City Government

Protesters Shut Down Oakland City Council Meeting, Call for Budget That Responds to Oakland’s Needs

Published

8 years ago

July 1, 2017

Oakland City Council meeting in June 26. Photo on Facebook by Cat Brooks.

In an act of civil disobedience, Oakland residents, city workers and community shut down the City Council budget meeting on Monday, preventing the council from approving the city’s 2017-2019 budget.
The vote was rescheduled for Thursday, June 29. By law, the council must adopt a new budget by Friday, June 30.

Before the meeting was disrupted, community members called on council members to postpone the vote to give the council more time to hear about the desperate conditions Oaklanders are facing: more affordable housing and tenant protections, help for the city’s rapidly growing homeless population to get off the street and access to higher wages and decent jobs for workers.

The protesters opposed the budget backed by Council President Larry Reid and Councilmembers Lynette Gibson McElhaney, Annie Campbell Washington and Abel Guillén, instead supporting the budget proposal submitted by Councilmembers Rebecca Kaplan and Desley Brooks.

Cat Brooks, a community activist who was involved in Monday evening’s civil obedience, said council members who favored the council president’s proposal were trying to “pass … a ‘status quo’ budget giving money to the hills, developers and OPD (Oakland Police Department.”

“The people successfully interrupted the meeting and demanded a delay on the vote and that the only budget that gets passed (should) be the people’s budget,” said Brooks, co-founder of the Anti Police-Terror Project.
She called for more money for youth jobs, less money for cops, more funds for arts and artists, more money for the unhoused and for housing protections.

City workers asked the council to recognize their needs.

“We have an opportunity to fix Oakland and make it a city that everyone can thrive in, not just real estate developers,” said Felipe Cuevas, a city public works employee and local labor union SEIU 1021 Oakland chapter president.

“Residents and workers deserve a city budget that prioritizes public services and puts people first,” he said.

Margaretta Lin, a former city staffer who helped spearhead Oakland’s Housing Equity Roadmap in 2015, said the amount of money being earmarked for the homeless is inadequate.

“The proposed budget (for homelessness and anti-displacement) increased by only $370,000 for the next two years. This is even less than what the City of Berkeley, one-fourth the size of Oakland, is funding for anti-displacement,” she said.

James Vann of the Oakland Tenants Union said in an interview with the Post that the council’s budget fails to recognize that Oakland is in the midst of an affordable housing and homelessness crisis.

“Last year the Public Works Department spent $210,000 cleaning up debris and closing homeless campsites, which just pop back up once they leave,” he said. “This is not a constructive use of funds or a solution to a growing epidemic.”

Because the city has not met the challenge, a group of residents called the Homeless Advocacy Working Group began to hold biweekly meetings in January and have come up with a comprehensive program that would address these crises in various ways, Vann said.

The group’s proposal allocates $3 million per year to respond to the city’ homelessness epidemic.

The money would pay for the construction of tiny homes and establishing supervised campsites on city property, which would provide counseling, sanitation, bathrooms and other needs.

Mayor Libby Schaaf told the Post her budget dedicated significant funding to deal with homelessness. “We are dedicating $120 million to improve our city’s infrastructure, thanks in large part to Measure KK, while also making an unprecedented investment of $185 million in city and county funds to tackle homelessness in the immediate and long term,” she said.

Responding, Vann said, “The mayor’s statement is very misleading. She is projecting getting money from the county, she’s projecting getting some grants. But that money is not in the budget. It’s a fantasy – it’s money she’s hoping to get.”

“What there is for the homeless is about $100,000 – it’s almost nothing.”

Oakland Post

Posts by Oakland Post

Up Next

Funding Awarded for UC Berkeley’s New Latino Center of Excellence

Don't Miss

Fouché Foundation Fund Announces Grant Opportunity in Vocational Education

Oakland Post

Click to comment

Activism

Oakland Post: Week of January 1 – 7, 2025

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of January 1 – 7, 2025

Published

3 hours ago

January 2, 2025

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.

Oakland Post

Posts by Oakland Post

Activism

Racially Motivated Violence Against Black Teen Prompts $10 Million Claim Against LAUSD 

In December, a second altercation, on a video shared with news media, showed 4 to 6 boys attacking a Black student and using racial slurs. The video also shows a person in a safety vest trying to stop the fight and telling them to “handle it after school.” Then, the video ends. 

Published

3 days ago

December 30, 2024

Oakland Post

(Left to right) Civil Rights Attorney Caree Harper comforts the victim’s mother as she becomes emotional when describing the attacks on her son while her attorney Bradley C. Gage listens. Verdugo Hills High School on Thursday, Dec. 20, 2024, in Tujunga, CA. (Solomon O. Smith /for California Black Media)

By Solomon O. Smith, California Black Media

A distraught mother and her legal team announced a $10 million lawsuit against the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) on Dec. 16, alleging that her son was the target of bullying because of his race.

