I’ve learned to make short videos, sometimes with music, sometimes without. When I use music it is invariably from my collection of oldies-except the two videos I made using Boots Riley performing “Underdogs” at a rally against gang injunctions. I have made cat videos, mostly with my cat, Woody, but some with neighbors’ cats. I have made videos celebrating Lakeshore Avenue’s retail upsurge, well, one about the opening of Kwik Way and of local happenings near Lake Merritt.

But, mostly I make short videos of political events that say something to me. The funny thing is that I have a bunch (no idea of the actual length) of videos from the Occupy Oakland days which are languishing somewhere on my old computer’s hard drive-never did get around to putting them together which probably says something about my still sad, angry-confused inner zeitgeist on the whole damn thing. Someday.

(If you watch the first video, then keep watching, other videos will pop up or got to my channel on youtube.)

So, back to the music problem. If I use recordings I have come by legally downloading them, I still find that youtube has prevented them from being seen on mobile devices. A couple made it through before they decided to block them. The two videos I made using Boots Riley as a chorus I put on vimeo so no commercials would be sold on them; and I used one other platform for a long video of a meeting-don’t remember which! If you are acquainted with somebody who will let me use their homegrown music to avoid that problem, let me know. I can’t promise to make them famous though. The most hits I have gotten on my little channel is 336 on my “Save Adult Education Now” for a grand total of 2, 575 hits.

Well, I just checked my channel, bethpikegirlagain, and reminded myself that I made a really silly video on squirrels and one on bees buzzing my neighbor’s giant flower bush, nah, can’t remember the name of that fabulous plant, but it’s an ode to spring.

I’m still using windows movie-maker which leaves a lot to be desired and have recently used my phone to record video which really leaves even more to be desired. I should start carrying around my tiny camcorder so I’m always ready.

I don’t even know why I do it. I never take videos of tourist attractions. I don’t have grandchildren to record (yet). I can only get my kids to succumb when they have no way to prevent it (ha, my son’s law school graduation is very soon!), but I continue to want to document the life around me. There’s lots of snippets on my computer, waiting to be accidentally deleted, no doubt. Say a prayer that those snippets survive my general electronic incompetence.

Yes, I am as blown away that I can do any part of this as my friends are. Most of the time I don’t know how I got it put together. Just finding the damn shots stored on my computer can take up to an hour…then I used to have to convert them to another format before even using movie maker because I had an old XP system that could not translate some formats. Good grief, what language am I even speaking?

It’s just this damn tenaciousness that is a family trait. I might start making my video around 10 PM and wrap up around 2 AM waiting for youtube to finish uploading-and that’s for a 2 and half minute video! Without the assistance and encouragement of some folks formerly of Oakland Local-I won’t name them because they might be embarrassed by my product-I wouldn’t have persevered.

Anyway, while this videos never go viral, they are the little bit of art that my arthritic hands can still get satisfaction from creating. I hope that they inform, provoke, entertain, or annoy a few folks here and there. Whatever, I can’t stop documenting some of the moments that provoke, annoy, and even uplift me. So here are some more you may not have seen.

Oh, one more note, without some form of art and creation, life is not worth living, so maybe that’s why I do it.

https://vimeo.com/user6486608

http://www.youtube.com/user/bethpikegirlagain?feature=mhee

Linda Hubbard’s handmade, recycled paper bag flowers

If you’ve ever marveled at the wonderful window displays at Silver Moon Kids, you might be curious to know who creates that delicious whimsy. If you were to pass by now, you’d be blown away by the huge colorful “flowers” sharing the window with the children’s clothes, stuffed animals, and toys.

Her name is Linda Hubbard and she is the owner, Dima Hart’s, mom. She is a self-taught artist and window designer. Once upon a time she studied art in college but never finished, dropping out to be a self-described hippy. Later, Linda got a master’s in speech therapy and worked in that field until retirement, forgoing her art. About a decade ago, she picked up the brush again and began to paint. Around the time of Linda’s retirement, Dima opened her Lakeshore store-her former store was on Grand Avenue and for a short time, we were merchant neighbors.

Since then Linda has helped set up the store, painted the fairy mural on the back wall and come up with fanciful designs to showcase the store’s merchandise. Perhaps you remember the beautifully handmade heart for Valentine’s Day? But this month, she has outdone herself. I asked her how she did it.

Like any modern woman, she got the idea from a you tube video that described making giant flowers from old paper grocery bags! For these flowers she used recycled Trader Joe’s and Monterey Market bags, tweaking the shape and number of petals and using no VOC (volatile organic compounds-no outgassing-and safe around children) paints. She says it took her about a month to make them working a few hours a day.

When I had my shop on Grand I often sold art from recycled objects, many from my own hand, and encouraged people, mostly women, to take a chance, especially with paint! I’d buy mixed tints that are sold for less or given away at most paint or hardware stores because they did not come out exactly the way the original buyers wanted them. Then I mix them with more paints and voila, I paint whatever gets in my way and paint over it if I don’t like it. I painted bricks on my concrete patio in lieu of installing expensive stonework. I use cheap acrylics and repaint them every couple of years. This year I am contemplating over painting them with glow-in-the-dark paint. I’ll let you know how that comes out soon.

So, go see the wonderful windows in this charming store. Chat with Linda the next time you see her in the window, then go out and try something yourself. We may not all be as creative as Linda and Dima (by the way, Linda says the best part of doing this is working with her daughter), but we can have fun trying.

