This comes from one of the insurrectionists who
participated in last Saturday's failed attempt to expropriate the
Kaiser Convention Center in Oakland (which they had planned to take
over and use as the group's headquarters) The letter can be found at
the Anarchist
News site. It is interesting, if not disturbing, to see what
goes on in the mind of one of the demonstrators as he recounts the
events of that day with joy and elation. I am able to publish the
entire account, because the site specifically says that the material
is “anti-copyrighted.” Here is what this person had to say:
“Let us start by apologizing; that our words may be
incoherent, our thoughts scattered and our tone overly emotional.
Forgive us, because the ringing in our ear continues to interrupt our
thinking, because our eyes are bleary and we're weighed upon by the
anxiety and trauma of our injuries and the imprisonment of the ones
we love. As most of you are well-aware: after a full day and night of
street battles in Oakland, we were defeated in our efforts to occupy
a large building for the purposes of establishing an social center.
We're writing, in part, to correct the inaccuracies and
mystifications spewed by the scum Media. But more so as to convey the
intensity and the urgency of the situation in Oakland to comrades
abroad. To an extent, this is an impossible task. Video footage and
mere words must inevitably fail at conveying the ineffable collective
experiences of the past twenty-four hours. But as always, here goes.
Yesterday was one of the most intense days of our lives.
We say this without hyperbole or bravado. The terror in the streets
of Miami or St. Paul, the power in the streets of Pittsburgh or
Oakland's autumn; yesterday's affect met or superseded each of these.
The events of yesterday confronted us as a series of intensely
beautiful and yet terrible moments.
Beautiful words are delivered at Oscar Grant Plaza,
urging us to cultivate our hatred for capitalism. Hundreds leave the
plaza and quickly become thousands. The police attempt to seize the
sound truck, but it is rescued by the swarming crowd. We turn towards
our destination and are blocked. We turn another way and are blocked
once more. We flood through the Laney campus and emerge to find that
we've been headed off again. We make the next logical move and
somehow the police don't anticipate it. We're closer to the building,
now surrounded by fences and armed swine. We tear at the fences,
downing them in some spots. The police begin their first barrage of
gas and smoke. The initial fright passes. Calmly, we approach from
another angle.
The pigs set their line on Oak. To our left, the museum;
to our right, an apartment complex. Shields and reinforced barricades
to the front; we push forwards. They launch flash bangs and bean bags
and gas. We respond with rocks and flares and bottles. The shields
move forward. Another volley from the swine. The shields deflect most
of the projectiles. We crouch, wait, then push forward all together.
They come at us again and again. We hurl their sh*t, our sh*t, and
whatever we can find back at them. Some of us are hit by rubber
bullets, others are burned by flashbang grenades. We see cops fall
under the weight of perfectly-arced stones For what feels like an
eternity, we exchange throws and shield one another. Nothing has felt
like this before. Lovely souls in the apartment building hand
pitchers of waters from their windows to cleanse our eyes. We'll take
a moment here to express our gratitude for the unprecedented bravery
and finesse with which the shield-carrying strangers carried out
their task. We retreat to the plaza, carrying and being carried by
one another.
We re-group, scheme, and a thousand deep, set out an
hour later. Failing to get into our second option, we march onwards
towards a third. The police spring their trap: attempting to kettle
us in the park alongside the 19th and Broadway lot that we'd
previously occupied. Terror sets in; they've reinforced each of their
lines. They start gassing again. More projectiles, our push is
repelled. The intelligence of the crowd advances quickly. Tendrils of
the crowd go after the fences. In an inversion of the moment where we
first occupied this lot, the fences are downed to provide an escape
route. We won't try to explain the joy of a thousand wild-ones
running full speed across the lot, downing the second line of fencing
and spilling out into the freedom of the street. More of the cat and
mouse. In front of the YMCA, they spring another kettle. This time
they're deeper and we have no flimsy fencing to push through. Their
lines are deep. A few dozen act quickly to climb a nearby gate,
jumping dangerously to the hard pavement below. Past the gate, the
cluster of escapees find a row of several unguarded OPD vans: you can
imagine what happened next. A complicit YMCA employee throws opens
the door. Countless escape into the building and out the exits. The
police become aware of both escape routes and begin attacking and
trampling those who try but fail to get out. Those remaining in the
kettle are further brutalized and resign to their arrest.
