It ain't just the DEA

Oakland SWAT raided a wharehouse in East Oakland last night and seized 2,500 Marijuana plants, 50 pounds of processed pot, $40,000 in cash, two suits of body armor, six guns and several boxes of ammunition. 11 people were arrested in connection to the raid.

Investigators had been monitoring the warehouse for a long time before Wednesday night's raid because of suspicious activity there, according to police.
-Inside Bay Area

The City of Oakland is not against marijuana growers, just the ones who aren't politically-connected enough to be officially sanctioned by City Hall....i.e. they wear hoodies.

OPD Thugs in the spotlight yet again

Yesterday, news broke that Oakland Police shot the cousin of Oscar Grant this weekend. 24 year-old Tony Jones was shot in the back by Oakland Police early Sunday morning. The cops claim he had a gun, but no charges have been filed yet against Jones four days after the incident.

For several hours, attorney Waukeen McCoy says he was denied the right to meet with his client at the hospital, going so far as to take a picture of the Oakland officer he says refused entry after Jones requested to see his attorney.
"We believe what happened is that the Oakland Police Department is hiding the fact that they shot him in his back while he was retreating from them," said McCoy.
-ABC7/KGO

If that wasn’t bad enough, yesterday’s hot-off-the-presses issue of the East Bay Express contained another story that claims to have identified the Oakland Police Officer who both shot Iraq War Veteran Scott Olsen during an Occupy Oakland Protest back in October, and then threw a grenade at the group of people who came to Olsen’s aid.

An extensive review of video footage and Oakland Police Department records by this reporter indicates that Robert Roche, an acting sergeant in the Oakland Police Department and member of OPD's "Tango Teams," threw the flash-bang at Olsen and his rescuers. It's also not the first time that Roche's actions have come under scrutiny. Police records show that Roche had previously killed three people in the line of duty.

In one clip of footage shot on October 25 by KTVU, the camera zooms in on a helmeted, gas-mask wearing officer in OPD insignia pointing a shotgun at the crowd. Olsen's inert body is also visible in front of the barriers. Another video clip shows the same officer training his shotgun on the crowd, lowering the firearm as a crowd gathers around Olsen, and stepping back behind a line of San Francisco sheriff's deputies on the barricade line. A grenade is then tossed at Olsen's body as rescuers arrive.
According to former San Francisco Sheriff Mike Hennessey and Sergeant Kara Apple, a Palo Alto Police spokeswoman, officers from neither agency were equipped with less-than-lethal shotguns or flash-bang grenades that night. A list of OPD crowd-control munitions published by Al Jazeera last year includes the Remington .357 shotgun and two types of CS or pepper spray-loaded blast grenades.
Two stripes and a star, OPD's insignia for acting sergeants, are visible on the officer's left sleeve. In both clips, the officer is holding his shotgun with his right hand on the trigger, his helmet visor is up and the numbers "35" are visible on his helmet. According to an OPD roster of the three-digit helmet numbers assigned to individual officers and the personnel detail for October 25, Officer Robert Roche is the only one with a helmet number beginning with "35" who was assigned to a Tango Team that night. Roche's helmet number that night was "357," according to OPD records.
Three attorneys who reviewed the two clips mentioned above concur that the shotgun-wielding officer is the same in both clips.
-East Bay Express

Police Chief Howard Jordan claimed that no Oakland Officers had grenade launchers nor grenades that night.
That was clearly yet another lie from these habitual liars..

Anti-Occupy Organizer Outed

Standing for the bankstas comes with a price.

Occupy Oakland sympathizers aren't just targeting cyber attacks at council members and top city administrators; they've also gone after at least one of the organizers of a recently formed anti-Occupy citizens group.

Nancy Sidebotham has been a thorn in the council's side way before tents were ever pitched at Frank H. Ogawa Plaza, but she apparently ran afoul of Occupy supporters Monday when a group she helped start, Stand for Oakland, staged a rally decrying recent Occupy Oakland actions.

