Good afternoon and welcome to this council meeting. It is Tuesday May 19th
and this meeting shall come to order. Before I call roll I would like to give
instructions on how to submit a speaker card for items on this agenda. If you are
here in person participating and would like to submit a speaker card you must
fill out a speaker card on the table in the middle of the room and turn it into
a clerk representative across from the table either before the item is read into record
or 2 hours after this meeting began that would make that time at 5.33.
For submitting online speaker cards, they were due 24 hours before this meeting began.
So those are no longer accepted.
But again, if you are wanting to submit a speaker card for an item on this agenda, please
fill out a card and turn it into a clerk representative either before the item is called into record
or two hours at this I this meeting begin um whichever comes first with that I will now
call roll on roll for this meeting council member brown present council member five excused
excuse council member guile council member guile present thank you council member houston
excused
Okay
Councilmember Ramachandra
Councilmember
Excuse me
Unger my apologies
Present. Thank you
councilmember Wong
present and chair council president Jenkins present we have
Six mover present to to excused. I
I will now go to our first item item number three modifications to the agenda
Any modifications to the agenda see a none or is there anything from the administration for modifications to the agenda?
Thank you for that. I will now go to our we have no item four
We have no public hearings at this time
So we will go to item five which are non consent items starting with item 5.1. I will read this item into record
It is a resolution commemoratively renaming the plaza a public right away at the Oakland LGBT Community Center as
More hope Plaza. I do have three speakers for this item
Thank you
councilmember Brown
Excellent, so I'll go ahead and speak first and then turn it over to councilmember Wong
So I am beyond honored and humble to be a part of the renaming of the plaza near the Oakland
LGBTQ cultural center in the heart of the
cultural district
More Hope Plaza this renaming honors the lives and legacy of Peggy Moore and Hope Wood
These two women were trailblazers in the Bay Area through their passion for social justice
advocacy and community organizing.
Tragically, they were killed in a car accident May 2024,
leaving behind just a huge loss here in Oakland and beyond.
And so for those of you who don't, may not know,
who was Peggy?
But I'm confident that many of you have so many stories
to tell about her visionary leadership.
Peggy was someone who worked on both
the Barack Obama campaign and Hillary Clinton presidential campaigns and also ran for Oakland
City Council a seat that I currently hold and mentored so many of us finding our way
in public service and organizing. I even had the opportunity to volunteer on one of her
campaigns while learning my own path forward. Peggy was a fierce advocate for marriage equality
and work alongside countless community organizations
and initiatives across the East Bay
in pursuit of social justice.
That same passion and fire is exactly why Peggy
and her partner Hope would wear such a perfect match
after meeting in 2008 while working on the Obama campaign.
Hope was someone who also had accomplished a lot
as well as attending the Harvard Kennedy School,
color of change and courage and the courage campaign.
Together, Peggy and Hope created their consulting firm,
Hope Action Change, and continued to shape movements
and communities throughout the East Bay for many years.
And so this sudden and tragic loss of Peggy and Hope
was deeply felt across the entire city of Oakland
and the LGBTQ plus community as well as BIPOC communities.
So the renaming of this plaza outside the Oakland LGBTQ
Cultural Center is more than just a ceremonial recognition.
It is a commitment to honoring the legacy of two women
who fought tirelessly to create
a more equitable and just world.
More Hope Plaza will stand as a lasting reminder
that queer history cannot and will not be erased in Oakland.
And then lastly, I do wanna thank the leadership
from the Oakland LGBTQ Cultural Center,
Jeff Myers, Joe Hawkins, Brandon Harami
for their partnership and leadership.
In addition, I also wanna thank
the Department of Transportation team,
of course, the city attorneys,
the Office of Mayor Barbara Lee,
and my colleague, Councilmember Wong,
for all of your support
in helping bring this vision to life.
And so, cheers to the newest plaza in Oakland,
Morehope Plaza, and so I'll turn it over
to Councilmember Wong, who I believe
is gonna share a video.
Is that a motion?
Yes.
All right, Councilmember Wong.
First of all, I'm just so privileged and proud
to be the council member of that,
is not only a queer woman of color,
but also represents the LGBTQ cultural district,
which is just such an icon.
And for Peggy Moore and Hope Wood to be celebrated,
in spite of the horrifying loss of their lives
due to traffic violence.
But I'm glad we can celebrate.
So this is what I see as a celebration of their lives.
I did wanna just fill in a few other things
that weren't noted that Peggy Moore
was also the co-founder of SISTAS, Steppin' in Pride.
This was really to celebrate queer women of color in Oakland.
She was the past president of the East Bay Stonewall Democratic Club.
And Hope Wood, as well as Moore, they were leading organizers against
the horribly discriminatory Proposition 8 that happened in California.
And following the striking down of Proposition 8, it was Peggy and Hope.
They had a wedding celebration at Lake Merritt, also in District 2.
And it was really such a landmark and public celebration
of marriage equality.
And so they've continued.
They just have such a legacy, and I'm
so proud to celebrate them.
And I think the other thing is beyond just their resumes
and accomplishments.
I also wanted to note Peggy's, her why.
Why did she do everything that she did in politics in Oakland?
And so I dug into the Peggy Moore archive, so to speak.
And I have a video to share.
This was an interview, just a three minute clip,
with our favorite vlogger, Zenny.
Meadow, we can play the clip.
Who's Peggy Moore?
Where'd you go?
Peggy Moore.
Peggy Moore, right.
Yeah, more.
So look, I'm born and raised in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
I'm the oldest of four, raised by my mother,
stepfather, and my biological father is a narrow,
and he's now deceased.
And I have about six siblings on that side,
raised with my four siblings.
I grew up in Oklahoma, went to junior college,
but I pretty much worked all of my life.
Left Oklahoma, went to Texas,
and stayed in Texas for about seven years.
And then I left Texas, and then I discovered California.
I came out for vacation.
And then when I came out for vacation,
I decided this is the place that I wanted to be
I can actually fully express myself.
Be yourself.
Yeah, and totally.
And you know, that was, you know,
as a young lesbian coming out,
not quite sure what all of that meant,
but in San Francisco and the area,
I never will forget one of my mentors,
I mean, is Sydney Weinstein,
and hairdresser in San Francisco,
heterosexual woman, just mad was,
she took me to my first lesbian wedding.
And then it was, oh, it was one of the first things
I did when I came to town, but that was like 20 plus years ago.
Yeah.
This was before it was legal, but it was really just love, right?
Ayanna, Anna and Ayanna never will forget it.
Walked into the room in this young lesbian from Oklahoma.
100 black women of color, majority black.
I was like, where am I?
Oh my god, yeah, man, let's be like this, right?
Did you meet a bitch?
No, not there.
But I know some of the oldest, it's like 79 I think.
Wow.
But I know some.
Yeah.
I know some lesbians.
Black lesbians.
Yeah.
But that's another story for those of you.
Yeah, definitely.
So it was that moment where I felt whole, I felt like the stereotypes of what it was
like being gay and lesbian was really just completely different for me.
Because this was a body of women who had children and families and educators and professionals
and people who were doing their life and fully engaged, right?
And then I left the wedding, and I was like, okay, where are they?
Where can I find the people?
And it was that moment where I recognized that so many people in the community
really chose not to come out, or couldn't come out, for a lifetime reasons,
whether it's because of their job, or because of their children,
or their own personal struggle about being out.
But it was because of that that I knew that I had to be out, not only for myself, but for those who couldn't come out.
I have to be a voice to say, yes, we do have some strong, dynamic, beautiful black lesbians that are around.
Thank you. And I, you know, I wanted to just note too about Peggy that even though we didn't cross many paths, actually, when I was running in the at-large race as the long shot candidate,
lost to, of course, my colleague here on the dais.
But I had met up with Peggy, and she had actually
offered to help, which is a rare quality in politics,
where you're helping the long shot candidate.
But she said, you're a queer woman of color.
I want to help you.
And that is the type of person that she was,
was always extending the ladder behind her.
So I just think it's important to also just
You know, you gotta let somebody
know somebody's...
What's at their heart?
Not only was she a giant, she had a
giant heart.
Thank you, Councilmember.
I think you missed something.
You know where she shot that video at?
That's the Lakeshore Cafe, which is
now Peach District 2.
There we go.
Councilmember Houston.
Yes, I'd like to celebrate Peggy.
Me and Peggy go way back.
When she was working in Home Depot
in Emeryville, when I was doing
I went in there, met her, she was a manager,
and she embraced me from the jump.
And every time I went in there, she took care of me.
She said, you can't go to special order desk, I got you.
I'll get in and out, because it was real packed up,
so I like to embrace her.
And when she ran for mayor,
when I ran for my first seat, she inspired me.
She told me some things.
She came out on my first, when I did a tour
about illegal dumping.
I did, Council Member Brown, I did my first tour
through on that 3.5 mile stretch on San Angeles Boulevard.
And Peggy came out, she showed up.
She went with me on the tour and she said,
Ken, this is horrendous, right?
So I just want to celebrate Peggy more.
I never really told her how much she met
or the things that she did for me to inspire me.
So that means just tell people.
Just tell people when you see them.
John, what's up, man?
Just tell them, I got love for you, right?
Just tell them, because you never know when
might be tomorrow, you never know.
So I just want to celebrate Peggy, thank you.
Thank you, Council Member Houston.
Council Member Mor Stronger.
Thank you.
Several years ago, when I was, for the first time ever,
vaguely contemplating running for office,
I met Peggy at an LGBTQ political training
from Equality California, and she was one of the first people
who gave me advice, real advice, on running for office,
and I'll never remember the honesty about which she spoke
about how campaigning can take a toll on you,
your relationship, and thinking through what your values are
and whether it's worth it and it definitely can be.
So as one of the first people ever,
specifically LGBTQ women who gave me advice,
I remember her words often to this day.
Thank you, colleagues, for honoring her today.
Thank you, I want to thank Councilmember Mora-Chander,
I mean Councilmember Brown and Councilmember Wong
for bringing this forward.
I had the pleasure of knowing Peggy for quite some time
since I was a staffer working for Supervisor Keith Carson
and when she was working for Mayor Libby Schaff
and Peggy ran a number of campaigns,
was really active in the political scene,
really active in equality
and always, always, always loved my conversations with Peggy.
She was full of joy, and I was very sad
when she and Hope tragically lost their lives,
but I don't think there's any more deserving people
to rename this after Council Member Wong,
or is that later?
All right.
Sorry, I forgot.
I was gonna say something pithy after that clip,
and then I got so sucked in
that I forgot what I was gonna say,
But the reason I do love that clip
is because it was clear to me in watching it
that Peggy was inspired by Oakland,
and then Peggy would go on to inspire other Oaklanders,
especially LGBTQ Oaklanders.
So that's why I thought it was important
to share it at this meeting, thanks.
All right, Council Member Brown,
then we'll go to public comment.
Excellent.
Were we gonna hear from the mayor's office as well?
Council Member Wong, were you able to confirm on the item?
They will not be saying so I think we can move to public comment.
Okay, excellent, thank you.
Thank you.
Let's go to public comment.
As I call your name, please approach the podium.
If you are here in person, if you're participating via Zoom, please raise your hand so I can easily
identify you.
As usual, we'll start with those who are here in person in chambers.
Miss Olavala, Jean Hazard, and Isaac Cost-Reed, in any order, please approach the podium for
item 5.1.
We got our Pratt Commissioner here.
Thank you for that recognition of my service.
But I'm here to recognize Peggy Moore, such an icon.
When I saw it on the agenda, I thought,
apart from wanting to speak for affordable housing month,
I had to come out and honor her.
Seeing her in Lakeshore Cafe was kind of trippy,
because that's where my family, where my boys,
grew up running into her with my mother-in-law all the time.
I knew and loved her at the risk of offending
current city staff member who I don't see in the room any longer. She was the
first person I backed against an incumbent and I remember her kickoff
celebration party was at Lake Merritt at the Pergola where my wife and I started
salsa by the lake and she had us do a little dancing as part of the she had
like an Afro Cuban energy that that she carried forth in her own spirit in
politics. You know I wanted to say I also worked with her as a public affairs
professional. She went into the private sector and she fought for her clients
beautifully and in the same way that she fought for the people when she was in
the public sector. So may her memory not just inspire to be inspire us to be our
best civic selves but also may it be a reminder of how important safe
responsible driving and roads are to a civil society. I was probably one of the
first persons who met Peggy when she came here. Most folks don't realize and
And we would do political strategies.
And most folks don't realize, she was supposed
to run for the assembly, the same seat that Mia Bonta has.
But then she decided instead to open up a consulting firm.
And that's when she was a consultant for Libby Shaft's
campaign.
It hurt me because I was ready to hit
ground for assembly race. And it was sad what happened to her. I was at Hope's in her wedding
at the, I mean in the atrium and came over to the place on Broadway for the reception.
But yeah, she had a good heart, good spirit, good person.
y'all drain my energy when y'all start using that term a woman of color this
this beautiful black woman was outstanding and her blackness should
always stay in place because we struggle as black women to get recognition to be
respected the only time you hear is we angry black women so in the future when
when you're dealing with black women,
keep that perspective black in place.
And a woman of color, we are not women of color.
We are strong black women.
And the last thing is,
there are a lot of us here in this city.
Some of us are not getting out just due.
I'm glad this sister is.
But I'm gonna bring up Latanya Simmons again
and hope someday she will get her due respect
continue to work with the
public in this and this chamber.
Thank you for your comments that
concludes our public speech for
this I thank you so much so we
have a motion and a second.
I apologize I have a motion by
council member Brown the second
is.
Won't won't I stayed in on the
record motion by councilmember
Brown seconded by Wong.
To move item to approve item
houston
from a child
longer
chair Jenkins
five point one is approved
seven eyes one excuse
that now takes us to item number
s five point two i will read the item into record
and five point two is adopted resolution approving the appointment of annuity
without
one hundred eighty day break in service where the appointment is necessary to feel a
critically needed position before 180 days have passed since the employees retirement in accordance with the government code section
One two one two two four and seven five two two point five six. I have one speaker for this item ACA Baker
Thank you and through the chair and the council. My name is Chuck Baker assistant city administrator
we are bringing this item forward to retain a retiring employee that is supporting critical and time-sensitive work with the Oakland Army Base.
John Manette has been working on this particular project exclusively for over 15 years.
And so this ensures continuity during his transition into retirement.
While it's administrative in nature, CalPERS regulations require council approval.
And Brendan from our economic and workforce development department will provide additional
detail and I'm happy to answer any questions.
Good afternoon.
Brendan Moriarty, director of real estate and special projects.
I'll be very quick with this one.
So John Mineta has worked for the city since 26 years ago.
So 26 years of service here, most of the time working on the Oakland Army based project.
He's currently a project manager too in the economic and workforce development department.
He is planning to retire in the coming days, and we would like to hire him back as a retired annuitant.
It's a temporary part-time position, it's a strategy we use in the administration when we need specialized skills,
performing work of a limited duration, it would be no more than part-time, 50% full-time equivalent.
So he would be supporting on helping to ensure that we meet our obligations under a quarter billion dollar state grant,
that we're compliant with environmental regulations,
ensuring continuity in real estate negotiations,
such as for the Costco project,
coordinating with agencies around a variety
of complex projects and then training other staff
so that we can continue the work in the long term.
And as Assistant City Administrator Baker said,
CalPERS regulation simply requires an act of non-consent
to approve continuation of that service
after retirement without a break.
So that's why we're here to ensure a no
Loss and continuity of operations here. So that is it available answer questions. And thank you much very much for the time
Thank you. We wish him well in retirement
Councilmember Houston turn your on my gun
Can some of my guy will turn your mica?
Serana just want to yeah. Thank you
I've known mr. Moneta for many many years certainly have known his work
Appreciate it the work that is contributed to the city of Oakland and with that I make a motion to approve staff's recommendation
Thank you. I
Was gonna make a motion this past unanimously out of the committee. I chair finance and I will second the motion. Thank you
And through the chair, I like to just share something with the staff. I'm at John Mineta 24 years ago
We worked together. He saved the city
hundreds of thousands of dollars when they had,
they were gonna be fined like $10,000 a day with the EPA.
And that's when I first started
as a community based organization
helping out the justice impacted on the house.
And he actually hired us to actually do the SWEP.
And he saved the city hundreds of thousands of dollars
and worked it out of that violations
that they had with the EPA.
So he's a competent person.
I'm sad to lose him, he's, I love some John Mineta, right?
So if he's listening, John, I'm glad to keep you here
and keep doing the great work.
EAP is so part of your lexicon, you can't stop saying it.
Submit, E-P-A, y'all was thinking about the E-A-P,
yeah, E-P-A, same one, so E-P-A, thank you.
Let's go to the public speakers.
Mr. Sato-Ola-Bala.
Like I said in finance committee, I have no problem with this gentleman continuing his
work. I do have a tremendous problem with anything going on at the Army base. Oakland
Army base is heavily contaminated with toxic substances, including lead, arsenic, petroleum
projects, asbestos, and other solvents. These pollutants remain in the soil and remain in
the groundwater, causing significant environmental and public health concerns for the surrounding
West Oakland community. The site has required extensive remediation with remediation failures
throughout with high levels of contamination still in place. It has been deemed that the
parts of the site are too costly to develop
for residential, commercial, or temporary shelter use.
But you're ignoring that, and you do this a lot.
You ignore the best interests of health and safety
to do things that are going to be
financial, beneficial in this city.
So the man, OK, anything going on at West Oakland Army Base
appropriate and not safe. Thank you miss Asada does that conclude the public
speakers? That concludes our public speakers. Okay. There was a motion by
council member Gallo seconded by council member Ramachandran to approve item S
point five S five point two on that for roll council member Brown? Aye. Council member
five is excused council member Gallo? Aye. Houston? Aye. Ramachandran? Aye. Unger? Aye.
With seven nyes one excuse five.
That now takes us to item s five point three I will read the ordinance into record adopting ordinance authorizing the borrowing of funds and the issuance and sell of the twenty twenty six twenty seven tax revenue anticipation notes in principle amount not to exceed two hundred million dollars.
hundred million dollars and
that is the general fund for
twenty-seven tax revenue
anticipation notes in
principal amount not to exceed
two hundred million dollars
payable from revenues received
for it and accrue to the
general fund of the city during
the fiscal year twenty six to
twenty seven in approving a
certain related matters I do
have one speaker for this item
all right good afternoon
president Jenkins and council
members I'm David Jones with
that we are looking for the
borrowing of funds and the
issuance and sale of the 2627
notes payable from revenues
received during the 2627 fiscal
year in an amount not to exceed
200 million dollars.
The note will mature in less
than 15 months and the city has
done this successfully over the
years, if you will, the funds
the city of Oakland. And the
city of Oakland has been in a
lot of fluctuations in monthly
and tax receipts as well as
including a prepayment of the
city of un- of Oakland and
funded accrued liability which
allows for the city to garner a
3.34% discount from CalPERS.
The ordinance only approves for
the borrowing of funds and we
Approving the documents for for the transaction and I'm available for any questions that you may have
Thank you. See no question. Oh, can't remember. I'm Chandra
Thank you. Just another statement this passed out of finance committee unanimously, and I'm happy to make a motion
that emotion and then councilmember
dial
You want to turn your mic off?
Yeah
Anyway, so is this an ongoing practice every year where we do this type of borrowing that is correct
So when do we make we borrow the money when do we repay the money?
and approximately 15 months and it basically is just to smooth out the fluctuations in your revenues throughout the course of the
The fiscal year and this money will specifically that 200,000 be used for
For your general fund you know operations essentially for the general operation not a specific activity or service
no, no just
operations as well as potentially
Prefunding your CalPERS
accrued liability
Contribution which would allow for us to receive a discount from from CalPERS
Thank you. I'll second the motion
All right
If you would like to talk a
little bit about this.
Let's go to the public speakers.
Mrs. Sada-Ollabala.
I found it interesting during the discussion period of this
item in finance that nobody brought up that the arrangements
saw that the money would be repaid within one year.
Not only be repaid using expected future revenue,
such as fees, grants, or taxes.
money. That's future money. To be the source of how you repay this and now we're talking
about measure E is strongly going to fail, thank God. Vote no on measure E please everybody.
But that was never discussed. Fiscally that should have been a point of clarification.
We have to pay this back in one year. You brought it up Mr. Gallo. It wasn't brought
that we're going to talk about
in committee and the actual
identification of how we will
pay this back in one year and
the last question should have
been if we don't pay it back in
what year what are the
consequences for not paying it
back in one year.
Do we have to give a council
member up or what what is the
consequences.
We got a motion in the second.
There was a motion by council
councilmember. I have a motion to
speak on the ordinance on
introduction councilmember brown. I have a member five is excused councilmember guy. I have some of the Houston. I have some member on the chondrin I have some of the under. I have some of the long I share Jenkins. I motion passes with the vote of seven I's one excuse councilmember five. Moving to your consent. Calendar which includes all of item six.
starting with item 6.1 approval of the draft minutes from the meeting of May
5th, 2026. Item 6.2 a declaration of a local emergency due to the AIDS
epidemic. Item 6.3 a resolution renewing the declaration of medical cannabis
health emergency. Item 6.4 a declaration of a local emergency due to
to homelessness item 6.5 is an ordinance for the easement at 260 Oak Street item
6.6 in ordinance for an adoption of a federally compliant flood plan
management ordinance and flood hazard maps item 6.7 a resolution for SB 1313
Uh, for public water systems grant loans related to PFAS, item 6.8, a resolution for
AB 1821 for the California Public Records Act, item 6.9, a resolution for SB 1314 for
smoke shops, locations, hours of operation, and sale of nitrous oxide, item 6.10, a resolution
for Assembly Bill 1738. Item 6.11, a resolution for SB1230, Strengthening Illegal Dumping Enforcement.
Item 6.12, a resolution in support of Assembly Bill 2310, for illegal dumping, liability
and enforcement. Item 6.13, a resolution in support of SB417. Item 6.14, a resolution
resolution for a B. two three five one
item six point one five a resolution celebration of may
twenty twenty six is affordable housing month
and six point sixteen
a resolution for support of assembly bill one eight three seven
video imaging of parking of violations on public transit vehicles
and i'm six point seventeen
resolution authorizing
excuse me reimbursement for councilmember Cobb.
Item 6.18, a resolution for Gary Payton
commemorative street renaming.
Item 6.19, a resolution for a settlement
for Madison Clark versus the city of Oakland.
Item 6.20, a resolution for national prescription
opiate, opiate, opiate legislation.
Item 6.21, a resolution for appointments
to the Commission on Persons with Disabilities.
Item 6.22, a resolution for District 1 appointment
to the Budget Advisory Commission.
Item 6.23, a resolution for fiscal year 26-27,
landscaping and lighting assessment district.
Item 6.24, a resolution for HSIP 9,
rectangular rapid flashing beacon project,
Construction contracts award
item six point two five a resolution for cooperative agreements for purchasing electrical equipment and
accessories with gay bar electric company
item six point twenty six a resolution regarding the illegal jumping expenditure plan
item six point twenty seven a resolution for Caltrans community cleanup in employment pathway grant
Item six point twenty-eight a resolution for digital lift digital literacy training for older adults
item six point twenty-nine a
resolution for a path sighted program
acceptance of intergovernmental transfer award
Adam six point thirty a resolution for OFC Y 24 through 25 final year in independent annual evaluation
item six point thirty one a resolution for a ceasefire lifeline contracts
Item six point thirty-two a resolution for purchasing agreement with Bauer compressors
And your final item six point thirty-three a resolution for purchase agreement with Ellen
Curtis and Sun and I believe staff has some amendments to
item six point
Hi, good afternoon
Councilmember Jenkins a member of the council
I don't think that's a reality
but- she building official
Cecilia Muella I wanted to
bring forth items six point six
as the adoption of this
floodplain ordinance as an
emergency ordinance pursuant
to city charter section two
one three- it's necessary for
the immediate preservation of
public peace. Health and safety
because failure to adopt female
compliant floodplain management
regulations by may twenty fifth
would result in suspension of
Thereby jeopardizing the availability of federal funding for our constituents and the eligibility
for certain forms of federal disaster assistance in the event of a natural disaster or other
flood related events.
So immediate adoption is further necessary to ensure continued implementation of the
updated floodplain management standards that protect life, property, and public infrastructure
from flood hazards.
And we would like to amend the ordinance to include this statement.
It's also important to know that the floodplain ordinance did pass with a 4-0 vote at Public
Works Committee and a 7-1 vote at council's first reading.
Thank you.
We will also include an amendment to the ordinance with findings.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Any?
the council to include in their approval of the consent calendar to continue item six point five to the June 2nd council meeting which is the council meeting immediately following this meeting.
So the motion should include that we're going to continue item six point five to the following meeting and the amendments that staff read correct.
you go to public comment.
As I call your name please
approach the podium in any
order as with practice persons
in chambers will be taken first.
Those on zoom will be taken
immediately after.
And please raise your hand on
zoom so I can easily identify
you.
And those in chambers will be
taken immediately after.
And please raise your hand on
zoom so I can easily identify
those in chambers please state your name and step to the podium in any order.
Kevin Dally, Carla Guerra, Duane Nelson, John Jones III, Arthur Shanks,
Mrs. Ado Olabala, I have you with multiple items for the maximum amount of
time. Mr. Hazard, I have you with multiple items for the maximum amount of time.
Jason Dixon, Isaac Coss-Reed, Annie Elaine Ledbury, Nima Link, Cecilia Nguyen,
Rene Hayes, Jesse Williams. In any order, and again if you're on Zoom, please raise
your hand so I can easily identify you. Hello. Is this thing on? I'm speaking on
the consent calendar today. There are many items on the consent calendar, but
But before I speak on the particulars, there are some statistics that the council should
know about days.
So there are 52 weeks in a given year, and 20 of those weeks approximately are council
weeks, which means that there's about a 38% chance that any given week will be a council
week.
Now there are 365 days in a year, and there is a one in seven chance that that day will be a Tuesday.
And there's a one in 365 percent chance that that will be a birthday.
So if we combine all of these statistics together, that there is a 14 percent chance that any birthday will be on a Tuesday,
and a 38% chance that that Tuesday will happen to be a council day multiplied by
the point you can extend the time I'm sorry I didn't give you all your time
so you have two minutes left thank you so so I think it's important for the
council to know that information on the consent calendar at today is council
councilmember Rowena brown's birthday happy birthday. Councilmember. And I know she keeps
it a secret so she might be mad at me for doing this but I have lit you a candle which
is Palo Santo. So I don't know if you can blow this out from there you want to try.
Happy birthday councilmember. Thank you Neema. Hello council council members I'm here speaking
on item six point eighteen of the renaming of commemorative plaque for Gary
Peyton I grew up in East Oakland I was able to spend some time with his father
Gary Peyton senior he knew I wasn't much of a basketball player so he mentored me
off the court right and Gary Peyton is carrying on that legacy he expressed to
me how he wants to revitalize basketball courts that aren't as attractive
community members and that's a
positive and Oakland and it's-
is this good that we uplift in-
community members that has poured
into the community- so thank you-
the- to the painting family and-
council member- now no- it's just
real important that- we uplift
our community members- so yes
thank you to the painting family-
And it's a great honor to be with you in your home.
And I hope that Peyton family.
Before you go, can you give me your name?
Arthur Shanks.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, how y'all doing?
Good afternoon.
My name is Cecilia W.
And I am here as a hope and justice committee member
with St. Mary's Center.
I am proud to be a member also with the East Bay Housing
and diverse coalition that advocates to produce, preserve, and protect affordability housing,
opportunities for low-income communities in the East Bay. Our membership of over 400 individuals
and organizations include groups, faith, institutions, and residents of affordable housing across
housing. Thank you Oakland city
this month to educate our community about key aspects of affordable housing and housing justice.
Our program this year includes a great lineup of events, community celebrations,
days of action, panel discussions, housing workshops, community trainings, and more.
There are also grand openings and groundbreakings of new affordable housing communities
are here to help you understand
what is happening in cities that
showcase and celebrate what is
possible when community members
non profits and local
governments come together. You
can view of this a list of
events at apple dot org slash
events. Thank you. Hi my name is
Jesse Williams I'm also
representing St Mary's center
here in Oakland of the goal of
the center of those, and center of those affected
by housing crisis.
This month, we call attention to the housing affordability
crisis, lift up solutions, celebrate our achievements,
invite all community members to join us in our movement.
As we continue this work, we are reminded
that real change only happens when communities come together
to prevent and advocate for one another.
We can keep each other safe and housed,
but only if we work together and remain committed
to a vision of a racially and economically just East Bay
where everyone has access to safe, stable
and affordable housing.
On behalf of St. Mary's Center
and East Bay Housing Organization,
I thank you very much for this honor
and we hope to see you soon at one.
Hello, my name is Annie Ledbury
and I'm with the East Bay Asian Local Development Corporation.
Thank you so much to City Council for your support
and leading a strong affordable housing culture
here in Oakland.
Thank you so much to HCD staff and OHA staff
for their hard work in collaborating with Abaltzi this year.
We've been able to work on four affordable housing
new construction projects with the city this year.
That includes Send Lake, The Phoenix,
Clara E. Chan residents at Chinatown Bart,
and 34th and San Pablo Apartments.
Abaltzi is proud to be an anchor partner
on meeting the affordable housing needs of Oaklanders
for the last 50 years and is excited to be leading
15% of Oakland's current construction and pre-development
in the pipeline.
Thank you so much to all of our partners
and all of the residents helping to advocate
for affordable housing and stability.
Thank you so much.
Good afternoon, for the record, John Jones III
here to speak in support of item 6.18.
Before I speak, I just wanna do a moment,
a quick moment of silence for all the loved ones
and family members who was impacted
by the horrible tragedy on 85th.
And on behalf of my family,
I want to just give a special shout out
to OG Frog from 85th.
My uncle OG Ben is from 85th,
and when my uncle passed away a couple months ago,
Frog came to the funeral and spoke on his behalf.
East Oakland is hurting right now,
so I just want to ask all of us to really focus
prayers of healing and mercy for our community.
And with that being said,
is commemoration for Gary Payton.
I love the fact that it's occurring on the same birthday
as Elle Hosman Lee Gail Shabazz, AKA Malcolm X.
I see Davis referred to Malcolm X as our prince,
a shining black prince.
And I think those words also can and most certainly apply
to the one...
Isaac Koss read again to speak in support
of Affordable Housing Month.
Thank you for bringing this resolution forward
and recognizing this important moment.
And more importantly, thank you to all of the council
for investing in affordable housing
and good policies that are driving down costs.
Cost of homeownership is down in Oakland.
I know that's not good news for everybody,
but it is certainly good news for affordability.
And also, I can't believe we made it this far
in the meeting without noting the huge success
that was realized today of a 20% reduction
in the point of count for homelessness in the city.
So kudos to staff for all their work,
It's a great opportunity to
introduce her to our family
Weinstein and her team.
They've truly been delivering
on the promise of affordable
housing in this city.
I'm lucky enough to work with
the ball C. that spoke earlier
and we'd like to reiterate our
invitation to their
groundbreaking and night market
next Friday at the 34th and
San Pablo project it's going to
be beautiful.
Hope to see you there.
Miss Brown you are so blessed
to be born on Malcolm's
birthday as well as the fact
Thank you.
Happy birthday, Malcolm.
Okay, so I would hope at some point staff would be instructed, related to items 6.6,
you have to do something about bringing items for which there are time constraints that
you have to immediately move on something.
Make sure that staff is instructed to do everything in a timely manner.
three six notice of violation took three years for them to give a notice of violation.
Uh, item six, uh, 6.19, the lawsuit, Department of Transportation. I keep asking you, when
are you going to bring a discussion to the table about the number of lawsuits that are
being in court relating to the Department of Transportation, mostly around potholes.
we have to have that discussion and stop these lawsuits
uh... item six point two five
cooperative agreement
that do you all understand this is a cooperative agreement
from the city of kansas city missouri
what does that mean council members
you gonna prove it rubber stamp it do you understand what that means
a cooperative agreement
s six point two six illegal dumping
plan
like i said in committee
We have a culture of disrespect related to illegal dumping going on.
That culture has to change and it won't change anytime soon.
All of these initiatives are going to be repeating, picking up trash because people do not respect
the cleanliness of this city.
Item 6.27, grant for youth employment.
We got $2.1 million for our youth employment summer program to be expanded past the summer.
But we got these young people picking up litter, cleaning up graffiti and abatement.
We got to find better ways to have our children engaged.
We having a lot of problems with our youth and we got to give them some opportunities
to have activities of substance.
six point two eight the literacy training for older adults all senior
centers all opened up mister houston
they all open now good
uh... six point two nine
uh... nonprofits
uh... that is that is an item involving nonprofits
the lau family in the spanish-speaking unity council is getting rich off of the
city of oakland
you give them too much money
six point three one ceasefire life strategy
And I'm very proud to say that
I have to ask you and over and
over present the data of
effectiveness of ceasefire have
not seen it.
That's the last one.
My name is Dwayne Nelson
district through west Oakland
resident proud supporter of the
arsenal football club.
Resumpative champions in English
premier league for the first
time in twenty three years.
I rise in opposition to item
six point two six the one point
Council member Wong
Talked about how the budget reflects our values in commitment to transparency, but I don't feel like we're getting that from public works here
Now you're about to bypass the procurement process, but we don't have any KPIs. What's going on with that?
Why are you gonna allow them to do that?
And also they said they're ready to execute right away if they're ready to execute right away
Why do we have to wait a year before we get a report? I don't understand why this council isn't exercising their oversight. I
I don't think the urgency is about spending the money it's out on those streets the same streets that you're on money through Sunday picking up
Trash I want to see urgency around the outcome here not on spending the money
You need more frequent reporting and you need to see those KPI
Thank you. Thank you one second. I need a council member to come to the dais. I
Need one council member to come to the dais
So we do not have a quorum. We need to wait we cannot continue this meeting. Oh, there we go
No, he finished he finished if your name was calling you wish to speak please approach the podium
Good evening
We must respect to the president and I've been in communication with item six one point eighteen with mr. Noel and
Rosa and just appreciate the council creating this platform for us to speak weekly and cheers to everybody here at all the places
We can be we're here
trying to make Oakland a better place but
Oakland has a lot to be proud of too
Specifically this item I'm speaking on but we're doing a lot of good things. Oh, it's not just things we need to fix
So I just want to say that but yeah, cheers everyone here
Let's make sure we keep appreciating the things we doing good and the things we can work on as well. But yeah, I'm here
speaking on behalf of
Gary Payton, I appreciate the city council the mayor's office everybody involved. Mr. Jones. Mr. Archanks and
appreciate all your time your effort and
We were basically here as they already spoke and considering honoring Gary Payton the legend Gary Payton the glove
With the street naming this means a lot personally to me because the Payton family helped shape my life
Gary's father helped guided me at a young age
When I became a father at an early age
He helped me and I passed on the blessing to the community like he helped me coach me in basketball
And helped me through mentorship and discipline in the community and with my
Your time is up.
I'm sorry, your time is up.
Hey, can you give me your name, please?
Thank you.
All right.
I'm getting tired of this council and you, Mr. Jenkins, violating the rules.
This is the transcript from April 14th, 2026, on the protected tree ordinance.
And I got it on May 5th.
I handed out to you the following.
Look at it.
I try to tell you, don't do a motion for reconsideration at that May 5th meeting.
But you want to rush back in here and listen to the lies from the city attorney.
April 14th, that matter died because it didn't have President Jenkins a majority vote.
The mayor refused to break the tide.
Let me tell you what the legal opinion of two previous city attorneys, the core legal
consensus under both John Russo, city attorney, 2000 to 2011 and Barbara Parker, 2011 to 2013,
is dictated by the Oakland City Charter, the definitive legal posture on what happens during
on a tied vote when the mayor declines to break, it's a breaking, core legal mechanism.
If the mayor declines, the item fails under both Russo and Barbara Parker, the legal
opinions of the city attorney have consistently maintained a bedrock principle of municipal
law.
Get it?
And, uh, Parliamentarian, I want you to listen because you have to clarify what I'm saying.
a tie vote means there's no
majority in former vote,
therefore the motion
legislation fails.
Rucil's opinion reinforced that
when council members split
evenly, the item is effectively
frozen without a majority.
If the mayor does not step in
to provide the fifth vote, the
item cannot legally pass.
So what you did, and there's no
such thing for your edification,
Mr. Guile, there's no such
thing as a motion for
reconsideration but you with cast the city attorney said to you I tried to
warn you in the bathroom and I was gonna out you when you got in here it's
illegal so how do you correct it you got a cue incorrect under the law government
code 5 4 9 5 4 prohibits motion for reconsideration without agenda you didn't
even a Gen Dies, May 5th, it has to be a Gen Dies.
Thank you, Mr. Hazard.
Well, can you address it in open forum?
Mr. Hazard, can you address it in open forum, please?
In open forum, your time is up.
Thank you, Mr. Hazard.
Thank you, Mr. Hazard, Mr. Hazard.
You're violating the Brown Act.
You're violating the Brown Act.
You're violating the Brown Act, Mr. Hazard.
Mr. Hazard, open forum.
Mr. Hazard, thank you, Mr. Hazard.
You'd be back for open forum.
It's okay.
Okay.
Kevin Daly, are you in the chamber?
Thank you, thank you, Mr. Hazard.
The Zoom speaker, Ms. Guerra, please unmute yourself
and begin your comments.
I have you with one card for item 6.15.
Thank you. Good afternoon Council members. My name is Carla Guerra. I am the Policy and Advocacy Senior Manager at the Unity Council and I'm speaking in support of IM 615, Affordable Housing Month.
On behalf of the Unity Council, we wish Councilmember Brown a happy birthday. And we also want to thank you all for bringing forward this resolution for acknowledging the collective work happening across Oakland to build, protect and preserve affordable housing.
This past Friday, we celebrated the exciting groundbreaking of 2,700 international Boulevard development that's very beautiful, and it's 75 units, multifamily affordable housing development with 22 units set aside for formerly homeless veterans.
This was only possible because of measure you funds and your support across our portfolio. The unity council currently has 408 affordable units under management, 589 units built and preserved.
And 607 units in the pipeline. We look forward to many more years of building affordable homes together. Thank you
Thank you for your comments Kevin Daly. I do not see him in the chamber or on zoom
That was your last speaker. I'll entertain a motion
Excellent. Thank you so much
if you would like council president Jenkins if you want to put time on the clock because I'm gonna be speaking to a number of the
Items so to start off
with the items that we are supporting from our state legislators
SB 1314 for the smoke shops
both of the legislation around illegal dumping
As well as the affordable housing bond, which is SB 417
Also assembly member bond says a B 2351 around the shelter bed
we know that this is super important to ensure accountability and also that there's data to help address homelessness in our city and getting and getting the accurate data. I do want to shout out the recent results of the point in time count where the city of Oakland showed a 20% reduction in homelessness and I think
and homelessness, and I think that that is absolutely amazing.
Earlier before the council meeting I had the opportunity to connect with a handful of our
community organizations that are supporting the work of building more affordable housing
as well as our amazing city staff from HCD during affordable housing month.
So as the chair of community and economic development,
it is the tradition to ensure that we are recognizing
May as affordable housing month.
We know that this is so crucial given all of the federal cuts
that are taking place in social services,
rental assistance, grants to support
with affordable housing.
I did want to just shout out that at the next CED meeting
on May the 26th we will have a handful of items coming to report back on the city of
Oakland's annual regional housing needs allocation receiving different various data as well as
a report from the Oakland Housing Authority as well and so I just wanted to give a huge
shout out to all the organizations and community members and all of the great work of so many
there's a lot of us who work
with the county of our providers
working to build more affordable
housing in our city.
And then lastly I did want to
thank city staff as well as my
council colleagues that were on
the council budget committee.
For us for the allocations to
help support the illegal dumping
expenditure action plan and we
know that these investments will
definitely help mitigate the
all of which uh... i'm a hundred percent in in support of and so i'll make that
motion to move the
the consent calendar as amended
as amended a riot council member houston
through the chair before councilmember houston is just
including
that that amendment includes this
items six point five continue to the next council meeting
to believe is june second and i'm six point six
as amended in an emergency ordinance
councilmember Houston and councilmember dial.
On through the chair I really don't know where to start.
So bunch of things that I like to address on here.
I wanna just piggyback on my councilmember brown's I agree
with what she's saying.
I'm a tragedy happened in my district on eighty-fifth.
It's tragic, it's tragic.
Individuals ran down, it's still under investigation.
I like to close this meeting mentioning the deceased
and the ones that were injured.
And it's maybe a couple that I won't say
because I'm not sure if their family knows the condition.
But Robert Dixon called him Frog.
He was from 85th.
And I got a call at 1-123 on Sunday,
May the 17th in the morning.
And now they say, Ken, where are you?
And I went out there and it was just tragic, right?
And I thought it was the frog from 11-5.
You know, it's two frogs, it's one from 11-5
and it's one from 85th and I thought it was that one.
But it wasn't, but this is just a tragic situation.
So I wanted to end the meeting with saying
the individuals that were deceased.
Maybe this might be more appropriate for item number seven,
right, when we have announcements and adjournments.
Yes. Yes.
but I wanted to talk about some other things.
But I'll bring that up, I'll bring that under seven.
I wanted to talk about on the street warming,
or it's really the flashing beacon on S6.24.
When you think about it, since set 117, 2020,
Misha Singleton ran over on 98th.
And then 517, 2023, you had Carlos ran over.
over on 98th this is all in my district my district's been suffering right and I
just I appreciate all my council members understanding what's happening in my
district to embrace it and then on for one Lewis was ran over I wanted to
mention Misha she was she was killed she had seven kids on 98th yeah so this is
somebody that I knew personally that I did work with in a community at Stonehurst Elementary
School, right, with the illegal dumping. She was a straight advocate and she left behind
seven children. My community has been suffering, right, and then at one o'clock, these individuals
just ran down. It's a lot more to it, but I just want to tell everybody that's out here
that's listening let's just wait until the investigation is over before we make
some some some moves or some decisions on what we gonna do because this can be
very very dangerous in a critical situation with the things that are
happening but what I'm saying is just just wait just wait until the police do
what they have to do to investigate and on the the legal dumping pieces like
six point eleven six point twelve that my colleague was talking about these
these issues and I'm gonna say it again my community has been suffering right
these some of these penalties is too light I'm gonna go with it and I
endorsed them right I'm gonna go with them but some of these penalties is
but that's about five hundred
dollars a thousand dollars
they've been dumping hazardous
contaminated materials in my
community for decades right.
People need to be prosecuted
people need to go to jail.
Right because it's been happening
to my people my mother's black
my father's latino I touch both
worlds and that's I touch both
worlds and they've been.
Impacted on a whole nother level
way impacted on levels where they drop off asbestos, things that the dump won't take.
So think about this, things that the dump won't take that it would take a special permit
to go dump it.
They dump it in my community where my seniors and my babies are.
Let me tell you something.
People better be glad I'm a council member because what it's doing is it's pulling me
back from how I would really act because I got to behave myself a lot more.
So let me say this, these people that are dumping on my community, the support, the
new DA, the DA that's in place, because she's going to prosecute, she's going to prosecute,
right?
And what we need to do with some money put to the side through the budget, because I
only had three small things that I wanted in my budget.
It was about public safety, homelessness, and the EEOs.
The EEOs are the individuals that actually collect the data, collect the disha, right?
They need to be safe too.
And if you don't have the right information and they don't collect the right data, how
can you prosecute these fools that's dumping in my community?
So my thing is this, that money that was put to the side in the last budget, and I know
Councilmember Brown heard me because she had mentioned something about it, I want to find
out how our EEOs are going to be trained to collect the data.
Say for instance somebody go to the block and they shoot, right?
They're not just going to sweep up the bullets.
They're going to collect them, right?
So what we're doing is we just collect, we're just cleaning up trash that's dumped
in our community instead of logging it in so we can prosecute these fools that's dumping
in my community because my community is fed up.
People ready to stand up on a whole other level
Because they ain't going to keep doing this now that I'm elected.
I'm from a different fabric.
People don't understand where trickles through my bloodline, right?
So I'm from a different fabric and I'm tired of my babies in my community being dumped on.
So these things, these finds is way too light.
But I supported it because we got to start somewhere.
But here's my last point.
We need to stop clean up, clean up, clean up, clean up, clean up, it's not working.
It has not worked.
It has not worked.
Councilmember Gayle goes out every day, every weekend cleaning up, which should be applauded,
but we're not a clean up service.
We need to deter this problem and prosecute these fools as dumping in my community.
Or we're going to have to do something else to these fools, and let me say this to you.
It's not only a public health and safety issue on the people that have to clean it up or
the people have to live amongst it, it's another public health and safety issue for the people
that report it.
Because it's individuals that reported it that they got guns pulled on them, pull a
gun on me.
I shoot back.
Councilmember, I think you've exceeded your time.
Did you want to wrap it up?
Okay, all right.
You want to wrap it up?
I'm I'm I'm a support these these these things but we're being a little bit too soft
We need to be harder because it's a it's proof
I've been in this game for 20 something years and it has not changed but got worse
So we must do something different president. That's all I'm saying. Thank you. Is that a second?
All right, so we have a
Councilmember gender
Thank you, you know councilmember Houston brought up a good point on item
S6 point two six which I support and I'm really glad that we're going to have a thoughtful expenditure plan moving forward
But I do want to uplift what he said about the positions that were put in in the past budget
So when we're thinking about expenditure
What about the environmental environment officers that we put in there?
What about I'm looking at the budget amendments right now unfreeze two eos for illegal dumping enforcement
add funds for technology improvements to a death illegal dumping, $850,000.00, O&M for environmental officer training,
O&M for environmental crime data collection, public information officer, Oakland proud illegal dumping education campaign,
unfreeze a painter for graffiti abatement. These are things that are budgeted so we think about expenditures where,
if these positions haven't been hired, where is that money?
And so I hope that if they're not going to these positions,
which haven't been hired, that they're going somewhere
related to illegal dumping.
But as we think about illegal dumping expenditures,
I would like to understand, not today, because this is not here,
but where's the money that's already been expended,
that we've already put in the budget around these matters?
And I'm grateful to Councilman Brown and Houston
for uplifting what we put in the budget,
but we only have the power to put items in the budget,
not control what happens to it once it's there.
So I know that there's, they're thoughtful leaders
in all of these departments, and I want to,
I wish, I hope that there's more transparency
moving forward.
Councilmember Gail.
Turn this mic on.
Am I on testing one, two, three?
All right, thank you.
Thank you for that information.
I'm not going to get into the illegal dumping right now,
but if you have a recommendation, I can give you one that,
but, you know, you got to understand.
Okay, San Leandro, city next door,
they're allowed to go once a month to waste management
and dump their trash, like other cities do.
Why can't Oakland do that?
Why?
And I've been recommending we do that, right?
It's supposed to go down to the public works yard,
Having people stand there overtime whole day
waiting for people to come dump their trash,
then they gotta take it away as management.
But San Leandro, I was there Saturday unloading our trucks,
long line of cars.
And I could say, where are they from?
Oh, they're all from San Leandro bringing their trash
and unloading it, free.
And why can't Oakland do the same thing?
You know, members of the council,
come on, let's, why can't we do that here
as they do in other cities.
But I want to take my two minutes
and recognize Gary Payton
as we celebrate not only his contributions,
but for those of you that don't,
I see a lot of young people that don't know Oakland
in the past,
Oakland at one time was the fifth largest market
in the country for recruiting professional athletes.
The fifth largest market in the country
for recruiting professional athletes
from basketball, football, baseball, and so forth.
And you would see them at our high schools
a lot of recruiting.
A lot of our youngsters that were graduating
from Oakland High, Fremont, Mclymons, and so forth.
As an example, you have Marshawn Lynch, Gary Payton,
Damian Lillard is still playing,
Ricky Henderson, Jason Kidd is still coaching,
Brian Shaw, Bill Russell, Paul Peers, Dave Stewart,
that I played baseball with in high school,
Hall of Famer, Kurt Flint, and many others
that came out of Oakland,
and I just want to thank the family.
Gary Payton Jr. is playing
for the Oklahoma State Warriors still,
and I'm sure he'll be present in our dedication
with some other warrior athletes,
but I want to publicly thank Gary Payton
for his contribution.
I know there's a couple of schools in East Oakland
where he's contributed to the basketball court.
He came out of Jefferson Elementary School.
His mother taught at Jefferson Elementary School.
And, but on June 18th, for those of you
that are interested in joining us,
please come out and celebrate
and recognize his contribution,
because not only, you know, our schools in East Oakland,
but there's other elementary schools
where the Golden State Warriors,
adjacent kid and many others
have contributed for his development.
But I wanna thank the family of Gary Paden
for joining us and certainly it's an honor
to recognize his leadership contributions
and I've already received from Dave Stewart
and other professional athletes that wanna join you
and it's an honor to have you and thank you so much
And I'll second the motion on the items.
Thank you.
All right, thank you Council Member Gail.
Council Member, oh, you already seconded.
Council Member Houston already seconded.
Council Member Wong?
That's all weighing in here.
I just wanted to talk about that.
I think in the upcoming budget process,
we have an opportunity.
I think we need at least one full-time OPD officer
that's dedicated to illegal dumping and graffiti vandalism.
I've been engaged in this uphill battle
with our city staff to have somebody
to give a crap about the graffiti problem.
This is related to item 6.12, right?
Absolutely.
Yes, it is.
And the other thing that was noted in the auditor's report
is that when their team had notified OPD,
nobody actually bothered to file,
actually investigate the crime of illegal dumping.
So we need to dedicate some resources.
And on top of that, the other problem is the DA
didn't even take up the case.
So we have multiple issues to solve,
but we, I think as a body need to start really be unified
in pressuring both the DA and our own police department
to make some changes because it's these quality
of life crimes that continue to contribute
to the fact that people do not feel safe
and they do not feel like it's a clean city
and like we don't have basic pride in the city of Oakland
when we allow this to happen.
Thank you, council member.
So we have a motion and a second.
I believe that's Brown in Houston.
Yes, we have a motion by council member Brown,
and second by councilmember Houston
to approve the consent calendar
which also includes continuing item 6.5
to the next council meeting of June 2nd
and with item 6.6 as amended
and as an emergency ordinance.
Councilmember Brown.
Aye.
Councilmember Fife is excused.
Councilmember Gallo.
Aye.
Councilmember Houston.
Aye.
Councilmember Ramachandran.
Aye.
Councilmember Unger.
Aye.
Councilmember Wong.
Aye and chair Jenkins motion passes with a vote of seven ayes
That concludes all your action items moving to item seven, which is council acknowledgments and announcements
Yes
so in addition to
The victims that tragically lost their lives on
85th Avenue this weekend when I joined this meeting in memory of Wilson rouse jr. Former council member
Who departed and former police commissioner who did?
Wonderful work for the city of Oakland while he was here. I also want to say happy birthday to Kevin Garnett
Malcolm X and my
councilmember councilmember Brown
Thank you
Happy birthday councilmember of round. Happy AAPI heritage month. Happy women's health month
And I, in addition to all of the names mentioned, I wanted to also adjourn in the memory of
Christopher Buckley, who just succumbed to a battle with cancer.
He's a former arborist for the city of Oakland, who spent his time really committing to the
cause of supporting and uplifting Oakland trees, including for many years after he retired.
