Federal Judge Threatens Oakland Police Department With Court Takeover Over Ongoing Abuses
MARK KARLIN, EDITOR FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT
Due to past law enforcement abuses,
the Oakland Police Department (OPD) has been operating under the monitoring of a federal judge overseeing a consent decree since 2003.
Although it is difficult to set aside the deplorable record of the OPD in dealing with protesters for a moment - including Occupy Oakland advocates last Tuesday - it has a history of using excessive force on a daily basis. This includes the unnecessary drawing of guns, extortion and framing arrested individuals that is so egregious that the department may be put into receivership by the federal courts.
According to
a September 11, 2011 article in the Bay Citizen, just a little over a month prior to the infamous Tuesday assault on Occupy Oakland, the federal judge overseeing the police department lambasted their conduct:
In a hearing that exposed the breadth of the problems facing Oakland, a federal judge blasted the Oakland Police Department Thursday for failing to make court-ordered changes designed to reduce police misconduct and abuse.
Before a courtroom full of city leaders and police department brass, U.S. District Court Judge Thelton Henderson highlighted a series of issues that "indicate to me the city and the department still don't get it."
Shortly prior to the assault on Occupy Oakland, the superintendent of the OPD resigned - after the scathing report by the federal judge - and Howard Jordan was appointed as interim chief of police. What was Jordan's prior role as assistant chief of the OPD? According to the
San Francisco Chronicle, Jordan:
has been the Police Department's top authority on bringing the force into compliance with a consent decree ordered after four officers were accused more than a decade ago of systematically beating and framing suspects.
The consent decree is the most critical issue facing the department, as a federal judge warned last week that the city faces the possibility of having its Police Department placed in federal receivership due to its failure to fully comply with the court order. Such a move could result in the city losing control over its police budget, its biggest general fund expense.
Jordan, as interim superintendent, oversaw and directed the police action against Occupy Oakland supporters.
This federal consent decree is separate from the accord that the OPD was compelled to reach in 2004, which prohibits the use of potentially lethal and harmful suppression techniques against peaceful crowds, which
BuzzFlash at Truthout pointed out they violated last week.
There's a thin blue line in law enforcement between enforcing the law and breaking the law. It's clear to US District Court Judge Henderson that the OPD keeps crossing that line.
JUAN GONZALEZ: The legendary musicians David Crosby and Graham Nash at Occupy Wall Street, singing "Teach Your Children." Crosby and Nash visited the protest encampment on Tuesday and performed four songs for a packed crowd. Today they join us here, David Crosby and Graham Nash. Occupy Wall Street is the latest in a number of causes the musicians have supported in their historic careers, stretching back nearly five decades. They're best known as founding members of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, a supergroup that performed at Woodstock and sold millions of records. Prior to that, David Crosby was a member of The Byrds, and Graham Nash was in The Hollies. Both are two-time inductees into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Here's a brief sampling of some of their most famous songs.
[excerpts of "Teach Your Children," "Almost Cut My Hair," "Our House," "Marrakesh Express" and "Wooden Ships"]
JUAN GONZALEZ: Crosby and Nash recorded live this past summer. That was part of the trailer to a new DVD titled Crosby-Nash: In Concert.
Throughout their careers, politics has played a central role in their music. One of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young's most famous songs may be the Neil Young classic "Ohio," written in 1970, days after four students at Kent State were shot dead by the Ohio National Guard. Two years earlier, the band recorded the song "Chicago," following the violent police crackdown in Chicago during the Democratic National Convention in 1968.
AMY GOODMAN: In the '70s, Graham Nash helped form Musicians United for Safe Energy, which organized the historic "No Nukes" concert at Madison Square Garden in 1979. Just this past summer, Crosby, Stills & Nash played a No Nukes reunion show with Bonnie Raitt and Jackson Browne and others to raise money for relief efforts following the Japan nuclear meltdown.
David Crosby has been a longtime advocate of campaign finance reform, co-author of a book about music and activism called Stand and Be Counted: Making Music, Making History.
Well, David Crosby and Graham Nash, welcome to Democracy Now! It's great to have you with us.
GRAHAM NASH: How are you both?
DAVID CROSBY: Great to be here.
AMY GOODMAN: Very good. How was it going to Occupy Wall Street?
GRAHAM NASH: Phenomenal. It was an incredible experience. It really was. And what we were hearing down there, obviously, was the voice of the people.
