City Council Meeting: Voices & Solidarity Needed

The San Leandro City Council is having their next regular meeting this Monday, July 19, beginning at 6:30 PM PDT. What’s on the agenda? Climate action, racial justice, police brutality, mental health crisis response, menthol cigarettes, community health, reimagining public safety, affordable housing, and more besides!

The Zoom link is here. Alternatively, you can call in at 1-888-788-0099 or 1-877-853-5247. If you are unable to join in real-time, you can still submit your comments to clerk@sanleandro.org. If you do, make sure to CC citycouncil@sanleandro.org to make sure every elected official gets to read what your voice wants them to hear.

That said, let’s start in order of appearance!

Agenda Item 1.A, Pledge of Allegiance

It’s past time we acknowledge that American was founded on stolen land and slave labor. Without accepting the truth of our history, we are doomed to repeat it. Or, at the very least, commit the same sins in rhyme. Including a land acknowledgment helps ground our community and elected leaders in the reality that we owe a debt to Indigenous peoples that we can never repay... yet we must try anyway.

Specifically, we owe it to the Lisjan Ohlone people who were the caretakers of this land for thousands of years until stripped of it by the Spanish, by the gold-seekers, and by the United States government. California Native people were uniquely impacted by the oppressive Mission system of Spanish Colonialism. In many cases, the ability for native cultures to apply for legal Tribal Status was erased by forces seeking to separate the people from their ancestral lands. Recognition is often evaluated on the basis that a tribe has its own governing structure, a clearly defined community, and a continuous sense of ethnic identity – qualities that centuries of colonialism have attempted to stamp out. 

Since they aren’t federally recognized tribes, Ohlone communities have no reservations or land base and are unable to collect certain taxes on their land, unlike the larger tribal groups in the American Southwest and Great Plains. But The Sogorea Te Land Trust is an intertribal, indigenous, woman-led effort to rematriate the lands of Ohlone people to their stewardship and protecting.

When we talk about truth, reconciliation, and redress of grievances, it’s important to include rematriation projects of native people in the discussion. The land trust aims to “acquire and preserve land, establish a cemetery to re-inter stolen Ohlone ancestral remains and build a community center and round house so that current and future generations of Indigenous people can thrive in the Bay Area.” Without land, the Ohlone people have nowhere to practice ceremonies or re-inter their ancestors. They need our support. They need our solidarity. We owe them more than we can ever repay.

Learn more here. and support local Ohlone food here. 

Agenda Item 3, General Public Comments

We need to talk about the ongoing issue with police misconduct and mismanagement in San Leandro. To that end, it’s time we reimagine public safety by hiring a consultant to implement a local, mental health crisis response program to ensure there is never another Steven Taylor or Anthony Gomez murdered in our city again.

Alameda County has, so far, proven unable to tackle this issue, with an anemic rollout of the CATT program and with the revolving doors out of Santa Rita as well as John George. Clearly, we need to take charge of this problem ourselves for the good of everyone.

The big ask is this — the city should use allocated funds for this program from 2021 to hire a consultant from MH First in Oakland to provide direct support in the creation of a similar crisis response program in here San Leandro. You can learn more about MH First here.

Next, we need to talk about the ongoing public health crisis caused by menthol cigarettes that are decimating Black communities here and across the nation, as well as explicitly targeting our youth.
Did you know that 80% of kids who have used tobacco started with a flavored product? 97% of kids who vape use flavors. Meanwhile, major tobacco corporations like R.J. Reynolds immoral flood Black communities with a product they know kills people, slowly, painfully, and horrifically. 47,000 Black people die each year from smoking-related diseases, such as cancer, cardiac arrest, and strokes.

It’s past time that San Leandro follows the leadership of hundreds of other municipalities in California and countrywide to ban menthol tobacco products. Demand that our city council take up this issue and affirm that they think the life of our Black neighbors, of our children, are worth more than some immoral corporation’s profit margin. They should also attend the roundtable discussion scheduled for Tuesday, July 20, from 1:30 to 3:00. See here for more details.

