When I call Carroll Fife a dangerous radical whose thinking process is so extreme that it puts all of us in danger, I refer to things like her “Black New Deal” proposal, which, in the final analysis, is little more than a vehicle to blackmail the City of Oakland for “reparations” money.
As part of that scheme, Fife recently rammed through a resolution to the City Council to give $150,000 to BluSummers LLC, in order to create a “Racial Impact Study” to analyze the “On-Going Effects Of Public Policy Decisions And Actions Such As Redlining, Displacement Through Eminent Domain, Urban Renewal, And Gentrification On The Black Community In Oakland And To Assess Ways To Redress The Harms Caused Through A ‘Black New Deal.’”
Her resolution passed unanimously.
The key phrase here is “Ways to Redress the Harms.” We can easily anticipate just what the Racial Impact Study will discover: it will estimate reparations in the hundreds of millions of dollars, possibly in the billions—and then will “recommend” that this amount of money be given to “the Black Community in Oakland.” This is exactly what reparations means. That BluSummers’ findings are a foregone conclusion should be apparent to everyone: Fife would not have hired BluSummers had she not been assured in advance that the “study” would go her way.
And what is BluSummers LLC? Good question. You might think it was some kind of respected think tank with a proven track record. But in fact BluSummers filed for recognition from the California Secretary of State only on Nov. 14, 2022—little more than a month ago. The only company contact listed on the filing form is one Brandi T. Summers, an Assistant Professor of Geography at U.C. Berkeley.
More to the point, Summers works closely with Carroll Fife; one of Summers’ projects, The Archive for Urban Futures, collaborated with Fife’s Moms 4 Housing movement. (You’ll recall when they squatted in that house a few years ago, which launched Fife onto her political trajectory). And shortly before Fife was elected to the City Council, Summers moderated “an exciting convo” online featuring Fife; Summers’ tweet advertising the event was titled “We’re not leaving without a fight: reclaiming land and power.” (In the case of Moms 4 Housing, “reclaiming” meant taking something that never belonged to them, i.e. theft.) In an article she co-wrote for the online journal “Places,” Summers said “Divest From Prisons--Invest in Housing, Healthcare, Education.”
Shades of “Defund the Police”! Little wonder Fife is so anxious to have the Racial Impact Study conducted by her good friend and fellow ideologue, Professor Summers.
What’s going on? Why the no-bid stuff?
We can only make educated guesses, but here’s mine: once Fife knew her City Council colleagues would support her resolution, Summers registered BluSummers in order to become a nonprofit that could legally receive money from the City Council. We know virtually nothing of BluSummers, or of Summers’ qualifications to conduct such a study, beyond her career as an academic. We do know that the City Council decided to waive the usual Request for Proposal/Qualifications (RFP/Q) process required by law for contracting out professional services in excess of $50,000. Why grant Summers this extraordinary exemption? Here’s what Fife wrote to her “Council Colleagues” on Dec. 8: “[I]t is in the City’s best interest to waive the competitive RFP/Q process …to award a Professional Services Contract to, BluSummers, LLC in an amount not to exceed $150,000.”
In the city’s best interest—or Fife’s? Obviously, Fife didn’t want someone coming in and undercutting Summers. And just like that, Summers got herself a big, fat contract that no one else was allowed to bid on.
Look, folks, this is how the City Council works. When I say that members such as Fife give money to their friends in sweetheart deals, this is exactly what I’m talking about. You can expect Summers to deliver precisely what Fife expects. And then Fife and her radical friends on the City Council—augmented by the likes of Ramachandran--will demand reparations from the taxpayers of Oakland. Free money—lots of it—much of which, if they have their way (and why wouldn’t they, since they run the city?), will come from the Police Department.
As if that’s not bad enough, the City of Oakland just predicted a massive budget deficit, amounting to $200 million over the next two years. That is going to put the squeeze on everything—police, fire, parks, street cleaning, repaving, garbage collection, schools, youth services, you name it. In the face of this impending calamity, Fife & Friends have the nerve to demand millions more for their reparations scheme. This is not public service; it’s corruption.
Steve Heimoff