Jen Angel, 48, was a high-profile “social justice activist” in Oakland. She is being eulogized by a variety of left-wing websites, including Antifa sites.
She founded a “punk rock zine” called Fucktooth in 1991. Later she founded Clamor Magazine, which operated from 1999 to 2006. More recently, she was a contributing writer to “Anarchist Agency.” She previously lived in Columbus, Ohio and then Chicago, IL in the 90s.
After moving to the Bay Area, she became a member of the Bay Area Anarchist Book Fair Collective and founded a group called “Aid & Abet.” The stated purpose of Aid & Abet was to teach members of other far-left activist groups how to make media. She was outspoken about being anti-police and anti-incarceration.
She had also been operating a bakery in Oakland for the past seven years.
She was fatally wounded when one or more perps drug her fifty feet with a vehicle. She died in the hospital a few days later. Neither Oakland police nor any media outlets have published a description of any suspects. Local media call it “a robbery gone bad.”
The murder, and its treatment by the victim’s friends, seem to have strong parallels to the brutal killing of Kirsten Brydum in 2008. She was also a high-profile far-left activist from the Bay Area.
Angel’s family and friend allegedly do not want the perps sent to prison:
Update from Family and Friends on the Death of Jen Angel, Oakland Community Leader, and Bakery Owner
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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. The outpouring of support and care for Jen, her family and friends, and the values she held dear is a resounding demonstration of the response to harm that Jen believed in: community members relying on one another, leading with love, centering the needs of the most vulnerable, and not resorting to vengeance and inflicting more harm.
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If the Oakland Police Department does make an arrest in this case, the family is committed to pursuing all available alternatives to traditional prosecution, such as restorative justice. Jen’s family and close friends ask that the media respect this request and carry forward the story of her life with celebration and clarity about the world she aimed to build. Jen’s family and friends ask that stories referencing Jen’s life do not use her legacy of care and community to further inflame narratives of fear, hatred, and vengeance, nor to advance putting public resources into policing, incarceration, or other state violence that perpetuates the cycles of violence that resulted in this tragedy.
