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Can I get a witness?

Creative responses to G20/Mehserle verdict videos

by Ray HsuAlex Leslie

Outrage in the streets of Oakland
Outrage in the streets of Oakland

Also posted by dawn:

One minute and eight seconds outside Jules Bistro

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuetaYBHUhY&feature=related

A man is screaming Bastards outside the frame. Bastards bastards, air on the mic makes his throat hoarse. The row of circular plastic shields, held outward by the black figures. Their visors are tilted to distort their faces. Beyond their helmets a windows reads Jules Bistro. The figures do not speak. A few shields bob. The camera's eye sinks. A pair of legs, buckles fastened directly above the knees. At 0:11: What'd you take her for. A nightstick hangs at the right edge of the frame, along a leg. At 0:12 a high sound opens, a woman screaming. Between the two black legs you see the thin metal bars of a fence. The bars of the fence look the as the nightstick. A woman is being held over the fence, there is part of her face or is that her arm? A figure bent over her, genderless, its plastic visor down. At 0:13: She did nothing. She just happened to be wearing a mask like you are wearing masks. The legs you are looking between do not move. Two sets of black legs shift. The boots on the legs you are looking between are blunt-nosed and thick-soled. At 0:23 the woman screams: Get off of me. You can see the figure above her move his arm. At 0:28 a man yells Why did you take her why did you take her. The legs move quickly, together and forward. There is less of the woman visible. Six legs move. They could be attached to the same thing. You see that the woman being held against the fence has bare calves.

At 0:33 the crowd begins to chant Shame shame shame shame. At 0:39 the woman is walked away from the fence. You see one of her feet up in a half-kick of struggle, a black shoe with white laces. She is no longer screaming. The frame is now above the heads of the crowd, showing the tilted visors of the police. The frame weaves through the crowd, pursuing the woman who is being taken away. A barrier of police with visors and police. At 0:54: Where they fuck are they taking her where the fuck are they taking her? In the top right hand corner of the frame a slice of the road, four police on horseback. The frame shows the sidewalk beyond the row of police. The woman cannot be seen.

 

Thirty-One Seconds at Queen's Park

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-p64RHqi38&feature=related

One brown horse and the rest are dark, nine or ten horses, moving through the park scattered with protestors, a crowd of bright t-shirts and civilian bicycles on the other side of the path. There is no colour on the police riders: the visors reflect the white light of the sky, except for one rider whose visor is tilted up, revealing skin. Visors cover the eyes of the horses. At 0:09 a man yells: You're not intimidating You're dupes. While he shouts a young woman moves across the screen holding a camera, wearing a green tanktop and a black backpack. The horses move at an even gait at the speed of a tall statement being made. An empty pause on the concrete path.  At 0:12 the second group of horses enter, moving faster than the first group. The man with the white loop around his neck -- a plastic lei? -- is already on the path. He wears a black backpack and shorts. Between 0:14 and 0:15 the two dark horses pick up speed. The horse on the makes contact with the man. The man staggers forward, crumpling. The man puts his arms out, dives onto the cement path. You cannot see if hooves hit him or if he dove out of fear, the sound of two lines of black bodies advancing, horses and men. At 0:17 the police rider who hit him circles around him, shifts onto the grass, returns to the path. His helmet angles down. His visor looks like a beak. The man filming this, holding the camera is saying: Whoa whoa whoa. At 0:18 the man is on the path. At 0:19 the man gets up from the path, stumbles onto the grass. The camera moves away from him and follows the horses that continue briskly, curve onto the grass on the other side, At 0:22: Now people are throwing rocks at them and shit. People are pushing their bicycles in front of them to leave. A man walking in red pants and a skyblue shirt stands out to you in the crowd.

 

Nine Minutes and Eleven Seconds in Oakland, California

http://vimeo.com/13217165

you can march it don't matter baby

Reaction to Mehserle Verdict: Oakland, CA: 8 July 2010 from Oriana Bolden on Vimeo.

 

- what's going to happen after tonight?

 

- they're going to kill another black man

 

keep talking keep talking. all that talking ain't doing shit

 

[police were told to be in "retreat mode" until 8 pm]

 

[around 5:30 they back into/over a deaf woman]

 

"want peace? work for justice"

 

[folks worked together to move fencing that was laid on the ground by police...

 

[... partially in hopes that an ambulance could get through]

 

1) we need to put an end to racial profiling, police murders, of black men especially and people of colour in general

 

eventually we need to put a stop to the police altogether. and we need to eradicate them from our communities completely. entirely. they don't even need to exist anymore.

 

we have to eliminate the prison-industrial complex as a viable tactic to use against us. right?    we need to politicize the prisoners and we need to support political prisoners so that when someone does take a political action they're not just locked away into a dungeon

 

the thing about oscar grant was that         we see this case as a piece of evidence that can't be disputed        everyone's out here because they know it happens consistently

 

slavery is illegal unless you're duly convicted of a crime

 

- how far?

 

- off BROADWAY

 

- how far?

 

- unlawful ASSEMBLY

 

- what are you doing to that woman?

 

- ow. let me up

 

officers approaching from every direction        they're now jumping into the crowd        smacking people grabbing them        they cleared the intersection at 14th and        the area they asked to be cleared is cleared

 

in the name of the people of the state of California    or subject to other police actions including the use of force

 

there's a standoff between the cops and the protestors    there are far more cops than protestors at this point

 

they're not being allowed out

 

we have an occupying army. we don’t have a peacekeeping force    they're in attack formation and terrorist formation    we're not able to recognize them they’re not visible when they do shit    poking and hitting people    they're scared shitless of the people of Oakland    we're out here because a young men was murdered by a cop    they need to get roughed up and murdered because they were brown boys        it's not okay that brown children are murdered and they're not worth as much as white children    if you want to keep the peace

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Comments

It's amazing how when you

It's amazing how when you rearrange the familiar it enables you to see it for the first time again.

this is awesome.

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