Here’s something I posted on Facebook on Nov. 14, 2011, in praise of Occupy Oakland: “Just had a good talk with some Occupy people who left downtown and are now set up about 2 blocks away. They are smart, committed and sane. Hard not to side with them.”
Thirteen years ago—hard to believe!—when Occupy Oakland arose, I wanted to know more about these idealists who were objecting that 1% of the richest people in America were running our country. I first got to know them at their main gathering spot in Frank Ogawa Plaza and, a little later, when they had been rousted from the Plaza after a terrific confrontation with the police, they set up near Lake Merritt, where I live.
I was so impressed with them. They were young, idealistic, progressive (when that word actually meant something) and determined to make America better. I thought that Occupy Oakland, and the Occupy movement across the country, was the best political thing I’d seen in decades.
But then Occupy Oakland lost their way. Turning from peaceful protest, they staged destructive street demonstrations downtown. They refused to condemn violence, instead authorizing “a variety of means” which included arson, vandalism, mindless rioting. And so they lost me, as well as millions of other supporters. That’s how Occupy Oakland died. It wasn’t murdered; it committed suicide.
I resurrect the past because it holds important lessons for the present. The wonderment across America is how the Democratic Party has gone so astray. Long the party of the working class, that class has now turned against them and embraced MAGA in all its Trumpian glory. Historians will be analyzing this historic trend for decades. In my judgment, Occupy Oakland was its opening gambit—at least for me.
Occupy was morally right to shine attention on the inequities in America. Had they stuck to the principles of Jesus, Gandhi, Dr. King and the long history of peaceful protest in the world, they could have become a great and powerful force. That they did not—that instead they tolerated violence, if not actively encouraging it—brought about their demise. We face the same dilemma in America today, and indeed, throughout the world. The extremes on both sides of our political fence are grave dangers, as we can see at this time with the threat of rightwing MAGA types to turn to violence and unconstitutional practices to achieve their ends. Some years ago (I paraphrase), Trump said, “I have the military and the gun owners on my side” and now, of course, he’s threatening to use the U.S. military against his “enemies within.”
But we see this threat of violence also on the left, with the anti-police types who became violent in Seattle, Portland, Minneapolis and other cities, and indeed with the pro-Palestinian protesters who seem on the threshold of violence (and some have already resorted to it). More importantly—and this is the point I want to make--we see violence increasingly turned to by armed criminals, such as the gangs that have overrun Oakland.
Ironically today the threat of violence in Oakland comes, not from the organized far left as with Occupy, or from the organized MAGA militias who threaten civil war, but from criminal types whose political inclinations can’t be easily classified, to the extent they even have politics. What we’ve seen, in response to them, is an interesting new coalition of right and left, both of whom understand the threat these outcasts pose to our civilization. All sides stood up and recalled Thao and Price. The only interpretation we can come to is that all sides wish to crush the wave of criminality that has overtaken Oakland and so many other American communities. It’s funny how a homegrown phenomenon like crime has united us, left, center and right, but it has.
Have a wonderful, safe and healthy weekend!
Steve Heimoff