By Pamela Drake

It’s hard to keep track of the many educational programs that no longer exist in California because of budget cuts enacted during the past decade. The elimination of adult education in local school districts is one example. School libraries have also lost significant financial support. In Oakland, one-third of the public school libraries have been closed for years, and another third are only open part-time with limited staffing — mostly by volunteers.

Indeed, the school librarian, like the school counselor, has become an endangered species in Oakland and other cities throughout the state. My kids graduated from Oakland public schools in the 1990s. As lackluster and sad as their schools seemed back then, at least their libraries were still open and staffed.

Depending on where and when you grew up, you probably had a library in your elementary school. And by the time you got to high school, you could depend on finding a good selection of encyclopedias, non-fiction books, periodicals, and novels. You could talk to the librarian when you couldn’t find what you wanted, and you learned about the Dewey Decimal system.

But that’s no longer the case for many Oakland schoolchildren. “A child could enroll today in a district elementary school and graduate from an OUSD high school without ever having the benefit of a school library,” said Oakland city Library Commissioner Ruby Bernstein, recalling a quote from Kari Hatch, the executive director of Friends of the Oakland Public School Libraries.

Currently, Oakland Unified School District only funds two full-time and two part-time librarians for the entire city. OUSD’s Ann Gallagher — one of the full-time librarians — oversees the district’s libraries, librarians, technicians, and volunteers. She told me that California now ranks fiftieth in the country in terms of its ratio of students to librarians — and it’s a distant fiftieth. Some California school districts, however, have managed to keep most of their libraries open. Berkeley is using library technicians and San Francisco has held onto its librarians by splitting them among schools.

Gallagher said school libraries are particularly important because “children, especially children living in poverty, need access to free-choice reading,” and that “reading is more than drill and practice.” She believes that teachers are already too overloaded with curriculum tasks to also act as de facto librarians. Librarians also help train students to develop research skills in order to prepare them for college and careers.

Given these issues, Gallagher is working closely with Friends of the Oakland Public School Libraries (FOPSL), whose mission is to resurrect the city’s closed school libraries. FOPSL started in 2009 as a dedicated group of volunteers in the Montclair Community Action Committee who organized a book drive for schools that had outdated collections. When they realized what a huge undertaking it would be to live up to their motto — “Every child deserves a quality school library” — they decided to incorporate as a nonprofit. From 2009 to 2011, before they incorporated, they managed to reopen eight public school libraries, including two at middle schools — all of them in Oakland’s flatland neighborhoods.

Hills schools have managed to reopen their libraries, hire librarians, and buy supplies thanks to fundraising from parents. Many well-to-do hills parents also have the time to volunteer in their libraries. FOPSL, by contrast, wants to reopen libraries in neighborhoods in which parents have fewer resources.

“Our goal is tangible and achievable,” Hatch said. So far, the group has worked to reopen more than twenty school libraries with the help of grants, community donations, corporate sponsorships, and partnerships with faith-based organizations. The reopened libraries also have received funding from Measure G, a parcel tax approved by Oakland voters in 2008. Measure G provides more than $55 per pupil, but the measure’s oversight committee has made the funding available only to elementary and middle schools, and not high schools, due to the limited amount of funds available.

Currently, Skyline High is the only high school in the district with a full-time librarian. The other high schools have decided to fund other essential services, although they’re still hoping to reopen their libraries in the future.

In an editorial last October in the Fremont High School student newspaper, the Green and Gold, students bemoaned their shuttered library as a place where rats roamed. However, construction has begun refurbishing the space, and there’s hope that it will be reopened next school year. Students told me that Castlemont’s library has a computer area, which they use for things like applying for college loans online, but that the rest of it is closed off. Oakland Tech has a clerk who can open the library on occasion, and Oakland High’s library is currently being used for online classes and as a meeting space.

The state takeover of Oakland public schools is partly to blame for the demise of local school libraries. In addition, budget cutbacks as the result of an education “flexibility” spending plan approved under Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger have made things worse. The change gave school districts more authority on how to spend taxpayer dollars. Many districts, including Oakland, decided to focus on basic education. That led to the elimination of adult education, along with funding for libraries, not only in Oakland but also in other cities.

But there is hope. Superintendent Tony Smith is currently considering a Library Equity Plan, which would reallocate Measure G funds. A pilot project to hire six professionally trained librarians is gaining traction with district administrators, while the reallocation plan would offer sixty district employees the opportunity to be retrained as library technicians who would be able to staff the newly stocked and refurbished libraries.

Library refurbished by FOPSL

For those interested in joining or contributing to FOPSL, check out the group’s website at FOPSL.org.

The night that George Bush got on TV and declared his and the American media’s war on the Iraqi people-never forget that the original military title for it was Operation Iraqi Liberation, oops-I was ready, well, kind of. I had been meeting with my affinity group for weeks,  as many others had, planning a day long assault on business as usual in downtown San Francisco.

We planned to get up by dawn and fan out all over the downtown preventing traffic from flowing in non-violent direct actions. We had picked our streets, made our signs, and put together the arm tubes that would allow demonstrators to chain themselves together while making it more difficult for police to remove them and break the chain. We had decided who was willing to get arrested and who was not. Having done the arrest thing a few times before, I decided to go back to work that afternoon. Local journalist Henry Norr lost his gig at the Chronicle for attending even though his beat was technology. I’m sure there were others.

