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Oakland Unwrapped Silliness in a time of terror By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor Someone called me the other morning and told me I needed to turn on the television. It was the morning of September 11th. I got a local station and caught Mayor Brown saying something about us showing "steely-eyed resolve" and promising that Oakland would be open for business during this crisis. Now Reagan, he could pull off the "steely-eyed" thing and not look silly while doing it. Jack and Bobby Kennedy, too, if your memory goes back that far. And Rudy Guliani, before he got the idea that he was a national treasure and New Yorkers ought to change their laws to keep him as mayor. Diane Feinstein did it, in that famous 1978 press conference held at SF City Hall a few yards down from where George Moscone and Harvey Milk had just gotten shot to death. But Jerry Brown? Well, to be honest, he looked for all the world like someone looking for a television soundbite in prep-aration for a run for the United States Senate. Instead of talking to the press that morning, maybe Mr. Brown should have been talking to the City Manager. Within an hour or so after the Mayor was resolving that Oakland was open for busi-ness, Robert Bobb was, in fact, shutting it down. Workers report a ton of confusion, including being told that City Hall was remaining open but any worker who decided to leave would not be docked (how many workers, do you figure, took the second option?), and later being informed that City Hall was being evacu-ated, but all visitors would be leaving first, and then, after the building was clear, city employees would be told that they could leave. Not wanting to be sitting alone in an office waiting for the "all clear" call, a lot of city employees left with the visitors. I don't think there was really a right or a wrong decision to be made in the confusion of the morning of September 11th. City Hall could have closed down or remained open, and neither decision should be criticized. But one or the other, guys, and do it in an orderly fashion. Otherwise, instead of looking steely, it just looks silly. Brown and Bobb, at least, have the excuse that they were working in the immediate after-math of the hijackings, when there wasn't much time to be thoughtful. But what about Shannon Reeves? Mr. Reeves, the Oakland NAACP President and the poster ... um ... man for young conservative Republican black folk, took Congressmember Barbara Lee to task in a Tribune op-ed article two weeks after the New York/DC attacks. Reeves called Lee's lone and lonely vote against the President's "war on terrorism" resolution a "lack of conscience and patriotism," a "neglect [to] her first and foremost responsi-bility to her district and our country," and a "dereliction of duty." Reeves suggested that rather than voting her con-science on the resolution, Lee should have voted the will of her district. I'm not sure if anybody knows exactly what the will of the 9th Congressional District is on this issue. That's where I live, and though I've heard a lot about what we're supposed to be thinking around here over the couple of weeks (including an Urbanview piece written by an out-of-state col-umnist, Earl Ofari Hutchinson), I can't remember anybody coming around and asking us. From the talk shows and the letters to the editors in the various newspapers, it seems that we're pretty divided on the war against terrorism. In that case, when constituents are so divided, all you can ask your represent-atives to do is to vote their consciences. As far as I can tell, Lee did. The leader of the nation has his definitions of the nature and the responsibilities of patriotism, but those are not the only definitions. We fought a pretty lively war one time against another national leader ... King George of England ... for the right of dissent, among other things. Seems a shame to throw that all away right now, after all those years of struggle. And kind of silly, too, don't you think? J. Douglas Allen-Taylor is an author, a journalist, and a graduate of Castlemont High School. He can be reached at www.safero.org and [email protected]. [ East Bay | Metroactive | Archives ]