Occupy Oakland May Day General Strike
On Tuesday, May 1, Occupy Oakland organized a series of events around the city, all as part of what they deemed a “General Strike” in commemoration of May Day, International Workers’ Day.
Ooooh, looks very exciting, doesn’t it?
Well, actually, no. Despite Occupy Oakland’s earnest attempts to stir things up and to attract attention, or at least pose (as in the picture above) for the cameras in such a way that it looks like their protest is newsworthy, in the end very little happened, by Oakland standards at least. Some windows were smashed, some businesses vandalized, a few people were arrested, but that was it — your typical Oakland protest, in other words.
But was there indeed a “general strike”? Did business as usual shut down? Nope. Not even close.
The central rendezvous point for the day’s “General Strike” events was Frank Ogawa Plaza in front of City Hall, which the Occupiers have renamed “Oscar Grant Plaza.” In the morning, there were several “decentralized srike actions” around the city, in which the various Occupy committees would act on specific ideological agendas. For example, the “anti-capitalist” group vandalized banks, the Chamber of Commerce, and other symbols of capitalism; the “anti-gentrification” group tried to force local businesses to obey Occupy’s demand that they shut down for the day’s “General Strike”; and so forth.
After convening at the plaza for a noontime break to rally the troops, in the afternoon everyone would then once again scatter throughout the city wreaking havoc, before meeting up at Fruitvale BART for a mid-afternoon “Decolonization March” back to the plaza, where everyone would rest up for the night’s vandalism.
It was all very confusing and scatterbrained, and there was simply no way one person could keep on top of it all. So (like most of the protesters) I made Oscar Grant Plaza my home base, and monitored the comings and goings from there.
Just as I had assumed, there were several minor street battles on Broadway near the plaza throughout the day. There was no purpose or goal to any of these confrontations; in fact, the act of confrontation was the goal. Everyone would mill around waiting for something to happen, and then some cops would show up, and the crowd would go into a frenzy, for no apparent reason. The mere presence of a policeman is all that it takes to send an Oakland Occupier into either blind rage or a life-affirming adrenaline rush.
This brief video of two random street confrontations (shot by a contributor who wishes to remain anonymous) illustrate the kind of flare-ups that went on all day around downtown Oakland:
In the first half of the video, a small group of police showed up, causing the crowd of Occupiers to swarm like a disturbed hornet’s nest; in the second half, everyone scatters after some anarchist set off a small incendiary device in the crowd.
Neither of these two specific incidents were significant in and of themselves; rather, the video is just illustrative of innumerable similar scenes that played out all day and all night across Oakland.
The Occupiers were all hoping that one of these flare-ups would escalate into a full-fledged riot, but (as far as I could tell at least) that never happened.
The whole day had a very Rashomon-quality to it; each person, depending on where he or she was standing, might have a completely different impression of what happened. For example: After hearing what sounded like a brewing fracas nearby, I rushed past this (then intact) news van to see the action; but the fracas quickly fizzled, and I heard a crunching sound behind me. Thirty seconds later, I returned and took this picture of the van’s smashed windshield, having missed the moment of destruction by just a few yards and a few seconds. The perpetrator was long gone (or perhaps was standing right next to me — who knew?). Yet someone else could very well have been randomly at “the right place at the right time” and witnessed the whole thing.
Similarly, several times throughout the day I was caught up in the middle of various meaningless crowd-swarms in which people would rush at the police, and then retreat, and swirl around and rush again; projectiles would fly overhead; explosions would go off nearby; people would scream and cry and call out for medics; and yet even though I was in the middle of it all, I couldn’t really tell what was happening. It was sheer chaos. Later I would see news videos of police getting hit by paint-bombs, or Occupiers getting arrested, and realize I had been just steps away from the focal point of the action, and yet had not been able to see through the morass of people to the white-hot center of confrontation.
Here, for example, an Occupier threw some kind of smoke bomb over my head, and it landed nearby and exploded. It happened so suddenly that I didn’t see who threw it, nor could I see exactly where it landed, nor at whom it was aimed. Perhaps if the bomb had landed next to me, this would have seemed like a significant incident; but since it landed 40 feet away, it felt like just another trivial and purposeless act of social vandalism barely meriting a mention.
