News
Mayor Withdraws Nomination of Police Commissioner Who Defended U.S. Drone Killings
In the face of opposition, Mayor Libby Schaaf has withdrawn her proposed appointment of an ex-U.S. District Attorney as a police commission alternate. Brian Hauck, in a former position, defended the U.S. government’s killing by drone attack of two U.S. citizens accused not of violence but of “incendiary commentary.”
These extra-judicial drone killings have been condemned internationally. In the 2013 lawsuit against the federal government, the ACLU and the Center for Constitutional Rights the family of the man and his teenaged son, who was killed in Yemen in 2011.
At last Thursday’s Rules Committee meeting, the Schaaf administration proposed that Hauck serve as an alternative commissioner on the Police Commission.
At the meeting, Schaaf’s Chief of Staff Elinor Buchen praised Hauck for his “years of experience in the Department of Justice…he brings a level of expertise on some of the more technical issues.”
Hauck said, “I do have experience in these issues and look forward to serving the community whatever way the city would find helpful.”
The resolution to appoint Hauck was placed on the consent calendar on this week’s City Council agenda, which meant that it was not considered controversial and would probably be approved with little or no discussion.
However, the proposal quickly unraveled after Hauck’s background was brought to the attention of City Councilmembers and the public by journalist Jaime Omar Yassin at “Oakland News at Hyphenated Republic” (https://hyphenatedrepublic.com).
City Council President Rebecca Kaplan took the item off the consent calendar, in a motion seconded by Noel Gallo, meaning that it would have to be debated in public. A number of public speakers spoke against the resolution. Finally, the Mayor’s Office pulled the resolution off the agenda.
“Before it was pulled by the Mayor’s staffer there was public comment including public criticism of the nomination,” Kaplan told the Oakland Post after the meeting.
“I was told about the issue by a local journalist,” she said. “I agree with many in the community who spoke on their concerns about the nomination, given the undisclosed prior role defending extra-judicial killings.”
The 2011 case received wide attention around the world, involving the extra-judicial killing of Anwar Al Awlaki and his 16-year-old son Abdulrahman Al Awlaki in a U.S. drone attack.
The family’s lawsuit argued that then- U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and then-CIA Director David Petraeus, among others, were liable for having violated the constitutional rights the Al Awlakis.
Hauk represented the U.S. government in the hearing. According to a summary of the case by journalist Yassin, Hauck argued the U.S. could not be responsible for extra-judicial assassinations of citizens because it would “distract” those officials with the fear of litigation.
He also argued that though the two did have constitutional rights, “no court was capacitated to consider those rights’ – only the executive in consultation with Congress could decide on such matters.
Rashidah Grinage of the Coalition for Police Accountability told the Oakland Post as a former U.S. attorney, Hauck could respond that he had no choice but to make the case that he was assigned to make by his employer. However, she did question why he failed to disclose the issue to the mayor or the Police Commission, when he was interviewed by the selection committee
“This seems to reflect a lack of political awareness, especially about Oakland,” she said.
Activism
Oakland Post: Week of October 30 – November 5, 2024
The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of October 30 – November 5, 2024
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Activism
“Two things can be true at once.” An Afro-Latina Voter Weighs in on Identity and Politics
“As a Puerto Rican I do not feel spoken to in discussions about Latino voters… which is ironic because we are one of the few Latino communities who are also simultaneously American,” Ortiz-Cedeño says. Puerto Ricans born in Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory, have American citizenship by birth but they do not have the right to vote for president if they live on the island. “I think that we miss out on a really interesting opportunity to have a nuanced conversation by ignoring this huge Latino population that is indigenously American.”
By Magaly Muñoz
On a sunny afternoon at Los Cilantros Restaurant in Berkeley, California, Keyanna Ortiz-Cedeño, a 27-year-old Afro-Latina with tight curly hair and deep brown skin, stares down at her carne asada tacos, “I’ve definitely eaten more tortillas than plantains over the course of my life,” says Cedeño, who spent her childhood in South Texas, among predominantly Mexican-American Latinos. As she eats, she reflects on the views that American politicians have of Latino voters.
“As a Puerto Rican I do not feel spoken to in discussions about Latino voters… which is ironic because we are one of the few Latino communities who are also simultaneously American,” Ortiz-Cedeño says. Puerto Ricans born in Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory, have American citizenship by birth but they do not have the right to vote for president if they live on the island. “I think that we miss out on a really interesting opportunity to have a nuanced conversation by ignoring this huge Latino population that is indigenously American.”
Ortiz-Cedeño, an urban planner who is focused on disaster resilience, homelessness and economic prosperity for people of color, says that political conversations around Latinos tend to shift towards immigration, “I think this ties back into the ways that our perception of ‘Latino’ tends to be Mexican and Central American because so much of our conversation about Latinos is deeply rooted in what’s happening on the border,” she says. “I don’t think that the Afro-Latino vote is frequently considered when we’re talking about the Latino vote in the United States.”
As Ortiz-Cedeño sifts through childhood photos of her as a happy teen dancing with the Mexican ballet folklorico group in high school and as a dama in quinceñeras, she reflects on growing up in South Texas, an area with a large population of white and Mexican-Americans. The Black population was small, and within it, the Afro-Latino population was practically nonexistent.
