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Oakland’s ‘BBQing While Black’ Festival Was A Glorious, 2-Weekend-Long Rebuttal

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Hundreds of Oakland, California, residents celebrated a “BBQing while Black” festival at Lake Merritt on Sunday, showing that no amount of intimidation over “coal briquettes” will stop people from having a good time.

According to the Mercury News, attendees grilled racks of ribs, sausage links, chicken, veggie patties, and more, in defiance of one BBQ Becky, the woman at the center of a viral video three weeks ago who called the police on barbecuers who were minding their own business. (Her real name is Jennifer Schulte, and she’s a Stanford-educated environmental scientist.)

While Lake Merritt allows charcoal grills, the men Becky had called the police on were using a charcoal grill in a section of the lake where charcoal isn’t allowed. When the police showed up, Becky reported the other party for harassment and vice versa, though no one was ticketed and no charges were filed.

In response to Becky’s self-assigned mission to police Black people cooking food in a public park, the community organized a cookout two weekends after the incident. This next weekend, however, really got Becky’s goat. The Mercury News described the weekend as a result of the celebratory spirit of an annual four-day celebration called Festival at the Lake, which Oakland hosted in the 1980s and early ’90s, where thousands of people gathered.

Two of the festival organizers, Logan Cortez and Jhamel Robinson, even spent $700 of their own in order to apply for city permits for the barbecue in order to avoid another “Becky” situation from arising, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

“This is about doing what we’ve already been doing and eat in peace, literally,” Cortez told the publication. “We’re not fighting for our rights; it’s already our right to do this.”

Even Oakland resident Onsayo Abram, one of the men Becky called the police on, was in attendance. Another co-organizer of the event standing alongside Abram said the event was open for everyone regardless of race, specifically for Oakland newcomers to learn about the city’s Black community and culture. Kenzie Smith, another man who BBQ Becky had called the cops on, spoke about the incident at a city council meeting last week, saying that the woman had told him and Abram that they were going to jail, and also called them the N-word.

“She kept telling me I didn’t belong here,” Abram told the publication. “I was born here… At the same time, I wasn’t trying to feed into her negativity.”

 

This article originally appeared on the Daily Dot.