I feel like I'm implicitly rejecting Oakland by traveling for a year, even though I plan to come back. In this post, I remember why I (yes, we, but I'm trying not to speak for others) moved here.

My love letter to Oakland:

Oakland is an angry, loving, broken, healing city. Oakland is a work in progress. It almost, sometimes works.

Oakland matters because it is a scale model of my children's world. If there's hope for Oakland, and there definitely is, there's hope for the Western world my children will grow old in.

Oakland is a question. Oakland asks: what happens in the third season of the American Dream?

(In chapter 1, Americans were thuggish rebels against Mother England. In Chapter 2, we grew up a bit, freed our slaves but still racist. Now we are out of frontier, facing the poison left from our Manifest Destiny, slowed down, middle-aged, the propwash of our racial and social problems looming. We cant seem to reform our government, so Chapter 3 opens with Trumpland, the progressives forced to submit to the power of conservative America).

Oakland might write the third season's plot. Can we Americans invent a way to live and prosper in tolerant, free harmony, or will Trump's hate-fear vision let the age-old patterns (rich get richer, exploiting the 99%) triumph? If so, might Oakland show America the way?

I see two Oakland narratives today. It is getting rich and tame fast, marching toward an elitist boutiquey wealth narrative. There's no place for the poor, the blue-collar in that narrative... but at the same time, International Boulevard's brutal, run-down ugliness keeps Oakland's feet firmly on the ground for another generation. It will take 50 years for that narrative to finish. That's a lot of time for something magic, unexpected, amazing to happen here in Oakland.

Unlike San Diego, or the sanitized New York, Oakland kindly but firmly forces rich white guys like me to see more of the real world. Living in Oakland as a white male, my privileged bubble of lattes and yoga can't hide.

Oakland makes it real for elites like this: My kids and I are exiting Coliseum BART station. A filthy unshaven crippled homeless white guy in a wheelchair is screaming "Stupid nigger!!" at stunned young black man, Obama-style conservatively dressed, with two little black kids. I feel the shame of the black father, as his kids watch him struggle to respond with dignity, with empathy, but refusing to accept the slap of the racism whip. I can't walk by this. I walk by homeless every day, my empathy exhausted. I contribute too little and avoid conflict, like most white wealthy people, but this. This is unavoidable. In that moment, I find myself agreeing to join some kind of uneasy Coalition of the Willing here in Oakland.

Oakland is just hard enough for me. It's scary, but not so scary that I feel unsafe. It's comfortable, but not so comfortable that I feel complacent. It nudges me toward facing the future of our nation, of Western problems.

Will Oakland as a city hang together or will we fall apart?

Oakland's public schools are flawed. Will they crumble completely? As Oakland sells herself, block by block, to condo developers, will the money make Oakland whole? Will we somehow rise up together, keep the good parts of our Western heritage (our great-grandparents' self-fulfilling vision of a better future, love of Freedom and "Melting Pot" diversity)? Can we make peace across income, religion, race, culture, mix as neighbors?

The demons created by ignorant, thuggish Western pioneers prowl Oakland's streets in broad daylight, right next to the golden angels, working hard for a better future. Each Oaklander is both demon and angel. If there's hope for Oakland, and there definitely is, there is hope for future of urban America.

Oakland's answer might penetrate flyover urban America (Pittsburg, Cleveland, Nashville, Dallas) because Oakland's so obviously imperfect. Oakland has its share of incompetent pandering leaders, dogmatic social justice warriors, thugs and pimps and pushers, anarchists smashing shit for no reason any chance they get, plenty of rich assholes injecting fast food chains and strip malls, just like the rest of the country.

Oakland bridges the elite of Silicon Valley, New York, with the blue-collar reality of Pittsburg, Dallas. Oakland was designed for work, not pleasure. Oakland is mostly concrete and chain-link fences (with enough lovely forests and boutiques and parks to be attractive too). Oakland is towering freeways, 100 years of factories, drab auto body shops, train lines, shipping ports, the stringy muscle of real work. Oakland is the Hamilton line: "immigrants: we get the job done."

In sum:

I love Oakland because it is real.