Author Bios

Following the raid on Occupy Oakland a couple weeks ago, I was struck by the vacuum left in my downtown/uptown Oakland neighborhood, where protesters had been camped out for weeks. All that remained of Frank Ogawa Plaza was a lawn strewn with shredded protest signs. What remained from the raid was a mere space – some empty benches, a lawn in close proximity to City Hall, a mess to be cleaned up – but Oscar Grant Plaza was a place with its own cultural practices and a fledgling community that interacted with the larger neighborhood.