OAKLAND — Michael Kaufman’s Halloween costume this year had a political message to it.

“I’m a no coal in Oakland zombie,” he said, his face covered in dust-colored makeup. “This is a coal-pocalypse.”

Kaufman is a member of the No Coal in Oakland group, hatched to protest developer Phil Tagami’s plans to transport coal through the city to a terminal he’s building on the former Oakland Army Base. Kaufman and about 100 other zombies, from school children to union members, gathered on the eve of Halloween for a “Zombie March on Coal” to the developer’s home.

Tagami has been praised for restoring the historic Fox Theater and Rotunda Building, but derided by environmental activists upset over his legal fight against the city to ship coal through a new terminal near the Port of Oakland. His federal lawsuit is scheduled to go to trial in early 2018.

Folk songs have been written about the issue, and on Monday marchers as young as toddlers sported flour dust on their clothes and marched from a nearby park to the front door of Tagami’s Crocker Highland area home.

“Drop the lawsuit,” Kaufman shouted. “We will continue to shame him and isolate him.”

The developer could not be reached at his Oakland office Monday. Protesters at the home said they saw Tagami duck inside, and that someone inside the house was videotaping the event.

The issue recently took on national importance. Earlier this month, Environment Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt, standing alongside coal miners in Kentucky, announced he would roll back the Obama Administration’s Clean Power Plan and declared “the war against coal is over.”

In California, coal has been exported from a privately-owned port in Richmond and the Port of Long Beach, though officials there have said the amount has dwindled over the years.

If allowed to go through, Tagami’s operation could be the biggest of its kind on the West Coast. The developer is constructing a $250 million global logistics center on the Outer Harbor near the Port of Oakland. Coal is one of dozens of commodities that would be shipped overseas from Oakland.

His plan calls for covering the train cars that carry coal from Utah to Oakland, but environmental activists worry errant dust would be a health hazard to residents, especially in West Oakland.

Jada Delaney, a senior at Oakland Technical High School, said that children in West Oakland suffer from asthma more than children in other communities, and studies by Alameda County health officials show that West Oakland children younger than 5 are hospitalized for asthma twice as much as others in the county. Delaney said the catastrophic North Bay fires also highlighted the need for clean air. The Bay Area experienced some of the region’s worst air quality ever recorded, as winds pushed the smoke to the East Bay and beyond.

“Coal is going to do the same, except on a daily basis,” the 17-year-old said. “It’s just a pure pollutant.”

Tagami sued the city in December 2016, months after the Oakland City Council voted to ban the shipment of coal through their city, an action directed at Tagami’s project. The vote was necessary because the 2013 contract did not prohibit coal, though city leaders — most notably Mayor Libby Schaaf — said Tagami gave verbal and written assurances that it was not part of the logistics center.

In April, U.S. District Court Judge Vince Chhabria ruled that the lawsuit can proceed. It is now in the discovery phase. A trial date has been set for January. Tagami’s attorney, Robert Feldman, declined to discuss the details of the case.

But the zombies gathered near Tagami’s home weren’t shy about voicing their opinions.

“He seems intent on poisoning the lungs of our little ones, all to enrich himself and his business partners,” said Brooke Anderson of Climate Workers. “Those aren’t Oakland values.”