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Candidates For Oakland’s District 5 Share Their Platforms

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Incumbent Noel Gallo

East Oakland native and District 5 incumbent Noel Gallo touts his Oakland public education with pride. He’s been holding his city council position since 2013 and before that, he served 20 years as a member of the Oakland Board of Education. 

 In his time on the City Council, Gallo helped create the Police Commission and is committed to reducing the police department budget by 50%. He says he is committed to reimagining public safety and believes in providing a model of counseling for youth that is from the school level to street level as a form of violence prevention.

Gallo supports affordable housing, currently working with the Unity Council to continue Phase 2 development for housing in transit areas that includes 30 units of housing for the homeless. He has helped the Native American Health Center develop 110 units on International Boulevard next to the health center. He is also working with the Agnes Memorial Church to create senior housing.

Gallo is open to negotiating the leasing of the Coliseum land that is publicly owned in order to maintain control of how it is used by the city, rather than sell it or sell the Oakland Port to private entities. 

To learn more about Noel Gallo’s campaign go to https://www.noelgalloforoakland.com/

Zoe Lopez-Meraz

Zoe Lopez-Meraz has worked in the medical fields of physical therapy, transplant, and urology and volunteers at the Berkeley Free Clinics. She puts a high value on supporting teachers and education. She wants to decriminalize homelessness, sex work, and drugs as she says on her website all three disproportionately affect people of color and create a revolving door of criminalization.

Since 80% of calls to OPD are non-violent, Lopez-Meraz says reinvesting into the community from the money saved in the 50% decrease in OPD’s budget would make sense. She sees a great need for addressing mental health in the community so that police are not the first responders to mental health crises. 

On sheltering and housing issues, Lopez-Meraz holds a straight-forward stance. If it’s vacant, take the property, repurpose vacant lots, warehouses, empty hotel rooms and vacant units using state emergency funding that is already available. She said the city creates policies with no real plan for execution.

Lopez-Meraz does not support the project proposed to build 3,000 units of high-end housing and a ballpark on the Oakland Port property. She thinks more support should be placed in existing infrastructure and more should be done to boost business in East Oakland. 

To learn more about Zoe Lopez-Meraz’s campaign go to https://www.zlm4oak.org/

Richard Santos Raya

Long-time Bay Area resident Richard Santos Raya has a background as a classroom educator and lawyer. He says he wants to connect with those who are looking to work on labor, racial, housing, and economic justice.

Regarding OPD, Raya says one of the first things that can be done is to curb police spending and police injustice is to address rampant overtime funding. A huge drain on city coffers, it also incentivizes police to make arrests near the end of their shift in order to rack up overtime pay. He also says malpractice or brutality cases should not be paid out of taxpayer money, instead possibly from the police pension fund. 

On homelessness, Raya says that in addition to the construction that has already been undertaken and Tuff sheds, he believes Oakland needs to convert existing housing to deeply affordable housing. 

He says there should be a partnership with local land trusts and recommends removing housing from the unstable, untenable rental market into a more sustainable holding pattern. Small landlords need incentives to maintain their housing at below affordable rates. 

Raya does not support a new ballpark at the Oakland Port.  He wants to keep the public land at Oakland Coliseum and says it’s important to retain the Oakland A’s at that site. 

To learn more about Richard Raya Santos’ campaign go to https://www.santosraya.com/

 

Michelle Snider

Associate Editor for The Post News Group. Writer, Photographer, Videographer, Copy Editor, and website editor documenting local events in the Oakland-Bay Area California area.

Activism

Oakland Post: Week of February 19 – 25, 2025

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of February 19 – 25, 2025

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Activism

U.S. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Rep. Lateefah Simon to Speak at Elihu Harris Lecture Series

The popular lecture series is co-produced by the Oakland-based Martin Luther King Jr. Freedom Center and Peralta Community College District. Jeffries’ appearance marks the 32nd lecture of the Barbara Lee and Elihu Harris Lecture Series, which has provided thousands of individuals with accessible, free, high-quality information.

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U.S. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (left) and Rep. Lateefah Simon (D-CA-12) (Right).
U.S. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (left) and Rep. Lateefah Simon (D-CA-12) (Right).

By Scott Horton

United States House of Representatives Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY-8) will be a speaker at the Barbara Lee and Elihu Harris Lecture Series on Friday, Feb. 21.

The event will be held at the Henry J. Kaiser Center for the Arts, 10 Tenth Street in Oakland, at 7 p.m.

