While some of the other Occupy movements seem to be losing steam, the same cannot be said of the Occupy Oakland stalwarts. If anything, the numbers and strength of the Occupiers are growing. Taking time out from the usual random acts of violence which are daily events in the town that is San Francisco's poor relation, the crypto-anarchists have found common cause.
Contrary to the mainstream media's portrayal of the Occupy movement as "spontaneous," these demonstrations are carefully planned and widely publicized. In fact, as shown in the accompanying illustration, they've now become so orchestrated that the planners send out formal invitations. Behind the nebulous term "occupy" in Oakland is the serious intention to forcibly take over and occupy public and private property. Yesterday (Saturday), the movement moved. After a big rally near city hall, the Occupiers moved on to their intended target of occupation--the unused Henry J. Kaiser Convention Center near Lake Merritt in the heart of the city.
Making sure not to get shot by mistake by gang-bangers, a large number of the marchers covered their faces with black bandannas rather than the more dangerous red or blue. The crowd was estimated to exceed 1000, ranging from the homeless with nothing better to do to young mothers wheeling baby strollers who should know better. Rioting in Oakland is about as rare as cockroaches in San Francisco or rats in New York City. But this is something unseen in Oakland since the antiwar demonstrations of the 60s. Know-nothings gathering together to support a cause they don't know anything about.
The police had been tipped off that the demonstrators intended to take over a building somewhere near Lake Merritt, but the organizers had kept the actual location secret until the last minute. But it still raises the question about why the demonstrators have become so bold in this particular town. And that's easy. Mayor Jean Quan has praised the goals of the Occupy movement since the beginning, and any serious public criticism she has offered has always involved the "overreactions" of the police, never the criminal actions of the Occupiers.
Some of the demonstrators seemed mystified that the police actually prevented them from occupying the Kaiser Center. They had every reason to believe the police would threaten, the Mayor would cluck-cluck, and the Occupiers would be in like Flynn. By afternoon, the ever-honest San Francisco Chronicle had headlined stories of innocent Occupy bystanders being manhandled by fascist police. The DailyKos used the lede: "Updated: With Police Attack Video-Occupy Oakland." The blog also said: "Smoke bombs, tear gas, flash bangs, rubber bullets, and bean bag rounds were used on protesters that never got within 50-100 feet of police lines." Q.E.D.
What young Kos is not telling you is that those things happened only after police had earlier been physically attacked, including tossed chunks of concrete. The police very sensibly withdrew to a reasonable distance and re-formed, "50-100 feet" from the crowd before launching crowd control measures. They had first frequently announced over bullhorns that this was an unlawful assembly, and gave the crowd plenty of time to disperse peacefully. The demonstrators chose not to leave, and began to advance on the police lines.
One of the organizers and fomentors of this unlawful assembly egged the crowd on. She is Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz, a former professor at California State University, East Bay. Her words were designed to encourage a riot, promote an occupation of private property, and dispel any mistaken public perception that these marchers are peaceful. "Passionate, organized hatred is the element missing in all that we do to try to change the world. Now is the time to spread hate, hatred for the rich." Not exactly the "love children" of the 60s, huh?
The police were successful in preventing the occupation, but they failed to disperse many of the demonstrators who continue to hang around, waiting for the opportunity to slip past the police lines and occupy the intended target or another alternate building. I'm quite sure the police would have loved to push the demonstrators entirely out of the area and arrest anyone who refused to leave. But then they would have to face the Mayor's wrath for using "excessive force" to remove "peaceful demonstrators."
Sunday Update: After this post was written, a large cadre of demonstrators, frustrated by their lack of success in occupying the Kaiser Center, broke off from the main group and headed to City Hall. The government center was vandalized, rocks, bottles and flares were thrown at the police, and three policemen were injured. Naturally, the San Francisco Chronicle barely mentioned the destruction and vandalism, and headlined: "Oakland police use tear gas, flash grenades and rubber bullets to break up demonstration."
Sunday, January 29, 2012
Occupy Oakland Fails To Occupy
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31 comments:
I think the more Obama and the Dem's identify with the Occupiers, the better it is for us.
Tennessee: I agree. The Republican candidate is going to need to tie Obama and the leftist Democrats to the Occupy movement as well as pointing out how it is anything but non-violent, intelligent protest.
Jed.......they will identify with noble sentiments of what they think the Occupy movement embodies.....and only those..... They are cynical, manipulative and market awareness of America enough to never show support for the more violent acts of civil disobedience. They will always wrap themselves in the cloak of Ghandi, King and Mother Teresa (so they believe) and "non-violence" so that the uglier, more realistic end games that these "movements" always lead to, that they can then sit back, with the media's complicit agreement, and claim that they NEVER supported the violence and assaults.
