Call for Anarchists to March Today for Oscar Grant: the Future is Being Written

Justice for Oscar Grant: The Future is Being Written
Bay Area CrimethInc Workers Collective and Anarchists for Justice for Oscar Grant

Today, people in the Bay Area will continue building the uprising sparked by yet another police killing of a young Black man, Oscar Grant, murdered just hours into 2009. All week, people have come together to flood the streets with anger, grief and defiance.

The march today for justice for Oscar Grant, to end police brutality, and to work for genuine community safety through social justice on our streets, is going to bring together a broad cross-section of working class people in Oakland. It will be majority African American, inter-generational with elders and young children; it will include union rank and file, students from Oakland's public schools, people from neighborhoods most targeted by the police, and many others. It will also be a major risk for many people to participate in the march, as the police are making it clear that "they'll be ready to go off with any excuse." Even with police using intimidation tactics and the media drumming up fear on about "violent protesters" and "violent anarchists", people from Oakland will march in a demonstration of grassroots power for justice and an end to police terror.

There are thousands of anarchists around the Bay Area, involved in hundreds of important community organizations, projects, cultural work, and collectives working to build economic, racial, environmental, gender, and social justice in our communities, and around the country. Anarchists are all ages, all races, of many genders, and have a long history of dynamic, creative, and strategic action. A small number of anarchists, as well as other non-anarchists activists, sometimes utilize the black bloc as a tactic to raise the social and economic costs of injustice and oppression through corporate property destruction/re-design.

Today in Oakland, there is a need for people of many different political traditions to bring their creativity, energy, and vision to the march and work together to build working class community power through this march. We can all stay together, not be divided by state and media tactics of "good protester/bad protester," and support one another and the overall goals of the march. There may be anarchists of many kinds - parents, elders, union members, non-violent direct action activists, black blocers, health care workers, grandparents, community organizers, and children - contributing to a dignified, united, and powerful march. There are other times and places for graffiti, for raising the social costs through civil disobedience, property re-design, and facing off with the police. Let's respect the self-determination of those who have called for this march, many of whom are already taking risks in taking to the streets, and who have set out guidelines for what kind of space they want to create at this demonstration. Let's coming together to make this a powerful show of unity.

The police want a fight tonight to demonstrate their power. Today, the march can demonstrate a different kind of power - what it looks like when communities come together to assert their vision of an end to police violence backed by a system of white supremacy, patriarchy, capitalism, heterosexism and the state. Together, we can do it. But we need to work together and be united. Let us bring forward the new world that exists in our hearts.