Police sirens and helicopters all night

For more than two weeks, we have had a police helicopter hover over our apartment in the Adams Point neighborhood as it temporarily rests from its long circle of travel over downtown Oakland in its search for protesters in the streets.  The protesters have mostly stayed in the downtown area, but occasionally they have marched up Harrison within a couple of blocks from us chanting and keeping traffic at a standstill until the Oakland police push them back into the Uptown area.  Throughout the evenings, we hear the loud hum of the police helicopter and the sound of speeding cars and blaring police sirens drive by our apartment.

Oakland has always been a hot bed of political activism, but over the last several years the demonstrations have become more frequent, larger, and more volatile.  In 2006, community activists organized many immigrants and human rights alias to protest bill H.R. 4437, and large marches occurred down International Avenue from the Fruitvale District (a historically Mexican-American working-class neighborhood) to Oakland City Hall for rallies.  In 2010, large and volatile demonstrations were held in reaction to a jury's conviction and sentencing of Bart police officer Johannes Mehserle to two years in prison for shooting and killing a young Black man named Oscar Grant on a Bart platform in Oakland.  In 2011, the nationwide Occupy Movement spread to Oakland and large marches and rallies were organized to protest income and social inequality.  During that time there were many violent clashes between demonstrators and police.  In one of these clashes, an Iraqi War veteran was seriously injured.   The demonstrations were so intense that my family found sleeping at night difficult due to the non-stop circling of police helicopters over our area.  We even heard police setting off canons during these clashes.  The Occupy demonstrations were the largest we had ever witnessed in Oakland.

In 2013, demonstrations returned to downtown Oakland to protest the acquittal of George Zimmerman who killed an unarmed Black teenager named Trayvon Martin in Florida.

Now as I write this blog post, I learned that today protesters chained themselves to the doors of the Oakland Police Headquarters and hung a flag with the words "Black Lives Matter" to bring attention to police killings and excessive force in African-American communities throughout the country.  The recent protests are in reaction to recent grand jury decisions not to indict police officers in regards to their involvement in the killings of unarmed Black men in Ferguson, Missouri and Staten Island, New York.

My hope is that these more frequent and volatile demonstrations will transform into nonviolent and productive movements for social and economic changes in Oakland, the state of California, our country, and our larger world.  Oakland has always had an economic and racial gap.  There is a long history of distrust in the African-American community of Oakland police.  During the recession, these problems became bigger and despite the economic recovery the social and economic problems continue to grow in Oakland.  My hope is that the people of Oakland can come together to work for real change.

 The photo below shows an Occupy demonstration that occurred on Harrison Street in 2011.