The popular lecture series is co-produced by the Oakland-based Martin Luther King Jr. Freedom Center and Peralta Community College District. Jeffries’ appearance marks the 32nd lecture of the Barbara Lee and Elihu Harris Lecture Series, which has provided thousands of individuals with accessible, free, high-quality information.

The overarching goal of the lecture series is to provide speakers from diverse backgrounds a platform to offer their answers to Dr. King’s urgent question, which is also the title of Jeffries’ latest book: “Where do we go from here: Chaos or Community?”

In addition to Jeffries, Congresswoman Lateefah Simon (D-CA-12) will also speak.

“Certainly, now is a time for humanity, in general, and Americans in particular to honestly and genuinely answer Dr. King’s question,” said Dr. Roy D. Wilson, Executive Director of the Martin Luther King Jr. Freedom Center and Executive Producer of the lecture series.

“Dr. King teaches that time is neutral but not static. Like the water in a river, it arrives and then quickly moves on,” continued Wilson. “We must urgently create conditions for listening to many different answers to this vital question, and generate the development of unity of action among all those who struggle for a stronger democracy.”

In his book, Jeffries shares his experience of being unanimously elected by his colleagues as the first African American in history to ever hold the position of House Minority Leader.

In January 2023 in Washington, Jeffries made his first official speech as House Minority Leader. He affirmed Democratic values one letter of the alphabet at a time. His words and how he framed them as the alphabet caught the attention of Americans, and the speech was later turned into a book, The ABCs of Democracy, bringing Congressman Jeffries rousing speech to vivid, colorful life, including illustrations by Shaniya Carrington. The speech and book are inspiring and urgent as a timeless reminder of what it means to be a country with equal opportunities for all. Jeffries paints a road map for a brighter American future and warns of the perils of taking a different path.

Before his colleagues unanimously elected him Minority Leader in 2022, Jeffries previously served as Chair of the House Democratic Caucus and as an Impeachment Manager during the first Senate trial of the 45th President of the United States.

Jeffries was born in Brooklyn Hospital, raised in Crown Heights, grew up in the Cornerstone Baptist Church and he is a product of New York City’s public school system, graduating from Midwood High School. Jefferies went on to Binghamton University (BA), Georgetown University (master’s in public policy) and New York University (JD).

He served in the New York State Assembly from 2007 to 2012.

Admission is free for the Feb. 21 Barbara Lee and Elihu Harris Lecture Series featuring Congressman Jeffries. Please reserve seats by calling the Martin Luther King Jr. Freedom Center at (510) 434-3988.

Signed copies of his book will be available for purchase at the event.

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Alameda County

After Years of Working Remotely, Oakland Requires All City Employees to Return to Office by April 7

City Administrator Jestin Johnson recently told city unions that he is ending Oakland’s telecommuting program. The new policy will require employees to come to work at least four days a week. These new regulations go into effect on Feb. 18 for non-union department heads, assistant and deputy directors, managers, and supervisors. All other employees must be back at work by April 7.

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Oakland City Hall. File photo.
Oakland City Hall. File photo.

By Post Staff

The City Oakland is requiring all employees to return to the office, thereby ending the telecommuting policy established during the pandemic that has left some City Hall departments understaffed.

City Administrator Jestin Johnson recently told city unions that he is ending Oakland’s telecommuting program. The new policy will require employees to come to work at least four days a week.

These new regulations go into effect on Feb. 18 for non-union department heads, assistant and deputy directors, managers, and supervisors. All other employees must be back at work by April 7.

The administration may still grant the right to work remotely on a case-by-case basis.

In his memo to city unions, Johnson said former President Joe Biden had declared an end to the pandemic in September 2022, and that since then, “We have collectively moved into newer, safer health conditions.”

Johnson said “multiple departments” already have all their staff back in the office or workplace.

The City’s COVID-era policy, enacted in September 2021, was designed to reduce the spread of the debilitating and potentially fatal virus.

Many cities and companies across the country are now ending their pandemic-related remote work policies. Locally, mayoral candidate Loren Taylor in a press conference made the policy a central issue in his campaign for mayor.

City Hall reopened for in-person meetings two years ago, and the city’s decision to end remote work occurred before Taylor’s press conference.

At an endorsement meeting last Saturday of the John George Democratic Club, mayoral candidate Barbara Lee said she agreed that city workers should return to the job.

At the same time, she said, the city should allow employees time to readjust their lives, which were disrupted by the pandemic, and should recognize individual needs, taking care to maintain staff morale.

The John George club endorsed Lee for Mayor and Charlene Wang for City Council representative for District 2. The club also voted to take no position on the sales tax measure that will be on the April 15 ballot.

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