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Rep. Barbara Lee Promotes Innovative Manufacturing in San Leandro

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Congresswoman Barbara Lee was in Leandro last week to promote innovative manufacturing in the East Bay.

Speaking at the West Gate last Thursday at a “Make it in America” press event, Lee said, “Jump-starting the middle class is really what this is all about.”

Other speakers included San Leandro Mayor Stephen Cassidy, Rep. Steny Hoyer, and CEO & co-founder of Type A Machines Espen Siversten.

Each spoke about innovation and manufacturing at The Gate.

Cassidy said that the first industrial wave arrived in San Leandro around the end of World War II. The city became an industrial hotbed, a “mini industrial powerhouse,” he said

All this was possible due to investment into city infrastructure, mainly sewer lines. The city once boasted 20,000 jobs in the sector, and 25 percent of city land is still industrially zoned.

Currently, there are about 7,000 manufacturing jobs in San Leandro, according to Cassidy.

In the past, West Gate produced Dodges, Caterpillars, and Chrysler engines until the factory finally closed in the 1970s and was converted into a shopping mall and warehouse.

Since then, the building has seen its share of good and bad days and almost had to close its doors.

But that changed when Lit San Leandro installed a 10-gigabit fiber optic line into the building, which connected the business and art center to the 11.5-mile network installed throughout San Leandro in 2012.

After this installation, The Gate became a 3D printing hub. A coalition of 12 companies, dubbed BAAM (Bay Area Advanced Manufacturing Hub), is the world’s “Largest cluster of 3D-printing-related companies under one roof.”

The companies that are a part of BAAM have already proved beneficial for the local business community. Copper Harbor, a chemical plant, saved 95 percent on production for a new part by using modern and locally sourced methods.

The Gate is not only a technological hub but an artistic one as well. Cheryl Edison, community director, says they two are not necessarily exclusive. C

Cross-pollination of ideas is perhaps the best catalyst for innovation, said Edison.

Edison goes further to say it was not until the inception of the “Art-Tech-Makers” motto at The Gate that created demand for space. Now, demand for space far exceeds capacity in the building.

West Gate is located at 1933 Davis St. in San Leandro near Freeway 880. For more information go to http://www.westgatesanleandro.com/

Activism

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

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

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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.

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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.
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

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.

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.

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

By Margaret Rossoff

Special to The Post

OPINION

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.

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.

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