This summer, in my Urban Practice Research Fellowship, I produced a webpage deliverable for the Right to the City Alliance and developed a short documentary out of the city of Oakland for my personal journalism portfolio. The documentary focuses on the community impact of the Oakland Athletics Baseball team’s relocation to Las Vegas, capturing the cultural and consequences of this economic decision. I concentrated my interviews in public places of Oakland, particularly the Oakland-Alameda Coliseum — conceiving these locations as a “third space,” drawing on Ray Oldenburg’s concept from Celebrating The Third Place, for a space for community building outside of work and home. I documented the stories and resistance efforts of community members, fans, and local merchants in response to the relocation.

During my time with Right to The City Alliance, I researched housing injustices related to landlord surveillance technologies (prop-tech). This research culminated in a tenant-oriented prop-tech user guide on my personal webpage, contributing to the Right to the City Alliance’s efforts to combat the influence of the far-right in the real estate industry, particularly in relation to tenant displacement and surveillance. Both research and multimedia projects worked at the intersection of urban development, culture, and the rights working-class Americans have to their cities.

My fellowship experience this summer may differ significantly from that of my classmates, who are concentrated in New York and participate in on-site work with their community partners. Working with the national coalition of Right To The City Alliance (RTTC) is a more transient experience that primarily operates remotely without a specific office space or site. My timeline is also shifted later than my colleagues because I am currently abroad at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, participating in the Gallatin course “The Black and Green Atlantic,” meaning not much substantial work with my community partner has been done. Before I departed from the U.S., I connected with my community partner advisor, RTTC National Policy Organizer Tony Roshan Samara, and his associate, former GFFUP fellow and Associate Director of Infrastructure Development Anamika Jain. In meeting with these two over the phone and by email, I did notice a disconnect from the day-to-day experience of fully employed people at Right to The City Alliance, only in that I have not yet actively contributed to thought, research, or writing. So far, I’ve been primed on the general focus of my participation this summer, which regards an emerging housing and climate justice framework. Still, my only tasks have been to read and familiarize myself with what has/is being developed. Where I thought there would be routine, there has instead been fluidity, although this will evolve and potentially become more structured in the latter half of the summer. I’ve been appreciative of their meeting me halfway and allowing me the space to enjoy this Gallatin course and absorb it in its entirety towards gaining a new, global context in which to compare and contrast research on the housing crisis, racial dynamics, and urban planning in Oakland. 

In spending the month of May familiarizing myself with RTTC, I also began to (re)involve myself with the Athletics fanbase and the local community of Oakland. As a lifelong resident of the East Bay Area, this integration is more seamless as it first involves connection to my local friends and acquaintances who are well-versed in baseball and the controversy over the Oakland Athletics. My partner, Damian Irvin, a passionate Athletics fan and lifelong East Oakland resident, is my strongest connection to the Coliseum and is a key actor and entry point into this subtopic. Damian is helping to facilitate my integration into and research of the Athletics community and provides context and direction for my research focus — they will accompany me at all games I attend and will be a focus/guide throughout my short documentary. 

Together, we have attended one game, a mid-day game versus the Colorado Rockies, on Thursday, May 23rd, 2024. We were also joined by Damian’s high school friend Dario, who, like me, hadn’t attended an A’s game in around a decade. When Damian and I arrived at the Coliseum Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) parking lot, just before we stepped out of the car, an Oakland Police Department (OPD) helicopter circled low above us. Damian turned to me with a smirk on their face, “Welcome to East Oakland,” they said. Low-flying OPD helicopters and police sirens are an almost constant occurrence in East Oakland, so they typically go unacknowledged. We got out of the car and said nothing more about it. It wasn’t till later that week that we found out that the same day as the game, there was a shooting nearby at the Skyline High School graduation, injuring three people, following a parking lot dispute. Even this wasn’t a shock — shootings at Skyline were common, Damian explained — Their mother attended Skyline and frequently encountered violence and even student death during her time there. 

