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.
This isn’t Thao’s budget—it’s Fife’s
Carroll Fife rarely if ever speaks at Council meetings, even if she’s present, which she frequently isn’t. She know she controls the agenda even if she just sits there dumbly. The chatterboxes are Kalb, Gallo, Kaplan and, increasingly, Reid. Bas talks a lot, too, due to her presidency, but it’s usually to make some bureaucratic point of order. I think I know why Fife speaks so seldom. She did manage to get in a few words in favor of—what else?—reparations.
Council set to slash police funding, endanger Oakland today
Johnson v. Grants Pass: What it means for Oakland
With the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Johnson v. Grants Pass, Oakland no longer has any excuse for not immediately clearing our parks and other public spaces of all illegal encampments.
BREAKING NEWS: SCOTUS rules on Grants Pass!
It’s early Friday morning and the details aren’t fully clear, but apparently the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that homeless people can be rousted from squatting in public places even if the city has no shelters for them.
This is exactly what we’ve been demanding for years. It’s a huge victory.
I’ll have plenty more to say about this next week. For now, let me just say that Oakland no longer has any legal excuse whatsoever to refuse to clean up our parks and other public spaces. Thao, Bas, Fife & Co. have hidden behind this excuse for years, but SCOTUS has now ripped off the fig leaf. We’ll be demanding the city get rid of every tent in every park in the city!!!
Steve Heimoff