By Shaleece Haas/Special to 510 Report

Biofuel Oasis, a worker-owned biodiesel company, is moving from their one-pump garage to a new drive-through station on a busy corner in southwest Berkeley, Calif.

UPDATE: On April 30, 2009, Biofuel Oasis made the move to their new station.

By Anna Bloom/Special to 510 Report

Emilia Otero, and her daughter, Shelly Garza, longtime organizers of food vendors in East Oakland, say they are seeing a marked increase in illegal street vending.

Since 1998, the two women have fought hard for the legitimacy of street vending, founding ACAF, Asociation de Comerciantes Ambulantes de Fruitvale. However, the economy and crime have left the city short on resources. Garza and Otero say that in East Oakland, where the city limits the number of street vendors to 30, there are now as many as 80. Left unregulated, many of these vendors are not paying for permits or adhering to Alameda County Public Health Department food preparation standards, and may be putting the public’s health at risk.

Liz Martin sits on the passenger’s side of her shabby gray van – the side away from the sun – which is parked on a Saturday afternoon next to the spot where her merchandise is on display at Berkeley’s Ashby Flea Market. She keeps her eyes on three stools supporting organized piles of colorfully embroidered used bed sheets and pillows folded in plastic bags. Martin, who is 82, has been a vendor at the flea market since it began more than 32 years ago, and she never has left her spot.
At first, she said, “There was nothing here. It was kind of a hard time but we stuck around. I used to make 75 cents a day, but I stayed here and the flea market got built up.” Martin is wearing a red spotted shirt and long colorful skirt; time has not had much effect on her dark skin. Through the van’s half-down window, she muses, “I really do not know why they called it a ‘flea market.’ All I know is that when they first said ‘flea market,’ I thought they were talking about selling fleas.” She bursts out laughing.
In fact, the flea market at the Ashby BART station is a Berkeley landmark, which many customers from around the Bay Area visit for the good deals. The market is open only on weekends, but it provides a valuable service to both the vendors who want to earn a living by selling new and used merchandise, and for customers looking for bargains.  Some people go to the market for the fun of the day or to just have a glimpse of the merchandise.
The market is divided into rows of stalls; the floor is covered with merchandise shaded by brightly colored umbrellas and small tents. One can find nearly anything needed to furnish a full house: records, jewelry, clothes, incense, tools, books – even African masks and old portraits of American celebrities. Groups of drummers sit next to the Ashby BART’s main entrance and play African music. The smell of hot dogs and Mexican food from mobile booths fill the air; children play around or cling to their parents’ clothes. On a perfect sunny day, the market is like an open mall where families can relax.
People also find it a good place to re-sell used objects, or buy secondhand items to furnish their houses. A shopper named Elizabeth, who gave only her first name, was looking for a good, cheap piece of furniture for her daughter who recently bought a condo and ran out of money to furnish the place. “Furniture is just as good old as new,” she said. “People come to the flea market both because they want to recycle things and for clothing. You see here things you do not see anywhere else.” But Elizabeth predicted that the slow economy would push people to try shop carefully. “After a few more months when needs pile up, I expect more people would be looking at flea markets and thrift stores,” Elizabeth said. As she walked away, she kept her eyes open for worthy items she might buy.
For some vendors, the flea market provides a second income, if not the main way they pay their bills. Dray, who goes only by her first name, is a 58-year-old woman with 18 grandchildren, who works part-time building computers for Oakland high schools and sells jewelry and clothes at the flea market on weekends.  As she uses her long red artificial nails to arrange her colorful handmade jewelry, displayed atop three stools, she says, “I come here to supplement my income and pay my bills to go back to school next fall.”
The flea market was established in 1976 right after Ashby BART was built. It was formed to sell antiques and used objects. The vendors began to organize their merchandise on stools and advertised their trade by telling friends.  People began to come over to browse the merchandise and maybe buy something. Today, the flea market is crowded on weekends, with more than 190 vendors and dealers.
Despite its popularity, the Ashby Flea Market has not escaped some threats to its location throughout the years. The last one, according to the market’s Web site, was a proposal by the South Berkeley Neighborhood Development Corporation to housing on the west parking lot. But Errol Davis, the flea market’s general manager, says that although the issue is not entirely settled, he considers it a “cold case” that is unlikely to move forward anytime soon. “I think they stopped because of the economy,” he says. “We are fine for now.”
And as jewelry seller Dray points out, the country’s recession is actually good for the flea market and its culture of deal-making. “People do not have money to buy expensive stuff. I’m helping the economy, I’m helping the people,” she says. “It is a good place to bargain and make money.”

To learn how weatherization works, CLICK TO LISTEN:

Making magic with caulk, insulation and duct blasters, Contra Costa County weatherization specialist Brett Crowe can reduce a house’s energy waste by two-thirds in just half a day.

By late spring, thanks to $5 billion of stimulus funding, thousands of new weatherizers similar to Crowe will be sealing up low-income homes in the Bay Area and across the country. They will primarily come from the country’s 1.7 million unemployed construction workers, retrained as lean, greening machines.

These new weatherization hires will be some of the earliest manifestations of stimulus money in local communities. The East Bay will likely receive millions in additional funding, creating scores of new jobs.

