Politics

Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, the policy that forbids gays from serving openly in the military, is now being enforced again, after a federal appellate court granted the Justice Department’s request to keep the policy in place while a case challenging its constitutionality is being decided.

It’s the First Friday in October, and Art Murmur is in full swing. Local ’zines, art depots and thrift shops are peddling their wares in between galleries packed with inebriated merrymakers. The atmosphere is hardly political, and yet mingling with the crowd is Don Macleay, one of Oakland’s ten mayoral candidates. “Let me tell you,” he says, thrusting fliers into the hands of passersby, “say ‘Hi, I’m a politician,’ and people will shy away from you. But say, ‘Hi, I’m with the Green Party,’ and people will take your card.”

If you had to use ranked choice voting today, would you know what to do? That’s the question Oakland North asked voters in the lobby of the Grand Lake Theater last Sunday, and even after watching a two-hour spy flick, theatergoers explained the process admirably.

Superintendent Tony Smith got personal while talking reform and student performance expectations Tuesday at the Oakland Unified School District’s Region 1 Teacher’s Dialogue. The meeting, which was the third in a series of teacher outreach meetings being held this month, brought roughly 25 teachers to North Oakland’s Sankofa Academy. The dialogues are supposed to give teachers a chance to understand the administration’s vision and talk directly to the superintendent.

An eclectic group gathered last Thursday at the Oakland Cultural Center to view the Oakland premier screening of the work in progress, THE TRUST: Reclaiming Community In the Heart of the Prison Crisis. Produced and directed by yoga teacher Tamara Perkins, the film puts faces on the incarcerated and brings light to the issues they confront.

The military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, passed by Congress in 1993, prohibits those who are openly gay from serving in the armed forces. Last week, a federal judge ordered an injunction putting a temporary halt to the policy and on Monday issued a tentative ruling to uphold that injunction. With the judge’s ruling, local Navy vet Michael Hughes said, Americans are “one step closer to liberty and justice for all.”

“I’ve never been arrested. I never wanted to be arrested,” said Laura Wells, Green Party candidate for governor, who was taken into custody on Tuesday outside the debate between California’s leading candidates for governor, Meg Whitman and Jerry Brown.

A short hearing on the status of North Oakland’s gang injunction this Thursday served as a backdrop for protest and legal maneuvering by groups opposed to the city’s newest tactic for curbing violence.

As the Giants hosted the San Diego Padres on October 3, a long white banner peeked above the right field wall of AT&T Park. The sign, attached to the rigging of a yacht anchored in what Giants fans call “McCovey Cove,” did not support either team. Instead, the banner spelled out a political message in black block letters: Free Johannes Mehserle. Strung along the base of the boat was another banner listing a website, Justice4Johannes.com.