Is Brown Up to the Job?

A revolution is about to be launched on the east side of San Francisco Bay, one with the potential to create a new vision of metropolitan governance and the ways in which communities relate to the global economy. But its success will depend on the ability of former Gov. Edmund G. “Jerry” Brown Jr. to translate an inchoate philosophy of local democracy, economic self-sufficiency and spiritual renewal into globally related economic and political programs and, just as important, to establish the institutions necessary to implement and sustain those programs.

On Jan. 4, Brown will become mayor of Oakland after having won two victories at the polls. Last June, he avoided a runoff in a crowded field that included three influential African Americans and the city’s most powerful Latino leader. Then, last month, Oakland voters gave him a vote of confidence by overwhelmingly approving a measure that will significantly increase the powers of his new office.

But the two-time governor and three-time presidential candidate has said surprisingly little about what he plans to do after he takes office. His campaign slogan--”Oaklanders first”--and platform--jobs, safe streets and school reform--were remarkably unremarkable. Yet, there’s no denying that he strongly believes that the first step Oakland must take is to establish a sense of community. Toward that end, he has conducted a series of house meetings designed to bring neighbors together and give them an opportunity to communicate their concerns to him and to each other. But aside from boosting his popularity, the civic talkfest has yielded few clues to how Brown will manage Oakland’s relationship with the global economy.

Brown has largely avoided discussions about international issues and globalization, though nearly all the challenges that Oakland faces are affected by the increasing ease with which capital, goods, ideas, diseases, people and just about everything else move back and forth across the city’s borders. This is now true for nearly all major metropolitan cities, but the impact of globalization on Oakland is magnified, for three reasons.

* The Port of Oakland, which handles the bulk of all trade coming to and through the Bay Area, is a critical source of jobs and tax revenues, a key factor in the local transportation equation, a source of environmental pressure on the Bay and neighborhoods in West Oakland, a major player in downtown development and a potential magnet for a host of shipping and trade-related businesses.

* Immigrants, mostly from Mexico, the Philippines and greater China, are the fastest-growing segment of the city population. They are contributing a substantial amount of the capital and entrepreneurship that are beginning to revitalize the local economy; are creating a growing web of cultural and economic connections between Oakland and their homelands; are changing the city’s ethnic political balance; and are generating greater demands on public schools and social services.

* That the Bay Area regional economy is rapidly becoming a major center of the world economy puts added pressure on Oakland to orient globally. Current Mayor Elihu Harris, who chairs the Greater Oakland International Trade Center, is a leader in efforts to develop trade strategies for the region, and Oakland is the home of Baytrade, the Bay Area’s leading trade-promotion organization.

Brown’s known views on globalization seem ill-suited for the task ahead. In his radio commentaries, he often complained that trade serves to undermine the social fabric of America by creating pressures to reduce wages and degrade working conditions and environmental standards to the lowest common denominator. For these reasons, he strongly opposed the North American Free Trade Agreement and the Clinton administration’s decision to bail out Mexico during its peso crisis.

In one commentary, he warned that “as more and more of the focus for our money is Third World countries and foreign countries of one kind and another, we’re losing power over our own destiny. We’re losing the control of the United States and becoming more and more linked into crises in countries like Mexico. What is going on is getting increasingly more dangerous, more unjust and more unsustainable.” More recently, in a just-published book of his radio interviews, Brown seems to endorse the views of activists David Korten, Helena Norberg-Hodge and Vandana Shiva, who believe that free trade and multinational corporations are largely responsible for many of the world’s current ills and injustices.

Many Oakland residents, especially African Americans, agree with Brown’s critique of globalization. Most inner-city residents of Oakland have yet to experience the economic gains promised by the champions of unfettered trade and investment. The main beneficiaries of the city’s large investments in a world-class port and in a trade- and investment-promotion infrastructure live in Fremont, Piedmont, Pleasanton or Orinda. For longtime Oaklanders, the rise in immigration associated with globalization has altered the city’s ethnic and political balances in undesirable ways.

At times, Brown has hinted that he would cut the number of local connections to the global economy. That is clearly the preferred strategy of some activists, who advocate that communities establish their own currencies in order to delink their economies from the global one. It is also the position most consistent with Brown’s views on ecology and sustainable living. But, as he proved while governor of California, when he was forced to find ways to keep foreign companies from leaving the state because of a unitary-tax law, Brown could be a pragmatist, too.

He no doubt desires to turn Oakland into a showcase of a new urban model. Because of his personal notoriety, growing international interest in the Bay Area and the presence nearby of UC Berkeley and academics eager for a new case study, developments in Oakland will be closely watched, analyzed and, if successful, imitated.

To realize Oakland’s potential, Brown will have to think more systematically and talk more openly about how to translate his communitarian impulses into a workable model of governance. He is not alone in believing that the nation-state paradigm is teetering and that new and more flexible forms of governance, drawing on the growing vitality of civil society, are needed. Moreover, many of the ideas that Brown is drawn to, such as Martin Buber’s call for the creation of a global commonwealth based on “a community of communities,” have considerable appeal beyond the borders of Oakland. But the most important way that Brown and Oakland can lead is by doing.

For starters, Brown should commission a review of the city’s current and past efforts--and the organizations sponsoring them--to increase exports and attract foreign investment. Over the past decade, Oakland, like most major cities in the United States, has spent a significant amount of local, state and federal funds on trade-promotion campaigns. If these efforts have yielded substantial returns to Oaklanders, Brown should acknowledge and encourage them. If not, he should either refocus or end them.

Second, Brown should call for a citywide summit on Oakland and its global connections. Among the items on the agenda should be a discussion of how to prepare the city’s African Americans to take advantage of the international networking opportunities created by globalization, and how to get companies with large and growing international operations to use their global reach to help the city create more broadly based, mutually beneficial, development-oriented relationships with other cities around the world.

Is Brown up to the task? Many people outside Oakland doubt it. How can Brown’s often shrill and uncompromising attacks on trade and multinational corporations be reconciled with the city’s overriding need to connect better with the global economy? Yet, Brown’s avoidance of things global in his campaign may indicate that he is already rethinking past views. Also encouraging are reports that he is talking to Asian American business leaders about Asia.

Two forces are likely to determine the direction of his administration: the needs of Oakland and Brown’s desire to be recognized as a visionary, effective leader. Brown can satisfy both if he develops a municipal strategy of global engagement rather than a futile effort to unplug Oakland from the world.*