[Candidates who pledged to make Oakland work for everyone swept
the November elections. They face two huge hurdles to making that
real: proposals to close more schools, and to build a stadium plus
luxury housing at the Port of Oakland.]
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CAN OAKLAND’S NEW LEADERS SAVE ITS SCHOOLS AND PORT?  
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Ken Epstein, Kitty Kelly Epstein
January 30, 2023
Convergence
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_ Candidates who pledged to make Oakland work for everyone swept the
November elections. They face two huge hurdles to making that real:
proposals to close more schools, and to build a stadium plus luxury
housing at the Port of Oakland. _

Students and parents protesting the planned closure of Roots
International Academy at the Oakland school board meeting in January
2019 which later helped galvanize the city against school closings, a
central issue in the teachers strike a month later.,

 

Progressive-leaning candidates swept the November 2022 local races in
Oakland, CA and they take office at a flashpoint in the Black and
Latinx working-class town’s decades-long struggle against
gentrification. The breadth of the victories caught even the activists
who worked on the various campaigns by surprise: winning the mayor’s
race by a razor-thin majority, capturing all three city council seats
that were on the ballot, electing an outspoken criminal justice
reformer as District Attorney to serve all of sprawling Alameda County
(which includes Oakland), and creating an anti-austerity majority on
the Oakland Board of Education for the first time in nearly two
decades.

With little opportunity to savor its victories, the city’s new
leadership must confront two central issues that define the moment:
defense of the city’s public schools against closure and
privatization, and the push to ignore resident needs while
accommodating development interests. This includes ceding public Port
of Oakland land to a private developer to build 3,000 luxury condos, a
mall, and a new stadium for the Oakland A’s baseball team. The
proposed project threatens to cripple the Port of Oakland, a major
economic engine of Northern California.

The city’s new leaders have a chance to pivot towards solutions that
work for the majority of residents, but they’ll need the backing of
ongoing organizing to do so. In a city that has long stood as an
international center of resistance—from the Black Panther Party
through Black Lives Matter—this is not out of reach.

Development schemes and school closures

Today’s Oakland has a relatively unknown history. In the 1920s it
was the Northern California headquarters of the KKK, which had its
office on the city’s main thoroughfare. Then Oakland experienced
migration from the South, which brought Black families whose children
included Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, founders of the Black Panther
Party for Self-Defense; Sylvester Hodges, Oakland’s most effective
and anti-racist school board member; and the family of Paul Cobb,
activist and owner of the Oakland Post newspaper. These and other
militant individuals, and the organizations they built, reshaped
Oakland’s racial dynamics, and by the late 1970’s, the Black
community had real influence in the city.  

But in 1999 Jerry Brown took office as mayor. In his eight-year
tenure, he aggressively pursued expensive development projects,
working closely with powerful State Senator Don Perata. The two also
maneuvered to close public schools in order to move in more affluent
folk who could pay for the projects their developer-supporters wanted
to build.

What do school closures have to do with taking over Oakland for
development?

A 2021 Stanford study found that the one thing that is a consistent
factor in gentrifying a neighborhood is closing a Black school. The
extent to which anti-Black racism dominates America is starkly
demonstrated by this study. The combination of low test scores and the
reality of anti-Blackness leads affluent families to conclude
immediately that a neighborhood with a Black school is not for them.

A consistent factor in gentrifying a neighborhood is closing a Black
school.

Two prior attempts to take over the Oakland school district foundered
on the determined resistance of Oaklanders, under the leadership of
Sylvester Hodges. But in 2003 State Senator Perata, using his muscle
in the legislature, made sure the third attempt did not fail: the
state put the Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) into
receivership.

Takeover advocates argued that the district was in debt $37 million.
Other districts had been allowed to use their own construction money
as collateral for their debts. Oakland was not. As part of the
takeover legislation, Perata saddled the district with a $100 million
loan, debt that Oaklanders did not need or want and would have no
control over spending. The state administrator, Randy Ward, had plenty
to spend on outside developers, contractors and consultants, including
billionaire real estate developer Eli Broad, who was allowed to pilot
his neoliberal national superintendent training academy, invading
Oakland with his trainees as state administrators and senior staff. 
 

There was opposition to the takeover, to be sure, but it was
ineffective.Tthe teachers’ union president at the time advocated for
the takeover, with the unprincipled argument that control by the state
would be better than the local school board.

