That night – after the dance party at the intersection of Broadway & 14th, and before the police raid that ended in violence – there was an attempt to occupy an abandoned building.  I followed the crowd down Broadway after some folks dressed in black announced that “A Vacant Building Has Been Occupied!”.

After the building at 520 16th St. was stormed and a swarm of people trounced around and, occupied it, a crowd gathered outside.  I was standing next to the guy with the megaphone and captured his speech in several parts.  This first part, which I call “To Seize This Crisis,” is below.

We are moving to meet our immediate needs.

We are reclaiming space that has been unused, and used against us.

That’s empty while we sleep outdoors. While we cook and organize and struggle outdoors.

We open this building in this moment of crisis. In our moment. To continue our occupations. To continue our struggles.

To seize this crisis, and make a new world, in which everything belongs to everybody.

 

 

There’s something happening here
What it is ain’t exactly clear
There’s a man with a gun over there
Telling me I got to beware
I think it’s time we stop, children, what’s that sound
Everybody look what’s going down
There’s battle lines being drawn
Nobody’s right if everybody’s wrong
Young people speaking their minds
Getting so much resistance from behind
I think it’s time we stop, hey, what’s that sound
Everybody look what’s going down
What a field-day for the heat
A thousand people in the street
Singing songs and carrying signs
Mostly say, hooray for our side
It’s time we stop, hey, what’s that sound
Everybody look what’s going down
Paranoia strikes deep
Into your life it will creep
It starts when you’re always afraid
You step out of line, the man come and take you away
We better stop, hey, what’s that sound
Everybody look what’s going down
Stop, hey, what’s that sound
Everybody look what’s going down
Stop, now, what’s that sound
Everybody look what’s going down
Stop, children, what’s that sound
Everybody look what’s going down

After winding up in midnight clashes with riot police, the victory of yesterday was soiled with violent images in the morning news.  The peaceful demonstrations that successfully shut down the Port of Oakland have been marred by the more sensational news that happened after dark.

This will be the first in a series about the #OccupyOakland #GeneralStrike After Party on Nov. 2.   Please excuse my going through it deliberatively and step-by-step, in the hope of making sense of how a massive civil protest ended its historic day as a petty revolt.

After raising a huge banner with the word “Revolt” right in the middle of the party, some people started chanting that they had occupied a building.  Scattered amidst the crowd wearing black from shoes to ski-masks, they urged everyone to head up to 16th St. to take over the abandoned space. 

“Take a left. Take a left on 16th.”

“A building has been occupied. A vacant building has been occupied.”

“We’re going to go join it right now. It’s a building nearby.”

“Is it 16th & Broadway? What is it?”

“You’ll See”

These contemporary agitators often call themselves Black Bloc – though there is actually no such entity – after the first half of The Clash’s punk declaration Black Bloc, White Riot.  Most recently popping up in the context of anti-globalization activism, their nihilistic resistance is founded on the belief that social change won’t and doesn’t just happen.  In theory, they seek to change the world by reclaiming public space.  Some of these anarchist poseurs believe that political confrontation must inevitably resort to violence, and against private property.  They take on law enforcement on the offensive – by smashing windows, spraying graffiti, and generally initiating chaos.

Some are irredeemably angry and simply enjoy the act of destruction.

There is a strange multiple angle suspense when following an event remotely by instantaneous microblogging, especially when developments change by the minute.The following represents my Twitter feed, not necessarily in chronological order – between 12:00am – 2:00am November 3. I have also not investigated the veracity of these posts. This was how I experienced the shock of what had transformed just a half hour after I left.

