The Impoverished Need Not Apply

Who to call when you need help, if your poor in Oakland? The Mayor?
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Regarding the further criminalization of the young, and the impoverished, recently Oaklands Mayor Jerry Brown sent out the message pubicly that if your of the poor.......

An infamous quote from Mayor Jerry Brown from an
Oakland Tribune Article dated Wednsday June 20, 2001.
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Brown had said \"I would much rather deal with the problems of prosperity than the problems of poverty...think about that.\"

The above quote allegedly was made by Mayor Jerry Brown on Monday June 18, 2001. See story below...
Lynda Carson

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Oakland Tribune Wednsday, June 20,2001

Fighting talk as Wilson Riles joins Oakland mayoral race

By Chauncey Bailey
STAFF WRITER

OAKLAND -- Former City Councilmember Wilson Riles, Jr. officially entered the March 2002 Oakland mayoral race Tuesday with an opening salvo against Mayor Jerry Brown\'s stance that economic rebirth has arrived in Oakland.

\"Where you see prosperity you will also see great poverty,\" said the 55-year-old Riles, who filed documents with the City Clerk\'s office to set his campaign in motion. \"Jerry Brown is not the mayor of the Gap. He\'s supposed to be mayor for all of Oakland.

\"We have seen most of the development downtown, and this means those new jobs are already filled, and not with residents of Oakland. We need to see more economic development in the neighborhoods...that\'s the way to create jobs for residents.\"

Brown happened to walk past City Hall and quipped: \"What is he running against? Prosperity?\"

On Monday, during the announcement of a $2.1 billion home mortgage initiative by Fannie Mae and CitiMortgage, Brown had said \"I would much rather deal with the problems of prosperity than the problems of poverty...think about that.\"

Riles maintains that Oakland\'s No. 1 problem remains high unemployment. He said improving schools, economic development in neighborhoods and \"helping the businesses that are already here \"-- rather than focusing only on attracting new companies -- is the solution.

Riles promised to wage a grassroots campaign \"out in the streets and telling people what they need to know...this is not about one person becoming mayor. It\'s not about downtown versus the neighborhoods or the hills versus the flatlands. This is about bringing Oakland together and which candidate has the best vision for Oakland in the long term.\"

The 1968 Stanford University graduate with a degree in psychology served in the Peace Corps until 1970, and did graduate work at the University of California at Berkeley in educational psychology and child development from 1971 until 1973.

On the city council, he worked to secure a commitment of $1.3 million from the Oakland Redevelopment Agency for the public schools academies program, and fought to defeat a plan to build a detention facility in Oakland that would have been privately run.

Riles said he chose Tuesday to announce his campaign file campaign papers because African Americans were observing \"Juneteenth,\" an annual event that began in 1865 when blacks in Texas learned they were free -- several years after the signing of Emancipation Proclamation by President Lincoln ending slavery.

\"Oakland is \'late,\' too...today is about freedom and liberty for people who have been out of the loop...stepped on,\" Riles said. \"Mayor Brown wants to see 10,000 more people downtown, but there\'s no effort to bring in affordable housing. He has stopped listening to people; he has put blinders on. He\'s arrogant.\"

Riles conceded many blacks supported Brown because they were disillusioned after not seeing much progress during the terms of Lionel Wilson, the city\'s first black mayor, and then Elihu Harris.

\"For Lionel Wilson it was about breaking the color barrier and Elihu Harris wanted to improve education,\" Riles said. \"But too often people don\'t come with the ideas (needed for change). Now people are looking beyond skin color and \'identity politics.\' They want to see ideas and a vision that will benefit all of Oakland (in the) long term.\"

Riles, who unsuccessfully ran for mayor in 1990 -- losing to Harris -- left his seat on the city council in 1992 after 13 years, to battle prostrate cancer. On Tuesday he said the cancer is just about gone and he has used the time to reflect on what\'s important in life. He called himself \"an activist who has worked 30 years.\" For nearly 10 years now, he has been regional director with the American Friends Service Committee.

\"We have to stop \'criminalizing\' our young people,\" said Riles, referring to problems associated with weekend \"sideshows\" of drivers spinning doughnuts in the streets.
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