“Go Thin or Bust,” Feature, 11/19
A Kinder, Gentler Condom
Kudos to Rachel Swan for her story on thin condoms and for calling
attention to Mayer Labs, a true safer-sex pioneer. Two things re:
condom sensitivity. First, from my days at the Sexologists’ Sexual
Health Project and the condom info taught in the late ’80s at the
Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality: any condom will feel
more sensitive if two or three drops of lube go into the head before
the condom is rolled on — this allows the latex to move on the
penis’ corona and add stimulation, rather like a foreskin would. When
the condom is thin to start with, so much the better — among
other things, this lets more body warmth transfer through the latex.
Second, Swan mentions the Inspiral condom (with a head shaped like a
soft-serve ice cream cone), but the early adopter of the shaped condom
was Pleasure Plus, whose design looked like a rubber with a pelican
pouch. This, too, allows more friction on the head of the penis. Good
Vibrations liked this design so much (and listened to so many guys
complain when it went out of stock) that it has them packaged with its
own logo. Play safe, people — your Queen of Hearts misses you!
Visit me at SexandCulture.org
and get on our workshop mailing list if you want!
Carol Queen, PhD, founding director, Center for Sex &
Culture, San Francisco
“Changing the Philanthropic Agenda,” Raising the Bar, 11/26
Profit over Philanthropy
Charitable gifts are tax deductible, albeit with some limitations.
Perhaps, as a consequence, Americans make far more charitable gifts
than anyone else in the world, by a substantial margin. In Europe, for
example, charitable giving is quite limited. So, Doctors Without
Borders, a French organization, gets most of its contributions from
Americans. Europeans figure that the needs of society will be met by
government through their taxes.
Nonprofits, who are the recipients of foundation money, have long
felt resentment at having to beg the foundations for their sustenance.
My experience, though, is that the alternative of fund-raising, by the
organization itself, is not employed enough. It is a lot of work, but
then the nonprofit can control its own destiny. Additionally, when a
nonprofit goes into the community and asks for funds, it is competing
with others and sometimes that competition helps the nonprofit tailor
its activities and fund-raising to the interests of the donors. That
can result in more focused and appropriate charitable endeavors.
I suppose some foundations are more concerned with their own
survival than their eleemosynary mission. Guess what? Many nonprofits
suffer from the same affliction.
Kurt Schoeneman, Boonville
“Arrests Are Down, and Crime Is Up,” Feature, 12/3
Crime Isn’t Normal
I have long felt that crime is not taken seriously by the Oakland
Police Department and by the politicians and bureaucrats running things
in this extraordinarily troubled and dysfunctional town. In addition, I
have never agreed with nor understood the premise postulated by the
police that “we cannot arrest our way out of the problem.” The fact
that empirical, irrefutable evidence contradicts this odd assertion
seems to have been either missed or ignored by those in the know
downtown. If one were to dwell in some horrific Orwellian nightmare of
self-serving delusion, one would then be compelled to conclude that
crime is endemic and as such impossible to control. Following this odd
and peculiar reasoning, one would have to then accept crime and its
exponential increase as normal and, though unpleasant, an
uncontrollable consequence of modern society. Given the fact that I
reject this notion as nonsense, which only serves to rationalize
incompetence and indifference, I have instead concluded that Oakland’s
leaders are not up to the job. This fact is self-evident and to my mind
incredibly obvious. And what is ostensibly the cultural norm here is so
irrational and convoluted that after a while nothing makes sense
because lunacy and profoundly unintelligent thinking prevails. Oakland
is run by the oddest, most extraordinarily brain-addled folks I have
ever countenanced. Crime is endemic because it is tolerated and police
department members like Mr. Jordon rationalize it and perpetuate the
fiction that it is a consequence of outside factors. Crime is committed
by very bad, selfish, irresponsible, cruel people. That is a fact.
Jonathan C. Breault, Oakland
Tale of Ineptitude
A few years ago, my neighbor’s car was stolen. The police didn’t
find it. I found it a few days later while out walking my dogs, and
reported its whereabouts to my neighbor, who in turn called the cops. I
was scandalized to learn that the police did not even dust the car for
prints — it was full of partying evidence and other incriminating
detritus, and it would have been pretty easy to eliminate my neighbor
from the absolute fest of prints and DNA.
Had that crime been properly investigated, who knows how much other
crime could have been forestalled by putting the perps away.
Mary Eisenhart, Oakland
Blame the Riders
As far as the Police Dept. itself is concerned, the problems stem
from the consent decree resultant from the “Riders” case. This consent
decree was put into place at exactly the point in time when the
destruction of the OPD as an effective police force began. Coincidence?
Hardly. This travesty of an agreement has set the police up to fail. As
told to me by an Oakland cop that I am acquainted with, “as far as most
of us [police officers] are concerned, we won’t make an arrest unless
there is blood in the streets and we saw the crime committed.” The
reason for this is that under the terms of the consent decree, any
person arrested is asked (encouraged?) if they wish to file a complaint
against the arresting officer and is given a list of attorneys and pro
bono groups whose stock-in-trade is suing the City of Oakland. These
complaints, WHETHER PROVEN OR NOT are entered into the permanent record
of the officer. These folks need promotions and raises like anyone
else. Understand the attitude? If it isn’t an absolute slam dunk, no
officer will risk it. This consent decree has got to go. I urge the
reporter to address this issue in a future piece. No one ever speaks of
this issue, but it is of tantamount importance. Something that should
be pointed out is that after multiple trials, not a single conviction
resulted from the Riders case.
