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What's next for the 99% movement?
01/10/2012

This morning, OaklandBecks tweeted:

I just realized that this is the first morning since Oct 10 that there have been no #occupyoakland camps in Oakland.

I'm not sure that's an entirely bad thing. The camps were an effective protest for a long time, but it may well be time for the movement to move on.

The first reason is that the camp in Oakland is becoming a divisive issue internally. When the city evicted the camp from Oscar Grant/Frank Ogawa Plaza, a group proposed that the camp move to an empty lot at 19th and Telegraph. But that site is next to the Oakland School of the Arts, by affordable housing, and is about to undergo construction to become a sculpture garden. The effort to create the sculpture garden was a subject of community activism on behalf of the working class neighborhood. In other words, the camp moved from the front steps of city hall – where police violence emphasized the nature of the conflict between the 1% and the 99% and forced the government and the police to pick sides – to placing schoolkids and a community of the 99% in danger should police attack. This would create a hassle for working folks heading to the nearby BART stop or kids getting off it to get to school, but wouldn't inconvenience the government or the corporate workers further downtown. When people proposed that the camp choose a different location, the folks who put forward these concerns about the wellbeing of working class Oaklanders were shouted down and the proposal was ultimately rejected (apparently quite nastily). The lot was briefly occupied on Saturday, but police quickly and peacefully cleared it out. They also cleared out the longstanding camp in Snow Park, where campers had been clean, quiet, and peaceful. That camp's eviction undermines the claim that the camps were being closed down because of public health and safety concerns.

I fear that the fights over where to camp and whether to re-occupy old spots or find new spots has distracted the movement from its core message, the concerns about income inequality, the pernicious effects of that inequality on society at large, and the need for radical changes in order to fix those problems. If the public face of the movement is a self-serving argument over the protesters' eviction, rather than the many families being evicted from their homes, then the camps are a distraction and an ineffective tactic.

Moving on from the encampments is also fully in keeping with time-tested rules of political activism. At this point, the camps no longer fulfill Alinsky's 3rd and 7th rules (and many others):

The third rule is: Wherever possible go outside of the experience of the enemy. Here you want to cause confusion, fear, and retreat. …

The seventh rule: A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag. Man can sustain militant interest in any issue for only a limited time, after which it becomes a ritualistic commitment, like going to church on Sunday mornings. New issues and crises are always developing and one's reaction becomes, "Well, my heart bleeds for those people and I'm all for a boycott, but after all there are other important things in life" – and there it goes.

I'd say that by last week, the camps were a drag on the movement, and it's better to be moving forward. In addition to generating internal dissent, they were no longer outside the Oakland PD's experience. They didn't confuse or scare the police or the city or the corporations. They were a nuisance, and one that they figured out how to handle. As Alinsky says in his 10th rule: "The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition."

I don't know quite how to formulate this as a proposal for the Oakland General Assembly, but I'd like to see the tactic shift from occupation of City Hall's front door to an occupation of lots which have been abandoned for years, or (with the occupants' permission) the front yards of houses due for foreclosure. This would help defend people from foreclosure and return the focus to the nation's economic woes, and occupying abandoned lots would emphasize that this economic crisis is not news for Oakland. These sites might be farther from a BART stop and harder for the media to find, but by now they know to look for the camps, and this would create a different set of challenges for them, without violating the second of Alinsky's rules, "Never go outside the experience of your people."

The violence on the UC Berkeley campus and last weekend at UC Davis, and the subsequent challenges to the chancellors on both campuses, emphasize that the Occupy movement still has legs, and shows that there are still ways for the 99% to express its power through that movement. "Power is," as Alinsky says, "not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have." When a crowd of students managed to talk riot police into lowering their guns and retreating, they took power, and they took it again in forcing their school's chancellor to make a walk of shame past a crowd of angry but silent students. In the first case, the people's mic became a weapon that overcame pepper spray and body armor. In the second, it was silence which tore away the armor of power and privilege.

How we bring that power to bear is the question. Camping for the sake of camping is no longer outside the opponent's experience, nor is it inherently powerful any more. But we still have power, and still have grievances, so we have to keep moving forward.

