A Year in the Streets: Resistance in the Bay in 2014

Solidarity As a Weapon

Struggles and actions in the bay area continued throughout 2014 in solidarity with resistance happening around the world. In the case of the ‘Block the Boat’ actions at the Port of Oakland, the blockades were tremendously successful and showed the power of disruptive action and spread to other areas.

In May, a McDonald’s was attacked in solidarity with upcoming demonstrations and riots that raged against the World Cup in Brazil. A communiqué posted online read:

As an early kickoff to the May 15th “Day Against the World Cup,” a McDonalds location in Oakland was vandalized overnight. McDonalds is not only a sponsor of the FIFA World Cup, which has fueled rampant poverty throughout Brazil leading up to the June 2014 event, they are also a sponsor of the Olympics, which will come to Rio in 2016. Thousands of people have been forcibly displaced, with a rising death toll, to make way for the spectacle of the World Cup.

Also in May, people demonstrated in solidarity with the Zapatista movement which faced attacks from the Mexican State. In a flyer that was handed out they stated:

The death of endeared teacher, Galeano, at the hands of government-backed paramilitary groups creates the imperative to build autonomous and liberatory social relations here in the Bay Area. As such, we will show our force in numbers and expose both the U.S. and puppet government of Mexico for the impunity and brutality committed against the indigenous people of the continent. We do so joining the countlesss of others who are demonstrating in cities around the world as part of a Global Week of Action in solidarity with the Zapatistas and in rememberance of our fallen compañero Galeano.

In July, actions began in the bay area organized in solidarity with the latest assault by Israel against those living in the Palestinian territories, which resisted with riots and street battles. In San Francisco, thousands of people participated in massive marches, although some protest organizers attempted to contain and manage the protests from becoming too uncontrollable. A post on indybay.org critiquing this leadership read:

The logic that goes into these protests is a simple one: rallies and marches are visual petitions, to be measured in turnout. If there are one thousand, ten thousand, one million people marching, then someone in power will finally decide to start caring. The protest is also meant to be as photogenic as possible, which is why at each march it paused every block for pictures to be taken. This is under the assumption that the nicer it looks, the nicer the things the media will say, and the more people will be swayed to the cause. Perhaps those who are swayed to the cause will join the visual petition the next week. Therefore, when anyone steps out of line, even literally, in the most minuscule of ways, it is a threat to their photo-op. Much more could be said about it also being a threat to their place in the system. Just as unions are used nowadays to stifle worker’s organizing, non-profits and similar groups are used to channel growing protests and social movements into what they deem as acceptable outlets, which are coincidentally, or not, the least effective ones.

Out of these mass mobilizations, a call began to grow to organize a blockade of Israeli ships at the Port of Oakland. These actions were inspired in part by actions by the ILWU in the 1980s against apartheid in South Africa. Starting in mid-August, a variety of groups and organizations converged on the Port of Oakland with the goal of blocking the ZIM company from docking at the port. The march on the port was massive and ZIM did not dock. As the days continued, so did the marches and pickets at the port which continued as self-organized actions. As Electronic Intifada wrote:

Organizers had initially planned a one-day action for 16 August, delaying the weekly, Saturday-scheduled offloading of the Zim ship by just one full work day. Saturday’s success was seamless: the Zim Pireaus avoided the Oakland Port completely, preferring to remain at sea south of Oakland rather than meet the thousands of protesters who had descended onto the docks. But, fueled off the initial triumph, activists returned to Berth 57 at the Oakland Port the next evening, on Sunday, 17 August.

At 5pm Sunday, activists released an urgent call for activists to convene at the port. Within thirty minutes of the call, hundreds of people returned to the docks. Workers with the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) – Local 10 honored the picket line, and refused to unload the ship.

Bay Area Intifada released a series of interviews with people at the port which you can listen to here.

Hyphenated-Republic discussed the historic Block the Boat movement and also how the simultaneous events taking place in Ferguson also influenced the action:

The chants changed from Free, Free Palestine, to Hands up Don’t Shoot, in the perfect mirror of the current mood on the streets of Ferguson, Palestine and the rest the world under siege from armed police and soldiers. Remarkably, however, pro-Palestinian direct action found common cause with the longshoreman’s labor struggle on the streets and entry-ways of the port. Word spread that longshoremen were staging a work slowdown, their own protest against Zim and PA’s [Port America] tactic for bypassing the picket line.

While ILWU Local 10 has not officially endorsed the picket or its goals, it clearly put the onus of responsibility on any danger to them on police. ILWU’s stance was a constant reminder that it was police violence, conducted with the same less than lethal weapons that Urban Shield will be hawking in just a few weeks’ time—and that are plainly visible in Ferguson’s militarized police arsenal—which served as the pretext for their walking away from picket lines. This can’t be overstated.

A new kind of solidarity, perhaps tenuous and ephemeral, was formed via common cause and mutual aid in the port of Oakland under impossible to predict circumstances. Real connections based on shared experience and mutual respect were formed between rank and file workers and protesters, an invaluable side-benefit that certainly could have gone the other way, as was the concern. Ironically, despite being the least effective and most disorganized call-out of the entire period, Tuesday night and Wednesday morning had the highest numbers of positive interactions with rank and file workers at the port.

The incredible amount of energy and strength available for direct actions against Israel and other targets has been unprecedented. The fact that thousands of people showed up to block an Israeli boat and still came out on subsequent days, often lacking the same organized call out, is a game-changer for efforts of all kinds in Oakland, and other cities. This new reservoir of direct action energy is viable, scalable, affordable and most of all, popular. Never before have activists had a weapon that can cost the state of Israel so dearly. The Zim lines an acknowledged Israeli security asset, were severely hobbled in the space of a weekend.

While Block the Boat was playing itself out, people were also taking to the streets in Oakland inspired by the ongoing resistance happening in Ferguson, a small suburb in St. Louis after the murder of a young unarmed man, Mike Brown. Responding to a call for a “Fuck the Police March,” up to 500 people marched through downtown Oakland, clashing with police (one officer was sprayed in the face with bear mace), writing graffiti, and attacking businesses. People also marched into Berkeley, creating a route that would be repeated in months to come. Over the next several days, more marches were called, which blocked the streets and held assemblies. In San Francisco, people also held a march linking the struggle around the police murder of Alex Nieto to the riots in Ferguson. Anarchist banners at these marches made reference to the connection between the struggles happening from Gaza to Ferguson, further linking the battles against colonialism and white supremacy across the world.

In September, Block the Boat actions once again occurred, called by more groups of people. The actions continued for several days and by October, people declared victory as ZIM announced they would not be returning to the Port of Oakland. By this time, Block the Boat actions had also taken place around the countries at different ports.

In October and November, anarchists took part and organized a series of actions and protests alongside members of the Kurdish diaspora in the Bay Area in solidarity with Kobane which was resisting attacks by ISIS.

Also in November, marches and protests took place in solidarity with the 43 disappeared students in Mexico. Anarchist took part in these marches, and distributed a flyer stating, “It was the State! All power to the hooded ones!”:

Mexico is at a historic crossroads as a growing wave of militant social movements unleash their resistance to the neoliberal narco state of President Peña Nieto. The collective rage boiling across the country over the disappearance of 43 students from the Ayotzinapa Teachers College at the hands of municipal police working hand in hand with a local narco cartel in the state of Guerrero has stripped the state of all legitimacy.

The spirit of the Yo Soy 132 movement that first took to the streets in response to the authoritarian PRI party’s return to power with Peña Nieto’s election in 2012 has now merged with the growing anger over the unending violence of the drug war and the Mexican State’s collusion with various powerful narco cartels. During the past week, demonstrators demanding the return of the 43 missing students in Guerrero and elsewhere have clashed with police, burned down government buildings, blocked highways and airports, and staged massive marches. Their fierce uprising has opened a new political space in Mexico where the state and the narcos can be seen clearly as two sides of the same repressive capitalist coin.

If these revolutionary fires continue to burn even brighter, it may signal the beginning of the end for Peña Nieto and the whole narco war power structure backed by the U.S. military aid and international capital.

In December, anarchists carried out an action at the SF Spanish Consulate against attacks on the anarchist movement in Spain by the State and also for the passing of several draconian measures. A communiqué posted online read:

On December, 15, 2014, the Spanish state passed the “ley de mordaza”, a gag law that makes it a crime to insult a cop, film a cop, or assemble in large groups. On December 16th, 2014, the Spanish state raided several houses and apartments in Barcelona. After seizing electronics, documents, and clothing, the state imprisoned 7 anarchist on vague charges relating to terrorism. These anarchists are meant to be an example of what happens when you lift your head against fascism.

Building and Sustaining Autonomy

2014 was a year of down and dirty building of infrastructure and spaces – and the continuation of projects that have been in existence for quite some time. In April, the Qilombo Social Center held a grand opening, after the former Holdout space closed its doors for several months of re-organizing. The new space featured a venue for various events, outdoor gardening, a radical bookstore, films, classes, and community programs such as needle exchange and bike repair. The space was also used for hip-hop cypher nights which featured a variety of artists and raised money for of political causes such as the Trayvon 2. Hundreds of people attended large scale events at Qilombo celebrating Black August, the 48^th Anniversary of the founding of the Black Panther Party, and many others. A post on the Qilombo website describes the space as such:

From the Kimbundu word kilombo, the original quilombos were maroon societies founded by African people in Brazil and throughout South America between the 16th and 19th centuries. Most inhabitants of the quilombos were Africans escaping the trans-atlantic slave trade, but included indigenous people from local regions and other marginalized people fleeing European colonization. These autonomous zones provided land, shelter, and safety for those fighting to protect themselves from colonial enslavement and genocide. Resistance meant survival.

 

In this spirit of inter-communal solidarity, we invite you to join us in struggle! The Qilombo community social center is a place of intersection for Anarchists, other revolutionaries for liberation and folks from our neighborhood.

In East Oakland, people associated with Poor News Network launched various initiatives such as communal schools and homesteads, striving to create “de-gentrification” zones. The Biblioteca Popular Victor Martinez continued to thrive both as a community hub of activity and as a library and place where food is grown. The library continues out of an occupation of an abandoned building in 2012. Specifically political squats continued in Oakland, as were documented in the film, “The Woman in the Trees,” highlighting squats in east Oakland and was released in April. Sadly, the RCA/Hotmess compound, once the crown jewel of Oakland squats was successfully ended, after a fire caused extensive damage and was then evicted and fenced off. In February, squatters and anarchists also participated in a defense of a squat from eviction of Sheriffs in West Oakland. A report on FireWorks reads:

Dozens of people gathered throughout the day on Tuesday, February 11th, in front of what seemed to be a derelict house at 625 23rd St, on the corner of Martin Luther King Jr. Way in Oakland. At 9am, a banner was unfurled from the second floor that read “They Can’t Evict Us All.” People brought food and coffee to share with residents and other supporters, and a pleasant attitude permeated the street into the afternoon. Radicals and activists mingled with the residents and their friends who had come to support them. Sheriffs drove by during the day, but made no action to evict the house.

The racialized nature of these events is unavoidable. The family living at 625 is the last black family on the block. 23rd Street between Martin Luther King Jr. Way and Northgate Ave is a hotly contested area, right between rapidly gentrifying KONO and Uptown, and also sitting on the edge of west Oakland. The group who bought their house, 302EOF LLC, is one of several ominous limited-liability companies that have been buying numerous properties across the city, often flipping them for profit soon after. Along with bigger players such as REO Homes LLC (which owns another house on the block) and Community Fund LLC, this has been a driving force for gentrification. Investment groups and prospectors like these have been so successful in Oakland and elsewhere because they can pay cash for properties, so sellers don’t have to worry about loans from potential new homeowners.

Organizers with the East Bay Solidarity Network (East Bay Sol) also worked with tenants at a complex in West Oakland against slum conditions and harassment and inaction from landlords. As one participant stated to FireWorks in an interview:

Booker Emery is a 40 unit building near the West Oakland Bart station that had everything wrong with it a building could have: mold, bedbugs, roaches, dead pigeons in the air shafts, holes in walls and ceilings, an unreliable and abusive landlord and security cameras that were used to intimidate tenants that demanded repairs and better conditions. There were tenants with chronic and debilitating respiratory problems because of nightmarish floor to ceiling mold. Some tenants had to send their children to stay with relatives because the bedbug problem was so severe, and I met with tenants whose legs were scarred from hundreds of bites. Before we started organizing there, tenants who requested repairs were moved into even worse units or told to keep quiet or get out.

The victory is presently unfolding. The landlord has been removed and the tenants say that his sons, who have replaced him as building managers, are much easier to deal with (and have not offered any rent reductions in exchange for sexual favors). Five retaliatory evictions have been stopped since the campaign began. Mold abatement and thorough treatment for roaches and bedbugs is underway. We have yet to receive a decision from the rent board hearing, but a majority of the nine tenants who participated expect to see serious rent reductions for an extended period.

In Albany, the Gill Track farm began hosting open farming days in June, in which the public was invited to come and harvest crops. After the occupation of the land in 2012, the UC finally conceded to give partial control of the land over to many of the people who illegally occupied it several years earlier. Later in the year, the struggle was documented in the film, Occupy the Farm, which played to packed audiences.

In San Francisco, in the wake of Alex Nieto’s murder by police, anarchists began to hold weekly ‘Coffee Not Cops’ events at 16^th and Mission, in which people gave out free coffee and pastries, talked with neighbors, and distributed information.

Long running radical spaces such as the Long Haul Infoshop, Bound Together Books, Modern Times, and Station 40 also continued to host events, reading groups, and staff open hours. Although in San Francisco some spaces such as Marcus Books and others faced eviction due to rising rents and gentrification.

Radical media projects continued to flourish and reach wider audiences, such as WeCopwatch, which produced a string of popular videos and documentaries on police brutality and anti-police movements both locally and nationally. Bay Area Intifada continues to regularly give updates and write reports on global and local struggles, as well as editing and creating more and more audio recordings. Blogs such as Hyphenated-Republic issued regular reports of ongoing battles in the bay area, along with a slew of other blogs. Radio shows such as Free Radical Radio and Radio Autonomia continued to broadcast with the pirate station Berkeley Liberation Radio, located now in West Oakland. Radical print projects such as the Chupacabra anarchist distro, specializing in works written by anarchists and radicals of color, along with Loose Dogs, Queer Insurrection, Anti-Repression Committee Distro, and others became mainstays at large demonstrations, distributing thousands of copies of revolutionary material. Anarchist print projects such as AK Press and Little Black Cart continued to release various anarchist titles throughout the year, along with the long running newspaper, Slingshot. EastWest was started as a free anarchist paper aimed at the wider public in 2014, and is distributed from East Oakland to Berkeley. FireWorks printed one paper issue this year (with many future articles being reprinted in EastWest), and our website continues to receive more and more hits.

