In the interest of diversity of tactics, and the spirit of love that we feel for our community, we propose a direct action to take place on February 14th.
We encourage our fellow Oakland residents to join with us to express our love for each other, and our beautiful city, on a march through the downtown Oakland area. Participants should wear red and/or pink in celebration of Valentine’s Day, and are encouraged to bring flowers, bubbles, Valentine’s candy to share, glitter, confetti, and flower petals…
This is to be a completely non-violent, family-friendly action, and will be open to all who are interested in joining us in an expression of love for our community and each other.
In the event of potentially oppressive police presence… couples will be encouraged to stop marching and kiss in the streets…
…the rallies starting at 6 PM will be at Fox Park, at 19th & Telegraph, and NOT at the Plaza. This is to include all of our fellow Occupiers who have unjust stay-away orders from the plaza!
At 6 PM, we will hold a “Make Love, Not War” rally in solidarity with Syria, Egypt, and other nations whose people are currently suffering from state and/or police repression.
At 6:30, we will hold a “Reproductive Health” rally, complete with safer sex supply giveaways.
At 7 PM, we will have our “Hella <3 Oakland” march through the downtown area.
Reads awesome, but the general pattern of Occupy Oakland events has been for something to go haywire, so given the sentence “In the event of potentially oppressive police presence… couples will be encouraged to stop marching and kiss in the streets…” it reads like a good excuse to launch a fuck-fest on the scale of something Paris Hilton might get involved in.
I want to hear Boots Riley explain this one…
In this case, even though “Make Love, Not War” day is supposed to be “family friendly” in the same way that Occupy Oakland protests of the past were supposed to be non-violent, it’s hard for this blogger not to see a scenario where couple are just plain doing it in the streets of Oakland.
I’m serious here.
Given the participation by anarchists in Occupy Oakland protests, such a display of, well, “love,” is a logical expectation. It’s going to be interesting to see how the Oakland Police deal with this one. On second thought, maybe OPD should just watch.
Stay tuned and Happy Valentine’s Day!