Thread by @hyphy_republic

About to sit in on this Moms4Housing mayoral forum. Should be interesting to say the least

https://twitter.com/moms4housing/status/1535311259150581760

The #moms4housing has begun the #oakmayor forum; they just explained the Spanish and Mandarin translation

Katie from Care for Community oaklandc4c.org is hosting; Dominique Walker from Moms 4 Housing is the moderator. Dominique Walker was one of the original Moms who took over a speculator owned house, demanding housing solutions for the homeless.

Walker says the goal of Moms 4 Housing was to draw attention to the need for solutions to homelessness. "we want to know what these candidates are going to do about homelessness"

Nicole from Care for Community is going over the role of the Mayor, and what the mayor has the power to do, explains the Mayor has the role of enforcing policy through City Admin; creates the City of Oakland budget "its our money, the money we pay in taxes"

The Mayor "has a huge platform, soft power and the ability to influence the things that do and don't happen in the city...recommends policy to council, can't vote, but can champion legislation...Mayor is the tie-breaking vote"

Mayor encourages programs to broaden and strengthen Oakland's commercial base, appoints members to boards and commissions.

Candidate Greg Hodge goes first, introduces, "public safety and homelessness" two biggest issues that we face in the City, mentions the murder on 14th and Franklin after Warriors game. Hodge says his role as Mayor would be "Listening, lifting, leading"

Hodge says he's been a community lawyer, facilitator, policy implementer. Hodge facilitated the City Council retreat last year.

Not all the Mayoral candidates are at this forum: It's John Riemann, Greg Hodge, Alyssa Victory and Sheng Thao; notably Treva Reid and Loren Taylor are not here

Reiman, a veteran of Occupy Oakland, shouts out the occupation of Parker Elementary. Says homelessness is directly related to poverty and economic injustice. He says a national program could start based on a social program in Oakland.

Reimann says that no one interested in Oakland's homeless issues supports Howard Terminal, says that the City should spend the money it would spend on HT on homelessness.

Oh, I forgot Derek Soo, now giving his intro: says his family first came to bay area in 1850 during Gold Rush, and is a lifelong resident of Oakland. Soo: "I myself am homeless and living on the streets of East Oakland"

Soo says he worked in counter-terrorism and worked in multi million dollar budgets over a twenty year career.

Sheng Thao, D4 council rep, says she's a daughter of refugees, one of ten kids, grew up in poverty. "I understand what families worry about every single day...like how to put food on the table and pay the rent"

Thao mentions the eviction moratorium "some of my colleagues wanted there to be a sunset date"...also championed extended paid sick leave at Council, says her colleagues running for Mayor called in sick that day

Thao says she has to step away but Brandon Harami, her staffer will stand in for her.

Alyssa Victory introduces herself in Spanish and says her family has been evicted and also lost their home later in a foreclosure, says the damage of foreclosure has not yet been repaired.

Victory says she's running on public banking, worker support, workforce housing and social housing and a Red, Black and Brown new deal.

Walker says each candidate will have two minutes, which will be monitored strictly. First question is from Moms 4 Housing, Shareena Thomas asks first question: "during M4M occupation, did you support actions that we took to stand up for homeless families...how and why/why not"

Victory: I absolutely supported actions...takeover of an empty house while families slept on street...70% of homeless are Black...I showed my support by physically attending defense actions...I stood with you, you can see photos on my social media...also on the ground with C4C

Victory says she's running to be the first Black woman mayor of the City..."we have to have people centered, human rights centered policy and that's exactly what I'm running on"

Brandon Harami, Thao's staffer, says Thao released a supporting statement, and understands what its like to be a homeless mom. We're seeing huge disparities for families, transitional housing, Thao is working on an IFD for the City to pay for housing.

Harami mentions Thao's ballot measure to increase business tax on large corporations, which he says can be used to build affordable housing.

Dereck Soo says he was there from the beginning for the action, in planning for organizing. He says he worked on parallel take-overs, did an occupation of a home in the Oakland hills, and protest resultd in 20 acre site from state of Ca which he plans to put in housing.

Walker slightly corrected Soo, that the planning simply happened on the steps of the house.

Reimann says he was very supportive of M4M, and that public officials need to be organizers, to build a movement and make the City of Oakland come to a screeching halt until homelessness is resolved.

Reimann says housing for profit has been a disaster, and need to look into publicly owned housing. Anyone who supports or does not actively oppose Howard Terminal is supporting gentrification, increased rents and driving more people into the streets.

