By Magaly Muñoz

Rising numbers of unbanked or underbanked individuals, largely due to unmet minimum balance requirements, have become a growing concern. However, organizations across Oakland are stepping up, waging a war against the financial illiteracy that’s plaguing some residents.

Up to 4% of Alameda County’s residents lack access to basic banking services, with Black and Hispanic communities making up the majority of that unbanked or underbanked population. The term ‘unbanked’ describes people without a checking or savings account, while ‘underbanked’ describes people who have checking or savings accounts but often rely on alternative financial solutions like money orders and payday loans rather than conventional loans and credit cards.

Recently, the downtown Oakland Wells Fargo branch redesigned their bank to include a Hope Inside center in partnership with Operation HOPE, an organization centered around expanding economic opportunities for underserved communities.

The center features free access to financial coaches who work with individuals to gain financial assistance and guidance, such as helping improve credit scores.

Dr. Joaquin Wallace is one of the financial coaches at the Oakland branch who meets one-on-one with clients to provide credit money management solutions and develop strategic plans to assist them with reaching their financial goals.

He’s created a seven-step blueprint for attaining generational wealth. This includes acknowledging that your background and culture have significant influence on how you view finances, focusing on reprogramming financial trauma and gaining financial edification through literacy programs.

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He shared that it can be difficult for some to accept their financial struggles because their environment might not allow for these immediate understandings because for many, money is not openly discussed in their communities.

“Money is a topic that is not communicated about — it’s taboo. And so first, you have to at least feel comfortable enough to have this conversation,” Wallace said.

Despite the initial roadblocks, the branch is seeing success with the program. Fifty-seven percent of the clients at the Hope Inside center have increased their credit score by an average of 19 points; 47% of the clients increased their savings by a median of $141; and 50% of clients have successfully reduced their debt by a median of $364.

Sonya Verdine, an Oakland resident of four years, is one of the success stories that Oakland Wells Fargo has helped since their soft launch in 2022.

Verdine’s life has been a rollercoaster of challenges including homelessness, mental health struggles and health scares that ultimately pushed her to improve her life, starting with attempting to correct the financial choices she’d made up to that point.

She was introduced to Wallace’s seven-step generational wealth method which provided her with a roadmap to get her on the right track to financial stability. Since visiting the Hope Inside center, Verdine has seen her credit score go up 200 points and she’s saving almost 10% of her income every month with a goal to someday buy her own home.

“You can take this program, you can start from literally nothing, and the program can help you build because they offer a variety of other services,” Verdine said. “It will be time well spent to participate in this program.”

Another organization that has long taken the reins to combat financial illiteracy and break the cycle of poverty is United Way Bay Area (UWBA), a program that assists families in the region to find financial stability.

Nicole Harden, Vice President of Economic Success at UWBA, says that their Sparkpoint program, which features centers scattered across the Bay Area that help low to middle income families establish financial goals, has grown tremendously since its inception in 2009. Anyone can come into one of their 23 centers to consult with a financial coach to receive guidance on how to increase their income, boost their credit, augment their savings, or reduce their debt.

She shared that it’s important for people to not feel embarrassed when talking about their financial struggles. Organizations like UWBA exist to help provide resources that they know are often inaccessible to underserved communities.

Harden explained that their centers not only cater to low-income families but see a significant number of women of color seeking assistance. As a result, they’ve taken the steps to ensure their programs are culturally competent to make conversations easier and more comfortable.

“We operate from the assumption that folks are creative, resourceful and whole. People have been making it all along, people aren’t broken. There’s systems that are broken, but this is an opportunity to work within the systems and help folks figure out how to navigate that,” she said.

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By Antonio Ray Harvey | California Black Media

The Assembly Committee on Elections recently held an informational hearing on a bill that would have given more “entities” the authority to register eligible voters in California.

Known as the California New Motor Voter program, Senate Bill (S.B.) 299 also promised to further automate and streamline the voter registration process while adding safeguards to prevent voter fraud or unlawful voting.

But the bill stalled in the Senate Health Committee last June prompting supporters to hold the hearing to discuss strategies for bridging voter turnout gaps, ensuring accurate registration, and reviewing the impact of recent electoral reforms.

