Jerry Brown's Divisive Agenda for Oakland:

"Ecopolis" for white people;

Police Containment and Poverty for African and Mexican Communities

Former California governor Jerry Brown settled in Oakland to become mayor and recently won an easy victory. But despite his populist "we the people" front, his talk of a "sustainable future" and hopes to turn Oakland into an "ecopolis," Brown's basic platform is the same old line. His goal is to make Oakland "safe" and pleasant for white people and investors by intensifying the policy of police containment and impoverishment of the African, Mexican and other oppressed communities.

Brown's victory follows a trend in predominantly African cities across the country. White mayors are once again replacing the black elected officials of the past several years. In Oakland and elsewhere, white flight is being reversed. The cities are flooding with white people and property values are skyrocketing.

Brown's victory coincides with a Northern California economic boom which has its apparent epicenter in Silicon Valley and is radiating northward. With housing virtually unavailable in the South Bay and San Francisco, young wealthy computer techs are flocking to Oakland. As the San Francisco Chronicle ¹ has reported, however, this economic boom makes no positive impact on the poverty of the majority of the African and Mexican communities in the area. In fact, the poverty of these communities is deepening.

As governor, Brown waged attack on Africans, Mexicans

Brown's background shows a history of the same kind of platform he is promoting in Oakland today.

Much of the wealth which Jerry Brown lives on, enabling him to be a perennial professional candidate, comes from his father, former governor Edmund "Pat" Brown. According to documents on the worldwide web, the elder Brown made millions of dollars representing the interests of Indonesian oil.² As recent headlines show, the U.S.-backed Indonesian government under Suharto not only oppressed its own people but waged genocide against the people of East Timor, a fact known for many years.

Pertamina, the Indonesian state oil company, reportedly contributed $70,000 to liberal Jerry Brown's first gubernatorial campaign. During Brown's administration as governor, he passed regulations which ensured that Indonesian oil would be used in California power plants.

Articles by Doug Henwood in Left Business Observer, February and April, 1992, point out that as governor, Brown slashed welfare with enthusiasm, backed work camps for juveniles and opposed state subsidized school lunches for impoverished children.³ During the '90s Brown has fought for the regressive Value-Added Tax. This would increase taxes by 20 percent for the poorest sector of the population while decreasing taxes for the richest sector by five percent.⁴

Poverty and oppression not addressed

With his $1.2 million headquarters near Jack London Square providing yoga and martial arts classes, Brown promotes himself as "the only living figure of populist reform known to most Americans other than Ralph Nader."⁵ Brown pledges his commitment to "Oaklanders first."

So why does Brown's platform for Oakland vigorously target and criminalize the African community in the most undemocratic way and fail to address the deep roots of poverty and oppression in this city?

Brown espouses populism yet embraces brutal police tactics in the African community similar to those of New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani. These are notorious methods which lead to the kind of torture and brutality experienced by Abner Louima, an African man who was was attacked and nearly killed by police with a toilet plunger in New York last year.

In his self-published campaign paper Oaklanders First, Volume 1, Number 1, Brown states that his "guiding principle" as mayor will be "Zero Tolerance of Crime." This is a catch phrase which everyone knows means an escalation of arrests in the African community. It is doubtful that we will see any increase in arrests in the hills where the real controllers of the drug trade live and where the bankers and corporate executives daily make policies which starve out the African community.

The crime rate is stable and even decreasing in Oakland and in all of California. Yet "zero tolerance" policies are responsible for quadrupling the prison population within just the four year period from 1992 to 1996. The prison population is 35 percent black while African people make up only 7 percent of the state's population.⁶

Brown boasts in his campaign paper that as governor he created the "Crime Resistance Task force to promote neighborhood watch programs and signed legislation establishing the state's first career criminal prosecution programs."

In fact, neighborhood watch programs are most undemocratic police-snitch programs which target African people. The vigilante neighborhood watch programs arise out of an economy in which some people have an abundance of resources at the expense of many people who have nothing.

Brown's career criminal prosecution programs laid the basis for the vicious "Three Strikes, You're Out" legislation which is today filling California's vast and lucrative prison system with young African and Mexican men at ever greater rates.

