Mural to commemorate Gary King Jr. is reborn

Just over a month ago, on September 24, Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) buffed away the mural commemorating the life of Gary King Jr. on Martin Luther King Jr. Way in North Oakland. This erasure happened just days after the two-year anniversary of Gary King Jr.’s murder by Oakland police.

On September 20, 2007, Gary King Jr. was beaten, tasered, and shot in the back by OPD officer Patrick Gonzales. King was handcuffed and left to bleed to death in the street. The justification for this murder was that King fit the description of “a person of interest” related to an unspecified homicide.

The mural was painted on a BART column next to where King was murdered. For two years the mural acted as a community gravestone mourning the death and commemorating the life of Gary King Jr., while calling attention to the violence of policing in Oakland.

On the heels of the murder of Oscar Grant by BART police earlier this year, we respond to the desecration of the memory of Gary King Jr. by marking the site of his murder with a new mural. This mural also includes images of Anita Gay, Andrew Moppin, Casper Banjo, and Oscar Grant—all murdered by police. We include the Spanish word ¡PRESENTE!—meaning that these community members are with us in memory and that we will not forget their lives or how they died.

This mural represents only a fraction of the people gunned down by police here in the Bay Area. This act of commemorating Gary King Jr., Anita Gay, Andrew Moppin, Casper Banjo, and Oscar Grant should be viewed as a small part of a necessary and growing movement to rid our cities of the violence of policing while building up our capacity for community self-determination.