The 2011 Oakland General Strike
We had called for the first “convergence” of the Oakland general strike for 9:00 a.m. At 8:45 maybe 300 people had arrived and were standing around on the sidewalk chatting amongst themselves. I was worried.
I shouldn’t have been. I was thinking “union” time, in which people generally show up around the time they are supposed to. With some encouragement, the few hundred went out into the intersection and started to stop traffic. (Note: Broadway and 14th St. – two large streets – is the absolute center of Oakland.) Then a few more people and a few more arrived. The intersection started filling up. More and more crowded into the intersection. It became packed.
Then it started overflowing up and down 14th St. and up and down Broadway. They arrived by the hundreds, by the thousands. The entire intersection was packed and we kicked of the speaking program.
And still more arrived.
It’s hard to estimate crowd numbers, but it must have been 10-20,000 at a minimum.
We had some speakers and then off the crowd marched to shut down some banks. The crowd thinned out, but then more arrived. Up on the speakers’ platform, there was constant speaking but – even more important – music. Out in the streets, the masses of people marched off to one target – generally a bank – after another. At one point they marched off to a huge very “hip” non-union grocery chain – Whole Foods – and shut it down.
The speakers were a huge variety. The majority of the small committee who made up the speakers’ committee had insisted that Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor in the President Clinton administration, speak. They also insisted that a local “radical” lawyer known for donating his services to radical causes, be allowed to speak. This lawyer, named Dan Siegel, is a perfect example of the link between the Democrats and the radical movement.
The young person whose sound system it was opposed their speaking, as did I. My idea was to get a little emergency meeting to change that decision. He had a better idea. He simply vetoed their speaking by saying that it was his sound system and if those two got up to speak he was going to pull the plug – shut off the sound. That took care of that.
The Nation of Islam showed up wanting to speak, but it had been agreed that there would be no religious speakers. Their minister stood by the end of the truck with his hands folded, looking very pious, waiting to be called up. That’s what he usually does at such rallies, but this time was different. After a series of people spoke, the music was turned on and he walked off.
These were just sidelights, though. The main point was who came to the Oakland General Strike, or the Oakland Commune, as one young comrade kept putting it. Amongst those many, many thousands was a huge sector of young people. In the past, we’ve had street demonstrations about cuts in education that attracted thousands of young people, but this was different because they weren’t just there for their own particular – almost their own individual – interests. They were there to do something about society in general.
The anti-capitalist message got out there on several occasions. At one point, three main principles were stressed: 1) Might makes right – we’ve taken the streets and shut down downtown Oakland simply because we have the power to do so. 2) Rely only on your own strength – No connection with the corporate powers. 3) You can’t control what you don’t own – you can’t control the banks and the giant corporations; we need public ownership of them.
One guy was marching around with a giant mirror on a picket stick. I borrowed his sign and got up on the stage. “We’ve been taught in America to seek a hero, one who can save the day, a savior. Whether that be Rambo or the president of the United States, we’re taught to wait for somebody to save the day for us. Well, here is your savior!” I held up the mirror. The crowd loved it.
The plan was for everybody to march down to the port of Oakland in the early evening and shut down the port. I was concerned about this because that would be the time that most workers – especially union workers – would be arriving. As far as shutting down the port – I’d seen probably a dozen such shut downs. Some were larger, some smaller, but what came of it the next day and the next month?
The problem was that I hadn’t actually seen such a shut down before, because all previous ones were accomplished by the Bay Area’s radical activist crowd. This one was accomplished primarily by the youth who’d never seen or done anything like this before. The fact that they could shut down the single most important industry in Oakland must have really impressed them, filled them with a sense of their own power and also given them a different sense of direction.
Towards the end of the day, a middle age very “middle America” couple came up to me. They asked for some help. The man was a clerk at one of the large supermarket chains. He’d been given 6 weeks notice that he has to take early retirement or when he retires he will lose major portions of his pension benefits. Meanwhile, his union – the United Food and Commercial Workers – had signed a contract extension through January 1. It should be stressed that a huge portion of the food stores’ profits come in November (Thanksgiving season) and the Christmas season, so the union was handing over their bargaining power on a silver platter. The woman said she’d been doing everything she could to get something done to change this and they came to the Oakland Occupation – the Oakland Commune – to see if they could get some help.
We got them up on the stage to speak and I introduced them to some other grocery workers. We talked about occupying the trust fund office of their union if necessary and we will get together soon.
The fact that a union worker would come to this general strike for help is enormously significant. It signals the beginning of the effect this movement will have on the union membership.
As for the unions as a whole, they set up a tent somewhat apart from the main action and fixed hamburgers and hot dogs all afternoon and evening. The head of the Alameda County Central Labor Council was there helping cook. Neither she nor any other top local labor leader asked to speak. This included the head of the teachers’ union in Oakland, who’d been invited and usually never misses a chance to talk at a microphone.
For once they showed some smarts. What they would have had to say would have been revealed to be the hollow words that they would have been and they knew it.
Two years ago, a huge student rally was held in downtown Oakland. It was held in the amphitheater in front of City Hall. That was the first robin of spring time. But sometimes the first robin – the bird that migrates South in the winter and whose appearance signifies that the end of winter is coming – sometimes you have to wait for quite awhile before spring actually comes after you’ve seen that first robin.
The Oakland General Strike could be called the 21st Century model of a general strike in the US. The unions have weakened enormously and, even more important, they have been seized around the neck by a conservative, timid hierarchy. This means that such a mass action will not originate on the job for the moment. This general strike was actually partially successful in shutting down Oakland, though, by mobilizing in the community as a whole. It won’t always necessarily be that way, but that’s how it is for the moment.
On the way back from the port of Oakland, I got to talking with a young guy – maybe 20 years old. It was the first time he’d ever been to something like this. He commented about how his grandpa had fought in the Vietnam War. Clearly, this was a large part of his consciousness. Slowly, through their own routes, the traditions of the ‘60s are finding their way back to the younger generation.
At some point, people – especially young people – start getting involved in something because that’s the “thing” to do. The Oakland General Strike was one of those “things”. It is the start of a new era. It didn’t come as we of the older generation expected, but here it is.
– Postino”
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