They Were Going To Set The Wire In Oakland, But It Was Too Dangerous

Watching The Wire, I don’t think think “wow, Baltimore is super awful” but instead, “wow, that’s a lot like Oakland.” We all remember in Season One when Clay Davis’ driver is caught driving away from the Towers with $30,000 in cash, and how Davis intervenes with Burrell to make Daniels’ investigation into Barksdale and Davis go away. Well, basically the exact same thing just went down in Oakland.

Recently, a wave of homicides and restaurant robberies have struck Oakland. In response, the police arrested 56 members of the infamous Acorn gang who were connected to the crime wave. One of the gangbangers caught up in the police sweep was 27 year old William Lovan, the “nephew” of City Administrator’s Deborah Edgerly. Edgerly intervened, ordering the cops on the scene to tell her why the car was being towed and then, according to San Francisco Chronicle reporter Chip Johnson, “she vowed to contact Oakland Assistant Police Chief Howard Jordan and Tucker when the officers refused to tell her, police say. She then promised an internal affairs investigation into the whole matter.” She wasn’t very effective at bailing out her nephew, Lovan has now been charged with murder and armed robbery, while Edgerly has been forced to resign.

But it gets worse, not only was Lovan a gangbanger receiving protecting from a high ranking city official, he was also a repairman for the parking division, and was one of “several people” in the Edgerly family who was employed by the city. And, shockingly, these relations got special treatment when applying for city jobs:

Edgerly has requested - and received - concessions in the past from the Police Department, most notably a change in the city’s physical training requirements to help her daughter’s efforts to become a police officer.

Erin Breckenridge, her daughter, who still works as a civilian employee in the department, was provided with an unprecedented four opportunities to pass the academy training’s physical skills test.

Of course, Edgerly is likely to replaced by another corrupt hack, or an ineffective boob in the mold of Dellums, but still, it’s nice to see someone in Oakland facing accountability. It would nice if this happened a bit more.

Afghan Fine Dining…No, Really

Garance has some fun with Gourmet’s spread on dining in Kabul. Turns out that finding high quality cuisine in Kabul can be difficult:

the subhed to “Kabul Nights” is “Most of the restaurants in Afghanistan’s capital, where there are few named streets and no addresses, are tough to find. One clue: Look for the guards.” I love when the upscale glossies do spreads on such places.

Afghan food in the United States, however, is both delicious and can be rather upscale. Hamid Karzai’s brother is a restaurateur, with three restaurants named Helmand with locations in Baltimore, San Francisco and Cambridge. I went to the one in Cambridge about five years ago, and from what I can remember, it was fantastic. Afghan food is, not surprisingly, something of a mix between Indian/Pakistani food and Middle Eastern/Iranian food. So lots of rice, yogurts and lamb. Also, Fremont, California — a city about 40 miles southeast of San Francisco — has a very large Afghan community and has many smaller and lower scale Afghan restaurants which are also quite good.

Lenny Bruce Is Not Afraid

Another earthquake shook the lovely East Bay up tonight. More info here.  It was a 3.2, so just a few seconds of mild shaking, not nearly as exciting as our 4.2 trembler a few weeks ago.

Bringing in the Cavalry

Taking political advantage of the Chauncey Bailey situation, Governor Schwarzenegger has ordered Highway Patrol units to Oakland to provide back-up and support for the Oakland Police:

 Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Tuesday responded to a recent spike in Oakland homicides by committing more California Highway Patrol officers to patrol the city, where 79 people have been killed this year.

…

It’s still unclear how many additional CHP officers will be sent to Oakland under the governor’s plan. But their mission will be to work with local law enforcement to bolster officers’ presence on the street and support efforts to combat gang violence, the governor and CHP said.

“What this will do is put more eyes and ears on the streets to help reduce the crime rate in Oakland,” said Trent Cross, CHP spokesman in Oakland. “We’re going to conduct proactive enforcement, be out, be visible, take an aggressive approach to enforcing the law.”