In addition Brown plans to "fill every vacancy" on the Oakland police force, to get "every penny of state, federal and foundation anti-crime money available to Oakland... to make Neighborhood Crime Prevention Councils truly a part of the fabric of each neighborhood."

As mayor, Brown pledges to "assume greater responsibility" for Oakland's brutal school system which is 92 percent African, Mexican and Asian. His plan includes bringing reactionary General Colin Powell to Oakland to work with him on the public schools, as well as former General of the California National Guard, Frank Schober, to establish a militaristic "cadet corps" in the schools.

In his platform, Brown never addresses the fact that Oakland is a divided city! Most white people live in affluence and freedom in the hills above the 580 freeway and most African, Mexican and poor Asians live in the flatlands in a virtual police state created to make sure they stay there. Below 580 where unemployment is rampant, most rental property is owned by people living in the hills or out of town. In West Oakland there is still no grocery store and residents are forced to shop at the overpriced convenience stores.

Flatlands public schools receive massive federal funding as long as the students continue to rank below the accepted educational standards. The schools are little prisons devoid of the books, arts, sports and computers which are taken for granted in white schools, including the more white public schools in the hills. As recent exposés have shown, in some schools there aren't even always working toilets!

In the flatlands the children are criminalized, especially if they are bright, energetic and resistant to the dulling school system. They are sent in large numbers to "special ed" and are often given mind-numbing drugs.

Certainly there is no curriculum which gives a true history of African and Mexican people. There is no community control of a racist school system which has been controlled by the state and which is currently led by a corrupt school board. It has long been an issue in the African community that the Oakland schools suspend and expel African students in a discriminatory way and track them into the juvenile prisons.

An "A" from an Oakland school is meaningless. In the 1997-98 school year, the University of California at Berkeley reportedly did not accept one student who graduated from the Oakland school system.

In the African communities of Oakland, every possible kind of local, state and federal police agency stalks the streets and flies over in helicopters. Sweeps of the community, harassment by the police and house-to-house searches are commonplace. Oakland has one of the highest rates of police brutality in the country. Last year the Oakland police department killed seven African people including 24-year-old Verlon Dykes, who was shot in the back in front of his pregnant wife, and Venus Beaird, who was killed in her home in front of her 17-year-old daughter.

On Sundays when young African people like to gather at Lake Merritt, police command posts are set up and African people are denied their rights to enjoy the parks. This would spark outrage if it happened to white people. The Festival at the Lake was discontinued because too many African people attended it.

It is clear that Brown's expressed love of the police stems from his strategy of police containment of the African community so that investment and democracy can be enjoyed by the white population.

Oakland has reputation of black militancy

Brown has stated that he wants to overcome Oakland's "bad image." The fact is the so-called "bad reputation" of Oakland long bemoaned by the Oakland Tribune and City Council arises from the fact that Oakland is the city where the Black Panther Party was born. African workers and poor people here have a history of refusing to be docile victims of white liberal policies aimed at suppressing the black community to ensure a pleasant life-style for white people.

Since the early '80s the Uhuru Movement has continued the legacy of struggle in the interests of the African working class &endash; much to the dismay of many white liberals and the organized white left.

It was out of the streets of West Oakland that Huey Newton rose to world-wide stature as a leader of the Black Revolution in the U.S. and throughout the world. The sight of Black Panthers doing their trainings on the shores of Lake Merritt sent many investors packing. The African community's demands for freedom, justice and political power in the '60s shaped the political agenda of the whole period. It was the Black Power Movement which sparked the free speech, anti-war, women's and gay movements of white Berkeley and San Francisco.

The marches, rebellions and organizations of the Black Movement brought world-wide attention to the American reality. The brutal colonial conditions suffered by African people inside the U.S. borders and the myth of "democracy for all" were exposed.

The Black Movement of the '60s had the participation and support of millions of African people from all walks of life. It was militarily defeated by the U.S. government which defined it as the "greatest internal threat to the U.S. government since the Civil War." The government's response was the notorious COINTELPRO,⁷ a deadly counterinsurgency program which was responsible for assassinating such beloved leaders of the African community as Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Fred Hampton, as well as 17-year-old Bobby Hutton here in Oakland. Others such as Geronimo Pratt were framed up and imprisoned for years. Movement offices were attacked and organizations were infiltrated and destroyed.

