Originally published on Mission Loc@l

When Lutz Plumbing first came to the 3100 block of 17th Street in 1982, Susie Hotarek was afraid to leave the building on foot.

Employees would drive into the building through the garage entrance and leave the same way. What waited beyond — drug peddlers, prostitutes — was more urban than made them feel safe.

“We had to pretty much have a secure building,” she said.

That has changed as a growing number of new businesses and organizations have moved in. The area has transitioned from a gritty industrial one where a cement and chocolate factory thrived to one where a few industrial survivors, such as Ocean Sash and Door, are outnumbered by relative newcomers, including cafes, artist collectives and educational organizations, attracted by low property values and rents.

“The community has gotten together, and we have really formed a good network of neighbors,” Hotarek said. “We pretty much cleaned up everything.”

The 3100 block of 17th Street, nested between South Van Ness Avenue and Folsom Street, is in the northeast Mission, an area where the last vestiges of a once-bustling industrial area struggle to coexist with ever-increasing residential and commercial development.

Unlike most of the northeast Mission, the 3100 block never had a concentration of heavy industry, but there were plenty of factories surrounding the block.

Looking around the block in the 1970s, a visitor would find Kilpatricks Bread on 16th and South Van Ness and the Green Glen Linen Service on 18th and Folsom.

The 3100 block, however, was home mostly to wholesale suppliers, such as Centennial Electrical Distributors and J. Borg Hardware; automotive repair shops like Hans Art Automotive and Tramco; and light manufacturing, such as Ocean Sash and Door.

Much of the transition away from industrial development that began in the late ’70s and early ’80s was the result of the loss of container ship traffic, which moved from San Francisco to the Port of Oakland, and overall deindustrialization — the loss of industry due to economics and land-use policy, according to Philip Lesser from the Mission Merchants Association.

It was a harbinger of change for the area, as property values plummeted, factories shuttered and live/work spaces began to proliferate. In the ’90s, the railroad that used to run along Harrison Street to the port was torn up, and the container traffic on 16th Street gradually dwindled.

“I don’t think you can understand the Mission without understanding the industrial port,” Lesser said.

This gave an organization like the Oberlin Dance Collective an opportunity when it arrived in 1979.

Mike York at Ocean Sash and Door said that ODC’s arrival “changed the neighborhood considerably,” mainly by attracting theater-goers who in turn brought in better lighting for the streets, scaring off the criminals. But this took time.

The theater struggled for years to convince people to come to its location, mainly because the area was seedy and unsafe in the ’80s and ’90s, according to ODC’s Kimi Okada.

“There was not a lot of foot traffic,” Okada said. “We wanted [ODC] to feel like a place that people actually wanted to come to, rather than a place to avoid.”

The people who didn’t avoid the block were the prostitutes and drug dealers who would regularly line the street, especially at 17th and Shotwell. Crime bled into the neighborhood, and few people cared to walk around it.

Susette Blackwell remembers that time. She lives and has run her business, the Blackwell Files, out of a house next to Gas and Shop since 1999; before that it was a machine shop. She said when she left her house she would have to walk over people passed out near her door, and at times was solicited for sex.

“Prostitution was rampant,” Blackwell said. “It was not fun living here.”

Jose Guillen has worked at Gas and Shop since 1994, and he recalled that he used to chase down thieves with a baseball bat and had to defend himself from violent people.

“It was a little bit dangerous,” he said, “but I had to make it. I had to, because I had to protect my place.”

The catalyst for expanded residential use was a 1988 ordinance that allowed the conversion of industrial spaces to live/work uses. What followed was a gobbling up of industrial land in the northeast Mission.

On the 3100 block, there was an attempt to build live/work space next to ODC in 1998, but the Planning Commission denied the permit. This was during a period of concern over the rapid proliferation of live/work spaces in the Mission, which culminated in a ban as of 2002.

In 2003, Seven Tepees, a youth empowerment organization, set up in the space where the live/work project had been proposed. This was a year after ODC began what became an eight-year renovation project that resulted in a new space, the Shotwell Commons, which opened in 2005, and in the renovation of its theater at the corner of Shotwell and 17th streets, which reopened in 2010.

The changes that have swirled through the district since its light industrial days have transformed it into a neighborhood that is more attractive to the new wave of young, hip residents who are planting roots in the Mission.

Stable Cafe, a coffee shop, moved in around the corner on Folsom Street in 2008. Saison, a French restaurant, followed a year later. Bite Me Sandwiches, on the corner of South Van Ness, opened last year.

The old electrical supply warehouse next to Ocean Sash and Door is being remodeled into the Mission Bowling Club, a six-lane bowling alley with a full-service restaurant and a liquor license to boot.

The parking lot on 17th and Folsom streets may become a park — currently a contentious point among nearby businesses, many of which depend on the extra parking spaces. Though the city plans to establish another lot nearby, some business owners fear that the planned park and public housing project could make parking more difficult and hurt business.