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The science education reform agenda hasn't changed in a century
01/10/2012

Marie-Claire Shanahan teaches science education at the University of Alberta, and blogs about her own research and about the state of science education (and science education training: science education education if you will). Her latest post summarizes her findings from reviewing science teaching guides going back over a century:

Educators, critics, and scientists often argue for improving science education by teaching the processes of science, emphasizing critical thinking, and actively engaging students in doing science. Almost always, this is argued to be a great improvement over “traditional” approaches to science teaching that prioritize the rote learning of facts–an approach that is said to have dominated in the past. The problem is, it’s always a different past that we’re talking about – for us, it’s maybe the 80s, for those involved in writing the book, maybe the 40s. …

Modern science education – to go further, the inclusion of science in school curricula at all – owes a lot to Louis Agassiz and Nature Study education. … One of Aggasiz’s most famous arguments was the students should “study nature not books”. They should engage in the processes of science (Agassiz emphasized the power of observation) and learn to analyze evidence and draw their own conclusions. …

At the turn of the 20th century, science was not a typical part of the school curriculum. Standardized curricula that flowed from elementary to high school were really just beginning to be created in North America in the 1890s. Including science in these plans was seen as modern choice, a way to prepare for the future but also to challenge the rote approaches of a classical education. Instead of memorizing Latin conjugations, students should be learning things that would help them live better and survive economically. Sound familiar?

So what happened? Greater efforts to standardize education and concerns about teacher education and training (among other things) created the same kind of push/pull that we see today. A flexible science education that emphasizes engaging in science in the local environment became a difficult thing to do when inspections, prescribed texts, and standardized exams became the norm.

The barrier that prevents active, critical and process oriented science teaching has never been the fact that it’s a new idea. It’s not. When you scratch the surface of these arguments it turns out to be a rabbit hole. There is no past where rote teaching of scientific content was thought to be the best approach. This past is a rhetorical one.

The challenge this presents is that arguments presented in this way can’t lead to change because the actual challenges are covered up. When those challenges (e.g., (standardization pressures, assessment practices, changing curricula, to name just a few)) are invisible, they become a lot harder to address. A more fruitful approach might sound like this: “ We recognize that many teachers, scientists, and science educators have been asking for the same things for a long time. For many reasons it’s been difficult to realize this vision of science education. Let’s see what we can do to address the underlying issues.”

This can’t happen if the real reasons are constantly covered up by the rhetoric that this is new and non-traditional. So what do you say, can we leave that reason alone for a bit?

The whole post is well worth reading: a fascinating historic look at the place of science education in North American schools as well as a thoughtful analysis of how we currently teach science, how we seem always to have thought we ought to be teaching science, and why we haven't been able to make a reality of that ideal.

So what are the underlying issues, and how do we address them? In my own (limited and perhaps skewed) experience, the conversation tends to focus on pre-service teacher training, and lack of resources for hands-on teaching. The solutions proposed often involve razing every school of education and starting from scratch. At which point everyone starts arguing and then they all go to the bar.

Shanahan's point is well-taken, though, that there are various structural reasons why we teach science how we do. It's hard to stick to a standardized curriculum if you're having students design their own experiments, or if you encourage students to explore the outdoors in a relatively free manner. The need to cover specific topics can require narrowing the scope of these investigations, pushing lab exercises away from the (often unpredictable) practice of hypothesis-generation and hypothesis testing toward duller but more controllable lab demonstrations, or cookbook experiments where the teacher knows that a right answer exists and knows what it is.

Similarly, the rising importance of standardized testing and the use of these tests (and the statewide standards they're based on) to hold teachers and schools accountable encourages rote learning. While I'll grant that it's surely possible to devise tests which assess a student's ability to develop a hypothesis and design and experiment to test it and to evaluate the results, it's far cheaper and easier to administer and score multiple choice tests focusing on retention of certain factoids from textbooks. If that is the sort of learning we reward, that's the sort of teaching we can expect.