Huey Newton was assassinated by the government in West Oakland in 1989. At the time of his murder, the African People's Socialist Party which leads the Uhuru Movement correctly summed up that Newton was killed in an attempt to wipe out the remaining vestiges of Oakland's Black Panther reputation. The plan was to usher in a new era to make Oakland "safe" for white people and investors.⁸

In Oakland and throughout the country the COINTELPRO attack left the African community without an organized movement. Most of the democratic gains won by the Black Movement of the '60s were reversed, such as affirmative action, welfare and many First and Fourth Amendment rights affecting African people. The living conditions are worse than they were 30 years ago. As a result of COINTELPRO, the African working class and poor community was thrown back into an oppressive and terrorized existence.

Government flooded community with drugs

As has come to light in subsequent years, the U.S. government then flooded the streets of African communities all across the country with heroin and other deadly drugs. Heroin was brought from Southeast Asia, where the U.S. was conducting a deadly war against the Vietnamese people.⁹

The drugs are a way to keep the African community silent, unorganized and debilitated. Later, as the U.S. CIA and military were involved in suppressing revolutionary movements in Central and South America, the government began filling the African communities with a consciously-manufactured deadly derivative of cocaine called crack.¹⁰ Oakland was one of the first cities to feel the impact of this drug. Crack was calculated to alter the chemistry of the brain, cause birth defects and disrupt the cohesive African culture, as well as generate millions of dollars for the mainstream U.S. economy.

Another tactic of this counterinsurgency was to install black puppet elected officials to carry out an oppressive agenda which white officials could no longer openly implement because they had been exposed by the Black Power Movement. Deadly attacks on the African communities were carried out by black officials. These tactics would have produced massive rebellions if carried out by white elected officials.

One example is the 1985 bombing of the MOVE organization in Philadelphia by black mayor Wilson Goode which killed ¹¹ African people (including six children) and burned down over 60 houses in the African community.

In Oakland, former black mayors Lionel Wilson and Elihu Harris represented the interests of the white corporations which control this city. Wilson and Harris deepened the attacks on the African community. Harris, for example, sponsored the state take-over of the public schools and ushered in the terroristic drug task force to be used against the African community.

This strategy, called neo-colonialism, has been largely defeated by the African population whose political and economic conditions have grown far worse since the black puppets were installed. African and Mexican resistance to these brutal conditions is growing all over the country and the consciousness and resistance of the '60s are reappearing. This is one of the main reasons that Jerry Brown has been able to win the election in Oakland&endash;the African community sentiment that anything would be better than the hell brought by the black neo-colonialists.

Increasingly though, African people are demanding control of their own communities and genuine African economic development instead of the relentless policy of police containment.

White dream; African nightmare

Jerry Brown's "vision" for Oakland as an ecological utopia is a dream for the white population and a nightmare for African people. Brown ignores the fact that African and Mexican people from Oakland massively feed the California prison system which has the second largest number of people in prison in the whole world.11 Thousands of African men&endash;more than 40 percent of the young African male population&endash;are being sent to prison constantly, mostly on drug charges. This is so even though the majority of drug users and sellers are white.

White drug users are put in drug treatment programs while African people are sentenced to life under the "Three Strikes" law.

California prisons are heinous and deadly. At Pelican Bay, physical and psychological torture of prisoners has been exposed. At the Corcoran prison recent investigations have revealed forced "gladiator fights" between inmates during which at least 50 people have been shot and several killed by armed guards.¹²

Brown and his supporters make no outcry or comment on this reality, even though it fits the definition of genocide by international law and affects the lives of thousands of people in Oakland.

In the Bay Area and around the country in the past few years, there have been countless exposures of government, police and white control of the drug trade. Brown himself held a forum at his headquarters a year or so ago exposing the CIA's role in bringing drugs into the US.

In the African community the statement made years ago by Chairman Omali Yeshitela, leader of the Uhuru Movement, has almost become a cliche: "African people don't control the planes and the ships to bring the drugs into the community."

Yet Brown's platform continues to criminalize African people, the victims of a very large, very lucrative but unacknowledged drug economy which sends wealth flowing into white people's bank accounts.

