On Monday, April 7th, a group called Direct Action set out to close down American President Lines (APL), a shipping company in the Port of Oakland. The plan was to set up a picket line of protesters in hopes that the longshoremen would respect it, and everyone wishing to participate in this endeavor was invited to assemble at the West Oakland BART station. I arrived there with a friend at 6:50 a.m., and found about a hundred protesters who were waiting for rides in a makeshift shuttle of cars that would take us to the docks, about a mile away.
Somebody offered us a ride, and we set out, not knowing if when we got there we'd be met by the police or the National Guard. After all, this had even been publicized in the Tribune, and we couldn't expect APL to take kindly to our action. Minutes later, we arrived at the Adeline Street Bridge which is the public entrance to the port area. The police had blocked it, closing it off to incoming autos.
A king-sized mattress at the bridge entrance bore the message, "Shut down the war machine!"
Could we just walk in? Apparently so. We left the car, walked past the police and set out across the bridge, which was actually a lengthy overpass over a railroad yard. I'd never been there before and didn't have a map; I wasn't even sure we were in the right place. We seemed to be almost alone. Where were the other protesters? Usually you see a lot of them when something like this is going on. I kept looking behind me; wasn't anyone else coming?
The starkly bare concrete bridge gave me the uncomfortable feeling that I was heading into a place of no return. "Like crossing over," another protester said later of this bridge. Having been caught in a mass arrest just two weeks before, I felt wary of entering a place where I could easily be trapped.
The bridge curved around for a quarter of a mile before we came to the other end. "There they are!" my friend said, and now I could at last see banners in the distance.
As we got closer I could make out a long, drawn-out, circular picket line consisting of several hundred people, and when we finally got there, we fell in with the rest and joined in the chants. Along one side of us were a row of riot police who pressed uncomfortably close to us. I tried to just ignore them as I walked past them.
In addition to banners, flags and picket signs, many of the protesters had cloth patches pinned across their shirts or packs, reading "Shut down the war machine," or "Global intifada."
But I'd only been there a few minutes when a woman called out, "We need ten people for a tactical team."
A tactical team? I didn't understand quite what for, but a number of others stepped out, ready to go. Is this something where I might get arrested?-I wanted to ask, but didn't. If they needed me, I felt I'd better go. My friend stayed with the picket line, and I set out with the others, walking along the left side of Middle Harbor Road. One of the women began a chant and the rest of us took it up, chanting as we strode along, getting ever deeper into the port area.
It didn't look or feel like any port I'd ever seen before. No water and no ships were in sight; only some huge loading cranes could be seen in the distance off to the left of us. There were no buildings along this road, only railroad tracks, and no sidewalk either, just oily gravel that crunched under our feet. It felt like a place of vast distances with this single road in or out. Now and then a semi rolled past.
After a quarter of a mile we could see banners and picket signs up ahead. There appeared to be a fairly large group there, but as we approached, a line of riot police prevented us from getting within a hundred yards of them. There was also another row of police closer to the people with the banners.
Around us were a couple dozen protesters, scattered about in small groups, watching the larger group up ahead of us that seemed to be trapped behind the police lines. It looked to me like a mass arrest, but I wasn't sure.
What was going on up there? I tried to find out from people around me, and was told that it was a contingent of perhaps three hundred people, but that's about all anybody knew. There didn't seem to be much we could do. Some started to leave. I wondered if it might be wise for me to leave too. The row of police nearest us were trying on their gas masks.
Then I saw Dave, a person I knew from other protest activities, and we spoke for a while. He'd just arrived and didn't know too much of what was going on either, but, for the lack of anything else to do we talked about other things. Dave is one of those people whose whole life seems to revolve around politics, and he always has a lot to say.
When we looked again, the contingent of protesters up ahead were gone. Had they all been arrested en masse? Then I saw their banners moving in the distance. They seemed to be going deeper into the port area. I wondered where they could be going. How much farther did that road go? I again wished I'd brought a map.
Before long the banners had disappeared from sight.
Suddenly a loud explosion rang out from approximately where I'd last seen the banners. A plume of smoke rose into the air. It was followed by another blast and another plume of smoke. Tear gas grenades?
