There had been more, but for DL that had hit the highlight. He regretted his braggadocio in revealing the Council of War almost immediately when he noticed the stir it caused, not only in the crowd, but also in the cops on the fringes of the rally and behind the stage. He had not intended to throw down the glove in challenge quite so soon. But it was done. To think that the idea for unifying all of Oakland’s gangs had come from a silly-assed Hollywood movie he had once rented, a 1970’s movie called “Warriors.”
DL and the New Afrikan Lords piled into two cars after the rally, DL and Jack’o’Hearts in one and Hakim and Samuels in the other with the rest of the brothers divided up for a cruise to Mama’s Big Kitchen Bar-B-Q in the Tenderloin. Even Hakim could eat at Mama’s, with her strictly kosher beef, chicken and vegetarian specialties. DL’s words echoed from the radio on the ride down, coming through on Liberation Station Afrika loud and clear.
That was a speech by New Afrikan Lords President and Director of the New Afrika Center, Daniel Logan, recorded at today’s anti-war demonstration in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. Daniel Logan is a young, up-and-coming Black leader in the city of Oakland.”
It was DJ Elijah doing his Liberation News Service. Jack’o’Hearts just had to laugh.
“Hey, DL, he got your Christian name.”
“That man’s got his ear to the street,” DL laughed along. “Wonder who the fuck he is?”
They had to park a ways away from Mama’s, and they got a little boisterous on the walk down. Not the feeling of gang, but one of posse danced among the Lords that evening as they all piled into the Big Kitchen.
“Heard your speech today,” Mama herself came out of the kitchen. “Man, you paintin’ a target on your back or what. Be careful little brother. And here’s a little something for your work.”
The check was for $1,000, made out to the New Afrika Center. The meal was on the house. Mama insisted. They drove all high across the Bay Bridge, not on any drug but on the power of the people. Night could be felt around the two cars and their rowdy Lords. They joked and laughed as their sound systems blared the new Afro/Carib/Hip-Hop/Brazilian sound called JuJu OverMix, pumping out on Liberation Station Afrika.
“To the Center, boyeee,” DL laughed with Jack’o’Hearts, his only driver.
Sometime after the Oakland Army Base, as their radios blared a gangsta’ kayo beat, their cars became an unexpected caravan as three more cars caught their tail. When the Lords turned off of 580 onto Broadway, their tail followed.
“We got company,” Jack’o’Hearts said.
“Evasion,” DL ordered. Jack’o’Hearts gave the hand sign to the other car, and then squealed tires around corners. The Lords’ cars choreographed a chase scene right out of the movies. Somewhere off Jefferson, when they succeeded in gaining a little but not much distance ahead of their unwelcome pursuit, DL said, “Time to face the music.”
Jack’o’Hearts signaled again and the two Lords cars screeched into a makeshift blockade, angled across the street. DL could not ask his Lords to do something he was not willing to do, but he was not stupid. He leapt from his car and bounded back to the other driven by Hakim. Not known to DL and his Lords, a window in an apartment above one of the street’s storefronts slid open and a face appeared.
“Keep on driving,’’ DL yelled, To the Center.”
“They’re gonna kill you,” Samuels protested from the car as DL pushed Mama’s check into his hands.
“Drive to the Center,” DL now barked, as their pursuers screeched up into a counter barricade, “That’s an order. You’re New Afrikan Lords. Act like Lords.”
Killah Samuels burst into tears.
“You heard the Lord’s President Hakim,” Samuels bawled, “Drive.”
The remaining Lords from DL’s car had emptied out behind it in the meantime, joined by their president when the other car full of Lords obeyed. The Lords had given up dealing, numbers, rackets, protection, pimping, auto theft, everything associated with their gang days, except for their guns. Two of their pursuer’s cars directly counterpointed their position, with ten black clad men, in black ski masks, gloves and guns, around behind their vehicles. The third car parked discreetly behind the mounting confrontation, seeking the anonymity of shadows. Seeing what was about to go down, the face in the window had disappeared. Now the lens and mike of a portable camcorder nuzzled the window ledge.