He continued to work tirelessly to beautify the city of Oakland and balance it with his
Historic preservation public green space and importance of well-maintained street trees
He personally donated and planted and cared with his own hands for thousands of Oakland trees
And yes, thank you
Thank you councilmember Houston
So through the chair. I want to say happy birthday my councilmember Brown. Happy birthday
and in in remembrance and of the injured the deceased and the injured
Robert Dixon frog
85th
forever
Charles black men deceased
Sylvester Patterson and
injured to shine and Gabriella
I'm gonna go call Gabriella and it's another one that I'm not gonna mention because I'm not sure family knows
But I want to end the meeting and for the deceased and the injured in my district
Thank You councilmember. Let's go to open forum
as a car name please approach the podium in any order please state your name for the record
before beginning if you are on zoom please raise your hands so I can easily identify
you you will have one minute to address the council
Kevin Dally missus out all of allah
mister hazard
sylvia goosman
sent the iraq regas
Jacqueline Guillen
daniela lopez
As soon as Toronto Hernandez, Alicia Pablo, Jason Chalet's.
Brianna Ramirez, Bruce, Condi, Linda Wade,
Fig P, Fiyomo, Alberto, Para, Thomas, a bird.
Mark Robles, Renee moon, Lucretia Flemings, Melvin Calome,
Gudilia Cruz Hernandez, Mary Luckett, Kathy Harris, Sharon Green Pace,
I think this is a duplicate, Kathy Harris, Cora Clark, Isabel Ruiz, Michelle Washington,
Greg Slaughter and Crystal Harding.
So it's real clear 54950, the government code.
on the government code 54960, actions taken in violation
of key open meeting laws are avoidable by the courts.
City must explicitly, and this is your notice now,
you have to cure and correct May 5th,
2026 public hearing.
President Jenkins, vote no on Jenkins,
vote no on Measure E.
The minutes are an accurate record of what actually happened.
Not a declaration of whether what happened was legal.
May 5th was legal, illegal, Gayle, open your mouth.
Get a legal opinion from the city attorney.
I gave you the legal opinion from Russo and Barker.
May 14th was, April 14th was failed.
And thank you your time is up.
Thank you your time is up.
And effective voice not just the channel.
Good afternoon council members.
My name is Sylvia Guzman I'm a healthy housing champion with La Clinica de la Raza.
I live work and play out of East Oakland.
I'm a mother of three and recently a grandmother to one.
When my youngest children were born they were born into a building that was infested with
lead.
Lucky we were able to move out to here I'm here to talk to you about proactive rental
County.
Thank you for your personal
inspections.
Many of the families that grew
up with my children are now
parents themselves like my
eldest most of these families
continue to live they're being
impacted by the conditions in
the outside if you walk by that
building it's now falling from
the outside in.
It's literally falling and you
can see that.
I'm here to ask you for
proactive rental inspections as
council members you have the
power to help prevent children
to create these policies and
give priority to prevent in.
Good afternoon city council
members my name is Cynthia
Rodriguez I'm a Oakland resident
and I'm also you break or need
for like when you got- healthy
homes initiative where we work
to address the ongoing issue of
lead exposure in Oakland.
Out so throughout this school
year are you have had the
opportunity to learn about the
dangers of lead exposure and
have had the opportunity to learn about the dangers of lead and how deeply this issue
impacts our communities.
They have worked hard to raise awareness, educate the community, and advocate for their
health and safety of their families, their friends, and community members.
Today we come before you in hope and urgency.
We ask that the lead settlement funds be used to strengthen and expand the lead abatement
and proactive rental inspection programs so that more families can live in safe and healthier
homes. Thank you for your time. Good morning. I mean good afternoon City Council. My name is
Daniela Lopez. I am an 18 year old senior in high school and a resident of Oakland. I am part of
Casa Che in collaboration with Healthy Homes Initiative to support healthier and safer
communities for youth and families. Throughout this program I've learned more of civic engagement
and how important it is for young people to speak up about issues affecting our
community. Today we are here to talk about our policy campaign focused on lead
exposure and the importance of lead abatement programs. With the support of
Casa Che, we are here advocating in support of using the city's lead
settlement funds to start an equitable lead abatement program and proactive
rental inspection program. These policies are important to me because they help
create safer homes, healthier communities, and better opportunities for children to
grow and succeed. Thank you for your time.
Good afternoon. My name is Lucena Serrano Hernandez. I'm a senior in high school, and I am a member, and I'm
here today as a member of the Youth Bridge Program at Casa Che, in coloration with
the Healthy Homes Initiative. Today I want to bring attention to a problem our
community faces on a daily basis, lead contamination in houses. Lead
Their contamination has been a serious problem in Oakland for almost half a century now.
In a report done by KQED, it was reported that 83% of rental houses in Oakland are
led contaminated.
Many of these houses are occupied by immigrant families who are often aware of the dangers
that are being exposed to, leaving them at a great disadvantage and a risk of developing
health conditions that are in life.
And even if the families are aware of the dangers that are being exposed to, they are
are often unable to speak up and advocate for themselves
due to factors such as language barriers, immigration status,
and economic insecurity.
So I come here today to ask for your support, the city plans,
to use the lead settlement funds to create an equitable lead
abatement program supported by a fee.
Good afternoon, everyone.
My name is Brianna Ramirez.
I am 16 years old.
I attend Oakland Technical High School,
and I'm here today to speak about how lead
is affecting our community.
Lead exposure is a serious health issue,
especially for children.
There is no safe amount of lead exposure for children
because it can affect brain development, learning, behavior,
and growth.
Many people are exposed to lead without even realizing it.
Lead can be found in older homes through peeling paint,
contaminated dust, old water pipes, and soil.
This is important in Oakland because many buildings and homes
in our city were built before 1972
and may still contain lead material.
Families should not have to worry
about whether their water or homes are safe.
As a student, I believe every child deserves
a healthy and safe environment where they can learn
and grow without being harmed by something preventable.
Our community needs more awareness,
safer housing conditions, and action from local leaders
to help protect families from lead exposure.
If we work together as a community...
Good afternoon, Council members.
My name is Jacqueline Guillen.
I am 16 years old and I am currently a junior
at Crystal Ray de La Salle.
I am a part of La Clinica's Healthy Homes Initiative,
working to address the issue of lead in homes
and protect families in our community.
Lead poisoning is a serious issue
because it can affect children's brain development,
behavior, growth, and ability to learn and concentrate.
This issue matters deeply to me
because many families in Oakland,
especially in the Fruitvale area,
live in older homes where lead pain is still a danger.
Many families may not even realize
their homes contain lead hazards,
and their children should not have to grow up
in unsafe environments that can harm their health and future.
As young people, we care about creating safer
and healthier communities for future generations.
That is why we are asking for continued investments
in lead prevention programs, home inspections,
and resources for families affected by lead exposure.
Thank you for your time,
Hello, everyone. My name is Alicia Pablo. I'm a senior at CCPA. Today, I'm here on behalf of healthy housing
Initiative with La Clinica. In Oakland, there are many challenges we face, one of them being lead poisoning. Today
we are seeing the impacts it has on children and no one is doing anything about it.
Those who are exposed to lead have many health problems, like cognitive, emotional, physical development
that could be long-term. As a teen living in Oakland, specifically East Oakland,
I have seen the impacts of lead firsthand.
My little sister, who is seven years old,
was exposed to lead in a house she would spend time in.
She began having stomach pain.
This was the start of her suffering.
We began looking for answers, and it wasn't until she got
tested that we found her pain was due to lead poisoning.
No child should have to go through this.
Luckily, she was taken care of.
But imagine how many children in Oakland are currently
experiencing these same health issues,
and no one is doing anything about it.
This is why I am here to advocate for those
who can't be here today.
I want you to know that I'm advocating
not only for my sister,
but for the future of other children.
We need...
Hello, my name is Kathy Harris
and I live at 1428 105th Avenue.
I just want to thank Councilman Jenkins and Ms. Brown
and Ken Houston for coming to our apartment building
with the city administrators
and the building inspectors, fire chiefs,
and whoever else was a bunch of people there,
expecting our building.
I just wanna say that we, as residents there,
want our building cleaned up,
and I don't know what they're gonna do about it.
Can you tell me what they're gonna do about it?
Anybody up against?
Chen Houston is my council member.
Yeah, we'll make sure that you guys give updates.
Okay, great, thank you.
Good evening, everyone.
Good evening.
My name is Crystal Harding.
I'm representing All Children Thrive, California,
and the Havens Court Safe Homes Initiative.
Shout out to those youth that just spoke.
Give it up for them.
That's what I'm talking about.
ACT is a community-led movement transforming how cities
address childhood trauma, bring together residents, city staff,
and elected officials to co-design policies and programs
that foster child and family well-being.
Communities of color in East and West Oakland,
including Havens Court are among the most at risk
for childhood lead poisoning in the entire state.
Fruitvale had higher lead poisoning rates
than Flint, Michigan at the height of its water crisis.
We know that it has some permanent harm and damages,
and Oakland has over 14 million
from the 2019 legal settlement with the paint companies.
We want you to take action and move this money forward,
invest in the equitable lead hazard abatement program
and the proactive rental inspection.
thank you for your time. Thank you. I encourage African-American black people take an opportunity
to embrace yourself and talk about what's going on with us. We're so open-hearted we're always
talking about everybody but concentrate on us. Nothing wrong with that. I am concerned about the
West Oakland senior center I just got a text that is still not open. I'm going to say vote no on
measure E and we have an important decision to make in this city and I want
to address it right now we have to appoint a police chief and I am in a
position my position is it can't come from a person from within the Oakland
Police Department that culture of the Police Department is well protected
somebody's got to come in here and change the culture and be willing to
make a difference. And it's not going to happen with anybody that's already in
that police department. When they came here and gave a report and said that no
longer do we have racial profiling in the Oakland Police Department.
How you doing council members? I talked to you earlier today President Jenkins.
Okay I want to do what I need to do right now. I need to ask you to stand. I
need to ask council member Brown. Can she please stand? You know I'm coming at
Councilmember Houston I need you to stand okay this is what I want to tell
you guys to me personally you guys have a dream team for Oakland station the
reason why I say that Councilman Brown when you came there you left a grown
man in tears because you listen to him he felt real good when you did that okay
and I thank you and he thanks you President Jenkins when you came on a
Saturday I got a call 8 30 Sunday morning to get my butt over to Oakland
station because you came there with a team and one of the team members you
came with is sitting over here and I'm gonna do this in front of your
colleagues mr. Houston our unit apologies for the things I said in the
past because after the conversation that me and you had and what you've been
doing you just did it on the under you have anything else to say okay you let
be know what you was doing and we appreciate that you guys should take a
bow seriously I have one more place that I need you and Brown to come to and
that's city towers if she's Oakland it's just as bad as Oakland station and with
the team effort that we're doing together we're gonna get to we get that
building together like we do an ocean Oakland station can I'm gonna tell you I
I am with you a hundred percent behind circling that building
That they trying to build and let's shut it down. We're gonna do it as we're gonna do it
It's a team me you gonna be up front. You're gonna be you gonna be the general
I'm gonna be your little titter read up on you cuz I'm gonna stand there pretty good ain't nobody in there
Okay, and I personally firstly. Thank you guys
Before you go, can you give me your name, please?
sir
Your name
My name is Gregory Slaughter, and I'm a resident of Oakland, California next morning on the 28th
I'm proud to say I'll be 73 years old. I'm still handsome too
My name is Tommaso Bird and I live at 105
International in the new building so-called
I
Had so much problems. I broke my wrist
being there and lost my car.
I've been there for five years,
and nothing's being done about the bars in my bathroom.
I've fell so many times, and I'm sick and tired of it.
You people are helping me wear shit five years
without bathroom bars.
And I've just been falling all the time.
I fell, and they said I have to pay for my bars
be put in the bathrooms. From what I know I'm not supposed to be there already and
I've been writing down every year for bars in my bathroom and nothing's being
done. There's still no bars that I went out and all they had was plastic bars.
Can you guys get, I need to ask her a question.
Can you give her 20 more seconds?
Oh, okay.
No, was there anything else you have to say?
Yeah, I have, it rained inside my apartment
and I had roaches the following day.
I would really hate to wake up one crawling on me.
I really need that done.
Thank you, ma'am.
If your name was called and you're in the chambers and you wish to speak during open
forum, please approach the podium.
At this time, all names have been called.
If open forum is done, I would like to ask the council if I, too, could do an adjournment
in honor of Eda Mae Johnson.
Many of you know she used to come to council meetings all the time, and she passed away
on April 21st.
So I would ask that the Council adjourn in her honor
and her services, I believe, are Friday, May 22nd.
Thank you for that.
Councilmember Houston.
Through the Chair, I wanna tell all the individuals
that came out from the Oakland Station,
I got you, I got you.
And let me say this.
When we went out there, expired fire extinguishers,
handrails didn't work.
The roll-up door didn't work.
It smelled like stench, and it was just awful.
No one should have to live like that.
And let me tell you what I did.
And I'm gonna bring it to the next council member meeting.
I'm gonna bring the bottle, the glass of roaches
that I got from there.
I'm gonna show it.
I'm gonna put it online.
So I'm gonna say, do you wanna live like that?
I have them, and I'm gonna bring them.
And I'm gonna show them what you had.
Because you showed me something,
and I went there and got them myself.
So I'm gonna show the public, should my seniors,
should my Oaklanders have to live like this,
would you live like this?
And you're gonna say, no, it's appalling.
And I'm gonna bring it, I'm gonna show it.
Thank you, council member.
Thank you and thank you for everyone
that joined us this afternoon.
For those that brought up the issue of lead and the paint,
there is a process for that.
The city does have, it was awarded $5 million
and the county has 9 million dollars, all right,
but the process for, if you get ill,
you go to, if you're a child, you go to Children's Hospital,
they'll do the testing, and they'll submit that information
to the city or to the county for service.
If, you know, if you're an adult,
you can go up to Kaiser and get tested,
and they'll submit that information to the city
or to the county to follow up, test your facility, your home,
and also remove the lead in the paint.
The lead in the paint.
And so while I'll ask the city administrator, we've been
through this challenge where there have been some lead
in the paint issues, but we have not responded as a city.
All right.
And we've been at this for a number of years,
and I've tried working with the county,
But then the county says we deal with the county
and not the city, because that city property in the city
has been, finally we hired a consultant group
to tell us how to do it after a number of years.
And so if you can respond to those that are here,
because we do have the money,
and I'll give you this last example,
because it happened here at City Hall, at my office,
upstairs, this is a 113 year old building.
All right, and so what happened is,
when my assistant's child got ill,
and he went to Children's Hospital,
and he came back extremely positive with lead and the pain.
But the mom said, I already had my home tested,
it's not there.
But she brings her child here to mind,
then she went and got tested,
and the numbers were extremely, extremely high.
But I'm trying to work with the city,
with the inspectors to come,
but it took a while to get it done,
but I'm still waiting for the results
of the letter and the paint issue
because in some of our offices,
the lead is falling through the walls,
through the ceilings, the windows,
and the strong paint came out of the windows that we have.
But I'm still waiting for the inspectors came a month later
to inspect my office,
but I'm still waiting for the results
because I saw your previous office upstairs.
Man, their paint's peeling.
Left them right in.
And I know you're no longer there, but I.
I know, I'm still up there.
But anyway, so I think that city administrator,
you need to communicate and let the council members know,
where are we with the lead and the paint issue?
Because we have not responded to members of the public.
Yeah.
Including to our own, my assistant,
The tests got ill and the numbers were extremely high
and they come out of this facility.
So Madam City Administrator, we're gonna hold you
responsible for responding outside of council
and making sure that we get on
dead lead settlement money getting out.
Councilman Wong.
Just on the topic of lead, last Friday I went to
Councilman, Councilman High School
with the frontline catalysts group
And something that I had picked up there from one
of the student presentations
where they were doing lead testing given all the lead
in the school pipes is that they basically rely
on these electronic filtration systems.
And there is literally only one working drinking fountain
for the entire school.
And I know that's on the, that is part of, you know,
capital improvements for the school district, but man,
it's just totally unacceptable to have lead going
into her children's blood streams like that.
Thank you, Councilmember.
All right.
All the forms done, adjournments are done.
Oh, no, now it's time for adjournments.
Thank you.
We adjourn this evening in honor of all the victims
of the 85th Avenue tragedy, those who pass
and those who are injured.
Wilson Riles, Jr., Christopher Buckley, and Etta Mae Johnson.
Thank you, this meeting is adjourned.
When the season goes on, I don't know if it's the case or not.
But I don't know what to expect or how I'm going to die.
If I'm going to die, I don't know if the season goes on or not.
I don't know if it's the case or not.
But I don't know if it's the case or not.
I don't know if it's the case or not.
If I'm going to die, I don't know if it's the case or not.
If I'm going to die, I don't know if it's the case or not.
If you want to find out what you are going to do with this video,
you can check out the video description below.
If you want to find out what you are going to do with this video,
you can check out the video description below.
If you want to find out what you are going to do with this video,
you can check out the video description below.
If you have any questions, please let me know in the comments below.
We want more connected neighborhoods and better access to housing, jobs, and everyday
essentials.
The Draft Land Use Framework for Oakland's General Plan shows how we can make that vision
real.
The framework focuses on achieving key community priorities, like housing and services near
transit and jobs, well maintained open spaces, and transportation that gets
people where they need to go. Does this plan reflect what your community needs
to thrive? Scan the QR code or follow the link to review the framework and share
your feedback today. Translation services in order to access city government, the
City of Oakland's Equal Access Office is here to help. There are many different
ways that language access services can be used throughout the city, from brochures
and fact sheets that are in multiple languages to bilingual staff that can provide live translation
services.
Here are some of the ways that the City of Oakland can help you get more out of your
city government.
At all city departments, language access posters are available allowing you to simply point
to the language you speak and city staff can call an interpreter over the phone for the
language assistance you need.
our city website information is available in multiple languages with the click of a button.
And like our bilingual service, over-the-phone interpreters,
video interpreting, and in-person interpretations can be provided. All you have to do is ask,
what if you're at a city facility but need language services? The public can request
translation or interpretation just by talking to city staff they come in contact with at the
library or by reserving an OPRID facility for a birthday party. If you
need assistance just let a staff member know. All you have to do is ask. You can
minimize wait times for interpreting by requesting language assistance in
advance. If you are planning on attending a public meeting you may require the use
of translation headsets. City staff will need time to arrange for equipment to
arrive at the meeting venue on time so requesting them in advance is advisable.
Here at the Equal Access Office of the City of Oakland, we want you to be able
to access city government on your terms, in your language, and provide you with
the best possible experience the city has to offer. Everyone deserves access to
their city government.
Necesita servicios de traducsion para hacerdera do servicios del codierno de la cidade,
la o ficina de accesso evalutario de la cidade oclan esta aqui para ayudar de.
A muchas maneiras de utilizaros do servicios de accesso linguístico en toda de la cidade.
Desde foyetos y hos informativas en barrios idiómas hasta personal bilingué que pueden
proportionar servicios de traducsion en vivo.
At the end of the day, the plan of the year is to provide maximum service for the full COVID-19 municipal.
In all of the municipal departments, there are many ways to access the linguistic bodies of people,
which indicate the need for help, and personal help for the need to find a way to interpret what the need for help is.
Queremos que puede hacer el govierno municipal en sus propios terminos.
En su idioma y o precerle la mejor experiencia posible que la ciudad puede o precer.
Todos el mundo me reces en receso el govierno de sus sizar.
Hi Oakland, I'm Mayor Barbara Lee and today I want you to hear one clear message.
Immigrants help make this city strong and your city is here for you.
Now, I know Oaklanders are concerned about the safety of our immigrant communities as
federal enforcement activity is escalating across the country.
We stand firmly with our immigrant communities.
Oakland is a sanctuary city, and we will not be intimidated by federal operations designed
to create fear and division.
No city employee will ever ask for your immigration status.
So regardless of your status, you should always feel safe to ask a police officer for help.
Call 911 to report an emergency or visit city offices to access services.
I have signed an executive order affirming that city property and spaces are to be used
for city approved uses only.
If your family is impacted, you have rights and support is available.
the ASEALIP hotline, 510-241-4011, that's 510-241-4011, for rapid response and legal
guidance.
Now if you're looking for support, visit our city website for know your rights information.
This resource is available for everyone, individuals, families, organizations, city workers, and
even elected officials.
Thank you very much.
We will protect the town.
migratoryo no importa su estatos usted puede llamar al nueve once en una
emergencia puede peder ayuda la policia or a cudir a las officinas de la
cudad para recivir servicios con confianza la alcaldessa barber lee
afirmado una orden el potiva a firmando que propiada desde open seran usada
solamente para usos de la cudad y no para operationes de eyes si su familia
a cido aspectada usted tienes derechos y ayuda disponible y a me a la
We will protect the town.
We are proud to be here today.
We are so proud to be here today.
We are proud to be here today.
We are proud to be here today.
We are proud to be here today.
We are proud to be here today.
We are proud to be here today.
We are proud to be here today.
We are proud to be here today.
We are proud to be here today.
We are proud to be here today.
We are proud to be here today.
We are proud to be here today.
We are proud to be here today.
We are proud to be here today.
We are proud to be here today.
We are proud to be here today.
We are proud to be here today.
We are proud to be here today.
We are proud to be here today.
We are proud to be here today.
I also have the opportunity to come back to Korea to meet with my friends in the community.
I also have the opportunity to come back to Korea to meet with my friends in the country.
I also have the opportunity to come back to Korea to meet with my friends in the community.
I also have the opportunity to come back to Korea to meet with my friends in the community.
I also have the opportunity to come back to Korea to meet with my friends in the community.
If you are interested in learning Chinese,
you can go to the YouTube channel.
If you want to learn Chinese,
you can go to the YouTube channel.
You can follow the YouTube channel.
If you want to learn Chinese,
you can go to the YouTube channel.
If you want to learn Chinese,
you can go to the YouTube channel.
If you want to learn Chinese,
you can go to the YouTube channel.
If you want to learn Chinese,
you can go to the YouTube channel.
If you want to learn Chinese,
We heard you, Oakland. You want more connected neighborhoods and better access to housing,
jobs, and everyday essentials. The Draft Lands Use Framework for Oakland's General Plan shows
how we can make that vision real. The framework focuses on achieving key community
priorities like housing and services near transit and jobs, well-maintained
open spaces, and transportation that gets people where they need to go. Does
this plan reflect what your community needs to thrive? Scan the QR code or
follow the link to review the framework and share your feedback today.
In order to access city government, the City of Oakland's Equal Access Office is
here to help. There are many different ways that language access services can
can be used throughout the city. From brochures and fact sheets that are in multiple languages
to bilingual staff that can provide live translation services, here are some of the ways the City
of Oakland can help you get more out of your city government. At all city departments,
language access posters are available, allowing you to simply point to the language you speak.
City staff can call an interpreter over the phone for the language assistance
you need. With our City website information is available in multiple
languages with the click of a button. And like our bilingual service, over-the-
phone interpreters, video interpreting and in-person interpretations can be
provided. All you have to do is ask, what if you're at a City facility but need
language services? The public can request translation or interpretation just
by talking to city staff they come in contact with, at the library, or by reserving an OPRYD
facility for a birthday party. If you need assistance, just let a staff member know.
All you have to do is ask. You can minimize wait times for interpreting by requesting
language assistance in advance. If you are planning on attending a public meeting, you
may require the use of translation headsets. City staff will need time to arrange for equipment
to arrive at the meeting venue on time, so requesting them in advance is advisable.
Here at the Equal Access Office of the City of Oakland, we want you to be able to access
city government on your terms, in your language, and provide you with the best possible experience
the city has to offer. Everyone deserves access to their city government.
Necessíta servicios de traduczón para hacerderas de servicios del codierno de la ciudad.
La afísina de accesso y valitário de la ciudad de Oakland está aquí para ayudar de.
A muchas maneras de utilizares de servicios de accesso linguístico en toda de la ciudad.
Desde foyetos y ojas informativas en barrios idiómas hasta personal bilingue que pueden
proportionar servicios de traduczón en vivo.
En el citio ued en nuestras cidar, la información estados bisponible en barrios idiómas consolo
hacer clique en un botón.
Y como nuestro servicio bilingue, y nuestros interpretes te telepono, se pueden proportionar
interpretes en video un persona, solo tienes caperido.
Que pasa si en cuentra en una instalación municipal pero necesita servicios linguístico.
Meembras del publico pueden solicitar tradación o interpretación sí implemente a alando con el personal municipal, con el que entre en encontacto.
En la biblioteca o reservando una facilitar de los parches de la cidar para una fiesta de cucitanios,
si nacitá yuda solotiene que communicarcelo a un miembras del personal, solotiene que fédido.
When minimized, the time to speak to the interpretation is sufficient to assist linguistics with intelligence.
If you assist a public reunion, it is possible that you can use the curricular and the traditional language.
The personal municipal necessary to organize the people's work to help the reunion is sufficient,
for those who recommend the communication with intelligence.
Hello Oakland, I'm Mayor Barbara Lee and today I want you to hear one clear message.
help make this city strong and your city is here for you. Now I know Oaklanders are concerned
about the safety of our immigrant communities as federal enforcement activity is escalating
across the country. We stand firmly with our immigrant communities. Oakland is a sanctuary
city and we will not be intimidated by federal operations designed to create fear and division.
No city employee will ever ask for your immigration status, so regardless of your status, you
should always feel safe to ask a police officer for help.
Call 911 to report an emergency or visit city offices to access services.
I have signed an executive order affirming that city property and spaces are to be used
for city approved uses only.
If your family is impacted, you have rights and support is available.
Call the ASEALIP Hotline 510-241-4011 that's 510-241-4011 for rapid response and legal
guidance.
Now if you're looking for support, visit our city website for Know Your Rights information.
This resource is available for everyone, individuals, families, organizations, city workers, and
even elected officials.
Thank you very much.
We will protect the town.
ningun en pliado de la Ciudad de Hoqen, levá preguntar sobre o su status migratorio.
No importa su status, usted puede llamar al nueveense en una emergencia, puede peder
ayuda a la policia o acudir a la Soficinas de la Ciudad para recibir cervisos con confianza.
La alcaldessa barber li afermado una orden ejapotiva a firmando que propiedes de Hoqen
seran usada solamente para usos de la Ciudad y no para operaciones de Eis.
She's too familiar with the fact that she's a young woman and she's a little bit disappointed.
She's also the director of the CILEP, the CINCODS, who is a young woman, who is a young woman,
who receives a letter and a legal invitation.
For more information on her resources, visit our Internet.
This is for all the family and organizations and communities.
Oakland is with us.
We will protect the town!
I want to thank you so much for taking the time to be here.
I would like to thank you so much for being here.
I would like to thank you for taking the time to be here.
I would like to thank you so much for being here.
I would like to thank you so much for taking the time to be here.
I would like to thank you so much for taking the time to be here.
I would like to thank you so much for taking the time to be here.
If you want to learn more about the Chinese culture, you can use it as a guide.
If you want to learn more about the Chinese culture, you can use it as a guide.
If you want to learn more about the Chinese culture, you can use it as a guide.
If you want to learn more about the Chinese culture, you can use it as a guide.
If you want to learn more about the Chinese culture, you can use it as a guide.
If you want to learn more about the Chinese culture, you can use it as a guide.
There is a lot of work to do, but there is a lot of work to do and there is also a lot of work to do.
So if you want to try to be successful in your career, you can do anything you want to do.
We heard you Oakland. You want more connected neighborhoods and better access to housing, jobs and everyday essentials.
The draft land use framework for Oakland's general plan shows how we can make that vision real.
The framework focuses on achieving key community priorities.
housing and services near transit and jobs, well maintained open spaces and
transportation that gets people where they need to go. Does this plan reflect
what your community needs to thrive? Scan the QR code or follow the link to
review the framework and share your feedback today. In order to access
city government, the City of Oakland's Equal Access Office is here to help. There
are many different ways that language access services can be used throughout
about the city. From brochures and fact sheets that are in multiple languages to bilingual
staff that can provide live translation services, here are some of the ways that the City of
Oakland can help you get more out of your city government.
At all city departments, language access posters are available, allowing you to simply point
to the language you speak. And city staff can call an interpreter over the phone for
the language assistance you need.
With our city website information is available in multiple languages with the click of a
button.
And like our bilingual service, over the phone interpreters, video interpreting, and in-person
interpretations can be provided.
All you have to do is ask, what if you're at a city facility but need language services?
The public can request translation or interpretation just by talking to city staff they come in
contact with.
at the library or by reserving an OPRID facility
for a birthday party.
If you need assistance, just let a staff member know.
All you have to do is ask.
You can minimize wait times for interpreting
by requesting language assistance in advance.
If you are planning on attending a public meeting,
you may require the use of translation headsets.
City staff will need time to arrange for equipment
to arrive at the meeting venue on time,
So requesting them in advance is advisable.
Here at the Equal Access Office of the City of Oakland,
we want you to be able to access city government
on your terms, in your language,
and provide you with the best possible experience
the city has to offer.
Everyone deserves access to their city government.
At the end of the day, the city of Oakland has been able to provide maximum service to the full government.
In all of the municipal departments, there are posters of the most important things to be done,
which indicate the need for help, and personal support for the city to be able to interpret what the city has to say.
an interpretation simply meant that
Lando was an international musical
when he entered in contact with him.
In the bibliotheca,
Ores servando una facilitar
de los parches de la cidar
para una fiesta de cucitános.
Sí nacicidad,
solos tienes que communicarcelo
a un niemre de el personal.
Solos tienes esta federalo.
Cuede minimizar,
los tiempos despera
para la interpretation
suicitando assistantia
linguistica con antellación.
en la official de accesso y validario de la Ciudad de Oakland.
Que remos que puede hacer el govier no municipal en sus propios terminos en su idioma y opreser
le la mejor experiencee a posible que la Ciudad puede opreser.
Todo el mundo, me rese tener accesso al govier no desusizad.
Hello Oakland, I'm Mayor Barbara Lee and today I want you to hear one clear message.
Immigrants help make this city strong, and your city is here for you.
Now, I know Oaklanders are concerned about the safety of our immigrant communities as
federal enforcement activity is escalating across the country.
We stand firmly with our immigrant communities.
Oakland is a sanctuary city, and we will not be intimidated by federal operations designed
to create fear and division.
No city employee will ever ask for your immigration status, so regardless of your status, you
should always feel safe to ask a police officer for help, call 911 to report an emergency,
or visit city offices to access services.
I have signed an executive order affirming that city property and spaces are to be used
for city approved uses only.
If your family is impacted, you have rights and support is available.
Call the ASEALIP hotline, 510-241-4011.
That's 510-241-4011 for rapid response and legal guidance.
Now, if you're looking for support, visit our city website for Know Your Rights information.
This resource is available for everyone, individuals, families, organizations, city workers and
even elected officials.
Thank you very much.
We will protect the town.
la espersonas immigrantes fortalesse en Oakland y quiero que espanalco muy claro.
La ciudad está aquí para poyar los.
Sabemos que muchas familias está preocupadas por lo que está pasando en todo el paíz.
Quéremos decirles que no están solos.
Oakland es una ciudad su entuario y novo a most apparent miter actiones que busqué en
casar miedo o dividera nuestra comunidad.
Ningún en playado de la ciudad de Oakland, levá preguntar sobre ustú status migratorio.
non importa su estatus, usted puede llamar al nuevejense en una mergencia, puede peder
ayuda a la policia o acudir a las officiales de las judad para recibir servicios con confianza.
La alcaldessa barber li, afermado una orden ejos potiva, afermando que propiada desde
ocun, seran usada solamente para usos de las judad y no para operationes de hayes.
Sí su familia acido affectada usted tienes derechos y ayuda disponible.
Yame a la Linea Directa de Acillep, al Cinco días, dos cuatro uno, cuatro sero uno uno,
para recibirá pollo y mediato y orientación legale.
Para más información y recursos confiables, visite nuestro sito de internet.
Estemensajes para todas las personas y famílias y organizaciones communitarias.
Oakland está con ustedes.
We will protect the town.
I'm a fan of the company, and I'm very happy to be a fan of the company.
I'm very happy to be a fan of the company.
I'm very happy to be a fan of the company.
I'm very happy to be a fan of the company.
I'm very happy to be a fan of the company.
I'm very happy to be a fan of the company.
I'm very happy to be a fan of the company.
I'm very happy to be a fan of the company.
I'm very happy to be a fan of the company.
I'm very happy to be here. I'm very happy to be here.
I'm very happy to be here. I'm very happy to be here.
I'm very happy to be here.
I'm very happy to be here.
I'm very happy to be here.
I'm very happy to be here.
I'm very happy to be here.
I'm very happy to be here.
I'm very happy to be here.
I'm very happy to be here.
I'm very happy to be here.
I'm very happy to be here.
If you feel like you're doing this, you can do it with your hands.
If you don't do it with your hands, you can do it with your hands.
If you feel like you're doing it with your hands, you can do it with your hands.
If you feel like you're doing it with your hands, you can do it with your hands.
If you feel like you're doing it with your hands, you can do it with your hands.
If you feel like you're doing it with your hands, you can do it with your hands.
If you feel like you're doing it with your hands, you can do it with your hands.
If you have any questions, please do come to our channel.
If you have any questions, you can come to our channel for more information.
If you would like more information, please do come to our channel.
If you would like more information, please come to our channel.
If you would like more information, please come to our channel.
We will be posting more information on our channel.
If you would like more information, please come to our channel.
We heard you, Oakland. You want more connected neighborhoods and better access to housing,
jobs and everyday essentials. The draft land use framework for Oakland's general plan shows
how we can make that vision real. The framework focuses on achieving key community priorities,
housing and services near transit and jobs, well-maintained open spaces and transportation
that gets people where they need to go. Does this plan reflect what your community needs
to thrive?
Scan the QR code or follow the link to review the framework and share your feedback today.
In order to access city government, the City of Oakland's Equal Access Office is here
to help. There are many different ways that language access services can be used throughout
the city. From brochures and fact sheets that are in multiple languages to
bilingual staff that can provide live translation services, here are some of
the ways that the City of Oakland can help you get more out of your city
government. At all city departments language access posters are available
allowing you to simply point to the language you speak and city staff can
call an interpreter over the phone for the language assistance you need. With
With our city website information is available in multiple languages with the click of a
button.
And like our bilingual service, over the phone interpreters, video interpreting and in-person
interpretations can be provided.
All you have to do is ask, what if you're at a city facility but need language services?
The public can request translation or interpretation just by talking to city staff they come in
contact with.
the library, or by reserving an OPRYD facility for a birthday party.
If you need assistance, just let a staff member know.
All you have to do is ask.
You can minimize wait times for interpreting by requesting language assistance in advance.
If you are planning on attending a public meeting, you may require the use of translation
headsets.
City staff will need time to arrange for equipment to arrive at the meeting venue on time, so
So requesting them in advance is advisable.
Here, at the Equal Access Office of the City of Oakland, we want you to be able to access
city government on your terms, in your language, and provide you with the best possible experience
the city has to offer.
Everyone deserves access to their city government.
Necessitas servicios de traduction para hacerderas los servicios del codierno de la Ciudad.
La aficina de accesso egalitarian de la Ciudad de Oakland esta aqui para ayudar de.
A muchas maneras de utilitarian dos servicios de accesso linguístico en toda de la Ciudad.
Desde foyetos y ojas informativas en barrios idiomas hasta personal bilingue que pueden proporcionar servicios de traduction en bivo.
E tia el gunas de las formas en que las chudad de Oakland, puede ayudarle a probechar al
consighir maximo los servicios de su ahcovier no municipal.
En todos los departmentos municipales hay posteres de accesso línguiste codisponibles
spandre puede indicar que el idióma que hablas y personal de las chudad pueden llamaras
por te la pono a un interprete que la ayudará en el idióma que nacípe.
the city of wed in nuestra cidar, la información está despísponible en varíos idiómas,
consolo hacer clique en un botón.
Y como nuestro servicio bilingue, in nuestros interpreters te telefono, se pueden proporcionar
interpreters en video un persona, solo tienes que perido.
Que pasa si se encuentra en una instalación municipal pero necesita servicios linguístico.
Me embras de el publico pueden solicitar tradación o interpretación simplamente a alando con el personal un musical,
con el que entre en encontacto.
En la biblioteca o reservando una facilitar de los parquets de la cidar para una fiesta de curcayanos.
Sí, nacitá Yuda, solo tiene que communicarce lo, a un me embras de el personal, solo tiene que pederilos.
When minimized, the time to speak to the interpretation is sufficient to assist linguistics with intelligence.
If you assist a public student, it is possible that you can use a regular language to teach them.
The personal municipal necessary to organize the people's work to learn the language is sufficient,
for those who recommend to speak with intelligence.
En la officina de accesso y valitario de la Ciudad de Oakland.
Que remos que puede hacer el govir no municipal en sus propios terminos.
En suidíoma y oprecer le la mejor experiencee a posíve de que la Ciudad puede oprecer.
Todos el mundo, me reces en el accesso el govir no desusidad.
Oakland, I'm Mayor Barbara Lee, and today I want you to hear one clear message.
Immigrants help make this city strong, and your city is here for you.
Now, I know Oaklanders are concerned about the safety of our immigrant communities as
federal enforcement activity is escalating across the country.
We stand firmly with our immigrant communities.
Oakland is a sanctuary city, and we will not be intimidated by federal operations designed
to create fear and division.
No city employee will ever ask for your immigration status, so regardless of your status, you
should always feel safe to ask a police officer for help, call 911 to report an emergency
or visit city offices to access services. I have signed an executive order affirming
that city property and spaces are to be used for city approved uses only. If your family
is impacted, you have rights and support is available.
Call the ASEALIP hotline, 510-241-4011, that's 510-241-4011 for rapid response and legal
guidance.
Now if you're looking for support, visit our city website for Know Your Rights information.
This resource is available for everyone, individuals, families, organizations, city workers and
even elected officials.
Thank you very much.
We will protect the town.
Usted tienen de retros y ayuda desponible.
Y a me a la linea direcada de hacilep a el cinco días,
dos cuatro uno, cuatro sero una uno,
para recibir a pollo y mediato y orientación legale.
Para más información el recursos confiables,
visite nuestro sito de internet.
Estemens ajes para todas las personas y familias
y organizaciones comunitarias.
Oakland está con ustedes.
We will protect the town.
When I met him, I felt like he was going to a meeting.
He said he was going to meet me.
When I met him, I felt like he was going to meet me.
When I met him, I felt like he was going to meet me.
When I met him, I felt like he was going to meet me.
I felt like he was going to meet me.
When I met him, I felt like he was going to meet me.
When I met him, I felt like he was going to meet me.
I felt like he was going to meet me.
When I met him, I felt like he was going to meet me.
If you don't remember, you can ask for money.
If you don't remember, you can ask for money.
If you don't remember, you can ask for money.
If you don't remember, you can ask for money.
If you don't remember, you can ask for money.
If you don't remember, you can ask for money.
If you don't remember, you can ask for money.
If you don't remember, you can ask for money.
We heard you, Oakland. You want more connected neighborhoods and better access to housing,
jobs, and everyday essentials. The draft land-use framework for Oakland's General Plan shows
how we can make that vision real.
The framework focuses on achieving key community priorities, like housing and services near
transit and jobs, well maintained open spaces, and transportation that gets people where
they need to go.
Does this plan reflect what your community needs to thrive?
Scan the QR code or follow the link to review the framework and share your feedback today.
In order to access city government, the City of Oakland's Equal Access Office is here to
help.
There are many different ways that language access services can be used throughout the
city.
From brochures and fact sheets that are in multiple languages, to bilingual staff that
can provide live translation services, here are some of the ways that the City of Oakland
can help you get more out of your city government.
At all city departments, language access posters are available, allowing you to simply point
to the language you speak, and city staff can call an interpreter over the phone for
the language assistance you need.
With our city website information is available in multiple languages with the click of a
button.
And like our bilingual service, over-the-phone interpreters, video interpreting, and in-person
interpretations can be provided.
All you have to do is ask, what if you're at a city facility but need language services?
the public can request translation or interpretation just by talking to city staff they come in
contact with, at the library or by reserving an OPRID facility for a birthday party.
If you need assistance, just let a staff member know.
All you have to do is ask.
You can minimize wait times for interpreting by requesting language assistance in advance.
If you are planning on attending a public meeting, you may require the use of translation
headsets. City staff will need time to arrange for equipment to arrive at the
meeting venue on time, so requesting them in advance is advisable. Here at the
Equal Access Office of the City of Oakland, we want you to be able to
access city government on your terms, in your language, and provide you with the
best possible experience the city has to offer. Everyone deserves access to their
city government.
The city of Huerta en nuestra hospital de información estados
respondible en barrio cidíomas con solo hacer clique en un botón.
And, como nuestro servicio bilingué, un nuestros interpreters de telefono,
se pueden proportionar interpreters en video o an persona, solo tienes que pelido.
Que pasa si se encuentra en una instalación municipal pero necesita servicios linguisticos.
members of the public can be able to be able to interact with the people in the community.
In the Dibio-Teca, we serve a facility in the park of the city for a few days.
If necessary, we can communicate with the members of the community. We can do it.
To minimize the time to speak to the interpretation of the language system with intelligence.
If you assist a public opinion, it is possible that you can use the language system to explain the truth.
The personal municipal necessary to organize the people's language system to the attention of the people.
For those who recommend the communication with intelligence.
¿En la opicina de accesso y validarios en la ciudad de Oakland?
¿Qué remos que puede hacer al govierno municipal en sus propios terminos?
¿En su idioma y opreserle la mejor experiencia posíve que la ciudad puede opreser?
¿Tódo el mundo, me rese tener accesso al govierno de sus ciudad?
Mayor Barbara Lee, and today I want you to hear one clear message.
Immigrants help make this city strong and your city is here for you.
Now, I know Oaklanders are concerned about the safety of our immigrant communities as
federal enforcement activity is escalating across the country.
We stand firmly with our immigrant communities.
Oakland is a sanctuary city and we will not be intimidated by federal operations designed
to create fear and division.
No city employee will ever ask for your immigration status, so regardless of your status, you
You should always feel safe to ask a police officer for help.
Call 911 to report an emergency or visit city offices to access services.
I have signed an executive order affirming that city property and spaces are to be used
for city approved uses only.
If your family is impacted, you have rights and support is available.
the ASEALIP Hotline, 510-241-4011. That's 510-241-4011 for rapid response and legal
guidance. Now if you're looking for support, visit our city website for Know Your Rights
information. This resource is available for everyone, individuals, families, organizations,
city workers and even elected officials. Thank you very much.
We will protect the town.
and no para operationes de AIS.
Si su familia acido affectada,
usted tiene de retros y ayuda desponible.
Y a me a la linea directa de hacilep a el cinco días,
dos cuatro uno, cuatro sero uno uno,
para receivir a poyo y mediato y orientación legale.
Para más información de recursos confiables,
visite nuestro sito de internet.
Esta menzajes para todas las personas y familias y organizaciones communitarias.
Oakland is not going to status. We will protect the town.
As you can see, there's a lot of water.
There's no place to go to the beach.
There's no place to go to the beach.
There's no place to go to the beach.
There's no place to go to the beach.
There's no place to go to the beach.
There's no place to go to the beach.
There's no place to go to the beach.
There's no place to go to the beach.
There's no place to go to the beach.
There's no place to go to the beach.
There's no place to go to the beach.
There's no place to go to the beach.
When you're in the middle of the day, you're going to have to go to the next day.
You're going to have to go to the next day, and you're going to have to go to the next day.
You're going to have to go to the next day.
You're going to have to go to the next day, and you're going to have to go to the next day.
You're going to have to go to the next day.
You're going to have to go to the next day.
You're going to have to go to the next day.
You're going to have to go to the next day.
I'm sure there will be some changes in the future.
I'm sure there will be some changes in the future.
I'm sure there will be some changes in the future.
I'm sure there will be some changes in the future.
I'm sure there will be some changes in the future.
I'm sure there will be some changes in the future.
I'm sure there will be some changes in the future.
I've seen a lot of changes in the future.
We heard you, Oakland. You want more connected neighborhoods and better access to housing,
jobs and everyday essentials. The draft land use framework for Oakland's general plan shows
how we can make that vision real. The framework focuses on achieving key community priorities,
housing and services near transit and jobs, well maintained open spaces, and transportation
that gets people where they need to go. Does this plan reflect what your community needs
to thrive?
Scan the QR code or follow the link to review the framework and share your feedback today.
In order to access city government, the City of Oakland's Equal Access Office is here to
help. There are many different ways that language access services can be used throughout the
the city, from brochures and fact sheets that are in multiple languages to bilingual staff
that can provide live translation services. Here are some of the ways that the City of
Oakland can help you get more out of your city government.
At all city departments, language access posters are available, allowing you to simply point
to the language you speak. And city staff can call an interpreter over the phone for
the language assistance you need. With our city website, information is available in
multiple languages with the click of a button. And like our bilingual service, over-the-phone
interpreters, video interpreting and in-person interpretations can be provided. All you have
to do is ask, what if you're at a city facility but need language services? The public can
request translation or interpretation just by talking to city staff they come in contact
at the library or by reserving an OPRYD facility for a birthday party.
If you need assistance, just let a staff member know.
All you have to do is ask.
You can minimize wait times for interpreting
by requesting language assistance in advance.
If you are planning on attending a public meeting,
you may require the use of translation headsets.
City staff will need time to arrange for equipment
to arrive at the meeting venue on time so requesting them in advance is
advisable. Here at the Equal Access Office of the City of Oakland we want
you to be able to access city government on your terms, in your language, and
provide you with the best possible experience the city has to offer.
Everyone deserves access to their city government.
If you assist your public health, it is possible that you can use your curricular or traditional language.
The personal municipal need is needed to organize the people's health to the level of the municipal level.
For those who recommend to you with an intelligent solution.
Hello Oakland, I'm Mayor Barbara Lee and today I want you to hear one clear message
Immigrants help make this city strong and your city is here for you.
Now, I know Oaklanders are concerned about the safety of our immigrant communities
as federal enforcement activity is escalating across the country.
We stand firmly with our immigrant communities. Oakland is a sanctuary city
and we will not be intimidated by federal operations designed to create fear and division.
division. No city employee will ever ask for your immigration status, so regardless of your status,
you should always feel safe to ask a police officer for help, call 911 to report an emergency,
or visit city offices to access services. I have signed an executive order affirming that city
property and spaces are to be used for city approved uses only. If your family is impacted,
you have rights and support is available.
Call the ASEALIP hotline, 510-241-4011.
That's 510-241-4011 for rapid response and legal guidance.
Now, if you're looking for support,
visit our city website for Know Your Rights information.
This resource is available for everyone,
individuals, families, organizations, city workers,
and even elected officials.
Thank you very much.
We will protect the town.
nígún en pliado de la Ciudad de Okun, lévá preguntar sobre o su status migratório.
No importa su status, usted puede llamar al nueveense en una emergencia.
Puede pedir ayuda a la policia, o acudir a la sophicinas de la Ciudad, para recivir se visos con confienza.
La alcaldesa barber lí, a firmado una orden ejefotiva, a firmando que propíadades de Okun,
seran usada solamente para usos de la Ciudad y no para operationes de Eis.
We will protect the people of all the communities and organizations of all the communities.
We will protect the town.
We are very happy to be here today.
We are very happy to be here today.
We are very happy to be here today.
We are very happy to be here today.
We are very happy to be here today.
We are very happy to be here today.
We are very happy to be here today.
We are very happy to be here today.
We are very happy to be here today.
When you're in the kitchen, if you don't have food, you can put it in the kitchen.
If you are in the kitchen, you can put it in the kitchen.
Once you're in the kitchen, you can put the food in the kitchen.
If you're in the kitchen, you can put it in the kitchen.
If you don't have food, you can put it in the kitchen.
If you're in the kitchen, you can put it in the kitchen.
If you're in the kitchen, you can put it in the kitchen.
If you're not a Korean, you'll have to take a break from the video.
If you're not a Korean, you'll have to take a break from the video.
If you're not a Korean, you'll have to take a break from the video.
If you're not a Korean, you'll have to take a break from the video.
If you're not a Korean, you'll have to take a break from the video.
If you're not a Korean, you'll have to take a break from the video.
If you're not a Korean, you'll have to take a break from the video.
If you're not a Korean, you'll have to take a break from the video.
I'm very happy to be part of this project.
I'm so happy that I'm here to help you become part of this project.
We heard you, Oakland.
You want more connected neighborhoods and better access to housing, jobs, and everyday essentials.
The draft land use framework for Oakland's General Plan shows how we can make that vision real.
The framework focuses on achieving key community priorities,
like housing and services near transit and jobs,
well-maintained open spaces,
transportation that gets people where they need to go. Does this plan reflect
what your community needs to thrive? Scan the QR code or follow the link to
review the framework and share your feedback today. In order to access
city government, the City of Oakland's equal access office is here to help.
There are many different ways that language access services can be used
throughout the city. From brochures and fact sheets that are in multiple
languages to bilingual staff that can provide live translation services.
Here are some of the ways that the City of Oakland can help you get more out of
your city government. At all city departments, language access posters are
available, allowing you to simply point to the language you speak and city staff
can call an interpreter over the phone for the language assistance you need.
With our city website information is available in multiple languages with the
click of a button. And like our bilingual service, over-the-phone interpreters, video
interpreting, and in-person interpretations can be provided. All you have to do is ask,
what if you're at a city facility but need language services? The public can request
translation or interpretation just by talking to city staff they come in contact with. At the
library or by reserving an OPRID facility for a birthday party. If you
need assistance, just let a staff member know. All you have to do is ask. You can
minimize wait times for interpreting by requesting language assistance in
advance. If you are planning on attending a public meeting, you may require the use
of translation headsets. City staff will need time to arrange for equipment to
arrive at the meeting venue on time so requesting them in advance is advisable.
Here at the Equal Access Office of the City of Oakland we want you to be able
to access city government on your terms, in your language and provide you with
the best possible experience the city has to offer. Everyone deserves access to
their city government.
When you are in the middle of the time to interpret, you can use the language system with your own intelligence.
If you assist a public student, it is possible that you can use the language system with your own intelligence.
The personal municipal system is used to organize the people's work to look at their own time.
for what I recommend you to visit with a friend.
In the official access to the city of Oakland,
what we do is also serve the municipal government
in various terms.
In this way, I present the best experience
possible for the city.
All over the world we have access to the city of Oakland.
Hello Oakland, I'm Mayor Barbara Lee,
I'm Mayor Barbara Lee, and today I want you to hear one clear message.
Immigrants help make this city strong, and your city is here for you.
Now, I know Oaklanders are concerned about the safety of our immigrant communities as
federal enforcement activity is escalating across the country.
We stand firmly with our immigrant communities.
Oakland is a sanctuary city, and we will not be intimidated by federal operations designed
to create fear and division.
No city employee will ever ask for your immigration status.
So regardless of your status,
you should always feel safe to ask a police officer for help.
Call 911 to report an emergency
or visit city offices to access services.
I have signed an executive order affirming
that city property and spaces are to be used
for city approved uses only.
If your family is impacted, you have rights and support is available.
Call the ACILIP Hotline 510-241-4011 that's 510-241-4011 for rapid response and legal
guidance.
Now if you're looking for support, visit our city website for Know Your Rights information.
This resource is available for everyone. Individuals, families, organizations, city workers, and
even elected officials. Thank you very much.
We will protect the town.
It's like you're not going to do something wrong with the government.
It's like you're not going to do something wrong with the government.
It's like you're not going to do anything wrong with the government.
It's like you're not going to do something wrong with the government.
It's like you're not going to do anything wrong with the government.
It's like you're not going to do anything wrong with the government.
It's like you're not going to do anything wrong with the government.
She's too familiar with the fact that she's a young woman and she's a very good woman.
She's the only one who can be a part of the family, a single woman, a very good woman, a very good woman, a very good woman, a very good woman, a very good woman.
For more information on her social media, visit our Internet.