Other Struggles

Small Anti-Fascist actions continued in 2014. In March, an anonymous communiqué on indybay.org took credit for an attack on Counter-Currents publishing, a ‘thinking man’s’ white nationalist book publisher located in San Francisco. At the time of this writing, it appears that Counter-Currents have uprooted itself to Southern California after pickets and repeated brickings. Also in March, an ‘Antifa Patrol’ was organized in San Francisco after sightings of skinheads roaming Market Street, although no boneheads were to be found. Several months later, anti-fascists infiltrated an event and made public the appearance of a Ukrainian Neo-Nazi in San Francisco who did a talk to other right-wing extremists.

Throughout the year, struggles led by undocumented people took to the streets, largely in the vein of civil disobedience and marches. The protests occurred against the Obama Administrations continued attacks on immigrant communities and heightened waves of deportations. In East Palo Alto in February, 250 people marched and conducted a sit-in in the middle of a busy intersection in front of IKEA. People also denounced the grocery store Mi Pueblo for working with the federal government by using the program, E-verify, which screens citizenship status. In April, people blocked streets in civil disobedience and where carried away by officers in San Francisco.

Native struggles in the bay area persisted, as the Winneman Wintu tribe began to resist the raising of the Shasta Dam. In June, long time Ohlone organizer Luta was attacked and brutalized by police in San Leandro although his eventual charges were dropped. In October, in an “anarchist and indigenous collaboration,” a billboard was altered with the following communique released:

Ohlone Land, Huchin Lives Buried, Return the Ancestors, #decolonizethebay” wheat pasted over 45 foot, 4 story billboard over the 580. A demonstration of continued resistance against genocidal colonization.

In the spirit of resistance we give voice to the people of the land. Universities and colleges collecting remains like debt collectors. Alive is the soul of the land. Humming bird is the first mother of the people from the creation story. Basket designs weaving the strength of the past.

Protests also continued in Emeryville at the site of the Bay Street mall, built on top of shellmound, a sacred site to the Ohlone people.

The Chevron oil refinery also remained a hot-button issue in the city of Richmond and was the scene of a variety of protests and actions. Also in 2014, Chevron started its news service, which attempted to promote a pro-Chevron slant on the news while the massive energy corporation backed a slew of candidates in local elections. Chevron went as far as to call one local progressive politician an “anarchist” and supporter of “Occupy Oakland” in one campaign designed to scare voters. Chevron candidates failed poorly in the election and fires continued at the refinery, keeping firming in the minds of the local population the massive eruption that took place in 2012. The continuing debacle in Richmond also happened behind the national backdrop of resistance to the movement of crude oil by rail, struggles to fracking and pipeline projects, as well as an ongoing drought in California.

The Police War on Black and Brown Bodies in the Bay Area

Before the Ferguson rebellion spread to the bay area in the late summer of 2014, in the first half of the year we saw a continued war on black and brown communities and the growth of anti-police struggles in various cities. Protests, marches, freeway disruptions, and in some cases, small riots broke out over the police murder of Andy Lopez in Santa Rosa, Antonio Guzman in San Jose, Alex Nieto in San Francisco, a string of police killings in Salinas and Vallejo, and the police murder of Yanira Serrano-Garcia in Half-Moon Bay, among others. Actions also continued in the case of Kayla Moore, a transgendered woman who was murdered by Berkeley Police in 2013.

By late 2013, a large movement had started in Santa Rosa after Andy Lopez was shot and killed for walking with a toy air-soft gun, he was only 13 years old. Massive marches, protests, and student organized actions took place frequently in the area. The action continued into 2014, as demonstrators sought charges against Sheriff Erick Gelhaus, and protests became more intense. In one instance, very young Lopez supporters smashed up the court house in one action, and in another, young people blocked highway 101as they faced down riot police after the DA ruled against charging Gelhaus of any wrong doing. This courageous blockade by young people showed what lied just around the corner in only a few months time.

As the struggle in Santa Rosa was underway, in San Francisco in March police shot and killed Alex Nieto, a community college student studying to become a probation officer who worked nights as a security guard. While eating a burrito on Bernal Hill, someone called the police claiming a Latino man was armed with a gun. Police then arrived and unloaded a massive amount of bullets into Nieto, killing him. While initial media reports claimed that a man with a gun attempted to attack police who fired in self-defense, later it was revealed that Nieto was only armed with a taser which he carried for work. That night, over 100 people gathered in the Mission District and marched to the 850 Bryant jail in response to the killing and against plans to build a new SF jail. Police cars were vandalized and attacked and no arrests were made. A communiqué from the march posted online read:

On the night Friday, March 21st, a rowdy noise demonstration marched to 850 Bryant, the current jail in San Francisco, as well as the site of a proposed jail expansion. We participated in this demonstration both to express our disgust for the proposed jail expansion, but also to express solidarity with current prisoners. Around 100 people marched behind banners reading ‘no new jail, no old jail’, and ‘smash patriarchy, burn the prisons: a jail is a jail is a jail’. Upon reaching the jail, fireworks were lit for those inside. Police vehicles and the jail itself were vandalized with rocks, spray paint and paintbombs.

