SOURCE: IndyBay.org
A number of critiques of Occupy Oakland have appeared in the weeks since January 28, aka Move-In Day. Many have argued that Occupy Oakland is on the decline and have given various reasons for why that is the case.
One article that has recently lit up the Twitter-sphere (and Facebook-sphere) this morning is An Open Letter to the Broader Occupy Community Regarding Occupy Oakland From a Small Group of Oakland Radicals. The authors claim that they are, “a group of radical Oakland activists who have been involved with Occupy Oakland from the very first days.” Unlike other commentaries, by Chris Hedges for example, this one speaks with an air of authority and honesty. I am not familiar with the authors and cannot say much about their participation, but I believe that their description of Occupy Oakland (OO) sets up a straw man with little evidence to back it up and in fact ignores the healthy moves that have been made in the weeks since J28.
First, the authors argue that,
We are concerned that the inclusivity that began this movement and contributed to its rapid growth is dying in OO as a result of the dominant insurrectionist tendencies and the “vanguardist” maneuvering and manipulations of some of its proponents . . . We all collectively must take responsibility for this “hardening” and shrinking of the OO ranks, and we must recognize that in trying to re-make OO in an ideologically purist vision, we are destroying our ability to garner the wide base of support and goodwill that will be necessary to successfully resist corporate and state domination.
No evidence of this supposed ideological hardening is given. In fact, it is not even clear which ideology is supposed to be winning this war. The authors later state that they are not interested in having out a debate about anarchism or the Black Block (neither of which I would identify with) so it is left as a lingering critique to be interpreted by the reader. Is there something you don’t like about Occupy Oakland? Great, file it under “ideological purification,” whatever that means.
The assumption would appear to be that the entire J28 episode was only carried out in order to produce a conflict with the police. The authors write, “We strongly believe that the struggle in Oakland should not be used to produce what amounts to riot porn.” I heartily agree! So does everybody I know in OO, none of whom ever believed that the purpose of J28 was to have a confrontation with the police. Granted, this is now a widespread belief among many but it is simply not true. On the contrary, we went to ridiculous lengths to avoid a police confrontation. Snaking the entire march of 2,000 people through the quad of Laney College was only the most surreal example of this.
The authors do make a handful of somewhat concrete criticisms of undemocratic maneuvers taken by a group of insurrectionists with a shady agenda. Let’s review them one at a time:
“Two non-sanctioned press conferences”
I am in the OO Media Committee and have been involved in several OO press conferences. I have no idea what a “non-sanctioned press conference” is supposed to be or who is supposed to sanction it. All of the press conferences I am aware of have been called by the Media Committee or the group that is planning the action that the press conference is discussing. The first press conference referred to here (I assume) was the one that notoriously called for the airport to be shut down in retaliation if the police attacked us on J28. That statement was a mistake, in the opinion of myself and many others. But the conference was organized by the Move-In Day Committee–with some participation of the Media Committee–and there was nothing “non-sanctioned” about it. These folks have heard an earful from many people about this threat and I assure you that the person who made this statement to the press will never live it down for the rest of our natural lives. Nobody is talking any longer about shutting down the airport or making any similar threats in the future.
Press conference post-J28 against police repression
The second press conference occurred the Wednesday after J28 and highlighted police repression precisely at the moment the media was endlessly replaying the clip of a flag burning outside City Hall. I personally proposed this press conference to the Media Committee and did much–though not all, of course–of the organizing for it. Not only is it completely unclear how this could not be “sanctioned”–or by whom–it is, in fact, one of the achievements in Occupy Oakland for which I am the most proud.
“The secretive and exclusionary planning of the strategy for J28 in which community voices were systematically excluded from the inner workings”
This was a part of the original proposal that passed the General Assembly. The idea was always to keep the location a secret–in order to avoid a police confrontation! Perhaps that was a mistake, or perhaps we should have secretly begun a squat well in advance of the announced action. But this issue was widely discussed and agreed upon in a contentious General Assembly discussion. After the extremely close vote, a handful of people undemocratically attempted to alter the plan so that the location would not be a secret. One of those people, I am told, is an author of this very article from the “Oakland Radicals!” But anybody who wanted to participate in the organizing itself was more than welcome to attend the Move-In Day meetings, which planned a series of events for the entire weekend in the hopes of a successful occupation, not a police confrontation.
