Open Letter to the Ladies of Oakland City Council

It's been too long since anyone in Oakland wrote an open letter, don't you think? I watched the City Council meeting last night - it was better than almost anything on television - and was inspired to write to you, Councilwomen. I'm leaving the guys out of this, because I have little faith that they will listen at all. I do have faith that you will, and did last night, even if you didn't quite hear. And I am here to tell you that I listened to you as well.

Councilmembers Brooks, Brunner, Kaplan, Kernighan, Nadel and Schaaf: I hear that you are frustrated with Occupy Oakland. Trust me, I hear you. I consider myself a PART of Occupy Oakland, and I am frustrated with it. We spend almost all our time arguing! We are trying to create a future while living in a messy, globalized, hyper-interconnected, and massively technological present. We argue all day! We are trying to find a way to create new, more flexible, organic, porous structures. We are trying to GROW a society from our very cells instead of making a blueprint and building one. It's frustrating, and exhilarating, and intense.  We enjoy each other's passion. It's a love affair, or like parenting. It's a loving argument.

Some of you keep reminding us that yes, yes, you once had a love affair with a movement too. And that was great, but now we need to work TOGETHER. And you're hurt when we say no. You agree with us about so much! What is wrong with us? Why can't we just talk?

If you were alive in the sixties or even if you just read about them, you remember "Don't trust anyone over 30." I wonder if you're wondering if that's what's going on here. That would hurt anyone's feelings!

But that is not what this is about. As you know, the Occupy movement has people of all ages. This is not about the sixties, this is not about whether you were in a sit-in or are a nice person who wants to do good things. I wholeheartedly believe that you are, and were, and you do.

But your negotiating position at the moment is such that I don't have a choice.

I don't need to tell you what has happened with wealth and power in this country and globally in the last 40 years. I don't have to tell you about executive salaries, the environment, banks, how nobody has been held truly accountable. I don't need to tell you about the powerful interests influencing politicians - in fact, last night you kept telling me. (Thank you, Councilmember Nadel.)

Your position in all this as a politician is clear: different interests try to sway you, and you try to get what you need in return. You need money and votes, the rest of us need influence. You're not a victim, you are a player. You are an influence saleswoman. And so am I.

When you say you're frustrated, and you want what I want, and you too protested, you are negotiating. You are trying to convince me that if I enter into a negotiation with you, you will make it worth my time. Unfortunately we are now at such a juncture in history that I can't believe you - not because I think you are dishonest, but because of the nature of the game we are playing.

I am sorry if it hurts your feelings, but entering into the negotiation would ratify the process. The process is not acceptable to me. You are a professional negotiator, so you know that the way to change the process is to refuse to enter the negotiation, and continue being difficult. I am certain you've done it many times yourself.

It's not personal. It's all in the game.

Right now, it's time to change the rules of the game - before we start a new round.

Occupy Myrtle Street Block Party!

How I woke up one day and discovered I was a radical

I am a pretty average Finn. All Finns are social democrats, no matter what party they tell you they belong to, because even the right wing in Finland believes in free education, national healthcare, and not letting anyone get too rich lest they think they're better than other people.

My mother's side of my family represents a fairly typical Nordic success story, having gone from starving poverty to comfortable middle class in three generations. It wasn't a free ride on government handouts. My great-grandfather starved to death in a concentration camp after taking part in the 1917 attempt at Communist revolution in Finland. My great-grandmother served two years in prison after killing a baby she couldn't support, and went on to raise five children to productive adulthood, one of them my incredibly hardworking grandmother. Grandma was widowed early, when my war veteran grandfather died after a drunk driving incident, and raised her two surviving kids (one died by drowning at age 7) on her salary as a mail carrier. She brought my mother up to believe in beauty, and made sure there was real art on her walls. My parents both had fulfilling careers without a college education, and are now safely retired. Their health care is taken care of. I count my blessings every day for the free education that made me the first university graduate in my family, and for the freedom I enjoy because I don't have the huge financial burden of elder care and loans that Americans are shouldered with. My stepson has access to a free university degree in Europe. How can anybody say that all this is not worth a 40% tax rate?

What I want for everyone is what my family had: a fighting chance. What I want is for children to be born like me: into countries where labor and the left have selflessly fought the battles that make fairness a fact of life - not sold out to lobbyists and corporate interests. This should be a piece of cake in the industrialized west. We should now be working on how to make equality of opportunity a global right in a globalized world. Not bickering over whether it's fair that a billionaire "job creator" may have to give up on a slightly larger yacht this year.

I am a lucky immigrant for having come to America from a "socialist" country. If I end up destitute after an illness that my insurance won't cover, all I need is to scrounge up enough money for a ticket back to Finland. They'll take care of me there.

With the "mainstream" now pushed so far right in the American political discourse that we have the Democrats passing a watered-down version of a Republican health plan and helping bankers get enormous bonuses for nearly destroying the entire world economy, where the hell do you think that leaves me? With the so-called social democrats "working within" the liberal industrial complex that's been bought by Wall Street, while the Democrats fall all over themselves pretending they don't exist?

By simply acknowledging what I believe - and what apparently a majority of Americans believe, if you don't tell them it's called "socialism" - I have fallen off the political map.