“I’m really worried as a whole for everybody,” said Hotarek, who hopes the new parking lot will happen. “I hope [the city] is right, because if they’re not, we are going to have to move.”

But nothing stays the same forever. New players have joined the land use debate over the years; among the latest are technology startups.

Soundcloud, a company that’s the audio equivalent of YouTube, moved in a few blocks away. Hipmunk is in the old Hamms Brewery building. Others are following suit.

Originally published on Oakland North

For Dimitri Thompson, it’s all or nothing.

Whether its the rectangular chillers to keep the milk cold and sanitary, the energy-efficient espresso machine that draws little power or the reused materials that make up most of his furniture, Thompson left no detail unattended while crafting the blueprints for his Noble Cafe. But the attention he is paying into the equipment and materials of the cafe pales next to the ultimate goal of his establishment: a carbon neutral cafe — the first in the United States.

The idea behind carbon neutrality is bringing one’s carbon footprint — the amount of carbon dioxide produced through your energy-using activities, like driving a car — to zero through a mixture of reducing one’s energy use and paying money to a fund, such as CarbonFund.org, to offset what cannot be reduced. Such organizations reinvest funds toward renewable energy projects.

The carbon neutral café idea has been implemented in the United Kingdom and Australia, but it has yet to take hold here in the U.S. “I need to give back to my community,” Thompson said. “It’s my duty.”

With plans to launch on January 9, the Noble Cafe will be the newest café in a city that’s not hurting for them — in the downtown, Uptown and Lake Merritt areas alone, there are 28 businesses that identify themselves as coffee and tea shops, according to a search on Yelp. But what makes Noble Cafe different is its scope; it’s a cafe where patrons can do their part to offset carbon use. For example, patrons who come in with laptops can opt to pay a 50 cent electricity fee that goes to help offset the power used to run their computers.

Photo Courtesy of Noble Cafe

Energy efficient equipment, like the espresso machine that shuts off when not in use, the transportation practices of his employees, like bicycling to work, and on-site composting will help reduce the cafe’s footprint, Thompson said. He estimates that after all the energy saving reductions he makes, he will likely pay $600 a month to a non-profit fund to offset the carbon he uses.

Thompson paid meticulous detail to materials he used to build the cafe on the bottom floor of the One Grand building on Grand Avenue in Uptown. The medium-sized cafe has spacious seating of wicker chairs at wooden tables constructed from reused Monterey cypress, and dangling wooden boxes contain energy efficient light bulbs that cost $70 a pop.

“The whole cafe uses 300 volts of electricity,” Thompson said of the cafe’s lighting, even if it’s left on overnight.

The cafe will feature a menu that includes Belgian waffles and smoked duck breast salad, Blue Bottle Coffee and French-pressed loose teas. The ingredients, Thompson said, will be mostly organic and sourced from within 200 miles when possible.

One of the more interesting experiments Thompson plans on trying is SMS-based room service for the 248 residential units inside the Grand building. By allowing people who live in the building to buy pre-paid cards for use at the cafe, a resident could wake up, text for tea and have it delivered within 30 minutes with no money exchanged, he said.

Although Thompson plans to have a small staff, it will be a well-paid one. He plans to hire people at $10 per hour and offer full medical insurance after 45 days. But the planned perks don’t end there: one pedicure/manicure a month, free Yoga at a studio next door each week and one massage per month.

The lavish benefits for a café staff beg the question of whether the business model will be affordable, but Thompson said that there is little difference in wages between the minimum wage ($8.50/hour) and what he is proposing. He also said he would rather spend money on well-being of employees than on energy costs. “I just believe that people are here trying to squeeze water out of stone,” he said. “If a business cannot make that extra money, it shouldn’t be in business.”

And Thompson knows a thing or two about the hospitality industry. He was trained by the Buckingham Palace Butlers and is a member of the International Guild of Professional Butlers, worked on the Radison Seven Seas Cruises in Tahiti and has consulted on a number of restaurants, including Bing Crosby’s in Walnut Creek before it closed.

His investment partners, Jeffrey Harry and Dana Santa Cruz, are also part of a non-profit formed to give back to community. Twice a month, the cafe will host events, including one where they have already lined up partners to give school supplies and meals to low-income children.

Photo Courtesy of Noble Cafe

Thompson said he was able to reduce his costs through private and public partnerships. The city of Oakland gave him a $55,000 grant because of his goal of making the cafe carbon neutral. Clover Stornetta, a milk company, is giving him $6,000 a year to have their brand attached to special milk refrigeration devices that are both energy efficient and more sanitary than the jugs traditionally used. The company that owns The Grand reduced the cost of renovating the café, in part because of the room service idea, Thompson said.

With all the subsidies, Thompson said it was cheaper to go green than to open a more traditional cafe. But costs aside, he truly wants to leave a mark on the coffee business with his cafe, and he hopes others will replicate it by elevating wages for workers and expanding their environmental practices.

