Since 2014, the East Oakland Black Cultural Zone Collaborative Partners has worked with a coalition of residents, government agencies, churches, and grassroots organizing and community groups to help keep Black folks in East Oakland. Through our strategy of building power, securing land, and directing more dollars to community driven projects we can secure a foothold in East Oakland that finally allows our neighborhoods to thrive.
BCZ Collaborative Partner Highlight: BWOPA - Black Women Organized for Political Action, was founded in 1968 and has grown into a statewide non–profit organization. Their main goal is to educate, train and involve as many Black women in and around the political process as possible. They strongly believe that everything affecting and impacting quality of life, is political. By providing training and mentoring through their TILE(Training Institute for Leadership Enrichment) and PAC (Political Action Committee), they hope to empower Black women to address and solve issues ailing the Black community, through participation in the political process. Their long-term goals include but are not limited to creating strategies to insure the sustained representation of Black people on the political spectrum and increase Black participation in local politics and beyond. As they develop connections with other organizations, preserve and chronicle the political experiences of Black women in California, they continue to break new ground and increase Black political literacy.