This is a link to a petition started by our friend Rajni Mandal, who monitors the Oakland Police Commission. The petition demands an end to the federal Negotiated Settlement Agreement, which as most of you know has been in effect for more than twenty years. Under the NSA the Oakland Police Department has lost its independence and much of its ability to ensure our public safety, all because a certain greedhead named Robert Warshaw, who runs the NSA, keeps finding excuses to keep OPD under his heel. Of course, Warshaw’s $1 million annual salary may have something to do with that!
Why is Oakland the most resistant city to do anything about encampments?
Under Mayor Lurie San Francisco has taken unprecedented steps to clear out encampments, arrest drug dealers, remove abandoned vehicles from the streets, and stop sideshows. Berkeley is following suit, toughening its anti-encampment policies significantly last year, although some of its new ordinances continue to be—as usual—challenged in court by pro-encampment radicals. In Fremont, as we’ve seen, the same regressive forces that have stalled encampment cleanups in other cities have been unusually aggressive. As I blogged the other day, they’ve managed to coerce Fremont into partially undoing its recently-approved encampment ban, and are actively working to scuttle the remnants of the ordinance.
Who won the fight in Fremont over encampment bans?
Pro-homeless advocates claim they won because they forced the city to rescind the part of its new law that would criminally charge anyone caught “aiding and abetting” homeless people. Anti-encampment activists say they won because the rest of Fremont’s law outlawing encampments remains in effect. The City Council passed the law in February. Its two main components are:
What’s the problem with young White men?
I am, as most of you know, a supporter of Gov. Gavin Newsom, for a simple reason: he’s doing his best to keep the liberal values of the Democratic Party alive, at a time when they’re under massive assault, not only from the current U.S. administration but large numbers of Americans, especially young men.