Hodge: says he supported the efforts at the time. Hodge says he was organizing Brotherhood of Elders network at that time, which sent a donation to the group, supports work for dignity and justice, education, work skills.

James Burch of APTP asks the next question: he says recently released data shows much of OPD time is spent on non-urgent calls, and asks whether the candidates would reduce amount of officers.

Soo says he believes in removing military equipment, but we do need a multi-tier approach vs old antiquated system we see now

Hodge: "we could have fewer sworn officers in certain issues like technicians...the bigger question is that public safety is a group effort"

Hodge says he's very supportive of MACRO and disappointed its taken a year to get it running. He says talking to people on Reimagining Taskforce, police shouldn't focus on "cat in the tree problems" and focus on violent crime.

Harami for Thao, he says per Measure Z the City is unable to go below 678 [the City is well below number today, by nearly thirty officers]. He says that the issue is how we approach public safety, he mentions MACRO, and says its getting a lot more calls than they thought it would

Clarissa Doutherd asks next question: 24.5% of clients who'd been homeless in the prior year identified threats of eviction and inability to pay for rent, kids have negative outcomes from prolonged homelessness, that can be lifelong, three babies from displaced families have died

How will you protect families from eviction and prevent discrimination of Black and Brown families: [Doutherd is Executive Director at Parent Voices]

Reimann goes first, says there's no way to end discrimination in housing as long as housing is owned privately and run for profit. "we need a crash program to pay for public housing, controlled and managed by workers themselves"

Reimann also says they need to build a movement of workers and tenants, and a 28 dollar/hour minimum wage which would affordable the average rent for a 1 bedroom apartment. "if the system can't afford that sort of wage, then we can't afford the statement"

Harami, rep of Thao, talks about Thao's experience of being single homeless mom. "Oakland has failed our homeless families and youth...we need to build more affordable housing & invest in more transitional housing and services for families...department of children/youth/families"

Harami says that THao's way out of poverty was welfare and services, but many homeless women don't know how to access these services...

Victory, says she was homeless as a youth when she was trying to finish high school, she says that their family didn't have permanent housing for a decade. ; there should be more city is doing to provide safety nets...we've shown Cities can have eviction moratoriums and rent help

Victory: "we have enough resources, we have a lack of political will" to provide services. Victory says that she supports a strong public lands policy, instead of just a policy for overseeing homeless encampments "I don't want to manage people in crisis, I want to house them"

Because of technical problems with the timer, the host is asking the participants to set their own two minute timers. Public will hear timer with the audio. Complaint that viewers can't see both candidate and timer.

Brooklyn Williams with Coalition of CT Hub: will you commit to support transitioning age youth with one stop hubs that offer housing, community services and wrap around services, and what would that support look like.

This is a tough debate to moderate, because some of the questions are for specific candidates, and hard to catch which is which, apologies.

Soo talks about previous training programs that prepared youth to begin work immediately, and wants to fund programs for continuing education and early education, and housing.

Reimann says he would support programs for transitioning youth, but there's a couple of other issues. Reimann says he lives in Funktown and knew a lot of youth involved in non-legal activities...what is the plan to create good paying jobs, not just minimum wage work.

Reimann says they need to set up accessible apprenticeship programs in the trades, and they'd have to transform the unions themselves to accomplish this

Victory: "it's shameful City can't house youth trying to finish their education". Victory says she'd meet with the orgs working with transitioning youth to figure out what policies need to be done. Victory says she was paid as a youth to do organizing by local groups, as example

Victory talks about previous years of non profit work for youth, says that was a unique period

Meaghan Connor of Laney Poor People's Campaign, says she's a D3 resident and student member. She says people should not live in or die from poverty in the richest nation that exists...mentions decades of real estate speculation that creates poverty.

Connor: what is your plan to get real estate speculators out of Oakland and keep them from ever coming back...what is your plan to bring rents down to affordable levels, i.e., 30% of income

I love these questions

Harami on real estate speculators, says that Costa Hawkins and Ellis need to be repealed or reformed to fix certain issues, the mayor can push on that, but can't fix it alone. Expanding rent control can reduce the amount of speculation that happens, mentions CPI decrease

Harami says that Thao was ready to introduce a CPI reduction, but Fife beat her to it...Thao believes in right to access for tenant protections and eviction protections. Harami says Thao is working to invest in eviction protection services, including right to counsel

Hodge: redlining has created these intense wealth inequalities...on limiting speculators, city or county should buy properties and put it into community land trusts and support renter owned cooperatives. State counterparts needs to push to eliminate Costa Hawkins and Ellis.

