OaktownLive
Team OaktownLive consists of Pirate (Camera-Monkey, Raconteur) and Lexica (Base Control, Social Stream Mod, Voice-of-Reason).
This work by Team Oaktown Live is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Oakland May Day, 2012: OPD “Snatch Team” Arrest
After the crowd had been dispersed from 14th & Broadway, fellow livestreamer CourtneyOccupy & Pirate encountered what seems to be one of an undetermined number of roving OPD “snatch teams” prowling the streets of the 510. This may or may not be part of the “new tactics” Chief Jordan planned to roll out for May Day
It’s not strictly illegal to have rocks in your pocket, and the two men standing on the corner didn’t seem to be doing anything more suspicious that dressing in all-black on May Day in Oakland. That seems like sketchy probable cause at face-value.
If OPD had some specific intelligence that they were arresting a specific person for a specific crime, that’s one thing.
But just rolling up on people dressed in all-black, that’s kinda fucked up.
Here are the raw video segments from the TOL May Day 2012 Broadcast.
All Team Oaktown Live videos are Creative Commons licensed (reuse,remix/non-$/attribution). Any booshwa from YouTube about “Matched Third Party Content” is in dispute as these were all captured at public, newsworthy events and come under “Fair Use”.
Highlight clips to follow.
Oakland May Day 2012 Pt 1/7
May Day 2012, TOL will be Live & Direct from Oakland, Ca. Plan is to start early, go as long as the batteries hold out. Won’t be live streaming constantly all day, but both Pirate and Lexica will be tweeting all day long.
Watch this space for further updates.
Oaksterdam Raid - DEA Agents break the window from INSIDE Coffeeshop Blue Sky.
On Monday, April 2, 2012, agents from the DEA, IRS, and U.S. Marshals Service raided Oaksterdam University and several other businesses associated with Oakland cannabis activist Richard Lee. The Oakland Police Department was not notified in advance of the raids and did not participate in them, but did provide crowd control as the morning progressed and increasing numbers of angry locals opposed to the raid arrived at 19th and Broadway.
In this clip, OPD clears a path for DEA vehicles leaving with confiscated Oaksterdam University records as Oaklanders, including one in a wheelchair, attempt to block the way. We also see officer J. Low with his baton out, pushing protesters out of the way of the DEA vehicles, but his personal camera is off. When it’s on (see in passing on Officer Nguyen) the green is exposed.
Transparency statement: Clipped from the longer raw video; captions, title, and end text added; otherwise unedited.
Apologies for the way the video freezes at times; downtown Oakland is something of a concrete canyon and signal quality can be irregular. We’re working toward upgrading our equipment.
The subject of stay-away orders has been something that TOL has been mentioning on the stream for a while now. To summarize, the Alameda County District Attorney has has been issuing so-called “Stay-Away Orders” against people taking part in Occupy-related protests and activities, most noticeably in Oakland and at UC Berkeley.
These orders require people to stay 100 to 300 yards away from Frank Ogawa/Oscar Grant Plaza or, in the case of the UC orders, away from ANY UC PROPERTY IN THE STATE, with the exception of going to class or to work-related activities. One of the recipients of a UC-related stay-away lives in student housing and had to get a court order to be able to legally return home.
These orders have been issued against people who have been charged but not convicted of any crimes. Like anti-gang injunctions in Oakland, they are considered by many local activists to be targeted repression against citizens with unpopular political activities and affiliations (in this case, Occupy). The Oakland injunctions in particular make it impossible for people under such orders to attend the Occupy Oakland General Assembly (held at the Plaza) or the Oakland City Council Meetings (City Hall abuts the Plaza). As the plaza has also been a center for organizing and meetings related to Occupy, the orders also prevents people from assembling and partaking in protected political speech.
The ACLU has filed suit against the DA, asserting that these orders are a fundamental violation of people’s civil rights, especially since the people they have been issued against have not been convicted of crimes and are for the most part charged with nothing worse than misdemeanors; moreover, virtually all of the alleged incidents happened nowhere near the plaza, and often many blocks away in Oakland.
The Occupy Oakland Anti-Repression Committee (press conference video) has been working and speaking out with local groups fighting against the Oakland Gang Injunctions. The gang injunctions are civil in nature while the stay-away orders are criminal, but both are aimed at exiling certain people from a certain geographic area because of their affiliations. Both are contentious issues in Oakland.