In the subsequent 20 years, a sequence of state administrators and
trustees, along with the state-appointed Fiscal Crisis and Management
Assistance Team [[link removed]] (FCMAT), have kept the
schools in perpetual upheaval, misnamed “school reform,” and
forced the closure of many schools, supposedly to achieve the ever
elusive and receding goal of fiscal stability.  

FCMAT, a state-funded non-profit agency that operates with no public
accountability, had been charged with one thing—approving the
budget. Yet $100 million later, FCMAT still claims that the budget is
out of whack despite its constant surveillance, advice, and threats of
vetoing local decisions. Even if the agency’s assignment had been
legitimate, which it wasn’t, its performance was clearly a massive
failure.

However, the “reform” project of Perata and developer friends met
its actual objective, which was not improving Oakland’s budget, but
playing with millions of state taxpayers dollars to close existing
schools and create others more appealing to the newcomers moving into
the developers’ creations. Since 2000, Oakland has created 39 new
charter schools, giving it one of the highest rates of charters in
California. A clear, sometimes overwhelming majority of students
displaced
[[link removed]] by
the shuttering of public schools have been Black.

Brown, Perata, and more recently Mayor Libby Schaaf (a Brown ally)
facilitated the construction of expensive housing that literally no
one currently living in Oakland can afford.  In Alameda County a
low-income family of four has between $54,000 and $86,300 a year.
About half of all residents are in this category. In 2021, Oakland
developers built 180 units that could be afforded by this group and
2,500 that could not.

Oaklanders have slowly become conscious of the relationship between
the new condos they can’t afford; rents on their old apartments that
they also can’t afford; and the loss of schools that they and their
parents once attended.   

Choosing finance and real estate over production

Economist Michael Hudson (The Destiny of Civilization) describes
“finance capitalism’s self-destructive nature.” Oakland could be
the poster child for this assertion, as it barrels towards sacrificing
its thriving and growing Port to build 3,000 luxury condos, a mall,
and a new stadium for the Oakland A’s at the Howard Terminal. The
project is spearheaded by the A’s billionaire owner John Fisher, a
Trump-supporting Republican.

The importance of the Port of Oakland to the local and regional
economy is hard to overestimate. As the ninth-busiest container port
in the U.S., it loads and discharges more than 99% of the
containerized goods moving through Northern California, especially
serving as a gateway to the world for the export of California’s
agricultural products. Together with two other California ports,
Oakland moves about half of the nation’s total container cargo
volume, according to official Port figures
[[link removed]].

The Port has also continued to employ new generations of the African
American families who moved up from the South during the Great
Migration. It has been a community anchor as a stable source of
family-supporting jobs, thanks to the relatively high wages the
workers have been able to win through their union, International
Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 10.

Mayor Schaaf and port commissioners she appointed said repeatedly the
55-acre Howard Terminal is unnecessary for the viability of the Port,
arguing that the property has not been used for cargo vessels for
nearly a decade. But maritime officials say the land is crucial as a
staging area where cargo-bearing trucks wait for loading and
unloading.“Howard Terminal is currently operating at 100% capacity.
It is currently a critical component of the fluidity of the cargo
flows into and out of the Seaport, primarily acting as a near dock
container staging area,” Port of Oakland Maritime Director John
Driscoll wrote in a 2019 memo. “The importance of this continues to
be dismissed as ‘truck parking’ by those who don’t understand
the logistics of our maritime business.”

Maritime officials say the Howard Terminal [site of the proposed
stadium/housing complex] is crucial to Port operations as a staging
area where cargo-bearing trucks wait for loading and unloading.

With the viability of the Port at stake, negotiations between the city
staff and the Oakland A’s development team continue behind closed
doors. Though details of the development proposal and negotiations
have not been made public, the Council has received an update from
City staff that there is nowhere near enough money to finance the
project. The cost to the public would “significantly exceed the
A’s previous estimate,” Assistant City Administrator Elizabeth
Lake wrote in a September 2021 informational memo. How much that cost
will increase and how the city plans to pay for it is unclear, not to
mention the cost to local taxpayers and the crippling impact on the
City’s ability to fund other desperately needed infrastructure for
the next 45 years.

Meanwhile, Oakland residents have real transportation concerns that
the city does not have the funds to address. So, it is not surprising
that many Oakland residents, including baseball fans, are wary of the
project. December 2021 poll showed that 46% of Oakland residents did
not support using public money for this project, compared to 37% who
did. The poll also found that even among A’s fans, who comprise a
53% majority of the electorate, support was tepid at best.

