All Out To Stop Privatization Of Howard Terminal: Port Workers & Community Unite

7/20 All Out To Stop Privatization Of Port Of Oakland Howard Terminal: Port Workers and Community Unite, Stand Against the Theft at the Port of Oakland!


On July 20th, 2021, Oakland City Council will take a vote on Oakland Athletics proposal for the development of a baseball stadium and accompanying condominium complex in the current Howard Terminal and connecting area to Jack London Square.
What does this means for maritime workers and the community in and around the port of Oakland?

Ultimately our livelihoods are at stake. More traffic congestion from mass sporting events and high end entertainment will surround the real estate portion of this proposed development. The developers argue any economic growth will benefit all workers and the community as it will inevitably spread out.

We know this not to be true. Just remember how conversion of the San Francisco Embarcadero from industrial maritime use to tourism was promoted over past decades. The loss of shipyards, maritime facilities and jobs such as scalers, boilermakers and machinists has lead to a steady eroding of union scale wages such that those who work in these areas can no longer afford to live anywhere near the city front.

The Oakland Athletics stadium proposal does not democratically consider workers at the port and the surrounding maritime community. Under the A’s proposed Enhanced Infrastructure Financing District (EIFD) increases in property tax revenue on the development expected to rise from the current $30 million to over $12 billion by 2037 will be used for the area of the development itself. Infrastructure spending for schools, port facilities, and resources outside the specified EIFD area (Howard Terminal to Jack London Square) would be left out of this 30+ year projected tax revenue increase.

This type of exclusionary development planning is typical of public land privatization schemes, notably of the Fisher family (who own the A’s Franchise), which has gone on record as backing some of the biggest public land grabs for private profit in city history including AT&T park and the Charterization of public schools into the KIPP chain and Rocketship which their family controls.
Fishers enjoy bipartisan support from all corrupt politicians in the City. The Democratic Council members Ron Bonta and Nancy Skinner of Oakland City are among the foremost advocates for this privatization project. Most other Democrats and Republicans in the City or County have been silent on the issue at best, or supported this union-busting gentrification drive at worst. It is clear that we need a working-class alternative to defend our jobs, unions, residences, and environment.

Sailors, Longshore Workers, Truckers and Railroad Workers Unite! Stand with the working class and multi-ethnic communities against displacement! For well funded schools and public infrastructure through a participatory and democratic decision-making process of all who are effected and concerned!

Come to rally just before city council: July 20th, 2021 1pm PST
Oakland City Hall Oscar Grant Plaza , 1 Frank Ogawa Plaza, Oakland CA
Get on speakers list for city council meeting by contacting: committeeforlaborparty(at)gmail.com or For a Mass Labor Party in the USA @masslaborpartyusa on Facebook and Twitter
https://www.facebook.com/masslaborpartyusa/
https://foramasslaborparty.wordpress.com

Rally At John Fishers A's Stadium Protests Privatization Of Oakland Howard Terminal For New Stadium
https://youtu.be/_DerI2zS3Rk

Gentrification, The Billionaires & The Port of Oakland Privatization With Danny Glover
https://youtu.be/AN0S0lhDk18

Privatization, The Port Of Oakland and Labor
https://youtu.be/KH-ARujOeDQ

Oakland Port Privatization Scam By Billionaire John Fisher, Demos & Union Bureaucrats
https://youtu.be/1hu_s7A4Yc8

Who's Selling Whom? The A's Stadium, The Destruction of Howard Terminal In The Port Of Oakland & The Battle In Labor
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2sgYOaGbB7U&t=19s

"It's Insane!" ILWU Longshore Workers & Truckers Challenge Oakland A's Billionaire Owner John Fisher’s Land Grab Of Howard Terminal
https://youtu.be/5A8uZpqSX_M

Maritime, Labor & The A's Stadium At The Port Of Oakland Press Conference 5/13/19
https://youtu.be/ouL39ISDzBE

Alameda Labor Council, AFL-CIO Backs Howard Terminal Ballpark for Oakland A's
https://www.mlb.com/press-release/alameda-labor-council-afl-cio-backs-howard-terminal-ballpark-for-oakland-a-s

The A’s and MLB don’t care about Oakland, only profits
If the current, taxpayer-subsidized deal is the best the team can offer, the city should let them go

https://www.eastbaytimes.com/2021/05/12/editorial-the-as-and-mlb-dont-care-about-oakland-only-profits-2/?fbclid=IwAR2OEG5rNrYTPvaO-RPpdbNCHX448xorbX4mwRj8yKT9Bnj0uuIBF-qhh8A
The Howard Terminal site and the proposed A’s ballpark are shown in a rendering supplied by the Oakland A’s. (Courtesy of Oakland A’s)


By MERCURY NEWS & EAST BAY TIMES EDITORIAL BOARDS |

PUBLISHED: May 12, 2021 at 9:27 a.m. | UPDATED: May 12, 2021 at 9:29 a.m.