“We have an arrest warrant for Daniel Logan, known as DL,” one of the masked men shouted.
“Why you wearing masks if you’re cops?” Jack’o’Hearts yelled back.
“Turn DL over to us, and the rest of you go free,” the masked man replied.
“Bullshit,” DL yelled, “I go with you and not only do I die, but all the brothers die. You’re the Death Squad.”
Once they had established that DL was indeed behind the car, the masked men opened fire. The Lords retaliated, and the block cleared. New Afrikan blood flowed in rivers down the street that night. That river succeeded in watering a particular seed. The seed of revolution. The camcorder recorded it all.
The Bay wide 11 O’Clock News, all channels, reported it as a gang war casualty.
“This evening, Daniel Logan, known as DL, and four other members of the Young Afrikan Lords gang were gunned down in what police are calling a gang related shoot-out in downtown Oakland at 9:30 this evening. The Oakland PD are still looking for the rival gang members who ambushed the Lords gang near Jefferson and 17th...”
The videotape hit the media at 2 in the early, early morning. It ran in its entirety; showing the Lords facing off the black masked men, recording DL’s arrest order, and detailing the gunfight down to the last Lord moaning and dying in the streets. It recorded one more thing; the third car parked behind the black hooded squad, the four unmasked white men in it observing the shoot-out through to the final death. After which, they jumped from their car, hustled their masked companions off the scene and away, and then took over the situation. Plainclothed Alameda County sheriff.
“This is Oakland, not LA!” DJ Elijah broadcast over his pirate radio station around 3 that morning, when the trouble started. “Don’t be burnin’ and lootin’ our own neighborhoods, like folks did in LA in ‘92. Take the fires to Piedmont, to Rockridge, to the Hills. And hey, that shopkeeper, or that store owner ain’t your enemy. The cops are. Daniel Logan’s murder was political assassination by the cops. Cold. It proves that old saying: ‘blue by day, white by night.’ Don’t let a single cop walk the streets of Oakland in peace. Leave no police or sheriff station standing. This is our community. Don’t let the cops call in reinforcements. Seize the time. Seize our neighborhoods. This is Oakland, not LA!”
Oakland burned by sunrise.
***
Greg woke first as sunrise slanted in beneath the low clouds pouring over the west peninsula hills, among a rooftop of sleeping forms. He huddled in his bag, numb, as if down and dulled from a massive psychedelic experience. Larry, then Smoke, and finally the rest of the MDRG grumbled awake.
“Let’s get some breakfast and BART it over to our cars in Berkeley. They should have cleared the tracks by now.” Smoke had on a pair of regular sunglasses. He spoke, then glanced out over the rooftop. “Hmmm, something big is burning in East Bay.”
Columns of smoke fiercely oranged up the sunrise and curtained over much of the East Bay south of the bridge. They sauntered in for breakfast at a neighborhood diner and soon found out its cause.
“...The riot’s fury was not at all randomly aimed.” The television voice crackled over helicopter scenes of Oakland in flames. “Hit, and hit hard were the freeway interchanges—the 980/880, 980/580 and 880/580 maze—and both the 12th Street and Lake Merritt BART stations. Police and sheriff substations have been burned out. Others are under siege. Ambushes of police patrols have virtually driven law enforcement off the city’s streets. The government buildings on Lake Merritt have been looted and are presently in flames. Firefighters cannot reach the fires however because
of snipers. The rioting has spread south to Courtland and High, but the rioters are not indiscriminately burning down buildings. Police stations have become the principle targets, but all government buildings are being attacked...”
“What the hell caused all that?” Smoke asked as the waitress brought their food to the booth.
“Oh, some gang guy got killed by the cops,” she said, indifferent, “Somebody D...”
“DL?” Smoke gave her a sharp look.
“Yep, I think that’s him,” she shrugged, “Want anything else?”
“Just more coffee,” Smoke said.