An alliance of businesses that utilize the Port, supported by Port
workers and community groups, is fighting to stop the developer’s
encroachment on their ability to ship products around the world in a
fast-growing global economy. Industrial uses and residential uses are
incompatible in any space. Clearly the residents of wealthy condos
will not be content adjacent to a 24-hour-a-day dirty, noisy Port.

Dems, developers, and the building trades

It goes without saying that Republicans generally support developers,
but most of the Democratic Party leadership also supports both
developers’ projects, including Fisher’s, and the denial of the
right of Oakland residents to elect a school board that is able to
make decisions without the threat of veto by FCMAT or a trustee.
Governor Gavin Newsom, Attorney General Rob Bonta, State Senator Nancy
Skinner and others have consistently rejected the pleas of Oakland
parents and teachers to relieve the Oakland Unified School District of
the debt from the $100 million loan foisted on them in 2003. In one
legislative trick after another they have ensured that the district
could not be liberated, and the main educational action of the
agencies they direct have been to insist on closing more and more
schools. None of the districts treated in this way are in affluent
places like Moraga or Piedmont.

Under political and legal
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Attorney General Bonta announced in November 2022 that his office
would investigate the possible discrimination
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in Oakland’s school closure plan.

On the development side, these Democrats have worked closely with
Fisher in his effort to take over a chunk of public Port property.
They have passed new legislation; provided funds and grants; fiddled
with environmental regulation; and on and on.

Operating on their side is the mainstream press supporting corporate
candidates and corporate explanations in their reporting. And then
there are the construction trades, which operate as part the growth
coalition. The building trades spend money on candidates who will
uncritically line up to support developers’ projects in order to
obtain jobs for their members. Most of the members of the trades do
not live in Oakland, and these unions continue the racially
discriminatory membership policies that exclude Black people from
getting work in construction. (Dept. of Race and Equity Report)

Progressive push-back

The Oakland Education Association (OEA), as part of the nationwide
“Red for Ed” wave, struck for seven days in February 2019.
Parents, teachers, and community members packed school board meetings
and twice occupied schools to prevent their closure. OUSD proposed
closing 19 schools in 2021. In the end only three were closed or
reconfigured. And, at least partially as a result of unending
protests, none of those school board members who supported closing
schools chose to run for re-election.

The OEA now has leadership with a social justice orientation. In
addition to the traditional bread and butter issues, President Keith
Brown has led the union to oppose school closings and work with
parents. He is now president of the Alameda Labor Council. The ILWU as
well takes stands in many local and international struggles; it
refused to handle cargo from apartheid South Africa and has done the
same recently for apartheid Israel. Teachers and longshore workers
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each other in a rally against both school closures and Fisher’s
project at the Port.

Community organizations and progressive Democratic clubs have
bolstered the electoral work, These include the John George Democratic
Club, the Wellstone Democratic Club, and the East Oakland Democratic
Club. Niagara Movement Democratic Club, ACCE, Oakland Rising, Oakland
Progressive Alliance, Black Women Organized for Political Action, and
others.

Even before the November 2022 election, a progressive/liberal alliance
led the Oakland City Council. Two years ago Carroll Fife won a council
seat, joining three other progressive women and a couple of generally
progressive men. Fife, formerly the director of the Oakland office of
ACCE became well-known nationally with her leadership in the
successful “Moms 4 Housing [[link removed]]” campaign
that caused a major corporation to actually concede one of its many
unused houses to the unhoused families that took it over.

They have also created an alternative to calling the police, MACRO
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Assistance Community Responders of Oakland), in response to many
domestic disputes and mental health crises. The city created a new
Department of Race and Equity, in an effort led by former
Councilmember Desley Brooks before her ouster in a campaign
spearheaded by Mayor Schaaf. The creation of this new department has
made it possible to document and challenge structural racism.

But despite the many progressive measures they passed, the majority of
council members have not been willing or able to hold off John
Fisher’s play for the Oakland Port. In fact, only two of seven voted
against the various steps in moving forward the massive, expensive and
ultimately destructive project, and conversations with some of those
who vote “Yes” make it clear that their reason is fear of having
the construction unions spend money to defeat them.

