Here is a video plus the text of an interview I did with the SF Chronicle yesterday:

SF Chronicle
Well, John, can you tell me a little bit about yourself?

John Reimann
Okay, I’m a retired Carpenter, I was the recording secretary of carpenters local 713. I was expelled from the union in 1999, for leading a 2000 member wildcat strike in the Bay Area. I’m a longtime socialist. And I’ve been active in all sorts of various movements in this area. And I’ve also traveled and visited workers movement throughout the United States and internationally, including most recently in Ukraine.

I moved here in 1969.

SF Chronicle
What made you want to run for mayor?

John Reimann
Well, I think that we are facing two huge dangers, train wrecks, in this country, and really, internationally. And one of them is the potential for the fascist connected Republicans to return to power nationally. And I wouldn’t have spoken in those terms, you know, 10 years ago, but it’s true today. And the other is the danger of global warming, which is caused actually by capitalism itself. And I think that we need a workers movement to ward off those two enormous dangers. And I believe that, as mayor, I would be able to help develop that movement, and even in my campaign to raise that. I should also say, I’m the only candidate that opposes the Howard terminal project.

SF Chronicle
You said that we need a workers movement to ward off those two dangers and that you believe as mayor, you’d be able to help develop that. Can you elaborate? What do you mean by that exactly?

John Reimann
Well, we see how Trump as president helped build a movement of the extreme right, including fascists, and as mayor, you know, you have an elevated voice. And what I would do, I would be using that voice like as what they call the bully pulpit, I would be going around to the working class neighborhoods, to workplaces, and so on, and, and to the unions, and explaining to people you know what’s happening in this country. The fact that any proposed reforms for for Oakland is just shuffling around the lounge chairs on the deck of the Titanic, if we can’t reverse course, and how any real positive change in this country history shows has always come from a movement from below the civil rights movement, the labor movement of the 1930s, and so on. And that’s what we need to organize again, and link that up with the need for working class party and for socialism.

SF Chronicle
Can you talk a little bit about your plans to address homelessness, if you were mayor?

John Reimann
So we have to understand that the biggest cause of homelessness is poverty. And so I call for a $28 an hour minimum wage, with full benefits and guaranteed work for all. And also we need the anybody that is living in the streets for any extended period of time. They know that we know that that can cause also various other emotional problems. And so we need full funding for service and for all the social services that are required also. Also, I believe that the housing for profit model has just as the healthcare for profit model has been a dismal failure. So as housing for profit, and we need a crash program of publicly financed public housing.

SF Chronicle
How would you as mayor achieve getting a $28 an hour minimum wage with full benefits and guaranteed work for all?

John Reimann
Any any advance for workers has been achieved by workers organizing and demanding it. And so I would help to build a movement of workers that would demand it, and if necessary to go on strike to shut the city down in order to achieve in order to bring that about. And also, I would be explaining that we can win a $28 an hour minimum wage here in Oakland. But in order to keep it, we have to build a wider movement throughout the entire region and beyond.

SF Chronicle
You mentioned a crash program of public publicly financed public housing. Can you elaborate? What do you mean by a crash program?

John Reimann
Well, massive spending for it. And then of course, that gets into the issue of taxes, where the money comes from. And number one, Oakland is the only port city, I believe on the entire west coast, that does not tax its port – the Port of Oakland. So we should be taxing the Port of Oakland. And also, that also leads to the question of the whole tax structure in the county and in the state. And again, you need movement of working class people to force [a change]. As we know, the tax structure has been increasingly moved away from taxing corporations and the rich, that’s happened under both Republicans and Democrats alike. And so we need a campaign to reverse that. That’s where the money can come from.

I should say also, you know, most candidates, when they talk about the homelessness and so on, really what it gets down to is kicking the homeless, the people that are living in the street, out of the only home, they know, which is some tent, or a car or something like that. And that’s just really a barbaric, cruel approach. And do we really want to live in a society like that? Maybe you could call it the Ron DeSantis society, you know, where you see what he’s done with, with the immigrants and just shipping them off across all the way across the country? You know, is that really the kind of country, the society that we want to live in?

