Fife is such a phony. Suddenly “traffic safety” is her #1 issue. This, from “defund the police” Fife and “Moms 4 Housing” Fife and “Protect the encampments” Fife. None of those issues is resonating with normal people, so Fife has found a new cause—or is pretending to.
Traffic safety! Slow streets! Raised crosswalks! Lovely tree canopies! This is what her progressivism has sunk to.
Examine Fife’s twitter feed. When she’s not waxing hysterical about being the victim of misogyny (her favorite topic), she’s now pontificating on “traffic violence.” We’ve never before known Fife to care about anything related to traffic or cars; what prompted this sudden switch? “People are starting to hit me up with ‘traffic calming/st. redesign’,” she tells us, using a meme we’ve heard before. She makes it sound like everywhere she goes, people say to her, “Councilmember Fife, may we please have more speed bumps and parklets?” I don’t think that’s the case. What people tell Fife (to the extent she actually exposes herself to constituents, which is rare) is, “Councilmember Fife, hire more cops! Crack down on criminals! Clear out the encampments!” Her particular form of evasiveness, of strategic recalculation, is eerily similar to that of Donald Trump. He often introduces preposterous hypotheses by saying, “A lot of people are [fill in the blank]”, which makes it sound like he’s responding to the will of the people when, in fact, he’s simply spreading misinformation and attributing it to others. Fife has, in fact, learned a lot from Trump…but that’s a topic for another day.
The truth is, Fife is desperate. She senses that her woke movement is on the losing side of history. She sees the forces gathering to recall Thao and Price. Her internal polling suggests she won’t be re-elected when her current term expires. She knows how unpopular she is. This is one reason why she’s been relatively reticent on twitter: whenever she says what she really thinks, the reaction is a firestorm of criticism. Therefore, she tweets about trivia. Lovely tree canopies! Just what’s been missing in Oakland.
It will come as a surprise to no one that Fife is a hypocrite. Here she is, in an interview from earlier this month, on why she has suddenly become so obsessed with traffic. “People are literally losing their loved ones. I’m tired of reading people’s names who have died [in traffic violence] at the end of meetings. They’re dying for something that could be prevented just by how we construct our streets.”
How many people have died in Oakland in traffic accidents? I don’t know the exact number, but it has to be a mere handful. On the other hand, how many people, especially Black people, have been murdered in Oakland over the last 3 or 4 years, usually by Black killers? In excess of 500. But have you ever heard Fife denounce Black-on-Black violence? Neither have I. Not once. By her silence, she supports Black violence; by her attacks on the police, she enables it. By refusing to speak truth to her people, she violates her oath of office, and becomes a symbol of indecency. In all my years living in Oakland (since 1987), I’ve seen a lot of truly awful City Council members (remember Desley Brooks?), but Fife is truly the worst.
So don’t be taken in by this nonsense about “traffic safety.” When that proves to be a dud, she’ll come up with something else—maybe goose poop on the grass at Lake Merritt—anything in her desperate fight to stay relevant, and to make it seem like she’s actually doing something when, in fact, all she’s doing is destroying Oakland.
Steve Heimoff