I thought MACRO was a scam from the moment I learned about it. I based this on my experience as a journalist in Oakland for 30 years, including investigative reporting I did in the 1990s on Oakland anti-violence programs. I saw shockingly fraudulent, near-criminal stuff that seemed wired into the DNA of Oakland social services; and the intervening years since have only strengthened this impression. In Oakland, if it smells like BS, it usually is. And MACRO smelled like BS.
Thao, in the Octagon, fights for her political life
Sheng Thao, in the fight of her political life due to the recall, is taking credit for the reported fall in Oakland crime in the first four months of 2024.
Other Bay Area cities are succeeding. Why isn't Oakland?
As America becomes more pro-police, Oakland wokes keep up their war on cops
A couple of years ago, “defund the police” was all the rage. Some of us realized it was bogus, dangerous nonsense, but a lot of gullible Americans bought into it.
But now that America has seen a spate of violence that’s almost unprecedented in scope, there’s been a remarkable sea change. People now like cops, having discovered how much they need them. Take, for example, this headline the other day from the estimable Washingon Post: “Killings by police brought reform. Fear of crime is unraveling them.”
The article summarizes efforts, from Memphis to Portland OR, Los Angeles to New York City, San Francisco to Washington D.C., to increase police funding, expand police surveillance, allow police pursuits of criminals, and even to ban civilian-run police boards such as Oakland’s Police Commission. Public opinion has shifted 180 degrees on police, with growing numbers of Americans saying they want spending on cops to increase in their areas.
Gallup found that just 15% of Americans favor abolishing the police (as Pamela Price and Cat Brooks wish to do). A very interesting poll by the University of Massachusetts found support for so-called police reform as well as for Black Lives Matter is dropping off a cliff; the poll’s director said, “It is no surprise that the public’s one-time enthusiasm for policies designed to bring about wholesale changes to the nation’s police departments has waned in the past year.” On the other hand, Gallup data also found that “Black Americans’ perceptions of policing in their communities remain substantially less positive than those of other U.S. adults.” Black adults’ confidence in police is 13% lower than the national average.
I welcome the public’s renewed confidence in police. The past four or five years of anti-cop hysteria in America was like the COVID pandemic. It swept through the nation, infected a lot of people, and seemed like it would never go away. But it did end, mercifully. But I’m troubled that so many Black people still mistrust the police.
I’ve tried to understand why. The conventional wisdom is that Black people have been harassed by cops all their lives, and so their resentment is only natural. Not being Black myself, I can’t say I’ve had a hard time with the police. When I was younger, I was arrested a couple times for minor stuff, and I certainly was hassled by cops back in the day. But I was never roughed up, or set up, so I never formed that anti-cop bias in my head. I accept that Black people have been hassled by cops. But I think the majority of that lies in the past. The demand for police reform has been so strong that police departments everywhere have had to double-down on procedures and training meant to eliminate every last vestige of police misconduct. I think and hope that, at least here in Oakland, Black residents no longer take such an extremely negative view of cops.
Unfortunately, we have politicians who have built their careers on instigating anti-cop sentiment. People like Carroll Fife, Cat Brooks, Nikki Bas and Pamela Price achieved considerable power by driving an anti-police narrative. These people have out-sized voices in their communities. It’s my belief that many Black Oaklanders, who may say they don’t like the police, actually have a secret place in their minds where they realize that the OPD of 2024 isn’t their grandfather’s OPD, and that the diverse men and women of the force bear them no malice but simply want to help keep Oakland safe.
But these anti-police rabble rousers are good at what they do, which is to stir the community up with inflammatory rhetoric and remind them all the time that they’re victims of White supremacy and police violence. Neither of those things is true, but the rabble rousers have had plenty of experience, and they know just what buttons to push, what slogans to use, in order to perpetuate anti-police sentiment. They are, by definition, demagogues.
And then I look at our beleaguered, rather dim-witted mayor. I don’t think she’s a bad person. I think she has a decent heart and wants to help poor people in Oakland. We all do, really; the question is, How? If Sheng Thao were a little brighter, she would have realized that the people with whom she chose to align were not making the best choices for Oakland, or even for their own communities. Thao may have had to make bedfellows with them of necessity, in order to form the coalitions she needed and get the money to be elected. But now she’s got her dream job. She no longer has to carry water for Cat Brooks or Carroll Fife. She’s free to declare her independence from a far-left cult that she must know, in her heart, has done so much damage to Oakland. She fact that Thao has not yet repudiated these people is the very reason why we’re recalling her. Here’s the link to the Recall Thao movement, who can use your donation. Thank you.
