Meeting Explores Oakland Progressive Alliance

Meeting Explores Oakland Progressive Alliance

by Jonathan Nack February 29, 2011

OAKLAND – Fifty local activists met at the Humanist Hall, 390 27th Street, Oakland on the evening of February 24, to explore the possibility of creating an Oakland Progressive Alliance to contest in local elections.

The meeting was initiated by the Oakland Green Party [ http://www.oaklandgreens.org/ ], but attended by registered Democrats, independents, Peace & Freedom, and a number who claimed to be skeptical of electoral politics.

Opening the meeting, Don Mcleay, who was the Greens candidate for Mayor of Oakland in 2010, explained that the Greens were seeking to initiate a public discussion into whether it would be feasible to form a broad alliance with other political, community, and movement forces.

Standing with Mcleay, who is running for the District 1 City Council seat, were three other candidates from the Green Party who are running for office in Oakland: Theresa Anderson is running for City Council At-Large; Randy Menjivar for District 7 City Council; and Vicente Cruz, for School Board District 3.

It' i the largest slate the Greens have ever put up in Oakland, and something of a breakthrough for them in that three of the four are people of color, the significance of which should not underestimated in racially diverse Oakland.

Standing with the four Green candidates was Dr. Terrence Candell, who is running for the District 3 City Council as an independent. Candell, who has been known for his flamboyant presentations, and at times booming voice, appeared quite comfortable standing alongside the four Greens, and contributed throughout the meeting.

Macleay told the assembly that the Greens had no master plan as to what an alliance would look like. He also said the Greens have no problem with uniting with progressive Democrats, independents, or anyone.

“The one principle that has lasted through the years is...we don't take corporate money.” said Macleay.

Mcleay introduced Andrés Soto from nearby Richmond, and the Richmond Progressive Alliance, which has been successful.

Sota gave a brief history of the Richmond Progressive Alliance (RPA), which he aught to know, since he is one of the two people who started it.

Politics in Richmond had for decades been dominated by Chevron, as a major local employer and as source of the big money in local politics and philanthropy. Soto described how the establishment has functioned through the Democratic Party – he said that 77 percent of Richmond voters are registered Democrats, and that money and political power is flows through the Contra Costa Central Labor Council, and the Police and Fire unions.

Sota said the RPA ran it's first two candidates in 2004. One of them was a woman with no political experience, and who had just recently moved into town. Those first two RPA candidates both won, and the woman is now the two term Mayor of Richmond, Gail McLaughlin, (Green).

“You have to work across party lines... Define the issues in the community that create a wedge between progressives and the other guys, who like to call themselves progressives, but we call conservatives,” advised Soto.

Historian Larry Shoup spoke next. Shoup was the first Green Party candidate for office in Oakland when he ran for City Council in 1996. He said the same issues he ran on then, are the same ones facing us today. Shoup said that despite some gains, such as the Just Cause Eviction ordinance, things are generally worse.

“We need to be the voice of principled opposition; putting forward a vision well in advance of the corrupt system. The voice for peace, social justice, and the environment, for saving our planet. For a new Green Deal,” counseled Shoup.

Shoup slammed the Mayor and the City Council for what he called the repression of Occupy Oakland.
“Here we have people trying to help the homeless, to feed them, and house them, and how do they get treated? They get beaten by police. Attacked. It's outrageous,” exclaimed Shoup.

Urban agriculture was an issue Shoup highlighted. He cited a study done at U. C. Berkeley about the potential for small scale agriculture inside Oakland, which found that the city owned about 1,200 acres of land that could be cultivated. http://urbanfood.org/research/inventory.php He said the study found Oakland could grow 5 percent of its food needs, using only publicly owned land, not even considering the much greater acreage of privately owned open lots in Oakland. He pointed out that the City endorsed such a plan many years ago, but has made little progress. In contrast, Shoup claimed that currently, the city of Havana, Cuba, “produces 80 percent of all the food it consumes.”

Andrea Pritchett, of Oakland Cop Watch, said that the police are being used to squash and repress us. Pritchett called for moving towards more community control in the short term, and in the long run, challenging the whole notion of the police.

Pritchett pointed out that many things the police do could be civilianized. She said many functions, such as interviewing witnesses, doing certain investigations, and follow-ups could be done much more cheaply by civilians. “Why should a uniformed officer show up at someones home to deliver forms on domestic violence,” she asked.

Shawn McDougal, of the Community Democracy Project, spoke about a voter initiative his group is doing for a charter amendment to create direct democracy around the Oakland city budget.