Sidebotham, a community policing leader and former City Council candidate, got a voice mail Tuesday evening from a man with a Texas-based phone number, saying "Hi Nancy, for some oddball reason your life history seems to have been plastered all over the Internet."

Sidebotham Googled herself and found that just like city leaders, her phone number, address and lots of biographical information had been posted on the file-sharing website Pastebin.com.

The information, which was likely culled from other public websites, included a nasty note from someone claiming to represent the hacker group Anonymous: "After looking into your background, it has come to our attention that you are involved in a self-aggrandizing political game you should not have involved yourself in, as now you have drawn our attention."
-Inside Bay Area

A new era

Occupy Oakland has paid its dues, and is now truly and officially an Oaklander. The movement is diverse and foward-thinking, is committed to working together to move forward into the future, cares about everyone in its community, has been scapegoated and misrepresented in the media, has been evicted twice, has been repeatedly shot and grenaded and teargassed, is ALWAYS being watched by the police (and most likely the feds as well), and now has a major case of PTSD that no one else seems to care about, and actually seems to blame them for. Most importantly though, despite all of the state repression/oppression and harassment and intimidation, the movement is still alive and well (even though homeless and misunderstood). That's about as Oakland as it gets.

The powers that be are LYING about the movement. The J28 "Move-in Day" action, and the criminally violent suppression of that attempted action, have forced a major rift in the broader society between those who instinctually trust the police, and those who know better.
J28 was the epitome of the class war that has been raging in the country for generations: a homeless movement was attempting to peacefully occupy a blighted, unused public space, and the police showed up armed for war. The video evidence alone proves whose agenda was actually carried out that day.

The Occupy Oakland movement is about democracy. Period. It is about an inclusive process where anyone who wants in can be in, and no one is left out. Anyone who says otherwise is a LIAR.
Resident livestreaming videojournalist Spencer Mills extended a polite invitation to Oakland Police Chief Howard Jordan to participate in tonite's community forum on police actions. Hojo, of course, declined. OPD has never and will never be interested in dialog. Just ask Bobby Hutton and Judi Bari.
Even back when Mayor Quan was trying to "dialog" with the labor council (her best attempt at trying to understand the movement was to call in the usual suspects, most of whom had NOTHING to do with the actual movement on her front lawn) OPD was calling for violent action rather than talk. When she realized that she couldn't bully big labor into controlling the movement (i.e. when she realized that they weren't in charge), she ignored the progressive voters who got her elected, and let OPD have their way. Rather than waiting her turn to speak to a general assembly and having genuine dialog, she conspired via teleconference with Homeland Security to help orchestrate a nationwide series of violent assaults on Occupy camps. That's her interpretation of democracy apparently.

The funny thing is, her blatant subservience to the radical right has earned her no respect in their eyes either. A recall campaign to oust her from office is currently underway, and its backers all represent "business" interests. Clearly, it was an incredibly stupid move on her part to try to make them happy...they didn't want her elected in the first place.

Oakland City Hall could learn a lot from the Oakland Raiders, who are risking short-term criticism from their fan base in exchange for long-term success. The Raiders are cleaning house in a quest for better communication, more discipline, improved teamwork and increased productivity (the same values that Occupy Oakland has prioritized since its inception).
It is painfully clear that OPD needs a similar cleansing.

Only one person had to die in order for the Raiders to move forward.
How many will it take before OPD and Oakland City Hall clean up their act?

Recall Quan campaign update

A third draft of the petition to recall Oakland Mayor Jean Quan is "almost" ready to be signed by City Clerk LaTonda Simmons. After that, petition author Gene Hazzard will have 160 days to gather 19,109 valid signatures (10% of the residents who voted in the last election) to qualify the measure for the November 2012 ballot.
Just 11 months into her first term, Quan is being blamed by conservatives for layoffs in the Oakland Police Department at a time when the crime rate is rising. She is also being criticized from all sides regarding her handling of the Occupy Oakland movement.
In a nutshell, Quan is being scapegoated for the inevitable collapse of the global infinite-growth paradigm.

