The Port of Oakland, you may recall, was shut down in November during the Occupy Oakland general strike, and also briefly a couple of weeks ago during another protest. Last week, after the Oakland City Council tabled a resolution calling for a hardline approach to keeping the port open, Mayor Jean Quan caused a bit of a stir when she seemed to throw up her hands on the issue in an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle.
Oakland Mayor Jean Quan said Wednesday that the city probably would be unable to stop future Occupy demonstrations from shutting down the Port of Oakland and that attempting to do so would require at least 500 police officers, which the city would deploy if the port paid the $1.5 million cost.
In a meeting with Chronicle editors, Quan said that even with that many officers, a handful of protesters could sneak around police lines and shut down the port.
"I don't know what you know about the port, but with the longshoremen it only takes one person with a bike getting through a fence and getting to the gate. Then they (stop working) and call a mediator," the mayor said.
That sounded a bit defeatist to some, like the Chronicle editorial page, which wrote the next day:
One of a mayor's most critical roles is to set the tone for a city. Which brings us to Oakland Mayor Jean Quan and her oddly passive acceptance of the prospect that just "one person with a bike getting through a fence" could shut down the city's engine of commerce, the Port of Oakland.
Equally puzzling was Quan's assessment of what it would take to keep the port open against a future demonstration: At least 500 officers would need to be deployed - "and if the port wants to pay for that, we can do that," she said. On top of that, the mayor told Chronicle editors in a meeting Wednesday that it was "absolutely" impossible to promise that the port could be kept open in future protests.
What a dispiriting message to send businesses that depend on the port for shipping and receiving of goods.
Comments by Chronicle readers were not half so kind. Here's one that seems to represent the general tone:
"My jaw dropped when I read this. Can Quan be more clueless?"