Reconsidering Occupy Oakland and Its Horizons: Media Misframing, Decolonizing Fractures, and Enduring Resistance Hub Madison Marie Alvarado Research Supervisor: Frances Susan Hasso Reader: Jennifer Christine Nash This thesis is submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for Graduation with Distinction in the Program in Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies Duke University Durham, North Carolina 2021 Abstract Reconsidering Occupy Oakland and Its Horizons is an archival study of the creation, reception, evolution, and remembrance of Occupy Oakland using a feminist lens. I investigate how Occupy Oakland’s radically democratic mobilization against economic violence, racism, and police violence was undermined by local and regional news coverage—namely in the San Francisco Chronicle and Oakland Tribune—through framing devices that demonized protesters and delegitimized the movement. I nevertheless found differences between local and regional coverage. Occupy Oakland challenged existing hegemonic boundaries regarding participatory democracy as its activists –seasoned and less experienced people from multiple generations – experimented with horizontal world-building through community structures, methods, and processes. This horizontal radical movement nevertheless struggled with the same divisions and inequalities that existed outside its camps: heteropatriarchy, white supremacy, and classism. The “stickiness” of embodied and structural inequalities persisted in Occupy Oakland camps despite efforts to create a radically egalitarian community. The nature of this stickiness can only be understood by taking seriously the local material and institutional conditions, obstacles, and histories that shaped the spaces of protest and its participants. Though news coverage often describes the movement as a failure, several new projects and coalitions formed during and after Occupy Oakland, illustrating its dynamic legacy and challenging social movement scholarship that reproduces temporal demise frameworks in its analysis. A feminist examination of these projects demonstrates how stories of Occupy Oakland’s “failure” or “death” miss the nature of projects attempting to radically reimagine a patriarchal, racist, neoliberal social world along more egalitarian and just lines. The problems Occupy Oakland struggled against and challenged have only intensified during the CoVid-19 pandemic. iii Acknowledgements I would like to extend my deepest gratitude to Dr. Frances Hasso, without whom this thesis would have never come into fruition. I cannot begin to express my thanks to you, Dr. Hasso, for your tireless dedication and time spent mentoring me, guiding my research, and editing my work throughout this long process. Your unparalleled social movement and academic expertise were invaluable to this project, and perhaps even more so was your unwavering empathy and emotional support throughout this pandemic. I owe a great debt to Dr. Jennifer Nash, whose insightful feedback as my second reader sharpened my arguments and elevated my thinking to a higher level. Thank you so much for taking me under your wing despite only knowing me for a short three months, and for pushing me intellectually to expand the scope and significance of my work. I gratefully acknowledge the assistance of Anna Bunting from the Oakland Museum of California; Emily Foster from the Oakland Public Library; Heather McKee Hurwitz at Case Western Reserve University; Tim Strawn from the Kennedy Library at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo; and Kathryn Neal from the Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley for assisting me in accessing various archives and research materials despite the closure of many of these facilities during the pandemic. I would also like to thank Kevin Pina for sharing with me the rough cut of his forthcoming film, #OO: Occupy Oakland, and the various actors involved in the creation of blogs and websites related to Occupy Oakland that I drew on for my research. I am forever indebted to my parents Robin and David Alvarado for not only financing the education that led to this project, but for unconditionally supporting me in my personal and academic growth over the years. Your constant affirmations and belief in my ability to create my iv own path have propelled me to places I never dreamed of before. I love you both and will never be able to adequately express how grateful I am for what you have given me in this life. Thank you to Ana Bambrick-Santoyo and Carmen Lessley for emotionally grounding me as we lived through a global pandemic in the confines of a house together, and for listening to me talk about this research and various deadlines for hours on end. I’d also like to extend my gratitude to Adela, Amelia, Charity, Elizabeth, Emily, Hannah, Leila, Lu, Lydia, Sondra, and Tree for loving, supporting, challenging, and inspiring me to be a better human through our interactions every day. Lastly, I must thank the many Oakland activists as well as the feminist and queer theorists and writers (especially those of color) who continue the struggle and make this resistance—and survival itself—possible. I hope this work honors the political possibilities you continue to create. v Table of Contents Table of Contents ........................................................................................................................... vi List of Tables ................................................................................................................................. vii List of Figures ............................................................................................................................... vii Introduction..................................................................................................................................... 1 Occupy and Its Predecessors: Horizontal Social Movements .................................................................................. 6 Occupy’s Deliberative Democracy as Process ........................................................................................................... 10 “Segregated Development”: Policing Oakland’s Class and Race Divisions ................................................... 15 How Traditional Media Create “Dangerous” Oakland ........................................................................................ 18 Chapter One: Comparing Local and Regional Media Framing of the Occupy Oakland Movement: Oakland Tribune and San Francisco Chronicle ........................................................ 24 Framing Occupy Oakland & the Difference Local News Makes ........................................................................ 28 Safety and Security for Who? .......................................................................................................................................... 36 Misunderstanding OO’s Vision & Message ............................................................................................................... 43 Deconstructing the “Violent Clashes” of Occupy Oakland ................................................................................... 53 Conclusion .............................................................................................................................................................................. 62 Chapter Two: From Occupying to Decolonizing Oakland: “Stickiness” and Fractures in Social Movements .................................................................................................................................... 64 The Logic & Composition of Occupy Oakland ......................................................................................................... 69 Heteropatriarchy, Race, and Class: Safety and Policing in the Oakland Camps ............................................ 75 Genesis of Decolonize Oakland: Race, Indigeneity, and the 99 Percent .......................................................... 88 Conclusion .............................................................................................................................................................................. 99 Chapter Three: From Occupy Oakland as Encampment, to Occupy Oakland as Activist Hub, to Even Harder Times ..................................................................................................................... 101 The Continuing Struggle against Institutional Economic Violence ........................................................... 107 The Continuing Struggle Against Police and Intimate Violence.................................................................. 115 Even Harder Times: Doing Research in 2020-2021.............................................................................................. 124 Conclusion .......................................................................................................................................................................... 136 Conclusion .................................................................................................................................. 138 Bibliography ............................................................................................................................... 142 vi List of Tables Table 1: Income Levels in Occupy Oakland ________________________________________ 74 List of Figures Figure 1: Occupy Hand Signals Graphic ___________________________________________________ 13 Figure 2: Teach