It Started With Oscar Grant: A Police Shooting in Oakland, and the Making of a Movement
Demonstrators end the night at Cesar Chavez Plaza, Wednesday, June 3, 2020.
Andrew Nixon / CapRadio
In America, Black people are twice as likely to die of COVID-19 than white people. That number sounds hauntingly familiar, because Black people are also two and a half times more likely to be killed by police.
Right now, people are risking their lives in the middle of one pandemic to stand up against another: the virus of police violence. The movement on the streets today is one many activists say began with the killing of Oscar Grant 11 years ago. Grant was 22 years old when he was shot at an Oakland train station by a transit police officer.
KQED's Sandhya Dirks looks back at how Grant's killing created networks ready to mobilize against police brutality.