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Black Lives Matter movement leader Shaun King (right) spoke last Saturday with Oakland leaders (L to R) City Councilmember Desley Brooks, Cat Brooks and Carroll Fife. Photo by Ken Epstein.

Shaun King, a journalist and national leader in the Black Lives Matter movement, received a warm reception in Oakland last Saturday night when about 2,000 people came out to meet him at two hastily organized speaking events at the Oakland Technical High School auditorium.

Local activists organized the event in less than 24 hours after learning that King was visiting Oakland to speak Sunday morning at McClymonds High School for True Vine Ministries.

Also speaking Saturday night were local leaders Cat Brooks, co-founder of the Anti Police-Terror Project, and Carroll Fife of the Black Power Network.

King is a writer on social media and senior justice writer for the New York Daily News. He is also a political commentator for The Young Turks and was previously a contributing writer for Daily Kos.

Over the last several years, he has directed his energies toward exposing the epidemic of police violence in the United States, including the cases of Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Sandra Bland, Philando Castile and Alton Sterling.

During election season, King backed Bernie Sanders and later supported Hillary Clinton in an attempt to keep Donald Trump from winning the presidency.

Police violence is not a current affairs issue, King said at the Saturday night event. The victims are peoples babies, their husbands, their brothers, their uncles, their sisters.

We have to get to a point where its personal, he said. Were dealing with a human rights crisis. We have to get to the point where (we understand) the human cost of brutality in this country.

When activists talk about taking on white privilege, he said, they have to understand that Its not simple, its deep. Its centuries in the making. This is not new. Its old.

In order to bring about change, four elements are necessary: people who support the cause, people who are energized to bring about change, and people who are willing to put in the hard, unglamorous day-to-day work to make change happen.

At present, the first three elements exist, but what the movement is lacking is the fourth element: a strategy for moving forward.

There are pockets of very strategic people among us, but the masses of people are not clear on what the strategy is, said King.

Cat Brooks, APTP leader, said Oakland is pushing out Black people at a rate that is unfathomable.

We are at under 25 percent.

Instead of paying for policing, the city needs to put its money into educating children, building gardens and creating jobs and housing, she said.

We have to have a conversation about where our city is putting its resources, said Brooks.

Fife talked about the current struggle in Oakland to allow African Americans to own some of the new businesses are taking off in the billion-dollar cannabis industry.

We will never be free if we dont own the fruits of our own labor. What we want to do is push for (cannabis) equity, she said.

It is estimated that the racial wealth gap means that it would take 228 years for the average Black family to achieve the wealth of what the average white family has today, she said. Thats not going to change unless we do something radically different.

The discussion of cannabis equity is scheduled to go to City Council on March 7.

King told organizers he supports Oaklands fight for cannabis equity. Ownership means jobs and entrepreneurship. Equity is key, he said.

Read more:
Black Lives Matter Movement Leader Shaun King Speaks in Oakland - Post News Group (blog)