Thursday, November 3, 2011

11/2/11 General Strike in Oakland

I wasn't sure what to expect from today's general strike. I assumed there wasn't going to be many people there until last night when it was semi-viral on Facebook.
When I showed up the size of the crowd was smaller than I expected but probably around 2,000+. At first I was turned off by all the music and dancing, but excused it as part of a movement. Now that I think about it, an Egyptian I met recently, called Occupy SF a party, and frankly Occupy Oakland resembled a party. I wandered around the area and was attracted to the huge black banner that said destroy capitalism. I didn't see anyone that looked worth talking to so I drifted towards the socialists. I argued with some salesman selling some socialist literature about how having a vanguard movement was not much better than the system we have now. He disagreed and I did my best not to tell him to STFU. I then ran into Ali & Greg. We hung out for a little while. Then I ran into Greg and he told me Wells Fargo got smashed, so I went to check it out. Amazed by the Damage, I stood around for a few minutes. It was almost time for me to leave so I headed back to the center of everything. I stood around next to the feminist and queer protesters. After about ten minutes we started marching to the Oakland ports. Once we reached Castro st. where my car was parked I broke away from the group and headed to my car.
I spent a lot of time today thinking about my political identity and justifications for it. I think we spend a lot of time worrying about our political identity when in reality it's not that important. I think it can sometimes get in the way and political junkies need to address that issue. After I left I came across a wiki page: anarchism without adjectives, which pretty much was an idea created by an anarchist who saw adjectives as more problematic than helpful. OK. Bed time.

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