The sun shined down on West Oakland last Wednesday as I was greeted with a warm, welcoming, COVID-cautious elbow bump from Ericka Huggins.
Huggins, the former director of the Black Panther Party’s Oakland Community School, stood masked among a scattered crowd of people on the 1.3-mile stretch of greenway that bisects Mandela Parkway in West Oakland. It’s here that the Cypress Structure collapsed in the '89 quake—and also where two months prior in that same year, Black Panther Party cofounder Dr. Huey P. Newton was shot and killed just a few blocks away.