Daniel Mark Siegel is a civil-rights attorney at the Oakland-based law firm Siegel, Yee, Brunner & Mehta, former legal adviser to Oakland Mayor Jean Quan, and candidate in the 2014 Oakland mayoral race. He specializes in employment and labor law. [1]
Siegel was born in New York City and raised in New York City and on Long Island. He attended high school in New York, graduating second in his class.
He graduated magna cum laude from Hamilton College (New York) in 1967 with a bachelor's degree [1] in Philosophy and Religion.
Siegel graduated from UC Berkeley's Boalt Hall in 1970. [1]
Siegel was a student activist in 1967-1970 while he attended UC Berkeley's University of California, Berkeley, School of Law. He was also a leader in the local Students for a Democratic Society.[ citation needed ] As UC Berkeley Student President-Elect in 1969, Siegel is known for his role in the student rebellion on "Bloody Thursday," when thousands of students clashed with hundreds of California Highway Patrol officers and Alameda County sheriff's deputies sent by the office of then-California governor Ronald Reagan to assert control over a piece of property known as "People's Park." The 2.8 acre People's Park was, in 1969, in the midst of a stalled redevelopment plan, littered with debris and abandoned cars. [2] During a rally on Sproul Plaza on that day, May 15, 1969, Siegel received the microphone as the crowd of 3,000 agitated to reclaim what was perceived as their community space, when he yelled "Take the park!" His exhortation was perceived as the start of a riot, which featured protestors marching against riot police, who responded with shotgun fire among other acts, killing one and blinding another. [3] [4]
Upon receiving his J.D. degree from the University of California School of Law in 1970 and passing the California bar examination, Siegel was denied a license to practice law by a subcommittee of the State Bar of California. According to the Long Beach Independent , his admittance to the bar was denied on moral grounds because he allegedly "advocated violence and the seizure of property and lied when he denied advocating those things". Earlier in the year, he had been charged with inciting a riot, but had charges dismissed due to a lack of evidence. [5] Siegel and his lawyer Malcolm Burnstein appealed the subcommittee's decision, taking his appeal to the California Supreme Court, which overruled the State Bar and found that Siegel possessed the requisite "moral character" to practice law. [6]
Today, Siegel is a civil rights attorney at the Oakland-based law firm Siegel, Yee, Brunner & Mehta. [7] In recent years, he has won a series of high-profile sexual harassment and employment discrimination lawsuits,[ specify ] and has represented clients such as the National Union of Healthcare Workers. He has served as both general counsel and Interim Executive Director of the Pacifica Radio Foundation, and has served as a director on both the Pacifica National Board and the Local Station Board of KPFA-FM in Berkeley. In 2006 he completed an eight-year tenure on the Oakland Unified School District Board of Directors.
Siegel, a long-time friend of Oakland Mayor Jean Quan, served as her Legal Adviser until November 14, 2011, when he resigned in protest of her decision to clear protestors associated with Occupy Wall Street from their camp at Frank H. Ogawa Plaza. [8] Siegel subsequently announced, via Twitter: "No longer Mayor Quan's legal advisor. Resigned at 2 am. Support Occupy Oakland, not the 1% and its government facilitators." [9] [10]
In 2011, Matthai Kurivila of San Francisco Chronicle described Siegel as "one of Oakland's most active and vocal police critics". [11]
On January 9, 2014, Siegel announced his candidacy for mayor of Oakland. [12] Seigel was not elected, and Libby Schaaf was sworn in on January 5, 2015.
Siegel and his wife, Anne Butterfield Weills, have lived in Oakland since 1977. Weills is an attorney who is listed "of counsel" at Siegel, Yee, Brunner & Mehta. [13] Their son, Michael, was also an associate at Siegel & Yee. [14] Weills' son from a previous marriage, Christopher Weills Scheer, is an author and journalist.
Berkeley is a city on the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay in northern Alameda County, California, United States. It is named after the 18th-century Irish bishop and philosopher George Berkeley. It borders the cities of Oakland and Emeryville to the south and the city of Albany and the unincorporated community of Kensington to the north. Its eastern border with Contra Costa County generally follows the ridge of the Berkeley Hills. The 2020 census recorded a population of 124,321.
Oakland is the largest city and the county seat of Alameda County, California, United States. A major West Coast port, Oakland is the largest city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, the third largest city overall in the Bay Area and the eighth most populated city in California. With a population of 440,646 in 2020, it serves as the Bay Area's trade center and economic engine: the Port of Oakland is the busiest port in Northern California, and the fifth busiest in the United States of America. An act to incorporate the city was passed on May 4, 1852, and incorporation was later approved on March 25, 1854. Oakland is a charter city.
People's Park in Berkeley, California is located just east of Telegraph Avenue, bounded by Haste and Bowditch Streets, and Dwight Way, near the University of California, Berkeley. The park was created during the radical political activism of the late 1960s.
Joseph Lawrence Alioto was an American politician who served as the 36th mayor of San Francisco, California, from 1968 to 1976.
John Leonard Burris is an American civil rights attorney, based in Oakland, California, known for his work in police brutality cases representing plaintiffs. The John Burris law firm practices employment, criminal defense, DUI, personal injury, and landlord tenant law.
