Tommy the Traveler...
Posted on 07/11/2010 8:58:04 AM PDT by SmithL
OAKLAND — Nearly 1,000 people filled the street in front of Oakland City Hall on Thursday evening. They gathered to vent, pray, and ask how a Los Angeles jury could find Johannes Mehserle, a white former BART police officer, guilty of involuntary manslaughter for fatally shooting Oscar Grant III, an unarmed, 22-year-old black man from Hayward, in the back.
At first, the crowd was electric, but not volatile. To respond with violence would dishonor Grant's memory, they said. Hundreds of Oakland police officers watched and endured taunts, spits and rocks from a small group that tried, but failed, to incite other demonstrators. The officers, to their credit, did not retaliate.
But something happened when the sky darkened. And once again, Oakland made national headlines for all the wrong reasons. The earlier images of peaceful assembly were quickly exchanged for video of smashed windows, looters with boxes of shoes, and fires in trash bins.
From the Dec. 16, 1773, Boston Tea Party protest that helped found our nation to the 1960s
civil rights marches in the South, history has shown that it doesn't take much for rallies to escalate into trouble, whether it's the protesters or the police who spark the violence.
But the agitators who spurred the window-smashing rampage through downtown Oakland last year and again last week had their own agenda, and it did not involve justice for Grant.
As business owners boarded up their windows and surveyed the wreckage of their stores Friday morning, Oakland police confirmed that all but 19 of the 78 people arrested for parole violations, arson, property damage or failure to disperse came from outside Oakland. In fact, 19 live outside the Bay Area and 12 were from other states.
So why were they here? Is it no longer possible to stage a demonstration or protest without outsiders showing up to cause trouble?
Robin Einhorn, a professor of history at UC Berkeley, said little has changed since the 18th century, when colonists demonstrated against taxation without representation. It didn't take much to turn a peaceful demonstration into an ugly scene.
"Anything can cause crowds to go haywire," Einhorn said. "In 1886, Chicago, it was the Haymarket riots. It started with a peaceful demonstration. The mayor was there, it was all good and he goes home. Then somebody, they don't know who, threw a bomb at police."
The ensuing riots sparked by that action lasted days and resulted in the deaths of six police officers. Several anarchists were hanged, even though the authorities were never sure who threw the bomb.
"People were watching speeches — of course, it might have been incited through rabble-rousing speeches — but the point is, anything can cause something to become violent," Einhorn said. "This is not a new thing."
Incessantly texting
What has changed is the way people far and wide find out about events. Many people today predominantly communicate via social networks, YouTube, text messages and e-mail.
On Thursday, people in the Oakland crowd were incessantly texting, and hooligans who smashed store windows were stopping to snap photos and record videos of themselves to share with their friends.
Michael Walker, a member of the Coalition for Justice for Oscar Grant, one of the groups that organized Thursday night's post-verdict rally at 14th Street and Broadway, called the peaceful gathering of young and old "monumental." He didn't condone the property damage, but he wasn't surprised that a small group of agitators was later able to excite some in the crowd, given the involuntary manslaughter verdict Mehserle received.
"People are emotional, agitated, so they are easy to influence. It doesn't take much to egg things on," he said.
"If there are large groups and if there are some who want to be (contrary), no matter how few, they will do what they intend to do," he added.
Oakland Councilmember Larry Reid was at the rally, standing near a couple of young men who said they had driven all day from Oregon to be there. They were wearing red and blue bandannas and were weighed down by heavy backpacks, clues that police used to identify members of anarchist groups that sparked the vandalism, Reid said.
As the much of the crowd started to leave before dark, he saw one of the men throw a bottle with liquid in it at the window of a Walgreens pharmacy, but the plate glass did not break.
"There were people who were there to take advantage of the situation, who were hellbent on destruction," Reid said. "There certainly were agitators who came into our city and incited some of the young Oakland folks to engage in some of the same activities they engaged in."
'A long time to recover'
Once people get caught up in the emotions of the protest, they often don't think about the consequences, Reid said. He watched that happen in his own neighborhood in Cincinnati in April 1968.
"When Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated, there were riots all over the country," he said. "(African-Americans) have a tendency to destroy our own communities and it takes such a long time to recover."
That didn't happen in black communities in Oakland and San Francisco back then, largely because the Black Panther Party went to the communities and urged people to stay calm, said Billy X Jennings, the party's historian.
"The Black Panther Party did not believe in rioting," Jennings said. "It was formed after the Watts riots (in Los Angeles) and most of the destruction happened in the black community. So one of the first party policies was to forget mass rioting in the streets because it is so unorganized and properties and homes are destroyed."
He said he's not against anarchy, but some groups advocate destruction, regardless of the situation.
"Some people might have been bent on revenge and destruction, but that's not the way you do it, because it's short-lived and misguided," Jennings said. "You might think you are striking a blow against the system, but you might be destroying some small-businessperson's livelihood. Just because you are mad at the system doesn't give you the right to tear up property."
