PUEBLO Re-Builds: Statement from the Interim Board

May 3, 2004
For Immediate Release:
PUEBLO Re-Builds: Statement from the Interim Board


Press Contacts: Walter Riley (510) 451-1422

Jackie Thomason (510) 452-2010



Early this year, members of the former Board of Directors of PUEBLO (People United for a Better Oakland) discovered serious management and fiscal problems in the organization. As a result of this situation, the decision was made to terminate the Executive Director and because of lack of funds, to lay off PUEBLO’s staff. Several meetings were then held with active PUEBLO members and supporters to discuss the way forward for the organization.

In those meetings there was overwhelming support for PUEBLO to continue because it was seen as such an important asset for the community. PUEBLO has been successfully advocating on a number of important community issues for 15 years and in the process has empowered a large number of Oakland’s residents in their struggles for community control of police, affordable housing and economic justice and against environmental and institutional racism in the city.

The PUEBLO community decided that in order to rebuild PUEBLO, the old board members would resign and an interim board be put in place. The mission of the Interim Board is to oversee a complete investigation of the organization’s fiscal and management practices and develop a plan to rebuild the organization. All parties to PUEBLO’s internal and external disputes agreed to the creation of this interim board. Walter Riley, a civil rights attorney in Oakland and a long-time PUEBLO supporter, was initially sought out as a mediator to begin sorting out the most critical issues it faced as an organization. Riley is a trusted member of the larger PUEBLO community and is as an excellent choice to lead PUEBLO’s interim board. The other Interim Board members are Grover Dye, former Deputy Director of Alameda County Mental Health Department, and Anne Weills, a civil rights advocate and board member of Youth Together. Francis Calpotura, PUEBLO Founder and veteran organizer, is an advisor to the board.

The Interim Board has begun its work and sees its most critical tasks as the following:

1) to oversee and complete a thoroughgoing financial audit of the organization;

2) to work with past and future funders to explain what happened and create a plan to turn things around;

3) to put into place a new board of directors for PUEBLO that will over see the rebuilding of the organization;

4) to implement a new management system with strong and transparent management/executive practices for a non-profit of PUEBLO’s size, issues and focus;

5) to provide an assessment to what led to the crisis, highlighting lessons learned for the organization which can be instructive to social justice organizing in general;

6) to develop a short-range and long-range plan to rebuild the organization and use this crisis to make it an even stronger, more committed and powerful organization for Oakland’s working class and people of color communities.


Signed by,

Walter Riley, Grover Dye, Anne Weills