Interesting Mother Jones piece on Occupy, the Black Panthers and the Oakland Police

[marmar]

from Mother Jones:



On Sunday night, a day after the mass arrest of some 400 Occupy Oakland protesters—and journalists including one of my Mother Jones colleagues—many of those who'd been released met outside City Hall to let off steam. Broadcasting through a speaker in a bicycle trailer, members of Occupy Oakland's Anti-Repression Committee denounced the use of "teargas, rubber bullets, and assault grenades." The crowd chanted, "Fuck the cops!" But anger at those who’d encouraged police violence by throwing rocks, ransacking the inside of City Hall, and burning an American Flag was hard to find. A veteran member of Occupy Oakland later told me that proponents of nonviolence had largely quit speaking up at Oakland meetings for fear of being shouted down.

The militancy of Occupy Oakland contrasts sharply with the culture of Occupy Wall Street in New York City, where I was embedded this fall. In the weeks leading up to the occupation of Zuccotti Park in September, experts schooled groups of young people in peaceful protest tactics. Calls to occupy the park invariably stressed nonviolence, and the movement's official "Declaration of Solidarity," adopted later that month, proclaimed that "we have peaceably assembled here." Occupiers took turns waving an American flag on the night of the eviction, and even during the most confrontational demonstrations that followed, enforced a code of restraint. During an effort to shut down the New York Stock Exchange, for example, I saw garbage bags that had been tossed into the street by a few rogue protesters get picked up by other activists and put back on the sidewalk. A young anarchist I was shadowing denounced the incident as "stupid black-block shit," showing his disdain for anarchism's militant wing.

.....(snip).....

The OPD's defenders argue that the police have inadequate funding to do their job properly. Indeed, the department's manpower has dwindled by 20 percent since 2008, although the city posts one of the nation's highest murder rates per capita. Oakland Mayor Jean Quan accuses Occupy Oakland of compounding the city's crime and budget problems by sucking up scarce police resources. The occupiers counter that the police should just leave them alone and focus instead on roberies and murders.

If only it were that simple. A cycle of tit-for-tat violence between the OPD and its activist citizens stretches all the way back to the racially charged Civil Rights Era. It was in Oakland in 1966 that Huey Newton and Bobby Seal founded the Black Panther Party, a group initially dedicated to stopping police brutality in African-American neighborhoods. In 1967, Oakland police officer John Frey was shot to death during an altercation with Newton at a traffic stop. (Newton went to jail for the murder but was later exonerated.) A year later, OPD officers retaliated, it seemed, by killing 17-year-old Bobby Hutton; the Panther's body was shot at least 12 times after he'd surrendered and stripped down to his underwear to show that he was unarmed. Through the 1970s, the police harassed the Panthers and the FBI disrupted the group through its secret CoIntelPro program—increasingly turning the city's African-American community against law enforcement. ...............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://motherjones.com/mojo/2012/01/occupy-oakland-black-panther-roots

[unionworks]

1. those not old enough to remember

....have a hard time understanding how this game is played by the government. The Federal Judge in charge of the ongoing oversight of OPD needs to put them under federal control before a tragedy occurs.