Shanahan also rightly highlights the problem of prescribed texts. In practice, many master teachers have come to supplement their assigned textbook with so many other exercises and resources that the book itself is essentially ignored, it still shapes how they think about teaching, and about science. A unified textbook tends to emphasize what I think of as the science-as-encyclopedia mindset. For over a century, science educators have been wanting to shift away from that idea of science as a collection of facts, and to emphasize the science-as-process mindset. But textbooks rarely teach a scientific mindset in any consistent way. Indeed, the existence of a textbook is in some sense antithetical to that mindset.
Many states' published science standards emphasize the importance of teaching science as a process, but the inherent limits which Shanahan lists – including the focus on standardization embodied in those documents – undermine that focus. The essays praising inquiry-based learning that often open the standards don't affect which textbooks are adopted or how the tests are written, and so those exhortations are easily ignored.
Compare how we teach science to how we teach English (or at least, how we did in the schools I attended). We use grammar textbooks because the rules of grammar are established (though they change over time). But in learning about literary techniques like metaphor or about the ways that stories and essays are structured, we don't just rely on a textbook. We hand out novels and short stories and essays and plays. We don't just read essays about Shakespeare, we read the Bard himself, and the teacher helps students puzzle through the structure of the play and the way he's using language to get the desired effect. We teach students to do literary criticism. English teachers might use texts that include excerpts which represent the major themes, but what primary or secondary school teacher would think of teaching English without having the students read literature and analyze it themselves?

In science classes, you may not see the primary scientific literature until an upper-level college science class, and may not do a real scientific experiment until that point, either. Working from textbooks and canned experiments is the equivalent of giving students a copy of the Hamlet Cliff's Notes and asking them to read a section of the play and regurgitate the Cliffs' Notes explanation. The results for science education are predictable.

I have to believe that students could work through annotated versions of scientific papers, and analyze those scientific results the way that a scientist would. The language and concepts could be tricky at times, but no more more so than Shakespeare, and good teachers could help students navigate the trickier bits. I could easily envision a textbook consisting of important historic papers (including those whose authors were wrong, but which influenced later and better work), so that students would not just learn the end result of science, and not just how science is done in the lab and in the field, but how scientists think about new results and devise new hypotheses and test them.

Assuming someone wrote such a textbook, how would we get teachers to use it? It wouldn't necessarily be aligned to the particular information required by state standards, nor would it necessarily prepare students to do better on standardized tests. Running science classes as discussions rather than lectures would make a lot of teachers uncomfortable, and could require massive retraining.

It would surely be possible to introduce this style of learning without a wholesale revolution. Even reproducing a handful of scientific papers in textbooks would make it easier for students and teachers to see how science works. Science and English teachers could even co-teach classes with those papers, to emphasize the interdisciplinary aspects of those lessons and to give cover to any science teachers who weren't comfortable with that style of classroom management.

The ongoing effort to unify the state standards – the framework of which emphasizes the importance of teaching science-as-process – could allow better tests to be developed and deployed which would better assess students' science skills (and not just factoid retention). Better tests and strong standards could press policymakers and administrators to give teachers leeway to explore different ways of teaching.

And of course, parents and scientists could get interested in helping teachers make this shift. Locally, that could mean bringing the issue up in parent-teacher conferences and PTA meetings, offering to help teachers develop such lesson plans and labs, and to sell that pedagogical shift to administrators. They could interrogate their state boards of education about how the state's standardized tests assess scientific thinking. They could make sure local school boards and science supervisors and superintendents are on board, and that the textbooks they choose reflect that choice. They could make sure it's easy for teachers to take students outside, ideally without requiring permission slips just to go out into the schoolyard or to a nearby park.

For over a century, we've known how science should be taught. These ideas aren't new, and they shouldn't be scary.

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More misogyny from the Disco. 'tute
01/10/2012

Disco. 'tute president Bruce Chapman is upset. There are ladies with their bloomers in a twist over something or other that they claim Herman Cain said. Let's read Chapman and see if we can guess what Cain is supposed to have done:

A number of significant insights are emerging from the charges of sex harassment lodged against Herman Cain. It may be wise to withhold judgement [sic] about the particulars so far. There are a number of groups operating behind the scenes to drive the story one way or another.

Aha! Charges of sexual harassment were filed, but we should be dubious because shadowy groups are trying to destroy this innocent man.

