DA Nancy O'Malley’s Frivolous Prosecution of Activist Prince Bason
DA’s Frivolous Prosecution of Black Activist Comes on the Heels of Back to Back Exonerations of Black Oaklanders
Last year on May Day, a boisterous but mostly peaceful demonstration promoted by Occupy Oakland and other groups, was aggressively attacked by an OPD assault force. There really is no other way to describe the events [I wrote about that day here, and that attack in "Part 2"].
As the march, which had surged around the city center and lake, came back to Oscar Grant Plaza to plug back into the rest of the day’s events at around mid-day, the police suddenly rushed the crowd from behind, causing panic. In the ensuing confusion, the OPD targeted several individuals. As you can see from these photos, they were offensively brutal in the arrests–but in the case of Prince alone, they went the extra step of tazing him. I think that given that he was the only African American arrested that day, its definitely arguable the extra force was racially motivated.
I was in the crowd that day and absolutely no one posed a threat to any police officer. All of the protesters brought to the ground and arrested, were quite literally just standing there, except for one woman, who was rushed from behind and yanked from a bicycle.
Now, nearly a year later, Prince, has been picked up on a warrant for a charge generated by the arrest. Like so many arrested during actions of civil disobedience and protest, the district attorney has stacked charges on top of the initial ones, and failed to notify the accused of their arraignments.
For those like Prince, who already faced several charges, it didn’t occur to them that they would have to check in with the district attorney to see if even more charges would be stacked on. Despite the fact that the city and county complain about lack of legal resources and funds, they nevertheless generate extra arraignment hearings; knowing as well that these will likely result in warrants.
This behavior is typical of a DA focused on spectacle prosecutions for the viewing benefit of a law and order constituency. The DA almost never “dropped” charges against protesters, for example, throughout the last year and a half;’ rather they kept the charges open, and in some cases brought the charges months later. Again, this generated warrants, creating potentially dangerous situations for activists, given what we know about the habit of police of shooting first and asking questions later.
The DA”s behavior is even more absurd when considering the fact that the office has still not responded in any way to the recent exoneration of two Oakland residents who were arrested and convicted under the shoddiest and most racist police, judicial practices imaginable; no investigations, no studies, no reports about the fact that OPD and DA actions could produce such startling outcomes as the loss of a combined two decades of freedom for two wrongly accused Oakland citizens. Despite years of complaints and evidence that police and prosecution work are sorely racially biased when they are not incredibly lazy and incompetent, the DA continues on its course, with not a complaint from the City Council nor Mayor.
The DA also lacks the time to do all but the most cursory review of the shooting of Alan Blueford, reviewing police files and interviewing Miguel Masso, but doing no investigation of their own. Satisfied, the DA closed the book on Masso only five months after was opened.
What does the DA have time for? Politically motivated frivolous prosecutions against activists like that of the “Ice Cream 3′, who were disappeared into the county’s jails on bogus “hate crimes” charges that were eventually dropped. The DA had the time to target Chris Moreland, who committed the crime of embarrassing OPD Chief Howard Jordan with the truth about his violent police force. The DA has time for harassment of political activists who’ve been through the system like ‘Ghetto Prophet’, who spoke loud and proud at a recent Justice for Alan Blueford action, and hours later found himself being arrested on bogus charges. And the DA has time to prosecute activists like Prince–a father to be who nearly a year ago, helped create a farm out of UC-owned mismanagement and blight in Albany. It’s quite clear that one of the county’s overriding motivations is to intimidate activists like these and others. Remarkably, almost everyone of these people disappeared into the local justice system were people of color, African Americans targeted because of their activism.
The math is simple and striking here. The DA and police want Oakland’s marginalized people to develop an ingrained fear of speaking openly about the city and county’s malfeasance. And they want the natural outcome of that fear to be the ceding of political activism and the public sphere to the socially connected and affluent, so that the mayor and council can always describe uprisings as the work of “unconnected outside agitators”. So that the city’s poorest and most marginalized people will even begin to believe that getting out in the street is something that only rich, white people will do. Something that only the white, affluent people can do.
We say no.
