Snorlax helmet is complete and ready for the next action that street medics are needed. My brain is going to be kept safe and cute! ^___^

So I’m just going to quick talk about what happened tonight, 30 April, 2012, on the eve of the May Day 2012 General Strike. I don’t know everything yet, and I’m too busy getting ready for tomorrow to really sit down and do homework. You’re getting my on the ground observations and you’re getting the cursory bits of reseach and double checking i’ve done with others that were there. I’m not a journalist, I’m a big fat gay guy who spends too much time watching cat videos on the internet, so please remember to read actual news stories from this event. I am providing you with as neutral and informed an account as I possible can because I believe the truth is more important than being a movement celebrity and other dumb shit. 

So anyway, I believe we were hijacked and it was an utter clusterfuck. It started out as sort of a “pep rally” type thing at Dolores Park, but maybe 20 minutes after we got there, it turned into a march. I tweeted “LOL looks it turned into a surprise anticapitalist march. #osf #oo #ows #dolorespark”. although i frown on the tactic of spraypainting and paintbombing, it was a bit funny to see the normally sneering people outside some of the boojie restaurants in 18th street get a little taste of their own class warfare. that said, what happened once the march reached Valencia was a) the fastest i’ve ever seen a march fall apart in my life and b) the largest concentration of simultaneous D: faces i have ever seen in my life. This is where I disengaged from the march, advised people I was pulling out and they were on their own, and told some people who were distracted or otherwise slow on the uptake that the march was entering ‘smashy smashy land.”

So, rather than describe what happened (since 340958345 other blogs and news agencies will do just that), I think it is more important to point out who did this. But as I’m about to explain to you, I don’t know that I can do that. You see, I don’t know who, the people I’ll dub as the ‘ringleaders’ of the march were exactly. Nobody did. Yeah some of the aggro people we always have to deal with were there, but these guys weren’t it. You remember those asshole jock bullies in high school? Well that was who was leading the march tonight. Clean cut, athletic, commanding, gravitas not borne of charisma but of testosterone and intimidation. They were decked out in outfits typically attributed to those in the ‘black bloc’ spectrum of tactics, yet their clothes were too new, and something was just off about them. They were very combative and nearly physically violent with the livestreamers on site, and got ignorant with me, a medic, when I intervened and reminded them that I was there to fix them from police violence, not protester on protester violence. 

I am typically really bad with names, but I am great with faces. I love people. I love looking into their eyes, looking at their smiles and their body language and trying to guess at their life and stuff. I probably will forget your name the first few times I’ve met you, but I will not forget your face. Even people I pass on the street, I’ll remember you for weeks. With that said, I didn’t recognize any of these people. Their eyes were too angry, their mouths were too severe. They felt “military” if that makes sense. Something just wasn’t right about them on too many levels. I’m not one of those tin foil hat conspiracy theorists, I don’t subscribe to those theories that Queen Elizabeth’s Reptilian slave driver masters run the Fed. I’ve read up on agent provocateurs and plants and that sort of thing and I have to say that without a doubt, I believe 100% that the people that started tonight’s events in the Mission were exactly that. 

Now I’m not pointing a finger at SFPD, although it would not surprise me if certain elements were clued in on it. Generally, the officers seemed as upset and bewildered as we were. Remember that article that just came out about the banks cooperating against Occupy? They have hired Pinkerton, those fucking goons, the scourge of the labor movement from back in the day, to coordinate against us. It could be that they are the Feds, it could be that they are some corporate assholes or even some of our right wing blogger friends who stalk us at events. It very well could be SFPD, as apparently there were no arrests, yet several cruisers drove past myself and a few other people with what I assumed were protesters in the back seats. Bandanas still up over their faces. I actually laughed at them possibly being arrested, because of the damage they did (which is an asshole move, i’ll admit, but i did it out of anger.)

Isn’t it funny too, that for the last 6 months of sustained protests, we couldn’t fart sideways without riot police raising their truncheons against us anywhere in the Bay Area, yet these cops weren’t around tonight when the convergence in Dolores Park turned into a march. the 2 squad cars and van that were following us did so at a snail’s pace while the boojie restaurants on 18th street got vandalized. Some more police units on Valencia just let the protest pass, despite it’s obviously destructive intent, and the cops were driving past laughing as their cars were pelted with paint. The laughter is really what betrays something seriously wrong about tonight’s march. For six months, we’re beaten, harassed and arrested at the slightest provocation, park and public lodging rules enforced to the very last dotted ‘i’ and crossed ‘t’, but tonight, they let a pack of vandals run riot down Valencia street. 

The other thing that bothered me is the level of destruction and the targets. This was all Bay of Rage Indybay organized, from what I gather, but it was all wrong. Black Bloc goes after state or corporate property not that of the working class and poor. I disapprove of that behavior, as it is not something I would personally engage in, however, this was off. This wasn’t directed against corporations or big banks, with the exception of one single ATM I saw smashed. This was specifically directed against mom and pop shops, local boutiques and businesses, and cars. Lots and lots of cars. I won’t weep for the hipster dives or the WASP nests for nouveau riche white trash, but the working class, poor and immigrant owned places I will. At first it was a few luxury cars, but as I followed the march down Valencia from a distance, it was all types of cars. There was a little girl crying and her mom was holding her and telling some onlookers that people smashed their car windows right in front of them as they were walking to it. She’s always going to remember the ‘mean people’ smashing. Everyone everywhere was really upset and blaming Occupy. 

We’ve spent months radicalizing and empowering the Mission, working with and learning from groups who have already been here for decades, trying to use our momentum, enthusiasm and appeal to energize moribound organizations and skittish and apathetic people. We’ve been encouraging people to feel empowered to organize themselves, to get unions for day laborers, to march for and bring attention to our terrible immigration practices, hell the list goes on and on. It’s just convenient that these so called ‘protesters’ acted in such a way to undermine and burn all those bridges we’ve been so carefully building. The destruction was too calculated and precise in it’s seeming randomness to be Black Bloc or even those fucking suburban scumbags who get an anarchist patch at Hot Topic and think that gives them license to come to Oakland or SF and burn shit down. 

Like I said, I don’t know who did this, but I am 1000000% certain they were not OccupySF and they were not OccupyOakland. I know the action was marketed as an action against gentrification, but too many regular people suffered tonight. Too many car tires are slashed. An old, brown minivan on the corner of Valencia and Duboce has all the windows busted out and the tires are flat. How is the owner supposed to drive that to work? The point is, the Mission, my neighborhood, a working class neighborhood, albeit one infested with yuppies and hipsters, got fucked up tonight. All that work we’ve been doing is now jeopardized. All the interest in what we were doing that brought people in the Mission to ask OccupySF to help them organize is jeopardized. I’m sure the woman wondering how she’s getting to work in the morning because her car is jacked up now finds her job and way of life jeopardized. 

