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    Oakland mayor and county’s district attorney ousted in historic recall

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    Voters have ousted Oakland’s mayor and the region’s progressive district attorney, in a major political shake-up for the northern California port city. It’s the first time in modern history that voters here have ousted leadership from either position.Sheng Thao, the mayor, and Pamela Price, the district attorney for Alameda county, were both the target of recall campaigns, launched amid discontent over the city’s challenges: a spiralling housing crisis, rising costs and the departure of the city’s last remaining major league sports team.But the recall campaigns particularly centered on residents’ enduring frustrations about the area’s crime rates. Like many cities in the US, Oakland experienced a surge in violent crime during the pandemic, one that took longer than elsewhere to subside. Statistics had shown both violent and non-violent crime finally trending down – before the election, the Oakland police announced a 30% drop in homicides this year compared to 2023. Non-fatal shootings were down 20% and robberies were down 24%. Still, many residents remained deeply frustrated.The overwhelming support for both recalls came amid a broader sentiment in the state that crime had become out of control. Californians also supported a tough-on-crime measure, Prop 36, to enact harsher penalties for retail theft, property crimes and drug offenses and undo some of the landmark criminal justice reforms from a decade ago. They also voted down Prop 6, a measure to ban forced prison labor. Foundational Oakland Unites, a committee set up to fund signature gathering before the mayoral recall, sent residents a “Common Sense Voter Guide” that encouraged a yes on 36 and no on 6.While the campaigns tapped into deep frustrations among residents, they were funded in large part by a handful of the region’s wealthy residents. Over the summer, the local news site the Oaklandside revealed that Philip Dreyfuss, a hedge-fund manager who lives in the wealthy enclave of Piedmont, had been the biggest funder to the effort to recall the mayor. Ron Conway, a billionaire tech investor, was another major funder.Thao, the mayor, came into office just two years ago, the first Hmong American to lead a major city. She faced opposition from the start of her tenure, including from the city’s police department – she fired the police chief early in her term – and her moderate opponent in the mayoral contest.“People are fed up with crime and homelessness,” Dan Lindheim, a former Oakland city administrator and now professor at UC Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy, told the Guardian in October. “And they want to hold somebody accountable. It was like: ‘We don’t like what they’re doing, so – symbolically – it’s off with their heads.’”Criticism intensified after the FBI raided Thao’s home in a sprawling corruption investigation. The agency has neither implicated the mayor in any wrongdoing, nor absolved her of involvement. Thao has maintained her innocence.“It was just piling one thing on top of another,” Lindheim said. “That was the seal of death for her mayoral position.”In a statement last week, Thao said she was proud of her administration’s accomplishments and was “committed to ensuring we stay on track by supporting a smooth transition”.Price, the district attorney for Alameda county, which includes Oakland, was also ousted in a recall campaign that began just months after she took office. She was the first Black woman to hold the job. A former civil rights attorney, Price had come into office promising to reform the justice system, stop “over-criminalizing” young people and hold law enforcement to better account.The Alameda county board of supervisors is expected to appoint an interim district attorney.Thao must vacate the office as soon as election results are certified on 5 December and the Oakland city council declares a vacancy at its next meeting, Nikki Fortunato Bas, the city council president, said in a statement.A special election for a new mayor will be held within 120 days, or roughly four months.Until then, Bas will serve as interim mayor, unless she wins a seat on the Alameda county board of supervisors. As of Monday, Bas was trailing in that race. More

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      Harris’s home town is hopeful she will make history: ‘she is going to win big’

