Displacement, Segregation (News)

The Federal Transit Administration pulled $70 million in stimulus funds from BART's Oakland Airport Connector project last month based on our civil rights complaint, finding that BART ignored civil rights laws. Fortunately, the Bay Area didn't lose that funding - it was distributed among the region's ailing transit systems. But the transit administration's action makes it clear that public money must be spent fairly or agencies will be held accountable.

A project isn't "shovel-ready" until it is fair. Agencies receiving federal funds are legally obligated to ensure that low-income and diverse communities share fairly in the benefits of that funding. To do so requires analysis and community involvement. BART failed to live up to these responsibilities.

City Council vows to fight legal attack on measure voters approved in 1996

by Jeb Bing

Bob Egelko, Chronicle Staff Writer

Wednesday, June 24, 2009


(06-24) 18:14 PDT PLEASANTON -- State Attorney General Jerry Brown joined a
legal challenge Wednesday to Pleasanton's 13-year-old limit on housing
construction, arguing that the East Bay community is defying state housing
laws and adding to urban sprawl, vehicle use and greenhouse gas emissions.

"Pleasanton's draconian and illegal limit on new housing forces people to
commute long distances, adding to the bumper-to-bumper traffic along
(Interstates) 580 and 680 and increasing dangerous air pollution," Brown

Michael Taylor, Chronicle Staff Writer

Luke Cole, a San Francisco attorney who was one of the pioneers in the field of environmental justice - filing lawsuits for poor plaintiffs or people of color whose communities were being ravaged by corporate polluters - died in a head-on car crash Saturday in Uganda. He was 46.

Mr. Cole and his wife, Nancy Shelby, were on vacation and traveling on a rural road in western Uganda about 7:30 a.m. when "a truck veered to Luke's side of the road," said Mr. Cole's father, Herbert "Skip" Cole.

Mr. Cole died, and his wife was injured. She was flown to Amsterdam, where she underwent an eye operation Monday, Herbert Cole said.

By Lynda CarsonStop the displacement: Pack the CEDA meeting Tuesday, March 10, 2-4:30 p.m., at Oakland City Hall, Hearing Room 1, first floor

Oakland - Low-income renters have long complained about being barred from so-called affordable housing developments because they do not earn enough money. And residents of those developments live in fear that renovation schemes will end up displacing them.
In recent months, two Notices of Funding Availability (NOFA) were made available for affordable housing projects by the City of Oakland. NOFA-1 is for new construction and substantial renovation of low-income housing, and NOFA-2 is for the renovation of existing low-income rental housing. The funding comes from HUD’s HOME program and other sources.

During November 2008, 11 NOFA applications were submitted to the City requesting $13 million in funding to renovate, rehabilitate or preserve a number of low-income housing sites citywide, placing hundreds of low-income renters at risk of being displaced due to a lack of housing available for relocation while their homes are being renovated. Some of these NOFA applications seek funding to renovate properties that they have not acquired beforehand - properties that are currently in legal dispute.

Atty. Gen. Brown, lawsuit contend cap blocks affordable units

by Jeb Bing
Pleasanton Weekly Staff

Community and city leaders started updating the Pleasanton General Plan in 2003, a hoped-for three year process that is just now nearing completion and waiting for final approval by the Planning Commission and City Council within the next few weeks.

But now everyone may have to wait a bit longer. 

By Ben Ehrenreich

"This is a crowd that won't scatter," James Steele wrote in the pages of The Nation some seventy-five years ago. Early one morning in July 1933, the police had evicted John Sparanga and his family from a home on Cleveland's east side. Sparanga had lost his job and fallen behind on mortgage payments. The bank had foreclosed. A grassroots "home defense" organization, which had managed to forestall the eviction on three occasions, put out the call, and 10,000 people -- mainly working-class immigrants from Southern and Central Europe -- soon gathered, withstanding wave after wave of police tear gas, clubbings and bullets, "vowing not to leave until John Sparanga [was] back in his home."

By Yurina Rico, Translated by Suzanne Manneh

Having a child in juvenile hall is painful enough, but it is even more difficult when poor families have to pay Los Angeles County $25 for each day their child is locked up.

Isaac Gonzalez, who is 41 and works at a supermarket, received a bill of $5,000 for the six months his teenage son was at the juvenile detention center in Sylmar.

"At first they told me I could pay $50 a month, but then I got a monthly bill of $500. I have no other option but to find some way to pay it. What worries me is that I also have 12-year-old daughter to take care of," said Gonzalez.

A fight at school last year led Ivan, who is now 18, to serve time in a juvenile correctional facility.

"I wouldn't mind paying if my son had learned to be better, to overcome it. But the truth is, they (juveniles detained) come out worse. He's working now, but I'm afraid he’ll have problems again, because while you’re inside (juvenile detention center) you learn other things you shouldn't," said Gonzalez.

By Nayaba Arinde, Amsterdam News

“When Wall Street catches a cold, the Black community catches pneumonia,” assessed Councilmember Charles Barron. “We are in trouble.”

Before Lehman Brothers was thrown a financial lifeline late on Tuesday, and we, the people, bought an 80 percent share in A.I.G. to save the failing company, Monday saw distressed cardboard box–carrying shirt-sleeved guys and office-smart ladies streaming out of offices on Wall Street. “This fiscal approach to bailing out the rich is a reverse Robin Hood—robbing the poor to give the rich,” charged an angry Barron. “Under Bill Clinton, the conservative Democrat, and Reagan and Bush, the banking and finance industry was deregulated and they were allowed to run amok with the people’s money and make bad decisions and investments. And now, they are coming back to hurt the economy and poor people.”

By Tiny aka Lisa Gray-Garcia

Be bop bebop..bop..bop

A slow mist rose from the ground co-mingling with candlewax, sage, and car exhaust. Bop..bop..be-bop..bop.. Warm breath weaving through the rhythm of a congo drum entwining with words of resistance from African Peoples, Raza Peoples, Celtic peoples, Pilipino peoples, Native peoples, indigenous peoples all.."One.... we are the people..Two....indigenous people...Three .. and we are taking back the land and ONE....We are the Scholars...Two... indigenous scholars and Three... we are taking back OUR land!..."

Citing the articles from the United Nations(UN)Declaration on Indigenous Peoples adopted one year ago by the UN General Assembly, displaced, evicted and removed children, mamaz, daddys, tias and tios, aunties and uncles, grandmothers and grandfathers, elders, ancestors, and spirits from all across Turtle Island; Oakland, San Francisco, San Jose, New Orleans and DQ University gathered to pray, testify and resist on Market street at sunrise in a spiritual, political and revolutionary ceremony of resistance to out of control development, eviction, displacement and criminalization locally and globally.