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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cem>Updated 11:15 a.m. Tuesday\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This article was \u003ca href=\"https://publichealthwatch.org/2025/03/18/california-metal-shredding-lead-waste/\">originally published\u003c/a> by \u003ca href=\"https://publichealthwatch.org/\">\u003cem>Public Health Watch\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>, a nonprofit investigative news organization. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The engine from Oakland Fire Department’s Station Number 2 had rolled out to \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11958816/alameda-county-das-office-wants-your-help-investigating-schnitzer-steel-fire\">Schnitzer Steel\u003c/a> before, but this call was different.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It wasn’t the typical smoldering nugget of debris. Instead, smoke was billowing from a massive pile of scrap as flames shot outward from an orange glow deep within.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lt. Eduardo Ibarra was on that engine, the first to respond to the metal shredder’s bayside yard that night in August 2023. He guessed the burning pile was close to the size of a football field, 50 to 70 feet high in places.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We knew that we were gonna be there for a long time,” Ibarra told an Alameda County criminal grand jury, according to a transcript of the proceedings obtained by Public Health Watch.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The glowing core — the seat, the origin of the fire — proved hard to reach, with the scrap piled up near the back fence. Fire crews struggled to maneuver their trucks and hoses around the mound, and it soon became clear that something inside was volatile.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hours after the first fire truck arrived, repeated explosions sent hot metal sizzling through the air. At one point, an oval piece of metal about two feet long and four feet wide flew over the heads of Ibarra and his crew, landing on a discarded Bay Area Rapid Transit car, where it burned through the roof and started another fire.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12031598\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-12031598\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/Ibarra-800x1066.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"1066\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/Ibarra-800x1066.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/Ibarra-1020x1360.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/Ibarra-160x213.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/Ibarra-1152x1536.jpg 1152w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/Ibarra-1536x2048.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/Ibarra-scaled.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Lt. Eduardo Ibarra can see the Schnitzer Steel facility from Oakland Fire Department Station 2, which took the call to respond to a fire in 2023. \u003ccite>(Molly Peterson/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“The explosions [are] not something that we deal with all the time,” Ibarra later told Public Health Watch. “We do deal with explosions from, like propane tanks and things like that, RV fires and things of that nature. But we never deal with explosions of this caliber on a regular basis.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ibarra’s sworn testimony and the testimony of others recorded in the 2,700-page grand jury transcript provide new details about the fire and its aftermath.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Public Health Watch also reviewed hundreds of pages of additional documents obtained under the California Public Records Act that recounted what state and local regulators have done — and what they haven’t — to keep the public safe over the years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The new details raise questions about California’s oversight of the metal shredding industry and the potential health hazards posed by the toxic and airborne metals and other pollutants that drift off the property.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>About 23,000 people live in West Oakland within a mile of the Schnitzer site, and thousands more live downwind.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The company, which has since been renamed Radius Recycling, and two employees were later charged with up to 10 separate environmental felonies and misdemeanors.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The charges include felony violations of the state’s health and safety code between 2021 and 2023, as well as conspiracy to destroy evidence, reckless handling of hazardous waste and negligently emitting air contaminants. The company and both employees pleaded not guilty in December.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Radius Recycling did not respond to requests for comment from Public Health Watch, before the article published, but the company has defended its business and the metal shredding industry as a way to produce steel — a construction staple — with a small or neutral carbon footprint that can help mitigate climate change and meet regulatory requirements for greener building.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On Tuesday, after the story published, the company issued a statement to Public Health Watch via email, complaining that allegations raised in the story, based on grand jury testimony and multiple other sources, were false.[aside postID=news_11996994 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/07/012_KQED_SchnitzerSteelPortofOakland_03082022_qed-1020x679.jpg']“Radius Recycling remains committed to safety, environmental compliance, and transparency,” according to the statement from Eric Potashner, the chief sustainability officer. “Following the fire at our Oakland facility, we worked closely with the District Attorney’s Office and multiple regulatory agencies — including the California Department of Toxic Substances Control and the Bay Area Air Quality Management District — who were on-site immediately.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Our operations follow strict environmental regulations, and we remain fully confident that the facts will demonstrate Radius Recycling’s continued prioritization of public safety and compliance with the law,” Potashner said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The statement also challenged some of the testimony presented to the grand jury that later issued the indictments, saying the company had alerted officials it would immediately shred the evidence from the fire and that no one objected.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“As part of standard fire prevention protocol, we proactively informed regulators that we would begin shredding the burned material that day to eliminate any risk of reignition. No agency or regulator objected to this process,” according to the statement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then-District Attorney Pamela Price called the criminal charges “historic.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We believe Radius has often shrugged off the regulations when it was convenient to them, treating minor administrative penalties and fines as the cost of doing business,” Price said at the time the indictment was handed down.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Regulators, it appears, also fell down on the job.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12031603\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12031603\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/PHW-Photo-3.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1500\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/PHW-Photo-3.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/PHW-Photo-3-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/PHW-Photo-3-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/PHW-Photo-3-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/PHW-Photo-3-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/PHW-Photo-3-1920x1440.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">6231 Schnitzer Steel workers use cranes to pull metal out of the smoky mound after a fire started deep in a pile of scrap on Aug. 9, 2023. \u003ccite>(Courtesy Oakland Fire Department)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Oversight of the metal shredding industry has repeatedly faltered. Over the years, the state has granted exemptions from a key rule, missed a deadline for drafting new regulations and avoided enforcement of existing laws, either through lack of resources or lack of effort.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Along the way, decades of poorly coordinated efforts among a host of public agencies have enabled — and in some cases exacerbated — problems across the industry, Public Health Watch learned.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s multiple agencies in charge of making sure industry complies with relevant laws, but these agencies have failed to actually do the job of enforcing those laws,” said Karen Chen, an attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council, which has filed friend-of-the-court briefs in support of stricter enforcement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“In the meantime, real people suffer irreversible health harms while [the state Department of Toxic Substances Control] waits to truly do its job and enforce the hazardous waste control law,” Chen said. “In turn, metal shredders get to skirt regulations in order to make a buck.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Read the full story at \u003ca href=\"https://publichealthwatch.org/2025/03/18/california-metal-shredding-lead-waste/\">Public Health Watch\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We knew that we were gonna be there for a long time,” Ibarra told an Alameda County criminal grand jury, according to a transcript of the proceedings obtained by Public Health Watch.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The glowing core — the seat, the origin of the fire — proved hard to reach, with the scrap piled up near the back fence. Fire crews struggled to maneuver their trucks and hoses around the mound, and it soon became clear that something inside was volatile.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hours after the first fire truck arrived, repeated explosions sent hot metal sizzling through the air. At one point, an oval piece of metal about two feet long and four feet wide flew over the heads of Ibarra and his crew, landing on a discarded Bay Area Rapid Transit car, where it burned through the roof and started another fire.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12031598\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-12031598\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/Ibarra-800x1066.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"1066\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/Ibarra-800x1066.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/Ibarra-1020x1360.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/Ibarra-160x213.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/Ibarra-1152x1536.jpg 1152w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/Ibarra-1536x2048.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/Ibarra-scaled.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Lt. Eduardo Ibarra can see the Schnitzer Steel facility from Oakland Fire Department Station 2, which took the call to respond to a fire in 2023. \u003ccite>(Molly Peterson/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“The explosions [are] not something that we deal with all the time,” Ibarra later told Public Health Watch. “We do deal with explosions from, like propane tanks and things like that, RV fires and things of that nature. But we never deal with explosions of this caliber on a regular basis.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ibarra’s sworn testimony and the testimony of others recorded in the 2,700-page grand jury transcript provide new details about the fire and its aftermath.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Public Health Watch also reviewed hundreds of pages of additional documents obtained under the California Public Records Act that recounted what state and local regulators have done — and what they haven’t — to keep the public safe over the years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The new details raise questions about California’s oversight of the metal shredding industry and the potential health hazards posed by the toxic and airborne metals and other pollutants that drift off the property.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>About 23,000 people live in West Oakland within a mile of the Schnitzer site, and thousands more live downwind.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The company, which has since been renamed Radius Recycling, and two employees were later charged with up to 10 separate environmental felonies and misdemeanors.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The charges include felony violations of the state’s health and safety code between 2021 and 2023, as well as conspiracy to destroy evidence, reckless handling of hazardous waste and negligently emitting air contaminants. The company and both employees pleaded not guilty in December.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Radius Recycling did not respond to requests for comment from Public Health Watch, before the article published, but the company has defended its business and the metal shredding industry as a way to produce steel — a construction staple — with a small or neutral carbon footprint that can help mitigate climate change and meet regulatory requirements for greener building.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On Tuesday, after the story published, the company issued a statement to Public Health Watch via email, complaining that allegations raised in the story, based on grand jury testimony and multiple other sources, were false.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>“Radius Recycling remains committed to safety, environmental compliance, and transparency,” according to the statement from Eric Potashner, the chief sustainability officer. “Following the fire at our Oakland facility, we worked closely with the District Attorney’s Office and multiple regulatory agencies — including the California Department of Toxic Substances Control and the Bay Area Air Quality Management District — who were on-site immediately.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Our operations follow strict environmental regulations, and we remain fully confident that the facts will demonstrate Radius Recycling’s continued prioritization of public safety and compliance with the law,” Potashner said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The statement also challenged some of the testimony presented to the grand jury that later issued the indictments, saying the company had alerted officials it would immediately shred the evidence from the fire and that no one objected.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“As part of standard fire prevention protocol, we proactively informed regulators that we would begin shredding the burned material that day to eliminate any risk of reignition. No agency or regulator objected to this process,” according to the statement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then-District Attorney Pamela Price called the criminal charges “historic.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We believe Radius has often shrugged off the regulations when it was convenient to them, treating minor administrative penalties and fines as the cost of doing business,” Price said at the time the indictment was handed down.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Regulators, it appears, also fell down on the job.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12031603\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12031603\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/PHW-Photo-3.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1500\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/PHW-Photo-3.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/PHW-Photo-3-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/PHW-Photo-3-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/PHW-Photo-3-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/PHW-Photo-3-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/PHW-Photo-3-1920x1440.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">6231 Schnitzer Steel workers use cranes to pull metal out of the smoky mound after a fire started deep in a pile of scrap on Aug. 9, 2023. \u003ccite>(Courtesy Oakland Fire Department)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Oversight of the metal shredding industry has repeatedly faltered. Over the years, the state has granted exemptions from a key rule, missed a deadline for drafting new regulations and avoided enforcement of existing laws, either through lack of resources or lack of effort.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Along the way, decades of poorly coordinated efforts among a host of public agencies have enabled — and in some cases exacerbated — problems across the industry, Public Health Watch learned.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s multiple agencies in charge of making sure industry complies with relevant laws, but these agencies have failed to actually do the job of enforcing those laws,” said Karen Chen, an attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council, which has filed friend-of-the-court briefs in support of stricter enforcement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“In the meantime, real people suffer irreversible health harms while [the state Department of Toxic Substances Control] waits to truly do its job and enforce the hazardous waste control law,” Chen said. “In turn, metal shredders get to skirt regulations in order to make a buck.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Read the full story at \u003ca href=\"https://publichealthwatch.org/2025/03/18/california-metal-shredding-lead-waste/\">Public Health Watch\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"slug": "how-oaklands-16th-street-train-station-helped-build-west-oakland-and-the-modern-civil-rights-movement",
"title": "How Oakland's 16th Street Train Station Helped Build West Oakland and the Modern Civil Rights Movement",
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"headTitle": "How Oakland’s 16th Street Train Station Helped Build West Oakland and the Modern Civil Rights Movement | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">\u003ci>View the full episode transcript. \u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003cem>This story was first published on April 14, 2022, and updated on Feb. 13, 2025.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If you’re in Oakland, take 16th Street west from downtown like you’re heading to the freeway. As you travel, single-family homes will give way to vacant lots, industrial warehouses and shiny new condominiums. Pretty soon you’ll see the 880 freeway roaring above you. You’ve hit a dead end, and you’ll be staring up at Oakland’s 16th Street Station.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s a massive, 40-foot-high stone structure covered in terra-cotta tiles. Designed in the Beaux Arts style, it’s elegant, with three large arched windows over the main door. There’s a wide parking lot, an old control tower and what looks like the skeleton of an elevated train line.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[baycuriouspodcastinfo]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For all its grandeur, it clearly has been left to the slow decay of time. Local graffiti artists have covered its once bright walls, the perimeter is encircled by cyclone fencing and weeds grow everywhere.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It definitely could have been cared for better,” says Tadd Williams, our question asker. He drives by the station on 880 every day and often wonders about the lives it has lived. “What’s the deal with the 16th Street station?” he wanted to know.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As it happens, the 16th Street station played a crucial role in the Bay Area’s transportation infrastructure during the golden age of rail travel, helped establish a working-class Black community in West Oakland and was a major organizing force behind America’s first Black union.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>The golden age of rail travel\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The 16th Street station opened in 1912. Trains were the way to get around, and Oakland soon became a major hub for the Southern Pacific Railroad, which operated a rail yard there. In the decades following its opening, the station boomed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11910937\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11910937\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/Busy_scene_on_the_Southern_Pacific_RR_Oakland_Pier_San_Francisco_CJ_Allen_Steel_Highway_1928-800x479.jpeg\" alt=\"Black and white photo of multiple rail lines and trains exiting a busy train station.\" width=\"800\" height=\"479\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/Busy_scene_on_the_Southern_Pacific_RR_Oakland_Pier_San_Francisco_CJ_Allen_Steel_Highway_1928-800x479.jpeg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/Busy_scene_on_the_Southern_Pacific_RR_Oakland_Pier_San_Francisco_CJ_Allen_Steel_Highway_1928-160x96.jpeg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/Busy_scene_on_the_Southern_Pacific_RR_Oakland_Pier_San_Francisco_CJ_Allen_Steel_Highway_1928.jpeg 803w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Southern Pacific lines approaching Oakland Pier Terminal in 1928. \u003ccite>(\u003ca href=\"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c6/Busy_scene_on_the_Southern_Pacific_RR%2C_Oakland_Pier%2C_San_Francisco_%28CJ_Allen%2C_Steel_Highway%2C_1928%29.jpg\">Wikimedia Commons\u003c/a>)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“It was like an airport is today,” said Mitchell Schwarzer, a professor at California College of the Arts and author of the book “\u003ca href=\"https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520391536/hella-town\">Hella Town: Oakland’s History of Development and Disruption\u003c/a>.” “Back in the day, there would have been 50 or more trains coming into the station from long distances every day.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hundreds of interurban trains would pass through from all over the East Bay, as would hundreds more street cars. Some trains ran on the first elevated train tracks to be constructed west of the Mississippi.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Bay Bridge wasn’t constructed until 1936, so for many years the 16th Street station was a passthrough for travelers headed to San Francisco. Trains took passengers out onto “\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXbicSxD0_g\">moles\u003c/a>” — essentially, wooden piers built far out into the bay. Riders then would transfer to a ferry for the final leg of their journey.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11910936\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1600px\">\u003ca href=\"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Key_Route_Pier_postcard_(3).jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11910936\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/Key_Route_Pier_postcard_3.jpeg\" alt=\"A color drawing shows ferries and other boats out in the Bay with a long stretch of rail tracks connecting back to the mainland.\" width=\"1600\" height=\"1002\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/Key_Route_Pier_postcard_3.jpeg 1600w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/Key_Route_Pier_postcard_3-800x501.jpeg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/Key_Route_Pier_postcard_3-1020x639.jpeg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/Key_Route_Pier_postcard_3-160x100.jpeg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/Key_Route_Pier_postcard_3-1536x962.jpeg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Postcard circa 1915-1930: “The Key Route Pier: San Francisco-Oakland-Berkeley, Cal.” \u003ccite>(\u003ca href=\"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Key_Route_Pier_postcard_(3).jpg\">Wikimedia Commons\u003c/a>)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Perhaps even more surprising, two lanes of traffic on the lower deck of the Bay Bridge were once devoted to rail travel. From 1936, the year the Bay Bridge opened, until 1941, riders could board a train at 16th Street station and take it across the bridge into San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Southern Pacific Railroad was a major employer in Oakland, and workers migrated from all over the country to live and work in West Oakland near the station.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Levy Laird arrived in Oakland in the 1920s, and found a job working as a cook on trains. Like many Black people at the time, he was looking for a better life away from the Jim Crow South. The first steps of this new life were into Oakland’s 16th Street Station.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Oakland was a golden doorway to a new life,” said Alan Laird, Levy’s son. “When the doors opened up, and the passengers were departing the train, the engine would let off this last blast of steam. It was like a sigh of relief, like hope is here, we made it, and now we are in a new home.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Pullman car porters make their mark on West Oakland\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Cross-country rail travel could be long, harsh and uncomfortable. So, it was only a matter of time until companies started catering to the wealthy who wanted to travel in style. The Pullman Palace Car Company was known for its luxury sleeping cars, like hotels on wheels.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11910920\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2288px\">\u003ca href=\"https://lccn.loc.gov/2012649450\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11910920\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/SleepingCar.png\" alt=\"Black and white photo of a woman in early 20th century clothing reading while lying down in a sleeping birth on a train. A small hammock for belongings hands abvoe her.\" width=\"2288\" height=\"858\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/SleepingCar.png 2288w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/SleepingCar-800x300.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/SleepingCar-1020x383.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/SleepingCar-160x60.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/SleepingCar-1536x576.png 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/SleepingCar-2048x768.png 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/SleepingCar-1920x720.png 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2288px) 100vw, 2288px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A woman reading in bed in a Pullman car berth with curtains up, circa 1905. \u003ccite>(\u003ca href=\"https://lccn.loc.gov/2012649450\">Geo. R. Lawrence Co./Library of Congress\u003c/a>)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Imagine travelers sitting on plush seats, chandeliers hanging from ceilings, windows with silk curtains and dark walnut woodwork. Travelers could get almost anything on a Pullman car, and it took an army of employees to deliver that experience.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Pullman employed maids, waiters and cooks to provide top-quality service. But the porters were the most renowned part of the operation. They would carry luggage, shine shoes and wait on passengers’ every need. The Pullman Palace Car Company hired almost exclusively Black men for these jobs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There was this racist idea of Blacks serving whites in a subsidiary role,” Schwarzer said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://interactive.wttw.com/a/chicago-stories-pullman-porters\">Pullman managers expected porters to work 20-hour shifts.\u003c/a> They were at the beck and call of passengers at any time, day or night. Many customers wouldn’t even call the porters by their given names, instead referring to them all as “George,” after the company’s founder, George Pullman.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Conditions didn’t improve over time. One report from 1935 found that the porters made just $0.278 per hour, whereas workers in manufacturing or federally funded New Deal projects made twice that. Yet despite the terrible working conditions, being a porter was considered a good job. It was one of the few opportunities Black people had to travel and earn a steady income.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11911065\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-11911065 size-medium\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/MS189_1319-800x1073.jpg\" alt=\"A very old and poor quality image shows a man wearing a pullman porters uniform holding 2 pieces of luggage at a train station.\" width=\"800\" height=\"1073\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/MS189_1319-800x1073.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/MS189_1319-1020x1368.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/MS189_1319-160x215.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/MS189_1319-1145x1536.jpg 1145w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/MS189_1319.jpg 1267w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Clinton Jones stands at a railroad station wearing a porter’s uniform and holding two pieces of luggage, circa 1920. \u003ccite>(Cottrell Laurence Dellums papers/African American Museum and Library at Oakland)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“It was a huge source of employment for Blacks around the country,” Schwarzer said. “The porters had a kind of role as ambassadors of information throughout the United States to Black communities.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.pbs.org/blackpress/news_bios/defender.html\">Porters often distributed the Chicago Defender\u003c/a> — the largest Black newspaper at the time — across the country, including to the American South, where the paper was banned in some places. The Defender helped fuel the Great Migration out of the South by informing people of opportunities elsewhere.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The porters also were talking to each other on their long trips, and organizing to take on the systemic racism in the railroad business. In 1925, the porters announced they wanted to form a union. It would come to be known as the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters — the first Black union in the country. It was based in Chicago.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“But the vice president, C.L. Dellums, was based in Oakland,” Schwarzer said. “So Oakland takes on a very large role within the brotherhood. It’s kind of the secondary headquarters of the brotherhood.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.britannica.com/topic/Brotherhood-of-Sleeping-Car-Porters\">The struggle to unionize was a long one, taking 12 years.\u003c/a> The Pullman company fired workers who tried to organize, and did everything they could to discourage the union. But in the end, the porters were successful, and Oakland played no small part.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11911063\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11911063\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/MS014_B12_F11_048-800x654.jpg\" alt=\"A photo shows three black men in suits and ties standing in front of a banner for the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters\" width=\"800\" height=\"654\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/MS014_B12_F11_048-800x654.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/MS014_B12_F11_048-1020x834.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/MS014_B12_F11_048-160x131.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/MS014_B12_F11_048.jpg 1252w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">From left, C.L. Dellums, vice president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters; A. Philip Randolph, president; and unidentified man, at the 28th anniversary of the union, in 1953. \u003ccite>(Cottrell Laurence Dellums papers/African American Museum and Library at Oakland)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“It’s widely reported that the branch that was the most steadfast, that had the largest membership, who supported ongoing union efforts, was the Oakland branch under C.L. Dellums,” Schwarzer said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters is credited with helping to establish the Black middle class in America, as well as the modern civil rights movement. \u003ca href=\"https://www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/a-philip-randolph-first-call-mow/\">In 1941, the porters threatened to march on Washington to protest employment discrimination.\u003c/a> This was more than 20 years before the March on Washington where Martin Luther King Jr. made his “I Have a Dream” speech.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=103880184#:~:text=Pullman%20Porters%20Helped%20Build%20Black%20Middle%20Class%20Porters%20combined%20their,for%20the%20civil%20rights%20movement.\">porter’s offspring\u003c/a> also made their mark on history. Former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown and former Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall both are descendants of Pullman porters. C.L. Dellums’s nephew, Ron Dellums, served both as the mayor of Oakland and a U.S. Representative of California in Congress.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If you look at Oakland’s history of civil rights activism, this is really the start,” Schwarzer said. “If you think about the Occupy movement in the 2010s, the Black Panthers in the ’60s and ’70s, or \u003ca href=\"https://moms4housing.org/\">Moms 4 Housing\u003c/a> now, it all goes back to the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The good railroad jobs offered at Oakland’s 16th Street Station, along with the nearby Army base, helped the community to thrive. West Oakland had a vibrant business district, swinging nightclubs and plenty of people who owned homes. Alan Laird remembers going to the porters’ union hall with his father. He looked up to the men there.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It was a vibration there,” Laird said. “It felt like I was getting vitamins from them. It was like I was a sponge receiving it all.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Redevelopment guts West Oakland\u003c/h2>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11910898\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11910898\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/LamarMcDaniel_16thStreetStationOakland_02162022-qut.jpg\" alt=\"An older Black man wearing an athletic jacket, necklace and white hat stands in the hall of an old building. Sunlight pores through a window behind him, spotlighting the floor.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/LamarMcDaniel_16thStreetStationOakland_02162022-qut.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/LamarMcDaniel_16thStreetStationOakland_02162022-qut-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/LamarMcDaniel_16thStreetStationOakland_02162022-qut-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/LamarMcDaniel_16thStreetStationOakland_02162022-qut-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/LamarMcDaniel_16thStreetStationOakland_02162022-qut-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Former Amtrak employee Lamar McDaniel poses for a portrait in the Main Hall of the 16th Street station in West Oakland on Feb. 16, 2022. McDaniel toured the station with KQED’s Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman and shared his memories on the podcast. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In the 1950s, Oakland leaders approved two major infrastructure projects that leveled hundreds of homes and businesses, displacing thousands of mostly Black West Oakland residents. In little more than a decade, the neighborhood suffered the construction of the Cypress viaduct (part of the 880 freeway), a huge regional post office, a BART line and several other “\u003ca href=\"https://www.oaklandca.gov/topics/oaklands-history-of-resistance-to-racism\">urban renewal\u003c/a>” projects.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s no place in the Bay Area that received more abuse than West Oakland,” Schwarzer said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Without a business district, the economy of West Oakland began to decline. At the same time, the rising popularity of the automobile made the 16th Street station less relevant. By the late 1980s, just a few trains a day stopped there. In 1989, the Loma Prieta earthquake badly damaged the structure, forcing it to close. The last train rolled past it in 1994.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Without regular visitors, people squatted inside the building and stripped its once immaculate interior of anything useful. The tracks themselves disappeared, dug up and sold for scrap, leaving the station disconnected from the world.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Instead of fixing the station’s aging structure, Amtrak opened two new stations serving the Oakland area: the Jack London Square station in 1994, and the Emeryville station in 1993. The 16th Street station and West Oakland’s prosperous past became a distant memory.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>What’s next for the station?\u003c/h2>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11910935\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11910935\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/Hall_16thStreetStationOakland_02162022-qut.jpg\" alt=\"A once grand hall stands dilapidated and empty. A stairway leads up to the left and light streams in through huge windows.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/Hall_16thStreetStationOakland_02162022-qut.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/Hall_16thStreetStationOakland_02162022-qut-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/Hall_16thStreetStationOakland_02162022-qut-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/Hall_16thStreetStationOakland_02162022-qut-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/Hall_16thStreetStationOakland_02162022-qut-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Light shines through windows in the main hall of the now abandoned 16th Street station in West Oakland on Feb. 16, 2022. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Nowadays, the station stands in a strange limbo. BRIDGE Housing, a large affordable housing nonprofit, bought the station in 2005. But after nearly two decades in their care, the station still stands vacant and in disrepair.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re not just a housing developer, we try to develop community,” said Jim Mather, chief investment officer for BRIDGE. “I think this was seen as something that could benefit the community and something that could help bring West Oakland back.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But it hasn’t gone according to plan. The building needs over $50 million dollars worth of seismic retrofitting and historic restoration. BRIDGE hoped to get help footing that massive bill from local redevelopment agencies, but the 2008 recession dashed those dreams.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11910897\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11910897\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/Disrepair_16thStreetStationOakland_02162022-qut.jpg\" alt=\"A close up of one wall shows the plaster is crumbling away and bricks can be seen underneath.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/Disrepair_16thStreetStationOakland_02162022-qut.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/Disrepair_16thStreetStationOakland_02162022-qut-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/Disrepair_16thStreetStationOakland_02162022-qut-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/Disrepair_16thStreetStationOakland_02162022-qut-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/Disrepair_16thStreetStationOakland_02162022-qut-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Plaster has crumbled to reveal brick in the Main Hall of 16th Street Station in West Oakland, Feb. 16, 2022. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“We’re on hold, trying to find the financing,” Mather said. “So if there are any billionaires listening who want a project, here it is.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>BRIDGE used to rent the station out for events. A few \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GZbaXdK8Js\">music videos\u003c/a> were shot there. But even those uses are a thing of the past. Pieces of the ceiling can fall without warning, Mather said, and the city of Oakland won’t grant BRIDGE permits anymore.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The liability is too high,” Mather said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some people want the station turned into a museum for the railroad and the porters; others want it to be an event space. Community advocates, historians and West Oaklanders who remember the building’s former glory don’t want any part of it torn down.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Whatever happens here, BRIDGE is going to recognize and honor the history behind the station and its significance to the African American community of Oakland,” Mather said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You may never hear a train pull into 16th Street Station again, but it’s possible the site could have a new beginning, just like the people who passed through it all those years ago.