Thousands of marchers set out from Oakland, CA to Emeryville, CA around noon today, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, on a four mile march. When they got there they blocked one of the main intersections in the small City of Emeryville but...
Apparently it was a massive diversion...
A year ago, during the original Black Lives Matter protests in Oakland and Berkeley, police went to great lengths to keep the Bay Bridge from being “assaulted.” Today, apparently, they were lulled into a false sense of security with a “family-friendly” march of thousands that commenced at Oscar Grant Plaza in downtown Oakland and ended in Emeryville, near to where Yvette Henderson was shot and killed by Emeryville police.
Diversion? :
More tweetpics of the blockade:
Looking west towards Treasure Island and on the other side of it, San Francisco:
Looking East back toward Emeryville, Oakland and the Port of Oakland (right):
More than a year ago BlackLivesMatter protesters shut down BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit — Subway) at the West Oakland BART stop using similar tactics and with the same surprise. It took a year of subsequent protests to have charges dropped against the people who participated in that action. Who knows what will happen this time? But that’s most certainly the point…
You may well ask: "Why direct action? Why sit ins, marches and so forth? Isn't negotiation a better path?" You are quite right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored.
- MLK, Letter from Birmingham
Tuesday, Jan 19, 2016 · 3:00:35 AM +00:00
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jpmassar
MLK Day protesters block westbound traffic on Bay Bridge
OAKLAND -- In a coordinated protest similar to a BART shutdown two years ago, more than 40 protesters commemorating Martin Luther King Jr. Day parked cars on the westbound ascent of the Bay Bridge on Monday afternoon, chained the vehicles and some protesters arms to the bridge and stopped traffic for almost an hour.
California Highway Patrol officers arrested 25 protesters from the group Black.Seed who were being booked into San Francisco County Jail on Monday night on suspicion of public nuisance and unlawful assembly charges, officer Vu Williams said.