Community
On Monday evening, the Oakland Scraper Bike Team rolled through East Oakland for their 5th Annual Scraper Bike Halloween Ride. A scraper bike is a custom designed bike that includes flashy wheels, a spray-painted frame and a unique design. Some scraper bikes even have sound systems installed.
At 1:14 pm on Tuesday, the Port of Oakland issued the following statement, titled “Open Letter to the Community of Oakland,” with regard to the planned general strike tomorrow, Wednesday, November 2 organized by Occupy Oakland.
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 Cyrano.
On Thursday night, a cast of about 40 characters gathered under the lights of the Rockridge BART parking lot for the annual pre-Halloween version of FourSquare East Bay, dubbed “Costume Square.”
On Friday, parents, kids, and community leaders came out to Youth Uprising, a youth center in East Oakland, to help build a community playground. In six hours, the play area at Youth Uprising transformed from a slab of concrete to a playground that includes swings, monkey bars and artwork made by the kids who volunteered. “If you would have showed up here at 7:00 this morning, you would have seen an empty lot with a bunch of concrete,” said Manuel…
In places like Oakland, where local authorities treat syringe exchange as an accepted public health practice, groups like HEPPAC no longer face the risk of arrest. Today their challenge is going mainstream, and needle exchange programs are now reaching for the biggest government seal of approval of all—federal funding.
Heated confrontations between Oakland police and over 500 Occupy Oakland demonstrators during a march against police brutality on Saturday night threatened to turn into a repeat of Tuesday night’s violence, but the tension dissipated as the march moved away from OPD headquarters and into West Oakland. The night ended peacefully and without arrests.
From the living room of his sparsely furnished West Oakland apartment, Joseph Moreno, 30, runs a vintage costume rental business. That he can do so for just $25 per rental is perhaps the most remarkable thing about his work.
As Mayor Jean Quan fielded reporters’ questions on Friday about the clash between police and protesters earlier this week, she was suddenly drowned out by cheers coming from outside as documentarian and activist Michael Moore arrived to speak to a gathering crowd of hundreds on the steps of City Hall.