This was not OccupySF, this was not OccupyOakland. What it was, was fucked up and a failure. I don’t care about delusions of anarchist grandeur and being the vanguard. That’s masturbation. I care about results and I care about how I’m getting them. The end does not justify the means, the journey is just as, if not more important than the destination. Fuck the yuppies and the hipsters. They’ll join us when revolting becomes ‘cool’ and claim they did it all along. By doing this, and by allowing ourselves to be led on by provocateurs, we alienate them, we push them back into their sleepy little tyranny enabling coccoons. If you’re gonna break windows, if you’re gonna smash cars, be real with your targets. Even rich WASP assholes are family when your they’re your neighbor. If you don’t live in the mission tonight, if you don’t live along Valencia, you don’t know what damage that was done here. For months, years even, this will be a nest of counter revolutionary sentiment because of the actions tonight. If there’s one thing to be thankful of, at least the media isn’t blaming OccupySF or OccupyOakland for once. It’s strange when they actually bother to do research and report correctly. 

Anyway, I’m tired, it’s May Day and I’ve got a long day ahead of me. Good luck, stay safe, and be smart and considerate in your tactics. This shit was bunk as fuck tonight. 

PS: i get that certain affinity groups may have been involved in the planning and execution of this action, and that you may have worked with these people for years, but i’m telling you that the little love and revolution sandwich you have made has some fucking bacon in it. thank you, love scott.

sfideawar:

It has been well-established in declaration and law that all people are endowed with  inalienable rights, among them life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, freedom of expression, and freedom of assembly. We, and our descendants, share common human needs — a sustainable global ecology, adequate food, shelter, health, education, and equal opportunity to fulfill our potential.

Through a deliberate series of attacks, these rights and basic necessities are being stolen from us by the economic elite in Washington, London, Wall Street and other centers where money and power consolidate.  

We have no redress from our government, as it is busy ensuring the health, prosperity, and security of corporations and financial institutions while ignoring and actively working against the basic needs of the People. In light of this, a call was made to occupy Wall Street on the 17th of September, 2011. From Liberty Square in New York City to the Financial District in San Francisco, we answered that call, occupying with determination and solidarity.  

To reclaim our rights, we collectively confront a monolithic government, a parasitic financial system, and a military industrial juggernaut, all of which command overwhelming economic power and seemingly insurmountable physical and legal force. We confront these entities with courageous nonviolent civil disobedience. By occupying public space, mobilizing people, and transforming public discourse, we shine the light of truth on the situation at hand.

Financial institutions have become parasites of the economic system.  Instead of functioning as a buttress for the economy, they have constructed mechanisms that allow them to plunder the world’s wealth and divert it directly into their pockets. By abusing the money creation powers of the Federal Reserve, manipulating domestic and international financial markets, and creating risky, deceptive, and dangerous investment products, they accumulate staggering wealth and power, leaving in their wake global economic devastation.

Multi-national corporations are equally guilty.  Under the guise of fair competition, they take an unfair proportion of produced wealth.  When true competition threatens their power, they crush it.  They achieve global hegemony by using our armed forces as personal enforcers and looting the public treasury to fund their empires.  They befoul and contaminate the air we breathe, the waters we drink, and the soil that gives us life. The Earth’s resources are destroyed and depleted for their insatiable avarice.

To continue accumulating obscene wealth, these culprits commit horrendous economic, political, and environmental crimes.  To perpetuate these crimes and escape accountability, they deploy their vast ill-gotten wealth to buy control of our society and government at all levels, undermining the tools and abilities we have available to us to resist effectively.

• They buy the loyalty and votes of politicians through lobbying and corruption to create laws and regulations favoring the financial and corporate interests at the People’s expense.
• They influence the judicial system to interpret and enforce those laws and regulations primarily to their benefit, even going so far as to grant corporations the rights of people.
• They buy or neutralize government regulatory bodies tasked with protecting the People’s and economy’s health.
• They buy university curricula and research, particularly in science and economics, to advance their agenda.
• They influence the creation of, and even draft, anti-Constitutional legislation that punishes or inhibits those who publicly protest their misdeeds.
• They buy and consolidate the print and broadcast media to inhibit diversity of ideas and opinions and ensure mass media conformity to their agenda.
• They manipulate the political process and the media, demonizing our differences in ethnicity, skin color, gender, age, sexual orientation, nationality, political affiliation, and religion to separate us from our natural allies.
• They seek Internet censorship laws to eliminate the last bastion of free media and organizational tools for the People.
• They fabricate pretexts to divert excessive public resources into wars of choice, and the weapons and personnel to wage them.
• And they inflict debt slavery on the people of other nations by using the IMF and World Bank as their foreign arms of operation.

Because these financial institutions and multinational corporations have committed these crimes, the government, the corporate media, and the prevailing ideology no longer represent the People.

We, the People, are left to suffer the staggering costs that these financial institutions and multinational corporations inflict — on the economy, political process, and the environment.

• We suffer from a shrinking middle class, rising unemployment, insecure jobs, diminishing wages, retirement plans looted by Wall Street, a decline of living conditions, and a slide toward poverty.
• We suffer from millions of fraudulent home foreclosures and evictions that have devastated our communities and families.
• We suffer the costs of fighting and financing unnecessary wars, and the inadequate support our government provides for veterans.
• We suffer from an exorbitantly expensive and inefficient health care system, leaving us at the mercy of employers and insurance companies who can arbitrarily deny, or prohibitively price, the coverage our very lives depend on.
• We suffer from decimated lands and imperiled wildlife caused by the unsustainable rape of the environment.
• We suffer from food and water supplies laced with poisonous runoff and unhealthy additives, due to woefully inadequate government regulation.
• We suffer from an increasingly inaccessible college education system that results in decades of crushing student debt and extremely limited job prospects after graduation.
• We suffer from a brutal austerity regimen resulting in ever-worsening K-12 education, imploding social services, and crumbling infrastructure.
• We suffer incalculable personal and community devastation due to the reckless privatization of public necessities, including education, healthcare, and even prisons.
• And we suffer from a broken political system where moneyed interests are represented, but the People and communities are not.

We, the People, are fed up with this unwarranted suffering. We can no longer idly stand by, with indifference and apathy, watching our rights, our economic security and our shared environmental heritage being torn from us.  We answered the call to Occupy because all of us can agree that these profound wrongs must be righted.

Occupy is both the conversation and the space to make meaningful change happen. Occupy is a big tent and all are welcome to help us create the solutions for a better world. Whether it’s removing money from politics, transforming the economic system, or advocating for a more just and equitable society,  we have the energy and we have the ideas, but the most important thing we need is your passion! You have more power than you’ve been led to believe, and your voice is more needed than you think. These are the days when we must speak out, no matter how our voices shake.

As we grow, the criminal financial institutions, multinational corporations, and their government lackeys will continue to attempt to silence us.  But our resolve and purpose will only grow stronger.  They can tear down a tent, they can eject a body, but they cannot evict an idea once it is rooted in the hearts and minds of a People.  We are an expression of hope and solidarity for a better tomorrow. We are the cry that has found a voice, and that is the voice of the People. We invite you to join your voice with ours. Let us stand together and let it be known that we we will not go quietly into the night. We are Occupy!

