No Coal in the East Bay: our campaign is expanding!
The No Coal campaign is ramping up across the East Bay … here’s a taste of ongoing activity to-date this Spring and Summer:
Community Meetings and Outreach
We recently held two standing-room-only Community Meetings. The first was on April 18th at the Meeting Hall at DeFremery Park in West Oakland, where more than 50 community members and activists caught up on the history of our campaign and plugged into the ongoing work of keeping a coal terminal from being built on the Oakland waterfront.
The second meeting was held on June 25th at La Peña Cultural Center in Berkeley, where an overflow crowd of 300+ engaged and amped-up community members kicked off the acceleration of our campaign beyond Oakland’s borders. Dozens of activists ready to get to work attended breakout meetings of a half-dozen Working Groups focusing on: Advocacy, Public Health, Labor, Faith, Education/Youth, Communications, and Outreach.
Outside the La Peña event, David Solnit screen-printed hundreds of new posters that have been appearing across the East Bay, and we distributed another hundred or so yard signs. Oakland City Councilmember Carroll Fife gave a fiery introduction to the meeting (in her private capacity, on the advice of Oakland’s City Attorney), and was followed by presentations by epidemiologist Dr. Bart Ostro, Rev. Ken Chambers, Ms. Margaret Gordon, NCIO’s Ted Franklin, and more … followed by the breakout groups.
Posters silkscreen-printed by David Solnit outside the June 25, 2026 Community Meeting at La Peña. Image credit: Manali Sibthorpe.
We’ve been engaging our East Bay neighbors in many ways beyond these energizing community meetings. This includes outreach, signature-gathering on our Open Letter to the Bay Area Air District, and yard sign distribution. We’ve tabled at Farmers’ Markets at Lake Merritt and West Oakland, at Berkeley’s Fourth Street commercial district (directly adjacent to the rail route coal trains would take if the proposed terminal were built), and at West Oakland’s annual Juneteenth celebration. We’re also scheduled to speak at upcoming neighborhood meetings, town halls, and block parties.
Bay Area Air District: Open Letter and Lobbying
Our Open Letter to the Bay Area Air District has so far been signed by over 2,000 residents of the District, as well as more than 60 organizations and businesses, including labor unions, faith groups and congregations, environmental and neighborhood groups, and more. Signature gathering is ongoing: please sign on if you haven’t already!
Patrick Messac of Oakland Undivided speaking at the Bay Area Air District Board of Directors meeting, July 1, 2026; image credit: Zoom screenshot.
At the July 1, 2026 meeting of the Air District’s Board of Directors, more than a half dozen speakers addressed the board during the monthly meeting’s Open Comments period. They advocated for the District to take strong action as outlined in the Open Letter, calling on BAAD to “fully exercise its permitting, regulatory, and enforcement authority to prevent increased fine particulate matter (PM 2.5) emissions from coal transport through the planned Oakland Bulk and Oversized Terminal (OBOT).”
We will continue to lobby the Air District in the coming months, as developers move toward submission of design documents and permit applications.
AB 40: the Community First Coal Review Act
Assemblymember Mia Bonta’s AB 40, the Community First Coal Review Act, advanced through the Senate Environmental Quality Committee on July 1st, and heads next to the California State Senate’s Appropriations Committee. As we reported in mid-June, the bill, if passed by the Assembly and Senate and signed into law by the Governor, will require a full Environmental Impact Report before any local agency may grant a discretionary approval for a new or expanded coal handling, storage, or export terminal with a design capacity exceeding 5 million short tons per year. The bill also requires an updated environmental review when the type or quantity of coal changes materially or when the existing EIR is 10 or more years old.
On July 1st, two dozen members of our campaign representing a broad spectrum of opposition to the coal terminal showed up at the Senate Environmental Quality Committee to voice their support of principal speakers Ms. Margaret Gordon, co-founder of the West Oakland Environmental Indicators Project; and Colin O’Brien, deputy managing attorney of Earthjustice’s California Regional Office. The speakers’ comments can be accessed from a press release posted by Asm. Bonta’s office.
More to come…
Stay tuned for more community meetings; plug in as a volunteer to keep coal out of the East Bay; sign on to our Open Letter to the Air District; and let us know if you’d like a yard sign to display in your neighborhood. Over the summer, we’ll be expanding our campaign all along the threatened coal trains’ East Bay rail route – from Martinez to Richmond to Berkeley, Emeryville, and Oakland – seeking strong, vocal support from both residents and city governments. The What You Can Do to Fight Coal page on the NCIO website will be kept up-to-date with … well, what you can do to stop developers’ dystopian plan to ship coal from West Oakland’s waterfront.
Image credits: A few score of the 300+ participants in a Community Meeting at La Peña on June 25, 2026; image credit: Manali Sibthorpe. Posters silkscreen-printed by David Solnit outside the La Peña meeting; image credit: Manali Sibthorpe. Patrick Messac of Oakland Undivided speaking at the Bay Area Air District Board of Directors meeting, July 1, 2026; image credit: Zoom screenshot.