Occupy Oakland's Black Panther Roots  | Wed Feb. 1, 2012 4:01 AM
GMT    Advertise on MotherJones.com  The same nonviolent tenor
defined the movement's early days in Oakland, as when some
10,000 people blockaded the city's port on November 2 in a tour
de force of peaceful resistance. But that was then. As the
Occupy movement faded from the headlines this winter, many of
its more moderate supporters stopped showing up at meetings,
leaving the radicals to run the show. That hasn't mattered much
at Occupy Wall Street, where the radicals and reformers mostly
agree on rhetoric and tactics, but it has left the Oakland group
increasingly marginalized. Last month, for example, a group of
Oakland occupiers began holding a weekly "Fuck the Police" march
where they've chanted "Kill the cops!", smashed patrol-car
windows, and lit a box on fire in the middle of an intersection.
"The police are being paid to protect them, but they're
attacking them," says one Oakland Occupy member. "Most people
feel that kind of nullifies