Note: This declaration was unanimously passed at the OccupySF General Assembly on 5 April 2012. It is an official document of Occupy San Francisco. It was authored through consensus by the OccupySF Ideological Liberation working group (formerly OccupySF Research and OccupySF Ideological Warfare). Although this is presented in text format, it is intended for wide distribution via flier, pamphlet, and other electronic means. We invite other Occupations to adopt this document wholly or edit as they see fit and use it as the seed for your own homegrown declaration. Please spread far and wide!

i had the pleasure of helping write and editing this document. i’ve spent the last month working and politicking to get this document into something that people would consense on and i’m happy that it was. this is definitely a challenge, but a fun one. making a document from start to finish via consensus caused many gray hairs but also gave me a lot of respect for my working group members as we all worked feverishly to make sure that everyone’s essence remained in the final document even though our individual contributions may have been edited several times. i’m really proud of this and i’m not sure that this could have been completed any other way than how we did it. :)

please spread far and wide! <3

Hey everyone! Sorry for the long interval between updates. I’m sort of juggling two different blog entries tonight, so I’m going to do some creative typing and try to unify them. I’m still dealing with a lot of stuff from January 28, or as I’m calling it, the Night of the Long Batons. I saw too many of those in use that night and I don’t ever want to see that again, although I’m not going to hold my breath on that one. I don’t want to be an armchair psychologist and self diagnose myself, but I’ve definitely got some issues I need sorted out big time. I need to act on it because it has overcome my ability to manage and has exhausted any and all self care attempts. I am not really one to give things like this any power, but sometimes you have to call in the cavalry.

And that’s another thing to get over: SHAME. I’m generally super self reliant and more of the rock in the eye of the storm type person. Not being able to get over this is driving me nuts. I’m wracked with shame: shame that my experiences that night were nothing like others, that I shouldn’t be so messed up; shame that I’m ‘not right’ anymore; guilt that I didn’t and couldn’t do anything to try to help people I saw getting hurt by the police; guilt and shame that I’m sitting here typing in my macbook in a goddamn coffee shop all sorts of fucked up from a comparative few incidents with the police, and yet People of Color who have been dealing with this for their entire lives shoulder on and suffer in silence because nobody ever listened. Well, we hear you loud and clear now and I’m sorry that I allowed the media and the inundation of meaningless and irrelevant things distract me. Never again.

I’m blogging this to help myself heal, but also to bring this to light from my perspective. As I’ve mentioned in previous blogs, I’m not a stranger to the ‘idea’ of police brutality, but being subject to the reality of it is something else entirely. And it must end. Even when I’m gumplestiltskin, I consider myself a very loving, caring, empathic person. I cannot deal with this shit. It breaks my heart seeing this. People who honestly and earnestly want to make a better world for everyone getting gassed and getting their faces crunched into the pavement. The Police and the City blatantly lying to the so called “free press”, and many of the journalists accepting it without question. It’s a Pavlovian response on a cultural level: we’ve been indoctrinated from birth to accept authority; accept its purity and honestly and perfection. Bad politicians, no matter how indicative of greater roots of corruption, are just ‘bad apples’; bad protesters indicate a movement that must be annihilated with the utmost force, urgency and suspension of truth and justice. 

The state uses force and physical and structural violence to keep us cowed and compliant; to keep us disempowered and alone and huddled in our warrens, hugging our force fed paradigm and thanking and loving it. Those cherished constructs of the kind and benevolent police officers, while true in some cases, are largely evaporated in displays of ultraviolence like we have seen in Oakland, and like many communities have known for decades. It’s a bitter pill to swallow. Nobody likes their world to stop spinning, and woe if that world stops spinning and the curtain parts and you see the Serpent in the Garden. 

Republicans and the Tea Party campaign with slogans of “taking back America” and “Rebuilding the American Dream”; they hold “Restoring Honor” rallies; they talk a good game through their forked tongues. The problem is that it isn’t a motherfucking game, it’s real life. The policies instituted by Republicans and complicit, craven Democrats, are responsible for the decrepit social and economic conditions we find ourselves in. Just like Iraq, they have a plan to rebuild a country they destroyed, a people they shell shocked and made destitute; a plan that costs a lot of money and makes a lot of old white men richer than their wildest dreams. They have to ‘Rebuild America’ and ‘Restore Honor’ because in some twist of fate out of Mercutio’s lips, when we destroyed our alleged enemy’s House, we found the pox on our house too. 

Occupy is but a symptom of a greater, deeper and more powerful dissent. It’s this ur-tsunami of rage, bubbling and churning and growing more indignant and radical and militant. Our leadership could have maintained their power, they could have come to us in the beginning before we started to get organized, before we started throwing our bodies on the gears. But it’s too late now. Where we could have been accommodated, negotiated with and placated with a few changes back in the autumn, we now have 3 months of rage and injustices, wounded friends, night terrors, that smell of teargas permanently burned into our noses - it’s too late to go back now. I can’t go back now. You can’t go back now. Maybe we can turn away from the movement, but we’ve forever been rewired by hardship, siege and street fighting; by community and empowerment and direct democracy. It’s bigger than Occupy now, it’s a movement, and it’s a meme and it’s alive and self aware and that feeling of rightness and wellness, wholeness and justice is sitting in our heartspaces waiting for the spring. 

And just what will spring bring, dear Government? I have no idea. What happens when March rolls around and people stop huddling and start rocking the boat again? What happens when people realize that despite all the amazing things that happened this fall, a bunch of people got gassed and beat, and our elected leaders gave us silence and unspoken platitudes? Implicitly shaming us, despite the fact that many of us still looked to you for help and simple reassurances, through our cynicism and profound disappointment. This isn’t Rome, we have the internet and we’re all angry everywhere, so you can fuck right off with your Bread and Circus bullshit. And while we’re at it, you can stop the Smoke and Mirrors bullshit too. Nobody believes the lies anymore: whether it’s Mayor Quan spitting out ‘don’t recall me i’m a good mayor’ and deceits from whatever side of her mouth her hand isn’t leaned against to prop up her bored ass head, or President Obama pretending that he’s going to care about us now that he’s probably going to be reelected to a second term. 

What happens in Chicago when tens of thousands of G8 and NATO protesters face off against Rahm Emmanuel’s beefed up and crackdown encouraged police force? It’s not a game or a picnic. Our government has made that abundantly clear to us of late. Rahm’s ass just left the Obama White House! I think there’s a big disconnect between us on the ground and the government in that i think they think we’re not that serious. A leftist revolt under a democratic administration? Impossible you say? Try me. You’re already preparing your strategies for massive counter insurgency operations despite the protests being declared as peaceful, non-violent assemblies. We’ve seen how the police have treated protests in the last few months, let alone during the major convergences like the G8, WTO, and other big groups. Once again, the state is bringing violence to a non-violent protest, except this time, we’ve got months of notice. It’s not going to be like in Oakland on #j28 where a few people brought shields. It’s different now. The state has destroyed any vestiges of goodwill we once had for it and they’ve exhausted whatever moral pretensions and justifications they had for remaining in power. This isn’t Seattle. It’s bigger than Seattle ever could be, and bigger than Chicago ever will be. There’s a collective consciousness now, a groupthink. An assault on one of us is an assault on all of us. We don’t need trite, hollow slogans “we are all Oakland” or “we are all Scott Olson” this time because we are all angry. The most peaceful, loving, non-violent members of our movement are still mad as hell and we aren’t going to take it anymore. 