Several days later, the SFPD attempted to do damage control at a packed meeting in San Francisco to address concerns about the police killing. The community was outraged however, and drew connections between Nieto’s murder and the ongoing gentrification of the city. People also made open reference to the riots that broke out after Oscar Grant’s murder, stating that it was not until the rebellion that the State was forced to bring charges against BART officer Johannes Mehserle. A week after Nieto’s murder, the week of action “Defend the Bay Area” began, which included block parties, assemblies, marches, and the blockading of Google buses. One anarchist flyer passed out at a march against Nieto’s murder by pigs read:

As the rents and condos go up, so does the abuse we face at the hands of the police. The police are the ones who murder and evict poor people to ensure this profitable transformation of San Francisco. From campaigns backed by developers to sweep the homeless out of BART plazas, to the horrific police murder of Kenneth Harding Jr., to the recent brutal beatings of young men of color by SFPD like D’Paris Williams and Kevin Clark, one thing is made clear: the police are the foot soldiers of gentrification. As many people have stated openly, their role is to push out homeless, poor, working class, and largely people of color from areas that are prime targets of gentrifying business interests.

Late into 2014, actions continued around Nieto’s case, fueled in part by the ongoing rebellion in Ferguson that spilled into the bay area. In December, a judge ruled that the police must release the names of officers involved in Nieto’s murder, which police were withholding, due to reported death threats against the officers.

In Salinas, an agriculture hub and home to a large Latino population close to Monterrey a similar situation developed after police killed several people in the span of as many months. One Wednesday night after protests had broke out, people began to riot and clashed with police and damaging their cars. In the aftermath of the riot, Leftist and activist groups attempted to contain the anger, even going as far as dictating which signs could be held by protesters at marches and demonstrations. The Salinas events were important because it was an example of an anti-police riot taking place outside of a large urban city like Oakland or San Francisco. Furthermore, it showed the drive of activist groups and self-appointed leaders to try and control and manage revolt as it unfolded. Lastly, Salinas was important because it was a town where the military had been directly training the local police department in counter-insurgency techniques. This reality informed the protests and helped deepen the conversations around this string of police murders. As FireWorks reported:

Pre-made signs awaited marchers with approved slogans such as “Respect, Dignity, Justice” in English and Spanish, and “Queremos Justicia” (We Want Justice.) In between speakers during the rally, one of the organizers in a yellow security vest told the crowd that people with signs deemed “negative” or “inappropriate” were going to be asked to put their sign away or leave. Almost simultaneously, another yellow-vested organizer approached someone who had spray painted FTP on their sign and told them to put it away. An argument broke out when he refused, with many people in the crowd telling the organizers to respect people’s freedom of speech. Despite calling for backup, the group of yellow-vests that had assembled could not convince anyone to remove their signs- in fact they had inspired others in the crowd to write “FTP” or “ACAB” on their own signs.

Just over five years ago, the Salinas Police Department began coordinating with the nearby Naval Postgraduate School to implement the tactics of counter-insurgency. The strategy was developed in Iraq by David Petraeus, US Military General as well as former Director of the CIA, and now has been adapted to fight gangs in the United States. However, population control remains at the heart of counter-insurgency, and when SPD can use certain segments of the population to police their own actions, why create a potential confrontation by providing a visible target for people’s anger?

In Oakland, a banner was dropped in solidarity with the revolt and many people went to Salinas to support the rebellion.

Throughout the wider bay area, protests against police brutality continued but often remained small as many families avoided confrontational tactics as they attempted to bring charges upon the officers involved through legal means. Would have things played out differently in a post-Ferguson world? The next time the police kill someone in the bay area; will people remember not to be side tracked by self-appointed authoritarian leadership on the streets? Only time will tell.

While not generating as much headlines as the high-profile cases such as Alex Nieto and Andy Lopez or the Salinas riots, police in the Oakland area continued to harass and brutalize the general population through violence and beatings. Caught on camera numerous times during the year, police beat and arrested several people on BART and on the street, causing storms on social media. In January, BART police shot another officer while inside someone’s apartment. Cameras on the officer unsurprisingly did not capture the incident. Brutal incidents took place in February, May, and September on BART. In SF, police came under fire for the choking of a baseball fan at a stadium in April. In May, protests were sparked when UC Berkeley police profiled and savagely beat black graduate students at the school. Vallejo saw a surge of protests after a string of police shootings and murders. Oakland police also continued to generate bad press, as a new study revealed what many residents know too well, that local police continue to disproportionally detain, search, and harass black people at an alarming rate.

