Occupy Archives — Page 20 of 26 — San Francisco Bay Guardian Archive 1966

Occupy Oakland shuts down three banks

Zelda Bronstein

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November 2, 2011

Steven T. Jones and Rebecca Bowe are out on the streets of Oakland as Occupy Oakland tries to shut down the city. They’re posting live updates on Twitter here. And there’s already some success — the Oakland branches of Wells Fargo, Citibank and Chase have been shut down by the protesters. There are two sound stages set up downtown, and so far, the cops are holding off on any action.

The Chron reports that 13 percent of Oakland’s teachers have joined the general strike and 12 percent of Port workers took the day off from work. Most businesses in downtown Oakland are closed.

It is, our reporters say, “part party, part protest, and an inspiring demonstration of people power.”

Occupational hazards

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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November 2, 2011

5

HAIRY EYEBALL Weds/2 marks the first citywide general strike in our country since 1946. Spearheaded by Occupy Oakland in the wake of the Oakland Police’s grossly excessive use of force against protestors last week, the strike is further proof that the only definitive thing one can say about the Occupy movement is that it is growing at a remarkable pace.

Whether this growth will result in greater political traction, rather than merely prompt further sympathy or ridicule from politicians and the media alike, remains to be seen. Then again, one metric of political traction for the Occupy movement is simply endurance, measured by present bodies. As Lili Loofbourow recently wrote in an on-the-ground report on Occupy Oakland for website The Awl, “technology tilts the political machine so that only that which is public matters.” And despite the Occupy movement’s necessary imperfections, there is no more direct and immediate way of being public than showing up and speaking out.

What gets broadcast and what gets heard beyond the encampments is another matter. Even with the tools of social media at the Occupiers’ disposal, can the movement’s horizontal, leaderless structure effectively amplifying the voices of “the 99%” without resulting in an echo chamber? And if that is what’s being perceived, both on the ground and in the national conversation, is that necessarily a sign of the movement’s failure or merely a testament to its vibrancy?

A variation on these questions of mediums and messages is at the heart of Geof Oppenheimer’s intellectually bracing and formally daring show at Ratio 3, Inside Us All There Is A Part That Would Like to Burn Down Our Own House, which although not explicitly about current events, uncannily resonates with them. The work in Inside Us formally traces the fluctuating state of the body politic by zeroing in on moments of stress in which civic faith breaks down or flares up, whether due to admissions of failure on the part if its appointed leaders or from internal combustion.

The latter isn’t just a figure of speech. The ballistic-grade Plexiglass cubes on plinths that snake down the center of Ratio 3’s main room, collectively titled Modern Ensembles, each contain the multicolored residue of an explosion set off within. Oppenheimer worked with a pyro-technician (a former employee of the Disney Corporation, no less) to create custom-made charges of various explosive chemicals that were then detonated inside the cubes, resulting in gorgeous, nebula-like washes of color that completely cover each cube’s interior face.

That the beauty of the Modern Ensembles comes from such violent origins is less interesting to me (that’s an old story in Art History, particularly in regards to action painting, a tradition which these sculptures extend as much as they do classic Minimalism’ proverbial cube), than how they embody a tension between explosive force and containment. The Oakland occupiers also hit a wall — a phalanx of police armed with riot gear and tear gas. It’s hard not to think of that moment, that so many experienced remotely via Facebook posts and Flickr feeds, when viewing these chemically colored cubes that, although transparent, you can’t actually see through.

Communication breakdown is also taken up in Social Failure and Black Signs, a suite of five pigment prints that surround the enigmatic vitrines like a gaggle of lost protestors. Each black and white image consists of a similarly-positioned arm holding aloft a sign printed with phrases concerning governance or economics but clearly removed, media res, from their original context. “Tolerated, as unfortunate excess,” reads one. Another states, “everything, but it is not enough.”

These stranded phrases are, in fact, excerpts from interviews with political figures such as Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, Fidel Castro and Robert McNamara, in which they discuss moments when their ideologies resulted in policy failure, something which Oppenheimer’s photographs formally restage by transforming these confessional moments into incomplete sound bytes.

The opposite tack is used to achieve similarly disorienting results in Anthems, a four minute high definition video, which superimposes footage of a military marching band playing four different national anthems while in formation. The resulting wall of sound renders the pieces indistinguishable from each other, while, visually, the rapidly overlaid footage scrambles the patterned order of military spectacle.

Politically, a lot can happen when polyphony gives way to cacophony (or in the case of Social Failure and Black Signs when signal becomes noise). But the result can also just be chaos. As an ongoing experiment in the messy business of building a participatory democracy with its share of successful and failed words and deeds, the Occupy movement is a living, ever-expanding testament to this. And despite being presented under a title full of Freudian dramatics, so are the pieces in Inside Us.

GEOF OPPENHEIMER: INSIDE US ALL THERE IS A PART THAT WOULD LIKE TO BURN DOWN OUR OWN HOUSE

Through December 10

Ratio 3

1447 Stevenson, SF.

(415) 821-3371

www.ratio3.org

Remember, remember the 5th of November

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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November 1, 2011

1

steve@sfbg.com

Guy Fawkes’ masks — popularized by the film and graphic novel V for Vendetta — have been the most common face of American resistance to empire, used by the hacktivists of Anonymous and by the Occupy Wall Street protesters in cities across the country. Bay Area costume stores report the masks getting snapped up as soon as they hit the shelves.

Guy Fawkes Day on Nov. 5 — commemorating the day in 1605 when Fawkes was caught with a cache of explosives under the House of Lords — is also the deadline set for a pair of unrelated actions directed at powerful corporations: national banks and Facebook.

Bank Transfer Day calls for people to transfer their money from the huge banking institutions that helped crash the economy and into local credit unions or locally owned banks. It was created as a Facebook event by Central Coast resident Kristen Christian and it went viral, with almost 67,000 people pledging the take part.

“Together we can ensure that these banking institutions will ALWAYS remember the 5th of November!! If the 99% removes our funds from the major banking institutions to nonprofit credit unions on or by this date, we will send a clear message to the 1% that conscious consumers won’t support companies with unethical business practices,” reads the invite.

Meanwhile, Facebook is the target of threats by a splinter group from Anonymous, the leaderless online collective whose hackers have crashed corporate websites in defense of Wikileaks, confronted the Church of Scientology, and organized protesters against BART over police reform and the agency’s decision to cut cell phone service to scuttle a protest, with many wearing the Fawkes mask.

Videos in several languages have proliferated on You Tube, featuring a speaker in a Guy Fawkes mask and electronic voice accusing Facebook of giving corporations and government agencies access to people’s personal information (Facebook did not respond to a request for comment). The videos urge people to close their Facebook accounts by Nov. 5 or risk having the hackers expose their information, urging allies to help “Kill Facebook, for the sake of your own privacy.”

GO DOWN IN HISTORY

“Prepare for a day that will go down in history, Nov. 5, 2011. We are Anonymous. We are legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget. Expect us,” the video closes, using the standard Anonymous tagline.

While many supporters of Anonymous have criticized the Facebook campaign and cast doubts on its chances of success, the system administrator for the AnonyOps.com website told us it is the nature of this movement that small groups can start campaigns of their choosing.

“One thing I do want to state about Anonymous is the fact that it is not a group. As stated above; it is an idea, an idea in which anyone can sail under freely. Think of it as a banner, a banner anyone can use to spread awareness of an issue or topic,” the administrator said.

As for Bank Transfer Day — which has significant support in both the Anonymous and Occupy communities, although it doesn’t identify with either — the AnonyOps administrator wrote, “I can’t speak for Anonymous as a whole about the expected response from banks, but I personally believe that this movement is mostly to send a message. A message that says, ‘We’re fed up of your lies, and we don’t trust you anymore.'”

He also wrote, “November 5th was chosen because it is a rather big day for Anonymous. A lot of Anonymous’ ideas are based around the ideology of Guy Fawkes, and the movie “V for Vendetta”. November 5th marks the day that Guy Fawkes failed to assassinate King James I of England, and this is also the same day in which the people stand up to their Government in the movie, so it marks a special day.”

WHO WAS THIS GUY?

So how exactly did Guy Fawkes Day — with its sing-song mantra learned by British schoolchildren: “Remember, remember, the fifth of November, the gunpowder treason and plot/ I know of no reason why the gunpowder treason should ever be forgot” — come to play such an iconic role in the current political moment?

Much of it was the power and timing of the 2005 movie, a dystopian tale of fascism taking root in England, with the state using fear and aggressive police tactics to quiet dissent and control the population. While the film’s hero, V, adopts the Fawkes mask and story, it is his ideology that probably resonates with the modern movement than the historical Fawkes, a Catholic partisan who targeting a Protestant king.

In particular, when V speaks to the people through a television broadcast, his issues and critique on power resonate with young people raised in the post-9/11 world who then watch the financial collapse and saw how crony capitalism protects the powerful at the expense of the powerless.

“The truth is that there is something terribly wrong with this country, isn’t there? If you look about, you witness cruelty, injustice and despotism. But what do you do about it? What can you do? You are but a single individual. How can you possible make any difference? Individuals have no power in this modern world. That is what you’ve been taught because that is what they need you to believe. But it is not true,” V says.

Indeed, the young people of Occupy, Anonymous, and various other nascent political movements are feeling empowered by their successes and the support they’re receiving. In his speech, V calls for everyone to show up in Guy Fawkes masks on Nov. 5 to watch him blow up the House of Lords.

“I have come to offer you a deal,” V says. “If you accept, I will give you a different world. A world without curfews, without soldiers and surveillance systems. A world that is not run by other men but that is run by you. I am offering you a second chance.”

The notion that an idea can ripple through the populace with little organizational support seems to be borne out by Bank Transfer Day, which was announced shortly after Bank of America said it would charge monthly fees on debit cards. Since then, credit unions report a steady uptick in business.

Robin McKenzie from the nonprofit Redwood Credit Union in San Francisco said more than 500 people have opened accounts with the community institution since the announcement, specifically by customers who reported being unhappy with the fees, ethics, and government bailouts of the big banks.

Carol Highton of Patelco Credit Union told us she’s seen a 65 percent increase in checking, 80 percent increase in credit cards, and 33 percent increase in membership since Bank Transfer Day was announced.

“Our stance on it is: why wait? If they’re interested in moving their money they should do it now,” McKenzie said. “We’ve been seeing a lot of demand from people for honesty and trust, and a lot on the local level…We’re not looking to profit from them, we’re looking to serve them.”

Mood setters

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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November 1, 2011

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emilysavage@sfbg.com

MUSIC Water Borders, a gloomy beat-driven San Francisco band with a new release (Harbored Mantras) on Tri Angle Records, spent the past few weekends practicing the art of creating atmosphere for obscure vintage films.

The band was picked for the first San Francisco installment of Celluloid Salon, a multimedia series that also takes place in cities such as New York, Chicago, and Austin, Texas. At the event — Nov. 15 at Public Works — the trio will live score four silent shorts from the 1920s and ’30s. “We’re good at soundscapes,” explains the group’s singer Amitai Heller, sitting amongst pedals, synths, stacked TVs, and laptops in the band’s Tenderloin practice space. “It’s kind of what we do best, is create moods.”

He’s right. The textured tracks on Harbored Mantras creep from black velvet-swaddled eerie (“What Wiwant”) to veiled ethereal (“Waldenpond.com”). Moody synths and drum machine beats are layered with cinematic samples that recall snake rattles, dragging chains, even bird chirps. The album — which is the band’s first full-length release after putting out a CD-R, a cassette, and a few records on labels such as Disaro — also takes hints from post-punk and experimental industrial, most notably, Coil.

Heller’s doomed, swallowed vocals are the most startling. “There’s definitely a lot of studio tricks with the vocals,” says Heller’s partner-in-sound, Loric Sih. “Our music is generally dense and cavernous, the vocals have to be mixed in a specific way to sound right sitting on top of that. There was a lot of experimenting, a lot of trial and error, a lot of long nights in here.” Here meaning the practice space, where a nearby metal act’s muffled guitar bleeds through the walls.

While this project arose in 2009, the two met 10 years back at UC Santa Cruz when Heller was the “flamboyantly dressed” singer of Gross Gang. After Gross Gang ended, Heller started New Thrill Parade and asked Sih to join. With Water Borders, Heller says they had a plan: “everything in reverse from how we did things in the previous band.” In the other band, they “self-promoted aggressively, toured insane, and lost tons of money.”

Says Heller, “With this, [Loric and I] decided that we wanted to get everything in order first, have concise direction…and not show people the evolution as it unfolded. So it’s record it, perfect it, show it.” While that was the theory, the reality was a bit more complicated. They had to work at bringing the synth-and-machine music to the stage in an engrossing way. “It’s taken us about this long to understand how to make electronic sound good live. I think the [record release] show we just played at Amnesia was probably the first time that nothing went wrong.”

