I just came across a post that Carroll Fife’s male partner, Tur-Ha Ak, put up on her Facebook page. It’s from last December, but I assume that Mr. Ak still feels the same. He wrote:
“The political right is attempting to manufacture a story that Carroll is somehow the ideological architect of defund, despite the fact that she was not even in political office during the period they claim this shift occurred. She had nothing to do with the defund movement they are trying to pin on her. This is framing, a deliberate attempt to turn a Black woman into a symbol, a caricature, and ultimately a target.”
I have a response. First, Carroll Fife for years has been the predominant force on the Oakland City Council for weakening the Oakland Police Department. Often, she’s the sole vote against things that would help OPD do their job. I don’t know if she ever publicly called for defunding the police in those words, but I believe she has. Justin Phillips, a former columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle and himself a Black man who was hired to opine about progressive Black causes, wrote, in December, 2021, that “council President Nikki Fortunato Bas and Fife have worked alongside these [defund the police] groups, [and] used the phrase on social media.” In June, 2021, Fife voted against Libby Schaaf’s proposed budget; she and Bas instead proposed their own budget that Schaaf argued would “destroy” OPD. Fife, in response, said “she [Fife] doesn’t think adding police officers to the department will improve public safety,” according to Oaklandside; she added that budgetary support for the police would keep “disenfranchised groups…marginalized.” The San Francisco Chronicle reported that “Council members Nikki Fortunato Bas and Carroll Fife spearheaded the push to defund the Oakland Police Department with the[ir] amended budget vote.”
Maybe it’s just the way I read it, but when Fife votes to constrain OPD funding, and opposes even the efforts of a moderate Mayor, Schaaf, to provide a lifeline for the cops, that’s pretty much equivalent to shouting “Defund the Police” from the rooftops. She went on to oppose public safety cameras in Oakland, and was the sole “No” vote in December on utilizing Flock cameras to help fight crime.
That “no” vote brought a lot of negative attention to Fife from people who actually care about public safety. It probably was responsible for Mr. Ak’s diatribe on Facebook, where he attempted to defend his partner. Was Fife the “architect” of defund the police? No. There was no single “architect.” But she was one of its most ardent promoters; she’s never hidden the fact that she dislikes and mistrusts OPD, which she believes to be rife with thugs and racists.
Mr. Ak, predictably, calls Fife’s critics “the political right.” That’s standard smear tactics from radicals like Mr. Ak, who know that the “right” is hated in Oakland. Public safety is not a right-left issue, it’s a human rights issue. All normal people in Oakland want more cops, especially the Black citizens of the flatlands who suffer disproportionately from crime. No one is “trying to turn [Fife] into a symbol.” No one is trying to “pin” anything on her. Fife has pinned herself to her reputation as a police hater, and there’s no way for her to wriggle out of it. We, her critics, simply disagree profoundly with her on the issue of public safety. We believe she is a danger to Oakland because of her resentment of the police, because of her tolerance for homeless encampments, and because her racist ideology—in which Black people can do no wrong and White people are suspect due to the color of their skin—has caused Oakland to fall into the mayhem it’s mired in today.
For Mr. Ak to suggest that Fife’s critics are eager for her to be shot or attacked or even killed is a vulgar, monstrous slur. (In fact, Fife herself is responsible in part for the anti-police frenzy in Oakland, which endangers cops every time they don the uniform.) We decry violence of all kinds. I’m glad that Mr. Ak loves his partner, Fife, but that doesn’t let her off the hook for the horrendous anti-police campaign she’s waged for years. Fife is wrong for District 3, wrong for Oakland, and wrong for America.
Steve Heimoff