Fuck Trump: Protesters Defy More Aggressive Police, Take Freeway on Day Two (photos/video)

(Gathered around the flag pole in Oscar Grant plaza, Oakland City Hall in the background.)


On the second night of post-election protests in Oakland, speakers address the those gathered from the raised concrete which encircles the flag pole in Oscar Grant plaza instead of from the back of a flatbed truck with a sound system as they had the previous day.

Oakland police showed up early with an industrial-sized tow truck and threatened to haul away the flatbed truck organizers had rented. After some negotiation, those who had rented the truck were allowed to drive it away themselves, but not after receiving citations.

Apparently, city leaders were operating on the idea that if they can silence, or greatly reduce the volume of, speakers at a rally, the defiance and vandalism that occurs later in the streets can be prevented. This didn't pan out as they might have hoped, however. Once organizers of the rally departed, a march proceeded as expected.

A squad of police swooped in to arrest and man who was standing around just before the march was about to embark, greatly riling up protesters. OPD has been known to do this in the past, especially prior to a number of the Occupy Oakland marches. In their preemptive attempts to control protesters that second night, police even kettled the march early on, but it is illegal and against their own crowd control policy to essentially do a mass arrest without any public warning and a chance to disperse.

Once the kettle was opened up, the march continued for hours. The temporary kettle didn't stop people's determination to raising a ruckus over Trump's election as the next president.

While the number of protesters and the level of vandalism was significantly less than the night before, protesters marched through downtown streets for hours and managed to blockade Interstate 580 in both directions at one point.

As the night wore on, and protest groups fragmented, it was not uncommon, if one sat still in any one location around Broadway or Telegraph for any length of time, to see a string of protesters marching in one direction, followed by a convoy of police vehicles, be passed by another convoy of police vehicles heading in the opposite direction to pursue another group of protesters in the distance.

All of downtown again seemed to be full of protesters and police in every direction, with slower moving bar-hopping passersby mixed in throughout.


Fuck Trump: Oakland Police Lose Control of the Streets on Day One (photos)
https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2016/11/13/18793523.php

Indybay feature on anti-Trump protests in and around the Bay Area: