May 8, 2026
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‘Blindspotting’ Shows Heart of West Oakland
by Doniphan Blair
'Blindspotting' stars and was written by Oakland-native Daveed Diggs (lft) and Berkeley-boy Rafael Casal. photo: courtesy C. López Estrada THE FIRST TO HAIL 'BLINDSPOTTING',
this summer's indie hit by freshman feature maker AND Mexican immigrant Carlos López Estrada, starring and written by two East Bay buddies, was the Sundance Film Festival, where it world premiered last February on opening night.
Then came The New York Times. “The actual core of the movie is so pertinent,” its reviewer gushed about the film, which is simultaneously a rom-com, a race-baiter, a drama AND a musical, “'Blindspotting’ ought to be seen by the widest audience possible.”
And Variety: “'Blindspotting’ encourages audiences to look beyond surface prejudices and really see their fellow citizens for the first time… If ever there was a film to open America’s eyes, this is it.”
The only fly in the ointment was the perennially-snobby New Yorker, which sniffed, “the conflicts are schematic, the characters are thinly sketched.”
Now that big media has pronounced on “Blindspotting”, which is set in West Oakland and was written by and stars Oakland-native Daveed Diggs, fresh from his award-winning roles in the decade's biggest musical, “Hamilton”, and Rafael Casal, a spoken-word artist renown around Berkeley and Hollywood, perhaps it’s time to hear from a West Oakland media outlet, yours truly.
Apologies for running late. Alas, we heard nothing about “Blindspotting”, even as it was being shot all around our studio in the fall of 2017, mostly with an out-of-town crew. And we didn’t see it until a month after it hit theaters in July.
Totally understandable, the “Blindspotting” media team probably never heard of cineSOURCE, despite this being our tenth year, replete with our tenth annual Oakland report (“Can Oakland Save the World?”).
I’m not saying they’re the dreaded “G” word (gentrifiers), especially since I oppose gentry-shaming. They're probably just downstaters.
Moreover, The New Yorker couldn’t have been more wrong. “Blindspotting” is a masterpiece, so good, it could have been directed by Prince Charles, for all its creators' home address would matter, not to mention its insightful, race-reversing take on gentrification, which writers Diggs and Casal obviously derived from regarding the issue from all sides.
Collin and Miles suit up to work as movers, which brings them into people's houses and problems, including with gentrification. photo: courtesy C. López EstradaAmong other things, Diggs's mother is Jewish and he first met Casal at Berkeley High, an international university masquerading as a local high school. Diggs eventually joined Clipping, a well-known if avant-garde Berkeley-based rap group, and Casal did poetry slams as well as rap. Eventually, Diggs caught the ear of "Hamilton"-creator Lin-Manuel Miranda and was invited to audition. He ended up performing dual roles, the Marquis de Lafayette and Thomas Jefferson, and taking a Tony Award in 2016.
“Blindspotting” features sharp satires of Oakland slang, food fanaticism, corner stores and, of course, the white yuppie scum, who’ve destroyed the city of late, as well as—thankfully—black culture, to keep the sides even. I particularly liked when a dashiki-dressed matriarch admits she's overjoyed to have haute hipster cuisine in the ‘hood.
They missed a few obvious Oaklandisms, however, like the men who wear their pants around their thighs or lower, displaying their designer undies (if you're lucky), or the mixed-race love fests, like Lake Merritt on Sundays (despite the one notorious white woman narcing on black families BBQing) or at the hundreds of burrito trucks nightly.
Not including a burrito truck was an infield error for Estrada, who moved from Mexico City to LA when he was 12 and probably became famous too young to know how they save single men's lives. He redeems himself with a lovely mis-en-scene opener featuring documentary footage of “side shows” (drivers doing tricks with cars), BART fights and other Oakland esoterica, before jumping feet first into Riggs and Casal's story.
