Politics
2016 brought another group of student reporters to Oakland North, and they covered the daily news of a changing city: The rising cost of rent and concerns about gentrification, the election of a new president and the protests that followed, the legalization of recreational pot use in California and the passing of a controversial city soda tax, the sex scandal that continued to plague the Oakland Police Department, street level efforts to help stem the rising tide of opioid addictions, and the Ghost Ship…
A truck driver in Millbrae chased a Hispanic woman down the street screaming slurs. A university researcher living in Albany, California, was confronted with swastikas on her way to work at UC Berkeley. A mosque in San José received a letter threatening to “cleanse” Muslims from the country. All of these incidents took place after the election—and in each case, the perpetrators explicitly linked their racial hatred to the election of Donald Trump. Following Trump’s November win, the nation has…
In 1973, the Black Panther Party opened an elementary school in an old church on International Boulevard. At its peak, The Oakland Community School (OCS) served around 160 students, and relied on a combination of grants and private donations to give it total autonomy: the Panthers hired whom they pleased, taught how they wanted, and won awards doing it. When the party disbanded in 1982, the school shut its doors. But a generation of its alumni still live—and to hear…
President-elect Donald Trump is famous for his divisive, and some say hateful, rhetoric. During the campaign he called for a blanket ban on allowing Muslims into the country and proposed creating a national registry of Muslims.
Dani Geen was 18 when she was in a severe accident: the car spun violently and was smashed on all four sides. The force of the seatbelt broke all of Geen’s ribs and caused internal abscesses. She came to in an ambulance, panicking from pain and shock, and felt the sharp stab of a needle—the injection of a tranquilizer. Her recovery in the hospital and at home was bolstered by Norco and Percocet, to which she built up a hefty…
For Carmen Garcia, the end of a prison sentence was the beginning of a new set of problems.
“The biggest obstacle for me was continuing to stay in school, because the halfway house wanted me to get a job right away, a full-time job,” she said. “And I remember a case manager said to me, ‘You need to take this job, whatever job they offer you, because now you have a criminal record and you’re not going to be able to get another job. Don’t worry about education, because that’s not going to help you.’”
One afternoon in the middle of summer, Beatriz Valencia’s son Jonathan came home with a question. The 7-year-old wanted to know if his mom knew that Donald Trump was running for president.
Illegal dumping has plagued the city of Oakland for more than 20 years. Today, the problem is worse than ever and it is affecting residents, businesses and government leaders alike.
A crowd of around 5,000 mourners gathered in vigil for the victims of Oakland’s Ghost Ship fire at the edge of Lake Merritt on Monday night. They held electric candles and glow sticks, and listened as friends, family and community members took turns speaking to the crowd.