Oakland District Four Councilmember Jean Quan met with this blogger for a requested redo of an interview conducted with her just after her kickoff event for the Oakland Mayor's Race. The request came from this space simply because the first interview video was so long, 41 minutes long, it was at least 12 minutes beyond the length of the Don Perata Interview of a month ago, and 18 minutes longer than the interviews with mayoral candidates Don Maccley and Greg Harland.
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| Jean Quan |
Rather than meet in a cafe, as before when we met in the upstairs nook at the Lake Merritt Cafe, we met at the Law Offices of Siegel and Lee, the same firm in Oakland City Center where Oakland City Council Vice Mayor Jane Brunner is a partner.
Like many of my visits here and there in Oakland, the person working the front desk was an old friend: Chris Weills, who helped in the Super Bowl: Oakland bid effort. Chris is a kind person and an all around good guy. He made sure Councilmember Quan and I used the conference room for our talk.
Oscar Grant and Unity
Councilmember Quan and I met just three hours after Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums' press conference calling for calm and civic unity on the eve of the Oscar Grant Trial verdict. The Oscar Grant murder of 2009, where now former BART Police Officer Johannes Mehserle shot Grant in the back on the platform at the Fruitvale BART Station on the morning of New Years Day 2009, has done everything from start riots in Oakland, to arguably provide the idological fuel that led to 80 Oakland Police layoffs by the Oakland City Council.
Now, with the verdict just days, if not now hours, away, Oakland braces for it, and America watches to see if Oakland will erupt again.
Naturally, that was a great place for Quan and I to start our talk. "You know the whole world of media was there today, so, you know, Oakland is watched right now. And it's unfortunate. I think it's being watched because people are expecting or maybe hoping for violence. You know this is a very tough time for Oaklanders. I've been doing a lot of door-to-door walking. Talking to a lot of young people. This incident makes the whole city sad. Not just the African-American community, but particularly the African American community because I think Oscar is a symbol of a young black man who was working, and trying to get his life together. And he was out celebrating New Years, and now he's dead."
Quan says she and her neighbors have worked to support Oscar Grant's family. She says Grant's a "very sweet" person who many, but particularly young people, want justice for. Because the unemployment rate for blacks in Oakland is estimated to be as high as 25 percent, and even higher for young black men, Quan says that at a time when it seems hopeless for some, a "just" verdict to end the Oscar Grant trial is a symbol of hope for them.
Does the media overblow the idea of a riot?
The ideal of a riot after the Oscar Grant trial verdict is something talked about in the media, including here. Is the media making too much of the idea? "You almost get an expectation of excitement around it," Quan says. "I told reporters I was there for both of the demonstrations. And thousands and thousands of Oaklanders were there. Less than a few percentage of people were involved in it (the riots)."
Quan claims that three-quarters of the people arrested were not from Oakland. Quan says "I was there at the second demonstration There were 30 people there by the time my daughter and I decided to go have dinner." And that after she and her daughter left, the police departed to, leaving a set of unwatched outsiders to start another riot in downtown Oakland. To Quan, it gives an image of Oakland that's not true.
On The World Cup and The Oakland Mayor's Race
Quan's World Cup Soccer favorite was the team that got kicked out the day we met: Brazil. Quan says her family watches a lot of soccer, especially South American soccer, and so they had high hopes for Brazil; "Too bad," she said. At least that can't be said for Quan's status in the Oakland Mayor's Race, even though she focused on having been "beaten up" during the last week.
Quan's displeasure came from a mailer and robo-calling effort on the part of the Oakland Police Officers Association that was aimed at Quan and illegally executed, according to The East Bay Express. Why the attack? Because Quan, who's the chair of the City's Finance Committee, was painted as having called for as many as 200 Oakland Police Officers to be let go to cut the budget, which she says she did not do; the actual highest number was 150 officers. (Eventually, Oakland would lay-off 80 officers.)
The problem with the robocall was that it was done without asking the phone call receipient if they wanted to take the call, a move that's against California campaign law.
Quan also notes that the mailers came from the California Prison Guards Unuon, who she wonders may just be "looking for new customers" in Oakland. "I won't hide the fact that I believe we have to have a fair and balanced budget." She points to Oakland's dramatic reduction in crime not just to the police but to crime prevention programs.
