Podcast: Land, Culture, and Belonging: Place-based Community Advocacy

 Transcript

Speaker 1:
Hello, and welcome to this special episode of Who Belongs? A Podcast from the Othering & Belonging Institute at UC Berkeley. This episode is part of a series of talks and panel discussions recorded during the breakout sessions of our Othering and Belonging Conference that took place in Oakland this past April.

This session is titled, "Land, Culture and Belonging: Place-based Community Advocacy." It looks at the redevelopment of the Henry J. Kaiser Center in Oakland, which was the location of our conference. A private developer who was granted a long term lease by the city to reopen the venue had negotiated a community benefits agreement with a coalition of local artists, and some of those artists and leaders involved in that process are among the panelists invited to discuss the issue and how it speaks to broader issues of land, culture and belonging. Panelists include Nikki Bas, who is the president of the Oakland City Council, Thomas Cavanagh from the group, BANDALOOP, Cristy Johnston-Limón, who leads the city of Oakland's business development activities, Ayodele Nzinga, who is an artist, actress, playwright and poet, and Kev Choice who is a pianist and community advocate. The session was moderated by Eli Moore, who directs OBI's Community Power and Policy Partnerships Program. Eli Co-curated the session with OBI's Sara Crowell. You can find more episodes from this podcast series on our website at belonging.berkeley.edu/whobelongs.

Eli Moore:
Good morning, everyone. Thank you for being here. I'm Eli Moore with the Othering & Belonging Institute, and there's so much meaning in this place, there's so much meaning. I just found out that Calvin Simmons' birthday is tomorrow, and for so many of us, the reopening of this space just has deep meaning, and has been a long time coming, and has a lot of wrinkles, and contradictions, and struggles involved, so we're going to get into all of that. Thank you for being here, we have a spectacular panel, I'm sure that's why you're here, And we are going to kick it off with a poem from Doctor Ayodele Nzinga. She's a poet, a playwright, community advocate, has been very much devolved in shaping this space and how it's opening and what it's looking like. Please read her bio, I'm not going to get into the details, she has many, many achievements. With that, I'll pass it on.

Ayodele Nzinga:
There's just one more I'd like to bring into this room. I happen to be Oakland's inaugural Poet Laureate. So I brought a mashup of two pieces that, to me, speak to the moment. The first one is called, "Neither Wolf Nor Sheep," and the second one is called, "The Closing Of Jesus."

Prophets are often thrown into the lion's den not knowing true lions are friends to gorillas in your midst. Seeking higher path, upholding righteousness, invest in the movement of the pendulum that signifies the moral arc. Go ask Daniel, go ask Wolf or Jaguar, come ask me. King said he believed the Ark leaned towards good, then they murdered king. Before Robert Christman died, he said, "The pendulum is always moving, tugged one way then another." I have said its direction depends on the works of human hands. Those willing to see and out naked emperors, wolves in sheep's clothing, pimps and poly tricksters, lined up to bleed the sheep. The Ark and its direction are an eternal battleground where potential wages war with what is, with what has been, carving room for what needs to be. Those who would birth paradigms must resist being wolf or sheep. You will be known by the works of your hands. Idle hands will be judged by the reality they allow to be created. We are all there is, we are the pendulum. The wind it makes when it swings, the bell sound as it clamors when it lands like a lead dime on now.

Walking the road after king, after Christman, after Malcolm, I'm pragmatically optimistic like West, I aspire to be a shepherd, a freedom fighter like Robeson, a clear light like Belafonte, a gift to struggle like Glover, neither Wolf nor sheep. A voice clearly heard by both, a clarity and calling hands to the work of moving the pendulum, neither a wolf nor a sheep. Walking forward awake in the eye of the storm, standing on yesterday, holding court for tomorrow, invoking with the constant prayer of moving hands, a birthplace for a new paradigm.

I saw Jesus. He was break dancing on a corner in West Oakland. Right before the banks came to steal people's homes. He must have been a warning, he was beautiful. Homeless, funky, dust flying from his dreads as he contorted his selves into shapes that defied reason, with syncopation that was undeniable, beating out the truth in the dance of the times. Jesus. Diddy bop bop and hyphy breaking, crunckly popping locks, moon walking, tooting his joints, sliding electrically to The Holy Ghost. Dancing on the corner of Pine and 11th, he was facing your old train station, it ain't there no more. Or maybe he was looking at the freeway that roars like an ocean at night and early in the morning, making music with the beeping trucks of waste at the center where the old center of the world collided with the end of the world, recycling the yews to make way for the shiny and new.

Between the lines of hungry children marching, single file for free breakfast, lunch programs. Or maybe, maybe he was on the corner where Newton died, dancing while parents searched for work that can't be found in packed up houses after being hit with balloons full of piss tossed by colonial goons. To be reborn drowning underwater, landless with Jesus. Sea walking on the corner of 14th and Willow under the mural before laying down in the middle of the street on the yellow line. Now that must have been some kind of sign, but didn't nobody pay attention. I saw it. In the middle of the day, heat rising off the asphalt, Jesus barefoot dancing, near recycling center, closed now. Shut down because it fed the unwashed pushing carts full of waste from the shiny and new. But Jesus, best not dance there no more, leaving me to wonder what happened to Dancing Jesus? I mean, it must have been a message but didn't nobody hear it. As the trucks left with the people, and the dreams, leaving me to wonder, where is Jesus dancing now?

Eli Moore:
When I think of poetry in the Oakland and being in this space, I can't help but think about some of the artists who have come from here and given so much and have passed in recent years. So I think of DJ Pam from The Coup, think of Zumbi from Zion I, think of Gift of Gab from Blackalicious. Call them out, anybody want to call somebody out?

Kev Choice:
Calvin Keys.

Eli Moore:
We're going to take a moment just of gratitude and recognition of all of those folks who have given and passed. Peace be upon them. I'm honored here to be in the company of these folks who have given so much towards equity, justice, belonging, culture in this city, in this space. We have Nikki Fortunato Bas from the city council. We have Cristy Johnston-Limón from the city and a long time community builder. We have Thomas Cavanagh from BANDALOOP, who you hopefully have seen and will definitely appreciate when you do. Thank you. And the pianist, artist, MC, and advocate, Kev Choice. So I'm going to say a couple of words just on background and then open it up, don't worry. Belonging is built and sustained through culture, but belonging and building that culture needs a place, it needs land, it needs physically like somewhere we can actually be together.