This is for all the family and organizations and communities. Oakland is with us.
We will protect the town.
From New York, this is Democracy Now!
The community is mourning.
This is something that we have never expected to take place.
But at the same time, the religious intolerance and the hate, unfortunately, that exist in
our nation is unprecedented.
In California, two teenage gunmen attacked the Islamic Center of San Diego Monday, killing
three people.
And what authorities are saying was a suspected hate crime.
The center housed both a mosque and a school.
We'll get the latest.
Plus, we go to Minneapolis, where state officials have charged an ICE agent with shooting a
Venezuelan immigrant, then falsely reporting what happened.
You also look at a new documentary about Eugene Carroll, who successfully sued Donald Trump
twice in federal court.
He was found guilty, civilly liable for sexual abuse and defamation.
If you were concerned about being dragged through the mud, why would you choose to sue
Donald Trump?
Because he called me a liar, and I couldn't let it stand.
I called you right after the attack.
I was very disappointed that you wouldn't report him.
They never would have believed me.
We'll speak to filmmaker Ivy Meeropol, director of the new film Ask Eugene.
All that and more coming up.
Welcome to Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report, I'm Amy Goodman.
President Trump said Monday he postponed an imminent U.S. attack on Iran at the request
of Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
Trump's reversal came after he repeatedly threatened to launch new strikes, warning
Iran there won't be anything left of them.
We were getting ready to do a very major attack tomorrow.
I put it off for a little while, hopefully, maybe forever, but possibly for a little while,
Because we've had very big discussions with Iran, and we'll see what they amount to.
It's not clear whether there have been any breakthroughs and stalled talks to end the
U.S. and Israeli war on Iran.
Iranian negotiators continue to demand an end to the U.S. naval blockade of Iran's
ports, the release of Iran's frozen assets, and the lifting of international sanctions.
As Iran's foreign ministry said, it remains skeptical after President Trump twice ordered
attacks on Iran while negotiations were underway.
We approach every diplomatic process with deep distrust in serious skepticism in order
to safeguard the national interests of Iran.
Iran is aware that given the U.S.'s track record of undermining negotiations, it might
repeat the same actions at any moment.
The Trump administration has imposed a U.S. entry ban on foreigners who have traveled
in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda or South Sudan in the past three weeks.
The order came, as the World Health Organization said, an outbreak of Ebola virus in the DRC
in Uganda has reached 500 suspected cases and 130 suspected deaths, with those numbers
expected to rise.
This is the WHO's director general, Tedros Adinonglebriasis.
I'm deeply concerned about the scale and speed of the epidemic.
The WHO says the DRC will open three Ebola treatment centers in the eastern Ituri Province,
where the outbreak began.
Meanwhile, the Centers for Disease Control says a U.S. doctor tested positive for Ebola
after working with a medical missionary group in Congo.
Dr. Peter Stafford was exposed to the virus while treating patients in the capital of
a Tury province.
He's been evacuated to Germany for treatment.
To see our interview with Dr. Craig Spencer, who was positive for Ebola virus about a decade
ago, but now is critiquing U.S. policy on Ebola and other viruses, we go to democracynow.org,
Israeli forces are continuing to intercept ships with a Gaza-bound humanitarian aid flotilla
off the coast of Cyprus.
More than 50 ships with a global smooth flotilla set sail from the Turkish port city of Marmaris
last week.
According to organizers, Israeli forces have intercepted 41 of their boats in the eastern
Mediterranean, about 250 nautical miles from Gaza, which is under an Israeli maritime blockade.
Video shows armed Israeli commandos climbing onto boats, 337 activists have been taken
into custody.
Ten boats are still sailing towards Gaza.
Meanwhile, thousands of protesters took to the streets in Italy and Greece in solidarity
with the Gaza-bound activists, as world leaders condemned the Israeli raid.
Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim wrote on social media, quote, �The world cannot
continued to bow to tyranny and corruption, the oppression against Palestinians and those
who mobilize and deliver humanitarian aid must be stopped immediately, and Israel must
face justice and accountability, he said.
This is Turkey's president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
I curse in the strongest terms this act of piracy and banditry against the passengers
of hope on the Samud flotilla, a compromise of citizens of 40 different countries.
We are taking the necessary steps to ensure the safe return of our citizens on the flotilla.
We call on the international community to take action against Israel's lawless and
rule-breaking actions.
In California, two teenage attackers fatally shot three people on Monday at the Islamic
Center of San Diego, the largest mosque in San Diego County.
Among the dead was a security guard, Amin Abdullah, a father of eight, who police said
played a pivotal role in saving children's lives.
The suspects, age 17 and 19, were found dead from a parent's self-inflicted gunshot wounds
in a car near the scene.
Police are investigating the attack as a hate crime.
Law enforcement officials told CNN hate speech was scrawled on one of the weapons.
A suicide note that contained writings about racial pride was also found, according to
the officials.
CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, noted the attack comes as anti-Muslim bias
complaints reached their highest level on record last year, with 8,683 complaints filed
nationwide.
This is Taha Hussein, the Imam and director of the Islamic Center of San Diego.
My community is mourning.
This is something that we have never expected to take place.
But at the same time, the religious intolerance and the hate, unfortunately, that exist in
our nation is unprecedented.
After headlines, we'll be speaking with Linda Sarsour.
In Minnesota, prosecutors have filed criminal charges against an ICE officer, who allegedly
shot a Venezuelan immigrant in North Minneapolis during an immigration raid in January, lied
about what happened.
On Monday, Hennepin County attorney Mary Moriarty announced federal agent Christian Castro will
face four counts of second-degree assault and one count of falsely reporting a crime.
Counts of assault are a result of Mr. Castro shooting through the front door of a residence
with the intent to cause fear of immediate bodily harm or death to the four adults who
are just inside the door.
These charges have activated a nationwide warrant for his arrest.
Venezuelan immigrant Julio Sosicelles suffered a leg wound when Castro allegedly shot him
through the door.
The Trump administration initially claimed that Castro fired in self-defense after accusing
Sosicelles and another man of beating an officer with a broom handle and snow shovel.
A federal judge later dismissed those charges after video evidence clearly contradicted
it.
This comes as Hennepin County prosecutors continue to investigate the killings of Renee
Good and Alex Preti by federal agents during the Trump administration's violent immigration
enforcement campaign known as Operation Metro Surge.
We'll go to Minneapolis later in the broadcast.
A new report finds more than 100,000 children in the U.S. have had a parent detained since
the Trump administration began its mass deportation campaign last year.
That's far more than under President Trump's first term, and more than double the number
of family separations that would be projected using government data.
The finding comes from a Brookings Institution study that estimates some 400,000 people have
been booked into ICE jails since January of last year.
The Justice Department announced Monday it will create a $1.776 billion fund to make
payments to Trump supporters who say they were wrongly investigated or prosecuted by
previous administrations.
The so-called anti-weaponization fund would be overseen by five commissioners, four of
whom would be appointed by the attorney general to serve at the pleasure of the president.
the announcement came as part of a settlement agreement between President Trump and his
own administration, after Trump, his sons and their family business sued the IRS for
over $10 billion over the leak of Trump's tax returns by an IRS worker.
Following Monday's announcement, the Treasury Department's top lawyer resigned.
Brian Morrissey leaves his post just seven months after his Senate confirmation.
He did not respond to reporters' requests for comment.
Democrats have accused Trump of creating a slush fund for his MAGA allies, including
insurrectionists who joined the January 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.
On Monday, 93 Democratic lawmakers filed an amicus brief in federal courts seeking to
block the fund.
Virginia Congressmember Don Beyer wrote, quote, he's just stealing your money.
There's no transparency.
We won't know who gets paid or how much it's illegal and corrupt as hell.
We're fighting it in court," Congressmember Byer said.
The EPA proposed Monday to kill drinking water limits for four so-called forever chemicals
set by the Biden administration in 2024.
The EPA said it will keep limits on PFOA and PFOS, the two most widely studied PFAS
compounds, but will allow some water utilities to extend their compliance deadline from 2029
to 2031.
The rovax could delay or eliminate drinking water protections for up to 105 million people.
PIFAS have been linked to cancer, thyroid disease, liver damage, decreased fertility
and immune system damage.
In a statement, Katherine O'Brien, senior attorney at Earthjustice, said, quote, this
move only underscores that the Trump administration's maha rhetoric, that's Make America Healthy
Again, is just that—empty rhetoric, and it will leave children and families to bear
the cost of continued drinking water contamination, unquote.
Later in New York, Long Island railroad strike ended Monday night after the MTA and Five
Unions reached a tentative agreement ending a three-day work stoppage that paralyzed the
largest commuter rail system in the United States.
Over the weekend, 3,500 unionized workers walked off the job for the first LIRR strike
in over 30 years.
The deal still needs to be ratified by members of the Five Unions that have rejected the
strike could resume.
When New York City mayors Oran Mamdani announced Monday the city's first municipally-owned
grocery store will open in the Hunts Point section of the South Bronx next year.
The 20,000-square-foot store will be located inside the peninsula, an affordable housing
and mixed-use development.
The plan is part of a broader $70 million initiative to open one city-owned store in
each of the five boroughs. Under the proposal, the stores would pay no rent or property taxes,
keeping overhead costs low. The plan still requires City Council approval. This is Mayor
Mandani.
I'm standing here this morning. I cannot help but think of the words of our 40th president,
Ronald Reagan. He famously said, the nine most terrifying words in the English language
are I'm from the government, and I'm here to help."
It's a good quote, but I disagree.
I think nine more terrifying words are actually, I worked all day and can't feed my family.
We are going to use the power of government to lower prices and make it easier for New
Yorkers to put food on the table.
And those are some of the headlines.
This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report.
I'm Amy Goodman.
In California, two teenage gunmen fatally shot three people on Monday at the Islamic
Center of San Diego, the largest mosque in San Diego County.
Among the dead was a security guard now identified as Amin Abdullah, a father of eight who police
say played a pivotal role in saving lives, particularly children's lives.
The suspects, aged 17 and 19, were found dead from apparent self-inflicted gunshot wounds
in a car near the scene.
Police are investigating the attack as a hate crime.
Law enforcement officials told CNN hate speech was scrawled on one of the weapons, a suicide
note that contained writings about racial pride was also found, according to officials.
Care, the Council on American Islamic Relations, noted the attack comes as anti-Muslim bias
complaints reach their highest level on record, with 8,683 complaints filed nationwide.
This is Taha Hussein, the imam and director of the Islamic Center of San Diego.
My community is mourning.
This is something that we have never expected to take place.
but at the same time the religious intolerance and the hate, unfortunately, that exists in our nation is unprecedented.
All of us, we are responsible for spreading the culture of tolerance, the culture of love.
All of us, we are responsible from whatever position we have as parents, as media people, as elected officials,
law enforcement, as religious leaders, all of us we can do something to protect our
nation, to protect our society. And please I have one request to the media, stop
sharing the picture of the victims. Let the families mourn, let them pray as we
do always at the Islamic Center of San Diego. It's a house of worship, it's not
a battlefield come on people come to the mosque to pray to socialize to celebrate to enjoy their
time together Muslims and non-muslims alike everyone have been always welcomed our doors are always
welcomed we never ask people when they show up at the door of the Islamic center we never ask them
Whether you are a Muslim or not, who are you?
Because everyone is welcome.
So let's do our best to spread this culture of love and tolerance and sympathy for the
sake of this nation, for the sake of the future generation.
That was Taha Haseen, the Imam and director of the Islamic Center of San Diego, attacked
on Monday.
Police said they'd begun a search for the two teenage gunmen two hours before the attack
after the mother of one of the shooters called police.
This is San Diego Police Chief Scott Wall.
She believed her son was suicidal, and she began to share information that several of
her weapons were missing.
Her vehicle was missing, in addition to her son.
She also said that she was—her son was with a companion.
They were dressed in camo, and that is not consistent with what we would typically see
from somebody that is suicidal.
That's the San Diego police chief.
We're joined now by Linda Sarsour, Palestinian-American Muslim organizer, friend of the Imam at the
Islamic Center of San Diego, author of We Are Not Here to Be Bystanders.
co-founder of Empower Action Fund.
Linda, thanks so much for joining us again, but under these incredibly sad circumstances.
The guard has just been named, who was killed by the gunman, the gunman themselves apparently
dead of self-inflicted wounds.
Can you talk about what you heard yesterday in your reaction, as it was unfolding?
You're a friend of the imam.
I immediately saw a tweet on X that said that there was a shooting at the Islamic Center
of San Diego.
And I immediately texted Imam Taha Hussein, who's an old friend of mine.
And I said, are you okay?
And he immediately called me back and said that we are in a lockdown right now.
There has been an active shooting.
At that moment, he had not known about all the fatalities, but they did know about Brother
Amin Abdullah, who was the armed security guard of the mosque, and a father of eight,
and a wonderful, incredible human being that I also had the honor and privilege of meeting
myself.
There are also two other adult males that were also killed in the shooting.
One of them is Brother Mansour, also known as Abu'l-Aziz.
He is an elder, a caretaker of the mosque, also was running the Islamic bookstore at
the mosque.
And just a beloved kind of uncle in the community.
Another one is Brother Naddid.
Brother Naddid is a neighbor of the mosque, a congregant, someone who is heavily involved
in the mosque itself.
It's just a very devastating experience.
There is also over about 200 kids in a pre-k to third grade Islamic school that is a part
of the Islamic Center of San Diego who are also on lockdown hiding under desks and closets.
And if it wasn't for brother, I mean Abdullah and these brothers that came out to put their
bodies on the line, we could have had many more fatalities and many of them could have
been small children in this country.
So even though the children are safe, thank God, they are forever going to live with this
trauma of knowing that their mosque was attacked because they were Muslims.
I was watching, as parents wept also, talking about how Amin had saved their children that
the kids, the first thing they look forward to going to school in the morning is seeing
him there.
That's right.
That's who he was.
And this was his job, as a matter of fact, a few days before this horrific shooting,
he had made a post on social media, on Facebook, and said something like, a lot of people look
for fame, they look for financial stability, they look kind of for the worldly things.
But for him, he just wanted to be a good Muslim, and he wanted to meet his lord as pure as
he was when he was a baby.
And that is his last message that people saw on social media.
Um, Imam Taha, also the director of the Islamic Center, who was in the building when this
happened, he was on the second floor, um, is an incredible ally.
He's someone who is very well known in the immigrant rights movement, in the San Diego
economic justice movement.
He's at, often at many rallies.
This is a mosque that has opened its doors to the community.
They literally have open mosque day, where anyone in the community can show up to the
mosque, and they are opened, they are welcomed with open arms, and they have, uh, film screenings.
They do like community events, they do festivals.
Like this is the epitome of a mosque
that shows our true values as Muslims
in community and in solidarity.
So it's just devastating.
And no house of worship should have to ever experience this.
You were with Imam Taha the same just a few weeks ago.
Mm-hmm.
Imam Taha is a national leader.
He is part of many of the movement work that I do.
He's someone that we go to as an Islamic scholar
to help guide us through the social justice
and work that we do.
And we were in Dearborn just a few weeks ago.
He was there as a mentor to many Muslim organizers
in this country.
And he's someone that I've spoken on many panels with.
We do the Muslim Student Association conference
in California, just someone who's always at the right place
at the right time and very encouraging
and of women leadership in our community,
of youth leadership in our community.
And so it's just devastating to see that his mosque
was targeted as someone who has poured so much
into our community and movements.
Can you talk about what you understand
the mom of one of the alleged shooters?
Cane Clark was I believe 17.
He was with Caleb Vasquez.
These two now dead teenagers have been identified.
How the mom got in touch with the police hours before,
I think she had a cache of weapons,
but she saw her guns gone and her car gone
and her kid was dressed in camo with the ammo.
And as the mayor, as the police chief said,
even though he had left a suicide note,
that is highly suspect when they're putting on camo,
obviously.
I mean, we can't deny, Amy,
that there's been increased political rhetoric
against Muslims in this country.
and the ways in which Muslims are treated,
even after this horrific shooting,
right-wing MAGA accounts, some of them verified,
some of them high-profile, have begun conspiracy theories,
or have actually blamed the mosque itself
for their own shooting that happened there.
It is absolutely horrific to see the ways
in which elected officials anywhere from Randy Fine
to the members of Congress who have started this,
what they call the Sharia Free Caucus.
People are not held accountable for their anti-Muslim hate.
You are anti-Muslim hate is one of the few types of bigotry in this country that is acceptable.
You don't lose your job.
There's no consequences for it.
And here comes a 17-year-old who is probably brought into all this propaganda.
He's wrote a suicide note.
The officials are saying that there was hate rhetoric scrolled on the weapons, which also
tells me how long were your guns missing?
How long did it take him to scroll, you know, hateful, you know, rhetoric on guns?
Also, how is the mother storing her guns?
you know, did you just leave them around?
Is there, was there no key?
Was there no way for this to be protected
so that your child does not go out
and kill innocent people at a mosque?
So there's something very, you know,
strange that's happening here,
but I will say this about the 17-year-old
and also a 19-year-old, I'm sad, Amy, for them.
I really am sad.
They're too young for this type of hate
and the fact that it drove them to the point
where they went to a mosque and they shot innocent people
and could have shot children.
I mean, the fact that there's an Islamic school,
If it wasn't for Brother Amin and the brothers that interfered, we literally could have
had dozens of children who would have been literally shot and killed.
And the thing is, we've seen this before.
We saw it in Sandy Hook.
We saw it in Ubadi.
And so for me, I'm just like, it's an issue around, let's end this anti-Muslim hate.
Let's make sure that there are consequences for people who propagate this hate, for media
outlets who propagate this hate.
And also, let's get some sensible gun reform.
How did this mother get this?
Were they registered guns?
How was she storing them at home?
How did your son wear—where did your son get cameo from?
Like wearing—I mean, the whole thing just is just—it just seems like—it just doesn't
make sense.
During a televised news conference on Monday, a woman disrupted the news conference just
as San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria was beginning to speak.
She accused him of emboldening what she called Zionist propaganda.
So after that, the mayor began speaking, but she referred to him as Todd, which was his
first name.
Linda Sarsour, I don't know if you could make out what she was saying, but if you could
respond.
to him, that you're part of the problem.
That this is because you've emboldened this hateful rhetoric.
Like she was basically holding him accountable.
Mayor Todd, in the course of genocide,
has condemned Palestinian organizers.
He condemned Palestinian students.
He would never show up to any events
led by Palestinian American or Muslims
that were related to the genocide in Gaza.
And he continued to vilify folks
that organize around the genocide.
And he is someone who has aligned himself with right-wing Zionists and others.
So I think again, who you ally with as a leader of a city, right?
Like San Diego, tells me where you stand.
If you're going to be willing to stand with people who are condemning,
vilifying, dehumanizing people who are standing up for justice for the Palestinian people,
then you're part of the larger problem that we have here,
which is reaffirming anti-Muslim, anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab.
Hey, you know this, Amy, in this country.
in this country, people don't know the difference between a Muslim, Arab, or a Palestinian.
And that's the problem here. And so all these things are conflated. In the past,
this mosque has been targeted during genocide by right-wing media. There was a New York Post
article that just literally got published yesterday after a horrific shooting that basically said
the shooting that happened at an Islamic center with a history of controversy. Like,
instead of reporting the news, they're telling us that there's a controversial mosque here.
What does that have to do with what is happening to these people?
The far-right political activist Trump ally, Lara Loomer, posted a message on X on Monday reading,
the mosque that was, quote-unquote, supposedly shot up today, just remember the people who attend
this mosque want us all to be killed. We will be told they are such amazing people. I'm not
advocating for violence, I condemn violence, I'm showing you how evil this mosque is
and always has been, it should be raided by ICE and the FBI," she tweeted.
In a follow-up tweet, Laura Loomer called for the DHS to, quote, deport every Muslim
in America back to the Middle East, end quote.
Your response, Linda.
And this is exactly what's across the entire internet.
This is the conspiracy theories blaming us for the tragic and horrific shooting that
has happened at this mosque.
And this is the kind of rhetoric that's acceptable.
No one else, Amy, would be able to say something like Laura Loomer about any other religious
community.
Again, for us, it's acceptable.
Her posts won't get taken down.
There will be no consequences for a Laura Loomer.
But here we have three adult men beloved in their community in an incredible mosque where
their neighbors love them.
There are people that have come out and spoken about them, pastors, rabbis, those that have
visited this mosque and know that this mosque is a community center.
It's a beloved place.
I've been there so many times, Amy.
It's so incredible.
It's one of the most diverse mosques in all of America, from the African continent, from
South Asia, from the Arab world, from converts in the United States of America, to Latino
Muslims.
They have Spanish-speaking programs.
I mean, it's just an incredibly beautiful place.
They welcome the formerly incarcerated.
This is the kind of people that they are.
Nam Taha is one of the most incredible leaders we have in this country, and it's just despicable
that we allow this kind of rhetoric, especially after horrific shooting.
Linda Sarsour, Palestinian-American, Muslim organizer, author of We Are Not Here to Be
Bystanders.
She's also co-founder of Empower Action Fund.
Coming up, a new documentary on E. Jean Carroll.
She successfully sued Donald Trump twice in federal court.
He was found civilly liable for sexual abuse and defamation.
We'll speak with the director, Ivy Meeropol.
Stay with us.
Pham Dumong, Women of the World, by Amadou and Mariam, in our Democracy Now!
studio.
This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org.
I'm Amy Goodman.
Will the Supreme Court let two verdicts against President Trump stand for the sexual abuse
and defamation of writer Eugene Carroll?
In 2019, Eugene Carroll published her memoir, What Do We Need Men For?, in which she described
an encounter in the 1990s when President Trump, she said, sexually assaulted her in a department
store dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman.
At the time, she was a well-known advice columnist and host of her own TV show.
When President Trump denied the account, Eugene Carroll sued him and won.
A unanimous New York jury found Donald Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation and
and awarded Eugene Carroll $5 million in damages.
President Trump then denied knowing Carroll and called her a whack job on CNN.
Eugene Carroll then sued him again for defamation.
A second jury, also unanimous, awarded her $83.3 million, but she has yet to see a penny.
Several courts upheld both verdicts, but now President Trump's attorneys are asking the
Supreme Court to overturn them, asserting the president has absolute immunity for comments
he makes as president.
The Department of Justice has submitted a filing to the Supreme Court, backing the president's
argument.
Trump's attorneys have also sought to invoke a federal statute to swap the president out
as defendant and have the U.S. government take his place, which would essentially nullify
the verdicts as the federal government can't be sued for defamation.
The verdict is on pause until the Supreme Court either reviews the two cases or decides
to pass.
The second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals conditioned the stay on President Trump posting a bond
of nearly $100 million.
Well, a new documentary goes through all of this and more.
It's called Ask Eugene Carroll.
The film is directed and produced by the award-winning filmmaker Ivy Mirapole.
Her past films include Heir to an Execution, a documentary about her grandparents, Julius
and Ethel Rosenberg, who were executed at Sing Sing in the 1950s.
In a moment, we'll be joined by Ivy Mirapole, but first, this is the trailer for Ask Eugene.
There's no such thing as destiny, dear listener.
ourselves make our lives. All the time I'm writing writing writing and then I
write this little quiz and Esquire buys it. I got one taste of New York and I
thought wow I was as happy a being as ever existed. All my dreams were about
becoming an advice columnist and then Roger Ailes gave me my own TV show. You
You don't really care who comments on anything, because you comment on everything.
If you were concerned about being dragged through the mud, why would you choose to sue
Donald Trump?
Because he called me a liar, and I couldn't let it stand.
I called you right after the attack.
I was very disappointed that you wouldn't report him.
They never would have believed me.
You were more famous than he was.
Here comes this huge attorney, Robbie Kaplan.
She laid out the case.
If women could see what kind of questions their fellow woman is asked when she brings
charges against a powerful man.
Were you wearing underwear?
Did you wear a bra?
Are you taking any medications and drugs?
Have you ever had acting classes?
No.
There was some darkness coming in.
We were prepping for the second trial, and Robbie said the man you have not seen in thirty
Two years is going to be in that courtroom.
E. Jean Carroll had the guts to face him down twice.
I am thinking of getting a toaster.
The trailer for the new documentary, Ask E. Jean, out this weekend, New York's IFC Center.
And we'll be coming out in Los Angeles, as well.
We're joined now by the award-winning filmmaker, Ivy Mirapole, from Cold Spring, New York.
Thanks so much for joining us.
It might surprise people that these—I was going to say this case, but these cases continue,
and they are now sitting at the Supreme Court.
Explain these verdicts and the amount of money that Eugene could see, nearly $90 million
from President Trump.
Well, hi, Amy.
Thanks for having me.
So, E. Jean, in the first case, she was awarded $5 million.
Then she was awarded the massive, you know, amount of 83.5.
And that specifically had to do with the amount of defamation that continued to, you know,
rain down on her from President Trump, but also that activated so many of his followers
to really threaten her, you know, violently.
So she—so, the 83 million was the jury saying, you know, it has to be a very large number
to make it stop.
Both of those cases are now at the doors of the Supreme Court.
I honestly can't speculate on what's going to happen there, but I can say that they have—I
I think, at this point, maybe there's been about 10 or 11 weeks, maybe more, where they
could have decided at least to hear or deny cert to the first case, and they just keep
kind of bumping it down the road.
And the first case, the $5 million, explain exactly what that was about.
Well, so, the 5 million had to do with the sexual assault and defamation.
So what E-Gene was able to do is, when the Adult Survivors Act was passed in New York,
it allowed for a one-year window for victims of sexual assault rape to file lawsuits from
any time in their lives they could—they had that year window.
And E. Jean was the first one to file that case.
She had already filed a defamatory lawsuit against Donald Trump, because he, in his first
term, had defamed her from the White House lawn and was attacking her regularly.
So, that had been filed.
But then, when the Adult Survivors Act gave her the opportunity to bring the case of sexual
assault.
She did so.
So, that's the first case.
I want to play a clip from the film, which shows the start of Eugene Carroll's deposition,
in which she is questioned by President Trump's personal attorney, Elena Hava.
Do you swear to tell the truth, tell the whole truth, and nothing but the truth to help you back?
I do.
Thank you.
Good morning, Cheryl.
Thank you for being here.
How do you do?
I'm okay.
My name is Alina Hava.
I'm sure you know that.
I represent the former president, Donald Trump.
Have you ever been deposed?
Never.
Okay.
So let's go over some ground rules.
First of all, you're under oath.
So that means we must testify truthfully and honestly and accurately to the best of the
ability.
Are you ready to start?
Is that a yes?
That's a yes.
Giddy up.
Yeah.
Hey.
If women could see what kind of questions their fellow woman is asked when she brings
charges of rape against a powerful man, it would stop a racehorse.
It is really quite stunning.
Okay.
I am going to switch into the complaint.
Do you remember what the temperature was outside?
Yes.
Clear and cool-ish.
So that was a clip from the deposition.
That's an Ivy Mirapol's film Ask Eugene.
And she was being questioned by Elena Hava, President Trump's attorney.
She just stepped down as the top federal prosecutor in New Jersey, following an appeals court
ruling that found she was unlawfully serving in that role, just a little background on
Alina Haba.
But, Eugene Carroll, we heard the deposition and then a clip of an interview with her talking
about what women face when they make accusations about sexual abuse today.
Ivy.
Yeah.
So, excuse me, the—so, I just want to first say that this is an incredible opportunity
for audiences to see what really goes on when a woman brings a case like this, especially
against a powerful man—but any man, really—that if you make it all the way to being deposed
or sitting in the courtroom, you are going to be subjected to this kind of questioning.
And when you watch the whole film, you see that it's relentless and it goes on.
So these depositions were private.
You know, they were not entered into evidence, so they never were made public.
And attorney Robbie Kaplan and E. Jean gave them to me as—and it is an incredible gift
for this film and for the world to see this and to experience what E. Jean experienced.
But the other part is—and I love, you know, the start of it, because it just captures
E. Jean, who she is, so beautifully, because right at the top, you see she takes it very
seriously that she's under oath.
And then she doesn't realize that she has to speak the word, yes, when Alina Haber asked
her the last question.
And she said, Are you ready?
And E. Jean just nods.
And then when Alina Haber presses her, she says, Yes, giddy up.
That's like—I mean, I love it.
It's like the mantra for E. Jean's life and for what E. Jean took to this case.
I want to play a scene from your film, Ask E. Jean, in which E. Jean Carroll talks with
writer Lisa Birnbeck, the first person she spoke to, about Donald Trump sexually assaulting
her back in 1996.
I called you right after the attack.
We were not that close of friends.
And you didn't like me that much, right?
No, I adored you.
See, that was the thing.
I thought you were the funniest writer I know.
And if I tell you what happened, you will laugh.
And then I will feel great.
Yeah.
And then we'll both be happy.
I think, oh, this is going to be fun.
And you tell me this story.
And I said, E, what happened to you was horrible.
And you got upset that I wasn't laughing.
Yeah. But if you thought it was funny, if I called you, it would take the sting out.
I, that it hadn't happened. It was just a funny thing. And instead, I was shocked and said,
wow, what are we going to do?
Please.
Cheers.
Thank you.
You know, I was very disappointed that you wouldn't report him.
But Lisa, they never would have believed me. I would have lost my, I would have been fired.
I didn't have money to get an attorney.
Everything I'd work for would be dissipated.
You said, don't ever speak of this again?
Don't ever tell anyone this story as long as you live.
Do I have your word?
And you did.
And that was that.
That's writer Lisa Bernbach, the first person E. Jean Carroll spoke to about being sexually
assaulted in the department store dressing room.
Ivy Maripole, talk about the significance of what it means when a person has told another
person contemporaneously.
Yeah, so Lisa is what's called an outcry witness, which just means that she's the
person that E. Jean called, told, right after the attack.
Carol Martin is Eugene's other outcry witness.
Those two women were told within a day or two after Trump assaulted Eugene at Bergdorf-Gutman's.
And what's important about that is that now, then, 25 years later, when Eugene decided
to come forward with this story, she went to Carol and Lisa and, you know, asked that
they please come forward now and lose their anonymity, which was not an easy choice to
make for either of them.
And they both did.
And they both stood by Eugene.
And it's a beautiful story of female friendship across the years and then coming together
to fight this common battle.
I want to go to one last clip, and that is, during his deposition in 2023, Trump was
shown a picture of himself, E. Jean Carroll, her former husband, the news anchor John Johnson,
and Trump's then-wife Ivana.
He confused E. Jean Carroll with his ex-wife, Marla Maples.
You're saying Marla's in this photo?
That's Marla.
Yeah.
That's my wife.
Which woman are you pointing to?
No.
I'm here.
Oh, I see.
The person you just pointed to was E. Jean Carroll.
Oh, I see.
Who is that?
And the person—the woman on the right is your then-wife, Marla?
I don't know.
This was the picture.
I assume that's John Johnson?
Is that…
That's Carol.
Carol?
Because it's very blurry.
So, this is an amazing moment, right?
This is Donald Trump, who said he'd never met this woman, who—she was not his type.
And, of course, then Eugene Carroll writes a book, He's Not My Type.
And he is confusing Eugene Carroll with his ex-wife Marla Maples.
Yes.
Now, you know, Amy, this was reported at the time, but I don't think people, myself included,
can fully appreciate or understand what was happening here until we were able to just
really play it out in the film.
Yeah, it's—as you said, Trump is presented with this photo that shows, you know, him
meeting Eugene in a—or saying hello to Eugene in a receiving line.
And he gets very confused.
He is asked to identify everyone in the picture, and his wife, Ivana Trump, is there with him.
But he looks at Eugene, and he says, that's Marla.
That's Marla, my wife.
But Robbie Kaplan, so quick, she follows up with this unbelievable bombshell of a moment
and says, would you say that all three of your wives were your type?
Are your type?
And he says, oh, yeah, yeah, sure, doesn't even, you know, it's just we have that in
the film, too.
So I, you know, I it is it is such an important turning point in the case.
And and it just shows, you know, how all of his bluster about, you know, she's not my
my type and all of this is just more lies.
Ivy Miripolis, we wrap up.
Can you talk about the release of this film, the theatrical release, this weekend?
It's opening at IFC Center here in New York.
Going on to Los Angeles, have you had difficulty distributing this film?
Yes.
Yes.
It has been, as you can imagine, it is quite a challenge.
You know, there is, it is just the reality in our country
right now that this vengeful president,
and he's so powerful right now, back in office,
that it, you know, it has a chilling effect.
So we have had a very hard time.
We know that audiences want to see this film.
We've seen the reactions in the film festivals
we've been privileged to be part of.
So it took a while to get here,
but we have partnered with a Brahma Rama,
an incredible distributor,
and we are pushing the film out all over the country.
And we're really excited,
because it's a New York City story,
and we just, the IOC Center Memorial Day weekend,
big opening, we'll be there all week.
And yeah, I'm gonna be joined by some incredible women
to do some Q and A's.
Roxanne Gay will be with me.
I have Amber Tamblin.
So I feel the momentum starting.
It feels like the exact right moment for this film.
Ivy Mirapal, director and producer
of the award-winning documentary, Ask E. Jean.
Her past films include, Air to an Execution,
about the execution of her grandparents,
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, executed in 1953.
And she will be at Q&As this weekend at the IFC Center here in New York.
Coming up, state officials in Minneapolis have charged an ICE agent for shooting a Venezuelan
immigrant, then falsely reporting what happened back in 20 seconds.
♪ Mediiste, quera linda ♪
♪ Que la rosa, nova estaba ♪
♪ Que neruda, no a la cansaba ♪
♪ Mediiste, me carría ♪
♪ Mediiste, me adorabas ♪
♪ Mediiste, quera linda ♪
♪ Que miso coz un lo sero ♪
During Musician Calalada, performing in our Democracy Now!
studio.
This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org.
I'm Amy Goodman.
In Minnesota, prosecutors have filed criminal charges against an ICE officer, who allegedly
shot a Venezuelan immigrant in North Minneapolis during an immigration raid in January, then
lied about what happened.
On Monday, the Hennepin County attorney Mary Moriarty announced federal agent Christian
Castro will face four counts of second-degree assault and one count of falsely reporting
a crime.
Four counts of assault are a result of Mr. Castro shooting through the front door of
a residence with the intent to cause fear of immediate bodily harm or death to the four
adults who were just inside the door.
These charges have activated a nationwide warrant for his arrest.
Venezuelan immigrant Julio Sosa-Celes suffered a leg wound when Castro allegedly shot him
through the door.
The Trump administration initially claimed that Castro fired in self-defense after accusing
Sosa-Celes and another man of beating an officer with a broom handle and a snow shovel.
The federal judge later dismissed those charges after video evidence clearly contradicted
it.
This comes as Hennepin County prosecutors continue to investigate the killings of Nay
Good and Alex Prettie, by federal agents during the Trump administration's violent immigration
enforcement campaign known as Operation Metro Surge.
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison also addressed reporters Monday.
There's a long line of cases where state authorities have had to hold federal agents
accountable for breaking state law.
I think the first one is called N-Ray Nagel, and they flow from there.
And so, as was said earlier, there's no such thing as absolute immunity.
For more, we're joined in our New York studio by Emilio Gonzalez-Appolos.
She is executive director of UNIDOS and Minnesota, a grassroots organization that builds power
with Minnesota's working families to advance social, racial and economic justice.
She's here in New York.
She just received the Puffin Prize for Creative Citizenship.
On behalf of her group, Hands Off NYC also was a recipient this year.
Melia, congratulations on the award.
As you're here, these charges are announced.
Talk about the significance of them.
It is really important to demonstrate that there are opportunities to continue to embody
a functioning democracy when the crimes of people are meeting consequences.
And that is what the institution of the Hennepin County Attorney's Office is trying to attempt
here after several months of the federal government obstructing investigation of both the murders
of Renee Good, Alex Purdy, and also the other crimes that this officer is committing during
Operation Metro Source and Operation Paris.
So talk about what it means to have state officials and what this video evidence was
so that people understand it's the state of Minnesota
that is going after the ICE officer.
But in the case of Renee Good and Alex Preti,
who were killed as they bore witness
to what was happening on the ground,
Alex Preti, the VA nurse, the mom, Renee Good,
they're having trouble, the state officials,
getting cooperation from the federal government, who's taken the evidence.
Correct.
Since the beginning, they deployed false narratives, calling both René Goode and Alex Purdy, criminals
and injuries, trying to polarize their identities for the public narrative that could benefit
the federal government.
And they were also trying to hide the overreach and the violence, the vitriol in which federal
agents were behaving on the ground, the amount of erosion of people's constitutional rights,
the violations of people's constitutional rights, also enduring detention and through
the detention and the transportation of immigrants into southern states for processing.
And so when we see that Minnesota was a place where civil society was prepared to record
and bear witness and they brought all of these activities and recordings to the light.
They share it in their social media, they share it with reporters, they share it with
mainstream media.
And so we had the evidence, people, regular people had the evidence that the narrative
that the federal government was putting out there was not only false but also quite opposite
to the type of misguiding that they were trying to,
misguided the regular Americans into believing
that the Minnesotans were unruly and radical.
And so now the county prosecutor has evidence
from regular people, a neighbor that recorded
that actually nobody used to shovel,
that there was no use of force but a Venezuelan immigrant.
That in fact, there was an agent that shot through the door
when there was a baby inside the home,
several children inside the home,
trying to figure out how to answer
and ask if there was a warrant,
if there was a judicial warrant,
how to respond to the authorities.
All that was recorded by neighbors.
There were people trying to bear witness.
They were eyewitnesses on the ground
trying to bring these cases to light,
and it was the people that equipped the county prosecutor
to move the institution, to embody the constitutional law
and the body of the institution of Hennepin County
to actually prosecute the wrongdoing of these officers.
And that is what democracy looks like.
It looks like separation of powers
and getting material consequences of wrongdoing.
Well, Emilio Gonzalez-Savalas, thank you for being with us.
Executive Director of Unidos Minnesota Grassroots Group
that builds power with Minnesota's working families
to advance social, racial and economic justice.
We'll do an interview in Spanish
and post it online at democracynow.org.
That does it for our show.
I'll be tonight at the IFC Center
after the six o'clock screening
of the film about Democracy Now!
Steal the Story, please.
I'll be there with the director, Tia Lesson,
and with the formerly known as Eve Ensler.
Tomorrow I'll also be there for a Q&A
after the six o'clock screening at IFC Center
with our own Democracy Now! co-host Nermeen Shaikh
and the director, Tia Lesson,
then to Boulder and Denver, check our website.
Financial literacy and the human condition.
Welcome to Financial Fitness with the Muddy Doctor,
Dr. Frances Raheem.
You are not broken.
All right, you may be operating
inside a system that isn't coordinated yet.
Okay.
And once you see that, everything begins to change.
Hi, it's Frances.
I just wanted to take a minute
to thank you for watching this video.
If you're catching us on YouTube,
please help us help others by clicking like, subscribe,
and all notifications so you don't miss any videos.
And check back for the next video.
I think you're gonna love it.
Thanks again.
For more information, you can visit us at hugyourmoney.com.
It's time for financial business
with the money doctor, Dr. Francis Ram. Hi. Hi, Jess. How's it going? It's going well.
And we're talking. Well, what are we talking about this week? Well, it's interesting. You
know, today's show is a little bit different. I know you're always so skilled at like, here's
what we're talking about. But the show is a little bit different because you know, over
the years I've worked with thousands of people and I keep seeing the same pattern, right?
Right. I kept seeing the same pattern again and again and surprisingly, it's not what people think.
It's not about income. It's not even just about debt.
It's not really about managing your money well directly.
Something much quieter and I'm teasing this because it's such a fun riddle, right?
what are all these things, but it's quieter, it's something much quieter but more profound,
more powerful, and so I finally have given it a name, I call it the quiet pressure, okay?
So today I want to talk about what that actually means and why it matters more to most people
than anyone seems to realize, this matters to almost every household.
The quiet pressure internally, you mean, with people?
Yes, internally, but produced by an external, well, number of external forces.
Okay?
Okay.
So until I gave it a name, it was sort of in the background, kind of like our own finances
are, right?
Until we named the problem, it's just hanging around there in the background.
But here's the thing.
In most of the people I talk to, they say something seems off, even when they seem
to be doing okay financially.
Paying their bills on time and they're proud of that.
My credit score is good.
I'm paying my bills on time.
I'm contributing to my retirement.
My kids are going to good schools.
They got the whole American dream going on and they will still tell me where does the
money go?
Why doesn't it feel like I'm getting anywhere?
I just have a sense that something is not as good as it could be, that there's something
better that I don't have access to in some way and most people I think don't actually
sit down to analyze it and so what happens is it just keeps on keeping on and that's
what I call a quiet pressure.
It's an elusive idea so we're going to talk about it in little bits and pieces today but
at no point will I point my finger to one thing I just felt like at no point will my
My hands leave my wrist, right?
At no point will I bite my finger to one thing and say, that is the quiet pressure.
Okay.
But here's an example.
We are resigned as a society to expect our mortgage to take 15 years, 30 years, whatever
it is.
Yeah.
We see our finances in very linear fashion.
Okay.
Isolated.
Okay.
So we accept that a mortgage is whatever
the term we got for it is.
It's five and a half percent for 15 years.
That's our mortgage.
We accept that a car payment is four years, six years,
whatever it is.
We see them in isolated chunks
because that's how they're presented to us.
Right.
Right, that's logic.
You have to be able to afford this payment every month
and then you can have this thing.
Yeah, doesn't that seem right?
Yeah.
Yeah, okay.
None of that is coordinated in some way.
So I'm going to use a few terms today
that maybe I use differently.
I've created them as a framework, a language,
to describe what this quiet pressure is,
so that we can do something about it.
So they're words you'll know, like coordination, right?
Right.
But I'm using them a little bit differently.
So it's not coordinated.
In other words, Jess, when you go to get your mortgage,
sure, they pull your credit report,
and they see what your debt to income ratio is at that moment as a snapshot.
Right.
There's no future coordination.
They don't check in with you every year going, Hey, Jess,
how's the price of groceries?
Yeah.
Are you still making your mortgage payment?
Okay.
They don't care if they get their payment.
They're done.
Right.
Right.
There's nothing that is coordinated between let's say the debt and the
retirement, so people decide, uh, I have to max out my 401k or I'm never
going to be able to retire.
So let me just put as much money as I can in my 401k.
Right.
Does anybody say, how's your cash flow doing?
Can you actually afford that?
Are you racking up credit card debt because there's not enough
money in your take home pay?
Okay.
Then you add to that things like healthcare, who talks to you about
affordability in healthcare?
This is what it costs.
You have to have it.
Good luck.
Right.
And that's another thing that's gone up so much this year
that it's really hurting people.
Yeah, exactly.
So the first layer of this quiet pressure
that we're talking about today is that lack of coordination,
that lack of a wide lens that allows
you to see your entire financial picture in any effective way.
OK.
The closest we come to this, this
It was almost an epiphany to me, Jess.
I'll explain about the book in a minute,
but obviously I've written a book about this
called The Quiet Pressure.
Another book, yes.
Yes, just released actually.
But this show really isn't about the book.
It's about what inspired me to write this book.
And what inspired me to write this book
is the realization that all of the people
I've been dealing with individually
work for someone or work for themselves.
They are part of a collective workforce.
Right. Okay. And that workforce is what keeps America running.
Not that we know from COVID. That's right. That's what keeps America running.
And we're not well financially. I could say it softer than that,
but I think most people would agree that if you're in the workforce,
you at some point are concerned about your finances.
So what's fascinating about that to me, Jess, is this is not,
It's kind of like cancer doesn't care who it chooses, right?
Financial stress even though people without much money won't believe it of people with much money
Doesn't care about industry. It doesn't care about income
It doesn't care about gender or race or anything else. It affects people in the same
way that same internal pressure
regardless of what their set of
challenges are. For some people, that's food insecurity, right? It's as basic as how am
I going to feed my family? Right. And for others, it's I've saved half a million dollars,
but I don't know if that's enough for me to retire, and I'm really worried I won't be
able to retire. That seems absurd to people, you know, like how can that possibly be affecting
people the same way? If I had $500,000, my problems would be gone. Right. But the fact
the matter is, people experience things differently and everything is relative.
Yeah. So my hypothesis, proven over many years though, I'll call it a hypothesis is that employees
carry to the job, not just their skills, not just their experience, but the financial timeline with
which they live, right? And we call this distraction that employees often have at work, whether
anybody is logging these numbers or not. There's a term for it, and I didn't make it up. It's
called presenteeism, presenteeism, okay? Okay, not absenteeism, which can, of course, happen
from financial stress. It's presenteeism, it's being at work, while your mind is not
quite there. Your mind is busy worrying about all those things we're talking about. I did
actually end up writing a book about this, my new book, The Quiet Pressure.
Nice. How normalized financial stress is shaping today's workforce.
Yes, because that's exactly the point, how normalized financial stress is shaping today's
workforce. Not how financial crisis is causing people to stay home.
Right? This is affecting most people at some level and the problem is we have normalized it.
We have accepted that your mortgage might take 15 years, that you have to make extra payments to
be able to get something to be paid off faster, that you will never be able to stick to a budget,
that your company offers a retirement plan,
but you just can't find the money to go into it
because you're not like those other people
who have extra money.
We accept these things as a given.
But I think at its core, the thing I've objected to
so many times and continue to defend people about
is this inference that if you're having
any kind of money, stress, worries, challenge,
you are to blame for it. Now, okay. Now I'm not,
I'm not trying to say, look, it's nobody's fault. You know,
you make all the world's worst decisions and you don't have any responsibility.
That's not what I'm saying. What I am saying is that it is,
it's not what people point the finger at, which is, you know what,
Jess, if you just made better decisions, you wouldn't have these problems.
You should be like saying so.
Or you cut out this and this and this from your budget.
Yeah. So they think it's behavioral and static. Like you said, cut this out and you'll be fine.
Financial outcomes are rarely determined in a single decision. They're the cumulative result
of thousands of small choices made under varying levels of stress with the limited information we
get I guess and constraint right we're in this tight little box I my kids are
aging and I have to get them to Disney before they're too old to enjoy it
everything is in this short timeline so if help is only offered at the company
level and it and many companies are doing this now offering financial
wellness benefits mostly as an add-on okay so if help is only offered at the
company level, at the point where breakdown happens, where crisis happens.
Then people have to get past the stigma of telling their employer they're in
trouble, that's hard, or they have to say, I will reach out to one of these
resources and bear my soul to a stranger.
It's always hard.
And this is where I really feel empathetic and sympathetic with the workforce.
If that's what really happens, then becoming capable,
the more capable a person is,
that becomes a disqualifier.
The more capable you are,
the longer you are expected to be able to carry that load.
And you are then disqualified
from needing all those crisis benefits
that are offered as financial wellness.
Well, and I think sometimes too, employees,
there might be a little trepidation about going
to tell your employer you're in trouble
because then you feel like it makes you vulnerable,
you can accept whatever they're gonna give to you
because they know you need that job.
So I think there's a fear there.
You know, there was a gentleman who was kind enough
to come into the studio and record his thoughts about this
and he was very brave and very honest.
And he said it best, I think.
When I'm at work and all I'm thinking about
is how to make a car payment,
how to pay my son's tuition or my daughter's future tuition.
It's incredibly distracting.
I can't really be fully present for my students.
And they see it.
I know they see it because they ask me,
these are teenagers asking me, an adult, if I'm okay.
And as much as I try to hide it, they know me well enough.
And that also makes me feel bad
because they shouldn't be taking care of me.
You know what I mean?
It's my job to take care of them.
I know it's really bad.
And I just, how do you say this to your employer?
I'm sure my employers understand.
I'm sure they know that this is going on,
but I know of people who have not come to work
because financial stress has made them sick.
I know of people who come to work
with financial stress on their mind.
So, you know, I'm grateful to him
for just teeing it up and saying what was really true
about how do you say this to your employer?
So when we come back, let's talk more about this quiet pressure.
Okay. In the meantime, can we get your phone number?
Sure. 413-773-3333.
And you can go to hugyourmoney.com and you can also get the brand new book,
wherever books are available, if you want to hold that up again.
The quiet pressure is available on Amazon, in paperback, hardcover, Kindle,
and soon-to-be audio format.
So more financial fitness to come next on Franklin County Now.com.
Financial fitness with the money doctor is underwritten by Franklin County
technical school. We build futures.
Visit fcts.us or call
4 1 3 8 6 3 9 5 6 1.
Welcome back to financial fitness. I'm Jess Tyler along with the money doctor.
Dr. Francis Ram. Hi. Hi Jess. I'm fired up.
Yeah. Well, we're kind of talking about the inspiration behind your brand new book and
about companies getting involved. I do have a couple of questions, but first, the name
of the book, the quiet pressure, how normalized financial stress is shaping today's workforce.
All right. Question for you from what we were talking about with employers offering financial
services. If I'm an employer listening, and I know you and I have talked about this before,
so I know the answer. But if I'm an employer listening to us right now, and I'm saying
I don't want to get involved in my employees finances. That's their business. That's their problem
Tell everyone why it benefits the employer as well
well, it certainly does benefit the employer, but first let me just say they don't need to be involved in your finances and in fact
Keeping your privacy is not
An option it's paramount. It should be structural and the structural is the reason that it matters to employers
So a good example
We talked about presenteeism your people are coming to work their mind is somewhere else whatever in in severe cases
It bothers their health all of that
But when I say it's structural let me use this in as an example, and I do use this in the book
If you're a company you don't ask your employees if they'd like to opt into health care
Mm-hmm, it's put in as infrastructure because it's too risky
For you to have employees with catastrophic illnesses that aren't covered you won't have a workforce left
people get sick, right? Yeah. You also integrate something for cyber security as infrastructure.
You don't pick up cyber security once you've been attacked. You don't say, Hey, we got
a problem. Let's call the cyber security people, right? You put it in as infrastructure because
it's too risky not to have it, even though you might not need it ever, right? You might
not need it for a year when it's insurance. Okay. So in this case, if you know that your
workforce has to deal with money, and pretty much every workforce has to deal with money,
then you can pretty much assume that they are worried about it at some time, at some
level for almost everyone in your company.
Now, the question is, what is that costing you?
I can tell you that the data says between two to four hours per week per employee is
lost on this stuff.
Yeah.
Wow.
Yeah, nobody will believe that, but if you're, the problem is it's so hard to see, you know,
you can ask your employees, are they stressed out about money and what are they going to
say?
They're not going to tell you if they're stressed out about money unless they're really at crisis.
Right?
Yeah.
So what happens is employers put these plans in place, these financial wellness add-ons,
you know, here's a bank of calculators, here's a referral to somebody, here's a webinar,
but they are judged by things that companies can see.
They're judged by how many people enrolled, how many people showed up, how many people
utilize this stuff.
And based on those things, that's how they judge whether it's effective or not.
I'm here to say that financial wellness at this level, when we're talking about coordination
and sequencing, which we haven't even gotten into yet, but when you apply what I'm talking
about in the quiet pressure, as infrastructure, then your way of understanding whether it
is working or not as an employer isn't about how many people click the button.
It's about what is changing.
Are people less distracted at work?
Are your timelines, you know, are they able to see out into the future more when really
what they've been doing is asking a lot of questions about a short-term project because
they're thinking in those terms.
People under financial stress don't think about the future in a rosy way.
They think about now.
That translates, it all carries with these people into work, no matter how skillful somebody
is, how committed, how loyal, how capable.
They are carrying this quiet pressure and it is affecting the workforce.
It turns out that it's very affordable, really inexpensive for companies to do this.
In fact, in some cases companies don't pay for it, they just offer it to their employees.
So it's free for a company to do it.
I want to be very clear about this.
