Occupy Oakland issued a statement today that they intend, presumably after dark and after their non-camping supporters get off work, to attempt to re-occupy Oscar Grant Frank Ogawa Plaza today. After being kicked off their last two campgrounds — one at Snow Park near Lake Merritt and the most recent on a private lot adjacent to a foreclosed home in West Oakland — the Oakland occupiers have the grand intention today of "creat[ing] a model for a new wave of Occupation protest throughout the United States." We salute them, especially since the weather is way worse than it was when all this started, but it's unfortunate that this new wave may have to be porta-potty-free.

Given Ed Lee's success in not getting too much flack in the press for his dealing with Occupy SF — something C.W. Nevius notes in his column today — perhaps Oakland mayor Jean Quan and the OPD might want to try a hands-off approach with this one. It is getting cold out there after all. Just so long as no one else gets shot, of course.

For those critics who have enjoyed repeating Ann Coulter's mantra about the Occupy movement ("[Unlike tea partiers, they need] three things: showers, jobs, and a point."), particularly with regard to their lack of focus, the statement about Occupy Oakland's intentions today should spark some amusing discussion:

[It] said the group plans to install structures in Frank Ogawa Plaza that will be "symbolic and part of the vigil protest." They will include a teepee to honor the Sioux Indians, homeless workers during the Great Depression and San Francisco AIDS activists of the 1980s, it said.

[Chron]

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