Law and Order: Oakland
In the Occupy movement, the 99% are represented by two separate yet equally important groups: those who occupy, and the pro bono attorneys who defend them when they are arrested for nonviolent protest. These are their stories. CLONG CLONG
I had Monday the 28th off from work, so I used it to go the arraignment of an Occupy Oakland protester. I’d seen the protester several times at Occupy events and knew him as Rasta; he had been part of the original camps (before the first and second raids) and acted as a scout and security officer who patrolled the perimeter of the camp, broke up conflicts, and kept an eye out for police actions. On Thanksgiving, Rasta was part of a crowd of protesters who were trying to stop police from removing Port-A-Potties that had been rented as part of a community Thanksgiving dinner. One police officer shoved him and his fiancée into a group of police officers, who knocked him to the ground and arrested him with no small amount of force.
(Rasta is the tall guy with dreads roughly in the center of the frame at the beginning; his fiancée is the woman in the headscarf and camo pants who is holding him*. He was initially charged with felony assault on an officer, which is pretty rich considering that the video shows other police officers running into him.)
I went down to Occupy Oakland at about noon and hung out until 1:30, sitting on the steps of Ogawa Grant Plaza** and knitting. (I like to fuck with people’s idea of what a protest looks like. Everyone expects white dudez with Guy Fawkes masks and joints; nobody expects straight-edge queer brown chicks who knit and bake banana chocolate-chip muffins.) I met a woman who has some sort of mental disability (something developmental and Axis IIish) who told me that she had been pushed around as well that day. People were making signs with slogans like “I HAD TO PEE BUT OPD WOULDN’T LET ME” and “FREE [Rasta’s legal name]”. I got offered pot about three times. (I’m not sure whether this is normal for Occupy protests/encampments, or if this was a bizarre variation on trying to buy me a drink or something.)
At 1:30 someone got the huge banner that reads “WE ARE THE 99% - OCCUPY”. It’s easily 25 feet long, and we normally use it for marches where there are hundreds of people and we take up the whole street. Today there were only about 40 of us, but we unrolled it anyway and started marching south down Broadway, taking up all three southbound lanes. The Alameda courthouse is less than a mile away from OG Plaza, not quite long enough for me to lose my voice shouting things like “ya basta, free Rasta” and “the system has got to die, hella hella occupy”. Either my throat is getting stronger or I’m getting better at pacing myself for prolonged periods of yelling. It still amazes me that we can get away with things like blocking traffic and marching and hollering, and not only does nobody mess with us, but cars honk in support and pedestrians smile and pump their fists and take pictures.
When we got to the courthouse, a few people volunteered to stay outside with anything we didn’t want to bring inside. Courthouses have security rules only slightly less strict than TSA; nobody complained about my water bottle or made me take off my shoes, but I had to leave my knitting outside. Once inside, we found out that Rasta’s charges had been downgraded to a misdemeanor rather than a felony, and we had to go to a different room. (Aaron met up with us as we were going to the other room.) We also met an attorney from the National Lawyer’s Guild*** that was going to represent Rasta, and an assistant who was collecting video evidence of the incident.
The judge that was doing the arraignment was. . .not the most pleasant character. Imagine one of those substitute grade school teachers who are two years away from retirement and resent you for being in their class and making them come to work, and who seem to really relish yelling at students for talking out of turn and sending them to the principal’s officer; put a black robe on her and you have Rasta’s judge. She knew why we were there and she was not happy to have us at all. I heard the words "racist bitch" thrown around; I prefer to give her the benefit of the doubt and assume she was just cranky from being up all night sucking on lemons or something. (One protester next to me entertained herself while we waited by drawing pictures of her dying by increasingly gory methods.)
