SIDEBAR: Oakland, an NGO city

As Chris Bray‘s adjoining report shows, California contains an extraordinary collection of well-funded nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that promote left-wing policies. The report also notes that the “N” for these lefty NGOs is often missing because many have been pocketing big grants from state, local, and federal taxpayers to advance their missions.

Studying just one California town—Oakland—is illustrative. A recent Census Bureau report shows the Bay Area community is home to nearly 441,000 people living on just 56 square miles. Residing among them are at least 67 definitively left-leaning policy NGOs that file their tax returns from Oakland. That’s more than one lefty nonprofit per square mile.

With the anomalous exception of Washington, DC, it is hard to imagine another American city with so many left-wing NGOs per capita. Oakland has one for every 6,600 residents. (And this counts only the definitively left-wing NGOs, not all of Oakland’s nonprofits.)

According to their most recent IRS filings, the combined net assets of the 67 lefty Oakland NGOs equaled nearly $1.9 billion.

The Census Bureau reports a poverty rate of 13.4 percent for Oakland, which works out to nearly 60,000 men, women, and children living below the poverty line in the city. Many of Oakland’s lefty NGO’s preach “economic justice.” If they all agreed to liquidate their assets and give the money to Oakland’s poorest people, it would yield $31,000 per person, or $124,000 for each impoverished household of four.

Oakland’s original and oldest left-wing NGO is probably the Sierra Club (net assets $111,253,422) and its educational affiliate, the Sierra Club Foundation (net assets $180,648,301). The Sierra Club has worked to block the production and use of all hydrocarbon fuels (oil, natural gas, and coal) and even opposes nuclear power, which produces no emissions except water vapor. That’s almost 90 percent of all the energy Americans use.

Many other Oakland-based NGOs have opposed the use of all hydrocarbon and nuclear fuels. These include (but are not limited to) the Movement Strategy Center (net assets $54,935,730), the Greenlining Institute ($43,392,738), GRID Alternatives ($34,868,354), the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation ($23,538,600), PowerSwitch Action ($23,306,950), Vote Solar ($14,139,336), the California Environmental Justice Alliance ($5,463,037) and International Rivers ($1,677,825).

Oakland’s largest left-wing NGO is the California Nurses Association (CNA), with net assets of $435,071,522. CNA’s national affiliate, National Nurses United (NNU)—net assets $49,381,098—also files tax returns from Oakland. A notation on the most recent publicly available return from CNA notes the two have a “joint employee” agreement in which “substantially all NNU employee related expenses, including payroll and employee benefit costs, are paid through the CNA payroll system and NNU reimburses CNA…”

In 2015, The Nation credited NNU for giving Bernie Sanders his “first major” endorsement for the 2016 U.S. presidential race. NNU has also promoted Medicare for All, publicly opposed the production of American hydrocarbon energy, and formally opposed free trade deals such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership. More recently, NNU has been a sponsor of the #NoKings rallies against the Trump administration.

Similarly, Oakland is also home to two affiliates of the SEIU, arguably the most stridently left wing major union in America: SEIU Local 1021 (net assets $58,833,345) and SEIU United Healthcare Workers West ($42,390,952).

Some of Oakland’s lefty NGOs pursue almost comical missions, such as giving the Bay Area back to native tribes. The Sogorea Te’ Land Trust (net assets $54,252,353) “facilitates the return of indigenous land to indigenous people.” To this end they have created the “Shuumi Land Tax,” which is “a voluntary annual contribution that non-Indigenous people living on traditional Lisjan Ohlone territory make to support the critical work of the Sogorea Te’ Land Trust.”

Translation: “If you live on our land, then give us some money so we can keep bothering you about living on our land. Your donation is the purest form of virtue signaling.”

But despite the $54.2 million net egg, the Sogorea Te’ Land Trust has a long way to go. So far, even the federal government won’t recognize the Ohlone tribes, let alone their allegation that they should be given some of America’s most expensive real estate.

Here is an alphabetical listing of the 67 left-wing NGOs operating from Oakland:

Akonadi Foundation

350 Bay Area

Community Initiatives

Alliance for Safety and Justice

Amazon Watch

Anti Police-Terror Project

Asian Immigrant Women Advocates

Asian Pacific Environmental Network

Asylum Access

Bay Area Legal Aid

Beneficial State Foundation

Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation

Business Climate Finance

California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice

California Environmental Justice Alliance

California Environmental Voters (EnviroVoters)

California League of Conservation Voters Education Fund

California Nurses Association

Center for Cultural Power

Center for Environmental Health

MediaJustice

Center for Story-Based Strategy (SmartMeme)

Center for Third World Organizing

Centro Legal de la Raza (Centro Legal)

Changelab Solutions

Children Now

Cultural Engagement Laboratory

Center for Cultural Power

Clean Energy Leadership Institute

Color of Change

Common Counsel Foundation

Critical Resistance

Dream Corps

East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy

Essie Justice Group

Filipino Advocates for Justice

Greenbelt Alliance

Greenlining Institute

GRID Alternatives

Institute for Public Accuracy

International Rivers

Lynn Handleman Charitable Foundation (Left Tilt Fund)

Maynard Institute

Movement Strategy Center

National Equity Project

National Nurses United

Oakland Institute

Planting Justice

PolicyLink

PowerSwitch Action

Prism Reports (Prism)

PSE Healthy Energy

Rose Foundation for Communities and the Environment

San Francisco Baykeeper

School of Unity and Liberation

SEIU Local 1021

SEIU United Healthcare Workers West

Sierra Club Foundation

Sierra Club

Sogorea Te’ Land Trust

Solidaire Network

Sustainable Economies Law Center

TransformCA

Vote Solar

Vote.org

Western States Legal Foundation

Women’s Foundation of California

Source: https://capitalresearch.org/article/sidebar-oakland-an-ngo-city/