Pigs are No Friends of Ours

–by some women and queers of Occupy Oakland

Because of recent manipulative lies released by the Oakland Police Department, we felt compelled to make something unquestionably clear: The exclusive role of the police is to serve and protect the interests of the patriarchal and racist state and the rich capitalist elite. The “justice” system of the united states has one function: to protect the rulers from us, those who would want to overturn this horrible state of things and begin a new way of living all together.  So we can say with confidence that the police and the state do not give a FUCK about women, about fags, about dykes, about trans people or about queer people, UNLESS one of these people happens to be RICH and POWERFUL.  OR, unless “protecting” us helps to justify their racist, patriarchal attacks on poor people, which is what they have done, once again, on Friday March 2nd in their press release.

Yesterday three of our comrades from Occupy Oakland were charged with robbery and “hate crimes” on someone for allegedly making hateful remarks on her sexuality. The OPD writes, “The Oakland Police Department prioritizes hate crimes for immediate investigation.” Police frequently lie, and also many of us, as products of a sexist racist society, do shitty things, but etheir way, cops can’t and won’t change what sucks about this society. But WE sure as hell intend on doing that. Part of that project is negating police authority and their monopoly of violence.

The OPD’s claim that they care about “hate crimes” is a disgusting manipulation of OUR identities as women and queers, in order to justify state violence that we ABSOLUTELY OPPOSE. The history and current existence of militant radical women, queer, and trans’ movements is dealt a blow every time the state invokes our identities to hurt us and our comrades, under the vice that they are protecting us and our identities. THAT IS THEIR GOAL, to reduce our struggles to the desire for a right to vote, a right to marry, a right to buy commodities marketed especially for us — to all those things that don’t really threaten the status quo.

We have worked with and alongside these 3 people with solidarity and with love for months. These are people we’ve cooked with, cleaned with, cracked jokes with, danced with, at Occupy Oakland, at the Occupy 4 Prisoners Rally, at countless events and marches. We will be at their court dates and ready with warm food when they are released. On the other hand, we have experienced nothing but brutality from OPD. We have been terrorized, verbally abused, condescended to, and assaulted by OPD. We have seen the city and the police department lie on a regular basis in order to throw occupiers in jail, particularly homeless people and people of color. So while WE actually care about misogyny and gendered violence, the OPD appropriates the language of our struggles to serve its own evil purposes.

There is racism, homophobia, transphobia, misogyny, and violence in every nook and cranny of “This Great Country.” People are treated like trash, garbage and worse, and that means sometimes we do not treat each other well. But the project of communicating, learning from each other, and dealing with assault and abuse is something that we have to do, together, and we can do it a million times better than the wettest dream of even the most ‘liberal’ state institution. If someone fucks with us because of our gender, our race, our sexuality, that is something for US to handle, whether it means mediation, accountability, reparations, violent retaliation, or exclusion — that is for US to work out together, WITHOUT the police. In order to do that, we need to break down the barriers that the police and the capitalists are so interested in building between us, so that we can start learning how to work together. It is something we began to do in the Oakland Commune before the pigs cracked down on our collective projects.

Until they tear off their badges and join our fight against the state and capital, willing to fight the officers who stay on the side of the state with as much force as they have fought us in the streets from Oakland to Cairo, the police are our enemies. And any time they purport to be on our side, or act for us, we have three little letters for them: FTP!

 

 

COME OUT TO SUPPORT 2 OF THE 3 ARRESTEES TOMORROW (monday) :

TOMORROW – Monday, March 5 at 2pm – Dept 112, Wiley Courthouse (7th & Washington)

RALLY in support of 3 Occupy Oaklanders facing false and outrageously conflated charges as part of the DA & OPD’s campaign of collusion to target and repress Occupy Oakland.

The three Occupy Oaklanders were arrested last week on charges stemming from an alleged stolen wallet. This alleged incident has prompted the DA to pursue felony robbery and hate crime charges against these individuals, who are now being held in custody with bails exceeding $100,000 each.

On Monday Occupy Oakland will descend upon the courthouse to protest this gross manipulation of the “justice” system to target members of our movement. We will also be holding a celebration to honor the birthday of one of these jailed occupiers.

Next OOP meeting: Thursday 5pm Holdout.

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.

For San Quentin, Feb. 20th

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.

/

The spheres of our oppression grow indistinct.

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.

