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b"https://kpfa.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/BOONE-OAKLAND-D3-COUNCIL-1.mp3\\t\\t\\n\\t\\t\\tjQuery(document).ready(function($) {\\n\\t\\t\\t\\tvar media = $('#audio-346298-7');\\n\\t\\t\\t\\tmedia.on('canplay', function (ev) {\\n\\t\\t\\t\\t\\tthis.currentTime = 0;\\n\\t\\t\\t\\t});\\n\\t\\t\\t});\\n\\t\\t\\n\\xa0\\nBy KPFA election reporter Ariel Boone (@arielboone)\\nOAKLAND, CA \\u2013 On a sunny Saturday morning in DeFremery Park in West Oakland, 50 people have come to knock on doors. There are ironworkers, students, democratic socialists, even Sunrise Movement climate activists \\u2014 all here to support Carroll Fife, a candidate for Oakland city council in District 3.\\n\\n\\u201cWho\\u2019s door knocking for the first time ever?\\u201d precinct captain Mary Schindler asks the crowd. Several hands go up. Everyone cheers. \\u201cYes! You guys, that\\u2019s awesome!\\u201d\\xa0\\nWest Oakland is a historically Black neighborhood, rapidly gentrifying, and one of the epicenters of the 2008 foreclosure crisis. Last year, it was also the site of an action that drew national attention: A group of unhoused Black moms, calling themselves \\u201cMoms 4 Housing,\\u201d took over an empty investor-owned home, occupied it for over two months, and eventually \\u2014 after heavily-armed sheriffs evicted them \\u2014 forced the owner to sell the property to a land trust for conversion to permanently affordable housing. Carroll Fife, the Oakland director of Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, or ACCE, was a key organizer behind the moms\\u2019 action. Now she is trying to unseat the councilmember who represents the neighborhood, aiming heavy fire at the incumbent\\u2019s votes on policing and tenants\\u2019 rights.\\xa0\\nToday, Fife says she has a network of over 600 volunteers phone-banking, text-banking, and canvassing. \\u201cWe\\u2019ve knocked on about 12,000 doors,\\u201d says Fife\\u2019s volunteer coordinator, Katie Tertocha. This is all in one council district of about 57,000 people, and all to unseat one incumbent.\\xa0\\nWho\\u2019s represented in the fight for housing rights?\\nIn 2016, Lynette McElhaney won a second term in the district with 13,000 votes.\\n\\u201cI am a very proud Oaklander, wife and mom and grandmother, and a person has been deeply involved in community level work,\\u201d Lynette McElhaney tells me.\\nMcElhaney has been in office eight years. She\\u2019s seeking a third term. She says she wants to address the housing and homelessness crisis by building housing for all income levels. She emphasizes the importance of private homeownership, using the example of the house her parents bought with GI Bill benefits.\\xa0\\n\\u201cMy family was more stable than that of my neighbors,\\u201d McElhaney says. \\u201cI believe in property ownership, I believe in securing families, neighborhoods through ownership, I believe in the generational transfer of wealth. And I know that that helped define a middle class.\\u201d\\nMcElhaney is the only property owner in this race. And her focus on property owners \\u2014 including landlords \\u2014 has put her at odds with groups working for tenants\\u2019 rights. In 2018 she tried to take away eviction protections from renters in owner-occupied fourplexes.\\xa0\\n\\u201cI literally got surrounded by a group of elderly black women at a funeral,\\u201d McElhaney explains. \\u201cWe couldn\\u2019t even grieve, because they were afraid of what they called the \\u2018liberal majority\\u2019 of the council was doing to them as Black women, as Black elderly women who had worked hard, their entire lives. And they felt that this was a push to erase them. And I had an obligation to hear from them and to try to raise their voice on council.\\u201d\\nOakland city council candidate Carroll Fife addresses supporters and members of the media outside \\u201cMom\\u2019s House,\\u201d the property in West Oakland that became the nationwide focus of the fight for housing rights in the winter of 2019-2020.\\nFife says McElhaney has been reticent to help tenants facing displacement from the district during her tenure, including members of ACCE. \\u201cIf you ask any housing organization in the city of Oakland, they will tell you how oppositional that the councilmember has been to renters and anything that would protect renters.\\u201d\\n\\u201cI had a family that lived in a [threeplex] for three generations, and they were calling the councilmember repeatedly saying that they were going to be evicted illegally. And she would not return their calls. And ultimately said the landlord was well within his power to evict them because he wanted to move in. And they said, \\u2018He\\u2019s not moving in. He\\u2019s going to sell the property.