Oakland Unified School District security guards forcefully removed people who had been occupying Parker Elementary School on Thursday evening, but a group of protesters surged back to retake control of the shuttered building.
OUSD security arrived at the elementary school around 5 pm on Thursday when there were only two occupants in the building — Rebecca Ruiz, a Fruitvale resident and organizer, and another person, according to Ruiz. The guards said they planned to remove the occupiers, by physical force if necessary, Ruiz said, prompting her to send out a call on social media for supporters, who soon arrived.
Ruiz said school security officers tried to aggressively disperse the protesters. “(They) grabbed my arm and threw me into the wall,” she said, as she held an ice pack to her head after she and other protesters had regained control of the building.
A woman named Maureen, who identified herself as a neighbor with children in the Oakland school district, was holding an ice pack on her wrist and hand inside the building after the confrontation. “My arm was on the door frame and two OUSD security began to twist my arm behind my back as hard as they could,” she said.
A tweet from Parker for the People, an account run by supporters of the occupation, said, “OUSD school security just brutalized parent and school board candidate Max Orozsco. Then they handcuffed him. He is bleeding. Security has locked him IN Parker and we can’t get him out.”
A Chronicle photographer witnessed the protesters regaining access to the building at around 6:50 pm The guards who were inside opened the front door to admit a police officer and a crowd of protesters surged forward. Although five guards shoved back the protesters, the guards were eventually overwhelmed by sheer numbers, he said. A video of the incident shared by occupiers showed the altercation, with protesters chanting, “Let Max go — now!”
According to OUSD spokesperson John Sasaki, OUSD staff changed locks on the school on Thursday after they found that “all the people who had been inside the building had left the premises.” However, someone “picked, cut, or otherwise broke through a lock to get back inside the building,” Sasaki said.
He said the occupiers had been “removed” and officials were “doing what we can to keep several others from entering the building.” But eventually, at least two dozen occupants were back inside the school by Thursday evening and OUSD security left the campus.
“Parker K-8 School is now closed,” Sasaki said. “The individuals at Parker have been trespassing. We have directed them to leave from day one and have continued to do so on many other occasions. Of great concern is that the children who were onsite were sleeping in unsafe conditions and that the adults were running an unsafe and unlicensed child care program. We continue to demand that they find other ways to safely and peacefully express their concerns.”
Nicol, a second grade teacher in Oakland schools who asked to withhold her last name for fear of district retaliation, said she came out to support the occupiers. “This is our community,” she said.
Valarie Bachelor, who lives up the street, said the confrontation “only emboldened the community to support what is happening here.”
Misty Cross of West Oakland, who has been volunteering with the non-sanctioned children’s summer program at Parker, said that the district had impeded the program by locking the kitchen so they couldn’t serve food and locking the gate so they couldn’t take the trash out.
Cross, an activist with the Oakland group Moms 4 Housing, said she thinks it is important to fight for children’s education. “This is a working-class neighborhood,” she said. “Families here work two or three jobs. To make their kids go to school 30 blocks away” is not right.
For months, the district has faced push-back from community members, who have protested the decision and pursued legal action.
A complaint filed by the ACLU of Northern California to the California Department of Justice said the school mergers and closures would “disproportionately impact Black students and families,” noting that four of the seven schools the district voted to close serve predominantly Black families while Black children make up a small portion of the district’s overall student population.
Protesters said they will continue to occupy the building even after school starts on Monday.
Chasity Hale and Carolyn Said are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: [email protected], [email protected].