No one has fought Occupy Oakland as viciously as the Oakland Chamber of Commerce, and OakPAC, the Chamber’s Political Action Committee is the cash in every council member’s campaign. The Chamber is not a lobbyist; they are the lobbyist, in Oakland. They have been the political push behind the generally limp and befuddled elected officials. They have catalyzed the Oakland City Council, famous for its inability to agree on anything, into an orgy of consensus and an eagerness to act without regard for costs.
Shockingly, the press applauded the council’s “common sense” approach to Occupy Oakland. The press’s lockstep agreement with the council’s approach to Occupy Oakland was further bolstered by a “scientific survey” showing that the public agreed with the Chamber and the Oakland City Council and the blundering mayor, when she agreed with the Chamber. Something had to be done; Occupy Oakland was a crisis, a disaster. The home invasions, armed robberies and record murder year could wait, the Chamber was right, the people of Oakland must fight the tents.
So how did the good people of Oakland all come to agree so quickly and completely with the Chamber? Who elected the Oakland City Council, OakPAC did, and who surveyed the public, EMC Research, a Chamber member. Who reported the story: the Oakland Tribune, the San Francisco Chronicle, ABC-7 (KGO-TV), CBS 5 and KTVU, all Chamber of Commerce members. So how did the Chamber come to have such a huge influence over Oakland Politics?
Here’s the history. Oakland has long had a problem with “pay to play “machine politics which starved the poorer neighborhoods and citizens of services and representation. Paul Rockwell wrote an insightful if not prophetic piece about the Chamber and its PAC (OakPAC) in 2006. The City of Oakland attempted to limit lobbyist control over Oakland politics with a Campaign Reform Act in 2000, the object being to create freer elections. The Chamber agreed to the reform and their influence, through OakPAC, was curtailed.
So between 2000 and 2006 Oakland’s people had more influence over local elections. Ron Dellums became mayor and in 2006 there was a contested race for a council seat where the OakPAC candidate, Pat Kerninghan was in a tight race against Aimee Allison. The Chamber, unhappy with the possibility of losing a council seat, threatened legal action against Oakland’s Campaign Reform Act and a judge deemed Oakland’s Campaign Reform act unconstitutional, saying it violated the groups’ freedom of speech.
The City’s Campaign Reform Ordinance amended and OakPAC was once again free to pour unlimited funds into political campaigns. Their candidate won and the City of Oakland paid a $75,000 settlement to OakPAC. So Oakland taxpayers paid OakPAC, who in turn bought politicians, who then promoted the Chamber’s position, which was then researched and reported on by the Chamber’s members and this is how Oakland has come so quickly and completely to support the Chamber’s position on the occupy protests.
Oaklander’s need no longer be bothered with tedious tasks like choosing their council people, or researching issues, the Chamber can do it for them. As for public opinion, they have the Chamber’s research and their reporters to tell them what to think. So what if one’s council member doesn’t have time for office hours and sends their staff; they can’t be expected to miss a “Power Breakfast” with the Chamber. Without a “Power Breakfast” with the Chamber of Commerce Oakland City Council members would have no idea what their positions are.
“Shockingly, the press applauded the council’s “common sense” approach to Occupy Oakland.”
In reality, there’s nothing shocking about it. The owners of the mass media represent the same class interests as the Chamber of Commerce.
I’m not aware of any single mass media news site that has attacked the Occupy Movement, and in particular Oakland Occupy, to as large an audience as relentlessly and dishonestly as the SF Gate (Chronicle) website.
The rest of this post is a short piece I wrote and posted multiple times in late November on the SF Gate’s comment’s section (where, suspiciously, Occupy-negative comments, many of them full of bald-faced lies and distortions parroting misinformation transmitted in the SF Gate’s news section, far outnumber Occupy-positive comments):
In a deliberate effort to misinform its readers and suppress support for the Occupy Movement, SF Gate has systematically misrepresented and concealed news about about Occupy mass actions that have occurred around the United States.
To illustrate, last Thursday (11/18), tens of thousands demonstrated in all day actions in New York City in support of the Occupy Movement. But those who rely upon the SF Gate Those who happened to scroll down the SF Gate home-page might have found their eyes resting on a link to an article entitled “300 Arrested Across the Country” which reported that 1,000-2,000 loud demonstrators attempted to shut-down the stock exchange on Wall Street, leaving the reader with the distinct impression that that was the *high point* of the day.
The fact is that the SF Gate reported one small part of a day’s long set of marches and actions as if it were the entirety of the day’s demonstration. In day-long demonstrations, many participants rotate in and out (and in again, possibly) throughout the day so crowd estimates at one moment in time and space CAN NOT HONESTLY BE PRESENTED AS A CROWD ESTIMATE FOR THE EVENT IN TOTAL. This is elemental, but the “journalists” at the SF Gate can’t be bothered to point this elemental fact out or incorporate it into their reporting.
The fact that the NYPD, which invariably low-balls the numbers participating in left protests, reported that 32,000 marched across the Brooklyn Bridge late in the afternoon, suggests that *in the course of the day* at least 50,000 participated in the NYC pro-Occupy demonstrations last week. And that’s a conservative estimate.
The coverage of mass demonstrations in the Bay Area has been no better. At noon on the day of the Oakland General Strike (11/4)–when thousands were filling Frank Ogawa Plaza, 14th and Broadway, and spilling into both–the SF Gate’s headline read “Two Hundred March in Oakland.”
And in the days after, the SF Gate gave almost no coverage to the Oakland strike, which closed down much of downtown, or the 20,000-30,000 Occupy demonstrators who shut-down the Port of Oakland, the fifth largest port in the country. No comparable actions have occurred in the US cities *in decades*, but the ONLY sustained coverage the day’s events received was of the minor riot that ensued when the police came in riot gear to eject pro-Occupy demonstrators who late in the evening had taken occupation of an abandoned building on 16th Street. After all, that’s all the SF Gate editors wanted the plebes to know.