The benefit involves land if it involves a place, then it necessarily involves the capitalist economy that we're living in. How land is governed, used, transferred, valued, and it involves the racist history of how land has been dispossessed, been concentrated and hoarded, and folks have been excluded from it. So how do we build those spaces? How do we build those spaces for that culture of belonging in that context? What are the strategies? What are the resources needed? What does it take from cities? What does it take from artists? What does it take from community organizations? That's what we're talking about today.

This particular place we're in, Henry J. Kaiser Center was built over a hundred years ago. It's city-owned, it's spectacular, right? Literally, this is the first big event that's happened in here in over 20 years. Dr. King, Aretha Franklin, The Dalai Lama, so many brilliant visionaries have been in this space, and it was closed in 2005, the city couldn't keep funding it, couldn't keep it open. It was closed for a decade and then they put out a request for proposals and found a developer. And it had been a long time, I mean who here has been to a concert here, or a graduation, or a Ms. Black Oakland, or a rollerskating competition? I went to a Shaggy concert here in like 2001 or something.

Thomas Cavanagh:
That's some honesty.

Eli Moore:
It's shameful, I know, but... So it means a lot. But it's a complicated process to sustain a space like this in an era of austerity and divestment from cities like Oakland. So the like thumbnail of the redevelopment process is that the city chose a developer, granted them a 99-year lease to redevelop the space and then manage it, That was in 2015. There was a coalition of artists led by none other than Doctor Nzinga that negotiated community benefits agreement on how the space could be accessible to artists of color and local artists. The city financed some parts of it, nonprofits foundations financed parts of it, around $47 million of nonprofit, and city tax credits and grants and other types of funding were provided. Overall, it was somewhere around $80 million project. In the context is that the city had been already looking at what challenges artists face in terms of displacement and housing stability, access to performance space, and had released this task force report recommending that real estate be one of the ways that the city could support artists.

So that was part of the context, and then the city had also passed a racial equity policy that said that all major programs across city, across the policy and different departments should be analyzed through a racial equity lens. So you'll hear more about what that process was like from folks involved, but just one last piece on kind of a little bit of framework. So the racial equity policy suggests you look at baseline conditions in the community. What are the needs, visions, capacities in the community that this project can support? And then for a development project, you need to look at what's the possible impact, what are the capacities that the project has? And so for a project like this, we can think about event space, studio space, programming, hiring and contracting, revenue sharing, funds for community needs, and then of course, governance and ownership, how's that going to work?

So that's just a little bit of framing on what some of the potentiality is, and then of course we know that development projects always carry risk of displacement, of gentrification, and the way that major investments increase property values and raise rents for small businesses, for tenants, for others, and so there's risk on that side too. With that, I'm going to close and turn off this projector and open up this discussion. So Doctor Nzinga, maybe you can start us off with some of the context on how you got involved and what you saw as some of the needs and visions in the community as this project got on your radar.

Ayodele Nzinga:
So I see a little format here. My name is Ayodele Nzinga, my pronouns are she/we/her/us. I represent a couple of organizations, for today, I'd like to bring the Black Arts Movement Business District Community Development Corporation into the room. We are sitting on a periphery of the Black Arts District, and in the original resolution, there are now two resolutions that guide the development of the Black Arts District, and the original resolution, it cited this space as a landmark within the Black Arts District. So the Community Development Corporation was founded in 2016, the year of the resolution, and not to be mistaken for the district itself. It's a community based organization because I felt as an artist that when I was on the verge of being displaced and pushed out of Oakland, even though I run Oakland's oldest Black theater company. So when they declared a cultural district, it gave me the first real basis for a place to push back. So that opened up some interesting questions. So if we have a cultural district, then how many square feet are dedicated to the making and preservation of culture? How many square feet are dedicated to the preservation of Black culture in a Black culture district? So the district is large. And community benefit agreements were actually a method that came with opportunity.

West Oakland, where half of the district is, had been 80% gentrified before it got included in a cultural district. Downtown is where the epicenter of redevelopment was at the point in time the district was founded. So there were a number of developments that were going up that gave community reason to question whether the developments would benefit us or whether they would push us out of the city. By the time we got to the Henry J. Kaiser Center, we had negotiated several community benefits, benefit agreements. Some of them have borne fruit. There are some businesses, there are some arts groups who exist because of those agreements. And then we got here, and it's interesting, the city owns this house. You have to understand, though, that we the people are the city, that's how cities work. So in essence, this is the people's house, so I'm sitting in my house, I'm sitting in y'all's house.

So what's concerning to me to think that the space which represents the last large arts making institution in Oakland? We have the Paramount and we have the Fox. Both are too expensive for the majority of Black cultural groups or arts organizations of any stripe in Oakland to producing, so this was the last place. The mayor's task force that Eli alluded to said one of the solutions to stopping the displacement of artists was for the city to hold on to the land it had or to purchase more. Our city at that point in time I suppose thought that it could not afford to buy more art space, so then it became really crucial that community be included in the conversation about the last large art space in Oakland. And that conversation led to the thought that if we're going to allow a private developer in this space for 99 years, is there a way to bring community into this space for the next 99 years?

Eli Moore:
Thank you.

Kev Choice:
Reciprocal energy is always good here in Oakland, we appreciate it if you could stand up, clap, holler, however you feel. You're welcome to do that in this space and we appreciate is as well.

Eli Moore:
Yeah, Kev, please continue and tell us ore about your vision and what you see as the possibility in this space and what it takes to build that space for belonging?

