Another Occupied City: Oakland (Berkeley, Vincent: neighborhoods, camps, buses)

[Gentoo]

Another morning and the local news is wall to wall coverage of Occupy Oakland with hundreds of police surrounding the Occupy Oakland encampment....*ugh* Im so over it.

Its really unfortunate how the Occupy movement squandered the goodwill and sense of solidarity that tens of millions of people across the country felt concerning their cause.

They should have struck while the iron was hot and lobbied loud and hard for lawmakers to pass strict campaign finance laws, strict banking regulations, and end to corporate subsidides for billion-dollar companies, changes to corporate tax laws, strict consumer protections etc....but instead they got mired in weirdness....I hope its not too late to make these changes happen.

made a permanent medieval dwelling in the middle of a city - peeing, crapping, vomiting all over a park while fostering drug use, crime, disease, damage to private property, waste of scarce public resources, and strangling local commerce and community is not an effective way to address abuses of Wall Street banks.

I agree with both of these points

[jade408]

This is probably the best news for OPD all this year:
Quan's top legal adviser resigns over raid (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/11/14/BAGA1LURQ7.DTL&tsp=1 - broken link)

Dan Siegel, a civil rights attorney who was one of the city's most active and vocal police critics before getting appointed...
Siegel had previously sparred with police officials over the city's gang injunctions and the handling of violent protests after the a jury found Johannes Mehserle, the former BART police officer, guilty of involuntary manslaughter after shooting an unarmed rider.

[nullgeo]

Originally Posted by 18Montclair

Another morning and the local news is wall to wall coverage of Occupy Oakland with hundreds of police surrounding the Occupy Oakland encampment....*ugh* Im so over it.

Its really unfortunate how the Occupy movement squandered the goodwill and sense of solidarity that tens of millions of people across the country felt concerning their cause.

They should have struck while the iron was hot and lobbied loud and hard for lawmakers to pass strict campaign finance laws, strict banking regulations, and end to corporate subsidides for billion-dollar companies, changes to corporate tax laws, strict consumer protections etc....but instead they got mired in weirdness....I hope its not too late to make these changes happen.

I doubt the goodwill of the movement has been squandered at all ... the roots of the issues remain and run deep and won't be solved anytime soon ... the reality of the encampments' deteriorations will find solutions and those problems will dissipate -- but the problems of the middle class will continue without relief. Usurpation of the economy's potential and of the political infrastructure by the top 1% - 10% will continue. And the reaction to that will be forced by necessities of survival. The middle class will find more and more targeted ways to revolt ... and a lot of the inertia for the ongoing development of this revolt will have developed in these early protests. Clear and intelligent and capable minds will rise to the surface as leadership who see the counter-productivities in allowing unruly and undirected participation to attach itself to movement activities.

Really a fascinating challenge in this social upheaval. The problems to be solved are multi-faceted and extremely diverse. They go to foundations of cultural and daily survival in ways that can't be simply remodeled without first shoring up and bracing the structure with real care. It is seriously analogous to a major building remodel in which the foundation is in terrible shape and must be dealt with first: the crews can't just rip the underpinnings and perimeters out without engineering the structure to withstand the work.

[jade408]

Originally Posted by nullgeo

I doubt the goodwill of the movement has been squandered at all ... the roots of the issues remain and run deep and won't be solved anytime soon ... the reality of the encampments' deteriorations will find solutions and those problems will dissipate -- but the problems of the middle class will continue without relief. Usurpation of the economy's potential and of the political infrastructure by the top 1% - 10% will continue. And the reaction to that will be forced by necessities of survival. The middle class will find more and more targeted ways to revolt ... and a lot of the inertia for the ongoing development of this revolt will have developed in these early protests. Clear and intelligent and capable minds will rise to the surface as leadership who see the counter-productivities in allowing unruly and undirected participation to attach itself to movement activities.

Really a fascinating challenge in this social upheaval. The problems to be solved are multi-faceted and extremely diverse. They go to foundations of cultural and daily survival in ways that can't be simply remodeled without first shoring up and bracing the structure with real care. It is seriously analogous to a major building remodel in which the foundation is in terrible shape and must be dealt with first: the crews can't just rip the underpinnings and perimeters out without engineering the structure to withstand the work.

Most people are in support of the concept of Occupy. Unfortunately with the current tactics, no plan, no leadership, and no real goals, goodwill with the moderate majority is fading fast.

The list of camping supports shrinks daily.

[ringwise]

Originally Posted by nullgeo

I am slightly amused at the people posting here that wonder why Oakland "of all places" should be at the forefront of the protests ... well, as we wake up this morning, if you haven't noticed for the past week, protests in several other cities are as hot as Oakland: Portland, Atlanta, and Salt Lake City among them ... last night San Francisco got pretty hot, though there have also been snide remarks here about how sedate it has been over there, as well. Portland is gearing up for major confrontation that I am sure Quan is watching intensely for clues as to what to do next.