The two members who vote “No” provide a clue to what is needed to
“save Oakland”.  Councilmembers Fife and Noel Gallo each have an
independent base. They are not dependent on the construction trades,
the Democratic Party leadership or the non-profits to support them in
elections. Fife was an effective organizer before she ran for City
Council, and those who worked on her election campaign have maintained
an organization that regularly does door knocking and holds events on
behalf of projects that are consistent with her vision.  She holds
Town Hall meetings of people in her district to hear what they have to
say about issues. So, while the construction trades have endorsed her,
she would survive even if they did not.    

Councilmember Gallo has a more eclectic set of issue positions, but
his ability to act independently on the Council also relies on his
independent base. Among other things, he goes out with community
members to clean up streets in his community. Like many of Oakland’s
poorer neighborhoods, his district receives inadequate city services
and is overflowing with trash from illegal dumping. Gallo’s
volunteer efforts convey all kinds of messages to his working-class
district from, “I’m willing to get my hands dirty,” to “I can
be trusted because I’m one of you.”

Progressive candidates who have won in Oakland have done that sort of
broad and deep organizing. Ron Dellums, who won the Mayor’s race in
2006, had represented the district in Congress for years. So, his
views and his community service were familiar when he ran for Mayor.
Jean Quan, a moderate progressive, who beat Don Perata, had knocked on
every door in the entire city as part of her election campaigns.

Progressives in power

Almost every progressive candidate and ballot measure won in
Oakland’s November 2022 election. Two of the new school board
members, Jennifer Brouhard and Valarie Bachelor, ran to stop school
closures, and since the election the new school board has
already taken action to reverse the closure
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five schools scheduled for closure next year.  

 The new mayor, Sheng Thao, has a progressive history on housing,
homelessness, police issues, and multi-racial alliances. She has not
opposed billionaire Fisher’s project, but she did campaign with the
pledge that the project would not go forward unless it met the needs
of Oaklanders. There are two new City Council members Jenani
Ramachandrin, an immigrant rights attorney and progressive activist,
and Kevin Jenkins who replaces Loren Taylor, an ally of the
developer-oriented outgoing Mayor Schaaf  

Pamela Price, a civil rights attorney and the new Alameda County
District Attorney, has promised to prosecute police, when this is
appropriate, unlike her predecessor.

And every progressive ballot measure passed, including some which will
have a significant impact on affordable housing.

But these electoral victories do not mean that developers and their
political allies will give up.  Ranked-choice voting is being
challenged. Mayor Thao is already being critiqued.

 The County-FCMAT apparatus is questioning the decision of the school
board not to close five schools. And Carroll Fife is receiving
violent, racist threats,

The movement will need to have Fife’s level of organizing strength
to sustain and advance progressive policies and candidates against the
money of the construction unions, the billionaires, the police
associations, and the corporate Democrats.

Some potential may come from the rankrd-choice electoral coalition put
together by civil rights attorney and activist Walter Riley, the
authors of the article, and other individuals and groups, which might
provide a jumping off place for on-goiing city-wide organizing  

 We need to organize residents who understand that the issues are
different from the way they are reported in the mainstream press.
 The positive accomplishments of the Dellums’ Mayoral
administration were not widely recognized, because the movement that
elected him did not have an organized network to provide an
alternative to the lies of press figures like Chip Johnson of
the _San Francisco Chronicle_.

Organizers need to be flexible enough to combine electoral work and
the sort of direct action typified by Moms 4 Housing.

And, since Congressmember Barbara Lee is running for US Senate, we
need to figure out a progressive candidate to replace her in the
House. None of those mentioned most frequently are nearly as
left-leaning as Lee herself or Ron Dellums, her predecessor.

_KEN EPSTEIN is an editor and reporter for the Bay Area’s African
American newspaper group, which includes the Oakland Post
[[link removed]]. He also worked for the Oakland
Unified School District for 20 years as a teacher and Public
Information Officer, and has been active in community affairs._

_KITTY KELLY EPSTEIN is a college professor, an activist and the host
of a radio show on KPFA 94.1 FM. She has written three books and a
number of articles on Oakland politics and the fight for public
education, including Organizing to Change a City (Peter Lang
Publishing, New York, 2012). [link removed]
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_CONVERGENCE is a magazine for radical insights. We work with
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collective practice, lift up stories from the grassroots, and promote
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* Oakland
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* organizing
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* elections
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* power building
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* Public Education
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* economic development
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