It’s not news that the state of Oklahoma frequently treats people like garbage. Last weekend, in a move worthy of the most cartoonish political strongman, Governor Kevin Stitt literally did just that as he swept into Tulsa with “Operation SAFE,” designed to clear state property of the evidence of Oklahoma's failure to support the most vulnerable of our neighbors. Since the weekend, Stitt claims, over 250 tons of “debris and hazardous materials” have been removed from homeless encampments across the city by the Oklahoma Highway Patrol and the Oklahoma Department of Transportation. Presumably by “debris and hazardous materials” he’s talking about people’s belongings.
The humans who are also being removed are being offered nothing more than “a ride”—either to a local social service agency, all of which are overwhelmed already, or to jail. It gets worse: Stitt promises that if these Tulsans return to these sites, they’ll be removed again by state patrols. “And after two or three times, guess what? They’re not going to come set their tent back up because they know it’s going to be taken and thrown in the trash. And they’ll move on to Portland or Los Angeles or San Francisco or somewhere else,” Stitt said.
“Tulsa families deserve to be at peace in their own city,” Stitt said in a recorded video announcing the operation from behind a gleaming, taxpayer-supported desk. Are many of the homeless not “Tulsa families”? Is this not their city too? What about their safety?
Sweeps like this are a well-worn move from the Republican playbook, akin to Trump calling in the National Guard on Los Angeles, more about advancing a political career than about actually governing. Tulsa Mayor Monroe Nichols called out Stitt’s move for what it is: “I think the best way to maybe go to Iowa as a presidential candidate is not to talk about how you stuck it to the Democratic mayor in Tulsa, but to talk about how you got your state off the bottom of every list out there,” Nichols said.
More interested in flexing his muscle than in working with ongoing local initiatives that are actually addressing root causes and pursuing effective and compassionate care, Stitt—in Nichols’ words—“has shown himself again to be an unserious person.”
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The Oklahoma Eagle reported yesterday that “since the sweep began on Thursday, 30 encampments have been removed, nobody has been taken to jail and only one person has been taken to services, according to OHP spokesperson Sarah Stewart.” Furthermore: “Last month, Tulsa City Council approved $6 million as part of a rapid rehousing program that includes individualized wraparound services. Nichols said Monday his staff was preparing to announce the first milestone in a few weeks. But due to the governor’s program, which isn’t tracking people, service providers have to start over.” And, per NonDoc, the Oklahoma Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services has just cut 300 mental health contracts across the state, a move that directly impacts local efforts to create sustainable solutions to homelessness.
“When I took office,” Nichols wrote in a statement, “I inherited a homelessness crisis largely unaddressed by anyone in public office, including our two-term governor, who disbanded the interagency council on homelessness, which had a crippling impact on service providers, leading to what we have today. Instead of spending my time engaging in activities that won't reduce homelessness, I have created the Safe Move Initiative, which aims to get hundreds of people off the streets for good, rather than simply shifting the problem elsewhere. We have a goal to end homelessness by 2030, and we're on the pathway to doing that. I'm going to continue doing the job I was elected to do, and I am not interested in being lectured by someone who has proven time and time again that he only cares to intervene to score political points.”
Who Will Think Of The Tragedy Enablers?
On Monday, The Oklahoman published an op-ed by Jeffrey Myers, a Presbyterian pastor and great-grandson of Tate Brady, lamenting the 1925 suicide of one of Tulsa’s most notorious Klan power brokers by noting that he most likely died “of a broken heart” following the accidental death of his son. Myers asked readers to have compassion for those who, like Brady, were dealing with the difficult and incomprehensible elements of life, like grief, disappointment, regret, and seasonal affective disorder.
Presumably meant to be a supportive and awareness-raising message during Suicide Prevention Month, the op-ed dropped jaws and raised eyebrows around here. The 1921 Race Massacre and its aftermath, in which Brady was directly involved, is significantly more than a regrettable moment in a life that included “a large family, a historic mansion and a vision unfulfilled” and ended in an “untimely, tragic death.”
Drawing attention to the story on her Facebook page, Black History Saturdays founder Kristi Williams wrote, “As a descendant of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, this is insulting! While I understand the pain of losing a loved one and acknowledge that suicide is a serious issue, this piece dangerously erases the truth about who Tate Brady was and the harm he caused in Tulsa…. By publishing this piece without historical context, The Oklahoman has contributed to the very erasure that continues to wound Tulsa and Black History throughout this country.”
On Tuesday morning, The Oklahoman (to its credit, I guess) published a rebuttal to Myers’ op-ed by Michael Mason, former editor of This Land. Readers of The Pickup and This Land already know the fuller story, which Mason concisely summarizes in his piece: that Brady (“a white Tulsa pioneer,” as the headline of Myers’ op-ed calls him) was part of a longstanding campaign of violence in Tulsa, going all the way back to the Tulsa Outrage of 1917 and continuing through his efforts to keep Black Tulsans from returning to and rebuilding in Greenwood after the Massacre.
“None of this forbids grief for a son’s death or mercy for a man who broke under it,” Mason writes. “It does insist on proportion. We can lament a suicide in August 1925 and still say clearly: In 1917, 1921 and the hard years after, Tate Brady stood with those who brutalized workers and dispossessed Black neighbors. That is not a footnote to his melancholy; it is the through-line of his public life.
“To the editors and readers of The Oklahoman: Keep publishing tender pieces about grief. Also publish the unvarnished record. When mercy depends on forgetting, it isn't mercy—it’s myth-making.”
The Blue Whale Is Getting A Makeover
Out in Catoosa, history is being rewritten even at the level of picnic tables. The Blue Whale site is being “renovated” as part of Oklahoma’s larger pre-centennial-of-Route-66 glow-up, complete with a shiny new visitor center, a fire pit, and a playground. What won’t be there? Apparently a bunch of the original stuff that’s made it an organically grown, genuinely kitschy attraction since 1972. Photos from the construction site show the original outdoor tables destroyed and other elements removed to be “refurbished.”
Those little whale tables, man. What price for “progress”? This hurts almost as much as the removal of the iconic cow that’s stood in front of the 15th and Lewis Reasor’s for a literal generation, now probably lying on its side and staring into nothingness in some landfill, discarded as part of the grocery chain’s bland rebranding. RIP to some real ones.
