OccupySF

Occupy the Mission?

Photo taken by Geoff King outside 1950 Mission Street on May 1, 2010.

As the Guardian reported yesterday, protesters camped out at Occupy SF rejected the city’s offer to grant use of 1950 Mission Street, the fenced-in site of a shuttered school near 16th and Mission streets, in exchange for clearing out of Justin Herman Plaza.

Occupiers ultimately opted not to sign a facility license agreement prepared by the city that would have granted them use of the empty lot and some structures — with about 17 strings attached, including rules banning minors or pets from the site. However, some occupiers noted at a meeting yesterday that they saw potential in the space and liked the idea of relocating to the Mission.

It’s worth noting that this offer isn’t the first time the site, which formerly housed the Phoenix Continuation School, has been linked with economic justice activism. On the evening of May 1, 2010, around 100 activists — many of them clad in black with bandanas covering their faces — participated in a May Day march that culminated with a takeover of this very same abandoned lot.

While it was more common to hear rallying cries of “reclaim” than “occupy” at that point in time, the action was meant to draw attention to the fact that the abandoned school could be put to better use. After people broke into the property and mingled around within the fenced-in area, announcing they wished to hold the space and ultimately turn it into a free school, police wound up cutting off access to the street and making arrests.

UPDATE: Meanwhile, a raid at Occupy SF seems imminent. According to a text update from the Guardian’s Yael Chanoff, who has been closely following Occupy SF since its inception, about 80 officers were on the scene as of 6 p.m. Dec. 1, and police barricades were already beginning to surround the camp.


The impact of Occupy

8

With the city getting ready to crack down on OccupySF, and Occupy encampments around the country under attack, it’s easy to get discouraged. And I know that a lot of the Occupiers aren’t thinking about specific legislation or how the movement translates into action in Washington.

But it does — it does:

In the world where Occupy had never happened, Republicans would’ve held these tax cuts hostage without suffering any ill repercussions. Why would they? The chattering class and Beltway media would be droning on endlessly about deficits and other things that didn’t matter.

In this world, Occupy has thrust income inequality to the forefront of the political debate — so much so that typically immovable Republicans are afraid to feed that narrative.

In other words, a ragtag bunch of hippies with supposedly no demands have done what Democrats have never been able to do — get Republicans to cry “uncle”

And this is just the beginning.

OccupySF awaits police raid after rejecting city ultimatum

5

A police raid that could wipe out OccupySF, one of the country’s largest remaining Occupy camps, now seems imminent after the protest group rejected the city’s ultimatum to either voluntarily move to school district property at 1950 Mission Street or face forced eviction.

OccupySF received a written document laying out the terms of this potential agreement yesterday. After a long day of discussion, including a General Assembly meeting last night, OccupySF is refusing to sign the agreement, largely because of concerns about autonomy, as well as visibility and livability at the new site.

This marks the end of almost a week of talks with the city during which no raids were threatened on the camp. Now that OccupySF has rejected the ultimatum, police are expected to enter the camp and attempt to clear it out tonight or tomorrow night. That could destroy the longest continuous large Occupy encampment in the country. Protesters have been sleeping in public spaces in the Financial District under the name OccupySF since Sept. 17, enduring two previous police raids that only increased support for the group.

After last night’s General Assembly, a working group is meeting to form a defense plan in case of a raid, and it’s still unclear how the standoff will unfold.

The rejection of the offer comes after days of debate at the camp, including a session that took place after the city made clear the exact terms of their proposed contract yesterday afternoon. Around 3:30 p.m., OccupySF liaisons to the city handed out photocopies of a document entitled “Facility License Agreement: 1950 Mission Street.”

If signed, the agreement would have allowed the group to use the former school site until May 31, 2012. There were 17 expectations listed, including no animals or pets, no minors, “no sound/noise greater than 45dBA between 10:00pm and 7:00am,” “no panhandling or loitering,” and “no stoves, flammable liquids, wood storage or gases, open flames allowed on the site.”

What the city called an “agreement” and an “offer,” protesters saw as an ultimatum and, for some, a “veiled threat.” Katt Hobin, one of OccupySF’s key organizers, told the group, “We are operating under violent coercion. They are threatening violence if we don’t evacuate this space.”

Under the agreement, the city would have been the tenants, renting the space from the school board for $2500 per month. The space is a lot surrounded by a 15-foot chain link fence and has several portable buildings. Protesters would have had access to toilets, electricity, and indoor space at the site.

At the current camp at Justin Herman Plaza, which they renamed Bradley Manning Plaza, protesters debated how accepting the agreement would affect their branch of the Occupy movement in terms of autonomy, ability to expand and grow, inclusivity, and long-term viability.

Around 4 pm, hundreds paced camp, talking to each other about how to move forward. Some were interested in the possibility of a deal with the city but felt they could not accept the terms, especially prohibitions on minors and animals.

There seemed to be an understanding that the police would attempt to clear out the current camp in the coming days. Yet many seemed assured that the OccupySF network would stick together even after such a raid. One organizer invoked George Washington, saying, “He knew his army didn’t have to win battles, they just had to stick together. They would lose and they would retreat to a new place, but everyone would know that revolutionary army is still out there.”

Others saw the group’s place in revolutionary history differently. One protester reflected, “I think this is history being made right now. We can take the space and do so much with it. There are inside spaces for the sick and the elderly.”

Dozens of protesters had made up their minds to take the space. They waited with their belongings on the Steuart St and Don Chee Way corner of the plaza. “Jerry the Medic” Selness, who had been acting as OccupySF liaison to the city and speaking with Director of Public Works Mohammed Nuru, had relayed the message that DPW trucks would be coming to pick up those who wanted to move to the new site that afternoon.

One protester said that he and about 30 others had signed a symbolic petition stating that they wanted to accept the space. “We don’t need to sign it as OccupySF,” he said. “We’re Occupy Mission.”

Some had been waiting since the early morning. Around 5 pm, Selness got a call that no trucks would be coming that day because the city was awaiting the General Assembly’s response to its offer. About 100 people convened for the daily General Assembly at 6 pm. Around 9 pm, it was clear that OccupySF would not be signing the agreement as it stood.

The assembly did not object to any individuals or autonomous groups who might want to sign the document. They planned to write a response letter detailing their reasons for the rejection, the text of which will be discussed in a General Assembly tonight (Wed/30) at 6 pm.

Many came and went during the General Assembly, including dozens of people who were coming through OccupySF for the first time. Many organizers and supporters who had been there since the beginning but who not attended for days or weeks came back to discuss this issue, which many believed was important “for Occupy movements across the country.” Representatives from Occupy San Rafael, Occupy Santa Rosa, Occupy Berkeley, Occupy Oakland, Occupy USF, and Occupy Gainesville, FL spoke up, expressing solidarity, requesting support, and giving advice.

One homeless woman who had been living in the camp but had never spoken in GA expressed the opinion that to move would be to get out of the public eye and to concede to the city’s attempts to contain the movement, a much-expressed sentiment at the meeting. She cried, “You can’t move and live limited with their rules and regulations. You’re an eyesore, that’s why they want you to move. It’s political.”

Another woman agreed, declaring, “They can’t tell us how to protest or where to protest.”

Others cautioned against accepting the offer for different reasons. One man who spoke up at GA said that he was a teacher at Civic Center Secondary, formerly Phoenix Continuation School, the previous tenants of the offered space. He warned that the school had moved because of instability and health issues surrounding the flow of Mission Creek underground. Another worker familiar with the area recounted a tale of power-washing the sidewalk on the proposed site only to be confronted with “thousands of rats who poured up from the streets”; an OccupySF member who had surveyed the site earlier that day confirmed that the buildings had several holes in the walls, seeming to indicate a rat infestation.

One of the attendees, a young child, expressed the opinion that “we should stay strong and stay here,” amplified by the Peoples Mic. She also helped keep the meeting’s energy high and going in the right direction, showing aggressive “downward twinkle fingers” that signal disagreement at the proposed prohibition of minors on the site, and yelling “there are children present!” when adults used curse words in their impassioned statements.

Many agreed with Diamond Dave Whitaker, local celebrity in the poetry and radical communities and OccupySF organizer, when he stated: “OccupySF is citywide. We’re an autonomous entity as part of a worldwide network. We’re going to see a number of autonomous occupations arising.”

Whitaker mentioned a planned Occupy USF action to take place Dec. 1, as well as the small contingent that is currently “occupying” outside of Wells Fargo at 1 California Street, across from the former occupation site at 101 Market Street. That site is still blocked off by police barricades.

Occupy LA issued a similar rejection letter November 23, which might form the basis of OccupySF’s letter (Link: http://losangelesga.net/2011/11/assembly-authored-city-response/ ). That camp was raided and disbanded last night.

