Community

Union Backed School Board Candidates Finish Strong Against Billionaire Supported Candidates

Published

5 years ago

November 12, 2020

Kiki

Mike Hutchinson, who is poised to win the District 5 School Board election, speaks at a protest against NewSchools Venture Fund outside of an invitation-only fundraising dinner for the organization at Oakland’s Marriott at City Center on May 8, 2019, a few months after the Oakland Educator Strike. NewSchools Venture Fund is a billionaire backed organization that has invested in Oakland Charter Schools. Photo courtesy of Rex LC and East Bay DSA

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.”

Kiki

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Alameda County

Bling It On: Holiday Lights Brighten Dark Nights All Around the Bay

On the block where I grew up in the 1960s, it was an unwritten agreement among the owners of those row homes to put up holiday lights: around the front window and door, along the porch banister, etc. Some put the Christmas tree in the window, and you could see it through the open slats of the blinds.

Published

2 days ago

December 21, 2025

Oakland Post

Christmas lights on a house near the writer’s residence in Oakland. Photo by Joseph Shangosola.

By Wanda Ravernell

I have always liked Christmas lights.

From my desk at my front window, I feel a quiet joy when the lights on the house across the street come on just as night falls.

My father, the renegade of the block, made no effort with lights, so my mother hung a wreath with two bells in the window. Just enough to let you know someone was at home.

Two doors down was a different story. Mr. King, the overachiever of the block, went all out for Christmas: The tree in the window, the lights along the roof and a Santa on his sleigh on the porch roof.

There are a few ‘Mr. Kings’ in my neighborhood.

In particular is the gentleman down the street. For Halloween, they erected a 10-foot skeleton in the yard, placed ‘shrunken heads’ on fence poles, pumpkins on steps and swooping bat wings from the porch roof. They have not held back for Christmas.

The skeleton stayed up this year, this time swathed in lights, as is every other inch of the house front. It is a light show that rivals the one in the old Wanamaker’s department store in Philadelphia.

I would hate to see their light bill…

As the shortest day of the year approaches, make Mr. King’s spirit happy and get out and see the lights in your own neighborhood, shopping plazas and merchant areas.

Here are some places recommended by 510 Families and Johnny FunCheap.

Oakland

Oakland’s Temple Hill Holiday Lights and Gardens is the place to go for a drive-by or a leisurely stroll for a religious holiday experience. Wear a jacket, because it’s chilly outside the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, at 4220 Lincoln Ave., particularly after dark. The gardens are open all day from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. with the lights on from dusk until closing.

Alameda

Just across the High Street Bridge from Oakland, you’ll find Christmas Tree Lane in Alameda.

On Thompson Avenue between High Street and Fernside drive, displays range from classic trees and blow-ups to a comedic response to the film “The Nightmare Before Christmas.” Lights turn on at dusk and can be seen through the first week in January.

Berkeley

The Fourth Street business district from University Avenue to Virginia Street in Berkeley comes alive with lights beginning at 5 p.m. through Jan. 1, 2026.

There’s also a display at one house at 928 Arlington St., and, for children, the Tilden Park Carousel Winter Wonderland runs through Jan. 4, 2026. Closed Christmas Day. For more information and tickets, call (510) 559-1004.

Richmond

The Sundar Shadi Holiday Display, featuring a recreation of the town of Bethlehem with life-size figures, is open through Dec. 26 at 7501 Moeser Lane in El Cerrito.

Marin County

In Marin, the go-to spot for ‘oohs and ahhs’ is the Holiday Light Spectacular from 4-9 p.m. through Jan. 4, 2026, at Marin Center Fairgrounds at 10 Ave of the Flags in San Rafael through Jan. 4. Displays dazzle, with lighted walkways and activities almost daily. For more info, go to: www.marincounty.gov/departments/cultural-services/department-sponsored-events/holiday-light-spectacular

The arches at Marin County Civic Center at 3501 Civic Center Dr. will also be illuminated nightly.

