Oakland Post, week of July 6 - 12, 2022

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All Roads Lead South, the Underground Railroad to Mexico...Page 2

Gov. Signs $308 Billion Budget: Californians to Get “Inflation Relief” Checks of Up to $1050 Page 2

CaliforniaHawaii NAACP Legacy Awards Honor U.S. Rep Maxine Waters

COVID-19 Cases Peaking Again Throughout California

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Oakland Post “Where there is no vision, the people perish...” Proverbs 29:18

postnewsgroup.com

59th Year, No. 3

Weekly Edition. Edition. July 6-12, 2022

Council Says NO to Voters Who Want to Weigh in on a Billion Dollars of Public Spending for A’s By Ken Epstein

In a meeting this week that dragged on for more than 12 hours, Oakland City Councilmembers decisively turned down a proposal to place a measure on the November ballot to allow voters to weigh in on whether they want over a billion of their tax dollars spent on infrastructure for private luxury development and a baseball stadium on public land at the Port of Oakland. The final vote was 5-2 against the measure, with Councilmember Rebecca Kaplan abstaining. Voting yes was Councilmember Noel Gallo, the author of the measure. Gallo emphasized that this proposal had not been his idea but was drafted in response to a deluge of calls and petitions from local residents, demanding that their voices not be ignored in the city’s rush to give public funds for infrastructure to billionaire developer and A’s team owner John Fisher.

Barbara Lee’s Fourth of July Remarks

Rep. Barbara Lee

On July 4th, we celebrated 246 years since our nation gained independence. And on this holiday, I’m mindful of what freedom really means to many Americans. Independence and liberty for all were not achieved in 1776. Instead, it’s taking centuries to realize true freedom — for Black peoContinued on Page 8

The Oakland A’s released renderings of their proposed new ballpark at Howard Terminal near Jack London Square in Oakland. (Courtesy of Bjarke Ingels Group.

“Your neighbors, my neighbors, are asking us to put this on the ballot,” Gallo said, addNoel Gallo ing that this is a business deal, and the A’s corporation has been less than transparent about the terms of the deal,

whether the A’s will pay any community benefits and how much infrastructure will cost the public. “As of today, I don’t have a complete picture of what the A’s are asking for and what they are willing to pay,” Gallo said. Also voting in favor of the resolution was Councilmem-

ber Carroll Fife, who represents District 3 where the project would be built. “I want to Carroll Fife know what the City of Oakland is on the hook Continued on Page 8

OUSD Receives $120,000 Grant to Bring Black Educators to Classrooms Special to The Post

The Oakland Unified School District wants many more young adults to come to Oakland to be teachers, and recently, OUSD received a major grant to bolster that effort. The Oakland Teacher Residency (OTR) program received $120,000 from the National Center for Teacher Residencies (NCTR) to expand efforts to recruit and develop Black educators for OUSD schools. The grant will allow OTR to provide an additional $10,000 for 10 Oakland Teacher Residents to reduce the financial barriers to entering the profession and becoming credentialed teachers. The grant will also support professional development through mentoring for Black Oakland Teacher Residents and first-year teachers. The award comes through NCTR’s Black Educators Initiative (BEI), a five-year,

Courtney Bean (standing) works as an Oakland Teacher Resident supporting students at CCPA.

$20-million effort to prepare 750 Black teachers through its nationwide network of teacher residency programs. OUSD launched OTR in 2019 as part of a districtwide Grow Our Own strategy to recruit and retain staff who are reflective of Oakland’s rich diversity in the district’s Strategic Initiative #4.