“Utlimately, we don't need a few more experts. We need the people to know the expertise that they have amongst themselves. We need people to stop feeling like politics is a spectator sport,” said McDougal.

“We need to practice democracy. We need people to experience democracy, so that they'll demand democracy. People tend to demand what they see in the world is possible,” reasoned McDougal.

Laura Wells' presentation, who was the Green Party candidate for Governor in 2010, who resides in Oakland, recounted how she got arrested trying to get into a televised debate. “They told me I was trespassing at a private party,” said Wells to laughter. “They said I didn't belong there. Well we belong there,” she exclaimed.

Wells said she's exploring running next for State Controller. She said she'd emphasize two key issues in her campaign. “We need a state owned bank, so we can control our money supply,” she said. Wells said such a bank could work with credit unions and cooperatives to direct its use for the people.

“We need to get rid of that two-thirds majority needed for the state to raise revenue under Prop 13,” she said of her second campaign theme.

Wells called for a change in spending priorities from the national to the local level. She said 60 percent of the nation's budget is for the military, and that 60 percent of Oakland's discresionary budget is for the police, and vowed to change both.

Following Wells, the assembly broke into small group to discuss topics such as what would people want from an alliance, and what would it mean to be an alliance? Two documents were offered to help with the discussions. One was about a\the commitment of candidates to a set of principals, and the other was a preliminary platform proposal. Both had been drafted by the Oakland Greens.

After the small groups discussion period, the candidates came back up front to each get a brief word in. Randy Menjivar, the youngest of the candidates, said, “We're not just about talk, we're about being out there in the communtity,”. He vowed to hit the streets of East Oakland and to register voters.

Vincente Cruz, an educator, said, “we've got to talk openly and honestly about the problems we're facing. “We have to start with the kids, we have to start with them in elementary school.”

Theresa Anderson, who works in entertainment management, echoed Cruz's sentiment. “If we don't fix our young people today, we'll have a broken society tomorrow,” said Anderson. She said she focuses on meeting the needs of people in her community, including feeding the hungry.

Dr. Terrence Candell, an educator, said that politicians once elected aren't responsive to us. He propose the alliance require candidates it supports, “to sign a letter of allegiance to the principles and procedures we put down. They should put in writing a commitment to ethics,” said Candell.

It remains to be seen if the Oakland Progressive Alliance will actually get off the ground. No endorsements of candidates were even considered at this meeting.

There surely are many obstacles to overcome for such an alliance to succeed, not the least of which is that the local mainstream leadership of the Democratic Party has a deathlock on political power in Oakland. The Mayor all the Councilmembers are Democrats. While they may collectively be considered quite liberal when compared to politicians in the rest of the country, they are the establishment in Oakland, and have been for decades.

That brings up another problem for this embroyonic alliance. The local politicians of the Democratic Party political establishment likes to call themselves “progressives”, some even are a little in their sympathies. However, in reality, since they've been the political establishment for so long, and since the rest of the country is much farther to the right, it would be more accurate to call them conservatives. They are defending what's left of the social welfare state in Oakland. [Councilmember Nancy Nadel, stands out in this crowd of Democrats in that she actually has a very solid progressive record. She's not running for re-election and the City Council will miss her influence.]

Then there is problem of reaching out to the wave of young activists who are emerging around the Occupy Wall Street movement, as well as others. Noticeably in short supply at the meeting were young activists, the ones who fill General Assembly meetings for Occupy Oakland. The Greens and other progressives contemplating an alliance clearly seek to embrace the Occupy movement - in sharp contrast to Mayor Jean Quan, who certainly still considers herself a progressive, but became a harsh critic, and then the number one opponent of Occupy Oakland, unleashing the Oakland Police Department to brutalize, illegally assault, and fire weapons at non-violent protesters, re-enforced by regiments of cops from all over the area. Whether these young activists want to return the embrace of a new Oakland Progressive Alliance, and spend any energy on electoral politics, is far from clear.

If they can get it together, the proposed alliance could draw on the imense and diverse talent that exists in Oakland. They could also draw on support from a very progressive minded, forward thinking, working class electorate which is pretty pissed off about the direction Oakland, and the whole country is heading.

They will have another thing going for them. With the advent of Ranked Choice Voting, for which the Oakland Greens campaigned for more than a decade, they will no longer face the spoiler and lesser of two evil arguments.

Video excerpts of the meeting can be viewed at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NogNNYwrEE8