AMY GOODMAN: What brought you there? How did this get organized?
DAVID CROSBY: Well, it's sort of part of our job. You know, part of our job is just to make music that makes you feel good, but part of our job is to be the town crier, the troubadour carrying a message and stuff. And when we saw what was going on down there, we definitely wanted to be a part of it, and taste it and feel it and find out, you know, what it was and how it worked, and try to figure out what was going to happen.
GRAHAM NASH: We were in Europe for the last seven weeks, so we kind of missed a lot of it. But we talked about it at every single concert. And we thought, well, you know, maybe there's a language barrier, maybe they're not going to understand. Every time we mentioned OWS, they cheered.
AMY GOODMAN: And were they having those kind of Occupy movements around Europe?
GRAHAM NASH: Indeed, and as David points out, larger than Zuccotti Park.
JUAN GONZALEZ: And the young people at Zuccotti Park, how many of them were familiar with your music?
GRAHAM NASH: A lot of them, because, as you can see from some of the video, they were singing like crazy. I mean, you know, all we had to do
DAVID CROSBY: It seemed like all of them, because they sang with us. That wasreally, for me, that was the best part.
AMY GOODMAN: It was like a variation on people's mic, you know, because there isn't an amplification system. You have to repeat what everyone says.
DAVID CROSBY: Yes, theyyou know, when they started singing along with us, it was very inspiring. I felt like I was really doing my job. I felt like I was Woody Guthrie right there.
AMY GOODMAN: Hey, would you guys consider singing another of the songs that you sang at Occupy Wall Street, right here without your guitars, without all the accoutrements?
GRAHAM NASH: Sure.
DAVID CROSBY: Yeah, sure.
GRAHAM NASH: Absolutely. This is a song that David wrote, called "What Are Their Names," an incredibly pointed piece of poetry.
DAVID CROSBY: They've sort of taken this one to be their official song, or at least they told us that.
GRAHAM NASH: Do you want us to do it now?
AMY GOODMAN: Please.
DAVID CROSBY AND GRAHAM NASH: [singing] Who are the men
Who really run this land?
And why do they run it
With such a thoughtless hand?
What are their names?
And on what streets do they live?
I'd like to ride right over
This afternoon and give
Them a piece of my mind
About peace for mankind
Peace is not an awful lot to ask
AMY GOODMAN: Graham Nash and David Crosby, live in our New York studio, just a few days after singing at Occupy Wall Street. Talk a little about music, art and protest.
GRAHAM NASH: We're humanbasically, we're human beings. We get up every morning the same as everybody else, take our first breath, thank God that we're alive, and get on with life. We get affected by what's going on around us. We're human beings and veryeven though we are, you know, "rock and roll stars," whatever that means, our feet are firmly planted on the ground, and we get affected by what happens to us as people, and we have to say something about it.
AMY GOODMAN: David?
DAVID CROSBY: Music is a terrific vehicle for ideas. It transmits ideas better than almost anything. And ideas are the most powerful stuff on the planet. And it's been something that we felt was an obligation and part of our job the whole time.
GRAHAM NASH: People have always called us, you know, a political band, but when you shoot four students down, and they get slaughtered for their constitutional right to address their government's failings, is that political, or is that a human story? When you bind and chain and gag Bobby Seale at the Democratic trial, is that political or is that a human story?
JUAN GONZALEZ: And what's been, over the years, the reaction of the industry, of the music industry, to your continued consistency on raising so many of these issues?
GRAHAM NASH: We don't
DAVID CROSBY: Some of them just really laugh at us. I mean, if youthe industry is a broad spectrum thing. On one side, you've got the Disney pop tart factory, and on the other, you've got people who come up and are of the school that came from The Weavers and Josh White and
GRAHAM NASH: Pete and Woody.
DAVID CROSBY: Pete and Woody, and there are people with consciences.
AMY GOODMAN: We put out on Facebook and Twitter that you guys were coming, and lots of people emailed us
DAVID CROSBY: Oh, boy.
AMY GOODMAN: tweeted us questions, posted them on Facebook. Leigh Kerr wrote in, asking, "How do today's demonstrations feel different from the demonstrations of the 1960s?"
GRAHAM NASH: They don't, to me.
DAVID CROSBY: Didn't, to me.
