Nights in Tents

by Laura Love

  “Shame shame shame—Shame shame shame shame shame … Shay-ee-ay—ee-ay—ee-ay-ee—ame shame on you”

  I pointed and stared back to the Supreme Court Building, which was the backdrop from the stage, before launching into the first verse which was:

  For many a year/ A vote was one citizen

  But I found out just now/That it’s a corporation

  They treated us bad/Oh, they treated us cruel

  They think they got us where they want us yeah

  And we ain’t nothin’ but their fools.

  From there I progressed to this chorus:

  Occupy won’t leave you alone/No we ain’t a gonna go back home

  You thought you could take it easy/ Oh but our anger is much too strong

  We’ve had it with you! Shame shame shame/shame on you!”

  Just as I was finishing, I saw a long line of marchers who were arriving from the two encampments that were located in the vicinity. One group had begun marching from McPherson Square, which was often said to be the rougher, (and also more “real” in the sense that a higher percentage of its residents were actually homeless) of the two, and continued toward the other from nearby Freedom Plaza, which was said to be a slightly more upscale, “homeless by choice” community of purely political dissidents. I was happy to be done with my official commitments and free to scurry from the stage to join the protesters who were now idling in the street and spilling outward onto the wide sidewalk which lead to the same steps we’d swarmed on January 17. Many reporters who had been covering our show dashed off to film the developing story across the street. Primal drums accompanied the cries of, “Money is not free speech/Corporations are not people,” only this time refrain dovetailed into, “Whose Court?/Our Court!” as police cruisers began pouring in from all directions.

  Hundreds of us soon faced off with scores of police, who were cramming to unload aluminum barricades from a van parked right on the sidewalk. Their goal was to keep us from climbing the steps to the marble columns as we’d done a few days earlier, while ours was to gain entry into what we were contending was “Our Court.” The standoff was fairly predictable, until one demonstrator produced a long, slender wooden pole with a glazed donut tied to one end and began dangling it in front of the faces of the officers, in a game he called, “Fishing for Cops,” which drew thunderous laughter from our side, and even a few smiles from some men in uniform. All was going well and tensions were ebbing until one officer, failing to see the humor, suddenly yanked at the fisherman’s pole, raging, “Get that fucking thing out of my face, faggot,” which pitched the holder forward, almost landing him on the police side of the barricade. A furious tug of war with the body of the fisherman broke out—us trying hard to restore him to our side, as a battery of officers jerked him in the opposite direction, attempting to get him into their clutches. Donut boy was screaming out in pain as his torso got raked across the aluminum top rail and his clothes were being ripped off of him. Our side eventually won, and we were able to reclaim our scraped, bleeding prize from the maelstrom. A loud cheer went up, followed, bizarrely, by an eruption into “The Hokey Pokey,” at the other end of the barriers, some twenty-five feet away. I turned to see a big, scruffy guy leading other Occupiers in reaching through the barriers at knee height to poke cops’ legs while singing, “You put your right hand in, you take your right hand out.” Apparently, the feeling of having their legs groped by demonstrators freaked the officers out, because each one of them immediately recoiled and climbed the stairs behind them to avoid the sensation. Then, someone among us noticed how extraordinarily easy it was to lift up the momentarily abandoned barricades and back the row of police up the stairs, as they jumped back to avoid contact. In short order, the entire front row joined the Hokey Pokey game, while those of us further back sang along and kept the mood light. As we frolicked, lots of cops were becoming furious as they realized their own unwitting participation in helping us advance to the top. As their frustration grew, a few began swinging batons indiscriminately, in all directions. “Hey guys, stop swinging the clubs, you’re gonna hurt one of us,” came the order from a top cop. “Yeah—hey—we’re unarmed! This is a peaceful protest,” shouted some agitated demonstrators. We were almost to the marble columns when suddenly confronted by a solid row of riot troops, who had assembled quickly into place and exploded from the inside of the courthouse. They were wearing bulletproof shields, kevlar body armor, and gas masks as they maintained tight grips on their highly visible military-style assault rifles. We could all plainly see that the jig was up, and, as suddenly as the scuffle began, it ended, within a few short yards of reaching the entrance to the Supreme Court.