OccupySF plans to put out a formal response to the proposal and explanation of their decisions tonight.

Public health and Occupy

8

By Sasha J. Cuttler

OPINION On November 17, Mayor Ed Lee’s administration declared OccupySF a "public health nuisance." The mayor and other city officials are using this declaration as a justification to evict the OccupySF camps.

But rather than being a nuisance, the Occupy camps are reclaiming public space and voices while making health disparities more visible. Dozens of health organizations are making statements of solidarity, including the American Public Health Association, with more than 30,000 members, which recently passed a resolution with overwhelming support of the Occupy movement.

San Francisco officials say that overcrowding and inadequate sanitation are causing a threat to public health and safety. But as noted by public health nurse Martha Hawthorne, "When is the last time city department heads have left their offices and taken a walk through the Tenderloin, just minutes away from the San Francisco Occupy site? Smells of human waste? Evidence of street drug use? Garbage on the street? It’s there and has been for years, the inevitable consequence of the lack of affordable housing and years of cutbacks to mental health and substance abuse funding in San Francisco."

As far as overcrowding of tents, Hawthorne goes on to note: "Overcrowding? Go anywhere in the city with a public health nurse. You’ll see multiple families living in one flat, sharing a kitchen, having their own tiny room if they are lucky and can afford it. People sleep in shifts and live elbow-to-elbow in garages, basements, closets, old office spaces — and they are the ones we nurses can see, because at least they have an address. "

The one percent is attempting to maintain control by blaming the victim. Rather than blame the marginalized for their misery, the Occupy movement opens an opportunity for dialogue and mass mobilization while providing tangible assistance to those in need of help right now. Homeless and mentally ill individuals have been receiving food and shelter at Occupy encampments everywhere.

The Occupy movement is making visible the public health consequences of insatiable corporate greed. Income inequality is closely paralleled, unsurprisingly, by poorer health outcomes. The rich are not only getting richer, they are living longer, healthier lives than the majority of us in the 99 percent.

Despite months of Occupy experience world-wide, the only evidence of ill health and injury directly related to the camps can be found in the hundreds of nonviolent activists exposed to clouds of tear gas, fountains of pepper spray, myriads of beatings, and volleys of rubber bullets. These incidents of state-sponsored violence can cause lasting health impacts on the individuals who are exercising their right to free speech and assembly.

We can do better than this. We need to use this gathering as a reminder that health care is a human right and do everything in our power to help, not hinder, the populations we serve.

Like thousands of other public health workers, I believe that the Occupy movement is creating an incredible opportunity that needs to be protected and expanded. Public health does need to be protected — and one of the best ways is through engagement with the Occupy movement, not through its eviction. 2

Sasha J. Cuttler, R.N., Ph.D, is a nurse and SEIU Local 1021 activist

Alerts

0

alert@sfbg.com

WEDNESDAY, NOV. 30

 

Protesting Muni firings

Transport Workers Solidarity Committee hosts a press conference to highlight Muni operators who have recently been fired. The group claims SF politicians, the MTA, and the current Transit Workers Union Local 250A leaders are culpable in unfair and unjustified dismissals. TWSC — with support from the NAACP and United Public Workers for Action — says it hopes to spur the TWU to speak out against unfair contracts and bosses.

11 a.m., free

San Francisco Chronicle 5th & Mission, SF

415-867-3320

www.transportworkers.org

 

Occupying foreclosed homes

Occupy Santa Cruz is taking opposition to the 1 percent a step further. Congregate and picket in front of corporate banks in downtown Santa Cruz to show contempt for unfair capitalistic practices. A march toward the foreclosed homes in Santa Cruz will protest against banks and highlight how many properties are left empty and unused despite many citizens who struggle to find affordable shelter.

2-6 p.m., free

Meet at the Courthouse on Water Street March to banks at *:30 p.m.

www.occupysantacruz.org

 

SATURDAY, DEC. 3

 

OccupySF Housing

OccupySF Housing, a coalition comprised of the Housing Rights Committee, OccupySF, Asian Law Caucus, San Francisco Tenants Union, Eviction Defense Collaborative, Tenants Together, and other groups leads a protest to protect San Franciscans from predatory banks and landlords who degrade the 99 percent’s access to affordable housing. The protest will highlight equity loans designed to turn a fast profit at the expense of homeowners and illegal evictions financed by big banks and their role in contributing to the city’s affordable housing crisis. Delegations from four of the most affected SF neighborhoods will converge on the banks most responsible for foreclosures in the city.

11 am, 3rd and Palou (Bayview)

Noon, Market and Castro (Castro)

1 p.m., Mission and *4th (The Mission)

1 p.m., Civic Center (Tenderloin)

March will end @ 3 p.m. in Justin Herman Plaza

Contact Amitai Heller at 415-971-9664

amitai@sftu.org

SUNDAY, DEC. 4

 

Occupy Oakland Self Defense

Occupy Oakland ensures that the 99 percent can protect itself. Girl Army spearheads community development as a self-defense collective, run through Suigetsukan Dojo, a nonprofit martial arts school in Oakland. Women and queer people are especially welcome, but the class is also geared toward those who are occupying foreclosed homes and camping in protest of the 1 percent.

1-2:30 p.m., free

Oscar Grant Park/Frank Ogawa Plaza, Oakland

Meet at North Plaza near the flower shop

Contact Melissa at girlarmyoakland@gmail.com

www.girlarmy.org

Mail items for Alerts to the Guardian Building, 135 Mississippi St., SF, CA 94107; fax to (415) 437-3658; or e-mail alert@sfbg.com. Please include a contact telephone number. Items must be received at least one week prior to the publication date.

Occupy standoffs continue as poll finds public support for the movement

11

As OccupyOakland moves to reoccupy Frank Ogawa/Oscar Grant Plaza today and the burgeoning OccupySF encampment braces for another long-threatened raid by police, a new Field Poll finds that about half of registered California voters identify with the Occupy movement and support its goals, which include taxing the rich and limiting the ability of large corporations to corrupt the political and economic systems.

As the San Francisco Chronicle reports, 46 percent of respondants said they identified with the Occupy movement and 58 percent agree with the cause that prompted it, compared with 32 percent who say they disagree with it. Unsurprisingly, those on the left were more likely to support Occupy while those on the right were more likely to oppose it. A previous Field Poll at the height of the right-wing Tea Party movement found it had only about half as much support as Occupy now enjoys.

Still, as it enters its third month and winter descends on the encampments, Occupy faces myriad challenges. In San Francisco, the mainstream media — particularly curdmugeonly Chronicle columnist CW Nevius — has regularly highlighted conflicts and other conditions in the camps and pushed Mayor Ed Lee to follow-through on his threats to clear the tents from Justin Herman/Bradley Manning Plaza. Rumors abound that a raid could come on Wednesday night, when SFPD beefs up its staffing for training exercises.

In Oakland, the site of some of the most violent police crackdowns on Occupy encampments, OccupyOakland members are right now (noon, Tues/29) marching back into their former home and pledging to set up a 24/7 protest in defiance of city officials. While they seem to be stopping short of a full-blown occupation and tent city, they claim to be setting up a model for the next phase of the Occupy movement.

The group’s press release follows:

 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Contact:

Phil Horne, Esq., Occupy Oakland Vigil Committee

415-874-9800; occupylaw@riseup.net

www.occupyoakland.org

OCCUPY OAKLAND— RE-OCCUPYING OSCAR GRANT a.k.a. FRANK OGAWA PLAZA

On Tuesday, November 29, 2011 at noon, Occupy Oakland activists will retake Frank Ogawa a.k.a. Oscar Grant Plaza in downtown Oakland with a 24-hour, 7 day-a-week vigil.  Occupiers hope to create a model for a new wave of “Occupation” protest throughout the United States. With the vigil, Occupiers will continue asserting rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution to assemble, speak, and petition government for redress of grievances.  The vigil is not the product of a bargain with Mayor Quan, nor is it negotiated with law enforcement–permission from the city is not required to exercise these constitutionally guaranteed rights.

The structures in the plaza will be symbolic and part of the vigil protest. A teepee will remind the public of the former Occupy camp and historic struggles of the Sioux Indians on the Plains of the U.S.; homeless workers in Hoovervilles during the Great Depression; the “Bonus March” to Washington D.C. by unpaid and unemployed veterans in 1932; Resurrection City following the assassination of Martin Luther King; the AIDS vigil of 1980s San Francisco; and the redwood occupations of Judi Bari and Running Wolf.

