Police station windows smashed following huge Oakland rally
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
Downtown Oakland was on alert Saturday night following a peaceful protest that drew thousands of people in a show of solidarity against racial injustice and in support of protesters in Portland, Ore.
Hours after people had marched from Frank H. Ogawa Plaza along Broadway chanting, No justice, no peace, reports from the scene indicated a barricade of cops in front of a police station, with protesters projecting images like Defund police onto the building, smashing windows, using graffiti and using flares and fireworks.
Oakland police said on Twitter that some windows on the station were shattered, and messages were spray painted on the building.
Breaking windows, spray painting, shooting fireworks and pointing lasers at officers and helicopters, Oakland police said on Twitter. We ask for organizers to keep the protest peaceful. Oakland police end the tweet with the hashtag, WallofMoms.
Read more: https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Hundreds-gather-at-packed-Oakland-rally-to-show-15434658.php
Grokenstein
(5,728 posts)"Keep it peaceful or we'll break your skulls and kill you until you let us go back to breaking your skulls and killing you with impunity."
demosincebirth
(12,547 posts)oldsoftie
(12,637 posts)And if the worst arent arrested and exposed for whoever they are, it'll continue.
The fight against police brutality has already been hijacked by a dozen other "demands"
Humanist_Activist
(7,670 posts)Thekaspervote
(32,813 posts)Humanist_Activist
(7,670 posts)few windows, etc.
Those who are willing to attack people in defense of property(i.e. the police) are vastly more of a threat to the well being of others.
oldsoftie
(12,637 posts)Spraying "fuck the police" on a wall isnt art.
And yes, you have the right to defend PROPERTY. And that property is paid for by US. And a ton of our money will be spent to FIX it.
The collateral damage is that this activity pushes more people away than it brings in. Along with the extreme demands now being made that have nothing to do with the murder of George Floyd & police abuse of power
demosincebirth
(12,547 posts)Looting and violence follows. Im sure thats the pattern in many U.S. cities - just like clockwork. This is what the rest of the country sees, not the peaceful protests.
HotTeaBag
(1,206 posts)That's exactly the imagery he's is looking for, and unfortunately he's getting it.
oldsoftie
(12,637 posts)Dyedinthewoolliberal
(15,596 posts)Igel
(35,377 posts)breaking things and setting your kitchen on fire, you're likely to call it violence.
Until recently "violence" required physical action. So "silence is violence" was a reach of a metaphor.
A storm can be violent in destroying a house. No people need to be involved. Recently there's been a redefining to make what used to be violence into non-violence.
"Violent" has a connotation. It has a denotation. Some aware of this are trying to manipulate the denotation to serve their ends while keeping the connotation and shift it to things they want to assign a negative connotation to.
Linguistic manipulation is a tried and true way of manipulating a population. It hides what you're doing, it backfoots enemies, it deludes superficial people into changing what they think without changing what they think they think. A classic case is "the people". You define "the people" one way, and suddenly power shifts to the "right" people; you define it another way, and you can kill millions of "not really people". But language is like air, it's in the background, it's seldom noticed. Until it's so polluted it's harming people, so tained with carbon monoxide that it's killing people. Often, though, it's slow enough that we don't notice until we're too weak to do anything about it. There's a nifty work that shows how "the people" changes referents through a discourse, starting with "workers" in factories and streets and ends up with "the people" just including the supreme leader in a repressive regime, with anybody--or everybody--that disagrees with those views being "not really people." And if you're not really people, off to the camps with you.
Could have been Nazi Germany under discussion. But it was definitely not Germany discussed in that work.
Skittles
(153,226 posts)rockfordfile
(8,708 posts)Auggie
(31,213 posts)The crawl out from under the rocks when there's a protest Oakland
KY_EnviroGuy
(14,498 posts)Righteous protesters must monitor their groups for those who only want anarchy or to do damage for revenge and stop the damage to public and private property. Otherwise, things will not change or changes will come far more slowly.
Damage to property feeds Trump's narratives as he pits middle-class suburban and rural citizens against those in the cities.
Plus, city maintenance budgets are strapped to the limit already.
KY
oldsoftie
(12,637 posts)demosincebirth
(12,547 posts)Response to alp227 (Original post)
CountAllVotes This message was self-deleted by its author.
JonLP24
(29,322 posts)they turned people against each other among other things. Huey was likely right to be paranoid.
The issues they are protesting have existed during the entire US history. It should have been an issue that was addressed a long time ago.
LeftInTX
(25,646 posts)brush
(53,925 posts)Are you white?
oldsoftie
(12,637 posts)Thekaspervote
(32,813 posts)brush
(53,925 posts)brush
(53,925 posts)Last edited Sun Jul 26, 2020, 11:48 AM - Edit history (2)
and the Black Panther Party was an absolute champion of the black communities of west and east Oakland against a brutal Oakland Police Dept. then lead by the notorious police chief Darryl Gates, which is why I asked if he/she is white. Black folks, myself included, have different opinions of the BPP.