"It's so unfair," she said. "I'm the first Asian-American mayor of a major American city. They are not going to take me out without a fight."
-Inside Bay Area

Happy Thingstaken Day

Today, I’m thankful for the validation.
The world really is watching. This really is the future, and though the revolution may not necessarily be televised, it is being streamed and youtubed and tweeted and facebooked.
Joblessness, homelessness, shootings, starvation, mental illness, professional motherfuckery, rats in City Hall, undas, cops, pigs and shit…none of this is new to us. This is how we roll. They killed Lil Bobby, Judy Bari, Oscar Grant, and countless others. Each time, we came back stronger than before, letting them know that we would not be intimidated.
This is why I built a life here, planted a garden and joined the community. Oakland keeps it real.
I’m not a pacifist. Because I grew up in Nazi territory during the 80s, I strongly believe in everyone’s right to defend themselves, but I’m also trying to raise a son in a world where people use their words before their fists. The strong commitment to non-violence in Oakland, a place where people are not afraid to fight by any means necessary, is incredibly encouraging, and we should all be proud.
People in Oakland get it, and have gotten it for a long time. This is the best place to experience the collapse, because people have been preparing for it, people have been organizing around it, and most importantly, people are willing to work together to survive it. All 99.99% of us.
Oakland really is a commune. It was before the Occupy movement, and it will be after. That’s how we roll. People who don’t know don’t know, and they can judge from that position of ignorance all they want. We don’t need anyone else’s validation, especially if their perspectives are rooted in the old played-out infinite growth paradigm. They are the dinosaurs, and we are the birds.
Even if the Occupy movement died tomorrow, hella people still got an unprecedented sensitivity training for free. They didn’t have to go off to some foreign land in search of meaning, as they had a convenient excuse to come to Oakland as part of some sort of urban domestic peace corps minus the fees and bureaucracy. No passport was needed for this trip. They served the people here in this country, and I highly doubt that they’ll be satisfied going back to a meaningless life of endless consumption. I doubt that anyone will really have that choice to be honest.
Besides, the movement ain’t dyin tomorrow anyway. It was never just about the camp. The camp, which was unlike any other camp anywhere else in the country, was but one protest out of many in Oakland. The camp was merely a symbol that could be replicated elsewhere, like the mouse ears of the movement. It was important for the homeless people, but it wasn’t the end goal.
The end goal was, and still is, a better world. The path to that goal is the process, and that still lives on.
Inclusiveness.
Everyone in, no one left out.
Judgement is the bankstas’ way. Mutual respect is the only way we can learn from one another, and if we can’t learn from each other, we can’t learn.
We have a lot to learn if we want to survive, and there really isn’t a better place to learn than right here, right now.
So I have to also be thankful for the bankstas’ predictable greediness. They couldn’t possibly save themselves from themselves, and they partied like it was 1999…for an extra decade.
And now the collapse is here. It was inevitable to us, and that’s why we have been preparing: dreaming and planning, learning and sharing, organizing and working to make a better world. Now, thanks to the teargas and the pepperspray, more people have a reason to notice, and be curious. They are all welcome to join the movement towards a better world, and they can do so in their own home towns. Oakland isn’t just a place, it’s a way of life, one that the overwhelming majority of us have chosen.
We aren’t where we need to be yet, but we are still ahead of the curve, and it’s being noted. For those of us committed to the struggle, who have been screaming for years/decades hoping to be heard, it is nice to know that the tide has shifted away from willful ignorance and towards curiosity. That’s actually more than we realistically hoped for, and it is a call to action for us to step it up and continue building on the momentum.
The whole world is watching.

