Oakland launches 'Am I Next?' Art and Solidarity Campaign

Let's go ahead and peek in on an event that just got going. Here we see Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee speaking at the launch of a public art and solidarity campaign called Am I Next. This comes amid heightened fear in Oakland's immigrant community due to federal immigration enforcement. We'll listen in here to what this public art means to the mayor and to the residents of Oakland. Thank our Assistant Chief Johnson and Mia, where's Mia on my staff, Mia Sakachi, who is my Chief of Staff, Brittany, where's Brittany Garza in my office, and for everyone who stepped up right away to help institute our Protect the Town Task Force, as well as executive orders, which were initiated through our Protect the Town Task Force. Also, our interim city administrator, Betsy, is here today with us. I want to thank you for making sure this rose the way it should in Oakland, because this campaign is about courage, it's about allies coming together, and it's about refusing to stay silent in the face of fear and injustice. And I know what that means, personally. At a time when our immigrant communities are being targeted, vilified, and intentionally made to feel vulnerable. This is a move to try to cancel people out. We have a moral obligation to step up and say clearly that you are not alone. You are not invisible. Oakland sees you, and Oakland has your back. Oakland is a city built by immigrants. Our diversity isn't just something we celebrate. It's really our greatest strength. Immigrants are our neighbors, our co-workers, our entrepreneurs, our teachers, our caregivers, our family, our friends, and more. And so as mayor, let me just say, true leadership means standing shoulder to shoulder with community members when it means and matters the most. That's why the two executive orders, again, I signed the Protect Oakland from Aggressive Federal Immigration Outreach, are so important to this city, to myself, to my staff, to our community. We established the Protect the Town Task Force. This brings together city departments, legal partners, and community organizations to coordinate a unified citywide response, expand know-your-rights education, and deploy local policy defenses. Secondly, we strictly prohibit federal civil immigration enforcement from using any city property or resources or staging areas, processing bases, or operational hubs. And let me be clear, the Oakland Police Department, and again, our Assistant Chief Casey Johnson is with us today, they do not and will not assist ICE with civil immigration enforcement. Thank you very much, OPD. maintains complete operational independence from federal forces or the National Guard. So, am I next? It's groundbreaking public art and a solidarity campaign designed to make visible the real people, families, and communities impacted by the unjust federal immigration enforcement and the complete, mind you, the complete erosion of our constitutional rights. This is fundamentally anti-democratic. It's anti-democratic. So starting today, you'll see this powerful message of solidarity across Oakland in two major ways. First, we have deployed the campaign across our citywide digital network. As residents drive to work, arrive public transit, they will see powerful portraits of our neighbors on billboards and transit kiosks featuring interactive QR codes connecting people directly to legal resources. and thank you, Fred, for our committee that's working on raising money regionally for our immigrant communities to direct these resources and support services and action networks, of course, to directly our immigrant community. Secondly, public art in Oakland has always been a vehicle for truth. In partnership with renowned third-generation East Oakland muralist Kalani Katachi, Can you pronounce her name? Sakachi. Sakachi. Sakachi. Ka-ta-chi. Katachi. Katachi. Kalani Katachi. Got it. We have commissioned a massive 90 by 20 foot mural on the exterior of an East Oakland tire shop. This piece is stunning and permanently roots our local legacy, and we truly have a local legacy of civil rights and resistance into the Am I Next national movement. By lifting up the real faces and stories of our community right here on our own streets, we are declaring that Oakland stands united for dignity, justice, and yes, human rights for all. human rights for all. And we're telling our federal agencies that. We refuse to look away. The Am I Next campaign is one of the ways we are putting our protect the town vision into practice. We've moved from policy to real world implementation because that's what policy for me should be about, how we put it in action. And we will not stop until every single resident in Oakland is safe and feel safe. Fear will never define us here in Oakland. That's not who we are. Unity will. Am I so grateful to all of our partners for bringing this unity to Oakland And it's so important now that we stand with our immigrant community. So I just want to thank all you who have been doing this work each and every day not just recently but for so many years because sooner or later we will get to real comprehensive immigration reform but in the meantime we've got to protect our immigrant community and we've got to make sure that they know we see them we hear them and we are them thank you again i'd