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Oakland in the Time of Corona
by Doniphan Blair

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Sunset on Lake Merritt, in the center of Oakland. photo: D. Blair

THEY CAME FROM FANCY APARTMENTS,
funky studios, old Victorians. They jogged, biked and boarded but mostly walked. They came in couples, a few threes but mostly alone.

They came silently or chatting quietly, so as not to disturb their neighbors, to whom they sometimes came closer than the “six feet rule” of the brand-new social distancing.

It was March 26th, nine days after the nation’s first shelter-in-place order had been issued by five Bay Area counties.

But they approached each other only for an instant, to pass congested corners on the 3.5-mile walk around Lake Merritt, which serves as the central square of Oakland.

As they walked around the lake, past the bird sanctuary and colorful Fairyland sign, over the long, iron footbridge and under the iconic arched portico, there was no handshaking, of course, nor much nodding or even smiling.

The pandemic inspired people in New Jersey to put children’s rainbow drawings in their windows. Across the river, New Yorkers cheer out their windows each sunset to support their medical, delivery and other front-line workers.

Oaklanders come to their lake, much as they used to on nice weekends, now every afternoon.

As I walked, I watched. Some seemed Stoic, a few cocky, many in a slight daze. Nevertheless, almost no one dodged my gaze. We seemed to be deciding something. It seemed like we wanted to know: Will you work with me to survive unprecedented hardship? Are you the people with whom I am willing to die?

Welcome to acknowledgement, if not love, in the time of Corona.

A week after the start of social distancing, Oaklanders were still bunching up at spots on Lake Merritt's circumnavigating path. photo: D. Blair

Before we came to Lake Merritt, of course, most of us had to come to Oakland.

Some of us came because Oakland is a sanctuary city, which doesn’t prosecute undocumented people. Some came because Oakland was recently rated the most multicultural city in the United States. Many came for cheaper housing.

Of course, some of us were so-called natives, descendants of the African Americans who came from Louisiana and Texas in the 1940s, or of the Okies who came from Oklahoma a decade before, or of the gold miners, bar girls and writers, who came from around the world and started settling in Oakland right after its 1852 founding.

Some of us were even First People, who are fairly well represented in Oakland with one percent of the population.

Actually, the figure is .9% for indigenous Americans, 15.9% Asians, 24.3% blacks, 27% Latins and 36.7% whites, according to the city's website.

But those details have become so February, 2020.

Of course, many places will be harder hit by the Covid-19 Pandemic than Oakland, which has gotten off lightly thus far. We will not escape, however, the impending Corona Collapse.

Always a fragile balancing act, Oakland’s economy will probably suffer severely. Plus, it will prove even more tragic to most Oaklanders, given the prosperity we were enjoying until one month ago.

Although that prosperity brought the scourges of gentrification and homelessness, Oakland just had its best decade since the 1940s. Except for those without homes—and even some of those folks, if a restaurant or cannabis company dropped off a good bag—we lived it up.

We enjoyed the new Oakland, the Oakland that didn’t roll up downtown at 10 pm; the Oakland fecund with fantastic food, drink and nightlife; the Oakland of every imaginable activist, ethnic organization and artist as well as entrepreneur, professional and programmer.

Almost a thousand businesses opened to serve the tens of thousands of new residents. The first Friday art crawl blew up 5000%, from 500 to 25,000 people, the murder rate plummeted.

Oakland's St. Columba Church memorializes those killed with a cross, bringing a thicket when it exceeds 100, although it has been below that since 2012. photo: D. Blair

Oakland endured 74 homicides in 2019, seven more than in 2018, which was our lowest year since 1999, but still below the decade-ago average of 105. Fifteen years ago, Oaklanders were apoplectic about kids getting gunned down in their streets. Now it's gentrification and homelessness.

Of course, Oakland has been inundated by an army of craft-beer-drinking, yoga-doing and bike-riding hipsters, who can be annoying en mass talking about their day. Meanwhile, its downtown has been clogged with cranes, whole parts of neighborhoods have been made over, and 17,000 single-family homes were—pre-Corona—on track for completion by 2024.

Of course, rents became untenable, driving people crazy and fueling the homeless crisis. Along with many sorrowful exits and evictions, however, there have been some successful rent strikes and occupies (notably the valiant women of Moms 4 Housing, who took up in a vacant West Oakland house and worked things out with the owner).

Oakland’s first homeless camps emerged in 2012, right after the Occupy Movement proved that camping on public property was viable. Although all West Coast cities experienced this phenomena, Oakland had extra. Indeed, some 5,000 Oaklanders, yet another one percent of its population, are living rough, sometimes in communities of over 100, according to officials (activists give higher numbers).

Of course, Oakland responded as creatively as conceivable within its limited means. It issued rent vouchers for houses in suburbia as well as in town; it subsidized low-income units and charged developers “impact fees,” although it failed to pursue them properly; and it came up with the cute but extremely limited Tuff Shed program (four settlements of twenty tiny, two-person dwellings with water, internet and social services).

Of course, in a city like Oakland, with severe underlying conditions, that was just a start.

Of course, Oakland was over 50% African American for almost fifty years. And the world-class musicians, artists, entrepreneurs and politicians who emerged dominated Oakland well into the 2000s. But in the last twenty years, almost half have been compelled to leave by rising rents, the need to sell the family home or the loss of a family member to violence.

Oakland's First Friday gallery crawl on Telegraph Ave is one long inter-social love fest. photo: D. Blair

Of course, few people recommend we return to 1990s Oakland, before mayors Jerry Brown and Ron Dellums—both famous politicians (one a four-term governor, the other a thirteen-term Congressperson from West Oakland)—endorsed efforts to build 10,000 and 100,000 units, respectively.