GRAHAM NASH: They're actually the same, same as Selma, same as women's rights, same as
DAVID CROSBY: Same kind of emotions, same kind of pride.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Except now they don't have mimeograph machines. They have
GRAHAM NASH: I know, but they have the internet.
JUAN GONZALEZ: computers and phones.
DAVID CROSBY: Well, it's much faster.
GRAHAM NASH: And that's the secret.
DAVID CROSBY: The spread of a movementlook, this thing is like a solution that's reaching saturation. And at the right point, all of a sudden, the crystal forms. And that's what's going on down there in that park. America is a solution, and it is reaching a saturation point. And this crystal is starting to happen all over the country. There's an awful lot of people who feel that they are not represented in Congress, that Congress has been bought by the large corporations, and that they are powerless, and that they are getting the short end of the stick. All across the political spectrum, even conservatives, feeling, you know, they're not being represented and that what was supposed to be their representation is
GRAHAM NASH: Doesn't exist.
DAVID CROSBY: Doesn't exist.
AMY GOODMAN: Maria Aytes-Wagner left this question on our Facebook page, said, "I think it is time for a concert to support the #Occupy Movement with all the good protest songs from the 1960s. Would you start the #OccupyMusic movement, before they take away our songs? Get all the groups together from Woodstock to make a new album to help the protesters." And she said those "donations would go to groups supporting the basic necessities to the forefront."
GRAHAM NASH: I think she has a fantastic idea, and we're going to think about that heavily.
DAVID CROSBY: Yeah, except for the line, "take away the songs." Nobody can take away the song. Nobody can own one, and nobody can shut it up.
GRAHAM NASH: And that's the power of music.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Graham, I'd like to ask you. Over the years, you've especially focused on nuclear power, nuclear energy, and the big concert, obviously, in '79 in Madison Square Garden, now recently after the Fukushima disaster. Your sense of where our world is going on this issue of nuclear power, especially those now who are saying, "Well, at least it's cleaner than coal, and it provides an opportunity to get away from fossil fuels"?
GRAHAM NASH: It's a complicated question. It may be cleaner than coal. We know what coal does, right? However, with a half-life of a quarter of a million years, who the hell is going to be able to take care of all this stuff? Where are we going to store the waste? Where are wehow are we going to protect them against terrorist activities, about transporting the waste across countries, to where? They tried in Yucca Mountain, and then they found that there was earthquakes and water down there that would affect the nuclear waste. So, we really have no idea what we're going to do with all this waste. And it's mounting by the second.
DAVID CROSBY: And that's only the first part of the problem. The second part is that human beings make mistakes. That gave us Chernobyl. That gave us Three Mile Island. Mother Nature can kick our butts anytime she wants to. That gave us Fukushima. It's not safe. There are two plants in California right on the beach. One of them is on a fault line. It's 50 miles to, windward, my house. I keepI sort of look that way to make sure I spot the plume when it happens. There's nothing safe about it, and there's nothing green about poisoning your country.
AMY GOODMAN: Since our Facebook friend asked about Woodstock, let's go back to '69 for a moment to that part of Crosby, Stills & Nash's performance right there, upstate New York.
CROSBY, STILLS & NASH: [singing] It's getting to the point
Where I'm no fun anymore
I am sorry
Sometimes it hurts so badly
I must cry out loud
I am lonely
I am yours, you are mine
You are what you are
You make it hard
Remember what we've said
And done and felt about each other
Oh babe, have mercy
Don't let the past remind us
Of what we are not now
I am not dreaming
I am yours, you are mine
You are what you are
You make it hard
AMY GOODMAN: Ah, and Graham Nash and David Crosby, and Graham Nash, still with us here today in New York. As you look back to 1969, your thoughts on today?
GRAHAM NASH: It hasn't changed much. There are many problems that we have to deal with as human beings, and we need to do it gracefully and nonviolently.
AMY GOODMAN: We're going to leave it there, but we're going to continue the interview, and we're going to post it online at democracynow.org. Graham Nash, David Crosby, legendary musicians who playedwell, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young and The Byrds, two-time inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
From LAT, on their newly elected leader of OWS-Denver, Shelby.
"Shelby is closer to a person than any corporation: She can bleed, she can breed and she can show emotion. Either Shelby is a person, or corporations aren't people," the Occupy Denver statement said, quoting one of the border collie's supporters.
