Features

Marchers Decry Killing of Gary King at National Day of Protest

By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor
Tuesday October 23, 2007

A small group of protesters rallied at Frank Ogawa Plaza in front of Oakland City Hall late Monday afternoon as part of a National Day of Protest to Stop Police Brutality, Repression, and the Criminalization of a Generation. 

Protests were also scheduled on Thursday for New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago. 

Speaking for the family of Gary King, Jr., who was shot and killed by an Oakland Police officer last month in North Oakland, Keith Shanklin, executive board member of ILWU, local 34, said that “the family of Oakland is bleeding the blood of injustice, stolen lives, and police brutality,” and promised that protesters demonstrating against King’s death would rally every Thursday afternoon at City Hall until further notice.  

Shanklin said that he wanted Sergeant Patrick Gonzalez, the Oakland police officer who shot King, to “surrender his badge and gun and report to the community so we can arrest him for his crimes.” 

Shanklin was flanked by several members of King’s family, but said they were not able to speak at the rally themselves about the case under the advice of attorneys. 

Some 75 demonstrators, some of them walking bicycles and one riding on a scooter for disabled users, marched the seven blocks from City Hall to the 7th Street headquarters of the Oakland Police Department and back again before beginning Thursday’s rally. 

Other speakers at the rally presented the cases of several residents killed in recent months by San Francisco Police Officers.