Kev Choice:
No, thank you. First off, I'm a I'm an artist, pianist, MC, producer, composer, and grew up here in this city. Went to my first concert here at this building, I think it was called Fresh Fest, It was like EPMD and some local artists, Too Short and a bunch of folks. Used to come to Easter Sunday services here where all the churches, all the big churches in Oakland, would come together and have church all together, like thousands of people on the other side and Henry J. Kaiser side. I think I might have came too, it was one of the speakers in the Nation of Islam came and did a big event here. But this space is very important to us in our community, and I'm pretty sure there are other spaces in other communities that have that same relevance. And me as an artist, my question number one is always, where do we art? Where are we able to create? Where are we able to communicate? Where are we able to engage? Where are we able to express? And how are we holding the value of those spaces?

And I almost feel like as a cultural affairs commissioner with the city of Oakland, we always have to fight every single year around the budget for cultural affairs and arts, and why is it always one of the lowest priority markings? We know how important it is. If we're talking about spaces that can help decrease violence, because people come together, and then we know it is safer when we are together and creating and culturing art. If we're talking about education, I'm an educator, we're all educators as artists in some capacity. We also know that we talk about economy, that culture is also something that helps boost and raise economy. But as you heard earlier, Sister Ayodele is an incredible poet, she should be arting at all times, but we are having to engage in fights, and conversations, and meetings just around where to express and how to express.
So to me, as an artist, growing up here in Oakland, it was always indebted in me the importance of not only just expressing myself, but fighting for the right to express myself and connect with my community. If we didn't have a choice, we would be on the streets, we would be performing on the streets, we'd be performing in the alleys, but why not uplift these spaces that were created for us to express and for us to engage in, for us to build community and for us see similarities in cultures. As a cultural affairs commissioner, I was able to help bring together conversations around Black and Asian solidarity, and we should be having Black History Month, Lunar New Year celebrations in this space every year. We should be bringing together the mariachi and the gospel bands in these type of spaces. This is what this was created for, and how do we not see the value and importance of it and why are we not uplifting the opportunity that we have here with this space?

That's just what I want to bring into the space today, the importance of artists being involved in the conversation, but also the importance of others supporting that conversation, because it shouldn't just be us, it should be the whole community because the culture is the whole community. And just one more thing to that big picture of that big gathering of people, which to me was probably the biggest gathering at this space, was the Warriors parade when they won that first championship. And I feel like we have forgot this, sports is also culture, sports brings us together, sports is youth engagement, sports keeps youth off of the streets. Sports, religion, all of these things, we have to expand the definition of what culture is because I feel like we're giving it a limited ideology and a limited perspective, and we need to uplift all the things that are culture. Just like when we come together and connect and say, "What up?" to each other, there's a cultural engagement exchange even in that, even just how we address each other and come together. So expanding the definition of culture and realizing the importance of cultural spaces is something I'm very dedicated to.

Eli Moore:
Yes, Council Member Bas, will you share with us a little bit about your vision?

Nikki Fortunato Bas:
Hi everyone, it's great to be here, it's great to see all of you. Nikki Fortunato Bas, I serve as the President of the Oakland City Council and Council Member for District 2, which is this district that we are in. My pronouns are she and her and one of the things that's really important to me is public land for public good. I've lived here in Oakland since 1997. I was an organizer for a couple of decades working on worker rights, immigrant rights, women's rights, environmental issues before I got recruited to run for office. And in 2019, when I first entered office, there were a couple public pieces of land that were really critical in terms of how we move forward as a city. This parcel of land right here, and I don't want to repeat what Kev and Ayodele said, the other parcel of land is right next door. If you exit the building out to the front and you look to the right, there's a corner lot. It's called the East 12th Street Parcel, for those who are from Oakland.

And for for many years, that parcel of land was slated to be luxury housing, market rate housing. And one of the reasons I got recruited to run was because this area, called EastLake, is one of the most highly gentrified and displaced neighborhoods. It's also, one of the most diverse neighborhoods, it's majority renter, it's majority people of color, and there have been universities like, I believe, Stanford who have indicators for the gentrification and displacement pressures on neighborhoods, and it's really intense in this very diverse area where it's majority renters. And so a lot of my work has been how do we use public land for public good? And it's not only about where do artists art, it's also about where do artists live? And so I'm really proud to share, it's been a long, long struggle, literally at least a decade, but just on Tuesday, we broke ground on that parcel of land for the first of two 100% affordable housing projects.

So each each of the projects are going to be more than 90 units. The first one is for folks who earn 20% to 60% of the area median income, with 1/4 of those set aside for people who are currently homeless. And so when I think about belonging and public land for public good, if you're an artist, where do you also live? And so stemming that displacement of artists. The other thing that I think about, because I represent the eastern part of our lake, And the lake has been a contested space in terms of belonging, especially for folks in the Black community. Right before I ran for office, we had the BBQ Becky incident. I'm sure a lot of you have heard about that. And during COVID, the lake is literally our public park, our backyard, So many people live in apartments and don't have a space, And so during COVID, people were out there getting fresh air, enjoying being outside, vendors who had who did not have a brick and mortar space were out there vending. And so my hope is also that this space, including the outdoor plaza, will be a space for vendor markets, for fairs, and festivals. So those are a few of the things that I'm thinking about, thank you.

Eli Moore:
Thank you Nikki. Public land for the public good. Thomas, will you speak to some of what your vision is?

Thomas Cavanagh:
Thanks so much. Thomas Cavanagh here, producer and director for BANDALOOP. He/him pronouns and I'm wearing a brown fedora and a blue ora. It's an honor to be here with this group of of greats, and amazing humans and colleagues that I've been in and out of circles with, but also with all of you and to see this room full. I was last in this room in 2018 when the deal had just been struck to maybe look forward and we were asked to put a BANDALOOP performance on the front side of the building under the Calvin Simmons. And it reminded me then, with the holes in the walls, and I think the door was chained shut, so we actually had to crawl through the hole to get to the roof, which is not abnormal for BANDALOOP. But it reminded me then how important it is to be at the beginning, and that we're always at the beginning and we need to lengthen the beginning.

