Yesterday, Oakland City Council member Ignacio de la Fuente called a press conference along with three other council people to demand the immediate end of the Occupy Oakland encampment at Frank Ogawa Plaza. It was, no doubt, a hilarious spectacle. Politicians–who know they can call a press conference in the lobby of city hall any day of the week–claiming that they’re being censored by a crowd of people who only matter to the press when they start yelling things. Come on, now.
Beyond the drama, there’s some ironic issues to note about the council people’s hysterical preoccupation with the plaza. I live in councilman de la fuente’s distict 5. My neighborhood in the Courtland Creek areas is literally the area’s garbage heap. A car was once left in front of our house, in the middle of the street–full of garbage, like several hundred pounds of it. The backyard of the rental unit next door was full of garbage for months–garbage that was rotting, toxic stuff, right there in the open, yards away from my house. We tried to get the city to do something about it for months, and they claimed their hands were tied. That’s not an isolated story.
Area police don’t respond to this kind of thing, and generally turn a blind eye to it when it actually affects citizens living in the city’s poor neighborhoods. You can’t call a cop to come and do something about a dumper, even if you just saw them dump a couch in front of your house. They don’t care. As I went out to photograph this, my neighbor commented “sick of it, too?” and agreed that police will roll right by someone dumping their trash in the common spaces on their way to nowhere.
Here’s a picture of a growing trash heap, I took yesterday:
And here it is today:
And yes, that is a mattress a few yards up the road.
Courtland creek, which would be a lovely place for people in this neighborhood to picnic and spend time, is full of dumped garbage all the time. Landlords regularly use the park areas around the creek to dump the life-possessions of human beings after they’ve been evicted. And there are a lot of evictions. On one particularly bloody eviction day, I came out of my house to see stuffed animals lying in various prone positions throughout the neighborhood–it looked like the climax of a Scorsese film about stuffed animal gangsters. There’s always big heaps of people’s former domiciled lives sitting everywhere. Its an ugliness that doesn’t even begin to scratch the real tragedy beneath, especially when you consider who those stuffed animals belonged to.
De la Fuente’s constituents are used to poor administration and have gotten tired of asking for help to keep the neighborhood free of vandalism and garbage. The guy hasn’t even updated his website in three years. He has a lot of things to check off of his to do list before getting around to repressing a popular mass movement.
Occupy Oakland has grown, in part, to draw attention to this business as usual approach to Oakland’s decaying neighborhoods. Council people don’t understand this yet, but I think they may before its through.
Update: Close to a week later, the garbage pile is still there and bigger. A satellite heap has grown around the discarded mattress, also still there.
marymad
November 10, 2011
You can report dumping to the following email address:
PWACallCenter@oaklandnet.com
Tell them what it is/how big and the exact location. They will take care of it.
Jaime Omar Yassin
November 10, 2011
My neighbor and I both reported this yesterday. As you can see, its not only still there, its bigger.
marymad
November 10, 2011
If you send an email, first they send you back an “open ticket” meaning they got your report. Then when they take care of it they email you again to let you know it is “closed.”
I have not tried reporting by phone.
Elle
November 10, 2011
I think the point here is the speed with which certain things are actually addressed. What takes precedence in the order of business is always what matters to the politicians, not what matters to the people. If the council man wanted, he could very easily rally the troops and get city staff cleaning up the street constantly. Instead, he and other council members decide to focus on removing the Occupy Oakland encampment–because the occupier’s presence directly threatens the power and authority of the council.
Jaime Omar Yassin
November 10, 2011
True. I also wanted to draw attention to selective enforcement by police of crimes which are being touted as dire and important at OO. Fire hazard, sanitation problems, etc., area all a part of daily life here. There’s no police enforcement to prevent those crimes whatsoever; that’s only for political protests.
cocktailhag
November 10, 2011
Our somewhat infamous lame-duck Mayor, Sam Adams, has summarily announced that Occupy Portland would be removed from its two parks Saturday night. If you don’t hear from me next week, it’s because I got arrested.
Worker
November 10, 2011
Or, you could act like a socially aware being, and instead of whining about a distant government you could organize a collective right there to improve your neighborhood.
The ideas of Occupy must be everywhere. Not just tent city, but all city.
If we can’t do things like this, we fail.
Jaime Omar Yassin
November 10, 2011
I pick up garbage there regularly; sometimes I have to, because its left in front of our house. My point, since you missed it, is that de la Fuente wants to use a militarized police raid to end the same kinds of putative violations that police do nothing about in other areas. Of course we clean up our neighborhood, here, because we can’t rely on the city to enforce the laws that would prevent people dumping garbage here. Do you get it?
Darjeeling43
November 25, 2011
Ignacio De La Fuente’s son is in jail for 14 years for raping 4 women. This is the level of person who’s a City Council member.
http://sfist.com/2007/10/26/rapist_ignacio.php