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2013 COUNTERPOINTS COLUMNS Mr. Perata Shows His True Interests, Again He Takes Up The Raider Cause
Once More, This Time To Help Them Move Back Out Of Oakland Yes, A Government Shutdown Is Sometimes Justified—But Not Over This Issue Conservatives Are Not Fighting
For Fundamental Rights In Seeking To Stop The Affordable Care
Act Drawing "Community Of Interest" Boundaries For The Oakland City Council Districts With New District Lines Needed
By The End Of The Year, A Suggestion For A Different Way To Do
It Mr. Tagami Strikes Back At My Oakland Army Base Development Columns And Stories The Army Base Developer Argues
That Reporters Shouldn't Have An Opinion About The Issues They
Are Reporting About—Or Shouldn't Let Readers Know Those Opinions
In Opinion Pieces Separate From Their News Articles—Or Maybe
It's Just That The Developer Doesn't Like The Particular Opinons
I Hold About His Development Project Restorative Justice And Oakland Tagging Some Things Still Need To Be
Ironed Out In Oakland's Anti-Graffiti Ordinance How Hardball Is Played In Oakland To See How It's Played, Check
Out The City Oversight Of Phil Tagami's Development Of The Old
Oakland Army Base Property A Continuing Critique Of Occupy Oakland More Attempts At Understanding
The Volatile Movement That Captured—For A Time—The City's
Downtown Sector So Who Tore Up Oakland This Time? Occupy Oakland Or Not? It's
All Very Confusing Mr. Johnson's About-Face On Curing Oakland's Violence Simply Hiring Big-Name
Consultants Is Suddenly The Chronicle Columnist's Way To Go Calling (Again) For A Long-Term Look At The Causes Of Oakland's Violence Another Round Of Short-Term
Solutions Proposed Following The Shooting At First Friday The Time We Saved Oakland's Jewel From The Developers And Property Speculators The Forgotten Story Of The
Fight Over The Lake Merritt Channel That Followed The Passage Of
Measure DD A Quick Look Back At The
Movement That So Impacted Our East Bay City In So Short A Time Is It Being Overused Against
Oakland City Government In The Post-Occupy Oakland Era? In The Wake Of The First Friday Shooting City Response Should Take Into
Account The History Of Our Response To Festival And Crowd
Violence In Oakland's Graffiti Abatement, An Echo Of The (Failed) Sideshow Strategy The City's New Anti-Graffiti
Ordinance Fails To Ask "Why Are The Young People Tagging?" A Profile Of Mr. Bratton's Stop-And-Frisk A Controversial New Sheriff
Comes To Oakland With A Consultant Contract In Hand The Quick-Trigger "Solutions" To Oakland's Violence Problem Because The Issue Is So
Serious, More Serious Thought, Discussion, And Debate Is In
Order Will Murals Save Oakland From Graffiti? Local Aerosol Artists Think
Murals Are The Solution To Oakland's Exploding Graffiti Problem;
I'm Not So Sure Current
CounterPoints Columns SEND ME AN EMAIL (to safero@earthlink.net)
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YES, A GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN IS SOMETIMES JUSTIFIED—BUT NOT OVER THIS ISSUE
I’m not one of those who believes that we should always let the federal government keep running along, unimpeded. There are times when I think a shutdown of the federal government is warranted, or would have been justified. It just depends upon the issue involved. Had I been alive in those times, I certainly would have supported shutting down the federal government until African-American slavery was ended, and I would have done the over the the issue of a federal anti-lynching law in 1918, when African-Americans were being butchered across the South by the hundreds by anti-Black white terrorists. Passage of the 19th Amendment—the amendment that gave voting rights to American women—was another such issue that warranted a federal shutdown to ensure, although given the fact that African-Americans, both women and men, in the South weren’t included in that guarantee in 1920, I might not have felt so charitable about the issue had I been around back then. I certainly would have felt that it was worth temporarily bringing down the federal government in 1965 if that would have ensured the passage of the Voting Rights Act that year, and would have felt the same about doing so to end the war in Vietnam or the war in Iraq, had it been presented as a viable organizational option in any of those cases. We shut down as much as it was in our power to do. [More...]
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