In Oakland we plugged into the 3/19/2009 actions on BART stations by working with BAY-Peace to do an action at the Fruitvale BART. The action included spoken word, Poetry, Hip Hop, Guitar, visual art and a dramatic representation of the Oscar Grant killing in the form of tableaus.
We created an attention getter opening which went as follows: Our guitarist would riff wildly for a few seconds. At the same time 8 young people wearing why not peace black shirts and holding posterized images of militarism in Iraq and Oakland would run around doing one full circular Lap. As they were half way around the circle the characters came out from the right and acted out the shooting of Oscar Grant and froze just before the shooting in the form of a tableau.
Basically every time a major rush of commuters arrived at the Fruitvale Bart we looped our opening and then featured a 2 to 4 minute performance related to the issues of militarism at home and abroad and specifically the Iraq war and the Oscar Grant killing.
Many Commuters stopped and spectated and made positive comments as well as taking our literature. Thanks to Sandra Schwartz a photographer named Ross Cameron from the Oakland Tribune came and took some pictures which made the front page of the Oakland Tribune.