The California Highway Patrol, who came under much criticism after undercover CHP officers pulled guns on demonstrators in December, were also involved in numerous police murders throughout 2014. In January of 2014, CHP shot and killed two men in separate incidents, both the result of car chases, both in East Oakland, only hours apart from each other. In February, another driver died after trying to out-run CHP, again in East Oakland. In December, a woman died after fleeing the CHP from San Leandro, only to crash in Oakland. As the group, Against Hired Guns wrote in a flyer:

It might be alarming that the California Highway Patrol is chasing people down and killing them in our streets, because their job is normally to police and chase people on the highways. In the past year, the Oakland City Council decided to pay the CHP to police Oakland streets, because politicians don’t think we have enough cops. Chasing people across the Town, ready to be judge, jury and executioner never makes us safer.

In response, families and friends of one of those killed in January held a BBQ that was attended by a wide range of people from the community in order to raise money to cover his funeral. People also vandalized a CHP substation with graffiti against the killings, which was reported on indybay.org.

In February, people attacked an Oakland Police Department sub-station in the Fruitvale District. A communiqué read:

In the early hours of February 8th, the glass door of an OPD Office in Fruitvale was shattered. Joy in our hearts at seeing the symbols of authority smashed, we fled into the darkness under cover of rain. Our aim was to demonstrate that action, however small, is both possible and desirable. We dedicate this action to the rebels in Durham, North Carolina who have repeatedly taken to the streets in outrage against the killer pigs who murdered a young man, Chuy Huerta, in the back of a cop car last year. Weapons in hand, we attacked for Chuy. It’s easy to attack!

Throughout the summer and into the fall, police murders continued. In June, San Mateo County Sheriffs shot an 18 year old special needs woman, Yanira Serrano-Garcia, during an encounter. After the shooting, Yanira’s family and friends organized a series of marches and rallies in protest of the killing. In August, just as the events in Ferguson were starting to unfold, Alameda Sheriffs shot and killed Jacorey Calhoun, 23, after a high speed chase. In September, Richmond police killed an unarmed man outside of a liquor store. In October, San Francisco police shot to death O’Shaine Evans. Evans family quickly organized demonstrations against the killing and have been ongoing participants at many militant street protests.

In September, galvanized by the exploding Ferguson uprising and also images of militarized police firing weapons and tear-gas upon rioters, people took to the streets against the ‘Urban Shield’ conference. In the past, police trained in various protest scenarios, in which police took down activists holding banners with “99%” and anarchist symbols. With the images of cops on the streets of Ferguson freshly in the minds of many, people blockaded the streets in Downtown Oakland in front of the conference forcing the Mayor’s office to declare that they would not ask Urban Shield to return in coming years. In an article posted on FireWorks, we discussed the connection between counter-insurgency and Bill Bratton, police commission of New York and former consultant to the Oakland Police Department. Bratton also had connections (as did Urban Shield) with Israeli police forces. The article writes:

In the wake of the Occupy revolts, Bratton was hired as a consultant for the city of Oakland in January of 2013. Likewise, Bratton has also consulted police departments in the UK in the wake of massive riots in response to a police murder. In recent years, Bratton has also worked with the Israeli Police (Mishteret Yisrael). Through Bratton, Israel and American police forces have traded notes on what they have in common putting a boot to the throat of a large population of poor and oppressed people.

Looking at Bratton’s career, we see a pattern emerge. From the UK to Los Angles, Bratton is brought in as a consultant in the wake of riots. In New York, his policies lead to the practice of ‘stop and frisk’ and paved the way for the mass incarceration of vast amounts of people as well as attacks on the squatting and guerrilla gardening movement in the 1990’s, [as well as incidents that lead to the death of Eric Garner].

Seeing the problem of insurgency among the poor as a problem of ‘broken windows,’ (that larger crimes and rebellion grow from smaller ones), police sought to clamp down hard on small and petty disturbances. As Bratton stated at the Israeli conference, “[New York] in the 1980s and 1990s was a very frightening experience to walk the streets — the aggressive beggars, the prostitutes, the gangs, the filth, the graffiti. It is a city today that is vibrant, it is alive, it is safe. On the subway system, the graffiti is gone, the beggars are gone, the vandalism is gone.” But of course, Bratton isn’t talking about an improved quality of life in American society, especially in poor and working-class communities. Instead, he’s describing a perspective that sees everyone as a potential insurgent and every petty offense as a possible outbreak of rebellion.