We waited for the announcement on TV, about 10 PM on the West Coast, as I remember it, watched as our newsmen glowingly broadcast the beginnings of shock and awe, this all, remember after months of ever increasing marches around the world, everyone of which I partook of in SF. Huge beautiful gatherings full of every nationality, ethnicity, age group, identity group, families of all kinds, dogs, bikes, kids, with fabulous costumes and pithy signage, well, you remember.

Just before leaving for San Francisco that night I typed up a quick note to give to workers stuck in traffic to explain why we were there and to tell their employers why they were tardy (a word that only teachers continue to use which is why I like it). They could fill in their names and it was signed, “Sincerely, your Co-workers and Neighbors.”

It said- “Please excuse (fill in the blank) for tardiness due to our peaceful response to war. We are doing our best to compensate you for the lost time of your employee, student, or co-worker by shortening the length, violence, and economic impact of this illegal war.

We understand that you may agree with our goals but not our tactics. Please believe that we have voted, signed petitions, written letters, marched, attended vigils, and torn our hair out. We have implored our government, the UN, and the Pope. Nothing has worked. We hope this small inconvenience will start a movement that you can join. Check our http://www.actagainstwar.org for ways to help!”

So in my mid-fifties I set out to spend the night in a warehouse . I took a cushion from my deck knowing I would not sleep anyway but I could, at least, be slightly comfortable among a crowd of excited young people. Of course, I didn’t sleep either but waited for the word to start out in the early dawn.

Our first spot to block was a freeway off-ramp which we somehow managed by making it possible for drivers to see us in time to stop before the end of the ramp. It was near Mission and 13th. Then we moved closer to the downtown where most of the action was.  At one point we took over 8th at Market where Hyde Street leads before it changes. Cars were backed up raring to head out. Some of our group of young people thought they would sit down. I took one look at the cars gunning their engines and talked them out of that so that they could move quickly if some cars refused to stop (I vaguely remember almost getting run over in downtown Oakland during the Stop the Draft demos-of the Vietnam era.) Others decided to pull newspaper stands into the street for protection, destroying some, an action with which I disagreed.

I remember handing out my tardy notices (I had made hundreds and others handed them out also). Most of the responses I got were not negative. However, at one point, while I stood with my arms locked in another’s, a bicycle rider approached and did not stop. He ran into my side and I came very close to hitting him before I was pulled away by a more peaceful person.

Our goal was to shut down the morning rush hour and for many of us that was done, and we headed back to our lives. Others stayed and made a day of it. By that evening there were some testy interactions with drivers and some demonstrators, more arrests, and some vandalism. Overall, I think we did well-maybe if this had happened in many other big cities for many more days, it might have made some difference. I’m not sure what we expected but I know we were not going to let that awful conflagration start without demanding that business as usual should not go on and letting the MSM know how we Americans felt.

I returned to Oakland to attend a meeting on a budding program to support small local business at which I found many city staff who congratulated us for our actions! I had a friend who was a school principal who reported that her secretary who lived in SF had arrived late with a tardy slip! She loved it.

My son was attending Morehouse College in Atlanta at the time and working with his roommates at a local chain restaurant. It was considered a middle class, business lunch type of joint serving “Italian” food. The TV had been on and the roommates watched in horror as the room erupted in applause when Bush declared war. At that point (among other reasons) he decided to get out of Atlanta as soon as he got his diploma.

But Morehouse was offering him a special chance at a good education with other young Black men who were ready to strive together, and he had been nominated as a youth delegate to the UN. They had a worldwide conference coming up in Frankfurt, Germany in a few days. My son had never been to Europe or traveled outside of the US at all. He had grown up listening to me telling the tales of my youth traveling in Italy, Greece, France, and living in Germany after my high school graduation. He was excited and ready to go.

Then his school cancelled their delegation. Other delegations from other colleges would still be going but Morehouse took their strict parenting duties very seriously-they decided it was too dangerous to travel. Not being the strict parenting type myself and wanting very much for my son to have this adventure, this learning experience, I called and talked to everyone. I pleaded and demanded they not miss this chance-to no avail.

My son has yet to visit Europe though he has seen a little of Latin America now. I know it’s a small thing, but for this, I also blame George, for so many opportunities for so many people, not the least of whom are the young of Iraq-a generation for whom, war and destruction has been the heritage we as a people have bequeathed to them.

I apologize that we let this happen. I wish I could offer more to all that still suffer. This is a day of mourning for all of us, for giving up our democratic rights and responsibilities, for the young Americans who still suffer PTSD, domestic violence, lack of resources, and even suicide, I also apologize and mourn. To American Exceptionalism ne Imperialism, I wish we could say, Never Again, humbly and with the full knowledge of our complicity.

Design by Rha Bowden, “Co-Exist”

It’s head exploding time in these United States and maybe in Venezuela, too. As Rachel Maddow declared it’s another day “in which all of this news does not seem possible.” I started writing about about the various and opposing views of Hugo Chavez who just died and whose legacy is being discussed on the social media and the MSM (mainstream media), but social media, as usual, is more interesting and more nuanced.

But only just. Being “friends” with so many folks on the Left or at least left of center, wherever the hell that is now in times of challenging women’s right to birth control and the right to vote for folks who waited for hundreds of years before even getting to register, I have read a lot of tributes on my news feed. Then a bunch of disagreements started to pop up and as one wag, radio critic, Matthew Lasar wrote, “Hugo Chavez was a wonderful monster who destroyed and saved Venezuela, which will never recover from his life/death.”

