If any of you live in the East Bay, let us know in the comments how this is developing:
After Oakland emerged as a new center for the Occupy Wall Street movement — largely because an Iraq war veteran was seriously injured in a clash with police — local protest leaders decided on a tactic with a storied history in the city: a general strike.
The strike, scheduled for Wednesday, aims to disrupt commerce, with a special focus on banks and other symbols of corporate America. Protesters will also try to shut the city’s port, one of the nation’s largest, in the late afternoon.
Local labor leaders, although generally sympathetic to the Occupy movement, say their contracts prohibit them from proclaiming an official strike. City officials say government offices are scheduled to be open; it’s unclear whether many businesses will heed the call to close down for the day.
What’s a good place to follow this? I lived there many years ago, but the relevant outlets have probably changed.
Chyron HR
Hey, I recongnized one. About fucking time.
Reality Check
TAKE IT TO TEH STREETZ, maaaaaan!
Fucking aging boomer morons still stuck in the Sixties.
Brachiator
Might as well go local:
City gears up for general strike, which could bring thousands to downtown Oakland
and
Oakland teachers take off work, students stay
eemom
Roland was the best.
Steve
I don’t think a general strike is good PR in the middle of an economic downturn. But I doubt this is going to have any more effect than all those chain emails that encourage you not to buy gas next Friday in order to send a message to the oil companies.
JPL
The Guardian has a live blog..
Reality Check
But remember–public school teachers do it all for The Children ™.
bourbaki
@Steve: Uh why?
You do realize how militant labor was during the great depression don’t you?
Chyron HR
@Reality Check:
Looks like you Waffle House Patriots have a new public enemy #1.
Villago Delenda Est
“That son of a bitch van Owen, blew off Roland’s head!”
Villago Delenda Est
Reality Check is van Owen.
Pass it on.
You’ll find him in Mombassa, in a bar room drinking gin.
Chyron HR
@Reality Check:
Does AARP give you a discount on onions to tie to your belt?
Mnemosyne
I have to say, the more hysterical the right becomes about OWS, the more I think that OWS is on the right track, even if they are dirty fucking hippies.
(Let’s face it, we’re talking about Oakland — the proportion of actual real-life DFH’s is going to be quite high when compared to other cities.)
(Edited for pronoun trouble.)
jl
Was going to say the Guardian blog, but comment 6 beat me to it.
KCBS radio has been good about getting reporters on scene quick for live reports. This morning they had a few stationed around the port and likely hot spots downtown. You can listen over the internet.
http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/station/kcbs/
mpbruss
A large U.S. city may actually have something approximating a general strike. Did anybody see that coming?
jl
Love them Waffle House waffles, but always sensed it was a sketchy place, where violent revolutionists would hang out and plot against common decency.
PTirebiter
Patty Hearst heard the burst in Oakland?
jl
@mpbruss: In SF and Oakland, something like that would come along sooner or later. Part of the murals at Coit Tower commemorates a big one that happened in the 30s. It’s a commie mural, disliked by right thinking people.
I was surprised how soon it came up, though.
different-church-lady
@Chyron HR: check in tomorrow, when instead of aging boomers it will be a bunch of lazy, dirty 20-somethings just out of college that are the problem.
Yevgraf
Patty Hearst, heard the burst, of Roland’s Thompson gun…
…And bought it….
agrippa
@Reality Check: TAKE IT TO TEH STREETZ, maaaaaan!
Fucking aging boomer morons still stuck in the Sixties.
epic fail, keyboard commando!
WeeBey
He found him in Mombassa, in a barroom drinking gin.
agrippa
@Reality Check:
But remember—public school teachers do it all for The Children™.
the keyboard commando fails sarcasm school.
Bubblegum Tate
I live in Oakland, but I went to work today. I know, shame on me. But I’m pretty cynical about what this strike will actually accomplish (I view it as analogous to those utterly pointless “don’t buy gas on Friday–stick it to the oil companies!” things), and I feel like shutting down the port is extremely counterproductive.
Plus, having lived here for a while now, I’m kind of over the non-stop protesting that happens here, even when I’m sympathetic to the general thrust of the protest (as I am here).
agrippa
I was expecting this; and, it taking place in Oakland is no surprise.
eemom
Why DID Zevon put Patty Hearst in that song?
Brian R.
