Dirk Scribbler's Guide to Being a 97 Percent Raiders Fan, Part 3

Unless you've been living under a rock or you've been more focused on Agent Orange becoming POTUS, you know Raiders majority owner Mark Davis officially filed relocation papers to move the storied franchise from Oakland to Las Vegas by 2020.  Although they have been my AFC team for most of my life, neither am I from the state of California nor have I ever been there; thus, I shouldn't be affected by this move, right?  Not exactly.  Even when the Raiders moved to Los Angeles for thirteen seasons between 1982 and 1994, they were still in Cali--a state which has its own mystique up and down its picturesque coast.  Moving the team to a place like Vegas might seem like the sexy pick, but as I contend in this third and final part of "Dirk Scribbler's Guide to Being a 97 Percent Raiders Fan", the appeal only stretches but so far--even for a Raiders fan from the D.C. area...

Dirk Scribbler's Guide to Being a 97 Percent Raiders Fan, Part 2

As explained in Part 1, part of what drives my love for the Oakland/Los Angeles Raiders is my subconscious infatuation with California.  However, my conscious decision to make the Raiders my AFC team ran even deeper than Tecmo Super Bowl, fierce team colors or the love for anything Compton native Kendrick Lamar laid out in "The Recipe".  From a social and political standpoint, neither Oakland nor Los Angeles have not been kind to people of color, especially in regards to police brutality.  The Black Panther Party, who were formed in Oakland in 1966, served as enforcers of justice specifically for Black and Brown people around the country against systemic racism despite perceived and actual controversy.  Although I've never seen any of them in Raiders paraphernalia, they wore all black as a sign of solidarity and empowerment.  So in Part 2 of "Dirk Scribbler's Guide to Being a 97 Percent Raiders Fan", I dig deeper than football to speak about how the Raiders became the inadvertent symbol of a new era which included yours truly...