Community

Union Backed School Board Candidates Finish Strong Against Billionaire Supported Candidates

Published

6 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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Black History

Oakland Protesters Rally to Defend Haitian Immigrants and TPS

The Haiti Action Committee traces its roots to the international movement that emerged following Haiti’s 1991 military coup, which overthrew the nation’s first democratically elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Political violence sent thousands of Haitians fleeing the country, while U.S. policies resulted in refugees being intercepted at sea, repatriated, or detained at Guantanamo Bay.

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1 day ago

August 20, 2026

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Activists Gerald Smith and Romaine Charite at 14th and Broadway in downtown Oakland near City Hall protest in support of Haitian immigrant rights. Photo by Carla Thomas

By Carla Thomas

Protesters gathered in downtown Oakland near City Hall at 14th Street and Broadway on Thursday, Aug. 13, calling for protections for Haitian immigrants and an end to deportation policies affecting Haitian communities across the United States.

Organized as a call to action by the Legalization for All Network and supported by the Haiti Action Committee and other community organizations, the demonstration carried a clear message: “Defend TPS! Legalization, Not Deportation!”

Participants focused attention on the termination of Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, for Haiti and immigration policies protesters described as continuing attacks on Haitian immigrants under the Trump administration.

Haitian Romaine Charite of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization urged demonstrators to stand with Haitian families and led chants:

“When Haitians are under attack, what do we do? We fight back.”

Injustice to one is an injustice to us all.”

“Dump Trump!”

Charite and other protesters condemned the federal government’s treatment of Haitian immigrants, describing the policies as an attack on a population already facing extraordinary hardship.

Haiti’s TPS designation was terminated effective July 27, 2026, removing temporary deportation protections and work authorization for hundreds of thousands of Haitian beneficiaries who lacked another legal basis to remain in the United States.

Gerald Smith, a protester and former member of the Black Panther Party during the 1970s, said Haitians were being unfairly targeted and warned that ending TPS would have a devastating impact on Haitian families and communities.

“These policies are racially motivated and unfair,” Smith said. “Everyone deserves the right to self-determination and protection from persecution.”

The Haiti Action Committee cited the continuing political, economic and humanitarian crisis in Haiti as evidence that returning large numbers of immigrants to the country could place already vulnerable people at greater risk.

The Oakland gathering, which drew about 20 participants, reflected a decades-long history of Bay Area activism surrounding Haitian democracy, refugee rights and U.S. immigration policy.

Those policies sparked protests involving Haitian communities, Black activists, artists, college students, churches, labor organizations and human rights advocates. Prominent figures, including dancer and activist Katherine Dunham, tennis champion Arthur Ashe, and TransAfrica leader Randall Robinson, joined campaigns challenging the treatment of Haitian refugees.

In 1992, Haiti Action Committee joined other Bay Area organizations in a dramatic demonstration on San Francisco Bay. Boats carrying Haitian participants were intercepted by the U.S. Coast Guard while supporters gathered along the waterfront and reportedly chanted, “Let Them Land!”

More than three decades later, protesters have returned to the streets of Oakland, centering on protecting Haitian immigrants, opposing deportation and pressing for immigration policies that provide families with a pathway toward permanent legal residency.

For more information, visit Haitisolidarity.net.

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Community

First 5 Alameda County Celebrates First Year of Measure C’s Implementation

Measure C, a community-led and voter-approved half-cent sales tax, was designed to generate approximately $150 million annually for early care and education. During its first year, the initiative reached more than 20,000 children and supported more than 6,400 early educators and caregivers throughout the county.

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1 day ago

August 20, 2026

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Alameda County Supervisor Nikki Fortunato Bas (left) with Community Advisory Councilmember and childcare provider Nancy Harvey. Photo by Carla Thomas.

By Carla Thomas

First 5 Alameda County marked the first anniversary of the impact of Measure C with a community celebration Friday, Aug. 7, at Children’s Fairyland in Oakland, highlighting more than $135 million invested to strengthen early childhood education, families and caregivers across Alameda County.

The celebration brought together families, educators, caregivers, advocates, elected officials and community leaders for an evening of music, cultural performances, and children’s activities.

“Oakland is on the move,” said Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee, commending all the advocates who helped win the victory for early childhood education and their providers.

First 5 Alameda County CEO Kristin Spanos said, “In the first 10 months of Measure C being available after the Board of Supervisors adopted the 5-year plan, we’ve had over $135 million put directly into the community supporting children and providers with emergency grants, investments, and stipends.”

First 5 Alameda County, the public agency responsible for administering Measure C, focused on quickly moving voter-approved dollars into local communities while developing partnerships, accountability measures, and infrastructure intended to create long-term impact.

