Have you heard the latest on Howard Terminal? Fife wants to put a ballot measure in the upcoming election “that would let voters decide the fate of the A’s proposed waterfront ballpark.”
Never mind that actually voting is what Council members are supposed to do. But Fife—who is said to have the highest rate of voting abstentions of any of the other members—doesn’t want to have to vote on Howard Terminal. The question is, why?
This blatant abandonment of her professional obligation isn’t going over well on Twitter, where the vast majority of commenters are against it. Here’s a typical one:
“Wow, incredible how elected council members want to pass the buck to voters. They need to do their jobs and make good decisions based on the facts at hand.”
It’s been clear to me that Fife doesn’t want Howard Terminal to happen, no matter how much she professes to have an open mind. Her method is to stall. No amount of research, no matter how thorough, will ever satisfy her; she is the Warshaw of the City Council, always finding one more nitpicking reason to continue her stalling. (And then she claims she’s merely reflecting the “concerns” of her constituents.) The problem with the A’s project, from Fife’s point of view, is that it doesn’t jibe with her Black agenda: reparations, defunding the police, allowing encampments to fester, and what amounts to “housing on demand” for people of color. Were Howard Terminal to go forward, Oakland would be less poor. But keeping Oaklanders poor is in reality Fife’s goal. Poor voters are resentful voters, and Fife, like Donald Trump, counts on resentment—her own, as well as that of others--to keep her in power.
In my 35 years living in Oakland (all of them in District 3), I’ve never seen a worse City Council member. This is an elected official who will not communicate with any constituent she deems the enemy. She inhabits an echo chamber with people like Cat Brooks, Nikki Bas and Rebecca Kaplan, all of whom are similarly disconnected from the majority of Oaklanders. I believe they’ve all made up their minds to drive the A’s out of town, even though they can’t come out and admit it.
When Fife was running for City Council in 2020, she made a big deal of “uniting Oakland communities.” It was laughable. She had no intention of “uniting” anyone, just of getting elected; then, she intended to ram through her radical agenda that makes race the driving factor in all her decisions. Whether it was potholes, climate change, housing, parks, schools or public safety, Fife sees “racism” lurking everywhere.
Fife reminds me of those rightwing Republicans in the 1950s, like Joe McCarthy, who saw “Communists under every bed.” This was a whimsical way of saying that they were obsessed with Communists who, in their fantasies, were trying to take over America. These obsessive types saw Communist infiltration wherever they looked: in the schools, in the State Department, in the legislatures, in the media, in Hollywood, in the Pentagon, maybe even in their own families. They were forerunners of the obsessed Republicans today who find sexually subverting influences in books they are banning and are using the Don’t Say Gay law in Florida to stifle voices they hate. And, yes, they were the forerunnners of those radicals who see racism under every bed. Carroll Fife, in her far-left race obsession, shares many psychological characteristics with the QAnon Republican Party.
It’s so dangerous, so wrong. Wouldn’t it be nice to have well-rounded, sane City Council members who actually respected their constituents?
Unfortunately, Carroll Fife will not let go of her grievances, which warp her perception into a reality distortion field. Her real goal, with this ridiculous ballot proposal, is to intolerably prolong the Howard Terminal process—already years in the making—so that the A’s will finally say, Fuck it, it’s not worth it. We’re going to Vegas.
The good news is that, according to my sources, Fife does not have the votes to put Howard Terminal on a ballot. She probably will get three votes—herself, Kaplan and Bas. But in politics, you never know. I wouldn’t put it past, say, Gallo or Thao to jump on the Fife bandwagon; they’ve done it before. Just to make sure, please contact your City Council member and tell them to reject Fife’s proposal.
Steve Heimoff