Sorry Lisa, but your White Guilt is showing.

Have you spoken to any of your older Black neighbors in N. Oakland? Probably not. If you did, you would find those older neighbors, who survived the 80s Crack/Cocaine filled years that decimated our neighborhood, support the Gang Injunction because they remember the elegance and beauty our neighborhod had. Many of them know the names on the GI because they are names that repeatedly show up in crime reports. For goodness sakes, 9 of those 19 names are currently in prison!!!

The Gang Injunction is not about race, it is about crime. It is about selectively, if not surgically, removing people from places where they are creating crime and fostering an environment which sustains a culture of crime as a lifestyle. I welcome the GI and the support for the Injunction in our North Oakland neighborhood is overwhelming. You should really get out more and chat with your neighbors. You might learn a thing or three.

The first thing that I notice when comparing this opinion to the one posted by Don Link is that Ms. Nowlain is using an extraordinary amount of strident and aggressive rhetoric.

Ms. Nowlain's rhetoric is also very uninformed.  Casting John Russo as advocating some kine of racist, pro-prison police state is just plain silly.  

For instance: John Russo is a strong voice for legalizing cannabis in California, specifically because of the mess that cannabis prohibition has made in our prisons. He's scheduled to debate a room full of Californian police chiefs on the issue next month.  If I remember correctly, he also supports three strikes reform.

In short, it looks like he's right to say that there are some folks out there who cannot be debated with on this issue because they have entrenched philosophical opposition.

Ms. Nowlain is heavy on the rhetoric, light on disputing the injunction point by point. I think this is because the audience she's speaking to is more interested in rhetoric and solidarity than it is interested in the technical facts of this situation.  

The facts are that this is quite possibly the most narrowly tailored and low-impact gang injunction in the history of this state, and that there is a long chain of due process before anyone is subject to it's effects.

No good ever comes of comment debates on the internet, but I will say this:

1. I have done outreach on streets all over North Oakland and spoken with many people and have not heard "a thing or three."

2.  we can debate the points of the injunction over and over again, but if Russo is going to accuse the opposition of being only "philosophical" I wanted to say what my politics were, and what that means the politics of the opposition are. 

3.  There is no such thing as an evolved injunction.  There is no "low-impact" injunction. 

I am also a North Oakland resident.

The gang injunction is not going to work. You have to talk about race if you are going to discuss crime. To assume otherwises makes the assumption that we live in an equal society.

If we all truly care about the issues we will stop attacking people for things we know nothing about.

We need to focus on action:

STOP THE GANG INJUNCTION RALLY

12:30 – 2, going into the courthouse at 2.  There will be speakers between 12:30 and 1, and then we will be marching until the hearing starts. 

1225 Fallon St, Dept 1 (the big courthouse downtown).  Come whenever you can!

We must be peaceful in our angst and disagreements; we will suffer from the bickering and gain nothing.

Arguing the injunction point by point:
1.  Russo says this doesn’t target youth.
•    Youth have already felt increased harassment in North Oakland since the injunction was put to motion.
•    Nowhere is he legally bound by these assurances in the documents.
•    Much of the “evidence” (declarations from police) are about juvenile activity.
•    In the eyes of the law, up to 18 counts as youth.  However, research and experience shows that the category of “youth” extends up to age 25.  Talk to any 19 year old and see if they reason as adults do.

2.  Russo says the community has asked for this.
•    City Council, with our elected officials, never approved of the injunction, despite it being placed in front of the Public Safety Committee.
•    Attorney Fierro, when asked if community declarations could be put into the court papers, told a group of community members that they couldn’t “for their own safety”
•    Neighborhood Crime Prevention Councils do not represent the entire community. 
•    Russo was invited to our Townhall for community-based solutions to violence but didn’t show up.
•    The opposition has a petition with over 600 signatures and are endorsed by:
 Legal Services for Prisoners with Children, 
All of Us or None
, Oakland Community Action Network, 
Critical Resistance, 
National Lawyers Guild San Francisco Bay Area, PUEBLO, 
Proyecto Common Touch, 
The Center for Young Womens Development
, Black Alliance for Just Immigration, 
Copwatch
, Center for Third World Organizing, 
Prison Activist Resource Center

3.  This is an “evolved” and “tailored” injunction that won’t hurt the community.
•    It goes to court today, so we won’t know what it looks like, but so far despite being “targeted” there are still up to 70 does that will be decided by police.
•    There is no real evaluation system to measure its efficacy or effects on the community.  Russo has said before that “numbers lie” and we can’t count on them.  What do we count on then?  Police declarations?

