(first published on Project Oakland on May 29, 2012)

The link between transportation and racial justice has been an explicit part of American culture since Rosa Parks ignited the Montgomery Bus Boycot in 1955, if not earlier. Most of us understand, if only intuitively, that who moves around, where they move to and from, and what they move upon interacts with complicated histories of oppression, rebellion, and innovation.

This is one of the reasons why Oakland’s Red, Bike, and Green collective  is so exciting. They have not only created an an affirmative, welcome spacing for Black urban cyclists but also established a platform for a new discussion of the politics of mobility in the city.

I recently had a chance to ask Red, Bike, and Green about their work and views. The following is a transcript of our exchange.

~ Chuck Morse

* * *

Q. Can you tell me how Red, Bike, and Green (RBG) got started and what exactly you do?

Design by Nick James

A. Five years ago, becoming more and more disenchanted with driving, the cost of regular car maintenance, insurance rates, gas prices, and the overall expense of having a car, Jenna Burton decided to ride her bike more regularly. She began to think about creating a space and culture for Black folks that would promote biking as a safe and viable mode of transportation. Burton organized a small group of Black bikers to go on random weekend rides. Further conversations with colleagues and friends led to naming the group Red, Bike, and Green. For those unfamiliar, Red, Bike and Green is an ode to Marcus Garvey’s idea that Black people in the United States need their own nation and flag, which would be symbolized in the colors of Red, Black, and Green.

With a little help from some friends, Burton officially launched the first season in April of 2010. Red, Bike, and Green now rides every third Saturday and First Friday of the month from April until November of each year.

Q. One way that White supremacy operates is by limiting the mobility of Black people and people of color generally—from the laws that prevented people from moving into a specific neighborhood to the ongoing police harassment of motorists (i.e., “driving while Black”). Do you believe that encouraging Black people to get around by bike is a way to challenge White supremacy? If so, how?

A. Yes. And no. First and foremost, we see RBG as a psychological and spiritual departure from White-supremacist values. While we are not gathering with the intention of directly challenging White supremacy, we are not trying to feed that machine either. If the indirect outcome of being pro Black (not anti-White) and asserting autonomy is a challenge to White supremacy, then so be it. We are functioning out of a love for Black people and the need to create a space where we feel safe and part of a community that cares about our well-being.

When you see fifty plus Black people on bikes in ANY neighborhood it is a symbol of Black power. The rides are a way to make a space where Black love and healthy Black living is visible. As a result of RBG’s success in outreaching to a community of Black folks who have largely been ignored by mainstream bike culture, it has given us a platform with which to fight different sorts of oppression and we are grateful for that.

Q. Black people have long been marginalized in the cycling sports—from the prohibition on African-American membership in the League of American Bicyclists, which was not rescinded until 1999, to more subtle signals that push Black people out of bike networks. What do you think about the racial dynamics of the bike scene in the East Bay today? In what ways is it an affirmative, inviting place for Black people and how is it not?

What is affirming is that there are groups that have advocated for bike lanes in some neighborhoods, which make it safer and easier to ride for all bikers. Who are the bike lanes for is the question.

It is easy to assume that biking is a really accessible and easy way to travel. But a simple understanding like that discounts not only the cost of the bike but also other factors that weigh in when thinking about riding. Can you afford to fix your bike if it is broken? Is it practical for your lifestyle (i.e., do you have children)? If your bike is stolen, can you replace it? What’s the morale before even deciding to get on a bike?

If we were to use a metaphor to illustrate the racial dynamics of the bike scene in the East Bay, it might read something like this: Red, Bike, and Green is like English Breakfast Tea being dropped in an ocean—it’s not going to turn anything Black. The bike scene in the East Bay is largely a White space and since Black people are traditionally overlooked in bike culture as well as multi-racial sites of organizing, an organization like RBG fills a void.

Q. There is a tendency in Hip Hop culture to celebrate cars, particularly luxury cars, as symbols of power and even defiance. Do you believe that encouraging bike riding among Black people is an important counter-tendency to this trend? If so, why?

A. RBG is cultivating a culture of healthy living that incorporates more alternative and economic modes of transportation, such as bike riding. It’s important to encourage bike riding as a counter tendency to materialism, but we want to be careful not to give Hip Hop (or any one culture) the monopoly on defining blackness. The side that’s been dominated by mainstream media has fixated on a particular kind of Hip Hop, where luxury cars are flaunted as being Hip Hop.

