OAKLAND — Business owners who went on strike in protest of the city’s spiking crime rates ultimately closed their storefronts for just two hours Tuesday, but it was enough time to get their point across: Oakland’s rise in robberies and burglaries is intolerable.
“Oakland has become known as a city that is OK with violence and crime, and we’re not,” said Nigel Jones, owner of uptown restaurants Calabash and Kingston 11.
The public demonstration — while mostly symbolic — allowed restaurant and store owners to join local business leaders in calling for the mayor to declare a state of emergency. Doing so, they say, could help Oakland secure more funding from the state and federal government for additional law enforcement and provide direct cash payments to businesses that have taken financial hits from thefts and robberies.
The message reflected anti-crime sentiment that has won support from Oakland’s more moderate political ranks, plus the city’s NAACP chapter, but alienated critics who suggest the movement is being fueled by right-wing reactionaries.
As of Sunday, burglaries in Oakland had spiked by 38% and robberies by 33% in 2023 from the same period last year, according to data provided by the Oakland Police Department. Even more strikingly, police data show local burglaries were up nearly 87% from the year-to-date total in 2021, a year notorious for its explosion in pandemic-era violent crime.
Some leaders of the city’s chambers of commerce have come to double as anti-crime advocates, with Chinatown Chamber President Carl Chan leading recall efforts against notably progressive Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price, who critics say has been too soft in prosecuting crime.
Chan, who organized Tuesday’s strike, said that as many as 100 businesses took part, though he could not provide an official count or list of participants because each business community had organized separately.
Political tensions around crime grew even more tense earlier this month after the city’s leaders failed to apply in time for a state grant that sent millions of dollars to boost crime-fighting efforts in several Bay Area cities.
Chan, however, struck a diplomatic tone at Tuesday’s news conference, saying “we don’t want to waste time blaming anybody — we want to do something more positive.”
The strike was not really intended to close businesses, he added, but rather to raise awareness of the perils faced by Oakland’s legacy storefronts, such as Le Cheval, a local Vietnamese staple of 38 years that announced last week it was planning to close for good due to break-ins at the restaurant.
“I want public safety so that small businesses like mine can be able to work and live in peace,” the restaurant’s owner, Son Tran, said in her native Vietnamese at Tuesday’s event.
Some business owners have said they’ve lost out-of-town patrons who are afraid they would be mugged or have their car windows smashed if they visited Oakland.
Nido’s Backyard, a high-end Mexican bar and restaurant near the city’s waterfront, announced earlier this month it had acquired the parking lot across the street in order to staff it with private security. The business owners and their supporters believe a similar model of parking security could be established at other storefronts with state and federal funds if city leaders were to declare a state of emergency.
Tackling the crime issue has often forced Oakland’s more moderate political figures — such as Jennifer Tran, a candidate for Rep. Barbara Lee’s open seat in Congress who spoke at Tuesday’s event — to walk a narrow tightrope, at once supporting criminal-justice reform and calling for more cops. Though they have been accused of being backed by wealthy donors known to fund recall campaigns against progressive political leaders, several business owners at Tuesday’s event scoffed at the notion.
Taylor Jay, who owns an eponymous line of retail stores in Oakland, said she came to the event out of sheer frustration. The intruders who break into her stores are motivated by the knowledge that they’d be treated leniently by Alameda County prosecutors, she said.
Chan’s calls for unity and diplomacy fell on deaf ears among another group of business owners who hadn’t been invited to speak but ultimately shouted down the event. The group co-owns Ole Ole Burrito Express and multiple Oakland liquor stores. Its leader, Izzy Ahmed, angrily declared that the only solution to crime was a stringent police crackdown with widespread arrests.
In spite of the hardline stance, the group found some sympathy from some of the event’s speakers.
“If you really look at it, Afghanistan is safer than Oakland,” said one of the event’s speakers, Ahmed Dobashi, who owns the 12th Street Gas and Mart and organizes local Yemeni-American businesses. “Let’s get Oakland great again.”
Staff writer Jakob Rodgers contributed to this story.