I'm not saying, look, throw out all those benefits you're paying for and get the hug
plan.
That's not what I'm saying.
What I'm saying is the problem is in the uncoordination and the lack of sequencing.
So if you can apply something like what we're talking about in the quiet pressure to coordinate
the benefits you've already got and apply sequencing, which I'm just going to talk
about now to apply sequencing in a way that is scalable, then you then you really start
to address something.
So let's talk about sequencing.
Sequencing is the order in which these decisions get made, right?
you could say, my financial wellness benefits are coordinated. I get them all through my
EAP. They're all, you know, they, they coordinate that. I don't care about that, but it's really
unlikely that sequencing at all is involved. In other words, think of it like levers. Okay.
If I pull this lever to my budget, this lever over here changes, right? Right. Sequencing
cares about that. Typical benefits don't. So if you pull the budget lever, your retirement
account doesn't care. You know, suddenly gas prices have gone up. Do you change
your retirement contributions? Not likely. Not until it becomes a crisis. So what I'm
talking about is something that you put in place like healthcare, like cybersecurity
as infrastructure, because it is so important to your workforce. But it requires
This is tough because it requires an employer, a CEO, an HR team, somebody in the C suite
level with some vision and some empathy.
I don't want to say those who don't do it don't care about their people, but you have
to care about your workforce, at least at the level of, hey, if my workforce was better,
felt better, felt happier, you know, they'd come to work and my bottom line would be increased.
It's not a morale initiative.
It's not a pep talk.
We're talking about giving people that for 18 or 19 years, I've been hearing in almost
every appointment, why didn't I know about this?
How come nobody teaches about this?
I've got some stuff through work.
I go to a webinar, but I can't apply it.
Right?
So that's an important point.
Financial wellness benefits that are out there are great.
I'm glad that they're there.
What I'm talking about is the missing piece, okay?
So let me say this, because we're talking about levers.
You can go to a financial wellness webinar that teaches you about compound interest rates
at work.
That doesn't change the fact that your debt is still taking you forever to pay.
You understand compound interest rates, but nothing changed on your side.
That kind of thing adds to the pressure, because now you feel like, geez, I not only was doing
everything right in the beginning, I'm gathering as much knowledge as I can, I'm trying to
apply this stuff, and I still can't do it.
Hmm.
Or I'm still failing at it.
Yeah, yeah.
Oh, I hate that word failing, yeah.
So I just think that, you know, people really do need to understand, if you're feeling like
you're doing everything right and you're still not getting ahead if there's one take away from this
you are not broken all right you may be operating inside a system that isn't coordinated yet
okay and once you see that everything begins to change and you know i could go into a lot of
history and we don't have time to do it but i will just say that there has been a major shift
in the responsibility individuals have about their money from a time in the mid-century
where companies had pensions and people worked for one company for a long time they got their
pension that was it they cared about you know raising their kids and doing their their ledger
sheet was a lot simpler household budget was simpler way simpler we used to get a little book
right down which you know your 10 things you had to pay that month okay but once we started to get
get rid of pensions and shift into 401ks and 403Bs and 457
plants and put the burden of health insurance
and disability and other things, dental insurance, everything
on the employee.
We didn't give people any education about this, Jess.
We just said, hey, we're not doing this anymore.
It's up to you.
And so we've done this in a way that the system has
become very fragmented.
we expect of people that they now have to do their own sequencing, which is the order
which decisions are made. Now they have to do their own sequencing, their own coordination,
and their own implementing of these plans with very little experience or resources.
And all I'm saying is it doesn't have to be that way. There's a, there is a way to do
I've written 300 pages about it right right I mean if you're an employer and
you're listening to this mm-hmm you know download the Kindle version if you don't
want to buy the hardcover that's fine but but take a look at this because it
could really it might be the highest ROI benefit you add this year okay yeah
when you're talking two to four hours per person per week you know even if you
have 10 employees there's a whole 40 hour week done. Yes I mean we could talk
about this forever but when you said even if you have 10 employees it comes
to mind that I was recently talking to a small veterinarian clinic and she said
to me oh I would give this to my employees because you know what most of
the time they have to go to Tufts or they want to go to Tufts or someplace
because of the pay and I can't compete but our average person just applying
this coordination and sequencing the average person saves a couple hundred
thousand dollars. Wow. It's a benefit. It's a real benefit.
So yeah, you know, it's really, um,
I would encourage anybody who, who has an interest if this resonates with
anybody. Um, of course I go much deeper in the book and I,
I just hope that that a great employer hears it, uh, says, you know what,
I've been seeing that. Yeah. I've been seeing it at my own company. Uh,
I feel like I'm doing everything right. And yet, you know,
my bottom line is increasing. My company isn't growing at the rate I expected it to. I can't
see it on the page. What is going on? You know what? It's structural. Look at your
workforce. Well, on a side note, congratulations on book two is no easy feat writing a book.
And how are you feeling after after getting it done? I know that that's a lot of it's a lot
of hard work. Thank you. Actually, it's book three. Oh, book three. Okay, book three. Well,
And then you revised that I did so it's really two and a half. I would say yes
Thank you. It's it feels good to have it done
I made jokes about it as I was doing it because it was an intense book to write
And I wanted it to be a light enough read for people but still make a point
So I was referring it to my own quiet pressure
It was my own quiet pressure. So yeah, it feels great to have it out and available
and people can get it on amazon.com or they can call us and we'll get them a copy yeah all right
and what is the phone number to call you sure 413-773-3333 and you can go to hugyourmoney.com
all right thank you so much thank you i just want to add for employers when you go to hugyourmoney.com
slash groups perfect easy thank you we'll have more financial fitness next week on franklincountynow.com
Have you ever seen the show severance? No. Okay, so there's the show severance on Apple
with Adam Scott, isn't it? But basically, it's and I can't remember the details of what exactly
they do, but they put it some kind of chip or something in people so that when you get to work,
you have no memories of your outside life. So you just focus on work. And then when you leave work,
it switches you back to so you have no memory of work. And it's employers, the employers in this
sci-fi show are doing this because of what you're talking about where people are so distracted at
work by relationships and money and all these other things, they want them just focused on
their work like bots almost. And so it's this, it's a really good show. Wow, that's great. Yeah,
I would really write up the alley of what you're talking about. But employee like employers don't
get any ideas. All right. That's really, really kind of scary when you think about it, because
every employer would love to do that. Yeah. You know? Well, could be easier than that. But yes.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Thank you, Jess. Interesting. Of course. Well, it's good to
see your face. Thanks. You too. Financial Fitness with the Money Doctor is underwritten by
Hug Your Money. Will you help us spread the word about financial fitness? Please like, subscribe,
and choose all. Thank you. Financial Literacy and the Human Condition. Welcome to Financial
Fitness with The Money Doctor, Dr. Francis Raham. Five point eight billion dollars has been lost to
fraud. And that was more than a 70, seven zero, Jess, percent increase from 2020 because the
the systems are designed to catch you off guard. It's not a failure of intelligence,
it's an engineered moment. Hi, it's Frances. I just wanted to take a minute to thank you
for watching this video. If you're catching us on YouTube, please help us help others
by clicking like, subscribe and all notifications so you don't miss any videos. And check back
for the next video. I think you're going to love it. Thanks again. For more information,
You can visit us at HugYourMoney.com.
Hey, it's Jess and it's time for Financial Fitness with the Money Doctor, Dr. Francis
Ram.
Hello.
Hello, Jess.
How are you?
I am doing good.
Today we're talking about a topic very near and dear to me because I think I get, I don't
know, three or four of these a day, talking basically scams or scam emails, right?
All kinds of scams, actually, and the reason we're talking about it, and believe me, I
don't want to come on the air and talk about scams anymore.
I would love to talk about something more interesting, but, well, let me put it this
way.
Here's how bad they've gotten, okay?
First of all, they are slicker than ever and they're using real email addresses, all the
things I've told you about in the past, like hey, don't click the link, watch the email,
you know?
Right.
It might be one letter off, all that.
Oh my gosh.
Now they're legit.
getting harder and harder to tell apart, even in voice. And so I'm going to give you a three step
process that you can use every time to protect yourself from this as we go through it. And I'll
repeat it a couple of times so that you folks will get it. But just to just to put this into
perspective. I've always said, you know, after you discover one of these scams, you should report it
to the Federal Trade Commission. You should still do that, but you should not expect a response
because they are so overloaded that in fact the data we're getting is so old. It is 2026
when we're filming this right from 2021 that says 5.8 billion dollars has been lost to fraud
And that was more than a 70, seven zero Jess percent increase from 2020.
So when I come on the air and I'm saying, you know, we're talking about scams.
I am not talking to people who are, um, technologically unsavvy or people
who are undisciplined or people who are sloppy or people who panic easily.
I'm talking to everybody just this morning.
I got a serious message from my assistant saying,
hey Francis, there's an email in your inbox from Microsoft.
There's been an attempt, you need to go and check on it.
But now they're legitimate email addresses.
So you can't even say, hey, is this address real?
If you stop watching the show at this point,
I want you to walk away with one thing.
Do not click the link.
Can I just do a little sidebar here for a second?
Yes.
This, to me anyway, is so frustrating because we're all doing a million things.
When I get an email, the fact that you've got to turn into Nancy Drew, figure out whether
it's real or not, and the other thing is, then if there really was an important email
coming through, we're so prone to not believe it, and that just gets so frustrating.
Because these folks all do the same thing.
They send something that if you don't act on it, could cause you a problem.
So they are designed for you to react to them, not to make a decision to react.
That's their job is to get you to react and if they can, to get you to react under pressure,
right?
Yeah.
So that irritates me to begin with.
And then I worry from a business standpoint that we are sending legitimate emails to people
who have asked us questions or to people who are in our system who need to know about something
important.
and I'm afraid that they won't open it. I mean it's really, this is really bad and everybody is
walking around saying geez with AI now we don't know what is real and what is not real. We're
going to go into that more but that's getting scarier too. I'll tell you that I've had two scam
attempts come to me in the last two days and it's why I'm on on top of this. One of them came inbound
from a friend of mine. He's somebody who comes to hear our band often and he feels friendly and so
he reached out to me and said, Francis, I discovered this great financial thing you should know about.
Oh boy.
Yeah, parts of pennies. Now, remember the movie office space?
Yeah, I did.
This always shows up in movies. Parts of pennies have been scaled off the top,
scraped off the top and they're being stored somewhere and they add up to lots of money.
Okay so of course it's he's got a video on this that seems seems government related
and you know you all you have to do to get your parts of pennies is go to this website put in
your information and see how much money is being held for you. In his case he came back to me and
he said it's $2,000. Oh, it sounds exciting. Wouldn't you like that? Yeah. So let me just say
that everything is not a scam. If you're listening to this show or watching the show right now,
there is a legitimate site in every state that you can go to and find missing money that is
actually yours. Oh, right. Yes. It doesn't come from parts of a penny that the government set off
to the side somewhere waiting for you to claim it. That does not happen.
It's usually some account you've forgotten about or some interest in something, right?
That's somebody left you money, they couldn't find you. You move too often, they can't find
your address. Those are legitimate things. I have found money for people like that many
times, relatives and whatnot. So you can always do that. Now, just look in your state, but
make sure it's a .gov address. I think it's in Massachusetts, don't quote me on this,
but I think it's find mass money dot gov, I think.
Okay.
But just Google it to make sure.
Double check, yeah.
Yeah, so it's not always a scam,
but when you combine hope with urgency,
oh boy, you got a magic combination there.
So the two scam attempts, so this guy sends me the thing
and it's got a video and it says he's got $2,000
and he's already put in his social security number.
Oh no.
Tried to get the stuff.
Well, keep watching because I will tell you
that that's not the end of the world.
There are things you can do to protect yourself,
even if you've clicked the link
or given up your information.
Okay. Okay.
But for right now, let's just talk
about the scams for a moment.
So he gets this and I send him back a message
with all the little red flags
that I think this might be a scam because,
and thankfully it stops him in his track
before he gives anybody any money to get his money back.
Another scam we've talked about recently
where somebody says, you have to be at a certain level
in order to get your money out of your account.
And so if you add more money to it,
you'll be able to get your money out, never happens.
When I'm saying this, it sounds like I'm being judgmental
or like nobody would ever fall for this.
But evidently it isn't true.
I mean, yeah, no, I mean, you do all the time
and the ones that I've been getting lately,
it gives you like a little bit of hope.
Like it'll be, I just got one from AT&T yesterday
that said I won an iPad.
And I'm like, well, I've been a very good customer for years.
I deserve an iPad, but I knew the chances of that being true are slim to none, and it
was none.
It's true.
But you know, imagine now couple that.
This is how these things happen, Jess, and it's a very good point.
Couple that with the fact that you might have just been at a website looking for an iPad.
And there might have even been an ad off to the side that said something like register
to win an iPad.
There are reasons that these things come together
in a way that a totally responsible, reasonable,
intelligent, careful person still gets scammed.
Or just.
Fair enough, fair enough, you're too self-effacing.
But yeah, I think you can't just look at somebody
who was taken by a scam and think they got duped
because they're an idiot.
They are not an idiot.
The scams are getting more and more clever because you're looking for higher net worth
individuals with professional jobs who are very busy, who will just have somebody else
do that.
If my assistant did not contact me this morning and say, because she's been taught to do this,
right?
And say, there's an email in your inbox that you'll have to go and do this.
It said it was from Pakistan.
Maybe I'll even put the email up.
It said it was from Pakistan.
It said it was an unusual access attempt and that if I did not respond, then they would
continue to allow access from this person or this company.
Now that's not quite scamish like it used to be in the past where it would say if you
don't respond, we're going to close your account right away.
You could spot that a mile away.
Microsoft is not going to close your account if you don't respond to an email.
That was kind of silly.
they're sending it from a legitimate email address and they're saying if you
don't respond that's okay but we're gonna let this Pakistan person continue
to access your account and so that creates a sense of urgency especially
on a morning when I'm getting ready to be on the air and my assistant Sheri is
busy trying to go through emails it would have been so easy to say did you
check the email address yeah it was legit okay click it and do it right
Thankfully, I just stopped. It just seemed to me that Pakistan was a little too on the nose.
And I was like, okay, you know that somebody is attempting to access my account from Pakistan.
Okay. So anyway, all I'm saying is there's no judgment here. You should not feel embarrassed.
You should not feel ashamed to say something. If you don't, you're only helping the next person
get scammed. We don't start fighting back against this. These are just going to get worse and worse
and worse.
And I think sometimes some of these hackers or people that are doing this count on that.
They count on the fact that people will be embarrassed and not spread the word about
it, and then they can keep doing it.
They do.
Now, I will tell you that this email was rather interesting to me because it allowed you to
go.
You know, I looked it up on the web and I said, is this a legitimate address?
Yes, it is.
But, of course, I wasn't going to click the link.
So then I went, I had to find my way, which was not easy, I have to say, to this specific
Microsoft area where I could find out whether my account had been accessed or not, my recent
activity.
And when I put the email in that they sent in the email to me, they said, your email
address such and such has been accessed.
When I put that email address in, even though it was one of our old email addresses, it
wasn't in the Microsoft recent activity thing.
So you really, I'm totally with you.
I hate that you have to keep doing this to save yourself.
And in the case of this gentleman who sent me the video, he spent time doing this.
He was excited about it.
He was going to get $2,000 of his own money.
And what's interesting about that is that he wasn't sending it to you to say, is this
a scam?
He really believed it, right?
He was helping me out, Frances, look at this great financial thing you should see.
And you know, he was so sweet.
When I wrote back to him, I said, I hope I'm not overstepping, but here's what I think.
You know, he came back to me thanking me for saving him and, you know, all of that nice
things that kind people do.
But I just was like, boy, I don't know how many times I've talked about these, but they
just keep evolving.
They just keep getting more and more sophisticated.
And I'm getting really concerned that people who would never have fallen for anything,
top level people who are managing all the plates in the air all the time, because they
are not touching everything themselves, they're companies, they're people, they're all gonna
get scammed because somebody else is gonna click the link or do whatever.
The amount of training you have to do to keep up on these things is absurd.
And they're getting you from all angles.
It's not just email.
I get texts all the time like saying I owe tolls.
You know, you just get those kinds of leaky from every direction.
Yeah.
Yep.
And it'll be a place that I lived before, but haven't been in years.
That's right.
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
I like the things from even where I haven't lived.
So I know we have to go to break, but I just want to say, um, so I leave people
with these three things that they can do every time.
So, you know, you don't need to be careless anymore.
You just need to be human.
And I think we all are.
So I'm going to give you a three step process you can use in every single case.
filter. I call it save, S-A-V, there's no E on it. You can execute for E if you want to, but I recommend
S for stop, separate from the message. Don't click that link. I just separate from the message.
A is for assess or ask yourself. Ask yourself, what am I feeling right now? Am I feeling a sense
of urgency? Do I feel, walk away, calm down about it. Okay. And then the last one is V, S-A-V, save,
verify. Check from inside your account, not from the email. Just go to a direct link and check.
So S-A-V. Okay, excellent. Let's get your phone number. Sure, it's 413-773-3333.
You can go to Hug Your Money dot com. We'll be back with more from the Money Doctor,
Dr. Frances Ram on Financial Fitness. Financial Fitness with the Money Doctor
is underwritten by Franklin County Technical School we build futures visit fcts.us or call
413-863-9561. Welcome back to Financial Fitness I'm Jess along with the money doctor Dr. Francis
Ram. Hi. Hi Jess and we're talking about spending money on discovering whether these emails or texts
are real or not. Yeah we're talking about losing money to scams and how sophisticated they've gotten
and I was just saying that this morning I got one that was from a legitimate email address and so
even if you check it and it looks legitimate which is what we used to say don't click the link if the
email isn't legitimate even if it's legitimate now you got to go check it. So I am giving a
three-step process for people so that they can use this as a filter in every single case and we
We call it SAVE, S-A-V. S is for just stop, separate from the email.
A is assess, ask yourself, how am I feeling?
Am I feeling nervous?
Am I feeling like there's a sense of urgency?
If you are, step away, okay?
And then V is to verify it.
Never, ever, ever click the link.
Copy it, paste it, research it, do whatever you got to do.
Unless you know, like you get an email from us and
You asked us a question and we sent you a link.
Okay, you're gonna be fine clicking that.
But if you don't know the person sending you the email, you go to the web and verify it
inside your own account.
There are three places to go for help on this, and I'll give these again at the end, but
ftc.gov, the Federal Trade Commission, has a report fraud placed on their website that's
perfect for this.
There's an identity theft resource center.
These are all free that I'm telling you about.
ITRC, Identity Theft Resource Center, and that's at idtheftcenter.org and AARP does
a free thing as well.
They have a fraud watch network, which is great for real-time alerts and things.
So FTC, the Identity Theft Resource Center, and AARP are good places to go for free support
on this stuff and to educate yourself about it.
So let's talk about what's actually happening out there right now, what the most common
scams are and why they are working so well.
So you know, if you know what to look for, this becomes much easier.
But we need to walk through a few of the big things.
So like the ones I received, right?
One of the things you see is there's been an unusual login attempt.
Right.
leg, unusual login attempt. It might be a legitimate, unusual login attempt. That's
why people can scam you. They hide in the truth, right? Or someone accessed your account.
Right? I got that too. And it was opened from another country. So those three things were
all at work in the one email I got this morning, or that Sherry got. And it will always say
click here immediately, right? Because these three things are the things that you're having.
So there's a sense of authority, there's a sense of urgency, and there's always a sense
of fear.
Right, like someone's going to keep using your account if you don't do this right now.
Yeah, you shouldn't be getting an email from anybody that causes you to feel urgency and
fear, especially if they're in a position of authority, okay?
So as soon as you feel your emotions, you know, bubble up and you're thinking, oh, I
have to act immediately, close the lid, walk away from the computer, stop the phone, whatever,
Okay, now money waiting for you is one of the scams.
Like the ones we were talking about in an earlier segment,
money is waiting for you.
Somewhere there, somebody has died and left you money.
They've scraped parts of pennies off
and they're waiting on the side.
You just forgot that you won the lottery,
you won something of value, whatever it is.
If there is money waiting for you,
you probably know about it already.
What you're saying is the Nigerian prince does not want to gift me millions.
As old as that is, it is still the same premise.
It's still the same premise. Yeah. Uh, yeah. If you deposit,
if you let us deposit money into your account and then we'll clear it from your
account, but we're only going to take part of it. And what's left is yours.
Scam, scam, scam all the way. Okay. So you have money waiting.
You have a refund. You have an overpayment. You have unclaimed funds.
All of those are scams.
Unless you're able to research it separately,
you call your local bank,
do I really have money in my account?
You check with your broker, is this really true, right?
Check with someone you know in person.
And while I'm thinking of it,
that's another good way to protect yourself
is to use a second source.
Like if you get a text from somebody
and you're worried if it's a scam, call them up.
Send them an email.
Don't do it through the same thread.
So double up on your ways that you're responding to people.
And here's a really subtle part.
It doesn't feel like a scam for those money things
because it feels like a pleasant surprise.
Right, yeah.
So, you know, there's hope and curiosity together
is a majorly dangerous thing, right?
I hope this is gonna work and I'm curious.
And what I really detest about that
is that we often hear about hug your money,
that people are very hopeful and that they were just curious.
They went in and filled out the form and saw the numbers.
I don't want those two things squashed for people
or quashed for people, right?
Those are good things to have.
Hope and curiosity, get me up in the morning, right?
Those are the two things to have.
So this is why I really think scams are far more dangerous
than just the money that people lose,
is that I feel like we're losing part of our human edge
because we're being taken advantage of so often like this.
So anyway, that's just an incredibly powerful combination.
Now there's another thing that is happening a lot now
called smishing.
Have you heard this term, smishing?
Is it a combination of fishing and something else?
It is, very good.
It's a combination of fishing which by the way is pH,
fishing, which came from, you know, we're going to throw a line in the water and cast
some things.
But it actually came, little history lesson, actually came from freaking, P-H-R-E-A-K-I-N-G.
Freaking was an old term when they were scamming on the telephone, believe it or not.
Oh, okay.
Yeah, I heard that.
Telecom stuff.
That's where fishing came from.
Started out as freaking, went to fishing, and now we have smishing, which is S-M-S,
which is short messaging, short message service,
that's what SMS stands for, short message service,
and the end of phishing,
the ish-ing part mashed together, right, it's inflated.
So now we have another fun term, smishing.
Sorry, smishing, it's hard to say.
Anyway, smishing is exactly that.
It's short message, it's texting scams, okay?
Yeah, so it's a different delivery.
It's the exact same hook.
And they'll switch numbers on you too.
I don't know if you've noticed this.
Like I'll do a stop and then it'll say,
can you report junk?
And I hit report junk.
And then you see a number
that's like one number off calling again.
So they don't give up.
They don't give up.
I mean, even now here's how things have evolved.
It used to be that they spoofed numbers.
They would send you a message from a number that you knew
so that you'd believe it was a person.
They don't even bother doing that anymore.
They just keep, here's a no number, a new number,
a new number because there's no regulation stopping them.
You can't find these people.
So you have to be on your diligence game here.
Oh, here's one I get all the time.
Your package couldn't be delivered because?
Oh, yeah.
Yes, I have.
Your bank needs verification here.
They do these things that are so dangerous because in texts, the really dangerous thing
is we trust text more than we trust email.
Because we think somebody got our personal number and we don't normally give that out.
And we all have like that email address where if you're signing up to get a 15% code you all put that email address in
But you don't normally do that for your phone. No, that's absolutely true
And and that's exactly the strange combinations. It feels personal and it feels immediate
Now here's the big really really really creepy one that I think we're in for it on this. Okay AI
voice impersonation
I haven't gotten that yet. I don't think it's coming Jess. It's okay
This one's really growing quickly because someone will call you and say mom. I need help
Oh, I have heard about this. Yes, and especially to grandparents saying like to send it because they think they might do it quickly
Yeah, yeah, yeah and money
This is your boss send this right away. Mm-hmm. There was a story. I forget who it was Lamborghini Ferrari somebody big
who stopped themselves from
thousand dollars being transferred or something because they got a call from someone who sounded
like their person in their employee and they said send this money right away.
And the guy was smart.
And the guy said, I was just in your office yesterday.
You had a book on the shelf.
What was it?
And he didn't get scammed, but can you imagine in a busy day and this is what I'm talking
about?
This is going to hit everybody.
This is not just, you know, somebody who's sitting at home who never uses a computer
and isn't savvy and clicks a link.
talking about, they're coming after us all, because the money is so big, billions and
billions of dollars every year that people are losing to this.
So I'm here talking about how do we save, how do we protect our assets, how do we relieve
the quiet pressure of having that stuff dog us on our way to work.
And here we are losing billions of dollars a year, just to scams.
So that's why I'm talking about them.
So every one of these scams is designed to trigger a reaction, not a decision.
They don't care what your decision is, they just care that you click the link.
After that, they've got you on the hook.
So the question becomes, how do you protect yourself, even when the messages look real,
even when the voice sounds real, what are you going to do to protect yourself?
And so this is where we've developed this three-step filter to protect you.
You can use in every scenario and it's S-A-V. The first is S is just stop or separate yourself
from the email, the phone, whatever, hang up.
If it's your kid and they need help, tell them, I'll call you right back and hang up.
Right.
Okay.
Okay?
Just don't continue the conversation.
Access, ask yourself, how am I feeling?
If you feel a sense of urgency or fear or excitement, back up.
Something's going on.
Yeah is about you just need to slow down and pause for a moment
And then the last thing of course is to verify and when I say that that is where you take a second route
You never click the link. You don't send money. You don't go to Western Union
You contact the person or the company directly and you say I just got a call from you
I just got an email. I just got a text. Is it really you? Yeah
I'm so sorry to have to say this and I know it's a waste of time and it's really disappointing
to have to
Guard yourself like this, but imagine how much more time you will spend and how awful it will be
If you let one of these places get to you
And so I'll give you three quick places
You can go for help and some additional guardrails because even if you click the link, it's not the end of the world
Okay, okay Federal Trade Commission
Identity Theft Resource Center
ARP fraud watch network you can find them all online. They all do great things
Use that second form of contact. I talked to you about
It's not just being about careful anymore
It's about having that process that we talked about and so you definitely verify everything you never act immediately
Okay, what do you do if something does happen if you do click the link what then or or give your social or you give out?
Your information that's right. Yeah, we just had to do this with this nice guy, you know, what do you do?
You don't panic and you don't feel embarrassed. I'm not a fan of telling somebody how not to feel
But please please don't feel embarrassed that everybody gets these. Okay. Yeah, so
Because the systems are designed to catch you off guard. It's not a failure of intelligence. It's an engineered moment
All right. So if you click the link change your passwords immediately
Okay, enable two-factor authentication, even though it's a pain in the patoot do it and review your research
activity.
Okay.
If you shared information, contact your bank or credit card company immediately, monitor
your accounts and my recommendation would be to put a fraud alert or a freeze on your
credit report, which you can do at annualcreditreport.com, the only government approved place to get
your credit reports.
Okay.
Okay.
So I hope these things are helpful for people.
You know, they're real resources.
They're all free.
Everything I gave you is free.
And they just can help you to be safe and to take the next steps properly.
And I just want to say in closing, in financial wellness, we talk about it as though it's
always numbers and budgets and plans.
But it's also just knowing when something doesn't feel right, giving yourself permission
to pause because that one click can cost you, but one pause could just protect you.
So just use S-A-V, separate, assess, verify, as part of your daily diligence routine and
just know that you're going to need to do this more now and more into the future than
you have in the past.
It's coming your way.
All right.
If people have a question on this, where they just want to find out more about the Hug Your
Money program, what is the phone number for them?
Sure.
They can call us at 413-773-3333 and we will never call you outbound, unless you ask us
to, but we don't make cold calls.
Exactly.
All right.
It is Financial Fitness with the Money Doctor, Dr. Frances Ram.
Thank you so much.
Thanks Jess.
It's scam stuff.
I know we talk about scams a lot, but my gosh, these things are getting ridiculous.
I had one this morning from Microsoft or about Microsoft with a legitimate Microsoft email.
Fitness with the Money Doctor is underwritten by Hug Your Money.
Will you help us spread the word about financial fitness?
Please like, subscribe, and choose all.
Thank you.
And welcome to our 2023 Black Music Month special.
And we saw all the festivities that were happening throughout the nation and even in our state.
And it was a pretty busy month for Black Music Month.
And so we wanted to wait till this time to give you more of an overview, the initial
roots of black music, it's just an introduction because there's so much when we look at the
roots of black music and how much it has influenced the American culture and the worldwide cultural.
If you look at the worldwide culture, cultural aspect of everything, black music is everywhere
as far as in its influence.
And so we're going to be giving you that introduction, an overview basically from the 1800s, just
roughly right about 1940s, 1950s, and we'll have to do another part at another time to
go from the 50s to the 70s and then from 70s to the 90s and 80s. There's so much there when we
look at the influence of how it is structured, not only the American culture and society, but again,
this is really a worldwide influence culturally. Now we know that the displacements from slavery
have created a different influence and that's what we're going to be going into and talking
about in today's program as we look at an overview of the Nisha roots of Black music.
And my name is Julia Dudley Najeeb, and I will be your host as we run through this.
So we know that Black Music Month was officially recognized and approved by President Jimmy
Carter in 1979, June being African American Music Appreciation Month.
And that's where we celebrate African American musical influences that comprise an essential
part of our nation's treasured cultural heritage, and formerly called Natural Black Music Month,
the celebration of African American musical contribution is reestablished annually by
presidential proclamation. So I know that even President Barack Obama did such a proclamation
and really accentuated on the influence of the culture itself, black music, and how it
That has really changed the way we look at things.
Music has been used to communicate a plan.
Music has been used to encourage change, sometimes social changes.
So we know that at the root of it, there was something else and that's what we're going
to be talking about in today's program.
But first, I want to introduce you to the hip hop guy.
He's going to give a cool intro.
It's about six to seven minutes long.
And I like the way he really does a rundown of all of the influencers in one, like less
than seven minute clip.
Mind you, we'll have to go into more detail each one as time allows, not in today's program,
but at a later time.
But I like the way he does this rundown, the hip hopper guy, black music history.
So we're going to take a listen to him and just let's see how he tells us about Black
Music Month or Black Music History.
And it's very different how he puts it all together, but I think you're going to like
it.
So let's take a listen.
So people have been talking about Black History and examples of Black excellence.
We need to talk about Paul Robeson.
If you don't know who Paul Robeson, never mind, let's just get into it.
To give you an idea of the times, Paul's dad was freed from slavery.
And Paul went to Rutgers University on a scholarship, because he was brilliant.
And while he was there, he played football, and was named All-America.
Twice.
After he graduated out of the Victorian, he went to Columbia University to study law.
While he's in law school, he starts training as a singer, and an actor, and plays football for the NFL.
Then he graduates, and becomes a lawyer.
But then he quit, because racism.
So, he just becomes a movie star.
But then he quit, because of racism.
The dude's mad political, so he's speaking out against the US government loud.
And they don't like that, so the FBI cancels all his concerts and gets him blacklisted.
So my dude takes his concerts overseas and keeps talking en masse.
Then they took his passport so he couldn't travel.
He starts holding telephone concerts, and thousands of people show up.
And there's a lot more.
So today's Leontyne Price's birthday.
And some of you don't know, some of you don't know who Leontyne Price is!
Leontyne Price is literally one of the greatest operatic sopranos to ever walk...
Okay, here's the story.
She was born in 1927 in Mississippi and she started playing piano at five.
And her mom sang in the church choir, but she knew she wanted to be a singer for real
after seeing Marian Anderson perform at the Lincoln Memorial.
You don't know who Marian Anders played later.
She also got a full-ride scholarship to go to Juilliard,
which they weren't just handing out to black kids in the 40s, but she...
She sounds like this.
After school, she toured all through Europe,
but when she had her debut at the Metropolitan Opera in New York,
she finishes singing.
This is her first performance, by the way,
and the audience leaps to their feet and starts clapping,
and doesn't stop for 42 minutes.
And that doesn't happen,
except for her last performance when they did it again for 35 minutes.
Leontyne Price.
We're still talking about Black Excellence,
and I can't talk about Leontyne Price without talking about Marion Anderson.
Without Marion Anderson, let's just...
She was born in Philly in 1902,
when she grew up singing in the church choir and she was really good so when
she got a little older and wanted some more training she went to the
Philadelphia Academy of Music and they told her we don't take Negroes and we
never will. Bet you do now though. Anyway so her church got together and raised the
money for her training and she was able to put on some concerts but racism so
she goes to Europe to start a career because apparently Europe was less
racist than the US in the 20s. Oh dang I gotta start saying 1920s huh.
Anyway, she actually went by ship, but this picture is by herself.
She was known to perform classical European pieces alongside Negro spirituals, and Europe
just fell in love with that voice.
So now that she's world famous, when she gets back to the U.S., everyone starts acting brand
new.
Except...
I'm out of time.
I'll tell you in part 2.
Alright, I just needed that for the thumbnail thing.
Marian Anderson 2.
Let's go.
So Marian Anderson towards Europe becomes this world famous international opera singer.
So a lot of these venues in the United States were suddenly feeling a lot more comfortable
about her performing there.
So she comes home like Mike Jones.
Turns out I can't play that song, they took the other video down, so I'll paraphrase.
Previously, there was no interest, but with my new acclaim, I'm in high demand.
She eventually becomes the first black woman to sing a named role at the Metropolitan Opera.
But when Howard University invited her to come sing, as they do, the only place big
enough to hold a Marian Anderson concert was Constitution Hall.
A Constitution Hall was owned by the Daughters of the American Revolution who said only white artists can perform in their building.
So, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, who happens to be a member of the D.A.R,
quits the D.A.R and helps Marion put on a concert at the Lincoln Memorial and 75,000 people came to listen.
This is singer-songwriter Madison McFerrin, who also happens to be the daughter of
Bobby McFerrin, the musical genius and the guy who wrote Don't Worry Be Happy, who also happens to be the son of
The great baritone Robert McLaren. Now, if you don't know who this is, you need to.
And you're a Baptist. Born in Arkansas in 1921, he was actually a boy soprano in his church
gospel choir. Gospel was the only music he was allowed to sing as a kid. His dad was a Baptist
preacher. He attended Fisk University, got drafted into World War II, and when he finished college,
he moved to New York to study voice with the composer Hall Johnson. And dude was good,
because a year later he was singing in a bunch of musicals and operas. And in 1955, he became the
the first black man to sing a role at the Metropolitan Opera.
And when he was done with that,
he moved to Hollywood to be in the movies.
So if you've ever seen that 1959 Porgy & Bess movie
with Sidney Poitier, his singing voice,
♪ Show me how ♪
The Grammy for the Best Roots album
went to the Fisk Jubilee Singers.
Do you know who they are?
Because this is historic.
Right after slavery was abolished,
a lot of the newly freed wanted to learn to read and write.
So schools were started,
and a lot of those schools became our HBCUs.
And in Nashville, Tennessee,
one of them was Fisk University.
At a certain point,
got into real financial trouble, like there wasn't going to be any more school financial trouble.
So, the music teacher, who also happened to be the treasurer, took some of the choir students
to neighboring towns to sing for donations. But they're not really singing standard European
choral works. They're singing their music, the stuff that was composed and passed down by the
enslaved, namely Negro spirituals. And they blew up. Remember, this is America's first time hearing
African-American music. So they had to go on tour, they sang for the president, they sang for the
queen. There were other groups coming out of Nashville pretending to be them. Man, they came
back to Nashville with money. They paid off debts, bought new land, built a new school.
And the group members have changed through the years, but they kept the music alive.
Last thing, Nashville's music city reputation, they started it.
Turns out June is Black Music Appreciation Month, so let's learn about some Black Opera history.
The first Black person to sing of the Metropolitan Opera was not Robert MacMaren nor Marian Anderson.
It was Helen Phillips. And the reason even opera singers haven't heard of her,
Besides the racism is because she sang in the opera chorus and look opera doesn't care about the chorus. I mean they do
She was born in st. Louis and her father was a Baptist minister
She studied music at Fisk University and in 1947 the Metropolitan Opera called her agent asking for his best soprano and guess
Who shows up so they send her right in and she sings in the chorus for three performances of Kavaleria Vusticana
All right, so let's recap and bring this whole circle Helen Phillips first black person to sing in the Met 11 years later
Robert McFerrin is the first black man to sing at the Met. But 20 days before that,
Marian Anderson was the first black person and woman to sing a role at the Met. She also had
a concert in Mississippi where a nine-year-old girl in the audience decided she wanted to grow
up to be her. Her name was Leontyne Price. And part of Ms. Price's training was paid for by a
benefit concert held by Paul Robeson. So I thought that was pretty cool. He did a rundown of all of
the top things you should know about as far as the roots of history. And Fisk University played a
huge role in the Black experience to be able to get the culture of the music out there.
And many of the Black colleges did, but primarily you'll see that Fisk University,
you'll see Fisk University brought up a lot, especially in today's program.
And you'll get to hear a more extended version of the Fisk Jubilee. So we thank the hip opera guy,
or hip-hopper a guy for allowing us to use this video for the purpose of today's program and
he has a lot more videos you can actually find him on YouTube so he's got a lot more for you
but now we want to take it down to the next step we want to go into the blues and the jazz
and the ragtime all of that stuff that influenced what you hear today believe it or not what we are
hearing today and the music you're hearing in the background as we go over Black music and the roots
those are the sounds of Paul Robeson. Sometimes I feel like a motherless child. So the roots of
African-American music and this is thank you to the Smithsonian for giving us this information
and highlight that it cannot be separated from the transatlantic slave trade and the forced
transportation of millions of African peoples across the Atlantic who are then
enslaved. And so the music you're hearing right now, we'll discuss more why the
significance of this song and other songs like it was important as enslaved
peoples here in the Americas had to communicate with one another through
music. So many of the instruments historically used in African-American
music including the banjo and the drum have antecedents and African musical
instruments and many features common to African-American music likewise have
roots in African-American musical traditions such as the call and response
song form and an immerse approach to singing and call and response form was
done a lot in Africa and done a lot today in today's music amongst many
non-black singers so slave lies were very restricted as we know and the
limitations of literacy and property ownership were huge but music was passed
down orally and early records of African-American music indicate that
songs change frequently not just from singer to singer but also from day to
day when sung by the same musician. Music was a solace, a community builder, and
voice for hope during enslavement and afterward in the days of reconstruction
and then Jim Crow. The Negro spiritual, which is an example of what you're
hearing now, is one of the most widespread of early musical forms among
southern blacks and it was the spiritual. Neither black versions of white hymns or
transformations of songs from Africa, spirituals were distinctly African
American response to American conditions.
They expressed a longing of slaves
for spiritual and bodily freedom,
for safety from harm and evil,
and for relief from the hardships of slavery.
Many of the songs offered coded messages,
some like, follow the drinking gourd,
steal away and wade in the water,
contain encoded instructions for escape to the north.
Others like, sometimes I feel like a motherless child
and I am troubled in mine,
conveyed the feelings of despair that blacks slaves felt.
The spirituals also served as the critiques of slavery,
using biblical metaphors to protest
the enslavement of black people.
Such protests can be found in lyrics of Go Down Moses,
Go Down Moses, Way Down to Egypt Land,
Tell old Pharaoh, Let my people go.
The spirituals also provided African-Americans
with a means of transcending their enslaved conditions
of imagining a life of freedom.
As in the lyric, ride on, King Jesus, ride on.
No man can hinder thee.
With the rise of Jubilee singers in the 1870s,
the spirituals began to be seen as music
that revealed the beauty and depth
of African-American culture.
And so the call and response
is what we were just talking about before that,
what is it, and it's a compositional technique.
And this is from the master class
that you can take a look at
if you wanna know more details about that.
And these phrases can be either vocal, instrumental, or both.
So the call and response could be the music calling
for the response and the people know the response.
You see a lot of that James Brown music.
You see a lot of that, of course, in Cab Calloway.
We can go down the list.
So, the roots of it, again, is traditional African music.
They employed a lot of vocal versions of this.
And if you think of gossip music, for example,
you will immediately recognize the technique.
It's when a pastor or a song leader calls out
or sings a line and the congregation acquire response.
In other styles of music,
call and response is used as a form of experimentation.
And you'll, again, see this call and response
is very popular today.
And it originated in the Sub-Saharan African cultures,
which use the musical form to denote
democratic participation in public gatherings
like religious rituals, civic gatherings,
funerals, and weddings.
And the African slaves brought this tradition
to the Americas.
In the works, songs heard all over planetations
in the Deep South.
It had a huge impact on the development
of African-American music from soul, gospel, and blues,
all the way to rhythm and blues, funk,
and more contemporary examples like hip hop,
Edwin Hawkins, people know him.
Singers Gospel Standard, Oh, Happy Day, 1968.
That's a good example of a call and response
that reached the listener to directly lift their spirit.
So we're gonna listen to,
by the Tuskegee Institute Singers in 1914,
an actual performance by them in 1914,
looking at what example of a old Negro spiritual.
And so you'll hear this double male quartet,
unaccompanied, okay?
And so this has been digitized so that we can hear it,
you'll hear the crackling and things in there,
but that's just because of the time period
of when things were.
So let's take a listen to that at the moment.
Again, those authentic voices.
As we look at also the counterparts,
plenty of professional African-American musicians
and singers during reconstruction,
including a group of African University students
led by their music instructor
and billed at Fisk as the Fisk Jubilee Singers.
And so they sang African-American folk music
and religious music, including slave songs to audiences
and raised enough money through their ventures
to fund a building on campus named appropriately Jubilee Hall.
And that's what our hopper guy was talking about
as far as the Fisk Jubilee Singers were about to hear next.
So in the early part of the 1900s,
as a result of the work of black composers,
the performance of Negro spirituals
became a tradition among black singers,
particularly singers of classical music.
And composers like Harry T. Burlow, 1866 to 1949,
Margaret Bontz, 1913 to 1972,
and Hall Johnson, 1888 to 1970,
set the spirituals to piano accompaniment
as a means of preserving the perpetuating
the beauty of the traditional black music.
So let's hear from the Fisk University Jubilee Quartet,
Swing Low, Sweet Chariot, 1909.
And you'll see there John Wesley is a vocalist,
tenor vocal there.
And Fisk University Jubilee Singers,
the vocal group, King Alfred, Garfield vocalist,
bass vocal, writer, Noah Walker vocalist,
bass vocal, and J.A. vocalist, tenor.
Let's take a listen.
The music you hear in the background
as we move from our Negro spirituals now
to an overview of the Ragtime music.
The music you hear in the background
is composed by Scott Joplin
who we're gonna be talking about here next.
The rise of Ragtime is definitely an influence
from Mr. Scott Joplin.
And so we wanna hear, talk more about his plight.
But Ragtime became first nationally popular form
of American music in 1899 when Scott Joplin's 1868 to 1917
maple leaf rag enjoyed unprecedented success,
selling over a million sheet music copies.
But rag time was not new in 1899.
Documents reveal that it was being played
as early as the 1870s.
Black musicians spoke of ragging a tune when
describing the use of syncopated rhythms,
whether in classical compositions,
popular songs, or genteel dance tunes.
While Black musicians could rag tunes on any instruments,
the music we call Ragtime developed
when the piano replaced the violin
as a favorite instrument for dance accompaniment.
Something incredible that he did during such a time.
Scott Joplin was a jazz composer
known as the King of Ragtime.
He's best remembered for his tune, The Entertainer,
which was popularized in the movie, The Sting, in 1973,
for which it won an Academy Award for Best Film Scoring.
His opera, Tri Manisha, written in 1907,
won a Pulitzer Prize in 1976 when it was brought to Broadway.
Born near London, Texas, his family moved to Texarkana,
Texas when he was age seven.
Encouraged by his parents, he learned to play the banjo
and piano and in his late teens began a career
as a dance hall musician.
When Joplin died of syphilis
in a New York City mental hospital in 1917,
he was penniless and largely forgotten.
In fact, his grave at St. Michael Cemetery in East Elmhurst, Queens, went unmarked for
decades.
This seemed to happen to a lot of our musicians, unfortunately.
And so we're going to watch an excerpt of Jazz in Queens.
Scott Joplin in this video gives you some insight about his influence into the ragtime
music and unfortunately how he was treated during the time period, being a black man
who was very talented, a musical genius, unfortunately that didn't go well with
the white Americans who didn't really appreciate the ragtime music, thought it
was kind of sloppy and dirty and kind of sounded outlandish and so I think that
was more so of it than anything. Let's listen to a little bit of it before we
go right to the video.
We're not sure when ragtime began.
It emerged sometime probably in the 1880s in the black communities.
And at first it was not called ragtime, it was called red.
♪♪
In 1893, there was a World's Fair in Chicago.
and although African Americans were not permitted to perform at the World's Fair,
surrounding the World's Fair there were saloons, dance halls, and that's where
the African Americans were performing and they were performing ragtime in many
places. This was something new to most of the white people who went to the World's
fair. It became the rage. Even though the music was not heard in the fair, it was
heard outside and everyone loved ragtime. It became popular before Joplin
entered the field. Now he was at the World's Fair with a quartet. He was a
singer at the time. He was born in Northeast Texas, most likely. The first
notice of Scott Joplin is in the 1870 census. Scott Joplin was a very
intelligent, well-spoken, and extremely modest. He was reluctant to talk about
his music even. His brother Robert was, seemed to have been just the opposite,
but he just wasn't this talented. His mother was cleaning home and the home of
white family. There was a piano there and he started playing around with it and
he had talent. A local music teacher agreed to give him lessons. Later in life
in the 1890s or maybe even up to 1900 when he was living in Sedalia, Missouri
he went to the George R. Smith College which was a college just for Negroes at
that time and it has since burned down so we don't have the records. The reports
are that he was a very good singer. He started a barbershop quartet. He toured
the country with his quartet and all the reports are that they were excellent.
Do you know the name, W.C. Handy? He played piano. He played violin. He played cornet.
He wrote some orchestrations, not necessarily of his own music, of other people's. He would
have the piano music and he was orchestrated. His first ragtime composition was original
rags published early in 1899. And that was the same year as his second composition which became
the most famous instrumental rag of the time, Maple Leaf Rag. By the time he died in 1917, he had
published more than 50 pieces for piano, most of them rags, and many of them extremely good rags,
but they were not as popular as Maple Leaf Rant.
It flowed so beautifully.
No other composer was working that way.
I think this is because he had experience arranging for the Barbershop Quartet for voices.
So he was aware of this when he was writing for piano music, as if he was almost writing
voices, not just the melody, but the chords also have some melodic sense. And many of
the musicians were non-readers, and they were improvising. Louis Armstrong began as a quartet
singer, just as Joplin did. And being a quartet singer was very important for Joplin because
it taught him how to handle what we call voice leading, to make the chords move from one
to another very smoothly. Many people say that Scott Joplin had a gift of writing great
melodies, and he did write great melodies, but his most famous piece, an April leaf rag,
this is not a great melody at all. It sounds like banjo strumming. Then we get a surprise.
And that's what makes Joplin. All of these surprises. You don't expect this. You don't
get it and the music of other composers. After he composed the Maple Leaf Rag, the
first year only 400 copies were published, but then Maple Leaf Rag, I
mean everyone who saw, who heard and sourced Maple Leaf Rag, they liked it.
His second year he started selling a lot of music. The Maple Leaf Rag, it earned him
more money than any other piece, because it's sold so much.
With a guest of honor, since we don't have the music, we don't know what it's
about really, but from the few things that he mentioned in the newspapers, I'm
pretty certain that the guest of honor was Booker T. Washington, the African-
American leader at that time, who was invited to President Theodore Roosevelt's
White House and had dinner there. So he was the guest of honor. A newspaper that
I know Joplin read referred to Booker T. Washington as the guest of honor at that
event. So that's probably what the opera was about. This was a big event. Everyone
in the country knew about it. Many parts of the country spoke very poorly of it.
they would say Theodore Roosevelt will never be forgiven for this. He has made
the Negro the social equivalent of the white man which was not acceptable. This
shows that Theodore Roosevelt is president of all the people. His second
opera was Tremanicia. He had the word tree in there because it's about this
foundling this baby girl who's found under a tree and her mother's name was
Monisha so they called her a tree Monisha. The overriding point of the
opera is that for African Americans education is essential. This is what will
make African Americans equal. That was the thought. The biggest challenge was
that he was an African-American. I mean, everyone, or most people disparage African-Americans.
But he broke the stereotypes. The people would meet him and they would say he's very intelligent
and he speaks so well and he's so modest. So he personally was very much liked, very
much respected but still being African-American was difficult and who
was going to publish an African-American opera. What was good about his regs, he
did not do the obvious things. Today the most famous piece of his is The
Entertainer and the reason for that is the movie The Sting. That was a Robert
Redford, Paul Newman movie, that was a tremendous success, Academy Award winner, and the background
for that film was Scott Joplin's music. And the main theme was The Entertainer by Scott
Joplin. And that became incredibly popular in the 1970s. And suddenly the whole country
knew Scott Joplin's music. It would be formed in classical concerts and in popular concerts.
It had the popular record charts in both categories. And this had never happened before.
Why was he buried in St. Michael's Cemetery? Well, for one thing, it was free because he
he was put into a community grave, you might think a pauper's grave. So they then buried
him in Queens in St. Michael's Cemetery.
So that was the brief 10 minute piece about Scott Joplin to say that he died penniless
again has happened to a lot of different artists unfortunately. But his major influence and
You've probably heard the music before.
I didn't know that this was a black man
that had produced such beautiful ragtime music
that was that influential.
I know I didn't, and my piano teacher told me otherwise,
actually, about who this man was,
and never gave a hint that this was a black man
when I was practicing one of the first songs,
The Entertainer.
That's the irony of all of that.
The strangest part for me was when I had to discover
this history and it was a couple decades before I realized wow Scott Joplin was a
black man and I had to learn the entertainer you know with my piano
teacher and I really liked this music when I was growing up as far as when I
would practice it on the piano was very easy for me even though people have
claimed to be very difficult because it doesn't follow the regular patterns in
music. And so that being the case, I just think we sell ourselves short, right, when we don't look
at the history of things and how things are coming about. But the rise of ragtime also evolved out
of two other musical styles, Kun Song and the Kekwa. Kun Song was a racist term used to describe
the music of white minstrels performing in blackface. In acts that were supposed to be humorous,
imitations of black slaves. Blackface minstrelsly, a popular entertainment throughout most of the
19th century, was at first performed only by whites, though blacks eventually formed their
own minstrel tropes. The great blues singer Gertrude Ma Rainey, 1886 to 1939 began her career in a
in a black minstrel troupe known as the Rabbit-Foot Minstrels,
where she was later joined by Bessie Smith, 1898 to 1937,
as far as the life of Bessie Smith music.
An early form of popular American music, Coon songs,
were written by both black and white composers.
Now that would be considered derogatory today
to use such term as Coon, just for your FYI.
The Kick Walk was a stately ring dance
performed by Blacks during and after slavery.
It was accompanied by music that was similar to ragtime
and composed by such African Americans as Ernest Hogan,
Will Marion Cook, and the musical team of Bob Cole,
and Billy Johnson.
These artists popularized this style of music
and brought it to the Broadway and Broadway stages
in the late 1800s.
Now let's look at an overview of Black music
from the blues standpoint.
Gotta look at how blues was also a major influence
and still is today.
The blues is perhaps the simplest American musical form
and yet also the most versatile.
Along with jazz blues takes its shape and style
in the process of performance.
And for this reason,
it possesses a high degree of flexibility.
Although certain musical and lyrical elements of blues
can be traced back to West Africa,
The blues, like the spiritual, is a product of slavery.
