We Are All Oscar Grant!

As regular readers of Modesto Anarcho know, police brutality, harassment, murder, and abuse, are all issues that we cover heavily in our magazine. In the past year, many people have died in the local county jail at the hands of police neglect and tasers, as well as all of those who have have died on the streets as a result of a police encournter. As every poor person in the Central Valley knows, the police act as a unit and look at for each other. They will lie on the stand, in court, in paper work, and if need be, intimidate and threaten those that attempt to speak out against them.

While doing Copwatch in Modesto, one of the things that we hear most often from people on the street is, "Oh I know MPD is fucked up, they beat the shit out of me..." It is almost cliche to talk about police abuse in this area, because the police control and influence so much of the power structure. The Modesto Bee prints things always favorable to their side. When a publication like Modesto Anarcho then steps up to take the police head on, they react with repression. For instance, several months ago, the police threatened the owner of a corner store if he did not take out a free box stocked with copies of our magazine from his property. Fearing for his safety, he did so.


As the author Kristian Williams explained in his book, Our Enemies in Blue, the police force in the United States is a result of the power structure seeking to keep class and racial divisions in place. In the north, the modern police force grew out of a desire to keep strikes by workers from turning into full scale insurretions. In the south, it was established to keep blacks and those on the border squarely in their place as a lower class of workers that could be exploited for the sake of white capitalists.



Recently, there is a new blog that has stared in the Central Valley to chronicle the violence of the police in the local area and make connections with those in the bay area who are struggling for Justice for Oscar Grant. View the blog here.


Oscar Grant, was a young black father from the bay area who worked as a butcher, he was shot on New Years day 2009. If you haven't seen the video, which shows Oscar unarmed on the ground as a white police officer shoots him in the back, you need to watch it. Outrage over the murder brought people out into the streets of Oakland, where people rioted and fought the police. The riots focused attention to the murder and forced the state to charge Oscar's killer with murder - a first in many years. The slogan, "We are all Oscar Grant" serves to remind people that to the police, we are all potential murder victims, especially poor and people of color.


Now, with the trail coming to an end, people are calling for everyone to assemble at 14th and Broadway in Oakland when the verdict is read. Whether in Modesto or Oakland - SEE YOU IN THE STREETS!