Politics

In Oakland, mixed feelings about urban livestock

As a growing number of Oakland residents embrace urban farming—including the raising of chickens, goats and pigs in their back yards—the city planning commission is investigating the trend’s potentially negative impacts on the surrounding community.

Despite promises, the $484 million Oakland Airport Connector yields few local jobs

One year after construction began, has the controversial, $484 million Oakland Airport Connector project created the jobs it promised? “It requires a lot of physical strength and it wears on the body,” said Tiffany West, 31, of her work as a carpenter’s apprentice. Every Monday through Friday, from 7 am to 3:30 pm, West is somewhere along Hegenberger Road between the Oakland Coliseum and the airport shoveling debris, fine-grading sites for paving or building the footings for the connector’s elevated guideway.

Oakland women’s group to kick off new campaign on World AIDS Day

The U.S. Positive Women’s Network (PWN), a project of Oakland-based Women Organized to Respond to Life-threatening Disease (WORLD), will kick off its “Count Us In!” campaign tomorrow with a march to Oakland City Hall, followed by a press conference. The campaign seeks to uphold the rights of HIV-positive women despite healthcare changes threatening to limit or eliminate many services and programs dedicated to women.

Fir or Plastic? Oakland residents weigh their Christmas tree options

Megan Reed and Christine Landry are in the market for two Christmas trees, as they push a stroller with their infant son through aisles of options at the Simonis Christmas Tree Lot on Telegraph Avenue and 51st Street on a quiet Monday morning. Reed and Landry usually buy one Christmas tree for their home, but they’re going for two this year because grandma is visiting and needs one for her place. “We got kind of the ‘junior Charlie Brown’ for…