Last night Occupy Oakland held its general assembly meeting. A major item on the agenda was the issue of establishing a formal position on the issue of non-violence. I am drawing information about the meeting from this blog post:
Occupy Oakland - update based on online media
It is written by affinis who I have found to be a fairly reliable source of information. Here is his/her summary of what happened at the GA meeting.
Two "nonviolence" proposals were presented. The first, a relatively vague proposal apparently put together by a few OO members, essentially sought to encourage black block advocates to constrain use of black bloc tactics. The proposers stated that in retrospect it was probably not wise to use black block tactics during the general strike. The proposal stated that black block should not be used against local business, especially those that have supported OO. It also urged people who wished to use black bloc tactics to consider the nature of the event - it shouldn't be used at events seeking to draw the general public (e.g. where people have been encouraged to bring children and kittens) or during community-engagement events. And it also encouraged people who favor nonviolence to dialogue with those who favor violence/vandalism to try to discourage its use. This proposal appeared to be a very earnest attempt by people who personally favor nonviolence yet who wished to maintain a "big tent" (an approach that they hoped would keep black bloc anarchists on board and that would garner sufficient support to pass the GA). It failed miserably, with only a 15% yes vote. The biggest complaint was lack of clarity of the language. Proponants of the inclusion of black bloc and violent tactics were unhappy because of the constraints it attempted to place and many nonvioloence proponants were unhappy because it wouldn't effectively prohibit violence/vandalism, and the language might be interpreted as legitimizing black bloc tactics.
The statements against excluding violent tactics/vandalism predominantly came down to a few major arguments.
a. Why should OO repudiate violence when the most severe violence - resulting in all the serious injuries - was by police. That the recent focus on window smashing, fires, etc. was entirely misplaced and lacked perspective given what the police had done.
b. The argument that destruction of property is not violence.
c. The idea that OO needs solidarity and inclusiveness (and that nonviolence proposals exclude people and useful tactics).
d. The argument that one can only decide on what tactics are appropriate in the context of ongoing events, so a decision in advance that precludes certain tactics would be a mistake.
3. Just before the main nonviolence proposal was to be presented, it was withdrawn. Apparently the decision to withdraw the proposal resulted from intensive discussion between proposers, unions, grassroots groups, etc. The reason given was that at the current juncture (i.e. an implicit reference to the impending police raid, etc.), solidarity was perceived as more important than a discussion on nonviolence. I suspect a secondary unstated reason was recognition (based on crowd responses and prior speakers) that the proposal probably could not get enough votes to pass the 90% threshold. However, based on the statements of the speaker who withdrew the proposal, the stated rationale (the need to prioritize solidarity given the current situation) seemed genuine. It should be noted that the proposers, though allies of Quan in the community, apparently put forward the proposal without official sanction (this wasn't clear last night - but it now seems that it might have been something of a genuine community-based attempt).
My reading of that information is that Occupy Oakland still has no policy position on non-violence and property destruction. There are different factions within the group about what the policy should be. Elsewhere in the post affinis makes some analysis of what is happening to the group.
At the camp, the split on the topic of nonviolence vs "diversity of tactics" continues. From online postings, it appears that many Oaklanders who do not agree with the use of violence/vandalism have been leaving the encampment and stating that they will no longer participate in OO events. And to some extent, the OO camp itself may be dividing. Some OO participants are attempting to reach out to OWS and other occupations for help.
There is a broadly held expectation that the Oakland police will soon be making another attempt to remove the camp.
There is one piece of good news. The GA decided to move the $20K that they deposited in Wells Fargo to a community bank in Alameda.