Another vet injured by riot police in Oakland

First Scott Olsen, now this:

A former U.S. Army Ranger and Occupy Oakland protester was in intensive care on Friday after a veterans' group said he was beaten by police during clashes with anti-Wall Street demonstrators this week.

Kayvan Sabeghi, 32, was arrested and hospitalized about a week after another U.S. military veteran, former Marine Scott Olsen, was badly injured in a confrontation with police that helped spark the latest round of unrest.

The group Iraq Veterans Against the War said Sabeghi was detained during disturbances that erupted late on Wednesday in downtown Oakland and was charged with resisting arrest and remaining present at the place of a riot.
-Reuters

Kayvan was seen in news footage talking peacefully with with riot police prior to his arrest/beatdown. News footage also showed him face-down at the bottom of a pile of baton-wielding riot police. He suffered a ruptured spleen, but police denied him medical treatment for 18 hours.

A man who said he shared a cell with Sabeghi at Glenn Dyer jail in Oakland said Sabeghi showed his wounds, which looked like baton bruises mainly to his torso.

(Sabeghi's friend David) Goodstal said they posted bail about 12:30 p.m. Thursday, but the partner who made the trip down there did not see Sabeghi. The next time they heard from him, he was calling from Highland Hospital.

"I didn't know he was going to take part in the protest; I heard about it when he called me and said he was seriously injured," Goodstal said. "He said he went to the port, and then he and a friend had dinner and he was leaving and was confronted by the police."

Goodstal said his friend told him that he was not part of the group that took over the building or fought with police.

He told him that he was in tremendous pain while he was in jail and asked for help, but none came.

"He said he was throwing up bile," Goodstal said. "He told me one of the cops said, 'You need to get off heroin.' That's what Kayvan told me; I wasn't there. I'm sure the police will have a different story.

"He went by ambulance to the hospital. He couldn't get up himself and walk out so he said they just locked the cell," Goodstal said.
-Inside Bay Area

Protestors had occupied the former Traveler's Aid Society building, and as or beeven before Mayor Quan was offering to negotiate the return of Traveler's Aid Society, Oakland Police and Alameda Sheriffs were posse-ing up for a riot. And then there was a riot.
At a city council meeting the next night, Mayor Quan warned Occupy Oakland to start talking with the city or else...even though she clearly isn't in charge anyway.

It's been interesting to see how the movement has addressed the black bloc issue. Many people are physically intervening. Others are merely calling them out for what they are. The issue, which has been a hot topic over over the past 36 hours, is far from being resolved, but it is good to see the movement majority clearly not fully endorsing such behavior.

Occupy Oakland Lives!

Wow, I don't really know where to begin.
This was a crazy fuckin week.
On Sunday, my wife performed her music at the Occupy Oakland Children's Village, and my son decided to take home a piece of lego home with him. When I saw it, I said that I'd have to return it to the camp on Monday.
Unfortunately, I was feeling sick on Monday, and worked from home. By the time I woke up on Tuesday morning, it was already too late to return the piece of lego.
The camp had been destroyed.
I went downtown and saw the damage.
It was horrible.
Riot cops surrounded Oscar Grant Plaza, which looked like a tornado had ripped through it. Banners had been torn down, tents had been trampled, and almost everything was covered in tear gas residue. It was a truly depressing site.
I thought to myself that this was the saddest day in American history.
Somehow, I went to work for a couple of hours, but came back to 14th and Broadway at midday. The scene was even more tense than it had been in the morning. Many campers who hadn't been arrested were there, as were many others who disapproved of the cops' presence.
After work, I joined the march leaving the main library on its way downtown.
The scene when the march first squared off against the police line at 14th & Broadway and chanted "Oscar Grant! Oscar Grant!" can only be described as amazing.
Then later in the night, this happened.

