Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Report From Oakland: The Art Of Insurrection, Pedro Lange-Churión, John Zarobell

International Studies Faculty Publications

At the end of May, the third month of a shelter-in-place order in the counties of the San Francisco Bay Area, protests erupted daily in Oakland (California) following the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. After a spree of early looting, the businesses along Oakland’s main corridors—many still closed to the public today, in November—had boarded up their windows leaving a ready canvas for a host of street artists and muralists to make their mark. The protest works that emerged are both beautiful and politically fraught, exposing some of the most sensitive social and economic divisions in the US. With …