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Aminah Luqman

Senior Program Manager for Capacity Building

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Aminah Luqman

Senior Program Manager for Capacity Building

As Capacity Building Program Manager, Aminah Luqman (she/her/hers) leads the capacity building work in Oakland and supports local stakeholders to advance community-driven, equitable climate solutions. Prior to joining The Greenlining Institute, Aminah worked at Shared Value Media as the Community Partnership Manager for the California COVID-19 Workplace Outreach Project. As the Community Partnership Manager, she worked with community-based organizations in the Bay Area, Sacramento and Los Angeles regions to reach workers who were disproportionately affected by the COVID-19 pandemic about their rights in the workplace. She was also the Census 2020 Program Manager at United Way Bay Area, where she worked in coalition with 100+ community-based organizations to make the 2020 census more accessible and culturally relevant for “hard-to-count” communities in Alameda, Contra Costa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Solano and Marin counties. Prior to moving back to Oakland to work at United Way Bay Area, Aminah lived and worked in Colombia for two years as a Fulbright grantee. Aminah was born and raised in Oakland and in her free time she loves to play sports, dance hip-hop and salsa, read, and spend time by bodies of water.

Policy Staff Transformative Communities

In partnership, The Greenlining Institute submitted a public comment letter to the City of Oakland with our recommendations on how to make the City’s Final Environmental Justice (EJ) Element stronger and more impactful. Specifically, the comment letter focuses on strengthening the implementation of the Environmental Justice Element and offers recommendations for putting the following components into practice during implementation.

• Support an ongoing, meaningful and accessible community engagement process;
• Foster trust and accountability with Oakland’s EJ communities; 
• Strengthen interdepartmental coordination and implementation; 
• Evaluate the community engagement and EJ Element implementation process; and 
• Support and resource capacity building for communities to anchor community-driven planning, decision-making and implementation processes in their neighborhoods.

We submitted this comment letter in partnership with HOPE Collaborative, Mycelium Youth Network, the East Oakland Neighborhoods Initiative, the Oakland Climate Action Coalition, Communities for a Better Environment and Homies Empowerment.

Summary of Recommendations

I. In the Final EJ Element, Chapter 9 (Implementation Actions & Programs) should include more details to strengthen implementation, increase interdepartmental coordination, and foster trust and accountability.

• Section 9.1: Prioritizing Improvements and Programs that Meet the Needs of EJ Communities
  • Include a detailed overview of the EJ Element’s Implementation Plan in Section 9.1.
  • Develop a workflow to facilitate stronger interdepartmental coordination and accountability among lead departments for General Plan implementation.
• Table EJ-11: Implementation – Goals, Policies and Actions
  • Clarify the specific timelines, responsibility roles and priority levels for each Action in the Final EJ Element.
  • Add cost estimates to each action in the Final EJ Element.
  • Prioritize and plan for funding the implementation of EJ Element Policies and Actions.
• Policy EJ-10.2 & Action EJ-A.34: Implementation Monitoring and Evaluation Plan
  • Track the implementation status of the EJ Element and provide open access to progress updates.
  • Allocate funding for, and hire a trusted third-party evaluator to annually review the implementation of the EJ Element in partnership with EJ Communities.

II. In the Final EJ Element, Goal EJ-8 (Foster Meaningful Civic Engagement and Support Community Power and Capacity Building) should include the necessary corresponding EJ Actions and strategies to ensure that the EJ Element’s implementation process includes ongoing, accessible and meaningful community engagement.

We urge the City to embrace open outcomes and adaptability in the planning and Implementation process to ensure Oakland’s EJ communities have a meaningful opportunity to shape and inform outcomes, rather than just provide feedback on predetermined outcomes. We strongly recommend that City of Oakland staff and contractors be frank and clear about the process, timeline, constraints, and the ways in Which community engagement will be conducted and used throughout the EJ Element adoption and implementation process.

Additionally, we offer the following policy amendments, new policies and new actions for Goal EJ-8 to support an EJ Element implementation process that includes ongoing, meaningful and accessible community engagement.

Download Comment Letter Here.

Aminah Luqman

Senior Program Manager for Capacity Building

Read Bio