FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
December 6, 2017
CONTACT
Alvina Wong, Stay the Right Way Coalition
(510) 467-0359
Community Groups to March on Chancellor’s Office at 3pm Today
to Demand Commitment to No Stadium at Laney
OAKLAND, CA – Laney students, faculty, staff, and residents from the surrounding Chinatown and Eastlake neighborhoods celebrated this morning as the Peralta Board of Trustees shared their decision to instruct the Chancellor to cease communication with the Oakland A’s, but the campaign is not yet over. The groups are now pressing for a commitment from the Chancellor’s office to take the A’s stadium plan off the table completely.
“This is a victory for all of us who have been working to make Laney and Oakland places where working class people color can thrive,” said Alvina Wong with the Stay the Right Way coalition. “The Peralta Board of Trustees did the right thing by putting the interests of Laney students and the surrounding communities first. We need to know that the Chancellor is committed to doing the same, and that he won’t try to revive this stadium plan again next year.”
The Board met last night in closed session. This morning, Chancellor Jowell LaGuerre’s office released a vaguely worded statement saying that, “The Board provided direction to the Chancellor to discontinue planning for a community engagement process on a possible baseball stadium… We will develop a robust and inclusive internal engagement process to assess our needs and partnerships aligned with our mission.”
In phone calls with the Stay the Right Way coalition, Peralta Trustees clarified that the Board specifically instructed the Chancellor to “cease all communication with the Oakland A’s.”
Given the lack of clarity from the Chancellor’s office, the Stay the Right Way coalition is planning to march on the Chancellor’s office today at 3pm to demand a public commitment that the A’s stadium mega-development plan is done for good.
WHO: Laney students, faculty, staff, and Oakland community members
WHAT: March on Chancellor Jowell Laguerre’s Office to demand commitment to No Stadium at Laney
WHERE: March begins at Laney College Quad – 900 Fallon Street, Oakland
WHEN: 3pm Today, December 6
The Board had been scheduled to vote next week on whether to begin a months-long planning process to determine what a potential stadium, retail, and tourist development could look like. According to Board members, the item will no longer be on the December 12 agenda.
Laney students, faculty, staff, and Oakland community members have been mobilizing since September to stop the A’s from constructing a stadium mega-development next to Laney College, Chinatown, and Eastlake. Groups representing Laney students, faculty, and staff had come out opposing the stadium, and a poll released by Oakland Rising last month showed that 4 in 5 Oakland residents wanted the A’s to stay at the Coliseum and invest in East Oakland.
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The Stay The Right Way Coalition is working to stop the Oakland A’s stadium mega-development at Laney so that working class people of color can thrive in the cultural communities they’ve spent generations building. The coalition includes small businesses, students, faculty, workers, tenants, seniors, artists, and nonprofits with the Oakland Chinatown Coalition, Save Laney Land for Students Coalition, Vietnamese American Community Center of the East Bay (VACCEB), Laney College Social Justice Center, Causa Justa: Just Cause, Eastlake United for Justice, Oakland Tenants Union, Coalition of Advocates for Lake Merritt (CALM), 5th Avenue Community Waterfront Alliance.
