Ella Baker Center seeks new vision for Oakland
Human Rights organization addresses urban issues
Ryan Simon
Issue date: 2/18/10 Last update: 2/18/10 at 4:08 AM PST
Section: Features
Raised in East Oakland, Jakada Imani has made a career of affecting positive change in his community. As executive director of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights since 2007, Imani said he works with his colleagues to "find and promote solutions to lift up low-income communities, communities of color, and urban communities all over the country."
Imani recognized early the dichotomy between Oakland's proud history and the dysfunctional characteristics that had come to plague it. "There was this contradiction," Imani said of his experience "My family was on drugs, drugs ravaged my community, but don't forget. Oakland was the home of the Black Panther movement and a center, an example of the potential power of black communities.
"East Oakland historically was a working class community," he told an African-American Studies Laney College classroom of over 70 people early morning Feb. 9th. "People could walk to work in factories [at] good jobs, people could own homes…but something had changed."
As a child Imani experienced firsthand how out of touch local government could be, treating its constituents like enemy combatants rather than citizens to be represented.
"What was really striking," he said, "was how many resources the government was expending adding damage to damage." He mentioned a college friend of his whose study found the "War on Drugs" made the trade more violent and profitable, and therefore more attractive.
Since joining the Center, Imani has been involved in all of their initiatives. In North Oakland, on a mural-sided building, Center employees work supporting youth in the prison system, advocate educational investment over incarceration, attempt to reduce violence in the Oakland streets, do police oversight, build support for "green collar jobs," and advocate for community businesses.
He acknowledged that the scope of the Ella Baker Center is broad in some areas, "but that we really needed a vision for Oakland that was really about lifting up the people who were here now."
Imani recognized early the dichotomy between Oakland's proud history and the dysfunctional characteristics that had come to plague it. "There was this contradiction," Imani said of his experience "My family was on drugs, drugs ravaged my community, but don't forget. Oakland was the home of the Black Panther movement and a center, an example of the potential power of black communities.
"East Oakland historically was a working class community," he told an African-American Studies Laney College classroom of over 70 people early morning Feb. 9th. "People could walk to work in factories [at] good jobs, people could own homes…but something had changed."
As a child Imani experienced firsthand how out of touch local government could be, treating its constituents like enemy combatants rather than citizens to be represented.
"What was really striking," he said, "was how many resources the government was expending adding damage to damage." He mentioned a college friend of his whose study found the "War on Drugs" made the trade more violent and profitable, and therefore more attractive.
Since joining the Center, Imani has been involved in all of their initiatives. In North Oakland, on a mural-sided building, Center employees work supporting youth in the prison system, advocate educational investment over incarceration, attempt to reduce violence in the Oakland streets, do police oversight, build support for "green collar jobs," and advocate for community businesses.
He acknowledged that the scope of the Ella Baker Center is broad in some areas, "but that we really needed a vision for Oakland that was really about lifting up the people who were here now."
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