The news of the Israel-Hamas war is so horrible and overwhelming that it feels weird to be talking about our local issues while world-shattering events are unfolding across the Middle East. Even the recall of Pamela Price, important as it is, feels almost insignificant compared to what’s going down in Gaza and Israel.
Are there any conclusions we can draw between the situation over there, and the one we find ourselves here in Oakland? The first thing I want to emphasize is the similarity between the Islamic extremists who launched this war in Gaza and the woke politicians who launched their own kind of war on us here in Oakland. Both of these groups are ideological extremists, motivated by revenge fantasies. Neither group has the slightest clue about how to make life better for anyone. What they know how to do is disrupt; at that, they’re quite talented. Hamas can kidnap, rape and murder—all very disruptive things, while Carroll Fife, Pamela Price and their ilk can undermine the criminal justice system, blaming victims instead of criminals. This, too, is severely disruptive.
But what is being disrupted? Normal life, as we have come to know and depend on it. It used to be that Oakland was pretty safe. One knew which areas to avoid, but those were places nobody wanted to go to anyway, unless you were looking for drugs or a prostitute. As long as we were able to contain the pestilence to a few dark, dirty street corners, we felt safe.
Not anymore. With the takeover of woke government (which began under Dellums, picked up speed under Quan, and then hit warp speed under Schaaf), the lifestyle of the average citizen in Oakland—me and you—plummeted. And yet, the wokes continue to double down on their failed policies of defunding the police, weakening the criminal justice system, installing weak-on-crime judges, allowing homeless camps to erupt across the city, and winning elections through secret, backroom deals with corrupt labor unions. Well, you get what you vote for, and what we got was a classic lesson on how to kill a city.
Don’t get me wrong about the Palestinians. Those wretched people deserve some kind of statehood. I blame the ultra-orthodox Jews of Israel, many of them from Russia, for their uncompromising stand against negotiating with the Palestinians. There is absolutely racism in Israel against persons of Middle Eastern ancestry. I’ve seen it among conservative Jews. But there also is racism, or anti-semitism, among too many Muslims when it comes to Jews. Both sides are horribly wrong, and they seem intent on plunging the world into a new round of unimaginable horrors.
By the same token, I have a great deal of empathy for the poor, downtrodden people of Oakland, most of whom are Black or Brown. How could you not? But the escape from poverty is no secret; it’s as old as time. Hard work is the way to lift yourself up. Hard, honest work, I should say. Anyone can make a few free bucks robbing a 7-Eleven or stealing an old lady’s purse. Takes 2 minutes and, whoopee, you have a couple hundred bucks in your pocket. But are you still going to be doing that when you’re 40 or 50 years old? Probably not. You’ll either be dead, the victim of violence, or you’ll be in prison, or you’ll be slobbering half-naked in the gutter.
In the end, violence is not the right answer for anyone. Violence begets more violence. Pretty soon, everybody is angry at everybody else. Everybody’s looking for vengeance, for payback. Then we’re at each other’s throats, exactly as we see in Israel and Gaza. Is that really what Carroll Fife, Pamela Price, Nikki Bas, Dan Kalb, Cat Brooks and Sheng Thao want here in Oakland? Apparently so, because everything they say and do contributes to this aura of stupidity and violence that hangs over Oakland like a polluted cloud. So when I draw direct comparisons between Oakland’s woke government and Hamas, I’m not just playing word games. These woke politicians are throwing gasoline onto a smoldering fire that’s on the edge of exploding.