"I Opened the Door and They're Pointing Rifles at Me."
So related a thirteen year old girl, one of the speakers at this year's Urban Shield protest in Oakland, California, describing an encounter with a local SWAT team.
Urban Shield, sponsored by the Alameda County Sheriff (Oakland is within Alameda County), is an annual police convention and tradeshow, glorifying the militarization of police and violence. It's an excuse for wanna bes to cosplay "Special Forces" for a couple days, taking part in military-style "exercises" throughout the area. Participants include local police departments such as San Francisco, Oakland and Berkeley, and units from around the country.
To get a sense of the spirit of things at Urban Shield, here's a very popular t-shirt at this year's trade show. You can see weaponized vehicles, equipment and t-shirts from last year's show here.
Last year, a combination of protests and other pressure forced Urban Shield to move this year's activities out of Oakland, where it had been held for a number of years at the Marriot Covention Center. This year it moved out to suburbia, to Pleasanton, CA, at the County Fairgrounds.
Nonetheless, some two hundred people still gathered at 14th & Oak in Oakland, just outside one of the Alameda County Sheriff's offices, announcing that Urban Shield was still not welcome in Oakland, nor anywhere in Alameda County and neither should it exist at all. The effort was organized by the Stop Urban Shield Coalition, with Critical Resistance, AROC, War Resisters League, Code Pink and other local organizations as members.
Last year, and in years previous, the police made their presence more than visible at the protests with - guess what? - militarized formations of police surrounding the protests on all sides. This year, for whatever reason, there was no visible police presence at all, just a couple of Sheriff's Deputies on the steps of the Sheriff's office. Organizers took charge of routing traffic and, unlike what Urban Shield's philosophy would like you to believe, not a single terrorist or criminal act was committed, unless you count feeding people after the speeches were over.
Here's how the protest came down, beginning with a march from Oscar Grant Plaza in downtown Oakland to the Sheriff's office - in tweets, tweetpics and tweet videos. There's a short video of the girl speaking about her SWAT raid experience in the mix. Below all the tweets you can read a letter to Berkeley and Oakland demanding that they withdraw from participating in next year's Urban Shield exercises.
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