Like I said: Rashomon.
Here’s generally how the day’s ebb and flow played out:
First, a squad of cops would line up on the street.
Next, a line of ludicrous poseur anarchists would face off against them, mainly for the purpose of trying to look cool for the cameras.
Then the cops would start to move forward, and everyone would scatter and scream in outrage.
Then some knucklehead would throw a smoke bomb or a paint bomb or a bottle or some kind of incendiary device at the cops, and everyone would rush around taking photos and screaming “Medic!” because someone got hit by friendly fire or got trampled by the crowd.
Then the cops would arrest someone and retreat, and everyone would wander away, leaving the street deserted just moments after it had been the scene of what felt like a brewing major battle.
This exact same series of steps happened over and over and over throughout the day, to the point where it felt repetitive.
So, what was the purpose of all of this? Nothing. Excitement for the teenage rioters. Moral outrage for the Occupy organizers. Overtime for the cops. Boarded-up windows for the businesses. And higher bills for the taxpayers.
After one of the meaningless battles, I took some photos of the impact points where the Occupiers’ homemade explosives landed.
This one hit a garbage can.
A paint-bomb that missed its mark, though you can see the “splatter shadow” of someone’s foot at the upper right.
There was perhaps less violence this time around because the Oakland police employed a new strategy today; instead of trying to control the whole crowd, they’d just zip in and quickly arrest individual malefactors, and then retreat. The Occupiers tried to stop the arrests, which they dubbed “snatches,” to little avail.
SFGate captured photos of a few arrests, as part of their summary of the day’s events, which they characterized as “a kaleidoscopic variety of protests ranging from skirmishes with police to dancing, chanting throngs of demonstrators peacefully waving signs.”
The “Bay Area Strike” twitter feed archive is a essentially a list of each individual clash, recorded in real-time.
But enough of these pointless skirmishes! Let’s retire back to Oscar Grant Plaza where a colorful parade of eccentric characters and eccentric messages provided entertainment for the whole family.
Some douchebag carried a homemade banner with Obama’s new campaign slogan “Forward,” while in the background a different douchebag waved an upside-down American flag. Nice juxtaposition!
One of the Occupy security team members behind the main stage wore a shirt that said “Defend Oakland” and pictured an AK-47.
He showed off a rather sharp-looking flip-knife which he carried around — just in case.
To the left of the stage, someone hung up a police-pig piñata, while yet another douchebag rang a Tibetan singing bowl, to get us all in a peaceful Buddhist hypnotic trance before taking out our rage on the piñata scapegoat.
The Fuck Police were on hand to put the kibosh on any hanky-panky. But not to worry…
Captain Anarchy is here to save the day!
It dawned on me during this rally why the current “Occupy” movement feels so grating and unpleasant compared to our idealized collective memory of the 1960s: back then, they had great music as the soundtrack to the revolution. But where is the K-Tel-worthy soundtrack for the Occupation? Where is our Bob Dylan, our Jefferson Airplane, our Country Joe and the Fish?
Voilà!:
I don’t know who this guy is, but he was actually pretty talented. I nominate the song that he sings here, “We Are the Ninety-Nine Percent” as the official theme song of the Occupy Wall Street movement.
I guarantee you will be humming it long after reading this report!
Behind the stage someone hung up a huge (but still managing to be barely legible) “Death to Capitalism” banner.
Speaking of which…I won’t harp on this, but overt anti-capitalism was the theme of the day, and all sorts of unsubtle messages and groups were on display. A small sampling:
Our friend Karl. (Disorientingly, someone held up a somewhat out-of-place Tea-Party-esque “We have taxation without representation” sign in the background.)
Our friend Ho Chi Minh (with Mr. Obama-motto “Forward” in background; the guy has a talent for juxtaposition!).
A bovine (in all senses of the word) fan of the FMLN, the Salvadoran communist group.
Someone hawking Red Flag, to “Mobilize the Masses for Communism.”
Needless to say, the Revolutionary Communist Party showed up, as they always do at every Occupy event. Do take note of their globe, which depicts either a polar ice cap extending as far south as Italy, or perhaps is it a hurricane centered on the North Pole? Are they implying that the Earth is headed for a new ice age?
