THE FULL MEETING WILL BE DEDICATED TO TWO DISCUSSIONS:
1: MAYDAY
2: EAST OAKLAND SPEAK-OUT EVENT
5pm
THURSDAY
at The Holdout – 2313 San Pablo Ave, Oakland CA
If you’re coming for the first time, or finding out more about oop, check out our Points of Unity.
Budget cuts liquidate social security programs, retirement and education, and therefore the future, while stuffing humans into overcrowded prisons and juvenile detention facilities. There’s no jobs, no money, but crime is captured by capital too. The black market is still the market, and beyond that there is an economy of incarceration complete with banks building private prisons and corporations leasing the labor of their captives. Forced into the drug trade and sex work, criminalized, incarcerated, then forced into both sex (rape) and work (slavery) in the penitentiary. This is what we mean when we say “the prison industrial complex.” It extends outside the wretched walls of San Quentin and the others into every part of life in a racist and patriarchal commodity society. All prisoners are political prisoners. And as feminists have long pointed out, the personal is political.
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Home is prison, prison is the Third World factory. Boyfriends are bosses, wardens are pimps. Capitalist and patriarchal social relations flow effortlessly across the boundaries between the “inside” and the “outside.” Our solidarity and struggle must also flow easily past barbed wire, to destroy capitalism and patriarchy we must destroy all prisons and the police. Free all prisoners! Destroy capital! Smash patriarchy!
oo//***//oo
It is impossible to quantify a unified experience of how trans people, gender queers, queers, and women live in relation to the prison industrial complex. However, we found these statistics gravely moving and feel that these facts illuminate the connections between capitals grotesque maintenance of oppression grounded in gender, race and class to the prison industrial complex.
sanquentin - pdf
Tags: capitalism, patriarchy, prisons, racism
*From the perspective of a woman of color, Oakland resident, and public school teacher. (Many issues have been made to dismiss the truth by citing that the Occupy Movement is a bunch of unemployed white people from out of town and I am none of those) This is my perspective:
One lesson I learned is that Occupy Oakland is a powerful movement and the financial elite are willing to crush the movement by any means necessary.
The march from Oscar Grant Plaza to Henry J. Kaiser Auditorium was festive and peaceful. It was a beautiful day and 2000 plus people took part in the march, all I was thinking as the sun kissed my face was that this was the ideal day for Oakland to rise up and claim a Social Center for the people.
Once we arrived to our destination it was clear that we were not going to be able to claim the building for the people. The closest anyone came to the actual building was about 75 yards away on the other side of a fence. Several individuals began to shake the fence and this caused the police to issue a warning and then they attacked. They launched smoke bombs and flash bang grenades into the crowd of families, strollers and elderly causing the people who could, to scatter.
If rocking a fence causes the OPD to attack, then we must be doing something right. Why do they want to spend million of dollars to silence us? Why do they want to silence us using such violent force?
This made me think about the parallels between the Occupy Oakland and the Civil Rights Movement. The issues and the people involved may seem to be completely different, but they are not. Racial Equality is Economic Equality. Occupy Oakland has been a strong advocate for economic equality, social justice, and judicial equality all of which are desperately needed in Oakland. The Civil Rights Movement fought for the same. The police arrested and brutalized the protestors during the Civil Rights Movements (used water hoses and dogs to attack protestors) and the OPD are doing the exact same thing (409 arrested and only 12 charges filed). During the Civil Rights they tried to disseminate lies about the movement and that is exactly what the Mayor, the police chief, and the media are doing to Occupy Oakland.
A friend of mine said, “It is really hard for people to situate this (Occupy Oakland) politically and historically.” This is a great point and when thinking about this moment I can’t help think about Rosa Parks. Rosa Park, a militant civil rights activist and anti-rape activist for 25 years before she refused to move to the back of the bus, was prepared to take drastic measures to force change in the South. Many people at that time were on the wrong side of history, they thought she was foolish, and didn’t understand why she had issues with following the Jim Crow Laws. That is where we are in this movement, people need to decide if they are ok with the crumbs they are given or are they going to take a stand and fight for their fair share. People need to decide which side of history they want to be on.
