Rien talked about the problems they had in The Netherlands with fireworks and the noise, exploded hands and missing fingers that littered his city around New Year's Eve. We've had an ongoing crackdown on fireworks here in the Bay Area for some time now and it's had an effect. You don't hear them the way you once did near the Fourth of July or New Year's Eve, not so much because there's any real danger of a police car turning the corner just as you're sending your rockets up into the night, but rather there's a very real chance your next door neighbor might call the police and have them take you off into the night.

And the police will come if your neighbors call and they will take you off into the night if you're making that kind of racket. That, I think, more than anything else, is what keeps things quiet. The culture has decided fireworks are out, Fourth of July or not, so now you can call the police when you hear them nearby and people will say alright.

So you don't hear so many firecrackers come midnight, New Year's Eve. What you do hear, however, now that the masking noise of arial bombs has gone, is the very distinct sound of pistol fire. There's no mistaking it: A kind of measured crack!-crack!-crack! in the distance cutting off abruptly when the magazine runs out of rounds. I'm happy to be in the house then and think, in a kind of macabre fashion, that any stray bullets will have to penetrate the roof and pass through my neighbors above before they reach me and (ha! ha!) anyway, these guys are shooting into their lawns, right? Something about steel jacketed bullets adding needed nutrients to the soil. Nobody is actually, um, shooting into the air. Right?

Now my logic leaps from shooting into the night to shooting into people in the streets (and the bars and the bedrooms and the sidewalks and the highschool hallways).

Jerry Brown was elected mayor of Oakland last November and he took office on January 4th. I mentioned I shot some pictures at the inauguration speech he gave in front of Oakland City Hall. I suspect they may even have heard of Jerry Brown, "Governor Moonbeam" in the Netherlands. A politician who generates heat between those who admire the man and those who do not. The interesting thing to me was what he said in that speech and the reaction it caused in the audience and in the electorate, who voted overwhelmingly to put him in office.

No more violence. No more shooting in the streets. Every politician's mantra for the last twenty years. And Jerry Brown is saying the same thing, so what? Probably nothing, but for some reason, his presentation elicited a response I've never seen before. He talks about reducing crime through citizen participation and there's been a lot of that in the last ten years. Crime watch neighborhoods with little signs on the telephone polls and, I've learned in living here, neighbors who actually participate.

If you notice the next door neighbor likes to get whacked every Friday night and put a few rounds into the dumpster from his back porch, blowing off steam, well, instead of bottling it up inside you mention it to the police. Or the mayor. Or the crime stopper on the next corner and maybe those Friday night adventures will cease. (Or maybe your next door neighbor, pissed at your meddling in his business, will drop by and kill everybody in your house, which is why you never reported the guy in the first place.)

Rien's journal entry is more serious and somber. Flowers left on the spot where an innocent person was beaten to death, again, in the street. We know about innocents killed in the street. The young girl Polly Klass who was playing in her bedroom with friends and is kidnapped by someone who walks right in through the front door of her home in the early afternoon, abducts her, rapes her, kills her and dumps her body in a ditch. There were flowers there too.

So who knows? The police are a problematic part of Oakland life. Oakland is primarily black and Latino. I can only relate the stories told by coworkers: If you are black and you are stopped in your car by the police you are afraid and you are afraid for very good reason because new car, well dressed, nice manners and all can count for nothing if the gods do not smile. If you are black. That's the perception and, I think, that's often the reality. Too many stories told by too many people who seem not to exaggerate. If this is your reality, when do you call the police?

So Jerry Brown is going to go after violence the same way this town went after fireworks? I don't know. The deeper I get into this, the less I'm convinced, but there was a kind of rustling in that crowd and in this electorate. People are really, really tired of this shit and here is another guy saying lets do something about it and evidently saying it in a way that got people to vote. He's not going to do anything that anyone else has ever done, but that doesn't mean something might not happen in Oakland. The vibes are right for something, I don't know what, but something is going to happen, Brown or not.

Maybe all we're seeing is the gentrification of Oakland: The run down city next to the bay where the rents and prices are lower than anywhere else so lets buy up the real estate, fix up the schools, clean the streets, jack up the rents and drive the residents out. Move the crime out with the population, who cares where as long as it doesn't screw up the commute.

We'll see. I have a big tub of fireworks stored in the back of my closet and a half dozen guns left over from my youth. Don't shoot fireworks anymore and don't go out on the back porch and riddle the neighbors dumpster on Friday nights. Wouldn't kill a burglar if only because it would take me half an hour to find the ammunition (I think I still have some of that, for the shotguns at least, but the Thompson and the pistols, I don't know.)

These have not been times of trust or hope or enthusiasm. Too many miles of bad road for that. But still, bad road or not, I find deep down there's still a flicker left. Which is embarrassing, of course. Another naive fool who actually voted for a man named Moonbeam. I'm not sure I want you to know that.