And of course, Che.
But it wasn’t all communists. Mostly it was anarchists, or just generic anti-capitalists who haven’t given much thought as to what might conceivably replace capitalism.
This sign had me really scratching my head. If capitalism is the end of human infancy, and if we’re all supposed to grow up, does that mean he wants us all to embrace capitalism? I think he probably meant that “The end of capitalism would be the end of human infancy,” but let’s not clue him in that his sign means the opposite of what he thinks it means.
The range of extreme ideologies led to some hilarious vignettes. Here, for example, a guy from the ultra-libertarian anti-federal government conspiracy site InfoWars somehow convinced a guy with a “Single Payer Health Care” hat to sign a petition — even though one advocates the abolition of governmental authority and the other advocates the exact opposite, a totally centralized economy and power structure. WTF???
Nostalgia for the ’60s (in this case, the Paris uprising of May, 1968) underpinned the whole atmosphere.
And then there was nostalgia for the 1880s, when anarchism first exploded onto the political scene. Here, a woman carefully reads the history of the Haymarket Riot, which is glorified and glamorized in the Occupy version of history; a golden moment that we all seek to re-create.
Speaking of which…
Back on the main stage, a member of “Modesto Anarcho,” a notoriously militant and violent anarchist group, gave a rousing speech that was so extreme it even started making some of the girls in the audience a little nervous. The video of his speech is four minutes long, but well worth a listen. In it, he savagely attacks the Occupy movement as being too moderate, too passive, and too open to being co-opted by lily-livered liberals and totalitarian communists. In his mind, Occupy is already contaminated by acquiescence to the status quo, and needs to be discarded. We need to skip any intervening steps and rush straight to the end of civilization right now: smash it all, tear everything down, eliminate all existing rules, laws and customs of society and start again.
If this was the ’60s, then Occupy would be the SDS (Students for a Democratic Society), and this guy would be Bill Ayers, trying to transform it into a terrorist army like the Weather Underground. Amazing how history repeats and repeats and repeats.
When I get a spare moment, I’ll try to do a transcript; until then: watch the video, to see where our future lies.
And here’s the opposing viewpoint. Par-tay!!!
And to get that party started, we can have a “Free Pussy Riot.” I’m not sure I even want to visualize what that might be like. (Update: Commenters have noted that this shirt is likely a reference to the Russian anti-Putin punk band “Pussy Riot”.)
But one group must be excluded from all that partying: No fun for you, GOP!
How about this for a new fashion fad: Noose necklaces! You saw it here first.
More fashion trend-spotting from the rally: Anti-capitalist pirate…
…Slatternly nun…
…Black Panther gun moll…
…Euro-chic class warrior…
…Occu-buffoon…
…and anarchist mime.
After the revolution, this is what your medical care will look like. Out: Doctors. In: Druidic Occupy medics!
There was a grand total of one counter-protester: a guy from the paleo-conservative Constitution Party tried to bait the anarchists with a sign that said “Occupy Attacks Working People,” but strangely, everyone mostly just ignored him.
Even when some of the street battles raged around him, he only managed to attract a couple of opponents.
If you’re curious about what was written on the upside-down flag shown earlier: it said “Imperialism in Distress.” I was amazed that an Occupier actually knew that an upside-down flag was traditionally a distress signal, and not just a generic way to indicate one’s anti-Americanism, as protesters these days universally assume.
Unlike at previous Occupy Oakland outbursts, there was very little mention of race this time around. But a poster advertising an upcoming “Court of Black Justice” by a Black Nationalist group reminded everyone that the issue was not to be forgotten.
The Israel/Palestinian conflict also made precisely one appearance, in the form of a young woman riffing on the problem of the whole “occupy” definition (i.e. it’s good in Oakland but bad in Palestine).
So…every criminal is rich? Really. It’s strange how so many of them seem poor. What I think he meant was “All rich people are criminals,” but in his attempt to be clever, it came out sideways.
Yeah, stealing a cop’s badge will suddenly grant you the authority he once possessed! Yes, it’s that easy.
After a while, some cops lined up in front City Hall, and within a minute all the Occupiers rushed over there for a big cop-hating jamboree.
