Are you just about done with all the summer squash coming out of your garden? Or been eyeing the neighbor’s plum tree, wishing you had some of your own? There’s a bench in North Oakland’s Mosswood Park where you can trade away your excess harvest and pick up something else you like.

The Mosswood plant and produce exchange offers a space for neighbors to barter herbs, fruits, vegetables, seeds and plants with their fellow gardening buffs. Several members of the Greater Mosswood Neighborhood Association organize the weekly, Saturday morning exchange, which began just a month ago. Already, there are big ideas for the future.

“We hope it’ll get bigger and some day be a farmers market-type thing,” said Karen Hancock, one of the organizers.

Participants in the Mosswood produce exchange discuss the items up for barter.

For now, the exchange is refreshingly informal. Shortly after 11 a.m. on July 3, Hancock and three other gardeners sat in the patio of the abandoned building adjacent to the Mosswood community garden, offering donut holes to incoming exchangers. Along the garden side of the building, a long wooden bench served as the barter table. Jars of dried herbs flanked a wooden tray displaying green beans and two types of squash. There were bags of plums, snap peas, homemade potpourri sticks, and even a jar of vinegar made from the popular fermented drink, kombucha.

Two more women walked in with a bag of lettuce, a handful of lavender stems and some squash blossoms. Soon, everyone was out of their chairs and perusing the items on the bench. Gloria Bruce, who recently moved to the neighborhood with her wife, examined the potpourri sticks.

“I’d be happy to trade you one for some squash blossoms,” said Diana Young, who made the sticks, along with the kombucha vinegar, and a tangy sauerkraut that she later spread on crackers for the exchangers to sample. Done deal. The two women swapped their wares.

The exchanging went on casually among talk of gardening and neighborhood happenings.  Soon, Theresa Halula walked in and plopped down a shallow, blue bucket full of pepper and tomato seedlings—extras from a friend who owns a nursery. Minutes later, she and Hancock left the marketplace and began preparing the dirt in a nearby garden bed, to plant some of the seedlings. Hancock, who’s been unemployed for a year, plans to start gardening the raised bed with local teens.

In fact, the actual exchanging of produce is just one part of the weekly event.

“Even if there’s not a lot of produce getting exchanged, we’re getting together and talking about things,” said A.J. Benham, who’s a nurse practitioner.

“It’s nice to organize around something positive,” said Andrea Snedeker, who chairs the Greater Mosswood Neighborhood Association.

“Yeah,” agreed Benham.

“Not fighting against anyone,” added Snedeker, who described herself as “very vocal” in community affairs.

Karen Hancock (left) and Theresa Halula (right) do some impromptu gardening at the exchange.

Talk wandered from gardening tips to the nearby Kaiser expansion. Hancock handed out fliers for two upcoming trainings on emergency preparedness. Soon it was well past the two hours allotted for the exchange. The remaining participants began to divvy up the unclaimed produce.

“Does anyone want these last snow peas that are left?” asked Hancock.

“I’ll trade you for the green beans,” said Benham. Done.

Ultimately, Hancock said, she hopes to organize the neighborhood’s backyard gardeners and get them more involved in the community garden at Mosswood. She’s also thinking about organizing garden work exchanges, where neighbors volunteer to help each other out with pruning, weeding or other garden chores.

“I never thought of myself as a community organizer, but that’s what I’m doing,” said Hancock, who, after a year of unsuccessful job hunting, is thinking about retiring at her 61 years of age. A barter-style Mosswood farmers market may be coming soon after all.

The Mosswood plant and produce exchange happens every Saturday from 11 am to noon at the Mosswood community garden, on the corner of Webster Street and MacArthur Boulevard.

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On Sunday, the Spokeland Bike Co-op set up shop down at Mosswood Park for a “Love Your Bike” fundraiser. They called all their friends with tools and skills to diagnose and fix all passers-by’s bikes for a small donation, and were happy to teach anyone basic bike mechanics. Besides working on bikes, there was also plenty of time to drink refreshments and hang in the sun.

Spokeland Bike Co-Op is a non-profit just getting started and part of yesterday’s event was about raising funds to sign a lease on a permanent workspace. Once up and running, they plan to have a bike/work exchange, build bikes for cheap and teach bike maintenance and safety. The workspace will also have a café and music venue.

Here are some photos from Sunday afternoon:

Photo by Jason Ferrier

Photo by Emma Clune

Photo by Jason Ferrier

Photo by Jason Ferrier

Photo by Jason Ferrier

Photo by Jason Ferrier

Mickey Martin stood up before protesters gathered yesterday afternoon at the Oakland Federal Building downtown. He called in his 2-year-old son, who approached shyly from the side and hid behind his father. Martin was about to go to prison. The charge was something both Martin and the State of California say is not a crime: selling medicinal marijuana.

“There’s nobody out here today who looks like a criminal,” said the 35-year-old marijuana advocate, who is preparing to spend the next 12 months in federal prison.

“We want to be part of this community,” he said to the 100 or so supporters, including Oakland City Councilmember Rebecca Kaplan and Berkeley City Councilmember Kriss Worthington, who met on Monday afternoon to protest Martin’s imminent imprisonment.

Mellody Gannon, 52, was one of Martin’s clients. She used marijuana to alleviate cancer symptoms.