The cops shot some guy in the face with a tear gas cannister, and then when people came to help him, another cop threw a grenade at them.
That pretty much guaranteed that that was the saddest day in American history. Not just because of Scott Olsen, but because of Occupy Oakland. Scott was the cherry bomb on top.
Occupy Oakland, just like its hometown, is like no other in the world.
Diverse.
Conscious.
Organized.
Wired and amplified even.
It provided services for the city's neediest residents that the city was unable/unwilling to provide. Jobs, food, shelter, heath care, community, and electricity. More importantly, it provided meaning for the city's neediest.
It had to be destroyed, because it represented something completely new and radically different.
It represented the future.
Everyone in, no one left out.
This is what democracy looks like.

Mayor Jean Quan really did have a grass roots background, and she really did betray it. She let someone else do her job for her. She is an Oaklander who kept it real, and it was a horrible mistake, but she has a chance to make things right and make history in the process. We'll see where she goes from here.
The day after her police force shot and teargassed and grenaded a thousand of her constituents, three thousand showed up the next night to reclaim Oscar Grant Plaza. There were no cops, and the fence surrounding the grassy area was easily dismantled and made into geometric sculptures. A general strike was agreed upon for November 2. Mayor Quan waited to speak, but was booed back into the confines of the building.
The Occupation continued.

Does this look "peaceful"?

Pic above from http://twitpic.com/75mjjh/full

Early this morning, sometime around 5am, the rumored and expected police raid came in swiftly and violently. As protestors chanted "You are the 99%!" to the police, their cries were silenced with tear gas, flash bang grenades, batons, rubber bullets, several hundred cops in riot gear and gas masks....the cops trashed the camp and aggressively arrested 75 some people, perhaps more.
The camp now looks like a tornado swept through it....i.e. it now looks how the mainstream media has been presenting it all along.
Protestors who are returning to the camp to get their belongings are allegedly being arrested.
This is one of the saddest days in American history.

More pics here.


Here are two nice before-and-after shots of the camp.

The real rats are in city hall, not Frank Ogawa Plaza

An interesting piece that clairifies the rat situation at Occupy Oakland:

The fact that the journalist “reporting” the story simply repeats, at length, what a single city spokesman tells him should be seen as the gift from the newspaper to City Hall that it is. I’ve underlined the main verbs in the first six sentences to make that as clear as possible; that story is almost literally nothing but variations on “what City Hall told us [about the people protesting against it].” And so, the “objective” reporting just happens to repeat exactly the narrative that city hall wants to tell — things were under control before, but now the demonstrators are “attracting rats, alcohol and illegal drug use” — and imagine out of existence any possible counter-narratives which might be told.[1]

But the story that city hall wants to tell is preposterous. There are rats there at night because there are always rats there at night. I’m sure the smell of food does attract more vermin than usual — even as the presence of people also repels them — but the bottom line should still be obvious to anyone with a brain: you don’t normally have a rat “problem” in the park at night because you don’t normally have any people there (or at least not any people the city cares to notice). Even during the day, the only people that use this (quite unused) park are on their lunch break, eating their sandwiches or whatever, and then at night the rats eat their leavings. And no one cares. But now that there are people there — people creating a political headache for city hall — now, suddenly, the rats are an important problem. Suddenly, coincidentally, the city is very concerned about “rats.”

I invite you, by the way, to take a stroll through any part of the adjacent downtown Oakland at two in the morning and observe the rats which have been living off Oakland’s messy humans for many decades, and who will for many more. They’re not hidden, or even particularly shy; you’re just not there to see them and have your sensibilities offended by their presence. But that entire area is a filthy fast-food ridden stretch of a typical dirty downtown, well and truly “marred” by the fact that day-time human leave their waste everywhere for the night janitors to feast on, and who are the real causes of whatever vermin problem it has. It would be truer, in fact, to say that Oakland’s rats are invading the Occupation’s camp.
-Zunguzungu

Jerry Amaro's family wins $1.7 million settlement

Today, the Oakland City Council voted unanimously to approve a $1.7 million settlement to the wrongful death lawsuit filed by the family of Jerry Amaro, who was beaten to death by as many as five Oakland police officers in 2000.

