Free Republic

OAKLAND — Nearly 1,000 people filled the street in front of Oakland City Hall on Thursday evening. They gathered to vent, pray, and ask how a Los Angeles jury could find Johannes Mehserle, a white former BART police officer, guilty of involuntary manslaughter for fatally shooting Oscar Grant III, an unarmed, 22-year-old black man from Hayward, in the back.At first, the crowd was electric, but not volatile. To respond with violence would dishonor Grant's memory, they said. Hundreds of Oakland police officers watched and endured taunts, spits and rocks from a small group that tried, but failed, to incite other...

KENT - Anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan would like to see today's college students become more active against the war in Iraq. ``I wish college students cared enough about what's going on in Iraq and our country to be as committed as the students were in 1970,'' Sheehan said in an interview an hour before she was to address a crowd at Kent State University on the 37th anniversary of the Kent State shootings. Sheehan, 49, whose son Army Specialist Casey Sheehan was killed in Iraq in 2004, said she does not wish for any protest to become violent, but she...