Earlier this week, we heard about a Wichita, Kan., Black Lives Matter protest that turned into a community barbecue with a Q&A segment with local police.
Wichita Police Chief Gordon Ramsay challenged other departments and communities to come together and follow suit after what turned out to be an apparently productive gathering.
However, not all activists are willing to dine with the police while issues with police brutality are still rampant. At one Black Lives Matter protest in Oakland, Calif., where individuals U-locked themselves to the doors of a police-union headquarters demanding that the city divest itself from the Oakland Police Department, the barbecue invitation sent out by the OPD was not met as warmly.
"Barbecues aren’t going to stop the brutality that black folks are facing. A barbecue is definitely not going to stop this blockade. And as a radical black farmer from East Oakland—I eat pigs, I don’t eat with them," one protester, Karissa Lewis, told KTVU.
Despite Lewis' response, the Oakland police said that the offer to barbecue is an open invitation, though it is not known if any protesters will take them up on it.
Read more at KTVU.