Brett Crowe trains new hire Jesus Ruiz to track the energy leakage at an older home in Richmond.

For 32 years, the federal Weatherization Assistance Program worked in relative obscurity, but since first mentioning weatherization in a presidential debate, President Barack Obama has repeatedly put the program front and center. He has called it “exactly the kind of program we should be funding.”

Obama said he wants one million households to benefit.

Weatherization funds create jobs so quickly because they flow into the existing federal program, which already has established procedures for everything from allocation formulas to material selection. The quick transformation of funds into jobs means weatherization will provide one of the first opportunities to put Obama’s stimulus approach to the test.

“Basically, we’re just doing more of the same things we’ve always done,” said Robert Adams, director of weatherization services for the National Association for State and Community Services Programs (NASCSP), the network for agencies that administer programs like weatherization for low-income households.

While the benefits of the program sound nice, Leslie Paige, spokesperson for Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW), said she does not think the government should even be in the weatherization business in the first place.

Weatherizers use a blower door to force air into a house and measure how much leaks out.

“The private sector could provide us this type of need if there’s demand for it in the economy,” she said. Paige would have preferred to see tax cuts to stimulate private sector growth.

County agencies said they expect to begin hiring as early as late April. That timeframe would be “really, really early” for stimulus funding that involves construction and hiring new workers, according to Steve Levy, director of the Center for Continuing Study of the California Economy.

NASCSP estimates that California will receive $192 million over two years, pumping about half a billion dollars into the state’s economy through jobs, suppliers, and other related spending.

While the Department of Energy has not yet released final numbers for each state’s take, local organizations have already begun planning based on past allocations. The head of Contra Costa County’s program, Michael Angelo Silva, anticipates receiving $3 million from the stimulus.

He has already calculated that he will need to hire a dozen more staff, purchase and supply five more vans, and double his warehouse space.

Silva said he should have no trouble finding qualified applicants. When he posted a job opening in January, he ran one classified ad for one day in one local paper. Fifty people responded, many with decades of residential building experience.

Once in force, the program will create nearly 47,000 direct jobs, and an additional 86,000 indirect jobs for suppliers, according to an analysis by the non-profit Economic Opportunities Studies. Around 5,000 of these jobs will be in California, where employment rolls were particularly hard hit by the cessation of new residential construction.

The local sheet workers union covering the northern California coast said more than 50 percent of its members are unemployed. “We obviously welcome any opportunity to secure work in that market,” said Rob Stoker, president of the Building and Construction Trades Council of Alameda County.

These jobs, however, will be tied to the two years of stimulus funding. CAGW’s Paige said she was concerned that the private sector would not be able to absorb these trained workers once the stimulus times out.

Crowe reads the gages and determines that this home leaks the equivalent of having a three-foot square hole permanently in the side of the house.

“I suspect if they throw $4, $6, $8 million at it, they will create jobs,” she said. “What kind of jobs, though? Will there be an entrepreneurial market for it in the future?”

Contra Costa’s Silva said because the funding is temporary, new hires will not be full-time county employees; they will be hired on a contract basis. He said cyclical funding has always been problematic for weatherization—they train employees only to have to let them go a year or two later. Silva said the employees leave with training certifications that make them desirable to the local private sector.

Unlike the scramble for other stimulus funds, weatherization money is doled out to states based on an orderly, predetermined formula. It takes into account the size of a state’s low-income population, its climatic conditions, and the financial burden that energy use places on its low-income households. The states, in turn, contract out the actual weatherization work to a network of governmental and nonprofit agencies in each county.

California divides up coverage of the entire state into a network of 63 individual organizations, including the Contra Costa Community Services Bureau, Spectrum Community Services in Alameda County, the Economic Opportunity Council of San Francisco, and Community Action Agency in Santa Clara County.

The stimulus legislation mandates that the federal government disperse funds to states within 30 days of signing the legislation. The state will need less than a month to execute new contracts and disperse funds to the 63 governmental and non-profit agencies that perform the weatherization work, according to Helga Lemke, director for external affairs with the California Department of Community Services and Development. That signed contract is all Contra Costa’s Silva needs to get going.

Contra Costa County's agency expects it will need to purchase and outfit five new vans because of stimulus fudning.

Silva’s organization sends out two-person teams to help low-income households fix leaky homes. Lower energy bills save homeowners an average of $413 a year—extra icing on the stimulus cake.

They do this by following a basic maxim. “We want to be heating the indoors,” said specialist Crowe. “We don’t want to be heating the outdoors.”

That is easy to say but surprisingly hard to do.

New weatherization hires will learn the newest greening techniques through a mix of on-the-job training and formal education at an existing network of training facilities. Pacific Gas & Electric’s Energy Training Center in Stockton provides the preparation for northern California. It teaches how to audit homes and determine how much energy escapes in order to locate and fix the leakage.

At an older home in Richmond, Crowe maneuvered his equipment around the living room filled with knick-knacks and pictures of grandkids. He set up a door-sized fan that blew air into the house to measure how much disappeared. Based on the electronic readings, this house leaked the energy equivalent of having a three-foot-square hole permanently in the wall.

