In our haste to come to grips with the killing of Oscar Grant we get all hyped and emotionally cranked up and in the mist of all that jumping up and down common sense and critical thinking goes out of the window. It would seem to me that those who are leading the charge to protest and keep this tragic event in the forefront of peoples thinking would COMBINE their efforts so that they are NOT bumping heads with each other (remember the saying there is strength in NUMBERS!!!!). If all these various individuals/groups would collaborate/co-ordinate their meetings/protest events the effect would have a greater impact. The only outcome they will get doing what their doing now is splintering that impact, which oh by the way is just what BART, Oakland DA the Mayors Office and everyone else on the other side of this issue want. It is not beyond the realm of possibility that some of these individuals/groups are interlopers sent
by the powers that be to Divide Conquer and/or Splinter the whole protest effort in order to render it DOA. At the very least they are being used to collect information on the folks that are really about protesting (remember COINTELPRO!!!). I just think that if we stop and think and examine history we will find that we have been down this road before and there are some lessons to be learned before we go down the same road again. Because if we do not learn those lessons (remember the saying if you do not learn from history you are doomed to repeat it!!!).

Peace

S Murph

I was not aware of dissing white people in the article….and did not see any pictures of you Annie laying face down to emulate Oscar Grant…

Please do not take my observations personally. I know how hard you work, that none of us are paid to fo it, some of us (moi 2t) on the verge of homelessness, etc.
And I have tremendous respect for your clarity and intelligence. So lighten up, white gurl LOL !
You are a valued and precious ally of ours

in Unity & Respect
mesha
ISARC

No one gets paid for posting anything to Facebook, the You Tube, or Google Video, unless they work for an organization paying them to do so.

This week Vin Park and I busted ass, as volunteers, to create pages for both J.R. and the San Francisco Bay View, but this is making me wonder whether I shouldn’t delete them in a fit of white guilt. I was about to try and find out whether there’s a link I could post to J.R.’s page, for donating to his defense fund, but this makes me think that I should just shut up and not offend.

I’m sure there are a lot of uncoordinated 501(c)3s attempting to rake in the Oscar Grant dollar for various sorts of advocacy without authority, but people posting or discussing this on Facebook, the You Tube, or other social networking sites, are taking an interest, trying to understand and help one another think about this. And trying to keep J.R. and his friends’ cases in the public eye.

If and when a Justifce for Oscar Grant UNITED coalition, or an End Racially Based Policing Coalition, emerges, I’ll do what I can to publicize it, by posting to social networking sites, possibly writing and/or talking about it, or maybe attending a meeting, though this makes me very wary of any such further involvement.

I certainly wasn’t looking for any moments of Facebook fame by throwing up a page for J.R. I was about to go struggle with the pictures on that page right now, and think about how to post a plea for anyone who can be in Oakland at 9:00 A.M. tomorrow to show up at J.R. and friends trial. But, this is actually a lotta work to do, just to get slammed, especially when there’s plenty I should be doing to bolster my own defenses in the war at home.

You rant at the anti-war movement for trying to capitalize on Oscar Grant’s murder with glossy, gratuitous PDFs on “The War from Palestine to Oakland,” but the next moment you’re ranting at the unions for their absolute silence.

There’s value in this piece, Mesha. Competition for the non-profit dollar is often fierce, unpleasant, unethical. And the really big mega-charities, outfits like Conservation International and the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, and U.S. “AIDS relief,” do more to advance imperial foreign policy than anyhting else. And, non-profit professsionalism diverts much of the originally radical energy into 501(c)3 cages.

People should understand all this, and ask themselves who they’re giving to or speaking out for, before they do so. In 2005, in dismay at the sight of the flood in New Orleans, I foolishly wrote a check to the Natural Resources Defense Council, a clean green nuclear power advocacy agency, just because they wrote to me, to captalize on New Orleans’ pain.

We should all know to look out for the atrocities of non-profit corporations, as well as those of for profit corporations.

But, nevertheless, I think you’re being too harsh with a lot of us. During the Gaza bombing, I, like many others, put up a Palestinian profile page that said “We Are All Palestinians.” Think I should go kill myself, try to get a BART cop to shoot me, or fly off to someplace Barack Obama might drop a bomb on me before suggesting solidarity with the Oscar Grant Movement, with J.R., or with Palestine?

People have been talking about, and trying to understand the Oscar Grant murder, and, now, J.R.’s case as well, in my Facebook Network, ever since this started, and nobody’s paying me, or sending any adulation my way, for it. J.R. and Mary both said thanks, to Vin Park and myself, and that was enough, but this is too much.