It starts with Collin (Diggs), a sweet-tempered black guy, who gets out of jail (for an unrevealed reason) and is attempting to stay clean for his probation, despite provocations from his best friend Miles (Casal), a thuggy white guy, who's the life of the party. Aside from one edge-of-the-seat moment, when the son of Miles's girlfriend stumbles upon his gun, “Blindspotting” meanders through its first half, building characters and themes so they can roar to life later.
As it happened, I saw “Blindspotting” with filmmaker Rob Nilsson (see the epic article "Infant Terrible, Old Master of the Indie"). He laughed in my face when I remarked, as we left the theater, that it was like a Russian film, starting slow until it suddenly explodes.
“The first half was boring,” retorted Nilsson. “The audience was laughing at, not with, the characters.”
I tried to explain to Nilsson, who is white and just turned 79, that he might not quite cognize spot-on humor penned by and for twenty-somethings, often of color.
Collin doesn't get the joke when best-bud Miles picks out weapons from a happily-go-lucky thug—who is also an Uber driver, using a Mexican-American low rider car. photo: courtesy C. López EstradaRegardless of Nilsson’s or The New Yorker's critique, the film's first half masterfully sets up the many subplots, which can be suddenly picked up, like a gun off of Chekhov’s mantle, and fired in the second half.
For that simple reason, "Blindspotting" is able to seamlessly blow up AND switch genres, from homoerotic as well as straight rom-com—Collin's relationship with his childhood buddy AND the girl who dumped him after his incarceration—to serious drama.
As if out of nowhere, from an anecdote told in passing, “Blindspotting” fills in its backstory blanks and rips out our hearts, only to shift gears yet again—as hard as it may be to believe—to a romantic musical!
Even Nilsson, with his anaphylactic allergy to anything Hollywood, had to confess the extended flashback was a deft cinematic trope. And, once the fights started, first in front of a bar, then in the middle of a typical Oakland party, flush with all conceivable socio-economic and racial types, he confessed his interest had been piqued.
And so, since it doesn't matter how flashy your film starts, which is the American system, but where you finish, which is the Russian cinematic philosophy, “Blindspotting” is fantastic: well-written, -motivated and -acted, as well as nicely shot, with some striking hard edits.
No wonder “Blindspotting” earned $4.3 million nationally by September, decent for an indie, given it probably only cost two-thirds that, while international box office and streaming brought in almost $400,000 by December (according to The Numbers).
More heartfelt than the blockbuster fantasy, “Black Panther”, which failed to fulfill its promise of a mythical allegory about the Black Panther Party, and more romantic and balanced then Oakland’s other acclaimed summer sleeper, the searing satire “Sorry to Bother You”, “Blindspotting” would take this year's cineSOURCE Stutter Award™, if we could afford to present such a thing.
Cinema quality aside, however, what about “Blindspotting”'s politics and philosophy? Is “Blindspotting” the great cultural antidote to the Trumpist racist surge?
As it happens, “Blindspotting” revolves around Collin witnessing an unarmed black man being shot in the back by a white cop. As it happens, “Blindspotting” sets this climactic moment on the corner of West Grand and Adeline in West Oakland, if in name only, during the film’s faux news report (the actual scene was shot on a side street).
And, as it happens, cineSOURCE studios are also on the corner of West Grand and Adeline, where this author has lived since 1989, a few years before “Blindspotting”'s director or writer-stars were born.
As happens, I, too, am an old white guy who, like Nilsson, believes my art and world-travel bonifides allow me to speak freely about any film but also West Oakland, regardless of tribal affiliations, especially valid given “Blindspotting” is about evolving beyond race-based viewpoints.
Driving home in his company's moving van, Collin sees a cop kill a black man on the corner of West Grand and Adeline in West Oakland. photo: courtesy C. López EstradaSo what is my take, as one of the few people to observe West Grand and Adeline for the last thirty years? (Actually, I am probably the ONLY person, since three of the intersection's four corners are industrial, and my building's one other long-term resident doesn’t face that direction.)
For one, few whites have adopted Oakland's unique black culture—low pants, teeth grills, regional slang—as Miles does, simply because Oakland has always been multicultural, leaving little incentive for cultural cross-dressing.
