The number one issue in the upcoming local elections ought to be the continuing meddling by outside, unelected agitators into the Oakland Police Department via the Negotiated Settlement Agreement, or NSA.

The S.F. Chronicle’s front page story today, headlined “Town halls reveal a divided Oakland” (online, the headline is “Fighting recall, Mayor Sheng Thao hosts citizen town halls across Oakland”), set me to thinking about political divisions that tear entire communities, if not nations, apart—what causes them, how Oakland reached this point, and where we go from here.

For the last few weeks progressive media in the East Bay have been pushing a narrative that there’s a powerful anti-Recall movement afoot, in response to the efforts to recall Pamela Price and Sheng Thao. This story is little more than a wishful fantasy on the part of anti-recallists; but it is true that the pro-Thao and pro-Price forces are panicking, and will stop at nothing to keep their leaders in power.

The thing people need to recognize about James Chanin and John Burris is that both lawyers are opportunists whose self-interests are served as long as they keep the Oakland Police Department under federal receivership.

Much opposition exists to our penal system, especially prisons. On one side, you have prison abolitionists, like Pamela Price, Cat Brooks, Carroll Fife and Nikki Bas, who wish to shut down all the prisons and jails, or at least greatly decarcerate them, and instead refer criminals to “counselors.” On the other side, you have a majority of Americans who want criminals—especially violent ones and repeat offenders—thrown into jail. The fight between the two sides has sucked all of us in, and is exemplified nationally in the presidential campaign and, locally, in the effort to recall Price.