Makayla Walker waves a Black Lives Matter flag during a caravan to celebrate May Day, also known as International Workers Day, in Downtown Oakland. Photo by Zack Haber on May 1st.
Hundreds of workers and a coalition of over 25 Bay Area groups celebrated May Day in Oakland with a car / bike caravan, block party, and an art installation that explored ways of opening and occupying vacant housing units.
The celebration started as about 80 vehicles and about 40 people on bicycles gathered at Lake Merritt’s Bart Station. Standing on a flatbed truck behind a red and white sign that read “MAY DAY WORKERS OF THE WORLD UNITE,” Minister Cherri Murphy, with Gig Workers Rising, was the first to address the crowd.
GUEST WORDS The murders by cop go on - the latest, Lymond Moses, was asleep in his car - prompting furious calls for police reform from many weary of the carnage.
Along with systemic racism, rabid militarization, fascist police unions, no accountability and infamously inadequate if not deranged training, we can thank messianic warrior-cop, uber fear-mongerer and killology expert Dave Grossman, a former Army ranger who for 20 years has traveled
almost daily to every state in the blood-soaked union to offer popular police trainings to tell young acolytes they re the royalty of this land - alas, a war zone of thugs and terrorists where they must learn to fight back with righteous violence, shoot first and think later, and per Radley Balko s Rise of the Warrior Cop, make the threat die - which, as the grim headlines remind us, they are, at a rate of roughly three a day.
A month before George Floyd anniversary, East Bay island jolted by death after police restraint
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Police body-camera footage shows Gonzalez, who died in Alameda police custody, being restrained by officers.Alameda Police Department / New York TimesShow MoreShow Less
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Friends, family and supporters of Mario Gonzalez hold photos of him during a news conference outside the Alameda Police Department the day after he died in police custody.Santiago Mejia / The ChronicleShow MoreShow Less
For nine minutes, an Alameda police officer tried to engage a man in a park who didn’t appear to be harming anyone.
Six minutes later, 26-year-old Mario Gonzalez was unresponsive with three officers and a civilian parking employee on top of him. Family members were outraged and drew comparisons to George Floyd. Police characterized Gonzalez’s death as a “medical emergency” and said they sought to defuse the situation.
A Hispanic man died after police pinned him down on the ground for five minutes, echoing the death of George Floyd at the hands of former Minneapolis officer Derek Chauvin. Alameda Police Department released an hour-long video of the tragic death of the Hispanic man, Law & Crime reported.
The said incident happened the same day a jury in Minneapolis began the deliberation of the George Floyd case, Associated Press reported. Because of this, the Alameda Police were under fire as the family of the Hispanic man, Mario Gonzales, 26, accused the law enforcement officers on Wednesday of using excessive force on the Hispanic man.
What the video will show:
Death occurs 22 minutes into the video, which includes a lame 9/11 call from someone who claims his wife is frightened from seeing a Hispanic person out her window, on what appears to be public property.
Fire Department arrives at 28 minutes. Police lie to fire and rescue.
Mario is declared dead by fire and rescue at 28:35, which is blipped out of the video by Alameda police
Second bodycam shows him expiring at 18:56 real time, 39:50 on video. CPR begins at 40:43 on video, second bodycam
41:55 officer says, for camera and radio “He’s breathin ”, in reference to someone who has been dead for several minutes (breathing but no pulse)