A Brief Tactical Analysis of #OccupySF's First Confrontation with SFPD

Recently, I received a call of solidarity and to action via social media around midnight. The OccupySF encampment was facing eviction by police. Comrades were in trouble so I raced to downtown San Francisco to show the members of the encampment, many of whom are from out of town, some real SF solidarity and how we handle the cops. Bay of Rage had this fantastic account of what went down, posted in less than 4 hours, which was impressive.

On the night of October 6th San Francisco Police attacked the Occupy SF encampment at the Federal Building on Market and Drum. After a day in which 800 people marched through downtown San Francisco in solidarity with the occupation of Wall Street in New York and elsewhere around the country, hundreds gathered at the site of the occupation. However by evening the police had administered an eviction notice to the occupiers claiming that the police would move in at midnight alongside the Department of Public Works to clear the plaza. Roughly around 10pm the police began to gather a block away from the occupation. Word circulated quickly and as both the occupiers and the police prepared roughly 150 people assembled at the occupation. After a few hours of waiting, debate, and nervous conversations within the occupation the police finally made their first move. Marching down the street, adorned with helmets and batons, the police escorted a line of Department of Public Works Vehicles. Standing between the occupiers and the living spaces that had been created since the occupations’ beginning, Department of Public Works workers were then forced to begin eradicating the space of any materials related to the occupation. The trucks were quickly filled with the same rapidity as the mood in the air began to intensify.

Almost spontaneously a large wooden pallet that the vehicles had not yet managed to collect was brought in front of one of the trucks. Immediately others began to follow bringing bodies and all material left behind in the encampment and surrounded the police and Department of Public Works vehicles. People grabbed anything they could find – garbage cans, street signs, cones and even the police’s own metal barricades to prevent the trucks from leaving as well as corner the police. While the police had tried to encircle and intimidate the occupation those there quickly used the opportunity to encircle and intimidate the police. As the SFPD closed in on the trucks standing off with what was now hundreds of people on market street and beautifully constructed barricades, they began to make way for the vehicles to leave. This created a series of small scuffles. Eventually the vehicles left and the barricades stood proudly on market street between the starry twilight of 2:30am and the confused fright of the SFPD.

 Having bore witness to these events, I wanted to share my tactical assessment the confrontation between the police and the occupiers.

The first thing that stands out in my mind is how quickly things escalated. At first I stood in disgust as people literally sat down, chanted ohm, and sang "We Shall Overcome" while the police were robbing their entire encampment. But soon people started to talk about blocking the trucks from leaving and encouraging others to do so. People, myself included hesitated but then one by one we all took to the street to block the DPW trucks.

Soon after, one person began to drag pallets out into the streets, then dozens followed his lead. I can not emphasize enough the spontaneity of the moment, these were not local anarchists who had marched together in the past, TOTAL STRANGERS were organically acting in unison to completely encircle the police and city trucks. The pallets soon formed a solid barrier; a comrade had the great ideas of lashing the elements of the barricade together with rope and bungee cords.

The cops, despite their best efforts at encirclement faced multiple rings of resistance, first people laying and sitting in the streets immediately in front of the police, then the barricades, then all the other protesters. They clearly were not expecting this level of resistance and only deployed one battalion (40 cops) and back up was a long time coming; in other words the police were outnumbered by protesters, almost 5:1. The protesters controlled the front line and had complete operational freedom in the other 300 degrees of the intersection, which allowed people to gather debris from up to a block away and deposit it in the street without fear of arrest. Because of the late/early hour, there were no pedestrians or business owners to get in the way or further complicate things, which further added to our tactical advantage.

It was an inspiring and beautiful moment to be a part of.

Stay tuned for more analysis of #occupysf's clashes with police and other frontline analysis from the San Francisco bay area.

Report Back: #opBART-2 Shutsdown Two SF BART Stations, 40+ Arrested

See my report back on the original #opBART protest here

After the seeing the very disorganized nature of the first #opBART, many people showed up for round two hoping to help the protest be a little more directed, energized and radical. This time I didn't bother to go into the station, foreseeing its closure and all the protesters ending up in UN plaza and instead just waited above ground. People milled about not sure what to do, what was happening, etc. Eventually three protesters on the platform were arrested for raising their voices and being too loud, including a local zaney but committed older female anarchist. Everybody else was forced out of the station and the above ground crowd rushed to look over the railing down into the station as people streamed out.

At that point the crowd was just looking around, when one of the many anarchists present yelled "Powell!" Which got everybody moving east along market, but on the sidewalk. Certain individuals dressed in dark clothes got people into the streets pretty quickly, simply by walking out into the streets and two or three people shouting "take the streets!"

The group of 30-50 people marched along Market St to the Ferry building, accompanied by both a vanguard and rearguard of police. When we reached the Ferry Building the cops blocked our entrance and there was a brief stand-off. At this point we had put ourselves at a tactical disadvantage, the police were in perfect position encircle/kettle the entire group. But they didn't and the group turned around, heading back west along Market, in the street, with police escort.

When the group reached UN Plaza, an overweight older man in red started running along the crowd throwing punches. He tried to assault a comrade near me and several people in the proximity rushed to stop a fight and chase the man off. The assailant ran off, which caused a large group of protesters and media to peel off from the main group, adding half a block of distance between the two groups. Allegedly he was an "angry commuter" but he served the role of a provocateur and split the main march.

The group continued on Market before returning to UN Plaza. At this point one person with a bullhorn brought people out into market to block traffic. He was arrested and folks continued to march before being kettled by the police, who at that point just wanted to make it go away as darkness fell, most likely.

There were a number of important lessons from this protest. The importance of having several people to continuously lead chants and to help the direction of a march cannot be understated, especially when there is no organizing group as with opBart. Hopefully these folks have bullhorn, but just yelling works too.

The person with the bullhorn gets heard, in this case it was an Alex Jones/NWO-conspiracy type; he was talking about the federal reserve, how 9/11 was an inside job, and I felt like was one step away from mentioning "the international Jewish banking conspiracy." Not that I am unsympathetic to these causes, rather that that messaging was extremely off-topic and not exactly what any group's "mass-line" should be composed of.

The other thing of note is that a good comrade talked to me about following the protest from his house. He was watching the livestream video from the news helicopter; listening to the BART radio dispatch online as well as reading the twitter streams relevant to the action. Given the pretty comprehensive perspective this allowed, my comrade found it really interesting in terms of analyzing both the actions of the protesters and the police. The BART radio provided invaluable insight as to how inept and ill prepared BART was for these protests.

Stay tuned for more accounts of the #opBart protests. They will be coming out slowly but eventually all of the protests will be covered