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Early Morning Police Raid Ousts Occupy Oakland
OAKLAND -- Before dawn Tuesday, at least 200 police, many in riot gear, tore down the Occupy Oakland encampment in front of City Hall and arrested dozens of people. A smaller camp near Lake Merritt was also dismantled.
Oakland police surround the Occupy encampment in the early morning preparing to go in and disband the tent community set up by citizens to protest what they see as a dysfunctional economy and political system caused by Wall Street greed and rampant inequality. Early reports from police say the raids went smoothly, with all protesters cleared out of the downtown Frank H. Ogawa Plaza in less than 30 minutes.
After police surrounded the plaza about 4:45 a.m., they began moving in and taking down tents and barricades erected by the group, which had been camped there since Oct. 10 in support of the Occupy Wall Street effort.
Many protesters were handcuffed and led away by police from the camp at 14th Street and Broadway. Many others left on their
own.
Police in riot gear, armed with billy clubs and some with shotguns, overturned tents, and the campers' wooden stalls quickly, leaving what looked like a hurricane-struck refugee camp in their wake. They ripped up dozens of cardboard signs, overturned a couch and when it was over there were scraps of carpet, personal belongings and trash all over the plaza.
One police officer said several objects were thrown at police, including bottles, skillets, other kitchen utensils and rocks. They also "threw plates at us like Frisbees," the officer said.
Protesters also chanted "Police go home, cops go home" and banged sticks on anything they could find. Some chanted "Police were the biggest gang in America."
At the Snow Park camp, Mindy Stone said as she was led away by police that she was just there to protest and exercise her rights. "We are not camping, we are just demonstrating."
No injuries were immediately reported. Police did not have an exact count of how many people were arrested.
The Occupy Oakland encampment, an offshoot of Occupy Wall Street, sprung up on Oct. 10 and over the last two weeks had grown into a "tent city" with an estimated 300 campers, hay bales and stalls for medical aid, food, art, and community meetings. Along with the makeshift city came a host of problems. City officials reported rats in the camp, fights, drug use and violence against the media.
Shortly before 3 a.m. Tuesday, Occupy Oakland organizers sent out a text message alert, saying a police raid was imminent, but police didn't surround camp until almost two hours later. Police used a bullhorn to repeat instructions to leave the plaza immediately or risk arrest. Police threatened to use "chemical agents" to oust the protesters.
Protesters attempted to keep police out by putting at least two metal Dumpsters at the side of the camp near 14th Street and Broadway, but police pushed them aside during the raid.
One man walked around carrying a giant shield he fashioned out of duct tape. After the plaza was cleared of protesters, about 20 to 30 people gathered on a small side street off Broadway between 14th and 15th streets beating drums and chanting "rise up, rise up, rise up, come on people rise up" as police mulled around the plaza and in small groups on the streets. Three helicopters circled above the scene as the night began to turn to day. The city has advised employers to keep employees away from downtown while cleanup crews move in to remove the massive amount of debris.
When the loose-knit group first occupied the plaza, it was to protest widespread unemployment and corporate greed, but the encampment grew to encompass many other causes: support for state prison inmates who are on hunger strikes, housing rights, fair wages and against social oppression.
City officials began stepping up pressure on the protesters last week and on Friday upped the stakes by issuing a letter stating that the encampment on the plaza was "a violation of the law" and threatening violators with immediate arrest.
The "notice of violations and demand to cease violations" came a day after a preliminary letter that urged the residents to vacate the camp because of what the city said were a host of problems, including fighting, vandalism, public urination and other sanitation and public health issues. Officials said an existing rat problem in the area was being made worse by the encampment, which had about 100 tents at one point.
A spokeswoman for the mayor, Karen Boyd, said Friday that the protesters had shown themselves incapable of self-governance. "As a collective, they cannot maintain the plaza in a safe condition," she said.
Reporters Scott Johnson and Sean Mahercontributed to this story.
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45 Comments so far
Show AllAs we saw in Boston, the authorities like the cover of darkness.
Pick a bank, move your money, close your account. Pick one corporation: BOYCOTT FOREVER. Add a new one every so often. Spread the word. Seek to build jobs in co-op enterprises.
Time to close down all the libraries in Oakland and lay the librarians off. No cash. Half the cash went for police overtime, honestly, they couldn't wait until 8:00 a.m. on a weekday? Overtime and aviation fuel for three choppers? The rest of Oakland's mad money went down the drain for human rights abuses.
Were the cops apprehending the felons that took away some person's insurance after the insurance company found the victim had cancer? No, the whole force was off chasing kittens in the park.