So we're still there, 2024 we got stuck at the beginning perhaps, but it's warm to see everyone here today. I have a 30-year experience of bringing public art to places all over the world, 40 countries, 350 cities, and I'm honored to spread and be a Bridger, I love this new term that John's wearing on his head, to be a Bridger that helps bring the beginning to the next step. So I see a lot of hope here, BANDALOOP has just been reborn in West Oakland in our home of 15 years. We are now bigger, 8000 square feet instead of 4000 square feet, tied together with shoe strings that are really strong. For those of you that haven't seen BANDALOOP, please come to see our performance tomorrow, but I'm really honored to be in this conversation because it is about how we continually begin, how we continue to stay at the table. Community benefits agreements need that, artists need that, council members need that. We need all of you too, so I'm really looking forward to questions and ideas that come forward today.

Eli Moore:
Thank you, Thomas. Cristy, please share with us some of your vision? You come from now at the city, but previously working at Destiny and Youth Speaks, please?

Cristy Johnston-Limón:
Thank you. Good morning everyone, I'm Cristy Johnston-Limón. Thank you so much for being here and being with us as we think about what it means to create spaces for us all. My background is actually as a community organizer. I was in San Francisco for most of my life until we were owner removed and evicted three times in the 90s. And so my family is incredibly familiar with what it means to be othered and displaced because you're poor, and you're immigrant, and you don't belong. And so for me, this career as a nonprofit real estate developer came as an accident. One of the reasons why I joined the City of Oakland was because after 15 years of fighting for artists and artist spaces and building out spaces to prevent art displacement, not just from Oakland but from San Francisco, I have found that the city of Oakland had a lot of power in mitigating, if not preventing consistent displacement.

The city of Oakland is one of the first, if not the few, to have a Department of Racial Equity, and everything that we do is through a racial equity lens. And that has given me a mandate and a framework for all of the policies that come out of our economic and workforce development department, and I can authentically speak to what that looks like and feels like, as I am now engaging with the rest of the city on how to equitably advance economic strategies and community development projects that mitigate displacement and engage our communities in real and powerful ways for ownership. So an example of that is the Sogorea Te Land Trust. My team, you've heard of it, but we rematriated land to our indigenous community here, and so many of my colleagues, those are the projects that they've been working on, and that's what I'm here to support.

So I look forward to your questions and to sharing more about how I was able to sustain Destiny Art Center in North Oakland, which was founded by three queer and black artists that wanted to create a safe space to engage and stabilize the community that was facing displacement. So we were able to, through a miracle, purchase and build out a permanent home for Destiny Art Center that is now a hub for community engagement and provides free artist rehearsal space and programming for thousands of young people throughout Oakland. Thank you. And as an executive director, I had to learn how to fundraise, and how to partner, and how to politic, and so that's something that I believe, in my heart, that nonprofits maybe shouldn't have to do. That there should be an ability to focus on running programs and serving the community. So my vision is that nonprofits in particular and artists have all the resources and support that they need so that they don't have to be distracted by having to capitalize a project.

Another example I'll share and then I'll be done is after Destiny Art Center, we were able to acquire that building, that warehouse. It was an empty warehouse, broken windows, had been abandoned for a long time, it's now vibrant space for young people. We were able to turn an empty parking lot owned by the city of San Francisco on the corner of 17th and Folsom, again through a land lease with the city of San Francisco of 99 years to turn it into 127 units of 100% affordable housing with two floors of community space, as well as a permanent home for Youth Speaks, another giant in the Bay Area Arts community. Thank you.

Eli Moore:
So we talked a little bit about what's possible and the vision of artists having space to art, publicly and for the public good, of real racial equity progress of these different visionary projects that have already happened. Let's talk about some of the challenges, the struggles, what what it takes. What's the pathway towards realizing some of these visions? What are some of the lessons learned that you all would like to share? Anybody want to kick that off?

Kev Choice:
I can kick it off a little bit. If we're talking about some of the challenges, I'm one of the Community Advisory Board members for this project, people who have come together have been appointed to kind of hold the developer accountable around the Community benefits agreement. And when we talk about to meet three of the main points of that agreement, which were permanence, having a permanent space to not be displaced from the space. If we talk about equity, meaning diversity of types of art that could be created in the space, and also talking about cultural preservation, uplifting and upholding the culture of the space. And honestly those are things that we are still having to fight and advocate for on a day-to-day basis and it's a challenge to not only get the developers to see the importance of that, because they're really just thinking about, well, how is this going to make money? How are we going to fund it?

They they don't care who who's coming in here, if they're serving the community. Honestly, I've been in this space before it was in this iteration and not understanding that project that Council member Bas was talking about. Before they built that, that was one of the largest homeless unhoused encampments in our city, there were people living in tents. And then they built tiny houses on that space, and there were people living in that area, and those are the neighbors of this of this space. And how is this developer even interacting, or supporting, or engaging, or seeing the humanity and those people that are their neighbors, who are a part of this neighborhood, who are fabric of who we are? And when we talk about culture, a lot of those people are artists as well, a lot of those people have a lot to express.

I've I've been in actually talent shows and encampments where people are playing music and doing poetry. And how are they even allowed to interact in the space that is right next door to them or are they just swept away to to another space? And some of the challenges I see is these developers who come in and build these projects, seeing the humanity of the people around them, seeing the humanity and what we're expressing as culture, and also just upholding those 3 fundamental targets that were actually in the agreements, which was permanence, equity, and cultural preservation. And again, us as artists continuing these fights, these challenges when our goal really is to uplift art, to express, to show connection, to be inspiration to our community. And I, I want us to be able to spend more time doing that so then we can inspire all of us to see the humanity with each other.

Ayodele Nzinga:
So permanent affordability, that's the thing. And our city has many kinds of protections, but the type of permanent affordability that the Community Benefit Agreement tilts at didn't exist until that point was negotiated. This space represents a place to interact with community. Promises of shiny things can bring community together, it can also divide it. It can cut people into pockets where they serve their particular interest and lose sight of the whole. A space like this allows for a community to level up. For a long time, we fought to be things like sustainable.

