Posts Tagged ‘You Tell Us’

On Tuesday, Oakland is poised to make history with AC Transit. Specifically, International Blvd. is in a position to gain over $150 million of investment, bring in over 300 new, full-time jobs, improve safety from traffic and crime, receive attractive new streetscape (including street re-paving from curb to curb) and become a healthier corridor overall. AC Transit’s proposed “Bus Rapid Transit” (BRT) project will go before the Oakland City Council this Tuesday, and we urge them to vote in support.

Besides obligating all of us to a big financial risk that a city as poor as Oakland cannot handle, it is not OK to burden younger and future residents and businesses with the huge retirement costs of city employees who never served those future and younger residents.

One of the largest banks on the planet, Goldman Sachs refuses to let the City of Oakland refinance the municipal bonds it owns. Holding onto these “toxic assets” has allowed the company to pocket almost $30 million of our money – and to keep profiting at a rate of $5 million a year.

The burden of $33 billion in federal assistance being shifted to a network of non-profits is nothing short of preposterous. That $33 billion is equal to the budget of nearly every food bank in America, six times over. This isn’t a cut — it’s an amputation.

It’s good to see Oakland in a positive light, and to get excited about new opportunities in our city, but do extreme media representations fuel change that is beneficial to the whole community or just for some?

Here, to me, is the best current illustration of Oakland’s fractious politics. The people who want to recall Mayor Jean Quan can’t even agree to run a single campaign. There are two separate campaigns collecting signatures for a recall measure.

Permitting a permanent encampment is a far better solution than waging war on the Occupy Oakland supporters. Looking back to history, during the Great Depression we had Hoovervilles that lasted for years. Central Park was “occupied.” The only thing that enabled these shanty towns to be destroyed was an economic recovery.

My concern is for those children who are rejected by the local charters and private schools. Either their parents don’t have the savvy to get them in, or once they fail there the charters and private schools send them back to us.

Measure I will do nothing to solve Oakland’s fiscal mess, or to address the fact that Oakland is over $450 million in debt for pension obligations it can’t afford.

Are you an Oakland local and find your invitations to hang out in your beloved city turned down purely based on the location? I know I can’t be alone.

What has happened to us as a culture and people when we enjoy watching a fight, more concerned with videotaping on a cell phone than calling for help, and take a national past time and turn it into something ugly?

If you walk every day, like I do, then you’ve probably had a few near-death experiences while trying to overcome what is probably the biggest barrier in pedestrian safety: crossing the street.

We not only need to ask why it is that the city of Oakland’s Black population is shrinking, but, just as crucially, why is it that so many non-Black people are coming to Oakland from other places? Why the reversal?

What does it say about a city of Oakland’s size to have only four libraries left? What does it say to propose closing the Oakland History Room and the African-American Museum and Library? Does it say to the world that our history is not worth preserving and sharing?