“The hijacking of the General Assembly during the second Port Shut Down”
After shutting down the evening shift of the Port of Oakland on December 12, an emergency General Assembly was called to plan the shuttering of the Port for the next morning. In a hasty and messy series of declarations, this GA was called off and many people felt alienated. That feeling is understandable. However, while I was not involved in any of those decisions, I believe the real issue is that there should never have been an emergency GA in the first place. The original GA vote to call for the West Coast Port Shut Down stated that we would extend the blockade if there was police repression. There was police repression, therefore we were required to extend the blockade. The possibility of having a new GA vote against this standing decision would have been an embarrassing fiasco when we had already committed ourselves to doing so.
A member of the facilitation committee ultimately took the blame for the poor handling of this emergency GA, came to the next Labor/WCPSD Committee meeting and personally apologized for this whole mess. So much for an unaccountable shadow group destroying Occupy Oakland.
“[I]deological purification behavior often now takes place at the GAs and in groups like the Move-In Committee, where dissenting voices are booed and jeered”
I have been to few if any GAs or committee meetings at any time in Occupy Oakland where there was not booing or jeering or heckling among some of the most militant activists, largely directed at each other, even at the height of the movement. It may be rude but it is hardly a purification process and this argument feels much more like a useful way to score points than an analysis of the decline of Occupy Oakland.
A small group of quiet dissidents even attended the GA on February 5 carrying signs that said, “Please Rethink Vandalism.” They were not disruptive–any more than carrying a sign at a public meeting that criticizes that meeting can avoid being disruptive–and I cannot tell that they were bothered in any way. About halfway through they simply left, not having been ideologically purged from what I can tell.
This is not to say that OO is facing no challenges. On the contrary, everybody I have talked to is aware that we need to work to rebuild the confidence of the public since January 28. One such action occurs tomorrow, the Make Love Not War rally for Valentine’s Day where we literally plan to walk around Oakland and pass out candy. I have heard people who are sympathetic with Black Bloc-tactics say that we need this action to be “non-violent”–while struggling to speak those words aloud–because it is so obvious that we need to rebuild support. There is also the February 20 National Occupy Day in Support of Prisoners, aka Occupy San Quentin. This action will aim to not only broaden the set of issues we organize around but also include a broader group of people who previously have not been included. These are precisely the sort of actions we should be doing and have nothing to do with “insurrectionism.”
So my sense is that everybody is clear that we do not want to participate in endless police battles. In fact, we are actively pursuing a course to re-establish Occupy Oakland. In the past two weeks, we have also had immigrant workers from Pacific Steel come to our GA asking for our support in their struggle, and an official with SEIU Local 1021 even declared that he wanted a “marriage” with Occupy Oakland.
All is not lost. We were delegitimized by the police attacks on us on J28–which happened well before any property destruction, ALL of which occurred at City Hall after the mass arrests–and seek to relegitimize ourselves in the eyes of the public. None of this involves “insurrectionary” tactics of any kind but precisely the sort of patient planning that the authors of the “Oakland Radicals” article say we need.
At the same time, none of us have ever organized anything like Occupy Oakland before and Move-In Day was entirely new form of action. Everybody is comfortable with marching up and down Market Street holding signs opposing a war that we all know–or should know–is inevitable. We are now carrying out mass actions that actually have an impact politically and economically and are therefore in new territory for everybody. Had we retreated from the Kaiser Center quicker on J28 and taken another building, we might all now be heroes. Such is the significance of small tactical decisions which have absolutely no significance in symbolic protests.
Anybody who wants to participate in any of the above actions or help us plan more in the future will find Occupy Oakland a welcoming community to organize with. We may heckle each other from time to time, but that is only because we take our decisions and our actions extremely seriously.
That’s Twitterverse and Facebooksphere. Damn, doesn’t OOT have editors?
Yes, but who will edit the editors?
Well stated and I like the direction on rebuilding popular support. A slight disagreement with the #D12 GA recap: that night, after watching OakFoSho’s stream and feeling extremely disappointed when one of our comradely insurrectionists took the mic to announce “no, we won’t be voting on this” (we all know who did that wack shit, even if we love her), I went back and reviewed the original Port Shutdown resolution. Despite the spin, which unfortunately you have bought into, the original #D12 resolution did not mandate a continued shutdown upon any police repression. It indicated that the shutdown “may” be continued. In this case, given that we don’t have a Central Committee or Spokescouncil or any representative body of that sort, it WAS appropriate to have a GA vote on the issue. (Otherwise, the issue of statutory interpretation was left up to the privileged folks with the microphone.) And truthfully, given the relatively moderate police fightback that day, it was worth a discussion, to debate pros and cons. So, all that is to say, let’s not excuse the bullshit that night. That was a missed opportunity that alienated more than a few.