As far as when it began, we know only that it began in the South during slavery and in
the years following slavery spread throughout the region as early bluesmen wandered from
place to place.
One of them, Bunk Johnson, 1879 to 1949, claimed to have played nothing but blues as a child
during the 1880s.
The blues formed the foundation of contemporary American music, as did sacred and folk music.
The Blues also greatly influenced the cultural and social lives of African Americans.
Geographically diverse incarnations of the Blues arose in various regions, including
the Mississippi Delta, Memphis, Chicago, Southern Texas.
Each regional manifestation of the Blues features a uniquely identifiable sound and message.
For example, Mississippi Delta Blues illustrated the poverty of the region while celebrating
its natural and cultural richness.
Now, here are some of the major influencers,
because blues eventually became
a woman-dominated musical entity.
So singers such as Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith,
and Alberta Hunter and Ethel Waters
were the most popular women blues singers.
Ma Rainey, referred to as a mother of the blues,
became popular in the early 1900s.
Rainey was the first popular black female stage entertainer
to incorporate authentic blues into her song selection.
And now I want to give you some history
about the mother of the blues, Ma Rainey.
Gertrude Ma Rainey Pridget.
That's how her name originally was, Gertrude Pridget.
She was born April 26th, 1886, died December 26th, 1939,
and was an American blues singer
and influential early blues recording artist.
Dubbed the mother of the blues,
she bridged earlier vaudeville
and the authentic expression of Southern blues,
influencing a generation of blues singers.
Rainey was known for her powerful vocal abilities,
energetic disposition, majestic phrasing,
and a moaning style of singing.
That's what became the blues, by the way.
Her qualities are present and most evident
in her early recordings,
Bo Weevil Blues and Moonshine Blues.
Gertrude Pritchett began performing as a teenager
and became known as Ma Rainey
after marriage to Will Paul Rainey in 1904.
They toured with the Rabbit Foot Minstrels
and later formed their own group,
Rainey and Rainey, Assassinators of the Blues.
Her first recording was made in 1923.
In the following five years, she made over 100 recordings,
including Bo Weevil Blues, 1923, Moonshine Blues, 1923,
CeeCee Rider Blues, 1925, The Blues Standard,
Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, 1927,
and Soon This Morning, 1927.
Rainey also collaborated with Thomas Dorsey,
Tampa Red, and Louis Armstrong,
and toured and recorded with the Georgia Jazz Band.
Touring until 1935, she then largely retired
from performing and continued as a theater in Presiario
in her hometown of Columbus, Georgia
until her death four years later.
She has been posthumously inducted
into the Blues Hall of Fame
as well as the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Rainey has been portrayed in several films
including the 2020 Academy Award-winning Netflix film,
Ma Rainey's Black Bottom.
In 2023, she was honored
with the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.
I'll tell you what,
The mother of the blues, Ma Rainey,
certainly had a stage presence.
Gold teeth and all, the horse hair,
she really made the crowd and audience
wonder what she was gonna put up next.
And then she had those big ostrich feather fans
that you see in a lot of her photos.
So the stage presence was what people knew her for.
And that's why Bessie Smith really adored her
and looked up to her because of that beautiful stage presence
that she wanted to have as well as Ma Rainey.
So Ma Rainey took it to a whole other level
with the blues and the moaning sound,
that's when the blues became real popular
as far as that attribute of the moaning sound
that you hear in the lyrics.
So let's listen to Gone, Daddy, Blues, Ma Rainey,
Georgia band, Gertrude Ma Rainey, that is.
And this was published in 1927.
Let's take a listen.
♪ Quickly for one time ♪
♪ When I just couldn't win the little time ♪
♪ Just one time ♪
And so that was Gone Daddy Blues by Ma Rainey in the Georgia band.
Trude Ma Rainey publication date 1927. And we want to take you to Bessie Smith who loved
the presence of Ma Rainey on stage. And so she was also, she came right after her and
she was an African American blues singer nickname, the Empress of the Blues. She started in the
company of Ma Rainey as a dancer. And she begged her brother because she was so envious
of a brother always going on tour. Begged, begged, begged, begged, begged, begged, begged
to get an audition, Ma Rainey's band, and got that addition.
As a dancer, made her way in as a singer,
and really liked that style and presence.
So around 1913, she started to form an act on her own.
She made many popular records for Columbia in 1923 to 1931
and recorded four sides of OK! in 1933.
In November, 1929, she made a two-reeler
and sang St. Louis Blues, accompanied by the Fletcher
Henderson Orchestra, James P. Johnson, and a string section.
Unfortunately, a car crash did kill her at the age of 43.
So she's considered the Empress of Blues.
We have Ma Rainey who's the mother of blues.
Bessie Smith would be considered the Empress of Blues.
So let's listen to an excerpt
from Bessie Smith, the Empress of Blues,
the song that I'll be playing.
You'll hear, it's actually accompanied by Louis Armstrong.
Yeah, on the cornet.
And then Fred Longshaw on the organ.
This is like history.
That's why I was kind of stopped there in my tracks.
This was recorded in 1925.
And so we're going to hear the St. Louis Blues,
W.C. Handy, let's take a listen.
And that was Bessie Smith, St. Louis Blues.
Now let's talk about another influencer in the blues,
Alberta Hunter.
And she began her legendary travels
between New York City, Europe, and Chicago,
performing in nightclubs and theater production,
most successfully in Europe,
including the 1928 to 1929 London production
of Showboat with Paul Robeson.
And she returned to the United States in 1929,
but the Great Depression eroded
even the dubious security of Vaudeville.
And in 1933, she headed back to Europe,
where work was more plentiful and racism less evident.
So know that a lot of musicians did that.
Even today, a lot of musicians get more,
their hands, arms were open in Europe.
since they had abolished slavery,
not that they didn't have slavery,
not that they didn't have racism,
but it was pretty extreme in the United States.
During this time, we talked about the Jim Crow laws,
very difficult living environment.
So a little bit about Alberta Hunter,
as far as who she was, born April 1st, 1895,
died October 17th, 1984.
And so she was an American jazz and blues singer
and songwriter from the early 1920s to the late 1950s.
Born in Memphis, Tennessee, to Laura Peterson,
worked as a maid in Memphis, Bothell, and Charles Hunter, a Pullman porter. Hunter said she never
knew her father. She attended Grand Elementary School off auction street, which she called
auction school in Memphis. She attended school until around age 15. She had a difficult childhood.
Her father left when she was a child and to support the family, her mother worked as a servant in the
Bothell in Memphis. Although she married again in 1906, Hunter was not happy with her new family
and left for Chicago, Illinois around the age of 11 in the hopes of becoming a paid singer. She had
heard that it paid $10 per week. Instead of finding a
job as a singer, she had to earn money by working at a
boarding house that paid $6 a week, as well as room and
board. Hunter's mother left Memphis and moved in with her
soon afterwards. And after 20 years of working as a nurse
hunter resumed her singing career in 1977. So very
dynamic indeed. And that's what we're going to hear. We're
going to hear a downhearted blues. It's a blues song
composed by musician Lovey Austin with lyrics by American jazz singer Alberta
Hunter. And the first line sets the theme for the song, Gee, but it's hard to love
someone when that someone don't love you. Hunter sang it during her engagement at
the Dream Land Cafe in Chicago where she performed with Joe King Oliver's band.
Blue singer Bessie Smith recorded the song with piano company by Clarence
Williams. It was released as her first single backed with Gulf Coast Blues and
780,000 copies were sold in the first six months.
So they definitely made money during that time.
Let's take a listen then to Alberta Hunter
in Down-Hearted Blues.
♪ My man mistreated me ♪
♪ And he throws me from his dough ♪
♪ Lord, he mistreated me ♪
♪ And he throws me from his toes ♪
♪ But the good birds say ♪
♪ You got to read just what you stole ♪
♪ I got the word in a jet ♪
♪ Got the proper idea in my hands ♪
♪ I got the word in a jet ♪
♪ And the papa right here in my hands ♪
♪ And if you want me sweet papa ♪
♪ You got to come under my command ♪
♪ Say I ain't never loved but three men in my life ♪
♪ Lord I ain't ever loved but three men in my life ♪
my life but my father and my brother and the man that wrecked my life, Lord it may be a week and it may be a month or two.
♪ I said maybe a week and it may be a month or two ♪
♪ Oh, the night you turn to me shows comin' home to you ♪
♪ But I walked the floor, sang my hands and cried ♪
Down Hearted Blues, again that was by Alberta Hunter, the vocals there, and now we're going
to get to our last influencer as far as In the Blues, Ethel Waters, and this will be
a video. Born October 31st, 1896, she passed away September 1st, 1977, and was an American
singer and actress, Waters frequently performed jazz swing and pop music on the Broadway stage
and in concerts. She began her career in the 1920s singing blues, her notable recordings including
Diana, Stormy Weather, know you've heard these songs before, Taking a Chance on Love, Heat Wave,
Supper Time, Am I Blue, which is what we're going to hear right now, 1929, Cabin in the Sky, I'm
Coming Virginia, and her version of His Eyes is on the Sparrow, Negro Spiritual, that one. Waters was
was the second African American to be nominated
for the Academy Award, the first African American
to star on her own television show.
And the first African American woman to be nominated
for a Prime Time Emmy Award.
Let's look at the dazzling Ethel Waters.
In this piece, Am I Blue?
1929.
Let's take a look.
That was the beautiful Ethel Waters.
Again, the performances, if you look at the time period,
that's just the way it was.
so you'll have mostly a white audience,
that's just how that goes.
So as we continue on, let's take a look at jazz
and all about that jazz music.
Jazz evolved from ragtime,
an American style of a syncopated instrumental music.
Jazz first materialized in New Orleans
and is often distinguished
by African American musical innovation.
Multiple forms of the genre exist today
from the dance oriented music of the 1920s,
big band era to the experimental flair
of modern avant-garde jazz.
And also we need to talk about this dynamic figure.
And we're gonna watch a 18 minute video
just about his influence.
Charles Joseph Bolden, born September 6th, 1877.
New Orleans, he was born, which is in Louisiana,
died November 4th, 1931, unfortunately, Jackson, Louisiana.
And he was a cornetist
and one of the founding fathers of jazz.
And there were many jazz musicians,
including Jelly Roll Morton and the great trumper,
Louis Armstrong, Louis Armstrong, as we call him,
acclaimed him as one of the most powerful musicians
ever to play jazz.
Little is known about the details of Bolden's career,
but it documented that by about 1895,
he was leading a band.
Acknowledged as the Cornet King of New Orleans,
Bolden often worked with six or seven different bands
simultaneously in 1906.
His emotional stability began to crumble and tumble.
And the following year he was committed
to the East Louisiana State Hospital
where he died in 1931.
And so this seemed to happen
to a lot of musicians during that time.
And I have to say, it'd have to be a different broadcast
as to why you could see here
this type of pattern happening, unfortunately.
And so let's take a look from our favorite rocker,
Polly Fonnick, who does a very cool video
about Charles Bolden and about who he was
as a person, his music, the influence,
and how much Charles Joseph Bolden's music influences
what we hear today.
So let's take a look at this particular documentary
and then we'll end with Louis Armstrong
and also Cab Callaway,
because there's so much more for us
to be able to tell you about.
But first we wanna get into more information
about Charles Joseph Bolden and the jazz
and we wanna thank again Polyphonic
for allowing us to use this video.
So let's take a listen.
Jazz has a rich mythological tradition.
It's full of tales of good and evil,
struggle and triumph, of comedy and tragedy.
And it's got a deep pantheon of gods and heroes,
men and women who have tapped into something so beautiful,
so pure with their music that they transcended mortality itself.
Of course, because the story of jazz is the story of the modern age,
we usually know the truth behind these legends.
But there's one figure in jazz who has slipped almost entirely into myth.
He was a man who lived at the turn of the century, and blew horn lines so loud and so hot that they changed the course of history.
He was the first true virtuoso of jazz music, and a man whose tragic life story would be echoed by the greats who followed in his footsteps.
And he's a mystery that jazz has been trying to unravel for generations.
His name was Charles Buddy Bolden, but to many he was known better as King Bolden.
And to some, he is known simply as the man who invented jazz.
Let's take a closer look.
As far as we know, there's only one existing photo of the man who played jazz before it was called jazz.
It's a grainy piece taken by an unknown photographer at the turn of the century.
In it, Buddy Bolden cradles his cornet, surrounded by the musicians who helped him shape history.
And while we know what Bolden looked like, we don't really know what he sounded like.
Growing up as a working class black man in New Orleans, Bolden learned to play music
by ear, so we don't have any sheets of his songs.
Furthermore, Bolden's career took place at the dawn of recording technology, and it
was over a decade before the original Dixieland Jazz Band cut what people consider to be the
first jazz record. Bolden's trombonist Willie Cornish claimed that Bolden and his band did
record one phonograph cylinder, but if that recording did indeed exist once, it has since
been lost to time. So the best way we can get a sense of what Buddy Bolden might have sounded
like is to look at the world he lived in. Buddy Bolden, like the music that he would come to define,
was born in New Orleans in the late 1800s. At that time, the city was a melting pot of
diverse musical ideas. The transatlantic slave trade had brought African rhythms to the New
World, where they coalesced into a number of different musical movements. Along the Mississippi,
field haulers turned into the blues, and in the Caribbean, they mixed with traditional Spanish
dances to become the Habanera. Meanwhile, gospel songs became an essential part
of black communities and the first generation of freed slaves had turned
minstrelsy into ragtime music. All of these musics met and conversed in the
streets of New Orleans where a young buddy Bolden heard and began to learn
them. But instead of singing in church or playing ragtime on piano, Bolden adapted
music he heard to his Cornet. Since he had no formal training, he played by ear, making up his
horn lines as he went. And Buddy Bolden played it all loud. Frankie Dusen, who played the trombone
in Bolden's band, claimed that Bolden blew the loudest horn in the world. And Albert Glennie,
who played bass with Bolden from time to time, remembered that Buddy's Cornet was as loud as
Louis Armstrong playing through a microphone a generation later. This volume, along with
Bolden's penchant for improvisation, helped him stand out in the music scene. And there
was one more innovation that Bolden brought, and it might be the most important of them
all. A rhythm known as the Big Four. The Big Four was a modification on the most popular
kind of beat at the time, the march. It took this march and jammed an African rhythm known
today as a hambone into the end. The result was a syncopated beat that created space in the music
and let improvisers go wild. Within this framework, Bolden played traditional songs
and his own original works. The most famous of these was a raunchy piece called Funky Butt,
written by Willie Cornish. That song got its name from the smell of the sweaty halls where people
packed in to dance to Bolden's music. And Funky Butt gives us our best shot at knowing what Buddy
Bolden might have sounded like. At some point the song took on a new name, Buddy Bolden Blues,
and it was recorded by Jelly Roll Morton, another one of jazz's early greats.
As for Bolden's horn, a best guess at what it might have sounded like
comes from a 1943 recording made by Bunk Johnson.
Though Johnson wasn't a member of Bolden's band, he probably played alongside the king
a number of times, and did his best to emulate those sounds on that recording.
By the time the century turned, Buddy Bolden had been crowned the king of New Orleans music,
Though it was still years away from being named Jazz
But Buddy Bolden's reign as King of New Orleans was short. In 1907 when he was just 30 years old
Bolden suffered a psychotic episode. Soon after he was committed into a mental institution with what we now know to be schizophrenia
Save for a brief discharge at the end of World War one Buddy Bolden spent the rest of his life in that mental institution
Then on November 4th 1934
Buddy Bolden died. But while Bolden was ailing in a mental institution the music
he helped invent came to find its name and then it spread across America and
around the world. Bolden's story is as compelling as it is tragic but it
doesn't end with his death and what interests me most about Bolden isn't
really his life or even the mystery of his sound. What I find most interesting
of Buddy Bolden is the way that he has been mythologized in the century and more since
he stopped playing music.
Myths are at the very foundation of culture, and the culture of jazz is no exception to
that.
The story of Buddy Bolden serves as a kind of creation myth for the genre of jazz and
by extension for nearly all of popular music.
As with most great stories, the myth of King Bolden began as oral tradition, stories passed
down by those who saw him play.
One such person was Louis Armstrong.
Though Armstrong was just six years old when Bolden was committed, he claimed that one
of his earliest memories was dancing to Bolden's music as a young child.
And of course, alongside the oral tradition, Bolden has been remembered musically by some
of the greats in jazz history.
Sidney Bechet paid tribute to his contemporary and Buddy Bolden stomp.
And then there's Duke Ellington's Hey Buddy Bolden.
Wynton Marsalis broke out his best impression of Buddy Bolden for 1992's The Legend of Buddy
Bolden.
There's two takes on Buddy Bolden, his life and his sound, that fascinate me most.
Michael Ondaatje's novel Coming Through Slaughter and the 2019 film Bolden.
There have been other works about Bolden, but few others take such an open liberty with
fact.
Ondaatje's book includes a number of apocryphal stories, including that Bolden worked as
a barber and ran a small press called The Cricket.
Meanwhile, Bolden inserts familiar musical struggles into the titular character's life,
Notably those that represent the constant tug-of-war between creativity and commerciality.
But neither of these works purport to be rooted in truth.
Instead, these stories use Buddy Bolden the same way that we've always used the Heroes
of Myth, as a means of explaining that which is inexplicable.
And jazz is inexplicable.
Sure, you can look at the history of the music that coalesced into jazz and see where it came
from, but there's something else about jazz, something raw and something uniquely human.
Something that captured the world in a way no music ever had, and changed popular culture
forever.
Both stories try to explore this aspect of jazz, not just through the content, but through
the way they tell Buddy Bolden's life.
Andache's story is strange and disjointed, his prose is experimental, often feeling closer
to poetry, it seems to be a narrative built on creating spontaneous moments of beauty,
like the improvisation that is one of the cornerstones of jazz music.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, it's at its best when Andache is writing about Bolden's music
in question.
We thought he was formless, but I think now he was tormented by order.
What was outside it?
He tore apart the plot.
See, his music was immediately on top of his own life, echoing.
As if, when he was playing, he was lost and hunting for the right accidental notes.
Listening to him was like talking to Coleman.
You were both changing direction with every sentence, sometimes in the middle, using each
other as a springboard through the dark.
You were moving so fast it was unimportant to finish and clear everything.
He would be describing something in 27 ways.
There was pain and gentleness, everything jammed into each number.
Another jazz cornerstone, syncopation, is imitated in Audace's prose as well.
His book doesn't have the steady rhythm of story to tie you down.
Instead it leaves gaps and jumps ahead, like the syncopated rhythms that Buddy Bolden's
band played.
You can say the same about the Bolden movie.
The film frames the entire story through the eyes of Buddy Bolden locked in a mental institution.
The music of Louis Armstrong comes through the radio and gives Bolden a surreal passage
into his memories.
We flit back and forth from the sweaty, vibrant dance halls to the harsh realities of lower-class
New Orleans.
At one point, Buddy Bolden parachutes into a bandstand with his segregated audience.
His music draws everyone away from the traditional pop and has people of different colors dancing
and singing together with joy.
An easy metaphor for how jazz dropped into the music world and blew it wide open.
In addition to surreal jazz inspired passages like this, Bolden works new story beats into
the life of the titular character.
The biggest of these revolves around a fictionalized manager named Bartley who pressures Buddy
into recording and selling his music. This is a conflict that has pervaded throughout
jazz history. Jazz is built around improvisation, which means there's a spontaneity baked into
its very DNA. When it comes to recording jazz, there's something about the electricity
of watching performers work off each other that's lost. But at the same time, there's
no way jazz would have flourished like it did without recording. And of course, any
discussion of jazz is also intrinsically tied to race. The recording of jazz music disseminated
it to a wider audience, and much of that audience was white. Generations of black musicians would
thrive and become icons while playing to segregated audiences. We see this emboldened through the
the performance of Louis Armstrong, who plays to a rich white audience while the black community
is forced to sit outside and listen from afar.
The racial dynamics of jazz are also explored through the character of Judge Perry, a rich
white judge who ends up condemning Bolden to the asylum.
The creation of these characters allows Bolden to explore how race ties into jazz in a way
that you just couldn't if you needed to focus on the truths we know about Buddy Bolden's
life.
Similarly the soundtrack doesn't seek to find Bolden's true sound, but instead to
create a facsimile that can appeal to more modern audiences.
Masterfully developed and performed by Wynton Marsalis, the soundtrack helps us understand
not who Buddy Bolden is, but what Buddy Bolden means.
Because really there was no true Buddy Bolden, not in the way that we imagine him anyways.
fact of the matter is that no single person invented jazz. I'm sure Buddy
Bolden was an innovator of the music but there were dozens of unnamed musicians
who created jazz in the dance halls and the brothels of New Orleans. But Bolden's
life is representative of all these musicians and so many jazz musicians to
come. Bolden's life was one of class struggle and race struggle, one defined
by a constant battle with mental illness.
Bolden's myth is one that foreshadowed
the jazz greats to come after him.
Whether it's Charlie Parker or Bix Beiderbecke,
John Coltrane or Billie Holiday,
the story of jazz is the story of great musicians
overcoming adversity only to face more.
It's the story of race and sex in America.
It's the story of the complicated relationship
between art and money and it's the story about the dangers of chasing fame and glory.
The true story of Buddy Bolden is something we'll never know. Maybe someday we'll find
the famed Lost Cylinder or dig up some archival information and learn more about the man they
called King. But in the grand scheme of things, will that really change much? I'd like to
hear Buddy Bolden play just as much as the next guy, but at the same time, I've heard
Buddy Bolden play. I've heard Buddy Bolden play through the fingers of Jelly Roll Morton.
I've heard him play through the lips of Louis Armstrong. And I've heard him brought to life
by the mind of Wynton Marsalis. I've heard Buddy Bolden play in the vast ripples of music
that spread ever outwards from New Orleans and spread even further to this day. I don't need to
hear Buddy Bolden's music because I've heard his story a thousand times. Because the story of Buddy
Bolden is the story of jazz. And we like to thank our favorite rocker guy, Polly Fonnick, for giving
that intriguing story of Buddy Bolden, Charles Buddy Bolden. And as tragic as it may seem,
these stories that we hear about are musicians who are trapped in between emotional worlds and
society that will leave one in the auspices of racist handlers. I mean that had to be a
difficult balance for anyone to try to manage. So we thank Polyphonic for giving us more information
and history, from his perspective, much appreciated.
And now we're looking at Louis Daniel Armstrong,
born August 4th, 1901, died July 6th, 1971.
Nickname, Satchmo, Satch, and Pops,
was an American trumpeter and vocalist.
He was among the most influential figures in jazz.
His career spanned five decades in several eras
in the history of jazz.
He received numerous accolades, including the Grammy Award
for Best Male Vocal Performance for Hello Dolly in 1965,
in 1965, as well as Posthumus win
for the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1972
and induction into the National Rhythm and Blues
Hall of Fame in 2017.
I said it that way because that's the way he says,
Hello Dolly, and that's what I remember as a child
growing up watching this movie with my dad, actually.
Not in 1965, because I wasn't born yet,
but it played a lot in the 70s.
If I remember the late 70s, I believe it played.
And so I got to watch that with him.
So anyways, Armstrong was born and raised in New Orleans,
coming to prominence in the 1920s
as an inventive trumpet and cornet player.
Armstrong was a foundational influence in jazz,
shifting the focus of the music
from collective improvisation to solo performance.
Around 1922, he followed his mentor, Joe King Oliver,
to Chicago to play in the Creole Jazz Band.
He earned a reputation at cutting contests,
and his fame reached band leader Fletcher Henderson.
He moved to New York City,
where he became a featured
and musically influential band soloist and recording artist.
By the 1950s, he was a national musical icon,
assisted in part by his appearances on radio
and in film and television, in addition to his concerts.
His best-known song included, What a Wonderful World.
You've all heard that song, What a Wonderful World?
And La Vie en Rose.
Hello, Dolly.
On the sunny side of the street.
Dream a little dream of me.
And when you're smiling, and when the Saints go marching in.
I know you've heard him sing, oh, when the Saints go marching
in.
He collaborated with Ella Fitzgerald,
producing three records together.
Ella and Louis, 1956.
Ella and Louis, again, 1957.
And Porgy and Bess, 1959, that's very popular.
People usually know him from there.
He also appeared in films such as Rhapsody in Black and Blue,
1932, Cabin in the Sky, 1943, High Society, 1956,
Paris Blues, 1961, A Man Called Adam, 1966,
and Hello Dolly, 1969.
With his instantly recognizable, rich, gravely voice,
Armstrong was also an influential singer
and skillful improviser.
Bending the lyrics and melody of a song,
he was also skilled at scat singing.
by the end of Armstrong's life,
his influence had spread to popular music in general.
Armstrong was one of the first
popular African-American entertainers
to cross over to wide popularity
with white and international audiences.
He rarely publicly discussed racial issues
to the dismay of fellow African-Americans.
But again, took a well-publicized stand
for desegregation in the Little Rock Crisis.
He was able to access the upper echelons
of American society at a time when this was difficult
for black men.
I'll tell you what, Louis Armstrong was very influential
on me as far as in music and my early days
of piano lessons and things like that.
I loved playing What a Wonderful World
and also hearing his raspy voice and gravely voice,
however you wanna call it.
And I love, my favorite is with Ella Fitzgerald
when he sings and we'll get to that part two
when we get to the 1950s and we get to talk about Chuck Berry
and all of those things, all of these great singers
and Icons Chuck Berry who really influenced rock and roll.
And so we're just barely getting into the 30s, 40s, and 50s
with Louis Daniel Armstrong and Cab Calloway.
And so he was definitely one of my favorites
along with Ella Fitzgerald.
I listened to him a lot when in my younger days
in piano and music.
And so again, Cabo Calloway the third,
boy did he command the presence on stage.
on December 25th, 1907, passed away November 18th, 1994.
He again was an American jazz singer and band leader.
He was associated with the Cotton Club in Harlem.
Again, we'll be talking about that in part two,
about all the great clubs in Harlem
and what was happening and cracking
and bouncing in the music scene.
So, Cap Calloway was a regular performer there in Harlem
and became a popular vocalist of the swing era.
His niche of mixing jazz and vaudeville won him acclaim
during a career that spanned over 65 years.
Callaway was a master of energetic scat singing
and led one of the most popular dance bands
in the United States from the early 1930s to the late 1940s.
His band included trumpeters Dizzy Galipsie, Jonah Jones,
and Adolphus Duck, Sheedham, and saxophonist, Ben Webster,
and Leon Chu Berry, guitarist Danny Barker,
bassist Milt Hinton, and drummer Cozy Cole.
Callaway had several hit records in the 1930s and 1940s becoming known
as the Hideo Man of Jazz for his most famous song, Mini the Moocher,
originally recorded in 1931, very fun song.
He reached the billboard charts in five consecutive decades, 1930s and 1970s.
Callaway also made several stage film and television appearances until his death
in 1994 at the age of 86.
He had roles in Stormy Weather, 1943, Porgy and Bess, 1953,
And the Cincinnati Kid, 1965, and Hello Dolly, 1967.
His career saw renewed interest when he appeared
in the 1980 film, The Blues Brothers.
Go back and watch it.
I go back and watch it all the time.
And he was still a fabulous presence on stage,
even in The Blues Brothers in 1980,
one of my favorite films when I was growing up as a kid.
I loved The Blues Brothers because of that scene,
and I appreciate that Jim Belushi.
And then bringing that to the forefront,
I really love that scene.
And Callaway was the first African American musician
to sell a million records from a single
and had to have a nationally syndicated radio show.
So he was also had a show, nationally syndicated radio show.
Everybody loved Cab Callaway.
In 1993, Callaway received the National Medal of Arts
from the United States Congress.
He posthumously received
the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2008.
His song, Minnie the Moocher,
was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999
and added to the Library of Congress
National Recording Registry in 2019.
Three years later in 2022,
the National Film Registry selected his home films
for preservation as culturally, historically,
or aesthetically significant films.
You're gonna love the pieces
that we're gonna show you here.
He's also inducted into the Big Band and Jazz Hall of Fame
and the International Jazz Hall of Fame.
This is gonna be so cool.
I can't wait to play.
First we're gonna be, you're here,
or excuse me, watch this video.
Louis Armstrong and his band Shine in this particular piece,
followed by Cab Calloway and his orchestra.
You'll get a nice surprise.
It's gonna be fun.
So let's take a look at both of these videos.
Stay with us again, starting with Louis Armstrong
and his band Shine.
So let's take a look and watch an excerpt of that.
♪ Just because my teeth are pretty big ♪
♪ Oh, just because I always wear a smile ♪
♪ Like to set up in the ladies' style ♪
♪ Just because I'm mad I'm living ♪
♪ Makes all my troubles all with a smile ♪
♪ Just because my color's shady ♪
♪ Makes no difference, baby ♪
♪ That's why they call me shine ♪
["A Rebound Minnie the Moocher"]
♪ A rebound Minnie the Moocher ♪
♪ She was the red hot hoochie coochie ♪
♪ She was the roughest, toughest frail ♪
♪ But Minnie had a heart as big as a whale ♪
♪ Hidey hidey hidey hidey hidey hidey hidey hidey hidey hidey hidey hidey hidey hidey hidey hidey hidey hidey hidey hidey hidey hidey hidey hidey hidey hidey hidey hidey hidey hidey hidey hidey hidey hidey hidey hidey hidey hidey hidey hidey hidey hidey hidey hidey hidey hidey hidey hidey hidey hidey hidey hidey hidey hidey hidey hidey hidey hidey hidey hidey hidey hidey hidey hidey hidey hidey hidey hidey hidey hidey hidey hidey hidey hidey hidey hidey hidey hidey hidey hidey hidey hidey hidey hidey hidey hidey hidey hidey hidey hidey hidey hidey hidey hidey hidey hidey hidey hidey hidey hidey hidey hidey hidey hidey hidey hidey hidey hidey hide
So that was one of the fun songs I was telling you about.
So so fun and there's your call and response that we're talking about.
And so people knew in Cab Calloway, we get on the stage, he commanded that stage, right?
You can't help but still smile even though this is like decades ago.
Same thing with Louis Armstrong, right?
Very just dynamic on stage and even if they were feeling bad, you'd never know it.
It was something that they had to get past that because it was all about being the stage
presence because you wanted the people to forget about their problems, especially during
that Jim Crow era.
He wanted them to forget about what was going on in society and enjoy the moment, the stage
presence, the dancing and all those things.
So wait, when we get to the part two, we'll be talking about how the musical influence,
as we celebrate Black Music Month, once again, the following year, we'll be able to share
that, what was going on in the 50s, 60s and 70s and that influence and genre and how music
truly influenced the changing of times
and how the social aspect of music
was very, not only inspirational, but influential.
And so I appreciate you taking some time
to celebrate with us the 2023 Black Music Month
and just bringing you to the very humble beginnings
of black music and helping people to understand
that the roots come from the pain,
and, but the roots don't end with the pain.
So the roots of black music comes from the experience
of pain, but allowed us to express it in a way
that was so melodic and beautiful,
even in the churches when we go to church
and we hear the Negro spirituals
and the call and response from the preacher
and the call and response and just music,
general music, even today, even in hip hop,
as it's the 50th year in celebration of hip hop.
And we'll be talking about that as well throughout the year.
We won't wait till next year to talk about that
because the 50th anniversary is happening now.
But thank you for joining me for 2023 Black Music Month.
My name is Julia Dudley Najeeb
and we'll see you in the next go around.
Take care.
Welcome everyone.
I'm Helen Hutchison.
My colleague Deborah Scheffler and I are here to tell you
about the measures on your Oakland ballot
for the June 2nd election.
We're recording this on April 21st.
The League of Women Voters is a grassroots,
nonpartisan organization of women and men.
Nonpartisan means we never support or oppose
political parties or candidates.
We were founded in 1920 when women gained the right to vote
and our goal is to safeguard democracy
and make it work by building a society of informed
and participating people at all levels of government.
The League has two branches.
In voter service and education,
we work to present complete information
and the arguments on all sides of an issue.
The League also has an action and advocacy branch
where we do take positions and may advocate
for legislation or ballot measures.
We keep the two roles separate.
We're here today representing the voter education branch.
So a few questions that we suggest you consider
when you're deciding how to vote on any ballot measure
is what does the measure actually do
and why is it being presented to you?
What does it cost and how will it be paid for?
Is it well written or is it likely to cause more problems
than it actually solves?
Follow the money, who's really behind it,
who's paying for it?
And which side do you agree with
and the arguments before support or oppose?
Voting is not a test, so it's okay to leave blanks
if you don't understand things,
vote for where it's clear
and things that are important to you.
There are four measures on the June 2nd ballot in Oakland.
One is for the Peralta Community College District
and three are for the city of Oakland.
I'm gonna turn it over to Deborah now
to talk about the community college measure.
So community college measure is measure A
and it is a county of Alameda measure.
So voters approved Measure B in 2012,
a $48 parcel tax to fund affordable higher education
across the Peralta community colleges,
which includes Laney and Merritt colleges here in Oakland,
the College of Alameda in Alameda,
and Berkeley City College in Berkeley.
The tax was reauthorized in 2018,
but it will expire June 30, 2028.
The 8 million in annual funds generated by this task
are used to prepare students for jobs and careers
and for transfers to four-year colleges.
Funds are also used for retraining programs
and preservation of core academic programs,
as well as for recruiting and retaining faculty.
Oversight has been provided
by an independent citizen committee
that will continue to monitor expenditures.
And I wanna emphasize that this is not a tax increase,
but a renewal of an existing tax.
The fiscal impact of this measure would be
to reauthorize the $48 per year parcel tax
for nine more years.
In lieu of expenditures in support
or opposed to this measure as we often show,
here is a list of signed supporters and opponents.
And you can see here that many of the supporters
are associated with our community college system.
So someone from Merritt College, the College of Alameda,
the Peralta Federation of Teachers,
the Alameda County Superintendent of Schools,
and Zach Unger, who is currently a member
of the Oakland City Council,
but was formerly a Peralta College's
Citizens Oversight Committee Chair.
There are no official funding committees
opposed to this measure.
So what do the supporters say?
Supporters say that voting yes on A
will maintain critical funding that supports students
at Oakland's Laney and Merritt Colleges,
College of Alameda and Berkeley City College,
and it will help them obtain quality career training programs
and avoid high interest debt.
In times of increasing educational costs
and reduced state and federal funding,
This measure provides critical funding that stabilizes these colleges' finances and enables students to learn skills for future employment.
There are no opposition statements on the Registrar of Voters website, nor have we identified other statements or articles in opposition.
What your vote means. If you vote yes, that means that you support continuing this $48 parcel tax. If you vote no, it means you oppose the parcel tax. And now I'm going to turn this over to Helen again.
Thanks Deborah. So before we talk about the first city measure on the ballot is a quick reminder about how measures can get onto the ballot.
the city council can place measures on the ballot as they did with measures C and D on this ballot
or citizens or groups can then circulate an initiative and have that get onto the ballot
and that is how we got measure E. So I'm going to next slide please and I'm going to talk about
measure C which is a temporary business tax exemption. Oakland has a business tax ordinance
which taxes businesses according to the categories of what they do.
This was approved by voters in 2022.
And so any changes also have to be approved by voters.
This measure was put on the ballot by the Oakland City Council to assist small
businesses in Oakland with their post pandemic recovery and to attract
additional businesses to the city.
San Francisco has passed and renewed similar legislation in the past few
years. The proposal is to provide a one year, so 2027, business tax exemption for small businesses
that have an annual gross receipt of $1 million or less. Those businesses that are retail sales,
grocers, businesses, and personal services, recreation and entertainment, and manufacturing.
So all of those categories of businesses would be exempt if they are small, less than $1 million.
The measure would also provide a one-year business tax exemption in 2028 for new businesses opening
in a commercial space in Oakland in 2027. That exemption would be for up to $1 million on taxes
owed. The fiscal effect of this would be the is provided by our city auditor. If passed,
this measure would exempt about 12,000 existing businesses from paying city business taxes
and would result in about a 2.2 million dollar savings for those city businesses.
That would mean a loss of about that same 2.2 million dollars in business tax revenue for the
city of Oakland for the calendar of year 2027. And again, in lieu of expenditures and support
where measures we've listed here, the people who have signed this and were supporters,
and it was, the arguments are signed by the council members, Ramachandran Unger and Mayor Lee.
It was placed on the ballot with a unanimous support from Oakland City Council, and we have
not identified any opposition to the measure. So the supporters say that Oakland small businesses
are vital to our neighborhoods and it's important to find tangible ways such as tax relief to
support their post-pandemic recovery. Oakland should support measures such as this to encourage
businesses to locate here rather than in neighboring cities. Opponents might say things like that it's
It's contradictory to offer even temporary tax exemptions
at the same time that Oakland has declared
a state of fiscal emergency.
And there's a new parcel tax measure on the ballot.
There is no clear data showing whether these tax exemptions
actually have the desired impact on the small businesses
or they're effective in attracting new businesses to Oakland.
So what's your vote means on this one?
If yes, you support the temporary business tax exemption
support the small and new businesses in Oakland and no means you oppose the temporary business
tax exemption. And back over to Debra. So this is a City of Oakland Measure D, the PFRS
or Charter Amendment, which requires 50% plus one. The Oakland Police and Fire Retirement
System called PFRS covers the city's sworn police and fire employees who were hired before
July 1, 1976, and who chose not to transfer to CalPERS, that's the statewide retirement system.
PFRS provides for the payment of retirement allowances, disability, and death benefits
to its members and their beneficiaries. PFRS is governed by a board of trustees,
including three who must be retirees covered by the PFRS system. Board member composition
and the frequency of in-person meetings is specified in our Oakland Charter.
Due to the age and geographic dispersion of the retirees, the PFRS board may soon be unable to
find members who can agree to the in-person meeting requirements and achieving quorum will
become difficult. So the board is seeking a modification to the Charter to allow for the
members to have the option to elect someone who is not a PFRS member. The PFRS board is also
seeking a charter amendment to allow for the board to meet no less frequently than quarterly.
This amendment would provide more flexibility and discretion of the board in setting meetings.
The board will still have the option to hold special meetings as needed. There are no fiscal
effects for the city of Oakland or for taxpayers involved in this measure.
So the supporters say that increased flexibility about who may serve as a trustee is a reasonable
response to the increasing age and changing demographics of those who were covered by
the system.
Increasing flexibility about the frequency of meetings is a reasonable response since
monthly meetings may not be needed and would entail unnecessary expense.
As for opposition, we have not identified any opposition to this measure.
So what your vote means, if you vote yes, you vote to support this PFRS board charter
amendment.
And if you vote no, you vote to oppose this charter amendment.
And I'm going to hand it back to Helen for Measure E.
Thanks, Deborah.
So measure E is called the public safety cleanliness and community accountability measure.
It also requires a simple majority, so 50% plus one to pass.
So in June 2025, the Oakland City Finance Committee projected a $40 million deficit
in the 2025 to 2027 budget, so the cycle we're in right now.
budgeting for the projected revenue, that deficit, the City Council budgeted based on an anticipated
additional revenue through a new parcel tax or some other means to backfill that deficit.
The stated purposes of this measure are very broad spending categories. So it's fire, police,
homelessness, and clean city activities. A lot of the things the City measure does.
This if this measure does not pass the city will revert to an alternative interim budget
for the coming year. The precise impact of not passing this measure on the city's budget and
services is really unknown because there has been no alternative budget in the public but rejection
of this measure likely would result in layoffs and reductions in city services given the current
revenue projections. The measure requires a biennial audit by the city auditor. It also
establishes a seven-member oversight commission that would be charged with issuing a report on
the expenditures of the revenues. So the fiscal impacts of this, a single family home would be
paying an additional $192 per year in multi-unit buildings. Each unit would pay $131 per year.
commercial property would be taxed based on the frontage and square foot square
footage that it has this would be in place for nine years there are the usual
exemptions we see in these kinds of measures for people with very low
incomes senior households affordable housing tenants and foreclosed family
houses property owned by religious organizations or schools and there's a
distressed homeowners exemption. The Oakland City Council discussed various possibilities
for revenue generating measures, but ultimately did not propose the measure. This measure was
placed on the ballot by collecting signatures. If a measure had come from the City Council,
it would have required a two-thirds vote to pass. This measure, because it was placed on the ballot
by collecting signatures requires a simple majority. Local unions provided approximately
$440,000 for signature gathering. As of today, April 1st, there is no organized opposition to
Measure E. So arguments for the supporters say that Oakland needs this additional revenue to
address serious problems, including gun violence, illegal dumping, and challenges of helping the
the unhoused population.
Without these revenues, residents in Oakland
face reductions of core city services.
The city needs this revenue as it develops
additional fiscal policies and plans
to fully recover post pandemic.
Opponents to this say that property taxes in Oakland
are already at an unacceptably high level.
And the measure gives so much discretion
to the city council to decide the allocation
of this money, that the oversight is meaningless.
Proposing additional taxes to the existing tax tax,
excuse me, proposing additional taxes
to the existing taxes for property owners already pay
requires much more transparency and justification
than had been provided.
What your vote means.
If you vote yes, you approve a new parcel tax
for nine years to help back fill the city budget deficit
and no means you oppose this new parcel tax.
Back over to Deborah.
All right, be an informed voter.
On our website, we have links to how to register to vote,
change your registration, update it, ways to vote,
important deadlines, and how to get informed
about the measures.
Let's get a little more specific.
We have on our website,
one-pagers on the pros and cons of these ballot measures
we've just been discussing.
And we have the easy voter guide,
an easy to read guide on tips on voting.
You can refer to them to learn more about these measures
and about voting generally.
Vote 411 is our national platform.
And if you enter your address,
you can view your entire ballot,
as well as links to voting resources,
kinds of things we've been talking about here. While we never endorse candidates or parties,
we do organize candidate forums and we post those recordings on our website also.
So thank you for attending this presentation and thank you for being a voter. We have been
championing democracy in Oakland since 1924 for over 100 years. Again, please visit our website
for more voting resources. Finally, do consider becoming a member. We offer a sliding scale fee
to support all budgets and most importantly, it's a validation of the work that we do. Thank you again.
The Blues is something we didn't want, but that's what we got. And in fact, it is sort of like our
psychological outlet release.
The history of black people in America,
starting from Congo Square,
feel how it's from us working out on cotton fields,
begging for our lives every day.
♪ I want him to try ♪
I don't think you can grow up in Oakland
during that time period and didn't play the blues
because this is just part of the culture there.
It's that funkiness about Oakland.
Eugene Blacknell was magical to us.
Bob Geddings, Chico Potty Santo, Jimmy McCracken.
Faye Carroll has an Oakland sound.
We have a funkiness to us.
It's just your story of youth and what you feel.
That's what the blues is.
Horns is indigenous to West Coast blues.
both folks in Jimmy McCracklin, Lewis Jordan,
they all would have at least seven, eight horns.
The blueprint of black life.
All of the joys, sorrows,
the education, the miseducation, the sexuality,
just the whole blueprint of life.
And it had to be expressed.
And it came from a place of hardship
because we were living hard and we had to talk about it.
The Great Migration was an outpouring
of six million African Americans from the South
to the rest of the United States of America
from the time of World War I until the 1970s.
90% of all African Americans were living in the South
at the time the Great Migration began
and that meant that 10% of all African Americans
were spread out throughout the entire rest of the United States and this migration followed
three beautifully predictable streams.
We focus on the development of West Coast blues that wartime migration of so many cultures,
Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas and Oklahoma.
music is probably the most significant and recognizable, instantly recognizable gift
of the Great Migration.
I don't know what we would be listening to if there were no Great Migration.
I mean literally as Americans and thus as human beings because of the impact that American
music has had on what people in the world listen to.
For the kids to know that, really know that, and know it from a prideful place.
But no, look what we did.
contribution is so great. You bring these Africans over here to work for no pay
and you're gonna own them and they're coming with this rich musical tradition
that goes back thousands of years in Africa and you you know put them in the
fields something happens. The more you research black music the more you
realize everywhere black folks go they create a musical scene of their own. I
I grew up in the country. I know I drank well water. I worked in the field. I know what it's like. I kind of know where they're coming from.
The people brought the sounds that was with them. And once they became city people, the sounds evolved because they was evolving.
So the music starts reflecting that.
I always call it black roots because it came really from these spirituals and singing in the fields and that's all that you had.
All American music, especially country music,
is black blues, is slave music.
From darkness, from tragedy, from tragic surroundings
and environments, as we even learn from hip-hop,
comes great art.
What the migration did was it allowed
people who had been held down to, in some cases
within a single generation, lift themselves up to such a degree that they would actually
have an indelible impact on the culture itself.
Now, a lot of the cowboys come out of Texas, very famous lap steel guitars, play the country
western band, had those guys take their instruments in and in so doing. I asked them, could I
I said, you guys practice session, tune-up session?
He said, sure.
And I looked up at it and I smiled.
I said, man, that's beautiful.
I said, when I get to be a man, I'm going to get me one of
them, and I'm going to play it too.
He looked at me and he smiled, and he said, I don't
think so, son.
This is a white man's instrument, and niggas
don't play them.
I'll be the first to play one.
I'll be the best at it.
but that was an old black man that did play one of them,
Elsie Goodrockin' Robinson, Lupton Berkley.
I played bass behind them just to learn the technique
of how to play the lap steel guitar, and I did.
And that was over 30 years ago,
and then nobody can touch me.
♪♪
Charles Sullivan.
He would bring everybody in here,
because he was a booking agent.
He would book the West Coast period.
So he kept a lot going on here, you know?
Born around 1907, though he started with nothing,
Charles Sullivan became known as the mayor of Fillmore.
When he was two, his mother signed papers
that indentured him as an apprentice to Robert Sullivan.
That meant Robert became the master of Charles.
He abused and beat Charles.
Charles ran away for the first time at the age of 13.
He was determined to make it to the West Coast.
Young Sullivan landed on his speed in Los Angeles
and got a job washing cars.
He also ventured into the jukebox
and vending machine businesses,
with his jukeboxes and black bars on both sides of the bay.
Sullivan became an important player
in the growing record business centered
around Oakland's 7th Street.
Sullivan also became the biggest concert promoter
on the West Coast.
His crew promoted shows for James Brown, Jackie Wilson,
Bobby Blueland, Ike and Tina Turner,
Ray Charles, The Temptations,
and a host of other international blues and R&D artists.
His businesses took off after he acquired the master lease
for a building on Fillmore and Geary.
He named it the Fillmore Auditorium.
His fortune changed on August 2nd, 1966.
He was found murdered, alone, by the railroad tracks in San Francisco south of Market.
His murder is still unsolved.
I saw B.B. King at the Fillmore Auditorium when it was a black dance hall, before Bill
Graham was doing rock there.
A black businessman named Charles Sullivan was running the place.
And me and my friend Rick were the only two white guys in the whole place.
And I realized there's nothing dangerous about this place.
These people are friendly.
I felt right at home.
In fact, that's when I said to myself, this is where I want to be.
I want to be in the middle of all of this.
The beauty of the Great Migration was that it was a leaderless revolution.
The only way that they could get any information was if they could get their hands on one of
the northern newspapers, the Chicago Defender, the Pittsburgh Courier, the Pullman Porters
would drop them off in designated locations off of the side of the tracks.
This is the beauty of the network of how did they make this happen without cell phones
and texting and e-mail, and it's amazing what the human heart will do when it has a desire
to be free.
A long time I thought I was from Arkansas.
I'm on the line of Arkansas and Louisiana.
They ended up here because my father, he beat up this guy, it was a white guy and he was
harassing his sister.
And so my dad came up and saw what was happening and he got angry and he beat him up.
But we knew he's going to come back with a lot of people.
So we're going to get out of here and he made his sister.
He left everything, the house, everything.
So he threw us all in the car, including his sister.
And down the highway we went.
And we stopped in Vallejo, California.
And my father told me this story over and over as a kid.
My grandmother was named Minnie.
And the insurance guy came by and said,
I want them two guineas to get insurance.
And he said, my children ain't no damn guineas.
She had told him, she said, you shouldn't have sassy to him.
Eddie they gonna come back for you.
She made them leave.
They was at the train station, here come the Klan,
and they rolled up on the side of the train set,
stopped the train.
He said, we're on government rails, you can't get him.
You go find another one.
We moved to Oakland right there on 8th Street,
behind 7th Street, which was the epicenter of black life.
They had stores there.
The movie theater was there on 7th Street.
You would see both sides of the street, businesses.
You would see people walking back and forth both sides, all black, well-dressed, very
mannable, happy, music, music, music.
The first African-American music that I know for sure was played on 7th Street was in 1917
at a club called the Creole Cafe, and Kid Orie and his band from New Orleans was playing
there.
But it was sort of a tradition on Saturday night.
We'd get in the car, brother, dad, and the lecturer,
go down to West Oakland and do our shopping.
Because it was a drug store.
There were markets along the way, clothing stores.
Because these were the people that supported dad.
And he made sure that he went down and supported them.
You'd see all walks of life.
Because don't forget, they had pawn shops,
pool halls, record stores, wolf records,
and reed records was the ticket masters of the day.
This street here had a lot of juke joints.
Like this one place here, this would have been
nearly the Kit Kat Club or the Black Girls Lounge
further down, but it might have been the Rex Club.
It could have been the main event.
All these clubs was on this street.
And you'd go from one to the other,
one to the other, one to the other,
and then they'd always have a jam section.
Of course, you'd see the white and black
maritime workers, the white guys from the south.
We'd run in the SS Orbit Room to get hog mugs,
to get, you know, to get oxtails,
to get the real southern food.
With the war came the demand for down home blues
from Texas in particular, the kind of blues
that the new residents had heard back home.
And Bob Geddons filled that demand.
When he got ready to leave Texas,
him and a friend jumped on a freight train.
He left from Los Angeles to visit his mom up here in Oakland.
And he said he went down on 7th Street
and he said he's seen all them people down there.
He said, this is where I need to be at.
I bet I can get the blues over.
Bob Geddens built his own studio by hand from used parts
and began recording these down home blues musicians
and singers like Lowell Folsom and Casey Douglas.
Bob Gedding's style was always that gospel thing.
He didn't lack a lot of fast stuff.
That's the kind of style that was popular or made it
to the charts, but that's not Oakland Blues.
Oakland Blues is more jumpy with the horn thing,
much more lively.
But that slow draggy Bob Geddings blues was great.
It really put Oakland on the map.
What is the blues?
Well, maybe different people got different opinion of the blues.
But my opinion of the blues is when you're all dining out
and you're a woman or something and treat it wrong.
And the next day, you just got that certain feeling.
Low down, it's feeling.
And I call it, and it ladders and langers on your mind.
So I figured that's the blues on your mind.
I recorded my first hit record here in the Bay Area
with Bob Geddings, who was producing soul music and all that.
I brought a tape to his studio one day
with the I Wanna Know hit.
And I was sitting in the studio when Sugar Pie and Pee Wee
came in with a huge recording.
She said, Bob, I think I got one.
She goes, yes.
Plug it in.
Let me hear it.
So they plugged it in.
Because I want to know.
Bob said, you come back tonight, and you're
going to cut that sucker hard.
He said, and he was so funny.
My god, that sounds like a hit.
Some people are born with sound in their ear.
They don't have to know, you know,
not an inkling of music.
It's all a feel, and this is what he had.
You know, he couldn't read A-flat from B-flat,
but he could feel and he could hear, and very keenly.
And you couldn't fool him for nothing in the world.
You know, if you try to say, well, no, Geddings,
I don't want that there.
I want to know if he saw.
And he had that draw, oh, no, don't play that.
You know what I mean?
Really down, down home dude.
But he knew what he wanted.
And he come across with it.
Any artist that he was producing,
he would always hum the way he wanted to hear them sing it.