Recently, as part of their Occupy Faith national conference here in Oakland, the Occupy Oakland Interfaith Tent held a “Sanctuary for Stay-Aways” service at Oscar Grant Plaza. A canopy was raised, decorated, and sanctified as “Sacred Space” by Starhawk, beneath which several folks wearing masks (who may or may not have had stay-aways) walked inside the veil of sanctity with the protection of clergy who had vowed to put themselves between OPD and anyone they were trying to arrest.
All so that people with stay-aways could (even if only symbolically) attend the multi-faith service at the plaza put on by the Interfaith Tent.
Several weeks ago at a protest, Pirate bumped into Joseph (“L.A. Joe”) Briones, one of the recipients of a stay-away (and the first to be arrested for violating his order… or did he?) who had just been released from custody. At the time, Joe was recently free from a week in Santa Rita jail and didn’t feel up for speaking about his experience.
Wednesday afternoon, while attending an OO rally in support of Oaksterdam after Monday’s Federal raids, Joe caught up with Team Oaktown Live and was ready to talk about his situation, his experience with the stay-away orders, and how he never got arrested before Occupy.:
Big thanks from the Team to Joe for sharing that with the world. TOL is not about shoving the camera in people’s faces who don’t wanna talk, and nobody should ever feel bad about saying “no, I don’t want to talk now.” And… wow, that was absolutely worth waiting for.
This is the situation on the ground in Oakland. This is what Americans are facing as they speak out against economic injustice and a system rigged in favor of the powerful few: police repression and the substantial weight of the legal system coming down in a full-on assault against some pretty basic American rights of assembly, expression, and presumption of innocence until proven guilty by a court of law.
Team Oaktown Live very much recommends you pick up a camera and show the world what’s happening where you live. Be the media. And always remember… FILM THE POLICE!
P&L
Monday 4/2/2012, TOL streamed live and direct from Oakland, CA, during most of the IRS/DEA/Federal Marshals raid against California cannabis activist Richard Lee and businesses associated with him. Here are some of the highlights from that day
The DEA rolling down the purple gate at the Oaksterdam Gift Shop. Not a popular move in Oakland.
The Interfaith Tent at Occupy Oakland is holding a 3-day Occupy Faith conference in the Bay Area. As part of that conference, the I.T. will be holding a 6pm interfaith service at Oscar Grant/Frank Ogawa Plaza in Oakland tonight, march 21st.
The tent will be declared a “Legal Sanctuary” for anyone given a stay-away/”no loitering” order by the city who wishes to attend the interfaith service at the Plaza and the General Assembly afterwards. Clergy members will be on hand to offer escort to/from the tent to the edge of the 300yd exclusion zone if necessary.
Many attendees of to tonight’s event are expected to be wearing masks events so as to offer camouflage of numbers for possible stay-aways who plan to come.
Team Oaktown Live expects to be live and direct from approximately 5:15. Not expecting to stay for the entire GA. But one never knows.
BIAS NOTICE: Team Oaktown Live believe that the Oakland stay-away orders are bullshit and fundamental violations of the rights to peaceably assemble. The Plaza has, from the very beginning, been a place of gather and organizing for Occupy Oakland. It also directly abuts Oakland City Hall.
The orders, given to people with misdemeanor charges that occurred blocks and blocks away from the Plaza, are specifically designed to target political activism/free speech/lawful assembly, including attending Oakland City Council meetings. The boundary is also ill-defined, leading to a somewhat subjective risk.
TOL fully supports Interfaith Tent’s Sanctuary action and the tactic of a “Mask Bloc” in nonviolent defiance of this abuse of official power trying to squelch free speech. TOL does not consider hunting for possibly masked stay-aways in the crowd to be newsworthy.
On the other hand, if any of the Stay-Away Club openly accept the offer of escort/sanctuary and defy the OPD to arrest them, Sunshine Bloc would consider filming that to a gesture of solidarity/publicity, to show the world, live and direct, just what the fuck Oakland is trying to deal with regarding free speech.
And of course, if OPD wish to make a big deal of things…
Live and Direct from Oscar Grant/Frank Ogawa Plaza, ~5:15 PDT.
