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| Photo courtesy of Yahoo News. |
Hundreds of protesters gathered at the intersection of Broadway and 14th Street overnight in anticipation of the eviction, and of many tents remained in the camp when lines of police in riot gear began moving in.
However, dozens of occupiers had moved their tents out of the plaza as the city issued repeated eviction notices over the weekend, and rumors of an early morning raid intensified.
"It feels pretty sad because we built a community here, and now they can just come and destroy it," said Lara Bitar, 28, who helped collapse three of the camp's four tents early Monday morning. "At the same time, this movement is about more than just the space here."
Many feared a repetition of the nighttime clashes that followed an early morning takedown of the camp on Oct. 25. But this action has so far remained peaceful, with police clearing tents and protesters engaged in civil disobedience submitting to arrest.
Mayor Jean Quan, the City Council and the local business community have made numerous pleas to the campers in recent weeks to leave the plaza. These pleas intensified last week after a young man was shot and killed just outside the camp's borders.
The Mayor has been looking for an excuse, and the shooting last Friday provided the shakiest of reasons to move forward and dismantle the camps by taking down their tents and essentially evicting them from the plaza. Of course the fear is that OTHER mayors will follow Quan's lead and invent their OWN reasons to evict these protestors from their camps and start the campaign to quiet their protests before it can have a serious affect on the corporations and banks that they are targeting.
Fortunately not ALL of the news coming out about the Oakland protests is all bad news, the marine who was famously injured by Oakland police has been released from the hospital:
Former U.S. Marine Scott Olsen, whose injury during clashes between Oakland police and protesters last month galvanized the Anti-Wall Street movement, has been released from the hospital, friends said on Friday.
"He is out of the hospital as of yesterday or today, thank goodness," Adele Carpenter, 29, told Reuters.
Occupy Oakland organizers say Olsen, 24, was hit in the head by a tear gas canister fired by police during a downtown Oakland confrontation on October 25. He was admitted to a local hospital in critical condition.
More than two weeks later, Olsen was released from inpatient care in time to celebrate Veteran's Day, Carpenter wrote in a blog post on a website for the group Veterans for Peace.
The Iraq veteran was "still struggling with speech, but is attempting conversations without having the writing instrument out," on which he had been relying to communicate, Carpenter said in the blog post.
It seems that Oakland has always been the least hospitable city toward this movement, so it is no surprise that they are the first to take such drastic measures. The question is will this lead to more mayors, of more cities, following suit, or is this an isolated circumstance?
Update: It appears that Mayor Quan's legal adviser does not agree with her decision to dismantle this camp, and has resigned in protest:
Mayor Jean Quan's chief legal adviser resigned early this morning after what he called a "tragically unnecessary" police raid of the Occupy Oakland camp.
Dan Siegel, a civil rights attorney and one of Oakland's most active and vocal police critics, said the city should have done more to work with campers before sending in police.
"The city sent police to evict this camp, arrest people and potentially hurt them," Siegel said. "Obviously, we're not on the same page. It's an amazing show of force to move tents from a public place."
Well isn't THAT interesting?
I guess when you spend your life fighting for civil rights it makes it somewhat difficult to stand by while they are being trampled.
Boycott Oakland
ReplyDeleteYea, I can see where they're coming from, there were never shootings in downtown Oakland before OCCUPY got there...
ReplyDelete/snark
more proof that we are living in a total police state.
ReplyDeletei warn you all unless you get involved and support these and others fighting for your rights things will be getting much much worse.
so..be alert and do all you can or we are lost as a people.
the stupid tea bags welcome this stuff so get friends and family to do the right thing too.
It's a mistake to assume that Mayor Quan is allied with corporate interests. Jean Quan is a long time progressive political activist and ally of the left. Her serious mishandling of the Occupy Oakland protest does not change this.
ReplyDeleteBreak the camps, not their spirit. They'll come back with even more people.
ReplyDeleteOT for this blog post, but I thought you'd be interested in the 6th paragraph of this article:
ReplyDelete"Despite the name, Draft Herman Cain kicked into gear after Mr. Cain already entered the race and came on the heels of an effort by the same men called Draft Sarah Palin, which reported running no ads. Other Goodwin efforts that drew contributions but no political activity include the Breast Cancer Awareness PAC."
They probably got the idea from SarahPAC itself...
Something similar's happening in Portland--they're putting up chain link and concertina wire around the parks to keep OWS out of them, and they've evicted the encampment. The excuse was that the camp had drawn too many homeless people.
ReplyDeleteI guess the cops and the politicians that want this to end were the ones that got rich betting on the stock market that the economy would go bust and then using that blood money to buy up dumped stocks on the cheap.
ReplyDeleteBecause if they weren't and aren't among the 1% that did, who do they think is going to make an effort to keep it from happening to them again, after they brutalize and jail the people who dare to speak out.
When are the cops going to realize that they are hurting themselves by stopping this movement. What happened to their 401s in 2000 and 2008? Did they get bigger or smaller?
It's happening to a lesser extent in Philadelphia. Dilbert Plaza is about to get renovated, planned way before the protests, and the protesters are being told to move, citing sanitary issues and a reported rape in one of the tents the night before.
ReplyDeleteThe politicians and police have, for the most part, been supportive of the movement, but moving the camp is strengthening the resolve and attracting more people willing to occupy.
They can move us, but we'll keep returning. The 99 percent are not backing down.
I wonder when/if the police will realize that they are part of the 99% and the higher-ups are pandering to the 1%. Police budgets have been cut, just like budgets everywhere. Maybe a nationwide spread of 'blue flu' would get the higher-ups to see that civil protest is a right, not an annoyance and a nuisance.
ReplyDelete