Oakland hall holds events despite warnings by city
An Oakland events space has hosted indoor weddings, birthday parties and wakes — sometimes exceeding 100 people — since July, according to the manager of the space, in violation of state and county pandemic restrictions about large gatherings.
Events manager David Oertel reopened the Humanist Hall events space this summer because he said he suffered a “devastating” financial loss
from canceling so many events. Oertel said people want a place to gather, and he hasn’t seen “any evidence” of the coronavirus and doesn’t think it’s anything more than “a bad flu.”
Oertel said he knows he’s violating health orders, but he rejects them and describes them as “torture.”
He has disparaged social distancing, masks and handwashing, which public health experts say are vital to stopping the spread of the virus that has killed more than 1,400 people in the Bay Area.
Oertel’s ideas are shared by people across the country who argue that the virus is not a serious health threat and reject social distancing and masks, citing objections about personal freedom and government overreach. President Trump has often embraced this stance, making the virus into a partisan issue.
Alameda County doesn’t allow any indoor gatherings of people who don’t live together. Social bubbles of 12 people are permitted for outdoor activities and gatherings. It’s up to cities to enforce the rules, and infectious disease experts and activists said Oakland needs to swiftly deal with those who violate health orders. They said the situation with the Humanist Hall is especially concerning because the space is marketed to Black and brown communities, which have been hardest hit by the pandemic.
Although Oertel said he didn’t start allowing events until July, Oakland police received three 911 complaints from May to July about large gatherings and a lack of maskwearing at the building. It’s unclear if police took any action. The department did not respond to inquiries about whether it sent officers to the hall.
City officials sent warning letters in July and August to Oertel, and a Sept. 2 letter slapped the hall with a $4,904 penalty for violating the health order. That letter threatened a $500aday fee if all events weren’t halted within 30 days. But Oakland didn’t send anyone in person to investigate, Greg Minor, an assistant to the city administrator, told The Chronicle.
Oertel said he doesn’t know if he will comply with the orders, arguing that the coronavirus isn’t a threat. Oertel said those who have died either had comorbidities or had “likely” reached their anticipated life expectancy.
No cases of the coronavirus have been tied to events at the space, according to Neetu Balram, spokeswoman for the Alameda County Public Health Department. But infectious disease experts warn that large indoor events, particularly those where people aren’t social distancing or wearing masks, pose a significant threat of spreading the virus.
“This is the highest level of risk activity,” said Kirsten BibbinsDomingo, the chair of the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at UCSF. “We have to be willing to really crack down on what I call the bad actors ... workplaces that don’t take masking, distancing and worker protection seriously, as well as other types of venues that don’t take our health order seriously.”
Events like those held at the Humanist Hall can be superspreaders where it just takes one attendee who has the virus to spread it to many others, BibbinsDomingo added.
Concerns about a potential superspreader event is what prompted San Francisco officials to quickly shut down an indoor wedding in July. The secret wedding drew nearly 100 guests at a Catholic church. Just days later, the newlyweds and at least eight guests tested positive for the virus, two guests told The Chronicle.
While San Francisco took quick action against the wedding, Oakland appears to have taken a less urgent approach to the Humanist Hall.
That’s despite Alameda County’s strict rules banning indoor gatherings, which reflect the county’s relatively high virus prevalence — 20,951 cases and 391 deaths — and cases were up 21% week over week as of Thursday, based on a sevenday moving average, according to The Chronicle virus tracker.
Oertel is president of the Fellowship of Humanity, a local group that values humans based on the principles of “truth, honesty, humility, compassion and kindness.” The Fellowship of Humanity owns the Humanist Hall, located at 390 27th St. in midtown, according to property records, and state records show the fellowship to be a nonprofit with Oertel as its chief executive officer.
It is up to each local jurisdiction to enforce the county’s public health orders and ensure that people aren’t violating them, said Sgt. Ray Kelly, a spokesman for the Alameda County Sheriff ’s Office.
“Oakland hasn’t been that responsive to a lot of the complaints that they’re getting,” Kelly said about the city administration’s response to virus violations in general. “We are willing to help cities if they need help in certain areas, but each city has enough resources to be able to handle these problems.”
Karen Boyd, a spokeswoman for the city, said the Oakland Police Department prioritizes its “limited resources to stem the uptick” in crimes and shootings.
Councilwoman Lynette McElhaney, who represents the district where Humanist Hall is located, said in a statement that she had contacted city administration and Police Chief Susan Manheimer over a week ago about the problems there.
“I’m deeply angered by this brazen disrespect for the County order and the threat it poses to Oaklanders,” she wrote. “We are reaching out to the County and local officials to determine what can be done. Humanist Hall stands out as the sole (gathering place in) defiance. This is egregious given that most of their events attract Black and Latinx residents, who are most likely to contract and die from the Coronavirus.”
Boyd said city officials plan to send another notice this week that imposes more fees and civil penalties.
It’s unclear if that approach will work. Oertel said in a text message that the Sept. 2 letter from the city is “fascism, tyranny.”
He emailed the city a response to the Sept. 2 letter, challenging the shelterinplace order.
“If you order us to physically attack our neighbor, then are we obligated to attack them or is it better to disobey the order?” Oertel wrote in a response he shared with The Chronicle. “And where does the State of California or the County of Alameda or the City of Oakland get the right to issue such grotesque orders?”
The Humanist Hall has 21 events scheduled in September and 17 in October, including birthday parties, baby showers and weddings, according to a public calendar on its website.
Oertel told The Chronicle he’s not being “cavalier” or “inconsiderate” by hosting events at the hall, which has more than 2,000 square feet of space and can hold 123 people seated and 265 people standing.
“These measures, the social isolation and the compulsive hand washing and the mask wearing, we think they are all extremely unhealthy practices,” he said. “We are trying to protect the community from that.”
Oertel said he discourages mask wearing at events because he said it doesn’t protect people from the virus, a stance at odds with public health experts. Oertel has referred to masks as “slave muzzles” on Humanist Hall’s Facebook page.
“I tell people to take the stupid thing (masks) off. It takes away your basic humanity and spirit,” he told The Chronicle.
Oertel’s other Facebook posts refer to masks as “part of an initiation ritual into a slave cult” and that they have “nothing to do with slowing the spread” of the virus. His posts have sometimes been marked by Facebook as “False Information.”
“We just don’t agree with the mainstream media spin and with (Dr. Anthony) Fauci and our great ruler Bill Gates,” he told The Chronicle. “We think they’re monsters.”
The hall — which costs $600 to $800 to rent for an entire day — is marketed as an “affordable” event space appealing to mostly Black and brown clientele, and those communities have been disproportionately affected by the virus, with higher rates of infection, severe illness and death.
On its website, the hall is advertised as a safe place where Oakland police “will not come by to harass you for being ethnic,” and its Facebook page advertises the space for “progressive & minority events!”
Critics like Cat Brooks, the cofounder of Anti Police Terror Project, said what Oertel is doing “flies in the face of all of the science and the things that we know that we need to do to stem the spread of this virus. Because it is predominately people of color that utilize the services of Humanist Hall, he’s potentially exacerbating the already disproportionate impact of coronavirus on Black and brown people.”
Chris Weber, who lives near the hall, said activity there “quieted down” shortly after stayathome orders began. Although Oertel said he didn’t start allowing events until July, Weber said he noticed gatherings of perhaps 100 people by early June.
“I was shocked they had the audacity to be allowing people to meet in a space like that,” Weber said, “and that they’d have such a disregard for the safety of the people using that space.”