Yesterday the Oakland Museum of California posted an online video exhibit on the Occupy movement. "Portraits from the Occupation" is a series of 16 interviews with "individuals involved with or impacted by Occupy Oakland." The videos were shot by artists Alex Abramovich and Lucy Raven.
On Saturday, May 5, the piece will screen all day in the entry areas of the museum's Gallery of California History and Gallery of California Art.
Three of the videos and transcript extracts below...
For Oakland, it's obviously not been great. What I've learned out of this is that the Occupy and young people have their own media system. So...what a lot of people think across the country is that we are this repressive fascist city and we just closed down the camp and we teargassed and rubber bulleted people and we're constantly not allowing people to demonstrate. When the reality is that there's only one night since this thing began when occupiers could not use the plaza, could not have meetings, could not have demonstrations.
We as a city had a lot of damage to our reputation, and to our finances and to our public safety in the sense that there's probably been at least a million dollars of vandalism and damage in the city hall area, and that because the demonstrations have been continuous and ongoing...it's taken police officers away from a city that really needs its police officers… We have one of the highest murder rates in the country...
The movement has to be sustainable and built on really concrete demands...When I was a union organizer, it was not just okay we're against rich people... I had a discussion with a young person who said we're going to try to close down all the banks in Oakland. I smiled and said, you know I've spent most of my last year trying to open banks in neighborhoods that have been greenlined, so we're obviously coming from a different place. You have to sort of figure that out: Are banks innately evil? Maybe. On the other hand, Bank Of America has had this historic old tradition that the owner of that bank literally hauled the money out of the bank vault in a cart and leant money so people could rebuild San Francisco. So sometimes things aren't so clear cut... As the mayor of the city, when I negotiate with Wells Fargo and Bank of America, I'm asking them to open branches in East Oakland, in areas where immigrants have no ability to have a checking account. You have to keep your eyes on what the goal is, and the goal is for people to have better lives and more opportunity in this country.