That sounds good, right, to be sustainable? How about if you aim to be perpetual? What if you plan to build institution? What if you plan for your activities and your families to be doing what they're doing now, or some better iteration of thriving 100 years from now, just like a developer plans on eating off of a space for 100 years at a time? Indigenous wisdom tells us we plant things 7 generations in advance. To live close to the bone and the narrows, sometimes we're just trying to figure out how not to end up in a tent and to stay in our houses. This represented a chance to ratchet it up and to think in bigger chunks of time. It also represented a place what you could do for yourself what no one else had found a way to do. So if the city is espousing a desire for equity and a desire for artists to stay but can't buy more property and feel a need to give this space to a developer for his development for 99 years, again, how do you get community in this room for that same chunk of time, at least 99 years?

How do we get to design our own neighborhoods around the social determinants of health that we think are vital to our thriving, our surviving? A place to grow culture and work with community and to give opportunity for artistic development? A lot of things, when you shape them down, they all come down to money in the end. And in that case, let me let me ground arts for you so you don't think it's all air and unicorns. Arts is an economic driver. So one of the few things that although we are suffering in venues and selling tickets, it's one of the few things that have grown outside of real estate post-pandemic. Art is an economic driver in the state of California, and to here in the Bay Area, and in our city where we struggle to fund it every two years, and then struggle to hold on to the funding we got on the two-year on the one year.

So this is the potentiality of this place and that potentiality is what takes artists who really just want to art and brings them into spaces with developers, and politicians, and into city halls and into airless meeting rooms, literally for years to negotiate things that we think will help us thrive. I'll pass with that.

Thomas Cavanagh:
Just something that sits with me a bit is just to think about that 99-year lease a bit, and we have to really engage as artist advocates. And everywhere I've produced art, I find engagement in time, not just money, is really what it's all about. And our focus around time and elongating each other's view of what that time is. So when I show up to do a grand opening of a beautiful performance hall in Singapore or in or in Cincinnati, I'm bringing examples of Oakland, I'm bringing examples of what what we've experienced here on a lonely land at this crossroads of salt and fresh water. This is sacred ground we're standing on that was marshland, and what it's gone through in a short period of time in the grand scheme of things, and what can it go through? So when the good doctor speaks of this in this beginning and where and takes us into we're staking a bit of a claim here, it requires us to stay at the table of time. And I do look for us in the conversations today to look for ways to provide more 99-year leases. The finances and the banks come to the table with long view.

The artists do too. When I think about that permanent affordability, I also think about that potentiality, I think also about perpetuity. And Oakland is that beacon when I go around the world taking BANDALOOP now for 30 years to places and they ask, "Where did you decide to dance on the side of the building?" And it's because we had buildings that were offered to us by developers, by small hotel owners right here in Oakland and in San Francisco Bay Area. Educating those developers was critical and key, educating them in risk management, but educating them in public art and in vertical art that we can open hearts when we look up. But that takes hard work on all parts, so as we kind of go down the line here and think about examples and move forward, I just really want to name that that timeline and that need to educate humbly, and those developers need that too, as do all of us.

Nikki Fortunato Bas:
So maybe I'll build on build on a little bit of a theme around not only how we work together, but how we govern together. I've been an elected official for about 6 years, and when I first came into office, as you heard from Eli, this deal had been already made with the developer in 2015, I came in 2019. And what I quickly found out was that the prior council member had not recently engaged the community. So three months in, did a town hall, I got to know a number of the folks in the arts movement through that town hall and through other engagements. And there was an opportunity in the first six months of my term to either kill this project, and I believe if I remember correctly, the coalition that had formed had done a planning appeal and it could have potentially not even gone forward.

What we ended up doing was negotiating a community benefits agreement. And you know, I'm not going to sugarcoat things either, what we were able to achieve was in the confines of the administration at the time. We had a different mayor, a different city administrator, a different real estate attorney, and I think we probably could have done better if we had a different collection of people in office, honestly. And I don't think it's always about who's in office, it's also about who's in the community and how we work together. So just thinking forward, for me, it's really important that we think about who are all the pieces in this ecosystem that need to be trying to move in the same direction around belonging, around public land for public good.

There's obviously a role that I can play that is powerful as the President of the City Council and I also need to have an administration that works together with me and so grateful for Cristy and her role. We also have in the audience, Roberto Bedoya, who's our Cultural Affairs Director. So all the pieces, who sits inside city government from the different branches, the administration, the mayor, the city attorney, the council, matters. And how organized, how much you all advocate matters as well, and so really encourage continuing to build those connections, because if we're going to really promote a vision of belonging, it really will take all of us really co-governing together towards that vision?

Eli Moore:
So I want to move us forward to thinking about some of the resources and strategies for what this takes. We're already starting to talk about governing, talking about thinking for the long term, inside/outside city community strategies. What other specific types of approaches, or resources, or principles, or frameworks do you want to lift up that think is useful in your experience and may be useful in other communities for projects like this?

Cristy Johnston-Limón:
I'll take this one. So, it's so interesting because the projects that I've worked on, I had the opportunity to be the developer for the first one. And that project, what I grounded were a set of values that were about building a permanently affordable home that the community owned and for community use. And we asked permission of our ancestors before we did anything to facilitate even being on that land and dedicating it to the community there. And it's now seen as a model for how you engage community in an entire process for development. And that one was a purchase, and so that land is actually owned by the nonprofit organization and so they have a lot of autonomy on how they want to use that asset. And they chose, during the Pandemic, to leverage the asset, to not lay off the artists, the teaching artists that work at Destiny Arts and in all the schools here in the school district.

And that was long after I'd left. But those values around creating that place for artists were were there. At Youth Speaks, it was a little bit different, we were the tenant and so we had to negotiate with the nonprofit developer, who also needed to capitalize the project and operate it much like a for-profit developer where they needed to sustain and build out the project. And so what we did there was sort of interesting. We put together a coalition called the Mission Arts Coalition of Latino Organization, something like that, comprised of dozens of arts organizations serving the mission community, which has also had different ways of displacement, including my family in the 90s. And we were able to negotiate a 35 year below market rate lease, which basically made it pretty affordable for the long term, but we're not allowed because of the agreement with the city to go beyond that.

