As you might have heard, the Mexican Men’s National Soccer Team, visiting Oakland for a match at the Coliseum, had their van broken into on Tuesday, and were robbed of $4,000 worth of equipment.
There’s been plenty of coverage of this, which I don’t intend to add to, but I do want to point out how this reflects on B. Lee’s new regime, because it does, very negatively. Lee and her posse of sycophants have been telling us how safe Oakland is now that she’s in office. Lee already had a reputation for being old and out of it, and this just confirms what many of us already know: she’s not fit for her job. Her performance until now has been, well, performative: she’s okay at showing up for events, cutting ribbons and smiling for the cameras, but let’s face it: this is not a leader. There’s nothing inspirational about B. Lee, nothing to make you glad she’s Mayor, nothing to indicate the cares about our concerns. Maybe SEIU is happy because B. Lee is their lapdog, but as far as we, the People, are concerned, swapping Thao for Lee was meaningless. Lee, unlike Thao, may not be a crook (I think Thao was, but we’ll wait for the judicial process to play out), but electing Lee was like wheeling Grandma up from the cellar where she’d been mummifying for years. All we could expect was nothing, and that’s exactly what B. Lee has deliveredNothing personal here. But what Oakland needs, and has needed for a long time, is a person of vision and courage. Vision, because the same old same old—wokeism—was no longer working (if it ever did), and the city was begging for someone with new ideas. Courage, because it required telling a lot of powerful people that they were no longer welcome in the halls of power, particularly the unions.
My parents both were union members; I was a union member. I always admired unions for the work they did representing the interests of working people instead of the rich. But that changed when unions decided to get involved with “equity” issues. Instead of being apolitical, they got into bed with the most absurd leftwing elements in America. It may have made sense for a while, but by 2015 it should have been clear to everyone that this unnatural marriage benefitted neither side. Unions were damaged in public opinion by their obsession with race. They were no longer perceived as the good guys; instead they became partisan radicals whom even working people resented. It’s not too late for unions to change their unbalanced attitudes, and they can still do a lot of good. It’s just sad that so many unions have turned into race mongers. If they would just drop this racialized obsession, they’d have a lot more members and a lot more power.
It may be true that a union like SEIU has a preponderance of minority members: people of color, ethnic minorities, gays and Lesbians. But SEIU’s purpose should be obtaining the best possible salaries, benefits and working conditions for all its members, regardless of identity politics. Their constant fixation on “under-represented, low income, and diverse communities” makes the union shills for certain demographic groups instead of for all workers. There’s no reason for SEIU Local 1021 to have an AFRAM (African American) Solidarity Committee for “SEIU members and staff of African descent.” Ditto for the Lavender Solidarity Committee, Women’s Solidarity Committee and Latino Caucus. How about an Albino Trans Committee? Can’t SEIU see that this fragmenting of Americans into fringe groups just divides us? Don’t they realize that real Americans are tired of all this? As the late Christopher Hitchens put it, “If I would not vote against someone on the grounds of ‘race’ or ‘gender’ alone, then by the exact same token I would not cast a vote in his or her favor for the identical reason.” That sentiment, with which I concur, is the quintessence of authentic equity: equity is not “I’ll vote for Barbara Lee because she’s Black.” That’s racism, and it’s unconstitutional, unAmerican, and profoundly stupid.
Steve Heimoff