Just after midnight on
June 13, Johannes Mehserle, the white Bay Area transit cop who
executed 22-year-old Oscar Grant III in front of a train full of
witnesses, was released from Los Angeles county jail after serving
less than one year of a two-year sentence.
Mehserle shot and killed
Oscar Grant on New Year’s Day 2009. Videos taken from multiple cell
phones show Oscar Gant was beaten by the transit police officers,
called racist names, pinned face down on the train platform and then
suddenly executed from behind by Mehserle.
In a city where more than
85 people have been shot by Oakland Police officers since 2000 (all
but six of the victims Black or Latino), footage of Oscar Grant’s
execution-style murder, which spread virally all over the world
within days, ignited what has undeniably been a powerful and dynamic
political movement in Oakland over the last two years.
Oakland and other Bay Area
residents organized mass actions and demonstrations throughout every
stage of the struggle and at every critical moment in the case—when
the Alameda County district attorney filed murder charges, when the
trial was moved to Los Angeles, and when the verdict was returned.
Not surprisingly,
California’s law enforcement apparatus stood firmly behind one of
their own. Mehserle’s $3 million bail and legal expenses were paid
for in part by the Police Officers
Research Association of California, one of the state’s main law
enforcement advocacy groups. Ron Cottingham, PORAC’s president,
wrote an opinion piece last December in which he
described Mehserle as a “political prisoner” and alleged that
former Alameda District Attorney Tom Orloff “bowed to mob pressure”
in charging the former cop with second-degree murder.
Regardless
of such pressures by the police, on June 12 in the afternoon, over 500 outraged community members gathered at Fruitvale BART
Station, where Oscar Grant was killed, to protest once again. This
time, they protested the fact that Mehserle, who murdered an unarmed
Black father in front of the entire world, would walk free after
serving only 11 months in jail.
In fact, two Oscar Grant
protesters who were arrested last July faced charges that could have
led to a longer incarceration than the one served by Mehserle, for
lighting a trash can on fire!
The protest included
impressive Bay Area youth, many of whom are quickly developing into a
new generation of political activists. Entire families participated,
pushing their babies along in strollers, joining in chants like:
“Raise your voice, Take a stand / We are all Oscar Grant!” and
“We won’t stop fighting ‘till we are free!”
Oscar Grant’s family
members addressed the crowd. Grant’s mother, Wanda Johnson, who was
with Grant’s now six-year-old daughter, Tatiana, told the protesters,
“She was robbed of her father and I was robbed of a son.”
Jack Bryson, the father of
two of Oscar Grant’s friends who were on the train platform the day
Grant was killed, also spoke. He has become one of the central
organizers and key leaders of the movement.
The names of other people
shot and killed by the Oakland police or other Bay Area police
departments were constantly invoked during the protest. Lori
Davis gave a heart-wrenching speech about the murder of her son
Raheim Brown on Jan. 22, one of three people killed by police in a
single week in Oakland. She said: “I’m here today to support all
of the family members who have gotten assassinated by police
officers. And also, to inform you of how the Oakland Unified School
Police assassinated my son.”
OUSD Police officers shot
Raheim seven times after opening fire on him and his girlfriend in a
car for having a screwdriver.
Lori Davis, fighting
through emotion, said of her son: “His daughter is about to be
born. And it is just so disturbing on how he’s not gonna be able to
raise his son or daughter. He was a very highly intelligent, loving,
beautiful young man. He had a big family that loved him. What I’m
doing today is trying to speak up for him. We need help and support
to get rid of these school police out of Oakland schools. They give 5
million dollars a year to pay police officers. But they refuse to
help the children in their education! And now they are getting ready,
according to the last board meeting, to take the counselors out of
the school, to make the children suffer even more!”
The protest highlighted
the fact that justice was not brought against the racist white cop
who served little time for the murder of a father, a son and a
friend to many. At the same time it demonstrated the power a
community has when it stands together without fear to speak out
against the racist police brutality ingrained in the city of Oakland.
As the crisis deepens and the racist state becomes more oppressive,
those targeted are the communities who they deem a threat, Black and
Latino youth. As the Oscar Grant movement has shown, we must not be
afraid and stand united to put an end to police impunity for their
murderous and corrupt crimes.