Part of that newfound live strength comes from the band’s newest member, Matt Rogers, a longtime friend and recent Seattle transplant. At shows, the multi-instrumentalist plays guitar, keyboard, and an electrical kalimba, among other pieces. The addition of Rogers, who joined in August, meant Heller could focus mainly on vocals. And those are important to him. While they’re murky, under a thick goth-y haze, the lyrics on Harbored Mantras touch on themes of dissatisfaction, systemic and institutional change, and colonialism. They come from Heller’s sociopolitical awareness; raised on a kibbutz in Israel, he’s now a volunteer counselor at the Tenants Union and frequents the Occupy SF grounds.

While likely not so in line with his personal politics, he once composed music for a documentary on the Seastedding Institute (which, he says, is basically an organization of rich libertarians who want to colonize the ocean by creating autonomous cities). The event at Public Works will be the first scoring for Water Borders as a band though. Sih and Heller seem stoked at the prospect. “I would be happy if this band was able to score films professionally,” enthuses Sih. The tones of the short films vary wildly, one even has a slapstick element — which seems worlds away from the Water Borders vibe. Says Heller, “It’s challenging in a good way.”

WATER BORDERS

Nov. 15, 7 p.m., free with RSVP

Public Works

161 Erie, SF

(415) 932-0955

www.myopenbar.com/celluloidsalon

www.publicsf.com

Homemade shaman

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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November 1, 2011

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arts@sfbg.com

THEATER A rare event for rare times: Robert Steijn comes to San Francisco. The visit — which included a workshop Oct. 31-Nov. 2, and comes courtesy of THEOFFCENTER, Zero Performance, and Jorge Rodolfo De Hoyos — marks the first Bay Area show by this somewhat unexpected but internationally acclaimed figure in contemporary dance-performance.

A onetime dance critic who made a mid-career leap into performance, Steijn is at 53 defiantly not young, nor especially sleek despite a close working relationship with his spirit animal, a deer. But a graceful, probing, witty, and intriguing artist he certainly is. Known to collaborate widely — most consistently with compatriot Frans Poelstra, with whom he forms United Sorry — he’s also the creator of a handful of idiosyncratic solo works, one of which he performs Thursday night at the new Joe Goode Performance Annex in the Mission.

“I am reborn a smoker/Allowing myself to get high in the clouds of imagination” is billed as “a performance in the form of a lecture/demonstration,” but that’s a misleadingly dry description for a euphoric foray into the “invisible” places Steijn — who counts among his influences Jack Smith, Korean shaman-performer Hi-Ah Park, and ayahuasca rituals — has long pursued with a playful earnestness.

“Every time I do it, it changes a little bit,” Steijn says of the piece. “In a way, it’s my introduction about what I can do onstage, but it’s also a kind of showcase of how we use imagination. It’s really about belief systems.”

It’s also a piece where he channels a deer to communicate with the dead. “I dance a lot with a deer, and also it comes into my mind sometimes.” Of the title’s reference to a reborn smoker, Steijn explains, “I was working on shamanistic power animals, and I manifested the deer, and the deer was smoking a cigar.”

Steijn, who divides much of his time between Vienna and Amsterdam, spoke by phone last week from New York City, where he was at work on a new collaboration with choreographer Maria Hassabi (with whom he made a splash last year in an eye-locking duet at New York’s Danspace). Genial, thoughtful, self-effacing, and prone to shy laughter, Steijn remembers that as a lonely child he fantasized a guardian angel. “And it really worked,” he chuckles. It led him to consider “how you can comfort yourself with imagination; how imagination can open up a certain structure for reality.”

“I found I was interested in how the mind works,” he continues, “how we can put our self in a certain mind state, or in a way of thinking, or in a way of perceiving reality, and how that could be very truthful for theater, to show what happens when you are in this state of mind. Because I feel sometimes we’re too rational — or not even rational, but we think too much in the patterns we are used to thinking in.

William Forsythe [showed how] we can change the center of movement in the body; it can be in every body part almost, and you can [put it] also outside the body sometimes. I like to think in that way about the mind: how can you perceive or analyze reality from another center than you are used to? I felt that in shamanism it was very playful to go there, to still a little bit your logical mind. What I found is that when I imagine [myself] into a state, I look at the world with much more compassion and love. It’s a strategy to relate differently to the audience and to movement in the body, to a different imagination.”

Steijn had been in New York only a few days, but said he’d already visited Occupy Wall Street several times. Waxing enthusiastic about what he found there, he spoke of the dialogue and imagination opened up in this re-appropriated public square, and it seemed to recall much of his own work with “intensifying” a space, setting it free of the usual constraints to imagination and experience.

“You know when Joseph Boeys said everybody has to be an artist? I think it would be nice if everyone has to be a poet,” he says. “Perhaps there’s not so much difference between the two. But I like to think you meet with a situation and then you have to create how you want to deal with it, how you want to change it. It’s not to adapt yourself to a situation but really to make it your own. I think this empowerment is important.”

ROBERT STEIJN

Thurs/3, 8 p.m., $10-$20

Joe Goode Performance Annex

401 Alabama St., SF

www.brownpapertickets.com

SF supervisors support OccupySF’s 24/7 encampment

Sasha Cuttler

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November 1, 2011

56

SF supervisors support OccupySF’s 24/7 encampment

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors today approved a resolution supporting Occupy Wall Street and the right of OccupySF to maintain a 24/7 encampment in Justin Herman Plaza, although sponsors of the measure narrowly lost a fight over amending the measure to allow police to use force if “there is an objective threat to safety or health.”

The sponsors of the measure – Sups. John Avalos, David Campos, Eric Mar, and Jane Kim – noted that heath and safety concerns were used as a pretext for both police raids on OccupySF and for last week’s violent police crackdown on the Occupy Oakland encampment, something San Francisco officials uniformly say they want to avoid here. Those four sponsors were joined by Sup. Ross Mirkarimi in opposing the amendment by Sup. Scott Wiener, which passed on a 6-5 vote.

But the overall measure – which urges Mayor Ed Lee to drop his opposition to tents and other camping infrastructure and not order another police raid on the camp – was then approved on an 8-3 vote, with Sups. Mark Farrell, Carmen Chu, and Sean Elsbernd in dissent. Farrell and Chu both expressed support for the movement’s call for addressing severe economic inequities in the country, but they oppose the tactic of occupation.

Board President David Chiu, the swing vote on allowing the resolution to be watered down, said his vote was an effort to get as much support for the measure as possible. “For me, it was important to build consensus here at the board,” he said, praising the work that city officials and OccupySF participants have done to resolve their differences. “I have been very impressed with the behavior of individuals involved in this movement.”

Wiener had made a number of amendments to the resolution that Avalos accepted without objection, drawing the line only at the change that would specifically allow for police to use force to dislodge the protesters. While the nonbinding resolution doesn’t compel any action by Lee or the SFPD, Avalos praised the mayor for meeting privately with OccupySF members after he seemed to take a firm public stand again allowing camping.

“I do want to thank the mayor for coming to the table on how our public spaces can be used,” Avalos said. Kim echoed the point, noting that, “A ton of progress has been made.” The Mayor’s Office has not yet responded to Guardian requests for comment on the resolution or his current position on OccupySF, but we’ll update this post when we hear back.

Wiener and others also thanked Avalos for taking the lead role in addressing this issue. “I want to thank Sup. Avalos for being so open and collaborative,” Wiener said, noting that he’s been very impressed with how OccupySF has handled itself throughout the standoff. “I’m very supportive of OccupySF…It’s been incredibly peaceful and people have been friendly and passionate.”

On the Cheap Listings

Andrew Lam

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November 1, 2011

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On the Cheap listings are compiled by Lucy Schiller. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com. For further information on how to submit items for the listings, see Picks.

WEDNESDAY 2

Ecology, Ethics, and World Renewal lecture Northbrae Community Church, 941 Alameda, Berk. (510) 526-3805. 7:30 p.m., $5 suggested donation. Stephen Most, documentarian and dreamer, discusses the links between Aldo Leopold’s philosophies and those of the Klamath River tribes.

Alan Kaufman reading Booksmith, 1644 Haight, SF. www.booksmith.com. 7:30 p.m., free. San Franciscan Alan Kaufman, author of “Matches” and “Jew Boy,” has led a life as steeped in alcohol as that of a tequila worm. Somehow, he made it out of the bottle and has managed to write a harrowing account of the battle.

Ask a Scientist Science Trivia Atlas Café, 3049 20th St., SF. www.atlascafe.net. 7 p.m., free. Finally, a trivia night where no one has to name all the members of the Bangles. Join revelers for more cerebral concerns (and munch on an Atlas yam sandwich).

Day of the Dead procession 22nd St. and Bryant, SF. www.dayofthedeadsf.org. 7 p.m., free. With marigolds, stilts, drum-pounders, candles, and altars, SF’s annual Dia de los Muertos procession mixes reverence with neighborhood block party. Join thousands under cover of darkness for a thoughtful remembrance of friends, family, pets, and strangers.

Day of the Dead Festival of Altars Garfield Park, 26th St. and Harrison, SF. www.dayofthedeadsf.org. 6-11 p.m., free. Upwards of 80 altars commemorating the lives of loved ones light up Garfield Park. Break out your sugar skulls, candles, photos, and meaningful mementos, this is the time to celebrate the folks you love and miss.

Casa Bonampak Day of the Dead Fiesta Casa Bonampak, 1051 Valencia, SF. www.casabonampak.com. 7-10 p.m., free. Duck into the papel picado-bedecked nook for a break from the DOTD parade to dance, eat, drink, and browse.

THURSDAY 3

San Francisco Transgender Film Festival opening celebration CounterPULSE, 1310 Mission, SF. Also Fri/4, Sat/5. www.counterpulse.org. 8 p.m., $12 sliding scale. Honoring its tenth anniversary as a massive exhibition of short, trans-themed films, this year’s festival opens with a veritable extravaganza featuring some of the more creative names around: Fairy Butch and Kentucky Fried Woman, for starters.

FRIDAY 4

Pico Sanchez Tribute and Dia de los Muertos celebration Mission Arts Center, 745 Treat, SF. (415) 695-5014. 5-8 p.m, free. Kick off the opening of the new Mission Arts Center with a fitting Dia de los Muertos remembrance of formative Mission muralist Pico Sanchez.

Dance Palace Day of the Dead celebration Dance Palace Community Center, 5th St. and B St., Point Reyes. www.dancepalace.org. 6-8 p.m., free. Head North for a smaller-scale Dia de los Muertos, attended by Point Reyesians (Reyesites?) whose aim for the evening is constructing a communal altar celebrating the lives of their loved ones.

SATURDAY 5

Robin Hood and Occupy Wall Street lecture Green Arcade, 1680 Market, SF. www.thegreenarcade.com. 7 p.m., free. Paul Buhle, radical historian and illustrator extraordinaire, recently published a graphic exploration of the original populist hero: Robin Hood. Here he talks about the link between Occupy and men in tights.

Bay Area Star Party Thornton Hall, San Francisco State University, 1600 Holloway, SF. www.astrosociety.org. 8-10 p.m., free. Hubble, Hubble — SFSU opens its stellar planetarium and telescope to the public as part of a bay-wide celestial celebration and viewing. Because we’re all stars in our own right, right?

Cowgirl Tricks Performance Potrero Branch Library, 1616 20th St., SF. www.sfpl.org. 4 p.m., free. San Franciscan Karen Quest holds a rather vague prize from the Wild West Arts International Convention for “Most Unusual Trick” — quite a trophy to carry in this city, anyway. Quest whipcracks, yeehaws, and ropes in style among library bookshelves.

Rad Dad book release and reading Rock Paper Scissors Collective, 2278 Telegraph, Oakl. www.rpscollective.org. 7-9 p.m., free. The hip dads biking through SF with faux-hawked toddlers named things like “Orbison” are sweet alright, but there are also plenty of radical folks for whom politics and parenting go hand-in-hand. Zinesters and Rad Dad scenesters Tomas Moniz and Jeremy Adam Smith speak on activist parenting.

Hypothesis: An Art and Science Fair The Lab, 2948 16th St., SF. www.thelab.org. 7:30-11 p.m., free. For a certain high school subculture, science fairs were make-it-or-break-it happenings. Would your sputtering baking-soda-and-vinegar volcano land you that NYU scholarship? Now of legal drinking age, local artists vie for the blue ribbon at the Lab’s true-to-form exhibition, which was closed to any entries lacking the classic tripartite foam board.

Trail Ridge service day UCSF Mount Sutro Open Space Reserve, SF. www.ridgetrail.org. 8:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m., free. Register online. When completed, the ongoing trail work sponsored by the Bay Area Ridge Trail Council, Sutro Stewards, and REI will culminate in 550 miles of hikeable, bikeable horse-ridable glory. Make your mark this weekend restoring the Twin Peaks Connector Trail.

