On a street in Oakland, Calif., a tiny home sits on wheels. The artist Gregory Kloehn, using recycled materials picked up from the streets, made several such homes and gave them to the homeless in the industrial neighborhood near the Port of Oakland.
OAKLAND, Calif. — This summer, the median rent for a one-bedroom in San Francisco’s cityscape of peaked Victorians soared higher than Manhattan’s, sent skyward by a housing shortage fueled in part by the arrival of droves of newcomers here to mine tech gold.
And so, as the story of such cities goes, the priced-out move outward — in New York City, to Brooklyn and, increasingly, to Queens. For San Franciscans, the rent refuge is here in Oakland, where the rates are increasing as well — so much so that young professionals are living in repurposed shipping containers while the homeless are lugging around coffinlike sleeping boxes on wheels. Continue reading →
International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 10 in the Bay area will use its monthly stop-work meeting on Friday to idle the ports of Oakland and San Francisco to protest recent police killings of African Americans. The executive board and membership of Local 10 aligned its “Union Action to Stop Police Killings of Black and Brown People” with International Workers’ Day, which is celebrated on May 1 in many countries.
May Day in Oakland: ILWU March and Rally Against Police Terror!
STATEMENT TO THE BAY AREA LABOR MOVEMENT
A CALL TO ACTION!
April 22, 2015
The membership of International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) Local 10 has voted at its meeting on April 16, 2015 to call for a stopwork meeting on May 1st. It is fitting that on May Day, International Workers Day, Bay Area ports will be shut down to protest the racist police killing of mainly black and brown people. This is the first U.S. union to take such action. Local 10 took similar action on May Day 2008 to close Pacific Coast ports stopping all work to demand an end to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the first such anti-war union action in American labor history.
ILWU Local 10 dock workers march in San Francisco on May Day 2008 in the first-ever strike action by U.S. workers against U.S. imperialist war. The work stoppage shut down all 29 West Coast ports demanding an end to the war and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as support for immigrant rights.
Oakland has made history once again with another BDS victory for Palestine against the Israeli Zim shipping line. This latest round of organizing has been the most momentous and historic. Members of ILWU Local 10 informed Block the Boat organizers that the Zim Beijing which was headed to the Port of Oakland, has been re-routed to Russia to avoid disruptions at the SSA terminal. For the first time ever, an Israeli ship has been completely turned away before reaching its port of destination due to sustained overwhelming community organizing.
The damage to Israel’s credibility can’t be exaggerated — the Zim line, though privately owned, is an Israeli “security asset.” Israel exerts control over the corporation through a “golden share” which it uses to prevent the sale of the company into foreign hands. The Zim line is mandated to be part of Israel’s critical supply chain during protracted military conflicts. The brand and economic impact on Zim has yet to be calculated, but is surely devastating. Goods have been rerouted, and undelivered for months. ILWU workers have honored our pickets and sided with the community against US complicity in Israeli apartheid. Zim has been disrupted and confronted by anti-Zionist protests in Seattle, Tacoma, Los Angeles, Vancouver, New Orleans, New York and Tampa. Ports all over North America are making it clear that Israel can no longer conduct business as usual because Zionism is simply not welcome on our coasts.
[In this news report, the San Francisco Chronicle combines boastful techie claims with assertions that this surveillance is motivated by concerns for “public safety,” not to enable political repression and control. — Frontlines ed.]
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Oakland police’s war room the new normal
Matthai Kuruvila, San Francisco Chronicle, Sunday, October 28, 2012
The massive undertaking by Oakland officials and police to prepare for protests would be an exceptional challenge for most Bay Area cities. In Oakland, it’s become the new normal.
It involves months of planning, orchestrating hundreds of police and other public workers, and has cost millions of taxpayer dollars.
The Occupy Oakland protesters who took to the streets last week were largely peaceful. But the city had prepared for the worst: They surrounded the protesters with more than a hundred officers on bicycles, motorcycles, all-terrain vehicles, cars, vans and foot.
Public safety personnel work in the situation room of the Emergency Operations Center ahead of an Occupy march. Photo: Mathew Sumner, Special To The Chronicle / SF
Meanwhile, inside a downtown building, dozens of city, county, regional and state workers gathered at the city’s Emergency Operations Center to provide support and coordinate the troops on the streets.
