Re: Thoughts on the meetiing

[brian s pearson]

Thank you all who attended last nights Mosswood Park RAC (Recreation Advisory Council) meeting.   It was fantastic to see the turn out and to see many new faces.   I hope that you all will continue to support the Park by regularly joining the RAC.   The RAC is a volunteer community group intent on maintaining and developing the quality of the park as well as supporting the activities of the Recreation Center and its director.   It can not happen with out you - the community.

While the encampments have been a regular issue the RAC is not a forum to dispute and solve the issue of unsheltered in the Oakland.  The RAC meeting are an open forum (that is open to any community member) for discussing issues of the Park.  As such we encourage our City staff and Councilmembers to attend the meetings.   And they have done that.   Both CM Fife and CM Kalb and now CM Unger (or their staff) have regularly attend meetings and events, not as honorary attendees or presenters but as community members

As an adjunct to the RAC we have seen in the past a group of community members have formed to address the unsheltered folks encamping in the park.  Groups have worked in the past to bring services, coordinate different organizations, coordinate with City administration to highlight issues and assist in transitioning people to shelters.   Unfortunately its been a cycle of closure and re-encampment.   Also unfortunately some of the key community members involved in the past have dispersed to other locals.   So it is fantastic to see so much community energy coming together to address the issue and I hope that some of that energy can be direct toward volunteer work.

Because many of you attending the RAC meeting last night were expecting it to be a forum about homelessness there was an unfortunate collision of purpose.  There is some dismay about Ms. Flynn's attendance and talk.   She was NOT brought in to discuss the encampment issue.   Ms. Flynn was invited in January to address community member's concerns about the current presidential administration's attack on DEI initiatives and how it would affect Oakland.   She was to invited to speak at the February meeting but could not make it so got invited to March.  So while Ms. Flynn had things to say about encampment policy her presence at the RAC was unrelated to encampments in Mosswood Park.

Thank You

-brian

---- On Thu, 03 Apr 2025 07:47:56 -0700 Denise Simard <denise...@gmail.com> wrote ---

I'm trying to be optimistic. She sounded as if she wanted to work together. Okay, then, let's work.

Like Ben, I thought it was somewhat depressing that we seem to be seen as gentrifiers who don't understand the struggle of the neighborhood and its history. Most of us on the call have lived in the neighborhood 10+ years. I felt as if the Race & Equity person from the city was brought in to school us, which was insulting, because 1) you can't live in the Bay Area and not understand inequity, the root causes, etc., and 2) I would also wager that most of us continually vote for services, vote for solutions that don't criminalize homelessness, vote for safety nets, give to orgs that work in the community.

And yet, somehow it's us, the neighbors who don't understand? Why? Because we dared to call out the city and council person because we're tired of living with passed out people on our porches (happened to us last week!) or walking past someone in a fentanyl stupor by the entrance to the park?

I'm ready to work. But I'm not going to be made to feel as if I don't have a right to be pissed off that my neighborhood was allowed to dissolve into chaos, and my councilperson couldn't be bothered to answer neighbors on an email thread that began in 2023. The jokes write themselves.

Denise Simard 

 510.326.4743

On Wed, Apr 2, 2025 at 7:58 PM Ben Campbell <robot...@gmail.com> wrote:

--

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Mosswood Neighborhood Action Committee" group.

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to mosswood-neighborhood-act...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/mosswood-neighborhood-action-committee/CAJ-8pbbzX5PiCdXVcJ9%3DZQ4U3MuV%2BjbNUOGDv%3Dy1O7CG4GOWzg%40mail.gmail.com.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Thank you Joann! I couldn’t make it until 7 so that helped. CM Fife and CM Unger (D1) both showed. Fife states she is organizing a meeting on Mosswood Park encampment at Evergreen Baptist, date TBD. 

The next in a long line of city admins gave us a lecture on how the problem is bigger than us and how we are all ultimately to blame. Then in standard fashion, the “We have to call on Sacramento to make some real change!”