Occupy Oakland continues its occupation because residents of Oakland and across the US are still fighting for food, shelter, medical care, school, childcare, and other necessities.  The 1% enjoy 40% of U.S. wealth and 50% ownership of Wall Street stocks and bonds.  The bottom 80% split 7% of the former and just 5% of the latter.  The average 35-year-old in the 99% has a net worth less than $3,000.00.  Occupiers ask the public to consider, “How long does it take an unemployed member of the 99% to go through $3,000.00 and become homeless.” In Oakland, the unemployment rate is nearly double that of the national average. These are issues of crucial relevance to our city.

Occupy Oakland’s vigil declares, “If the 1% won’t share voluntarily through a sense of morality and concern for the well-being of all, then through protest and direct action, we will force change!  Occupy the Plaza!  De-colonize the 99%!”

Occupy Oakland will have sign-up sheets starting Tuesday at 11 am. at the Plaza, but sign up is not a prerequisite for participation in the vigil. Supporters are encouraged to come out day or night to participate.  The Plaza is fully accessible to the differently-abled.

About OccupyOakland:

Occupy Oakland is an emerging social movement without leaders or spokespeople. It is one of 1,570 occupations currently occurring around the world in solidarity with Occupy Wall St. For more information about the other occupations, see: http://www.occupytogether.org/

An up-to-date calendar announcing Oakland actions, and more information can be found at:

http://www.occupyoakland.org/

 

 

 

 

 

Protesters target UC to demand openness, accountability, and the restoration of cuts

2

UPDATED BELOW — Protesters with ReFund California and other groups are gathering today (Mon/28) at UCSF-Mission Bay and three other UC campuses to protest a teleconference of the UC Board of Regents, which will discuss state funding levels and tuition increases, as well as recent incidents of police violence against nonviolent student protesters.

ReFund California, a coalition of student and labor groups, is angry with the UC’s decision to abruptly cancel the Nov. 16-17 Regents meeting at UCSF, citing public safety concerns surrounding a meeting that the group had been planning a convergence on for months – as well as a hastily called meeting on the day after Thanksgiving.

The group has created a pledge that it wants the Regents to agree to, which includes calling for higher taxes on the rich, a restoration of cuts to the public university systems, removal of commercial land from Prop. 13 property tax caps, and a fee on Wall Street financial transactions.

ReFund California is also dismissive of independent investigations the UC has initiated to look at aggressive police repression of students protests, including police at UC Berkeley using batons and mass arrests to dismantle an OccupyCal tent city and police at UC Davis dousing passive protesters with pepper spray. Video of both incidents went viral and have helped galvanize the overlapping Occupy and student movements.

“No amount of new ‘police protocols’ will prevent violence against students and workers, as long California’s corporate and financial elite along with their representatives among the Regents and administrators of the UC rely on police to address the concerns of students and workers,” the ReFund California Coalition wrote in the letter to the UC.

Today’s action at UCSF – centered around the meeting site at 1675 Owens Street, where a Guardian reporter is on the scene and will offer her report later today – joins similar protests at UC Davis, UCLA, and UC Merced, the four sites where the Regents will gather.

Meanwhile, ReFund and other groups are also angry that the CSU Board of Trustees went ahead with its Nov. 16 meeting behind closed doors, clearing out student protesters and the public before they approved a 9 percent tuition hike, an action that Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom (a member of that body) denounced.

“While I understand the CSU leadership’s concerns regarding public safety, the spirit of open deliberations has been marred,” Newsom wrote in a Nov. 18 letter to Chancellor Charles Reed, calling for the matter to be re-voted at the Dec. 5 meeting to “allow the full board to hold an open debate, with full public comment and members of the media present.”

In related news, many students and faculty at UC Davis are on strike today to protest the pepper-spraying incident. And tomorrow (Tues/29) at noon, members of OccupyOakland say they plan to retake Frank Ogawa Plaza (which they renamed Oscar Grant Plaza) and set up another 24/7 encampment.

UPDATE NOON: Guardian reporter Christine Deakers says there is a heavy police presence at the UCSF meeting, where only 50 members of the public are allowed inside and most of those seats have been claimed by ReFund California members. When the Regents decided to limit the time for public testimony, the group held a General Assembly in the meeting, drowning out the Regents and causing the meeting to adjourn until 1:30 pm. You can follow her tweets here or here.

UPDATE 1:50 PM: The UC Board of Regents did not reconvene, instead cancelling the rest of the meeting without taking action. The San Francisco Chronicle quotes Newsom as saying he supports the demands of ReFund but that he’s not willing to sign its pledge.

In his words: SF Occupier Derek

0

We spoke with Derek at Occupy SF on Monday, November 21. He spoke about his Cherokee roots and how he feels like he’s been an activist since he was “in the womb.” Listen to our interview with Derek after the jump.

 

OccupySF_Derek by SFBayGuardianSounds

Meet more Faces of Occupy here.

In his words: SF Occupier Adam

0

Art director Mirissa Neff and photographer David Bornfriend had the chance to talk with Adam at Occupy SF on Monday, November 21. The recent Cornell grad discusses why he felt it was important to participate in Occupy as well as the solidarity he feels with the UC Davis and Berkeley students. Listen to his interview here

(Click here to learn more about the collodion portrait work that appears on the cover of this week’s paper.)

The faces and voices of Occupy

33

Who are the 99 percent — and what are they saying? It’s not what you read in the daily papers

To read some of the accounts in the daily papers in San Francisco, and hear some of the national critics, you’d think the people in the local Occupy movement were mostly filthy, drunk, violent social outcasts just looking for a place to party. Or that they’re mad-eyed anarchists who can’t wait to break windows and throw bottles at the police. Or that they’re a confused and leaderless band that can’t figure out what it wants.

When you actually go and spend time at Occupy SF and Occupy Cal and Occupy Oakland, as our reporters have done, you get a very different picture.

The Occupy movement is diverse, complex and powerful. It’s full of people with different backgrounds and perspectives. And they all agree that economic injustice and inequality are at the root of the major problems facing the United States today.

Here are some of those people, the faces and the voices of Occupy — and a celebration of the lives they’re living and the work they’re doing.

 

The student

Jessica Martin reflects on the First Amendment

Guardian photo by Rebecca Bowe

Jessica Martin stood and held her sign high on the steps of Sproul Hall, at the University of California at Berkeley, while a jubilant crowd of students jammed to classic dance party tunes and set up tents. They were invigorated by a general assembly that had attracted thousands following a Nov. 15 student strike and Day of Action called as part of the Occupy movement. (Their tents were cleared in a police raid two days later, yet students responded with flair, suspending tents high in the air with balloons.)

Martin’s sign proclaimed, “Remember the First Amendment,” and she’d written the text of the Constitutional right to free speech on the other side.

“My mother stood on the steps [of the Lincoln Memorial] in D.C. with Martin Luther King as part of the ‘I Have a Dream’ speech,” said the graduating senior, who’s majoring in Japanese and Linguistics. “And now I stand on the steps of Sproul Hall,” — the birthplace of Berkeley’s Free Speech Movement — “in front of the Martin Luther King Student Union, to defend my First Amendment rights.”

She expressed solidarity with students who were brutalized by police Nov. 9 following their first attempt to establish an occupation.

“Part of what [police] are here to serve and protect is the First Amendment,” Martin said. But on that day, “They met the First Amendment with violence.” (Rebecca Bowe)

 

The artist

Ernest Doty responds to police brutality

Guardian photo by Rebecca Bowe

In Oakland, a young veteran named Scott Olsen suffered a fractured skull and brain injuries after being hit with a police projectile at an Oct. 25 Occupy Oakland protest. Ernest Doty was one of several who ran to Olsen’s aid and carried him to safety.

“Immediately after I saw Scott go down … I knew I had to get him, and get him out of there,” Doty recounted. “I whistled at another guy, and we both ran in. The cops were shooting at us with rubber bullets.” As they ran up, he said, a flash grenade blew up next to Olsen’s face, just inches from his head injury.

Doty, 32, recently moved to the Bay Area from Albuquerque, New Mexico. An artist who also does spoken word performances, he’s camped overnight at Occupy Oakland and has incorporated words and images from the Occupy movement into his artwork and poetry.

He’s also been personally impacted by tragedies arising from police interactions: Both his stepbrother and his cousin — a veteran who suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder — were shot and killed by police in New Mexico.

Occupy Oakland “has managed to create a community out of chaos,” Doty said. “I think that this movement is going to continue to grow. It’s the 1960s all over again, but it’s broader. It’s going to be a long road. I think encampments, marches, and protests are going to continue into the next year.”(Bowe)

Ernest Doty’s next art show is Dec. 2 from 7 to 11 p.m. at Sticks + Stones Gallery, 815 Broadway, in Oakland.

 

The peacekeeper

Nate Paluga deals with camp conflict

Guardian photo by Mirissa Neff

Does this man look like he’s an occupier? Depends on your perception of the movement. He’s not homeless — he’s a bike mechanic who lives in Nob Hill and whose girlfriend only tentatively accepts that he’s camping in Justin Herman Plaza. He is young, blunt, and possesses the intense gaze of an activist, belied by a snug red-white-and-blue biker’s cap with “USA” emblazoned on the underbelly of its brim.

