ST EOBHCSunset 072321 - Flipbook - Page 8
education. TCE prioritized the funding of community organizing groups that focused on building
resident power, agency, and voice from the beginning through the end of the EOBHC initiative.
Additionally, TCE supported local Boys & Men of Color (BMoC) work, which was part of a larger
statewide BMoC effort. This Sunset Report does not examine TCE’s grant-making, but rather
outlines the story of work driven by EOBHC and its impact, both directly, and at times tangentially.
TCE invested over 75% of its East Oakland budget toward helping CBOs build the power necessary
to hold and build ground, prevent further displacement, and ensure that both youth and adult
residents, as well as small businesses, have a stake and say in how East Oakland is developed. More
recently, due to the rise in hate and terror targeted at immigrants and refugees, as well as increased
deportation threats, TCE has supported transforming the criminal justice systems, grassroots
neighborhood groups, and immigrant rights groups to develop intersectional approaches to link
immigration reform work with broader struggles for health, dignity, racial justice, and human rights.
Community Context: The Changing Face and
Political Economy of Oakland, 2008-2020
In 2008, the impact of the recession was just beginning to reveal signs of devastation in East
Oakland neighborhoods. Ironically, in other areas of Oakland, the decade leading up to the
formation of BHC brought major public and private investment, resulting in a revival of the
downtown commercial core and an economic and demographic change in the adjacent
neighborhoods that has persisted and spread
since 2010. The groundwork that set the biggest
In 2010, East Oakland
development and populations shifts is credited
to Jerry Brown, who during his 8-year term as
was still an economically
Oakland’s Mayor (1999–2007), brought over $1 billion
disinvested area of Oakland
of investments and explicitly set a goal of bringing
with the highest numbers
10,000 new residents with high “disposable” incomes
into Oakland’s neighborhoods. In 2010, while the
of residents unemployed
economic downturn was in full swing, and Oakland
in Oakland, and the highest
was starting to lose its long-time residents to financial
homicide rates.
hardship and the subprime mortgage scandal, City
and County leaders were keeping their eyes set on
Oakland’s growing promise as a critical economic and
political anchor in the San Francisco Bay Area. Public and private investments in big redevelopment
projects, especially at Oakland’s waterfront—Jack London, the Airport, and the Oakland Army
Base—were clear signs of long-laid plans for Oakland’s growth viability.
In 2010, East Oakland was still an economically disinvested area of Oakland with the highest
numbers of residents unemployed in Oakland (25% of Blacks and Latinos and nearly 40% of all
young Black men), and the highest homicide rates. Residents in East Oakland were among the
sickest in the City, with the highest rates of diabetes, hypertension, high blood pressure, and heart
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FOR THE LOVE OF BLACK EAST OAKLAND: EOBHC Sunset Report