The reality is that even though the economic boom seems to mysteriously hinge on the computer industry of Silicon Valley, the real basis for the fabulous wealth currently being enjoyed by the white population of California is this long-standing illegal drug trade. We can only assume it was money laundering, for example, which bolstered Bank of America in the '80s, bringing it out of a several million dollar deficit and into a spectacular profit within one year's time.

Many other banking institutions, brokerage firms and law firms have gotten wealthy the same way. It is the drug trade which is behind the skyrocketing real estate values for white people today in Oakland. The drug trade is estimated to be worth between $100 and $250 billion annually to the U.S. economy. Clearly none of that money circulates in the African community although it is portrayed as the "drug" community.

California's enormous prison system&endash;a byproduct of the drug economy&endash;has also created one of the largest growth sectors of the state's economy. Within the next few years, California could have as many as 70 prisons and will soon have a quarter of a million people in prison, far more than huge countries such as Brazil, China or India. Only 15 percent of California's prison population is white.¹³

The state currently has more than 25,000 prison guards, up from 7,500 in 1985. A guard makes an average of $45,000 a year and much more with overtime. The prison guards' union contributed over $100,000 towards the "Three Strikes, You're Out" legislation. Inside the prisons, companies such as TWA, Lexus, Spaulding, Eddie Bauer and many others are using prisoners as slave labor, reaping massive profits.¹⁴

Some of America's largest Wall Street brokerage firms, such as Goldman Sachs & Co., Prudential Insurance Co., Smith Barney Sherson Inc. and Merrill Lynch and Co., are underwriting prison construction with private tax-exempt bonds.¹⁵

The gold rush of today

Jerry Brown boasts that his great grandfather came to Northern California in the gold rush of 150 years ago. On Brown's website¹⁶ is a proposal for an "Oakland Ecopolis," which states, "The gold rush of 1849 gave birth to Oakland as a bustling town... As a new millennium approaches, Oakland can become the site of yet another gold rush..."

It is only appropriate that Brown would favor such a comparison. During the gold rush, tens of thousands of white people stormed California to participate in stealing the land, gold and resources of Mexico and to carry out California's violent state-supported campaign of genocide against the Indigenous people. Nearly 300,000 Indigenous people were killed during the next 20 years, mostly by ordinary white people.¹⁷

In 1850 and '51 the state of California paid out $1 million each year to white people who could bring in scalps and body parts of Native people or build vigilante groups to exterminate the Indigenous population. The Indigenous people, whose environment was completely destroyed, were raped, enslaved and massacred by the '49ers who are so glorified today.¹⁸

Like Jerry Brown's platform for Oakland, the genocidal gold rush was a "populist" campaign and enjoyed the support of the majority of the white population who reaped great wealth and freedom in the process of wiping out the Native people.

In fact, the origin and fabric of America is slavery and genocide. It was this which created a world economy that has always enabled the white population to share the stolen wealth and experience a popular democracy by carrying out terror, genocide and enslavement against African and Indigenous people.

The unspeakable lynchings and enslavement of African people (which white labor unions and socialists of the time did everything possible to maintain); the legacy of white "pioneers," a civilian militia to exterminate Indigenous people&endash;this is the popular history of the U.S.

Brown's victory indeed represents a modern gold rush as white people again flood into Oakland to experience a desirable life style and liberal existence at the expense of enforced poverty and police containment of African and Mexican people.

Crisis of white society

Despite the momentary economic boom felt by white people in Northern California, the fact is the white population is in a serious crisis.

White children are killing their parents, teachers and friends. Parents are killing their children; husbands are attacking their wives and vice versa. Workers are gunning down their bosses and co-workers. Recent statistics show that two million people (mostly white) experienced violence in the workplace between 1992 and 1994.¹⁹

White society is in a crisis born of the specter of the rising resistance of African and Mexican people who are challenging a system born and maintained on their oppression. They are rejecting the police containment and poverty forced on them by the support of the majority of white people, including liberals!

This is a crisis born of our historic complicity with genocide and suffering, of active or passive support for the U.S. violence trained on millions of people in order to get resources for ourselves. It is a crisis born of the growing cry of Indigenous people for the return of their stolen land and of African people for their liberation and return of their stolen labor and resources. It is a crisis born of the emptiness and alienation of the consumer society overflowing with resources while others suffer.