“He brought magic to those of us who were sick. He was our spoonful of sugar,” said the San Francisco resident, raising her shirt to show a long vertical scar from an operation to remove a tumor. “His kids are going to suffer, and that’s not right.”

Martin, an Oakland resident, founded the nonprofit company Compassion Medicinal Edibles in 2000. For seven years, the shop near the corner of 40th Street and Broadway produced brownies, chocolate bars and other sweet treats laced with marijuana to be sold in local medical dispensaries.

Then, on September 26, 2007, the feds knocked on his door.

According to Martin, the federal Drug Enforcement Agency raided five facilities connected with his company, including his shop—which he said operated in accordance with state and city laws. DEA agents also raided his house and a cultivation facility.

“It was a pretty traumatic thing to deal with,” Martin said. “My wife and kids went through a lot.”

After the DEA discovered more than 100 marijuana plants at his growing facility, Martin was charged with conspiracy to manufacture and distribute marijuana, which carries a 10-year minimum sentence. He eventually pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of conspiracy to manufacture and distribute products containing trace amounts of Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and was sentenced to two years in prison. He has already served the first year at home under house arrest.

“It’s senseless,” Martin said. “It’s a pretty violent thing to experience for making brownies for sick and dying people in California.”

Martin is scheduled to report today to the U.S. Bureau of Prisons Cornell Correctional Facility in San Francisco, where he will serve the final year of his sentence.

Protesters march in downtown Oakland on Monday afternoon.

“Mickey Martin is not a criminal,” Berkeley City Councilmember Kriss Worthington said during speech at the protest yesterday. “Incarcerating Mickey Martin is a crime.” Worthington added that the health-care reform bill in Congress should include provisions to allow people like Martin to provide medicinal marijuana products to patients.

Oakland Councilmember Rebecca Kaplan, who did not discuss Martin’s case specifically during her remarks, said that Oakland has been in the forefront “both of what is beautiful and what has been troubling on this [medical marijuana] issue.”

On the local level, Kaplan said that Oakland has taken steps to protect providers and consumers of medical marijuana—such as awarding legal permits for medical dispensers. She also said Oakland makes sure that the medicinal marijuana dispensary system “is being run in a responsible, accountable way.”

Kaplan said that medicinal marijuana could also become an important source of revenue to the city, which faced close to a $100 million deficit last year. She also referred to the proposal initiated by cannabis guru and Oaksterdam University’s president Richard Lee for statewide legalization and taxation of marijuana, which supporters say will be on the California ballot in 2010.

On the federal level, however, things are complicated. Kaplan cited a 2005 case where the Supreme Court denied one of her constituents with a brain tumor the right to use medical marijuana, even if the woman could prove that the treatment improved her condition.

“Let’s be clear on this,” Kaplan said. “They said even if she would die without it, they would take it away from her. That is the face of what we are up against.”

For consumers of medical marijuana in Oakland today, the risk of getting in trouble with federal authorities is slim. Still, some at the protest said they constantly worry that the murky legal situation means they may inadvertently be breaking the law by purchasing medicinal marijuana.

Cecile Bonaudi, a retired Oakland resident who uses marijuana to alleviate chronic pain, said she follows all the rules. She gets a prescription from her doctor and buys products only from the four legal dispensaries in Oakland. Yet she’s still worried about it.

“I do what I think is legal,” Bonaudi said. “But yet there’s always the fear that if they want me, they could come get me.”

Bonaudi, who said she’s been suffering from chronic pains for over ten years and much prefers marijuana to other drugs such as oxycontin, said that she feels fortunate to live in California.

“I would never live in a place where I didn’t have access,” Bonaudi said. “I couldn’t. I don’t even travel. When I travel, I suffer.”

Fans of carbon-neutral travel and cadiovascular exercise, rejoice. Oakland is taking another step toward making its streets even more amenable to bicycle transportation.

After receiving a $242,500 grant to improve bicycle access around North Oakland’s MacArthur BART station, the city is moving ahead on a series of measures. According to Jason Patton, the city’s bicycle and pedestrian program manager, new bicycle signs are being added to to 40th Street, 41st Street, West Street, Webster Street, and Shafter Avenue.

In addition, the city is preparing to create wider bike lanes on parts of the east-west routes of 40th Street, 41st Street and West MacArthur Boulevard. These are designed to complement North Oakland’s existing north-south “bicycle boulevards” on Market Street and West Street. If all goes according to plan, cyclists would be able to ride west on 40th Street through Emeryville all the way to the new bike lane on the new Bay Bridge eastern span between West Oakland and Treasure Island.

More information is available on the city’s Public Works web page.

Ah, those Copenhagen climate change talks may drag on, but our city will soon have yet another way to keep our internal combustion engines in check. Keep it wheel, Oakland.

On a balmy weekday evening, North Oakland’s Mosswood Park is a hub of energetic urban neighborhood activity. On the park’s hallowed basketball courts – training ground for a number of future pros and long known as home to the Bay Area’s best pickup competition – about a dozen black, white, and brown players jockey for position, sink jump shots, and argue the score beneath neighboring baskets. Other players dissect the action from the benches near the courts. Soccer is king over on the baseball diamond, and at the play structure, a pair of towheaded youngsters wobbles up a plastic staircase under a bespectacled father’s vigilance. A boom box blares rap music, three adults roller-skate to the beat, and cars and cyclists whiz by on nearby West MacArthur Boulevard. A helicopter buzzes noisily by overhead.  “What’s up, cop!” a dreadlocked ballplayer shouts skyward.