The A’s and Major League Baseball threatened this week that if they don’t get their way they will pack up and leave the Bay Area.
The team has thrown down a greedy and opaque demand that the city of Oakland approve a $12 billion residential and commercial waterfront development project that happens to include a new ballpark — and requires a massive taxpayer subsidy.
If that’s the best the A’s can offer, the city should let them go.
Few people want to end the team’s 53-year stay in Oakland. Bay Area residents have fond memories of the decades of exciting, and sometimes championship, play. But the A’s and MLB are trying to pressure city officials into a bad deal.
The team’s demand would require the city to recklessly mortgage future tax revenues to bolster profits for the A’s. Despite team President Dave Kaval’s claims that the A’s would provide a privately financed ballpark, taxpayers would cover the cost of the infrastructure. And the more than $1 billion of city and community benefits Kaval keeps touting would also come from property taxes.
We already saw Alameda County supervisors get suckered by Kaval when they agreed in 2019 to sell the A’s a half interest in the Oakland Coliseum property. It was a sweetheart deal, with no public bidding, for valuable public land the team wants to develop to help fund the waterfront ballpark six miles away.
County supervisors said the Coliseum deal was aimed at keeping the A’s in town. But there was no requirement that the team would stay. The latest threat by MLB and the A’s to leave town shows what gullible fools the supervisors were.
Oakland city officials shouldn’t make the same mistake.
The city owns the other half of the Coliseum property. They should carefully guard it. And City Council members should not let themselves be bullied by MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred, A’s owner John Fisher and Kaval to approve a bad deal for waterfront development at Howard Terminal on the eastern tip of the Port of Oakland.
The team and its backers like to point across the bay to the Giants’ success reviving the waterfront around their new ballpark. What that ignores is that San Francisco had only a minimal port while Oakland has the 10th busiest operation in the nation.
Kaval claims the A’s waterfront project would include $12 billion of residential and commercial development, including a $1 billion stadium. But the team’s proposal calls for creation of two new financing districts that for 45 years would use tax money from a 1½ mile swath of property around the site and the new development itself to pay for the project’s infrastructure and community benefits.
That’s right: For all the talk from Kaval about the team providing community benefits, they don’t plan to put up a dime of it. That would all come from future tax revenues.
Exactly how much this would cost taxpayers remains a mystery. The deal is currently indecipherable. The devil is in the financial detail, which Kaval isn’t providing.
And, like a high-pressure salesman, the numbers he does throw around intermix short-term expenditures with expected tax revenues over more than four decades without adjusting for the lost value due to inflation.
No rational businessperson would enter such an agreement without a careful analysis. And neither should the city. The City Council and the public first deserve a thorough independent financial evaluation of the A’s offer, alternative uses of the land and the effect on port operations.
Anything less risks piling more debt on an already deeply indebted city — endangering the ability of city officials to provide the services and progressive programs they say they want.
Finally, city officials should not be fooled by the notion that sports teams are revenue generators. Sports teams do not pay their way, says Roger Noll, a sports economist at Stanford University. They may enhance civic pride, but the common arguments for public subsidies “are based on the idea that a sports team is a magnet for other things. That’s the part that’s not true.”
So, if Manfred, Fisher and Kaval continue to demand that Oakland cave to their demands, the city should show them the door. It’s clear that the trio don’t care about the welfare of the city — only the profits of the team and MLB.