Alameda County District 5 Supervisor Nikki Fortunato Bas: “We’re celebrating the first year of getting money into families’ pockets and childcare providers’ pockets. This is about deploying very vital resources over the course of five years. It’s a billion-dollar impact.”

Community Advisory Council member Nancy Harvey said, “We are totally excited. It was a 10-year fight, and we fought tooth and nail. We had so much support from County Supervisors Nate Miley and Nikki Fortunato Bas, the unions, and the late Supervisor Wilma Chan. This is a historic event – people are watching Measure C all over the nation.”

Harvey explained that small childcare providers received a $40,000 grant, and larger providers received a $50,000 grant.

Childcare advocate and provider Lisa Zarodney of Livermore said, “When I got my emergency funds, I was about to close. The stipend allowed me to continue through 2026 and get all the babies on my wait list.”

In business for 27 years, Zarodney said she is now caring for the children of past clients.

“I couldn’t continue my legacy, my dream, and my passion without the funding from Measure C.”

Harvey emphasized that he next leg of the fight is to ensure workers have a sustainable wage.

“We are now pushing to raise the wage of workers to $25 to keep doors open and people employed,” she said.

First 5 Alameda County’s vision is to build an integrated and equity-centered early childhood system supporting children, families, and communities regardless of race, income, or neighborhood. As administrator of Measure C, the agency has worked to expand access to early care and education, strengthen family stability, and support the providers and caregivers families rely upon.

Through Measure C and partnerships with initiatives including the Oakland Children’s Initiative, First 5 Alameda County has sought to reduce fragmented services and better coordinate public resources.

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Commentary

From Palestine to Oakland: Seeds for Liberation Examines Shared Struggles for Freedom

The screening was hosted by the East Bay Democratic Socialists of America and the Dr. Huey P. Newton Foundation. Following the film, director Matthew Solomon joined local community leaders for a discussion about solidarity, resistance, and the historical connections explored throughout the documentary.

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1 day ago

August 20, 2026

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Documentary film, "Seeds for Liberation," highlights the Palestinian struggle and the shared fight for freedom and liberation in the United States and abroad. Graphic courtesy of www.seedsforliberationmovie.com

By Carla Thomas

Community members gathered at the Black Panther Party Museum on Saturday, Aug. 15, in downtown Oakland for a screening of “Seeds for Liberation,” an award-winning documentary examining the Palestinian liberation movement and its connections to Black, Chicano and other movements for collective liberation.

The film reveals the face of conflict, struggle, and injustice today and yesterday. In one scene, a bleeding child pleads for help on a shell-shattered rooftop after a bombing in the Gaza Strip last year. In another scene, newly freed Nelson Mandela addresses thousands at the Oakland Coliseum in 1990, at the end of apartheid.

Directed by Solomon and executive-produced by Donna Hadjikhani and Alana Hadid, “Seeds for Liberation” situates Palestinian experiences within the broader history of anti-imperialist and decolonial movements.

Through interviews with historians, legal scholars, activists and organizers, the documentary examines Palestinian resistance. It also details the role of social media in shaping the public’s understanding of the impact of Palestine’s 77-year occupation by Israeli forces, events in Gaza and the West Bank, and relationships between liberation movements across generations and geographic boundaries.

The film includes perspectives of people connected to the Black Liberation Army, La Raza Unida and the Stop Cop City movement. Those featured talk about colonialism, U.S. foreign policy, policing, racial justice and their views of what solidarity with Palestinians has meant.

Solomon developed the documentary following his previous film, “Reimagining Safety,” which explored alternatives to traditional policing.

“I use film as a medium to connect personal testimony with larger social and political questions,” said Solomon, who is currently touring the film across the nation as well as Canada and other countries.

Executive producer Hadjikhani brought a personal connection to the project. An Iranian American designer and social justice advocate, she traveled to Gaza and the West Bank as a college student in 1993 during the First Intifada. Hadid has since focused on Palestinian stories and other underrepresented voices.

The Oakland screening carried added historical significance because it was held in the Black Panther Party Museum, where the history of Black resistance and community organizing provided a backdrop for the film’s examination of interconnected struggles.

Activist and artist Cat Brooks passionately spoke about the fight for the freedom of all people. “No one is free until everyone is free,” she said.

Brooks played a key role in the struggle for justice for Oscar Grant, who was gunned down by a BART police officer in 2009 and is co-founder of the Anti Police-Terror Project (APTP), whose mission is to rapidly respond to and ultimately eradicate state violence in communities of color.

Rather than treating liberation movements as isolated chapters, “Seeds for Liberation” asks audiences to consider how movements separated by time, race and geography have influenced one another and how solidarity has continued to evolve across generations.

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