Indeed, the Black Panther rallies, often held four blocks from West Grand and Adeline in DeFremery Park were mostly radicalized white kids, since 1967's Summer of Love brought a massive influx of them, while most black kids were dissuaded by their families or their fear of the cops from attending (see cineSOURCE's "The Black Panther Filmography").
On Day Two of the Rodney King Riots, May 1st, 1992, I didn't notice a single other white guy playing basketball in DeFremery, at the exact spot where the Panthers used to hold their rallies. While LA burned and 49 were killed, and there were riots in Berkeley and San Francisco, I got some icy stares but no overt violence, while Oakland had only a few broken windows.
Two: there have been no killings by cops at West Grand and Adeline. While white cops killing black men is a critical issue for artists to tackle, and Oakland, with its Panther history and some high profile murders by police, is the perfect place to set such a story, it is not that relevant to West Grand and Adeline, or Oakland in general.
As bad a rap as the Oakland Police Department gets for its prodigious prostituting and number of police chiefs (three in one week, June, 2016), there have been no flagrantly-unmotivated killings by cops since Oscar Grant in 2009, as excellently explicated by Ryan Coogler in “Fruitvale Station” (2013), which springboarded him to “Black Panther”.
As it happened, there have been few killings by Oakland cops in the last decade; conversely, four of their number were murdered in one day, March 21st, 2009, by a hardcore criminal wanted on parole violation. Indeed, during the entire year of 2017, the OPD didn’t discharge a single weapon—ever!—while 76 Oaklanders were offed by civilians.
“How many murders have you seen,” I inquired the other day of Muhammad, who owns Nick’s Liquors, one block from West Grand and Adeline, and I’ve known for eighteen years.
“Oh man…” he said, “many, many.”
“How many? Ten?” I asked.
“Ten? Oh no,” he answered, "many more," punctuating his response with the hollow laugh people use when they’re addressing fate, although Muhammad is assisted in that regard by his faith and heritage.
An outgrowth of the Oakland church movement that emerged out of the high murder rate of the 2010, SAVE and True Vine Church does monthly protests around Oakland against violence. photo: D. BlairLike many Oakland corner-store owners—and "Blindspotting" features one prominently—Muhammad is of Yemeni stock and his wife wears the colorful Yemeni dress, even though both she and Muhammad were raised in Oakland, where both of their grandfathers started stores in the 1960s.
A country beset civil war, Saudi bombings and now famine, Yemen has world-record weapon ownership, almost as much as the US. But that didn't prepared Muhammad for all the killings on his corner, mostly by drug gangs, or the stickups of his shop, which sent two relatives racing to Highland Hospital (they survived).
To be sure, being shot in the back by an officer of the law, sworn to uphold justice, in the land of the so-called free, is a crime against humanity. Nevertheless, it represents a tiny fraction of the actual human beings being killed in Oakland.
One evening in 2016, I was rudely awaken from a couch nap by a fuselage of machine gun fire, the loudest of the dozens of blasts I had heard over the decades, because it was coming from right beneath my window. Fascinated to find out what was going on but fearful to peak out or exit my front door, I circled around back.
By the time I got to the corner of West Grand and Adeline, a fresh-faced white cop, probably residing in the suburbs of Walnut Creek, and his female Latina partner, perhaps from San Leandro, were picking up shell casings. “About 18 here and another 15 two blocks down,” he told me.
Later, I got the details from a neighbor, who saw the fire fight from his truck, parked forty yards from the corner of West Grand and Adeline.
"A couple of cars were chasing each other down West Grand," he explained. "Then the first car swerved right onto Adeline, screeched to a halt and out jumped a guy loaded for bear—some sort of machine gun." When the pursuit car cornered, he ambushed it.
“I could see him about 20 yards away, riddling the other car with bullets, amazing they could still drive away,” my neighbor said.
“Did you call the cops?” I asked.
“No,” he said.