However, it's not too soon to note the way job problems in our times are converted into legal problems. I have commented on the tendency of lawyers for businesses and even governments to discount charges of sex discrimination and sexual harassment by settling out of court--the supposedly "cheaper" outcome for otherwise costly lawsuits. Obviously, if there really has been an illegal action or pattern of behavior the business or agency should settle, and effectively admit wrongdoing. If not, the "cheaper" outcome may become an expensive one--at least in terms of publicity.

Oh, it's a job problem. Like when Stephen Meyer doesn't make a new pot of coffee after he finish the old one, or when David Klinghoffer writes another essay blaming Charles Darwin for his hangnail. Sure, someone can sue over it, but it's not a real issue, so businesses might decide, foolishly, to settle this frivolous claim. Fortunately, while Cain has had charged lodged against him, it isn't like his former company already settled these charges over a decade ago, "effectively admitting wrongdoing."

In The American Spectator, Lisa Fabrisio [sic] makes another relevant arguement [sic]: that the Cain issue reeks of hypocrisy. Here is a modern media/entertainment culture steeped in soft porn, where new breakthroughs in lowered standards are accomplished [sic] constantly. And yet it is this same debased culture that acts offended by some official's conversational gaffe or unintended double entendre!

The problem isn't what Cain did (or if Chapman's to be believed, didn't do). The problem is that there's cleavage on display at supermarket checkout lines. Hypocrisy! Women are allowed to wear revealing outfits, but an employer can't grope an employee? (Allegedly!) Besides, I bet this "sexual harassment" is just a slip of the tongue, or a joke that was taken the wrong way. You know how women are.

Of course, those of us who've read the newspapers in the last week (without being distracted by the bra ads), know a few things that Chapman doesn't.

First, we know that Cain isn't just charged with sexual harassment, he and his company settled those charges over a decade ago. And his company added a gag rule to the settlement, so that he and his former company can talk about the charges, but the women he assaulted cannot speak publicly. Politico explains what we know about those cases:

The sources — including the recollections of close associates and other documentation — describe episodes that left the women upset and offended. These incidents include conversations allegedly filled with innuendo or personal questions of a sexually suggestive nature, taking place at hotels during conferences, at other officially sanctioned restaurant association events and at the association’s offices. There were also descriptions of physical gestures that were not overtly sexual but that made women who experienced or witnessed them uncomfortable and that they regarded as improper in a professional relationship.

In addition to the three women (we know of) whose suits were settled, a fourth woman came forward and discussed a similar incident she experienced. She had been fired by Cain's National Restaurant Association, and asked to meet Mr. Cain to get help finding a new job:

After taking her out for a night on the town in Washington, she said, he suggested she engage with him sexually in return for his assistance — seizing her inappropriately when they were alone in a car and running his hand up her skirt.…

As she described it, Mr. Cain ran his hand up her skirt, “reached for my genitals” and pulled her head toward his crotch. “I said, ‘What are you doing? You know I have a boyfriend; this isn’t what I came here for,’ ” Ms. Bialek said, her voice cracking. “Mr. Cain said, ‘You want a job, right?’”

Importantly:

Joel P. Bennett, a lawyer for another of Mr. Cain’s accusers, called Ms. Bialek’s description of the encounter “very similar” to Mr. Cain’s interaction with his client, who he has said received several inappropriate advances from him. Without going in details [as forbidden by their settlement], Mr. Bennett said, “It corroborates the claim.”

To dismiss crotch-grabbing, threats of forced oral sex, and offer to exchange sexual favors for employment as a "job problem," "a conversational gaffe," or "unintentional double entendre" stretches the legitimate meanings of any of those terms. Chapman is either clueless about the actual circumstances at hand, or doesn't understand sexual power dynamics and sexual harassment.

Mr. Chapman runs a multi-million dollar organization, handling administrative matters and a large staff. He seems to genuinely not know what sexual harassment is and why it matters. Clearly, sexism infects the Discovery Institute from the top down. Not many women work at the 'tute, so maybe the issue hasn't come up, or maybe this misogynist attitude has simply created an environment where few women are comfortable working.