Crowe got to work installing weather stripping, replacing the front door, and sealing off the kitchen fan. The ducts in this house were wrapped in asbestos, so Crowe could not do any work repairing potential duct leakage. Contra Costa Community Services Bureau outsources asbestos removal, but typically the services cost more than is allowed per house.

“It doesn’t take much,” said Contra Costa’s Silva. “You put a water heater in, and right there, there’s $2,400.”

But soon larger expenditures like furnace replacements and asbestos abatement will be possible since the stimulus package more than doubled the funding per house, up to $6,500.

NASCSP’s Adams said since California has a warm climate, most homes will not require additional funds. This means organizations in California will likely help proportionally more households than their counterparts in colder states.

While more households may benefit, Adams said weatherization programs aren’t new players in the ongoing drive to conserve energy. “These are things we’ve always been doing,” he said. “It’s nice to be finally recognized.” But with the recognition, comes pressure from Obama’s national spotlight.

About a month ago, the North Oakland branch of the San Leandro-based chain Pet Food Express was hit by an armed robber. Two weeks later, it happened again, this time at the Pet Food Express Rockridge store, located in the Safeway shopping center at 51st and Broadway. According to employees, it was the same guy.

It was then that the vice president of Pet Food Express, Mark Witirol, started hearing of other armed robberies at the Rockridge shopping center. Frustrated by what he thought was a predictable pattern of crime, he wrote a letter to Mayor Ron Dellums, posting a copy on a Montclair community Yahoo group.

“For the last few months, just about every Friday night, between 5-9 p.m., one of the stores in the Safeway Center at 51st and Broadway has been robbed at gunpoint by the same person,” Witriol wrote.  The letter continued: “Since the robber’s moves can be predicted, catching him should be as easy as fishing in a barrel.”

That message was then forwarded to the Rockridge Neighborhood Watch Network, magnifying its reach, as Witriol intended.

“I have raised the alarms all over the place,” he later said in a telephone interview.

The heightened attention got results. Witriol, as well as employees at various stores in the center, said they have noticed an increased police presence at the shopping center. And Witriol said that his letter prompted an outpouring of support from other Oakland residents, who wanted to know how they could help keep watch over his store and other local businesses. Perhaps most significantly, Oakland police arrested a suspect on the charges of one North Oakland robbery and are currently investigating connections into several more.

But Witriol’s original letter didn’t get it quite right. According to Oakland CrimeView, an online website affiliated with OPD that tracks recent crime trends, there have been six robberies at the Rockridge shopping center since December — a lot, but not nearly as regular a pattern as Witriol’s letter suggested. And the Oakland police said emphatically that the robberies were the work of a several robbers, not one.

Witriol’s letter may not be the most accurate portrayal of crime in North Oakland. But it spoke worlds about the city’s perception of crime, of its mood and frustrations, suspicions and cynicism. For a community beleaguered by crime, Witriol’s letter struck a chord.

“The people of Oakland are very, very upset, and they want to do something about it,” Witriol said.

The anxiety extends to those working at the shopping center, particularly at stores that have been robbed. At Jamba Juice, the site of an armed robbery this winter, most of the employees who were working at the time have since transferred to other locations. Even employees of neighboring businesses which have not been directly affected say they are nervous.

“My co-workers are very scared,” said Jocelyn Sprinkle, a Starbucks employee. Even though her store has not been robbed, she said that there was new focus on safety procedures to guard against robberies, such as bringing in outside furniture during daylight hours.

At the Dress Barn, there is now a full-time security guard sitting at the store’s entrance. An employee at GameStop, who asked not to be named because corporate headquarters has asked its employees not to speak with the media, said he was working one evening in February when a robber, armed with an automatic pistol, came into the store, demanding money from both the cash register and the store’s customers. The employee said that now he has started violating company policy of keeping doors unlocked during business hours, choosing instead to lock the doors once the sun goes down and let customers in himself.

“If it looks like one of the people that robbed me, they’re not getting in,” he said. “If they have a covering over their face, I’m not going near the door.”

But while merchants and their employees may be on the watch for a common thread, the OPD contests Witriol’s assertion that one suspect is to blame for all of the incidents.

“There is no pattern [of crime] at 51st and Broadway,” said Officer John Cunnie, a public safety officer for the nearby 12X police beat. “There is a pattern of stores getting hit, but there is no pattern in regard to one suspect.”

What is it about that particular location? Cunnie said he believes that the shopping center presents multiple opportunities for a would-be robber because there are so many stores clustered in one area.

The GameStop employee has a different theory.

“This is actually a good part of Oakland,” he said. “They [the robbers] know the security will be lax.”

The police arrested Quentin Carter earlier this month and charged him with armed robbery further down on Broadway and a parole violation. OPD Public Information Officer Jeffrey Thomason would not say whether Carter, 27, is also suspected of armed robberies at the Safeway shopping center, but he did say that police investigators are looking into possible ties to other robberies.

Witriol and other workers at the shopping center said that they believe Carter is responsible for at least some of the robbery attempts. Witriol said he believes that his employees will likely participate in a line-up to see if they can identify the suspect as the man who robbed their store.

