Wyatt Kroopf

Oakland teachers strike for higher wages, smaller classes

Early Thursday morning, Oakland teachers went on strike, calling for a pay raise and a reduction in class sizes. As early as 6 am, teachers gathered—equipped with coffee, jackets, and beanies to withstand the chilly morning weather—and started to picket in front of their schools. The strike follows two years of failed negotiations between the Oakland Education Association, which represents teachers as well as school nurses, counselors and other staff, and the Oakland Unified School District. The teachers have been working…

As early returns trickle in, Oakland voters and candidates wait

In a packed home in the Grand Lake neighborhood, supporters of Mayor Libby Schaaf and her campaign’s volunteers nibbled on quesadillas and checked back and forth between CNN and the front door to see when the candidate would arrive. Everyone from Jon Sarriugarte, the artist who designed the now-famous snail car, to city hall officials like District 3 Councilmember Lynette Gibson McElhaney, waited under orange and blue streamers. Schaaf’s older sister, Chris Schaaf, even drove in from Castro Valley to…

Ta-Nehisi Coates speaks at ‘Black Panther’ screening in Oakland

On Tuesday, author Ta-Nehisi Coates spoke at a screening of Marvel’s Black Panther in front of 250 high school students at Oakland’s Grand Lake. The action film, which stars a nearly all-black black cast and imagines an Afrofuturist world untouched by white supremacy and colonialism, had a record-breaking opening weekend.

Birthing inequities: Combatting racial disparities in the health of newborns

This article is part of “Birthing Inequity,” an Oakland North project on maternal and infant health disparities in Oakland. See the full multimedia report here. In 2003, while she was carrying her third child, Tanisha Fuller had to convince her hospital caretakers that something was really wrong. Six months pregnant, and unsure of what was happening to her, she’d rushed to the emergency room with pain in her back, feeling like she couldn’t breathe. At the hospital, she was told that…

Healthcare workers act to prevent Hepatitis A outbreak in Oakland

Hepatitis A outbreaks are spreading throughout Los Angeles, San Diego and Santa Cruz counties—mostly among the homeless populations in those places. So healthcare workers in Oakland—a city where the homeless population has grown 26 percent over the last two years—are acting to prevent a similar outbreak.

Wine country wildfires create hazardous air conditions for Bay Area residents

Wildfires raging throughout California’s wine country have ravaged more than 170,000 acres and killed 21 people so far, with hundreds missing. The blazes are sending a cloud of ash and smoke over the bay, threatening residents with polluted air. On Tuesday, air quality officials issued health and smoke advisories for all nine Bay Area counties, the second such warning issued this fall wildfire season. Residents should avoid outdoor activities, close windows and doors, and avoid using air-conditioning units, according to…