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Evangelicals have lower science literacy, part 2
01/10/2012

A month ago, I posted a link to an op-ed in the LA Times which referred to as-yet unpublished research which purported to show no difference in science literacy between people who don't take part in religion and evangelical Christians. Then I did my own analysis of the data, which found significant differences between evangelicals and the nonreligious.

Now, in a special issue of Social Science Quarterly,
Darren Sherkat again shows that evangelicals are less science literate than other groups. The analysis I reported in my previous blog post is actually a bit more sophisticated, and Sherkat's graphs are heinous offenses against all principles of clear data presentation (3D barplots! grey backgrounds! lack of self-sufficiency! excessive labels on the y axis! general chartjunk!), but the point comes across clearly:

The gap between sectarians [i.e., evangelicals] and fundamentalists and other Americans is quite substantial. Indeed, only education is a stronger predictor of scientific proficiency than are religious factors. … The religion gap is larger than the gender gap, which places women at a deficit of 0.85 when compared to men. Controls for religious factors eliminate the significance of the negative impact of southern residence on science scores, suggesting that regional differences in scientific literacy are a function of the concentration of sectarians and fundamentalists in the South. Deficits remain between rural Americans and others, but the difference is not as large as the religious differences.

Berkman and Plutzer's excellent Evolution, Creationism, and the Battle to Control America's Classrooms also found the same basic factors explained most of the variation in teachers' willingness to teach evolution: fundamentalism, rural life, and low education were the major predictors. Rural areas tend to have less-qualified science teachers (though there are certainly excellent rural science teachers), and also tend to have cultural aversions to science that more urban communities lack.

As Sherkat writes:

the religious effects are not a function of the differential impact of education on scientific literacy, nor are they simply a function of particular religious regional cultures. …

In contrast to expectations of structural sociological theories, which root educational, occupational, and income deficits in material circumstances, this research shows that religious factors have persistent negative effects on scientific literacy even after controls for educational attainment, ethnicity, immigrant status, and income. Further, the magnitude of the impact of religious factors on scientific literacy is substantial. Religion plays more of a role in structuring scientific literacy than does gender, ethnicity, or income.

I'm not terribly surprised by the results for income. If we had reliable data on the parents' income during a person's childhood, that might tell us a bit more, but an adult survey respondent's income is driven substantially by education, which this model already accounted for. Looking at parents' income would tell us more about the respondent's socioeconomic status at the time when his or her view of science largely gelled, while current income is really a proxy for a host of consequences of that worldview, including education in general and scientific attitudes in particular (science-oriented careers – including in medicine and nursing or engineering or technical positions in labs or factories – tend to pay better than other career options). In other words, I'd expect all sorts of odd causal interference between current income and attitudes toward science, which is why I didn't include that in my previous model. I should have included rural status, but it wouldn't have changed the magnitude of the result.

Sherkat's summary of the dangers posed by this cultural/religious gap is perfectly stated:

In an era when citizens are called on to evaluate scientific evidence for issues like evolution, global warming, health-care policy, environmental pollution, and the like, the low levels of scientific literacy in the United States are a substantial barrier to reasoned discourse and informed political action. Although conservative Christian activists claim that their conflict with science is primarily related to theories of evolution or the propriety of stem cell research, this research shows that the effect of sectarian religious identifications and fundamentalist religious beliefs extends well beyond these two issues. Given the low levels of scientific literacy prevalent among fundamentalist and sectarian Christians, they may have difficulty understanding public issues related to scientific inquiry or pedagogy, and they may have a limited capacity to understand technical information regarding their own health and safety.

I'll just add that this is why it's so critical to engage those religious communities through trusted avenues like their pastors, or scientists speaking in their churches. If they're culturally averse to science (at least, to certain forms of scientific knowledge and certain claims of science's competence), it's key to find other ways to reach them and bring them closer to the mainstream. They need to be able to engage with science not just on hot button issues, but on uncontentious matters of personal health, workplace safety, and professional advancement. Read the comments on this post...

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Solidarity forever
01/10/2012

Hand in hand together
We shall not be moved

"We Shall Not Be Moved," Trad. civil rights song

On Wednesday, November 2, the people of Oakland peacefully, politely, closed downtown Oakland and the Port of Oakland – the nation's fifth busiest port.

