We should all be grateful that the City Council yesterday voted against placing a measure on the November ballot that would have given Oakland voters a chance to approve or disapprove the Howard Terminal project.
I have to admit being stunned by that vote. I had thought and assumed that the leading anti-baseball Council members—Fife, Gallo and Kaplan—would have their way and force the issue to an election, although I admit also to believing that, had things gone that way, the people of Oakland would have approved the project, by a considerable margin. That’s because most Oaklanders know that the project will provide jobs, homes and recreational opportunities, in addition to giving a shot in the arm to Jack London Square, which has struggled for decades to discover its reason for existing.
I considered it likely that, had the Council voted to put Howard Terminal to the voters, the Oakland A’s would have announced that they’ve had it: they’re moving to Las Vegas. Who needs the hassle? They still might, but it’s now looking less likely.
The thing that’s struck me most about this whole dreary pattern of the City Council trying to derail Howard Terminal is the complete lack of honesty displayed by the anti-baseball crowd. Fife, Kaplan, Gallo and some others who want the A’s to leave town can’t come right out and say so, because they know how popular the A’s are to Oaklanders, and because they know how fantastic the Howard Terminal project will be for Oakland. Still, they harbor a grudge against the A’s. It’s hard to tell why. Fife rarely is honest in her discourse, but from what we know, she loves things that, in her opinion, are good for Black people. She has hinted, or more than hinted, on numerous occasions that she doesn’t want the A’s project to move forward, and she bases this on the lie (there’s no other word for it) that she “hears” from her constituents in West Oakland that they don’t want the stadium. Of course, it’s easy for a politician to say they “hear” things from the community, without telling us whom they’re hearing it from, or how many of them there are. I suppose Fife might have run into a constituent who told her they don’t want the Stadium. Fife, an arch-propagandist whose relationship with the truth is tenuous, simply cites a voice or two as proof of overwhelming objections to a new Stadium project in West Oakland, when the truth is, Oaklanders rather like the idea, with all of its economic and cultural opportunities.
It is true that a recent poll indicated that a majority of Oaklanders preferred that the project be put to the voters. But that poll’s origins need to be examined. It was paid for by something called the East Oakland Stadium Alliance, which has been one of, if not the, leading anti-Howard Terminal groups in town. As their name implies, the Alliance is comprised of East Oakland businesses and unions that stand to profit if the A’s remain at the Coliseum, which is something the A’s have said, over and over and over, they’re not going to do. The Alliance, hoping to pressure the A’s, continues to lobby for a revamped Coliseum site, but anyone with any sense at all knows that the A’s would rather move to Vegas than to have anything to do with the Coliseum site, which is in a dilapidated part of town. So it’s not surprising that a “poll” from the Alliance would find something that the Alliance’s funders wanted and paid for.
While I strongly support the Howard Terminal project, I can respect people with an opposing point of view. It just seems to me that every objection to Howard Terminal has been thoroughly demolished; last week’s approval of the project by the Bay Conservation and Development Commission was the final hurdle to be overcome. But Carroll Fife will never stop plotting and conniving to get her way. She can’t come out and admit she doesn’t want Howard Terminal to happen (although she doesn’t), so she has resorted to stalling and obstructing and making life as hard for the A’s as she can. Her hope has been that the A’s would tire and give up. Well, so far, they haven’t. Fife has met an enemy that is as dogged and tireless as she is, and with far more money.
The funny thing is—well, it’s not funny, it’s rather sad—that when the new project is finally approved, Fife will come out and take credit for it, even though she’s been trying so desperately to kill it. Some of her constituents might even believe her, but most of us will just look at Fife and think, There she goes again.
Steve Heimoff