Occupy Oakland protesters split over violence

HOW CAN WE BECOME NONVIOLENT

AND STILL FUNCTION WITH DIGNITY

WITHIN A WORLD THAT LARGELY RUNS ON VIOLENCE AND CONFLICT?

Changing Our World's Systems Toward

Economic Justice And Greater Fairness ~~~~~~And Surviving

Tuesday, January 31, 2012

by Kevin Fagan and Justin Berton, San Francisco Chronicle

Michael Macor / SFC A masked protester joins the march through downtown Oakland before the demonstration turned violent Saturday.

For many Occupy activists outside Oakland and San Francisco, the violent clashes with police and destruction that attended protests in those cities over the past two weeks not only went against the Occupy message - they've started to undercut its essence.

Even within the cities, there is a deepening split between those who accept violence as a tactic and those who oppose it. The conflict is turning into a wrestling match for the soul of the Occupy movement in the Bay Area. And it's become so pronounced that many who started out calling themselves Occupiers now refer to themselves as "99 percenters" instead.

"But now," Horaney said, "we've got this group that pretty much just wants to destroy things and make trouble."

"When I started to see what was happening Saturday, my heart just broke," Michele Horaney of Alameda, a member of the 99 Percent Solution activist group in the East Bay, said of the Occupy Oakland protest that devolved into an hours-long street battle with police. "There is so much good to be gotten, earned and kept from really solid, sincere efforts to make things change for the better. Not Their Fault

For others, though, it's not a matter of protesters committing violence. Any destruction is in reaction to police repression of their efforts to seek economic equality, they say - and if violence happens, it's not really the protesters' fault.

"In any struggle for social justice, the people have been told to shut up and sit down," said Cat Brooks, an active Oakland Occupier. "I believe in a diversity of tactics. If you are fully aware of the risks, then you have to do what you have to do.

"I'm not condoning violence, and I'm not condemning it," she said. "I'm just saying that 99 percent of the time when violence happens, it's police who start it. And you have to do what you have to do."

Occupy roots

Occupy began last fall on Wall Street as a crusade against economic inequity, shrinkage of the middle class and what its backers perceived as corporate greed. As tent cities sprouted throughout the country, the leaderless movement gathered adherents from many stripes of protest, and today one of the more vigorous contingents advocates taking over empty buildings and resisting police.

This is particularly true in Oakland, where protesters protecting themselves with shields tried to take over the vacant Henry J. Kaiser Convention Center on Saturday. The confrontation turned into another melee with police firing tear gas, protesters flinging objects and people getting hurt on both sides. Activists eventually broke into City Hall, burned a U.S. flag and trashed parts of the building.

The week before, on Jan. 20, Occupiers broke into the abandoned Cathedral Hill Hotel in San Francisco after a peaceful day of marches in the Financial District, and were ejected after they threw bricks and other items at police.

Occupy San Francisco's General Assembly has voted to oppose violence as a tactic, but in Oakland - where there have been weekly "F- the police" marches - such proposals have fallen short of the consensus vote needed to pass. At protests in both cities, those who commit vandalism and throw rocks and other objects at officers are often opposed by other protesters who try to calm them down.

Other goals

Outside the two cities, there is little such debate among the 30-plus Occupy organizations from Santa Cruz to Concord and up to Santa Rosa.

There, the tactics have generally settled into marches and rallies to drive home a few central themes that include banking reform, making the rich and corporations pay more taxes and granting foreclosure relief. Ellis Goldberg, a marketer who has staged Occupy-inspired rallies against banks in Dublin and San Ramon, has become so frustrated he now calls himself a "99 percenter" instead of an Occupier.

What we are protesting about has been totally obliterated by what is coming out of the television set," he said. "It's not just burning the American flag that is terrible - it's terrible that it's all getting totally off message. Trashing buildings and fighting with police is not what 99 percent of what the 99 percenters are about."

"We had 50 people in front of banks in San Ramon two weeks ago, and we have been telling people for months about $156 billion bonuses Wall Street executives got last year on the backs of the rest of us, but do we get press?" Goldberg said. "No. Instead, we turn on our TV and there are pictures of people breaking into City Hall.

Oakland debate

At Frank Ogawa Plaza on Sunday evening, members discussed the impact of the repeated clashes with police and considered the movement's future.

Barucha Peller, one of Occupy Oakland's key organizers, said the group was the victim of police brutality and had no intention of reaching an accommodation with law enforcement, ever.

"I think it's impossible," she said. "If someone shot you in the head, beat you and your family, would you negotiate with that person? That's terrorism."

Standing nearby, Mike Rufo, 50, disagreed. "It'd be reconciliation," he told Peller.

Rufo, an energy-efficiency consultant who has helped organize the delivery of portable toilets to the plaza, said the cycle of conflict had not resulted in progress for either side.

"If you're not willing to sit down and try and work through it, I don't see where we can go," he said.

Off message

Rufo said the Occupy Oakland movement, which he has supported since October, had strayed from its core principles - fighting economic inequality - and was distracted by continual run-ins with police. He hoped the group would shift course and authorize members to meet with city representatives.

"Beating up on each other with the city of Oakland, I don't see where that's going," Rufo said. "They don't have deep pockets either."

Brooks said the goal is more complex than that.

"It helps those who oppose us to portray this movement as a bunch of violent, crazy people, and that's just not the truth," she said. "Occupy didn't invent what's happening now - this has always happened in social justice movements. What we really need to do now is engage more of the masses."

E-mail the writers at kfagan@sfchronicle.com and jberton@sfchronicle.com.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/01/30/MN7E1N0JU1.DTL&ao=2#ixzz1l2DLT3z2

This article appeared on page A - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle