"Hundreds of East Bay residents descended on Oakland Tech on Sunday, Oct. 5, and by 9:30 a.m., a line stretched halfway down the block. People in sneakers and Dr. Martens and flip flops, in keffiyehs and hoodies and bike helmets and cat t-shirts, were waiting to check in for Bay Get Ready, a day-long session on how to get trained and organized to fight back."
"First they filled a 950-seat auditorium, then hundreds spilled into an overflow room. Then, after an opening song, they settled in for a briefing on authoritarianism. The old expectations, of flawed but functioning government systems, were rapidly falling away, Zombro, the movement training director for We Are California, said, and that called for new strategies. Her training partner, Jane Martin, the organizing director of Bay Resistance, threw up a slide listing the hallmarks of an authoritarian regime and walked the crowd through each one."
"By the time she got to No. 6, The autocrat won't leave check and asked those assembled whether they thought the United States had entered authoritarianism, nearly every hand in the room shot up. The first thing is everyone needs to snap out of it, Zombro said in an interview later. We are not dealing with the same deck of cards that we had last year."
A Bay Get Ready training at Oakland Tech drew hundreds who queued before 9:30 a.m., filled a 950-seat auditorium, and overflowed into additional rooms. Attendees from diverse backgrounds checked in for a day-long session focused on organizing and noncooperation. Trainers identified hallmarks of authoritarian regimes, including investigations of critics, domestic military deployments, and leaders who refuse to leave office; attendees largely agreed the United States showed those signs. Trainers urged new strategies, advising organizers to convert overreach into backfire moments and to replicate trainings across multiple California cities.
Read at www.berkeleyside.org
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