- Joined
- Mar 21, 2005
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- Slightly Conservative
The roving mob expressed fury at police and frustration over society's racial injustice. Yet the demonstrators were often indiscriminate, frequently targeting the businesses and prized possessions of people of color.
They smashed a hair salon, a pharmacy and several restaurants. Police in riot gear tried to control the crowd, but some people retreated along 14th Street and bashed cars along the way.
The mob smashed the windows at Creative African Braids on 14th Street, and a woman walked out of the shop holding a baby in her arms.
"This is our business," shouted Leemu Topka, the black owner of the salon she started four years ago. "This is our shop. This is what you call a protest?"
...
I feel like the night is going great," said Nia Sykes, 24, of San Francisco, one of the demonstrators. "I feel like Oakland should make some noise. This is how we need to fight back. It's for the murder of a black male."
Sykes, who is black, had little sympathy for the owner of Creative African Braids.
"She should be glad she just lost her business and not her life," Sykes said.
**** this asshole.
But soon after, a man shouted "that's the modern day lynching" and the mob quickly continued its rampage, smashing at least seven storefronts on 17th street between Franklin and Webster streets. They also smashed eight cars, including four belonging to the City of Oakland.
Near 14th and Alice streets, Myron Bell was taking dance lessons in "step," a form of dance popular among African Americans, when he looked out the window and saw people jumping on his Lexus sedan.
Bell, 42, came out to find that almost all of the car's windows, including the front and back had been smashed and it appeared that someone had tried to set the car on fire.
"I'm for the cause," said Bell, who is black. "But I'm against the violence and destruction."
Nearby, Godhuli Bose stood near her smashed Toyota Corolla as a man walked by, repeatedly called her a misogynist slur and then added, "F- your car."
Bose, a high school teacher, said: "I can't afford this."
Soo Jung Sung didn't understand why she was to blame. She wept as she looked at the shattered front windshield of her Nissan Montero.
"Emotionally, I totally understand them," she said of the upset over Grant's shooting. "But it's not nice."
Well done, all around.