This is the final installment of a series of three diaries about the West Coast port shut down. Part one is Occupy Seattle - Why We Shut Down The Port Part I (highlighting the Longview ILWU's struggle with EGT), part two is Occupy Seattle - Why We Shut Down The Port Part II (highlighting the SSA/Goldman Sachs connection as it relates to the Port of LA/Long Beach). Today I am writing about police oppression as it relates to the cities participating in tomorrow's port shut down.
A press release from Occupy Oakland has laid the ground work for all of us who are organizing to explain our reasons for participating in this day of action.
"We're shutting down these ports because of the union busting and attacks on the working class by the 1%: the firing of Port truckers organizing at SSA terminals in LA; the attempt to rupture ILWU union jurisdiction in Longview, WA by EGT. EGT includes Bunge LTD, a company which reported 2.5 billion dollars in profit last year and has economically devastated poor people in Argentina and Brazil. SSA is responsible for inhumane working conditions and gross exploitation of port truckers and is owned by Goldman Sachs. EGT and Goldman Sachs is Wallstreet on the Waterfront," stated Barucha Peller of the West Coast Port Blockade Assembly of Occupy Oakland.
Police oppression - Occupy Oakland
On October 25th, during a raid on Occupy Oakland, a young Iraqi vet named Scott Olson was struck in the head with a tear gas canister. The police claim they were using "non lethal" force. This video proves that was not true, and in fact the police continued to attack protesters when they went to aid this young man.
In response to this event, and despite some pithy promises from the horrid mayor of Oakland Jean Quan, Occupy Oakland called for a General Strike on November 2nd.
It is important to note that on the day of this action, police response was minimal. There is one reason and one reason only for this. When we mobilize in large numbers, the police are very unlikely to respond with force because they know that a. it is risky for them personally and b. it is risky for them to give us momentum by making a huge tactical error when our numbers are strong. Tens of thousands marched that day, and they successfully shut down their port WITHOUT the support of the unions. It was only later that day as numbers dwindled that police lashed out and sent 400 officers to clear those who were occupying an abandoned building. The November 2nd action was seen as a huge success, and it buoyed the movement after the traumatic events of October 25th.
Unfortunately, subsequent police crackdowns have resulted in more injuries including an additional brutal attack of veteran Kayvan Sabehgi which resulted in a ruptured spleen:
After this, Sabehgi was apparently left in a police van for three hours, then taken to jail. Only after he made bail was an ambulance called — "18 hours after he was first handcuffed by police," according to New York's Daily News— and then he was taken to the hospital and put into surgery.
Police oppression - Occupy Los Angeles
On November 30th the police launched what they publicly claimed was a "peaceful" eviction of Occupy Los Angeles. Media access was tightly controlled:
The LAPD deployed this old-school method in a decidedly 20th-century way. First, they didn't select a single web-based publication or alternative news outlet. Instead they allowed the Los Angeles Daily News, Los Angeles Times, Reuters, AP, the big four television outlets, and a two radio reporters. Anybody not in that group -- which would include reporters for every website not affiliated with a newspaper in Los Angeles, not to mention all citizens performing acts of journalism -- were told that they would be arrested if they came too close to the eviction area.
In all, nearly 300 people were arrested during the eviction. As people began to be released from jail reports started filtering out that told the true story of what happened that night at Occupy Los Angeles and after the arrests.
A blogger writes of his experience after he was arrested:
The bus moved to City Hall east. Some of the crowd was in pain, but many were in high spirits shouting “we are the 99%” and “occupy the jail.” At one point, the man who I thought was asleep, was asked if he was alright and did not respond. We had a group shout that there was a medical emergency- “a man needs help” “help please officer” etc. These shouts were interrupted by the radio in the front of the bus being turned up to an unreasonably loud volume (the thought in my head at the time was “full volume” but that’s something that I can’t verify). Even typing this right now, my rational brain thinks “this could not have happened”, but it did, and I assumed that I wasn’t more shocked by it at the time because I had my hands tied behind my back, urine on my shoes, people screaming in pain, my wrists throbbing and my knees tilted and was unable to even sit up properly. He was breathing, but we all were incapacitated, and there was nothing that we could do, but shout for help which was responded to by “God Bless America” on the speakers (I wish I wish I was lying about this) at volume 10. Ie, this was not an effort to ignore cries for help, it was the opposite. We cried for help for a person in dire need of medical attention and the officer(s) responded by turning up the radio so loud that it was painful to hear. please re-read that until it sinks in.
