City-wide Crowd Converges at City Attorney’s Office

Oakland Residents Tell Russo to

End Gang Injunctions Now

By Isaac Ontiveros

What: Demonstration

When: 3:00pm, Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Where: Oakland City Hall, 1 Frank H. Ogawa Plaza

Oakland, CA —Hundreds of opponents of John Russo’s controversial gang injunctions in Oakland will converge on City Hall Wednesday where a delegation of residents from North, East, and West Oakland will demand to meet with the City Attorney. North Oakland residents are fighting to end a temporary injunction in their neighborhood, while a proposed injunction for the Fruitvale and San Antonio neighborhoods will be heard in court on February 16th. The City Attorney’s efforts to file another injunction in West Oakland before the end of 2010 were curtailed by widespread opposition to the first two injunctions.


This month the Stop the Injunctions Coalition won a major victory when the City Council’s Public Safety Committee agreed to make the City Attorney’s Office and the Oakland Police Department reveal heretofore hidden information on the costs and effects of the North Oakland injunction at their next meeting February 22. North Oakland resident Zaylia Pluss says, “It took a huge amount of public pressure to get the City Council to pay attention to all the tax money Russo is wasting on these injunctions during this budget crisis. If Oakland wants to be a Model City, we must stop these ineffective gang injunctions and invest in the programs that actually work to reduce violence: after-school programs, accessible youth centers, support for people coming home from prison, well-funded schools, counseling services, and community-based ways of dealing with harm and conflict.”


Oakland residents overwhelmingly reject Russo’s claims that gang injunctions will only impact the people who are enjoined. “We know that enforcement of these injunctions will be in the hands of the notoriously corrupt Oakland Police Department Oakland. We remember the Riders and we remember Oscar Grant. Oakland claims to be a sanctuary city but gang injunctions add to the already violent and devastating anti-immigrant programs like ‘Secure Communities’ that terrorize our communities. We demand an end to gang injunctions and to all collaboration with Immigration and Customs Enforcement,” says East Oakland resident and organizer Aurora Lopez.


Demonstrators will gather outside of City Hall at 3pm and form a picket which will include speakers and community art.