I am not the face of this movement and I cannot be the voice of it. I am an overeducated white woman and if they gun me down there will be smiling graduation pictures; there will be outrage and there will probably be an indictment. I am sick and furious about all of this–Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin…–but I am not afraid, not in the same way. So, I wrote what I could, from what I saw, but the voices in the videos are those you should pay attention to.

7:30pm and the march had gathered hundreds strong,

stretching through downtown Oakland, shutting down the streets. Drums and bullhorns, signs and whistles, some people yelling and some walking in silence, occasionally raising voices or fists to respond to “If we don’t get no justice” with “They don’t get no peace!”

We headed past Lake Merritt, turned south through neighborhoods. Mothers stood on porches with children on their hips, blinds flicked open, phones filmed, people opened their doors to watch us go by.

Chants cycled quickly, but one stuck and spread up and down the line, for a long time: “Indict, convict, send those killer cops to jail/the whole damn system is guilty as hell!”

We walked on, past restaurants and auto repair shops, the employees standing out front, clapping, raising fists. Past the Oakland firefighters, standing outside the station with their hands up, the murmur passing back through the crowd They’re the ones who are really here to protect us! A few people from the houses grabbed their coats and ran down front steps to join us, blending into the mass of people.

One young black man who looked late teens, early twenties (I think he may have been one who came from the houses along the way to join us) kept running around, running up to people, even asked for a bullhorn to shout: “Thank you, thank you for coming out! This means so much. This is so important. Thank you.”

And all along the way, flanked by red and blue flashing lights, police in riot gear, blocking roads and redirecting us, systematically.

And then we entered a section of the street bordered by buildings on both sides, boxed in, and saw a line in helmets, shoulder to shoulder blocking the way forward.

And we turned and saw that we had been separated, cordoned off, and that another line blocked our exit.

A woman next to me with a slight Caribbean accent: “But we didn’t do anything!” Then, the slow realization that it didn’t matter.

We were trapped. Were they trying to intimidate us as a power play, scare us out of the streets? Make us angry, antagonize us into doing something, justify the use of the zipties hanging conveniently from their belts, the unmarked white vans waiting a street over? Veterans pulled out sharpies, everyone began writing the phone number for legal aid on their arm. It’s hard to imagine how the protest could have been more peaceful (earlier, one young white guy had knocked over a grocery cart into the street, and people chided him and set it upright, reminding him Black people will be blamed for that!).

The classic protest chant of “This is what democracy looks like!” changed into “This is what a police state looks like!”

And we were angry about it.

The mother of a fourteen year old boy: “You are not the judge, the jury, and the executioner…Half of y’all don’t even live in Oakland, wasn’t born in Oakland, didn’t grew up in Oakland.”

“You was born a threat. That’s what they trying to say.”

After what seemed a long time they backed down and let us go. Maybe social media, maybe realizing they were being filmed, maybe more strategy, who knows. Hundreds down to a few dozen, but we kept going, down the streets to Fruitvale BART. Where they had closed the station, drawn down bars over the entrance, blocked us out (Google maps said “closed due to civil disturbance”).

So we paused, against the bars, and everyone bowed their heads in a long silence for Oscar Grant, ended by a resounding “Amen!” Then people spoke.

“You can no longer think you can kill our brothers and our sisters and think we are going to stand by peacefully and passively.”

“I don’t want to tell my little brother anymore they hate him because he is black…Why is there more black and brown men in prison today than were enslaved in 1850?..

It’s not just about shooting people down in the streets, black bodies, it’s also about deporting brown bodies. It’s about not valuing people of color.”

We rattled the bars one more time. Helped each other figure out bus routes home. And left with unfinished business.

Tags:  activism black lives matter eric garner Ferguson inequality Michael Brown oakland protest race urban