Illuminations: Dia de los Muertos 2011 closing reception, SOMArts, 934 Brannan, SF. www.somarts.org. 6-9 p.m., $10 sliding scale. Last chance to catch the upwards of 30 altars and installations covering death, from the gravely massive — Fukushima — to the highly personal. Pablo Picasso and beloved Casa Sanchez owner, Martha Sanchez, are among those honored.

SUNDAY 6

Come Out and Play Festival ending games The Go Game, 400 Treat, SF. www.comeoutandplaysf.org. Noon-6 p.m., free. Today marks the end of this week-long, maddeningly mysterious and impossibly brilliant festival challenging San Franciscans to step away from the laptop and onto the streets for games titled things like “Charge of the Rubber Ball Brigade”. Don’t forget to Daylight Savings-ify your reminder notification.

Leave the occupiers alone

Andrew Lam

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November 1, 2011

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EDITORIAL With all of the police raids and arguments over messages and demands and tactics, it’s easy to forget that the Occupy Wall Street movement has a clear political point — and it’s right.

The movement is about the devastating and unsustainable direction of the American economy, about the fact that a tiny elite controls much of the nation’s wealth, that virtually all of the income growth over the past 20 years has gone to the very top, about the collapse of the middle class and the rise of economic inequality that would have been unthinkable a generation ago. Those are the central issues facing the United States, the state of California and the cities of San Francisco and Oakland today — and instead of trying to crack down on the protests, city officials ought to be endorsing the occupy movement and talking about cracking down on the financial institutions and the wealthy.

A few things worth noting:

1. The protesters are almost entirely nonviolent. Although there have been a few isolated incidents in Oakland and SF, the overwhelming majority of the thousands of people at Justin Herman Plaza and Frank Ogawa Plaza are actively promoting and insisting on nonviolence. This is not a crowd that is a threat to anyone.

2. There’s a precedent for long-term political protest camps in San Francisco. The AIDS Vigil remained at U.N. Plaza — with tents, tarps, and cooking gear — for ten years, from 1985 to 1995.

3. The city of San Francisco’s citations — reported without question in the daily newspapers — about health and sanitation problems are way overblown. The OccupySF protesters are making extraordinary efforts to keep the place clean. When the city failed to live up to its promise to provide portable toilets, the protesters ordered (and paid for) their own. As state Sen. Leland Yee (not known as a crazy radical) noted after a visit Oct. 26: “While hundreds gathered, there was not one incident of violence. If the interim mayor thinks there are health issues, I certainly didn’t see them.” We visited Oct 31, and the place was clean and peaceful.

4. The cat-and-mouse game with the San Francisco police is the equivalent of psychological warfare; protesters have to be on edge at all times for fear of a crackdown that may or may not come.

5. Mayor Jean Quan made a bad mistake sending in the cops to roust Occupy Oakland. Nothing good at all can come of any further police eviction action.

Frankly, we don’t see why the protesters — who are well-behaved, represent no threat to anyone, and are doing a huge civic and national service by bringing attention to an issue that the powers that be in Washington, Sacramento and (sadly) San Francisco have largely ignored — can’t stay where they are. If there are health issues, let the Department of Public Health work with the occupiers. If there’s a problem with a portable kitchen, let the Fire Department show the protesters how to run it safely and legally (there are portable cooking devices at every street fair, in dozens of food trucks and in probably 100 other places around town).

The people at OccupySF and Occupy Oakland have done an amazing job of building a safe, respectful and inclusive community. They are the political heros of 2011. If there’s anyplace in America where the movement ought to be allowed to grow and thrive, it’s here in the Bay Area.

Editor’s notes

Andrew Lam

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November 1, 2011

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tredmond@sfbg.com

One cool October day in 1985, when I was a young reporter at the Guardian, a friend who was visiting from New York where she was working with Gay Men’s Health Crisis, called me with an urgent message:

City employees were out with water hoses, trying to force a couple of HIV-positive men from camping in front of a federal office building at U.N. Plaza. I ran down there; she had photos. I talked to the men, who were tired and wet, but determined not to leave — and within a few days after my story ran (“AIDS vigil under attack,” 11/6/85), they were joined by dozens more.

And as the months passed, the AIDS vigil grew and grew. It raised awareness of the federal government’s criminal lack of attention to the epidemic. It became a tent city, a small community in the middle of San Francisco with donated food and supplies. Every once in a while, a politician or a media celebrity would spend a night there.

The feds backed off with the hoses and the city figured out that the encampment was no danger to anyone and was making an important political statement. And it remained there — with tents and tarps — for ten years.

I was at the OccupySF camp Oct. 3rd to do a live KPFA broadcast with Mitch Jeserich, and the place was clean, peaceful and well-organized. A couple of cops walked through while we were on the air; they were smiling and chatting with the protesters, who were negotiation with the Department of Public Works about vacating the grassy areas to allow watering. I saw none of the filth that the daily newspapers have talked about.

The only real health and safety problem was the lack of portable toilets — the seven on site weren’t enough for the number of people there. So if the city wants to keep things sanitary, Mayor Ed Lee ought to send in some more. Oh, and the medical tent needs supplies, particularly ice packs and sterile gauze.

A woman from Occupy Vancouver was down visiting and showing solidarity; she said that protesters all over the continent were looking to San Francisco and Oakland for inspiration.

This is a good thing. The protests may not have an agenda, but they have a message, and it’s getting to big and too loud to ignore. I hope it doesn’t take ten years for politicians at the local, state and federal level to respond — but as long as nobody’s addressing economic inequality, OccupySF is and ought to be here to stay.

As OccupySF attracts support, Oakland gets ready for a general strike

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee

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November 1, 2011

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At a rally of some 2,000 activists held in Oakland’s Frank Ogawa Plaza Oct. 26 — the day after a brutal police crackdown left 24-year-old war veteran Scott Olsen in critical condition from a skull fracture inflicted by a police projectile — Occupy Oakland’s general assembly reached a 96 percent consensus agreement to call for a general strike to be held Nov. 2.

“We have the chance to write the next chapter of this worldwide occupation movement,” an activist announced before bringing the idea to the table. Then the official proposal was read: “To liberate Oakland and shut down the one percent with a citywide general strike.” Cheers arose.

Over the next half hour or so, activists approached the group with clarifying questions. “If the national guard comes, what do we do?” someone asked. (This concern could be addressed at one of the general strike planning meetings, the facilitator answered, if the group approved moving forward with the plan.)

Since that evening, plans for a citywide general strike have gained momentum as the Oakland Education Association and other public sector unions have voiced support for the idea.

Oakland Mayor Jean Quan wrote in a Twitter update, “It’s my hope that the general strike is peaceful and places the issues of the 99% front and center.” In another post, she wrote, “I am working w/ OPD chief to ensure general strikers get message across w/o conflict that marred last week’s events.”

But the Oakland Police Officers’ Association stated in an open letter that police were “confused” by the mayor’s actions with regard to Occupy Oakland, and by a memo Quan released to city employees granting permission for all but police to take the day off.

An Occupy Oakland press release announced that tomorrow’s demonstrations would converge at three different times: 9 a.m., noon, and 5 p.m. at the intersection of 14th and Broadway, near the entrance of the encampment (and the place where Olsen was struck). Activists have renamed the square Oscar Grant Plaza in memory of a 22-year-old police shooting victim.

At 5 p.m., groups planned to converge at 14th and Broadway for a march to the Port of Oakland to shut it down in advance of the 7 p.m. shift.

“This is being done in order to blockade the flow of capital on the day of the general strike, as well as to show solidarity with the Longshore workers in their struggle against EGT in Longview, Washington,” said Oakland hip-hop artist and community organizer Boots Riley.

The Guardian will attend the day’s events and plans to post updates to Twitter. You can follow city editor Steven T. Jones here, reporter Rebecca Bowe here, and SFBG here.

Meanwhile, momentum surrounding the Occupy movement has remained strong in San Francisco. On Oct. 30, more than 150 residents of Chinatown attended a “We are the 99 Percent” rally at Portsmouth Square oraganized by the Chinese Progressive Association. A group of about 50 marched down Clay Street to Justin Herman Plaza, where the OccupySF encampment continues to grow.

“I used to be a restaurant worker, but because of a work injury, I haven’t been able to work for the past 4 years,” a Chinatown community member who identified herself as Mrs. Rong said about her experience in America. “We rely entirely on my husband’s income. My daughter already graduated from college, and although she already found work, she has to pay students loans every month. We don’t know how long we will be paying those loans. We don’t have anything. We are the 99 percent and we have to work together.”

Stephanie Chan, a high school student whose parents are Chinese immigrants, described her experience in San Francisco. “My dad works for more than 13 hours a day, and my mom works two jobs, but my family is still low-income. I currently have healthcare, but I will lose it once I turn 18. I can’t help but wonder, what will happen when it is time for me and my little brother to attend college? How will we afford the high price of college tuition? That’s why people are protesting right now, and why we are the 99 percent.”

Alerts

Andrew Lam

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November 1, 2011

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alert@sfbg.com

WEDNESDAY 2

Occupy Oakland General Strike

In response to last week’s police crackdown, Occupy Oakland called for a general strike on Nov. 2, urging workers and students to shut the city down and join the movement. Convene with neighbors, community members .and affinity groups to take part at a moment when “the whole world is watching Oakland.” Banks and corporations that don’t close will be marched on. The Strike Coordinating Council will begin meeting every Wednesday at 5pm in Oscar Grant Plaza before the daily General Assembly at 7pm. All participants are welcome.

All Day, free

Oscar Grant Plaza

14th & Broadway, Oakland

www.occupyoakland.org

THURSDAY 3

Transgender Film Festival

This year at the 10th Annual Transgender Film Festival, watch the captivating collection on defiance, bullying, romance, relationships, sex, and so much more. International filmmakers journeyed from across the globe. Be sure to buy your tickets before they sell out, which it is expected to.

8-10 p.m., $12-15

CounterPULSE

1310 Mission, SF

Contact Eric Garcia: intern@freshmeatproductions.org

www.sftff.org

FRIDAY 4

Sacred Sites Peacewalk

The Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists Social Justice Committee will provide overnight shelter space for participants in Sacred Sites Peacewalk for a Nuclear Free World. All are welcome for a potluck dinner, speak out and discussion featuring a Buddhist teacher and peace activist. The walk began Oct. 22 at Diablo Canyon and ends Nov. 6 at Glen Cove, Vallejo.

6-9 p.m.

Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists’ Hall

1924 Cedar, Berkeley

(510) 841-4824

www.bfuu.org

SATURDAY 5

Occupy Wells Fargo

The marginalized in the 99 percent are fed up with austerity, especially these 67 Suenos, a collective of undocumented youth and allies that refuse to be passive about violence in the Bay Area community. Stand in solidarity against banks who aggressively invest and profit off anti-immigrant laws like Arizona’s AB 1070. Come and join in planning preparations.

10 am- 1 p.m., free

Contact: 67suenos@gmail

Oscar Grant Plaza/Downtown Wells Fargo 1 block away

14th St. and Broadway, Oakl.

Marxism Conference

From Athens to Cairo to San Francisco, capitalism has proven its instability and people are fighting back. With the Occupy Wall Street phenomenon, it’s the perfect time to further understand the Marxist philosophy on exploitation and how the working class can liberate the oppressed. Featured speakers include Alan Maass, editor of Social Worker newspaper and Keeanga Yamahtta Taylor, editorial board member of International Socialist Review.

10 am- 6 p.m., free

UC Berkeley

Rooms 220 Wheeler and 126 Barrows

Telegraph and Bancroft, Berk

iso@norcalsocialism.org

www.norcalsocialism.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.

Flattened fences and strengthened bridges

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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November 1, 2011

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Flattened fences and strengthened bridges

With high-profile standoffs between protesters and police last week, Occupy Oakland and OccupySF have attracted international attention and support, helping to galvanize the six-week-old Occupy Wall Street movement.

At press time, Occupy Oakland organizers working in league with local unions were gearing up for a citywide general strike intended to shut down the Port of Oakland and encourage work stoppages and school walkouts on Nov. 2. The occupation at Frank Ogawa Plaza, which had been dismantled by police only days earlier, had begun to reseed, with some 40 tents and a kitchen and first aid area reassembling. Planning meetings for the general strike were being held daily. Nearly 2,000 Occupy Oakland participants voted at an Oct. 26 general assembly to call for the shutdown, following an Oct. 25 clash with law enforcement that left Iraq war veteran Scott Olsen with brain injuries after his skull was fractured by a projectile fired from a line of riot police.

