The attempt by Occupy Oakland to initiate a “general strike” on 2 November
2011 in response to the massive police attack on their encampment a week earlier struck a
chord with tens of thousands of working people in the San Francisco Bay Area and across
North America. It should not be called a “general strike” because the vast
majority of workers went to work, but it was nonetheless a powerful mobilization which, at
its height, involved some 30-40,000 people. There was no “business as usual”
in Oakland that day, as some shops closed and demonstrators forced several bank branches
to shut down. Daytime shipping was reduced at the port of Oakland, before being entirely
blocked by a mass demonstration in the evening.
The capitalist media sought to play up the fact that a few bank windows were broken by
“black bloc” participants, but attempts to discredit the mobilization as
“violent” fell flat. A few days earlier, Copwatch had posted a video on YouTube which identified
two police infiltrators wearing black clothes at Occupy Oakland.
After the main demonstrations ended, the police brutally attacked a few hundred people
attempting to occupy a vacant building previously used by the Travelers’ Aid Society
(an advocacy organization for the homeless) which had been closed due to funding cuts. Had
this occupation been carried out as part of the mass protest, it might have provided an
important political focus for opposition to Oakland’s cops and Democratic Party
administration.
During the day the police kept a low profile and did not attempt to prevent the
protests. Oakland’s “1%” was certainly aware that, despite the
foot-dragging of the union tops, there was substantial sentiment among the ranks for
walking out and joining the action. The scale of the demonstrations and their labor
orientation point to the possibility of more powerful mobilizations in the
future—but this will require a political fight in the union movement to build a
class-struggle leadership committed to ousting the pro-capitalist misleaders and breaking
with the Democrats once and for all.
The following IBT statement was distributed in Oakland in the days
leading up to the 2 November 2011 protest.
Whenever Iranian or Syrian police teargas and beat anti-regime protesters, the White
House is quick to issue an outraged denunciation. Yet state repression has routinely been
used by the American ruling class against any movement it considers a potentially serious
political challenge (even those whose actions are limited to the supposed constitutional
rights to “free speech” and “free assembly”). The violent response
to the movement spawned by Occupy Wall Street (OWS) is the most recent example.
On 24 September [2011], barely a week after OWS began, New York cops attacked marchers
on their way to Union Square, arresting more than 80. A week later, on 1 October, 700
protesters were arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge. On 12 October, New York Mayor Michael
Bloomberg announced that the OWS camp at Zuccotti Park would be removed. But the
outpouring of solidarity was so great that the Bloomberg administration had to back
off—at least temporarily.
Police Repression Fuels Resistance
It would be unrealistic to imagine that each instance of premeditated police violence
(or the threat of same) will indefinitely continue to generate ever greater support for
the movement against corporate tyranny. Police attacks on Occupy protesters in Chicago,
Atlanta, Boston, Denver and other cities have reportedly been somewhat more successful.
Yet it has clearly come as an unpleasant surprise for America’s rulers that a large
swath of the population has disregarded the mainstream media’s depiction of the
Occupy movement as a mix of youthful naifs and unkempt, socially-marginal malcontents.
On Friday, 28 October, Mitt Romney, campaigning for the Republican presidential
nomination in traditionally conservative New Hampshire, found it expedient to join
President Obama in claiming to “sympathize” with key concerns of the OWS
protesters. Their sympathy is evidence of the fact that, at least so far, the combination
of police repression and bourgeois propaganda has failed to make a dent in a movement that
was initially written off as juvenile theatrics. Popular support for the Occupiers has
risen in lockstep with public awareness of their message—the complaint that in what
purports to be the land of the free, the “1%” at the top lord it over the
other “99%.” While oversimplified, it is nonetheless a potent idea and open to
a spectrum of interpretations. One protester, who was on the right track, carried a sign
that read: “When the rich steal from the poor it’s called business. When the
poor fight back it’s called violence.”
Oakland Mayor Jean Quan, who gave the order for an assault on the Occupy encampment in
her city on 25 October [2011], did not anticipate the public’s revulsion at the
scenes of police brutality and violence that quickly circulated on the internet. Anger has
focused on a potentially life-threatening injury suffered by Scott Olsen, a 24-year-old
former U.S. Marine and member of Iraq Veterans Against the War, whose head was split open
by a teargas canister.
A few weeks prior to ordering the attack, Quan, a “left” Democrat who once
identified with the defunct Maoist Communist Workers Party, had been proclaiming her
support for the Occupy movement. Her first response to the widespread popular outrage at
the police assault was to deny personal responsibility. When that did not fly, she
“apologized” for the attack and met with Olsen’s parents to express her
“concern” for his condition. When Quan attempted to speak at a rally of Occupy
supporters on Thursday, 27 October, she was booed off the stage.
Resisting the Violence of the Ruling Class
Rather than cowing the militants, the attack on the Oakland encampment appears to have
outraged them. A meeting of a couple of thousand protesters the next night voted
overwhelmingly in favor of attempting to launch a one-day general strike on Wednesday, 2
November. (The Oakland General Assembly operates on the basis of a “modified”
consensus model where any proposal with 90 percent support is adopted.)
The Bay Area has long been a stronghold of the left and workers’ movement in
America and the last general strike that ever took place in the U.S. occurred in Oakland
in 1946. The series of port shutdowns carried out in recent years by the International
Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) in defense of Mumia Abu-Jamal, in opposition to the
Iraq war and in protest of the racist police murder of Oscar Grant has doubtless helped
the activists of Occupy Oakland understand the potential political and social power of the
labor movement.
There has been some union support for the proposed mass strike—ILWU Local 10 is
backing a blockade of the Port of Oakland on the evening of 2 November, and the Oakland
Education Association (teachers) and Alameda County Carpenters Local 713 have endorsed the
protest and called on their members to support the action. Yet it does not appear that
these unions are actually prepared to officially strike on 2 November. The labor
bureaucrats representing city workers have negotiated a deal with management to allow
their members to use leave-time in order to participate in the protests, but this makes it
a matter of individual choice rather than collective action.
Capitalism Can’t Be Fixed—Expropriate the ‘1%’!
It is unfortunate that this general strike initiative, which could link the demands of
organized and unorganized workers, is constrained by the timidity of a union leadership
that shudders at the idea of breaking the “no-strike” clauses in the contracts
they negotiated with the bosses. But even with these limitations, this call represents an
important step forward for the Occupy movement. It not only gives political expression to
the intense opposition to the brutal suppression of the right to protest and free
assembly, but also points in the direction of the future labor-centered mass actions
necessary to challenge and ultimately uproot the domination of the “1%,” i.e.,
the capitalist ruling class. Capitalism can’t be fixed—it is a social
system based on exploitation and no combination of Robin Hood tax, jobs bill, tightened
financial regulations or any other reform can change that. To solve the fundamental
problems the Occupy movement is attempting to address, it is necessary to construct a
revolutionary party capable of leading the working class and oppressed in expropriating
the “1%” and reconstructing society on an egalitarian, socialist basis with
full employment and universal access to free post-secondary education, decent housing and
quality healthcare—a social order in which economic activity is geared to meeting
the needs of the many, rather than the enrichment of a few.
Hands Off ‘Occupy’ Protesters—Drop All Charges
Now!
Break with the Democrats—Build a Revolutionary Workers’
Party!
Expropriate the Banks & Corporations with No Compensation!
Capitalism Can’t Be Fixed—Forward to a Workers’
Government!