Bloc in traffic

Why Did the March onto the Oakland Freeway Happen?

Nico Dacumos

I have heard and saw with my own eyes that the march to the freeway was

led by a group of mostly white anarchists (black bloc). Why are people

that don't have any link to Oakland communities leading people in actions,

the consequences of which many, especially young students of color, were

not made aware? I saw at least 20 of these white folks in black fleeing

the scene, stuffing their black clothes into bags, hiking up their skinny

jeans, and jumping on their bikes. Meanwhile, I am on the phone with Irina

and she is telling me she is watching students of color getting loaded

onto a paddy wagon. Who is really paying the price here? As a public

school teacher, I am actually shocked and honored or something that kids

feel like they care enough to come out to support education. I am angry

and saddened that this event turned into yet another reason for the

Oakland police to lock up more young students and people of color.

An article published by Lillian R. Mongeau on <oaklandnorth.net> highlights

exactly why parents, teachers, neighbors, and anybody else who has a part

in the daily lives of students should be pissed off by the people who

incited the march into the freeway:

"Sebastian Beretvas, a 12-year-old Oakland School of the Arts student who

was arrested and then released, said he had been attending the rally at

Frank Ogawa Plaza with the permission of his parents. "We were going to

take the bus home and we saw some protesters so we joined the group," he

said. "Then we were led on the freeway and I thought with one side of my

brain that this is fun. I thought with the other side of my brain, 'This

is a bad idea.' " "

A few hours later I ran into a teacher friend at the grocery store and she

had a similarly pissed-off reaction to hearing that groups of mostly white

anarchists spent the morning and afternoon trying to get people hyped up

to run onto the freeway and then led the way once the march got to Frank

Ogawa Plaza. She immediately connected this incident to the Oscar Grant

protests and the role that anarchists played in how things went down on

January 8, 2009 in downtown Oakland.

One of my friends and mentors, an older Latina dyke with years of activism

and shit-starting under her belt, is convinced that most black bloc-ers

are hired narcs for the likes of the FBI, starting shit up, letting people

who really don't need any more exposure to the American justice system

deal with the legal consequences, and then walking away unscathed. I don't

know about that, but I certainly know that people at the protests didn't

recognize many of these white folks from any of the activist circles they

frequent in the Bay Area. Additionally, one of the people acting as a

legal observer who was arrested tonight specifically did recognize some of

the anarchist ring leaders and wanted nothing to do with them or their

proposed stroll across 980.

At issue here is not so much the political ideology of mostly white black

bloc anarchists, but the ways that their incitement of actions here in

Oakland speaks to an entitlement and privilege that makes them think it is

okay to encourage people of color, mostly African American and Latino

males, to engage in "violent" forms of protest when they are already

groups targeted and abused by the police. Do they care that getting

arrested will have messed up consequences for these kids? Did anyone take

a minute to explain the possible consequences of their actions so that

people could make an informed choice? I have no way of knowing what was

going through the minds of the reportedly 150+ people who were arrested

today, so I won't pretend to know if people knew what might happen or not.

It just frustrates me to see people get locked up for ends I'm not sure

are clear to anyone involved.

People gathered today to protest the ways that the state continues to

exact structural violence on low-income and people of color, who rely on

public education as an avenue to access even the most basic of needs,

nevermind that we must do so while trying to navigate and side step the

ways that public education is used as a tool to indoctrinate us into

American cultural norms that tell us we we're not worth anything anyway.

In the end, I'm thinking about all the white kids in black I saw laughing

and running down 8th Street free as shit while my friends Cooper and Puck,

who went into today acting as documentation and legal observer, are

sitting in jail because they wanted to support and protect the young

people and people of color who were headed to the freeway behind back

bloc-ers waving Syndicalist flags.

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Nelson Maldonado-Torres writes:

Dear colleagues,

A number of us who went to Sacramento made it later to Oakland in time to be at the rally there. I heard from students and faculty about how powerful and peaceful the march down Telegraph Ave had been. The rally itself was also a powerful and peaceful event. It had a large contingent from UC Berkeley, mixed with high school, community college students, and others. It was an important statement, I think, that complemented in important and necessary ways the rally in Sacramento.

Unlike Sacramento, Oakland is not the seat of power, but is widely known for its activism, particularly by communities of color, many of whom are working class people who sometime live in precarious conditions where they face poverty, environmental racism, and different forms of violence. Unlike Sacramento also, it is not necessary to drive far away from campus in order to actually join a peaceful demonstration calling attention to the poor conditions of public education. And many of those who live in the Bay Area and are interested in establishing more long lasting forms of organizing were in the Oakland rally, not in Sacramento.

