A plan to reduce murders in Oakland
by one-half in 10 years
The City of Oakland has experienced a 20 year average of 111.8 homicides per year. The City of Oakland suffers a 9/11’s worth of homicides every 2 years and 7 months.
It is long past due for the Mayor of Oakland to step forward and show true leadership, vision and compassion in order to make significant reductions in murder and violence within our City. To this end, I am offering the Mayor and our community the following ideas and strategies that will enable us to significantly reduce the rate of murder and violence in the City of Oakland.
First, set a collective goal to reduce homicides in Oakland by one-half in 10 years, and by ninety percent in 20 years. Visualizing success is one of the keys to realizing it.
- Invite Spiritual Deputies into the Mayor’s counseling circle; these would be community leaders and visionaries who would offer counsel to the Mayor. Seemingly intractable human problems like violence and homicide require an appeal to God’s Grace, and for the wise understanding among the leaders to employ policies that actually work at reducing violence at its source.
- Youth Centers opened in Oakland with division of space into at least three areas, for Loudness, Learning and Lounging. Every center would always have adult “social directors” on duty to instruct, encourage and guide the youth. (Please also see my proposal for the 24 Hour Youth Multiplexes.)
- Place billboards around the city with catchy harm-reduction slogans, like: “De-escalation, discussion and dispute resolution”, as well as information about reducing violence, who to call, where to go, etc.
- The Mayor can truly show an example of leadership by publicly fasting and praying after each murder in Oakland. Others in the city would be encouraged to join the Mayor in fasting and praying when murders occur, and this would bring a new consciousness and focus to the issue.
- The Mayor and members of the community could visit the families of the murdered and the murderers, and offer their prayers, presence and help.
- A section of the police force should be allowed to employ non-violent means of policing. Instead of carrying and using lethal weapons, this nonviolent police squad would employ conflict resolution, skilled intervention, prayer, de-escalation and other nonviolent and harm-reduced methods. This would set another example of non-violence for the citizens.
- Nonviolence should be taught in all public schools in Oakland. The Mayor should speak to groups at the public schools and show video tapes or introduce live speakers who can talk first hand about the effects that murders in Oakland have had on their lives, as well as teach and demonstrate to the youth the various non-violent methods to address the problems.
- Employment, detox and counseling services should be guaranteed to each person released from jail or prison in Oakland. This would help reduce crimes committed by people who are getting out of jail.
- One day a month should be devoted by each citizen of the city to prayer, fasting, contemplation and social service citywide in Oakland.
- Neighborhood volunteers would take their turn as “social directors”, easily identified by distinctive clothing or designation, who wander the neighborhoods on foot or bike, helping to resolve disputes when called, and connecting people in need with the appropriate referrals and resources. Social directors would work closely with police to pre-emptively reduce violence.
- Artists and Musicians in Oakland should be enlisted to get the message about non-violence, harm reduction and cooperative community out to Oakland residents through all available media channels.
- A survey of the city should be made of all streets that don’t have trees, and a tree planting campaign put in place to make sure there are trees on every street.
- The Mayor should initiate and support a gun buyback program in Oakland so that the number of handguns could be reduced in the city.
- The Mayor should help to create an Oakland Memorial for all those in Oakland who have been murdered. In addition, the gun buyback program could supply materials for a gun sculpture, that would take all donated and purchased firearms and weld them into an artistic sculpture of destroyed guns. Once a year a city holiday would commemorate the dead and redouble our collective commitment to meeting our violence and homicide reduction goals.
- The Mayor should support legalization of all drugs within the City of Oakland. A large proportion of the violence taking place in Oakland is driven by the prohibition against drugs. Drugs on the black market have highly inflated prices, which attracts people into the business of selling them. With no legal means of dispute resolution, illicit drug sellers resort to street violence to resolve territorial disputes or bad business deals. By removing the black market for drugs, we could eliminate most of the violence. The City of Oakland must take local responsibility for the taxing and regulation of the sale of marijuana, ampthetamine, heroin, cocaine and psychedelics, etc. for the sake of the health and well being of the residents of the City.
- Education in non-violence should be made available to every child in Oakland, on or before the 6th grade, the 9th grade and the 12th grade.
- Arts and music programs should be availabe to every youth during every year of their public education.
- The Mayor should require that all programs, policies and initiatives have a certain amount of budget allotted for the scientific study of the consequences and outcome of the programs over time. Without this kind of “objective” and consistent feedback, we have no way of knowing if we are throwing good money after bad. We must always directly monitor the results of our policies, and provide the resources necessary to do so.