Amaro, 36, died on April 21, 2000, from pneumonia caused by multiple rib fractures and a collapsed lung. He had told his mother and several other people that he had been beaten by police officers who arrested him during a drug sting on March 23, 2000. The police report of the arrest made no mention of use of force.

Amaro was jailed for five days and repeatedly complained of pain in his ribs, which jail officials noted. On April 18, Amaro saw a doctor who took X-rays that revealed five rib fractures and a collapsed lung. The doctor recommended that Amaro seek emergency medical treatment to drain fluid from his lung. Amaro did not seek further treatment and died in his friend's basement three days later.

Attorneys John Burris and Jim Chanin filed the federal wrongful death lawsuit on behalf of Amaro's mother, Geraldine Montoya, in March 2009, shortly after the details of the internal police investigation were leaked to the press.

Investigators found that Amaro had been "severely injured" during his arrest, and at least five officers had used "some form of physical prowess" on Amaro without noting the reason for such force or mentioning the use of force at all.

The report also concluded that the reporting officer falsified his supervisor's signature on the police report and the commanding officer, Lt. Edward Poulson, inappropriately met with the arresting officers before the interviews with Internal Affairs investigators.

The investigation also found that the officers were "derelict" in not seeking medical attention for Amaro.
-Inside Bay Area

Oakland OKs small urban farms

On Tuesday, the Oakland City Council voted to lift an outdated ban on selling home-grown produce within city limits.

"It's the first step in legitimizing urban agriculture in Oakland," said Esperanza Pallana, 37, who has a 1,200 foot backyard plot in the Grand Lake neighborhood and has been pushing for the change. "It's also preserving our right to grow our own food for ourselves and our community."

The code change altered the definition of "home-based businesses," which previously mandated that it had to be indoors. The new code allows outdoor vegetables as long as it didn't need farm equipment to produce it. Previously, all it took was one phone call from a neighbor to bring down the city's wrath on someone selling backyard carrots.

Eric Angstadt, the city's deputy planning and zoning director, said he estimates that anywhere from a half to three-quarters of urban farmers in Oakland will be protected by this change.

"These are people for whom urban farming is not a primary, money-making occupation," he said. "These are maybe people who are just trying to recover their own costs of growing, or maybe people who are trying to see if it can be a possible commercial occupation."
-SF Gate

The code change won't allow large commercial farms to operate within Oakland, and it doesn't address the issue of farm animals. It simply allows residents to sell produce that they grow in their own yard.

Feds give Oakland $10 mil for more cops targeting youth

Oakland has won a $10.7 million grant from the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, or COPS, and will be able to hire 25 more cops.
The city intends to use the federal money to put more cops in middle schools and hookers.

The officers will be focused on a community-policing effort at four middle schools in high-crime neighborhoods, as well as working on the twin problems of human trafficking and the prostitution of teenage girls, police Chief Anthony Batts said.
-Inside Bay Area

Oakland still ridin'

US District Judge Thelton Henderson, who last year threatened OPD with a federal takeover, has ordered the city of Oakland to address its noncompliance with 5 provisions of the historic 2003 Riders settlement.

* The rehiring in March of Officer Hector Jimenez, who was fired after he shot and killed two unarmed suspects within seven months of each other in 2007 and 2008, including a man shot in the back. Jimenez and his attorney fought the firing, and an arbitrator sided with him against the city, forcing the department to return Jimenez to work under the rules of its contract with the police union. He is currently assigned to maintaining the fleet of police vehicles and keeping in-car computers up to date.

* July's "Operation Summer Tune-Up," a four-day crime prevention effort in which police issued 28 parole violations, made 17 arrests and recovered seven guns. Henderson is likely concerned about the connotations of the term "tune-up," widely used as a euphemism for the beating of suspects by police.

