The parkland includes a playground for small children surrounded by picnic tables, a bonsai garden, a children’s fairyland, and a boating center. Not all of it works well, not all of it works all of the time, but it is a tremendous community resource. Indeed, in a country radically segregated by class and race, one of the most striking things about Lake Merritt is the willingness of people in the community to share it. Schoolchildren, families, lovers, sunbathers, students, fitness buffs, picnickers, and temporary housing encampments all coexist around the 3.5-mile shoreline. In a city where a two-bedroom apartment might rent for $5,000, it’s not surprising to see a small tent encampment beside the lake. When the city authorities moved port-o-johns into the park for people living in the tent encampment, it became obvious that things were not going to change any time soon. This is not to say that everyone is happy about it, but the park continues to serve a wide and diverse community.
Oakland, once called the Harlem of the West, has been experiencing an influx of young, white, wealthy tech workers and an explosion in housing prices. The changing demographics are also affecting the park use. As white families move into Oakland in increasing numbers, complaints to police about people “living while Black” have also increased. For example, in 2018 Oakland made the news when a leisurely picnic turned into a nightmare. A white woman, Jennifer Schulte, called the police on a Black family using a charcoal grill at their Lake Merritt picnic. As she summoned the police, Schulte reportedly told Kenzie Smith and Onsayo Abram, who were barbecuing, that they would be going to jail. Smith told the Guardian he couldn’t get her voice out of his head. “I honestly thought that I was going to die.”33 Jennifer Schulte became a potent symbol for the ways in which white people target Black people engaged in ordinary behavior. She was quickly dubbed “BBQ Becky” in memes that went viral. Later in the month, hundreds of Black residents showed up at Lake Merritt for a “BBQ’n while Black” cookout/protest.
There is much more to Oakland than Lake Merritt. A short drive from downtown Oakland, several communities are laboring under the weight of deep poverty, including Acorn, Ghost Town, and the Deep East. Today, these communities can only be described as the homelands of American apartheid. Their reputation for violence makes it easy to forget – perhaps encourages people to forget – that people live here, raise children here, and call these communities home. The media refers to them as “areas.” No one lives in an “area.” Even the poorest of us live in communities and neighborhoods – even when those communities carry a more dangerous feeling at night.
Once envisioned as part of a redevelopment plan, the Acorn neighborhood, at the edge of West Oakland, stands as a weary testimony to the old housing projects of the 1960s. Today, the community is not just bordered by Interstate 980 – Interstate 880 runs right through it. Small yards in front of homes have been paved with concrete and delineated from each other and the sidewalk by chain link fencing. Every home I saw was protected by bars on the windows and security gates on doors. As I wander through these streets on foot, the overwhelming presence of concrete and home security is harsh and unrelenting.
Just a short distance away in West Oakland, another development project created the neighborhood of Ghost Town. Hundreds of families, nearly all Black, lost their homes to eminent domain claims that cleared the way for three freeways, a massive freeway interchange dubbed “the MacArthur Maze,” and the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system, all of which cut through the low-income community. The MacArthur Maze marks the south border of Ghost Town, that stretches roughly from 27th Street to 35th Street. Under the knot of freeways that form the Maze, the sidewalks are filled with encampments of people – an informal community of its own, with cardboard architecture, a few shopping carts, and mounds of belongings wrapped in trash bags.
In the midst of the sidewalk encampments and broken-down buildings are schools and children. In this neighborhood half of all families live below the federal poverty line. Despite the number of boarded up buildings, however, it is a neighborhood with a strong identity.
The community is home to a small garden known as Ghost Town Farms, as well as the local Ghost Town Brewery, and it once attracted artist collectives that sprung up in converted warehouses. A tragic fire in the artist’s collective known as the the Ghost Ship in 2016 took thirty-six lives and led the city to condemn many of these properties.
Viewed from Ghost Town, Oakland’s high-rise office buildings form a horizon that looks like the Emerald City of Oz. So perhaps it is telling that the history of Ghost Town has been replaced with local lore. One story claims that there were so many killings in the neighborhood it became known as a Ghost Town, another that the name derives from the fact that two casket makers were once located side by side in the neighborhood, while a third attributes the name to a drug kingpin who referred to the area as a Ghost Town because he had eliminated all his rivals. The scariest story of all is the real history. It has nothing to do with gangs – it’s a story of how collusion between government and business betrayed entire communities; first through redlining practices, and then through eminent domain claims.
Across town, the Deep East is a neighborhood roughly defined as running southeast of 73rd Avenue to the San Leandro Border. I stop for gas on 106th Avenue – deep in “the Deep East.” I am immediately and obviously out of place as an older, white woman, in a community that seems to be younger and without white faces. As in Mobridge, I don’t understand immediately how the gas station works. Familiar things can be so different. Here, the pumps do not take credit cards. I ask a young man sitting in a car on the opposite side of the island for help. He slowly, and wordlessly, points to a small bullet-proof booth with an attendant. I join the small but steady flow of people to the booth. A young woman arrives ahead of me and with a hand gesture offers me the opportunity to go ahead of her. No eye contact, no smile, not a word. Her face is closed to me and I don’t know how to read the interaction. I decline her offer and get a silent shrug. She leaves without speaking or making eye contact.
On the road beside the gas station an old van is parallel parked. The hood is open and the engine exposed. Enough engine parts are scattered around the vehicle that it looks like a long-term repair project in process, yet no one is in sight. Not far from the van, on the chain link fence that surrounds the gas station, a man growls and snarls – I’ve never heard a person make sounds like this. He is splayed spread-eagle across the fence, his body twisting and turning. Although he is writhing, he remains so attached to the fence that I have to look closely to be sure he is not actually tied to it. He is not, but his grip is powerful. A line of men and one woman sit on a curb inside the parking area of the station. No one engages the growling man, no one stares, or even seems to notice.
I follow their lead, pump my gas and return to collect my credit card. This time, a young man offers for me to go ahead of him. I decline but he insists with such firmness that I can only say thank you and accept. While waiting for the clerk to process my card, I turn around and start a casual conversation with this man. I talk about the weather; yesterday was unbearably hot and today is a breezy spring day that feels perfect. He agrees. I make a comment about the unpredictability of the weather that gets a laugh. He has a beautiful smile and for a moment I make eye contact. And then his face closes and I know to return to my business. I realize much too late that, in some communities, survival can depend on learning to see nothing and say nothing. That in some places in the country, eye contact might get you killed. Is this where I am? If so, it is all the more amazing that ordinary acts of kindness seep through in daily interactions. I collect my card receipt and leave.
Signs of an informal economy are everywhere –