Perhaps 5,000, perhaps 10,000 marched from Oakland City Hall to the County Court House in a buoyant demonstration as far as the eye could see. Home-made signs were coupled with pictures of Oscar Grant, killed 2 weeks ago by a local transit cop. For the family of this 22-year old Butcher apprentice there must have been some pride alongside the terrible emotional tragedy of raising a child who is then brutally murdered.
Yesterday there was also some solace for the family in the arrest on Murder charges of the police officer that killed Oscar while he was on the ground with his hands behind his back on New Years Day.
The March was peaceful, unlike the march last week for Oscar that resulted in hundreds of cars and store fronts smashed. Frankly, if I was 16, I would have been out there turning over police cars. The 105 people arrested after last week’s demonstration conveyed the anger that cops never get arrested for murder. This current arrest on Tuesday of Johannes Mehserle, the police officer that provoked the organization, Coalition Against Police Executions, that led the march, was unprecedented. Oakland has lost at least 8 people, killed by the Oakland Police Department in the last 2 years alone. Not one cop was ever indicted for murder. In fact, attorneys in the local newspapers admitted that they had never even heard of a single police officer ever arrested for murder for an on-duty death. Never.
What was different? The outrage that Oscar’s death created. The swine that is known as the Oakland City Attorney, who is used to letting the police off the hook, told shocked Oaklanders that any charges against the executioner would take at least 2 weeks to process.
Are there any lessons here?
#1 is that the powers-that-be are very sensitive right now to, what they consider, “the mob” ie us, the working class. The capitalist class’ failed running of the economy has put them on the defensive. An article in the capitalist Financial Times warned “there is an angry mob out there” (1.6.09), even when the mob hasn’t actually assembled. Well in the case of the Oscar Grant execution, the mob had assembled. And the bosses moved to try to disassemble the mob by charging a cop with murder. On the day of this huge demonstration the mood of the march was considerably different because of the Murder charge.
#2 Is that last week’s riot was not roundly condemned by working class people because the act of the cop was seen as so much worse. The media, of course, condemns anything that’s bad for business. Riots generally don’t help the cause of the working class, but they do happen and there is no simple defining line between an angry demonstration that confronts the cops and what can turn into a riot.
How much better if that angry mob marched onto city hall and took over city hall, in a relatively peaceful manner. Large numbers rarely need much violence to force their way through. The violence invariably comes from the police’s attempt to loyally defend this utterly corrupt system. If we, as a class, had marched on city hall last week and taken over the city Attorney’s office with 2-300 young people and union people and made their system unworkable, they would have conceded earlier.
However, let that not prevent us from celebrating this Victory. For the first time a cop has finally been charged with murder. Our movement did it. Their fear of us did it.
This won’t bring back Oscar, nor any of the hundreds of others, nationwide, killed by the police, but it is a good day for the working class.
photo courtesy of Z with Eastbay Indymedia
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