Oscar Grant Protest at City Hall and Courthouse

Posted on January 16, 2009 by Jack Stephens

Cross-posted from The Mustard Seed.

Photo by Sasha Kelley (click on pic)

Related blog posts: Fruitvale Bart Station Protest: The Rally, The Riot, Bloggers on the Oakland Riots, “To survive in these times,” Grant’s Killer Arrested.

Yesterday I was able to meet up with some friends, comrades, and kasamas during the protests in Oakland. Might I add they were wonderful, the energy was positive, there was a lot of people of color (majority or close to it), and around 1,300 to 2,000 people. The Oakland PD put the protest at around 1,000 but I find that extermely undervalued. I have been going to protests since 2002 and I have become adept at juding the amount of people at a protest (I normally use my high school of 1,200 students as a mental note and how “big” we looked in crowds, which is not that big) and I would say it is safe to assume near 2,000 people, especially judging how long it took for the front of the march to the back of the march to cross one single intersection.

Photo by Frederic Larson / The Chronicle (click on pic)

Like last time I recorded some of the speeches from the protest and want to highlight them here (somebody’s got to do it since the Chronicle doesn’t seem to give a shit about what the organizers actually have to say in their speeches as they have, again, decided to not highlight any of the community concerns).

I showed up late but I was able to catch most of the speeches when everyone went to the Courthouse. The speakers were speaking into a microphone in front of the DA’s office (across from the courthouse) on top of a van with large speakers; in between speeches a group of black gentlemen would bang on drums to create some ambiance in between each speaker.

Behind the speakers and right in front of the courthouse were two large purple banners, one read:

Fuck the Police

While the one next to it read:

We are all Oscar Grant

Photo by Sasha Kelley (click on the pic)

One of the speakers stated to the large crowd:

Once we are divided wer will be conqured. The only way we can be heard is for peaceful militant protest!

…

We need police officers that think like people! Not people that think like police officers!

Photo by Sasha Kelley (click on pic)

A woman came up to the stage reading a statement from a death row inmate in San Quinton, didn’t catch his name:

I am disgusted by the Bart police spokespeople for what they said. That what what we saw was not murder and that it needed to be investigated.

Since the videos were so clear it what happened to young Oscar Grant.

A man from a Chicano movement organization spoke:

I am!

Oscar Grant!

This is not just a Black struggle! This is a struggle of the oppressed many against the enslaving few!

…

We are not asking! We are demanding the immediate conviction of the officer and officers responsible!

…

We are united under on cause!

Photo by Frederic Larson / The Chronicle (click on pic)

Then actor of Mr. Cooper fame Mark Curry took the mic:

Don’t ride Bart! We gotta protest Bart! Bay Area Rapid Transit?! Morel like Bay Area Racist Transit!

…

Don’t let them to allow to treat you like animals! We are people! We are Oakland!

After Mr. Curry a group of young women of color came up to the mic and read off some poetry and spoke, one of them talked about the Black community being brutalized by the state and local governments:

That’s why they keep shooting us! To enforce Black inferiority! We need to rise and organize!

Another man stated:

We have a tradition here! From the Black Panethers to the political progressives who have left us a legacy of organizing!

To keep this movement live we need to be live!

Photo by Frederic Larson / The Chronicle (click on pic).

After the speeches were done we marched back to Oakland City Hall while being escourted by a group of fellow protestors on choppers at the front of the march. Along the way I saw many posters along the street of Oscar Grant III as well as a large street mural of Oscar Grant on the side of a wall.

Photo by Michael Maloney / The Chronicle (click on pic).

My only stipulation in the comment section is that YOU STAY ON FUCKING TOPIC!  No random ass shit.

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5 Responses to Oscar Grant Protest at City Hall and Courthouse

  1. Sailorman says:
    January 16, 2009 at 7:17 am

    Good post. thanks for the report.

    p.s. what does “kasamas” mean? My google search only shows things which don’t make sense given you and your posts, like this http://dictionary.babylon.com/Kasama or this http://dictionary.babylon.com/Kasama (thopugh maybe you were using #2 as a noun?)

  2. Susan says:
    January 16, 2009 at 8:36 am

    Thanks for the report! I’m in the hospital right now and so couldn’t check it out for myself.

  3. Jennifer says:
    January 16, 2009 at 1:49 pm

    This kind of thing makes me wish (or uh, not) that I lived in the Bay Area again and could go to this stuff.

    I was on BART hours before the poor guy got shot. I’m still horrified. That killer had better not get away with this.

  4. Jack Stephens says:
    January 16, 2009 at 2:45 pm

    what does “kasamas” mean?

    Ooops, my bad. Kasama means someone who is a partner and friend within the same struggle, it’s a Tagalog (Filipino) word. As I’m apart/ally of a large progressive Filipino-American organization in the 2nd largest metro-area populations of Filipinos in the world that stuff tends to get thrown around with no explanation. Sorry.

    So, yeah, it’s like that; or also kinda like comrade or habibi.

  5. RonF says:
    February 9, 2009 at 9:21 am

    I didn’t know if you’d seen this editorial:

    BART shooting probe keeps looking worse

    Examiner Editorial 2/9/09

    The longer BART’s investigation goes on trying to explain why an unarmed passenger laying face down on the Fruitvale station platform was shot to death by an on-duty officer, the more embarrassing it becomes.
    By now, BART police administration looks like the Keystone Kops, and the 236-officer department looks like one of those boutique police forces that should be taken over by the nearest county sheriff, who might have better resources for proper training and oversight.

    A climactic embarrassment came when a new cell phone video belatedly surfaced showing a second BART officer punching a seated and unresisting Oscar Grant III two minutes before Johannes Mehserle fired the much-filmed fatal shot that landed him with homicide charges. This latest video emerged after BART police Chief Gary Gee announced that BART had completed
    its confidential in-house investigation of the shooting death, and that all other officers at the scene had acted with admirable professionalism.

    Gee then followed up by cluelessly sending a memo on his own letterhead instructing BART officers how to send money, food, books and letters to Mehserle at Santa Rita Jail in Dublin, where he was being held until he posted bail Friday. Meanwhile, the leader of BART’s police union distributed a message asking law enforcement officers for donations to help Mehserle reach bail. The union denied having approved the plea.

    After the shooting, BART police did not stop a trainload of potential eyewitnesses from leaving the station and were unprepared to intercept witnesses disembarking at four other stations. BART also made no attempt to compel Mehserle to appear before an internal-affairs hearing until a week after the New Year’s Day shooting — by which time he had quit and did not have to answer questions.

    In one of BART’s few good moves, it announced Jan. 29 it would turn over its internal investigation of the shooting to an outside public agency or law firm, so as to reassure the public about the impartiality of the findings. However, that is the last we heard about the independent probe. How long does it take to sign up a reputable organization with a solid track record of investigating police incidents? It is getting harder to avoid some suspicion that BART’s outside-investigator promise was intended primarily as a distraction and delaying tactic.

    Some BART board members and the head of the BART police union have expressed a lack of confidence in Gee. It seems indisputable that sweeping changes are needed in the training and peer culture of BART police. Replacing Gee with a stronger chief ought to be a good place to start.

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