Paluga, a self-proclaimed philosopher, has grabbed upon the concepts of “fairness and equality” as the core values of Occupy. “This movement means something different to different people, but I haven’t found anyone that disagrees with those being some core values,” he said as he showed off the bike he uses to move as much as 100 pounds of food and equipment for the camp.

His core values are his guidelines in his other role at Occupy SF: peacekeeper. Paluga said he and others often intervene in the disagreements that can arise in a group-run housing situation populated by diverse socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds.

He said that with aggressive individuals it’s important to reinforce why they’re all there. “They’re coming from places where there wasn’t a lot of equality and justice and they’re bringing that with them. You gotta step in and tell them it’s gonna be okay.” (Caitlin Donohue)

 

The nester

Two Horses’ permanent protest

Guardian photo by Mirissa Neff

Two Horses might have the most welcoming tent at Occupy SF. Brightly stocked flowerboxes and a welcome mat are outside; inside, the one-time property manager and current homeless man has arranged an air mattress, carpet, and princess accommodations for his 12-year-old blind white cat Luna. There’s even a four-foot tall kitty tower.

The agile feline moves toward the sound of his hand tapping on the floor. “I like the idea of a 24-hour protest,” said Two Horses. He came to the camp a few weeks ago and was impressed by the quality and availability of food available in the encampment’s kitchen, where he said donations come from all over (“it comes from the 99 percent”) at all hours of the day and night.

“I knew I had to do something, so I started volunteering.” He now works the late shift, a core kitchen staffer.

When Michael Moore came by the plaza, Two Horses was impressed. “It wasn’t so much what he said but how he came shuffling up with no entourage, no security, no assistant with a clipboard.” He would, however, like to see more communication between Occupy camps, maybe a livestream video screen to see other cities.

He seems quite at home in his surroundings. “My goal is to look as permanent as I can,” he said, the corners of his mouth turning up crookedly, happily. (Donohue)

 

The healers

Med tent volunteers from the nurses’ union do it for the patients

Guardian photo by Mirissa Neff

Melissa Thompson has a kid who’s looking at college options; she hopes her family can figure out a way to afford education in a state where public university tuition continues to rise.

But that’s not the only reason she’s at Occupy SF. On a cloudy Friday morning, Thompson sat outside the encampment’s med tent, where she tended to cuts, changed the dressing on wounds, and provided socks, blankets, and tools for basic hygiene. It’s her trade — she’s a nurse, one of the many California Nurses Association members sick of cuts to the country’s public and private health options who were eager to lend their services to the movement.

She’s also one of the determined crew that enlivens Occupy Walnut Creek. What’s it like out there? “It’s been good,” she assured us, brightly. “We’re on the corner, by the Bank of America? We’ve had great reactions at Walnut Creek.”

Thompson said she got involved because “I love being a nurse, number one.” Corporate greed, she said, has led to cuts in her patients’ insurance, leaving them to make tough decisions between feeding their family and filling the prescription for their post-dialysis medications.

She said he hopes the politicians are listening to Occupy. “I don’t understand what the problem is. They need to open up their eyes and see how they’ve damaged us.” (Donohue)


The fabulous

Li Morales and Molly Goldberg talk about Queer Occupy

Queers have long been resisting the ravages of the one percent on the 99 percent. Resistance has looked like coming together on our own, on our own terms, with our own names, genders, and chosen families. Like the (decolonize) occupations in San Francisco, Oakland, around the country and world, our resistance is made out of a stubborn imagination, and can be messy. We are a menagerie of magnificent beasts, with all of our struggles and limitations firmly at the center of the fabulous and fucked-up world we make for ourselves.

In HAVOQ/ SF Pride at Work, we imagine queerness not as a What, an identity whose boundaries we seek to police, a platform from which to put forth our One Demand. Rather, we imagine it as a How: a way of being with one another. We call it Fabulosity. And Fabulosity means drawing on queer histories of re-imagining family as a way of expanding circles of care and responsibility. Fabulosity is to affirm the self-determination of every queer to do queer just exactly how they do. It affirms that under the banner of the 99 percent, we are all uniquely impacted by the ravages of the 1 percent and we come with a diversity of strategies and tactics to resist and survive.

In the gray areas lives our emerging autonomy and interdependence — an autonomy not contingent on capitalism’s insistence on utility. We are not useful. We are not legible. And in that lack of utility and that illegibility, we are not controllable. Because we do not have one demand, but rather a cornucopia of desire. We’re making our fabulous fucked-up world for ourselves, with each other. We always have. (Morales and Goldberg)

Li Morales and Molly Goldberg are members of SF Pride at Work/HAVOQ, a San Francisco-based collective of queers organizing for social and economic justice.

 

The mechanic

reZz keeps Occupy’s tires filled

Photo by David Martinez

On a Sunday afternoon at Occupy SF, Bike Kitchen volunteer reZz exported the education-oriented bike shop’s mission — and its tools — to Justin Herman Plaza. There he stood, fixing alignment on the wheels of passers-by and occupiers — for free. “Occupy Bike Shop,” as he and other volunteers have come to call the service, has been tinkering out in the plaza two to three times a week.

“It’s been lovely,” he said later in a phone interview with the Guardian. “I’ve purposefully been in a place where it’s open to people in the encampment and people who are passing by. People who stop want to see the occupation in it’s most positive light.” reZz wouldn’t consider camping out at Occupy, but that’s not to say that he doesn’t truck with the movement’s message that public space can — and should — be repurposed.

An avid biker himself, he thinks public bike repair is a great re-envisioning tactic. And fixing poor people’s bikes sends its own message. “This year’s junk is an invented need,” he said. “We’re falling into debt because we think we need a new car every year. Part of the idea of fixing people’s bikes and showing them how to do it brings us away from the artificial scarcity whereby the robber barons and capitalists insist we have to struggle against each other instead of working with each other.” (Donohue)


The medic

Miran Istina has cancer — and helps others

Guardian photo by Yael Chanoff

It had grown dark, and the OccupySF camp was restless as many signs pointed to a raid that night at 101 Market Street. But 18-year-old Miran Istina sat calmly on the sidewalk, medical supplies spread over her lap. “As a medic for OccupySF,” said Istina, “It’s my job to have a well-supplied, well-organized medical kit.”

The tall, wide-eyed teenager, who spends some of the time in a wheelchair, is not just a medic at camp. She has done police liaison and media work as well. And she has a remarkable story.

When she was 14, Istina was diagnosed with chronic myelogenous leukemia. Her family had purchased her health insurance only three months before, and the cancer was in stage two, indicating that she had been sick for at least one year. So the company denied her treatment, which would include a bone-marrow transplant, radiation therapy and chemotherapy, on the basis of a pre-existing condition.

Her family bought a van, left Sisters, Oregon, and started searching for somebody who would treat her. They traveled around the country three years, desperate for the life-saving treatment but unable to pay for it.

Just after her 17th birthday, Istina left her parents in New York and began hitchhiking back to Oregon. “That was my way of saying, I’m done looking for treatment. I’m going to do what makes my heart happy.”

After a little over a year of traveling and exploring her interests, Istina made her way to San Francisco. She was sleeping in Buena Vista Park when she “heard some protesters walking by, going ‘occupy San Francisco! Occupy San Francisco. I figured they were a bunch of radicals and that a street kid like me really wouldn’t be welcome.'”

A few nights later, she did go check it out, looking for a safe place to sleep. “They explained to me what it’s about, and why we’re here, and my story directly sat inside of that.”

She has been living and organizing with OccupySF ever since. She got involved with the medic team after spending a night in the hospital for kidney failure, then being treated for nine days, free, in the camp’s medical tent. “They realized I had a lot of skill as a medic, and gave me a kit.”

In the midst of recent media attacks on the OccupySF community, Istina is defensive: “Every community has its assholes. Every community has that pit that no one goes into because it’s just yucky. For some people in San Francisco it’s the Haight, for the the Haightians- you know, the Haight people- it’s the financial district. For other people it’ll be somewhere else. But I love the community here. “I’ve been hurt by a lot of people in my life,” said Istina. “But I think I can make that right by holding to this pure-hearted motto of universal and unconditional love, for everyone. No exceptions.” (Yael Chanoff)

Lessons of the Avalos campaign

157

By N’Tanya Lee

It’s the middle of the night. His two kids and wife are home in bed. Supervisor John Avalos, candidate for mayor, heads downtown in his beat-up family car. He parks and walks over to 101 Market Street, and casually starts talking to members of OccupySF. He’s a city official, but folks camped out are appreciative when they see he’s there to stand with them, to try to stop the cops from harassing them, even though its 1 a.m. and he should be in bed.

