Carroll Fife, who are you performing for?
Oakland City Councilmember Fife is a politician trapped between activist theater, collapsing influence, and the reality that Oakland voters are no longer buying her performance.
Carroll Fife, who are you performing for?
Surely you don’t believe the stuff coming out of your own mouth. We know this because you constantly contradict yourself and say different things to different audiences. Many have witnessed it.
Your latest statement during the vote over the appropriate punishment for a man and his wife who cut down a bunch of OAK TREES for damn sake, is lazy, even for you:
“We’re talking about land that has been colonized — who is the authority that gives permission on stolen land?”
—Oakland City Councilmember Carroll Fife, May 5, 2026
What does that even mean?
You’re an elected official — a City Councilmember. Surely you understand exactly which authorities grant permission, because you’ve personally voted to block projects via CEQA and other extortion-esque regulatory mechanisms, including projects by Black-owned developers.
You can’t simultaneously wield governmental power and then pretend the concept of governmental authority is meaningless when it’s politically convenient.
So who is the performance for?
You used to at least pretend to care about the environment, so surely you’re no longer performing for the environmentalists either, because many of us are PISSED about these trees.
You, like Barbara Lee and Zac Unger, took sides with Sheng Thao over the people during the recall, we haven’t forgotten that. Are you performing for the old white-hill hippie crowd that backed Thao too? After all, District 1 was the only district that didn’t vote to recall Thao.
There was a racist leaked memo from Sheng Thao’s office where you were the ONLY name mentioned twice.
“CM Fife can outreach to NAACP - use BP [Black People] as tokens”
Were you performing for Sheng Thao then? It certainly looked that way.
Because the NAACP wanted no part of you or her, and it’s simply part of Oakland history now that many people viewed Thao’s leadership as a failure. Much of the Black community, in particular, wanted her gone.
So it’s fair to ask: who exactly were you performing for? Because it clearly wasn’t the majority of Oakland voters — your own district voted in favor of the recall as well.
Or is this about the $4 million that flowed into your nonprofit after you were elected? The same organization that still hasn’t filed a 2020 Form 990. What was that money for? Who gave it to you? Are you performing for them?
Surely it’s not your District 3 constituents you’re performing for — the same people who have begged for leadership, only to get full voicemail boxes and handoffs to staffers you’ve publicly claimed are “smarter than you.”
Your district looks terrible. It’s much worse than when you took office in 2020, promising change.
Ralph Bunche burned down and you didn’t say a word. Nothing is ever your fault, and somehow every situation gets reframed into YOU being the victim.
But how does a perpetual victim mentality empower anyone else?
At some point, leadership requires accountability, not just rhetoric. And the reality is, many people simply don’t believe in your vision anymore.
So……who are you performing for while the West Oakland Senior Center remains closed? While desperate mothers and children in the towers still feel ignored and call you “Phony Fife”? While constituent emails pile up with excuses, deflections, and a refusal to take accountability?
When you said you came to Oakland to “burn it down,” who exactly was that statement meant for?
Was it for the mostly white Black Bloc and DSA radicals who romanticize riots while small businesses downtown get destroyed? Was that a performance for them?
When you lied and told Black and Brown housing providers — people with white gentrifiers living rent-free in their homes — that you would help them, only to later ignore them and instead support those squatters and activists, who exactly was that performance for?
Which, frankly, makes sense to many of us because you yourself rose to political prominence through a housing-squatting movement.
So were you performing for the white gentrifiers who mocked those Black and Brown housing providers while they lost generational wealth — all while those same activists bought Teslas, went on vacations, and even brazenly rented those homes out themselves?
After all, the door knockers and activists in your “Care 4 Community” fan club are mostly young white gentrifiers.
You see, I’m genuinely trying to make YOU make sense.
Because your movement is collapsing around you. Cat Brooks and her Anti Police Terror Grift Club have zero influence. You have the worst voting attendance on council, missing 19% of votes. You held up paving potholes for years with the same performative racialized stunts — everything you do fails.
You can barely get votes through council anymore, your old squad is history, Nikki Bas failed forward to Board of Supervisors, Kaplan out of office but still leeching taxpayers and your buddy Sheng Thao was recalled. We clearly out organized you and took away your power.
You followed the mayor around like a puppy for months, but she’s apparently keeping you at arm’s length. She avoids controversial votes and stays far away from anything politically messy — crafty old bird that she is.
So I’m pretty confident you’re not performing for her.
Which brings us back to the same question: who exactly are you performing for? And why are you still here?
Maybe the right thing to do is resign and move on. Don’t make Oakland wait until 2028. We don’t need anyone here to “burn it down” anymore — people are exhausted enough trying to survive the damage that’s already been done by your ilk.