Taeku Lee’s interesting, instructive book, “Mobilizing Public Opinion: Black Insurgency and Racial Attitudes in the Civil Rights Era,” examines the role of public opinion in galvanizing the civil rights movement of the 1960s. It became the considered opinion of the American people, especially after the horrendous events in Selma, Alabama, in1965, that segregation must end. The President of the United States, Lyndon Johnson, on March 15, 1965, was compelled to issue a nationwide speech from the Oval Office, the first such on domestic policy in nineteen years. Less than four months later, in August, Johnson saw his Voting Rights Act passed by Congress—an act hailed as a landmark in the history of U.S. lawmaking.

I bet you haven’t even heard of Measure NN, which will appear on the Oakland ballot in November. Officially titled “Oakland Community Violence and Emergency Response Act of 2024,” it purports to be “a results-driven approach to public safety which balances investments in community violence prevention and law enforcement strategies…”.

It can be hard for a political activist like me to criticize his own team. I think everyone knows I’m a Democrat who is fiercely opposed to the MAGA cult that has corrupted the Republican Party. But sometimes, in the interests of truth, you have to call out your own people when they do bad stuff.

The way Fife tells it, all that garbage in the streets of Oakland was planted there by her many enemies, most likely Piedmont billionaires, in some bizarre conspiracy to make her look bad.

“California Forever” is dead. BAHFA is dead. Both met surprisingly unexpected ends. Why did they die, and what did they have in common?