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Updates:\u003c/strong> The 16th Street Station was \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12024819/historic-landmark-status-boosts-push-restore-iconic-west-oakland-train-station\">added to the National Register of Historic Places on Jan. 21.\u003c/a> BRIDGE Housing sold the property to City Ventures, a housing developer based in San Francisco and Irvine, in 2022.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[baycuriousquestion]\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2 id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Bay Curious listener Tadd Williams often finds himself driving on the 880 freeway in West Oakland. There’s this one building that’s visible from the road that he’s always wondered about…\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Tadd Williams:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> It seemed like such a beautiful structure. I guess that was the first thing that kinda caught my eye. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s an impressive building, in a beaux arts style that looks stately and European. The front is dominated by three grand arched windows, positioned over the entrance. Everything is very symmetrical.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But the outside is routinely covered with graffiti, and this place is surrounded by a perimeter of chain link fencing … Because it’s been abandoned for more than 3 decades.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Tadd Williams:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> It’s something I’ve always seen from the freeway and I just wanted to understand more about its background, you know, its history, its purpose.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Turns out the building Tadd has been eyeing is the 16th street train station in West Oakland. It’s got a storied legacy that can hardly be overstated. It helped give rise to West Oakland’s Black community … and laid a foundation for activism in the town. But with all these accolades, why does it sit empty today? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">On today’s show, we go inside the once grand, now derelict 16th Street Station.This episode first ran on Bay Curious in 2022, but there’s been an exciting update. So we’re bringing it back to refresh your memory. Hang out at the end for what’s new. That’s all just ahead on Bay Curious. I’m Olivia Allen-Price. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>SPONSOR MESSAGE\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Question asker, Tadd Williams, sent us on a journey to learn about the impressive, and neglected, 16th Street Train Station in West Oakland. Reporter Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman found that for many coming to California, it was the end of the line. The opening scene in your next chapter …\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alan Laird:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Oakland was a golden doorway to a new life \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is Alan Laird, he was born in Oakland, but before he was born, his father made the journey from Mississippi to California.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alan Laird:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> And leaving the south. Um, Uh, brown paper bags and baskets worth of fried chicken and things just to make the journey. And chairs, chair cars that would not give sometimes and your back would ache and your rock and you think, and all the time about making it to that place.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It was an opportunity to start a\u003c/span> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">life away from the Jim Crow South. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alan Laird:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> When the doors opened up the engine led off this last blast of steam. Ahh. You almost hear a sigh of relief, like hope is here. We made it on time. We made it all the way through that. And now we are at home, a new home. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For many people, the first steps of this new life would be into the 16th street station. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alan Laird:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> And they stop and pause for a minute, getting off the train, gazing around, not knowing what to expect beyond those, uh, highly polished brass plated doors.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Laird’s father worked as a cook on the Southern Pacific Railroad. So Laird was there a lot in the 50’s when he was a boy.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alan Laird:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I remember the smell of the hot dogs and the hot peanuts and things from it, from the little snack shop there that had all the books that you could buy to read and…\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">He says the marble floors were so polished, you could see the reflection of the chandeliers when you looked down. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alan Laird:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> So I had a love affair with that station. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">(music bridge)\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> It was built in 1912, during the golden age of rail travel. For decades, the station was as busy as an airport is today. There would be \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">dozens of long distance trains\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> arriving every day.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alan Laird:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> “Now on train number track 22. That Shasta Daylight coming in, now arriving.” And depending on what train my father was on, it was extra exciting.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">(Music ends)\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Mitchell Schwarzer: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It was the grandest railroad station ever designed in the San Francisco Bay Area. That includes San Francisco, Oakland, and all the cities around. This was the big station. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That’s Mitchell Schwarzer, professor and author of the book \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“Hella Town: Oakland’s History of Development and Disruption.” \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">He says that the station was also home to a huge network of local trains and streetcars.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Mitchell Schwarzer: T\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">here would have been hundreds – 500 or more – electric interurban trains arriving from various parts of the East Bay. There would have been about 200 street cars arriving and departing every day as well.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Before the Bay Bridge was built you could take a train from 16th street station to something called the Mole. Essentially a pier that took trains out into the bay, to a terminal where people transferred to a ferry to get to San Francisco. Later, for about five years, you could even take a train across the lower deck of the Bay Bridge into San Francisco. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">(Music bridge)\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In the decades after the station was built, throughout the early 1900’s, you’d see all sorts of trains, but the most luxurious were Pullman Palace Cars. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Archival tape: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">By day or by night, Pullman offers complete rest and relaxation cleanliness, safety, and comfortable transportation for the American public.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">These trains were \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/traveling-style-and-comfort-pullman-sleeping-car-180949300/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">luxury sleeping cars\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, like hotels on wheels, designed for wealthy people to make the long transcontinental railroad trip in comfort. Imagine well-to-do travelers sitting on plush seats, chandeliers hanging from ceilings, windows with silk curtains and dark walnut woodwork. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Archival tape: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It takes a great army of men and women to maintain Pullman standards. The yards and shops storerooms and offices work smoothly day and night.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It was an operation. Pullman employed maids, waiters, and cooks to provide top quality service. But the porters were the most renowned part of the operation. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Archival tape: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And electric bell with which to summon the porter at any hour. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">They would carry luggage, shine shoes, and basically wait on passengers every need. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Archival tape: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">PORTER! PORTER!\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And the Pullman Palace Car company almost exclusively hired Black men for these jobs. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Mitchell Schwarzer: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So there was that kind of racist idea of Blacks serving whites in a subsidiary role. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">They were expected to work hard, 20 hour shifts. Many customers wouldn’t even call the porters by their name, they just referred to them as George, after the founder, George Pullman. Calling someone the name of their enslaver was a tradition carried over from slavery. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Mitchell Schwarzer: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But at the same time, it gave a great source of employment for Blacks around the country. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The combination of a steady income and the ability to travel around the country was almost unheard of for Black people at the time.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">(Music)\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Mitchell Schwarzer:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> So the porters have a kind of role as ambassadors of information, right throughout the United States to Black communities.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Porters were known for distributing the Chicago Defender, the largest Black newspaper at the time, across the country, including to the south, where the paper was banned in some places. The paper helped fuel The Great Migration out of the south by informing people of opportunities elsewhere.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Mitchell Schwarzer: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So they’re both, they have relatively well-paying jobs, stable jobs. They’re moving around the United States. And basically communicating to other Black communities cause they’re getting off and sleeping and then getting back on.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Because of the hard working conditions and the systemic racism, in 1925, the Porters announced they wanted to form a union. The first Black union in the country, called the Brotherhood of Sleepingcar Porters. They were based in Chicago\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Mitchell Schwarzer: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But the vice-president C.L. Dellums was based in Oakland. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">(Music)\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Mitchell Schwarzer: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So Oakland takes on a very large role within the brotherhood. You know, it’s kind of, it’s kind of what the secondary headquarters of the brotherhood.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But the struggle to unionize was a long one. It took 12 years. The Pullman company fired workers who tried to organize, and did everything they could to discourage the union. But in the end, the porters were successful, and Oakland played no small part. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Mitchell Schwarzer: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The branch that was the most steadfast, that had the largest membership who supported ongoing union efforts was the Oakland branch under C.L. Dellums.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The porters are credited with helping to found the Black middle class in America, as well as the modern civil rights movement. In 1941, they threaten a march on Washington to protest employment discrimination. This is more than 20 years before the March on Washington where Martin Luther King makes his “I have a dream” speech.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Schwarzer says the community organizing that continues in West Oakland today, groups like Moms 4 Housing, are part of a legacy started by the Brotherhood. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Mitchell Schwarzer: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">If you look at Oakland’s history of civil rights activism, this is really the kind of start, you know. You think about the occupy movement in the 2010s, and the Black panthers in the 60s and 70s. It all goes back to the brotherhood of sleeping car porters. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">These railroad jobs were the foundation for a neighborhood of black owned businesses, nightclubs, and homes in West Oakland. Alan Laird remembers going to the porters union hall with his father and seeing a flourishing community. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alan Laird: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So in that community, we had all our own businesses and finances. I remember my barber shop, Stovall Barber Shop, was right there on Seventh Street. It was vibrant. It was people walking on both sides of the street going and coming with shopping bags and different things.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">West Oakland, and the 16th Street Station, were thriving. But all that starts to change in the late 1950s. The construction of the 880 freeway and later, the BART line, demolished a lot of those West Oakland businesses. And as the economy of West Oakland begins to decline, so does the 16th street station. The golden age of railroads comes to an end. Cars and airplanes become more popular and all those streetcars and suburban trains ceased to exist. By the late 80’s, just a few trains a day stopped at 16th Street Station. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Alan Laird remembers seeing the station in disrepair.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alan Laird: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">When I pass by and it’s just a hulk, with a million memories, you know, the windowpanes looked as though they’d been in steady tears. And say, “Won’t, they notice me can’t they see me don’t they know who I was,” you know?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In 1989 the Loma Prieta Earthquake badly damaged the structure of the station, and it was closed. The last train rolled past it in 1994.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The station sat vacant and abandoned for 11 years. People squatted in it, covered it in graffiti, and stripped the interior. In 2005 it was bought by BRIDGE housing, an non-profit affordable housing developer. They wanted to turn the station into something the community could use, but like other redevelopment plans in West Oakland… \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jim Mather: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A lot of those plans have been derailed by at least two major recessions during that time. I mean, the dot com bust was one, then the big recession.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That’s Jim Mather, the Chief Investment Officer for BRIDGE. I met him outside the station. He says those recessions dried up a lot of the funding that the station needed. And the price tag for the restoration and seismic retrofitting the station needs is at least $50 million dollars. So the station is in limbo.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jim Mather: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We’re on hold. I mean, it’s really trying to find the financing. Any billionaires listening who want to want a project here, here it is. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Frankie Whitman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I like to say we’re looking for, uh, somebody with deep pockets who says, this is my legacy to Oakland.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Also here is, Frankie Whitman a consultant for BRIDGE.\u003c/span> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We’re going to go inside the station, for a chance to peek at some history most Oaklander’s never get to see. So I brought someone along who knows the station firsthand.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Recordings outside the station: \u003c/span>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cb>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Hey, nice to meet you, man.\u003c/span>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cb>Lamar MacDaniel: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Hey, Am I late?\u003c/span>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cb>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">No, you’re right on time. Perfect timing. So welcome back.\u003c/span>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cb>Lamar MacDaniel: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Alright alright\u003c/span>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cb>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">How’s it feel to be back? \u003c/span>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cb>Lamar MacDaniel: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Oh man, I just got a little chill.\u003c/span>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is Lamar MacDaniel. He started working out of the station in 1973. He’s 71 now. He walks a bit slowly, which he credits to working on the railroad.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lamar MacDaniel: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">By the time you leave the railroad, walking on the train, serving, waiting tables and taking all that rocking and rolling, You’d be wowed, you’ll feel like you’ve been in football game for the last 27 years. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">When he started, MacDaniel was trained by some of the last of the Pullman Porters to work on the railroads. He started as a waiter and worked his way up. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lamar MacDaniel: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And I was the one that got, you know, I got taught a lot. That’s how I ended up being a maitre’d, which was the job that a Black guy didn’t have during the Pullman days. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">He hasn’t been inside since the station was closed.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Sound of door being unlocked\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But today we get to go in.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Sound of everyone “wow” as they enter the station\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The inside is jaw dropping. The ceilings are 40 feet high, adorned with intricate plaster work. Golden light filters in through arched windows. MacDaniel remembers some of the same things that made Alan Laird’s eyes big as a kid …\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lamar MacDaniel: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">They used to have a guy over there that was shine shoes … and over in that corner was a snack stand. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But the grand clocks and chandeliers that Alan Laird told me about are gone. Somethings off.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Frankie Whitman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But you could even see here, even though it looks very distressed, it’s very evenly distressed.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Since BRIDGE has owned the station, they’ve rented it out to companies like HBO and Netflix for TV and movies, and those companies have left a lot of their sets behind. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Frankie Whitman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">All the wainscoting, the door treatment, the window treatment, the valances … those are not elevators cause there’s no second floor. All movie set. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">More than one music video has been filmed here as well. So in the same spot where porters once carried luggage, E-40 told us how to go dumb in the Tell Me When To Go Music video.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Clip from “Tell Me When To Go”\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Mumford and Son’s did a video here too, and it has hosted Burning Man inspired parties. But BRIDGE can’t even do that anymore. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Frankie Whitman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This, this, this is new\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Back in the main hall, Whitman points to a pile of debris on the floor. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>In the train station:\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Where do you think that fell from? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Jim Mather: \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Right up there. \u003c/span>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Wow. So the, the ceilings like actively crumbling, huh?\u003c/span>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Jim Mather: \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yes. Another reason we don’t have, I mean, it’s part of the liability thing. Why we not having events in here anymore.\u003c/span>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We walk out of the main hall, through a dark corridor, to the old baggage wing. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lamar MacDaniel:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I’m going to need my flashlight\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, it’s pretty dark here.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The baggage wing is thick with history. There’s an old scale for weighing luggage, and a large rolling door where passengers used to wait for their things. The first elevated tracks west of the Mississippi are directly over our heads. I walk with Lamar over to another small room. It’s the utility room, where the porters would hang out between shifts.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lamar MacDaniel:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> There would be luggage all over the place. Guys would be here, when there wasn’t a train to be ready to be serving. The red caps would just hang out, back here and shoot the breeze, tell jokes and all kinds of stuff. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Some people want the station turned into a museum for the railroad and the porters, others want it to be an event space. Jim Mather from Bridge. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jim Mather: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Whatever happens here, BRIDGE is going to recognize and honor the history behind the station and its significance to the African-American community of Oakland. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Just When the doors of the 16th Street Station will reopen again is unclear. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Sound of freeway\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">To complete the tour we walk out to the back of the station. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Where once there was the shore of the bay, there’s the 880 freeway. Instead of trains, semi’s run in and out of the Port of Oakland. There are no tracks connected to 16th Street Station anymore. They’ve been dug up and taken away. It’s reminiscent of how this station has been disconnected from Oakland, the building neglected, the history obscured. Alan Laird again.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lamar MacDaniel:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> It was like losing a friend, you know, but, you see the shadow of it right there and you want to run and tell people: “I remember when that was a palace! And that was filled with thriving hearts and minds and souls and energy and hope was waiting for you as you got off the train.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You’ll never hear a train pull into 16th Street Station again, but it’s still possible the station could have a new beginning, just like the people that passed through it all those years ago. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">(music bridge)\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> So, Azul, as we mentioned earlier this story first aired in 2022, and there have been some recent developments. What’s happening now?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So the big news is that the 16th Street Station has been added to the National Register of Historic Places. A non-profit group called the Oakland Heritage Alliance submitted the application for the station, which basically outlined the stations significance for three things; its importance to local transportation, its architectural significance, and its relation to C.L. Dellums, and that’s the labor organizer you heard about in this story. The station was one of the first places to be recognized for this newly created category within the register, that recognizes the history of African Americans in California. I spoke to Feleciai Favroth, whose the treasurer with the Oakland Heritage Alliance, about this, she said she was ecstatic.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Feleciai Favroth:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> This could be the key to make the station a viable rehab project. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Alliance is really hoping this will turn the tide in the battle to get the station repaired. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Historic sites make me think the building is like going to get a fancy plaque that has a little bit of history written on it. But what does historic designation mean practically?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So yes there is a lot of notoriety and national recognition that comes with being added to the register, but a really big thing that’s tangible is that it also opens the station up to a 20% federal income tax credit. And a developer could use that towards restoration of the station. This has actually worked in the Bay Area before. Like say, have you ever been to the Fox Theater in Oakland?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Oh yeah, I’ve seen some great shows there and I always marvel at the ceiling in that place …\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, well the Fox is on the National Register, and received a federal tax credit toward its rehabilitation, including that really nice ceiling. So advocates are hoping this will happen to the 16th Street Station as well. But again this is all still just theoretical. There’s no money that has been committed yet. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So it’s not like the station is suddenly saved necessarily…\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">No. There still aren’t any plans to restore the station itself. And another change is that BRIDGE Housing no longer owns the station, they sold it to City Ventures, a housing developer based in San Francisco and Irvine in 2022. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">City Ventures has submitted plans to the city of Oakland to build a 77-unit townhome-style development — called “Signal House” — on the area around the station, but there’s no plan to rehabilitate the station itself.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">To that end, City Ventures has hired a consulting group called OE Consulting to explore finding someone or some group to fund the rehabilitation of the station, separate from this housing project. They’re still trying to find someone to fund that. And even what the space could become is still open ended. Members of the Oakland Heritage Alliance have suggested a business incubator, or an events space, and something that highlights the history of the station, but as of now, those are all just ideas.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Alright. Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman, KQED Features Reporter – thank you.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You’re welcome.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">(Music bridge)\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> If you want to see some pictures of 16th Street Station, including some from our tour inside, head to BayCurious.org. We’ll drop a link in the show notes too.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Special thanks to Dan Brekke and Paul Lancour for their help on this episode.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This episode was made by Katrina Schwartz, Sebastian Miño-Bucheli, Brendan Willard and me, Olivia Allen-Price. Additional engineering from Christopher Beale.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Bay Curious is produced at member-supported KQED in San Francisco.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I’m Olivia Allen-Price. Have a good one!\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"title": "How Oakland's 16th Street Train Station Helped Build West Oakland and the Modern Civil Rights Movement | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">\u003ci>View the full episode transcript. \u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003cem>This story was first published on April 14, 2022, and updated on Feb. 13, 2025.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If you’re in Oakland, take 16th Street west from downtown like you’re heading to the freeway. As you travel, single-family homes will give way to vacant lots, industrial warehouses and shiny new condominiums. Pretty soon you’ll see the 880 freeway roaring above you. You’ve hit a dead end, and you’ll be staring up at Oakland’s 16th Street Station.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s a massive, 40-foot-high stone structure covered in terra-cotta tiles. Designed in the Beaux Arts style, it’s elegant, with three large arched windows over the main door. There’s a wide parking lot, an old control tower and what looks like the skeleton of an elevated train line.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003caside class=\"alignleft utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__bayCuriousPodcastShortcode__bayCurious\">\u003cimg src=https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/bayCuriousLogo.png alt=\"Bay Curious Podcast\" loading=\"lazy\" />\n \u003ca href=\"/news/series/baycurious\">Bay Curious\u003c/a> is a podcast that answers your questions about the Bay Area.\n Subscribe on \u003ca href=\"https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/bay-curious/id1172473406\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Apple Podcasts\u003c/a>,\n \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/podcasts/500557090/bay-curious\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">NPR One\u003c/a> or your favorite podcast platform.\u003c/aside>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For all its grandeur, it clearly has been left to the slow decay of time. Local graffiti artists have covered its once bright walls, the perimeter is encircled by cyclone fencing and weeds grow everywhere.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It definitely could have been cared for better,” says Tadd Williams, our question asker. He drives by the station on 880 every day and often wonders about the lives it has lived. “What’s the deal with the 16th Street station?” he wanted to know.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As it happens, the 16th Street station played a crucial role in the Bay Area’s transportation infrastructure during the golden age of rail travel, helped establish a working-class Black community in West Oakland and was a major organizing force behind America’s first Black union.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>The golden age of rail travel\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The 16th Street station opened in 1912. Trains were the way to get around, and Oakland soon became a major hub for the Southern Pacific Railroad, which operated a rail yard there. In the decades following its opening, the station boomed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11910937\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11910937\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/Busy_scene_on_the_Southern_Pacific_RR_Oakland_Pier_San_Francisco_CJ_Allen_Steel_Highway_1928-800x479.jpeg\" alt=\"Black and white photo of multiple rail lines and trains exiting a busy train station.\" width=\"800\" height=\"479\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/Busy_scene_on_the_Southern_Pacific_RR_Oakland_Pier_San_Francisco_CJ_Allen_Steel_Highway_1928-800x479.jpeg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/Busy_scene_on_the_Southern_Pacific_RR_Oakland_Pier_San_Francisco_CJ_Allen_Steel_Highway_1928-160x96.jpeg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/Busy_scene_on_the_Southern_Pacific_RR_Oakland_Pier_San_Francisco_CJ_Allen_Steel_Highway_1928.jpeg 803w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Southern Pacific lines approaching Oakland Pier Terminal in 1928. \u003ccite>(\u003ca href=\"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c6/Busy_scene_on_the_Southern_Pacific_RR%2C_Oakland_Pier%2C_San_Francisco_%28CJ_Allen%2C_Steel_Highway%2C_1928%29.jpg\">Wikimedia Commons\u003c/a>)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“It was like an airport is today,” said Mitchell Schwarzer, a professor at California College of the Arts and author of the book “\u003ca href=\"https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520391536/hella-town\">Hella Town: Oakland’s History of Development and Disruption\u003c/a>.” “Back in the day, there would have been 50 or more trains coming into the station from long distances every day.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hundreds of interurban trains would pass through from all over the East Bay, as would hundreds more street cars. Some trains ran on the first elevated train tracks to be constructed west of the Mississippi.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Bay Bridge wasn’t constructed until 1936, so for many years the 16th Street station was a passthrough for travelers headed to San Francisco. Trains took passengers out onto “\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXbicSxD0_g\">moles\u003c/a>” — essentially, wooden piers built far out into the bay. Riders then would transfer to a ferry for the final leg of their journey.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11910936\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1600px\">\u003ca href=\"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Key_Route_Pier_postcard_(3).jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11910936\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/Key_Route_Pier_postcard_3.jpeg\" alt=\"A color drawing shows ferries and other boats out in the Bay with a long stretch of rail tracks connecting back to the mainland.\" width=\"1600\" height=\"1002\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/Key_Route_Pier_postcard_3.jpeg 1600w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/Key_Route_Pier_postcard_3-800x501.jpeg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/Key_Route_Pier_postcard_3-1020x639.jpeg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/Key_Route_Pier_postcard_3-160x100.jpeg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/Key_Route_Pier_postcard_3-1536x962.jpeg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Postcard circa 1915-1930: “The Key Route Pier: San Francisco-Oakland-Berkeley, Cal.” \u003ccite>(\u003ca href=\"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Key_Route_Pier_postcard_(3).jpg\">Wikimedia Commons\u003c/a>)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Perhaps even more surprising, two lanes of traffic on the lower deck of the Bay Bridge were once devoted to rail travel. From 1936, the year the Bay Bridge opened, until 1941, riders could board a train at 16th Street station and take it across the bridge into San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Southern Pacific Railroad was a major employer in Oakland, and workers migrated from all over the country to live and work in West Oakland near the station.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Levy Laird arrived in Oakland in the 1920s, and found a job working as a cook on trains. Like many Black people at the time, he was looking for a better life away from the Jim Crow South. The first steps of this new life were into Oakland’s 16th Street Station.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Oakland was a golden doorway to a new life,” said Alan Laird, Levy’s son. “When the doors opened up, and the passengers were departing the train, the engine would let off this last blast of steam. It was like a sigh of relief, like hope is here, we made it, and now we are in a new home.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Pullman car porters make their mark on West Oakland\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Cross-country rail travel could be long, harsh and uncomfortable. So, it was only a matter of time until companies started catering to the wealthy who wanted to travel in style. The Pullman Palace Car Company was known for its luxury sleeping cars, like hotels on wheels.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11910920\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2288px\">\u003ca href=\"https://lccn.loc.gov/2012649450\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11910920\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/SleepingCar.png\" alt=\"Black and white photo of a woman in early 20th century clothing reading while lying down in a sleeping birth on a train. A small hammock for belongings hands abvoe her.\" width=\"2288\" height=\"858\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/SleepingCar.png 2288w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/SleepingCar-800x300.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/SleepingCar-1020x383.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/SleepingCar-160x60.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/SleepingCar-1536x576.png 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/SleepingCar-2048x768.png 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/SleepingCar-1920x720.png 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2288px) 100vw, 2288px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A woman reading in bed in a Pullman car berth with curtains up, circa 1905. \u003ccite>(\u003ca href=\"https://lccn.loc.gov/2012649450\">Geo. R. Lawrence Co./Library of Congress\u003c/a>)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Imagine travelers sitting on plush seats, chandeliers hanging from ceilings, windows with silk curtains and dark walnut woodwork. Travelers could get almost anything on a Pullman car, and it took an army of employees to deliver that experience.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Pullman employed maids, waiters and cooks to provide top-quality service. But the porters were the most renowned part of the operation. They would carry luggage, shine shoes and wait on passengers’ every need. The Pullman Palace Car Company hired almost exclusively Black men for these jobs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There was this racist idea of Blacks serving whites in a subsidiary role,” Schwarzer said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://interactive.wttw.com/a/chicago-stories-pullman-porters\">Pullman managers expected porters to work 20-hour shifts.\u003c/a> They were at the beck and call of passengers at any time, day or night. Many customers wouldn’t even call the porters by their given names, instead referring to them all as “George,” after the company’s founder, George Pullman.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Conditions didn’t improve over time. One report from 1935 found that the porters made just $0.278 per hour, whereas workers in manufacturing or federally funded New Deal projects made twice that. Yet despite the terrible working conditions, being a porter was considered a good job. It was one of the few opportunities Black people had to travel and earn a steady income.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11911065\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-11911065 size-medium\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/MS189_1319-800x1073.jpg\" alt=\"A very old and poor quality image shows a man wearing a pullman porters uniform holding 2 pieces of luggage at a train station.\" width=\"800\" height=\"1073\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/MS189_1319-800x1073.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/MS189_1319-1020x1368.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/MS189_1319-160x215.