SF Chronicle
What do you propose instead of that?

John Reimann
Well, I just said, you have to have an alternative, and you have to have a living wage, which even $15 an hour in Oakland is not a living wage.

SF Chronicle
So if you were to break ground on a public housing project, that could take a really long time. What do you do in the meantime?

John Reimann
Well, there’s plenty of of vacant buildings in Oakland. And through eminent domain, you can provide housing for people through that.

SF Chronicle
The issue of illegal dumping has been something that Oakland residents have talked a lot about. How would you address trash on the streets and illegal dumpers?

John Reimann
Well, let’s look at the real illegal dumpers or in some cases not illegal, but it should be. That is those who are dumping legally or illegally into the bay. It seems to be getting a little better now, but we’ve just seen this horrible red tide. And you had the massive fish die off in Lake Merritt. And that comes from number one, dumping into the atmosphere, which is to say from global warming, and number two, all kinds of chemicals being dumped into the rivers and so on and into the bay. So let’s look at the real illegal dumpers which is a corporate illegal dumpers not as far as trash in the streets, and so on. We see that [dumping in the streets] around here. Sure. And we need the city to spend sufficient money to pick that trash up.

SF Chronicle
So the city has the money to pick that trash?

John Reimann
No, I said the city has to have the sufficient money.

SF Chronicle
How does the city get the sufficient money to pick the trash?

John Reimann
Well, I talked about the tax structure – taxing the Port of Oakland and also changing the tax structure in the in the state.

SF Chronicle
Can you go over what you said about changing the structure in the state? I’m sorry. I may have missed that.

John Reimann
Well, we’ve had an increasingly regressive tax structure in the state, where for instance, the corporate share of total state taxes, has declined for many decades, through both Republican and Democratic run administrations. And the same goes for the rich in California. And so that has to be reversed.

SF Chronicle
So taxing corporations more? How much would you tax corporations?

John Reimann
Well, I wouldn’t have exact figures on that right now. But that’s not really the point. The point is, first of all, let’s look at the tax structure as it used to be in as it is. And let’s get rid of this idea that you have to help the corporation’s increase their profits. so that we can have jobs, which is basically the old trickle down school of economics.

SF Chronicle
One issue the city has been kind of grappling with is a high number of vacancies. How would you attract more workers into the city? [In further discussion, she clarifies that she means vacant job openings.]….

John Reimann
Well, the $28 an hour minimum wage would certainly attract a lot of workers, wouldn’t it?

SF Chronicle
Um, can we talk about public safety? What is your stance on public safety and police?

John Reimann
Well, you know, what you’re really talking about is crime. And, you know, first of all, we have to recognize that crime has two basic causes, one of them is poverty. And, again, a  $28 an hour minimum wage with full benefits would go a long way towards alleviating that. The second is that we have to recognize that we live in an increasingly violent society. And that violence has always been there. But the call for violence has been amplified, as we all know, for four or five years now. And really beyond that, by Trump and the Republicans. And, you know, that violence trickles down, and the tendency towards violence trickles down in many ways. And it just becomes generally acceptable.

In 1946, Oakland had a general strike. It was the last true general strike in this country. The chief of police reported that crime completely disappeared during that time, because people were united. They felt solidarity for each other. And so building a workers movement that would unite all working class people in Oakland, and really beyond that, and also a program to alleviate poverty would go a long ways towards eliminating crime.

I also want to say that all the other candidates in one way or another, what they really call for basically is increasing the number of police and what they’re really talking about when you really look at it is Fortress Oakland and Fortress America. Is that what we really want, especially when you consider that when workers go on strike, or when people protest against some corporate polluter, that the police will not be on our side?