To borrow a quote from my favorite author Jeanette Winterson, ‘Walls protect and walls limit. It is in the nature of walls, that they should fall. That walls should fall is the consequence of blowing your own trumpet.” Well, we heard your clarion call loud and clear. We heard it in the sirens echoing through our streets, we heard it in the sound of batons striking flesh and bone, and we heard it in your dispersal orders and in the sound of ripping tents. You’ve built yourself a mighty fortress around yourselves, with your green zones and your closed door summits deciding the fate of nations. Just as those walls protect you, they limit you too. You don’t hear the cries of the people, and you are blind to them. The human mind has a funny way of downplaying tragedy when it’s just numbers and statistics, and those walls you’ve built within and without, be it a wall of barbed wire or a wall of officious, indifferent bureaucrats and flunkies, will be your undoing. 

It’s a new year and it’s a year which finds people wanting and demanding change; true, lasting and meaningful change. We tried doing things the right way, and you met us with violence, intimidation and used many of the resources at your disposal that would have best been not used on peaceful, extremely well networked and motivated protesters. We’ve learned from this. All these attacks did was make us bolder, smarter and more radical. I guess all I’m saying from this is that while your moves against us have hurt and traumatized us, it has not stopped us. It’s 2012. It’s the year of the motherfucking dragon and we will have change. We will no longer tolerate debate whether a woman has access to abortions or can make her own reproductive decisions; we will no longer tolerate social and economic injustice; we will no longer tolerate police brutality and repression; we will no longer tolerate racism and classism and other -isms. We don’t subscribe to ideologies, we are full of idea-ologies. You can evict our tents and you can arrest our persons, but you cannot evict an idea that is rooted in the hearts and minds of the People. It’s 2012 and we stopped pressing snooze, we stopped being meek and broken and disempowered. It’s 2012, we’re here, we’re not going away and we’re going to win. 

OccupySF Street Medics: Looking cute and looking after you! <3 

LOL

A MODEST PROPOSAL

Occupy, as a movement, succeeds wildly when we use creativity, humor and optimism to confront the extremely grave and heartbreaking inequalities in our society. The ‘Perfect Storm’ of socio-economic conditions that allowed our movement to get our foot in the door is often too frightening; too intimidating; too hopeless seeming for the average person to think of confronting. We are waging a struggle against centuries of entrenched violence, oppression and exploitation. Instead of drawing in a trickle of people who have long girded and steeled themselves for protracted street fighting and insurrection, let us try for a tsunami of people who confront the worst evils we have ever known with a smile on their faces and perhaps the first twinkle of hope they have ever known in their eyes. 

I don’t know that the old way of #oo and #osf (and perhaps even #ows altogether) are working in the post-camp environment. Let’s shake it up a bit, be creative, and be what the powers that be do not want and can not afford us to be. There will be plenty of time for street fighting and such when the tanks are in the streets. Right now, let’s concentrate on getting the streets filled with people! 

And so, I propose a #catbloc. It doesn’t have to just be cats, but let’s make it funny, creative, and amazing! keep it upbeat and humorous in spite of the crushing despair or blinding rage that fills us when examining some of the things we face. We can be violent, and we can resort to property destruction; we know we can, it’s easy. The point is, let’s take that higher road while we still can - let’s reach out to our oppressed brothers and sisters in other parts of town - let’s reach out to our forlorn brothers and sisters in the suburbs - let’s reach out and do it with smiles and optimism. We are the light that people are looking for in their lives right now. We stood up and stood fast against terrible opposition this fall and winter. Let’s be the spring that this nation and this planet deserves. CAN WE JUST TRY IT PLEASE? 

Paint your shields with cats. Print out and make funny cat face protest signs. Let’s fuck with the police and fuck with the powers that be with humor! It is our greatest weapon and really shows our contempt for them that we’re not even going to get angry anymore. We’re going to laugh and the whole world will watch and laugh with us!

I love you all! Let’s do this!

Scott 

OccupySF 

EDIT: Here’s the tweet that started it all - https://twitter.com/scottanansi/statuses/167515846154010624

And we’re on Facebook here: http://www.facebook.com/protest.catbloc

I’ve been trying to write this blog for a few days now but it’s just been too difficult. Too many tears have been cried, too many times I’ve had to stop because it just got too much. The entry I wrote Saturday night was so easy to write because I was still full of anger and adrenaline from the things I saw and experienced in Oakland that night (#j28). Since Monday, it’s just been grief, sadness, trauma, fear … you name it. Much like after the OccupySF eviction from Justin Herman Plaza on December 7, I resorted to my old nemesis compulsive overeating to try to fill that void in my heartspace. Typically, I ignore that little whisper of the addiction talking, but I just gave in this time. The pain was too great and I just wanted to feel good and have some goodness take over. I can’t get caught in the same self destructive cycle again and again and again. That’s what ‘they’ want. We’re supposed to be cowed and broken and intimidated by the violence. That’s why it’s used against us, and used so freely and indiscriminately with little accountability by those that order and act out the violence. 

I can’t pinpoint what exactly is causing me to feel this way. Is it the mass arrest outside of the YMCA and knowing that 400 people who are trying to fight for a better world were going to be in jail for an unknown period of time? Is it that between 40 and 50 of them are people I know either directly, part of my Occupy Tribe, or indirectly via Twitter and occasional face to face meetings at events? Was it the police brutality I saw: the beatings, the knees on faces and necks, the pushing of people to the ground by cops two, three even four times their size? Or was it that the police tried to arrest me 3 times, one of which I believe resulted in the possible injury and arrest of two other protesters? Is it worth it to probe? Does it matter? Should I just concentrate on the psychological and spiritual components of the damage and stop trying to dig out the causes? 

These are questions I have that need answers. This is why I’m seeking professional help. I get triggered easily and I have panic attacks, or I’ll just burst into tears. Sometimes sounds make me remember things from that night or even all the way back to the OccupySF eviction. I was helping a friend move on Wednesday morning and a situation happened and I felt helpless and it brought me right back to that moment when I caught up with the march only to see the police closing around them. That utter helplessness knowing all those people need help and I was powerless to do anything. Seeing that kid get hit by a police baton after he had been knocked to the ground, but realizing the officer was too far away to get a badge # and being thankful that it wasn’t me or anyone I knew and that I couldn’t hear him scream.

A lot of new feelings and experiences like survivor’s guilt. Or this weird shame and victim blaming where it’s like “i shouldn’t be upset by police brutality or mass arrest. We’re breaking the law.” Right now, i’m like “fuck that shit, fuck the law and fuck the police. It’s wrong.” But I wasn’t always feeling that these last few days, and sometimes i go back and forth, or sometimes i think we deserved to go through this retroactively because of the city hall break in. There’s a grief aspect to it too. Doubt. Vulnerability. There’s a bit of shame and feeling that i’m a coward because i didn’t charge through those cops to try to rescue the kid, or charge through the cops to try to break people out of the police cordon, despite the rational part of me knowing that would have been futile, felonious and possibly injurious. The mass arrest really is bothering me too. The uncertainty of it all. The knowledge that a lot of people probably would be mistreated and people would just brush it off to a few “bad apple cops” when in reality that whole ship is rotten. There’s so much more. The more I look, the deeper the rabbit hole seems to go into new unplumbed levels of sadness and rage and impotence. I feel so small inside and so weak and when i start crying (which happens a lot) i feel even worse, despite knowing damn well that I shouldn’t. I feel awful that people in communities of color have been dealing with this for decades and we white people just left them to rot and deal with it for so long and brushed off their complaints and the reports, or if we did hear it we didn’t listen and just attributed it again to those “bad apples”. I’ve worked against police brutality in the past, I’ve read about it but none of that prepared me for actually seeing it and almost being subject to it and I cannot emphasize that enough. I cannot emphasize enough about how jarring it is to see that childhood myth shattered with every baton swing. They aren’t even supposed to swing their fucking batons! The blatant disregard for their own departmental guidelines, let alone state and federal guidelines. 

