Alice Street

In 2014, I was living on Alice Street in downtown Oakland, California when I learned two artists were interested in painting a mural just down the street. At most, it was intended to be a short film incorporating community voices and the painting of the mural. This project unlocked a treasure trove of living history that I never knew existed in my neighborhood. The story of Oakland lay inside the intersection where the mural would be painted, and my interviews would shape the content of the piece that I was documenting.

When the story turned and became a fight to save the mural, I recognized there was a larger story to impart. I had to broaden the focus beyond the two muralists and their artwork to share the community’s struggle to exist within a city that they had helped build but which had no motivation to retain them. A movement was forming amidst the residents I had been documenting and the central battleground between development and displacement was my neighborhood.

Ultimately the response from Oakland’s artist community became a model for engaging cultural artists in the fight against displacement. Gentrification and displacement are taking place throughout the country. The lessons from this story changed my outlook on the power of the arts in community development. I want to share what I’ve witnessed with other communities and while we are in an ongoing Alice Street social impact campaign around the country, we continue to center the voice of local artists.