OAKLAND, CA — “We won’t be silenced!” These were the opening – and closing – words of an important press conference on the steps of the Oakland, California City Hall on Monday, February 6th. Called by Oakland City Councilmember Carroll Fife, the press conference featured women of color leaders from throughout the East Bay, including State Senator Aisha Wahab, Assemblymembers Liz Ortega and Mia Bonta, Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao, Oakland City Councilmembers Carroll Fife, Nikki Fortunato Bas, Rebecca Kaplan, and organizer/radio host Cat Brooks.
Community organizations, including OPA, C4C, Wellstone, Moms4Housing, ACCE, All of Us or None, APEN, BOP, OEA, EBAYC, APTP, SF Foundation, and Wood St. Commons attended in support, revealing the broad base these leaders represent.
The press conference revealed that Black women and women of color in leadership positions, especially those who challenge existing centers of wealth and power in support of the needs of people living under growing stress, poverty and houselessness, receive far more threats and harassment than other public figures.
And, while these abusive messages — up to and including violent attack, death, and rape – are usually openly racist and misogynistic, it’s also clear that a key goal of such attacks is to silence voices who threaten the wealth and power of billionaires, and the corporations that make them billionaires, to own and control our lives and communities.
Carrol Fife
In fact, when asked if these attacks follow any pattern, Oakland City Councilmember Carroll Fife responded, “Oh yes, it definitely goes in waves – whenever our police department’s budget and staffing issues hit the national news, my voicemail is flooded with death threats. Whenever there’s conversation in City Hall about the Howard Terminal development (Oakland A’s billionaire owners’ proposed new stadium and massive luxury retail and housing project), whenever those conversations happen, the harassment towards me goes way up.”
Two things that are true about this situation: One is that if you are a perpetrator of these attacks you are doing the dirty work for the very same elites who make and sell the opioids and heroin that are killing your brother, your sister, your children. The very same elites who pay so little that an electrician from Alabama has to have his family “temporarily” living in an RV in California to make a living wage. The very same elites who keep your mother or grandfather from getting medical care, and whose pollution and chemicals probably gave them the cancer, Black Lung, or workplace injuries in the first place. The very same billionaires whose military-equipped police forces kill your unarmed son, niece or grandkid to keep the lid on an increasingly stressed, impoverished, and rebellious population. You might as well be building your own coffin.
The other truth is that we cannot leave these leaders out there alone.
The liberation struggle has always been a multiracial effort in the United States, and this is an historic moment when we have the opportunity, and the necessity to stamp out white supremacy once and for all time.
When they say, “We will not be silenced. . . . we will continue to speak out, and we will continue to do this transformational work,” there need to be many more people, of all colors, actively standing with these courageous women leaders – our leaders, who speak with our voice – and saying “if you want to get to them, you have to go through us.”
