top
East Bay
East Bay
Indybay
Indybay
Indybay
Regions
Indybay Regions North Coast Central Valley North Bay East Bay South Bay San Francisco Peninsula Santa Cruz IMC - Independent Media Center for the Monterey Bay Area North Coast Central Valley North Bay East Bay South Bay San Francisco Peninsula Santa Cruz IMC - Independent Media Center for the Monterey Bay Area California United States International Americas Haiti Iraq Palestine Afghanistan
Topics
Newswire
Features
From the Open-Publishing Calendar
From the Open-Publishing Newswire
Indybay Feature

Street Action Begins After Oscar Grant Rally and March, Oakland, 1/7/09: short video clip (1 of 3)

by dave id
At about 6:30pm, the march from the Oscar Grant rally at Fruitvale BART was passing Lake Merritt BART and came upon a lone police car and two officers at the corner of 8th Street and Madison. This short video shows how the situation quickly escalated.
Copy the code below to embed this movie into a web page:
Just before this video begins, some of the first marchers to reach the car laid face down on the street within feet of the cops, re-enacting the position Oscar Grant was in when the BART police shot him in the back. As the video begins, others are yelling at the police, regarding the two people on the street, "Shoot him! Shoot him!" As more of the crowd moves in around the car chanting, "No Justice, No Peace, Fuck the Police," the two officers begin to walk away from the car, the female officer grabbing her riot helmet from the car first. The officers backed away about 10 yards or more from the car, positioning themselves so that no one was behind them. As the police were clearly abandoning their vehicle, people began to jump on the car and throw objects at it. That's where this short video gets cut off.

Several people then began rocking the car in a seeming attempt to flip it over. Others push a dumpster that had been lit on fire into the front of the car. Just as the group rocking the car was giving up due to their lack of success, a line of riot police moved in fast from behind the march and immediately fired off several volleys of tear gas without warning. This is where the march broke apart as people dispersed and ran away. From here, it was a series of protesters running through the streets in smaller groups, occasionaly remassing until standoffs with police forced them to split into smaller groups again. All of this more or less continued all over downtown Oakland until just before 11pm when a large group of about 50 protesters was cornered and arrested in front of the Paramount Theater on Broadway. Those protesters remaining throughout downtown seemed to drift away.
Street Action After Oscar Grant Rally and March, Oakland, 1/7/09: photos & video (2 of 3):
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2009/01/11/18561424.php

Street Action After Oscar Grant Rally and March, Oakland, 1/7/09: photos (3 of 3):
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2009/01/11/18561459.php

Add Your Comments
Listed below are the latest comments about this post.
These comments are submitted anonymously by website visitors.
TITLE
AUTHOR
DATE
solidarity
Fri, Jan 9, 2009 2:54AM
We are 100% volunteer and depend on your participation to sustain our efforts!

Donate

$75.00 donated
in the past month

Get Involved

If you'd like to help with maintaining or developing the website, contact us.

Publish

Publish your stories and upcoming events on Indybay.

IMC Network