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

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.