And so I feel like those are some of the challenges, right? Is how are you engaging with the developer that shares values beyond money? How do you position yourself as adding value to the project outside of money, as we talked about arts and culture are an economic development strategy? And how do you work with a developer who gets it that this is not just an investment that is about yielding money and the dollar, but also about strength in community and sustaining a community? So those were just some of the ways that we approached the project. The last piece was we also partnered across 8 organizations to collectively fundraise. So we raised $2,000,000 during the pandemic to build out the space and created agreements where we shared our resources, our networks, our funders and we went to them and pitched them for it. So that took a lot of trust, so that's the other piece.

Ayodele Nzinga:
So rifting off that, I said in a room the other day that developers come in different flavors. I think that a talent for community is hoping that our stewards are selective in who they let into the story of building our future. Often in this city, in other spots in the world, we sit in the lap of scarcity because somebody told us there wasn't enough. That's not true. There is enough, you just got to open your hands and let other people in and not close your hands around everything. So we need to reject scarcity and we need not to be afraid to do things that have not been done before, because if you continue to do what's been done, you reproduce what you got. So you also have to ask community be able to demand what you deserve. Now they say for artists that a piece of work is never done until you decide that it is. So if you're going to demand what you deserve, then maybe the conversation isn't over until you feel like you have what you deserve.

So this requires from you a certain amount of stamina you have to come to the table and you have to be willing to sit through the twists, the turns, the gas lighting, the the the bum-rushing, the double talking until you get to even ground that you can actually stand on and build on. Now there are what we call upstream investors who invest for the money because we're in a capitalist paradigm at this moment, so they're not trying to lose money, but they have decided by upstream investment, investing into the people, investing into the culture, investing into a space and thinking about what this will look like 100 years from now. Is this going to be a slum 100 years from now? Is it going to create poverty or is it going to create opportunity?

All of those are choices that developers, cities, and communities should righteously make together. So when a party is in your honor, you have to make sure that you have a seat at the table. Once you get a seat at the table, you can't leave until the conversation is over. Another secret, not only is there enough, but if they don't give you a seat at the table, you have to be willing to build your own. So how do we do that? There were conversations during negotiation when people got weary and we were threatened with, "We'll buy it." Maybe that's a good idea. How do you do that? You got 99 years to figure it out. To do capital campaigns, to find what comes next in this space. So the answer to the problem is always in the people who are discussing what the problem is. So I said this is a process that's ongoing, it is complicated. There are a million ways for us all to win, and the are ways for us all to lose. Nobody benefits from us being afraid to do what's right, because it's right. It's always a good day to do that.

Kev Choice:
I want to say too is I love what Cristy talked about as far as collaborations, because I feel like community collaborations is how we keep a space like this thriving, how we make it inclusive. And I feel like a lot of times, organizations, artists, we're fighting for funding, we're fighting for fan bases. It's not enough communication within us as artist community, even as artist organizations on how we can sustain a place like this. And ownership is also a big part of it and teaching artists or providing artists with an opportunity to be more involved in ownership of the spaces, and we do have a lot of those type of collectives here in Oakland, and it's beautiful to see that, but they're always again fighting for funds, fighting against development, fighting against eviction. As many spaces that we see open up, there's another space that's being closed down or somebody being forced out, and it's like a continuous seesaw of people fighting for space and then people being displaced at the same time.

So how do we make more collaborations? Maybe some of those groups that don't have enough funding to hold their space, they're supported by another organization that can. Even myself, I'm a a board member for the Oakland Symphony, and I don't know if everyone is aware, he said earlier about the Calvin Simmons Theater. You know, Calvin Simmons was the first African American conductor of a major orchestra in the United States here in Oakland, California. And then the person who preceded him, Michael Morgan, or after him was Michael Morgan, another African American conductor. And now we have a new just appointed African conductor, 29 years old, who will be coming in. So that's a line of three African American conductors of a Symphony Orchestra. And Oakland Symphony is supposed to be housed in this space, and even making sure that we have large organizations that are able to sustain and hold these spaces that then can also bring in smaller organizations to utilize this space as well.

So again, it's like collaboration between larger organizations and smaller organizations. And also understanding, I was cultural strategist for the City of Oakland's motto, which is "Love Life," and coming into a political space, coming into these meetings where we're talking about these numbers and data and talking about how are we bringing love into this space? How we bring in the love of each other into this space? Are we just talking about the bottom line and we're just looking at a graph? I hate data, I hate graphs, like let's connect on the human level first then we can talk about all that other stuff and we can make it happen on a real level. So bringing love into the space, bringing collaboration into the space.

Also the people who are experts in this, like Roberto Bedoya, who's Cultural Affairs Executive Director, he should be in every conversation about this building. He shouldn't be an afterthought, he should be right there at the table, he's the cultural affairs manager of our whole department. And then us as cultural affairs commissioners or artists also making sure we're engaged in those conversations as well. So it's a lot but collaboration and let's let's bring love into every space that we're in, and that's how we'll see equity, that's how we'll see diversity, that's how we'll see collective economics. The values that we've been instilled in community need to be spread around the whole fabric of the of the city. Love Life, Oakland motto, Love Life.

Nikki Fortunato Bas:
Thanks, Kev, Love Life. I wanted to sort of build off of that conversation and talk about abundance. There is abundance, I mean, obviously with you all here, there's an abundance of talent and abundance of love and joy. And in the current role I'm playing as an elected official, I'm trying to think about how do you shift those resources so there's more abundant resources for our communities. We've had some success, I was able to, in 2022, put on the ballot, voters passed a progressive corporate business tax. So now the larger companies in Oakland pay more than the smaller ones, and we have to do that on every level. I was just at an event last night on the budget, and Senator Nancy Skinner was talking about, "Well, we've got a wealth tax, but we also need a stronger corporate tax."

And and I think one of the resources that we can really lean into is the idea of a public bank here in the East Bay. So it sounds like some of you are familiar with it, they're really working to get off the ground throughout the East Bay region, and if we're able, as a city, to invest our resources, what's currently in other banks into a public bank, that means the interests can be invested in affordable housing, in arts and culture. We're facing another deficit here in the city of Oakland and I am going to go through yet again with all of you who love arts and culture another round of having to advocate for those for those resources, and we need to find some ways to shift where those resources are, and I think one of them is a public bank where we collectively can own and direct our resources into things we care about, like housing, like arts. So I'd really lift up us getting involved in those type of efforts.