John Avalos was the first elected official to personally visit Occupy SF. It wasn’t a publicity stunt — his campaign staff didn’t even know he was going until it was over. He arrived and left without an entourage or TV cameras. This kind of moment — defined by John’s personal integrity and the strength of his personal convictions — was repeated week after week, and provides a much-needed model of progressive political leadership in the city.

John Avalos is more than “a progressive standard bearer,” as the Chronicle likes to call him. He’s also a Spanish-speaking progressive Latino, rooted in community and labor organizing, with a racial justice analysis and real relationships with hundreds of organizers and everyday people outside of City Hall. He’s demonstrated an authentic accountability to the disenfranchised of the city, to communities of color and working people, and he knows that ultimately the future of the city is in our hands.

Some accomplishments of John’s campaign for mayor are already clear: He consolidated the progressive-left with 19%, or nearly 40,000, first-place votes, despite the confusion of a crowded field; he came in a strong second to incumbent Ed Lee despite being considered a long shot even weeks before the election; after RCV tallies, he finished with an incredible 40% of the vote, demonstrating a much wider base of support across the city than he began with, and much broader than former frontrunners Leland Yee and David Chiu, who outspent him 3-1. He won the Castro, placed third in Chinatown (ahead of Yee), and actually won the election-day citywide vote. Not bad. In fact, remarkable, for a progressive Latino from a working class district in the southern part of town, running in his first citywide race.

I believe John Avalos demonstrated what can be accomplished with a new kind of progressive leadership — and suggests the elements of a new progressive coalition that can be created to win races in 2012, and again, in 2015.

It’s Monday afternoon, 1:35pm, time for our weekly Campaign Board meeting. John rushes in, after a dozen appointments already that day. The rest of us file into the ‘cave’ — the one private room in Campaign headquarters, with no windows, a makeshift wall and furniture that looks to be third-hand. The board makes the key strategy, message, and financial decisions. There are no high paid political consultants here. Most of us are, or have been, organizers. Today, we need to approve the campaign platform. Finally. We’ve decided to get people excited about our ideas, an agenda for change. We leave the meeting excited and nervous, wondering if anyone will get excited about the city creating its own Municipal Bank.

We were an unlikely crew to lead a candidate campaign — even a progressive one in San Francisco. We come from membership based community and labor organizations, and share a critique of white progressive political players and electeds who spend too few resources on building power through organizing and operate without accountability to any base. We are policy and politics nerds, but we hate traditional politics. Seventy percent of us are people of color — Black, Filipina, Latino, and Chinese. We are all women except John, the candidate, and nearly half of us are balancing politics with parenting.

The campaign board — including John himself—shared a vision for building progressive power. The campaign plan was explicit and specific about achieving outcomes that included winning room 200 but went beyond that central goal. We set out to strengthen progressive forces, to build towards the 2012 Supervisor races, and increase the capacity of the community-based progressive electoral infrastructure so we can keep building our collective power year-round, for the long-term.

We hope these victories will shape progressive strategy moving forward:

1. In just a few months, Team Avalos consolidated a new and unique progressive bloc. We brought together people and organizations who’d never worked together before — white bike riders and Latino anti-gentrification organizers, queer activists and African American advocates for Local Hire. The Avalos coalition was largely community forces: SF Rising’s base in working class Black, Latino, Filipino and Chinese communities; the Bike Coalition’s growing base of mostly white bike riders; affinity groups like Filipinos, Queers, Latinos and Arabs for Avalos; progressive Democrats; social networks of creative, young progressive activists affiliated with the League of Young Voters; and loyal families and neighborhood leaders from John’s own District 11. The campaign prioritized communicating to voters in four languages, and according to the Chinese press, John Avalos was the only non-Chinese candidate with a significant Chinese outreach program. There were stalwarts from progressive labor unions (most notably SEIU 1021 and USWW) who threw down — but overall, labor played it safe and invested resources in other guys. And then, in the great surprise development of the race, supporters of the new national occupy movement came to be a strong part of the Team Avalos base because the campaign was so well positioned to resonate with the call to take on the one percent.

2) Team Avalos built popular support for key progressive ideas. We used the campaign to build popular support for a citywide progressive agenda. Instead of leading with our candidate we led with bold, distinctive issues that provided a positive alternative vision to the economic crisis: Progressive taxation, municipal banking, and corporate accountability for living wage jobs instead of corporate tax breaks. By the end of the campaign, at least three other candidates came to support the creation of a city-owned bank, and the idea had enough traction that even the San Francisco Business Times was forced to take a position against it.

3) Team Avalos built the electoral capacity of grassroots organizations whose members have the most at stake if progressives gain or lose power in SF: poor and working-class communities of color. We developed the electoral organizing skills of a large new cohort of grassroots leaders and organizers of color with no previous leadership experience in a candidate campaign. They are ready for the next election.

For the last few months, I had the privilege of working with an unusual but extraordinary Avalos campaign team, who were exactly the right people for the right moment in history, to lead a long shot campaign to an unlikely, remarkable and inspiring outcome. Let’s build on these gains. In the coming weeks and months, we must be thorough in our analysis of this election, engage and expand the Avalos coalition base, and build unity around one or more collective demands of Mayor Lee from the left. And in time, we will have a progressive voting majority and a governing bloc in City Hall. We will win, with the mass base necessary to defend gains, hold our own electeds accountable, and truly take on the city’s one percent.

NTanya Lee was the Executive Director of Coleman Advocates for Children & Youth, and served as a volunteer chair of the Avalos for Mayor campaign board. You can find her now at USF or working on her new project about a long-term vision for left governance called Project 2040.

 

The one percent on the waterfront

10

EDITORIAL While Mayor Ed Lee struggles with the OccupySF encampment, another, very different group has its eyes on the city’s waterfront. On the edges of the ground where protesters are talking about the one percent of Americans that control the vast majority of the nation’s wealth, two major development projects aimed entirely at that very wealthy sliver are starting to move forward.

At 8 Washington and 75 Howard, developers want to build a total of 365 condominiums aimed at people with incomes that place them in the top sliver of the richest Americans. It will be a key test for the Ed Lee administration: Will he evict the Occupy protesters and allow the One Percent to claim choice property on the waterfront?

The 8 Washington project calls for 165 of what developer Simon Snellgrove says will be the most expensive condos ever built in San Francisco. The 12-story building, sitting on the edge of the Embarcadero, would include units selling for as much as $10 million, and even the low-end places would go for $2.5 million or more.

At 75 Howard, the Paramount Group and Morgan Stanley want to demolish a parking garage and erect a 284-foot tower with units that the San Francisco Business Times predicts would sell for at least $1,000 a square foot.

Just to be clear what we’re talking about here, a $2.5 million condo, according to real estate experts, would require that a buyer have $625,000 cash to put down and an income of more than $450,000 a year. Either that or millions in spare cash to plunk down.

That, needless to say, is not the majority of the working people in San Francisco.

There’s no conceivable planning or housing-policy rationale for either of these projects. They offer nothing that the city needs; there is absolutely no shortage of housing for people with that kind of income. In fact, allowing these two projects to proceed would directly violate the city’s own General Plan and every regional planning proposal for San Francisco’s housing mix. The General Plan states that some 60 percent of all the new housing built in San Francisco should be below market rate. Environmental sanity suggests that the city ought to be building housing for people who work here — high housing costs have driven thousands of local workers to live in the East Bay or further out, leading to long, energy-intensive commutes. And the more of this ultra-luxury housing the city builds, the more the housing balance gets disrupted — and the more rapidly San Francisco becomes a city of, by and for the One Percent.

The two projects have powerful support — among other things, Lee’s friend and ally Rose Pak is promoting 8 Washington, as is lobbyist Marcia Smolens. If Lee has any scrap of independence he’ll make it clear that both of these projects are dead on arrival.

Alameda County sheriff is shocked

115

Sarah Jane Holcombe, a graduate student in public health at UC Berkeley (and a neighbor of mine), was disturbed to see Alameda County deputy sheriffs using unnecessary force against peaceful student demonstrators. She’s not alone — a lot of people on campus have been upset about police conduct during the demonstrations. But Holcombe did more than grumble — she wrote to Alameda County Sheriff Gregory Ahern to complain. And she got back a remarkable message that says a lot about what the elected sheriff thinks about the protesters.

Here’s Holcombe’s letter:

Dear Mr Gregory Ahern,

I find myself just stunned and appalled at the behavior of your police in Sproul Plaza, and as a Berkeley student, have lost respect and confidence in the Alameda County Police Force.

Who are these Officers?  Where were they trained?