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      As the extremely divisive election over who will next lead the United States wrapped up, California’s Bay Area was enveloped in a quiet calm. Far from the massive political rallies and the rousing rhetoric that has overtaken battleground states many voters here are decided; the communities to the east of San Francisco were among the counties that voted most strongly for Joe Biden in 2020, and they will show up again hoping to defeat Donald Trump.Even so, some ballots in Oakland and Berkeley will be cast with an extra sense of pride. In the towns where Kamala Harris was born and raised, locals are hopeful their hometown hero will make history.“Words cannot express how excited I am for Kamala Harris to become the first woman president, the first Black woman president and the first south Asian woman president,” said Oakland resident Kim Thompson. “She will also be the first president from Oakland, California,” Thompson added.Not all voters in the mid-sized cities that hug the shores of the San Francisco Bay are aware that the Democratic nominee got her start there. But as the self-proclaimed “daughter of Oakland”, Harris staged her campaign around her connection to the area, claiming the diverse city that’s steeped in cultural and political history with pride.View image in fullscreenThose are also the attributes that drew Thompson to lay down roots and raise her family in Oakland after moving there in 1987. As a Black woman and a lawyer who is deeply connected to civic life in the city, she delights in its ties to a potentially historic moment should Harris be elected.“How great would it be for Oakland if the rest of the country looks to us and says, ‘Wow. That is not just the birthplace of the Black Panthers, not just a place that stood side by side with San Francisco and Berkeley where a lot of the civil rights movement started,’” she said. She’s looking ahead to a future where a presidential library is hosted in the town. “That will be such a positive mark on our city – we are the place where it all began for her.”Born in a Kaiser hospital near the heart of Oakland, Harris and her small family moved frequently in her early years, settling in the midwest and in Montreal in between spells in California. But Harris left a mark on the places where she grew up that still lingers today.A mural depicting her alongside the civil rights leader Dolores Huerta, female education activist Malala Yousafzai and other impactful women now stands in the tree-lined neighborhood where she attended elementary school in north Berkeley, bussed across town from her apartment as part of a 1967 plan to desegregate schools.View image in fullscreenBerkeley and Oakland each offer lists of important sites for Harris-themed tours, including where she launched her first bid for the presidency – one she ended before primaries began back in 2019 – in front of roughly 20,000 people near the steps of Oakland’s city hall.These towns left an indelible mark on her too. Those early years, which she chronicles in her memoir, The Truths We Hold: An American Journey, are filled with remembrances of joy but also the budding awareness about injustice, the fight for equality and rich cultural traditions of activism and art.Harris credits her upbringing, including trips to the Rainbow Sign, a once vibrant African American cultural center in Berkeley that she attended with her mother, Shyamala, and her sister, Maya, for seeding her political ambitions.View image in fullscreen“Being from a place that’s so diverse it helps shape our ideals and our morals and to accept people for their differences,” said Derreck Johnson, an Oakland resident and close childhood friend of Harris. And, he said, even if Harris hasn’t devoted a lot of campaign time to the area, understandably focusing resources and face time in areas where votes are harder-won, she hasn’t forgotten about her home town or the friends who still live there.When Johnson opened his restaurant, Home of Chicken and Waffles, she called to congratulate him. He returned the favor, driving to Nevada to join her in the crucial final days of campaigning. He’s also planning to add a temporary menu item that bears her name – chicken lasagne cooked with collard greens – for those back home.“I am overwhelmed with joy – I don’t even know how to describe it,” he said. “I feel she is going to win. I feel she is going to win big.”

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      In the Bay Area, whether voting with hometown pride, a desire to see history made or a dedication to progressive values – perhaps even all three – large numbers are expected to cast their support. Close to 80% of Alameda county, of which both Berkeley and Oakland are part, voted for Biden in 2020, the landmark election that made her the first female vice-president.View image in fullscreenStill, “everybody’s holding their collective breath and that’s all we can do”, said Joyce Gardner, who has owned a women’s clothing shop in Rockridge, one of Oakland’s lively shopping districts for more than two decades. She’s dedicated her storefront to depictions of the candidate, adding Harris’s face to mannequins clad in classy suits and adorning it with cardboard cutouts.For Gardner though, Harris’s hometown heritage isn’t the draw.“It’s not about her connections to here,” she said. “It’s about what she’s going to do to lift up people.” Gardner is one of many who is voting in this election with a specific purpose: to ensure Trump doesn’t get another shot at the White House.“We need this country to move forward with a decent human being who cares about people, and not just lining his pockets,” she said.“We will see,” she added. “I believe this country is going to do the right thing.”Read more of the Guardian’s 2024 US election coverage

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      An unlikely Oakland mayor is fighting for political survival amid a billionaire-backed recall