News of the arrest has cheered many who work at the shopping center. But not all of them.

“That’s not the only guy,” the GameStop employee said.  “It’s not the guy that robbed me back in February. It was the one guy that robbed us in November.”

For now, Mark Witriol is pleased with the new attention being focused on the armed robberies. When asked about the recent arrest, Witriol praised the Oakland police efforts.

“We were all amazingly impressed,” Witriol said, further adding that cooperation from Oakland residents and other business owners was crucial. “It’s not about whose job it is. When something is at this level, it’s everyone’s job.”

But although they say they hope that this arrest will result in charges for the robberies, some of the center employees remained pessimistic.

“I think it’s going to continue,” the GameStop employee said. “Not that these guys have jobs anyway, but people use the recession as an excuse to commit a crime. We’re going to continue to get robbed.”

The tropical crops of Maria Inés Catalán’s youth don’t grow in Hollister. Instead of winding through the papaya and mango trees of her native Guerrero, Mexico, here, wearing black loafers caked in mud from the past week’s rain, she tramples weeds, carefully stepping over the kale, broccoli and artichoke plants that thrive in the Northern California winter.

Catalán stops mid-field, spotting something hidden in one of the plants.

“Mira!” she says excitedly. “Look!” When she smiles her round sun-chapped cheeks seem to grow, and her already slanted eyes become thin lines on her face. Her brown hair is streaked with a mix of grey and orange-yellow strands.

Brushing the plant leaves aside, she cups an artichoke gently in her hand and holds it proudly for all to see. It is huge, almost the size of her palm, and the green is stained with a light, washed-out purple.

“Qué chulada,” she says, almost to herself. What a beauty.

Catalán Family Farms, which María Inés Catalán owns, lies in a flat stretch of land surrounded by emerald green hills between the Silicon and Central Valleys. Once a farm worker, Catalán became one of the first Latina immigrant organic farmers in the country when she started fifteen years ago.

Today she sells her produce at farmers’ markets throughout the Bay Area, including three in Berkeley and one in the Temascal neighborhood in North Oakland. While the term “organic” often carries with it a highbrow, not to say high price, connotation, Catalán also sells at wholesale price to Farm Fresh Choice, a Berkeley-based food justice project that works to make organic produce accessible to low-income communities of color. Just as her desire to make healthy eating an option for the surrounding Latino community comes from her own experience as an immigrant, so her decision to go organic had more to do with her personal history with the land, than with pure business sense.

***

Standing in her Berkeley Farmer’s Market stall, wearing a black apron decorated with small embroidered vegetables, Catalán rapidly weighs heads of lettuce and bunches of celery, tells the customer the price in a rough but matter-of-fact English, and gives them their change with a gentle “Thank You.”

And she really is grateful. People are buying less than they used to before the economy went sour. “They used to buy two bunches of chard,” she says, “and now they buy only one, because they’re afraid of being left with no money.”

Small mounds of vegetables are spread out in front of her, and behind her hang two papers, both declaring her produce to be certified Organic. She points to them with a shake of the head, recalling how difficult it was to get the certification when she first started. There were so many forms, most in English, and it was dizzying to maneuver through the various agencies and departments in charge of the process.

But what angers her the most, as she tells it, is that once she did get certified and started selling at the markets, other vendors gave her a hard time. These fellow farmers, always white Americans, would come up to her stand and inspect her produce. “They would ask me if I grew it,” she says, “or if it was really organic, like they didn’t believe me.”

A funny question, since Catalán’s background is firmly rooted in the concept of organic farming. “It’s called organic certification here in the US,” she says,  “but for us in Mexico, it’s traditional agriculture. My grandparents grew organic. Simply because of our culture we are organic farmers.” The only difference, she says, is that in the US, “there’s regulations and politics to certify a ranch, to work in what you want to do, like to do, and are used to doing.”

But when Catalán migrated to California, this traditional agriculture was lost to her, and for years she labored in the pesticide-laden broccoli and strawberries fields of Monterrey County. She remembers it as painstaking, dehumanizing work. “They use you like a machine,” she says. “They tell you to fill…one box a minute, or 60 boxes of broccoli per hour. And by paying you a wage, they know how much they are going to produce per day or per hour.”

Catalán partly attributes her current farming to a need for healthier work.  “And as I learned that being an organic farmer was about about taking care of our environment, our air, soil, our water,” she says, “I made the decision to farm organic.”

Recalling childhood moments of running with goats and playing in piles of harvested peanuts on her father’s farm, Catalán says that even as a farm worker she dreamt of someday owning a farm where her grandchildren could grow up as she did.

“A lot of people told me I was crazy. They said, ‘We are in the United States, and being able to own your own farm and be your own boss and do what you like to do because of tradition is impossible.’”

Now, Catalan’s six grandchildren are growing up on a farm as she once dreamt, even if, in the end, they decide they don’t want to be farmers, themselves. “As they grow they are learning to love the land and to produce their own food, which is the most important thing,” she says proudly.