However, the resolution of this crisis is not in finding better therapy groups or "downsizing" our lives or creating a better life style. It is in joining in genuine solidarity with the legitimate struggle of the Mexican-Indigenous people for their land and with African people for control of their resources and destiny.

Thirty years ago most of the world recognized the Unites States primarily for its brutality against African people. It was understood that African people were oppressed.

Today as part of the policy of police containment, African people have been criminalized and portrayed as pathological by the government and the media. The most vicious white serial killer is portrayed as "misunderstood" or mentally ill, but every African is portrayed as a "superpredator" or part of an "unredeemable underclass."

The sentiment is promoted that white people need to be afraid of African people when any real study of history shows the reality is the other way around!

There is no formal recognition by the U.S. government or white people in general of any responsibility for the conditions faced by African people in this country. Nor is it permissible to speak of African people as oppressed and exploited in seeking redress from the government and from the white community.

Uhuru Movement fights for African working class

The Uhuru Movement is led by the African People's Socialist Party, an organization which has continued to struggle for the interests of the African working class and poor since the '60s. The Uhuru Movement is made up of African people throughout the U.S., Europe and Africa, and their allies.

Uhuru has been a crucial component of Oakland since the early '80s. The Uhuru Movement has always struggled for social justice, economic development and an end to the conditions of martial law which have created hell for the African community for so long.

The Uhuru Movement twice ran a grassroots ballot initiative in Oakland calling for Community Control of Housing in a city that doesn't even have rent control. Essentially a land reform bill, Measures O in 1984 and H in 1986 called for rents to be no more than 25 percent of the average income of a neighborhood. In both instances the initiative won more than 22,000 votes.

First to raise up the issue of rampant homelessness in the African community, the Uhuru Movement drew attention to this question by taking over and fixing up an abandoned house in the early '80s. It coordinated a tent city for the homeless in a downtown Oakland park for three months, feeding hundreds of African people daily before it was violently attacked by the Oakland police department.

Over the years the Uhuru Movement has continued to struggle tirelessly for the life and death issues affecting the most attacked sector of the African community. Health care, police brutality, foster care, education and housing&endash;these are the issues that the Uhuru Movement has forced onto the city's agenda time and time again.

Instead of police containment in the African community, the Uhuru Movement has always developed programs for an economy controlled by and benefiting the African community itself.

The Uhuru Movement's most successful efforts at economic development include the popular Uhuru Bakery Cafe on Telegraph Avenue. It served thousands of people natural foods at low prices and was a bustling political center until a mysterious fire closed it down in 1989. Spear Graphics was located on High Street for several years where it functioned as an institution for printing and typesetting.

Today, Uhuru Furniture Etc. has been thriving on Grand Avenue since 1989. It is a place where good quality furniture can be donated and sold for excellent prices as a fund raiser for the Uhuru Movement and where political discussion and information are always available.

Call to the white community

The Uhuru Movement puts out a call to all&endash;including the white community&endash;to stand against the policy of police containment advocated by Jerry Brown. Instead, we can unite with the efforts of the African community to achieve economic development through self-determination. Join in the African community effort to unleash the genius and creative power of African people to reestablish their rightful place in history as free and productive humans, independently pursuing their own self-defined happiness.

It is a call for white people to denounce the criminalization of African society and validate black life. Recognize the dreams and aspirations of the thousands and thousands of young people stuffed into brutal concentration camps for the remainder of their lives. These are the victims of a parasitic social system which guarantees an affluent future for white people at their expense. This is a call for white people to contribute toward genuine economic development in the hands of the African community.

Overturn the assumption that the majority of the African community will always remain poor and powerless while the white population is subsidized with millions of dollars voted in by the City Council every year. The embargoes, red-lining and financial boycotts of the African community must stop! A massive infusion of capital must be poured into the African community.

We call on white people to recognize that the crisis of white society can be overcome by breaking with white power and joining in solidarity with African and all oppressed people. The divisiveness brought about by the policy of police containment and the premise that our livelihood comes from the exploitation of African people must end. We can take it upon ourselves to end the policies of officials like Jerry Brown who appeal to the base instincts of self-interest and exploitation under the banner of liberalism.

We can take responsibility to right this historical wrong and end the divisions in our city.

The only solution to the problems for Oakland is genuine economic development for the African community as opposed to police containment which has been imposed on a community without resources.

We can participate in solving the real underlying causes of social injustice. By being part of these solutions white people can begin to work for a truly positive future which benefits all of Oakland and all of humanity.

The African People's Solidarity Committee (APSC) is an organization of predominately white people which was formed by the African People's Socialist Party in 1976 and which works under its leadership. The APSC gives white people an opportunity to become organizationally linked with the liberation of African people instead of tied to a system which is built on the exploitation of African and all oppressed people.

APSC works not against racism, "the ideas in white people's heads," but to support the demands for real political and economic power for African people. APSC takes an active stand for reparations as an honest self-criticism from the white community and as a real way to return the resources hoarded in our hands&endash;resources needed to develop an economy benefiting the African community. This is the only true way to a "sustainable future," free of oppression.

APSC's work includes coordinating Uhuru Furniture as well as Uhuru Concessions which has held food booths at popular Bay Area street fairs and festivals for more than 15 years. These institutions permit a wide base of white people and all allies of the African community to participate in community development for African people.

APSC, under the leadership of the Uhuru Movement, coordinates an activist movement which can recognize that the injustice of what the U.S. has done against the people of Vietnam, Nicaragua, El Salvador and many other places around the world begins here!

APSC believes that no one can call him or herself liberal or progressive unless we work to take a public stand against the genocidal conditions imposed in our name on African and other oppressed peoples right here. We are calling on white people of all walks of life to join this movement. Link arms, sit-in, march and protest against the prison camps, the police brutality, the forced poverty and this deadly public policy of police containment of the African community. Contribute to genuine economic development which benefits the whole African community.

We all know what has to be done. Join the African People's Solidarity Committee and the National People's Democratic Uhuru Movement. Volunteer, donate and support Uhuru Furniture and Uhuru Concessions or any of the other projects of the Uhuru Movement.

Let's get to work to build a true populist movement that puts all Oaklanders first. Let's stop police containment and the economic embargo against the African community, and work for genuine economic development. It's the only road to social justice, peace and a positive future.

Uhuru!

FOOTNOTES

1 "The Digital Divide: High-tech boom a bust for blacks, Latinos," San Francisco Chronicle, May 4, 1998.
2 "He's Back: Jerry Brown on a white horse," http://www.panix.com/~dhenwood/Jerry-Brown.html

3 Ibid.

4 "Jerry's schemes: regressive taxes exterprise zones," http://www.panix.com/~dhenwood/Jerry-Brown.html

5 Oaklanders First, Volume 1, Number 1, May, 1998.

6 "California Lawyer: Three Strikes...and You're In; California's Growing Prison System," http://www.amandla.org/osepp/stats/02.html

7 See Agents of Repression: The FBI's Secret Wars Against the Black Panther Party and the American Indian Movement, by Ward Churchill and Jim Vander Wall, South End Press, 1988.

8 See The Burning Spear Newspaper, Oct-Nov, 1989.

9 See "Guns, Drugs and the CIA," part of the Frontline series, Public Broadcasting System, 1989.

10 The Dark Alliance, by Gary Webb, first appearing August 18, 1996, in the San Jose Mercury News. http://www.sjmercury.com/drugs/start.htm

'11"Progress, Not Prisons," http://www.peaceandfreedom.org/Evans/progress.htm

12 "Corcoran Prison Brutality," San Francisco Chronicle, August 3, 1998.

13 "California Lawyer," op.cit.

14 "The more prisons you build," http://www.dailybruin.ucla.edu//DB/issues/97/09.26/view.meck.html.

15 Ibid.

16 http://www.wtp.org/ecopolis.html, "Oakland Ecopolis: a Plan for a Green Plan."

17 See Digger, the Tragic Fate of the California Indians from the Missions to the Gold Rush, by Jerry Stanley, Crown Publishers.

18 Ibid.

19 "Violence at Work Affects 2 Million," San Francisco Chronicle, July 27, 1998.