City Government

Former Foster Youth Sokhom Mao Is Making a Difference

Published

10 years ago

July 26, 2014

Sokhom Mao shows me the 11th floor of Oakland City Hall, where he chairs meetings for the Citizen’s Police Review Board, an entity that works between community members and police officers to ensure police accountability and improve police services.

“For me, being raised on the lower end of the economic ladder, and now being the chairman of the Citizen’s Police Review Board on the 11th floor, really tells a tale,” said Mao.

Onlyabout 15 years ago, Mao was in the foster care system, jumping from group homes to transitional housing. Now, at 27, he is running for Oakland City Council, and hoping to use his years of policy and advocacy experience to take lead of the same area he was raised in.

Mao is the child of two Cambodian refugees who made their way to Oakland, Calif. His mother passed away when he was nine and his father, who was physically abusive to his mother and struggled with alcoholism, was left as the sole guardian for Mao and his five other siblings.

“My father would leave us alone at home with no food. Sometimes, there wasn’t even hot water or electricity,” said Mao of living under his father’s care. “That’s when social services were called.”

That all changed after Mao told his middle school counselor about the issues he was dealing with at home. For a couple of months, Mao and the rest of his siblings were split apart. After some time, four of Mao’s siblings were placed into kinship care with his aunt. Mao and his brother Sokha were forced to stay in a group home because of delayed paperwork.

After bouncing around between group homes, his father and his aunt, who also became abusive, Mao moved into the Bay Area Youth Center’s Real Alternatives for Adolescents (RAFA) while his younger siblings remained with his aunt.

“It was there they taught me how to be independent,” he said. “And it was there where I got the guidance I needed to apply for colleges.”

Mao applied to a handful of California State University schools, but eventually landed at San Francisco State University to pursue a degree in criminal justice. At the time of his acceptance in 2005, the university was just starting their Guardian Scholars Program, which helps former foster youth navigate higher education through support and resources.

This marked the beginning of his work in advocacy.

“I went to one of the focus groups they had and met with the executive director at the time,” said Mao. “There we had the chance to structure, design and really shape the program.”

Through the Guardian Scholars Program, Mao was able to effectively navigate higher education which, he notes, is a difficult task for anyone, and especially foster youth.

Mao moved back to Oakland during in his third year at San Francisco State University. Upon doing so, he got an apartment and took in his two younger siblings who were still living with his aunt.

“I was going to school full time, working part time, and had to worry about registering my little brother who was in eighth grade for school,” said Mao. “I met with his teachers, made sure he did his homework and everything.”

It wasn’t long until Mao was able to get his other, older siblings into the same apartment complex, and until most of the family was reunited.

Mao was also a member of the California Youth Connection from high school through his graduation from San Francisco State University and afterward. He got a job at The Stuart Foundation after college, where he worked on initiatives looking to improve higher education access for foster youth. He also worked for the California Social Work Education Center, where he developed curriculum and training for social workers all across California.

“I like to say I made a full 360 within the system,” he said. “I was a client of the system, I was an advocate, and then I became the person who developed the same curriculum I was going through just a couple of years before.”

In 2010, Mao was called upon by Daniel Heimpel, executive director of Fostering Media Connections, to go to the state capitol where he met with President Pro Tempore of the California Senate, Darrell Steinberg and Speaker of the California State Assembly, Assemblyman John Perez to urge support of Assembly Bill 12 (AB12), a 2010 bill that extended foster care services from 18 to 21. And then, in 2012, Mao became vice president for the California Youth Connection board of directors.

Now Mao is moving beyond topics that relate just to foster care, and looking to grapple with citywide issues in District 2 of Oakland’s City Council.

“The foster care system is not a silo to the foster care community, it is the root cause of many problems we encounter as a community,” said Mao. “I started advocating for foster care issues, and that leads into things such as education and juvenile justice.”

Five other candidates are running for the area that covers parts of Grand Lake, Ivy Hill, Highland Terrace, and other parts of Oakland.

“For a child to have been raised in public housing, in the public welfare system, in public education both K-12 and then after, no one can say they are more a product of the public system,” Mao said. “I’m a public child. I know this city, and I know how to serve it.”

The Chronicle of Social Change (CSC) is an online periodical covering juvenile justice, child welfare and other industries that should be strengthening youth and families. The CSC is run by Fostering Media Connections, a San Francisco-based organization that uses journalism and media to drive public and political will behind policy and practice to improve the well being of children experiencing foster care.

For more information, visit www.fosteringmediaconnections.org.

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

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

Published

21 hours ago

November 1, 2024

Oakland Post

To enlarge your view of this issue, use the slider, magnifying glass icon or full page icon in the lower right corner of the browser window.

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Bay Area

Evidence Appears to Show Cover-Up of Previous Charges of Discrimination Against Jewish and Black Jurors, D.A. Says

Today, District Attorney Pamela Price announced that attorneys assigned to review the office’s death penalty cases found evidence revealing that instead of investigating claims of prosecutorial misconduct—excluding Jewish and Black residents from juries — a former senior Alameda County District Attorney’s Office prosecutor who is now a sitting judge in Alameda County, Morris Jacobson, and a team of investigators appeared to have taken part in covering it up.

Published

5 days ago

October 28, 2024

Oakland Post

A handwritten note by an employee under a previous administration appears to show plans for a cover-up of jury discrimination in a death penalty case. Courtesy image.