Mosswood Park, located at West MacArthur Boulevard and Webster Street, is the nucleus of a diverse and changing neighborhood.

In the park’s northwest corner, where West MacArthur meets Webster Street, a chain-link fence surrounds a sizeable rectangular section of real estate – Mosswood’s community garden, bookended on one side by a large double gate and, on the other, by a drab little flat-roofed outbuilding.  A banner advertising Jazzercise hangs from one part of the fence, inside of which a fleet of some 20 raised wooden planter beds is organized in rows. Most of the beds contain browned vegetation, lumpy soil, and haphazardly strewn metal plant supports. But in a corner of this corner of Mosswood Park, over by the flat-roofed structure, is a different planter bed – one that sits higher than the rest, and, compared to the others, bursts with fecundity.

Eggplants, red peppers, and white and yellow flowers grow from lush green stems watered by a network of white plastic tubing. The tubing circulates back to a ground-level tub, filled with goldfish, that cycles water back up to the planter box. A blackboard diagram on the outbuilding wall explains the arrangement: fish excrement fertilizes the vegetation as water from the goldfish tub is drawn up through the white tubing to be dispersed among the plants, whose roots, in turn, filter out the waste before the water returns to the tub. It’s called aquaponics, a self-contained agricultural system.

But scrawled in chalk over part of the blackboard diagram is another word: STOP.

Kijiji Grows, a local for-profit company that specializes in designing aquaponic systems, built the contraption this summer, setting off a lingering neighborhood dispute in the process.

At the surface, the debate is pretty simple. Some Mosswood residents say Kijiji’s presence and innovative technology can help inspire urban youth – several local teens helped build the setup and have expressed interest in constructing more – to learn and think about the earth, where their food comes from, and community-based business. But other neighbors see Kijiji Grows’ entrance to the garden as unfair, are troubled by some of the company’s actions since moving in, and now regard the whole episode as the latest example of shoddy city parks management.

Nominally an argument about a garden, Kijijigate reveals a complicated set of deeper tensions in the community: tensions of change, class, precedence, priorities, and entitlement. A recent meeting, called to address the brouhaha, resembled a wedding: lots of chairs, an aisle down the middle, and – on either side of the aisle – two distinctly different clumps of people.  To the left of the Oakland Parks and Recreation (OPR) officials, who stood up front facing the crowd, sat one group – mostly African American, many of whom had lived in the neighborhood for decades, and almost all of whom supported Kijiji Grows in the park.  Farther back, and to the right of the OPR emcees, sat much of the anti-Kijiji Grows group – almost all white, and many newer to the neighborhood. Tensions between the pro-Kijiji crowd and the anti-Kijiji crowd never boiled over, but there was no shortage of impassioned exchanges.

“Underneath all the stuff about the garden,” longtime Mosswood resident Cassie Lopez said, some weeks after the meeting, “there’s a power struggle going on between folks in this community.”

*    *    *    *    *

Mosswood’s community garden opened about a year ago after an effort by a group of neighbors, who were aided by a contribution from Kaiser Permanente. But the new venture, along with similar sites across Oakland, was hit hard this summer when the city’s community gardening coordinator left amid substantial OPR budget cuts. It was around this time that local entrepreneurs Keba Konte and Eric Maundu entered the picture, reaching a deal with OPR to use Mosswood as the site for an aquaponics operation from their company, Kijiji Grows. Konte, an Oakland resident, photo artist, and co-owner of Berkeley’s Guerilla Café, and Maundu, an engineer with farming experience in his native Kenya, declared that they had no intention of making money selling produce or aquaponic systems from the Mosswood site, although the free prototype showcase certainly couldn’t hurt business.

The community garden at Mosswood Park, as well as similar sites throughout the city, felt the loss of Oakland Parks and Recreation's community garden coordinator this summer.

But when Konte and Maundu’s business entered the park, the move seemed to crystallize tensions that had been building in a changing neighborhood in a changing city.

“There’s been a lot of development and a lot property transitions here over recent years,” says city redevelopment agency project manager Kathy Kleinbaum, who oversees the area including Mosswood Park. “I think the demographics of the area have really changed significantly, with younger families moving in who are wealthier, a lot more professionals, just a wealthier population in general.”

Oakland as a whole has seen a significant shift in demographics over the past 10 to 20 years, particularly among black and white residents, according to U.S. Census Bureau data. In 1990, the city had 163,526 black residents, 44 percent of the entire population. By 2000, the number of black residents was down to 142,460, and by last year African Americans had dropped to 106,491 residents, 29 percent of the citizenry.  Between 2000 and 2008, in the meantime, the city’s white population grew by more than 12,000, rising from 31 to more than 37 percent of the entire populace.

And, over the two decades before 2008, Oakland’s median household income nearly doubled, from $27,095 to $48,699, which represents an increase in wealth even when accounting for inflation. Similar changes have been recorded in much of urban America, most notably, perhaps, New York City’s Harlem and San Francisco’s Mission District. Harlem and the Mission have had their own issues with demographic shifts and the influx of new residents, but as the Mosswood-Kijiji struggle shows, no two local controversies are completely analogous, even if they revolve around the same central points – who has power and sway, who is enfranchised or disenfranchised, and whose visions and values take priority as distinct populations try to integrate and find common ground.

