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Medium-sized Lebowski
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- Jun 20, 2010
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- Name
- The Dude
Tuesday's pre-dawn sweep of the Occupy Oakland encampment, which resulted in about 80 arrests, came after the diverse community of protesters refused to allow police and fire officials -- as well as at least two ambulance crews -- access to the area to provide services, city officials said.
Oakland had issued repeated warnings to the campers over the last week, citing an increase in public urination and defecation, rats and fire hazards from cooking. The greatest concern, however, stemmed from violence.
When the camp took shape Oct. 10, things were relatively harmonious: City officials, including Mayor Jean Quan, asserted their support for the protesters’ free-speech rights and the movement's values. A children's "village" was set up, along with a kitchen and "school" in which to conduct workshops.
Homeless individuals and families who had been living in the area were embraced by the makeshift community and became a part of it.
On Oct. 17, the first sexual assault was reported. But camp leaders declined to allow police and fire officials to conduct patrols.
By the following day, city officials said in a statement, "We began to receive numerous complaints of threatening, intimidating behavior…. public health and safety requirements were being ignored."
More sexual offenses, fighting and public drunkenness were reported. Officials also said one resident of the encampment had been severely beaten.
On Friday, Oakland demanded that protesters cease overnight camping. After a brief warning before Tuesday’s raid, about 30 of the 350 people present left voluntarily, officials said.
Those who helped build the encampment were distressed by the decision to tear it down, noting that tensions were being resolved internally and had led to uncommonly frank conversations about class, race, and gender during repeated public assemblies and committee meetings.
"There were internal problems, but we were working it out," said Kerie Campbell, 46, who co-founded the children's village and had set up a similar tent filled with donated toys, clothes and snacks at an ancillary encampment near Lake Merritt that also was raided Tuesday.
The children's tent at the main plaza was ripped apart by police, said Campbell, who has spent her days at the encampment but slept at home with her children.
"It's a blatant violation of our 1st Amendment rights," Campbell said of the raid as she sat with a sign calling for Quan’s recall. "This is going to make the movement pull together. It was a bad mistake. We'll go somewhere else. There are plenty of parks in Oakland."
Indeed, the Occupy Oakland movement put out a call for participants to meet near downtown this afternoon to plan future steps.
Over the weekend, Green Party members had helped organize a group of protesters who hoped to sit down to discuss their concerns with Quan. Among those named to the committee was Chino Marti, 28, who has spent his days at the camp and says he has "completely lost faith" in the mayor.
"The city says it's supportive of free speech and of us taking ownership of public spaces, but they obviously have no intention of supporting us if they're going to come down on us with cops," Marti said.
Quan was in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday. But she issued a statement after the raid, noting that although "many Oaklanders support the goals of the national Occupy Wall Street movement ... over the last week it was apparent that neither the demonstrators nor the City could maintain safe or sanitary conditions, or control the ongoing vandalism."
The plaza, she said, will "continue to be open as a free speech area from 6 am to 10 pm as soon as practical."
bluecoconuts
Legend
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Looks like they wanted to do a peaceful Occupy type protest like they've done (for the most part other than a few places) really around the globe... But Oakland is such a shithole they're just going to riot instead. No offense to anyone from there, or with friends/family there, but that place blows, I hate it. Never had good experiences in Oakland.
Carson Palmer trade demonstrations.
- Thread Starter Thread Starter
- #6
Thank goodness. I thought it was because of this
JaMarcus Russell: The most maligned figure in football tells his side of the story
From a chair in Maysville Barber Shop in Mobile—where he goes to have his head shaved three or four times a week—JaMarcus Russell tells senior writer L. Jon Wertheim (@jon_wertheim) his side of the story. Russell says that few people are aware of the factors that worked against him during his time with the Oakland Raiders, including:
The death of 11 family members or friends, including uncle and father figure Ray Ray: “I went through so much no one knew about. Go to a funeral on Saturday, fly into the game on Sunday. Then I hear, ‘He doesn’t lead by example.’ Really?”
What Russell regards as being betrayed by then coach Tom Cable: “I stuck my neck out for him. Didn’t complain when he benched me as the starter. Didn’t complain when he called the same plays five damn times. Didn’t [badmouth] him to other coaches. When the [media] asks me, I say, ‘He’s a good coach, a good guy.’ Then I hear he says I was the worst thing ever happened to the Raiders, if it weren’t for him we’d be in the playoffs?… It just got to where the game wasn’t fun for me.”
The lack of support from his teammates: “Things weren’t going right, and it felt sometimes like everything fell back on me. I take some responsibility, but I was one guy…. I may have missed a throw, but I didn’t give up 42 points, I didn’t miss a block.”
Unbeknownst to many, Russell has given generously to his hometown of Mobile. He’s paid for turkeys at Thanksgiving food drives, bought supplies and library books for local schools and uniforms for local sports teams, underwritten the renovation for his church, built ramps for wheelchair-bound residents and rewarded kids with straight A’s with bikes, MP3 players and GoPhones. Russell says: “If I do go broke, it’s going to be from providing for my neighborhood and my family.” So why isn’t his charitable work better known? “My business is my business. That’s how I prefer it. I gotta look up to God. I don’t gotta look out to no damn news cameras!”
