I had a meeting yesterday at OPD, and walking down Broadway I came to Latham Square, with its sculpture of Breonna Taylor. And I have to say that I wondered, “Where’s the memorial for Jasper Wu?”
Ms. Taylor was, of course, the 26-year old Black woman who was accidentally shot and killed in her Louisville KY apartment when cops came to talk to her boyfriend about his drug dealing. The boyfriend shot first, hitting one of the cops in the leg. The cops returned fire, hitting Ms. Taylor. The case became a national cause celebre; lots of cities have memorials to her.
Jasper Wu was the 23-month old toddler who was shot and killed by two thugs during a gun battle on the 880 freeway. The men, fortunately, were captured, but Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price refused to charge them with special circumstances, meaning neither of them faces the possibility of life in prison without parole or the death penalty.
Breonna Taylor is not the only Black victim memorialized in downtown Oakland—there are graffiti about others everywhere--but she is possibly the best known. Local progressive politicians have used Ms. Taylor to capture public attention and raise funds. At a Taylor rally in 2020, for example, Oakland’s very own Cat Brooks charged police in general with waging a “consistent and constant war that’s raged on the lives of Black women,” a vile, pernicious, racist lie. With Brooks was Carroll Fife, another unrepentant police hater. A member of Fife’s Moms4Housing—the group that squatted in that stolen house—speaking to other Black women at the rally advised them to “get ready for the war that we’re in.”
“Get ready for the war”… Hmm.
And what of little Jasper? You could, I suppose, travel the length and breadth of Oakland and find no mural, no memorial, no sculpture to remember his brief life.
Is it politically incorrect to inquire why Black activists get so worked up about Black victims who are shot (many of them while resisting arrest), but who seem to not care about Asian victims, even if they’re babies? This inquiry is not meant to diminish the horror of Breonna Taylor’s death, which was tragic, but I do wonder about the disproportionality of grief in Black activist circles. Nor we do see memorials to the hundreds and hundreds of young Black men who have been murdered in Oakland over the years by other Black men. Lest I be accused of racism—and I will—by pointing out this inconvenient fact, let me quote John Adams: “Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.”
But of course, for people like Cat Brooks, Carroll Fife, Nikki Bas, Pamela Price, Sheng Thao and their colleagues, facts are meaningless details to be ignored or denied if they run counter to the official narrative. And, if there are no actual facts to advance the narrative, alternative “facts” may be invented. As Hitler’s minister of propaganda, Josef Goebbels, observed, “If you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it.” The race-obsessed radicals who currently run Oakland are well aware of this hideous truth. When Brooks alleges that “OPD is the perpetrator of the crimes that are part of the state’s war against Black people,” she understands there are credulous individuals who will unquestioningly accept that outrageous perversion as truth. Peddling BS is what she does for a living.
As for “getting ready for the war we’re in,” I should think Moms4Housing would have better things to do with their time than riling up disgruntled people. Are they stockpiling weapons for their little war? Knitting battle fatigues? Training with paintballs in the woods? Sharpening kitchen knives? What in God’s name are they talking about? Lord knows, we’ve had enough of insurrectionists in this country, haven’t we? Look, ever since the 1960s, these losers have been advocating revolution “by any means necessary,” including violence. As they lose power, they become frantic, and more violent. It’s more important than ever to keep an eye on them, to hire more cops to control them, and to identify soft-on-crime judges who let criminals walk. Speaking of which, here are some major crimes reported by OPD in the final week of September, compared to the same period in 2022: robbery +34%, firearm attack +40%, knife attacks +49%, strong-arm robbery +34%, residential robbery +60%, carjacking +21%, auto theft +41%, commercial theft +9%, motor vehicle theft +51%. Ms. Price, this has occurred on your watch. Crime is completely out of control; under your kleptocratic regime, Oakland has turned into a narco-state. The blame is yours.
Steve Heimoff