Whose long-ass write up of May Day? OUR LONG-ASS WRITE UP OF MAY DAY!
I got up way too early for my own good and got to 19th and Telegraph, where buses were waiting to pick up people to support a Golden Gate Bridge Labor Coalition picket line in Larkspur. There had been plans to shut down the Golden Gate Bridge along with the workers; the plans fell through, and we wanted to make sure that people who got on the buses knew which action they were going to. Making sure people knew where they were going proved to be a very easy job, because relatively few people showed up. There were two buses and only one was 75% filled. The police we'd seen earlier were hanging around waiting to follow the buses. The empty one ended up pulling out five minutes before the filled one, with about ten police cars and five motorcycles followed it. (lulz) After the protesters left, we dispersed to various strike stations that had been set up around the downtown area for different actions - one was protesting Child Protective Services for targeting women who bring their kids to OO events, one was shutting down banks, one was protesting gentrification along Telegraph, and there was a central one in OG Plaza letting people know where to go and what was going on.
Since my ankle was bugging me, I went to OG Plaza where I could be out of the physically active (and possibly physically unsafe) actions. The morning was cool but getting noticeably warmer, especially in the sun. The silk screeners who designed and produced the iconic "Hella Occupy Oakland" poster (this one, you've probably seen it around) set up their table and ran off about a thousand posters, which people could take as soon as they dried. It felt like a family reunion for a while - I saw a lot of familiar faces (who shall remain nameless because some have stay-away orders). I'm always somewhat surprised that people notice and remember me at these things, since I wasn't embedded in the camps or vigils and I'm not active on any committees because of my work schedule (except maybe the pandoradeloeste Knits Gloves For Everyone Committee), but I guess seven months of hanging around the periphery and some fleeting Mother Jones fame makes up for it.
I stayed with the table for the most part, since it had convenient seating by the flagpole. The people who came up were evenly split between "non-Occupier who wants to know what's going on" and "Occupier from out of town who wants to know what's happening where". There were no trolls, and all the non-Occupiers I spoke to were happy to see us back. I don't know if I convinced anyone to strike or call in sick from work, but I had a lot of positive conversations and people were really happy to hear about the station that shut down banks.
(People coming back from the CPS action said that there was a counter-protest with people claiming that Occupy Oakland is full of child molesters and is run by a Mexican gang. I am now very confused, because back in February I was informed that Occupy Oakland was white terrorism. So am I a white terrorist, or a Mexican gangster? And apparently I molest children, which is hilarious if you've ever heard me talk about the ridiculous lengths I go to keep children out of my life.)
At about noon people started filtering back from the various marches and actions, headed up by people with shields (corrugated siding with door frames and handles attached, or heavy-duty plastic garbage cans sawed in half). Those shields are works of art, by the way; most of the good ones don't come up on Google image searches, but here's a few good ones About half the people I saw were in masks of some kind (T-shirt ninja masks, balaclavas, bandanas, Guy Fawkes masks, etc). The sound system came back with the march from CPS, and a dance party broke out in the middle of 14th and Broadway. Someone had rigged up a makeshift maypole using a tree branch and some torn strips of cloth, which people grabbed and started playing with. Every so often I looked up from the dance party and saw that the people on the periphery were still holding up their shields and watching the cops, who had lined up loosely about a half block away facing us.
At about 12:30 I went to Rising Loafer (a restaurant on the Plaza, run by an awesome woman who lets OO use their bathroom and stash some equipment in their back room) to use the bathroom. That took a while, and when I got out a group of ~50 protesters had gone north on Broadway to shut down the banks on 20th. After ten minutes of wandering around and enjoying the carnival-like vibe, someone got on the mike and said, "Our comrades need help on Broadway!" Of course everyone ran to Broadway to see what was going on. Protesters were speedwalking and jogging up Broadway - nobody flat-out runs from the cops because that's more likely to hurt someone in a crowded street - first a few, then a bigger mass that slowed down as a skirmish line between cops and protesters formed on 15th and Broadway.
