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Opinion: The Murder of Ahmaud Arbery — and Our Continuing Terror

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Today there is a national outcry about the murder of Ahmaud Arbery. The public condemnation has forced a belated response.

Those accused of his murder finally have been arrested. His murder has become a global embarrassment for whites.

For Blacks, however, it is another humiliation, a continuing terror. It is the normal silence, however, that condemns thousands of African Americans to unjust deaths and millions to shattered lives. When the camera turns away, the savage injustice that embarrasses us becomes simply business as usual.

The horror of Ahmaud Arbery’s murder is now well known. The 25-year-old Black man went for a jog down the middle of the street in the middle of the day on Feb. 23. Two white men decided he was suspicious, hunted him down and shot him point-blank in the middle of the street at 1 p.m.

Local law enforcement had video evidence of the crime. Yet no arrest was made until 74 days later, two months and two weeks after the murder. Local authorities chose not to act. Two U.S. senators said nothing. The white church — that had blessed slavery, segregation, apartheid in South Africa — was silent.

Why did the arrests finally take place? Because an intrepid reporter from the New York Times investigated the story and made it public; the murder video was leaked to the public on the 72nd day after Ahmaud’s murder.

As the public outrage grew, the arrests were made. Never forget, as one commentator noted, they did not make the arrests because THEY saw the incriminating video. They made the arrests because WE saw the video. Embarrassed, faced with an aroused community and an international scandal, they finally acted.

So it goes. African Americans suffer in silence the savage injuries of institutionalized racism.

We live in northern ghettos — driven there in the early part of the last century by terrorism — most strikingly the Ku Klux Klan and their signature lynchings. The Equal Justice Initiative reports there were 4,084 lynchings of Blacks in the South from 1877 to 1950. The Klan, embraced by and often made up of the white gentry of the South, often gathered at their churches to organize the public lynchings. They terrorized Blacks to end the fusion multiracial coalitions that grew up in the Reconstruction and to take back control of their states.

The lynchings and violence were greeted with silence, if not approval. White authorities, white churches, white society turned their heads if they weren’t applauding in approval.

Fleeing north, Blacks were redlined into ghettos, with jobs hard to get, and discrimination closing doors. To this day, African Americans are last hired and first fired. We suffer the worst poverty, the highest unemployment, the highest childhood hunger and malnutrition, the most inadequate health care. This reality is sustained by the silence of white elites, the silence of the white church, the silence of the evangelicals, the silence of the best-minded citizens.

Then, the virus hits, and its most lethal effect is on those who are vulnerable: the elderly, the sick, the hungry, those with asthma and obesity. It hits hardest among the suddenly proclaimed “essential workers” who do the work that previously was largely “invisible: the bus drivers, the grocery clerks, the nurses and medical aides. Not surprisingly, African Americans make up a disproportionate number of those killed or infected by the virus.

The racial disparities are so stark that they gain national and international attention. Pundits express shock and outrage at the reports as if they were surprised by the results. Editorials demand reform. Politicians call for action. The informed public is embarrassed.

But little happens: the rescue packages passed by Congress send most of the money to the biggest companies and the most affluent investors. Banks are saved; the post office — with a largely minority workforce — is starved. Hunger spreads. Any expansion of food stamps is blocked.

Arrested for leading nonviolent protests against segregation, Dr. Martin Luther King penned his letter from the Birmingham jail expressing his grave disappointment with the “white moderate” and the “white church.” He suggested that the “great stumbling block” for African Americans seeking their freedom is “not the White Citizen’s Councilor or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate “who is more devoted to order than to justice.” He decried a religious community “largely adjusted to the status quo, standing as a tail-light behind other community agencies rather than a headlight leading men to higher levels of justice.”

The virus didn’t discriminate. The society enforced the discrimination; the virus just preyed upon its victims. We have gone too long, struggled too hard to adjust to the reality that it is dangerous to be Black while jogging or to be Black in a pandemic.

It isn’t enough to express dismay when the newspapers highlight the horrors. We need leaders and citizens of conscience who will act and not rest until justice is done.

Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, Sr.

Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, Sr.

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Oakland Post: Week of March 13 – 19, 2024

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of March 13 – 19, 2024

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Oakland Post: Week of March 6 – 12, 2024

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of March 6 – 12, 2024

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Who are the Alameda County District 4 Supervisor Candidates’ Top Campaign Contributors?

Below, we’ve listed each candidate’s 10 highest campaign contributors. For Miley, two of his top campaign donors also bought their own advertisements to support him and/or oppose Esteen through independent expenditures. Such expenditures, though separate from campaign donations, are also public record, and we listed them. Additionally, the National Organization of Realtors has spent about $70,500 on their own independent expenditures to support Miley.

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Jennifer Esteen. (Campaign photo) and Supervisor Nate Miley. (Official photo).
Jennifer Esteen. (Campaign photo) and Supervisor Nate Miley. (Official photo).

