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Oakland City Council’s Weird Agenda: Oakland A’s Coliseum Closed Session Thursday Is Black NFL Group

ONN – Oakland City Council’s Weird Agenda: Oakland A’s Coliseum Closed Session Thursday Is Black NFL Group – vlog by Zennie62 YouTube

Oakland City Council’s Weird Agenda: Oakland A’s Coliseum Closed Session Thursday Really Black NFL Group

The Thursday October 29th, 2020 Special Oakland City Council Closed Session Meeting is worded as if the attendees would be representatives of the Oakland A’s. But the African American Sports and Entertainment Group (AASEG) headed by Ray Bobbitt was under the impression the meeting was supposed to be a first-introduction of their proposal and a progress report to the Oakland City Council.

So, the naming of the meeting is a head-scratcher to the group – and to this vlogger.

According to one person connected with the African American Sports and Entertainment Group (AASEG), Oakland District 7 Councilmember Larry Reid told them that the title of the meeting was “a place-holder”. That would seem to imply the name would be changed to point to the business of the African American Sports and Entertainment Group (AASEG). But there’s another complication.

Rick Tripp, a man with a history of trying to get involved in sports economic development in Oakland, and whom I talked about in this livestream, wrote on his Facebook page that…

First response is already in regarding our Oakland stadium redevelopment proposal. For those of you who might be interested, I’m going to be a bit more diligent about posting the progress of the proposal. With that said, a multi-term Councilmember emailed me today that he had passed the proposal on to staff in the Economic Development Dept. That’s it for now. We’ll see what tomorrow brings.

On top of that, Tripp explained that he was asked to submit a proposal, but he wrote that he could not say who asked him to do so. On Sunday, Councilmember Reid revealed that it was he who advanced Tripp’s proposal to Oakland’s economic development staff.

But why?

Why is an African American Oakland Councilmember advancing Tripp’s proposal and allowing by appearances others to think, or at least me, that he’s not for the African American Sports and Entertainment Group? Knowing Larry, my spider-sense tells me he’s a bit miffed that African American Sports and Entertainment Group did not include him directly in the group, from the onset. I want to be wrong here. I hope I am. Larry should be concerned about African American economic development first, even beyond matters of protocol.

Oakland has to rid itself of its crabbarrel mentality, especially where it applies to us: to Blacks in Oakland. Too often we’re ready to not support each other economically, and for the most ridiculous reasons. Too often, too many Blacks in Oakland have been all too willing to do anything to discredit someone else who’s black, even if it’s “Oh, he can’t do it” or “She doesn’t have any money”. Why do I think the reasons behind black-on-black crime are the same ones causing the Oakland crabbarrel problem? (And for the record, neither me nor Zennie62Media has either Ray Bobbitt or his group as a client. But, we are all friends, and I once worked for Robert Bobb when he was the Oakland Chief Administrative Officer. Bobb put me in charge of Oakland’s Super Bowl Bid Project. Given no chance to win, Oakland emerged from 11 cities to be one of three finalists for the right to host The 2005 Super Bowl that eventually went to Jacksonville.)

Toward A New Oakland Sports Economic Development Process

The problem is that, absent a process, other competitors like Tripp will step forward and claim they have a proposal – and many of them will be white, if not all of them. So, all of this should go through a task force within the office of Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf (which technically includes the Oakland Chief Administrative Officer). Oakland has to take a pro-active stance and say that it wants to see the first black NFL ownership group represent Oakland. That can’t happen just by words – it has to happen by legislation, too. (And since this does not involve public contracting, one can’t claim such a focus violates California Proposition 209. Moreover, the group Bobbitt’s formed includes black millionaires and billionaires, so it would stack up to any other team, regardless of color. That said, given the history of racism that’s clouded NFL team ownership and blacks, a coherent process is needed.)

Given that there’s a ton of case law favoring an elected official publicly stating they want a particular developer for a project (and with that rules against “pay to play” relationships) what the City of Oakland should do is draft a new agreement structure that recognizes the Oakland A’s first, and then the African American Sports and Entertainment Group as a subordinate, and then a process where any other interested developer or investor has to send their materials to a designated person at The Oakland Mayor’s Office, who then informs both the A’s and the African American Sports and Entertainment Group, and goes about a process of vetting.

That would help bring clarity to the Oakland Coliseum Stadium and Coliseum City issue, and at the same time, reduce the ambient political noise that’s already audible with Ray Bobbitt’s effort.

Stay tuned.

Note from Zennie62Media’s Zennie62 YouTube and Oakland News Now Today Blog SF Bay Area: this video-blog post demonstrates the full and live operation of the latest updated version of an experimental Zennie62Media , Inc. mobile media video-blogging system network that was launched June 2018. This is a major part of Zennie62Media , Inc.’s new and innovative approach to the production of news media. What we call “The Third Wave of Media”. The uploaded video is from a vlogger with the Zennie62 on YouTube Partner Channel, then uploaded to and formatted automatically at the Oakland News Now site and Zennie62-created and owned social media pages. The overall objective is smartphone-enabled, real-time, on the scene reporting of news, interviews, observations, and happenings anywhere in the World and within seconds and not hours. Now, news is reported with a smartphone: no heavy and expensive cameras or even a laptop are necessary. The secondary objective is faster, and very inexpensive media content news production and distribution. We have found there is a disconnect between post length and time to product and revenue generated. With this, the problem is far less, though by no means solved. Zennie62Media is constantly working to improve the system network coding and seeks interested content and media technology partners.

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