February 27, 2026 will mark Oscar Grant’s 40th birthday.
Grant was killed at the age of 22 on New Year’s Day 2009, when he was shot on a platform at Oakland’s Fruitvale BART station by then-transit cop Johannes Mehserle.
The widely shared video of Grant’s murder set off a chain of protests and calls for police accountability, along with plays, music, and films — including Ryan Coogler’s Fruitvale Station.
On Grant’s birthday this year, and every year since his killing, his mother Rev. Wanda Johnson and the Oscar Grant Foundation host an annual fundraiser and gala.
Ahead of this year’s event, the multimedia project 1-800 Happy Birthday will celebrate the life of Grant on Sunday, Feb. 1, with a free event showcasing an art installation at Oakland’s Black Panther Party Musuem.
The installation takes the form of a phone booth that displays intimate family photos and birthday balloons. By lifting the phone receiver, audiences are able to hear audio recordings submitted by loved ones and community members, sharing their sentiments about the man whose life was stolen 17 years ago.
“If you want to see something that’s amazing,” Johnson tells me during a recent conversation, “go look at the booth.”
Johnson’s son is one of many “celebrants” honored by 1-800-Happy Birthday, a project created by San Jose-raised filmmaker and co-founder of Even/Odd Studio, Mohammad Gorjestani. At the time of Grant’s death, Gorjestani, now based in San Francisco, recalls being too young to fully process it but infuriated nonetheless.
“Seeing Oscar’s mom on television,” Gorjestani says, recalling the interviews of Johnson in the wake of Grant’s killing, “the pain that she was feeling, I couldn’t really approach it too much because it was just so overwhelming.”
Sensitive to Johnson’s emotions, Gorjestani was inspired to do more than protest — he wanted to serve the community.
“1-800 Happy Birthday is really meant to be an honoring, an intervention, and a confrontation of the epidemic of police killings in America and state-sanctioned violence,” he tells me.
The project’s first iteration came in 2014, when Gorjestani debuted his short film, Happy Birthday Oscar Grant. That was followed by two more films dedicated to people killed by armed police officers: Happy Birthday Mario Woods and Happy Birthday Philando Castile.
Filmmaking proved to be taxing, and the COVID-19 pandemic added even more hurdles to that process. So, in July of 2020, Gorjestani pivoted, creating a hotline people could call to leave voicemails celebrating the life of Mario Woods. After receiving over 100 calls, he put the recordings on a website, where they could be heard publicly.
Gorjestani then replicated this process for over a dozen other families.
The online project expanded to an in-person art installation in the fall of 2022, when Gorjestani teamed up with the New York-based arts nonprofit WORTHLESSSTUDIOS. They created a 1-800 Happy Birthday exhibition in Brooklyn, where people listened to voicemails honoring celebrants on refurbished New York City pay phones.
“We try to really pivot the way people engage with these tragedies,” says Gorjestani of the project. He stresses the importance of language, rephrasing “victims” to “celebrants,” highlighting that people who’ve had their lives taken also had birthdays.
By viewing people by the the day they were born instead of the day they died, their story becomes more relatable. “This was a person who had a birthday just like you,” Gorjestani says, “[a person] who had dreams and aspirations just like you, bad days and good days just like you.”
Late last year, WORTHLESSSTUDIOS, Gorjestani’s Even/Odd studio and the police reform group Campaign Zero secured $1 million in funding from the Mellon Foundation to support a national expansion of the exhibition. They debuted the latest iteration earlier this month at San Francisco’s FOG Art Fair at Fort Mason. With curatorial support from Benjamin “BJ” McBride and the backing of FOR-SITE’s Guardhouse Program, they created a space where community members and families who’ve lost children to police violence could celebrate their loved ones’ legacies.
As Oscar Grant’s mother, Johnson was one of the many people present.
Johnson says many of the project’s messages for her son have come from people who didn’t know Oscar personally. “They will tell you, ‘I don’t know you Oscar, but I’m praying for your family,'” she says, adding that people have also left happy birthday wishes, along with songs and poems. “It’s beautiful to see, and it’s beautiful to hear.”
Visitors get to learn intimate details about people who they might only know as names in news headlines or hashtags on social media, Johnson says.
“You get to see some of the clothing that they [wore], you get to see some beautiful photos that they’ve taken,” she explains. “It’s really an eye-opener. It’s sad, but it’s beautiful.”
The artwork also gives those like Johnson a chance to speak on the continued legacy of their family members. Since Grant’s killing, there have been numerous murals painted in his honor, a street sign mounted at Fruitvale BART that bears his name and the creation of a community center operated by the nonprofit CURYJ called the Oscar Grant Youth Power Zone.
In the policy realm, modifications to police practices on BART have been instituted, as well as significant changes to policing policies in the state of California. Most notably, 2018’s police transparency bill SB 1421 led to the release of BART’s police records on Oscar Grant’s killing.
The ripple effect of Grant’s legacy has also inspired artists and activists to create organizations that still stand to this day.
Johnson has also evolved. She’s now an internationally recognized activist who works with families who’ve lost children to gun violence, as well as a seminary student.
“My end goal is to have a doctorate in theology,” she says, elaborating that her intention is to combine religious research with her work in quelling community violence.
As for addressing the root cause of malicious acts, Johnson first points out the commonalities we all share as human beings. “It doesn’t matter what color you are,” Johnson professes, “if we cut each other, we bleed red blood, right?”
It’s not just about understanding the reason for hate, she explains.
“In order for our society to become a more productive society,” she says, “it’s going to require some love.”
The opening event for ‘1-800 Happy Birthday’ takes place Sunday, Feb. 1, at the Black Panther Party Museum (1427 Broadway, Oakland); the exhibition runs through Feb. 28. More information here.