like to go ahead and ask Miguel Santana from the California Community Foundation buenos dias Mary Lee you may not represent us in Los Angeles, but we know who you are. You cast the lone vote in Congress against military force after September 11 and later oppose the Iraq War. Standing on principle, even standing alone, has always been who you are. So we shouldn't be surprised that you embrace this initiative. Thank you so much for your leadership, for bringing this campaign to Oakland, a city with a proud history of challenging injustice. But today you are not alone. In fact, none of us are. You are joining Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and Long Beach Mayor Rex Richardson in sending a powerful message across California. Our communities belong here, our rights matter, and no family should have to face this moment alone. I Am Next began in Los Angeles in the summer of 2025, when immigration raids created fear through our communities. Parents afraid to go to work, children wondering whether parents would come home, families afraid that their everyday activities could put them at risk. I personally know that fear because I was one of those kids. I grew up on the east side of Los Angeles as a son of undocumented workers and parents. I know what it means to live with that uncertainty. But the damage created goes beyond fear. It sends a message to our families and children and communities that you do not belong here. That somehow they are less American, less deserving of dignity, less part of this country. And we know that is simply not true. Immigrant communities are our neighbors, co-workers, and families. They are an essential part of California. Today, millions of Californians are feeling intimidated and uncertain about their future. I Am Next challenges that fear and sends a very different message. You do belong here, you do matter, and you have a place in this country. Because when the rights of one community are threatened, the rights of every community become vulnerable. This campaign is also an example of philanthropy stepping up in ways that go far beyond our traditional grant making. We have resources, relationships, and a platform that could bring people together, elevate community voices, and help turn shared values into action. And that's exactly what our colleagues here in the Bay Area have done. I especially want to thank my friend and colleague Fred Blackwell of the San Francisco Foundation, Julian Castro of the Latino Community Foundation, Tim Szilard and Cria Gomez of the Rosenberg Foundation, who really embraced this initiative here in the Bay Area. You didn't simply fund this campaign, you led it, bringing your relationships, your credibility and voices to make it meaningful. This is philanthropy at its best, showing up as a partner, working alongside communities, and using what we have, including our voice and our face, to make a difference. And soon, as the mayor said, we'll be making this very same message in Washington, D.C., in front of the White House. As the announcement is ongoing, a new public art campaign launched by the group I Am Next in Oakland, meant to embrace all Oaklanders and especially give strength to those in its immigrant communities. We'll take a short step away from this and come right back to it here in two minutes. Stay with us on Fox Local. All right, welcome back to Fox Local. Straight back to that event as it's unfolding inside Oakland City Hall, the launch of a new art and solidarity campaign grouping together with I Am Next? Let's listen in. I sent Miguel a text asking him what we should be prepared for. And Miguel said a few things. He said, make sure that local jurisdictions are coordinated because the administration is looking for the weakest link. He also said, make sure that you have something, a mechanism in place to support mutual aid because families will need it. The third thing that he said was, you've got to gather a coalition of the unusual suspects. It's always important to have the people who have always advocated on behalf of immigrant communities at the microphone and at the forefront of this work. But you've got to recruit the entire community. And one of the most important parts of the community is the business community. And they need to have their expertise, their influence, their voice in this mix as well. And so what we did when we heard that was we followed all of Miguel's instructions and I want to today start with just kind of explaining to you one aspect of that. We funded a report with the Bay Area Council to show what the economic impacts were of aggressive immigration enforcement and mass deportation are in the Bay Area and I want to share a few highlights of that. First thing to know, there are half a million undocumented folks in the Bay Area, okay? Second thing to know is that half of them have been living in the Bay Area for more than 10 years. A third of them have been living in the Bay Area for more than 20 years. So what that means is that for many of us, they were living in our neighborhoods and our communities before we moved there, okay? These are our colleagues, it was said before. These are our neighbors. These are our co-workers. And we've seen a lot of this about kind of the impact on Latinx communities. But let me be clear. These are impacting Caribbean communities, African communities, Eastern