Now I am not, I repeat, not, an expert on Hugo Chavez but I did admire his chutzpah and his ability to completely change the conversation in Venezuela and around the world. As the first person of Native and African origins to be elected in his country, he gave the populace who looked like him a reason to hope.

He told the world that the most valuable resources of his county, oil, belonged not to international corporations, but to the people of that country. He thumbed his nose at baseball owners who were used to running a plantation system where young players were treated as commodities not people.

He also shut down newspapers and went after opposition press. He spent his country’s wealth on literacy and health clinics AND goodies for his friends and family(so they say). For Americans, for whom the MSM’s version of a dictator or strong man who terrorized the (wealthy) newspaper owners who fomented  (funded) a failed coup against him, he wast billed as both scary and a clown. Well, if the first image didn’t work to belittle him, the other surely would do the trick.

For many of us regular viewers of the MSM who don’t read the Nation as often as we watch cable news but hated Bush-he was a breath of fresh air. When he told the UN, “Yesterday, the devil came here. Right here. Right here. And it smells of sulfur still today.” Well, Mastercard, that really was priceless.

Now that he is gone, no matter what he did or did not do, many of us fear for his countrymen and for the help he lent to other countries. But we have enough problems dealing with our own politicians and the policies of two parties beholden to corporate CEOS and their boards.

Now along comes Rand Paul and more head exploding politics, personalities, and contradictions. I listened to part of his filibuster against possible murderous drone strikes in the US on KPFA. Rand Paul on KPFA should have been enough to hurl me into migraine territory much less the fact that I found myself nodding along with him.

When I later caught Lawrence O’Donnell on MSNBC haranguing against Paul’s long speech and describing him as a mad man, I got more confused and bewildered. Then O’Donnell asked his guests to join him in berating the “stark raving mad” Paul; but they declined and went on to talking about the president giving out his secret list of terrorists who may be killed (Ryan Grim, HuffPo) and bringing attention to the use of drones (EJ Dionne). Then we got to hear Republicans like John McCain and Lindsey Graham denouncing Paul for implying this president was that horrible??

At that point I had to finish eating my whole day’s ration of chocolate before my brain shut down. This morning I read that Eugene Robinson agreed with Rand Paul and almost went into a coma writing it (I’m only imagining that).

At least Eric Holder has now stated that no, we won’t be doing that unless of course there’s a little caveat to that statement like, unless necessary. I never even got the wonderfulness of drone attacks in other countries against people without my grocery-store-surfing-third-world-exploiting-talents-and passport-owning-non-burka-wearing-music-downloading rights who might be attending a wedding with the wrong entourage, never mind the bad bridesmaids dresses. I never really felt good as an American about our apparently god-given technologic advances that are making this all possible.

It seems that now some Americans are waking up to a few of these new threats. Back to facebook and twitter, and tumblr, and whatever else they invented last night that I haven’t found out about yet, there’s Bradley Manning and Aaron Swartz, and, oh for those of us in the Bay, KPFA’s contradictions could fill, well, many a book-as they already have.

One thing I want to know though. If we voters elected Barack Obama, he of the brightest smile since JFK, and of the drones, and the I-could-cut-a-little-out-of-your-social-security-checks for the sake of the deficit which happened because people are out of work , which happened because the investment bankers ponzied us all out of a living, not our greedy grannies and grandpas buying their cat food; if we (yes, this is the definition of a run-on sentence) could vote for him because we recognized the scariness of the other guy or just because the other guy wore mom-jeans, then why can’t we learn to live with the contradictions??

I, for one, maybe you for another, don’t want to be caught using all my energy hating a president the way I did in the 60′s who turns out to have been probably the best one in my lifetime. After all, LBJ gave us Medicare and food stamps, and the Voting Rights Act which we may now be losing.

I don’t want to be in long arguments against a now dead president of a country I have never visited.

I don’t want either to read about my mayor (you knew I’d get around to that) and wonder  if she were either a head breaking, proponent of police violence or a criminal-coddling-cry- baby-liberal, neither of which comes close to the person I know who has ably engineered a budget that has maintained our libraries, youth and senior services through a deep Recession.

What’s my point-ferkrissakes-how would I know while my head explodes?!The only guess I have would be that these are tough, volatile times. They come close to the polarization of the 60′s which means I am now too old to be trusted anyway. Sometimes I don’t trust myself so I have to back up, study a little more, write it all out or paint it or whatever works and then be responsible for what I say, write, and do, how I am in the world.

I need to figure out how to live with the contradictions of loving my president while fearing his power, his mentors, and his isolation from people like me. I need a place to mourn the loss of a charismatic leader who spit in the eye of the world’s most powerful states. I need to listen to my enemies and, more importantly, resist the need to have enemies and the desire to have heroes.

By the way, Happy International Women’s Day!

If you’re a local activist like me, you’re probably up to your widow’s peak in causes that demand you sign their petitions, tweet their updates, march under their banners, or, god forbid, attend their meetings, too. We have lots of issues that folks in Oakland alone are working on: violence prevention, economic development, police accountability, and improving the schools. I better stop before I make myself too tired to complete this blog.

