Oaklanders breathed a sigh of relief on Friday when we learned that Judge William Orrick abruptly lifted his Temporary Restraining Order, which had prevented Caltrans from clearing out 200 homeless people who were trespassing on the agency’s property at the Wood Street slum.
Orrick’s move came only days after he imposed the TRO. It was an odd reversal for a judge to make, one that could have been an embarrassment. So Oakland provided a fig leaf to Orrick to hide behind: a so-called “plan” to remove the homeless people in tranches of 50 every two weeks instead of all at once. That incremental approach supposedly gives the city another few months to find alternative shelter for the 200—shelter it does not have and is not likely to find. But at least it sounds like a plan, and gives Orrick an excuse for his turnaround.
My own opinion is that Orrick yielded, not because Oakland came up with a non-plan disguised as a plan, but because Gov. Newsom threatened to battle Orrick in court. It was a bare-knuckled fight Orrick did not care to take on; nor did he wish to be seen as giving in to a popular Governor. Hence the fig leaf.
We all should celebrate. Even the San Francisco Chronicle, a bastion of pro-homeless progressivism, referred on its front page to a “statewide encampment backlash.” That was a first for them: previously the Chronicle always had insinuated that anti-encampment people were a minority of heartless conservative NIMBYs. Now, suddenly, the paper discovers a “statewide backlash.” Well, we could have told them a year ago the backlash existed. In fact, we did. They chose not to listen.
It is a backlash, not merely against the tents, RVs and garbage, but against an array of sociopathic forces, of which the homeless are but a symbol, that are tearing apart the fabric of our lives. Drugs, crime, psychotic people wandering the streets, rotting infrastructure, unusable parks, police not allowed to do their jobs, and city governments paralyzed by their own discredited ideologies from acting lawfully—the backlash is against all of these horrors.
Additional evidence of the backlash and its force has been a spate of so-called Measure O ordinances in several California cities. These measures prohibit tents in inappropriate areas and, for the first time, allow residents—ordinary people—to sue cities for “unlawful camping or storage on city property.” The latest city to consider a Measure O is Sacramento, where the proposal will appear on the November ballot. It is strongly supported by Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg, and was just upheld by a Superior Court judge when it was challenged by pro-homeless forces.
Clearly, the people of California are fed up with encampments. They are fed up, too, with their electeds on City Councils who refuse to deal seriously with the problem. A “statewide backlash” is a very serious matter for politicians; they either have to take it seriously and start listening to their constituents, or else they have to stubbornly remain committed to their failed policies and tell voters, in essence, to drop dead. This latter alternative is not a good path for getting re-elected.
Here in Oakland we have seen this dynamic played out with our own City Council members, in particular Nikki Fortunato Bas, who is running for re-election. Bas is part of the Big Four Pro-Encampment council members: herself, Fife, Kaplan and Thao. The four tried for years to defund the Oakland Police Department; they consistently put the interests of homeless people over the rest of the people of Oakland; and together, they presided over a lawless regime under which Oakland has become a pathetic wreck. Bas, a super-leftist, refused to listen to her constituents, whose voices grew louder and louder each day: “Help us!” they pleaded. “Do something about the camps and the murder and the filth!”
Bas indeed told her constituents to drop dead. Then, rather suddenly, last Fall, as the backlash gathered momentum and polls indicated voters in District 2 were fed up with her, Bas discovered that her own job was on the line. Like Judge Orrick, she decided to reverse course and call for a stronger police department. She pretended to be a paragon of public safety, but she fooled no one. Her constituents, particularly in Chinatown, know all too well that she sold them out and is now hypocritically pretending to be pro-cop. A petition shortly will be circulating throughout the city demanding Bas quit the City Council. This is not good news for her re-election prospects.
The Coalition for a Better Oakland is proud to have been a charter member, if you will, of the backlash. For two years we supported and publicized it. There now is light at the end of the tunnel, although given the intractability of the opposition, there will undoubtedly be more struggles ahead. But we all should take heart that our sisters and brothers across California feel the same way we do. It’s time to get rid of these encampments, one way or another. It’s time to support the police. And it’s time to fire those dead-end politicians who got us into this mess in the first place!
Steve Heimoff