Public Policy
Here are some of our favorite and most-read stories from 2014. We’ll be back in 2015!
Animal rights groups are claiming that in Oakland, animals are being unlawfully killed; they want the shelter to sign up to the No Kill movement, which keeps euthanasia for only the most extreme cases. The new director, however, has different ideas.
After 4 years, Oakland schools’ African American Male Achievement initiative assesses how it’s doing
The Office of African American Male Achievement will release reports in January that focus on its flagship program and hopes for future growth.
Oakland’s superintendent of schools Antwan Wilson has been at the helm for six months. The midwest-raised leader credits his mother, a passion for civil rights, and growing up poor for molding him into the leader he is today.
The California Department of Toxic Substance Control (DTSC) launched a program called Safer Consumer Products, where manufacturers will have to find a safer alternative to products containing toxic chemicals.
As many as 170 people were arrested in Oakland after protests erupted in the days following a grand jury decision in Missouri to not indict the officer responsible for the death of Michael Brown. Over three nights, arrests were made in connection with vandalism in the Temescal and downtown areas, as well as attempts to shut down local freeways.
Sex worker advocacy groups in the Bay Area have taken to social media and traditional media methods to express their outrage over Oakland’s recent updates to an existing “nuisance eviction ordinance” for housing. Advocates believe that the newest addition will allow landlords to unfairly evict those who are voluntarily working as sex workers in commercial and residential spaces. Oakland’s city council unanimously voted on October 21 to amend an existing eviction ordinance—originally instated in 2004—to allow landlords and/or the city…
President Barack Obama’s recent executive order defers the deportation of undocumented parents of American citizens or legal permanent residents who have been in the country for at least five years. This is expected to affect approximately 4 million undocumented immigrants, but excludes approximately 7 million others, according to a recent report on NPR. Among those excluded are the tens of thousands of unaccompanied child and teenage migrants that arrived to the U.S. border earlier this year. The Oakland-based Social Justice Collaborative (SJC)—a nonprofit…
As word spread through Richmond, Oakland and other East Bay cities with large immigrant populations of the President’s executive orders easing some restrictions of federal immigration policy, families and support groups affected by the new orders reacted with a mix of relief and disappointment.