Over the past three years, the program has grown from supporting eight student teachers to supporting a total of 46 teachers pursuing credentials in math, science, and special education. Of the 46 Oakland Teacher Residents, 67% identify as Black, Indigenous, Peo-

If you were celebrating on the Fourth, you have to be troubled on the fifth, sixth, seventh, and all the rest of our days. This past weekend, some of our fellow Americans were flinching from gunpowder blasts. And it’s not from the fireworks. It’s from guns. And it’s a reminder that our freedoms just don’t seem to be working right now for all of us in America. We may have to think seriously about giving up some

Opinion

rights for the greater good. It surely can’t go on much longer the way it is. Not when seven are dead and more than 30 are injured when a gunman shot up a Fourth of July parade in Highland Park, Illinois. Not when the police chief of Akron, Ohio finally released officers’ body camera videos of the Jayland Walker killing on Sunday, nearly a week after Akron cops put more than 60 gunshot wounds into an unarmed Walker. The Sunday release of the body cam footage and the

NAACP protest that occurred over the holiday in Akron would have led the national news most weekends. But not when you have a live shooting at a Fourth of July parade in a Chicago suburb considered one of the safest places in America. If you don’t know Highland Park (population 30,177), it’s to Chicago what the Lamorinda area is to Oakland. Affluent ($147,067 plus median income), 80-90% white. As a “white flight” suburb, mass shootings aren’t supposed to happen there. So when it does, the media get super-focused on Highland Park.

Roe v Wade – Considerations for the Black Community By Lorna Kendrick, PhD

This article is dedicated to all women and their loved ones who have suffered silently because of biases towards female reproductive choice. As we as a community ponder Roe v Wade, we must pause and consider this is not simply about abortion. This is about human rights not politics or societal dogmatism, equity for those most vulnerable and at risk, and freedom for all, not just for an elitist few. During my doctoral education in the early 1990’s the buzzword or answer to achieving health equity for Black America was “access” to care. Data showed, with access we could change the poorer outcomes we were seeing in our

communities. As a woman and as a researcher who has dedicated my entire career to improving care for all, in particular my community, I am beyond outraged when I think about the decision to overturn Roe v Wade, a decision never steeped in data only personal beliefs and opinion. Frederick Douglass once said, “I expose slavery to this country, because to expose it is to kill it.” I hope my words on this page expose this new form of slavery, hatred, and destruction of our community, through the overturning of laws and redistricting of voting lines, helps support efforts to “kill it”. I am outraged. There are groups and individuals deterContinued on Page 8

WNBA Star Britney Griner Pleads Guilty to Drug Possession in Russian Court

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Highland Park is a Tragedy, But So is Akron, Ohio and Jayland Walker By Emil Guillermo

Lorna Kendrick, PhD

Meanwhile, Akron barely got mentioned in the news. You need both instances together to give you the rich, full picture of America’s gun problem. It’s not the same for everyone. For people of color, we have to fear the bad guys and the good guys. Surely, minority communities know the Highland Park kind of gun violence perpetrated by an alienated male with an AR-15 type weapon. The Black community felt the pain at the Tops Supermarket shooting in Buffalo where ten Continued on Page 8

Brittney Griner pleaded guilty to drug charges months after being detained in Russia. (REUTERS/Evgenia Novozhenina). By Post Staff

WNBA champion Brittney Griner entered a guilty plea for possession of hashish oil cartridges on Thursday as part of what some legal experts assert is a strategy for a lighter sentence. Accused of large-scale drug transportation, she has been detained since Feb. 17, 2022. She was in possession of .07 grams of hashish oil. The charges carry a 10-year sentence. “I’d like to plead guilty, your honor. But there was no intent. I didn’t want to break the law,” Griner said on the second day of her trial, according to Re-

uters. Her guilty plea came one day after Pres. Joe Biden and Vice Pres. Kamala Harris spoke to Griner’s wife, Cherelle Griner, who had complained that the president had not been in touch with her or other members of the basketball star’s family. She revealed the contents of a hand-written letter Brittney wrote to the president on national news networks on July 4. “(As) I sit here in a Russian prison, alone with my thoughts and without the protection of my wife, family, friends, Olympic jersey, or any accomContinued on Page 8


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