To the Streets

The killing of Oscar Grant inspired a Bay Area movement now coming to terms with its own complexity.

By Sam Stoker

OAKLAND--For many people in Oakland, 2009 began with the unsettling sound of a gunshot, as Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) Police Officer Johannes Mehserle fired his Sig-Sauer pistol into the back of Oscar Grant III, killing the twenty-two-year-old unarmed black man as he lay prone on [RETURN TO ARTICLE]

  • Reader Comments

     Page 1 of 1 pages

    The Revolutionary Communist Party, Workers World Party and the ISO, that cuddly mix of Stalinist, Maoist and Trotskyist loons egged on the rioters in Oakland after this police killing.
      What is a democratic socialist journal I’ve read since the late 70’s doing publishing Bill Ayers who to this day is hostile to democratic socialiism/social democracy and left-liberalism?

    United States Posted by michael.098762001 on Feb 11, 2009 at 2:00 PM

    What? This is a joke, right? Maybe it all seemed very romantic and helter skelter from where the author sat in Chicago, but here in Oakland it was just as senseless and pointless as the act that inspired it. Oakland Rebellion? Funny, nobody here calls it that. No, just the ho-hum ‘Smash The Starbucks’ Berkeley ararcho-wankery we all love to laugh at. Rebel against what, exactly? The best weather and most liberal government in the country? Oaksterdam?

    Way too many young men are gunned down in these streets every year and nobody goes out to smash up the RadioShack and Jamba Juice in their names. To the contrary, it’s a big game of heros and martyrs of the Cult Of The Yay to the kids in this town. And so you can bet the Blackwateresque antics of the BART police will continue due in no small part to the “protests” against them.

    Like Jello said, “Rioting! Playing right into their hands” Way to go, morons.

    United States Posted by orlac on Feb 12, 2009 at 10:33 PM
     Page 1 of 1 pages

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