“I believe this is my mission,” Thompson said.

When Occupy Wall Street first started in September, Wil Cook, an Oakland woman, was eager to join.  

After health issues prompted her to pull out of school for the semester, she quit her job and flew to New York to join hundreds at the Liberty Plaza camp. But she soon realized that men in the group would tell her how to do things. On one occasion, she said, a man grabbed a broom out of her hands as she was cleaning and told her to get another.

“I thought it was me at first,” Cook recalled, “but then I talked to other women in the camp who said it happened to them too.”

As with Liberty Plaza, at Oscar Grant Plaza (Occupy Oakland’s name for Frank Ogawa Plaza), some women and queer-identified occupiers said they experienced sexism or were the target of slurs by fellow campers when the vast tent city took over the plaza. On Sunday, Occupy Oakland’s feminist and queer bloc hosted an “Occupy Patriarchy” event that drew at least 200 people over the course of the day at the lot at 19th Street and Telegraph Avenue.

Throughout the day, several canopies hosted a number of workshops covering such topics as conflict resolution, the politics of sexual and intimate violence, empowering women and ensuring political and social equality. Artists played guitar and spoke poetry on the open-mic stage. Many families brought their children, who kicked soccer balls around and played with a large parachute.

Some of the harassment experienced at the Oakland camp, said Lauren Smith, an Occupy Patriarchy organizer, came in the form of interruptions at the general assemblies, where men shouted down women as they spoke. On one occasion, she continued, harassment by one male was so great that he had to be physically removed from the area. Meanwhile people around them watched and did nothing.

“We [women] took care of it ourselves. I think people don’t know what to do,” in those situations, Smith said. “It’s clear we need to organize a space for us that is safe.”

Yosef Tinkelman, who recited poetry during the event, said that a committee was formed to address issues that included sexism, homophobia and racism following a number of incidents at the Occupy Oakland camp during which people were harassed or threatened, and in response to a feeling among some in the queer community that they were being alienated.

Tinkelman, who identifies as androgynous, said he’d had people heckle him when he dressed in drag at the Occupy Oakland camp.

“Yeah, I’ve had a lot of unsavory comments, which I’m used to,” he said of his experiences at the camp. “Transphobia, both within the gay and straight community, is a huge issue.”

Having safe spaces for parents to bring children is also important to the Occupy protesters, said Tess Unger, one of four women who started the children’s village at the Oakland camp. The village was a place where parents could safely leave their children in order to participate in the general assemblies.

“We wanted families to feel like the movement was accessible to them,” she said, adding that the village was safe entry point for people who were new to the camp, particularly women.

But protesters like Unger are concerned that Occupy Oakland has not necessarily been a safe place for children. During the first police raid on the Occupy Oakland camp on October 25, police officers fired tear gas into the camp after giving the protesters dispersal orders. Although the tear gas was not used until after campers were warned to leave, and many had voluntarily departed, Unger said she is concerned that children still could have been present. (Although Oakland North reported that there were children living in the camp in the days before the raid, we do not have any confirmed reports that children were still in the camp at the time the tear gas was used.)

“I used to think the police would respect the safety of children,” said Unger. “I don’t think so anymore.”

Cook, who returned to Oakland after a month at Liberty Plaza, said she had concerns about the confrontations in downtown Oakland between protesters and police that unfolded later that evening after a march, when police once again deployed tear gas after giving protesters orders to disperse. She said the use of tear gas and less-than-lethal projectiles “alienated a lot of parents” from the protest.

The Occupy protests have placed a renewed spotlight on issues of inequality, and started a national conversation about how to change the status quo. Recently, the use of the word “occupy” itself to define the protest has initiated conversation about the European settlement of America, which displaced indigenous peoples through disease and relocation. There is currently a campaign to change the name Occupy Oakland to “Decolonize Oakland.”

Sunday’s event was intended to further this conversation by are educating people about words or behavior that makes women, transgender and queer people uncomfortable or contribute to their unequal treatment. “People are still used to placing other people in boxes,” Tinkelman said. “I like to think outside the box.”

Many people have been waiting for something like Occupy, an outpouring of voices demanding change, said many of the participants in Sunday’s event. But it has to include everyone, Cook said.  “I want to see a revolution that happens that includes everyone and is safe for everybody,” she said.

Relations between Occupy Oakland and Oakland officials have had a tumultuous two weeks that included a number of raids and arrests, but culminated Thursday in an unprecedented meeting between city officials and protesters.

The last two weeks got off to a sour start after a total of 40 people were arrested and a number of others cited and released after a string of incidents that have left protesters feeling that they are targets for harassment. These included campers being dislodged from a vacant West Oakland lot, protesters being evicted from a foreclosed home, and confrontations at Frank Ogawa Plaza involving a teepee at the site of an ongoing vigil.