Olsen, 24, who completed two tours of duty before becoming a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War, had progressed beyond critical condition and was expected to eventually recover, yet he continued to have difficulty speaking. At a flagpole near 14th and Broadway, near where Olsen was struck, a shrine was created with his visage illuminated with candlelight and surrounded by flowers and notes wishing his speedy recovery.

Video of an injured Olsen being carried by fellow activists through what looked and sounded like a war zone went viral, putting pressure of Oakland Mayor Jean Quan to retreat from her stance against the encampment. But in San Francisco, Mayor Ed Lee stuck to his position that the OccupySF encampment must come down, threatening another police raid if necessary.

“Any official who would send in the riot police to deal with this camp does not deserve to be mayor of San Francisco,” said Brad Newsham, one of a stream of activists sounding off at an Oct. 31 hearing of the Board of Supervisors’ City Operations and Neighborhood Services Committee convened by Sup. John Avalos to consider a resolution the mayoral candidate had created allowing OccupySF to keep its infrastructure in place.

OccupySF was jolted to a new level of activity Oct. 26 when supporters flooded into the camp in anticipation of a pending police raid. As hundreds practiced forming human blockades to defend the space and news of police whereabouts traveled like wildfire along social network sites, five members of the Board of Supervisors and Sen. Leland Yee appeared in the plaza and voiced their support for the Occupy movement.

“We should allow OccupySF to do what they’re doing,” Sup. David Campos, who was among those to turn out at the plaza and address protesters around 2 a.m., said at the Oct. 31 hearing. “It’s good for San Francisco.”

Campos singled out Lee and Quan for the violent raids, disputing the idea that “somehow it’s okay for us to spend the limited resources we have on these kinds of police actions…I hope we don’t have Mayors Quan and Lee wasting resources that could be better spent elsewhere.”

Amid the ranks of Bay Area occupiers, it was clear that a week marked by fierce government resistance to their organizing had only strengthened their resolve and ignited greater passion for advancing the Bay Area’s role in a nationwide movement that, on the cusp of its seventh week, continued gaining momentum.

Chinatown residents rallying with the Chinese Progressive Association gathered in Portsmouth Square Oct. 30 and marched to the OccupySF encampment in solidarity with the “We are the 99 Percent” movement. On Oct. 29, some 1,000 activists gathered at Ocean Beach to spell out “Tax the 1%” in a human formation.

“For every one of us you repress, 50 join the movement,” said camper Steven Boffo, according to an Occupy Oakland press statement. “Oppressive attacks like the exorbitantly expensive one last night give social movements their wings.”

POLICE BRUTALITY Olsen was not the only protester to be injured by the Oakland Police Department (OPD) and other regional law enforcement agencies recruited for backup on Oct. 25. The conflict began with a 4:30 a.m. police raid of the Occupy Oakland encampment, and ended with a street conflict akin to a war zone just outside the plaza, in which toxic teargas clouded the streets and thunderous booms from flash grenades sent protesters fleeing.

The National Lawyers Guild San Francisco Bay Area Chapter (NLGSF) condemned police actions as excessive and unjustified.

“The police violated just about every provision of their own crowd control policy last night,” said Bobbie Stein, a NLGSF attorney. “Tear gas canisters and flash bang grenades were thrown directly at protesters. … Demonstrators were shot with rubber bullets and shot-filled ‘bean bags.’ All of this is prohibited under the policy that we helped write and under which all OPD officers and commanders are required to be trained.”

There were reports of hand injuries, welts and bruises that appeared to be from rubber bullets, and a head injury stemming from the encampment raid in which officers made 115 arrests, according to a briefing delivered by NLGSF when protesters reconvened in the aftermath.

When the raid occurred, activists erected barricades using wooden pallets, Dumpsters, and an old couch, yet the occupation was crushed in a show of force carried out by hundreds of officers. “The first thing they did was teargas,” explained a protester who gave her name as Maria Jackson. “The teargas created a blackout zone.”

Injuries resulting from the early morning raid paled in comparison with wounds inflicted that night, when Occupy Oakland activists sought to return en masse to Frank Ogawa Plaza, which they had dubbed Oscar Grant Plaza in memory of a 22-year-old police shooting victim.

More than 1,000 marched from the Oakland Public Library around 5 p.m. and continued progressing through the streets for hours, though several standoffs with police sent protesters scattering in mayhem before they reconvened to head back to the plaza, chanting forcefully.

Harun Arsalai, a 29-year-old Muslim organizer originally from Afghanistan, told the Guardian he was taken to the hospital after losing consciousness when several police officers pummeled him on the pavement during a heated standoff at the intersection of Eighth and Washington streets, not long after the march began. A YouTube video shot from a window above the scene shows several officers piling on top of him.

After being released from Highland Hospital to Santa Rita Jail several hours later, Arsalai said several officers stationed inside the jail brought him into an empty cell where they beat him, forced his hand into a toilet, and restrained his neck so that he could not turn to see their faces.

Arsalai — a student, bartender, social worker and organizer who was at Occupy Oakland nearly every day since the encampment started — said he has no way of knowing whether he was specifically targeted. Yet his visibility was high during the march because he was in the front line, helping to carry a banner with writing in English and Arabic. He partially covered his face with a bandana inscribed with an Arabic prayer.

When we was initially arrested, Arsalai said he tried to make police aware that he was having difficulty breathing, but then everything went white. “I didn’t realize teargas was going off right behind me, because I was passed out, unconscious,” he said later.

Upon arriving to jail, Arsalai said he was first placed in a holding cell for a short time which was doused in urine and lacked a toilet. He complained, saying he wanted to speak to a lawyer, but then he said he was taken to a different cell, put in a pain compliance hold, and beaten by several officers. Arsalai weighs about 130 pounds.

“They were standing on my face and telling me not to dare move to look at them before they closed the door and locked it,” he said. “I’m still basically in shock. I’m banged up everywhere. It made me feel less than human.” Sgt. J.D. Nelson, a spokesperson for the Alameda County Sheriff Department, told us: “His allegations are false…We have surveillance areas of all the areas of the jail. We’ve been reviewing all those tapes.” He added, “We’re looking into it, but it’s not an internal investigation at this point. Nobody seemed to remember this guy, so it’s odd.”

THREAT OF A RAID

Across the bay, meanwhile, protesters at the OccupySF encampment continued to live on the psychological edge, not knowing when the hammer would come down.

Avalos’ resolution to allow OccupySF infrastructure to remain in place — which was co-sponsored by Sups. Eric Mar, Campos, and Jane Kim — was approved by the committee and sent to the full board for consideration on Nov. 1, after Guardian press time.

“It is something I am wholeheartedly supporting because it is an expression of great frustration and concern about the economic system,” Avalos said. “We need to speak with a greater voice about changing our economic system so it works for the many and not just the few.”

But Avalos noted his frustration that Lee and the police had raided the camp twice and were threatening to do so again, something the mayoral candidate has sought to mediate since Oct. 5. The city should learn from Oakland that using police force to stop the movement only makes it stronger, Avalos said.

“If we were to try to stop it from happening, it would just encourage more people to take part in it,” he said, noting that more midnight raids are dangerous for both police and protesters. “We have to figure out as a city how we’re going to facilitate, encourage, and accommodate this movement.”

With a second police raid fresh in memory and the threat of a third looming, protester Philip Oje, 26, said the numbers in the camp had swelled. “It’s a microcosm of society and we have to work through all kinds of issues, which we’ve been doing as a group,” he said.

Oje spoke with the Guardian on Oct. 25, hours after the raid on Occupy Oakland. The SFPD had just circulated memos warning OccupySF inhabitants: “You are subject to arrest.” But rather than backing down, OccupySF rented four porta-potties — what many called “occu-potties” — that arrived that afternoon.

“Last night, because of what was happening in Oakland, I thought it would happen here as well,” Oje said. “Personally, I feel like police action is imminent.”

Oje said his personal strategy was to place his body between police and the medical tent to try to salvage that critical resource. “It’s about peace and nonviolence and it’s hard when we have people of lots of different backgrounds,” he said. “So we have to practice rational responses. We need to know what to do when the tear gas comes and the rubber bullets start flying.”

As the evening of Oct. 26 wore on, however, the camp experienced no teargas, projectiles, or physical force — only an outpouring of support from local labor leaders, activists, and elected officials.

By 4:30 am, some 500 were still gathered when OccupySF organizer Ryan Andreola announced, “We just got a report from an official police statement that the raid has been called off because there were not enough police for the number of people here.” The crowd erupted in applause.

The following day, a different story emerged from City Hall. Mayor Lee and Police Chief Greg Suhr offered shifting explanations for the massing of SFPD troops in riot gear, which protesters tracked by sending motorists to keep tabs on them and by communicating via Twitter.

“There were that many police amassed last Wednesday, there will be that many police amassed next Wednesday,” Suhr said. “Wednesday is a standard training day for the Police Department.”

But when reporters expressed skepticism — many were aware of last-minute changes in police staffing schedules and notices issued to neighboring businesses warning of police activity — Suhr said police were preparing to either assist in Oakland, where occupiers had planned to reconverge at the plaza for a general assembly, or deal with trouble from OccupySF.

Lee also raised the concern that violent agitators might come to San Francisco. “They had to get ready for what they saw in downtown Oakland. They had to get ready for hundreds of people coming to San Francisco, either walking over the bridge or coming through the BART system. So they were trying to get ready for that particular activity because we didn’t know what was going to happen.”

BART stations nearby the Oakland and San Francisco encampments were shuttered for some time that evening, presumably to prevent Oakland supporters from joining the ranks of the OccupySF protesters facing a possible police raid. BART did not respond to inquiries as to who made the decision to close those stations or why.

“I’ve always asked the chief to be ready [to enter the camp],” Lee said at the Oct. 27 press conference. “I’ve been insistent that we have to be ready to enforce our laws so he’s been under that instruction for quite some time. But the tactical decisions are the chief’s responsibilities.”

Yet later in the press conference, after Lee had left the room, Suhr made it clear that the final decision lies with the mayor. “Make no mistake about it, Mayor Lee is in charge of this situation,” Suhr said.

After a series of vague responses to reporters’ questions, Lee stood by his earlier statements that protesters would not be allowed to camp.

“There’s a fine line between occupying public space within your First Amendment rights and sleeping overnight and causing health conditions that we’ve been very concerned about,” Lee said. Asked whether tents would still be allowed if the camp was clean and otherwise compliant, he said, “We’re still saying no tents.”

WORLD WATCHES, AND RESPONDS The Oakland crackdown stirred an international response. Talk show host Keith Olbermann condemned the excessive show of police force in a special broadcast and called for Mayor Quan to either resign or fire Police Chief Howard Jordan, whose interim term began just weeks ago following the departure of Chief Anthony Batts.

Quan, for her part, was thrust into the center of a public relations nightmare upon her return from a trip to Washington, D.C., where she was when the raid was occurring.

“I am deeply saddened about the outcome on Tuesday,” she wrote in a statement released Oct. 27. “It was not what anyone hoped for, ultimately it was my responsibility, and I apologize for what happened. Today I visited Scott Olsen and his parents because I was concerned about his recovery,” she wrote.

Quan added that she had called for an investigation into police use of force, and stated, “I will continue to order a minimal police presence.” But Quan noted in her message that camping was still prohibited overnight, a fundamental conflict that seemed to be leading the city back to square one with regards to the occupiers.

Occupy Wall Street (OWS), the encampment based in Manhattan’s Zucotti Park, voted to send $20,000 to Occupy Oakland in the wake of the police crackdown. Between 500 and 1,000 people also marched through the streets of New York City Oct. 26 in a show of solidarity with the Oakland occupiers. “That was a really big march, especially considering how quickly it came together,” said Joseph Carter, a member of IVAW based in New York. “There was a good sized veterans’ contingent. There’s a lot of outrage and a lot of sadness here in New York related to what happened to Scott.” Donations to IVAW for Olsen’s medical and legal needs were pouring in, Carter added. “We’ve had about 700 donations, and they’re coming from across the country,” he said. “Clearly this has touched a nerve here in America.” In Cairo on Oct. 28, thousands rallying against Egypt’s interim military government marched from Tahrir Square to the U.S. Embassy in a show of support for Occupy Oakland. “We’re following everything minute to minute,” said Gan Golan, an OWS activist. “This entire movement is interconnected through the use of social networking technology.”

BEFORE THE STRIKE

At an Oct. 31 press conference at Telegraph and Broadway streets, an intersection which held historic significance in the 1946 Oakland general strike, Occupy Oakland organizers shared their plans for their Nov. 2 day of action, which they officially titled, ‘Liberate Oakland, Shut Down the One Percent.’ The strike was being called to demonstrate solidarity with the global Occupy movement, to call for an end to police attacks, to defend Oakland schools and libraries, and to resist an economic system that promotes inequality and environmental destruction, activists said.

