Changing the Story on Race

In early 2009, the Center for Media Justice played a pivotal role in the organizing efforts surrounding the police murder of Oscar Grant, a young black man on his way home from a New Year’s party in Oakland, California. Our communications team helped change the story with tested strategies and a new narrative on race.

In the early morning hours of New Yearʼs Day, Bay Area Rapid Transit Police Officer Johannes Mehserle shot Oscar Grant in the back as he lay on his stomach, unarmed, prepared for arrest. Grant died later that day at the hospital.

Fellow BART passengers captured the entire event with their cell phone video cameras; wide distribution of this footage led to broad media coverage and public awareness—and an all-too-rare prosecution of a police officer for his actions on the job. There was also a new opening to tell a compelling story about race, violence, and policing in Oakland, with hard evidence to back it up.

As people marched through the streets to demand justice in the case of Oscar Grant, CMJ and our community partners brought some critical questions to the debate: What are the rights of citizenship? Who gets to access those rights? Where is the accountability for police misconduct?

Cases like this often leave us without new policy or structure to address root causes of police violence. It’s hard to argue that current policing standards may be antithetical to building strong communities of color, especially during an economic downturn when public fear is stoked by reports of increasing crime rates. But in the wake of Grant’s murder, new solutions have been discussed in Oakland, including community policing solutions and strong community review boards over police departments in the Bay Area.

If the debate had been limited to prosecuting one “bad apple” cop, we wouldn’t have gotten far. Ultimately, it was the broadening of the discussion to the bigger, systemic questions that got us to a new place in examining race and policing in Oakland. Moving forward, CMJ continues to seize rapid response opportunities to change conversations and reshape the way we look at the critical issues of race and justice.