As an anecdote, when Burton started riding her bike in 2008, the Black folks that she would see riding were largely folks that couldn’t afford cars. By and large, they rode a bike out of necessity. And over the years she has seen a change. While it is still not commonplace, there are a lot more Black folks on bikes.

Part of the reason why RBG exists is to try and bridge the gap between the folks that are already riding (the avid cyclist; the sports enthusiast; the college educated, single, twenty/thirty something, without kids, health conscious rider) and those that haven’t given riding a second thought. And one thing RBG does pretty well is create a visual aesthetic around Black folks riding bikes, care of our designer, Nick James. The material that is produced for RBG intentionally uses the rich history of biking in the Black community. I guess you could say we are redefining Blackness too.

Q. Do you have sister groups in other cities?

Yes. In Chicago and Atlanta.

Q. In an ideal world, where will Black biking in the Bay Area be in, say, five or ten years?

A. Hopefully there will still be Black people left in Oakland and the Bay Area.

Q. How can people get involved with and/or support RBG?

A.Follow us on Twitter or Facebook.  Or you can donate through Paypal on our website at www.redbikegreen.com

Photo by Jewels Smith

(first published on Project Oakland on April 15, 2014)

Last month, when Oakland Mayor Jean Quan gave her annual “State of the City” address, the 10K2 Plan was the only major, new initiative that she announced. With an election coming up in November, and faced with persistently low approval ratings, she clearly hoped that it would help her persuade voters to give her a second term. Under the program, she pledges to add 10,000 units of housing to Oakland—25 percent of which will be affordable—at some time in the future.

Quan’s policy is designed to appeal to people with interests that are typically counterposed. On the one hand, the addition of 7,500 units of market-rate housing will be great for the wealthy tech workers pouring into the region. These are the people who can pay thousands upon thousands each month for a small apartment and who are driving up housing costs, by all accounts. On the other hand, the addition of 2,500 units of affordable housing will be good for poorer residents; these are the people who can’t pay high rents and are being pushed out in droves. On top of all this, the expansion of the housing stock will put some downward pressure on housing prices generally, enlarge the city’s tax base, and create some new jobs. Apparently, this is a win-win-win policy.

Quan looked unusually confident during her presentation, as if she knew that she was scoring a political victory, and pundits gave her performance high marks. The East Bay Express immediately lauded her plan’s environmental aspects. Zennie Abraham, one of her harsher critics, said that she had “finally found her political legs” and grown from an “accidental mayor” into a “real mayor” who understands what it means to exercise power. Her odds of winning reelection started to look a little better.

In some respects, Quan is merely rebranding and taking credit for a construction boom that is already underway but, still, she has presented this as a plan and we should assess it as such. The issue that Oaklanders need to consider when doing so is this: has she found a way to increase the city’s housing stock, make space for those driving displacement, while also protecting the working class’s ability to live in the city? Can Quan actually perform this magical balancing act?

The answer to all of these questions is no. Although the 10K2 Plan contains some modest measures intended to mitigate displacement, it will necessarily make the city more of a place for the rich and the rich alone. There are two reasons for this.

First, the 10K2 Plan embraces an economic model that has been ruinous for Oakland’s poor and urban areas throughout the country. After deindustrialization and “white flight” gutted the city in the mid-twentieth century, planners and policy makers have set out to rebuild the city’s economy around shopping, entertainment, and housing. We see this not only in the 10K2 Plan, but also in Quan’s boosterism on behalf of local sports teams, the hotel and restaurant industry, the monthly Art Murmur gatherings, etcetera. These things generate some jobs (and some tax revenue), which politicians are quick to celebrate, but the jobs are low-end service jobs that are almost always insecure, lack benefits, and do not pay salaries that could support the rental or purchase of a market-rate home in Oakland. The 10K2 Plan embraces this model and, as such, furthers the city’s commitment to an economic form that more or less guarantees that its poor will remain poor and have to go elsewhere.

Second, adding 7,500 market-rate units will bring many thousand more—let’s say 15,000—wealthier residents to the city. These people will push for planning and policy changes that will make Oakland less hospitable for lower income folks. We can expect more parklets, dog parks, and bike lanes, which are great for people with lots of leisure time but maddening for those rushing to get to work. We can also anticipate an increase in heavy handed police tactics, a necessary tool for managing marginalized and discontented populations. Subtly and not so subtly, these things will indicate that Oakland’s streets are not for the working class.

In reply to these criticisms, defenders of the 10K2 Plan might argue that at least the low-end service jobs being produced are jobs, which is better than nothing at all. This is a “logic of lesser evils” argument used to bludgeon people into accepting the bad because it is not worse, but Oaklanders shouldn’t have to endure substandard employment or an economic model that pushes the poor from the city. Likewise, Quan’s allies might say that the city can institute policies to ensure that its planning and design decisions express all residents’ concerns, not just the upper class, but this is naive. These new Oaklanders will demand that the city reflect their needs and they will have far greater resources to force it to do so than the poor. It would be unrealistic to expect otherwise.

Although Quan was able to deliver an effective stump speech, no one should be confused about the class-bound nature of her 10K2 Plan, such as it is. It portends more displacement not less, despite the presence of superficial half measures oriented toward working class residents’ needs. There are so many things that cities can do—foreclosure prevention, improve rent control, encourage land trust conversion, etcetera—but this is not what we see here. In essence, expanding the housing stock without challenging class inequality will always serve the upper class. Indeed, no politician will ever be clever enough to create a policy that can override the basic class conflict between the rich and the poor that is dividing our society and our city. Quan may try her best, as she fights for reelection, but we should not be deceived. Housing justice and economic equality are inextricably linked.

~ by Chuck Morse

(Posted on Project Oakland on January 2, 2014)

Doh! There is no leftwing alternative in Oakland’s mayoral race and there won’t be one. The three credible candidates—Jean Quan, Joe Tuman, and Libby Schaaf—are pro-business, pro-gentrification Democrats and no viable left candidacy will emerge from the fringe. Why is this? Because the left has basically checked out of municipal politics in Oakland and that is a huge mistake.

I know it seems nuts to say that the left is absent in Oakland. Wasn’t it just yesterday that Occupy Wall Street protestors swarmed the streets of downtown? And isn’t there always some demonstration or another going on? Whether it’s up in the Hills (isn’t that where Angela Davis lives?), in the flatlands of East and West Oakland, or anywhere in between, there are literally scores of lefty writers, activists, and on-going and ad hoc groups. That’s why it made sense when the New York Times called Oakland the “last refuge of radical America” in 2012.

However, there is a big difference between having leftists in a city and actually having a municipal left. As it stands now, no group is advancing a program to transform the City of Oakland as such. No one is pushing or even talking about comprehensive changes designed to fundamentally alter how the City works or how it fits into the region. People occasionally prod the City to change this or that policy, but no one is trying to rewrite the rules as a whole.

Could the left have an impact on the city government? Experiences in cities elsewhere suggest that it could. Activists have used Richmond’s City Hall to challenge “big oil, big soda, and big banks,” making it one of the most progressive cities in the country, to cite the East Bay Express. Up the Pacific coast, socialist Kshama Sawant just won election to Seattle’s City Council. She has urged Boeing workers to take over the factories and explicitly positions herself against capitalism. Last July, Chokwe Lumumba became the mayor of Jackson, Mississippi; he describes himself as a revolutionary and wants the city to foster a “solidarity economy” that would include things like “worker-owned co-operatives, co-operative banks, peer lending, community land trusts, participatory budgeting, and fair trade.” Even Jac Asher, the new mayor of that corporate barfpark known as Emeryville, has called for the inclusion of worker-owned cooperatives in new development.

And there is a history of local engagement with the city. The Black Panthers ran Bobby Seale and Elaine Brown for Mayor and City Council, respectively, in 1973; this was part of their “Base of Operations” campaign, with which they hoped to seize the city government, take control of the Port, and turn Oakland into a hub of global communist revolution. In fact, the Socialist Workers Party, which positioned itself to the left of the Panthers, also ran candidates for local office that year. In the 1980s, the Oakland Progressive Political Alliance pushed progressive candidates and, back in the Stone Age, the Socialist Party ran Jack London for mayor.