The idea of holding a general strike had won support from the Oakland Education Association (also known as the Oakland teachers’ union), the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), and Oakland’s largest union, Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 1021.

“The Oakland General Strike will demonstrate the wide reaching implications of the Occupy Wall Street movement,” according to a statement on the Occupy Oakland website. “The entire world is fed up with the huge disparity of wealth caused by the present system. Now is the time that the people are doing something about it. The Oakland General Strike is a warning shot to the one percent — their wealth only exists because the 99 percent creates it for them.” *

Yael Chanoff contributed to this report.

Guardian editorial: Leave the occupiers alone!

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November 1, 2011

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As the world watches, San Francisco and Oakland should set the standard by supporting Occupy San Francisco and Occupy Oakland and supporting their goals and peaceful tactics. B3

With all of the police raids and arguments over messages and demands and tactics, it’s easy to forget that the Occupy Wall Street movement has a clear political point — and it’s right.

The movement is about the devastating and unsustainable direction of the American economy, about the fact that a tiny elite controls much of the nation’s wealth, that virtually all of the income growth over the past 20 years has gone to the very top, about the collapse of the middle class and the rise of economic inequality that would have been unthinkable a generation ago. Those are the central issues facing the United States, the state of California and the cities of San Francisco and Oakland today — and instead of trying to crack down on the protests, city officials ought to be endorsing the occupy movement and talking about cracking down on the financial institutions and the wealthy.

A few things worth noting:

1. The protesters are almost entirely nonviolent. Although there have been a few isolated incidents in Oakland and SF, the overwhelming majority of the thousands of people at Justin Herman Plaza and Frank Ogawa Plaza are actively promoting and insisting on nonviolence. This is not a crowd that is a threat to anyone.

2. There’s a precedent for long-term political protest camps in San Francisco. The AIDS Vigil remained at U.N. Plaza — with tents, tarps, and cooking gear — for ten years, from 1985 to 1995.

3. The city of San Francisco’s citations — reported without question in the daily newspapers — about health and sanitation problems are way overblown. The OccupySF protesters are making extraordinary efforts to keep the place clean. When the city failed to live up to its promise to provide portable toilets, the protesters ordered (and paid for) their own. As state Sen. Leland Yee (not known as a crazy radical) noted after a visit Oct. 26: “While hundreds gathered, there was not one incident of violence. If the interim mayor thinks there are health issues, I certainly didn’t see them.” We visited Oct 31, and the place was clean and peaceful.

4. The cat-and-mouse game with the San Francisco police is the equivalent of psychological warfare; protesters have to be on edge at all times for fear of a crackdown that may or may not come.

5. Mayor Jean Quan made a bad mistake sending in the cops to roust Occupy Oakland. Nothing good at all can come of any further police eviction action.

Frankly, we don’t see why the protesters — who are well-behaved, represent no threat to anyone, and are doing a huge civic and national service by bringing attention to an issue that the powers that be in Washington, Sacramento and (sadly) San Francisco have largely ignored — can’t stay where they are. If there are health issues, let the Department of Public Health work with the occupiers. If there’s a problem with a portable kitchen, let the Fire Department show the protesters how to run it safely and legally (there are portable cooking devices at every street fair, in dozens of food trucks and in probably 100 other places around town).

The people at OccupySF and Occupy Oakland have done an amazing job of building a safe, respectful and inclusive community. They are the political heroes of 2011. If there’s anyplace in America where the movement ought to be allowed to grow and thrive, it’s here in the Bay Area.

Superviors and labor leaders challenge Lee’s OccupySF stance

Sasha Cuttler

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October 31, 2011

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Superviors and labor leaders challenge Lee’s OccupySF stance

Mayor Ed Lee has put the city and its police force on a collision course with not only OccupySF, but also several members of the Board of Supervisors and top labor leaders who support the movement and want the city to allow its encampment to continue.

They spoke at a special hearing of the City Operations and Neighborhood Services Committee that was convened by Chair John Avalos this morning, supporting a resolution that Avalos created to allow OccupySF to have tents and other infrastructure that Lee opposes. The resolution – which is co-sponsored by Sups. Eric Mar, David Campos, and Jane Kim – was approved by the committee and is set to be considered by the full Board of Supervisors tomorrow (Tues/1).

“It is something I am wholeheartedly supporting because it is an expression of great frustration and concern about the economic system,” Avalos said. “We need to speak with a greater voice about changing our economic system so it works for the many and not just the few,” Avalos said, explaining why he is “wholeheartedly supporting” the OccupySF movement.

But Avalos said he’s been frustrated that Lee and the police have raided the camp twice and are threatening more, something that Avalos has been trying to mediate since the first raid on Oct. 5. He also said the city should learn from Oakland that using the police force to stop the movement only makes it stronger.

“If we were to try to stop it from happening, it would just encourage more people to take part in it,” he said, noting that more midnight raids are dangerous for both police and protesters. “We have to figure out as a city how we’re going to facilitate, encourage, and accommodate this movement.”

But instead, Avalos said Lee’s stand against allowing tents or an kind of encampment, while claiming to support the message OccupySF, has created a tense standoff. “I’ve seen very mixed messages come out of this administration,” Avalos said, adding that nobody believes police statements that the massing of SFPD cops in riot gear on Oct. 26 was only a training exercise.

Mar said OccupySF deserves tremendous credit for holding the space and being responsive to the health and safety concerns raised by city officials. “I’ve seen a transformation in the movement in the last three weeks that is truly impressive,” Mar said. “I’ve also seen, during the General Assemblies, an incredible exercise in democracy.”

He also disputed accusations that the camps are dirty and that the movement is unfocused. “Don’t believe the hype from the mainstream media but look at the messages coming out of this movement,” said Mar, who was wearing a “We are the 99 percent” sticker.

“We should allow OccupySF to do what they’re doing,” Campos said. “It’s good for San Francisco.”

Campos also called out Lee and Oakland Mayor Jean Quan for ordering violent raids on the peaceful encampment, disputing the idea that “somehow it’s okay for us to spend the limited resources we have on these kinds of police actions…I hope we don’t have Mayors Quan and Lee wasting resources that could be better spent elsewhere.”

During the public comment portion of the hearing, each of the more than two dozen speakers supported the resolution.

“What this resolution does is it calls on the other supervisors and the mayor to decide how they want to deal with OccupySF,” said Gus Feldman of SEIU Local 1021.

Representatives of several labor unions and the San Francisco Labor Council that have voted to endorse OccupySF spoke at the hearing, include Ken Tray with United Educators of San Francisco, who gave a rousing speech in support of the movement.

“The times have changed and the political landscape has shifted,” Tray said, ticking off a long list of reasons for supporting the movement, from San Francisco’s long tradition of advocating for progressive change to the fact that “the schoolchildren of San Francisco are being denied resources because the 1 percent refuse to pay their fair share.”

Frank Martin del Campo of the SF Labor Council displayed the bruises on his arm inflicted by police during the raid on the Occupy Oakland, saying “this was an attempt to criminalize dissent…It represents the politicization of the police.”

Labor Council Executive Director Tim Paulson said, “I just want to be clear that we are the 99 percent….We want Occupy San Francisco to be there 24/7.” He and others say the Occupy movement is highlighting deep economic inequities that the labor movement has long been raising as well. “OccupySF has called the question on really important issues we’ve been struggling with for years,” said Gabriel Haaland of SEIU Local 1021

“Here is a peaceful protest being answered with violence,” said Pilar Schiavo of California Nurses Association, which has been supporting the occupations. This is an important political struggle, she said, and “It’s time for the mayor to decide what side he’s on.”

Many speakers focused their criticism on Lee, such as Brad Newsham, who said, “Any official who would send in the riot police to deal with this camp does not deserve to be mayor of San Francisco.” He said the city should set an example for the country by formally allowing the encampment to continue, and he turned to the young protesters in the room and said, “Hold your ground and we’ll try to get your back.”

Sean Semans, an active member of OccupySF since the beginning, thanked Avalos and the other progressive supervisors for “saving us when nobody would,” and he expressed frustration with the Mayor’s Office.

“The mayor still doesn’t recognize us, he won’t come down and see the work we’re doing,” Semans said. “We can do all kinds of work when we’re not fighting to protect our First Amendment rights.”

He was part of an OccupySF delegation that met with Lee last week, and Semans said the mayor offered to help get the protesters rooms in SRO hotels or meals from local soup kitchens, showing that he has a fundamental misunderstanding about what this occupation is about.

As Semans said, “It shows what we’re dealing with here.”

CHP menaces the Halloween Critical Mass ride

Sasha Cuttler

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October 29, 2011

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The California Highway Patrol seems to be on high alert and itching to fight the people in the street, at least if a bizarre incident at last night’s Critical Mass is any indication. And that’s a scary prospect in the Bay Area, where the ongoing standoffs between police and the Occupy movements in San Francisco and Oakland are potential powder kegs that require cool heads on both sides.
Critical Mass was rolling through the warm streets of San Francisco, as it’s been doing on the last Friday of the month for 19 years, and it was a glorious night. The weather was nicer than it’s been in years for the Halloween ride and most of the large crowd wore costumes, many of them playing off Occupy Wall Street themes, from zombie bankers to the Glass Seagull (a reference to the gutted banking regulation Glass-Steagall Act).
Best of all, the San Francisco Police Department seemed to be standing down and allowing the ride to self-regulate, which it did with a minimum of conflicts with drivers. The mood was buoyant and many riders said it was the best Critical Mass they’d been on in a long time.
Then suddenly, as the ride headed up Market Street toward the Castro, crossing Octavia Boulevard, about a dozen CHP officers on motorcycle rapidly descended on the ride, aggressively cutting the dense ride in half to clear Octavia. Some used their motorcycles to push the cyclists back and tensions flared.
Angry words were exchanged back-and-forth between the cyclists and cops, some of whom seemed to be itching for a fight. One in particular pursued the cyclists up Market Street, playing the provocative tough guy or using his motorcycle to try to corral and menace the ride, long after the standoff had ended with enough green lights for the ride to get past Octavia and his fellow officers left.
This battle over public space and freedom of assembly isn’t going away anytime soon. There are resentments building and there will be bad apples on both sides of the barricades in the days and weeks to come. That’s one reason why Mayor Ed Lee is playing a dangerous game by threatening to raid OccupySF at any moment, and why the SFPD’s approach to this ride was far better than the CHP’s.
Just stand down and let the people police themselves.

Potrero Hill History Night: a special occasion for a special neighborhood

Gen Fujioka

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October 28, 2011

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Potrero Hill History Night: a special occasion for a special neighborhood

Scroll down for Potrero Hill History Night photos

And so Country Joe McDonald ambled on to the stage Saturday night at the International Studies Academy on Potrero Hill and told an full auditorium full of history night groupies that since he was playing in a school he would open with a spelling lesson.

“Give me an F,” he roared, and the audience roared back with an F.

“Give me a U, give me a C, give me a K,” and the audience roared back again and again with knowledge of the lyrics of the anti-war song “I Feel Like I’m Fixing To Die” that Country Joe made famous during the Vietnam war and has been singing as his trademark song ever since.

He would pause and the audience would continue on with the words. Country Joe was in top form, the audience loved him, and it was a stunning beginning to the 12^th annual Potrero Hill History Night. And the fact that Occupy SF and Occupy Oakland were fixing to explode sooner or later in nearby neighborhoods only gave some timely poignancy to the occasion.

But Country Joe wasn’t at History NIght to perform as a singer or political activist. He explained that he was there as a turnaround artist to interview Joel Selvin, the veteran San Francisco Chronicle pop culture reviewer and author of “Smart Ass,” a collection of 40 years of Selvin’s music journalism. Significantly, Selvin also happens to be a longtime Potrero Hill resident. The latter phrase is the key, because the point of History Night is to focus on the rich history and colorful personalities of Potrero Hill and put them together into a lively program. In this segment, Joe the performer interviewed Joel the reviewer/reporter who had been writing about Joe for years.

The two made a splendid team and it turned out that Joel was as good onstage in this format as Country Joe. It was good fun, instructive at times, particularly with the stories about Bill Graham’s antics and angry outbursts and how each dealt with him. The audience had fun trying to figure out through questions just how rock n’ roll and Country Joe from Berkeley connected to the hill. Well, one answer was that Jann Wenner, the founder of Rolling Stone magazine, claimed three different addresses on Rhode Island Street.

The program this year was the best ever. A barbecue outside the building serviced by a platoon of History Night groupies on a warm and wondrous Potrero Hill evening. And a program featuring a formal presentation of a chunk of goat hoofprints embedded in concrete, an interview with the woman who tended the goats decades ago, a surprise appearance by the lady who found and preserved the hoofprints for years, and a starring role by Phillip DeAndrade of Goat Hill Pizza who was given the goat hill hoofprints as a surprise gift because he once had goats in the back of his Goat Hill pizza parlor and because, well, he’s Phil DeAndrade.

