Posts tagged as Oakland
A Tale of Two Occupy Movements: Oakland and Miami
Last night, Occupy Miami was rousted from their encampment, with a few arrested (including photographer Carlos Miller). They have negligible local support, and are remote enough from the rest of the Occupy movement that they're pretty much on their own. (Good news: the camp-clearing was "carried out almost completely without violence," except for when they clubbed a dude.) The small organization will have to regroup without an encampment; it's a hard movement to sustain in isolation, though they say they'll try. (Hint: what a prime American location for an Occupy movement to move homeless people into foreclosed houses!) That's the opposite of Oakland, where Saturday's large demonstration resulted in a crazy mass police reaction, the arrest of 400, and also the continued creation of a criminal class of people who have previously been arrested on trumped-up charges and who now aren't allowed to go near downtown Oakland without facing six months in prison. (How American!) Of the 409 arrested, only 12 are being charged. (The intention with the arrests being to hold protesters in jail long enough to scare them off protesting.) Despite such tough police and government opposition in Oakland, it's quite likely that protesters will win soon enough—at the very least, in their intent to turn an abandoned convention center into a community service facility. READ MORE
The Oakland Police Department's War on Citizens
Oakland's police chief Anthony Batts resigned a couple weeks ago, because, when he wasn't busy applying for other jobs, he was busy trying to turn Oakland into a police state, and that mean old City Council wouldn't let him. His approach to policing was that crime would stop if you instituted a curfew for young people and if you could immediately arrest anyone found "loitering" anywhere in Oakland. Also, a decade on, he and his predecessors still couldn't enforce court-ordered changes to the police department arising from the sensational "Oakland Riders" trials, which also ended in zero convictions of police but a $10 million settlement to 119 different plaintiffs. The court supervision agreement includes not very outlandish things like "Improved reporting and investigation of use of force by officers." Apparently that is not something that can happen in ten years. Longtime department member Howard Jordan took over as chief—for the second time, as retention of chiefs has become a problem for what is an extraordinarily troubled police department. And then, last night happened. READ MORE
Reminder: Bay Area Rap
Last month, while I was making a friend a mixtape of my favorite 50 rap songs, I knew that I was bound to want to kick myself after sending it to him (and, foolhardily, publishing the list here) because I was surely forgetting something. I was proven right later that very week, when I saw that Awl contributor Willy Staley (who had censured me for including so few Californian rap songs on my list) had made his own list, "The 50 Greatest Bay Area Rap Songs," for Complex.com. Sure enough, right there at no. 1, deservedly, was "I Got 5 On It," by the Oakland duo Luniz—a tremendously great song, one I definitely would have on my list, but one that had totally slipped my mind. Now, as if to rub salt on my neurotic, self-inflicted wound, Complex offers another great Bay Area rap slide show: "Rap Atlas: Oakland." It's a much fun—full of music and information, and very easily to get lost in for an hour of your day. Best (or worst) of all, it's the first in a series. So I'm sure I'll be reminded of lots of other songs I'll rue leaving off my stupid list.
Revealed: "Sex Packets" Based On Junk Science
"Meanwhile, in his briefcase he has an actual plan to create sex packets. The nigga was nuts [laughs]. Smooth really believed he was going to get a grant from the United States government to develop this technology to help astronauts have sex when they traveled. I thought it was a brilliant idea, but I didn’t think technology reached a point to where we could induce a dream and allow someone to see who they wanted and have sex with them. Acid and ecstasy were close, but it wasn’t quite that. As we were putting together the concept of the album I told him, ‘You know what? Sex packets would make a cold concept for a song. Let me try to flip it.’ ... we started going over the Sex Packet concept to make sure people couldn’t poke holes in it. We started studying the properties of ecstasy and LSD and what all the jargon was. We created a story where there was a professor at Stanford University who designed sex packets for astronaut travel so they could be sexually satisfied. The name of it was GSRA which stood for Genetic Suppression Release Antidote. We created this story that a powerful drug leaked into the streets of San Francisco and it was called sex packets on the street. Then on top of that, we went to Kinko’s and made a serious looking pamphlet on how to use sex packets because it was dangerous and fucking people up [laughs]. We made thousands of those pamphlets and left them on the back of buses and at hospitals. After all that, it was Tommy Boy’s idea to name the entire album after the ‘Sex Packets’ song." READ MORE
The Oscar Grant Verdict and Aftermath
When people say "there's no such thing as a fair trial," they're right and they're wrong. Those of us who don't work in courtrooms sometimes forget that the law is an extremely complicated series of if/then operators. So while emotionally and intellectually it's perfectly reasonable to be astounded that a (white) police officer can be convicted of involuntary manslaughter (by an all-white jury) for having shot (in the back) an unarmed (black) person (who was face-down on the ground), there is at least some logic to it in a legal sense. This is a good short primer on California law and voluntary and involuntary manslaughter-the "voluntary" charge involves provocation and passion. The conclusion being that, in this case and others like it, the law is not made for these situations: "Any result from a criminal justice proceeding will fall far short of the consequences that would truly constitute justice. Inherently. Intentionally." In Oakland last night, after the verdict, a largely peaceful planned protest was only somewhat marred by a conflict of agendas between different groups. A smaller anti-capitalist splinter group was interested in the tactic of violence against property-while a much larger group was interested in a peaceful opposition to a verdict that literally could not do justice to the crime. One of those groups received more attention from the media, which as an entity could not quite bring itself to make any differentiation between the two.
Is Oakland the New Williamsburg? (Answer: Oh Hell No)
A new "humor" video ironically anti-sells the city of Oakland as the hipster paradise of the Bay Area. The racism is thinly veiled! But anyway: is Oakland the new West Bushwick and greater Williamsburg of the west coast? Okay no it is not. And if I catch you in your skinny jeans up on MLK Blvd cruising by my mom's house I will carjack you myself.
