War on Occupy Oakland: Rights defenders tell mayor to fire police or resign

Unprecedented mobilization of U.S. armed forces attack American human rights defenders at Occupy Oakland while mayor was 'missing in action'

Human rights abuses digitally documented of Tuesday night's violent attack with grenades, chemical and other weapons peaceful Occupy Oakland protesters by unprecedented mobilizations including military, mutual aid mobilizations, with law enforcement from all over the state and Homeland Security and some 500 police warrants Oakland Mayor Jean Quan either firing the city’s acting police chief or resigning according to human rights defenders including Keith Olbermann.

“Mayor Quan is left with two choices, she can dismiss the acting police chief… or she must resign,” Olbermann said Wednesday night, adding that she has betrayed all the good she has attempted to take to the city.

"There is no justification, there is no rationalization for being the Mayor who may have begun the great march backward in this country," he said, referring to the Tuesday night brutal assault on protesters with military stun grenades, also known flashbangs, so-called non-lethal weapons that can and do kill.

Olbermann compared Tuesday night to Mayor Daly and others standing back allowing peaceful protesters to be brutally bullied and brutally assaulted by police in the height of the Civil Rights and Vietnam era movements.

"Those protests began non-violently and positively with singing and marches and cooperation with authorities," he said.

"But the police, like the police in Oakland, California this week, they injected the violence. And it escalated and echoed and soon, there wasn;t just one Iraq Vet in the hospital with a fractured skull, but there were dead men and women on the streets of this country and no one in this country wants to see that again."

(Watch embeded Youtube captured of police assaults that turned downtown Oakland into a war zone Tuesday night.)

Olbermann compared Mayor Quan's actions to those of Chicago Mayor Richard Daley's hard crack down on a protest during the 1968 Democratic National Convention.

“There were dead men and women on the streets of this country, and no one wants to see that again,” he said.

(Watch Keith Olbermann's report on Youtube here.)

Rachel Jackson, member of the Oscar Grant Committee Against Police Brutality and State Repression, told Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! at University of California, Berkeley’s TV studios "we want to be clear, and clear to Mayor Quan and anybody else who’s involved in the decision-making process, we want the camp back. We want the camp back. We want everyone’s stuff back."

"We want charges dropped against protesters and an end to martial law in Oakland," she said.

Jackson said who makes these decisions is an interesting question but that the Oakland mayor was missing in action.

"In some ways, there’s clearly—there are clearly tensions here in Oakland between the Police Department and law enforcement, on the one hand, and the Jean Quan, the mayor’s office, on the other, with Chief Batts stepping down just days ago or a week ago, and in part because he felt like he didn’t have the tools, frankly, of repression and racial profiling that he wanted, such as youth curfews, gang injunctions and anti-loitering laws. On the one hand, we had a disgruntled chief who stepped down, who felt like he didn’t have enough of an arsenal here and felt that the mayor wasn’t giving him what he needed, on the other hand, and then, you know, on the other hand, we have the mayor, who basically was missing in action. And so, you know, there’s these power plays, these power dynamics, that are going on.

When Goodman asked about the police chief referring to some kind of sexual assault, Jackson replied, "That was—that was basically like the WMDs of our struggle here, has been—has been rats—rats, sexual assault and drug use."

"And that’s why I say that it’s interesting to think about the decision-making process, because while clearly there are individuals who are making certain decisions, it’s—we have to look at, and be suspicious of, the fact that many of the camps all got attacked at the same time and really largely for the same reasons."

The battle between armed "justice" department employees and unarmed protesters began with a 5:00 a.m. pre-dawn vicious raid by police on the campers who were chased and ended with one human rights defender in critical condition and approximately six other protesters wounded.

The M84 is the currently issued stun grenade of the U.S. Army that transfers its weapons to the U.S. Justice Department. When detonated, the stun grenade "emits an intensely loud "bang" and blinding flash of more than one million candela and 170–180 dB within five feet of initiation, sufficient to cause immediate (but temporary) flash blindness, deafness, tinnitus, andinner ear disturbance." ("US Army’s Search for an Economical Device for Stun Hand Grenade Training" (PDF). dtic.mil, pg. 5. Retrieved on 24 July 2009.)

People exposed to the grenade experience disorientation, confusion and loss of coordination and balance. The M84 is classified as a non-lethal weapon.

Human rights defender Thomas Olsen, 24, a U.S. Marine veteran attempting to defend Americans protesting at Occupy Oakland remains unconscious in critical condition with a fractured skull, brain swelling and brain damage risk after shot in the face during Tuesday night's American government assault on over 1000 protesters exercising Fifth Amendment Rights.

The hostile attack turned downtown Oakland into a war zone of explosions, smoke and screaming.