The verdict in the Mehserle trial will be announced in mere minutes.
I expect that agitators from ANSWER are already chomping at the bit in Oakland; they were extremely evident during the riots last year.
Poeple like Richard Becker and Forrest Schmidt live for moments like this.
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Before you go out in the streets for any reason after the verdict, write the National Lawyers Guild's Bay Area hotline number on your arm: (415) 285-1011. The NLG will be documenting police abuses in the streets and providing legal support throughout.
Here's some coverage from the right-wing Examiner
http://www.examiner.com/x-32279-SF-Crime-Examiner~y2010m7d9-Violence-erupts-after-peaceful-protest-against-Mehserle-trial-verdict
Apparently the protests wrapped peacefully, but some troublemakers caused a little damage later in the evening. Of course, from the pictures, the local cops, by their dress and demeanor, seemed to be going out of the way to alienate the local residents. And tell me, why can't the City of Oakland go out and hire some black riot cops? We don't have this problem (at least not as badly) where I live. There's nothing worse than white suburbaoid cops trying to ride herd over the black inner city.
Tayere CA, if you had watched the live coverage (which lasted from four PM to past eleven), you would have seen an entirely different picture.
Huge numbers of black officers, extreme forebearance on the part of the authorities, versus white middle-class suburbanite youth and twenty-somethings.
A very large number of the rioters and arrestees were, in fact, from outside the community. International ANSWER and the Revolutionary Communist Party both sent in their people - as activists, recruiters, and observers. In part to harness the energy of the masses and make a political statement for further use, in part to keep each other from being able to exploit the situation. And both, of course, seek to 'politicize the masses'. If they can win over members of the Black Block (anarchists), so much the better.
The National Lawyers Guild was also represented - as they are at many rallies and riots in the Bay Area. Again, their own political reasons, as well as their firm link to International ANSWER, the RevComs, and other "activist" groups in the SF Bay Area. For many of the outsiders, this was about making political capital among a choice demographic that they have not yet as successfully co-opted as they desire.
Also please note that many of the vandalized businesses were black owned - both this time, and a year and a half ago.
This wasn't about Mehserle, this wasn't about Oscar Grant. This was a chance to make trouble.
For some people, of course, it was a blast, a party, and a fun thing to do in the middle of summer.
Riots and looting - the all-American teenage adventure!
Even if you're an unemployable mid-thirties quasi-revolutionary gadabout.
Given the amount of destruction, and that the crowd of legitimate protestors had been replaced after dark by opportunists (again, many youths from very white middle-class backgrounds), the number of arrestees is remarkably low.
The police in the Bay Area are often criticized, unjustly, for not doing enough at these events - at the same time as anybody and everybody will sue the city and the police department for using unnecessary violence, interfering with their constitutional rights or civil liberties, bias, and even being tools of the capitalist rulers, Masons, and Jews.
It's also a logistical issue. Each arrest can take up to three officers off the line for up to half an hour (increasing the risk of both injuries and further damage), in addition to costing thousands of dollars both in direct expenses and in legal costs.
Add to that the 'observers', who videotape everything the police do for future propagandizing and lawsuits, and record none of the offenses committed by those 'legitimate protestors', and you have a nearly impossible situation. Again, think NLG.
Eighty three arrestees means at least eighty three law suits - the National Lawyers Guild, International ANSWER, and funders like the Tides Foundation et al, will make absolutely certain of that.
It's also guaranteed that Dick Becker of International ANSWER will take precisely your tack in your comment, and add on to it, claiming that there was excessive police violence and repression by the Authorities, a deliberate attempt to repress the underclass, racial and economic injustice, and even, as he did last year, a clear Zionist connection. Only that last accusation didn't quite sink in. Too unbelievable even for a receptive audience.
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