The neighbors three doors down are doing some semi-major renovations on the house and the weekdays are filled with its noise: a hammer pounding, a power-saw whining, and this morning the snap of a roofing gun as shingling is attached. Mostly not intrusive, and I can’t see the workers for the vegetation in the way so it’s all good back here in my quiet little corner of Oakland. Actually it’s better than good: I like knowing people are around, and busily at work. Some places I’ve lived in this city the only sound you heard during the day was the rattling of shopping carts filled with empty cans as the neighborhood derelicts made their daily rounds of the dumpsters on the block.
It was a lot noisier over the weekend, Saturday especially, and most of the noise came from helicopters circling overhead. Occupy Oakland at it again, in other words, also in a semi-major way. It’s already been covered to death in both the mainstream media and the independent so I won’t bore you with details (though this first-hand account is a welcome alternative to the story being repeated ad nauseum by the regular news noise machine and this covers the difficulty of getting a story out at all for some journalists). Hell, by now you may have as many of those details as me, and I was there for part of the day.
Participating in an OO march wasn’t part of the plan when I left the house that morning. Having breakfast at Aunt Mary’s and working on The Novel at the coffeehouse across the street was, and that was about the extent of it. But I made good progress with the writing, 2100 words in a little over two hours, and when noon rolled around and I was all noveled-out but not ready to head home yet I stood outside on Telegraph, considered what an absolutely spectacular day it was (I apparently had to choose the only day all week that wasn’t beautiful to go to Point Reyes), and contemplated my options until I remembered the flyers I’d been seeing on the poles: something about a Move-In Day March where OO claimed it would occupy a vacant building that would become the movement’s hq and/or social center. Hmmm – dubious but still worth a look. It certainly had to be better than spending the rest of the day indoors, as I knew I’d do otherwise.
So a little while after that I was at 14th and Broadway watching the crowd boil out into the intersection. (OK, more than a little while since the protest was already snarling bus service and I waited more than a half-hour in the Temescal for a #1 to arrive. I could have gotten there faster walking but since I hadn’t planned on marching I left my hiking boots at home.) And a little while after that the fun began and it didn’t let up the rest of the day.
For others, that is. I lasted all of about three hours and when I arrived home around 4PM I was footsore, exhausted, mildly dehydrated, and fed up. Disgusted by some of what I’d experienced: people tearing down fences for no apparent reason at all, way too much “fuck the police” invective, the OPD’s predictable overreaction, the general aimlessness of it all. Occupy the Kaiser Auditorium grounds? What the hell were they thinking? Some foreclosed house somewhere – yeah, that would have been within the day’s reach. It would have made a positive statement consistent with the Occupy movement’s goals. The Kaiser, though, had little value but sheer provocation.
So, OO provoked and the OPD reacted and we got another chapter in the nice little dance that stands in for reasonable protest in this city. Argh. “Disgusted” just about sums it up for me two days later as well.
I mostly stayed out of harm’s way and on the march’s fringe: partially because that’s my style anyway, and partially because I didn’t want to risk arrest and possible physical abuse while carrying a 15-lb. daypack containing my laptop and all kinds of other things I couldn’t replace if lost, stolen or damaged. As it was I got shoved around a little anyway; stopped to turn and watch one of the first arrests, one of the foot escorts for Larry The Bus on the march’s trailing edge, and a cop grabbed me by my shoulders and pushed me not very gently in the direction I was supposed to keep going. I didn’t fuss about it, but after that I made good and sure to stay outside the police cordon. Not 8 blocks into the march and it was already evident the OPD wasn’t going to be fooling around this time.
After that I also got out my Flip and kept it on almost until the recording time ran out, fixed mostly on the police in case something happened – you can never have too many cameras in such circumstances, as last fall amply proved. When I got to the Kaiser I filmed protestors instead; everybody gets their turn on camera as far as I’m concerned, even if I plan on never making the footage public. In the end it just isn’t that interesting.
(Not even the wild-eyed long-hair who sat cross-legged facing the police line at 10th and Fallon chanting “boingboingboing” high-pitched. He was flat-out weird and it wouldn’t surprise me at all if he was later involved in the flag-burning.)
What I most wish after what I witnessed Saturday is for someone - me, if it comes to it - to form a group of concerned Oakland residents to act as adults at these marches: to call out the vandals and the provocateurs and expose them to the rest of the crowd for what they are, which is jerks who fuck up the Occupy movement for those of us who’d see it do something besides get scornful headlines. The fence-busters I saw at the Kaiser were mostly little cowards in black masks who hugged each other like they’d achieved something worth celebrating; I wanted to take them over my knee for a good spanking. The movement has to police itself and slowly, steadily, cut the OPD out of the loop. I hope others see the need for this too, but if so I haven’t heard much about it to date.
That’s what I’m thinking today, anyway. Thank god for the quiet that makes it possible.
[Addendum 1/31: This sums up my disgruntlement best of all so far.]
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