European communities. The list can go on. Asian communities, Southeast Asian communities specifically. Second thing, or the third thing that I want to lift up is from an economic point of view, they're contributing $68 billion to gross domestic product in the region. $68 billion. So not only are they contributing to the culture of the region, they're contributing to the economy. $8 billion in taxes. Okay? So I just wanted to paint a little bit of a picture of who we're talking about and go a little bit deeper into how embedded the immigrant community generally and the undocumented community is in the Bay area. These are undocumented Oaklanders. These are undocumented San Franciscans. Undocumented Bay Area residents. They're not just some group of folks that you see on the news that are being put on the cargo planes. These are our neighbors, our colleagues again. And so Am I Next, for me, is about that. Showing solidarity for a part of the community that showed solidarity for us and with us. But it's actually about more than that. Because Because these kinds of projects, the kinds of projects that we're talking about, the intimidation that we're seeing, the violation of people's human rights, the violation of people's civil rights, these are projects that never end where they begin. We've seen time after time after time that when one group of people's rights get violated like this, that's not where it stops. And so for me, Am I Next? is raising the question about who's next if we let undocumented people and immigrant people's rights be violated. And my picture is a picture up there because one of the questions that I believe is that I can be next. And so we are a part of this because we're standing in solidarity with the immigrant community. But we're a part of this because we are ringing the alarm that this could end up at anybody's doorstep tomorrow. And so Am I Next is about solidarity, but it is also about self-preservation, y'all. If you need to know that this could be at your doorstep in order for you to take action, so be it. This is an economic issue, a legal issue, a moral issue, and it's an issue for all of us. So thank you so much, Miguel, for your leadership. Thank you so much, Mayor, for your leadership. And we're just really looking forward to see how this grows, and we're looking forward to all the other things that we need to do in order to protect our community. Thank you. From the Rosenberg Foundation. Thank you, Mayor Lee, for your important partnership and leadership. Thank you to the California Community Foundation for bringing this powerful campaign to life as well as the San Francisco Foundation and Galleria de la Leza. We are proud to join our peers in philanthropy in bringing this important Am I Next campaign to Oakland and the broader Bay Area community. Nina Simone once said that the artist's duty is to reflect the times. We'd like to thank the artist Kalani Sakachi for using his art as a powerful vehicle for change. Our hope is that this piece will make a stop, make each one of us see in each other and our humanity, and to recognize our responsibility to one another. At Rosenberg, supporting this campaign is about standing with our immigrant friends and neighbors and using the power of art to affirm what we believe, to defend one another's rights and their dignity. Bringing Am I Next to Oakland is an opportunity to turn that solidarity into visible public commitments. Our immigrant friends and neighbors are essential members of our community. Their rights, their safety, and their dignity are inseparable from ours. We cannot be silent while immigrant communities are subject to racial profiling and absolute terror. Each of us has a role to play in speaking out and standing together. Bringing Am I Next to Oakland is that opportunity to turn that solidarity into something bigger. There is a message we want to send from Oakland today, not just to our neighbors and to the Greater Bay Area, but to our friends all over. In the Bay Area and across California, everyone belongs and we must stand together to make that promise real. Thank you. and I'd like to invite Annie Rivera from Galería de la Raza to the podium. Good morning. Buenos días. Plus one, what has already been said. I'm going to do mine in Spanish. Buenos días. Mi nombre es Annie Rivera. Soy directora ejecutiva de Galería de la Raza en San Francisco. Durante décadas, Galería ha utilizado el arte como una práctica social para el cambio, fomentar la unidad y defender y nuestras comunidades hoy nos sentimos súper orgullosos de estar junto a la comunidad de Oakland para el lanzamiento de la campaña Sigo Yo Am I Next estamos viviendo en un momento en que nuestros derechos civiles están amenazados y atacados a medida que operativos como Operation Safe California perturban a nuestras comunidades y vecindarios esta campañanos invita a hacernos una pregunta listening in to Oakland City leaders and others announcing the start of a new public art project meant to unify all of Oakland with a specific focus on the immigrant community. We'll step away from this for two minutes and then we'll likely go right across the bay here where San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie is holding an event during this Domestic Violence Awareness Month. Stay with us here in two minutes. More live coverage after a short break.