Liberate 23rd Ave

building on 23rd ave.
 

About Liberate 23rd Ave

 

A long-time, low-rent community building in Huichin (Ohlone land, East Oakland) could have become a giant playground for big tech. Instead, with community support, it's staying an affordable, queer and trans Black, Indigenous, and people of color (QTBIPOC) -led social justice center.

In January 2017, our landlord told us she was selling the building. Unless we raised cash in 90 days to help buy it, the vibrant, tight-knit community members and community resources who share our historic building at 23rd and International could have been displaced.

Our mixed-use building is home to:

  • The Bikery: a community bike shop, part of Cycles of Change

  • SOL - Sustaining Ourselves Locally: a QTBIPOC collectively-run house and community garden

  • Shaolin Life: a Black-led martial arts and self-defense studio

  • Peacock Rebellion and Liberating Ourselves Locally (LOL): a QTBIPOC arts organization and maker space and is home to a diverse group of working-class BIPOC.

Together with the Oakland Community Land Trust, we had the rare opportunity to buy the building and realize a dream of long-term affordable housing and community space.

Together, the community raised cash, and we made an offer on the building in May 2017. On November 28, 2017, we bought the building!

Thanks to the Oakland Community Land Trust, POC Sustainable Housing Network, Sustainable Economies Law Center, Community Vision (fka Northern California Community Loan Fund), EastSide Arts Alliance, and everyone who donated, gave advice, cheered us on, conjured, and kept believing in this dream. You are why we're still here.