It's hard to say how many people spent at least part of their day at the intersection of 14th Street at Broadway. Broadway was closed for two long blocks, the side streets were, too, and all were filled with people. The plaza in front of City Hall was filled as well, with tents, with free food, with DJs, with silkscreening stations, with speeches, and with impromptu teach-ins. Occasionally, a large mass would gather and march off to protest in front of a bank or other corporate malefactor, but those marches left the center of the strike filled with people.

At its peak, I'd guess there were over 5,000 people present, and in the course of the day, I'd be amazed if fewer than 20,000 participated. I've seen estimates as high as 100,000, which strikes me as high but not implausible. By the end of the day, the City of Oakland and various other local businesses had instructed employees to leave work early, and many simply told their employees not to come to work.

My employer remained open, but I took the day off to see history made. This is the first general strike in the United States in almost 55 years, and the context of this strike is different from those that came before. I doubt any strike as successful as this has been assembled in so little time, with so little direct involvement from organized labor. In less than a week, the organizers seemed to have planned for every contingency, and accomplished all their major goals for the day. And they did so peacefully, and with barely more than a token police presence. I saw a police car blocking off Broadway when I biked in that morning, but even that presence was gone by the afternoon.

The crowds came for myriad reasons. Unions had tents set up, where they talked about their work, rallied their members, and provided some institutional memory. Various socialist and communist factions had tents and tables, too, as did the Black Panther Party.

But it wasn't all politics. Next to the Black Panthers was the Buddhist meditation circle, where people sat in silent meditation all day, amidst throngs of people and not far from the massive sound truck, jammed with amplifiers and people exhorting those massive crowds. Elsewhere, an interfaith tent hosted services. Food justice groups organized a teach-in, and all day there were long lines waiting for the free food supplied by groups like Food not Bombs.

Musicians performed live in the plaza's amphitheater, and a DJ spun records on Broadway in front of the Oaklandish shop (which was closed for the day). Inside the plaza, crowds danced as DJs hyphy and hiphop spun by various different DJs. A brass band wandered through, and a jugband ensemble took up residence in an office building breezeway.

Another long line led to a silkscreening station, where strikers could make their own sign that read "Hella Occupy Oakland." Other folks handed out signs that read "This is our city and we can shut it down." For myself, I brought some markers and cardboard, making a sign that read "Solidarity Forever" on one side and quoted a line from that classic labor hymn on the other: "Without our brains and muscle not a single wheel can turn." While I was drawing that sign, two young guys of high school age asked to borrow my marker, and made their own signs. The spare cardboard I brought wasn't hard to pass along to folks in need, and other folks made signs out of a massive pile of cardboard in the middle of the tent city that has been Occupy Oakland's permanent home for these last weeks.

There were arts and crafts areas for children, too. I'd guess that 10% of the crowd was under 10, and there were blocks and crayons and toys for them in a children's tent. Just like their parents, these kids were putting their imagination to work, building a better future.

Festive as the atmosphere was, people did come to protest, and to put those signs to work. Some people blocked the entrance to a Citibank office building directly across 14th street, and marches went further afield, to protest in front of various corporate offices. There were 3 major marches during the day, and various smaller ones. On the march I fell in with, I arrived shortly after the window at a Chase bank had a brick thrown through it, and the cracks in the glass were still crackling outward as I walked past. That was the only sign of violence I saw that day, and no one was cheering it.

For various obvious reasons, the media coverage of the day focused on a few broken windows and some other vandalism, but to do so truly misses the point. What violence took place involved perhaps 1% of 1% of the people present, and for the most part, those crowds policed themselves. A few people turned out hoping to start trouble, and a few of them succeeded, but it would be wrong to let those isolated incidents shade our perception of the day.

Everyone I met and everything I saw at Occupy Oakland was filled with joy, and it felt like nothing so much as an enormous street festival. Everyone was friendly, everyone felt connected to a bigger cause, and everyone was having fun. The news helicopters overhead couldn't capture that part of the story, but there were loads of reporters on the ground with us, and there's simply no way that they could have come away with anything but a positive impression.

