Residents of Oakland’s high-crime neighborhoods held a rally on Sept. 9 to demand solutions from public officials. The gathering was held on a street that had recently seen shootings between facing houses.
NTO confronted the city for its eviction moratorium too. Many rental units in West Oakland are owned by local families who worked and saved for years to buy small income properties. They’ve been devastated by the city’s policy of protecting tenants who don’t pay their rent.
Fewer rental units are available because the city has made being a landlord so unattractive, Mr. Scott said.
NTO organized the rally because many Oaklanders fear leaving their homes in the wake of recent violence. The rally attracted a highly diverse crowd and an impressive lineup of speakers.
An especially moving talk was given by a high school student who said she was shocked by the recent spate of lawlessness among her fellow students. They raged through a nearby mall and destroyed property with impunity.
Dashawnna Warrick blamed the situation on a “lack of parental supervision.” She had a dream: active parenting in parks that are free of criminal activity.
Another young female African American speaker is the coach of a local crew team. She explained that she reports lawlessness whenever she sees it and that authorities often treat her as if she’s the problem for reporting it.
Our culture dwells on victimhood, yet victims of crime don’t seem to count. Elites speak constantly of “justice” but don’t seem to believe in justice for crime victims. The endless rounds of finger-pointing mean another generation will grow up in a culture of lawlessness.
It seems obvious that people in high-crime neighborhoods would favor more law enforcement. Yet we’re surrounded by the narrative that minorities think law enforcement is bad. African Americans and Latinos pleading for safe streets are ignored because they don’t fit the narrative.
The media and the political elite would like you to believe that there is no crime problem.
This distortion of reality is eerily familiar to me because my ancestors are all Sicilian. When I was growing up, I was told that the Mafia didn’t exist and was only an invention of Hollywood.
Imagine my surprise when I discovered that the Mafia is a real thing. Then, I spent a lot of time researching the culture of violence that plagued my ancestors for generations.
I learned that the Sicilian Mafia succeeded by corrupting whatever new leaders came along. They found it easy to sway people with the huge stream of wealth that their illegal activities brought in. Each generation learned the Mafia skill set from their elders.
Corruption is what makes a culture of lawlessness possible.
Corruption is a subtle process. People even save face by calling it “cooperation.”
Here’s a simple example that I know too well from my 25 years as a college professor. Teachers who uphold academic standards risk being ruined by nasty accusations, so they learn to protect themselves by letting students’ bad behavior slide.
Students learn that teachers will let such behavior slide, so they don’t take standards seriously. It works for everyone involved, so the big picture is ignored.
This kind of subtle corruption allows politicians and journalists to turn a blind eye to crime. They learn that the truth can upset people, so they win over the public by blaming problems on Republicans.
People like hearing that nothing is their fault, so they support politicians and media who tell them that. Even in districts with no Republicans in sight, every problem can be 100 percent pinned on them. It works in the short run, but it ruins the quality of life in the long run.
Politicians and the media need support from big groups, but crime happens to individuals. So public debate is designed to appeal to big groups, while the consequences for individuals are ignored. It works unless you want to play in a park that is dominated by crime. Then, everyone pretends you don’t exist.
I was fortunate to grow up with safe streets, yet most of my parents’ generation came from a culture of violence. What changed things? I was eager to figure it out, so I did a lot of research.
I found that law enforcement ignored the Mafia for decades. This seems hard to believe with all the gangster movies, but the Sicilian cycle of violence went mostly unpunished in the United States and Italy.
I was even more surprised to learn that Bobby Kennedy (Sr.) was one of the central figures in bringing attention to it in the 1950s. Rudy Giuliani was one of the first successful prosecutors, having come of age at the time when the RICO law was first passed. Many others didn’t get public attention, but they risked their lives and resisted the pull of corruption in order to give us a law-abiding society.
I want Oakland youth to enjoy safe streets the way I did. Corruption is hard to resist because the “everybody does it” attitude is so pervasive. We must all do our part to resist corruption if the rule of law is to prevail over lawlessness.
