On Monday, Libby Schaaf was sworn
in as Oakland's 50th mayor at the historic Paramount Theater, where
she used to dance in the hallways as a little girl while her mom served on the
board of directors. And she left no doubt in anyone's mind: There's a new
sheriff in town.
"I have lived here all my life,
and all my life I've been one of Oakland's biggest
boosters," she said. "But I've also spent my life frustrated by
Oakland's lack of safety and the gross inequities in our public schools. I've
been miffed when investment has passed us by and I've been furious when people
have disrespected our beautiful city with dumping, graffiti, and most recently
with smashed windows."
Translation: Look for a crackdown
on violence.
This will not come as welcome news
to the so-called "anarchists" – I call them nihilists – who just want
to fight. (Trashing the Christmas tree at Jack London Square? Really?)
But it's music to the ears of the
people who actually live and work in the part of Oakland that's been affected
by the violence.
They are young people, minorities,
single moms, restaurateurs, tattoo artists, sculptors, painters, hipsters and
entrepreneurs, including one guy I talked to who runs a medical marijuana
dispensary.
They are appalled by Michael Brown,
Eric Garner, and all the other killings that demonstrate a nationwide pattern
of blue-on-black violence too obvious to miss. But it's their garbage cans that
are being set on fire and their neighborhood stores that are being looted. And they
can't understand how that does anything to stop police brutality.
Not everyone thinks the violence
has been a bad thing. I heard a student at Berkeley High being interviewed on
KCBS last weekend, and she said, "Nobody paid any attention to what was
happening in Ferguson until they burned the QuickTrip down."
But she couldn't be more wrong. The
only thing burning down the QuickTrip accomplished was to give the other side
an excuse to divert the conversation from Officer Wilson's behavior to the
protestors' behavior.
What really generated public interest
in the case was the sight of hundreds of people peacefully chanting,
"Hands up! Don't shoot!"
As Martin Luther King, whose
birthday we'll celebrate next week, would have told us, that the only way to
win when the other side owns all the guns, printing presses and TV stations is
to force the American people to watch what is being done in their names.
Dr. King called it "bearing
witness," and it worked for him. It also worked for Gandhi. "People
Power" brought down Marcos in the Philippines, Mubarak in Egypt, and the
whole Soviet Union. In each case, the only shots fired were fired by the losing
side.
There must be some way the police
and the protestors could get together and figure out how to isolate these
nihilists. It's in their common interest. The protestors could protect their
demonstrations from being hijacked, and the police could get a decent night's
sleep for once.
Back in my day, during the Vietnam
War demonstrations, we'd deal with the problem by surrounding the troublemakers
with hundreds of people. That might not work today, so today's protestors will
have to figure out their own tactics.
But if they can't do it in Oakland,
where can they?
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