Which Side Are You On? That's the question being asked of the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) Board of Directors. You see, back on Black Friday, #BlackLivesMatter protesters in Oakland shut down the West Oakland BART station by chaining themselves to a BART train.
BART and its lackey District Attorney decided to get nasty. They are pursuing serious charges against the protesters and demanding $70,000 in "restitution" for lost fares during the one to two hour shutdown. Then they doubled down on stupid.
In response to a petition and the outrage created by these charges and demands for restitution, BART recently put out a
Statement by BART General Manager Grace Crunican regarding recent petition drive
which comments on freedom of expression, the protests, the charges, and the petition to drop them.
It begins
"BART supports the rights of free expression. Just yesterday, New Year's Day, the District facilitated a vigil to honor the life of Oscar Grant at the Fruitvale BART Station, drawing hundreds of community participants...
That might seem unremarkable to those of you not in the Bay Area until, perhaps, I tell you that
BART POLICE KILLED OSCAR GRANT.
Yes, you read that right. the BART General Manager had the temerity to cite as an example of BART's dedication to free speech the commemoration of one of the seminal events leading up to the #BlackLivesMatter movement - and the one that BART, literally, had blood on its hands thereof.
To put it in simpler terms
(P.s. You do not get points for guessing the skin color of Grace Crunican, the BART GM)
@Blackoutcollect is the twitter account of the BlackOUT Collective, the organizers who put together the action. Here are a few choice tweets of theirs regarding the punitive actions BART is taking:
BART is being penny-punitive wise, and pound-philosophically foolish. Even a few hundred people willing to boycott BART because of this would quickly add up to more than $70,000. Perhaps the BART Board has not heard of the Montgomery Bus Boycott? (And it's not like there's a lot of Tea Party crazies in the Bay Area willing to abandon their pickups and hop on BART to pick up the slack.) If a few thousand participated in an organized boycott BART's losses could start running into the millions. Will this happen? Is it being organized? I have no idea. But it has been alluded to a few times in miscellaneous tweets and almost seems inevitable at this point unless BART and the District Attorney recant.
You, too, get to choose "Which Side Are You On?"
As someone who believes that Black lives matter, I strongly urge Thomas Blalock and Tom Radulovich, President and Vice President, respectively, of the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) Board of Directors, to end their shameful attempts to extort, intimidate, and demonize the Black protesters fighting for our right to live without police violence...
Withdraw the BART criminal complaint pending against the 14 Black leaders ...
Immediately suspend the punitive, retaliatory, and unconstitutional restitution of approximately $70,000 it is seeking...
You can
sign the petition and make your voice heard.
CLICK HERE NOW.
If you live in the Bay Area, you probably have an elected BART Board representative (believe it or not!). Here's a map of the districts, and once you figure out what district you are in, here's contact information for your elected BART director. Here's a message for them: