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Cyclists ride through the “safety zone” to protest gang injunctions

on March 2, 2011

On Tuesday night more than 25 cyclists took to the streets to raise awareness about the North Oakland gang injunction and the proposed gang injunction in the Fruitvale district.

The Stop The Injunctions Coalition sponsored the bike ride as a part of a week of action that will close this Friday afternoon with a rally at Oakland City Hall where activist, professor and former Black Panther Party member Angela Davis is expected to speak.

The cyclists convened at Bushrod Park and took a pre-planned route that wended its way through the North Oakland “safety zone” where alleged gang members named in the injunction are not allowed to interact with each other and have a 10p.m. curfew, in addition to other restrictions.

“We want to push for more community-based alternatives to create healthy and safe communities,” said Whitney Walton, an organizer with Stop The Injunctions Coalition.“From the very beginning folks started to talk about what alternatives could be more effective, and ways they would rather see their money being spent, and what things we know actually work opposed to gang injunctions—which don’t really have a history of being effective at all.”

The group made its way north from Bushrod Park on Shattuck and hung a left on Alcatraz.  The first rest stop was in front of Actual Café on the corner of Alcatraz and San Pablo, where one woman passed out snacks of oranges and miniature chocolates.  Another rider had a boom box strapped to her bike rack that was playing Daft Punk’s signature tune “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger.”

Patrons inside Actual Café peered out the windows quizzically while riders stocked up on flyers to pass out and got ready for the next leg of the trip.

As the sun set, the bikers’ flashing safety lights helped to create a festive atmosphere.  After a quick discussion some riders decided to chant as they stood in front of the café, “Say Hey!  Say Ho!  Gang Injunctions have got to go!”

The riders next headed south on San Pablo towards 43rd Street, fanning out to take over the right lane.  Some of the riders zipped over to the sidewalk to pass out flyers to interested on lookers and explain the basics of the gang injunction.

One of these riders most active in his outreach was 27-year-old Berkeley resident Solo, who declined to give his last name.  Solo often sped ahead of the crowd and would be seen later on the sidewalk talking to someone as the group caught up and passed him by. “I think at this stage in the game it’s really about showing up, and taking some risks and investing time to educate other community members,” he said.

North Oakland native Fred Hampton was just as active as Solo.  The 19-year-old student got off work and came directly to the ride.  By the end of the evening he had passed out all 30 of the fliers he had been given to community members.

“The more conversation the better,” said Hampton.  “People get desensitized to aggression from the police.  This is an exception.  It needs to be stopped or it will set a bad precedent.”

Zaylia Pluss, a 24-year-old organizer with Stop the Injunctions Coalition who also works for a non-profit, thought the ride was a great opportunity to have a good time while working.

“There were a lot of familiar and new faces. It’s a fun action.  We met a lot of new people interested in helping,” she said.

A motorist stopped at a red light rolled down his passenger window to ask what was going on, and a rider rolled over to the car and handed a flyer to the passenger in the shot gun seat.

Nine more cyclists were waiting at the corner of 43rd and San Pablo.  When the crew made a left onto 43rd Street the new cyclists mixed in seamlessly.

The next destination was 55th and Market Street, a historical site where Black Panther Party members volunteered as crossing guards in 1967 and stopped traffic to help children cross the street, a reaction to the City of Oakland saying it would be years before a stoplight could be installed at the intersection.  (Once the volunteer crossing guards set up shop, the City of Oakland ended up installing a stop light a few months later.)

According to Walton, one of the evening’s goals was to bring together community members and share some Oakland community organizing history to show how the legacy of past organizers like the Black Panther Party connect to the organizing that they are doing right now.

The ride ended at It’s All Good Bakery on Martin Luther King Boulevard, which was the original site of the Black Panther Party offices.  Ride members shared large slices of three-layered yellow cake with chocolate frosting and hunks of square cookies.

“It’s a history of people seeing something wrong and not always depending on these bureaucratic systems to fix the problems,” said Walton.  “It’s about depending on community to fix community problems.  Just starting that conversation and looking back on things that have worked and hopefully encouraging other people to think more creatively about what we want except gang injunctions.”

