Politics
In vintage crocheted frills and elaborately designed hats reminiscent of early 20th century fashions, on Sunday Oakland women celebrated the centennial anniversary of the passage of women’s voting rights at Lakeside Park with a reenactment of the first suffrage parade.
Public officials and maritime industry leaders met on Friday to urge Congress to release funds collected from the Harbor Maintenance Tax in order to improve California’s port infrastructure and help stimulate economic growth.
In Oakland, the city attorney represents the city government, advising its departments on legal matters and ensuring that city officials are constitutionally sound in their practices. When former City Attorney John Russo left his position in June before completing his third term to become the city manager of Alameda, Barbara Parker became the woman for the job. Parker had worked in the city attorney’s office for 20 years, serving as chief assistant city attorney for 10. She is a graduate…
Oakland’s New Parish club in Uptown will be hopping with music and dancing Friday night for part two of “London Calling: Stories from the Diaspora,” an event aimed at provoking community discussion about youth-led unrest both in London and Oakland.
Hundreds of Ethiopian immigrants and their families from around the Bay Area gathered at the Ethiopian Orthodox Cathedral on Mountain Boulevard Sunday for Meskel, or the finding of the True Cross, one of the most important holidays in the Ethiopian Orthodox calendar and a national holiday in Ethiopia. Wearing snow-white linen, worshippers congregated outside the church for much of the day while others prepared food which filled the air with the aromas of East African spices, turning the church parking lot into a scene out of their home country.
Over the past year, according to the Newsletter on Intellectual Freedom, 46 books have been “banned” in the United States—taken off school and main library shelves, removed as “inappropriate” from class reading lists, attacked by bloggers and family value organizations or re-edited to replace words deemed offensive. All of these books are being showcased this week for a library and bookstore event called Banned Book Week.
The California Healthy Food Financing Initiative (CHFFI) landed on Governor Jerry Brown’s desk last week, after the state Senate and Assembly both voted to approve it by a wide margin. If signed by the governor, the bill would help bring more grocery stores, farmers’ markets and other sources of produce to under-served communities throughout the state, including West and East Oakland.
An emotional Oakland Unified School District board meeting that attracted hundreds of agitated parents and children went on until nearly midnight, though the board took no action in its controversial plan to close or consolidate more than a dozen of the city’s schools.
City Council’s Public Safety Committee approved a contract renewal during a meeting on Tuesday to install a new version of the sound monitors that would help police pinpoint gunshots in Oakland. With the Shotspotter technology, the Oakland Police Department will receive notifications of gunshots and explosives through devices installed on rooftops across the city.