Russell’s reputation as a “Santa Claus” of Mobile (in the words of a barbershop denizen at Maysville) contrasts sharply with the rumors that dogged him in Oakland. Russell also addressed those with Wertheim:
On reports that he slept during team meetings: “In the NFL, my first year, I had to be there at 6:30 [a.m.] before practice and be on the treadmill for an hour. Then meetings come, I sit down, eat my fruit. We watch film, and maybe I got tired. Coach Flip [quarterback coach John DeFilippo] pulled me aside and said, ‘What are you doing for night life?’ I said, ‘Coach, I’m just chilling.’ He said, ‘I need to get you checked out.’ I did the sleep test, and they said I had apnea.”
Life coach John Lucas, responding to reports that he “fired” Russell as a client: “I don’t know where that [report] came from. JaMarcus is a good kid, I’m telling you, who just needs to find his motivation. But we still talk. Have him tell you about his sleep apnea. A lot [of his issues] come from that. And no one knows it.”
Addressing rumors that he’s broke: “Football isn’t paying me now. You make $1 million a game and you can do whatever. It’s not like that anymore; I need to put myself in a place where those zeroes in the bank last for a long time. But I’m not broke. Far from it.”
Russell sums up the current state of his life—and his football prospects—thusly: “I’ll keep moving, man. But what if I don’t make it back to the NFL? I’ll be O.K. Being a competitor, I feel like I have unfinished business. Like, ‘It can’t end like this.’ But want to know the truth? I know that the game don’t owe me a damn thing.”
JaMarcus Russell: The most maligned figure in football tells his side of the story
From a chair in Maysville Barber Shop in Mobile—where he goes to have his head shaved three or four times a week—JaMarcus Russell tells senior writer L. Jon Wertheim (@jon_wertheim) his side of the story. Russell says that few people are aware of the factors that worked against him during his time with the Oakland Raiders, including:
The death of 11 family members or friends, including uncle and father figure Ray Ray: “I went through so much no one knew about. Go to a funeral on Saturday, fly into the game on Sunday. Then I hear, ‘He doesn’t lead by example.’ Really?”
What Russell regards as being betrayed by then coach Tom Cable: “I stuck my neck out for him. Didn’t complain when he benched me as the starter. Didn’t complain when he called the same plays five damn times. Didn’t [badmouth] him to other coaches. When the [media] asks me, I say, ‘He’s a good coach, a good guy.’ Then I hear he says I was the worst thing ever happened to the Raiders, if it weren’t for him we’d be in the playoffs?… It just got to where the game wasn’t fun for me.”
The lack of support from his teammates: “Things weren’t going right, and it felt sometimes like everything fell back on me. I take some responsibility, but I was one guy…. I may have missed a throw, but I didn’t give up 42 points, I didn’t miss a block.”
Unbeknownst to many, Russell has given generously to his hometown of Mobile. He’s paid for turkeys at Thanksgiving food drives, bought supplies and library books for local schools and uniforms for local sports teams, underwritten the renovation for his church, built ramps for wheelchair-bound residents and rewarded kids with straight A’s with bikes, MP3 players and GoPhones. Russell says: “If I do go broke, it’s going to be from providing for my neighborhood and my family.” So why isn’t his charitable work better known? “My business is my business. That’s how I prefer it. I gotta look up to God. I don’t gotta look out to no damn news cameras!”
Russell’s reputation as a “Santa Claus” of Mobile (in the words of a barbershop denizen at Maysville) contrasts sharply with the rumors that dogged him in Oakland. Russell also addressed those with Wertheim:
On reports that he slept during team meetings: “In the NFL, my first year, I had to be there at 6:30 [a.m.] before practice and be on the treadmill for an hour. Then meetings come, I sit down, eat my fruit. We watch film, and maybe I got tired. Coach Flip [quarterback coach John DeFilippo] pulled me aside and said, ‘What are you doing for night life?’ I said, ‘Coach, I’m just chilling.’ He said, ‘I need to get you checked out.’ I did the sleep test, and they said I had apnea.”
Life coach John Lucas, responding to reports that he “fired” Russell as a client: “I don’t know where that [report] came from. JaMarcus is a good kid, I’m telling you, who just needs to find his motivation. But we still talk. Have him tell you about his sleep apnea. A lot [of his issues] come from that. And no one knows it.”
Addressing rumors that he’s broke: “Football isn’t paying me now. You make $1 million a game and you can do whatever. It’s not like that anymore; I need to put myself in a place where those zeroes in the bank last for a long time. But I’m not broke. Far from it.”
Russell sums up the current state of his life—and his football prospects—thusly: “I’ll keep moving, man. But what if I don’t make it back to the NFL? I’ll be O.K. Being a competitor, I feel like I have unfinished business. Like, ‘It can’t end like this.’ But want to know the truth? I know that the game don’t owe me a damn thing.”