***

“It’s a man’s world, agriculture,” says Catalán, nibbling on a bright yellow mustard flower as she trudges through the muddy rows. “Usually the man is in front, and the woman is behind,” she says, “But here, I’m in front and my husband is behind!” she lets out a hearty laugh and looks back. “What do you think, viejo?” she calls out to her husband Javier, whom she always refers to as her “old man.”  He is following close behind with one of Catalán’s grandsons; he smiles and shrugs, unbothered.

Fifteen years ago, Catalán took part in three-year long Small Farmer Education training offered by the Agricultural and Land-Based Training Association (ALBA), which trains low-income farmers-many of them Spanish-speaking former farm workers-to grow and market organic produce. She was the only woman in the course, and her fellow farmers refused to take her seriously, especially when it came to learning how to operate heavy farm machinery. They would laugh and tell her that she should be at home taking care of her husband.

“They respect her now,” says her son Juan, “because they know that she is helping everyone.” Juan, whom Catalán brought from Mexico with his three siblings when he was seven years old, used to work el fil-the field-with his mother as a young boy. Now, he helps her run the farm. At one point when she is not around, he proudly shows off a leather-bound “Certificate of Appreciation” awarded to his mother by the Department of Agriculture in recognition of her work for Latino farmers. He points to the gold seal with his finger, as though to highlight the official nature of her work.

Catalán is, after all, founder and current president of Pequeños Agricultores de California (Small Farmers of California), an organization of Latino organic farmers mainly concentrated in San Benito County. She is also the organization’s only female member.

On this day, Catalán is in a hurry to get to an 11 o’clock meeting with another organization to discuss the lack of access to financial resources that Latino organic farmers have. The organization works almost as a cooperative, although she doesn’t use those terms. Farmers grow their crops and mutually help each other commercialize their product. Oftentimes, Catalán has given other farmers small interest-free loans, and helps new farmers maneuver through the complicated organic certification process she herself struggled with years ago.

And farming continues to be a struggle. Although the Catalán’s business is staying afloat, this year-during what has been referred to as California’s most severe drought in history-seems particularly daunting.  The farm might not get any irrigation water from the municipal reservoir, because the state’s priority is supplying the cities first. There is even talk that the county may start to charge for using local well water. Many farmers in the north, says Catalán, have decided not to even plant this season.

“But if nothing gets planted and there is no alternative, there won´t be any food,” she says, her voice mixture of anger and despair. “That’s what they don’t see.”

Last week’s rain has helped the crops, but not so much Catalán’s market sales. Fewer people come to farmers’ markets when it rains. And there’s another economic issue: the high cost of labor. Catalán reaches into the middle of the lettuce crop and pulls out a handful of weeds-if this was a “conventional” farm, she says, there wouldn’t be any weeds because of the chemicals used on the plants. But in organic farming, the only way to get rid of the weeds is to pull them out by hand; because of that, she estimates that out of the $30,000 it takes for her to maintain the farm each month, about $20,000 of that goes to the contractor who hires the laborers.

Though happier as a farmer than as a farm worker, Catalán has yet to own the land on which she farms. She leases it, paying $5,100 a month in rent, with the option to buy. Without any outside financing, buying land is a difficult goal to attain, but for Catalán, it’s something she is working towards.

“Imagine if it was like Zapata said,” she says, referring to the Mexican revolutionary who fought for land reform in the early 20th Century, “and the land belonged to those who worked it.”

***

Amidst the early morning garble of chickens and cows and the neighing of horses, Catalán lets out a squeal.

“Está naciendo!” (“It’s being born!”) She gasps and points to a goat standing perfectly still inside a pen, with what looks like a lump of slime drooping from between its legs. “Viejo!”  she calls out to her  husband. “Está naciendo!”

“I always get nervous,” she says, wringing her hands.  “Sometimes the babies get trampled on by the mother and die.” In one quick second the slimy pouch drops onto the hay, red liquid gushing out after it, and the baby goat squirms for a few minutes before attempting to wobble on its still-weak legs.

Catalán sighs in relief. It’s as though she’s never seen a goat being born before, but in the same pen there are eleven other kids, along with eighteen adults.

She hopes to certify them as organically raised, so she can sell the meat to restaurants. She already sells produce to a handful of restaurants in San Francisco and the East Bay, in addition to selling through Community Supported Agriculture programs in Monterrey. These new endeavors, she says, are the only way to keep the farm running in hard times.

Later that day, she returns to the barn area to check in on the newborn goat. It’s standing now, stumbling to find its mother´s teat. The anxiety that the kid will get trampled comes back for a minute; Catalán presses her husband to take the two goats out of the pen, so the baby isn’t in danger. He disappears and comes back with an old towel.

“I´ll do it,” says Catalan, grabbing the towel and briskly walking into the pen. She gently scoops the kid up in the blanket and lays it outside. They tie the mother to a post next to it. She calms down again.

Dame un cigarro, she says bluntly, putting out her palm. “Give me a cigarette.” No “please,” no “Thank you.”  Her husband pulls out a pack of Marlboro reds and hands her one along with a lighter.

