George Washington Williams: Turning Experience Into History
Page 2
Black Leaders Remember Life and Work of Former Legislator
Willard H. Murray Page 5
State of California Forced or Coerced Sterilization. Victims Can Be Compensated. Page 10
Port of Oakland Aiming to Help Agricultural Producers Export Products More Quickly..P16
Oakland Post “Where there is no vision, the people perish...” Proverbs 29:18
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Weekly Edition: Jan. 5-11, 2022
58th Year, No. 29
Environmental Advocate Margaret Gordon Turns Against Oakland A’s Development The former Port Commissioner says, “The A’s should adopt fair and equitable benefits to Oakland or stop lying and saying (they’re) doing community benefits.”
By Ken Epstein
Bishop Ernestine Cleveland Reems, 92
Bishop Ernestine Cleveland Reems, the founder and Senior Pastor of the Center of Hope, died Dec. 28, 2021. She was 92. She will be succeeded by co-pastors Brondon and Maria Reems. The family and congregation will announce the funeral and memorial services in the special Post Memorial Tribute Edition that encompasses her national leadership and global ministries. She was an early pioneer of women in the ministry and crashed through the “stained-glass ceiling” for the roles of women in the pulpit and the ministry.
Until recently, West Oakland community leader and environmental advocate Margaret Gordon had been on board with billionaire John Fisher’s massive real estate and stadium development project at Howard Terminal, which is public land at the Port of Oakland. She has now withdrawn her support and is actively opposed to the development. In an interview with the Oakland Post this week, she said she was involved since the beginning several years ago, working with others to produce a community benefits agreement with the A’s, which the A’s were expected to pay for. But the A’s have gone back on their promises, she said. “We, as a community, should hold everybody to task around the issue of equity,” Gordon said. “The A’s started off talking about equity and ended up
Margaret Gordon, co-founder of West Oakland Environmental Indicators Project (WOEIP). Photo courtesy of Earthjustice.
putting [all the costs] back on the city. That’s not equity. Unmitigated environmental issues — that’s not equity. I don’t believe they are going to [build affordable] housing — that’s not equity.” Gordon, co-founder of the West Oakland Environmental Indicators Project (WOEIP), has served on the Port Com-
On Anniversary of Jan. 6 Friendship Christian Center Provides Insurrection, Rep. Lee Calls on Senate Tests, Vaccines to Thousands to Pass Voting Rights Legislation
Congresswoman Barbara Lee (CA-13) released the following statement on the one-year anniversary of the Jan.6 insurrection: This time last year, I was hurrying down flights of stairs in the Capitol, thinking about how fortunate it was that I wore my tennis shoes, and praying that the angry mob of armed white supremacists didn’t know where we were going. It was a traumatic day for the country. Trump’s egregiously false claims about election fraud culminated in a shocking attempt to overthrow our democracy. Although the rioters ultimately failed to do so, the siege on our institutions is nowhere close to being over. By refusing to accept facts and spreading corrosive lies about election sabotage, Republicans are stoking the flames of dictatorship and
Congresswoman Barbara Lee
authoritarian rule. Across the nation, over 400 bills have been introduced suppressing the right to vote — from reducing polling hours and locations to allowing lawmakers to overturn a legitimate election result. And we know that voter suppression laws are not felt universally: these restricContinued on Page 18
A lone forms outside the Friendship Christian Center on a recent, rainy cold day in Oakland. Photo courtesy of FCCC.
Friendship Christian Center Church (FCCC), pastored by Dr. Gerald Agee, is located at 1904 Adeline St. and is one of the dozens of Black churches across the state of California, who, in conjunction with the California Health Agencies and California Black Media, has stood on the front line, with the Black Press for over a year providing COVID-19 testing and vaccinations to minority communities. FCCC has served thousands with lines forming an hour and a half before opening to get tested and vaccinated with one of the three vaccines, boosters, and vaccines for children. Agee said it has been going at this pace for over a month, with the new Omicron variant surging.