Which is why the #J28 self-critique is so important and affirming. Yes, folks makes mistakes. Revolution is not easy! So get off the porch and run with the big dogs, dear “Oakland Radicals,” or stop woofing that BS.
The importance above all (strategy, tactics, PR) is persistence. Either we set aside our differences or we don’t. If we don’t, the movement won’t persist. It’s that simple.
I will try to respond to some of this later, but really quickly I wanted to clear a couple of things up. One is that I know of many people who are standing on the sidelines, or are waiting for OO to fold up, who used to be big supporters of OO. This latest action was primarily organized by folks who do not have a real base locally. Their main method of bringing numbers was to recruit a bunch of college kids of which they do appear to have a network of. Also even supporters of the action, and the faction that organized it are admitting that the planning was weak, and seemed to be predicated on the fall back plan of hoping to provoke the cops into doing something stupid. (see the critique titled “Santa Rita, I hat every inch of you” for an example of that critique) Our goal with the letter was to start a larger conversation, and to ask OO leadership to start reigning in their own bad actors. If that can’t happen, then many of us are ready to start organizing our own version of OO, and thus sidestepping all of the BS that has accumulated…more later oh, the version of the Port Shutdown assembly posted here is contradicted by many, and the other non sanctioned press conference that we refer to was back in November around the move to 19th and telegraph.
Regarding the mandate/may language of the Port resolution, in the Port/Labor committee we all assumed it was a mandate. Perhaps we should have reviewed the language. If only we had a lawyer! But the day or two before D12 we were all stressing about the fact that there was almost no way there could be Port shut downs up and down the West Coast without some police repression, and now we were committed to extending it, and nobody wanted to do it but we knew we had to. So maybe we bought into our own misinformed spin but everybody felt like it was an obligation we would have preferred to avoid.
While we are talking about hypothetical threats, it’s worth pointing out that some of the people behind the “airport” statement stress that the threat was that we “might” shut down the airport in retaliation. I, for one, never accepted that as a justification for ever having made that statement in the first place.
Semantic games aside, the press release was something that pissed off a lot of people, as it appeared to have been done on the name of OO…whether or not things done are within the “rules” (which we don’t really appear to have) is beside the point. It was an abuse of power, and vanguardist as well.
per Zappa above, it appears you want to be divisive. You will be ashamed of your behavior later on as it closely mimics what happened in the late 60′s and 70′s. Your own “alternative” Occupy Oakland, being precisely divisive of the 99%, simply won’t work.
what about all of the people that are already divided? Blaming me for that which already exists is certainly ridiculous. And should they only organize with OO? Isn’t it OO’s job to reach out to our base and be receptive to critique from the community? rb, your critique is the type of vanguardists mentality that we speak of.
I recommend that you come to the Valentine’s Day march tonight and to the Occupy San Quentin rally on Monday. We would all also appreciate it and consider it a sign of good faith if you helped advertise them and brought along friends and comrades, though that is your call. Both of these actions are meant to bring in a broader and more diverse group of people. Whether they will succeed I do not know, but they are both serious, honest steps in this direction. I would appreciate your thoughts about both of these actions afterward.
I also cannot guarantee that OPD and Marin Sheriffs/SQ guards will not do something stupid. But I assure you the intention in both cases is non-violence and to absolutely avoid police confrontations, while building support for OO. I both hope and expect these actions to succeed on this basis.
It’s you that need to reach out to them and persuade them to your way. Right now you represent a tiny faction from what I can see. The only reasonable inference is you want the movement your way or no way. That’s called co-option. If you really believe in the movement you will stop this and deal face to face with others.
I am planning to come to some or all of these events. I have plans to promote some actions with the Children, Parent’s and Allies Committee One thing that I would like to say right now is that there seems to be a widespread assumption that I am not active in OO, and this is simply untrue. I am also active outside of OO, and I will continue to be active in long haul where ever I am. Secondly, I personally am a believer in what is now known as a Diversity of Tactics, I just don’t agree with many of the people who push DOT here in Oakland for a variety of reasons. We plan on taking on the NV issue pretty soon at the Oakland Radical site. Radicallness points in all directions, including back at oneself. I already know that there are things that I can do better…I do think that I am part of a pretty large cross section of people who actually have a lot of ideas, and energy, but who do not feel in step with a lot of what is happening at OO right now. Which does not preclude me personally, from engaging in OO related stuff.
