Saturday, August 16, 2014

Oakland's Fuck the Police March in Response to the Murder of Michael Brown in Ferguson Missouri

The event was called fuck the police and at 6pm on the corners of broadway and 14th in Oakland a crowd started to gather. The protesters were preparing to march against police brutality that took place a week earlier when Missouri police brutally shot and murdered an unarmed 18 year old black male named Michael Brown.  Oakland is no stranger to outrageous police corruption and extremely brutal racial discrimination by authorities. A large banner showing faces of youth who had been slain in their own community were carried through the streets. The police quickly lost all control of the mob which brought traffic to a standstill. Protesters breaking through police line after police line spilled onto the busy downtown streets. Police stood and watched as graffiti was sprayed on buildings by masked activists right in front of them. At one point the police attempted to arrest a muslim women breaking their line but were unsuccessful as the crowd swarmed and rescued her. Oakland is ahotspot for political movements and the protesters were very well organized and knowledgeable about police pacification tactics. Oakland police have responded in recent years to political unrest by militarizing their force and testing a variety of new futuristic weapons including sound canons and invisible rays that make the protester feel agitated and highly uncomfortable. The new weapons seem only to invigorate the protesters and foster a feeling of a growing brutality toward citizens by police.