Does Oakland hate its police officers?
The moments leading to the eventual Oakland City Council decision to cut 80 officers at the June 24th special meeting of the Oakland City Council were not fun for Oakland Police Officers. Not just because of the talk of layoffs, but because of the dislike expressed for the Oakland Police. In some cases, it boardered on expressed hate. What did Quan think about that? "I think we have a divided town. The Chief's poll shows that 40 percent of the citizens of Oakland distrust the police," she says, "for good or legitimate reasons? We don't know. Clearly the city is still under court order because of the Riders case. Clearly not enough of the Oakland Police force lives in Oakland; 90 percent of the police force lives outside of Oakland. We don't have enough minority police officers. We don't have enough who live in the City."
On the matter of the Oakland Police Pension Fund, Quan says the current retirement level of 50 years of age is "not sustainable." When pressed to say if she favored San Francisco's two-tiered system (where they also put 9 percent of their salary into their pension fund, versus Oakland cops, which put none into their own) she did not rubber stamp it out-right, but said that Oakland needs a change in that direction.
Jean Quan challenges Don Perata
While this space disagrees, some think of the Mayor's Race as being between former California State Senator Don Perata and Councilmember Quan. I think the race is more wide open because media is so poorly used and done and the traditional forms of Bay Area media, incuding the print version of the San Francisco Chronicle and the Oakland Tribune are all but dead from a perspective of influence. Only television remains. The candidate who knows how to use the Internet has not yet emerged; using YouTube is not enough.
Still, a Perata / Quan fight's as easy to start as one between Muhammed Ali and Joe Frazier in their prime, and equally as hard to resist the chance to do. I asked Councilmember Quan about Perata's attacks on how the Oakland City Council came to form its budget and Quan did not mince words: "Don's not come up with any budget. And most of the proposals he's come up with haven't been ones that make a lot of sense to me. If Don wants to present a full city budget, then he should. Last year, when we were trying to balance the budget, he was trying to convince the council that the police didn't have to give 10 percent like everybody else (to their salary reductions). They only had to give 5 percent. We stood our ground, and they gave 10 percent. Now, he's basically saying the police officers don't have to pay more to their pension. You know if he gets to be Mayor of this city, he's going to have to balance the budget too; and I want him to show me how's he's going to balance the budget if the police don't start paying something into their pensions."
Quan's calling you out, Don. She thinks Oakland's police pensions are way out of line.
On Black / Asian violence
I asked Jean Quan for her view of alledged increase in black / Asian violence, because there were four high profile attacks involving blacks and Asians in San Francisco and in Oakland this year, and the deadly beating of Tian Sheng Yu in downtown Oakland. Quan said she from Oakland and has had a lot of African American friends for a long time, and she says, that then half of the Oakland school students were African American, now it's more Latino. She also has been "Taking the lead in helping" Yu's widow, Zhi Rui Wang cope in the wake of the loss of her husband. Quan says that Zhi Rui Wang wants to make sure this does not happen to any other family, and wanted us to reach out to our young people, and to give them more opportunity. "The way we break the cycle of violence is justice," she says, and part of that is giving hope to young people. So with that, Quan and I closed the circle around the desire for justice in the Oscar Grant case.
On being an Asian American running for Mayor in Oakland
Quan said that at the Gay Pride Parade in San Francisco, she was "mobbed" by young Gay Asians who were not from Oakland, but knew who she was. There's a kind of hunger for an Asian candidate not just in Oakland, but in California and it seems Quan's tapped into that.
On being Mayor if she wins
Quan says she would have a small office staff, and not "shadow" the city offices. "I plan to have one or two people who are working on our image and our economic development," she says, as well as more organizers.
On Oakland sports
Quan's supportive of the "efforts the Mayor has made" to retain the Oakland A's and loves the idea of a baseball stadium at Jack London Square. Quan thinks that while the Golden State Warriors possibily leaving for San Francisco is one issue, she's more afraid the Raiders will go over to Santa Clara with the 49ers, costing Oakland millions more in revenue that have been used for the retirement of the Raider bonds going back to 1995.
More on the video
That's a good part of the vidoe interview; you can see the rest of the 30 minute conversation right above.
Stay tuned.
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