In her first appearance as Oakland’s mayor-elect, Libby Schaaf held a press conference wearing a striking red dress, a necklace of the Oakland tree, a bamboo earrings and riding — unforgettably — in a fire-snorting snail-shaped chariot. All of these were made in Oakland, and all of them had a story.
The assembly of those bamboo trees on the new mayor’s earlobes was an Oakland production, start to finish — and one small product of the local “maker” culture that inspires the earrings’ designer.
In one of her last organizing projects as mayor of Oakland, Jean Quan announced last week a new effort to stop the sexual exploitation of children along a stretch of East Oakland. The city began putting more police officers on the streets late last month in order to discourage pimps, as well as adult males seeking to buy sex, from preying on victims and minors at risk.
With fifteen mayoral candidates and more than a handful of measures on this year’s ballot, Oakland voters make their voices heard.
Opponents to Israel’s policies in the West Bank and Gaza organized on Sunday to prevent the ZIM Beijing container ship from docking and unloading it’s contents.
Oakland Public Library, home to much more than books and shelves, encounters an old foe – funding.
In dual news conferences in Oakland and Washington D.C., Congresswoman Barbara Lee and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced Tuesday that Oakland and Richmond have been named by the Justice Department as part of a new national program that Holder called an “all-hands approach to curbing endemic violence” in five U.S. communities with high violent crimes rates. “If we want to reduce violence in our East Bay communities, we must work together,” Lee (D-Oakland) told reporters Tuesday morning, alongside other…
Oakland libraries offer free afterschool programs aimed at kids without ready access to art classes.