The juniors in John Barber's social justice classes at Salesian High School in Richmond are trying to make sense of their world.They followed the Kony 2012 campaign with interest and a fair bit of skepticism. In class they're reading about the violence in Afghanistan, Syria and Libya. And many of them have become so attuned to the steady drumbeat of homicides, drive-bys and beatings in North and Central Richmond that they're able to joke darkly about it. "Are things heating up?" Barber asked his afternoon class last Thursday. Heads started wagging: yes.

"Before, it was just lukewarm," said one student, "Now it's boiling."

Some of this violence in Richmond has spilled over into Oakland. A 24-year-old killed in East Oakland last month while walking his baby in a stroller was a refugee of sorts from Richmond -- a young man fleeing the violence in his hometown to seek a better life a few miles away. Police aren't saying anything yet, but neighbors and friends of the young man believe his killer (or killers) chased him from Richmond and caught him unaware.

I spoke to three of Barber's classes last week. And in all three, there was at least one student who had had direct experience with the effects of violence. One girl's cousin was shot and killed. A boy said his uncle returned from Afghanistan with severe PTSD. And a third girl said her brother had lost so many friends to gun violence that it had become commonplace.

"There's nothing to be done about it," the boy told his mother. "You just have to keep going."

Salesian High School shares a boundary with Richmond High, a public school with roughly three times as many students. The two schools look out over the same athletic field. During a break between classes, Barber took me on a walk of the grounds and told me how, in 2009, a 15-year-old girl was brutally beaten and gang-raped by students at a homecoming dance at Richmond High. The victim won a $4 million settlement; the case against the defendants goes to trial this coming September.

The crime sparked discussions at Salesian about rape, victimization and the problems that arise when students feel pressured not to "snitch" about what they might have witnessed.

The students I met had lots of questions. What was apartheid in South Africa? What was happening with the Palestinians who had gone on a hunger strike? Why were Afghan soldiers killing the Americans they were working with?

Closer to home, they had some solid ideas. Communities whose adults stopped caring about their children were destined to stutter and slide into generational failure. Kids who grow up thinking that gun violence is a normal part of everyday life are going to face more challenges as they grow older. And, finally, that the best way to deal with violence is the way you deal with any chronic disease: prevention.

 

In a few weeks we will be launching a new website.  It will be a collaborative effort between several institutions, including The California Endowment, The Maynard Institute and the Bay Area News Group.

The new site will also be called “Oakland Effect” (www.oaklandeffect.com) and it will have multiple purposes – as a repository for stories that I and others have done on the effects of violence and trauma on the mental health of communities in the Bay Area.  But we also hope it will grow into a place where you, the readers and residents, can interact with each other and have discussions about the issues that are important to you. 

Lately, I’ve been receiving a lot of phone calls from people talking about “the Oakland effect.”  And they all seem to have different things to say.  A woman today called and said that there is a sea change taking place in the city around the issue of homelessness – t that a lot of Oaklanders are working together to help those less fortunate.  I don’t know if this is true, but I’m told this is one manifestation of the “Oakland effect.”  Other residents call to say that the scourge of gun violence is the most obvious sign of the “Oakland effect.” And still others lament that Oakland, such a vibrant and dynamic city in so many ways, has become known more for its high homicide rate, its bleak flatlands and the sense of despair that pervades so many neighborhoods.   

So what I’d like to do is ask you to get in touch with me with your thoughts about what “the Oakland effect” is. And is what we see here replicated in other cities around the country, or even around the world?  And if so, what kinds of conversations and initiatives can be developed to make that kind of dialogue more meaningful and effective? 

 This new project is exciting. I think it will give people across the city a new way to connect with each other both within and across communities.  But to make it work, we would like to hear from as many people as possible about what issues you think we need to address more, and more effectively.  And we also need to know what means of communication speak most directly to you.  Twitter?  Facebook?  Email?  Video? 

 I look forward to hearing from all of you.  What is “the Oakland effect?” And what does it mean to you?  

