Comments on: Jean Quan doesn’t believe crime is up

By: Max Allstadt

Max Allstadt — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 07:28:52 +0000

i was hal kidding, julia. but watch the interview.

By: Julia Cavenovia

Julia Cavenovia — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 05:54:57 +0000

Oakland I can take — but, please! John Russo?

There just is a limit to how many psychic showers one has to take before embracing a new paradigm shift.

By: Max Allstadt

Max Allstadt — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 03:14:38 +0000

Go where you will folks. I’m stayin.
Perhaps I’ll be part of John Russo’s predicted paradigm shift.

By: Nancy Rieser

Nancy Rieser — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 02:39:48 +0000

Sherry O: The conga line outta town starts behind me, amiga…

By: Sherry Oxling

Sherry Oxling — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 00:43:14 +0000

Sheese, that sounded dark! That’s it — time for me to move. I am loosing my twinkle.

By: Sherry Oxling

Sherry Oxling — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 00:25:57 +0000

When I said “spent” that refers to the void in my life that’s left after years community meetings, working on campaigns and speaking at City Council.

Sadly, it’s just that… now , I have found myself in the position of having skipped over the stage of being cynical and have gone direclty to lacking hope. I drive west of Broadway and see vast acres of empty condos — some of them, incomplete, construction stopped, all shrink wrapped, the plastic sheeting flapping in the wind.

Can someone tell me why Oakland is not going to go the way of Vallejo and file for Chapter god-knows-which-number? Wasn’t much of our budget based on the presumed transfer taxes on the now shrink wrapped condos?

P.S. Thanks, Chris, for the welcome. That was very kind of you.

By: BMC

BMC — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 00:13:45 +0000

sherry, have you not noticed that our host on this very own blog is doing exactly what your asking for, and yes, for free?

By: Chris Kidd

Chris Kidd — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 23:45:08 +0000

Paying taxes isn’t enough. Voting isn’t enough.

I Don’t mean to get all ‘inspiriational poster’ on you, but you gotta be the change you want to see(can’t you just imagine that under a picture of Half Dome, or an overhead shot of people rowing a crew shell or something else lame like that?)

Things like engaging in discussions like these, attending city council meetings, calling your councilmember, organizing and informing your community: THAT is democracy in action. Government is there for the seizing, you just need to stick out your hands.

I respect that some people just aren’t inclined to do that. But since you’re posting here, I’m guessing you’re not from that crowd.

P.S. Big ups to you for becoming another voice in the discussion. I can only deal with so much Max a day. =P

By: Sherry Oxling

Sherry Oxling — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 22:16:06 +0000

Max — I didn’t know about the after-story. Thank you. I agree with you it is HUGELY complicated. What would I do, you ask? Well (she takes a deep breathe before typing) I wouldn’t raise my son to be a rapist to begin. That said, I admire your compassion, Max. I realize compassion in this situation, is something that I don’t have to give — which is more my issue than Ignacio’s.

Chris Kidd — yup. All those issues should be tackled one by one — but who has room in their life to to do that — who out there has the time or power or the economic freedom — to be an outside a consultant/policy analyst — for free?

Chris, that is what I pay taxes for. I reckon the best thing I can do to effect change is to elect intelligent people with the highest standards of ethics to fix all thing you listed above and more.

As for me — I am spent. Spent, discouraged and ….sad to say, devoid of hope.

By: Chris Kidd

Chris Kidd — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 21:52:42 +0000

Sherry,
I think that throwing everything on the “Oakland political culture” pile is really counterproductive. It’s just a way of lumping everything that goes wrong all together without analyzing the problems themselves and how they came to be. It also unnecessarily builds up the problems we have had into an unassailable monolith. Let’s deconstruct, look at each individual problem, and assign blame where blame is due. **btw, this might seem hyper-critical and possibly mean, but I’m not trying to be. I just can’t seem to express my point in a less aggressive manner. My apologies if it seems rude**

Instead of lumping in our police staff shortage with the habits of politicians, I think it’s much more useful to look at: the hiring freeze under JB, the shutting down of the jail, the beefing up of IA because of the settlement for the Riders case, the use of badged officers for desk work, the old dysfunctional shift system that led to way too much overtime. Now, plumbing the depths of each of those issues and how they led to our current staffing crisis may be much more time consuming(heck, I don’t have that kind of time), but I think they’re more beneficial in the long run.