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/MS189_1319-1145x1536.jpg 1145w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/MS189_1319.jpg 1267w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Clinton Jones stands at a railroad station wearing a porter’s uniform and holding two pieces of luggage, circa 1920. \u003ccite>(Cottrell Laurence Dellums papers/African American Museum and Library at Oakland)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“It was a huge source of employment for Blacks around the country,” Schwarzer said. “The porters had a kind of role as ambassadors of information throughout the United States to Black communities.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.pbs.org/blackpress/news_bios/defender.html\">Porters often distributed the Chicago Defender\u003c/a> — the largest Black newspaper at the time — across the country, including to the American South, where the paper was banned in some places. The Defender helped fuel the Great Migration out of the South by informing people of opportunities elsewhere.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The porters also were talking to each other on their long trips, and organizing to take on the systemic racism in the railroad business. In 1925, the porters announced they wanted to form a union. It would come to be known as the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters — the first Black union in the country. It was based in Chicago.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“But the vice president, C.L. Dellums, was based in Oakland,” Schwarzer said. “So Oakland takes on a very large role within the brotherhood. It’s kind of the secondary headquarters of the brotherhood.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.britannica.com/topic/Brotherhood-of-Sleeping-Car-Porters\">The struggle to unionize was a long one, taking 12 years.\u003c/a> The Pullman company fired workers who tried to organize, and did everything they could to discourage the union. But in the end, the porters were successful, and Oakland played no small part.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11911063\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11911063\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/MS014_B12_F11_048-800x654.jpg\" alt=\"A photo shows three black men in suits and ties standing in front of a banner for the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters\" width=\"800\" height=\"654\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/MS014_B12_F11_048-800x654.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/MS014_B12_F11_048-1020x834.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/MS014_B12_F11_048-160x131.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/MS014_B12_F11_048.jpg 1252w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">From left, C.L. Dellums, vice president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters; A. Philip Randolph, president; and unidentified man, at the 28th anniversary of the union, in 1953. \u003ccite>(Cottrell Laurence Dellums papers/African American Museum and Library at Oakland)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“It’s widely reported that the branch that was the most steadfast, that had the largest membership, who supported ongoing union efforts, was the Oakland branch under C.L. Dellums,” Schwarzer said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters is credited with helping to establish the Black middle class in America, as well as the modern civil rights movement. \u003ca href=\"https://www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/a-philip-randolph-first-call-mow/\">In 1941, the porters threatened to march on Washington to protest employment discrimination.\u003c/a> This was more than 20 years before the March on Washington where Martin Luther King Jr. made his “I Have a Dream” speech.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=103880184#:~:text=Pullman%20Porters%20Helped%20Build%20Black%20Middle%20Class%20Porters%20combined%20their,for%20the%20civil%20rights%20movement.\">porter’s offspring\u003c/a> also made their mark on history. Former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown and former Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall both are descendants of Pullman porters. C.L. Dellums’s nephew, Ron Dellums, served both as the mayor of Oakland and a U.S. Representative of California in Congress.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If you look at Oakland’s history of civil rights activism, this is really the start,” Schwarzer said. “If you think about the Occupy movement in the 2010s, the Black Panthers in the ’60s and ’70s, or \u003ca href=\"https://moms4housing.org/\">Moms 4 Housing\u003c/a> now, it all goes back to the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The good railroad jobs offered at Oakland’s 16th Street Station, along with the nearby Army base, helped the community to thrive. West Oakland had a vibrant business district, swinging nightclubs and plenty of people who owned homes. Alan Laird remembers going to the porters’ union hall with his father. He looked up to the men there.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It was a vibration there,” Laird said. “It felt like I was getting vitamins from them. It was like I was a sponge receiving it all.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Redevelopment guts West Oakland\u003c/h2>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11910898\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11910898\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/LamarMcDaniel_16thStreetStationOakland_02162022-qut.jpg\" alt=\"An older Black man wearing an athletic jacket, necklace and white hat stands in the hall of an old building. Sunlight pores through a window behind him, spotlighting the floor.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/LamarMcDaniel_16thStreetStationOakland_02162022-qut.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/LamarMcDaniel_16thStreetStationOakland_02162022-qut-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/LamarMcDaniel_16thStreetStationOakland_02162022-qut-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/LamarMcDaniel_16thStreetStationOakland_02162022-qut-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/LamarMcDaniel_16thStreetStationOakland_02162022-qut-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Former Amtrak employee Lamar McDaniel poses for a portrait in the Main Hall of the 16th Street station in West Oakland on Feb. 16, 2022. McDaniel toured the station with KQED’s Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman and shared his memories on the podcast. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In the 1950s, Oakland leaders approved two major infrastructure projects that leveled hundreds of homes and businesses, displacing thousands of mostly Black West Oakland residents. In little more than a decade, the neighborhood suffered the construction of the Cypress viaduct (part of the 880 freeway), a huge regional post office, a BART line and several other “\u003ca href=\"https://www.oaklandca.gov/topics/oaklands-history-of-resistance-to-racism\">urban renewal\u003c/a>” projects.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s no place in the Bay Area that received more abuse than West Oakland,” Schwarzer said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Without a business district, the economy of West Oakland began to decline. At the same time, the rising popularity of the automobile made the 16th Street station less relevant. By the late 1980s, just a few trains a day stopped there. In 1989, the Loma Prieta earthquake badly damaged the structure, forcing it to close. The last train rolled past it in 1994.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Without regular visitors, people squatted inside the building and stripped its once immaculate interior of anything useful. The tracks themselves disappeared, dug up and sold for scrap, leaving the station disconnected from the world.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Instead of fixing the station’s aging structure, Amtrak opened two new stations serving the Oakland area: the Jack London Square station in 1994, and the Emeryville station in 1993. The 16th Street station and West Oakland’s prosperous past became a distant memory.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>What’s next for the station?\u003c/h2>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11910935\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11910935\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/Hall_16thStreetStationOakland_02162022-qut.jpg\" alt=\"A once grand hall stands dilapidated and empty. A stairway leads up to the left and light streams in through huge windows.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/Hall_16thStreetStationOakland_02162022-qut.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/Hall_16thStreetStationOakland_02162022-qut-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/Hall_16thStreetStationOakland_02162022-qut-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/Hall_16thStreetStationOakland_02162022-qut-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/Hall_16thStreetStationOakland_02162022-qut-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Light shines through windows in the main hall of the now abandoned 16th Street station in West Oakland on Feb. 16, 2022. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Nowadays, the station stands in a strange limbo. BRIDGE Housing, a large affordable housing nonprofit, bought the station in 2005. But after nearly two decades in their care, the station still stands vacant and in disrepair.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re not just a housing developer, we try to develop community,” said Jim Mather, chief investment officer for BRIDGE. “I think this was seen as something that could benefit the community and something that could help bring West Oakland back.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But it hasn’t gone according to plan. The building needs over $50 million dollars worth of seismic retrofitting and historic restoration. BRIDGE hoped to get help footing that massive bill from local redevelopment agencies, but the 2008 recession dashed those dreams.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11910897\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11910897\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/Disrepair_16thStreetStationOakland_02162022-qut.jpg\" alt=\"A close up of one wall shows the plaster is crumbling away and bricks can be seen underneath.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/Disrepair_16thStreetStationOakland_02162022-qut.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/Disrepair_16thStreetStationOakland_02162022-qut-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/Disrepair_16thStreetStationOakland_02162022-qut-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/Disrepair_16thStreetStationOakland_02162022-qut-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/Disrepair_16thStreetStationOakland_02162022-qut-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Plaster has crumbled to reveal brick in the Main Hall of 16th Street Station in West Oakland, Feb. 16, 2022. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“We’re on hold, trying to find the financing,” Mather said. “So if there are any billionaires listening who want a project, here it is.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>BRIDGE used to rent the station out for events. A few \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GZbaXdK8Js\">music videos\u003c/a> were shot there. But even those uses are a thing of the past. Pieces of the ceiling can fall without warning, Mather said, and the city of Oakland won’t grant BRIDGE permits anymore.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The liability is too high,” Mather said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some people want the station turned into a museum for the railroad and the porters; others want it to be an event space. Community advocates, historians and West Oaklanders who remember the building’s former glory don’t want any part of it torn down.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Whatever happens here, BRIDGE is going to recognize and honor the history behind the station and its significance to the African American community of Oakland,” Mather said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You may never hear a train pull into 16th Street Station again, but it’s possible the site could have a new beginning, just like the people who passed through it all those years ago.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Updates:\u003c/strong> The 16th Street Station was \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12024819/historic-landmark-status-boosts-push-restore-iconic-west-oakland-train-station\">added to the National Register of Historic Places on Jan. 21.\u003c/a> BRIDGE Housing sold the property to City Ventures, a housing developer based in San Francisco and Irvine, in 2022.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-content post-body\">\u003ch2 id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Bay Curious listener Tadd Williams often finds himself driving on the 880 freeway in West Oakland. There’s this one building that’s visible from the road that he’s always wondered about…\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Tadd Williams:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> It seemed like such a beautiful structure. I guess that was the first thing that kinda caught my eye. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s an impressive building, in a beaux arts style that looks stately and European. The front is dominated by three grand arched windows, positioned over the entrance. Everything is very symmetrical.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But the outside is routinely covered with graffiti, and this place is surrounded by a perimeter of chain link fencing … Because it’s been abandoned for more than 3 decades.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Tadd Williams:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> It’s something I’ve always seen from the freeway and I just wanted to understand more about its background, you know, its history, its purpose.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Turns out the building Tadd has been eyeing is the 16th street train station in West Oakland. It’s got a storied legacy that can hardly be overstated. It helped give rise to West Oakland’s Black community … and laid a foundation for activism in the town. But with all these accolades, why does it sit empty today? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">On today’s show, we go inside the once grand, now derelict 16th Street Station.This episode first ran on Bay Curious in 2022, but there’s been an exciting update. So we’re bringing it back to refresh your memory. Hang out at the end for what’s new. That’s all just ahead on Bay Curious. I’m Olivia Allen-Price. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>SPONSOR MESSAGE\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Question asker, Tadd Williams, sent us on a journey to learn about the impressive, and neglected, 16th Street Train Station in West Oakland. Reporter Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman found that for many coming to California, it was the end of the line. The opening scene in your next chapter …\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alan Laird:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Oakland was a golden doorway to a new life \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is Alan Laird, he was born in Oakland, but before he was born, his father made the journey from Mississippi to California.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alan Laird:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> And leaving the south. Um, Uh, brown paper bags and baskets worth of fried chicken and things just to make the journey. And chairs, chair cars that would not give sometimes and your back would ache and your rock and you think, and all the time about making it to that place.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It was an opportunity to start a\u003c/span> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">life away from the Jim Crow South. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alan Laird:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> When the doors opened up the engine led off this last blast of steam. Ahh. You almost hear a sigh of relief, like hope is here. We made it on time. We made it all the way through that. And now we are at home, a new home. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For many people, the first steps of this new life would be into the 16th street station. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alan Laird:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> And they stop and pause for a minute, getting off the train, gazing around, not knowing what to expect beyond those, uh, highly polished brass plated doors.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Laird’s father worked as a cook on the Southern Pacific Railroad. So Laird was there a lot in the 50’s when he was a boy.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alan Laird:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I remember the smell of the hot dogs and the hot peanuts and things from it, from the little snack shop there that had all the books that you could buy to read and…\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">He says the marble floors were so polished, you could see the reflection of the chandeliers when you looked down. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alan Laird:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> So I had a love affair with that station. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">(music bridge)\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> It was built in 1912, during the golden age of rail travel. For decades, the station was as busy as an airport is today. There would be \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">dozens of long distance trains\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> arriving every day.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alan Laird:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> “Now on train number track 22. That Shasta Daylight coming in, now arriving.” And depending on what train my father was on, it was extra exciting.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">(Music ends)\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Mitchell Schwarzer: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It was the grandest railroad station ever designed in the San Francisco Bay Area. That includes San Francisco, Oakland, and all the cities around. This was the big station. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That’s Mitchell Schwarzer, professor and author of the book \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“Hella Town: Oakland’s History of Development and Disruption.” \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">He says that the station was also home to a huge network of local trains and streetcars.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Mitchell Schwarzer: T\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">here would have been hundreds – 500 or more – electric interurban trains arriving from various parts of the East Bay. There would have been about 200 street cars arriving and departing every day as well.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Before the Bay Bridge was built you could take a train from 16th street station to something called the Mole. Essentially a pier that took trains out into the bay, to a terminal where people transferred to a ferry to get to San Francisco. Later, for about five years, you could even take a train across the lower deck of the Bay Bridge into San Francisco. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">(Music bridge)\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In the decades after the station was built, throughout the early 1900’s, you’d see all sorts of trains, but the most luxurious were Pullman Palace Cars. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Archival tape: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">By day or by night, Pullman offers complete rest and relaxation cleanliness, safety, and comfortable transportation for the American public.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">These trains were \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/traveling-style-and-comfort-pullman-sleeping-car-180949300/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">luxury sleeping cars\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, like hotels on wheels, designed for wealthy people to make the long transcontinental railroad trip in comfort. Imagine well-to-do travelers sitting on plush seats, chandeliers hanging from ceilings, windows with silk curtains and dark walnut woodwork. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Archival tape: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It takes a great army of men and women to maintain Pullman standards. The yards and shops storerooms and offices work smoothly day and night.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It was an operation. Pullman employed maids, waiters, and cooks to provide top quality service. But the porters were the most renowned part of the operation. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Archival tape: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And electric bell with which to summon the porter at any hour. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">They would carry luggage, shine shoes, and basically wait on passengers every need. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Archival tape: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">PORTER! PORTER!\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And the Pullman Palace Car company almost exclusively hired Black men for these jobs. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Mitchell Schwarzer: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So there was that kind of racist idea of Blacks serving whites in a subsidiary role. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">They were expected to work hard, 20 hour shifts. Many customers wouldn’t even call the porters by their name, they just referred to them as George, after the founder, George Pullman. Calling someone the name of their enslaver was a tradition carried over from slavery. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Mitchell Schwarzer: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But at the same time, it gave a great source of employment for Blacks around the country. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The combination of a steady income and the ability to travel around the country was almost unheard of for Black people at the time.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">(Music)\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Mitchell Schwarzer:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> So the porters have a kind of role as ambassadors of information, right throughout the United States to Black communities.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Porters were known for distributing the Chicago Defender, the largest Black newspaper at the time, across the country, including to the south, where the paper was banned in some places. The paper helped fuel The Great Migration out of the south by informing people of opportunities elsewhere.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Mitchell Schwarzer: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So they’re both, they have relatively well-paying jobs, stable jobs. They’re moving around the United States. And basically communicating to other Black communities cause they’re getting off and sleeping and then getting back on.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Because of the hard working conditions and the systemic racism, in 1925, the Porters announced they wanted to form a union. The first Black union in the country, called the Brotherhood of Sleepingcar Porters. They were based in Chicago\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Mitchell Schwarzer: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But the vice-president C.L. Dellums was based in Oakland. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">(Music)\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Mitchell Schwarzer: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So Oakland takes on a very large role within the brotherhood. You know, it’s kind of, it’s kind of what the secondary headquarters of the brotherhood.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But the struggle to unionize was a long one. It took 12 years. The Pullman company fired workers who tried to organize, and did everything they could to discourage the union. But in the end, the porters were successful, and Oakland played no small part. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Mitchell Schwarzer: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The branch that was the most steadfast, that had the largest membership who supported ongoing union efforts was the Oakland branch under C.L. Dellums.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The porters are credited with helping to found the Black middle class in America, as well as the modern civil rights movement. In 1941, they threaten a march on Washington to protest employment discrimination. This is more than 20 years before the March on Washington where Martin Luther King makes his “I have a dream” speech.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Schwarzer says the community organizing that continues in West Oakland today, groups like Moms 4 Housing, are part of a legacy started by the Brotherhood. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Mitchell Schwarzer: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">If you look at Oakland’s history of civil rights activism, this is really the kind of start, you know. You think about the occupy movement in the 2010s, and the Black panthers in the 60s and 70s. It all goes back to the brotherhood of sleeping car porters. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">These railroad jobs were the foundation for a neighborhood of black owned businesses, nightclubs, and homes in West Oakland. Alan Laird remembers going to the porters union hall with his father and seeing a flourishing community. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alan Laird: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So in that community, we had all our own businesses and finances. I remember my barber shop, Stovall Barber Shop, was right there on Seventh Street. It was vibrant. It was people walking on both sides of the street going and coming with shopping bags and different things.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">West Oakland, and the 16th Street Station, were thriving. But all that starts to change in the late 1950s. The construction of the 880 freeway and later, the BART line, demolished a lot of those West Oakland businesses. And as the economy of West Oakland begins to decline, so does the 16th street station. The golden age of railroads comes to an end. Cars and airplanes become more popular and all those streetcars and suburban trains ceased to exist. By the late 80’s, just a few trains a day stopped at 16th Street Station. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Alan Laird remembers seeing the station in disrepair.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alan Laird: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">When I pass by and it’s just a hulk, with a million memories, you know, the windowpanes looked as though they’d been in steady tears. And say, “Won’t, they notice me can’t they see me don’t they know who I was,” you know?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In 1989 the Loma Prieta Earthquake badly damaged the structure of the station, and it was closed. The last train rolled past it in 1994.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The station sat vacant and abandoned for 11 years. People squatted in it, covered it in graffiti, and stripped the interior. In 2005 it was bought by BRIDGE housing, an non-profit affordable housing developer. They wanted to turn the station into something the community could use, but like other redevelopment plans in West Oakland… \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jim Mather: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A lot of those plans have been derailed by at least two major recessions during that time. I mean, the dot com bust was one, then the big recession.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That’s Jim Mather, the Chief Investment Officer for BRIDGE. I met him outside the station. He says those recessions dried up a lot of the funding that the station needed. And the price tag for the restoration and seismic retrofitting the station needs is at least $50 million dollars. So the station is in limbo.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jim Mather: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We’re on hold. I mean, it’s really trying to find the financing. Any billionaires listening who want to want a project here, here it is. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Frankie Whitman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I like to say we’re looking for, uh, somebody with deep pockets who says, this is my legacy to Oakland.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Also here is, Frankie Whitman a consultant for BRIDGE.\u003c/span> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We’re going to go inside the station, for a chance to peek at some history most Oaklander’s never get to see. So I brought someone along who knows the station firsthand.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Recordings outside the station: \u003c/span>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cb>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Hey, nice to meet you, man.\u003c/span>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cb>Lamar MacDaniel: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Hey, Am I late?\u003c/span>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cb>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">No, you’re right on time. Perfect timing. So welcome back.\u003c/span>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cb>Lamar MacDaniel: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Alright alright\u003c/span>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cb>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">How’s it feel to be back? \u003c/span>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cb>Lamar MacDaniel: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Oh man, I just got a little chill.\u003c/span>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is Lamar MacDaniel. He started working out of the station in 1973. He’s 71 now. He walks a bit slowly, which he credits to working on the railroad.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lamar MacDaniel: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">By the time you leave the railroad, walking on the train, serving, waiting tables and taking all that rocking and rolling, You’d be wowed, you’ll feel like you’ve been in football game for the last 27 years. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">When he started, MacDaniel was trained by some of the last of the Pullman Porters to work on the railroads. He started as a waiter and worked his way up. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lamar MacDaniel: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And I was the one that got, you know, I got taught a lot. That’s how I ended up being a maitre’d, which was the job that a Black guy didn’t have during the Pullman days. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">He hasn’t been inside since the station was closed.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Sound of door being unlocked\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But today we get to go in.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Sound of everyone “wow” as they enter the station\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The inside is jaw dropping. The ceilings are 40 feet high, adorned with intricate plaster work. Golden light filters in through arched windows. MacDaniel remembers some of the same things that made Alan Laird’s eyes big as a kid …\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lamar MacDaniel: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">They used to have a guy over there that was shine shoes … and over in that corner was a snack stand. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But the grand clocks and chandeliers that Alan Laird told me about are gone. Somethings off.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Frankie Whitman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But you could even see here, even though it looks very distressed, it’s very evenly distressed.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Since BRIDGE has owned the station, they’ve rented it out to companies like HBO and Netflix for TV and movies, and those companies have left a lot of their sets behind. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Frankie Whitman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">All the wainscoting, the door treatment, the window treatment, the valances … those are not elevators cause there’s no second floor. All movie set. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">More than one music video has been filmed here as well. So in the same spot where porters once carried luggage, E-40 told us how to go dumb in the Tell Me When To Go Music video.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Clip from “Tell Me When To Go”\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Mumford and Son’s did a video here too, and it has hosted Burning Man inspired parties. But BRIDGE can’t even do that anymore. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Frankie Whitman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This, this, this is new\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Back in the main hall, Whitman points to a pile of debris on the floor. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>In the train station:\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Where do you think that fell from? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Jim Mather: \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Right up there. \u003c/span>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Wow. So the, the ceilings like actively crumbling, huh?\u003c/span>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Jim Mather: \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yes. Another reason we don’t have, I mean, it’s part of the liability thing. Why we not having events in here anymore.\u003c/span>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We walk out of the main hall, through a dark corridor, to the old baggage wing. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lamar MacDaniel:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I’m going to need my flashlight\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, it’s pretty dark here.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The baggage wing is thick with history. There’s an old scale for weighing luggage, and a large rolling door where passengers used to wait for their things. The first elevated tracks west of the Mississippi are directly over our heads. I walk with Lamar over to another small room. It’s the utility room, where the porters would hang out between shifts.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lamar MacDaniel:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> There would be luggage all over the place. Guys would be here, when there wasn’t a train to be ready to be serving. The red caps would just hang out, back here and shoot the breeze, tell jokes and all kinds of stuff. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Some people want the station turned into a museum for the railroad and the porters, others want it to be an event space. Jim Mather from Bridge. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jim Mather: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Whatever happens here, BRIDGE is going to recognize and honor the history behind the station and its significance to the African-American community of Oakland. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Just When the doors of the 16th Street Station will reopen again is unclear. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Sound of freeway\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">To complete the tour we walk out to the back of the station. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Where once there was the shore of the bay, there’s the 880 freeway. Instead of trains, semi’s run in and out of the Port of Oakland. There are no tracks connected to 16th Street Station anymore. They’ve been dug up and taken away. It’s reminiscent of how this station has been disconnected from Oakland, the building neglected, the history obscured. Alan Laird again.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lamar MacDaniel:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> It was like losing a friend, you know, but, you see the shadow of it right there and you want to run and tell people: “I remember when that was a palace! And that was filled with thriving hearts and minds and souls and energy and hope was waiting for you as you got off the train.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You’ll never hear a train pull into 16th Street Station again, but it’s still possible the station could have a new beginning, just like the people that passed through it all those years ago. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">(music bridge)\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> So, Azul, as we mentioned earlier this story first aired in 2022, and there have been some recent developments. What’s happening now?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So the big news is that the 16th Street Station has been added to the National Register of Historic Places. A non-profit group called the Oakland Heritage Alliance submitted the application for the station, which basically outlined the stations significance for three things; its importance to local transportation, its architectural significance, and its relation to C.L. Dellums, and that’s the labor organizer you heard about in this story. The station was one of the first places to be recognized for this newly created category within the register, that recognizes the history of African Americans in California. I spoke to Feleciai Favroth, whose the treasurer with the Oakland Heritage Alliance, about this, she said she was ecstatic.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Feleciai Favroth:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> This could be the key to make the station a viable rehab project. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Alliance is really hoping this will turn the tide in the battle to get the station repaired. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Historic sites make me think the building is like going to get a fancy plaque that has a little bit of history written on it. But what does historic designation mean practically?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So yes there is a lot of notoriety and national recognition that comes with being added to the register, but a really big thing that’s tangible is that it also opens the station up to a 20% federal income tax credit. And a developer could use that towards restoration of the station. This has actually worked in the Bay Area before. Like say, have you ever been to the Fox Theater in Oakland?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Oh yeah, I’ve seen some great shows there and I always marvel at the ceiling in that place …\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, well the Fox is on the National Register, and received a federal tax credit toward its rehabilitation, including that really nice ceiling. So advocates are hoping this will happen to the 16th Street Station as well. But again this is all still just theoretical. There’s no money that has been committed yet. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So it’s not like the station is suddenly saved necessarily…\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">No. There still aren’t any plans to restore the station itself. And another change is that BRIDGE Housing no longer owns the station, they sold it to City Ventures, a housing developer based in San Francisco and Irvine in 2022. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">City Ventures has submitted plans to the city of Oakland to build a 77-unit townhome-style development — called “Signal House” — on the area around the station, but there’s no plan to rehabilitate the station itself.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">To that end, City Ventures has hired a consulting group called OE Consulting to explore finding someone or some group to fund the rehabilitation of the station, separate from this housing project. They’re still trying to find someone to fund that. And even what the space could become is still open ended. Members of the Oakland Heritage Alliance have suggested a business incubator, or an events space, and something that highlights the history of the station, but as of now, those are all just ideas.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Alright. Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman, KQED Features Reporter – thank you.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You’re welcome.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">(Music bridge)\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> If you want to see some pictures of 16th Street Station, including some from our tour inside, head to BayCurious.org. We’ll drop a link in the show notes too.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Special thanks to Dan Brekke and Paul Lancour for their help on this episode.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This episode was made by Katrina Schwartz, Sebastian Miño-Bucheli, Brendan Willard and me, Olivia Allen-Price. Additional engineering from Christopher Beale.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Bay Curious is produced at member-supported KQED in San Francisco.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I’m Olivia Allen-Price. Have a good one!\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>"
