Community
After cancelling a public speech initially planned for Wednesday, Oakland mayor Ron Dellums presented his final State of the City address as a 68-page written document and a video posted on his official website.
November, for a number of Americans, brings Thanksgiving and the kickoff of the Christmas holiday season. But for the descents of the country’s first peoples, it also brings an entire month of heritage celebrations.
The San Francisco Goaldiggers, a recreational league hockey team that plays at Oakland Ice Center, is out to win games, as well as change minds. Otvos says his hope was always to simply show that the sport of hockey is for everyone, regardless of race, gender or sexual orientation.
Four three-foot high barrels resembling oversized soup cans sit at Spice Monkey Café and Restaurant in downtown Oakland. Each is emblazoned with photos of smiling children and has “Donate Food Here!” stamped across the black and red label. One barrel is filled with nonperishable canned goodies. Another is half full. And two are completely empty.
Experience Corps, a national service program for adults 55 years and older, has enlisted Bay Area seniors—known as corps members—to tutor and mentor children in Oakland’s public schools since 2003.
Nationally, the program reaches roughly 20,000 students in 20 urban communities including New York, Boston and Philadelphia. Oakland’s corps is operated in seven elementary schools and includes roughly 50 corps members, many of whom are retired.
Fredrick Pugh has a good problem. The president of the East Bay Warriors Pop Warner football and cheerleading program is trying to figure out how to get up to 178 little football players and cheerleaders to Orlando, Florida, next month for the Pop Warner national championships. It’s a good thing, Pugh said, to have so many children to accommodate because it means the Warriors program has had a successful season.
Despite cell phones’ distracting effect on students, and the nuisance they present to teachers, efforts around the country to ban the phones in schools have been met with resistance and even lawsuits from students and parents.
With Thanksgiving around the corner, many Oaklanders will soon be flocking to the airport to spend the holiday with loved ones across the country. But with the holiday rush clogging traffic, that may be easier said than done. Join Oakland North next week for the Race to the Airport to find out which means of transport will get you there first: car, bus, BART or bike.
A Richmond man was shot to death Tuesday in front of a cross outside East Oakland’s Allen Temple Baptist Church, the same day church officials announced that Allen Temple had been awarded two-year grant to combat violence in the city.