“We’re leading the fight for justice and equity so working families can thrive in Oakland.”
For over a decade, Carroll Fife has been fighting for communal wellness and positive changes for the community. She has assumed the role as the city councilmember of Oakland, California for its 3rd district since January 2021, and has gained high regard and acknowledgement from her people. One of the founding members of Moms for Housing, CM Fife centers her vision toward economic resilience, affordable housing, community safety, and environmental justice.
In an interview with ShePolitics, Fife shared issues regarding her pursuit of politics, issues of her current term, hardships of being a woman in the political realm, steps that ought to be taken to achieve gender equality in political representation, and advice for young women aspiring to enter politics. Here are some key takeaways from my insightful conversation with CM Fife.
Can you tell us a bit about your background and what inspired you to pursue a career in politics?
We were in a movement moment in 2019, 2020. I hadn’t expected to run for office when I did even though for years people had asked me to consider it ever since 2014. I was never interested. And it was only until 2019, when several women around me were experiencing several hardships around housing.
I was working on housing problems at the state level, trying to change the laws, and worked on several state-wide campaigns that I even considered it. A woman that I know, a senior citizen, attempted to take her life because she couldn’t find housing, and several of my employees were struggling with homelessness.
So I decided that it [step into the role as councilmember] was something that I needed to do to address: the policies that I believe are super damaging to people who are just trying to live a decent life. Those are some of the things that pushed me: the people around me were struggling and I really wanted to make a difference for them.
What are the key issues you are focusing on during your current term?
“I’m focusing on ways to create economic vitality in my district and in the city. I think that it is important that we look to the future for what Oakland can do with the unique characteristics that Oakland has particularly with the port of Oakland, and our entertainment and food industry.
I’m working to bring film and the film industry to Oakland and making it a hub similar to Los Angeles and New York. So I’m just trying to think of creative ways to build on the amazing things that are already here to bring economic development and increase the economic development in the city.”
What are the major challenges you have faced?
I think the biggest thing I’m challenged by is this generation of social media consumption, where people don’t really check to see what’s true. It’s really difficult to combat a perspective where people are ruled by their emotions and feelings versus what’s factual. And lies move really quickly in this [you know] 90 second or 60 second attention span.
So that’s probably one of the biggest challenges: big industries like the real estate industry and the tech[nology] industry being oppositional to me. They have the money and resources to put out misinformation and disinformation about me really quickly and it has circulated. Like they’ve spent 1 million dollars on campaign ads that say I’ve been trying to release rapists and murderers from prison.
And then I think at the national level, our former president Trump has made it so fashionable to lie, and be really antagonistic to his enemies [like] creating enemies every single day with every sentence that he says. That’s kind of trickling down to Oakland, where everyone’s just fighting each other not realizing that we are all in this together; we all have a stake in our city and our country.
And it’s not helpful to be angry to a point where we can’t have dialogues anymore. So in short, I think the most challenging things are combating lies and finding the maturity to be able to talk through disagreements with people who are on opposite sides of the aisle.
How do you feel your experience as a Black woman has shaped your perspective and approach to politics?
I think my experiences have definitely shaped my approach [to politics], having children, being a mother, a teacher, and caring for children for a long time; I mean I’ve been a mom the majority of my life and that shapes how I feel we should feel about the world. I think we should plan our indigenous inhabitants of this country seven generations forward. So that shapes how I think we should deal with the environment, education, and how we should support our seniors.
All of these I believe are tied into the gender I was born into, and the different eras I’ve lived through since the 70s. And having a daughter, having a son, and seeing the differences they’ve experienced walking their bodies [yeah], all of it impacts me. And I’m also seeing the different ways I’m engaged versus my male counterparts in council. They’ve never experienced this type of verbal aggression [perhaps… although they do get beat up in council meetings], but never the type of gender response that I get, in terms of offline comments, threats of rape, threats of physical violence.
I don’t think anyone on the city council has experienced what I’ve experienced, and I think that it’s directly tied to my race and gender. And that’s unfortunate and tied to the national statistic that women, especially Black women elected officials, experience disproportionate levels of harassment and violence than any other group…I mean I don’t feel limited because I’m a fighter, but I do notice that there is a difference. ”
What steps do you believe need to be taken to achieve gender equality in political representation?
I think we, particularly women, need to do more to mentor young people, young women who want to go in[to] the field. Bring them into offices, like that’s one of the things I do: I bring in young people to my office so that they could spend time with me, come to council meetings, sit with me on the desk, and learn what the job and the work actually is.
But I think we also need to invest in caring professions, and the things that allow women to be more visible and engaged in politics like child-care[affordable child-care], housing, there’s a statistic that author and political scientist Matthew Demond wrote that, particularly for black women,
“Eviction is to Black women, what mass incarceration has been to Black men.”
So if women, particularly women of color, are just struggling with the basics of where they are going to live, it makes everything else difficult. And so the things we need to do are gender equity and politics, which are the things we need to do for women in society in general, which is to have access to housing, affordable health-care, particularly reproductive health, mentorship opportunities for young women, and access to affordable child-care. I think once we have those things, it makes it easy for women to do whatever it is that they want to do more equitably in this country.”
What advice would you give to young women in high school aspiring to enter politics?
I think the most important thing is to understand yourself; do the work that makes you the most happy, what makes you upset, what drives you, because it’s important to be grounded and having self-care practices before going into an environment that’s toxic, quite frankly, and is very anti-women. If you don’t have a sense of who you are and what you need to regenerate yourself, then it makes this job unnecessarily stressful.
So my advice is to know yourself, love yourself, know what you need to regenerate, and find something that you really care about. If you're going to get active, find something that you want to see changed in the world, and become a master at it. So, read books, study, listen to podcasts about issues, whether it’s about climate change, housing, police reform, and become an expert at it and start organizing and talking to people about it.
But always know what you threshold is because a lot of these issues have been issues for generations, and often times we want to see immediate change and you will get burned out if you don’t understand your threshold for how much you can give.
You got to love yourself through all of the work. That’s the most important thing.
Interview by Jessie Chen / Edited by Amy Zhao