Mollie Costello-Warrior For The People
- Ellen Dahlke
- May 5, 2016
- 3 min read
Do you remember the day when you decided to move from the sidelines to the front lines?
When did you decide to actually get involved in the struggle? For each of us its different. However, the thing that each activist has in common is that there was some point when they decided to move from apathy to action.
I ran into Mollie Costello on my way home back from the City Hall March on May 3rd, supporting the San Francisco 5 hunger strikers. She was wearing a red shirt with three black revolutionaries stenciled on it. She said, “I like red. Red is the color of action.” That fits because Mollie is a woman of action. Rarely do I attend a march or protest action where she is not present.
She asked, “Rev, do you recognize me?” I smiled. Her trademark is a picture perfect, salt and pepper globe shaped afro. The natural was gone, cut down to a pixie hairstyle. I laughed and said, “Yeah, I recognize you, Mollie!”
As we were waiting for the train, I asked her how she first became involved in the struggle. She took me back to May 6, 2012. 18-year old Alan Blueford was chased Oakland Police Officer Miguel Masso shortly after midnight near the corner of 92nd Avenue Birch Street in East Oakland. Masso shot young Blueford and then shot himself in the foot.
It was alleged that the officer was taken to the hospital due to his foot injury while the teenager was left to bleed out on the sidewalk. “I was a hospice nurse at the time,” Mollie Costello said.
“I was very moved because this young person could not spend his priceless, final moments with the family that he loved because of injustice.”
Soon Mollie became involved in the founding of the Alan Blueford Center For Justice. She is one of four who once shut down the Oakland Police Headquarters for four and a half hours to protest police aggression against the community. She might be most famous for being a part of the Black Friday Protest of November 28th, 2014, where Black Lives Matter revolutionaries allegedly chained themselves to the BART subway hindering holiday shoppers from riding into San Francisco as an act of protest against police violence. Threats of incarceration and soul crushing fines loomed overhead. The community was both energized and vocal. I didn’t ask Mollie about the outcome of the situation but it is apparent that she is free.
Mollie is inviting the entire community to come by the Alan Blueford Center For Justice on Friday evening, May 6th. It is the anniversary of his “angel date.” Come by to say, “hello.” Come by to comfort the family. Come by to make your faith witness. Come shake Mollie's hand.
Not everyone is going to bolt themselves to a subway train to protest against the mistreat of his or her fellow human beings. Not everyone is even able to physically participate in a civil rights march. However, everyone can do something to better the human condition. You may not be able to be a Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to the masses but you can give direction and support to a child without parents through the Big Brothers or Big Sisters programs. You can bring a hot plate of food to an elder whose only sustenance by month's end is cat food. You can vote for politicians and programs that will benefit the poor and tell others to do likewise. You can tutor some child or write encouraging letters to someone behind prison bars. You can talk to your faith leader about what should be done in a community where educational and health systems are abysmal or lacking all together. Everybody can do something.
Its time to move from the church pews to streets, like Jesus did. It was once said that, "It only takes a single grain of sand to move the world.' We are living in times when we need everyone to move their grain.
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