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<p>Anti-Wall Street protesters in Oakland have vandalized a Whole Foods store and shattered windows at two downtown banks.</p> <p>Windows were shattered at a Bank of America branch, where someone also spraypainted "Class War" and "Shut it Down," near Lake Merritt and a Chase bank at 20th and Webster streets.</p>

(VIDEO AT LINK) OAKLAND, Calif. - A protest that shut down the Port of Oakland to show the broadening reach of the Occupy Wall Street movement ended in violence when police in riot gear arrested dozens of protesters overnight who broke into a vacant building, shattered downtown windows, sprayed graffiti and set blazes along the way. --snip-- Protesters also threw concrete chunks, metal pipes, lit roman candles and molotov cocktails, police said....

Occupy Oakland protesters claimed victory after they shut down one of the nation's busiest shipping ports - escalating a movement whose tactics had largely been limited to marches, rallies and camps. In a five-hour stand-off protesters vandalised businesses and smashed bank windows, as they tried to shut down the city - and police appeared to respond using tear gas and flash bang grenades. The California demonstrators blocked operations at the city's port and stopped traffic on Wednesday in protests against economic inequality and police brutality, marred by scattered vandalism. Police in riot gear arrested dozens of protesters who had marched...

One of those OWS defining messages... Few have a problem with exercising our 1st Amendment rights for redress of grievances. Even when the ultimate cadre of misguided souls band together to work overtime to inflame law enforcement - such as the assault on Oakland police with bottles, rocks and firecrackers preceding all the riot ta..doo last week - in hopes of creating that coveted "Kent State" moment, most of us just grind our teeth, hold our noses when making our way thru the great unwashed to get to places of business, or sit back and wait it out. But there...

Anti-Wall Street protesters in two West Coast cities were subdued with tear gas and pepper spray after they shut down a California port and disrupted rush-hour traffic in Seattle, authorities said. Oakland police fired tear gas on "several hundred people" throwing rocks and shooting fireworks at officers after demonstrators were asked to disperse early Thursday, a California police official said. The violence came after protesters in the city appeared to carry out a successful strike of downtown businesses Wednesday as merchants and retailers shuttered their doors in what was a largely peaceful protest. The protesters also disrupted business at the...

All over #OccupyOakland right now, not fully confirmed. Apparently attempting to block the road - angry driver hit the protestors.

We as fellow occupiers of Oscar Grant Plaza propose that on Wednesday November 2, 2011, we liberate Oakland and shut down the 1%. We propose a city wide general strike and we propose we invite all students to walk out of school. Instead of workers going to work and students going to school, the people will converge on downtown Oakland to shut down the city. All banks and corporations should close down for the day or we will march on them. While we are calling for a general strike, we are also calling for much more. People who organize out...

MC Hammer expressed his opinions about the police's treatment of the Occupy Wall Street protesters in Oakland, California and he feels that kind of abuse "can never be tolerated." The Oakland native took to Twitter to criticize the force's use of tear gas and other weapons to disperse the crowd of about 1,000 near Frank Ogala Plaza at City Hall last week. More than 100 people were arrested during the clashes. “The unabated abuse of the PEOPLE can never be tolerated!,” MC Hammer wrote. “They were expressing systemic frustration and pain, peacefully. You knew this would happen. You cannot eliminate...

SAN FRANCISCO -- On both sides of San Francisco Bay, the liberal mayors of two famously liberal cities have found themselves struggling to balance their avowed support for the Occupy Wall Street movement with the need to preserve public safety. The spirit of the movement has strong allies in Oakland Mayor Jean Quan and San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee, both of whom have ties to social activism in the area. Quan, a former student activist at University of California, Berkeley, during the 1960s, had stood one year ago between police and police-shooting demonstrators in an unsuccessful attempt to calm the...

On Tuesday, about 1,000 protesters gathered in Oakland, California, and major concerns began to arise. There was a rat problem, vandalism, fights, and fire hazards. Medical responders were denied access to the protest site on two occasions. So the city of Oakland decided to move the protesters and police did that. But later on that day some of the occupiers tried to return to the plaza outside city hall. Police told them they could not return and violence broke out. At least 200 arrests were made. Scores of people injured, including a number of police officers. Property was destroyed. And...