They learned much of the rest listening and watching as they rushed their meal of greasy eggs, hash browns and bacon. Cop assassination of DL, that is what it looked like from the evidence despite Alameda Sheriff’s Department denials. East Oakland was no longer part of the United States. The northern and western parts of the city were almost entirely under the rioters’ control, thanks to snipers, ambushes, suicide bombings, and berserker style assaults. Oakland’s mayor had flown to Sacramento and now waited on a meeting with the governor. Thirty-eight dead, twenty-five of them cops. And the BART was down. The authorities had cleared the Bay Bridge of its incandescent barricades though.
“Well have to catch a bus,” Larry said, twirling the ends of his beard meditatively as the broadcast switched from news flash to the regular news of radical environmentalists dynamiting another dam on the Columbia river, and then of Canada’s further dismemberment under aboriginal pressures.
They made the correct bus stop at 8, and caught the correct bus at 8:15. The bus spent three hours on the way over to Berkeley in traffic jams. They seemed to ride into an inferno, the eastern horizon ribboned with black smoke and the hot rising sun stained blood red. An apocalyptic landscape that effectively hushed conversations. Finally they reached their vehicles. Time to split up.
“I’ll call ASP and tell ‘em we’re coming back in,” Smoke said and headed for his transport with the MDRG. “Let’s all meet back at the pub.”
Traffic snarled and knotted beyond untangling, thanks to Oakland. It took them another three hours to clear Richmond. In the meantime, the van’s radio kept them up on the important happenings. KPFA broadcast a news conference called by a coalition of the Black Unity Front, Black Panthers, Nation of Islam, All-African Peoples Socialist Party, African Peoples Revolutionary Party, New Afrikan Peoples Movement, and the remnants of the New Afrikan Lords, among many others. As Larry started over the northern bay, beneath Oakland’s gritty pall, one of the conference holders spoke.
“...I don’t approve of the methods used by the people in the streets, but I can sure understand how the brutal methods of the Oakland PD and the Alameda Sheriffs could drive people into such desperate actions. The cops murdered Daniel Logan in cold fuckin’ blood. They assassinated him, just like this government assassinates political leaders down in southern Mexico.”
“This New Afrika Coalition,” another of the conference sponsors spoke, a man named Samuels, “Is dedicated to keeping DL’s New Afrika Center open, to keep DL’s work and dreams alive...”
Noise cluttered the background, angry voices exchanging words. The speaker stopped.
“There seems to be a disturbance at the back of the auditorium,” the radio announcer came on the air, “A number of young black men, also Latinos and Asians, perhaps thirty in all, are now making their way down the aisle as a group. The Coalition’s security is coming with them. They are approaching the open microphone.”
“The name’s Steppin’ Razor. Hiyo Killah. For the rest o’ you I be head o’ the East Bay Crips. This here’s Fetchin’ Death, he head the Bloods. We got most o’ the head Oakland gangbangers here. Most everybody DL was gonna speak to. We callin’ a city-wide alliance on our own. We turnin’ our guns over to the revolution...”
The Governor called a State-Of-Emergency for the East Bay at 3, and Martial Law for Oakland at 4, enjoining the National Guard into action as the two pulled into Alabaster. But it was too late for the Guard to accomplish much. Heavily armed barricades held Peralta to MacArthur, West MacArthur to ML King Jr. Way, and north from there to 51st Street. The wealthy town of Piedmont was partially ringed by insurrectionists. They held various streets west and south of the 13 freeway and the 580 highway all the way to 98th. About all the Guard could do, once authorized to carry weapons, was to mass troops and tanks at strategic intersections, these movements matched by reinforcements from the rioters. When the Guard maneuvered, so did the rioters. Stalemate. The Governor had the next flight out to Washington to counsel with the President.
They arrived at the pub by 4:30, Greg having missed yet another whole day of classes. The entire ASP/MDRG affinity, to include Lori and Mary, crowded around tables inside, beneath one of the Redwood Eatery’s TVs. Smoke gave Greg and Larry a nod as did the others.
“Guess no one got arrested from Wednesday,” Greg glanced around.
“No one,” David managed, hardly able to leave off watching the news.