Roosevelt Vernon Cobb, Daddy Hammercy! By Paul Cobb
Roosevelt Vernon Cobb
my life, because you worked for the Phoenix newspaper in Muskogee, Oklahoma, before you brought your family to Oakland, where I was born at 1776 7th Street at the Pack Train Hotel
into a large, welded barrel that you kept in the closet. Most of that money was “earned” from your after-work second job mastery of the billiard tables on Seventh Street while wearing overalls with a cargo hook in your back pocket. You brought your entrepreneurial skills to your work as a longshoreman, where unbeknownst to your children, you managed to save by dropping the dimes, quarters, halves, and silver dollars. Those coins allowed you to buy properties and a car, in the same manner in which you earned them, face-to-face, over the counter, to be counted and acknowledged by the bankers and dealers, while you watched.
As a kid, with a portable shoe shine box, I worked in front of the pool halls by day, where I collected national Black newspapers from the Pullman Porters who brought them to me as a tip with payment. You and Jimmy Herman helped me and my brother to get hired as ship clerks. Dad, I did not know that you “graced” those same places at night. I remember when your wife told you to stop that lifestyle or she would leave, you stopped. You abruptly pursued a Bible-based lifestyle with zeal. I still use some of your favorite aphorisms, such as, “don’t back down from any challenge, Continued on Page 18
Continued on Page 18
Planning Commission to Hold Public Hearing on Oakland A’s Real Estate Project, Jan. 19 By Post Staff
Remembrance birthday letter
Happy Birthday, Daddy. I am honored to be a son of your seven-children family circle. Even though you only finished the 6th grade, you were known to spot talent and could predict future opportunities for success, especially when you met Mary Magdalene Bland while she was working at Grandpa Early Bland’s watermelon and food stand. And you prophesied that the “Lord willing, I’m going to marry you.” You crested when you married her after she had graduated from Langston University. I now understand why publishing has been a major part of
mission and has struggled for decades to reduce the impact of industrial pollutants that cause respiratory illnesses and improve the overall air quality in her community. She said her goal in working with the A’s development was to design social justice and environmental justice projects to support West Oakland, China-
town, Jack London Square area and Old Oakland, four areas that would be most impacted by the massive project. “We agreed with the City to sit down and do a community benefits agreement, which included education, environmental improvements, housing, jobs, business development,” she said. “We met for almost two years trying to develop our own agreement with the City and the A’s. We finalized our draft, telling them that this is what we want.” But then the A’s shifted their position. “All of sudden, the A’s stopped the process. We wanted more conversations as part of negotiations. But there never were negotiations to finalize the community benefits agreement,” she said. “There were no sit-downs with the A’s or city staff. Never.” Gordon said she was not en-
The Oakland Planning Commission will hold a public hearing on the Final Environmental Impact Report (EIR) on the Oakland A’s Stadium and Real Estate Development. It will take place on Wednesday, Jan. 19, at 3 p.m., according to a city media release. “During the hearing, the Planning Commission will consider whether the Final EIR was completed in compliance with state law, represents the independent analysis of
the city, and provides adequate information to decision-makers and the public on the potential adverse environmental effects of the proposed project, as well as ways in which those effects might be mitigated or avoided” according to the media release. The 3,500-page report was released the week before Christmas 2021, leaving little time for community advocates to read and critique the report.
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An Agenda for Jobs and Freedom in Oakland By Rebecca Kaplan, Oakland City Councilmember-At-Large
In 1963, hundreds of thousands of people marched in what many now refer to as the March on Washington for Civil Rights. But the march organizers called it the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, fighting for justice and equality under law and equal access to economic opportunities and jobs. This struggle is not over, and the work must continue, as today the Black unemployment rate continues to far exceed the white unemployment rate in America. The racial wealth gap is large, and, in Oakland, our local disparity studies continue to document, year after year, the ongoing exclusion of Black-owned businesses from important city opportunities in contracts and economic development. That is part of why I and others have been pushing to remedy these problems, and
Opinion
Rebecca Kaplan
fighting to ensure that jobs, business contracts, and development opportunities in the City of Oakland must, much more significantly, include our Black community. One of the recommendations that came from conducting the most recent disparity study, was to ensure that Black contractors are ready and able to bid on city contracts. As a result, and with strong community support, we fought Continued on Page 18