[http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/10/25/MNRP1LLJUT.DTL]
SAN FRANCISCO -- No single face represents the elaborate encampment outside Oakland City Hall that inhabitants call an experiment in antiauthoritarian living.
Instead, two weeks after the first tent went up - and four days after the city gave its first eviction order - the plaza on Monday held a spicy stew of idealists and anarchists, angry middle-class workers and aging radicals, peaceniks and provocateurs, the jobless and the homeless, plus some people who just want to party.
The common ground at Occupy Oakland is anger over economic inequality and a desire to hoist a local flag in the Occupy Wall Street movement. But creating an alternative society on a half-acre isn't easy, and no fewer than 21 committees have formed to oversee everything from food to security.
Perhaps more challenging - given the mass appeal of the movement - is fostering inclusiveness in a camp that is highly unusual, tinged with paranoia about corporate America and facing a possible confrontation with police over sanitation and security issues. A sign at the entrance seems to sum up some of the camp's insular leanings: "Don't worry," it states, "I don't take you seriously either."
Different this time -
Many veteran protesters say they haven't seen this broad a spectrum of people camping out long term for a cause since the 1960s. Demonstrations against wars and other causes produced marches and coalitions, but actually occupying in unison across the country for as long as this is remarkable, they said.
"This is different," said the Rev. Louie Vitale of Oakland, who at 79 is one of the deans of the Bay Area protest community.
"There is certainly some of the usual expressive behavior of the counterculture in terms of dress and revolutionary rhetoric," he said as he marched with other clergy Monday in support of the San Francisco Occupy camp - which is more homogenous in its counterculture flavor than Oakland. "But it's not the heart of what's going on.
"What they're really trying for everywhere is a paradigm shift, and a lot of that has to do with the new idea of what the middle class is after losing ground for years," Vitale said.
That dynamic is drawing out people like lawyer Timothy Fong, who has been driving in daily from his Santa Clara office to the Oakland camp to help with strategy on fundraising to continue the protest.
"There are people here from the anarchist or communist movements, and we're not going to see eye to eye, but that's fine," he said, standing in the camp in a snappy L.L. Bean jacket. "We all need to dialogue. I've also seen a lot of people here from the neighborhoods, people used to working in the community, office workers."
Ra So, a 38-year-old musician from Oakland who has been taking part in the camp's committees, said it should not be surprising that many of the camp's full-time residents are veteran activists. He called them "the foot soldiers of the people."
"The people that can afford to camp out are usually idealistic young people, so what you see in camp isn't always going to be reflective of the broad-based support behind this," So said. "It takes people who have hard-core ideals. Most people are sitting at home watching 'The Simpsons.' They might feel the same way, but not take action."
Coming after work -
It's usually during the camp's general assemblies - which were recently scaled back from nightly to four nights a week - that a broader set of people arrives, often after getting off work.
"I'm definitely in the part of the camp that is for nonviolent protest," said a 23-year-old woman from Berkeley who gave only her last name of Dorney. "But it seems like there's a group of people that does want to fight back, and aren't thinking about the safety of everybody else."
Dorney has been operating "Children's Village," an area for as many as 23 kids every day, complete with games and art supplies, but said she will have to cut back on her duties after landing a job as a tutor.
Asked why she had come, she said, "We all want to change the world, to make it better. We're all kind of sick and tired and fed up. ... I think a lot of people in California and across the country are looking to us."
'A test run' -
Surveying the plaza on Monday morning, a 25-year-old anarchist who goes by the pseudonym Michael Sampson said, "This is a test run. I see this camp as a school where people learn how to organize and learn about social issues that are plaguing us all."
Sampson, who lives in a radical collective house in North Oakland and volunteers with nonprofit groups and a radical newspaper, said anarchists are often misinterpreted as advocates of chaos.
"Anarchism to me is about structure and order," he said. "You want to see anarchism in its truest form - it's here."
The test has had plenty of tension built in.
Protesters have struggled to communicate with television reporters, who have at times been harassed or forbidden from filming. And campers have had trouble at times controlling troublemakers - "nihilists," as some call them, who didn't come for the policy debates.
Some people who wanted to camp were scared off by violence, including a frightening incident last week in which a mentally ill man assaulted protesters before one knocked him down with a two-by-four. Such incidents have prompted deep soul-searching and fierce debates in camp.
During a march through Oakland on Saturday, for instance, one protester began screaming "F- the police!" over and over. Mills College student Annie Lebowitz, who was in the march, ran up to him and persuaded him to take it down a notch.
"I said, there are families here, we don't want to be alienating people," said Lebowitz, 27. "I told him, 'I don't want to tell you what to do, but please consider what I'm saying' - and he stopped."
Vowing nonviolence -
One resident of the camp who knows how to shake things up but is vowing nonviolence is Gabe Meyers, a 34-year-old Oakland resident known for provocative protest tactics. In April 2009, in the wake of a BART police officer's fatal shooting of Oscar Grant, he threw red paint at the transit agency's general manager during a board meeting, earning 30 days in jail.
He said some troublemakers have been disruptive enough at times to undermine the mission of the camp, but added, "I think there are enough good people here not to let us get distracted."
"This is people deciding to reclaim space, which is a way of taking power back," Meyers said. "It's not the typical protest movement, with just the leftists getting involved. It's more of a populist thing. People are realizing we've been screwed over by the ruling class."
Senior Pastor Andrea Davidson, with the Taylor Memorial United Methodist Church in Oakland, listens to a speaker during an Occupy San Francisco march through the financial district on Monday October 24, 2011 in Oakland, Calif. Davidson said, "We need financial equality for everyone. We've lost sight of the values our country was founded on."
Photo: Mike Kepka / The Chronicle
Aiyahnna Johnson of Oakland, with her daughter, Persia Evans, has been taking part in the protests for weeks.
Photo: Mike Kepka / The Chronicle
Zisa O,22, a writer and blogger, sits with with a new group of friends in the center of a tent city at Occupy Oakland on Monday October 24, 2011 in Oakland, Calif. O came to Occoupy Oakland four days ago after leaving Occupy Portland. "We the 99% have to work through this. Our economic system needs to colaps," she said.
Photo: Mike Kepka / The Chronicle
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