Big-league bluff or real threat, A's told they can look for new home
In the A’s statement, Fisher said, “The future success of the A’s depends on a new ballpark.”
There is ample evidence that to Fisher, success is measured not in W and L, but in $.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/sports/ostler/article/Big-league-bluff-or-real-threat-A-s-told-to-16169394.php
May 11, 2021
Updated: May 11, 2021 4:03 p.m.
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A's President Dave Kaval (left) and Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf take questions during a press conference held at the A's corporate offices in Oakland, Calif. Wednesday, Nov. 28, 2018 announcing early plans to build a new ballpark at Howard Terminal.
A's President Dave Kaval (left) and Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf take questions during a press conference held at the A's corporate offices in Oakland, Calif. Wednesday, Nov. 28, 2018 announcing early plans to build a new ballpark at Howard Terminal.
Jessica Christian / The Chronicle
It’s called chin music.
That’s the tune MLB and Commissioner Rob Manfred started playing Tuesday. They threw a high, hard one at the chin of Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf and the Oakland City Council.
Get the message, Oakland? Vote to approve the A’s plan and commit to kicking in $855 million for infrastructure for the A’s new ballpark and surrounding village around Howard Terminal, or kiss your lovable little baseball team goodbye.
ESPN’s Jeff Passan broke the news that MLB has suggested the A’s should start looking for a new hometown, in case their latest stadium proposal gets rejected or delayed.
Actually, the news contained two bombshells: Along with giving the A’s the greenlight to shop for a new home, MLB stated, “The Oakland Coliseum site is not a viable option for the future vision of baseball.”
Until now, neither the A’s nor MLB had rejected the Coliseum as a viable site for a new ballpark. You might think MLB’s main concern would be a new ballpark for the A’s, rather than a heavyhanded rooting interest in John Fisher’s $12 billion proposed development, wouldn’t you? Maybe MLB stands for Major League Business.
The East Oakland Stadium Alliance, which opposes the A’s plans to build in and around Howard Terminal, issued a reaction statement Tuesday: “While the Oakland A’s have claimed to be ‘Rooted in Oakland,’ we now see that was only if the city would hand out hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to fund a massive real-estate development.”
It’s called power politics, folks. Please allow me to poke a few holes here and there in the heated puffery of MLB’s directive.
• Note that the original statement is from MLB, not from the A’s, although surely the plan to pressure Oakland is a joint effort. The A’s have been very careful in trying not to appear unneighborly or belligerent, even as opposition to their project intensified. They let their big brother do the dirty work for them. Now the A’s can say, “Hey, we love Oakland, but MLB told us to start looking around, what can we do?”
• “The Athletics need a new ballpark to remain competitive,” the MLB statement said.
Why does MLB care if the A’s are competitive? I had a recent conversation with Neil deMause of fieldofschemes.com, an expert on how sports venues get built — or not built. We discussed the A’s ballpark situation.
Referring to the A’s playing in the badly outdated Coliseum and using that as an excuse to keep payroll super low, deMause said, “How does it hurt Major League Baseball? It keeps salaries down, because it’s one more team that’s not bidding up the free-agent salaries. It shows other teams that you can win, at least sometimes, with a low payroll, so that encourages other teams to follow the A’s, and the Rays’, model: ‘We’re not throwing in the towel. We’re playing Moneyball.’”
The team owners “love it, deMause said. “They’d obviously love the A’s to have a new stadium, because why not, but I don’t think they have any problem with the A’s not spending much.”
Many cities would love to have a major-league team, and many are ramping up plans to wine and dine the A’s. The list includes Las Vegas, Portland, Ore., Nashville, Vancouver, British Columbia, Charlotte, N.C., and Montreal.
The threat of moving is a common tactic used by teams seeking public money to build — or help build — a stadium.
“The Rays used that threat,” deMause said. “If they were going to move somewhere, wouldn’t you think they would have by now? It’s been so many years. With the A’s, the problem is that, even though they aren’t bringing in as much revenue as they think they should, it’s still a more valuable franchise than if they were in Portland or Nashville or someplace like that.
“The Bay Area’s such a huge TV market, and local TV still matters so much for baseball. ... Right now, the A’s are in good enough shape. They’re not Cincinnati; they’re solidly sort of a mid-level market, if not a little bit above that. There’s nowhere that’s a better option. Like, if Nashville gave the A’s a stadium completely for free, I don’t know if that would be a better deal than staying at the Coliseum.”
What if Oakland were to tell the A’s, We’ll give you $155 million, best we can do. What would Fisher do?
“So if you’re John Fisher, do you throw a hissy-fit and move to Las Vegas?” deMause asked. “Or do you say, ‘You know what? Mayor Schaff isn’t going to be there forever, and I’m going to keep owning the team, so do I give up on this or just wait for the next mayor?’ It’s hard to argue that moving to Las Vegas is a better option.”
You know who agrees with that? Or did? Rob Manfred, who in 2018 said, “I believe that there is not another market in the United States that has the upside potential that Oakland has, and I think we would regret leaving Oakland if we did that.”
• John Fisher, please define “success.”
In the A’s statement, Fisher said, “The future success of the A’s depends on a new ballpark.”
There is ample evidence that to Fisher, success is measured not in W and L, but in $. The A’s most glaring weakness right now is at shortstop. They let East Bay native Marcus Semien, a Cal alum, walk rather than pay him $18 million for this season. They traded for Elvis Andrus while having to pay him only $8.75 million, with the Rangers paying the remaining $6.25 million of his salary. Financially, a successful move. On the field, a disaster.
If Fisher moved the A’s, the team’s value would drop, with no guarantee of increased revenue. And MLB would be trading down to a smaller market.
Watch your chin, Oakland.
Scott Ostler is a columnist for The San Francisco Chronicle. Email: sostler [at] sfchronicle.com Twitter: @scottostler