The Occupy Strategy Lab of Organizing Upgrade is excited to share the thoughts of movement innovator and strategist Max Rameau. With his experience founding the Take Back the Land movement and advancing land-liberation and eviction defense strategies, Max is well positioned to provide some insight into how organizers can and should strategically connect with the Occupy movements. Over the last few months, Max has been engaged in strategic thinking, dialogue and planning with Occupy movements in Miami, DC, Baltimore, Philadelphia and Wall Street. This article is part of a series in which Max explores the potential for movement building within the Occupy movements. Forthcoming pieces will address the Basis of Unity (between #Occupy and Liberate) and a proposal for a  2012 Spring Offensive.

The last few years have been hard for us: record foreclosures, high unemployment, drastic cuts in social services, and government actively doing the bidding of big business at the expense of regular people.

With a combination of bewilderment and frustration, concerned global citizens had asked one question over and again: when and where are people in the US going to rise up and take to the streets?

Turns out, the answer was September 17, 2011 on Wall Street.

Of course, for all it’s simplicity and elegance, that answer is not entirely accurate. Communities of color, albeit in smaller numbers and with less media, have taken to the streets for years around issues of police brutality and the impacts of the economic crisis, particularly gentrification, foreclosures and evictions.

Since 2007, The Take Back the Land movement has identified vacant government owned and foreclosed homes and “liberated” them by breaking in and transforming vacant houses into homes for families. Our objective is to transform land relationships to secure community control over land and elevate housing to the level of a human right. With the crisis deepening, many more organizations are liberating land or waging eviction defenses with increased success.

This one grand crisis, then, has elicited two very different responses, each strong and each relevant to its core constituency. With the combination of low-income communities of color and working and middle class whites taking to the streets, this society is on the cusp of a major social movement, the likes of which have not been experienced in the U.S. in more than a generation.

Far from homogeneous, this budding movement is evolving towards parallel, but interrelated campaign tracks: #Occupy and Liberate. The two look similar in many regards, but are distinguished by three important characteristics: composition, primary frame, and target/base.

1. Composition. #Occupy has mobilized mainly, though not exclusively, disaffected young and impacted working and middle class whites. Liberate is mainly low and middle income people of color.

2. Primary Frame. #Occupy’s primary frame is the economic system and the injustice it produces. Liberate frames issues in terms of land control and use (such as housing, farming and public space);

3. Target/Base. #Occupy targets those symbols, institutions and persons responsible for perpetrating the economic crisis–the 1%–through the “occupation” of public and private spaces, most notably New York’s financial district, the Oakland seaport and individual bank branches. Liberate’s base are the victims of the crisis, who are protected via land liberation and eviction defense.

Social movements are not single celled creatures on a linear path, but dynamic complex organisms with multiple moving parts, each responsible for a different series of tasks. Such a division of labor must be understood, appreciated and fully embraced. This movement is a complex organism with two tracks, and each track performs unique and critical functions.

Two intractable images of the housing crisis include the banks responsible for this financial mess and the homes from which families are evicted. This movement must take the fight to the banks, protesting and occupying them on their turf. Those same banks are occupying our communities, neighborhoods and homes. We must end that occupation through Liberation and eviction defense. The crisis simply cannot be resolved by choosing to fight on either one front or the other.

Not only must we both #Occupy and Liberate, but the chances of success for one-track increases exponentially with the actual success of the other. Therefore, the Occupy-Liberate dichotomy is not an antagonistic one; it is complementary.

We must occupy the 1% and liberate the 99%.

That is not the job of one organization, but the mission of everyone’s movement.

There is growing awareness of the two tracks, their characteristics, strengths and limitations. As we struggle to properly understand and define this relationship, we must resist the tendency towards two competing orientations:

The first tendency is to examine both tracks, note their size, frames and composition and conclude that each track actually represents its own separate and unique movement essentially unrelated to the other. The second, and polar opposite, tendency is to remark the similarities in approach and tactics and conclude the tracks are effectively identical and must be merged into a singular monolithic track. Both tendencies are wrong.

