Oakland’s Reins Blister a Mayor Raised on Protest

OAKLAND, Calif. — Days after Jean Quan was elected mayor in the fall of 2010, the Oakland police put a wheel clamp on her silver Prius while it was parked outside City Hall. She cursed her husband for not paying the family’s parking tickets and braced for the embarrassing news articles.

So it began: the rookie year from hell. In May, the city attorney quit, lambasting City Hall as being corrupt. In October, the police chief followed suit, complaining about micromanagement. In November, voters rejected a tax that Ms. Quan had advocated to help fix a budget shortfall. December brought new talk that all three of Oakland’s professional sports teams might leave for fancier digs.

But the problem that has really besieged Ms. Quan, the first woman and first Asian-American to be the city’s mayor, has been the Occupy Oakland movement, which in October turned a grassy plaza in front of City Hall into a muddy staging ground for anticorporate protests.

In a dizzying series of reversals, Ms. Quan initially embraced the protest, then ordered the camp cleared, then allowed the demonstrators to return after the police seriously injured one of them, a Marine veteran. Two weeks later, she ordered the plaza cleared again, citing reports that “anarchists” were fomenting violence.

Now, Frank H. Ogawa Plaza remains empty most days, but Ms. Quan’s mayoralty is teetering. In a city known for its flamboyant and colorful mayors, she has emerged as one of its most controversial. Conservatives accuse her of coddling the protesters, while former allies on the left are incensed that she ordered the plaza cleared at all.

And now two rival groups, one started by a black community activist, the other by a white former mayoral candidate, are vying to have her recalled.

Like obama, another community agitator in over their head.

Bears repeating. Pure arrogance, parking her car wherever she wants ("I won").

When it's booted, it's not her fault for parking there, it's her husband's for not paying her fines (wonder how he likes standing in for GWB?).

The Times is already enabling her and setting her up for entitlemants ("first asian woman mayor", blah blah). I'm sure her race card is in the mail, and she'll be using it a lot.

Note to self: avoid Oakland (like I was gonna go there anyway...)

1. The “Marine” who was injured by parties unknown in the melee, was found to have a website called “I Hate The Marines.com”. IF this is true, I am tired of the crocodile tears in his behalf. If you are so squeaky clean——you don’t go to that location in the first place, IMO.

I cannot see him as a ‘simple bystander’ who the police injured. Various videos show no direct contact with the police when he got hurt. Whatever hit him came flying thru the air. Even if it was a tear gas canister fired by the police, there is no evidence that a protester didn’t pick up the canister & fling it back.

2. Quan’s husband was in the midst of the Occupy Oakland camp, participating with them & protesting along with them. Not exactly what I would call behavior supportive of your wife-—the Mayor.

3. In the full day ++ in which the protestors SHUT DOWN the entire Port of Oakland at a cost of over $18 million for just that one day, Quan’s husband was marching with those protesters, also.
Driver’s who are in line to pick up cargo at the Port cannot leave the line without a severe fine from the shippers. Drivers who are bringing back empty cargo containers and are probably picking up another container are on a tight schedule, based upon the computer tracking of the container shipper. IF that container is not returned on the day prescribed, the DRIVER must pay as much as $800 up for this delay.

The protesters who shut down that port not only cost the shippers valuable lost time, ships were stacked up outside the port , out into the Pacific Ocean, waiting to be unloaded & reloaded. The Drivers——many of whom are private owner-operators lost time-fuel-earnings & were fined on top of all that by the system which has NO ALLOWANCES for not returning a container on time.

It is a half-world long conveyor belt, consisting of manufacturers, containers, ships, ports, crane operators in the ports, drivers at each end, & the customers who are awaiting their goods for inventory......only to have American goods be reloaded and sent back to Asia.

ALL at Christmas time, when sales make or break a company. Who knows how many of those containers carried goods destined for Sears/ K-Mart stores, which are now slated for closure of as many as 120 of them because of lackluster sales in December?

A company cannot sell what is not on their shelf & is stalled on a ship in the Port of Oakland or out in the Pacific Ocean.

IF Bloomberg, Quan & other city Mayors had taken a hard stand at the beginning of this mess, who is to say that it would have continued this long & caused so much cost to taxpayers?

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