Normal crowd noise and shouting started to pick up volume and sound angrier and resolve into chants: "ALL COPS ARE BASTARDS! A.C.A.B.!" "WHOSE STREETS? OUR STREETS!" "PIGS GO HOME!" People started running past me to join the melee (only some of them were in black or masks). National Lawyer's Guild legal observers ran in with their conspicuous lime-green hats to take the names of people being arrested. The anchorwoman from ABC got into a screaming match with another protester (not masked). I heard a gunshot (those are really loud with buildings around to reflect the sound) and a plume of white smoke appeared in the middle of the front line of the skirmish. "We've got tear gas!" shouted the guy on the mike. "Stay calm, everyone! Protect each other!" (Note: I don't know whether it was tear gas or just smoke - police use both interchangeably since people react the same to clouds of smoke coming their way.) This went on for a while. The guy on the mike changed the music to N.W.A., and every so often would call out, "Stay calm, comrades! Stay together! Fuck the police!"
After a while people started filtering back into the plaza and cooling off. There were some smashed windows on Broadway, and some people had climbed onto the bus shelter by Rite-Aid to see further down the street. From this point on Broadway was closed off from 17th to some point south of the plaza (10th?). Police were OK with people wandering around in the street, as long as it didn't look like they were massing for a march. The anti-repression committee led a small march to City Hall in protest of stay-away orders and deportations (the crowd was big but they marched all of 100 yards). When the march spilled over into the street, police shot more unidentified white smoke at their rear and issued a dispersal warning, telling them to get back to the plaza. (I think this was tear gas, because the wind shifted and I got a whiff of something sharp.) Medics got on the mike and informed people about the snatchbox technique that the police were using, where small squads of police quickly push into a crowd and isolate and grab one or two people (this is the small unit tactics that HoJo and other police officers were talking about prior to May Day), and had us practice "tightening up" by linking arms when someone spots a squad about to do their thing to make it harder for police to snatch up individuals. We were warned that police were also snatching up people who were walking alone on side streets, and advised to travel in groups of three or more.
At this point I left to go on a march for immigrant and labor rights that was scheduled to start at Fruitvale BART (4 miles away). I found a few other people who were headed to the march and we walked to a BART station. The march was permitted and relatively tame compared to the stuff going on downtown; police weren't wearing riot gear, they blocked traffic for us, etc. They did conspicuously film us as we passed, which was probably a little intimidating for people who are vulnerable to police repression (I'm a citizen and I've already been filmed at protest actions so many times I really only care if they get my good side at this point). The march was long as hell - I wish someone had aerial pictures of it, there were at least 5,000 people there - and took about three hours to get to the plaza. I was bringing up the rear of the march and by the time I got there, another dance party was underway in the street. The sound system was playing reggaeton, and the plaza had people playing acoustic punk and guys juggling with devil sticks.
The permit for the march and rally was good until 8:00 and everything seemed chill at this point, so I decided to take my very sore feet and ankles home. I checked in with a security guard (rent-a-cop, not police) to make sure police weren't snatching lone protesters anymore, confirmed that they were chill for now, and limped to 24 Hour Fitness to call Aaron and get some water and use their bathroom.
As far as I can tell, the march/rally was permitted until 8:00, and the police had no intention of letting it continue one minute longer. At the stroke of eight dispersal orders were given and the real fun began, for a loose definition of fun that includes setting trashcans on fire, chasing people down a crowded sidewalk with a motorcycle, snatching up people who've been separated, etc. (I'm told that the dispersal orders were actually not legally binding, since they basically consisted of "clear the plaza NOW" rather than providing a time frame, but at least people were given a way to disperse, so progress has been made since January 28.) At our apartment I heard helicopters going until at least 10:00.
Much is being made right now of the fact that the police arrested fewer people than they have in the past. The medics I follow on Twitter have stated that even though fewer people have been taken to jail than there were in January, the police beat the shit out of a lot of people. One thirteen-year-old girl was treated for a huge bruise on her back where a cop hit her because she wasn't moving fast enough for him [edit: video is here, at 1:15]. One of the guys who carries the red Occupy Oakland sign got shot in the head with a less-lethal projectile of some kind. There are pictures of someone being tased when they're on the ground not resisting (which is bringing back all sorts of uncomfortable memories of Oscar Grant for a lot of people). Lots of people got batons to the face. There's a picture circulating on Twitter of a police officer holding an M4 assault rifle in front of City Hall, which apparently is far more likely to have been loaded with live ammunition than less-lethal stuff. Nobody was hit with live ammunition on May Day, but the fact that it was present is understandably disturbing.
