Police - Back the Hell off Occupy Oakland and the Occupy Movement!

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Youth marching back to City Hall
after being tear gassed by police
photo credit: Jay Finneburgh


10-25-11 Statement by Revolution Books 
Police - Back the Hell off Occupy Oakland and the Occupy Movement!
This Is so Not Over!  
The Whole Damn System Is Guilty!

Youth in stand-off with police after
gassed & marching back to City Hall
photo credit: Jay Finneburgh






This morning(10-25-11) the Oakland Police, along with other police forces, launched a violent military assault against the non-violent Occupy Oakland encampment and arrested 75 who would not surrender.  By this evening over 100 people have been arrested.  People were beaten, including a disabled woman. One man was beaten so badly he couldn’t walk to the paddy wagon.  Peoples’ belonging were trashed.

Boots Riley speaks to crowd of 500
at Oakland Public Library. 10-25-11
In the late afternoon hundreds of people regrouped at the public library and marched back to the area around Oscar Grant Plaza, their numbers growing. Again people defied the police and the powers-that-be. Again the police launched multiple violent attacks on the people, lobbing tear gas, bean bag projectiles and flash/.bang grenades.

Teachers contingent in march to
police station/city hall. 10-25-11




Some of the media has reported police’ lies that they launched their attacks in response to being pelted with bottles and even injured by demonstrators, but the truth is that 16 different law enforcement agencies converged on downtown Oakland bristling with weaponry to put down peaceful protesters with violent force. 

Injured vet attended after being hit in
the head by a tear gas canister.
photo credit: Jay Finneburgh
Through at least 5 tear gas attacks people continued to stay in the streets. Throughout the evening and late into the night hundreds remained downtown, marching and defying police threats. Some were literally dancing in the streets in the midst of tear gas. “Rise up, rise up, rise up with the people of the world!” they chanted. “Let’s go/Oakland!” and “the role of the police: serve and protect – not us– but the 1%!”

Scene lit up by projectile
fired directly at ppl who
helping wounded vet
photo: Jay Finneburgh


Mayor Quan called this a “peaceful resolution,” claiming it wasn’t about suppressing the peoples’ rights – it was about “health,” “sanitation” and “public safety.”  These are bald-faced lies.  The City of Oakland, and the capitalist-imperialist system it’s part of, are slashing healthcare, “sanitation,” and all manner of social services.  This system can’t provide millions with jobs.  And where’s the “public safety” for those subjected to the Oakland Police Dept.’s daily insults and brutality – or who’ve been shot down in cold blood by these killers?!

The attack was unprovoked, unjust, and complete outrageous!  The rulers yammer on about the Occupy Movement needing demands.  Well – here’s one:  

People rushing vet away after being
fired on by police while attending.
photo credit: Jay Finneburgh


POLICE BACK THE HELL OFF
OCCUPY OAKLAND,
ALL PEOPLE’S OCCUPATIONS,
AND THE WHOLE OCCUPY MOVEMENT!  







These attacks show the truth of the statement by Bob Avakian, Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA:
“The role of the police is not to serve and protect the people. It is to serve and protect the system that rules over the people. To enforce the relations of exploitation and oppression, the conditions of poverty, misery and degradation into which the system has cast people and is determined to keep people in. The law and order the police are about, with all of their brutality and murder, is the law and the order that enforces all this oppression and madness.”  -BAsics, from the talks and writings of Bob Avakian, Chapter 1, Quote 24
At Occupations across the U.S. people have righteously stepped out of the bounds of “politics and protest as usual” and  put themselves on the line to seize public space to make known that people are suffering needlessly and unjustly and  are refusing to put up with it. The movement tapped into and is now a way for expressing the widespread discontent of millions, with international impact.  It has the potential to uncork even greater opposition and resistance to the way things are.  This must continue and not be stopped.

People must step up and spread this movement.  It needs to lead to even broader, more determined resistance as well as the emergence of a new, growing movement for revolution that can sweep away the horrors of imperialism and set to work creating a whole new world. 

All charges against those arrested today at Occupy Oakland must be dropped and Occupy Oakland must continue.

October 25, 2011
Revolution Books
2425 Channing Way at Telegraph Ave. Berkeley, CA  510-848-1196


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