\\u2019 And she would not help. They were evicted. Four generations, 50 years, in one home. And as soon as he got everybody out, he sold the house for $1.5 million.\\u201d\\nFife has confronted McElhaney for her votes on council in the past. In 2019, she rebuked McElhaney in public comment during a council meeting for \\u201crepeatedly interrupting\\u201d community members who came to testify against proposed changes that would have lengthened the time required to submit ballot measures.\\nFife says her own family was also displaced from West Oakland years ago, by an owner move-in eviction. She says it was illegal \\u2014 the owner never moved in. She wants to decommodify housing, move it out of the private market, and treat it as a human right.\\xa0\\xa0\\n\\u201cI believe that the whole idea of housing being built and construction constructed to address the housing crisis. Is a little fallacious. We see housing being built all over the place, it\\u2019s just not affordable,\\u201d Fife says.\\n\\u201cThere are several of these luxury units that are vacant right now. You\\u2019ll have 50% vacancies in a lot of these different buildings. So let\\u2019s get people in there, and let\\u2019s build in the places that have been segregated for decades, like Rockridge.\\u201d\\nIt is a very serious campaign. Fife\\u2019s years of organizing work helped her pick up high-profile endorsements, including from Bernie Sanders, the Alameda Labor Council, and tenants\\u2019 rights groups. She\\u2019d raised $176,000 from individual donations as of October 16. That\\u2019s slightly more than the incumbent. Labor unions have also dropped nearly $400,000 into an independent expenditure committee supporting Fife and at-large council candidate Rebecca Kaplan.\\nMcElhaney\\u2019s high-profile endorsements include state senator Nancy Skinner, Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf and San Francisco Mayor London Breed.\\xa0\\nMcElhaney faces questions over ethics, policing votes\\nThere are other candidates in the race \\u2014 Oakland uses \\u201cinstant runoff\\u201d or ranked-choice voting, so there was no primary. They all have much less funding and organization. But each candidate I spoke with aimed more fire at McElhaney than Fife.\\xa0\\nOakland councilmember Lynette McElhaney, who is facing a fierce challenge from organizer Carroll Fife. (Facebook)\\nCandidate Seneca Scott says his top issues are homelessness, blight and illegal dumping. He moved to Oakland 8 years ago to work for SEIU Local 1021\\u2013one of the unions now backing Fife. Scott founded a community garden and kitchen, where he runs his campaign. He says he has about a dozen volunteers.\\n\\u201cI think Lynette just doesn\\u2019t have the bandwidth or the energy anymore,\\u201d Scott says. \\u201cIf you\\u2019re undergoing ethics investigations, and new ethics investigations about using the money from the old ethics investigation, to pay her lawyer \\u2014 I mean, it was just kind of a lot.\\u201d\\nScott is referring to ethics violations that have plagued McElhaney\\u2019s campaign. \\nA grand jury in 2016 said McElhaney inappropriately used her council office and resources to stop multi-unit housing from being built next to her home. She was ordered to pay a fine \\u2014 so she created a legal defense fund \\u2014 and then took an illegal contribution from a developer who had business before the city, which she voted for. That developer, Lane Partners, was fined $5,000 for the contribution. The company\\u2019s lawyer is still listed as McElhaney\\u2019s legal fund principal officer.\\nI asked McElhaney if she had any regrets for taking money from Lane Partners. She said, \\u201cI have literally no idea what you\\u2019re talking about.\\u201d\\nAnother candidate in the District 3 race, Meron Semedar, questions the logic of building market rate housing in the district. Semedar is an Eritrean refugee who has lived in Oakland for eight years, and works with African students at UC Berkeley.\\n\\u201cIf we look at Lynette, she\\u2019s been in office for the last two terms eight years. And while she was in office, housing has become a huge problem in Oakland. We see there\\u2019s a lot of housing being built, but it\\u2019s not really addressing our housing crisis.\\u201d\\nMcElhaney also faces fierce criticism for a vote on police funding this summer. After the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, hundreds called into Oakland council meetings demanding the defunding of police. On June 23, 2020, McElhaney joined a group of councilmembers that derailed a proposal to cut the police budget by $25 million, by pushing a surprise vote on a budget that the public had not seen, which included smaller cuts and a \\u201ctask force\\u201d to consider future cuts.\\nThe public comment at that meeting sounded like this:\\n\\u201cWe need to defund the Oakland Police Department. It is honestly shameful that you have done this.