There is absolutely nothing wrong with feeling these things. The state uses violence to keep us in line. It keeps people at home, it keeps them from marching, from striking, from daring to think or dream that this world could be different. Violence, humiliation, despair, austerity cuts, banker bonuses, all violence. Apathy is violence. Poverty is violence. Social and economic injustice is violence. Smashing a window or throwing rocks and bottles at the cops, while not violent, is useless. It’s masturbation and a few peacock feathers to show off during mating season and all it serves is the ever present, thunderous media narratives on the violent ravaging ‘other’. Real weapons are empowerment, education, outreach, alliance building, liberated hearts and minds. You can really ‘fuck the police’ by presenting them with a well motivated, educated and excited show of numbers that just doesn’t give a fuck about them. Aquapy! Chalkupy! Bubble Bloc! Dance parties! Book Clubs! We’ve got a world to change, but if we continue to get caught up in a cat and mouse game of back and forth skirmishes, they will win because they have a better PR machine, better logistics, and they have fear and violence and uncertainty to keep people in front of their televisions cursing you for intruding into their little bubble. 

Part of me wants to go into a tangent on race and class and talk about poverty, police brutality and empowerment versus the illusion of empowerment, but I think I’ll save that for when I’m in a better head and heartspace, and I’ll just continue to sort of air out my thoughts and my heart and soul here. I’m doing this because it is important. I am extremely privileged to have people from all walks of life, from all areas of the political spectrum, and from all of the classes in American society in my life. I have a unique ability to get this out there, to show people the realities that people of color have been living with for decades in cities like Oakland, and really, all over the country. This is not just ‘a few bad apples’. It’s a few bad apples if there’s one or two incidents of abuse across the whole country and they are vigorously pursued and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. This a systemic problem and it’s an epidemic. Where previously it was largely meted out ot people of color, and a problem that was not readily understandible or visible to middle and lower class whites in the United States (yay propaganda!), it is now an epidemic of state violence being used against a population that is waking up. We are waking up to the disgusting and intolerable blasphemies of our socioeconomic system. We don’t need and aren’t accepting of racism in our lives anymore. We aren’t scared of some dark skinner ‘other’; some bogeyman who is going to tip toe into our house and steal our television and our blonde haired and blue eyed daughters; the immigrant come to steal our jobs; the infidel come to fly a plane into our buildings. Those lies don’t work anymore. The insidious and subtle efforts of the state to ensure racial divides are failing, especially as the Decolonization movement and the various anti-oppression working groups rise out of the occupations and flood onto the internet. Suffering the same injustices, feeling the same bite of poverty and need and the callousness and unwillingness of our government to help any of us out are really helping dissolve those lines. It’s not perfect and there are speed bumps to this process, but we’re finding out that we all bleed the same when being beaten by police, we all cheer when YMCA opens its doors and lets us through. For the first time in a long time, maybe even ever, white people are learning about privilege and people of color are willing to listen and to teach. There’s old hurts that need to be healed, but it’s happening, and in the face of police brutality we’re learning what comrade, community, tribe, solidarity, cooperation and safety mean. 

I got involved with Occupy Wall Street because I have been waiting for this my entire life! I came for the Revolution. I didn’t go down to OccupySF to protest for 45 minutes and then go home. This is a long struggle. It’s the right struggle because this world isn’t working anymore and we deserve better. It is 2012 and children are starving to death or eating cookies made of clay because their food is sent elsewhere so fat Americans and Euros who are dying from overeating can have bananas for a dollar. It’s 2012 and we’re still fighting over the color of someone’s skin or what invisible sky grandpa they may or may not worship. Christ, we’re fighting over where someone sticks his dick or her tongue and whether that’s right or they deserve equality. This movement is the first and best and maybe last chance to get things right for all of us. I joined it because it was the right thing for me and gives me the best chance at having a world I could be confident bringing children into and I could fight for those who couldn’t fight for themselves. 

The media would have you believe that Occupy is doing you a disservice that the movement has evolved into a battle with the police over the first amendment, but is that not important? Don’t you see the trick there? Either we fight for social and economic justice, or we fight for free speech. We cannot have both? We must rob Peter to pay Paul and the media is exceptionally skilled at making you think we only have one thing to choose from. I’m not going to be cowed by this violence. I will continue peacefully assembling, marching, agitating, organizing and inspiring. I will continue in my duties as a medic and I will continue networking and empowering. We’re responding to the violence and the disproporational use of force this past Saturday the 28th with a General Strike on May 1st, with increased resolve, increased organization, and increased communication between the various Occupations. You cannot keep us down. You cannot evict an idea once it is rooted in the hearts and minds of a people. You cannot win. I, and others like me, will not succumb to this terror in the way you wish. These attacks make us more radical, these attacks make our bonds stronger and these attacks make us fight harder and longer for a better world. 

Winter is here, but Spring is coming. 

NOTE: if you want to read my ‘notes from an occupation’ series, just click on the tag to the left. it will let you read all 15 of them plus the little extras that i grouped in. <3 Part 1 of this blog can be found here: http://scottrossi.tumblr.com/post/16693276441/notes-from-an-occupation-14-shock-and-awe-or-how-i <3

First off, as I said on facebook, the only way I can really start this out is by saying “Fuck the Police!” And I well and truly mean it. I know many of you who have known me for years, and even a lot of my brothers and sisters in the Occupy movement, who have only known me for a few months, will probably be shocked that I’m at this point, and frankly, I am too. I’m torn up about it. I might laugh when I say it, but it’s that uncomfortable “Oh God.” laugh, because I’m really split about it.

I’m very much in the nonviolence/no property destruction camp, and I was also one of those Occupiers who would argue “but the police are our friends!” and I was one of their first defenders, “oh they’ve got such a shitty job!” or “oh they’re caught between a rock and a hard place.” Hell, I’m sure I’ve tweeted and blogged about it in the past at some point. I still believe that right now, but at the same time, fuck that bullshit. Really. There comes a time when your orders are so wrong, so unjust, so ill conceived, poisonous and odious that you must refuse. You have to do it, for yourself, and for those people who you are about to cause harm to. That point has come and gone, more times in just the last few months during the police vs. occupy movement alone, setting aside, for a moment, all the decades of police brutality and oppression in certain neighborhoods and against certain races in our cities. Today, these Oakland cops were batshit insane, and were going buck wild all over town. Good people were hurt, good people were arrested, and many innocent people, both marchers and pedestrians, were put in harm’s way, for no justifiable reason.

It’s not like I’m “new” to police brutality or I didn’t know it happens. I’ve read about it, written about it, and been an activist against it in the past. That said, there’s a distinct and jarring difference between seeing and knowing it on paper, and seeing people ridden down by motorcycle cops, or seeing people get their heads smashed into the pavement and all the other lovely, grisly things police like to do to assert the little power they’re given. I mean, sure, we can dress it all up nicely and call it “training” and “tactics” and whatnot, but really, Police are just a gang. A gang employed by the state, but a gang nonetheless. Enforcing laws, regardless of whether that law is right or not, and using their force of arms and the backing of the criminal justice system to keep us in line and make sure we follow our marching orders. 

