Some questions and comments about Occupy Oakland Questions:

Is it better now? 
Is the area around city hall safer? Cleaner? Is business back up? Are there less homeless at 14^th and B-way? 

 

What was the cooperation about? Was it nation wide?  Why?  
If this was a local sanitation and public safety issue, then why did we need to coordinate with so many other mayors and have all those raids in the same week?  Why were the billionaire mayor of New York and our “progressive” mayor Quan saying the exact same things?  Was it the exact same situation?  Or did we prep the exact same talking points? 

Who are those folk who come and throw bricks? 
Why was this allowed to happen the evening of the general strike?  This is the second major time this has happened.  The other was the Oscar Grant protests.  Are we investigating these instigators of violence or making use of them to justify shutting down protests we do not like?  

What is Mayor Quan doing about the problems of the 99%?  
Has the City of Oakland done anything about the foreclosures?  Have they even asked or tried?   Are we holding the banks we do business with up to any accountability?  Do we rate them for their ethical practices?  Are we getting any of the redevelopment or stimulus money to directly aid common people?  

Comments: 

If there was no violence at the second raid, it was thanks only to the protestors.

Nancy Nadel, council member for District 3, warned the public that this second raid was going to take place.  The police came again in the dead of night armed for a confrontation.  The protestors had already cleared the tents and were standing on the other side of the cordon.  The only people arrested were from a meditation group and the interfaith taskforce and it was a peaceful act of civil disobedience.  Other than that there was one Native American in a tree. 

When Jean Quan and other city officials went through the camp holding their noses at the filth, what they were really doing was walking through abandoned tents and left behind garbage.  Now, compare these verifiable facts with what you were told in the media.  

Occupy is a popular movement with popular support.  ; there are nearly 1400 protests in the USA. 

 
Tens of thousands of local people came out to support the Occupy Oakland General Strike.  Hundreds, and at times thousands of people have been in the plaza.  Thousands came to protest the West Coast Ports.  People come to the plaza with workshops, theatre, a mobile library, a children’s tent and much more. The original group of young people have been joined by older activists, and the movement is very multi ethnic and growing.  There was a bailout of the banks and Wall Street but no help for the mortgage holders and Main Street. There is a tax holiday for the rich and cutbacks for the rest.  Strong opposition to the economic injustice in our country is taking place for good reasons.

Your neighbor, Green Party activist and Occupy Oakland Supporter, Don Macleay