No Oakland march would be, well, an Oakland march without FTP (File Transfer Protocol, for you non-nerds) banners and slogans. If it happens to also be in support of a dead young man killed by a racist vigilante, well, all the better.
Six hundred people left Oscar Grant Plaza at 5:00 PM this evening after a rally in the plaza that began at 4:00 PM. Taking over the streets they marched into West Oakland (home of the 60's Black Panther party), gathering people as the march progressed. It is not implausible that over a thousand people returned to Oscar Grant Plaza as the march ended. Yet the day's activity had not.
Hundreds then decided to block downtown Oakland's main intersection at 14th & Broadway (right off Oscar Grant Plaza), lying down in the street in symbolic affinity to the sprawled corpse of Trayvon. The blockade has continued for some three hours.
Here is the Trayvon's legacy as told in Oakland today in tweets and pictures.
Nothing in Oakland starts on time, and therefore no one shows up on time, but by 4:00 PM, the nominal start of the rally, there were already over 200 people in the Plaza by my count, portending a soon-to-be wall-to-wall people gathering.
Six hundred people marched out of the plaza, with some staying behind, so the rally itself had more than six hundred attendees.
Just starting out down Broadway.
And then heading towards West Oakland.
A new and invigorating chant.
Old Jim Crow, New Jim Crow, Whole Damn System's Got to Go"
Some observations by marchers and onlookers.
I think he's exaggerating some, but the march definitely got significantly bigger over time.
For some inexplicable reason five or six OPD marched right along, practically within, the march. I was off to the side once counting marchers and holding a WANTED poster for one of OPD's finest (Miguel Masso, who shot and killed Alan Blueford) and they trod right past me, within a foot or two, right in the middle of the protesters.
Well, all they got for their trouble was listening to such as this for miles:
Protect & serve that's a lie they don't care when black kids die.
"no justice no peace, no racist police"
The march went all the way to the West Oakland Bart Station, then up to Little Bobby Hutton Park, then straight back to Oscar Grant Plaza.
Back at the Plaza, and deciding to take the intersection.
More speakers!
And let's do it again tomorrow!!!
Now for some things completely different.