I’m not saying that the left must run candidates for local office. Electioneering often slides into pandering and it is not clear what a left candidate could actually accomplish if he or she were to win office. What I am saying is that we can’t afford to ignore City Hall.

The City presides over an annual budget of approximately a half billion dollars and exercises enormous influence over what happens here. Much of this has to do with development—where it occurs, what it looks like, and who pays for it—and it also has a big impact on policing, schools, among other issues. On a broader level, the City is the main institution that ties us together as citizens—a key point of reference for democracy in the city, or at least the idea of it. Whether or not we choose to engage the city through elections, we do need to engage it.

At the very least, Oakland leftists should start talking about how to transform the city. What would Oakland look like if it was restructured around social justice and emancipatory ideals and linked up with worldwide movements for change? What policies would we implement and why? What policies would we abandon and why? These are tough political questions. We need to start wrestling with them.

As Oakland’s mayoral election heats up, we can expect the candidates to debate who can create the most “business-friendly” climate in the city and, above all, who can put more cops on the street. While this happens, we should start laying the foundation for a real alternative. There are thousands of us here, and we can draw upon what’s going on in cities elsewhere, from elements of local history, and maybe even come up with some bright ideas of our own. Oakland is a great place. It could be awesome.

~ Chuck Morse

(First published on Project Oakland on March 28, 2012)

Social struggles occur in diverse places in Oakland: at street protests, in debates at City Hall, and sometimes even where you plant your butt! Take the benches in this photo: though modest and unassuming, they are actually a salvo in the battles over public space that are presently unfolding in Oakland and cities worldwide.

They sit steps from a West Oakland park known as a hangout for the homeless and super-poor. At this park, it is common to see a half-dozen shopping carts full of belongings, people drinking from paper bags, and to smell pot smoke wafting through the air. Those present are almost always black men, middle-aged and up, with a sprinkling of younger adults and women of assorted ages. I have only seen kids there twice during the dozens of times that I have passed by and the absence of swings or play gear of any sort suggests that no one expects them to show up more regularly. I have never witnessed the police harassing people there, though surely it would not be hard for them to come up with  reasons to do so if they wished. It appears that authorities have decided that it is okay for the uber-marginalized to congregate at this site. Something similar would not be allowed in Berkeley or San Francisco, which rank among the “meanest” cities to the homeless in the United States.

An inspection of these benches yields insights into their origins (click the photo above for a larger view). First of all, we can see that they are not city-issue products. Local authorities construct benches out of steel, or a mix of steel and composite wood, whereas these are simply painted wooden planks bolted to the sidewalk with cheap “L” brackets. We can also conclude that they are not the work of a business hoping to accommodate its customers—they lie in front of a trash-strewn lot, not a store or restaurant. Everything indicates that some guerrilla decorators installed them surreptitiously, presumably under the cloak of night and inspired by the outrageous thought that poor people also have a right to sit down.

The built environment is inherently political. This is obvious in the case of things like monuments and palaces, but seating and politics also have a particularly strong connection. In Home: A Short History of An Idea, Witold Rybcznski sketches the long evolution of approaches to seating and argues that what has changed over the years is less the technology of seating than its cultural use. He points out that seats are often means of articulating and representing power. We see hints of this in our everyday language: the head of an academic department is the “chair,” a judge “sits” on “the bench,” the center of authority in a country is the “seat” of power, a monarch occupies “the throne,” etc.

But what does it mean when someone covertly builds seats for the marginalized in a city like Oakland, with its vast quantities of public space that have been privatized and in which thousands have been stripped of their right to assemble due to encounters with the Prison Industrial Complex? It is an act of compassion and also an act of resistance. To write the needs of the impoverished into the physical structure of the city itself, even in a small way, is a gesture toward reclaiming public space, toward reopening the commons.

Changing society and changing our practices of domesticity and comfort have always gone hand in hand. The Black Panther Party housed its members in austere, barrack-like “Panther pads,” whereas hippies built kaleidoscopic homes in the form of geodesic domes—their larger social visions influenced their sense of space and decor, and vice versa. Whatever forms we might invent in the future, these benches point to a politics of seating in which the purpose of seats is not to bolster authority and coercion but to recuperate the city for the oppressed. While plain and easy to overlook, they are among the many signs that rebellion is alive and well in Oakland.

~ Chuck Morse