How many times have police officers said to us Occupiers something akin to “I’d love to let you camp here but the law is the law.”? They’ll let the homeless sleep in an alley or a doorway in a grimy part of town that isn’t yet gentrified enough to warrant anti-homeless sweeps, because those people are ‘out of sight, out of mind’. They’re suffering in silence and invisible and overlooked and they should just go lay down in their doorway and be lucky it’s not some other city, or some other officer isn’t on this beat or there’d be hell to pay. 

And that’s the thing about this. You’re supposed to suffer in silence. If the police are arresting you, or shooting tear gas at you, you’re obviously doing something wrong, right? You’ve obviously committed some crime and deserve the treatment you’re receiving, right? WRONG. This is what I learned dealing with some of the issues that started cropping up, because I had to get over that hurdle, I had to let that myth about Police and Law shatter. Sometimes, in fact, many times, the Law is wrong. The law is the law because it’s there to protect protect property and privilege of the few, and maybe the rest of us too. It facilitates an order that perpetuates these cycles of hatred we find ourselves in. And you’re supposed to take it and like it and suffer in quiet. Suffer in quiet in a jail cell if you run afoul of it, or stay home and suffer and watch your family die because some back tricked you in to a shady mortgage or your job went overseas or your business imploded because a few bankers (who, historically, do not often run afoul of the law in comparison with lower class people). DO NOT GO OCCUPY. STAY HOME AND WATCH THE KARDASHIAN SHORE AND LIVE IN YOUR CAR AND BE QUIET AND GO AWAY IF SHIT IS FUCKED UP.

Well you know what? I’m not going to be quiet. I’m not going to cry at night or have to run to the bathroom half pissing myself in terror because I had a flashback from the camp eviction or a memory of seeing someone I care about be pulled from the sidewalk and tossed into the street on their side. I am not going to be quiet while I see Police fire tear gas and fucking flashbangs at a peaceful march, which had elders and children in attendance. I am not going to be quiet, I am not going to go home and I am not going to let you get away with this. You see, with Occupy, but especially Occupy Oakland, a police attack is like dripping water on a Gremlin (to steal a twitter quote from someone I can’t find right now!) they multiply. And not only that, you make moderate people more radical. You make peacenik people more radical. Notice I didn’t say more violent or more property destructioney - but more radical. 

Mayor Quan, Dual +5 Broadsword of Capitalism wielding Serpent Queen Santana and whoever the hell is Oakland’s Police Chief this week, your ‘shock and awe’ campaign you keep trying to run is a) going to get the feds to take over your police department, and b) not going to clear Occupy Oakland. Your suggestions of organizations as “alternatives” to Occupy Oakland are laughable when your ‘little oppressors in blue’ have arrested many people from these very organizations and previously condemned them as criminal. But wait, where is the “WOE IS ME” letter from the Police Union this time about flip flopping or whatever bullshit they tried to spin to place the blame for their uncalled for hyper violence last time? Oh yeah, you’re full of shit and are having a hard time lying fast enough to keep up the pace. Don’t try to deny it, whether it’s the Police Union, the rank and file or the Police Chief himself, we all know the truth is not something commonly found at the Oakland Police Department ( http://www.ktvu.com/news/news/emails-exchanged-between-oakland-opd-reveal-tensio/nGMkF/ ). In short, you’re scum and we’re coming for you. Wether it’s a recall, or we elect the first candidate who promises to toss you out on your asses, those of us who still vote have long memories, especially when the howls of our teargassed and wounded brothers and sisters comes back to haunt us in the middle of the night. 

Tonight was a fucking massacre. I’m trying to remain calm, and collect myself, but it’s so difficult. I saw a lot of awful things tonight and a lot of good people that I care about deeply are in some black hole East Bay jail and I have no idea when they’ll be getting out or in what condition. I wasn’t even going to come over to Oakland, I promised my bf I wouldn’t go and I promised my friend Jill I’d celebrate our friend Breanna’s birthday with her and then I’d go dancing at my other friend’s club party. Once I saw pixplz’ stream of the crowd getting teargassed, and the constant, staccato popping of the rubber bullets hitting shields and legs and furniture, I knew where I had to be tonight. It was not my night to spend with my friends or out being a dancy faggot. 

As a quick aside, I want to commend the “black bloc” for one of the most amazing and inspiring things I have ever seen in my life. Those shields, the defense of the medic treating the wounded protester, and then that slow, hoplite turtle crawl you did when you tried advancing on the police line was fucking fantastic. This is where we can solve the friction over diversity of tactics. Aggressive defense. And you know what? When the cops let loose and go buck wild like they did today, gassing a crowd with kids and old ladies in it, I think you’d be hard pressed to find any large number of people telling you to stop throwing rocks and bottles. The other cool thing is that you were right up front and not throwing bottles from behind and running away. Please keep doing these things and we can all be friends and heal this fake ass divide in our ranks. That was some amazing, heroic work out there today. 

Anyway, back to my narrative about tonight. This is getting tl;dr, so I’m going to make it shorter and sweeter than I intended as I’d like to get some sleep tonight also. I got to Oakland to link up with one of my former partners on Welcome Committee, Kevin. As I was getting off the train, two older OccupySF people saw me and hugged me and teary eyed asked me “not to go out there.” and that the police were “going crazy on us.” I ran into two more coming down the escalator, who pretty much told the same tale, so I was not expecting a picnic by a long shot. 

What I did not expect to see was several hundred Occupiers being kettled in front of the YMCA. The ring had closed on them just minutes before I got there and had I not stopped a few minutes to talk to my fleeing OSF comrades, I’d have been behind those lines and probably sitting and rotting in Santa Rita prison or wherever they would have sent me to. 

What I expected to see, in light of recent history, was police roughing up protesters, violating their policies, beating people, but knowing that, again, is different from seeing it. Thankfully, what I did see was from far away and I didn’t hear the screams. It’s always the screams that stay with me. There’s absolutely nothing so world destroying as someone sworn to protect and serving you, someone sworn to help protect your rights and facilitate expression thereof, being the shit out of someone else. Hitting them with their clubs, not pushing and prodding as instructed. Or several cops jump on top of a scrawny young protester, one smashing his knees into the protesters face, and then that face covered in blood and rocks as he’s lifted off the pavement. For what? We haven’t even gotten to the “Fuck the Police” march yet. These people still had signs and were making a second attempt at establishing a reoccupation, a community center to replace so much of what Oakland has gutted, and are threatening to cut even more in the immediate future. 

I’m not going to get into the debate about the legality of occupying an abandoned building. There’s historical precedents and nobody who would criticize Occupy Oakland for doing so is criticizing the banks for their shady foreclosures or for destroying communities, neighborhoods and families in their rapacious pursuit of wealth. It was “illegal”, but so is unilateral military action and that hasn’t stopped us in the past. Instead of destroying a community, or helping cut the safety net, Occupy Oakland was trying to help rebuild our tattered and frayed way of life. Instead of letting it happen in some ‘great experiment’, the city responds with overwhelming force, double speak, and the MSM helps them with their usual ‘spin’ and half or quarter truths. 