I want to be associated with people who actually give a shit, and aren't looking to use me for something in some campaign that is mainly about their own career or some other interest that's not being mentioned out loud.

And like so many others, I feel like the Occupy movement, started by anarchists, is where I suddenly have space to express my - still, I think, pretty mainstream - opinions, without being branded a loony and a dangerous person.

(It's not the first time I find myself breaking bread with anarchists when I'm trying to express some really very non-extreme opinion. When the G.W. Bush administration was threatening to attack Iraq for having imaginary WMD, I found myself at a protest in Helsinki, marching to the American embassy side by side with anarchists under the red and the black. Laughing at the anarchist jokes - "Come on guys, don't stop in front of other people! Didn't anybody here go to the Army?" - and finding mad respect in my heart for the two guys carrying the nearly passed-out fellow with "Junkies for peace" scrawled in marker on his forehead.)

You don't leave me a choice, oh Political Map of America. I don't necessarily believe that abolishing repressive systems will end repression (I tend to believe that humans secrete repressive systems like spiders poop webs), but I'm starting to think that since our systems are so completely broken and corrupt, and immune to the actual will of the people, hell, maybe we need to smash the whole thing and start over. Maybe the conversation needs to be had entirely outside the existing paradigm, which has been entirely co-opted and is no longer useful. Otherwise all we have left is manufactured consent fueled by emotional masturbation, masking a massive clusterfuck of injustice and greed.

Memorial Service at St. Andrew's Plaza

You might have noticed that at St. Andrew’s Plaza there is a memorial in the center of the stage we built for National Night Out. This was put together by some of the park patrons who knew Taj-Mall, a young single mother, pregnant with her second child. While sitting at St. Andrew’s Plaza she began to hemorrhage and hours later was declared dead at highland Hospital. These are all the details that we have. Out of respect we didn’t clean the Plaza as scheduled last Saturday.

This Friday, December 2nd, 5pm, Neighbors, Spc2 members, and our Pastors Lankford, Lowery and Martin help us say goodbye in a dignified manner to Taj-Mall. After the memorial service her family and friends will remove the park memorial.

Our hope is that this will help bring closure to Taj-Mall’s friends and family who miss her and will continue to love her.

Please come join us. St. Andrew's Plaza is located at the corner of Filbert St. and San Pablo Avenue.

Last but not least community meeting of the year!

McClymonds High School 
6:00pm Second Floor Library
Meeting Agenda:
• California Hotel Developer’s Update and Window Displays
• Alliance Recycling Presentation and Community Q&A
• Cass Recycling Presentation and Community Q&A (not confirmed)
• SPc2 Committee Reports
• San Pablo Corridor Commercial Redevelopment Efforts
• St. Andrew’s Plaza renovation plans, Jobs, Community Outreach


Tell metal recyclers how their business affects our community life. Hear all about the new developments at the California Hotel. And more!



SAN PABLO CORRIDOR COALITION
Bring something to share  •  Bring a smile  •  Bring a warm hug

Calling all Active and Lovely People in West Oakland

The next San Pablo Corridor Coalition Neighborhood Meeting is coming up! Come join your neighbors and various City representatives for fruitful discussion, find out about how you can be active in your neighborhood, buy a house, find a job, protect the environment, or just check out if anyone brought cookies.

West Oakland is an active, exciting, powerful neighborhood. We can all work together to make sure we are heard and that our voice counts.

The meeting is on Thursday September 8th, at 6:30PM at the Library of the historic McClymonds High School, 2607 Myrtle Street, Oakland.

The agenda is packed with great stuff:

Guest Speaker:

• Mayor’s Office
-Update on Parcel Tax, City Budget and Small Business Month

• Redevelopment Agency Staff, (West Oakland Specific Plan Steering Committee)
West Oakland is undergoing a thorough study that will chance the way we live and work
Come ask your questions - be part of the process

• Lily Smith, (Alliance Metals and West Oakland Alliance Foundation)
Special presentation followed by Q&A
Learn about Alliance Recycling & their efforts to work within our neighborhood

• Tom McCoy, WOGI, Director
West Oakland Green Initiative
-Do you want a free tree? It’s FREE!
351 Trees to be planted in West Oakland before the end of the year.

St. Andrew’s Plaza:
• Alex Miller-Cole, Beautification and Sustainability Committee chair
-Unveiling of “first draft” plans, renderings and general idea behind renovations

Financing and home ownership opportunities:
• Alex Miller-Cole, San Pablo Corridor Coalition Chair
-West Oakland has unique opportunities and we need to know about them

West Oakland Voter Registration Effort:
• Ron Muhammad, West Oakland Network, Director
We need to show that West Oakland counts! It is up to all of us. We must make our

voice heard.

Like the San Pablo Corridor Neighborhood Coalition on Facebook!

Market Street Waterworld

The 2500 block of Market Street is afloat with water, due to the flocking of mermaids into their underground caves for winter hibernation.

Beware that the street may be dangerous to drive on. Should you find any lost mermaids, please call the City of Oakland Mythology Patrol. Any stray mermaids and sirens will be returned to the wild, so that they can attempt re-flocking.

The mermaid caves are under the San Pablo Avenue - Market Street crossroads. This accounts for many uncanny phenomena seen in that area.