Someone affirmed that's what they were. Beyond that my companions and I could only guess what might be going on. One fellow told me the police were using pellet guns; I wondered how he might know that. Later I learned that the police had indeed used them as well as concussion grenades earlier in the morning.
We watched for a long time without seeing anything, and our "lost" contingent didn't reappear. Some people had cell phones, but it appeared that nobody had exchanged numbers, so there seemed to be no way to communicate with them.
So what about our original mission-to hold a demonstration that would persuade the Longshoremen to go home for the day?
"That's already happened," a woman whose name was Ingrid told me.
"It did?"
"Yes, the longshoremen went home."
Bit by bit, after talking with several people, I started piecing together what had gone on, and I learned to my chagrin that by the time I'd arrived at 7 a.m., it was all over with. "I missed it?" I gasped unbelievingly. "But how could that have happened? I was told to be here at seven, and I was."
Ingrid told me what had happened.
Knowing that we were going to set up a picket line, the company had phoned its workers, telling them to come in an hour early. But of course word about that had gotten out, and a number of our people had gotten the information as well, some 300 arriving as early as 5 a.m. Unfortunately I hadn't been one of them.
"I'll probably miss my own funeral," was all I could think to say. Nothing ever seems to happen when I'm around.
So our objective seemed to have been achieved. Was there any reason to stay around? I wondered why people didn't just go home. Maybe it was the American work ethic-that deeply ingrained notion that when you get your day's work done early, then you just naturally find something else to do.
It was now only about 9 o'clock.
The problem at this moment was that there just didn't seem to be anything else to do, so we began our withdrawal to the main picket line, but as we set out in that direction, we were met by a hundred protesters who'd left that picket line and were coming our way.
What followed was a lengthy discussion, but before we'd gotten to the point of deciding anything for certain, someone looked back behind us and noticed that riot police were gone from a gate they'd been guarding.
That settled that. We trooped back to the unguarded gate and set up a picket circle for incoming trucks. There were maybe a couple hundred of us here now. Among them I saw an old guy on a wheelchair whom I recognized as Bob Miller from the Lake Merritt peace walk. I'd heard that he'd been arrested in San Francisco during some antiwar action on the first day of the war. He must've been quite old, but he was out here with us on this picket line, a real fighting son of a bitch.
Meanwhile, trucks were coming in and going out, but it wasn't clear if they were actually entering the port or maybe just circling around and leaving. Some of the drivers honked and waved peace signs, and that always brought loud cheers from us.
There was also a port-a-potty there, which people lined up to use. It almost seemed as though it had been put there for our benefit, though obviously it was there for reasons that had nothing to do with us.
We'd been picketing and interacting with traffic for about half an hour when the riot police suddenly reappeared, emerging from an AC Transit bus which they'd apparently commandeered, and started to move in behind us. I don't think they said anything to us; in fact, I never heard the police say anything to anybody, nor did I see any police even carrying bullhorns.
So we began our retreat, retracing our steps down the railroad tracks towards the long bridge by which we'd entered. It was nearly a mile from where we were now. We kept walking, and the police kept following us. I was afraid they might arrest us, but what I didn't quite understand was that instead of making mass arrests they'd been shooting people with pellet guns. It just seemed unthinkable.
It was only later, when people showed me the evidence, which included the wooden dowels, the concussion grenade fragments, and the physical wounds those weapons inflicted, that I began to fully comprehend the situation. And now that I look back on it, I wonder why the police didn't start shooting at the group I was with. My guess is that not all of the Oakland police are trigger happy. Maybe it was a relatively small number of them that did the shooting-at least that's what I'd like to believe.
As we retreated towards the bridge and then across it, I talked with people around me, discussing the fact of having shut this part of the port down. I considered it a tremendous achievement, not because it would really affect shipments of munitions to the war, but because of the psychological effect. We'd set a precedent.
I tried to learn more of what had gone on that day, but nobody seemed to know a great deal, since many had arrived late, and also because each of us was limited to knowing what was going on around him. To get a complete picture of something like this, one would have to talk with dozens of people.
