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No Justice No BART Takes Fare Gates at Fruitvale Station, Oakland, 3/5/09: photos
No Justice No BART held their first in a series of actions at the Fruitvale BART station in Oakland on Thursday, March 5th at 4pm. NJNB intends to continue disruptive protests at various BART stations around the Bay until their list of demands is addressed by BART and other authorities. The Fruitvale station was chosen as the first target as it's where Oscar Grant III was murdered on January 1st. While this action was not a complete shut down of the station because police funneled passengers in and out of the station through a back door, demonstrators did block the fare gates at Fruitvale for two full hours, meaning that BART collected no money at the station during the rush hour commute.
Looking back on the first action, Krystof Cantor of No Justice No BART said the demonstration was a success despite the corporate media's focus on protesters not having fully closed the station. He notes that some had objected beforehand to the idea of interfering with the commutes of workers, and in that sense the demo was a win-win in that passengers came and went yet BART collected no fares during the protest and spent extra money on the phalanx of security and riot police they chose to have present. The only loser was BART itself -- appropriate, Cantor noted, as BART and their continuing inadequate response to the murder of Oscar Grant is the target of the No Justice No BART campaign.
The next NJNB action is scheduled for 4pm Thursday, March 19th at the Rockridge BART station in Oakland.
Video from the action can be found at http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2009/03/07/18575555.php.
The next NJNB action is scheduled for 4pm Thursday, March 19th at the Rockridge BART station in Oakland.
Video from the action can be found at http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2009/03/07/18575555.php.
For more information:
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2009/03/0...
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I think that the Thursday rally was a success. TV news stations had live coverage and it was a top story. This is rather unprecedented that they have had this level of prolonged interest, among many cases of injustice that we could list in the Bay Area.
Sometimes, I have an impulse to suggest finding a way to take the unusual success in organization and channel it into economic issues, because California/Las Vegas are leading the country in inequality. But, police brutality and racism are distinct issues that we might not want to dilute.
At the same time, the headline of the 11 oclock news and several weekly papers was that this was an unsuccessful rally due to not rioting or shutting down BART - which resulted first from the baseline set by the earlier demonstrations and the rally announcement.
Some reporters on TV or Eastbay Express are very smart, but seem to be pressed for time or underpaid, while others are very untalented - to grab a local example: http://www.lesliedinaberg.com/Columns.php?choice=Nailed They produce stories calling the 12th ANSWER march of the Iraq occupation a failure because there were 'only' 5000 people, which was lower than the peak of 150,000. These recent tax tea parties with a couple dozen people is represented as a major opposition group.
The reality is that we have to deal with this landscape. So perhaps NJNB has had mixed results so far in media strategy. CA joblessness and foreclosure seems so underreported. A good example of this is a set of articles about the Sacramento tent city, after a British paper and Oprah popularized it. In reality, there are large homeless camps and unreported squatting *all* over, with thousands of people affected in many cities, and it's not getting into the LA Times, Chronicle and so forth. Starting new online newspapers and staging militant demos might what is necessary to communicate
Sometimes, I have an impulse to suggest finding a way to take the unusual success in organization and channel it into economic issues, because California/Las Vegas are leading the country in inequality. But, police brutality and racism are distinct issues that we might not want to dilute.
At the same time, the headline of the 11 oclock news and several weekly papers was that this was an unsuccessful rally due to not rioting or shutting down BART - which resulted first from the baseline set by the earlier demonstrations and the rally announcement.
Some reporters on TV or Eastbay Express are very smart, but seem to be pressed for time or underpaid, while others are very untalented - to grab a local example: http://www.lesliedinaberg.com/Columns.php?choice=Nailed They produce stories calling the 12th ANSWER march of the Iraq occupation a failure because there were 'only' 5000 people, which was lower than the peak of 150,000. These recent tax tea parties with a couple dozen people is represented as a major opposition group.
The reality is that we have to deal with this landscape. So perhaps NJNB has had mixed results so far in media strategy. CA joblessness and foreclosure seems so underreported. A good example of this is a set of articles about the Sacramento tent city, after a British paper and Oprah popularized it. In reality, there are large homeless camps and unreported squatting *all* over, with thousands of people affected in many cities, and it's not getting into the LA Times, Chronicle and so forth. Starting new online newspapers and staging militant demos might what is necessary to communicate
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