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.
Filed Under community, news, race & racism | 4 Comments
McCain, Obama, & White Privilege
Posted on August 1, 2008
Saw something interesting on the AP wire today, apparently Obama has decided to be more overt in opposing identity-based smear tactics against him and has explicitly called out the RNC for fear mongering. Here’s his exact words:
“What they’re going to try to do is make you scared of me… You know, he’s not patriotic enough, he’s got a funny name, you know, he doesn’t look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills” [from the Associated Press]
McCain, of course, reacted with indignation and accused Obama of playing the Race card by accusing McCain of playing it.
Filed Under politrix, race & racism | 1 Comment
Does Race Exist?
Posted on July 1, 2008
My last post prompted a few responses. 2 of those were from ‘national anarchists’ and i marked them as spam because i’ve already made it clear i’m not interested in giving them a voice on my blog. they’ve got their own blogs where they can run on as much as they want. Fact is, while many of the NA’s claim to be anti-racist, the fact that they’re willing to work with white nationalists tells me everything i need to know about just how flimsy their commitment to anti-racism really is. (not nationalists who happen to be white, like say scottish nationalists, but white racists who want to create explicitly and exclusively white “nations” in america, australia, south africa, etc. That’s not an endorsement of scottish nationalists either, I’ve got a completely different set of issues with the SNP, but I’ll save that for another post.) So …. yeah. I’m not down with NA’s and i’m not going to approve their comments or dignify them with further response.
The third response, and the one that prompted this post, was from a right-libertarian who asserts that I am wrong and race does actually exist. He provided a link to an article by Ernst Mayr, a biologist, to support his statement. This is my response to his claim:
Filed Under culture war, race & racism, science and history | 2 Comments
