Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


OSCAR GRANT….I’ve been following this story but haven’t posted about it, so here’s the latest:

A former transit police officer seen on video shooting an unarmed man in the back has been charged with murder and could face up to life in prison in a racially tinged case that has sparked outrage and street protests in Oakland.

….The shooting occurred two weeks ago, early on New Year’s morning. Grant and his friends were heading home to the East Bay aboard a BART train after celebrating New Year’s Eve in San Francisco when a fight broke out between two groups of riders. BART police met the train at Oakland’s Fruitvale station and demanded that passengers disembark.

In videos that have been broadcast on television and viewed hundreds of thousands of times on the Internet, a uniformed officer later identified as Mehserle stands over a prostrate Grant, pulls his gun and fires point-blank into Grant’s back.

If you watch the video, it looks for all the world as if transit officer Johannes Mehserle, who quit the force shortly after the incident, does indeed simply pull out his gun and shoot Grant in the back while he’s prostrate on the floor and being held down by three officers (at about the 0:30 mark in the video above). It’s just stunning.

What’s equally stunning is that, as near as I can tell from watching several videos of the shooting, the other officers don’t really appear to be all that taken aback by what happened. They don’t grab Mehserle or yell at him (in the videos with sound) or anything like that. They seem to treat it like a fairly routine thing.

On another note, the LA Times tells us that “There has been some speculation that Mehserle meant to stun Grant with a Taser, not shoot him with his gun — a confusion that has occurred before.” If that’s really true, that’s as good a reason for banning Tasers as I’ve ever heard.

THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

If you can afford to part with a few bucks, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed year-end donation. And please do it now, while you’re thinking about it—with fewer people paying attention to the news like you are, we need everyone with us to get there.

payment methods

THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

If you can afford to part with a few bucks, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed year-end donation. And please do it now, while you’re thinking about it—with fewer people paying attention to the news like you are, we need everyone with us to get there.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate