Why is Oakland, CA in such turmoil about the Ferguson case?

[pnwmom]

Probably because Oakland hasn't recovered from the subway station murder of Oscar Grant five years ago -- and the decision of the civil jury to rule in favor of the police officer who shot and killed the handcuffed, kneeling man. This followed his acquittal of murder and serving a year in jail for involuntary manslaughter.

He said he meant to use his taser.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/01/oscar-grant-lawsuit-bart-officer_n_5548719.html

A San Francisco civil jury today ruled in favor of a white, former transit officer who fatally shot an unarmed, black man in an infamous killing captured on cellphone cameras.

The federal jury awarded no damages to the father of Oscar Grant III, killed by a single shot to the back from BART Officer Johannes Mehserle early on Jan. 1, 2009 in Oakland.

SNIP

Passengers with cellphone cameras recorded the shooting, turning the incident into a national story. Grant's killing inspired an acclaimed indie movie "Fruitvale Station," named for the platform where the shooting occurred.

http://www.insidebayarea.com/news/ci_26063846/civil-jury-gets-case-against-johannes-mehserle-second?source=rss&utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

Grant III's mother, daughter, girlfriend and friends who were detained alongside him by BART police that New Year's Day morning have all settled their lawsuits against BART and the officers involved. The two current complaints over the shooting that sparked national outrage and inspired a Hollywood movie are the first to reach a civil jury.

Mehserle, 32, served about a year in jail after a Los Angeles jury in 2010 acquitted him of murder and convicted him of involuntary manslaughter for shooting an unarmed Grant III in the back while Mehserle and the lead officer, Anthony Pirone, tried to handcuff him.

[still_one]

1. Not because of that specific case, but the fact that the demographics of Oakland give them a

perspective on civil rights and police brutality that other areas of the country do not appreciate

Unfortunately, like most things if it doesn't affect one or one's community directly, some folks won't empathize

[hollysmom]

2. This is thanksgiving, I should be thankful for all I have, but

so many are expected to accept injustice, where is the America I was taught about, did it ever exist? Are humans just stupid or just so selfish they don't realize all they take from others.

[Comrade Grumpy]

3. There's a long tradition of radical activism in Oakland.

[daredtowork]

10. But now there is more BS lamestream media in the area

...trawling for quotes to claim that the protest is all coming from outsiders, and they are trampling the nice gardens of the new thriving middle class.

[socialist_n_TN]

20. Yep. LOTS of "Classic" Reds (Marxists) in Oakland too......

And red and black anarchists.

[HereSince1628]

4. The justice that's missing is missing all across America

The struggle for it is as much for the future as it is for those who haven't received justice in the past

[Wella]

5. Oakland is one of those cities that is always in turmoil

I'm more impressed that some San Diegans got off their butts yesterday and blocked the freeway. That was unusual.

[SunSeeker]

13. No doubt. San Diego is Darrell Issa's back yard. nt

[Wella]

21. Yes, it is.

And if you want him, you can have him.

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

6. I lived in Oakland during the late 60's

The black community there was very activist. I went a year to Merritt College which was then in the middle of the black community in Oakland. It's where Huey Newton and Bobby Seale founded the Black Panther Party. There constantly were demonstrations and civil rights activities. I remember participating in enormous marches in support of Native American rights and also a very long march that went through downtown Oakland in protest over the murder and awful torture of 16 year old Charles Oatman in 1970 while in police custody in a Georgia jail.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huey_P._Newton

"...As a student at Merritt College in Oakland, Newton became involved in politics in the Bay Area. He joined the Afro-American Association, became a prominent member of Phi Beta Sigma fraternity, Beta Tau chapter; and played a role in getting the first African-American history course adopted as part of the college's curriculum. He read the works of Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, Frantz Fanon, Malcolm X, Mao Zedong, and Che Guevara. During his time at Merritt College, Newton and Bobby Seale organized the Black Panther Party for Self Defense in October 1966.[4] Based on a casual conversation, Seale became Chairman and Newton became Minister of Defense.[9]

The Black Panther Party was an African-American left-wing organization working for the right of self-defense for African Americans in the United States. The Party achieved national and international renown through their deep involvement in the Black Power movement and in politics of the 1960s and 1970s.[10] The Party's political goals, including better housing, jobs, and education for African Americans, were documented in their Ten-Point Program. The group believed that violence - or the threat of it - might be needed to bring about social change. They sometimes made news with a show of force, as they did when they entered the California Legislature fully armed in order to protest a gun bill.[11]

Newton adopted what he termed "revolutionary humanism".[12] Although he had earlier visited Nation of Islam mosques, he wrote that "I have had enough of religion and could not bring myself to adopt another one. I needed a more concrete understanding of social conditions. References to God or Allah did not satisfy my stubborn thirst for answers."[13] Later, however, he stated that "As far as I am concerned, when all of the questions are not answered, when the extraordinary is not explained, when the unknown is not known, then there is room for God because the unexplained and the unknown is God."[14] But Newton later decided to join the Church after the party disbanded during his marriage to Fredrika.[15] ..."


And Oakland sits right next to Berkeley and that latter town is synonymous with left wing political activism.

[dixiegrrrrl]

7. I fear Berkeley's left wing activism may be gone.

I did not hear much from there when he was hired to reach law after Bush left office.

The man who justified torture, now teaching law at Berkeley.!

[daredtowork]

11. Even when I was a grad student there in the 90s

...the Berkeley undergrad population seemed to have shifted entirely to business students, permanently attached to their cellphones.