(It should be noted that even less-lethal stuff is pretty damn bad. Scott Olsen took a less-lethal beanbag round to the head back in October and was in intensive care for several days, couldn't use language for a few months, and is only now starting to speak fluently again. Beanbags and rubber pellets sound innocuous enough but they can easily be just as lethal as live ammunition when they're aimed at people's heads or vital organs, which happens a lot.)
My overall impressions of the day:
1) People were glad to see us back. When I was tabling in the morning, everyone who passed was smiling and happy to see us back in the plaza.
2) Holy class divide, Batman. The difference between our reception in Fruitvale and North Oakland (the area that the anti-gentrification group was picketing) is like night and day. People in Fruitvale honked and cheered. People in North Oakland shouted at protesters to get out of their city. Recognition and excitement versus fear and anger. There's probably something profound about the relative levels of privilege in rich and poor areas of the city, who benefits the most from the system as it stands now, and who has the most to gain/the most to lose from the sort of radical solutions that come out of Occupy. This entry is already hella long; have at it in the comments.
3) Occupy's honeymoon period is over, and that played out not only in the media coverage (which has almost all been pretty unsympathetic) but in the mood of both protesters and police. Protesters came in expecting trouble from the police (witness the shields that were present from the first march, and the dance party atmosphere that didn't make it to the edges of the crowd because they were watching for trouble), and police came in knowing who they wanted to separate from the crowd and arrest. The unseelie folks came in ready to mask up and smash things/set them on fire.
3a) Police brought live ammunition to defend City Hall. This is a big deal. Police brought live ammunition to a protest. Not in handguns in their holsters, in huge fuck-off rifles out in the open. It's a huge escalation, given that protesters are generally armed with the crudest of improvised weapons, when they're armed at all. There's only one way a standoff between a police officer with an assault rifle and a protester with nothing more serious than a bottle or a 2x4 can end, and it is not a good way.
4) May Day was supposed to be about labor rights and International Workers' Day, and somehow the narrative downtown turned into "fuck the police". Again. I know Occupiers are sick of it (jail and jail support are not the funnest things ever), I know non-Occupiers are sick of hearing it, it's reactive and not an easy PR war to win, and I wish there were a way to shift it effectively without losing momentum.
Since my ankle was bugging me, I went to OG Plaza where I could be out of the physically active (and possibly physically unsafe) actions. The morning was cool but getting noticeably warmer, especially in the sun. The silk screeners who designed and produced the iconic "Hella Occupy Oakland" poster (this one, you've probably seen it around) set up their table and ran off about a thousand posters, which people could take as soon as they dried. It felt like a family reunion for a while - I saw a lot of familiar faces (who shall remain nameless because some have stay-away orders). I'm always somewhat surprised that people notice and remember me at these things, since I wasn't embedded in the camps or vigils and I'm not active on any committees because of my work schedule (except maybe the pandoradeloeste Knits Gloves For Everyone Committee), but I guess seven months of hanging around the periphery and some fleeting Mother Jones fame makes up for it.
I stayed with the table for the most part, since it had convenient seating by the flagpole. The people who came up were evenly split between "non-Occupier who wants to know what's going on" and "Occupier from out of town who wants to know what's happening where". There were no trolls, and all the non-Occupiers I spoke to were happy to see us back. I don't know if I convinced anyone to strike or call in sick from work, but I had a lot of positive conversations and people were really happy to hear about the station that shut down banks.
(People coming back from the CPS action said that there was a counter-protest with people claiming that Occupy Oakland is full of child molesters and is run by a Mexican gang. I am now very confused, because back in February I was informed that Occupy Oakland was white terrorism. So am I a white terrorist, or a Mexican gangster? And apparently I molest children, which is hilarious if you've ever heard me talk about the ridiculous lengths I go to keep children out of my life.)
