What really happened at Occupy Oakland

reddit.com

By baked420

Short version - The mass arrests at Occupy Oakland occurred 4 hours after the violent incidents ended. The arrests occurred during a march which had no protester violence, and the arrests were conducted unlawfully. Protesters marching on a public street were kettled by police after receiving no dispersal order. After the arrests, more incidents occurred back at the main plaza. The media justifies the mass arrest by using a minority of the protesters actions at different times and places. In reality, the flag-burning, street battle, and city-hall trespassing are legally separate incidents. The 2:30pm street battle became the justification for calling the 5pm march a ‘riot’, even though the 5pm march had different people, a different purpose, and no incidents of protester aggression or rioting. Protesters were charged under CA Penal Code 409, which reads:

Every person remaining present at the place of any riot…after the same has been lawfully warned to disperse…is guilty of a misdemeanor.

This was an illegal mass arrest because no “lawful warning to disperse” was given. In order for it to be lawful, the warning must be loud, repeated, location-specific, cite the penal code, and identify the direction to disperse in. This march was simply stopped with a kettle, and the only police announcement stated, “You are under arrest. Submit to that arrest.” The police cannot arrest a mass group of people for the actions of a minority at a different time and place! This post is not about Occupy, it is about the First-Amendment!

Please spread the fact that the mass arrest of 300+ was ILLEGAL – no dispersal order was given, nor was an unlawful assembly declared at the arrest location. The mass arrest was a flagrant First-Amendment violation and Oakland will now be facing more lawsuits AND Federal receivership.

Edit/Update Thank you for upvoting the story, the legality of the mass arrest needs to be discussed! Try to not make assumptions about me; you do not know me. I do not endorse many of the things I saw. This post is meant to provide a first-hand report of yesterday’s events; it is not a sweeping justification for OO’s tactics. I feel for the people of Oakland who support occupy’s ideals, but are firmly against aggressive protest tactics and police provocations on their streets. I take advantage of my youth to show up at these incidents, stay safe, and report the truth; I am not down with violent protest. I will post another video and answer questions over the next day or two.

BEGIN

For the internet, here’s a first-hand account of Occupy Oakland on 1/28/2012, because the news never tells the full story. I’ll tell you about the street battle, the 300+ arrests, the vandalism, the flag burning, all in the context of my experience today. This is deeper than the headlines. No major news source can do that for you, but Reddit can.

The stated goal for the day was to “move-in” to a large, abandoned, building to turn it into a social and political center. It is a long vacant convention center – the only people ever near there are the homeless who use the space outside the building as a bed. The building occupation also draws attention to the large number of abandoned and unused buildings in Oakland. The day started with a rally and a march to the proposed building. The police knew which building was the target, surrounded it, and used highly mobile units to try and divert the protest. After avoiding police lines, the group made it to one side of the building. Now, this is a very large building, and we were on a road with construction fences on both sides, and a large ditch separating us from the cops. The police fired smoke grenades into the crowd as the group neared a small path around the ditch, towards the building. They declared an unlawful assembly, and this is when the crowd broke down the construction fence. A few people broke fences to escape the situation, others because they were pissed. A couple more fences were taken down than necessary, but no valuable equipment was destroyed. They only things broken were the fences.

The crowd decided to continue moving, and walked up the block to a more regular street. We decided to turn left up the street, and a police line formed to stop the march. They again declared an unlawful assembly. The protesters challenged the line, marching towards the police with our own shields in front. You can see the shields in the earlier-linked visual, some small and black and a few large metal sheets. The police fired tear-gas as the group approached, and shot less-than-lethal rounds at the crowd. The protesters returned one volley of firecrackers, small projectiles, and funny things like balloons. A very weak attack, 3 officers may have been hit by something but none of them got injured. Tear gas forced many people back. The protesters quickly regrouped, and pressed the line again. This time the police opened fire with flash-grenades, tear gas, paint-filled beanbag shotguns, and rubber bullets.

After the police fired heavily on the protesters, they pushed their line forward and made a few arrests. The protesters regrouped down the block and began to march the other way (followed by police), back to Oscar Grant Plaza.

All of this occurred during the day, but it was that street battle that set the tone for the police response later in the evening. After taking a break in Oscar Grant Plaza, feeding everyone and resting, the group headed out for their evening march. Around 5pm, the group took to the street at 14th and Broadway and began a First-amendment sanctioned march around the city. The police response was very aggressive.

About 15 minutes into the march, the police attempted to kettle the protesters. This march was entirely non-violent; nobody threw shit at the cops and an unlawful assembly was never declared. . This is a very important detail. The march was 1000+ strong, conservatively. The police were very mobile, using 25+ rented 10seater vans to bring the ‘troops’ to the march.

For their first attempt at a kettle, the cops charged the group with police lines from the front and back. They ran towards us aggressively. Us being 1000+ peaceful marching protesters. The group was forced to move up a side street. The police moved quickly to surround the entire area; they formed a line on every street that the side street connected to. Police state status: very efficient. They kettled almost the entire protest in the park near the Fox theater. AFTERWARDS, as in after they surrounded everyone, they declared it to be an unlawful assembly BUT OFFERED NO EXIT ROUTE. Gas was used (didn’t hit me, could have been tear or smoke gas. If I say tear gas, like earlier, I felt it and know 100%.).

The crowd then broke down a fence that was on one side of the kettle, and 1000 people ran across a field escaping a police kettle and embarrassing the entire police force. It was literally a massive jailbreak from a kettle. The group re-took telegraph ave. and left the police way behind.

At this point, I was on edge because I knew the police were not fucking around tonight. Because of the incident earlier in the day, I realized they were effectively treating the peaceful march as a riot. There was not rioting, or intentions to riot, just dancing, optimism, hope, and walking. But clearly the police thought differently, and I knew they would try to trap us again without warning. From the moment I saw riot police running towards our march from both directions, I knew the constitution would not apply in Oakland tonight. The police made that very clear. My friends thought differently, thinking that they would not be arrested for marching. They are currently in jail.

The second, and successful, kettle occurred as the protest was headed back up Broadway, at Broadway and 24th. Again, the police appeared quickly in front of the crowd, as well as a line behind the crowd. This time there was no side street. A few people attempted to escape into the YMCA; some mis-infonformed news reports claim that the YMCA got ‘occupied’. Around 300 people were trapped, mostly young people. At this point I had fallen behind the line of riot police in back of the crowd, and when the kettle was sprung I was on the other side of the police line. I have a policy of avoiding arrest, but I feel like I’ve been striped of some dignity. I’ve seen some shit go down in oaktown, but I’ve always avoided arrest because it was easy. Most mass arrests occur when people choose to break the law (ie occupying Bank of America in SF with a tent to send a statement to UC Regent Monica Lozano). At ‘unlawfully assemblies’, people are usually extracted by a quick attack of 5+ cops, and they’re often ‘targets’ (previously-identified and profiled protesters). If the crowd is too large, they use tear-gas. (continued in comments)

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