Worked for Clorox @ 12th and Broadway for 16 years. Always been like a microcosm of everything that is wrong with Oakland. A very nice, even pretty new City Center right next to a classic, statuesque City Hall and park, planted right in the middle of a seriously economically depressed area.
Then 9-11 happened and the presence of the Federal buildings on Clay St. become a major law enforcement focus. (The Oakland Fed building is the “capitol” for FEMA region IX which serves the US SW and the Pacific regions. Check it: http://www.fema.gov/about/contact/regionix.shtm). After that, the CHP, State police and every local police department in the region got tons of money, ex-military MP types and training. And believe you me, they are all itchin’ for a fight.
Nice, respectable, white, educated folks like myself came in from the suburbs to run their businesses and government. The locals were never trained to do the jobs we were imported to do, and thus, were relegated to working the surrounding restaurants and utilities. The locals looked upon us with envy and distain, and we did our best to ignore them.
Simple, Black vs. everyone else (including “mixed”, as they call themselves). I carried a big folding knife with me everyday.
Ron Dellums is a racist, activist, communist idiot. He’s rattling on about Global Warming now. Jerry Brown was invisible.
There will never be a solution to this situation until big companies like Clorox, APL, and all of the other ones move out of City Center. Then the natives can take over and run it into the ground permanently. We will all be able to ignore Oakland once and for all at that point.
Ron Dellums is a self serving thief of the people of Oakland.
I believe APL moved out last year.