OAKLAND AND JERUSALEM BECOME TWIN CITIES

October 27, 2011 at 14:10 (Activism, Class Struggle, Nonviolent Resistance, Occupy Wall Street, Police Brutality)

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At the unrestrained attack on the Oakland encampment a 24 yr. old Iraq vet (2 tours) was hit in the head by a police fired projectile.  He’s in a coma – swollen brain.  Thousands in Oakland have re-taken the camp site which is right across from their City Hall.  Late last night when they heard what happened the NY occupiers held a big late night march around the financial district.  Reporters on TV were very histrionic showing it.  It was a big group but outside of chanting they were just walking – no threat to anyone or anything. …. a lesson taught by zion.

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I was not surprised when I learned that the same company that supplies the Israeli army with teargas rounds and other weapons of mass suppression is selling its dangerous wares to the Oakland police.

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Palestine in Oakland

by Adam Horowitz

Woman in a wheelchair tries to escape the tear gas the Oakland Police Department launched upon the protesters. (Photo: Occupy Together)

Last night police in Oakland, California cracked down on protesters in the Occupy Oakland movement in a possibly ominous sign of things to come. Mother Jones reports that law enforcement used rubber bullets, tear gas, and flash-bang grenades to attack the protesters. The tactical similarities to Israel’s treatment of nonviolent Palestinian protesters were obvious to many, but they go deeper than that. Max Blumenthal writes the Oakland police used many of the same weapons:

The police repression on display in Oakland reminded me of tactics I witnessed the Israeli army employ against Palestinian popular struggle demonstrations in occupied West Bank villages like Nabi Saleh, Ni’lin and Bilin. So I was not surprised when I learned that the same company that supplies the Israeli army with teargas rounds and other weapons of mass suppression is selling its dangerous wares to the Oakland police. The company is Defense Technology, a Casper, Wyoming based arms firm that claims to “specialize in less lethal technology” and other “crowd management products.” Defense Tech sells everything from rubber-coated teargas rounds that bounce in order to maximize gas dispersal to 40 millimeter “direct impact” sponge rounds to “specialty impact” 12 gauge rubber bullets.

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Poet Amirah Mizrahi made a similar connection in a piece she wrote for the Occupy Writers series:

oakland, 25 october 2011

I. second person present

when you are there
nothing else
is real.

tear gas makes you calm
clear-headed
surprisingly
a warm comfortable room
is disorienting

the shaking you feel
is each cell rising up
to protest with you
each person marching
is a cell
in the blood stream
of resistance flowing
steadily

broadway
is a vein

II. first person past

today
i was wadi salib 1959
i was musrara 1971
i was palestine in oakland
like never before i was
all the places
in all the radical histories
i know and don’t know

i heard a trumpet in a marching band
play a tune i recognized
bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao ciao ciao
clapping hands marching feet i gave
away shirts as scarves
to shield faces

today i was a time
place comma date
that some day some one will be
when she is again marching
in the streets and
knowing history
holding it
making
it.

III. future perfect

there is a moment of realization
that a new world
is on the horizon we
work hard for her
slowly, painfully we
recognize

that there is still work
to be done tomorrow we
go home, wash
tear gas out
of our hair
clean our wounds
each other’s wounds

we remind each other:
love yourself
& build
for tomorrow.

How far will these connections resonate with the broader Occupy Together movement? Blumenthal ends:

Some Occupy Wall Street activists have argued that Palestine must remain segregated from the movement’s agenda. It is a distraction from the essential economic issues that drive the protests, they say, and turns the majority of Americans off. But the issue is becoming increasingly difficult to avoid now that the protesters are confronted with the very same weapons Israel uses to crush unarmed Palestinian resistance.

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