On December 28, OPD officers disbanded a freshly constructed camp at 21st Street and Mandela Parkway at the behest of the lot’s owners, leading to one arrest and about two dozen citations for trespassing. Members of the Occupy Oakland’s Tactical Action Committee said at the time that they had believed the West Oakland lot to be city-owned, not privately owned, when choosing it as a place to camp.

Then on December 29, officers evicted occupiers and Causa Justa activists from a foreclosed home at 10th Street and Mandela Parkway, leading to a dozen arrests. The house, owned by financial company Fannie Mae, was targeted in response to that lender foreclosing an East Oakland home in May. Protesters urged the company to turn the Mandela house into low-income housing.

Originally published onOakland North

City of Oakland officials and Occupy Oakland protesters laid the groundwork for building trust at a meeting at City Hall on Thursday afternoon, following weeks of contentious incidents in West Oakland and on Frank Ogawa Plaza that have led to 40 arrests.The first steps toward building that trust, members of the Occupy Oakland Interfaith group told city officials, involve helping to get the 16 protesters still in custody released.

The meeting was unprecedented, in that it was the first time city officials and protesters formally discussed issues involving the ongoing Occupy Oakland protests. It also came about after a tense scene where at least 80 protesters tried to occupy City Hall in response to a raid last night at Frank Ogawa Plaza that resulted in 12 arrests. Two more protesters were arrested Thursday afternoon, the reason for which was not know before press time.

At the meeting, delegates from the Interfaith Group, one of the many groups associated with Occupy Oakland, called for the Oakland Police Department and city officials to change their culture which they said has been one of hostility toward the protesters.

“There’s a huge culture shift that needs to happen” said Nichola Torbett, one of the Occupy Interfaith members said at the meeting. “City employees and elected officials need to be human beings first, not functionaries. We raised that issue, and I believe we were heard.”

The Interfaith Group had originally planned to occupy City Hall this afternoon to demand the release all of what they called “political prisoners” in custody. But when protesters approached City Hall, they found locked doors and police officers.

Only people with prior appointments were being allowed into City Hall, not large groups of people, said City Administrator spokesperson Karen Boyd in a phone interview. City officials then agreed to meet with Occupy delegates to discuss the protesters still in police custody and how the Oakland Police Department has treated protesters.

Four Interfaith members met with a group from the city that included Boyd, Mayor Jean Quan’s chief of staff Anne Campbell-Washington and assistant to the City Administrator Arturo Sanchez. During the hour-plus long meeting, Interfaith members talked about three major points: the release of any protesters imprisoned, the need for OPD to change what members deemed an “arrest-oriented” culture and more of a willingness for city officials to listen to concerns of protesters.

“We recognize that it’s challenging for everyone to step outside of our own experience in order to create a greater sense of community,” said a woman named Patricia, one of the Interfaith members at the meeting, “but we are committed to working toward that.”

Boyd called the meeting “productive” and a first step toward dialogue on how to address these issues. She agreed that addressing long-standing issues between OPD and the community, such as mistrust of police due to officer-involved shootings.

“We as a city, and certainly the mayor, are very interested in seeing that happen,” Boyd said.

Boyd added there are health and safety concerns that need to be addressed as well on the plaza, mentioning that a number of employees have felt increasingly unsafe while going through the plaza over the past months, though she did not attribute anything specific to Occupy Oakland.

“There’s been an increase in aggressive behavior that is creating an environment that is unsafe,” Boyd said.

While more meetings between city officials and the Occupy group are planned moving forward, with a tentative meeting planned for early next week, all decisions the group makes must be passed by consensus by the General Assembly. But for the time being, Interfaith representatives say they are willing to continue talking with city officials.

A sign of a potentially new relationship between protesters and the city could come in the form of releasing those in custody. The Interfaith Group, and Boyd confirmed, that Campbell-Washington asked for the names of protesters still in custody, and would look into if they could be released.

But Boyd said that city officials can’t tell Alameda County Sheriff officials to release the prisoners, all of whom are being held at Santa Rita County Jail.

As the meeting went on upstairs, protesters outside, locked out and frustrated by the recent arrests, banged on the doors chanting “Let us in!” One protester tried to jimmy the door open with a bar, but then ran off when officers arrived.

Later, a group of officers swept into the entry way of the side door facing 14th Street, and grabbed two protesters. It is not known as of press time what the two were arrested for, but they were quickly taken from the building by officers, much to the ire of protesters.

Protesters also congregated outside the front steps of the plaza, holding a momentary prayer and then sharing their frustrations. Rev. Jeremy D. Nickel said he believes they were seeing the death throes of free speech after the recent successive raids on the plaza.

“This city is not yours or mine anymore,” he said to the crowd. “We’ve been holding on to an illusion for too long.”

Last night’s events led to 12 arrests after about 50 officers in riot gear descended on the plaza. Last Friday, 13 protesters were arrested in what erupted into a chaotic scene after officers demanded protesters remove items from the ground that were in violation of their permit.