The fact that the organizers admit that the planning was weak is to the credit of the organizers, who are openly trying to admit to their failures and NOT trying to cover them up, as was insinuated in the original “Oakland Radicals” article. I respect them for that. I was very loosely involved in the 19th and Telegraph press conference in November, yes it was a fiasco, but everybody on the Media committee was aware of it being planned and there was nothing “non-sanctioned” about it. You cannot declare something “non-sanctioned” after the fact just because you do not like the results and/or have political disagreements with the organizers.
I was told otherwise re: the media committee and November 19th.
Aside from the larger strategy, on a tactical level the J28 daytime march appeared astonishing in its lack of preparedness in some ways–the absence of any sort of tactical information group keeping us informed where we were going on the day of comes to mind– while clearly very prepared for police confrontation (shields and corrugated steel banners).
“At the same time, none of us have ever organized anything like Occupy Oakland before and Move-In Day was entirely new form of action”
That is simply not true. How old are you, Scott? Have you read any history or spoken with any activists? Marches down Market Street is simply one tactic. Believe it or not, none of the Occupy Oakland tactics I’ve seen so far are “new territory”.
What do you call it when some reckless fool throws a Snapple bottle at a line of police who are hemming in the back of a retreating march? Is that one of the “diverse tactics” that is going to make this movement successful in attracting more support? Is that an action that is respectful and inclusive of other protesters? Or is it simply going to give police the rationale they need for rushing the march in the name of arresting that one “bad apple”, while also endangering those in the march who want no part in such confrontations?
The cops will clear the area of an arrest any time their security is threatened by onlookers crowding around. Clearly their policy can be used to prevent people from seeing what happens to the arrestee; but anyone capable of complex thought must acknowledge that a ‘scrum’ of people gathered around such an arrest is potentially dangerous to those onlookers and police alike. (Remember, we’re talking “rationale”, a.k.a. “excuse”, not truly compelling reasoning.)
The Travellers’ Aid building break-in on Nov. 2 was an event that was obviously aimed at creating confrontation with the police, and the Jan. 28th action is noticeably different in its advance planning and its mostly genuinely stated goals; but it seems disingenuous for anyone to say that the Jan. 28th action would not also invite a strong response and likely confrontation with police. The Jan. 28th action was flawed not because of a poor back-up plan or inadequate communications networks; it was flawed because it was so obviously illegal that organizers should have known it would not succeed, and because the taking of the building was attempted without first working through negotiations and other forms of pressure to get the City or County to offer the space, or another viable space, and to coordinate with OO. The apparent lack of such attempted negotiations is an ongoing problem that we must address.
Yes, we can do some things for ourselves; but our elected officials and public agencies–even the police–are part of “ourselves”, and we should be proud to have elected a mostly progressive, humanist City Council and Mayor. If we don’t like how they work, then we should confront them directly and openly and demand that they be responsible and accountable. The OPD is not going to disappear; thus, we need to get it under control.
I won’t try to prove my participatory level here, but I’ve been plenty involved, frequently at the front or rear of marches or other protests where the protesters meet the police line. I think organizers (all of us) should be clear about when we are attempting a symbolic action, and when we are attempting a practical action aimed at helping our community economically/materially; that way, people can decide whether they will come out and support an action in accordance with the intended impact of that action. And it is imperative that participants in OO know what they are doing when they give the organizational authority to an action through a GA resolution. If a GA wants to sanction confrontation with police, then it is risking alienating a huge mass of potential supporters and potential participants–but at least it won’t lead to people coming down expecting to help protest peacefully, then finding themselves caught between over-reactive police and out-of-control protesters. And if too many such symbolic actions keep happening, the cumulative effect on participation will definitely be negative.
You are correct. I think too that if there is a faction that wants confrontation and violence they should form their own group and not call themselves Occupy Oakland but, some other violent name that expresses who they are. It is not helping any Occupy movement any where to have one group that is getting violent it hurts everyone.
Please get a handle on this violence.
From an outsider looking in on these statements (I do not live in Oakland or in California), I am seeing a real problem. You have people who are sabotaging your movement by making it violent. It may be from outside but, it seems to be from inside. This is dangerous for a peaceful movement that plans to have any respect in the community. You need to reign in the violence or you are done in Oakland. The police are not the enemy and I would try communicating with them. You may even find that you could have supporters within the departments. But, destruction of property, violence are sure signs there is a problem. I respect all the Occupy movements and support them 100% as long as they remain non violent.