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Activists Meet to Plot a New Electoral Strategy for the Oakland Left

by Jonathan Nack
Police accountability, affordable housing, good paying jobs, support for organized labor, improving public education, food security, and environment issues form the core of the politics of Oakland's left. Organizers said more than one hundred people from more than forty organizations were present.
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Activists Meet to Plot a New Electoral Strategy for the Oakland Left

by Jonathan Nack

OAKLAND - Over a hundred activists met to seek a path to electoral success in Oakland on Saturday, Nov. 7, at a community forum at the First Congregational Church of Oakland. The city is under tremendous stress from the forces of gentrification, which are transforming huge swaths of it, as a wealthier and whiter population of workers is swarming into it. A city which for decades suffered from neglect by investors, the loss of industry and middle income jobs, now has the eyes of capitalists seeing dollar signs.

It's a problem faced by many cities as a trend that lasted for sixty years of higher paid workers moving to the suburbs has begun to reverse. Young professionals are flocking to urban cores, driving up rents and real estate while changing the political calculus of many cities.

Oakland's government, long dominated by Democrats, is also transforming. Still a relative bastion of liberalism, a new generation of politicians, led by Mayor Libby Schaaf, eager to continue Oakland's hot real estate market, are still Democrats. However, the Black Democratic establishment, and politicians who came of age during the Civil Rights movement and opposition to the Vietnam War, are being steadily swept out of office.

Dan Siegel, of The Oakland Alliance, which sponsored the event, opened by posing the question: “what does it mean to be “progressive”? The rest of the meeting was geared to collectively defining what this group means by a term that has become increasingly vague in a city in which virtually all politicians call themselves progressive.

Standing for racial justice and supporting the Black Lives Matter movement is central. Skyrocketing rents, struggling public schools, and heavy handed, and often deadly, racial profiling by police are hitting Oakland's Black community hard. Cat Brooks of the ONYX Organizing Committee put it bluntly, “Black lives are in trouble in Oakland.” Brooks described how Mayor Schaaf spent her first day in office meeting with police, after making increasing the size of the Oakland Police Department a priority in her campaign. “Libby Schaaf has directed OPD to reduce crime by any means necessary. If you protest police brutality – you are seen as pro-crime,” Lamented Brooks, who is also a leader of the Anti-Police Terror Project.

James Vann of the Oakland Tenants Union described Oakland as a divided city. He used MacArthur Boulevard which runs east to west across Oakland as a dividing point. Below MacArthur Blvd. live “the majority of people in Oakland,” said Vann. Sixty-five percent of Oakland's population lives there, where the average income is $34,000 dollars a year for a family of four. In sharp contrast, the average income above MacArthur Blvd. is $85,000 dollars for a family of four, according to Vann.

Despite having a minority of the population, political power has resided above MacArthur Blvd. It's not just a matter of wealth, according to Vann, but also voter turnout. Above MacArthur Blvd., eighty to ninety-five percent of people vote; while below MacArthur, only fifteen to twenty percent vote, explained Vann. If the majority, residing below MacArthur is to better represented in local government, both voter registration and turnout there will have to dramatically improve.

Vann also pointed out that rents in Oakland have increased by fifty percent since 2000. “When units are vacated, rent on them goes up by thirty percent,” he said.

Millie Cleveland and Jack Bryson of the Service Employees International Union, Local 1021,which represents city employees, presented together. Cleveland emphasized the campaign to increase the minimum wage in Oakland to $15 dollars an hour. Beyond that, Cleveland identified two other concerns. “There are a great many part time temporary workers working for the city,” she said. The propensity for the city to contract out city services to private companies was also identified by Cleveland. Outside contractors are not unionized, don't have contracts, and pay less, according to Cleveland. Cleveland also said that, “SEIU is educating its members to stand up for the entire working class, not just the bargaining unit.”

Jack Bryson, who works for Oakland's Housing Authority, said that even full-time city employees whom are paid at a middle income, are being pushed out of Oakland. “Most union workers can't afford to live in Oakland. Gentrification is pushing Black and brown people into East Bay suburbs,” said Bryson.

Trish Gorham of the Oakland Education Association said that needs of Oakland's primary and secondary students are not being met. “There's a narrowing and standardization of curriculum which is designed for standardized tests,” Gorham told the audience.

Margaret Gordon spoke about environmental concerns, particularly environmental racism. Gordon, a founder of the West Oakland Environmental Indicators Project, spoke about the current struggle against the development of a coal export terminal at the Port of Oakland. This struggle marries the fight to reduce reliance on fossil fuels – coal being the dirtiest – and community concerns over pollution. West Oakland has long had high incidents of cancer. Environmentalist and community activists recently won the support of the International Longshore and Warehouse Workers Union and forced the city council to order additional study of the proposed project's environmental impact.

Police accountability, affordable housing, good paying jobs, support for organized labor, improving public education, food security, and environment issues form the core of the politics of Oakland's left. Following the presentations, there were small group discussions on these issues. Then, each offfice up for election in 2016, and the incumbent in that position, were evaluated by the group as a whole.

Organizers said more than one hundred people from more than forty organizations were present. There was an impressive turnout of longtime activists, including many Black and white activists. The city's Latino and Asian American communities were not nearly as well represented, nor were young activists, nor anarchists.

There are many challenges ahead, including the selection of candidates, as no one announced their candidacy at the forum. Given it's early stage of development, how much impact this new formation will have on the 2016 elections remains to be seen. The next step will be taken at another public forum scheduled for December 5th.

For more information, contact the Oakland Alliance at: http://oaklandalliance.org/ and https://www.facebook.com/OakAllianceCA
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Photo credit: Jonathan Nack
Forum on a New Electoral Strategy for Oakland
First Congregational Church of Oakland, CA
November 7, 2016
§James Vann of the Oakland Tenants Union
by Jonathan Nack
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Photo credit: Jonathan Nack
Forum on a New Electoral Strategy for Oakland
First Congregational Church of Oakland, CA
November 7, 2016
§Millie Cleveland and Jack Bryson of SEIU Local 1021
by Jonathan Nack
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Photo credit: Jonathan Nack
Forum on a New Electoral Strategy for Oakland
First Congregational Church of Oakland, CA
November 7, 2016
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With Carol Fife, Co-chair of The Oakland Alliance standing behind her.

Photo credit: Jonathan Nack
Forum on a New Electoral Strategy for Oakland
First Congregational Church of Oakland, CA
November 7, 2016
§Veteran activists in attendance
by Jonathan Nack
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Phil Hutchings, Wilson Riles, Jr., and Laura Wells attended.

Photo credit: Jonathan Nack
Forum on a New Electoral Strategy for Oakland
First Congregational Church of Oakland, CA
November 7, 2016
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