Culture
The African American Family Support Group hosted the ‘Help for Family Caregivers Coping with Mental Illness or Substance Abuse’ workshop last Saturday
Doris Lilly took her time deciding between three different sets of croquet equipment. “This is vintage and it just cost me $15. I knew I would be able to find it here,” she said confidently, picking one set. Lilly grew up playing croquet with her family. Later she would play with friends, but it has been ten years since she played her beloved game. Now, she is enthusiastic to play again. “I can’t wait to play croquet with my son,”…
2017 brought a new group of student reporters to Oakland North from across the country and the globe. They covered a city in flux: a housing and homelessness crisis that shows no sign of abating, a school district facing millions in budget cuts, a citywide crackdown on warehouse spaces in the wake of the Ghost Ship fire, and local reactions to the new immigration and sanctuary city polices coming out of Washington under the new Donald Trump administration. But they also dug…
According to the State of California Department of Justice, human trafficking is the world’s fastest-growing criminal enterprise, bringing in $32 billion dollars a year globally. Vanessa Russell founded Love Never Fails in 2011 to fight human trafficking in the Bay Area. She was inspired to start the organization after she found out that a student of hers was being sex-trafficked throughout California.
Jason Muñiz stands in the door frame that separates his classroom from the bright hallway full of lockers, with his hands holding onto the frame behind him. He looks back and forth from the high school students who are greeting each other before taking a seat inside the classroom, and welcomes the ones who are just walking in. When the school bell rings, Muñiz walks to the front of the classroom, closing the door behind him. “Thank you for being…
Cynthia Obleton was born and raised in Abandze, a coastal town in Ghana’s Central Region. She started braiding at age fifteen and opened her first salon at seventeen. In 2010, Obleton moved from Ghana to Oakland, where she started a braiding business at her house. In 2014, she opened Sankofa Braiding and Natural HairCare in South Berkeley. She says she wants her salon to be a place where black women feel comfortable. “I realized that I’m living in a place where…
Skateboarder at DeFremery Park mentors young Oakland and Berkeley skateboarders
Artist Favianna Rodriguez is busy designing political posters and preparing to produce a large glass mural. A printmaker by trade, the mural will be the first time Rodriguez works wth glass. Ten minutes away, in a gallery in downtown Oakland, Natalia Mount spends her days guiding visitors through the current exhibition, which includes sculptures that move and emit loud sounds. The executive director of Pro Arts Gallery, Mount is eagerly planning new shows that toy with accepted notions of what is…
On a Friday night in East Oakland, Shoshana Zambryski-Stachel, founder and owner of ArtVale gallery, prepares for a monthly community potluck by arranging cheese wedges, dips, cut vegetables, and wine across two large tables at the back of the gallery. The air outside is crisp and cool, but the gallery is warm and well-lit, and will soon be filled with children and adults eating, drinking, and drawing together. A Bay Area native, Zambryski-Stachel opened ArtVale two years ago on Champion…