It took about an hour and a half to get to Rasta’s case, and some people went out to the hallway to relax a little. I stayed around and heard the other cases being arraigned. Arraignments are quick little affairs: a judge calls a defendant to the stand, a bailiff leads them in from a door stage left, the defendant verifies their legal name, the judge reads them their charges and sets bail, and then the bailiff escorts them back off stage left into custody. The whole thing takes about five minutes per defendant. Most defendants I saw didn’t seem to have representation with them. The defendants I saw weren't dressed in the orange jumpsuits you usually see on TV; they were wearing what looked like solid pastel-colored nurses' scrubs. A lot of the charges were for things like possession of drugs or drug paraphernalia, or DUI charges. In one of the cases the defendant was being held on a deportation hold for a DUI charge (so even if he made bail, he would remain in detention, and quite likely deported). That one was tragic; I don’t have a whole lot of sympathy for people who drive drunk, but deportation detention centers are the worst.
Basically, if you’ve been rhapsodized, or if you’re a changeling about to go into bedlam, sit in on a few arraignment hearings and watch the extra glamour melt away. Law and Order really does not do a good job of conveying the oppressive banality and depression of the judicial system.
Finally, Rasta's case came up. He was on crutches when he came out, which means he got medical attention at some point over the weekend. A good 2/3 of the Occupy Oakland contingent stood up when he entered and put their fists in the air (is there a word for that? I haven't run across it yet). The judge facepalmed and cleared the courtroom (definitely stayed up too late sucking those lemons), so we didn't get to stick around and hear the rest of the arraignment. The attorney told us later that Rasta had been charged with misdemeanor assault on an officer, his case will be heard/tried/whatever in January, and his bail had been set at $15,000. When I left the camp, his fiancée was talking to one of those bail bond services that hang around courthouses. We were also advised not to pull stunts like that again, since they only hurt the defendant. (OTOH, Rasta apparently thought it was the niftiest thing ever, so it's got its advantages.)
I was towards the back of the crowd leaving the courtroom, so I didn't see what brought this on, but there was quite a bit of "don't touch me!" shouting going on in front of me at the police officers guarding the courtroom. Tensions were high and Occupy Oakland was probably a little combative. Someone started filming with their cell phone behind me, and when the police yelled for him to stop, he dropped his phone and ran past us. Four or five police officers tackled him, while another grappled with an occupier who picked up the phone. (The police officer succeeded in taking the phone away; it's probably an "accidentally wiped" phone now, if not an "accidentally dropped and stepped on" pile of scrap metal. The occupier's hand got pretty scratched up in the process.) Occupiers surrounded the police and the filming guy and started whipping out phones and cameras of their own and chanting "the whole world is watching" and "fuck the pigs".
Eventually things got sorted out with the predictable conclusions: running filming guy was arrested and charged with contempt of court and resisting arrest, the Occupy Oakland contingent stormed out yelling about the injustice of tackling a dude for taking pictures, bystanders stood by going "bzuh?". We hung around outside the courthouse and waited for Rasta's fiancée and the attorney to come out and give us the news, and then we marched back north to Ogawa Grant Plaza chanting "banks got bailed out, we got thrown out".
All in all, an educational experience. It's actually good to see what I'll be facing if/when I get myself arrested over the next few months. (I'll actually be a little disappointed if I don't manage to get arrested before Occupy runs its course, although I hope it's for something like "sitting and linking arms with other protesters" rather than "get shoved into a group of cops and charged with assault".)
----
* I know both their legal names, but it doesn't seem kosher to name them on a blog without their permission, so they're going to be Rasta and fiancée for now.
** The plaza outside City Hall was originally called Frank Ogawa Plaza. Protesters changed it to Oscar Grant Plaza, in honor of the shooting ~2 years ago. Unfortunately, Frank Ogawa is actually quite worthy of being honored with the plaza's name - he lived in a relocation camp during WWII and was one of the first Asian American California congressmen. I prefer to combine the two and call it Ogawa Grant Plaza. Sadly, my version has not caught on outside of Chez Poisson.
*** National Lawyer’s Guild is very awesome and has been providing legal aid pro bono to all the Occupy protesters who get arrested. It’s common practice for people to write the local NLG chapter's hotline number on their arms (415-285-1011) when they go to any Occupy action where there's a chance they could be arrested. I have it on my arm pretty much permanently, in varying stages of fadedness/legibility. I would highly recommend donating to them if you can; there’s a few thousand arrests that have been made so far, and probably a few thousand more to go before we’re done.