Cassie Lopez – a woman of commanding physical presence and verbal panache – has lived on 38th Street about a block from Mosswood Park since 1970, after growing up in Detroit and spending years working with the Black Panthers and Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. Recently retired after 31 years teaching in Oakland’s public school system, she and her husband raised two children on 38th, in addition to caring for many more “homeless kids or kids who needed someplace to be.” Over the past dozen years she has witnessed firsthand the changes Kathy Kleinbaum described in the neighborhood, where “a real division has happened between the people who have been living in the community and those who have moved in,” Lopez says.

“I’m not against people who got money coming in, it’s just that the people who used to own these homes don’t own these homes anymore,” Lopez says. “That’s changed the feel of a working class neighborhood. Working class black families helped to build Oakland. Now it feels like we have no voice here, no place here, and it’s not a good thing. It’s not all about the Benjamins. At least, it shouldn’t be.”

AJ Benham bought a house across the street from Mosswood Park in 1998, after renting for a time in Montclair. She says she wasn’t originally looking to buy in the neighborhood, but happened to find a place where “the price was right – it was more than right.” An athletic looking, middle-aged white woman, with a sharp gaze and frizzy dark hair, Benham works as an orthopedic nurse practitioner at a private practice downtown, teaches Jazzercize classes at the recreation center, and is active in a local citizens’ group called the Greater Mosswood Neighborhood Association. She says that although she’s a relative newcomer, the gap between Mosswood residents is not lost on her.

“The issue in this community,” she said, “is that there are probably two groups, one of which has been here longer than everyone else, and the other that hasn’t been here as long.”

The Mosswood neighborhood is a mix of apartments, houses, and old and new residents.

When Kijiji Grows moved into the community garden, supporters and resisters of the company split largely along those lines, and many neighbors saw its co-owners’ actions as arrogant and inconsiderate. Upon brokering their deal with OPR, Konte and Maundu removed the fence gate’s locks – to make the garden more accessible for everyone, they said. They also piled debris around the garden – simply a consequence, they said, of refurbishing the adjacent outbuilding, which has long been discussed as home for a planned teen center. And they drilled a hole in the outbuilding wall, running wiring out to power their aquaponic setup; OPR director Audree Jones-Taylor has said they were not authorized to do that, so a solar panel currently provides the energy for Konte and Maundu’s planter bed.

Another prime source of contention is that Kijiji was fast-tracked in, while most citizens have to submit an application, face possible waitlisting, and pay an annual fee to use a plot in the garden. Konte and Maundu also managed to reach an agreement with OPR that included no formal tenancy agreement or monetary rent requirements.

In a September missive to Jones-Taylor, park neighbor Seth Katz lambasted Kijiji Grows for ‘cutting down locks, vandalizing a public garden, stealing electricity and water, leaving out dangerous wiring, tossing city property out of a city building, piling countless heaps of garbage on both sides of the garden, and being rude in the process.’

Katz, who moved into the neighborhood in 1999 and works as a technical writer in Palo Alto, spearheaded a push to install a dog run at the park some years ago. He sits on the city’s redevelopment board, and, like Benham, is active in the Greater Mosswood Neighborhood Association. “I am all for the idea of bringing in private money to support the parks in their time of need,” he said via email. “But I do not trust the way it is being done, and have no idea what criteria are used to decide who gets to use our property.”

Public rancor eventually grew to the point that a community meeting was called for the end of September, in large part to address the Kijiji Grows issue.  A divided room – and neighborhood – debated for hours across the wedding-like aisle.  But not much changed, and many neighbors left with a feeling of frustration.

Glen Bell, who grew up in the 1960s and ‘70s playing at Mosswood Park and still lives in North Oakland, says he feels the anti-Kijiji crowd has been overreacting these past several months, and getting too hung up on bureaucratic details.

“I think a big part of the bigger picture was being missed by a particular group,” Bell said, referring to Kijiji’s intended positive impact for neighborhood kids.  “Everybody has a social responsibility, and I think one group was missing part of that bigger picture.”

Lopez, an outspoken participant at last month’s meeting, pointed to how she says the division over Kijiji Grows has really reflected the neighborhood’s larger issues of change in the community.

“Some white people really are conscious, but a lot like to come in and talk and push an agenda,” she said in October. “Those are really the people who need to learn to work with people more collaboratively, really get to know folks, not come on the block and try to lay my gauntlet down right away, just because I bought a piece of property.  There’s a certain arrogance there, a certain smugness there.”

*    *    *    *    *

After the late September meeting, Jones-Taylor, the OPR director, decided to let Konte and Maundu keep Kijiji Grows in Mosswood’s community garden. This came to the satisfaction of many, and to the displeasure of others who have become disillusioned with OPR.

Multiple phone calls to Jones-Taylor’s office over the past couple weeks went unreturned, as did calls to general recreation supervisor Reco Bembry. When finally reached by phone and told the subject of this story, Bembry groaned and transferred the call to OPR’s Dana Riley, saying she would be able to handle all questions. Riley said tersely that she does not make public statements, and passed the query to city spokeswoman Karen Boyd, who had this response: “Parks and Recreation staff is very aware of what these issues are, and are working to find positive solutions.  The director is very comfortable that, in the next few weeks, they will be able to achieve a positive solution to these issues.”

