Clashes broke out between masked protesters and police here early Thursday after a day of peaceful anti-Wall Street protests shut down one of the United States' busiest ports. The demonstrations were mainly peaceful until around midnight, when dozens of protesters in the city center hurled rocks and bottles, briefly occupied a vacant building and torched a barricade. Riot police responded with tear gas.
The violent protesters appeared to be a breakaway group from the much larger Occupy Wall Street movement that has been camped out near Oakland's City Hall, many of whom rushed to the scene to urge calm, an AFP photographer said. The Oakland Tribune reported that one protester was injured and later taken away by an ambulance, and that police had arrested 30 to 40 people. The Oakland police could not immediately be reached for comment.
California's port of Oakland - which does 59 percent of its trade with Asia and is the fourth busiest US port - had sent staff home early on Wednesday as hundreds of protesters besieged the docks. "Maritime operations remain effectively shut down," said a Port of Oakland statement in an update late Wednesday night, adding that services "will not resume until it is safe and secure to do so. "Our hope is that the work day can resume tomorrow and that port workers will be allowed to get to their jobs without incident," it said, adding that there had been no injuries, property damage, or major security problems.
The dockside shutdown came after thousands of people rallied in the city center during the day to support a strike called after police fired tear gas while clearing a protestors' camp last week, injuring one person. Local media reported that two protesters had been hit by a car and taken to hospital with non-life threatening injuries. With their mission accomplished by late evening, the protesters began heading back downtown as police blocked freeway entrances.
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