Every week, between 10 and 30 men meet for hours at the Rainbow Recreation Center in East Oakland. These are the Men of Influence -- mostly ex-convicts who have transformed themselves into respected neighborhood elders, intervening when violence is imminent on the Oakland streets. Their goal is simple: to reduce the shootings and homicides that have so plagued Oakland over the years.
These men are using the organizational skills most of them developed working on criminal enterprises to make a life-and-death difference at street level. With about 18 core members, each man is responsible for a five-to-10-block area. When they get wind of a dispute, they go to work on a mediation plan before violence breaks out.
Read more about the Men of Influence here and here, and meet some of them below ...
Photos by Deborah Svoboda
Glen Upshaw started the Men of Influence in January after his 15-year-old neighbor was killed by a stray bullet. Born and raised in Oakland, Upshaw served time in prison as a young man for robbing a grocery store, and as an adult for domestic violence. Now he works as a violence interrupter for California Youth Outreach in Oakland. He has three adult sons, all incarcerated, two on murder convictions. Those stemmed from a gunbattle in which a young innocent bystander was killed. That boy was the son of an old friend, and his death affected Glen deeply. He says his greatest hope is that the boy's family will forgive his sons.