EMAIL SIGN UP!
Most Popular This Week
Popular content
Today's Top News
Oakland Protesters Call for General Strike Against City
An Iraq war veteran badly wounded in clashes between protesters and police remained in hospital on Thursday morning as activists called for a general strike against the Bay Area city.
Occupy Oakland protester Scott Olsen, a former U.S. Marine and Iraq war veteran, is carried away after being injured during a demonstration in Oakland, California October 25, 2011. (Credit: REUTERS/Jay Finneburgh) Occupy Oakland organizers said they had voted to stage the strike next week, intending to shut down the city following what a spokeswoman called the "brutal and vicious" treatment of protesters, including former U.S. Marine Scott Olsen.
Olsen, 24, has become a rallying cry for the Occupy Wall Street movement nationwide.
"We mean nobody goes to work, nobody goes to school, we shut the city down," organizer Cat Brooks said. "The only thing they seem to care about is money and they don't understand that it's our money they need. We don't need them, they need us."
Here's the full Occupy Oakland statement, that was passed by their General Assembly with a 96.9% majority:
We as fellow occupiers of Oscar Grant Plaza propose that on Wednesday November 2, 2011, we liberate Oakland and shut down the 1%.
We propose a city wide general strike and we propose we invite all students to walk out of school. Instead of workers going to work and students going to school, the people will converge on downtown Oakland to shut down the city.
All banks and corporations should close down for the day or we will march on them.
While we are calling for a general strike, we are also calling for much more. People who organize out of their neighborhoods, schools, community organizations, affinity groups, workplaces and families are encouraged to self organize in a way that allows them to participate in shutting down the city in whatever manner they are comfortable with and capable of.
The whole world is watching Oakland. Let’s show them what is possible.
The Strike Coordinating Council will begin meeting everyday at 5pm in Oscar Grant Plaza before the daily General Assembly at 7pm. All strike participants are invited. Stay tuned for much more information and see you next Wednesday.
Spokeswomen for the city of Oakland and Mayor Jean Quan could not immediately be reached for comment.
Brooks said a general strike was a "natural progression" following a crackdown by the city of Oakland early on Tuesday morning in which protesters were evicted from a plaza near city hall and 85 people were arrested.
Protesters sought to re-take that plaza on Tuesday night and were repeatedly driven back by police using stun grenades and tear gas. It was during one of those clashes that protesters say Olsen was struck in the head by a tear gas canister fired by police.
A spokesman for Highland General Hospital in Oakland has confirmed Olsen was listed in critical condition from injuries sustained during the protest, but could not say how he was hurt.
Acting Oakland Police Chief Howard Jordan told a news conference his department was investigating the incident.
Olsen is believed to be the most seriously wounded person yet in confrontations between police and activists since Occupy Wall Street protests began last month in New York.
News of his injury ignited a furor among supporters of the protests. Activists in Oakland and elsewhere took to Twitter and other social media urging demonstrators back into the streets en masse.
More than 1,000 protesters moved onto the streets of Oakland again on Wednesday night as police largely kept their distance.
Friends say Olsen had been active in several anti-war veterans groups and had joined Oakland protesters in a gesture of solidarity after learning of the police crackdown there.
Keith Shannon, 24, who said he served with Olsen in Iraq, told Reuters his friend suffered a two-inch skull fracture and brain swelling and had been sedated and placed on a respirator in the hospital's emergency room trauma center while neurosurgeons decided whether to operate.
Olsen served two tours in Iraq from 2006 to 2010 with the 3rd battalion, 4th Marine Regiment, Shannon said, adding that he and Olsen deployed together and were assigned to a tactical communications unit.
(Additional reporting by Dan Whitcomb, Ben Berkowitz, Emmett Berg and Mary Slosson; Writing by Dan Whitcomb; Editing by Jerry Norton)
- Posted in
Comments
Note: Disqus 2012 is best viewed on an up to date browser. Click here for information. Instructions for how to sign up to comment can be viewed here. Our Comment Policy can be viewed here. Please follow the guidelines. Note to Readers: Spam Filter May Capture Legitimate Comments...
82 Comments so far
Show AllYah Post Scarcity Anarchism, I think Murray Bookchin will have a lot to teach us about what AFTER the revolution/collapse looks like.
I never thought I would live to see this fine day.
A new Generation has spoken. They have said: NO MORE. Assert your rights to Direct Democracy!
Who cares what the consequences are!
Nobody gets out of this life alive. Here's a chance to greatly better your country by throwing a wrench in the corrupt and tyrannical system hijacked by a Unconstitutional One Percent.
The 99 Percent have spoken, and boy are they pissed!
The fight for Liberty and Citizen bravery in America is not dead after all!
I was wrong.
What a great country
TJ
"Here's a chance to greatly better your country by throwing a wrench in the corrupt and tyrannical system hijacked by a Unconstitutional One Percent. "
WHAT WRENCH?!
