City Moves to Evict Occupy Oakland Protesters
The city of Oakland has served an eviction notice to protesters of the Occupy movement. The notice was posted on Thursday, stating that the park at Frank Ogawa Plaza must be cleared of all protesters by 10 p.m. Though it didn’t specify a date, the park was still occupied as of Friday.
Occupy Oakland is one of hundreds of protests taking place across the nation and across the world, where demonstrators peacefully (for the most part) protest the wealth gap, corporate greed, and many other hot-button issues that are highly relevant during these days. If you were only to read the local news accounts, this Occupy protest and others are nothing more than partying “hippies” with signage and loud speakers. But visiting one of the protests may change your mind.
The city says it’s a public health issue, that the protest camp has attracted rats, not to mention violence, alcohol, and drugs. “In recent days, camp conditions and occupants’ behavior have significantly deteriorated, and it is no longer manageable to maintain a public health and safety plan,” says the city’s notice.
Protesters don’t plan on leaving, chanting messages about holding the camp and resisting “by any means necessary.” While this doesn’t sound like the shouts of a peaceful protest, it could be that Occupy Oakland has actually deteriorated. “Things have changed dramatically this week, and many of the people who were here left because of the violence and fighting,” said one unemployed protester.
Many demonstrators of the Occupy movement, which has grown in cities across the country, have been rightfully critical of the media coverage. There seems to have been a push to paint the movement as a rag-tag group of young people who didn’t know exactly what they were protesting or what they wanted to achieve.
But, for the large part, protesters at these gatherings know exactly why they are there and just because there is no single, catchy tagline to sum up their litany of frustrations, they have been marginalized by the mainstream.
In many cases, where we are hearing about violence and filthy, illegal behaviors at these protests, they are stories of a select few—it’s the behaviors of a select few that have earned the entire collective a bad name.
In Oakland, and across the country, arrests at these gatherings are not unusual, though they are less common than some would think, considering the number of people turning out. Mostly these arrests are for violations of city ordinances or crimes like disorderly conduct.
If you’ve been arrested at an Occupy protest and have questions about your case, contact our offices today.
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