The University of California, Berkeley, School of Law is the law school of the University of California, Berkeley, a public research university in Berkeley, California. It is one of 14 schools and colleges at the university. Berkeley Law is consistently ranked within the top 14 law schools in the United States.
Lai Jean Quan is an American politician that served as the 49th mayor of Oakland, California from 2011 to 2015. She previously served as City Council member for Oakland's 4th District. Upon inauguration on January 3, 2011, she became Oakland's first female mayor. Quan ran an unsuccessful campaign for reelection in 2014, losing the mayoral race to Libby Schaaf, a member of the Oakland City Council.
The following is a timeline of Occupy Wall Street (OWS), a protest which began on September 17, 2011 on Wall Street, the financial district of New York City and included the occupation of Zuccotti Park, where protesters established a permanent encampment. The Occupy movement splintered after NYC Mayor Bloomberg had police raid the encampment in Zuccotti Park on November 15, 2011. The timeline here is limited to this particular protest during this approximate time-frame.
Occupy Oakland refers to a collaboration and series of demonstrations in Oakland, California that started in October 2011. As part of the Occupy movement, protestors have staged occupations, most notably at Frank H. Ogawa Plaza in front of Oakland City Hall.
The following is a timeline of Occupy Oakland which began on Monday, October 10, 2011, as an occupation of Frank H. Ogawa Plaza located in front of Oakland City Hall in downtown Oakland, and is an ongoing demonstration. It is allied with Occupy Wall Street, which began in New York City on September 17, 2011, and is one of several "Occupy" protest sites in the San Francisco Bay Area. Other sites include Occupy San Francisco and Occupy San Jose.
The 2011 Oakland general strike was a demonstration held in Oakland, California on November 2, 2011 as part of the larger Occupy Oakland movement.
Occupy Cal included a series of demonstrations that began on November 9, 2011, on the University of California, Berkeley campus in Berkeley, California. It was allied with the Occupy Wall Street movement in New York City, San Francisco Bay Area Occupy groups such as Occupy Oakland, Occupy Berkeley, and Occupy San Francisco, and other public California universities. "Cal" in the name "Occupy Cal" is the nickname of the Berkeley campus and generally refers specifically to UC Berkeley.
The UC Davis pepper-spray incident occurred on November 18, 2011, during an Occupy movement demonstration at the University of California, Davis. After asking the protesters to leave several times, university police pepper-sprayed a group of student demonstrators as they were seated on a paved path in the campus quad. The video of UC Davis police officer Lt. John Pike pepper-spraying demonstrators spread around the world as a viral video and the photograph became an Internet meme. Officer Alex Lee also pepper-sprayed demonstrators at Pike's direction.
Jane Brunner is a former member of the Oakland City Council, a position she held from 1996 to 2013. Brunner is a former president of the council, a post she held for two years. She was Chair of the Community and Economic Development Committee.
The Occupy movement has been met with a variety of responses from local police departments since its beginning in 2011. According to documents obtained by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, the FBI, state and local law enforcement officials treated the movement as a potential criminal and terrorist threat and used fusion centers and counterterrorism agents to investigate and monitor the Occupy movement.
The following is a timeline of the history of the city of Oakland, Alameda County, California, United States.
The history of Oakland, a city in the county of Alameda, California, can be traced back to the founding of a settlement by Horace Carpentier, Edson Adams, and Andrew Moon in the 19th century. The area now known as Oakland had seen human occupation for thousands of years, but significant growth in the settlements that are now incorporated into the city did not occur until the Industrial Revolution. Oakland was first incorporated as a town in 1852.
James B. Chanin is an American civil rights attorney, based in Oakland, California. Chanin has been an attorney since 1978, and is best known for his representation of victims in the “Oakland Riders” case, and as one of the two plaintiffs’ attorneys in the Riders Negotiated Settlement Agreement (NSA). Although best known for his cases involving police misconduct, Chanin has also represented police officers and other police department employees.
The 2014 Oakland mayoral election was held on November 4, 2014 to elect the mayor of Oakland, California. It saw the election of Libby Schaaf, who unseated incumbent mayor Jean Quan.
The 2010 Oakland mayoral election was held on November 2, 2010 to elect the mayor of Oakland, California, electing Jean Quan to be their mayor. In early August 2010, incumbent mayor Ron Dellums announced that he would not be seeking reelection to a second term. In November 2010, Oakland also instant-runoff voting to elect its mayor, three city council races and four other local offices, with the elections for the mayor and Oakland council district four requiring multiple rounds of counting. Oakland used instant-runoff voting in the city's remaining elected offices in 2012. IRV was again used in 2014 and 2016, including in the 2014 mayoral election in which incumbent Jean Quan was defeated by Libby Schaaf.
But 30 years ago this spring, Siegel was a counterculture catalyst, the man whose exhortation to 'Take the park!' was the precursor to a bloody clash between University of California students and police that left one man dead, another blinded and a city locked in martial law.
Quan's legal advisor, Dan Siegel, has resigned from his position in protest at the eviction.
No longer Mayor Quan's legal advisor. Resigned at 2 am. Support Occupy Oakland, not the 1% and its government facilitators.
Dan Siegel, a civil rights attorney and one of Oakland's most active and vocal police critics, said the city should have done more to work with campers before sending in police.