At one point, a large group of people spontaneously joined hands and began dancing in a giant and growing circle.

A Teamsters Union truck pulled in for a while, blasting music and pumping up a different part of the crowd.

Tibetan monks and a Native American leader sang chants together.

Clergy at the Interfaith tent sang "this little light of mine."

Folks shared tips on which sandwich shops were open, and where you could recharge your cell phone.

Giant and sometimes obscure banners flapped overhead. "Death to capitalism" stretched across 14th street, while the large and cryptic "Bioregional Fractional Banking" banner seemed to pop up everywhere. A couple of kids whose parents had let them skip school carried signs in support of teachers, while a 1 year old had a sign strapped on her back saying: "Too small to fail."

The same, fortunately, cannot be said of the general strike. While smaller than the organizers had hoped, it closed down commerce through downtown Oakland for the day, and emphasized the oft-repeated chant: "Whose streets?" "Our streets." Not the banks' streets, not the police's streets, not even the City Council's streets. Ours. And we made good and noble use of them.

Beginning at 4, much of the crowd made its way to the Port of Oakland, the historic center of the city's economy. The goal was to prevent the night shift from being able to clock in, shutting down a different part of the city's commerce for the night, reminding the multinational elites that they move jobs and goods and money around the globe only at the sufferance of the folks who work in these cities. The port workers supported the strike, but had agreed to a contract clause forbidding them to strike. By blocking the gates to the port, we gave them an excuse to do what they wanted to do anyway.

So off we marched, in several waves of a few thousand. The 2 mile path to the port was packed with people, four lanes across, for hours that night, with crowds still streaming in at 7, when I had to head back.

Inside the port, the same festive atmosphere prevailed. The brass band was there, and someone was signing songs over his own amplifier. Folks were chatting with the remaining workers inside the port fence, celebrated with them as they came off shift and drove out. The few truck drivers parked along the port road seemed bemused and didn't object to the crowds who climbed on top of their cabs and containers to get a better view. I tweeted: "The only thing more beautiful than the Port of Oakland at dusk is 5000 people marching on the Port at dusk."

Helicopters and geese crowded the skies overhead, and even cameras in the helicopters couldn't capture the entire mass of protesters. If there were fewer than 10,000 people in those marches, I'd be amazed, because they filled the entrance road for hours. I hear the police are estimating 7,000, and organizers claim 30,000. My guess would've been 15-20,000 anyway, which splits the difference nicely.

I'd always wanted to spend and evening photographing the port's cranes at sunset, so on top of the sheer joy of watching the 4-lane road fill up with miles of cheery protesters, I had a great time trying to find the perfect shot of the port. You can see a bigger sample of my photos at Flickr; I took 320 photos that day, which I whittled down to my favorite 38.

By the time I left, the Port Authority was well on its way to officially shutting down the port for the night. Trucks were backed up at the entrance to the port, and there were (unfounded) rumors of police massing to evict the protest. Much later that night, protesters occupied an abandoned building and invited the nonprofit that formerly used the space to return and continue providing services to the homeless. Riot police responded to that, and after protesters lit a barricade on fire, the police fired off some tear gas. But despite having massed around Oscar Grant Plaza itself, and despite fears that the bloody police riot of a week ago might repeat, the police remained calm, and protesters helped protect shops whose windows were broken by drunk and disgruntled troublemakers.

My sense of the day was much like what Jaime Omar Yassin describes:

Words fail, I was simply moved by the reality of all these people coming down to engage in an ‘illegal’ action that just a week ago would have been considered radical and subversive, but today was filled with happiness, community, respect and love. And the power of such a mobilization to silence and dispel the police, the power of people to write the rules of public space. That’s something I’d never thought I’d see in my lifetime.

I don't know what will come of this. Will I see this again in my lifetime? Again in 2011? Will this change what happens in Washington, DC, or in Sacramento? Will this sort of protest spread, shutting down the streets of Manhattan or of Washington for a day? It's too soon to say.

But I know that it changed me, and it feels like it changed Oakland. Even the forbearance of the police suggests a change. A week ago, who would have predicted that they would stay out of the way of the unauthorized blocking of major streets and the Port, and that they would responded about as minimally as possible to a act of civil disobedience that damaged property? (Their behavior wasn't perfect: they arrested some legal observers and journalists along with whoever set the fire and broke into the building, but progress is progress.)