 

If you think that Oakland's high homicide rates don't affect you directly, think again.  According to research conducted by two prominent researchers, Jens Ludwig and Phil Cook, every homicide in a city leads to the departure of roughly 70 people.  The higher the homicide rate, then, the faster the city will empty out.  And of course the faster the city empties out, the harder it is to grow that city's businesses, attract investment, raise the necessary tax revenues to pay for needed social services and foster and develop an image of a vibrant economic hub that is keeping pace with regional and global economic trends. 

From 2000 to 2010, Oakland has been averaging between 80 and 90 homicides a year. During that same time frame, the city's population declined by 2.2 percent, according to Census data, from 399,484 in 2000 to 390,724 in 2010.  The homicide "rate" per 100,000 has hovered between 20 and 23 a year.  That is exceptionally high. 

Compare it, for example, to New York's homicide rate, roughly 5 or 6 per 100,000, or fully 70 percent lower than Oakland's.  According to calculations prepared by Jens Ludwig, if Oakland had New York's homicide rate, the city would have been spared roughly 56 deaths per year, every year.  That's 560 saved lives over the last decade, and 39,200 people who might have stayed behind to help Oakland grow and prosper. 

Over the last decade, that would have translated into a 10 percent increase in the city's population -- and thus its ability to draw business in, to raise tax revenue, and to appear to the outside world as a vibrant and prosperous city -- rather than the 2.2 percent shrinkage that actually occurred.  

Instead, the opposite is happening.  "The conclusion to draw here is that a lot of people think that the crime problem isn't relevant to them," says Ludwig, "And that's a mistake.  The "victims" of crime aren't the only victims.  Everyone should care about this because if we don't get this right it will create problems for all of us when our cities start emptying out."  

This is an especially critical issue for Oakland because, when it comes to gun-related violence, this city remains an island of negativity in an otherwise improving national climate. For the last several years, crime statistics have been improving nationwide.  But this is not the case in Oakland, or some parts of Chicago, another area where the statistical analysis above also holds true.  While New York actually grew over time, and saw its homicide rates decline, both Oakland and Chicago saw the opposite happen -- a decrease in population and a rise in crime. 

These things are all connected.  Your life and your livelihood, and your continued ability to grow and prosper in the community you love is directly linked to lives that are being lost, squandered and forgotten about miles away, in neighborhoods you may or may not have ever seen, in stories you may or may not care about. And all the while your city continues to shrink. Something to think about.   

I was driving around Montclair the other day when I saw a Kony 2012 poster hanging from a lamppost. It said: "Make Him Famous" referring to the now notorious Ugandan warlord Joseph Kony and his band of kidnapped child soldiers, known as the Lord's Resistance Army.

The poster was part of the campaign by San Diego-based NGO Invisible Children to blanket neighborhoods across the country with news about Kony and his campaign of atrocities and bring awareness to the problems of a population of disempowered Africans thousands of miles and two continents away.

It's a laudable goal, but it made me wonder why, in a place like Montclair, there's not as much or more enthusiasm about helping solve problems that are much closer to home. Where was the poster rallying people to address the fact that while crime is declining nationwide and has been for years, it is actually climbing in Oakland?

Is it because the poverty, violence and social upheaval here in our American backyards are not as sexy as the chaos in Africa? Or is it that the problems here seem so familiar and depressing that no amount of help could ever possibly solve them?

I think it is admirable, fantastic even, that so many young people -- several tens of millions if the YouTube views are to be trusted -- have rallied around the cause of lost children living and dying a world away. At the same time, I would like to see more engagement by these young people around the lost children of America. Indeed, it is not simply a few lost children who we are talking about here.

The more I report from the inner city in Oakland, the more I hear the refrain that an entire generation is slipping away, lost to violence, despair and hopelessness. Last week, I spent an hour chatting with a young man in East Oakland whose cousin was shot in the head while walking down the street pushing his baby in a stroller.

"I just felt like it was my fault," he told me, referring to the fact that he hadn't been able to give his cousin a cigarette, which prompted a walk to a nearby store and the eventual close-range fatal shot. Nothing has been proved yet, but it sure looks, smells and feels like a murder -- in broad daylight on an American street.

I'd like to see a poster about that, a poster calling on the citizenry to make that killer famous, the one who no doubt lives within driving distance of everyone reading this column right now, the one who is killing your own children.

