I doubt it will be the “next …mass political protest against capitalist institutions” that at least one Labor Outreach Committee member anticipates. I think it will be one day of a traditional, boring “march and rally” with permits, yellow vests, police liasons, and traffic cones. Will that type of event have enough gravitational pull to shift the axis of Occupy Oakland? I sure hope we’re stronger than that.

On the whole, I think labor officials are looking for a way to put their stamp on a safe, predictable A-to-B march that carries the cachet of the Occupy Movement. (It also doesn’t hurt them to tap into a large group that is easy to “turn out” to a march – and, ironically, a lot easier to turn out than their own rank and file.) I hesitate to guess what their underlying motives are, but I suspect there are a range of them. For example, surely there is some embarrassment on the part of many labor officials that their slavish devotion to the election cycle has abjectly failed to inspire the vast majority of workers, let alone move the political establishment toward any substantive support for unions.

But despite whatever suspicions we may have about the motives of officials, it is more important to keep an eye on how these overtures advance the institutional imperative of labor councils, which function as little more than fund-raising and GOTV machines for the Democratic Party – as well as that of their affiliated unions, who are focused on their own rather narrow sectorial interests. I suspect that “50%” of the speakers at the rally after the march will be connected to the Democrats, and will give the same ole “we’re here for you!” speeches they always give. And people may be reminded once again how uninspired that whole model is, and remember why we all started occupying in the first place.

I am, I admit, morbidly fascinated by this spectacle. Do the people who are working with the Labor Council think that “labor” will provide troops for the inevitable show-down with the police? Do they imagine the Labor Council will construct a Maginot line of burly, hard-hatted construction workers? I predict that at the first sign of physical confrontation with the police, the Labor Council and its affiliate unions will be, as Johnny Cash sang, “gone as a wild goose in winter.” Or are they more realistically aware that the “defense” the labor council will offer will be in the form of a deal with the elected officials they door-knocked for in the last election – a deal that includes no end of horrors like permits, restricted hours, and other concessions designed to cut Occupy Oakland off at the knees and restore order and predictability in the relationship between the Labor Council and City Hall? Seriously, friends, “understand your man!”

(I am convinced, however, that when it does come time to physically defend the camp again, it will be defended by workers – but most of them will not belong to unions, and will be there to defend the camp on their own volition and not because some professional organizer convinced them to be there. In other words: just like last time.)

To those who think that this provides a kind of golden opportunity to recruit a mass of rank-and-filers into a battle royale against their own bureaucratic leadership, ushering in a new era of revolutionary unionism, I can only say, “good luck.” The thinking here seems to be that we rely on the labor council and the staff of its affiliated unions to unwittingly turn out thousands of rank-and-filers to one place where, through clever and subversive use of the labor outreach committee’s negotiated 50% control over the speakers’ list at the rally, we can inspire the workers to cast off their purple, red, blue, or green union t-shirts and march forth unencumbered. Shit, it’ll be like shooting fish in a barrel!

I just hope that when that moment arrives, we aren’t looking around thinking, “Hey, why is this place so dark and wet? And what’s Josie Camacho doing with that rifle?”

On my way to the Millbrae BART station I contacted several friends. I convinced two of them to come to Oakland. One was a student who cut her classes for the day even though she had important assignments due and meetings scheduled. The other was a recently-laid-off former co-worker. (My former co-worker was nervous. I received a text from her during the first march of the day, before she had left her house: “Is it too crazy there?” My reply, “No – just crazy beautiful!” was enough to convince her after all, and we ended up spending a few hours together.)

UC Berkeley Graduate Students

Coming up the escalator to Oscar Grant Plaza from the 12th Street BART station I heard amplified speeches – I had heard there would be a flatbed trailer, and I was apprehensive that November 2 would devolve into the typical, deathly boring rally form with which we have all had far too many years’ experience. And indeed, the intersection of 14th and Broadway had that feel at 9:30 am: a few hundred people either facing or ignoring a stage of blabbering activists. But soon enough, the streets filled with people coming from all directions. Before I knew it there were thousands of us and the sound stage became practically irrelevant.

The first march pushed off and circled a few blocks. There were no police visible and we filled the entire street. I had the first burst of the feeling of elation, freedom, and solidarity that would stay with me all day. I walked near the Brass Liberation Orchestra, which stopped on Clay Street, where a circle of cheering and dancing people formed. We sang “Occupy! Shut it down! Oakland is the Peoples’ Town!” and “This system is about to die! Hella hella occupy!” These music and dance circles formed many times throughout the day, and I could not help but reflect on the accounts I have heard of similar behavior breaking out during the 1946 Oakland General Strike.

The Brass Liberation Orchestra at the port

I noticed that many downtown businesses were pre-emptively shuttered for the day. I know that there were a few triumphant instances of flying pickets shutting banks and other businesses down – but somehow I missed being present at the moments these things happened.

The second march of the day was the 2 PM “Anti-capitalist march,” that wound its way through downtown and past a few banks, including Chase and Bank of America (both of which sported fresh facelifts, complete with shattered windows, graffiti, and paint splatters.) Word rippled through the crowd that workers at Whole Foods – the “yuppie sweatshop,” as a friend called it – needed support to shut down the store by Lake Merritt, and the march moved toward the store.
As Whole Foods came into view we could see “STRIKE” spray-painted across the plate glass windows. It looked like at least one window had been broken. I lingered here for a while with a few friends. Two passers-by voiced their displeasure with the vandalism, and seemed to blame us for either doing it or tacitly condoning it. Neither person was very articulate about their positions but they seemed to echo the typical peace-bully talking points, which I find exasperating and demoralizing, so we split to catch up with the march.