Perhaps more to the point is, why are you authorizing such blatantly violent and anti-democratic behavior?  This shows such bad judgement that I wonder why you are the head of the Alameda County Police Force.

Finally, what are you doing to address the gross problems and violations evident in Alameda County Police Officers’ behavior?

My confidence and trust in you and your force is now very low.

I look forward to your response.

Ahern’s letter back, sent within two hours:

I am shocked too.  I am shocked educated individuals who violate laws do not expect to be arrested. I am shocked that people who speak of peace in our society attempt to do harm to law enforcement personnel. I am shocked that some protesters throw rocks, cement, bottles and paint at law enforcement. I am shocked that protesters throw urine and feces at police officers.

I am shocked at the vulgar language used at my staff.

I am shocked that people like you make judgements about law enforcement without knowing all the facts and without asking questions prior to making judgements and assigning guilt on those prior to any investigation.

When the protesters follow the laws of our society and our lawful commands we have no issues.  Many of the protesters speak to us and provide us with their legal intentions to march and we assist them.

Let me tell you something…..my staff has done nothing wrong. They have assisted this community in allowing their free speech and right to assemble. We have provided protection to thousands of individuals and allowed them to practice their rights while some of those same individuals insult us. We have provided traffic blocks so people could march safely. We have protected buildings and provided escorts to frightened citizens in the area of the protest. We have escorted special need individuals and eldery from areas of the protest. We have assisted handicapped people to safety.

In each use of force that my staff has used has been in direct response to direct actions of individuals. We have not and do not and will not just use indiscriminate force. Each use of force is documented, reviewed and subject to further review of command staff. Indiscriminate force is not tolerated. Do not judge my people from news reports or YouTube videos.

I beg you to come to our training.  I will provide you full access, I will answer any of your questions.  I will prove we do our job correctly and according to national standards.  Let me know when you can show up at our training.

It was signed Gregory Ahern. I called his press spokesman and he confirmed that this was Ahern’s message and represents his position.

Actually, Sheriff, I didn’t see many reports of protesters at Cal doing anything to harm police officers. And to simply say “my staff has done nothing wrong” without listing to an evaluating any complaints that might be filed seems, well, a rush to judgment.

And honestly, were there “frightened citizens” at Berkeley who needed to be escorted from buildings? Was beating up a poet appropriate use of force?

Sheriff Ahern has made his decision. Already.

 

Guardian editorial: The one per cent on the waterfront

27

EDITORIAL While Mayor Ed Lee struggles with the OccupySF encampment, another, very different group has its eyes on the city’s waterfront. On the edges of the ground where protesters are talking about the one percent of Americans that control the vast majority of the nation’s wealth, two major development projects aimed entirely at that very wealthy sliver are starting to move forward.

At 8 Washington and 75 Howard, developers want to build a total of 365 condominiums aimed at people with incomes that place them in the top sliver of the richest Americans. It will be a key test for the Ed Lee administration: Will he evict the Occupy protesters and allow the One Percent to claim choice property on the waterfront?

The 8 Washington project calls for 165 of what developer Simon Snellgrove says will be the most expensive condos ever built in San Francisco. The 12-story building, sitting on the edge of the Embarcadero, would include units selling for as much as $10 million, and even the low-end places would go for $2.5 million or more.

At 75 Howard, the Paramount Group and Morgan Stanley want to demolish a parking garage and erect a 284-foot tower with units that the San Francisco Business Times predicts would sell for at least $1,000 a square foot.

Just to be clear what we’re talking about here, a $2.5 million condo, according to real estate experts, would require that a buyer have $625,000 cash to put down and an income of more than $450,000 a year. Either that or millions in spare cash to plunk down.

That, needless to say, is not the majority of the working people in San Francisco.

There’s no conceivable planning or housing-policy rationale for either of these projects. They offer nothing that the city needs; there is absolutely no shortage of housing for people with that kind of income. In fact, allowing these two projects to proceed would directly violate the city’s own General Plan and every regional planning proposal for San Francisco’s housing mix. The General Plan states that some 60 percent of all the new housing built in San Francisco should be below market rate. Environmental sanity suggests that the city ought to be building housing for people who work here — high housing costs have driven thousands of local workers to live in the East Bay or further out, leading to long, energy-intensive commutes. And the more of this ultra-luxury housing the city builds, the more the housing balance gets disrupted — and the more rapidly San Francisco becomes a city of, by and for the One Percent.

The two projects have powerful support — among other things, Lee’s friend and ally Rose Pak is promoting 8 Washington, as is lobbyist Marcia Smolens. If Lee has any scrap of independence,  he’ll make it clear that both of these projects are dead on arrival.

 

 

Police raid part of OccupySF

0

Police dismantled the OccupySF protest and campsite in front of the Federal Reserve building early Sunday morning.


Around 1 a.m., police massed on Market Street between Main and Spear. They drove up to the Federal Reserve protest site, which consisted of a kitchen, small library and information table, and about a dozen tents. The 30 or so tents that had been pitched there for weeks were gone, voluntarily taken down by protesters around 12:40 p.m. Saturday, when police threatened to arrest and confiscate the belongings of anyone who continued to camp on at the 101 Market Street location.


Apparently considering that afternoon’s actions and previous notices concerning vacating 101 Market Street fair warning, police did not warn campers this morning before beginning to arrest. Six people who were sleeping in tents report having been awoken and put under arrest within a matter of minutes. Several had no time to put on socks or shoes before being dragged out of their tents.


All six were cited and released in a matter of hours, and arrived back at camp by 2:50am.


One man who had a small radio had heard a warning that police were present from camp security patrol about one minute before the police arrived. He says he had time to “spring out of bed” and exit his tent before police arrived and “Told me, ‘You need to leave now or get arrested.’ By the time I started to shake my head no they had already started putting the ziptie on me.”


Department of Public Works employees put tents and materials in DPW trucks police barricaded and blocked all of Market Street, including sidewalks, between Steuart and Main Streets.


Shortly after 1:00, OccupySF put out calls for support. Many heeded the call and arrived around 1:40 to the site. By this time, only the sidewalk was barricaded, and protesters continued to chant and argue with the about 120 police in partial riot gear who lined the sidewalk. A few tried aggressively to shake or take down metal police barricades and were stopped by other protesters and met with chants of “non-violent protest!”


For the next few hours, protesters slowly left 101 Market and congregated back at Justin Herman Plaza, discussing strategy and trying to understand what had happened. The raid was over in a matter of minutes and very few protesters had witnessed it.


The 101 Market Street site had been used by the protest movement since September 29, when it was established as the main camp site. The encampment had since expanded, and as of yesterday 101 Market Street was serving as the group’s “protest central,” distinct from the main camp at Justin Herman Plaza.


As of 8:00 this morning, about 15 police officers were still stationed, warming themselves by heating lamps that have been placed behind the barricades in front of the Federal Reserve. Barricades surround empty space on the sidewalk on Market Street from Main to Steuart Street.


 

Labor ready to fight Occupy eviction

5

Tim Paulson, director of the San Francisco Labor Council, just told me that he’s got as many as 500 union members on alert to stand with the OccupySF encampment if the city attempts to evict the protesters. The Labor Council has put together a communications system to let members who have volunteered to help know when a showdown with the police is coming, and the volunteers are ready to spend as much as 24 hours at Justin Herman Plaza, and if necessary, in jail.

“We mobilized for last night, but nothing happened,” he said. “We’re in a state of constant vigilance.”

Paulson noted that the San Francisco encampment “is the symbol of the Occupy Movement.”

The solidarity of San Francisco labor will make it considerably more difficult for Mayor Ed Lee to send in the police and break up the camp. The idea that he would be ordering the arrests not only of several hundred Occupy protesters but a large contingent of local labor leaders and union members has to be giving him second (and third, and fourth) thoughts.

And whatever the outcome, the connenctions between labor and Occupy are critical to building and sustaining a national movement to demand economic justice. It’s great to see the SF Labor Council in the heart of the fight.

OccupySF is worth the investment

30

Thirteen labor and community leaders wrote to Mayor Ed Lee Nov. 17 asking him not to evict the OccupySF protesters. The message of the hand-delivered letter: It’s worth the time and effort the city will have to make to allow the encampment to remain. It was signed by Conny Ford, OPEIU Local 3, Bob Offer-Westord, Coalition on Homelessness, Pilar Sciavo, California Nurses Association, Elizabeth Alexander, SEIU 1021, Rev. Carol Been, Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice, Steve Williams, POWER, Gabriel Haaland, SEIU 1021, Tim Paulson, San Francisco Labor Council, Kate Huge, La Raza Centro Legal, Gordon Mar, Jobs with Justice, Forrest Schmidt, ANSWER, Shaw-San Liu, Chinese Progressive Association, and Mike Casey, UNITED-HERE Local 2.