The founders of Invisible Children were clever in choosing a name for their outfit. But the term is slightly misleading.

Why?

Because in northern Uganda, South Sudan and Central African Republic, the kidnapped children aren't invisible at all.

Their communities care about them and go to great lengths to integrate them back into society if and when they escape Kony's clutches or are rescued.

It seems to me that the real invisible children are the ones right here in America whose deaths, or worse, whose slow living destruction, have become so commonplace as to be altogether unremarkable.

Those are the children whose situations require urgent domestic attention 

I just returned from several weeks in Africa. While I was there, I had occasion to reflect on my work here in Oakland on more than one occasion, but each case was very different. 

In South Africa, for instance, I spent several days doing reporting in a community called Hanover Park, an area outside of Cape Town in that broad swatch of desolate landscape known as the Cape Flats.  It is a high-density neighborhood of roughly 43,500 people, the vast majority of whom are low-income earners. Many of them were displaced there from Cape Town during apartheid. 

It is a bleak place. There are no trees or parks or green areas. There are too many liquor stores and not enough grocery stores. Row upon row of desolate apartment blocks line the dusty streets.  Gangs are a big problem. Last year, there were some 28 gang-related shootings in one four-month period. Many of the dead were children.

If this sounds familiar to many East Bay readers of this newspaper, it should.  The environments, the mood, the ambiance in parts of East or West Oakland and Hanover Park are eerily similar. And the brave people working there to help resolve these problems know all too well the challenges faced by American cities like Oakland, in part because the gangsters there often take inspiration from what they see in movies and television from the gangs here. I will soon be posting a short movie we made about Hanover Park, so stay tuned. 

Meanwhile, other parts of Africa reminded me of the vast gaps that separate these two places.  In South Sudan, Congo and Central African Republic, for instance, children are at risk of being kidnapped by militiamen from the Lord’s Resistance Army and dragged into the dense jungles where they may languish for months or even years as child soldiers in Joseph Kony’s maniacal army. 

Many of these children suffer terrible deprivations.  They are at risk of having their lips, noses or ears chopped off.  The girls are often raped and turned into sex slaves.  The boys may be forced to kill other abductees or, if they refuse, be killed themselves.  And quite apart from the LRA, the communities in that part of Africa have been subjected for years to the abuses and excesses of the region’s corrupt and ill-trained armies, whose record of human rights abuses are well-documented, and extreme. 

    While there I thought about how far removed the experiences of the people in these two places are from each other.  And then I remembered that Oakland is home to one of the most robust and disturbing child sex trafficking networks in the country. The “gorilla pimps” that the FBI routinely chases down live out in the open along International Boulevard.  The hotels that cater to the sex trade are currently being attacked in court, in Hayward. 

One night at my hotel in Uganda, I turned on the television and was surprised to see that Al Jazeera was running a long documentary about, of all things, Occupy Oakland.  There I was, sitting in Africa, listening to all the familiar Oakland voices we have been hearing about for the last six months:  Boots Riley and Angela Davis and some of the more strident activists who have made a name for themselves.  Halfway around the world, Oakland was suddenly right there in front of me again, on the television screen. 

It was instructive to be away. And it is good to be back, too.  

One of the great challenges that violence presents to a community is that until it happens to you, it remains an abstraction. But when it happens to you, it is often too late. There is very little middle ground. And what middle ground does exist is often a fearful, anxious place where no one wants to linger for too long. In other words, the perspective necessary to survive often only comes after the damage has been done.

I was speaking with an Oakland police officer the other day who told me as much. There's no reason someone living in a safe neighborhood will be able to understand what is happening in some of these less safe neighborhoods, and it is easy to point a finger and say the violence is unacceptable," he told me, "But until you live in that neighborhood, until you have experienced what a lot of these people have experienced, you can't really understand."

This may seem obvious. But it applies to everyone, including people for whom violence is a regular and routine occurrence. I met with a grieving father this morning who told me that until he lost his own son recently to gun-play on Oakland's streets, he had a sense of basic, all-encompassing safety. His son's death changed that, and now he looks back at his former life with a great deal of regret. But in his story, as with so many others, there was very little room for adjustment. One day everything was okay. The next, it was not.