Samsarah Morgan, an Interfaith representative at the meeting, said she believed that city officials were genuine in their willingness to hash out issues.

“We made it clear that the city has not behaved in a very trustworthy fashion,” Morgan said. “I believe (our concerns were) authentically heard and we will not stop until it is fact.”

Originally published on Oakland North

With a price tag of at least $100,000 and the lead investigator having previous ties to Oakland, some critics are wondering whether the city’s newly-formed independent investigation team will be effective in figuring out just what happened between police and Occupy Oakland protesters, especially because it is only composed of law enforcement experts.

But city officials insist the process will be fair.

The city announced on Dec. 21, 2011 that Thomas Frazier, a former Baltimore police commissioner, will head up a team of four to investigate how police officials handled themselves on October 25 and November 2, two days when mass arrests and tear gas were used to disperse Occupy Oakland protesters. The first phase of the investigation will look into the events of October 25 and should produce results within 90 days, city officials said.

James Chanin, a civil rights attorney who has headed up litigation against the Oakland Police Department several times, questioned the appointment of Frazier to the review team. Chanin was one of the attorneys who led the civil rights lawsuit against the city over the “Riders” police brutality case, and the city is currently working through a Negotiated Settlement Agreement that mandates reforms to the police department’s procedures.

Chanin believes appointing Frazier to lead the independent review team is a conflict of interest because Frazier was also hired by the city to oversee court-approved changes within OPD related to the Riders case. Frazier “is a consultant with the city,” Chanin said. “I wouldn’t call the [investigation] independent.”

“When you hire someone on retainer,” Chanin added of Frazier, “it’s not fair or independent.”

But Frazier and city officials say his previous work for the city has concluded and that he can be an impartial observer. After the city announced Oct. 13 that Interim Police Chief Howard Jordan would fill in for former chief Anthony Batts after he resigned in early October, Frazier was brought on by the city as special adviser to help implement the court-mandated provisions of the Riders settlement leading up to a review set for January, said Karen Boyd, spokesperson for the City Administrator. But after the first raid on Occupy Oakland, his work did not continue.

“The work [Frazier] did was getting up to speed with OPD and its structure,” she said. “It was sort of introductory.”

Frazier said he was on the job for six weeks before Mayor Jean Quan put out a bid for the investigation team. After his consulting firm, the Frazier Group, won the contract, he suspended his work on the Riders NSA, he said.

His brief time working with the city and his years of work with law enforcement agencies will not impact his ability to be independent or impartial, said Frazier. “I don’t have any loyalty to OPD,” he said. “If mistakes were made, then recommendations will be made to fix them.”

In his time investigating incidents at numerous police departments, including in L.A. and Detroit, he said, he observed that independent reviews happen all the time and are a reliable tool to investigating incidents. “There’s an old saying,” he said, “they pay me to chop the wood, the chips fall where they may.”

Frazier brought on three other ex-law enforcement officials to conduct the investigation: Donald K. Anders, former deputy chief of the San Jose Police Department; Michael R. Hillman, former deputy chief from the Los Angeles Police Department; and Captain Richard L. Cashdollar of the United States Coast Guard. All members of the team have deep roots in command and police tactics.

While a review team comprised of only law enforcement experts can be fair, Chanin said, having a more diverse make up would be optimal, such as including civil rights lawyers or academic experts. “In a perfect world, which they can create, there would be balance,” he said.

Shon Kay, an Oakland resident and Occupy Oakland participant, said the makeup of the review team keeps the investigation within the law enforcement “boy’s club.” He said that he would prefer that the OPD publicly release the names of all officers who used force against protesters, a process he would consider more transparent. “They know exactly who did what already,” he said. “The fact that they need an independent investigation shows that the OPD is not being forthcoming.”

“There are videos of everything that happened,” Kay continued. “Look at the videos. Look at the law. It doesn’t take $100,000 to figure it out.”

Occupiers are concerned over Frazier’s former ties to the Police Executive Research Forum, a non-profit law enforcement organization that facilitated two conference calls with police departments nationwide in how to handle Occupy protests; Frazier was a former president of the board of directors.

During the press conference announcing the investigation, Frazier said the team is comprised of law enforcement experts due to “legal access issues,” but added that a civil rights attorney may be called on due to the complexities involved, such as mutual aid.

This new review may be the fifth investigation looking into how police handled themselves during several confrontations with protesters since Occupy started in October. The OPD’s Internal Affairs and the Citizen Police Review Board are pursuing their own investigations.

The federally appointed monitor overseeing the department in the wake of the Riders lawsuit may be looking into events to see whether they violate the Negotiated Settlement Agreement, Chanin said, although the OPD has not been able to confirm whether Occupy-related events will indeed be part of the court’s next NSA review in January.

