The Google bus blockades are not over! Separate protest events will be happening on Friday May 1 in two different parts of Oakland, in recognition of International Workers' Day, a.k.a. May Day. The first, designed to "disrupt the tech commute" to protest Oakland gentrification will involve blocking tech shuttles that pull up beside the MacArthur BART station on 40th Street between 7:30 and 9:30 a.m. The second, organized by the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) Local 10 and Occupy Oakland, will attempt to shut down the Port of Oakland in connection with Black Lives Matter, saying "Disrupting commerce in this country is one means to find viable solutions to STOP POLICE TERROR."
The tech shuttle protest, as posted on IndyBay, echoes the sentiments of similar protests that happened in San Francisco in early 2014, and comes just two months after the Chronicle declared the anti-tech protest movement already dead. Per the posting:
Oakland is seeing an unprecedented wave of gentrification creeping in from every direction. The rich have begun colonizing North Oakland, West Oakland, and Downtown. Their tech buses, their pricey cafes, and their luxury apartments have begun to appear with alarming frequency. This May Day, we will deliver a simple message to these colonizers during their morning commute.
The posting about the Port of Oakland protest echoes similar attempts to shut down the Port that have occurred in the wake of the killing of Oscar Grant, and during the height of Occupy in late 2011. The plan is to march from the APL Terminal at the Port (1395 Middle Harbor Road) to Frank Ogawa Plaza a.k.a. Oscar Grant Plaza.
Again, much like the protests two weeks ago in San Francisco, we're seeing the economic and gentrification tensions currently stressing the Bay Area being conflated with the national movement against police killings of unarmed black men. It remains to be seen if these two separate Oakland actions will converge on downtown, and if, per usual, opportunistic anarchists will use the gathering to run around breaking shit and lighting things on fire.
Maybe they can keep the two separate messages from getting muddied this time?
Oh, but it looks like there is an evening event too, at 7 p.m. Friday at Latham Square (Broadway and Telegraph), next to Frank Ogawa Plaza, which is just dubbed an Anti-Capitalist March.
