Community
Zarina Ahmad, principal of Piedmont Avenue Elementary in Oakland, put extra effort this year into creating a bright first day of school. She and her staff pasted a class list to the outside wall, with a photo of each teacher. Big orange cones separated children by their grades. Teachers ran a short pep rally, called the “Line Up to Learn.” Uniformed Oakland firemen welcomed kids into the school.
In a parking garage in East Oakland’s Jingletown neighborhood, an enormous piece of local music history gazes out at parked cars. More than ten feet tall, and sporting sunglasses, the relic is a stage prop modeled after rapper Shock G. The head was featured in a 1993 music video by rapper Shock G’s platinum-selling group, Digital Underground, and went out with the group on tour. Now it collects dust and dirt from exhaust pipes.
Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi died August 20, at the age of 57, of an undisclosed illness. The Bay Area will host two memorial services on Sunday – in Oakland at the Jack London Aquatic Center, and in San Jose at the Masonic Temple.
Over the past two weeks an impromptu library has sprung up on the location of the former Latin American Library in the Fruitvale district. A group of nearly fifteen people, including a few Occupy Oakland protesters and several community members, have been loaning out books, constructing planters for gardening and holding community meetings.
Tuesday marked two weeks since the former campus of Lakeview Elementary School became an Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) administrative hub. The campus is now home to OUSD’s Family, Schools, and Community Partnerships (FSCP) department, which was previously scattered among four locations.
Nearly a year after the Occupy protest coalesced in downtown Oakland, a longsuffering casualty of the protest is finally being attended to as the City of Oakland begins a full-scale restoration of the lawn of Frank H. Ogawa Plaza. The project involves the removal and replacement of all grass sod in the plaza—a new lawn, essentially, from scratch.
Every week, Oakland North will publish a photo submitted by one of our readers. This week’s photo is by Richard Parks.
At a candidate’s forum held Monday night at the College Avenue Presbyterian Church, six candidates for the City Council District 1 seat debated how to rebuild a shrinking police force, explored finding a middle ground on the controversial issue of gang injunctions and talked about how the city of Oakland could stimulate sluggish economic growth.
On a Tuesday afternoon, in a Piedmont Avenue studio between a yogurt shop and a purveyor of vintage European goods, Yania Escobar has her kinder warriors—a half dozen 3 to 5 year olds — gathered around one of the many perfect circles outlined on the gym floor in colored tape. Escobar crouches over. She steps from one foot to the other, swaying side to side, while moving her arms about in front of her.