Johannes Mehserle, the former Bay Area Rapid Transit officer convicted of killing unarmed Oscar Grant in July of this year, was denied bail yesterday [Dec. 3],  by Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Robert Perry.

Michael Rains, attorney for Mehserle, had asked the court allow his client to go free pending an appeal of the involuntary manslaughter conviction handed down by a Los Angeles jury on July 8.

The shooting of Oscar Grant by former Bay Area Rapid Transit police officer Johannes Mehserle Jan. 1, 2009, was captured on video and shown widely throughout the United States and abroad. Tensions surrounding the case have not abated to this today; indeed, they may have been worsened by the subsequent trial, verdict and sentencing.

Headquartered in the Oakland/San Francisco Bay Area, the movement for justice for Oscar Grant has spread virally and through good old-fashioned community organizing. In Los Angeles, however, where the trial was moved due to pre-trial publicity, many of the activists involved in the justice for Oscar Grant movement feel that a “media whiteout” severely hampered their efforts to generate the same amount of knowledge and concern about the case as the Bay Area had.

by Cat Brooks and Rachel Jackson

(Editor's note: The following piece written by OL writer/videographer Oriana Bolden is a first person account of events that took place Nov. 5 in downtown Oakland, following the sentencing of Johannes Mehserle in the Oscar Grant murder trial.)

As night fell arrests became free flowing. Information, not so much.

Former BART Police Officer Johannes Mehserle was sentenced on November 5 to two years for the 2009 murder of Oscar Grant.

The lenient sentence upset many community members who gathered at a rally in downtown Oakland to honor the life of Oscar. When the rally ended, people promptly hit the streets.

Oriana Bolden wasn't the only videographer in the crowd during Friday's march.

Alameda County Supervisor Keith Carson, District 5, sent over this announcement to share with OL readers: 

"Former BART Police Officer Johannes Mehserle’s sentence of two years minus time served for the shooting death of Oscar Grant is an example of everything wrong with the criminal justice system, Black elected officials, legal organizations and community groups said today following the sentencing hearing in Los Angeles.

A public statement signed by a number of legal, religious and civil rights groups condemned the light sentence and called attention to the likelihood that Mehserle would have received more jail time if he were a civilian.  The statement notes that police officers kill an average of one person a day, and people of color are overrepresented among the dead. Perpetrators of these crimes are rarely prosecuted or punished, and the victims’ families rarely get justice in civil lawsuits.  The signatories called for greater transparency in cases involving police misconduct and strongly urged the Justice Department to file charges against Mehserle.

It was 10 a.m. last week when I left Berkeley for Hayward to meet Oscar Grant’s family. Cephus Johnson, Oscar’s uncle, had invited me to his mother’s house where I could observe the Channel 2 TV crew that was making a show about the family.

9:00 PM  More than 100 people have reportedly been arrested.  Police at 7:30 PM were  believed to have never issued a dispersal order, but immediately declared the area at 6th and E 17th a crime scene, warning media to "get out or they would be arrested too."

by Donny Lumpkins,  New America Media

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that a large number of people who marched through the neighborhood around East 17th and 6th on Friday were "screaming, jumping on cars and smashing windows." This is the LEAD paragraph.  Way down further in the story, the reporter concludes " destructi

Curtis Jermany  of GZ PhotoZ.com Photography took a powerful set of photos of our community celebrating and mourning what Oscar Grant stands for and what his loss means to us at Friday's rally and memorial in downtown Oakland.  He stayed around to catch some of the later-evening photos of the march to East Oakland that eventually led to the trapping of over 100 people at E 17th and 6th that led to mass arrests of 152 people (see related story and real time videos on OL).  These photos by Curtis however, show and celebrate our community; you will see people you recognize, and messages you will remember.