Remembering Oakland Police Riot & Human Rights Violations-April 7, 2003

(There are many others, these are just the ones that received the most attention. As I'm doing this from memory, there may things I'm leaving out, so feel free to add them if you see something missing.)

?? (1984) Crowd attacked by police, Dolores Juerta has her kidney ruptured, Michelle Shocked placed in choke hold.

1991 - Response to AB101 uprising. Martial law declared in the Castro, street sweeps.

M20, 2003, SF. Cops alternate between beating the crap out of people, and not knowing how to respond to a large-scale decentralized protest.

M21, 2003, SF. Cops take advantage of the somewhat lower numbers to come out swinging.

M20 or M21, 2003, SF. Cops violently rip a child off of one of their parent's shoulders.

A7, 2003, Oakland. See article for details; indiscriminate use of tear gas, bean bags, pellet bags and concussion grenades; several injuries requiring medical attention or hospitalization, some long-term (permanent?) injuries.

Reclaim the Commons, Summer 2004, SF. Widespread intimidation tactics, including using police sirens to create a deafening wall of sound.

?? 2005, SF. Street protest ends up in fracas with police. Several people injured, one person placed in choke hold.

1.2009, Oakland. Oscar Grant Protests. Siege mentality approach against protestors, tear gas. See recent reports for more details.

3.2009, SF. Tristan Anderson/Palestine solidarity protest. Widespread use of batons, child arrested. See recent reports for more details.

The important thing to realize here is that the police systematically use violence to control dissenting populations. Cops do not train for policing communities anymore, they train for crowd control, for urban suppression, for urban warfare, as well as racial discrimination (profiling). Cops target black and brown people. Poor whites, too. Cops come from outside a community (the cops from Richmond who got shot, for example) to control other people, other populations, whom they have no loyalty or accountability to. They are outsiders who invade the streets of our community each and every day.

Cops are systematically inclined towards violence, towards racism, towards classism, and are inherently evil. This is how they always have been, are now, and always will be. Get over it. Deal with it.

thanks for the post. how can anybody defend these scumfucks?

Remembering the Police brutality of April 7, 2003 without also remembering that we fought back on many levels and won back some political breathing space through struggle is important! Yea, cops serve the status quo, but history is a struggle to win our political breathing space through strategic community organizing and direct action. After the April 7th attacks antiwar, community and workers came together and did just that.

Here's how we fought back:
* We refused to disperse and stood up to violent cops-- it took them two hours to force out of the docks area, then we marched to Oakland City Hall, pulled together a press conference that went national. Medics treated injuries and serious ones were taken to hospital.
* ILWU, PUEBLO and community folks responded immediately responded and mounted a campaign to pressure the OPD and the City to back off our people and our demonstrations!
* All charges from those arrested were dropped or won, which then allowed many to successfully sue for damages.
* We returned to the docks a month later and again a year later, and mobilized allies, used the media and backed the cops off, successfully shutting dow the port for the day:

* Another group organized a community picket in 2007:
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2007/05/13/18415810.php
* Movement attorneys pushed a Federal Court imposed new crowd control rules on OPD and activists and movement attorneys watchdogged til they adopted them. The OPD on on Jan 7, 2009, though still brutal, is more restrained than the OPD of April 7, 2003.

Original May 7 Coverage:
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2003/04/08/12292.php