It should be noted that although Oakland murder total is alarmingly high, 79 just 8 months into the year, if that total were 78 (minus Bailey) this deployment wouldn’t happen.  And while a more beefed up police force could bring some near term benefit, this is just more Dellums politicking than anything else.

There are however, some potential s problems. The CHP has no experience in Oakland, they are state cops who are going to be shipped in.  So while increased patrols could be valuable, it would be better if they could get Oakland cops to do those patrols and not “foreign” interlopers.  The bigger problem is that the Oakland police is desperately understaffed and is having trouble recruiting, so it’s just a bad situation no matter how you look at it.

Hitchens on Your Black Muslim Bakery and Bailey

Christopher Hitchens, writes on the entire Chauncey Bailey situation, and seems to indulge in some serious over interpreting:

Now, I’m just asking, but: rape, polygamy, intimidation, torture, murder, all these actions emanating from one address and some of them performed in the name of a fanatical ideology. What does it take before the police decide to raid the premises? Should we wait until unveiled women are attacked on the street or until honor killings or female circumcision take hold? (There is no official connection between YBMB and Louis Farrakhan’s racist and cultish Nation of Islam, though it seems that Yusuf Bey Sr. did convert to some form of Islam under that sinister organization’s auspices.)

OK Hitchens, we know you get into a tizzy whenever anyone says the word “Muslim”, but let’s be serious here.  Female circumcision, honor killings?  The thugs at YBMB weren’t too kind to various wives and girlfriends, but that’s because they’re thuggish assholes, not because of their wacky form of Islam.  The murder and extortion aren’t being performed in the name of any ideology, unless it’s the ideology of organized crime.

Hitchens seems rather ignorant of what the Nation of Islam and YBMB actually are - black self help organizations that have a vaguely spiritual superstructure.  There’s no connection to any form of Islam practiced anywhere else and little continuity with traditional Muslim practice.  This wouldn’t be a Hitchens column if it didn’t have some ridiculous flourish at the end:

This official apathy—amounting to collusion—is undergirded by a culture that cringingly insists on “respect” for any organization, however depraved, that can masquerade as “faith-based.” If I had stood outside that hideous bakery with a sign saying “Black Muslims Are Racists and Fanatics,” I think the cops would have turned up in a flat second and taken me into custody. I might well have been charged with a hate crime. As I have written before and am sure I will write again: This has to stop, and it has to stop right now, before sharia baking comes to a place near you.

This has nothing to do with the “Black Muslims” being “faith based.”   Black Islam is Oakland is not centered around adherence to any doctrine, it’s a black community empowerment organization and structure.  The Bey fiefdom turned into little more than petty organized crime, but it was never just a religious organization, and it’s religious orientation was always secondary.  To the extent that there was a religious doctrine - it was a mixture of conspiracy theories, Scientology quality history and a classic American message of self help and responsibility.  The shameful apathy and collusion from the Oakland political and media establishments was due to Yusuf Bey representing a large, institutionalized black constituency - and Oakland politics basically revolves around black interests and concerns.

While this type of looking the other way isn’t any less shameful if it’s on the account of race, the prescencse of Your Black Muslim Bakery in Oakland is not the vanguard of sharia law or Islamism in the United States. The establishment acquiescence to their criminality is just another example of city politicians ignoring ethnic based organized crime/community organization - no different from Irish gangs in Boston, or Italians in New York and New Jersey.  This type of crap has been going on for more than 100 years in urban politics, which Hitchens, a Brit blinded by his hostility towards religion and Islam, seems incapable of acknowledging. Instead, he reverts to tired tropes more fitting for the East End than East Oakland.

More Bailey and Your Black Muslim Bakery

When all of this shakes out and thing settle down a bit more, I’ll write more extensively on my thoughts on the entire Yusuf Bey/Black Muslim phenomenon, but for now, I’ll bring you the latest news. Leslie Fulbright reports for the SF Chronicle.

The late Yusuf Bey’s son-in-law said Monday that he was the main news source for a series Chauncey Bailey was writing about Your Black Muslim Bakery and that he was stunned to learn the journalist may have been killed over it.

Saleem Bey, 43, said that he and Bailey were longtime acquaintances and that the two had decided a few weeks ago to collaborate for an exposé on the bakery’s decline since its founder, Yusuf Bey, died and his son Yusuf Bey IV took over.

More proof of the abject thugishness of this organization - they killed a journalist who had written a story that wasn’t being run exposing their illegal bankruptcy plan. The Bakery was a perfect combination of liberal guilt, political fecklessness and classic mau mauing.  Hopefully this will serve as a wake up call that politicians, the media and people in general can’t turn a blind eye to any organization that’s a mixture of community revitalization, black entrepreneurship, organized crime, wacko religious cultism, antisemitism, covering up child rape and just general thugishness.

The thing is, everyone knew these people were abject thugs, and yet Oakland’s political and media establishment continued to ignore the evidence of their criminality and instead recognize child rapist Yusuf Bey as some sort of revered community figure.  It’s distressing when nearly every conservative and neoliberal critique of post civil rights liberalism and black organization comes true in one horrible instance.  This should be a wake up call to everyone who hadn’t gotten on the neoliberal/neoconservative critique of the welfare state bandwagon in the early 70s or early 90s, and all but the most politically deformed and reactionary should come around now.

Thugs and Terrorists

As you’ve expected, the right wing media has jumped all over the Chauncey Bailey/Your Black Muslim Bakery Story. Of course, the clowns over at Jihad Watch are getting their knickers in a bunch because the people who allegedly shot Bailey were Muslims. Nevermind that black Muslims and Arab muslims don’t have a ton to do with each-other and that American black Muslims have little to no connections with Jihadists. Of course, if we get over excited and say that every two bit Black Muslim thug is a terrorist, then maybe some Black Muslims will be a bit more tempted to join up with the Jihadists. That would be bad, very very bad.

Malkin joins in the collective destruction of nuance.

UPDATE: The Oakland Tribune is reporting that a 19 year old Bakery employee confessed to killing Bailey.

Chauncey Bailey and Your Black Muslim Bakery

Now for some Bay Area blogging! The story that’s really taken a hold of us (besides Barry Bonds) is the murder of local journalist Chauncey Bailey. Bailey was something of an advocate for Oakland’s Black community, editing the Oakland Post, a weekly aimed towards blacks in Oakland.

The police made a series of arrests today of people associated with the “Your Black Muslim Bakery” - Bailey was investigating the bakery when he was killed. It’s thought that by many journalists and community members that the bakery is something of an organized crime ring/gang is run out of the bakery that extorts local businesses, kills people and threatens local journalists who investigate them. The son of noted Oakland community figure and founder of the bakery Yusuf Bey, Yusuf Bey IV, was arrested in the raid. Interestingly enough, a string of liquor store assaults and vandalisms in Oakland last year were connected to Bey IV - who apparently was going around in his Nation of Islam issued suit and bow tie getting his Carrie Nation on, insisting that liquor stores stop stop selling booze to the local black community.

Yusuf Bey himself was something of an interesting figure. Like so many black community leaders (especially connected to the Nation of Islam) who arose in the post civil rights era, he was a mixed bag. He certainly was a pillar of the Black Muslim community in Oakland, promoting black empowerment, entrepreneurship and community organization. He was also (allegedly) a serial sexual abuser and, like so many Nation of Islam leaders, had his anti-Semtic moments. Not to mention accusations of fraud, corruption and violence against other business and even the city government and police. He was the near archetype of those that drove so many liberal intellectuals (especially Jews) into the open arms of neo-conservatism in the early 70s and 80s.