I just love this highway patrolman’s expression. “Why’d I have to get called for riot duty in Oakland again? Sigh….”
As we saw in the essay’s first photo above, all the little teenage pretend-anarchists with their cute homemade garbage-can riot shields lined up bravely against the big mean fascist pigs.
Then someone turned on a song called “Fuck the Police” and everyone went into a frenzy of obscenities.
“Fuck the po-lice fuck the po-lice fuck the po-lice!!!!”
Behind this wall of rage, a clique of nerdy pagan Occupiers performed a maypole dance.
What will we teach our kids? We will teach them education!
If even the teachers can’t grasp grammar, it’s no wonder our society is descending into illiteracy.
So, criminal street gangs are the vanguard of the revolution? I’ll note that down for later reference.
All in all, it’s just doo doo pants.
This is just Part 1 of my Occupy Oakland May Day coverage. To see the rest of the day’s shenanigans, click on through to Part 2:
Decolonize Oakland May Day Occupy Rally
Occupy that link!
As far as I can tell, OWS folks seem to be nerds, hippies late to the party, and bored people who are angry because they are bored.
And after all this time, I still don’t have the faintest clue what they actually want. Anyone who can afford smart-phones and the slavery fee that goes with them is in fact a slave, so I understand their concerns in this area at least.
Being a twenty-something these days is an expensive proposition since one cannot miss out on thrilling Tweets, texts, videos and the almost mindless music that reminds them they are alive. If their is nothing to talk about it is important to manufacture it. In this sense, they could use some lessons about the art of conversation learned in Third World polities where people move around like crazy but don’t actually do very much.
In their own minds, the protesters think that they are superheroes, but in reality are romantics and primitivists, consumers of hip-hop culture and masochistic with respect to the environment, an environment that they do not understand. I blame the schools for turning out these children who neither know themselves or the world into which they were born. I wrote about the deleterious hold of mass culture here: http://clarespark.com/2012/05/04/3957/. It is a short piece on Charles Murray’s latest book, Coming Apart, that also comments on populism on the so-called Left.
What a pathetic group !!
The dregs of society by choice
Liked spoiled children they want evrything for free and are NOT willing to work because their too proud
The pigs are the protesters themselves
Why does the press even bother with these loosers.
Go back in your parents basement, slip of your berkinstoks and your hemp jeans .
Learn to spell or learn to edit.
“I am not a slave” No, you’re a dork. Grow up.
Its not a “rather sharp-looking flip-knife”. It’s a 3 1/4″ Leatherman multi-tool. By the time the loser gets it out of the pouch and accomplishes approximately 6 movements to get the blade out, whoever it was who caused him to react has already beat his ass bloody. Again, grow up loser.
I’m just amazed at the stupidity on display. It’s sad. The only saving grace is that for 90% of them *if* they reach 30 they will have grown up enough to see how stupid they were.
He’s a dork *and* a slave. His mind has been enslaved, by his own choice.
Do you ever thank God that certain things exist in the World? I thank God for Zombie!
I’m pathetic, but I trolled Kos and saw a mopey “diary” about Mayday in Oakland. The Kid personally saw windows smashed and a hurled bottle that knocked an older female protester to the ground (woops!). He lamented that the anarchist “Black Bloc” was infiltrating Occupy and giving it a bad name. Infiltrators, eh?
I asked why the anarchists would infiltrate Occupy and not the Tea Party if they want to discredit grass-roots political movements. I got hit with 28 frowny-faces and banned.
You should definitely add that to your resume!
haha every once in a while i’ll make a new sock puppet for dkos and go visit so i can get kicked off again. it’s great fun. sometimes i go for the long con; they’re by and large pretty gullible people.
Heh
Incidentally, do the anarchists realize that the real Guy Fawkes was actually an arch-reactionary?
In a way, this was all bound to happen. When I substitute taught high-school, kids shunned competition, having been taught that being competitive was wrong.
The exceptions were those kids involved in sports. But largely, even competitiveness with “mind-drills” to get them to think were awkward at best.
If these kids had been taught to excel at something they were good at, not necessarily sports, they might have discovered that they have some value and needed to work at the things that showed promise.
