Let’s keep capitalism from taking over our community
By John Reimann
“I respect that they are privately financing their ballpark — and this is the site that they feel is most finance-able.” So spoke Oakland Mayor Libby “Yuppie” Schaaf about the A’s plan to build a ballpark across the street from Laney College in the next few years.
In other words, if you have enough millions to invest, you get to invest that capital anywhere and anyhow you like. Capital trumps people (pun intended).
Can you imagine the traffic if the stadium is built here? The thousands of people lining the streets and sidewalks? Can you imagine the noise every time an A’s player hits a home run?
The Washington Nationals’ baseball stadium was built in a similar neighborhood in Washington, D.C., and what happened there could happen here. In a 2017 Master’s Thesis by Dominique Wilkins, the effects of this Washington, D.C. stadium were examined.
Wilkins found that before the stadium was built, 42.1 percent of families living in the neighborhood had incomes of below $50,000 per year and 13.8 percent had incomes of over $150,000.
After the stadium was built, those families with the lower income composed only 15.5 percent of the neighborhood while the wealthy families composed 52.6 percent. The wealthy families moved in and the poor families were driven out.
In their minds, it’s a waste of this valuable land to use for the education of a bunch of working-class youth, mostly people of color, especially when there are billions in profits to be made.
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This is what’s been happening in Oakland in general over the last few years. The real estate developers have been having their way, building expensive condos and driving up rents throughout the city. They look at the land from the estuary to Lake Merritt and they are licking their chops.
In their minds, it’s a waste of this valuable land to use for the education of a bunch of working-class youth, mostly people of color, especially when there are billions in profits to be made.
How is the view of Schaaf and the A’s any different from the view of Donald Trump — the view that capital has a right to go anywhere, do anything, working-class people be damned? This is Trumpism brought to Oakland.
Is this the Oakland you want to live in? In fact, is this the world you want to live in? Laney students should organize to stop this land grab.
John Reimann is a Tower Staff Writer.