Yep, that’s good ol ‘Red Dellums’. Younger Freepers were spared the years that Red was a Congression Representative from the East Bay area of CA.
But don’t worry kids - you can direct extrapolate from what you hear today backwards in time and get a pretty good idea of what ol’ Red sounded like in Congress. He was just as loony (or stoned) then as now.
When Oakland elected Dellums, I reckoned that there would be riots on a pretty regular basis, simply because Dellums can’t walk back his idiotic statements of yore, when he could shoot his mouth off because he had the luxury of being in Congress and not in charge of a city/town/county. Now that he’s the leader of the city and is supposed to be on the same side as the police, he’s trapped between his past rhetoric and the requirements of his job, which includes NOT inciting riots.
The pity of it is that Oakland used to be a economically solid community. Now, I can’t help but think that every one of the incidents will chase more and more business out of the city, hastening the decline of the city.
I grew up here.
Oakland decades ago had a wonderful city center that, while not as "glamorous" as that of San Francisco, was still filled with nice stores and movie theaters. People still dressed up when they went downtown. Lake Merritt was a peaceful recreational area.
Now it's a ghost town. Even on a non-riot day, people clear out of there FAST as soon as the clock strikes five. There are many empty storefronts. On a weekend the city streets are like cold, dark canyons.
While following the story from KRON/4's live feed, I checked out a Google Map of central Oakland. There's a Unitarian Church, U.S. Labor Relations Board, the Golden Lotus Vegetarian Restaurant, Diving Swallow Tattoo Shop and the Oakland Leased Housing Department. Looks like it pretty well fits the stereotype of a declining liberal town.