Sensory experiences of an occupation

It is night, it must be 3 or 4 am at least. And it is cold. We are all bunched together on the intersection right next to the occupation, and a drumcircle is playing. A drumcircle is always playing. The world could be going down but they will continue beating those drums until the ship has sunk completely. People are prepared for the worst. Everybody is wearing bandanas in front of their faces to protect against the media and against the teargas that they are expecting. Some people have gas masks on, or goggles, or both. I am standing in between all of this, bandana strapped in front of my face, a hoodie pulled over my head. It’s late, and I’m slightly tired, because I had no sleep the night before.

Choppers are hovering overhead, shining on us with big white beams of light. We are in between tall office buildings, and people are screaming protest songs. It feels like apocalypse. But it also feels powerful.

The reason we came was because the camp was in danger of getting raided again tonight. We are the manpower to make sure no aggression happens, and no mass arrests. The fewer people there are, the more dangerous it is. Supposedly.

The intersection we are on is called Broadway and 14^th street. On one side is the camp, which is almost empty. I don’t understand why we are not in the camp, to protect it. Somebody tells me that last time everybody who was in the camp got arrested. I don’t want to get arrested. I’ll lose my visa and get deported. All I want is that this camp stays intact, and that no useless violence happens. But it doesn’t seem very effective to protect the camp from outside the camp. We march in circles around it, and end on the square again.

Rumors are that the riot police is coming. They are preparing to cattle us. I don’t know exactly what cattling means in this context but I can imagine it perfectly well. Yet still, nothing is happening.

Suddenly, at the far end of one of the streets, we see a line of cops marching our way. And in the other street also, and the other street also. All around us, police in riot gear are steadily walking in our direction. They look so much stronger than us. I’m getting slightly freaked out, but one of the people I am with tells me that they have to give a warning first and give us a chance to leave before they arrest us. That’s a relief.

The crowd is rather passive tonight. Oakland is not a place for passive protests, that’s what we have San Francisco for. I’m not wearing a bandana for nothing. Oakland is supposed to have a critical mass of people willing to fight for their goals. The police are standing all around us, and we are blocked out of the camp.

This is just silly. Basically, the camp is taken in already. They won. Whoever is in the camp is on their own now. People are taking pictures of the police, and talking into them. There is one cop who is chewing gum and who keeps on smiling at whatever the protesters tell him. It seems really perverted. Here we are, in an intersection, surrounded by police. They have batons, and teargas, and they have used it before. We need an uproar to save the camp. But the police is just standing there, and nobody is doing anything but screaming insults. A friend I was with made a police man cry. The big waiting begins.

After an hour or so, the police move into the camp. On the intersection people are getting more aggressive, screaming “pigs” at the police, and asking them to let the people inside the camp go. Everybody in the camp is sitting on the floor, passively, and they are getting arrested, one by one. It’s a very sad view, especially since there’s nothing we can do.

I’ll go to more protests, I’ll protect more. This was a silly night, and no more of this should happen. It should be more strategic. More effective.

Tomorrow (or today) at 4 pm people are gathering again, and the camp will be reoccupied. “You cannot evict an idea whose time has come”.

Unfortunately I wasn’t ready, I was sleepwalking. The crowd wasn’t active enough. I walked back to the van and as soon as my head hit the pillow, I fell asleep.

More to follow.

Oakland General Strike

November 2nd is a day that will stay in my memory for ever.

It was a day of joy and drumcircles, and distopia and fear.

Last Wednesday I skipped my classes, and joined the Occupy Everything movement for a day to join the General Strike in Oakland, California.

It was one of the most beautiful things I had ever been allowed to witness.

Have you ever seen 10.000 people walk peacefully in a protest? People, young and old, of all colors and sizes, walking for a common purpose.

That day, the occupied square (that is normally called Frank Ogawa Plaza) was called Oscar Grant Plaza on Google maps, after an innocent black man that was shot there by the police a while back, in broad day light. This was the name the occupiers had given to the square.

It was a general strike, and whoever was allowed to strike by their unions, joined us at oscar grant plaza. There were places where the employers told their employees that they would fire them if they went on strike (such as supermarket branch wholefoods). In the morning they found their supermarkets tagged with huge graffiti letters saying "strike". It was reported that of all the teachers who were teaching that day, 25% called in sick.

I joined the movement at 4 pm. All day there had been marches to the banks, some windows were smashed,

but it had been generally peaceful. There was a flashmob where people sung "we will survive-capitalism" on

the I will survive-tune.

At 5, the biggest march started. It was a march to shut down the port of oakland, one of the largest ports in the united states, the place where all the goods (and thus capital) flows into the country.

