I was walking home on Grand Avenue, across the street from Lake Merritt by the Senior Center, when I saw a man in a wheelchair coming toward me, about a half block away. As we neared each other, I noticed the man was holding what appeared to be a sawed-off piece of thick wooden broomstick, about two feet long. When we were about 12 feet from each other, the man deliberately steered his wheelchair directly into my path, brandishing his wooden stick menacingly in the air. He looked at me and said, “Oh, I like this one.”

I’ve long complained about the secrecy and pettifogging that taint so much of politics in Oakland. We’re never told what deals our electeds make with unions to get their financial support. The various agencies—City Council, Police Commission, etc.—often go into “closed” or secret session despite California’s Ralph M. Brown Act, which “ensures the public’s right to attend the meetings of public agencies.” And now, with this mess about Sheng Thao and California Waste Solutions, it’s becoming even clearer that there’s a vast underground labyrinth of money laundering and clandestine activity occurring out of sight and undermining our democracy in Oakland.

Readers have often heard me gripe about the San Francisco Chronicle for being so woke. Actually, the newspaper’s coverage of Oakland has been decidedly schizy. On the one hand, they delight in shocking news about murder and crime, portraying Oakland, accurately, as one of the most dangerous cities in America. But then there’s their editorial department, symbolized by opinionators like Justin Phillips, who portrays Oakland as a wonderful place populated by virtuous people of color, and ruined only by crooked, violent cops paid by out-of-town billionaires.

Events elsewhere—the presidential race, the heat wave, inflation and the economy, the threat to democracy—seem to be on everyone’s mind, pushing local Oakland politics to the provincial background. But in many respects, what happens here in the next 4-1/2 months will prove to be more important to our future than anything else.

I don’t often disagree with Gavin Newsom, but I do on the topic of Proposition 47, the 2014 ballot initiative that made theft of less than $950 a misdemeanor rather than a felony.