At about noon people started filtering back from the various marches and actions, headed up by people with shields (corrugated siding with door frames and handles attached, or heavy-duty plastic garbage cans sawed in half). Those shields are works of art, by the way; most of the good ones don't come up on Google image searches, but here's a few good ones About half the people I saw were in masks of some kind (T-shirt ninja masks, balaclavas, bandanas, Guy Fawkes masks, etc). The sound system came back with the march from CPS, and a dance party broke out in the middle of 14th and Broadway. Someone had rigged up a makeshift maypole using a tree branch and some torn strips of cloth, which people grabbed and started playing with. Every so often I looked up from the dance party and saw that the people on the periphery were still holding up their shields and watching the cops, who had lined up loosely about a half block away facing us.
At about 12:30 I went to Rising Loafer (a restaurant on the Plaza, run by an awesome woman who lets OO use their bathroom and stash some equipment in their back room) to use the bathroom. That took a while, and when I got out a group of ~50 protesters had gone north on Broadway to shut down the banks on 20th. After ten minutes of wandering around and enjoying the carnival-like vibe, someone got on the mike and said, "Our comrades need help on Broadway!" Of course everyone ran to Broadway to see what was going on. Protesters were speedwalking and jogging up Broadway - nobody flat-out runs from the cops because that's more likely to hurt someone in a crowded street - first a few, then a bigger mass that slowed down as a skirmish line between cops and protesters formed on 15th and Broadway.
Normal crowd noise and shouting started to pick up volume and sound angrier and resolve into chants: "ALL COPS ARE BASTARDS! A.C.A.B.!" "WHOSE STREETS? OUR STREETS!" "PIGS GO HOME!" People started running past me to join the melee (only some of them were in black or masks). National Lawyer's Guild legal observers ran in with their conspicuous lime-green hats to take the names of people being arrested. The anchorwoman from ABC got into a screaming match with another protester (not masked). I heard a gunshot (those are really loud with buildings around to reflect the sound) and a plume of white smoke appeared in the middle of the front line of the skirmish. "We've got tear gas!" shouted the guy on the mike. "Stay calm, everyone! Protect each other!" (Note: I don't know whether it was tear gas or just smoke - police use both interchangeably since people react the same to clouds of smoke coming their way.) This went on for a while. The guy on the mike changed the music to N.W.A., and every so often would call out, "Stay calm, comrades! Stay together! Fuck the police!"
After a while people started filtering back into the plaza and cooling off. There were some smashed windows on Broadway, and some people had climbed onto the bus shelter by Rite-Aid to see further down the street. From this point on Broadway was closed off from 17th to some point south of the plaza (10th?). Police were OK with people wandering around in the street, as long as it didn't look like they were massing for a march. The anti-repression committee led a small march to City Hall in protest of stay-away orders and deportations (the crowd was big but they marched all of 100 yards). When the march spilled over into the street, police shot more unidentified white smoke at their rear and issued a dispersal warning, telling them to get back to the plaza. (I think this was tear gas, because the wind shifted and I got a whiff of something sharp.) Medics got on the mike and informed people about the snatchbox technique that the police were using, where small squads of police quickly push into a crowd and isolate and grab one or two people (this is the small unit tactics that HoJo and other police officers were talking about prior to May Day), and had us practice "tightening up" by linking arms when someone spots a squad about to do their thing to make it harder for police to snatch up individuals. We were warned that police were also snatching up people who were walking alone on side streets, and advised to travel in groups of three or more.
At this point I left to go on a march for immigrant and labor rights that was scheduled to start at Fruitvale BART (4 miles away). I found a few other people who were headed to the march and we walked to a BART station. The march was permitted and relatively tame compared to the stuff going on downtown; police weren't wearing riot gear, they blocked traffic for us, etc. They did conspicuously film us as we passed, which was probably a little intimidating for people who are vulnerable to police repression (I'm a citizen and I've already been filmed at protest actions so many times I really only care if they get my good side at this point). The march was long as hell - I wish someone had aerial pictures of it, there were at least 5,000 people there - and took about three hours to get to the plaza. I was bringing up the rear of the march and by the time I got there, another dance party was underway in the street. The sound system was playing reggaeton, and the plaza had people playing acoustic punk and guys juggling with devil sticks.