@IVAWSF #EyesWideOpen #Veterans #Suicide #Iraq
On March 19th, 2012, Iraq Veterans Against the War SF commemorated the 9th anniversary of the Iraq War by displaying the American Friends Service Committee exhibit “Eyes Wide Shut” across from San Francisco City Hall.
Part 1: The reading of the names on the boots, as well as the names (and often nameless details) of a small fraction of the Iraqi dead due to the war.
00-~32:00: Reading the names of the California Iraq War dead. Apologies if I missed a name or two off the front end.
~33:15: Farah, an Iraqi Native, reads some of the names of the Iraqi civilian war dead.
55:00: Melanie Yates(sp?) (IVAW), a public affairs specialist in Iraq. “My job was to make the war look good.”
58:50: Ryan Holloran (IVAW), active duty soldier from Ft. Hood
1:02:00: Michael Blecker(sp?), Vietnam Vet, from Swords to Plowshares
1:05:45: Scott Olsen (IVAW), the Marine veteran of 2 tours in Iraq who was shot w/ a beanbag round by riot police in Oakland
1:11:00 - Farah M. of the Iraqi Student Project, speaking as a member of the Iraqi community in the Bay Area
1:17:50 - Jason M. (IVAW) reads a staemenmt from Graham Klumpner (sp?) (IVAW) who lives in Denver, re: Afghanistan
1:23:00 - Marilyn Saner, mother of an injured Iraq Veteran, speaks about toll of multiple deployments
1:28:00 - Dottie Guy (IVAW), member of the SF Veterans Affairs Commission
1:30:15 - Paula Santos, along with her husband Ruben. Their son Ruben jr, an Iraq vet, lost his battle with PTSD and committed suicide. They read a poem he wrote on why he couldn’t come see the “Eyes Wide Open” exhibit when he had the chance, choosing instead to play video games.
1:35:30 - IVAW announces they will observe 1 second of silence for every military suicide since the beginning of the Iraq War, while blocking the intersection across Polk st in front of the City Hall steps. This will take 1 hour, 5 minutes, and 30s
Recorded live on my iPhone on 3/19/12 at 12:04 PDT
Today Iraq Veterans Against The War laid out the American Friend’s Service exhibit “Eyes Wide Open” for the last time:
Eyes Wide Open, the American Friends Service Committee’s widely-acclaimed exhibition on the human cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, features a pair of empty boots honoring each U.S. military casualty. The exhibit started in January 2004 when the US casualties in Iraq numbered 500 as a local project in Chicago. As the casualties grew so did the exhibit and it toured the country extensively until May 2007, when the casualties in Iraq numbered 3500 and it was determined to split the exhibit up into smaller state-based exhibits. Eyes Wide Open has been seen by millions of people across the country and has involved thousands of volunteers. Eyes Wide Open continues to tell the story of the human cost of war in 46 states with boots representing US deaths in both Iraq and Afghanistan, and shoes representing Iraqi and Afghan civilians.
TOL, along with @CourtneyOccupy, PunkBoyInSF, and @PixPls were streaming today. @Tigerbeat was also onsite. Love y’all.
I found it profoundly moving. I’ll probably have more to say about this tomorrow, after I sleep on it and process a little more.
The war is over, and yet the violence in Iraq continues. The damage that so many vets have brought home with them continues.
Today members of IVAWSF held a press conference where they read out each the 481 names of military Californians killed in Iraq. Then a member of the Iraqi community in the Bay Area read out a mere fraction of the names of Iraqis killed.
Then in the memory of every veteran who died by suicide since Sept. 11th, 2001, the vets observed ONE SECOND OF SILENCE while standing in pretty ordered ranks blocking the crosswalk across Polk st in front of the SF City Hall stairs.
One second per veteran suicide since Sept. 11th, 2001 took an hour and forty minutes. While there was some doubt for a while, in the end SFPD allowed the action to go forward and didn’t arrest a bunch of Iraq vets observing their fallen comrades by blocking one of the lesser used stretches of San Francisco for a little while.
Good call, that.
Today was the ninth anniversary of the Invasion of Iraq. President Obama declared it a “National Day of Honor”. Great. So how much are you increasing the VA’s budget?
I’ll write more tomorrow, maybe just expand this post. But for now, I’m gonna embed some links and call it a night.
-Pirate, on behalf of TOL
Pt 1: IVAWSF “Eyes Wide Open” Press conference
