It’s never popular for an Oakland politician to urge greater law enforcement in our progressive city. Too many voters resent cops, a sentiment they’re steered into by liberal city officials who, one way or another, insinuate that the police are horrible, bad, rogue racists who delight in bashing Black skulls.
That’s huge lie, of course, but Oakland has always attracted anti-social types who harbor a generalized disgruntlement against society that easily finds expression in cop-bashing. When you don’t feel good about yourself—and most of these wokes don’t--you look for others to step on, in order to boost your sagging self-esteem. And so we have this anti-police cancer in Oakland that we just can’t seem to get rid of.
All the more reason to praise City Council member Janani Ramachandran. She’s calling for “a culture of enforcement,” by which she means law enforcement. In particular, she means enforcement of primarily parking and other auto-related laws. “The more we can enforce our civil laws,” the District 4 council member says, “the more revenue we will be able to recover,” in these perilous times of massive budget deficits and severe service cuts.
Note her qualifier of “civil laws.” Ramachandran, unfortunately, didn’t call for greater enforcement of criminal laws. That’s still a taboo topic on the Oakland City Council. To promote a stronger police department and stricter enforcement of criminal laws is practically an invitation to a primary challenge next election, if not an outright defeat in the general. Ramachandran didn’t dare go that far, even though her wealthier constituents in the Hills would have welcomed it if she had. This indicates, not just her timidity in the face of criticism, but outright cowardice.
Still, at the very least Ramachandran’s recommendation of “enforcement” is something we’ve heard practically nothing of on the City Council for many years. Leftists like Fife, Kaplan, Bas, Thao, Kalb instead have knuckled under to race warriors and blamed crime and deterioration not on the actual sociopaths committing it, but on “structural racism.” That there is no racism in Oakland—a minority-run city for decades—seems to have escaped them. If anything, Oaklanders are ready, willing and able to move beyond race, which has simply been an irritating burr under the saddle that has hobbled our city for so long. But the race warriors are a powerful lobby, and they have never permitted Oakland to become a truly post-racial city. It’s well within our power to do so. But first, we have to smash the racial-woke complex that has our town by the cojones. We all know who these enemies of conciliation are. It would take but one election to send them all packing. Sadly, though, that one election always seems to be the next one. Just when we think we might be rounding the corner, the dumb voters go and vote for someone like Barbara Lee, and we’re back to square one.
Have a wonderful weekend! I’m recovering nicely from surgery, and I thank everyone who has expressed their good wishes.
Steve Heimoff