  Chapter 7

  Advance—Retweet—J28

  A week later, it was a beautiful, warm Saturday morning at Oscar Grant Plaza. I thanked my lucky stars that I was sitting on a concrete bench sipping a latte in California, and not in a concrete jail somewhere in Washington, DC. We christened the event, “Move-In Day,” because we planned to take control of a large, long-shuttered commercial building near downtown, for the purpose of housing Occupy Oakland, which had not been the same since losing the encampment back in the November raid.

  It was envisioned as a family affair, featuring jugglers, musicians, dancers, poets, speakers, and musicians. I’d signed up to be one of those providing entertainment in our new home as part of the January 28 Rise Up Festival, which we hoped would usher in a new era for Occupy Oakland. We were tired of being arrested and shot at, and wanted a home base, away from Jean Quan and the OPD, who had demonstrated over and again how little affection they held for our movement. None of us knew what the building looked like, or even where it was. It was a well-kept secret, known only to a select few Occupiers who had been directly involved in the planning and selection process. The formerly vacant building was supposed to be a safe haven—the new and improved headquarters for Occupy Oakland. Our dream was not only to occupy a physical space, but to embody an ideal—to stanch corporate greed, as well as to house, feed, and clothe some of Oakland’s exploding homeless population. There was even an ambitious, yet marvelously designed plan to operate a daycare/preschool for the children of our growing community. Many Occupiers, who were present and former educators, had already volunteered to teach children and adults how to read and write. Doctors, nurses, and dentists had also committed to providing free treatment for folks who currently had no access to such services.

  Visions of the wonderful world we were about to create danced in my head as I sat on the stairs squinting, bleary-eyed in the unseasonably warm January sunshine. This would be the day we would give birth to a model community, where others, mired in the dominant paradigm, had not. We knew the job would be difficult. It would be hard enough to secure the space itself, let alone restore its dormant systems; sewage, electricity, water, heat, etc., to working order. Even though these obstacles presented challenges, I was wildly optimistic about the possibilities, and prepared to do whatever it took to overcome them.

