Sounding Off about Oakland Protests

should be our watchword. I think demos everywhere does help. I think those people who want to go to San Francisco and especially those San Franciscans who want to demonstrate there, should. I think Jerry Brown, the Attorney General of the state, has no right to speak until he uses his office to indict the murdering cops. I agree we need to be thinking what we want from the BART meetings, if anything, altho i think there could be a situation where different people make different demands. One demand that would help allay antipathy between each other, would be a demand to drop the charges against all those arrested.

This seriously needs to be addressed. This is the NPIC exploiting our community. They all are guilty -- RUCKUS, CR, CJNY and the many more poverty pimps.

Let's not rely on the Non-Profits that exploit us and then bad mouth us the way they did in the front page of the chronicle and say they don't care about who was arrested because the march wasn't on their agenda.



Poverty Pimps Profiting off Oscar Grants Execution?
by ????
Sunday Jan 11th, 2009 7:23 AM
Oaktown Eye wrote:Poverty pimps get plenty of the blame

Two people have come forward as the main organizers of the protest. One is Dereca Blackmon, 38-year-old $75,000/yr chief of some program called Leadership Excellence that lives off government grants.

The organizers made two big mistakes. 1) They did not focus the protest around one or two demands on the government. If was just a general call to vent emotion. 2) They did not have a crew of monitors committed to calling out the thugs who smashed the cars of innocent workers and broke the windows of innocent scuffling little business owners, like a braid shop no less.

Did you know that the poverty pimps that hosted the protest also put the $$$ intended to go towards Oscar Grants family in the wrong hands? A woman claiming to be his sister took off with the $$$. She wasn't his sister and friends of Oscar Grant told the organizers so. Corporate media is claiming most of the rioters were professional activists and even throw in the word corporate demonstrators. Watch the clips on Channel. 2.

This gives us all a bad name.

They asked for us to protest and we did. Both non-violently and otherwise. We must come together. We must not duck into the night into your gentrified downtown lofts as I have seen Hipster wanna be anarchists do.

http://arizona.indymedia.org/uploads/2008/12/pict0007.jpg

Really Lets stop arguing with each other and direct it toward where it need to go --- to hold the cops accountable!

Why hasn't this BART PIG been brought in for questioning?

What will it take?

Why has Andrew Moppins' OPD Killer gotten a whole year of paid leave?!?!?!

These are the demands we need to be making!

disconnect from the community
byq
Thursday Jan 8th, 2009 10:16 AM
It was so disrespectful to hear CJNY "organizers" of the peaceful demo talk about how they are trained and professional activists.

Do you actually think that message connects with the Youth in Oakland that you get paid to profit off organizing the execution of Oscar Grant?

You provided the platform yet you were not organized in mobilizing people.

You actually expect them to stand there and cry? To act defenseless as Oscar was when he was shot?

The Rodney King riots had LA in an uproar and he wasn't even killed. You expect everyone to stand back and gather peacefully around this? You can't even blame them.

Blame the anarchists for using this to their advantage and smashing businesses of color.

Title: Meeting Organize MLK Day March for Justice for Oscar Grant
START DATE: Sunday January 11
TIME: 4:00 PM - 6:00 PM
Location Details:
Uhuru House, 7911 MacArthur Blvd, Oakland
Event Type: Other
The International People's Democratic Uhuru Movement calls on the people to come out to help organize the march on Monday, January 19th on the Martin Luther King Holiday for JUSTICE and REPARATIONS for the family of Oscar Grant III.

Unite with the following demands:

1. Jail and Prosecute Killer BART Cop Johannes Mehserle and Charge All BART Cops Involved With Accessory to the Crime of Murder
2. Reparations to the Family of Oscar Grant
3. Economic Development for the African and Oppressed Communities in Oakland
4. Immediate End to the Public Policy of Police Containment of the African and Oppressed Communities in Oakland
5. Immediate Release of All Arrested Demonstrators



http://www.uhurusolidarityoakland.blogspot...

that anarchists as compared to the crowd as a whole, specifically targetted "Black-owned businesses"? And how do you believe that anarchists benefitted from these attacks? And where do most people get the idea that all anarchists are white?

