Oakland. Home of the Black Panthers. Of Gertrude Stein. Of notorious corners, multimillion-dollar drug empires. Hyphy music. Hella. And, more recently, of the upscale Blue Bottle Coffee. Now according to an online real estate company called Movoto, Oakland is the most exciting city in America. Movoto regularly releases top 10 lists, among them “The 10 Most Redneck Cities in America” and “The 10 Nerdiest Cities in America.” When it came to excitement, Oakland took the top slot, with Boston taking second,…
Frank H. Ogawa Plaza looked a little bit like Vatican City Tuesday, as the dramatic afternoon light illuminated the faces of nuns, priests and immigrant families who gathered together in prayer and supplication. The goal: comprehensive immigration reform, an end to the raids that separate families and unity among different groups and coalitions of Americans. A guitarist changed the lyrics of popular Motown song “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” to “Ain’t No Migra Strong Enough” while the crowd sang along…
Enjoy the photo gallery for our weekly series, The Pulse of Oakland. This week’s featured ZIP code is 94606. The area includes many neighborhoods just east of Lake Merritt.
A gymnasium full of teachers, teenagers and community members are sitting around small tables and jotting down the names of their favorite teachers on blue Post-It notes at Edna Brewer Middle School. Stephanie Benjamin, a 17-year-old peer educator with Youth Uprising, met her favorite teacher during elementary school in Oakland. She reads from her Post-It: “Ms. Wallis knew what was going on with us. She wouldn’t just get on you for not doing your work, she’d try to figure out…
On a recent Tuesday afternoon in Fruitvale, a group of people chatted nervously in a stark, white room as they waited for someone to look over their electricity bill or rental agreement in exchange for something many had never had: a clean, new identification card with their name and photo. Oakland began issuing municipal IDs on Feb. 19 to all city residents. The ID, which also has an optional debit function that works like a prepaid MasterCard, will allow undocumented…
It’s Saturday afternoon at the African American Museum in Oakland, and archivist Sean Heyliger is showing a small group how best to preserve and care for old photos as part of an open house for Black History Month.
“One, two, three” says Ben Ofori to a neat pile of fifth graders sitting cross-legged in front of him at the Eastmont Library. They squirm a little, but mostly stare in wide-eyed wonder at the man in brightly colored clothes.
Around 350 people came to the New Parish in Oakland to see Chilean rapper Ana Tijoux perform on Wednesday along with Raw G, 2 Mex, Hordatoj, Magnolius and DJ Nima Fadavi. Tijoux, who is petite and in the early stages of pregnancy, swayed to her drummer’s military beat and spit out rhymes with self-assured, low-key confidence. Dressed in a flannel shirt and black tights, her style was more ‘90s b-girl than rising international hip-hop star.