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"content": "\u003cp>Advocates say West Oakland’s once-bustling, now decrepit \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12014677/advocates-historic-oakland-train-station-fallen-disrepair-eye-lifeline\">Southern Pacific 16th Street Train Station\u003c/a> is finally getting the recognition it deserves.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Added to the National Register of Historic Places on Jan. 21, the station is recognized for its role in transportation, architecture and its connection to C.L. Dellums, an influential figure in the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the nation’s first Black union.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Once hailed as the “\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11910890/how-oaklands-16th-street-train-station-helped-build-west-oakland-and-the-modern-civil-rights-movement\">Grand Central Station of the West\u003c/a>,” the station has languished in disrepair since the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake forced its closure. Advocates, long seeking funding, hope its new historic designation will spur action before it’s too late.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“ I am ecstatic,” said Feleciai Favroth, treasurer of the Oakland Heritage Alliance, which submitted the station’s nomination.“ This could be the key to make the station a viable rehab project.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Beyond recognition, the listing makes the station eligible for a 20% federal income tax credit for restoration costs. Similar incentives have helped revive \u003ca href=\"https://ohp.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=29847\">Bay Area landmarks\u003c/a> such as Oakland’s Fox Theater and Richmond’s Ford Assembly Plant.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12024827\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1999px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-12024827 size-full\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/01/004_KQED_16thStreetStationOakland_02162022_qed.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1999\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/01/004_KQED_16thStreetStationOakland_02162022_qed.jpg 1999w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/01/004_KQED_16thStreetStationOakland_02162022_qed-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/01/004_KQED_16thStreetStationOakland_02162022_qed-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/01/004_KQED_16thStreetStationOakland_02162022_qed-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/01/004_KQED_16thStreetStationOakland_02162022_qed-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/01/004_KQED_16thStreetStationOakland_02162022_qed-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1999px) 100vw, 1999px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Weeds grow through cracks in the pavement near the 16th Street Station Signal Tower in West Oakland on Feb.16, 2022. From its website: The Signal Tower, which is still on site, served as the train traffic controller. It was built in 1913 and was twice the size of most signal towers of its age. The base is made of concrete rather than wood, another unusual feature. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“ The bottom line of the tax credit is it just makes things much more financially feasible and attractive for developers,” said Kara Brunzell, an architectural historian who worked on the nomination for the station.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Although this is a moment to celebrate, Favroth acknowledges the challenge remains: securing funding for the station’s $50 million seismic retrofit and restoration costs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“ Just because we’re on the registry doesn’t mean the station is saved,” Favroth said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postID=news_11910890 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/16thStreetStationOakland_02162022-qut-672x372.jpg']\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Despite multiple owners over the decades, none have secured the funds necessary to restore the station. The current owner, City Ventures, has a pending application with the city of Oakland to build a 77-unit townhome-style development, “Signal House,” around the site.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Under review since May 2023, the proposal excludes station rehabilitation. City Ventures has hired OE Consulting firm to explore fundraising for repairs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In previous interviews, OE Consulting told KQED it was searching for an “anchor funder,” someone to underwrite a starter amount of money to jumpstart the station’s rehabilitation, who would also agree on letting the community decide what the use case for a reimagined 16th Street Station would be.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Favroth said the Oakland Heritage Alliance is now focused on securing funding for a feasibility study on the station’s potential.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“ So you have to do something that’s financially viable because that’s the big thing nowadays with historical preservation. ‘Can the asset financially sustain itself?’” Favroth said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11911066\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11911066\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/58195sp-2-scaled-e1738284345467.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1470\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A 1915 photo shows the elevated tracks at the rear of the 16th Street Station. \u003ccite>(Western Railway Museum Archives)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Proposed ideas include an event venue, offices, a technology hub and a business incubator.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Brunzell said the station is of “the highest level of architectural and historical significance,” adding that it’s rare to have one structure that encompasses so many different kinds of history.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“ It’s akin to Grand Central Station in its grandeur and its solidity,” Brunzell said of the structure, which opened in 1912 and was designed in the Beaux Arts style by renowned architect Jarvis Hunt. “ I don’t think you have to be an architectural historian to just observe the beauty of that building.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postID=news_12024586 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/08/240823-VALENCIATELEGRAPHBIKELANES-36-BL-KQED-1020x680.jpg']\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Brunzell noted the station’s significance as a key hub for both local and long-distance trains at a time when rail travel was the primary means of transportation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“ You could come into the station from distant parts on the Southern Pacific, get off on the ground floor, walk upstairs and get on a local streetcar to take you to your hotel. That was really important and unusual for the time,” Brunzell said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The station is also one of the first to be designated under a new category that recognizes the history of African Americans in California. Favroth said she was inspired to work on the campaign to save the 16th Street Station because of its importance to her family and the local Black community.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Favroth added like many African Americans, her aunts passed through the station when they migrated to Oakland from Louisiana in the 1940s.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“ I wanted to be able to honor their history and their memory,” Favroth said. “And this station has a strong tie to our history.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Advocates say West Oakland’s once-bustling, now decrepit \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12014677/advocates-historic-oakland-train-station-fallen-disrepair-eye-lifeline\">Southern Pacific 16th Street Train Station\u003c/a> is finally getting the recognition it deserves.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Added to the National Register of Historic Places on Jan. 21, the station is recognized for its role in transportation, architecture and its connection to C.L. Dellums, an influential figure in the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the nation’s first Black union.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Once hailed as the “\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11910890/how-oaklands-16th-street-train-station-helped-build-west-oakland-and-the-modern-civil-rights-movement\">Grand Central Station of the West\u003c/a>,” the station has languished in disrepair since the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake forced its closure. Advocates, long seeking funding, hope its new historic designation will spur action before it’s too late.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“ I am ecstatic,” said Feleciai Favroth, treasurer of the Oakland Heritage Alliance, which submitted the station’s nomination.“ This could be the key to make the station a viable rehab project.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Beyond recognition, the listing makes the station eligible for a 20% federal income tax credit for restoration costs. Similar incentives have helped revive \u003ca href=\"https://ohp.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=29847\">Bay Area landmarks\u003c/a> such as Oakland’s Fox Theater and Richmond’s Ford Assembly Plant.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12024827\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1999px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-12024827 size-full\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/01/004_KQED_16thStreetStationOakland_02162022_qed.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1999\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/01/004_KQED_16thStreetStationOakland_02162022_qed.jpg 1999w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/01/004_KQED_16thStreetStationOakland_02162022_qed-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/01/004_KQED_16thStreetStationOakland_02162022_qed-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/01/004_KQED_16thStreetStationOakland_02162022_qed-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/01/004_KQED_16thStreetStationOakland_02162022_qed-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/01/004_KQED_16thStreetStationOakland_02162022_qed-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1999px) 100vw, 1999px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Weeds grow through cracks in the pavement near the 16th Street Station Signal Tower in West Oakland on Feb.16, 2022. From its website: The Signal Tower, which is still on site, served as the train traffic controller. It was built in 1913 and was twice the size of most signal towers of its age. The base is made of concrete rather than wood, another unusual feature. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“ The bottom line of the tax credit is it just makes things much more financially feasible and attractive for developers,” said Kara Brunzell, an architectural historian who worked on the nomination for the station.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Although this is a moment to celebrate, Favroth acknowledges the challenge remains: securing funding for the station’s $50 million seismic retrofit and restoration costs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“ Just because we’re on the registry doesn’t mean the station is saved,” Favroth said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Despite multiple owners over the decades, none have secured the funds necessary to restore the station. The current owner, City Ventures, has a pending application with the city of Oakland to build a 77-unit townhome-style development, “Signal House,” around the site.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Under review since May 2023, the proposal excludes station rehabilitation. City Ventures has hired OE Consulting firm to explore fundraising for repairs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In previous interviews, OE Consulting told KQED it was searching for an “anchor funder,” someone to underwrite a starter amount of money to jumpstart the station’s rehabilitation, who would also agree on letting the community decide what the use case for a reimagined 16th Street Station would be.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Favroth said the Oakland Heritage Alliance is now focused on securing funding for a feasibility study on the station’s potential.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“ So you have to do something that’s financially viable because that’s the big thing nowadays with historical preservation. ‘Can the asset financially sustain itself?’” Favroth said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11911066\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11911066\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/58195sp-2-scaled-e1738284345467.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1470\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A 1915 photo shows the elevated tracks at the rear of the 16th Street Station. \u003ccite>(Western Railway Museum Archives)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Proposed ideas include an event venue, offices, a technology hub and a business incubator.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Brunzell said the station is of “the highest level of architectural and historical significance,” adding that it’s rare to have one structure that encompasses so many different kinds of history.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“ It’s akin to Grand Central Station in its grandeur and its solidity,” Brunzell said of the structure, which opened in 1912 and was designed in the Beaux Arts style by renowned architect Jarvis Hunt. “ I don’t think you have to be an architectural historian to just observe the beauty of that building.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Brunzell noted the station’s significance as a key hub for both local and long-distance trains at a time when rail travel was the primary means of transportation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“ You could come into the station from distant parts on the Southern Pacific, get off on the ground floor, walk upstairs and get on a local streetcar to take you to your hotel. That was really important and unusual for the time,” Brunzell said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The station is also one of the first to be designated under a new category that recognizes the history of African Americans in California. Favroth said she was inspired to work on the campaign to save the 16th Street Station because of its importance to her family and the local Black community.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Favroth added like many African Americans, her aunts passed through the station when they migrated to Oakland from Louisiana in the 1940s.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“ I wanted to be able to honor their history and their memory,” Favroth said. “And this station has a strong tie to our history.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Advocates for Historic Oakland Train Station, Fallen Into Disrepair, Eye a Lifeline",
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"content": "\u003cp>People who have been advocating for decades to restore \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/west-oakland\">West Oakland\u003c/a>’s once-bustling 16th Street train station see a potential light at the end of their tunnel in the form of federal historic recognition.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By early January, the National Park Service will decide whether to list the station — which played a critical role in the development of West Oakland as a thriving Black neighborhood — on the National Register of Historic Places. That would open it up to a 20% tax credit that could be used to help with badly needed repairs and rehabilitation work, estimated to cost $50 million.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s about time. I’m hoping this will get folks to say, ‘Well, what can we really do with this asset?’” said Feleciai Favroth, the treasurer of the Oakland Heritage Alliance, a nonprofit organization that submitted the station’s application to the California State Historical Resources Commission.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The commission voted unanimously last week to nominate the station and its signal tower for consideration to the national register, citing its cultural, architectural and transportation-related significance.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In addition to the tax credit, the Oakland Heritage Alliance hopes designation as a historic place will attract grants and additional attention that could give the station a second life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Opened in 1912, the station was once a sort of Grand Central Station of the West, welcoming generations of newly arrived Oaklanders from all parts of the country on their way to the city’s once-plentiful jobs working for the railroad, Navy and other industries.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12007815\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12007815\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/10/007_KQED_16thStreetStationOakland_02162022_qed.jpg\" alt=\"The front exterior of an abandoned building with fencing around it.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/10/007_KQED_16thStreetStationOakland_02162022_qed.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/10/007_KQED_16thStreetStationOakland_02162022_qed-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/10/007_KQED_16thStreetStationOakland_02162022_qed-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/10/007_KQED_16thStreetStationOakland_02162022_qed-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/10/007_KQED_16thStreetStationOakland_02162022_qed-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/10/007_KQED_16thStreetStationOakland_02162022_qed-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The front exterior of the now abandoned 16th Street Station in West Oakland on Feb. 16, 2022. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“Soaring arched windows evoke Roman baths and flood the grand main hall with natural light, providing the visitor with a majestic portal into Oakland,” reads the Oakland Heritage Alliance’s application for the station.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Porters who worked out of the station’s baggage wing established the West Coast headquarters for the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters — the first Black union in the United States.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>However, after the slow decline of rail travel and the deindustrialization of Oakland, the station fell out of use and into disrepair. After being damaged in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, it saw its last train in 1994 and has sat vacant and in neglect for the past 30 years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If the station is repaired, Favroth said she would hope to see it used in a way that benefits the West Oakland community now and honors its past. She suggested the space could be used as a hybrid events space and business incubator.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11910897\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11910897\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/Disrepair_16thStreetStationOakland_02162022-qut.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/Disrepair_16thStreetStationOakland_02162022-qut.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/Disrepair_16thStreetStationOakland_02162022-qut-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/Disrepair_16thStreetStationOakland_02162022-qut-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/Disrepair_16thStreetStationOakland_02162022-qut-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/Disrepair_16thStreetStationOakland_02162022-qut-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Plaster has crumbled to reveal brick in the Main Hall of 16th Street Station in West Oakland on Feb. 16, 2022. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“African American places are rarely saved, rarely counted, rarely documented. This is an opportunity to say to West Oakland in particular, we hear you, your stories are important, and we are willing to help you save a physical asset that hopefully will reinvigorate the community and be able to be a physical representation of your story,” Favroth said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The current owner, housing developer City Ventures, has an application pending with the city of Oakland to build a 77-unit townhome-style development — dubbed “Signal House” — in the areas around the station.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postID=news_11910890 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/16thStreetStationOakland_02162022-qut-1038x576.jpg']\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The proposal has been under review since May 2023 and does not include rehabilitation of the station. City Ventures has hired the OE Consulting firm to explore fundraising for the repair of the station.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We and our client are delighted with the nomination and grateful to the Oakland Heritage Alliance for their efforts,” said Arthur Combs, the principal of OE Consulting. “The prospect of tax credits helps with our funder conversations. In order to be successful, this restoration campaign will have to make use of every possible avenue for resources; it’s always a complex mix of private and public support, and this will be no different.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Members of the Oakland Heritage Alliance are hopeful that if the station is added to the national register, it will spur a drive to repair it before it falls.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We really look forward to finding a way to get this station rejuvenated as an activity hub for West Oakland, and celebrating its role in Oakland’s rail, and multimodal transportation history,” said Naomi Schiff, secretary of the Oakland Heritage Alliance.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Favroth said a place on the national register would cement the station’s significance not just as an architectural gem but also as a place of significance for the community.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We need the world to know that it’s more than just this physical structure that trains went through. We need to talk about the people,” Favroth said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The State Historical Resources Commission passed the nomination on to the National Park Service on Nov. 7. The park service has 60 days to respond.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>People who have been advocating for decades to restore \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/west-oakland\">West Oakland\u003c/a>’s once-bustling 16th Street train station see a potential light at the end of their tunnel in the form of federal historic recognition.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By early January, the National Park Service will decide whether to list the station — which played a critical role in the development of West Oakland as a thriving Black neighborhood — on the National Register of Historic Places. That would open it up to a 20% tax credit that could be used to help with badly needed repairs and rehabilitation work, estimated to cost $50 million.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s about time. I’m hoping this will get folks to say, ‘Well, what can we really do with this asset?’” said Feleciai Favroth, the treasurer of the Oakland Heritage Alliance, a nonprofit organization that submitted the station’s application to the California State Historical Resources Commission.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The commission voted unanimously last week to nominate the station and its signal tower for consideration to the national register, citing its cultural, architectural and transportation-related significance.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In addition to the tax credit, the Oakland Heritage Alliance hopes designation as a historic place will attract grants and additional attention that could give the station a second life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Opened in 1912, the station was once a sort of Grand Central Station of the West, welcoming generations of newly arrived Oaklanders from all parts of the country on their way to the city’s once-plentiful jobs working for the railroad, Navy and other industries.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12007815\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12007815\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/10/007_KQED_16thStreetStationOakland_02162022_qed.jpg\" alt=\"The front exterior of an abandoned building with fencing around it.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/10/007_KQED_16thStreetStationOakland_02162022_qed.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/10/007_KQED_16thStreetStationOakland_02162022_qed-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/10/007_KQED_16thStreetStationOakland_02162022_qed-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/10/007_KQED_16thStreetStationOakland_02162022_qed-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/10/007_KQED_16thStreetStationOakland_02162022_qed-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/10/007_KQED_16thStreetStationOakland_02162022_qed-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The front exterior of the now abandoned 16th Street Station in West Oakland on Feb. 16, 2022. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“Soaring arched windows evoke Roman baths and flood the grand main hall with natural light, providing the visitor with a majestic portal into Oakland,” reads the Oakland Heritage Alliance’s application for the station.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Porters who worked out of the station’s baggage wing established the West Coast headquarters for the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters — the first Black union in the United States.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>However, after the slow decline of rail travel and the deindustrialization of Oakland, the station fell out of use and into disrepair. After being damaged in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, it saw its last train in 1994 and has sat vacant and in neglect for the past 30 years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If the station is repaired, Favroth said she would hope to see it used in a way that benefits the West Oakland community now and honors its past. She suggested the space could be used as a hybrid events space and business incubator.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11910897\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11910897\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/Disrepair_16thStreetStationOakland_02162022-qut.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/Disrepair_16thStreetStationOakland_02162022-qut.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/Disrepair_16thStreetStationOakland_02162022-qut-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/Disrepair_16thStreetStationOakland_02162022-qut-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/Disrepair_16thStreetStationOakland_02162022-qut-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/04/Disrepair_16thStreetStationOakland_02162022-qut-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Plaster has crumbled to reveal brick in the Main Hall of 16th Street Station in West Oakland on Feb. 16, 2022. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“African American places are rarely saved, rarely counted, rarely documented. This is an opportunity to say to West Oakland in particular, we hear you, your stories are important, and we are willing to help you save a physical asset that hopefully will reinvigorate the community and be able to be a physical representation of your story,” Favroth said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The current owner, housing developer City Ventures, has an application pending with the city of Oakland to build a 77-unit townhome-style development — dubbed “Signal House” — in the areas around the station.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The proposal has been under review since May 2023 and does not include rehabilitation of the station. City Ventures has hired the OE Consulting firm to explore fundraising for the repair of the station.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We and our client are delighted with the nomination and grateful to the Oakland Heritage Alliance for their efforts,” said Arthur Combs, the principal of OE Consulting. “The prospect of tax credits helps with our funder conversations. In order to be successful, this restoration campaign will have to make use of every possible avenue for resources; it’s always a complex mix of private and public support, and this will be no different.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Members of the Oakland Heritage Alliance are hopeful that if the station is added to the national register, it will spur a drive to repair it before it falls.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We really look forward to finding a way to get this station rejuvenated as an activity hub for West Oakland, and celebrating its role in Oakland’s rail, and multimodal transportation history,” said Naomi Schiff, secretary of the Oakland Heritage Alliance.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Favroth said a place on the national register would cement the station’s significance not just as an architectural gem but also as a place of significance for the community.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We need the world to know that it’s more than just this physical structure that trains went through. We need to talk about the people,” Favroth said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The State Historical Resources Commission passed the nomination on to the National Park Service on Nov. 7. The park service has 60 days to respond.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "oakland-police-say-violent-crime-is-down-but-guns-are-an-issue-in-west-oakland",
"title": "Oakland Police Say Violent Crime Is Down, But Guns Are an Issue in West Oakland",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/oakland-police\">Oakland’s police\u003c/a> chief touted a decrease in violent crime at a Friday news conference, where police also announced arrests in several cases that made headlines over the summer and promised their efforts will remain focused on issues and areas of most concern to residents.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Police Chief Floyd Mitchell’s remarks came in response to Oakland’s inclusion in \u003ca href=\"https://majorcitieschiefs.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/MCCA-Violent-Crime-Report-2024-and-2023-Midyear.pdf\">a recent report from the Major Cities Chiefs Association\u003c/a> that shows a decrease in all crimes across the country during the first half of this year compared to last year, including double-digit percentage decreases in robberies and homicides in Oakland.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s important to understand that when you look at our violent crime, it is decreasing, and we know these numbers are very accurate,” he said. “We are having challenges with our property crime, but we have seen a significant decrease in our property crimes as well.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So far this year, there have been 47 homicides in Oakland, compared to 52 in 2023. Rape is down 8%, robberies are down 15%, and aggravated assaults are down 4% compared to the first half of last year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Oakland’s crime data has come under scrutiny before. Last month, \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/oakland-police-data-reports-19545681.php\">the \u003cem>San Francisco Chronicle\u003c/em> reported\u003c/a> that Oakland has been publishing misleading crime data for years. The review found police statistics overstated a reduction in crime, though it did find OPD’s data for homicides and violent crimes to be “mostly accurate.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>San Francisco also saw a decrease in its violent crimes, according to the Major Cities Chiefs Association report.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, Frederick Shavies, deputy chief of the Police Department’s Bureau of Investigations, said the U.S. Marshals Service arrested a young woman in Dallas in connection with the July 6 shooting death of another young woman at a First Friday celebration in Oakland.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">[aside postID=news_11989730 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/06/20161112_214941_qut-1020x765.jpg']\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Assistant Chief James Beere said Oakland police arrested three separate groups of people linked to two dozen assaults and robberies around the Westlake Christian Terrace retirement home near Lake Merritt.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’ve taken several proactive steps to sustain our operations and maintain the public safety in that area to work with the community leaders and meet with the residents,” Beere said. “We’re not taking our foot off the gas. We’re going to keep going forward, and we’re going to listen to the voices and concerns of our residents.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Beere said there has been an “uptick” in violent crime recently in West Oakland, adding that within the last three weeks, police have arrested several suspects and seized firearms equipped with things like high-capacity magazines and multi-burst triggers, “essentially making them machine guns.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Along with targeting gun violence in West and East Oakland, Beere said OPD will continue to target human trafficking on International Boulevard.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The people that are engaging in these activities are involved in a multitude of different crimes, and this actually reflects what we do see of those arrested,” Beere said, listing off several arrests, including a man from Arizona. “None of those arrested were actually Oakland residents. They come from all over the state, as well as one from out of state, which we see quite frequently.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Chief acknowledges failures over officer misconduct\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Mitchell said Friday that the department is reviewing its internal affairs policies and training after a federal monitor said its response to alleged officer misconduct remains inadequate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The federal monitor said in a report last week that Oakland police mishandled cases involving perjury and bribery allegations against a homicide detective and a sergeant who fired his gun inside a city building.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Asked about progress on the issue, Mitchell said turnover of the entire executive command staff is partly responsible for addressing failures within the internal affairs division, but he’s addressing those issues now.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Yes, there are some issues out there, but from my lens or the seat that I sit in, I want to make sure that we are continuing to educate our staff so we don’t continue to have these failures that keep us out of compliance,” Mitchell said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The department has been under federal court supervision since 2003. A hearing in that case is set for next month.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/oakland-police\">Oakland’s police\u003c/a> chief touted a decrease in violent crime at a Friday news conference, where police also announced arrests in several cases that made headlines over the summer and promised their efforts will remain focused on issues and areas of most concern to residents.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Police Chief Floyd Mitchell’s remarks came in response to Oakland’s inclusion in \u003ca href=\"https://majorcitieschiefs.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/MCCA-Violent-Crime-Report-2024-and-2023-Midyear.pdf\">a recent report from the Major Cities Chiefs Association\u003c/a> that shows a decrease in all crimes across the country during the first half of this year compared to last year, including double-digit percentage decreases in robberies and homicides in Oakland.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s important to understand that when you look at our violent crime, it is decreasing, and we know these numbers are very accurate,” he said. “We are having challenges with our property crime, but we have seen a significant decrease in our property crimes as well.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So far this year, there have been 47 homicides in Oakland, compared to 52 in 2023. Rape is down 8%, robberies are down 15%, and aggravated assaults are down 4% compared to the first half of last year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Oakland’s crime data has come under scrutiny before. Last month, \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/oakland-police-data-reports-19545681.php\">the \u003cem>San Francisco Chronicle\u003c/em> reported\u003c/a> that Oakland has been publishing misleading crime data for years. The review found police statistics overstated a reduction in crime, though it did find OPD’s data for homicides and violent crimes to be “mostly accurate.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>San Francisco also saw a decrease in its violent crimes, according to the Major Cities Chiefs Association report.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, Frederick Shavies, deputy chief of the Police Department’s Bureau of Investigations, said the U.S. Marshals Service arrested a young woman in Dallas in connection with the July 6 shooting death of another young woman at a First Friday celebration in Oakland.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Assistant Chief James Beere said Oakland police arrested three separate groups of people linked to two dozen assaults and robberies around the Westlake Christian Terrace retirement home near Lake Merritt.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’ve taken several proactive steps to sustain our operations and maintain the public safety in that area to work with the community leaders and meet with the residents,” Beere said. “We’re not taking our foot off the gas. We’re going to keep going forward, and we’re going to listen to the voices and concerns of our residents.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Beere said there has been an “uptick” in violent crime recently in West Oakland, adding that within the last three weeks, police have arrested several suspects and seized firearms equipped with things like high-capacity magazines and multi-burst triggers, “essentially making them machine guns.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Along with targeting gun violence in West and East Oakland, Beere said OPD will continue to target human trafficking on International Boulevard.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The people that are engaging in these activities are involved in a multitude of different crimes, and this actually reflects what we do see of those arrested,” Beere said, listing off several arrests, including a man from Arizona. “None of those arrested were actually Oakland residents. They come from all over the state, as well as one from out of state, which we see quite frequently.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Chief acknowledges failures over officer misconduct\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Mitchell said Friday that the department is reviewing its internal affairs policies and training after a federal monitor said its response to alleged officer misconduct remains inadequate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The federal monitor said in a report last week that Oakland police mishandled cases involving perjury and bribery allegations against a homicide detective and a sergeant who fired his gun inside a city building.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Asked about progress on the issue, Mitchell said turnover of the entire executive command staff is partly responsible for addressing failures within the internal affairs division, but he’s addressing those issues now.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Yes, there are some issues out there, but from my lens or the seat that I sit in, I want to make sure that we are continuing to educate our staff so we don’t continue to have these failures that keep us out of compliance,” Mitchell said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The department has been under federal court supervision since 2003. A hearing in that case is set for next month.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "west-oakland-steel-recycler-charged-with-10-crimes-after-toxic-fire-last-summer",
"title": "West Oakland Steel Recycler Charged With 10 Crimes After Toxic Fire Last Summer",
