By Ken Epstein

District 3 City Council incumbent Carroll Fife recently kicked off her campaign for reelection, speaking to an enthusiastic, standing-room-only crowd at ForTheCulture Oak, 701 Clay St. in West Oakland.

Since she took office in 2021, Fife has been working to move Oakland City Council in a progressive direction, spearheading efforts and working with others on the council and in the community to enact strengthened protections for poor and working people.

Her track record has earned her enthusiastic support from some quarters and stirred the enmity of others, including developers, large landlords, and hedge fund executives, who are already financing campaigns to unseat Fife and other local progressives.

“We are in a moment that they have written history books about,” said Fife at her campaign launch. “Our opposition is in fear because we are winning. We are winning, not because of me personally, but (because we are) lifting up the necessity of working cooperatively and thinking about the people who have the least.”

While on the council, Fife has worked for humane policies to reduce homelessness, strengthen public safety, build affordable housing, and foster small business and economic development.

She helped to pilot community-initiated traffic safety solutions, improve Oakland’s 911 dispatch system, finance safe parking sites for unhoused residents, establish a Lakeshore LGBTQ Cultural District, and put Oakland on record in support of a ceasefire in Gaza.

She has also backed the African American Sports and Entertainment Group (ASSEG)-sponsored development of the Oakland Coliseum, which potentially can lead to the historic economic development to benefit Oakland residents and especially residents of East Oakland.

Her work also included popular ballot measures that authorized low-rent housing, expanded tenant protections, created a progressive tax structure on big business, established public banking in Oakland, capped allowable rent increases for tenants, and expanded opportunities for young people through the Summer Jobs program.

Five candidates are running against Fife. One of them, Warren Logan, transportation planner and former policy advisor of ex-Mayor Libby Schaaf, has already raised over $100,000 in donations from Schaaf and others, many of them involved in tech and real estate development.

Formerly, Fife served as executive director of ACCE Oakland, helped found Moms for Housing and passed legislation at the state and local level to build collective power for tenants. She worked to develop a network of Black organizations and was a 2016 and 2020 delegate for Bernie Sanders and has been a member of the 2020 Platform Committee for the Democratic National Committee.

One of Fife’s major opponents will not appear on the ballot. He is Sam Singer, a longtime public relations operative, with deep connections to corporate media organizations, who has represented Chevron for years in its fight to demonize environmentalists.

Singer was also employed by Wedgewood Properties, a billion-dollar corporation, helping the company vilify Moms for Housing, which in 2020 received international attention in their fight to purchase a vacant home in Oakland. Fife, a community activist at the time, worked closely with Moms for Housing.

Currently, Singer works with officers in the Oakland Police Department and writes frequently on social media denouncing progressive elected officials. Local observers say Singer’s PR efforts promote racial divisions and encourage support for authoritarian solutions by promoting MAGA-type hysteria of rampant crime.

“We’ve got to be united,” said Fife.  “We’ve got to organize like we’ve never organized before,” she said. “Information is easy to come by, but truth is not.”

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By Carla Thomas

On Aug. 9, in downtown Oakland at Oakstop, a co-working and event space, dozens of journalists and broadcasters convened to hear an historic announcement from NBA icon Jason Kidd and NBA All Star and Finals MVP Jaylen Brown.

The duo told the world that they have joined forces to raise an ambitious $5 billion dollars to empower underserved and marginalized communities. The week prior, Brown set the goal in motion by creating the Boston XChange in preparation to do the same in the Bay Area as the Oakland XChange.

“True systemic change requires collaboration, shared vision, and collective impact. By working with community partners, thought leaders, and cultural influencers, our goal is to cultivate a powerful network of support and innovation,” shared Brown.

Through the new nonprofit XChange enterprises in Boston and Oakland and his sphere of influence, Brown has set his intentions in motion jumpstarting a path toward generational wealth and cultivating cultural innovation in underserved and underrepresented communities. Designed to provide opportunities at the intersection of business and culture, Brown says the XChange will use a place-based strategy to drive solutions for better cities, integrating real estate development, business education, technology, and cultural competency to foster economic growth.

