Protesters Chain Themselves to Oakland Police Headquarters

OAKLAND, CA - Protests are expected throughout the day in Oakland and elsewhere as the Movement for Black Lives has called for a national day of action against police violence.

Rallies are planned at both Oakland police headquarters and Frank H. Ogawa Plaza this afternoon, part of nationwide #FreedomNow protests expected to last throughout the day.

Autonomous direct actions are likely to spring up, such as two protesters who chained themselves to the front door of the Oakland police building at 455 Seventh St. this morning.

Today's actions follow a lengthy sit-in staged Wednesday afternoon when several protesters chained themselves to the Oakland Police Officers' Association building around the corner from police headquarters.

The protesters were allowed to stay but left voluntarily at about 3 a.m., Anti-Police Terror Project organizer Cat Brooks said today. Similar actions were staged at police union buildings in New York and Washington,
D.C., on Wednesday.

Protests have resurged in Oakland and throughout the country in recent weeks following the fatal shootings of Alton Sterling in Louisiana, Philando Castile in Wisconsin and Delrawn Small in New York. Recent protests
over Sterling and Castile's deaths shut down Interstate Highway 880 in Oakland for hours.

Oakland organizers of today's action say their demands are the recall of Mayor Libby Schaaf, to investigate and hold accountable the officers implicated in a sexual exploitation scandal, divest half the police budget and reinvest it in educational programs and to establish a civilian police commission, a proposal expected to go before voters this November but is opposed by the police officers' union.

"We are taking action in solidarity with Movement for Black Lives organizers who are taking militant action for a future in which they can be free from state-sanctioned violence and oppression. We echo their call for
#FreedomNow," Showing Up For Racial Justice organizer Sam Bickle said in a statement.

Oakland resident Sarah Raridon was one of two protesters who chained themselves to the door at Oakland police headquarters at 9 a.m. today. She said she intended to remain there "until they stop killing black
people."

"Specifically as a white person, I see a lot of white people immobilized by guilt and fear," Raridon said. "It will take a lot of us putting our bodies on the line to make change."

She said she wasn't part of some larger organizing group beyond taking up the call to action, but that she had been seeing what was going on in the news and "passion" drove her to affix herself to the door of the police headquarters building with heavy chains and sit on the concrete in the hot sun today.

"This is the most direct way I could think of to physically stop police from murdering black people," she said. "I really do feel that none of us are free until all of us are free."

--Bay City News; Photo by Scott Morris, BCN