Conor Friedersdorf: Attention Occupy Oakland and Bay Area Police: The Lessons of 1934 By Conor Friedersdorf

Conor Friedersdorf is a staff writer at The Atlantic, where he focuses on politics and national affairs. He lives in Venice, California, and is the founding editor of The Best of Journalism, a newsletter devoted to exceptional nonfiction.

It is a volatile moment in the San Francisco Bay Area: galvanized by the Occupy Wall Street movement, the injury an Iraq War veteran suffered when police tried to clear Occupy Oakland from the streets, the 2009 killing of Oscar Grant III by a Bay Area Rapid Transit police officer, and a 2003 incident when police brutalized Iraq War opponents, activists are attempting a citywide strike Wednesday, when they'll try to disrupt commerce and shut down Oakland's port. "At meetings of Occupy Oakland, many of the people I spoke with watched the unfolding occupation with sympathy--but just watched," Gabriel Thompson writes in The Nation. "It took the raid, the images of tear gas clouds and a bloodied Scott Olsen to get them into the streets." Said Oakland Councilwoman Patricia Kernighan, "This is sort of a perfect storm of dysfunction."

Before taking to the streets, Occupy Oakland protesters and the Bay Area police officers preparing to meet them would do well to look back at another tumultuous moment in the Bay Area: the summer of 1934, when longshoreman struggled to unionize ports along the West Coast. The strikes and confrontations with police culminated on July 5, 1934, also known as Bloody Thursday. Three were killed and 31 people shot as widespread rioting rocked San Francisco, and both police and longshoremen attacked one another with guns, riot sticks, and hurled objects. Those bygone events and Wednesday's general strike are different in all sorts of ways. Most notably, the International Longshoremen Worker's Union, which these days has a pretty sweet labor deal, is encouraging its members to work their normal shifts on the Oakland waterfront. Still, there are similarities and contrasts at which to marvel, and lessons to be gleaned.

The biggest takeaway: during the Summer of 1934, increasing the intensity of police attacks on strikers only stiffened their resolve, spreading solidarity and exacerbating disorder; and similarly, attacks on police officers that led to serious injury or the imminent danger of it bolstered their resolve, provoking the establishment to call in more force, eventually including National Guard troops with machine guns. Whether you're an Occupy Oakland organizer or a police commander, the challenge is the same -- in a volatile situation that could turn violent at any moment, the ultimate advantage usually redounds to the side that is seen as being attacked, and especially to the side that suffers a serious injury; the trick is persuading those under you, "Whatever else you do, don't seriously injure or kill someone on the other side." In 1934, even funerals were exploited for tactical gain....