Oakland’s True Believers See Greatness in Its Future : Urban problems: A new generation of leaders think they can turn things around in the decaying city.

Poverty is on the rise and murders hit an all-time high in 1990. But through it all, Oakland’s middle class, black and white, has remained to fight for a city they believe can still attain greatness.

If the decay of rusting industrial cities can be reversed anywhere, it is here, they say.

Among those who stay: an educator who as a child went to an East Oakland elementary school, then returned years later as principal to halt its downward spiral; a police officer who leaves his gun in his desk while he oversees basketball games in an especially rough neighborhood; a grandmother who helps other grandmothers raise their addicted daughters’ children.

“I have that Don Quixote feeling like everyone else who deals with Oakland: With just a few changes, it can be marvelous,” said Edward J. Blakely, chair of the Department of Urban Planning at UC Berkeley.

What other city has a picturesque Lake Merritt at its center, or the striking views of San Francisco Bay, or such committed activists living within, Blakely asks. He is the chief executive officer of the University-Oakland Metropolitan Forum, a grant-funded think tank established to study Oakland’s problems and advise its officials.

“This isn’t Kansas. This is the Bay Area, one of the most desirable places in the country,” said Clinton Killian, 33, a lawyer, standing in front of his West Oakland home, his two sons, ages 2 and 3, darting back and forth on the sidewalk.

But even though Oakland is at the heart of one of the most affluent parts of the world, and its white-collar work force is expanding, many of its people don’t share in the bounty. Although millions have been spent on anti-poverty programs in Oakland, the poverty is “more virile,” Blakely said.

Giving cause for hope, however, is a new generation of civic leaders. A new superintendent is in charge of the long-troubled Oakland Unified School District. The school board spent two years searching for someone to fill the job, after it had changed leadership six times in six years. Three of the seven school board members are new, and promise a better future.

A new mayor, Elihu Harris, will be sworn in today after five days of festivities leading up to Oakland’s first mayoral inaugural ball. One of his goals, Harris says, is to boost the city’s sense of itself, then change the image that outsiders have of it.

Harris, 43, left a safe Assembly seat, ousted Lionel Wilson, who at 76 had been in office since 1977, and defeated a veteran city councilman in November.

“We’ve got problems and we’re going to deal with them. We’re not going to sweep them under the rug,” said Harris, a liberal Democrat. But he maintains “the perception (of Oakland) is worse than the reality.”

As bad as Oakland’s problems are, its boosters point out, other cities in California have higher murder rates. The rate of infant mortality is rising faster in Los Angeles County than in Alameda County.

Cities with large minority populations--Oakland’s is more than half black--often are portrayed as being “in a state of despair,” the mayor-elect said. “Part of it is racism,” he said.

Harris’ city does have its attributes. In a region where housing costs are beyond the reach of young families, houses in Oakland’s flatlands sell for $100,000. With the BART subway, Oakland has better access to mass transit than any city in the state. Its seaport is Northern California’s largest by far, pouring $4 billion a year into the economy. New buildings continue to rise up downtown.

“It acts like a city much, much larger than it is,” said Glenn Isaacson, executive vice president of Bramalea Pacific, the main developer of Oakland’s downtown. He takes what he sees as a realistic view of its future: “It’s on the verge of incrementally improving.”

Oakland is a city of moderate size, with roughly 360,000 people living within its 55 square miles. While California grew by 26% in the 1980s, Oakland’s population grew 6%, largely because of Asian immigrants. In 1970, 4% of Oakland’s populace was Asian. Now, the number approaches one in five, many of them Southeast Asian, and a Chinatown blossomed in Oakland in the 1980s.

San Francisco is renowned for its culture. But no other city the size of Oakland has professional baseball and basketball teams, a ballet, a symphony and a museum like the Oakland Museum, which is devoted to California history. It is also home to hundreds of working artists, drawn by inexpensive work space.

“Despite its reputation, it is a hospitable place to work,” said artist Anthony Holdsworth, who set up his easel at a favorite corner of his for urban landscapes, one with Victorians in the foreground and a freeway as a backdrop. People stop to watch as the accomplished artist paints. He says he often leaves his supplies out when he runs errands, and they have never been disturbed.

Author and playwright Ishmael Reed, one of Oakland’s more famous literati, is another one of those who is determined to stay. “It’s a myth that the middle class has abandoned the inner cities,” he said.

Images of crack dealers crept into his daughter Tennessee’s poetry, and he found that especially scary. Then, to rid his North Oakland block of the dealers, he organized a neighborhood watch.

But the public perception that urban blacks are to blame for the drug crisis angers him. “More of it goes on in the suburbs,” he said.