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      The Oakland mayor, Sheng Thao’s political rise was precarious from the start.For progressives, her narrow victory in 2022 affirmed their city’s radical, leftist roots. By electing a daughter of Hmong refugees and a domestic violence survivor who promised to advocate for the city’s most vulnerable residents, it seemed Oakland had defied the tech billionaires and venture capitalists who were working to transform the political landscape in neighbouring San Francisco.Almost as soon as she was sworn in, her detractors were questioning the legitimacy of her leadership and called for a recount. Things only got messier from there.This summer, just 18 months into Thao’s tenure, a recall effort against her qualified for the ballot – the first in Oakland in more than a century. Bankrolled by wealthy tech and crypto executives and a hedge-fund manager, the recall gave voice to voters who were furious over what seemed like a decades-long failure by city hall to fix everything from potholes to crime and homelessness.“Since I’ve been here, I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Pamela Drake, a longtime activist and political commentator who moved to Oakland in 1968. “This recall is a reaction during a time when the whole country is in somewhat of a state of reaction, when the whole world is sort of chaotic.”The town where Kamala Harris was born and launched a political career has been under a spotlight lately – or, perhaps, a microscope. National politicians on the right have all too eagerly cast it as a dysfunctional hellscape with runaway crime. But its struggles of late have been painfully real.View image in fullscreenA spiralling housing crisis has driven hundreds of people into sprawling encampments. Acclaimed restaurants have closed, blaming crime and rising costs. And the city’s last remaining major league sports team has left Oakland’s crumbling Coliseum.Many of the same groups backing the recall against Thao helped launch a recall effort against the county’s top prosecutor, the progressive Pamela Price.“People are fed up with crime and homelessness,” said Dan Lindheim, a former Oakland city administrator and now professor at UC Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy. “And they want to hold somebody accountable. It was like: ‘We don’t like what they’re doing, so – symbolically – it’s off with their heads.’”It didn’t matter that homicides had spiked under Thao’s predecessor, and that neither Thao nor Price had direct or total control over the police department or crime rates. Nor does Thao have broad authority to quickly fix a housing crisis that has plagued nearly every corner of California. “But I don’t think this movement was sort of the sum of rational decisions,” Lindheim said. “I think it’s sort of an emotional tidal wave.”Just one day after the effort to recall Thao qualified for the ballot, the city saw one of its worst mass shootings in years: 14 people were shot at a Juneteenth celebration, after a sideshow – an illegal street takeover – developed nearby and fighting broke out.As if to put a finer point on the city’s turmoil, the day after that, FBI agents descended on Thao’s home, carrying out boxes of evidence in an investigation that has neither implicated the mayor in any wrongdoing, nor absolved her of it. “It was just piling one thing on top of another,” Lindheim said. “That was the seal of death for her mayoral position.”Two years into office, Thao has argued she is just getting started. “We’re doing all this great work,” she told the Guardian in an interview. “The first year was about trying to figure out what our ills are, and finding solutions to our ailments. And now we’re seeing wins come in.”At recent rallies and town halls, the mayor and her supporters have pointed to statistics that in Oakland, as in cities across the US, crime, and especially violent crime, has been declining. This summer, a report from the Major Cities Chiefs Association, which represents the police chiefs of big cities, found a 17% decrease in the number of Oakland’s homicides from January through June, compared with the same time period last year. The local news outlet Oaklandside reported that the number of robberies, assaults and rapes had also dipped.They’ve questioned the extent to which the recallers’ grievances can be pinned to Thao, or any mayor. Crime was increasing before she took office, as was homelessness. The Oakland As – the town’s beloved major league baseball team – had been in talks to leave the city for years. Thao points out that she helped bring in the Ballers, an independent league team that began competing this summer in West Oakland.She has contradicted her critics’ characterizations of her as soft on crime by pointing out that she has expanded surveillance and policing, by calling in state funds and resources. And – much to the chagrin of some of her progressive backers – she recently ordered the city to take a more aggressive approach to removing homeless encampments.View image in fullscreenShe also has insisted on her innocence in the scandal that followed the FBI’s raid on her house. Thao had said she is not the target of the investigation, but the agency has not publicly commented on the case, nor has it confirmed her claim. It has also raided properties of the politically powerful Duong family, who hold the city’s curbside recycling contract and who had previously been under investigation by the city’s ethics commission. Thao has called out the agency for refusing to clarify the situation and timing the raid so close to the recall. “It shouldn’t look like they’re putting their finger on the scale when it comes to elections,” she said.Her arguments appear to have done little to quell broader anxieties about crime and calls for more policing. It hasn’t helped that even California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, has jumped into the morass, publicly urging Oakland’s leaders to change a policy to allow more police vehicle chases, after observing “criminals often fleeing with impunity”.