Meanwhile, we approached the tunnel of the BART station that leads to the overpass bridge to the stadium, where we encountered a Falconer with his hawk. He explained that his bird, ‘Jacklyn,’ who also has a brother, ‘Hyde,’ was contracted by BART to visit stations that have pigeon problems. I hadn’t heard of or seen the Falconry-Based Bird Nuisance Program before, but he explained that the predator bird helps to scare them off, helping to keep the stations cleaner. We made our way up the BART stairs and walked across the BART overpass bridge connecting to the stadium. Typically lined with street vendors, merchants, and fans, the bridge was nearly empty — there was only one t-shirt stand and one hot-dog vendor, and they seemed to be buddies based on their friendly exchange. Arriving outside the coliseum, the young security guard at the entrance joked about me carrying a bomb when I accidentally set off the metal detector. He took out his scanning wand and leaned over to whisper to me while scanning, “Just pretending to do something for the camera.” I was greeted with kindness by the ticket checker, and as we made my way to my seat, I received compliments from several women employed at the stadium — one I later saw yelling at a fan who was getting out of control, cussing aggressively at the players. We got to our seats, which were on the closest row to the left outfield, and quickly realized there was a very drunk group of white guys on the upper balcony directly behind us. For most of the game, they continuously changed “Oakland” at the top of their lungs. The stadium was mostly empty, but the fans were decked out in gear, wielding “SELL” merch and cheering at the top of their lungs. The game itself was also riveting, resulting in a tie, going into overtime, and ending in an A’s win.

This summer, for my independent research, I am primarily concerned with collecting interviews and oral histories of local community members who feel impacted by the loss of the Oakland Athletics team. I initially intended to pair these interviews with the historical account of Oakland, particularly of the Coliseum, as presented by architectural historian and Professor at CCA San Francisco and Oakland, Mitchel Schwarzer, in his 2022 publication Hella Town: Oakland’s History of Development and Disruption. Hella Town is also a valuable book for approaching the work I am engaging with Right To the City Alliance — particularly their ongoing research surrounding findings of a conjunctural analysis conducted on the role of the far-right in the real estate industry. We have whittled down my focus to be on the role that landlord property technology (prop-tech) surveillance plays in perpetuating housing injustice against tenants. I will be discussing the book in both of these research contexts. 

Professor Schwarzer has dedicated much of his career and several publications to exploring the Bay Area’s architectural history and visual perception— including working with local universities and serving as a San Fransisco City Planner. Hella Town is the first of his works to focus specifically on the architectural history of Oakland — and his note sections demonstrate thorough research and engagement in this endeavor. This book caught my attention during my initial research because of the title — combining one of the most commonly used Oakland slang terms, ‘hella,’ with the colloquial name for Oakland, ‘the town.’ The title drew a sense of residency or relatability that stuck out to me, leading me to purchase the book. 

Schwarzer tells the story of Oakland’s development beginning in the 1890s when the city started rapidly developing and transforming the urban landscape. He starts the book with an infamous quote from Gertrude Stein’s memoir Everybody’s Autobiography, in which, after returning to Oakland after some years away, she observes that “there is no there there” (Schwarzer 1). Stein’s sense of unfamiliarity was sparked by the rapid transformation from sparse farmhouses to “corridors of single-family dwellings.” Schwarzer remarks, “Her words have since underpinned a false impression that Oakland is lacking in something, in someplace” (Schwarzer 1). While I certainly agree that this sense of lacking might be overstated, especially from outsider perspectives on Oakland as a failing city, I think there is certainly a sense of unfamiliarity, or uncanniness, that is present today. I feel this feeling each time I return from college. I was particularly aware of there being no ‘there there’ on Monday, July 15th, when I traveled around the town putting up posters requesting interviews for my documentary. The last stop to put up posters was at the Oakland Coliseum, and when Damian and I finished, we sat in my car in the Coliseum BART parking lot, discussing the changed urban landscape. Adjacent to the BART parking lot was a newly constructed low-income housing project occupying a once-vacant lot. Damian recalled how the empty lot used to be used as cheap and informal spill-over parking during A’s game — a guy used to stand by the entrance, and you would slip him a couple of bucks, primarily as insurance that he wouldn’t let someone bip, or break into, your car. Damian explained to me that their mother, a lifelong resident of Oakland who moved out of state after the Pandemic, was pleased to see the transformed facades of the apartments surrounding the Coliseum when she recently visited. At the same time, she noticed that there was more graffiti in downtown Oakland than there had ever been when she was growing up in the 80s. The gentrified, cookie-cutter five-over-one apartment complexes and the new high-rise building complex at 601 Civic Center evoke this sense of unfamiliarity. The rapid and comprehensive wave of urban development happening throughout the city makes it difficult for the eye to fully process all the changes.

