Rise East Unlocks $100 Million to Reimagine East Oakland

Rise East did it.

In 2023, Rise East — anchored by a collective of nonprofits known as the 40×40 Council — received a $50 million grant from Blue Meridian Partners, a national philanthropic organization. But there was a catch: The money could only be unlocked if Rise East raised $50 million from local donors.

On the Thursday episode of Forum, Rise East formally announced it had surpassed the goal. The work of investing $100 million in East Oakland to drive systemic change — with a focus on education, public safety and housing — has already begun.

What we’re talking about is a 40-square-block area — roughly from Interstate 580 to the San Francisco Bay and from Seminary Avenue to the San Leandro border — that has the densest concentration of Black people in Oakland. It’s where our shared history of disinvestment in Black communities can’t hide.

Rise East has a 10-year plan to address decades of harm. And it’s East Oakland natives who are leading the effort with hopes of keeping Black families in the neighborhood while encouraging the return of those displaced by economic barriers and systemic disinvestment.

Carolyn Johnson, CEO of the Black Cultural Zone, which, among other things, addresses the displacement of Black People and Black businesses in Oakland, emphasizes the need for affordable housing and job creation. For a community to exist and thrive, there has to be a place reserved for the community.

“There hasn’t been an effort like this that actually has the voices of folks who are born and raised in the area to be a part of the conversation,” Johnson told my colleague Brian Watt in November. “My vision is to see commercial corridors that are thriving, that are vibrant, that are filled with cultural artisans, makers.”

The Liberation Park project, a formerly abandoned lot that has been converted into a cultural hub, and the 8321 International Welcome Center are key Rise East initiatives. Johnson, who grew up in East Oakland, said Rise East is focused on healing and strengthening the Black community.

“If we don’t hold ‘place,’ we won’t be here,” she said. “So real estate is an important part, and really giving people opportunities to build economic wealth is critical.”

The $100 million is an investment in the health, safety and prosperity of East Oakland. It’s not enough to cure systemic inequities, but it can change the fortunes of a neighborhood and city.

The $100 million experiment offers a glimpse of what reparations could look like — not as a payout, but as an investment in public safety, a response to the decades of mass incarceration that undermined a generation of Black and brown families and destabilized their communities. Ballooning police budgets won’t solve what that kind of harm has done.

Oakland residents deserve hope that doesn’t hinge on an election. Oakland is the birthplace and home of much of the Bay Area’s culture. Just ask the people rooted there; the people determined to build the future they want to see. For KQED, Olivia Cruz Mayeda chronicled how the $100 million investment could bring its long-time residents relief in Deep Down, a five-part Instagram video series.

Deep Down captured the beauty and realness of East Oakland, as well as the artists, business owners, community leaders and residents who dream of a better future. The series centered East Oakland’s cultural intersections — Black, Japanese, Filipino, Indigenous and Latino families living next to each other — that cracked under the weight of history.

For a November 2023 Political Breakdown newsletter, I wrote about the disinvestment in East Oakland that began when the General Motors assembly plant closed and moved to Fremont in 1963. The closure started an exodus of resources, and white residents fled the city for the suburbs, attracted by low-interest housing loans and newly-built highways that made it easier to commute to work in downtown Oakland, San Francisco or the South Bay.

Black neighborhoods in Oakland were bulldozed to make room for the highways. Urban renewal, redlining and police violence contributed to East Oakland’s decline. Predatory check-cashing stores replaced banks. The one-two punch of the foreclosure crisis and the Great Recession crushed Black homeowners. Between 2007 and 2011, more than 10,500 Oakland homes were foreclosed.

Rise East plans to focus on investments in education, community safety, health care, affordable housing and boosting the local economy — you know, the areas that simply can’t be addressed through a tough-on-crime approach. The decade-long, community-led effort will be driven by local nonprofits and leaders rooted in East Oakland.

When I talked to Selena Wilson, CEO of the East Oakland Youth Development Center, for the Political Breakdown newsletter, she told me Rise East would succeed in raising $50 million. When we talked earlier this week, we reflected on how much Oakland — and the country — has changed in less than two years.

Oakland is in a budget crisis — and it could get worse. Same with the school district. Federal dollars are drying up, and the cuts are coming fast. Philanthropy, once eager in the wake of George Floyd’s murder five years ago, is stepping back — cautious now, quiet.

DEI has become a dirty word in some circles, an easy target for people who’ve stopped pretending to care about systemic inequality. And queer and trans people are being demonized — their existence politicized, their rights rolled back, their humanity debated like policy.

“The marginalized communities that we’re centering in this work are literally under attack in a different way, and so in that way the need has become even greater,” Wilson, an East Oakland native, said. “It’s kind of one of those two steps forward, three steps back, but we shall persist.”

We’re witnessing the renaissance of East Oakland.

“We are undeterred. We are not discouraged. We are lionized, if anything, to triple down,” Wilson said.