Just Win, Baby!

(Much later in the evening, after I had finally left the port, there was a now-well-known incident involving a building takeover, barricades, fire, stuff getting thrown, and cops hurting people. I was not surprised to hear about this. All day long the cops hadn’t dared to make themselves visible. They had overplayed their hand the week before and had for all intents and purposes been beaten back.  I have heard varying reports of what precipitated the attack by the police, and I originally believed that protesters were smashing windows, but now I am not sure of that and retract any of my earlier statements that were based on that assumption.

But it is true that some windows were smashed during the day. I have heard it pointed out that there are always incidents of vandalism, breaking stuff, and fights in the wake of big baseball and football games, too, but nobody ends up getting “alienated” from sports, and neither do I see headlines like “Giants fans hopelessly divided – baseball fandom disintegrates!” so I have trouble giving these relatively minor outbreaks much weight. At least, in contrast to the hooliganism associated with a minority of sports fans, there’s some thought put into the significance of the targets as they relate to existing social relations.

The more important questions for me have to do with whether or not we maintain solidarity. I believe it is important to refrain from denouncing other protesters. Intelligent debates can and will be had about how to win, and the sooner we recognize that there will always be some of us who are going to smash shit up, whether we like it or not, the sooner we can get back to the task at hand.

On Wednesday, we all fell deeply in love with us; we became linked in the euphoria of solidarity. The “1%” and its armed protective forces are determined and powerful: we have to be prepared to defend each other, even when we do stupid shit. The press attention will be horrendous, but gazing into the fun-house mirror of the corporate media will distort our self-perception and turn us into a cartoon of ourselves; I try to avoid it, just as I avoid reading fashion magazines.

Okay, enough of all that.)

The Anti-Capitalist March returned to 14th and Broadway and a friend and I found a place to sit and rest. By this time the Alameda Labor Council had started their grill but we discovered the line was hundreds-long and we abandoned the idea of getting free food. Plans to find an open restaurant for food and bathrooms were dropped when the march to the port began; we had found some other friends and did not want to lose them again. Off we marched up 14th Street toward west Oakland.

A quick pit-stop into a taqueria for a bathroom and maybe some food was a bust – too long a line – but the workers there offered free bottles of ice-cold water. We took some and rejoined the march. From a freeway overpass we heard cars below honking wildly in support and saw traffic slow to a crawl as drivers took in the sight of thousands of people heading toward the port. Families watched from their driveways and cheered us on as we passed. Chants floated in the air: “Let’s go, Oakland! Let’s go!” The neighborhood smiled on the march and residents held up hand-made signs.

The flat geography of downtown and west Oakland made it virtually impossible to get a bead on the size of the march from ground level, but I got my first idea of its size as we rounded the corner of 7th and Adeline. Two blocks ahead I could see the rise of the overpass above the freight tracks. It was packed with people marching. Tractor cabs leaving the port were stranded in the sea of people, unable to move, and as we made our way across the overpass I saw many of the drivers grinning in awe, honking in support and laughing with protesters who hopped up onto the cab ladders to chat.

The view from Adeline

At the other end of the overpass the ground leveled out again along Middle Harbor Road. People climbed up on top of containers in triumph as we continued on to block all the gates. Each gate drew crowds of many hundreds, who stayed to secure the closure while others continued on to the rest of the gates.

Soon I was marching with four other women and we all had to pee. This stretch of road – train tracks on one side, cyclone fences and sheer walls on the other, and thousands of people all around – proved an inhospitable environment for the task. Eventually we found a low concrete barricade and created a “human shield” for one another. Some guy stopped to pee in solidarity nearby. I don’t think he quite got it that it’s not really the same thing for men to pee in public, but it was a sweet and funny gesture all the same. When we marched on we occasionally overheard other women talking about needing to pee and offered our services as the “Ad-Hoc Girls’ Bathroom Brigade.”

BART trains heading for San Francisco thundered overhead as we walked west. We heard rumors that Occupy San Francisco had shut down the Bay Bridge, but as darkness fell I had seen headlights moving on the bridge so I don’t think that really happened. It was a nice thought, though.

Over time we made our way to 7th and Maritime, where a crowd of hundreds was holding down the westernmost port entrances. It was dark now, and it had been announced that shift-change at the port had been moved from 7 to 8, then from 8 to 9. I still don’t know if any of that was true. We were all waiting for an announcement that the arbitrator had ruled that conditions for workers were “dangerous” and that the incoming shift would be sent home.

When it was clear that we had succeeded in shutting down the port for the night, even if the official word was still about 20 minutes from arriving, I began the trek to the West Oakland BART station with a couple of friends.

When the tracks up on the elevated platform were free of trains we called “mic check!” across the tracks and we spoke to each other through the peoples’ mic and we cheered our victory. A woman read a message from Scott Olsen, written that evening from his hospital bed – his first public communication since his injury. Trains arrived and we boarded, tired but sleepless like young people in love.