You know what I mean?
So it was a certain feeling and emotion
that he would want to see.
He was recording the lower post,
and then he had those metal discs,
you know what I mean?
And every time the lower post would hum the word a long way,
he'd have to take that disc up,
bend it up, and throw it away.
And he would be mad.
Now he used to sit and laugh,
I'd say, man, you should go through a whole lot of problems
trying to make a record.
3 o'clock jump was the first hit on Bob Getty's label.
Blues hit that low, John.
And that's what put Bob Getty's on the map.
He was able to buy a lot of new equipment and everything.
You know, sometimes I'd be playing.
I'd take off my hat and lay it down.
And I'd look at it.
It'd be full.
And I'd take it and do it like this
so I wouldn't waste nothing.
I'm going to put mine in my pocket.
I'm going to put mine back in my pocket.
I'm going to put mine back in my pocket.
I'm going to put mine back in my pocket.
Lowell was a self-taught guitarist
influenced by the strains
of his 90-year-old grandfather's violin.
In 1939,
one of his first professional jobs
was replacing Howlin' Wolf
in a country band led by a singer
named Texas Alexander.
Soon after,
Lowell was drafted into the military and then relocated to the bay area at the end of World War II.
Folsom began recording for Bob Gettins in 1946.
Folsom bands were the launchpad for many greats like Lloyd Glenn, Jay McShannon, Ray Charles,
Ike Antina Turner, King Curtis, and Stanley Turrentine.
In the 1990s, Lowell recorded and toured, winning several WC Handy Blues Awards.
He was inducted into the Blues Foundation Hall of Fame.
He also received two Grammy nominations and the R&B Foundation Pioneer Award.
Lowell and Bebe are among the key architects of the new urban, sophisticated and horn-driven
blues that remains popular to this day.
His legacy as a guitar player is rarely matched.
His fluid delivery up against his damping legato phrasing and attack is still studied
intently by serious students of blues guitar.
Folsom's legacy floats on.
Rock is kind of an Oklahoma, Texas, twang style guitar playing to Oakland blues.
7th Street was still vibrant because you could go see somebody like Lord Folsom someplace
and then somebody like myself who was just starting.
We worked every night someplace.
The complexion of West Oakland prior to the war was of all kinds of nationalities, white
and black primarily, and I don't know what the black population was, but it wasn't like
it became suddenly during World War II.
The coasts were where the action was with shipbuilding, with ports of embarkation, wars
in the Pacific or in the European theatre, so it was really promoted as your patriotic
duty to see what you can create in the way of housing for war workers rather than them
just living in their car or sleeping overnight in the Lincoln Theatre or something.
White people would take their big old Victorian or whatever the houses they had and divide
them up into apartments and rent to black folks while the white folks moved to East
The stewards had a kind of a house that had a lot of room and they rent it to a lot of people that were coming out.
And I guess people got their start there and then eventually moved on.
We went to Star Bethel Missionary Baptist Church right there on 7th and Center, where the apartheid is now.
I guess my dad met the stewards at church when he came out and then we all lived there for a minute.
And then eventually my parents got their own place.
The houses that we moved in always were related to where dad can work.
He rented a store that would be like a small supermarket size and with his carpentry skills
he put a partition down the middle of the store and the shoe repair shop was here.
Mother had gone to beauty school and the beauty shop was on the other side.
extended to support other blacks so we had a chance to meet and know quite a few people.
West Oakland's black community in the middle decades of the 20th century developed a rich
and robust entertainment culture.
It was a good time in history because there was no line of demarcation between professions.
You shopped with one another, the money circulated.
It was unheard of to be unemployed because you could always work for one of the merchants.
But also homelessness was unheard of.
It was a phenomenal system that we had under segregation.
Well the war in it, the jobs in it, and integration.
You couldn't go to the Fairmount before, but now you can.
So everybody took off to the Fairmount.
They used to go to Slim Jenkins and he had to lay off some waitresses.
They had to lay off the cook, you know, and it was just a domino effect.
The CAS system was formalized and commodified in the South, and it migrated with the people
when they journeyed out of the South trying to escape it.
It's about a structure of hierarchy that exists in this country.
It's kind of a blueprint for how people are to be treated.
It's been passed down through generation, through generation,
and to break through that means to understand what it is
and to know that it is not about how you feel about someone.
How dare anyone mistreat another person
for the characteristics that they had
nothing whatsoever to do with.
["Dancing With My Life"]
Timon McCracken is the most important musician
to come out of the Bay Area Post-World War II.
McCracken fell under the tutoring of Walter Davis,
a great blues vocalist and pianist. After stint in the Navy, he chose a career in
entertainment and migrated to the West Coast, finally settling in Richmond,
California. He recorded for a slew of labels before
associating with Bob Gettin Sr. It was with Gettin's that McCracklin was the
most fertile and creative. As proof that he wrote The Thrill is Gone, McCracklin
offered a wrinkle envelope postmark 1948 that was mailed to himself with the song
title written on the flap of the envelope. McCracken claims between Lowell
Paulson and himself that he is the better songwriter. Well now they're both
gone and there's no debate. Jim McCracken died at the age of 91. The song that was
made famous by B.B. King was written right here and that is The Thrill is Gone.
It was Bob Geddes and Roy Hawkins and Jim McCracken is the authors of that song.
He wrote that song for Roy Hawkins.
My dad never made our contracts with an artist.
Then B.B. King, then it blew up.
It blew up.
B.B. King was signed to modern records in them days,
and that's who my dad used to sublease to.
And look, years later, B.B. King make the thing
make a big old head out of it. We don't get nothing.
The Thrill is Gone was one of the first blues song
ever to hit the pop charts first. The thrill of working with a great
artist like Sugar Pie is it keeps you on your toes
because you always have to watch them and they give you cues.
In Filipino it means a bitter melon or sour fruit and I'm named after my father's mother, Ampalaya,
quite a name, huh? I went out there at a young age and started singing at the theaters locally in
San Francisco, you know, like the Ellis Theater. I ran into Johnny Otis who discovered me way back
in the early 50s and right away he liked me. He said, you are going with me. I said, excuse
me? And who are you? You know what I mean? I'm Dee Johnny Otis, you know, hand jive.
Don't, don't, don't, don't. Really, he said, yes. I went to L.A. and cut my first record
in 1955. First one, with Johnny Otis. And I'll never forget it. He said, I tell you,
You're so little, you're just a little sugar pumpkin.
And that's how I got it.
He named me right on the spot, my first record.
Please be true and boom-diddy-wah-wah, baby.
Never forget it.
Raise your hand.
Everybody, I said raise it.
And when you raise it, I said get up.
And I always could control an audience.
I said control them.
If I say move left, they'll move.
If I say go right, they'll come.
If I say come on, they'll come.
It's just something in the way that I portrayed my talent.
I just brought them with me.
And it's the same that applies today, same thing.
Aaron T. Bo Walker was a main ingredient
in the Texas to Oakland Blues Pipeline.
Walker and his music were transported by the Great Migration.
As a young boy, T. Bone was a guide
for Blind Lemon Jefferson, a street musician
and father of the Texas Blues.
Jefferson mentored Walker in the art of blues guitar.
T-Bone recorded his first release in 1929.
He was known as the father of the electric blues.
His stamp on the Oakland blues scene is simply undeniable.
You could catch his performance at Slim Jenkins
and at both of Don Barksdale's clubs,
the sportsman, and the showcase.
T-Bone was an amazing showman.
He always dressed neatly and was known
for doing the splits while playing his guitar.
Bernita Walker fondly recalls the night in 1987
that her dad received his induction
into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
She remembers Chuck Berry claiming his own stage antics
came from T-Bone Walker.
And as far as he was concerned,
T-Bone Walker was the greatest entertainer of all time.
In 1975, at the age of 64,
T-Bone left the earth way too soon.
His style of guitar licks is still being copied
all over the world.
When they came here to California,
when they came here to Oakland,
they were met with tremendous resistance.
And this resistance came in the form of often violence
when they sought to move into a neighborhood
that was outside the prescribed places assigned to them
in each of these cities.
They were met with restrictive covenants,
which meant that white homeowners were forbidden
to sell to them, even if they were so inclined to sell to them.
It was written into the very deeds of the property.
And then there was redlining, which meant
that the government would not permit loans
in the places where African-Americans lived.
Will the new black migrants have access to jobs?
Will they have access to housing?
Will they have access to politics?
These were formal walls that were created
to restrict African Americans from owning homes
to be able to build wealth
that other Americans were permitted to do.
And wealth does not mean that you are rich.
Wealth just means what assets,
what resources do you have to call upon
for the development of your family and your family's health.
We still live with the effects of that to this day.
Most opportunities have in the United States
been racialized in the 20th century.
That's simply a fact.
Johnny Chapman played with everybody.
He played with Larry Williams for a long time
who made Boney Maroney.
He played with Ella James, T. Bone Walker,
and everybody else, you know,
because he used to go back to the beginning.
And he had a great band.
He probably had one of the greatest band
that ever come out of Oakland.
We started playing at a place called The Shack.
It's in Russell City,
and it's all hogs and pigs out there.
And The Shack, it was a nightclub,
but I guess what they call a real old, old juke joint.
When the sun shines,
the sun comes right through the woods,
and it would rain right on us while we were playing.
It was one way in and one way out.
You go down and it was a nicer club,
stuck old and all that.
We weren't old enough to get in there
but we told him we was playing down at the shack,
Johnny Talbot was playing.
Man, wow, this guy, you know?
That's how I met him.
I won a talent show at the Oakland Auditorium.
And part of the prize was to be able to
sing with a professional band in a professional club.
The band was Johnny Talbot and the Thames
and the venue was the side door at the Zanzibar,
California Hotel.
So that's how I got started.
I started adding a horn player like every six months.
So I had like almost a orchestra and I mean, fuck.
It was only one person in my way.
And that was Johnny Talbot.
♪♪
You know, like in the fight sports,
he was the reigning champion.
I had to give it to him.
A blues man can tell you a story.
And in the old days, he'd tell you a story,
and the song may break down and go one direction
and come right back.
Nowadays, a great blues man can tell you a story,
and then the song will go through eight chord changes
and then come back, and then have a rap breakdown,
and then come back, and then he'd tell you the same story.
So the blues evolved into funk because the music that
backed up these stories evolved.
The blues it is a natural development and a lot of people mistake the blues as something
easy that you can do easily.
To play the eight bar blues, the country blues and the twelve bar blues which is the city
blues they added one more four bar chorus to the city.
So you got a problem, you state the problem, you state it again in the second chorus.
Last four bars is the solution.
It's a very vital part, it's a natural folk art spread around the world.
Billy May, Big Mama Thornton.
She was born in Oregon, Alabama in 1926.
She began singing in church where her mom
was a gospel singer and her dad was a preacher.
In 1950, Big Mama Thornton recorded her first record
as a member of the Harlan Stars.
She signed a contract with Peacock Records
where she cut several singles.
While on the road with the Donny Otis show,
Big Mama cut a song that was handwritten
on a paper bag called Houndo.
Big Mama tweaked it lyrically
while the Johnny Otis band tweaked it rhythmically.
The song shocked the number one on the R&B charts
and stayed for seven weeks.
It was the biggest hit of her career.
She was paid a minimal fee for her efforts
and she never received a penny in royalties.
Her career had many additional highs and lows.
For the end of the 1950s,
Big Mama moved to the Bay Area and settled in Oakland.
She played on 7th Street and all over the West Coast.
One of Big Mama's finest career moments
was playing at Carnegie Hall,
performing with the Count Basie Orchestra
and John Hammond's Spirituals to Swing Concerts.
Big Mama played her last concert
at the Julia Morgan Theater in Berkeley.
Although she was ill and used to walker,
she was still feisty and had a disruptive patron
tossed from the vineyard.
She completed this show with her resounding approval
from her audience.
Big Mama died that same year in Los Angeles, and it's remembered as one of the finest blues
performers of all time. When I first went to Europe, it was with Big Mama Thornton,
and the first concert we played was at a beautiful hall in Baden Baden, Germany,
and Big Mama started to sing and definitely quiet. I mean, it was so quiet, I started looking around,
What's going on? And once she's completed Thunder Salvation and of course on the tour
it was Big Mama, Buddy Guy, John Lee Hooker, Fred McDowell, Freddie B. Low, and they were like
close to the fathers. You know we're often asked how is it overseas versus performing here.
When we come to Europe they're hearing artists singing in their language and they appreciate
what we do. When we get back home it's like, yeah well so-and-so does the blues so does 40 other people.
I went from being like a child prodigy to actually playing in a club and from playing in a little
little club in my little hometown to plan in Oakland.
And Oakland was like New York to me.
I actually got the job at Glide,
and I was really only supposed to be at Glide for two weeks.
And then I ended up doing it for 35 years.
♪♪
It was the promoter of gospel music
at the Oakland Auditorium.
Everybody who was great, they were able to showcase.
I love the way it made me feel.
There was certain chords with the ones that made me feel so happy, so beautiful.
Why did they come here to sing to us?
Because we needed home to come where we were because we had migrated here.
It was like visiting somebody in jail.
You brought the cookies, you brought the sandwich.
The phrasing and those notes, they can make you cry and they can make you happy.
the sacred and the secular, it's not as divided
in our community as it is in Mo's.
That's why they sold out when they came here
because they brought home back to us.
Blues is the Genesis, I pray that, that never evaporates.
Omar Sharif was born David Alexander Elam
on March 10th, 1938 in Shreveport, Louisiana.
His family settled in Marshall, Texas while he was still an infant.
Marshall, Texas claims to be the birthplace of the Boogie Woogie.
Though Dave Alexander's dad was a piano player,
Dave was largely self-taught because his mother insisted that he play in church.
In 1957, after two years in the military,
the Texas Oakland Blues Pipeline shuttered Alexander to Oakland.
and for 10 years he toiled tirelessly in Oakland area clubs.
He first recorded in 1968 on the World Pacific label
on a compilation album entitled Oakland Blues.
Omar in the company of such greats as
Albert Collins, L.C. Good Rockin' Robinson,
and Lafayette, Thing Thomas, with tracks arranged and directed by
Jimmy McCracklin, helped create a highly regarded collector's item
has become a prime example of Oakland blues. His first recording under Omar
Sharif was the critically acclaimed The Raven, released in 1991. It strains the
essence of a powerful blues statement. Dissonant jazz chords, T-Bone Walker's
hesitation mix, and it incorporates painfully poignant lyrics. Omar Sharif
with the gifted brilliance blends blues, jazz, classical, and other distinct styles to his
politically charged lyrics. Along with the smooth grace of Charles Brown, Alexander sets the standard
for blues piano on 7th Street. Well my family, my father, and us were living in West Oakland,
across from a school called Durant and one day on a Saturday we heard something outside
it was I guess it was music because in 55 you know TVs and radios and all we didn't have that
so we went outside and it was a band playing never seen nothing like that never in my life
didn't know what a guitar was didn't know what drums were it was Larry Graham Dale Hart and Eugene
Well, Larry had an electric guitar and Eugene Blackmill was in the background.
He had an acoustical guitar, and they had all, everybody else had an electrified instrument,
and I mean, that was it.
My father came home, my brother and I said, well, we want to play, and he said, no.
So what I did was I was in 7th grade.
I made a guitar in Woodshop.
The instructor in the class, he got into it, he cut out the shape of a guitar and then
he helped me put breaths on there and all that.
When my father came home, I showed him, I got a guitar.
Then he knew I really wanted to play and so then he took me and brought a guitar, but
I wanted one that Larry had, it's called the Supro.
And I threw away the one I made.
I'd get that every time I think about it.
I'm a product of vocal, even though I was born in Texas.
And at McCleimons, we had a music teacher
who was, we considered a genius.
Almost everybody he touched did well in music field.
Mr. Penn, he heard of him.
He was a great music teacher, and I would go to him
and ask him, show me a line, and he'd show it to me,
and then we'd be playing someplace,
and all the bass players in the club run up to me.
Show me what you did, show me what that was,
and stuff like that.
And I used to depend on him.
The school we went to, the teachers and the counselors
encouraged you to do your best, you know?
And I get settled a little, give me a minute.
And they always tell you, don't settle for less.
And that carried me a long ways.
I played drums, a drum kit exclusively,
born and raised in Oakland.
And I started playing in clubs at about 13 or 14.
I played with various musicians who are no longer with us.
Eddie Foster, Bobby Forte, Claude High.
I played with Ms. Faye Carroll.
And I played at Don Barksdale's Sportsman's Club.
The Whispers came up in Los Angeles.
And we played, we backed The Whispers up.
Dobie Gray, he made a hit called I'm In With The In Crowd.
And O.V. Wright, he was a soul singer from the South.
I'm from a jazz background,
but jazz musicians know how to play the blues.
And you have to because people would ask you to say,
oh, after you play all that jazz, all that fancy stuff,
can y'all play some blues?
That's what we're guessing.
So I know what the blues is and I know how it goes, right?
♪ My baby went to Sweet Jimmy's one Friday night ♪
♪ All of a sudden there was a fight ♪
♪ Somebody walked up and grabbed her from behind ♪
I was just telling Dale Hart how I was in high school, and he was playing at a club
in East Oakland called Al's House of Smiles, and we used to, the back door used to be open
with a screen on it.
So I'd be, you'd have to go around this dark alley light, and you could see in the club
and listening. But you could go through the screen and the steps led right up to the stage.
They had a stage that was above the bar. So I would go up those steps and Eugene and Dale
Hart and them, they'd be up there playing. And they'd always let me play the last song.
I'd sit there all night. We would watch these cats that were out there doing it, like the
ballads and Eddie Foster and Johnny Talbot's band. As a matter of fact we named our first
band D. Emeralds, because it was Johnny Talbot and D. Thame. But Ron Wells, the first time
I saw him we were at a talent show at the Oakland Auditorium, and it was Gene Blacknell
and his band, Johnny Brown, all the cats was in the band. They were backing up Joe Simon,
and I mean they were killing. But before they went on, we were just back there watching
the cats. And Ron Wells was sitting on the drums and he was just backstage playing with
them before he went on. He wasn't a drummer in the band at the time. But these were all
his homies. I said, what was that cat? That was my first time seeing you, man. My first
time. Haha.
That was the NAACP talent set at the Oakland Auditorium Theatre.
Right. So these cats are like role models for me. These cats were out there doing it,
making records and we had a community here where even though we had the national artists
like James Brown, Bobby Bland, B.B. King, all these cats coming through the area, Lou
Rawls would be at the showcase with a sportsman, Ike and Tina Turner, the Impressions, Curtis
Mayfield and the Impressions. We had all that going on but then we had a community that
was amazing, like the ballads, like Faye Carroll, Johnny
Tabard and the D things, and all these Eddie Foster.
Marvin Holmes.
Marvin Holmes, yeah.
Fred Hughes.
Freddie is probably, from my estimation,
one of the most incredibly emotional voices,
phenomenal voices that ever came out
of the Bay Area that should have actually
been an international voice.
Listen to that song, Sharing, that I
I never wrote the vitamin album.
I haven't seen anybody since Fred
that could sing as good as Fred.
♪ I know that you could be a woman ♪
I started singing at church
and I was with Edwin Hawkins
and his sister, Fady and Carol Hawkins.
It left and went its way
and I continued to try and sing.
So I noticed that there's a whole lot of good singers
in the church.
So you know, it wasn't no way.
It's a way to rehearse and learn your craft,
but it's not a place to get paid properly.
A lot of folks didn't particularly like me
because I sang high and I didn't,
I had a gospel thing.
What I wanna tell you about Fred,
out of all of the singers that come out of Oakland,
I'm talking about everybody.
He is the guy.
You know, you talk about, he's got a good voice,
but when he was a kid, he was unbelievable.
I sung hard, I sang.
I had a lot of range, you know?
♪ To share with what it's all about ♪
I learned how to produce records through Norman Connors.
I was there through his whole career.
Matter of fact, he and I were roommates in New York.
Norman was like a conduit.
He had this record deal, and he was
able to go into the community and bring
all these incredible talents, Phyllis Hyman, Michael Henderson,
and record them.
We both told each other when we were starving and deaf
in New York that if either one of us made it,
we would pull the other one.
So his record would plant, and he got me
a record deal with Buddha Records.
He named my band Vitamin E.
And I got Freddie Hughes, Lady Bianca, David Gardner.
Those are my singers.
♪ Like I'm impossible to see ♪
♪ I'm love's unknown soldier fighting ♪
♪ But that girl just won't see me ♪
♪ And it's telling me ♪
My most famous song probably would be
As You Are With Phyllis Hyman.
I think a lot of people had misconceptions
about my writing because later on, people say,
well, you never write about love or nothing like that.
Cause I create music probably different
than a lot of other people do.
And at first when I started back in the early 60s,
not being able to go to school or for music or anything,
you just go by what you hear on the radio.
And I met a guy named Eddie Foster,
probably one of the baddest guitar players in the world.
I mean, you include him with George Benson,
and he was from Oakland.
I would go and I'd practically be sleeping on his porch
and he said, oh man, come on in.
Nicest guy in the world.
And so he started teaching me.
I never even thought about if people like what I did.
I always recorded what I felt.
My whole thing is drums and percussion.
I played all of it.
Conga, timbales, bata drums, the whole bit.
I studied it.
I really started with the escavado family,
teetaner, and they took me under their wings
and taught me that, okay?
And from there I went into the exploring the funk part of the music.
That's why we had the Oakland Funk Machine.
And after that, years of that and the whole bit, I got there together, I started exploring jazz.
That's when I met Cal Jada, and I played with Cal Jada, and I played with everybody that come through Oakland.
Through that, I developed my own style of playing.
I had a combination of the funk, the latin, and the jazz.
♪ Let's move on to the gamble ♪
♪ And I know it's true ♪
♪ Rock that bumblebee ♪
♪ Watch out for you ♪
♪ Before we fade ♪
♪ What will we do, ladies and gentlemen ♪
♪ And wake you alive, what will we have ♪
♪ Just to keep it running ♪
I wanted to be different.
I wanted to call myself the disciple of the blues.
So I had to sit down and think about what would a disciple look like if he wanted to
call himself this.
So I figured, why he'd put a turban on his head and a fake jewel right in front of it.
I wore that for about five years until people started saying the wrong things about me and
doing the wrong thing.
I remember when I took it off,
I was playing in the place in Calgary, Alberta.
We had finished playing that evening,
and three guys came out and had guns on me
and said I was a terrorist.
I was afraid of them, you know,
but I looked at them with tears in my eyes.
They said, you guys just came out
and was dancing to my music.
I said, the only accent that I have
is my southern accent that I speak with.
This is a costume.
I said, if you want to kill me, go ahead.
And he looked at one another, put the guns up, walked away.
We started out doing gospel.
And then we made a transition into the blues.
And from that, we got a lot of recognition around the Bay Area.
We came from an era where everything was done live
in the radio stations.
My father and I was singing live in a radio station
called KRE in Berkeley.
We were absorbing everything from him and their group
because they had a very nice group called
The Golden West Singers.
As I got older, then I got bold enough to sing by myself.
So my father, finally he heard me sing and he says,
oh Robert, you can sing like that.
My dad always taught us to sing from our gut
and not sing from your throat.
It was kinda like a training,
If you're going to do a song, you got to sing the song from your heart.
So we'd be in a heart field.
We had to sing, you know what I'm saying?
So that's what we did.
We sang.
Music is a story.
It comes from what a person goes through a lot of times or what they're going through.
The world doesn't get a picture of what's going on with a person or where he comes from
unless we tell it through music.
John Barksdale was a former NBA basketball player who opened up the Showcase and the Sportsman Club.
Eddie James Flay there, Lou Raw, Lou Willie John, Bobby Bluhblan, Bobby Freeman.
A friend of mine suggested that I go down to the Showcase Lounge because they had a talent show on Thursday.
and so I went down there and I sang on the talent show
and then I won and I think you get like 25 bucks
and I was in college and so like 25 bucks in college
back in the 60s was a lot of money
and so I started going every week.
At that time, the radio stations,
they played all types of music
and Oakland was a big blues town
and so I'm listening to that on the radio
so I was influenced by not only gospel but blues,
country music, my mother was a big country music fan.
we had what was known as Black Radio.
In every neighborhood,
KDIA was on the radio all day long.
If you went in a club and you was singing or doing,
entertaining, the audience would know
your songs better than you,
because we listened to the radio all day long.
KDIA was an interesting radio station.
I mean, you'd be listening to music all of a sudden.
Barbara Ann Jones, your mama said,
you better be home in 15 minutes
so you're gonna get a whippin', you know?
It was that kind of thing.
It was community-oriented.
K-S-O-L, and places that played basically black music,
they started switching it over,
and it kind of faded the blues completely out.
You know, they just decided
there wasn't a big enough audience anymore.
the East Bay was as segregated racially in terms of its neighborhoods and housing markets
as any American city.
Oakland is a city of beautiful homes and views, a fine place for living, working and raising
children. But in Oakland's future, as in all larger cities, there is an internal threat,
cancer of housing decay. Here the speckled stuff is the residential neighborhoods and so these are
the two neighborhoods that the post office took out but all at that mid-century rhetoric about
newer better finer and really nobody with designs on cleaning up the neighborhood much looked beyond
the Cypress Freeway for 50 years.
Big city panned in budgets, made bart knock out, made the post office knock out 500 homes
and they had villages on every side, low income.
But when it came, they gave them $4,000 or $5,000 a move.
So everybody started leaving West Oakland.
The houses were demolished by Abdo Allen's demolition company and the way he was able
to be the low bidder was he had a World War II surplus tank.
There are photos of him just driving
into these little raised basement cottages.
Oof, and when the dust clears, he climbs out of the tank
and waves.
Now, you might say all of these things
are necessary for an urban infrastructure.
They're necessary for the fabric of a city,
and that's quite true.
But the question is, how are they located?
Where are they located?
what happens to the people who live in the places and spaces where they're located.
And that's where I think we have to say that race was an enormous factor
in disadvantaging people in West Oakland.
I never dreamed that the city could say you got to move.
When my father and mother worked hard in their house,
and then, you know, my mother was upset about what they offered them
because she wasn't going to move.
The decades after World War II are about creating fairness in these markets.
So you hear the terms like fair employment, fair housing.
These are all objectives of black politicians
and the black community, but they don't open quickly.
They don't open entirely.
There are enormous political fights about making it happen.
♪ Southern trees ♪
The civil rights struggle, Jim Crow,
all that we have gone through touches me
so very deeply, because so many of the issues that we had then, we still have now.
And if they're killing people in the streets, to me it's just a modern-day lynching.
And there's been things going on that we did not know about at the time, was not publicized.
But the people who it was happening to actually knew it, but they couldn't bring it to justice.
♪ Black bodies swinging ♪
♪ In the southern breeze ♪
♪ Strang fruit hanging ♪
♪ From the part of the world ♪
Do y'all a day, sang this song,
and she defied everybody by singing it,
which I thought was so brave and so beautiful.
And the song speaks of such a truth
that I just want the feeling of that song.
When you say fruit, you're not talking about a nectarine,
or you're not talking about a plum.
When you say fruit that's hanging from a tree,
you're talking about a human being.
To me, that's just, I, to this moment,
can't describe to you what it makes me feel like.
You have people like C.L. Delhams,
who was the head of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters
union in West Oakland.
We heard a lot about him, our family and then those that around us, because of the Pullman
porters. I remember him so well. Byron Rumford, who was a pharmacist, lived in South Berkeley.
He was working very hard into the legislature to get rights in the area of property.
And it's really the working together in the East Bay Democratic Party in the 1940s and 1950s.
that's really the origin of what we might call the kind of black political capacity.
The 1960s and 1970s generation is, what am I saying, more complicated generation.
Paul Cobb, I knew when he was a high school kid, Elijah Turner. I remember Edith Austin.
They were all part of that group of us that would meet together and talk about strategies
and agreed to lead some kind of movement.
In 1967, when the Black Panther Party
marched into the State Capitol Building in Sacramento,
that was on May 2nd, 1967.
That was the same day Aretha Franklin's
Respect was released.
At the end of that day, you'd watch on the news,
these brothers with guns walking in the State Capitol Building
and then you turn on your radio and you're hearing
R-E-S-P-E-C-T, and you're gettin' this whole experience.
1967, I had a record called Believe in Me Baby.
It was about the fast life, and as I was singin' this song,
I just started sayin' things, and the more I said
about that lifestyle, the crowd would holler
and scream, you know, every time I would say something.
A guy came in from Los Angeles.
He was with 20th Century Fox.
We was on the show with the whispers.
And you know, the girls all screaming for the whispers.
So this guy comes back.
He said, I'd like to sign you to a contract.
I said, wait a minute.
I said, how come you're not trying to sign the whispers?
All the women are screaming for them.
He said, I never will forget this.
He said, there are five headaches, you're only one.
In the late 60s, I think 69, my neighbor,
there was a mailman, and he was like,
well, when are you gonna do a show?
And I was like, well, I don't have a band.
So he was like, oh, well, I do a little managing,
and I've got a band that lives in Fremont
called the Motown Soulband.
And he says, I'm gonna take you out there
and hook you up with them.
So I rehearsed with them for a couple of times,
and then nothing never really happened.
And the only person that was here in Oakland was Larry Graham.
And I just kept saying, if only I could meet Larry Graham,
I know that that's my ticket to success.
So I went to Saul Zance, who was the owner of Fantasy Records.
I asked him to release me from Fantasy Records.
He wanted to know why.
I said, I just want to be unencumbered.
So I wanted to make sure that when I met Larry Graham,
if I ever got a chance to, that I was like, I'm free.
whatever you want to do with me, let's do it.
And then I would be going to places in Oakland.
I'd go to a club and somewhere in conversation street,
oh Larry Graham just left here.
Then I'd go to a party and say,
oh man, Larry Graham was here.
Oh my God, I'm like snake bitten, right?
And so I'm driving down the street one Saturday
and who do I see in the middle of the street
with his hood up, his car had cocked up was Larry Graham.
So I stopped and I helped him get his car started
And then I, you know, while we're doing that,
I'm telling them, hey, my name's Lenny,
and I'm a singer, and whatever.
And he's like, whoa, come on to my house tonight,
we're gonna be jamming, you know?
Neil Sean from Journey, and different people
are gonna be over there, we're gonna be hanging out.
So I go up, and then I'm on my way up there,
and then my home training kicks in.
I stomp and get a bottle of wine.
And then, when I walk in, and I give it to him,
he says, man, I invite people to my house all the time,
and you're the first one that ever brought something.
And so then we became fast friends,
next thing I know and we started writing music and and then you know hooked up
with the tower power through him. Well how I started singing my mother sang in
church they would broadcast from the church and on Sunday night we would all
gather on the radio and listen to my mother. I didn't miss it for the world
you know so she used to pack us all up take us to church every Sunday and that's
That's where I met Sly Stone, his family.
We all went to the same church.
I asked Sly one day to be a part of my band.
He did and we started playing around town, we had a group called Royal Aces, five guys,
John Turk was in it also.
And at school we was very popular, I mean they loved us at school, really.
I became president of the school because I could sing.
♪ I'm not trying to be funny, honey ♪
♪ Tell me I'm the one to win it ♪
I hooked up with Larry Graham.
Larry's like, we need to put some horns on this stuff.
So he said, I'm going to get this band Tower Power
to come over and put some horns.
So when they came through the door, I'm like, oh,
these are the kids from the Motown Soul Band.
So we kind of like hooked up again.
And I always tell a joke about that
when they wrote so very hard to go,
They called me at late at night and they had a ritual,
you know, when they wanted to write something really,
really soulful, they'd go down to Everton Jones or Flints
and get some barbecue.
We're gonna get some red soda water like they do in Texas.
And we gonna go back in the back room and close the shades
and roll up one of those little skinny white cigarettes
and smoke that, and then now we're ready to write a hit.
And so I said, they called me about three o'clock
in the morning and said, man, we wrote this great song.
I'm like, okay, I'll hear it tomorrow.
No, no, no, no, no, man.
We went out to barbecue, we drank the red soda water,
we smoked that little white cigarette, this is a hit.
So I walk in the door and bam, you know,
so very hard to go.
♪ So very hard to go ♪
♪ I'm hookin' so ♪
♪ Now we did this song back in 1973 ♪
♪ Had a dance on the charts ♪
The guys in Tower of Power loved the R&B,
you know, black music sound, soulful music, funky music,
and they came out and you know, they lived it
and then they wrote the songs and the songs are authentic
because they are who they say they are.
They are volunteers.
My father recognized Bay Area artists and entertainers
and he did that for 39 years
in something called the Top Star Awards.
We won the very first Top Star Award trophy
over everybody, Oak the Pointer Sisters,
Larry Graham,
whispers, the ballots, all those people.
He was responsible for a lot of those entertainers
getting jobs.
I met Jay in 73.
When I first started with KSOI,
I met Jay at a club called Sweet Jimmys.
Jay was the master of ceremonies.
He was a hoofer.
He'd travel all over the world.
He was the consummate MC.
He was the one that guided me through my career.
If it wasn't for Jay, I can guarantee you,
I probably wouldn't have had,
still have over 40-some years in his business.
The energy in the street was changing.
The most important black entertainer at that time
was James Brown, who was the hardest working man
in show business.
He played every night.
He quickly got the pulse of the communities he was in.
So he would push his band a little further.
You know, give me a little more of that.
You know, that thing you do over there,
put that in there lay that down give me some the main objective was to get over
at the Apollo if you could get over there you could get over anywhere and I
got over there that's when James Brown discovered me
He said, girl, I got to have you.
So what are you talking about?
You have me?
What are you talking about?
He said, how won't you eat me?
He said, doing what?
You open my show.
I said, hmm.
OK.
And that's what we did.
And they have these balconies way up there.
I'd be way up there hanging upside down on the balcony.
What the?
And then that's when they named me that's
the lady, James Brown.
James Brown himself went through a break
with his record company and they started
writing music on another label, completely illegal,
but if you're a badass, that's what you do.
And he went in the studio in 1965 in February,
right around the time Malcolm was killed,
and he brought in Jimmy Nolan, this rhythm guitarist
out here in the Bay Area, and they laid down a new lick
called Papa's Got a Brand New Bag.
It didn't go the way most songs went.
Most songs were written where you kind of stomp your foot
on the one and the three,
and you clap your hands on the two and the four.
And that's how most Western music has been made.
And James Brown got his band
to put more of an emphasis on the one, uh.
Do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, uh, do, do, do, do, do, do.
So even if you're still sort of clapping on the two
and the four, boom, two, three, four, boom, two, three,
You're bumping on the one.
You're sort of hearing melodies that are Western
and a traditional way of making music,
but you're bumping in a place
where you haven't bumped before.
In the 1960s, really the decade of grassroots activism,
you see a resurgence of local politics.
It's in that context,
the emergence of the Black Panther Party
in West Oakland is so crucial.
They provided a lot of things that I needed to know about me.
And then they had to program us feeding the kids,
and you know, which was a good thing.
They had influence on all of us.
We're just trying to live and have a better life.
My mom would catch me at the center of the South
from 64th and East 14th.
I didn't know if that was the Black Panthers' home,
but they would let us rehearse.
And if one of my buddies or me or whatever
did something wrong, which we usually did something wrong.
patent on the wall, they're doing something, a food fight.
Oh, they would check us to the 20th power.
But they also allowed us to develop our skill.
The Black Panthers are known for their advocacy
of self-defense, which had not been possible
for African Americans in the South.
I mean, they could not really defend themselves
against the attacks, the night riders,
and the lynchings and such in the South.
But, you know, of course, the Black Panthers
were about so much more than that.
We want the power to control the destiny
of our Black community.
The Black Panther Party had yet a different way of thinking about survival, and for them
it literally meant looking after the poorest, the least advantaged in the community on almost
a literal survival kind of level.
The idea, of course, was not simply to provide for the community, but to dramatize the racial
segregation and racism that had created such intense poverty.
♪ Listen, y'all, yeah, listen to it ♪
Oakland Blues turns into Oakland funk
because things got a little bit too heavy.
Funk is just some heavier blues once you put it on the water,
and then Oakland artists took it from there.
It's the evolution of the blues,
and when I say evolution, moving to that next step,
because we talk about Johnny Talbot and Marvin Holmes,
of Marvin Holmes, they were sort of the second generation.
The best example we get is what Herbie Hancock
was doing with the Headhunters.
The sound of Herbie Hancock was an Oakland funk sound,
combination of jazz, little taste of Latin and funk.
Started right here in Oakland, the Headhunters.
And the song Chameleon features this thumping,
ascending bass line that feels and sounds like a loop.
What Herbie did was to come in from the jazz world
and then lay down a locked-in sequence
of a heavy Larry Graham bass line
that changed the way bass has been played
in American music to this day.
And most musicians know this.
They know Larry Graham,
the bass player in Sly and the Family Stone,
is an entity above and beyond.
I'm amazed that if I go someplace
And they say, Lady Bianca is here.
People know who I am.
And it's like, what?
How did that happen?
I don't think some women were strong enough.
Survivors like Etta James.
You didn't tell Etta James.
She ran her band.
Fig Carol, there's a strength in her.
Suga Pie De Cento, you know there's a strength in her.
Ruth Brown was a strong person.
Johnny Washington was strong.
Billie Holiday strong.
But if you didn't have the strength to get through it,
It was hard, it was so hard.
I don't know really how I survived.
I think you have to have strong backup to, male backup to.
Somebody that can help you sing.
Let her sing, let her play piano.
I had to burst through,
that's why I started to fight back
because most of the male figures
were reluctant to let me get out
because once I got that microphone,
You did what I said, and you did right,
and they thought I was a little bit aggressive.
Because I was as tough as they were.
Well, you just said, oh, no, I don't.
Well, you said, oh, no, I don't.
You know what I'm saying?
It's not like that.
It's going to be like this, OK?
OK.
I'm very convincing.
Don't make me mad.
Mm-mm, don't do that.
I got along pretty good with everybody.
Somehow there are people that still
come and sit in them seats I journey on but it's a pill journey this go happen
and we all kind of cracked up and said well nobody's gonna really pay to go and
see somebody spend a record when they could spend a record at home it's
It's the beginning of a displacement of musicians,
and it's also the creation of DJ-driven culture.
You didn't have to absorb the cause of the band.
Eventually, security became your greatest expenditure.
Then around that time, Oakland-based hip-hop emerged
with Too Short, ironically, MC Hammer,
whose styles could not have been more different,
and yet they're both funk-based.
we had a lot to pull from.
You know, you see Santana jamming in the park.
You see Larry Graham, you know, in jam sessions.
The area's been centered on the funk from the beginning.
And it's just a question of who you're going to ask,
who's going to tell that story.
I remember Castle Mott when outside in the courtyard,
Graham Central Station came out.
And, you know, sometimes we would jam out there in the stage.
And when they came out, and they came on that stage,
and they used our instruments.
And the way David Dynamat made my Les Paul sound,
I was like, well damn, it can go like that.
I sued the Oakland Police Department
because I used the garage which was across the street
for my entire 16 years that I was at Jefferies in a Circle.
And a police officer went to the owners of the garage
and said a shooting had occurred in the garage
while I was renting it.
did a shooting occur? No. The garage management said, if we had known that this had not occurred,
we wouldn't have taken away his right. And then Oakland waged war on black clubs systematically
for such clubs. I remember it got raided in one night. The Oasis, Arcemonas, the Air Lounge,
and the Oyster Reef. Harassment to the point where the landlord doesn't renew your lease,
And with Arcemonas, you would think that they would have had a tenant,
and that's why they put you up.
It's still unoccupied, you say.
Oh, damn, talking about willful.
Cabaret licenses, the way they've been issued,
and the pressure that they put on black owners, it's brutal.
I don't know what it was Jerry Brown decided to do,
but he started taking away these people's licenses
on the halftime music.
White clubs, they get them overnight.
Liquor licenses are expedited in an unprecedented fashion.
It's used selectively to design African-Americans out.
It ended in the 1970s,
when there was no further reason to be escaping.
Only to find that by then,
the concentrations of African-Americans
in these northern and western cities
would end up attracting the kind of hostility
that would carry forth today.
And what we see is police brutality,
extreme hyper segregation in the cities
that the people fled to, disparities in unemployment,
in housing, in every sphere of life,
now accruing to the places where the people had fled.
That is what has happened.
You know, a lot of people ask me,
why didn't you just sing R&B or something?
I guess I'm just stubborn because I never thought about it.
If I can make money, if I do this,
I never been that kind of person.
That wasn't my intention at all.
I just need to express myself.
It's the legacy I wanna leave, my music,
whatever it does, and that's what it does.
So I'm not, you know, I don't know what it'll do.
It takes on life of its own, so I respect that.
♪ Everybody ♪
♪ Everybody ♪
The parents that I have work with me,
they'll be playing something,
and I'll play it and they'll be like,
where'd you get that from?
And I'm playing it, it's like, that's Shuggy Otis.
No, that's, I was like, no, see?
That's the blues guitarist that, you know,
the Brothers Johnson got Strawberry Letter 23 from,
and he never got famous, but, you know,
you have to introduce them to this information.
It's up to the current generation now
to find new ways, new tools that are relevant
to our day now to make those dreams
and goals of equality come true.
You know, a lot of people think of this as history
till they turn on the news.
I play on a 1973 Fendel Coronado guitar.
This happened to be the guitar I was in the studio with
when I had that altercation with the police officer.
That guitar has been like my shield.
From the time that we came out with the Tonys,
I guess I had been off the scene in Oakland
and not around certain things.
So when that happened to me, you know,
now I'm a grown man.
I'm on my money, I pay taxes, all this type of stuff.
And here's a gentleman that just opens my car door
and start choking.
I was just coming from the studio, working with India Irene,
working on her first release.
And that happens.
I just really felt like I had to lay the message out there
because I was a person that had a voice.
So if you say we want to design African Americans out
and that is the policy,
then what you're giving away is the richest culture
that is known to any city in the country.
Anybody else would be heroifying Joe Morgan
and having signs all over the airport saying the home of,
but we ignore it.
My brother died at 14 years old.
I told the spirit that I would never forget him.
My mother had to bury her son.
this is just pervasive in communities of color
that these women are the strength.
And they too often bury their own children.
I just, so that was one song that I thought,
okay, I have to do this song.
And no one knows really who wrote it.
It's come, you know, from the time of slavery,
But Leadbelly, he made it popular.
I wanted to make it lyrically relevant to today
and some of the things we're going through
and they're really dedicated to these women
who bury their children.
♪ Then the policeman shot him down ♪
♪ In the pines where the sun don't shine ♪
♪ I shiverd all ♪
The things that are happening to us now,
the music is gonna reflect that.
Certainly the pain and suffering won't go anywhere,
so there'll be a need to sing the blues for a long time.
♪♪
♪ Shine on the moon ♪
When I think that history is important,
so the walk of fame to me I think is important,
so kids kind of know the people
who kind of laid the foundation
and were the bridge, so to speak, for them.
and white folks need to understand and love the music too.
If they understood and love that music,
I wouldn't care who played it, but love the music.
Love it, take care of it.
Don't just do it any kind of way.
So it's no sting, it's rock, fuse, blues.
Yeah, it is some rock, fuse, blues.
But it comes from blues.
And the thing about it, it morphs itself in so many ways
that you don't even know it's the blues.
Like they say, blues had babies, you know?
I have no fear that it ends when I take my last breath.
Lord Filsom will live forever.
B.B. King will live forever.
Bobby Blumblat, he'll be here forever.
Those are the shows that we're standing on.
I don't like genres.
I just don't even like,
I feel like a genre is a place to hide.
And I don't like everything that's blues.
I love great artists.
When you think about Oakland,
Man, we've produced so many different types of artists
just because of the place that it is,
so I'm at home with being in the legacy of Oakland Blues
as much as I'm at home being in the legacy of rap,
the too short or the legacy of rock and roll
with Metallica and funk with...
So I saw there's a spirit.
something special about the bear that we do things different.
I'm Carmen Martinez, the director of the Oakland Public Library, and I welcome you here for
our annual authors program.
We usually hold it during National Library Week, but this year we are so happy and so
blessed and honored to have our featured author, Ms. Isabel Wilkerson.
I wanted you to just listen for a couple minutes to some acknowledgements I need to make, a
couple of very important thank yous.
This program is all due in great part to our wonderful friends of the Oakland Public Library.
I don't know where they are tonight.
There's so many wonderful people here.
Yay, Foppel, thank you.
Please visit the Bookmark Bookstore in Old Oakland.
Every single penny, well almost every single penny
that they earn from, that they make from selling used books
goes to programs like this and for other activities
that the city can't afford to help us with.
So thank you, Foppel.
I'd also like to thank our wonderful Oakland
Public Library staff, Rosalia Romo, Tom Downs, and let me see who else is here, Kathryn
Kavett, Eka Schneider, Winifred Walters, and I know I'm forgetting somebody, but I'll
remember and thank them later.
Okay, so I was reading one Sunday, the New York Times book review section, and I came
across a review of the warmth, the warmth of other suns.
And I thought, well, you know, Oakland just has to be in this book.
It's about the great migration.
And so, yay.
The very next day, I was with a whole bunch of library director colleagues in San Francisco
and my colleague from Cuyahoga, Cuyahoga County said, we welcome this fabulous author.
Isabel Wilkerson.
She was fantastic.
She talked so eloquently.
Perhaps you can get her for your program.
And we called Random House the next day.
She was already on the superstar list,
but she wanted to come to Oakland
because so much of her research was based here.
So yeah.
So we were very lucky to get her.
And so I need to tell you a little bit about her.
As you know, she was in Chicago bureau chief
of the New York Times and it was there
that she won the first, she was the first
African American woman to win a, excuse me,
a Pulitzer Prize in journalism
and she won it for individual reporting.
The list goes on and on.
She also won the George Polk Award
and a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship
and she is currently the professor of journalism
and Director of Narrative Nonfiction at Boston University.
She was born and raised in Washington, D.C.,
and this is her first book, oh, yay!
And this is her first book, which she dedicates
to her parents, and I love this part.
Her parents, whose migration, she says, made her possible.
Before I go on to bring our esteemed author up,
I see that our mayor is in the audience,
Mayor Jean Kwon. Welcome Mayor to the program. Would you like you just, okay,
okay, we're giving our mayor 10 seconds to say hello to all of you. Let's let's
see if she can do it. Hello, how are you? So let's talk about how we're gonna save
the libraries. Okay, so first of all, I met with other library people this
morning and let me say that Oakland's no different than rest of the country. There
are some people who think that we have to, after four years of cutting, that the
only answer is to have an all-cuts budget. And that that means that all
they want to do is cuts. They don't want to consider new taxes. They don't want to
consider anything. They just want to cut. And it's no secret that I've had a
little fight with the City Council because had they at least given the
voters the chance to decide two months ago when I asked them we would have
known by July 5th whether or not we had a parcel tax and that that would have
made sure that not only the libraries but many other programs like our senior
programs and our rec centers would have survived pretty much without major cuts
and so what I'm asking people to do there's a budget hearing tomorrow and to
talk to your council member at least let the community decide so why do I need
this money I didn't want to talk about really quickly. We've gone from four years of cuts.
This will be the fifth year of cuts. And last year in particular, we were hard hit because
if you own a house, how many of you bought a house in the last five years? Anybody here?
You got an automatic property tax deduction, right? Well, that cost the city $28 million.
That means in one year, we had to cut $28 million. And we have to find a way to let
the recession end and get our property taxes back up so we can maintain services.
It is so bad this year, we've cut so many things, that we may not be able to meet the
minimum of major Q. Now I wrote major Q so this is like deja vu for me.
When my first meeting as a city council member, Robert Bob said he was going to close I think
A quarter of all the rec centers and a third of all the libraries.
So major Q needs to be protected.
The only way it can be protected is if we do the parse attacks.
Secondly, I just want to say AMLO is an amazing institution because of what it does.
I spoke at the Ethnic Studies graduation last week at UC Berkeley.
Their archives are not as complete in some areas as ours are.
And so we do need to work and we need to protect it and the way you can do that is join the
friends of this group to help increase the activity and to use each of this institution
and secondly, help me get the parcel tax on the ballot and vote for it.
Thank you.
Okay, without further ado now, I do present Ms. Isabel Wilkerson.
It means so much for me to be here in Oakland because this was one of the cities that I
I went to when I started working on this book, you know, I spent 15 years on this book, as
you all probably know, you probably heard it over and over again.
And as you probably heard me say, if you've heard any of my talks, I always say that if
it were a human being, it would be alive and dating.
That's how long it took to finish this.
It's a good thing I didn't know it would take this long because I probably would not have
even begun it. And I am so glad I did. I'm so glad I did.
All of you have turned out today are representing some ways of celebration, not of, certainly
not of me, hopefully in some ways of the book, but more importantly for all of the people
who may not be with us today who are the reason why we are even here, which is what propelled
me to write this book to begin with. I wrote this book because I am a child of the very
phenomenon I've written about. I'm sure that the room is filled with people who are children
of the great migration or of a migration from someplace else. How many of you are? It is
all of our stories. The book is putatively, the subtitle is the epic story of America's
great migration, but in many respects, the book is not about this great migration truly.
It is about the longing, the fortitude, the faith, and the courage that is responsible
for all of us being here right now in this place, in our space right now.
In other words, somebody had to do what these people did for us to even be sitting or standing
here today, truly.
And so the question was, what did it take?
What did it take?
What did they leave?
What did they give up?
What were the sacrifices that they and so many other people
made in order for us to be here today?
And also, it was written in such a way
as to ask the reader to think, what would you have done?
What would you have done had you been in the same place
as the people in this book?
as the people who, you know, we talk about this as a book,
but this is not just a book, this is people's lives.
These are real people who are the ancestors,
the parents, the grandparents, the great-grandparents
of pretty much everybody in this room,
because we all are descended from people
who came a long way away to get here.
To get to California means you came a long way away.
You had to cross an ocean, or you had to cross a continent,
but you had to come a long way away.
And I have to say, just to give you a little background
on myself, if you don't know,
I am the product of a mixed marriage.
My mother was from Georgia, father from Virginia.
I call that a mixed marriage.
My mother was from Rome, Georgia,
and I love to say that she's from Rome, Georgia,
because I'll just say she's from Rome.
And they say, wow, she's from Rome?
And then I say, Georgia, they say, oh.
And my father was from Virginia, and they came, they went to Washington, D.C., which
was the beginning of the end of Jim Crow, you might say, on the east coast.
And they came in different years, and they met, and they married, and they had me.
And as a result of their participation in the Great Migration, which is similar to the
migration experiences of so many other people who are American, I wouldn't even exist had
they not done that.
How many of you would not have existed had someone not come a long way away, from far,
far away, and met someone who they never would have met otherwise, created whole new lineages?
In other words, half the room would disappear because we wouldn't even have existed.
And so that's why I approached this book, this project with such a tremendous sense
of gratitude.
Gratitude that I exist, gratitude that they made the great sacrifice in order for this
to happen.
Now I want to talk a little bit about what the migration is because no discussion of
this is complete without recognizing the magnitude of this thing.
This migration began during World War I and did not end until the 1970s, didn't end until
the 1970s.
It meant that 6 million African Americans, this is just one wave of migration, one kind
of migration that has occurred throughout the world, but this was the largest one that
occurred within the borders of our own country, this is the only time that people who were
citizens of their own country, the United States, had to leave one part of their own
homeland for another part of their own country in order to experience the rights and privileges
that they had been born to as citizens.
That's astounding.
That is astounding, and yet that is what they had to do.
This migration was so massive that when this migration began, 90% of all African Americans
were living in the South.
By the time that it was over, half were living everywhere else but the South, from Boston
to Chicago to Oakland and down to Los Angeles.
