Police sirens and helicopters all night

For more than two weeks, we have had a police helicopter hover over our apartment in the Adams Point neighborhood as it temporarily rests from its long circle of travel over downtown Oakland in its search for protesters in the streets.  The protesters have mostly stayed in the downtown area, but occasionally they have marched up Harrison within a couple of blocks from us chanting and keeping traffic at a standstill until the Oakland police push them back into the Uptown area.  Throughout the evenings, we hear the loud hum of the police helicopter and the sound of speeding cars and blaring police sirens drive by our apartment.

Oakland has always been a hot bed of political activism, but over the last several years the demonstrations have become more frequent, larger, and more volatile.  In 2006, community activists organized many immigrants and human rights alias to protest bill H.R. 4437, and large marches occurred down International Avenue from the Fruitvale District (a historically Mexican-American working-class neighborhood) to Oakland City Hall for rallies.  In 2010, large and volatile demonstrations were held in reaction to a jury's conviction and sentencing of Bart police officer Johannes Mehserle to two years in prison for shooting and killing a young Black man named Oscar Grant on a Bart platform in Oakland.  In 2011, the nationwide Occupy Movement spread to Oakland and large marches and rallies were organized to protest income and social inequality.  During that time there were many violent clashes between demonstrators and police.  In one of these clashes, an Iraqi War veteran was seriously injured.   The demonstrations were so intense that my family found sleeping at night difficult due to the non-stop circling of police helicopters over our area.  We even heard police setting off canons during these clashes.  The Occupy demonstrations were the largest we had ever witnessed in Oakland.

In 2013, demonstrations returned to downtown Oakland to protest the acquittal of George Zimmerman who killed an unarmed Black teenager named Trayvon Martin in Florida.

Now as I write this blog post, I learned that today protesters chained themselves to the doors of the Oakland Police Headquarters and hung a flag with the words "Black Lives Matter" to bring attention to police killings and excessive force in African-American communities throughout the country.  The recent protests are in reaction to recent grand jury decisions not to indict police officers in regards to their involvement in the killings of unarmed Black men in Ferguson, Missouri and Staten Island, New York.

My hope is that these more frequent and volatile demonstrations will transform into nonviolent and productive movements for social and economic changes in Oakland, the state of California, our country, and our larger world.  Oakland has always had an economic and racial gap.  There is a long history of distrust in the African-American community of Oakland police.  During the recession, these problems became bigger and despite the economic recovery the social and economic problems continue to grow in Oakland.  My hope is that the people of Oakland can come together to work for real change.

 The photo below shows an Occupy demonstration that occurred on Harrison Street in 2011.

From Foreclosures and Short Sales to Expensive Rents and Real Estate

In January of 2006, when my husband and I were looking for a condo to buy in the Lake Merritt area our real estate agent tried to discourage us from buying in Oakland.  She told us that Oakland was not a good place to raise a family. Oakland had long suffered from a stigma of high crime and a poor ranking of public schools.  We ignored her advice and insisted on keeping our search for a home in the neighborhoods surrounding the lake.  In March of 2006, we purchase a two bedroom condominium in the Adams Point neighborhood.  From 2001 to 2006, we had happily lived in the East Lake neighborhood (historically called Clinton Park) on the south end of Lake Merritt.  East Lake was predominately composed of Vietnamese and Chinese immigrants, but there were also African-Americans, African immigrants, Latinos, and Whites.  When we moved to Adams Point, we noticed the neighborhood had a larger White demographic but the neighborhood was still very ethnically mixed.  The neighborhood's ethnic mix as well as having students, working-class families, and middle-class professionals all living together was an important factor for us when we decided to purchase the condo.  We quickly fell in love with our home and we enjoyed the slightly shorter commute to our jobs in San Francisco.  At the time we purchased the condo, we were at the height of our careers.  My husband was working as an underwriter at a large insurance company and I worked as a paralegal at a law firm.

When the housing market collapsed, we were trapped into paying a large mortgage on a home that was quickly depreciating in value or face the risk of defaulting on our loans.  Soon the housing bubble led to the great recession and large numbers of good paying jobs were eliminated by companies in an effort to maintain high profits for their shareholders.  By 2009, the neighborhood soon became littered with foreclosures.  Every week, we noticed listings in the newspaper of home and condo sales for rock bottom prices.  We ourselves would not be able to escape the great recession; while I was home full-time to care for our 18 month old daughter, my husband was laid off from his underwriting job.  We found ourselves unemployed and with a huge mortgage to pay.  The banks (we were given two loans to pay for the condo) refused to negotiate.  After watching an unemployed neighbor go through foreclosure, we decided to call our old real estate agent to arrange a short-sale.  In 2012, we sold our condo for $225,000.  We had originally paid $439,000 for our condo.  We then were cast out into a difficult rental market.  The Oakland rental market had become saturated with people who lost their homes and now had to become renters.  There was also a small but growing number of individuals moving to Oakland from San Francisco for cheaper rents.  We lucked out and found an apartment in our price range in the neighborhood.

For the last two years, we have lived in our rent control apartment and watched the neighborhood change as the rents and real estate prices have gone through the roof.  Due to the large influx of people from San Francisco and long-time residents being shut out of the expensive housing market, Adams Point is suffering from a housing shortage.  We see more people with sizable incomes move into the neighborhood and this in turn is fueling the creation of high-end shops and restaurants in the area.  Landlords are now fixing up old properties so they can charge large sums of money for their rental units.  When my husband and I moved to Adams Point we saw a healthy vacancy rate and many people easily moved into and out of the neighborhood.  This has all changed. The biggest change to Adams Point has been the rapid transformation from a racially mixed neighborhood to a predominately White neighborhood.  

Renegade Art in Oakland

Over the last several years, I have noticed art being placed on property without the knowledge or consent of the owner.  Oakland has a long tradition of graffiti art and that is still prevalent in the city.  However, there are new types of artistic expression popping up in the city.  Below are photos I have taken of art being attached or spray painted onto private and public property.

Goodbye CVS/Pharmacy, Top Dog, and Payless

My husband and I started shopping at the large drug store at Broadway and Pleasant Valley Road when it was Long's Drugstore.  It later became CVS/Pharmacy but the only change to the store was the name.  It was a great place to shop because it was clean, it had friendly staff, and you could almost buy anything there.  There was a key maker at the entrance of the store.  When you were done shopping you could pick up a hot dog at Top Dog which was opposite of the key maker.  We also loved to shop at the Payless Shoe Store in the same shopping complex.  It was a great place to purchase our daughter's shoes.  Now this is all gone.  The local newspaper reported that Safeway will take over the space.  The businesses servicing the working and middle class families are leaving.

Public art in Oakland

Public art is everywhere in Oakland.  In regards to the murals, I suspect the business community and property owners are paying artists to create these beautiful murals in order to eliminate the public graffiti.  It seems to be working.  So far, the taggers seem to respect the murals.