Oakland Docks May12

it was a pleasant event. FnB brought cherries and ILWU people were supportive. I laughed when someone rode their bicycle after Chief Word's car chanting 'Chief Word out of Oakland' into a megaphone.

Those cranes were the inspiration for one of the robot monsters in a George Lucas film.

It was amazing for them to have thought they needed to patrol this event with a helicopter the whole time, even all the way to the BART station.

In SF you see the helicopter and you know BB is somewhere nearby. Or else about 80k people.

I'll send an email to the city council about it.

>helicopters

Have you seen the video "Urban Warrior"? It may help put the why of that into perspective for you. The tactical teams that the PDs send out to protests are the same ones that they use to do drug busts -- basically militarized police forces that use SWAT team tactics. The only reason that they don't shoot first, ask questions later is because of the TV cameras and arguably because people the people at the protests tend to be white, definitely because they tend to be middle class (in other words, docile, frequently medicated and more than willing to follow orders). That may not be what you want to hear, but how many protests have you seen where the police fucked with people, and the protestors just went along with it?

anon