Community
Union Backed School Board Candidates Finish Strong Against Billionaire Supported Candidates
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As final votes are being tallied, three Oakland School Board director candidates backed by the Oakland Education Association who ran on platforms against privatization, cuts, and public school closures hold significant leads poising them to win against candidates who, backed by political action committees, spent between two to three times more money on their campaigns.
District 1 candidate Sam Davis, District 3 candidate VanCedric Williams, and District 5 candidate Mike Hutchinson, have each thus far secured between 10-13% more votes than their opponents Austin Dannhaus, Maiya Edgerly and Leroy Roches Gaines.
Dannhaus, Edgerly and Gaines received major campaign donations from PACs including Go Public Schools and Power2Families, which are funded in large part by billionaires like Michael Bloomberg, Bill and Melinda Gates, and Alice and Jim Walton, all of whom have encouraged the development of charter schools.
“I knew, even years ago, the only way to counter money power is with people power,” said Hutchinson.
Starting in 2012, Hutchinson began fighting school closures when he founded Oakland’s Public Education Network in reaction to school closures that included Santa Fe Elementary, a school he had attended.
In 2016, Hutchinson ran for School Board on an anti-school closure and anti-privatization platform but only secured about 16% of the vote. Hutchinson claimed years of hard work by himself and other public school advocates helped shift the narrative by 2020 against both the ideas that school privatization is beneficial and that public school closures are needed or inevitable. In 2020, the message of his campaign resonated more with voters.
From 2004 to 2019, Oakland had closed 18 public schools and in 14 of the closed sites, charter schools moved in. The student population of the 16 closed schools was mostly Black. School board members claimed closures were financially necessary to best serve students, and pushed an agenda to close 24 more schools in 2019.
At the same time, Hutchinson, advocates, and OEA united to assert that the closures were strategic and came from underfunding and under-supporting schools that served Black and Brown students.
OEA Vice President Ismael Amendariz said the union had been focusing on problems around teacher retention issues like low teacher wages compared to nearby districts. But they shifted their focus in 2019 to cuts to OUSD and closures of schools by showing that School Board members who were pushing for the 24 closures had their campaigns funded by GO Public Schools.
Since pro-charter school funded Board members were pushing cuts, and school closures in recent history often meant charter schools taking over closed public school sites, they claimed the push to close schools was about privatization instead of financial necessity.
Amendariz said the union made an effort to make issues of billionaires pushing privatization more apparent to people during and leading up to a seven-day Oakland educator strike in late February and early March of last year. Hutchinson said the public was well situated to reject the privatization efforts as Pres. Donald Trump and his Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, who are unpopular in Oakland, pushed a similar agenda.
East Bay Democratic Socialists of America were strong supporters of the strike, claiming that the push to spread charter schools, which do not allow unions, was funded by billionaires who wanted to break up labor organizing that could raise wages while improving working conditions and benefits which would drive up taxes on billionaires.
“In the build-up to the strike we had memos, we had education about who was buying our School Board,” said Amendariz. “When we were doing actions during the strike we were very intentional about where we were doing the actions and what was the messaging. That’s when people started to realize there’s something wrong here.”
A teachers’ strike in January 2019 in Los Angeles had similar anti-charter messaging that helped make Oakland’s strike more legible to the public. Hutchinson saw parallels between the two strikes in terms of “who the unions made the target of their strikes.”
“On day two of the L.A. teachers’ strike, UTLA marched on The California Charter School Association headquarters,” he said. “On day two of the strike in Oakland, OEA marched on GO [Public Schools] headquarters.”
Mona Treviño, who has been a parent activist since 2015 and worked with Hutchinson on his campaign said that although public consciousness against schools closures and privitization has recently shifted, “there have been waves of resistance in the last 10 years.” She pointed out battles to stop the closures at Santa Fe, Tilden, Maxwell Park and an occupation of Lakeview Elementary School during Occupy Oakland.
With Hutchinson, she and other advocates have spoken regularly at School Board meetings against closures and cuts. Organizing around legislative issues like the fight for AB 1505, a bill passed in October 2019 that helps give local school boards the power to deny approving charter schools, also has helped to educate voters.
In the months leading up to the strike, non-OEA sanctioned actions by teachers and students helped get themselves, the public, and the union to discuss and consider the issue of budget cuts and closures by laying the groundwork for a strike where issues of billionaire-backed privatization were more clearly addressed.
The school board chose to approve the closure of Roots Middle School January 2019, but not before Roots students, teachers, and parents showed up at School Board meetings to speak out against its closure.
