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OP-ED: Channeling the Spirit of Frederick Douglass to Save DMC

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By John William Templeton
Special to the Richmond Post

Channeling the immortal words of Frederick Douglass, a courageous group of doctors, nurses and civic leaders drew a line in the sand this week (by seeking a Temporary Restraining Order, see adjacent story) to avert the closure of West Contra Costa’s only public emergency lifeline – Doctors Medical Center (DMC).

< p>Invoking thousands of senior citizens who labored in four shipyards to win World War II and now count on their nation, state and county to care for them, the Doctors Medical Center Closure Aversion Committee implored U.S. District Judge William Orrick to choose humanity over despair and stop the closure of Doctors Medical Center

They cited the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, created as a direct result of Douglass’ abolitionist messages. The towering figure’s words “Without struggle there is no progress” are enshrined on a monument in the U.S. Capitol Visitor Center. The African American Civil War Memorial also carries Douglass’ statement: “Who would be free themselves must first strike the blow.

Legislating from atop that Douglass statue is Rep. George Miller, D-CA, considered the “right hand” of Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi. Committee members met with Barb Smith, his local chief of staff, and other staffers to discuss how Miller can intervene for citizens whose sacrifice saved the nation after Pearl Harbor

Dr. Otis Rounds, a hospitalist in the facility, leads the committee and joined other DMC physicians as named plaintiffs in the suit. They also held a town hall at Sojourner Truth Presbyterian Church Thursday to empower community members with facts about what county officials describe as “catastrophic” impacts of reducing service dramatically or closing the facility.

Rev. Kamal Hassan, pastor of Sojourner Truth Church, is also moderator of the Presbytery of San Francisco, and called on all area clergy to get involved.

Dr. Rounds and other members of the committee cannot reconcile how relevant officials can paint such a bleak picture, yet not act to prevent it. “Many of our patients today were building a ship every week for years when America was in its darkest hour,” said Rounds. “How can we not get decision makers together to keep their hospital thriving for years to come?”

The closure is part of a cycle of declining services for minority and low-income communities throughout the Bay Area despite record tax revenues and explosive growth.

Deleting transit services, schools, libraries and health facilities then leads to a spiral of community decline accelerated by the highest concentration of predatory loans of any metropolitan area in the country and employment discrimination by the fastest growing and cash flush technology companies.

The result is displacement from coastal communities once needed for shipbuilding and unloading cargo that are now viewed as desirable places to put luxury housing, offices and sports arenas. Plan Bay Area, a nine-county document that forecasts through 2040, identifies those minority coastal neighborhoods as headed for rapid growth, but doesn’t address the fate of the people who currently live there.

DMCs fight is then a fight on behalf of all those communities, which are often invisible so that the 25 percent rate of asthma for youth in Richmond is ignored.

But when 60 percent of Contra Costa County’s ambulance traffic gets re-routed within a 25-mile radius to hospitals from Martinez to Oakland to Napa, this problem will become real to the entire East Bay, clogging freeway traffic and extending daily commutes.

The doctors note that closing the hospital actually costs more than keeping it open. Sen. Loni Hancock, D-Berkeley, and Assemblywoman Nancy Skinner, Budget Committee chair, are reviewing ways the state can provide additional assistance as West Contra Costa County bears the burden for providing industrial materials for the entire state.

As West Contra Costa County experiences its most explosive growth since World War II, it is likely that such developments as the University of California’s Richmond Bay Campus will drive population and tax revenues up. Including a new hospital and associated facilities with such growth is consistent with proper land use planning.

Similar construction at UC San Francisco paid for the construction of a new public safety headquarters.

Martin Luther King Jr. has said, “I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. That is why right temporarily defeated is stronger than evil triumphant.”

The advocates for Doctors Medical Center foresee a solution that preserves the access to high quality care for the patients that need it most. It is the right thing to do.

John William Templeton is co-founder of National Black Business Month in August and a consultant to the Doctors Medical Center Closure Aversion Committee.

Activism

‘Jim Crow Was and Remains Real in Alameda County (and) It Is What We Are Challenging and Trying to Fix Every Day,’ Says D.A. Pamela Price

“The legacy of Jim Crow is not just a legacy in Alameda County. It’s real. It is what is happening and how (the system is) operating, and that is what we are challenging and trying to fix every day,” said D.A. Price, speaking to the Oakland Post by telephone for over an hour last Saturday. “Racial disparities in this county have never been effectively eliminated, and we are applying and training our lawyers on the (state’s) Racial Justice Act, and we’re implementing it in Alameda County every day,” she said.

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Exclusive interview with County D.A. Price days before recall election. Photo by Ken Epstein.
Exclusive interview with County D.A. Price days before recall election. Photo by Ken Epstein.

