Occupy Oakland Flyer: “Don’t assume those who break the law or confront the police are “outside agitators.”

Via Zombie

Well, amongst the plethora of literature handed to me by various protesters was this orange flyer issued by the Occupy Oakland movement itself. For those who still harbor fantasies that the Occupiers really are mainstream, no really, they’re just being misrepresented, the manifesto removes any remaining doubts about their revolutionary bona fides.

The full text was posted on this site among others where you can read it in full.

Here are a few excepts:

Dear Oakland

Occupation is nothing new. The land we stand on is already occupied territory. The United States was founded upon the extermination or indigenous peoples and the colonization of their land, not to mention centuries of slavery and exploitation.
…

For a counter-occupation to be meaningful, it has to take this history into account. Furthermore, it shouldembrace the history of resistance in Oakland extending from the 1946 general strike, the Black Panther Party, the militancy of the ILWU, student occupations, and the current struggles against foreclosure and austerity.

[The above paragraph, inserted within quoted excerpts --Ed.]
…

The idea of redistributing wealth must not only be directed towards the “1%” but to all of us as well.

The problem isn’t just a few “bad apples.” The crisis is not the result of the selfishness of a few investment bankers; it is the inevitable consequence of an economic system that rewards cutthroat competition at every level of society.

Capitalism is not a static way of life but a dynamic process that consumes everything, transforming the living, breathing world into objects and profit. Now that the economy has consumed every aspect of life, the system is collapsing, leaving even some of its former beneficiaries out in the cold. The answer is not to revert to some earlier stage of capitalism, such as the economic boom of the post-war years; not only is that impossible, those earlier stages didn’t benefit the “99%” either. To get out of this mess, we’ll have to rediscover other ways of relating to each other and the world around us.

Police can’t be trusted. They may be “workers,” but their job is to protect the interests if the ruling class. As long as they remain employed as police, we can’t count on them, however friendly they might act.