The West Oakland Mural Project, at 831 Center Street on the corner rechristened Huey P. Newton Way, is in its sixth year of running community block-party programming modeled on the Black Panther Party's free-service programs — one block from where the Panthers first set up headquarters.

At 831 Center Street in West Oakland, on the corner where 9th Street was rechristened Huey P. Newton Way, the side of a private home holds 2,000 square feet of names. More than 250 women of the Black Panther Party — the 70 percent of membership that history mostly didn't preserve — are painted there in full, in a mural envisioned by longtime Oaklander Jilchristina Vest and executed by muralist Rachel Wolfe-Goldsmith. The mural was unveiled on February 14, 2021. On the first floor of the same house is a 1,000-square-foot museum documenting the 65-plus community survival programs the Panthers ran from 1966 to 1982: the Free Breakfast for Children, the free medical and dental clinics, the free food.

A community member posting this past weekend on r/oakland described stopping by what they called a "Free the People event" at the site — in its sixth year, organized by Vest, modeled explicitly on those Panthers-era free programs. The post showed the kind of block-party programming WOMP runs annually: free food, groceries, DJs, open mic, community partners. WOMP's confirmed recurring event is called the "Love the People Block Party," held at the mural each February with LifeLong Medical's outreach team, the East Oakland Collective, and Restorative Justice for Oakland Youth among the organizers. Whether this weekend's gathering is a separate summer edition or the same event under a different name, the philosophy running through both is the same: replicate what was happening on these blocks six decades ago.

The address is not incidental. 831 Center Street sits one block from where the Black Panther Party opened its first headquarters on Peralta Street. The National Park Service added WOMP to the African American Civil Rights Network in 2024.

Vest founded the project in June 2020, amid the uprisings following George Floyd's death, funded by local grants and community donations. She receives no compensation as founder, curator, and keeper of the corner. "There was nothing special the Panthers did," she told Black Women Radicals. "Everything they did could be replicated today if we wanted to."

West Oakland's Black population has dropped by roughly half since 1980, now under a quarter of current residents. The mural is one block from where the organization that ran free clinics and free breakfast programs for those residents was born. Someone walking past tomorrow will see the names on the wall; the museum is open by appointment.