Thomas Dryden, Oakland
Fighting Crime Isn’t PC
My thanks to Robert Gammon for exposing the popular fallacy about
arresting our way out of crime. We suffer an official but secreted
policy of passiveness regarding crime, due in great part to the recent
historical linkage of urban crime to black perpetrators. Fighting crime
has wrongly been synonymous with fighting black people; in politically
correct Oakland, that has resulted in half-hearted efforts to fight
crime lest more robust efforts be deemed racially oppressive. While
some attorneys have made their fortune suing Oakland for enforcement
allegedly gone awry, many politicians have made their careers by
excusing away the victimizers and tying one or both of the cop’s hands
behind their back.
Whereas the Oakland Police Department is inherently likely to do as
most police agencies will do and arrest criminals, the local
politicians have imposed their theories and will in limiting the
funding and political support for arrest and prosecution. The failure
of NN has given the same pols who were dragged kicking and screaming to
publicly acknowledging that more police and funding are needed, a fresh
excuse for not providing the funds for that purpose. The truth still
lurking beyond Mr. Gammon’s light is that the budget has the money for
cops and libraries but the passive-policing pols voted to spend the
money on bloated bureaucracy and favors they find more essential than
public safety.
Patrick Kevin McCullough, Oakland
Creating a Police State?
Your “Arrests Are Down, And Crime Is Up” article was well researched
and provided a good comparison of police work between several
California cities. Writer Robert Gammon’s conclusion, that Oakland can
arrest its way out of crime, might be true, but you have to ask
yourself if that is what you really want to do.
As a resident of Fresno, one of the cities mentioned in the article,
whose clearance rates for homicide and other violent crime has
increased, resulting in a decrease in crime, I have to tell you that
there is more to the story than the charts and graphs show.
Fresno is well on its way to becoming a police state. The police
receive over half of the city budget, video surveillance cameras are
popping up like mushrooms after a spring rain, street gangs are
declared “terrorist organizations” (with the same rights and privileges
of Al-Qaeda), and we don’t have an Independent Police Auditor to
investigate police misconduct and abuse. As my friend Rev. Floyd D.
Harris says, the internal affairs department is “like having the fox
watching the hen house.”
Yes, if Oakland wanted to follow Fresno’s fine example and put most
of its resources into fighting crime, you could probably arrest your
way out of the problem. But, then you would have half of your citizens
monitoring, arresting, and imprisoning the other half. There has got to
be a better way!
Mike Rhodes, Fresno
Halt Death Sentencing
As an Oakland resident, I care deeply about unsolved crime and
violence in Alameda County. I have already lost two family members to
murder, and as a mother of six adult males and one female, I need this
cycle of violence to end. Crime in Oakland is not only prolific in my
African-American community but it has now spread to areas that have
been previously sheltered from crime.
When we take a look at unsolved crime in Alameda County, there may
be an element that can help solve crimes — a moratorium on death
sentencing.
Without the funding to provide more highly skilled technicians to
crack the many unsolved murder cases in Alameda County we are literally
allowing killers to get away with murder. How much can we truly expect
from our law officials when their hands are financially tied behind
their backs? Did you know that for each person sentenced to death row
in Alameda County the money comes from the county budget. It cost $1.1
million dollars more to sentence someone to death rather than
sentencing them to permanent incarceration. These are people who will
most likely die of old age before being executed, however, the governor
decided to put $250 million dollars back into a deficit state budget to
provide special housing for those on death row. Logically speaking,
there is no logic in doing this. Ask our governor to take this $250
million dollars and place it where it will make the biggest difference
— getting more cold cases solved. Our biggest concern isn’t those
locked away for murder, it’s the ones on the street that have not been
caught and can murder again and again.
If the governor, on a statewide level, and the district attorney, on
a local level, call for a moratorium on death sentencing, millions of
dollars will be freed up IMMEDIATELY. A moratorium on death sentencing
has been established in the past by those who weighed the cost
carefully and choose to realistically tackle the problem of unsolved
crime.
Delane Sims, Oakland
Accountability, Not Officers
Thanks for this article on rising crime in Oakland. If the chief of
police and his top assistants refuse to take responsibility and insist
that they can’t “arrest our way out of the problem” of murderers and
other criminals patrolling our streets, clearly no amount of additional
officers on the force will make the slightest difference. The dense
thinking and lack of accountability at the top has to go before
officers on the street get the kind of management and direction that
will make a difference. Sounds like Chief Word has to acknowledge the
false premise in this dismal excuse and change directions, or Mayor
Dellums should replace him.
Beth Weinberger, Oakland
Arm the Citizens?
Another two cents from a person with some firsthand experience of
the whole situation: I was mugged at a gunpoint close to my home in
Fruitvale almost a month ago. To this day, I have not been able to get
in touch with my investigator. I left a couple of messages, one person
returned my call and gave me a name of an officer apparently in charge
of assigning cases to “real” investigators; he never returned my call.
After reading your article, I am beginning to understand why. It’s very
disheartening to realize that, as a citizen, you are very much left to
your own devices. Unfortunately, this approach only encourages young
perpetrators; I spoke about my case to a couple of officers on the
street, and they said the worst thing about it is that kids brag to
each other, and, once they realize how much they can get away with, the
crime wave ends up spreading like wild fire! Much as I try to
sympathize with the investigators wanting their raises and promotions,
I am wondering what are people of Oakland supposed to do? Self-organize
and arm themselves, while cutting off their tax payments altogether? Or
simply leave if they can? If anyone out there has any other solutions,
I’d love see them discussed.
Name withheld by request, Oakland
