Occupy Oakland attacked by police!
Yesterday in Oakland, CA a force of over 500 local police, Highway Patrol, sheriffs, and police from other departments used tear gas, rubber bullets, and flash grenades on peaceful protesters. They beat people and arrested upwards of 100 people who committed no acts of violence. I was at this protest.
Yesterday morning at 4AM the Occupy Oakland downtown site at Frank Ogawa Plaza was violently raided. Basically the Oakland police as well as officers from 10 other departments (Highway Patrol, Sheriff, departments as far away as San Jose, etc.) showed up and raided the camp with the use of tear gas, rubber bullets, and flash grenades. They beat people and arrested about 80 people. Then the police chief gave an interview claiming that the protesters threw glass bottles and rocks (something neither protesters or media ever saw) and that they never used rubber bullets.
Occupy Oakland put out a call to rally and march at the public library at 4PM, so I went. As I got off BART the first thing I saw was ten motorcycle cops in full riot gear. In the four blocks I walked to the library I saw about three more cops at each intersection redirecting traffic, a whole bunch of cop cars, paddy wagons, an armored car, and massive police presence. I'm not good at recognizing where the officers are from, but I hear that even that early there were multiple departments again.
When I got to the library there were literally thousands of us! I saw people of every age, every color. I saw people with disabilities who felt they had to protest despite being in wheelchairs, on walkers, and on crutches. People were sharing cookies and chatting. There was certainly a level of anger at the injustice of that morning, but the atmosphere was not one of nervous energy or anger. We had a relatively brief rally in which the organizers stressed that our march had to be peaceful, that we should avoid violent confrontation, that we should not antagonize the police, and that we should look out for each other.
We started marching on a circuitous route with the intention of passing by the jail (where the arrestees were) and back to Frank Ogawa Plaza to retake the space. I was marching with a friend and everything started off pretty well. We marched for a quite a few blocks without incident. When we got within two blocks of the courthouse there was a police line blocking our way. I was further in the back of the march, so I didn't see all of this part, but the protest broke through the police line. This is when bad choices were made on our side. A large group of protesters surrounded the police who had broken the line. Apparently someone started throwing paint at the cops and someone got arrested.
This was happening on a very small block. When I got to it there was a big crowd around the arrest happening, but my friend and I moved past it with a lot of people. At the other end of this small block we found two cop cars and a line of about twenty cops in riot gear. When we turned around to look the other way we saw that police had blocked the way we came as well. It was a frightening moment realizing that we were blocked in and that the march had effectively been split up. At some point the protesters made our way through a parking lot, which was the only exit the cops left us. Everything was very disorganized and people were kind of walking around in circles for a few moments, until someone called for a people's mic. It's a technique that's being used in all the Occupy movements in which the person speaking says short phrases that the crowd repeats loudly to make sure everyone can hear. In this context it really focused the people who were confused and the decision was made to continue marching to the plaza.
As we marched the rest of the protest seemed to come together again. When we got to the plaza the barricades were still up and there were about 100 cops in riot gear behind it. The protesters stopped there and chanted. I saw one woman, clearly old enough to be from the Vietnam era protests, jump over the barricade and lay flowers down in front of the cops. A few people, myself included, removed the police barricade. The cops announced that we were an "unlawful assembly" and that if we didn't disperse in 15 minutes they would start using "chemical agents" (aka tear gas). At this point I broke away from the crowd and called home to check in. When I got off the phone most of the protesters started marching away from the confrontation. Some people decided to stay and sit in the street, but I don't know how long they stayed or what happened to them.
We marched to a small park by Lake Merrit and the group decided to keep marching in the streets around the plaza without stopping anywhere for too long in the hope that eventually we would get in. At this point the people I was with (my friend and I had met up with four others) decided to break away and eat something. It was about 7PM and we'd been marching since 4. We went to a diner about a block and a half away from the plaza. While we had dinner we saw the march moving nearby and then saw people at the intersection by the plaza. It was a bit far to really see what was going on at all, but we saw that there was a moving crowd. Then we saw something kind of shocking: a line of 20 Highway Patrol cars, each with three or four officers in full riot gear, speeding towards the plaza with their lights on. We quickly tweeted that they were coming and found out that tear gas and rubber bullets had started being used. We never went back to the protest. I know that some of us were feeling conflicted about leaving, but I personally was comfortable not getting gassed or shot at.
Video of tear gas being shot at protesters. At 3:30 you can see tear gas being shot at a group of people trying to carry an injured woman to safety.
Twitter photos showing what kind of weapons were used.
There are a bunch of sites reporting slightly different versions of what happened, but the consensus is that the protest never got violent, that a force of 500+ cops were there, and that they used tear gas, flash grenades, and rubber bullets on the protesters. There are countless photographs and videos of these forces being used. Cops claim that protesters threw glass bottles and rocks and firecrackers at them thereby instigating "retaliation", but I never saw that happen, no protesters mentioned that happening, and no media saw it happen. At one point last night the chief of police denied the use of rubber bullets and people immediately started collecting them and putting the pictures online. There are pictures of protesters with head wounds and videos of people in wheelchairs getting tear gas lobbed at them. It's a thoroughly unjust situation!
There are going to be continuing rallies and marches every night at 6PM. I work nights until Sunday, but the next free day that I have I'm going back over. I'm going to do everything I can to avoid getting hurt, gassed, arrested, etc. But I am going to keep showing up!!!