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She shut down two Oakland hotels that were centers for prostitution and the sexual exploitation of minors in 2015 she filed lawsuits against two other motels that have been epicenters of crime and violence in East Oakland. She has been a strong advocate for transparency and good government at City Hall she sponsored and co-authored a comprehensive government ethics law adopted by the City Council in 2015. Parker has worked to keep Oakland in the strongest possible legal standing, thereby saving millions of dollars for essential services like public safety, libraries and infrastructure. In 2000, Parker was promoted to serve as Chief Assistant City Attorney (second-in-command), a post she held for more than ten years.Īs Oakland’s City Attorney, Parker has worked to improve public safety, to secure equal opportunity and justice for all Oaklanders, and to ensure that City Hall operates in a transparent, honest and fair manner.
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Parker joined the City Attorney’s Office in mid-1991 as a line attorney, was promoted to head the Labor and Employment Unit in the Advisory Division, where she handled complex advisory and litigation matters for the City of Oakland. The constitutional agency chaired by the Chief Justice of the California Supreme Court oversees the California courts and is responsible for ensuring the consistent, independent, impartial and accessible administration of justice. In 2005, the State Bar Board of Governors selected Parker for a 3-year appointment to the prestigious State Judicial Council. Parker also has worked in the private sector for several major law firms and corporations, including the law firm of Pillsbury Madison & Sutro (now Pillsbury Winthrop), Brobeck Phleger & Harrison, Kaiser Aluminum & Chemical Corporation and Kaiser Hospitals. As an Assistant US Attorney, she represented the United States in federal court litigation involving complex matters, including but not limited to medical malpractice, civil rights, employment and breach of contract. In an award‐winning legal career spanning more than four decades, Parker has developed extensive expertise as an attorney at all levels of government – federal, state and local – including more than 10 years as Chief Assistant of the Oakland City Attorney’s Office and more than five years as an Assistant United States Attorney for the Northern District of California.
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She graduated from Harvard in 1975 determined to use the law as a tool to help underrepresented communities.
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Parker earned an undergraduate degree in Economics from the University of Washington, and she was one of the very few African Americans and women accepted at Harvard Law School in the early 1970s. Parker and her siblings are the first generation in her family’s history to go to college. Family experiences during segregation, her parents’ fierce commitment to education and their struggles as union workers ignited Parker’s determination to strive for equal opportunity and equal rights for all. Parker is a native of Seattle, Washington, where her parents migrated during the Great Migration to escape the brutalities of legalized oppression and sharecropping in the rural, segregated South. Parker is the first and only African American woman elected to citywide office in Oakland.
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Voters elected Parker to a second four-year term in November 2016.
Barbara oakland daughter of simon oakland full#
In July 2011, the Oakland City Council appointed Parker to complete the term of the prior City Attorney, and in November 2012, Oakland voters overwhelmingly elected her to serve her first full four-year term. She is the recipient of the 2015 Public Lawyer of the Year award from the State Bar of California. Parker is the elected City Attorney of Oakland, CA.
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