Currently, eligible California residents are automatically registered or pre-registered to vote when they obtain or renew a license or state identification card at the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) or conduct other transactions. The DMV sends their information to the Secretary of State (SOS) office for processing “unless the person opts out or is ineligible to vote.”

Supporters of S.B. 299 are confident the law would enfranchise more Black and other marginalized voters.

If lawmakers vote to pass it during the next legislative session, the law will expand the definition of “voter registration agency” to include all entities designated by SOS.

S.B. 299 also provides an option to decline to register to vote.

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During the hearing, Mindy Romero, founder and director of the Center for Inclusive Democracy at the University of Southern California, provided information on the turnout gap between Black and white voters.

In the 2020 general election, Romero stated, 64% of adult Black voters cast a ballot while 74.5% of white, non-Latino eligible voters did, a 10.5% turnout gap.

The gap drastically increased in 2022. White voters that cast a ballot decreased to 62.8% in the 2022 General Election while Black voters numbers fell to 43.3%.

“What I really want to emphasize is we still have to make it easier to vote but we also have to make people want to vote. It’s the ‘motivation question,’” Romero said. “It’s a story, of course, of our electoral system today that has not supported these groups and made it harder to vote and made it harder to sell the importance of voting.”

Several state agencies in California, such as Covered California, already have the authority to register or pre-register voters.

According to the National Voter Registration Act, federal law authorizes states “to designate state government agencies and offices that offer public assistance or services to people with disabilities, as well as other suitable offices, as voter registration agencies.”

Those voter registration agencies “could include schools, city and county clerk’s offices, fishing and hunting license bureaus, government revenue offices, and unemployment compensation offices.”

Under S.B. 299, SOS would have the authority to designate other entities to register Californians to vote and the process would be simplified with increased digitization.

S.B. 299 is co-authored by Sen. Caroline Menjivar (D-Van Nuys) and Sen. Monique Limón (D-Santa Barbara).

“Voting is one of the most powerful ways to initiate change in the United States and simplifying voter registration will have an instant and dramatic effect on voter participation throughout California,” said Limón in a statement.

S.B. 299 provides a path to 100% voter registration, advocates say. It was designed to align with similar legislation passed in Alaska, Delaware, Wash., D.C., Colorado, New Mexico, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington.

As of May 2022, the state had nearly 22 million registered voters, about 82% of eligible voters in California, according to a Public Policy Institute of California report.

Currently, California has 4.7 million eligible but unregistered voters, according to GDC. They are disproportionately from working-class Black, Latino, and Asian American communities.

Kristin Nimmers, policy and campaign manager for the California Black Power Network, said the state has tried to improve the voter registration process but needs to push bills that prioritize the most vulnerable populations, including eligible individuals who were formerly incarcerated.

The other pressing barriers facing Black voters, Nimmers said, are a lack of understanding of the voting process due to information gaps and inadequate outreach, a mistrust of the system, and limited language access.

Nimmers also said that the pandemic has impacted the voting and registration behaviors in African American and Black immigrant communities. “Black residents are facing gentrification and displacement and are moving out of traditional Black neighborhoods … They aren’t updating their registration.”

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LOS ANGELES (AP) — The area under an elevated Los Angeles freeway that burned last weekend, damaging a section of a key thoroughfare in the car-dependent city, was stacked with flammable materials on lots leased by the state through a little-known program that now is under scrutiny.

The blaze Saturday burned about 100 support columns, forcing the closure of a vital mile-long stretch of Interstate 10 near downtown that is used by hundreds of thousands of people daily.

It could take crews working around the clock between three and five weeks to repair the freeway, Gov. Gavin Newsom said.

Newsom said the state would reassess the practice of leasing land under roads to bring in money for mass transportation projects.

Details of that program remain opaque. Newsom’s office directed questions about whether the state has any regular inspection protocols to state transportation officials. The California Department of Transportation, known as Caltrans, did not respond to questions about inspections or provide information about how many properties the state leases.

State Assemblymember Miguel Santiago, who represents part of downtown Los Angeles, said officials should disclose how many sites are leased under the program, the terms of contracts, how much money the program generates and how the state ensures companies comply with the contract requirements.

