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Living Income Project
Campaign for Community Safety and Police Accountability (CCSPA)
Strategic Action for Environmental Health project (SAFE Health)
YOU (Youth of Oakland United)
Youth 2 Youth Fund for Social Justice

The Living Income Project

In the fall of 2000 PUEBLO kicked off the Living Income Project (LIP) to fight for fair and just welfare policies in Alameda County. Currently the Living Income Project is fighting to stop the County's criminal prosecution policies against current and former welfare recipients. LIP members are committed to ending this unjust practice, to ensure that welfare policies actually help poor families overcome poverty, rather than keep them trapped within it. LIP's long-term goals are to ensuring that everyone who needs public assistance has equal access to the benefits to which they are entitled. This includes confronting such barriers as language and translation, transportation, and childcare.


LIP is currently:

• Pressuring the County Social Services Administration and County Board of Supervisors to change their policies to deal with welfare overpayment cases administratively, rather than criminally.

• Outreaching to new members at welfare offices and courtrooms, to spread the word about PUEBLO's work and hear more women's stories about being caught in the criminal justice system.

• Providing those who are being prosecuted by the County with legal referrals and support.

Campaign for Community Safety and Police Accountability (CCSPA)

The Campaign for Community Safety and Police Accountability (CCSPA) organizes to demand more accountable and responsive police practices in communities of color and low-income communities. In 1993, PUEBLO initiated the Campaign for Community Safety and Police Accountability (CCSPA) to offer a progressive alternative to overly punitive and ineffective public safety policies that target and scapegoat communities of color.

CCSPA currently:

• Runs a police abuse hotline where people can report incidents of police abuse, receive assistance in filing a complaint, and get referrals for legal assistance.
• Documents incidents of police misconduct in Oakland and maintains a database that holds over 1,000 reported incidents of police misconduct.
• Monitors the Citizens' Police Review Board which hears complaints filed against Oakland police officers.

Strategic Action for Environmental Health project (SAFE Health)

PUEBLO began the Strategic Action for Environmental Health project (SAFE Health) as a model of developing community-based policies for environmental justice. While environmental toxins pose a threat to residents across the City, the problem is most acute along the I-880 corridor in East Oakland. PUEBLO believes that to address the environmental health threats faced by families in East Oakland, low income communities and communities of color must begin by tackling issues that directly confront their every day lives. SAFE Health approaches industrial polluters as an entry point to tackle larger issues in the East Oakland community such as public health, transportation access, health care, the learning environment in schools, community safety, and economic development.

SAFE Health is currently:

• Identifying environmental health issues in East Oakland by completing surveys in the neighborhood and mapping out environmental hazards using GIS mapping.
• Working to develop a partnership between East Oakland communities and the Alameda County Health Department to develop community-based environmental justice policies.
• Developing the leadership and skills of residents of East Oakland to engage in the SAFE Health project through organizing, popular education, community-based policy development, trainings, and technology skills building around computer and GIS use.

YOU (Youth of Oakland United)

Youth members of PUEBLO founded Youth of Oakland United (YOU) in 1994 to increase opportunities for young people to come up with and fight for solutions to the collective problems they face as youth. YOU fights to affect change on issues affecting the lives of Oakland youth, such as education policies, policing, and city spending on youth programs. In YOU, young people learn organizing skills, increase their political analysis and understanding, gain experience using computers and technology, and learn to work together with youth from different backgrounds to make positive change in their communities.

YOU currently:

• Holds Youth Leadership Programs every year to train youth leaders in organizing skills, to identify issues to work on, and to plan a campaign
• Produces documentaries about issues affecting youth in Oakland, such as gentrification, unfair suspension practices, and the Kid's First! Initiative to increase city funding for youth programs
• Participates in the Youth Media Council to challenge the media's negative portrayal of youth.

The Youth 2 Youth Fund for Social Justice (Y2YFSJ) is a city-funded youth grant making program run by PUEBLO that offers youth-initiated social justice projects in Oakland access to resources that wouldn't otherwise be available to them. Y2YFSJ awards grants and offers training to youth-initiated and youth-led groups and organizations working on social justice organizing projects. The Y2YFSJ grantmaking board is made up of youth ages 12-20 who make all of the decisions on funding and grant awards, granting up to $10,000 per group. The board reviews the proposals, interviews applicants, helps train grantees, and evaluates funded projects.

Y2YFSJ recruits new grantmakers every spring and begins orientation and training with the board in the summer. The board then begins outreaching to potential grantee groups in the fall and accepts and reviews applications through the winter. Y2Y granted close to $100,000 to Oakland youth-led social justice projects each year in 2000 and 2001, funding programs that demanded better food service in school cafeterias, organized neighborhood clean-ups, and petitioned for more jobs for youth in neighborhood recreation centers.