ABSTRACT
Lesser-known actions included attempts to permanently occupy vacant buildings in downtown Oakland, leading to pitched battles with the police and a proliferation of political squats across the city. This chapter discusses these occupations which serve as an opportunity to consider a genealogy of occupying land in the United States (US) west, as well as broader questions of public space and political resistance within contemporary forms and processes of urbanization. Specifically, it considers how the material emphasis of "the land question", pivotal to 19th century politics as the US expanded westward, may inform contemporary politics of urban resistance since the new left focus on cultural symbolism and identity beginning in the 1970s. For many historians the occupation serves as an important marker of the rise of "Red Power", pan-Indian cultural identity, and symbolic politics of representation. This approach embraced the broader construct of race rather than specific tribal identity as a source of political mobilization and empowerment.
