Politics & Government
Fremont Deserves a Mayor Who Upholds Racial Justice
Justin Sha, Candidate for Fremont Mayor, criticizes Lily Mei for her record on transparency and racial justice.
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On September 30, 2020, the Kentucky attorney general asked to delay the release of grand jury recordings and documents involved with proceedings that failed to indict any officers for the killing of Breonna Taylor.
“The lack of transparency demonstrated in the case of Breonna Taylor occurs regularly across the country, including in the City of Fremont,” said Justin Sha, candidate for Fremont Mayor. “The Mayor, Lily Mei, has made this city less transparent and has emboldened the prejudices in our society against racial justice.”
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On Tuesday, June 2, 2020, the Mayor appeared at a Fremont demonstration for racial justice, and many residents feel that she mishandled the situation and tried to play both sides of the issue.
“For me, it both was and was not about the fact that she refused to kneel,” said Justin Sha. “The Mayor made it about religion by saying that she does not kneel ‘to anyone but God’ but that was never the issue. The issue was about the fact that a black man was murdered by a white police officer, who was eventually charged with second degree murder. Specifically, George Floyd was killed when that office kneeled on his neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds. No one was asking the Mayor to kneel 'to' them, a narrative that she tried to manufacture in later interviews, statements, and conversations with her supporters. Fremont residents were asking their leader, the Mayor of the City of Fremont, to understand their pain—the fact that Black people in this country still get murdered by the police due to institutional racism that operates at the systemic and systematic level. Fremont demonstrators were asking the Mayor to kneel—not to them but with them in solidarity. And that is a very big difference.”
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On Justin Sha’s Facebook page, some residents have provided that Mayor Lily Mei’s “fence straddling” only added fuel to the fire, ultimately invigorating those in the community who are opposed to racial justice.
During the September 29, 2020 presidential debate, President Donald Trump has faced similar criticism in enabling groups like the “Proud Boys” when he declined to make an affirmative statement against racist actions of some of his supporters. The Proud Boys has been described as a right-wing white supremacist hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
In recent months, Justin Sha has been the victim of homophobic attacks by individuals who support the Mayor.
https://www.facebook.com/519219071/posts/10157943812234072/?extid=3Yoy9iyYo5RyZLrW&d=n
The Mayor has yet to make a public statement to publicly condemn such hate speech, which has been propagated by residents who are close supporters and friends of the Mayor’s inner circle. Lucy Shen, candidate for Fremont School Board, has also been the subject of extremely venomous anti-LGBTQ attacks online, especially on the Chinese-language WeChat.
Mayor Lily Mei has faced a lot of controversy about transparency during the 2020 Fremont mayoral election. In 2019, for instance, the Mayor’s administration destroyed decades of Fremont Police Department records before a California transparency law would have made them accessible to public scrutiny. This included documents covering decades of internal affair investigations and citizen complaints, as detailed in a KQED investigative report.
“The Mayor has continued to directly undermine government accountability, public safety, and community trust,” provided Justin Sha. “Whenever she is asked about the increasing crime in Fremont, she simply cites some statistic about Fremont being ranked one of the nation’s safest cities. Those metrics are heavily tied to factors such as murder and do not account for unreported crime, which is a big issue in Fremont. Moreover, it is tone deaf. Rather than listening to resident accounts of car jackings, window breakings, home burglaries, commercial burglaries, and the theft that occurs in plain daylight, she hides behind some arbitrary ranking that says Fremont is a safe city, without actually tackling the issue.”
Justin Sha has also criticized the tendency for city staff to post data in selective ways or to refuse to post data at all. In the past four years, overall crime has increased in Fremont. Fremont saw 2417, 2755, and 2997 thefts in 2014, 2015, and 2016 respectively. But after the Mayor took office, theft has increased to 3545, 3284, and 3408 in 2017, 2018, and 2019 respectively. Commercial and residential burglaries have also increased, and car break-ins have spiked.
“While I have called on the Fremont Police Department to disaggregate their data, we still do not have enough transparency as to victims of crime by ethnicity or age group,” said Justin Sha. “Many Fremont residents feel like they are victims of racially targeted crime, and many advocates know that the impacts of crime are felt disproportionately among persons of color. The truth is that not all of our communities feel comfortable going to the Fremont Police Department, and this is why many feel like our numbers are actually underreported. What I do know is that Fremont does not feel safe for many residents, especially in light of all the reports of robberies and break-ins that have been increasingly happening these past several years, and this has spiked since the onset of COVID-19.”
When asked about his policy, Justin Sha has provided that supports the creation of a task force to improve community relations with the Fremont Police Department. He also supports making Fremont a safer city for all residents by having the Fremont Police Department prioritize addressing crimes that impact residents’ quality of life, such as the spikes that Fremont has seen in commercial and residential break-ins and carjackings. If elected, Justin Sha has stated that he will engage trained health professionals to answer homelessness and public health calls.
Justin Sha attended Fremont demonstrations and kneeled in solidarity with fellow demonstrators for racial justice and equality.
In his post, Justin Sha provided: “We live in a country where Black kids are given ‘the talk’ by their parents. We live in a country where immigrants and minorities are afraid to talk to the police. We live in a country where public servants act in ways to avoid the ire of local police associations, resulting in decreases to transparency and accountability in government . . . We can no longer stand silent as bystanders to racial discrimination . . . We will make sure that Fremont is a safer city for all our residents, both housed and unhoused. We need new vision and bold leadership to effect structural change and create a brighter future for the City of Fremont.”
Justin Sha is a candidate for Fremont Mayor. He works as a VP of a global technology company based in Fremont and teaches business law at Ohlone College, where he also serves on the Ohlone College Foundation Board.
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