Arts and Culture
Opposition Grows Over Proposed 40-Story High Rise in Middle of City’s Black Arts District
An out-of-town developer is trying to build a 40-story high-rise in the middle of Oakland’s Black Movement Arts and Business District against strong community opposition. At its meeting on Feb. 16, both the Planning Commission and the developer were called out by Oaklanders including the Oakland Heritage Alliance and a representative of minority builders.

By Post Staff
An out-of-town developer is trying to build a 40-story high-rise in the middle of Oakland’s Black Movement Arts and Business District against strong community opposition. At its meeting on Feb. 16, both the Planning Commission and the developer were called out by Oaklanders including the Oakland Heritage Alliance and a representative of minority builders.
The Planning Commission acknowledged that they went through the entire design review process for the building without even knowing that the Black Arts and Business District existed! The district was created in 2016 by city council resolution.
When the developers claimed to have Black support, Oakland community leader and owner of Geoffrey’s Inner Circle, Geoffrey Pete, quoted Harriet Tubman, “I freed a thousand slaves. I could have freed a thousand more, if they had known that they were slaves.”
At the heart of the opposition to the building is the desire to further the legacy of local Black entertainment and entrepreneurship exemplified by businesses like Pete’s. His business is housed in a building that was once the all-white Athenian Club. It is now a historic landmark and the venue for thousands of people who listen to jazz and other entertainment and hold wedding receptions and memorial services.
Geoffrey’s has hosted hundreds of homeless people for holiday dinners with table clothes and fancy cutlery and offered his venue for free to groups ranging from advocates for affordable housing to academics urging Black and Brown residents to become teachers.
Residents are asking the city to make the Black Movement Arts and Business District real by investing in its corridor along 14th Street. The Black population of Oakland has decreased rapidly in the last decade because of the city’s concentration on building housing that is not affordable to people who currently live in Oakland.
Enhancing the Black Arts District could help to stop displacement. Approving this proposed building would further displacement by continuing the policy of approving developments that current Oakland residents cannot afford.
The new building would remove the only parking available in the area and threaten a historic brick building during construction. In addition, acknowledgement of racism and the experience of other cities tell us that new high-end housing developments drive out entertainment venues, especially those frequented by Black customers.
While some argue “we need housing,” others say this claim is disingenuous because this particular housing will displace more Black and Brown Oaklanders in favor of gentrification.
Said one opponent of the development, “If Tidewater wants to build in the Black entertainment district and help Oakland with housing, they should determine the rent level that the average Black family can afford and build for those families.”
Activism
New Oakland Moving Forward
This week, several socially enterprising members of this group visited Oakland to explore ways to collaborate with local stakeholders at Youth Empowerment Partnership, the Port of Oakland, Private Industry Council, Oakland, Mayor-elect Barbara Lee, the Oakland Ballers ownership group, and the oversight thought leaders in the Alameda County Probation Department.

By Post Staff
Since the African American Sports and Entertainment Group purchased the City of Oakland’s share of the Alameda County Coliseum Complex, we have been documenting the positive outcomes that are starting to occur here in Oakland.
Some of the articles in the past have touched on actor Blair Underwood’s mission to breathe new energy into the social fabric of Oakland. He has joined the past efforts of Steph and Ayesha Curry, Mistah Fab, Green Day, Too Short, and the Oakland Ballers.
This week, several socially enterprising members of this group visited Oakland to explore ways to collaborate with local stakeholders at Youth Empowerment Partnership, the Port of Oakland, Private Industry Council, Oakland, Mayor-Elect Barbara Lee, the Oakland Ballers ownership group, and the oversight thought leaders in the Alameda County Probation Department.
These visits represent a healthy exchange of ideas and plans to resuscitate Oakland’s image. All parties felt that the potential to impact Oakland is right in front of us. Most recently, on the back side of these visits, the Oakland Ballers and Blair Underwood committed to a 10-year lease agreement to support community programs and a community build-out.
So, upward and onward with the movement of New Oakland.
Arts and Culture
BOOK REVIEW: Love, Rita: An American Story of Sisterhood, Joy, Loss, and Legacy
When Bridgett M. Davis was in college, her sister Rita was diagnosed with lupus, a disease of the immune system that often left her constantly tired and sore. Davis was a bit unfazed, but sympathetic to Rita’s suffering and also annoyed that the disease sometimes came between them. By that time, they needed one another more than ever.

