Community

Spoken Word in the Bay Area

Spoken word, a form of poetry that expresses social commentary,  life experiences, and emotion has become particularly strong in the Bay Area where performances happen almost every night. Youth development programs such as Youth Speaks have flourished over the years attracting thousands of teenagers around the nation to take the stage and perform. Spencer Whitney got an inside look at how spoken word poetry groups are giving youth a voice in the Bay Area.

Tech girls fall in first round of NorCal basketball playoffs

The Oakland Tech girls basketball team couldn’t pull through on Wednesday night, losing 52-46 to visiting Heritage High School of Brentwood in the first round of the Northern California playoffs. The loss ended Tech’s season and eliminates the Lady Bulldogs from the state tournament.

Quan, city officials roll out ambitious Coliseum plan in effort to keep three pro teams in Oakland

In an effort to prevent the Oakland A’s, Oakland Raiders and Golden State Warriors from being lured away to places like San Jose, Los Angeles and San Francisco, a group of city officials, business leaders and developers rolled out an ambitious “public-private” partnership plan on Wednesday morning that would transform the Coliseum site and bring up to 32,000 jobs to the area, Mayor Jean Quan said. The City of Oakland is in a “position of strength” to keep its three…

For transgender people, a life without binary norms

As a child, West Oakland resident Jack B. Pierson, 27, hated wearing the pink and purple outfits his mother chose for him. He craved the sensible, utilitarian clothing his older brother got to wear, the kind that permitted a more rough-and-tumble lifestyle. Pierson was a girl back then.

OUSD exploring “partnership” model in attempt to keep two schools close to the district

In January, the OUSD board voted to reject charter school applications from two elementary schools, ASCEND and Learning Without Limits. Shortly after the denial by the school board, school and district officials began meeting over a compromise measure that would allow the schools to become charter schools but also have stronger ties to the district than other such schools.