For all the city’s energy and diversity, the belief runs deep that Oakland forever will be in San Francisco’s shadow. San Francisco, business executives say, is a prestigious address and Oakland is not.

“We always felt we were in the middle of something important--that it was on the verge of something. But Oakland is beset by problems,” said Steve Lowe, a partner in a company that restored two downtown blocks of especially ornate Victorian buildings. Unable to find commercial tenants, the partnership declared bankruptcy last month. “People have no confidence in Oakland,” he said.

A large downtown retail center remains where it has been for years--in planning. As it is, there’s one department store downtown, and one aging shopping mall in East Oakland. J C Penney, which along with Mervyn’s was one of two anchors at the mall, announced plans on Friday to close its Oakland store.

Department stores are a major source of newspaper advertising revenue. In part because that ad base is missing, Oakland’s daily newspaper, the Tribune, is teetering. With circulation falling, publisher Robert C. Maynard has asked employees to take 11% pay cuts. If the Tribune folds, Oakland would be the largest city in the country without its own daily.

With commerce, safety and public institutions at stake, a sense of urgency is building among Oakland’s citizens and leaders.

“We’re going to run out of time,” said Alameda County Supervisor Don Perata, whose district takes in the poorest parts of East Oakland. Perata, a former high school teacher and one of Oakland’s most active officials, notes that there are almost no recreation programs in his district, and no money to fund them. All too often, children with nothing to do end up on corners.

“My life is consumed by trying to do small things” to help in small ways, he said. The problems, by contrast, are large:

* More than one in six Oakland residents is on welfare. The number of black babies who died in their first year climbed by 22% in a 10-year period ending in 1988. Infant mortality for non-black babies in Alameda County dropped 26%.

* Nearly a fourth of the high school students drop out. The number of children referred to foster care rose 53% in the last five years, giving Alameda County the second-worst rate in the state.

* The Oct. 17, 1989, earthquake wreaked havoc across the Bay Area. The Nimitz Freeway collapsed in Oakland, killing 47. A block of downtown business is still closed. City Hall is uninhabitable and needs $90 million in repairs.

* Voter turnout rarely tops 50%--and there is a loss of confidence in government. Charges of cronyism are common. Six Oakland housing authority police officers were indicted in August for thefts from drug dealers and civil rights violations. The district attorney prosecuted 15 school employees for theft.

* For the third year running, Police Capt. Steven Jensen said, police made more than 5,000 arrests in 1990 for drug dealing and possession on the city’s streets. The 161 murders in 1990 broke the old record of 148 set in 1989.

“People are being killed over a $20 bag of cocaine, a bag of potato chips, whether a guy could use a bathroom,” said Lt. Clyde Sims, homicide division chief. “People increasingly use deadly force to settle minor disputes.”

If only there were jobs, Perata said. “Jobs confer dignity.” People who work don’t have time to hang out on street corners, he said.

The once industrial city boomed in World War II when thousands of shipyard workers arrived to build Liberty ships. A center for jazz along 7th Street in West Oakland became nationally known. But that strip is long gone, as are the shipyards and most of the heavy industry.

If four remaining Navy bases in the area close--as Defense Secretary Dick Cheney proposed last year--Oakland could be devastated, Perata said. As many as 44,000 jobs, many of them well-paying blue-collar jobs, could be lost.

No job, blue or white collar, pays what a successful drug dealer can make.

“I come home and they laugh because I’m dirty, and I’m not making as much as they are,” Jacob Holmes, 22, said of acquaintances who deal drugs. As he spoke, he picked up garbage in an Oakland park, earning $10 an hour from the parks department. At night, he studies business at San Francisco State.

Holmes is determined to be the first one in his family to graduate from college, and resents the perception that every young African-American deals drugs. But that image gets reinforced every time Oakland is mentioned on television, and a black man is shown being led off in handcuffs.

“I flip the channel,” Holmes said.

Between 1981 and 1986, the Bay Area had job growth of 16%. Oakland’s job market declined by 1%. Still, as industrial jobs disappeared, white-collar employment increased.

Attorney Killian, a graduate of Stanford and UC Berkeley’s Boalt Hall law school, is one of those professionals. As he stood out in front of his West Oakland Victorian, he talked about the diversity of his neighborhood and city. One neighbor is a teacher. Another is a police officer. A welfare recipient lives on the block, as does a city councilwoman.

“I really like this neighborhood,” he said. But it’s also frustrating. There are no pharmacies or supermarkets in West Oakland. When his children get sick, or when his family needs groceries, he and his wife must drive across town to wealthier areas.

“There are 70,000 people living in West Oakland, not a single supermarket, not a single drugstore,” he said. The reason is evident. Not long ago, he met a local merchant who was shocked to learn that any college-educated blacks lived in West Oakland.