A few hundred keep going. Vengeance time. People break
into city hall. Everything that can be trashed is trashed. Files
thrown everywhere, computers get it too, windows smashed out. The
american flags are brought outside and ceremoniously set to fire. A
march to the jail, lots of graffiti, a news van gets wrecked, jail
gates damaged. The pigs respond with fury. Wantonly beating, pushing,
shooting whomever crosses their path. Many who escaped earlier
kettles are had by snatch squads. Downtown reveals itself to be a
f***ing war zone. Those who are still flee to empty houses and loving
arms."
---
"A war-machine must intrinsically be also a machine of
care. As we write, hundreds of our comrades remain behind bars.
Countless others are wounded and traumatized. We've spent the last
night literally stitching one another together and assuring each
other that things will be okay. We still can't find a lot of people
in the system, rumors abound, some have been released, others held on
serious charges and have bail set. This care-machine is as much of
what we name the Oakland Commune as the encampment or the street
fighting. We still can't count the comrades we can't find on all our
hands combined.
We move through the sunny morning and the illusion of
social peace has descended back upon Oakland. And yet everywhere is
the evidence of what transpired. City workers struggle to fix their
pathetic fences. Boards are affixed to the windows of city hall and
to nearby banks (some to hide damage, others simply to hide behind).
Power washer try to clear away the charred remains of the stupid
flag. One literally cannot look anywhere along broadway without
seeing graffiti defaming the police or hyping our teams (anarchy,
nortes, the commune, even juggalos). A discerning eye can still find
the remnants of teargas canisters and flashbang residue. At the
coffee shops and delis, friends and acquaintances find one another
and share updates about who has been hurt and who has been had. Our
wounds already begin to heal into what will eventually be scars or
ridiculous disfigurements. We hope our lovers will forgive such
ugliness, or can come to look at them as little instances of unique
beauty. As our adrenaline fades and we each find moments of solitude,
we are each hit by the gravity of the situation.
Having failed to take a building, our search continues.
We continue to find the perfect combination of trust, planning,
intensity and action that can make our struggle into a permanent
presence. The commune has and will continue to slip out of time,
interrupting the deadliness and horror of the day to day function of
society. Threads of the commune continue uninterrupted as the
relationships and affinity build over the past months. An
insurrectionary process is the one that emboldens these relationships
and multiplies the frequency with which the commune emerges to
interrupt the empty forward-thrust of capitalist history. To push
this process forward, our task is to continue the ceaseless
experimentation and imagination which could illuminate different
strategies and pathways beyond the current limits of the struggle.
Sometimes to forget, sometimes to remember."
---
"We'll conclude with a plea to our friends throughout the
country and across borders. You must absolutely not view the events
here as a sequence that is separate from your own life. Between the
beautiful and spectacular moments in the Bay, you'll discover the
same alienation and exploitation that characterizes your own
situation. Please do not consume the images from the Bay as you would
the images of overseas rioting or as a netflix subscription. Our hell
is yours, and so too is our struggle.
And so please... if you love us as we believe you do,
prove it. We wish so desperately that you were with us in body, but
we know most of you cannot be. Spread the commune to your own
locales. Ten cities have already announced their intentions to hold
solidarity demonstrations tonight. Join them, call for your own. If
you aren't plugged into enough of a social force to do so, then find
your own ways of demonstrating. With your friends or even alone:
smash, attack, expropriate, blockade occupy. Do anything in your
power to spread the prevalence and the perversity of our
interruption.
for a prolonged conflict; for a permanent presence; for
the commune;
some friends in Oakland.”
I don't know how this all strikes you, but it doesn't
sit at all well with me. When the Occupy movement first started, I
had high hopes for it. Now, I think my hopes have been dashed.
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