Oakland: Victims in Waiting
I’ve had an awakening recently and finally found the words to describe it. They came to me unprompted while reading a neighbor’s reflections on their fears and if arming themselves would secure or endanger their loved ones and themself. Their ruminations come on the heels of a disturbing spike in crime in Oakland. They were shaken by all the gunpoint robberies, the countless shootings, and the audacity of the people committing these deeds.
Here’s how I replied:
This is a fundamental result of the decay of our city and state. The reason why we form governments is for safety and order. We give up our readiness to kill each other because the system guarantees our safety. But we are not living in a well-functioning, ordered system. So now you must protect yourself, your family, and your property. You have to be vigilant, form self-protection groups, and ultimately bear all the costs of protecting yourself AND maintaining a system that does not work.
Why pay all these taxes to live in a wilderness that demands ceaseless vigilance and deadly arms? How is this a remotely reasonable demand? Are we to expect vigilance from every citizen? Should we require this of children, the elderly, and the infirm? Will you be vigilant and armed when you’re aged or ill?
All these solutions — gun ownership, neighborhood groups, increased awareness, etc. — are futile coping mechanisms and ultimately unsustainable. The only sustainable solution is to remove every politician, judge, and official not wholly committed to public safety. We must abandon the current political dogma or continue to be victims in waiting.
It is no secret Oakland and California at large have abandoned reason and good governance for cheap and shallow progress — disbanding the traffic enforcement unit to prevent racism without a plan to ensure our streets remain safe or decriminalizing prostitution without mechanisms to keep sex workers and Johns from harassing and terrorizing communities. It is easy to pass laws but social progress, the supreme goal of our era, has a heavy price and a speed limit that demand respect, or we risk relapse and chaos. I now realize this, and I accept that no ideology has a monopoly on wisdom, justice, or truth.
I have not abandoned progressivism, but I no longer see it as an unmitigated good. What is the correct degree and pace of social progress? And who should decide? I don’t know, but I am certain that the recent criminal justice reforms have gone too far and too quickly to the severe detriment of victims, their communities, and order.
To be clear, I am not advocating we forsake the progressive movement for whatever the conservatives call their crude attempt at usurping our democracy. No, conservatism and the Republican party, as they are, are not reasonable options. However, if a Republican is indeed a Democrat who was mugged, perhaps we should prevent the muggings instead of kvetching about who “the real victims” are, lest we replace muggers with tyrants.