Catalán props herself onto a plastic barrel, the blue of her fleece sweater almost blending into the pale blue of the sky, the fields rolling back behind her. She hides the hand holding the cigarette behind the barrel so the smoke doesn’t blow in anyone else’s face. Her legs dangle, crossed at the ankles, and in between deep drags of her cigarette she begins to talk dreams: Of starting a commercial kitchen, as she calls it, where members of the Small Farmers of California would be able to jar or pickle their produce in order to preserve and sell it. Of letting the chickens lay eggs wherever they want so there will be 800 chickens and she can start selling organic eggs. Of inseminating a cow with world-renowned Japanese bull semen so she can sell organic beef. Of expanding her crops to include more Mexican produce – nopal cactus and different varieties of chiles that she can dry. Of homemade salsas she can sell at the farmers’ markets.

The problem, she says, pushing her finger into the air and moving her entire body forward to make the point, is that there are no resources to help already established organic farmers expand in this way. Although there are organizations that help them get started, such as the one that helped her fifteen years ago, there is nothing to help them “take it farther.”  This, she explains, is what her meeting will be about later today.

Which reminds her that she has to get moving.

“I think I was a queen in a past life,” she says with a grin in between smokey breaths, “Just that this time I was born poor.”  She belts out a laugh and turns to her husband.

“Right, viejo?”

Scenes from an Auction: As the number of Bay Area foreclosures skyrockets, so does the amount of auctions selling foreclosed homes at a fraction of their original price. Watch potential buyers vie for bargains at a recent auction.

[See post to watch Flash video] ]]> http://510report.org/2009/03/04/scenes-from-an-auction/feed/ 0 http://510report.org/2009/03/03/filmmaker-to-screen-redemption-story-of-oakland-recyclers/ http://510report.org/2009/03/03/filmmaker-to-screen-redemption-story-of-oakland-recyclers/#comments Wed, 04 Mar 2009 02:50:46 +0000 kara http://510report.org/?p=3292

By Samson Reiny/510 Report

Jason Witt is an Olympian of recycling—he can recycle up to 800 pounds of bottles and cans a day.  “He’s the captain of his ship,” said Amir Soltani, a writer and activist who has been following Witt for the past year as part of his upcoming documentary on West Oakland recyclers.  Soltani said there is a lot of physical effort and finesse involved in manning a cart the size of Witt’s, which, at the end of each day, is stacked with overstuffed bags protruding several feet into the air.  “He has to read the road, know every pothole and how to maneuver around them,” Soltani said.  “He has to be able to turn his cart without tipping it.  It’s not pretty if it tips.”

Witt is one of the characters in Soltani’s upcoming film debut, “Redemption: Stories of the West Oakland Recycling Community,” which focuses not only on the lives of recyclers—running the gamut from those who sell cans for residual income to others whose livelihoods are dependent on collecting the trash of others—but on the community’s varied reactions to them and to Alliance Metals, the recycling facility that keeps them in business. The Graduate Theological Union’s Justice Collaborative will be hosting a director’s cut preview of the film next Thursday at the First Christian Church in Oakland.  Recyclers featured in the movie will be on hand to offer further testimony about their experiences, and staffers from Poor Magazine and the Homeless Action Center, along with various representatives from the community, will also hold discussions to promote public dialogue about poverty. 

The first-time filmmaker became especially interested in exploring this issue after meeting a recycler. He vividly remembers meeting Miles Jefferson, a regular who makes his rounds near Soltani’s West Oakland home. Jefferson is partially paralyzed on one half of his body as the result of a stroke, but still manages to gather his bottles and cans.  “I was stunned and mesmerized by him,” Soltani said.  “He had this tremendous dignity.”

Indeed, that is one of his film’s main messages—for those to whom recycling is a way of life, there is tremendous discipline involved.  Jason Witt, the Olympian recycler, not only has to balance his cart with finesse; there is other strategy involved because of the intense competition out there for recyclables. Recyclers must be good at cultivating relationships with businesses and residents, and at establishing a route.  Witt knows when and where to be at a certain place, usually to collect before someone else does. Sometimes he is deft and camouflaged because he doesn’t want to draw public attention.  Soltani said people often don’t think of recyclers as productive.  “There’s this tendency to want to criminalize them,” he said, “but many of these people don’t want handouts, and they’re not waiting for them.”

The presence of recyclers, and of Alliance Metals, is a contentious one in West Oakland.  For many, including immigrants that speak little English and those without the skills to be competitive in an already beleaguered job market, cashing in on the recyclable goods is their only means of survival.

But some residents and business owners want Alliance Metals shut down. They say some recyclers urinate in their yards and bring drugs to the area—others say the lack of public restrooms leave them no choice.  Another faction argues that closing the company will only increase crime in West Oakland because recyclers who suffer from drug addictions, left with few alternatives, will find more nefarious ways to support their habits.  Some from both sides of the spectrum blame Oakland city councilwoman Nancy Nadel for not reducing blight in the area.  Fingers are sometimes pointed at developers and tenants of new condos like Magnolia Row—maybe the reason why poor people have no where to go is because affordable housing is disappearing.  “Besieged is the best word that describes the community,” said Soltani.  “Everyone is a little bit stuck.”

In addition to portraying the daily lives of recyclers, Soltani interviewed Nadel, Metal Alliance owner Jay Anast, and several nearby residents, all with varying points of view.  “There are all kinds of barriers that prevent us from seeing each other,” Soltani said.  “This film is not an art form but a life form where a community can reconnect and solve a problem none of us can solve alone.”              

