“Most of the remaining councilmembers polled in the 20 percent range, with Councilmember Carroll Fife the least popular, registering 24 percent strongly unfavorable.”
That’s from the East Bay Insiders newsletter of Oct. 31, citing an Oakland Chamber of Commerce poll released last Thursday.
So we have to ask why so many Oakland voters loathe the District 3 councilmember.
I know why I do, and my assumption is that all those other people find the same objectionable qualities about Fife as do I. A lot of it is her personality, or at least what comes across as her personality in photos. Now, photos are mainly how we know Fife, as she’s infamous for not communicating with people in her district unless they’re fawning sycophants. She carefully stage manages her rare public appearances, so photos of her are really the only way we have of perceiving her.
And in those photos she routinely appears to be aggressive, angry, contemptuous of others. One never sees her with a kindly look. Instead, her face looks like a middle finger, a sort of “Yeah, screw you, and what are you gonna do about it?” A picture is worth 1,000 words, says the old adage, and whenever we see a picture of Fife, we don’t need to have it explained to us that this is a nasty woman. Her body language tells it all.
But it’s not just these creepy photos that make Fife so unpopular. It’s her actions as well. Notorious as one of the leaders of the defund the police cult, Fife’s efforts to destroy the Oakland Police Department are rooted in her lifelong resentment of the law. Fortunately, public attitudes in Oakland towards OPD have shifted remarkably in the last year or so, in favor of support; but Fife remains mired in her cop-hating ideology. She’s never apologized for all the things she’s said about OPD, never indicated she has any regrets about the part she played in the approximately 500 deaths by shooting of Black people since she was elected. Did Fife pull the trigger in all those cases? No. But her rhetoric contributed to the belief in Oakland, and especially in Black communities, that cops are not to be trusted, that a massive White conspiracy exists to keep Black people down, that criminality is the result of racism, instead of a personal decision to break the law, and that, ultimately, Black people have the moral right to rebel by committing crimes.
People know this about her, without necessarily having to follow every speech Fife makes or every one of her votes on the City Council. People’s instincts are usually correct. They know that Carroll Fife is not healthy for the City of Oakland. They know she’s obsessed with being Black, and that race consume her mind, to the exclusion of almost everything else. Most voters are sick and tired of getting clubbed over the head with the racial cudgel. We have far more important things to worry about than whether some person feels mistreated due to a micro-aggression or somebody who didn’t get a job promotion believes it was because of skin color. Yet these are the pseudo-issues Fife panders to. She’s made a good living from being a professional race monger. But history is passing her by.
So while we voters are electing new members to the City Council who (let us hope) may represent truly progressive ideals, Carroll Fife is stuck in her sad, dreary cycle of vengeance. She’s been playing her race card far too long. People know it, and that’s why she’s the most unpopular politician in Oakland.
Steve Heimoff
P.S. Please share and sign this petition to end the corrupt federal oversight of the Oakland Police Department! END THE NSA!