Dante’s Inferno or the Twisted Saga of Dante Cano vs. Phil Tagami

On February 13th, 2015, Dante Cano was arrested in front of the Rotunda Building in Downtown Oakland during a protest against police violence. He was mobbed by several OPD officers, tackled to the ground, and then hauled off to Santa Rita Jail. In a statement posted online while he was in jail, Cano wrote: “I was violently attacked for supposedly breaking a Men’s Warehouse window. I was tackled and beaten by OPD, then put in a van and taken four to five blocks away. I was then asked if a bat and a black bag was mine. I said, “Fuck no.” Police beat me once more in the van and then took me to jail.” Currently, Dante has plead "not guilty" to the charge of felony vandalism and is fighting in court to clear his name.

Cano is accused of breaking not just any windows, but busting out two $5,000 windows of the Rotunda Building, owned by a developer named Phil Tagami. Dante Cano, who stated in court that he worked as a dish washer, has hardly any money to his name. Phil Tagami is a multi-millionaire, and his investment company, California Capital and Investment Group, CCIG, owns countless buildings around the Bay Area. Tagami spearheaded the gentrification and development of Downtown Oakland and Uptown and now has pushed through the West Oakland Specific Plan (WOSP), which will further accelerate the gentrification of West Oakland. And, for some reason, Phil Tagami has taken a personal interest in Dante Cano.

On his personal Facebook account, Phil Tagami wrote the following: “The man arrested for breaking the windows at the Rotunda last week was Dante Cano of San Francisco. He is 21 years old… Well what can we do to address the cost recovery, fair restitution for his act of property destruction? What is the responsible course of action to be taken? Should we 1) let it slide, 2) work out a payment or work arrangement, or 3. press the DA to make an example of him? please advise …I have an open mind that is closing fast…read the thread below this is not his first rodeo and he is a repeat mind you repeat offender [sic].”

After making this request of his Facebook network, a whole range of folks, from the District Attorney, local developers, pro-gentrification ‘activists,’ and Oakland well-to-dos began to chime in. District Attorney Nancy O’Malley herself commented on the Facebook thread to update Phil Tagami on Dante’s progress through the judicial system. It seems that a few broken windows is enough to merit the attention of the head of the District Attorney’s office. Alongside her comments were dozens of others that encouraged Phil Tagami to “throw the book at ‘em.” Some even had the nerve to call Dante Cano a “trust-fund baby.”

Dante Cano is the son of Duran Ruiz, a longtime sex-worker activist from San Francisco who died in 2007. In her own words, “I have accumulated 14 years total in prison and I’m only 38. I don’t do bad things. I’ve never stolen. I’m a prostitute because it’s honest and I’m honest.” She was in prison while she was pregnant with Dante in 1994. After giving birth, her son was taken away and put up for adoption. His foster father, a well-known gay-rights activist, placed him inside a group home in San Francisco at the age of 7. Inside various group homes, Dante was often forcibly administered psychiatric drugs and physically restrained for his acts of rebellion. Dante often attempted to escape and fight the guards in these institutions until his escape from a San Diego group home at the age of 16.

By 2011, Dante had learned to live on the streets of San Diego before eventually finding Occupy. In this popular movement, Dante was able to meet hundreds of people energized at the prospect of over-throwing the reign of the bankers and real-estate speculators. A large caravan from Occupy San Diego left for Oakland in an attempt to occupy the empty Henry J. Kaiser convention center on January 28th, 2012. The riot police prevented this from occurring by firing tear gas and rubber bullets at the crowd, and Dante was arrested with over 400 people later that night. After his arrest, Dante remained in his birthplace, the Bay Area.

Phil Tagami, on the other hand, patrolled the Rotunda building with his shotgun during Occupy demonstrations. Since those auspicious circumstances, Tagami has pressed onward with his scheme to revamp the Oakland Army Base logistics center. Approved by the City Council in 2012, Tagami’s plans to redevelop the old West Oakland army base include dozens of warehouses and new train yards to handle cargo to and from the Port of Oakland. Construction officially began on November 1st, 2013 and currently the old army base is demolished, the site leveled, and the first structures will soon begin to rise. This new logistics site will allow for more capital to enter the port and be shipped quicker than ever before, cutting out truckers and instead opting for rail transportation. Oakland will become even more important to the global capitalist economy. Riding high off the success of his new project, Tagami still has time to scheme about putting Dante in jail.

Dante is yet to be convicted of the crime of smashing the Rotunda windows, but if he is, Tagami has a direct line to Nancy O’Malley and can recommend punishment. Many of his peers have publicly encouraged Tagami to make an example out of Dante. It makes sense why these scumbag developers would feel so threatened by a poor rebel like Dante. Dante has no interest in allowing them to carry out their development plots without resistance. Dante only wants to help the poor people around him who are exploited, jailed, and killed by the reigning economic system. He cares nothing for the lines, numbers, and sums of the developers. In 2014, Dante Cano made headlines by jumping on the dais of Oakland City Council during a meeting on the West Oakland Specific Plan, scaring Noel Gallo out of his seat. His rebellious spirit comes for a genuine place and Dante has little stomach for the injustices and deceptions of the reigning capitalist nightmare.

It is no surprise that Phil Tagami was one of the main backers of the West Oakland Specific Plan (WOSP), which was denounced by many as a way to further gentrify West Oakland and the surrounding area. As an article on indybay. org by Lynda Carlson stated: “Millionaire Phillip Tagami, and wealthy Wall Street investors Hamid Moghadam, Douglas D. Abbey, and T. Robert Burke have teamed up together for the massive gentrification projects. These are the wealthy investors who are the movers and shakers in the combined redevelopment schemes to gentrify…West Oakland. Once WOSP becomes the law of the land, the plan is to target the Opportunity Sites for redevelopment and maximum exploitation by wealthy developers. WOSP will be used as a marketing tool to attract developers to the Opportunity Sites. Low-income people need not apply, and have been abandoned to fend for themselves once this gentrification scheme gains traction.”

Tagami makes tens of millions of dollars by displacing communities of color and the poor and working class more broadly. Tagami lives in a mansion in the Oakland Hills that overlooks Lake Merritt and is right next to Governor Jerry Brown’s house. From atop his tower of wealth and power, Tagami gazes down at the city he is helping to rapidly change. His vision of development ends with a city drastically divided along lines of race and class. People like Dante aren’t the enemy; they’re heroes that stand up against the rich and powerful.

Dante’s next court date is on Friday, June 5th, 2015, Department 6, at 9AM in Rene C. Davidson Courthouse, located at 1225 Fallon Street. Come show support for one of the Bay Area’s young rebels the capitalist overlords are poised to make an example of.

Let’s show them why we call solidarity a weapon.