A Fresh Look at Old Farts

My husband, ever eager to teach our children life skills, bent over to turn on the vacuum and farted audibly. He turned to our five and four year old children, James and Emma, who paid careful attention to the vacuum demonstration and said, “James farted.”

James looked indignant briefly and quickly countered, “Emma cut one.”

Emma gave her father a long steady look and said, “No, seriously James farted.”

My husband says he’s teaching important life lessons, political skills. I find this farfetched since Emma already exaggerates, embellishes and lies with the poise and spontaneity of a politician. As parents in Oakland we don’t get to play politics much, we’re too busy working two jobs to pay for the mortgage and the private schools.

Our family falls between the demographic cracks we get to check all the boxes for ethnicity and we earn enough live in Oakland, but not enough to buy political favors. My husband and I don’t matter and I don’t mind if we are left out of the discussion about Oakland’s future. Emma and James though they deserve a place at the table.

Here and now makes our children what they will become tomorrow and Mayor Brown and the Oakland City Council have failed Oakland’s children miserably. We had a youth and child sex industry blossom under the careful management of these “crime stoppers.” If you vilify minority youth for political gain, why should you be surprised when they are then exploited for profit? If you promise pork and cut deals to better serve voter rich affluent neighborhoods while schools and other city services disappear in poorer neighborhoods, how can you than be “shocked” when youth create their own entertainment by driving in cars.

I can’t bear to hear more promises of pork, police and bond initiatives. I want to hear an acceptance of failure and a sincere apology from Council President Ignacio De La Fuente to the children and parents of Oakland because his mistakes and mismanagement have cost our children their lives, their dreams and their futures. The Oakland City Council stinks up the council chambers with their sweet deals for developers, gaseous rhetoric, stupidity and arrogance then when bad things happen on their watch, they blame our kids. Come on Ignacio you farted, all we want is a simple, “excuse me.”

Oakland 911

“911”
“Yes, please help me, a pit bull is eating my poodle.”
“Sir, you don’t really think this is a ‘police emergency’ do you?”“Oh my God! He’s finished my poodle and is attacking the neighbor’s Labrador.”
“Sir, maybe you should call animal control or your neighborhood watch captain.”
“Please, just do something. What’s the animal control number?”
“Sir, this is 911, not 411. Click.”
“Hello, you’ve reached the City of Oakland’s animal control. We are unable to take your call at this time; if you need immediate assistance call the Oakland Police Department’s non-emergency number or you may leave a message after the sound of the beep. Beep. The voice mailbox you are trying to access is currently full. Click.”“You have reached the Oakland Police Department’s non-emergency number all our operators are currently busy with other calls please stay on the line and your call will be answered in the order received. The current wait time is approximately 3 hours and 20 minutes.”
“Hello, you have reached the Oakland City Council.”
“There’s a marauding pit bull headed to a pre-school.”
“You know, we get so many calls about dogs and let me assure you that the councilperson strongly supports dogs and their owners. Let me suggest that you go to our website where you can see pictures of the councilperson and dogs and you can read about all that this district has done for dogs.”
“No! I need help, someone might get hurt.”
“Oh, I’m sorry we get so many calls about crime, there’s nothing we can do at this time. We did successfully pass Measures B and S and the new funding should be available in 2020.”
“No, my neighborhood is being terrorized by a marauding pit bull.”
“Well, I can advise you to join your neighborhood watch and get organized. If you can bring lots of people to meetings where the councilperson can talk about all they have done for your community, we might be able to help you more.”“Please I just need one police officer.”
“Sir, this is a nuisance crime, if you give me your name and address I will send you a helpful brochure about policing yourself, home safety tips and 25 reasons to elect Jerry Brown as California Attorney General.”

Reprinted from the Dailydirt.blogspot.com July 2005

Angels in Oakland (December 2004)

Bureaucrats love numbers and the end of the year calls for the final count. So here’s some numbers for you 86, 109, 108, 84 and 80. Murders in Oakland for the last five years friends, children, husbands, wives and grandparents lost. Oakland actually has a neighborhood called “ghost town” of course city hall doesn’t recognize the name, it's bad PR. Oakland has become a city of ghosts, of angels and people whose lives have been forever changed by violence.

Our democratic machine has approached its people and their strife from a position of fear and ignorance. Liberal democrats wring their hands, “Why don’t the youth vote?” “Why are they so angry?” “What is wrong with them?” Then they vote for more prisons and close schools. I meet Oakland youth everyday who have personal experience with violence. They have ideas opinions and a very thoughtful perspective of the world and their place in it. They don’t vote or trust politicians because politicians have done nothing to win their respect or trust. They want to be heard, to be taught and to be loved and we do little or nothing to meet their simple needs.

Poor neighborhoods can’t get a beat cop in Oakland, but affluent enclaves like Montclair get two. Mayor Brown having done little or nothing for Oakland youth now plans to exploit their suffering to promote his own political career. Having played politics with our schools and our police services, leaving both much worse
than he found them, Brown, a ruthless pollster, plans to run against crime and inner city youth for state attorney general. He will appeal to fear and a tired white liberal base, who remembers him as a governor, back when he cared and came to work.

Mayor what’s his name can’t help Oakland, leadership and hope in Oakland won’t come from has been politicians; it will come from our children. RIP, Rest in Peace, our children understand death and in a funny way life better than most forty year olds. These kids know the world in a hard dark way and face it with courage and hope. They love and remember lost friends, the people our politicians are so determined to forget. They know that to our leaders they are just troubling statistics, “ urban youth problems” not people. I had one young girl tell me, “ I feel like garbage, something that someone has thrown away and forgotten.”

Local democrats need to stop sucking up to developers, stop building ballparks and ice rinks, put down their spread sheets, walk out of their focus groups and go and meet our children. Every week these young people come through Highland Hospital their lives lost or forever changed by violence, not once in twelve years have I seen a politician come to talk to these kids or their families. You can’t solve problems you don’t understand. Oakland’s political machine doesn’t care about our youth and our youth know it. We just voted money for violence prevention, let's see those politicians walk into the neighborhoods, the prisons and the hospitals, talk to our children then bring them back to city hall. Urban youth problems cannot be solved without buy in from urban youth. If you want to change the culture you have to understand it. RIP doesn’t just mean "Rest in Peace", it means Rich in Potential and if democrats continue to ignore these children, Rise in Protest.

Reprinted from the Dailydirt.blogspot.com (December 2004)