Quan's / Oakland police's recent "eviction notice" reads in part:
"Your activities are injurious to health, obstruct the free use of property, interfering with the comfortable enjoyment of (Frank Ogawa Plaza), ... "

To which the protestors are responding: The same can be said about the actions of the 1% -- by virtue of the severe limitations placed on our economy and lifestyles ...

Very mature answer. Might as well have said "I know you are, but what am I".

Violent, lazy scumbags, that are ruining local businesses, costing taxpayer dollars, breaking the law, and gearing up for a violent confrontation. Time for the beat down, I'm thinking....

[nullgeo]

Originally Posted by jade408

Most people are in support of the concept of Occupy. Unfortunately with the current tactics, no plan, no leadership, and no real goals, goodwill with the moderate majority is fading fast. \

The list of camping supports shrinks daily.

Yes. Sort of. The "moderate majority" will have no patience with out-of -control camping ... but they won't lose support for the issues ... because they will be forced over time to become less and less "moderate" by the economic inequality of opportunity.

I never expected "camping" to be a long-term strategy, nor in itself any kind of tactic to solve problems. It is just part of the initial surge of expression -- and one that was certain to exhibit how non-productive fringe activity will attach itself to anything that lacks definition and focus.

But there will be still a lot of future protest activities across the country. Some will likely be quite disruptive -- on and off for years. Marchers in Europe in the past couple days (Germany I think?) showed up in numbers nearing 10,000 to protest one bank's domination of their market. That's a LOT of folks in the streets!

[nullgeo]

Originally Posted by ringwise

Very mature answer. Might as well have said "I know you are, but what am I".

Violent, lazy scumbags, that are ruining local businesses, costing taxpayer dollars, breaking the law, and gearing up for a violent confrontation. Time for the beat down, I'm thinking....

Very few are violent ... and those have been shown to be not OWS protestors.
And how do you know the protestors are "lazy scumbags"?
Because you saw some pictures on FOX News? Or even NBC? ... which mainstream media make their money by depicting sensationalist confrontations and disasters?
Have you watched any non-sensationalist analysis, such as the Charlie Rose interviews that explore the issues, the cross-cultural participants (many many of whom are employed and include all manner of professionals) and emerging leaderships? Rhetorical question, of course. You haven't. Because you are a knee-jerking conservative as demonstrated repeatedly by all your posts in the past.

[18Montclair]

Originally Posted by nullgeo

Yes. Sort of. The "moderate majority" will have no patience with out-of -control camping ... but they won't lose support for the issues ... because they will be forced over time to become less and less "moderate" by the economic inequality of opportunity.

I never expected "camping" to be a long-term strategy, nor in itself any kind of tactic to solve problems. It is just part of the initial surge of expression -- and one that was certain to exhibit how non-productive fringe activity will attach itself to anything that lacks definition and focus.

But there will be still a lot of future protest activities across the country. Some will likely be quite disruptive -- on and off for years. Marchers in Europe in the past couple days (Germany I think?) showed up in numbers nearing 10,000 to protest one bank's domination of their market. That's a LOT of folks in the streets!

The majority of Oakland is hardly a 'moderate'.

And Im sure most Oaklanders agree on the ugency to act NOW.

But you yourself elude in this comment that the camping thing has gotten out of control.

Like I said, if they actually organize and spend all this energy productively, they will ultimately win as most Americans Im sure would agree with nearly everything they want.

[ambient]

Originally Posted by nullgeo

Clear and intelligent and capable minds will rise to the surface as leadership who see the counter-productivities in allowing unruly and undirected participation to attach itself to movement activities.

Let me know when this part actually happens, and I might start taking "the movement" seriously. Right now, for every one reasonable person in the bunch, I see a gaggle of the same kinds of extremist lunatic hippies who I see lounging around on the asphalt every time I walk down Telegraph Ave. They do not seem to be a viable alternative to our current system, imperfect as it is. I would not trust these people to manage an electric can opener, much less the leadership of broad reform in modern society.

[jade408]

Mayor's statement for today. For once I agree:
http://www2.oaklandnet.com/oakca/gro.../oak032127.pdf.

Also, a former Oakland leader, John Russo I believed, the Occupy team is trying to misconstrue the level of violence downtown. There hasn't ever been a murder near Old Oakland/City Center in the 16 years he worked there.
John_A_Russo: I was an Oakland official for > 16 yrs til this June. There has NEVER been a murder in Ogawa Plaza. Occupy Oakland lies! [https://twitter.com/#!/John_A_Russo/...1057008205824]




I concur, gun violence is extremely rare in most of downtown, and the Occupy camp tried to claim it was a regular occurrence. That was the final straw, shootings in downtown will kill any economic momentum.

Hopefully Quan can continue to exhibit leadership in the rest of her term.