Much ink has been spilled over the more unfortunate events in the late night following Wednesday's general strike in Oakland. I could write a separate diary on the topic, but this is not about that. For the city that I live in and love dearly, Wednesday's events were a testament to Oakland's great diversity.
I have been going to demonstrations in the Bay Area and beyond for 20+ years, and what has really struck me about the Oakland OWS events has been their diversity, not just in terms of race, but also in terms of age and walk of life. That is not to say that the "regulars" are not out in force (it wouldn't be a Bay Area event without the tired Maoist rhetoric of Bob Avakian and the RCP sneaking in...) but I am seeing a much wider range of people than I ever have in the past...and it's a point worth making.
More photos and commentary after the squiggly.
I think any media organization can wander down to the OWS tents at 2 in the afternoon on a weekday and pull out a demographic that fits neatly into the negative narrative of this being an overwhelmingly white and wingnut crowd. It's a reality that people who have jobs in this economy are likely to value them highly enough to remain at work during the day (and not to camp out every night), and the support network that allows people who CAN camp out to do so, while totally welcoming to anyone who shows up, has grown out of an activist/punk/university subculture that opens the door to criticism that the movement lacks diversity.
But go to a GA at 7pm, and it's a different story entirely. This is where the cross-section of people that make up Oakland comes out, and it is quite something. Just as the MSM wants America to believe that there were only 7,000 people who marched last Wednesday (even as a cameraman from Channel 7 told me, in a discussion at the port, that he figured at least 40K were there), the MSM also has a vested interest in marginalizing this movement. And in our odd "post-racial" America, one of the most effective cudgels is that the people marching are overwhelmingly white, middle class, entitled, etc... If the ludicrous "OWS is full of anti-semitism" argument didn't work, next is the "it's all white college dropouts" argument.
This photo essay is my rebuttal to that argument. These photos were shot by my wife who was able to take off work and spend the day marching in Oakland (I joined the march to the port in the late afternoon). Oakland is a beautiful and diverse city, and these images are a testament to it.
What is worth noting about Oakland and it's diversity is that this is the direction the country is moving in, and the demographic realities of America in the 21st century scare the hell out of some people. The Pat Buchanans of America are terrified of the coming end of white, male rule in this country, and their ever shriller and incendiary rhetoric is a testament to the fact that the writing is on the wall. As much as the endlessly replayed images of masked white kids breaking windows are meant to stir contempt in middle America, it is the images that show the America of the future that truly inspire fear and hand-wringing amongst the 1% and their defenders.
View more photos from the event on the book of faces and Flickr.