Demonstrators gathered in Downtown Oakland on Friday night to protest a Wisconsin jury's acquittal of Kyle Rittenhouse on multiple felony charges, including first-degree intentional homicide, stemming from the night he shot and killed two men and wounded another during last summer's protests of the Kenosha police shooting of Jacob Blake.
By about 6:30 p.m., approximately 200 protestors met at 14th Street and Broadway in a demonstration led by All of Us or None and Communities United for Restorative Youth Justice, with other social justice organizations like Oakland Rising among the groups represented. Posts promoting the protest said organizers were demonstrating in solidarity with the three men shot and calling for immediate action from the U.S. Department of Justice.
Protestors marched to Oakland City Hall and Frank H. Ogawa Plaza, before later heading to the Ronald V. Dellums Federal Building. Speakers addressed crowds throughout. AC Transit redirected a number of bus lines during the demonstrations.
Buses returned to their normal routes by 8:15 p.m., shortly after demonstrators held a moment of silence as the protest was winding down.
Quanah Brightman, Executive Director of United Native Americans, told KCBS Radio on Friday night that demonstrators wanted Bruce Schroeder, the Wisconsin circuit court judge who presided over the trial, to be removed from the bench.
Schroeder faced criticism this week for dismissing a misdemeanor charge Rittenhouse faced for possessing a dangerous weapon as a minor hours before the jury deliberated and allowing Rittenhouse to pull numbers from a raffle drum to dismiss alternate jurors. Before the trial, Schroeder prohibited attorneys from referring to the three men Rittenhouse shot as "victims."
"Obviously, we set the trend as far as being the home of the civil rights movement," Brightman said of how Oakland protestors can affect change in Wisconsin.
"This is the home of the Black Panthers," he continued. "This is the home of United Native Americans. This is the home of a number of national and international groups that stand for justice, that stand for the people, that believe in justice and still are fighting this atrocity of white supremacy today."
Cat Brooks, founder of the Anti-Police Terror Project, told the assembled protestors that the Rittenhouse verdict, the Ahmaud Arbery trial and the Charlottesville "Unite the Right" civil trial all concerned "things (that) are legal in the American justice system."
"There is nothing out of bounds, out of order or out of the norm of the rulings the judges have been making, and the way this has been playing out," Brooks said. "White supremacy is baked into every single institution of this country. It is as American as apple pie."
In a Friday afternoon press conference, Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf criticized the verdict and said protest is what the city can do best.
"I expect Oaklanders to be vocal, to express their opinions, their emotions, following what I consider an extremely disturbing verdict," Schaaf said. "But at this time, we believe our streets will remain peaceful. If they are not, we will be prepared."
The Oakland Police Department told KCBS Radio in an email on Friday afternoon that it did "not have any intelligence suggesting there will be any protests in Oakland." Communities United for Restorative Youth Justice first tweeted about a demonstration on Thursday night, prior to Rittenhouse's acquittal.
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