Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I’m sure you banged some questionable people yourself.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

The GOP is a fucking disgrace.

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

Joe Lieberman disappointingly reemerged to remind us that he’s still alive.

Republicans choose power over democracy, every day.

The willow is too close to the house.

Not all heroes wear capes.

Innocent people don’t delay justice.

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

Conservatism: there are some people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

White supremacy is terrorism.

It’s easy to sit in safety and prescribe what other people should be doing.

Let there be snark.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

A consequence of cucumbers

You are here: Home / In Ireland, in Lebanon, in Palestine and Berkeley

In Ireland, in Lebanon, in Palestine and Berkeley

by | 103 Comments

This post is in: 

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.

Reader Interactions

103Comments

  2. 2.

    Reality Check

    TAKE IT TO TEH STREETZ, maaaaaan!

    Fucking aging boomer morons still stuck in the Sixties.

  5. 5.

    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.

  7. 7.

    Reality Check

    Oakland teachers take off work, students stay

    But remember–public school teachers do it all for The Children ™.

  11. 11.

    Villago Delenda Est

    Reality Check is van Owen.

    Pass it on.

    You’ll find him in Mombassa, in a bar room drinking gin.

  12. 12.

    Chyron HR

    @Reality Check:

    Fucking aging boomer morons still stuck in the Sixties! That’s why we lost Vietnam! Up with John McCain, down with Laugh-In! I don’t like the looks of that Donovan guy, neither!

    Does AARP give you a discount on onions to tie to your belt?

  13. 13.

    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.)

  15. 15.

    mpbruss

    A large U.S. city may actually have something approximating a general strike. Did anybody see that coming?

  16. 16.

    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.

  18. 18.

    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.

  19. 19.

    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.

  24. 24.

    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).

  27. 27.

    Brian R.

    I, for one, love Reality Check’s posts. You can practically hear him stamping his angry little feet. It. Is. ADORABLE!

  28. 28.

    srv

    No helicopters over SF, so nothing going on here.

    indybay.org will probably have pictures after noon.

    kpfa.org is broadcasting it

  30. 30.

    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?

  31. 31.

    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.

  32. 32.

    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.

  33. 33.

    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.

  34. 34.

    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.

  36. 36.

    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.

  38. 38.

    Mino

    Baby steps, people. Yesterday all I heard was “it can’t be done without weeks of organizing”. Well, maybe so/maybe not.

  39. 39.

    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.

  40. 40.

    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?

  42. 42.

    Yevgraf

    @eemom:

    Bonus trivia question: how many on this thread are old enough to know what I’m talking about?

    Regretfully, me. I was in middle school.

  43. 43.

    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.

  44. 44.

    Linnaeus

    @eemom:

    Bonus trivia question: how many on this thread are old enough to know what I’m talking about?

    I was alive then, but too young to know what was going on at the time. I’ve learned since then.

  46. 46.

    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.

  47. 47.

    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.

  50. 50.

    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”

  51. 51.

    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.

  54. 54.

    kindness

    Well the pictures tell the story. No Thompsons in either image. Thanks for clearing that up Velago Delenda Est.

    My bad.

  56. 56.

    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.

  58. 58.

    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.

  60. 60.

    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.

  62. 62.

    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.

  63. 63.

    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.

  65. 65.

    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.

  66. 66.

    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.

  67. 67.

    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.

  68. 68.

    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.

  69. 69.

    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.

  71. 71.

    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.

  72. 72.

    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.

  73. 73.

    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!

  74. 74.

    Yutsano

    There was a random bankstah sign crossing Union on 5th in downtown Seattle this morning. Might be something happening today.

  77. 77.

    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…

  78. 78.

    scav

    @Yutsano:

    random bankstah sign crossing Union on 5th

    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.

  79. 79.

    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.

  83. 83.

    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

  86. 86.

    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.

  87. 87.

    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.

  90. 90.

    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.

  91. 91.

    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.

  95. 95.

    Poopyman

    @kindness:

    Good for our side.

    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”

  97. 97.

    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.

  98. 98.

    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

  100. 100.

    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.

  101. 101.

    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:

    2:45 p.m. Whole Foods-fight – As marchers approached the Whole Foods Market near Lake Merritt, a small group of people in black infiltrated the group, smashing the windows and throwing paint at the store. Other demonstrators who had marched to Whole Foods enveloped the agitators, forcing them to stop. Fist-fights broke out. No one went inside; the store closed before the crowd arrived. After the incident, the crowd continued to move down Grand Avenue. Protesters on Twitter appear to be trying to find the people responsible for the vandalism.

  103. 103.

    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.

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