Politics
On Thursday evening, hundreds of Occupy Oakland supporters gathered in the amphitheater at Frank Ogawa Plaza to discuss details of a general citywide strike planned for November 2, and to support war veteran Scott Olsen, who was injured during the confrontation between police and protesters earlier this week.
More than a dozen people waited in a fourth-floor hallway of Oakland’s Wiley W. Manuel courthouse on Thursday afternoon, waiting for the arraignment of the nine protesters still being held after Tuesday’s eviction of the Occupy Oakland camp and subsequent clashes between police officers and protesters.
The Oakland Unified School District board voted 5-2 to close five elementary schools — Lakeview, Lazear, Marshall, Maxwell Park and Santa Fe — and transform or merge several other schools at its meeting at Oakland Technical High School on Wednesday night.
Thi Bui has just begun her fifth year teaching at OHIS. During her time here she has worn several hats. She taught social studies for one year, then art, reading and literacy for another; for the past two years she’s been the art and media teacher. As she begins her third year teaching a combined comic book and oral history curriculum, she finds she is doing a little bit of everything.
In coming months, the first of hundreds of prisoners will be transferred from state facilities back to the counties’ care. Derreck Johnson, the owner of Oakland’s Home of Chicken and Waffles, has a message for other employers: Don’t be afraid to hire people with records. At his family-style restaurant, it’s a tradition that works.
A jubilant crowd of Occupy Oakland supporters poured into the city’s downtown streets late last night, after their “general assembly” approved supporting a citywide strike Nov. 2. But the crowd’s efforts to cross the bay to join the Occupy S.F. group were thwarted by BART officers, who shut down the 12th Street BART entrance amid cries of “Police brutality!” and “This is what democracy looks like!”
Reporters from Oakland North and Richmond Confidential are shooting cellphone videos Wednesday evening as the Occupy Oakland protests move noisily into the streets, with BART and city police trying to corral their movements and keep them out of downtown BART stations. This raw footage was captured between 9 and 11:00 PM.
After Mayor Jean Quan’s first public comments Wednesday on the police raids of the Occupy Oakland encampments the day before, protesters returned to Frank Ogawa Plaza and gathered a nighttime standing-room only crowd into a “general assembly” meeting outside City Hall. A long crowd discussion led to a late–night vote urging a citywide general strike Nov. 2.
The aftermath of Tuesday’s Occupy Oakland eviction escalated into a street confrontation in the city’s downtown, with tear gas and multiple arrests. The story unfolds in this video by Dylan Bergeson and Byrhonda Lyons.