I, for one, love Reality Check’s posts. You can practically hear him stamping his angry little feet. It. Is. ADORABLE!
srv
No helicopters over SF, so nothing going on here.
indybay.org will probably have pictures after noon.
kpfa.org is broadcasting it
Origuy
The East Bay Express, the local alt-weekly, has several blogs covering it.
pete
@eemom: Good question. I always viewed it as a comment on the romanticization of violence, as a contributory factor to Patty’s Stockholm syndrome. Did Warren ever say?
goblue72
I live a few blocks from ground zero of the Occcupy Oakland events. I didn’t notice all that much this morning on my way to work in SF. As much as I respect (as a transit commuter) them calling off occupying the BART stations, I think they should have – disruption is part of the effectiveness of a General Strike – you kinda gotta make people feel some discomfort and pain in order to be effective. I hate to say it, but nobody gave a sh$t about Oscar Grant until they set the city on fire.
ruemara
public workers have a no strike clause in their contracts. At least, in california. However, we can all get very ill at the same time, probably due to air currents. I’ve always felt that what this country needs is a good old public worker strike that’s nationwide. Good on Oakland, I wish them the best.
cleek
this Oakland thing is over the top.
an explicit anti-capitalism and “anti-colonialism” message, along with Soviet-style poster imagery is just not going to play well outside of the 1% who make up the fringey far-left.
complaints about how the top 1% are playing by different rules resonate. complaints that white men are ruling CA as colonializers will not resonate.
cathyx
Here is where Reality Check gets his information:
Republican For Dummies: A Translation Guide
This site won’t let me link it, but if you google it, you can read everything he has been saying.
Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937
live blog from ‘Inside Bay Area’
also
Veterans Are Marching On Wall Street today.
Violet
@cleek:
Dunno….it’s been 25 years since the Berlin Wall fell and a lot of people don’t have much of a feeling for the Soviet era one way or another. If anything, it’s kind of cool and fashionable.
cleek
@Violet:
among kids who are too young to have real memories of the Soviet era, sure.
Mino
Baby steps, people. Yesterday all I heard was “it can’t be done without weeks of organizing”. Well, maybe so/maybe not.
kindness
Oakland… they have the streets blocked off around the Civic Center. It’s pretty quiet around us here (about 5 blocks north of Civic Center). I see a few groups of people with signs wandering around where we are. There seems to be a crowd down at the Civic Center though. They were out in the street on Broadway. You can hear helicopters overhead. Didn’t look to see if they were News, Police or black helicopters (look out it’s the UN invading!). Lots of security folks on the corners all looking to see if hordes of DFHs make their way up here.
The Occupy Oakland folk are cool. They’re peacable and seem to be trying to keep it that way. It’s tough though. There’s always a few anarchists who like any excuse to do dumb stuff. We’ll see how it pans out.
eemom
@pete:
did a bit o’ googling just now: apparently Hearst used a Thompson gun in a robbery after she supposedly joined her kidnappers, the SLA.
Bonus trivia question: how many on this thread are old enough to know what I’m talking about?
Mino
She held a Thompson during a robbery.
Yevgraf
@eemom:
Regretfully, me. I was in middle school.
Violet
@cleek:
Well that includes anyone younger than, say 35, since they were ten when the wall fell. Maybe even 40, since most kids at age 15 are (were) probably not paying much attention to world politics.
Linnaeus
@eemom:
I was alive then, but too young to know what was going on at the time. I’ve learned since then.
MikeJ
@eemom: Camper Van are old enough.
Villago Delenda Est
@eemom:
There’s a pretty famous picture of “Tania”, wearing a beret(!) and holding a weapon of some sort (not sure if it was an actual Thompson gun, might have been a grease gun (if you were ever in the Army, you know the one I’m talking about, and hey, it’s for image, for the love of Remington) at an SLA hold up of some bank branch somewhere in the Bay area.
kindness
@Mino: no she didn’t. She held a Thompson in her SLA picture. During the robbery she had some automatic with a banana clip. You can’t hide a Thompson under your overcoat. Thompson’s have round drum clips not banana clips.
Southern Beale
6 Democratic Senators introduce legislation to overturn Citizens United.
Villago Delenda Est
Here we go, linkies to fun photos!
Patty Hearst posing in front of a SLA banner
Here’s the photo from the Hibernia bank heist
The Other Chuck
@kindness:
Actually, Thompsons could take box magazines too, and there’s pics on wikipedia of both configurations. I think the box magazine was always straight tho, not a “banana clip”
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@eemom: Worse that that. I not only know what you’re talking about but can correct teh google on the topic. She held a Thompson for her famous SLA photo. In the actual bank robbery she carried a more contemporary weapon, no doubt for relative ease of concealment.
Villago Delenda Est
@Southern Beale:
I’m happy to say that my man Merkley is in on this one.
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): Steven Weed
kindness
Well the pictures tell the story. No Thompsons in either image. Thanks for clearing that up Velago Delenda Est.
My bad.
Villago Delenda Est
@Brian R.:
They’re widdle feet. Need that for the full monty on this one.
pete
@Villago Delenda Est: Thanks all!
