Historically, West Oakland was a thriving center for arts and culture, a popular place to own a community-driven business, and a place to organize community-driven solution to social ills. Seventh Street boasted numerous jazz and blues clubs, and acted as the main business strip for emerging entrepreneurs. This vibrant art scene and late 19th century homes with classic architecture dubbed West Oakland the “Harlem of the West”. The Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the first African American labor union, located its headquarters at 5th and Wood Street. The Black Panther Party began their free breakfast program in West Oakland, which laid the groundwork for our national public school nutrition program. Between 1979 and 1982, residents started the West Oakland Food Cooperative, an early attempt to use food as an economic generator. As evidenced, West Oakland residents have had the ingenuity, drive, and commitment to create their own economic opportunity, social campaigns, and healthy food retail options.
The community still has this enormous human potential, but class struggle, institutional racism, and economic policies have repeatedly disrupted efforts for change. Starting in the 1950’s, a number of public works projects took place in West Oakland that had a harmful impact. The construction of the Cypress Freeway, which connected the San Francisco Bay Bridge with the Nimitz Freeway, demolished local businesses, split the neighborhood in half, and isolated the community from the rest of Oakland. In the late 1960’s, the city bulldozed dozens of blocks of residential homes to make way for the Oakland Main Post Office, a new BART Station and a large public housing project. The damage caused by these “urban renewal” projects, along with racial segregation and the relocation of many middle-class white families to new suburbs caused West Oakland to fall into economic decline characterized by unemployment, poverty, and urban blight.
This decline had a negative impact on West Oakland’s food local food system. Before the 1950’s there were numerous mom-and-pop grocery stores and supermarkets located throughout the neighborhood that offered a variety of groceries, produce and prepared foods. Many of these stores, catered to the special food desires of local customers who had arrived from all parts of the country, especially the South.. They also provided places for people to socialize. With the isolation created by the new freeways and the economic challenges, grocery stores in West Oakland shut down and relocated to the suburbs. It became virtually impossible to buy fresh produce or quality food products in the neighborhood. This problem persists today.
The exodus of grocery stores combined with increasing poverty and the rise in availability and promotion of cheap, processed foods have contributed to West Oakland’s health crisis. Health disparities for people in West Oakland are well documented:
“Compared with a White child in the Oakland Hills, an African American born in West Oakland is 1.5 times more likely to be born premature or low birth weight, seven times more likely to be born into poverty. By fourth grade, this child is likely to live in a neighborhood with twice the concentration of liquor stores and more fast food outlets. As an adult, he will be five times more likely to be hospitalized for diabetes, twice as likely to be hospitalized for and to die of heart disease, three times more likely to die of stroke, and twice as likely to die of cancer.” Life & Death from Unnatural Causes: Health & Social Inequity in Alameda County Health Inequities Report, 2008.
The opportunity for community transformation still lies within the residents. Unemployment and poverty have damaged the social networks that residents need for connections to policymakers, access to capital, and social support that leads to lasting community change. People’s Grocery steps in to catalyze emerging resident leadership and support existing leadership with skills development, and uses our social capital to connect residents to resources. At the core of this work is using food to create this change.