Here’s the full letter:

Dear Mr. Mayor:

Occasionally a movement takes hold of the imagination of a people, resulting in major social and economic shifts in public policy. Thirty to forty years ago, such a movement driven by a coalition of the religious right and corporate America and spearheaded by the National Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers, changed the course of our nation for the worse.

With the election of Ronald Reagan and scores of corporate-backed politicians since then, our nation has seen a reversal of the progressive gains made in the decades immediately preceding 1980, from the New Deal to the War on Poverty.

In yesterday’s meeting, you and several city department heads questioned whether it is “worth the investment” to meet and work with the SF Occupy movement to address certain health and safety issues. We think it is.

The national Occupy Wall Street movement has brought dramatic focus to the disproportionate concentration of wealth and power held by the top 1% of America.  They have drawn broad attention to the devastation wrought by Wall Street upon communities throughout the country:  home foreclosures, record unemployment, attacks on immigrants, union busting, school closures, social service cutbacks, etc.

Over the years, in our own city, a number of legendary movements and causes have led to meaningful and lasting progressive change. The 1934 General Strike and the I-Hotel are but two examples. These and other struggles such as the Civil Rights movement are iconic not based on whether they resulted in victory or defeat, but because these struggles inspired and trained a new generation of organizers and activists committed to economic and social change.

Whether the Occupy movement is helping usher in yet another shift remains to be seen. But of this we are certain: the City of San Francisco working with Occupy SF to support their vision and work is “worth the investment.”

Provocative police actions in Oakland resulted in unnecessary injuries and threatened the very safety of the community they’ve sworn to protect.

We appeal that you not shut down the occupation of Justin Herman Plaza and continue to meet, daily if necessary, in order to work through the issues connected with Occupy SF.

Will Occupy message reach Sacramento?

26

One of the early tests of the political impact of the Occupy movement will come in the next two months, as California prepares to make drastic further cuts in education and social services for the poor and the Democratic governor begins — cautiously and hesitantly — to talk about new revenues.

The numbers from the Legislative Analysts Office are fairly bleak — the state budget relied on $4 billion in revenue that hasn’t been collected. That’s because Gov. Brown and the Democrats in the Legislature assumed that the economy would pick up more than it has. We don’t know what the final shortfall will be — but because the budget deal included automatic trigger cuts, it’s clear that K-12 education, CSU and UC are going to get hit again, as will, for example, medical assistance for the disabled.

So just as students and faculty all over the state are protesting existing cuts and tuition hikes, more are on the way. I expect this will go over extremely well on the campuses.

The cops may be poised to shut down OccupySF, but this is a movement that isn’t about to go away. And if the governor and the Democrats in the Legislature (who are going to be running from new districts next fall) start to feel the heat and realize that the Occupy movement is already influencing the political debate and will, directly or indirectly, be playing a major role in state and national politics, they’re going to have to respond.

How? Well, the Legislature can always decide to scrap the cuts and raise taxes now. Unlikely, since that would require a two-thrids vote and the Republicans still care more about their no-taxes pledge than they do about the tens of thousands of people (including in their own districts) who are taking to the streets to protest economic inequality.

More likely the talk will be about November, 2012, and what sort of revenue measures Jerry Brown wants to put on the ballot. And that’s where the politics of Occupy can have a significant impact.

There are so many ways to go with tax measures; the easiest, in some ways, is to talk about the state sales tax, which bothers the GOP hardliners (like any tax) but bothers the big-business world a lot less. Most of any sales tax hike would be paid by consumers and the poor would pay more than the rich; typically, big business groups are willing to accept a sales tax hike before they’ll go for anything more progressive.

Obviously, the best option is to do exactly what Occupy is talking about, and raise the income tax on the top brackets (and cut corporate loopholes, and pass an oil severance tax). And that’s what will drive the California Chamber of Commerce types absolutely mad.

But I think a there’s a way to make this a winner at the polls, and a winner for the legislators who push it — and maybe even a winner for a Dem or a moderate Republican in some of the potential swing districts. Just call it a One Percent Tax — that is, a tax on the One Percent. Could be a combination of income taxes and corporate taxes, as long as it’s a package carefully written to target largely the wealthiest in the state.

Hard for anyone these days to oppose something that is totally defined and promoted that way. Gives the Occupy movement something to vote for. Could save jobs, keep classrooms open, keep sick people alive … I see no downside at all.

 

 

Occupy SF: Chron, Ex set the eviction stage

29

The OccupySF camp is filthy. There’s violence, drugs and disease. Half the protesters are just drunken thugs who are there to party and make a mess. It’s a public-health hazard. Jeez, it looks like the message is lost and the place has to go.

That’s what the Chron and the Ex are saying — and it’s a perfect setup, a ready-made public excuse for Mayor Ed Lee to send the cops in with riot gear and an eviction notice. It could happen tonight, or tomorrow night.

Frankly, Lee needs the bad (for Occupy) press. The movement’s goals are popular in this city, and when he came very close to evicting the campers, with cops running around the city in buses, his popularity dropped. He saw what happened to Jean Quan in Oakland; her tear-gas assault on Occupy Oakland may have been the end of her political career.

But hey, it’s different now: The daily papers are proclaiming that the encampment isn’t about economic inequality any more. It’s devolved into an unruly mob that can’t be tolerated. Who can blame Lee for cleaning it up?

That also happens to be an utterly unfair characterization of what’s going on. Sure, there are homeless people in the camp, and yes, some of them have mental health issues. But OccupySF is talking about the 99 percent, some of whom have suffered greatly in this economy — and it’s no surprise that some of them part of the occupation. Yes, it’s a challenge, but it something that OccupySF is taking on. Oh, and by the way — the homeless people and people with mental health issues (that sometimes lead to violence) will still be on the streets of San Francisco is they evict the Occupy encampment. But they’ll be worse off than they are today.

Yael Chanoff just filed her report on what’s really going on at OccupySF:

At last night’s General Assembly, OccupySF organizer Philip Oje debriefed on that days meeting with Mayor Ed Lee, and participants in the 150-person meeting debated the best next steps. Several different viewpoints were discussed. Many were indignant about reorganizing camp to appease the city, saying that “I didn’t come her to comply with city ordinances that change every day. I came here to do what I think is right.”
Others believed believed that the camp should do everything possible to comply with the city in order to hopefully avoid a raid (and maintain credibility if one does occur.) It was generally acknowledged that the situation was a Catch-22: The camp could not comply with requirements such as maintaining four feet of space between tents without expanding past Justin Herman Plaza, but the city refused to allow any expansion to stand until their requirements were met. In general, those assembled agreed that regardless of the city’s difficult to follow guidelines, a clean-up would benefit the health and well-being of campers, and got to work.

This comes after a hard week of dealing with the frustrating realities of human interaction in a cramped space. The encampment has grown steadily since its start, and in recent weeks has been home to upwards of 300 people on a regular basis. Many campers would agree that in the past two weeks that tensions have built as high as they did. When Examiner Reporter Mike Aldax spent 24 hours at camp, it was during the peak of conflict.

Indeed, many at OccupySF are frustrated. There is a general feeling that there is not enough time in the day to maintain a safe and caring community that does not exclude anyone as well as progress with the political agenda that the movement stands for. However, there is also a basic agreement that those with addiction, mental illness, and other causes of suffering are affected directly by an unjust society in which a small percentage hoards vast majority of wealth while the masses struggle to afford food, shelter, health care and education; to attempt to exclude those who are in desperate situations, the most in need of emergency action to change our system and our lives, would be morally intolerable hypocrisy.

As famed radical environmentalist Derrick Jensen put it when he came to speak at the encampment November 12, “At the same time you’re building a resistance movement, you’re being put in the position of dealing with the needs of those who have been dispossessed and damaged by the system.”

It’s true: according to Connie Ford, a member of OPEIU Local 3 which represents many on the city’s Homeless Outreach Team, “The homeless come there because it’s safer than the shelters.”

This has caused difficulties in the past few weeks that the camp has been struggling to deal with. The solution is starting to come together. After physical fights began to become a major problem last week, the camp stepped up the process of enacting a culture of community policing. The night of November 15, when “Instigator Jimmy” was involved in an altercation during a general assembly, about 50 formed a mass between him and camp and slowly pushed him off the site, chanting “Whose park? Our park.” As one camper put it, “Jimmy’s individual will was extinguished by our collective will.” This is an experiment in radically non-violent coercion.

Since then, this tactic has been employed to greater and greater success. Last night, when one camper began to instigate conflict, it only took 10 or so others to cause him to leave in the same way, and hardly disrupted the peaceful mood at the site.