How about we talk about the fact that every goddamn occupy medic was arrested tonight, and rumor has it some were even beaten? We’re humanitarian workers. The only reason I wasn’t arrested was sheer luck and possibly that the Universal Aggregate was looking out for me. 

Umm, I’m pretty much done. I have to stop crying and I have to go to sleep because I work in 3 hours. I don’t care if this convinces you or not. I just hope and maybe even pray that you don’t see and hear and smell the things I did tonight. Some of them I’m not yet comfortable writing about, but I’ll wait for my support group to deal with that. 

EDIT: as always, and especially with the things being discussed here, feel free to share this widely. it’s not my best piece by a long shot, but i’m sleep deprived and i need about 30 good cries. i don’t normally pepper my stuff with profanity unless it’s strategic and i’m not going to go back and edit the piece because it’s perfect just the way it is. 

OccupySF has a new street medic! woo hoo! 

for me, this is one of the most rewarding things i’ve yet to do in this movement. and it was really inspiring, personally, just seeing people’s faces light up when they realized there was a medic. and people on the bus on my way to the SOPA/PIPA rally in SF yesterday were really excited at the concept of a medic that does their best to keep protesters going. 

this new path is going to be really interesting. 

also, i’m going to be blogging again real soon. thanks for waiting and thanks for the messages of encouragement. :)

OccupySF started a 2nd Mobile Occupation last night in the Castro. Ben (in the glasses) and Chad (green shirt) are veteran Occupiers and zine makers and they happened to be in the Castro and wanted to Occupy for a few hours. Using some old Pizza boxes, they made a bunch of signs and then the OccupySF People’s Mobile Library showed up to bring books to the People. It was fun and cute and we got some good attention and outreach. 

occupysf was raided. we no longer have our main ‘permanent’ camp at Justin Herman Plaza, but we still have our mobile “pop up occupation” and the 101 camp for now. lots of people arrested. injuries. 

everything is gone, but we’re not broken. we’re still alive and kicking. 

i need sleep. <3

Notes from an Occupation 12: Statement to the SFPD

Hello, my name is Scott Rossi and I am on the OccupySF Welcome Committee and Committee of Correspondence. I want to address this to the San Francisco Police Department specifically, but also to Police officers all over the country. 

I’m a Pennsylvania native, a 4 year California resident and I’ve been living and working in San Francisco for a year. I’ve been an active member of the Occupation since the first week of October. It’s been extremely difficult and exhausting, holding a full time job during the day and then joining the ranks of OccupySF during the evening. 

I joined up with the Occupation for a lot of reasons. The straws that broke the camel’s back were pretty much what got all of us involved: the insatiable greed of corporations and banks; the corruption and cooption of our Governments to these banks and corporations; the austerity cuts we are expected to bear without complaint while the rich get richer.

You may have seen a recent video by my fellow Occupier, Katt, in an attempt to reach out to you after the ‘barricade incident’ back on December 1. I’m making this one to bolster her efforts, and also in light of a stunning turn of events that happened in Washington DC yesterday, December 4. On the livestream of the police raid on OccupyDC, we were shown an officer refusing orders to taser an Occupier. Thousands of viewers saw this. It was amazing. We had heard rumors of it happening, but this was the first actual evidence. Unfortunately, no recording of the event has surfaced yet, but we’ve gotten confirmation from the videographer, so we know it’s not mass hysteria. 

I wish I knew that officer’s name and badge number because he surely deserves much praise for making what must have been one of the most difficult and possibly costly decisions of his life. I am making this video and writing this blog entry to ask you to do the same. 

I’m not asking you to mutiny or quit your job. What I am asking you to do is listen to your conscience, listen to the cries of the people you are sworn to protect and serve, and help us. 

We’re the same, you and I. As I mentioned before, I work a full time job, and then some. I pay my taxes. I have a 401k. I volunteer and give my free time to better the community. I care about people and the greater good. Many, if not all of you do as well. I believe that there is a social contract that we all are a part of and that we all must participate in and pay into in order to have a healthy society. I believe that there are rules and laws in order to better help realize that society. Unfortunately we played by the rules and abided by the laws and we still lost. The CEOs, the bankers, the politicians, they make the rules and they are not even playing by them. The deck was stacked against us from the beginning. 

Our 401k accounts, your pensions, they are the playthings of the rich. Our education and healthcare system is imploding under the crushing weight of the needful and the lack of resources which have been diverted to the wars, the bailouts, the banker bonuses. That’s not even addressing the money siphoned off through tax loopholes, hedge funds, offshore accounts and the rest, that could go towards helping our system be sustainable and worthy of us. 

I love this city more than any other place on Earth. I love all the crazy, lovely, wonderful people I meet here. I love the fog, the rain, those sunny days that never seem to come around enough, and that I never fully enjoy while they’re here. And I love you. I really really do. I empathize with your position and have nothing but compassion and goodwill towards you. I love this city and so do you. You see us every day. You’ve arrested us. You’ve no doubt looked at some of us and wondered how we got into the various predicaments some of us find ourselves in. You’re stuck between the most difficult of positions - follow orders and evict an encampment of peaceful protesters who are trying to make the world a better place, or disobey orders and be open to all the risks and consequences that position would entail. 

I appeal to the decent persons in your force. I appeal to the dream you had of being a Police Officer and all the good things you want to accomplish in this world. You are looked to by generations of children and citizens as heroes, and you are heroes, so I am asking you to do heroic things right now. We need heroes. We need you.

The Occupation is a thin and ragged line in the sand. We’re alone out there on the edge of a great night on one side, and a tsunami of rage, indignation and profound sadness on the other. We need help. We’re a nonviolent movement. We’re full of everybodies, anybodies and yes, even the people i’ll call ‘nobodies’ that many people would rather see tucked away in a doorway or an alley in the Tenderloin or SOMA. Many would prefer not to see them at all. We need help. We need safe spaces to do so. We need a kitchen so we can feed people and we need warm, dry places to sleep at night. 

I’m tired of the 99% vs. the 1% meme. This movement is bigger than that. It’s not a numbers game, that’s what got us into this position in the first place. This movement is about a new way forward. The old way isn’t working anymore, and that’s apparent to anyone who opens up the newspaper or is brave enough to turn on the television. We have some solutions to the many ills we face as a civilization. We’re a conversation and a safe space for all of those that are left out and left behind by our society. We need people to come talk to us and with us, and in order to do that, we need a space and we need to hold that space so we always have it. 

We should be allies, not adversaries. You fight crime and keep the peace. We’re trying to address many of the root causes and structural violence that lead to crime and punishment and recidivism. 

From time to time, the rules we’ve established as a society no longer work. They’re not working for us but working against us. This is one of those times. This is a time when good people, regardless of station, must not remain silent and enable terrible wrongs and evils, but must stand up and be loud and be heard. We won’t go home quietly. Too many of us don’t have homes. We will not and can not sit by and let these wrongs go unrighted. Not one step further, not one moment longer. Please, my brothers and sisters in the San Francisco Police Department. I saw your faces the other night. I saw your confusion, your sadness, that sense of betrayal, your anger! You’re given poor orders with little or no explanation. You’re not invited to be a part of the decision making process, and you’re not invited to express your opinion of those orders, nor are you invited to opt out  We need you. Stand down. Please. If you’re ordered to move on OccupySF, please say no. You know that this might be our last, best, chance to do things right by all of us. Talk to your union representatives. Talk to legal representation. Talk to US. Think of your families and talk to them. Do what’s right for them. Do you want a future where your children can be safe and have a good life? Please help the Occupation. Help us, don’t hurt us. We are you and you are us. 

