You may be familiar with the Grand Lake neighborhood, where, just across the street from the Grand Lake Theater there’s a parking lot nestled below the 580 freeway that hugs the east end of Lakeside Park.
For a long time the lot held a single, sprawling and unsightly tent, with piles of boxes, bags and junk piled around it, like a fortress. It was inhabited by a woman who appeared to be a bit loony. I once saw her standing there in the middle of her debris holding two big pieces of wood in a cross across her chest, as if she were scaring away vampires. I suppose, being alone and vulnerable and a woman, she thought this gesture might afford her a modicum of protection. I hope it did.
But lately the tents have multiplied dramatically. There are now too many to count. (There’s also a guy living there who doesn’t have a tent, nor even a mattress; he just throws his stuff on the pavement and crashes in the midst of it.) My point is that, unless the city takes drastic action quickly, this place is going to turn into another Wood Street. The lesson is, You have to clean the first tent up. Otherwise, there will soon be more.
But this isn’t Wood Street, isolated in a part of town nobody goes. It’s in the heart of a thriving middle class neighborhood that includes both the Grand Avenue and Lakeshore Avenue shopping districts. This vital area of the city features great bars, restaurants, shops, Trader Joe’s, and a few of Oakland’s remaining drug stores, not to mention the Grand Lake Theater itself and the Saturday Farmer’s Market. Oakland can’t afford to let the neighborhood deteriorate. And yet it’s sliding into ruination.
Welcome to District 2, represented by one of the most irresponsible council members, Nikki Bas, whose politics can only be described as ultra-woke. She has allowed encampments to spiral out of control throughout her district because she thinks that homeless people have a right to live anywhere they want, in any conditions of filth and degradation, and because she believes that anyone who objects to these encampments is a rightwing racist. Bas, as most of my readers surely know, has for years allied herself with the most leftwing council members, people like Carroll Fife, Rebecca Kaplan and Sheng Thao, who is now the mayor. The damage these individuals have done to Oakland is inestimable and may well be irreparable.
On my walk yesterday, not far from the parking lot, I came across a yard sign that said “Congratulations to the Class of 2032 / St. Paul’s School.” St. Paul’s church and school are located on my block. It’s a wonderful school (I’ve had friends with kids who go there) and the church itself is to be praised for its gay-friendly practices. Seeing that sign, I couldn’t help but wonder what the neighborhood and Oakland will be like in the year 2032. If the current rate of deterioration continues, there won’t be much left. Crime will by then have surged completely out of control. Tents and encampments will have metastasized everywhere, driving out what few businesses that remained. (Just today I noticed that the Starbucks on Lakeshore has shut down.) And, I suspect, a lot of the families whose kids now go to St. Paul’s School will have pulled up stakes and left Oakland. Who would want to raise children in such dismal circumstances?
But Nikki Bas doesn’t care. I think she made a deal to support Thao for mayor, and then in turn Thao would support Bas when her two terms are up. (Both, of course, have had their careers funded by unions.) That would give us sixteen years of woke leadership, with the resulting chaos and destruction.
Clearly we can’t afford much more of this “progressive” leadership. There is absolutely nothing progressive about it. It’s as regressive as anything can be, the way that Soviet rule was regressive. The public in the old Soviet Union suffered great privation due to the hallucinatory ideology of their Communist leaders. Most of our current progressive politicians had their own ideologies informed by Communists and crypto-communists like Angela Davis, Herbert Marcuse, Mao Zedong and Cat Brooks. All of them were leftwing fascists who ruined every society they touched, who failed the very people they claimed to be helping, who sold out the working classes for their own elevation and enrichment. The most visible symbol of the progressive virus that has infected our city is those encampments. Any normal “progressive” society would long ago have refused to tolerate them. But Oakland’s leadership is not normal. It’s not progressive, it’s not healthy, it’s not designed to help people. It’s a one-way ticket to annihilation.
What can you do about it? You can support the Recall of Pamela Price (I spoke with Carl Chan yesterday and things are proceeding well, although the County of Alameda is predictably dragging its feet). And you can contact Nikki Bas (nfbas@oaklandca.gov) and order her to clean up the mess in the parking lot before it turns into Wood Street!
Steve Heimoff