We must take care not to expect large numbers of Blacks, Latinos, indigenous, and other oppressed nationalities or immigrants, each with particular historic relationships to the police, to “occupy” banks and financial institutions. In fact, it is not clear that #Occupy could have succeeded if first executed by people of color. We must also resist the temptation to allow 1,000 young white kids to “occupy” historically people of color communities, still reeling from the more onerous occupation of gentrification. At the same time, we must find creative, effective and empowering ways to work together through parallel, supportive and even joint actions and campaigns.

While engaging the dual tracks in parallel actions is a prerequisite to building a holistic and powerful movement, it is not sufficient to guarantee trust and success. Two sets of actions, even during the same time frame and in the same city, will not result in an instant movement.

Forging these dual tracks into a cohesive movement with mutually supportive actions, requires at least three basic understandings:

1. Basis of unity. Why are we fighting and what are we fighting for? Do we want the same things or are we just doing the same thing in order to get to different places. What is the basis of our unity.

2. Framework of unity. How are we working together? How are decisions made? What do we do when one track disagrees with the other?

3. Next steps. What are we doing next? We propose a 2012 Spring Offensive.

We must Occupy to Liberate.

Max Rameau is a Haitian born Pan-African theorist, campaign strategist, organizer and author. He is one of the founding members of the Take Back the Land movement and is currently with Movement Catalyst, a movement support organization, providing campaign development and other support to social justice organizations.

If the camp is evicted gather at 4pm at the Main Library at Oak and 14th Street.

To sign on to the text alert system: text the word “bayaction” to 41411.  You can also check the twitter feed: http://twitter.com/occupyoakland or the facebook group https://www.facebook.com/groups/occupyoaktown/  for updates.

We are reclaiming public space to use as a forum for the people to come together, meet one another, listen to each other, and build power for ourselves.  Occupy Oakland is more than just a speak-out or a camp out.  The purpose of our gathering here is to plan actions, to mobilize real resistance, to defend ourselves from the economic and physical war that is being waged against our communities.

We look forward to making this occupation a space that is welcoming and inclusive of the diverse communities of Oakland (and the bay area).   We will acknowledge and learn from each other’s histories of struggle.  And we commit to challenging oppressive ideas, behaviors, and politics, even – or especially – when they come from ourselves or our comrades.

Oakland represent!

To the Politicians and the 1%:  This occupation is its own demand.

Since we don’t need permission to claim what is already ours, we do not have a list of demands to give you.  There is no specific thing you can do in order to make us “go away”.  And the last thing we want is for you to preserve your power, to reinforce your role as the ruling classes in our society.

It may not be obvious to you, but the decisions you make daily, as well as this system you are a part of, these things are not working for us.  Our goal is bring power back where it belongs, with the people, so we can fix what politicians and corporations have screwed up.

Stand aside!

To the Media: Our struggle won’t fit in a 15 second soundbite.

This occupation is a beginning, and we have a long way to go.  And while we have much in common, we believe the people are stronger united behind many banners, rather than a single one.   We want to make it very clear that Occupy Oakland is not putting forward leaders, tactical or strategic directives, or a uniform message or political platform.

- October 8th, 2011 Message from the Oakland General Assembly in preparation for Occupy Oakland!

Several meetings of a General Assembly have been held and the”official” website has been moved and is under construction at http://www.occupyoakland.org.  The occupation plans workshops, food, music, childcare, a library and much more. Come ready to spend the night or just swing by to say hello. Let’s do this Oakland style!
Download Flyers: link to 4 up pdf

Oakland Education Association Backs 4 p.m. City Hall ‘Occupy Oakland’ Rally Demanding Economic Justice

OAKLAND – Oakland Unified educators will join a 4 p.m. “Occupy Oakland” rally at city hall today after the Oakland Education Association Executive Board voted to support the national grass-roots “Occupy Wall Street” movement against corporate greed that began last month in New York.