Their self-esteem truly has slid off the edge and into the abyss and they were let down by the adults horrifically. Now they are responsible for themselves with a skewed worldview that is incorrect and unhealthy.
I hold them responsible for their idiocy but the adults who let them get this way as well.
They may be ugly but they wear fancy clothes! See this description of the standard OWS haberdashery and the carefully labelled anarchists fashion guide at SDA .
It is probably a new OWS group – “Anarchists for Capitalist Clothing” – or something.
OWS – RIP
These always make me LAUGH and make me glad I moved to Texas! Thanks again Zombie- you’re my hero.
Love it, Zombie! I always look forward to your photo journalism. Keep up the good work!
I see peach pickers. I see peach pickers everywhere. They don’t know they are peach pickers … yet. And boy are they going to be mad when they have to start picking.
This is a better link to the anarchist’s fashion guide at SDA.
Apparently you have to be well heeled to be an anarchist.
The Big sites have a stock photo of some “Black Bloc” thugs in which one of the thugs clearly has carefully groomed eyebrows and skillfully applied eye shadow. I guess you have to look FABULOUS to smash the state…
I noticed that the “Free P#$$y Riot”…person…was also carefully made up. I, ah, wonder if that person is committing false advertising though?
“Free Pussy Riot” refers to the Russian provocateur all-female group Pussy Riot who were arrested and jailed by the Putin regime recently.
See other comments where this was noted.
Well Nancy Pelosi loves them, as recently as the last day or two she has averred her devotion. Yup, the former Speaker of the House, tells you what goes on there and what Normal People are up against. And then there’s Obama, birds of feather & with brains to match.
– ought to cover instead the collapse of the Vallejo Ferry system.
One wonders if CBS-5 TV actually reported on their own van getting trashed, or was that memory-holed in accordance with editorial Narrative policy>
^This^
They’re a lot busier when they’re striking, than when they’re just “occupying”. Good to see them get some exercise.
“Forward” looks an awful lot like “Backward” these days. Ho Chi Minh, Che, Karl, Single-payer healthcare, 1968, Origins of Mayday?
I’d like to point out that general strikes are illegal. If you have an unauthorized absence from work to partake in a general strike, your employer can fire you for it.
Party pooper!
Party pooping! Newest craze! Everything’s coprocetic!
Or…doo-doo pants.
I don’t get the arm contortions of the helmeted person to our left of the noose-necklace girl. Is that someone else’s hand on his/her mouth??!
Wow, you’re right, that is totally bizarre. I just looked at the hi-res original of that photo, and it still makes no sense. Either:
- The person’s hand is on backwards;
- They wrapped their arm entirely around their body, as if boneless;
- There’s another person hidden behind them wearing the exact same color clothing; or
- It’s a Fortean photograph.
Here is what it looks like to me:
She is wearing a long sleeve shirt that is black, and a neon green scarf.
Her left elbow is resting on something.
Her chin is in the palm of her left hand, pushing the entire hand backwards until it is bent 90 degrees.
or something.
You know what — you are 100% correct.
One has to really squint to see it, but once the optical illusion is conquered, it suddenly makes sense.
It only looks like her arm is coming from the left side of the photo (her right side). It’s actually coming up from below.
What looks like her green sleeve is actually her scarf. What looks like a dark background area is actually her sleeve.
Mystery solved!
Thank you! My arm hurts because I was attempting to mimic the pose (so…yes; just for today, you can call me a “non-working mother”).
The fat douchebag in the “Defend Oakland” t-shirt? Yeah, he’d last about a second in a real fight.
See, he’d get an object lesson in why bulls — the biggest, meanest, angriest animals on the farm — have rings in their noses.
At first glance, I thought he was Muqtada Al Sadr (yes, I looked up the spelling) but no.
And those trash-can “shields”?
Wouldn’t stop a baton, let alone a rifle bullet.
The “Defend Oakland” security guy was not going to chase anyone down.
I wanted to thank Zombie for all the work he puts in to take these photos and videos. In order to gain an understanding of events taking place it’s vital to get a perspective right at the source.
Also, I wanted to let you know that the girl wearing the Free Pussy Riot shirt was most likely referring to the protest group in Russia called “Pussy Riot.” Some members were arrested after protesting at a Russian Orthodox church in February and now face 7 years in prison for it.