An anti-violence protest at West Grand and Adeline organized by SAVE and True Vine Church, attended by lawyer and mayoral candidate Pamela Green. photo: D. Blair“Why,” I asked.
“I don't call cops,” he said.
Yes, a few people have died on West Grand and Adeline, but from traffic accidents: it is a notoriously dangerous intersection. In 2005, a car full of illegal immigrants, being chased by ICE, ran the red light and hit another vehicle, instantly killing its driver.
While no one has been murdered on this corner for the last thirty years, over a hundred people have been butchered within a three block radius. Indeed, Chestnut and 24th, three blocks away, is a heavily-trafficked crack corner where dozens have died (for the story of one young man who was slaughtered in October, 2017, see "Four Indies Out of Oakland, Some with Bullets").
One year after that machine gunning, on October 13th, West Grand and Adeline was the site of a demonstration by Soldiers Against Violence Everywhere, also called SAVE Oakland. Organized by Michelle Edmond and her many good Samaritan associates, they mount their brand of vigil/demo some where in Oakland every second Saturday of the month, from 11 am to noon.
I thought it was one of those anarchic parades—a high school football win celebration, a bicycling group—that periodically rolls through the neighborhood, until I looked and saw some twenty people, most waving signs saying “Stop the Violence” and “Honk to Help”, with one gentleman on a bullhorn.
One demonstrator was Oakland mayoral candidate Pamela Green, although SAVE was not endorsing her; another was a white guy, from a participating church.
"We don’t want accountability only from the police,” Ms. Edmond told me by phone, a few days later. “We want accountability from the community, to be accountable, to report to the police. We stand for every victim. Not all the victims are black or brown. We think murder is terrible and we want peace on the streets of Oakland."
When I noted that Oakland's murder rate had been cut almost in half, to 76, from a high of 145 in 2006, Edmond retorted:
Another reaction to gentrification may be arson, according to Mayor Libby Shaft, as transpired on October 23 at the Ice House Complex four blocks east of West Grand and Adeline. photo: D. Blair“It is hard to say that 76 people being killed is OK. From our perspective, every life is precious. Every family deserves to have their family members remembered. Their life is precious and those who are committing the murders are still in the wrong. Those things are just basic."
SAVE, which has been operating for eight years, grew out of the clerical movement, which started during that very bloody year, 2006. Pastors, mothers, rabbis and teachers came out to walk the streets and rally the community, as well as put the police on notice.
One vocal advocate was Pastor Zachary Carey Senior of the True Vine Ministry, on nearby Isabella Steet—recently renamed Newton Carey Junior Way, in honor of his relative, who continues his efforts. Carey Senior along with Theresa Butler, an activist social worker, founded SAVE.
"Carey Senior had a passion for service in community," Edmond told me. "That is why he created the True Vine clothing and food drives and started calling for peace in the streets.”
Sadly, not everyone agrees. At their vigil-rally the previous month, in front of the MacArthur BART, a white women called the police, claiming, "'There was no need [for a demonstration] since there was no crime at this location,'" according to Edmond.
Conversely, I was overjoyed that someone was exercising spiritual strength on my corner, and I immediately jogged down to join them. Although the chanting and sign waving was invigorating, I found it especially moving when we gathered in a circle, prayed and honored the victims, including the son of youthful-looking woman.
"He was a very friendly kid," she said, "About to graduate high school."
As all of us should know, wherever we live but especially in West Oakland, any day can be our last, and it's worth honoring life as well as its passing as fully as possible.
Others, however, are not satisfied with the non-violent approach. On October 23rd, a five-alarm fire engulfed the half-completed 126-unit Ice House complex four blocks east on West Grand from Adeline. It is thought to be the latest in a series of suspicious fires at residential construction sites.
"It’s unclear whether an arsonist set the blaze," the about-to be-re-elected Mayor Libby Schaaf told a news conference, "[but] arsonists have been trying to burn down housing projects in Oakland.” There were also reports that homeless were living there, the site had a fire in April and security was lax.