Of course, local political figures were up to the eyeballs in associating with Bey and his Bakery, even after he died and his thug son took over. Congresswoman Barbara Lee (D) and former Congressman, now Mayor Dellums, had issued statements of support when Bey IV filed for bankruptcy.

In his filing, Bey also wrote that he met with Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums and Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Oakland, both of whom promised to support him in maintaining the bakery. Dellums “has even pointed out his official support of me continuing in my father’s successful pattern of running the business,” Bey wrote. Dellums’ office said the mayor had no comment. Lee spokesman Nathan Britton said Friday, “Congresswoman Barbara Lee is on record supporting the bakery as a community institution.”

I don’t have much to add to the story besides that my association with the Bakery, besides occasionally driving by it, is their stands in the San Francisco and Oakland airports, which always seemed to provide some decent coffee and pastries at a reasonable price without a side of murder and extortion.

Chris Thompson, a reporter for the alt-weekly East Bay Express, had a two part expose of Bey in 2003, well worth the read if you have any interest in the particularly dysfunctional aspects of Oakland politics.

(Photo: Bailey’s Oakland Tribune Staff Picture - AP)

Remembering Bill Walsh

Bill Walsh, the legendary 49ers coach from 1978-1989, died today of leukemia. Here’s the LA Times obit that covers all the basics. For a sports fan or any remotely sports conscious person who lived in the Bay Area between 1984 to around 1995, it’s hard to overstate how revered Bill Walsh is. He was a Bay Area figure to the core - starting his coaching career at Fremont Union High before he went on to Cal and Stanford. He then bounced around Cincinatti and LA before landing in San Francisco in 1979 - in which the 49ers would go 2-14. But, he drafted Joe Montana and the best 15 years in Bay Area football history began.

Bill Walsh really was the perfect coach for the 49ers then, not only did he invent a whole new offense and have the best quarterback-wide receiver combo ever (Jerry Rice and Montana) but he also was a bit different from other coaches. He struck everyone as being more refined, not the blustery type that is associated with “great” coaches from the midwest.

The Bay Area has always been a bit insecure about the authenticity of our football - with the Raiders shuttling in and out of LA and in frequent conflict with the city of Oakland - and the 49ers having a reputation for being the “wine and cheese” team. Not to mention that the great NFL cities are supposed to be from the industrial heartland and have hearty, midwestern fans that brave the snow and “frozen tundra” from Green Bay to Pittsburgh and Chicago. There’s never been snow at a 49ers game, and never will be. The 49ers style of play under Walsh was more refined - the West Coast Offense depends on very precise route running and timing between receiver and quarterback. This was a departure from the major offense approach in the NFL - run behind a big, sturdy offensive line and use that run to set up passes on third down.

The 49ers switched that up by using short, quick slants that had the receivers catching the ball only 5 or 7 yards from the line of scrimmage, but catching the ball in stride so they could turn upfield for big gains. Additionally, tight ends and running backs, who were traditionally blocking on pass plays, had to be able to catch the ball. Walsh played thinking-man’s football, with a temperament to match his city and fans.

Though I never actually watched a football game coached by Bill Walsh, I was aware of how the 94 49ers team, coached by former assistant George Seifert with Steve Young as quarterback, was perhaps the most talented football team in history. They ran Bill Walsh’s offense, and to great success, destroying the Chargers in the Super Bowl. Moreover, in my family and among sports fans who did see the 49ers during their amazing 15 year, 5 championship run, Bill Walsh is spoken off in reverential terms.

The 49ers have been in a post Rice and Young doldrum for a while now, just recovering from the NFLs sanctions for their exorbitant free agent spending in the mid to late 90s.  With a surprisingly competitive season last year and an energetic  young coach in Mike Nolan, memories of Walsh’s tenure are floating back to the Bay.

EARTHQUAKE!

Nothing too exciting, but a 4.2 magnitude quake woke up everyone in the house.  Epicenter was only three miles away from where I live.  We don’t have awful weather during the summer, so I guess this is how we even it out.  Here’s all the USGS info.