The permit for the march and rally was good until 8:00 and everything seemed chill at this point, so I decided to take my very sore feet and ankles home. I checked in with a security guard (rent-a-cop, not police) to make sure police weren't snatching lone protesters anymore, confirmed that they were chill for now, and limped to 24 Hour Fitness to call Aaron and get some water and use their bathroom.
As far as I can tell, the march/rally was permitted until 8:00, and the police had no intention of letting it continue one minute longer. At the stroke of eight dispersal orders were given and the real fun began, for a loose definition of fun that includes setting trashcans on fire, chasing people down a crowded sidewalk with a motorcycle, snatching up people who've been separated, etc. (I'm told that the dispersal orders were actually not legally binding, since they basically consisted of "clear the plaza NOW" rather than providing a time frame, but at least people were given a way to disperse, so progress has been made since January 28.) At our apartment I heard helicopters going until at least 10:00.
Much is being made right now of the fact that the police arrested fewer people than they have in the past. The medics I follow on Twitter have stated that even though fewer people have been taken to jail than there were in January, the police beat the shit out of a lot of people. One thirteen-year-old girl was treated for a huge bruise on her back where a cop hit her because she wasn't moving fast enough for him [edit: video is here, at 1:15]. One of the guys who carries the red Occupy Oakland sign got shot in the head with a less-lethal projectile of some kind. There are pictures of someone being tased when they're on the ground not resisting (which is bringing back all sorts of uncomfortable memories of Oscar Grant for a lot of people). Lots of people got batons to the face. There's a picture circulating on Twitter of a police officer holding an M4 assault rifle in front of City Hall, which apparently is far more likely to have been loaded with live ammunition than less-lethal stuff. Nobody was hit with live ammunition on May Day, but the fact that it was present is understandably disturbing.
(It should be noted that even less-lethal stuff is pretty damn bad. Scott Olsen took a less-lethal beanbag round to the head back in October and was in intensive care for several days, couldn't use language for a few months, and is only now starting to speak fluently again. Beanbags and rubber pellets sound innocuous enough but they can easily be just as lethal as live ammunition when they're aimed at people's heads or vital organs, which happens a lot.)
My overall impressions of the day:
1) People were glad to see us back. When I was tabling in the morning, everyone who passed was smiling and happy to see us back in the plaza.
2) Holy class divide, Batman. The difference between our reception in Fruitvale and North Oakland (the area that the anti-gentrification group was picketing) is like night and day. People in Fruitvale honked and cheered. People in North Oakland shouted at protesters to get out of their city. Recognition and excitement versus fear and anger. There's probably something profound about the relative levels of privilege in rich and poor areas of the city, who benefits the most from the system as it stands now, and who has the most to gain/the most to lose from the sort of radical solutions that come out of Occupy. This entry is already hella long; have at it in the comments.
3) Occupy's honeymoon period is over, and that played out not only in the media coverage (which has almost all been pretty unsympathetic) but in the mood of both protesters and police. Protesters came in expecting trouble from the police (witness the shields that were present from the first march, and the dance party atmosphere that didn't make it to the edges of the crowd because they were watching for trouble), and police came in knowing who they wanted to separate from the crowd and arrest. The unseelie folks came in ready to mask up and smash things/set them on fire.
3a) Police brought live ammunition to defend City Hall. This is a big deal. Police brought live ammunition to a protest. Not in handguns in their holsters, in huge fuck-off rifles out in the open. It's a huge escalation, given that protesters are generally armed with the crudest of improvised weapons, when they're armed at all. There's only one way a standoff between a police officer with an assault rifle and a protester with nothing more serious than a bottle or a 2x4 can end, and it is not a good way.
4) May Day was supposed to be about labor rights and International Workers' Day, and somehow the narrative downtown turned into "fuck the police". Again. I know Occupiers are sick of it (jail and jail support are not the funnest things ever), I know non-Occupiers are sick of hearing it, it's reactive and not an easy PR war to win, and I wish there were a way to shift it effectively without losing momentum.