Driving out to Richmond the afternoon of the Mesherle verdict, I could feel the tension starting to build already. I showed up at the RYSE center and Fred and some of the youth staff were already starting to set up chairs in the front lobby. There was an unusual amount of young folks hanging around the front of the building, and everyone was a buzz waiting for the 4pm trial verdict to be announced.
I was feeling anxious. Several thoughts were running through my mind- remembering Telegraph Ave up in smoke and glass during the Rodney King Riots, watching LA and cities all over the country burn, watching the media over the last few days get hyped and ansy about whether all the poor black folks from the avenues would wild out, and my thinking- sadly, actually- that the response would be more powerfully underwhelming them overly so. Seeing the faces of the young folks I work with, checking in with them as the trial went on, mostly they seemed more involved in surviving their own lives to really step back and take in what was going on around them. But the thought, or rather image, most in my mind was remembering the first time I saw the footage of Oscar being shot, in the back, on the ground, arms behind his back. Prince and I jumped. The jolt I felt through my body watching is still inside me. Execution, was my first and most prolonged thought.
As the verdict was being waited on on the TV, Fred gave a rundown for the younger RYSEers about Rodney King. Fred grew up in Inglewood and shared first hand experence of what the riots really felt like, and the longer historical context of their emergence. Che then dropped some local history about he and his father getting beat up by the police on 23rd street during Cinco de Mayo, and the subsequent community organizing efforts that changed city policy. Then the verdict came onto the screen.
God dammit. As it settled in, I felt a fire burn inside me. The sentence was too predictable, the consistency painful. I thought of little Bobby Hutton's grave stone where I would ride my bike as a kid, and of the dozens of young men I know who will spend more time locked up for MUCH less heinous crimes, whether mistakes or not. Bizarely, though he received the lightest sentence possible, Mesherle actually became the first officer in over 3 decades to be convicted at all in a homicide allegation. Oscar’s uncle was the most articulate: ‘I don’t even blame Mehserle. This is the product of a poisoned system.’ Later, a reporter asked him if he wanted to tell the people of Oakland to not react negatively to the verdict. ‘People are entitled to have their own feelings and choose their own responses to events. I know what I feel, and I feel outraged.’
I left work and headed right down to city center to see what was still going down. I know the major speeches were over, but I felt the need to be around people and feel the mood myself. After negotiating the illegal street blockades set up everywhere by the police to contain the crowds to a tiny, manageable intersection, I met up with a colleague Dzashe and observed the scene. A bizaare mix of 'hood teens, outraged Oaklanders, and masked white rebels were stirring up chaos every few minutes that had been contained into a single intersection by city hall. Stolen sneakers were being traded on the spot. There were as many photographers as there were protesters. Kind of interesting, kind of sad. Every potential window breaker or rock thrower was immediately surrounded by a horde of photographers trying to 'capture' the moment. I just put my camera in my pocket after awhile, I couldn't be a part of it. A young white girl got reprimanded by two older black men for spray painting on a city column. ‘Go take that shit to Danville, don’t do that round here!’ She looked scared and pissed and ran away into the anonymous safety of the street crowds. The spray paint, still drying, read: ‘Racism.’
As evening gave way to night, the police decided to act. They would lurch into the crowd and grab someone, then try and back everyone else away. I young 'hood walked right up to an officer who was swinging his club menacingly: 'Man, you look like an animal. You should be ashamed. Where you from? Where you from?'
I haven't really taken the time to fully digest the night. I must say the scene downtown was strange, to say the least. There was something circus-like about the environment. That could be felt in the media's preamble of fear prior to the hearing and the excited fear of whether the wild folks would come out and burn the city down. Sadly, Oscar himself began to be forgotten, it seemed to me. Or maybe just subsumed into a larger plot. I guess I just can't say quite yet... Let's see what the discussion becomes at Mesherle's sentencing.