And one last point I’d like to make: it just was revealed that 47 sheriff’s deputies for the Alameda County Sheriff’s Department were found to be psychologically unfit to serve as sheriff deputies. So what did they do? They put them on desk duty at full pay, until those sheriff’s deputies can learn how to answer the questions properly, so that they can become, quote, psychologically fit. And then we also know that we have a huge number of police, the studies have revealed that, who are members of the Proud Boys, the Oathkeepers, and so on. So you have to take into account all of these issues. And one last point is what I also call for is democratically elected, publicly financed community committees of public safety, that would deal with issues of violence and crime and so on it within each community.

SF Chronicle
Can you repeat that last part, I’m sorry,

John Reimann
I said, I also call for publicly financed, democratically elected community committees of public safety. That would be financed publicly, and that could could could be present in their communities 24/7 and deal with issues of public safety, and so on. And, you know, my experience is that lots of times on the issue of violence, including crime in a community that many times if it’s people that are known in the community, that they can really talk people down and resolve the problems in a peaceful manner, including actually just matters of pure theft, but also, you know, on spousal abuse and so on.

SF Chronicle
Would they be with the community committees of public safety? Would they be unarmed civilians, armed civilians? I mean, what are you what do you envision in terms of who would

John Reimann
I think that most of the time they would not have to be armed. But there is that potential for it as a potential also

SF Chronicle
As a potential to the arm?

John Reimann
Yes,potentially. But I’m not talking about self appointed vigilantes. I’m talking about a committee that’s elected by and controlled by the members of the community and workers who work in that community. And they would be responsible to them.

SF Chronicle
Would they be elected through an election? Or how would they be through an election?

John Reimann
Yes, exactly.

SF Chronicle
What kind of qualifications would they have to be able to run?

John Reimann
That would be for the people in that community to decide the people that live there and the workers that work there.

SF Chronicle
So they could only be elected by the people within their direct, like council district, for example, or something like that, and also workers who work in that in that community?

John Reimann
I think that the council districts, you see how they’re kind of, they’re like kind of gerrymandered. But anyway, that’s a whole other question that, you know, you’d have to work out those details, once we get the principle established.

SF Chronicle
The principle is and how it how it would be paid for, how it would be paid for how the elections would be held, and so on.

John Reimann
That would be things that would have to be determined, you know, by a movement itself as it develops. The exact details

SF Chronicle
Is there anything I haven’t asked that you would like to add or anything that you think?

John Reimann
Yes, number one, the Howard Terminal Project. And you have a few candidates whosay, “Well, you know, I don’t support it. I support community benefits.” There can be no community benefits for the Howard Terminal Project. And it’s going to kill potentially hundreds of longshore jobs. It’s privatization. It’s going to bring a right bring a right wing privatizer into the heart of Oakland politics. I’m talking about John Fisher. And community benefits is just putting lipstick on a pig.

The other thing that I would urge you to ask, and I’m going to name the candidates, I would urge you to ask them about is this: You have one candidate who has directly expressed extreme anti semitic and racist views. And I mean, he actually is a fascist. I’m talking about Peter Liu. But nobody is directly [raising it]. Well, I’ve raised it, but when he speaks in public, he doesn’t raise it. But when you see his emails, he says it over and over again. And if you want to see his emails, I’ll send them to you. So I think that Peter Liu should be asked about that. How come you said these things in these emails? And are you willing to say them publicly? The other one that I think should be asked directly about things is Ignacio de la Fuente who the coal industry lobbyists have donated $100,000 indirectly for his campaigns through what they call an independent campaign committees or something. And in other words, he directly represents global warming. And again, he won’t ever tell anybody. Well, yes, I’m tied in with the coal lobby. And I defend that and he should be asked about

that. And, again, I’m the only candidate that brings this up.

My comments: As I’ve said, I’m learning a lot through this campaign. One issue I see is this: The interviewer asks me over and over for details on some of what I call for. The clearest example is my call for elected committees of public safety. What I should have made clear is that what I’m calling for is a movement of working class people to organize these changes, not that I can produce them from above. All anybody can do is indicate the general program and then the movement itself will have to work out the details. Asking for the precise details in advance really is an indication of the idea that this can be produced by executive order or something like that. It cannot.