Mayor Jean Quan, the police department, and the mainstream media all run by the 1% will stop at nothing to discredit, dismantle, and destroy our movement. We are too powerful. We are and we stand for those unable to stand for themselves. We are and we protest for the workers putting in long hours at low wage jobs. We are and we march for the teachers, social workers, counselors and city workers whose wages continue to decline to help pay for the state’s deficit. We are and we organize for the college graduates without job opportunities available to them. We are and we fight for the rights of the elderly, homeless, and disenfranchised youth.
Another important lesson I learned from the Occupy Move-In Day is that Oakland Occupy Patriarchy is a group of powerful, intelligent, fearless people who held it down on the front lines despite of how violent OPD became. Members of our group did everything in their power to protect the marchers behind them. They deflected tear gas canisters, went out of their way to make sure the rest of us stayed together and were safe, and many were subject to arrest. After witnessing the extradionary bravery from these individuals, it has encouraged me to risk more for the movement, and it has empowered me to speak up and speak out.
We are Occupy Oakland.
T.
So we fled. After failing to evade or break through police lines to get to the first two vacant buildings, the march returned to Oscar Grant Plaza to regroup and gather strength. On the way back, the OPD approached a group of parents with children who were keeping to the side and away from all the action, and threatened to arrest them for child endangerment – when the police charged at one woman, the other parents defended her and she ran with her kid to safety.
The police managed to temporarily corner us. They boxed us in on every side, at the 19th and Telegraph Park, another space we had attempted to occupy when forced out of Oscar Grant Plaza. The pigs would let no one leave the kettle and fired gas into the trapped crowd, but we finally tore down their super-reinforced chain link fence, streaming up and over and out. We tore down the fence we had torn down already once before, which, once liberated, had become a playground for the school across the street “finally the kids had a place to have PE, for a few months, until they put the fence back up.” Thwarted, frustrated, the pigs followed us, now out for mass arrests.
Many people were arrested outside as well in the kettle. Our estimates sit at about 448 arrests, the largest mass arrest in Oakland in recent history. People were submitted to torturous conditions in jails, and denied essential medications such as HIV meds, many going through withdrawal. Some were kept for 40 hours in cramped cells without being charged. People classified as “women” were called “occupy bitches”, “men” who “looked” gay were cordoned off and called fags. People were denied food, water, access to restrooms – the usual torture all prisoners face on a daily basis. For three days following the mass arrest, hundreds of people did jail support for the arrestees, bringing food and coffee, sleeping all night in the release room of the jail, collecting legal information, and driving people home.
what next?
xo
The RAT Fraction of Oakland Occupy Patriarchy
* Oakland sold the building, the Kaiser Center to its own redevelopment agency for 28.3 Million – this money went to the city’s general fund, 50% of which funds city policing.
NEXT Oak Occupy Patriarchy meeting Thursday 5pm in West Oakland! Email us at oaklandoccupypatriarchy [at] gmail for address.
AGENDA: MOVE-IN DAY!
1. preparations for Queer/Feminist Block during march leading up to move-in
2. Move-IN prep
3. Updates on feminist/queer Literature , Panels, and Discussion for Move-In festival
ALSO we will start out with the discussion we didn’t get to last week, beginning with:
Why do you think that we need a seperate organizing space for Women, Trans and Queer people only?
We will also be discussing “point of unity” number two, if we have time:
Women, Trans people, Queers, Fags, Dykes, need a space that is OURS because we are marginalized, harassed, and attacked in other spaces all the time. We do not all have the same needs and desires, and our relationships with one another are structured by the intensified oppression of people of color, trans people and poor folks. However we think that we can sup- port and increase our power by working with each other.
Hope to see you there!
Come join Oakland Occupy Patriarchy’s next meeting this Thursday at 5pm!
We are still a group in progress so don’t be intimidated, its not too late to come check it out!
Email us at Oaklandoccupypatriarchy@gmail.com for the location!
Our beginning forum discussion will be:
Why do you think that we need a seperate organizing space for Women, Trans and Queer people only?
