www.newsandletters.org
|
|
NEWS & LETTERS, December 2002
Black/Red View
Black life in Oakland
by John Alan This fall national and local news carried daily reports on
the wanton killings by a sniper in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. Television
networks broadcast daily reports of the sheriff of Montgomery County, Md. on the
hunt to find the mysterious sniper and how the Justice Department and the FBI
were aiding local law enforcement agencies in their efforts to apprehend him. In contrast to the intense coverage the media gave to the
killing of ten people in the Washington, D.C. area, it has paid hardly any
attention to the skyrocketing numbers of mostly African Americans who are being
murdered on the streets of Oakland, Cal. Since the beginning of this year, 102
men and women have been murdered in Oakland predominately in two
African-American communities. Neither the FBI nor the Justice Department offered
help. POLICE BRUTALITY AND BAFFLEMENT Oakland's police department has solved only a small number
of those homicides and claims it is baffled, since many witnesses know the
killers and won't inform on them. Whether or not one chooses to believe the
Oakland police's claim that African Americans are not inclined to give them
information, the police's perception of non-cooperation offered as a
"reason" for not solving crimes expresses a great social division in
Oakland. African Americans in Oakland have been deeply aware of
police brutality. Take for example the current trial of a group of Oakland
police calling themselves "The Riders." It was uncovered in open court
how those policemen, for a long time, systematically beat and terrorized
innocent African Americans. Even this startling revelation is old history for
many African Americans. It was precisely this type of police brutality that
caused Huey Newton and Bobby Seale in 1966 to organize the Black Panthers as a
means of self defense. The history of Oakland police's racist relationship with
African Americans lingers on, while Jerry Brown, the present mayor of Oakland,
is under pressure to end the rising rate of unsolved homicides. Brown moved to
relieve this pressure by placing two propositions on the November ballot. The
first would let Oakland hire a hundred more police officers and the second would
let the city pay them by new tax assessments, such as an increase in parking
fees, a surcharge on utilities and an increase in hotel taxes. Voters accepted
the first proposition and rejected the others. RACE AND CLASS IN OAKLAND Mayor Brown got his police officers, but not the money to
pay them. His dilemma is not an accident, but a manifestation of race and class
divisions in Oakland. According to the voting record, the majority of whites,
living in upscale neighborhoods in the Oakland hills, voted for the employment
of more police officers and against the taxes to pay them. African-American
voters living in the flatlands voted against both hiring more police officers
and creating new taxes to pay them. Mayor Brown has attempted to shift his political dilemma
away from the race and class antagonisms in Oakland by saying that most of the
recent homicides are committed by parolees. He claims that California's Parole
Board has a policy of giving parolees a few hundred dollars and a bus ticket to
Oakland. Therefore, he convinced his friends in the State Legislature to send
more parole officers to Oakland. By doing this, Brown appears to be humane and
rational. In reality he does the opposite. Parole officers don't solve homicide
cases. They are given the power to arbitrarily arrest parolees without any
"interference" from courts or lawyers. Some say the murders are connected to the sale of drugs, others say gang warfare, or a family feud. The police say nothing. Whatever the reason, they're inescapably related to the alienating conditions in Oakland's two African-American communities. The present economic downturn comes after the social safety net of the welfare state has been removed. When hard times come the problems of the poor are invisible and the only solution politicians propose is putting more African Americans under the criminal justice system. |
|
Home l News & Letters Newspaper l Back issues l News and Letters Committees l Dialogues l Raya Dunayevskaya l Contact us l Search Published by News and Letters Committees |
