Oscar Grant Verdict and Oakland’s Bad Rep

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


I live in Oakland, Oscar Grant used to sell me meat at my local grocery store, and every time I get off of BART I pass by the spot where he was killed. I’ve been in Oakland my whole life pretty much; I saw the impact of the Rodney King riots and aftermath here, and I felt the 1989 earthquake and saw the metropolitan devastation it wrought. Basically I’ve been here long enough to know that Oakland gets the shaft pretty much all the time in the national news. Despite the post-verdict focus on looting (which this article notes was mostly by “outsiders” in “black face paint”) and the pictures of young black men busting store windows, yesterday was mostly peaceful. Peaceful like talking peaceful. Like people speaking their minds and saying they felt justice wasn’t served and expressing their anger through microphones. Peaceful like community leaders and young people (some community leaders themselves) speaking out for change and nonviolent action. Isn’t that what needs to happen? Almost irrespective of the verdict (more on that in a sec) what you want to come out of something so unjust is at least some movement in a positive direction. Will BART police train their officers better? Will transit and city police across the nation do the same? Cities probably have a keen eye on this case and its aftermath enough to shore up their TASER and firearms training.

Nothing will bring Oscar Grant back, and a guilty verdict of any kind against an officer in the line of duty is rare. Yet it was involuntary manslaughter, which seems hard to fathom given the videos and evidence (face down, unarmed, handcuffed, etc.), check out the Prospect’s Adam Serwer’s solid undressing of the verdict for more. The gun enhancement charge the jury added to their verdict shows that they didn’t buy his reaching-for-a-TASER story, as Oakland district attorney Nancy O’Malley pointed out yesterday. So he’s going to jail for at least a few years (5 minimum). Would justice be better served if he was going for a very long time? Yes, says his family (and the DA’s office). But there are other justice end-games here: better, more responsible policiing, better race relations, and a fair criminal justice system. The community calls for a federal civil rights investigation have been heard, so that’s a start. Oakland is doing its part; it’s one of the most diverse cities in the nation, low on dollars, but high on productivity. There’s more than crazy Raiders fans here, folks, we’re a proud, struggling folk, cut us some slack.

Hey, I know what might help: David Simon, once you leave New Orleans want to tell our story?

UPDATE: The SF Chronicle released a letter Johannes Mehserle wrote to the public last week, definitely worth reading. Grant’s famly is apparently unimpressed, saying it’s too little too late.

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate