Why Quan’s Got to Go
by zunguzungu
After Jean Quan ordered the raid on the Occupy Oakland camp, and imported police in riot gear from 17 districts to “police” a peaceful demonstration, she wants to apologize and calls for dialogue and also continues to tell the occupiers that they need to do the things she’s been telling them to do for weeks (stop camping out, etc). She regrets what happened, but it doesn’t change the fact that she’s mayor.
It should, though. She needs to go. A precedent needs to be set: unleash police on peaceful protesters, lose your job. And while we don’t know that the person that replaces her will be any better, this is exactly why she needs to go. She’s a very liberal mayor and yet still this happened. Electing a liberal mayor does not get you liberal policies; that person may still, as Zennie Abrahams says Quan did, take what seemed to be the politically safest course of action. Let’s not forget that Quan was already taking fire for being insufficiently harsh on crime. The recall proposal that was already circulating declared that “she has willfully ignored the City’s most pressing issue: public safety.” Might that have played into her decision to be wildly overzealous about defending (so called) “public safety”?
This is something the Framers understood quite well: power corrupts but democratic accountability keeps that corruption in check. Good people only stay good if The People are able to make sure they do. So Jean Quan needs to go to make the next mayor aware that there’s a political cost to putting nonviolent protesters in the hospital, to putting police in a position where they can be as violent as they inevitably will be when challenged. The next Mayor needs to know that you cannot police your way out of a confrontation with political dissent. And if Jean Quan goes, the next mayor will calculate the “safest” course of action differently. They might even take the safety of Oakland’s citizens into account, and maybe even prioritize that over the desirable emptiness of parks.
Okay, I said this on twitter, but I actually think that for the sake of an actual dialogue I should probably comment directly on the blog. I entirely agree that Quan should be punished, and I like the idea of saying to politicians “sponsor a police riot, lose your job.” But the Wisconsin recall efforts show the danger of such a strategy: recalls are hard and can take energy from the broader nonelectoral movement. Moreover, doesn’t Quan’s badness prove that electoral politics is a mug’s game? You elect someone you think is a progressive ally, but in fact the office is greater than its holder. There’s no reason to think that Quan’s putative replacement would be any better. So why go through the effort of recalling her if the person who takes over will be just as bad?
Quit misusing/overusing/abusing italics in almost every post. Christ!
If blog commenting has taught us anything is that it is almost impossible to predict what people will choose to be dicks about.
Hmm. I’ve lived here most of my life and having seen many mayors come and go (not to mention a few police riots), I can’t get behind the recall Quan campaign.
- I don’t know the exact personnel behind the pre-riot recall effort, but I do know that a number of anti-tax and by Oakland standard conservative types have been vocal about the idea. Not interested in allying with this crowd.
- Not only do we not know if the replacement would be any better, I think we can be reasonably sure any replacement would be significantly worse. The previous 2 mayors used the position as a stepping stone up or down the ladder of state politics and neither gave a flying fuck about the city. Dellums was completely disengaged which I think is part of why he wasn’t held particularly accountable for the post Oscar Grant police actions. Quan’s progressive opponent in the last election was Kaplan who looks to me to also be using every office as a stepping stone and is rumored to have her eye on Sandre Swanson’s seat. While she did come out with a statement yesterday that was refreshingly critical of the police action, she had been silent about OO until that point and certainly looked to me to be hiding out to avoid associating herself with any controversy. We don’t need a bullshit mayor who is more interested in her career than the city. Oakland has a lot of bullshit nepotism and machine politics and any other replacement for Quan is likely to come from that world.
- Quan has attempted to engage with OO in a way I don’t think you would have seen with another mayor. Jerry Brown, Dellums, even looking back to Harris, all of these mayors were closed-door types who refused to dialog at all with the community. While I agree with the OO/OWS strategy of ignoring the “authority” of authorities and creating its own structures, I also feel Quan’s pre police riot communications with OO were not off the wall or crazy. OO should stay night and day but health, safety, and vandalism concerns were completely valid in my opinion.
- The criticisms of Quan strike me as unprecedented in at least the time I’ve been in Oakland (and I can remember back to Lionel Wilson). I wasn’t there last night (planning to spend the night tonight) but what I heard about people running at Quan when she came to speak strike me as potentially rooted in unexamined mysogony. I have NEVER seen an activist run at or scream at an Oakland mayor before. And I’ve seen a lot of bullshit in Oakland including many incidents of police brutality and including brutal crackdowns on demonstrators which the mayor has never been held accountable for. (Remember the Oakland Port protest? Why was there no “recall Jerry Brown” movement after that?) There are unique things about this situation but I think we’re treating Quan much differently than activists have treated previous mayors and I think we should examine whether our own internalized issues around gender and race may play a role in this.
(Sorry to drop this all on your blog but have been really wanting to respond to this issue.)
Do you think, as mayor, she wants to have genuine dialogue with Occupy Oakland? And does Occupy Oakland want (now, or did they want before) to have a dialogue with her?
It seems that if the answer to the first question is “yes”, there is a strategic opportunity that should influence the answer to the second question – going by that saying ‘you make peace by negotiating with your enemy.’ If Occupy can use her as mayor (in whatever way – even as a rallying point of anger) to further their own ends, then maybe they should.
My thoughts aren’t crystal clear hear, and of course the Oakland GA and all the Occupiers are in the best position to make a decision. But as a longtime follower of your blog I’m struck by the fervor of your post – and I don’t mean that as a negative by default. Rather, I’m curious as to your analysis. I was surprised to read in the NY Times about Quan’s radical Berkley affiliations from her university days. People change, of course, but it made me more reflective about the call that she must go.
Jacob Remes also makes some really strong points.
Best of luck, and keep Occupying.
I agree, and your argument makes sense because it is structural. It is about the nature of democracy. The question about what Quan wants is kind of irrelevant I think. She is a political actor, she has a position in an institution. Her actions revealed her orientation against people’s will and people’s rights, which is a betrayal of that position. Anyone in her position, any mayor, will be under similar pressures and it is up to us the people to hold them to it, which we do by making sure people lose their positions when they do them badly.
Ripley says: “Her actions revealed her orientation against people’s will and people’s rights, which is a betrayal of that position. Anyone in her position, any mayor, will be under similar pressures and it is up to us the people to hold them to it, which we do by making sure people lose their positions when they do them badly.”
I think that begs the question (in the classical sense of the term): the orientation against the people’s will is not necessarily a betrayal of the position of mayor. It’s not just that any mayor is under similar pressures; any mayor would in fact do the same thing, or similar things, or at least be powerless to stop those things. That’s why there was a smaller-scale (maybe) police riot in Denver today, that’s why the police keep arresting folks in Nashville, and it’s why Democratic, supposedly progressive mayors have evicted and arrested OWS folks in Atlanta and Boston. The position of mayor forces the occupants–even progressives like Kaseem Reed and Thomas Menino and Jean Quan–into acting against the people’s will, because that’s what mayors are forced to do in late capitalism. The fact that Quan, Menino, and Reed have done what they’ve done despite being supposed progressives should point to the uselessness of electoral politics.
I’m actually very uncomfortable making this argument, since I’m ambivalent about a total abandonment of electoral politics (I’ve worked for, donated to, cared about, and voted in electoral campaigns, and I will do so again). But I do think there is often a choice–as illustrated by the Wisconsin recall–between direct action and electoral politics, and I think choosing electoral politics right now is almost certainly a distraction from the main event.
I didn’t a chance to hear it, but apparently, some people involved in Occupy Oakland were interviewed on the KPFA morning show on Thursday, and they were reported as being, rightly in my view, if so, completely dismissive of Quan. They had no concern for her because she has nothing to offer them after allowing the police free reign to assault them. While I am tempted to dismiss Felix’s claims of misogyny against Quan, I am willing to concede, based upon what I have seen in regard to Occupy Sacramento, that it might be something that needs to be addressed. Even so, it doesn’t change the fact that Quan, for the reasons mentioned by Remes, will never do anything for the benefit of Occupy Oakland, public relations stunts to the contrary. She’s already picked her side, and she can’t change that.
I guess the main thing that matters to me in this discussion is whether Quan’s future as mayor should be decided solely on the basis of her relationship to Occupy Oakland, or even to this specific police action when taken on it’s own without the context of Occupy Oakland.
While I wholeheartedly believe she completely fucked up by calling in the goons on the camp and on that demonstration, I also think she is doing other work as mayor that is beneficial for the city. After Occupy Oakland is gone, Oakland still has to live with the mayor. I’ve seen a lot of shitty mayors who have made things demonstrably worse for the city. While I certainly don’t put the majority of my hope or faith in the politicians who hold office on a city, state, or national level, I do think that on a city level it matters who those politicians are. If Quan were to be ousted, I think Oakland as a whole would likely be worse off with her replacement (unless there’s someone awesome waiting in the wings I’ve never heard of), and I think that matters significantly for the 390 thousand people who live here.
On the other hand, maybe this is the beginning of a whole new system – a true Oakland Commune – and if so I certainly welcome it and don’t care what happens to the current mayor. I welcome that if it happens but I hold out some pragmatic investment in this mayor who has been, in my view, an improvement over those she has followed.
(And by the way, thank you for your very thoughtful and thought provoking posts on OO. I’m excited to read stuff on this level especially as it pertains to Oakland – previously the blog universe offered pretty slim pickings on the overlapping subjects of Oakland and politics, mostly of the pro-development/business/condos/downtown variety.)
[...] evicted Occupy Oakland. A great post from Aaron Bady on the march and police riot afterwards. The police left some trash in the plaza when they [...]