4.  It won’t take money away from services that really do prevent violence because it’s already in Russo’s budget.
•    Who approved that?  And why is Russo so afraid to tell us how much it costs?  When asked, he told us we should do a public record request.
•    John Russo is not someone to be trusted with respecting a budget: he is the city’s highest paid elected who has refused to take pay cuts in the past. “According to The San Francisco Chronicle (December 19, 2007), the City Attorney gave himself a significant raise without permission: "John Russo boosted his $207,000 salary by $28,000 this year by giving himself management leave and vacation pay typically reserved for non-elected department heads and managers, city records show."” (http://www.flashreport.org/blog0a.php?postID=2008011619120358&authID=2006111814384800)
•    On that note, trusting Chief Batts with something this important also seems dangerous.  He left Long Beach with charges of corruption, and has said that gang injunctions don’t work: “In Long Beach, Chief Batts was reported to be “unconvinced that [gang injunctions] are accomplishing all they should” although he was not opposed to police being given this “tool” (Long Beach Press Telegram, November 15, 2003).

5.  The opposition doesn’t have any real solutions are a bunch of whiners.
•    We recently held a townhall for community members to propose solutions.  Many of those solutions are listed here: http://stoptheinjunction.wordpress.com/our-oakland-our-solutions/
•    Community members are full of solutions if you just ask them.
•    Here a few articles with solutions proposed by members of the coalition:
•    http://www.oaklandseen.com/2010/05/12/solving-gang-violence-requires-embrace-of-youth-leadership/
•    http://www.criticalresistance.org/article.php?id=101

•   Anyone with more ideas is welcome to email them to stoptheinjunction@gmail.com

CC and Lisa, (Lisa, btw I didn't recognize you from your pic, but you've taken that down so I guess  you've learned why it might be better to be anon online?)

Have either of you spoken to any OPD members about the GI?

You will find that they, too, support the GI regardless of their race. I know one officer to told me he hoped this injunction would save the younger generation of gangbangers by using a few older members as examples. If they see their idols going to jail for longer and tougher sentences, as a known gangmember, he hoped the youth would reconsider their lifestyle. He spoke very lovingly for this generation and truly looked as if he hoped all the work he'd done for over two years would produce quality results.

Having worked the streets of N. Oakland for +10 years and knowing all 19 in the GI, this officer knows more than you or I about the people involved and what works or does not work.

Anyway, have fun in the rain. I have to work, otherwise I'd be there too.

I suggest if people want to see an objective pro and con analysis of this injunction, they look at Tessa Stuart's piece on the East Bay Express website today.  

I think that Russo may have chosen the wrong word in calling Lisa's opposition "philosophical".  I would have said "academic".

The people who are supporting this injunction include very liberal folks like Don Link. Ron Dellums, think of him what you will, is a lion of the civil rights movement. He has the ability to stop Batts and Russo from pursuing this injunction, and he has chosen not to do so.

The main opposition I've seen is from borderline reactionary groups. I'm sure the wingnuts at the Uhuru Solidarity movement are mad about this, but they're assholes who also called Lovelle Mixon a hero for murdering four cops.

The reason that the city decided to move the gang injunction away from the City Council and into the courts is simple: The council politicizes everything, and in an election year, people like Ms. Knowlan who represent a tiny but shrill minority can gum up the works and stall things.  Judges, fortunately, are not so fickle.  This will have it's day in court, and I predict it will win.

I live in North Oakland, and I agree with the author that the gang injunction will bring harm to our city.  Subjecting members of our community to terms in many ways more restrictive than probation or parole without any involvement of the criminal courts sets a dangerous precedent.  Moreover, the injunction will further repress and alienate members of our community who need to be offered inclusion if we are serious about pursuing safer streets.  

The lawful conduct criminalized by this injunction (knowingly remaining in the presence of drugs, being in public after 10 p.m.) has a minimal impact on society, and the gang injunction irrationally prioritizes enforcement of this innocuous behavior when our city has a crisis of unsolved homicides and law enforcement officers being laid off by the dozen.  Why is the Oakland City Attorney wasting our tax dollars on this misguided diversion from real solutions to violence, and why are our City Council members remaining silent?  We need to safeguard our constitutional rights and reject this political and ineffectual project.      

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