Economy
Journalist David Bacon remembers the first time he saw farmworkers chased and dragged away by immigration officials in the mid-1970s. He talks about his new book, “Illegal People: How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants.” By Puck Lo/Oakland North
A neighbors’ uprising has helped kill any chance that that the old Parkway will be occupied by a woman who’d requested city permit to open a new business inside–a massage parlor. Story by Mario Furloni/Oakland North.
On a recent Saturday afternoon, AC transit’s Number 15 bus carried no more than a half dozen commuters at a time. But for some, this bus line—slated for closure as part of AC Transit’s massive service reduction proposal—is a lifeline. With public comment workshops starting this weekend, Richard Parks explores the proposed cuts in this story and video, and Oakland North invites the community to a live poll.
On a hot day in West Oakland, children and parents sat at rows of desks in a warehouse classroom. It was dark, the fan hummed and people chattered in low voices. A sense of expectation filled the room. In three hours, every child would get a voucher for a free computer
After 33 years, the owner of the Bread Garden bakery is considering closing down his shop. The bakery that in the 1970s helped ignite the Bay Area artisan bread trend is now in danger of becoming a victim of its own success.
Nearly ten percent of US workers were jobless this Labor Day. That’s a five percent increase in unemployment since December 2007, according to the Department of Labor. In the midst of global economic turmoil, the Alameda County Labor Council of the AFL-CIO held its annual barbeque at Shoreline Park in Oakland. Union officials, members and community groups gathered to celebrate and drum up support for what some say are major political battles to come: health care reform, passing a federal…
Bay Area drivers breathed a sigh of relief as the Bay Bridge reopened this morning just before 7 a.m. The region coped without this major thoroughfare for four and a half days, but commuters improvised and managed to avoid worst-case scenarios. Caltrans shut the bridge for a special construction project over Labor Day weekend. During safety inspections unrelated to the construction project, however, workers discovered a crack in an eyebar, a vertical steel structure with loops or “eyes” on either…
Romana was seven months pregnant, she told the congregation at Lakeshore Avenue Baptist Church on Sunday, when she walked for six hours from Mexico to the United States -– mostly without water, sometimes without shoes. She crossed through brush where sticks ripped at her skin, she said. Her brother and grandmother dragged her when she felt too tired to walk. When Romana and her family arrived at a tunnel where they thought they could rest, she said, US immigration workers…
On Saturday, approximately 95 passengers attended a seismic retrofit cruise to watch the construction on the Bay Bridge. Private cruise company Celebrations on the Bay hosted the cruise. Four attendees told Oakland North why they set to sea to witness the retrofit first-hand.