Occupy Oakland: photos before and after violent police raid

About the photos above and below, Mike Godwin says,

The "Before" photo, with Occupy Oakland tents in place, was taken October 21. Photographer Donna Enright, an Oakland resident, says she took the photo because she heard from her employer that Occupy Oakland had been served with a notice that the demonstrators were to be evicted.

"I thought this was the last chance I might have to take a picture of [the tents], she says.

The "After" photo was taken later in the day after the pre-sunrise October 25 police intervention at Frank Ogawa Plaza.

Photographs reproduced by BoingBoing with permission. Copyright 2011, Donna Enright. All rights reserved.

• [trefecta]

  Well, this photo just goes along with the concept of ‘world peace’ in the eyes of the power hungry:
  ‘Get rid of everyone.’

• [Matthew]

  Yeah, those tents were such an eyesore compared to tons of tear-gas soaked trash.

• [Guest]

  Wow, look at all the abandoned kittens!

• [Justin Kalb]

  What a mess.  is anyone planning on cleaning all that crap up?  or is this some kind of “Jobs Creation”

  • [Guest]

    there were a bunch of people with that plan, but they were woken up and dispersed by the paramilitaries. 

• [Nathan Hornby]

  At least they sorted out that eyesore!  Oh, wait… you say that the second photograph is the AFTER shot?  Oh.

  An organisation that acts this way should have no power. Just because they’re the ones that carry the handcuffs doesn’t mean that they’re any less criminal. I consider moral crimes far worse than ‘rule book crimes’ – so this may not have been an illegal act, but it’s morally very questionable – and would be twice as illegal as smoking some weed or taking pictures of your own children in public if it were up to me.

  Maybe we should start opening up mass police movements like this to debate and vote? Insert a little democracy into this regime.

  NWA got it right.

• [Amy L Sacks]

  BTW, I’ve noticed a curious thing from perusing so many blog/news comments about Oakland: A number of people in the pro-law-and-order camp (no pun intended) seem really, really obsessed with human waste products– with the fact that if you live in an encampment, you don’t get indoor plumbing.

  Apparently, it’s more noble and “American” to sit docilely at home/work while bankers and their “elected” flunkies shit all over you.  Because if you get grouchy and go outside to complain about it, you might have to shit in a bucket and then Jesus and George Washington cry.  Or something.

  I suppose it’s also possible that it’s just three or four really, really shit-obsessed people writing all the comments everywhere. [crosses fingers]

• [JeffF]

  If we let people live in tents like that they might eventually get pretty dirty and a few of them could get food poisoning or diarrhea.  That would make them slightly ill, and maybe even require a few low end hospital visits.  Also they are killing the grass which is worth tens of thousands of dollars from our limited landscaping budget.

  Alternatively we can have the police force them out with teargas, rubber bullets, and clubs.  The whole crowd will be made to feel rather ill, and a few of them will react badly to the gas or get hit on the head too hard receiving serious, possibly permanent, injury or even death.  This will cost hundreds of thousands of dollars from the much more generous security budget, heck maybe millions if we maim/kill a few people and lose the lawsuits.

• [Scott Tsuchitani]

  I’d like to see a photo from the same perspective taken today, a picture of resilience in the wake of violent abuse.

• [jes5199]

  yeah – by the way – the city spent the whole day after the raid (Oct 26) cleaning up the park – it looked spotless. Then they reopened the park. Then the tents gradually moved back in, and last I saw it looked most or less like the “before” photo again.