Community

The morning light came up around them by degrees. No one was still; there were shaking maracas, beating drums, last-minute adjustments to pieces larger than an Alexander McQueen headdress. They moved their bodies in Mayan tradition—dancing as a form of prayer. Nearly 2000 Catholic worshipers gathered at East Oakland’s St. Louis Bertrand Church Saturday morning for a six mile pilgrimage to the Cathedral of Christ the Light, near Lake Merrit.

Families flocked to the 12th annual Comcast America’s Children’s Holiday parade, lining Broadway from 20th to 11th Streets and stretching all the way to Lake Merritt, where a short while earlier, a religious processional had brought walkers from East Oakland to the the Cathedral of Christ the Light.

The Nightcap is a series that features a favorite Oakland drinking establishment every Friday afternoon. This week, it’s Heart and Dagger Saloon, a beer and a shot, rock ‘n’ roll bar in the Grand Lake area.

A man police believe was responsible for the November 10 shooting death at Frank Ogawa Plaza in downtown Oakland near what was then the Occupy Oakland encampment has been arrested and charged with murder, according to a bulletin released Friday afternoon by Oakland Police Department spokesperson Cynthia Perkins.

East Bay eating disorder specialists are concerned that the graphic representations of symptoms and behaviors in the upcoming Lifetime reality series, “Starving Secrets with Tracey Gold” could be detrimental to vulnerable audiences.

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.