But here I am on a sunny day in Oakland asking you to show up, be counted, march, rally, and speak out with our local branch of the national organization 350.org. Check out 350BayArea.org’s September 17th rally in San Francisco where we will join together to let the president know what we want him to do when he makes the final decision on the Keystone XL pipeline.

The fact that it’s a sunny day after 5 weeks of no rain during our California “rainy season” should be a tip-off. I’ve also been enjoying the wonderful sunsets that we’ve been seeing and photographing for the last year or so. Could they be a result of drier and dirtier air, don’t know, but I have to wonder?

I’ve worried about climate change so much over the last decade or so that I, like many Americans, have almost avoided the subject. I try to conserve energy and water, and recycle everything, but whenever I’ve taken the online quiz, myfootprint.org, I still find that it would take 3 or more planets like ours if everyone lived like poor little me. Being a  meat eater, I contribute greatly, as my son always reminds me, to methane gas production, a more dangerous gas than carbon dioxide. So I try to eat a little less meat-it’s very doable.

Also very doable is joining 350BayArea.org which is finding itself so popular, its projects have almost gotten ahead of its membership structure. They still don’t have regular meetings but are involved in some very interesting campaigns. You can find out more at 350BayArea.org’s website, but I’m going to promote two of them here for now.

Here’s what they have to say about the “No Tar Sands” movement. “The Bay Area 350 No Tar Sands Campaign focuses on local activism in support of the 350.org movement. We bring to public attention the dangers of the Tar Sands Oil and the Keystone XL Pipeline. We support the ongoing Tar Sands Blockade and encourage participation.  We will work to prevent the refining of this oil in the refineries of the East Bay.”

I attended their last event and heard a very effective speaker from Canada, Garth Lenz, who showed us slides of the horrendous damage that tar sands development is already wreaking in Canada (yes formerly benighted Canada).

From the website oilsandstruth.org site, “The Tar Sands “Gigaproject” is the largest industrial project in human history and likely also the most destructive. The tar sands mining procedure releases at least three times the CO2 emissions as regular oil production and is slated to become the single largest industrial contributor in North America to Climate Change.”

The national version of 350.org is holding a giant rally in Washington, DC, on February 17th to let the Obama administration know we will back him if he stands up to the oil lobby. The state department is slated to make a decision soon on whether to let Canada bring the oil from Canadian tar sands into the US. The demonstration in DC will be held at the national mall but the Bay Area dem will be held in front of the state department’s building at 1 Market Street in SF, starting at 1 PM and continuing til 3 PM. There will be brass bands, giant puppets, and speakers. Bring your original signs and all your friends and family-this is truly a family issue.

But before you make those signs and check your BART schedule, you can do something even easier if less fun. The Bay Area 350 Carbon Cuts Campaign will lobby Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD) “to lead the way to achieve the deep cuts we need to protect the global climate.”

They are petitioning the Air District Board to use their authority to enact programs to reduce Bay Area Green House Gas emissions to 80% below 1990 levels by 2050. Please go to 350BayArea.org and check this under campaigns, “Carbon Cuts.” There are also other intriguing actions being planned that you will probably want to sign onto-a Chevron watch (Richmond refinery), divestment and dump the pump labels to check out.

For today, please sign the Carbon Cuts petition and plan your Sunday, February 17th, to meet in San Francisco with those you hold dear. See you on BART!

Those council members who have called their constituents to come on down, have failed to explain why they support the Bratton contract with specifics. I’m calling on them to be clear about what Bratton will be asked to do and what he will not be asked to do. I would like someone to explain the interface between the Bratton/Wasserman folks, and what Judge Henderson and his compliance managers will allow given the Negotiated Settlement Agreement which may be the key to this controversy. Is Stop and Frisk equal to racial profiling? If it is, how is it possible Henderson would allow it?

But no one can deny that Oakland as well as some of our surrounding communities is in a public safety crisis. People who live in formerly “safe” neighborhoods have discovered some of the dangers that people who live in East and West Oakland have lived with for a long time.

More people are afraid now than I can ever remember and the list of the dead is growing at an alarming rate. Still, this is not the time to rush into half-baked solutions or to demand  gimmicks-state of emergency, curfews-instead of well-thought out policies.

There is evidence that Bratton and his compatriots have accomplished some good things re crime and community complaints in Los Angeles. But there is also lots of evidence that many Oaklanders continue to experience brutality and harassment at the hands of our police force. Regardless of how one acts at a meeting, or whether the aggrieved parties are making these demands, our local citizenry has every right to demand reassurance when it comes to how new crime-cutting strategies  will affect all members of the community.

We all deserve a real conversation about these issues. We owe it to one another to listen and be given time to change our minds and even change them again. This is an ongoing crisis that demands both long and short term solutions. What it doesn’t demand is dueling crowds, shouting matches, threats of arrest for hecklers or fear mongering by any of us.

I will see you at the Council meeting tonight. I will be demanding answers to these questions and really listening to the responses I get before coming to a conclusion. I hope you will do the same.

I have not always been good at the honey part. I’ve rarely been accused of being sweet and my anger can get the better of me; but when thinking strategically, I try really hard to be patient and make my arguments persuasive.

The crowd at the public safety meeting the other night was large and raucous. It may have succeeded in persuading some council members that Bratton is not the guy to help our city, just maybe. On the other hand, it may also have convinced the viewing audience that the folks who care about police accountability are unaccountable themselves.