The Alameda County Superior Court judge is expected to hold another hearing on the proposed Fruitvale gang injunction this afternoon.

Photo: Cyclists hang in front of It’s All Good Bakery, the historical site of the first Black Panther Party office, after a ride protesting gang injunctions.

12 Comments

  1. Tim Anderson on March 2, 2011 at 3:05 pm

    Are there, as Whitney Walton suggests, really “things we know actually work” to combat murderous gang violence?

    I support and believe in “community-based alternatives” but what do you do about the people you can’t reach? It is not OK for people to hurt other people. How do we respond to people who didn’t get the message that we care and are now out robbing and murdering people? Have we as a community gotten so “desensitized to aggression” from wayward individuals that we’re willing to accept assault, robbery, and murder as the price for achieving social justice?

    I don’t know the answer but it appears that some people do. It’s time for them to speak up and stop the senseless violence before one more person is hurt.



  2. MarleenLee on March 2, 2011 at 3:25 pm

    People get desensitized to aggression from police? Sounds like these protestors are desensitized to crime and violence committed by gang members. Why don’t these activists organize protests against violence and preach about the evils of gang membership? Are they aware that since the injunctions started, 14 of these “victims of civil rights violations” have been arrested on charges ranging from attempted murder to robbery to burglary? Why don’t they devote their time and energy to the real victims here – the victims of those crimes!



  3. […] Cyclists ride through the “safety zone” to protest gang … […]



  4. Zaylia on March 2, 2011 at 5:09 pm

    We are the opposite of desensitized to violence – we are working to address violence and our community issues at their root causes. Violence is linked directly to unemployment, lack of affordable housing and healthcare, and lack of education opportunities and resources. We need to address these issues in Oakland, not just rely on the OPD, which has proven itself to bring even more violence.

    Stop the Injunctions Coalition is hosting a vigil against violence, where folks can come together to remember all who have been lost to the street, police, and other forms of violence in our communities tomorrow night (3/3) at Lake Merritt.



    • len raphael on March 3, 2011 at 8:19 am

      if anti GI people want us to wait till the second coming of of plentiful affordable housing and decent paying jobs for all, they have to be able to justify the number of innocents killed and wounded until that happens.

      -len raphael, temescal



  5. N.O. Resident on March 3, 2011 at 11:19 am

    Yeah tell the little gang thugs who robbed me a block away from my home in North Oakland that they are just misunderstood snowflakes who made the wrong choices. Let’s all hold hands and sing kum-ba-ya around a campfire while we eat smores together and talk about our feelings and lack of social programs. According to the Stop the Injunctions group I am “desensitized from aggression” from the police, what about aggression from people in my own neighborhood? According to STI, I am suppose to accept robbery and crime in my neighborhood, that’s the message they are sending out. I know for a fact OPD officers have never and will never run up on me from behind and rob me. I can’t even walk home from work in my own neighborhood after dusk.
    I will never support Stop the Injunctions. I will fully support the proposed Injunctions and hope for more of a police presence in North Oakland.



  6. Wilson Riles on March 3, 2011 at 1:58 pm

    One thing that is true (but is unheard by supporters of the gang injunction) is that gang injunctions do not work! They do not work! You want to stop robberies and crime in your neighborhood, start looking for something else because gang injunctions do not work!



  7. […] at Fremont Federation High School on Monday (which KPFA’s Hard Knock Radio covered in full), bike rides through Fruitvale and North Oakland on Tuesday, and discussions about policing, gang injunctions […]



  8. […] Read Oakland North’s coverage of our North Oakland “safety” zone and Black Panther Party history ride here. […]



  9. […] Cyclists ride through the “safety zone” to protest gang injunctions (North Oakland) […]



  10. […] a courtroom packed with anti-injunction activists, Oakland Deputy City Attorney Rocio Fierro argued for the injunction saying, “safety should not […]



  11. […] Fruitvale gang injunction proposal drew continued public protest as witnesses continued to testify before Judge Freedman in the injunction hearing, including a […]



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