Our Recording Secretary, Jack Saunders, has reported extensively on this topic on our Facebook page, and he’s done a great job. But I wanted to add my perspective now that I’ve had a few days to think about it.
Flip-flops are the lingua franca of politics. One notorious example: Sheng Thao and Nikki Bas deciding that, with elections coming up, it was advantageous to be pro-cop, after years of trying to defund the Oakland Police Department. But perhaps the most stunning flip-flop recently is Noel Gallo’s call for the National Guard to help fight crime in Oakland.
This, from the man who voted to defund the Oakland Police Department, and even voted “No” on adding new police academies in Oakland, before he changed his mind and flip-flopped on the issue.
Gallo’s call isn’t without precedent. Following the George Floyd riots, Gov. Newsom called up thousands of California National Guard to preserve peace. Last December, Mayor Libby Schaaf called on Newsom to send the California Highway Patrol to Oakland to “prevent violence and solve violent crime.”
Although she didn’t specifically ask for the National Guard, her request for “better coordination of our intelligence-gathering and investigations” was a confession that Oakland, on its own and under its current leadership, is incapable of addressing the crime situation.
Gallo’s Fruitvale district has become unlivable due to encampments, psychotic people wandering the streets, rotting mounds of garbage, and shocking levels of crime. Gallo’s weekend trash pickups are widely seen as publicity stunts. And now, this National Guard call.
What are we to make of it? Surely, no one can be blamed for changing their mind. It is quite possible that, after years of not seeing, or pretending not to see, or refusing to see, how horrible things are in Oakland, Noel Gallo has indeed seen the light and switched his position.
But this would have been easy enough for him to see a year ago, when he voted against the new police academies, or a year-and-a-half ago, when he voted to defund the police, or two years ago, when calls to abolish the police were rampant from the likes of Carroll Fife, and Gallo was silent as his own district slid into hell. Lord knows the rest of us saw what was happening in 2020 and 2021, and we screamed our bloody heads off, trying to warn everyone the sky was falling. You didn’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out what was going on. Whether Gallo was willfully ignorant of the facts on the ground (which seems impossible), or just didn’t give a damn, or whether he was mentally incompetent, or just had lousy judgment, I can’t really say. But we know he did nothing as Oakland burned.
As for the idea of the National Guard itself, don’t get me wrong: it’s a good one. But it’s not going to happen—not because it shouldn’t, but because Gallo’s colleagues on the City Council won’t allow it. As soon as Gallo made his suggestion, mayoral candidate Sheng Thao was denouncing it. “I do think,” she said, “calling in the National Guard is an extreme measure, one that could put our civil liberties in possible jeopardy.” This is such patent B.S. it’s worth analyzing. Yes, calling in the National Guard is an extreme measure, but the situation in Oakland is extreme, and desperate times call for desperate measures. Would you feel safer if you were shopping or dining on International Boulevard and you saw uniformed Guard troops patrolling? I would. I’d be relieved. I’d tell them “Thank you for your service.” As for our theoretical “civil liberties,” let’s talk about what’s putting us in “jeopardy.” What are “civil liberties” worth when people are afraid to go out at night, or let their kids play on the sidewalk, or when they’re harassed coming and going to work? A 16-year old boy shot dead by drive-by assailants is in no position to enjoy the “civil liberties” Thao claims to be so zealously protecting. The dead have no civil liberties at all, and when they’re murdered, the responsibility is shared by those who didn’t do enough to prevent it.
But Thao has to prove her woke credentials if she hopes to be elected Mayor, and despite her unpopularity in her own district—the people who know her best loathe her--she has a chance if she can rally progressives who still believe, against all the evidence, in woke politics. This is our City Council: dysfunctional fantasts like Gallo, Thao, Carroll Fife, Rebecca Kaplan, Nikki Bas and Dan Kalb, living in la-la land, the lunatic fringe of the Democratic Party that is, in fact, helping to bring their own party, and the rest of us, down.
Steve Heimoff