Now, a certain amount of randomness is present for anyone in the world. Loved ones die in car crashes. They succumb to cancer or heart disease or brain aneurysms. They choke or drown or have strokes.

But where a culture of violence is omnipresent, where criminality goes unpunished, the innocent suffer all the more because the randomness of everyday life begins to seem, well, not so random after all. And, in fact, it isn't. In neighborhoods where shootings are a daily occurrence, anyone out on the streets is a target. If you live in an otherwise safe neighborhood, this is not an issue. But imagine for a moment that simply leaving your house was in every instance a life-risking endeavor. The uncertainty would be so magnified that it would sap from life a certain degree of the pleasure that usually accompanies chance, spontaneity and the random encounter.

Every day we hear of more shootings. This last Thursday and Friday there were three more. One of the men died. Every week there are countless more shootings that go unreported, even to the police. As long as these have not happened to you, they remain abstractions. Consider for one minute what your life would be like if these were more than bullet points in a news report. What if they were your life? What then?

About a decade ago I wrote a story about a French doctor in Peru who was using a hallucinogenic plant brew to treat drug addicts.  The concoction, called ayahuasca, is culled from plants in the Amazon known to contain a powerful hallucinogenic compound called DMT which, when activated, produces incredibly intense visions, insights and can, in many cases, lead to profound personal growth. 

The article elicited an interesting response.  Some people asked -- how can a doctor prescribe one drug to treat someone’s problem with another drug? Wasn’t it unethical to encourage sick people to undergo such an intense and possibly dangerous process?  Others, including many physicians, psychologists, spiritual healers and university professors (including some right here in California) were encouraging and enthusiastic about the doctor’s results which were, on average, roughly on par with the kinds of success and recidivism rates you might find in more traditional clinical environments. 

Since then, research into the possible benefits of so-called “psychedelics” as successful healing treatments for a wide range of mental health and psychiatric disorders has grown by leaps and bounds.  This month the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences published a study purporting to show how psilocybin, the active ingredient in what are known as “magic mushrooms” is helpful in the treatment of despression, PTSD and anxiety.  Another study, published in the British Journal of Psychiatry, found similar results. 

Meantime, researchers around the world have been experimenting with ecstasy, whose active ingredient, MDMA, has been linked to improvements among people suffering from depression.

But exactly how does it work?  No one can say for sure.  But researchers are intrigued by the chemical reaction between the plants and the brain. In much the same way that clinical anti-depressants like Prozac and Zoloft change the neuron-chemistry of the brain, some researchers believe alternative treatments may have the same effect. 

Let’s be clear:  this is not an endorsement for anyone to go out and try this on his or her own. It’s not. When I spent time with the French doctor, he told me in no uncertain terms that while ayahuasca induced a profound spiritual change, it had to be taken and understood within the context of the Amazonian shamanic experience.  Outside of that, he said, it amounted to little more than curious experimentation at best, and dangerous abuse if not monitored.

What researchers in this country and elsewhere are finding, however, is that the “mind expanding” nature of some of these alternative treatments can shift perspective and change life directions in such meaningful ways that problems like addiction, depression and anxiety get healed – or at least improved – in the process. 

  In a Time magazine story last June, Roland Griffiths, the lead researcher of a psilocybin study at John’s Hopkins University, said, “The important point here is that we found the sweet spot where we can optimize the positive persistent effects and avoid some of the fear and anxiety that can occur and can be quite disruptive.”  In the Johns Hopkins study, 94 percent of the participants noted improvements in their lives.  Their friends and colleagues also overwhelmingly said they noticed marked improvements in mood, temperament and ability to cope with stress among the volunteers. 

With the gross overmedication of adult America, and the health care crisis among its most vulnerable population, this is all interesting food for thought. 

 

 

Sorry I've been away from this site for a while. The pieces I've been writing have been appearing in the paper, but I've neglected to post them all here. My apologies. Here is the latest piece, from last week, about some prisoners I met with last Monday at San Quentin prison, here in the Bay Area.  Because of the many programs it offers to help prisoners rehabilitate, San Quentin is considered one of the most forward-thinking prisons in the country.  I certainly came away with that sense after spending half a day there last week.  

