Video: Big Dan feat. Cutty Boy: "Reminisce"

Big Dan is an educator, activist and emcee all rolled into one. He is ¼ of Oakland-based Chicano rap crew BRWN BFLO, a quartet not known to mince words. Here Big Dan weighs in on the issue of gang injunctions, a hot-button issue these days in Oakland.

“It’s not only a response, but also a message of community empowerment and a call for hood unity,” shares Big Dan. The song features Cutty Boy as well as an unnamed young man who has been placed on the gang injunction list. This issue is particularly personal for Dan because he was mixed up in the gang life when he was younger, but is now a youth advocate. Gang injunctions are one of the things he’s now fighting against on their behalf.

In the meantime, lawyers Michael Siegel and Jose Luis Fuentes are heading up the legal battle against gang injunctions in the Fruitvale district of East Oakland, citing that they are unconstitutional. “15,000 residences, perhaps 10% of the city of Oakland, would be under this net,” Siegel shared with Oakland Local reporter Eric Arnold. “We think that’s absurd. There are corners in the Fruitvale where a lot of bad things happen. And those should be the focus of law enforcement. Perhaps, if the judge wants to consider this down the road, there should be a mini-injunction on a particular corner. But to throw a net over the whole Fruitvale is ridiculous. We think that that is the main reason itself why the injunction should be thrown out.”

Another emerging critique is that there seems to be a lack of clarity as to how one arrives on this list and no clear review process to get someone off it. There also is disagreement whether the gang injunction that has been in effect in North Oakland has been successful. There are certainly those pushing a hard line to institute additional gang injunctions in the name of public safety, but others like Siegel, Fuentes and Big Dan want to ensure that people’s rights are respected in the process.