Community

Wearing bright shirts that say “Fighting for the Schools that Oakland Students Deserve” and holding supportive posters, nearly 500 parents, students, teachers and community members rallied at San Antonio Park on Tuesday before marching to the Oakland Unified School District headquarters on Broadway. Contract negotiations between the Oakland Education Association (OEA) and the school district have been going on for a year, and after meeting for three days for nearly nine hours each day, the union and district bargaining teams…

For several months, the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights has urged the Alameda County Board of Supervisors to allocate 50 percent of their public safety funds to community organizations that assist people who have recently been released from incarceration. Their campaign is called “Jobs Not Jails.” Their effort paid off Tuesday, when the board passed a motion requesting of the allocation of 50 percent of its 2015-16 public safety budget towards re-entry programs and services. These funds come from…

Bumping music, energetic people and booths selling food were all apart of the festivities at the sixth annual Oakland Running Festival on Sunday. The day included a marathon, half-marathon, a 4-person relay, a 5k and a kids’  fun run. Starting at 7 am, people from all over the Bay Area biked, walked and drove to Snow Park near Lake Merritt where the race began and ended. In total, 9,678 registered runners from 34 states and eight foreign countries ran for…

Oakland residents gathered in Park Community Garden this weekend to commemorate the victims and survivors of violence against women. The event, which included the unveiling of several portraits, was organized by the anti-violence group Her Resilience and Mamacita’s Cafe. “Her Resilience is a testament to what can be done when women come together,” said Hazel Streete, the group’s director. She said the goal of the grassroots organization is to support women in the process of healing and dealing with trauma….

It’s not over yet. The measles outbreak, which started in December, 2014, at a Disneyland theme park in Orange County, is still ongoing in the United States, and has now reached Mexico and Canada, where more than 100 people have been reported to have the disease. By March 6, 17 US states and the District of Columbia reported measles cases, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) website. The CDC is only one of the many health…

Two years ago, Jake Anderson took three friends from India to an NBA basketball game. To his surprise, his friends weren’t very impressed with what they saw. “We thought basketball games were fast and entertaining. This was the opposite,” one of them said. That was when Anderson realized he had to do something to save the sport he loved. One year later he created a community-based league called “The Run and Only.” “We take players that are terrifically talented and…

Unlike most of his classmates at Skyline High School in Oakland, Allan Qin, a shy 18-year-old, finishes class at noon and goes straight to work at the Emeryville headquarters of Peet’s Coffee & Tea. His day is just getting started. A high school senior, Qin has been working at Peet’s in technological support for more than five months. Opportunities for low-income students to find work are hard to find, and meaningful work is even more rare.

For one night, dancers at Oakland’s Skyline High School transported the auditorium’s occupants to the shores of West Africa with rhythmic drumming that reverberated through the room. Dancers stomped and moved rapidly across the stage, their energy captivating their audience. Then came the mystical sounds of the Kura, a West African 21-string instrument, which when plucked makes sounds similar to those of a harp and a guitar. This was the 20th Annual Collage des Cultures Africaines (Collage of African Cultures),…

The hip-hop community is mourning the loss of the Jacka, 37, whose given name was Dominic Newton. For many, the death of the rapper also means the loss of a mentor to at-risk youth and young artists in the Bay Area.