Either way, citizen filmmakers, please try to shoot some footage. The documentary about what is happening in Oakland is an important part of a cinema scene that now ranges from "gritty, grimy films," like those by Jamie DeWolf (see cineSOURCE article) to block busters like "Black Panther" or a full-on masterpiece like "Blindspotting".
While "Blindspotting" tackles one of the terrible tragedies trying our body politic—the cold-blooded killing of young men of color by mostly-white police people—we must be a notch more pragmatic as well as spiritual, following the example of SAVE, to address the more lethal diseases attacking us.
Doniphan Blair is a writer, film magazine publisher, designer, musician and filmmaker ('Our Holocaust Vacation'), who can be reached .
Posted on Dec 20, 2018 - 04:31 AM
by Doniphan Blair
'Blindspotting' stars and was written by Oakland-native Daveed Diggs (lft) and Berkeley-boy Rafael Casal. photo: courtesy C. López Estradathis summer's indie hit by freshman feature maker AND Mexican immigrant Carlos López Estrada, starring and written by two East Bay buddies, was the Sundance Film Festival, where it world premiered last February on opening night.
Then came The New York Times. “The actual core of the movie is so pertinent,” its reviewer gushed about the film, which is simultaneously a rom-com, a race-baiter, a drama AND a musical, “'Blindspotting’ ought to be seen by the widest audience possible.”
And Variety: “'Blindspotting’ encourages audiences to look beyond surface prejudices and really see their fellow citizens for the first time… If ever there was a film to open America’s eyes, this is it.”
The only fly in the ointment was the perennially-snobby New Yorker, which sniffed, “the conflicts are schematic, the characters are thinly sketched.”
Now that big media has pronounced on “Blindspotting”, which is set in West Oakland and was written by and stars Oakland-native Daveed Diggs, fresh from his award-winning roles in the decade's biggest musical, “Hamilton”, and Rafael Casal, a spoken-word artist renown around Berkeley and Hollywood, perhaps it’s time to hear from a West Oakland media outlet, yours truly.
Apologies for running late. Alas, we heard nothing about “Blindspotting”, even as it was being shot all around our studio in the fall of 2017, mostly with an out-of-town crew. And we didn’t see it until a month after it hit theaters in July.
Totally understandable, the “Blindspotting” media team probably never heard of cineSOURCE, despite this being our tenth year, replete with our tenth annual Oakland report (“Can Oakland Save the World?”).
I’m not saying they’re the dreaded “G” word (gentrifiers), especially since I oppose gentry-shaming. They're probably just downstaters.
Moreover, The New Yorker couldn’t have been more wrong. “Blindspotting” is a masterpiece, so good, it could have been directed by Prince Charles, for all its creators' home address would matter, not to mention its insightful, race-reversing take on gentrification, which writers Diggs and Casal obviously derived from regarding the issue from all sides.
Collin and Miles suit up to work as movers, which brings them into people's houses and problems, including with gentrification. photo: courtesy C. López Estrada“Blindspotting” features sharp satires of Oakland slang, food fanaticism, corner stores and, of course, the white yuppie scum, who’ve destroyed the city of late, as well as—thankfully—black culture, to keep the sides even. I particularly liked when a dashiki-dressed matriarch admits she's overjoyed to have haute hipster cuisine in the ‘hood.
They missed a few obvious Oaklandisms, however, like the men who wear their pants around their thighs or lower, displaying their designer undies (if you're lucky), or the mixed-race love fests, like Lake Merritt on Sundays (despite the one notorious white woman narcing on black families BBQing) or at the hundreds of burrito trucks nightly.
Not including a burrito truck was an infield error for Estrada, who moved from Mexico City to LA when he was 12 and probably became famous too young to know how they save single men's lives. He redeems himself with a lovely mis-en-scene opener featuring documentary footage of “side shows” (drivers doing tricks with cars), BART fights and other Oakland esoterica, before jumping feet first into Riggs and Casal's story.
