I want to explain why the upcoming election is so important to Oakland’s future. It represents the first opportunity in many years that we voters have had to change course and begin to reverse the decline that is destroying our town.
That decline had already begun when I moved here, in the 1980s. Progressives (back then they were just called liberals) had seized control of Oakland and begun their efforts to turn what had been a booming, port-side city with a lively downtown into what they believed would be a model of racial and economic justice. Lionel Wilson reigned at City Hall for most of the Eighties; he introduced race as the deciding factor in local politics, a scar from which we suffer to this day. We can see his legacy today; instead of focusing on economic issues (as voters want), our leadership through Mayors like Ron Dellums, Jean Quan and Libby Schaaf has concentrated on “social equity,” aided and abetted by a City Council that has outdone them in placing ideology over public safety and growth. Jerry Brown provided 8 years of welcome relief, governing in a rational, economically visionary way, but after he left office, the progressives, as they were now known, took over again, with “Sleepy” Ron Dellums at the helm.
The result should have been predictable: an Oakland whose economic base is disintegrating by the day. This leads to greater impoverishment of our crumbling infrastructure, a dwindling tax base, and an inability and unwillingness to manage the homelessness crisis. It leads also to a poorer Oakland, one where the middle classes are fleeing the city as survivors sink more deeply into the mire of poverty. In a very great sense, the theory that pouring resources into poor communities will lead them out of poverty has been thoroughly discredited. America has invested trillions of dollars into poor communities, from the War on Poverty to the billions now plowing into homelessness, and what has been the result? More poverty, more income inequality, more homelessness, more crime, more despair, more class warfare. One would think that any intelligent person would conclude that what hasn’t worked in the past won’t work today. But no. Instead, we have a Mayor and City Council who believe that even more money must be given to poor communities.
It simply doesn’t work. Welfare creates dependent beings who quickly lose the capacity to help themselves; once on the dole, it’s impossible to wean them off it. And that’s why this upcoming election is so important. We can begin to reverse our present course into destruction by electing more moderate candidates who are not blinded by pathological ideologies. We can start to undo the progressive chokehold that the unions have on our city. We can’t get rid of the worst of our council members, such as Carroll Fife, whose term isn’t up until 2024; but we can neutralize them by electing moderates to check them on the Council and in the Mayor’s office. We can begin the process of having a government that represents the majority who work hard, pay our taxes, obey the law and want to live in a city safe from mayhem. We can crack down on encampments and keep them limited in scope. We can, in other words, be a normal city again, instead of a failed and cynical experiment in “social justice.”
Very shortly—I hope this week—we’ll publish our complete slate of endorsements for the Nov. 8 elections. Stay tuned!
Steve Heimoff