November 8, California voters will be asked to extend a tax on our state’s wealthiest residents (those making over $250K), with the funds generated being used to continue funding education.

Vote with Black, Brown & poor communities this November 8th for strong education systems, better protections for renters, expanding affordable housing, and community oversight of Oakland Police Department.

We met our goal! Thanks to supporters like you, we will talk with 21,000 Oakland voters about supporting measures and propositions that will bring real change to our communities, like Measure JJ.

This November Oakland Rising is striving to make major progress on huge issues impacting our daily lives – from protecting renters to funding our schools to reforming the broken criminal justice system. As the media continues to make a spectacle of the elections by focusing on the theatrics of the presidential race, many of us end up feeling turned off and disengaged from the election.

We all know someone who has been pushed out of Oakland as the tide of gentrification and displacement continues to sweep through the Town and the wider Bay Area region, hitting low-income, immigrant and communities of color the hardest. Each month landlords are evicting between 1,000 to 1,500 tenants living in Oakland.

The 2008 presidential election brought to light the power of the youth voting block as young, first-time voters helped usher in the historic election of the nation’s first African American President. Subsequently, the youth vote has plummeted, with 2014 seeing a historic low. Oakland Rising is teaming up with other civic engagement groups in California as part of the Youth Voter Engagement Project to turn this trend around. With a goal of collectively contacting 73,360 young voters of color and ID’ing 46,162 as committed to voting, the Youth Vote (YVote) program utilizes three key elements:

Last week, I got to go back to Ghana – one of the places that has formed the person I am today. Not only had it been 14 years since I was last there but it also was an opportunity to spend time with my family. Ghana has a long history of political revolution.

This coming Saturday, October 1st, Oakland Rising along with Black Lives Matter Bay Area, BYP100 and Allen Temple AIDS Ministry will host a BLM Election Town Hall and Candidate Forum in deep east Oakland, District 7. With the highest density of Black and Brown residents and voters in the Town, we strategically partnered to hear from candidates and learn about key issues on the ballot.

The work that we do is made most meaningful when we have an emotional connection to it. That was especially true with Oakland Rising’s most recent campaign that focused on voter registration. At Oakland Rising, our work has focused on talking to occasional voters and turning them into people who reliably vote every election cycle.

We are looking for volunteers for our Fall Election Campaigns! Oakland Rising is knocking on doors in East and West Oakland, phone banking, and texting to get out the word for the fall election. We are focusing on Props 55, 56, 57 and Measure JJ. Join us! Talking to people not really your thing? No worries, we have volunteer opportunities for campaign prep, data entry, and social media organizing.