“Fruitvale Station,” is based on a true story about the fatal Oakland shooting of an unarmed young black man. This is the story of Oscar Grant III, a 22-year-old Bay Area resident, who crosses paths with friends, enemies, family, and strangers on the last day of 2008.
The film won the two top prizes at the Sundance Film Festival and has become a cause celebre among critics. The film hitting theatres just as the jurors in the George Zimmerman trial were deliberating.
This film was released in 2013, yet here in Australia I never heard anything about it until now.
Rightfully, activists are seizing the opportunity to promote the movie, which calls for justice and implies that nothing like it has occurred yet, though the man who shot and killed Oscar Grant has already served time in prison and Grant’s family has prevailed in a large civil suit.
So many videos have surfaced of officers committing race crimes around the U.S. and more so since this movie was released in 2013, including the murders of Eric Garner, 43, and Michael Brown, 18, (to just name the few that the media have paid close attention to). The list of unarmed African-Americans being shot for the most obscure reasons is endless and you can find their names and a brief explanation of what happened here: http://gawker.com/unarmed-people-of-color-killed-by-police-1999-2014
The 22-year-old, Oscar Grant is played by Michael B. Jordan. Mr. Grant was a small-time criminal who cheated on his girlfriend and had been fired from a job at a grocery store. “Fruitvale Station,” a debut effort from young filmmaker Ryan Coogler, tries to fit a halo on its subject, seemingly to play up the audience’s sympathies.
The way I see it, even if Oscar Grant III had been the worst criminal in the Bay Area, he SHOULD NOT have been shot in the back by a BART Officer while lying face down on a subway platform, and I thoroughly respect the film’s implicit plea that all human lives are valuable and deserving of basic human dignity.
This is the cell phone footage captured and its clear the actual event has been directed pretty close to actual events. *CAUTION GRAPHIC*
#AllLivesMatter
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