If you were there, you might have seen a very small group of folks who seemed genuinely unhinged do most of the catcalls, insults, and name calling. But, you would also have seen how easily influenced others were by them.

If you only heard it on KTOP or the local news, you would have thought that everyone had lost their minds. What you didn’t see were opportunities for discussions about the reality of the threat of crime and violence, much less creative solutions.

These meetings have led some council members and many Oakland citizens to repeat the myth that the folks who protest so loudly are not Oaklanders but should go back to, Berkeley or Walnut Creek, or wherever they imagine them to be from. I believe that while some young people come to town for demonstrations, and why shouldn’t they, most of the protestors are Oaklanders. Now maybe they weren’t born or raised here but so what? I wasn’t born or raised here either, and ain’t I an Oaklander?

I would guess that a lot of them are drawn by the image of a place full of radicals, artists, and entrepreneurs, plus some of the best weather and slightly more affordable housing. Are these bad reasons to find a home in Oakland? There may be another reason why many folks believe the protestors are not Oaklanders. When they speak at these meetings, they don’t seem to know our town or understand how it works and some of them seem to disrespect our long-time neighbors and activists.

Telling the city to stop closing the schools, for instance-most Oaklanders have at least a rudimentary knowledge of how our government works and know-the administration of the schools is completely separate from that of the City.  So why go yell at council members about paying for the schools instead of, say, policing?

So here’s the other thing. A friend wiser than me recently told me about negotiating techniques she has learned from study and application. One of the things she said was that if you go to a meeting/negotiation to persuade someone of the rightness of your position, do not assert that you are the good guys while they are the bad guys.

First, that sets them up as your enemy and does not incline them to hear you much less work with you. The other problem with portraying yourselves as the good guys is that you then must act like the good guys since you now will be held to a higher standard. When you mess up under those circumstances, you really lose credibility. Now, if you don’t care whether the people who’re making the decisions think you’re the good guys, ’cause after all, they’re the bad guys; then consider how the other folks whom you are trying to influence will view you.

All that cursing and yelling and catcalls (meowing would come under that nomenclature, I think) haven’t won you much and may lose you a lot of potential comrades in the long run.

Here’s some other tidbits of advice from an old radical. Oakland electeds do know about the prison-industrial-complex. They’ve heard of and even voted for programs for struggling families and at risk youth, hell, some of them designed measures to support those programs; and they would rather spend more of Oakland’s precious tax dollars on violence prevention and art, and good stuff than on policing.

Another news flash-Oakland’s leaders and community activists know we have a troubled police department. Do you know how we got into a Negotiated Settlement Agreement? That’s why it’s called a negotiated agreement. The city leaders wanted to confront the problems head on and they have tried and will keep trying. Yelling at them, especially the brand new ones, who were, I gotta say, extremely patient, will not help us find a way to heal the wounds caused by bad policing.

Oh, and for you law‘norder folks-like you’re reading this!-Oakland officials also know that we need more police than we presently have. Oakland’s leaders, elected or otherwise know that our cops should come from and even live in Oakland. Since it has been determined by the courts that we cannot mandate that, they are trying to find other ways to make it happen.

If you have new solutions to our crime and violence problems, it would be wonderful to hear them. Most of us here in Oakland like the solutions you have previously posed in these meetings but we know them to be much more difficult to implement than it looks. Most of us in Oakland, and I believe this, do not want any more stop and frisk types of “solutions” to the scourge of crime and violence. We are an independent lot and don’t want our rights trampled or our youth disrespected.

I did think the speakers who gave their personal stories of police abuse were pretty effective-especially those folks who have worked out some ways to nurture themselves and their communities. Oh, and those screamers who made fun of and personally insulted city officials, speakers, etc-that came off as just plain mean. Mean only works for authoritarian solutions with cruel leaders, and most of us will react badly to that stimulus no matter who it comes from. Stop it.

Finally, we need to be really creative in these scary times of corporate control and militarization. We need, most of all, to find and nurture our humanity and the humanity of those around us to move beyond this climate of control. I don’t see creative solutions being posited in a meeting rife with scoffing and outright intimidation. In fact, I think those things are the anti-thesis of what we are trying to build here in Oakland.

So I’m asking you, please, before the next meeting, to consider ways to broaden the conversation and show everyone, including yourselves, some respect. If you’re new here and want to know how we think, well, respect is something we put a lot of weight on- it’ll get you farther than insults.

In the next week the Oakland City Council will see a rare makeover as three long time council members exit the stage and 2 new faces take their places with one well-known local politician moving into the other. Jane Brunner, Nancy Nadel, and Ignacio de la Fuente, will be moving on while Lynette McElhaney, Dan Kalb, and former school board member Noel Gallo will be seated.

Much has already been written about the responsibilities and obstacles they will confront in fulfilling their promises to renew the city and remake the fractious city council. Top among them are crime and violence, police reform, and desperately needed public works along with the possibility of a transformative change in our local and regional economy with new development at the port.

But, little has been written about the legacy of the three outgoing council members, which is considerable despite the fractious board of more recent memory. I remember when all of these folks were elected; and while I may not recall all their specific accomplishments, I will long remember what they added to our little burg. And, I want them and you, curious readers, to know what some of those overarching themes were and why they need to be remembered and honored.

I came to work for the city council as the chief of staff for Nate Miley in 1991. He was considered the first  reform council member after years of the  Lionel Wilson-led council, Lionel himself a ground-breaker, as a judge and our first Black mayor. Former Assembly Member Elihu Harris had replaced Wilson during that campaign-an interesting story in itself (check it out online if you dare).

