ARG! Supervisor Keith Carson Cuts Off Line Before Welfare (His Arena) Comes Up!
I am so angry right now, and I'm the type of person who might write forcefully, but who doesn't get angry in person. But now I'm pissed.
Tonight I went to the "Moving Toward Change and Crafting Solutions" Town Hall that was supposed to give people a chance to discuss the police problems in the East Bay (Oakland, Berkeley, Richmond, etc.) with our political representatives. The Town Hall was sponsored by State Senator Loni Hancock (married to Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates), Alameda County Supervisor Keith Carson, Oakland Mayor Jean Quan, and an array of other local political luminaries. I particularly went because I wanted to directly confront Supervisor Keith Carson, who is particularly in charge of Social Services (welfare). While the event was billed as a Town Hall, it was strictly limited to two hours: there was only so much of the public speaking that our political representatives could take at one sitting, and apparently they were going to insist on taking up part of the time themselves, even though we could always go to their web site or look at their literature to see their platforms.
At the meeting the line to speak was really long as expected: people in the Oakland area have long been traumatized by police issues and have needed this kind of venue to explain their experiences and offer suggestions. I really wanted to speak, so I toughed out that line. And I wasn't the only elderly/disabled person to stand in that line for over an hour without a chair, waiting patiently for our turn to speak.
As I neared the front Supervisor Carson kept intervening with advice to keep comments up, but he was the one actually using up the time with his interventions. At this point I began to grow suspicious. I've attended County Supervisor meetings on General Assistance reform. Did he recognize me? Did he know I was about to blow the lid off of welfare issues in front of this nice middle class audience?
As I got closer to the mike, and Supervisor Carson kept stalling, some kids in the back panicked and pushed their way to the front, crying out: "Let black kids speak!" Since they were black kids, and this issue affected them the most, I let them in front of me. But then I regretted it. At least one of them turned out to be from San Francisco, and they came to spout general propaganda instead of offer suggestions relevant to the local issues. Black kids, or not, by grabbing the megaphone, they may have prevented the hearing of an issue that affected a large swathe of the Oakland community -the black community - that normally doesn't get a voice at all. No one else spoke on Social Services issues that night.
When I reached the head of the line, Supervisor Carson cut off public speaking. He suggested the people he cut off might get a chance to talk after the politicians got to do their grandstanding, so I remained in line the full two hours - and there was an elderly woman right behind me who tried to hold on, too - though she finally had to sit down some. Of course the politicians used up the remaining time, and we did not get to speak.
Here is what I had to say if I had had my two minutes, and I believe it was worth the public's time. The crowd was mostly middle class, and I believe the world of Social Services would have been news to many of them.
When applying for welfare, large numbers of people are herded into a room. They do not talk directly to their caseworker to go over their applications. They are presented with rules and circumstances which will be impossible to comply with, such as 2 day turn-around time for documenting any work they do. Then they are told they are all being investigated by the police because the State is cracking down on fraud. The investigators are spying on them and interviewing their neighbors.
People are being put in this situation because it's convenient for social workers, who have 900 cases apiece to process. But this is a recipe for paranoia about the police. And this paranoia is being set up in a population where the crumbling social infrastructure has increased their negative contacts with the police: the police show up at their door to evict them, to check for drugs, to intervene in suicide attempts, to deal with criminal (survival) activity, etc.
When people have fallen back on Social Services, they have fallen almost as low as they can go. This is the point where they need to start building trust in their community again, not the point where paranoia about the police should be generated. As part of the reform of Social Services, Supervisor Keith Carson's office should be sending "secret shoppers" to make sure how Social Services represents itself in County Supervisor meeting is actually want happens in their place of public operations at 2000 San Pablo.
Also, I wanted to accuse every single politician who was up on the dais of not responding to poor constituents who could only interact by email (because they didn't have a cellphone). I had tried to appeal to at least half of them about my welfare-to-work problem (see my sig) with zero response. I believe my MoveOn.org petition went to ALL of them. They all sat on the dais telling the audience how their office doors were open and how they were ready to help anybody and everybody with their problems. Well that has historically been a lie, and I wanted to publicly point that out. But I couldn't, because Keith Carson craftily cut off the public comment at my place in line. His office must have ignored a dozen emails from me - including ones that I started to copy to State senators, Federal Representatives and Senators, and eventually even the President. Sure the office door is always open, but no one is ever home. (ps. I know Keith Carson's office *got* my emails because the original one received a curt reception acknowledgement).
The above is the complete explanation of what I had to say: I would have had to condense my points into under 2 minutes. Possibly under 1 minute since people toward the back of the line got less time.
At the end of the meeting I went to the incoming Mayor Libby Schaaf, who offered to speak to people to try to tell her that Supervisor Keith Carson had cut the line right before I could speak on welfare - the topic that concerns his office/performance. Even if she wasn't the one to complain to, I just wanted to know where to complain. It was really upsetting not getting a chance to speak publicly on welfare issues: this world is so little known to people, and it seems very few people do speak up about it - at least in a specific, descriptive way. Well for once someone was on the spot, who could say something about it in front of a dozen elected officials and a largely middle class audience who was struggling to figure out why all these police confrontations were happening. And I was denied that chance - probably because Supervisor Carson had seen me at those Social Services reform meetings.
Unfortunately all the politicians there were in "shaking hands and kissing babies" mode, and I couldn't even get through their superficiality enough to find out who I could complain to.
I also tried to confront Supervisor Carson himself. I will document here that he denied seeing me previously at the Social Services meetings, but I don't believe him because I tried hard to meet his eye at them, too. When I brought up all the ignored emails, he had his assistant take down my information again to follow up. But where was he 3 months ago when I was kicked off Medi-Cal, and I found out the hard way that legally reporting work to earn money for basic necessities sabotages a rent check that goes to your landlord? Would have been nice to have someone "following up" then.
So now I'm back home, extremely bitter and cynical about the political process, and wishing my medical situation would at least allow me to drink. When I think how close I came to being able to tell all those politicians, to their faces, that people on welfare were being put in impossible circumstances and directly threatened with police investigation...I think it would have enlightened them a lot!!! And there was absolutely nowhere to complain about it.
Ps. As a minor addendum/annoyance: that same girl from San Francisco that cut in line kept trying to get the people who were trying to remain standing in line (to show they still wanted to speak) to "sit down" because she couldn't see. She could have moved. But even though she had gotten her chance to speak (by cutting in line), she was prepared to make a black thing of it because the white people in line wouldn't sit down on her command. By the way, there were still black people in line, too. Perhaps they also had something important to say that ended up being cut off by her all her "demands".
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I'll sign up, but as a super-introvert I'm not going to be group-rushing County Supervisors and City Council Members any time soon. 