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Oakland Post

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By Margaret Rossoff

Special to The Post

OPINION

It’s been two years since negotiations broke down between the City of Oakland and a developer who wants to build a coal terminal here, and the issue has reappeared, quietly, in the upcoming race for Oakland City attorney.

Two candidates are running for the position of Oakland City Attorney in November: current Assistant Chief City Attorney Ryan Richardson and retired judge Brenda Harbin-Forte.

Richardson has worked in the Office of the City Attorney since 2014 and is likely to continue current City Attorney Barbara Parker’s policies managing the department. He has committed not to accept campaign contributions from developers who want to store and handle coal at a proposed marine terminal in Oakland.

Retired Judge Harbin-Forte launched and has played a leading role in the campaign to recall Mayor Sheng Thao, which is also on the November ballot.  She has stepped back from the recall campaign to focus on her candidacy. The East Bay Times noted, “Harbin-Forte’s decision to lead the recall campaign against a potential future client is … troubling — and is likely to undermine her ability, if she were to win, to work effectively.”

Harbin-Forte has refused to rule out accepting campaign support from coal terminal interests or their agents. Coal terminal lobbyist Greg McConnell’s Independent Expenditure Committee “SOS Oakland” is backing her campaign.

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In the 2022 mayor’s race, parties hoping to build a coal terminal made $600,000 in contributions to another of McConnell’s Independent Expenditure Committees.

In a recent interview, Harbin-Forte said she is open to “listening to both sides” and will be “fair.” However, the City Attorney’s job is not to judge fairly between the City and its legal opponents – it is to represent the City against its opponents.

She thought that the 2022 settlement negotiations ended because the City “rejected a ‘no coal’ settlement.” This is lobbyist McConnell’s narrative, in contrast to the report by City Attorney Barbara Parker. Parker has explained that the City continued to negotiate in good faith for a settlement with no “loopholes” that could have allowed coal to ship through Oakland – until would-be coal developer Phil Tagami broke off negotiations.

One of Harbin-Forte’s main priorities, listed on her website, is “reducing reliance on outside law firms,” and instead use the lawyers working in the City Attorney’s office.

However, sometimes this office doesn’t have the extensive expertise available that outside firms can provide in major litigation. In the ongoing, high stakes coal litigation, the City has benefited from collaborating with experienced, specialized attorneys who could take on the nationally prominent firms representing the City’s opponents.

The City will continue to need this expertise as it pursues an appeal of the judge’s decision that restored the developer’s lease and defends against a billion-dollar lawsuit brought by the hedge fund operator who holds the sublease on the property.

Harbin-Forte’s unwillingness to refuse campaign contributions from coal terminal interests, her opposition to using outside resources when needed, as well as her uncritical repetition of coal lobbyist McConnell’s claim that the City sabotaged the settlement talks of 2022 all raise serious concerns about how well she would represent the best interests of Oakland and Oaklanders if she is elected City Attorney.

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By Emil Guillermo

After manning the fry station in Bucks County, what will “McDonald Trump” do next? The Palabok and Chicken Joy at the Philadelphia Jollibee for the Filipino vote?

Unlikely.

But there’s a reason for everything the candidates do now. For example, Trump’s recent reference to Arnold Palmer’s manhood. I’ll explain.

We are in full campaign stunt mode. Candidates, it seems, would do anything to grab what’s left of the still-undecided-yet-persuadable voters.

The candidates are resorting to what I call “fracking” for votes. It’s where candidates inject hot liquid rhetoric deep down into the electorate at high pressure to create fissures, openings, hoping to loosen things up to allow extraction–not for oil or gas–but for those hard-to-get voters.

So, Trump went fast food for some fast votes, but Harris topped him, saying she’d work to change the federal minimum wage from $7.25 so that service workers could afford a decent life. What’s Trump offering? Extra ketchup?

Last week, Trump was in Latrobe, the birthplace of the great golfer Arnold Palmer. At a campaign event, he elevated Palmer and the girth of his manhood into the 2024 campaign rhetoric.

It was crude and unpresidential. But Trump’s a convicted felon, who has been found liable of sexual assault and defamation in a civil court and has lied repeatedly on just about everything. After the Access Hollywood tape of 2016 where he crudely talked about grabbing women by their p—y, how would he top it in 2024? Trump used Palmer to “frack” for votes among undecided men, suburban women, Blacks, and Latinos.

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OAKLAND MUSEUM’S FILIPINO AMERICAN HISTORY TRIBUTE

I went to a unique celebration at the Oakland Museum last weekend.

John Calloway, jazz musician and San Francisco State music lecturer, presented his live multi-media experience on Buffalo Soldiers and the Philippine American War to a packed theater.

Calloway’s grandfather John W. Calloway was a Buffalo Soldier, the Army’s regiment of Black soldiers who served in the Philippines in the 1890s.  He also reported on the war for the Black press, notably the Richmond Planet.  While the mainstream press insisted on the colonization of the Philippines and its savage people, John W. Calloway’s compassionate writings showed how Filipinos were anything but savages.

It was a two-way street. Through the Buffalo Soldiers, Filipinos learned about American culture and the difference between white and Blacks. “The colored soldiers do not push us off the streets, spit on us, call us damn niggers, abuse us in all manner of ways, and connect race hatred with duty,” a Filipino interviewee told John W. Calloway.

He concluded, “The future of the Filipino I fear, is that of the Negro of the South.”

He said no one has any scruples regarding the rights of the Filipino, who is kicked. cuffed at will, drawn up and degraded before their eyes, cast into prison after prison, stripped and searched time and again, humiliated, brutalized.

It was one of the best Filipino American History Month celebrations I have ever attended. Enough facts and all the feels.

Get tickets to the show here: https://themarsh.org/monday-night-marsh-stream/

About the Author

Emil Guillermo is a journalist and commentator. See his micro-talk show on www.patreon.com/emilamok. He performs an excerpt from his Emil Amok Monologues, “Transdad,”  Nov. 4 and 18th at the Marsh, 1062 Valencia St,  San Francisco.

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