Cephus “Uncle Bobby” Johnson got the call in the afternoon. “You better get your butt down here,” Patrisse Cullors told him. She was standing on a corner of Oakland’s Frank Ogawa Plaza with five activists from London, each of whom had lost a family member to police violence. They were jetlagged and wearing matching T-shirts. “You’re supposed to be here,” Cullors said. A self-possessed woman with short, dreaded hair, Cullors is a co-founder of Black Lives Matter. Johnson is the…
This week on Tales of Two Cities, we talk about change: people and places going through powerful transformations.
Frank Ogawa Plaza at the lunch rush.
A class action lawsuit claims that Alameda County’s Social Services Agency has a 10,657 backlog in food stamps applications, blocking some residents’ access to food.
Activists are promoting Mobile Justice CA, an app created by the ACLU of California which enables users to record and report police actions in their community.
Merritt’s new law enforcement pre-academy program hopes to recruit students of color to the Oakland Police Force. In a department whose officers’ past use of force against minorities fueled generations of distrust, that can be a hard sell.
The agencies claim the motel is a center for human trafficking and other criminal activity.