Improving Oakland Schools

Green Party candidate for School Board Vicente Cruz wants to focus specifically on improving schools in order to avoid the frequent criminalization of students in the Oakland Unified School District. A majority of students are living in an urban environment coupled with the common setbacks of welfare, homelessness, the prevalence of drugs, and general lack of resources, resulting in the consistent jailing and incarceration of Oakland youth. The current setup of the OUSD education system does nothing to avoid this, and in fact, is supporting the prison industrial complex by cycling Oakland youth continuously through the prison system. The loss of potential here to Oakland’s economy, community, and values is gargantuan. One of the direct changes that must be made is the removal of armed and uniformed police officers on Oakland school campuses. The officers intimidate students and foster the belief that the adults in their lives feel that they will inevitably commit a criminal activity. Another task that will be completed is the definite removal of military recruiters on OUSD campuses, as they purposefully target poor and underprivileged children in a type of “poverty draft.” There is a fundamental problem in having these recruiters convince poor students that the armed forces is their only alternative to jail. These young adults are not receiving the support needed to persuade them to further their education in junior college or university. The Oakland education system is in dire need of an overall renovation in order to protect our youth for the future.

OUSD Board Candidate People's District 3

Vicente Cruz II

Written by Amani Liggett

Edited by Vicente Cruz II

OUSD Employee Changes

Green Party candidate for OUSD Board people's district 3 Vicente Cruz is demanding swift and drastic change within the Oakland Unified School District and the treatment of its employees. Those employed by the OUSD are doing noble work for their community and deserve benefits packages that include their immediate family members. These benefits should not cost the employees any type of fees out of their own pocket. Green Party Candidate Vicente Cruz will aggressively pursue the best possible rates to cover all OUSD employees in their benefits. In addition, there is an essential need for renegotiations to take place within each OUSD school, in order to release those teachers who are reported as consistently having a negative impact on students. Furthermore, we must promote those teachers willing to create more advanced and specific curriculum designed to better fit the diversity found in Oakland. The city of Oakland houses peoples of multiple backgrounds, ethnicities, languages, and beliefs. The OUSD must be reworked in order to properly reflect this. Representing the few rather than the many is not how Oakland wants to be presented to the world.

OUSD Candidate Peoples District 3 Vicente Cruz II

Written by Amani Liggett

Edited by Vicente Cruz II

Equal Education Solutions

The lack of equal and quality education is a fundamental problem in the Oakland Unified School Districts education system. OUSD Board Candidate People's District 3 Vicente Cruz desires that all OUSD students, regardless of poor socioeconomic status, be provided with the same opportunities as any other child. The current education funding needs to be radically redistributed in order to better benefit Oakland students. We need multilingual education programs that will not only make our students stronger in a global world but also provide the essential need for ESL students. The mental and physical health of students is also a great and immediate concern. OUSD students deserve to go to school and be offered fresh and healthy food in their cafeterias every day. Green Party Candidate People's District 3 Vicente Cruz also aims so instate physical education programs that setup district funded youth sports leagues. Healthy eating and frequent exercise often starts in school, and the citizens of Oakland owe it to their children to foster this type of environment. Furthermore, Oakland schools are severely lacking in classes for art and music, making it even harder for those students who graduate to compete in an ever-growing world of creativity and innovation. Oakland high school seniors also need to be offered more post-grad support, especially in guiding them to trade schools relevant to their interests. The adults of Oakland seeking further education also deserve to have Adult Education classes reinstated. With the election of the Oakland Green Party Candidate Vicente Cruz to the Oakland School Board, these changes can be expedited; the main goal is to use the funding provided to make better education choices for Oakland.

Vicente Cruz II OUSD Candidate People's District 3

Written by Amani Liggett

Edited by Vicente Cruz II

Platform Edit Comment

I had a bit of writers block so I posted a paragraph I needed a re-write on for community support. My Uncle replied back that we should consider a welfare to work program and switch to a hemp base for fiber fuel and such. This was my response.

Welfare to work is slave labor and does not work and causes the impoverishment of POC Raza included. We should rather offer education on whatever level is needed, treatment rather then jail, trade schools to provide high tech training so folks can get jobs. We could adopt a public works policy that when the economy is bad we use them to boost the economy. What Ron Paul and I am not sure about Pat are saying is not legalization. Rather regulation like alcohol and cigarettes. They are talking about ending the drug war I am for getting rid of legislation that attempts to regulate what anyone can do with their own body. Hemp is a great resource but at the moment we are still in the affects of the hearst corp so long way from that. The best way is for people from the community run for office take control of the economics in your hood, police ourselves attack crime from a medical perspective with treatment of addictions as focus. Vicente Cruz II OUSD Candidate Peoples District 3

Randy Reynaldo Menjivar

 I know one day, the youth and the children will be able to walk without having that subconscious fear of being brutalized by the police or being harassed for walking through a neighborhood they aren't from. It'll be possible for our younger G'z to go to college and come back to take ownership of their neighborhoods and cities, if we believe in them and do our part. In my eyes Oakland has always been beautiful and it's my love for my community that convinces me that one day we'll finally live in peace and be rid of the hate that destroys our lives daily.

