As people nationwide actively boycott big businesses on Black Friday, a group of protesters in California forced a temporary shutdown of a BART train station. Protesters rallied Friday and physically banded together to block train service from the West Oakland train station. In doing so, demonstrators — many who wore shirts that read #BlackLivesMatter — drew further attention to their fight for justice days after a Ferguson, Missouri, grand jury decided not to indict Officer Darren Wilson in the killing of Michael Brown. “There is a major delay system wide due to civil unrest at West Oakland Station,” a statement on the BART website reads. “There is no service into or out of San Francisco at this time…
As people nationwide actively boycott big businesses on Black Friday, a group of protesters in California forced a temporary shutdown of a BART train station.
Protesters rallied Friday and physically banded together to block train service from the West Oakland train station. In doing so, demonstrators — many who wore shirts that read #BlackLivesMatter — drew further attention to their fight for justice days after a Ferguson, Missouri, grand jury decided not to indict Officer Darren Wilson in the killing of Michael Brown.
“There is a major delay system wide due to civil unrest at West Oakland Station,” a statement on the BART website reads. “There is no service into or out of San Francisco at this time. Please seek other forms of transportation.”
According to NBC Bay Area, the protesters planned to demonstrate on the BART tracks for four hours to symbolize the amount of time Brown’s body lay in the street.
Protesters also reflected on the death of Oscar Grant, a teenager from Oakland who was fatally shot by a police officer at a Bay Area BART train station on New Year’s Day 2009.
The moments in Grant’s life that led up to and followed this tragic event were documented in a 2009 film titled “Fruitvale Station.” The award-winning film was directed by Ryan Coogler, who is the founder of Blackout For Human Rights — a network of artists, activists, filmmakers and lawyers who fight to address inequalities and injustice in America.
Coogler’s organization is also the originator of #BlackoutBlackFriday, an online campaign that was created to urge people nationwide to boycott Black Friday shopping.
“In the wake of #Ferguson, it’s become painfully clear that people of color, and Black people in particular, are still unjustly targeted by law enforcement and the criminal justice system,” reads a statement on BlackoutBlackFriday.org.
“The lack of indictment in the deaths of Michael Brown of Ferguson, MO, John Crawford III of Ohio, and many, many more victims of police deaths are unacceptable in this modern society. To that end, we will cease spending money on American retail corporations until a change is made.”
Link:
Protesters Participating In #BlackoutBlackFriday Shut Down Oakland Train Station
