as an interim tactic, yes in the nihilist tradition, we should go back to our neighborhood blogs and talk up the kids first ballot measure. i’d rather see our money spent on ineffective ngo programs for kids than for city employees and especially managers. might even have the salutory effect of forcing our chicken little city council to act in concert to oppose it.

The fact that non-blacks in Oakland are disengaged with black culture is depressing. It’s really depressing in my generation of white artist/bohemian types. We’re insular and incestuous. But this is also a part of the ongoing fragmentation of subcultures in America. The melting pot is now an hors d’ouvre platter. Lame.

The people who’ve commented on this blog recently include:

Kerry Hamill, Rebecca Kaplan, Doug Boxer, Phil Tagami, Pat Kernighan, and a number of others far more important than you or I are to the workings of this town. Some anonymous posters are known to me from various social encounters, and a few of them are rather important too. There are also, I understand, a huge amount of people who read this blog but don’t comment. One person from CED once phoned me withing minutes of a post I wrote about planning.

There is certainly an ebb an flow to the relevance of this website, but it seems to coincide with seasonal politics and the amount of activity in the news.

I thought Farrah’s comment raised some interesting issues, and you asserting that the Education Task Force is already addressing them just highlights this mayor’s failures. What are these “programs” and “solutions” from Dellums and the task forces that you accuse critics of “undercutting”? How will they be implemented, and when? Are the task forces having ongoing meetings (I hear they are not), and how are these mysterious meetings democratic?

It’s been more than two years since the mayor was elected, and it’s time to put up or shut up. Complaining about the last years of Jerry Brown is tired: it’s past time for Mayor Dellums to deliver on his promises and responsibilities.

Ron’s belief in democracy – unique among American politicians, it seems – resulted in the Task Force process, plumbing the depth of Oakland’s pools of expertise and arriving at solutions that were, warts and all, a whole lot better than the top-down process of yore that has brought its citizens the Oakland of today.

Happy that, all during his stay here, Jerry refused to talk with the A’s about staying on in Oakland? Or that the august President of the Council was unable to get Jerry to the table in spite of his supposedly superior effectiveness at rolling up his sleeves? Happy that the CED Committee can gut any group or individual who crosses it? Happy that undercutting the Mayor’s programs so that some future candidate can be Mayor maybe, come 2011? That seems to be what most in this blog really support, as opposed to sitting down and coming up with something that has a chance of working for everyone.

Let’s just take the Oakland Commerce Corporation for instance: little or no complaints noted on this blog about CED’s wish to destroy Oakland’s only business retention service. If you don’t believe it, somebody please show evidence of another such service contracted to help with such a needed, indeed essential effort (and while you’re at it, count up the businesses besides the A’s which have left the city over the last decade because there was zero response from the Council, our former Mayor, CEDA staff, etc., a momentum that is coming to a halt under this Mayor).

Sanjiv’s comments in front of Council as to exactly why OCC was being punished were right on: it’s personal between those on Council who support their pet projects and those who stood up for the Industrial Land Use Policy worked out by the Zoning Update Committee, considered by most folks to be a victory of this administration after almost eight years of being cloakroomed by the previous administration.

This time next year, earthquakes notwithstanding (and even that will be blamed on Ron), everyone on this blog, guaranteed, will be rooting for Mayor Dellums, with the probable exception of Breault. My guess is that you’ll be cheering louder if you give something positive in terms of constructive policy or projects to present to your city instead of carping because your guy didn’t get even close to a majority of votes.

Love,

– S

[With respect to Farrah's comments, who is working on the issues she addresses? Oh, that's right, Dellums' Education Task Force.]

Since I’m African American and have lived in another major city with a large African American community, I can compare the two. I’m from Detroit which is also known for having issues with crime. A big difference is that there is more support from within the community and in general for African American children and culture. It’s not that there weren’t any single parents or povery, but there were better role models and a better image in general of African Americans, particularly of men. I don’t feel the same thing here and it makes me sad. In this place that is supposed to be so liberal, I hear horrible things about African Americans, particularly young Black men. For this reason, I don’t think poor young African American kids in Oakland generally grow up with a positive self image. Gangs only exacerbate the issue.

This is in contrast to the support and love that you see for other cultures here. People of all races attend the Chinese New Year parade and Carnaval. People love to celebrate Day of the Dead, you’ll hardly see anyone who isn’t African American at Juneteenth festivals.

So regardless of the economy (which is suffering), you still have undereducated and underemployed poor and largely of color kids with a sense of hopelessness. I think that this is the reason for a lot of the crime.

Check it out: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121789872887012221.html

If I were Dellums, I’d be on a plane to VA tomorrow.

people don’t go on restaurant takeover robbery sprees in places like Texas because the sprees don’t last very long.