The movie Fruitvale Station documents the last days of Oscar Grant III, a twenty-three-year-old black worker from the Bay Area in northern California who was murdered by a cop from Oakland’s Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) Police Department in 2009.
The movie illustrates how Oscar, after having been in jail, attempts to restore his life and help his family. The movie excels at showing the hard decisions that Oscar has to face in this capitalist state where working-class people experience unemployment and racism. He was fired and was unable to find another job. He then had to decide whether or not to sell drugs to pay the rent, which he ultimately decides not to do because he does not want to end up back in jail.
Oscar Fights Effects of Capitalism
Through the lens of the camera, illustrating the real-life harsh reality under capitalism and vivid family relationships, we see Oscar’s love for his four-year-old daughter as he helps her get ready for school. Sophina Mesa (Oscar’s partner) struggles as the only one employed in the family, and Oscar tries to also help his sister pay her rent. These are the simple and human characteristics of a young man and family aspiring to make ends meet as the end of the month draws near.
However, despite the family’s effort to create a better future, they are unable to do so. The family’s turning point comes when, while riding the train to celebrate the New Year, Oscar is confronted by a person with whom he had had previous confrontations in jail, and is forced to fight him. The racist police arrive on the scene and immediately force only African American young men to sit on the platform. While there, Oscar and a racist BART cop get into a verbal disagreement and the cop tries to put him in handcuffs. While Oscar is pinned to the ground, another cop pulls out a gun and shoots him in the back.
The film depicts this as only one incident in a string of “unfortunate” events, but the reality of this system is that Latino and black men are disproportionally incarcerated, unemployed and killed by the police. They find their choices limited because that is how capitalism attempts to keep the working class powerless and oppressed. This system blames the individual for not trying hard enough. The film does not illustrate that this is a deliberate systemic problem of capitalism that continues to leave young black workers with only dead-end opportunities and choices. Oscar lived in a system that uses racism and racial profiling to rob working-class men and women of their full potential. Many laws, such as “stop-and-frisk,” perpetuate this system.
Film Omits Protests, Role of Cops
The film also mentions that the “punishment” of the murdering cop was two years in jail but he ended up serving only 11 months. However, the film does not show the major working-class protests that were led by Oscar’s family as a result of this sentence. The working class cannot negotiate with a racist system that uses cops to oppress and kill them! The film does not expose the police as the tool that the ruling-class uses to physically intimidate and control working-class individuals. Instead, the film illustrates the murderer as an “inexperienced” officer, who did not know how to “handle” an escalating confrontation with a detainee. However, cops and their violence and racism are used by the ruling class in its attempt to intimidate the working class from organizing and rising up.
Oscar’s tragedy resonates with the Zimmerman trial and acquittal because forums, protests and near rebellions broke out throughout the country after both incidents. At the time of this writing, the New York courts have just refused again to indict the cop who killed Ramarley Graham in the Bronx (see page 3). These are not separate incidents but a series of attacks by the fascist cops and courts against black and Latino working-class youth. The only way to fight against these racist cops and the court system is to destroy capitalism.