We just came across an interesting editorial regarding last weekend's Occupy Oakland kerfuffle in which a stalwart member of the bandwagon expresses distaste for the lack of strategy and general stupidity of what happened, and renounces the local movement altogether. She blames "misdirected anger ... the lack of long term strategy, and it's the justification of violence and the idea that a group of mostly out-of-towners can force their will on a community."
Though a number of those arrested Saturday were, in fact, Oakland or Alameda County residents, blogger Kazu Haga goes on much anecdotal evidence of opportunist protesters/anarchists coming from outside the city to enjoy the mayhem something we've certainly seen before like in the aftermath of the Mehserle verdict. This was partly why she voted for the name change from Occupy Oakland to Decolonize Oakland, which didn't pass the General Assembly.
But after what happened in Oakland last night, I’m starting to feel that “Occupy” is actually a fitting name. The vast majority of the people who were arrested yesterday don’t live in Oakland, and that is not opinion, that is fact. Their actions are costing this city a lot of money, during a time when city employees are getting laid off. And their actions go against the wishes of most people in this community, as evidenced by the fact that the numbers for these actions dwindle every time... When people that are not from a certain community come in and force their will on another community, what do you call that? Until those who are acting out in the streets invest more in listening to the concerns of real Oaklanders, swallow their ego and vanguard-ism and support the needs of Oakland, it’s perhaps fitting that they call themselves “Occupiers.”
This of course isn't the first fraying of the fabric of the movement that we've seen, and likely won't be the last. But she makes a number of cogent points, especially about how, in Oakland's case, this has become all about expressing anger toward the police, and not really about the principles of Occupy Wall Street at all.
