Question 9: Please describe and give an example of your experience working with community residents and organizations on issues affecting the community.

Paul Garrison

I have demonstrated track record of working with community residents and organizations on issues affecting the community.

1. I was the founder of the Haddon Hill Neighborhood Association working on core issues like crime and safety and beautification.  HHNA includes about 350 households in the China Hill area.  I have served as President for 10 years;
2. For over seven years, I have served on the Board of Directors for the Oakland East Bay Symphony in the capacity of Development.  I enjoy raising money for the Symphony because of its social mission to fund music-in-the-schools programs.  Studies have shown that kids who are exposed to musical training early in life develop cognitive skills and confidence that helps them avoid being attractive to negative influences like gangs and crime!;
3. I have served on the first Public Ethics Commission under the administration of Mayor Elihu Harris. Our job was to ensure that the average citizen had access to information about the business of the City so that they could effectively participate.  This is how good government should operate since the municipal government is supposed to serve the interest of the citizens; and
4. I have served on the Cultural Arts Commission under Mayor Jerry Brown.  My job was to ensure that individual artists as well as large institutions like the Symphony and the Ballet were properly funded by the City; and
5. As a lawyer, I have served on the boards of the Charles Houston Bar Association and the Wiley Manuel Law Foundation.  My work has allowed me to participate in a broad range of things from pro bono work to running a mock appellate advocacy competition for Oakland public high school students and career day opportunities.

Peggy Moore

In the fall of 1999, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (a nation-wide political organization) held its annual conference in Oakland for the first time. There was an incident of harassment by Oakland police of a young transgendered person. I helped build a coalition that created a set of proposed solutions and rallied at OPD headquarters to insist that the police treat all members of our community with respect. As a result, the Police department appointed an LBGT community liaison officer, and agreed to sensitivity training programs. Through this coalition, new alliances developed, andwe helped to inform more of Oakland about the importance of our vibrant and diverse community.

P.S. Right after Councilman Wan resigned, the police department announced that they will eliminate their LBGT-sensitivity training. And the Task Force will be holding their annual conference in Oakland again in the Fall of 2005. Our efforts for equality continue .

Aimee Allison

Critical support and resources are being diverted from our schools and communities to support an unjust war abroad - our schools are being closed and children don't have art, music, sports, or books.  Now more than ever, Oakland needs to protect our youth from the false promises of predatory military recruiters and to provide young people with job and educational opportunities.  I know from my personal experience of being recruited into the Army from my high school campus that recruiters are salespeople that often misrepresent benefits and do not paint an accurate picture of military life and of war.  I have worked with immigrant youth falsely promised citizenship and and LGBT youth shocked by the level of anti-gay discrimination.  Women soldiers are three times more likely to be raped or harassed on military bases.  For the past 15 years, I have worked with youth in our community to counter the $2.8 billion dollar military recruitment budget that promotes military service in commercials, online video games, sports events, magazines, and college and high school events. 

The federal "No Child Left Behind Act" requires school districts to give military recruiters contact and background information for every child in Oakland public high schools so that they can better target their recruitment efforts.  I have worked with groups of parents in Oakland to so that they are aware of their right to "opt-out" their child from the data that goes to military recruiters.  I have worked with Asian and Pacific Islander groups in Chinatown to teach after-school programs on the military and the draft.  With the Oakland-based Central Committee for Conscientious Objection, ACLU Youth, Global Exchange, and the American Friends Service Committee, I have appeared in high school classrooms across our community to discuss my experiences as a veteran and educate youth about their rights in the event of a draft.  Most recently, I spoke at Berkeley High School and was featured on the front page of the Berkeley Daily Planet http://www.berkeleydaily.org/text/article.cfm?storyID=21013.   As part of the the Campus Anti-War Network, and the National Network Opposing the Militarization of Youth, I am supporting the efforts to stop military recruiting on our high school campuses here in Oakland .