“Since taking office, Thao has shown herself incapable of handling the city’s most pressing challenges, while repeatedly deceiving the public about her actions and their consequences,” Seneca Scott, a recall organizer who also ran against Thao for mayor, said in a statement. “The effort to recall Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao isn’t about a single issue – it’s about a pattern of dishonesty, mismanagement and failure to provide effective leadership for the people of Oakland.”Scott and other recall supporters frequently point to reports by the San Francisco Chronicle that Oakland’s police department had been publishing misleading crime data for years. “Overall crime rates have worsened under Thao,” he said.But, at issue in the Chronicle report is the department’s weekly crime reports, which misstated some non-violent crimes. The Chronicle also found that the department had far overestimated violent crime.Longtime activists see the recall efforts against Thao and the county’s progressive district attorney as part of a broader backlash against calls for reforms following the George Floyd protests against police brutality.“I don’t know that there’s been any other time in Oakland besides that, where things had swung so far to the left,” said Cat Brooks, co-founder of the Anti Police-Terror Project.During the George Floyd protests, thousands were screaming in the streets in support of defunding the police – and briefly, it seemed that officials at the local and national levels were starting to pay heed. “And so I think what we’re seeing right now is a really big swing to the right,” Brooks said.Harping on the discontent are Thao’s longtime political detractors.Mere days after the election, the moderate councilmember Loren Taylor, whom Thao defeated in the mayoral race, said Oakland’s ranked-choice voting system was a form of “voter suppression” – even though the system has been in use for decades, and got him elected to his own seat.Taylor has continued his criticism of Thao, leading a group called Empower Oakland, which endorsed the recall, and vowing to run for election if Thao is removed. Thao’s predecessor, Libby Schaaf, who backed Taylor, has also endorsed the recall, telling KQED she believes Thao “is not capable of growing into the job”.Another major critic is LeRonne Armstrong, the former chief of Oakland’s troubled police department, which for decades has been under federal oversight. Thao fired Armstrong after an investigation implicated him in systemic failures within the department and after he publicly accused the federal watchdog of corruption, without evidence. But Armstrong – who is now running for a city council seat – had been well-liked in Oakland, and his dismissal triggered a fresh wave of animosity toward the mayor.Brenda Harbin-Forte, a former Alameda county superior court judge and police commissioner whom Thao removed after taking office, ended up leading the campaign against the mayor – focusing in large part on public safety and Thao’s dismissal of Armstrong.Leaders within the Oakland chapter of the NAACP have also backed the recall, with Cynthia Adams, the chapter president, calling Armstrong’s firing a “modern-day lynch”.“If you go down the streets of Oakland, it looks like a third-world country. Oakland never looked like this,” Adams told the Guardian.Meanwhile, several current and former members of the NAACP chapter have said the group has been “hijacked” by conservatives.Adding fuel to the recall effort’s momentum are hundreds of thousands of dollars from wealthy benefactors. Oaklandside revealed that the recall’s biggest funder was one man – Philip Dreyfuss, a hedge-fund manager who lives in the nearby wealthy enclave of Piedmont and was also top donor in the successful effort to oust San Francisco district attorney Chesa Boudin in 2022. Ron Conway, a billionaire tech investor who was also involved in the San Francisco recall effort, is another major funder.In recent weeks, several prominent Democratic lawmakers have voiced their support for Thao – or, at least, their opposition to the recall. “The voters – through regular elections, not a few billionaires – are the ones with the power to ensure our democratic process remains strong and in place,” said Barbara Lee, a longtime ranking member of the US House, representing Oakland and neighbouring communities.“Except in rare circumstances of serious misconduct,” said Nancy Skinner, a state senator, “recalls are undemocratic and a waste of public funds.”Thao, too, has been on the offensive, holding public rallies and town halls.Whether it will be enough to fight off the challenge is unclear. At a public-safety town hall event in Oakland’s bustling Temescal neighbourhood earlier this month, Thao appeared alongside the city’s new police chief, fire chief and transportation director to reassure voters that things were getting better.The city had managed to hire dozens of new 911 operators and was in the process of hiring more, and crisis call response times had gone down since Thao took office. Also, Thao had overseen the revival of Operation Ceasefire, one of the city’s marquee gun violence prevention strategies that had been watered down under the previous administration.“We are seeing a decline in our crimes,” Thao told the crowd. “And we are seeing that we are intervening before crime actually gets started.”Attenders, many of them members of the spiritualist church that was hosting the event, seemed dubious. Were the city’s new license-plate readers making any difference? When did they expect to fill the vacancies in the police department, and hire more officers?There were stacks of notecards with questions about potholes, littered streets and illegal dumping. Thao and her team projected statistics showing that Oakland had fixed nearly as many potholes over the last fiscal year as it had during the entire 10-year period between 2008 and 2018.Linda St Julian, 75, remained unconvinced. “I’m just so upset with how nasty the city has gotten. I’m just hurt to see my city go down like this” she said. “But I’ll be dead before they fix things.”St Julian had already decided she was in favor of the recall; Thao hadn’t done enough to address crime or homelessness, she felt. Nor had Schaaf, a moderate who is now running for state treasurer. “I don’t like any of them,” St Julian said, shaking her head, referring to the city’s last several mayors.Laux Williams, 37, agreed. The last mayor they felt had done a good job was Ron Dellums, who served from 2007-2011. Williams didn’t want to say whether or not they would vote to recall Thao – but said Oakland had been suffering. “I’m just waiting on a change,” they said. More

