Oakland
Opinion: Stopping the Stadium Mega-Development Was an Important Victory, But Fight Is Far from Over
By Alvina Wong
After four months of organizing by Laney students, faculty, and staff, Chinatown and Eastlake residents, and Lake Merritt environmentalists, the Peralta Board of Trustees decided to end talks with the Oakland A’s about constructing a stadium mega-development next to Laney College.
Their decision is a testament to our communities’ power to fight for a future where we can stay and thrive. We also know that this fight is far from over.
Since 2014 when BART and City officials completed the Lake Merritt Station Area Plan, Chinatown and Eastlake have been bombarded with a wave of luxury condo developments, soaring rents, and mass displacement of longtime residents.
At the time, many of our organizations demanded that we be included in the city-led ‘community-engagement process’. We advocated for affordable housing and storefronts, parks and open space, and resources for working class immigrant and refugee communities.
Despite countless meetings, letters, and petitions to city officials, none of our communities’ needs were reflected in the plan.
Instead, we got a plan that incentivized high-density market-rate development by rezoning the neighborhood to allow developers to build up to 275 feet in some areas, without a conditional use permit.
Our vision for a neighborhood where new immigrants and refugees could stay and thrive was noted, but no policies were put in place to help realize this vision.
The Lake Merritt Station Area plan, like the West Oakland BART plan and many others, has paved the way for developers to turn Chinatown and Eastlake into playgrounds for the wealthy, with 20 and 30 story luxury apartment buildings that literally cast shadows over our communities.
So, when the Oakland A’s decided to build a stadium with upscale stores and hotels next to Laney College, our communities quickly decided that we needed to oppose it. Chinatown and Eastlake groups joined with Laney students, faculty, and staff who were fighting to protect Laney as a public resource.
Groups that had been working for years to restore Lake Merritt and its saltwater channel also joined the fight. We went door-to-door and classroom-to-classroom. Despite the A’s aggressive PR campaign, we found that people overwhelmingly opposed the stadium at Laney.
While we were successful in stopping the A’s stadium mega-development at Laney, we know that there are more developers that want to use this public land for their own profits.
Many of us have been part of building community, culture, and resources in neighborhoods that formed as a result of racist housing covenants, suffered from disinvestment after white flight, and are now threatened with mass displacement. In these times, we’ve learned that our public land is one of the last remaining places where we can build the resources our communities need.
For us, this decision to say no to a stadium at Laney opens the door for our communities to say yes to stewarding this land to serve the public good.
It helps us transition away from looking at land as a commodity that exists to maximize profits for the wealthy, and toward looking at how this land can help sustain our lives and communities for generations to come.
As for big corporations like the A’s that benefit from Oakland’s public infrastructure and diverse communities, they should have been giving back all along – whether that means supporting public education institutions like Laney College, affordable housing and good jobs for local residents, or growing in ways that take leadership from working class people of color who want to stay and thrive.
We hope the Oakland A’s will stay the right way. Oakland has already invested millions of public dollars in the Coliseum. Now it’s the A’s turn to invest in East Oakland’s communities.
Alvina Wong works with the Stay the Right Way Coalition and is employed by the Asian Pacific Environmental Network (APEN).
Activism
Oakland Post: Week of May 8 – 14, 2024
The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of May May 8 – 14, 2024
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.
Bay Area
Faces Around the Bay: Sidney Carey
Sidney Carey was born in Dallas, Texas. He moved with his family to West Oakland as a baby. His sister is deceased; one brother lives in Oakland. Carey was the Choir Director at Trinity Missionary Baptist Church for 18 years.
By Barbara Fluhrer
Sidney Carey was born in Dallas, Texas. He moved with his family to West Oakland as a baby. His sister is deceased; one brother lives in Oakland.
Carey was the Choir Director at Trinity Missionary Baptist Church for 18 years.
He graduated from McClymonds High with a scholarship in cosmetology and was the first African American to complete a nine-month course at the first Black Beauty School in Oakland: Charm Beauty College.
He earned his License, and then attended U.C., earning a secondary teaching credential. With his Instructors License, he went on to teach at Laney College, San Mateo College, Skyline and Universal Beauty College in Pinole, among others.
Carey was the first African American hair stylist at Joseph and I. Magnin department store in Oakland and in San Francisco, where he managed the hair stylist department, Shear Heaven.
In 2009, he quit teaching and was diagnosed with Congestive Heart Failure. He was 60 and “too old for a heart transplant”. His doctors at California Pacific Medical Center (CPMC) went to court and fought successfully for his right to receive a transplant. One day, he received a call from CPMC, “Be here in one hour.” He underwent a transplant with a heart from a 25-year- old man in Vienna, Austria
Two years later, Carey resumed teaching at Laney College, finally retiring in 2012.
Now, he’s slowed down and comfortable in a Senior Residence in Berkeley, but still manages to fit his 6/4” frame in his 2002 Toyota and drive to family gatherings in Oakland and San Leandro and an occasional Four Seasons Arts concert.
He does his own shopping and cooking and uses Para Transit to keep constant doctor appointments while keeping up with anti-rejection meds. He often travels with doctors as a model of a successful heart-transplant plant recipient: 14 years.
Carey says, “I’m blessed” and, to the youth, “Don’t give up on your dreams!”
Bay Area
Emiliano Zapata Street Academy Celebrates 40 Years Serving Oakland Families
The Oakland Emiliano Zapata Street Academy, a public alternative high school, celebrated its 50th anniversary this year with a community party and festival last Saturday with live music, good food, vendors’ booths, and activities for adults and children.
By Ken Epstein
The Oakland Emiliano Zapata Street Academy, a public alternative high school, celebrated its 50th anniversary this year with a community party and festival last Saturday with live music, good food, vendors’ booths, and activities for adults and children.
Attending the Saturday, April 27 celebration were current and past students, families, faculty, and supporters of the school. The school is located at 417 29th St., and the celebration was held nearby at St. Augustine’s Episcopal Church on Telegraph Avenue in Oakland.
For more information, go to www.streetacademy.online or call 510) 874-3630 or (510) 879-2313.
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