Immigration
Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee held a news conference Thursday urging calm and unity as federal enforcement threats loomed over the Bay Area. “Oakland is and will continue to be a welcoming city for our immigrants and our refugees,” Lee said. “We will remain calm, focused, and united. We will not allow outsiders to create chaos or exploit our city.”. Her remarks came moments before President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social that he was calling off plans for a federal…
The Alameda County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously Tuesday to approve nearly $3.6 million in new funding for immigrant services, amid increased concerns about U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity in the Bay Area. The resolution, introduced by Supervisors Nikki Fortunato Bas and Elisa Márquez, allocates $2 million for the Alameda County Rapid Response line, a hotline to verify ICE sightings and connect people to immigrant legal services. It also extends grants approved earlier this year, when the board gave…
Chanting “ICE out of Oakland!” and “Hey hey, ho ho, Donald Trump has got to go!” protesters demonstrated Saturday near the East Oakland intersection where federal immigration agents reportedly had taken a person into custody three days earlier. They cheered when horns honked and engaged with a few drivers and pedestrians who stopped to talk. “We’re here at the heart of this community to try to show that we’re not intimidated, we stand with immigrant rights, and we will stand…
“The Stakes” is a UC Berkeley Journalism project on executive orders and actions affecting Californians and their communities. Since President Donald Trump took office in January, Jessie Papalia has felt the panic and confusion among her students and their families at Bridges Academy Elementary in Oakland, a dual-language school with many students who have recently arrived in the United States. “The first week was rough. I had kids asking me if they could sleep at school because they were too…
Last Tuesday, Oakland City Council renewed the Police Department’s contract with the cloud-based software company Forensic Logic for use of its data-sharing platform COPLINK. COPLINK, which has been used by OPD since 2012, allows officers to search and analyze data shared by “several thousand law enforcement agencies across the United States.” The contract costs the city a total of $704,000 over a three-year period. The resolution passed 7-0. Councilmember Nikki Fortunato-Bas (District 2) abstained from voting citing concerns over third-party…
2019 brought a new group of student reporters to Oakland North from across the country and the globe. We covered a city that is always changing, but where tensions about city finances, policing, housing and the fate of the public schools run deep. We also produced three new episodes of our Tales of Two Cities podcast, which covers audio stories from Oakland and Richmond in collaboration with our sister site, Richmond Confidential. Click here to check out all episodes of the Tales of…
Oakland is a city of immigrants. According to information provided by Census.gov, in 2018, Oakland had a population of about 429,000 people, with about a third of the population being from another country. But those census figures may not be accurate. “I think the challenge is that many of them are living in the shadows, so it is really hard to know how many [immigrants] are here,” said Lisa Hoffman, development director for the East Bay Sanctuary Covenant, an organization…
Tina Liu founded Chinese Beyond Borders in 2013 to bring diversity to Burning Man which believes is underrepresented.
There aren’t any markets or restaurants, but there is the Pu Guang temple. And pigeons. Lots of pigeons.