Noise Demo - Solidarity with the Grand Jury Resisters!

We need to take back the Plaza starting with our constant presence there and especially Making A Noise (Check out Robbie Robertson song Making a Noise). I'm sure the Anarchist will be there in force because they have to make up for not being there at their eight days of Anarchy. Just like labor wasn't there for their own May day as I did not see one labor on that day which ended for me at three pm. for calling telling the police to "fuck off you hall monitors".

We are pleased by the recent news of Maddy’s release, as the last Seattle Grand Jury resister has released. However, it must not be forgotten that the Grand Jury itself is not over, the witch hunt continues and the threat of prison still looms over the heads of all resisters, even those who have been previously jailed.

We will go ahead with our noise demo the 26th, in part as a celebration of the release of our comrades, in part as solidarity to them and many others who still face repression.

We are still looking for a sound system for the demo- any help would be greatly appreciated.

Somewhere around five o’clock, hours before people were to gather for the demonstration, some altercation occurred in downtown at 14th and Broadway, between a woman and group of people who were sitting by the plaza. We do not know what happened to spark it. However, it seemed to subside for the time being.

By 7:00 PM, a decent-sized crowd began to gather, and music played on a small speaker. Across the street, the previous altercation seemed to reappear out of nowhere, and someone ran inside the Walgreens as several dozen people, including many there for the demonstration, looked on. Police were on the scene in five to ten minutes, (they didn’t seem rushed) and by then most people had returned to OGP. When “Fuck The Police” by Lil Boosie came on, it turned the people of Oakland into a frenzy. Insults were hurled across the street as people joined in singing the song, most by average people who were not attending the demonstration. At 8 o’clock, as people started moving towards the street, an impromptu dance-off occurred. Finally, after some short but incendiary poetry, people ran off into the streets!

The march totaled around fifty, with at least a dozen or more being made up of people who did not plan on demonstrating, but had simply been embolden by the atmosphere, the music, the community. Non-political Oakland citizens were excited and had commandeered the evening against the police- in a more direct way that it had been intended, that is. Due to this fact, the frenzied group darted off south on Broadway, despite the initial plan to move north towards Uptown and cause a ruckus before approaching the police station and North County prison. We marched by the cops who watched us from across the street, reminding them that it was not a small minority of anarchists that were against them- Oakland as a whole is fed up with them.

We stopped in front of the police station, before moving towards the prison where the noisemakers were brought out and we yelled at the top of our lungs in solidarity with those locked inside. Prisoners banged on their walls, and flickered their lights at us. After that, we returned the way we came, and ended at Oscar Grant Plaza.

It did not go according the plan, and the message of the march had taken a different course, but it would have been counter-productive to fight the nature of the evening. We count it as a victory in and of itself that we provided a space of resistance for those who perhaps had never marched before. The true feature of the march- the many pamphlets on how Grand Juries were an abuse of power- still made there way into people’s hands, even though the message of the march had become straight up anti-police.

There were no arrests, a very festive atmosphere, and we look forward to future resistance!

P.S. thanks to the NLG for providing a legal observer!