by flory
So last night I came home from an evening at the theatah to find eight police motorcycles parked at the bottom of my street.
Oh -- did I mention? -- I live in downtown Oakland. The Whole Foods that got vandalized is two blocks away.
We apparantly do random riots here. Granted, it could have been a lot worse. The city had cops mobilized from all over Northern California, plus the National Guard on standby. It was the riot that kinda sorta happened.
Still, it was ugly and scary and completely random. Why Oakland? Johannes Mehserle wasn't an Oakland cop, he was a BART transit officer. Oscar Grant lived in Hayward. The trial, and the jurors delivering the verdict, were in Los Angeles. And yet, the demonstrations that turned into random violence and looting formed up in front of Oakland City Hall. Three quarters of the people arrested were from out of town.
I dunno, maybe I'm just old, but I find myself as furious at the out-of-towners finding my city a convenient place to trash as I am at a system that's weighted against a young black man and his family getting real justice.