Bay Area Transit Station Shut For 2 Hours: Black Lives Matter!
November 28, 2014 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
Around 10:30 a.m. Friday, November 28- prime shopping time–a couple dozen protesters entered the West Oakland BART (Bay Areas Rapid Transit) station. Wearing “Black Lives Matter” shirts and hoodies, they chained themselves together, and then to trains running in both directions out of the station.
Activists from The Blackout Collective chained together bringing the BART train station to a halt for two hours, November 28, 2014.
A spokesperson said ,”We are interrupting Black Friday commerce specifically to send a very important message which is that Black Lives Matter! We want to send this message specifically in the wake of the decision to not indict with the Ferguson verdict.” Fourteen activists were eventually arrested. They chanted “No justice, No Peace!”and tied up trains for almost two hours while BART information signs informed passengers that there were "system-wide delays due to civil unrest at West Oakland Station." As we post this, funds have been raised to bail out the protesters.
The action followed days of protest in Oakland. On Wednesday night, Thanksgiving Eve, the third night in a row of powerful protests against the Ferguson verdict rocked the streets of Oakland. Protesters marched from downtown Oakland to West Oakland, taking the struggle to the masses of people in this historically Black neighborhood. Some 500 people were in the streets, mostly young, and of all nationalities, at least some for the first time since the grand jury decision—testimony to the breadth and determination of people coming into this battle.
In addition, there have been a number of other important actions by many different people around the Bay Area–more than we can report on now. For example, on Tuesday, Stanford University students took over University Avenue in downtown Palo Alto.
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