They were all over the country as a result of this.
It was a relocation of an entire people.
That is a lot of people who had made a decision to leave the only place that they had ever
ever known for a place that they'd never seen in hopes
that life might be better.
That takes a lot of courage.
It takes a lot of foresight.
It takes a lot of vision, and it takes a lot of faith
to essentially jump off a cliff into the unknown
with no guarantees of success.
And so that's why I wanted to talk about,
I wanted to understand, what propelled people to do this?
What was it that inspired them to make
this great leap of faith?
Ultimately, what this was was in some ways a defection.
This was misunderstood movement of people.
This was not people just getting a transfer for a job.
In fact, many of them did not know
what they were going to do ultimately when they arrived.
Bear in mind that in some ways
they were seeking political asylum from a caste system
which is almost impossible to comprehend now.
So you know I have to talk about that.
That caste system was something else.
That caste system had been carefully calibrated
and designed to maintain an oversupply of cheap labor
in the South, keeping them virtually imprisoned
so that they would not have the options to go anywhere else.
And in order to do that, they had to make it such
that everyone understood that everyone had a role
in that caste system,
and this hurt everyone black and white.
It meant that from the moment you woke up
until the moment you went to sleep,
there were rules, laws, and protocols
that you had to have memorized
in order to stay within the bounds of your caste,
and ultimately, particularly for African-Americans,
to stay alive.
It was a matter of life and death,
a matter of life and death.
So some of the examples are,
as you may have heard before in any of my talks,
that it was actually against the law
in Birmingham for a black person and a white person
to play checkers together,
merely to play checkers together.
Someone must have seen a black person and a white person
in some town square in Birmingham
and they were playing checkers together
and they might have been having too good of time.
Maybe the wrong person was winning.
Maybe they were laughing.
Who knows what they were doing?
But someone saw that and they decided
that the entire foundation of Southern civilization
was in peril.
We cannot have this.
And so someone wrote that down as a law.
So that that meant that the black person who might have
enjoyed playing checkers and the white person who might have
enjoyed playing checkers with their friend
couldn't do that anymore.
They could face prison time.
And you wouldn't want to face prison time, hard labor
in Alabama at that time, I can assure you.
There were in courtrooms throughout the South,
and it's still hard.
As many times as I've said it, it's
still hard for me to believe there was actually
a black Bible and a white Bible to swear,
to tell the truth on in courtrooms throughout the South,
a black Bible and a white Bible.
And the way that I found out about this
was through all the research that I had to do.
There are no references to water fountains and restrooms
anywhere in this book.
For any of you who've read it, you know that.
If you haven't read it, don't worry
that you're gonna be reading about something
you've heard about already,
because we know about that already.
There's no need to put that in.
No reference to restrooms or water fountains,
because we know that already.
I was looking for all the other things
to make it come alive for people.
I wanted people to be able to really understand
what these people had to live with day in and day out.
Black and white, actually, because we often talk about the,
and we all know how limiting and restrictive it was
on black people, and it certainly was,
but it also meant that white people were restricted as well.
They had created the caste system,
but it was a caste system
that restricted everybody's movements.
So everyone was hurt by it.
and I would argue that for those in the upper,
putatively in the upper caste,
what they lost was a spiritual loss.
They lost a piece of their own,
of their spiritual selves because,
and also the unmet potential.
Because if you're spending so much energy
holding other people down,
it means that there are other things
that you're not able to do.
Because it takes a lot of energy
to maintain a caste system as I've described.
So back to the Bibles.
I found out about it because it was in an article
in a North Carolina newspaper.
And it came to light, it made the newspaper
not because anyone said, well, this is an absurd ritual.
Why are we doing this?
Because people accepted this as the norm.
This is the way it should be.
It came to light because during the middle
of a trial in North Carolina, the trial
had to be suspended because they couldn't find the Black Bible.
A black person had taken the witness stand,
which was rare enough to begin with,
and they couldn't find the Bible
that this person was supposed to touch.
It turned out that it was not acceptable,
it was against the law for a black person
and a white person to touch the same sacred text.
How ironic is that?
And so that meant the bailiff, the sheriff,
and all the court officers had to go all over the courtroom
trying to track down the black Bible for this person
to be able to touch in order to swear to tell the truth,
the truth and nothing but the truth, so help them God.
And that is what they had to do.
They finally found it and the child could resume.
I've been asked since then,
well, was it a different version of the Bible?
Like did the white people have the King James version
and the white and the black people
had the American standard maybe?
But it turned out it was the same Bible.
It's just they could not touch the same sacred object.
Now, you know, I've been all over the country.
In fact, I just got back from Italy where,
believe it or not, there's great interest
this great migration and I think that's a beautiful thing, beautiful thing, not amazing.
And they have been reading the book in English and they've been studying the book because
they're facing great migration issues themselves and so they want to understand it.
But as I was there, I've been all over the country and my toughest audiences are always
high school students.
So I've been through that and I have been searching for ways to make this come alive
for them. You know, most people seem to be, seem to really understand it when I
describe the two things I've described for you. But with the high school
students, I have to come up with something else. So I finally figured out
what gets through to them. Now, before I tell you what that is, I want to first
ask for a show of hands as to how many people in the last week have passed
someone on the road. Yeah, every hand goes up. Yeah, there's, I'm always
I'm surprised that there's a delay in the answer.
People think, is there a new law that says
we can't do this anymore?
So they're hesitant.
Maybe she won't think so well of me
if she knows I passed somebody.
But it's perfectly legal as far as I know.
And in fact, you probably passed someone on the way here.
Truth be told, if you're being honest.
Well, if you were African-American in the South
during much of the time period I've described,
You couldn't do that.
A black motorist could not pass a white motorist on the road
no matter how slowly that person was going.
No matter how slowly that person was going.
And you know how when you're behind someone who's lost
or they're from out of town and they stop every 10 feet
thinking that this is the turn?
That might have happened to you yesterday.
And you want so badly to get around them.
And if you can, you will.
Well, you couldn't do that if you were African-American.
And I would argue that that is so frustrating to people
that that alone could account for probably a couple million
people to leave right then and there.
How they bore up under that, I'll never understand it.
And yet, that was the law.
That was the law.
And when I describe this, I mean, it
seems so absurd that we can now kind of chuckle at it.
But this was actually life and death.
It really was life and death.
every four days, every four days during the time period
in the decades leading up to the migration
and the decades immediately following the migration,
an African-American was lynched
every four days somewhere in the South.
So this was truly life and death.
And the reason I say that is because we know
about the more commonly,
the commonly associated reason for lynching,
having to do with generally a black man's,
an accusation that a black man may have made
some untoward remark toward a white woman.
That actually was not the more common reason, however,
when you look at the statistics of the lynchings.
Lynchings most likely occurred because a black person
had been accused of trying to act like a white person.
That was the general accusation,
meaning they were stepping outside of their cast.
That's how big and significant and enduring
and oppressive this caste system truly was.
They would be, that meant of not stepping off the sidewalk
fast enough, of speaking in a way
that was not appropriate to their caste,
of looking straight into the eye of someone.
It actually turned out that the protocols were so strict
that an anthropologist of that day said
that the majority of people of each race
had not ever shaken the hand of someone of the other race
because that was not allowed.
So this shows you that it was a nerve-jangling experience
just to make it through the day,
and these were the kinds of things
that people had to live with day in and day out.
And so ultimately this was in some ways
a search for political asylum.
Now how and why did this migration actually begin?
There are many reasons and discussions as to why,
but ultimately the precipitating event was World War I.
And during World War I, during World War I,
the North had a problem.
African Americans have been wanting to leave
for a long, long time, but there was really no option
other than to stay there because the caste system
had created a limit, so many limits and restrictions on them.
And so during World War I, Europe was at war,
and that meant that all of the Europeans
who had been coming and the European immigrants
who had been fueling the factories and the steel mills
and the foundries were no longer available.
And the North needed labor, and where did they look?
They looked to the cheapest labor in the land,
which was African Americans in the South.
The South was the poorest region of the country,
and these were the poorest-paid people in the South.
Many of them were not paid at all for their labor.
They were working merely for the right
to live on the land that they were farming.
They were sharecroppers.
So they were quite ready to be recruited to go North.
So this is a reminder for people
who may not have understood much about this migration.
African Americans, most African Americans
in the North and the West arrived at the invitation
express invitation of industries that wanted their labor. The interesting
thing about this is that they often wanted the labor. They wanted the workers
but didn't want the people. So how do you manage that? You know, how do you manage
that? That's a conundrum. In any case, they've set about trying to do what they
could to get them. So they went and actually recruited, recruited people to
come to these places to work. So you have unusual combinations of cities where
people, where people in the north went to recruit. Beloit, Wisconsin went to, they
People there went to Mississippi, for example.
And so what happened was, you have these connections.
Finally, the door opened, and the people
began to answer the call.
But when the South men found out about this,
the South did not take kindly to this at all.
They did not take kindly to the poaching
of their cheap labor one bit.
And so they began to take action to stop this.
There was a great deal of hand-wringing
about what to do about it.
And they began to make great efforts.
They tried to fight it on both levels.
One, they wanted to deal with the supply side,
meaning the people who were trying to leave,
and on the demand side,
meaning the people who were trying to recruit.
So on the supply side, what they started to do
was they would arrest people on the railroad platforms
when there were many, many black people waiting
with northbound tickets ready to leave, trying to leave.
They would arrest them from the train seats.
Once they were on the train and they thought
they were handing the ticket to the conductor,
They're actually handing it to a sheriff
who was about to arrest them.
And that was all of these efforts
to thwart their effort to get out.
And then when there were too many people to arrest,
they would wave the train on through
so that people who had been saving for months and months
and months for that ticket to go north
had to watch that train pass them by.
That train to what they felt would be freedom.
And that was what they ended up having to do.
On the demand side, they would start arrest.
They would arrest people, Northerners,
who were caught recruiting without a license.
They set these incredible licensing fees.
One fee in Macon, Georgia required
that anyone who wanted to recruit a single black person
had to pay $25,000 licensing fee.
Now, the equivalent in 2011 is half a million dollars.
To recruit one black person, who in the world
would pay that to recruit one person?
And so that was definitely going to be a dampening effort,
one would think, but actually the reverse occurred.
But I wanna tell you, give you a little sense
of what these people, what the people were thinking about.
What were the Southerners thinking
at the time that this was going on?
And this is a quote from Macon Telegraph, an editorial,
which says so much about how the South was reacting.
And so this editorialist wrote this.
Everybody seems to be asleep about what is going on
right under our noses.
That is everybody but those farmers
to have wakened up on mornings recently
to find every Negro over 21 on his place gone.
To Cleveland, to Pittsburgh, to Chicago, to Indianapolis.
They hadn't gone to LA yet,
because this is World War I.
They hadn't gotten to California or Oakland yet.
And while our very solvency,
our very solvency is being sucked out beneath us,
we go on about our affairs as usual.
So this gives you a sense of their hand wringing
and the questioning and the wondering and the effort
to try to keep the people from leaving.
And yet, every single thing that was done
actually only fed the desire of the people to leave.
It had the reverse effect.
All this hand wringing and wondering what to do,
the arresting of the people on the railroad platforms
only made the people wanna go all the more
because it gave them a sense
that this was not gonna be a place
that was gonna change anytime soon.
Now I want to talk a little bit about the work on this book
because it's been a long odyssey.
I talked to seniors here in Oakland.
I talked to seniors in Los Angeles.
I talked to seniors in Chicago, in New York, in Milwaukee,
all over the country.
And I set about trying to talk to people in order
to find out what the stories were.
And it turned out that these people often did not
perceive themselves as being a part of any great wave, which
one reason why I describe this book as, this migration rather, as one of the greatest under-reported
stories of the 20th century. It was under-reported because the people didn't talk about it. Any
of you who have had this in your background know that the people didn't talk about it.
My own mother was probably the toughest interview of all. She was saying, you know, she was
saying, well, why do you want to go out? That's in the past. That's in the past. That's in
the past, let's let that go. In fact, many people changed their name. My mother added
an E to her name. It's Ruby. She added an E to it to change her name. There's someone
in the book who changed his name. People changed their name. They didn't look back. In some
ways when they arrived here, it was like they had a new birthday. Nothing that they had
been through in the past had even happened. They were starting a new one. They didn't
want to think about it. They also wanted to protect the children from whatever it is that
had gone through. Many people have carried this to their grave and never told what happened.
Ultimately, it was just too painful. It was much too painful. There was a great deal of
shame associated with what they had gone through. And why? Why should they feel ashamed of what
they had endured? The goal of this is to turn that paradigm around and to say that what
they went through, we should be joyous that they survived at all. We should express gratitude
I'm personally filled with a sense of both sadness that they had to endure it, but a
sense of gratitude that they had the fortitude in order to live through those times.
And this is an effort to try to embrace that and learn something from what they had endured.
Learn something so that all that they endured does not go in vain.
So that we can in fact gain strength from the strength that it took them in order to
survive it.
That's the goal of all of this.
Now in order to go out and write about this huge phenomenon, as I told you, I went all
over the country.
I came here and I interviewed so many people, I interviewed over 1200 people.
And what that meant was I ate well.
Let me say this.
I ate very well.
You know?
I ate very well.
And actually, you know, I like to say that it was an experience of doing that.
So let me give you a little sense of what this migration
has meant for people.
The South is huge.
Each state that people came from is distinct
from the other states.
It's not just one monolith.
So people who are from Texas came from a very different
culture than people who are from Virginia,
which is totally different from Alabama,
which is totally different from Florida,
which has very little that seems to do with Tennessee.
I mean, all of these states are very different.
And when they left, they transferred their culture with them.
And we, in some ways, are the bearers of that culture,
in the same way that when you go to certain parts
of the Lower East Side of Manhattan,
or you go to certain parts of Chicago,
and you find that there's a little Italy,
or you find that there's a Ukrainian village in Chicago,
and that in Minnesota,
there are a lot of people from Scandinavia.
Well, the same thing goes for this migration.
It was not a haphazard unfurling of lost souls.
People made individual, well thought out,
planned decisions as to where they were gonna go
based on the bus routes, the train lines,
and the already well trod road
that had been developed for them from where they were from.
And that is the reason why I'll just ask here,
how many of you have forebears or people from people
from Louisiana or Texas.
Yeah, Mississippi, Arkansas.
Yeah, but you see, most of the hands
go up for Texas and Louisiana because that
was the route that was taken to get out
of Texas and Louisiana, primarily,
was to come to California.
They're all over California.
The people who really wanted to get away went to Seattle.
They were still here.
One of my mother's cousins went there
from Rome to Seattle, she really wanted to get out.
When you're looking at the Midwest though,
you're looking at people who went from Mississippi,
Alabama, Tennessee, and Arkansas often
to Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, Minneapolis,
the entire Midwest, and then the migration stream
that my family was part of took people from Florida,
Georgia, the Carolinas, up to Washington D.C.,
Washington D.C. to Philadelphia, New York, and Boston.
So those were the roots.
Those roots are beautifully defined.
It means that the people were not just scattered to the wind.
They were thinking about what they were going to do.
They were planning, they did a great deal of work.
There are many telegrams that went back and forth,
letters back and forth, letters to the Chicago Defender,
letters to a great aunt or a minister's son
who was up in the north or out here in the west.
a great deal of planning went into this.
And that is also one of the myths that had often prevailed,
that people just landed here out of nowhere.
That was not the case.
You don't just land in California by accident.
You have to think about it.
You have to really think about that.
And so the process of going out and doing
the search for the people and doing the reporting
for this book was quite interesting,
because I was running into the very manifestation
of the differences between these migration streams,
beautiful differences, meaning the people had many
and mostly left for the same reason,
but the roots meant that a different culture
sprang out of the migration stream
that I might have been visiting.
So I'll tell you a little bit about the three things
that I ran into that were quite interesting.
One is that when I went to Chicago,
when I was in Chicago, I found myself on a bus
that had been chartered by some seniors
who were going to be going to a floating casino,
meaning they were going to gamble.
It was early in the month.
It was early in the month.
They met at a, they always gathered at a parking lot
outside a Juul food store at 87th and the Dan Ryan.
Anyone from Chicago knows where that is.
Yes, see your hands.
And it was always early in the morning,
it'd be lots of buses, and it was just a question
of where they were going.
Got on the right bus.
And as soon as I got on the bus, there was a commotion,
actually, because someone had brought a cooler which
contained a delicacy from the old country,
a delicacy from the old country.
And everyone was in an uproar when they found out
it was on the bus.
Now, I had never heard of this delicacy.
And I'm wondering how many people here have heard of it.
I will tell you what it is.
But first, I wanted to say that the people in the back
were quite anxious to make sure there was enough left for them.
They said, be sure to say some for us.
They were very gracious, and they
decided to offer the guest, meaning
me, first piece of this delicacy.
I'd never heard of it.
It was called hog head cheese.
Oh, my goodness.
Oh, my goodness.
How many of you have heard of hog head cheese?
How many of you call it South meat?
OK, that's interesting.
That's a reflection of the migration stream right there
because some people know it only is that.
How many of you actually had hog head cheese?
Yes.
Notice, however, that there were fewer hands
of people who had actually had it than had heard of it.
Interesting.
I had neither heard of it nor had it
and so when they offered it to me,
well I have to say, my Georgia born mother never made it
and my Virginia-born father never required it.
And so therefore, I never had it, and I'd never heard of it.
And so when they broke it out, there
was a great deal of excitement about it,
but I didn't know what I was going to do because I didn't
really, look, all I knew was it involved a hog and a head.
And you know, neither one of those was working for me.
This wasn't working for me.
And so I had to find a way to demure graciously.
And so what I did was I told them that about some,
told them I had blood pressure,
high blood pressure to worry about, which I did not,
but which they accepted as a perfectly reasonable reason
to forgo the Hawkeye cheese.
And then they decided to set about carving out the hunks
to spread out.
As you know, it's in hunks, right?
And so that was the experience there.
Now, when I came to the West Coast,
I found that it was not easy to necessarily make my way,
because it's very complicated.
It's much more complicated here.
People are coming from Louisiana.
There are multiple kinds of Louisiana.
It's not just one Louisiana, there's Northern Louisiana,
which is closer to more Delta.
There's Southern Louisiana, which is,
you've got New Orleans.
You have all kinds of experiences here in Louisiana.
I spent so much time on every permutation
that you could imagine.
Zydeco, got exposed to that.
I'd never heard of that.
Zydeco.
I learned that the spellings and pronunciations of many words,
which I'm convinced are a way of exposing people who
are not from there.
That's what I've convinced.
We know you're not from there.
And I had to work very hard to get
in the good graces of people who recognized, well,
where are your people from?
That was a question that I got a lot of.
And no one had heard of Rome, George,
so that didn't help me very much.
But the people were very friendly and very gracious,
and I managed to find that there were multiple clubs for
and many of the groups.
There were Monroe Louisiana Club,
there was Lake Charles Louisiana Club,
all kinds of Texas clubs for days,
because Texas is a country unto itself.
And I, yes, and I found my way in.
I had every permutation of red beans and rice
with sugar and without.
There's a whole issue with that.
And you know those are, you know,
cooks might leave the kitchen over the issue of sugar
in both greens and red beans and rice.
And so I had all kinds of wonderful experiences
just learning my way around.
I went to all kind of Juneteenth parades.
I had a booth at a Juneteenth parade.
So I did all of this in order to learn
the experiences of that.
But each migration stream is distinct.
And I'm so proud of the experiences that I had here.
But when I went to New York,
just to give a sense of how beautifully predictable
each migration stream is.
When I went to New York, as big as New York is,
I went to senior centers there,
and at one of the senior centers there,
I actually ran into not just people
who had heard of Petersburg, Virginia,
which is where my father's from,
but they actually knew him.
They actually knew him.
That shows you how beautifully predictable
this migration stream was,
and the migration exists and lives in all of us,
even to this day because there are connections
in all of these places and I'm so grateful
for the people who invited me into their stream
even though I was from a different stream.
I'm so grateful to that.
Now to tell you just a little bit
about the three people in the book,
those of you who may have read it,
you know that it's about three people,
narrowed down those 1200 to three
amazing and beautiful people,
complicated people, not predictable people,
and each of them represent the three streams.
So one of them represents a stream up the East Coast.
He came from Florida and went to Harlem.
He was basically fleeing for his life because he'd gotten on.
He tried to earn a little bit more
for the people he was working with in the groves.
He had a little bit of college, he was good with math,
and he could see how the people were being cheated
out of what they weren't supposed to be making.
The work was dangerous.
They were having to climb these 40-foot trees,
taking their lives in their own hands,
and then they were being paid nickels for a box
for a fruit that would go and sell for $4 a box.
They weren't asking for $4.
They're just asking for a few more pennies more.
For doing that in the 1940s, he had to flee for his life
because that was not acceptable for an African American
in that caste system to do that.
That just was not possible.
So he had to flee for his life.
He ended up becoming a railroad porter.
The second story was of a woman
who had been a sharecropper's wife in Mississippi,
but she was terrible at picking cotton.
That's not a good thing to be a sharecropper's wife, meaning that's your job and you're terrible
at it.
You're just not good at it.
Actually, that's a lesson too.
Just think of all the people who had to do this because that happens to be where they
were born.
They were born into a caste system.
But maybe they would have been better at chemistry.
Perhaps they needed to be bookkeepers.
Maybe they would have been really wonderful horticulturalists, who knows what they might
have been but they were they were consigned to a world in which all they
could do was a particular thing in fact in the state of South Carolina it was
against the law for a black person my black person had to actually get a
license go to and petition to do anything other than agricultural work
that's how difficult and controlling this was that means someone who actually
would should have been an opera singer was going to have to go and work in the
fields because that was all that they could do so so that was one of the
people that was one of the things that she actually was not good at and it was
kind of refreshing to hear that you know actually hadn't even thought about
being good or bad at it but there were people who actually were bad at it and
actually felt felt bad about it but that wasn't why they left they left because a
cousin of her husband's had been beaten to within an inch of his life and her
husband said to her after what he saw it happened to his cousin this is the last
cooperate making and they had to set about getting off the land of the of the
planter and they couldn't tell anybody. She told me years later she said
you didn't tell people you were gone until you were gone. You couldn't let
people know what you were doing. You couldn't trust anyone. So she just told
her mother and one of his trusted nephews and that's how they got out. And
then finally the migration to California was represented by Dr.
Robert Joseph Pershing Foster, who was from Monroe, Louisiana.
And I got a question earlier before arriving
that I was going to have to discuss
how he came to make the decision.
And I'm not saying I agreed with it.
I'm just saying this is a decision he made to go to LA
after having seen Oakland.
I didn't make the decision.
It was his decision.
I can't say I would agree with him,
I'm just saying this is a decision he made.
I love the Bay Area.
I love the Bay Area.
It's one of my favorite places ever to come.
And I will come here willingly, happily, any time,
because I love it.
It could be a more, yes, mm-hmm.
But he made the decision because,
well, if you know him, if you read about him,
you know he was a flamboyant surgeon
who had performed in the army as a surgeon,
but it turned out he couldn't practice surgery
in his own hometown of Monroe, Louisiana.
And so he set out on this journey to get to California.
He had, it was a perilous journey
that meant that he ended up having to drive
for three states of the west without being able to stop
because it turned out that Jim Crow had extended farther
than he had anticipated.
He just did not realize that.
And it was a quiet kind of Jim Crow.
It wasn't in your face.
There were no signs.
It's just that no one would take him in for the night.
And he had to make that drive.
And I attempt, I recreated that drive myself.
I had my parents in the car.
And he had rented a Buick.
He had driven a Buick.
The Buick was, he had a Buick Roadmaster in 1949.
He said, if you'd seen it, you would have wanted it too.
That just tells you what he's like.
And so I rented a Buick in his honor.
And I was driving.
And my parents were in the car, had them with me.
And we came to the part of the road.
And how many of you made the drive through the mountains
to get here than you know.
Even now, it's perilous and treacherous.
Imagine not being able to stop.
Imagine having to take those hairpin curves at night
through the mountains, through the desert,
no cars on the road, the road is so mean
that it's going north and south as much as west,
and that's what we were going through.
And I began to get sleepy.
I began to veer from the road,
and my parents got worried for us,
and they actually said, you really need to stop the car.
You really need to stop the car.
stop the car. And if you won't stop the car let us out. And they said they said
basically you know if you want to know about Jim Quo we will tell you. If this
is a way to get us out we'll tell you about it. We'll talk. So we stopped in
Yuma Arizona where we had no trouble at all because it just shows you how far
we've come. We have a long long way to go as a country but we've come so far
that we had no trouble at all, was a choice of which one, which in did you want to stay in,
Holiday Inn, Key to Inn, all the different ones, which one did you want to stay in and we had no
trouble at all. And that actually made me feel more empathy for him because it showed you that
as tired as we were, we had options that he didn't have. He did not have the option in 1953 and that
was not that long ago, not that long ago at all. And I am tempted to read you something
about him because I would love to, but I don't want to take up any more time. I want to make
sure I can answer your questions. I want to close with a couple of things. Oh, you want
oh, wow. All right. This is Dr. Robert Joseph Pershing Foster. I'm just going to say one
I'm just gonna say one other thing. You know I keep feeling the need to defend
what he, his decision, even though I didn't make his decision. Now the thing
is he had a father-in-law who he was trying to also run from. He was running
from Jim Crow, he's running from the father-in-law. Father-in-law was a very
powerful man in Atlanta. He was president of Atlanta University and he was a very
powerful, overwhelming figure.
And so before he left, before Robert Joseph Pershing Foster
left for this drive, the father-in-law said,
you need to go to the Bay Area.
I love the Bay Area.
You will love the Bay Area.
Go to the Bay Area.
At that point, that pretty much sealed it for the Bay Area.
He was going to choose something no matter what,
as long as it wasn't what his father-in-law wanted
but let me read this to you.
This is Los Angeles, 1996.
This is the day that I met Robert Joseph Pershing Foster.
The panel door rides the story high
and would befit a museum or government office,
but is actually the front door
of a Spanish revival south of Wilshire.
The door opens and there stands
a one-time bourbon-swilling army captain
and deft-handed surgeon who now in his later years
is a regular at the blackjack table
and the trifecta's at Santa Anita,
but he is at the heart of it all
and perhaps most important, a long standing,
still bitter and somewhat obsessive expatriate
from the 20th century south.
The heartbreak Jim Crow land he chose to reject
before it could reject him again.
He is a Californian now, this Robert Joseph Pershing Foster.
He is the color of strong coffee and has waves in his hair
which he lets grow as untamed as Einstein's,
but then brushes back like the boys in the band.
He's wearing a white Cotton Island shirt,
loose slacks and sandals,
the uniform of the well-to-do LA pensioner.
He has the build and bearing of a Sammy Davis Jr.
and not a little of a showmanship
and delightful superficiality
that seemed to grow on people in certain circles of LA.
That's LA, she says.
Now, you know, I've read that in LA
and I started to think, oh, I meant to edit that out.
But you know what? They loved it. They said, yep, we're superficial. We're superficial.
Now they loved it. And you know it's right, don't you? Yeah.
He walked straight back and sleut footed into the foyer, past the curved faux-gone-with-the-wind staircase and the East Asian pottery.
He gestures toward the living room, an imposing ballroom of a space that dwarfs him in its volume,
fairly frozen in the seafoam carpet and hot pink tulip chairs out of a sherbetty Doris Day movie from the 50s.
The whole effect is as starched and formal as the tuxedos he used to wear to the parties he threw for himself
back when his wife Alice was alive and the money was raining down like confetti.
He seems accustomed to people fawning over the place, and with the prim air of leading men of his favorite movies from back in the 40s,
insists on serving his guests a slice of lemon pound cake and vanilla ice cream
on Rosenthal, China, whether they would like to have it or not,
which I did not, not already eaten.
He sat and watched. He is a physician
or was for most of his adult life and by most accounts a very good one
and is prone to pontificate like a man of his years and accomplishments.
But he is just as likely to interrupt himself and check the time
to see if he can still make the 1 o'clock at the Hollywood Park racetrack.
His photo albums are filled with an unlikely assortment of bookies and blues singers and dentists and fraternity men
and surgeons and society people whose approval he craved, even though he knew they were too pretentious to matter, really.
He doesn't say it because it would be gauche and hardly worth mentioning from his point of view,
but there happened to be a lot of Little Roberts around town due to the fact that over the years
He delivered a number of baby boys whose mothers were so grateful for his firm hand and calming reassurances at the precise moment of truth
That they named their sons not after their husbands, but after the doctor who had delivered their babies
Before he begins the story he tells you it's a long one and you can't get it all
He's lived too many lives done too much known too many people
Ridden so high and so low that there's no point in fooling yourself into thinking you can capture the whole of it
You could try of course, and he agrees to give as much as he can I
Love to talk he says a smile forming on a still chiseled face as he sits upright in his tulip chair
And I am my favorite subject I
Just want to close with them with with these thoughts and before taking your questions
And that is that this migration, we've talked about the joys of reporting it, we've talked
about the origins of it and how we all owe a debt of gratitude to the people who made
it possible for us to be here.
In fact, many of us wouldn't be here if they hadn't left and met the people who would ultimately
become our grandparents, parents or whatever.
But this migration has a lot of lessons for all of us today.
Remember, this migration was a leaderless revolution that changed the country.
That shows you the power of the individual.
One person multiplied by millions ended up putting so much pressure on the South that
it forced the South to change, and the ways that it forced the South to change was this.
One, it showed the South and also the North that the lowest caste people in this country
had options, finally, and were willing to take them.
It wasn't clear whether they would take them or not.
This is the first time in American history that the lowest caste people, African Americans,
took this huge step to leave the only place that they had ever been for most of their
history and set out for places unknown.
Secondly, it exposed the people who stayed to options other ways of being.
In other words, they would come and visit their cousins and their great aunts and the
neighbors who moved up north or out west, and they could see how the people were living.
they wondered to themselves and said to themselves,
why can't we have this back home?
Why can't we walk freely down the street
without fearing that we might somehow offend
and get on the wrong side of a caste system
that is so hard to figure out
that we just basically shrink from everything?
Why can't we have that here?
And that helped to feed and fuel
what would ultimately be known as the civil rights movement.
The civil rights movement would have happened eventually,
But it was accelerated by the mass departures of basically
half of the black population from the South.
That's massive.
That's power of the individual.
And then finally, those people were sending money back home
to help support the effort.
So there was all of this back and forth going on.
It took people in the North and the West and people in the South
to make this happen.
Remember that whenever there's any kind of turmoil anywhere
in the world, usually the United States gets more involved
if there is already a contingent of people
from that part of the world here in this country.
And that's because those people can put pressure
on the United States to at least cover it and pay attention
just by being there, not having to necessarily even protest
just by being there.
In other words, the North and the West,
having such a large percentage of black people
that they'd never had before, had to take note
of what was going on in the South.
They hadn't been paying attention before.
it should be remembered that resistance to this caste system,
resistance to what is known as, whether you
want to call it slavery, the Jim Crow caste system,
whatever you want to call it, resistance
had been going on since 1619.
There had been resistance to the oppression
that African-Americans have been living under
for the entire time it was going on.
But these were people who were dying or attacked, lynched,
But they were like trees that were falling
and no one was hearing them.
Finally, when there was a large enough contingent of people
in these big cities where all the media were,
where the cameras were, suddenly people were taking notice.
And it was then and only then that all of these
resistance efforts were getting attention.
And that is what helped fuel the civil rights movement,
what I like to consider the human rights movement forward.
And then finally, I wanted to say that
what is the result of any migration experience?
What truly is the result of it?
People who migrate often don't do it for themselves.
It's almost too late for them sometimes
because they've already suffered whatever the indignities are,
the lowered experiences with education,
the limits on their education.
Some could only go as far as the eighth grade.
That was as far as you could go
in Chickasaw County, Mississippi, for example.
Others could only go as far as the 11th grade.
That was a standard for many, many people at that time.
They had already suffered the lack of nutrition.
whatever it was they had already suffered,
but it wasn't too late for the children
and the unseen grandchildren and great-grandchildren,
meaning us, it wasn't too late.
So ultimately when they made this decision to leave,
it was not for them, but ultimately it was for us.
All of us, I mean this is for, I always say that
this was not unlike any migration,
the people who migrated across the Atlantic in steerage,
the people across the Pacific Ocean,
and those who crossed the Rio Grande.
Everyone who does such a thing is doing it
for the unseen children and grandchildren who might benefit.
And what happened?
What happened to those people?
Those people, this was the first time
that people in this lowest caste had an opportunity
to become their truer selves.
And those children, once they got the opportunity, not all,
not everybody in any group is going to go off
and become Nobel laureates.
But this was the first time that you had an opportunity
for Toni Morrison to exist the first time.
And that is because during the time
that her parents migrated from Alabama to Ohio,
had they not migrated, she would not
have been able to do something that we take for granted.
And perhaps today we're not taking as granted
as much in this particular moment here in this building.
She would not have been able to go to a library
and take out a library book.
It was against the law for African-Americans to do that.
And if you're going to become a Nobel laureate,
you kind of need to be able to get a book now and then.
And she would not have been able to do that
had her parents stayed.
She would not have been able to do that.
When it comes to music, music as we know it
would simply not exist.
Much of the music as we know it.
Motown would not have existed at all.
That's because Barry Gordy migrated from,
his parents migrated from Georgia to Detroit.
There when he got to be a grown man,
he looked around him, he wanted to go into music.
He didn't have the money to go scouting out
the best talent, so what did he do?
He ended up looking around himself
and there were these children.
The children of the great migration.
children who were listening to gospel music at home and spirituals at home and
the blues music at home. And they were playing it out for themselves and he saw
these three girls. One of them was full of personality but didn't have the
strongest voice. I think you know what I'm speaking about. We would not even know
her name, Diana Ross. Her, and that's because her father migrated from West
Virginia, mother from Alabama, met in Detroit. She wouldn't even have existed
have been no great migration, much less to be discovered by Barry Gordy, who also wouldn't
have existed, but you just keep going back and back and back and you realize that this
is an American story of so many people who wouldn't have existed and we wouldn't even
know their names had they not migrated out and taken this act of courage to lead. He
also heard about this very large family in Gary, Indiana. Nine or ten kids, five boys,
The youngest one was the one who did all the dancing and singing.
We would not know Michael Jackson's name.
We would not know Prince's name.
All of these people are individuals who were products of people who had migrated from different
parts of the south to the north, met in the north, had the children, and the children
had the opportunity to be exposed to and to be discovered.
The talent was within them all along,
but it was latent and undeveloped
because people were stuck in a caste system.
And when it comes to jazz, Miles Davis
simply would not have been able to become the person
that he did had there been no great migration.
His parents migrated from Arkansas to Illinois,
where he had the opportunity to develop his skill,
the luxury, you might say.
Thelonious Monk, his parents migrated from North Carolina
to Harlem when he was five years old.
he too had the luxury of being able to spend time developing his God given talent instead
of picking tobacco which is what the family would have been doing in North Carolina and
John Coltrane. John Coltrane, he migrated himself at the age of 17 from North Carolina
to Philadelphia where believe it or not think about this historical fact. That is where
when he got to Philadelphia, that is where he got his first alto sax. He had not touched
and Alto sax until he got to Philadelphia and where would jazz be? Where would music
be? Where would culture be? And not just American culture but world culture. All of these names
I've given you just a few of the names. This is just the tip of the iceberg. I have a long
list of recognizable names from August Wilson to Michelle Obama to James Baldwin and Richard
Wright, all of these people who would never have been able to become the people that they
had, had someone not made the decision to leave, simply to leave. The power of the individual
decision could lead to so much that we now, in some ways, just, it's so embedded in our
culture that we don't often realize that this is actually the culture of a people who had
left and made this big decision to leave. Now, I want to end with this quote from Richard
right because we're in difficult times overall as a country, as a planet, on so many levels,
and yet the human story is one in which we truly have so much more in common than we've
been led to believe and we have so much more strength because it's embedded in our backgrounds.
We need to recalibrate what it means to be a hero. Our young people need to recalibrate
what it means to be a hero. We have heroes in all of our backgrounds, all of our families.
We need to know the family's story to realize how did we as individuals get to this point.
These people who made the sacrifice have left us in some ways the code, the answer to a
lot of the questions that we might ever have.
They left us not through their words but by their actions as to what we should do even
today.
We have the strength within us to overcome anything because these people had to overcome
so much more than we can even fathom.
These are people who we're talking about we're in a great recession.
These are people who survived the Great Depression.
And this is not to compare it, you know, our expectations are different now, but the reality
is these people had so little compared to what we have.
The poorest person has a cell phone.
It may be Metro PCS, but they have a cell phone, you know, but they didn't have a cell
phone, you know.
And so they have left us, they have left us through their actions and also in our very
DNA you might say, as people who are descended from people, all people here in the United
States for the most part, are descended from people who came a long way away just to get
here.
That makes people different.
There's something different about people who make this leap of faith.
And so they have left us the answers.
I want to leave with end with this quote from Richard Wright where the title of the book
comes from.
In some ways, it's a prayer.
It's what he said to himself as he was about to leave Mississippi for Chicago, and it's
a lesson for all of us to, you know, whisper it to ourselves in moments of darkness where
we're wondering what to do.
And he said, I was leaving the South to fling myself into the unknown.
I was taking a part of the South to transplant in alien soil, to see if it could grow differently,
if it could drink of new and cool rains, bend in strange winds, respond to the warmth of
other suns, and perhaps to bloom.
They have left us the answers to almost any question we might have.
They may not even be here to tell us what it is that they have by their actions.
and that means that if they could do what they did
without cell phones, no Skype, no email,
think about the moment of departure.
Think about the moment of departure for all of them,
which is how we all got here ultimately.
There's a moment of departure in which
somebody in all of our backgrounds had to look
into the face, into the eyes, the teary eyes, truly,
of the parent, the person who had raised them,
mother, the father, the grandmother, the grandfather, the aunt, whoever it might
have been. And they could not be assured that they would ever see this person
alive again. This is not, this is not an exaggeration, this is the reality of life
at the time that I'm talking about. Remember there was no email, there was no
Skype, there was no, there were no cell phones, no reliable even long-distance
cell, long-distance telephone service. So when they were leaving, if they were
getting on a boat from Europe to here, if they were getting on a train from Florida
to Seattle, there was no guarantee that they would see this person alive again, no guarantee.
And that person, that older person who could not make the crossing, because this is a young
person's thing really, they were too old to make the crossing, they had lived their lives
and they had to look into the eye of that person that they had raised and wonder if
They would live to see them again in their lifespan
and not know if they ever would.
Think about that.
Think about the sacrifice that they had to make
at that moment, the heart-wrenching moment of departure.
And when you think about what they had to do
in order for us to be here today,
you realize that if they could do what they did
with absolutely nothing but just grit,
fortitude, faith, and hope,
and a belief in something
that they could not even see,
but believed had to be better
than what they had there,
then that means that there's nothing that we,
the heirs to all that they did, cannot do.
So thank you so much for having me.
Thank you.
I've been told that we can take about 10 minutes
for questions, if there are any.
Yes, the question was, do I travel to the South
to deliver the message to talk about the book?
And yes, I do, and I was surprised
that actually the very first place
that I was invited to speak, this is before the book came out,
was the University of Mississippi.
Yeah, and I wondered at a certain point
to remind them, you know the book is about the people who
left.
You know, just to let them know.
And they say, yes, we understand.
We know that we want to hear about it.
And the reason is because actually,
I should say that some of the best turnouts are in the South.
And that's because these are their people.
These are their people.
These are their cousins, their aunts, sometimes
their grandparents, sometimes their parents.
These are their people.
And so they feel a deep connection to this,
a deep curiosity.
I've been really gratified to see that.
Yes, I was at the University of Virginia
and it was a great turnout.
And I was, in that particular setting,
I was the only person of color in the room,
which is very, which says a lot about
the appreciation for history overall.
And I was very, I was gratified to see that as well.
So the, and in some ways, this great migration,
the people who were part of this migration,
In some ways we're unwitting ambassadors of Southern culture
because they brought the culture with them.
So, Southerners, if they look at it
and really take note of what happened,
then in some ways, the way that I gather
that it's being understood and appreciated
is that these are our people
who went to the North and the West
and carried the culture with them
so that in some ways we can take a part of that.
We can take joy in it.
We've come a long, long way.
We really have come a long way.
And the turnout has been phenomenal in the South.
It has been.
Mr. Mokerson?
Yeah.
My name is Malcolm Westbrooks,
and my father, JB, and my mother, Vadilia,
migrated to Oakland 1937 from Jasper County, Texas.
And he did it by freight train.
But I do have a deal for you,
a photo of them on the East Shore Lake Merit, 1939.
and some video.
I began videotaping my father in the late 70s, early 80s,
and he has some wonderful stories that I think you'll enjoy.
So I'd be honored if you would accept this.
Oh, thank you.
Yeah, from my parents.
Thank you.
Thank you, thank you.
Hi there.
I am just absolutely so moved by this book.
I'm an avid fan of history and history of real people
and particularly of the migration coming to California,
my family settled in Arizona
and up in the mountains of McNary and Tucson
and Phoenix and Yuma and all of those places
in the middle of the desert.
Yeah, and I mean it's fascinating stories
of how black folks got to be in the middle of the desert
in the first place.
But one of the things I wanted to ask you
was about the process.
I also work with senior citizens to get them to tell their stories about settling in places
like Cochran and those places like that in the cotton fields and fruit farms that are
here in the Bay Area or in Northern California.
I was just wondering what kind of questions did you ask and when you went through the
interview process, and I know that this was a 15-year process, and old people do love
to love to talk. They love to give them an opportunity to tell their story and they're
ready to tell it. So I was just wondering, what kind of questions would you ask?
Well, when it comes to the 15 years, the 15 years was in segments. It was about two years
of just interviewing the 1200, going all over the country and going into senior centers
and AARP meetings and Baptist churches in New York where everybody was from South Carolina
And of course Catholic Church is in LA where everybody was from Louisiana and on and on.
So there was a lot of places that I went.
That's one of the things that took the time.
Another thing that took the time is that people have to tell the story in their own time.
And for many of the people, remember many of them don't want to talk, have not wanted
to talk.
My mother was, as I said, one of the toughest interviews I had was my mother, who I am convinced
still has not told me everything. But one of the things that I did with her, for example,
was I actually read every word of the book to her. My father passed away and did not
live to see the day. He would have been so proud to have seen this book. But I did read
it to her, who was then widowed. And what happened was I would read it and she would
start interrupting. I mean, I couldn't get through a page because she said, well, in
you know, there goes Rome again.
And so that was one way to get her to talk.
So one of the challenges is just to make it comfortable
for people to talk.
Because a lot of times they don't want to talk.
It is too painful.
When you describe these things and we talk about
the absurdity of not being able to pass somebody
on the road or that sort of thing,
but this was their lives.
This is what they had to live with
for until they made the passage out of the south.
And it scarred them.
And I think that a lot of this is almost
like post-traumatic stress.
So it takes a lot of time and patience, which is one reason
why it wouldn't be just one interview.
It would be many, many, many visits.
I would call them more visits than interviewing.
And we would just talk about whatever
was on their minds at that moment.
I might throw out a topic about, you know,
tell me about when you got married
or how you met your spouse, how'd you meet your husband?
And then they would start talking
and then we would ease into it.
And then over time, other things would come out
and that's how I got the story.
There's a hand right there.
Right here.
Hi, let's focus in.
Hi, you actually answered the part of my question
regarding getting those stories.
So I wanted to take a quick second
to announce an event I'm doing.
I'm inspired by your book.
My boss, Alameda County Supervisor Keith Carson
initiated a program where the last three months,
we've been doing genealogy with youth in South Berkeley,
West Oakland, and former foster youth.
So those young people will be telling their stories
on June 4th at Malcolm X Elementary in Berkeley.
So I hope you all will come out
and support those young people telling their stories.
And for the record, my family, my mother's side,
Appaloosus, Louisiana, and Jacksonville, Florida,
on my father's side by way of Detroit.
I have to say that when I started this,
people didn't talk like that.
And my goal was to have, almost when you introduce yourself,
to describe what the background is,
because that is part of the identity.
And it's embracing that identity and taking
a sense of dignity from what that represents.
That means something.
It means something.
Just saying where they're from means
they had to come a long way.
That's the story in itself.
There's more to the story, but that says so much, and it just warms my heart to hear that
we are embracing it and talking about that in that way.
The question is about the migration from Gory Island.
I have, obviously, heard of it, The Door of No Return.
One of the things that I have come to embrace with this book, if you read it, you get a
sense of it.
If you heard me speak, you get a sense of it, and I'll say it again.
We all have so much more in common than we've been led to believe.
We are all here because someone made a great leap of faith to jump off a cliff into the
unknown.
I view all these migration streams as being reflective of the faith and the fortitude
of the forebears who did this thing, and I don't see a difference between whether people
came from the Caribbean or whether they came from Alabama. The idea is they all, we all
came through great sacrifice and loss and homesickness and all of that, bringing the
culture with us, having to recreate the culture wherever we landed. And it's that idea that
I connect with. The people in this book are merely proxies for what anyone who ever made
the crossing has done. The beauty of it is it gives us an idea because for many people
the actual migration experience, immigration experience happened a long time ago, this
is so recent and yet it's complete that you get a chance to understand what was it like,
what did it take, what would I have done. I wanted it to come alive for readers. These
people, these people are human beings doing what human beings do when they're
faced with the circumstances that they were in and that's where I take my
sustenance from and it makes me feel a greater connection to all of humanity
because it this to be human in some ways is to migrate ultimately. Yes, yes.
There is. Well first of all, this is the book. This is my book. This is my version of the book.
This has been with me since September when the book came out. I had no idea that it was going to,
that I would still be talking about the book to this degree at this point eight months into it.
And it doesn't appear to be coming to an end because I'm booked through spring of 2013.
I cannot believe that.
So when I say that to say that it's become in some ways
a touch point for many groups to identify with.
There is a great discussion about immigration
in this country.
It helps understand why people do a particular thing.
I would hope that it would help us
to recognize the common humanity in all of us.
My name is.
I would hope that it would help people who are recent immigrants
see African-American, the African-American experience
is not as different from theirs as they might perceive it to be.
And that for other Americans to also see that African-Americans
ended up doing forced ultimately to do what other groups have chose to do.
And so there's so much commonality that we have.
One of the things that I do know that it's being taken up by many, many schools, there are,
it is across the ocean and is being read by very high level people in Europe
who are looking at their own immigration situation with people with all the turmoil
in North Africa coming into Europe.
So believe it or not, that's what's going on there.
And I don't, we don't know all where it will go because people are still reading it.
I mean, it's a great leap of faith just to pick up the book because it's a big book.
But I hope you find that it is a pleasure to read because I worked really hard to try
to make it that.
These people are beautiful people.
Yes.
It is.
Thank you so much.
And I think we can do a lot with our children if we talk to them about the situations in
And we talked to them about the situations in which we came from.
Because with my daughter and son, I said, do you know why you like potato pie?
No, I just know it's good.
I said, well, because blacks in the South years ago,
they didn't have money for desserts.
So therefore, they used whatever they had that they had grown
and put sugar in it and made it to be what they wanted.
I said that's where you got your potato pie,
that's where you got your bread pudding,
that's where you got your rice pudding.
All of those desserts, peach pie,
and all of that was from down south
because my parents did not have money to buy sweets,
so they made it themselves.
And just one other comment,
I can go back, because it's very emotional for me,
because when you were talking about people trying
to act white. My English teacher at Grambling was very white, fair-skinned, and she had
her hair red. She always colored it red for some reason, and she was very stiff, you know,
she was very educated. She was on her way to Grambling to work one morning, and a group
of white people forced her off the road between Grambling and Rustin and beat her up because
they told her she was trying to act white.
So it was very emotional when you said that,
because I pretty much lived through a lot of it.
It was life and death, this is the reality.
You knew your place back there, you knew where to go,
where not to go, and that's why I really appreciate
that you speak off, and go to visit your camp.
Yeah, I wanted to, yeah, I wanted to thank you so much
I wanted to thank you so much for your book.
I migrated to California 1951 when I was just 20 years old,
and last week I got a chance to share my migration story
with fourth graders, and they were very much interested in it.
Also-
Because Hope after all.
Yes, yes of course.
They were very, very much interested in it with pictures of my family and so forth.
But I wanted to say also that I had the opportunity to connect my migration story and your story
with the migration of one of my great-grandmothers who came over and lived as an enslaved person
and I knew her when I was a young child.
She died in 1939 when I was nine years old.
And so, they got a chance to see a larger picture of the migration, but thank you very
much.
Well thank you.
I think we have time for one more question.
You had started out earlier talking about how you make this story alive to young people,
and I'd like for you to share that with us, because I really would like to know, because
I know we talk to our kids and our grandchildren, but I'd like to hear how you share it and
make it alive.
One of them is to come up with these things that are connected to their lives, and one
of them is driving is a big deal, especially for people who feel that no one can tell them
how to drive.
And so I've looked for examples such as that, but I'm struck by a study that I came across
after having completed the book that reminded me of even why I decided to do the book.
And that was a study that showed that it was in North Carolina, as I'm recalling, one of
the Carolinas, it happened to have been Mexican-American children.
And they showed that the self-esteem for the children rose when there was a discussion
of actually their culture and their background.
In other words, once they embraced their culture and their background, recognizing
that they were American, but they also had other parts
of themselves that could strengthen them in some way.
And their self-esteem, measurements
of self-esteem actually rose.
Now, the thing is that for many African-American children,
that may not be occurring because the assumption is,
well, they're American and, you know,
they know the story already.
Well, actually they don't know the story.
There's no way you could truly know the story.
And I, it reminded me of why I decided
to do the book to begin with.
The idea, you know, going way back,
I'm thinking about how when I was in school,
my mother got me in the best school that she could
because she valued education,
the people actually truly valued education
because it had been denied them.
And so she got me in a diverse school,
a very good school in Washington DC
with many, many people from all over the world.
And so there many of them were diplomats, children,
or anyway, there were a lot of so-called immigrants.
And I found myself identifying with the immigrant children.
I found myself feeling that, you know,
we'd open up our lunch boxes.
And our lunch boxes were different from the other children.
Other children might have grilled cheese sandwiches.
Well, my mother made, every single day,
she had Vienna sausages on Wonder Bread with Miracle Whip.
She actually pronounced it.
It was not pronounced Vienna sausages.
They were pronounced Vienna sausages.
So every day, I would open it up.
And there it was.
It's the same thing.
She was buying the sausages on Wonder Bread with Miracle Whip every single day.
And she was doing, this was her understanding, her translation of what she thought Northerners
would be eating.
This was an upgrade in her mind.
And so I identified with the horror of opening this up and seeing what it was.
And then I had immigrant friends who were opening up things that might be curried or
something else or very spicy with some things that other children were not having.
So I identified with that, but I didn't realize why.
And that is because we had a similar experience
of being newcomers, the children of newcomers in a new world.
And so that's how I became going, obviously at the time,
I didn't recognize that I was going to go and write a book.
But to answer your question, I didn't
realize on certain days where people would start talking
about how their grandparents, their great grandparents,
had come from the old country and done this and done that
and made something of themselves,
I didn't realize that the same could be said for people
who had done what my parents had done.
I didn't realize that.
I didn't realize I would be quiet on those days
and not know what to say.
And I didn't realize that we had stories to tell too.
So, thank you very much.
Paint me like I am.
Why don't you paint me like I am?
Laughing and dancing and smiling a lot.
running with the children, with the sun in my face.
Why don't you paint me like I am?
Paint me nappy-headed and curly-haired
and walking with that amazing grace.
