Community
For Christmas this year, Leo Keegan set out to create a nativity spectacle at the Cathedral of Christ the Light, the seat of the Catholic Diocese of Oakland. The result was the Starlight Festival: seventeen unique displays of the crèche, or nativity scene, each an interpretation of the biblical story of Jesus’ birth
Laughter, cheers and the occasional clanging of cans of green beans echoed through an East Oakland warehouse this morning as volunteers finished packing more than 500 holiday gift baskets for public housing residents at sites across the City.
It’s that time of year again—time for school-age kids and their parents to pick which Oakland public school they’d like to attend. Starting on December 6 and running through January 14, Oakland’s “options process” is meant to provide students and parents with greater flexibility and allow them to select the schools that are best suited to their particular needs.
Twenty years ago the United Nations General Assembly accepted a new international agreement that sought the safety and security of migrants worldwide—the Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families. This weekend, thousands of people globally will celebrate International Migrants Day, December 18, and speak out for the rights of migrants.
After studying a recent New York Times interactive that offered readers a way to try different cuts and tax increases to decrease the national budget deficit, Oakland North decided to do the same—but on a smaller scale, focusing only on Oakland. Our interactive gives Oaklanders a way to try grappling with the city’s budget deficit themselves.
Javier Amaro is one of hundreds of people in Oakland who have started reusing “greywater”—or run-off water—in their homes. California’s laws recently changed to allow certain kinds of greywater reuse systems to be installed without requiring permits, so residents are increasingly conserving water from their showers, bathroom sinks, washing machines and more.
Oakland North is continuing with our new feature. Every Wednesday, we will publish a photo submitted by one of our readers. This week’s photo is by Alisha Marie Ragland.
Though psychic storefronts are ubiquitous in Oakland, little is known about this mystical community. Do their abilities hold weight in the scientific community, or is the phenomenon just smoke and mirrors?
Sitting before a semi-circle of her peers at Chabot Elementary, fifth-grader Nyah read aloud from her story, Alia and Andrew and the Story of the Odd Objects. It’s a novel, and she wrote the whole thing this fall. Her audience, consisting of nine fellow classmates and instructor Sondra Hall, were gathered on a Tuesday for the semester’s last session of “Take My Word For It!,” an afterschool workshop developed by Hall.