Bitter Tears, the Assassination of Oscar Grant: "BARTing While Black"

Bitter Tears,
the Assassination of Oscar Grant:
"BARTing While Black"
___________________________________________________________________________

by mesha Monge-Irizarry
(Idriss Stelley Action & Resource Center)

Maya Angelou once wrote...
"Like the Moon and the Stars....
We Shall RISE...."

Unless of course, it is 2 a.m.,
New Year's Eve 2009,
on the Oakland Plantation.

You, unarmed, pleading for your life as a young Father, at the tender age of 22,

while a rogue Bay Area Rapid Transit cop (Tony Pirone) punches you, then crushes your neck with his knee,
quickly followed in his enthusiastic-racist, vicious rage by Officer Joannes Mehserle,
who shoots you in the back, murdering you.

Last Call, Lights Out.

The Party is over, you DEAD,

BARTing While BLACK/

A now fatherless baby-daughter, Tatiana, yr. old,
is wondering where Daddy went....
A mother, Wanda Johnson
cries her heart out for life.

Was Mehserle promised a medal in the Bart PD corridors
for solely taking the rap,
while infamous Pirone,
(now nicknamed "Pirana", like the murderous fish, on Justice4Oscar_grant yahoogroup by one of its 288 subscribers) ?

Mehserle, who conveniently resigned (which likely will safeguard his pension),
yet to offer any condolences to Oscar's Grieving Family,
was arrested as a "fugitive", in Nevada on January 13.

The corporate press, two weeks after the assassination of Oscar Grant III, made a furtive. one-day attempt the "angelize" the killer, on the day following his arrest,

i.e.: The KKKrronicle's puff piece on Mehserle depicted as a "Gentle Giant" since childhood.

But as soon as DA Orloff announced that no charges where considered on Pirone and the 2 officers who remained busy confiscating the cellphones of horrified onlookers at the murder scene. instead of applying CPR on a dying, innocent Black Youth,
the glorifying of Mehserle came to an abrupt stop,
Be gone "Gentle Giant",
now Prime candidate for the sole Oakland Bart police recipient of
the grand Looser of the Year 2009 Award....
Although the Bart Police Association has announced that it will cover all Mehserle's legal fees from now on...
just like Chicago POA covered first class flights to trial and VIP luxury hotel accomodations for Jon Burge , (main torturer of over 200 Chicago prison inmates) for three years in a row.

In the meantime,
"progressive" political parties and their local factions experience growing pains and tension around...

Who spearheads the Justice4OscarGrant Campaign,
who reaps the credits,
who will subsequently increase "hits" on their website,
beef up membership recruitment,
and successfully beat the competition on donation drives.

And, sadly....
Who will, the quickest, get preferential access and hegemony on Oscar's family, to be able to Claim Justice4OscarGrant Campagn as their prime promo.
Been there.

Muddy waters will flow under the Plantation's Bridge,
crisis after crisis.
Next !

And after a year or so, us Grieving families of Loved Ones murdered by Law Enforcement are soon forgotten to the world,
or labeled "Attention Hoes" by the conservative press, if we dare to continue demanding Justice for our Loved ones' Stolen Lives.

"Community based" organizations are staging similar protests at the same date and time,
but at different locations.
- I should know, as I maintain the calendar of relatred events on a daily basis on :
groups.yahoo.com/group/Justice4Oscar_GRANT/

Four different NGOs and groups are running their own endorsements list on the "People demands: Justice4OscarGrant", with no effort or intent to consolidate.

Bro Prez tightens Homeland Security, which incidentally BART Police is part of.

Does "HOPE" and "CHANGE" spells Law Enforcement Transparency and Accountability ?
Or "Police Reform"? ....In my pipedreams, it does.

The Liberal Band plays on:

"We are ALL Oscar Grant !"
We are ALL Sean Bell !"

No, Dahlinks, not quite. There is a tiny difference.

You are ALIVE, YOU have a future,
Amadou, Kathryn, Sean and Oscar are very DEAD,
and have fallen and won't get up when the show is over.

You can lay on the floor face down on the pavement,
time for a dramatic, ephemerous moment of fame on "Facebook" or "UTube",

but you get to get up and go home when the shooting is over.

If you are white,
and were ALLEGEDLY drinking 'n fighting on New year's first hours,
you probably got a CITATION,
if an underaged white minor,
you likely were released to your parents custody,
for "Boys will be Boys".

As for you, "Revolutionary" boogie Youth,
if you did indeed something "illegal" or distateful on that infamous night,
Daddi bailed you out in one piece in the morning.

As the mother of a Black kid executed by SFPD in 2001,
my soul is fuming,
as the malaise and hypocrisy doesn't let down.

The anti war movement in the Bay Area...
sends us one or two quick "From Gaza to Oakland" fancy PDFs,
opportunistic demagogy paying lip service to the War at Home,

and the Unions' overall silence around the Murder of Oscar is deafening.

Am I pissed ?
Ya betcha.

My agency has not attempted to contact Oscar's family, not over my grieving body, ever.

Oscar's biological and extended family would eventually contact us,
when and/or if they wish to do so,
but I am not about to join the progressive bandwagon and contribute to their suffocation and exploitation in the name of Justice.

Bitter tears.... BARTING while BLACK,
Party on, Oakland !
My heart intensely goes to the family...

Am I "defeating Unity" ?

(although gathering our forces under ONE Justice4OscarGrant Movement is already weakened by growing dissension on the left bank of "progressive politics",
drowning in NGO's cat fights to make Justice4OscarGrant their primary pet peeve....)

Disagree ?
Holla Back !

You can contact the writer, mesha Monge-Irizarry,
SF MOOC City Commissioner
& Co-director of the SF office of Education Not Incarceration, (ednotinc.org)
at : iolmisha [at] cs.com (ISARC)