Chapters in Boston (BXC) and Oakland (OXC) will serve as organizing hubs, utilizing commercial real estate to empower underserved communities.

Kidd says he was inspired by Brown’s concept and the two have committed millions of dollars from their own fortunes to kick off the venture. Kidd and Brown, both Oakland natives, see a bright future for their hometown.

“We welcome anyone that is willing to make a commitment to the future and health of the community and put it on a path toward generational sustainability,” said Kidd, during the press conference.

“The racial wealth gap is not limited to Boston — It’s a national issue, affecting Oakland and cities throughout the country, revealing how some groups are better positioned to make critical investments in their futures that benefit their families and communities,” said Kidd.

Kidd has also made significant philanthropic contributions to his hometown, such as funding the Willie Keyes Recreation Center in West Oakland.

The XChange will create and showcase scalable and repeatable models for shared real estate ownership and impact investments to facilitate asset building for sidelined community members that can be adopted across the country. They will engage professional athletes, business leaders, philanthropists, and influencers who are passionate about solving wealth inequality in the cities they love, using a replicable model that maximizes impact while uplifting existing organizations working to bridge the wealth gap.

“Using this strategy, The XChange presents an opportunity for individual cities to tailor the model to the unique needs and strengths of their communities, replicating and refining it for optimal impact,” said the Oakland XChange’s founder Trevor Parham.

“Place based strategies are important for unifying and revitalizing underserved communities and our lived experiences inform market insights and social solutions that help foster sustainable economic development. I’m proud of Oakstop’s track record for community-led social impact and our synergy with the Boston XChange.”

Boston XChange board member Riz Shah was also on hand along with local politicians, Caroll Fife, Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA-12), and Lateefah Simon, candidate for U.S Congress. They all shared their excitement for the new venture.

For more information visit:  www.oaklandxchange.org

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OAKLAND, CA — Congresswoman Barbara Lee (CA-12) today celebrated the Department of Transportation’s (DOT) announcement of two grants for California to expand clean transportation infrastructure. The DOT announced that Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) will receive over $14 million to install Level 2 EV charging ports at all BART-managed parking facilities for use by customers and community members. The DOT also announced that the California Department of Transportation will receive $102 million for the West Coast Truck Charging and Fueling Corridor Project to deploy charging and hydrogen fueling stations for zero-emission medium- and heavy-duty vehicles along 2,500 miles of key freight corridors in California, Oregon, and Washington.

The transportation sector is the largest source of U.S. carbon emissions. According to the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a 50 percent reduction in carbon must be achieved by 2050—and as much as a 91 percent decrease by 2100—to stay within the globally accepted goal of limiting the planet’s warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

“Today, I am excited to announce that BART has been selected to receive this critical federal funding to help expand mobility and end fossil fuel dependence,” said Congresswoman Lee. “It is especially important the first phase of the project will prioritize deployment at stations in or near disadvantaged communities. BART is an essential part of our public transit system, and these funds will improve transit for its riders in throughout the Bay Area.”

By installing chargers at BART stations that are close to multifamily housing, workplaces, medical facilities, schools, and retail, the project will support robust EV adoption across a wide range of socioeconomic groups and road users.

Furthermore, because of discriminatory policies, highways were built near and through Black and brown communities, making these communities much more vulnerable to chronic illnesses associated with disproportionate exposure to air pollution. A reduction in gas-powered cars will be especially beneficial to communities of color and low-income communities who have been disproportionately harmed by infrastructural and environmental injustices.

The West Coast Truck Charging and Fueling Corridor Project will enable the emissions-free movement of goods connecting major ports, freight centers, and agricultural regions between the U.S. borders with Mexico and Canada.

On this funding, Congresswoman Lee said: “This funding will go a long way toward not only combatting the climate crisis, but it will create good-paying jobs as well. I thank the Department of Transportation and the Biden-Harris administration for their continued commitment to a cleaner and healthier environment.”

Last year, alongside the California delegation, Congresswoman Lee sent a letter to DOT Secretary Pete Buttigieg urging support for the grant application of the West Coast Truck Charging and Fueling Corridor Project through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law’s Charging and Fueling Infrastructure program.

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