By Zack Haber

Nate Miley, who has served on Alameda County’s Board of Supervisors since 2000, is running for reelection to the District 4 supervisor seat.

Jennifer Esteen, a nurse and activist, is seeking to unseat him and become one of the five members of the powerful board that sets the county’s budget, governs its unincorporated areas, and oversees the sheriff, Alameda Health System, and mental health system.

District 4 includes most of East Oakland’s hills and flatlands beyond Fruitvale, part of Pleasanton and unincorporated areas south of San Leandro like Ashland and Castro Valley.

Voting is open and will remain open until March 5.

In California, campaign donations of $100 or more are public record. The records show that Miley has received about $550,000 in total campaign donations since he won the previous District 4 election in March 2020. Esteen has raised about $255,000 in total campaign donations since she started collecting them last July. All figures are accurate through Feb. 20.

While Miley has raised more money, Esteen has received donations from more sources. Miley received donations of $100 or more from 439 different sources. Esteen received such donations from 507 different sources.

Below, we’ve listed each candidate’s 10 highest campaign contributors. For Miley, two of his top campaign donors also bought their own advertisements to support him and/or oppose Esteen through independent expenditures. Such expenditures, though separate from campaign donations, are also public record, and we listed them. Additionally, the National Organization of Realtors has spent about $70,500 on their own independent expenditures to support Miley.

Nate Miley’s top campaign contributors:

The California Apartment Association, a trade group representing landlords and investors in California’s rental housing business, has spent about $129,500 supporting Miley’s election bid through about $59,500 in ads against Esteen$55,000 in ads supporting Miley, and $15,000 in campaign donations.

The independent expenditure committee Preserve Agriculture in Alameda County has spent about $46,025 supporting Miley through about $27,200 in their own ads, and $18,825 in donations to his campaign. Preserve Agriculture has supported reelection efforts for former Alameda County DA Nancy O’Malley, and Sheriff Greg Ahern, a republican. It’s received funding from ChevronPG&E, and a the California Apartment Association.

Organizations associated with the Laborers’ International Union of North America, or LiUNA, have donated about $35,000 in total. Construction and General Laborers Local 304, a local chapter of the union representing which represents over 4,000 workers, donated $20,000.

Laborers Pacific Southwest Regional Organizing Coalition, which represents 70,000 LiUNA members in Arizona, California, Hawaii and New Mexico, donated $15,000.

William ‘Bill’ Crotinger and the East Oakland-based company Argent Materials have donated $26,000. Crotinger is the president and founder of Argent, a concrete and asphalt recycling yard. Argent’s website says it is an eco-friendly company that diverts materials from landfills. In 2018, Argent paid the EPA $27,000 under a settlement for committing Clean Water Act violations.

Michael Morgan of Hayward, owner of We Are Hemp, a marijuana dispensary in Ashland, has donated $21,500.

Alameda County District 1 Supervisor David Haubert has donated $21,250 from his 2024 reelection campaign. He’s running unopposed for the District 1 seat.

SEIU 1021which represents over 60,000 workers in local governments, non-profit agencies, healthcare programs, and schools in Northern California, has donated $20,000.

UA Local 342, which represents around 4,000 pipe trades industry workers in Contra Costa and Alameda counties, donated $20,000.

The union representing the county’s deputy sheriffs, Deputy Sheriff’s Association of Alameda County, has donated $17,000.

Becton Healthcare Resources and its managers have donated $14,625. Becton’s mission statement says it provides “behavioral health management services to organizations and groups that serve the serious and persistent mentally ill population.”

Jennifer Esteen’s top campaign contributors:

Mary Quinn Delaney of Piedmont, founder of Akonadi Foundation, has donated $20,000. Akonadi Foundation gives grants to nonprofit organizations, especially focusing on racial justice organizing,

Bridget Galli of Castro Valley has donated $7,000. Galli is a yoga instructor and a co-owner of Castro Valley Yoga.

Rachel Gelman of Oakland has donated $5,000. Gelman is an activist who has vowed to redistribute her inherited wealth to working class, Indigenous and Black communities.

California Worker Families Party has donated $5,000. The organization’s website describes itself as a “grassroots party for the multiracial working class.”

David Stern of Albany has donated $5,000. Stern is a retired UC Berkeley Professor of Education.

Oakland Rising Committee—a collaborative of racial, economic, and environmental justice organizations—has donated about $3,050.

Fredeke Von Bothmer-Goodyear, an unemployed resident of San Francisco, has donated $2,600.

Robert Britton of Castro Valley has donated $2,500. Britton is retired and worked in the labor movement for decades.

Progressive Era PAC has donated about $2,400. Its mission statement says it “exists to elect governing majorities of leaders in California committed to building a progressive era for people of color.”

East Bay Stonewall Democrats Club has donated $2,250. The club was founded in 1982 to give voice to the East Bay LGBTQIA+ communities.

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