The recycling controversy is just a segment of the greater plight that has ravaged the historic district.  Soltani said that many of West Oakland’s problems today—poverty, poor health, and high crime, to name a few—represent the residual effects of a long, tumultuous, and yet proud struggle for justice.  “There’s a long history of fighting poverty and inequality,” Soltani said. 

West Oakland is a well-known incubator for social change movements.  The Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters established their West Coast office at Fifth and Wood Streets and became the first African American-led group to sign a contract with a national company.  After World War II, the 16th Street railroad station became synonymous with the African American escape from segregation in the south.  In the 1960’s, the Black Panthers used West Oakland as their base of operations.             

But these notable efforts are, in large part, the work of a community that has been prompted into bravery and resourcefulness in order to survive.  “Racism, poor public planning, a weak political base, capital flight…there are so many aspects to this that I can’t do it justice,” Soltani said.  Yet through all of the challenges, Soltani is amazed that people, like the recyclers, are still managing to survive.  “Without trying to sound crass, there’s a magic to West Oakland that’s not lost,” he said.  “It’s beautiful that people are finding a way to make a living out of nothing.”

Thursday’s screening of the preview of “Redemption” will be open to the public, but Solatani says he’s still not sure when the final version of the film will be ready.  He’s shot most of the footage, but there are issues he wants to delve into more deeply.  “I’m looking into more funding.  There’s so much more that could be explored.  If I could go on forever, I would,” he said, smiling.  But what is certain is that he wants the movie to evoke a change in awareness.  “Redemption doesn’t just mean redeeming cans and bottles,” Soltani said.  “It’s about redeeming people’s lives.”                

The GTU Justice Collaborative Presents: Redemption: Stories of the West Oakland Recycling Community. Thursday, March 5th, 4:30-8:00pm. 111 Fairmount Ave. Oakland, CA.Suggested donation for admission $10.  Groups of 10 or more $5 per admission.  No one will be turned away.  Child friendly. For more information, call Tyson at 510.525.7587 or email justice.collaborative@yahoo.com

By Samson Reiny/Oakland North

Many of Oakland’s community health problems can be traced to a history of bad city planning and land use, an expert from the Alameda County Public Health Department (ACPHD) said last Wednesday during a panel discussion at the American Institute of Architects East Bay offices in downtown Oakland. 

Sandra Witt, the County’s deputy director of planning policy and health equity, referred often to a report published last year called “Life and Death from Unnatural Causes: Health and Social Inequity in Alameda County,” as she argued that historical segregation, racial steering and block-busting practices by real estate agents, as well as business disinvestment and concentrated poverty in urban centers, have created poor living conditions in largely non-white communities.   

Witt said that this has resulted today in the proliferation of liquor stores, a lack of safe community spaces, and forced close proximity to hazardous industrial zones, just a few of the many direct causes of health inequity for these depressed communities.  People in these areas suffer from higher rates of obesity, diabetes, asthma, and early death.

The report found that both ethnicity and geography play a role in one’s health. Compared to a white child in the Oakland Hills, a black child in West Oakland is seven times more likely to be born into poverty, five times more likely to be hospitalized for diabetes, and two times more likely to die of heart disease.  A black child in West Oakland, on average, has a life expectancy that is fifteen years shorter than that of a white child in the hills. “Looking at social inequities, it’s indicative of who makes decisions, and how we value certain populations over others,” Witt said.

Alameda County will try several strategies to overcome these challenges.  The “Place Matters Team,” formed in 2007 as an initiative of the Health Policy Institute, conducts research that focuses on the influence of social conditions on health.  The findings are designed to influence policy on issues including affordable housing, economic development, education, and land use.

The county’s public health department has also advocated on behalf of communities confronted with potentially health-averse developments.  Last year, county health officials were one of several agencies that testified before the California Energy Commission (CEC), lobbying against the construction of a power plant in a low-income area in Hayward.  The CEC ultimately denied the permit requested by the East Shore Energy Center to build.  Officials also recently testified at a San Leandro City Council Meeting, urging members to support an affordable housing complex as part of a new development project near the downtown BART.  A decision is expected by the end of the month.

The health department is also involved in the City-County Neighbor Initiative (CCNI), a partnership between the county, the city of Oakland, the Oakland Unified School District (OUSD), and various community groups aimed to help neighborhood residents tackle health inequities.  The CCNI worked with Sobrante Park area residents as they petitioned the Oakland City Council to fund improvements and safety measures at Tyrone Carney park, which was closed in 2002 due to violence and drug dealing in the area.  In 2007, the city allotted $30,000 for the redesign of the park, and public works installed new traffic safety improvements. 

“Creating healthy communities is in the original DNA of the planning profession,” said Albert Lopez, director of planning for the County. “But good advice has been ignored for several decades.” He notes that urban sprawl in the last several years has been about “dumb growth,” about reckless planning in certain counties and communities.  “There’s a lack of pedestrian amenities and there’s a real sense of isolation in the hinterlands like Antioch and Pittsburgh, where they have less access to transportation and resources,” Lopez said.