Yasha Levine writes of his experience as well:
First off, don’t believe the PR bullshit. There was nothing peaceful or professional about the LAPD’s attack on Occupy LA–not unless you think that people peacefully protesting against the power of the financial oligarchy deserve to be treated the way I saw Russian cops treating the protesters in Moscow and St. Petersburg who were demonstrating against the oligarchy under Putin and Yeltsin, before we at The eXiled all got tossed out in 2008. Back then, everyone in the West protested and criticized the way the Russian cops brutally snuffed out dissent, myself included. Now I’m in America, at a demonstration, watching exactly the same brutal crackdown…
While people are now beginning to learn that the police attack on Occupy LA was much more violent than previously reported, few actually realize that much—if not most—of the abuse happened while the protesters were in police custody, completely outside the range of the press and news media. And the disgraceful truth is that a lot of the abuse was police sadism, pure and simple:
Patrick Meighan shared his experience:
As we sat there, encircled, a separate team of LAPD officers used knives to slice open every personal tent in the park. They forcibly removed anyone sleeping inside, and then yanked out and destroyed any personal property inside those tents, scattering the contents across the park. They then did the same with the communal property of the Occupy LA movement. For example, I watched as the LAPD destroyed a pop-up canopy tent that, until that moment, had been serving as Occupy LA’s First Aid and Wellness tent, in which volunteer health professionals gave free medical care to absolutely anyone who requested it. As it happens, my family had personally contributed that exact canopy tent to Occupy LA, at a cost of several hundred of my family’s dollars. As I watched, the LAPD sliced that canopy tent to shreds, broke the telescoping poles into pieces and scattered the detritus across the park. Note that these were the objects described in subsequent mainstream press reports as “30 tons of garbage” that was “abandoned” by Occupy LA: personal property forcibly stolen from us, destroyed in front of our eyes and then left for maintenance workers to dispose of while we were sent to prison.
When the LAPD finally began arresting those of us interlocked around the symbolic tent, we were all ordered by the LAPD to unlink from each other (in order to facilitate the arrests). Each seated, nonviolent protester beside me who refused to cooperate by unlinking his arms had the following done to him: an LAPD officer would forcibly extend the protestor’s legs, grab his left foot, twist it all the way around and then stomp his boot on the insole, pinning the protestor’s left foot to the pavement, twisted backwards. Then the LAPD officer would grab the protestor’s right foot and twist it all the way the other direction until the non-violent protestor, in incredible agony, would shriek in pain and unlink from his neighbor.
Guess we can see why the police kept the mainstream press out of the area.
Police oppression - Occupy Portland
Occupy Portland had been a cooperative effort between the Mayor's office and the occupiers up until the Portland Business Alliance and the Portland police began to pressure the Mayor to do something about the occupation site. The Mayor caved to this pressure and announced an eviction date of November 13th at 12:00 am. After Occupy Portland made a successful stand against the eviction notice that lasted several hours, Portland police did what has become common operating practice during the occupy evictions - they waited for numbers to dwindle and then they came in with force and brutalized protesters.
An open letter to Mayor Sam Adams from members of Occupy Portland:
Thousands of Portland residents of all ages came out over the weekend to support us and help defend our constitutional right to peaceful assembly. They were greeted by hundreds of militarized riot police armed with tasers, stun batons, beanbag weapons, tear gas, pepper spray and live ammunition. This was shocking to many of us who did not expect you to respond to unarmed, peaceful and joyful protest with potentially deadly force. The next day we observed police officers clubbing our fellow citizens and friends with batons, throwing people to the ground and making many unnecessary arrests in the process of destroying our encampment.
An example of this blatant police brutality is the violent attack on Justin James Bridges, the sign language interpreter for Occupy Portland. After repeatedly communicating to Portland Police officers that he had a broken back, police officers responded by beating him and putting a knee into his back. He was hospitalized and lost feeling and control of movement in one arm and one leg due to the unreasonable and excessive physical aggression inflicted by these police officers. Justin was released from the hospital yesterday after spending the night in the hospital. Justin is now in a wheelchair.
On a national scale, there are news reports that have begun to expose the fact that the paramilitary police response to the occupy movements is being coordinated by people behind the scenes. The most stunning of these news reports is the profoundly stupid move by Mayor Quan of Oakland (is this woman an idiot or what?) admitting that:
“I was recently on a conference call with 18 cities across the country who had the same situation. . . .”
Another national news story worthy of a mention is the report that UN Envoy Frank La Rue sharply criticizes US Local Governments for Repressive Actions Against OWS Protesters:
The United Nations envoy for freedom of expression is drafting an official communication to the U.S. government demanding to know why federal officials are not protecting the rights of Occupy demonstrators whose protests are being disbanded — sometimes violently — by local authorities.
Frank La Rue, who serves as the U.N. “special rapporteur” for the protection of free expression, told HuffPost in an interview that the crackdowns against Occupy protesters appear to be violating their human and constitutional rights.
“I believe in city ordinances and I believe in maintaining urban order,” he said Thursday. “But on the other hand I also believe that the state — in this case the federal state — has an obligation to protect and promote human rights.”
“If I were going to pit a city ordinance against human rights, I would always take human rights,” he continued.
So, we shut down the port because you can't evict an idea. You can't oppress all of us and we are too big to fail.