• Nearly two-thirds of women in prison are mothers.
• In federal women’s prisons 70% of guards are male.
• Sexual assault within the confines of prison walls are often perpetrated by prison guards.
• In many states guards have access to and are encouraged to review the inmates’ personal history files. Guards threaten the prisoner’s children and rights as a means of silencing the women.
• Over a five-year period, the incarceration rate of African American women increased by 828%. Black women make up nearly half of the nation’s female prison population.
• The female prison population grew by 832% from 1977 to 2007. The male prison population grew 416% during the same time period.4
• Latina women experience nearly four times the rates of incarceration as white women.
• Average prostitution arrests include 70% females, 20% percent male prostitutes and 10% customers.
• In San Francisco, it has been estimated that 25% of the female prostitutes are transgender
• 60% of the abuse against street prostitutes perpetrated by  60% clients, 20% by police and 20% in domestic relationships.
• A company that operated a maquiladora (assembly plant in Mexico near the border) closed down its operations there and relocated to San Quentin State Prison in California.
• Jurors in the US were polled as to what factors would make them most biased against a defendant, and perceived sexual orientation was chosen as the most likely personal characteristic to bias a juror against a defendant.

by Some Bad Girls of occupy patriarchy

sanquentin – pdf

Which side of history?: Two Important Lessons I learned from Occupy Oakland Move-In Day

 *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.

teeth and claws: Move-in day at occupy oakland

Yesterday Occupy Oakland tried to take over an immense vacant city-owned property* and turn it into a social center. The ruling class of Oakland brought out all its forces to protect the empty space, to keep it empty.

/

The Occupy Oakland march was huge, militant, determined, brave. Over 2000 strong. The march and the OPD played a game of cat and rat, we, the rats with our tiny sharp teeth bared, they, the dumb slow cats with their fancy technology and weaponry. Their minions thudded around the building as Occupy Oakland swarmed from one side and then other, but we were never fast enough to find the gap we needed to get through to our first target. We didn’t have enough communication, we got split up moving into bad terrain, we took some wrong turns. Carrying chairs, sleeping bags, books, instant coffee, snack bars, we also bore our shields of garbage cans and corrugated metal. They fired on us with small plastic balls covered in neon dust to mark us for capture, balls that stole chunks of flesh out of our arms, legs, scalps. They fired on us with hot cans releasing acidic clouds, cans that felt hot like a flaming ball of metal flying over your shoulder. They left dents 4 inches deep in our metal shields, they left bleeding arms and legs, bruised chests, armpits, shins. We tried to divert them: the glitter block sparkled in their eyes for distraction while the medics tended to the wounded. We finally moved to elide them towards the second location (though most of us didn’t know what was going on in the frenzy and miscommunications). But they had more troops than we could evade, though we came close once or twice.

/

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.

/

We set out again to find ourselves a space to move into. Hours later, and we were still over 1000 strong: we left with an energy we didn’t know we still had. We tried to re-enter the Traveler’s Aid society building (the site of the occupation we attempted on the day of the General Strike), but it was filled with management and workers mid-renovation, who refused to allow us inside. We could not break the lock, and the manager hit our hands with poles when we tried. We heard one of the workers say to another; “we are on the wrong side in here.” We marched northwards, snaking around, sniffing out empty buildings, blasting our music, waving and blowing kisses to our Oakland neighbors. From Chinatown through downtown and up Telegraph, everbody we saw jumped up and pumped their fists to us, leaned out their windows and waved and shouted and smiled. People in their cars raised fists out the window or stuck their hands out for high-fives as we flooded around them.

/

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.

/

Eventually, we were cornered again, between two lines of police. People jumped over fences and into the YMCA to escape — the YMCA initially closed its doors, but when we yelled, “they’re going to gas us!” they opened up and the crowd streamed in, flowed through the YMCA with the pigs close at our heels, grabbing the ankles of the protestors at the tail end of the march and dragging them down the steps of the building. Half of us were able to escape through the back door, half were trapped inside and arrested.

/

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.

/

Many of us said afterward: never have we been with such an enormous group so ready to have each-others backs, to run when we have to run, to pull down fences when we have to pull down fences. The crowd was undaunted, the crowd was young and old, the crowd was elated, the crowd was sometimes afraid, the crowd was sometimes terrified, eager, starving for a victory.

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.

Occupy Patriarchy MOVE IN MEETING Thursday 1/26

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!

Next Meeting This Thursday at 5pm!

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!

❤ Oakland Occupy Patriarchy

 

Build-Up Event #1 – Jan 8th!

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 8^th we will kick off with an event at 19^th 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 8^th event, visit: https://oaklandoccupypatriarchy.wordpress.com/

To  get involved, email: occupypatriarchy@gmail.com.

Oakldn Fem/Queer MEETING THURSDAY 12/29 3-5pm

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!

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: WE ARE NOT JUST THE 99%: Queering the Occupy Movement, Reimagining Resistance

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!