An Anarchist Perspective on the “Violence” of the Protests against Oscar Grant’s Murder

Posted on January 13, 2009

This is not my writing, I pulled it off the A-Infos news wire.  I liked it though and wanted to share it with ya’ll so here it is.

The news of the “riots” that followed the shooting of 22-year-old Oscar Grant has sensationally occupied the headlines of Bay Area newspapers and television programs over the last week. These reports have focused almost exclusively on the vandalism of local businesses and cars and have remained chillingly silent on the topic of the police violence that occurred that evening. The troubling assumption made throughout all of the reportage is that the destruction of storefront facades and car windows somehow equates to the horrific execution of Oscar, and that it justified the police violence against demonstrators that night.

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Police Murder in Oakland

Posted on January 7, 2009

First thing you gotta understand is that Oakland has more unsolved murders then you can shake a stick at and the police don’t do shit.   Mayor Dellums, who ran on a “progressive” platform and built his election campaign on the support of all the various lefty community organizations does even less, he’s far too busy spending taxpayer money to fly to Vegas and go gambling to actually, ya know, do his fucking job.  So when BART Police shoot an unarmed man  who’s laying face down on the ground in the back in full view of a crowd of onlookers, some of whom just happen to be holding video camera’s, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that folks here decided it was time to get out in the streets and say “enough is enough”.

Video of the actual shooting from the Mercury News.

and a second video from the tv news

Oscar Grant, the victim, was 22 years old and lived in Hayward. He was in the Lakeshore BART station (in Oakland) when a fight broke out, from the news coverage it looks like he wasn’t even involved in the fight but “fit the description” (young black male) and when the cops came (the BART Police, not the OPD) they grabbed him, threw him face down on the ground to arrest him, and then – inexplicably – shot him in the back instead and killed him. It’s all there on the video. Check Indymedia and SFGate for more info.

Oscar’s family is pushing to have the cop charged with Murder but is being ignored by the Police department who, unsurprisingly, refuse to arrest one of their own without explicit instructions to do so from higher up.   The Mayor’s assistant issued a form statement and did not promise any action.    The cop who did the shooting quit the force and thus avoided having to face any internal review or disciplinary action.   As of this writing, no arrests or any legal action by the authorities has taken place.  So this fucker killed an unarmed man in front of dozens of witnesses and on video and walked away with no consequences of any kind.  If the pigs won’t prosecute him for murder under those kinds of circumstances, what are the chances for the other victims of police violence to get justice?  This is a blank check from City Hall for the police to terrorize and murder citizens with no fear of repercussions.  And, unsurprisingly, that’s exactly what’s happening.

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Colbert, Dan Savage, Olberman, and me on Prop 8

Posted on November 12, 2008

I think it’s a good thing that media types are talking about it now, I just wish they’d talked about it before the election instead of being too busy talking about Obama and McCain; and not allowed the bastards who passed it to go unchallenged spreading lies about schoolchildren being indoctrinated and other nonsense.  This ties directly into the article i posted right before the election about how the puppet show of “representative” democracy distracts people from the real issues that they can actually do something about.

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