It starts with Collin (Diggs), a sweet-tempered black guy, who gets out of jail (for an unrevealed reason) and is attempting to stay clean for his probation, despite provocations from his best friend Miles (Casal), a thuggy white guy, who's the life of the party. Aside from one edge-of-the-seat moment, when the son of Miles's girlfriend stumbles upon his gun, “Blindspotting” meanders through its first half, building characters and themes so they can roar to life later.
As it happened, I saw “Blindspotting” with filmmaker Rob Nilsson (see the epic article "Infant Terrible, Old Master of the Indie"). He laughed in my face when I remarked, as we left the theater, that it was like a Russian film, starting slow until it suddenly explodes.
“The first half was boring,” retorted Nilsson. “The audience was laughing at, not with, the characters.”
I tried to explain to Nilsson, who is white and just turned 79, that he might not quite cognize spot-on humor penned by and for twenty-somethings, often of color.
Collin doesn't get the joke when best-bud Miles picks out weapons from a happily-go-lucky thug—who is also an Uber driver, using a Mexican-American low rider car. photo: courtesy C. López EstradaFor that simple reason, "Blindspotting" is able to seamlessly blow up AND switch genres, from homoerotic as well as straight rom-com—Collin's relationship with his childhood buddy AND the girl who dumped him after his incarceration—to serious drama.
As if out of nowhere, from an anecdote told in passing, “Blindspotting” fills in its backstory blanks and rips out our hearts, only to shift gears yet again—as hard as it may be to believe—to a romantic musical!
Even Nilsson, with his anaphylactic allergy to anything Hollywood, had to confess the extended flashback was a deft cinematic trope. And, once the fights started, first in front of a bar, then in the middle of a typical Oakland party, flush with all conceivable socio-economic and racial types, he confessed his interest had been piqued.
And so, since it doesn't matter how flashy your film starts, which is the American system, but where you finish, which is the Russian cinematic philosophy, “Blindspotting” is fantastic: well-written, -motivated and -acted, as well as nicely shot, with some striking hard edits.
No wonder “Blindspotting” earned $4.3 million nationally by September, decent for an indie, given it probably only cost two-thirds that, while international box office and streaming brought in almost $400,000 by December (according to The Numbers).
More heartfelt than the blockbuster fantasy, “Black Panther”, which failed to fulfill its promise of a mythical allegory about the Black Panther Party, and more romantic and balanced then Oakland’s other acclaimed summer sleeper, the searing satire “Sorry to Bother You”, “Blindspotting” would take this year's cineSOURCE Stutter Award™, if we could afford to present such a thing.
Cinema quality aside, however, what about “Blindspotting”'s politics and philosophy? Is “Blindspotting” the great cultural antidote to the Trumpist racist surge?
As it happens, “Blindspotting” revolves around Collin witnessing an unarmed black man being shot in the back by a white cop. As it happens, “Blindspotting” sets this climactic moment on the corner of West Grand and Adeline in West Oakland, if in name only, during the film’s faux news report (the actual scene was shot on a side street).
And, as it happens, cineSOURCE studios are also on the corner of West Grand and Adeline, where this author has lived since 1989, a few years before “Blindspotting”'s director or writer-stars were born.
As happens, I, too, am an old white guy who, like Nilsson, believes my art and world-travel bonifides allow me to speak freely about any film but also West Oakland, regardless of tribal affiliations, especially valid given “Blindspotting” is about evolving beyond race-based viewpoints.
Driving home in his company's moving van, Collin sees a cop kill a black man on the corner of West Grand and Adeline in West Oakland. photo: courtesy C. López EstradaFor one, few whites have adopted Oakland's unique black culture—low pants, teeth grills, regional slang—as Miles does, simply because Oakland has always been multicultural, leaving little incentive for cultural cross-dressing.
Indeed, the Black Panther rallies, often held four blocks from West Grand and Adeline in DeFremery Park were mostly radicalized white kids, since 1967's Summer of Love brought a massive influx of them, while most black kids were dissuaded by their families or their fear of the cops from attending (see cineSOURCE's "The Black Panther Filmography").
