I had coffee yesterday with a group of about ten wonderful people at a café on Piedmont Avenue and listened as they shared their concerns. Person after person had a story to tell: being afraid to go out at night. Cars broken into. Rat-infested encampments within feet of their front doors. Homeless strangers caught on their deck. Council members who didn’t care about their worries, and even laughed at them. And overall, concern about whether Oakland is going into a death spiral.
I hear these sorts of things constantly, from folks in every neighborhood, from the San Leandro border up to Emeryville, from the Hills to the Bay. People ask, “How come my council member never replies to my emails?” They ask, “What can I do?” They want to know who’s in charge of homelessness, how is the money being spent, what’s being done about tents and crime?
In most cases, there’s no answer. How can I speak for a council member who won’t return a constituent’s message? Nor can I explain how the money is being spent. We know there’s a lot of money: it must be in the hundreds of millions of dollars, poured into Oakland through the American Recovery Act and from Sacramento, not to mention parcel and other taxes. But we, the citizens, have very little understanding of where all that money goes. When the Coalition asked Council Member Loren Taylor, several weeks ago on Zoom, if anyone is keeping track, his honest answer was “No.” Different programs get the money, but we don’t know how they account for it, or how corruption is prevented (if it is). For all we know, a lot of the money is being siphoned off to disreputable ends; Oakland has a history of such abuse. If a sitting Council member doesn’t know where the money is going, how is anyone else supposed to?
Ordinary citizens feel these discrepancies, these ambiguities, “known unknowns and unknown unknowns.” It only adds to our sense of drift, irresponsibility and unaccountability at the top. The sense is that we have a government—a Mayor, eight City Council members, a City Manager, a City Auditor, and so on—but we don’t see them addressing the problems that afflict us. They hold meetings and give speeches filled with high-sounding rhetoric. But somehow, nothing ever seems to change. Encampments proliferate. Crazy people wander the streets. Of crime, I don’t have to go into the details: we all know it’s out of control. And yet we look at our electeds, and something doesn’t add up. It’s like they live in an alternate universe.
It’s easy for the average person to think to herself, “If I was Mayor, I’d” – fill in the blank. I do that kind of fantasizing, myself. I’d order all tents to relocate to city-sanctioned places. I’d budget OPD for 1,100 sworn officers. I’d let those cops do their jobs, instead of hobbling them, the way Oakland now does. But I also have to admit that these are very, very tough issues. Oakland is politically fractured. A lot of people don’t trust the cops—I heard from some of them yesterday and was a little perturbed when someone referred to cops as violent and brutal. I don’t agree with that at all, but perception, as they say, is reality. We have to reach out to those people and engage them in persuasive conversation.
Sadly, there are power brokers in Oakland who are beyond the reach of civil conversation. Their minds are made up: All cops are bastards, the Oakland Police Department is hopelessly corrupt and must be disassembled, the prisons should be emptied. People who read this blog know these claims are falsehoods. They know that Oakland cops are the best-trained in the country, and OPD is the most regulated police department in America. The entire department, from Chief Armstrong on down, understands that OPD must lead the nation in what is called police reform. They are, in fact, doing their best. But they’re not doing a good job communicating that to the public, which is why the Coalition feels the responsibility of doing it for them.
I left our Piedmont Avenue meeting yesterday saddened and disturbed by how bad these upright citizens feel to see Oakland circling the drain. At the same time, my hopes were raised. We agreed to keep on talking and sharing ideas. They’re strong, energetic and smart; they may not know exactly what to do (who does?) but, together, we’re figuring it out. As long as there are good people who care about our beloved town, there’s hope.
Steve Heimoff