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Julian Bond Was a Leader With Strength and Character

Published

10 years ago

August 18, 2015

The news this weekend that Julian Bond passed away at 75 saddened me deeply. America has lost a true and still vital champion for justice.

President Barack Obama, hailing Bond as a hero and a friend, noted that “Julian Bond helped change this country for the better. And what better way to be remembered than that.”

At a very young age, Bond helped forge the emerging civil rights movement, and was in many ways, a founding father of the New South that we now see still in formation. In 1957, as a student at Morehouse, son of a college president, varsity swimmer, head of the literary magazine, intern for Time Magazine, he was on the path to success.

But the success he chose was to make history, not money. He was arrested after organizing some of the first student demonstrations to desegregate Atlanta’s lunch counters, parks and theaters.

Realizing that young people could take risks too costly for adults with families, at 20, he helped found SNCC, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. He became its secretary and head of its communications in part because he was seen as organized, levelheaded and eloquent.

Julian was ahead of most in the movement for understanding the big picture. He realized that civil rights could not be achieved without economic rights, and that economic rights would not advance if America kept throwing resources and lives into war abroad. He became an early and outspoken critic of the Vietnam War.

After the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965, Julian led voter registration drives. At the remarkable age of 25, he was elected to the Georgia State House. The sitting legislators demanded that he repudiate his opposition to the Vietnam War.

When he refused, they refused to seat him. Three times his constituents re-elected him, three times the House denied him his seat. Finally the Supreme Court ruled their actions unconstitutional. In January 1967, Bond took his seat, and served in the House and Senate for the next two decades.

By that time he was a national hero for having stood on principle even at the cost of his political career. In the embittered 1968 Chicago Democratic Presidential Convention, Bond led an insurgent Georgia delegation and was called upon to second the nomination of Eugene McCarthy for president.

With the convention floor in bedlam and demonstrations raging outside the hall, Bond was nominated as vice president, a symbolic nomination (he was only 27 and the constitutionally required age is 35) “about the wave of the future.”

Bond served as legislator, scholar, teacher and leader. He was a founder and early president of the Southern Poverty Law Center. He taught at the University of Virginia and lectured widely, receiving over 30 honorary degrees. He chaired the NAACP for 12 years until 2010.

He had experienced first-hand the slight and shackles of segregation — and organized to end them. He knew first-hand the suppression of the right to vote and helped build a movement to challenge that.

To his final years, his intelligence, clarity and passion continued to instruct. He understood that, as he put it, “America is race,” from the founders to the Civil War to the civil rights movement to Treyvon Martin, Michael Brown and Sandra Bland.

He knew that Barack Obama’s election and re-election was a measure of the progress that had been made but “didn’t herald a post-civil rights America. … It couldn’t eliminate structural inequity or racist attitudes,” he said, even suggesting Obama’s election fomented such attitudes: “Obama,” he said, “is to the tea party as the moon is to werewolves.”

To his final days, he urged people into motion, knowing that only when people mobilized and acted could anything change. “We look back and see giant leaders like Dr. Martin Luther King,” he taught, but the civil rights movement was “a people’s movement.

It produced leaders of its own; but it relied not on the noted but the nameless, not on the famous but the faceless. It didn’t wait for commands from afar to begin a campaign against injustice. It saw wrong and acted against it; it saw evil and brought it down.”

Julian Bond was a leader of exceptional clarity. He had the strong mind and courage needed to break strong chains. He made a dramatic contribution with his life. And he will be deeply missed.

Oakland Post

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Oakland Housing and Community Development Department Awards $80.5 Million to Affordable Housing Developments

Published

6 months ago

June 17, 2025

Oakland Post

Special to The Post

The City of Oakland’s Housing and Community Development Department (Oakland HCD) announced its awardees for the 2024-2025 New Construction of Multifamily Affordable Housing Notice of Funding Availability (New Construction NOFA) today Five permanently affordable housing developments received awards out of 24 applications received by the Department, with award amounts ranging from $7 million to $28 million.

In a statement released on Jan. 16, Oakland’s HCD stated, “Five New Construction Multifamily Affordable Housing Development projects awarded a total of $80.5 million to develop 583 affordable rental homes throughout Oakland. Awardees will leverage the City’s investments to apply for funding from the state and private entities.”

In December, the office of Rebecca Kaplan, interim District 2 City Councilmember, worked with HCD to allocate an additional $10 Million from Measure U to the funding pool. The legislation also readopted various capital improvement projects including street paving and upgrades to public facilities.