What the connection is between “Pussy Riot” and a protest event in Oakland is a question I doubt even the girl wearing the shirt could answer.
Ah, the mystery behind “Free Pussy Riot” finally explained! Thanks for the info. I was pretty mystified.
Chairman Obama says: Great Leap Forward to WTF.
I think that the “Free Pussy Riot” shirt might be a reference to the anti-Putin Russian punk band that got arrested after they occupied (it’s that word again) the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow and held a protest/concert. See: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/9215595/Pussy-Riot-held-in-prison-after-mocking-Vladimir-Putin-in-cathedral-punk-prayer.html
Yes, an earlier commenter just noted that. Thanks for filling in more details.
OK, I have now updated the “Pussy Riot” caption with the additional info. Thanks everyone!
I believe the Occupy Movement is actually an invention of the plastic garbage can lobby. Every can or lid stolen by the protesters must be replaced by the homeowner. Millions!
You don’t mean to tell me that these protesters did not bring their own trash can lids either from their own home or bought from a store like Home Depot or Lowes do you? If they did not then they are thieves and even though it it petty theft it is still stealing and so all photographed with a trash can lid should be arrested for petty theft and serve jail time, this will stop a few of them from further appearances at these events especially after having to sit in a jail cell with real criminals who might not like them too much!
In this fallen world, there must be evil; but God, in His mercy, has stuffed a huge chunk of it into the teeny little heads of morons where it can do much less harm.
Archive these pictures, Zombie. Some day it will be useful to show to kids in a classroom what idiots these OWS fools are.
I like the word pellucid.
I especially like it because it so accurately describes these photo essays by zombie.
Every time I see one (or two, in this case), I feel like my eyes have been opened after having previously lived in the dark. The images are a crystal clear window into reality that suddenly opened up out of nowhere.
It’s an incredible skill, being able to produce reports like this.
You THINK you know what’s going on, and then a new zombie report hits the Web and shazam! It’s like getting smacked with a Reality Stick.
I am grateful.
I love the fat blob with the tiny little knife. If he ever ran across someone who actually knew what they were about, he’d quickly end up with that funny little knife sticking out of his gluteal muscle.
Great work Zombie! I loved your captions.
Doug Santo
Pasadena, CA
I find it amusing that the “Defend Oakland” shirts picturing AK-47s show magazines that were disallowed under the assault weapons ban. Only Communists can enjoy high capacity mags?
As psychiatrists create syndromes, firemen carry out arson without questioning. This has been going on for as long as they have sensed competition and a possible cure for social problems.
Would a sincere “occupy” movement look any different? That depends on who takes the photographs. We may never know.
The usual great stuff Zombie, bravo.
My two favorites:
1) The “Pink Floyd” patch on the leg of the shaggy-haired garbage can shield holder guy. It’s the little things I find most fascinating. I could study these pictures for hours. In 100 years, if we’re all still here, anthropologists will have a field day with these photo essays.
2) the “Smell My Finger” sign. I might have to sport that one at the next Tea Party rally. On the other hand, nah, it really only fits the narrative of the insane 99% at these protests.
The Occupy movement is their social life.
“The mere presence of a policeman is all that it takes to send an Oakland Occupier into either blind rage or a life-affirming adrenaline rush.” rotfl!
…The Euro fashion fag lady is wearing a vintage Soviet pin worn by oktyabryata, a mandatory youth group for kids 7-10. It’s a red star with Lenin in the middle. I doubt she knows what it is, and if she does, she’s not thinking it through.
Why are some of their faces covered? They certainly cannot be proud of what they’re doing
Thanks for the behind-the-scenes info. I continue to be amazed at what we are witnessing. These people are the DUMBEST human beings I have ever seen. They are arrogant and so completely uninformed and uneducated; it truly boggles my mind. Just imagine how stupid someone has to be to walk around carrying a “Forward” banner. Where are these idiots coming from? Is there a factory somewhere producing these scum?
Are they using plastic garbage cans cut in half for shields? Really?
I’m glad I’m not drinking anything right now.