On the bright side, some Berkeley engineering students did fly some tents over the university's Sproul Plaza during the Occupy marches. That spark of creativity gave me a lot of hope. Maybe something like that will flare up again, especially since there is a big issue around rising tuition in the UC system.

I still don't understand that. I thought that tuition wasn't even allowed in the University of California Master Plan. When I was there, tuition was being covertly charged by highly inflated "fees". Apparently someone finally just ripped up the Master Plan, though.

[XemaSab]

19. Oakland is for people who are too poor to live in Berkeley

n/t

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

22. When I was there in 69 and 70

there were some pretty ritzy sections of Oakland up in the hills similar to Berkeley. My dad rented a house near Telegraph Avenue (that heads into Berkeley) that seemed to be at the time the dividing line between the richer Oakland and the poorer sections.

[Fumesucker]

8. Grant wasn't kneeling, he was laying face down on the ground and Mehserle was kneeling on his back

[daredtowork]

9. Also the Social Services Atrocity

There is the underground problem that nobody sees.

A large prison population is released around Oakland - there is high unemployment and poverty in the area.

Yet General Assistance welfare will only grant "cash" assistance (which actually means assistance with housing) for THREE MONTHS OUT OF THE YEAR for single adults without children if your are not disabled. Forget for a minute the tremendous pressure this puts on single women to have a baby just for survival purposes: look at what kind of "aid" you get for those piddling 3 months. You get a LOAN (that's right, it's not "free money" for "welfare queens&quot of $336/month max in a gentrifying area where an AFFORDABLE apartment, if you can find it, is running in the area of around 2k/month!!! Even within that 3 months that aid can be disrupted or subtracted-from by all kinds of errors and bureaucratic rules. If you want to see what happens to people on welfare if they try to help themselves by working - click my sig (I also lost medi-cal - that hadn't happened yet at the time of that post).

In short, there are a lot of poor people in Oakland, and "the system" that is supposed to help them just IMPOSES CHAOS ON THEM!!!!

I went to a Board of Supervisors Meeting that was supposed to be about new programs under consideration. Social Services trotted out a report with a lot of vague "feel good" ideas about people needing to get basic needs met (how? there's no subsidy to even meet basic needs like toilet paper!) but the only "programs" could only handle small numbers of people, hand-picked for success - i.e., they barely needed to be on welfare anyway.

What is worse is that the shifts that Oakland's poor have to make just to survive since Social Services has failed them in such an epic way may end up getting them into legal troubles. Or protesting the horror of their situation (which I consider to be abuse of the State, if not outright torture) could get them into legal trouble...and then they become a part of CALIFORNIA'S CAPTIVE SLAVE LABOR POOL. http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025832854

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2014/11/17/3592964/how-californias-program-to-have-inmates-fight-wildfires-could-be-keeping-people-behind-bars/

I'm not surprised some people are lying in traffic, setting stuff on fire, looting stores, and rioting. I'm surprised there is not a lot more people joining them. There is a cap on this situation that has been created by medicating people into complacency, keeping people in fear of not being able to get a job and support themselves, and generally policing and punishing justified anger.

If Oakland wants to gentrify so badly they better start bringing people along from the bottom up instead of continuing to deny what they've been subjecting the poorest members of their community to.

[wryter2000]

12. I live in Oakland

While what you're saying is true, we always have a big problem with anarchists infiltrating all legitimate protests in order to make trouble. They messed up Occupy. Virtually all the people who blocked the freeway on the night of the press conference were white and under 30. They're not there with the best of motives.

[daredtowork]

14. I was at the Occupy marches in Oakland

I did witness a FEW people who I thought were trying to provoke peaceful cops into doing something that they could get on camera (running at them, calling them names, etc.). So I will assume your good motives in posting your remark.

However, I did not see Occupy "dominated" by or "ruined" by such people. If anything, Occupy was undermined by hauling the march down to the Port of Oakland, and in general expanding in the area of it - which made it impossible to include the people who most desperately needed to be a part of it: elderly people, disabled people, etc.

I haven't been able to go to the Ferguson protests, but the way you are representing Occupy makes me question your account of a "made for media" freeway blockage.

Instead, I've been questioning the canned quotes from "average middle class citizens" in the gentry-friendly media that are representing the protesters as "out-of-towners".

By the way, when Berkeley business interests attempted to pass the sit-lie law, they also attempted to represent all the homeless people as "out of towners" just pretending to be homeless for the weekend so they could come to Berkeley and beg for drug money. I'm sure that's true in SOME cases. But painting EVERYONE like that does the TRUE COMMUNITY a terrible disservice.

[wryter2000]

16. My wording was sloppy

I didn't mean to suggest that all the problems at Occupy were caused by anarchists. I certainly didn't mean to suggest that all of Occupy were anarchists. And as far as I know, the anarchists weren't from out of town. Oakland has all types.

However, it was documented that there were people wearing masks who deliberately were causing trouble during Occupy. The same thing happened in the SF anti-Iraq war demonstrations. In Oakland, while Occupy was behaving very peacefully, there were people in black masks throwing bricks at the Whole Foods over a mile away from city hall.

We always have trouble with these people during demonstrations, and they're doing it again.

[Cha]

15. "Virtually all the people who blocked the freeway on the night of the press conference were white

and under 30."

Thanks, wryter.. that's good to know.

[wryter2000]

17. I heard that from an eyewitness who was on the freeway that night.

[Jamaal510]

18. I'm out here,

and what I'm wondering is:

A. How were they even able to block the freeway and
B. Why are people coming here from out of town just to riot and tear up our city? So far, I have heard of "protestors" from places such as Berkeley and San Jose, and even as far away as Fresno coming up here just to start trouble.