That difficulty in trying to get detailed answers from OPR reflects some of the frustration Katz, Benham, and others feel towards the department – what they describe as a lack of communication and openness.

For example, a Mosswood-related OPR interoffice memo, dated September 16 and worded ambiguously, appears to request a citywide advisory board’s permission to let a private nonprofit elementary school called Bridgemount Academy use part of the park’s recreation center to hold classes for its 28 students. But when contacted, school director Lisa Hopkins said that Bridgemount’s first day of class at Mosswood was September 8, despite the permission-seeking memo being dated more than a week later.

Benham says she worries about the lack of formal contracts and application processes for many of the outside operations that run out of Mosswood, including Bridgemount, Kijiji Grows, and even her own Jazzercise class, which she says is currently bound by nothing more than a handshake deal.

“I’m a very upstanding person, and I write my check every month,” she said.  “But what if I wasn’t? Then what?” It’s not that Benham personally wants to plant where Kijiji’s set up, or wants a portion of their harvest; what she and others want most is to avoid a repeat of the circumstances surrounding their move-in.

“With regard to Kijiji, he could be as good a person as I am,” she said. “He could have all the best intentions.  But without the openness of communication, it looks a little bit suspect.”

Benham, Katz, and others have also raised concerns about the possibility of  a teen center starting up in the outbuilding connected to Mosswood Park’s community garden. According to redevelopment agency project manager Kleinbaum, OPR has been awarded $66,000 in community grants since 2006 for just that purpose. Another application submitted this year for more money was turned down, she said, primarily because of community apprehensions about how specifically the center would be run in terms of operating hours, supervision, and accountability.

“Parks and Recreation applied for the money,” said Kleinbaum. “But they haven’t done a very good job of telling people what will actually occur.”

Said park neighbor Katz in a recent email, “I have no faith in OPR to create a responsible, constructive teen center at this point.”

But, as is the case in the Kijiji Grows conflict, Lopez and other longtime residents say they feel many of the newer neighbors, in focusing so much on procedure, are “missing part of the bigger picture,” as Glen Bell said.

“You can talk about ‘process’ and all this stuff, but be sensitive to the fact that there are kids dying in the streets,” Lopez said. “Maybe their kids aren’t dying in the streets or out getting in trouble. But ours are. If it’s going to help the kids, why not be more receptive to it? Why does it have to be a battle? Why can’t it be easier to invest in the community?”

Lopez has long sat on Mosswood Park’s advisory council, an OPR-sanctioned volunteer organization designed to support the park’s recreation center, and yet another source of tension between newer and older community residents. A park’s advisory council has considerable sway over what happens at its site.

Benham says that when she tried to become involved in the advisory council over the past couple years, she became frustrated after several months of showing up for meetings only to find them canceled or rescheduled.

“If you have that happen enough times, the message you get is ‘we’re not really interested in having you at the meeting,’” she said. “You either just don’t want me at the meeting, or aren’t meeting and don’t do anything. There are times I’ve wondered, is it racial tension?  Is it ‘I’ve lived here a hundred years and you’re new here?’”

Much of the late September community meeting focused on – in addition to the Kijiji Grows controversy – a piece of OPR literature dated November 2, 2000. The document directs advisory councils to have a minimum of five active voting members, each of whom serve a maximum of four consecutive years. Members may serve a maximum of two consecutive years in one of the council’s four officer positions. A number of attendees at the meeting, most of whom also vocally opposed Kijiji Grows in the community garden, challenged whether Lopez and others are following these rules.

Lopez, for her part, acknowledges serving on the council for longer than the allotted time, but is unapologetic.

“The people who complain and have to resort to the rules are full of it,” she said recently. “A lot of people come to the council, and once they do their little pet park project and get that done, they leave after only staying a few months. The reason I have stayed for so long is I want to see Mosswood really survive and flourish. Some people only worry about the park. But I’m worried about the kids and the community here, not just the park.”

*    *    *    *    *

Mosswoood Park itself, meanwhile, continues through the debate, disagreement, and dysfunction, a dynamic nucleus of a diverse and changing neighborhood in a diverse and changing city. Local ballplayers, entertaining visions of Gary Payton and Jason Kidd, continue to test their mettle on the outdoor courts. Professional parents keep watching children on the tree-shaded play structure. Bustling West MacArthur Boulevard traffic keeps whizzing by. And in Mosswood Park’s northwest corner is the low-roofed would-be teen center that Glen Bell remembers from his North Oakland childhood as a snack bar where, decades ago, he bought refreshments and checked out athletic equipment during long days of play. Reflecting recently on the brouhaha over the garden that still hosts Kijiji Grows, Bell tried to understand the point of view of those who want Kijiji out, but might as well have been describing the neighborhood at large over the past decade or two.

“Sometimes people get a little bit of something and they react strongly when they feel it’s being taken away from them,” Bell said. “There’s this duality, because maybe their reaction makes the situation worse or creates more tension.  But at the same time, they really do feel that something is being taken away from them.”