Students were at the forefront of the actions, wielding signs against budget cuts and closures, speaking out, at times though sobs and tears, in public comments against the board choosing to close their school. At one point students convinced the board to engage in a restorative justice circle to discuss the closure, transforming the regular format of the board’s meetings.
“You closing down Roots, to me, is like putting me up for adoption,” said former Roots student Tenai Harris, addressing the School Board. “Roots made me who I am.”
After the School Board announcing its decision to close the school, parents and students decided to boycott attending the school on February 1. Treviño said around 80% of students did not attend school that day. The activism stemming from Roots helped put the issue of closures at the forefront of people’s dialogue during the strike.
In December, 2018, Oakland High School teachers called in sick en masse to protest the lack of a contract with the district, a lack of nurses, too-large class sizes, and low wages. The strike was not sanctioned by OEA and was, in part, a reaction to what teachers perceived as a lack of union action. Oakland High teacher Alex Webster Guiney said at the time that the union was “moving too slow.” On Jan. 18, 2019, teachers and students at four other OUSD High Schools, and a middle school joined Oakland High to stage a mass walkout and march to protest the same issues.
The teacher-led actions soon lead to a student lead sick out, organized by students at Oakland Technical High School, where students from six different Oakland High Schools called out sick on Feb. 8, 2019, and rallied in support of the same demands. Looking back on the sick-outs and walk-outs, OEA Vice President Becky Pringle said that they helped organize high schools for the upcoming seven-day union sanctioned strike.
“Before the strike I didn’t have any awareness of union politics or School Board politics,” said Webster Guiney. “I just knew we didn’t have a contract, we hadn’t had one for 20 months, and our union wasn’t doing anything as far as I could tell.”
At that time, new union leadership coming into OEA was planning for the sanctioned strike. During the strike, and just after, when parents, students and teachers at Kaiser Elementary School repeatedly protested the school’s closure at board meetings, OEA, Hutchinson, and other advocates found it easier then they had in the past to educate the public about the privatized interests involved in school board elections.
“We went on our own little learning journeys,” Webster Guiney said. “People really started to see…there’s a concerted effort to take over Oakland schools.”
During the strike, Hutchinson was regularly at marches, pickets, and protests speaking out against public school closures and charters moving into public school sites, drawing a firm line between him and board members. None of the incumbent School Board members eligible to run for re-election this year chose to.
Hutchinson drew parallels between his campaign and Carroll Fife’s, an organizer who has worked diligently for housing for all in Oakland who recently won District 3’s City Council race.
“Both Carroll and I are organizers who have been on the front lines for years around all of these issues,” he said. “I’m really proud that it shows that in Oakland we have a by-any-means-necessary, inside-outside approach to politics.”
With the message more legible to the public, OEA-backed campaigns found it easier to talk to voters and drum up volunteers. Hutchinson had around 100 volunteers who worked almost 10 Saturdays in a row— missing one day due to wildfire smoke—doing phone calls and walks through his precinct to engage with voters.
In District 3, OEA helped phone 12,000 voters to support Williams, who opposes public school closures, against Edgerly, whose campaign received more than $100,000 from Go Public Schools and over $50,000 from Power2Families.
While three union-backed candidates are poised to win their races, one candidate backed by OEA, Ben Tapscott of District 7, looks poised to lose as he has received about 4.5% fewer votes than Clifford Thompson, whose was funded by Go Public Schools and Power2Families. This means the Oakland School Board has a narrow majority of candidates whose campaigns were backed by billionaires.
Still, with strong public support against closures and the privatization of schools and a new round of School Board director elections coming in 2022, OEA and public school advocates are hopeful.
“People don’t like billionaires and they trust teachers,” said Amendariz. “Bernie Sanders and Trump helped drive that point well. Voters are going with teachers.”
Activism
Oakland Post: Week of February 19 – 25, 2025
The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of February 19 – 25, 2025
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Activism
U.S. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Rep. Lateefah Simon to Speak at Elihu Harris Lecture Series
The popular lecture series is co-produced by the Oakland-based Martin Luther King Jr. Freedom Center and Peralta Community College District. Jeffries’ appearance marks the 32nd lecture of the Barbara Lee and Elihu Harris Lecture Series, which has provided thousands of individuals with accessible, free, high-quality information.
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By Scott Horton
United States House of Representatives Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY-8) will be a speaker at the Barbara Lee and Elihu Harris Lecture Series on Friday, Feb. 21.
The event will be held at the Henry J. Kaiser Center for the Arts, 10 Tenth Street in Oakland, at 7 p.m.