That’s Right OGP Candidate Randy Reynaldo Menjivar Peoples District 7 Endorsed/supported by Vicente Cruz II OUSD Candidate Peoples district 3

A Green Vision for Oakland

A Green Vision for Oakland City Politics
In Oakland we need to face some facts.  The facts are that we have many crisis to face in our city.

There is as three prong crisis facing our youth of education, crime and employment. 
We need schools up, crime down and jobs in. 

There is a crisis that is our city budget.  We need to hold a budget convention and issue a new, comprehensive budget. On the one hand we need to deal with the pension’s entitlement problems and have a stable, reliable budget for basic operations from parks to police stations and on the other hand we need to incorporate all the measures, such as Measure Y (or BB) into the body of our budget and law.  We need a budget that has a clear plan for up and down times in the economy. 

There is a crisin our democracy.   Council districts should look like neighborhoods, (not gerrymandered districts that cut them up)  All Oaklanders need to be represented in our government. We need the money out of our local election process and; we need to formalize the relationship with our grass roots neighborhood groups devolving part of the city authority and budget to the local communities.

We propose to make these and other changes only with the citizens of Oakland stepping up and becoming producers, not consumers,  of the politics in our own communities. That means we have to get involved with voting, even when we all know the system is rigged in favor of paid political advertizing and the status quo. 

The public is the solution.  The running of money free grass roots campaigns, the energy behind a reform of the City Charter and budget, the will to deal with our most intractable social problems all can find their solution in an active public.  There are thousands of local registered Greens on the Oakland Voter roles.  It is time for us to say NO MORE.  We need to say NO to money politics by not voting for it, helping spread the work without the media and paid advertizing and VOTING FOR REAL ALTERNATIVES. 

Now in the Oakland Green Party,  a group of known local progressives with a long track record dedicated to real change, are putting together a slate of candidates to be your voice for your and the cities real needs such as:  Schools with vocational training. Schools with arts and sports a top priority, with healthy food for our children a top priority. Safe public services.  Community Policing. Restorative Justice. Local employment.  Stable economic environment.  Environmental retrofitting. And many, many other basic practical things that our city should be doing, but is currently only doing for show, if at all. 

We signatories are stepping forward to be three of those candidates, committed to a reform of our city from top to bottom, from police practices to budget policies with our faith in democracy that includes all of us. 

Please help us by registering to vote those who have rightly been put off by the voting process.
We encourage other progressives to put up candidates and join us.  We plan a public forum in February.  

Don Macleay,                    Dist 1, planning to run for City Council,
Randy Menjivar                 Dist 7, planning to run for City Council,
Vicente Cruz II                   Dist 3, planning to run for school board

Oakland Green Party
contact@oaklandgreens.org (510) 866-7488  P.O. Box 20299, Oakland, CA 94620

OPA Press Statement

         Friends, Family, Brothers and sisters, today we are here to discuss 2012, and in greater detail the forthcoming elections. Oakland is currently at a crux, mass unemployment, increase in violence and crime, home foreclosures, and poverty which is strangling the life out of the working-class communities. meanwhile, the simultaneous tyrannical oppressive regimes that continue unleashing militarized police in our communities to implement and ensure that the gap between the rich and the poor continues to exist and expand. Our schools and libraries are being shutdown at alarming rates, increasing the disparity in education for people of color – yet when these same people protest they are incarcerated or gunned-down.

This year 2012, seems to be a decisive year, where we have to re-consider the ballot or the bullet. We as people can no longer support Democrats and Republicans; they consistently continue to make false promises to the populace, also believing that it is alright to lie to our communities. These politicians blame each other, falsely portraying the image that they are not at fault for any of the wrong-doing of the crimes that have been perpetrated upon the residents of Oakland. We have unmasked these hypocrites and recognized that ‘Progressive, Democrat and Republican’ leasers serve as an arm for the ruling elite.

We have attentively witnessed the masses of people awaken to social, economic, and political injustices committed by many of the nation’s leaders. Singing, ‘We Shall Overcome,’ in 2012 is outdated and will no longer suffice. Begging and pleading for just wages, better education, and equality, has reached its limits. Today we are here to continue on our quest of building a better, more promising future for our elders and the children.

If you believe in our plan of action, please stand with us in solidarity, align yourself as our allies in pursuing freedom and liberation from the oligarchs and capitalistic structures that have devastated our lives for far too long.

Don Macleay,                    Dist 1, planning to run for City Council,
Randy Menjivar                 Dist 7, planning to run for City Council,
Vicente Cruz II                   Dist 3, planning to run for school board

Theresa Anderson            At Large Council Seat

Oakland Green Party
contact@oaklandgreens.org (510) 866-7488  P.O. Box 20299, Oakland, CA 94620