Almost immediately after District Attorney Pamela Price took office last January, organizers in Alameda County began working to recall the “progressive” prosecutor, saying her policies were a threat to public safety.
Michael Collins is the Color of Change PAC Director, he says Price’s policies aren’t actually impacting crime rates.
“I think if you look at the numbers, she is prosecuting more cases than her counterpart in San Francisco. The difference between the two is that one of them talks tough on crime and was elected as part of a disingenuous recall campaign, and the other person is reform-minded,” Collins says.
Collins says the recall movement is part of a larger, national trend targeting progressives.
“What we've seen nationally, especially with black women prosecutors, are far right organizations, you know, MAGA Republicans, really using reform-minded prosecutors as a punching bag.”
But this is hard to tally with some of the faces behind the recall movement. Brenda Grisham and Florence McCrary are African-American women, whose sons were killed in Oakland. They've been outspoken about their frustration with DA Price’s more “lenient” policies.
Here’s McCrary: “I'm not a right wing person. I am just a citizen who wants justice for their child who was an innocent victim. We are not aligning with any political party whatsoever to deal with justice.”
So far, the recall movement has raised more than a half-million dollars — with most of that money coming from people who work in real-estate and tech. They need to gather about 80,000 signatures by March to trigger a fall recall election.
