Oakland Braces for Sentencing of Killer Cop

Oakland Braces
for Sentencing of Oscar Grant, Jr. Killer Cop

Again, the City of Oakland circulated a letter to downtown businesses to use their best judgment whether they should leave early on Friday in anticipation of a light sentence for theBART police officer who shot Oscar Grant in the back while under arrest on last New Year's.

Men's Warehouse is boarded up. Shall there be another Day of Absence with white workers fleeing the area early Friday afternoon? They did so when the verdict was announced. They fled by car, bus, subway, taxi, and on foot. It was a day of fear of the North American African response to injustice by Euro Americans, part of a 400 year train of injustices.

Will the murder cop get 14 years? We highly doubt it. Some say five years, 31/2 serve, 1/1/2 years probation. Of course this is a light sentence by a wicked society protecting one of their own who kill under the color of law.

What should be our response? Personally, we feel brother Lovelle Mixon got justice for Oscar Grant when Mixon smoked four Oakland police. The universe has a way of getting justice. Sometimes we pray when God has already answered!

There is no black army for justice. The Oakland Black Panthers were the last to attempt putting police under community control. At least they took the oppression off the people for a moment by having the police focus on crushing the Panthers. Panthers gave the people a time to breathe while the pigs killed Panthers and Panthers killed them. The BPP became a threat to the national security of the United States, according to the FBI's J. Edgar Hoover. His plan COINTELPRO or counter intelligence was to stop the rise of a black messiah by any means necessary, including assassination or outright murder in the case of Chicago BPP leader Fred Hampton, Jr. and Oakland's Lil Bobby Hutton, murdered by the OPD in a shootout in which Minister of Information Eldridge Cleaver was wounded.

When violence occurred a few months ago after the verdict, manslaughter instead of murder, small business owners suffered damage and could not understand why they were attacked. Many purposely displayed an Oscar Grant poster in their windows. The small business owners should be spared violence. But we know agent provocateurs shall be in the crowd. And the police are totally useless and themselves provocative. After the verdict was announced and looting at Foot Locker, radical civil rights attorney Walter Riley was beaten by police as he tried to enter his office next door to the Foot Locker. The police were apparently unconcerned about the looters.

The Nation of Islam's newspaper Muhammad Speaks used to have a cartoon of police brutality that asked in the caption Who do you call for protection? We must protect ourselves. We can provide community security. In Iraq the US stopped the insurgent violence by hiring them to secure their communities. It offered the insurgents jobs, education and housing. It is doing the same in Afghanistan with the Taliban.

So we must move beyond focusing on the police, they are the neo-slave catchers and must fulfill their duties. We can respond to them tit for tat, as Mixon demonstrated, liberty or death!

We can also stop being reactionaries and be proactive with respect to black on black violence. Is Oscar Grant selective suffering? Why is there no anger when we kill each other but only when the white man kills us-- murder is murder, death is death, and wrong is wrong. It is hypocritical for us to only respond to police abuse. What about all the suffering families who've lost loved ones to black on black homicide. Why don't we riot about that, kick some doors in about that?

Why do we not protest black on black murder. Why do we not demand blacks use their arms for community defense rather the attacking each other for mostly minor matters. Ain't no nigguhs getting killed over millions, billions or trillions. Most of the homicide is over pussy and dick, not drugs, but pussy and dick matters between all genders. Domestic violence, partner violence is such that half the community attends court mandated anger management classes.

We must get beyond physical violence, verbal and emotional abuse. We suggest a self imposed tone test with each other and the police. Based on our tone of voice, we can, when stopped by the police, get killed, arrested or released. With each other, whether on the street or in the home, we can use the language of love and unity.

We must practice eternal vigilance, stay aware of our surroundings and not try to function in a mind altered state. These are dangerous times and we must wear the armor of God consciousness. For example, we were trapped in the crowd of the millions for the Giants World Series parade. People were pushing at our back yet there was no room to move. We could have reacted to the constant pushing and shoving, but we kept our cool, refused to respond to the fools at our back. We could have turned around and bust them in the mouth. But we were cool, even though the day was hot, the crowd impossible, we're sweating and fools trying to push us forward.

There comes a time when politics becomes war. But you can't make war if you are not prepared, if you are not organized. Marcus Garvey said the world is moving against all unorganized people.
Mao Se Tung told you to get organized. Yet it is helter skelter in the hood.

We like to cry crocodile tears, attend funerals and suffer our grief alone. Whatever the sentence tomorrow, whatever the community response, this will not bring Oscar Grant back, and yet because family and community organized, a killer cop was at least charged and convicted for the first time in California history. Imagine, Oscar has had more power in death than in life, a few days ago the Longshoreman's union closed down all Bay Area ports in honor of Oscar Grant. There were proclamations by European countries in honor of Oscar Grant. Honor him by continuing to organize against all violence, whether police under the color of law, or black on black violence, or the violence caused by the trillion dollar US defense budget that causes violence around the world.
--Marvin X

Poet, playwright, essayist, Marvin X holds sessions of his Academy of da Corner at 14th and Broadway, downtown Oakland and Third and LaSalle, Hunters Point, San Francisco. He's published five books this year: The Wisdom of Plato Negro, Parables/fables, volumes I and II;
The Mythology of Pussy and Dick, toward Healthy Psychosocial Sexuality, Pull Yo Pants Up fada Black Prez and Yoself, essays on Obama Drama, and I AM OSCAR GRANT, essays on Oakland,
Black Bird Press, Berkeley. Visit his blog: www.blackbirdpressnews.blogspot.com. Email: jmarvinx@yahoo.com.