Community
Although tradition in some Oakland and other Bay Area African American communities calls for honoring the dead with burial funerals, cremation is gaining popularity as a simpler, less expensive alternative in financial hard times.
As a growing number of Oakland residents embrace urban farming—including the raising of chickens, goats and pigs in their back yards—the city planning commission is investigating the trend’s potentially negative impacts on the surrounding community.
The U.S. Positive Women’s Network (PWN), a project of Oakland-based Women Organized to Respond to Life-threatening Disease (WORLD), will kick off its “Count Us In!” campaign tomorrow with a march to Oakland City Hall, followed by a press conference. The campaign seeks to uphold the rights of HIV-positive women despite healthcare changes threatening to limit or eliminate many services and programs dedicated to women.
On Tuesday at the Community and Economic Development Committee meeting, Oakland City Council members and speakers from the audience criticized the city administrator’s office for not moving fast enough to fix systematic problems with the city’s much-criticized building services division.
Oakland North is continuing with our feature. Every week, we will publish a photo submitted by one of our readers. This week’s photo is by Seth Warren.
Seven people, including a 1-year-old child, were injured in a shooting on the 700 block of Willow Street in West Oakland Monday evening. The shooting, which happened at approximately 6:30 pm, injured five men, one woman and 1-year-old Hiram Lawrence, who is currently in critical condition.
Since Youth Alive launched its first violence prevention program 20 years, some of the crime and gun violence trends in Oakland have changed, but two things remain consistent: Young people make up a high percentage of Oakland’s homicide victims, and many are killed by someone using a firearm.
Oakland North is continuing with our feature. Every Tuesday, Oakland Animal Services will spotlight an “Animal of the Week” that’s up for adoption at their facility. This week it’s Sufi.
On Sunday morning at the Cathedral of Christ the Light in Oakland, the sounds of high-pitched singing, a ringing organ and a mumbling congregation filled the huge cathedral as people tried to catch on to the new version of the Catholic Mass. Sunday, also the first day of Advent, was the first time the updated Mass text was used at English-speaking Catholic churches across the world.