By Special to The Post

Innovative initiative combines employment, housing support, job training, and case management to create permanent pathways out of homelessness

Mayor Barbara Lee announced on Tuesday a $1 million grant from a Kaiser Permanente fund at the East Bay Community Foundation to launch the Workforce Development and Interim Housing Pilot Project. The initiative combines low-barrier employment with housing support to strengthen Oakland’s homelessness response while cleaning public spaces throughout the city.

Grant funding provides recipients with:

• Part-time paid work focused on citywide sanitation and trash clean up, with pathways to permanent, full-time employment
• One year of interim housing support
• Comprehensive job training and wrap-around supportive services
• Tailored case management designed to transition participants into permanent housing

“This pilot program gives us an essential tool to drive change for all of our neighbors affected by homelessness, including our Black and African American population who are disproportionately impacted,” said Lee.

Data show that having a job is critical to housing stability and preventing homelessness. This pilot provides unhoused residents with job opportunities that keep public spaces throughout the City clean, directly supporting the mayor’s goal to reduce unsheltered homelessness in Oakland by 50%.

Achieving these goals requires unified City operations backed by new philanthropic and private sector investments. With Kaiser Permanente’s support, this project brings together the Mayor’s office, City Administrator’s office, Office of Homelessness Solutions, Housing and Community Development, Human Services, and Economic and Workforce Development.

The pilot is modeled after a similar program in Portland, Oregon, that offers low-barrier employment in sanitation services and housing support to people experiencing homelessness. Program results include a high percentage of participants moving to temporary or permanent housing and cleaner public spaces.

“We’re proud to support this innovative project because it creates meaningful opportunities for people experiencing homelessness while strengthening the health and vitality of the entire Oakland community,” said Yvette Radford, vice president of external and community affairs for Kaiser Permanente Northern California. “By providing job training, paid employment, supportive services, and a pathway to stable housing, this program offers people the tools to move forward with dignity and hope—while creating cleaner, safer, and healthier public spaces for everyone.”

The Communications Department of the Oakland Mayor’s office is the source of this report.

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By Dr. Y’Anad Burrell

“Fashion vs. Fascism” (FVF) is a visually immersive evening of fashion, music and political theater exposing the rise of fascism in the U.S. and the need to resist. Democracy is under siege, and culture is one of our most potent defenses, organizers say.

Called a live “runway revolution,” FvF premieres Oct. 3 at The Rotunda, 300 Frank Ogawa Plaza in downtown Oakland.

A play that is part fashion show, part protest, part performance art, FvF stages five runway collections spotlighting the pillars of contemporary fascist politics and the urgent need to resist: the myth of a “glorious past,” the manufactured emergencies used to justify surveillance and crackdowns, and the oligarchs and grifters profiting from it all. Runway fashion shares the stage with political theater and live music, with a closing call to action.

“We need lawsuits, ballots and mass protests, but none of it lands if we’re not also fighting for people’s imagination,” says Linda Burnham, co-producer of the show. “People are exhausted and scared. FvF will expose the absurdities of fascist mythology and ideology in ways a news headline cannot and spark new ideas about how to resist.”

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“Fascism doesn’t win by policy alone. It wins by telling a story. A myth about a ‘Golden Age.’ A permanent emergency that makes cruelty seem necessary. That’s not an accident, it’s a strategy, and it works on the same terrain as culture: image, spectacle, emotion,” says Aya De León, the show’s playwright.

“Every piece on this runway translates what is happening under fascism into a feeling,” explains Erica Furlong, the FVF creative director. “One designer’s trench coat is covered in pockets stamped ‘TRUTH,’ ‘MEMORY,’ ‘HOPE,’ ‘VOTE,’ ‘FUTURE,’ because that’s literally what gets seized first, pocket by pocket, under fascist decline. Fashion can hold grief and hope in the same silhouette, and that tension is exactly what this moment needs.”

At its best, fashion is about creativity, diversity, innovation, experimentation and the free exchange of ideas. Fascism, by contrast, demands conformity and control, while suppressing dissent.

FVF was created, organizers say, because democracy should always be in style.

Featured designers include Erica Varize, Rickie Lee, Tianna Charity, Julie Wong, and Maria Flores. The evening features a script by lead playwright Aya De León, musical performances by Mindeullae Project and DJ Emancipation, and other special guests.

FvF is designed to travel. Following the Oakland premiere, FvF will extend its reach through a documentary short, a curriculum on contemporary fascism in the U.S., and a full replication playbook — design templates, script, and curriculum — so organizers in other cities can stage their own version of the show.

Get more details at www.fashionvfascism.org.

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