When we finally reached the end of the bridge, we tarried there for a while, watching as the riot police followed in their commandeered AC Transit bus. They closed off the port behind us, but it was like closing the bag after the cat got out.
Three policemen blocked the sidewalk exit of the bridge. One was carrying a tear gas grenade launcher, while the other two were armed with long-barreled weapons that someone told me were pellet guns. They held them at ready, across their arms, not pointing them at us, but the threat was implied. They wore bandoleers of ammunition across their shoulders as in a cowboy movie.
The mattress with the antiwar slogan was still there. "Shut down the war machine," it still read, and we had. At least for the moment.
We decided to return to the West Oakland BART station, and there we'd talk about what to do next. So we resumed walking. It was only another half mile.
One of the people I talked with was a photographer named Ben. He told me he was putting photos he'd taken of the demonstration on the website of Direct Action. He was glad to see an older person like myself here among the young people, he said, and that he hoped that at my age he'd still be doing this.
There was a sprinkling of older people in this day's action, but most were young. I told Ben about Miller, the old guy in the wheelchair. Ben told me he'd seen Miller position himself in front of a moving truck, and stop it. Ben had caught a photo of that incident.
Later when I saw Miller again I congratulated him. He didn't respond, and then I realized that he was also deaf. I tapped him on the shoulder and grinned and gave him a thumbs up, but I wanted to say something more. How do you say anything to a deaf guy? I gave him a hug.
We finally arrived at the BART station; I can't say how many there were of us, perhaps a couple hundred, but shortly after we arrived, a larger contingent joined us, coming from the opposite direction, marching down 7th Street from the west. I wondered where they'd been and who they were.
Then I learned that this was the "lost" contingent-the unit I'd seen disappear behind police lines and hit by those loud tear gas grenades. Many were injured; nearly all had been hit, though I didn't learn most of the gruesome details till later. One fellow had two large welts on his back and one on his chest. I talked with a woman who'd received an ugly bruise on her right shoulder from a concussion grenade, and another who'd been shot in the leg. Nevertheless, it wasn't until I spoke with more of them the next evening during the city council meeting that I learned that practically everybody in this group had been hit at least once. So what really amazes me now that I think back on this, is the way they arrived at the station, not as battered survivors straggling in, two or three at a time, but with their unit still intact, banners flying.
In a situation like this, I'd expect people to be crying and hysterical, but I saw none of that. These people had been beaten up-they were not beaten down.
One fellow showed me a pellet. It was a short dowel, about as thick as a broomstick, and an inch long.
While medical corpsmen attended the most seriously wounded, someone showed up with a huge sack of bagels. Cupcakes were also distributed. Food has a way of showing up at these demonstrations.
There were two bullhorns among the demonstrators, and they were being used to announce that we'd closed down the morning shift, and of course there was more self congratulations on that-the news didn't reach us till later that nine longshoremen had also been shot and injured by the police.
Then came the question of what we should do now. It was around 10 or 11 a.m. and, while some people went home, there were many who wanted to continue doing something.
It was decided to first take a few minutes and each affinity group should get together and discuss this. So the groups held their discussions, and then a general discussion was held.
Two proposals were put forward: One was to go back to the docks to picket the next shift which would go on at around 1 p.m. The other was to march downtown, first to the Federal Building, then to City Hall where we'd talk with members of the City Council.
So we held a vote, and about half voted for each proposal. Then someone asked how many would go along with the majority, whichever the way the vote went. And a good many, including myself, held up their hands.
In retrospect, I'm awed when I realize what I witnessed there - a gathering of several hundred people who'd spent up to five hours in "enemy" territory, including many who'd been painfully hit, calmly sitting down to discuss and vote on what to do next. This was responsible democracy in action.
In this discussion I didn't speak up; I really didn't have anything to say, and I felt that these people knew the tactical situation and the geography of Oakland better than I did. Then someone asked how far we'd have to march to get to the Federal Building, and people looked around and somebody consulted a map and said it was about two miles.
