Longshore workers, Oakland Educators rally to save port jobs, public schools
Local 10 members joined with educators and students at Oscar Grant Plaza
outside of Oakland City Hall on February 17th for a rally to protect the Port of Oakland’s Howard Terminal from billionaire Oakland A’s owner John Fisher’s proposed baseball stadium and condominium development project.
Privatization threatens schools
Several hundred people attended the noon rally, where voices were also raised to protest the planned closure of several public schools in the Oakland Unified School District. Speakers at the rally pledged solidarity between the two struggles, and dozens of protesters held signs reading “Stop privatizing our schools, our port.”
In addition to owning the Oakland A’s, John Fisher is a leader in the effort to privatize public schools. He is on the Board of Directors of KIPP schools, which runs charter schools across the country. This network has 17 charter schools in Northern California, including one in West Oakland and another in downtown Oakland.
Protecting Oakland workers
Activists said that school privatization and the proposal to develop industrial port land for million-dollar condos and a ballpark is a dual attack on Oakland workers. They say these efforts will accelerate gentrification by displacing long-term Black and Brown residents of West Oakland, destroying well-paying blue-collar jobs at the Port that have provided a middle class living to generations of Black families (Local 10 is 73% African American), and closing schools that serve working-class students in Oakland.
Fight against gentrification
“John Fisher wants to move us out and move his millionaire friends in,” said Local 10 member Trent Willis. “There’s a word for that — gentrification. As members of the ILWU, we stand against privatization and gentrification because those two things widen the wealth gap. There’s an attack in this country on the middle class. That attack is coming from these billionaires who think they can just come to your city, take your land, take your jobs, take your money, and go live high up on the hill somewhere. We don’t put up with that.”
Willis was one of several ILWU members who spoke at the rally. Other speakers included residents of West Oakland, Oakland teachers, and students. Local 10 member Aaron Wright said that it was outrageous that the City wanted to give more than $1 billion in taxpayer money to Fisher’s development project while shutting down public schools because of a lack of funds. Wright also said that the Howard Terminal development poses a serious threat to port operations and would jeopardize the 84,000 regional jobs generated by the Port of Oakland.
“Howard Terminal is important because it is a nexus of truck traffic, a nexus of ship traffic, a nexus of train traffic,” Wright said.
Cautionary tale
ILWU International Secretary-Treasurer Ed Ferris said the deindustrialization of his hometown of Pittsburgh should serve as a cautionary tale for Oakland about the negative effect of destroying good, blue-collar jobs.
ILWU International Secretary-Treasurer Ed Ferris said the attempt to de-industrialize the port could have a devastating impact on the economy of Oakland.
“We need to pay attention to what’s going on here, because I see a lot of parallels to what I saw in my hometown of Pittsburgh, PA,” Ferris said. “In the 1970’s, there were a lot of great union jobs that allowed working-class families to live in dignity. Unfortunately, those jobs went away. And it’s all because of corporate greed, corporate profits. They like to blame the worker instead of who’s really at fault — and that’s the elite class. Trickledown economics doesn’t work.”
EIR approved
The rally was scheduled hours before the Oakland City Council met to consider the final Environmental
Impact Report for the proposed project. Councilmembers voted 6-2 in favor of certification. This is just one of many steps before the Council can approve a binding agreement between the city and the A’s for the project. Councilmembers Noel Gallo and Carroll Fife opposed the certification. Howard Terminal is located in Councilmember Fife’s district.
Long fight ahead
Kitty Kelly-Epstein, a professor, writer, and activist spoke at the rally and said that she was hopeful that the project would eventually be stopped along with the planned closure of Oakland schools.
“The people of Oakland already know that these things are wrong,” she said. “Nobody wants to pay money to a billionaire. Nobody wants our schools closed. Nobody wants our port wrecked. The moral authority of this city has always rested with educators and longshore workers. We are the people who speak for justice. And we’ve been doing this for years.”