After encountering several arrests at Frank Ogawa Plaza during the past few weeks, Occupy Oakland has turned the heat up a notch by organizing a "March Against Repression" Saturday night dubbed, "Fuck OPD." The organizers are demanding the release of their fellow activists who are currently in Santa Rita Jail, including Marcel Johnson, a homeless man who might be facing the three-strike law and was allegedly held in solitary confinement without his psychiatric medications for ten days.

The press release is below (emphasis theirs):

The City of Oakland is a war zone. The politicians, chamber of commerce, large scale property owners and Oakland Police Department daily work together to make our lives a living hell. Between the inflated rents, unemployment and consistent indiscriminate police violence there is not a day where the social forces that surround us do not attack the very foundations of our lives. Recently over the past weeks those who have actively participated in Occupy Oakland have been the targets of the OPD. At the vigil in Oscar Grant Plaza as well as in new occupations across the city, the OPD has coordinated a brutal campaign of repression and intimidation using counterinsurgency tactics such as targeted hit and run snatch squads. This is clearly an attempt to undermine the resurgence of the Oakland Commune in the new year. Dozens have been arrested these past weeks and many of them are still sitting in Santa Rita facing daily harassment and brutality at the hands of the Alameda Sheriffs.

This is a direct assault on comrades trying to change this hell we live in. This is a direct attack on people self organizing to take our city back into our own hands. This is coordinated police activity to destroy the Oakland Commune.

This is war.

This Saturday January 7th a 8pm meet at Oscar Grant Plaza at 14th and Broadway. We will march on the police and show them that we are capable of defending the commune and that we will not rest until all our comrades are once again running with us in the streets.

FREE ALL OCCUPY OAKLAND POLITICAL PRISONERS!
LONG LIVE THE OAKLAND COMMUNE!

FUCK THE OPD.