We Are Under Siege

Greetings from the occupied nation-state of Oakland.  The siege-a-palooza that is Occupy Oakland has rebranded itself as O-O, a name it has more than earned. One of many Occupy Wall Street offshoots that sprang up across the United States like flowers in an Arab spring, O-O built slowly in Frank Ogawa Plaza over the chilly summer months of 2011 while the darker, more sinister group, Anonymous, played train-stopping cat and mouse with San Francisco police in the BART system. Perhaps it was the allure of international intrigue or their masked faces, but Anonymous virtually commandeered Bay Area media with guerilla tactics expressing resentment that cell phone service was shut down within the system during another street action—an egregious suspension of civil rights in the eyes of organizers. In the summer of everyone’s discontent, irate citizens all over the country demanded work and health care from local governments that were broke or mega-corporations that were posting record profits by stripping expenses. As the Occupy movement heated up and evolved into class war, I walked off a great job in September that gave me both and flew to France. Paris offered enough distraction that for two weeks I lived in a cocoon of ‘perfect world’. While I was away, I learned that Occupy Wall Street had become THE story coming out of the United States. In the Bay Area, we had Occupy San Francisco, Occupy Oakland, and Occupy Berkeley. Of the three, only Berkeley was hard to take seriously. Berkeley has been a party in the park from the get go.
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Summer in the East Bay arrives in September and by October Oakland was sizzling. Despite the bright sunshine, O-O languished in the shadows of trendier, more hip San Francisco’s takeover of Justin Herman Plaza. Then, Oakland Mayor Jean Quan decided she wanted the Oakland protestors off her lawn. An order was given, police moved in, the rest is YouTube. Oakland, a town that loves a rumble, let loose with another spectacle that brought the Mayhem Factor to 6 in two short years: three Oscar Grant riots, a mass march of students enraged by successive and steep tuition hikes took over the 880 freeway where it cuts through my neighborhood (a young man fell to his death), a 150-round shoot out on that same stretch of 880, and now, as a bouche amuse, Occupy Oakland.
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Oakland’s version of the shot heard round the world put the city at the epicenter of Occupy action on the West Coast. National and international commentators were calling for Mayor Quan’s resignation. She took a public beat down for having given the order that sent OPD in armed and ready to use violent force to evict Occupy Oakland and then left town on a business trip to Washington. DC. Some are saying she acted without consulting the City Council—not yet clear. Either way, on Tuesday, October 25, 2011 at about 2 a.m. police ‘raided’ or ‘cleared’ the encampment depending on your point of view. It was violent. Police fired flash bombs and several rounds of non-lethal ammunition into the unarmed crowd. It was an excessive use of force; completely without honor. Hundreds of people were hurt by so-called bean bag and rubber bullets. Pictures of the wounds inflicted by these non-lethal bullets are horrifying; as bad or worse than a beating. As public outrage built, sympathy for the 99% here in Oak Town shifted the power base from the police to the protestors. Quan is now widely believed to be fucked. True dat.
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In one evening, O-O had ascended to first place in the Occupy pageant and I don’t mean Miss Congeniality. Oakland was the reigning beauty. O-O claimed the mantle of de facto government. People came from all over the world. Today, November 2, 2011, they were sufficiently organized and in control to call a successful general strike.
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Although nothing near the ‘tens of thousands’ of fellow travelers O-O predicted, when I arrived around 3 p.m. on the 2nd a crowd of about 5,000 people roamed Frank Ogawa Plaza now called Oscar Grant Plaza by the occupying forces. The order of the day was to march to the Port of Oakland and shut that motherfucker down. The community stage was busy rallying the crowd with—okay, let’s just say it—leftist propaganda. Much of what was said was true but some of it was ridiculously untrue. The Port of Oakland does make billions of dollars each year. But it does not return “only pennies” to the people. The Port provides thousands of jobs, builds Oakland’s infrastructure, donates money and in-kind services to area non-profits, attracts federal dollars that improve our city, and is the cornerstone of our economy. Economies are ecologies—kill off the major sector and you have picked at the thread that unravels the sleeve. That is not to say there are no legitimate complaints against business in general or the Port in particular but be careful, O-O, what you ask for and do. This movement has a point of diminishing returns.  I turned my bullshit detector on 'High' and listened to several more speakers including one man of color who remarked on the diversity of the assembled throng, saying,“black people, brown people, red people, and white people—whatever that is.” Fortunately, I’m gay so insult rolls right off my back. What did stun me, however, was the arrival of eight huge tour busses brought in by the Teamsters to ferry any protestors who needed a little extra help getting down the jetway to the revolution.
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At about 4 p.m., we marched down 14th street toward the gates of the Port of Oakland on Marine Harbor. In the middle of the 14th Street Bridge, which we took with the medieval tactic of clogging, I stopped. My heart just wasn’t in it—the same reason that I resigned my job. I couldn’t spend any more time doing something that I did not do for love. O-O has my respect, but not my love. It has placed itself on a world stage to broad acclaim and made its statement, one that I essentially agree with concerning income inequality and unfair tax burdens. It has shown that ordinary citizens can confront their elected government when they believe themselves to be so seriously aggrieved that they are without other recourse. They did, in fact, shut down the Port of Oakland for several hours by sheer numbers. They choked the roads and stopped traffic. It was peaceful . . . until it wasn’t and again the police used force. Broadway and 14th was again a standoff between police and citizens well into the wee hours.
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Oakland is not a police state, as some in the crowd are now chanting at 2 a.m. Those who think it is would do well to read a history of the 20th Century. I very much recommend Paul Johnson’s “Modern Times.” That, ladies and gentlemen, will school ya on a police state. In a true police state beat down, not one of those citizen protestors would have lived through the night. Yet, there they will be tomorrow morning when the smoke clears. At home in Oscar Grant Plaza. The open-flame cook stove camp fires burning. The Port-O-Potties. The free library, the free tee shirt table, the chanting tent, the meditating tent, the sage-stick purification tent, the free clinic, all the apparatus of a refugee camp.
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But this afternoon I stood on the bridge at 14th as thousands of people streamed past me and I thought, ‘This is my neighborhood. I have an obligation to my neighbors.’ And I began to walk back toward where I live in Jack London Square where small business owners are suffering. Along the way I spotted Uncle Willy’s Original BBQ and decided to stop in and support the local economy. Uncle Willy’s is run by the nicest people on earth. They make a great fish sandwich (get the snapper) garnished with a pepper inflected tartar sauce that is inspired solo but rises to perfection when drizzled with ketchup.
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If you want to build peace, get out and meet your neighbors. ‘Knowing’ is the beginning of accepting. Studies have shown again and again, the number one factor in straight people letting up on their eternal pogrom of gay people is simply knowing a gay person.
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Hi. I’m gay. I shop in your store. I teach your children. I sit next to you at work. I am a first responder. I am your doctor, lawyer, candlestick maker.
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I went into the shop and bought a sandwich for my dinner. Waiting for it to cook, I talked to the three men working at Willy’s about their thoughts on what was happening outside and their hopes for the future. When I left, I didn’t say “I’m gay.”
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I said, “I live here, too.”
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Where the skies are not cloudy all day.