An Oakland activist who believed in abolishing the police was killed during a robbery outside a Wells Fargo Bank on Monday, Feb. 6.
Jennifer Angel, 48, parked her car in front of the bank in uptown Oakland. That’s when robbers smashed her car window and stole her belongings inside the vehicle.
Angel ran after the getaway car and caught up with it but she was trapped in the door and dragged over 50 feet. Her head was crushed on the sidewalk. The robbers drove away.
Angel lingered in a coma for several days before she died in an intensive care unit, her family said. Police have no suspects.
The family is seeking “restorative justice” for the criminals who killed their loved one. In a statement on GoFundMe, the family said they don’t want the thugs sent to prison.
They hope police will pursue “alternatives” to prison for the criminals.
“As a long-time social movement activist and anarchist, Jen did not believe in state violence, carceral punishment, or incarceration as an effective or just solution to social violence and inequity,” they wrote.
They added: “We know Jen would not want to continue the cycle of harm by bringing state-sanctioned violence to those involved in her death or to other members of Oakland’s rich community.”
Friends gathered outside Angel’s bakery, Angel Cakes, in Oakland to remember her on Friday. The GoFundMe page raised over $130,000 to keep the bakery open.
A “Black Lives Matter” sign was visible in an upstairs window of the bakery that Angel opened in 2008.
Angel, a vocal anti-police activist, once bragged on Facebook that she instructed her employees to “never call the cops.” She told them to call the fire department in case of an emergency.
“I think Jen would affirm that of course that’s what people have been trained to believe is the answer, to lock people up,” her friend Emily Harris told the San Francisco Chronicle. “But we know that if the people who cause her harm are sent to jail, all we’re doing is perpetuating more harm.”
In a Facebook post, Angel thanked shopkeepers for not sharing their surveillance footage with police to help solve crimes. She also said she appreciated downtown businesses that had their windows broken during Black Lives Matter protests.
“Thank you businesses that support the protests,” she wrote. “Thanks for showing up, Oakland.”
Watch the video below.
