Thousands upon thousands of people turned out to mass actions held as part of the Oakland General Strike Nov. 2, called for by the General Assembly of Occupied Oakland at Frank Ogawa/Oscar Grant plaza. (check out this video!) The actions shut down several banks, snarled traffic, closed businesses around the plaza and downtown, re-routed buses, shut down the port and did wonders for building solidarity.
  

   (photo by Nicole Belle) City workers, teachers, students, union people, elders, children, chanted, swayed and danced through the streets of Oakland. The crowd at times roared, “We are the 99%” as they marched on specific bank targets as well as the State Building where teachers were demanding greater funding for education. Oakland has just closed down five elementary schools. The state budget for California schools has been cut by $20 million over the past three years.

The International Longshore and Warehousemans Union, California Nurses Association/National Nurses United, Service Employees International Union and the Oakland Educational Association endorsed the action although they could not officially urge their members to strike.

In solidarity with the strike, community, and labor groups marched on the Big Banks to demand a moratorium on foreclosures; to demand banks stop investing in detention centers and dirty energy; and to hold financial corporations accountable for their role in causing the economic crisis. Referring to big banks as “banksters,” local residents are voicing their refusal to continue being financially exploited by the targets of these actions.

“This economy does not benefit us, it benefits from us. It’s time to change that,” said Causa Justa :: Just Cause Immigrant Rights organizer Cinthya Muñoz Ramos. “Our communities are being pushed out of the economy, jobs, homes, and neighborhoods into prisons and detention centers as slave labor.”

Maria Reyes, of the National Domestic Workers Alliance and Mujeres Unidas spoke before the crowd to remind them that immigrants are part of the 99% and have been waging the battle for fair treatment long before the Occupied movement kicked off. 

“We take care of the 1 percent’s children and their grandparents and their elderly.  While we’re taking care of the elderly and their children, our children stay late at school or home alone and we come home from work frustrated because we don’t get treated right. That is why we want a Domestic Worker Bill of Rights so that we are treated fairly. Si Se Puede!”

Professor and civil rights activist Angela Davis spoke: “We do not assent to economic exploitation. We do not assent to global capitalism, to police violence, to corporate inequalities. We do not assent to the prison industrial complex… the eyes of the world are on our city.”

Last week, the violent police action involving 18 different agencies who razed the encampment and later threw tear gas into the crowd (and left a young Iraq marine vet Scott Olsen in a coma) galvanized the Occupy Oakland movement and received national and international attention. Olsen remains hospitalized but is improving.

Operations at the Port of Oakland stopped as protestors blockaded the area. Earlier in the day some Longshoremen did not go to work in the morning shifts. Oakland is the fifth busiest port in the U.S.

Jack Hayman said in a press conference that the Longshoremen had stopped work on their own in the morning. “The trucks with containers are backed up for at least a mile. None of the cranes are moving… and the rank and file of the Longshoreman’s Union did this on their own. The leaders of the union wanted them to work today, but they by and large are not working the port.”

At 6pm the Port of Oakland announced that “all maritime activities” had been shut down because of the sea of thousands of protestors descending on the port. Port Spokesperson Marilyn Sandifur said in a statement in the early evening that “Maritime area operations will resume when it is safe and secure to do so,” which they did later at night.

Dozens of protestors clambered up on cargo boxes and truck cabs as a sea of marchers could be seen coming across the bridge toward the port.
Occupy Oakland asked workers on its website to “go on strike, call a vacation day or simply walk off the job.” Judging by the estimated 7,000 to 10,000 people who took part in the action, they did.

About 360 teachers at Oakland Unified School District observed the General Strike, Fifteen Headstart centers were closed because of the staff participation in the event according to a city bulletin– and about 40 Port of Oakland workers did not show up for work at the hall that hires for daily jobs.

Many stores around City Hall were closed.

Long lines winded through the encampment in front of City Hall where Alameda Labor Council — an umbrella group for labor unions set up food kitchen and grilled hotdogs and hamburgers and served up potato salad.

There were Endorsements by the SEIU Local 1021 as well as the Oakland Educational Association. Harry Baker, member of the executive board of SEIU Local 1021, estimated there are a few hundred members present. He said SEIU’s involvement in the unequal economy started several years ago.

“Our union at our convention in Puerto Rico nearly two years ago put 20 million dollars into what we called The Fight for a Fair Economy. Mostly that organizing effort went into cities in the Midwest, in the East and Southern California. The SEIU has been behind the fight against the banks for years.”

Baker, who has been a member for 35 years said, “I am totally fed up with how the banks have ruined our economy. As a result, public services are being strangled and they don’t know when to give up, the 1 percent. They’re going after more and more and more.”

Oakland was the site of the last great general strike in 1946 when 130,000 workers refused to work in solidarity with 400 female retail clerks.

Dwight McElroy, president of the chapter 1021 Service Employees Union told Mitch Jeserich of KPFA in an earlier interview, “There’s a process that would have to take place in order to call a strike. We don’t want to get caught up in the semantics of it, we want to get caught up in the energy of it. The bottom line is that those individuals who were batoned and tear-gassed …they were out there for us because we are definitely the 99 percent whom they refer to.”

He added, “Our city and our coworkers are taking furlough days, they are losing their homes. We have individuals having to choose between their mortgage and having their cars repaired. We need to stand in solidarity. America has caused a marriage between the occupy and labor movement — it’s something that should have come some time ago but it’s never too late.”

Hundreds of teachers and nurses came out as well. Sharon Blaschka, a nurse practitioner, and member of the California Nurses Association/National Nurses United Union said, “I believe in the OWS movement. It’s been a long time coming. It should have happened a long time ago. The 1 percent count on the fact that we don’t have enough time to get out there and do something major because we have to support our families and they’re counting on that fact. I had patients today but I rescheduled all of them and when I called them to tell them why — they were excited about it.”

She added, “I also came with my family to support our family and our schools. The Oakland Unified School District is closing five elementary school, but yeah, we can drop a billion dollars on Libya. So, if we can drop a million dollars on the war then why can’t we drop a billion dollars into our education system?  Like they say, if you’re not outraged, your not paying attention.”

Said Nell Myhand of the day’s actions. “It was fantastic. This is the moment we have been working for — many of us for years and years,” said Myhand, who is Oakland Homeowner Clinic Coordinator for Causa Justa :: Just Cause.

“We get divided within our class. But we can see this dramatic shift when we start talking about the 99%. We can see the divisions that the top 1% capitalize on based on our differences in class. Well that’s over. We see the thing we have in common is that the banks are bankrupting all of us.”