Harris disappointed many by seeming to pick up where Wilson left off. He and the majority of the council were seen as overly influenced by the downtown White business elite that dominated the previous Republican administrations. One refrain I remember from Harris and his cohorts was that Oakland was not going to build more affordable housing because too many folks moved here to take advantage of that, as if buses were dropping people off from Castro Valley to live in run down apartments, rather than that long-time residents still needed decent, affordable housing (which is not limited to projects.)

This is not to denigrate some of the Harris administration achievements, many of which were put in place before Jerry was inaugurated, and were credited to his mayoralty. In fact that old council was also influenced by activists members like Council Member Mary Moore who fought with the powers that be to protect the neighborhood interests. But, by the time Mary left and John Russo took her place, she had begun to be viewed as a NIMBY; and the reform-minded Russo then honed his power along with his generation’s local developers like Phil Tagami.

Someone ought to write a book about Mr. Tagami, by the way, a man many of us watched grow into a powerful and sometimes reviled figure in Oakland politics and the development community. He’s a truly fascinating character whether you like what he does and how he does it, or not.

After Miley was elected came Mr. De La Fuente and Sheila Jordan who spun off from the school board to the council then to the county Department of Ed where she has since built a small empire. As an aside, for all those budding politicos considering a run for the school board, Sheila, then Jean Quan, and now Noel Gallo were able to move to the council from 2nd Avenue. While it may seem that becoming a school trustee is often entree into the next level of elected office, it’s just as often a dead end for political careers. Running the schools is an almost completely thankless task.

So from Ms. Jordan, the seat then turned over to her close friend, Jane Brunner, while Nancy Nadel moved into what has been called the West Oakland seat; but which now finds most of it voters in the Adams point and Lake Merritt areas. Ignacio De La Fuente  was elected to represent the Fruitvale district in 1992 and was the powerful president of the city council for 10 years of that two decades. This council set about changing the face of Oakland politics and bringing  their strong social justice bonafides with them.

Prior to this “reform” council being elected, Wilson Riles Jr. was considered the “conscience of the council”. When Mr. Riles left to run the American Friends Service Committee, Nancy Nadel took that title and remained the only one of the new members-particularly after Mr. Russo was elected-to stand completely outside the heavily-financed camp of Don Perata followers.

Despite the heavy influence of Don Perata who ran a lobbying firm known as Perata Engineering-the guy who engineered the Raiders deal along with our long term taxpayer obligations to  the Silver and Black-these council members pushed their own progressive agendas.

Notably, Brunner and Nadel, having grown up in low-income housing in New York City, have always been promoters of affordable housing for those who have long lived and struggled in Oakland.

Nadel who has the most interesting background in a membership of folks whose own stories could be made into successful miniseries, has a masters in geoscience, has worked as an artist, a teacher, and an environmentalist, and now heads her own sustainable boutique chocolate company.

She has led the struggle to develop restorative justice and violence prevention as a public health issue, and worked to implement groundbreaking programs to reintegrate former prisoners into the community.

Nancy can be counted on to look at ways that sustainable industries can be developed regionally, youth and their needs can be explored and resources can be found to demand underserved populations be offered real solutions to better their lives.

Jane has always been a union stalwart, a neighborhood mediator, and budget negotiator. Her negotiating talents have been prodigious even as others pushed for jobs programs that often resulted in little, she worked on the details that made them come alive (along with her former colleague, Jean Quan, a behind the scenes council negotiator without whom many successful ballot measures and inter-jurisdictional programs would not have passed.)

Jane presided over district town halls and folks from all over Oakland attended her D1 meetings to learn about and deliberate on the issues of the day facing Oakland. Only Mayor Jean Quan, of all the mayors in my memory, have promoted and organized similar but citywide town halls. I hope that new and long term council members will still consider adding these regular constituent check-in sessions to their agendas.

As a union lawyer, Jane Brunner, has advocated for local, union-strong jobs, that is, jobs with benefits and protections against unscrupulous employers and for affirmative action for Oaklanders who have traditionally been kept out of the equation. Council Member Desley Brooks has more recently assumed that mantle. Now it is her turn to develop a coalition to carry on that tradition with the new council members.

Now we come to Ignacio De La Fuente, who I once considered an ally and still consider a colleague. He came to office as the first Mexican immigrant to sit on the Oakland Council. He has maintained his cultural connections and roots in a district with a successful Latino- based business and retail district. Two of his most significant accomplishments are the redesign of the old Montgomery Ward building into the Cesar Chavez Education Center and the completion of the Fruitvale BART station project.

Believe it or not, I have worked more closely with Mr. De La Fuente than I have with Ms. Nadel and Ms. Brunner though I have always admired their tough work ethic and creative, progressive solutions.

As a council aide to Nate Miley, De La Fuente was the one who helped us shepherd through Miley’s ground breaking legislation to curb crime around liquor stores as alcohol industry lobbyists circled like vultures and our legislation looked like it could not pass. I watched while Ignacio challenged the  police department’s budget busting excesses. I also remember when he tried hard to pass a local hire requirement for the police department that was undone by the California courts.

While De la Fuente has long had a knee-jerk reaction against environmentalism; because of concerns that it would hurt job growth-and an autocratic and rule-bending style of leadership-personally, he is always good-humored and self-deprecating. He has never shown offense at my outspoken criticism.