Between them, the five men seated around the table have spent 67 years behind bars. Their crimes range from bank robbery to home invasion to making threats, and many things in between.  Their ages, ethnic backgrounds, educations and perspectives all differ. But as journalists at the San Quentin News, a newspaper designed and written by prisoners and read by inmates and staff alike, they share a passion for news, learning and writing.  “We’re trying to prove to society that it is possible to change,” said Richard Richardson, 38, a slight man on his 14^th year of a 47-year sentence for a home invasion, and the papers layout master.

            The prisoners work at the newspapers one-room office, adjacent to the main recreation yard for St. Quentin’s Level 1 General Population, ten hours a day, six days a week.  They are barred from using email on their own, so they send queries and interview questions to experts through their prison advisors. A couple of former journalists, including a former Associated Press reporter, advise the inmates on questions of style and the basics of journalism. The printing is outsourced to a local non-profittk.

            But the rewards of engaging with their fellow inmates and the San Quentin staff are clearly beneficial.  While doing a story on death row, the reporters found a man who was taking classes in order to set an example for his daughter.  “She realized that if he could be on death row and get an education, she could too,” said Aly Tamboura, 45, a former engineer and businessman who was sentenced to 14 years for threatening his wife with a gun.

            The newsroom also gives these inmates the chance to escape, however briefly, from the tense atmosphere of the prison yard. As journalists, they often engage in vigorous philosophical discussions about crime, race, rehabilitation and personal responsibility.  “Prison is criminogenic,” says Glenn Padgett, 48, convicted of arson and murder, “Behind bars society defines people by the crimes they commit, not as the people they are, but someday I’ll get out and if I’m not participating in here, I’m going to go back to society worse than when I came in.” 

            And the close proximity of the daily paper grind has helped these men learn some valuable lessons.  “What we do in here is work together,” says Arnulfo Garcia, 59, a lanky Latino man who serves as the paper’s editor-in-chief and the group’s good-humored rock, “We try to understand each other.”

            There are challenges, of course.  One former reporter wrote a story whose headline erroneously hinted at reporters being “informants” – a cardinal sin in prison, where snitching is just about the worst thing one can do.  Other times, inmates complain that the reporters aren’t doing enough to draw attention to the prison’s flaws. And not all the staff are supportive.  Some prison guards think the San Quentin inmates have it too good, and that they should be stripped of anything remotely educative or pleasurable. 

            “But until you experience it, you don’t know how terrible prison really is,” says Tamboura, who urges anyone involved in street violence to “just stop for a minute and think about what you are doing.” 

            The group’s wise mentor is Juan Haines, 54, convicted of bank robbery. He credits the paper with helping these men understand their place in the world. But he also says the paper can be a tool to help remind society what its role is, too.  “The person that made the mistake has to take the first step,” he said, “But we as a society gotta stick our hands out and help them up a little bit.”

 

             

 

The Occupy phenomenon isn't really about tent cities or arrests or even, one could argue, police brutality, though recent events could easily lead one to that conclusion. At a deeper level, it is about inequality.

How do we think about inequality? And what are we going to do about it? This was the message from Tony Iton, vice president of the California Endowment, speaking to health journalists last weekend at a symposium in Los Angeles. (Full disclosure: The California Endowment funds my job.)

"Occupy Wall Street is not an intellectual movement," Iton said. "It's about a visceral sense of injustice, it's about people feeling that our society is now producing such extreme inefficiencies, where the bulk of the population is struggling."

The California Endowment is investing upward of $1 billion in health care projects across the state over a period of 10 years. They are currently two years into the project.

The aim, says Iton, is to improve conditions on the ground that lead to improved health outcomes for everyone.

When the project began, many people told Iton it was doomed, that without a popular movement, the work of improving health outcomes for Californians was destined to fail. Iton believes that the Occupy movement may be that movement.

 

"The ability to tie those two things together will make or break success of this work," he said.

Iton said the gap between the haves and the have-nots in America is wider than it has ever been. He cited one study showing that every additional $12,500 in household income translates to an added year of life for residents of the Bay Area.

