Libby Schaaf for Senate

What Oakland needs is not necessarily what the country needs. But interestingly what they both need is Libby Schaaf at a newly elevated post. She has taken on the Trump/Sessions legal dumptruck and their xenophobic ICE minions. She has incurred their wrath and has fought back for us. She has been a power broker with a voice and she has used it.

She has also filed campaign coffers with money from luxury developers, corrupt police and corporate lobbyists. She has not lifted up our lower classes with wealth distributing policy to help curb rapidly rising wealth inequality. Developments are pricing people out from a city that, under Libby’s watch as councilperson or Mayor, won’t educate their children fairly or help them build a middle class life.

With Libby in the Senate we would have a powerful voice to stand up to the hate and anger making policy from the white house. In Oakland we would have a chance for a new mayor who understands the city and it’s real needs: more social services, equity building and economic restoration. Libby Schaaf is going to get credit for trying to protect immigrants but how has she actually protected them?

In this instance she has tried to protect people from the looming ICE hall monitors and inefficient process of deportation… but why? How does that play out? Is it so she can have immigrants here to do our unskilled, underpaid labor while STILL living in poverty, squalor AND shadows? She’s gonna get a lot of credit for this little stunt. I want to give the benefit of the doubt. But Libby Schaaf, as mayor, currently has:

• people sleeping on the streets in rapidly increasing numbers, specifically including rapidly growing amounts of working poor (read: people of color).
• children deprived of budget money because of poor management and private schools encroaching further on local public schools — this deprives our teachers of the income they need to own homes in Oakland and invest in their communities.
• been unwilling to make sure that low skilled labor has benefits and protections to work in our community so that they can afford rents and healthcare — further allowing large corporate employers to prey on low skilled labor
• allied herself with a police department that functions outside the law and preys on people of color, including these same people she is supposedly protecting.

Democrats will cheer for LIbby Schaaf and her posturing. I do as well, I must admit. And we should send that attitude to Washington to let them know how we feel about our marginalized communities: they are integral, industrious and vibrant parts of our California and America. BUT a nasty hypocrisy from the ruling class emerges when Libby takes a stance like this. Every city need people to do the hard, dirty work. But rather than just keeping those folks and their families from the long arm of the law, couldn’t she arm them with resources like better pay, better teachers and more efficient policing?

I believe LIbby Schaaf wants these people in our community. But maybe everyone in our community is better, including Mayor Schaaf, if she finds a higher office while we find another mayor to take care of the most vulnerable here. While the culture wars are fought in Washington we need someone whose interests are beyond developers and corporations, someone who really knows how to champion a good pay check for a hard day’s work.