“When you got a city with the debt that Oakland does, I question if another investigation is really necessary, ” he said.

OPD also conducted its own internal review where disciplinary action was taken, Jordan said during the December press conference, but he wouldn’t elaborate on details as it was considered a “personnel matter.”

The city is also currently embroiled in a lawsuit brought about by Scott Campbell, a videographer who said he was shot by police on November 2 with a bean bag projectile while filming the confrontation with protesters. His suit has been joined by other plaintiffs who are being represented by the National Lawyers’ Guild and the American Civil Liberties Union.

The lawsuit, filed on November 14, alleges that excessive force was used by police against Occupy Oakland protesters, which violated the department’s crowd control policies and has intimidated people from protesting by making them afraid to come out for fear of police violence.

Rachel Lederman, a lawyer with the National Lawyers’ Guild representing the plaintiffs, said it was good that the city to launch an independent investigation into the policing of the Occupy Oakland protests. But she added that her group will continue their own investigation into the matter. “We’re determined to seek redress in federal courts instead of relying on Oakland’s investigation,” Lederman said.

Boyd said it’s important to have an independent, third-party investigation to complement other ones that are in progress to offer a “higher level of scrutiny.”

“It’s important so the public knows there’s an outside view of the investigations,” she said.

Originally published on Oakland North

Just hours after two Oakland Police Department officers escorted a man who identified himself as a property owner of a plot in West Oakland encamped by members of Occupy Oakland, police raided and disbanded the camp, leading to at least one arrest.

On December 22, occupiers set up camp at a triangular lot at 20th Street and Mandela Parkway, a plot they believed to be owned by the city. But city assessor’s records show that the plot is indeed owned by a number of people, including Brian Collins, Henry Wong and Hemmat and Dokhanchy Associates.

On Wednesday afternoon, a man who identified himself as Ed, and would not give his last name, toured the area with two police officers and said he was the property’s owner.

Police officers returned around 5 p.m. on Wendesday as the occupiers were eating dinner. They gave campers 10 minutes to disperse, according to numerous witness accounts.  Shortly thereafter, about 30 police officers entered the property and detained a group of about 25 people.

Most were cited and released for trespassing, although one person was arrested for failing to produce identification, according to several witnesses at the scene.

Debi Mills, a camper at the site who has been homeless for some time, said the camp provided food and security. She had arrived there last Thursday after bouncing around places in Berkeley. “Now we’re moving again,” Mills said. “We’re a nomadic occupation. We will not stop.”

OPD officers place numerous “No Trespassing” signs around the gates of the private lot where Occupy Oakland protesters were camping.

As onlookers yelled at police, officers posted “No Trespassing” signs around the gates of the property, while Ed, the man who had identified himself as an owner of the property, wrapped a chain around the entrance and locked it with a padlock.

After police left the scene, a protester ripped down the “No Trespassing” signs, and the gates were opened in order to allow people to gather tents, food and other materials left inside the property when police told them to disperse.

As this reporter left to file this story, the remaining 30 or so protesters were gathering food and preparing to complete their meal on a public street outside the property.

“Who wants to finish dinner?” yelled one protester, eliciting cheers of approval from the others there.

Originally published on Oakland North

Activists with Occupy Oakland have taken over a vacant industrial lot on the corner of Mandela Parkway and 20th Street establishing a small camp with a kitchen setup, but may soon face eviction.

The lot, which is currently fenced off with barbed wire, hosts about 16 tents, but the protesters may soon be asked to leave. Police arrived Wednesday afternoon to survey the land with a person who claimed to be its owner, although the occupiers at the camp contend that that the property is owned by the city and that they will remain there.

The camp, which was established on December 22, was one of Occupy Oakland’s Tactical Action Committee’s autonomous actions, actions that are developed and executed in secrecy in order to control strategic information until the last possible moment, said one woman who was part of the committee.

“I’m all about autonomous actions and doing things behind the scenes,” said a woman at the camp who did not give her name, “not because of the secrecy, but to announce it at the right time in order to gain support and avoid crackdowns.”

Julian Lewis-Tatman, an occupier at the camp, said they claimed the space because they identified it as owned by the city and wanted to create a safe space to feed and shelter the homeless. “We’re just feeding the homeless,” he said, “and trying to give them a warm place to stay.”

Lewis-Tatman said that surrounding businesses support the camp. On Wednesday afternoon, across the street from the camp, a few employees with the nearby Global Fire and Safety Inc. stood outside and talked about it. One employee, Bobby Safikhani, said that the camp wasn’t hurting anybody and that he supported the goals of the protesters. “They just need better PR,” he said.

While this reporter was talking to people at the camp, two OPD officers arrived to escort a man who identified himself as Ed — he wouldn’t give his last name — and said he is an owner of the property. “We bought it from the city five years ago,” the main said outside the lot to a group of people.

