New Year's Eve Noise Demonstration Against Incarceration, Oakland, 12/31/12: photos

For the second New Year's Eve in a row, nearly two hundred people chose to forgo traditional evening indoor parties and instead demonstrated in the streets of Oakland against the racist prison industrial complex. Gathering in Oscar Grant plaza before marching to Alameda's North County jail, formerly known as the Glenn Dyer Detention Facility, music boomed and speakers included anti-prison advocates from Oakland's latino, black, muslim, and queer communities, Occupy Oakland's Anti-Repression Committee, the Black Riders, and anarchists of color. After a noisy march with a sound system down Broadway, a symbolic attack was made against the jail by a barrage of fireworks shot high into the air towards the jailhouse walls. Inmates responded to the show of light and sound by intermittently blocking the light in the narrow windows of their cells, signaling their recognition of the solidarity action below. Participants marched back to the plaza in time for the midnight count down to 2013 right in the middle of the intersection of 14th & Broadway.