Occupy Oakland and other Occupy groups in Alameda County have been subjected to a relentless campaign of suppression and discriminatory application of the law by the Oakland police department, the mayor, the city administrator’s office, and the Alameda County district attorney’s office. This campaign focuses not only on intimidation and terrorizing activists with threats of violence, inordinately long jail stays due to high bails, inflated and inflammatory sentencing such as: lethal use of less than lethal weapons, bails in the 100’s of thousands, criminal and hate crimes charges, stay away orders, and the like.
These actions endanger not only the individual’s involved, but other activists in Occupy Oakland and Alameda County, their reputations, their rights to liberty and their right to express their political opinions. Because mainstream media has so far shown itself unable and/or unwilling to report these egregious, corrupt, illegal, and unconstitutional abuses of power by the city, county, and DA, we therefore propose to formulate a press release and press conference, addressing the issue of stay away orders, and most importantly the situation of Occupy Oakland members facing baseless criminal and hate crime charges.
The press conference will invite other members of the Oakland community facing similar oppression by the police, victims of hate crimes that have found the OPD and DA’s office completely indifferent to investigating and charging their attackers, and legal advocates fighting stay away orders and gang injunctions. The press conference will also be promoted as an Occupy Oakland action, with the intent of presenting to the media the large and diverse group in OO and its supporters who stand against these acts of repression. This proposal will require the press conference to occur as soon as possible within strategically sound parameters, and no later than the start date of the trial of Occupiers currently facing hate crimes charges. A temporary committee charged with these tasks will be formed if this proposal is passed, and it will be dissolved within one week after the press conference. The committee will seek to work with other committees already involved in these issues, with the aim of bolstering and focusing their efforts for the purposes of this press conference.
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