Dear Annie,
I hope it is okay that I write to you today at some length. I do so because I continue to believe in your heart and your desire to be a public servant.
I further hope it is okay that I write as a Christian who has no intention of converting you or anyone else. Please translate this in whatever way you need to. The metaphors and imagery of my faith tradition are the only ways I know how to think about these things that are so hard to articulate in materialist terms.
Our conversation about affordable housing on November 2 has stayed with me, and I’ve been thinking about it off and on throughout these weeks. I felt your frustration around the lack of any policy solution that would really address the urgency, depth, and breadth of the problem.
I really understand that frustration. I was quiet during our meeting with Matt Prinz and his other associates because I agree that policy-as-usual is not going to resolve this crisis. There is simply nothing more to be said. Viewed from within a neoliberalist framework, the crisis is irresolvable, and the massive displacement we are now seeing is a kind of unavoidable “collateral damage.” Stuck within the dominant worldview of global capitalism, those of us with hearts for justice are struck mute.
In considerable distress, praying about this afterward, I was reminded of all the mute, paralyzed people who are healed in the gospels, and in particular of a story that appears in several of the gospels. Jesus comes down from a spiritually transformative moment on the mountain, and he finds that his disciples have hit a serious roadblock in their efforts to alleviate suffering among the oppressed and poverty-stricken masses in Jewish Palestine. When Jesus asks what is happening, a distraught father responds: “Teacher, I brought you my son; he has a spirit that makes him unable to speak; and whenever it seizes him, it dashes him down; and he foams and grinds his teeth and becomes rigid; and I asked your disciples to cast it out, but they could not do so.” The boy has become possessed by a spirit that means him harm: the passage goes on to say that this spirit has often cast the boy into fire and water, attempting to kill him. Furthermore, it renders him mute and rigid, unable to speak or move on his own behalf.
There is a spirit that has seized hold of our city, and it means harm to our city’s most vulnerable residents. It is casting them into harm’s way, and it is also rendering many of us almost unable to speak about it.
Maybe it sounds unsophisticated to speak in terms of “evil spirits,” but in an empiricist world, language fails us when we try to speak of the kind of evil that does not originate in particular human beings but does seize hold of us and use us. (Unlike many others, I do not believe you and our other city council members are evil. I do believe that you are being used to evil ends–namely profit for a very few and power that accrues primarily to those who already have it. The evil doesn’t reside in them, fully, either, though. That is what makes it so sinister and hard to address….)
What I am trying to say is that those leading this city are suffering from a spiritual crisis that renders it extremely difficult to act on your own and others behalf. Indebted for your positions to people of wealth, public officials are trapped within a particular mindset and are trying to find solutions within that mindset to the pain that it is causing. Most people of privilege and position in this country are in thrall to a worldview that is essentially demonic.
Let me try to explain. The worldview I’m talking about is made up of some seemingly “common sense” ideas that are actually lies. These include, for example, the notion that continual growth is essential; that money is always needed to solve problems; that outside money is needed to make Oakland flourish; that people with more money are smarter than people with less; that white people are smarter and more competent than non-white people and that men know more and are more competent than women (I know! Remember, I said these notions are lies, but they are deeply entrenched in our assumptions about the world, even when we are not conscious of them or think that we have rejected them. The nature of unconscious beliefs is that they are unconscious–in other words, we don’t know they are there, but they are policing our behavior, our ideas, our policy solutions, and the limits of our imaginations.)
At the heart of the Judeo-Christian tradition is the notion that salvation, newness, revitalization, creativity, and justice–all of the good things of God–come NOT from the centers of wealth and power, but from the margins. Over and over I have seen this to be true. It was true of Jesus (child of a displaced refugee family) and of David (shepherd boy turned liberatory king). It is true of the most transformative organizations in Oakland. They are led by disenfranchised people. People of privilege are blinded by their privilege and possessed by a deep and well-founded insecurity that comes from knowing deep down that their lifestyle relies upon the suffering of others. Without serious spiritual help, this makes us fearful, defensive, irrational, and unkind. We do not rightly know what we need, and for that reason, we desperately need to heed the perspective, wisdom, and creativity of those on the underside of history and to do so with the most profound humility possible. We need to seek a kind of wisdom that exists outside of our dominant worldview. That is why I write to you from my spiritual tradition. Jesus said the kind of spirit that possessed the boy in the story would come out “only through prayer”–only by connecting to a totally different kind of spiritual power that resides outside the centers of worldly power.
Over and over again, I see the Oakland city government doing the opposite. I see you catering to wealth and power and ignoring the voices and needs of the marginalized communities that have called this place home. You advocate for a luxury high rise instead of affordable housing. You advocate for more police to protect unjustly obtained wealth and property rather than for new community safety plans for those who have lived here a long time.
This cannot lead to more life. It can only lead to the destruction of God’s life and disconnection from God’s wisdom and power. It is absolutely the wrong direction. I am sorry; I cannot state this strongly enough.
In the words of John the Baptist, “The ax is already at the root.” This whole way of life is destined to fail, and all of us along with it, unless we turn around, and soon.
Practically, what does this look like? What am I asking you to do as our trusted public servant?
First and foremost, I am asking you to meet with and take with utmost seriousness the housing recommendations of Causa Justa :: Just Cause, East Bay Housing Organizations, and ACCE–all organizations led by the people most impacted by this housing crisis. I am asking you to redirect funding toward those recommendations, even it means cutting the bloated police budget. I am asking you to push forward the People’s Proposal for the East 12th Street Parcel and to oppose all efforts to salvage a luxury highrise on that site. The People’s Proposal represents exactly the kind of prioritizing of disenfranchised voices that I am urging, and it can serve as a model for how to design future development projects. This city has all the creativity it needs to solve its myriad problems within the residents who are already here, but it’s going to require you all to admit that you don’t have the answers and that you are seeking our help.
I am asking you to prioritize the needs of the poorest and most disenfranchised in our city, recognizing that they are our salvation.
Will this cost you some support from your more conventional and wealthier constituents? Yes, I am certain it will. It’s going to take incredible courage because you are bucking a very powerful, very violent system. (So long as we don’t resist it, we escape its violence, but when we start to resist….well, that’s how Jesus ended up on the cross. And we have plenty of crosses–plenty of instruments of terror in the hands of the powerful–here and now. What I am asking of you has a steep cost. Please know that I understand that.)
But Annie, I believe you have this in you. I have believed that from our first meeting way back when you worked for the mayor during Occupy Oakland. I see your heart. I see that you want something different than what you and your colleagues are creating, and I see how you struggle to stand up. I want you to know that I have your back, that I will support you in any way I can if you are willing to take on this challenge. I will meet with you anytime, even if all I can offer is spiritual support or a shoulder to cry on.
We need you. I believe you were created for just such a time as this. Shall we get busy?
Love and blessings,
Nichola Torbett
District 4
Love Warriors Unite 