Going Deep With the Raiders Superfans Benched by Betrayal

With another disappointing season over and their owner determined to move the team anywhere but Oakland, the Raiders’ long-beleaguered football fans aren’t any less in love.

Text by Chris De Benedetti

If Oakland does one thing better than any other American city, it’s probably this: fighting back for what it believes in. Ask Occupy Wall Street, whose Oakland branch became the movement’s unlikely cleanup hitter a few years ago. Ask East Bay activists who’ve persuaded Oakland leaders to rethink their surveillance and privacy policy. Ask the protesters who demonstrated in the streets when Oscar Grant was killed by a BART police officer. Ask the surviving Oakland founders of the Black Panthers or the Hell’s Angels.