Great photos, Zombie, as usual. My favorites:
- Trevor “Che” Cunningham, with his AK-47 “Defend Oakland” tee-shirt.
- The “Smell My Finger” sign. Ooooh, that hurts.-
- The ‘medic’ kid who didn’t have an anonymous Guy Fawkes mask, so he wore a black smiling thespian mask.
- The chic babe with her silk scarf announcing class war (maybe she was a counterprotester?)
- The three rummies with plastic garbage can ‘shields’ with ‘Peace’ ‘Love’ and ‘Anarchy’ symbols, screaming hate at policemen.
- The ‘BANANARCHY’ sign. Not sure what that means, but I do like a smaller government and I do like bananas. Maybe I should join this movement.
Zombie: A little advice from an old street reporter. When covering these demonstrations, you need to do the following, as we did at the Pink Sheet/American Sentinel for almost 20 years.
1. Take good photos. You did. However, you did not identify any organizations attached to the signs/posters/banners, with one or two exceptions.
2. Identify the newspapers, by name, and what organization publishes them, and their ideological position in the communist/marxist panetheon. Show a collage photo of them all together. It is very effective in showing the readers how many communist/marxist organizations are participating in these demonstrations.
3. Identify, if possible, all the leaders who spoke, who claimed to be a spokesman for an organization, etc.
4. Stay focuses on the Black Bloc. They are the nazi stormtroopers of the marxist movement, i.e. the usefull idiots – lumpenproletariat cannonfodder (as WEB DuBois used to call them. Many of them are mentally ill and a clear & present danger to both individuals and society. The police obviously have no idea how to handle them, esp. in California.
5. Identify the leaders/spokesmen of the OCCUPY MOVEMENT, by whatever city or town you cover or get information on. The names of professional communist, marxist and “socialist” organizers are showing up in the newspapers and TV film clips. Some of them are to be found at the http://www.keywiki.org sites for “Occupy Wall Street”, Occupy Movement, and “Occupy name of city” .
Because Keywiki “bluelinks” a name throughout its’ database, you will find that many OWS Movement leaders show up in other marxist organizations throughout the county. This will show you who is really in charge of the planning/strategy, not the ragtag bunch of clowns you see on TV.
You are doing a good job, but let’s improve the “informational” content a bit.
Thanks for the suggestions, but you might be surprised to learn that I often intentionally fail to provide certain background info as you recommend. Why? For various reasons:
A. First of all, I don’t want to give the impression that my report is the “official” report of what happened on any particular day. I know full well that my experience was unique and that a zillion other things happened that I didn’t witness, and that someone else there — anyone else there — witnessed different events. Especially at May Day, where the action was spread across the city for 16 hours. This is why I referenced “Rashomon,” because I’m acknowledging that what you see here is just my personal observations, not the “official” version of May Day.
B. Part of the charm, as it were, of my reports is that they’re sort of an “ant’s eye view” of reality; I notice the little details that generally go unnoticed, and not the supposedly “important” things that I’m supposed to take note of. I assume (correctly, in most cases) that other MSM reporters are going to supply the nuts and bolts details summarizing the days events — X number of people were arrested, the protesters demanded “economic equality,” or whatever euphemism they’re using that day — and so forth. My job is to reveal to the reader what it was actually like to have been there. And that doesn’t always involve listening to the speakers on the stage (for example, when the Occupy organizers spoke, only at most 5% of the protesters were in the audience or paying any attention; the rest were milling around various parts of the plaza, eating, swarming up and down Broadway for no particular reason, etc.). If someone gets up and gives a boring speech, rather than dutifully reporting their name and what they said, I find it more revelatory to show that next to the stage there was a pig/police piñata and a guy ringing a TIbetan Buddhist singing bowl — a juxtapositional hypocrisy (violence/nonviolence) that tells us more about the movement than anything some random speaker may have said.
C. I don’t see it as my job to provide a dossier of information about specific individuals. Sometimes I may report on someone’s name, if it seems particularly relevant to the thrust of the report, but most of the time I will not — even if I know the person’s name. I think of myself less as a spy and more as an impressionist painter. For example, I know the name of the “Modesto Anarcho” speaker who gave the incendiary speech trying to transform the Occupy movement into a revolutionary terrorist group. But I purposely did not reveal it, because my goal was not to “get him in trouble”; the specifics of what that particular guy’s name may have been is not as important as the fact that that kind of rhetoric is commonplace at Occupy rallies in Oakland. By naming a specific individual, it almost lets the rest of the Occupy movement off the hook.