“CS DOE is a 14-year-old African American student at Verdugo High School. He is a Ninth Grader,” reads a statement the plaintiff’s attorneys shared with California Black Media (CBM).

“Almost from the first day of class (in August 2024), CS DOE was targeted by Latino students who called him racial slurs, physically attacked him and threatened to stab him.”

The family’s identity has not yet been released to the public due to safety concerns, according to their attorneys Bradley C. Gage and Caree Harper. The student’s mother is identified only as A.O. in the complaint.

The first video, filmed in August, showed several non-Black students punching and kicking a Black student in a bathroom on campus while yelling racial slurs. The mother claims that the students who attacked her son were not punished, and the administration asked her to move her son to another school for his safety.

“They wanted him to leave the school without giving any disciplinary action towards those students,” said the student’s mother. “He’s not going anywhere. He’s going to finish. I wanted him to at least stay until the December winter break, and then I was going to transfer schools for him.”

Before she could enroll her son in a different school the attacks escalated.

CS DOE, a 14-year-old freshman, left the school but was followed by a car, according to Gage. Several individuals exited the vehicle, one with a “large butcher knife.” A fight ensued and two people were stabbed. The Black student was arrested for assault with a deadly weapon but was later released into his mother’s custody.

The high school freshmen is scheduled to appear in juvenile court on Feb. 1, but Harper says she will reach out to the District Attorney and make the case against charging the young man.

“His mama had to go find him because he was hiding and fleeing for his very life,” said Harper.

According to the boy’s mother, the young student is still traumatized and has not been able to return to the area because it remains unsafe. Racial slurs have also been spray painted on their home.

“I’m sad. I’m devastated, you know,” said the mother. “I still feel like they’re after him. I still feel like they can kill him, possibly.”

The LAUSD and principal of Verdugo High School did not respond to CBM’s requests for comment.

If you are – or someone you know is – has experienced a hate crime or hate incident, please visit CAvsHate.org for more information and to find out what you can do about it.

Oakland Post

Posts by Oakland Post

Activism

OPINION: Solutions to the Housing Crisis Exist, but Governments Waste Tax Dollars Instead

People who are homeless want real housing, not temporary shelters that are dangerous and crowded. The City of Oakland has been telling the public that the sweeps of encampments are an effective solution, but it just pushes people from block to block, wasting tax money on paying police officers overtime in a budget crisis. This is true at the state level too, where California spends $42,000 per person that is unhoused per year. The city and state could just help pay residents’ rent, rather than pay for police to harass people on the streets, many of whom have disabilities or are elders.

Published

3 days ago

December 29, 2024

Oakland Post

iStock.

By Kimberly King and Victoria King

In a powerful demonstration of grassroots organizing, activists joined forces in direct action that started on Dec. 17 to call for the establishment of sanctuary communities across the West Coast

The goal of the effort is to raise awareness about misleading narratives around homelessness and to present concrete solutions to a crisis that leaves over 35,000 people unsheltered each night in the Bay Area.

The action, led by members of Oakland’s Wood Street Commons and Homefullness/Poor Magazine, represents a direct response to the U.S. Supreme Court and Gov. Gavin Newsom’s approach to homelessness. At the core of the movement is a fundamental truth: housing is a human right, not a commodity to be bought and sold for profit.

The coalition of organizations, led by people with lived experience of homelessness, coordinated their efforts to show the unity behind this movement, including setting up sweeps-free sanctuary communities and resource centers and presenting solutions to city council. The message is clear: unhoused residents refuse to remain invisible in the face of policies that have resulted in 347 deaths for people experiencing homelessness in Alameda County just this year alone.

The coalition presented four key demands, each addressing different aspects of the housing crisis. First, they called for the establishment of sanctuary communities instead of sweeps, urging the redirection of encampment management funds toward positive solutions like encampment upgrades and permanent low to no-income housing.

The second demand focuses on utilizing public land for public good, specifically identifying vacant properties like the Hilton Hotel on Port of Oakland land. The coalition emphasized the immediate availability of these spaces to house hundreds of currently unhoused residents.

Prevention forms the third pillar of the coalition’s demands, with calls for strengthened renter’s rights, rent subsidies, and a permanent moratorium on rental evictions and foreclosures for non-payment.

Finally, the coalition demands the defunding of coercive “Care Courts,” advocating instead for non-carceral approaches to mental health care and harm reduction.

The Poor People’s Campaign’s motto, “When we lift from the bottom, no one gets left behind,” encapsulates the spirit of the action. Daily activities, including opening prayers for those who have died while homeless, served as powerful reminders of the human cost of failed housing policies that treat housing as a commodity rather than a fundamental right.

As this crisis continues to unfold, these activist groups have made it clear that the solution to homelessness must come from those most directly affected by it.

About the Authors

Kimberly King and Victoria King are Oakland Residents who advocate for the unhoused and propose solutions to end homelessness and housing insecurity.