Three officers sat at computers monitoring Twitter and other social media for clues on protester plans. Other officers coordinated the taking of internal affairs complaints, and some oversaw the gathering of street intelligence. Five televisions and several other screens showed live streaming video from locations around the city. Continue reading →
[The San Francisco Chronicle performs its duty as bourgeois media, blaming the internet for the outrage over police killings. The epidemic of such killings of, especially, Black and Brown youth, as detailed in the recent Malcolm X Grassroots Movement report detailing that such killings take place every 26 hours, is not described by the Chronicle as alarming or disturbing. Instead, they decry the attention given by the internet. — Frontlines ed.]
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Demian Bulwa, San Francisco Chronicle, Sunday, October 14, 2012
[Jimmy Blueford, whose cousin Alan Blueford was shot by police, marches in Oakland. Photo: Sarah Rice, Special To The Chronicle / SF]
From San Jose to Oakland to Vallejo, fatal police shootings often follow a familiar script.
An officer makes a split-second decision to kill, later explaining that he had no choice. His department struggles to communicate with the dead person’s family and the public. Anger spills into the streets, with activists demanding that authorities condemn the shooting – not just as a mistake but as murder. And an investigation clears the officer of any wrongdoing.
This could describe the shooting of 18-year-old Alan Blueford in Oakland in May or many other recent Bay Area cases.
While there is little evidence that police shootings are on the rise, they have become more politically divisive and combustible, people on all sides say, in part because of the spread of video cameras and the immediacy of online communication. Continue reading →
Every member of the large and close knit family of Alan Dwayne Blueford who could spoke truth to power at the Oakland City Council meeting on May 15 in support of justice for their slain loved one, who was gunned down on May 6 by one of the OPD’s paid killers behind the badge, Miguel Masso. – Photo: Malaika Kambon
After seeking justice from the City of Oakland for months, the family of Alan Blueford finally caught the attention of city leaders on September 18 when their protest brought the City Council to a halt.
Alan, an African-American high school student, was murdered on May 6 by Officer Miguel Masso, who drove up on the young man who had committed no crime, chased him for five blocks and shot him dead outside a Cinco de Mayo party. Masso initially claimed that Alan shot him, a story spread by the local media, although when it was revealed that Masso actually shot himself this lie turned into the claim that Alan pointed a gun at the officer. The Bluefords refute even this claim, considering Masso’s earlier lie.
Since May, the Bluefords have demanded that Masso be fired and prosecuted and that stop-and-frisk and racial profiling practices be ended among Oakland police. The elected leadership of Oakland have largely ignored these requests outside of a handful of closed door meetings where the Bluefords were promised a timely investigation and no slandering of Alan in the press. Neither promise was kept.
The Bluefords arrived at the September 18 City Council meeting with over 100 supporters to speak during open comments, recounting not only their heartbreak but also the endless unkept promises from the city and OPD. “I just want to know what happened to my son,” Adam Blueford, Alan’s father, both begged and demanded of the Council.
The Councilmembers, typically masters of evasion who are usually absorbed in their cell phones and magazines during public comments, suddenly all sat upright at full attention. Once it was clear the Bluefords were not going to walk away quietly without answers, City Administrator Deanna Santana went scurrying to find something to offer the Bluefords. Finally, it was announced that OPD Chief Howard Jordan was on his way to City Hall with the police report in hand – after refusing to release it for months.
This promise also evaporated within the hour after the Bluefords refused yet another closed-door meeting with Jordan, insisting he address the public in order to be held accountable. With no sign of either Jordan or the report, the Council attempted to resume with its first order of business – passing a resolution declaring Oakland an International City of Peace. This absurd resolution, from a city internationally known for the murder of Oscar Grant and the repression of Occupy Oakland, led to chants of “No Justice No Peace” and “Howard is a coward!” from both the Bluefords and the audience, many of whom were beaten and tear-gassed during those two movements. Continue reading →
After murdering high school senior Alan Blueford, Oakland police have been trying to do damage control. Initially they claimed Blueford was involved in a shoot out and shot the officer.. We now know the officer shot himself after killing Blueford.. The officer’s name was not released to the public due to California law. The police held a townhall meeting at Acts Full Gospel church to try and calm down angry residents. As Chief Howard Jordan rattled of lie after lie, folks turned their back to him..They were not feeling what amounted to a dog and pony show.. OPD cut the townhall short as folks surrounded the police and demanded justice for Alan Blueford.. We caught up with Oscar Grant’s uncle Cephus Johnson aka Uncle Bobby to get his assessment of what took place.
