Candidate for
City Attorney; City of Oakland

About Oakland City Attorney Barbara Parker

Oakland City Attorney Barbara Parker is a longtime Oakland resident, award-winning trail-blazer, and lifelong legal advocate for civil rights, women's empowerment, and children. She has worked her entire career to maintain the highest level of integrity and professionalism.

Parker grew up in Seattle, Washington, where her parents moved to escape legalized oppression in the rural, segregated South. Her mother came from a sharecropping family and her father from a poor farming family.

Parker was raised in a strong union household. Her father was a merchant marine and proud member of the Marine Cooks and Stewards union. Her mother was a hotel maid in the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Workers union. Her parents were able to provide their children with health, dental, and vision insurance because of the work of their unions.

Parker was inspired by the civil rights leaders of the time, and at the age of 12, she led a sit-in at a segregated lunch counter in Seattle. As she grew older, she decided she wanted to become a lawyer, in order to fight for civil rights and equal opportunities for all.

In the 1970's, she was one of the very few African American women admitted to Harvard Law School--but some male classmates informed her that she was "taking a space that should have been held by a man." She had to fight hard every day against this entrenched attitude that a woman--and an African American woman at that--did not belong in law school.

Barbara graduated from Harvard Law in 1975, at a time when around 10% of students in the entering class were women or African American. Since then, Barbara has been committed to using the law as a tool to champion underrepresented communities, create opportunities, and fight for equal rights for all, regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, national origin, or economic status.

In an award-winning legal career spanning almost four decades, Parker has worked as an attorney in the private sector for two major corporations and two prominent law firms. She has served as the manager of a large public agency and as an attorney at all levels of government--federal, state, and local--including more than five years as an Assistant United States Attorney for the Northern District of California, where she represented the U.S. in federal court litigation involving complex policy matters.

In 2005, the State Bar Board of Governors selected Parker for an appointment to the prestigious State Judicial Council. The constitutional agency chaired by the Chief Justice of the California Supreme Court is responsible for ensuring the consistent, independent, impartial, and accessible administration of justice in the California State Court system.

Prior to becoming City Attorney, Parker served for 20 years in the Oakland City Attorney's Office, including 10 years as Chief Assistant City Attorney, the second-in-command in the office. As Chief Assistant, she oversaw the Advisory Division, which provides all legal advice to the Mayor's office, City Council, and all other City departments and commissions.

During her time as Chief Assistant, Parker also oversaw the creation of groundbreaking, nationally-recognized legislative initiatives, such as Oakland's Anti-Predatory Lending Ordinance, the Bubble Ordinance--assuring women safe access to reproductive health services, and the decriminalization of medical marijuana.

Over the last 12 years, in her role as Chief Assistant City Attorney and now City Attorney, she has gained invaluable experience managing a large, complex City department which is also a law office, for a vast, multi-faceted municipal corporation with a budget of almost one billion dollars.

Parker was appointed City Attorney in 2011 after the retirement of then-City Attorney John Russo.

Since her appointment, Parker has reorganized the office in order to focus more resources on public safety. She has successfully shut down two hotels that were running child prostitution rings. She's fought back against gang violence, and is working to get illegal guns off our streets.

She has worked to keep Oakland in the strongest possible legal standing, helping to save millions of dollars for essential services like public safety, senior programs, and libraries. She has been a strong advocate for transparency and good government at City Hall.

As a result of her efforts to protect taxpayer dollars and do more with less, outside counsel costs have dropped 40% since she has taken office, and settlement costs have dropped more than 50%.

City Attorney Parker has taken on important social justice issues, like protecting a woman's right to choose, fighting back against the Feds' crackdown on medical marijuana, ensuring the enforcement of the Americans with Disabilities Act, and fighting big Wall Street banks and predatory lenders.

Parker has received numerous awards and recognitions, including the "2011 Bay Area Achiever" Award from the National Forum for Black Public Administrators, and recognition in 2012 as "One of the Most Powerful and Influential Women of California" by the California Diversity Council.

Parker is a member of the Charles Houston and Alameda County Bar Associations, and the Black Women Lawyers Association. She has been a member in good standing of the California State Bar for her entire career.

Parker also serves as President of the Black Adoption Placement and Research Center, an organization that finds permanent, loving, and supportive homes for waiting children, many of whom are in the foster care system. She is Co-President of Sankofa Holistic Healing Institute (supporting holistic health and healing for cancer and depression) and volunteers as a mentor for the East Bay College Fund, which provides mentors for college students who are the first in their generation to attend college.

Daughter Savannah, whom Barbara raised as a single parent, graduated from Spelman College this year. Barbara is also a proud grandparent of one year old Samuel Koda Clement. She resides in Oakland's Haddon Hill neighborhood, near Lake Merritt.