I don’t really know what else to say. I just hope that this message doesn’t fall on deaf ears or blind eyes. I hope that you realize you’ve been misled to stand up for the property and monied interests in this nation instead of those of us that need your help most of all. If I’ve managed to sway but one of you, or make you at least question your role in the way things go, then I will count this as a victory. It’s not a numbers game with us in the Occupation. It’s about hearts and minds and people. It’s about the way forward. Don’t follow the same old historical trends. The People are speaking and we always win the day. Get on the right side of, and make history and be the first police department to protect people and not the property of the privileged. Come help us make it happen and make it work.

I love you all. I’m out. 

OH MY GOD MRS. BOOEY! She’s from OccupySF! She claims she’s got dementia and would go from being extremely warm and loving and lucid to just … wow. This basically. The first time I met her I got blasted with a tirade of every sexual, fat and racial slur against white people I ever heard and then some. 

We made a lot of inroads in helping her out, but it just got too much and I’m not sure what happened exactly, but she got 5150’d by the SFPD for attacking someone violently in the middle of the night. :(

(via av-revolution-deactivated201303)

hahahaahaa Oakfosho interviews me on livestream after the “Battle of the Barricades” on 12/1. thanks to MattB for snapping the picture!

Umm. So tonight, 12/1, something weird happened with the SFPD. I’m not sure of everything behind it, and I know I only have a partial picture, but I’m going to relay what I know, what I saw and what was relayed to me by other Occupiers which has formed a more complete picture of things. I have filtered out the junk, the speculation and the crazy talk from this. This is important because it is part of our story and also an indication of the turmoil we had heard tell of in the rank and file of the SFPD. 

So tonight, the SFPD showed up at OccupySF and nobody is really sure what the hell the objective was, why they were there or who ordered them there. Basically, 30 or 40 officers showed up during rush hour and started putting barricades around the perimeter of the camp without talking to anyone. This, after we had supposedly had a noon order of dispersal from the city and were already anxious. The police barricaded the entire perimeter of the park in, and people panicked, stormed the barricades and knocked them over. The police officer that was injured was running trying to stop a bunch of barricades from falling over domino style and he tripped and fell into the Embarcadero and his hand was run over by a car. That isn’t a joke, a number of people saw it happen in front of them. Another of our people was hurt in the melee. The asshole that hit, or tried to hit a cop? Well, fuck him, he can rot in jail. We’re a non-violent movement and I won’t have that upstaged because you want bragging rights. Anyway, so the barricades around Justin Herman Plaza were torn down and the police retreated towards 101 Market and the Federal Reserve. 

The General Assembly met and blockaded Market Street in front of the Federal Reserve, while dozens of people trickled in until there were several hundred people basically surrounding the SFPD and their barricades. This is where I arrived on the scene and saw the SFPD begin tearing them down themselves and tossing everything in the back of SFPD trucks. 

This is also where it gets interesting, because it’s the first time I had observed any of the rumored infighting myself. Over the last few weeks, several Occupiers had seen SFPD officers in heated arguments about what they thought should be done with us, with most of the SFPD allegedly siding with us being left alone. Since I hadn’t seen it, I made sure to tell people it was only rumored or that I had heard it from other people. But tonight I saw it with my own eyes, and 5 other people told me the same thing! 

Here’s what I saw: I was heading to Walgreen’s on California and Drumm to get batteries for my megaphone and there was 5 SFPD throwing barriers into the back of a pickup truck and they were having a loud conversation. As I got closer this is what I heard:

Officer #1: “I don’t understand what the fuck we’re doing here. Why are we here?”

Officer #2: “Just shut the fuck up, OK?”

Officer #3: “Why don’t we just arrest them all?” (mind you, GA was being held in the middle of the street and our facilitator was inviting the Riot Police at the Fed to come on stack and talk to us, hahaha)

Officer #2: “Listen, just shut the fuck up ok?”

So yeah, nothing major, except for the fact that their voices were raised and they had none of the professionalism you typically see with SFPD. Nothing too crazy though. It wasn’t until the other reports of similar scenes started coming in that I was starting to see a pattern. One story, observed by 2 different people, really stuck out to me. 

After the SFPD had cleared the barricades from in front of the Federal Reserve and 1 Market, they were grouped around Justin Herman Plaza and were clearing the piles of barricades there. Two officers/commanders were observed in a heated argument that went something like this:

Commander #1: “Are you questioning my orders?” A hush on the gathered SFPD people. 

Commander #2: “No, but we don’t have the morale or the manpower for this anymore.” 

And the first officer pulled the second through the gathered throng of police and out into the middle of the street where I’m told they continued a heated conversation at length. In front of the police and Occupiers and even some press. 

What really bothered me personally, was the looks on the officers’ faces this whole time. They looked lost and sad and just generally upset. Their entire operation was a clusterfuck, the Chief of Police was allegedly on the news changing his story left and right, saying at first that we were “too paranoid about a raid” and then telling another news station he needed to deploy the barricades to “contain the violence”. Several Occupiers heard police officers remark to the effect of “we were supposed to gain ground, but instead we lost it!” 

And indeed, they had lost it. 101 Market and 1 Market had previously been occupied by the SFPD with a labyrinth of barricades deployed as an area denial tactic after cleaning the camps 2 weeks ago. Not only did our “pop up Occupation” immediately retake their former stomping grounds at 101 Market outside the Federal Reserve, but we immediately called for a victory dance party and some random person brought us hot pizza after hearing about what had happened. 

I dunno. It was really weird. I am going to need to let tonight’s events marinate and I’m interested in seeing the city’s attempts at damage control, since it looks like this whole shit was mismanaged and I’m not even sure half of them knew what they were supposed to be doing out there. 

One thing that is cool is we took all the plastic bands that were holding the barricades together and made bracelets from them. It’s sort of a symbol of the “101 Market Tribe” and our bond with each other and a symbol of this weird weird weird weird night. 

Was tonight a victory? Is it a sign that the SFPD might be the first police department to “break” and stop doing beastly things that they’re told to do only to get the ire of the working classes and poor? San Francisco has its asshole cops, like those guys that were stealing poor people’s valuables in those SROs, but I have to say, out of all the cities I’ve lived in, all the protests I’ve seen or been a part of, San Francisco also has some of the best goddamn cops I’ve ever seen, and I think that’s going to work in our favor as a movement. 

I dunno, like I said, I’ve got to let this night marinate quite a bit. I’m not sure what the hell happened, and I’m not even sure how I feel about it. Jubilant, yes. Happy that my 101 Tribe peeps got their homebase back. But really, something isn’t right about this thing with the SFPD and I need to think on that and do some homework. 

Anyway, just telling our story the best I can.

Love and Solidarity,

Scott

OccupySF Welcome Committee and Committee of Correspondence

@scottanansi on twitter

Here’s the bracelet we made out of the zipties the SFPD was using to secure the barricades. HURRAH! ^___^