Write-In Vicente Cruz Oakland City Council People's District 6

Write-In

VICENTE CRUZ

Candidate for Oakland

City Council People's District 6

November 4, 2014

Your voice

Your community

HOW I will deal with Public Safety

I believe we have looked at public safety from a perspective that our current approach has not worked. The proof is the Recidivism, the failing of half our students, and the violence that comes from poverty that effects disproportionally people of color. I will bring forth an approach of education, employment, housing, and health as a priority to public safety. The best public safety plan we could come up with is a better economy. Less poverty, better housing, better health care, more jobs, and more educational opportunities can only help and should be part of every decision a city council member makes.

One of 4 factors is part of most of our city’s crime:  Substance abuse, homelessness, truancy, and recidivism.  
When we work on crime prevention programs we need to know that we are always staying focused on all of these four social problems.  These four are the priority. We need to do the hard work of bridging the divisions, disdain and distrust in our community. Since we agree that there should be enforcement, prevention and community policing, then we should focus on that and spend our time on outreach to all sectors of the community. Volunteer community groups across the city and across our society are working hard on social outreach, violence and crime prevention and neighborhood law enforcement.  City government can reach out to all of them and bring disparate groups together, but it is going to be a long, difficult campaign and each and every one of us will need to be willing to LISTEN to the other views.

The police force, like all of city government, needs to be held accountable to civilian oversight. 
Measure Z funding and all other programs need transparency, managerial review and inspection. Do some of this housekeeping and then the cost of hiring more officers would not be the multimillion dollar hamster wheel that it is now and we could expand staff with the support of the public and enough funds to hire them. First, the public needs to feel that our police are held up to a high ethical standard and that they work for us and not the other way around.  If we do not feel that the police serve us, why pay the cost? And the cost of employing people who will not live in our city should be brought into account. That costs us in trust, in support and in flat dollars. 

Write-In VICENTE CRUZ                      

Oakland City Council Candidate

People’s District 6

P.O. Box 20299 Oakland, CA 94620

In Oakland we need to face some facts.  

We have many crises in our city that need immediate attention.

There is as three prong crises facing our community

Which are education, crime and employment we need schools up, crime down and jobs in.

Our city budget has been attacked extensively and designed to solely serve the interest of the elite.

We need to hold a budget convention and together, develop a new, comprehensive budget. We need to deal with the pension’s entitlement problems and have a stable, reliable budget, encompassing the various operations; from parks and recreation to police stations. We need a budget that within its structure also focuses on the fluctuation of an economy, and preventative strategies are prioritized to protect the city’s population. There is a crisis in our democracy. Council districts should look like the neighborhoods of Oakland, (not gerrymandered districts that cut them up) All Oaklanders need to have a voice and be represented in our government. 

Money needs to be out of our local election process

And; we need to formalize the relationship with our grass roots neighborhood groups and local community leaders, devolving part of the city authority and budget to those people that have live in Oakland and transform the city into an autonomous entity instead of upholding an oligarchical governmental system. VICENTE CRUZ proposes to make these and many other’s with the citizens of Oakland and not for them.  Also, our priority is to create and form producers, not consumers, of the politics in our own communities. That means taking ownership of our city, and participating in direct action, wherein we have to get involved with voting. We can no longer make excuses, we have to recognize the power that we have, and challenge the system that is rigged in favor of paid political advertising and the status quo.  

The working-class, the common-person is the solution.  

The running of money-free grass-roots campaigns, the energy behind a reform of the City Charter and budget, the will to deal with our most intractable social problems all can find their solution in an active public.  We need to say NO to money politics and take a definitive position by not voting for it; what we can do to change our city is to help by spreading the word of a real alternative in Oakland, without the usage of corporate media and paid advertising as well as VOTING FOR REAL CHANGES AND A BETTER TOMORROW.

Now in Oakland Green Party member VICENTE CRUZ who has long track record dedicated to real change, is running as a write-In candidate to be your voice for people’s district 6 your and the city’s real needs such as: Schools with vocational training. Schools with arts and sports with healthy food, safe public services, Community Policing, Restorative Justice, Local employment,  Stable economic environment,  Environmental retrofitting, And many, many other basic practical things that our city should be doing, but is currently only doing for show, if at all. VICENTE CRUZ is stepping forward to be one of those committed to a reform of our city from top to bottom, from police practices to budget policies with our faith in a democracy that includes all of us. Please help by registering to vote and getting those who have rightly been put off by voting, the voter marketing, and process to register as well. But no matter how you register, do so.  Otherwise someone else is voting for you. 

Write-In VICENTE CRUZ                      

Oakland City Council Candidate People’s District 6

P.O. Box 20299 Oakland, CA 94620