Occupy Oakland briefly resurfaces, Obama Headquarters Smashed
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From [HERE] Occupy Oakland seemed to reemerge for a few hours yesterday evening, in the form of a roving dance party that made its way through downtown behind a large banner that read “Fuck The Permits, Fuck The Police.”
The dance-march was in partial solidary with the venders of Art Murmur, a street fair that takes place in downtown Oakland every 1st Friday. Over the last few months, Art Murmur has exploded into a carnivalesque block party, in which Oaklanders have taken over the streets and filled them with art, music, food, dancing, and general revelry.
On July 6, uniformed security officers informed Art Murmur venders that anyone without a permit would be ticketed, starting next month. According to a statement on a flyer passed out by demonstrators, “the [permit] process is inaccessible, unaffordable, and there are not enough “officially sanctioned” spaces to go around.” The flyer also explains the deeper motives behind the permits:
“Their intent is to target street artists and vendors as a means of regulating and controlling the community’s use of public space, for the benefit of expensive galleries, fancy restaurants and developers. The effect is to better provide the capital-owning business elite with a controlled and sterilized neighborhood full of passive armies of docile workers and obedient shoppers. Their ambition is to redraw urban geography according to profit motives, and convert public and social life into the plaything of the private interests. This amounts to an attempt to rob us of every free and spontaneous aspect of our communities and our lives, and replace each of them with no alternative but submission and the compulsion to consume.”
Last night, many venders and artists ignored last month’s threat of being ticketed, and set their tables in illegal spaces.
Police kept their distance though, as the dance-protest roved up and down the streets, with demonstrators chatting “fuck the police” between songs.
Many bystanders cheered when they saw the “Fuck the Police” banner as the dance party approached.
Residents of Oakland are still outraged over the police murder of 21-year-old Oscar Grant, who was shot by a transit officer in a crowded BART station on New Year's Day in 2009. The transit officer, Johannes Mehserle, was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter in July 2010, despite publicly released videos showing Mehserle pinning Grant to the ground before shooting him in the back.
