Politics
By Brittney Johnson and Lauren Rudser Protesters on both sides of the California same-sex marriage debate showed up at the State Supreme Court, Thursday. They voiced their opinions and listened to oral arguments presented to the Supreme Court Justices about whether Proposition 8 can change the state’s Constitution.
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Jason Witt is an Olympian of recycling—he can recycle up to 800 pounds of bottles and cans a day. “He’s the captain of his ship,” said Amir Soltani, a writer and activist who has been following Witt for the past year as part of his upcoming documentary on West Oakland recyclers. Soltani said there is a lot of physical effort and finesse involved in manning a cart the size of Witt’s, which, at the end of each day, is stacked…
Join us for the Artist Reception March 6th• 6-10p show runs March 3 – 31st Amos Gajillionaire’s work is highly decorative and extremely colorful, he combines hand painted optical art with silkscreening to create one-of-a-kind piece of artwork. Amos is dedicated to making pieces accessible to a wide audience; his vision is to completely eradicate mass-produced posters and homogenized blandness from the walls of astute, urbane inhabitants. Amos is out to prove that there is no reason discerning collectors of…
By Madeleine Bair/Special to Oakland North Lisa Calderon, the curator of Mama Buzz gallery, spent a recent Friday tacking labels to a wall in last-minute preparation of her latest show: an artistic response to the killing of Oscar Grant, a 22-year old from Hayward who was fatally shot by BART police officer Johannes Mehserle on New Years day.
The patient, a gray-haired grandmother of 75, is unabashedly hitting on her twenty-something male nurse. “What are you going to do to me today?” she says coquettishly. “I’m going to start by taking your vitals, ” he says, trying to quash the flirtation. She cocks her head and flutters her eyelashes. “I think I’m going to need a bath.”
Many of Oakland’s community health problems can be traced to a history of bad city planning and land use, an expert from the Alameda County Public Health Department (ACPHD) said last Wednesday during a panel discussion at the American Institute of Architects East Bay offices in downtown Oakland. Sandra Witt, the County’s deputy director of planning policy and health equity, referred often to a report published last year called “Life and Death from Unnatural Causes: Health and Social Inequity in…
By Casey Miner/Oakland North Dr. Barry Krisberg is an expert on released prisoners in a city that’s full of them. Of the 12,000 people on parole or probation in Alameda County, roughly half live in Oakland, though the city is home to only a third of the county’s residents. Given those numbers, Krisberg, president of the Oakland-based National Council on Crime and Delinquency, says a few more released inmates—which is what the city may get if the state is forced…
Fewer beach vacations means fewer shark attacks! Frankly, the decline in shark populations due to commercial fishing sounds like a slightly more plausible explanation. But let’s face it, good economic stories are few and far between. At this point, I’m happy to hear about any silver lining that comes out of this downturn.