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      From homeless to city hall: the Hmong American mayor making history in Oakland

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      From homeless to city hall: the Hmong American mayor making history in OaklandSheng Thao says her experiences will help her lead the city through its severe housing crisis At the steps of city hall, surrounded by supporters and a gaggle of press, Oakland’s new mayor-elect Sheng Thao exhaled.“It’s been a long journey,” she began. “We’ve been through a lot to get to this moment right here.”Just 15 years ago, Thao was living in her car with her infant son. She had just escaped an abusive relationship and had nowhere to go. This week Thao, 37, became the first Hmong American woman to lead a major US city, the youngest Oakland mayor in 75 years and the first renter to hold the position.“There have been so many people in this beautiful city that have held our hands and lifted us up,” she said on Wednesday, in her first press conference since her history-making victory.The daughter of of refugees who fled Laos during a genocide, Thao was born and raised in Stockton, California, the seventh of 10 children. She left home at 17, and in her early 20s fled an abusive partner while pregnant with her son Ben. She spent months sleeping in her car or on stranger’s couches before she was able to secure a shelter.Now, as she steps into the role of mayor, Thao said her experiences with poverty and homelessness will help her lead the city through its own severe housing and homelessness crisis, and increasing gun violence. Over the past five years, Oakland saw a steeper rise in homelessness than any other city in the Bay Area.While many other Democratic midterm candidates across the state and country have responded to voters’ worries about homelessness and community violence with harsh, tough-on-crime rhetoric, Thao has promised policies that will treat unhoused people with dignity and investment in public health and violence prevention programs.Thao’s victory is a sign that voters “don’t want to vilify and punish poor people”, said Aimee Allison, founder of She the People, a national network elevating the political power of women of color.Allison, who lives in Oakland, said she has known Thao since she was an intern for Oakland vice-mayor Rebeecca Kaplan. Thao eventually became Kaplan’s chief of staff, before successfully running for city council herself. “Her values are clear,” said Allison. “It makes her very popular amongst lots of different people, because they feel seen and heard with her.”And Thao has built a long reputation of community involvement and action. At UC Berkeley, she organized the Bear Pantry – named after the university’s mascot – which collected food donations from local restaurants and grocers to help feed students in need. While working for Kaplan, she created a food delivery program for seniors and homebound residents. And amid the pandemic, she helped establish a mutual aid collective to distribute masks, hand sanitizer and public health information to underserved communities.“Sheng is a down to earth candidate who actually knows what it’s like for people who are marginalized in this city,” said Pamela Drake, a local activist who advised Thao’s campaign. “She’s not as progressive as I am,” Drake said. “I won’t always agree with her. But I do think what she’ll do is listen. And she won’t just ignore the people that are really in need.”Thao has hopes to see at least 30,000 new housing units built over the next eight years, provide safe RV parking sites for those who live in their vehicles and trash and sanitation services for encampments. Ultimately, Thao said, she wants the city to offer “adequate housing and shelter to all 3,300 unhoused residents in Oakland” over two four-year terms. She has also suggested stronger protections for renters, including rent controls, to keep people from ending up unhoused in the first place.The proposals had earned her the support of social justice group Oakland Rising, as well as a coalition of unhoused Oaklanders and homelessness advocates.To address public safety issues, Thao said she would like to fill vacancies in Oakland’s police force, which has been under federal oversight for nearly two decades following a corruption scandal. But she said she would also like to see more investment in education and violence prevention programs.In a ranked-choice election, she narrowly secured a victory by just 682 votes over the more moderate Democratic frontrunner Loren Taylor after nearly two weeks of ballot counting. Thao’s victory is considered something of an upset; while she had the backing of the local Democratic party, labor unions and progressive figures including California congressman Ro Khanna, her opponent Taylor was endorsed by key figures in Bay Area politics including Oakland’s outgoing mayor Libby Schaaf and San Francisco mayor London Breed.She is one of several newly elected progressive officials in Oakland, which will have a progressive majority in city council starting next year. And progressive civil rights attorney Pamela Price became the first Black district attorney of Alameda county, with encompasses Oakland.“We finally have the opportunity for progressive policies and changes to actually happen for the city,” Allison said.TopicsOaklandCaliforniaUS politicsUS midterm elections 2022DemocratsfeaturesReuse this content More

