bustour//

“What happened in Oakland is straightforward: People got fed up. After months and months of struggling to find a place to meet — a basic, simple Constitutional privilege known as the right to peaceful assembly — and getting tied up in rules (some followed and some not), and laws (some enforced and some not), that were clearly designed to keep them from assembling at all, the masses decided to take over unused public space.

…

Rage took over in Oakland on Saturday night, and protestors broke into and attacked City Hall. It’s not an action I condone, but it’s one I understand: The protestors were telling the mayor that no one — not government itself — is safe when the streets of the city aren’t safe from its own government. And the government of Oakland, with the OPD tricking and trapping demonstrators to arrest them, and arresting even journalists with OPD approved credentials, had most certainly made the city unsafe. “