Published on November 5th 2011
Hundreds of SEIU 1021 members took to the streets of Oakland on Wednesday, joining thousands more in a city-wide general strike that caught the entire world's attention after a peaceful "Occupy Oakland" encampment was brutally smashed by police in the dark hours before dawn a week earlier. Indeed, signs in support of Oakland could be seen on TV throughout the Middle East.
The day's actions were widely reported in the press and don't need much repeating here. Three major marches took off from 14th and Broadway, in front of City Hall and the epicenter of the strike, Frank Ogawa Plaza (renamed Oscar Grant Plaza after a young African American man shot by a transit cop in Oakland a few years ago).
At the first two, protesters surrounded nearby branches of Chase, Citi and Bank of America to demand an end to the rampant foreclosures that have ravaged families and communities across the nation; in the evening, thousands more marched a mile to the Port of Oakland to shut down operations.
All the while, thousands more stayed put at the plaza, site of the now-rebuilt encampment: listening to speeches and music and spoken word poets, hanging with the returned occupiers, visiting booths and memorials, and generally keeping up the buoyant attitude that made the general strike as upbeat as an outdoor music festival.
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