It was beautiful to see this many people walk together peacefully, accompanied by live bands and honking of cars and trucks (not sure whether that was supportive-but hey-everybody cheered). Walking in

the crowds, singing occupy-songs, you couldn't see the beginning -nor the end- of this large human snake

pushing it's way through the four laned streets, heading for the ports.

The police was no-where to be seen (yet). Though we were quite sure that there were some cops in plain clothes amongst the crowds of protesters. They were dressed like hippies and looked really awkward and obvious.

We walked past a primary school where the children were outside on the playground screaming "occupy".

We walked and walked, and after about 40 minutes we reached the port of Oakland. At every exit a group of people remained behind to block the streets, to prevent cargo from coming in or out.

I walked on, together with my housemates and friends, and after about 1,5 hours we got to one of the last gates of the port and the remaining group of people, including us, put up our camp (or, sat down on the streets and blocked the entire intersection).

It was a confusing occupation, and a happy one. News from the other gates was brought to us by organizers on bikes, who would call a "mic-check". When they call mic-check, everybody repeats what this person says, resulting in a huge human microphone. It's a very strange method of conveying information, but seeing that there were about 300 people at our square it was kind of necessary. Rumors went about of riot cops being here or there, and about people getting hit by cars and ending up in a hospital. It was all very confusing, and we didn't know what to believe, so all we did was stay on the intersection and wait until the 7pm shift would come.

Every time a truck came, everybody ran and blocked the streets. A human barrigade, 5 lines thick, would stand in front of the trucks, and they would have no where else to go but to turn around.

In the meanwhile, while waiting, I painted my fingernails and toes, ate some apple with peanut butter (we didn't really think about packing propper food, so all we had was a jar of peanut butter and some fruits) and there was a danceparty in the middle of the square. It was bizarre, boring and exciting at the same time. A flock of geese flew over and everybody cheered.

At 9 we got the message that the port was effectively shut down, that the workers were sent home (but would still get payed for the night), and that we all ought to get back to Oscar Grant plaza.

So we walked. And instead of walking back those 1,5 hours through scary wide streets of the port, we walked the other way, close to the highway. And there was the police, hidden effectively from our views. They prevented us from going on the highways (not that we would ever want to do that) but did not cause us any more trouble. They just stood there, grimy looks on their faces, and we stared back as we walked by.

It was a peaceful day, and we had archieved our goal. It felt more like a festival than a strike, and whatever the news reported about this day, just know that it was generally peaceful-apart from some small incidents. Back in Oscar Grant Plaza we were tired and slightly lost, and hungry (peanut butter isn't all that filling) and a group of us (including me) decided to go home.

I texted a friend I was leaving and he answered that things were about to get bad. I was secretly completely aware of that.

In the car, 15 minutes on the highway on our way home, we got a text message from one of our housemates who was still there. "I'm in the occupied building. Police is shooting teargas. We're all still fine."

One of my housemates with an iphone checked the internet. She said that tires were set on fire on the streets. The riot police had turned off all the lights around Oscar Grant Plaza and were ready to take the occupiers out of the building. Two arrest busses were parked onto broadway. The media helicopters that had been hoovering above the site all day had left, supposedly to "get gas".

Basically, the riots had started.

This is when the fear hit us. Two weeks ago the same thing happened, just when the media left, things got bad.

Two of my housemates that were in the car with us decided to drop us off at home and go back to support the people who were still there.

When we arrived home we put on a live stream of the events at oakland, where 200 cops in riot gear were swarmed around the camp, standing side by side. Teargas was being thrown. A homeless man was shot by a rubber bullet, and he made the most painfully whincing noises i had ever heard a grown man make. A slogan of this movement is "this revolution shall not be televised". It's true. The traditional media do not give a good representation of the events. But we have the internet. And people with android phones filming everything, with thousands of people watching.

A person on the internet appropriately discribed the riots that evening as an 'apocalyptic dystopia with a drumcircle'.

We stayed up all night, watching the live stream, half wishing we were there to help, half happy we were not getting shot by rubber bullets and having to run from teargas all the time.

Two of us had a midterm on Tursday. They probably didn't do all to well.

My housemates came home safely the day afterwards. My friends were fine.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=r4jYdCaHrjQ some footage of the people marching-taken from a chopper (100.000 people is a *bit* exaggerated I would say. But I think 10.000 is a reasonable estimate)

This is a small video I took while marching towards the ports

This is the end of this post, but not the end of the story.

And here is a video compilation I made of that day's events:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fQ6gLS2iqg

PLEASE WATCH THIS IT'S AWESOME:)

To be continued.