Politics

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.

  A state-wide sigh of relief was heard at 7 o’clock this morning because California finally has an emergency budget plan in place. (Now we just wait until the pain of the impending budget cuts meets the burden of tax increases for the real misery to set in). In light of the tragic events surrounding the death of Oscar Grant, two assembly members introduced a bill that would form a civilian oversight group over the BART police, intending to increase…

  Another day of showers around the Bay Area messed with people’s plans, including delays at SFO and Oakland Airport, power outages and flooding – but it still won’t be enough to end the water shortage. In a really heinous move, someone burgled a local food giveaway over the weekend. Hopefully we’ll start to see some positive changes with the $787 Billion stimulus plan signed into law today by President Obama, but the California Senate is still one vote shy…

By ANNA BLOOM At Thursday’s opening ceremony for “Oakland Celebrates the Dream of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.,” leaders reached for the wisdom of King to weave together the tragic and auspicious first month of 2009. The ceremony was held the afternoon following the second of two citywide protests over the fatal shooting of 22-year-old Oscar Grant III on Jan. 1 at the Fruitvale BART station. Newspapers led the day’s paper’s with the story that the former BART police officer,…