I'm sure those old folks with the blue tattooed number on their arms will recognize all of this from the days of their youth in Germany.
Deja vu?
I don't recall reports of Jews camping out in public squares and parks for weeks on end, beating reporters and non-participants, and not letting the police patrol their encampments.
Oh.. and I don't think the OPD packed the protesters into cattle cars and then took them to death camps.
Seriously, the nazi metaphors are just ignorant.
Everyone can just go back in the morning and protest as long as they like as long as they don't pitch tents, set up kitchens and block the park workers from cleaning on the regular schedule.
I think the comparison was having a militarized person come into your sleeping area and haul you off to jail. Maybe some other things, but even the holocost didn't start off with cattle cars and death camps. This is america and the roots of genocide are different here. BTW, those Oakland police are a cheerie bunch of lads.
"Police did not have an exact count of how many people were arrested."
Why is that? I have problem with the fact that our police agencies seem to lack the ability to accurately account for the results their actions.
Existing rat problem? That's the reason cited? Really? Talk about a lack of credibility on the part of "governance". It sounds to me like the debris was left by the police not the protestors.
Even in the supposedly liberal Bay Area, the cops represent wealth, property and power.
And they don't have to give an account of how many people were arrested because it's none of your business. They don't represent you or me.
Many people still fail to see that democrats and their MS Liberal supporters are much more (physically) dangerous to the average American than republicans ever were. With Obama The Violent, you can now add the rest of the world to that as well. That's the biggest danger today. So many are sleeping with the Beast...
This isn't a police thing, its a liberal/power structure thing. The cops are being told what to do – from the top.
The republicans want to cut heat assistance to the poor, food stamps, and women's rights, along with giving social security to wall street and Medicare voulcures that won't cover health care and you call liberals dangerous? More guns in bars and on college campuses, that is your republican ideals.
I would can that ..A grand slam!
I agree with Moonpie, and my reasoning is this: the policies of both parties are different in degree, not in kind. Both parties back policies that will gut entitlements, aid and abet wall street looting, and despoil the environment.
The reasons liberals/democrats are more dangerous than republicans is that the opposition is so overtly frightening, democratic policies have not been vigorously opposed by the left and therefore have become codified into law . (If Jr. had created a 'super committee' charged with carte blanche slashing and burning of the budget, you think rachel maddow or thom hartmann and their many followers would be silent?)
It's a style thing. The republicans don't have it, some democrats do. The Smiling Man is good for the oligarchs...he takes away the contempt people had for Jr., even though his policies are the same...in some cases worse.
At least this was all true until OWS ...
Spy satalites, tasors, helocoplers, computer links to the intelligence community but cannot sum arrests. So right away there is a credibility gap.
A spokeswoman for the mayor, Karen Boyd, said Friday that the protesters had shown themselves incapable of self-governance. "As a collective, they cannot maintain the plaza in a safe condition," she said.
Oh aye, they had armed goons come in the night and start wrecking things. Definitely unsafe. Just goes to show why folk need the ruling classes to keep them safe and unharmed -- except by the ruling classes' goons.
The best thing about V is that he/she uses knives which I suspect hurt more and he/she is undoubedly aware of this.
This is the video made before the police attack:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kek8qUWgS-Y&feature=player_embedded#!
Democracy is messy. A park without people is orderly. Suspect the rats would be there anyway. And the dope, too.
I remember being in Oakland at the large anti-war demonstration in 1967 and I'll never forget the looks on the faces of the Oakland police and CHP who looked so eager for our blood. The only good thing about their moving in on the OW camp at 4:45 am is that the campers didin't have to see that same look.
"The city has advised employers to keep employees away from downtown while cleanup crews move in to remove the massive amount of debris."
Note the patronizing and authoritarian world view implicit in this statement. The government thinks of its citizens as serfs and corporations as princes and lords. This is a perfect illustration of why these "occupations" are needed.
"A spokeswoman for the mayor, Karen Boyd, said Friday that the protesters had shown themselves incapable of self-governance."
Previously a predicate for foreign groups, like Chile under Allende, Panama under Noriega, Haiti under Aristide, etc. They complain about OWS not having a leadership to negotiate with, but if it ever does, I'd expect him to be a CIA plant. THe CIA has, after all, started domestic missions.
In each of these cases there is a mayor involved. They give the orders. Direct your anger at them.
Sorry Moon...The cops have the same requirement as the military to refuse illegal orders. "Just following orders" didn't work at Nuremburg and it won't work when these Fascist pigs meet their Justice. France, do you have a used Guillotine for sale because we reallllly need it here!!