They were doing back in the sixties what the George Floyd protestors are doing now, fighting against police brutality which was routine, often and unreported then as there were no cellphone videos. The BPP actually armed themselves (legally) and patrolled the cops in an attempt to stop the brutalization. They also had a breakfast program that fed neighborhood kids for years, and they also published a newspaper that informed the community and helped them raise funds. They did a hell of a lot of good and were the forerunners of today's protestors so someone who didn't get it then, it's a puzzle to me as he/she didn't even live there. His/her uncle did.
JonLP24
(29,322 posts)Don't worry about it.
I also feel the same way about the Black Panther Party but that is because I actually research things.
brush
(53,925 posts)post on this progressive board.
Response to brush (Reply #8)
CountAllVotes This message was self-deleted by its author.
JonLP24
(29,322 posts)(Snip)
In 1969, Federal Bureau of Investigation Director J. Edgar Hoover described the party as "the greatest threat to the internal security of the country."[17][18][19] He developed and supervised an extensive counterintelligence program (COINTELPRO) of surveillance, infiltration, perjury, police harassment, and many other tactics, designed to undermine Panther leadership, incriminate and assassinate party members, discredit and criminalize the Party, and drain organizational resources and manpower. The program was responsible for the assassination of Fred Hampton,[20] and is accused of assassinating other Black Panther members, including Mark Clark.[21][22][23][24]
Government persecution initially contributed to the party's growth, as killings and arrests of Panthers increased its support among African Americans and the broad political left, who both valued the Panthers as a powerful force opposed to de facto segregation and the military draft. The party enrolled the most members and had the most influence in the Oakland-San Francisco Bay Area, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle, and Philadelphia.[25] There were active chapters in many prisons, at a time when an increasing number of young African-American men were being incarcerated.
(Snip)
August 1967, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) instructed its program "COINTELPRO" to "neutralize ... black nationalist hate groups" and other dissident groups. In September 1968, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover described the Black Panthers as "the greatest threat to the internal security of the country".[70] By 1969, the Black Panthers and their allies had become primary COINTELPRO targets, singled out in 233 of the 295 authorized "Black Nationalist" COINTELPRO actions.[71] The goals of the program were to prevent unification of militant black nationalist groups and to weaken their leadership, as well as to discredit them to reduce their support and growth. The initial targets included the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the Revolutionary Action Movement and the Nation of Islam, as well as leaders including the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Stokely Carmichael, H. Rap Brown, Maxwell Stanford and Elijah Muhammad.
COINTELPRO attempted to create rivalries between black nationalist factions, and to exploit existing ones. One such attempt was to "intensify the degree of animosity" between the Black Panthers and the Blackstone Rangers, a Chicago street gang. The FBI sent an anonymous letter to the Rangers' gang leader claiming that the Panthers were threatening his life, a letter whose intent was to provoke "preemptive" violence against Panther leadership. In Southern California, the FBI made similar efforts to exacerbate a "gang war" between the Black Panther Party and a black nationalist group called the US Organization, allegedly sending a provocative letter to the US Organization to increase existing antagonism.[72]
COINTELPRO also aimed to dismantle the Black Panther Party by targeting their social/community programs, most prominently Free Breakfast for Children. The success of Free Breakfast served to "shed light on the government's failure to address child poverty and hungerpointing to the limits of the nation's War on Poverty".[73] As the Party taught and provided for children more effectively than the government, the FBI denounced their efforts as a means of indoctrination. "Police and Federal Agents regularly harassed and intimidated program participants, supporters, and Party workers and sought to scare away donors and organizations that housed the programs like churches and community centers".[73][74]
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Panther_Party
I'm sure this wasn't publicized back then.
brush
(53,925 posts)Without more information on the BPP calling my question a cop out is just that.
Blues Heron
(5,948 posts)are they trying to blind people? That's fucking evil.
dalton99a
(81,648 posts)Hong Kong protesters use laser pointers to deter police, scramble facial recognition
Police label the hand-held lasers 'offensive weapons'
Adam Jacobson · CBC News · Posted: Aug 11, 2019 4:00 AM ET | Last Updated: August 11, 2019
Blues Heron
(5,948 posts)The path of violence is the wrong path.
oldsoftie
(12,637 posts)But if this stuff starts up in earnest, the officers are going to get a lot rougher a lot faster.
EX500rider
(10,882 posts)Does not sound very peaceful.
uncle ray
(3,157 posts)Steelrolled
(2,022 posts)But they are enabling the people who do.
I think they are largely doing it unwittingly. Many of the protesters are relatively young, and they might not realize the role they are playing.
Face it, even if you're not one to commit destruction, it is exciting being around it. It becomes a carnival atmosphere. I've experienced it many years ago.
Meanwhile the media just reports that the protesters became destructive. They are writing campaign ads for trump.