Occupy Wall Street to Occupy Oakland (& Beyond): The Week in the US Protests

On Sunday night, The Guardian published an editorial discussing how the Occupy protest in London has brought about a long-overdue interest in the recent moral failures of capitalism in the United Kingdom. It also noted the impact OWS is having on political debate in the US, offering this intriguing forecast for next year's Presidential campaign:

The first political challenge is to grasp the depth of the shift in sentiment. In the US, after characteristically prolonged deliberation, there are signs of Barack Obama doing just that. As he plans his re-election, he is said to be dusting down Roosevelt speeches, and preparing to run energetically against tax cuts for the wealthy. America might thus hear the principled as opposed to the pragmatic case for progressive taxation for the first time since FDR's day.

Reciprocal trans-Atlantic interest in the significance of the Occupy movement was evident in The New York Times on Sunday, "'Occupy' Protest at St Paul's Cathedral in London Divides Church", while The Washington Post chose, "Occupy London showdown at St. Paul's Cathedral".

In general, however, Americans may have shown little interest in the London developments because they had so many news stories at home to follow. 

There was a noticeable increase in New York in more militant methods of getting the Occupy message heard. On Thursday, Occupy Wall Street marched in solidarity with Occupy Oakland after that camp was forcefully evicted and a protester, Scott Olsen, was seriously hurt by a police projectile when he joined efforts to treclaim the camp space the following night. As occupywallst.org reported:

[On Sunday night] hundreds marched through the streets of NYC, chanting "New York is Oakland, Oakland is New York". We circled City Hall, ran in the streets, refused to be kettled or have our voices silenced, marched up broadway, North on 6th Ave, circled around on Bleecker, and marched south against traffic on 6th ave, running past police barricades, running past our fear, running in solidarity with each other and #occupyoakland.

Some rather confused video, from a overhead shot, accompanies that story. For those who know Broadway it is an evocative visual image of the physical efforts of OWS to spread their protest through the streets of Manhattan.

And in a sign that the Occupy movement is beginning to have a wider impact on American politics in the US, OWS held a rally for civil rights at City Hall Park on Saturday, co-sponsored by a list of prominent organisations more usually associated with political protests:

In a demonstration of the broadening base of the Occupy Wall Street / 99% movement, a rally will be held this coming Saturday, October 29 at City Hall Park in New York City, co-sponsored by the Coalition Black Trade Unionists (CBTU), the A. Philip Randolph Institute (APRI), the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement (LCLAA), the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance (APALA), the National Action Network (NAN) and the NY State and NYC City Chapters of the NAACP.

After that rally, OWS hosted a screening of a new documentary, SING YOUR OWN SONG, about the contributions of Harry Belafonte to the civil rights movement, including bailing Martin Luther King out of a Birmingham, Alabama, jail cell.

The biggest story of the week for the Occupy movement, in unfortunate circumstances, came from Oakland with the injuring of ex-Marine and Iraq War Veteran by the police. In this video of the incident, the most shocking moment comes when the police, after potentially fatally injuring Olsen, do not come to his aid, but --- deliberately and “with malice aforethought” --- throw a flash grenade into the group who rush to help the injured.

The good news, via the San Jose Mercury News , is that Scott Olsen is expected to make a full recovery, but the anger at the overly aggressive actions of Oakland authorities last week still reverberates. On Wednesday, shortly after Olsen was injured, the Oakland General Assembly, in the reclaimed Oscar Grant Plaza, voted 1484-46 (with 77 abstentions) to hold a general strike on Wednesday:

We as fellow occupiers of Oscar Grant Plaza propose that on Wednesday November 2, 2011, we liberate Oakland and shut down the 1%.

We propose a city wide general strike and we propose we invite all students to walk out of school. Instead of workers going to work and students going to school, the people will converge on downtown Oakland to shut down the city.

All banks and corporations should close down for the day or we will march on them.

While we are calling for a general strike, we are also calling for much more. People who organize out of their neighborhoods, schools, community organizations, affinity groups, workplaces and families are encouraged to self organize in a way that allows them to participate in shutting down the city in whatever manner they are comfortable with and capable of.

The whole world is watching Oakland. Let’s show them what is possible.

On Friday, OccupyOakland raised the stakes from just trying to shut down the banks for a day, and announced it would also attempt to blockade the Port of Oakland in solidarity with dock workers.

Despite Mayor Quan issuing a "Contrite Statement after Police Crackdown", her commitment to avoid similar incidents in the future will come under severe strain if the General Strike achieves its dual aims of shutting down both the City and Port of Oakland.

Further up the West Coast, in Portland, Oregon the police also broke up attempts to ccupy a public park after a city ordinance curfew early Sunday morning, but this time without the general level of violence witnessed in Oakland. The press release from Occupy Portland contained this noteworthy comment from one protester:

“It’s not about this park, it’s about making a stand,” Imre Ilyes responded. “It’s time for us as people to take back control of our government. The old channels haven’t been effective, so this is where it starts, with people sitting down and being arrested for the right to come together and find solutions.”

And the protest on Saturday night also helped partly dispel an old stereotype that liberals have no sense of humour, with the release noting, “The protesters and officers weren’t all business. When they started chanting ‘You’re sexy, you’re cute, take off the riot suit’, the protesters and officers were chuckling.”

On the humour theme, this time from a different angle, there was a brief controversy Sunday night on Occupy London's Twitter timeline when Sky News were accused, and supposedly admitted, of using this graphic briefly on air.

Turns out that the "statistics" were shown , for less than a second, on KGW in Portland.

The same paper that reported the KGW blunder, also has an in-depth report from a journalist who spent a couple of days at the Portland camp, reveaing part of the behind the scenes chaos that attends the establishment of an inclusive participatory, and consensus building rather than dictated, democracy. 

And on that theme, news site oregonlive.com posted a report Sunday night from Kate Mather in the Portland News which included these two contending visions of the future of Occupy protests:

Mayor Sam Adams reiterated his support for the ideas behind the occupy movement, but said he was interested to see what the protesters would do next.  
  
“I hope in its next phase of growth it gets back to its core mission. The occupy movement is not about expanding the takeover of local parks in cities like Portland where the mayor and the City Council are very supportive of the founding purpose of Occupy Wall Street,” he said. “If this becomes about picking fights with local governments that are generally supportive of its founding purpose, I think it will lose its way."

Contrast that with:

“I appreciate Sam Adams allowing us to stay in this park but the underlying tone behind this occupy movement is not to camp everywhere. It is to create systemic change,” said Jasmine Zimmer-Stucky 25, from Chapman Square Sunday afternoon. “And sometimes systemic change is not going to come by getting permission from the people in charge.”

There was a twist in law enforcement's attempts to end the occupation of public parks overnight in Nashville, Tennessee, this weekend. Early Friday morning, 29 protesters were arrested for occupying Legislative Plaza, but, as ABC News reported:

“As fast as Nashville, Tenn., police arrested Occupy Nashville protesters this weekend for refusing to leave a public park after curfew, they were freed by a judge who said the state was wrong for holding them at all.”

The local NewsChannel5 highlighted how "the handcuffs and heavy (Tennessee) Highway Patrol presence virtually disappeared Saturday night, and some wonder if it's gone for good because the Metro magistrate judge, Tom Nelson, couldn't find a legal reason to charge those arrested and refused to charge them".

The American Civil Liberties Union are coming to Tennessee to represent the constitutional right of the occupiers to carry on with their protests.

On a more prosaic level, the unseasonably early snowfall on the East Coast has pushed forward concerns that the Occupy movement will not be able to sustain enthusiasm through the winter, with OWS issuing a plea to the public for much-needed supplies.

Wednesday's General Strike in Oakland, and in the other cities that decide to join  --- Portland is not, for the moment, citing the difficulties of organising an effective protest in such a short space of time ---  could make the headlines for this week. But, as a cursory look at the Occupy protests last week throughout the US shows, it could be a different story, a different theme, in any of the hundred cities involved in this challenge to supposed corporate greed.