Community
Absentee ballots were once used mostly by ex-pats, military families and diplomats strewn across the globe. They voted from far-away locales by filling out ballots at home and mailing them in, while the rest of the population spent a chunk of the day standing in a long line to cast a vote at their neighborhood poll. Now, in California, the mail-in ballot isn’t just for those abroad—it’s for everyone.
Xiao’s current research involves the designing of a new model of tree wells—the area right around the tree root—that are integrated into the city’s drain system. This will allow the tree roots to become the cheapest water purifier. “The new well will save at least 20 percent of water in terms of irrigation as well,” Xiao said.
Oakland mayoral candidate and local businessman Greg Harland hopes to address the majority of Oakland’s problems—high crime, unattended street maintenance, and increased parking fees and fines—using business sense.
The It Gets Better Project serves as a digital chorus of solidarity and support for LGBT adolescents and teens all over the world. The video project, which in less than a month has turned into an international phenomenon, was spearheaded by Seattle-based advice columnist Dan Savage in the wake of a sequence of gay teen suicides in September. Each teen death has been traced to peer bullying, and to the harsh reality of being a gay teenager in America.
It’s the First Friday in October, and Art Murmur is in full swing. Local ’zines, art depots and thrift shops are peddling their wares in between galleries packed with inebriated merrymakers. The atmosphere is hardly political, and yet mingling with the crowd is Don Macleay, one of Oakland’s ten mayoral candidates. “Let me tell you,” he says, thrusting fliers into the hands of passersby, “say ‘Hi, I’m a politician,’ and people will shy away from you. But say, ‘Hi, I’m with the Green Party,’ and people will take your card.”
In 2004, Lorrain Taylor, the mother of two twin sons murdered in 2000, founded an advocacy group she called the 24/7 Gospel—now called 1,000 Mothers to Prevent Violence—and part of its mission is the support group, the Circle of Prayer and Empowerment, or COPE. The group meets every other Saturday, near Lake Merritt, at Regeneration Church. Her main job at these support groups is to hear the survivors of these loved ones mourn, as well as to simply invite family members to come and sit with others and talk, or just listen. Reaching out to families of homicide victims is Taylor’s full-time job now. When needed, she shows up to their doorsteps with groceries, a smile, a hug, kind words.
If you had to use ranked choice voting today, would you know what to do? That’s the question Oakland North asked voters in the lobby of the Grand Lake Theater last Sunday, and even after watching a two-hour spy flick, theatergoers explained the process admirably.
West Oakland residents, business owners and city leaders openly refer to their neighborhood as the city dump. Although the mounds of trash may not be as prevalent as it once was thirty years ago, illegal dumping is still a large problem. Every year, Waste Management, the city’s waste removal company, continues to haul away tons of trash from streets and sidewalks. Although the city has a law that fines dumpers $1,000, it’s difficult to enforce.
Dubbed as America’s worst urban fire since the Great Chicago Fire, Wednesday marks the 19th anniversary of the Oakland firestorm which left 25 people dead, 150 injured and over 3,000 homes destroyed. To honor those who fought and those who were lost, the Firestorm Community Mural Project was erected in 1994. Located outside the Rockridge BART station, the mural features over 2,000 hand-painted tiles. [This video and timeline are no longer available.]