Chris Moreland, who cried “Justice!” at the Oakland townhall, is now in jail on $100,000 bail for battery of an officer, clearly a trumped up charge; arraignment Friday, 2 p.m., Wiley Manual Courthouse; support march 7 p.m., 19th and Telegraph
by Davey D
Alan Blueford, 18, was preparing to graduate from high school when he was murdered by police for running from them on May 6 in East Oakland.
Since the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, close to 30 Black or Brown people have been shot and killed by law enforcement – or, in the case of Trayvon, wannabe law enforcement. Many of these shootings have been highly questionable, meaning the person killed was unarmed or there are strong conflicting statements from either the police or witnesses.
Here in Oakland, California, the shooting death of Alan Dwayne Blueford is one such killing. Oakland police have been very shady with the stories they put forth to the public. It seems like a deliberate attempt to muddy the waters, cast seeds of doubt and cover up their own mistakes.
Initially police said they were in a shoot-out and Blueford shot the officer in the stomach. Later the police said Blueford shot the officer in the leg. Next the police said that it was possible the officer was shot in the leg by another officer in a case of friendly fire. Finally it came out that the officer shot himself. He shot himself in the foot.
Many believe the officer shot himself after he killed Blueford and saw the young man was unarmed. The police then doubled back and said a gun was recovered; the community has yet to see any evidence of fingerprints, gun residue etc. Many have concluded it was the officer planting a gun near the scene.
This would not be unusual in a city that in the past 10 years has had to shell out over $58 million for wrongful death shootings and police brutality incidents. This would not be far-fetched in a city that was home to a rogue group of cops known as the Oakland Riders, who were found to routinely plant drugs and guns on suspects. One of the Riders is a still a fugitive at large. Continue reading →
Protests targeting West Coast ports on Monday stopped work shifts and shipments for hours with major disruptions at the ports of Long Beach and Oakland.
Hundreds of people gathered at ports in the early morning hours from San Diego all the way up to Vancouver, Canada. Protesters targeted in particular, terminals owned by a company named SSA Marine because it is co-owned by the Wall Street firm Goldman Sachs, and grain exporter EGT for anti-union activity.
The International Longshore and Warehouse Union, thousands of whose workers are employed by SSA Marine, did not sanction the action but respected the Occupiers’ picket lines. While some workers complained to press about a day’s worth of lost wages, an open letter by four port truckers decrying their working conditions, and in support of the spirit of the port shutdown, has received broad attention. In it, they say “we believe in the power and potential behind a truly united 99%. We admire the strength and perseverance of the longshoremen. We are fighting like mad to overcome our exploitation, so please, stick by us long after December 12.”
Protestors significantly disrupted business at the Longview, Washington port, where companies sent workers home citing health and safety concerns. In Seattle, Washington hundreds of protestors shut down at least one port terminal and police turned out with flash bang percussion grenades to disperse the demonstrators. Here in Southern California, the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles saw hundreds of Occupy activists gather near Harry Bridges park and block shift changes for several hours. Police then pushed protesters out of the area, and arrested a small number of people. The longest port occupation appears to be Oakland’s, where protestors disrupted traffic into the port until 4am December 13.
Uprising correspondent Lydia Breen was at the Occupy the Ports action at the Ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles yesterday and filed this special report.
[Oakland Mayor Jean Quan (photo: Ella Baker Center)]
Embattled Oakland Mayor Jean Quan, speaking in an interview with the BBC (excerpted on The Takeaway radio program–audio of Quan starts at the 5:30 mark), casually mentioned that she was on a conference call with leaders of 18 US cities shortly before a wave of raids broke up Occupy Wall Street encampments across the country. “I was recently on a conference call with 18 cities across the country who had the same situation. . . .”
Mayor Quan then rambles about how she “spoke with protestors in my city” who professed an interest in “separating from anarchists,” implying that her police action was helping this somehow.
Interestingly, Quan then essentially advocates that occupiers move to private spaces, and specifically cites Zuccotti Park as an example:
In New York City, it’s interesting that the Wall Street movement is actually on a private park, so they’re not, again, in the public domain, and they’re not infringing on the public’s right to use a public park.[Note: this comment was made before the brutal eviction of Occupy Wall Street in Zuccotti Park, NY, — adjust “lessons” accordingly.-ed.]