* The finding by the internal affairs division that accusations of illegal public strip searches of suspects by police were unfounded, despite a federal judge agreeing with the case made by at least two suspects to whom she awarded more than $100,000 each.

* A special report in August by the federal monitoring team, charged with tracking the OPD's progress in the reforms, which found that in 28 percent of the instances when Oakland officers draw their guns and point them at someone, the person has demonstrated no threat to anyone. In some cases, the monitors said, the person wasn't even a suspect in a crime.

* The process by which the department hires outsiders to stand on boards that evaluate police use-of-force incidents. The details of this issue remained unclear Wednesday.
-Inside Bay Area

Don't let the door hit ya...

OUSD Police Chief Pete Sarna has retired from police work as he is being investigated for a racist tirade he went on in front of two subordinates.

Sarna, who is white, attended the charity golf tournament at the Sequoyah County Club in Oakland on July 18 with two other sergeants from his department, one who is African-American and one who is white. The white sergeant, who filed the complaint, is represented by San Francisco attorney Joe O'Sullivan.

Because the men were drinking alcohol during the Sequoyah event, an officer was called to drive the trio to their homes.

According to O'Sullivan, on the drive to Orinda, where the African-American sergeant lives, Sarna called the African-American sergeant a racial slur "several times, told him that he had no right to live in (the area) because he's African-American, although he didn't use that word, told him he should be hung in the town square because he's African-American ... told him that he would be the last African-American he'd ever hire."

O'Sullivan said Sarna later approached the African-American officer and told him "that thing that happened never happened." The names of the officers involved in the incident were not released.
-Inside Bay Area

Good riddance asshole.

OPD wishes somebody would

A recent study by Robert Washaw has found that Oakland police officers drew their guns and pointed them at individuals who did not present a threat 28 percent of the time.
Warshaw is the federal monitor assigned to oversee the Oakland Police Department in the wake of the Riders federal corruption case. He looked at reports of 80 incidents in which 215 officers had drawn their guns between Jan. 1 and March this year.

Officers are escalating their use of force with no information that supports their belief a person is armed, using a tactic that could quickly prove deadly while bypassing less dangerous methods, such as drawing a stun gun or using a hands-on technique.

"In a few instances," Warshaw wrote, "it seemed that the only offense that a subject 'committed' was running from the police. While it is reasonable to assume that someone may be running because (he or she) is wanted or guilty of an offense, running is not, in and of itself, against the law; and it does not serve as justification for pointing a firearm."
-Inside Bay Area

And right on cue, Oakland Police shot an unarmed homeless man last night in el Fruitvale.

Oakland city job cuts announced

It turns out that fewer jobs will be cut than were officially projected last week, but still more are likely on the chopping block for later in the year.

56 city employees are headed out the door in the next couple weeks, with unions reporting that the deepest impacts will be seen in the physical maintenance of the city.
-Inside Bay Area

Here are some of the casualties:
- The city's long-dwindling Litter Enforcement Program, which enforced illegal dumping laws, is now completely gone.
- The police department will be budgeted for 636 officers this year and 588 next year.
- Starting July 2012, the fire department will close two fire houses per day on a rotating basis.
- The Live Oak Pool at Oakland High School will no longer be open in the summer.
- Elected officials will take a 15% pay cut.

Given that some fuzzy math was used to pass the budget last month, we'll revisit this same situation (or likely an even more dire one) next year, in an even dirtier, more blighted, more overgrown city.

Water Writes

People like this make me very proud of Oakland.

Murderer Mehserle to be released this Sunday

Johannes Mehserle, the former BART cop who was caught on multiple video cameras killing Oscar Grant by shooting him in the back while Grant lay facedown on the ground with another officer's knee on the back of his neck, will be released from jail on Sunday, June 12.
A protest has been called for 3pm that day at "Grant station," the site of the New Year's Day 2009 murder.

