Hard Times on the San Pablo Corridor

On the night of Monday, August 25th, police descended upon St. Andrews Plaza, a small park in West Oakland and home to many in the area that lack housing. Since the US government began pumping crack-cocaine into the United States which hit Oakland hard in the 1980s, along with lack of access to jobs, the “San Pablo Corridor” and the rest of ‘Ghost Town,’ has been awash in drugs and criminal activity. For elites, such activity is not problematic as long as it is contained in a set area and properly managed and does not spill out into affluent areas or, more importantly, lead to people acting out against their conditions. However, with the passing of the West Oakland Specific Plan (WOSP), city developers and capitalists are now hoping to bridge the condos and retail space of Emeryville with the Downtown Oakland core. Unfortunately for them, the countless efforts over the years to “clean up” the plaza have been unsuccessful so far.

Recently, a group called the San Pablo Corridor Coalition has come up with a plan to replace the homeless population with art and sculpture installations. The coalition was formed in 2009 by businesses and property owners in collaboration with the Oakland Police Department. They then “adopted” St. Andrews Plaza in 2010, and the next year they received a grant of $75,000 to renovate it. Their plan for the plaza was originally approved in the beginning of 2013, and recent updates on their Facebook page suggest the park was to be fenced off for the installations in March
of this year– so it is clear they are running very behind schedule. At no point was even the slightest effort made to involve the people living at St. Andrews in these plans and according to one man at the plaza, the meetings that were held, “Never had anyone from here.”

Interestingly enough, this raid comes just weeks after the city approved the West Oakland Specific Plan, widely criticized as an effort to gentrify the area. One of the four “Opportunity areas” designated by the plan includes the stretch of San Pablo Avenue between downtown Oakland and Emeryville. Along this street, one of the precise targets of development include the block just south of St. Andrews. For the whole block, including the side facing the plaza, the city intends to have townhouses built for the wealthy, with retail stores located at their base. The final draft even mentions the Coalition’s plans for the park, as their “beautification” falls perfectly in line with the gentrification scheme outlined in the WOSP. If the city and its developer cohorts are successful, San Pablo Avenue will become nothing more than another bland shopping district to connect Emeryville to Downtown Oakland.

On August 31st, two days after the West Oakland Specific Plan came into effect, a group of people, including residents of nearby squats, approached St. Andrews Plaza with bags full of food, and pitchers of water and coffee. Simultaneously, a police car pulled up the park and came to a stop. For the next two hours, free beverages and snacks were given out to those who lived there or passed through. The cop’s plan for the afternoon may forever be unknown, but regardless, he drove away just minutes after witnessing the neighborhood solidarity. According to someone living
there, the police hadn’t been back to harass them since the raid, which had ended in a single arrest. But it is only a matter of time until that changes now that one more major hurdle has been overcome in the effort to transform West Oakland into a developers paradise.

Less than a week afterwards, a small group of UC Berkeley students were verbally confronted at St. Andrews Plaza, while doing research to help envision the development of the park. Since 2011, students from UC Berkeley have been enlisted to help redesign the San Pablo corridor for the West Oakland Specific Plan. Believing themselves to be helping the community, these urban design majors began working with students from McClymonds High School in order to gain legitimacy for the upcoming gentrification and displacement. Now that all the parks and encampments along San Pablo are being liquidated, groups of UC Berkeley students and staff are wandering around with clipboards and collectively envisioning how they will alter the urban landscape. The individual plans for each park or “opportunity site” will be drafted through these on-the-ground inspections and visioning sessions. The input from local teenagers is only meant to mask the fact that UC Berkeley’s Center for Cities and Schools is the driving force behind the redesign of San Pablo. With its well documented history of nuclear research, destruction of sacred indigenous sites, and the stifling of dissent, UC Berkeley is not to be trusted to do anything, especially the development of West Oakland.

On the morning of September 2nd, 2014, seven OPD officers surrounded Bishop Plaza, the small park besides the food stamp office on San Pablo and 21st. The cops quickly pushed all of the majority black homeless people out of the plaza, allowing them only a brief amount of time to gather their belongings. Soon after, a Public Works Agency crew arrived and began disposing of everything left behind in the plaza. This white-clad cleaning crew, guarded by seven armed police officers, did not so much as look as the people they were displacing. By the afternoon of the 2nd, the entire park had been cleansed and wrapped in yellow police tape. An OPD officer guarded the park for the next several days, preventing anyone from resettling in the park.

The notice posted on the walls of the plaza reads as follows: THE PUBLIC WORKS DEPARTMENT HAS DEEMED THIS SITE UNINHABITABLE AND ALL PERSONS ARE DIRECTED TO VACATE THIS SITE AND REMOVE ANY PERSONAL BELONGINGS. PUBLIC WORKS AGENCY WILL BE OUT TO CLEAN THIS SITE ON FRIDAY 9/5/14...

As you will notice, the date for the eviction is three days after the actual eviction took place. This happened without any protest from the public, as few knew it was happening. In the days that followed, several of the inhabitants of Bishop Plaza set up their tents and shacks in the nearby area. On Friday the 5th, the Public Works Agency erected a chain link fence around the entire plaza.

Around the same time, a homeless camp that had been set up between the I-980 free way and the BART tracks just north of the 19th St Station was cleared out. All the trees and bushes that provided those living there with some semblance of shelter were razed, and the graffiti that had greeted commuters on BART for years was erased. While many resent the crime associated with these places, and we certainly do not find it desirable, the displacement and homeless people in plazas and the gentrification of neighborhood will not solve these problems. Instead, they will simply be pushed elsewhere, where it does not interfere with the lifestyle of the wealthy- which is how it ended up at places like St. Andrews in the first place.

This entire process is happening throughout Northern California, as more and more people are being pushed into Antioch and Stockton. The eviction of these plazas will not be isolated to select corners either. It will affect every resident struggling to pay their rent or their mortgage as well, and those that aren’t struggling yet soon will. We must support each other against the forces of capitalist development, because it will not solve our problems. We can only do that ourselves.

(From EASTWEST #4)
https://www.indybay.org/uploads/2014/09/22/newa-4.pdf