Ain't that big of 'em?
The hell with Occupiers and their supporters in the political arena. And the hell with Berkley and California too (the land that my forefathers settled in the 1800's) for allowing this crap to continue. Remember, Nixon was elected on a law and order platform to stop all the rioting and anarchy back in 1968. The American people will only tolerate so much of this b.s. Before they themselves rise up and tale action.
The OWS'er are having to resort to violence because they weren't making any headway "occupying". It's funny how those property laws keep getting in their way.
Our OWS'ers finally gave up Zuccotti Park after a judge ruled they didn't have any right to take over at the expense of the owners or the general public. I am going to report on what's been up with our little occupiers in NYC next week. One hint - even the sympathetic religious organizations have lost patience and want them evicted from their santuaries...
You know, it strikes me this whole (bowel) movement is falling apart. I think it was doomed from the beginning and now it's gotten to the point that even liberals are upset at what they so wanted to believe was an uprising of "youths and the common man." Instead, it was trust fund babies and professional radical socialists.
I hope the Republicans tie this movement around the necks of the Democrats and that it drags them down with it.
You know I have to laugh every time some leftist TV Anchor tries to label the Occupy movement as the Leftist answer to the Tea PArty. They talk about it as if it were some organic movement that just came to be....
In truth these people have been around sincfe the early 90's. They are the same people that are the g8 summit protestors and whatever else leftists thought could give them political momentum. They are the same violent idiots that start riots and try to destroy property that we have been dealing with for years.
It is just that since the Tea PArty has become such a prominent force the leftists have to try to rebrand their movement as a marketing ploy. It is laughable.
Patriot: All of what you say is true. I just happen to think that the Obamists are running out of credibility with enough of the American people that their protestations of innocence are beginning to fall on deaf ears.
Two years before Nixon was elected President, Ronald Reagan was elected Governor of the State of California on an even stronger law and order platform. These Occupiers are amateurs compared to what Reagan faced. As California's economy sinks farther into bankruptcy, as illegals leave because the freebies are drying up, and as state employees are laid off or terminated because there's no money to pay them with, the state may yet come back to its senses.
Bev: That's the trend I've been seeing everywhere except Oakland. And even there, the new mayor is losing political support at an astounding rate. I'm really beginning to think that outside of already-lawless towns like Oakland, the people are in a sour mood about bums demanding a free ride. "Eat the rich" just isn't working as well as it did just a few years back.
Andrew: Amen! This "people's movement" is backfiring badly. Unlike the Vietnam War, this movement doesn't face a nation divided. People are angry, and there's resentment (much of it justified) against the excesses of the financial industry, but they don't see rabid egalitarianism and socialism as the cure. The Democrats want to over-regulate business while the Republicans want to reform business so it can act freely without the oligarchic control of a few fact cats and crony socialists. But the vast majority of the people don't want to destroy business or abandon free enterprise, and that's the miscalculation these anarchists have made.
Indi: Agreed. A thug is a thug is a thug. Dressing them up as "social revolutionaries" worked in the 60s, but it isn't working this time. The MSM no longer have control of the facts the way they did back then. Comparing the Tea Party to the Occupiers is about as historically and factually correct as comparing the American Revolution to the French Revolution.
I love the Ocutards. There can be no better example of what Barry considers the perfect democrat. A worthless sorry bum leeching of society for their very being…woops my bad, a form of conservative turrets syndrome. I like to call them the “Cousin Eddie,” generation, you know “…holding out for a management position.” Oakland is a perfect hive, it could even be Barry’s 57th state if you will. For my money I want them raising Hell right into the 2012 elections. It’s getting time to fix the mistake of ’08, and get Barry’s Brats a job, or they can starve, their choice. Of course they are little spooner babies with far to much time on their hands, so the starving is not likely.
With the rise of the internets and differing points of view it gives us, we now see who and what drives these type "movements" of rage against the machine. It is sleepless socialists around the world who stand to benefit from destroying capitalism and all it has created. Orwell once again proves prophetic in his Animal Farm allegory about the instigators living off the wealth and prosperity that others have worked hard to create. Socialism does not create, only eats.
It is so antithetical to their philosophy that man does not need to be told what to do, how to live and how to find happiness on earth. The fact that some make it and some don't will always be a cudgel for them to beat the witless about. People will continue to make bad decisions and sometimes die as a result. To fall for the siren song of heaven on earth has always led to disaster for the people. Sure, the "leaders" will do fine but the people will be subjugated and eventually rise up in revolution and kill the overlords. Thus is life on earth from our earliest recorded histories.