As they walked around the camp and inspected the land, the protesters demanded documentation of ownership, saying that their records search produced no ownership results.“I don’t know what you guys are talking about,” the man responded.

According to records available at the Assessor’s Office and Recorder, the city sold the land to Brian Collins, Henry Wong and Hemmat and Dokhanchy Associates after an auction of the property in 2006. A deed transfer from March 14, 2006, shows that a transfer tax of $6,225 was paid over the parcel, which indicates that the buyers paid about $415,000 for the property.

In 2009, according to a Planning Commission staff report, a property line error from the original purchase led to a swap of land with the city, approved by the Planning Commission, to avoid including land that was actually CalTrans property. A 2011 document shows an amended deed with those corrections.

Oakland Police Department Sgt. Sekou Millington, who was on scene at the camp, said that after the owners file an official report and if their ownership is verified, action could be taken against the camp. “At this point, it is trespassing,” he said.

One of the occupiers talked with Millington about the ownership issue and said that the campers had looked up the records themselves and found that the property wasn’t owned. The occupier added that the property was unchained when the group arrived.

“I hear what you’re saying,” Millington replied, “but the property is owned by someone else. You guys are not welcomed on the property.”

After the disbanding of Occupy Oakland’s main camp on November 14, a number of autonomous actions have been happening across the city, including the occupation of a foreclosed home on 10th Street and Mandela Parkway, a 24-hour vigil on Frank Ogawa Plaza and a daily Interfaith group space on the plaza where protesters hand out information. A group also occupied a raft in the middle of Lake Merritt for nearly a week in mid-December.

After the arrival of the police at the Mandela camp, occupiers wouldn’t allow reporters back onto the property. Lewis-Tatman said before going back into the camp that he was “crystal clear” that the property was not owned, and that they would continue to camp there.

“He’s not proven to us that he’s the owner,” Lewis-Tatman said of the main who claimed to own the property.

Update: Shortly after this story was published, Oakland police officers arrived to disperse the camp. You can read the update here.

Originally published on the East Bay Express

Few could have predicted the coming of the Occupy movement and the ripples it created on the fabric of American society. In its short, three-month life, the movement has shifted the political calculus from the drum-beating march toward uncompromising austerity to the real and largely ignored issue of economic inequality that has spread to the middle class like a contagion.

Despite a swift crackdown on the movement’s first incarnation — encampments of public space — Occupy, particularly in the Bay Area, shows little sign of disappearing outright. But tactics are changing. Gone are the tent cities that defined the movement; what is next is Occupy 2.0.

Given the current economic and political climate, it’s no surprise that such a spontaneous, national movement would spring forth from America’s youth. Youth unemployment is among the highest it’s been since 1948 at 23.7 percent, closer to 40 percent for black youth. And taxes on the most wealthy have been trending downward since the Eighties. Today, the nation’s One Percent captures 40 percent of all the wealth.

But high unemployment and the growing chasm between rich and poor also have empowered today’s youth to take action. They’re a generation frustrated with a system that they see as thoroughly rotten — a hopeless circus of weekly governmental tragedies that would make the Greeks shudder. Eddie, a 23-year-old native of Ohio, is one such youth. After graduating college and trying six times to find a job back home, he decided to travel from Occupy to Occupy in order to help the movement along. “I find humanitarian care and warmth here in the Occupy Nation,” he explained.

Diane Reiner, a 57-year-old member of Occupy Oakland, contends that this movement also is different from the protests of the Sixties and Seventies, when the mantra was “Don’t trust anyone over thirty.” Even though the Occupy movement skews toward those who are in their twenties and thirties, it is rather inclusive, Reiner noted. David, a 28-year-old elementary school teacher, added that a number of youth present in the movement are street kids, those who have disengaged from the system for one reason or another. Youth also have been more present during direct actions.

Indeed, after a handful of youth planted a flag at Zuccotti Park in New York City on September 17, the Occupy movement spread like a passionate wildfire to virtually every major city in the country. In California, there were, at its peak in early November, at least one hundred active occupations, twenty of which were encampments. The Bay Area saw at least sixteen Occupies materialize, not including colleges and universities, and encampments popped up in San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley, UC Berkeley, and San Jose.

Although Occupy Wall Street is considered the flagship for the movement, San Francisco protesters marched on the Financial District on the same day OWS was founded, blossoming into Occupy SF shortly thereafter. Occupy SF would see itself pushed around downtown for a month until finding a home at Justin Herman Plaza.

Occupy Oakland established a camp at Frank Ogawa Plaza on October 10, and it quickly ballooned to more than one hundred people. Two weeks later, hundreds of riot police from OPD and sixteen other law enforcement agencies dismantled the camp during an early-morning raid, only to spawn a backlash later that day where thousands shut down the downtown area.

It was there that police unleashed tear gas and less-than-lethal projectiles on a largely peaceful group of protesters, not once but five times over the course of that night after having had bottles thrown at them. Scott Olsen, an Iraqi War veteran, was shot in the head by police with a tear gas canister and became the movement’s living martyr.

