Recently, I got an email from my District Councilman, Ignacio De La Fuente.
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Dear Residents,
While I agree with the message of the Occupy movement and consider myself, along with all City Employees, including the men and women in our Police Department, to be part of the 99%, I disagree that occupying Frank Ogawa Plaza, shutting down the Port, or calling for a general strike against our City, is going to impact the 1% that this movement is supposed to be targeting.
I do not believe that the 1% was affected by the small businesses that were vandalized earlier this week in our Downtown. Nor were they impacted by the Port truckers or small business employees that were forced to miss work on Wednesday.
The “Occupy Movement” is costing Oakland millions of dollars, dollars that we simply do not have given the economic downturn we find ourselves in. The 1% will not send the City a check to cover the damages suffered by our downtown businesses earlier this week. They're not the ones that are going to pay to replace all the broken windows of City owned buildings nor will they compensate local businesses for the damage they sustained on Wednesday night.
The impacts to residents all over the City, not just in the downtown area, are serious.
There are Oakland families who lost an entire day’s pay on Wednesday. How do we justify the fact that 15 of our 17 Head Start Centers in the City were closed and that those families were forced to make last minute alternative arrangements for child care? This caused a serious financial impact to our lowest income families who ARE part of the 99%.
Residents who rely on public transportation were not able to get to or from work due to Wednesday's disruption to public transportation services. Calls for service to the Police department are going unanswered. As an example, Saturday alone, there were 179 pending calls for service to OPD.
We can not allow this to continue while the residents of our City suffer the consequences. Every additional public works employee who is spending their time in the plaza cleaning up after the occupiers is NOT in our neighborhoods cleaning our parks, emptying our garbage cans and removing graffiti or performing the other services that we as tax payers, pay for.
We still have shootings, robberies and burglaries everyday, the only difference now is that OPD is taking longer to get to those calls. That’s not fair to the residents and small business owners of Oakland.
Just because we might agree with the message we cannot simply allow a group of individuals to outright break our local laws, infringe upon the rights of others, or indefinitely occupy a space that is intended to be used and enjoyed by all Oaklander’s. We also cannot treat this group of individuals any differently than we would any other group. To my colleagues who support the continuing occupation of Frank Ogawa plaza I pose the following question, "would this all be OK if the group outside was the Tea Party or some other right wing extremist group?"
We can not wait until something terrible happens in the Plaza. Nor can we wait for further destruction of businesses. I demand that the Mayor and City Administrator provide the Council with a plan to remove the encampment and bring back the Plaza for everyone’s use.
I hope the residents of Oakland hold the Council and Mayor accountable for their actions or inactions in dealing with this problem.
Ignacio
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My response (which I emailed to him, but am posting here for discussion):
As one of your constituents, I have to take issue with some of your points.
Yes, there are problems with how the Occupy Oakland protests are impacting local business people. This can and should be prevented. Absolutely.
However, the vandalization of small businesses was most likely not the intent or action of the protest organizers or most of those who are participating. You know as well as any of us that Oakland has a history of drawing out a thug contingent, both from inside Oakland and outside our city, whenever a protest is organized. Blaming the larger protest for the actions of a minority does not serve us.
The General Strike, as I understand it, was a direct response to the excessive use of violence against peaceful protesters. Oakland, as a city, decided that rather than act in support of the protesters it would work to shut them down. It did so by bringing in others who were clearly spoiling for a fight and brought incredible shame on our city.
Our Mayor and the council could have chosen to support the goals and ideals of the protests, worked with organizers to cooperate in matters of safety and sanitation and done some real community building. Imagine if one or two police offers were assigned to work WITH the protesters to help them police the fringe elements themselves, and only intervening when situations required an official response. Imagine if Oakland sanitation worked with the organizers and protesters to ensure that they cleaned up after themselves and all Oakland needed to do was cart off full trash bins?
What if, instead of shutting down it's own citizens, Oakland had actually found a way to make this entire situation work for everyone. What if, instead of appearing to the world as a city that can't get its message straight and is quick to resort to force to quiet protesters, it became a beacon to the country of how a city could turn a negative situation into a new start of community involvement and cooperation?
But no, the city chose to expend a lot of money, the money that we can't afford, to make things much much worse than they needed to be.
Should city buildings have had their windows broken? No. Will that end up costing us all money? Yes. But how much did it cost for us to flood the square with out of town cops so they could beat on our citizens? How much are we going to have to pay in lawsuits for the injured? If you want to talk about financial losses the city will suffer, look there.
You ask, "how would we feel if it was right wing protesters occupying the plaza?" I would be fine with it. I might avoid the plaza, but they have as much a right to protest as we do. If they could get enough numbers to fill that plaza, and be dedicated enough to suffer the cold and damp overnight, then let them. That plaza is for everyone, as you point out. If it's for everyone, if it's our tax dollars that pay for it, then the citizens of Oakland have a right to be there. Does the city have a responsibility to ensure safety, and accessibility? Yes it does, but the answers need to lie with community involvement and cooperation, not this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0pX9LeE-g8
Something terrible did happen in the plaza. Shot with a rubber bullet, for filming a line of cops. Not advancing, not screaming, just walking and filming the line and *bang*. You can hear people yelling on that video, but it wasn't the person filming, or anyone right next to him.
I'm not on the front lines, but as a taxpayer and a member of your district, I'd rather see you advocating for ways to make this better rather than for ways to make it all go away.
Respectfully,
Dan Wilson
Monday, November 07, 2011
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