Yes, I am old enough to remember the SLA, and to have thought the beret was pretty cool. I always had a lot of sympathy with Patty, who is 5 years younger than me. But I never knew nothing about no guns. So, if what she posed holding was a Thompson gun, then I’d say my original speculation holds up pretty well.
Linda Featheringill
@eemom: #40
Absolutely.
But then, on some days I’m older than dirt. :-)
HG Hay
@eemom: I’m not old enough to remember them from real life, but I do know about Patty and the SLA thanks to John Waters.
catclub
@Violet: Why is 1989 25 years ago? Was the Kennedy assassination 50 years ago?
trollhattan
Me, I’d monitor things from Zachary’s on College Ave but I’ve decided to stay away from Oakland and Oakland’s finest for the time being.
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
Know who Joseph Remiro is?
Villago Delenda Est
@kindness:
“Thompson gun” is kinda generic slang for “machine gun”, but there is a specific weapon that is a Thompson submachine gun which is most closely associated with prohibition gangsters and 30’s bankrobbing outlaws like John Dillinger.
Patty’s not brandishing a Tommy Gun (or a “Chicago Piano”, for that matter) in the photo, but some other submachine gun.
Technically, machine guns are crew served weapons (require a gunner and an ammo feeder) while submachine guns are designed to provide automatic fire for an individual.
Poopyman
@eemom: My roommate and I were sophomores and had just came back from the dining hall and turned on the radio. What we first thought was a (bad) radio play turned out to be the live broadcast from the shootout.
Fun times, the mid-70s.
Joel
Related to the Google talk discussed earlier…
Poopyman
@catclub: Gettin’ there! And then when they unseal the Warren Commission papers nobody will really care ’cause politics are really poisoned now to the point that whatever the WC concluded won’t shock anybody.
JC
@Bubblegum Tate:
I feel similar, in a lot of ways. The issue is, Oakland proper, SF proper, is not ‘THE MAN’, in this case. Is not the problem.
Like in the 50’s, you protested the businesses that WERE DISCRIMINATORY.
So too, now, I would join a protest that camped out in Wells Fargo corporate, but SF and Oakland proper, are not the villians here.
Now, the Oakland general strike as a means to protest the thuggish police tactics? That I understand.
Villago Delenda Est
@cleek:
The propaganda of the old Soviet Union did all the right things, even if the reality was totally different than the idealism of the propaganda.
It’s like how the analysis of Das Kapital is pretty good, even if the proposed solution is really heavy on the entire underpants gnome meme.
Comrade Colette Collaboratrice
I work in Oakland about two blocks from Frank Ogawa Plaza but didn’t go in this morning. I absolutely have to be back home in SF tonight and didn’t want to take a chance on getting stuck if BART is disrupted. As for the protest/march – I’m torn. I support OWS and would have liked to participate in the march, but as several others have noted, there’s a small but significant local contingent of self-proclaimed anarchists who are determined to make everything go to shit. They’re there – I recognized a couple of them on the news coverage this morning. If I saw one of those little pricks getting out of control, I’d probably get into a fight, and I’m too old for that. Also, selfishly, I’m really, REALLY tired of having helicopters hovering outside my office window all damned day, every day. So, kids, lawn, etc.
And that song makes me smile (grimly) and run a little faster every time it comes on my iPod.
Joel
@cleek: while I agree, I can only say: “It takes all kinds”. Refer to the John Oliver piece on the Daily Show from last week or so.
Linda Featheringill
@Villago Delenda Est: #67
Not all the posters are Soviet-era in style.
http://www.occupyoakland.org
[I like the wild cat. :-)]
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
@Villago Delenda Est: I remember when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan and the old line commies in Champaign-Urbana paraded around with signs that said “Hail the Red Army, Smash Islamic Resistance” in front of the union.
scav
@eemom: Barely. Out for dinner, TV on wall with something live, that really bad 70s panelling behind it. Chinese food. drat being in one of those cuspy generations. Can’t participate fully in all the really good memories.
Richard W. Crews
A strike can be targetted; let’s have a week where we all go to Bank Of America, make accounts with a few dollars in them, then write and cash checks to each other of a dime or so, use all the free checks and all their time! Get 30 people in line to cash a 10cent check.
Gp to an Exxopn gas station, put down a $20, wash the windows, buy a qurrters worth of gas, get back change, then repeat.
Plug them up for a point!
Yutsano
There was a random bankstah sign crossing Union on 5th in downtown Seattle this morning. Might be something happening today.
NobodySpecial
@Villago Delenda Est: Don’t mind cleek, he’s getting his reasonable Democrat on.
Villago Delenda Est
@Raven (formerly stuckinred):
Well, they’ve got a lot in common with Pam Geller, then!
