Election 2016
One afternoon in the middle of summer, Beatriz Valencia’s son Jonathan came home with a question. The 7-year-old wanted to know if his mom knew that Donald Trump was running for president.
For most of the candidates in the 2016 race for Oakland’s city council seats, in which all of the incumbents successfully re-secured their positions, their major challengers spent more to win each vote, yet went home with nothing.
Mental health and relaxation professionals across Oakland say they are seeing heightened levels of election-related stress and anxiety among the city’s residents.
On election night, protesters gathered in downtown Oakland after midnight yelling angry things like “Not my president!” and “Fuck Trump!” in the quiet streets. Others took it a step further and lashed out against nearby businesses, breaking glass doors and windows and spray-painting graffiti anywhere visible, like on the windows of the Chase bank, the walls of the BART public elevator and the pillars of the Oakland federal building.
Garbage cans were set on fire and worried faces peeked out through doors after the angry crowd passed. Confused bystanders were upset at the damage to their property, and others worried about their safety, while the rest followed the trail of fires left on Broadway, trying to catch up to the mob either by running or riding their bikes. By the next morning, garbage, broken glass and graffiti covered the downtown.
This November, 63 percent of Alameda County’s registered voters cast a ballot, or 562,205 people. That’s higher than the national average—as of Tuesday, 58 percent of all eligible voters in the U.S. weighed in on this year’s presidential election, according to the United States Election Project. But those numbers are expected to rise as registrars across the nation continue to count ballots. Tim Dupuis, Alameda County’s registrar, said another 87,000 local votes still need to be counted, most of them…
This week, California voters approved Proposition 51, a $9 billion bond for public school construction and improvement across the state. By noon on Wednesday, the proposition led 54 percent to 46 percent and the Associated Press had declared the victory. “If you’ve been in some of our most antiquated schools, then you’ve seen, firsthand, how difficult it is to learn in that environment,” said Justine Fischer, president of the California State PTA, a nonpartisan organization that supported the measure. “We…
On Friday evening, around 200 protesters gathered at Broadway and 14th Street near Frank Ogawa Plaza for a passionate but peaceful demonstration. Fewer people gathered than on previous nights–which drew crowds of between 2,000 and 7,000–but protesters expressed a need to come together in solidarity to condemn Donald Trump’s election and what they called state-sanctioned hate and violence. A woman with a megaphone rallied the crowd, saying, “This is bigger than Donald Trump. This is bigger than hate! We need…
For the second night in a row, on Wednesday protesters took to Oakland’s streets to demonstrate against the election of Donald Trump as the president of the United States.
What started as a series of peaceful daytime walkouts and rallies largely led by students at East Bay high schools and in downtown Oakland turned violent soon after nightfall. Protest organizers urged women, children and the frail to leave, and soon after, Oakland police officers began forming skirmish lines and using tear gas as protesters broke windows, burned Trump in effigy and set a series of small fires on downtown streets.
Less than 24 hours after Donald Trump clinched the presidency, downtown Oakland filled with undocumented immigrants, families with young children, students and activists who gathered to reject their president-elect.