Pamela Drake

As the Director of the Lakeshore Business improvement District and the Grand Lake Neighborhood Center , I got the call from McDonalds that they were getting ready to take over the Kwik Way on Lake Park Avenue . They said they wanted to meet with some community members. I told them they would find that a lot of community members would like to talk with them and began to notify folks of this impending disastrous change. Within days of my notifying the press, the Tribune published an article which quoted me as saying that we did not think this would be the highest and best use of this property and were hoping for a mixed use project (retail and housing). A local developer who lived behind the area called and asked me to hook him up with the owner and talk out a possible project that would be accepted by both the neighborhood and property owner. We finally succeeded in meeting with the property owners and I articulated a description of how we wanted the street developed that surprised and pleased both myself and our committee, but the owners seemed to want to pursue the McDonalds proposal (though they mentioned looking at other projects). By the date of the meeting with the McDonalds franchisee, we had built a large, vociferous neighborhood coalition that opposed the McDonalds for a variety of reasons. Many of us saw the McDonalds as a deadend to the revival of Lake Park that the Farmers’ market and extension of the Business Improvement District (I had worked to extend the BID to Lake Park the previous year) had started.

When we held the town hall meeting that over 400 attended, I moderated the meeting and although the franchisees were unhappy about the turnout and response; they were able to express their plans. More importantly, the turnout, that we had all worked for, impressed city officials so much that they found a way to reverse the permit which had been given to McDonalds. The local developer immediately began talks with the owners and when the Planning Commission turned down their plea to overturn their loss of a permit for the franchise; the owners began to talk in earnest to the local developers. Now, if the city issues strong enough conditions on the transfer of the nightclub (not as a cabaret but as a bar) to new owners, the Kwik Way owners and the developer have agreed to proceed with a neighborhood planning process before building any project at the site. The hoped for plan would probably include an upscale food retailer and condo units above it.

I also promoted the See’s Store on Lakeshore which was slated to close. By working with the press and local community, including personally setting up a table outside of the store and promoting a special shopping weekend, we convinced the owners that we cared about our See’s and would continue shopping there.

In the late 90’s, the Grand Lake Theater was threatened by corporate theater chains. I organized a committee of the Greater Mandana Action Coalition to promote the first weekend of the blockbuster film, “Airforce One“. Opening night, I stood outside of the theater and signed the large crowd who attended into a coloring book with all the reasons why they loved the theater. Ultimately, the owner, Alan Michaan, sued and won his suit to show first-run Hollywood films. We alerted the community to the importance of our beloved theater but his suit saved it.

I took the school district to the Public Ethics Commission for its violation of local Sunshine laws and brought the second largest crowd ever to speak to the Commission.

At the Center, with the help of an organizer at TURN, I started a group that lobbied for energy efficiency and to save ratepayers costs during the energy crisis. We did not solve the crisis but taught ourselves and our legislators about energy conservation (we also held an energy fair), renewable resources, and the possibilities of public power.

Those are just a few of the projects I have had a leadership role in. They do not include actively recruiting neighbors and merchants to the BID board, that I administer, to advocate for neighborhood friendly businesses. I have been assisted by the local press in all these endeavors, most notably Peggy Stinnett, of the Oakland Tribune.

David Kakishiba

There are many interesting and important examples of my work with residents and organizations, including:

• organizing San Antonio and Eastlake neighborhood residents, including Chinese, Vietnamese, Latino, Cambodian, and Mien immigrant families, to join a coalition (Oakland Community Organizations, Asian Pacific Environmental Network, Oakland Coalition of Congregations, East Bay Asian Youth Center, Urban Strategies Council, PolicyLink) to fight for a community benefits agreement regarding the proposed Oak-to-Ninth waterfront development project;
• organizing San Antonio and Eastlake neighborhood residents to partner with non-profit job training agencies, community development corporations, and labor unions to establish a neighborhood-based construction job training and placement program;
• organizing San Antonio and Eastlake neighborhood residents to partner with Oakland Community Organizations and other community groups to ensure Measure Y includes the hiring, training, and deployment of neighborhood foot patrol officers in every beat, and the establishment of an effective education & employment-based intervention initiative for youth and young adult offenders;
• partnering with parents from Crocker Highlands Elementary School, Cleveland Elementary School, Edna Brewer Middle School, Bella Vista Child Development Center, La Escuelita Elementary School, MetWest High School, and Garfield Elementary School to win $30 milllion in school district construction funds to make long neglected repairs and renovations to those schools;
• organizing Garfield Elementary School parents/residents and teachers to partner with Urban Ecology to design and win pedestrian safety improvements (narrowing Foothill Blvd, installing curb bulb-outs, high visibility crosswalks, and countdown signal lights, deploying crossing guards, and creating a one-way loop child drop-off/pick-up) around Garfield Elementary School;
• organizing Garfield Elementary School parents/residents to partner with Neighborhood Crime Prevention Council leaders (18Y, 18X, 21X) to improve safety along 23rd Avenue;
• organizing Garfield Elementary School parents/residents to partner with merchants, non-profit organizations, and Life Academy High School to win the deployment of a bilingual foot patrol officer and increased police attention to prostitution along International Blvd;
• organizing Roosevelt Middle School parents/residents, teachers, and students to partner with the San Antonio Neighborhood Hills Association to identify and win long-needed physical improvements to San Antonio Park, including a new soccer field;
• organizing Franklin Elementary School parents/residents to win public policy and funding commitments from the City of Oakland and the Oakland Unified School District to expand daily after-school programming at all schools, including Franklin Elementary School;
• organizing Roosevelt Middle School parents/residents, teachers, and students to partner with St. Anthony's Catholic Church and several community organizations to reclaim the neighborhood from gang violence and to open the school six days a week for after-school programming, health care services, and parent involvement;
• organizing Eastlake and San Antonio high school students to partner with high school students in West Oakland, Fruitvale, and East Oakland to craft, campaign, and win the passage of the 1996 Measure K - The Kids First! Initiative

Shirley Gee

Experience working with community and organizations on issues affecting community.

Political Empowerment - In 1989, I discovered that the Asian and Hispanic community did not have the political muscle to impact the outcome of any election because they had been fragmented into multiple electoral districts. Consequently they were not able to affect or influenced the decisions being made up in City Hall.

I volunteered 3 years of my time to do re-districting in Oakland so that ALL communities in Oakland could have access to the political arena and influence their Council representative. This involved mobilizing the Asian community and its leaders and helping the Hispanic community to do the same. It involved a complete revamping of the existing electoral map and required cooperation from the other communities in Oakland (e.g., African Americans) as well.

I was the primary architect for the electoral map drawn by the community and submitted to City Hall in 1993. By builting a consensus around a common map, we were able to empower communities previously left out and to re-balance the political dynamics so that all citizens could become vested in the City of Oakland ; an important factor in creating stability within Oakland .

Youth Invention, Families and Seniors - Subsequent to this effort, in 1996, I created the "dragon boat project" to do youth intervention. This was also a volunteer project from 1996-2003.

Having served on the Mayor's School Safety Task Force and Co-chairing the Campus Safety Committee, I realized that youth with little to no athletic ability were being left out of after school programming. These youth accounted for about 80% of the youth in Oakland . To engage them and to create an environment where they could learn about each other and their respective cultures, I introduced the sport of dragon boating to take advantage of one of Oakland 's biggest assets; the waterfront. I picked dragon boating for two primary reasons: it was environmentally sound and safe and it allowed me to handle upwards of 80 youths in four boats every hour on the hour.

Within 8 years, we had positioned Oakland as an international destination point for dragon boating, hosted a regional and national race and was well on our way to hosting a World Invitational for dragon boating involving 48 countries. ( Oakland was the only west coast finalists in the United States and we were poised to be selected as a host site down the road).