Dinosaurs in Oakland City Hall beat out the forward thinkers

If the Oakland gang injunction case has anything to teach us, it is as a fairly predictable case study on the design, intentions, and impacts of police suppression tactics. Gang injunctions are part of a long history of racialized and violent policing that regularly claims the lives of poor people and people of color in Oakland. In the face of this daily reality, the City Attorney’s office mounted an aggressive public relations campaign claiming that Oakland’s gang injunction is somehow different from the rest and that gang injunctions do not lead to racial profiling. We know from our own experiences that this is a clear and dangerous lie. Despite the fact that the City Attorney claims that the power to determine who is enjoined or not rests in the hands of the courts, enforcement of these gang injunctions (stopping, detaining and arresting individuals) relies on the police visually identifying young men of color. This guarantees, and provides legal justification for, a dramatic increase in police harassment of young men of color in the so-called “safety zones.”
-Stop the Injunctions in Oakland

On Tuesday night, the Oakland City Council reaffirmed its commitment to the police state in two of its hottest real estate markets.

OAKLAND, Calif. — Oakland officials have agreed to continue supporting the city's gang injunctions.
In a 4-3 vote on Tuesday, the City Council decided not to end funding for a gang injunction currently in place in North Oakland. The council also agreed to continue funding the pursuit of another gang injunction in the city's Fruitvale district.
An Alameda County judge has yet to decide on that injunction.
-Oakland Tribune

Gang injunctions don't prevent violence, but they do destroy families, and in turn, communities. They are good for big business too. City Attorney John Russo, who just so happens to be leaving Oakland to go develop the former Navy Base for the neighboring city of Alameda, certainly thought it was a good investment of public money. And despite a $58 million budget shortfall, the City Council has now agreed to continue this escalation of the war on the poor.

With all due respect to the many cops who uphold the law, the OPD has too many rogue cops like “the Riders,” who have not yet been held accountable for their actions. This is why the Oakland Police Department is currently under threat of federal receivership by a U.S. District Court judge.
Consequently, Oakland cannot be trusted with unfettered police power, which is what gang injunctions allow – named defendants are guilty until proven innocent. The issue that must be addressed if positive change is to be realized is increased opportunities for youth, legal scholars say.
-SF Bay View

Interestingly enough, the Oakland Tribune reported today that not only did Oakland police shoot and kill two men just a few blocks outside of the Fruitvale injunction zone last night, but the City has also agreed to pay $630,000 to cover medical bills for a man whose back was broken when oakland police smashed into his car in 2006. The man, Daniel Pena-Marquez, was not a suspect in any crime, and was not being pursued by cops, he was just an innocent driver who was in the wrong place at the wrong time (The City has already paid out $211,000 in workers comp claims to Officers Jacqueline Shaw and Tyman Small who were in the patrol car that broke Pena-Marquez' back).
In addition to the fact that Oakland Police are untrustworthy and incompetent, Incarceration nation isn't sustainable. Yes, it's been good for business, but prisons are huge wastes of energy. In many ways. As we continue to plunge down the post-peak slope of Hubbert's curve, we will be forced, one way or another, to start accepting new ways (or to some us, the correct ways) of thinking.

As reported in “Betraying the Model City: How Gang Injunctions Fail Oakland,” the substantial social and financial costs of gang injunctions “divert a tremendous amount of resources from vital programs that could build strong, stable and healthy communities.” While the costs of gang injunctions are devastating to Oakland neighborhoods, community groups throughout the city continue to provide programming that offers more than quick fix solutions at a fraction of the cost.
-SF Bay View

The sustainable way involves communities working together to get along. The locusts' way (John Russo's way) involves racist and classist violence that serves only the interests of rich rapists (like DSK) and adulterers (like The Schwarzenator) who care little about the people of Oakland.
Fortunately, the City Council also agreed to not expand the injuctions to other areas of the city. Kudos to Councilmembers Desley Brooks, Rebecca Kaplan and Nancy Nadel for being forward thinkers who care about the future of today's Oaklanders.