I had Monday the 28th off from work, so I used it to go the arraignment of an Occupy Oakland protester. I’d seen the protester several times at Occupy events and knew him as Rasta; he had been part of the original camps (before the first and second raids) and acted as a scout and security officer who patrolled the perimeter of the camp, broke up conflicts, and kept an eye out for police actions. On Thanksgiving, Rasta was part of a crowd of protesters who were trying to stop police from removing Port-A-Potties that had been rented as part of a community Thanksgiving dinner. One police officer shoved him and his fiancée into a group of police officers, who knocked him to the ground and arrested him with no small amount of force.
Click to view(Rasta is the tall guy with dreads roughly in the center of the frame at the beginning; his fiancée is the woman in the headscarf and camo pants who is holding him*. He was initially charged with felony assault on an officer, which is pretty rich considering that the video shows other police officers running into him.)
I went down to Occupy Oakland at about noon and hung out until 1:30, sitting on the steps of Ogawa Grant Plaza** and knitting. (I like to fuck with people’s idea of what a protest looks like. Everyone expects white dudez with Guy Fawkes masks and joints; nobody expects straight-edge queer brown chicks who knit and bake banana chocolate-chip muffins.) I met a woman who has some sort of mental disability (something developmental and Axis IIish) who told me that she had been pushed around as well that day. People were making signs with slogans like “I HAD TO PEE BUT OPD WOULDN’T LET ME” and “FREE [Rasta’s legal name]”. I got offered pot about three times. (I’m not sure whether this is normal for Occupy protests/encampments, or if this was a bizarre variation on trying to buy me a drink or something.)
At 1:30 someone got the huge banner that reads “WE ARE THE 99% - OCCUPY”. It’s easily 25 feet long, and we normally use it for marches where there are hundreds of people and we take up the whole street. Today there were only about 40 of us, but we unrolled it anyway and started marching south down Broadway, taking up all three southbound lanes. The Alameda courthouse is less than a mile away from OG Plaza, not quite long enough for me to lose my voice shouting things like “ya basta, free Rasta” and “the system has got to die, hella hella occupy”. Either my throat is getting stronger or I’m getting better at pacing myself for prolonged periods of yelling. It still amazes me that we can get away with things like blocking traffic and marching and hollering, and not only does nobody mess with us, but cars honk in support and pedestrians smile and pump their fists and take pictures.
When we got to the courthouse, a few people volunteered to stay outside with anything we didn’t want to bring inside. Courthouses have security rules only slightly less strict than TSA; nobody complained about my water bottle or made me take off my shoes, but I had to leave my knitting outside. Once inside, we found out that Rasta’s charges had been downgraded to a misdemeanor rather than a felony, and we had to go to a different room. (Aaron met up with us as we were going to the other room.) We also met an attorney from the National Lawyer’s Guild*** that was going to represent Rasta, and an assistant who was collecting video evidence of the incident.
The judge that was doing the arraignment was. . .not the most pleasant character. Imagine one of those substitute grade school teachers who are two years away from retirement and resent you for being in their class and making them come to work, and who seem to really relish yelling at students for talking out of turn and sending them to the principal’s officer; put a black robe on her and you have Rasta’s judge. She knew why we were there and she was not happy to have us at all. I heard the words "racist bitch" thrown around; I prefer to give her the benefit of the doubt and assume she was just cranky from being up all night sucking on lemons or something. (One protester next to me entertained herself while we waited by drawing pictures of her dying by increasingly gory methods.)
It took about an hour and a half to get to Rasta’s case, and some people went out to the hallway to relax a little. I stayed around and heard the other cases being arraigned. Arraignments are quick little affairs: a judge calls a defendant to the stand, a bailiff leads them in from a door stage left, the defendant verifies their legal name, the judge reads them their charges and sets bail, and then the bailiff escorts them back off stage left into custody. The whole thing takes about five minutes per defendant. Most defendants I saw didn’t seem to have representation with them. The defendants I saw weren't dressed in the orange jumpsuits you usually see on TV; they were wearing what looked like solid pastel-colored nurses' scrubs. A lot of the charges were for things like possession of drugs or drug paraphernalia, or DUI charges. In one of the cases the defendant was being held on a deportation hold for a DUI charge (so even if he made bail, he would remain in detention, and quite likely deported). That one was tragic; I don’t have a whole lot of sympathy for people who drive drunk, but deportation detention centers are the worst.