Paint me happy and shouting in the temple.
Paint me balancing dream baskets
of passion fruit in my head.
Paint me with the elegance I had
when I taught the chambermaid how to adorn herself
how to be a woman. Paint me when I remember that I am the daughter of
them hopeful legends of brooks and streams and growing green things. Paint
me without the tears and the bowed-down expression. Paint me without the ropes
for I am unchained. Can't you hear it in my voice? How some wish they could sing
paint me precious, paint me star bright, paint me free.
The 1954 Brown versus the Board of Education School desegregation case was one of the most
pivotal legal decisions in our nation's history.
It was the first in a series of decisions that proved to be the death knell for the
Jim Crow system of separate public facilities for blacks and whites.
2004 marks the 50th anniversary of the Brown decision.
We're here today to speak with Joyce Carol Thomas,
the editor of the new book, Linda Brown, You're Not Alone,
a work that features the writings of prominent authors
who lived through the historic decision.
Joyce lives in the East Bay
and is an internationally acclaimed playwright, author,
editor and poet.
She has received numerous awards and commendations
that include the National Book Award,
the American Book Award,
three Perretta Scott King Honors,
two Governor's Awards,
several American Library Association Awards,
and an Oklahoma Lifetime Achievement Award.
Joyce, tell me, how did the book,
Linda Brown, You Are Not Alone,
the Brown versus the Board of Education, come about?
My editors at Hyperion Disney asked me if I would be willing to pull together this collection
to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Brown versus Board of Ed.
And when you were, when they asked you to do this, Joyce, then you selected the audience
that you wanted to write this book for.
I already knew the audience was young readers.
And some of my choosing, the authors, took that into account.
I wanted the young people who would read the collection to be familiar with the authors
who were reading, pretty much.
And so the authors were all people who had been writing for that particular grade, I
mean age level.
Exactly.
the well known highly regarded children's book authors.
Okay.
How did you choose to arrange the contributions in the order in which you arranged them?
Well since it's a book that gives the memories of black and white children, I wanted the
collection to be spaced in that way too. Starts with a black author then a white
author then a black and a white. And it's the white and the black authors
were the ones who suffered through that period. And they all lived at the
particular period in which this decision was made. So the young people reading the
books now are reading about their favorite authors who were the ages they
are at the present when they're reading the book.
And that's part of the reason that you had some are stories, some are memoirs, and some
are poems to give the students, young people reading it, a variety of genres.
Absolutely.
And also, I didn't, I'm very careful when I ask other authors for work, because I know
how I work the sense of autonomy that you what comes up for you is what works best.
So I asked them if they had any memories it could be as we say a short story or a poem
or an essay whatever came up for them when they thought about where they were in 1954
or around 1954.
And so what did you tell them Joyce, and you told them just to go back in that time.
I don't know.
Don't let me tell you what you told them.
What did you tell them?
Well actually it's interesting because there are five white authors and five black authors.
The white authors said I don't remember anything about that time, and so we had lots of telephone
conversations and emails and so I said well where were you when you heard about the decision
and one of them I believe it was Jean Craighead George she was in a car riding with somebody
and then she remembered that in that in the she was riding with the I think the housekeeper
And they had gone over to see, to take one of the housekeeper's children or go over to the school,
black school for some reason, and she was appalled at the walls falling down.
Oh yeah.
The state of deterioration, and she was, she remembered that and I said why don't you write
about that, and she did.
And that's a strong, strong contribution to this book,
And you could just see her writing, and she was so glad to be writing with that teacher
to that school and had to be picked to do something special.
And then when she gets to the school, she just, she can't believe the contrast to her
own school.
Yeah, it's really, I think it was eye-opening because the white children were separated
from the black children.
So we don't have what we have today, but we in many senses enjoy today, which is the
ability for white and black young people to congregate, to discuss. And I also wanted
the students to be able to discuss some of the things that come up in the stories and
the poems, because for me the most important question an educator can get to come from
young people is the question why.
The perspectives, Joyce, of the different,
the black writers and the white writers,
you wanted that to be just naturally their perspective
of that particular period in their lives.
And how did you deal with the different perspectives?
Well, I accepted them.
I already knew one thing, which is very important,
that these authors already practiced
the multi-level joy of writing for young people.
And so it wasn't a big push.
And once they had decided what it was they were writing, they knew their audience so
well that the student or the reader, and by reader, it was young people, but it's also
readers also, of course, the adults, the grandparents, the families, people reading together and
talking about the book itself.
So that came out, I saw, after the book was completed.
Here's an opportunity to discuss this event that happened fifty years ago.
What do you think Joyce is then the value of this book for the young readers written
like this as opposed to going to the documents of the trial itself?
I think it makes it very vivid for them.
It makes history live, if you will.
I mean, just the cover alone, here's Curtis James' rendition of Linda Brown, where she's
now grandmother, Linda Brown. And so to think of her as a young girl is I think very wonderful.
And she's still fighting as we all are for the children. And to see her at this age just
brings us right into the book. I think that the Curtis James art, his art, he's a fine
And this is his first illustration book for children.
And he was so wonderful.
He asked me what I envisioned, because he did a painting for each contribution.
And so I gave him what I thought, and so he said, OK.
And then he asked me how I wrote, and I told him I get up early in the morning and write
first thing while my mind is still clear and it's quiet.
And I asked him how he worked, and he said the first thing he does when he gets up, before
he paints. He prays. He prays first and then he paints.
As a matter of fact, you mentioned that he did the illustration for each contribution.
And I get to the point that I was looking to see what it would be like for each one.
And the faces, as I said to you, you know, a little while back or a little while back
earlier today is that the face of the student on the cover are so familiar. The faces are
familiar you look at the cover and you say I've seen these kids yes and that's
that's the precious part of his art I do believe and of course his coming to the
art was through the contributions the contributions were first and then he
read them and had his prayer and then painted them well I know how careful you
are about who does the illustrations for your books because all of your books
we've had discussions before in the past about well Joyce who did this one you
You know, how did you decide on this illustrator?
So I know it, you know, I looked at it, I said, yeah, this is, I know it's going to
be good illustrations if it's with Joyce's work, because they always are, you know, and
this was particularly beautiful, beautiful work.
The whole book, the contributions to the book, the typography of the book, the touch of the
book.
I think the children...
The feel of it, yeah.
People like holding this book, and that's so important, you know.
A book could have a lot to say, but if it's not presented in a way that your eyes want
to rest on and your hands caress it then the kids aren't going to pick it up and
what is so marvelous about Linda Brown is she's five years old at this time she's
very young she's very young we think of often the black students integrated the
colleges but we don't think of the five-year-old and she's five years old
when this happened and she and so I think that part of the attraction will
be to students today who think older people do it all the time is this was a
little girl who was gonna have to go too far to school. One of the reasons I'm
particularly excited about this is that when that decision was passed, it was a
nine-to-zero decision. It was a unified decision of the court, of the high court,
and it was unanimous, and it makes me think about what the unified, the United
that means in the United States is unified and the decision was unified. We were united and I believe we can do that way again.
And I think you talk about that in your introduction.
I do, yeah.
About that, you know, what the students, young students will be reading this will get a sense of what this united means.
Yeah.
And it's kind of united in dignity and united in being concerned about each other.
other. And doing what's right, doing the thing that gives us our humanity. It's very
painful to watch people screaming at little children. And even though some of the judges
stood in the court room, the court stood in the doors of the courthouse and said all those
nasty things. Later on he changed his mind but yeah that's it's important to
know that that happened. But there are joyous, for example, our friend, on the
Welch's story about my dear colored people, it's just so funny. There's this
bishop, you know, proclaiming, you know, my dear colored people and just like
putting them down. As I say, you're lucky to be sitting in here and he's
to use where the white people sit right and she does something else with it in her head
and so the book ends on this very triumphant triumphant in this very triumphant place and
she knew she had the support of her parents and all of her parents were sitting there
and so she took the title my dear colored people there was supposed to be a put down
and reclaimed it to be dear was to be supported by your grandparents your aunts your uncles
your great-grandma, all of these people, your neighbors,
the people who went to church with you,
who said, you know, act right, sit up, do this, do that.
The people who cared, you carried yourself.
Yeah.
So the young people reading this book will see
that we had heroes and shearals of all ages.
Exactly.
And it's not, and as you said,
Quincy Truex's piece makes it clear that this was painful.
Absolutely.
Getting jumped on by kids who, I think he said,
maybe it was a handful of black kids in this school.
I think he was the only one for a while.
For a while, right.
Yeah, I think he was the only one.
And the other thing he said that I found very amusing
was that he was smarter than anybody in the school.
Oh yeah, that's, yeah, yeah, yeah, I like that.
and I also like where, I think it was Angela Reed mentioning that,
or maybe it was close to true still, that the benefit of going through all these struggles is you stop mystifying whites.
I mean, you looked over there, you saw, well, they may know this, but I know this, or they're no smarter than I am, you know?
Yeah, so it is a mixed bag that the stuffing happened, but also he would not have known
where he stood in terms of his intellect and his genius.
And that's true, I think, of everybody in the book.
Even the white writers understand that a lot of the things they had been told were not
true.
Exactly.
A lot of the things that they grew up believing were unexamined, what would you call it, an
unexamined?
Certainly unexamined.
Untruths.
You know.
An unexamined first hand.
Exactly.
So the why is an important question.
Why did this happen?
And why do you think it happened?
And I think that educators who use this book will really benefit from the teacher's guide.
They did this absolutely gorgeous elegant teacher's guide, which invites the teacher
and the student to discuss each of the contributions and to come up with their own, what do they
think?
And also there are some academic things like other books they can read and a timeline and
all of the things that surround it.
But this gets them into 1954.
I wanted to make sure to ask you, after reading Stormy Weather, I was wondering why, how you
came up with what you were going to contribute to the book.
Well, I was very busy talking with the contributors, because they'd never done anything like this
before, and all of the contributions are unique or original.
I don't like to do re-enthologizing things, if you're going to do something wonderful,
make it new.
And so it required talking, my talking back and forth with them.
And so I didn't do my stormy weather until everybody else's piece was in.
Like the mother takes care of all the kids and then she eats them.
Right, exactly, exactly.
But yeah, that was it.
I waited until everybody's was in and then I thought, well what shall I write?
I wondered if it would be an essay or a short story.
But what came up for me was this poem, Stormy Weather, which is sparked by something that
happened with Mama and me away from Tracy, California, to Oklahoma.
Stormy Weather.
We're traveling from Tracy, California, back to 1950s Ponca City, a town etched in young
memory, a segregated oasis, where black teachers lessen us in the freedom of piano music mixed
Using manners and reading and arithmetic and sacred sonnets.
Oh my Oklahoma!
In our Studebaker we sweat through the heat of the Mojave Deadzit and lurch on into Texas.
Mama is ill.
Her soft biscuit brown arms have turned bony and pale.
Dr. Sonnenberg has told her she could make the journey as long as she takes her medication
with water.
I am in charge of the doctor's instructions.
Sister, hand me my purse, my mother says.
I am the older daughter and have the designated title of sister.
I watch to see that mama takes her tablets on time.
She swallows the pill, rinses it down with water.
Hungry, we stop in Texas.
Y'all can't eat in here, gruff voice takes our money.
He points to an outdoor picnic table, littered dirty with bird droppings, swarming with flies.
I cannot eat the sandwich or watermelon, my stomach jumps rope.
On the Texas Oklahoma border, we stop for gas and water for mama's medicine.
Sister, hand me my purse.
Sister hand me my purse.
I pass the purse to Mama.
She opens the bag and takes out her peel.
She asks the attendant, may I have a cup of water?
No, the man says, still counting our money.
Mama's face turns ashen.
I look out the car window for a Sunday school Jesus driving the money chambers from the
temple.
Pray for an ever flowing stream, for a cloud burst from a summer storm, flooding a cup's
worth of water, enough for Mama to swallow her peel.
I am sister, but I cannot help her.
My mind screams if the attendant's face clouded by ignorance.
His mannerless, mean spirit of arrogance.
I want to smack the smirk from his lips.
I pray, sister, mama can read my angriest thoughts.
I pray, a storm kicks up.
Lightning flashes, a torrent of holy water
baptizes our dusty car.
Windchill wipers sing with laughter.
Sister, hand me my purse.
I leap from the car and collect healing water
in the cup of watertight fingers.
Mama sips raindrop from my praying hands.
At the station, the attendant gazes in disbelief,
struck dumber by this gift from God,
as though he never knew the kindness
of teachers and librarians.
A hug from a mama with fluffy biscuit-brown arms.
I still pray for stormy weather.
Whenever I see you, I think about the first time we met.
And it was such an experience, and we were watching an art show,
and to make the long story short, some of the things
we saw at the art show inspired you to write the poem Paint Me
Like I Am.
And I now call that the anthem.
I've been teaching many, many years,
and all my students know that poem Paint Me Like I Am.
And that's what you're doing with Linda Brown.
That's what you do with all your stories.
You say, pick me like I am.
To write is to write from another place, it's very deep,
it's a deep place.
And you hope that you're getting it right.
And I'm such a perfectionist.
I have at least 10 to 20 drafts of every book I've written.
Poetry's another thing.
Sometimes it just comes out whole.
But the books are something else.
And the plays, of course, there's many drafts of those
there are of the novels.
And actually what you just said, that's the beauty of this book is when teachers are teaching
it or when you're coming to visit classes, like I hope you will come to visit my class
and read from the book, just what you mentioned that a poem comes out one way, a short story
comes out another way, an essay comes out another way.
So in addition to the stories, the book is also good for young readers to see different
I could see teachers using this book also to teach writing in a classroom or to teach
in different literary genres since you cover all of them, many of them in this anthology.
I think of you, Joyce, as bringing your spirit to your work and that almost has an echo.
It is that spirit that makes people soften up.
I always say that when you open your home for many years and when different writers
would move to the Bay Area, they would meet other writers in your home and always said
when everybody came to Joyce's home, if there were like literary quarrels, they were left
at the door.
It was always, it used to be, it was such a place to go to your house.
It was at your house that I met Alice Walker, it was at your house that I met Chester Hines,
and it was at your house that so many people came together and enjoyed, it was, what I'm
trying to say is that same spirit that pulls people together harmoniously with all the
difficulties in this world is the same kind of talent that you have with these stories
when you have these different perspectives, white and black.
that maybe people individually might be challenging different perspectives, but somehow to come
together as a unified whole in this book?
I think so.
I think that's great and it lets us know our possibilities.
I mean there is no limit to what we can do once we put our hearts and minds into living.
And Joyce, would you, so as this book is going into the schools this year, I would imagine
that since 2004 is going to be the big celebration of the Brown versus the Board of Education
that this book is going to be a hot book and it's already getting a lot of attention.
It is. I'm just really thrilled at some of the absolutely amazing reviews. What you want
for a reviewer to do is to get it, to understand what's happening. And they do. I was just
very, very gratified as are the publishers, of course, that they knew, they talk about
the nuances of the pieces that are in there.
Yes.
The nuances.
Well, I certainly have enjoyed reading this book and I'm so glad that I was able to be
involved with talking to you about this particular book.
What would you like to see your next work coming after this?
My next work is, well I have a lot going on at one time.
That's how I should have thought about it.
As usual.
But the Gospel of Cinderella is a children's book and I've seen the galleys and they are
really wonderful.
And of course that comes out of my gospel background, the sanctified church background.
And then another thing about the Sanctified Church is Zora Neale Hurston's book for children
that I'm adapting.
Well, in talking to you, we could just go on forever as we've often done in your living
room.
But I want to say that we're delighted that you took the time to be here with us and thank
you for lively and informative discussion.
We'll all look for Linda Brown, you are not alone, as well as other works you shared with
us. Thanks again for being here with us and I'm loving you. It's just great.
So dear readers of Linda Brown, You're Not Alone. We come to reflect, to rejoice, and
to consider how much further we have to go. Today, the Brown victory is still leading
all of America's children, including all of you listeners and readers, into the 21st century and
beyond. We thank Linda Brown. We thank the brave children of our past. We are mindful that some
of those brave children who are now adults still bear the scars of that battle. Although you may
may not have a blue-backed Webster's, your books can be just as exciting. Your thirst
is the same as that of a child who wanted her father to read to her under the mulberry
bush. Can you hear her singing syllables into words because she wanted to read books for
herself? As we commemorate the 50-year milestone of the Brown decision, we, your authors, illustrators,
Librarians, teachers, and parents,
applaud your belief in education for all.
Let us continue to work together toward a truer democracy.
Good afternoon and welcome to the community
and economic development committee meeting
of Tuesday, May 12th, 2026.
The time is now 1.32 p.m.
and this meeting may come to order.
Before taking role, I will provide instructions
on how to submit a speaker card for items on this agenda.
If you're here with us in chamber
and would like to submit a speaker card,
please fill one out and turn one into myself
or a clerk representative
before the item is read into record.
Online speaker requests were due 24 hours
prior to the start of this meeting.
This meeting came to order at 1.32 p.m.
and speaker cards will no longer be accepted
10 minutes after making that time 1.42 p.m.
We'll now proceed with taking roll.
council members five.
Present.
Ramachandran.
Here.
Unger.
Here.
And Chair Brown.
Present.
Thank you, we have four members present.
Chair, before we begin,
do you have any announcements at this time?
Yes, thank you so much.
So first, I just wanna take a moment to express my gratitude
for the strong attendance today.
Definitely encourage everyone to continue showing up
for our community and economic development committee
well into the future,
given that this committee plays a critical role
in shaping the vibrancy of economic development
in our city, workforce opportunities,
zoning and housing policy.
And so with that in mind and in an effort to ensure
that the committee wraps up in a timely manner,
I would be allotting just 90 seconds
for public comment today.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Now reading in item one approval of the draft minutes from the committee meetings of March 24 2026 and April 21st
2026 and we have no speakers on this item. Excellent. Thank you so much. I'll entertain a motion
so moved
second
Thank you
We have a motion made by Councilmember Unger seconded by Councilmember Ramachandran to accept the draft minutes from the committee meetings of March 21st
and the first and April 21st
on roll council members by I
Ramachandran I hunger I and
chair Brown I thank you item
number one passes with four
eyes reading in item two
determination of schedule
about standing committee items
and we have one speaker that
signed up excellent thank you so
much so to the city
administration any changes for
our pending list I know okay
the public speaker. Calling in the name that signed up to speak on item number
two, the pending list, Miss Asada Ola Bala. At some point, I don't know why you won't
have this discussion, but you are a sanctuary city and being in that status
you have allowed people to come into this city illegally. People who have
come into this city illegally, it is estimated that it's over 200,000 in this
The state of California is 2 million.
The population of California black people is 2.3 million.
You have as many illegal immigrants in this state as you have black people.
But they are getting the jobs.
They are getting the housing.
They are getting access to education.
They are getting health care.
Black people, we are not getting much of anything.
The city of Oakland unemployment rate is over 9%.
The same thing is true for the United States unemployment
for black people close to 9%.
I will not sit here every meeting
and allow you to ignore the negativity, the disproportionality
of what's happening in the city of Oakland
as a result of your sanctuary city status.
You know what I would do.
Barbara Jordan told you in
nineteen ninety four when she
was a part of the immigration.
Investigative committee on how
we should look at immigration in
the future they said you should
put a limitation on it because
at some point it was going to
impact low level on in playing
for your comments all about.
Here that includes all speakers
on the side of.
Excellent thank you so much and
One more time, so moved.
Thank you, that's a motion made by Councilmember Unger,
seconded by Councilmember Fife, to approve, sorry,
to accept the determination of schedule
about standing committee items as is on roll.
Councilmember Fife?
Aye.
Ramachandran?
Aye.
Unger?
Aye.
And Chair Brown?
Aye.
Thank you, item number two passes with four ayes
to accept the pending list as is.
Reading in item number three, adopt a resolution
authorizing grant agreements with service providers
competitively selected for Workforce Innovation
and Opportunity Act program services
for fiscal years, 2026 to 2029,
and a total amount not to exceed $2,650,000
for fiscal year 2026 to 2027
to provide comprehensive adult and dislocated worker,
one-stop operator, business engagement, and youth services,
and amendments existing Wai'ola agreements
to extend contract terms through June 30th, 2027
and increased funding in a total amount not to exceed
$584,109.
And we have 11 speakers that signed up to speak.
Excellent, thank you so much.
So for this presentation, we will be hearing
from Assistant Administrator Sophia Navarro.
Good afternoon, just to correct my title, sorry.
I'm a deputy city administrator, but thank you.
So through the Chair, to Council, and to our public,
Sophia Navarro, and here also going to be co-presenting
with Honorada Lindsay, who's acting capacity
while transitioning out of workforce development
to city administration.
So, thank you again for this opportunity to present.
So we are bringing forth to Council approval of 2.65 million
in new WIOA, so WIOA Workforce Innovation Opportunity Act,
service contracts for fiscal year 2026 through 2027,
also authorizing renewals through fiscal year 2029
based on performance and funding availability.
Approve 584,109,000 amendments to extend current WIOA
service contracts through June 30, 2027,
and support continuity of workforce services
during transition to the new procurement cycle.
And I did want to also note that this presentation
was also provided to the Oakland Workforce Development Board
and the funding recommendations that are presented here
were approved by that board on February 26th of 2026.
So quick overview, actually, do I have a PowerPoint?
Let's, oh, thank you, appreciate that.
So going into just the overview of recommendation action.
So the new WIOA contracts, it's a competitive procurement
Conducted for adult dislocated worker youth business engagement, which is a new category in this process and the one-stop operator services
recommended awards based on were based on scoring geographic coverage operational capacity and system coordination and
Also these contracts support citywide workforce service delivery that would begin July 1st 2026
contract amendments and transition stability was something that we
uh, felt was needed to make sure that the workforce system continued during this procurement
process.
So, this extends current provider agreements through June 30, 2027, um, applies a portion
of increased fiscal year 2025, 2026, we owe allocations to maintain, as I mentioned, continuity
of services and supports, uh, uninterrupted participant services during this transition,
again, to the new procurement cycle.
So, why this investment matters, so the Oakland workforce system supports residents seeking
employment training and career advancement opportunities.
This item implements a new competitive procurement cycle while maintaining continuity during
this transition.
These contract extensions also help prevent disruption to workforce services for job seekers,
youth and employers.
The recommendations prioritize equitable geographic access, individual services and historically
underserved communities.
Also increased wheel of funding, as mentioned earlier, provides an opportunity to stabilize
money that has been added to
the budget.
We need to minimize provider
operations and strengthen
service delivery citywide.
And this recommended approach
balances procurement integrity,
operational continuity, fiscal
stewardship and community
impact.
So just a little bit about the
workforce system outcomes and
the last procurement cycle.
So every three years we are
mandated to put this out for
procurement.
These dollars are federal
dollars.
They come from the Department
of Labor, go to employment
three programs last year for
two to two twenty twenty five
more than one thousand one
hundred Oakland residents.
We're served across a dull
dislocated worker and youth
programs over the past three
program years.
Training participation increase
by twelve percent over three
year period employment outcomes
increased by ten percent across
we owe a- funded programs the
medium wages increased- from
twenty four fifty an hour to
Youth median wages increased from 19 an hour to 21 an hour
and cost for employment remained consistently below 5,000
despite that funding levels.
So competitive and transparent,
sorry, we of course had a competitive
and transparent procurement process.
So open and competitive requests
for proposal process was conducted.
I wanna just note that we were really intentional
of starting this RFP process last year.
Our whole intention was to make sure
that we started the process earlier
so that we could get ideally through our board,
our committee, and city council
so that we can start these contracts on time, July 1.
We're still aiming and focused on that timeline,
but again, we wanted to make sure
that our providers had contracts starting on time,
because traditionally, as we've heard oftentimes in council,
that contracts don't get executed until three
to six months sometimes after the fact.
So again, we were really thoughtful about this process.
Technical assistance was provided
to support equitable applicant participation.
Independent review process was conducted
by workforce development professionals
and subject matter experts.
There was a two-step evaluation process
which focused on compliance review
and qualitative scoring.
Score was on program design, experience, methodology,
cost-reasonableness, and responsiveness.
Recommendations reviewed in alignment
with the Oakland Workforce Development Board priorities
and federal requirements by the Department of Labor.
And we also did have a formal appeal process
that was completed in accordance with the RFP.
So just briefly on the appeal process
and procurement integrity,
which is something that we did provide
as far as this process goes.
All proposers were notified of funding recommendations
and evaluation outcomes.
Applicants may request formal debrief
regarding proposal scoring and process.
Appeals are limited to procedural concerns
related to the procurement process.
Appeals must be submitted in writing
within the designated appeal period.
And final determinations are issued
in accordance with City procurement and WIOA requirements.
And that did happen in this process.
So just real quickly with the recommended new awards
for 2026 through 2029.
So this procurement process had three categories.
and that first category is a comprehensive AJCC.
AJCC stands for categories, thank you, sorry.
Look at the screen.
So category one is comprehensive
American Job Centers of California.
The two recommended providers for funding,
there are the Oakland Private Industry Council,
which would cover the downtown,
they have a downtown location and a West Oakland location.
Lau Family Community Development,
they have a location in central Oakland
and East Oakland over at the Eastmont Mall.
Those were the, again, two organizations
that were being recommended for funding
for the comprehensive American Job Center of California.
For category two, we have the one-stop operator,
we have the Oakland Private Industry Council,
who's being recommended to provide system-wide support
to our workforce system.
The category three, and this, again,
I mentioned it briefly earlier,
but business intermediary, this is actually a new component
of this RFP process.
When we were in the process of putting together this RFP,
we did have community stakeholder convenings
in addition to connecting with our business community.
One thing that was called out is that we wanna make sure
that through the workforce system,
we are really intentional about collaborating
not only with the chambers in Oakland,
but our own business development division
and really just connecting more directly with businesses.
And so the way that we looked at this RFP process
was a business first model.
And what that means is not diminishing the role
and the need and the focus for our job seekers,
but really making sure that we are engaging employers
more intentionally, really focused on the high growth sectors
that we often talk about.
We talk about healthcare, IT.
And so this role would really help us make sure
that we're connecting with those businesses,
bringing in those opportunities for our job seekers
so that we're getting our job seekers
into more high quality paying jobs.
And so that organization was recommended
to be the Spanish-speaking Unity Council.
They would provide citywide services
and be working very closely with the providers
that you see here.
Category four is our youth services component.
And the organizations recommended for funding
are the Youth Employment Partnership,
Lao Family Community Development,
Spanish-speaking Unity Council,
Oakland Tech Exchange, and Youth Uprising.
So why these providers?
So these providers were the highest ranked proposals
within the service categories.
They've demonstrated capacity to deliver compliant,
high quality workforce services.
It also represents a strong red geographic coverage
across Oakland, including East Oakland, deep East Oakland.
The focus on system coordination was also a key priority
for us, employer engagement and participant outcomes.
And lastly, balanced fiscal stewardship
with continuity and equity considerations.
We wanted to make sure that as we were recommending
organizations for funding, that we were really ensuring
that there was coverage throughout the city of Oakland.
So in order for this to be realized,
it also requires a contract amendment to really, again,
support the stability of the transition.
So recommendation of extending current provider agreements
through June 30th, 2027, so that we can prepare
for transition for maybe some of the organizations
that are not being recommended to be funded
in some of the categories as they had before.
It applies 50% of increased adult dislocated worker
and youth allocations to direct services,
prevents disruption during transition,
as I mentioned, to new contracts,
maintains participant access and provider capacity,
and again, supports continuity
for employers, youth, and job seekers.
So just to reiterate why the extensions are needed,
So Oakland received approximately $1.4 million
in increased WIOA formula funding.
This is a one-time allocation for $25.26.
New providers require transition and implementation time,
so that is something that was put into consideration
because we wanna make sure our job seekers
are being transitioned appropriately
and have access to services.
Extensions prevent disruption of services,
as I just mentioned.
also employer engagement, youth programming,
and AJCC operations.
So the recommendation applies approximately,
as I mentioned earlier, 50% of increased adult
dislocated worker and youth allocations
to stabilize services during transition.
So this slide, sorry, it's a little tiny for folks
in the public, but this is really just showing
those recommended increases to current providers
for fiscal year 2526.
And so you'll see the increase there
based on the proportional percentage.
Excellent, just wanna comment.
We've given you 10 minutes plus two, so 12.
How much more time do you need?
Can you give me two more minutes?
That sounds good.
I have a few more slides, so equity and community impact.
So we, so this recommendation expands access
for underserved communities and priority populations.
So in this process, we wanted to make sure
that priority populations and areas
that are historically underserved, are being served,
and those tend to be our East Oakland, Central Foothill,
and West Oakland locations.
We also want support youth, low-income residents,
and individuals facing employment barriers.
We know that the unemployment rate
across our Black community, Latino community,
are increasingly high, and so our focus
and our priority is to make sure
that we are providing resources where needed
and trying to impact that gap.
So this also promotes economic mobility
and pathways to quality jobs
and strengthens coordination across the workforce system.
Again, super tiny map,
but I wanted to just reflect where services
for 2022 and 2025 have been provided.
So this shares really via zip code,
how many individuals were served in the various locations.
And what you can see in this map is that we hit our mark
of making sure that we, again, it's continuous work
And we need more dollars so that we can make more investments.
But it does show that we have been serving the areas
that we've been wanting to impact, which, again,
are the East Oakland, Central Foothill, and West Oakland
locations.
And lastly, just regarding the fiscal impact, so again,
approximately $3.2 million in fiscal year 2026 and 2027
workforce investment dollars.
It includes the $2.65 million in new awards and the $584,000
that I mentioned earlier.
And again, I'll just wrap up with the initial one-year term
with up to two-year renewals
based on performance through 2029.
So when we talk about accountability
regarding performance, the way that we go about this,
it is a three-year procurement cycle,
but our contracts are yearly
so that we can monitor and review the performance.
And if there are opportunities to adjust,
or if an organization's not meeting their numbers,
we do go back and we have a process
where we provide technical support.
And if needed, sometimes we do have to do
a corrective action plan to make sure
that folks are getting back on track
to meeting their numbers.
And so usually that's last resort.
We never wanna go there,
but we do wanna make sure that we are good stewards
of these federal dollars.
And so we do our due diligence
to make sure that there's accountability in this process.
So with that, I will yield my time.
Excellent, thank you so much.
We will hear from the public speakers.
Calling in the names that signed up to speak
on item number three.
In no particular order, you can come up to the podium.
State your name before making your public comment.
Mrs. Sada Ola Bala, Tiffany Lascato, Sarah Akken,
Yolanda Bronson Davis, Derek Barbosa,
Carla Guerra, Chris Iglesias,
Gabriela Pingaron, Theresa Newsom,
Raymond Lankford, and Richard Dilagran,
sorry if I butchered any names so please come on up
okay good afternoon members of the committee
my name is Tiffany rose now but he looks out on the chief program officer at the
unity council
Oakland raise and resident D6 on January 16th
the unity council submitted three proposals through the city's
I supplier portal for each proposal our team uploaded two files as required
After loading, uploading and downloading each file from iSupplier to verify the correct documents were in the system, we did everything right.
Despite that, OWDB reviewers downloaded our Service Category 1 budget package. iSupplier delivered a different file.
Our proposal was evaluated on materials we did not submit.
to review and contract said
there were no system errors but
didn't provide any proof.
We are asking the committee to
not finalize the adult award
while the question is still
open.
You will hear from our speakers
today on the specifics of the
technical error of the unity
council's impact on the workforce
system, the consequences of
being excluded from this process
due to a system glitch, and the
concerns this raises for every applicant who uses eye supplier thank you very
much hello council my name is Sarah Aiken and I'm with HTA consulting I'm a
grant writer a proposal writer and I've worked with HTA for nearly 15 years
submitting proposals to the city of Oakland on behalf of local nonprofits
including the unity council for the recent WIOA submission.
I've submitted five proposals for the WIOA application
on behalf of two separate organizations.
One of those proposal files had this technical issue
that Tiffany described.
In submitting proposals on iSupplier,
I submit both of the required files
and then download them to confirm accuracy.
And I have time stamped file records
that show both files for Unity Council's adult WIOA
submission were submitted on time
with the correct file name and correct file contents.
This information was submitted through the appeal
that Tiffany just described.
At the end of the year I as a
member of the community I would
encourage the council to look
at the procurement related
issues for the submission
because the unity council has
been delivering the WIOA
adults.
Maybe one more time we have it.
For more than 20 years and it
would be a shame for their
proposal not to be considered
our submitted documents show that they were submitted on time
with the right file names and right file contents.
Thank you.
Good afternoon, my name is Yolanda Davis.
I'm the workforce director for the Unity Council.
I wanna emphasize that our organization risk
of losing WIOA funding is not due support performance,
lack of compliance, or failure to serve the community.
This issue stems from a technical glitch.
Can you pause the time?
Mrs. Osada, I'm gonna ask for the first time,
let's allow everyone in the room
to be able to give their public comment, okay?
Thank you, go.
Again, we are not losing our funding
due to our poor performance, lack of compliance,
or fail in our community,
simply to a technical glitch
during the procurement application.
Unfortunately, these consequences of this issue
to provide services to the
community that could have
devastating impact on our
community we serve every day.
Our organization has been a
trusted provider in the
community, it has been a hub of
the Fruitvale district for over
60 years.
Serving primarily Hispanics but
also underserved population who
already faced significant
barriers to employment,
education, language access,
economic stability.
We do more than provide
The CC alone last year sold over 2,700 individuals.
We provide services in five languages
to ensure community members have access to support.
This level of accessibility is critical
for the reasons we mentioned above.
I respectfully ask the board to consider the full picture
and of our track record being a service provider
in our community and allow for us to resubmit the application.
I'm going to go ahead and do a
has helped residents in the city and in the community matriculate in numerous capacities.
A lot of people who we serve need these resources and to deny the residents of our community
these essential resources over a technology glitch will cause a major disservice to the
thousands of residents who are dependent on the resources and services provided at our
AJCC.
That's why Oakland is in a
better position to thrive as a
whole when our residents have
access to the numerous.
Resources and services that are
a JCC provides.
These options residents will be
left with without access to our
a JCC.
Will have negative impacts on
the community in the Frewville.
Multiple ethnicities and also in
the city of Oakland.
I thought the plan was always to
do what was needed.
opportunity. And I would
appreciate it if our request
would be heard out so that we
can continue to serve the
community and continue to help
Oakland get better as a city.
Thank you very much. Good
afternoon see the committee
members my name is Carla get I
am the policy and advocacy
senior manager at the unity
council. In district five and
I'm a resident of risk to
district three. We believe in
the values of transparency
we're here today to raise a
procurement integrity concern.
And many eyes are on the city of
Oakland today watching how you
hold the city and its departments
accountable to that process.
Oakland's procurement process
must be fair for everyone that
participates in them and when the
city's technology system fails,
and there's a glitch, it needs to
provide solutions, not barriers.
What happens when technology
fails?
How is this community going to
respond?
How do we respond?
how is this committee gonna respond today and will set a precedent for how
the city manages technology and failure concerns and in its procurement systems.
This is not about an RFP it's about the standard Oakland holds itself to when
it comes to system spells. And this is just you know the Wiyoa grant is
specially designated to serve underserved and priority populations
such as Fritville and that is a population that will be impacted by a
technicality. We submitted a public records act request and a file level
We have a request on April 8th of this year.
That request was due on April 20th.
We requested an extension and as of today,
that request remains unresolved.
We're asking this committee to do the right thing,
allow category one to have a due process.
The communities we deserve,
the communities we serve deserve due process,
and that is not optional, thank you.
Good afternoon, Madam Chair, council members,
I'm Chrissy Glesias, the CEO of Unity Council.
It's wonderful to be in your beautiful home here today.
So, I just want to give a shout out to the city staff
for running a wonderful process, timely process,
and we wholeheartedly agree with the whole process,
at least 99% of it, right?
We think it was very well done.
Everybody had a chance to compete.
But we are concerned about just 1% of the process,
and that is the glitch with iSupplier.
And again, I think this is much more of a technical issue
that should have and could have been resolved
before this meeting and we were really hoping
that would happen.
But we understand that we have to go through the process
so we're here today with the team and some of our partners.
Honestly, in my opinion, we think,
I think you should have just extended this contract
until January 20th, 2029,
which is the end of the current Trump administration.
We are under fire, we are a large federal contractor,
we're already dealing with a lot of issues,
like constantly with our existing federal grants.
So like, you guys are,
we're all partners together here in Oakland.
So we just want to find a common ground here.
We know it's there.
You have wonderful leadership
with Ms. Sophia Navarro and her team.
But again, we just,
we're hoping we find some kind of resolution on this.
So thank you.
Good afternoon, committee members.
I'm Richard Dehau-Rigge.
I'm the chief operating officer
with the Oakland Private Industry Council.
We were one of the fortunate awardees
and we thank both Sophia and her staff
and the Oakland Workforce Development Board
and this committee for that award and the recommendation.
One of the things that I've heard so far
about this particular RFP was everyone concedes
that the process itself was unfair
but there was a glitch of some kind.
Well, you know, I certainly sympathize
with the Unity Council and their concerns.
However, there are nine other awardees here
who are hanging fire.
We are getting very late in the time
when our new fiscal year is to begin.
Services are going to be interrupted
if we are not able to move forward on July 1.
You can move forward without a contract.
You can't move forward without an award.
So these awards are all being held up.
So, if there's a way to work this out, this problem,
it should be called out and the rest of the award
should move forward because there's no objection
to the rest of the process.
And I again wanna compliment Sophia and her staff
on running a very fair and well-run RFP.
Thank you.
Good afternoon, Madam Chair to other distinguished members
of the council.
I want to acknowledge the great work of the Oakland Workforce Development Board.
I am Pastor Langford.
I'm the CEO of the Oakland Private Minister Council.
I'm a resident of Oakland.
I recently moved from West Oakland to North Oakland, but I love you both.
But I'm here because this is a very delicate moment in situation.
I first do want to acknowledge that the Unity Council is a very strong long-term partner
of the Oakland Private Industry Council, I want to acknowledge that the problems with
iSupplyer is certainly beyond the control of the Oakland Workforce Development Board.
When you think of work and training in Oakland, the Oakland Workforce Development Board is
one of the leading agencies in this city and their ability to work with very diverse, aggressive,
assertive supportive leading agencies. We appreciate their leadership. However, there are
many other grantees that rely on this award for the work to go forward and we encourage
this council to allow those other awardees to be worked out while the issue between the central
issue is addressed, but again, I want to thank all of you for leadership on this.
I really respect your work, and I'm going to try harder to do better.
This history with the Spanish-speaking unity council of Alameda County was brought to my
attention in 2016 when a member of the Foothvale community showed me evidence that the Spanish-speaking
council had misused money under the umbrella of that they were a part of
NeighborWorks America. They misused $500,000 for NeighborWorks America for
maintenance and operation of their organization. They came to you, the city
of Oakland, and you gave them $500,000 to pay back from a
a project that they were supposed to be having to do with senior housing, I think. Then after
that, you continue to, on a regular basis, ignoring what they had done to give them money.
Year after year after year, they get money, with no accountability. Another project they
had with Wells Fargo was to help with the issue of redlining. They could create, with
well for the first time ownership. They gave it those those ownership of potentials. Ninety
nine percent went to Latinos or Spanish very few went to African. Thank you for your comments.
Miss all of all that. Calling the name that signed up Gabriela Ping around. Do you still
wish to speak. Chair all names have been called at this time. Excellent. Thank you so much
to the public speakers.
I do have some questions for Sophia and team,
but I see your hand, Council Member Fife,
if you wanted to start us off.
I just wanted, I just had two questions,
so through the Chair, to D.C. Navarro.
Number one, can you just give a little more clarity
on this new function of the business?
what is the connector, what is it called?
Intermediary?
Yeah, the intermediary.
Walk me through how I as a member of the public
would participate with that body.
So this function would be mostly focused
on engaging with the business community.
And so this entity, which would be the Unity Council,
who's being recommended for this role,
would be engaging, and they actually already
have a business center, so this would be expanding
upon those efforts essentially, but they would be engaging
with the Oakland Chamber, the ethnic chambers,
represented throughout the city, in addition to engaging
with employers, particularly focused on our high
growth sectors, industries, and so they would be doing
that outreach, connecting, identifying what are the
opportunities that are available within their businesses
so we can start identifying career pathways
for the job seekers.
So essentially they would also be coordinating with the providers that are providing the
service.
And so as they're making those, creating those relationships, creating those opportunities,
that there's also a conversation and a partnership with organizations that are working with the
job seekers.
And so ideally there would be warm handoffs, there'd be conversations with these businesses
to say, okay, how many positions do you have available at your business?
What are the requirements, you know, to get into X job?
And so as they are gathering that information and building those relationships, they're
communicating that with the service providers as well.
So that again, we are building, if needed, basically road map or pathways, sorry, into
these opportunities that are available through Oakland businesses in the city.
So...
How is that different than the one stops?
So the one stops also do some of that work.
So the one thing that we had not...
So our one-star purist centers do also have that function,
but it's not coordinated.
So yes, they do individually reach out to employers
and have those relationships,
and there are times when on a monthly
or maybe even quarterly basis, they come together,
but we haven't had it be an intentional approach
to really have an unholistic coordinated approach
to really reach out to all the businesses
and really leverage city resources, city partnerships,
and really leverage the workforce system as a whole
to bring everybody together.
So this would allow for there to be a point function
and an entity that's coordinating those services.
So it would enhance the current workforce system
right now as we have it.
So right now it's very limited
and across the organizations that do provide this function,
there's like one staff person,
but this would allow for more resources
and more dedicated and again, coordinated approach
to really engaging the business in this process.
And so on that, based on what I'm hearing
from the public speakers today,
the unity council will have that particular contract,
but not their other service provider contract?
Correct.
Currently, the recommendations have the unity council
getting two of the three categories.
So it would be the business intermediary,
which is again, new effort, and youth allocation,
not the adult.
They're not being recommended for the adult category.
and what steps were taken to confirm whether or not
there was an eye supplier issue.
I did read that the director of EWD spoke to that issue,
but can you tell us what was done
to investigate the claims that are being made?
So, through the chair to council member,
I got five, sorry, I was gonna say that's okay.
My mind's still here.
What happened is when we went to,
When we received and did the funding recommendations,
went to our board, at that point,
it was identified and the Unity Council,
through that presentation, was notified.
There was also an expression to share
that there is an appeal process.
The Unity Council did provide an appeal
that came to the workforce board email, or general email.
The board then forwarded that appeal
to contracts and purchasing,
and then they went through their process
of investigating the appeal that was submitted.
is that complete so that is complete uh... so when we received a response so
once we submitted that appeal to contracts and purchasing they did their
investigation
uh... then they provided us response uh... determination of that appeal
that appeal was then communicated to the unity council
oh but it wasn't it but it is complete
was it communicated to the council
that city council
uh... committee
so it was uh...
That appeal, yes, I mean that was in part of the report
as far as the...
I see that a final determination concluded
that there were no adverse events in iSupplyer
at the time of submission and user error.
Is that what you were correct?
Yeah, so that process and that determination was complete
and was communicated and then we went back
to our workforce board to share the determination of that
because part of their recommendation for us to move forward
was they approved the recommendation,
but were also telling us that if this appeal did come back
as sustained, that we would have to go back
to that process, but if it did not,
that we would be able to move forward
and bring up here to CED for recommendation.
Thank you.
Excellent, thank you so much, Councilmember Rifai,
for the questions.
I also had a handful as well.
First off, I do wanna thank our city staff
for just their due diligence in the process and the work.
We heard from the public speakers saying that, you know,
99% of the process they were happy with,
and I think that that is, that's much to be applauded, right?
So I really appreciate the hard work there.
I do wanna uplift, you know,
I have a really good understanding
of like the WIOA contracting in this work,
because I had the opportunity,
once I graduated from undergrad,
to actually work at one of the career centers,
to know and understand some of the work.
And so as I'm looking at the various allocations,
it's my understanding that this first category,
category one, actually makes up most of,
let me know if I'm wrong.
I believe it makes up the bulk of the work
of services to the community because that,
I guess like by the definition of workforce innovation,
you have the opportunity to provide services
there are a handful of definitions right.
And then can you walk me through cuz I guess the the thing that I'm looking at is you know the the city of Oakland you know we have our various districts and just wanting to make sure that we are actually providing services across the city of Oakland and so when we're looking at this like allocation I think it's very interesting to see what we're looking at in this process.
I'm looking at this like allocation. I know that historical precedent is that both Oakland Pick, Lao family and the Unity Council, I guess in the past were the providers of this particular category. But can you share with me how many how many applicants did we actually have? And then maybe some details about the scoring and how the various entities were scored. So I'm going to hand that over to on Rada Lindsay.
afternoon on Aroria Lindsay, acting executive director of Good Workforce Development Board.
I did spend a lot of time through the RFP process and can kind of help explain some
of the proposal scoring. And so there was a two-part evaluation during the scoring process.
One was a compliance review. That compliance review was scored in four different categories,
Oh, I'm sorry, five different categories and then in addition to that there was a qualitative
review where we actually assigned points after we did the compliance review.
So the compliance review was primarily done by contract staff and then city staff to ensure
that they met all the requirements, the initial requirements of the RFP and the qualitative
review was the evaluation criteria that I'm not sure if I'm so sorry and looking
over documents here if that information was listed here on the report but I do
believe it was those evaluation criteria were around responsibility and
responsive program design approach and methodology methodology qualifications
and experience and reasonableness of cost proposal so our Raiders reviewed
criteria as A through D. And then when it came to the reasonableness of cost
proposal that is where workforce staff had reviewed to arrive at the combined
final scores for each of the providers. And so each proposal in each category
was evaluated separately amongst raters and reviewers, and so no raider and
reviewer were reviewing, they were, they were all reviewing, you know, the single
category. And so among that, our first scoring criteria once we got back the
scores was who received the highest score. And then once we evaluated who
received the highest score, we then evaluated, okay, are we serving the
geographic location that we intended to serve? And then so we took all of those
items into consideration. We took into consideration performance history,
administrative capacity, and you know, in addition to some other things and that's
how we came up with our score. And unfortunately for Unity Council absent of a budget we were
not able to evaluate that piece and is why they scored where they did score. You know
Unity is a great organization in previous years. We did have them there in our workforce
network. They are still going to be a part of our workforce network through this really
exciting opportunity as the business intermediary. We are providing a
transition year for current service providers including Unity Council, so
there is no disruption in services. That is part of the recommendation today and
so for this next year we do plan on doing a soft handoff from transitioning
our current service providers into our new system that's presented here.
I appreciate that answer, but my question was okay. Yeah, so just to follow up. You had asked chair
What were the nine?
Applicants so we received nine applications for the adult category and just to name those
Oakland Private Industry Council and their category again adult but for downtown services and the amount of
385,000 their final score was ninety four point eight
Again, the Oakland Private Energy Council submitted
a second one as well,
and that was for the West Oakland services
for the amount of 385,000.
That application was scored at 85.
Lau Family Community Development submitted an application.
They submitted two.
One for Central Oakland services.
Proposed budget amount 385,000.
Their final score was 83.
Their second application, to cover East Oakland.
Again, a budget amount that they put in was 385,000.
Their final score for that application was 80.7.
The fifth organization, Roots Community Health Center.
They didn't put a category,
but they're in East Oakland area.
Proposed budget amount for 385,000.
Their final score was 80.
The Spanish-speaking Unity Council.
And again, just to note the application that we had received
did not have a complete document,
did not include the budget, so therefore their score,
with the information that we had at that time,
which was before the appeal was 79,
the International Rescue Committee, Inc.,
the seventh applicant for a proposed budget of 385,
their final score 78.2,
Swords to Plowshire, eight applicant.
Also adult and desiccated worker services.
They're located closer to the downtown area.
Their proposed budget was 114,410.
Their final score was 61.7.
And then finally, the Oakland Career Training Depot.
Their proposed budget was 384,995.
And their final score was 45.0.
Excellent, thank you so much for providing that input.
One thing that I noticed in the report
was that this go around of WIOA funding,
there was a 1.4 million dollar increase.
Did we consider actually expanding the services
to more providers across the city
versus what we've historically done?
I'm just curious.
So that 1.4 million increase,
that was to the current year's allocation,
our 25-26 allocation.
It's being recommended today
to extend current service provider contracts.
That's what that 1.4 million is being used for.
It is a one-time funding.
Yeah, and through the chair, that is the,
again, to support the transition period.
I see.
For stability purposes.
Okay, well thank you so much for the input.
I do think it's interesting that in the scoring,
the Unity Council only kind of,
without producing the one document,
it was only one point shy.
And then we also, I think it's interesting that,
I guess, Roots Community Health,
that would be a new provider to the services
that they weren't considered?
It's not that they were not considered,
they, you know, we are considering all of these providers
based on the scoring, but it is very difficult, right,
because they are so close
and there only is a limited amount of funding for next year.
So this past year, I believe our budget
to our service providers was around 3.3 million
and for next year based on estimates from what we're getting.
So we haven't received our Lila allocations
in the state yet, but the estimates that are coming
from the feds is that there are gonna be
a really large reduction for adult
and dislocated worker funding.
And so, the way that we reorganized our system
was be able to maintain services across the state
and, you know, within the allocations
that we've been given by the state.
And so, you know, taking a look at the scores
where Lao did come in is that they have been in East Oakland
for over a decade providing services.
In addition to that, they have a really great performance
within the WIOA system.
They have strong administrative controls around the funding.
And so all of those items were taken into consideration,
where Roots is coming in as a new organization.
They don't quite have the history with WIOA.
And administratively, they're not quite,
according to the notes, they're not quite set up
yet administratively to support the full function of WIOA.
And ultimately, based on ranking,
we were only able to fund for and scored
and recommended the top four applications.
All right, thank you so much.
So, colleagues, when we look at these contract amounts,
I think it's important that we recognize
the responsibility and opportunity that they represent,
especially with various community stakeholders,
and just ensuring that there is,
that our community members are actually,
you know, they're comfortable,
and they have the trust of those
who are providing the services,
as well as just overall cultural competency.
Because we know that these community members
are going to submit, going to receive services,
whether it's like new career training,
resume writing, career navigation,
multiple services that can be provided.
We also know and understand that there are concerns
with iSupplier and access and transparency
and accountability in the city's procurement services.
And so I am interested if you have a look
at the document in our reports, page four, table one,
you'll find that there are categories one through four.
And so I am interested at this time in making a motion
to adopt staff recommendation to categories two through four
and then have staff return with different allocation
for category one and that to come back
to CED by June the 23rd.
Councilmember Armachandran.
That was the second.
Thank you, Councilmember Fyfe.
What impact, Chair Brown, would that have
on the other service providers' budget allocations?
Yes, and so, Sophia, are you interested in answering that?
But I believe that our goal in,
I believe that the goal is making sure
that these are complete by July 1, right, is that our?
So through the chair to Council Member Fife's question,
as far as the impact, so if I understand the ask correctly,
the ask is to pull category one and reevaluate, reallocate.
So then that would mean that we would need to figure out
how we'd have to have conversations with the providers
that were currently recommended because those amounts
within likely need to decrease
in order to be able to consider
the other two Amazoo routes and the Unity Council?
Yeah, the top.
The top, the top five?
Sorry, I didn't have the list.
The top six applications.
So we would definitely, those amounts for,
that are currently being provided as recommendations
would need to decrease in order to be able to provide support
to Roots Community Health Center
and the Spanish-speaking Unity Council.
So we would have to go back, have those conversations,
renegotiate essentially, and then adjust scope of works,
conversations that we want to have, right?
So that will be limited, that would change,
I'm assuming, the plans for OPIC and Lao family
that they previously had.
So, and that would also,