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PW: Do you want to share any stories about the convening of the city-wide diversity conference? At this point you're very comfortable now talking with the city council. Or not comfortable, but you're becoming familiar with...

MY: I should preface that with the start of the Coalition of Alamedans for Racial Equality?

PW: Yes, please.

MY: Which got started out of the issue with the racial slurs issue with the police.

PW: Right, this is CARE?

MY: Yeah, CARE. And having us convene that, we had OAA, which was at the table, and we had CARE at the table. CARE was monitoring the police issue, but it was a multicultural response to what was going on, because there were folks who were seeing that it seemed to be looked at as a black/white issue, and there were folks who wanted to be involved and have some multicultural voice around, and that's why CARE got started. So we were monitoring, in the process of monitoring, There was a man by the name of Don Grant who was kind of a key leader in the Black community who was kind of leading CARE in some respect. And he was very clear that the community had to lead this, and it wasn't going to be clergy that were going to lead this, it was community members. And he was very adamant also about the ways in which we work with the city because historically the Black community had really been, I don't know what the word would be. They've always been marginalized, and I was learning so much as a newcomer to the community about their experiences. And long story short, with CARE and OAA at the table, at a certain point, we had some discussions about this issue of diversity being a city-wide thing. It's not just the police, it's not just in the school district. And in fact, the police chief told us that at one point when we had meetings with the chief of police when people were calling for his resignation, he said, "You know, it's not just the police, it's the whole community. We're responding to calls that people are making that are residents of the city, and they're the ones that are racists who are calling us to do certain things that are part of the whole system of racism. And so that's why we called for a citywide diversity conference. And also it juxtaposed with the impending closure of the naval base. And with the naval base being closed, that would be like one-third the mass of the island that would have go through redevelopment, and we knew that there were going to be economic implications of this as well. So we pushed for that, and city agencies came together and said, "Okay, let's do this thing," and they held a citywide diversity conference at the College of Alameda and had representatives from all of the, you know, city manager, from the superintendent of schools, the police department, from various city agencies. And then the College of Alameda provost as a host had their community involved as well.

PW: Was there like a training system?

MY: It was basically a conference, it was a citywide conference to talk about this issue of diversity in a city, and look at the changing demographics, increasing the numbers of Asians in the community, the historic Black issues that had gone on, and other ethnic groups that were part of the community, and talking about what's the future of Alameda coming forward in terms of how to embrace diversity and not see it as a problem. Embrace it as part of the reality, and then kind of look forward to where is the city going in terms of its own identity? And that was really the message around Alameda seeing itself as a diverse community, and owning that in a way that's not negative, but that's something that's positive. Of course, there were challenges to that because there were still many folks in Alameda who saw Alameda as a white community and perceived that way.

PW: Was it open to the public?

MY: It was open to the public, absolutely, yeah. And it was a way for us to bring more people into the conversations about what was going on, to invite people to be involved in civic engagement and discussion around the future of this community.

PW: Was there anything developed out of that conference that was the beginnings of a plan? Because I can also understand that it could be just an opportunity to look good and have a conference, but then what? What are next steps?

MY: I think that this is my own assessment of it. Of course I've always believed there's always multiple views of any kind of thing that goes on. But I believe we moved the needle in terms of key people saying, yes, we need to move forward in a new way in Alameda and begin to embrace the diversity of the demographics that are making up this community. And I would even go a further step to say to that, there were folks who were also saying that, in doing so, we want to become more diverse. Not just the status quo, but more diverse as well. And that needs to be part of a vision of different parts of the city as well. And I do believe that people in the district embraced that, people in city hall embraced it, and even the police department, to a certain extent, embraced that as well. And all those chiefs, the chief of police, the city manager and the district, the superintendent of the school district, they all resigned within the next year. And I don't know, I mean, I don't know all their personal situations, but I think there was a signal that there was a change of the guard in terms of -- and I wouldn't call all of them bad people per se -- but that there was a shift in the culture of the community at that particular time. As they gave way to new leadership, then that meant that people coming in to those positions needed to consider, this is the nature of this community. It's a changing community, and the kind of leadership we needed, the police department kind of leadership we needed, school district kind of leadership we needed, city hall, is going to be different, because these are the dynamics that are going on. So I believe that it changed the dynamics. But at the same time, it didn't mean it moved forward with ease because there were still stumbling blocks along the way.

PW: What year was this?

MY: I think that was in the mid-90s, or so, I think.

PW: And now that I know that there was a, kind of a large number of people who resigned or retired in leadership at that point, I could see how there's openings now for change, too. So I know that a lot of the church's involvement intersects with the Alameda Unified School District.

MY: Yeah.

<End Segment 14> - Copyright © 2023 Densho. All Rights Reserved.