Posts Tagged ‘Occupy Oakland’

Despite warnings from police and Mayor Jean Quan against setting up any more campsites in Oakland, Occupy Oakland protesters staged a peaceful march Saturday and then broke into a fenced downtown lot to begin staking more tents. Some neighbors pleaded with them, in vain, not to camp there.

At the Occupy Oakland encampment at Snow Park near Lake Merritt, cooking equipment that used to serve hot meals in the middle of the camp is gone, and the library and clothes donation area are a shell of what they once were–but, since the evacuation of the Frank Ogawa Plaza Occupy camp this Monday, the number of tents at Snow Park has been growing.

On Tuesday afternoon, about 400 people marched to the UC Berkeley campus from Frank Ogawa Plaza, which was the home of the Occupy Oakland camp from its inception October 10 until November 14, when the camp was shut down by police in an early morning raid.

With the site of what was once a camp teeming with people now not much more than a mud patch, more than 1,000 Occupy Oakland supporters marched down 14th Street and back into Frank Ogawa Plaza on Monday evening. On the minds of many: What happens next? The gathering was the first for Occupy Oakland…

Oakland city officials plan to reopen Frank Ogawa Plaza to the public this afternoon, Howard Jordan, the interim chief of police, said at a press conference in downtown Oakland Monday afternoon.

Police officers raided the Occupy Oakland encampment at Frank Ogawa Plaza early Monday morning, evicting scores of protesters, arresting 32 people and closing off the plaza. There were no injuries, according to police.

An urgent-sounding evacuate-now order from the city Saturday had Occupy Oakland protesters collecting their belongings and readying for a raid — but by midnight, after a heated argument between campers and a small faction of black-clad confrontationalists, the camp was still intact and settling for the night.

The attorneys representing the two people who were hit by a car during the Occupy Oakland strike march on November 2 held a press conference Friday at the Waterfront Hotel downtown, calling for the arrest of the man and woman who were in the vehicle during the accident. The attorneys also criticized the Oakland Police Department for not making any arrests and for the way officers have been conducting the investigation.

As the antiwar advocacy groups Veterans for Peace and Iraq Veterans Against the War held a joint press conference Friday afternoon in front of City Hall, near the center of the Occupy Oakland encampment in Frank Ogawa Plaza, Oakland Police arrived at the plaza and began handing out “Notice of Violations” fliers. The fliers stated that all belongings and infrastructure must be removed from the plaza “immediately.” They warned, “Your continued use of the Plaza for overnight lodging will subject you to arrest.”

On Occupy Oakland’s one-month anniversary, a man was shot and killed on the outskirts of the encampment Thursday afternoon. Witnesses at the scene said the victim was shot at around 5 pm, following an altercation with a small group of African American men that erupted near the portable toilets on the northeast side of the encampment.

Oakland Mayor Jean Quan released a statement on Thursday night regarding the shooting of a young man near the Occupy Oakland encampment earlier that evening. The statement is reprinted here in its entirety:

Amid rumors circulating of a police raid later that night, several hundred people packed the steps and floor of Frank Ogawa Plaza on Wednesday evening for an Occupy Oakland General Assembly meeting, at which protesters voted to march in solidarity with Egyptian activists this Saturday and considered whether to endorse or disavow violent “black bloc” tactics.