Sal Monella

Jaime Omar Yassin is a domestic abuser who beats his wife. He has spent years building a public image as a fierce independent journalist running The Oakland Observer and a principled activist fighting state violence. That image is a lie. Multiple accounts have documented that Yassin has physically assaulted his own wife. The same man who lectures Oakland about police brutality and accountability has repeatedly used violence inside his home. This is not a side issue. This is who he is. Yassin has long operated as a radical ideologue embedded in Oakland politics. He writes for Mondoweiss and Electronic Intifada pushing extreme anti-Zionist positions. He helped organize Block the Boat actions to shut down the Port of Oakland. He was deep in Occupy Oakland and later turned on parts of the movement when they didn’t meet his purity tests. He uses The Oakland Observer to attack police funding, surveillance contracts, and city budgets while advancing the same intersectional, anti-imperialist framework he pushes in his internationalist writing. All of this happens while he maintains a record of beating his wife. Oakland has already dealt with one corrupt operator in Sheng Thao who treated public power like a personal tool. Yassin represents the activist-journalist version of the same rot. He uses the cover of independent media and social justice language to push radical politics while his private conduct shows the same disregard for accountability he claims to demand from everyone else.