Flutterby™! : Radical Oakland

NY Times: the Last Refuge of Radical America is an interesting look at the "Occupy" movement in Oakland, with some attention paid to the power struggles between the Oakland police department and mayor Jean Quan, why Occupy Oakland was a different sort of movement, and one that lasted longer than the other Occupy camps, the struggles the Oakland PD is having in dealing with the fallout and federal accountability following the "Oakland Riders" scandal and in the huge divide between the citizens and the police department there.

Two pull quotes, the first because I was drawn there by the second from the MeFi link, but wanted to point out that the article goes deeper:

“It’s a shame,” he [Arturo Sanchez, an Oakland CA deputy city administrator] says. “If they had come to us with an agenda, we’re probably one of the few cities that would have written resolutions and lobbied our state legislators and sent a message along with our mayor when she went to the White House.”

The second because what drew me to the article was this section:

But radical Oakland will live on, awaiting its next opportunity to rise up, even as the city itself evolves. For every young tech worker moving into a downtown condominium tower or entrepreneur gobbling up cheap, deserted retail space, there’s sure to be a militant graduate student drawn to a city that has just added another chapter to its long radical history.

I thought it was an interesting use of "graduate student", especially in light of Eric's observation that grad students are disproportionately represented in murders on campus.