It’s the gritty urban basketball Mecca where Gary Payton and Jason Kidd developed the toughness and skill that would make them NBA All-Stars. It’s where street-ball legend Demetrius “Hook” Mitchell is said to have jumped over a Cadillac to win an outdoor dunk contest.  Mosswood Playground’s fame as a hotbed for pickup hoops even landed the North Oakland park a featured role in EA Sports’ popular 2003 video game NBA Street Vol. 2.      

But the guy about to shoot a three-pointer toward one of the basketball courts’ white square backboards on a recent weekday evening doesn’t much resemble an NBA All-Star or video game hero. He looks more like someone who spends much of his time indoors, maybe playing video games. Short, cornrowed and with a paunch that strains against his baggy white tee-shirt, he poses a rhetorical question to the three men milling about under the basket.

“I’m gonna start it up,” he says. “Ready?”  He shoots a weathered gray basketball with a jerky, almost spastic motion, missing badly.

The game is called “21.”   It’s a basketball free-for-all in which each player accumulates points by scoring single-handedly against all others before trying to add to his total by sinking free shots. First to score 21 points wins.

A skinny teenager in beat-up Air Jordans chases down the cornrowed man’s rebound and, after trying a series of dribble feints against his defender, takes a wild shot from the corner, which also misses badly.

“Yeah, right,” says the cornrowed man.

“Nah, I perfect that,” the teenager responds, laughing. “I work on that shit, man. I know what I’m going to do.” No one else on the court seems convinced.

“I’m gonna require a double or triple team right now,” boasts a big man wearing a striped headband, before caroming a shot off the side of the backboard. Two of the younger players fall back against a tree in hysterics, momentarily disabled as the game goes on.

* * *

Decades ago, at the apex of his basketball jones, John Hill haunted Mosswood’s outdoor courts looking for what he considered the Bay Area’s best and fiercest pickup basketball. Now, looking out at the park’s four baskets from the doorway of the Mosswood Recreation Center, which he has directed the past five years, Hill is more interested in reliving the past than touting Mosswood’s current standard of play.

“It’s nothing like it was in the 70s or 80s when you had the real ballers coming through here,” he says. “Back then, if you lost a game you probably couldn’t even play again until the next day, there were so many people lined up waiting to get next.”

After the inevitable eventual loss at Mosswood, Hill and his friends often would simply move on to another park, continuing on a tour of the area’s pickup basketball spots. “We’d usually start playing here, then when we lost go to Bushrod, then the old Grove Street Park in South Berkeley, then hit San Pablo Park, then go up to Harmon where Cal [The UC Berkeley Golden Bear basketball team] played, then over to Live Oak, then finally go home,” he says with a wistful smile. He says that nowadays it’s hard to compare that type of zealousness with what he sees from many of Mosswood’s current regulars. “Most of the kids here now, they just want to imitate what they see on TV, different crossover dribbles and things like that,” he says.

Hill spreads his fingers and turns his palm over and over at his side in an exaggerated motion. “See, to me, that’s a carry,” he says, referring to the basketball dribbling violation. “It’s just a different kind of thing now, I guess.”

* * *

Gradually, more players have trickled into the game of 21 until the area underneath the hoop’s rim is a knotted mess of seven or eight men half-heartedly jockeying for position while one or two of the more industrious types try to defend the man with the ball. At one point, the big man who previously demanded multiple defenders drifts away from the group, lying down on a nearby bench to take a call on his cell phone.

One of the newer players, a tall, broad-shouldered teenager, rises above the pack to grab a rebound one-handed before clearing the ball out to the perimeter.

“He got 19! He got 19! Get on him!” players shout from the tangled mass underneath the rim. It’s the first time any sense of urgency has entered the game.

The tall teen dribbles easily around two defenders, then spins and tosses up a soft hook shot that finds the bottom of the net. Game over.

By STEVE SALDIVAR

Last Sunday afternoon, Matt Siee dressed in knee high socks with a wool white top picked up a 42-ounce ash bat and drilled the ball to center field where it careened off a tree and got lost in shrubbery. A stand up double. One run in.

Andrew Nardinelli is known as Mouth on the North Oakland park.

It was baseball circa 1886 – the game in its purest form. The Oakland Colonels against the San Francisco Pacifics.

This is what Walt Whitman yelped about.

The Bay Area Vintage Base Ball league is celebrating its fifth season of playing by the rules exactly as they were back in 1886 – even down to the facial hair for the devoted.

It’s a throwback to celebrate actual teams that existed in the Bay Area years ago. While they might not be playing in ATT Park or at the Coliseum, an increasing number of fans are showing up at their fields in Mosswood Park in Oakland or Golden Gate Park in San Francisco.

There are no batting gloves to protect hitters, baseball gloves are as padded as church benches. And helmets? Who needs them. Batters go up to home plate prepared to jump out of the way of a screaming inside fastball. There’s nothing comfortable about 1886 – and the price to play is definitely 2009. Players pay a $75 entry fee and $140 for their uniform.

“We have grown about a team per year,” said Siee, captain of the Oakland Colonels and vice president of the Bay Area Vintage Base Ball League, which has recently added the Alameda Quicksilvers.

New players looking to join the team are given a handbook: 17 pages of history, rules and regulations on how to play base ball (two words.)

The league’s motto is clear: “We play the game the way it was before the $50 million dollar contracts, shoe sponsorships, and 25 man rosters,” the handbook states.
“Sportsmanship is the holy grail.”

The San Francisco Pacifics come off the field.