San Francisco

Look for light installations in Golden Gate Park, chocolate and cheer at Ghirardelli Square, and downtown, the ice rink in Union Square and the holiday tree in Civic Center Plaza are enchanting spots day and night. For neighborhoods, you can’t beat the streets in Noe Valley, Pacific Heights, and Bernal Heights. For glee and over-the-top glitz there’s the Castro, particularly at 68 Castro Street.

Livermore

The winner of the 2024 Great Light Flight award, Deacon Dave has set up his display with a group of creative volunteers at 352 Hillcrest Avenue since 1982. See it through Jan. 1, 2026. For more info, go to https://www.casadelpomba.com

Fremont

Crippsmas Place is a community of over 90 decorated homes with candy canes passed out nightly through Dec. 31. A tradition since 1967, the event features visits by Mr. and Mrs. Claus on Dec. 18 and Dec. 23 and entertainment by the Tri-M Honor Society at 6 p.m. on Dec. 22. Chrippsmas Place is located on: Cripps Place, Asquith Place, Nicolet Court, Wellington Place, Perkins Street, and the stretch of Nicolet Avenue between Gibraltar Drive and Perkins Street.

Oakland Post

Posts by Oakland Post

Activism

Lu Lu’s House is Not Just Toying Around with the Community

Wilson and Lambert will be partnering with Mayor Barbara Lee on a toy giveaway on Dec. 20. Young people, like Dremont Wilkes, age 15, will help give away toys and encourage young people to stay in school and out of trouble. Wilkes wants to go to college and become a specialist in financial aid. Sports agent Aaron Goodwin has committed to giving all eight young people from Lu Lu’s House a fully paid free ride to college, provided they keep a 3.0 grade point average and continue the program. Lu Lu’s House is not toying around.

Published

2 days ago

December 20, 2025

Oakland Post

Tania Fuller Bryant, Zirl Wilson, Dremont Wilkes, Tracy Lambert and Dr. Geoffrey Watson. Courtesy Oakland Private Industry

Special to the Post

Lu Lu’s House is a 501c3 organization based in Oakland, founded by Mr. Zirl Wilson and Mr. Tracy Lambert, both previously incarcerated. After their release from jail, they wanted to change things for the better in the community — and wow, have they done that!

The duo developed housing for previously incarcerated people, calling it “Lu Lu’s House,” after Wilson’s wonderful wife. At a time when many young people were robbing, looting, and involved in shootings, Wilson and Lambert took it upon themselves to risk their lives to engage young gang members and teach them about nonviolence, safety, cleanliness, business, education, and the importance of health and longevity.

Lambert sold hats and T-shirts at the Eastmont Mall and was visited by his friend Wilson. At the mall, they witnessed gangs of young people running into the stores, stealing whatever they could get their hands on and then rushing out. Wilson tried to stop them after numerous robberies and finally called the police, who Wilson said, “did not respond.” Having been incarcerated previously, they realized that if the young people were allowed to continue to rob the stores, they could receive multiple criminal counts, which would take their case from misdemeanors to felonies, resulting in incarceration.

Lu Lu’s House traveled to Los Angeles and obtained more than 500 toys
for a Dec. 20 giveaway in partnership with Oakland Mayor Barbara
Lee. Courtesy Oakland Private Industry,

Wilson took it upon himself to follow the young people home and when he arrived at their subsidized homes, he realized the importance of trying to save the young people from violence, drug addiction, lack of self-worth, and incarceration — as well as their families from losing subsidized housing. Lambert and Wilson explained to the young men and women, ages 13-17, that there were positive options which might allow them to make money legally and stay out of jail. Wilson and Lambert decided to teach them how to wash cars and they opened a car wash in East Oakland. Oakland’s Initiative, “Keep the town clean,” involved the young people from Lu Lu’s House participating in more than eight cleanup sessions throughout Oakland. To assist with their infrastructure, Lu Lu’s House has partnered with Oakland’s Private Industry Council.

For the Christmas season, Lu Lu’s House and reformed young people (who were previously robbed) will continue to give back.

