Plan to break up Occupy Oakland camp took a week

It's now fair to say that Mayor Jean Quan faces opposition on all sides. This morning the Alameda Labor Council issued a press release condemning the 5 a.m. police raid of Occupy,  Oakland, an encampment that thrived for two weeks outside of City Hall. The Labor Council criticized Quan and the city council for using city funds to bankroll the intricate tent-breaking operation, which required units from multiple counties and resulted in 85 arrests. The city said it had no choice but to shut down the tent city because of public-health problems (previous reports cited rodents and drug use), but the Labor Council called it an expensive and unnecessary action, intended solely to "silence the voices of the people." As the organization's executive secretary treasurer Josie Camacho wrote, "In a nation where 25 million people are out of work; where 50 million people have no access to health care; where one in five children grow up in poverty without adequate access to food, clothing and shelter; where funding for public education is gutted; where infrastructure is left to decay; and where millions of Americans have lost their homes due to foreclosure, this outrageous act to silence the voices of the protesters puts Mayor Quan and the City Council on the wrong side of history."


On Friday, two days after those two had set the process in motion, Mayor Jean Quan abandoned her initial support for the protest and came to the same conclusion as they had: The camp was a hazard to public safety and health, and had to go.


The questions were how, and when.


First up, timing. It would take at least five days to arrange the influx of police from other jurisdictions, and anyway, Occupy forces were planning a big march Saturday. That meant Monday at the earliest.


In the meantime, the plan was to try to thin the crowd by sending in social workers to lure away some of the hard-core homeless who had joined the campers.


On Monday, fire officials went through removing propane tanks that could serve as weapons against police.


By then, Quan had gotten out of Dodge - flying to Washington for long-scheduled meetings designed to raise money for developing the old Oakland Army Base.


The mayor, who has been taking hits over her public safety policies, was concerned about how it would look for her to be out of town when the cops made their move - but not concerned enough to cancel, feeling that her new police chief could handle the situation.


Political spigot: It may or may not be a conflict, but the fundraiser being tossed for San Francisco D.A. George Gascón at Ted's Sports Bar and Grill across from the Hall of Justice this afternoon sure has some interesting angles.


First up, the hosts and most of those being tapped on the shoulder work for Gascón.


Hosts of the meet and greet include Assistant D.A. Victor Hwang, who is also a co-chair of the "Run, Ed, Run" campaign for Mayor Ed Lee, and two former mayoral staffers now working for the district attorney - Rebecca Prozan and Lenore Anderson.


Malcolm Young, a staffer to Lee who formerly worked for the influential Chinatown Community Development Center - which has a number of city contracts - is also listed as a co-host.


Invites to the event went out to 78 Gascón colleagues and guests. And while no specific donations are being requested, Hwang confirmed Tuesday that the event was a fundraiser.


Although it's common for staffers to pony up for their bosses' election fund, it's a misdemeanor for an officer or employee of a government agency to solicit political contributions from a fellow worker on behalf of somebody in the office - that is, unless such a solicitation goes out to "a significant segment of the public."


Gascon's chief of staff, Christine DeBerry, said she had sent out 600 or 700 Facebook invites to friends and called the fuss much ado about nothing.


"People in the office are really enthusiastic" about Gascón, she said. "This isn't a mandatory thing - it's strictly voluntary."


Shocked! The recent Chinatown voting caper - where supporters of Mayor Ed Lee were videotaped "helping" elderly residents fill out their ballots - was a dumb bit of campaign chicanery.


On the other hand, there's a long tradition in San Francisco of such attempted sleights of hand.


In 1997, when Lee's political mentor, former Mayor Willie Brown, was in a nail-biting race to win approval for $100 million toward a new 49ers stadium, the city opened polling booths in the housing projects in Hunters Point a week early.


It was the surprisingly high level of "yes" votes from that district - which came in very late on election night - that put the bond measure over the top.


And let's not forget 2001, when, after a hard-fought battle over public power, several ballot-box tops were found floating in the bay.


As for nonprofits helping to get out the vote - such as Lee's friends at the Chinatown Community Development Center - that's been a staple of city campaigns for years. It happens in Chinatown, where many voters are elderly and speak little English, and in the Tenderloin, where groups have been known to encourage the near-homeless to vote for sympathetic supervisors.


It's also a key reason why those same nonprofits continue to profit from City Hall contracts.

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