Unfortunately for the socialists this time around, people around the world are able to see what free enterprise can provide and will follow that system over others if given the choice.
Stan: Now tell us what you really think. LOL
Reminds me of my college friend in the 70s.....he was an Olympic level fencer from the USSR and defected. He said he had all the benefits of socialism ( a red card believe it or not ) but he still had to pass dozens of people waiting in line for essentials. He could go to the head of the linenwith his red card. One of the State elites. He said Russian TV would show an American food store fully stocked and state that "this is the only one in America" don't fall for American propaganda. When he defected and came to the US and went into the first Giant Food supermarket he came to, he said he stood there with tears streaming down his face with the realization that his countrymen we being lied to about us every waking moment ofntheir life.
So I say, if we let the Brownshirt Occupiers win, we deserve the holocaust that will eventually occur. We need to come down hard on these socialists and make it very unpleasant for them when they fight our wa of life.
Patriot: I agree whole-heartedly. Even the Bible tells us that the poor are always with us. We are admonished to help the poor, not to buoy them up perpetually. A socialist society can never raise the poor to the status of wealthy, it can only bring them into equal poverty with those who produce the wealth (with the notable exception of the ruling elites who grab the money from every other group).
Patriot: Great story, and it backs up my comment about only the elites prospering under socialism. The Occupiers will not win.
I'm almost to where I would pay the police to go Third World on these protesters' you-know-whats. Maybe then they'd get some appreciation for the American way of life, and for what a truly repressive state looks like.
T-Rav: What's truly sad is that they don't even have to go "third world" (though I think I could turn my head and pretend not to see if they did). When the rioters and vandals know that the worst that will happen to them is a night in a warm jail with a meal, then release without consequences, there's no incentive to behave in a civilized manner. In Los Angeles, they're often not even jailed, just "booked" at the scene and released. A well-deserved beatdown was routine before the peace and love crowd got control over law enforcement. If you resisted arrest, they clubbed and cuffed you, then put you in jail until you could make bail, pay fines and accumulate a criminal record. Now they politely ask you if you'll go peaceably to jail if they promise not to prosecute. Rubber bullets and beanbags can be effective for taking out individuals, but they are constantly criticized as "brutal" and can therefore only be used when the crowd is already entirely out of control. Water-cannons are highly-effective in fending off large mobs, so naturally they were banned decades ago. Oakland cops are some of the toughest and most efficient in the nation, but they're nearly useless when the mayor forbids them to use their common sense and training.
Patriot and LawHawk - And that is why the internet has become so dangerous. Like the printing press in 16th Century, the internet has transformed how and who shares information. As we see here even at Commentarama, it's national. We are no longer limited with whom we share information by simple geography. No more printing presses in hidden basement with tracts secrets through a neighborhood. Though in a very real way it is much easier to spread propaganda, but much harder to sustain it.
Bev: Good assessment. And of course it explains why this administration wants to grab control of the internet by fair means or foul.
I find it ironic that one of the great liberal boogeymen is the oppressive law-and-order Republican leader. And yet, they engage in behavior that is almost begs such a politician to come about.
Or maybe it isn't ironic... /tinfoilhat
tryanmax: It's almost Hegelian. LOL
The sad thing is, I'm currently engaged in a Hegelian struggle with my 4-yr-old over bedtime that bears too close a resemblance to the Occupiers.
tryanmax: Yes, but your four-year old has an excuse for his behavior. Adults don't.
Hence my lamentation.
There is one difference, though. My 4-yr-old seems to be learning something.
tryanmax, I've learned that you should never get involved in Hegelian arguments with anyone. Especially not four-year-olds. They tend to see Big Bird as just a transitory phase of the Zeitgeist after that. It's very sad.
tryanmax: And will continue to do so because he has a father who behaves as a parent, not as one of his four-year old friends.
law: the mother's who bring their children should be dragged before child welfare courts. putting yourself in danger is your business, putting a child in danger is all of our business. the occupier's level of stupidity still continues to astound me.
Hawk
The KCBS news stated that over 300 arrests have been made. During the arrests police removed from the thugs knives,scissors and shields fabricated from corrugated sheet metal and 2x4s. The shields were intended to deflect the bean bag and rubber bullets the police use. So much for spontaneity when you arrive with your own arsenal. I personally like the idea of water cannons particularly in the winter months to douse the unruly, unlawful twerps.
Patti: Absolutely right.
Tehahcapi Tom: But you must remember that they carried those weapons only to protect themselves from police brutality (or at least that's the spin from the DailKos and the San Francisco Chronicle).
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