  As much as I considered myself to be a veteran of the Movement, I was unprepared for what actually did transpire that day in Oakland, California. I’d originally planned to play my bass guitar and sing later in the day, but since I’d been plagued by a series of tear gas–induced asthma attacks and respiratory infections, resulting in the loss of my voice, I’d ditched my plans to perform and was without it that morning, which proved to be fortuitous. Right off the bat there was trouble, as we’d been there for scarcely an hour when a disturbance broke out in the southwest corner of the plaza. Arms were waving and voices were rising in what looked to be a mini brawl, which prompted many of us to jump up and run full steam to the source of the commotion. I, along with about sixty other people, could see a number of OPD officers surrounding a tall, handsome, clean-cut young black man, who had been handcuffed and was now being dragged across the street to isolate him from potential liberators. Occupy Oakland had quickly mobilized and closed in around the officers, shouti
ng, “Let him go,” in unison, while jamming cameras into the faces of the dozen cops that controlled their victim’s every move. I immediately asked a graying woman of about fifty what had happened. She told me that she’d been standing next to the man while he was filming the actions of the same police, who were now trying to arrest him. The officers had been making a show of strutting through the plaza every few minutes, hand picking people, mostly black males, to run background checks on, to “see if they had criminal records or outstanding warrants.” The woman said the man had been complaining loudly about their “intimidation tactics” while cataloguing abuses, and matching faces with badge numbers for possible defense later. The man was responding to a developing trend at Occupy clashes, where the OPD had made a habit of covering their badges with tape before committing particularly egregious crimes, like hitting people in the face with nightsticks while they were cuffed, or lobbing explosives into a crowd of peaceful protesters as they administered aid to the wounded. Lately a plethora of damning videotape evidence had surfaced which led to the dismissal (and even conviction) of some cops who were shown to have committed such infractions on numerous occasions. A shocked and often naive public was being exposed daily, through social media outlets like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter, to rampant police overreach, such as using excessive force on noncombatant demonstrators and planting drugs on detainees. Because of the ubiquitous nature of cell phones, these and other tricks of the policing trade had been shown to be, not only unrare, but common practice on the force. In reaction, many law enforcement personnel began violently discouraging the practice of protesters filming them in action. Their objections began to surface in various forms of legislation being introduced around the country, which were attempting to make it illegal to take pictures of an officer while he or she was on duty. The eyewitness told me that the officers had teamed up and pounced on the guy, forcing him to the ground as they yelled that he was under arrest for “outstanding warrants.” The man kept insisting that he had no such warrants against him, and that he was being unlawfully arrested. We stuck to them like wheat paste, especially since many among us knew him to be an upstanding citizen with a clean record. It was gratifying to back the outnumbered cops away from us, for a change, and to realize we were denying them the opportunity to do what they really wanted to do, which usually included whacking the perp a few times with their truncheons. First they dragged him by the cuffs south across Fourteenth Street, then, unable to shake us, they hauled him back north onto the Plaza. With us hot on their heels, they pulled him all over OGP before finally managing to shove him into a large vehicle that looked like a mobile processing station for just such occasions. It made us anxious to see him disappear, but we had to get on with our day, as Brian’s PA system fired up and began pouring out beatheavy grooves. Nothing soothes the troubled mind like, Prince’s “When Doves Cry” or emboldens a timid spirit like a cut from Public Enemy or the Beastie Boys when you’re about to go into a tense situation. Brian’s mixes were becoming the soundtrack of the Oakland Occupation, and I liked his musical taste, so that was all right by me.

  Forty-five minutes passed, dancing and listening to various political speakers as we girded our loins for Move In Day. The last speaker had just shouted, “Let’s git this bitch on,” when I looked up onto the stage and noticed that the man I’d seen being carted off nearly an hour before had resurfaced, and was wrestling the microphone out of its stand to address us before we took off. Visibly shook up, he admonished us to be very careful about what we did that day, and how we did it. “Stick together and never get caught alone, because the OPD is showing us just how they plan to roll today, and it ain’t gonna to be pretty.” He advised that it was “all right to celebrate and even have a good time,” but to know that the police were probably going to be relentless in trying to stop us from completing our mission. He also told us that the police had been unable to keep him, because, just as he’d loudly insisted, there were no outstanding warrants, and they’d had no legal grounds to do what they had just done to him—but they did it anyway.

  Well, maybe the worst was over, and we’d gotten that out of the way and could all just go out and have a fabulous, revolutionary day. At around one thirty, we began assembling on Fourteenth and Broadway, between Walgreens and the Rite Aid store. I had to smile as I saw a new brigade of Black Bloc protesters; this time comprised mostly of giggling females barely out of Junior High, assembling at the front to be our first line of defense. Some weren’t much older than my own daughter, and it moved me to see them joking nervously and teasing each other like school girls, as they gripped their homemade shields. Some brandished tampons and other menstrual products which they said were meant to “protect them from police assaults,” however, their main armament consisted of cotton bandanas across their mouths, coupled with black plastic garbage cans cut in half with peace signs spray painted in white all across the front. The handles of their shields were fashioned out of rubber hoses, which allowed the bearers to lift them high enough to protect vital organs, if need be.