That is what I am saying. What wrench? 10% of people don't go to work or school. And.... ?
Like I say, the Day without a Mexican here there was a block party and it isn't 1% country where I live. A day with fewer crowds in businesses doesn't seem like it is that much of a wrench in the cogs of the machine to me. Especially if that same money is spent the next day or the day before.
Seriously. You are Coke a Cola or Pizza Hut or GM or Safeway. During a general strike your sales dip 10% or 20% for a day. Well next day what happens? People have spent extra the day before stocking up or spend it the day after on what they missed. They are still going to buy their cokes and cars and food, just not on that day. How do you suppose that effects their balance sheet for the month?
You know who gets hurt? What *man* you are sticking it to? The local schools that are paid by the state and feds for the number of students in class. So in the neighborhoods where presumably the money is needed the most, schools will loose 10% of their fund that day. No one is going to make that money back up.
How about nurses on strike and no one to help the sick? That doesn't come back.
I get that people are angry, but do you flail around with *feel good* responses or do you really think about what you are doing and how to really effect change?
General Strike is a sound bite. An instant. One story in the news. Want to really effect change, organized boycotts. That way you can really effect these corporations that are the criminals here.
Fight the power!
Sorry to post this here, but is it just me, or did CD cancel their ongoing occupy video feeds and twitter feeds, and instead replace it with a place to sell stickers?
Or is this just a bad dream?
Yes, it's a bad dream--reality that is. Yes, as of 3:05 Pacific, CD has taken down the feeds.
very bad dream... what the heck is happening?
I second that and wonder why they did it. Is there any way to contact the site's leadership and get an answer, since it's unlikely they'll ever post an explanation on the home page? The timing seems pretty weird for dropping the video feeds since the Oakland incident has really galvanized solidarity and energized the movement.
Let November 2nd be a historic day. Let millions of my fellow Americans join the General Strike all across America and around the world. Let freedom ring from every town and city. Let the members of the Oakland PD remember that they too are brothers and sisters in the great 99%, that we are all in this together. Let them refuse to continue to act as the army of the rich. Let the 1% tremble.
"The whole world is watching Oakland".Let this be the day we've waited for our whole lives.
1934 redux. Too cool.
Kudos to Occupy Oakland ! You are heroes ! A general strike seems a way not only to protest the brutality of the authorities but also to demonstrate the power of the citizenry over the corporate state. Scott Olsen, (heartfelt wishes for your recovery), and all of those arrested and battered, you have not risked your lives in vain. The power and moral argument of the 99% grows stronger and stronger. Bless you Scott Olsen, Occupy Oakland and We The People, the 99%.
Who are "they" that you're striking against?
If you don't buy things, then no one will have jobs. If you don't make things, then no one will have stores to sell them.
What does a general strike do besides stop business? Will you do that until famine sets in? Then what?
How about this? Stop having so many children. A general strike on heterosexism. Three additional kids are born every second. They all want stuff for needs and luxuries. Start there, then work on the system.
Thanks, your instructions help a lot.
I think protest tactics need to evolve, the open protest, occupation, and strike bring visibility to a cause, BUT responses to these tactics by the opposition have often resulted in violence by the opposition, police, protestors and agent provocateurs. The move from protest to strike & boycott is a natural one, but how it is implemented needs to change. Why that aforementioned violence is easily switches blame to protestors as easily as it does to police & opposition. Instead protestors should take the power of violence and blame away from them by staging long term strike & boycotts by staying at home and shutting off their utilities as well. Turning a city, or a nation into a ghost town for weeks months on end will result in less violence and squeeze the opposition harder in agreeing to terms. If the opposition starts using violence against homes for such a pacifistic porotest it becomes clear to the nation and the world at large who the ones in the wrong are.
I'm definitely tempted to take a sick day.
"The only thing they seem to care about is money and they don't understand that it's our money they need. We don't need them, they need us."
Go viral with this gem the corporatocracy does not want folks to know.
Yes, to the strike: shut the place down! Bring big biz, the banksters, and the guberment to a standstill, wear them down and bring them down.
I think it has gone far beyond a strike.
Call in NATO for R2P.
Given the violence towards the civilian population and NATOs mandate for Right to Protect (R2P) a no-fly zone is indicated to prevent invasive police helicopters. Some additional targeting of the Oakland cop shops with precision kinetic action to minimise collateral damage will help protect civilians from the militarised blueshirts.
Further escalation and regime change is a distinct possibility.
You got the lingo down pat.
Very good.....