Under my steadfast leadership and applying my strong business background, the non-profit was able to implement fully its business plan which involved borrowing and paying back a city loan; advancing the project money against a 2nd on my house (yes, I got out of hock); building the spectator base from 8,000 to 60,000; bulding the racers base from 350 to 1000 paddlers; and helping 2500+ youth to learn and compete in dragon boating. Along the way, we brought our community of families and seniors along to strengthen our community and provide an inter-generation environment, supported our local artists and cultural entertainers and generated commerce and business for the city and for local vendors and small businesses.

This project demonstrated that we can do good and still do business in the City of Oakland . It remains the only project that was "interactive" in nature and dedicated to strengthening a City's community across multi-cultural lines.

Help Hand to Other Projects - In between and during some of these major projects, I served as a Board Member on the Oakland Potluck, a food recovery program to feed the needy in cooperation with local charity kitchens. Served on the Oakland Asian Cultural Center to help preserve and promote the arts and culture. And am currently with the Jack London Aquatic Center trying to help set up aquatic programming for youth in Oakland (including dragon boating).

Consumer Rights - I also spent five years between 1995-2000 taking a Hate Crime to the U.S. Supreme Court to assure that consumers (including Oaklanders) had a right to a legal remedy in the event of negligence and harm caused by airliners (Gee vs. Southwest Airlines). This right which was lost in 1995 was reinstated in 2000 to consumers.

Todd Plate

I have worked with a number of non-profits, particularly children services non-profits. I have developed programs for them that allows them to operate in a more fluid manner. I have also worked on political strategy and policy for non-profits and for the West Contra Costa School District .

I worked closely with Public Employees’ Union , Local 1 and the United Teachers of Richmond to help get Measure J, a parcel tax for the school district, passed. I have served on the Board of Directors of a child abuse prevention agency and I have worked with TransFair USA , the fair trade certification organization, in their fight to promote fair trade.

Pat Kernighan

I have had the pleasure of working with over 30 community organizations in District 2 on a variety of neighborhood improvement projects during my six years in the Council office.  Perhaps the most dramatic result of any of these projects was the designing and building of Splashpad Park , which was a collaboration between the City and the Grandlake community, particularly the Splashpad Neighborhood Forum.  

In 1999 I started working for then-Councilmember John Russo at the time he proposed putting a Trader Joe's on the old Splashpad area, with the idea that Trader Joe’s would pay for upgrading the remaining open space.  This idea proved very unpopular with at least half of the Grandlake community. Ultimately Russo decided (after some urging by me) to drop the Trader Joe’s plan and find funding to renovate the entire park.  He was very magnanimous about this, and went to great lengths to come up with the funds to build the park.

Shortly after, Danny Wan took over as Councilmember and assigned me to make sure that the park renovation project got completed.  I worked closely with a large group of residents led by Ken Katz that came to be known as the Splashpad Neighborhood Forum.  During the Trader Joe's debate, they did a community survey about what people wanted to see in the site. We took this as the starting point for the community planning process.  The City did a request for proposals for a park designer and selected landscape architect Walter Hood. I set up a series of 3 community visioning meetings.  The planning process was skillfully led by Walter and consensus was reached on a plan. Prior to the meetings, I had helped the farmers market, which had at first operated under the freeway, to get permission to move to the old roadway that ran through the Splashpad area.  The market became so popular in that location that everyone agreed the park should be designed to accommodate the farmers market.  

After the contractor was selected, I continued to meet with the designers and City staff as the project progressed, checking back in with the SPNF when major decisions had to be made.

During the pre-construction process, it became clear that there wasn't enough money to include the fountain feature.  The Splashpad Neighborhood Forum rallied to raise over $40,000 from the community for the fountain.  This campaign created a lot of "buy-in" (literally and figuratively) from the community for the park.

Visit: www.greatergrandlake.org