The following Oakland affordable housing developments have been awarded in the current round:

Mandela Station Affordable

238 Affordable Units including 60 dedicated for Homeless/Special Needs
Award: $15 million + previously awarded $18 million
Developer: Mandela Station LP (Pacific West Communities, Inc. and Strategic Urban Development Alliance, LLC)
City Council District: 3
Address: 1451 7th St.

Liberation Park Residences

118 Affordable Units including 30 dedicated for Homeless/Special Needs
Award: $28 million
Developer: Eden Housing and Black Cultural Zone
City Council District: 6
Address: 7101 Foothill Blvd.

34th & San Pablo

59 Affordable Units including 30 dedicated for Homeless/Special Needs
Award: $7 million
Developer: 34SP Development LP (EBALDC)
City Council District: 3
Address: 3419-3431 San Pablo Ave.

The Eliza

96 Affordable Units including 20 dedicated for Homeless/Special Needs
Award: $20 million
Developer: Mercy Housing California
City Council District: 3
Address: 2125 Telegraph Ave.

3135 San Pablo

72 Affordable Units including 36 dedicated for Homeless/Special Needs
Award: $10.5 million
Developer: SAHA and St. Mary’s Center
City Council District: 3
Address: 3515 San Pablo Ave.

The source of this story is the media reltations office of District 2 City Councilmember Rebecca Kaplan.

Oakland Post

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Activism

Oakland Housing and Community Development Department Awards $80.5 Million to Affordable Housing Developments

Published

11 months ago

January 30, 2025

Oakland Post

Rebecca Kaplan, interim District 2 city councilmember. File photo.

Special to The Post

The following Oakland affordable housing developments have been awarded in the current round:

Mandela Station Affordable

238 Affordable Units including 60 dedicated for Homeless/Special Needs
Award: $15 million + previously awarded $18 million
Developer: Mandela Station LP (Pacific West Communities, Inc. and Strategic Urban Development Alliance, LLC)
City Council District: 3
Address: 1451 7th St.

Liberation Park Residences

118 Affordable Units including 30 dedicated for Homeless/Special Needs
Award: $28 million
Developer: Eden Housing and Black Cultural Zone
City Council District: 6
Address: 7101 Foothill Blvd.

34th & San Pablo

59 Affordable Units including 30 dedicated for Homeless/Special Needs
Award: $7 million
Developer: 34SP Development LP (EBALDC)
City Council District: 3
Address: 3419-3431 San Pablo Ave.

The Eliza

96 Affordable Units, including 20 dedicated for Homeless/Special Needs
Award: $20 million
Developer: Mercy Housing California
City Council District: 3
Address: 2125 Telegraph Ave.

3135 San Pablo

72 Affordable Units including 36 dedicated for Homeless/Special Needs
Award: $10.5 million
Developer: SAHA and St. Mary’s Center
City Council District: 3
Address: 3515 San Pablo Ave.

The source of this story is media reltations office of District 2 City Councilmember Rebecca Kaplan.

Oakland Post

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Alameda County

Oakland Acquisition Company’s Acquisition of County’s Interest in Coliseum Property on the Verge of Completion

The Board of Supervisors is committed to closing the deal expeditiously, and County staff have worked tirelessly to move the deal forward on mutually agreeable terms. The parties are down to the final details and, with the cooperation of OAC and Coliseum Way Partners, LLC, the Board will take a public vote at an upcoming meeting to seal this transaction.

Published

11 months ago

January 11, 2025

Oakland Post

Alameda County Board of Supervisors Chairman David Haubert. Official photo.

Special to The Post

The County of Alameda announced this week that a deal allowing the Oakland Acquisition Company, LLC, (“OAC”) to acquire the County’s 50% undivided interest in the Oakland- Alameda County Coliseum complex is in the final stages of completion.

Oakland has already finalized a purchase and sale agreement with OAC for its interest in the property. OAC’s acquisition of the County’s property interest will achieve two longstanding goals of the County:

The Oakland-Alameda Coliseum complex will finally be under the control of a sole owner with capacity to make unilateral decisions regarding the property; and
The County will be out of the sports and entertainment business, free to focus and rededicate resources to its core safety net

In an October 2024 press release from the City of Oakland, the former Oakland mayor described the sale of its 50% interest in the property as an “historic achievement” stating that the transaction will “continue to pay dividends for generations to come.”

The Board of Supervisors is pleased to facilitate single-entity ownership of this property uniquely centered in a corridor of East Oakland that has amazing potential.

“The County is committed to bringing its negotiations with OAC to a close,” said Board President David Haubert.