On the Eve of Our Repression: Communiqué on The Squatting Struggle in Oakland 2/10/13
From IndyBay
Communique on Immanent Squat Evictions in Oakland
“Solidarity With Occupied Villa Amalias”
*The Stayaway has received notice to vacate for Wednesday, February 13th at 6:00am,
*The Hot Mess/RCA Compound (Oakland’s Squatted social center) teeters at the outer limit of ability to delay eviction in court, with a final judgement ruled against them on February 8th. Both spaces could face raids on or before Valentine’s Day.
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“Welcome” Bill Bratton to Oakland at City Council this Tuesday.
Come to this week’s city council meeting to “welcome” Bill Bratton to Oakland in Solidarity with Alan Blueford’s family and all others against policing. Banners and all other forms of creative propaganda encouraged.
Tuesday, January 15th, 5pm-8pm.
Sure, Bratton is an innovative, evil super-cop. He alone threatens to stomp out “crime”, “blight” and “violent protests.” But it must be clear that Bratton is merely a trophy addition to an ongoing project of counter-insurgency perpetrated by the City of Oakland altogether.
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From Passive to Active Spectacle: Afterimages of the LA Riots
[written to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the LA riots, one of the most significant events in recent US history – r&d]
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LOS ANGELES, March 3, 1991 – On the shoulder of the freeway, police are beating a man. Because we are in the US, and because the man is black, we will know that this is a routine event, an ordinary brutality, part of the very fabric of everyday life for non-whites. But something is exceptional this time. There is an observer, as there often is, but the observer holds in his hands an inhuman witness, a little device for producing images which are accepted as identical with the real. The images – grainy, shaking with the traces of the body behind them – enframe this event, defamiliarize it, make it appear in all its awfulness as both unimaginable singularity and example of a broader category of everyday violence. The recorded beating of Rodney King marks, as many have noted, the beginning of one of the most significant episodes of US history. But few have examined this event in terms of the transformative effects it exerted upon contemporary spectacle and its would-be enemies. By spectacle, we mean here those social relations and activities which are mediated directly by the representations, whether visual or verbal, which capital has subsumed (that is, remade according to its own imperatives).
J28: The Battle of Oak Street
NYE Prison Noise Demo, March & Dance Party
On December 31st meet at Oscar Grant Plaza at 9pm. We’ll begin with a march to the jail for a noisy demonstration to show prisoners we have not forgotten them in our struggles. Afterward, we’ll return to the Plaza for a Dance Party.
New Year’s resolution: Destroy Capitalism… Oakland style.
This event is inspired by the North American call out for a day of action against prisons in the New Year of 2011, which remains relevant and unchanged:
Noise demos outside of prisons in some countries are a continuing tradition. A way of expressing solidarity for people imprisoned during the New Year, remembering those held captive by the state. A noise demo breaks the isolation and alienation of the cells our enemies create, but it does not have to stop at that.Prison has a long history within capital, being one of the most archaic forms of prolonged torture and punishment. It has been used to kill some slowly and torture those unwanted – delinquents to the reigning order – who have no need of fitting within the predetermined mold of society.
Prison is used not only as an institution, but a whole apparatus, constructed externally from outside of the prison walls. Which our enemies by way of defining our everyday life as a prison, manifest themselves in many places, with banks that finance prison development (like Wells Fargo, Bank of America, BNP Paribas, Bank of the West, and Barclays), companies that are contracted for the development of prisons (like Bergelectric Corporation, SASCO Electric, Engineered Control Systems, MacDonald Miller Facility SLTNS and Kane MFG Corp.), investors in prison development (like Barclays Intl. and Merrlin Lynch) to the police and guards who hide behind their badges and the power of the state.
Solidarity is not only an expression by way of our own revolutionary poetry which is defined by a developing anarchist analysis, but as an expression of actions put into practice within the social war daily. That is why we propose to others who have a certain reciprocal understanding of the prison world and the conditions it creates to remember this day, to mark it on their calendars. To locate points of attack. To not limit ourselves to just a noise demo, but proliferating actions autonomously from one another. That break the mundane positions we lock ourselves into by our own internalization.
To all our comrades known and we have yet to know. Just because we have not met, does not mean we do not act in affinity with one another. Our struggle continues not only on the outside, but on the inside as well. Prison is not an end, but a continuation. Through individual and collective moments of revolt, by the methods one finds possible. Like fire our rage must spread.
Against prison, and the world that maintains them.
For the social war.
In struggle with those currently imprisoned.
An Update and Thoughts from the Oakland Commune
A brief account of this last week in Occupy Oakland:
In the early hours of Monday morning (11/14) the police conducted the second eviction of the Oakland Commune. Far less spectacular than the first, a few hundred campers and supporters picketed and protested inside police perimeters and under the ruthless lights of helicopters for hours. Numbers dwindled down to dozens by 9 a.m. The following day, as planned, a large rally was held at the downtown Oakland Public Library followed by a march back to Oscar Grant Plaza (OGP). Upon arriving at OGP no tents were raised, the kitchen was not re-established, and there was no library, no free store or medic tent. By the mayor’s orders, the plaza was to be open to the public for 24 hours a day, but no camping would be tolerated and the plaza would be under police supervision for 3 full days thereafter. Next to the mud puddle that used to be our strong, police-free common space, we held our regular Monday night General Assembly under the eye of more than one hundred police, paddy wagons on hand. Despite how uninspired and crushed one could feel at this time, it was hard to forget, after all we’ve been through, that this is still Oakland.
On Tuesday, a contingent of Oaklanders marched from OGP to UC Berkeley’s Sproul Plaza to join the students’ second attempt at an encampment on the evening of their campus-wide strike (called for the evening of their first attempted encampment of the plaza). As the march approached the University, rich with the history of 2009′s student occupations, they chanted “Here comes Oakland!”. Occupy Cal’s General Assembly was attended by thousands, and they set up camp and partied late into the night. Police presence was minimal compared to the first day of Occupy Cal. This day’s activities overshadowed and largely disregarded the death of Christopher Travis, a UC Berkeley student who was shot and killed by the UCPD that same day (allegedly for having a gun on campus, though details are unclear).
Occupy Everything, Oakland Style
#OCCUPYOAKLAND
After the 4:30am brutal police eviction of Oscar Grant Plaza on Tuesday morning and massive clashes in downtown the following evening, thousands returned to the plaza tonight. Police completely withdrew from the area and the plaza was retaken. Over 1500 people participated in Wednesday’s Occupy Oakland General Assembly. A proposed General Strike & Mass Day of Action on Wednesday, November 2 was overwhelmingly agreed upon with 1484 votes in favor and 46 votes against. Get ready y’all. Liberate Oakland! Shut Down the 1%!
ANALYSIS: One Week Strong at OG Plaza, Plaza – Riot – Commune, On Greed, Unity & Violence