“It was interesting to try to have conversations with other Latinos in the community because I think that there was a combination of both willful ignorance and a sort of ill intent and effort to try and deny my experience as a Latino,” she says. “There are a lot of folks in Latin America who experience a lot of cognitive dissonance when they think about the existence of Black Latinos in Latin America.
Ortiz-Cedeño comments on the long history of anti-Blackness in Latin America. “Throughout Latin America, we have a really insidious history with erasing Blackness and I think that that has been carried into the Latino American culture and experience,” she says. “People will tell you, race doesn’t exist in Latin America, like we’re all Dominicans, we’re all Puerto Ricans, we’re all Cubans, we’re all Mexicans. If you were to go to the spaces with where people are from and look at who is experiencing the most acute violence, the most acute poverty, the most acute political oppression and marginalization, those people are usually darker. And that’s not by accident, it’s by design.”
Because of the lack of diversity in her Gulf Coast town, as a teenager, despite being the only Spanish-speaker at her job in Walmart, Latinos refused to ask for her help in Spanish.
“Even if monolingual [Spanish-speaking] people would have to speak with me, then they were trying to speak English, even though they could not speak English, versus engaging with me as a Latina,” she says.
“I think that the perception of Latinos in the United States is of a light brown person with long, wavy or straight hair. The perfect amount of curves and the perfect combination of Indigenous and white genes. And very rarely will people also consider that maybe they also have a sprinkle of Blackness in them as well,” she says. “Over 90% of the slave trade went to the Caribbean and Latin America.”
Ortiz-Cedeño remembers when a Cuban family moved in next door to her in Texas. The teen daughter had blue-eyes, blonde hair and only spoke Spanish, which caused neighboring Latinos to take pause because she didn’t fit the Latino “look” they were used to.
“People didn’t have an option to try and negate her [Latino] identity because they had to acknowledge her for everything that she was,” Ortiz-Cedeño says.
Later on, the girl’s cousins, a Black, Spanish-speaking Cuban family, came into town and again locals were forced to reckon with the fact that not all Latinos fit a certain criteria.
“I think it forced everybody to have to confront a reality that they knew in the back of their mind but didn’t want to acknowledge at the forefront,” Ortiz-Cedeño says.
Having gone through these experiences as an Afro-Latina, Ortiz-Cedeño says it’s easy for her to understand Kamala Harris’ mixed Indian and Jamaican heritage, “It comes really naturally to accept that she is both Indian and Black. Two things can exist at the same time,” she says. “I had a long term partner for about seven years who was South Indian, from the same state as Kamala Harris, so if we had had a kid, they would look like [Harris],” Ortiz-Cedeño jokingly shares.
She says she can relate to having to walk the road of people only wanting to see Harris as a Black American. The talking point about [Harris] not being Indian or not being Black, just deciding to be Black, is really disingenuous and cheap,” she says.
Ortiz-Cedeño believes that the Harris campaign has not capitalized on the vice president’s mixed identity, which could be vital in bringing together different communities to understand each other on a new level and allow for improvements on America’s racial dynamics.
As she rushes into a Berkeley Urban Planning Commission meeting straight out of Ashby BART station, Ortiz-Cedeño explains her love for talking about all things infrastructure, homelessness, and healthcare access. The topics can be dry for many, she admits, but in the end, she gets to address long-standing systemic issues that often hinder opportunities for growth for people of color.
Having lived through the effects of Hurricane Katrina as a child, with the flooding and mass migration of Louisiana residents into Texas, Ortiz-Cedeño was radicalized into issues of displacement, emergency mitigation, and housing at nine years old.
“I remember my principal had to carry her students on her shoulders and swim us home because so many parents were trying to drive in and get their kids from school [due to] the flooding that was pushing their cars away,” she recalls.
Her family relocated to Houston soon after Katrina, only to be met with a deadly Hurricane Rita. They wound up in a mega-shelter, where Ortiz-Cedeño says she heard survivors stories of the unstable conditions in New Orleans and beyond, which got her wondering about urban planning, a term she wasn’t familiar with at the time.
“I think that when you put people in the context of the things that were happening in this country around [these hurricanes], a lot of us started to really think seriously about who gets to make decisions about the urban environment,” she adds.
Watching the heavy displacement of disaster survivors, hearing stories of her Navy veteran father’s chronic homelessness, and her own mother’s work and activism with homeless communities in the non–profit sector put her on the path to progressive politics and solutions, she says. After attending college on the East Coast- where she says she was finally recognized as a Puerto Rican- and working in housing, economic development, and public policy, she returned to California to earn a Master’s in City Regional Planning from UC Berkeley.
Her vast interest in the urban success of underserved communities even took her abroad to Israel and Palestine when she was an undergraduate college student. “I’ve seen the border with Gaza, I’ve had homestays with farmers in the West Bank,” she says. “For me personally, Palestine is an issue that is really close to the heart.”