In addition, despite starting out completely unequipped to provide medical and mental health to the masses for free, OccupySF has set up a medical tent run by nurses from the National Nurses Association and several “emotional assistance” spaces, one of which has been facilitated by the Icarus Project and other groups with alternative approaches to mental health. According to an OccupySF press release today:
“Forty clergy, including bishops, have recently formed as ‘San Francisco Interfaith Allies of Occupy’ because we share the concerns of the ninety-nine percent,” said Rev. Carol Been of CLUE California, “and they have asked us for help because they were not prepared to handle homelessness, mental illness, people attracted for unseemly reasons not associated with the occupation. Resources have recently begun to be put into place.”

It seems that all of this grappling with difficult issues and hard work on the part of OccupySF has begun to pay off. Last night after General Assembly, campers worked to clear off the Bacci Ball courts as per the city’s request, take down tarps, and space out tents to the extent that they could without expanding past Justin Herman Plaza (renamed by some Bradley Manning Plaza.) Camp was clean and vastly quieter than it had been in previous days.

Around midnight, there were about 30 people awake, talking and playing mellow drums on the outskirts of camp while hundreds more slept in the approximately 180 tents. One man who had been sleeping there three weeks said, “There’s a new energy. After we cleaned, a lot of the riff-raff left.” With a grin he added “It looks like there’s still some, but they’ve been over there having some kind of profound conversation all night,” gesturing to the camp east side.

I pitched my tent about 10 feet from the “profound conversation” and drifted off easily, though I admittedly prefer a nice buzz of humanity while I sleep. I was, however, woken up around 6:00, when others began waking up and excitedly discussing the fact that the camp had made it through the night without a police raid.

It remains to be seen if the same will be said for tonight.

 

 

 

There are homeless people and mental problems at Occupy encampments? No duh, that’s the point.

23

The SF Examiner reporter that embedded at the Occupy SF camp just brought back a titillating story of pants-off rowdies, pot smoking, and screaming. This is how it starts (I swear):

The third major fight at the Occupy SF encampment was supposed to be the last of it Monday night after about 100 protesters banished “Jimmy the Instigator.”

Most protesters believed he was responsible for about half the brawls that broke out there in recent days. Once he was gone, tensions eased, and a heartwarming singalong forecast a peaceful night.

Then Nick took off his pants, the drugs and alcohol took their toll and the violence returned.

Examiner staff writer Mike Aldax spent 24 hours at the encampment undercover. He didn’t tell anyone he was a reporter or his real name, which I can tell you is A) arguably unethical as a journalist in a situation that doesn’t explicitly call for it and B) a great way to ensure that you don’t have any honest conversations with any of the people you’re reporting on. 

It’s fine if you’re just there to find ways to belittle protesters though! Like this gem: 

The east side now resembles a scene from “Pirates of the Caribbean.” Drunk people are fighting and yelling incessantly as someone sings a folk song in a low, bluesy voice.

I mean, that verbal imagery is hilarious but then, making fun of addicts is kind of like shooting fish in the bucket. Ahem, homeless fish that have run into all the injustices and inequities in life that the Occupy movement has sprung up in reaction to. 

Aldax differentiates the troublemakers from “responsible protesters” and tells tales of people with mental illness, not to mention someone who asks him for money, hugs him, and asks him for more, and of course, an incident in which he is told to turn his camera off. Of course, he’s undercover so the person that asks him to do so calls him by his psuedonym, which is Mickey (which I consider a fake name with flair, btw, begrudging props). 

I was also at the encampment the other day interviewing occupiers to get a deeper understanding of the society that’s sprung up in Justin Herman Plaza. Only I told the occupiers my real name. Even though I am a member of the media, I am of the belief that even if you are homeless you still merit the basic standards of human interaction. 

A photographer and I were at the Occupy SF info table when Nate Paluga (by the way Examiner, the occupiers have last names), came up and pointed to a cardboard sign that read “equality and justice” amid the brochures and fliers. “I did that,” he told me. “I’m kind of the camp philosopher. This movement means something different to different people, but I haven’t found anyone that disagrees with those being some core values.”

It turned out he was a bike mechanic who left his apartment in Nob Hill to come live at the camp. He also was one of the camp peacekeepers, and knew a fair amount about the “addicts, opportunists, and people suffering from mental illness” profiled in the Examiner post. 

Here’s the thing, Paluga told me – there’s a reason why people are like that. 

“They’re coming from places where there wasn’t a lot of equality and justice and they’re bringing that with them. You gotta step in and tell them ‘you’re gonna be okay.’”

That’s the role he fills on camp, but he says that kind of intervention also serves to reinforce the camp’s core values.

At Occupy SF, there’s a 70-year-old woman who is nuts. She screams a lot, occupiers told me. But she’s also a barometer for them: when people freak out on her, the craziest one there, others know that that person needs to be spoken with, and reminded of why OccupySF is there in the first place. Because we’re all crazy in our own way. There’s homeless people with mental problems at Occupy because there are homeless people with mental problems everywhere — it’s just that at the Occupy encampments they’re not precluded from being heard because of it. 

Paluga wasn’t denying that disruptions or evictions happen at Occupy – but also he was acknowledging that the movement has the responsibility to deal with trodden-upon people in a different way than the castigation techniques of our legal and social system. “You’ll see it,” Paluga told me. “People will step in.”

This line kills me in the Examiner article. In it, Aldax considers the failure of Occupy if the “good” and “bad” protesters are forced to co-exist:

As long as these two communities live side by side, it’s hard to see how the movement’s message will ever transcend the storyline being scripted by the troublemakers. 

But what about the storyline being scripted by the mass media?

Occupy your imagination: Tomorrow, hear the words of a Mission son

0

It’s getting into the grind time for the Occupy movement. The first, brilliant tactic of camping out in our nation’s towns and cities is meeting with a nationally-coordinated crack-down, just like we all knew it would. It’s time for phase two.

Benjamin Bac Sierra knows a lot about reimagining. The author survived an adolescence among the Mission gangs to publish the first novel by a native son to come out of the neighborhood in decades

“Once upon a time,” he writes on his blog announcing a lecture tomorrow (Thu/17) at City College,  “the truth was that I was supposed to be a dishwashing convict criminal and to disagree with that truth was to fight the universe.”

With the raid on Zuccoti Park, the raids on Oscar Grant Plaza, the violence on the UC Berkeley campus (?!?), it’s clear that the warriors of Occupy are in need of some uplift – and they’re certainly in need of a plan. 

“To invent your destiny, you must appreciate your base knowledge and synthesize it with other knowledge or predictions, and create something new, unimagined by others,” Bac Sierra writes. Sure, it’s New Agey and maybe his presentation isn’t geared exactly towards camping activists – but this is a man from a section of society that gets a raw deal, who has subverted the “rules” and come out on the other side with a family, a teaching gig at City College, a luminous book, and self-worth.

It might be worth a trip to City College to hear him at this point, just sayin’. 

 

“Inventing Your Destiny” presentation by Benjamin Bac Sierra

Thu/16 1 p.m., free

Diego Rivera Theatre

City College of San Francisco

50 Phelan, SF

todobododown.wordpress.com 

 

Editor’s notes

0

tredmond@sfbg.com

Occupy Oakland has been very good at exposing one local problem — police brutality. The first raids, and the tear gas and rubber bullets that flew afterward — showed the world how poorly trained the Oakland cops are and how unprepared they were for a largely peaceful demonstration.

But overall, the Occupy movement has been about national issues — or rather, The National Issue, which is income inequality. Nothing else going on in the United States compares. On an economic level, I could argue that nothing else matters — until we resolve the wealth and income gap, the recession will never end, the deficit will never improve, the unemployment rate won’t stabilize, the nation will grow weaker and weaker and more and more unstable … basically, we’re doomed.

But while there have been marches on local banks and corporations, not a lot of Occupy attention has gone to local inequality — to what the folks at San Francisco City Hall, and Oakland City Hall are doing to make the one percent in our own backyards pay its fair share for the services that most impact many of our lives. Mayor Jean Quan got booed for calling in the riot cops, but Mayor Ed Lee isn’t getting booed for corporate tax breaks.

The OccupySF people came out in force to a Board of Supervisors hearing to demand that their camp be left alone. But they aren’t out in force to demand, say, a local fee on bank foreclosures.

That’s not a criticism of a movement that continues to inspire me every day; it’s just a statement about tactics and strategy. And it’s one we all ought to be thinking about.

In a brilliant opinion piece this week, Raj Jayadev, director of Silicon Valley Debug, notes:

“In San Jose, the city that used to promote itself as the capitol of Silicon Valley, city budget cuts have either eliminated or dramatically slashed hours for youth sanctuaries like libraries and community centers. … For us, the one percent are just up the street -– the 101 to be precise. Those tech giants exist in the same Silicon Valley that cannot even keep its library doors open. Why have they not given? Why have we not demanded?”

Good question.