We will also be discussing “point of unity” number two:
Women, Trans people, Queers, Fags, Dykes, need a space that is OURS because we are marginalized, harassed, and attacked in other spaces all the time. We do not all have the same needs and desires, and our relationships with one another are structured by the intensified oppression of people of color, trans people and poor folks. However we think that we can sup- port and increase our power by working with each other.
Hope to see you there!
<3 Oakland Occupy Patriarchy
Occupy Patriarchy!
Feminist/Queer block event on Jan 8 , noon to 5, at 19th and Telegraph.
Occupy Oakland’s feminist/queer block is organizing to occupy/decolonize a building and establish a collective space in Oakland (at a location that remains undisclosed).
On January 8th we will kick off with an event at 19th and Telegraph, noon to 5pm. Presentations, discussions, and a direct action are being planned.
The first two points of unity for the group are:
1. This capitalist society is based on a racist, white supremacist, patriarchal order. Our organizing must confront and attack the structural racism and white supremacy in this city and our own spaces.
2. Women, Trans people, Queers, Fags, Dykes, need a space that is OURS. We are marginalized, harassed, and attacked in other spaces all the time.
To find out more about the group and the January 8th event, visit: http://oaklandoccupypatriarchy.wordpress.com/
To get involved, email: occupypatriarchy@gmail.com.
Thursday, 3pm-5pm at the Holdout. 2313 San Pablo. Show up a bit early if you can.
Please bring banner/sign making supplies so we can prepare for the Dec 30th Egypt Solidarity Demo!
WE ARE NOT JUST THE 99%:
Queering the Occupy Movement, Reimagining Resistance
Edited by Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore
*CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS*
Ignited by the Arab Spring, uprisings in Greece and Spain, and protests in Wisconsin, Occupy Wall Street has brought corporate greed and structural inequality into the spotlight while claiming public space and refusing hierarchical models of resistance. “We are the 99%,” the central slogan of the Occupy movement, has been crucial in rallying mass support. And yet, this slogan invokes a vision of sameness that stands in stark contrast to a queer analysis that foregrounds, cultivates, and nurtures difference. From Mortville, the queer camp at Occupy Baltimore, to the Feminists and Queers Against Capitalism bloc at the Oakland general strike, queers are playing central roles in Occupy spaces. But, what would it mean to bring a queer analysis to the forefront, going beyond the politics of inclusion to question the very terms of the debate?
For the first time in decades, perhaps there’s a possibility for a mass movement demanding radical social change in the US. Still, most Occupy spaces remain straight, white, and male-dominated: how do we prevent the power imbalances intrinsic to previous movements? What about accountability within the 99%? How have Occupy spaces addressed (and failed to address) homophobia, transphobia, misogyny, racism, ableism, imperialism/patriotism, police brutality, anti-homeless territorialism, sexual assault, and other issues of structural, personal, and intimate violence? As struggles emerge to confront the colonial rhetoric of “occupying” indigenous land (and to address this history), what can a queer analysis bring to this challenge? What do queer struggles have to learn from Occupy/Decolonize movements, and what can Occupy/Decolonize movements learn from queer struggles?
I’m interested in missives from queers involved in Occupy/Decolonize movements, as well as from those veering between skeptical and inspired. I would love to hear about queer challenges within Occupy encampments large and small, across the country and around the world. Bring me your explosive analysis, your rants, your manifestoes, your journal entries, your rage and rigor and hope and heartbreak. In addition to written nonfiction work, I’m also interested in art, photography, posters, flyers, and other forms of visual documentation queering the Occupy movement – its goals and aspirations, its impact, its perils and possibilities.
Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore is the editor of five nonfiction anthologies, most recently Why Are Faggots So Afraid of Faggots?: Flaming Challenges to Masculinity, Objectification, and the Desire to Conform (AK Press 2012), and the author of two novels, most recently So Many Ways to Sleep Badly (City Lights 2008). More info on Mattilda at mattildabernsteinsycamore.com.
Please send essays or written materials of up to 5000 words, as Word or text file attachments only, to nobodypasses@gmail.com. Include a brief bio. Please send a query before submitting visual work. The deadline is March 20, 2012, although the earlier the better. Any questions, send them my way!