Another study showed that residents with household incomes one standard deviation below the mean were 35 percent more likely to die prematurely; those with incomes one standard deviation above the mean were 25 percent less likely to suffer the same fate.

"The goal of this work is to flatten these lines," he said. "The flatter the line, the lower the overall mortality is across the country. Bringing down the highest mortality rates brings down everyone's mortality rates."

This may seem counterintuitive, but it's true. One of the most powerful metrics for improved health outcomes is measured by the presence or absence of stressors.

"Health is related to health care, but health care is not sufficient," Iton said. "We have to think about stressors in peoples' lives that result in premature death."

This includes access to healthy food, the cost of education, the availability and quality of care for seniors and the availability of health insurance.

But that's just part of the equation. Community, family and a sense of belonging matter more than you might think. Consider this: in Alameda County, low-income immigrants live longer on average than high-income whites. Why? Iton believes that at least some of the health of the immigrant communities is directly tied to a sense of social cohesion and solidarity.

As they acculturate, or as Iton said, "as they become more American, their health gets worse."

This is unacceptable, is it not? And this, in the most elemental way, is what Iton thinks the Occupy movement is really about.

In case you missed it, here are some outtakes from the blog I've been doing from Occupy Oakland.  

Occupy Oakland Blog: Another long night at the tent city

Following the lead of "Occupy Wall Street," demonstrators have rallied and camped outside Oakland City Hall since Oct. 10. The initial protest, attended by 500 people, has been followed by a permanent tent city.

9:30 a.m.: Another long night at Occupy Oakland

It was well past Wednesday's midnight when the shouting match erupted. About two dozen people formed what looked at times like a moving rugby scrimmage, a closed circle at the center of which an angry man was trying, and largely succeeding, in shouting down any voice that tried to challenge him. He said he was from East Oakland, and he derided what he said were the fake protestors at Occupy Oakland.

"This is my city," he screamed, "I've been occupying this city since before any of you were here."

A tall figure wearing a brown helmet, a long grey coat and a carrying a walkie-talkie showed up. He's a familiar face around the encampment, providing security along the perimeter and inside the grounds.

"It's okay," he said, to a few people who seemed concerned that the argument was degenerating into an actual brawl, "It's okay, this is political, this is political."

A quiet, reserved man named Keichi stepped to the side to watch the shouting.

"I'm not against capitalism from an aesthetic point of view," he said, "If it worked, then fine, but it doesn't work, that's the problem. It just goes and goes until it collapses utterly spectacularly."

The people in the melee weren't arguing about capitalism, really. Or they were, but it was mixed in with a whole mess of other things, too -- the possibility of revolution, the role of the banks, the threat of the police, the relative virtues of different kinds of militant actions.

None of it was coherent, there were too many voices speaking all at once. That was kind of the point, said Keichi. This occupation isn't about coming up with grand designs to solve all of America's problems, at least partly it's about throwing people who may not get a chance or be inclined to talk to eachother in everyday life into a space where they can, and often do.

A young man in a wheelchair and wearing a bright orange fur coat told us "a new world order" was coming, and that soon the whole country would look very similar to the loosely-controlled chaos swarming around us.

A happy-seeming woman suddenly yelled "Free Yoga, Free Yoga!" and then sat on the ground with two other people and began to chant.

Keichi smiled. "You can't really get away from capitalism," he said, "I'm sort of an accelerationist, you have to just keep going until the whole thing collapses on itself."

I ran into the brown-helmeted security guard later, smoking a cigarette and taking what looked like a much-needed break.

"This is by far the most amazing thing I've ever been involved in," he said, "Think about it. We're feeding the homeless, we're clothing them, we're taking care of them, the city of Oakland isn't doing that. What we're doing here is really wonderful, it's really special."

A bike-riding security guard from another quadrant joined him. "I got a report of a robbery on Broadway and 14th," he said.

The two men's radios crackled.

"It's going to be a long night," said brown helmet.

