Looper’s vision of new employment opportunities and job training for Tenderloin residents was central to his crime-prevention strategy, and the Sizzler fulfilled both objectives. Unfortunately, Looper and the rest of us learned that even self-identified progressive politicians have come to address crime solely in punitive terms. The Sizzler closed down around the same time the neighborhood police station opened—a sad but fitting parallel that perfectly captures how even the best-intentioned progressive-led anti-crime campaigns inevitably fall prey to Officials’ preference for law-and-order solutions.
Where did we go wrong? The answer lies in our failure to follow the fundamental tenet of tactical activism: we responded to the crime problem without ensuring that crime reduction remained part of a larger campaign for neighborhood revitalization. By putting an economic development and social action agenda under the rubric of crime prevention without making specific demands for these positive goals, we allowed law-and-order-minded residents, law-enforcement personnel, and politicians with repressive agendas to narrow our demands to “more police, more arrests.” Such an agenda is insufficient for a community desperately needing government-aided and private economic revitalization.
Simply put, the Tenderloin’s grassroots anti-crime campaign failed to frame the crime problem in a way that would lead to concrete improvements in the lives of residents. Although the number of arrests and police officers both rose in the Tenderloin, there was no focused advocacy to force government to address the preconditions causing crime. When I speak of preconditions, I am not referring simply to pervasive inner-city problems such as poverty, unemployment, and racial discrimination, which progressives frequently stress as the underlying causes of crime. I mean preconditions that realistically could have been addressed to increase neighborhood safety. For example, the city could have installed more street and sidewalk lighting, passed laws mandating outside lights on all buildings, and reduced vacant storefronts by providing tax breaks or subsidies, or both, to encourage new businesses to move to the Tenderloin.
We could have eliminated bus shelters and telephone booths used by drug dealers, and taken civil legal action against property owners who allowed nuisance activities in and around their premises. Increased funding to expand neighborhood cultural facilities would have increased the presence of the legitimate nighttime activities necessary to crowd out problem behavior. We also could have figured out ways for property owners to contribute more money to clean streets and sidewalks, making the neighborhood more pedestrian friendly.
Sadly, most if not all of these changes could have been achieved during the late 1980s. Our failure to achieve them resulted from tactical and strategic errors, not political weakness. Neighborhood plans included many of these ideas, yet residents rarely transcended the push for more police.
Signs of Progress
Tenderloin activists learned from the strategic errors of the 1980s, and in the past decade did initiate many of the non-law-and-order strategies noted above to reduce neighborhood crime. Crime remains unacceptably high, but there is recognition that reducing this problem must be part of a broader action plan for the neighborhood.
The Tenderloin’s learning curve is part of a broader trend. Democratic Party politicians are finally recognizing that they cannot deliver for their constituents while diverting massive numbers of dollars toward imprisoning nonviolent drug users and small-time sellers. In 2004 Oakland mayor Jerry Brown appeared in television ads opposing a November ballot measure to modify the state’s costly three-strikes law. This law was designed to stop violent predators from leaving prison after their third offense, but the “third strike” also included nonviolent property crimes such as stealing a loaf of bread. Brown’s opposition helped narrowly defeat the measure.
But after Brown returned to the governor’s office in 2011, he took aim at budget-busting prison costs. He transferred nonviolent offenders from state prison to county jails, and backed Prop 36, a revision to three strikes on the November 2012 ballot. The measure passed by nearly 70 percent of the vote, indicating that voters are revisiting costly criminal justice strategies they once handily approved. Prop 36’s passage, the legalization of marijuana by Colorado voters in the same election (Amendment 64), and high-profile efforts in New York City to end police “stop and frisk” procedures used on 700,000 primarily African American and Latino men each year show that activists can reshape the debate on crime through proactive strategies. And when you see 47 percent of California voters vote to end the death penalty in the same November 2012 election—after support for such a policy was long considered politically essential for statewide candidates—using proactive strategies to roll back decades of crime-dominated politics is an opportunity to be seized.
2
Elected Officials
Inspiring Fear and Loathing
Ernesto Cortes, Jr., organizer of the Industrial Areas Foundation network in Texas and the San Antonio–based Communities Organized for Public Service (COPS), has plainly described activists’ necessary relationship to elected Officials: “It’s unfortunate that fear is the only way to get some politicians to respect your power. They refuse to give you respect. They don’t recognize your dignity. So we have to act in ways to get their attention. In some areas, what we have going is the amount of fear we can generate. We got where we are because people fear and loathe us.”1
This assessment by one of the United States’ premier community activists and tacticians is harsh but accurate. Today’s activists all too often work tirelessly to elect “progressive” politicians who then require strong prodding before trying to implement their progressive campaign goals. Without such pressure, self-identified progressive elected Officials frequently prefer to “broaden their base” rather than deliver for those responsible for their election.
The backgrounds typical of “progressive” officeholders explain much of the problem. Their career path no longer begins with years of grassroots activism; instead, one becomes an aide to a legislator, a job that provides access to funders and puts the aspirant in the position to be tapped for electoral openings. Today’s “progressive” Official rarely achieves power through a grassroots or democratic nominating process, and views politics as a career vehicle rather than a means for redressing social and economic injustice. He or she is not ideologically driven, takes pride in “pragmatic” problem solving, values personal loyalty over ideological consistency, and views social change activists as threatening because they place their constituency’s interests ahead of the official’s political needs.
When candidates from a neighborhood or other grassroots base do get elected, they often soon become like other politicians. Their drive for reelection or to attain higher office leads them to make new or stronger connections with a whole range of financial interests. After all, even grassroots field campaigns cost money, and progressive candidates require significant funding if they are to prevail in all but the smallest local races. The ever-growing power of money in politics has led most politicians to put their funders’ interests above those of their volunteer base. Raising money nationally through small online donations has helped restore some of the connection between politicians and their funders, but statewide or national races still require large donors. Even before Citizens United opened the floodgates to corporate donations, the best-intentioned, most progressive candidates still had to seek out potential funders who were more conservative than the candidate’s core supporters.
Once in office, grassroots politicians are contacted by representatives of financial interests who opposed their candidacy. These representatives soon ingratiate themselves by offering to help retire the inevitable campaign debt. Many local elected Officials receive low salaries, making them receptive to offers of the luxurious fund-raising events that are a regular part of political business. Like most other people, elected officials are awed by power and wealth. They don’t go home and report, “I met with some poor people from the Tenderloin, and it was exciting”; rather, they boast, “I met with the president of Wells Fargo!” The trappings of power and the social component of their new status easily excite them. The election-night celebration is often the last opportunity for meaningful personal contact between the candidate and the volunteers who sacrificed their personal lives to walk precincts, staff phone