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Indybay Feature

Black women challenge new ordinance for evening curfew in Oakland with peaceful protest

by Black Women Matter
For IMMEDIATE Release!
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(Oakland, CA) – On May 21st, Oakland’s Black Youth Project called for a peaceful march in downtown Oakland to protest the stealing of Black women’s lives by state sponsored violence. This march was met with unprecedented repression as the Oakland police department immediately kettled the crowd of mostly Black women and children while threatening citation and arrest and pushing women, childen and disabled bodies. BLACK WOMEN WILL GATHER WITH THEIR ALLIES AT 7:00 TONIGHT AT OSCAR GRANT PLAZA FOR A RALLY AND NIGHT MARCH.

“Mostly white marches have been allowed to take place in the Oakland streets at various times a day with no problem,” said Cat Brooks of the ONYX Organizing Committee/Anti Police-Terror Project. “We had a reasonable expectation to enact our constitutional rights to peacefully assemble. But Mayor Schaaf instructed her police department to terrorize us instead. This new enforcement is nothing short of a sundown law.”

The National Lawyers Guild immediately condemned this act by OPD by saying:
“The NLGSF believes such preemptive restrictions on protest are both unconstitutional, and in violation of OPD's own Crowd Control Policy, which was adopted as part of the federal court settlement orders in NLG litigation over 2010 mass arrests of Justice for Oscar Grant protesters and 2011 police attacks on Occupy Oakland. ... The Crowd Control Policy spells out when police may lawfully stop a demonstration, and how, and gives OPD the tools they need to protect persons and property, while upholding the right to demonstrate and avoiding further liability to the Oakland taxpayers. NLGSF is prepared to take immediate action to enforce the Crowd Control Policy...There is no legitimate justification for such a limitation, and the unlawful policy change being implemented by Mayor Libby Schaaf serves little purpose but to suppress free speech.”

“We called for a peaceful demonstration and were met with violence,” said Wazi Davis of Black Youth Project. “We are going back into the streets peacefully tonight to stand against repressive forces that don’t value Black lives and instead choose to harass, incarcerate and kill it.”

Protestors will gather at 7:00 pm at Oscar Grant Plaza at 14th & Broadway and enter the streets at Sunset.

“Mayor Libby Schaaf likes to appropriate our cultural norms and language, but she doesn’t actually like us very much,” said Mollie Costello of the Alan Blueford Center for Justice. “We hope she sees tonight as a message from the people that we will not be bullied into silence.”

This march is being called by the Black Youth Project – Oakland and supported by Black Lives Matter – Bay Area, ONYX/APTP, The Alan Blueford Center for Justice and the Black Out Collective.

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