Health
Every September, the Alameda County Community Food Bank joins a network of 200 food banks nationwide for Hunger Action Month to promote volunteering, social media activity and advocacy to raise awareness about food insecurity, a term food bank staffers, activists and the government organizations use to mean that people lack access to enough safe, nutritious food to be healthy.
After the Oakland Unified Schools District (OUSD) eliminated the district’s free supper program in 2018, student organizers from Oakland Kids First, a city organization that supports youth organizing and campaign work, and the OUSD Superintendent’s Office teamed up to recover and revamp the program.
At a forum on tobacco use at the Oakland Coliseum, a panel of local health experts and advocates accuses prominent e-cigarrete manufacturer of targeting teens and young adults through its product design.
Oakland’s largest employer was confronted with protesters on Labor Day, as healthcare workers rallied urging Kaiser Permanente to address staffing shortages and improve wages and patient care. Photo Courtesy of SEIU-UHW.
Welcome back to the Tales of Two Cities podcast! This episode is all about endings.
Representatives from health giant Kaiser Permanente and unions representing its workers returned to the bargaining table late last week to resume contract talks with over 80,000 union members across the nation. Some 63,800 of those members are from California, and they are asking their employer for a renewal of their national agreement, which expired last September. The Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Union (CKPU) represents 11 labor unions in various states. Five of those unions represent California workers—the International Federation of…
Gardeners in the Northern California region would be replaced by landscape contractors, possibly displacing 60 full-time workers from their jobs.
The Richmond City Council will soon consider an ordinance that would restrict the handling of coal and petcoke, a byproduct of oil refining, on port terminals in Richmond. A draft of the ordinance, introduced in December, has been approved by the city attorney, and it is expected to go to the council for a vote, although according to that office, a date has not been set yet. The ordinance, authored by Councilmember Eduardo Martinez, calls for “the prohibition on the…
When Oakland resident Eddie Velasquez was growing up, he was frequently taunted by his peers for being gay. They called him derogatory slurs and told him to be a “real man.” He was raised in a traditional Latino household, and his cultural identity made little room for homosexuality. To stop the bullying, Velasquez even dated a woman for a short period of time, but he knew he wasn’t being honest with himself, he said. Velasquez’s experience is representative of the…