Eli Moore:
All right, we have time for some questions, thoughts, please. Yeah, over here.

Speaker 8:
Hi my name is Joy, I work at Restore Oakland, and one of the things I was thinking about as this panel was happening was first of all, what are the lessons for the A's Stadium, which is a highly contested piece of public land? But the actual question I wanted to ask was, redevelopment is in conversation with time in a way that is really in conflict with the narratives around public safety and the Doom loop narrative that is consuming San Francisco and consuming Oakland. And so how do we communicate this over 99 years to the community, but also with developers, because the people that are pushing this doom narrative are connected to developers. So how do we communicate this effectively to the community over 99 years, but also to developers in case they might make us shift our commitment to this project?

Kev Choice:
I just want to speak real quick to the A's conversation because as I spoke earlier, I feel like it was a loss not just for our community, for our businesses, but to me sports is culture, sports does bring in our economy, and I don't know where it gets lost in those conversations or debates around building new stadiums. Every city I go to around as a touring artist around the country, I see these new stadiums. I go to Detroit, they got 3 stadiums downtown, all connected together, and we we have to start, I feel like, learning in Oakland how to create more business models for our city to be able to thrive. That's hundreds of jobs, that's hundreds of opportunity for youth to go somewhere and and see a game. My first trip with my father was to an A's game. I'm saying those type of connections, taking schools to these spaces to these stadiums.

We look at sports as a big bad wolf, like we've lost all our teams and I feel like that's a loss for us as community and it's also a part of our culture, and it also builds up our economy. So how do we find ways to to support sports? Now we have all these new teams coming in, it's going to be a much smaller impact on our economy when we let such big resources of funding and money come in. And maybe we learn how to tax these sports teams to help support our said culture. He was just talking about $0.30 per ticket given to our community organizations or things like that, that could be a way that we can help you sustain our culture and community and also not allow all our sports teams to to leave because that's a big part. It's a big loss for all of us.

Ayodele Nzinga:
To give credit where it's due, that $0.30 a ticket idea was something I whispered in Kev's ear that I actually heard from Roberto Bedoya, who was talking about if you can't get blood from a turnip, you invent in some other kinds of fruits. We need some alternative sources of income, of resource to put into arts. And in terms of sport, sports are an economic driver, but ask yourself who they drive economics for. So if a sports team, and we're allowed to love each other and disagree, if a sports team isn't providing my community with jobs, and and housing, and at this point in time a share of the pie, you're dragging around, throwing around billions, we need a share of the pie. There are actually cities where when in negotiations, they say, "Well, you could just buy it." And they said okay, and their arenas are built to be profit sharing, where a certain amount of that money generated in that space goes to a community affairs.

So I think that that's the important thing for the A's, is how do we, the people end up with dirt? How do we the people eat off of whatever thing is going to feed then millionaires, billionaires. How are we going to be fed? How do we get to be a part of the generative part of that ecosystem, instead of just being baseline consumers who entertain tourists in our time?

Nikki Fortunato Bas:
I'd like to respond to this one too. Thank you, Joy and I am really proud to be partnering with Restore Oakland to support our small businesses with you all you know. With the A's, let's remember that their ownership is John Fisher, a billionaire developer from the Gap family, and so that has not served us well in the negotiations in terms of what he is willing to negotiate to ensure that it's a win-win for Oakland residents as well as A's fans. I did want to just briefly mention that the city is learning from that experience, so with Oakland Roots, with the Oakland Ballers, we are moving forward with some teams who have ownerships that are committed to our community. So with the Pioneer Baseball League, we're working with the Oakland Ballers, and they are going to be playing at Raimondi Park in West Oakland. And so in exchange for a lease of that site at a nominal rent, they're investing $1.6 million in order to clean up the toxic pollution in that area and to renovate that ball field. Those are the type of folks we want to be working with.

On Tuesday, the City Council is going to be looking into how we can ensure that the old Raiders practice facility in Alameda can be utilized by the Oakland Roots for their practice, and we are also working to ensure that we're able to participate in the World Cup when it's here, I believe it's in 2026. And so if we're able to secure the Roots having that practice facility, they're going to be able to use that facility for practice during the World Cup, which means we'll have like $5,000,000 in economic activity, with Oakland being one of the destinations during the World Cup. So those are the type of partners that I personally want to be working with.

Thomas Cavanagh:
Eli, if I just could add something there to that with this. We talk a lot about art and athleticism with BANDALOOP, as you can imagine, when we're on the sides of of cliffs or tall buildings and we find this great attraction across audiences across the public who now don't even know about the show that's coming, that is entranced by the marriage of art and athleticism. What Kev's talking about, what we're all bringing here is the athleticism within the community too. So if we think about the Colosseum, if we think about Raimondi Park, which is just a block away from the BANDALOOP studio in West Oakland, this is about that marriage in the community that then will attract back the right developers to fix some of these problems.

I would name there is one thing that's needed on every property. and that's ritual and finding some way to bring that ritual to that property to be reborn. Right now, Othering and Belonging Conference here is our type of ritual and ceremony. So what can be done on each of these sites where we want to see ritual and transformation?

Speaker 9:
Thank you, Eli, and thank you, panelists, I know you all too well and we've been at the table, but a couple of comments. You know the dilemma is the tension between the good and the goods, and we live in the capitalism, it's about the goods. They need to pencil out this building, they need to make their profit. So when do you turn ROI into return on investment, not investment, but on influence and impact and how do we measure impact and influence? And the other point, Kev, thank you for acknowledging me, but I'm weak. There's the politics of resource and position. The Commission is active, the division is active but we're a small unit in government and as Nikki just alluded, we're having to fight once again to be fed. And then the last comment about group dynamics, people talk about the arts ecosystem and the the public ecosystem, and then there's the arts egosystem, so we've just got to be mindful of that dynamic.

Eli Moore:
Thank you, Roberto. Yeah, one more question. Come on. Can you step up? Thanks.