That view is not limited to West Oakland, long one of the poorer parts of the city. Downtown redevelopment has brought a gleaming skyline. But in the 1980s, when companies tried to save money by moving lower-paid workers from high-priced San Francisco, they bypassed Oakland and located in suburbs to the east.

One often-cited reason that corporations offer when they bypass Oakland is its bad public schools. Parents don’t send children to many public schools, if they can afford a choice. More than half of the public school students come from families that collect some form of welfare, less than 9% of the 50,000 students are white and more than 40 languages are spoken in the public schools.

More than half score below the 50th percentile on standardized tests, and more than half of the graduates cannot pass Pacific Telesis’ entry-level job test.

But many in Oakland are heartened by the appointment of Supt. Pete Mesa, a career educator. Mesa, son of migrant workers who was the first in his family to graduate from high school and college, said he is convinced that the schools and students can do better.

Over the years, however, the goal of educating children was lost in Oakland schools. In one desperate attempt to save money, the board eliminated the Department of Instruction, which is responsible for key decisions about curriculum, Mesa said.

“Public education has to work,” said Yolanda Peeks, 42, the principal at Brookfield Elementary School in East Oakland.

Peeks was principal at a school of middle-class students four years ago when she heard of the opening at Brookfield, one of the district’s most troubled schools. Some colleagues were shocked when she asked for the job. But she had her reasons. When she was a child, Brookfield was her school.

School fund-raisers generate maybe $500 or $600, which is paltry when compared to what parents raise at hillside schools. “We compensate,” she said.

She has generated support that long had been missing. The Navy sponsors a tutorial program. A real estate agent adopted a class of kindergarten children four years ago. Each year, as they advance through the grades, the agent invests another $10,000 on their behalf. When they reach college age, their tuition will be paid. Slowly, Peeks sees signs of success. Brookfield’s test scores inch upward, and a few former private school students have come back.

Schools aren’t the only institution in trouble. The Alameda County health care system is in shambles, a victim of dwindling money from the state and rising demand, health director David Kears said in a court declaration.

“We’re just waiting, trying to keep it together, trying to keep it from exploding, or imploding,” Perata said, hoping that “the next governor will deal with” the health care crisis.

Public health workers find clusters of tuberculosis around crack houses where people sit close to one another and cough as they smoke. TB in Alameda County is two and three times the average rates in the state and the nation.

“As long as the rich think that public health measures are there only to provide for the poor, we all lose,” said Dr. Robert Benjamin, director of the communicable disease division of the Alameda County Health Department.

Drugs are the most devastating epidemic of all. Treatment clinics report a fourfold increase in pleas for help from cocaine addicts since 1986.

Celestine Green, a grandmother of 17, had lived in the same home in East Oakland for 40 years. She and her late husband raised six children there. But a few years ago, a new neighbor turned out to be a drug dealer. The dealer installed a metal door for fortification. At night, the clanging of the door kept Green awake. In time, shooting began. When bullets flew, she would hit the floor, gather her bedding and crawl to the hall to sleep.

“I got very expert at rolling off my bed without hitting my head on the night stand,” Green said. Then one of her sons returned home for a visit, and bullets shattered the bathroom window that night. All she could think of was how he might have been killed. That was the final straw and she moved to a suburb. “It’s quiet and peaceful. No sirens. I love it,” she said.

But she remains committed to the city where she was born. She works for Perata in East Oakland, spending much of her time helping other grandparents, ones who must raise the babies of their addicted children.

In Green’s old neighborhood, Oakland Police Officer Ralph Walker, wearing tennis shoes, pullover shirt, jeans, and no gun, keeps watch over basketball games at the James Madison Middle School gymnasium.

Walker and two partners are stationed at a portable classroom at Madison in a police-sponsored program to give youths an alternative to hanging out on the streets. At Christmas, they have a dinner for the neighborhood. In summers, they take children camping. Other officers deride them as “kiddie cops.”

But for Walker, it is the assignment he always wanted--a chance to be a role model. He’s there five days a week and volunteers many weekends. Younger children cling to his legs and call him their friend. Older ones are impressed by his skill on the court.

“Half of them, their father is jail and their grandmother is raising them,” Walker said.

Madison has a special meaning for Oakland officers. One school day in 1974, two officers were shot and killed there. Recently, someone fired several rounds into the door of the portable. But the officers will not be moved.

As Walker watched the game, a player asked him to hold his hat. The numbers, 11-5, were emblazoned on it. Meant to identify the youth as someone involved in the drug trade, the numerals refer to the California Health and Safety Code section that defines drug dealing. Walker shrugged. So long as the youth is shooting baskets, he’s not on the street.