Pix: A Million Hoodies March for Trayvon Martin #OSF #OO

San Francisco, March 21, 2012

Two Parks Were Just Occupied. In One, People Were Beaten. In the Other, Ice Cream.

Reblogged from Occupied Oakland Tribune

March 17, 2012

by jpmassar

It was a day-long festival in Zuccotti Park / Liberty Square today in New York City yesterday, 3/17/12. Occupiers re-occupied the park, celebrating the six-month anniversary of Occupy Wall Street’s founding. A large number of people stayed in Zuccotti for the evening, but about 11:30 PM were ordered out and were beaten by NYPD…

A different kind of Park Occupation took place in Oakland, CA the same day. Some three hundred Occupy Oaklanders and Oakland residents got together and held a barbeque / speakout / talk-fest at Arroyo Park in East Oakland this afternoon…

You probably won’t read anything about the Oakland event anywhere but here. Of course, that’s because there were no arrests. No shields. No tear gas. No violence. That’s for one very good reason: no police. Just a bunch of happy campers gourmands stuffing their faces with incredible bbq-ed chicken and awesome deserts, talking shit is fucked up and stuff…

You’d almost think that, for today, Oakland was New York, and New York was Oakland.

Read the much more detailed original article at Daily Kos, posted as the beatings in NYC were happening, complete with tweets about the police brutality as it was happening.

OWS Medic has head smashed into window by NYPD

Rampant police brutality at otherwise peaceful 6-month Anniversary of #OWS

[embedded video]

0:15 Cops throwing man against window

1:50 Close-up of broken window

More photos of windows broken by NYPD head-smashing:

Just saw police slam a protester into this door, 55 East 10th. This was the result. Arrestee was punched in the face. http://t.co/BKw7eN4N—
Ryan Devereaux (@RDevro) March 18, 2012

Via @OccupyWallSt: Bus window broken when NYPD smashed protestors head into it

Alternet: Liberty Plaza Re-Occupied for 6-Month Anniversary of Occupy Wall Street; Police Violently Raid

SignOn.org:

Investigate NYPD Violence Against Occupy Wall Street

 

The #AmericanSpring is here. #OWS—
Occupy Wall Street (@OccupyWallStNYC) March 18, 2012

American Spring is Here: Live from Zuccotti / Liberty Park #OWS 6-Month Anniversary

Occupiers set up living room in Bank of America lobby

[Embedded video]

Uploaded by OccupyTVNY on Mar 12, 2012

A crew of occupiers makes a home of a Bank of America lobby with a couch, a coffee table, a rug and a potted plant. “Bank of America took our homes so we though we’d move in here!” Join them March 15 as America turns the tables on the nation’s largest bank!

facebook.com/fightbankofamerica

fthebanks.org/

What #M5 Democracy Looks Like

This is what democracy looks like! RT: @sanginaem twitter.com/#!/sanginaem/s…—
Aaron Bady (@zunguzungu) March 06, 2012

there was easily 10K there today. RT @BenDoernberg: @salmonsoir ok cool, @OakFoSho estimated 10k+ but that seemed very high—
Spencer: For Hire (@OakFoSho) March 06, 2012

David Solnit gives nonviolent direct action training #occupyeducation #occupysf #m5 #occupythecapital flic.kr/p/bAPVsB—
Steve Rhodes (@tigerbeat) March 06, 2012

Harvard now cheaper than UC system for middle income students. Gutting of great state university systems/ mercurynews.com/breaking-news/…—
Katrina vandenHeuvel (@KatrinaNation) March 06, 2012

photos + video of March on the Capitol coming soon . . .

Rally to Defend Your Education – March 5

(Via Nation of Change)

Rebuild the Dream / Video Compilation

March 5th will be a huge day of action for students in California and New York. Students, individuals with student debt, and allies defending the right to education will gather to rally at their state capitols – Albany and Sacramento.

Concept, filming, and editing by Neama Alamri, Leila Alamri, and Sumaya Attia.

Get on the Bus!

Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring of Free Trade

[embedded video]

Just viewed this as part of a discussion on Chican@s and Latin@s in the Occupy Movement at USF.

Annotation:

Now, for the first time ever, the hidden prophecies of J.R.R. Tolkien’s classic epic, The Lord of the Rings, are decoded in this accurate re-edit of Peter Jackson’s blockbuster motion picture. Unknownst to many readers, The Lord of the Rings – once thought to be merely a story of archetypal struggle between good and evil – has been found to contain astute prophetic messages about the impending crisis of capitalist modernity.

by St01en Collective out of SF Bay area.

