Health

For some Oakland seniors, a meal is hard to come by

Some people have potted plants on their front porches. Others have rocking chairs or benches. Walk onto the porch of Jessie Mae Brown’s East Oakland home on any given day and you’re likely to be stepping around 100-pound bags of onions and potatoes or bins of apples and carrots—all fresh for the taking.

Oakland vegetarians and vegans celebrate Thanksgiving meat-free

Some meat-free Oaklanders will be eating veggie “meat” on Thursday, others will focus on traditionally vegetarian side dishes, and others are just looking forward to sitting down with friends and family, no matter what’s on the table. “A rainbow on the table” is how Breakroom customer Tiana Trutma describes her Thanksgiving meal.

Ceremony at Oakland center honors victims of anti-transgender violence

Discrimination and violence showed no boundaries at Friday’s Transgender Day of Remembrance at the Oakland Peace Center. Mexico, Brazil and India. Maryland, Florida and Louisiana. Turkey and Canada. All these are states and countries—their names read aloud in melancholy succession at the event–in which transgendered women were murdered this year.

With absentee ballots and special volunteers, helping the infirm vote

For Oakland’s sick and elderly population, voting today presented a litany of obstacles, from immobility to sickness to mental illnesses. But the Registrar of Voters is tackling what seems to be the biggest hurdle: patients who physically cannot walk to a polling station. “Most people here are in wheelchairs,” said Stephen Kutchko, the director of social services at Kindred Nursing and Rehabilitation Center, on 29th Street near the hospital center in North Oakland. “Most people can’t walk or get out…