Columns

On Friday night, May 1st, to Saturday morning, May 2nd, labor supporters and protestors against police violence nationally, roamed Oakland’s downtown breaking glass fronts of banks and a few other businesses, and systematically smashing the windshields of rows of vehicles at one car lot. Unfortunately, the media focus and Oakland’s response was on the damage caused by the protestors rather than their message. 

Oakland responded to the May Day protest with a policy banning nighttime demonstrations without a permit, which costs $300 and takes up to 30 days to obtain. On the evening of May 21st, demonstrators marched in downtown Oakland against this new get-tough policy. In response, the the Oakland Police Department (OPD) immediately forced demonstrators off the street onto the sidewalks, encircled them, and used amplified sound to interfere with the march against police killings of Black women and trans persons. Was the Oakland policy against nighttime protests reasonable? And did the OPD use reasonable force under the circumstances? And was their response in violation of their crowd management and crowd control policy? These are questions still to be resolved possibly with a lawsuit. 

In the United States, we have the right to speak out. Both the California Constitution and the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protect our right to free expression. Generally what we say cannot be regulated but how we say it can. If you organize a protest that causes violence or unnecessary disruption, your event may be disbanded. Every city has the right to enact regulations on the time, place, and manner of a protest.  

The OPD does have a crowd management and crowd control policy which was enacted on October 28, 2005 as part of a settlement of a 2003 lawsuit where the OPD allegedly used an abundance of violence against peaceful demonstration against the U.S. invasion of Iraq.  

Later, the City of Oakland agreed to pay approximately $1 million to end a class action lawsuit filed by National Lawyers Guild in 2011 in coordination with the ACLU on behalf of 150 Occupy Oakland demonstrators alleging police misconduct during a 2010 mass arrest. Under the settlement the ACLU now must be consulted before the OPD can alter their crowd control policy. 

The riots in Ferguson, Missouri may be instructive. In the riots following the killing of teenager Michael Brown by Darren Wilson, a white Ferguson, Missouri police officer, 80 arrests were made, 13 people were injured, 25 businesses were burned, 12 vehicles were destroyed, and hundreds of shots were fired. 

On May 15, 2015, the legislature ended its session having passed virtually none of the reforms activists sought in the aftermath of the shooting of Michael Brown. Activists had been tracking more than 100 bills related to criminal justice and policing, but only one of substance made its way out of the legislature. Was this because legislators were focused on the damage caused by the demonstrators rather than listening to the demonstrators. Hopefully Oakland is not Ferguson and California is not Missouri. 

The danger is that the Oakland May Day riots and the subsequent demonstrations may have created an unwanted backlash. When hooligans use what was meant to be a peaceful event to wreak havoc on public and private property, the possibility of positive change may be lost. Government may just focus on preventing future havoc instead of listening.  

And the majority of the citizenry may react to the destruction caused by the vandals with horror thus losing their support for positive change.