Oakland (Special to ZennieReport.com) – On Thursday, March 5th, 2025, I issued the following email regarding how these Oakland Mayoral Forums have started to bring less value to the Oakland Electorate than the initial group. All of them are basically the same with a person or panel asking questions, the candidates giving answers, and none of them broadcast in a multi-media organization way so the largest number of Oaklanders can see them.
But the biggest problem of all is the question format: it has nothing to do with actually running an Oakland Mayor’s Office at all. And it’s hard to determine what kind of leader we’re going to get from that format. So, we get the same answers to the same questions again and again, and learn nothing in the process.
There’s a bigger problem at play and I address it here:
Greetings Everyone,
I will issue this view. These forums have become completely monotonous and at this point valueless. The organizers ask the same questions. The format of audience – passive viewer is the same, even when who asks questions is considered. And NONE OF THEM REFLECT HOW THE CITY OF OAKLAND ACTUALLY WORKS, so the discussions start out as interesting, but then become laughable.
But they do reflect one problem: why Oakland has degenerated to a point where it’s own electorate does not care to self-engage change. The number one problem is that we have lost special interests representing what we’ve lost. Has anyone considered that for the A’s, Raiders, and Warriors, the booster clubs, once the actual Oakland promotional organizations, are gone. Same is true for the total of 20,000 businesses lost since 2020. And with that, the Census-estimated 14,000 Oaklanders who have left (the real number is greater). Then, there are those who have died.
Many of the people who remain do not at all know of the Oakland that existed before 2000. That was 25 years ago. By contrast, my first job out of Cal grad school was with the Oakland Redevelopment Agency and I was hired by the same man who was later the project manager for the Oakland Bulk and Oversized Terminal. Yes, the same project that some idiotically call a “coal terminal”. By contrast, from 1993-1999 my Montclarion Column competed with that of the Oakland Tribune’s Peggy Stinette for “most popular”, and I generated more mail in two weeks than The Montclarion had ever seen in its history. And in 1996 I managed to score a hat trick: Montclarion Columnist and Economic Advisor to Oakland Mayor Elihu Harris.
And that was before I became Oakland’s first blogger and vlogger. So I span two different generations of communication, and ways of thinking: one without the Internet, and one with it. The former generation is more interested in institutional detail; the later more interested in image (what some call “virtue signalling”). The movies had longer dialog; the books were of extreme length. So today you can’t start to understand how to wrap your minds around a city built of another time, and how to fix it today. And how you approach the forums reflects that.
And if you have doubts, and need an example from afar, I point to Ron DeSantis. The Florida Governor believed he could just take Walt Disney World for the government. My first thought was that something I memorized when I was 10 years old would block him: The Reedy Creek Improvement District. Passed by the Florida Legislature in 1968, it formed Walt Disney World into a City State, with an effective legal bubble designed to shield it from the study decisions that often follow those that hate to read details, or be bothered with them. That describes much of society, including the governments, today.
No surprise, Ron got smacked right in the head by the The Reedy Creek Improvement District, and while you may think it’s dead, it can be brought back to life under one change. And what’s left is still the RCID for the most part. And why did he and his people get smacked in the head: because like most couch-potato ideologues of today, they just don’t bother with details and hate reading.
I was attracted to urban planning at eight years old, and the desire to build a city from scratch, at 10 years old, because of two books: One The Art Of Walt Disney and a section by Peter Blake called “The Lessons Of the Parks” and the other before that called “The Modern Metropolis” by Hans Bluemenfeld (yes, I am aware and was aware then that he was a communist).
Eventually, I wound up going to Texas-Arlington for their under-grad program in city planning, watching in horror as they got rid of it leaving me to design my own major, then focusing on Berkeley only taking what turn out to be a sour visit to the Kennedy School of Government, which did not have its #$$$ together regarding urban planning then (or now), and a professor Avis Vidal, who spent more time mindlessly talking with my interview partner because she was white and had friends in England. By contrast, Berkeley was the best two years of school I ever had in my life. GO BEARS!
It was Professor Mike Teitz, on a walk from Wurster Hall to what was then called Cafe Roma, and on the very day of explosion of the Space Shuttle The Challenger, who told me “It’s OK to think big, just do it well”. Mike saved my life. I had invented a new proportion system (because I though The Golden Mean was illogical in its rules) and our visiting professor who looked like an odd mix between Ichabod Crane and James Bond (Roger Moore) proceeded to make fun of me, a new student at the time. But I saw all manner of wrongs in planning, and wanted to right them. A tall order.
Berkeley prized thinking: Mike Teitz, C. West Churchman (the father of systems thinking), Sir Peter Hall, Prof Steven Cohen, and the legendary Fred Collingon, Allen Jacobs and Betty Deakin, and David Vogel over at the Business School. My Cal classmates including Kofi Bonner (who I had lunch with in Detroit last year for the NFL Draft). And my friends like Mike Silver (who just gave me a copy of his book “The Why Is Everything”), my ex-girlfriend Lauren (still good friend today). They allowed me to be me. Still do.
Anyway, what you say and the DeSantis’ types say today reflects that fact of lack of attention to details. What they’re used to and you reflect just repeats the “solution approaches” that caused these problems we face. You all have too much in common with Ron DeSantis. The way you all do your forums offers no avenue to gaining better leaders, understanding how decision makers have to think (note that), or a better understanding of Oakland or urban development and financing.
My 2014 Oakland Sports Forum was and is still the best one ever. Chances are you weren’t around for that….
Just saying.
But given all of the flotsam I have been exposed to from this awful period, I had to.
If you want to see why Oakland is where it is, look in the mirror. If you can’t fix your thinking, or look back to see what was done and why in the past, how can you figure out how to fix the City, let alone determine who can?
Best regards,
Zennie Abraham