Labor
Mayor Jean Quan plans to travel this year with the Oakland Port Authority on its annual trade mission to Asia, looking to expand the volume and variety of the city’s business with China. “China understands that they should invest back in the United States,” Quan said.
While BART’s schedule has been the source of private grumbling since it opened in 1972, the Internet has provided a new tool, however blunt, to quantify the demand for expanded service. Since last year, advocates of a round-the-clock BART schedule have congregated on a Facebook page called “Make BART Trains run 24 Hours,” which is “liked” by more than 22,000 people.
Oakland Police Chief Anthony Batts has announced that he intends to stay on as Oakland’s top cop, and joined Mayor Jean Quan for an impromptu press conference this afternoon in West Oakland to affirm his commitment to Oakland and emphasize teamwork among city officials.
The immense hotel that has been a symbol of luxury in the Bay Area for nearly a century filed for bankruptcy on Tuesday. Despite speculation that its days were numbered, the hotel’s owners said that staff, management and operations were not going to change.
A crowd of Bay Area Rapid Transit employees and community members filled up the Kaiser Center Auditorium in downtown Oakland on Wednesday. They were there to celebrate and remember the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Typically when people think of scones, they think of the muffin’s inferior pastry sibling—a dry, crumbly thing that tastes like flour. But Remedy Coffee is serving up scones that are not typical. With flavors like huckleberry cream, cheddar scallion and blood orange along with a texture that’s buttery and flaky, they melt in your mouth more easily than a cupcake.
About 30 teachers gathered Thursday to demonstrate in front of three banks at the Rockridge shopping center at 51st Street and Broadway. McClymonds Teacher Craig Gordon explained the group was there to “demand that schools and public services be bailed out” the same way that banks were bailed out during the mortgage crisis.
Four charter schools presented petitions to renew their charters at the Oakland Unified School District board meeting last night. Students, teachers and parents from the Oakland schools crowded the boardroom and took turns asking the board to let their schools continue to operate for five more years.
As prolonged applause broke out from the crowd, Victoria Kolakowski, the first openly transgender trial judge in the United States, took her oath of office on Tuesday evening at the Asian Cultural Center in downtown Oakland. The special session of the California Superior Court drew more than a hundred people, including some LGBT community leaders and council members from several cities within Alameda County.