DeAndrade is a Potrero Hill version of the Scarlett Pimpernel (he’s here, he’s there, he’s everywhere). For this evening, he was doing triple duty as the worthy receiver of goat hoofprints in concrete, as master of ceremonies, and as the Hot Interviewer of the Colorful Potrero Hill Veteran, the key finale of every history night event.

DeAndrade was specially eloquent in explaining the importance of history night. It is, he said, a special event (nobody else in town has one) that showcases Potrero Hill.as a special place and its people as special people who live in a special neighborhood with a special culture and a special history and such institutions as the Neighborhood House built in the 1920s with Julia Morgan as the architect.

The goat hoofprints in cement made his special point. The artifact dates from 1925 or so and was found and preserved by Rose Marie Ostler, a Potrero Hill native. She kept the hoofprints for years and then decided they should go to DeAndrade of Goat Hill for his historic connection with goats. She presented them at the ceremony, with help from Dr. Frank Gilson, a local chiropractor wearing a Halloween type goat hill mask.

This year’s Potrero Hill veteran was Josephine Firpo Alioto, who was born on Potrero Hill 90 years ago, and now lives in San Jose. She married Frank Alioto, son of Police Capt Calogero and Vincenza Alioto. The Alioto family moved to 755 Carolina St. around 1930, just around the corner from Josephine’s house. There were no houses on the cornerin those days, so they had a clear view of one another’s houses. Josephine and Frank were friends for 80 years and married for 65 and a half years. They were married at nearby St. Theresa’s Church. With expert coaching from DeAndrade, she was most articulate and provided the details of life and times of growing up on the hill in the 1920s and 1930s.

Perhaps the most “newsworthy” comment came when she took the audience by surprise when she mentioned that her cousin, Luis Firpo, known as the Raging Bull of the Pampas in Argentina, knocked Jack Dempsey out of the ring in a championship fight. (My google check showed she was right. Firpo did knock Dempsey out of the ring in the famous 1923 heavyweight championship fight at the Polo Grounds in New York City and Dempsey’s head hit a reporter’s typewriter. But Dempsey got back in the ring on a contested long count and won the fight in the third round in what many think is the greatest fight of all time. It was Dempsey’s last successful defense of his title. The fight is on UTube and googleable under Firpo.)

As is the history night custom, there were lots of Firpos and Aliotos in the audience to help fill in Josephine Alioto’s story and answer questions from the audience and provide the evidence of a very special neighborhood.

All in all, it was a most memorable event and all to the credit of Peter Linenthal, the founder and impresario of Potrero Hill History Night. His event even got a nice writeup in Leah Garchik’s Chronicle column. UCSF at Mission Bay was the sponsor of the event and the Parkside, Chat’s Coffee, and Bottom of the Hill donated to the barbecue. Linenthal is also the curator of the Potrero Hill Archives project, assisted by Abigail Johnston. The two co-authored an excellent book on Potrero Hill. For more on the archives project, go to potreroarchives.com. You may find out more about Potrero Hill than you need to know.

I think Linenthal has done what every impresario dreams of doing: making his event so special and so memorable that it will live on and on. B3

Rose Marie Ostler formally presents the goat hoofprints in cement to Goat Hill Phi.

The audience of History Night groupies.

Selvin expands, Country Joe listen.

Josephine and Phil, a dynamic duo,

Josephine and Phil, getting ready for prime time.

The Apollo jazz group in concert at History Night.

A student from the International Studies Academy selling tickets for the barbecue. The money goes to the ISA student travel program.

Halloween 1951: Fast times in Rock Rapids, Iowa

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October 28, 2011

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The tale of what really happened on Halloween Eve in 1951 in Rock Rapids, Iowa (Reprinted by popular demand)

By Bruce B. Brugmann

As I was preparing to update my annual Halloween blog, I checked this week’s Guardian to see what the action looked like for Halloween Eve.

Three years ago, then Mayor Gavin Newsom shut down the Halloween celebration in the Castro, killing off one of San Francisco’s most famous party events. Last year a local flash mob operator by the name of Amandeep “Deep” Jawa organized an unauthorized “Take Back Halloween” party in front of the Ferry building.He had arranged for at least two mobile DJs to spin and more than 300 people had signed up on Facebook. But he had no permits and the police were threatening to shut down the event.

This year, the Guardian promoted a “Ghost Hunt” and a “quick and spooky guide to haunted SF.” Which means there aren’t any big Halloween events and that much of the action may be with Occupy SF and Occupy Oakland and their nationally newsworthy interaction with the mayors and cops over permits and authorization . (Editorial aside: Support the occupiers!!)

Well, back where I come from in the Halloweens of my youth, we didn’t get permits, didn’t have authorization, and the police (actually, just one cop) tried and failed to shut down our events. This was in my hometown of Rock Rapids, a small farming community nestled along the Rock River in northwest Iowa. But we did have some fast times and created some almost famous urban legends on Halloween. I can speak for a generation or two back in the early 1950s when Halloween was the one night of the year when we could raise a little hell and and hope to stay one step ahead of the cops.

Or, in the case of Rock Rapids, the one and only cop, who happened to be Elmer “Shinny” Sheneberger. Shinny had the unenviable job of trying to keep some semblance of law and order during an evening when the Hermie Casjens gang was on the loose. Somehow through the years, nobody remembered exactly when, the tradition was born that the little kids would go house to house trick and treating but the older boys could roam the town looking to make trouble and pull off some pranks.

It was all quite civilized. The Casjens gang would gather (no girls allowed) and set out about our evening’s business, being careful to stay away from the houses of watchful parents and Shinny on patrol. Dave Dietz and I specialized in finding cars with keys in the ignition and driving them to the other end of town and just leaving them. We tipped over an outhouse or two, the small town cliche, but one time we thought there was someone inside. We never hung around to find out. There was some mischief with fences and shrubs and lawn sprinklers and potted plants on porches.

After an evening of such lusty adventures, we would go home about ll p.m. and tell our parents what we had been up to and how we evaded Shinny the whole evening and they would (generally) be relieved. Shinny would just drive around in his patrol car and shine his lights here and there and do some honking. But somehow he never caught anybody or made any serious followup investigation. And the targets of our pranks never seemed to make police complaints. I once asked Paul Smith, the editor of the Lyon County Reporter, why he never wrote up this bit of zesty small town lore. “Bruce,” he said, “I don’t want things to get out of hand.” During my era, they never did.

Nonetheless, the city elders decided to keep Halloween devastation to a minimum and scheduled a dance in the Community Building, with the misbegotten idea the pranksters would give up their errant ways and come to the dance. The Casjens Gang would have none of this. In fact it was the year of the dance diversion that we made our most culturally significant contribution to Halloween lore in Rock Rapids. We happened upon a boxcar, loaded with coal, parked on a siding a block or so from Main Street, which also served as a busy main arterial highway for cars coming across northwest Iowa.

It is not clear to this day who came up with the idea of rolling the boxcar across Main Street and blocking all traffic coming from both directions. We massed behind the car and pushed and pushed but it wouldn’t budge. Then Bob Babl came up with a brilliant stroke: to use a special lever his dad used to move boxcars full of lumber for his nearby lumberyard. Bob slipped through a fence behind the yard and somehow managed to find the lever in the dark.

We massed again, now some 20 or so strong, behind the car and waited for the signal to push. Willie Ver Meer climbed to the top of the car and wrenched the wheel that set the brakes. We heaved in unison and the car moved slowly on the tracks until it reached the middle of Main Street. Willie gave a mighty heave and ground the car to a dead stop, bang, square in the middle of the street. Almost immediately, the cars started lining up on both sides of the car, honking away. Grace under pressure. An historic event. Man, were we proud.

We slipped away and from a safe distance watched the fruits of our labor unfold. Shinny, the ever resourceful police chief, soon came upon the scene. He strode into the dance in the nearby Community Building and commandeered enough of the dancers to come out and help him move the car back onto its siding. We bided our time and then went back and pushed the car once again into the middle of the street. Jerry Prahl added a nice touch by rolling out a batch of Firestone tires onto the street from his Dad’s nearby store. Suddenly, Main Street was a boxcar- blocked, tire-ridden mess. Again, the cars started lining up, honking away. Then we fled, figuring we were now wanted pranksters and needed to be on the lam.

The Casjens gang and groupies have retold the story through the years at our regular get togethers at the Sportsmen Club bar at Heritage Days in Rock Rapids and at our all-Rock Rapids Cocktail Party and Beer Kegger held in the back lawn of the Mary Rose Babl Hindt house in Cupertino. We would jokingly say that the statute of limitations never runs out in Rock Rapids and so we needed to be careful what we said and ought not to disclose fully the involvement of Dave Dietz, Hermie Casjens, Ted Fisch, Ken Roach, Jerry Prahl, Bob Babl, Romain Hahn, Willie Ver Meer, and lots of others, some who were there working in peril, others who declared they were there safely after the fact.

Two years ago, just before Halloween, I was invited back to Rock Rapids to speak to a fund-raising event for the local high school. It was a a crisp clear night just like the night of Halloween in l95l and a perfect setting to tell the story publicly in town for the first time. The event was at the new community building, on Main Street, just a block or so from the old Community Building, and a block or so from the siding where we found the boxcar. I told the audience that Shinny had assured me the statute of limitations had run out in Rock Rapids and that I could now, 54 years later, tell the boxcar- across -Main -Street caper with no fear of prosecution. And so I did, with relish.

Chuck Telford was in the audience and I recalled that he had driven up to us that night, as part of a civilian patrol, and inquired as to what we were doing. When he could see what we were doing, he just quietly drove off. “Very civilized behavior,” I said. Afterward, I told Chuck I would back him for mayor, on the basis of that incident alone. Craig Vinson, then the highway patrolman for the area, came up to me and said he remembered the incident vividly because he was on duty that night and came upon the boxcar blocking the highway with long lines of honking cars. “I got ahold of Shinny that night and told him it was his job to move the boxcar and get it off the highway,” he said. Others said they had gotten a whiff of the story but were never able to pin it down. The high school principal and superintendent didn’t say much and, I suspect, were worried my tale might lead to the Rock Rapids version of the movie “Ferris Buhler Takes A Day Off.”

For years, I said in my talk, I didn’t think that Shinny ever knew exactly what happened or who was involved in the caper or how we pulled it off, twice, almost before his very eyes. Shinny retired in Rock Rapids and I saw him twice a year when I came back to visit my parents. But I never said anything and he never said anything but finally a couple of years ago I found the right moment and cautiously filled him in. He chuckled and said, “Let’s drink to it.” We did. And we have been drinking to it ever since.

This year, for our reunion of the famous Dream Class of l953, I invited Shinny to sit in with us. He was still going strong at 89. He assured us once again that the statute of limitations had run out and we could speak openly about the Halloween caper in his presence and in front of witnesses. So Dave Dietz and I retold the story with expansiveness and gusto. Shinny supplied some key missing details. For example, he said that he didn’t get his troops out of the dance but out of the nearby movie theater with the threat that he would arrest them if they didn’t help him move the boxcar.

So there we were, 57 years later, working to make the fast times even faster on Halloween in Rock Rapids. Did he ever arrest anybody on Halloween? “No,” he said. “I would just shine my car lights and everybody would run.”
Any hard feelings? Shinny chuckled. “Naw,” he replied. “Let’s drink to Halloween in the good old days.” And so we did. Shinny still calls me now and then in my office in San Francisco and he always tells the receptionist, “Tell Bruce, it’s Shinny. I’m his parole officer in Rock Rapids.” Alas, Shinny died earlier this year but I am glad that I was able to confess properly to the top cop and only cop of Rock Rapids in l951 and to hear Shinny’s side of the story.

Those were the days, my friends. The days of fast times and safe Halloweens in Rock
Rapids, Iowa. On Rock Rapids, B3

P.S.: Ted Fisch, one of the conspirators, called me the other day. He was the center when I was the left-handed quarterback on our 195l team. He became a colonel in the Air Force and loved to say that he was the only field grade officer he knew of who was a solid Democrat. We went over the Obama prospects and the campaign in detail. And then he said, Bruce, a friend of mine googled my name the other day and found that I was mentioned in your Halloween story. How could that be? Does that mean I am up there forever? Somehow, it made me feel good.

P.S. I love smalltown lore and will from time to time lay out the life and fast times and wild adventures of my hometown, the best little town in the territory. I invite you to contribute your smalltown stories and lore.

Mayor Lee still moving toward showdown with OccupySF

Sasha Cuttler

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October 27, 2011

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Mayor Lee still moving toward showdown with OccupySF

Mayor Ed Lee continues to insist that OccupySF break down its encampment in Justin Herman Plaza and threaten to send in riot police if that doesn’t happen, even as this week’s violent police raid on Occupy Oakland has sparked international outrage, condemnation, and solidarity with other occupations.