The popular lecture series is co-produced by the Oakland-based Martin Luther King Jr. Freedom Center and Peralta Community College District. Jeffries’ appearance marks the 32nd lecture of the Barbara Lee and Elihu Harris Lecture Series, which has provided thousands of individuals with accessible, free, high-quality information.
The overarching goal of the lecture series is to provide speakers from diverse backgrounds a platform to offer their answers to Dr. King’s urgent question, which is also the title of Jeffries’ latest book: “Where do we go from here: Chaos or Community?”
In addition to Jeffries, Congresswoman Lateefah Simon (D-CA-12) will also speak.
“Certainly, now is a time for humanity, in general, and Americans in particular to honestly and genuinely answer Dr. King’s question,” said Dr. Roy D. Wilson, Executive Director of the Martin Luther King Jr. Freedom Center and Executive Producer of the lecture series.
“Dr. King teaches that time is neutral but not static. Like the water in a river, it arrives and then quickly moves on,” continued Wilson. “We must urgently create conditions for listening to many different answers to this vital question, and generate the development of unity of action among all those who struggle for a stronger democracy.”
In his book, Jeffries shares his experience of being unanimously elected by his colleagues as the first African American in history to ever hold the position of House Minority Leader.
In January 2023 in Washington, Jeffries made his first official speech as House Minority Leader. He affirmed Democratic values one letter of the alphabet at a time. His words and how he framed them as the alphabet caught the attention of Americans, and the speech was later turned into a book, The ABCs of Democracy, bringing Congressman Jeffries rousing speech to vivid, colorful life, including illustrations by Shaniya Carrington. The speech and book are inspiring and urgent as a timeless reminder of what it means to be a country with equal opportunities for all. Jeffries paints a road map for a brighter American future and warns of the perils of taking a different path.
Before his colleagues unanimously elected him Minority Leader in 2022, Jeffries previously served as Chair of the House Democratic Caucus and as an Impeachment Manager during the first Senate trial of the 45th President of the United States.
Jeffries was born in Brooklyn Hospital, raised in Crown Heights, grew up in the Cornerstone Baptist Church and he is a product of New York City’s public school system, graduating from Midwood High School. Jefferies went on to Binghamton University (BA), Georgetown University (master’s in public policy) and New York University (JD).
He served in the New York State Assembly from 2007 to 2012.
Admission is free for the Feb. 21 Barbara Lee and Elihu Harris Lecture Series featuring Congressman Jeffries. Please reserve seats by calling the Martin Luther King Jr. Freedom Center at (510) 434-3988.
Signed copies of his book will be available for purchase at the event.
Alameda County
After Years of Working Remotely, Oakland Requires All City Employees to Return to Office by April 7
City Administrator Jestin Johnson recently told city unions that he is ending Oakland’s telecommuting program. The new policy will require employees to come to work at least four days a week. These new regulations go into effect on Feb. 18 for non-union department heads, assistant and deputy directors, managers, and supervisors. All other employees must be back at work by April 7.
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By Post Staff
The City Oakland is requiring all employees to return to the office, thereby ending the telecommuting policy established during the pandemic that has left some City Hall departments understaffed.
City Administrator Jestin Johnson recently told city unions that he is ending Oakland’s telecommuting program. The new policy will require employees to come to work at least four days a week.
These new regulations go into effect on Feb. 18 for non-union department heads, assistant and deputy directors, managers, and supervisors. All other employees must be back at work by April 7.
The administration may still grant the right to work remotely on a case-by-case basis.
In his memo to city unions, Johnson said former President Joe Biden had declared an end to the pandemic in September 2022, and that since then, “We have collectively moved into newer, safer health conditions.”
Johnson said “multiple departments” already have all their staff back in the office or workplace.
The City’s COVID-era policy, enacted in September 2021, was designed to reduce the spread of the debilitating and potentially fatal virus.
Many cities and companies across the country are now ending their pandemic-related remote work policies. Locally, mayoral candidate Loren Taylor in a press conference made the policy a central issue in his campaign for mayor.
City Hall reopened for in-person meetings two years ago, and the city’s decision to end remote work occurred before Taylor’s press conference.
At an endorsement meeting last Saturday of the John George Democratic Club, mayoral candidate Barbara Lee said she agreed that city workers should return to the job.
At the same time, she said, the city should allow employees time to readjust their lives, which were disrupted by the pandemic, and should recognize individual needs, taking care to maintain staff morale.
The John George club endorsed Lee for Mayor and Charlene Wang for City Council representative for District 2. The club also voted to take no position on the sales tax measure that will be on the April 15 ballot.
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