The “Massive Downtown Oakland, East Oakland Sideshows And Gun Shootings” appears to be part of a larger effort to have mass sideshows all at once, in different cities. This is my speculation based only on a sudden rash of videos on YouTube and that happened today, all titled as referring to the Oakland Sideshow of last weekend, but not showing all of the video as from that event. Instead, a closer look reveals some of the moving images are from sideshows in Los Angeles and Mexico.
Here’s one example:
And another example:
Given that the Oakland Downtown Sideshow happened, and in the process took everyone by surprise, except those who were informed about it in an informal way, this may be an attempt to both present videos about it (they’re not YouTube Partners so they can’t make money from the videos) and in the process protect the identities of the persons who were driving and in general participating in the sideshows in Oakland.
Here, at NBC Bay Area’s newly posted YouTube video (as of January 26th 2021), my friend Raj Mathai reports on what Oakland Police say is a “troubling trend” in the sideshows:
Oakland Police told NBC Bay Area that because of budget cuts, there were not enough officers on duty to stop the event or make arrests. And the next video is from the other sideshow held last weekend, and that was in East Oakland:
And this one claims to be the Oakland sideshow, but has video images mostly not from Oakland. There’s clearly something going on:
And this YouTuber Chito Blockz doesn’t live in Oakland, but explains that he was part of a group that went from sideshow to sideshow and wound up in Oakland, where he said “God damn! Them mother-fuckers in Oakland do not play”. Then he mentions that it brought out “the SWAT team,” even though the video shows no Oakland Police SWAT team in it.
And the title of this video is “Random people start shooting into crowd at an East Oakland Sideshow”, but I think the person who made the video is not from Oakland, and did not realize they were in Downtown Oakland.
And this video shows another Oakland sideshow event on what appears to be 880 Freeway from last weekend:
This video is from the Downtown Oakland sideshow last weekend, and is titled “Oakland Sideshow on Grand Street ” – they mean Grand Avenue:
This video is from January 22nd, and is obviously an Oakland sideshow from last weekend (check “The Town” hoodies), and perhaps around the area of Fruitvale BART Station:
This video called “OAKLAND SIDESHOW!!! GIRL PLAYS CHICKEN (idk?) WITH CARS DOING DONUTS!!! IDIOT!!!” starts with the vlogger saying it’s “Sunday funday” and then we see a large group of kids on bikes riding by, and presumably to go a watch the sideshow. The viogger (who has a mask on) said there were “11 cops out there” and that it was crazy:
There are more Oakland Sideshow videos on YouTube, but the number of them ramped up starting four days ago, and through today.
I think Oakland has become a place for illegal sideshows to happen, moreover, some of this may be a giant public relations stunt to change the narrative on police defunding (UPDATE: See Schaaf, Libby – Home Attack). There’s too much action that’s coordinated with respect to date and to place: Oakland, last weekend. The other impact was to stretch the limits of what Oakland Police could deal with.
Stay tuned.