First Day at Work

Submitted by Ryan Dowell Baum on June 12, 2007 - 4:40pm.

Yesterday was my first day of work at OCO. I went in to the office in East Oakland for a noon staff meeting, and got to meet most of the people I'll be working alongside this summer. Happily, there were some familiar faces! Amy Fitzgerald, who I've seen at my church and talked to a couple of times on the phone, and who I can already tell is a powerful organizer, is working on affordable housing and inclusionary zoning. A very pleasant surprise was being greeted with a big hug by Pastor John Rutsinditwarne, a Lutheran minister from Rwanda who is using the PICO model to rebuild community there after the genocide. He had come to speak to the community organizing class I took during my first year in seminary and we hit it off quite well, staying in contact for a little while afterward.

I also met my supervisor for the summer, Kamara O'Connor, who is working with organizer Daniel English on homicide prevention in West Oakland. They gave an interesting presentation at the staff meeting on how the organization is moving in the community to address this urgent issue, and I finally started to get a feel for OCO's strategy. The idea is that there are a number of "hot spots" in Oakland, geographic areas that are notorious for violence and homicide. These areas need to be targeted for intervention with all of the available services and resources that Oakland can muster. OCO has spoken with a number of these resources, organizations and individuals who are providing services to help youth break out of cycles of violence, but the major problem seems to be that they are not coordinated and they're not working together. In April, OCO got the mayor's office to agree to convene these key players to figure out a way to coordinate their efforts, but as of yesterday morning, had yet to see any action.

At 5:30 I went with Kamara and a group of OCO leaders to meet with Dan Boggan, Mayor Dellums' Chief of Staff, to talk about this lack of action. Boggan assured us that the Mayor's Office is working to convene such a meeting, and has in fact been meeting with other community organizations since April. They say we should receive word of such a meeting "soon," though they haven't yet set a date and there seems to be doubt among OCO leaders about the Mayor's Office's concentration on the specific hot spots that need immediate care.

The task remains for OCO leaders to decide what to do next. Does OCO try and convene its own meeting of key players without waiting for the Mayor's Office, or does it follow the Mayor's lead? This remains to be seen, and I look forward to seeing the results of that decision.

» Ryan Dowell Baum's blog