Oakland Protests Occupy City Hall
Protesters against police killings marched through Oakland Tuesday afternoon, taking over Oakland City Hall, entering a Laney College cafeteria, and briefly blocking an on-ramp to Interstate Highway 880.
About 200 demonstrators gathered in Frank Ogawa Plaza starting at about 1 p.m. behind a banner adorned with the faces of black and Hispanic people killed by police over the last several years. Speakers linked the police shootings to the larger criminal justice system, which they said is racially biased, imprisoning black and Hispanic people at far higher rates than white people. After numerous speakers, including several organizers with the Revolutionary Communist Party, the protesters flooded into City Hall, posing at the top of the stairs, blowing whistles that deafeningly echoed through the building’s high ceilings.