Special to The Post

During a press conference, Price presented a copy of a handwritten note by a former DA office employee who attended a meeting with employees from the office.

Jacobson, a deputy district attorney at the time, led the meeting in preparation for an evidentiary hearing ordered in the Fred Freeman case.

That hearing was ordered after former capital trial prosecutor Jack Quatman, the prosecutor in People v. Freeman, signed a declaration revealing that he and other capital case prosecutors routinely struck Black women and Jewish jurors in death penalty cases.

Jacobson was assigned by former district attorneys Tom Orloff and Nancy O’Malley to coordinate the ACDAO’s response during the evidentiary hearing.

In that capacity, he and others assigned to the capital case team went to great lengths to distract the courts from the substantive legal allegations by besmirching the whistleblower Quatman’s character and credibility—a strategy that succeeded.

Key sections of the note include, “left it w/ Morris saying he would give us direction. Wants to find dirt on Quatman,” and “How good are your memories? His point was he doesn’t want any documentation of what we do unless it is agreed upon???”

“This note provides the public some of the missing clues regarding who appeared to be involved during previous administrations in covering up prosecutorial misconduct at the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office,” said Price. “The note from this meeting in 2004 gives insight into why prosecutors’ notes containing evidence of discrimination against potential Jewish and Black jurors may not have been subjected to a comprehensive review and were not disclosed to the Court in most of the cases until my office was ordered by Honorable Judge Vince Chhabria to review death penalty cases.

“What the public should know is that prosecutors have special duties as ministers of justice to uphold the Constitution, which guarantees the right to a fair trial and to be judged by a jury of one’s peers, regardless of race, religion, or sexual orientation,” she said.

United States District Court Judge Chhabria determined earlier this year that there was “strong evidence that, in prior decades, prosecutors from the office were … excluding Jewish and African American jurors in death penalty cases.”

He subsequently issued an order directing ACDAO to disclose jury selection files in all Alameda County cases which resulted in a death sentence.

The Alameda County District Attorney’s Office is the source of this story.

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Bay Area

In the City Attorney Race, Ryan Richardson Is Better for Oakland

It’s been two years since negotiations broke down between the City of Oakland and a developer who wants to build a coal terminal here, and the issue has reappeared, quietly, in the upcoming race for Oakland City attorney. Two candidates are running for the position of Oakland City Attorney in November: current Assistant Chief City Attorney Ryan Richardson and retired judge Brenda Harbin-Forte.

Published

5 days ago

October 28, 2024

Oakland Post

Members of Oaklanders Defending Democracy political action committee with Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao, center. Courtesy photo.

By Margaret Rossoff

Special to The Post

OPINION

Two candidates are running for the position of Oakland City Attorney in November: current Assistant Chief City Attorney Ryan Richardson and retired judge Brenda Harbin-Forte.

Richardson has worked in the Office of the City Attorney since 2014 and is likely to continue current City Attorney Barbara Parker’s policies managing the department. He has committed not to accept campaign contributions from developers who want to store and handle coal at a proposed marine terminal in Oakland.

Retired Judge Harbin-Forte launched and has played a leading role in the campaign to recall Mayor Sheng Thao, which is also on the November ballot. She has stepped back from the recall campaign to focus on her candidacy. The East Bay Times noted, “Harbin-Forte’s decision to lead the recall campaign against a potential future client is … troubling — and is likely to undermine her ability, if she were to win, to work effectively.”

Harbin-Forte has refused to rule out accepting campaign support from coal terminal interests or their agents. Coal terminal lobbyist Greg McConnell’s Independent Expenditure Committee “SOS Oakland” is backing her campaign.

In the 2022 mayor’s race, parties hoping to build a coal terminal made $600,000 in contributions to another of McConnell’s Independent Expenditure Committees.

In a recent interview, Harbin-Forte said she is open to “listening to both sides” and will be “fair.” However, the City Attorney’s job is not to judge fairly between the City and its legal opponents – it is to represent the City against its opponents.

She thought that the 2022 settlement negotiations ended because the City “rejected a ‘no coal’ settlement.” This is lobbyist McConnell’s narrative, in contrast to the report by City Attorney Barbara Parker. Parker has explained that the City continued to negotiate in good faith for a settlement with no “loopholes” that could have allowed coal to ship through Oakland – until would-be coal developer Phil Tagami broke off negotiations.

One of Harbin-Forte’s main priorities, listed on her website, is “reducing reliance on outside law firms,” and instead use the lawyers working in the City Attorney’s office.

However, sometimes this office doesn’t have the extensive expertise available that outside firms can provide in major litigation. In the ongoing, high stakes coal litigation, the City has benefited from collaborating with experienced, specialized attorneys who could take on the nationally prominent firms representing the City’s opponents.

The City will continue to need this expertise as it pursues an appeal of the judge’s decision that restored the developer’s lease and defends against a billion-dollar lawsuit brought by the hedge fund operator who holds the sublease on the property.

Harbin-Forte’s unwillingness to refuse campaign contributions from coal terminal interests, her opposition to using outside resources when needed, as well as her uncritical repetition of coal lobbyist McConnell’s claim that the City sabotaged the settlement talks of 2022 all raise serious concerns about how well she would represent the best interests of Oakland and Oaklanders if she is elected City Attorney.