OAKLAND, Calif. - Filmmaker Michael Moore told anti-Wall Street protesters in Oakland that the Occupy movement - which has spread to cities across America and overseas - in inspiring millions who are angry about corporate excess, income inequality and the failure of politicians to address issues facing the majority of Americans. "We've killed despair across the country and we've killed apathy," he said. The director of the documentary films "Fahrenheit 9/11" and "Bowling for Columbine" said people throughout the U.S. were "disgusted" and "horrified" when police fired tear gas and bean bags and took other aggressive actions against protesters Tuesday...

Despite this guy being serious, here's a hilarious video message to the Oakland PD on their arrests made on #OccupyOakland protesters. He has a pair of handcuffs, and he knows how to use them.

As reported on Thursday by Newsbusters' Mark Finkelstein, Joe Scarborough and some members of his MSNBC Morning Joe crew shot their mouths off about what Mike Barnicle described as a  "police riot" at the Occupy Oakland protests before waiting for all the facts. And now it appears that the Morning Joe folks have shot themselves in the foot as well since reports from the scene show that it was the police who were clearly provoked by the Occupy Oakland demonstrators. So were these reports from the usual "rightwing" suspects? Nope. The reports confirming the provocations from the demonstrators came from...

Scott Olsen survived two tours of Iraq, but his life could be over after being critically injured by a police projectile at Occupy Oakland, The Guardian reports. He's 24 years old. As we know, Occupy Oakland got incredibly ugly this week as police tried to remove protesters from their camp in front of City Hall by using tear gas, fire crackers, and rubber bullets. Olsen suffered a head injury on Tuesday night, and is now in critical condition in Oakland's Highland Hospital. Jay Finneburgh, a photographer on the scene, managed to witness and take pictures of the incident. Police policy...

After being struck by a projectile at Tuesday's Occupy Oakland evictions, Iraq war veteran Scott Olsen is lucid and awaiting brain surgery. The Guardian reports Olsen "responded with a very large smile" when his parents arrived from Wisconsin to visit him at the hospital. Medical officials say Olsen's able to write and hear, but is having trouble speaking. Meanwhile, Oakland's Mayor Jean Quan who left town after authorizing the raid, has separated herself from the police. Quan said, "I only asked the chief to do one thing: to do it when it was the safest for both the police and...

NEW YORK (AP) — While more U.S. cities are resorting to force to break up the Wall Street protests, many others — Philadelphia, New York, Minneapolis and Portland, Ore., among them — are content to let the demonstrations go on for now.New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, for example, said Friday that the several hundred protesters sleeping in Zuccotti Park, the unofficial headquarters of the movement that began in mid-September, can stay as long as they obey the law."I can't talk about other cities," he said. "Our responsibilities are protect your rights and your safety. And I think we're trying to...

OAKLAND, CALIF.—Anti-Wall Street demonstrators held vigils for an Iraq War veteran seriously injured during a protest clash with police in California as some occupy encampments came under growing pressure from authorities to abandon sites in parks and plazas. A crowd of at least 1,000 people, many holding candles, gathered Thursday night in Oakland in honour of 24-year-old Scott Olsen, who is hospitalized with a fractured skull. In Nashville, police cracked down overnight on an Occupy protest camp near the Capitol under a new policy setting a curfew for the complex. They moved in a little after 3 a.m. and arrested...

Meanwhile, in Oakland’s city center, about three dozen tents had sprung up by Friday morning on the lawn where an Occupy encampment was razed earlier in the week. That mirrored action in San Francisco, where city officials had removed tents only to see them return. “For every action there’s a reaction,” Saiid Shabazz, 35, of Oakland, said of the razing of the camp early Tuesday and the massive protests that followed. "The people are going to continue to use this camp as a training facility, an educational facility, a healing facility and a place to live facility.” Olsen, 24, a...

Marines have been flocking to the social networking/aggregator site Reddit to voice their anger at the life-threatening injury inflicted on 24-year-old Iraqi war veteran Scott Olsen by Oakland police during the recent Occupy protests. Video showed Olsen go down after taking a tear gas canister to the head. As fellow protesters tried to assist him, police lobbed a flash grenade into their midst–right next to Olsen’s already fractured skull.The picture above, submitted by Reddit user aburger, has generated well over 1,000 comments on the site–many from fellow Marines who are absolutely livid at the injury to one of their own...