A GYMNASIUM IN MARIN CITY was filled with hope on Monday at a celebration of the federal holiday honoring the birthday of Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
The event was organized by the Marin City Community Services District. Volunteers from the Black community led prayers, played music and delivered updates on local building and infrastructure efforts. Younger community members joined in to read poetry, dance and twirl batons.
The Manzanita Center Gymnasium held about 450 people. The audience was a mix of races, checkered Black and white. In the crowd was California state Assemblymember Damon Connolly, D-San Rafael, Marin County Supervisors Stephanie Moulton-Peters, Eric Lucan and Brian Colbert, as well as several Sausalito Councilmembers and the mayor of Mill Valley.
This year’s theme was “Crafting a New Blueprint for Justice.”
“Marin City understands what it means to survive systems that were never designed to serve it,” said keynote speaker Dana Emerson, vice president of student learning and success at the College of Marin.
She listed sobering statistics of an unjust system — Black people make up nearly 32% of the homeless in the U.S., while only account for 12% of the population; childhood mortality rates for Black women are more than three times the rate for white women; and Black people have a shorter life expectancy, about 74 years compared to 78 for white people.
“A blueprint is a plan, and it forces us to ask real questions,” said Emerson. “Who is this plan for? Who helped design this plan? Who will benefit from this plan and who will get left out of this plan.”
Marin City was built as wartime worker housing for the Marinship shipyard. After World War II, white workers largely left the city while Black workers were blocked from buying homes elsewhere by restrictive covenants and redlining. In 1961, the 296-unit Golden Gate Village public housing project formalized there.
The unincorporated town of about 3,000 people is one of the densest African American communities in the Bay Area. There are just over 600 Black residents left in Marin City, with the U.S. Census finding 28% of the population to be white and 21% Black.
The threat of displacement through divestment and gentrification is ingrained in the city’s narrative. Community members have organized, advocated and obtained infrastructure upgrades.
Issues such as persistent flooding have plagued the community for years.
“If you live in Marin City, you know over the last two years now, we haven’t experienced the flooding that’s been keeping us in or out of Marin City,” said Terrie Green, executive director of the nonprofit advocacy group Marin City Climate Resilience and Health Justice.
Green said the reason it did not flood was that Marin County put in temporary portable pumps that control flooding at the entrance road along Donohue Street.
“Congressman Huffman has picked it up,” she said, referring to plans for a long-term fix. “We’re going to get that flooding taken care of by the Army Corps of Engineers.”
This year, the first phase of renovations and upgrades will come to the historic public housing project, which is managed by the Marin Housing Authority, but some of its residents feel left out of the plan.
“Marin Housing Authority has given the Golden Gate Resident Council at least five versions of a memorandum of understanding,” said Royce McLamore, president of the council. “All versions have excluded a very important regulation: Resident involvement in housing authority management operations.”
She called for a legal injunction to stop the project until the residents were more involved in decision making, such as selecting who gets to live there.
Justice requires courage and daily practice, in policies, in budget meetings, in housing decisions… and in who gets invited to the decision-making spaces.
Dr. Dana Emerson, vP of student learning and success at the College of Marin
Rev. Floyd Thompkins of St. Andrews Presbyterian Church followed her statements with an invitation to the graduation of 21 women who live at Golden Gate Village who have completed a course in construction trades taught by the nonprofit Tradeswomen, Inc., one of California’s first organization for women working in the trades. The goal is for the graduates to participate in the upcoming renovation of their own homes.
“They are now getting their certifications so they can move on to change their lives,” said Thompkins, “Because when things work, we celebrate them, amen?”
Other projects on the group’s wish list include a barrier wall to block noise and pollution from U.S. Highway 101, a wetland restoration, a community-wide health assessment, a new sports complex and a charter school. A new freshwater pipe system is already halfway completed.
Emerson’s keynote underlined the spirit of these initiatives.
“Justice requires courage and daily practice in policies, in budget meetings, in housing decisions, schools and classrooms,” she said. “In hiring practices, in community and in who gets invited to the decision-making spaces.”