The City Council’s passage of Thao’s budget, with its vicious budget cuts to OPD, got a lot of headlines. But less noticed were the three councilmembers who voted against it: Janani Ramachandran, Noel Gallo and Treva Reid.
I’d love to be able to report that they cast their nay votes because of the budget’s assault on the Oakland Police Department. The loss of dozens of police officers will obviously be tremendously detrimental to our city’s safety and security, but that’s not why the three said no. Instead, as KTVU-TV reported, “Ramachandran, Reid, and Councilmember Noel Gallo voted against Thao's budget, concerned over the risk of the Coliseum sale not going through.”
To be sure, the sale of the Coliseum, which could go a long way toward balancing Oakland’s $177 million budget deficit, is iffy at best. There are many reasons why the deal could fall through. Basing a budget on a financial transaction that may or may not actually happen is a bad idea. Ramachandran, Gallo and Reid are entirely correct to oppose the budget, but not because of the uncertainty of the Coliseum deal. They should have opposed Thao’s budget because of its negative impact on OPD, and therefore on all of us. But they didn’t.
Why won’t any Oakland politician stand up and tell the truth: that Oakland is a criminal mess, and the only way to save this city is to strengthen OPD and arrest as many criminals as possible? We tell this truth every day here at the Coalition for a Better Oakland. But sometimes it seems like we’re alone. I think most Oaklanders agree with us, but they’re constantly exposed to an opposing point of view that says that cops are brutal racists and POC commit crimes due to white supremacy. If this false allegation came only from ideologues like Cat Brooks and Carroll Fife, it would be dismissed by a solid majority of Oaklanders. Instead, the Big Lie is picked up and amplified by the media and by small, timid politicians like Sheng Thao and Nikki Bas. So what’s the average Oaklander to do? He or she knows what they see in Oakland, which is horror after city-killing horror. But they’re confused, and understandably so. They want to do the right thing. They want to be compassionate. At the same time, they want to feel safe. So at election time, they’re confronted with an impossible choice: vote for progressives, who claim to be on the side of social justice but who endanger our city? Or vote against them?
If Oakland had liberal-oriented politicians who ran against the wokes, I believe we’d win those elections. But we don’t. Instead, moderate liberals are desperately afraid of being attacked by the PACs of leftwing funders like the SEIU, so even if they have doubts about the city’s progressive direction, they toe the woke line and fall into place. It’s exactly like all those Republicans who know Trump is a catastrophe but are terrified to admit it. If you want to blame any one thing for Oakland’s problems, blame this absence of moral spine.
There’s some good news out there. The City Council voted to put the Thao recall on the Nov. 5 ballot, where it will appear along with the Price recall. On that date, Oakland and Alameda County voters will have a chance to decisively change directions and deliver an historic judgment on wokeism. I’m already fantasizing about the newspaper headlines on Nov. 6: OAKLAND VOTERS DELIVER STINGING REBUKE TO PROGRESSIVES, RECALL MAYOR BY A WIDE MARGIN.
Steve Heimoff