Oakland Rising Action is a community-led political organization focused on supporting candidates and issues that drive a progressive agenda for Oakland’s working-class, immigrant and communities of color living in the flatlands of Oakland. Through a thorough process that includes a written questionnaire and panel and/or individual interviews, Oakland Rising Action endorses those candidates that most align with our values, vision, and emerging progressive strategy for Oakland. To ensure that alignment, our endorsement process engages activists, organizers and leaders of Oakland’s progressive left at all stages. Below are our endorsements for Oakland Mayoral and City Council races that voters will determine on Tuesday, November 4, 2014. To ensure that we are building a thoughtful, progressive voting bloc, and are better able to dialogue with fellow stakeholders who have reached different conclusions, we offer here some critique and analysis to clarify why we have, and in some cases have not, made the endorsements you see.

ORA Values for Oakland Leadership: 

As we look to the political future of Oakland, a few values loom large before us. We believe that halting displacement and addressing gentrification is critical and central to ensuring that working-class, immigrant and communities of color will be able to remain in Oakland. In order to do that, we need progressive electeds that will push for strong tenant and working class homeowner protections and enforcement that keeps people in their homes, and community benefits packages that ensure that long-time Oaklanders have first-dibs on long-term affordable housing and living wage jobs. Secondly, we believe that Oakland’s approach to public safety needs to advance multiple strategies at once; including: accountability and consequences around police violence and misconduct, a major culture shift in the force that builds back community trust, re-entry support services for our formorly incarcerated community members, violence prevention and restorative justice programs for youth, and more. Finally, we believe that the current culture of Oakland’s City Council is a travesty of government. We are supporting candidates that we believe will be ble to work with other members of the council effectively and, most importantly, will work with community members and progressive organizations to develop holistic, grassroots-led policy solutions that address the needs of our communities.