Ryan Russo is the now outgoing head of The Oakland Department of Transportation. The news was announced via an email, but did not spread like wildfire. Still, Mr. Russo, the first boss of the organization, gave one interview, and no video-version. This blogger reached out via phone and email with an interview request, but Mr. Russo did not respond.
Then, I checked, and noticed that Ryan Russo has never been interviewed by any black-owned media, even though he claims that one of his charges is “racial equity” in the transportation system of Oakland.
One would think that a top priority of any Oakland public official making a claim to be concerned about “racial equity” in the transportation system of Oakland, would be to seek out a talk with either The Oakland Post, or Zennie62Media, which owns the blogs I started, Oakland Focus, Oakland News Online, and Oakland News Now. But the fact is, Mr. Russo has not done so. I asked a friend of mine, who’s a long time Oakland politico, about Ryan Russo, and her response was one I am not going to print.
So, I checked his tweet stream. Russo has no record of talking to black-owned media, at any time. I made this video-blog about him, and only to report that he was to appear at the Rockridge Community Planning Council meeting for January 16th, 2020. That’s here:
So, Mr. Russo can’t point to anything I’ve written as a reason. But he knows I’m out there. Ryan Russo knows Paul Cobb, the publisher of The Oakland Post, is out there. Yer he claims to be paying attention to “racial equity”? Come on. Oakland Black media has a perspective that will not, and has not been, successfully replicated by white-owned media. Moreover, the habit of SF Bay Area white-owned media has been to push out for consumption the words of black writers who had issues with other black people and black institutions in Oakland. I’m not going to use this space about Ryan Russo to pivot into a history about that problem, but I will later.
What’s The Deal Ryan Russo? Why Not Talk To Black-Owned Media?
Given that Ryan Russo and I are both graduates of the Master of City and Regional Planning Program at U.C. Berkeley, one would think my interviewing him would be a top priority. But no. And, again, he should have accumulated a good list of examples of times he’s talked to black-owned media, but that’s not there.
Don’t claim racial equity if your spread of media interviews is racially-biased, Mr. Russo. Come and talk.
Stay tuned.