“The OEA has long advocated for a fair tax structure that would require corporations and the wealthy to pay their fair share to sustain the society from which they profit,” said Betty Olson-Jones, President of the Oakland Education Association. “Schools, programs for the elderly and disabled, health care for the poor and for children, and other vital public services have all been cut drastically in the past three years. This fight is about economic justice and protecting the poor and middle class. The Occupy Wall Street movement demonstrates that the American public understands how important people like teachers, firefighters and nurses are to society.”

The OEA joins the Occupy Wall Street movement in demanding that those who have not felt the bite of the recession—despite the fact that their actions played a large part in causing it—pay their fair share to fund recovery, Olson-Jones said.  “We also believe that corporations should be held accountable. It is wrong that some banks pay little to no income tax while schools and other public services are mercilessly cut. It is unacceptable that oil companies are permitted to take oil out of our ground in California without paying any tax or fee while California ranks 43^rd in per-pupil spending and state cuts continue to hurt our students and schools.”

WHAT:      Oakland educators will join other unions and other members of the community in a rally against corporate greed to support the national “Occupy Wall Street” grass-roots movement.

WHEN:     4 p.m. today, Monday, Oct. 10.

The Oakland Education Association is affiliated with the 325,000-member California Teachers Association and the 3.2 million-member National Education Association.

Across the country fallout from the outrage at Big Banks bailouts, the foreclosure crisis and mounting attacks on the working class have awoken many who once lived comfortably and thought the American Dream was theirs. A growing number are now coming to an understanding that there is no dream after all.

In Boston, thousands of people gathered outside Bank of America offices to protest the bank’s foreclosure policies. It was part of a series of ongoing actions organized by the Right to the City Alliance. Causa Justa :: Just Cause was there.

“When you have 3,000 people gathered and surrounding the bank demanding to be recognized and respected, then for each individual inside that bank, they are forced to ask themselves: ‘What am I doing? What role am I playing in this?’ That’s how the policies change,” said Nell Myhand, Oakland Homeower Clinic Coordinator for CJJC and someone personally fighting a foreclosure

The crowd enthusiastically “Took Back” the City of Boston. It coincided with a week of escalating actions in San Francisco “Make Banks Pay,” where a loud and raucous group heckled bank execs at a private party at AT&T Park, chanting “Keep Our Families Safe At Home”; to a bank divestment action targeting B of A, Wells Fargo and Chase banks; to a foreclosure vigil.

Since 2007 2.5 million foreclosures have taken place across the nation. 6.9 million have started and a projected 5.7 million borrowers are at risk. Locally in Oakland there are 1004 properties in default, 2105 bank-owned properties and 760 properties in the process of being sold at Trustee sale.

In San Francisco, some 16,355 homeowners are underwater. By 2012 it’s estimated that 12,410 local homes will be in foreclosures, according to a report by California Reinvestment Coalition and Association of Californians for Community Empowerment.

“B of A has over $2 trillion in assets. They got a $4.2 billion tax refund in 2010. Yet they insist on foreclosing on families with no regard for the circumstances of those individuals. For me, the faces of the people who were there standing up for their homes was so moving it was energizing,” said Myhand.

Causa Justa :: Just Cause has organized scores of protests in front of Big Banks such as B of A and Wells Fargo to put pressure to stop the evictions due to predatory loans. The families facing foreclosures did not cause the economic crisis and the banks have to be accountable for their actions.

Meanwhile protestors at the Wall Street occupation in New York increased each day. The occupation sparked similar protests across the country including San Francisco where an encampment continued to grow in front of the Federal Reserve Bank.

These national protests are bringing together unemployed young people, labor unions and community organizations of working class communities of color. The convergence of different groups to support a single demand to hold big banks accountable is inspiring and historic. The huge wealth and power of the banks means that it will take all of us working together to demand and win the justice we want to see.

“From the 18% unemployment in Black communities, rampant foreclosures and evictions and the profiteering from the detention of immigrants, Black and Latino families have been hardest hit by this economic crisis. Enough is enough. We are the 99%, the growing new majority. We will be heard. We will be seen” Cinthya Munoz, Immigrant Rights Organizer with CJJC.

Alameda County Courthouse Protest Foreclosure Auction