9:00 p.m October 19

Occupy Oakland is a social experiment. But despite the overtly anarchic impulses sometimes on display, and the repeated and constant calls for a dismantling of the country's financial, legal and regulatory systems, people can't seem to completely do away with what humans have always done, which is make rules and try to obey them. There are committees here for virtually everything — food, health, sanitation, camping, security and administrative details, to name just a few.

Even as many of the occupiers call for radical change to the systems already in place, they are creating simulacrums of those very same systems within the camp, albeit on a much smaller scale. When violent or unruly members of this little society get out of line, the security committee steps up to take the lead in dealing with it, the same way law enforcement institutions do it in the world out there.

When sanitation issues arise, and they do, more meetings are scheduled to deal with them, the way they would be dealt with in any city council meeting in any American city. Should dogs be allowed in the camp? Who will pick up the trash? Is it a good idea to make a site for laundry services? What is the appropriate posture regarding the media? All of these questions get debated, some of them intelligently, others with a great deal of paranoia, anger and fear.

Through it all, however, the human urge to make community, to establish rules to live by, to create some semblance of order in a complex and confusing world, is on display.

What is lacking, however, from this community is the kind of back and forth debate, the arguing, the respect for oppositional viewpoints that you might find in a city council or in the opinion pages of a newspaper. Here, the desire for autonomous expression seems to trump any tolerance for what anyone perceived to be an outsider might have to say. This is unfortunate. But maybe with time comes tolerance.

Heading out for a while. Be back a little later tonight. Stay tuned.

October 18 5:02 p.m. The eb and flow of Occupy Oakland

The occupiers at City Hall like to say that their movement is a work in progress. This is most apparent in how rapidly the make-up of the occupation changes hour by hour, day and night, who may be speaking and what is being said.

The late afternoons and early evenings tend to be the most intellectually diverse times of the day. People from around the city stop by after work, or on their way home, to listen to speakers who may not stay around for the rest of the night. I haven't been here long, but my impression is that the conversations tend to be more issue-oriented, more civil, more responsible.

As night falls, it changes. The focus on what the police may or may not do intensifies. Anarchists bearing signs that say "bring on the chaos" and carrying black flags and masks, seem to increase in number. It starts to feel much more like a rebel camp, an occupied space, a social experiment. Anything could happen.

The morning seems groggy, like a giant camping trip. It seemed to me that large numbers of people with mental health problems were out and about this morning.

Throughout it all, however, there is a fairly steady drumbeat of anti-capitalist, anti-authority and anti-banking sentiment. For all the diversity on display at the protest, there is a disappointing lack of real debate. But maybe that will change.

-- Scott Johnson, Oakland Tribune

October 18 4:47 p.m. Former Black Panther Party leaders speak to protesters

Former heads of the Black Panthers Party are speaking at Occupy Oakland right now in front of an audience of at least a couple of hundred. David Hilliard, former chief of staff of the party, gave a rousing speech about organizing. Former party members will also speak at Laney College tomorrow afternoon from 4 to 6 p.m. to talk about their 10 point organizing principles.

"I bet Huey Newton is smiling on us right now," said a young man who took the microphone, before reading out the ten points, including housing, education, health care for black, poor and oppressed people, an end to police brutality, an end to wars of aggression and several others.

A woman in the crowd stood silently with her fist raised in the classic Black Panther pose.

"I believe us here today is the same reason this country got founded," said the man.

-- Scott Johnson, Oakland Tribune

October 18, 5 p.m. Embedded with Occupy Oakland

Well into its ninth day, the Occupy Oakland camp has attracted a wide range of participants -- self-described radicals, unemployed workers, students and professionals, as well as a large contingent of homeless people who have relied on the free food and shelter.

Organizers have established a schedule of talks, forums, discussion groups and seminars to keep residents and participants occupied during the day. Themes include "capitalism and colonialism" and "the history of the Black Panthers."

Each day begins with a yoga class at 8:30 a.m. A stationary bicycle has been set up near a "media center" tent for anyone to use.

About 100 tents have been placed on nearly every square meter of available greenery. The grass is long dead and won't be revived until the protesters have left. A kitchen serving three meals a day, along with a library, an information center and a "safe space" for conflict resolution also have been added, after fistfights and arguments broke out in recent days.