Comrade Colette Collaboratrice
@eemom: Oh, big time. Live coverage of the SLA shootout/fire in LA is one of the most horrifying memories of my teen years. It wasn’t known at the time whether Hearst was in the house, but knowing that people – however evil – were being burned to death before my eyes…
scav
@Yutsano:
I’m getting a rather pleasurable vision of an anti-little-green walking man here: Little green guy in spats flashing “Accelerate” or “Aim Here” or “Super Bonus Round” in any order. Probably not what you mean, sigh.
some guy
the Black Cat is an homage to the Wobblies, who perfected the art of the general strike. Google “IWW Black Cat” for examples.
xian
http://oaklandlocal.com/
some guy
@Raven (formerly stuckinred):
so how did that work out in the end? oh right, Our Man Bin Laden.
catclub
@Villago Delenda Est: Huh.
makes sense.
So a marine needs help swimming but a submarine can swim on its own.
David in NY
@Southern Beale: “overturn Citizens United”
They can overturn the First Amendment? Seriously, how’s that gonna work. Oh, I know, I could click the link.
Ed: Oh, I did click the link. It’s not just “legislation” they’re introducing to overturn CU. It’s a “constitutional amendment.”
Well, good luck
different-church-lady
@Richard W. Crews: Yeah. Okay. That’ll lead to change alright.
Poopyman
@catclub: … And a Supermarine can fly!
David in NY
@catclub: “Why is 1989 25 years ago?”
I’ve been asking my wife to stop this odd phenomenon for several decades now, but she just ignores me.
Nemesis
And here I am thinking Im all cool and plugged-in and shit because I know the song and the artist, but damn people, I got nuttin’ on you folks when it comes to ancient tuneage.
cleek
@NobodySpecial:
oops. sorry.
BURN IT ALL DOWN!
better?
NobodySpecial
@cleek: Nah, we know you’ll never mean it in your heart. Don’t bother.
kindness
OK, just got back from the Civic Center Plaza. Passed a large contingent marching down Franklin St as I was going down there. Looks like they are gathering in front of the banks (BofA has a branch at 19th & Harrison). Everyone was really peaceful. Down at the Civic Center they are taking turns speaking but it all seems positive. No one is saying kill anyone. Big cross section of folks. Old people, kids, lotta boomers. But real nice. No angst & the cops are being very cool. Blocking off the streets for the marchers as they go. Some folk talking smack about the cops but most are reminding people they are on our side, other than what happened last week & the cops are acting the part. I’d say there were about 1,000 people but since they were so scattered about it’s hard for me to say exactly.
Fox will try to make this ugly but I don’t see how they’ll be able to do it.
Good for our side.
Steve
@Southern Beale: They couldn’t even manage to overcome a filibuster on the DISCLOSE Act, which is a mere statute, so a constitutional amendment is pretty obvious showboating.
Southern Beale
@Steve:
You never know. If they didn’t there’s be all of this whining about “WHY AREN’T THE DEMS DOING ANYTHING!!!!”
It’s a fucking start.
cleek
@NobodySpecial:
whew.
Villago Delenda Est
@Nemesis:
Of all the Thompson gunners, Roland was the best
Poopyman
@kindness:
What a field day for the heat
A thousand people standing in the street
Singing songs and carrying the signs, oh no
They mostly say “hooray for our side”
kindness
Stop Children, What’s that sound?
Everybody look what’s goin’ down….
yea.
Violet
@catclub:
Okay, I got it wrong. It’s 22 years ago. Pretty close, and for the arguments I was making, still fairly applicable. There are a lot of people who have no memory of the Soviet Union, and a lot more who have hazy memories of it. The numbers of folks who will be freaked out by Soviet-style fonts and drawings on posters is getting smaller every day.
goblue72
@kindness: Its CITY CENTER where all the shops are, and Frank Ogawa Plaza in front of City Hall. But it is NOT “Civic Center”. Civic Center is in San Francisco. #crotchetyoaklander
David in NY
@Southern Beale: I was sort of glad to see somebody’s proposed an amendment. Now I’ll have to read it.
kindness
@goblue72: Thanks for the correction. I went to the place with all the City, State & Federal buildings at 14th & Broadway.
You may want to get your caplock key checked. It seems to be acting up.
Joe Max
The Mercury News has a live blog running:
http://www.mercurynews.com/occupy-oakland/ci_19247016?source=rss
The crowd is doing a good job of trying to keep a lid on the anarchist assholes:
goblue72
@kindness: THIS IS AN ABUSE OF THE CAPS LOCK.
THIS is not.
Douche.
ChrisNYC
This site has livestreams from all of the Occupys.
http://www.occupystreams.org/
This site is for the NYC general assembly.
http://www.nycga.net/
Just a note — the anarchists are not “infiltrators” — they are a huge part of the movement. OWS calls them “provacateurs” when that’s convenient but they are a lot of the organizers.