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Mayor Barbara Lee, council president Kevin Jenkins, and firefighters union boss Seth Olyer held a rally with public employees to gin up support for Measure E.
Oakland Report obtained video of today’s rally at Oakland City Hall in support of Measure E. (See above for the video, and below for a transcript.)
Rally speakers included Mayor Barbara Lee, council president Kevin Jenkins, firefighters union president Seth Olyer, and Chaney Turner of Oakland Rising Action.
Also in attendance were former councilmember-turned-illegal dumping project manager Rebecca Kaplan, Oakland school board president Jennifer Brouhard, and around 50 others holding signs that said “Yes on E - save our essential services” and “Save our fire stations.”
Transcript
[WORKERS DISASSEMBLING POLITICAL SIGNS]
Take them off. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Of course.
No, I’m not. I’m not.
FIREFIGHTERS UNION PRESIDENT SETH OLYER:
All right, good afternoon every… good afternoon? It is afternoon. Welcome, everybody. We’re gonna get started here in one minute.
Okay. Good afternoon. My name is Seth Olyer, president, Oakland Firefighters, Local 55. I want to welcome everybody.
Welcome, all the workers here today showing support for Measure E. Oaklanders coming out to support this incredible, incredibly important measure on the June 2nd ballot.
Again, I’m Seth Olyer. There goes my script. S-E-T-H O-L-Y-E-R, president, Oakland firefighters. And I’d like to pass the mic to Chaney.
ACTIVIST CHANEY TURNER:
Good afternoon everybody. Thanks for joining us this afternoon. My name is Chaney Turner. I’m the director of voter engagement with Oakland Rising Action.
And as Seth said, we are here to show our support for Measure E and also talk to voters about why this is important for all of Oakland.
I want to introduce our honorable Mayor, Barbara Lee, who has a few words to say.
MAYOR BARBARA LEE:
Thank you all very much. And let me just say thank you to Pamela, and thank you to all of our community members, to all of our workers, to all of our organizations for being here today, our pastors.
This is a very important moment in the city’s history, really, in terms of our financial history and where we are today.
And I just wanted to say, my first year as your mayor will be May 20th. Is that tomorrow one year? And this is the first time that I’ve been able to submit my own budget.
Now, let me just be clear. The budget I submitted does not include the parcel tax because it would not be responsible to put forward the budget before any initiative on the ballot had passed.
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But having said that, we have a spending plan… that is a plan… if the parcel tax, Measure E passes, that really supports our city services, it supports our neighborhoods, and I’ll give you an example.
Under the mayor’s budget plan, where we have our senior centers, for example, open four days. If we pass the parcel tax, they’ll be open five days, you know?
So we can’t tolerate just treading water and just barely making it. Oaklanders deserve to move forward. And they deserve not just to survive, but to thrive. And that’s what we do here.
And I just want to say to you. There are... there’s a lot of misinformation out there. Okay? And so we decided — and Miya [Saika Chen] is here. Thank you very much, Miya and to my team, because we have our spending plan laid out in terms of what... and I’ll just show you what Measure E will do.
Don’t believe what people are saying with regard to this is about union raises or COLAs [cost of living increases]. You know, those are just arguments that those who don’t support this are making.
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This is about the services. This is about public safety.
It’s about making sure our illegal dumping strategies work.
It’s about making sure that housing and our unsheltered population have the services and the shelter and the housing that they deserve.
So that’s what Measure E is about. It’s about making good on our promise.
And so believe me, there’s a lot of misinformation out… and Pamela and all of you, I’m glad that you’re here doing this because we need to clarify what the truth is about Measure E.
And so, president Jenkins, why don’t you come up and say a few words? May I yield to the president of the City Council if he, he’ll say, he’s my... our colleague, our friend, our leader of the city council.
And I’m really happy to see you here. And I have to go in just a minute to a rally - another rally.
COUNCIL PRESIDENT KEVIN JENKINS:
Well, Pamela Drake said I wasn’t invited.
But, you know, this is really important for Oakland and the future of Oakland.
And the mayor has come out with a plan that is blessed by council on how we would spend the taxpayers’ money.
If we are so blessed to get Measure E passed, it’s desperately needed to help with our aging infrastructure.
It’s desperately needed to help when it comes to our some of our fire trucks. I think they’re older than me. Some of them, right.
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The city of Oakland has broken its promises to voters in three of the last four parcel tax measures
She said everything’s older than me, but we desperately need this for the city of Oakland.
We are rowing in the right direction and we have to continue that. We have to continue supporting the infrastructure that has been desperately underinvested in.
And so, with the mayor, with city council, we will be accountable to the voters. We’ll be accountable to the taxpayers on how we spend their money in a transparent way. Thank you so much.
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