"Something needs to be done, and done fast," said Barbara Lafitte-Oluwole. She tells her story to show the results of violence in Oakland. Currently she is trying to convince voters to approve Measure Y, to put more beat officers on the street and fund violence-prevention programs including job-training and after-school programs for youth.

Working as a community activist with Oakland Community Organizations can't bring her son back. It does allow her to put her values into action and advocate for changes in the conditions that led to his death. Lafitte-Oluwole said Measure Y would deal with some of the broken parts of the system. "We need programs for parolees and probationers — the people who killed my son were not great citizens."

A previous ballot initiative, Measure R last March, would have had some of the same results as Measure Y. It lost at the polls in March.

Lafitte-Oluwole, who works for a coalition of churches and schools called Oakland Community Organizations, used her personal story this past summer at a meeting with city council members. Her organization wanted to revive Measure R. "Another man who had lost a son and I, we gave testimonies about our kids being killed. I think the testimonies touched them — the city council members."

If two-thirds of voters approve Measure Y, it will fund 63 additional police officers and crime prevention programs for youth in Oakland.

Lafitte-Oluwole's son was killed in retaliation for his plan to testify as a witness to the murder of his best friend. "We were already working with truancy, prostitutes, johns, bad liquor stores," she said. "And working with them, I realized that truant children were not that way by choice. There are reasons that they are this way, they need some sort of case management."

Lafitte-Oluwole said her son's death made her slower to judge young people doing bad things. "I used to be down on young people who pimp girls, and sell drugs, I wished that the police would come and heard them up. But when he died, I saw them all as victims."

The past few days have been crunch time for Oakland Community Organizations. It made a bargain with City council members last year: if council members would agree to structure Measure Y in a way that the group could support it, then the group would turn out 5,000 voters to the polls. Before the weekend, Lafitte-Oluwole said they had contacted 5,000 people, and they would keep going — walking precincts over the weekend, and phone-banking until election day.

Low voter turnout is routine in the low-income communities where Oakland Community Organizations members live. Lafitte-Oluwole said voter turnout could make a difference to schools, among other aspects of the community. "When you compare the schools in the flatlands to schools in the hills where they are thriving with twenty kids to a class room, you see that those people get what they want because they vote."

After approaching infrequent voters, Oakland Community Organizations calls to remind them to vote and frames Measure Y in a positive light. Callers emphasize social programs, mentioning additional police last. Volunteers say a larger police force is a hard sell in many communities they are trying to reach.

One member congregation, Downs Memorial Methodist Church, has registered more than 2,000 new voters.

While Measure Y is important, Oakland Community Organizations wants to build political power by getting infrequent voters in flatland Oakland to vote, said the coalition's executive director Ron Snyder. Infrequent voters — voters who have voted in less than half of the most recent elections — are not often targeted by political campaigns, said Snyder. The coalition would like to count on these voters in the future.

At the phone bank, Al Parham from Brookins African Methodist Episcopal Church explains why voter turn out is important, "Power has to start from below and people have to force it up, if you want to build power you have to start from the voters." When he calls he soberly tells voters "Exercise that right because it might be taken away someday." Parham won't take no for an answer, "Don't tell me it doesn't matter."

"Some people are so busy, they are thankful for you calling. It's like someone cares to enough to call me to remind me to vote," said Geneal Tucker of Imani Ministry Church.

Other volunteers at the phone bank understand why people are cynical about voting. "For the most part, a lot of minorities don't feel it's important," said Michael Garrette of Cosmopolitan Baptist Church in East Oakland.

Garrette has a balanced view about the difficulty in getting people in the black community to vote. "If they say it doesn't matter, I say that's what they want you to think. To be honest, a lot of people don't trust the system."

"If we get more voters out, elected official notice and that means more power. If we want to get what we need, we need to vote," said organizer Peter Haberfeld.

While winning on issues is important to the coalition, former pastor Mark Wilson of McGee Baptist Church in Berkeley said the model "says power is in the relationships you build, they make the difference, if you win on an issue, and there is a backlash, you still have the relationships you have formed to keep on pushing."
Updated 11/2/04 10:25