Terrorism, plain and simple
They need to get back in there and re-occupy the park. This fascism should not be allowed to stand. I really don't believe a word of the official explanations given for clearing them out. I don't think anyone who understands what a threat to the power structure all of the OWS protests represent to the power elite should believe any official pronouncements. What those of us who saw the truth years ago is finally becoming visible to the rest of the sheeple - just about ALL office-holding politicians of either major party are beholden to the powerful economic interests who put them in power, there really isn't a dime's worth of difference between the D's and the R's, we need to vote for the G's and the S's.
I don't believe a word of what the cops claim happened either. I'm 54 years old and living in a major city and what I've seen over the years between being related to cops and seeing the behavior of cops, there is one thing I've learned "If their lips are moving, they are lying."
These men/women in these uniforms are brown-shirt Nazis and nothing less. And probably 98% of our Selected officials are Fascists. This what we are up against, but I still have the strongest faith that good will win out and we will win. But we are in for the typical battle it would take to get rid of Facism, but we will do it I believe because we have no choice.
... and riot gear and body armor.
Almost enough to make one long for the more modest apparel and fashions of fascism's "good old days."
What was that whole WW2 thing about again? Seems like American revolutions against imperialist tyranny and wars against fascist dictatorships have little to do with opposing the underlying concepts and much to do with wanting their ownership for itself.
A march with a permit is just a parade.
An encampment in a park with a permit is just a picnic.
No more parades...No more picnics
I agree with your statement. No more parades. No more picnics.
The whole thing is so obvious; every news item, even on MSM, is about the failing economy, the lack of jobs, the declining social structure, the "signs of the times", yet, they still pretend they don't know what this is all about.
To so many, it is still in the realm of a toss-off joke, a little banter, "yep, things are tough all over..."
Well, It's Not Funny Anymore!
Our permitt is the first ammendment.
"Unable to govern", doesn't that describe our government mismanaging economic regulation and there own job security? What does project mean?
The only violence reported is about Italy and USA police.
Aggressive fucking apes. These are merely the first forays of resistance, and there will be sets of realizations happening that build upon each other. I hope this begins to wake people up to the fact that violence is going to be used against them, extensively, and unless we're all prepared to inhumanly be martyrs, forceful resistance will be required in response. That's how the labor battles of the 1800s and early 1900s transpired, and that's what is unfortunately still required.
Human nature hasn't changed. Power will *not* slink away in the face of mere moral force.
Where were these useless fucking apes when the tea party was spitting on democrat law makers, or at the beck rally holding up posters of Obama as a witch doctor or a nazi? They get extra pay for fucking with us, over time, Wisconsin teachers sure don't get overtime pay, they just get it in the shorts.
If you look at what happened in Tunisia and Egypt earlier this year, you'd have to say that the people were as successful as they were because they remained mostly peaceful. Police and soldiers will be much more hesitant to shoot US citizens if we're peaceful. The key is reaching across what divides us to bring out greater and greater numbers of people. Power will not slink away, but it can be forced out by something other than guns. That's the power of public opinion, expressed and acted upon.
This is not a short-term project.
Egypt's military has replaced the functions of its former dictator.
At some point, whatever the uniting tactics may be now, people will have to be more forceful in their demands, or there will be endless retreating, a very weak standoff at best. Again, refer to the labor battles of a century ago, to see how these confrontations with economic power actually transpire. Citizens suffer and die for change to happen.
Eqypt was not non-violent. 1930s/40s India was not non-violent. Citizens made unyielding demands. OWS has a lot of evolving to come.
Not too long ago we were watching the masses revolting against tyranny, injustice and dictatorship in the middle east, all plastered over main stream media and cheers for 'democracy' in action. I guess the old quip, 'not in my backyard' applies here. It is never about democracy. It is about the 1% controlling all.
Earthbound, you are so right it is scary.
A spokeman for the mayor Karen Boyd, said Friday that the protesters had shown themselves incapable of self-governance.
-------------------
Karen Boyd is a genius and has diagnosed the situation with pinpoint accuracy.----
We should be grateful she shares her wisdom with us.----
The protesters simply need to pack up their tents and return to their palatial homes and high paying jobs.----
The difficult task of governance should be left to the experts like Karen Boyd.----
The protesters need not waste another moment worrying about their future food, housing or health care needs.----
Karen Boyd, her boss and the party they represent have proven eminently capable of the governance necessary to secure a prosperous future for us all.
