Hello everybody! We have been having a busy summer this year, and we have a few big events and milestones we'd like to keep you informed on, too! It's election season, and some of the candidates running for office have reached out to us to show their support for San Antonio Station, which shows how much a positive, community-responsive change resonates with our friends and neighbors. Let's dive right in.
Letter of Support
It’s on! Along with our petition (which is now at over 1250 signatures), we now have a letter of support for San Antonio Station, addressed to government elected officials from the City of Oakland, to the BART Board of Directors, on up to the state level. Our goal is to build a strong showing of endorsements from community businesses, organizations, and activist groups in support of the station.
So far our co-signers include long established mom-and-pop shops such as Jalisco Restaurant, to youth empowerment organization EBAYC, to Dr. Marc Weiss, the Chairman and CEO of Global Urban Development and developer Washington DC's NoMa infill station.
If your organization is interested in signing, we set up a form on our site to make it easy to do so. Click the link here:
San Antonio site visit event!
Our friends at Transbay Coalition and Seamless Bay Area are promoting transit month, and we're participating! Join us for a fun hang in San Antonio Park and a site visit to the potential station site, a short 2 block walk away. We'll have food and a fun things for the kids, so join us Sept. 22 at noon for a good-- and informative!-- time.
Meet Danny
Danny was at the upstairs bar at Quinn’s Lighthouse where he and his friend were having a quiet meal and a beer after work. The pair work at a nearby e-scooter refurbishing facility, but Danny also takes BART often to a second job as a bartender in Berkeley. He lives near the proposed San Antonio Station site on 23rd Ave., and due to a genetic eye disease, his vision has rapidly deteriorated in the last 3 years. Soft spoken and thoughtful, when we discussed the potential of San Antonio Station, he said simply “Oh, I need that.”
Danny says “I like how in Berkeley when you get out of the (BART) station, everything is right there.” He expresses a need for BART to extend their services– both in running the trains with later hours, and by building easier access for people like him. “When it’s late and I have to go to work, I have to take an Uber to Fruitvale station, because I can’t drive. It’s expensive, especially with surge pricing.”
Stories like Danny's aren’t unusual. Many have said that if getting to and from the local station was just a bit easier, they would ride BART more often. SASA hopes that someday, people like Daniel can have a better quality of life, thanks to safe, frequent, reliable access to transit.
Advocacy Works
Our goal is to get a station built, and to do that, we have to advocate for it. We came out in force to Oakland City Council’s Public Works and Transportation meeting, and transit planners are listening: see this exchange between Link 21 and the Oakland Planning Commission, it was encouraging for sure. Thanks so much to our supporters and friends who spoke out on our behalf.
SASA in Black & White
We got some ink– or pixels? Jose Fermoso at The Oaklandside wrote this insightful piece about us. What a researcher! And thanks to Roger Rudick for this short-but sweet piece on us as well. (Oddly enough, they both came out within hours of each other!) And we can’t forget Madeline Taub’s piece about Philomena, which featured SASA’s meetup. This is a “hat trick” for you hockey fans out there.
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