Like SAVE UC, a number of faculty supported a multi-action and multi-site day of demonstrations, and in that light everything so far indicates that we should be proud of both the march and rally in Oakland, and the trip and demonstration in Sacramento. Now, it would be interesting to see faculty who went to Sacramento taking a day to know more about the situation in Oakland and consider linking UC Berkeley with organizing in CSUs and Community Colleges in the area, and folks who went to Oakland and who have been more apathetic to "educating the state" sit with those who went to Sacramento to hear about their experience leading up to the Sacramento rally, the rally itself, and the plans for the future.

By now we have all surely heard of the "freeway occupations", which seemed to begin in Oakland. I include one description and reflection of the event below. I happened to be in the area and documented some of what was going on, but I only arrived when the freeway was paralyzed and when police were beginning to arrest the people sitting in the highway.

I immediately thought of a group of folks that I had seen in the rally with a sign that read: "Occupy everything." I do not know if they were the ones leading folks to the highway, but one account indicates that presumably white anarchists took a major role in it, just like some presumably did in a number of the demonstrations after Oscar Grant murder in Oakland.

Again, I cannot verify this. What I saw at the rally in Oakland was a beautiful and powerful peaceful demonstration in defense of public education, and I congratulate our campus organizers for making that happen. The "freeway occupation" was not a violent action per se, but it created, of course, a by far too dangerous situation to many drivers. Lives could have been lost yesterday, and that would have been tragic. This is clearly not the dominant strategy that community organizers who are giving countless hours in a sustained manner to improve the lives of their communities in Oakland take to address the issues that their communities face. It does not go in line with the principal forms of organizing among people there, and it did not go in line with the speeches that I heard or the spirit of the rally in Oakland.

The highway occupation took place after the Oakland rally was officially over. And even if there were UCB participants involved, that should not be in the way of recognizing the importance of the march to and rally in Oakland. The same would have been true if something similar had taken place after the rally in Sacramento.

We should be thinking about how to make productive this multi-site, multi-action day, and resist the temptation to think that we can seriously defend public education (from K-12, CC, and CSU) without having to face, communicate, and demonstrate with people in our neighboring communities who work or study in those spaces. In that sense, the rally in Sacramento should be likely taken as a triumph in itself, but also as a challenge. Oakland is waiting for us after Sacramento. Those faculty members who are already working on constructive relations with other circles of public education in the Bay Area, because they have children in public schools, because they live in working class communities in struggle, or because they do activism in the area, can lead the way or contribute to make that happen, but our students may have something to teach us here as well.

Best,

Nelson

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Jeffrey Skoller responds:

Dear Nelson,

I agree with your assessment here and for the most part with the description of what happened during the march after the official rally ended in Oakland. But I want to add an important caveat to the narrative that it was simply the privileged white anarchists who led the group into the face of danger and arrest. The police themselves played a crucial role in the chaos of the charge onto the freeway and perhaps contributed to many people finding themselves in a situation they couldn't get out of.

I was heading home after the Ogawa Plaza march ended and got caught up in the march which formed after the rally ended. I followed in order to monitor. The crowd was a mix of black bloc types and a very mixed and exuberant crowd of young people from 20s into teens. The march passed by the University of California admin building on Franklin St, massed there and moved on. The police began following the group with a spectacularly long line of squad cars, motorcycles and phalanxes of police on foot, in riot gear, some carrying shot guns. As the group moved through the street the crowd began moving faster to keep their distance from the police who were becoming more aggressive and threatening. By the time the crowd reached the Freeway entrance, the police were in full pursuit running after the crowds, blocking off street intersections and not letting people who tried get away leave the scene. In many moments the only way to avoid the police was to move forward or risk arrest. Every time I stopped to video tape the situation, screaming cops would start charging over to keep me moving forward. By the time we got to the freeway, I was part of a group who were trying to document the scene and found ourselves surrounded by a group of police who would not let us move and were about to begin arresting us when they were ordered to join the phalanxes on the freeway.

All of this is to say, that in the chaos of the moment, the aggressive and intimidating police response to the marchers created a situation in which people could either turn around and find themselves running into charging police with batons and guns or continue onto the freeway ramp to avoid them. It wasn't much of a choice. There were some young kids in the crowd (I saw a young girl being arrested on the highway who couldn't have been older then 12). They couldn't have known which way to turn and probably stayed with the people they were with. The person who was injured trying to jump off the freeway was trying to avoid the police, not cars.

So while the attempt to stop freeway traffic in such an uncoordinated way, can be seen as reckless, dangerous and perhaps counter-productive, the police themselves created a chaotic situation in which people were being herded onto the freeway with little choice to stop or turn around if they had wanted to. So once again the police we see how the have a role in escalating the potential for violence and injury through their aggressiveness.

As this struggle continues there needs to be a way to insist that police actions during political demonstrations must work to defuse the sense of danger and intimidation rather than contributing to such chaotic and confusing situations. The Police must be held accountable for their role when creating the conditions for such a potentially disastrous situation.

Best,

Jeffrey Skoller