Reporters packed into the Mayor’s Office for a photo op with a good samaritan who recently helped rescue an injured truck driver, clearly waiting for the chance to interview Lee and Police Chief Greg Suhr about last night’s aborted police raid on the OccupySF encampment, asking repeated questions seeking to clarify Lee’s confusing political doublespeak before his communication staff shuffled him out of he room after about 10 minutes.

“I, like all of you, were watching in somewhat of very big deep concern as I saw things unveiled in Oakland, certainly in constant communication with not only our chief of police, Chief Suhr, but also all of our departments to say that’s not what we want to happen in San Francisco,” Lee began. “We’re trying to enforce all the laws here, and of course it’s public health stuff that we’re emphasizing. We need to make sure our public spaces are clean and healthy, and to protect their First Amendment rights. But we didn’t want to get into a situation where we’re just busting heads because then it’s all lost.”

Yet neither Lee nor Suhr could articulate why they think Oakland’s raid turned so violent or how to guard against a similar fate here in San Francisco, particularly because they reiterated their position that the encampment must go and held open the possibility that another police raid – there have been two so far, the second more violent than the first, and the camp has only grown in size since then – could come at any moment.

They also offered shifting explanations for last night’s massing of SFPD troops in riot gear in buses on Treasure Island, which protesters believe was turned back only because of the huge presence in the camp, which included five members of the Board of Supervisors and various labor leaders, a group that Lee says he would be meeting with shortly after the event (“We’re seeing if they’d like to propose some additional solutions,” Lee said).

When asked about plans for yesterday’s raid, Suhr initially said it was simply a normal Wednesday evening training exercise. “There were that many police amassed last Wednesday, there will be that many police amassed next Wednesday. Wednesday is a standard training day for the Police Department,” Suhr said.

But when reporters expressed skepticism – many aware of the busloads of police in riot gear massing on Treasure Island, the last minute changes in police staffing schedules, and the notices of possible police activity sent to businesses around Justin Herman Plaza – Suhr said police were preparing to either assist in Oakland or deal with trouble from OccupySF.

“Out of deference for what was going on in Oakland, we felt that the more pressing need was whether we needed to assist Oakland and/or whether that situation was going to come to us,” Suhr said. “I didn’t say it was a training exercise, we took advantage of the presence on what was training day and to train to what we may have to do down the line.”

Lee also raised the concern that violent agitators might come to San Francisco: “They had to get ready for what they saw in downtown Oakland. They had to get ready for hundreds of people coming to San Francisco, either walking over the bridge or coming through the BART system. So they were trying to get ready for that particular activity because we didn’t know what was going to happen. We saw a lot of anger and a lot of frustration by people who wanted to come over to San Francisco and we didn’t know what their intention was.”

But reporters noted that Lee ordered OccupySF to take down its encampment two weeks ago, that he told reporters this week that they must do so “within days,” and that Suhr circulated a memo in the camp yesterday entitled “You are Subject to Arrest” if they didn’t heed city codes regarding overnight camping. Given all that, we again asked if there was any intention to go into the camp last night?

“That was not our intention, but I’ve always asked the chief to be ready. I’ve been insistent that we have to be ready to enforce our laws so he’s been under that instruction for quite some time. But the tactical decisions are the chief’s responsibilities,” Lee said.

Yet later in the press conference, after Lee had left the room, Suhr made it clear that the decision about if and when to stage another raid on OccupySF is the mayor’s. “Make no mistake about it, Mayor Lee is in charge of this situation,” Suhr said.

In fact, when we asked Suhr about this constant threat of a violent police raid in the middle of the night hanging over the protesters – which is a wearying distraction from the main economic justice purpose at best, and at worst what some protesters told us was akin to psychological warfare – Suhr said that even he didn’t know when a raid might come.

“There’s nobody more anxious that I am because I don’t know when the raid is coming either, so I can attest to the fact that it makes me anxious. We are working painstakingly and patiently to make sure that area is safe and sanitary,” Suhr said.

But while Lee insists that dialogue and compromise could still avert another crackdown, he refuses to accept that occupation is a tactic that protesters aren’t likely to abandon anytime soon. So Lee’s insistence that the camp be broken down seems to be putting the city and OccupySF on a collision course that most members of the Board of Supervisors – including those sponsoring resolution urging the city to allow overnight camping – fear could be a disastrous stain on the city.

“Our message to OccupySF is we’re still wanting you to comply,” Lee said. “That’s been the consistent message we’ve been sending clearly these last couple weeks…We’re trying to ensure that [the ban on] overnight camping is still enforced, but also respecting their rights to protest.”

I and other reporters tried to push Lee on the potentially harmful standoff he was creating, and he tried to make it sound as if the OccupySF movement could avoid another police crackdown, something he said depends on protesters submitting to his demands.

“It’s optimistic on our part that we would get some sensible minds who want to help us find a way to clean up the area, because that ultimately what we want to do,” he said.

But for all his statements of support for the Occupy Wall Street movement and stated desire to avoid the violent confrontation in Oakland, he refuses to allow tents on the site.

“There’s a fine line between occupying public space within your First Amendment rights and sleeping overnight and causing health conditions that we’ve been very concerned about. So we’re going to take it step by step,” Lee said. When asked about whether tents would still be allowed if the camp was clean and otherwise compliant, he said, “We’re still saying no tents.”

So then when and how will you be enforcing that, reporters kept asking.

“Let’s see what can voluntarily be done through the dialogue that trying to establish. We’ve given them a lot of notices. I want to be sure that if we have to do things to enforce our laws, that we’re quite justified and that everybody knows,” Lee said.

Yet that was the same stance that Oakland Mayor Jean Quan took, and it’s one that she is reportedly backtracking on in the wake of the violence and international condemnation. And Lee couldn’t explain how a crackdown might go differently in San Francisco, particularly none that OccupySF has grown larger and more empowered by defying Lee’s edict for so long.

“Everyone agrees that we don’t want to Oakland situation to happen here,” Lee said, at which point Press Secretary Christine Falvey said he would take only two more questions.

“We’re putting a responsible burden on the occupiers to work with us so we can avoid situations like Oakland,” Lee said. “They have to take responsibilities for what they’ve done.”

“Frankly, it sounds like you’ve said nothing, and I think some other reporters are feeling the same way,” KCBS reporter Barbara Taylor, the senior journalist stationed at City Hall, said with a tone of exasperation. “So can you just outline, when you say to do the right thing, what is the right thing? Do you expect them to voluntarily take down the tents, clean up the camp, only be there within certain hours?”

“Yes. The right thing for them to begin showing responsibility,” Lee responded.

“But what does that mean?” Taylor persisted.

Lee said they need to clean up the camp, saying that “cleanliness has been our number one concern….They have to show signs that they’re willing to work with us.” But the protesters have been diligent about regularly cleaning the camp, and they have complied with other city requests such as no open flames. And when the city refused to make porta-potties available at night, supporters of the camp rented four of their own after the city and its daily newspapers complained about public urination and defecation.

“I’ve said all along that public safety is our number one concern,” Lee said.

Fire Chief Joanne Hayes-White reinforced Lee’s point, complaining about open flames, car batteries, and generally “unhealthy and unsafe conditions.” When we noted that the protesters have already addressed and abated many of these issues in recent days, she admitted that she hasn’t been to the site recently, but said, “The tarps and the tents are not something we’re going to tolerate.”

Suhr made it clear that police action would be done in support of other city departments who ordered hazards to be abated. As for when and how officers would do so: “If we believe we could go into the camp safely, if we think we can go in and support the agencies that will be doing the cleanup, without having to go past a measured response, we would do that,” Suhr said. “That opportunity did not present itself last night.”

And so the standoff continues.

Guardian editorial: Let OccupySF and Oakland stay

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October 27, 2011

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With all of the police raids and arguments over messages and demands and tactics, it’s easy to forget that the Occupy Wall Street movement has a clear political point — and it’s right.The movement is about the devastating and unsustainable direction of the American economy, about the fact that a tiny elite controls much of the nation’s wealth, that virtually all of the income growth over the past 20 years has gone to the very top, about the collapse of the middle class and the rise of economic inequality that would have been unthinkable a generation ago. Those are the central issues facing the United States, the state of California and the cities of San Francisco and Oakland today — and instead of trying to crack down on the protests, city officials ought to be endorsing the occupy movement and talking about cracking down on the financial institutions and the wealthy.

A few things worth noting:

1. The protesters are almost entirely nonviolent. Although there have been a few isolated incidents in Oakland and SF, the overwhelming majority of the thousands of people at Justin Herman Plaza and Frank Ogawa Plaza are actively promoting and insisting on nonviolence. This is not a crowd that is a threat to anyone.

2. The city of San Francisco’s citations — reported without question in the daily newspapers — about health and sanitation problems are way overblown. The OccupySF protesters are making extraordinary efforts to keep the place clean. When the city failed to live up to its promise to provide portable toilets, the protesters ordered (and paid for) their own. As state Sen. Leland Yee (not known as a crazy radical) noted after a visit Oct. 26: “While hundreds gathered, there was not one incident of violence. If the interim mayor thinks there are health issues, I certainly didn’t see them.”

3. The SF Mayor’s Office and the police have made no serious effort to work with or negotiate with the protesters. Even the five supervisors who arrived Oct. 26 (and good for them) when there were rumors of a police action, had no idea what the cops were up to — and Police Chief Greg Suhr wasn’t responding to their phone calls. It’s the equivalent of psychological warfare; protesters have to be on edge at all times for fear of a crackdown that may or may not come.

4. Mayor Jean Quan made a bad mistake sending in the cops to roust Occupy Oakland. Nothing good at all can come of any further police eviction action.

Frankly, we don’t see why the protesters — who are well-behaved, represent no threat to anyone, and are doing a huge civic and national service by bringing attention to an issue that the powers that be in Washington, Sacramento and (sadly) San Francisco have largely ignored — can’t stay where they are. If there are health issues, let the Department of Public Health work with the occupiers. If there’s a problem with a portable kitchen, let the Fire Department show the protesters how to run it safely and legally (there are portable cooking devices at every street fair, in dozens of food trucks and in probably 100 other places around town).

The people at OccupySF and Occupy Oakland have done an amazing job of building a safe, respectful and inclusive community. They are the political heros of 2011. If there’s anyplace in America where the movement ought to be allowed to grow and thrive, it’s here in the Bay Area.

Guardian editorial: Let OccupySF and Oakland stay

Zelda Bronstein

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October 27, 2011

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Guardian editorial: Let OccupySF and Oakland stay

With all of the police raids and arguments over messages and demands and tactics, it’s easy to forget that the Occupy Wall Street movement has a clear political point — and it’s right.

The movement is about the devastating and unsustainable direction of the American economy, about the fact that a tiny elite controls much of the nation’s wealth, that virtually all of the income growth over the past 20 years has gone to the very top, about the collapse of the middle class and the rise of economic inequality that would have been unthinkable a generation ago. Those are the central issues facing the United States, the state of California and the cities of San Francisco and Oakland today — and instead of trying to crack down on the protests, city officials ought to be endorsing the occupy movement and talking about cracking down on the financial institutions and the wealthy.

A few things worth noting:

1. The protesters are almost entirely nonviolent. Although there have been a few isolated incidents in Oakland and SF, the overwhelming majority of the thousands of people at Justin Herman Plaza and Frank Ogawa Plaza are actively promoting and insisting on nonviolence. This is not a crowd that is a threat to anyone.

2. The city of San Francisco’s citations — reported without question in the daily newspapers — about health and sanitation problems are way overblown. The OccupySF protesters are making extraordinary efforts to keep the place clean. When the city failed to live up to its promise to provide portable toilets, the protesters ordered (and paid for) their own. As state Sen. Leland Yee (not known as a crazy radical) noted after a visit Oct. 26: “While hundreds gathered, there was not one incident of violence. If the interim mayor thinks there are health issues, I certainly didn’t see them.”

3. The SF Mayor’s Office and the police have made no serious effort to work with or negotiate with the protesters. Even the five supervisors who arrived Oct. 26 (and good for them) when there were rumors of a police action, had no idea what the cops were up to — and Police Chief Greg Suhr wasn’t responding to their phone calls. It’s the equivalent of psychological warfare; protesters have to be on edge at all times for fear of a crackdown that may or may not come.

4. Mayor Jean Quan made a bad mistake sending in the cops to roust Occupy Oakland. Nothing good at all can come of any further police eviction action.

