Appeared in The New Republic on November 3, 2011

On Wednesday, thousands gathered in downtown Oakland as part of a general strike declared by the Occupy Wall Street movement that has divided the city in recent weeks. Ample documentation of clashes between police and protesters—most prominently involving Iraq War veteran Scott Olsen, whose skull was fractured by a police projectile—has threatened to raise tensions to the breaking point. But it’s not the first time the city is experiencing this kind of faceoff: Oakland’s police department has a long history of troubled community relations, beginning in the 1940s, when it actively recruited officers from the South as a response to the influx of African American migration to the Bay Area. Here, TNR presents a list of some of the most prominent violent clashes in the East Bay.