SHEILA FITZGERALD / SHUTTERSTOCK
Oakland, California has become a critical battleground in the escalating war between the working people of America, including millions of people of color, and a corporate billionaire class that is aggressively dedicated to maximizing its profits. Workers demanding political and economic justice are organizing the people sidelined by decades of attacks and finding innovative ways to win in the electoral arena.
This war is a struggle for the power to determine whether everyone – or only the rich – will have good lives. The billionaires are funding attempts to overturn the choices made by voters and continue to profit by keeping people financially insecure and even homeless. Many follow the fascist Heritage Foundation Project 2025 plan to secure their corporate profits by ending American democracy altogether.
In 2024, voter turnout will be decisive. In Oakland, abolitionist class forces – working people – have demonstrated that part of the path to power is to motivate and engage people in the electoral process by mobilizing for basic needs, democracy and freedom.
The most visible attacks are the social fascist threats from groups like the Proud Boys or the Three Percenters, which promote the demonization of immigrants, LGBTQ people, “woke” teachers, Black youth, unhoused people, women and pregnant people. But the hidden power driving these visible attacks is the economic fascism that underlies them. Economic fascism is the accelerating merging of state power with corporate goals – Wall Street, big real estate, big tech and hedge funds.
The digital revolution drives today’s social polarization by eliminating living-wage jobs and forcing people into the political arena to defend their livelihoods. As production requires fewer workers, it becomes less profitable and Wall Street shifts its money into real estate and financial speculation, privatizing public services and monopolizing intellectual property in order to maximize income.
POLITICAL WARS
This is called financialization and it is the foundation for economic fascism. It is the basis for the political wars erupting in Oakland and elsewhere:
- Real estate and high-tech billionaires undermine democratic elections by attempting to recall duly elected public officials before they have established a track record. Recalls of Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao and of District Attorney Pamela Price are financed by the same special interests that financed the recall of progressive San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin.
- The pro-Pamela Price group Protect The Win listed 24 lies being told by paid recall signature gatherers. At last report, more than $3 million had been spent to recall Price.
- Anti-Price and anti-Thao campaign messages have been re-posted and supported by Elon Musk, X’s CEO and one of the wealthiest men on earth.
- They attempt to shut down public schools that serve everybody, in favor of either charter schools or private schools that use vouchers, both of which put public funds under private control.
- They build luxury housing that people cannot afford and refuse to build the low-income housing that the working class desperately needs.
- They force homeless encampments to move or close when the people have nowhere else to go.
- They prey on people’s fear of crime with “doom loop” anti-Black scenarios of a city deteriorating without police, when in fact police budgets have increased and sections of the Oakland police themselves have a history of committing crimes.
Oakland’s working class is resisting by building coalitions based on putting people’s basic needs, human rights, democracy and community cooperation ahead of corporate power grabs. Some elevate the principles of cooperation established by the Oakland-based 1960s Black Panther Party. Oaklanders have a long history of standing up against tyranny. This is what drove the 2022 rebellion against school closures. Oakland’s fighters understand that their strength comes from connecting their various campaigns and supporting each other’s efforts. They know that housing unaffordability and school closures are both fueled by real estate speculation, and pro-police narratives are designed to suppress any protest.
- In 2022, Oakland voters approved Measure U, an $850 million bond issue to build 2,200 to 2,400 affordable housing units over the next four to six years.
- Oakland voters created a progressive bloc on the City Council with the 2020 election of Carroll Fife, one of the key leaders in the Moms4Housing takeover of a home owned and kept vacant by a hedge fund.
- Councilmember Fife has opposed measures that allow the market to dictate public policy. Her landlord registry plan passed the council unanimously in 2022. It caps annual increases on rent-controlled homes at 3% and lets the city track the compliance of landlords subject to rent control and just-cause eviction requirements.
- The November 2019 Moms4Housing takeover of a vacant Oakland home uncovered a sprawling, mostly hidden network of at least 98 differently named LLCs that are part of Southern California’s home-flipping giant Wedgewood Inc.’s Bay Area operations.
- The Anti-Police-Terror Project raises awareness that the Oakland Police Department takes almost half of Oakland’s general fund, forcing cuts to essential city services. The project coordinates non-police responses to mental health crises.
- Care 4 Community Action (C4C) organizes weekly neighborhood information sessions to rip the mask off who holds power in Oakland. Their goal is to make housing a human right, and “to deliver a working city government that is responsive to the needs of Oakland residents, and to dramatically increase the participation of Oakland residents in our government.” Oakland Standing United Against Hate” forums are sounding the alarm against the billionaire power grab.
- Coalitions are mobilizing. They include public-sector labor unions like SEIU and AFSCME.
- The Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE) is part of the Oakland Progressive Alliance to refund, restore and reimagine what Oakland could look like “if we divested from racist and harm-perpetuating institutions, and invested in the things that really make our communities safe – housing, social services, education, living-wage jobs, and transformative justice.”
MAKE WORKERS AWARE
These movements reflect and strengthen flashes of consciousness that make workers aware of their power and open their minds to new ideas. The common conditions and common interests of low-income and displaced workers undermine the old ideologies used to divide the class.
Oakland is not alone in using elections to confront financialization and economic fascism. In Los Angeles, a progressive bloc won elections to City Council and City Controller in 2022, and is resisting corporate attempts to claw back control in 2024, with primary victories by unhoused advocate Nithya Raman and others. Chicago succeeded in placing the Bring Chicago Home Initiative on the Illinois primary ballot to house the unhoused, but the measure unfortunately was defeated in the low-turnout election March 19. In Georgia, despite massive state voter-suppression measures, the Atlanta Stop Cop City movement is continuing its campaign to force the city to allow them to vote on the project.
Despite some setbacks, voters motivated by the vision of an abundant and cooperative society have shown they can win critical victories on the road to making that vision a reality. Voting can be a crucial tool for overcoming isolation, divide-and-conquer tactics, and the bogus claim that America is too poor to feed and house its people.
Published on April 14, 2024
This article originated in Rally!
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