As we saw last month, a Federal judge, William Orrick, prohibited Caltrans from removing homeless people from Caltrans’ property along the notorious Wood Street encampment. Caltrans needed to clear the area because the homeless people were a threat and a danger. Earlier in July, one of the scores of fires they’ve started over the years forced the closure of the 880 freeway and damaged supporting pillars.
But Judge Orrick—the same one who’s had his foot on the neck of the Oakland Police Department for years—wouldn’t let Caltrans do it because, he said, Caltrans was unable to offer alternative housing to the evicted people. I thought that Orrick’s decision was outrageous, but what can you do? Disobey a Federal judge? Gov. Gavin Newsom himself, however, disagreed with Orrick’s mandate, and threatened to withhold $4.7 million in State funding he had promised Oakland, unless they and Caltrans arrived at a solution.
The situation, at this time, is unresolved.
What Newsom has done in this chess game is to concede that Orrick has the right to halt the Wood Street closure. At the same time, the Governor seems to be telling Oakland it must come up with shelter alternatives, whether it claims to have them or not. An interesting impasse, and definitely hardball. But, as we’ve consistently seen with Oakland’s current government, they never do anything they don’t want to do, unless they absolutely have to. Now they’ll have to figure out if $4.7 million and the Governor’s wrath are enough to stimulate them to action.
But there’s a larger question. Are we supposed to just chill while an unelected liberal Federal judge uses his power to allow continued degradation of Wood Street? We need to keep in mind Orrick’s abusive behavior in the Negotiated Settlement Agreement case regarding the Oakland Police Department, in which he went to absurd extremes to keep OPD under his fiefdom for the pettiest of reasons. Orrick is entitled to his beliefs, but we’re entitled to resist him when his actions clearly make our home, Oakland, dirtier and more dangerous.
It’s so obvious to sane people that Wood Street and all the other encampments need to be cleaned up. For Orrick to use some obscure legal reasoning to prevent that is unconscionable. Like Carroll Fife and her cohorts on the City Council, he’s imposing his ideology on all of us. It would be nice if, for once, Oakland officials stood up to Judge Orrick and judges like him and said, in effect, We’re cleaning up Wood Street no matter what you say, Judge. The next move, Sir, is yours.
Steve Heimoff