Carroll Fife didn’t want to run for office, but a movement candidate dropped out of the race to represent Oakland’s District 3 on the City Council. As Fife searched the community for others to step up, people turned to her. “They said, ‘Because you are a servant of the work we are doing together, and you know how to do this, it makes sense for you to run,” she said. On Episode 18 of Black Work Talk, she and co-hosts Steven Pitts and Lauren Jacobs explored what it means to bring movement practice to elected office. They talked about the balance of power among the people, the policymakers and the elites, and how that can shift. They dug into what deepening democracy might look like, about how that will require uncomfortable conversations and a deep and consistent attention to race. “Don’t talk to me about an uptick in crime if you’re not talking to me about closing schools, disinvesting in schools, not paying teachers, taking people’s homes, not providing health care and all the other ways wealth has been extracted from communities,” Fife said. “If we’re having a conversation devoid of origins, we’re not having a real conversation.”
Episode Guests
Carroll Fife serves on the Oakland, CA City Council, representing District 3 (West Oakland, Downtown, and Adams Point). A community organizer with two decades of experience, she directed the Oakland office of the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE) She was also a founding member of Moms 4 Housing, the group that occupied a house left vacant by a real estate investment firm, ultimately won the right to live there, and forced the investor to compensate tenants wrongly evicted across the state.