D. A moral issue that applies uniquely to me that does not apply to mainstream reporters: I work anonymously, so in general I respect the anonymity of those I report on, even though in many cases I strongly disapprove of their politics or their actions. I feel it is wrong to name someone, and they do not know who their “accuser” is. Only in those cases where: The person proudly announces their name and wants to be identified; or if they’re already a well-known public figure; or if their identity is an essential aspect of the story — generally only in those cases do I name specific individuals. I have no ironclad rule about this, but that’s my overall policy; as an anonymous reporter, I have some moral restrictions on my reportage.
E. I often will visually reveal in my photos the details/organizational names/URLs etc. of various organizations present at the protest, but purposely not comment on them. This allows readers to get intrigued and start to Google the names themselves. This too is intentional, as it makes my report somewhat interactive, and allows the reader to become a participant in the research.
F. As for focusing on the Black Bloc. That’s an interesting and crucial dilemma. On one hand, they’re visually compelling, and photogenic; but on the other hand, the rest of the Occupiers complain that the violent anarchists get all the press, and no one ever focuses on all the other “peaceful” people at the Occupation. So I take up their challenge and say — OK, you want me to show the world that not all of you are deranged violent maniacs? Fine. And then I proceed to show that even the non-Block Bloc “average” Occupier is either pathetic, insane, or despicable. By focusing on just the Black Bloc, I would once again be letting the rest of the protesters off the hook, and giving them some basis to whine that we’re focusing on the wrong people. Besides, I think the average news consumer already knows that there is a violent “vanguard” of the Occupy movement; I think it’s more useful and informational to show that even the rank-and-file are unhinged as well, just maybe not so physically violent.
G. I realize that many of my reports are a bit lacking in the “specific information” department, but I do not see it as my role to be the provider of the “name rank and serial number” about the day’s event, but rather to transport the readers themselves to the protest. In truth 95% of the participants there could not tell you the names of the leaders, nor how many arrests there were; and most participants did not witness most of the key incidents. For example, if I went to do a report on a baseball game between the Yankees and the Athletics, I would not focus on what happened on the diamond, but rather focus on funny things that happened in the crowd. The final score is of less interest to me than the facial expression of a guy in the bleachers trying to catch a foul ball. Besides, you can find the final score in the Sports Section the next day; but nowhere else would you ever be able to get a humanistic impression of what being at that game was like.
I could go on, but I think I’ve explained it clearly enough. My reportage is necessarily incomplete; in fact, everybody’s reportage — including and especially the MSM’s — is necessarily incomplete. The only difference is that they pretend they’re giving you “the real story,” whereas I concede that I can only give one person’s experience. I say “This is what I saw“; the MSM says “This is what happened.” I try to remove the hubris from reporting.
Note to Protestors, Plastic garbage can lids if struck by Molotov cocktails will melt and stick to your arm. 3rd degree burns for the occupation? or war wounds to show when your old and in a nursing facility.
“Yes the good old days when I was in the great Oakland riot.”
Spoiled children parading their discontent with authority. Clueless and shameless – quite a combination for denizens of one of the wealthiest, most powerful empires in human history.
Credibility is somewhat lost with glaring errors; i.e. “He showed off a rather sharp-looking flip-knife which he carried around …” The picture clearly displayed a multi-tool.
The left is of course frighteningly out of sync with any measure of reality; however, when a simple error as this one is made they scream out (unceasingly) that we misrepresent them as they march off with their sycophants in the MSM declaring their justification and our “wicked lies.”
Just something we should watch.
In the long history of internet errors, I think describing a flip-out “multi-tool” which has a sharp knife blade instead as a “flip-knife” ranks somewhere between “misplaced comma” and “photo extends past the margins of your blog template.” In other words: the “error,” if you even want to describe it as that, is so minor that it doesn’t affect credibility at all. If that’s the worst “error” in the entire photo essay, I’d say we’re doing pretty good.