This is what US taxpayers pay Israel to do to the Palestinians who have the audacity to protest their ethnic cleansing and occupation with the US providing any and all the ammunition necessary to exterminate the Palestinians.
I wrote this for CD years ago. It is even more accurate today.
http://steveosborn.blogspot.com/2010/10/brownshirts-dressed-in-blue.html
The cycle never seems to end.
Eventually everybody gets kicked out...
Thomas Gilbert-
Obviously, at some point amongst this American Uprising, there will be a need to take up weapons and have a real stand-off with the goon squads. If these fascist thugs show up now with shotguns at a democratic protest encampment (no matter how dirty or how many violations), you can count on the thugs using those shotguns any time now. As Chomsky has said, our 'leaders' have nothing but profound hatred for democracy.
In fact, I'm completely mystified as to why they did not kill every last person in that Oakland camp. Isn't that ultimately cleaner? You reduce the population of shit disturbers by just that many, until eventually you've eradicated all of them. And it's not as if the thugs would get into any trouble for it - the courts would side with them, no matter how many prosecutions for murder or lawsuits for 'wrongful death'. You can count on the CEO class and the political class to avoid getting their hands dirty in skirmishes or altercations with the hoi polloi, or all-out warfare, which is what I'm at the point of hoping this will come to - all-out civil war - so you can count on this sort of situiation being repeated, and sooner or later they'll start killing innocent civilians. This is, after all, the so-called country that keeps the Leonard Pelletiers and Mumia Abu-Jamals in prison, in which the JFK, RFK, MLK, Malcolm X assassinations and the 9-11 inside job are all part of a deliberate and planned assault on democracy and the people and the nature of the American state, and the so-called country in which today, that fucking brain-dead piece of murdering pseudo-christian shit Rick Perry is questioning the legitimacy of Obama's birth certificate. THE MIND REELS IN STUPEFACTION AT THIS KIND OF IMBECILITY, WITH THE COUNTRY GOING DOWN FASTER THAN A WHORE'S DRAWERS.
And just because Albany, NY police are defying orders to move in on the Albany Occupy protests is no indication for a second that there's some kind of cozy, cuddly relationship developing between any authorities and any part of the Occupy movement. Political expediencies, correctnesses and niceties in the movement's daily dealings with cops and mayors aside, make no mistake: THERE IS GRITTED-TEETH HATRED FOR THE OCCUPY MOVEMENT AMONG THE RULING CLASSES AND THEIR WHORES AND THUGS AND LAPDOGS, AND IT IS JUST A MATTER OF TIME BEFORE THEY ATTEMPT THE MAJOR CLAMPDOWN, NATION-WIDE. WHAT IN THE NAME OF CHRIST DO PEOPLE THINK THE TWO-HEADED BUSHCHENEY CORPORATE WAR MACHINE WHORE FROM HELL WAS DOING WHEN IT AUTHORIZED THE DEPLOYMENT OF AN ENTIRE ARMY BATTALION OR DIVISION OR SOME SUCH LITTLE-BOY THING OF THE U.S. 'NORTHERN COMMAND' ON DOMESTIC SOIL FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE THE CIVIL WAR, WITH THE BRIEF THAT IT WAS TO DEAL WITH CIVIL UNREST, DISGUISED AS DOMESTIC READINESS IN THE SO-CALLED WAR ON TERROR?
SO, WHEN THAT HAPPENS, HOW MANY FOLKS ARE GOING TO BE PREPARED TO TAKE TO THE STREETS WITH GASOLINE-SOAKED TORCHES AND DECLARE ALL-OUT WAR ON THE POLITICIANS AND BANKERS AND COPS?
"there will be a need to take up weapons and have a real stand-off with the goon squads"
No!!! The use of weapons will be used as an excuse for a slaughter.
Tony baloney lost several days holiday for an assault on some women. Had it been the other way around - protesters macing police, the response would have been dead protesters - and there would be no repercussions for the police.
Any violence from the protesters to the police will be repaid 100 fold. Violence is what they are good at. Play that game at all whatsoever, and you lose.
You have to keep this non-violent no matter what. The day you lose that is the day of the end of the OWS. Police will no doubt attempt to plant violence amongst the protestors in order to give the excuse to use open ended violence.
So the police are bad guys again?
The Government of the United States supports the rights of peoples to gather and demonstrate against their Government and make demands in peaceable assembly.
They only support this right in Countries like Libya and Egypt and Syria and Iran and Russia and China.
It doesn't look like the folks in Oakland have been detoured by these efforts.