Oakland Residents for Peaceful Neighborhoods

These guys don't mince words. From their website:

"We are for City leadership that insists everyone in Oakland observe simple respect for the community. We must turn around the attitude of making concessions to boom cars, open street dealing, sideshows, wrecking of public events, and disruptive party houses. There is no "cultural" excuse for making the lives of innocent residents all across Oakland miserable. City leaders must draw the line, not give Oakland a national reputation for thug rule of the streets.

"We are for a moratorium on residential development projects. Oakland does not need the two main kinds of housing promoted by the city council in its role as the redevelopment agency: neither more overpriced condos for young professionals, nor subsidized low-income housing. Our money should not help developers sell condos built like stacks of ship containers. As for so-called affordable housing, Oakland has 28 percent of the people in Alameda County but 55 percent of the income-based assisted housing, and this housing is concentrated in flatland districts while other parts of the City bear none of the travails that have accompanied these projects. We need peaceful, comfortable neighborhoods for the current residents of the flatlands – a mix of hard-working middle-income and poor people who all want peaceful communities for themselves and their children.

"We are for a rollback of redevelopment districts. These districts starve basic services of tax money, funneling the dollars largely into residential projects. Redevelopment amounts to welfare for politically connected developers, who get rich then use their wealth to grab even more public money for themselves.

"We are for imposing accountability on social programs. From the PUEBLO scandal to the latest illegal raid on the Measure Y fund, social programs in Oakland are scattered, overlapping, inefficient, out of control, and a breeding ground of political corruption. We are for fewer, consolidated programs run by public departments, not by half-secret nonprofit agencies. The City should largely confine itself to helping implement county, state, and federal job training, probation, and other programs. These levels of government have a broader tax base and the responsibility to run their criminal justice and penal systems well to achieve real rehabilitation."

Equal expectations of all Oakland residents. Imagine that.