By Terri Schlichenmeyer
Author: Bridgett M. Davis, c.2025, Harper, $29.99, 367 Pages
Take care.
Do it because you want to stay well, upright, and away from illness. Eat right, swallow your vitamins and hydrate, keep good habits and hygiene, and cross your fingers. Take care as much as you can because, as in the new book, “Love, Rita” by Bridgett M. Davis, your well-being is sometimes out of your hands.
It was a family story told often: when Davis was born, her sister, Rita, then four years old, stormed up to her crying newborn sibling and said, ‘Shut your … mouth!’
Rita, says Davis, didn’t want a little sister then. She already had two big sisters and a neighbor who was somewhat of a “sister,” and this baby was an irritation. As Davis grew, the feeling was mutual, although she always knew that Rita loved her.
Over the years, the sisters tried many times not to fight — on their own and at the urging of their mother — and though division was ever present, it eased when Rita went to college. Davis was still in high school then, and she admired her big sister.
She eagerly devoured frequent letters sent to her in the mail, signed, “Love, Rita.”
When Davis was in college herself, Rita was diagnosed with lupus, a disease of the immune system that often left her constantly tired and sore. Davis was a bit unfazed, but sympathetic to Rita’s suffering and also annoyed that the disease sometimes came between them. By that time, they needed one another more than ever.
First, they lost their father. Drugs then invaded the family and addiction stole two siblings. A sister and a young nephew were murdered in a domestic violence incident. Their mother was devastated; Rita’s lupus was an “added weight of her sorrow.”
After their mother died of colon cancer, Rita’s lupus took a turn for the worse.
“Did she even stand a chance?” Davis wrote in her journal.
“It just didn’t seem possible that she, someone so full of life, could die.”
Let’s start here: once you get past the prologue in “Love, Rita,” you may lose interest. Maybe.
Most of the stories that author Bridgett M. Davis shares are mildly interesting, nothing rare, mostly commonplace tales of growing up in the 1960s and ’70s with a sibling. There are a lot of these kinds of stories, and they tend to generally melt together. After about fifty pages of them, you might start to think about putting the book aside.
But don’t. Not quite yet.
In between those everyday tales, Davis occasionally writes about being an ailing Black woman in America, the incorrect assumptions made by doctors, the history of medical treatment for Black people (women in particular), attitudes, and mythologies. Those passages are now and then, interspersed, but worth scanning for.
This book is perhaps best for anyone with the patience for a slow-paced memoir, or anyone who loves a Black woman who’s ill or might be ill someday. If that’s you and you can read between the lines, then “Love, Rita” is a book to take in carefully.
Activism
Faces Around the Bay: Author Karen Lewis Took the ‘Detour to Straight Street’
“My life has been a roller-coaster with an unlimited ride wristband! I was raised in Berkeley during the time of Ron Dellums, the Black Panthers, and People’s Park. I was a Hippie kid, my Auntie cut off all our hair so we could wear the natural styles like her and Angela Davis.

By Barbara Fluhrer
I met Karen Lewis on a park bench in Berkeley. She wrote her story on the spot.
“My life has been a roller-coaster with an unlimited ride wristband! I was raised in Berkeley during the time of Ron Dellums, the Black Panthers, and People’s Park. I was a Hippie kid, my Auntie cut off all our hair so we could wear the natural styles like her and Angela Davis.
I got married young, then ended up getting divorced, raising two boys into men. After my divorce, I had a stroke that left me blind and paralyzed. I was homeless, lost in a fog with blurred vision.
Jesus healed me! I now have two beautiful grandkids. At 61, this age and this stage, I am finally free indeed. Our Lord Jesus Christ saved my soul. I now know how to be still. I lay at his feet. I surrender and just rest. My life and every step on my path have already been ordered. So, I have learned in this life…it’s nice to be nice. No stressing, just blessings. Pray for the best and deal with the rest.
Nobody is perfect, so forgive quickly and love easily!”
Lewis’ book “Detour to Straight Street” is available on Amazon.
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