  It was a gorgeous day and sunshine streamed in from all sides. I felt happy and hopeful that we might get some immediate help to people for whom the system had totally failed. I couldn’t wait to have a refuge to gather in and have discussions about how to get the world righted and set back on a course we could all live with. On the whole, I felt protective toward this endearing Black Bloc troupe, unlike previous ones that had so turned me so off in previous actions. These looked nothing like the handfuls of marauders who’d strapped on gas masks, brought out hammers, gasoline, and spray paint, and turned our peaceful protests into terrifying police encounters. These youngsters had none of the menacing vibe that their male counterparts had projected while breaking windows, spray painting buildings, and starting dumpsters on fire. I wasn’t particularly prudish about their activities, never having equated minor property damage with the violence and criminal behavior that was being perpetrated on the masses by corporations and the 1%, however, I hated how they’d draw fire to us, then cut and run, leaving hundreds, or thousands of peaceful protesters to bear the brunt of Oakland Police Department wrath. They’d poked the dragon, then disappeared into the shadows, leaving us to deal with injured protesters and the tons of negative press that was then directed at the Occupy Movement, in their wake. I had often posted messages on social media, excoriating them for the damage they had done to our movement. It bothered me too, that they didn’t usually discriminate between corporations and small, family-run businesses when selecting windows to break. In the past I’d seen lots of Occupiers gathering in public squares on the morning after a Black Bloc rampage carrying sponges, cleaning supplies, and paint remover to clean up the mess others had caused the night before. I’d seen Occupiers going door to door to small businesses that had been hit, apologizing for anarchist actions, and asking them to please make the distinction between those vandals and the vast majority of us, whose peaceful actions were intended only to quell corporate greed and secure social, economic, and environmental justice for all Americans. I came into Move In Day with a bias against the way Black Bloc did business, but seeing these babes frolicking about in the light of day was doing a lot for my disposition toward them. Just before we got underway, some of the girls began to dance around and cavort like puppies while reciting, naughtily, “We’re here/We’re queer bitch—If it’s vacant let’s take that shit.” The Rise Up Festival was beginning to take glorious shape as we began marching jauntily toward our still unknown destination.

  Upbeat music accompanied us as we marched, via Brian’s bannered up, decked out rolling flatbed sound truck. What would we have done without Brian Glasscock, the quiet, chain smoking boy with the peach fuzz and cherubic face, that had been a permanent fixture at Occupy Oakland since its inception. He always took it upon himself to crank out the best musical sequences I’d ever heard from every imaginable genre. Somehow, every song he selected, whether from Michael Jackson, Rage Against the Machine, S
ir Mix-A-Lot, NWA, Tupac, or Nina Simone, was just right for the moment at every #OO action. We walked south on Broadway for a while and then turned east up one of the numbered streets, pausing at times to let everyone catch up. I stayed near the front as was my preference during large demonstrations, and caught sight of my Ustream friends, OccupyFreedomLa, Oakfosho, Sky (@CrossXBones), and PunkBoyinSF, who were livestreaming along the way. The role they played in revealing truths and dispelling mainstream misrepresentations cannot be overstated. Time after time their footage had told the true tale and refuted OPD claims that protesters had instigated violence, or that the police had issued clear directives to disperse before they’d shot into crowds with explosives and chemical agents. These indie journalists were a different breed of human being—not like you or I. They regularly placed their bodies front and center during the most heated actions—positioning themselves inches from gun barrels, while taking close ups of officer’s faces and demanding they uncover their badge numbers. Streamers did their homework. They armed themselves with knowledge and could often be heard citing specific codes and statutes that police officers were violating in dealing with Occupiers. Unlike their mainstream counterparts, alternative press members often interjected spicy language—contributing editorial comments throughout their coverage—all the while maintaining constant twitter interaction with their viewers while in the pitch of battle. “You’re outta control man … Stop thumping on that guy with your stick … That ain’t cool … That’s totally unnecessary … You didn’t have to do that, man. You just broke his leg, douche! He’s being peaceful you motherfucking pig! What the hell are you pounding on him for? You’re breaking the law, officer … There was no order to disperse, Sir, you’re not allowing us to leave Sir.” In recent months I’d almost completely abandoned network coverage, as I realized their accounts rarely matched up with what I’d seen firsthand on the streets that day. I said goodbye to David Gregory, Sean Hannity, and George Stephanopoulos and the other flapping tongues that rarely seemed to say anything that moved me, or addressed my deepest fear that corporations and the super rich have overtaken our government from within.