Agenda Item 5.A, Climate Action Plan

Our city has been grappling with how to make measurable achievements through climate-friendly policy for years. But, somehow, we never seem to actually hold ourselves accountable to the standards and measures needed to deal with global climate change effectively and sustainably.

To that end, tell the city council that they must vote in favor of passing the Public Hearing Draft of San Leandro’s 2021 Climate Action Plan. Why? “This draft includes the mandatory language for climate action items such as building reach codes, construction contractor pre-qualifications for capital improvement projects, public transit improvements, and others. The other draft still includes the actions, but does not commit staff to implementing the most aggressive version. Without a clear mandate from the council giving us direction to do this work, staff will not prioritize climate action and it will be very difficult to implement any real change,” according to local environmental experts here in San Leandro.

However, if we have strong, mandatory language committing us to climate actions like building reach codes, construction contractor pre-qualifications for capital improvement projects, and public transit improvements, then these actions will put San Leandro on a strong trajectory to meet our 2030 and 2050 GHG reduction goals! While also meeting urgent needs within the community for good green jobs, mobility, and housing!

The community has given a clear mandate time and again for us to prioritize addressing climate change and equity, particularly centering frontline communities who get impacted first and worst with hazards like wildfire smoke and heatwaves. Our best way forward at this time is approving the Public Hearing Draft of the Climate Action Plan and including the recommended edits from the Planning Commission as well as the other formal comments appended by advocacy groups such as San Leandro 2050.

Agenda Item 6, City Manager and City Attorney Reports and Comments

The city’s own internal investigators from the OIR Group were clear in their report that SLPD Officer Stefan Overton violated SLPD policy and brutalized Steven Taylor as he was succumbing to the fatal gunshot wound inflicted by former SLPD Officer Jason Fletcher. As we learned from Fletcher’s case, all the deescalation and crisis intervention training in the world can’t fix the systemic problems with policing, where even a trained cop will kill a Black man who isn’t a danger to anyone and just needs help. 

The city is arguing that Overton can be retrained, but the issue is that more and better training alone cannot fix this problem. To quote our soon-to-be new police chief, “we can’t arrest our way out” of social problems. The people of San Leandro, especially BIPOC need to know that SLPD will hold officers accountable for misconduct and brutality. We need to know that SLPD won’t keep bad apples in the barrel and spoil the whole bunch.

Demand that Overton is fired from his position. Demand that the city release the public records related to a request that is still way past due for a response showing exactly how much police brutality is costing in taxpayer money and in people’s lives, from legal fees and settlements, to insurance policies and deductibles.

Agenda Item 10.A, Abode Communities

Earlier this month, I had the pleasure of speaking with Robin Hughes, the president and CEO of Abode Communities, Lara Regus, their senior vice president for real estate development, and Sabrina Saxton, their project manager, who handles the day-to-day of this project. I was even joined by Councilmember Fred Simon.
While I was initially concerned about a number of potential issues that could derail the project, my worries were washed away as I got to learn more about Abode’s plan for this development, the stakeholders they’ve solicited feedback from, the community leaders they’ve partnered with, and their commitment to social justice through affordable housing.

Let’s face facts: we’re in the midst of one of the most expensive real estate markets in the country, if not the world, coupled with an affordable housing crisis that has persisted for years. We need to ensure that San Leandro remains a city where people from all backgrounds, including income, can live, work, and play together. But the only way we can ensure that is by actually building affordable housing that doesn’t require someone to work three jobs just to afford rent.

The project's plans and proposed schedule of deliverables will bring a measurable amount of relief to those living in our city who are in danger of being priced out, especially if/when the eviction moratorium is ended after COVID-19. (Assuming that ever happens given the dangers of the delta variant and persistently polarized anti-vax populations.)

Tell the city council to approve this project so that we can ensure our family, friends, and neighbors who are essential workers — cashiers, retail clerks, delivery drivers, and other minimum wage jobs — are never displaced from their homes.

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There’s always so much more than that, but this covers the major highlights. I hope all of you choose to join us in building a better San Leandro.

Take note and take care.