But what happened in Oakland was not unique. Law enforcement agencies, armed with a decade’s worth of anti-terrorism training and Homeland Security funding, were used by dozens of mayors and university presidents across the country to uproot protesters from encampments. Police at UC Berkeley used batons to beat protesters who linked arms and refused to move. Videographer Scott Campbell was shot with a projectile by Oakland police on November 3 while video-recording a line of officers, and another military veteran was hit by cops that night, causing his spleen to rupture while in custody.

Few Wall Street executives have been criminally charged for their role in destroying the economy, but thousands have been arrested nationwide for peacefully protesting, including at least five hundred people in San Francisco and Oakland, and at UC Berkeley. The price tag to evict campers also was not without cost to taxpayers: Oakland spent at least $2.4 million and San Francisco at least $1 million. This dichotomy reflects a system that mostly forgives those who set the country on a path to economic ruin, yet arrests others for camping, David noted. “The courts are there to enforce the status quo; the status quo is capitalism,” he said.

Locally, Occupy Oakland became the most militant, perhaps because of the history between activists and police. Vandals using so-called Black Bloc tactics wielded considerable influence over Occupy Oakland, and protesters here were the least willing to negotiate with authorities. Occupiers booed Mayor Jean Quan at their General Assembly when she tried to address the crowd, and police were denied access to the encampment to deal with troublesome people.

Yet for all of its uncompromising ideology, it was Occupy Oakland that executed the first successful general strike in America since 1946, drawing well over ten thousand marchers who succeeded in shutting down the Port of Oakland on November 2. That victory, however, was marred by the smashed windows, barricade fires, and the rampant graffiti by a handful of vandals in downtown the next morning. The result led to a contentious discussion in Occupy Oakland about nonviolence, where some wanted a resolution embracing it, while others instead favored a “diversity of tactics” that effectively condoned violent action.

Oakland’s militancy was balanced by Occupy SF’s diplomatic attitude. Occupiers in the city vigorously negotiated with officials for weeks in an attempt to bring the camp to code. In the beginning, the occupiers were praised by city officials, but after Occupy Oakland’s camp was cleared by police on November 14, Mayor Ed Lee and the San Francisco camp grew increasingly frustrated with one another. “The (occupiers) that talked to their city had a good relationship in a way that didn’t violate their autonomy,” said Scott Anansi Rossi, who is a member of Occupy SF’s Welcome Committee. “On paper, we were very hopeful. Maybe the city saw that we weren’t a threat. Maybe we shouldn’t have taken Ed Lee’s word.”

After Lee offered Occupy SF a home one block away from one of the most dangerous areas of the Mission, the camp split between those who wanted a permanent home and those who didn’t want to stray from the Occupy message. After a marathon seven-hour General Assembly, the offer was declined and on December 5, after weeks of tension, the camp was cleared by SFPD.

But the camps, as a tactic, were successful in that they created a constant presence for the movement, one that allowed passersby to stop in and learn about what was happening. It also provided a safe space for the often-diffuse homeless community to congregate, get sleep, food, and basic medical attention. “It was a valid part of the movement,” Reiner said, “and it was worth defending.”

But, as Rossi pointed out, the camps also were a public relations crisis, with media focusing on images of downtrodden individuals and running sensationalist pieces about health and sanitation conditions rather than about the movement’s message.

And now, with the camps disbanded, the Occupy movement is shifting tactics. Oakland and San Francisco have jumped into foreclosure defense, occupying homes of families facing eviction because they defaulted on their mortgages. In Oakland, there are at least two foreclosure defenses in progress. Also, a handful of folks are holding down a 24-hour vigil at Frank Ogawa Plaza in order to maintain a public presence about issues of homelessness and economic inequality.

Occupy SF is also employing “asymmetrical protesting,” essentially a whack-a-mole revolution involving unannounced mini-occupations that can disappear in a moment’s notice.

“If you have a bunch of actions happening at the same time, the police aren’t trained for that model,” Rossi explained. “I don’t even know where [the occupation is] going to be until it’s up and running.”

There’s also greater coordination happening between Occupies. Oakland, again, led the rest by organizing the largely successful West Coast port shutdown, which impacted ports in Washington, Hawaii, and Houston, and effectively shut down the Port of Oakland. Oakland also is working with at least twelve other Occupies on a national radio program, Reiner said. And there is Occupy Congress, set for January 17, to lobby Congress during its upcoming session.

But what the future holds for Occupy is largely up to each individual offshoot. While some may get involved with electoral politics, there are sure to be more marches, more strikes, more shutdowns, and, likely, more confrontations with police. The movement, to be sure, is just beginning, and the stakes promise to rise as November 2012 approaches.

“This is a young, growing movement in its infancy. It’s not a one-message movement,” Reiner said. “This is real, this is unpredictable.”