We voted to go to the Federal Building and City Hall. So we began walking up 7th Street, on the sidewalk, and rather quietly at first. There might've been as many as five hundred of us. Then we began moving into the street. Soon we were fully in the street, chanting our slogans in a very spirited way. Eight or ten motorcycle police appeared out of nowhere and followed alongside of us, but, they didn't interfere, and when we came to intersections they went ahead and stopped traffic for us.
As we marched along I chatted with two guys next to me, Bob and Richard. Both were from San Francisco; they'd been arrested on Thursday, the 20th, the first day of the war. They and some 60 others had sat down in the intersection of Market & Beal in SF. They weren't very familiar with this part of Oakland, and I wasn't either.
"Join the protest and see the city," one of us remarked.
As we advanced up 7th Street, nearing the downtown, area we were chanting quite loudly, every step of the way. This march, unlike most others, had no drums or musical instruments, just bullhorns and our own voices. Numbering only in the hundreds, we were all able to hear the bullhorn and chant responses to it. At one point a fellow sang a song that I guessed came from the IWW song book. Then we went back to chanting again:
"See democracy - this is what it looks like!"
We got our share of honks and peace signs from passing drivers. Some people waved and cheered, making the peace sign. As we passed one particular grocery store, the customers came out cheering and waving peace signs. Half a dozen of our people left the column and entered the store; having been in action all day, some of them from as early as 5 a.m., they were perhaps hungry and thirsty.
Then, on 9th Street, as we were about to cross Washington Street heading for Broadway, the motorcycle police, who minutes before had been helpfully stopping traffic at intersections, suddenly cut in and blocked our way. They evidently didn't want us marching up Broadway.
For a while we hassled with them, and using their batons they shoved people back, though they didn't start swinging. I was on the left side of the street, where four cops barred our way. But suddenly everybody looked to the right, and there was our demonstration, streaming past, through the police line and up the street towards Broadway.
We quickly reformed our ranks, marching as a square. I noticed that a closely packed unit like this seems to have more spirit than a dispersed one and works best for singing or chanting in unison..
Having broken through the police line really raised our morale and we immediately began chanting much louder than before:
"Whose street?" "Our street!"
Then back to
"See democracy - this is what it looks like!"
Meanwhile, the motorcycle police took it gracefully, or appeared to, at least, and resumed their job of halting traffic at intersections as we passed.
There were many chants. One went something like, "No money to feed the poor?-you spent it on the war!" I really wondered when we would run out of voice, but we never seemed to.
Half a dozen bicyclists fanned out ahead of us, circling around back and forth, scouting out the street for a block or so ahead of us, like cavalry scouts in front of an infantry unit.
Finally, after marching up Broadway, then up and down several other streets of the downtown area, we turned onto Clay Street and went to the Federal Building. In front of it we encountered another demonstration, a much smaller one, a kind of vigil consisting of a dozen or two participants, who were holding a large banner.
In the middle of Clay Street in front of the Federal Building, we paraded in a circle, chanting loudly. The young woman leading the chants with a bullhorn seemed like an old pro, singing the phrases out, while we sang them back.
This went on for quite a while, with the police securing both ends of the block to prevent traffic from entering.
Eventually the media showed up. I saw channels 2, 5, 7 and 14. One of the persons I saw being interviewed was a fellow who'd been hit in the nose; he took his bandage off for the camera.
Eventually, around 12 noon, we ended our rally at the Federal Building, and, joined by the people who'd been there, we put their banner at the head of our unit and marched out, down Clay Street, up 11th, up Broadway again, and this time went to the Frank Ogawa Plaza where we marched across the wet grass to end our rally in front of City Hall.
The object of this final rally was to complain to the City Council about the bad treatment we'd received from the Oakland Police. A councilperson, Jane Brunner, spoke with us and said she would request a hearing to look into this matter of police overreaction.
Here some news items were also announced. It was reported that six longshoremen had been caught in police fire and hit by pellets. This was not greeted with cheers, even though it would obviously strengthen our case. Then it was announced that thirty two of our people had been arrested; they were now in Santa Rita.
Our rally ended with - "Till we meet again next week, this time in Walnut Creek to shut down Chevron Toxico."