Karla Zombro came to offer more than activist skills. She had a framework.
Hundreds of East Bay residents descended on Oakland Tech on Sunday, Oct. 5, and by 9:30 a.m., a line stretched halfway down the block . People in sneakers and Dr. Martens and flip flops, in keffiyehs and hoodies and bike helmets and cat t-shirts, were waiting to check in for Bay Get Ready, a day-long session on how to “get trained and organized to fight back.” First they filled a 950-seat auditorium, then hundreds spilled into an overflow room. Then, after an opening song, they settled in for a briefing on authoritarianism.
The old expectations, of flawed but functioning government systems, were rapidly falling away, Zombro, the movement training director for We Are California, said, and that called for new strategies. She threw up a slide listing the hallmarks of an authoritarian regime and walked the crowd through each one…