Occupy Oakland Safer Spaces Committee Statement on Tactics Used During General Strike

As Safer Spaces committee, we support a diversity of tactics and understand the need for autonomous groups to be able to organize fierce and brilliant actions, such as the building takeover on Wednesday evening.

Due to the complex nature of the Decolonize/Occupy movement, we also would like to make some suggestions to people who organize certain types of autonomous actions that carry with them a very high risk of police retaliation. These include actions such as “redecorating” police satellite headquarters, radically changing the appearance of bank storefronts, dumpster campfires, and taking over buildings very close to Oscar Grant Plaza.

1. Your tactics are part of a longer-term strategy with an end goal of collective liberation. We would like you to make those tactics accountable to that longer-term strategy in a direct way. This probably means checking in with folks who hold that longer-term strategy before you use high-risk tactics. If Occupy Oakland is permanently removed from Oscar Grant plaza, an ENORMOUS amount of organizing and infrastructure will be lost.

2. Your tactics need to be accountable to the people around you. There are a lot of amazing people at Occupy Oakland who live with intense mental health issues. There are a lot of folks at Occupy Oakland who are living with intense legal restrictions and physical disabilities. For many of these individuals, a cop attack could have dire consequences.

3. As a movement, we need TIME to bounce back from the trauma of a cop attack. We were assaulted by violent police a little more than a week ago. The mental health of the movement is key to its survival. Your tactics should also be accountable to our mental health