HOdge: "I think the Howard Terminal questions that Fife has asked need to be answered...what happens if you build the stadium, have the construction jobs extraction...but don't create an ongoing benefit for Oakland..."

Reimann: HT is a real estate speculators dream...w/the privatization of public land that its involved with, there's no way it will have a benefit to the community as a whole..." calls CBA a "scam". He says that anyone who wants to stop real estate speculation must be against HT

Reimann: "If we have to shut down the City or state in order to ensure that rents are affordable, taht's what real reps of working class must do...we have to have a 28/hr minimum wage"...need a crash program of truly affordable housing

Merika Reagan of ACCE, D7 resident, talks about a concern she heard at an ACCE meeting, a property across from her home that's been kept vacant has becomes a dumping ground for the street...owner rebuffs attempts to solve the issue"

Reagan: "do you support using vacant and under-used properties to house the unhoused and under-housed"

Hodge: "get a sense of who the owner is"...if they are underwater, how do we support home owners like that...but if its a corporate speculator, we should just take a page out of C4C of converting blighted properties into permanent affordable housing...

Reimann: we already have a vacant parcel tax and its supposed to be funding our homelessness services...we may have legislated those, but the admin is not fully enforcing them...the whole point was to ensure owners would either use those properties or pay to help people

Victory our mortgage assistance programs have been unfunded for the past year or so...we need to pay attention to other blight issues, we are criminalizing dumping, but we need to get at the heart of the issue...need to bring back street cleaning as City owned service

Soo: I see a lot of slumlords that are taking advantage of our people...the slumlord that made me homeless was paying bribes to city officials to pass her 600 slum units...I want to take aggressive action against these slumlords

Soo keeps talking about creating "destination attractions" to Oakland. Soo also wants to strengthen community land trusts

Walter Riley civil rights activist and attorney: mentions report on the closure of majority Black schools increases displacement of majority Black neighborhoods, and harms Black families. Have you read report, & will you support movement to stop closure of majority Black schools

Reimann says he hasn't read that specific report, but he was just at Parker Elementary the other day and has volunteered to help in that occupation...."this is directly connected to the issue of privatization to the public school system"

Reimann mentions Fisher, a supporter of privatization of schools, who would be brought into City politics in a real way. Reimann says that if the school population of schools has gone down, that's good, because it decreases class size, and that we need fully financed public ed

Hodge says he's seen study & understands its implications. He says schools shouldn't be closed until there's consensus about how many schools are needed, and what needs to be done for Black and Brown students, independent audit of OUSD budget, and debt forgiveness at state

Hodge says he supports SLAPP. He says the Mayor can convene a sort of summit to figure out how to reimagine public education, "the system we're protecting has never served us"

Soo says he doesn't believe in closing any schools, the situation with OUSD should never have gotten that bad, City of Oakland should have stepped in. Soo says he supports extremely low cost teacher's housing.

Victory: says she's read the Stanford study and supports it, says she supports SLAPP, and has been organizing around preventing closures from a young age, and that this isn't a new problem or a new movement and she's been on the ground.

Victory notes that the Mayor can't control OUSD, but there's other things to do, like loaning money and influencing policy.

Harami says that Thao partnered with Bas, Kaplan and Fife to produce a demand for forgiveness of the debt, "there's absolutely no reason we should be closing schools in Black and Brown communities" with the current state surplus.

Harami mentions that the advocacy work moved Mia Bonta to introduce AB1912 "imagine if the Mayor had been this vocal, with her access to governor etc...imagine what an impact that would have had"

Schaaf backed the school closures, btw, called it a way of "reimagining" education or something.

Shereena of M4M: What will you do in the first 100 days in office to get homeless off streets and into housing?

Hodge: need to move quickly on housing those in most need; we have not created a coordinated effort in county & state, he mentions Houston example, need to get everyone around table, they said 'let's get people in apartments and housing initially, then we'll work on other issues'

Mentions the county owned building on Broadway adjacent to police station "why has that not been converted into housing"...we should borrow example of Houston, others, convert vacant properties, etc.