“Some of those actions could have prevented what we now see happened underneath the 10,” Santiago said.

Apex Development Inc. has leased the land under I-10 since 2008. One condition of Apex’s contract stipulated it not allow flammable or hazardous materials to be stored there.

The fire that spread quickly over 8 acres (3 hectares) was fed by pallets, cars, construction materials, hand sanitizer and other items being stored under the freeway in an industrial neighborhood. No injuries were reported but at least 16 homeless people living in an encampment there were taken to shelters.

No arrests have been made and Newsom has said investigators are trying to determine if more than one person was involved in what officials said was likely arson.

Prior to the fire, state officials filed a lawsuit against Apex saying the company owes $78,000 in unpaid rent.

The lawsuit also says Apex was subleasing to six other companies. That can be legal if the company received permission from state and federal regulators but Apex did not, Newsom said.

Apex has confirmed the litigation but has not answered other questions through a lawyer.

Owners of two of the companies that subleased the property said they had warned of fire danger and other hazards related to homeless people living under the freeway. Luis Cartagena of Eagle Wood Services said he stopped using the space for his wood pallet business more than a year ago because he was losing so much to theft.

“There was a lot of homeless people there, drug dealing, prostitution and there was a lot of theft,” he said. “I couldn’t leave anything.”

Rudy Serafin said he’s been leasing space under I-10 from Apex since 2009. He uses it to store supplies for businesses in the garment district including hangars, boxes and bags. He also stores office supplies including hand sanitizer, which is flammable.

He estimates he lost $800,000. “I don’t know what I am going to do. I am 49 years old. I have no other resources. This is my livelihood. This is what I feed my kids with,” he said.

Serafin said he’s been unable to get insurance for his business because of concerns about homeless people using cooking fires in the area. He said he and other businesses called the city repeatedly to request a cleanup of the encampment. The city removed homeless people from the space once, but the encampments quickly returned, he said.

The city didn’t respond to a request for comment about whether they had received complaints or removed people from the site. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass warned Monday against assuming homeless people started the blaze.

Serafin said he and other contractors received a notice from the state transportation agency in May saying Apex wasn’t paying its rent. Serafin and other business owners stopped paying Apex, but lost access to their properties. They resumed paying and tried to work directly with Caltrans but the agency’s lawyer said he couldn’t negotiate with them, Serafin said.

Serafin said he signed a contract with Apex in 2009 but couldn’t find it.

The danger of storing flammable materials under elevated interstates has drawn the scrutiny of federal investigators in the past. After a 2017 fire collapsed a section of Interstate 85 in Atlanta, the National Transportation Safety Board criticized the Georgia Department of Transportation’s decision to store construction materials beneath the bridge without assessing the fire risk. The department said it immediately changed storage practices.

California Fire Marshal Daniel Berlant said investigators have identified where Saturday’s fire started and what caused it after sorting through the rubble for evidence, but did not specify what they found. He had no information on a suspect and said investigators are talking to witnesses.

An estimated 300,000 vehicles use the stretch of freeway daily, which runs east-west across the heart of the metropolis and connects with other major freeways. The city has been urging people to avoid the area, take buses and trains, or work from home.

On Wednesday morning, Javier Ramos inched along with his father who was driving to his weekly physical therapy appointment in an industrial area blocks from I-10 as trucks and tractor-trailers cut in and out of the traffic to get to nearby warehouses.

It had already taken them about 20 minutes to get to Sacramento Street from East Los Angeles and their GPS showed they still had 33 minutes — at least — left in their travel. Normally the trip takes 45 minutes.

“We can’t do nothing about it,” he said, adding that next week they will leave earlier.

The Federal Highway Administration, meanwhile, announced Wednesday the immediate availability of an initial installment of $3 million in emergency relief funds to offset I-10 repair costs. Caltrans district director Gloria Roberts said work was on schedule.

___

Taxin reported from Orange County, California. Associated Press writers Sophie Austin in Sacramento, California; Christopher Weber and Stefanie Dazio in Los Angeles; Jeff McMurray in Chicago; and Anisha Frizzell in Atlanta contributed to this report.