“You don’t have to bench 250 pounds and hit the ball a ton,” said Siee. “This is a great forum for people who love the game. We have guys from 19 to 60 years of age. They’re not concerned with getting too competitive out there and kicking butt.”

While he is Matt at home, Siee responds to “Chops,” his nickname on the diamond. And things didn’t  go so well the next time Chops went to the plate.

Snake, San Francisco’s pitcher, threw a fastball as Chops entered the batter’s box. “I believe that was a cross,” said the umpire, with slick hair and a mustache with curls so pronounced you can hang a trench coat on it.

The umpire adjusted his wool coat and pumped his fist, “You’re out!”
Siee lowered his head and turned toward the dugout. A strikeout hurts, no matter what era.

In 2009, a player might give the umpire an earful. Maybe even kicked some dirt in his direction. At the very least a player would nod in disapproval and give the umpire the stink eye. But this is 1886.

“I believe that was a ball, sir,” said Siee. There’s more confrontation at a little league game.

Nicknames, however, are part and parcel of the game.

Ghost. Cadaver. Mule. Mouth. “I chose nicknames just based on a personality cork,” said Andrew Nardinelli, a player who describes himself as Mouth because he talks so much.

For Nardinelli, nicknames are just half the fun. Vintage Base Ball for the independent contractor is really a completely different game than its modern version.

“There are rules that make it a less formulaic game,” said Nardinelli, citing no infield fly rule and, for batters, no stepping out of the box.

“You need a higher percentage of heart than skill.”

Playing Catcher might be the most difficult position in 1886 style base ball.

Nardinelli left his Friday night softball co-ed league for something a little more aggressive.

“I wanted something that was more rough and tumble,” said the Berkeley resident. “The modern game has this monolithic sluggish pace. It takes about five or ten seconds to get through pitches. This game has a much faster pace. Nothing is ever routine.” ”

“In a lot of ways, it’s a simpler game,” said the outfielder.

Lazy summer afternoons were made for base ball (two words.)

By LINNEA EDMEIER

Oct. 8 — The anxiety over the possibility of some school shutdowns played out in tonight’s Oakland Board of Education meeting as individuals and groups took the microphone to passionately say, “Don’t close our small schools.”

In the wake of announcing a plan to study closing certain schools in order to increase fiscal stability, the Board found itself on stage tonight—literally and figuratively.

Under spotlights, seated in a row behind a blue-skirted table lined with microphones, the board, Superintendent and State Administrator made their way through an agenda that included funding for a variety of programs aimed at raising student achievement and teacher competence. But for most of the patient, anxious audience, it boiled down to a single issue: school closures.

“Tonight’s been miscast as a night we’re actually going to close schools,” said board member, Gregory Hodge.

Other board members also addressed the audience’s concerns and made clear that the board’s intention had never been to close schools immediately, nor had it ever been the objective in tonight’s meeting. In response to overwhelming public skepticism and criticism about its plans, board member Kerry Hamill said the entire process had been started “in the wrong vein.”

“We threw a big blanket of fear over the issues,” Hamill told the audience. “Presentations and engagement meetings that began with talks about how to fight the fiscal battle instead of ways schools can improve wasn’t the best approach.”

OUSD Board of Education

“I came for information,” said one parent. “I had no idea any of this was going on until my daughter came home today and told me there was a meeting tonight because they were going to close schools.”

Parent Tavita Bass reflected much of the audience sentiment toward the District’s financial hardship. “When there’s more crime, they allocate more money for officers,” said Bass. “Why can’t we do that for our children’s education?”

In a Power-Point presentation, titled “A Case for Fiscal Sustainability,” the board not only laid out its fiscal challenges, but more importantly for those looking for alternatives to closing schools, it presented priorities and strategies for achieving long-term financial stability.

Opposing one of the long-term financial goals identified in the presentation, Hodge said he didn’t agree with accelerating the payoff of the district’s current state loan. Instead Hodge said, “We should demand the loan be forgiven,” a statement met by vigorous applause.

OUSD showed the audience its Case for Fiscal Sustainability at Wednesday nights BOE meeting

The board proposed actively recruiting new students and sustained fundraising as two strategies for increasing revenue and enrollment

Board member Noel Gallo said the District should aggressively recruit students in the same way as private and charters schools. Instead of complaining about losing students to the Catholic schools or the charters, Gallo said, “We should be out there putting our pamphlets right next to theirs.”

Board members were in unison when it came to getting the students in the schools and keeping up their attendance. Because schools receive their funding per student, maximum enrollment and maximum attendance are vital.

Based on community input, the board decided to take on its financial challenges by monitoring under-enrolled schools, considering the fiscal health of schools, while also bearing in mind the academic consequences of closing schools. More community engagement meetings will be scheduled to gather more input.

Charter schools attracted attention tonight as audience members, as well as the board, spoke about the impact charters have on enrollment and funding at non-charter schools. Closing charters was not offered as a solution, yet audience members complained about how charters draw students and money away from other district schools. Board members said that they must be mindful of everything that impacts the fiscal health of the district, including charters.

The backlash over proposed school closures comes at a time when the district is trying to shore up its finances so it can regain local control from the state, which took over OUSD in 2003.

