I don’t mean to pick on Carroll Fife. For more than a year I’ve had an open invitation to her to join me for tea so we could get to know each other. I’m sure she’s a delightful companion. But what she stands for is repugnant. Although I think she’s profoundly wrong on everything, nonetheless I recognize that she is a powerful, elected official whose opinions are trusted by many people. Therefore, I take her seriously enough to deconstruct her tweets and rebut them. So here we go.
“These findings aren't completely scientific, but by/large, 99% of the opposition I experience is either 1) connected to people & orgs financially benefitting from & connected to the previous administration 2) manipulated due to lack of deep investigation 3) political opportunism”
If you read the comments on her twitter feed, you’ll see lots of Oaklanders complaining about how Fife’s criminal-coddling and cop-hating have made our city more dangerous. These people are not “financially benefitting or connected” to the Schaaf administration, as Fife alleges. They’re just normal people, like you and me, who are worried about being mugged, robbed, carjacked. Or maybe these citizens are “manipulated due to lack of deep investigation”? What a crock, and an insult to those of us who think for ourselves and arrive at our own conclusions based on the facts. Are we “politically opportunistic”? What a bogus thing to say, as if everyone who criticizes Fife is running for office. Carroll Fife cannot accept the reality that people really hate her, and with good reason!
Here’s another good one:
“In Oakland, EVERYTHING is political, so believe nothing you hear, and only one half that you see. In the meantime I will not be distracted from the work so critically necessary to D3 and our entire city.”
No, Ms. Fife, everything is not political. Most of us have lives, loves, jobs, pastimes, interests. We just want to live in peace. But you and your woke co-conspirators won’t let us. You’re constantly trying to destroy the police department, and to “decarcerate” the jails and let the hoodlums back out onto the streets. You’re constantly stirring up race-based antagonisms, when all we want is to live together in harmony and not have this constant feeling of being in a race war. When you say you will not be “distracted,” what you’re really saying is that you refuse to listen to the people. You’re so addicted to your race porn that you’ve shut yourself off from reality.
And here’s another:
“I’ve alerted several agencies about this and I’m urging people to know the difference between free speech & politically stoking hate that intentionally perpetrates violence.”
Of course, when Fife says something hateful, it’s free speech. But when someone criticizes her politically, it’s “stoking hate and perpetrating violence.” That kind of nonsense is straight out of Donald Trump’s playbook. This is perhaps Fife’s most horrible trait: You can’t criticize her without her calling you a violent racist.
This is a really juicy one:
“Why they're really mad: Black New Deal, Tenant protections, Social Housing, Development without displacement, Reparations, Environmental Accountability, Budget scrutiny, Real departmental oversight, and forcing an overhaul of the status quo So yep, Let's get it in!”
You know why we’re mad? Because you, Thao, Bas, Kaplan and your woke cohorts keep foisting these stunts on us. You’ve come under bigtime fire lately for accusations that your husband beat up the homeless advocate, Vincent Williams. I read that you and your friends went wandering through the Wood Street encampment telling homeless people to NOT accept the city’s offer of shelter, but to stay in their tents because you, Carroll Fife, promised them something better. As it turns out, you have nothing better to give them and you know it. You lied to these poor people and, in their naivete, they suffered and died in the cold. You are using and abusing the homeless to further your political career. Your fairy tale of “reparations” and a “Black new deal” will never happen, nor should they, except in the most symbolic form. You keep peddling this stuff because it gets you votes and donations from useful idiots.
Here's one I take personally:
“My mission is to serve all D3 residents while centering solutions with/for the invisible & ignored. That is how we turn things around. DRASTIC shift from past practice is needed to realize real & lasting change and I will not be deterred.”
I live in D3 and I’ll tell you the District started going downhill when Fife took office. It’s dirtier and more dangerous than ever. There are more encampments and people living in vehicles than ever. More businesses are shutting down than ever. Every morning, residents wake up to overturned garbage containers and mounds of filth and rubbish on the sidewalks. Fife is so focused on her woke agenda that she has deliberately turned her back on the majority of us who pay our taxes and want clean, safe streets and parks. She wishes to pump your and my hard-earned money into phony programs that don’t work (MACRO, anti-violence). She refuses to implement the Encampment Management Policy. She still wants to defund the police and let criminals go free. She wants to install a Black Panther-style authoritarian-militant dictatorship in place of our democratic and capitalistic system of government. Yet despite being wrong time and time again, Fife “will not be deterred.” Well, she’ll find herself deterred next year, when the People of D3 vote her out of office, if we don’t recall her first.
I could go on and on, but this post is getting a bit lengthy, so I’ll let it be. #RecallShengThao
Steve Heimoff