Community

Oakland North is continuing with our feature. Every week, Oakland Animal Services will spotlight an “Animal of the Week” that’s up for adoption at their facility. This week it’s Dave.

Over 200 Oakland residents of all ages crowded onto the main floor of the Scottish Rite Center Friday night to kick off the two-day “Voices for Peace” festival with singing, dancing, and messages of nonviolence. The festival, a benefit for Oakland’s Urban Peace Movement, is part of a three-month “Summer of Peace” global celebration that features youth outreach programs, weekly online “telesummits” and multicultural events.

In response to what organizers at the Oakland-based Martin Luther King Freedom Center, Institute for Community Leadership say is a broken public service system in the Bay Area, at least 55 professionals from government and municipal institutions will convene this week in Oakland and explore ways to make public institutions more efficient and accessible.

“Dedicated to the One I Love” is a classic love song, originally recorded in the 1950s by The “5” Royales and remade by numerous artists who wanted to put their own spin on it. On Sunday, Actual Café in Oakland decided to take the theme in another direction with a musical event called “Dedicated to the One I Love” during which customers could make a request or a dedication to friends and loved ones. Listeners were invited to bring in their favorite songs or choose from the musical collection of KALX’s DJ Poindexter, who hosted the event.

On Saturday afternoon nearly 200 protestors showed up for a 1.7 mile march organized by a coalition of community organizers, Occupy Oakland supporters and Lakeview Elementary parents to protest the closure of five Oakland elementary schools by the Oakland Unified School District.

At the screening in Chinatown Wednesday night of the four documentaries made by 12 young men in the Warriors for Peace pilot project, the excitement of having produced and appearing in publicly distributed content seemed to fascinate the 70 or so young people who gathered for the premiere. Many showed a familiarity with the stories told, and moments of silence punctuated a few intense scenes.

The People’s School for Public Education is nearly a week old.

Protesters, including parents of students at Lakeview Elementary and members of Occupy Oakland, continued to occupy the Oakland Unified School District elementary school across from the Grand Lake Theater on Thursday, holding classes like gardening, art and social justice for the dozen or so adolescents present.

It’s summertime in Oakland, and that means there are plenty of free or low-cost public events underway, often outdoors to take advantage of the warm weather. Here are a few regularly-scheduled ways to have fun on the cheap in Oakland throughout the summer.