Oakland's community safety task force on Wednesday hosted a Day of Action to address violence and safety issues and provide resources for East Oakland residents.
About 19 organizations and city departments gathered along International Boulevard, between 82nd and 90th avenues, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.
The groups included Youth Uprising and Youth Alive!, Roots Community Health Clinic and the Oakland Police Department. The organizations met with more than 95 residents, providing them with personal protective equipment, over 200 hot meals, rental assistance, real estate co-ownership models, gang violence intervention and other resources.
The event was hosted by City Councilmember Treva Reid, who said her District 7 is the most socio-economically disadvantaged geographic area in all of Oakland.
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The blocks along International Boulevard have been burdened with homeless encampments, vehicle clusters, gun violence, open-air drug markets and about six to nine liquor stores, Reid said in a statement.
Ceasefire Strategy, a gun-violence intervention project in Oakland, was one of the organizations that attended the event. The organization gave out face masks, hand sanitizers and COVID test kits to residents and talked to people who had experience gun violence to offer guidance on how they could get further assistance.
"For all the organizations who attended today, we want to show the community as well as the city at large that we really were a village in the community coming together to change what's happening in that part of the city," said Damita Davis-Howard, Ceasefire Strategy's director.
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Davis-Howard said one of the most common questions residents asked at the event was how to get involved and make changes in their communities.
The organizations invited folks to join Friday Night Walk, a series of advocacy activities to raise awareness of gun violence control. Similar events will be hosted again in August and September. The community safety task force team said it would track the progression of the efforts through the end of the year to see the realized impact.
