melissa schilling

If you think it’s just homeless and hippies, You are wrong. It’s wholesome families down there on city hall living in tents. The homeless form a surrounding wall on the outskirts. And the hipsters hold economic summits on the grass with the hippies providing background drumming.
A really cool microniche of protestation.

Oakland, California, 10 October 2011—Oakland’s Frank Ogawa Plaza set the stage for this city’s entry into the “Occupation” phenomenon that is spreading across the country. Following on the heels of “Occupy San Francisco” and “Occupy San Jose,” the Oakland event began Monday under cloudy skies. Occupy Oakland would begin, rain or shine.
Huffington Post Article: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/pamela-mays-mcdonald/occupy-oakland-reflects-a_b_1006213.html

More about the local movement; http://www.occupyoakland.org/

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About the Occupy Wall Street Movemwent:
The demonstrations against corporate greed spread around the world over the weekend, with protests turning violent in Rome.
Though demonstrations were largely peaceful, 175 people were arrested in Chicago early Sunday after refusing to take down tents in a city park. Dozens of others were arrested from New York to Arizona on Saturday.
The protests are loosely organized, but a general theme is based on the theory that the richest 1% of the population controls a disproportionate share of wealth and political power. Complaints focus on the 9.1% U.S. unemployment rate, the housing crisis, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
“The majority of people in this country and around the world are tired of big corporations and big money ruling the world,” said Bruce Wright, 50, of St. Petersburg, Fla., who helped organize the demonstration at Freedom Plaza in Washington.
“If we want revolutionary change in this country, we have to be willing to do the same things that they’re doing in Tunisia and Egypt,” he said.

Bill Dobbs, a press liaison for Occupy Wall Street in New York, said the nearly $300,000 has been put into an account at Amalgamated Bank, which bills itself as “the only 100 percent union-owned bank in the United States.”
Donated goods ranging from blankets and sleeping bags to cans of food and medical and hygienic supplies are being stored in a cavernous space donated by the United Federation of Teachers, which has offices in the building a block from Wall Street near the private park protesters occupy.
Among the items are 20 pairs of swimming goggles (to shield protesters from pepper-spray attacks). Supporters are shipping about 300 boxes a day, many with notes and letters, Strekal said.
Over the weekend:
•President Obama referred to the protests at Sunday’s dedication of a monument for Martin Luther King Jr., saying the civil rights leader “would want us to challenge the excesses of Wall Street without demonizing those who work there.”
•In Chicago, 2,000 attended a protest, and then 500 set up camp at an entrance to Grant Park before police began the arrests.
•In New York City, thousands of protesters in Times Square chanted, “Banks got bailed out! We got sold out!” and 42 were arrested for taking down police barriers. Two-dozen were arrested after entering a Citibank branch and refusing to leave.
•In Arizona, about 100 people were arrested — 53 in Tucson and 46 in Phoenix — after protesters refused police orders to disperse. In Phoenix, 1,000 people packed César Chávez Park to protest abuses by banks and corporations. Several hundred rallied in Tucson’s Military Plaza Park.
Elsewhere Saturday: About 1,500 demonstrators marched for several blocks in Pittsburgh; an estimated 1,500 marched past banks in Orlando; about 1,000 rallied in downtown Denver and nearly 200 spent the night in Detroit’s Grand Circus Park.
Similar demonstrations took place in London, Toronto and Mexico City. In Rome, protesters broke away from the main demonstration, smashing shop and bank windows, and burning cars. Mayor Gianni Alemanno estimated the damage to city property at $1.4million.