Civil rights attorney Pamela Price kicked off her campaign this week for Oakland Mayor.

In a video announcing her candidacy, Price vowed to bring a new urgency to finding solutions to the city’s exploding homelessness crisis – and the health issues associated with it – by investing immediately in anti-displacement initiatives, affordable housing, and comprehensive support services, and to fight income inequality in Oakland.

“I’m running for Mayor of Oakland because the numbers of our neighbors and families without housing, or dangerously close to losing it, are spiraling out of control,” said Price in the video.

“Homelessness has increased by 25 percent in just three years, and more than 70 percent of the un-housed people are Black and Latinx, 30 percent are young people, and 86 percent are from within Oakland,” she said.

“I’m so grateful to have been a member of the Oakland community for over 40 years,” continued Price. “Oakland is an incredibly diverse city, known for leading action to advance civil rights and social justice. But in this moment, I am also saddened for Oakland (because) the high cost of housing is literally killing us.”

Price is a successful small businesswoman and an elected member of the Alameda County Democratic Party Central Committee. Last June, In June, Price ran for Alameda County District Attorney. She lost countywide but carried Oakland with 55 percent of the vote.

She is an award-winning civil rights attorney with a nearly 30-year record of successfully defending clients against discrimination and harassment.

Growing up in the foster care and the juvenile justice system, Price went on to get a B.A from Yale University in political science and a law degree from UC Berkeley School of Law.
At Yale, she made history serving as the lead plaintiff in the first Title IX case outlawing sexual harassment in education.

Price opened her own civil litigation firm in Oakland in 1991.

In 2002, she became one of only a handful of Black women to ever argue a case in front of the United States Supreme Court, where she successfully advocated for her client, a Black electrician who had been subjected to constant racial harassment at Amtrak’s Oakland Yard.

In a landmark suit in 2004, she won new statewide sexual harassment protections for female employees at the California Department of Corrections.

Price was honored in 2017 as the Woman of the Year for Assembly District 18 by Assemblymember Rob Bonta and the California Legislative Women’s Caucus for her lifetime of social justice advocacy and service to the people of Alameda County.

In 2018, she was honored with the African-American Policy Forum’s Pauli Murray Trailblazer Award.
For more information on Pamela Price for Oakland Mayor, visit pamelaprice4mayor.com.

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