Speaker 1:
Hello, my name is Sharmi, I am the Executive Director of Vital Arts. We came about... Hi. We started after the Ghost Ship fire, which I think most people in this room are familiar with and are doing housing advocacy for artists in a lot of different ways, we work with Doctor Nzinga, Hi, Tom, and something that in having these conversations with nonprofit developers and for profit developers, we're working with the City of Berkeley on AB 812, which is legislation that allows for 10% of housing to be allotted to artists specifically. And then we're talking to artists, we're on the ground talking to artists, I'm an artist and lived right there for 10 years, live across from Raimondi Park, watched so many of my friends who were in the encampments get sweeped, and then I'm now watching it be developed, and I'm just really thinking about the holistic view of housing in Oakland. And as we're kind of developing these long term solutions, there's also this, Kev Choice mentioned it in many different as... just people are being evicted constantly.

Good Mother is now like on like a month to month lease basically, could be evicted at any moment. Every day we're talking to folks who who have landlords who are attempting to illegally evict them. And so there's all these kind of like short term issues that I think people see as like low hanging fruit, and I'm wondering about some of the more people-focused solutions that are less around maybe the long term development that could be in conjunction with the... UBI is something that we're talking about, I don't know, just people.

Eli Moore:
So please speak to that question and also we have like 5 minutes, so any any closing thoughts? Who would like to start?

Ayodele Nzinga:
I like where you butt into the wrong people. People over things, and we need to look at people as a resource, as an infrastructure, as integral to development itself. If there are no people, then what are the buildings for? What's the what are the fences for? So people before everything always is the best way to develop places that sustain life and allow for thriving of human beings. So in the system I work in, the bottom line is people. Money gets you where you're going, however, I'm looking at a bunch of artists in this room who have maintained whole practices with less than $25,000 for 3, 4, 5 years. Okay, there are people in this room that feed the community, and house the community, and drop off blankets at encampments. And I said it before and I'll say it again, we are what we've been waiting for and it is unfair of us to expect city government, state government, federal government to do for us what we are unwilling to do ourselves.

OK, so developers come in flavors, and we get to save the human race if that's what we choose to do with our time. So in any project that you're looking at, even if it involves the financial bottom line, if you don't look at the human bottom line, then it's not a conversation about or for people.

Nikki Fortunato Bas:
So thank you. I think this is a really great way to close the event. I was an organizer before being an elected official and it's so much about people power, how we organize together. To the question about staying housed, Universal Basic Income I think is one great tool that I that I personally want to figure out because if we meet people's basic needs, they can hopefully stay housed. The other thing I wanted to mention is that more tenants are organizing. In Berkeley, there's a petition going around to expand tenant protections, and I think for the first time in the Bay Area, codify tenant unions. So if you and your building organize a union, your landlord will have to meet with you I think it's something like 3 times a year so that you can have collective power over where you live and with your landlord, those type of things I think are really important.

And then lastly, I think it's really important to Joyce's question, pushing back on this doom loop. There's a lot of people who think that Oakland's in the trash. That's not what we think and so how do we lift up all of the beautiful things about Oakland, especially when it comes to safety? You all as artists, you keep our communities safe. There's there's so much around the narrative around what safety is and what Oakland is, we have to really lift up all the positives. Thank you.

Kev Choice:
I'll speak very briefly. It kind of just goes to where my motto as an artist this year I set at the beginning of the year, which is to liberate the creativity, and I feel like we need to find ways to liberate our culture, spaces where it could be freely expressed, spaces where it could be freely supported, us coming together to share ideas supporting people. We are people, I feel like art, culture helps us see the humanity, helps us spread love between each other, helps us see the spirituality, The God, the goddess in all of us. And I bring those words into this space because I feel like those words aren't brought into this space, and if we could talk about strategies, we could talk about planning, we could talk about all of these things, but unless we're respecting each other on a human level, we will never be able to have spaces that support oo are sustainable for all of us, whether we're rich, poor, Black, White, Latino, Asian, anything, gender, all of the things that are important that we expressed for us, where are we spreading the love? Where are we showing the humanity? How are we liberating ourselves as artists and cultural practitioners? And I try to bring that into every conversation as someone who took his first piano lesson at an Oakland Public School who is now on the board of the Oakland Symphony and who's also performing with San Francisco Symphony.

And because I had arts organizations that provided me an opportunity, who saw value in what I could bring as an artist, now I'm able to come into these space and have conversations about the preservation of our culture, what's going on in in the community, in the streets, and bring that into these government spaces. And I feel like that collaboration is important for people who are deeply rooted in community to have conversations and relationships with our council members, and I have so much respect for Council Member Bas, and what she's done for my... I live in this district, so we have conversations around the lake, we have conversations around Henry J. It's important to keep those relationships with people in power for us as artists in culture.

And also, I could be confrontational with every meeting, but I'm like, "Nah, let me listen to what she's going through, Let's listen to what the people in government are going through and try to add value instead of always being confrontational or always antagonistic. Like what are we bringing to help bring solutions to the space?" And that's what I feel like us as artists and cultural practitioners need to bring it to these to these spaces and dynamics. So thank you for the opportunity to speak today for sure.

Cristy Johnston-Limón:
I'll just leave you with a question, which is how can you as an individual and as a part of your community hold space, create space that is restorative, how you use land and how you take up space in the way that is restorative as we change this capitalist society from extractive to something else? Thank you.

Thomas Cavanagh:
And I'll second that with us considering this space is now an open door here at the Calvin Simmons. We've opened that door and that portal is open for us to do something together, we. And think about that doorway in your neighborhood. BANDALOOP's Open House is this Sunday in West Oakland at 18th and Peralta. How do we demand more open houses? Our museums, they're ready for it, they're doing it right across the street. The zoo does it, Chabot does it. This House needs to do it and we need to call for it and be a part of it and show up for it, so more open houses, more open doors, more conversations at the threshold. Thank you.

Speaker 1:
And that concludes this episode of our special series of Who Belongs? A Podcast from the Othering & Belonging Institute. For more episodes from this series featuring discussions from our Othering And Belonging Conference in April, visit our website at belonging.berkeley.edu/whobelongs. Thank you for listening.