The eve of the Mehserle verdict, which stretches out for days and gives us sleepless nights
Take two, attempting to think about this, after the first attempt seemed overly personalistic and like it missed the balance I was striving for:
After a number of delays, the jury in the trial of Johannes Mehserle, the BART police officer who killed Oscar Grant at the Fruitvale BART station in Oakland in January 2009, is scheduled to begin its deliberations over again today, in Los Angeles.
The case has collective resonance because of a long history of systematic disregard for and collective punishment directed at Black and Brown communities in the East Bay by various police agencies. This is the underlying question to which we must return. However, public discourse has strayed a long way from this, in that the prospect of protests, upon acquittal or a manslaughter conviction rather than a second-degree murder conviction, have been put forth as a public safety crisis in and of themselves. This post is an attempt, along with many others, to analyze this manufactured crisis and to articulate the question of action which is part of it.
Read the rest at the Solidarity Webzine....
After a number of delays, the jury in the trial of Johannes Mehserle, the BART police officer who killed Oscar Grant at the Fruitvale BART station in Oakland in January 2009, is scheduled to begin its deliberations over again today, in Los Angeles.
The case has collective resonance because of a long history of systematic disregard for and collective punishment directed at Black and Brown communities in the East Bay by various police agencies. This is the underlying question to which we must return. However, public discourse has strayed a long way from this, in that the prospect of protests, upon acquittal or a manslaughter conviction rather than a second-degree murder conviction, have been put forth as a public safety crisis in and of themselves. This post is an attempt, along with many others, to analyze this manufactured crisis and to articulate the question of action which is part of it.
Read the rest at the Solidarity Webzine....