——

RT @OakFoSho: PEOPLE DANCING IN THE STREETS! Live stream! #OccupyOakland #GeneralStrike http://www.ustream.tv/channel/occupy-oakland-live#utm_campaign=unknown&utm_source=9636787&utm_medium=social

RT @jtb666: reclamation of building at 520 16th St by #occupyoakland to open a community center http://lockerz.com/s/152805081

RT @OperationLeakS: Scott Olsen’s message to the Occupy Wall Street movement http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ek_aDCJznQk

RT @j0ncampbell: Some tension between dance party segment and the barricade faction. And now people are yelling COPS! #occupyoakland

MT @bigwersk 10,000 people shut down Port of Oakland and none of the cable news channels are showing it what a complete joke #occupyoakland

RT @abcandrea: KGO TV reports #occupyoakland demonstrator who was hit by car was taken by ambulance, not dead as has been tweeted

RT @batriqa: Just spotted over 40 police cars (sirens/lights) headed north on I-880 toward downtown #Oakland #OccupyOakland

RT @JoshuaHol 16 vans filled with riot police just pulled up at 17th st, one block away. #OccupyOakland

RT @FHProd: Hundreds of police on the scene from multiple jurisdictions, moving towards #OccupyOakland #generalstrike #ows

RT @teolandia5: Cops lining up. 17th and San Pablo. #occupyoakland #occupy

RT @msowers: ABC aerial stream goes down just as police move in. Coincidence again? #oo #occupyoakland

RT @indybay: Riot police have arrived at San Pablo and 16th St, apparently intending to raid the occupied building #OccupyOakland

RT @AdamGabbatt: Police facing off protesters on Telegraph now, parallel to Broadway. Police 100m away in thick line #OccupyOakland

RT @Lulzviticus: Requesting all … supporters to help us hold 520 16th street! Urgent request for solidarity #occupyoakland

RT @AdamGabbatt: Forming 3 lines across the street. Small group of protesters has come down and stood 15m away from police #OccupyOakland

RT @FedcourtJunkie: #occupyoakland protesters shouting “oscar grant at a wall of cops at broadway and 17th

RT @USGeneralStrike: Flyer handed out at the Occupation of Foreclosed Property 520 16th St. http://j.mp/rVnn1Y #GeneralStrike

RT @harrisontweeter: #livestream grows from 1,000 to 4,400 viewers in just minutes http://www.livestream.com/globalrevolution #OccupyOakland

RT @JoshuaHol: 2 waves of police readying. This is going to be ugly. #OO #OccupyOakland

RT @kirkmurphy: Oakland LS “Someone just threw a bottle. They are shooting rubber bullets…tear gas rolling down the street” #occupyoakland

RT @antitheistangie: The barricades are on fire; I don’t know who set them. http://www.livestream.com/globalrevolution #OccupyOakland

RT @RT_com: #OccupyOakland protesters lit barricade on fire. Batons are out but riot police holding formation for now. Mood is tense

MT @LucyKafanov: 250+ police officers in riot gear march down telegraph st. On #occupyoakland barricade. Fire burning high. Fire truck here.

RT @susie_c: #occupyoakland three minutes to leave, police: “mask up!!”

RT @AdamGabbatt: That fire has really taken off. Police continue to ask protesters to move or face arrest. Protesters chant peaceful protest

RT @tobyharriman: “i would rather get shot with rubber bullets, then pay back my student loans.” #occupyoakland http://instagr.am/p/SinfI/

RT @hugokeller: Between livestream and globalrevolution, 6000+ viewers right now, @OakFoSho #occupyoakland

RT @FHProd: 1 minute warning issued at #OccupyOakland

RT @SuicideGirls: Police trying to disperse #OccupyOakland protesters w/ tear gas. Have they forgotten what sparked cot.ag/oyFa9k

RT @AdamGabbatt: “Homeless man” being carried away, apparently hit by projectile. Screaming. #OccupyOakland

RT @nishneb: #JeanQuan please stop gassing our city there are innocent animals out here! #OccupyOakland

RT @Boothism: Just got a call that the mayor’s office wants to negotiate re: occupied building anyone interested hit me. #occupyoakland

RT @mcduh: #occupyoakland RT (oakland mayor) @jeanquan: My office # is 510-238-3141.