_______________________
One last thing. Despite the fact that it shouldn’t matter by half if Prince were the most unpleasant guy I’d ever come across in my travels, I have to say it’s extremely shocking to see someone like that brutalized and maligned by the police for standing around at a constitutionally protected activity. I worked alongside Prince one morning at the Farm Occupation in Albany converting the ad hoc rickety chicken coop into an ad hoc rickety petting zoo for a bunch of kids. He was one of the warmest people I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with, and someone who’s had to overcome some pretty serious obstacles on top of it. The reality that this father-to-be may have to miss his child’s birth because he’s in jail on this bullshit is beyond tolerable.
Here’s a clip of Prince talking about his participation in the great Occupy the Farm action in Albany last year around this time. Its worth listening to, to get an idea of the kind of positive energy and enthusiasm that the DA seeks to silence.
http://hyphenatedrepublic.wordpress.com/2013/03/20/district-attorneys-frivolous-prosecution-of-activist-comes-on-the-heels-of-back-to-back-exonerations/
Police attack everyone at once in Oakland not because activists fight back, but because THEY DON'T.
Look at the police in Greece. Notice how they always keep a distance from a crowd throwing rocks, bottles and molotov cocktails and everyone in the crowd is always protected and able to come back another day. Can you see it?
The art of rioting is actually a low level act of war against the state and against capital by militant radicals, anti-capitalists and anarchists.
It is now is our que to rise up.
___ overtime-abusing _ drugged-up _lying, falsifying, fabricating dirty cop terrorists with "police powers" COMPLETELY out-of-control____
___ also watch out for "5150" FORCED PSYCHIATRIC DETENTION - DRUGGING __ IT could lead to a psychiatric-drug induced suicide death.
___ IS THIS AMERICA OR NORTH KOREA ?????? 3-30-2013 sat
In any ghetto you go, you have the same social relations. You have the same social relations in all of AMERICA where you're either really poor, middle class or super rich and depending on what status or category capitalism fits you into is how the police treat you. And that's real talk. Same with the Judges and DA's. They're all fucked up. Send them all on a rocket ship into the sun. /joke
But really. We could have built our world/better society if the police weren't so enthusiastic about putting down all our little rebellions. And our rebellions were VERY little> Oscar Grant riots/occupy.
So not only do we need to grow to be big but we need to use our size and growth in numbers to force out the police state to build our new world because anything short of a forceful overthrow won't remove the empire unless you just want to live with it, NOTHING ELSE WILL WORK! We've already tried peaceful protest. That reformist approach gets a lousy F- For FAIL!
But we need to replace the old world with a rational world where predictability and sustainability and equal opportunity are top priority. Until everybody's needs are met as a means to an end for conflict resolution we will not stop building and improving our new world.
Once we've established a non-hierarchical system of conflict resolution via the spread of equality, we can apply other models of conflict resolution to things that are minor in comparison to financial related crimes of desperation. The greedy nature of capitalists will remain and so will their violent nature to maintain or restore their archaic barbarian way of life. While free from the empire, we will never be free from their violent revenge attacks. Their bitter souls over the loss of their empire will torment them night after day into attacking our new way of life and turn us against each other.
A strong anarchist society is always vigilant and never EVER lets its guard down. Everyone is a soldier because there is no army and no police force just as there is no middle class, poor or rich. Everyone is community. The way it's supposed to be and should have always been and fuck anyone who disagrees with it and fight anyone who attacks it.
Let us not kid our selves into thinking America was ever great knowing the brutal history of slavery and the systemic serial killing of millions of the natives. The system of slavery and war didn't end with the Natives or chattel slaves. It only evolved into a corporate police state nightmare that no one can find the power to wake up from or find the courage to resist. And if anyone does find the power to resist, most sit back and watch.
Slavery continues to this day in the form of the prison and military industrial complex and the capitalist wage slavery system as a whole. Equal wages should be given to end the disparity if we are going to have money as means to trade and do business with anyone.
There are degrees of slavery in the American global capitalist system. The worst of their operation starts in the 3rd world where American corporations plant them selves to exploit peasants. The next level is in America it self where and other developed industrialized nations where people are paid minimum wage and are forced to work a second job that pays nothing or end up doing things that are illegal to pay their rent on time.
This game of cut throat economics must end either by collapse or sabotage.
This is why America has the largest prison population and with most people committing crimes of desperation being poor people color on top of racist police who profile them everyday, it's no wonder why black men reportedly make up 40.2 percent of all prison inmates. 1-3 black men end up in prison.
If you feel like rising up against an unjust system regardless of its rule, that is perfectly normal. What's not normal is feeling completely empty and not caring.
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