On Feb. 22, an unknown group dubbed the Black Action Alliance (BAA) declared its agenda for the first time.
It wrote on X, formerly Twitter, that BAA was founded by a “group of concerned citizens” to boost Black priorities when it comes to public safety, economic development, homelessness, public schools, and affordable housing.
“While these are policy priorities for the Black community in Oakland, these points directly impact quality of life for Black communities across the East Bay and broader Bay Area,” it stated.
The group says it came together in just six weeks, and its principal officer is Malcolm Goodwin, a venture capitalist and tech advisor who is a board member of the advocacy group 100 Black Men of America’s Bay Area chapter. Its timing couldn’t have been better: BAA got together just in time to become the co-sponsor of the first Oakland mayoral debate of 2025 between former Congressional Rep. Barbara Lee and former Oakland City Councilmember Loren Taylor, the likely top-two candidates in the special election on April 15.
The other sponsor was Empower Oakland, another community advocacy organization that launched last year. It was inspired by GrowSF and focused on recalling Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao and Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price. It is led by tech founder Gagan Biyani, and Empower Oakland has explicitly backed Taylor, who is considered a more moderate, law-and-order candidate than Lee.
Empower Oakland’s involvement in the debate has been criticized, given that the group was founded by Taylor — though the organization insists that it is independent from him. But the rapid rise of the Black Action Alliance has drawn further scrutiny from other East Bay community advocates, some of whom suggest BAA is part of a network of interconnected political funders while presenting an image of “grassroots” organizing.
The public agendas of BAA and Empower Oakland align almost perfectly: They both call for bolstering police funding, enforcing crackdowns on public homelessness, rolling back rent control and zoning laws to accelerate real estate investment, helping small businesses, and fixing public schools.
Campaign finance documents for BAA and Empower Oakland also suggest they are enmeshed in a web of overlapping donors and power players in East Bay and San Francisco politics.
The treasurer for the Black Action Alliance is Steven Lucas, a partner at San Rafael-based law firm Nielsen Merksamer. The BAA and the law firm share the same public address and phone number.
Lucas is also treasurer of Revitalize East Bay, a committee largely funded by hedge fund manager Philip Dreyfuss — a conservative Piedmont resident who has given upwards of $340,000 to the group and spent more than $1 million on the recalls of Thao and Price last year. (Taylor himself also gave $200 to Revitalize East Bay, according to the group’s financial disclosures.)
The key is that funding for BAA came almost entirely from Revitalize East Bay, who gave $22,500 on Feb. 25 — just three days after BAA posted for the first time on X.
Lucas also has ties to S.F. political funders: He is listed as the principal officer of the highly influential political action committee Neighbors for a Better San Francisco Advocacy.
Meanwhile, another client of Nielsen Merksamer, Govern for California, gave $11,000 to Empower Oakland through seven of its sixteen chapters; the controversial network was investigated by the state over the last two years, but was cleared of wrongdoing in January.
Biyani, the tech founder and director of Empower Oakland, donated at least $1,000 to the Revitalize East Bay Committee; he has also given $25,000 to his own organization.
Given the context, the emergence of BAA has sparked an outcry from Oakland advocates and grassroots organizations, who questioned how BAA was convened and whether it has partisan interests, especially as a co-sponsor of a nonpartisan debate.
“We’re standing in solidarity with principled Black-led organizations and concerned residents who take issue with the misleading way this forum has been organized and promoted,” the organization Care 4 Community Action said in a statement after the mayoral debate. “The event is co-sponsored by the ‘Black Action Alliance,’ which was only recently established by Philip Dreyfuss, a Piedmont hedge fund manager.”
Black Women Organized for Political Action (BWOPA) also released a statement, decrying the “lack of transparency and misrepresentation” in the sponsoring of the debate.
“We recently learned that the lead sponsoring organization — based outside of Oakland — failed to fully disclose its affiliations or its involvement in controversial efforts that have directly impacted Black leadership throughout the Bay Area,” it stated.
Greg Hodge, CEO of the advocacy group The Brotherhood of Elders Network, also released a statement on X Thursday, expressing strong disapproval of Empower Oakland head Biyani’s version of events. Biyani claimed this week that BAA had “recruited” partner organizations like The Brotherhood and BWOPA.
“We are deeply disappointed and we firmly believe that Empower Oakland owes our organization and community at large an apology for spreading misleading information,” Hodge wrote. “The Brotherhood of Elders Network was not recruited by the Black Action Alliance, a group that most of us had not heard of until a few days before the KTVU mayoral debate. In truth, we have significant concerns about the purpose, origins and authenticity of this group.”
(Lucas, the Nielsen Merksamer partner, and Goodwin, the BAA principal, did not respond to Gazetteer SF’s requests for comment.)
