Community
Women’s Cancer Resource Center celebrated its 16th annual Swim A Mile fundraiser this weekend. Cancer survivors, their supporters, center staff and others swam laps in support of the center’s services, while spectators waved homemade signs and cheered encouragement.
Last Saturday, hundreds of people flocked to City Hall to attend Financial Planning Day, a free event offering financial planning advice and workshops to participants.
Alameda County supervisor Keith Carson honored the school during its sixth annual Ready to Learn Fun Fair on Saturday. Peralta was selected as a National Blue Ribbon School last month. Tom Torlakson, California’s superintendent of instruction, nominates schools for the award that demonstrate superior achievement, especially in disadvantaged communities. Peralta, with just over 300 students, is one of only two schools to receive this award in Alameda County.
Oakland North reporters Megan Molteni and Dylan Bergeson set out to track a raccoon in observance of International Raccoon Appreciation Day. They failed spectacularly.
Oakland’s Community and Economic Development Agency (CEDA) announced a pilot program Thursday to convert parking spots or unused bus stops into public spaces called “parklets” where people can relax and hang out.
The Nightcap is a series that features a favorite Oakland drinking establishment every Friday afternoon. This week, it’s Make Westing, the newest bar to open in Uptown.
Oakland’s New Parish club in Uptown will be hopping with music and dancing Friday night for part two of “London Calling: Stories from the Diaspora,” an event aimed at provoking community discussion about youth-led unrest both in London and Oakland.
Hundreds of Ethiopian immigrants and their families from around the Bay Area gathered at the Ethiopian Orthodox Cathedral on Mountain Boulevard Sunday for Meskel, or the finding of the True Cross, one of the most important holidays in the Ethiopian Orthodox calendar and a national holiday in Ethiopia. Wearing snow-white linen, worshippers congregated outside the church for much of the day while others prepared food which filled the air with the aromas of East African spices, turning the church parking lot into a scene out of their home country.
Over the past year, according to the Newsletter on Intellectual Freedom, 46 books have been “banned” in the United States—taken off school and main library shelves, removed as “inappropriate” from class reading lists, attacked by bloggers and family value organizations or re-edited to replace words deemed offensive. All of these books are being showcased this week for a library and bookstore event called Banned Book Week.