A black activist has renounced his beliefs about defunding the police and wants to save his crime-ridden hometown of Oakland from what he calls “fake progressives.”
Seneca Scott, 44, was a self-described “lefty.” In 2020, he ran for elected office in Oakland, calling for “shifting budgets away from police” and a “complete overhaul of how we want our communities to interact with law enforcement.”
But now he is fiercely opposed to what he calls the “woke left” and “fake progressives,” who he says are “dismissive of black and brown people.”
Scott told The Free Press that he changed his mind when he realized ‘how deep the damage was’ and that ‘the people we had appointed were just complete fraudsters’.
Last year he decided to run for mayor after his own run-in with police, when he was arrested for defending himself against a knife-wielding thief in his own garden.
Scott ran for mayor after his own brush with police when he was arrested for confronting a knife-wielding thief in his yard
Crime has skyrocketed in Oakland, with assaults, robberies and rapes on the rise
On October 30, 2021, around 10 p.m., Scott discovered two men trying to steal the water heater from his yard. He went downstairs to confront them, taking his gun for protection, and discovered that they had set up a tent and left drugs on his picnic table.
He told them to put the boiler down and one of them pulled a knife. Scott showed them his gun and again told them to put the water heater down.
At this point one of the men fled, but the other stopped a police car and told them that Scott had pointed a gun at him. Police arrested Scott on charges of brandishing a weapon and carrying a concealed firearm.
The charges have all since been dropped.
Scott shared images of him with baby goats in a community garden in the run-up to the election
Scott said: ‘It’s a shame that we are now forced into self-help. That same evening, an hour earlier, my neighbor was shot in the face while holding his baby. That was on the same street, eight houses away.’
Since Oakland officials have cut $18 million from the police budget to pay for Social Security benefits in 2021, Scott says crime has gone through the roof.
He said: ‘There is no rule of law. Our crime labs aren’t working. We need to go out and outsource to other places to do DNA testing or fingerprint testing. And sometimes they deny us.
He says police response time to crime is “insane” and it can take “45, 50 minutes” for police to arrive.
Police data shows the city now has the second-worst 911 response time in California, while homicides rose 79 percent from 2018 to 2022.
This year, violent crime is up 22 percent over last year, motor vehicle theft is up 51 percent and theft is up 36 percent.
Scott said there is a huge problem with ‘drug addicts and drug tourists’, adding: ‘Anyone in a position to do so is making an exit plan. It’s like you’re in a country that’s about to go to war and people are looking at it: how are we going to get out of it?’
A Cornell graduate, Scott has activism in his blood — his father was the wife of Martin Luther King Jr., Coretta’s cousin.
He grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, but his family left the inner city to escape the crack epidemic. In 2012 he moved to Oakland.
He lost his 2022 mayoral campaign but is now focused on forming a new party filled with nonpartisan political candidates.
He is particularly opposed to current Oakland officials and its mayor, Sheng Thao, who has faced fierce opposition to her crime policies, including defunding the police.
Oakland’s NAACP leaders called for a state of emergency in August due to rising crime rates, attributing it to the defunding of the police movement and Price.
Scott says Oakland officials have failed to clear city’s encampments, fueling crime and drug problems
Scott shared a video of a trash-filled encampment in Oakland on Twitter, saying, “Remember when @carol_fife claimed in February that she could “quickly clear out any encampment” once Sheng took over the mayor’s seat? What happened to that?’
He says he doesn’t do left-right politics anymore, adding, “The Democrats wrongly demonize anyone who is a white man, or say that all that is wrong with society is white supremacy.” It is nonsense.’
Instead, he says, “I’m post-partisan. I don’t go left or right. I go up and down. You either have integrity and solutions or you don’t.’
Through his nonprofit Neighbors Together, Scott plans to find 100 non-traditional candidates like him and help them get elected to positions on city councils and boards across America.