I focused most of my attention on Hella Town chapter five, “Major League Venue,” particularly the few pages dedicated to the history of developing the Oakland-Alameda Coliseum in the section “A Sporting Megalith.” Schwarzer explains that the idea for the coliseum arose from the proposed route of the Eastshore Freeway as early as 1950 when Oakland city planning engineer John Marr explored the possibility of constructing a municipal baseball/football stadium near where Hegenberger Road turns off towards the Oakland Airport. The 1950s were occupied by pitching Oakland to football teams around the country in order to secure the project — Schwarzer writes, “it became known that Oakland had a shot to land the last of eight franchises in the new American Football League… Barron Hilton, the influential owner of the Los Angeles Chargers, loved the idea of a second AFL team in California and the north-south rivalry it would engender. Oakland became the logical choice” (Schwarzer 147). With the Raiders secured as the Oakland team, the nonprofit “Coliseum Inc.” was established to head the project, led by Robert Nahas, the same businessman in charge of the Oakland Museum project. Coliseum Inc. selected Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill (SOM) design firm to lead construction despite lacking a coliseum in their portfolio, the firm had an office in San Francisco and experience with large jobs. Schwarzer explains that the Coliseum project was approved by the Oakland City Council and Alameda County Board of Supervisors in early 1963 for the construction of a “48,4000-seat outdoor stadium and 13-500 seat indoor arena” and was envisioned to have a ripple effect on East Oakland economy, and potentially function as a venue for other local sporting events including high school and college track and field and horse shows. The contractor, Gus F. Atkinson began construction in May of 1964, and by September 18th, 1966, an enlarged 53,000-seat Coliseum opened to the public when the Raiders played their first game against the Kansas City Chiefs. “Oakland lost. But a little over a year later, Oakland got back at Kansas City — through baseball” (Schwarzer 148). The Kansas City Athletics were signed and moved to Oakland by owner Charles Finley in October of 1967 because of the immediate availability at the Coliseum. In what Schwarzer describes as a “fantastic coup,” Oakland nabbed teams in all four major league sports from the year the Athletics signed through 1977 — including the Seals hockey team and Warriors basketball team. 

Moving into a more financial analysis of the development project, Schwarzer explains that the Oakland-Alameda Coliseum lived up to the stereotype of sports venues in both underestimated construction costs and overestimated revenue costs. “Between 1966 and 1991, there were no profitable years. More often than not, then, the complex required annual taxpayer subsidy,” Schwarzer writes (Schwarzer 151). Schwarzer draws from a quote written during the 1973 election in which Black Panther Party leader Bobby Seale was running for mayor by kinesiology professor Maria Veri, “the Black Panthers framed Oakland’s patronage of the Raiders as a part of the political and economic dynamic that contributed to the oppression of urban black neighborhoods,” (Schwarzer 151). Public funds continued to be diverted to keep the sporting complex afloat and attempt to spur out-of-region money in the surrounding area near the airport, such as hotels, bars, retail, restaurants, and more. The notorious Lockwoods Garden housing project, colloquially known as the “The Village,” was neglected in the shadow of the Coliseum, and its reputation of violence further deterred retail development. No attempts were made, and Schwarzer writes, “On what had seemed to be prime retail land, warehouses, distribution centers, and storage facilities have long predominated,” (Schwarzer 153). To this day, the financial hole dug by the development of the Coliseum has been at the center of attention, turning energy and resources away from local communities in need. While The Village has an upgraded facade, the same issues still remain inside. 

The unfortunate lesson I learned too late concerning Professor Mitchel Schwarzer is that he holds controversial opinions regarding the colonial occupation of Palestine that I disagree with. While unrelated to Oakland’s development, I believe this is a flaw in his credentials as an architectural historian and urban scholar. His recent publication, Jews in The Museum, commissioned by the Jewish Museum Project and in collaboration with his wife, Marjorie, contained several inaccurate, insensitive, and over-emotional remarks that I disagree with— including their agreement with the quote from journalist Nathan Weisman’s book Being Jewish in America in the Age of Trump  that “the notion that ‘Anti-Zionism is not antisemitism’ is dangerous.” As someone who has engaged deeply with my local anti-zionist Jewish peers in the past few months, I cannot, in good faith, promote the works of Professor Schwarzer without condemning this recent essay and his inaccurate conflation. I personally feel that this recent essay casts doubt on the quality of his work conducted in writing Hella Town because if he is missing his bias in this piece, he is also lacking in his critical analysis of Oakland. I found it important to conclude this post with this acknowledgment because I feel that the ‘issue’ of Palestine is inextricably tied to the project of U.S. imperialism — the turmoil, policing, and dissemination of their communities is a bare reflection of ours, with tactics shared between both states. Oaklanders have come out strongly in support of Palestine, from union backing and teacher-organized events to city council ceasefire agreements and several blockades of weapons intended to be sent to aid Israel. Oaklanders sympathize with the Palestinian cause precisely because of a shared desire for liberation and peace.