As San Francisco Goes, So Goes Oakland
This originally appeared in my Broke-Ass City column for the SF Examiner.
The last time San Franciscans talked this much about Oakland was in 1906. The City was ablaze and 100,000 residents fled across San Francisco Bay, many never to move back to San Francisco. They say the population of Oakland doubled in roughly 72 hours.
Thereโs a funny analogy here. San Francisco is currently ablaze again and in the midst of changes that, while not on the scale of a three-day fire, will forever change the physical, cultural and demographical landscape, just like in 1906. New buildings and cranes scrape The Cityโs skyline while people who call themselves San Franciscans are being pushed from their homes by forces out of their control. Cataclysms are not always caused by nature.
And once again, Oakland is there to take the brunt of it, pick up San Franciscoโs pieces, and be forever changed by thousands of refugees just looking for a place to call home. Too bad no one asked Oakland how it felt about it.
I was out in Oakland this week with my good friend Sayre, whoโs been living in The Town for seven or eight years and is one of its biggest cheerleaders.
At one point we ran into Boots Riley from the legendary hip-hop group The Coup. Boots is an Oakland native involved in radical politics who cares deeply about his cityโs plight and capitalismโs role in it.
Boots and I became friendly when he was on my talk show, โThe Kinda Late Show with Broke-Ass Stuart,โ and we have been in touch ever since (his performance with Gabi LaLa was AMAZING!). We were at Legionnaire, one of the many new bars that have exploded into downtown Oakland in the past couple years, jamming out to the music of Motown on Monday, a party that originated in San Francisco. Marvin Gaye was bumping through the speakers and Soul Train was being projected on the screen. The crowd was far more diverse than any Iโve seen in San Francisco recently.
โSo how do we stop Oakland from becoming the Mission?โ I yell-talked at Boots over the blaring Motown. It was something that Sayre and I discuss often, but this was the kind of thing Boots focuses on in both his music and his activism.
โWe need to begin with functional rent-control laws,โ Boots yell-talked back to me, โand focus on bringing in jobs that pay real living wages for the people who are already here. Neither of which are things that City Hall has any intention of doing.โ
Later on, Sayre pointed out other things Oakland could do like occupancy requirements for new residential construction and penalizing property owners in places like West Oakland who just sit on fallow land until the price rises high enough for them to sell. But we all know City Hall wonโt do that.
Iโve spent so much time over the last few years lamenting the things that Mayor Ed Leeโs administration has allowed to happen in San Francisco, yet I never even thought about what his counterparts were doing just across the Bay. I didnโt realize that Oaklandโs City Hall was as deeply entrenched in the same โcapitalism at any costโ ideology as our own.
And maybe thatโs at the heart of whatโs happening in Oakland. When you live in San Francisco, itโs the center of the world. We like to think the things created here reverberate around the globe, but we fail to notice how the serious issues we view as just our own are actually affecting the communities around us.
Thereโs an old saying (that Iโm completely making up right now) that goes โAs San Francisco goes, so goes Oakland.โ And for Oaklandโs sake, I hope it doesnโt.