By Ken Epstein

Part One

Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price gave an exclusive in-depth interview, speaking with the Oakland Post about the continuing legacy of Jim Crow injustice that she is working to overturn and her major achievements, including:

  • restoring and expanding services for victims of crime,
  • finding funding for an alternative to incarceration and/or prosecution for substance use and mental health-related misdemeanors and
  • aggressively prosecuting corporations for toxic pollution and consumer violations.

“The legacy of Jim Crow is not just a legacy in Alameda County. It’s real. It is what is happening and how (the system is) operating, and that is what we are challenging and trying to fix every day,” said D.A. Price, speaking to the Oakland Post by telephone for over an hour last Saturday.

“Racial disparities in this county have never been effectively eliminated, and we are applying and training our lawyers on the (state’s) Racial Justice Act, and we’re implementing it in Alameda County every day,” she said.

Passed by the State Legislature, this law “is an extremely helpful tool for us to address the racial disparities that continue to exist in our system,” she said.

(The law addresses) “the racial disparities that we find in our juvenile justice system, where 86% of all felony juvenile arrests in the county are Black or Brown children.

“We trained the entire workforce on the Racial Justice Act. We are creating a data system that will allow us to look at the trends and to clearly identify where racism has infected the process. We know that where law enforcement is still engaging in racial profiling and unfair targeting and arresting, we’re trying to make sure we’re catching that.”

Many people do not know much about the magnitude of Alameda County District Attorney’s job. Her office is a sprawling organization with 10 offices serving 1.6 million people living in 14 cities and six unincorporated areas, with a budget this year of about $104 million.

Asked about her major achievements since she took office last year, she is especially proud of the expanded and renewed victims’ services division in the DA’s Office, she said.

“We have expanded and reorganized the entire claims division so that we are now expediting as much as possible the benefits that victims are entitled to. Under my predecessor, they were having to wait anywhere, sometimes as long as a year, to 400 days to get benefits.

“Claims had been denied that should not have been denied. So, we’re helping people file appeals on claims that were denied under her tenure,” D.A. Price said.

“Under my predecessor, (the victims’ service office) was staffed by people who were not trained to provide trauma-informed services to victims, and yet they were the only people that the victims were in contact with. We immediately stopped that practice,” she continued.

“We had to expand the advocate workforce to include people who speak Hmong, the indigenous language of so many people in this county who are victims of crime.”

More African Americans advocates were hired because they represent the largest percentage of crime victims and we hired a transgender advocate and advocates who speak Cantonese and Mandarin. “The predominantly Chinese American community in Oakland was not being served by advocates who speak the language,” said D Price

“We reduced the lag time from the delivery of benefits to victims from 300 to 400 days down to less than 60 days.”

She increased victim advocacy by 38%, providing critical support to over 22,500 victims, a key component of community safety.

Other major achievements:

  • She recently filed 12 felony charges against a man accused of multiple armed robberies, demonstrating her seriousness about prosecuting violent crimes
  • In October, a jury delivered a guilty verdict in the double murder trial of former Alameda County Sheriff’s Deputy Devin Williams, showing DA Price’s commitment to holding law enforcement accountable.
  • She recently charged a man and woman in unincorporated San Leandro with murder, felony unlawful firearm activity, and felony carrying a loaded firearm in public.
  • A. Price’s office was awarded a $6 million grant by the state for its CARES Navigation Center diversion program. In partnership with the UnCuffed Project at a Seventh Day Adventist Church in Oakland, the program provides resources and referrals for services to residents as an alternative to incarceration and/or prosecution for substance use and mental health-related misdemeanors.

“This is the largest grant investment in the history of the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office,” said D.A. Price.

She explained that the program now has a mobile unit. “We have washers and dryers. We have a living room. We have a television. It’s a place where people can decompress, get themselves stabilized,” she said.

The project has “the ability to refer people to housing, to more long-term mental health services, to social services, and to assist them in other ways.”

  • Her office joined in a $49 million statewide settlement with Kaiser Health Plan and Hospitals, resolving allegations that the healthcare provider unlawfully disposed of hazardous waste, medical waste, and protected health information. The settlement, which involved the state and a half dozen counties, resulted in Alameda County receiving $7 million for its residents.
  • DA Price charged a former trucking company employee for embezzling over $4.3 million, showing her commitment to tackling white-collar crime.
  • For the first time, Alameda County won a criminal grand jury indictment of a major corporation with two corporate officers that have been sources of pollution. “They had a record of settlements and pollution in this community, and they had a fire that constituted a grave danger,” she said.

 

Attorney Walter Riley contributed to this article.

