Hearth, Plea, and History

H E A R T H  Principals – Common Rights in Support of Our Common Good

H ~ Health Care for All.  The United States is the only developed country in the world that does not provide health care for all its citizens.  This is unacceptable.  American citizens should not have to worry about their ability to stay and get healthy.  Our female citizens should have the right to make reproductive decisions in confidence with their medical physicians and in keeping with their own personal beliefs.

 E ~ Environmental Life.  No one should  harm the air we breathe, the water we drink, the soil that nurtures life for us.  Our natural environs and our unique constructed historic icons are for all of us to enjoy, cherish, and preserve for future generations.  We should support our regional economies and conserve our resources.

A ~ Academic Quality.  A healthy society cannot thrive without an informed, well educated, and trained citizenry.  It is essential that each of our youngest citizens be provided a high quality education which identifies and makes the most of each child’s unique potential and abilities.

R ~ Realistic Fiscal Policy and Resource Allocation.  Compensation, taxation and profits should balance individual gain with that which is needed for the greater good.
Our elected officials should represent the citizenry and not special interests.  Those that benefit the most from a free society should also be willing to contribute the most.

T ~ Thrifty Trade Practices which are Fair, Honest, Harmless and Just.  Trade of raw materials, finished products, and labors should balance the needs of the makers and the needs of the recipients in a true fair market manner.  We should reduce our wasteful, consumption based behaviors and reinvigorate our thrifty and resourceful
nature.

H ~ Honor Our Home.  Our citizenry should have access to safe housing and our country should be a true safe haven for all those wishing to honor and abide by these democratic values.  We must protect, help and defend each other from natural and manmade disasters.  We should meet our needs at home and do locally what
we preach internationally.  As we journey through life, we should practice tolerance and merge etiquette.

A Plea to Occupy Oakland Protestors,

I support this effort.  I am part of the silent 99%.  Please consider my plea.

Our city of Oakland has been at the epicenter of suffering for a long, long time.  We don’t deserve, nor can we afford, the physical and perceptual damage you are reaping upon us.  Why pick on Oakland?  Just because the weather is nice?  Just because we have (had, until this movement destroyed it) a photogenic, newly renovated PUBLIC plaza in front of our City Hall (which also needed to be repaired after the Loma Prieta earthquake)?  Just because we have a well meaning but somewhat indecisive mayor?  Those reasons aren’t good enough.  Please, before you do any more damage to our city and to the Occupy Wall Street effort, it is time to move on.  Pack up, restore our plaza, and leave no trace.  This protest belongs elsewhere.

The longer you occupy our public plaza, (which already has been given a name in honor of a person dedicated to public service, Frank Ogawa), the more you damage a
city that is already hurting enough as it is.  Our public schools and city are already deep in debt.  The very entities you are protesting are the same ones who profit from the higher interest rates we are forced to pay.  It is costing $4,000  a day, minimum, to deal with this protest.  $4,000 a day that this city DOES NOT HAVE!!!!  Guess who wins?  Not Oakland.  And, ultimately not its impoverished residents when other public services they need get cut to cover these costs.  Why pick on us?  Many of our residents are part of the bottom 1%, not the top 1%.  Go where the TOP 1% live!  Need suggestions?  How about Atherton, Belvedere, or Beverly Hills?  San Franciso’s Pacific Heights, the Hamptons on Long Island, the upper East Side of NYC, Newport, RI, Vale, Colorado, Lloyd Harbor, NY?  That’s just for starters.  I bet you’ll find more
hedge fund trading, tax evading, trust funded, off shore monied, Swiss bank account holding, living large One Percenters in any one of those places than in all of the East Bay combined.  Please help, don’t hurt, Oakland.

and here’s some history for those of you new to Oakland:

In the 1940s,  tens of thousands of uneducated folks (many who relocated to escape poverty and prejudice in the south) moved here to help with wartime construction.  After WWII ended, they were left stranded.  They were not considered eligible for the GI Bill benefits that returning soldiers received (such a free education and cheaper
housing).  Their jobs were eliminated once wartime construction ended, leaving them still uneducated and now unemployed.  That legacy of suffering continues to this day.

Starting in the 60s, our city was recklessly carved up to make way for freeways and BART so that people could move to the suburbs out in Contra Costa County.  Our once prosperous main street became a ghost town, with stores like Capwells, I Magnin, Newberrys and all the others closing down and moving out.  While every other neighboring city has a thriving downtown, we have to subsidize Sears just to stay here.  In the meantime, those same cities benefit when Oakland residents must shop
elsewhere, thus contributing sales tax revenue to a city they don’t live in. Until recently, most non-Oaklanders have been afraid to even visit Oakland, let alone shop and eat here.  Any perception of violence scares people away.  It only hurts small downtown businesses that are already struggling.

During the 80s, we were at the center of drug and gang wars, which continue to scar us.  Two years ago, one of my daughter’s classmates, a good kid, was gunned down outside of his own home during his 18th birthday party.  Our city also suffered tremendous damage in the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989, such as the collapse of one of the same freeways that split up our neighborhoods a few decades prior.

In the 90s, we continued to lose industry.  For example, Mother’s Cookie Company was a prosperous company until corporate raiders acquired it, sold off its parts for profit and turned it into crumbs, leaving lots of hard working folks out of  jobs.  This year, Carl Icahn has been trying to do the same thing to Clorox, the only Fortune 500 company that is here (although most of its operations were relocated to Pleasanton).  In 1991, the Oakland Hills Fire destroyed more homes (including my own), than any fire in history.  We have just recently recovered.  The vibe of our downtown was, after over 60 years of decline, just beginning to turn upbeat.    Please don’t make things even harder for us.   Thank you.