In keeping with her new prominence, Shelby's dance card has quickly filled up. The protesters plan to introduce her to Hancock and Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper this week, their statement said. She is also scheduled to lead an Occupy Denver march "against Corporate Personhood" this weekend.
Weekend Edition November 11-13, 2011
The Fight Has Begun
The Pending Police Crackdown on Occupy Portland
by BEN SCHREINER
On Thursday, Portland Mayor Sam Adams announced that Occupy Portland would be forcibly cleared from its present encampments this Sunday morning at 12:01 am.
Occupy participants in Portland have now occupied two city parks (Chapman and Lownsdale Squares) for one month. In addition, since this past Saturday, a small group of activists have sat chained together in an adjacent federal park (Terry Schrunk Plaza). An initial attempt to establish a new encampment in Terry Schrunk had been blocked just days earlier,
as federal agents forcibly removed campers.
Though receiving little attention nationally, Occupy Portland is one of the country's largest encampments. Hundreds of people now permanently reside in the downtown camps, with campers ranging from student and political activists to veterans and the homeless. In a recent visit, Michael Moore even dubbed the encampment to be "the largest occupation in the country."
Until recently, the encampment has enjoyed the general support of city leaders, with the Mayor waving the city's no camping ordinance to accommodate the protest. However, as the encampment has grown, and as the occupiers have sought to both expand their message to new parts of the city and obtain much needed additional space in which to camp, city support has waned. On October 30, twenty-seven protesters were arrested in an attempt to occupy a park in the city's affluent Pearl District; and, as previously mentioned, on November 1st, the city's police force aided in
a federal led eviction of protesters from Terry Shrunk Plaza, arresting ten more in the process.
Mayor Adams, copying the pretexts employed by city leaders across the country, has now decided to end the previously permissible occupation via force by citing concerns over "health and sanitation issues," along with an unease over increased reports of crime and drug use within the camp. The camp's swelling homeless population has no doubt attributed to such problems. And though such chronic problems are hardly the responsibility of Occupy Portland, the city has chosen to lay the blame squarely on the movement. Such scapegoating can assuredly be attributable to having the city's destitute thrust from the darkened underpasses and marginal fringes to the city's core for all to see.
The Mayor's decision to now evict the occupiers has also been influenced by local business interests, which have voiced vocal opposition to the encampment from the beginning. And with the holiday shopping season now here, business leaders have intensified their push for the city to clear the park, arguing that holiday shoppers would be deterred from shopping in the vicinity of the occupied parks (an argument sure to soon crop up in cities across the nation). Who, after all, wants to be troubled with meddlesome politics, or the god forbid the homeless, when one shops for one's holiday trinkets? Atlas then, it seems that Occupy Portland truly went too far: threatening the potential comfort of the holiday consumer. Thus, it's game over. The camp, as the Mayor said, is now "unsustainable."
And though Mayor Adams is indeed threatening the removal and arrest of Occupy participants, he, as have many other "liberal" city mayors across the nation, continues to voice his "support" for the movement. As the Mayor said on Thursday, "It is my sincere hope that the movement, with its focus on widespread economic inequity, will flourish in its next phase" (i.e., a much hoped transition into electoral politics). Such "support," needless to say, is brazenly superficial. It is rather difficult to claim solidarity with a movement, as Oakland Mayor Jean Quan learned, while you busily send bands of armed men after the participants in order to ferry them off in paddy wagons to jail.
It is unclear what action Occupy Portland may take in response to the pending crackdown, though initial calls were made for mobilizations over the weekend. But with a strong labor movement in the regionenergized by the militant battle undertaken by the longshoremen of ILWU Local 21 at the port of Longview, which lies just to the North of the citya call akin to that made in Oakland for a general city-wide strike would seem to offer potential.
But what is definitely certain for now, as Portland readies to join the ranks of the cities choosing to crackdown on Occupy encampments, is that the nationwide Occupy movement, despite the incessant claims from its critics to the contrary, has already begun to transition to the next phase of the struggle. For as Gandhi said, first they ignore you; then they laugh at you; then they fight you; then you win. The fight in Portland and beyond, then, has begun.
Ben Schreiner is a freelance writer living in Salem, Oregon. He may be reached at
bnschreiner@gmail.com.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/11/11/t...-portland/
Shelby's reaction was to wag her tail. Beyond that, Shelby declined comment at this time. 