Many witnesses to the wave of government crackdowns on numerous #occupy encampments have been wondering aloud if the rapid succession was more than a coincidence; Jean Quan’s casual remark seems to imply clearly that it was. Continue reading →
DeBray Carpenter aka Fly Benzo, community activist and hip-hop artist, is again facing trumped-up charges for his outspoken opposition to the SFPD’s harassment, stalking, framing and brutality against the targeted Black community in the San Francisco’s Bayview District. This time, he was assaulted by police for videotaping their military occupation tactics, and then they threw the book of trumped-up lies at him. His next hearing will be in the San Francisco Hall of Injustice on Wednesday, November 16.
It’s Really Real TV: FLY Benzo – “War On Terror” // #BlackPOWER #DropTheCHARGES
FLY Benzo’s “War On Terror” Music Video… Filmed, Directed and Edited by Phil Jackson.. Black Power… United We Stand… Divided We Fall… STOP THE VIOLENCE.. START THE HEALIN’!!
[After scenes and statements from the Oakland streets, Democracy Now interviews an activist from the Oscar Grant struggle (against police abuse and killings) who links the long struggle for justice with the current battle, and a county Supervisor from San Francisco, who is trying to prevent any similar police suppression of Occupy San Francisco. — Frontlines ed.]
[Police Chief Pete Sarna is Chief of the Oakland School Districts Police, which has been protested and condemned for the murder of a young Black man, Raheim Brown, earlier this year. This article reveals a certain mind-set in command of that department–though it also quotes a friend of Sarna who attributes/excuses his comments to the influence of a few drinks. — Frontlines ed.]
The politically connected police chief of the Oakland public schools has been placed on paid administrative leave for allegedly hurling a series of racial slurs at fellow officers – then trying to cover up the incident – following a day of drinking at a charity golf tournament.
Police Chief Pete Sarna, 41, told officials that his use of the word “n-” was offhanded and intended to be funny, sources tell us. But San Francisco attorney Joe O’Sullivan, who is representing a white officer who filed a complaint with the school district, says the episode was anything but comic.
As O’Sullivan tells it, it started when Sarna invited three school district officers and a civilian staffer who works for him to play in a charity Oakland police golf tournament at the Sequoyah Country Club in the Oakland hills in mid-July.
As the group was headed home afterward through the Caldecott Tunnel, O’Sullivan said, Sarna turned to an African American sergeant and began cursing him, saying no blacks should be allowed to live in Orinda and that “the only good n- is a dead n- and they should hang you in the town square to prevent any other n- from coming in the area.” Continue reading →
An Oakland police officer who was fired after fatally shooting an unarmed drunken-driving suspect in the back has won his job back through arbitration, his attorney said Friday.
Officer Hector Jimenez was fired two years ago in connection with the July 25, 2008, shooting death of Mack “Jody” Woodfox III, 27, in the city’s Fruitvale district. Woodfox was shot three times in the back, his family said.
The department fired Jimenez after concluding that Woodfox had posed no threat to him.
But arbitrator David Gaba ordered Jimenez reinstated with full back pay and benefits. Continue reading →
OAKLAND — Dozens of protesters came to Wednesday’s Oakland school board meeting to speak out against the fatal shooting of 20-year-old Raheim Brown by a school district police officer on Saturday night.
“My son was murdered by your police officers,” said Lori Davis. “I want to know who killed my son. I want all the information.”
Brown and a 20-year-old woman were parked on Joaquin Miller Road with their hazard lights on when they were approached by a pair of Oakland Schools Police officers who had been patrolling the area outside of a Skyline High School dance at a park facility, Oakland Schools Police Chief Pete Sarna said. Police said Brown and the woman were in a stolen car but that they didn’t know it at the time. Continue reading →
OAKLAND, Calif. (KGO) — A demonstration is planned in Oakland at 3 p.m. to protest Monday night’s fatal shooting of an unarmed man by Oakland police.
Police say officers were responding to a domestic dispute involving 37-year-old Derrick Jones and his ex-girlfriend. They say Jones ran from the scene and reached into his waistband, as if to pull a gun. That’s when officers opened fire but, Jones was not armed.
An autopsy shows he was hot multiple times in the front of his body, not his back, as originally thought.Oscar Grant’s family says they will join today’s event. Grant was the unarmed passenger who was shot and killed by former BART police officer Johannes Mehserle.
Frontlines of Revolutionary Struggle 