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Oakland stayed home -- riots are media hype
From the balcony, I can see the only supermarket serving a wide swath of West Oakland and neighboring Emeryville. In addition to the Pac 'N' Save, the same shopping district is home to a variety of other chain businesses: Best Buy, Sports Authority, GameStop, Baskin-Robbins and a massive Home Depot.
If there had been any real riots in Oakland last night"on par with what happened after the Rodney King verdict in 1992 or when the Raiders won the AFC Championship game in 2002" I would have had a catbird seat to witness the carnage. No matter what the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle might lead you to believe, those riots didn't happen.
Before night fell, I was in downtown Oakland listening to very articulate and passionate young people" many from the organization Youth Uprising"decrying violence, pushing a line that helped keep things relatively calm immediately after the Johannes Mehserle verdict came down. There were maybe 500 people"a very diverse crowd in terms of age, ethnicity, gender and race"and hundreds of police.
The people were obviously upset and the police were obviously ready for anything" they'd been practicing for weeks. The streets knew that, and they kept their cool. Oakland is too smart to get caught up fighting the National Guard and hi-tech crowd suppression tactics.