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"content": "\u003cp>Radius Steel and two company leaders were charged with 10 environmental crimes for a \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11957894/smelly-smoke-from-oakland-metal-recycler-fire-prompts-health-concerns\">fire that broke out last August\u003c/a> at the large scrap metal processing plant near the Port of Oakland, Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price announced Tuesday.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The charges allege that Radius Steel, Daniel Woltman and Dane Morales recklessly managed hazardous materials and later engaged in a cover-up. The company and the two men are also charged with violating local air quality regulations and state toxic substance control laws.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The charges are the first ever filed by an Alameda County district attorney for environmental crimes committed by a corporation, according to Price.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This administration will not allow corporate criminals to poison our community recklessly and just walk away having made a profit and get off with a slap on the wrist,” she said at a press conference.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On Aug. 9, 2023, the fire at Radius Recycling, formerly Schnitzer Steel, sent plumes of gray, toxic smoke over the East Bay. Price announced an investigation into the Oregon-based company days later. The charges were filed at the end of June following a grand jury indictment and unsealed this week.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11957857\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11957857\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/08/230809-altenberg-port-fire-3-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"Large clouds of smoke rise from an industrial-looking space where many truck cabs are parked.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1336\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/08/230809-altenberg-port-fire-3-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/08/230809-altenberg-port-fire-3-KQED-800x534.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/08/230809-altenberg-port-fire-3-KQED-1020x681.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/08/230809-altenberg-port-fire-3-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/08/230809-altenberg-port-fire-3-KQED-1536x1026.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/08/230809-altenberg-port-fire-3-KQED-1920x1283.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Smoke rises from a fire burning at Schnitzer Steel in Oakland on Aug. 10, 2023. \u003ccite>(Nik Altenberg/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>If found guilty, Radius would be liable for between $625,000 and $33 million in criminal fines, according to Price’s office. Woltmann and Morales could face up to three years in county jail, in addition to financial penalties.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We believe that Radius has often shrugged off the regulations when it was convenient to them, treating minor administrative fines and civil penalties as the cost of doing business,” Price said. “There is a new day in Alameda County and we intend to hold people accountable. No one is above the law, and we will no longer have a double standard.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a statement, Aaron Dyer, an attorney for Radius, said the company does not treat or store hazardous waste, and it did not hide or destroy any evidence.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We are fully confident that the company’s actions will be proven to have prioritized public safety and compliance with the law,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Michael Hunt, a spokesperson for the Oakland Fire Department, said the fire started in a pile of scrap metal and was likely caused by a lithium battery. The facility shreds cars and other large appliances. The size of the scrap pile prevented firefighters from reaching the source of the fire for hours, according to Hunt. County and city officials advised residents near the Port of Oakland to avoid Jack London Square and to keep windows closed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The most impacted areas were immediately downwind of the fire. So that was East Oakland, West Oakland and other areas along the I-80 corridor, which are historically overburdened communities that kind of experience a disproportionate impact and exposure to poor air pollution already,” Michael Flagg, principal air quality specialist at Bay Area Air Quality Management District told KQED in August 2023.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Environmental justice advocates have long called for the facility to leave the city, citing harmful smoke from frequent fires. The facility was the site of large fires in 2009, 2010, 2018 and 2020.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 2020, the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11832073/as-file-suit-against-state-agency-to-regulate-steel-recycler\">Oakland A’s sued\u003c/a> to have the waste materials created by the plant reclassified as hazardous, alleging that five smaller fires had occurred at the facility since 2018. The A’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/State-Supreme-Court-rejects-Oakland-A-s-legal-17726660.php\">lost\u003c/a> the legal challenge.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Past investigations by the Alameda County DA and the California Department of Toxic Substances Control found that the facility released particulate matter contaminated with hazardous metals such as lead, cadmium and zinc. The investigations were cited in a 2021 \u003ca href=\"https://oag.ca.gov/news/press-releases/attorney-general-becerra-announces-41-million-settlement-schnitzer-steel\">settlement\u003c/a> between Schnitzer and the state Department of Justice over “the release of toxic air contaminants and hazardous particulates” in West Oakland and across the Oakland estuary.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While Price called the number of fires significant, the Oakland Fire Department said fires at the facility “are not frequent” compared to other fire sources the city responds to.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Awareness and interest in fires at Schnitzer has grown over the last few years,” Hunt said, adding that frequent fires at homeless encampments, which often include burning plastics, pose a more daily source of local air pollution.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Margaret Gordon, the co-founder of the West Oakland Environmental Indicators Project, an environmental justice organization, said pollution from trucks, ships and fires in and around the Port of Oakland, as well as fires at nearby homeless encampments, contribute to the poor air quality in her West Oakland neighborhood.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’m glad that they saw the impact and investigated with the depth that they did,” Gordon said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>The Alameda County District Attorney’s Office is requesting anyone who was impacted by the fire to contact its consumer justice bureau by email at \u003ca href=\"mailto:askcjb-da@acgov.org\">askcjb-da@acgov.org\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Radius Steel and two company leaders were charged with 10 environmental crimes for a \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11957894/smelly-smoke-from-oakland-metal-recycler-fire-prompts-health-concerns\">fire that broke out last August\u003c/a> at the large scrap metal processing plant near the Port of Oakland, Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price announced Tuesday.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The charges allege that Radius Steel, Daniel Woltman and Dane Morales recklessly managed hazardous materials and later engaged in a cover-up. The company and the two men are also charged with violating local air quality regulations and state toxic substance control laws.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The charges are the first ever filed by an Alameda County district attorney for environmental crimes committed by a corporation, according to Price.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This administration will not allow corporate criminals to poison our community recklessly and just walk away having made a profit and get off with a slap on the wrist,” she said at a press conference.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On Aug. 9, 2023, the fire at Radius Recycling, formerly Schnitzer Steel, sent plumes of gray, toxic smoke over the East Bay. Price announced an investigation into the Oregon-based company days later. The charges were filed at the end of June following a grand jury indictment and unsealed this week.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11957857\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11957857\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/08/230809-altenberg-port-fire-3-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"Large clouds of smoke rise from an industrial-looking space where many truck cabs are parked.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1336\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/08/230809-altenberg-port-fire-3-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/08/230809-altenberg-port-fire-3-KQED-800x534.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/08/230809-altenberg-port-fire-3-KQED-1020x681.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/08/230809-altenberg-port-fire-3-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/08/230809-altenberg-port-fire-3-KQED-1536x1026.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/08/230809-altenberg-port-fire-3-KQED-1920x1283.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Smoke rises from a fire burning at Schnitzer Steel in Oakland on Aug. 10, 2023. \u003ccite>(Nik Altenberg/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>If found guilty, Radius would be liable for between $625,000 and $33 million in criminal fines, according to Price’s office. Woltmann and Morales could face up to three years in county jail, in addition to financial penalties.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We believe that Radius has often shrugged off the regulations when it was convenient to them, treating minor administrative fines and civil penalties as the cost of doing business,” Price said. “There is a new day in Alameda County and we intend to hold people accountable. No one is above the law, and we will no longer have a double standard.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a statement, Aaron Dyer, an attorney for Radius, said the company does not treat or store hazardous waste, and it did not hide or destroy any evidence.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We are fully confident that the company’s actions will be proven to have prioritized public safety and compliance with the law,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Michael Hunt, a spokesperson for the Oakland Fire Department, said the fire started in a pile of scrap metal and was likely caused by a lithium battery. The facility shreds cars and other large appliances. The size of the scrap pile prevented firefighters from reaching the source of the fire for hours, according to Hunt. County and city officials advised residents near the Port of Oakland to avoid Jack London Square and to keep windows closed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The most impacted areas were immediately downwind of the fire. So that was East Oakland, West Oakland and other areas along the I-80 corridor, which are historically overburdened communities that kind of experience a disproportionate impact and exposure to poor air pollution already,” Michael Flagg, principal air quality specialist at Bay Area Air Quality Management District told KQED in August 2023.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Environmental justice advocates have long called for the facility to leave the city, citing harmful smoke from frequent fires. The facility was the site of large fires in 2009, 2010, 2018 and 2020.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 2020, the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11832073/as-file-suit-against-state-agency-to-regulate-steel-recycler\">Oakland A’s sued\u003c/a> to have the waste materials created by the plant reclassified as hazardous, alleging that five smaller fires had occurred at the facility since 2018. The A’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/State-Supreme-Court-rejects-Oakland-A-s-legal-17726660.php\">lost\u003c/a> the legal challenge.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Past investigations by the Alameda County DA and the California Department of Toxic Substances Control found that the facility released particulate matter contaminated with hazardous metals such as lead, cadmium and zinc. The investigations were cited in a 2021 \u003ca href=\"https://oag.ca.gov/news/press-releases/attorney-general-becerra-announces-41-million-settlement-schnitzer-steel\">settlement\u003c/a> between Schnitzer and the state Department of Justice over “the release of toxic air contaminants and hazardous particulates” in West Oakland and across the Oakland estuary.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While Price called the number of fires significant, the Oakland Fire Department said fires at the facility “are not frequent” compared to other fire sources the city responds to.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Awareness and interest in fires at Schnitzer has grown over the last few years,” Hunt said, adding that frequent fires at homeless encampments, which often include burning plastics, pose a more daily source of local air pollution.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Margaret Gordon, the co-founder of the West Oakland Environmental Indicators Project, an environmental justice organization, said pollution from trucks, ships and fires in and around the Port of Oakland, as well as fires at nearby homeless encampments, contribute to the poor air quality in her West Oakland neighborhood.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’m glad that they saw the impact and investigated with the depth that they did,” Gordon said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>The Alameda County District Attorney’s Office is requesting anyone who was impacted by the fire to contact its consumer justice bureau by email at \u003ca href=\"mailto:askcjb-da@acgov.org\">askcjb-da@acgov.org\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cem>Updated 12:55 p.m. Thursday\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Firefighters battled a massive fire overnight and into Thursday morning that destroyed an Oakland warehouse and sent smoke plumes into the sky.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The fire on the 1700 block of 24th Street near Interstate 880 broke out around 10 p.m. on Wednesday, according to Michael Hunt, a spokesperson for the Oakland Fire Department. By 1 a.m., more than 70 firefighters on the scene had \u003ca href=\"https://x.com/OaklandFireCA/status/1806229645475656040\">contained the blaze\u003c/a> to the main building of the roofing supply company warehouse of Pacific Supply.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As of Thursday morning, crews remain on-site to mitigate hotspots and evaluate damage from the fire.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>No injuries have been reported, but the warehouse structure along Wood Street is likely a total loss, Hunt said. The cause of the fire is under investigation. Streets surrounding the scene were closed due to water, and residents were asked to keep their windows closed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The fire is the third in the neighborhood in the past week. On Friday, an RV caught fire at Wood and 17th streets in what fire officials believe was an arson attack.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The next day, a fire broke out in another RV on West Grand Avenue and Willow Street near Raimondi Park, the Mercury News reported. The cause of the fire was not clear.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Frequent fires aren’t new to the area of West Oakland near Wood Street. Over a span of 2 1/2 years, 200 fires were reported along the road, where about a mile-long stretch was a settlement for over 300 unhoused people until \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11945422/end-of-an-era-last-remaining-unhoused-residents-at-oaklands-wood-street-commons-getting-evicted\">city officials evicted them\u003c/a> in 2023.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>During that time, fires’ causes weren’t often investigated, as their starting places were often obscured by propane tanks, lighters, and flammable siding on RVs, Hunt \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11949327/the-end-of-wood-street-inside-the-struggle-for-stability-housing-on-the-margins-of-the-bay-area\">told KQED in May of last year\u003c/a>, but some residents believed the fires could have been arson.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Pacific Supply’s warehouse is across the street from a city-run RV parking lot that runs from 24th Street to about West Grand Avenue.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>KQED’s Erin Baldassari contributed to this report.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cem>Updated 12:55 p.m. Thursday\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Firefighters battled a massive fire overnight and into Thursday morning that destroyed an Oakland warehouse and sent smoke plumes into the sky.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The fire on the 1700 block of 24th Street near Interstate 880 broke out around 10 p.m. on Wednesday, according to Michael Hunt, a spokesperson for the Oakland Fire Department. By 1 a.m., more than 70 firefighters on the scene had \u003ca href=\"https://x.com/OaklandFireCA/status/1806229645475656040\">contained the blaze\u003c/a> to the main building of the roofing supply company warehouse of Pacific Supply.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As of Thursday morning, crews remain on-site to mitigate hotspots and evaluate damage from the fire.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>No injuries have been reported, but the warehouse structure along Wood Street is likely a total loss, Hunt said. The cause of the fire is under investigation. Streets surrounding the scene were closed due to water, and residents were asked to keep their windows closed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The fire is the third in the neighborhood in the past week. On Friday, an RV caught fire at Wood and 17th streets in what fire officials believe was an arson attack.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The next day, a fire broke out in another RV on West Grand Avenue and Willow Street near Raimondi Park, the Mercury News reported. The cause of the fire was not clear.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Frequent fires aren’t new to the area of West Oakland near Wood Street. Over a span of 2 1/2 years, 200 fires were reported along the road, where about a mile-long stretch was a settlement for over 300 unhoused people until \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11945422/end-of-an-era-last-remaining-unhoused-residents-at-oaklands-wood-street-commons-getting-evicted\">city officials evicted them\u003c/a> in 2023.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>During that time, fires’ causes weren’t often investigated, as their starting places were often obscured by propane tanks, lighters, and flammable siding on RVs, Hunt \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11949327/the-end-of-wood-street-inside-the-struggle-for-stability-housing-on-the-margins-of-the-bay-area\">told KQED in May of last year\u003c/a>, but some residents believed the fires could have been arson.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Pacific Supply’s warehouse is across the street from a city-run RV parking lot that runs from 24th Street to about West Grand Avenue.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>KQED’s Erin Baldassari contributed to this report.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>Three teenagers were killed in Oakland during two fatal shootings early Monday morning, according to Oakland police officials.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The first shooting took place around 1:30 a.m. near 10th Street on Filbert Street. Police said that the victim, a 16-year-old boy, was declared dead on the scene.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Less than an hour later, officers responded to a second shooting on 102nd Avenue near International Boulevard, police said. Around 2 a.m., police located one of the victims, an 18-year-old from Antioch. He was assisted by paramedics and transported to a local hospital, where he was declared dead, according to a police spokesperson.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Police said they were notified that a second victim, a 17-year-old San Francisco resident, had arrived at a nearby hospital. He was pronounced dead after receiving treatment from hospital personnel. The names of the victims have not been released.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Joseph Griffin, the executive director of Youth Alive, a community-based violence prevention and intervention agency in Oakland, said that when young people are victims of gun violence, it has reverberating effects on their families and community.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“One of the things that we know from doing this work and from our own personal experiences is that mourning comes in waves,” Griffin said. “Making sure that we’re there for the families in [the] immediate, but also in the long term to create a community around them is really important.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Young people who are exposed to high rates of violence over an extended period of time also have increased risks for developing chronic physical health conditions, like diabetes, later in life, according to Griffin. Family members often face financial burdens as well as mental health challenges, he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Griffin told KQED that many of the people he works with in Oakland have or will experience more than one loss to gun violence in their lifetime. The three homicides on Monday brought the city’s total to 40 this year. In the same time period, San Francisco has reported 14 homicides, according to the San Francisco Police Department.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Griffin said exposure to violence can have a snowball effect.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Having a history of violence in a community, where there’s trauma that’s passed down from generation to generation, it can make you more vulnerable to violence because the options become fewer,” Griffin said. “There’s cumulative trauma of having those folks who are in your life but are now gone too soon, folks who may have been part of your own support as a child.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When you start to fracture a community like that, it has many long-term impacts.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Three teenagers were killed in Oakland during two fatal shootings early Monday morning, according to Oakland police officials.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The first shooting took place around 1:30 a.m. near 10th Street on Filbert Street. Police said that the victim, a 16-year-old boy, was declared dead on the scene.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Less than an hour later, officers responded to a second shooting on 102nd Avenue near International Boulevard, police said. Around 2 a.m., police located one of the victims, an 18-year-old from Antioch. He was assisted by paramedics and transported to a local hospital, where he was declared dead, according to a police spokesperson.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Police said they were notified that a second victim, a 17-year-old San Francisco resident, had arrived at a nearby hospital. He was pronounced dead after receiving treatment from hospital personnel. The names of the victims have not been released.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Joseph Griffin, the executive director of Youth Alive, a community-based violence prevention and intervention agency in Oakland, said that when young people are victims of gun violence, it has reverberating effects on their families and community.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“One of the things that we know from doing this work and from our own personal experiences is that mourning comes in waves,” Griffin said. “Making sure that we’re there for the families in [the] immediate, but also in the long term to create a community around them is really important.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Young people who are exposed to high rates of violence over an extended period of time also have increased risks for developing chronic physical health conditions, like diabetes, later in life, according to Griffin. Family members often face financial burdens as well as mental health challenges, he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Griffin told KQED that many of the people he works with in Oakland have or will experience more than one loss to gun violence in their lifetime. The three homicides on Monday brought the city’s total to 40 this year. In the same time period, San Francisco has reported 14 homicides, according to the San Francisco Police Department.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Griffin said exposure to violence can have a snowball effect.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Having a history of violence in a community, where there’s trauma that’s passed down from generation to generation, it can make you more vulnerable to violence because the options become fewer,” Griffin said. “There’s cumulative trauma of having those folks who are in your life but are now gone too soon, folks who may have been part of your own support as a child.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When you start to fracture a community like that, it has many long-term impacts.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"publishDate": 1715853627,
"format": "standard",
"headTitle": "When BART Was Built, People — and Houses — Had to Go | KQED",
"labelTerm": {
"term": 33523,
"site": "news"
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">View the full episode transcript.\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Back in the early 1960s, when BART was just a sketch on a map, planners with the young transit agency had a task in front of them. BART had to acquire around 2,200 parcels of land in order to build the transportation system.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Exactly how the agency went about getting that land was something that always puzzled Janine Dictor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For her, the question was also personal. Growing up, her family would tell stories about an amazing house her great-grandparents used to own in North Oakland, at 59th, and what is now Martin Luther King Jr. Way (it was called Grove Street back then). But the stories always ended with how they had to sell their home to BART.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[baycuriouspodcastinfo]“There was always a sad tone to the story as if they didn’t have control over it,” Dictor said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Dictor’s great-grandparents, Vito and Elizabeth Campilongo, loved that house. They were both immigrants from Italy, and they kept the house full of family, friends and good food. Vito tended a bountiful garden in the backyard.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“My grandmother loved to cook in the basement,” said Johanne Dictor, Janine’s mother. “She had this great kitchen downstairs where she made her ravioli; she made her sausages with her women friends.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was a happy time, but it didn’t last. By the time Johanne was a teenager in the early ‘60s, one topic started to dominate their family dinners.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I remember we’d be sitting at the table and they’d say, ‘They’re going to take my house, they say we have to sell it. And we have to leave everything here.’ And you know, they just were devastated,” said Johanne about her grandparents.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ultimately, the Campilongos sold their house to BART and moved to San Leandro. Her grandfather planted a new garden, but he felt it was never as big or as beautiful as the one in Oakland.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“He’d sit on the porch in San Leandro looking so sad,” remembers Johanne.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All this history left Janine wondering how exactly the sale of her great-grandparents’ house went down. So she asked KQED’s Bay Curious to look into how much property BART acquired at the time of its inception and whether any homeowners challenged the agency.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There must be a pretty robust story behind all of this, and it’s just odd that we never have known quite what it is,” Janine said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11986429\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1384px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/news/2024/05/16/when-bart-was-built-people-and-houses-had-to-go/vito_elizabeth_family/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-11986429\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11986429\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/05/Vito_Elizabeth_family.png\" alt=\"An old black-and-white photo of a family in their living room\" width=\"1384\" height=\"1020\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/05/Vito_Elizabeth_family.png 1384w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/05/Vito_Elizabeth_family-800x590.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/05/Vito_Elizabeth_family-1020x752.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/05/Vito_Elizabeth_family-160x118.png 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1384px) 100vw, 1384px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Vito and Elizabeth Campilongo (center) left their North Oakland home in the 1960s to make room for a BART line. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of the Campilongo family)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>And so BART begins\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Like much of the country in the early 1950s, the Bay Area was in a post-war building boom. New houses were going up all over the region, in places like Concord and Fremont. City planners had to figure out how folks would get around and travel between all these developments.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>State lawmakers began \u003ca href=\"https://www.foundsf.org/index.php?title=San_Francisco_Bay_Area_Rapid_Transit_Commission%E2%80%94The_Beginnings\">mapping out\u003c/a> a regional transportation system to connect the suburbs to the economic hubs of Oakland and San Francisco. In 1957, they passed a bill creating the Bay Area Rapid Transit District.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But BART needed land, including in residential areas where property was already owned and inhabited by people. As an entity charged with building public infrastructure, BART was given the power of eminent domain, a legal tool that helped it acquire the needed property.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to Radhika Rao, a professor at UC San Francisco College of the Law, eminent domain allows the government to take people’s property “even if they don’t consent,” as long as it pays them fair market value for it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Eminent domain is an important tool for governments, said Rao, because infrastructure projects like hospitals, public schools, highways, parks and train tracks might never be built without it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Because you could have one private property owner who says, ‘My house stands in the way, you can’t build a highway,’ and then we have no highway. So our infrastructure depends upon government having this power,” Rao said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>However, Rao says, historically, the use of eminent domain in California has disproportionately affected low-income people and communities of color.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote size=\"medium\" align=\"right\" citation=\"Radhika Rao, UC San Francisco College of Law\"]‘That just makes economic sense, right? Why would government situate your infrastructure in a place where you have to pay more?’[/pullquote]One reason, she said, is that government agencies often use eminent domain in areas with lower property values since it costs them less to acquire that property.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That just makes economic sense, right? Why would government situate your infrastructure in a place where you have to pay more?” Rao said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Another reason for the disproportionate impact, suggests Rao, is that government officials choose to develop areas where residents are less likely to organize against them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Who has the money to hire a lawyer and go to court saying, ‘the compensation that you’re offering me is not fair market value?’ Rao said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>West Oakland residents displaced\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>One of the places in the Bay Area hit hardest by eminent domain projects — including, but not limited to, BART construction — was West Oakland.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Maxine Willis Ussery was born in Shreveport, Louisiana in 1939, but her family moved to West Oakland when she was just a few years old.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When I was a girl, Seventh Street and all of West Oakland was predominantly Black, owned by Black people. Beautiful old Victorians were there,” Willis Ussery said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Her family, like many Black families at the time, had come from the South in search of work and a better life. Her mother and father made the journey from Louisiana and settled in West Oakland. They found jobs at the nearby Naval shipyard.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They had no problems understanding that they had to develop their own businesses, their own services because that’s how they lived in the South,” Willis Ussery said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She says the West Oakland community had everything they needed: drug stores, groceries, restaurants, churches, doctors, and lawyers. But starting in the 1950s, successive government infrastructure projects ripped apart the fabric of this community.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>First, government agencies demolished homes and businesses for the Nimitz Freeway (Interstate 880) in the 1950s. Then, in the following decades, they cleared more buildings to make way for the Oakland Main Post Office and the Acorn housing projects. And then, \u003ca href=\"https://diva.sfsu.edu/collections/sfbatv/bundles/232778\">there was BART\u003c/a>. The Oakland Planning Department estimates that between 5,100 and 9,700 housing units were lost in West Oakland in the 1960s alone.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It was like a dispersement of a whole community, not just taking the buildings, it was taking people who had lived there. Teachers, athletes, all of them were displaced,” Willis Ussery said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The effect on the community was disastrous, she said, especially for the older folks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They were up in age, and they were moved into areas where they could afford to go with the money they were given for BART, which was not a lot,” Willis Ussery said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A KQED analysis of the 1960 census reveals that the West Oakland census tracts hardest hit by eminent domain were where people of color lived — in some areas, as many as 95% of the residents were Black. Annual incomes in the development zones were also far lower than the city average. The neighborhood in North Oakland where the Campilongos lived had a higher median income but was also predominantly Black.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11986231\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/news/240514-eminentdomain-25-bl-kqed/\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11986231\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/05/240514-EMINENTDOMAIN-25-BL-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"A BART train above two streets intersecting\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/05/240514-EMINENTDOMAIN-25-BL-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/05/240514-EMINENTDOMAIN-25-BL-KQED-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/05/240514-EMINENTDOMAIN-25-BL-KQED-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/05/240514-EMINENTDOMAIN-25-BL-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/05/240514-EMINENTDOMAIN-25-BL-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/05/240514-EMINENTDOMAIN-25-BL-KQED-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A BART train runs along the tracks at 59th Street and Martin Luther King Jr Way in Oakland on May 14, 2024. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>Berkeley residents resist BART plans\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Some East Bay residents, such as Mable Howard of Berkeley, successfully altered BART’s path.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Howard argued that BART’s plan to construct raised tracks through part of the city would further divide it along racial lines. Her legal challenge was highlighted in the documentary “\u003ca href=\"https://video.kqed.org/video/welcome-to-the-neighborhood-truly-ca-zag6fb/\">Welcome to the Neighborhood\u003c/a>.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As the documentary explains, in 1966, Berkeley voters approved a tax that would pay to put BART completely underground.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But BART proposed a design for the Ashby station that was slightly above ground. Howard felt that the design would further segregate the city. She teamed up with the late East Bay politician Ron Dellums, then a city council member, to successfully sue the agency to underground all their Berkeley infrastructure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We won the case. How do we know we won the case? Go to Berkeley. You’ll see the whole thing’s underground,” said attorney Matthew Weinberg in the film.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>BART spokesperson: ‘Lessons learned’\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>These days, it is hard to imagine a Bay Area without BART. People from all over the Bay Area make millions of trips on it every month. Even the aerial tracks that tower over Martin Luther King Jr. Way, where the Campilongo house used to stand, seem to blend into the background of freeways and buildings.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>BART’s Chief Communications Officer Alicia Trost says it’s still important for the agency to acknowledge the past harms that the agency committed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There was a lot of generational wealth that was deeply impacted, if not destroyed, because of the building of the BART system,” Trost said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>BART now has an Office of Civil Rights and other equity initiatives that Trost says are critical to rebuilding trust with the community.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote size=\"medium\" align=\"right\" citation=\"Alicia Trost, BART\"]‘There was a lot of generational wealth that was deeply impacted if not destroyed because of the building of the BART system.’[/pullquote]“Especially when we’re building on our land, we want to make sure there’s a carve-out specifically for affordable housing and that we are in a daily conversation with the community to make sure what we’re building is something that they want,” Trost said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As the agency imagines future development, like building a possible second transbay tube between San Francisco and Oakland, she says they’re also developing plans to prevent the displacement of residents.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Trost said the uprooting of residents to create BART in the 1960s provided “lessons learned,” and mistakes that shouldn’t be repeated were made.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>State leaders are also looking at the long-term impact that eminent domain property transfers have had on families and communities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>California State Senator Steven Bradford, a member of California’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/reparations\">Reparations Task Force\u003c/a>, introduced a bill in February that would compensate former property owners if their parcel was taken through eminent domain, but they didn’t receive just compensation due to racism or discrimination by the government.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>The price the Campilongos paid\u003c/h2>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11986413\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/news/2024/05/16/when-bart-was-built-people-and-houses-had-to-go/campilongo_contract_page_01/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-11986413\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11986413\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/05/Campilongo_contract_Page_01-800x1032.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"1032\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/05/Campilongo_contract_Page_01-800x1032.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/05/Campilongo_contract_Page_01-1020x1316.