“We knew the idea of closing schools would be met with a lot of passion,” said OUSD spokesperson Troy Flint. “Tonight’s meeting, along with all the input from the community, as well as the board’s recommendations,” he said, “gives us a place to start as we move forward from here.”

by KRISTINE WONG 

Sep. 27 — Most Saturdays, Mosswood Park is filled with a lively mixture of families, dog walkers, and weekend soccer warriors. Today, a different group of voices rang out from the park’s center stage – those of environmentalists, builders, and students who rallied for new jobs to improve both the economy and the environment. 

The rally, sponsored by the Oakland-based Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, featured remarks by Alameda County Supervisor Keith Carson, Oakland City Council Member Nancy Nadel, and students poised to join Oakland’s new Green Jobs Corps, a program aimed at training a new generation of skilled labor to work in the emerging green economy, while providing at-risk youth with access to a stable career path. 

 “I’m excited to be part of a program that’s going to bring back money and jobs for us,” Olivia Caldwell, 29, told the crowd as she balanced her year-old daughter in her arms. Caldwell, who said she hopes to work in green construction, was formerly a medical assistant who decided to change careers so she could spend more time outside and earn a better living. 

Khanh Huynh, 24, spoke of wanting to learn how to install solar panels in homes and businesses. The first-generation immigrant said he might try to bring what he learns back to his native Vietnam. “I was in Vietnam last summer and they had a problem with electrical power,” he said. 

In a faltering economy, Caldwell and Huynh’s career choices appear to be wise. Despite the rising gas prices, foreclosures, and increased layoffs that have become the hallmark for these times, the green sector of the economy continues to grow: green building and construction; energy audits and retrofits; the manufacturing of green products; and the development and implementation of alternative energy sources, including wind power, solar energy, and biofuels. 

What’s missing, some economists suggest, is a “green-collar” workforce. A recent study conducted by UC Berkeley economist David Roland-Holst estimated that as a result of 2006 state legislation requiring California to achieve 1990 greenhouse gas emission levels by 2020, the state’s gross domestic product will increase by $74 billion, and 89,000 new jobs will be created by 2020. 

At the same time, the exit of the baby boomers from the workforce over the next 10-20 years will create an even greater shortage of workers to fill these positions. 

Support for green-collar jobs has been steadily mounting. In 2007, Congress passed the Green Jobs Act, which will provide $125 million in funding for jobs-training programs focused on energy efficiency. The Act places a priority on training veterans, displaced workers, and at-risk youth for these jobs. 

At the Mosswood Park rally, attendees milled between fiery hip-hop performers and speakers on the main stage to the more subdued resource fair and energy-efficient technology demonstrations in the back of the park, where they could sign up to get involved with a local organization, or marvel at smoothies being made in a blender hooked up to a solar panel.

The rally was one of scores of several similar events that took place around the country today.   In many participating cities, individuals and organizations added to the day’s activities with  green building tours, and informal discussions at homes and supporting organizations. 

The Oakland Green Jobs Corps was initiated by the Ella Baker Center and the Oakland Apollo Alliance in 2006. This year, Oakland funded the program with $250,000 of settlement money from California’s lawsuit against the Williams and Reliant energy companies for gouging prices during deregulation. Cypress Mandela Training Center, Laney Community College, and Growth Sector, Inc. have been contracted to carry out the training programs. The Corps is also advised by its own Green Employer Council, a 12-member advisory board comprised of Bay Area green businesses to provide job placement, apprenticeships, and guidance in regards to developments in the green economy. 

The first stage of the 8-month program focuses on an introduction to the skilled trades, and prepares trainees for job readiness by teaching them how to write resumes and handle interviews. Students will also be introduced to ecology, environmental sustainability, and environmental justice. 

During the second stage, students continue to Laney Community College for classes in solar installation, green construction, and energy efficiency and retrofitting. In the last stage, students receive 3 months of on-the-job training with local green employers.  

Some advocates emphasized today that the popular new term for environmentally-oriented jobs, “green collar,” should imply benefits for the workers as well.  “Green-collar jobs provide workers a living wage and opportunity for upward mobility and increased specialization,” said Emily Kirsch, Bay Area Green Collar Jobs Campaign organizer at the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights. 

To maximize Green Jobs Corps retention rates, both Cypress Mandela and Laney Community College have promised to provide social support and case management throughout the program. “We recognize that many of our students face challenges that can interfere with their education,” said Peter Crabtree, Dean of Career and Technical Education at Laney Community College. “Each student will receive a case manager that can help them with things like child care and transportation.” 

In 2009, the first class of 40 graduates  is supposed to be placed in paid positions in Bay Area solar installation and green construction companies, including Sun Light & Power, located in Berkeley. A member of the Green Employer Council, Sun Light & Power has grown in the last 5 years from 10 employees to almost 60 employees, according to Martin Morehouse, a company manager. “We’re excited for the Green Jobs Corps because we’re desperate to hire people that can do the work,” Morehouse said. “Currently, we hire people from plumbing, electricity and basic carpentry backgrounds, but we have to get them up to speed in regards to how to work in energy-efficient technology. We like the idea of relying on a local training program to give us highly trained and knowledgeable people.” 

Rally organizer Kirsch was hopeful about the outcome of today’s event.

“We’ll be sending a message to elected officials, Congress, and the next President that the country is ready to embrace the green economy,” she said. “We want them to know that change can come from the bottom up.”