What We Accomplished Together in 2021

As the year winds down, so too does our work as we enter a time of planning and reflection. Your support of Oakland Rising helped us to advance community-led solutions, strengthen Oakland’s racial, economic and environmental justice movement building work, and build the political power of working-class, immigrant, and BIPOC communities.

Even with the restrictions of the pandemic, we moved our work forward and scaled it out to officially bringing our campaigns to flatland residents of Alameda County for the first time! We know that this is a tough time, and our communities are heavily impacted by the pandemic, the housing crisis, and many other injustices. By meeting our community where they are and lifting up their voices, together we’re continuing to build people power and advocate for the living conditions we deserve.

Thanks to your support, this year we:

• Polled over 1,100 residents about public safety in the winter, and spoke with about 1,500 more residents in the spring to help pass a people’s budget in Oakland that prioritizes investing in community services and programs as opposed to policing.
• Co-governed with progressive City Councilmembers and worked in coalition with Defund the Police, Refund Oakland, and the Oakland Progressive Alliance to win a real People’s Budget for Oakland.
• Incorporated our new Art, Culture & Democracy cultural strategy into our civic engagement work to shift people’s hearts and minds.
• Spoke with nearly 5,500 residents this spring about the COVID vaccine and how to access it – our first door-to-door campaign since the start of the pandemic.
• Hired a team of 18 impacted residents as outreach workers who spoke with working-class BIPOC residents about our Beyond Recovery and Equitable Democracy platforms.
• Responded to anti-Asian violence by co-organizing a vigil for the community and voicing our support of alternatives to calls for more policing in local and national media.
• Launched our weekly Monday Meals live Instagram series which provides a space for discussions with partner and ally organizations to learn more about issues that impact our communities most and how they can get involved.
• Hosted weekly Redistricting Townhalls in the fall to ensure our unhoused, poor, working-class, Black, Indigenous, neighbors of color are fairly represented in Oakland’s new districts so that they receive accurate political representation and allocation of funds for schools, health clinics, transit, and other important resources.

We are proud of these accomplishments. This year saw us running simultaneous campaigns all while expanding our staff, programs and geographic reach! We ushered in new leadership with liz suk, as our Executive Director, and Jon Bean, our former Team Lead and organizer, as our Deputy Director. We created a year-round position for our Integrated Voter Engagement (IVE) coordinator as well as have begun to transition our outreach team to year-round. By speaking with voters now and over the next several months, they are laying the groundwork for the 2022 elections where we will fight for a strong post-pandemic recovery and secure a stable future together.