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/05/Campilongo_contract_Page_01-160x206.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/05/Campilongo_contract_Page_01-1190x1536.jpg 1190w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/05/Campilongo_contract_Page_01-1587x2048.jpg 1587w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/05/Campilongo_contract_Page_01.jpg 1701w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The contract the Campilongos signed with BART.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>A public records request submitted by KQED reveals that the Bay Area Rapid Transit District paid Vito and Elizabeth Campilongo $25,000 for their property in North Oakland on Sept. 2, 1965. Adjusted for inflation, that’s about $245,000 today. These days, homes go for around $1 million in that neighborhood.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Janine and Johanne Dictor were excited to see the contract their relatives signed with BART, the physical evidence of their family history.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Doesn’t that look like Nana’s handwriting?” Janine asked her mom.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But after the initial excitement, the mood turned somber.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s about a lot more than what they were compensated,” Janine said. “It’s about the fact that they were forced into this, that they lost a lifestyle, that they lost a community,”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The premise of using eminent domain is that individual sacrifices are warranted to build public infrastructure. However, for families like the Dictors, the construction of BART was a painful turn in their history.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“After we lost that house, we lost the sense of our family in a way. It was kind of driven apart,” her mom, Johanne, added. “That house really brought us together.”\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>\u003cbr>\nSpecial thanks to Pam Uzzell for providing parts of her documentary “Welcome to the Neighborhood” and to KQED’s Dan Brekke for reporting support and data analysis. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[baycuriousquestion]\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2 id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Sounds of BART\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> Johanne Dictor points at the grassy median dividing the six lanes of Martin Luther King Junior Way in North Oakland. An elevated BART track towers overhead.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Johanne Dictor:\u003c/strong> I guess my grandmother’s house was right here on the, the tracks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> Johanne’s grandparents, Vito and Elizabeth Campilongo were immigrants from Italy. They loved their home on what was then 59th and Grove street in Oakland … Grove is Martin Luther King Jr Way these days. They kept the house full of family, friends and, as is the Italian way … good food.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Johanne Dictor:\u003c/strong> So she, she had this great kitchen downstairs where she made her ravioli. She made her sausages with her women friends. They’d come over, and all day, they’d make sausages down there.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> And Vito grew food in the backyard.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Janine Dictor: Ah, garden, this master gardener with this beautiful, extensive garden that he used to cook these delicious Italian meals.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> This was a happy time. But it didn’t last. By the time Johanne was a teenager in the early ’60s, one topic started to dominate their family dinners.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Johanne Dictor:\u003c/strong> I remember, you know, be sitting at the table and they’d say, you know, they’re, they’re gonna take my house, they say we have to sell it. And we have to leave everything here, and you know, they just were devastated.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> Ultimately, the Campilongos sold their house to BART and moved to San Leandro. Her grandfather planted a new garden, but it was never as big or as beautiful as the one in Oakland.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Johanne Dictor:\u003c/strong> He’d sit on the porch like in San Leandro looking so sad, you know, (cries)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> Johanne’s daughter, Janine, grew up with this family story. But she has always thought it was odd that they didn’t know more about how it all went down.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Janine Dictor:\u003c/strong> How many properties were acquired? Did anybody challenge, you know, Bart’s ability to acquire their property? What was the outcome of that? Um, yeah, just there seems like there must, there must be a pretty robust story behind all of this. And it’s just odd that we never have known what, quite what it is.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> I’m Olivia Allen Price, and today on Bay Curious the story of how families like the Campilongos were uprooted to make way for BART. Theirs is a common story — people have been displaced for large infrastructure projects time and time again all across the United States. And it’s still happening today. Stay with us.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bay Area Rapid Transit…better known as BART…is a fixture of life in the Bay Area today. But many families and businesses were displaced to build it. KQED reporter Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman is going to help us understand how it all went down.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Music starts\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman:\u003c/strong> In the early ’50s, the Bay Area, like much of the country, was in a post-war building boom. New houses were going up all over the region in places like Concord and Fremont. And a big question was how folks would get around.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Sounds of BART promo reel\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman:\u003c/strong> State lawmakers began planning for a regional transportation system to connect the suburbs to the economic hubs of Oakland and San Francisco. There was a lot of excitement … which you can hear in this promotional video for BART.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>BART promo reel:\u003c/strong>…To do this by weaving into the fabric of the Bay Area an entirely new and vastly better way of getting around.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman:\u003c/strong> In 1962, voters in Alameda, Contra Costa, and San Francisco counties approved a nearly 800 million dollar bond to build the new tracks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>BART promo reel:\u003c/strong>… Locations of lines and stations was the first step in the long planning process.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman\u003c/strong>: But BART needed land, including in residential areas where property was already owned and inhabited by people. The Campilongos neighborhood in North Oakland was one of those areas; another was West Oakland.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maxine Ussery\u003c/strong>: When I was a girl, there were… So 7th Street and all of West Oakland was predominantly black, owned by black people. Beautiful old Victorians were there.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman\u003c/strong>: Maxine Ussery was born in Oakland in 1939. Her family, like many Black families at the time, had come from the South in search of work and a better life. Maxine’s mother and father made the journey from Louisiana and settled in West Oakland. They found jobs at the nearby Naval Shipyard.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maxine Ussery\u003c/strong>: They had no problems understanding that they had to, in fact, develop their own businesses, their own services, because that’s how they lived in the South.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman\u003c/strong>: She says the West Oakland community had everything they needed…drug stores, groceries, restaurants, churches, doctors and lawyers. But starting in the 1950s, successive government infrastructure projects ripped apart the fabric of this community.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maxine Ussery\u003c/strong>: They forced people to move.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman\u003c/strong>: Government agencies demolished homes and businesses for the Nimitz Freeway in the ’50s. Then, in the following decades, they cleared more buildings to make way for Oakland’s Main Post Office and the Acorn housing projects. And then, there was BART. The Oakland Planning Department estimates that upwards of 5,000 units of housing were destroyed in West Oakland in the 1960s alone.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maxine Ussery\u003c/strong>: It was like a disbursement of a, of a whole group of a whole community, not just, uh, taking the buildings, it was taking people and who had lived there and who, uh, uh, teachers, um, uh, uh, educate, you know, people who were athletes, all of them were displaced.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman\u003c/strong>: Maxine says the effect on the community was disastrous, especially for the older folks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maxine Ussery\u003c/strong>: They were up in age, and they were moved into areas where they, that where they could afford to go with the money they were given for BART, which was not a lot. It wasn’t enough money for them to live on.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman\u003c/strong>: Many of the infrastructure projects in West Oakland that Maxine talks about were only possible because of a legal tool known as eminent domain.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Radhika Rao\u003c/strong>: So that’s the part of the Constitution that gives government the power to come along and take people’s private property even if they don’t consent.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman\u003c/strong>: Radhika Rao is a professor of Law at UC San Francisco College of the Law. Eminent domain allows public agencies to buy private property at “fair market value” in order to build infrastructure that is in the public interest. Think hospitals, Public Schools, Highways, Parks, and train tracks. Radhika says without it, infrastructure projects like these might never get built.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Radhika Rao\u003c/strong>: Because you could have one private property owner who says, my house stands in the way; you can’t build a highway. And then we have no highway. So, our infrastructure depends upon government having this power. It’s, it’s super important.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman\u003c/strong>: But Rhadika says government agencies often target areas with lower property values because they cost less.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Radhika Rao\u003c/strong>: Of course! That’s, that just makes economic sense, right? Why would government situate your infrastructure in a place where you have to pay more?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman:\u003c/strong> And the government has a long history of undervaluing properties where people of color and low-income people live and work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Radhika Rao\u003c/strong>: And then there are also political reasons, you know, which communities have power, um, and which communities don’t, to organize against this kind of action.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman\u003c/strong>: The 1960 census reveals the parts of West Oakland hit hardest by eminent domain projects were highly segregated … as much as 95% Black … with annual incomes far lower than the city average. The neighborhood in North Oakland that the Campilongos lived in had a higher median income but was also predominantly Black. Rhadika says these communities were vulnerable to eminent domain action and less likely to fight back.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Radhika Rao\u003c/strong>: Who has the money to hire a lawyer and go to court saying this, the compensation that you’re offering me is not just compensation? It’s not fair market value.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Music starts\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman:\u003c/strong> BART records show that the agency acquired approximately 2,200 properties in order to build its first 75 miles of track. Some people sold their parcels to BART willingly, but others had to be evicted.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Clip of news report: \u003c/strong>This is Seventh Street on Oakland’s west side.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman:\u003c/strong> In this KPIX news report from 1967, BART staff are evicting an elderly Black woman named Leitha Blick from the thrift store she owns.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>News report:\u003c/strong> An admittedly blighted area, directly in the path of proposed Bay Area Rapid Transit District construction.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman:\u003c/strong> That word — blighted — is important. It’s a term that was used by urban redevelopment agencies throughout the country — including in Oakland — to describe neighborhoods that were seen as deteriorating.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>News report:\u003c/strong> Most of the homes and businesses in this area will have to be destroyed to make room for progress, and the push of progress is not always gentle. Angry and confused, many of the residents say they can’t buy new homes with the market value prices given them for the ones they now live in. Business people face the same dilemma.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman:\u003c/strong> In the news clip, Blick stands by with her arms crossed as workers pack her things into boxes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>News report footage:\u003c/strong> Miss Blick, had you and the Bay Area Rapid Transit District reached any agreement before this happened?\u003cbr>\n\u003cstrong>Blick:\u003c/strong> No.\u003cbr>\n\u003cstrong>News reporter:\u003c/strong> Why?\u003cbr>\n\u003cstrong>Blick:\u003c/strong> Because, uh, the price wasn’t satisfactory.\u003cbr>\n\u003cstrong>News reporter:\u003c/strong> You didn’t think they were offering you enough money for your merchandise?\u003cbr>\n\u003cstrong>Blick:\u003c/strong> That’s correct. Moving us out, and we had no place to go, and I didn’t think they were offering enough, no way.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman:\u003c/strong> Blick tried to stop BART from taking her property…but ultimately lost. But there are some examples of people successfully altering BART’s plan.\u003cbr>\n\u003cstrong>\u003cbr>\nDocumentary footage:\u003c/strong> Berkeley was basically a segregated city. So, the whole of South Berkeley was pretty much a black neighborhood.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003c/strong>Pam Uzzell’s documentary “Welcome to the Neighborhood” chronicles one effort in Berkeley. It profiles Mable Howard, who argued that BART’s plan to put raised tracks through part of the city would divide it along racial lines.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Documentary footage: \u003c/strong>A woman who said, I won’t have The city of Berkeley, divided in half, there won’t be any other side of the tracks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman:\u003c/strong> In 1966, Berkeley voters approved a tax that would pay to put BART completely underground in Berkeley. But BART proposed a design for Ashby station that was slightly above ground. So Mable Howard teamed up with Ron Dellums, then a city council member, to sue the agency. Here’s a lawyer on the case, Matthew Weinberg.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Matthew Weinberg:\u003c/strong> We won the case. How do we know we won the case? Go to Berkeley. You’ll see the whole thing’s underground.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003c/strong>BART acknowledges this legacy of displacement and struggle. Here’s Chief Communications Officer Alicia Trost.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alicia Trost: \u003c/strong>There was a lot of generational wealth that was deeply impacted, if not destroyed, because of the building of the BART system.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman:\u003c/strong> BART now has an office of civil rights, and other equity initiatives that Trost says are critical to rebuilding trust.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alicia Trost:\u003c/strong> And especially when we’re building on our land, uh, we want to make sure there’s a carve-out specifically for affordable housing and that we are in a daily conversation with the community to make sure what we’re building is something that they want.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman:\u003c/strong> As the agency imagines building a possible second transbay tube, Trost says they’re also developing anti-displacement goals.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alicia Trost:\u003c/strong> Which, if that’s not lessons learned, you know, I don’t know what is.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman:\u003c/strong> I’ve gone through multiple public records requests and dozens of deeds, right-of-way contracts, and insurance policies for this story. At the end of it all, I paid another visit to Janine, our question-asker, and her mom, Johanne. I had something for them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman, talking to the Dictors:\u003c/strong> I actually found the contract that your grandparents signed with Bart, so here it is. And so this, you can see, like it says right-of-way contract, and it has your grandparents’ names on it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Johanne Dictor:\u003c/strong> Oh, is that all they, so it was just 25,000. Is that right? Oh my God. Oh my gosh.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman talking to the Dictors:\u003c/strong> We’re looking at the original contract between Vito and Elizabeth Campilongo and the Bay Area Rapid Transportation District, dated Sept. 2, 1965.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Janine Dictor:\u003c/strong> And it looks like my grandmother’s handwriting, too, actually.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Johanne Dictor:\u003c/strong> Oh, it does?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman:\u003c/strong> It shows the Campilongos agreed to sell their property for $25,000. Adjusted for inflation, that’s about 245,000 dollars today. These days, homes go for around a million in that neighborhood.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Janine Dictor:\u003c/strong> Doesn’t it look like Nana’s?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Johanne Dictor:\u003c/strong> Not really.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Janine Dictor: \u003c/strong>That floral?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Johanne Dictor:\u003c/strong> Yeah, a little bit, but hers was, yeah, she had a good penmanship, Nana. Yeah,\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman:\u003c/strong> Janine and Johanne are excited to see the physical evidence of their family history. But after the initial excitement, the mood is somber.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Janine Dictor:\u003c/strong> Going through this process, it’s like you realize it’s like about a lot more than what they were compensated, right? It’s about the fact that they were forced into this, that they lost a lifestyle, that they lost a community, you know. So, even if they got a good price, it’s kind of like, there’s still something to mourn there right about their experience.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman:\u003c/strong> The word progress comes up a lot when talking about these kinds of projects. The idea is that progress, the greater good, justifies the sacrifice some families have to make. But for families like the Dictors, progress could feel like a step in the wrong direction. Here’s Johanne.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Johanne Dictor: \u003c/strong>After we lost that house, we lost the sense of our family in a way, it seemed like. It was kind of driven apart. Because that house really brought us together. More than the house in San Leandro, you know.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman:\u003c/strong> Public infrastructure is often seen as a kind of equalizer … it’s something we all pay for and that anyone can use. But the fact is … some people had to pay more than others.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> That was KQED reporter Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman.The use of eminent domain led to the displacement in some of the stories we explored today. It was often used to displace communities of color to make way for various infrastructure projects around the state. As part of its reparations efforts, California is now considering a bill that would compensate people if they can prove racism or discrimination prevented them from getting just compensation. To learn more about California’s reparations efforts, check out KQED’s coverage at KQED dot org slash reparations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Special Thanks to Pam Uzzell for allowing us to use clips from her documentary “Welcome to the Neighborhood” in this story.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>This episode was edited by Katrina Schwartz.\u003cbr>\n\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> Produced by Olivia Allen-Price.\u003cbr>\n\u003cstrong>Tamuna Chkareuli:\u003c/strong> Tamuna Chkareuli\u003cbr>\n\u003cstrong>Pauline Bartolone:\u003c/strong> Pauline Bartolone\u003cbr>\n\u003cstrong>Christopher Beale:\u003c/strong> And Christopher Beale.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> We get additional support from:\u003cbr>\n\u003cstrong>Jen Chien:\u003c/strong> Jen Chien\u003cbr>\n\u003cstrong>Katie Sprenger:\u003c/strong> Katie Sprenger\u003cbr>\n\u003cstrong>Cesar Saldaña:\u003c/strong> Cesar Saldaña\u003cbr>\n\u003cstrong>Maha Sanad:\u003c/strong> Maha Sanad\u003cbr>\n\u003cstrong>Xorje Olivares:\u003c/strong> Xorje Olivares:\u003cbr>\n\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> And the whole KQED family. Have a great week, everyone.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">View the full episode transcript.\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Back in the early 1960s, when BART was just a sketch on a map, planners with the young transit agency had a task in front of them. BART had to acquire around 2,200 parcels of land in order to build the transportation system.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Exactly how the agency went about getting that land was something that always puzzled Janine Dictor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For her, the question was also personal. Growing up, her family would tell stories about an amazing house her great-grandparents used to own in North Oakland, at 59th, and what is now Martin Luther King Jr. Way (it was called Grove Street back then). But the stories always ended with how they had to sell their home to BART.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003caside class=\"alignleft utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__bayCuriousPodcastShortcode__bayCurious\">\u003cimg src=https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/bayCuriousLogo.png alt=\"Bay Curious Podcast\" loading=\"lazy\" />\n \u003ca href=\"/news/series/baycurious\">Bay Curious\u003c/a> is a podcast that answers your questions about the Bay Area.\n Subscribe on \u003ca href=\"https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/bay-curious/id1172473406\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Apple Podcasts\u003c/a>,\n \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/podcasts/500557090/bay-curious\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">NPR One\u003c/a> or your favorite podcast platform.\u003c/aside>\u003c/p>\u003cp>“There was always a sad tone to the story as if they didn’t have control over it,” Dictor said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Dictor’s great-grandparents, Vito and Elizabeth Campilongo, loved that house. They were both immigrants from Italy, and they kept the house full of family, friends and good food. Vito tended a bountiful garden in the backyard.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“My grandmother loved to cook in the basement,” said Johanne Dictor, Janine’s mother. “She had this great kitchen downstairs where she made her ravioli; she made her sausages with her women friends.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was a happy time, but it didn’t last. By the time Johanne was a teenager in the early ‘60s, one topic started to dominate their family dinners.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I remember we’d be sitting at the table and they’d say, ‘They’re going to take my house, they say we have to sell it. And we have to leave everything here.’ And you know, they just were devastated,” said Johanne about her grandparents.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ultimately, the Campilongos sold their house to BART and moved to San Leandro. Her grandfather planted a new garden, but he felt it was never as big or as beautiful as the one in Oakland.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“He’d sit on the porch in San Leandro looking so sad,” remembers Johanne.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All this history left Janine wondering how exactly the sale of her great-grandparents’ house went down. So she asked KQED’s Bay Curious to look into how much property BART acquired at the time of its inception and whether any homeowners challenged the agency.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There must be a pretty robust story behind all of this, and it’s just odd that we never have known quite what it is,” Janine said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11986429\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1384px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/news/2024/05/16/when-bart-was-built-people-and-houses-had-to-go/vito_elizabeth_family/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-11986429\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11986429\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/05/Vito_Elizabeth_family.png\" alt=\"An old black-and-white photo of a family in their living room\" width=\"1384\" height=\"1020\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/05/Vito_Elizabeth_family.png 1384w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/05/Vito_Elizabeth_family-800x590.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/05/Vito_Elizabeth_family-1020x752.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/05/Vito_Elizabeth_family-160x118.png 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1384px) 100vw, 1384px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Vito and Elizabeth Campilongo (center) left their North Oakland home in the 1960s to make room for a BART line. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of the Campilongo family)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>And so BART begins\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Like much of the country in the early 1950s, the Bay Area was in a post-war building boom. New houses were going up all over the region, in places like Concord and Fremont. City planners had to figure out how folks would get around and travel between all these developments.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>State lawmakers began \u003ca href=\"https://www.foundsf.org/index.php?title=San_Francisco_Bay_Area_Rapid_Transit_Commission%E2%80%94The_Beginnings\">mapping out\u003c/a> a regional transportation system to connect the suburbs to the economic hubs of Oakland and San Francisco. In 1957, they passed a bill creating the Bay Area Rapid Transit District.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But BART needed land, including in residential areas where property was already owned and inhabited by people. As an entity charged with building public infrastructure, BART was given the power of eminent domain, a legal tool that helped it acquire the needed property.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to Radhika Rao, a professor at UC San Francisco College of the Law, eminent domain allows the government to take people’s property “even if they don’t consent,” as long as it pays them fair market value for it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Eminent domain is an important tool for governments, said Rao, because infrastructure projects like hospitals, public schools, highways, parks and train tracks might never be built without it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Because you could have one private property owner who says, ‘My house stands in the way, you can’t build a highway,’ and then we have no highway. So our infrastructure depends upon government having this power,” Rao said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>However, Rao says, historically, the use of eminent domain in California has disproportionately affected low-income people and communities of color.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "‘That just makes economic sense, right? Why would government situate your infrastructure in a place where you have to pay more?’",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>One reason, she said, is that government agencies often use eminent domain in areas with lower property values since it costs them less to acquire that property.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That just makes economic sense, right? Why would government situate your infrastructure in a place where you have to pay more?” Rao said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Another reason for the disproportionate impact, suggests Rao, is that government officials choose to develop areas where residents are less likely to organize against them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Who has the money to hire a lawyer and go to court saying, ‘the compensation that you’re offering me is not fair market value?’ Rao said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>West Oakland residents displaced\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>One of the places in the Bay Area hit hardest by eminent domain projects — including, but not limited to, BART construction — was West Oakland.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Maxine Willis Ussery was born in Shreveport, Louisiana in 1939, but her family moved to West Oakland when she was just a few years old.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When I was a girl, Seventh Street and all of West Oakland was predominantly Black, owned by Black people. Beautiful old Victorians were there,” Willis Ussery said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Her family, like many Black families at the time, had come from the South in search of work and a better life. Her mother and father made the journey from Louisiana and settled in West Oakland. They found jobs at the nearby Naval shipyard.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They had no problems understanding that they had to develop their own businesses, their own services because that’s how they lived in the South,” Willis Ussery said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She says the West Oakland community had everything they needed: drug stores, groceries, restaurants, churches, doctors, and lawyers. But starting in the 1950s, successive government infrastructure projects ripped apart the fabric of this community.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>First, government agencies demolished homes and businesses for the Nimitz Freeway (Interstate 880) in the 1950s. Then, in the following decades, they cleared more buildings to make way for the Oakland Main Post Office and the Acorn housing projects. And then, \u003ca href=\"https://diva.sfsu.edu/collections/sfbatv/bundles/232778\">there was BART\u003c/a>. The Oakland Planning Department estimates that between 5,100 and 9,700 housing units were lost in West Oakland in the 1960s alone.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It was like a dispersement of a whole community, not just taking the buildings, it was taking people who had lived there. Teachers, athletes, all of them were displaced,” Willis Ussery said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The effect on the community was disastrous, she said, especially for the older folks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They were up in age, and they were moved into areas where they could afford to go with the money they were given for BART, which was not a lot,” Willis Ussery said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A KQED analysis of the 1960 census reveals that the West Oakland census tracts hardest hit by eminent domain were where people of color lived — in some areas, as many as 95% of the residents were Black. Annual incomes in the development zones were also far lower than the city average. The neighborhood in North Oakland where the Campilongos lived had a higher median income but was also predominantly Black.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11986231\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/news/240514-eminentdomain-25-bl-kqed/\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11986231\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/05/240514-EMINENTDOMAIN-25-BL-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"A BART train above two streets intersecting\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/05/240514-EMINENTDOMAIN-25-BL-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/05/240514-EMINENTDOMAIN-25-BL-KQED-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/05/240514-EMINENTDOMAIN-25-BL-KQED-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/05/240514-EMINENTDOMAIN-25-BL-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/05/240514-EMINENTDOMAIN-25-BL-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/05/240514-EMINENTDOMAIN-25-BL-KQED-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A BART train runs along the tracks at 59th Street and Martin Luther King Jr Way in Oakland on May 14, 2024. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>Berkeley residents resist BART plans\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Some East Bay residents, such as Mable Howard of Berkeley, successfully altered BART’s path.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Howard argued that BART’s plan to construct raised tracks through part of the city would further divide it along racial lines. Her legal challenge was highlighted in the documentary “\u003ca href=\"https://video.kqed.org/video/welcome-to-the-neighborhood-truly-ca-zag6fb/\">Welcome to the Neighborhood\u003c/a>.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As the documentary explains, in 1966, Berkeley voters approved a tax that would pay to put BART completely underground.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But BART proposed a design for the Ashby station that was slightly above ground. Howard felt that the design would further segregate the city. She teamed up with the late East Bay politician Ron Dellums, then a city council member, to successfully sue the agency to underground all their Berkeley infrastructure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We won the case. How do we know we won the case? Go to Berkeley. You’ll see the whole thing’s underground,” said attorney Matthew Weinberg in the film.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>BART spokesperson: ‘Lessons learned’\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>These days, it is hard to imagine a Bay Area without BART. People from all over the Bay Area make millions of trips on it every month. Even the aerial tracks that tower over Martin Luther King Jr. Way, where the Campilongo house used to stand, seem to blend into the background of freeways and buildings.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>BART’s Chief Communications Officer Alicia Trost says it’s still important for the agency to acknowledge the past harms that the agency committed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There was a lot of generational wealth that was deeply impacted, if not destroyed, because of the building of the BART system,” Trost said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>BART now has an Office of Civil Rights and other equity initiatives that Trost says are critical to rebuilding trust with the community.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>“Especially when we’re building on our land, we want to make sure there’s a carve-out specifically for affordable housing and that we are in a daily conversation with the community to make sure what we’re building is something that they want,” Trost said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As the agency imagines future development, like building a possible second transbay tube between San Francisco and Oakland, she says they’re also developing plans to prevent the displacement of residents.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Trost said the uprooting of residents to create BART in the 1960s provided “lessons learned,” and mistakes that shouldn’t be repeated were made.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>State leaders are also looking at the long-term impact that eminent domain property transfers have had on families and communities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>California State Senator Steven Bradford, a member of California’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/reparations\">Reparations Task Force\u003c/a>, introduced a bill in February that would compensate former property owners if their parcel was taken through eminent domain, but they didn’t receive just compensation due to racism or discrimination by the government.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>The price the Campilongos paid\u003c/h2>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11986413\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/news/2024/05/16/when-bart-was-built-people-and-houses-had-to-go/campilongo_contract_page_01/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-11986413\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11986413\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/05/Campilongo_contract_Page_01-800x1032.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"1032\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/05/Campilongo_contract_Page_01-800x1032.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/05/Campilongo_contract_Page_01-1020x1316.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/05/Campilongo_contract_Page_01-160x206.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/05/Campilongo_contract_Page_01-1190x1536.jpg 1190w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/05/Campilongo_contract_Page_01-1587x2048.jpg 1587w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/05/Campilongo_contract_Page_01.jpg 1701w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The contract the Campilongos signed with BART.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>A public records request submitted by KQED reveals that the Bay Area Rapid Transit District paid Vito and Elizabeth Campilongo $25,000 for their property in North Oakland on Sept. 2, 1965. Adjusted for inflation, that’s about $245,000 today. These days, homes go for around $1 million in that neighborhood.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Janine and Johanne Dictor were excited to see the contract their relatives signed with BART, the physical evidence of their family history.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Doesn’t that look like Nana’s handwriting?” Janine asked her mom.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But after the initial excitement, the mood turned somber.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s about a lot more than what they were compensated,” Janine said. “It’s about the fact that they were forced into this, that they lost a lifestyle, that they lost a community,”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The premise of using eminent domain is that individual sacrifices are warranted to build public infrastructure. However, for families like the Dictors, the construction of BART was a painful turn in their history.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“After we lost that house, we lost the sense of our family in a way. It was kind of driven apart,” her mom, Johanne, added. “That house really brought us together.”\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>\u003cbr>\nSpecial thanks to Pam Uzzell for providing parts of her documentary “Welcome to the Neighborhood” and to KQED’s Dan Brekke for reporting support and data analysis. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-content post-body\">\u003ch2 id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Sounds of BART\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> Johanne Dictor points at the grassy median dividing the six lanes of Martin Luther King Junior Way in North Oakland. An elevated BART track towers overhead.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Johanne Dictor:\u003c/strong> I guess my grandmother’s house was right here on the, the tracks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> Johanne’s grandparents, Vito and Elizabeth Campilongo were immigrants from Italy. They loved their home on what was then 59th and Grove street in Oakland … Grove is Martin Luther King Jr Way these days. They kept the house full of family, friends and, as is the Italian way … good food.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Johanne Dictor:\u003c/strong> So she, she had this great kitchen downstairs where she made her ravioli. She made her sausages with her women friends. They’d come over, and all day, they’d make sausages down there.