My other comment is very simple: Monitors--Feh!!. We don't need anybody directing us where to go and what to do.

EMERGENCY MTG:
Revolution Books
2425 Channing Way, Berkeley
7pm

Justice for Oscar Grant!
No More Police Murder!

from the Bay Area Revolution Club

In the first hours of 2009, Oscar Grant, a 22 year old Black man, was shot in the back by a BART cop at close range, as he lay face down on a train station platform. Oscar died that morning.

Yet another Black man, murdered by police: but this time the killing was committed in front of dozens of witnesses. And when BART riders came forward with their videos caught on cell phones, soon thousands of people had seen the killing. And it sparked tremendous anger.

After one whole week this cop has not even given a statement nor been interviewed. And BART and BART Police spokespeople appeared in the media day after day saying that people "should not jump to conclusions," and that this was a "double tragedy" because the cop "was devastated."

Many, many people are outraged by this cold-blooded murder - everyone should be! And we must build a massive outpouring, from every corner of society, demanding: Justice for Oscar Grant-Now!

Last night protestors made up of mainly youth of all colors spilled out into the street chanting, "We are Oscar Grant." And, "When the people of Oakland are under attack, what do we do? Stand up fight back!" "When the people of the world are under attack, what do we do? Stand Up Fight Back." This resistance is righteous - and we need a lot more. No one should rest until there's justice for Oscar Grant.

Oscar's story is way, way too familiar. Uncounted thousands of our youth - especially Black youth - have been stolen from us by murdering police. Hundreds and hundreds of thousands have been criminalized by this society. We're facing a nationwide epidemic of police brutality and repression. And let's be real, this system offers few jobs and no real future at all for most of our youth.

Why can't this system stop police brutality and murder? Why does it justify and protect murdering pigs every time? Why can't it offer our youth something better? Because like we say in Revolution newspaper's The Oppression of Black People, The Crimes of this System and the Revolution We Need, "The oppression of Black people has been at the very heart of the fabric and functioning of this country, since its beginning and up to the present time," and that only revolution "could deal with and overcome that oppression, bringing in an entirely different, and far better, system as part of getting to a whole new, emancipated world." So join with us to live andfight for that future.

The Whole Damn System is Guilty!
Humanity Needs Revolution More Than Ever!

Stay tuned to Revolution Newspaper Online for updates (revcom.us)

There is a saying NO Justice, No Peace - is that true or not? If Mehserle had been detained, arrested and interrogated immediately after the shooting, I think people would feel differently and maybe not as angry. It is this repetetive experience of cops walking away from their violence with no accountability. What about the killing of Gary King, Jr - what about when he was shot in the back - is anyone still angry? Is Patrick Gonzales still on the force and on the street - yes.

In the SF Chronicle yesterday, there were letters to the editor saying that the videos did not show the whole context of the scene and blamed Oscar Grant for putting himself in the situation. This is the kind of mindset that is out there - that permits a police state to exist and grow.

A lot of people talk like everyone protesting and rioting is part of some group or movement. What if they were individuals acting on their own - doing what they thought irregardless of some group's agenda? That is kind of scary - that one person can think for him or herself and act as they see fit. They are arrested and tried as individuals not as members of some group. All I know is that the cop was the violent one - he put a bullet in Oscar Grant's back with out cause - that is true violence. But the system is now very conveniently making the protestors into the violent ones. After all, unlike Mehserle, they were immediately detained, arrested, thrown in jail and charged. The D.A. acted fast on them. Doesn't that say something?

not to mention,that any dispute where a african mixed or latino is involved,those people are presumed to be the cause of factors that cant be controlled,so random events that cause a dispute ,the white supremacist system is an automatic killing machine.why is it okay to kill iraqui but when a black or other is killed it is okay?black solidiers are kiolling ioraqi but olice here kill blacks,not going to work.the cworld wont let this go on.