Occupy Oakland
Senior citizens from Oakland performed in front of nearly 100 people at Frank H.Ogawa Plaza on Wednesday for the city’s 8th annual Older Americans Month celebration. The site, which has become synonymous with the Occupy Oakland protests, was transformed into a concert hall where folk dancers and Baby Boomers took center stage, despite some disruptions from Occupy protesters.
The inspiration for a web project that contains interviews with 16 people “involved or impacted” by Occupy Oakland came from an exhibit at the Oakland Museum of California that documents the year 1968. “We thought, ‘What we would have done if we had a time machine and could go back to 1968 with a camera and a notebook?’” said Alex Abramovich, a journalist, artist and one of the co-creators of the project. “’What did we wish someone had done?’”
Thousands of people marched through the streets of Oakland on Tuesday as part of Occupy Oakland’s May Day protest. Oakland North reporters were on the scene throughout the day, from the morning protests at Child Protection Services, to the nighttime clashes between protesters and police.
After an afternoon of largely peaceful protests, confrontation erupted between police and protesters in downtown Oakland after nightfall.
More than 1,000 people congregated in San Antonio Park in East Oakland on 5:30 pm Tuesday, waiting to march back to Frank Ogawa Plaza in front of City Hall as Occupy Oakland May Day protests continued into the evening.
Early this morning at the start of day-long series of marches planned for May Day, a group of more than 100 protestors gathered to protest what they call the “patriarchal capitalistic system.” The group convened on the front steps of the Child Protective Services near Jack London Square as police barricaded the entrance.
Oakland Police officers and protesters faced off in the downtown street Tuesday afternoon, as police fired tear gas canisters and using flash bang grenades to disperse protesters from the intersection of 14th Street and Broadway at about 12:15 pm today.
Early Tuesday morning Occupy Oakland activists kicked off a May Day general strike and protest to challenge what they see as a destructive capitalist system. May Day, which is often called International Workers’ Day, has a long history as being a day for unions to protest on behalf of employees.
Nearly six months after the first clashes between police officers and Occupy Oakland protesters in the middle of downtown Oakland garnered national attention, the Oakland Police Department is changing its crowd control policies, chief Howard Jordan announced at a press conference on Monday afternoon.