Earlier this year the city of Oakland petitioned for a gang injunction on one of the city’s most dangerous gangs, North Side Oakland (NSO). If the injunction is approved by a judge it will create a safety zone of about 100 blocks between Berkeley, Emeryville, and Telegraph Avenue. The injunction will also prohibit NSO and its members from any “gang” activity and from creating a "public nuisance" in that zone. There are rules gang members will have to obey while being in the safety zone. But not everybody likes the idea of an injunction. We spoke to a North Oakland resident, Lisa Nowlain who says a gang injunction won’t create a safe zone like authorities plan:

Q: How safe is your neighborhood?

A: I have never had an issue with safety in my neighborhood. I know that there are issues here though, with shootings, police chasing folks down MLK at 70 mph, etc, and I do not minimize the need to address people's bodily safety and feeling that they can move freely in their neighborhood, but I think more police will hurt my neighborhood more than it will help it.

Q:Why are you against Oakland’s gang injunction?

A: I think that the only proven result of a gang injunction is that people of color and poor people, and particularly young people, will be taken off the streets and put under surveillance. When people of color and poor people are off the streets, a neighborhood is open for private development and gentrification…I am against gang injunctions because if it doesn't make me safer, destroys my community, and will displace and hurt too many of my neighbors. I don't feel that anything justifies this kind of harsh suppression or secret policing (they named 19 people that they filed the injunction against, but there are many more that aren't on the public list and will never be able to fight it).

Q: Why is a gang injunction not the safest method or the right method of handling one of Oakland’s dangerous gang?

A: Putting a lot of money into policing not only is objectionable because I think policing is oppressive and linked to a wider system, but it just doesn't work. Suppression doesn't work address why youth form street organizations: lack of resources or organizations in their neighborhoods (ie after school programs, an engaging and non-militarized school setting, parks, access to the outdoors, etc), legacies of economic impoverishment, and the other aspects of the long racist history of our country. Therefore, it not only moves violence somewhere else in Oakland or the Bay Area because it doesn't address root problems, but it makes it harder for young people to get out of being affiliated with a "gang" by putting them in databases or in prison, making it harder to get jobs later in life. Letting the police decide who is part of a street organization and who isn't is asking for trouble and removes accountability and community voices from how our communities are organized.

More after the jump...

Q: How active would you like Oakland police officers to be in your city?

A: I feel very nervous about the OPD's new strategic plan as it plays into the same fears that policing has always played into in order to get more funding, get more fancy gear, and get more police into the streets, but puts it into a new set of clothes by calling it "community policing" and making it sound progressive. The gang injunctions won't stop in North Oakland, because as Chief Batts spoke about in his Strategic Plan community meetings, the police are looking for economic development to come from the police department, which means removing poor people, youth, and people of color off the streets and somewhere else to make way for condos and Whole Foods. I don't think the police have the answers for our city. It's definitely scary to say "get rid of them" because the way things are working now with people struggling for jobs and housing and neighbors being too busy to know each other and the legacies of the War on Drugs, so if the police left, I don't know what it would be like. But maybe that means there's something wrong with the system.

Q: Will a gang injunction have a negative affect for youth in that area? 
Yes, it will make it legal for the police to racially profile youth and it does nothing - at the most, maybe in the short term - to stop the violence that harms them and everyone who lives in the area.

Q: What’s another method, other than gang injunctions, to deal with gangs?

A: The issue of "dealing with gangs" is confused from the start of the entire conversation. As a white upper middle class gender-conforming woman, my own friendships have never been criminalized, and that comes from media hysteria generated by police and the prison industrial complex attacking friend circles in vulnerable communities (youngsters, poor folks, and people of color). What is criminalized, prosecuted, and under surveillance are subjective.

I work with a Plan for Safer Oakland, a coalition of community members and organizations that have put forth a three point plan: 1. Re-entry Support & Services for People Returning from Prison 2. Invest in People, Not Police and Prisons, and 3. Stand up for Youth. Resources should be going to the young people in the form of keeping good teachers in their schools, creating job and training opportunities, keeping parks clean, creating food security and access to healthy food, making sure their families can stay in their houses, and taking care of the entire community. That's the only way to reduce violence. Methods that focus on changing behavior and making it easy for young people to leave gangs and go into other activities are the only ones proven to be effective, not to mention humanizing and cost-effective.