As Oakland boiled over with tensions, rage and grief after Oscar Grant III was killed by a transit cop, Critical Resistance Oakland formed Stop the Injunctions Coalition (STIC) in 2010 with All of Us or None and a broad base of community organizations across the city of Oakland.
This strong city-wide coalition fought the use of gang injunctions and other destructive policing policies from 2010-2015
in Oakland, including youth curfews and anti-loitering policies criminalizing and pushing out poor people and people of color in key sites of gentrification.
Building community power across a fragmented city, STIC unified diverse communities in resistance as we demanded what we wanted and needed in Oakland instead of more policing.
In March of 2015, STIC won a full victory against the use of gang injunctions in Oakland. After six years of community pressure that had stalled the injunctions from being expanded or enforced, the City Attorney officially dropped both injunctions from the books. Oakland is the first city in the country to admit defeat on all fronts, dismiss the cases in court, and drop gang injunctions from their toolbox of repressive policing schemes.
A historic win in resistance to policing, STIC’s work has become a model for abolitionist campaign organizing beyond the landscape of Oakland, using a three-prong campaign strategy of legal support & legislative organizing in defense of people named in the injunctions and pressuring City Council to denounce the injunctions, strategic press work and people’s media, as well as robust grassroots mobilization and outreach, uplifting the expertise and leadership of people and communities directly impacted by the injunctions and policing in Oakland along the way.
For more information, visit STIC’s website.
Along the way, Critical Resistance, our STIC allies, Communities United for Restorative Youth Justice (CURYJ), and engaged neighbors built the Fruitvale Community Garden, as an example of a life-affirming community resource that STIC was demanding as a real solution to harm and disenfranchisement. While the campaign to stop gang injunctions became a model fight for anti-policing organizing for years to come, the Fruitvale Community Garden became a model for the Oakland Power Projects: how to seed resources that reduce our reliance on policing as the answer to community needs.
LEARN MORE
- Check out the case study of Stop the Injunctions Coalition’s organizing to defeat gang injunctions in CR’s toolkit, “Our Communities, Our Solutions: Developing Campaigns to Abolish Policing,” pages 32-34
- Read the Critical Resistance Oakland report: Betraying the Model City: How Gang Injunctions Fail Oakland.
- Read the story of STIC’s victorious fight in Life During Wartime: Resisting CounterInsurgency, published by AK Press
- Visit Stop the Injunctions Coalitions’ Resources page to view flyers, reports, and resources from Oakland’s campaign, as well as resources from struggles in San Francisco and Los Angeles.
General Research and Reports
- ACLU fact sheet on “gang” injunctions
- Betraying the Model City: How Gang Injunctions Fail Oakland from Critical Resistance
- Displacing the Dream: A Report on Bay Area Newspaper Coverage of Development and Gentrification, Youth Media Council
- Gang Wars: The Failure of Enforcement Tactics and the Need for Effective Public Safety Strategies, from the Justice Policy Institute, 2007
- Money Well Spent: How positive social investments will reduce incarceration rates, improve public safety, and promote the well-being of communities, from the Justice Policy Institute, September 2010.
- What you should know about gang injunctions in the Western Addition, an informational report prepared by the Brothers for Change Community Action Team, 2008-2009