The Oscar Grant Plaza Gazette
Thursday, October 27, 2011 Day 18
WHO’S AFRAID OF TEAR GAS?
Not Oakland.
[photo of crowd of 1500+ in front Oscar Grant Plaza]
97% of a gathering of approximately 1500 citizens voted in favor of calling for a
GENERAL STRIKE ON NOVEMBER 2, 2011
Planning meetings daily, 5PM, Oscar Grant Plaza,
City Hall, 14th and Broadway
From occupyoakland.org:
Below is the proposal passed by the Occupy Oakland General Assembly on Wednesday October 26, 2011 in reclaimed Oscar Grant Plaza. 1607 people voted. 1484 voted in favor of the resolution, 77 abstained and 46 voted against it, passing the proposal at 96.9%. The General Assembly operates on a modified consensus process that passes proposals with 90% in favor and with abstaining votes removed from the final count.
PROPOSAL:
-We as fellow occupiers of Oscar Grant Plaza propose that on Wednesday November 2, 2011, we liberate Oakland and shut down the 1%.
-We propose a city-wide general strike and we propose we invite all students to walk out of school. Instead of workers going to work and students going to school, the people will converge on downtown Oakland to shut down the city.
All banks and corporations should close down for the day or we will march on them.
-While we are calling for a general strike, we are also calling for much more. People who organize out of their neighborhoods, schools, community organizations, affinity groups, workplaces and families are encouraged to self organize in a way that allows them to participate in shutting down the city in whatever manner they are comfortable with and capable of.
-The whole world is watching Oakland. Let’s show them what is possible.
-The Strike Coordinating Council will begin meeting everyday at 5pm in Oscar Grant Plaza before the daily General Assembly at 7pm. All strike participants are invited.
excerpt from Solidarity Letter from Cairo
(it was so HARD to excerpt this beautiful letter! read the whole thing on
http://anticapitalprojects.wordpress.com/2011/10/24/solidarity-letter-from-cairo/)
To all those in the United States currently occupying parks, squares and other spaces, your comrades in Cairo are watching you in solidarity. Having received so much advice from you about transitioning to democracy, we thought it’s our turn to pass on some advice. […]
In our own occupations of Tahrir, we encountered people entering the Square every day in tears because it was the first time they had walked through those streets and spaces without being harassed by police; it is not just the ideas that are important, these spaces are fundamental to the possibility of a new world. These are public spaces. Spaces for gathering, leisure, meeting, and interacting – these spaces should be the reason we live in cities. Where the state and the interests of owners have made them inaccessible, exclusive or dangerous, it is up to us to make sure that they are safe, inclusive and just. We have and must continue to open them to anyone that wants to build a better world, particularly for the marginalized, excluded and for those groups who have suffered the worst.
What you do in these spaces is neither as grandiose and abstract nor as quotidian as “real democracy”; the nascent forms of praxis and social engagement being made in the occupations avoid the empty ideals and stale parliamentarianism that the term democracy has come to represent. And so the occupations must continue, because there is no one left to ask for reform. They must continue because we are creating what we can no longer wait for.
[ …] By way of concluding then, our only real advice to you is to continue, keep going and do not stop. Resist fiercely when you are under attack, but otherwise take pleasure in what you are doing, let it be easy, fun even. We are all watching one another now, and from Cairo we want to say that we are in solidarity with you, and we love you all for what you are doing.
-Comrades from Cairo.
24th of October, 2011.
A COMRADE AT OCCUPY WALL STREET REPORTS ON LAST NIGHT’S SOLIDARITY MARCH WITH OAKLAND
Oakland in occupied minds: Wildest (and by some counts the longest ever in New York) march for Oakland (between 9pm and midnight) erupted tonight (Wed 25 October) after an extended gathering at Liberty Square. During a tortured GA session two senseless blocks against financial support for Oakland occupation — the first proposal for $20,000 was upped to $40,000 before being blocked — had to be confronted. The blocks were finally withdrawn and it was agreed that $20,000 should go as support for Oakland’s occupation and arrests. Immediately after, a long march began at liberty square, snaked through church street, entered Broadway and then riotously occupied street after street — first Broadway, then Bleecker, then Broadway again, Sixth Ave., and so on and on in an exhilarating rush that lasted over two hours — before a triumphant return to Liberty Square. “Oakland is New York, New York is Oakland” among other slogans resonated all through night-streets and shook the yuppies and idle rich out of their stupid torpor. Street cars and cab drivers honked endlessly their support. Transgressive through and through. A part of the march included capture of police nets which marchers paraded through Broadway before dumping the trophies into the garbage dump of history. Oakland lives on. So does a rejuvenated Big Apple.
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