BART Meeting on Oakland Shooting Sunday Jan 11 2 PM to 4 PM

I was just informed today, Saturday evening January 10th, 2009, that BART is holding a "community meeting" on Sunday, January 11th, which is tommorrow, from 2 PM to 4 PM at 101 Eighth Street, the Joseph P. Bort MetroCenter in Oakland, off Lake Merritt BART.

The timing of the meeting is questionable because I got the intel on it today (Saturday) in the afternoon. And it was clear that today was the date of the creation of whatever release went out on the meeting. I think BART's officials were trying to prevent the activation of New Media to annouce the meeting to any possible "undesirables" that may attend.

In other words, they were trying to control the spread of the message.

It's clear BART has learned NOTHING from this entire affair. The knoweldge of the shooting and the reaction to it was the child of New Media. Traditional media played a bit part because it was not able to do what New Media can do, constantly repeat an event in the pasttime for present consumption.

Thus, two actions are happening: one people are looking at the current set of videos related to the shooting and the riots, and two, more videos are being made, photos uploaded, blog posts written, tweets are being sent and retweeted, and each one in some way is contributing to the disemination of the other at a rapid pace.

Wild.

And all of this is not understood by large firms like BART, who screw up on a frighteningly regular basis in this case.

The other almost certain can of worms at play is who's coming to the BART meeting? BART has reported that "community members" and "elected officials" are to attend the meeting, which means members of the Oakland City Council , the BART Board, Assemblyman Sandre Swanson (D) Oakland, and hopefully Oakland's City Attorney, someone from California Attorney General Jerry Brown's office and others. But what about the community members?

Picking certain people from the community opens a massive can of worms if the wrong people are selected, especially if others who weren't called show up. Yikes.

What BART should have done is worked to give time to inform as many people as possible and took steps to assure a safe meeting environment. That would have signaled a new way that BART takes action.

But what we get instead is more of the same, which could lead to more of the same.

If you knwo what I mean.

Oakland Mayor Calls in OPD and D.A.

Haaziq4News is all over the Mayor's press conference. But he didn't get the Mayor's full statement -- that was missed by many and is not on YouTube in full as of this writing. I've got to impress upon Mayor Dellums how important it is to use New Media to talk to people.

Public vents over BART shooting at BART board meeting

From The Contra Costa Times: "BART held it's Board of Directors meeting and the public showed up in force to voice their frustration and anger about the shooting death of Oscar Grant III by a BART police officer on New Year's Day."

I missed this because I was litterally sitting on my ass first doing CNN.com with Ali Velshi then HLN Headline News right after that. Hard to be in more than one place at once. This I wanted to attend. But thank God for New Media.

Oakland Latino's United's Video Opinion on The Oakland Riots and Shooting

This man makes a great point about how the media did not show the peaceful protest at Fruitvale BART and did show the violent riot. The only problem is his video gets a bit nasty toward the end, so be warned. He's pissed.

But part of the problem -- he does not know this -- is Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums called a press conference at exactly the same time as the BART protest and press conference.

Why? DaveyD has his view:

Re: Bart police shoot and kill black man on camera!

YouTuber darrincoe expresses his emotions over seeing the shooting video, and he doesn't even live in Oakland. But it shows the impact this has on the national mood because New Media has allowed people to see it again and again.

The Second Downtown Oakland Riot After The BART Shooting

This time Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums got out into the streets and talked with people. This one was smaller and ended almost as quickly as it started.

New Footage of Oakland Man Murdered By BART Cop

The YouTuber write that this is new, but it's not. However it's still worth another look, if only to see that the man next to Oscar Grant on the ground was very still and silent. He was also not dark-skinned Black.

I hate to point that out but it seems there was a kind of selective treatment based on race and evident in the video, and led to the taking of Grant's life by the officer.

Why? More on that later.