Always In Season

In the soft sunlight of a fading afternoon yesterday, a woman lay in the middle of Broadway at 10th in downtown Oakland. I had just come up from the 12th Street BART and passed her as I was walking home from a tough work week of few successes and several notable dead ends. She was immobilized on stretcher, her neck in a brace and her arms strapped down at her sides, but she could still scream. The shattered glass and crushed hood of her vehicle testified to the force of impact when she slammed into the tree on the median strip. Several EMTs were working on someone who remained inside the van—throwing instruments and wrappers to the ground as they burned through the effort to save a life.
.
With help on the scene and the siren of an ambulance growing ever closer, there was nothing for me to do except be in the way so I walked on, turning toward Washington at the Marriott Convention Center. But I could not out-walk her screaming. It echoed from the sides of buildings and chased at my heels; not the screaming of someone who was injured, though she clearly was, but the banshee wailing of someone who had lost something precious and whose soul had been torn. It was the kind of screaming for which there is no comfort other than the erosion of experience over time. I think she screamed for whoever was left inside that van. I still can’t get it out of my head; not just her screaming, but everything I have seen or experienced since moving here 11 months ago.
.
Oakland is a violent city. It routinely makes the Top Ten list of most dangerous cities in America—we currently occupy the #5 slot. A friend who is an attorney and a seasoned litigator lost an argument with his college-aged daughter, who he did not want moving to Jerusalem for fear that harm would come to her, when she said flatly, “Dad, we already live in Oakland.” True dat. My friends did not have a uniformly positive reaction when I announced I was relocating to Jack London Square on the fringe of West Oakland. One chap, among the coolest of the hip, was sufficiently alarmed to gasp—and this from a man who routinely throws himself into maverick waves in the open ocean and will take any drug handed to him by complete strangers at Burning Man. Thank you for your concern. It is not entirely misplaced.
.
Here’s a quick quiz to test your knowledge of my Oakland neighborhood:
Over what time period did the following events take place—one year, one month, one week, 48-hours?
.
A crowd rampaged through the Civic Center area smashing windows and cars after the verdict in the Oscar Grant murder trial.
.
A vigilante wearing body armor was driving a van packed with weapons and ammunition through the section of 880 that seals my neighborhood from downtown when he opened fire on police taking out a dozen or more bystander vehicles. Approximately 150 rounds were fired during the 12-minute shoot out on the freeway.
.
A sniper in a West Oakland high rise opened fire on police when they made a routine vehicle stop in the neighborhood.
.
Punks at 19th and Broadway shot and killed a man for the $17 he was carrying in his wallet. The man, a Chinese immigrant, was in town for a job interview. He is survived by his wife and three children who are now adrift in a country they do not understand.
.
Police helicopters hovered over the Lake Merritt BART station as officers rushed through the underground chasing down an armed suspect. He was not found.
.
Ok. Answer time. If you guessed one month, you are right. BUT, take away the night of looting and window smashing from the Grant trial and the answer shifts to 48-hours. Welcome to Oakland.
.
Why does Oakland not demand better of its people? Why do we settle for this behavior? Do we show no reaction because we are shell-shocked or are we simply afraid to challenge this deplorable standard lest we attract unwanted attention from the dark forces that appear to have us surrounded?
.
In answer to the question I suspect is floating through your head about now, I stay because this is random violence not aimed at me unlike the christian violence I must routinely deflect as a gay person. I was in San Francisco when Proposition 8 was over-ruled in a federal court of first instance. Shortly after 1 p.m., media vans and gay rights advocates began to gather in Harvey Milk Square at the top of Castro at Market Street in anticipation of a ruling in our favor. As the news came in that we’d won, the crowd quickly rose, leavened by the sweet justice of a victory for basic civil rights. By 5 p.m., we took to the streets and marched down Market toward City Hall.
.
For the first time in my adult life, I held an American flag. We are not citizens in the U.S. We are not protected by the full sweep of the Constitution or state and municipal laws. It has been open season on us all our lives and the degree of violence leveled at gay people in the U.S. is beyond the comprehension of those who have not experienced it directly. I had never before seen an LGBT crowd wave anything but the Gay Pride flag—the standard of our psychic territory. Seeing my tribe, my dispossessed family of choice amid a sea of American flags was over-powering and I could not stop the tears.
.
The Rev. Al Sharpton, responding to a reporter's question about his support for "gay marriage," answered: "Unless you are prepared to say they are not human beings, you have to let these folks have the right to marry." Seven million Californians, whipped into a hate-filled frenzy by the odious catholic and mormon churches, were quite prepared to deny my humanity and voted me to less-then-second class citizen under Prop 8. Carrying my fragile, little flag, I chanted and danced down the street, happy they had been proven wrong; that basic human rights cannot be submitted to a vote. But I was watching, from the corner of my eye, the crowds that lined the avenue—watching for the barrel of a gun and the anger-contorted face of a white christian who wanted to take me out.
.
Thanks, but I’ll stay here in West Oakland amid the dopers and dealers, the snipers and thieves. It is just random violence. They are not looking for me.