See Part Two

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Activism

‘Criminal Justice Reform Is the Signature Civil Rights Issue of Our Time,’ says D.A. Pamela Price

Speaking about the destructive impact of mass incarceration, Price asked people to consider “how many children have incarcerated parents, where the practice has always been to isolate and eliminate connections between people who are incarcerated and their children and their families and the community. So, when we bring people home, they have no more connection.”

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“People have no idea what the vision is for the next district attorney, or where the office will go if I am, in fact, recalled, she continued. “I'm just running against a billionaire,” who does not show his face in public, she said. Courtesy photo.
“People have no idea what the vision is for the next district attorney, or where the office will go if I am, in fact, recalled, she continued. “I'm just running against a billionaire,” who does not show his face in public, she said. Courtesy photo.

“As long as our criminal justice system is stuck in the mentality and practices of the 1950s, our country is not going to move forward,” she said.

By Ken Epstein

Part Two

District Attorney Pamela Price, facing a recall that began before she took office in January 2023, explained in an exclusive interview with the Oakland Post how she came to dedicate her life to transforming a deeply flawed criminal justice system into one that provides equal justice and public safety for all and ends mass incarceration for African Americans and other working-class people.

She summarized her life experiences as someone who was “traumatized and radicalized” by Dr. King’s murder, joining the Civil Rights Movement full force, getting arrested when she was 13 years old in a civil rights demonstration, being tracked into the juvenile justice and the foster care systems, and making it as a foster kid from the streets of Cincinnati to Yale College.”

“I understand a lot of things about struggle, about sacrifice, about trauma and fortunately survived all of that, and as a survivor learned some important lessons, and I brought all of that with me into the law and have been able to become a civil rights attorney in Alameda County,” she said.

“That’s been the joy of my life; I’ve lived every lawyer’s dream,” she said.

“Years ago, when I first decided to run for district attorney, I realized that mass incarceration was so destabilizing to our communities,” she said.

She saw that the “criminal justice system has so many impacts on our community, the safety of our community, the stability of our community, the growth of our community, the direction of our community.”

“As long as our criminal justice system is stuck in the mentality and the practices of the 1950s … our society is going to be mired in discord, and we will not have social justice, racial justice, economic justice, none of the things that actually make our communities worth living in.”

Speaking about the destructive impact of mass incarceration, Price asked people to consider “how many children have incarcerated parents, where the practice has always been to isolate and eliminate connections between people who are incarcerated and their children and their families and the community. So, when we bring people home, they have no more connection.”

It is crucial to address the needs of “young people in the juvenile justice system when they are more likely and able to be rehabilitated and redirected,” she said. Young people are much more able to be rehabilitated before the age of 18, really before the age of 26, and before they end up in an adult prison.

D.A. Price’s predecessor, Nancy O’ Malley, joined the D.A.’s office in 1984, where she remained for 39 years. She was promoted to a leadership position after just six years in the office during the era of mass incarceration when there was an explosion of prison construction in California.

“Prosecutors like my predecessor were the ones who filled (those prisons) up.  She became a leader in the office around 1990. And what is very important for the public to know is that prior to becoming the district attorney in 2009, she was the chief assistant district attorney for 10 years under Tom Orloff.

“O’Malley worked very closely, hand-in-hand with him for the period of time that included the illegal conduct or the unconstitutional exclusion of Jewish people and Black people from death penalty juries.”

Commenting on the recall campaign against her, she said that had not a handful of multimillionaires and billionaires “put millions of dollars into this, we would not be having this recall. It is not a grassroots movement. It’s a platinum movement.”

“People have no idea what the vision is for the next district attorney, or where the office will go if I am, in fact, recalled, she continued. “I’m just running against a billionaire,” who does not show his face in public, she said.

If they successfully paint Oakland as a failed city, then hedge fund billionaires and real estate developers can come in and buy up the property cheap, she said.

Though D.A. Price has been bombarded by a massive tsunami of lies, slanders, and misrepresentation, she remains strong and positive because she is a woman of faith, she said.

“I’ve been saved and guided by (a) higher power since I was 13 years old. So, I’m not a new person to faith, and I’m grounded in that,” she said.

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Activism

Oakland Post: Week of October 30 – November 5, 2024

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of October 30 – November 5, 2024

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Exclusive interview with County D.A. Price days before recall election. Photo by Ken Epstein.
Activism5 hours ago

‘Jim Crow Was and Remains Real in Alameda County (and) It Is What We Are Challenging and Trying to Fix Every Day,’ Says D.A. Pamela Price

“People have no idea what the vision is for the next district attorney, or where the office will go if I am, in fact, recalled, she continued. “I'm just running against a billionaire,” who does not show his face in public, she said. Courtesy photo.
Activism5 hours ago

‘Criminal Justice Reform Is the Signature Civil Rights Issue of Our Time,’ says D.A. Pamela Price

Activism1 day ago

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