Oakland – the last bastion of American radicalism?

Oakland’s a hell of a town, and always has been. Parts are dangerous, parts are beautiful, parts are both. A lot of the thinkers and dreamers and activists who got priced out of San Francisco never left Oakland — I never lived there but visited a lot, and got involved in a coop used bookstore that set up in an derelict nightclub on telegraph avenue — the dance floor was still there. There were illegal live-in art studios all down the second floor over the building, and nobody cared. A lot of good things take root in urban decay, and Oakland was always vital in some ways.nnIt was also the home of unionism, back when the East Bay was industrial from Hayward up to Richmond, and that has never changed. Wife of a friend was shop steward in a union shop in Oakland; they were involved in women’s rights, worker’s rights, equal rights, and on and on. They would come down to visit and she’d always express dismay at how slack and self-satisfied the liberal culture was down here.nnI don’t have a bit of surprise that Occupy hit it big in Oakland. The East Bay was where the Bay Area activism of legend was born, in the mid-60s at Sather Gate on the UC campus. The East Bay is where it still lives.