Nita Bee and Leon Sykes are two community organizers from
Oakland who planned #510Day in May. The goal of the gathering was three-fold:
to stand up against displacement, to celebrate Oakland’s history and culture
and to foster a sense of pride. We spoke about a week after the event. Here is
what they had to say:
Flyer: Courtesy of @510Day
Q (uestion): What inspired you to start #510Day
and what did you hope to achieve?
Leon: #415Day -- an event put on by people born and raised in
San Francisco, meaning long-term residents. It was a celebration of a
working-class community of color and its rich culture.
Nita: We started #510Day in 2016. I saw it as an opportunity to
send a message. At one point, signs were being put up around Lake Merritt stating
that groups of people (of 12 or more) could not assemble at the lake without a
permit -- even though it was public space! The first year, 200 people showed
up. This year, at least 1,500.
Q: I understand that an Anti-Displacement
March was part of this event, can you tell me more about that?
Leon: The march was fully the youth's idea! We adults supported,
but the youth brought out 150 young people and came up with the hashtag:
#WeStillHere. Meaning, we still congregate and we are still a driving force in
the culture of Oakland. The culture here is full of black folks, Latinx folks,
Asian folks.
Nita: And Oakland has a huge population of Native American
folks! My teenage daughter was involved in organizing the march. Four
organizations were also involved: Urban Peace Movement, Communities United for
Restorative Youth Justice, United Roots and an Asian and Pacific Islander
grassroots organization: AYPAL.
Q: Did you have other hashtags for this event?
Did you intend to make it go viral?
Leon: The other hashtags were: #OaklandAgainstGentrification and
#TownBizness. A lot of media coverage that the event received was because of
the whole #BBQBecky incident at Lake Merritt last summer. A white woman called
the Oakland police (in tears) because two black men were simply having a
barbecue (#BBQnWhileBlack). I would say that the incident proved why #510Day is
necessary. At the end of the day, it was the youth who put on for their city!
Nita: The work that the youth did in organizing this
Anti-displacement March is something that will be a driving force (politically)
for the years to come [smile]!
Photo: @The.Root
Q: What are some of the housing struggles that residents are facing here in Oakland? Have you encountered housing policy issues at the city government level when trying to organize and address housing struggles?
Nita: Illegal evictions happen, here. But many people don't
realize that as tenants they have rights or either they lack the resources to
fight eviction cases. There are also no regulations in place (rent control) to
keep the rents affordable for working class people of color. Or to take it a
step further, when developers come to town, they aren't mandated to have a
certain percentage of low-income units in a given project -- or if they do,
they can buy their way out of it. Also, many people that did buy their homes
lost them due to predatory lending. So there are a lot of policy
issues.
Leon: Oakland has a Rent Board. I have gone to some of their
meetings. But where they were receiving 2-3 cases a year regarding illegal
evictions, they are now receiving 100 or more cases per year. This means that
by the time many of these cases are able to addressed, families have already
been displaced. Also, many jobs in Oakland don't provide a living wage which
means that even with a full-time job, many people still can't afford to pay the
high cost of rent. Gentrification is an attack on working-class people. This is
why I say, gentrification is violence.
Q: What advice would you give to Bay Area
communities, like East Palo Alto, daily facing the threat of displacement?
Nita: Don't move. Don't
sell your land. Land is life. Take up space.
Leon: First, I want to
clarify something. We are anti-gentrification, not anti-new-to-Oakland. There’s
a difference. Advice? I’d say, there's strength in numbers. It’s the Warriors’
motto [smile], it’s very important to remember and it’s vital to our existence.
Keep organizing. We from the Bay (Area) and the radical is in us! We have to
remind folks that #WeStillHere in EPA! We have to remember who we are.
#SanFrancisco #Oakland #EastPaloAlto #HousingCrisis #AffordableHousing #StopDisplacement #DisplacedLane #DevelopmentWithoutDisplacement #SiliconValley #Gentrification #WeStillHere #StrengthInNumbers
