Features

Tyranny, our conservative friends remind us, is like hot tar poured from a limitless source. To describe it as greedy misses the point, as even the largest stomach eventually gets filled. Tyranny is more insatiable. Its own weight compels it on, overwhelming even the part of it that first comes through the breech, and it never stops of its own accord. Either it chokes off all the available space, or you have to walk over and turn off the spigot. Our conservative friends are wrong about a number of things. But not about this. 

Having successfully vaulted the fence of our electoral rights (taking away Oaklanders’ right to run our own schools through an elected school board, that is), our little band of tyrants has taken to relieving themselves upon the public lawn. The specific target of the season appears to be that portion of the First Amendment that protects the right of folks to assemble and petition the government for a redress of grievances. 

A group of Oakland citizens gather of a brisk afternoon at the center of the seat of power—the corridor between the State Building and City Hall—to let their opinion be heard concerning the state seizure of the Oakland Unified School District. To a person, they do not like it. It is an orderly gathering of teachers and parents and students (many of them of elementary school age) with a sprinkling of elected officials, both present and past (I see City Councilmember Nancy Nadel and former City Councilmember Wilson Riles amongst the group). By design, the gathering splits up to take their message to the offices of officials, state and local, who have had a hand in the school takeover. 

Those seeking an audience with Mayor Jerry Brown, however, find the doors of City Hall locked, and a contingent of Oakland police officers barring entrance thereto. The mayor has taken to exchanging smirks about the takeover with the business breakfast crowd, but the group at Ogawa Plaza that day probably does not appreciate the joke, and so Mr. Brown makes no appearance to the assemblage, nor does he suffer any of his aides to do so, either. 

By way of explanation to an Oakland Tribune columnist, Captain Rod Yee of the Oakland Police Department reveals that the doors were locked because letting these Oakland citizens into Oakland City Hall “would be disruptive to business.” A slip of a Freudian nature, one supposes. The citizens are reduced to shivering in the cold of the late afternoon, holding up signs and banners to empty windows. That they, huddling in the cold wind outside, are the ones paying to keep the lights on and the heat going inside, is a point many are apt to remember as they break up and head back for their Oakland homes. 

Oaklanders, get used to it. Pamela Drake, a parent and a former city council aide, posts the following message to a local political Internet discussion group concerning State Administrator Randolph Ward’s second public hearing on the Oakland school closures last month. I quote, extensively, with her permission, because there is no way I could describe it better: 

“Last night I attended the Oakland School Board Meeting (or whatever we’re calling it these days). I was met again with a large show of police force and no little amount of intimidation. School security and police officers straddled the steps. It was not apparent that you were able to enter at all. I went around them successfully and found at least a half dozen OPD officers immediately inside filling up the hallway. 

“I asked the officer in charge why such a large force was needed. He said he probably needed more and had I seen what had happened at the last meeting. I said I had and there had been no incident. He told me that they were required to enforce the fire safety laws (or something to that effect). I asked him why folks were not allowed to stand in the halls as they always had in the past when the room filled up. He felt that there were already too many people in the halls. At the time, most of people in the halls were TV reporters and cameramen. He commented that if there were an emergency, a gurney would not be able to get through. So I’m guessing that next the press may be excluded for causing a hazard. 

“I made my way to the meeting hall. There was an officer blocking the door. He said that the room was not yet open. [It later was opened], but when I tried to enter, I was asked who I was. He then told me that I had to have a ticket. I was unable to locate the ticket ‘vendor’. A teacher from Burbank School came up to me and got me to the lady giving out the tickets. She asked me if I were a Burbank teacher or parent and the teacher said that I was. So that way I could get into an OUSD ‘public’ meeting.” 

According to Ms. Drake, the only citizens allowed in the public hearing were representatives of the five schools scheduled to be closed, and then only one school at a time. She goes on to write: 

“Once in the meeting there were numerous police and security personnel... About 30 folks lined up and spoke very emotionally, many of them children. 

“As I got up to leave I observed an audience member (whom I know slightly), almost get into an altercation with an officer apparently over handing out flyers. Another officer calmed the first one. I saw that more security was coming in. I also saw an officer from the hallway ask if more citizens could come in. He said no. I watched as numerous people left, but it was still no. I could see the OPD and school security forming a barrier at the top of the stairs. Citizens were being ushered out the side entrance and not allowed back into the hallway. I watched a mother plead with the group of officers to let her take her daughter to the bathroom. They escorted her out. I shifted myself to the door and quickly left as an officer attempted to grab me before I could get through.” 

“The evils of tyranny,” John Hay once said, “are rarely seen but by him who resists it.” Oakland, in beginning to resist, begins to see. 

›