Aletho News

The Razing of Occupy Oakland at Sunrise

By MIKE KING | CounterPunch | October 26, 2011

Oakland – In the early morning on Tuesday, starting before 5 am, the police temporarily destroyed Occupy Oakland, sending in a riot squad of over 500 that outnumbered protesters almost 3 to 1.  Oscar Grant Plaza (officially Frank Ogawa Plaza) was too geographically large and open to be adequately defended against the armed tactical operation.  Despite swallowing a lot of pride in watching the space get torn apart and dozens submit to arrest, Occupy Oakland made big strategic steps by picking our fights, beginning to define the terms of our struggle, preserving our forces, and maintaining the moral high-ground against a ‘Socialist’ mayor who is now wedded, however abusively, to the Oakland Police Department.  Twelve hours later 1000 people marched against the police as stuck commuters cheered them on.  Whatever the former communist Mayor once knew about dialectics, she apparently quickly forgot when she took office.

The formerly leftist Mayor succumbed to OPD pressure by raiding Oscar Grant Plaza and signing on to support a youth curfew in the last few days, after Police Chief Batts stepped down two weeks ago due to tensions with the mayor.  The City Attorney left for similar reasons earlier in the year.  In a progressive town with a vibrant history of resistance, where Occupy Oakland has broad support, the Mayor has succumbed, without much visible struggle, to the forces that truly run this town – the police, the fear-mongering media that thinks ‘Oakland’ is simply a synonym for ‘murder,’ and the wealthy and upper-middle class that clamor for more and more law and order.  The ruling class and political establishment do not much care that the cost of that law and order is the gutting, not only of peoples’ rights, but also schools, libraries, health clinics, jobs programs, after-school programs and more that the ruling strata don’t personally need to survive, unlike a large and growing number of people who are slipping from struggling to desperation.

The fact that a Mayor who is seen as ‘ultra-Left’ could preside over such a budget, one that cedes roughly 2/3^rd of total city funds to the police, and then bend to the police when they ask for full control of the city, tells us a number of things.  The real enemies of the majority of the city’s residents – the working class, working poor and dispossessed – are the people who run the city.  Electing more ‘radical’ politicians is an utter waste of time.  When the State destroys our occupation, or smears us, or race-baits white radicals, or sends undercover cops into our space, or tries to intimidate us, they draw lines that they cannot erase in the minds of the Occupiers.  A chant of ‘shame’ directed at police who beat and arrested a man simply for taking video quickly turned to a resounding ‘Fuck the Police.’  They are the enemy, they made that point clear to everyone who didn’t already know.  Now what? … Full article

~

Occupy Oakland: Riot police fire tear gas, flashbang grenades:

October 26, 2011 Posted by aletho | Solidarity and Activism, Video | Leave a comment

Syrians rally in support of Assad

Press TV – October 19, 2011

Waving Syrian flags and pictures of Assad, hundreds of thousands of government supporters converged in Saadallah al-Jabri Square and its sub-streets in Aleppo on Wednesday to show the level of support that the Syrian president enjoys.

They also condemned the-US backed sanctions as well as the biased Western stance towards the unrest in their country and called for national unity.

The demonstrators also voiced support for Assad’s reform program, adding that they are satisfied with the process of reforms in the country.

The mass pro-government rally in Aleppo comes one week after a similar demonstration in the capital, Damascus. The rally was organized by Aleppo Youths Gathering.

Damascus and Aleppo are the largest Syrian cities and economic powerhouses.

In the Damascus rally, demonstrators thanked Russia and China for blocking a UN Security Council resolution against their country.

They also denounced the formation of the “Syrian National Council (SNC)”, an umbrella body formally set up on October 2 in Turkey, pulling together most of the groups opposing the Syrian leader.

Syria has been experiencing unrest since mid-March and hundreds of people, including security forces, have been killed in the violence.

While the opposition and Western countries accuse security forces of being behind the killings, the government blames outlaws, saboteurs and armed terrorist groups for the deadly violence, stressing that the unrest is being orchestrated from abroad.

~

October 19, 2011 Posted by aletho | Solidarity and Activism, Video | Leave a comment