Frankly, we don’t see why the protesters — who are well-behaved, represent no threat to anyone, and are doing a huge civic and national service by bringing attention to an issue that the powers that be in Washington, Sacramento and (sadly) San Francisco have largely ignored — can’t stay where they are. If there are health issues, let the Department of Public Health work with the occupiers. If there’s a problem with a portable kitchen, let the Fire Department show the protesters how to run it safely and legally (there are portable cooking devices at every street fair, in dozens of food trucks and in probably 100 other places around town).

The people at OccupySF and Occupy Oakland have done an amazing job of building a safe, respectful and inclusive community. They are the political heros of 2011. If there’s anyplace in America where the movement ought to be allowed to grow and thrive, it’s here in the Bay Area.

Quan’s legal advisor: “Which side are we on?”

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee

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October 27, 2011

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Quan’s legal advisor: “Which side are we on?”

The scene in Oakland was calm and peaceful around 9 p.m. last night as some 2,000 occupiers met in the amphitheater outside Oakland City Hall at Frank Ogawa Plaza. In sharp contrast with the war zone-like scene the previous evening, police did not mobilize to try and put a stop to the massive and highly organized general assembly meeting. Protesters have vowed to reconvene at 14th and Broadway at 6 p.m. every single day to continue organizing using a consenus process.

The night before, police in riot formations threatened “serious injury” if protesters did not disperse and assailed them with projectiles and blasts of teargas. But spirits were high as a fence blocking Frank Ogawa Plaza came down and the occupiers regrouped in the square, which they’d renamed Oscar Grant Plaza.

According to some news reports, Oakland Mayor Jean Quan had a change of heart. “Clearly, a decision was made last night not to involve the police,” Attorney Dan Siegel, a legal advisor to Quan, told the Guardian.

“My sense of things is that the city as a whole made a conclusion that it did not want to have another confrontation with Occupy Oakland.” Siegel said that when he was at City Hall in the early evening Oct. 26, before the General Assembly got underway, he was challenged by protesters who were angered by police actions the night before. “I said I didn’t agree with the decision of the police to break up the encampment,” he explained.

“I thought the police overreacted and committed actions of improper violence.”

In the heat of the confrontation, he even said he would think about resigning as Quan’s legal advisor.

But Siegel added that he hoped Quan was coming around. “I’ve been trying to convince her and others that there’s a different paradigm at issue here,” he said.

Instead of focusing on inconveniences and city ordinances about camping overnight in public parks, he said, Oakland could be taking the perspective that “we are really in a situation of crisis in the United States … and the Occupy movement is a response to that. It is very likely to be a longstanding movement.”

He added that problems could be mitigated without involving police or using force. “As a city and as individuals, which side are we on?” Siegel said.

The Guardian sent messages to Quan’s office a short time ago to find out what the mayor’s intentions are regarding Occupy Oakland, whether instances of police violence are being investigated, and whether the city planned to meet with Occupy Oakland organizers. We haven’t yet heard back.

Fearless fences: What it feels like at OccupyOakland and OccupySF

Andrew Lam

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October 27, 2011

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Everybody needs to get down to their OccupyWhatever location. I’ve been watching the dire news from the get, but it wasn’t until I spent time at Oakland and San Francisco’s occupations that I understood the gravity of what we’re fighting for: permission to be here, in our country. Straight up, police are creating war zones in our downtowns.

Now, I didn’t see any actual brutality last night. That all went down on Tuesday, when Oakland police rained tear gas canisters and rubber bullets — which everyone by this point knows struck a veteran in the face and captured a person in a wheelchair in noxious clouds of gas.

But it still felt like a war. As Oakland occupiers broke down the fence that police had erected around the green space of Frank Ogawa Plaza, speakers taking turns in an open mic format in front of thousands as the operation was performed, the atmosphere was tense. Even once there was access to the grass, only a few people were brave enough to take back the park.

A woman on a bullhorn urged on her fellow protesters. “You’ve got to step on the grass. I’m absolutely terrified to be on this grass right now, but I’m out on this grass.”

Every few moments a new friend told me “the third or fourth time you get tear-gassed it doesn’t hurt anymore.” My buddy for the night and I were by turns invigorated and enervated by the way you couldn’t see a single police officer around Frank Ogawa — what the hell were they plotting?

Hours later, I was trying to ignore the corporate implications of the Subway sandwich I was housing at OccupySF (war zones can be tough to find wholesome snacks in, although I do have to give a shout-out to the heavenly creature walking around with a dog on a leash and trashbag full of popcorn last night). Hysterical laughter pealed out from a tent in front of me.

“Sorry, I’m getting a little hysterical,” said the young guy who emerged from the tent. He had on a necklace with long stones on it, not-so-raggedy hippie clothes. He looked blissed out, and felt like chatting.

“I’m just stoked, you know, that we even figure out the real estate issue! These people want to leave for a second to go do stuff and asked me to watch their tent in case the police got here. We even figured out real estate!” He started laughing again.

“That’s just the thing, y’know — we said we were going to be self-sustaining and we are. Which is great, because where am I going to go? I’m a young homeless man of color, I mean I get arrested just for being me.” He pauses, considering.

“People ask me to just go home — my mom will catch these little snippets of me on TV and be like,” he flaps his arms around his face, “My boy! My boy! Oh lawd, my boy! I’m like Mom I’m having a great time!”

Throughout the evening, people would spontaneously catch me in conversation. Stuff like “are you ready? Can you believe this?” Rebecca Solnit wrote a book on this thing, the way people come together in the face of adversity. The SFPD and OPD probably weren’t considering that this kind of bonding would take place in the hours that they delayed action on the camps, hours in which ominously few officers were visible at the scene of the camps save the helicopters that whirred over heads (oh hai, psychological warfare).

This is all to say, like I already said at the beginning of this piece, that if you are supporter of the Occupy movements, or even (especially) if you aren’t, you need to get your ass down to a public square and hang with the occupiers. It’s a great way to internalize what has become tragically salient throughout all of this: that if you’re fighting for the 99 percent in this country, you’re considered an enemy combatant. Let’s take this shit back, wanna?

Today a friend shared the OccupyOakland photo that is attached to this piece. After all the fear of the night before (the “fence drama” you can read about on my coworker Rebecca’s Twitter feed from last night), the fences had been stacked upon each other by protesters in a graceful approximation of a house of cards. It looks a lot prettier than explosions and gun-noises of the night before.

So I guess good things can happen in times of war — but this is our war and you need to forgo a night at home or at the bars to be a part of it.

How about Scott Olsen Plaza?

Zelda Bronstein

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October 27, 2011

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Occupy Oakland changed the name of Frank Ogawa Plaza; it’s time for OccupySF to do the same.

The place where the protesters are gathered is named for Justin Herman, the notorious director of San Francisco’s Redevelopment Agency in the terrible days of the 1950s and 1960s, when “redevelopment” meant removing black people from the Western Addition and removing poor people, particularly Filipinos, from South of Market and later the International Hotel. Herman once famously said that the SOMA land where he wanted to build hotels was “too valuable to permit poor people to park on it.”

In the 1960s, the battle against redevelopment was one of the defining political struggles in San Francisco, bringing Asians, African Americans, white progressives, young community organizers, affordable housing and tenant activists, poverty and civil rights lawyers … just about the whole spectrum of the city’s left. It’s been the subject of books and movies. The people who fought Justin Herman are part of a long political thread in San Francisco — as is OccupySF today.

I’ve always thought it was an abomination to have a downtown plaza named after a guy who did so much to destroy San Francisco. Maybe from now on we should all call it Scott Olsen Plaza.

How OccupySF thwarted a police raid

Zelda Bronstein

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October 27, 2011

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More than 1,000 people amassed at the OccupySF camp last night based on word that police would be raiding the camp. At 4:30 am, there were still 500 gathered in Justin Herman Plaza when OccupySF organizer Ryan Andreola finally announced: “We just got a report from an official police statement that the raid has been called off because there were not enough police for the number of people here,” as the crowd erupted in applause.

It was the end of what was for many protesters a long — and remarkably successful — day. Word began circulating of possible police altercation at 6 a.m. October 26, when police passed through the encampment handing out notices titled “You are subject to arrest,” which claimed that the protest was in violation of several city and state laws and had become a public health hazard.

On Oct 19, city officials had communicated to OccupySF that they would provide portable toilets, but a week later had not followed through; to deal immediately with public health concerns, protesters acquired them on their own.

Around 8:00, having received various tips and seen a document warning nearby businesses of police activity that night, OccupySF put out a call for supporters, saying police raid was confirmed. Justin Herman Plaza officially closes at 10 p.m., so protesters mobilized to be ready for an attack then.
At 9:00, hundreds of people were at the encampment and were meeting about tactics in case the raid occurred. For the next several hours, as hundreds more continued to pour into camp, supporters practiced formations to defend the camp and separate those who were willing to risk arrest from those who weren’t.

At 9:30, photos began circulating social media of scores of police in riot gear waiting with six muni buses near the police operations building in Potrero Hill. Many feared that they were gearing up to descend on Justin Herman Plaza.

Different groups, including a group of clergy, SF Labor Council representatives, a meditation circle and groups practicing blockade formations met throughout the camp. Drum circles continuously pounded, and the Brass Liberation Orchestra jammed throughout the night.

Nurses and medic volunteers distributed materials to protect from and relieve the effects of tear gas, and National Lawyers Guild volunteers scoured the camp making sure protesters had their legal hotline phone number. Talk of the violence and mass arrests at Occupy Oakland that had happened the past few days permeated the group.

The BART stations closest to the OccupySF and Oakland camps were closed last night due to “civil disturbance,” but many supporters still crossed the Bay to swell the OccupySF ranks.

At 10:00, between 500 and 600 people had gathered at the camp. Protesters danced to the constant music and chanted political cries to the beat: “This system has got to die, hella hella occupy!”

Others waited in defense formation around the camp. After spotting Supervisor John Avalos, many began imploring him to sit down in the ranks, which he did.

As the night went on, sightings of police with buses continued. Some protesters joked, “the police are on the way, but they’re taking Muni so it will be a few hours.”

At 12:40, though much of the camp’s kitchen supplies and food had been moved offsite, protesters continued to serve free food. A young man serving up salad and bread gestured to several cases of food, saying “this has all been donated within the last hour.”

At 1 a.m., the group had reached its peak numbers. All sides of Justin Herman Plaza were blocked by masses of people, who also spilled out into the street on Steuart and Market, attracting virtually all passers-by into the crowd. Organizers urged supporters to stay prepared, but as one woman emphasized on a bullhorn “Remember, 99 percent means we are all individuals. It’s your choice how you respond.”

At 1:30, an impromptu speak-out began as protesters, amplified by the Peoples Mic, explained who they were and why they were there that night. Ten minutes later the group decided to allow a makeshift press conference, giving a formal space for five city officials present to speak.

Supervisors John Avalos, Jane Kim, David Campos, David Chiu and Eric Mar, along with state Senator Leland Yee, professed their support for OccupySF and commitment to protecting it from raids. The group was met with mixed responses. Many cheered their support, and one woman said, “I’m from Oakland and I wish Oakland supervisors had done what San Francisco supervisors have done tonight.” Others were less receptive, crying “I don’t trust you!” and “remember, these are the same supervisors that helped pass sit-lie!”

After the politicians finished speaking at 2:00, many supporters left the camp. One man declared, “I’m glad they came, but they do not represent us.”
About 30 minutes later, new reports were coming in that police were massing at Treasure Island. Protesters surveyed their drastically reduced numbers, and voted on what new formations to practice. As the group discussed, drummers punctuated each point, keeping energy high.

Protesters organized new strategies, but by 3:38 there was still no sign of cops. Representatives of labor organizations began a spontaneous rally, speaking to why they supported OccupySF. Mentions of Occupy Oakland’s vote to call for a general strike on Wednesday November 2 circulated, and one labor rep recalled the 1934 general strike.

At 4 a.m., hundreds were still awake and prepared in the camp. Said protester Robert Duddy, “I’m tired. I stayed up last night until 5:30 after getting the notice that we might be evicted. I think they’re trying to wait us out and have our numbers dwindle.” Duddy added that he did not expect the police to show up that night.

Won-Yin Tang wasn’t convinced. “I won’t feel [that we’ve won] until 7 a.m. when they’re not waiting in riot gear anymore. We have to stay focused. When everyone leaves, that’s when they’ll come.”

At 4:30, the long-awaited announcement of victory came. The crowd cheered, and many headed to nearby Muni stations, now open for the morning. Said protester Sam Miller, waiting exhausted in Embarcadero Station, “Tonight was a great triumph of the human sprit. It was the middle class showing we can’t be beaten down anymore. We’re not the zombies that they think we are.”

Protester Sean Semans also celebrated. Said Semans, “We won tonight. Now we just have to sure, if we need to, we can do the same thing tomorrow.”
Staying up until 5 a.m. on weeknights is no easy call to action. But it seems thousands throughout the Bay Area are willing to step up to the plate.