Journalist Alexis Madrigal on why Oakland serves as a cautionary tale of globalization

When journalist Alexis Madrigal moved to Oakland 14 years ago, he became obsessed with how the little town on the Bay became a “sacrificial landscape” as a result of global trade.

In his latest book, The Pacific Circuit, Madrigal, who also hosts KQED’s Forum, traces how Oakland, as a port city, shepherded in a new global economic order by becoming the nexus point between Silicon Valley and Asian manufacturing. Oakland became an economically vibrant city, but at a cost to the health of its residents — specifically its Black residents living near the port. And now, post-pandemic, the city’s downtown is in shambles, and city residents are looking for a way forward.

Imperfect Paradise host Antonia Cereijido spoke with Madrigal about what lessons Oakland has to offer about the tradeoffs between economic growth and harming vulnerable communities.

Interview excerpts have been edited and condensed for clarity.

Madrigal on why the story of Oakland matters

The thing I wanted everyone to know about Oakland was it really was the origin point for really a new version of capitalism. I call it the Pacific Circuit. It's really this way that the United States in the 20th century decided to bind a whole bunch of Asian countries closer and closer to the US on a geopolitical level by bringing them into this relationship with the West Coast of the United States.

L.A. and Long Beach are now the big ports, but it was Oakland first where this happened. Companies that were serving Vietnam and our war in that country started stopping off in Japan and bringing goods back to the Port of Oakland.

Over time, that developed into the probably the most powerful economic system in the world: connecting up massive numbers of laborers across Asia with American corporate know-how and consumers.

Madrigal explains how the port has changed over time

For 130 years or so, San Francisco was the most important port on the whole West Coast of the Americas, and Oakland was just kind of a backwater where ships would stop maybe for a bit to pick up some produce from the Central Valley.

And then, containerization hits.

The way that shipping used to work was the ship itself was the container. It required having huge numbers of longshoremen. Containers, what they do in a really clean sense, is they basically reduce the labor that's needed [to load and unload ships] by like a factor of 10.

Most of the people working on the docks now are working in a huge machine [that] moves containers around. And with containers, you need all this space. They gotta be stored in a yard. And you also need transportation access — all stuff that Oakland had.

Oakland’s port grows enormously during the container era. But the very same forces that Oakland used to sap away San Francisco's business began to be sapped away from Oakland by L.A./Long Beach, [which are closer to China, serve larger cities and have better rail connections to the rest of the country].

There's a real worry that Oakland essentially goes away as a port at all. And that fear provides a lot of political power for the port because it can always say, “Well, we need to do this kind of thing in the community. We need these concessions because otherwise we can't remain competitive.” And it allows them to win a lot of fights at the local level.

Madrigal on how the port turned Oakland into a “sacrifice zone”

There are these sacrificial landscapes that occur around major economic activity, and I think it's worth staring it in the face.

If you want to have thousands of containers get to warehouses across Northern California, you need to run thousands of trucks to the port of Oakland. And where are those trucks gonna go? They're gonna go through the neighborhood that directly abuts the port of Oakland, which is West Oakland.

And so the people who've been living with the growth of the Port of Oakland have had to bear the brunt of that: higher rates of asthma, trucks idling outside their schools. There's been a lot of work that people have done to try and improve these conditions, but just on a really basic level, the scale of these ships, the scale of the economic activity at the port requires there to be environmental damage in the surrounding area.

Our wealthier areas don't have to contend with these kinds of impacts. But if you grew up in West Oakland, you had to contend with it.

Listen to the full interview with Madrigal on Imperfect Paradise here:

Listen • 34:50

Listen • 34:50

Can Oakland point the way for the future of liberal cities

Journalist Alexis Madrigal is obsessed with the port of Oakland. He even has a tattoo of a shipping container! In his new book, The Pacific Circuit, he makes the case that Oakland is where the real-world impacts of globalization are felt, and serves as a warning for other port communities. He documents the impact that the tech/logistics industry has had on his hometown, and profiles a Black environmental justice activist fighting back against economic forces that want to erase her and her community.