Environment
by KRISTINE WONG Sep. 27 — Most Saturdays, Mosswood Park is filled with a lively mixture of families, dog walkers, and weekend soccer warriors. Today, a different group of voices rang out from the park’s center stage – those of environmentalists, builders, and students who rallied for new jobs to improve both the economy and the environment. The rally, sponsored by the Oakland-based Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, featured remarks by Alameda County Supervisor Keith Carson, Oakland City Council…
By SAMSON REINY The warehouse of the Alameda County Community Food Bank is a center of constant activity. Every day, delivery trucks bustle in and out of loading zones as workers drop off grocery deliveries from growers and discount sellers, volunteers sort and package food items, and employees from local nonprofit agencies go “shopping” for needed products. And as the holiday season approaches, companies and schools will begin their canned food drives, which have become classic exercises in civic engagement….
By MAGGIE FAZELI FARD Sept. 23 — In a compromise over city parking costs, the City Council finance committee agreed today to recommend moderate residential parking permit fee increases — in exchange for starting a performance audit into what was repeatedly called an “inefficient” parking division.
story and audioslides by LINNEA EDMEIER Sept. 21 — Reading, writing, arithmetic and recycling? For students of Civicorps Elementary School, in North Oakland, Saturday’s Coastal Cleanup Day wasn’t just another day at the beach. It was another day of fulfilling Civicorps’s mission of “participating in the life of the community.” At Saturday’s event, Resek, a third grader at Civicorps giggled while he worked alongside his cousins and mother, Ashley Allison. They were cleaning up around the Lake Merritt Boathouse in…
audio slides by MAGGIE FAZELI FARD and KRISTINE WONG Sept. 21 — Neighbors in Temescal spent the day cleaning up Temescal Creek, as part of the California Coastal Cleanup Day.
Bamboo, pebbles and boards made of wheat straw are all among the building materials being tried out by North Oakland homeowners trying to green up their properties. Click here for the story.
By MAGGIE FAZELI FARD SEPT. 6 — A short stretch of 58th street in North Oakland was alive with the sights, sounds and smells of Latin America this morning as local artisans lined the sun-bleached curb with their small works and residents took time out to talk, eat, laugh and dance in the street. But this was no block party. Alongside the artists sat women’s healthcare advocates, and behind the makeshift bandstand on the corner of Telegraph Avenue and 58th Street…
Plenty of people were eager to talk about Berkeley’s new sports fields complex. Mayors and city officials from five East Bay cities – Berkeley, El Cerrito, Emeryville, Richmond and Albany – lined up on Saturday to address the crowd of two hundred onlookers who came to celebrate the grand opening of the two new multi-purpose fields. The celebration had all the trappings of an opening ceremony: a podium, folding chairs for the crowd, a ribbon waiting to be cut. But…