After thugs spraypainted Wells Fargo today, #occupyoakland went by later with cleaning supplies says @OakFoSho http://is.gd/vdZndr

MT @SLSiri: Seems the OPD could just arrest the 10 ppl causing trouble and leave the 1,000′s peacefully protesting alone #occupyoakland

RT @chrisfilippi: 40+ people arrested at Frank Ogawa Plaza. Being processed now. #Occupyoakland http://bit.ly/sd41RD

RT @ShantyTownieTJ: People at #OccupyOakland camp yelling “There are children at this camp!” as tear gas is fired #GeneralStrike

RT @matthai: About 60-100 people arrested on North End of plaza. #OccupyOakland http://yfrog.com/5d4iyz

RT @LA_Crystal: #OccupyOakland – 10,000 viewing on global and ustream

RT @AdamGabbatt: Police pulling back from #OccupyOakland camp. 10m back. Hardly anyone here anyway

MT @rattlecans: Looks like the cops at #OccupyOakland have taken masks off. No more tear gas for a while http://bit.ly/uzU4Ee

RT @Catherina_Guate: Police have put tape over their names to hide them Livestream http://bit.ly/uzU4Ee bit.ly/uzU4Ee

RT @Princess_Bitchy: Protesters shining lights at police to get better pictures for ID purposes-names still covered #occupyoakland

RT @aeligature: So that’s what a faceful of tear gas feels / smells / tastes like. #ows #occupyoakland #occupyws

Most of our ideas and images are still shaped by revolutions which happened in pre-industrial societies where differentials of wealth, power, and privilege were deeply and hopelessly etched, and where a small and visible ruling class on the top oppressed and exploited the masses on the bottom. The revolutions of France, Russia, and China were directed against the long historical past and its persistence into the present. Today, any lucid discussion of revolution in the advanced states must begin with the fact of technological society, not with ideas fashioned to analyze traditional societies. It must ask whether that fact does not by itself alter the sense in which a revolution is a meaningful possibility; whether social evils do not therefore acquire a novel form; and whether the marks of oppression are not to be sought among groups very different from the oppressed classes in the classical literature of revolution.

The effect of this, they explain further, is that in a technological society, rebellion moves against an emerging present rather than the tyranny of the social structures of the past.

The main feature of technological society is not merely rapid change, but, as its admirers have said, creative destruction. it not only destroys habits, beliefs, and institutions inherited from the past, but those which were created only yesterday. In society where memory is an irritant because it impedes progress, concepts like “tradition” or categories like the “past” are mostly meaningless. To revolt against such a society means striking against the fluid present rather than against the burdensome past. It means, too, that instead of struggling, as revolutionists usually have, against societies which seemed incapable of moving and growing, today’s revolutionist is in the absurd position of protesting against a society in constant movement and capable of promising everything, from the abolition of poverty to the abolition of death – either as a penalty or a disease.

This is why the form of the #OccupyWallSt Movement is more profound and enduring than the specific debates about policy and politics with which mainstream political discourse tries to make sense of why people want to take back public space. The capacity for the negotiated solutions to society’s problems in a deliberative democracy – in which the 99% who don’t have enough money to influence policymaking – truly get to participate, regardless of the issues. That is what is at stake.

There are times when capitalist democracy can no longer tolerate the repeated presence of large numbers of protesters in the streets, even if they are nonviolent. One of those times is when they both reflect and stimulate widespread public uneasiness and “alienation”; that is, when they are growing sufficiently in numbers and militancy to raise thought sof a “clear and present danger” to the status quo. The danger may remain in the future, but if its outlines become clear enough to excite people and to arouse hope, the time has come to divert or destroy the movement. Let the people register, vote, run hopeless candidacies, even elect a symbolic figure or two (who can easily be brought to his senses by the realities of campaign financing and governmental procedure). But keep them out of the streets! Especially outside the political conventions that are supposed to fulfill the people’s democratic needs and provide them with acceptable channels for the redress of grievances.

 

My name is Eddan and I live in Oakland.
I’m tired of feeling like I live under a permanent crisis.
While the greatest heist in history has taken place.
Redistributing the wealth of our knowledge and creativity in a chaotic.
Bailout of the 1% that rig the system. They’ve built it to work that way.
Our collaboration and cooperation is what will determine our future.
You’ve made us all very mad.