The East Oakland Stadium Alliance, the organization of, as it describes itself:
…a coalition of longtime local businesses, workers, labor organizations, and Oakland community members who are deeply concerned about the Oakland A’s’ proposal to leave behind their current Coliseum location in East Oakland and build a new stadium in the middle of Oakland’s thriving working waterfront. You can view a full list of our partners here.
Which represents the heart of the Port of Oakland maritime workforce must shoulder a great deal of the blame for the current relocation threat the Oakland Athletics issued at the behest of Major League Baseball. The reason is simple: at no time has the East Oakland Stadium Alliance ever offered a plan to mate the Howard Terminal site desires of the Oakland Athletics with their own. At no point has the East Oakland Stadium Alliance ever made public overtures to that objective.
For example, while their will be enough tax increment financing revenue to create a new truck-rail center in West Oakland, and the East Oakland Stadium Alliance privately knows this, publicly, it never shares that idea. Why?
Moreover, why is the group of organizations that are primarily located in or near West Oakland, trying to push the Oakland Athletics to East Oakland? Why doesn’t the East Oakland Stadium Alliance acknowledge the rising water table problem in East Oakland, and call for Oakland’s Government to take action? And, why do some of the members of the East Oakland Stadium Alliance act more like bullies than negotiators?
From the start of the process toward approval, the East Oakland Stadium Alliance has not moved a muscle to be a positive force in the matter of the retention of the Oakland Athletics. They need to read the famous book “Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In“, for some tips.
In all, the East Oakland Stadium Alliance has violated the basic tenants of “Getting To Yes” in the following ways:
1. Not clearly speaking with the other party, but instead attempting to impress those within one’s constituency by taking a side instead of working toward a mutual agreement;
2. Not actively listening to the other party, but instead only listening to rebut the other party’s statements;
3. Misunderstanding or misinterpreting what the other party has said
All of those errors are fixable, but the East Oakland Stadium Alliance has to remove its bully personality to even have a chance at being an effective negotiator.
Some People Who Are Part Of The East Oakland Stadium Alliance Membership Organizations Have Acted Like Bullies
And on the subject of the “bully personality”, some of the member organizations of the East Oakland Stadium Alliance have behaved like public bullies to Oakland A’s fans or to media they perceived as not on their side, even when the content-maker was happy to get their side of the story.
I know this because it happened to Zennie62Media Vlogger Richard Haick at the Oakland A’s Rally for the Port of Oakland vote May 13th 2019.
Richard, who started out as a fan of the Zennie62 YouTube Channel before becoming part of our family of vloggers, made this livestreamed vlog to talk about it:
I also asked him to keep the other stream running where you can hear the ILWU representative harassing him so bad that I was typing for Richard to get the Oakland Police Officer who was on hand to intervene at the Port of Oakland event. You can hear Richard at the end of this video simply say “Don’t touch me” and in response to the ILWU representative who started harassing Richard for no reason at all.
As this livestream shows, Richard was just getting the views of people waiting to get in to the Port of Oakland meeting. At the end of the livestream just about a minute left, you can hear him say that. You can also see Richard get the view of another longshoreman who wanted the ballpark at the Oakland Coliseum.
The East Oakland Stadium Alliance Should Bring Oakland Together, Not Split It Apart
There is so much The East Oakland Stadium Alliance could do if it worked to bring people together. That road of assembly of relationships has to start with the Oakland A’s, and then radiate out like the spokes of a wheel to incorporate other groups, agencies, and companies. The East Oakland Stadium Alliance can keep the A’s in Oakland and at Howard Terminal.
And the The East Oakland Stadium Alliance can fashion a plan to mitigate the sea-level rise problem that will plague East Oakland, and has already produced backed up bathrooms at Coliseum Stadium. That problem of flooded bathrooms was not caused because the playing field is 22 feet below sea level, it’s been that way since it was built in 1966. The reason for the flooding is rising groundwater levels combined with high rainfall periods. The rising groundwater is due to the rising tide which is projected to reach 72 inches in 19 years. We have to fix the problem, now.
So, this is your wake call East Oakland Stadium Alliance. Go to work.
Stay tuned.