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> And Vito grew food in the backyard.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Janine Dictor: Ah, garden, this master gardener with this beautiful, extensive garden that he used to cook these delicious Italian meals.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> This was a happy time. But it didn’t last. By the time Johanne was a teenager in the early ’60s, one topic started to dominate their family dinners.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Johanne Dictor:\u003c/strong> I remember, you know, be sitting at the table and they’d say, you know, they’re, they’re gonna take my house, they say we have to sell it. And we have to leave everything here, and you know, they just were devastated.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> Ultimately, the Campilongos sold their house to BART and moved to San Leandro. Her grandfather planted a new garden, but it was never as big or as beautiful as the one in Oakland.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Johanne Dictor:\u003c/strong> He’d sit on the porch like in San Leandro looking so sad, you know, (cries)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> Johanne’s daughter, Janine, grew up with this family story. But she has always thought it was odd that they didn’t know more about how it all went down.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Janine Dictor:\u003c/strong> How many properties were acquired? Did anybody challenge, you know, Bart’s ability to acquire their property? What was the outcome of that? Um, yeah, just there seems like there must, there must be a pretty robust story behind all of this. And it’s just odd that we never have known what, quite what it is.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> I’m Olivia Allen Price, and today on Bay Curious the story of how families like the Campilongos were uprooted to make way for BART. Theirs is a common story — people have been displaced for large infrastructure projects time and time again all across the United States. And it’s still happening today. Stay with us.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bay Area Rapid Transit…better known as BART…is a fixture of life in the Bay Area today. But many families and businesses were displaced to build it. KQED reporter Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman is going to help us understand how it all went down.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Music starts\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman:\u003c/strong> In the early ’50s, the Bay Area, like much of the country, was in a post-war building boom. New houses were going up all over the region in places like Concord and Fremont. And a big question was how folks would get around.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Sounds of BART promo reel\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman:\u003c/strong> State lawmakers began planning for a regional transportation system to connect the suburbs to the economic hubs of Oakland and San Francisco. There was a lot of excitement … which you can hear in this promotional video for BART.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>BART promo reel:\u003c/strong>…To do this by weaving into the fabric of the Bay Area an entirely new and vastly better way of getting around.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman:\u003c/strong> In 1962, voters in Alameda, Contra Costa, and San Francisco counties approved a nearly 800 million dollar bond to build the new tracks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>BART promo reel:\u003c/strong>… Locations of lines and stations was the first step in the long planning process.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman\u003c/strong>: But BART needed land, including in residential areas where property was already owned and inhabited by people. The Campilongos neighborhood in North Oakland was one of those areas; another was West Oakland.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maxine Ussery\u003c/strong>: When I was a girl, there were… So 7th Street and all of West Oakland was predominantly black, owned by black people. Beautiful old Victorians were there.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman\u003c/strong>: Maxine Ussery was born in Oakland in 1939. Her family, like many Black families at the time, had come from the South in search of work and a better life. Maxine’s mother and father made the journey from Louisiana and settled in West Oakland. They found jobs at the nearby Naval Shipyard.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maxine Ussery\u003c/strong>: They had no problems understanding that they had to, in fact, develop their own businesses, their own services, because that’s how they lived in the South.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman\u003c/strong>: She says the West Oakland community had everything they needed…drug stores, groceries, restaurants, churches, doctors and lawyers. But starting in the 1950s, successive government infrastructure projects ripped apart the fabric of this community.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maxine Ussery\u003c/strong>: They forced people to move.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman\u003c/strong>: Government agencies demolished homes and businesses for the Nimitz Freeway in the ’50s. Then, in the following decades, they cleared more buildings to make way for Oakland’s Main Post Office and the Acorn housing projects. And then, there was BART. The Oakland Planning Department estimates that upwards of 5,000 units of housing were destroyed in West Oakland in the 1960s alone.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maxine Ussery\u003c/strong>: It was like a disbursement of a, of a whole group of a whole community, not just, uh, taking the buildings, it was taking people and who had lived there and who, uh, uh, teachers, um, uh, uh, educate, you know, people who were athletes, all of them were displaced.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman\u003c/strong>: Maxine says the effect on the community was disastrous, especially for the older folks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maxine Ussery\u003c/strong>: They were up in age, and they were moved into areas where they, that where they could afford to go with the money they were given for BART, which was not a lot. It wasn’t enough money for them to live on.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman\u003c/strong>: Many of the infrastructure projects in West Oakland that Maxine talks about were only possible because of a legal tool known as eminent domain.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Radhika Rao\u003c/strong>: So that’s the part of the Constitution that gives government the power to come along and take people’s private property even if they don’t consent.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman\u003c/strong>: Radhika Rao is a professor of Law at UC San Francisco College of the Law. Eminent domain allows public agencies to buy private property at “fair market value” in order to build infrastructure that is in the public interest. Think hospitals, Public Schools, Highways, Parks, and train tracks. Radhika says without it, infrastructure projects like these might never get built.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Radhika Rao\u003c/strong>: Because you could have one private property owner who says, my house stands in the way; you can’t build a highway. And then we have no highway. So, our infrastructure depends upon government having this power. It’s, it’s super important.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman\u003c/strong>: But Rhadika says government agencies often target areas with lower property values because they cost less.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Radhika Rao\u003c/strong>: Of course! That’s, that just makes economic sense, right? Why would government situate your infrastructure in a place where you have to pay more?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman:\u003c/strong> And the government has a long history of undervaluing properties where people of color and low-income people live and work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Radhika Rao\u003c/strong>: And then there are also political reasons, you know, which communities have power, um, and which communities don’t, to organize against this kind of action.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman\u003c/strong>: The 1960 census reveals the parts of West Oakland hit hardest by eminent domain projects were highly segregated … as much as 95% Black … with annual incomes far lower than the city average. The neighborhood in North Oakland that the Campilongos lived in had a higher median income but was also predominantly Black. Rhadika says these communities were vulnerable to eminent domain action and less likely to fight back.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Radhika Rao\u003c/strong>: Who has the money to hire a lawyer and go to court saying this, the compensation that you’re offering me is not just compensation? It’s not fair market value.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Music starts\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman:\u003c/strong> BART records show that the agency acquired approximately 2,200 properties in order to build its first 75 miles of track. Some people sold their parcels to BART willingly, but others had to be evicted.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Clip of news report: \u003c/strong>This is Seventh Street on Oakland’s west side.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman:\u003c/strong> In this KPIX news report from 1967, BART staff are evicting an elderly Black woman named Leitha Blick from the thrift store she owns.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>News report:\u003c/strong> An admittedly blighted area, directly in the path of proposed Bay Area Rapid Transit District construction.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman:\u003c/strong> That word — blighted — is important. It’s a term that was used by urban redevelopment agencies throughout the country — including in Oakland — to describe neighborhoods that were seen as deteriorating.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>News report:\u003c/strong> Most of the homes and businesses in this area will have to be destroyed to make room for progress, and the push of progress is not always gentle. Angry and confused, many of the residents say they can’t buy new homes with the market value prices given them for the ones they now live in. Business people face the same dilemma.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman:\u003c/strong> In the news clip, Blick stands by with her arms crossed as workers pack her things into boxes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>News report footage:\u003c/strong> Miss Blick, had you and the Bay Area Rapid Transit District reached any agreement before this happened?\u003cbr>\n\u003cstrong>Blick:\u003c/strong> No.\u003cbr>\n\u003cstrong>News reporter:\u003c/strong> Why?\u003cbr>\n\u003cstrong>Blick:\u003c/strong> Because, uh, the price wasn’t satisfactory.\u003cbr>\n\u003cstrong>News reporter:\u003c/strong> You didn’t think they were offering you enough money for your merchandise?\u003cbr>\n\u003cstrong>Blick:\u003c/strong> That’s correct. Moving us out, and we had no place to go, and I didn’t think they were offering enough, no way.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman:\u003c/strong> Blick tried to stop BART from taking her property…but ultimately lost. But there are some examples of people successfully altering BART’s plan.\u003cbr>\n\u003cstrong>\u003cbr>\nDocumentary footage:\u003c/strong> Berkeley was basically a segregated city. So, the whole of South Berkeley was pretty much a black neighborhood.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003c/strong>Pam Uzzell’s documentary “Welcome to the Neighborhood” chronicles one effort in Berkeley. It profiles Mable Howard, who argued that BART’s plan to put raised tracks through part of the city would divide it along racial lines.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Documentary footage: \u003c/strong>A woman who said, I won’t have The city of Berkeley, divided in half, there won’t be any other side of the tracks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman:\u003c/strong> In 1966, Berkeley voters approved a tax that would pay to put BART completely underground in Berkeley. But BART proposed a design for Ashby station that was slightly above ground. So Mable Howard teamed up with Ron Dellums, then a city council member, to sue the agency. Here’s a lawyer on the case, Matthew Weinberg.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Matthew Weinberg:\u003c/strong> We won the case. How do we know we won the case? Go to Berkeley. You’ll see the whole thing’s underground.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: \u003c/strong>BART acknowledges this legacy of displacement and struggle. Here’s Chief Communications Officer Alicia Trost.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alicia Trost: \u003c/strong>There was a lot of generational wealth that was deeply impacted, if not destroyed, because of the building of the BART system.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman:\u003c/strong> BART now has an office of civil rights, and other equity initiatives that Trost says are critical to rebuilding trust.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alicia Trost:\u003c/strong> And especially when we’re building on our land, uh, we want to make sure there’s a carve-out specifically for affordable housing and that we are in a daily conversation with the community to make sure what we’re building is something that they want.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman:\u003c/strong> As the agency imagines building a possible second transbay tube, Trost says they’re also developing anti-displacement goals.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alicia Trost:\u003c/strong> Which, if that’s not lessons learned, you know, I don’t know what is.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman:\u003c/strong> I’ve gone through multiple public records requests and dozens of deeds, right-of-way contracts, and insurance policies for this story. At the end of it all, I paid another visit to Janine, our question-asker, and her mom, Johanne. I had something for them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman, talking to the Dictors:\u003c/strong> I actually found the contract that your grandparents signed with Bart, so here it is. And so this, you can see, like it says right-of-way contract, and it has your grandparents’ names on it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Johanne Dictor:\u003c/strong> Oh, is that all they, so it was just 25,000. Is that right? Oh my God. Oh my gosh.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman talking to the Dictors:\u003c/strong> We’re looking at the original contract between Vito and Elizabeth Campilongo and the Bay Area Rapid Transportation District, dated Sept. 2, 1965.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Janine Dictor:\u003c/strong> And it looks like my grandmother’s handwriting, too, actually.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Johanne Dictor:\u003c/strong> Oh, it does?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman:\u003c/strong> It shows the Campilongos agreed to sell their property for $25,000. Adjusted for inflation, that’s about 245,000 dollars today. These days, homes go for around a million in that neighborhood.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Janine Dictor:\u003c/strong> Doesn’t it look like Nana’s?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Johanne Dictor:\u003c/strong> Not really.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Janine Dictor: \u003c/strong>That floral?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Johanne Dictor:\u003c/strong> Yeah, a little bit, but hers was, yeah, she had a good penmanship, Nana. Yeah,\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman:\u003c/strong> Janine and Johanne are excited to see the physical evidence of their family history. But after the initial excitement, the mood is somber.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Janine Dictor:\u003c/strong> Going through this process, it’s like you realize it’s like about a lot more than what they were compensated, right? It’s about the fact that they were forced into this, that they lost a lifestyle, that they lost a community, you know. So, even if they got a good price, it’s kind of like, there’s still something to mourn there right about their experience.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman:\u003c/strong> The word progress comes up a lot when talking about these kinds of projects. The idea is that progress, the greater good, justifies the sacrifice some families have to make. But for families like the Dictors, progress could feel like a step in the wrong direction. Here’s Johanne.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Johanne Dictor: \u003c/strong>After we lost that house, we lost the sense of our family in a way, it seemed like. It was kind of driven apart. Because that house really brought us together. More than the house in San Leandro, you know.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman:\u003c/strong> Public infrastructure is often seen as a kind of equalizer … it’s something we all pay for and that anyone can use. But the fact is … some people had to pay more than others.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> That was KQED reporter Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman.The use of eminent domain led to the displacement in some of the stories we explored today. It was often used to displace communities of color to make way for various infrastructure projects around the state. As part of its reparations efforts, California is now considering a bill that would compensate people if they can prove racism or discrimination prevented them from getting just compensation. To learn more about California’s reparations efforts, check out KQED’s coverage at KQED dot org slash reparations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Special Thanks to Pam Uzzell for allowing us to use clips from her documentary “Welcome to the Neighborhood” in this story.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>This episode was edited by Katrina Schwartz.\u003cbr>\n\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> Produced by Olivia Allen-Price.\u003cbr>\n\u003cstrong>Tamuna Chkareuli:\u003c/strong> Tamuna Chkareuli\u003cbr>\n\u003cstrong>Pauline Bartolone:\u003c/strong> Pauline Bartolone\u003cbr>\n\u003cstrong>Christopher Beale:\u003c/strong> And Christopher Beale.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> We get additional support from:\u003cbr>\n\u003cstrong>Jen Chien:\u003c/strong> Jen Chien\u003cbr>\n\u003cstrong>Katie Sprenger:\u003c/strong> Katie Sprenger\u003cbr>\n\u003cstrong>Cesar Saldaña:\u003c/strong> Cesar Saldaña\u003cbr>\n\u003cstrong>Maha Sanad:\u003c/strong> Maha Sanad\u003cbr>\n\u003cstrong>Xorje Olivares:\u003c/strong> Xorje Olivares:\u003cbr>\n\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> And the whole KQED family. Have a great week, everyone.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>"
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"content": "\u003cp>When Nancy Harvey opened a daycare out of her West Oakland home nearly two decades ago, she wanted to give kids in her neighborhood a high-quality preschool.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She was up for the challenge, but what she wasn’t prepared for was the low pay and lack of benefits: two things she took for granted when she worked in marketing and taught in private schools.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“A retirement plan was essential for anyone that worked a job and I couldn’t understand how this very valuable industry did not have that,” Harvey said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As workers across occupations walked off the job during this \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11963717/amid-kaiser-strike-a-look-at-the-biggest-union-walkouts-in-california-recently\">remarkable year of strikes\u003c/a>, a union representing 40,000 home-based child care providers like Harvey approved a landmark deal, which included a roughly 20% pay increase and unprecedented benefits. It was a big moment for a labor movement largely led by immigrants and women of color — two groups whose domestic work has \u003ca href=\"https://www.epi.org/blog/black-womens-labor-market-history-reveals-deep-seated-race-and-gender-discrimination/\">historically been undervalued and excluded \u003c/a>from labor protection laws.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Since child care in the United States is largely privatized, home-based providers are considered self-employed small business owners. But those who serve lower-income families have long argued they should be classified as public employees since their salaries depend on reimbursements from the state. In California, two-thirds of families who receive child care subsidies send their kids to home-based daycares.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For years, these providers complained \u003ca href=\"https://cscce.berkeley.edu/workforce-index-2020/the-early-educator-workforce/early-educator-pay-economic-insecurity-across-the-states/\">they were paid so little that they \u003cem>themselves\u003c/em> qualify for public assistance\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It spoke pretty loudly as to what folks really thought of child care providers, that we were just folks that they could use and not necessarily think about our well-being and our future,” Harvey said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For Harvey, her involvement started with a knock on her door not long after she started her daycare. A union rep came in the middle of the children’s nap time and pitched unionizing as a strategy to improve pay and gain benefits. She said she didn’t hesitate to sign up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote size=\"medium\" align=\"right\" citation=\"Nancy Harvey, child care provider, West Oakland\"]‘We have set them aside long enough and we can’t do that.’[/pullquote]Organizing isn’t easy for home-based workers because they work independently, but Harvey said she felt a duty to speak up for her industry because many providers were in the same situation she was in, but were too busy to effect change.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It took two decades of organizing — a lot of it done during nap time — before Child Care Providers United \u003ca href=\"https://www.gov.ca.gov/2019/09/30/governor-newsom-signs-legislation-allowing-child-care-providers-the-right-to-unionize/\">won the right in 2019 to collectively bargain\u003c/a>. The union represents 40,000 home-based child care providers. It is a partnership between two chapters of the Service Employees International Union locals and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But just as Harvey and other providers got ready to negotiate their first contract with the state, the pandemic hit, greatly intensifying their economic insecurity. As essential workers, many home-based providers kept their doors open, but still struggled to pay their bills. They said they were seeing lower revenues due to enrollment declines and higher costs due to inflation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11963691\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11963691\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/230810-FeltonInstituteRally-21-BL-KQED-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"A person speaks into a megaphone in front of a group of people.\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/230810-FeltonInstituteRally-21-BL-KQED-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/230810-FeltonInstituteRally-21-BL-KQED-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/230810-FeltonInstituteRally-21-BL-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/230810-FeltonInstituteRally-21-BL-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/230810-FeltonInstituteRally-21-BL-KQED-1920x1280.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/230810-FeltonInstituteRally-21-BL-KQED.jpg 2000w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Nancy Harvey speaks during a rally to bring attention to a gas leak Felton Institute employees say went unaddressed for more than a year outside of Felton’s Sunshine Community Center in San Francisco’s Mission District on Aug. 10, 2023. Felton Institute is a nonprofit serving children and families in the Bay Area. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“It was at that point that people really recognized the fact that, hey, this industry is important,” Harvey recalled. “We have set them aside long enough and we can’t do that.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The union reached its first contract in 2021, securing $100 million for health care, plus funding for training and pandemic relief. \u003ca href=\"https://laborcenter.berkeley.edu/many-california-family-child-care-providers-will-now-be-better-able-to-afford-health-care/\">In one survey\u003c/a>, many home-based providers reported delaying or not getting needed health care because they couldn’t afford out-of-pocket costs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gaining the health care fund was bittersweet for Patricia Moran, a daycare owner in San José. She said a fellow provider and member of the negotiation team was diagnosed with lung cancer during the talks and didn’t live long enough to see it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I knew providers who were going to Mexico, crossing the border for cheaper medical care and going so fast and coming back so fast they would sometimes get into car accidents,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Moran, Harvey and dozens of providers bargained for the second contract this past year. They spent nights and weekends negotiating and held union demonstrations, including rallies outside the Capitol and the governor’s mansion.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11963692\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11963692\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/231002-ChildCareLaborMovement-003-BL-KQED-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"A person stands by a window and looks at the camera.\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/231002-ChildCareLaborMovement-003-BL-KQED-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/231002-ChildCareLaborMovement-003-BL-KQED-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/231002-ChildCareLaborMovement-003-BL-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/231002-ChildCareLaborMovement-003-BL-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/231002-ChildCareLaborMovement-003-BL-KQED-1920x1280.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/231002-ChildCareLaborMovement-003-BL-KQED.jpg 2000w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Patricia Moran stands in her child care facility in San José on Oct. 2, 2023. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“I remember I slept like two hours because, in my daycare, some parents are bringing children at 5 o’clock in the morning,” Moran said. “I was like, OK, I’m going to sleep. Maybe, maybe not. No, I’m going to stay awake.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The organizing paid off. Last month, the state finalized \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11961256/newsom-signs-bills-boosting-child-care-for-struggling-californians-and-providers\">a landmark $2 billion deal \u003c/a>to give them their largest pay raise to date and launch the nation’s first retirement fund for unionized child care workers. The $80 million fund made California the first of \u003ca href=\"https://www.clasp.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/4.3.2023_Unionizing-Home-Based-Providers-to-Address-the-Child-Care-Crisis.pdf\">11 states with home-based child care worker unions (PDF) \u003c/a>to offer this benefit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote size=\"medium\" align=\"right\" citation=\"Patricia Moran, child care provider, San José\"]‘I knew providers who were going to Mexico, crossing the border for cheaper medical care and going so fast and coming back so fast they would sometimes get into car accidents.’[/pullquote]Overall, the push to unionize child care workers has had more success in some states than others. Seven other states, for example, had granted that right to home-based child care providers before backing out, \u003ca href=\"https://www.clasp.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/4.3.2023_Unionizing-Home-Based-Providers-to-Address-the-Child-Care-Crisis.pdf\">according to the Center for Law and Social Policy (PDF)\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It helped that in California, a record number of women in the state Legislature made \u003ca href=\"https://womenscaucus.legislature.ca.gov/news/2023-03-30-ca-legislative-women%E2%80%99s-caucus-announces-2023-priority-bill-package\">child care funding a priority in the 2023–24 budget year. \u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>State Sen. Nancy Skinner, an East Bay Democrat who chairs the Legislative Women’s Caucus, said funding was urgently needed because many child care programs permanently closed after the pandemic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“So we just saw this collapse that affected not only families, obviously, and the little kids that really deserve good child care, but also affected California’s employers and our economy,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But perhaps the biggest victory is that they got the state to \u003ca href=\"https://calbudgetcenter.org/resources/californias-subsidized-child-care-providers-are-overdue-for-pay-raise/\">fundamentally change the way it pays\u003c/a> providers of subsidized child care programs so that they’ll get closer to earning a fair wage, whether they’re in the union or not.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That means, the benefit will extend to larger state-funded child care centers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They fought for the entire system … which is incredibly tremendous for all of us,” said Nina Buthee, executive director of the advocacy group EveryChild California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Buthee said she hopes better pay will encourage more private daycares to serve families who qualify for child care subsidies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside label='More on Affordable Child Care' tag='child-care']“It’s really a huge step forward in terms of equity when you think about who our workforce is,” said Brandy Jones Lawrence, a senior analyst at the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment at the University of California, Berkeley.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s also a huge step forward in our commitment to systemic reform,” she added\u003cem>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Harvey said these gains were long overdue. She’s ecstatic about the changes and hopes child care workers in other states will follow in her union’s footsteps.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At 61 years old, she said she feels more secure about retiring in a few years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We think of a retirement plan as a pot of money that’s going to help you survive. And if you don’t have that, then how are you going to survive?” she said. “I’m glad that the state of California heard our cry.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As workers across occupations walked off the job during this \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11963717/amid-kaiser-strike-a-look-at-the-biggest-union-walkouts-in-california-recently\">remarkable year of strikes\u003c/a>, a union representing 40,000 home-based child care providers like Harvey approved a landmark deal, which included a roughly 20% pay increase and unprecedented benefits. It was a big moment for a labor movement largely led by immigrants and women of color — two groups whose domestic work has \u003ca href=\"https://www.epi.org/blog/black-womens-labor-market-history-reveals-deep-seated-race-and-gender-discrimination/\">historically been undervalued and excluded \u003c/a>from labor protection laws.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Since child care in the United States is largely privatized, home-based providers are considered self-employed small business owners. But those who serve lower-income families have long argued they should be classified as public employees since their salaries depend on reimbursements from the state. In California, two-thirds of families who receive child care subsidies send their kids to home-based daycares.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For years, these providers complained \u003ca href=\"https://cscce.berkeley.edu/workforce-index-2020/the-early-educator-workforce/early-educator-pay-economic-insecurity-across-the-states/\">they were paid so little that they \u003cem>themselves\u003c/em> qualify for public assistance\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It spoke pretty loudly as to what folks really thought of child care providers, that we were just folks that they could use and not necessarily think about our well-being and our future,” Harvey said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For Harvey, her involvement started with a knock on her door not long after she started her daycare. A union rep came in the middle of the children’s nap time and pitched unionizing as a strategy to improve pay and gain benefits. She said she didn’t hesitate to sign up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Organizing isn’t easy for home-based workers because they work independently, but Harvey said she felt a duty to speak up for her industry because many providers were in the same situation she was in, but were too busy to effect change.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It took two decades of organizing — a lot of it done during nap time — before Child Care Providers United \u003ca href=\"https://www.gov.ca.gov/2019/09/30/governor-newsom-signs-legislation-allowing-child-care-providers-the-right-to-unionize/\">won the right in 2019 to collectively bargain\u003c/a>. The union represents 40,000 home-based child care providers. It is a partnership between two chapters of the Service Employees International Union locals and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But just as Harvey and other providers got ready to negotiate their first contract with the state, the pandemic hit, greatly intensifying their economic insecurity. As essential workers, many home-based providers kept their doors open, but still struggled to pay their bills. They said they were seeing lower revenues due to enrollment declines and higher costs due to inflation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11963691\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11963691\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/230810-FeltonInstituteRally-21-BL-KQED-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"A person speaks into a megaphone in front of a group of people.\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/230810-FeltonInstituteRally-21-BL-KQED-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/230810-FeltonInstituteRally-21-BL-KQED-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/230810-FeltonInstituteRally-21-BL-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/230810-FeltonInstituteRally-21-BL-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/230810-FeltonInstituteRally-21-BL-KQED-1920x1280.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/230810-FeltonInstituteRally-21-BL-KQED.jpg 2000w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Nancy Harvey speaks during a rally to bring attention to a gas leak Felton Institute employees say went unaddressed for more than a year outside of Felton’s Sunshine Community Center in San Francisco’s Mission District on Aug. 10, 2023. Felton Institute is a nonprofit serving children and families in the Bay Area. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“It was at that point that people really recognized the fact that, hey, this industry is important,” Harvey recalled. “We have set them aside long enough and we can’t do that.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The union reached its first contract in 2021, securing $100 million for health care, plus funding for training and pandemic relief. \u003ca href=\"https://laborcenter.berkeley.edu/many-california-family-child-care-providers-will-now-be-better-able-to-afford-health-care/\">In one survey\u003c/a>, many home-based providers reported delaying or not getting needed health care because they couldn’t afford out-of-pocket costs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gaining the health care fund was bittersweet for Patricia Moran, a daycare owner in San José. She said a fellow provider and member of the negotiation team was diagnosed with lung cancer during the talks and didn’t live long enough to see it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I knew providers who were going to Mexico, crossing the border for cheaper medical care and going so fast and coming back so fast they would sometimes get into car accidents,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Moran, Harvey and dozens of providers bargained for the second contract this past year. They spent nights and weekends negotiating and held union demonstrations, including rallies outside the Capitol and the governor’s mansion.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11963692\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11963692\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/231002-ChildCareLaborMovement-003-BL-KQED-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"A person stands by a window and looks at the camera.\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/231002-ChildCareLaborMovement-003-BL-KQED-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/231002-ChildCareLaborMovement-003-BL-KQED-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/231002-ChildCareLaborMovement-003-BL-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/231002-ChildCareLaborMovement-003-BL-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/231002-ChildCareLaborMovement-003-BL-KQED-1920x1280.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/231002-ChildCareLaborMovement-003-BL-KQED.jpg 2000w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Patricia Moran stands in her child care facility in San José on Oct. 2, 2023. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“I remember I slept like two hours because, in my daycare, some parents are bringing children at 5 o’clock in the morning,” Moran said. “I was like, OK, I’m going to sleep. Maybe, maybe not. No, I’m going to stay awake.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The organizing paid off. Last month, the state finalized \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11961256/newsom-signs-bills-boosting-child-care-for-struggling-californians-and-providers\">a landmark $2 billion deal \u003c/a>to give them their largest pay raise to date and launch the nation’s first retirement fund for unionized child care workers. The $80 million fund made California the first of \u003ca href=\"https://www.clasp.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/4.3.2023_Unionizing-Home-Based-Providers-to-Address-the-Child-Care-Crisis.pdf\">11 states with home-based child care worker unions (PDF) \u003c/a>to offer this benefit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "‘I knew providers who were going to Mexico, crossing the border for cheaper medical care and going so fast and coming back so fast they would sometimes get into car accidents.’",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Overall, the push to unionize child care workers has had more success in some states than others. Seven other states, for example, had granted that right to home-based child care providers before backing out, \u003ca href=\"https://www.clasp.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/4.3.2023_Unionizing-Home-Based-Providers-to-Address-the-Child-Care-Crisis.pdf\">according to the Center for Law and Social Policy (PDF)\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It helped that in California, a record number of women in the state Legislature made \u003ca href=\"https://womenscaucus.legislature.ca.gov/news/2023-03-30-ca-legislative-women%E2%80%99s-caucus-announces-2023-priority-bill-package\">child care funding a priority in the 2023–24 budget year. \u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>State Sen. Nancy Skinner, an East Bay Democrat who chairs the Legislative Women’s Caucus, said funding was urgently needed because many child care programs permanently closed after the pandemic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“So we just saw this collapse that affected not only families, obviously, and the little kids that really deserve good child care, but also affected California’s employers and our economy,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But perhaps the biggest victory is that they got the state to \u003ca href=\"https://calbudgetcenter.org/resources/californias-subsidized-child-care-providers-are-overdue-for-pay-raise/\">fundamentally change the way it pays\u003c/a> providers of subsidized child care programs so that they’ll get closer to earning a fair wage, whether they’re in the union or not.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That means, the benefit will extend to larger state-funded child care centers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They fought for the entire system … which is incredibly tremendous for all of us,” said Nina Buthee, executive director of the advocacy group EveryChild California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Buthee said she hopes better pay will encourage more private daycares to serve families who qualify for child care subsidies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>“It’s really a huge step forward in terms of equity when you think about who our workforce is,” said Brandy Jones Lawrence, a senior analyst at the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment at the University of California, Berkeley.