Yes remember the General Strike of 1934. Oh! I forgot you were never informed of it unless you ran across it on your own. It was erased from our school history books. If the port is shut down that is the equivalent of shutting down the mass production of China, India, Bangladesh, Japan, Korea and all the other countries that the corporations use to supply the goods to the US. If the ILWU and Teamsters and railroad workers and airline pilots stay home the whole country shuts down very quickly. And they probably make up only 2 or 3% of us. Strategic strikes will follow the mass of the population. All those I mentioned know they are part of the 99%. The pilots have already shown up on Wall Street. We can suffocate Oakland with sweet nothing.
axkershaw: Right on the mark! Excellent post!
When this general strike against Oakland succeeds, and it will, it will be replicated across the nation.
The number of committed all day all night all week all month protesters needs to hit the millions. So don't jump the gun, keep building the numbers. The Cops will kill lots of people to get you to run. Build solidarity!
ONE WEEK from calling it to holding a city-wide General Strike?
This might be reaching too far, too fast.
Hope folks are getting ready for turnout and participation to be "low" (as in, reflecting only one week's worth of notice or planning).
Shut it down. OWS is going to be what the people make it. I hope we can focus on things that will help all 7 Billion Humans, flying through space on Beautiful Mother Earth.
Since we need sound money, which we have never had, lets gt out of the Fed. The best way I've hard to do that, is to follow what North Dakota has been doing fine with for 90 years, with its State Bank. Other States are studying how to do it.
If we don't fix Healthcare, the price will double in 10 years, probably with less care. Vermont's and Montana's Single Payer could very well be worth other States checking out.
And need we mention that ending the wars is a must. Why the hell not close all over seas Military Bases, and put the Vets, and others to work rebuilding this Broken Promised Land?
But on other thing: Communities should study how to set up the Worker Ownership of the Mondragon Cooperative, of the Basque in Spain. There is an Evergreen Cooperative in Cleveland, and Richmond California, is putting people to work by starting smaller Cooperatives. Its a better way to work. Don't we all want that?
I share your compassion for constructive change.
In the San Francisco Bay Area, there are a number of worker-owned cooperatives. Check out: www.nobawc.org
Oakland = the Selma of California
At this point there is only one thing you can do and that is extend your hand and learn people's names. Now is the time to invite the tea-party people on board. You have more in common than you realize and then some. The most profound thing you could make about this movement at this point is to keep emphasizing the inclusivness. This is how churches work. That's not a bad comparison.
IT'S A GREAT TRADITION ~ of which an early model is the Seattle general strike (1919), an action by 100,000 workers, who shut down the city. All essential services were provided under workers' control.
The First World War was hardly over, it was February 1919, and the leadership of the revolutionary rank-and-file union the Industrial Workers of the World was in jail. However, the IWW idea of the general strike became reality for five days in Seattle, Washington, when a walkout of 100,000 working people brought the city to a halt.
It began with 35,000 shipyard workers striking for a wage increase. They appealed for support to the Seattle Central Labor Council, which recommended a city-wide strike, and in two weeks 110 locals - mostly American Federation of Labor, only a few IWW - voted to strike. The rank and file of each striking local elected three members to a General Strike Committee, and on February 6, 1919, at 10:00 a.m., the strike began. . . .
A Labor War Veteran's Guard was organised to keep the peace. On the blackboard at one of its headquarters was written: "The purpose of this organisation is to preserve law and order without the use of force. No volunteer will have any police power or be allowed to carry weapons of any sort, but to use persuasion only. . . .
[A poem from this time stirred up strikers' courage and endurance. An excerpt from it reads:]
what scares them most is
That NOTHING HAPPENS!
They are ready
For DISTURBANCES.
They have machine guns
And soldiers,
But this SMILING SILENCE
Is uncanny.
The general strike ended after five days, according to the General Strike Committee because of pressure from the international officers of the various unions, as well as the difficulties of living in a shut-down city. . . . [But the authorities got the message. -- JoeHill]
A statement by the mayor of Seattle suggests that the Establishment feared not just the strike itself but what it symbolised. He said:
"The so-called sympathetic Seattle strike was an attempted revolution. That there was no violence does not alter the fact [...] The intent, openly and covertly announced, was for the overthrow of the industrial system [i.e., of that system as it is OWNED BY THE FEW TO ROB & EXPOIT THE MANY -- my addition (JoeHill)]; here first, then everywhere [...] True, there were no flashing guns, no bombs, no killings. Revolution, I repeat, doesn't need violence. The general strike, as practiced in Seattle, is of itself the weapon of revolution, all the more dangerous because quiet. To succeed, it must suspend everything; stop the entire life stream of a community [...] That is to say, it puts the government out of operation. And that is all there is to revolt - no matter how achieved."
(From Howard Zinn's PEOPLE'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES)
> MORE AT: libcom.org ~ http://libcom.org/history/1919-the-seattle-general-strike
NATIONAL GENERAL STRIKE: Let's get going!
This is stupid! The 5th is the day for the general strike! Why confuse the issue and dilute the cause!