Culture
For more than 60 years, the Chinese Exclusion Act legally prevented Chinese people from legally immigrating to the United States. On Wednesday evening, Mayor Jean Quan hosted an event celebrating the contributions of immigrants to the United States on the anniversary of the day the exclusion act was repealed.
On Wednesday at lunchtime, Oakland’s downtown workforce poured out of their offices and into the City Center Plaza to grab a bite and take in the sounds of the holiday concert series. This week, the theme was Kwanzaa, the celebration of African heritage and culture that is held each year between December 26 and January 1.
CERI is a non-profit organization that provides mental health and social services to refugee and immigrant families, mostly Cambodians. All of the girls in its support group have parents who are Cambodian refugees, and they all live in high crime neighborhoods in the East Bay. Many of them know other girls—friends, former classmates—who have become involved in “the life,” a term for the underground world of prostitution.
Musically Minded, Oakland’s non-profit music school, is holding a series of camps and workshops over the winter break for kids of all ages. The Rockridge academy, which opened early this year, triples as an education facility, community center, and concert venue. Music classes that will be offered this December include a hip-hop workshop and vocal ensemble sessions, and for the lovable but tone-deaf tots out there, there are workshops in topics like jewelry making and science.
In one of many formerly abandoned warehouses in post-industrial West Oakland, a community of artists has taken over. American Steel Studios sits on a six-acre spread with two conjoined buildings. The group, led by artist Karen Cusolito, has transformed the space from a relic of the 19th Century to a symbol of postmodernity, in which technologists, artists and entrepreneurs share skills and ideas.
When entrepreneur Alfonso Dominguez and urban planner Sarah Filley teamed up to create “popuphood”—a cluster of locally owned pop-up stores aspiring towards permanence in downtown Oakland—they hoped, simply, that Oakland shoppers would actually show up.
The Nightcap is a series that features a favorite Oakland drinking establishment every Friday afternoon. This week it’s Baggy’s By the Lake, one of the oldest bars in Oakland–with a facade much like the one it had when Baggy’s first opened in the 1930s.
Oakland’s holiday kids’ charity needs toys — lots of toys. This year’s Toy Drive, a city program that provides low-income families gifts for their children during the holiday season, has received more than 2,000 petitions. Its organizers expect this number to quadruple over the next few days.
The Oakland School for the Arts (OSA) Chamber Choir will tour in New Orleans in April 2012.