As I said before the strike, the goal was not to force some pre-determined list of demands on the city. The goal, as the poster said, was to show, "This is our city and we can shut it down." That means we can also start it up again, and shape what the city will be and do. What shall we do with that knowledge and power?

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When that shopping list is near complete, grab yourself some Topeka treats!
01/05/2012

What better thing to do before and during a fun filled day of shopping in Topeka than to eat?! Mornings can be made a little brighter with a warm cup of coffee from a local coffee shop. Lunch can be a delicious escape in one of Topeka’s locally owned restaurants. The word snack could make [...]

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Driving in a Winter Wonderland
01/05/2012

If you are in the mood for a relaxing drive while viewing thousands of holiday lights, Lake Shawnee’s Winter Wonderland is just for you. The scenic two mile drive takes you through lights and wonder as you view Lake Shawnee in the background. The annual event began November 18 and lasts thru December 31. Cost [...]

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Saddle up! The United Rodeo Association Championships are galloping into Topeka
01/05/2012

Slide on those cowboy boots and head over to the R.R. Domer Livestock Arena at the Kansas Expocentre to enjoy the United Rodeo Associations’ Championship Finals Rodeo. Events start Thursday, November 3 at 7:30 pm and ends Sunday, November 5 with the last show beginning at 7:30 pm. Tickets must be purchased through the box [...]

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Topeka- your New Year’s Eve destination!
01/05/2012

The New Year is just around the corner! Ringing in the New Year has been a well-known tradition for many years, maybe even centuries and Topekans do not plan on letting this tradition die as 2011 ends and 2012 begins. For some Topekans, their plans have been set for months but for all of us [...]

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Shop ’til you drop!
01/05/2012

Shopping during the holidays can unfortunately be a frightful experience if you are not familiar with your surroundings. The hustle and bustle of the holidays can add an unneeded stress. Fortunately, Topeka is a shopping hub for people of many interests and ages. Topeka also has convenient shopping located throughout the city to ease the [...]

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Yule It Downtown! Holiday shopping, parade and more
01/05/2012

Miracles happen and this weekend, the Miracle on Kansas Avenue Parade will have hundreds of people welcoming the holiday season downtown. The holidays are just around the corner and downtown is doing its part to “Yule it Downtown!” On Saturday, November 26, shoppers can find deals and coupons for several merchants downtown from 10 a.m. [...]

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Topeka awaits 3rd Annual Kanza Bowl
01/05/2012

If you thought football in Topeka was over, you are wrong! The 3rd Annual Kanza Bowl kicks off Sunday, November 27, 2011 at 1 p.m. at Hummer Sports Park. The University of Central Missouri Mules will take on the West Texas A&M Buffaloes at Weaver-Erwin Stadium. These two teams have met previously but never at [...]

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Attention early holiday shoppers, Merry Market is the place for you!
01/05/2012

Looking for a way to jump start your holiday shopping? Merry Market may be the perfect solution for you! The Kansas Expocentre Agriculture Hall fills up with holiday go-getters for their annual Merry Market. The Merry Market features handmade treasures, crafts, personalized gifts, jewelry, purses and more. This is the sixth year the Merry Market [...]

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All we do is win! – Visit Topeka wins TIAK awards
01/05/2012

Visit Topeka did it again! We recently won two marketing awards at the Travel Industry Association of Kansas’ annual conference held October 17 – 19 in Lawrence, Kansas. Our visitor guide won an award alongside a social media campaign. Additionally, Visit Topeka is a part of the Kansas I-70 Association which won a marketing award for [...]

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Jackson County Pet Problems
01/03/2012

The Star notes harsh times for critters in Jackson County . . .

"Animal welfare advocates were stunned when Jackson County recently defunded an aggressive, five-year effort to spay and neuter dogs and cats belonging to low-income pet owners."

Obviously, austerity has many victims and local mutts and stray cats must share the burden . . . Because not all of us can have top executive jobs as support staff for County Executive Mike Sanders.