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      in Elections

      Kamala Harris: her home town watches as one of its daughters makes history

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      The winter wind caused a flutter in a new flag hanging high above city hall in Oakland, California, on Wednesday morning, as the Bay Area celebrated the history being made by one of its own.Oakland native Kamala Harris on Wednesday was sworn in as the US vice-president, becoming the first woman in American history and the first woman of African American and south Asian descent to take up the position.Harris was born in Oakland and lived in neighboring Berkeley, where her parents studied at the University of California, Berkeley, until she was 12 years old. She served as San Francisco district attorney, and California attorney general, before becoming the state’s junior senator.Harris has frequently cited her experiences growing up in the Bay Area as foundational in her political career, including being bussed into wealthier white schools as part of an integration program. On Wednesday, residents of the region proudly watched her ascend to one of the highest offices in the land.An Oakland-Scranton “Unity” flag, designed by Oakland artist Favianna Rodriguez and Ryan Hnat from Joe Biden’s home town of Scranton, Pennsylvania, was hoisted into the heavy gusts the day before the inauguration.The Oakland mayor Libby Schaaf also hung the flag outside her home in the hills as the inauguration celebration continued on the other side of the country. “Congrats my friend Kamala Harris!” Schaaf wrote on Twitter. “Oakland is proud beyond words. First Black Woman & Asian Woman VP. Daughter of Immigrants & Daughter of Oakland. You make us proud to be Americans again.”It’s just moving that a Black and Indian woman was born at Oakland Kaiser like I was, grew up in the flats near San Pablo Avenue like I did, in the same heavily Black and Indian district I did, and got bussed up to a school in the hills like I did, is going to the White House— Darrell Owens (@IDoTheThinking) January 20, 2021
      Local businesses also commemorated the occasion. Local Food Adventures, a food tour company, boxed and sold foods that celebrate Harris’s heritage, and included a locally made cornbread mix, a garam masala spice blend from Oaktown Spice Shop, and a coupon for waffles from Harris’s friend Derreck Johnson, the owner of Home of Chicken & Waffles.Oakland chef Robert Dorsey, who went to the same elementary school as Harris, planned to serve one of her favorites – seafood gumbo – but he’s now calling it “Democracy gumbo”.Tony Evans and his 15-year-old granddaughter Dy’mond of East Oakland were overcome with emotion while watching Oakland native @KamalaHarris be sworn in as the first Black, South Asian female Vice President. Evans met Harris while working in Georgia as a poll worker @sfchronicle pic.twitter.com/AglLQodAfM— Jessica Christian (@jachristian) January 20, 2021
      Performers from more than two dozen local arts organizations prepared a program titled “Oakland Salutes”, celebrating the Oakland native. The prerecorded videos included socially distanced harmonies from the Piedmont East Bay Children’s Choir, performances from the Oakland Asian Cultural Center and the Oaktown Jazz Workshop, and spoken dedications from local officials.“I am standing in front of an oak tree, because it is a symbol of Oakland, as well as a symbol of strength, wisdom and endurance,” the orchestra’s music director, Michael Morgan said at the start of the streamed show. “These are all qualities we all associate with the native daughter of Oakland, Kamala Harris.”Today, a daughter of Oakland became the woman who shattered glass ceilings, inspired women and girls around the world, and made history. Congratulations, Vice President @KamalaHarris.— Alex Padilla (@AlexPadilla4CA) January 20, 2021
      Harris will also be able to show off her hometown pride at the White House, thanks to a gift from the Warriors. Stephen Curry, a star from the basketball team that played in Oakland from 1971 until last year when the team moved to San Francisco, presented Harris with her own jersey – No 49, because she is the 49th vice-president – and “Madame VP” in block letters across the top.In a moving tribute, a video from the team features a young girl named Stella donning the oversized jersey as she thinks about the opportunities ahead. “I love that Kamala looks like me and I can do anything,” she says, as she dances and skips through the city.Kari Paul contributed to this report More