The President declared a State-Of-Emergency and Martial Law for Oakland as well. Rumor had it that long range artillery was being positioned south of Briones and east of San Leandro Reservoirs. The Guard deployed south of Estudillo as the territory north to 98th was considered sympathetic to the central Oakland rioters. The President had ordered the Army at Oakland Base to break the Peralta blockades and retake the city of Oakland.
“We were lucky,” Smoke said.
“Yeh, when the affinity split on the charge, some of us were faced with the decision about whether or not to continue,” David glared at Smoke.
“You didn’t leave the fight, did you?” Smoke asked.
“No,” David frowned, “Only because we got help from another affinity. One from HardCore Autonomy. I thought the point was to stick together.”
“The point,” Smoke’s mouth firmed into a line, “Was to do as much damage to the corporate/government machine as possible. We stay together to do that so long as its possible. But mobility takes precedence over sticking together. Why the hell didn’t you follow us around the cops?”
“I… we...” David started. But the TV brought everyone around again with a start. Something was happening. The announcer’s face was pale, his eyes wide. Not two minutes before he had been detailing the mutual atrocities inflicted by Turks and Armenians upon each others civilian populations in their ongoing mountain war, switching from international to national news with a report that the water supply of the town of Aventura, Florida had been dosed with a designer psychedelic called Odainsaker.
“I have just been handed an important announcement. There has been a mutiny at the Oakland Army Base. I repeat. There has been a mutiny at the Oakland Army Base. Commander Malcolm Powell Brown has released a statement to the media. It says, in part: ‘Irresponsible elements in the US military and the US government are planning to resort to long range artillery bombardment and even aerial strikes to break the Oakland Uprising. I will not stand idly by while hundreds, perhaps thousands of African American citizens are killed to end a rebellion that was caused by widespread outrage at the Alameda County Sheriffs political assassination of Daniel Logan, popular leader of the New Afrikan Lords Party...’ Commander Brown has asked all soldiers on the base not willing to volunteer to join the Oakland riot to leave. Only one quarter of the troops have left, without their arms. The mutinous Army units are presently transferring the entire arsenal at Oakland Base, to include a unit of up-to-date battle lasers, into the Oakland riot.”
The screen cut to a helicopter shot as night deepened. Still, the scene below was clear. A column of tanks, APC’s and APVs, jeeps, trucks full of weapons, and a line of dished battle lasers moved down Viaduct and West Grand, peacefully breaching the Peralta barricades. They flowed triumphantly into Oakland, surrounded by throngs of jubilant people.
The kids around the table broke into spontaneous applause. Jesus, it really is a revolution, Greg thought. He ordered himself a pitcher of beer
.
***
Al Thompson, aka DJ Elijah, fit the basics of his grapevine profile; blind Persian Gulf vet, Copt mystic, and pirate radio station operator extraordinaire. An Army Reserve radioman during the first Persian Gulf war, Al had lucked into a good wife named Zoe and a fine pair of twin boys, as well as a mid management job in one of Oakland’s major, Black-owned radio stations, all of which he returned to after the war. He parlayed his vets status, and with the backing of his parents, he purchased a 12-story, downtown Oakland apartment building for the family to live in and manage. In turn, in putting his two sons, Zachary and Leo, to work about the building, he had the idea to encourage them to go into business for themselves. They formed their own janitorial business the books of which Al managed. All in all, Thompson and his family were on their way up, solidly middle class and an ideal example of American bootstrapping.
Then the Oakland PD, having stopped his son Zachary for drunk driving in late 1999, beat him into a permanent vegetative state on the excuse he had resisted arrest. Internal police investigation acquitted the cops involved of all wrongdoing, so outraging Al that he started on his pirate radio project in order to be able to broadcast such crimes to the public. Actually, he first intended to produce a series of independent programs on police brutality that he hoped to market to the Pacifica and public radio networks. In so doing he developed the contacts and located the resources he would use when he turned to pirate radio proper. Close to a year after Zach’s crippling, a squad of Oakland PD in pursuit of two alleged gang members suspected of a convenience store robbery opened up on the kids in the middle of the day, in the middle of a busy Oakland street. Cement shards from ricocheting bullets blinded Al Thompson on that day.
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