One charming aspect of my new neighborhood in Oakland is that people block the streets. If my neighbors can’t find an open spot by the sidewalk, they park where they are and throw on their hazard lights while they run in to take care of something. When I pull out of the driveway so that my roommate can get into the garage, other cars just have to pass against traffic. A couple weeks ago, drivers were stopped on both sides of the street chatting, apparently realizing only when they crossed each other that they needed to converse. I had to wait just a moment before they moved to let me pass. My favorite was my neighbor blocking me in so that he could move some stuff from a car into his truck. Setting his truck in the middle of the road, he put some cones out as if that made it legit. He told me it would only be a few minutes, so I waited; I wasn’t in a rush. Though it can be inconvenient, I love this about my neighborhood because it makes me feel like it’s ours - we all live here together and sometimes that means taking up space and sometimes that means going around.

I was out of town last week when the police rioted against the Oakland Occupiers, but my roommate said that even though we live over a mile away it felt like a war zone when she stepped outside, with the floating gas and the exploding noises and the helicopters that hung around for days. She asked me, why are we talking about shutting down schools when we can afford this much police action? If they were worried about sanitation, wouldn’t it have been cheaper to put out some porta-potties? Why are these people being treated like they’re worthless?

I was thinking about all this on Wednesday as I walked to the Port of Oakland in a group of thousands, joining in the chant of “Whose streets? Our streets! Whose town? Our town!” I felt a little bad for cars trapped at intersections, and sometimes marchers would pause to let the cars through and sometimes other marchers would yell LET’S GO and weave through the vehicles. One commuter turned into the middle of the march and we laughed, knowing he wasn’t getting anywhere. Usually cars control the streets but sometimes pedestrians can. I saw children and rabbis and drummers and teachers and unemployed people and artists and people with disabilities taking a special protest bus and some guy in a devil costume I disagreed with and a dude in a blue bodysuit and American flag shorts who used to be my roommate’s neighbor. I saw some police on motorcycles hanging back, seeming afraid to engage, not wanting to provoke more outrage. Usually police control the city but sometimes people can.

We found friends as soon as we got to the plaza, and as we approached the port there was one open space in the crush and a friend I really needed to catch up with was standing right in the middle of it. We talked about teaching history, and the temptation to teach current events instead. I had just told my 6^th graders that class hierarchy is a primary characteristic of civilization, to set them up to study Mesopotamia. We wondered how young is too young to teach power analysis. I wondered how many times in history police forces have tried to brutally knock down a movement, and then had to quietly stand back as the movement clogged the streets the next week, that’s how many people cared.

At the port, a woman in a union t-shirt found a drummer and broke into West African dance, shouting, “A revolution without dancing is not a revolution worth having.” Around the corner, a crowd gathered around a live performance of Redemption Song. People climbed on top of trucks and shouted. There was a memorial to Oscar Grant and other victims of police brutality. Protesters walked around complimenting each other’s signs. A man yelled into a microphone: “The port is supposed to have a shift change in ten minutes! Is that going to happen? No!” We passed by a sign that reminded me, COMPASSION IS REVOLUTIONARY. I took it literally.

On our way out, we danced to some Lady Gaga blasting out of a bicycle stereo. The man voguing next to us yelled, “you go San Francisco” and we yelled, “we’re in Oakland! Oakland!” Personally, I wasn’t interested in shutting down the port for too long. The workers and the city both need the money. But I was happy to help shut it down for a little while, to show that we could, to give a reminder: There are a lot of people in this city, and these streets are our streets too.

I’ll give you three guesses for the context of this quote.

1. Nope, it’s not Tucker Max trying to express classy interests.
2. Good try, but it is in fact not a creepy old man on the Home Shopping Network.
3. What’s that you say? A New York Times special section on children’s books? You got it! Such a logical guess, as this is a totally appropriate use of space in a literally four-sentence review of a book connecting bicycles with women’s rights. Thank you so much Patriarchy - I’m not sure what I would do if I could read about a book intended for fifth-grade girls without being reminded how diverting lady-ogling can be! If it weren’t for you reminding me that women on bicycles serve to be attractive, I might have to actually think about the impressive and inspirational actions of the women profiled in the book!

(Disturbing review notwithstanding, WHEELS OF CHANGE: How Women Rode the Bicycle to Freedom (With a Few Flat Tires Along the Way) does look like an awesome read.)