Nancy Nadel retired and has already moved on, but her innovative approaches to our problems will be missed. Jane seems to have ridden herself out of town on a rail, and Ignacio couldn’t wait to spend his stockpile of campaign funds on a useless crusade of silly attacks.

Somehow that didn’t surprise me.  He had always hoped to be mayor, and he still seems to be the only one who doesn’t know that can never happen. When he watched a colleague and former close ally who came to the council later than he did, take that job with no money and little high level support, the bitterness fairly dripped off of him until even some of his allies could not stomach his campaign of naysaying and demagoguery against the administration. It could be said that it was reminiscent of the Republican approach to making government work.

Jane could have run a campaign describing the innovations she might very well have promoted as city attorney but with the able assistance of Larry Tramutola- another special Oakland character- she slid into an attack mode from which she never recovered.

This council changing-of-the-guard could be a tale of good intentions lost due to corruption, or opportunism, or simple convenience, but I think, like everything, it’s more complicated than that.

Public servants, and, make no mistake, these are public servants who have worked overtime for what they believe in, are elected by us (all 3 were repeatedly reelected), then trained by all of us. Yes, it’s difficult to run a work-a-day life and stay informed on politics even  the local kind. But, it is a requirement of good government that folks not only vote but keep abreast of the issues they care about and continue to learn and demand what they want from their electeds in the context of what is possible.

Politicians are a little like puppies. You need both a rolled up newspaper and a bag of treats to train them to heel long enough to understand what you want. I frequently chat with folks I meet asking them how they think Oakland is doing.  They often comment on the failures of the mayor and the city council (any mayor, any city council), the police department, etc. When asked what they would do, the answers quite often range from the impossible to the absurd. It is disturbing and appalling how little many of our most well-educated citizens know about how government works.

So on the day after this new year has started, I wanted to memorialize the hard work and the sometimes magnificent accomplishments of this previous board of long-time activists.

I’d also like to welcome the newly elected and soon-to-be-reviled, incoming city council. Before you post that nasty comment in the paper, or denounce a new initiative, take a look in the mirror, remembering the wise words of that sage, Pogo. We have met the enemy and he is us.

After writing a blog post about the controversy surrounding Alameda County Measure A1 and seeing it disappear into WordPress purgatory, I got a little discouraged and then someone suggested the universe was trying to tell me something. Yeah, I think the universe is trying to tell me to fight the negativity, ugliness, and confusion surrounding every issue in the local, state, and national elections with a little thoughtfulness-just a little.

Maybe it’s better to step back and look at the specifics in this case. First of all, the Oakland Zoo is not some corporate entity. It is a park on land once owned by the state and now owned by Oakland to which the city and East Bay Regional Park District contribute a combined 15% of its operating budget.

Up until fairly recently, the city was able to contribute about 50% of costs but that has been cut severely. The zoo’s employees and programs have had to shoulder the costs of maintaining it at the former level but cannot continue to do that indefinitely without seeing a decline in the facility or the programs.

Yes, the zoo will be expanding its boundaries into the park and, no, I don’t want to get into that now. Zoo officials and workers and many who love the zoo, not some corporate raiders or bankers as they’ve been portrayed, say it will not go to the expansion. They have lots of wealthy folks and foundations who wish to contribute to that but very few of those sources offer funds for operating costs. Anyone who has ever worked for a non-profit or been on its board will know that that’s the case.

This zoo under, Dr. Parrott and this board, has gone from being a national disgrace to a nationally recognized habitat which is pioneering efforts to offer formerly abused and extremely endangered animals a safe haven and a habitat as natural as one can find minus the existence of predators and poachers.

It is a zoo which provides educational opportunities for young and old, even overnight camping for school kids, and jobs for East Oakland teens. It is a regional attraction in Oakland that even brings in tourists.

Here’s a blurb from the zoo’s 2006 timeline, “In response to the our mission to provide access to the whole community, the Oakland Zoo launched Zoo-to-Community, with the goal of providing free Zoo admission and transportation to qualified schools, daycare and Head Start programs, early childhood development centers and community organizations. In its first six months of operation, the Zoo-to-Community program exceeded its goal of booking and visiting twenty-five Head Start classrooms by more than 100%.”

So is this a private entity taking public dollars? I know non-profits have gotten a bad rap lately but they are designed specifically to provide good or services that the for-profit sector would not consider worthy. Should we demand accountability for our public funds? Of course, but let’s not go all crazy around this $12 request.

The funds so procured will be under an oversight committee; and to the extent the public pays attention, they will keep track of its uses. Has the zoo shown a propensity for wastefulness? Feeding left-over pumpkins or recycled trees to the elephants sure seems decadent to me??

Will the zoo and its fat cat board members (did you want skinny cat board members who don’t know where to dig for more funds?) cure the common cold, and eliminate crime in our neighborhoods, probably not. Do you buy the reactionary austerity argument that we can’t afford amenities for our community in tough times?

Really? I’m awfully glad Roosevelt and his administration didn’t see it that way. We’d be missing some bridges, murals, and parks if we progressives had hewed to that line.

But, if you don’t want to see this wonderful regional zoo decline again and want to see the local animals, the two-legged, four-legged (and other-legged) kind thrive, please donate one dollar a month to our zoo. The kids, the cats, and the critters will thank you.