Reimann says it would be a question of first 100 hours not days. "In my first 100 hours, I would build a coalition of working class people, homeless, and people who can't afford rent...tear a page from M4M and do what they did. We'll simply go out and occupy the vacant housing"

Reimann wins the debate for calling out "Mayor Yuppie Schaaf"

I am not going to surprise you by telling you Reimann is a communist of some notoriety in local area.

Soo says he's a well known community advocate...he says Oakland's pallet tiny homes was an iteration of an idea he brought forth years ago, one of the biggest things he'll be pushing is community land trusts

Harami "we don't need to do anything fancy, we just need to build and acquire affordable housing...implement our existing but unimplemented public lands policy...need to acquire more housing, potential 600 units from Project Homekey; engage hotel owners to buy new units

Harami mentions IFDs to bond against future revenue to build more affordable housing.

Victory: need to repeal & replace encampment management with housing first policy. Our current policy is managing homelessness, and new admin main task is to do that, we need to reorient our goals to housing people in "housing first policy" so revenue and resources go to housing.

need to implement public lands policy, audit our actual system which spends tens of millions on homelessness with no results, we need to host town halls on homelessness; we need to use the City's state of emergency on homelessness to use the full extent of emergency powers.

Now closing statements:

Victory you can actually vote for three candidates and I want to be one of those three. I am the only candidate who went through homelessness and is now a civil rights attorney working on their own for social justice, also delegate for Dem party, endorsed by people of community

Victory: running to be a public servant, not a politician, running on housing and people first.

Harami "we have a bunch of amazing candidates...vote for top 3 favorite candidates and I'm definitely voting for Victory as number 2". He says Thao has worked tirelessly for the poorest, most in need despite representing one of the wealthiest parts of the city.

Soo managed an encampment for years, had 32 people living in his encampment of which about 28 have been moved into housing. "I expect to expand my work in getting people off streets and into housing through public and private programs"

Soo says he's focused on housing first, then stabilization, then offer the services to help them get back on the road to society and self-sufficiency. He represents over 300 people in homeless encampments

Reimann: we should think of the issues as sitting on a railroad track with a picnic, with a freight train roaring down the track two miles away. The prep for that meal are worse than useless

Reimann says the country is facing two trains: the fascist takeover of national govt in coming mid terms/presidencyl as well as climate degradation, climate refugees, massive increase of food costs. "we need a working class party and we need socialism"

Hodge: we need leadership that's going to be hopeful, leadership to bring people together, no one has all the answers...he believes in facilitated leadership, promoted by people like Ella Baker; group centered leadership, not leader centered groups.

Hodge says he will bring transformative leadership that will disrupt the current system

Walker says she's giving the orgs that asked the questions a chance to respond to the answers given during the forum

Clarissa Doutherd: says this is the first mayoral forum she's experienced that identified organizing and leadership from the grassroots...skilled conveners with a sharp understanding of policy that bring people together even when there's not agreement...

Doutherd: need a Mayor with deep ties to community who understands community landscape in of the most anti Black, anti-poor and pro policing environments in history

Brooklyn Williams: appreciates the response, everyone said they would support a one-stop hub for transition age youth. "this population often gets neglected..."...the request is for this population should be top of mind in campaign and platform

Williams stresses that young adults becoming homeless become homeless adults "we're focusing on a huge gap that no one is addressing...50% of transitioning youth graduate and not connected to anything"

Ethel Longscott of Laney Poor People's Campaign: "a large percentage of the candidates who showed up were able to speak to housing insecurity that they've faced..." we need to build a movement of the unhoused, the housing insecure, renters and homeowners terrorized by costs

Longscott says that this kind of forum needs to be replicated many times over

Riley lauds the forum for focusing on housing, jobs, community efforts. He said he wanted to give candidates a chance to respond to the Stanford study about gentrification, and that its part of a city sponsored plan, supported by real estate and financial elites.

Riley says he doesn't think all the candidates approached the study question, he mentions Victory and Hodge as candidates that did.

Katie from C4C clarifies that all mayoral candidates were invited to attend the forum [so apparently many turned it down, including current electeds]

They're going through current actions that viewers can become a part of. In Moms 4 Housing:

Cassandra from M4M: we are in search of more space for people struggling to live in this City. House on Magnolia "Mom's House"; it's occupied by two families and working to acquire additional space. Looking at a property on Adeline that would house up to 15 families

Whew, I can't keep up with these, but I will post the names of the orgs and how to contact if they give info

you can volunteer with C4c at volunteer.oaklandc4c.org

Here is the full archived video hyphenatedrepublic.com/2022/06/18/643…