'Wild, ruffian behavior'
Paul Cobb, publisher of the Oakland Post newspaper, was a student when he joined King on the Selma-to-Montgomery march in Alabama in March 1965. He is amazed by what now goes on at demonstrations in Oakland, and how a few outsiders can hijack a cause for their own enjoyment. They care nothing about Grant, they just want to get on TV so their friends can see them smashing things up, he said.
"The nature of the protest hasn't changed, but the people who are organizing have changed," Cobb said. "In the '60s it was usually clergy, or community leaders. They didn't need to destroy anything, they wanted to peacefully assemble.
"The people who (cause trouble in Oakland) are poachers. They say, 'Hey let's go have some fun, let's hustle this black protest and show our friends how we can really (expletive) things up.' There's a lot of wild, ruffian behavior."
Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums said he was proud of the peaceful actions of most Oakland citizens and the way police conducted themselves in the hours after the verdict was announced. But he said that such openness allowed some people to exploit the situation.
Walker, of the Coalition for Justice for Oscar Grant, said such trade-offs are to be expected, and he said the police were smart to contain it to a small area and let it play out.
"The stuff that happened later aside, what we were able to do between the hours of 4 and 8:30 was monumental," Walker said. "More than 1,000 people flooded the streets "... young and old alike, regardless of generational barriers. We can come together as people and force change."
Human beings are pack animals, and there’s a significant amount of instinctual hard-wiring in our brains that says “do what the rest of the pack does.
The two best examples of this are how yawning and vomiting are both “contagious” within groups. The former to flush our bodies with oxygen in preparation of flight/fight, the latter to purge our systems in the event one member of the “pack” has eaten contaminated food.
In early October 1992 I was part of a small group of Young Republicans that infiltrated a much larger group of Clintonistas who were protesting an appearance by George HW Bush. The Clintonistas were chanting “Four More Weeks”. We just wanted to have some fun, see how long it would take for them to locate us and kick us out if we started chanting “Four More Years” from within their herd.
However, things turned out MUCH differently than expected when everyone around us started chanting “Four More Years” soon after we did. Including the guy at the front with the bullhorn. Took them a while to notice, I think the thing that triggered them was the main group of YRs across the street who stopped chanting and were looking at them with silent bemusement.
So that’s what a community activist does.
Anonymity in the crowd, espescially after dark.
These people seek to be unknown. Get their names and you will have no trouble out of them.
The general population in Oakland don’t need outsiders to help them riot. Neither did the Watts riots,the Detroit riots,and Chicago. When the weather is hot, the sun goes down, people like this will riot a the drop of a hat. They destroy their own neighborhoods just because they can and they can loot and destroy whatever they want. Note that the Police in Oakland said “We contained them in a given area”. Instead of containing them, they should have gone in and arrested them all. The more we stand back and let this go on, the more it will happen. Just look at the big cities. I lived through the Watts riots and more went on at that time than was reported. People in Watts complained about the police in the area and claimed racism by the police. The police department put mostly black police in Watts after the riots and the people complained even more. The black police were harder on them than the white police. If these people want racism, they will bring it on themselves.
The something for nothing ,Looting Obama voter bunch it is a cultural thing that has been encouraged by lack of punishment and shooting down the criminals breaking into business for robbery.
Tommy the Traveler...
It’s a matter of public record that Barry’s only job prior to working in politics was working on a Foundation Board, working closely with his personal/professional friend Domestic Terrorist Bill Ayers. When the President has been a long-time supporter of an agitator/terrorist such as Ayers you have to expect a sharp uptick in public demonstrations turning into violent mobs. That’s what we voted for. It’s the Change we asked for.
What a poor example; if the reporter is extrapolating from the professor, then she can be excused fro being no stupider than Chris Matthews. But if it's the U. of Cal. prof, then he needs to resign in ignominy.
This is a variation of the Everybody-does-it defense. It is anybody-will-do-it defense. Liberals are notorious for it. You and I know dang well that if someone got into a fist fight at a Tea Party, the news would be plastered everywhere.
In this cae, we need someone who can turn violent mobs protests into protestors.
correction: “case”, not “cae”. Sorry.
Once more: “In this case, we need someone to turn violent mobs into protestors.”
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[Art.] "The Black Panther Party did not believe in rioting," [Billy "X"] Jennings said. "It was formed after the Watts riots (in Los Angeles) and most of the destruction happened in the black community. So one of the first party policies was to forget mass rioting in the streets because it is so unorganized and properties and homes are destroyed."
Uh, Billy, nice try, Superfly, but that ain't what the Panthers were saying back then; I'm old enough to remember, and yes, I was paying attention. The Panthers were telling the brothers, "Don't riot over here -- let's go over on the other side of the underpass, let's burn down white people's houses, let's beat the piss out of white people out in the street, let's burn their businesses down!"
And they were all about, "if the piiiigs come up in here, then we're gonna do this, and this, and that." That was the Panthers. Funny you seem to have forgotten.
That's what the Panthers were putting around back then.
One good, long, ragged volley will take the riot out of any crowd.
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