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s also a huge step forward in our commitment to systemic reform,” she added\u003cem>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Harvey said these gains were long overdue. She’s ecstatic about the changes and hopes child care workers in other states will follow in her union’s footsteps.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At 61 years old, she said she feels more secure about retiring in a few years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We think of a retirement plan as a pot of money that’s going to help you survive. And if you don’t have that, then how are you going to survive?” she said. “I’m glad that the state of California heard our cry.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cp>A large fire that broke out at the Schnitzer Steel recycling yard in West Oakland around 5:30 p.m. on Wednesday sent huge plumes of stinky smoke across the East Bay and has prompted ongoing concerns about potential air quality risks from the burning aluminum, tin, steel and iron that were present in the large scrap metal pile where officials said the fire began.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“With fires like this, the material that’s burning, the smoke contains more things in the particulate matter. It also likely has other toxic air contaminants, including metals and volatile organic compounds,” said Michael Flagg, principal air quality specialist, Bay Area Air Quality Management District. “So it is really important to pay attention to what’s going on, if you see smoke or smell smoke, take efforts to reduce your exposure.”[aside postID=science_1930023,science_1976747,science_1969271 label='Understanding Air Quality']Thursday morning the BAAQMD released \u003ca href=\"https://www.baaqmd.gov/~/media/files/compliance-and-enforcement/incident-reports/2023/incidentreport_schnitzersteel_081023-pdf.pdf?la=en&rev=a8df9411b6b44703a050860dd7ac5678\">an incident report (PDF)\u003c/a> stating that the “large dense gray smoke plume” traveled south and east during the night, reaching as far as Milpitas, but had then shifted and pushed north.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Oakland Fire Department officials reported that it took nearly four hours to get the fire fully under control Wednesday night. But as of Thursday morning, it still had not been completely extinguished.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The most impacted areas were immediately downwind of the fire. So that was East Oakland, West Oakland and other areas along the I-80 corridor, which are historically overburdened communities that kind of experience a disproportionate impact and exposure to poor air pollution already,” said Flagg. He said smoke reached Moraga, Dublin and San Ramon, but then with a shift in wind it moved north all the way up to Martinez.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Residents near the Port of Oakland were originally advised on Wednesday to avoid the area around Jack London Square and to keep windows closed. By Thursday, impacts were expected to lessen but continue in parts of Alameda and Contra Costa counties.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If you smell smoke, or you know that there’s high concentrations, our recommendation is to reduce your exposure, to stay inside, close your windows, air filtration, things like that, but mostly just to monitor the situation closely and pay attention to \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/AirDistrict\">district advisories\u003c/a>,” said Flagg.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But, while the air district issued an advisory, it is not forecasting an exceedance of the national air quality health standards and is not issuing a more severe Spare the Air Alert. You can see the most recent air quality data at \u003ca href=\"https://fire.airnow.gov/\">fire.airnow.gov\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Air District staff will continue to investigate this incident to determine if there were any violations of air quality regulations,” the advisory statement said. The Oakland Fire Department also \u003ca href=\"https://www.oaklandca.gov/news/2023/update-on-fire-incident-at-schnitzer-steel-radius-recycling\">said\u003c/a> their hazardous materials team and EPA representatives were on the site Wednesday night to administer tests and evaluate the situation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Schnitzer Steel — \u003ca href=\"https://www.radiusrecycling.com/company/investors/news-release-details/22391\">which recently rebranded itself as Radius Recycling\u003c/a> — is a large scrap metal processing plant near the Port of Oakland that shreds cars and other large appliances. The fire started in a scrap metal pile. The cause is currently under investigation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>An initial response from fire crews contained the fire to a single debris pile, but it continued to grow rapidly, \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/OaklandFireCA/status/1689500888061382656\">according to Oakland Fire Chief Damon Covington\u003c/a>. Ultimately it required three engines, two fireboats from San Francisco and Alameda, and over 20 firefighters to get the fire under control. There were no injuries reported. However, because of the size of the debris pile, firefighters were unable to reach the origin of the fire and relied on Schnitzer cranes to pull apart the large debris pile.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Until we can get all the way into the pile and put the fire out, we’re going to be out here for awhile,” Covington said late Wednesday night.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://twitter.com/OaklandFireCA/status/1689500888061382656\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>An \u003ca href=\"https://www.oaklandca.gov/news/2023/update-on-fire-incident-at-schnitzer-steel-radius-recycling\">update\u003c/a> from Oakland Fire Department on Thursday said there was still a large amount of debris to untangle and crews continue to spray water on the pile to prevent any small fires that ignite from spreading. It is not uncommon for these kinds of large debris fires to smolder for some time, said officials.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The company is grateful for the first responders who brought this situation to a safe conclusion,” said Tasion Kwamilele, public affairs manager for Schnitzer Steel/Radius Recycling.[aside postID=news_11832073 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/08/Schnitzer_Steel-1020x744.jpg']This \u003ca href=\"https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/schnitzer-steel-environmental-violations-oakland-scrap-yard-fire/\">isn’t the first time\u003c/a> the Schnitzer Steel recycling yard has caught fire. There were previous large fires in 2018, 2010 and 2009. In 2020, \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11832073/as-file-suit-against-state-agency-to-regulate-steel-recycler\">the Oakland A’s also sued\u003c/a> to have the waste materials created by the plant reclassified as hazardous. At the time, the A’s suit said there had been five smaller fires since 2018. (The A’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/State-Supreme-Court-rejects-Oakland-A-s-legal-17726660.php\">lost the suit\u003c/a> earlier this year on appeal to the California Supreme Court.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 2021, Schnitzer also \u003ca href=\"https://oag.ca.gov/news/press-releases/attorney-general-becerra-announces-41-million-settlement-schnitzer-steel\">paid $4.1 million\u003c/a> as part of a settlement over “the release of toxic air contaminants and hazardous particulates” in West Oakland and across the Oakland estuary. The settlement with the state Department of Justice, at the time, reported that investigations by the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office and the California Department of Toxic Substances Control found that Schnitzer was releasing particulate matter contaminated with hazardous metals — such as lead, cadmium and zinc.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Bay City News and KQED’s Giuliana Salomone contributed to this report. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>A large fire that broke out at the Schnitzer Steel recycling yard in West Oakland around 5:30 p.m. on Wednesday sent huge plumes of stinky smoke across the East Bay and has prompted ongoing concerns about potential air quality risks from the burning aluminum, tin, steel and iron that were present in the large scrap metal pile where officials said the fire began.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“With fires like this, the material that’s burning, the smoke contains more things in the particulate matter. It also likely has other toxic air contaminants, including metals and volatile organic compounds,” said Michael Flagg, principal air quality specialist, Bay Area Air Quality Management District. “So it is really important to pay attention to what’s going on, if you see smoke or smell smoke, take efforts to reduce your exposure.”\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Thursday morning the BAAQMD released \u003ca href=\"https://www.baaqmd.gov/~/media/files/compliance-and-enforcement/incident-reports/2023/incidentreport_schnitzersteel_081023-pdf.pdf?la=en&rev=a8df9411b6b44703a050860dd7ac5678\">an incident report (PDF)\u003c/a> stating that the “large dense gray smoke plume” traveled south and east during the night, reaching as far as Milpitas, but had then shifted and pushed north.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Oakland Fire Department officials reported that it took nearly four hours to get the fire fully under control Wednesday night. But as of Thursday morning, it still had not been completely extinguished.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The most impacted areas were immediately downwind of the fire. So that was East Oakland, West Oakland and other areas along the I-80 corridor, which are historically overburdened communities that kind of experience a disproportionate impact and exposure to poor air pollution already,” said Flagg. He said smoke reached Moraga, Dublin and San Ramon, but then with a shift in wind it moved north all the way up to Martinez.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Residents near the Port of Oakland were originally advised on Wednesday to avoid the area around Jack London Square and to keep windows closed. By Thursday, impacts were expected to lessen but continue in parts of Alameda and Contra Costa counties.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If you smell smoke, or you know that there’s high concentrations, our recommendation is to reduce your exposure, to stay inside, close your windows, air filtration, things like that, but mostly just to monitor the situation closely and pay attention to \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/AirDistrict\">district advisories\u003c/a>,” said Flagg.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But, while the air district issued an advisory, it is not forecasting an exceedance of the national air quality health standards and is not issuing a more severe Spare the Air Alert. You can see the most recent air quality data at \u003ca href=\"https://fire.airnow.gov/\">fire.airnow.gov\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Air District staff will continue to investigate this incident to determine if there were any violations of air quality regulations,” the advisory statement said. The Oakland Fire Department also \u003ca href=\"https://www.oaklandca.gov/news/2023/update-on-fire-incident-at-schnitzer-steel-radius-recycling\">said\u003c/a> their hazardous materials team and EPA representatives were on the site Wednesday night to administer tests and evaluate the situation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Schnitzer Steel — \u003ca href=\"https://www.radiusrecycling.com/company/investors/news-release-details/22391\">which recently rebranded itself as Radius Recycling\u003c/a> — is a large scrap metal processing plant near the Port of Oakland that shreds cars and other large appliances. The fire started in a scrap metal pile. The cause is currently under investigation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>An initial response from fire crews contained the fire to a single debris pile, but it continued to grow rapidly, \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/OaklandFireCA/status/1689500888061382656\">according to Oakland Fire Chief Damon Covington\u003c/a>. Ultimately it required three engines, two fireboats from San Francisco and Alameda, and over 20 firefighters to get the fire under control. There were no injuries reported. However, because of the size of the debris pile, firefighters were unable to reach the origin of the fire and relied on Schnitzer cranes to pull apart the large debris pile.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Until we can get all the way into the pile and put the fire out, we’re going to be out here for awhile,” Covington said late Wednesday night.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\n\u003cp>An \u003ca href=\"https://www.oaklandca.gov/news/2023/update-on-fire-incident-at-schnitzer-steel-radius-recycling\">update\u003c/a> from Oakland Fire Department on Thursday said there was still a large amount of debris to untangle and crews continue to spray water on the pile to prevent any small fires that ignite from spreading. It is not uncommon for these kinds of large debris fires to smolder for some time, said officials.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The company is grateful for the first responders who brought this situation to a safe conclusion,” said Tasion Kwamilele, public affairs manager for Schnitzer Steel/Radius Recycling.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>This \u003ca href=\"https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/schnitzer-steel-environmental-violations-oakland-scrap-yard-fire/\">isn’t the first time\u003c/a> the Schnitzer Steel recycling yard has caught fire. There were previous large fires in 2018, 2010 and 2009. In 2020, \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11832073/as-file-suit-against-state-agency-to-regulate-steel-recycler\">the Oakland A’s also sued\u003c/a> to have the waste materials created by the plant reclassified as hazardous. At the time, the A’s suit said there had been five smaller fires since 2018. (The A’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/State-Supreme-Court-rejects-Oakland-A-s-legal-17726660.php\">lost the suit\u003c/a> earlier this year on appeal to the California Supreme Court.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 2021, Schnitzer also \u003ca href=\"https://oag.ca.gov/news/press-releases/attorney-general-becerra-announces-41-million-settlement-schnitzer-steel\">paid $4.1 million\u003c/a> as part of a settlement over “the release of toxic air contaminants and hazardous particulates” in West Oakland and across the Oakland estuary. The settlement with the state Department of Justice, at the time, reported that investigations by the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office and the California Department of Toxic Substances Control found that Schnitzer was releasing particulate matter contaminated with hazardous metals — such as lead, cadmium and zinc.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Bay City News and KQED’s Giuliana Salomone contributed to this report. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "California Close to Launching $80 Million Child Care Worker Retirement Fund",
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"content": "\u003cp>California is one step closer to creating the nation’s first retirement fund for family child care providers after they overwhelmingly approved a new contract with the state, Child Care Providers United, \u003ca href=\"https://childcareprovidersunited.org/\">the union representing 40,000 of these workers\u003c/a>, announced late Monday.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The deal, which still needs to be approved by the Legislature and signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom this summer, would provide an $80 million retirement fund for an underpaid workforce that is dominated by women of color. This would make California the first of 11 states with family child care unions to offer such a plan.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re exceedingly happy,” said Nancy Harvey, a 61-year-old family child care provider in West Oakland who helped negotiate the deal. “This is a historic moment for child care providers, not only here in California, but throughout the nation.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A little over 50% of family child care providers in California are 50 years old or older, yet less than a quarter of them have any retirement savings, \u003ca href=\"https://cscce.berkeley.edu/publications/report/early-educator-compensation/\">according to research\u003c/a> from the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment at UC Berkeley.[pullquote size=\"medium\" align=\"right\" citation=\"Nancy Harvey, family child care provider\"]‘We’re exceedingly happy. This is a historic moment for child care providers, not only here in California, but throughout the nation.’[/pullquote]“It’s really a huge step forward in terms of equity when you think about who the workforce is,” said Brandy Jones Lawrence, a senior analyst at the UC Berkeley center.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She said improving work conditions will raise the quality of care for California’s youngest residents.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>“\u003c/strong>If an educator is worrying about whether or not they’re going to be able to put food on the table or if they’re going to get their lights turned back on, they’re not going to be able to bring their whole self and all that they know and need to be for children at this age. … when [they’re] feeling much more professionally supported I think that they can show up the way they need to be.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Family child care providers are small-business owners who care for children out of their homes. There are \u003ca href=\"https://cscce.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/CSCCE-California-ECE-Profiles-FCCs.pdf\">more than 24,700 (PDF)\u003c/a> licensed family child care providers in the state. When license-exempt carers are added (family members, friends or neighbors who care for children), that number rises to about 40,000, according to the union.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11957186\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11957186\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/08/RS64819_015_KQED_EachOneTeachOneChildCare_04262023-qut.jpg\" alt=\"A woman with long, black braids and a brown hoodie plays with a baby in a sunhat in the backyard on a sunny day.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/08/RS64819_015_KQED_EachOneTeachOneChildCare_04262023-qut.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/08/RS64819_015_KQED_EachOneTeachOneChildCare_04262023-qut-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/08/RS64819_015_KQED_EachOneTeachOneChildCare_04262023-qut-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/08/RS64819_015_KQED_EachOneTeachOneChildCare_04262023-qut-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/08/RS64819_015_KQED_EachOneTeachOneChildCare_04262023-qut-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A little over 50% of family child care providers in California are 50 years old or older, yet less than a quarter of them have any retirement savings, according to research from the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment at UC Berkeley. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>For 16 years, family child care workers sought to form a union to improve their pay and obtain benefits such as health care, a retirement plan and access to professional development training.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 2019, they won the right to collectively bargain by successfully arguing that they’re employees of the state because they receive public funding for serving lower-income families who qualify for subsidized care.[pullquote size=\"medium\" align=\"right\" citation=\"Shannon Benjamin, family child care provider\"]‘To finally set a plan to reimburse us for the entirety of our costs each month, means I can keep my doors open with the confidence that I can make ends meet and feel the dignity of my work.’[/pullquote]The contract deal addresses one of their biggest demands: a promise and a timeline from the state to overhaul the way providers get paid for subsidized child care.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11948419/care-cant-wait-californias-child-care-workers-demand-better-funding-for-essential-services\">Family child care workers have long complained\u003c/a> that the state calculates reimbursement rates for subsidized child care based on outdated market prices. They’re currently paid based on rates from at least five years ago. The rates neither reflect the true cost of care nor keep pace with current costs of living, making it hard for these workers to stay financially afloat, according to an \u003ca href=\"https://calbudgetcenter.org/resources/californias-child-care-providers-need-a-substantial-pay-raise/\">analysis by the California Budget and Policy Center\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Providers frequently set their prices below their true costs to fill the gap between what parents can afford — and what the government pays for subsidized care.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Under the new contract, the state will provide $600 million in temporary rate increases over two years until a new payment system takes effect. The increases represent a 20% average rate increase, but vary slightly by region. A family child care provider in the Bay Area, for example, will receive an additional $211 a month per child, while a license-exempt provider will get an extra $148.[aside label='More on Child Care' tag='child-care']“This rate increase, and most importantly, the state’s commitment to finally set a plan to reimburse us for the entirety of our costs each month, means I can keep my doors open with the confidence that I can make ends meet and feel the dignity of my work,” said Shannon Benjamin, a provider from Carson in Southern California and a member of the union’s bargaining committee, said in a statement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While the new contract represents major progress, more sweeping changes are needed to ensure that all early childhood educators are making a living wage and can afford to stay in the profession, industry observers like Lawrence said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She estimates that less than a quarter of the family child care workforce is represented by the union, while the larger majority of workers are not because they don’t receive public funding.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Once union-represented providers are paid for the true cost of care, she asked, “How then are we going to reproduce or recreate a system that actually gets to all of the educators … and treat [early childhood education] like the public good that it is, like elementary education, where everyone has access and it’s based on the costs of the care?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>“It’s really a huge step forward in terms of equity when you think about who the workforce is,” said Brandy Jones Lawrence, a senior analyst at the UC Berkeley center.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She said improving work conditions will raise the quality of care for California’s youngest residents.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>“\u003c/strong>If an educator is worrying about whether or not they’re going to be able to put food on the table or if they’re going to get their lights turned back on, they’re not going to be able to bring their whole self and all that they know and need to be for children at this age. … when [they’re] feeling much more professionally supported I think that they can show up the way they need to be.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Family child care providers are small-business owners who care for children out of their homes. There are \u003ca href=\"https://cscce.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/CSCCE-California-ECE-Profiles-FCCs.pdf\">more than 24,700 (PDF)\u003c/a> licensed family child care providers in the state. When license-exempt carers are added (family members, friends or neighbors who care for children), that number rises to about 40,000, according to the union.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11957186\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11957186\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/08/RS64819_015_KQED_EachOneTeachOneChildCare_04262023-qut.jpg\" alt=\"A woman with long, black braids and a brown hoodie plays with a baby in a sunhat in the backyard on a sunny day.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/08/RS64819_015_KQED_EachOneTeachOneChildCare_04262023-qut.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/08/RS64819_015_KQED_EachOneTeachOneChildCare_04262023-qut-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/08/RS64819_015_KQED_EachOneTeachOneChildCare_04262023-qut-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/08/RS64819_015_KQED_EachOneTeachOneChildCare_04262023-qut-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/08/RS64819_015_KQED_EachOneTeachOneChildCare_04262023-qut-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A little over 50% of family child care providers in California are 50 years old or older, yet less than a quarter of them have any retirement savings, according to research from the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment at UC Berkeley. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>For 16 years, family child care workers sought to form a union to improve their pay and obtain benefits such as health care, a retirement plan and access to professional development training.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 2019, they won the right to collectively bargain by successfully arguing that they’re employees of the state because they receive public funding for serving lower-income families who qualify for subsidized care.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"info": "KQED’s new podcast, Bay Curious, gets to the bottom of the mysteries — both profound and peculiar — that give the Bay Area its unique identity. And we’ll do it with your help! You ask the questions. You decide what Bay Curious investigates. And you join us on the journey to find the answers.",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Bay-Curious-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/news/series/baycurious",
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 3
},
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}
},
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"id": "bbc-world-service",
"title": "BBC World Service",
"info": "The day's top stories from BBC News compiled twice daily in the week, once at weekends.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 9pm-10pm, TUE-FRI 1am-2am",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/BBC-World-Service-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/live:bbc_world_service",
"meta": {
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"source": "BBC World Service"
},
"link": "/radio/program/bbc-world-service",
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"rss": "https://podcasts.files.bbci.co.uk/p02nq0gn.rss"
}
},
"californiareport": {
"id": "californiareport",
"title": "The California Report",
"tagline": "California, day by day",
"info": "KQED’s statewide radio news program providing daily coverage of issues, trends and public policy decisions.",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-California-Report-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/californiareport",
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 8
},
"link": "/californiareport",
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}
},
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"title": "The California Report Magazine",
"tagline": "Your state, your stories",
"info": "Every week, The California Report Magazine takes you on a road trip for the ears: to visit the places and meet the people who make California unique. The in-depth storytelling podcast from the California Report.",
"airtime": "FRI 4:30pm-5pm, 6:30pm-7pm, 11pm-11:30pm",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/californiareportmagazine",
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"order": 10
},
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM3NjkwNjk1OTAz",
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},
"city-arts": {
"id": "city-arts",
"title": "City Arts & Lectures",
"info": "A one-hour radio program to hear celebrated writers, artists and thinkers address contemporary ideas and values, often discussing the creative process. Please note: tapes or transcripts are not available",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/05/cityartsandlecture-300x300.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.cityarts.net/",
"airtime": "SUN 1pm-2pm, TUE 10pm, WED 1am",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "City Arts & Lectures"
},
"link": "https://www.cityarts.net",
"subscribe": {
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/radio/City-Arts-and-Lectures-p692/",
"rss": "https://www.cityarts.net/feed/"
}
},
"closealltabs": {
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"info": "Close All Tabs breaks down how digital culture shapes our world through thoughtful insights and irreverent humor.",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/closealltabs",
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 1
},
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"id": "code-switch-life-kit",
"title": "Code Switch / Life Kit",
"info": "\u003cem>Code Switch\u003c/em>, which listeners will hear in the first part of the hour, has fearless and much-needed conversations about race. Hosted by journalists of color, the show tackles the subject of race head-on, exploring how it impacts every part of society — from politics and pop culture to history, sports and more.\u003cbr />\u003cbr />\u003cem>Life Kit\u003c/em>, which will be in the second part of the hour, guides you through spaces and feelings no one prepares you for — from finances to mental health, from workplace microaggressions to imposter syndrome, from relationships to parenting. The show features experts with real world experience and shares their knowledge. Because everyone needs a little help being human.\u003cbr />\u003cbr />\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510312/codeswitch\">\u003cem>Code Switch\u003c/em> offical site and podcast\u003c/a>\u003cbr />\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/lifekit\">\u003cem>Life Kit\u003c/em> offical site and podcast\u003c/a>\u003cbr />",
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"meta": {
"site": "radio",
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},
"link": "/radio/program/code-switch-life-kit",
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},
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"id": "commonwealth-club",
"title": "Commonwealth Club of California Podcast",
"info": "The Commonwealth Club of California is the nation's oldest and largest public affairs forum. As a non-partisan forum, The Club brings to the public airwaves diverse viewpoints on important topics. The Club's weekly radio broadcast - the oldest in the U.S., dating back to 1924 - is carried across the nation on public radio stations and is now podcasting. Our website archive features audio of our recent programs, as well as selected speeches from our long and distinguished history. This podcast feed is usually updated twice a week and is always un-edited.",
"airtime": "THU 10pm, FRI 1am",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Commonwealth-Club-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
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"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "Commonwealth Club of California"
},
"link": "/radio/program/commonwealth-club",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/commonwealth-club-of-california-podcast/id976334034?mt=2",
"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cDovL3d3dy5jb21tb253ZWFsdGhjbHViLm9yZy9hdWRpby9wb2RjYXN0L3dlZWtseS54bWw",
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},
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"id": "forum",
"title": "Forum",
"tagline": "The conversation starts here",
"info": "KQED’s live call-in program discussing local, state, national and international issues, as well as in-depth interviews.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 9am-11am, 10pm-11pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Forum-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED Forum with Mina Kim and Alexis Madrigal",
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"meta": {
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 9
},
"link": "/forum",
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM5NTU3MzgxNjMz",
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"freakonomics-radio": {
"id": "freakonomics-radio",
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"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2018/05/freakonomicsRadio.png",
"officialWebsiteLink": "http://freakonomics.com/",
"airtime": "SUN 1am-2am, SAT 3pm-4pm",
"meta": {
"site": "radio",
"source": "WNYC"
},
"link": "/radio/program/freakonomics-radio",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/freakonomics-radio/id354668519",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/podcasts/WNYC-Podcasts/Freakonomics-Radio-p272293/",
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},
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"id": "fresh-air",
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"link": "/radio/program/fresh-air",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?s=143441&mt=2&id=214089682&at=11l79Y&ct=nprdirectory",
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"info": "A live production of NPR and WBUR Boston, in collaboration with stations across the country, Here & Now reflects the fluid world of news as it's happening in the middle of the day, with timely, in-depth news, interviews and conversation. Hosted by Robin Young, Jeremy Hobson and Tonya Mosley.",
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},
"hidden-brain": {
"id": "hidden-brain",
"title": "Hidden Brain",
"info": "Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships.",
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"airtime": "SUN 7pm-8pm",
"meta": {
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"source": "NPR"
},
"link": "/radio/program/hidden-brain",
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},
"how-i-built-this": {
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"title": "How I Built This with Guy Raz",
"info": "Guy Raz dives into the stories behind some of the world's best known companies. How I Built This weaves a narrative journey about innovators, entrepreneurs and idealists—and the movements they built.",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2018/05/howIBuiltThis.png",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510313/how-i-built-this",
"airtime": "SUN 7:30pm-8pm",
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"source": "npr"
},
"link": "/radio/program/how-i-built-this",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/how-i-built-this-with-guy-raz/id1150510297?mt=2",
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},
"hyphenacion": {
"id": "hyphenacion",
"title": "Hyphenación",
"tagline": "Where conversation and cultura meet",
"info": "What kind of no sabo word is Hyphenación? For us, it’s about living within a hyphenation. Like being a third-gen Mexican-American from the Texas border now living that Bay Area Chicano life. Like Xorje! Each week we bring together a couple of hyphenated Latinos to talk all about personal life choices: family, careers, relationships, belonging … everything is on the table. ",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Hyphenacion_FinalAssets_PodcastTile.png",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/hyphenacion",
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"order": 15
},
"link": "/podcasts/hyphenacion",
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},
"jerrybrown": {
"id": "jerrybrown",
"title": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown",
"tagline": "Lessons from a lifetime in politics",
"info": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown brings listeners the wisdom of the former Governor, Mayor, and presidential candidate. Scott Shafer interviewed Brown for more than 40 hours, covering the former governor's life and half-century in the political game – and Brown has some lessons he'd like to share. ",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-Political-Mind-of-Jerry-Brown-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/jerrybrown",
"meta": {
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 18
},
"link": "/podcasts/jerrybrown",
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}
},
"latino-usa": {
"id": "latino-usa",
"title": "Latino USA",
"airtime": "MON 1am-2am, SUN 6pm-7pm",
"info": "Latino USA, the radio journal of news and culture, is the only national, English-language radio program produced from a Latino perspective.",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/latinoUsa.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "http://latinousa.org/",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "npr"
},
"link": "/radio/program/latino-usa",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?s=143441&mt=2&id=79681317&at=11l79Y&ct=nprdirectory",
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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510016/podcast.xml"
}
},
"marketplace": {
"id": "marketplace",
"title": "Marketplace",
"info": "Our flagship program, helmed by Kai Ryssdal, examines what the day in money delivered, through stories, conversations, newsworthy numbers and more. Updated Monday through Friday at about 3:30 p.m. PT.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 4pm-4:30pm, MON-WED 6:30pm-7pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Marketplace-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.marketplace.org/",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "American Public Media"
},
"link": "/radio/program/marketplace",
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"rss": "https://feeds.publicradio.org/public_feeds/marketplace-pm/rss/rss"
}
},
"masters-of-scale": {
"id": "masters-of-scale",
"title": "Masters of Scale",
"info": "Masters of Scale is an original podcast in which LinkedIn co-founder and Greylock Partner Reid Hoffman sets out to describe and prove theories that explain how great entrepreneurs take their companies from zero to a gazillion in ingenious fashion.",
"airtime": "Every other Wednesday June 12 through October 16 at 8pm (repeats Thursdays at 2am)",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "https://mastersofscale.com/",
"meta": {
"site": "radio",
"source": "WaitWhat"
},
"link": "/radio/program/masters-of-scale",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "http://mastersofscale.app.link/",
"rss": "https://rss.art19.com/masters-of-scale"
}
},
"mindshift": {
"id": "mindshift",
"title": "MindShift",
"tagline": "A podcast about the future of learning and how we raise our kids",
"info": "The MindShift podcast explores the innovations in education that are shaping how kids learn. Hosts Ki Sung and Katrina Schwartz introduce listeners to educators, researchers, parents and students who are developing effective ways to improve how kids learn. We cover topics like how fed-up administrators are developing surprising tactics to deal with classroom disruptions; how listening to podcasts are helping kids develop reading skills; the consequences of overparenting; and why interdisciplinary learning can engage students on all ends of the traditional achievement spectrum. This podcast is part of the MindShift education site, a division of KQED News. KQED is an NPR/PBS member station based in San Francisco. You can also visit the MindShift website for episodes and supplemental blog posts or tweet us \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/MindShiftKQED\">@MindShiftKQED\u003c/a> or visit us at \u003ca href=\"/mindshift\">MindShift.KQED.org\u003c/a>",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Mindshift-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED MindShift: How We Will Learn",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/mindshift/",
"meta": {
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 12
},
"link": "/podcasts/mindshift",
"subscribe": {
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM1NzY0NjAwNDI5",
"npr": "https://www.npr.org/podcasts/464615685/mind-shift-podcast",
"stitcher": "https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/kqed/stories-teachers-share",
"spotify": "https://open.spotify.com/show/0MxSpNYZKNprFLCl7eEtyx"
}
},
"morning-edition": {
"id": "morning-edition",
"title": "Morning Edition",
"info": "\u003cem>Morning Edition\u003c/em> takes listeners around the country and the world with multi-faceted stories and commentaries every weekday. Hosts Steve Inskeep, David Greene and Rachel Martin bring you the latest breaking news and features to prepare you for the day.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 3am-9am",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Morning-Edition-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/programs/morning-edition/",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "npr"
},
"link": "/radio/program/morning-edition"
},
"onourwatch": {
"id": "onourwatch",
"title": "On Our Watch",
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