Occupy Oakland protesters shut port, disrupt banks:
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(From a forwarded message, not sure who wrote it:)
The city of Oakland was NOT parallyzed, which is why I left. When I left there weren’t any cops inside the bart station, there had been four of them when I arrived, but they weren’t paying any attention to the people going or coming, with or without signs. Traffic in the city was light but there was traffice on streets other than the ones that were taken over by the large crowds. The banks were we passed were generally empty, and in the two hours that began with the noon demonstration, I saw none of the undercover cops that are normally mixed throughout the crowd – and no one obviously took my picture. In the demonstrations I’ve been in, beginning with the one against Cheney at the Fairmount Hotel, police photographers are always a major part of the police lines and are also in the crowd. I saw none of that yesterday – just the four helicopters above us. I walked a lot, around and through the march, from front to back and back again – looking for reality – and could not find it. Shops were generally open, and the protestors routinely stopped for snacks or drinks, as if they were just taking a tour of downtown Oakland, on a rather unusal day. 14th & Broadway was a bastion with lots of sings and some noise, they called it music, but I never did see any of the anarchists that are shown trashing Whole Foods – they descended on that place and then disappeared back into the crowd – the face masks would have stood out, had they been part of anything else.