Through these measures Oakland will stand as a beacon of intelligent and compassionate leadership for the whole world to follow.
by one-half in 10 years
The City of Oakland has experienced a 20 year average of 111.8 homicides per year. The City of Oakland suffers a 9/11’s worth of homicides every 2 years and 7 months.
It is long past due for the Mayor of Oakland to step forward and show true leadership, vision and compassion in order to make significant reductions in murder and violence within our City. To this end, I am offering the Mayor and our community the following ideas and strategies that will enable us to significantly reduce the rate of murder and violence in the City of Oakland.
First, set a collective goal to reduce homicides in Oakland by one-half in 10 years, and by ninety percent in 20 years. Visualizing success is one of the keys to realizing it.
- Invite Spiritual Deputies into the Mayor’s counseling circle; these would be community leaders and visionaries who would offer counsel to the Mayor. Seemingly intractable human problems like violence and homicide require an appeal to God’s Grace, and for the wise understanding among the leaders to employ policies that actually work at reducing violence at its source.
- Youth Centers opened in Oakland with division of space into at least three areas, for Loudness, Learning and Lounging. Every center would always have adult “social directors” on duty to instruct, encourage and guide the youth. (Please also see my proposal for the 24 Hour Youth Multiplexes.)
- Place billboards around the city with catchy harm-reduction slogans, like: “De-escalation, discussion and dispute resolution”, as well as information about reducing violence, who to call, where to go, etc.
- The Mayor can truly show an example of leadership by publicly fasting and praying after each murder in Oakland. Others in the city would be encouraged to join the Mayor in fasting and praying when murders occur, and this would bring a new consciousness and focus to the issue.
- The Mayor and members of the community could visit the families of the murdered and the murderers, and offer their prayers, presence and help.
- A section of the police force should be allowed to employ non-violent means of policing. Instead of carrying and using lethal weapons, this nonviolent police squad would employ conflict resolution, skilled intervention, prayer, de-escalation and other nonviolent and harm-reduced methods. This would set another example of non-violence for the citizens.
- Nonviolence should be taught in all public schools in Oakland. The Mayor should speak to groups at the public schools and show video tapes or introduce live speakers who can talk first hand about the effects that murders in Oakland have had on their lives, as well as teach and demonstrate to the youth the various non-violent methods to address the problems.
- Employment, detox and counseling services should be guaranteed to each person released from jail or prison in Oakland. This would help reduce crimes committed by people who are getting out of jail.
- One day a month should be devoted by each citizen of the city to prayer, fasting, contemplation and social service citywide in Oakland.
- Neighborhood volunteers would take their turn as “social directors”, easily identified by distinctive clothing or designation, who wander the neighborhoods on foot or bike, helping to resolve disputes when called, and connecting people in need with the appropriate referrals and resources. Social directors would work closely with police to pre-emptively reduce violence.
- Artists and Musicians in Oakland should be enlisted to get the message about non-violence, harm reduction and cooperative community out to Oakland residents through all available media channels.
- A survey of the city should be made of all streets that don’t have trees, and a tree planting campaign put in place to make sure there are trees on every street.
- The Mayor should initiate and support a gun buyback program in Oakland so that the number of handguns could be reduced in the city.
- The Mayor should help to create an Oakland Memorial for all those in Oakland who have been murdered. In addition, the gun buyback program could supply materials for a gun sculpture, that would take all donated and purchased firearms and weld them into an artistic sculpture of destroyed guns. Once a year a city holiday would commemorate the dead and redouble our collective commitment to meeting our violence and homicide reduction goals.
- The Mayor should support legalization of all drugs within the City of Oakland. A large proportion of the violence taking place in Oakland is driven by the prohibition against drugs. Drugs on the black market have highly inflated prices, which attracts people into the business of selling them. With no legal means of dispute resolution, illicit drug sellers resort to street violence to resolve territorial disputes or bad business deals. By removing the black market for drugs, we could eliminate most of the violence. The City of Oakland must take local responsibility for the taxing and regulation of the sale of marijuana, ampthetamine, heroin, cocaine and psychedelics, etc. for the sake of the health and well being of the residents of the City.
- Education in non-violence should be made available to every child in Oakland, on or before the 6th grade, the 9th grade and the 12th grade.
- Arts and music programs should be availabe to every youth during every year of their public education.
- The Mayor should require that all programs, policies and initiatives have a certain amount of budget allotted for the scientific study of the consequences and outcome of the programs over time. Without this kind of “objective” and consistent feedback, we have no way of knowing if we are throwing good money after bad. We must always directly monitor the results of our policies, and provide the resources necessary to do so.
Through these measures Oakland will stand as a beacon of intelligent and compassionate leadership for the whole world to follow.