Basically, if you’ve been rhapsodized, or if you’re a changeling about to go into bedlam, sit in on a few arraignment hearings and watch the extra glamour melt away. Law and Order really does not do a good job of conveying the oppressive banality and depression of the judicial system.
Finally, Rasta's case came up. He was on crutches when he came out, which means he got medical attention at some point over the weekend. A good 2/3 of the Occupy Oakland contingent stood up when he entered and put their fists in the air (is there a word for that? I haven't run across it yet). The judge facepalmed and cleared the courtroom (definitely stayed up too late sucking those lemons), so we didn't get to stick around and hear the rest of the arraignment. The attorney told us later that Rasta had been charged with misdemeanor assault on an officer, his case will be heard/tried/whatever in January, and his bail had been set at $15,000. When I left the camp, his fiancée was talking to one of those bail bond services that hang around courthouses. We were also advised not to pull stunts like that again, since they only hurt the defendant. (OTOH, Rasta apparently thought it was the niftiest thing ever, so it's got its advantages.)
I was towards the back of the crowd leaving the courtroom, so I didn't see what brought this on, but there was quite a bit of "don't touch me!" shouting going on in front of me at the police officers guarding the courtroom. Tensions were high and Occupy Oakland was probably a little combative. Someone started filming with their cell phone behind me, and when the police yelled for him to stop, he dropped his phone and ran past us. Four or five police officers tackled him, while another grappled with an occupier who picked up the phone. (The police officer succeeded in taking the phone away; it's probably an "accidentally wiped" phone now, if not an "accidentally dropped and stepped on" pile of scrap metal. The occupier's hand got pretty scratched up in the process.) Occupiers surrounded the police and the filming guy and started whipping out phones and cameras of their own and chanting "the whole world is watching" and "fuck the pigs".
Eventually things got sorted out with the predictable conclusions: running filming guy was arrested and charged with contempt of court and resisting arrest, the Occupy Oakland contingent stormed out yelling about the injustice of tackling a dude for taking pictures, bystanders stood by going "bzuh?". We hung around outside the courthouse and waited for Rasta's fiancée and the attorney to come out and give us the news, and then we marched back north to Ogawa Grant Plaza chanting "banks got bailed out, we got thrown out".
All in all, an educational experience. It's actually good to see what I'll be facing if/when I get myself arrested over the next few months. (I'll actually be a little disappointed if I don't manage to get arrested before Occupy runs its course, although I hope it's for something like "sitting and linking arms with other protesters" rather than "get shoved into a group of cops and charged with assault".)
----
* I know both their legal names, but it doesn't seem kosher to name them on a blog without their permission, so they're going to be Rasta and fiancée for now.
** The plaza outside City Hall was originally called Frank Ogawa Plaza. Protesters changed it to Oscar Grant Plaza, in honor of the shooting ~2 years ago. Unfortunately, Frank Ogawa is actually quite worthy of being honored with the plaza's name - he lived in a relocation camp during WWII and was one of the first Asian American California congressmen. I prefer to combine the two and call it Ogawa Grant Plaza. Sadly, my version has not caught on outside of Chez Poisson.
*** National Lawyer’s Guild is very awesome and has been providing legal aid pro bono to all the Occupy protesters who get arrested. It’s common practice for people to write the local NLG chapter's hotline number on their arms (415-285-1011) when they go to any Occupy action where there's a chance they could be arrested. I have it on my arm pretty much permanently, in varying stages of fadedness/legibility. I would highly recommend donating to them if you can; there’s a few thousand arrests that have been made so far, and probably a few thousand more to go before we’re done.