Yesterday I reported how San Francisco, Berkeley, San Jose, Fremont, Martinez and Richmond all have decided to crack down on encampments, embarrassing Sheng Thao who alone among Bay Area mayors refused to do so. Well, now you can add Fresno to that list. It’s not in the Bay Area, but it is the Central Valley’s largest city, and its new homeless crackdown is being called “the most aggressive” in California.
Why is all this happening now, years into the encampments problem? The most oft-cited reason is because of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Grants Pass decision. From a legal standpoint, that’s true, but it would have happened sooner or later anyway, because most people are really outraged by these camps, and want them gone. The wheels of politics grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly fine: it’s taken years to reach this point where cities actually have to take action against the homeless. But we’ve reached this point, thank goodness, and can now begin to restore our cities.
But wait, you say: Didn’t Sheng Thao vow to get tough on camps just the other day? Well, she put out a written statement, something she’s good at, but as for actually taking action, she’s nowhere to be seen. Not a single encampment has been closed, and none are likely to be. That’s because Thao left herself a huge escape hatch: She will close only those encampments that “present an urgency or emergency.” As with beauty, “urgent emergencies” are in the eye of the beholder. Say someone on Thao’s staff wants to shut down every tent and shanty in Lakeside Park. It’s not too hard to imagine a pro-homeless council member like Carroll Fife—in whose district the park is—opposing the shutdown because, in her opinion, there is no “urgency or emergency” reason to do so. Fife would say, “What is the emergency? Who is being harmed?” And because of the great power she wields, she would be able to stop action for the foreseeable future—and would probably have several other council members supporting her. We’d then see the rapid response of organized protesters, who would surround the threatened tents and challenge police officers from interfering with them—protesters organized by the likes of Cat Brooks, who is very good at flash mobs. We’d have the T.V. news crews swarming over the site like flies on manure, and a shiny new cause for woke mobs to rampage downtown.
That’s how Oakland works, folks. But it doesn’t have to be this way. The way to create a new culture in Oakland is actually easy: get rid of the dreary old politicians that caused this mess—Thao, Fife, Bas, Kaplan, Kalb—and replace them with moderate centrists. Oakland can join all the other California cities that are finally doing the right thing—cracking down on encampments—or Oakland can continue to march off the cliff, carrying us all to a crashing end. I know which side I’m on.
Steve Heimoff