Clashes in Oakland, black blocs spring up
the demonstration becomes violent: 100 arrests

OAKLAND – More than 100 arrests and eight wounded (five demonstrators and three policemen) are the last balance of yesterday’s clashes in Oakland between the police and a hundred violent people who were participating in the peaceful demonstration of the Occupy Wall Street movement.

The protest, one of the hundreds organized in recent months throughout the United States, had seen about three thousand people take to the streets. Wednesday the city had been paralyzed by a strike: the port, offices, shops and schools were closed. Then, yesterday, violence: a hundred militants, hooded and dressed in black, left the rest of the parade, destroying everything in front of them.

The police reacted with charges, tear gas and rubber bullets, and chaos broke out. Occupy Oakland movement activists have distanced themselves from the violent: “they are not the voice of the majority of the people who demonstrated with us, they have been in action for an hour against 12 o’clock in our peaceful protest”, said one of the students which for weeks has stood out in front of the city hall of the city that overlooks the bay of San Francisco.

This in Oakland was the first protest of the movement that resulted in violence since the mobilization against Wall Street greed took place on the evening of 17 September.

(04 November 2011)