The Advocate

(Image credit: Banksy) In the midst of all the discussions taking place about the problems facing San Leandro in the here and now regarding racism and policing, I think it's important we take a step back to look at part of how that happened. Well, it was on purpose. See, San Leandro was, as far back as the early 1900's, a sundown town. Look through the entry for our city by Bay Area historian, James W. Loewen. His holistic work is available here . What is a sundown town, you ask? Sundown towns, occasionally known as sunset towns or gray towns, is an all-White municipality or neighborhood in the United States that practices a form of racial segregation by excluding non-Whites. This is usually accomplished via some combination of discriminatory laws, intimidation, and violence. As a result, entire sundown counties and sundown suburbs were also created by the same process. The term originally came from signs posted that demanded Black people, and sometimes other racial minority g...

1. People who fail to use their turn-signal, resulting in: cutting me off, causing me to slam on my brakes, missing a light, nearly crashing into cars, going very slow, going waaaay too fast, backing-up traffic, confusing the fuck out of everyone in the immediate vicinity, and otherwise causing unsafe roadside conditions. Solution: USE. YOUR. FUCKING. TURN. SIGNAL. IT IS LITERALLY 1 INCH FROM YOUR HAND ON THE WHEEL. I CAN'T READ MINDS YOU IDIOTS AND I DON'T NEED NO CAR CRASHES AND VEHICULAR MANSLAUGHTER IN MY LIFE. 2. People who forget that sidewalks have lane. I mean, sidewalks have LANES like roads do. They split in the middle for opposites sides of foot traffic. The left-most side is for the fast walkers. The right-most side is for the slow walkers. The middle-most side is for the middle-most people. (Side-note: you also don't stop in the middle of the sidewalk. You go to the far end in order to not obstruct foot traffic. If you stop in the middle someone -- not n...