Steve Heimoff
What we can learn from Thao's twitter feed
When people post their twitter description, they usually include the most salient aspects of their identity. So how does Sheng Thao describe herself? “Renter, mom, daughter of Hmong refugees. She/Her”
It’s great she’s a mom, but why should anyone care that she’s a renter? What is Thao really trying to say? “I’m just a middle class woman who can’t afford to buy a house. Just like you.” See how Thao manages to get in a subtle dig against homeowners, who are widely loathed among progressive voters, who resent anyone with more than they have. Thao can’t come right out and say “I hate homeowners” because she needs their votes and their money. But when she brags about being a renter, she means the same thing.
And why should we care she’s the daughter of Hmong refugees? Is that supposed to make her special? We’re all descendants of refugees to this country (unless we’re indigenous). So, again, what is Thao saying? “I’m BIPOC. Vote for me if you’re also a minority.”
Well, Uncle Steve calls bullshit. Thao is just playing the old Identity Politics game that progressives invented, which is: Anything White is bad, so if I’m not White, I must be good. Christopher Rufo, the conservative writer, describes identity politics well when he says, “Whiteness represents the metaphysical essence of left-wing race politics: an irreducible force of evil, a master synonym for racism, oppression, inequality, and suffocating bourgeois norms; anything saturated with its properties can be automatically categorized and condemned.”
We see this hatred of Whiteness all the time from Oakland’s political elite. Cat Brooks is infamous for her anti-White racism. So is Carroll Fife. Pamela Price has built a career on it. They don’t even pretend to hide it, whereas more cautious politicians like Sheng Thao signal their own racism with dog whistles and codes. “Daughter of Hmong refugees” is Thao’s way of assuring BIPOC voters that she’s not part of the oppression and racism that keeps them down. No, she’s part of the solution. How do we know this? Because her ancestors were not White.
It’s easy for us to poke fun of this stupid, brainless form of political rhetoric, until we realize that a lot of people buy into it, which is why Oakland keeps electing the same racialists to high office. Appealing to anti-White resentment may work with some angry Black voters and smaller numbers of Latino voters, but Blacks and Latinos alone can’t get anyone elected to citywide office. For that, you need hill dwellers, which is to say, White people with money. You wouldn’t think that White people would vote for someone who runs on an anti-White platform, but as George Carlin is alleged to have quipped, “Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.”
Am I saying that White people who voted for Thao are stupid? Yes. And they’re even stupider if they continue to support her more than a year into her term. Thao has presided over the worst cultural and economic collapse in Oakland’s history. When I see on T.V. news little old White ladies--the same ones who support Thao--protesting the Recall of Price, as I did last night, I just have to wonder. Are you nuts? Who don’t you just give your house to the first drug-addled homeless person you see, because that’s going to be the end result of the politics that you—and Thao, and Price, and Brooks, and Fife, and Bas—promote. They’re all trying to destroy, not just rich people in Oakland, but the middle classes. Why? So that the “victims” of historic White supremacy can finally seize power, with their philosophy of Now, it’s our turn make the people who made us suffer, and we will extract due retribution. Let me assure you, I emphatically don’t mean most Black voters, but a substantial percentage that dominates the public debate. Readers: Can we not agree that if the wokes have their way, it would constitute a revolutionary overthrow of our 240-year old democracy, in which the politics of racial anger rule? If you don’t believe that vengeance and racial reprisal undergird progressive racialist politics in Oakland and elsewhere, then I’m afraid you’re in for a rude awakening.
I’ll give the likes of Price, Brooks, Fife and Bas credit for this: At least they’re honest. When they show hatred towards White people, it’s repulsive, but they mean it and aren’t reluctant to admit it. Thao, on the other hand, doesn’t even get credit for honesty. She’s just a great big blob of nothingness, standing for nothing, bloviating about nothing, trying to hang onto her job. Without moral bearing, she will do anything, say anything, to retain power. She got to be mayor by aligning with the very worst of local hack politicians; it was a pure power-play. Now that she’s climbed over their bodies to the top of the greasy pole, she could finally start speaking truth and doing things that actually help Oakland. The fact that she doesn’t proves either that she’s too dumb to understand, or too cynical and unscrupulous. I think it’s the former. Either way, this disaster of a politician should not be allowed to continue to preside over the further degeneration of Oakland. We must recall Sheng Thao.