On June 30, 2025 a Black man was found hanging from a tree in Dimond Canyon, at Bridgeview trail in Oakland, CA.
Within an hour and a half of “Preliminary Investigation” the Oakland Police Department (OPD) and the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office (ACSO) were leaving the scene and telling witnesses, “It was a suicide,” the same thing they would tell Oaklandside, the only news outlet who started covering the story four weeks after the body was found. It’s been six weeks, at the time of this writing (08.10), and OPD has actively denied public calls for a press release, the man has yet to be identified, and there is no organized public outcry in the streets demanding answers.
In September of last year, Javion Magee was found dead with a rope around his neck in North Carolina. The police were quick to rule it a suicide, but it took Javion’s family nearly a year of back and forth with the Sheriff and planning an independent autopsy to bring forward the evidence needed to be confident it was suicide. No family has come forward for the man found hanging on June 30th and we have to ask how long will it take for OPD and the Alameda County Sheriff to give us answers?
One woman who went to the trail and neighborhood to investigate (@paralegal__ on Instagram) asked “Where is the coverage? Where is the outrage?!” and she’s right! In a country built on slavery and white supremacy, where police have a history of participating in lynchings, and today beat, shoo, and kill Black and Brown men more than any other group of people, why in hell would we trust the police at their word when they rule a Black man’s hanging as a suicide?
In 2020, a day after a hate crime investigation was opened into nooses found on trees in Oakland, California, a “fake body hanging from a noose” with an American flag lying next to it was reported at Lake Merritt. Then-Mayor Libby Schaaf quickly denounced the incident and tweeted a statement saying the effigy was “a deliberate and vile attempt to traumatize and divide Oaklanders.” But when the flesh-and-blood body of a Black man is found hanging on a public trail, our current Mayor Barbara Lee remains silent.
The government’s (federal and local) litmus test for hate crimes will never be enough to keep the people safe from racist violence, but the urgency of the response from Mayor Schaaf stands in stark contrast to Mayor Lee’s utter lack of action. Touted as a “progressive” win compared to Loren Taylor, Mayor Barbara Lee reveals she is no lesser-evil at all, as she has effectively kept the hanging under wraps. Her administration has denied this man a funeral and denied the public any semblance of transparency in their investigation. Clearly decades-long federal oversight hasn’t made OPD any more accountable or transparent.
The Alameda County Sheriff-Coroner has apparently ruled out foul-play, but the Sheriff’s office has refused to release the autopsy report. The Coroner, Sheriff Yesenia Sanchez, (yes, 49 of California’s 58 counties have coroners who are also elected sheriffs, you read that right) is the same person who is fighting against the criminal charges for 9 of her deputies and 2 medical staff who are responsible for the death of Maurice Monk at Santa Rita Jail. Sheriff Sanchez has blood on her hands and we cannot trust her at her word.
Until those in power or those in hiding are forced to come forward and make all the details and records public, we can’t know what really happened at Bridgeview trail. OPD and the ACSO may have decided immediately the hanging was a suicide. But the fact is, the possibility of a lynching is weighing on the minds of people who recognize this system is rotten to the core and would waste no time protecting racist vigilantes who think they can get away with murder by staging a suicide.
We’re seeing two main sentiments in online debates: “this was a lynching” and “let’s not jump to conclusions yet.” But these narrow back-and-forths don’t elevate our understanding and hold us back from seeing the bigger picture. The point missing is that what happened is a result of the American Nightmare we live under, regardless of whether it was self-inflicted or not, and that is what we should blame.
Lynchings are the foulest form of white supremacist terror, and they need to be ruthlessly denounced, but more specifically, understood as serving a specific purpose that maintains the oppressive social order against Black people, under both Democratic and Republican Administrations alike. And our country views mental illness as a disease to be eradicated. Anyone can see that when they read about how often police killings involve a victim suffering from a mental health crisis.
We also don’t know if he was homeless. But anyone who’s spent enough time on public trails knows that homeless people are often forced to camp in parks for any number of reasons, whether to avoid police violence or find any semblance of privacy. No family has come forward and if that’s what this man was going through, this oppressive capitalist system is still responsible for his death.
We bring up the need to name the real culprit behind this, the American Nightmare under capitalism-imperialism, because otherwise our righteous anger will be funneled into the same system that allows and perpetuates these tragedies, and we will never understand the deeper reason why this happened or what we need to do about it.
We need the political clarity to name the enemy: those in power who want us to remain quiet and take their word for it when we see what looks like could be a modern lynching. And we need to rupture with the current insular culture of teach-in / mutual-aid food-distro / permitted-protest carousel thinking that it will lead us out of this Nightmare.
The only way we will get answers is by bringing people together into organizations, taking to the streets and demanding them.
Because of the active suppression of information surrounding this case, when we talked to people in the streets about it this week, most people admitted that this was the first time they’d heard of it. One father said, “That’s really concerning, I walk with my children on this trail. Why haven’t they said anything?”
To combat this ongoing general paralysis, we are organizing outings to fan out across various neighborhoods in Oakland and the Bay to break the silence and get people to join us in demanding answers. If you’re up for that, hit it us up to get involved.
We Demand
- The man found on June 30th be identified and laid to rest with dignity and respect
- All documents, footage, police & autopsy reports be released to the public
- A genuine and thorough investigation into the possiblity of a modern lynching at Dimond Canyon
Dare to Struggle 