On Day Two of the Rodney King Riots, May 1st, 1992, I didn't notice a single other white guy playing basketball in DeFremery, at the exact spot where the Panthers used to hold their rallies. While LA burned and 49 were killed, and there were riots in Berkeley and San Francisco, I got some icy stares but no overt violence, while Oakland had only a few broken windows.
Two: there have been no killings by cops at West Grand and Adeline. While white cops killing black men is a critical issue for artists to tackle, and Oakland, with its Panther history and some high profile murders by police, is the perfect place to set such a story, it is not that relevant to West Grand and Adeline, or Oakland in general.
As bad a rap as the Oakland Police Department gets for its prodigious prostituting and number of police chiefs (three in one week, June, 2016), there have been no flagrantly-unmotivated killings by cops since Oscar Grant in 2009, as excellently explicated by Ryan Coogler in “Fruitvale Station” (2013), which springboarded him to “Black Panther”.
As it happened, there have been few killings by Oakland cops in the last decade; conversely, four of their number were murdered in one day, March 21st, 2009, by a hardcore criminal wanted on parole violation. Indeed, during the entire year of 2017, the OPD didn’t discharge a single weapon—ever!—while 76 Oaklanders were offed by civilians.
“How many murders have you seen,” I inquired the other day of Muhammad, who owns Nick’s Liquors, one block from West Grand and Adeline, and I’ve known for eighteen years.
“Oh man…” he said, “many, many.”
“How many? Ten?” I asked.
“Ten? Oh no,” he answered, "many more," punctuating his response with the hollow laugh people use when they’re addressing fate, although Muhammad is assisted in that regard by his faith and heritage.
An outgrowth of the Oakland church movement that emerged out of the high murder rate of the 2010, SAVE and True Vine Church does monthly protests around Oakland against violence. photo: D. BlairA country beset civil war, Saudi bombings and now famine, Yemen has world-record weapon ownership, almost as much as the US. But that didn't prepared Muhammad for all the killings on his corner, mostly by drug gangs, or the stickups of his shop, which sent two relatives racing to Highland Hospital (they survived).
To be sure, being shot in the back by an officer of the law, sworn to uphold justice, in the land of the so-called free, is a crime against humanity. Nevertheless, it represents a tiny fraction of the actual human beings being killed in Oakland.
One evening in 2016, I was rudely awaken from a couch nap by a fuselage of machine gun fire, the loudest of the dozens of blasts I had heard over the decades, because it was coming from right beneath my window. Fascinated to find out what was going on but fearful to peak out or exit my front door, I circled around back.
By the time I got to the corner of West Grand and Adeline, a fresh-faced white cop, probably residing in the suburbs of Walnut Creek, and his female Latina partner, perhaps from San Leandro, were picking up shell casings. “About 18 here and another 15 two blocks down,” he told me.
Later, I got the details from a neighbor, who saw the fire fight from his truck, parked forty yards from the corner of West Grand and Adeline.
"A couple of cars were chasing each other down West Grand," he explained. "Then the first car swerved right onto Adeline, screeched to a halt and out jumped a guy loaded for bear—some sort of machine gun." When the pursuit car cornered, he ambushed it.
“I could see him about 20 yards away, riddling the other car with bullets, amazing they could still drive away,” my neighbor said.
“Did you call the cops?” I asked.
“No,” he said.
An anti-violence protest at West Grand and Adeline organized by SAVE and True Vine Church, attended by lawyer and mayoral candidate Pamela Green. photo: D. Blair“I don't call cops,” he said.
Yes, a few people have died on West Grand and Adeline, but from traffic accidents: it is a notoriously dangerous intersection. In 2005, a car full of illegal immigrants, being chased by ICE, ran the red light and hit another vehicle, instantly killing its driver.