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TACOMA, Wash. (AP) — Jurors heard the last words of Manny Ellis, a 33-year-old Black man who was punched, shocked with a Taser, put in a chokehold and held face down, during opening statements Tuesday in the trial of three Washington police officers accused in his death.

“I can’t breathe, sir. I can’t breathe, sir. I can’t breathe,” Washington Assistant attorney General Kent Liu told jurors, describing Ellis’ last words on March 3, 2020.

“When the first paramedics arrived on the scene, they found Mr. Ellis unresponsive,” Liu said. “His eyes were fixed in place, his pupils were dilatated. Mr. Ellis stopped breathing, his body starved of oxygen. He died on the street. He died right there, right on the street.”

Ellis did not die from an overdose, Liu told the jury. He died of oxygen starvation caused by the officers.

“Four witnesses will tell you Mr. Ellis never fought back,” Liu said. “We are here today because this should not have happened. Mr. Ellis did nothing wrong.”

Officers Matthew Collins and Christopher Burbank, both white, are charged with second-degree murder and manslaughter. Officer Timothy Rankine, who is Asian American, is charged with manslaughter. All three have pleaded not guilty.

It’s the first trial under a 5-year-old Washington state law designed to make it easier to prosecute police who wrongfully use deadly force. A jury of eight men and four women was seated Monday afternoon.

Ellis, was walking home with doughnuts from a 7-Eleven that night when he passed a patrol car stopped at a red light. Collins and Burbank sat inside.

attorney Brett Purtzer, representing Burbank, said during his opening statement that the officers tried to question Ellis about attempting to get into a stranger’s car.

When Ellis approached the patrol car, he was “fixated” on Burbank, Purtzer said. Ellis told Burbank, “I’m going to punch you in the (expletive) face,” and started beating on the window, Purtzer said.

The officers got out of the car and tried to take Ellis into custody, but he threw one officer to the ground with “super-human strength,” Purtzer said.

Burbank used his Taser, but it had little effect, Purtzer said. Collins tried to hold Ellis in what Purtzer called a lateral neck restraint, “but that didn’t work.” The officers tried to get control of his arms and Burbank called for help on his radio. Other officers arrived.

Ellis was “screaming, violent and extremely high on methamphetamine,” Purtzer said. “They were exhausted after the fight. He’s still fighting, he’s still resisting so they need to put the hobbles on him. The officers are saying, ‘Don’t fight. Stop resisting,’ but Mr. Ellis is still fighting.”

Witnesses have said they did not see Ellis try to open the door of another vehicle, strike the window of the police cruiser or swung his fists at the officers.

It was the drugs coupled with his bad heart that caused Ellis’ death, Purtzer said, a defense echoed by attorney Anne Bremner who was representing Rankine.

“The evidence is undisputed that he had a large heart and compromised lungs,” Bremner told the jury. “It comes from their own medical examiner. That level of meth would have killed anybody in this room.”

The Pierce County Medical Examiner ruled the death a homicide and said it was caused by a lack of oxygen during the physical restraint.

Rankine arrived after Ellis was already handcuffed and face down. He knelt on Ellis’ upper back as the man pleaded for breath.

Bremner said Rankine did what he was trained to do. He used just enough force to restrain Ellis. He was trying to hold him down to keep him from hurting himself or anyone else, she said.

“Officer Rankine did his job,” she said. “He did it with care. He didn’t do anything wrong or criminal.”

She said Ellis was “in a state of what is called excited delirium. People can actually die of that alone.”

The term is controversial. California lawmakers are considering a bill that would prohibit “excited delirium” as a medical diagnosis or cause of death in police custody.

Bremner concluded opening statements.

Prosecutors called a video expert as their first witness. Video evidence will be key in the case against the officers.

Ellis’ sister, Monet Carter-Mixon, said earlier Tuesday that the video and witness statements will prove the officers committed a crime.

“From the beginning of this case, it was clear to me that the officers’ defense strategy would be to try and assassinate my brother’s character,” she told the Associated Press in an email. “Let’s be clear, Manny is not on trial. The focus of this case needs to be on the three Tacoma police officers and the extreme police brutality that occurred on March 3, 2020, not defaming my brother’s character when he can’t defend himself.”

The trial in Pierce County Superior Court, which will run four days a week, is expected to last until early December.

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