Supporters attend pre-trial hearing of Oakland Port Protesters

Over a hundred people showed up to demonstrate support for the Oakland 25 at a pre-trial hearing on Friday, November 7th. The defendants include 24 protesters and ILWU's Jack Heyman, all of whom were arrested at the Port of Oakland protest on April 7th, when police fired "less-lethal" ammunition at both demonstrators and dockworkers.

Speakers from several groups addressed the Friday rally, which was held in front of the courthouse in Oakland. One of the speakers was Willow Rosenthal, who spent time in the hospital and underwent surgery for injuries to her leg which were caused by police use of wooden bullets.

The police had attempted to justify the April 7th attack by falsely claiming that protesters had showered them with a hail of rocks, bottles and railroad spikes, thus forcing them to fire in self defense. However, numerous videos, including one taken by the police themselves, showed that there'd been no rock throwing. The videos along with witnesses accounts established that the demonstrators were peaceful, and Oakland police officials were caught in a lie.

Almost from the beginning, District Attorney Tom Orloff expressed an intention to prosecute demonstrators, but for over two months his office seemed to be in a quandary over how to handle it. Finally in June the prosecutors filed charges against 24 demonstrators and ILWU Business Agent Jack Heyman. The charges against the protesters were "failure to disperse" and "interfering with a business." Heyman was charged with "failure to comply with a police officer's order" and "resisting an officer."

The arraignment was in July, and the event for this day (Fri Nov 7) was a pretrial hearing. After the rally we went inside to attend the hearing, but found the courtroom had seats for only about 70 of us.

When the session began, defense attorney Bobbie Stein pointed out to the judge that the defendants had done nothing wrong and had only attended a peaceful demonstration. "It's absurd that Alameda County is continuing to prosecute this case," she said.

The DA's office added a new charge, that of "creating a public nuisance." Attempting to justify the charges, Deputy DA Stuart Hing said, "It's like asking why we are charging drunk drivers. They committed a crime."

Meanwhile, no charges have been filed against the police who were presumably sober when they fired at peaceful demonstrators and dockworkers, injuring several dozen.

Defense attorneys also complained that the DA has refused to turn over 400 pages of evidence. These pages were requested in a discovery motion and the DA is required by law to turn them over. A previous judge had also made a ruling to that effect. However. "The district attorney has defied that ruling," an attorney for the defense told the judge.

There was some dickering back and forth over whether or not the judge should reaffirm the order to the DA to produce the missing documentation. The judge expressed hope that the DA would come through.

The next hearing will be on January 9, 2004 with a different judge presiding.

The 400 pages in question apparently consist of police records, and the DA's refusal to turn them over in the face of a court order seems unusual. However, this whole thing has gone through one cover up after another. Back in April our Oakland City Council voted to have an independent investigation into the police attack which injured so many people. The intention was to get to the bottom of the matter and find exactly who was behind the shooting; the suspects included several Oakland city officials including Mayor Jerry Brown. Other suspects were shipping company officials, some of whom had been seen at the police command post during the attack. The Department of Homeland Security was also suspected.

However, the task of setting up the investigative panel was entrusted to the Oakland city manager and city attorney who did not even grant power of subpoena to the panel. That meant that the panel couldn't require reluctant witnesses to come forth and testify. After only two meetings, the panel disbanded. That was in August.

But people do ask questions, and it was as a result of the shootings of April 7 that CATIC's role was uncovered. The Oakland Tribune published an article (5-18-03) in which CATIC (California Anti-Terrorism Information Center) spokesman Mike Van Winkle gave his famous interview in which he equated protesters to terrorists.

In two paragraphs of immortal prose which have been more quoted than anything since Shakespeare, Van Winkle said it all, and immediately lost his job as spokesman for CATIC. Poor Van Winkle is probably still wondering what he did wrong. But any of us who were in the courtroom on November 7th could tell the man that his error was to make a straightforward statement and let people know what was going on.



There is a 27,000 word account of the Port of Oakland events covering the time from April 7th to May 12th at this website:
http://www.artwithoutcredentials.com/peacesign