While no one has been murdered on this corner for the last thirty years, over a hundred people have been butchered within a three block radius. Indeed, Chestnut and 24th, three blocks away, is a heavily-trafficked crack corner where dozens have died (for the story of one young man who was slaughtered in October, 2017, see "Four Indies Out of Oakland, Some with Bullets").
One year after that machine gunning, on October 13th, West Grand and Adeline was the site of a demonstration by Soldiers Against Violence Everywhere, also called SAVE Oakland. Organized by Michelle Edmond and her many good Samaritan associates, they mount their brand of vigil/demo some where in Oakland every second Saturday of the month, from 11 am to noon.
I thought it was one of those anarchic parades—a high school football win celebration, a bicycling group—that periodically rolls through the neighborhood, until I looked and saw some twenty people, most waving signs saying “Stop the Violence” and “Honk to Help”, with one gentleman on a bullhorn.
One demonstrator was Oakland mayoral candidate Pamela Green, although SAVE was not endorsing her; another was a white guy, from a participating church.
"We don’t want accountability only from the police,” Ms. Edmond told me by phone, a few days later. “We want accountability from the community, to be accountable, to report to the police. We stand for every victim. Not all the victims are black or brown. We think murder is terrible and we want peace on the streets of Oakland."
When I noted that Oakland's murder rate had been cut almost in half, to 76, from a high of 145 in 2006, Edmond retorted:
Another reaction to gentrification may be arson, according to Mayor Libby Shaft, as transpired on October 23 at the Ice House Complex four blocks east of West Grand and Adeline. photo: D. BlairSAVE, which has been operating for eight years, grew out of the clerical movement, which started during that very bloody year, 2006. Pastors, mothers, rabbis and teachers came out to walk the streets and rally the community, as well as put the police on notice.
One vocal advocate was Pastor Zachary Carey Senior of the True Vine Ministry, on nearby Isabella Steet—recently renamed Newton Carey Junior Way, in honor of his relative, who continues his efforts. Carey Senior along with Theresa Butler, an activist social worker, founded SAVE.
"Carey Senior had a passion for service in community," Edmond told me. "That is why he created the True Vine clothing and food drives and started calling for peace in the streets.”
Sadly, not everyone agrees. At their vigil-rally the previous month, in front of the MacArthur BART, a white women called the police, claiming, "'There was no need [for a demonstration] since there was no crime at this location,'" according to Edmond.
Conversely, I was overjoyed that someone was exercising spiritual strength on my corner, and I immediately jogged down to join them. Although the chanting and sign waving was invigorating, I found it especially moving when we gathered in a circle, prayed and honored the victims, including the son of youthful-looking woman.
"He was a very friendly kid," she said, "About to graduate high school."
As all of us should know, wherever we live but especially in West Oakland, any day can be our last, and it's worth honoring life as well as its passing as fully as possible.
Others, however, are not satisfied with the non-violent approach. On October 23rd, a five-alarm fire engulfed the half-completed 126-unit Ice House complex four blocks east on West Grand from Adeline. It is thought to be the latest in a series of suspicious fires at residential construction sites.
"It’s unclear whether an arsonist set the blaze," the about-to be-re-elected Mayor Libby Schaaf told a news conference, "[but] arsonists have been trying to burn down housing projects in Oakland.” There were also reports that homeless were living there, the site had a fire in April and security was lax.
Either way, citizen filmmakers, please try to shoot some footage. The documentary about what is happening in Oakland is an important part of a cinema scene that now ranges from "gritty, grimy films," like those by Jamie DeWolf (see cineSOURCE article) to block busters like "Black Panther" or a full-on masterpiece like "Blindspotting".
While "Blindspotting" tackles one of the terrible tragedies trying our body politic—the cold-blooded killing of young men of color by mostly-white police people—we must be a notch more pragmatic as well as spiritual, following the example of SAVE, to address the more lethal diseases attacking us.
Doniphan Blair is a writer, film magazine publisher, designer, musician and filmmaker ('Our Holocaust Vacation'), who can be reached .
Posted on Dec 20, 2018 - 04:31 AM
