Politics

After the raid: First Oaksterdam, then legal battles for Harborside Health Center

He might direct the largest medical marijuana dispensary in the country, but Steve DeAngelo isn’t scared of the government’s attempts to shut it down.

“The federal government has thrown everything they had at us and we met them and we pushed back,” DeAngelo said, referring to Harborside Health Center, where he serves as founder and executive director. “It’s a drug war machine that’s bound for extinction.”

Women veterans find peace in Alameda community group

When former Staff Sergeant Starlyn Lara joined the Army fresh out of high school in Roswell, New Mexico, it was a time of peace for those who were serving in the military. Then came September 11. Suddenly, for many who joined the armed forces in search of serving their country—what Lara calls a desire to “be a bigger person than I was”—that peacetime was no more. “I sat there for about an hour, just dazed and confused, in awe of…

After the raid: The financial fallout for Oaksterdam and Oakland’s pot business

Following the federal raid on Oaksterdam University last April, Dale Sky Jones found herself with an incredible task: rebuilding the school from the ground up. Not only had Richard Lee, Oaksterdam’s founder and director, just stepped down—assigning Jones to take over his role—but during the raid, federal agents had gutted the university entirely. As Jones took on the responsibility of providing for the students, staff and volunteers who had already signed on for the spring semester, the rest of Oakland’s burgeoning pot industry was left wondering what lay ahead for their businesses and whether they, too, were vulnerable to raids or legal action from the federal government.

Civil rights complaint resolved at Skyline High School

In early March, Skyline High School and the Oakland Unified School District resolved a complaint filed by the high school’s Black Student Union nearly a year ago. The resolution could change how students file complaints, allow random audits of students’ class schedules, offer training for teachers on how to deal with complaints of racial discrimination, and require the school to provide annual logs of complaints to the US Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights. According to a statement from…

Union protest overwhelms early Oakland City Council budget talks

As the city gets ready to tackle a new two-year budget, councilmembers heard a presentation on Oakland’s fiscal future at Tuesday’s city council meeting. Whoops, jeers and the sound of a cowbell punctuated the meeting, and before the council could hear the presentation, they heard from dozens of angry union members and chants of “Enough is enough!” from the audience stalled proceedings more than once.