Lu Lu’s House traveled to Los Angeles and obtained more than 500 toys.

Oakland Post

Posts by Oakland Post

Activism

Desmond Gumbs — Visionary Founder, Mentor, and Builder of Opportunity

Gumbs’ coaching and leadership journey spans from Bishop O’Dowd High School, Oakland High School, Stellar Prep High School. Over the decades, hundreds of his students have gone on to college, earning academic and athletic scholarships and developing life skills that extend well beyond sports.

Published

2 days ago

December 20, 2025

Oakland Post

NCAA football history was made this year when Head Coach from Mississippi Valley State, Terrell Buckley and Head Coach Desmond Gumbs both had starting kickers that were Women. This picture was taken after the game. Courtesy photo.

Special to the Post

For more than 25 years, Desmond Gumbs has been a cornerstone of Bay Area education and athletics — not simply as a coach, but as a mentor, founder, and architect of opportunity. While recent media narratives have focused narrowly on challenges, they fail to capture the far more important truth: Gumbs’ life’s work has been dedicated to building pathways to college, character, and long-term success for hundreds of young people.

A Career Defined by Impact

One of his most enduring contributions is his role as founder of Stellar Prep High School, a non-traditional, mission-driven institution created to serve students who needed additional structure, belief, and opportunity. Through Stellar Prep numerous students have advanced to college — many with scholarships — demonstrating Gumbs’ deep commitment to education as the foundation for athletic and personal success.

NCAA football history was made this year when Head Coach from
Mississippi Valley State, Terrell Buckley and Head Coach Desmond
Gumbs both had starting kickers that were women. This picture was
taken after the game.

A Personal Testament to the Mission: Addison Gumbs

Perhaps no example better reflects Desmond Gumbs’ philosophy than the journey of his son, Addison Gumbs. Addison became an Army All-American, one of the highest honors in high school football — and notably, the last Army All-Americans produced by the Bay Area, alongside Najee Harris.

Both young men went on to compete at the highest levels of college football — Addison Gumbs at the University of Oklahoma, and Najee Harris at the University of Alabama — representing the Bay Area on a national level.

Building Lincoln University Athletics From the Ground Up

In 2021, Gumbs accepted one of the most difficult challenges in college athletics: launching an entire athletics department at Lincoln University in Oakland from scratch. With no established infrastructure, limited facilities, and eventually the loss of key financial aid resources, he nonetheless built opportunities where none existed.

Under his leadership, Lincoln University introduced:

Football
Men’s and Women’s Basketball
Men’s and Women’s Soccer

Operating as an independent program with no capital and no conference safety net, Gumbs was forced to innovate — finding ways to sustain teams, schedule competition, and keep student-athletes enrolled and progressing toward degrees. The work was never about comfort; it was about access.

Voices That Reflect His Impact

Desmond Gumbs’ philosophy has been consistently reflected in his own published words:

“if you have an idea, you’re 75% there the remaining 25% is actually doing it.”
“This generation doesn’t respect the title — they respect the person.”
“Greatness is a habit, not a moment.”

Former players and community members have echoed similar sentiments in public commentary, crediting Gumbs with teaching them leadership, accountability, confidence, and belief in themselves — lessons that outlast any single season.

Context Matters More Than Headlines

Recent articles critical of Lincoln University athletics focus on logistical and financial hardships while ignoring the reality of building a new program with limited resources in one of the most expensive regions in the country. Such narratives are ultimately harmful and incomplete, failing to recognize the courage it takes to create opportunity instead of walking away when conditions are difficult.

The real story is not about early struggles — it is about vision, resilience, and service.

A Legacy That Endures

From founding Stellar PREP High School, to sending hundreds of students to college, to producing elite athletes like Addison Gumbs, to launching Lincoln University athletics, Desmond Gumbs’ legacy is one of belief in young people and relentless commitment to opportunity.

His work cannot be reduced to headlines or records. It lives on in degrees earned, scholarships secured, leaders developed, and futures changed — across the Bay Area and beyond.