The First Time My Facebook Page "Blew Up"

There is a phrase within certain communities in America. It is a phrase that is in reference to one person or an group of people calling one's cell phone many times, often in rapid succession and usually over a short span of time. The phrase speaks of these people "blowing up your phone." This can occur when its your anniversary and you're suppose to be meeting your honey for dinner and you're running about 20 to 30 minutes or more late and your integrity is beginning to be questioned by that person. It can occur coincidentally when a number of friends randomly decide they want to connect with you. It can occur when bill collectors get bugs up their azzes in that very special way bill collectors tend to get bugs up their azzes. The scenarios are endless. And there are also endless emotional responses we can have. Annoyance is common. So is frustration. Sometimes having our phone blown up inspires a type of affection and warmth that comes with realizing we are loved and cherished enough by at least somebody that they are worrying the hell out of us to make that love known to us through the medium of cell phone technology. I have discovered that a facebook page can also get blown up.

In January of 2009 I had recently created a facebook account. Two months earlier in November of 2008, I had been laid off from my job as a manager at a large AIDS Service Organization non-profit in San Francisco, CA. I was living in a nice, friendly co-housing community in the Fruitvale district of Oakland, California; a district known for its high Latino/Latina population and culture but also known for having significant numbers of other people of color residents as well, of which I was one as an African Descended man.

I had opened the facebook account at that particular time for a very specific reason. Even though I had recently been laid off and was now facing large and looming uncertainty about my financial future, I had planned a trip to Europe several months before the lay off and had decided that, despite the lay off, I was going to go through with my European travel plans. Setting up the facebook account was part of my plan for keeping in touch with friends on this part of the international dateline as well as other parts of the world while I traveled. I realized facebook would be a great way to give friends around the world up to the minute updates on whatever adventures and misadventures I would experience in the coming weeks.

I left San Francisco International Airport on December 26, 2008 on a non-stop flight to London's Heathrow Airport. I was going to visit at least three countries. I bought a festive and colorful "Happy New Year" sign with each letter of that phrase individually cut out. I draped it across my window for my roommate and friend Skye to see on New Years Day. I wanted him to know I was thinking about him even though I would be thousands of miles away by the time the actual day arrived.

I arrived in London, met a friend for lunch, and within several hours was on a speeding train to Lille, France to meet another friend Gerard, whose home I would be staying at, in nearby Belgium, for the first leg of my journey. We had a wonderful four days. And then my facebook page blew up.

Early on New Years Day, back stateside and in my Fruitvale neighborhood, at the nearby Fruitvale BART Station, a young African Descended man named Oscar Grant had apparently been shot by a BART police officer. Details were very sketchy at first. But suddenly my newly acquired facebook account was overflowing with angry, shocked and in some cases, totally disbelieving posts from dozens and dozens of my friends in Oakland and from around other parts of the San Francisco Bay Area. The first post came from my friend Clay Smith who lived next door and who usually was up in the wee hours of the morning. He was probably one of the first people in the whole city to be on the computer letting people know what was happening. Soon it became very clear that this was a murder that many people were quickly seeing as being unprovoked and another example of Oakland's long and shameful history of excessive police force aimed at young men of color.

From many of these facebook posts I got the clear impression that something very big and something potentially very scary was going down in my beloved Oakland. I don't remember what time of the day it was in Belgium when the first influx of facebook messages and posts about his event came in. I am almost certain in was very early in the a.m. on January 2nd, Belgium time. I had Gerard turn on one of the twenty four hour French news channels on the TV. And sure enough, within minutes was the international report and there were the familiar images of the Fruitvale BART station on the screen and the familiar insignia of the Oakland Police Department on black and white police cruisers on the screen as well. I had frequented that BART station almost every day for more than a year. And this was the same station I had used to start my journey to Europe. I had taken the BART to SFO just a few days earlier. Now this station was on French TV. There was chaos and confusion all palpable in the video images. This BART station seemed nothing like the calm, tranquil BART station I had taken into San Francisco just five days earlier. It had now been transformed into an ugly crime scene. And from what I was hearing from my friends in Oakland, it was also the scene of a New Years Day execution. It was one of the most surreal moments I have had in recent memory. I sat before the TV motionless, in some form of shock. Tears started rolling down my cheeks, uncontrollably. I couldn't believe what I was hearing and seeing.

When the shock wore off a few minutes later, the only feeling I was able to clearly identify was a strong desire to return to Oakland. I seriously considered it. I eventually decided to stay in Europe for the duration of my planned journey. But from that day on, it was a very different journey. My trip had not been ruined. That had not occurred. It was just different now.

I returned about three weeks later. I flew back to San Francisco from London. I took the BART train back to the Fruitvale station. I got off the train, walked a few feet and just stood there on the platform for a very, very long time. I don't know how long I stood there. It was long enough for people to start staring at me. That takes some doing in Oakland. I got my wits about me and walked the three to five blocks back to the house I shared with my friend Skye. I walked into my room. There, draped across the window, was the sign I had placed there just before I had left. "Happy New Year."