George Floyd Protest in Oakland Reflects Conflicting Intensions

Photo gallery and Video by Michelle Dione

Friday night’s Oakland protest of the killing of George Floyd by Minnesota police had a different—pent energy—than any other protest I’ve ever been to.

Many people were fed up with police abuse of power. For others, it was an eye-opening pandemic. Walking past Lake Merritt up 14th Street, I saw large crowds of people filing out from the streets and Bart. Not all who attended were from here. Some groups were young and eager to be together again as if it was a chance to enjoy themselves.

In Oakland, a group called the Anti-Police Terror Project (APTP) often leads protests against police violence. This Friday’s protest was different. APTP posted an article by Cat Brooks and Rebecca Ruiz on their official website, stating they did not endorse the planned protest. Instead, they gave safety plans for those going to the protest. They mentioned a planned caravan in solidarity on Sunday to avoid risking the lives of protesters due to COVID-19, considering how the virus has disproportionately affected Black and Brown community members.

The unanimous group who organized the protest did so with “vengeance” in the flyer, and while the article did not mention that being a reason for non-endorsement, they did ask the organizers to consider not setting fires, saying, “In all neighborhoods of Oakland, there are people with vulnerable conditions who have contracted, or are likely to contract,  COVID-19 and whose lives hang in the balance. Even if they do not attend your rally, smoke from what you burn will travel and it will do harm.”

Photogallery

Arriving at 8:00 p.m., many people gathered at Frank Ogawa Plaza. Several groups gathered around as one frustrated protester after another was given space to speak.

Video Footage

Once the march started, a few people immediately took down the boards from windows covering the Chase and Walgreens windows on the corners of Broadway and 14th Street. As we kept walking, people threw rocks at windows, breaking glass over our heads.

It did not take long for the crowd to reach 7th street. Once there, large groups ran to take over the freeway. Police immediately lined up and prevented most of them from making it on the freeway, meanwhile aggravated protesters yelled “shame” and started shouting at the cops. Someone lit a fire, and a hand cleaning station meant for the homeless encampment in the area was knocked over.

Once the crowd lost direction, they started to head back towards Broadway. We stop at a bus that has several people jumping on top while others spray paint the bus and bash a window. The bus driver appeared frightened, the people who were on top of the bus jumped off and apologized to the driver before heading back into the crowd yelling “East Oakland!”

As we moved closer to Broadway, you could hear police announcing the protest as an unlawful assembly. They tell protesters they have three minutes to disperse while throwing flash bangs and tear gas into the crowd. We get to the front, and the crowd of protesters kneel, put their hands in the air, and start chanting, “I can’t breathe.” Police throw what looks like about four canisters of tear gas, and I am choked out and have to move to the side. Street medics help me recover.

*Update: Oakland Police were highly guarded around this time due to a shooting of two federal officers at the Ronald V. Dellums Federal Building next to the Oakland Police Department. One of the officers died. The suspect has since been arrested as an alleged ‘Boogaloo” extremist who was also an active duty military officer, according to NBCNews.

Many have asked why people would join in protest and attack businesses during a protest meant to stop police violence against Black people. There were several cases in which Black businesses were attacked, which frustrated Black community members.

NBC News reports that the white nationalist group Identity Evropa used social media platforms like Twitter to call for violence against Antifa.

Let me explain, as someone who has gone to many rallies and protests that involved Antifa and pro-Trump, white nationalists going against each other, this was likely used as an opportunity for a different agenda.

Over the weekend President Trump named Antifa as terrorists. From what I have learned being around Antifa, knowing them, and even being one myself, it is far more complicated than naming all of these people as one organized group.

Here is what I wrote on Facebook to explain my experience in understanding Antifa, which is not an organized group.

“Antifa = anti-fascist. It is not an organized group, although many organized groups call themselves Antifa. They use different tactics. Most of them search for white nationalist and neo-nazis information to expose them. They arrive at protests as medics. They turn into black bloc (the mass groups dressed in black) to protect protesters from the police.

Even within that, they all have different tactics and don’t always agree with each other on everything. Some believe in democracy, some are anarchists, all are against fascism, and believe the government is failing.

Anti-capitalist anarchists are mixed in and tend to be communist/anti-government. They believe people can create a society that is co-op, commune, without government or police (this is why they hate the police.) ACAB means: all cops are bastards and you will see a lot of that on protest signs and graffiti.

Some of them use old tactics to break the bank and big business windows in order to show the public the optics of a system that fails you. People who like to loot follow, and they are fine with that they don’t care about stealing from corporations when they see corporations looting from us through tax breaks and making special laws, evading corruption cases, etc.

The rest of this stuff going on is just opportunists and infiltrators. There are white nationalists and militia groups who are SUPER against Antifa because Antifa exposes them, so they will follow to attack them, hoping for a civil war. So yes, it’s complicated, but being anti-fascist is not. That is for everyone.

In other protests across the country, far-right extremists made an appearance. While many people may not understand the complicated nature of why this weekend’s protests burned entire communities up while looting, there are many factors. Mix 400 hundred years of oppression with three months of lockdown, pandemic, conspiracy theories, and mass disinformation with an economic strain like no other pushing down on the working class. Add in politicians and government who have ignored the people’s cries.

Photogallery Bonus — Chinatown

After I had endured the tear gas, blinded by my camera wandering down an alleyway, I was guided by mutual aid to medics who cleaned my eyes out with a solution. At that point, I decided to regroup with my fellow photojournalist, who I partnered with that night and had lost sight of and put my camera away. Things had gotten dangerous, and I was ready to go home.

Before walking back to the east side of the lake, my photo partner Saskia Hatvany and I took pictures of ourselves. We realized we were in Chinatown and started taking pictures of the broken windows, trashed streets, and graffiti. I used my iPhone 11. I thought it was a strange strategy for a protest to destroy the buildings in Chinatown, considering the historical disenfranchisement of the Chinese population there and their connected solidarity fighting with Black movements like the Black Panthers.