EXCERPT (via Aletho News):
Who Occupies Oakland?
The order of the day is to decolonize, transform, and liberate Oakland. This means being real about who actually occupies Oakland. Politically, economically, discursively, militarily – the Oakland police run this town. At one point Tuesday morning a phalanx of riot cops blocked us from the scores of other cops tearing down free schools, medical clinics, a kitchen, dozens of tents, our abandoned barricades – a whole mini-township and community that had been built over the last two weeks. A young protester yelled at the police line that they had brought a ‘fascist police state’ to the city. The truth is that all that happened was a geographical redeployment of an already existing militarized police force from the Deep East, Fruitvale, and West Oakland into downtown for the night. What the racially and politically diverse Occupy Oakland encampment faced in the early hours of the morning was a glimmer of the daily, lived experience of black and brown working class people in this city. From racial profiling gang injunctions to recently fast-tracked curfews, and ongoing killings of unarmed black men, there has been a police state here for many years – that means more than evictions, but life and death.
Oakland has long been occupied by a police force that lives largely elsewhere, in comfortable suburban homes bought and furnished by exorbitant salaries that start at $90,000 per year, for rookies, before overtime. The police are not part of the 99% – that goes without saying. They are obviously not in the top 1% of earners either, no matter how hard their Chief and union have been trying to get them there. Furthermore, the whole ‘99%’ language glosses over contradictions, erases oppression and paralyzes us, in a similar sense that consensus does. While we shouldn’t shun populism, we erase and reproduce a whole lot of inequality by using this frame. While the percentage may not be 99%, most of the people who live in this city not only want change – they need it. The first part of destroying inequality is shedding light on it. The first step to undermining it is recognizing privilege and oppression in a way that builds solidarity and trust through engaged political work all over the city. That work has begun and will continue.
From Speaking Truth to Power, to Becoming Our Own Power
We are in the initial stages of what will be a long series of struggles. We shouldn’t be wedded to any static plan or draw from outdated blueprints or de-contextualized (or unintelligible) theories. The inequalities we seek to destroy are primarily political – about power and self-determination – or the lack thereof. The general sentiment of the Occupy movement is about transcending existing political institutions, about ridding ourselves of politicians, not replacing them. I think that those of us who hadn’t come to the conclusion already are beginning to see that speaking truth to power is not a strategy, or even a logical impulse.
The movement from the occupation of public parks to the occupation of private property, workplaces, universities, shuttered public schools in many cities, foreclosed homes, etc. is a likely scenario in the coming months. Tactical escalation will necessitate political and organizational development to broaden our bases and begin to gain the active and engaged support of larger and larger segments of the broader society. The movement needs to align itself with the struggles of the most oppressed – making issues like police brutality and occupation in communities of color, persecution of immigrants and acute joblessness central – while also linking with university student struggles over fees, student loans, and cuts, and with workers inside and outside of workplaces. The State’s biggest fear is the coalescing of these populations and the existing movements around these issues. We saw this in the non-profit/police/media/politician mantra of outside agitators when anarchists joined the Oscar Grant struggle. Their biggest fear is in our solidarity, in our collaboration and potential cohesion. We need to figure a way to be their waking, spreading, ever-present nightmare.
The idea that 99% of the population in this country is going to support a just social order, here and now, is more than a little naive, but believing that simple protest and activism alone will transform this society is even more naive. We need to build our own political structures and our own politics, rooted in participatory and accountable democratic processes at the local level.
I am not proposing a vanguard party or even a platform. I am simply trying to push the conversation. We shouldn’t misread the Zapatista call to ‘make the road by walking it’ as being synonymous with the old deadhead slogan ‘Not all who wander are lost.’ We don’t have to march in line, but we don’t have time to wander.
If we, in fact, ‘want everything,’ lets figure out how to get it. And then get on with getting it.
Mike King is a PhD candidate at UC–Santa Cruz and East Bay activist. He can be reached at mking(at)ucsc.edu
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