Rally Changes Oakland Politics

Before February, mayoral candidate Ignacio De La Fuente declared himself the education candidate for mayor. He had not been known for taking up issues of education in the past, with one exception: bullying through demolition of the Montgomery Ward building, he foisted a school on the site at a cost of $55 million, versus the normal $16 million for a similar structure.

Then the dam burst. Oakland residents spoke out demanding peaceful neighborhoods. By the hundreds, they spoke back to City officials at meetings from north Oakland to Maxwell Park in east Oakland. The stalks were dry, and like a single spark, the call for a March 7 rally, "Enough Is Enough!" set the political prairie on fire.

Candidate De La Fuente spun on a dime. At a Feb. 10 debate of candidates, he called for "hiring more police officers." (SF Chronicle, Feb. 11, 2006) However, residents remember that De La Fuente already committed to hire more officers when he supported Measure Y and its new taxes in 2004. As soon as it passed, he and the rest of the council told Oakland, forget about it. You will not get the promised 802 officers for years to come. Shut up and pay your taxes now.

Candidate Ron Dellums told the same debate audience that the police department must embrace community policing, placing more officers on the beat in neighborhoods to build trust with residents. This beginning of a proposal raises two questions.

First, who are the "residents" whose trust the police must earn? For too long, the victims of robberies and burglaries, the victims who suffer as "boom cars" pound stereo noise into their homes hour after hour, the victims whose children must walk past street dealers on the way to school – all these victims have been ignored by politicians who display loving concern only for the wayward criminal.

Second, how can Oakland place more officers on beats when the City has abolished beats, when the police department is understaffed by 50%?

We look forward to elaboration by candidate Dellums.

Finally, the other mayoral candidate from the city council, Nancy Nadel, repeated her tired line that the City must "attack the problem at its root by expanding drug- and alcohol-abuse programs, after-school opportunities and adult literacy classes." This sermon is nothing but a cover for more small but endless grants, uncoordinated and ineffective, to social agencies whose officers build ties with councilmembers in return, often by illegally using public funds for campaign purposes. The great initiatives of the 1960s have shrunk to a bitter, tiny parody, aided by poverty-pimping politicians.

Nevertheless, the ground has shifted even before the March 7 rally. The people demand peaceful neighborhoods. Despite the weak and outright ridiculous words about crime from the candidates, their scrambling testifies to the potential power of the people.

Regardless of who succeeds outgoing mayor Brown, the most important thing voters can do this June is deny councilmembers more money to play with. A mail-in vote for an increase in the Landscape and Lighting assessment (LLAD) is expected in May or June. In reality, the money is no more for landscaping and lighting than the Measure Y money was for police. So-called LLAD money guarantees nothing, just as the councilmembers passed a jump in the library assessment (Measure Q), then promptly cut library jobs in the 2005-06 budget.

Vote No on the phony LLAD measure!