Police
As protesters trickled out of the Port of Oakland Wednesday night, after Occupy Oakland demonstrations shut down business at the port, scores filed into a retrofitted former AC Transit bus for free rides back to the encampments in downtown Oakland.
The Oakland City Administrator’s office issued a release on Friday containing estimated city costs related to the Occupy Oakland protests.
The Occupy Wall Street movement began in September in New York City, and soon protesters were setting up camps in cities across the country. The Occupy Oakland camp was set up on the afternoon of October 10 and occupied the plaza in front of Oakland’s city hall for two weeks. On October 25, campers were evicted and since that morning, there have been a series of actions from both city officials and protesters. Click through the timeline to see the sequence of major events surrounding the Occupy Oakland movement.
Hundreds of people attended the Thursday night Occupy Oakland City Council meeting, which lasted over five hours. The meeting was held to discuss recent events pertaining to Occupy Oakland, most notably the vandalism and property damage that occurred late Wednesday night when protesters clashed in the street with police officers. Almost 150 people signed up to speak before the council.
Wednesday’s Occupy Oakland general strike began at 9 am and continued until early the next morning. According to the City Administrator’s Office, the demonstrations were “primarily peaceful protests with some isolated incidents of violence and vandalism.”
Around midnight on Wednesday, confrontation flared between Occupy Oakland protesters and police officers near Telegraph, Broadway and 17th streets. A generally peaceful day of protests in which as many as 10,000 participated in what organizers called a “general strike” ended with clouds of tear gas, burning barricades and loud banging sounds.
A day during which thousands of people attended protests and marched through Oakland wound up this evening with as many as 10,000 protesters marching across the Highway 880 ramp and shutting down the Port of Oakland.
In front of downtown Oakland banks, some protesters staged peaceful and even comic demonstrations, while others smashed windows, blocked access to ATMs, and spray-painted graffitti.