West Oakland is a traditionally black neighborhood that surrounds the Port of Oakland. It has been heavily gentrified, developed, and restructured over the past three decades. Now there is an upper class enclave that has been established near the West Oakland BART station, in Jack London, and in the city of Emeryville.Oh fuck you and your dreadlocks.
There are only two photos on that page, so I don't definitively know who these protesters were (although there are no "traditional" blacks in those photos) -- but I know (I have a strong suspicion, I don't factually know) that the protesters were not drawn from the group mentioned above. These are Burning Man hippies, self-styled artists, people who graduated from great schools with useless majors, and the usual constituent of the Bay Area's overprivileged poverty tourists: 20-30 y/o white kids from middle class families.
The actual, working, poor people in West Oakland were at their first of the two or three jobs they hold. Or they were spending a few rare moments resting, or with their kids. Or they were lining up to get a meal at community kitchen. Actual black people were not part of this protest, because a mob of black people attacking a bus would be getting wall-to-wall coverage on every channel. It would have been responded to with a swift and overwhelming police presence.
The same thing happened a few years ago when these same non-workers shut down the Port of Oakland in the name of workers. The people who actually work the port asked that they not disrupt the port, but in the end these dreadlocked, shiftless complainers cost those longshoremen a day in wages -- Viva El Proletariado!
What we have today is a group of young, electively poor white kids who are upset that the price of unheated lofts and dingy Victorians are being driven up by people who have the means and motivation to actually own and improve them. That they wrap themselves up in the image of the poor (and yes, mostly black) -- whom they themselves displaced by rushing in to bid up rents with mom and dad's money -- makes this appeal all the more ludicrous. At least the tech gentrifiers will actually improve the fucking place, unlike these leeches!
(Source: I live and own property in Oakland)
Edited as suggested below by bonemachine.