Lead East Bay, a joint program between Oakland Rising and Oakland Rising Action, identifies, trains and assists social justice leaders in achieving critical public leadership roles throughout our region – elected and appointed positions, as well as staff roles for elected officials and on campaigns.

We focus on nurturing deep community roots and fortifying the network of support and accountability for participants. We believe that no decision-maker – no matter how skilled, passionate or principled – can be effective and build the political will necessary to make change, without these things.

We seek to reverse the trend of public leaders losing their focus on the values, goals and communities that brought them into leadership in the first place, and becoming reactive to political winds and paths of least resistance. Through Lead East Bay, we are building deep and lasting partnerships for grassroots activists while preparing them to succeed as values-based, goals-driven, accountable public decision-makers.

Through this program we gradually expect to see:

more accountability among elected and appointed officials to communities of color,
more inclusive decision-making within public agencies (involvement of low-income communities of color in the decisions that affect them),
more political power for working class communities of color in the East Bay, and
a leadership development ecosystem that is more focused on the needs of the movement rather than individual leaders.

We believe that getting the right leaders into public leadership roles is critical in tackling the persistent issues in our region, such as the lack of affordable housing, which plague communities of color and contribute to the growing inequality in the Bay Area. We are excited to work with leaders who want to be part of addressing these problems.

LEB leaders meet once a month for training, and also participate in a variety of campaigns across Alameda County. Trainings cover the various ins and outs of running a campaign including field outreach, base building, and fundraising. Additionally, the cohort receives trainings on the political lay of the land and context for the current political climate.