Coming Soon to youtube: Lord of the Rings: The Twin Towers

(until then feel free to check out http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2004/09/02/16942331.php)

Watch This Video: The Battle of Oakland

Produced by Brandon Jourdan and David Martinez

On January 28th, 2012, Occupy Oakland moved to take a vacant building to use as a social center and a new place to continue organizing. This is the story of what happened that day as told by those who were a part of it. it features rare footage and interviews with Boots Riley, David Graeber, Maria Lewis, and several other witnesses to key events.

TRT: 20:16  February 2012.

Note:  This Thursday (today 2/9/12) at 6pm, Occupy Oakland is hosting a Citizens Police Review Board and Open Forum on Oakland Police Department Actions at the Grand Lake Theater.

Last week, Oakland’s Citizens Police Review Board (CPRB) announced they had indefinitely postponed a forum which had been planned for months. This forum had been intended to allow the community to discuss the Oakland Police Department’s (OPD) handling of Occupy Oakland.

In actions against Occupy Oakland, OPD has consistently broken with their own crowd control policies and procedures, while brutalizing those they have arrested. Journalists have been arrested and detained, crowds have been tear gassed with no path of escape, and 409 people were trapped, assaulted, and arrested with no dispersal orders given. Let us not forget the most egregious action of OPD misconduct when Scott Olsen was shot in the head with a tear gas canister and nearly killed. All of these actions, and many others, on the part of OPD are proof that the department has a long way to go in the implementation of reforms mandated by federal courts stemming from the Rider Case almost a decade ago.

That the Oakland CPRB would choose to cancel its forum at such a critical time is appalling. As a result, Occupy Oakland is hosting its own CPRB to address these issues and instances of misconduct and brutality. The community, press, and city officials are all invited to attend and listen. There will be a public speaking section at the end of the forum for all to voice their opinions, concerns, and experiences.

Thursday, February 9, 6:00pm
Grand Lake Theater

Full Agenda here.

Choose Your Shield

Which do you like better?

Climate Camp's "Face Shields" in 2007, precursor to the Occupy movement

Or would you consider to be more effective?

Shields in Oakland on #J28 (via SF Weekly)

The answer may depend on one’s intentions, but consider this about the former:

The Face Shields were used as part of a mass action at Heathrow against the proposed third runway. The shields featured large-scale pictures of real people whose lives had been affected by climate change. These images were put on cardboard boxes, and handles were attached to the backside. Inside the cardboard boxes was not only stuffing to protect protester from police batons, but pop up tents. In this fashion the tents were able to sneak past police lines and once at the targeted destination, British Airport Authority, they were used to camp overnight forming a blockade. Such occupations by Climate Camp are a precursor to the occupy movement.  (more on Face Shields here)

Versus the headline that goes with the latter:

Occupy Oakland: Judge Issues Restraining Order Against Protesters

Here’s what the Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination‘s brilliant A User’s Guide to Demanding the Impossible has to offer (our emphasis):

During recent demonstrations in Rome, students brought out shields to defend against police batons, with book covers painted onto them. Culture itself appeared to be resisting the cuts. During the 2007 Climate Camp protests in London, shields appeared with huge haunting photographic portraits of the faces of climate refugees upon them. The TV cameras caught the police striking these faces with their batons to contain the crowd. Such re-engineering can be directly functional as well as symbolically powerful.  (Link to download book here)

Again, it all gets back to the question of the movement’s intention, now and for the future, and how much of that is about growth.  In the context of the battle for hearts and minds taking place via the mainstream media, it’s something to seriously consider on a tactical level.

Additional links and free publications produced in the midst of student uprisings:

We Demand The Impossible: An Interview with John Jordan and Gavin Grindon. – 19 July 2011.  Marc Garrett interviews John Jordan and Gavin Grindon about their collaborative publication, A User’s Guide to Demanding the Impossible.

Occupy Everything! Reflections on why it’s kicking off everywhere – 28 Jan 2012.  Ed. Alessio Lunghi & Seth Wheeler

Penned after the 2010 European student unrest and before what is now commonly referred to as the “Arab spring” began to escalate, BBC Newsnight economist Paul Mason’s “20 Reasons Why It’s Kicking Off Everywhere” sought to establish an understanding of the motivations behind these globally disparate, yet somehow connected struggles.

What roles do the “graduate with no future,” the “digital native” or the “remainder of capital” play in the current wave of unrest? What are the ideas, ideologies, motivations or demands driving these movements? How is struggle organized and coordinated in the age of memetic politics and viral ad campaigns?

This collection of essays seeks to further explore Paul Mason’s original 20 Reasons in an attempt to better understand our turbulent present.

(Link to Scribd and free download).