But Lopez said he believes that change is coming.  Planning is moving toward regionalism and mandates from a higher level of government, a change from what had been largely a city and county’s prerogative. Lopez said he believes it’s probably better this way, because the greater oversight of planning for land usage, “will create better connectors between housing, jobs, and transit … it will reinforce sustainability and resiliency.” 

As an example of this trend toward a more integrated and thoughtful planning system, the state is putting an emphasis on “going green.” In 2008, the California Legislature passed bill, SB375, which provides priority federal and state funding for communities whose plans include ample walking alternatives and public transportation. The goal of the legislation was not only community sustainability but decreased automobile usage, which would help to offset carbon emission levels.

But Lopez said planning does not hold all the answers to better health equity.

“The solution is not just a land use issue alone,” he said.  “It requires a conversation with various professions, and it needs political will.” 

Witt agreed. “There are historical forces at play in shaping our communities,” she said. “It’s not just a public health issue. It’s how we can better collaborate with transportation, educational sectors … it’s a collective effort.”   

Upstairs, cell phones are charging. In the kitchen, snapshots of kids in football jerseys plaster the fridge. And in the living room, auctioneer Danny Green is selling this family home to the highest bidder.

Green’s voice ping-pongs across the room, a jumble of syllables and numbers that mark that characteristic auctioneer dialect, albeit one lightly seasoned by his Texan twang. There are elements of the soft sell – “lot of house for the money!”- and sometimes a harder sell — “you’re missing the chance of a lifetime!” — all the while, cajoling the bidders for another five or ten thousand dollars. His team surveys the living room, scanning for bidders, assuring that a raised hand was indeed a bid and not some nervous flutter. And after a few short minutes of verbal gymnastics, the bidding peters out and a winner is determined. “Boom!” Green says. “Right there!”

Then he does it all over again.

At Monday’s auction in Hercules, five properties were sold in the span of 22 minutes. That’s actually slow for Green and his team–he usually averages about three minutes per property.

Green works for Williams & Williams, a real estate auction company based in Tulsa, Oklahoma. While many businesses are struggling in this economic downturn, Williams & Williams is thriving, doubling in size every year for the last five consecutive years.

According to Amy Bates, a senior vice president with the company, Williams & Williams auctioned off 15,000 properties in 2008. She anticipates over 25,000 properties will be sold in 2009.

Much of that business is driven by the increase of foreclosures and vacancies nationwide. Bates said 90 percent of the properties Williams & Williams sells are foreclosed homes.

Auctions are a way to sell property fast, an attractive option for banks looking to unload foreclosures.

“Some properties in California sit on the market for as much as a year,” said Chris Longly of the National Auctioneers Association. “The holding costs become exorbitant. Banks try to get rid of a property as soon as possible. They don’t want it on their books.”

On today’s auction route, from Reno to Sacramento to Hercules, Green and his team have sold 13 properties. Their record is 30 properties in a single day.

The style and condition of the houses varies from the pristine condo where the auction was held to run-down houses in drug and violence ridden neighborhoods. But Green and his team have never even seen most of the houses that they auction-they’re just the frontmen, a fact that Green takes care to remind his bidders.

“The four off-site properties, we have never seen,” Green says before the auction begins. “I can’t tell you a thing about the condition of them.”

This comes as no surprise to the home auction veterans in the crowd, of which there are quite a few. One couple comes to auctions so often that Junious Lockette, a local Williams & Williams employee, makes a point of saying hello when they come in. Another man, who has purchased property at auction before, is just here for the spectacle.

Contractor Angel Rodriguez, who lives in Hercules, is looking for another bargain like the condo he bought in Concord a year ago. It took him only 15 minutes to buy it, and 45 days to take possession.

“If I can get a good deal, I’ll buy it, whatever it is,” he said. He currently owns six properties, and rents out most of them.

But there are other attendees, like the families with toddlers in tow and the newly married couple, who are novices to the real estate auction. Green, who has been an auctioneer for 41 years, mostly in the auction-savvy world of purebred horse sales, takes care to make the proceedings accessible to these first-timers.

To a newcomer’s ear, the action is quick and tense, but Green actually slows the tempo of his auctioneer’s voice to one-third speed so that he doesn’t bewilder his bidders. Sometimes, he pauses to clarify terms of sale or to convince the prospective home-buyers that if they stop bidding, they are missing out on a bargain.

“You have to remember, the majority of these people have never been to an auction of any kind,” Green said. “When I just stop and say something, it gives them time to take a breath and remember what they came here for.”

One of the first-time bidders is a nurse from Hercules who walks away with a contract for a three-bedroom home on Oakland’s 34th and Market streets. He plans on surprising his parents with the new home, which he had never seen prior to the auction.

“It’s such an adrenaline rush, just because you don’t know what you’re getting into,” said Thanh (we’ll keep his last name hidden, lest we ruin his surprise purchase). “You have to use whatever instinct you have.”

Thanh said the house would likely need some repairs, and that he’ll turn to his brother’s contracting business to fix the house up. But for buyers like Thanh, the auction offers the benefit of being a quick way to score property for cheap.

“Three bedrooms for $78,000,” Thanh said. “It’s not a bad deal.”