Oakland has 72 square miles but only 420,000 residents, a perfect number, both for America’s cannabis capital and to avoid overcrowding. Indeed, Oakland’s downtown is still sparsely populated, even at mid-day; the city has many empty lots and warehouses; and many neighborhoods are essentially suburbs.

Although Oakland is the perfect place to expand a creative old culture into an innovative and egalitarian new one, we must close our doors to the gentrifiers, according to many Oakland public intellectuals.

In 2018, Oakland filmmakers released two award-winning, nationally-known films: “Sorry to Bother You”, by the brilliant musician-turned-cineaste Boots Riley, and “Blindspotting” by the equally talented actor-rappers Daveed Diggs and Rafael Casal. In both films the villain was played by gentrification.

Meanwhile, Tommy Orange’s “There There”, the bestselling book of the same year, covered growing up Native American in Oakland, oppressed by white society.

Over my last 31 years in West Oakland, I have met the occasional colonialist—almost always a man, almost always white—but they are minimal, probably only about one percent of new immigrants. Evidently, Oakland's image, many regulations and anarchic population is not that attractive to rapacious capitalists.

Moreover: What can you do? Administer a buyer or renter personality test? Allowing the occasional exploitative son-of-a-bitch is simply the cost of freedom.

We all knew Oakland’s expansion was unsustainable, given the gentrification cancer but also the absence of infrastructure and the competition of so many different interests groups. But who could have imagined Oakland would crash so fast?

Where once an all-night diner fed the depressed or high, a yuppie high-rise replete with Target has taken over. photo: D. Blair

Of course, seclusionary respite will be salutary for global warming, hyper consumerism, health care—once we recover—and the poor planning of cities and energy grids.

Indeed, exhaust from Oakland’s large port, thousands of trucks and many freeways is way down, as are emergency rooms visits for asthma, gunshot wounds and heart attacks.

Sheltering in place reduces some stresses but aggravates others: spousal abuse, depression and drug use, always a big one in Oakland, now increased by being America's weed capital, sometimes called Smoakland.

Oakland has dodged the big pandemic bullet, however.

In mid-March, Covid-19 cases were doubling in Alameda County around every five days, already under the three days in “hot spots,” but now doubing is taking as long as thirteen days. Moreover, there are only 886 Corona cases, as I write on April 14th, with 23 mortalities, indicating about a 2.5% morbidity, a bit less than the 3.5% or much more elsewhere.

Presumably, as a famous African American city filled with social justice warriors, blacks won't suffer due to underlying conditions as egregiously as elsewhere. Indeed, I have great faith in Highland, our large public hospital, after my own many emergency room experiences.

Of course, Oakland has long experience with civil stress, from Highland's renown gunshot wound expertise to the anarchist riots of 2011, the marches against the killing of Oscar Grant by a cop in 2009 or the marches against murder in general in 2006 (when the annual rate hit 145, almost back to the 1992 record of 165).

Then there was the Oakland hills fire of 1991, which killed 25 people and incinerated a thousand homes. Not to forget the 1980s, with its crack and killing epidemics as well as earthquake.

Of course, Oakland is resourceful and resilient. Despite lacking the assets of mega-rich, boutique cities like San Francisco, Berkeley and Palo Alto, Oakland has powerful civic, religious, activist and artistic forces at its disposal.

As many of us seemed to realize, as we were walking around Lake Merritt: If Oakland is going to survive the Corona Collapse and get back to February, 2020, we’re going to have to grab a hold of each other, if only metaphorically, and shoot for the stars.

Despite inherent contradictions, societies need street sweepers and brain surgeons, rappers and violinists, immigrants fleeing oppression and those who are better endowed.

Artists liven up a street fair in Oakland. photo: D. Blair

Like its other challenges, Oakland will inevitably grow beyond its high rents, homelessness and gentrification grievance towards its perennial promise simply because:

Radical multiculturalism is the only way so many different groups can operated together as a city, while no society has achieved greatness through guilt or nostalgia.

Of course, multiculturalism is easy when you’re with the like-minded or -looking. But if we want to own the cutting edge, we have to elevate acceptance to extreme difference.

Perhaps the Corona Collapse will be a wake-up call. Perhaps a significant number of us will step out of our comfort zones and meet each other half way, to help the stranger as well as neighbors, family and friends.

Indeed, we might just get an ethical bounce. Moreover, if we can satisfy what will be an immense pent-up demand with a more innovative product, service or art, we could roar back over the next year or three even stronger.

Meanwhile, the Oaklanders walking around Lake Merritt keep increasing, as I could see on my most recent stroll, Tuesday, April 7th. The difference with March 26th is they're keeping better separation and about a fourth are masked.

Although authorities may shut Lake Merritt down at any time, as they have dozens of parks across the Bay Area—due to what they deem are social distancing scofflaws—they may be more tolerant at Lake Merritt, given it's so central to Oakland.

Meanwhile how can Oaklanders force multiply and share their radical multiculturalism?

One suggestion is “The Great Oak Journey: Oakland to Oklahoma.” This would be an art, music and film caravan from Oakland to Oklahoma, where some Oaklanders have roots, where the “Bob Dylan Archive” was established in 2016 at the University of Tulsa, and where we can find plenty of people very different than us.

If the Corona Collapse has relaxed its lethal grip by October, 2020—eight long months from February, 2020—it might be good to stretch both our legs and our comfort zones and put our bodies where our mouths are in one of history's most tipping-point elections.

Until then, however, all Oaklanders should keep walking around the lake—appropriately distanced and masked, of course (for more photos of the lake, go here).

Doniphan Blair is a writer, film magazine publisher, designer, musician and filmmaker ('Our Holocaust Vacation'), who can be reached Posted on Apr 13, 2020 - 07:52 AM