\\u201d\\n\\u201cI\\u2019m just so sad. And it just really strengthens my commitment to making sure you\\u2019re unseated.\\u201d\\n\\u201cShame on all of you. I am so disappointed, and you have let me, as a Black woman, down.\\u201d\\n\\u201cVoting on the budget this evening was absolutely absurd. You clearly aren\\u2019t listening to us. So, Councilmember McElhaney, my councilmember, is up for re-election this year. And with our work, she\\u2019ll be unseated. Bye, McElhaney. You won\\u2019t be missed.\\u201d\\nMcElhaney insists she is listening to her constituents \\u2014 but to the ones who didn\\u2019t call into the Zoom meeting. \\u201cThis blaming and blocking business is, first of all, irresponsible to talk about what actually happened,\\u201d she says.\\xa0\\nShe maintains that cutting $25 million from police, a proposal by District 2 councilmember Nikki Fortunato Bas, would have done a disservice to crime victims. McElhaney lost her son and grandson to gun violence.\\n\\u201cWe said, show us how this will not hurt victims families. I spent four years sitting in the living rooms of people who have suffered loss in this community, people who don\\u2019t come with anger and righteous indignation on a Zoom or into city hall, whose pain and hurt have been ignored in this community for nearly 30 years, and the residents in District 3 that have been demanding increased police presence were not asking me to be reckless,\\u201d McElhaney says.\\n\\u201cIt just really strengthens my commitment to making sure you\\u2019re unseated.\\u201d \\u2013 Caller in public comment at the Oakland City Council meeting on June 23, 2020\\nIn contrast, Carroll Fife says disinvesting from police and reinvesting in public services is central to her platform. She says police should be reassigned from conducting traffic stops, going to encampment evictions, staffing special events, and towing cars.\\xa0\\n\\u201cI would love to see that the police budget goes down to nothing,\\u201d she says. \\u201cI think it\\u2019s going to take a minute for our society to actually invest and see a return on actually making sure that people are getting the services that they need. Because this whole system is based on the market, there are going to be forces that try to intervene, and probably you\\u2019ll see a spike in crime, because police are involved in manufacturing crime.\\u201d \\nIf Oakland does have policing, Fife adds, \\u201cI would love to see it focused on the top on white collar criminals that are actually stealing entire neighborhoods, immunities and disinvesting and shifts in wealth from working class people the wealthy elites. That\\u2019s the real crime.\\u201d\\nA chance to build power for West Oakland\\nOakland\\u2019s wealthier council districts have traditionally wielded more money to influence city races. But whoever occupies the District 3 seat next has an enormous amount of work ahead of them, from weighing the impact of any proposed development at Howard Terminal, to environmental cleanup, and meeting the needs of the city\\u2019s unhoused residents, many of whom live in West Oakland. Accomplishing change will require building power for the district.\\n\\u201cJerry Brown said he would break, his goal was to dismantle, the Black political establishment in the city of Oakland. That was his role and his goal as mayor. And he\\u2019s effectively done that. And his chief of staff through Libby Schaaf as mayor has extended that,\\u201d Fife says.\\n\\u201cSchaaf has to have a group that\\u2019s on the city council that\\u2019s beholden to her ideas to continue the displacement of Black bodies from the city, as well as enact policies that allow developers and corporations to have free reign.\\u201d\\nFife promises to keep her campaign organizing structure intact after the election whether she wins or loses, with neighborhood leaders in place to continue to push legislation in the city.\\nThe District 3 election is about more than just whether an economic and housing justice activist makes it to public office. It\\u2019s also about building power for residents of West Oakland, long an environmental dumping ground. And it could determine whether Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf has a supportive majority on the council \\u2014 which would impact everything from how the city bargains with unions, to what it does about its police department, and how this booming town with a long and radical Black history responds to rapid gentrification.\\nUpdate Oct. 22 \\u2013 This story has been corrected to indicate the District 3 family was evicted from a threeplex, and to remove a mention of any endorsement by Kamala Harris in the race.\\nThe post Moms 4 Housing organizer Carroll Fife takes on incumbent McElhaney in fierce Oakland council race over housing, policing appeared first on KPFA."