On November 24^th, Oakland exploded in response to the grand jury decision to not indict Darren Wilson. The first night of marches, rioting, and looting led to two more nights of disorder and clashes with the police, which only let up on Thanksgiving. The next day, on Black Friday, BART was shut down by the Blackout Collective who currently face charges and the threat of massive fines from BART. That night, people fought with police and attacked corporate stores in San Francisco, shutting down many businesses in the process. A few days of relative calm were then proceeded by the decision to exonerate the police who killed Eric Garner in New York, which lead to three more days of marching and protests. Then, starting on Saturday, large scale riots began after police attacked marchers in Berkeley, leading to five days of free-way shut downs, looting, and police violence. The marches ended after undercover CHP officers pulled their guns on demonstrators and made arrests. During this time, actions were also ongoing in San Francisco as well. On Saturday, December 13^th, a march to the Oakland court house ended with hours of further more militant marches. On December 15^th, the Blackout Collective shut down the area in front of OPD headquarters and the police flag was replaced with a “Black Lives Matter” one. Several days after, a sign memorializing slain Oakland officers at the hands of Lovell Mixon was defaced and torn down. Several days after that, people dropped a large anti-police banner during a Raiders game. Then, on Christmas day, a protest entitled, “No Time Off” took to the streets and attacked stores, looted alcohol, and defaced the Jack London square Christmas tree. On New Year’s Eve, hundreds took to the streets for a yearly noise demonstration outside of the Glenn Dyer Jail and once again clashes broke out with law enforcement. Throughout this time, hundreds and hundreds of people were arrested, with many still facing court dates and charges. Through the invaluable work of the Anti-Repression Committee, people have been bailed out, supported, and given access to lawyers. We encourage everyone to donate to their bail fund.

The blog Kissing in the Dark talks here about the first two nights of the riots:

When we take to the streets. When we fight back in direct ways, in offensive ways, not just passive marches, boycotts or petitions, then something changes within us. Our spirits are awakened when we take back space, whether it be buildings, freeways, walls, parks, ect. Confidence is built through taking risks. And when confidence is built we can do it better and larger and deeper. We can start to imagine what it might be like to not live in fear of the backlash of the state. We can begin to imagine what it might be like to live without a state altogether. To be truly free and autonomous. To not just take back space for a few hours, but to really decolonize and live with the earth.

Monday and Tuesday night in Oakland was inspiring, because it is a reminder of the dignified rage that flows through our people. That rage is the source of our power and magic. A righteous destruction we must employ against our oppressors, as well as a creative power to imagine and build something new. This is the beauty of militant decolonial struggle. The ways it builds upon itself through time and space. Nothing is purely spontaneous when the people have been self-organizing for 100s of years. What is important to me is how we build upon that energy so it hits the pressure points of the system as well as uplift one another.

Much has been written from a variety of sources about the large scale riots, militant tactics, free-way shut downs, and the overall character of the revolt. The rebellion was largely generalized, reaching beyond the anarchist and activist scenes, touching a wide cross section of the bay area population. At times, the revolt resembled a youth uprising, as young people danced on top of vans, blasted music, drank looted beer, projected riot clip videos onto walls, shut-down freeways, wrote graffiti everywhere, and marched for hours upon hours. The riot became the new occupy.

As was written in, “We Welcome the Fire, We Welcome the Rain:”

Through six years of street fighting in the Bay Area (from the Oscar Grant uprising, to the student movement, through Occupy) there are a great many who have met one another, grown together, and been emboldened by confidence in our abilities and relationships. These trajectories of learning have intertwined into something beautiful and ferocious here. Within this space there is room for all of us to contribute. Those of us who’ve found ourselves in recent years – in black blocs and graffiti crews, in anti-police riots and anti-austerity fights, in occupied plazas and buildings – have a great deal to share. Not as instructions or grand plans, but as proposals in each moment. Small suggestions which open more space: a call for a time and place when announcements are made, maybe barricades when people take the roads, maybe fires when barricades are built, maybe expropriation when facades are shattered.

We have no interests in being specialists in fighting. We want to fight, side-by-side, in the first person, alongside those who want similar things. We want to build a type of solidarity where each of us can recognize our own struggles and projects in the struggles and projects of others. We want to find conspirators in this and to learn from one another. The interweaving and spreading of these attempts is what we call ‘insurrection’.

Hyphenated-Republic wrote in a recent essay regarding the free-way shut-downs in particular:

[T]he freeway blockade has begun to emerge as an increasingly attractive option in the protest arsenal. Freeway targets have probably been at the edge of the collective consciousness since the days of the Rodney King protests, when student protesters took the freeway and occupied the Bay Bridge. There have also been relatively limited bursts of freeway blockades that seem to disappear as abruptly as they appear. I wrote last year about an ad-hoc takeover of the 880 overpass that overlooks the OPD headquarters during the anti-racism actions that occurred around the Zimmerman acquittal….The tactic did not have a popular character, and was poorly populated and deemed too radical for general audiences.

Many, if not most, of these protesters I saw leading marches on to freeways, are men and women I’ve never seen before in the well-worn activist circles I know in Oakland. My personal feeling is that a new emerging group of POC and Black street protesters are no longer satisfied with political action as usual, and are rejecting the narrative that they have seen played out on their TV screens over the past few years. They know what direct action is, and they realize that there are a multitude of convenient chokepoints all around them that are too ubiquitous for authorities to defend.