Meanwhile we just want less poop, less needles, less rats, less aggressive dogs, less crime, less toxic smoke… They have no plan to even follow up on our desperate 311 calls. The trash I know has been called in by neighbors this week still sits outside the Webster entrance. 

On Wed, Apr 2, 2025 at 7:02 PM JoAnn Castillo <jcasti...@gmail.com> wrote:

Mona Bisseret Martinez

   Title: Clean Community Supervisor, Department: Oakland Public Works Department, Email Address: mbissere...@oaklandca.gov

 - she asks that we report illegal dumping to

    https://seeclickfix.com/web_portal/wTMihVsatbiDau5Fw66m6HFD/report/category

Amauri Collins 
  Title: Administrative Analyst ll
  Department: City Administrator
  Email Address: acollins...@oaklandca.gov

he gave an update re Homeless Encampment before the agenda started

 - clearing Webster from 34th to 38th - when?

 - clearing all W Mac from Telegraph to Webster - when?

 - clearing Mosswood in a few weeks? 

Agenda

Center Director Updates, Darlene Flynn, Dir of Race & Equity for Oakland

 - Oakland Dept of Race & Equity Deptr Presentation - How we differ from DEI

 - Encampments and Park Clean-up Update

 - Earth Day Enollment

 - The Oakland Carnival is June 7th at noonb, and Mosswood Meltdown is on Sat/Sun events

7:05 0 7:15 - Moss House Updates:  Anna de Anguera, Linda Taylor, Naomi Schill

7:15-7:25 - Outreach Committee Updates - Cassie Lopez

7:25-7:30 - Meeting Adjourn

I had to leave at 7:00 pm for another meeting, this is all I got. Intros took more than 15 minutes.

JoAnn

--

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Mosswood Neighborhood Action Committee" group.

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to mosswood-neighborhood-act...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/mosswood-neighborhood-action-committee/44ad6439-1fe9-43ca-90b0-3f8fa22f9b9en%40googlegroups.com.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

--

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Mosswood Neighborhood Action Committee" group.

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to mosswood-neighborhood-act...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/mosswood-neighborhood-action-committee/CABcKtOq3C1iFkEtQLnUa6NuiNx7VvHACFKBbtZUNyMndyJ_QoQ%40mail.gmail.com.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[Denise Simard]

Thanks for the clarification, Brian, I'd assumed the meeting's agenda was a direct response to the anger of the neighbors, and it honestly makes me feel a lot better to know that it wasn't. I used to participate in the dog park clean-ups way back when, and we used the big dog run quite a bit, but I stopped going when I kept finding needles near the entry gate (by the back of the small dog run). It would be fantastic to have a functioning park (with a new Rec center!) again. 

Denise

Denise Simard 

 510.326.4743

    

[Kathryn Molitor]

Thank you for bringing up a very important point, Denise. The needles in the part get thrown around during the sweeps. If you’ve never watched a sweep, the state is required to save anything of value over $50. Except if it’s contaminated. A regular practice of the sweet teams is to find sharps containers kept by the residents and throw the them all over the belonging so they do not have to collect the items. 

I tried to bring this up with Caltrans, who typically run the sweeps over OPD, and even with video evidence from multiple sweeps caltrans would not take my complaint seriously. 

Besides the Extreme dehumanization of contaminating someone’s belongings so that you don’t have to collect them. Caltrans nor OPD make sure all of the sharps that they spread everywhere were picked up. They just leave them. 

In an  ideal world, yes there would not be people living in the park, but how cruel is it that they are trying to live in a sanitary place and it is denied to them and to us because of sweeps.

Thank you for your attention

KTM

Nature may reach the same result in many ways. - Tesla

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Mosswood-Park RAC" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to mosswood-park-...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/mosswood-park-rac/CAJ-8pbYffCDm1RTj%2BOa5FA99q5KshgU%3D2VHPepMyqmdGz0c68g%40mail.gmail.com.