Numerous Arrests mark Move In Day in Oakland

The police make the day's first arrest.

The March starts down Broadway in Oakland after 1 p.m. Saturday.

Protesters started the march at Frank Ogawa Plaza in downtown Oakland.

Those, who have made the prediction that Oakland will be the place that will provide a plausible reason for conservatives to assert that martial law is needed in the United States to maintain order, just got a specific newsworthy example of how things could hypothetically get so out of control that the only possible remedy would be a brief experiment with martial law.

Stories have been emerging in the regional news media that predict that the budgetary crisis in the city of Oakland will soon require a need to bring some national control over the Oakland Police Department.

Since the topic of what happened in Oakland starting at noon on Saturday, January 28, 2012 will be a popular subject for use on the Internets during the coming week, and since a columnist/photographer, who contributes regularly to this website, was a witness with a Nikon Coolpix for the first four hours of the Move In Day Protest, we will provide readers with a subjective report on Oakland's latest contribution to the evolving history of the Occupy Movement.

Since the World's Laziest Journalist is particularly fond of the coffee sold at De Lauer's Newsstand (you read that right it's an old fashioned store that specializes in newspapers and magazines) we went to Oakland and arrived about a half hour before the noon event was scheduled to begin.

There was about a hundred protesters gathered on the North side of Frank Ogawa plaza when we arrived.   We took the opportunity to take some photos of the signs and artwork because, even if the event turned out to be a total non-story, pictures of the signs would be the kind of feature photos that one website could use later.

Just before noon a fellow came up to the World's Laziest Journalist and requested that we not take photos that showed protesters' faces.  

At morning coffee earlier in Berkeley, a fellow in Berkeley predicted that there would be no arrests would be made at the day's event.

The OPD (Oakland Police Department) got the first arrest on the scoreboard before the event was five minutes old thus giving writers the opportunity to use a sports metaphor such as a kick-off return that produces a touchdown.

The protesters took a winding march route that led them to the campus of Laney College where it looked like, to this columnist, they were cordoned off.   Then protesters who were passing by reported that local news media was reporting that the protesters had moved to a new location to the north of the College.

At the college one police officer advised citizens to stay as far away from the event as they could.   Recently in similar news events in the greater San Francisco Bay area, reporters with press credentials have been detained along with protesters and so the advice seemed, to a fellow who no longer carries a current press pass, like sound advice.

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