Community
The sounds of nail biting, pencil tapping and head scratching filled the hot Oakland Tech high school classroom on Monday after school as students filled in the bubbles on their test answer sheets. While many of their classmates were headed home or were hanging out on the school’s front lawn, 18 Alameda County high school students were preparing for an exam that will help determine their futures—the SAT, also referred to as the college entrance exam.
Home movies are easy to define. According to Pamela Jean Vadakan, a former film collection assistant at the Pacific Film Archive, home movies are “personal moving images shot by an amateur (non-professional) of familiar subjects and familiar places.”
An OUSD facilities board meeting turned into an emotional protest Tuesday afternoon when parents, faculty and staff from Kaiser Elementary School showed up unannounced, rallying to keep their school open.
Giant dove puppets made from bed sheets were lofted high by youth brandishing them as signs of peace at this Sunday’s Roots & Shoots International Day of Peace event at the Oakland Zoo. The doves, held together by wooden poles and duct tape, their large eyes outlined with acrylic paint, looked down over the meadow as hundreds of attendees turned the ninth annual celebration into a day-long festival engaging youth in educational arts and crafts activities, like making piñatas for the primates at the zoo.
One after another, Oakland residents approached the City Council podium Tuesday night to share their horror stories in dealing with the Building Services Department, part of the city’s Community and Economic Development Agency.
Parents, childcare providers and state officials on Tuesday urged Governor Jerry Brown to sign a controversial bill, AB 101, that would allow family childcare providers to collectively bargain with government agencies.
Oakland North is continuing with our feature. Every Wednesday, we will publish a photo submitted by one of our readers. This week’s photo is by Kim Kerry-Tyerman.
Hollywood came to Oakland Monday night for the world premiere of Moneyball, the movie adaptation of Michael Lewis’ 2003 bestseller chronicling the Oakland A’s 2002 season and the revolutionary method of selecting players ushered into the game by general manager Billy Beane, played by Brad Pitt in the movie.
A man dressed in jeans and a t-shirt kneels on the ground, his hands held at an awkward angle by the chains that bind him to a drag king who is standing behind him wearing a sharp suit. Like a marionette, he is forced to bring his trembling hands to his face and smoke. The scene unfolds next to a 4-foot cardboard replica of a cigarette, as Maroon 5’s “Harder to Breathe” blares from the speakers.