The movement to occupy these chokepoints is embodied quite elegantly with the hashtag and chant #shutitdown, a term d’art that had been drained of meaning for a long while, but is enjoying renewed definition. The tactic no longer seems “too radical” for mainstream protesters who may have thought they were coming out to march for an hour or so, but find themselves being okay with blocking a freeway with a thousand strangers instead.

The anti-police rebellion in the bay is far from over; thus we do not want to comment too much, but know that this is certainly a historic year. However, we will say that several things seem to be clear. The current revolt has been informed by revolts in the past (Occupy, student occupation movement, Oscar Grant) as well as current conditions (militarized policing, gentrification, the economic crisis, environmental catastrophe). The youth that are in the streets today were in high school when they first saw people rioting for Oscar Grant or fighting the police during Occupy. Now, they are the ones in the street, walking out of class, and occupying freeways or a building. Attempts by self-appointed leaders to contain and direct the ‘movement,’ be they BAMN, the RCP, or a host of others, largely have not been successful. People have in their minds what they want to do, and often they are able to do it. While much has been said about “peace police” and vigilantes who have attempted to stop the looting and destruction of businesses in the name of ‘peaceful protest;’ these people have been totally ineffective at stopping the momentum. The militant street actions, along with the repression by the police of the protests, have only made things grow in scale. As an anonymous anarchist interviewed on KPFA stated:

We need tactics which are available to the masses – that everyone can do. And tactics which make people feel good and make them feel empowered. [The protests] have grown from the use of [militant tactics].

But, as always, the question remains: now what?

So Many Plantations Left to Burn

2014 was a historically explosive year. Riots raged, ports were blocked, workers walked off the job, free-ways were shut down, stores were looted, homes were squatted, and people took to the night in acts of destruction against systems of domination. The police also continued to murder people in the streets. The government attempted to expand surveillance and policing into every aspect of social life. The environmental situation continued to move closer to a dystopian reality – a reality openly admitted to by even ruling institutions. The elites attacked poor and working people at all possible angles. Through cuts and the privatization of public housing, the massive buy-up and consolidation of foreclosed properties into fewer and fewer hands, in cuts to social programs such as food stamps, the closure of schools, raising of tuition, the move towards charters, and in attacks on wages, working conditions, and benefits. The lines the sand for more and more people are drawn extremely clearly. Any final hope placed in Obama or in a “progressive” dream of America died the day Michael Brown was left to die on a St. Louis street for 4 and a half hours and suffocated later that night in a sea of tear-gas.

This government never was legitimate. It was a colonial project constructed on stolen land out of genocide and white supremacy that attempted to divide a nation of indigenous people, slaves, indentured servants, and workers all against each other as it grew into the most murderous destructive empire in human history. But for many now, the mask has been finally removed. This government is no longer legitimate; resistance to it is.

Occupy was a moment in time where we, like millions across the world came together and found one another in public places that were taken over. Attempts were made to move the struggle forward and deepen it. From the broken bank windows, to the blocked ports, to the occupied and communally farmed plots of land – all of it pointed to future possibilities of what everyday people could do after choosing sides in a war. Yet for many, Occupy remained a cry to those in power to listen – to listen to their discontent and make changes within capitalism. In 2014, millions of people, especially the youth, realized that those in power know very well things are fucked – they simply don’t give a shit. Many people came to see that it was necessary to physically shut down and attack the systems of domination; not simply register discontent to it.

Against the backdrop of nihilism and despair that makes up the daily reality of modern life, people found joy in discovering what human bodies could do in the thousands and as individuals within these rebellious constellations. This is something that all of the journalists, all of the non-profit workers, all of the politicians in waiting, all of the “good allies” who attempted to attack and silence black people were never able to understand. In the struggles of 2014, they instead saw potential voters, subscribers to their newspapers, and obedient members to their organizations. We saw accomplices and co-conspirators. We saw possibilities of revolt spilling into all facets and avenues of social life. That’s why when people shut down trains and freeways, when they blocked the ports, when they broke through the windows of Smart and Final screaming, “This is for Oscar!,” when they attacked police cars – there were smiles on everyone’s faces. People found a common joy in attacking this world of misery and alienation; in shutting it down and make everything stop.

2014 was about people finding their power and the confidence to attack and refuse within that power. It was about the awakening of a generation of people told over and over again that they had no future. And while perhaps for now the riots have receded, we hope that this spirit carries itself back with you, dear reader. Into your workplace, into your groups of friends, into your neighborhoods, into your schools – everywhere.

But the question remains, will we continue to use these actions not only in the rebellions to come, but towards what end? Will it be to meet our current material needs and grow stronger as a force? Or will it simply degenerate into symbolic gestures that are ended when cosmetic changes are made by those in power? Will we use these new found weapons and capacities to begin to joyously play with the creation of new worlds, or let them fall from our hands, as the demands of work, traffic, family, smart phone, internet, and more work pull us back into the bullshit of everyday life.

One thing is clear, we will never forget this year. A new standard has been set. We only hope to continue to raise it and learn from our shortcomings.

See you in the streets.