“I have a very intimate understanding of the conflict and I’m very disturbed by the way in which the [Democratic] party has not been willing to engage in what I would perceive to be a thoughtful enough conversation about the conflict,” Ortiz-Cedeño says. “The issue of Palestine is going to be one of those that is a make or break issue for her. It has not been one that has been taken seriously enough by the party.”
Ortiz-Cedeño is not under the illusion that one candidate will address every policy issue she wants to see tackled by the president. But she believes it’s better than what former President Donald Trump has to offer.
“Trump has made it very clear what his intentions are with Palestine, and what his relationship is with [Benjamin] Netanyahu,” Ortiz-Cedeño says. “I understand the political strategy that many people are trying to engage in by withholding their vote, but I would also encourage them to re-engage in the political process.”
Casting her vote for Harris is a decision grounded in calculation rather than outright support. “I think I can vote in this election in order to have harm reduction… because I have deep care and concern for other communities that are going to be impacted by a Trump presidency,” Ortiz-Cedeño says.
She also hopes that American politicians will consider the nuance and perspective that Afro-Latinos bring to the table when it comes to politics, policy, and race in America, “When we don’t think expansively about who is Latino in the United States, the breadth of Latino experiences in the United States, we miss an opportunity to capture how diverse Latinos interests are politically.”
This story was reported in collaboration with PBS VOCES: Latino Vote 2024.
Alameda County
2024 Local Elections: Q&A for Oakland Unified School Board Candidates, District 7
For the first time in California’s history, 16- and 17-year-olds in Oakland will be able to vote in their respective school board elections in November 2024. This initiative is a collaborative effort by the County of Alameda, the City of Oakland, and the Oakland Unified School District. The Post reached out to the eight candidates across Districts 1, 3, 5, and 7 to see what their views are on various topics concerning the OUSD community. Below are questions and answers from District 7 candidate Clifford Thompson. Dominic Wares, the other D7 candidate, did not respond to multiple requests for written or over-the-phone responses.
By Magaly Muñoz
In a few weeks, Oakland residents will vote for new school board directors in four separate districts across the city.
For the first time in California’s history, 16- and 17-year-olds in Oakland will be able to vote in their respective school board elections in November 2024. This initiative is a collaborative effort by the County of Alameda, the City of Oakland, and the Oakland Unified School District.
The Post reached out to the eight candidates across Districts 1, 3, 5, and 7 to see what their views are on various topics concerning the OUSD community. Below are questions and answers from District 7 candidate Clifford Thompson. Dominic Wares, the other D7 candidate, did not respond to multiple requests for written or over-the-phone responses.
Responses by Thompson have been edited for length and clarity.
Q1: What do you think the biggest challenge will be to address while on the board?
I think a continuation of a problem is going to make sure that we operate within our budget constraints. We’re looking at getting out of receivership and having our last bill paid off in June of 2026, but it scares me. If you look at the multiple-year projection, it shows that we’re going to be deficient some money, which means that if we don’t make the proper cuts that we should make now in order to balance the budget, we’ll still be in a deficit mode in the future, which means that we might have to get the state to bail us out again. If we go back into receivership, then we become necessarily a lame duck board with decisions being made by the state.
But number two is getting the board to focus on the major issue, which is making sure that our students graduate with flexibility [and with options]. Another challenge that’s facing us is a lot of students saying that their social, emotional character has been affected by COVID-19. The pain is a mental pain, not necessarily a physical pain, but because it’s a mental pain, it affects how kids show up physically. We, as a board, have to focus on minimizing the effect of the pandemic isolation time the kids were facing.
Q2: Given the large financial debt OUSD has and the looming threat of school closures, how will you ensure that funding for essential resources remain for students? What ideas do you have that do not include closing down schools?
We’re looking at not just closing schools, we’re looking at all of the avenues that we can actually pursue in order to balance the budget so that we don’t have to close schools. Closing schools is just one option.
I think a number of people in the community think that the board wants to close schools, but the board doesn’t necessarily want to close schools. We want to do what’s necessary to make the district whole so that the district keeps functioning and we don’t have to take out a loan from the state. We want to make sure that we’re operable as a successful district, giving all of the opportunities to kids that they need, making sure that we address union issues so that we’re compliant when it comes to the OEA (Oakland Education Association), and making sure that we’re hearing the voices from the community in terms of what they feel they need at that time. We want to look at everything and see how we can best leverage whatever opportunity we have in order to make sure that we operate in the black and not in the reds.
Q3: Students have reported feeling as though there is not enough inclusivity amongst their peers, often feeling a divide with those of other race and ethnic backgrounds. What do you think is the best way to foster an environment where students are not feeling excluded because of their background and differences to peers?
What needs to happen is voices need to be given to each person, and you need to value whatever their contribution is. When you exclude kids and you don’t allow their voice to be heard, then you’re in essence saying, ‘I don’t value what you have to say.’
Sometimes you have to go out of your way just to make sure that certain groups are at the table. For instance, if a person has a problem with people of color, you need to make sure you have people of color at the table, and you need to encourage those individuals to voice their opinion. You have to make sure you provide a seat at the table, but then you have to lower their affective filter so that they can actually voice their opinion when they’re at the table.
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