Safety
In coming months, the first of hundreds of prisoners will be transferred from state facilities back to the counties’ care. Derreck Johnson, the owner of Oakland’s Home of Chicken and Waffles, has a message for other employers: Don’t be afraid to hire people with records. At his family-style restaurant, it’s a tradition that works.
A jubilant crowd of Occupy Oakland supporters poured into the city’s downtown streets late last night, after their “general assembly” approved supporting a citywide strike Nov. 2. But the crowd’s efforts to cross the bay to join the Occupy S.F. group were thwarted by BART officers, who shut down the 12th Street BART entrance amid cries of “Police brutality!” and “This is what democracy looks like!”
Occupy Oakland protestors clashed with police forces last night at the intersection of 14th Street and Broadway beginning around 7:00pm and going late into the night. A number of reporters from Oakland North and Richmond Confidential were on the ground to cover the events.
On Sunday, Councilmembers Pat Kernighan (District 2) and Libby Schaaf (District 4) hosted a lecture by crime expert Franklin Zimring about New York City’s crime reduction successes and how Oakland could implement the same strategies to tackle crime.
As police and Occupy Oakland protesters squared off in front of City Hall this week, organizers of a recall campaign took their first formal steps this week toward an effort to remove Mayor Jean Quan from office.
After a day of clashes with police, approximately 150 Occupy Oakland protesters remained outside of Frank Ogawa Plaza as midnight approached. There were at least five new arrests as of 9:15 pm this evening, according to police, and 97 were arrested during the day after police raided two Occupy Oakland encampments at Frank Ogawa Plaza and Snow Park near Lake Merritt.
Homes where families used to live, beloved pets left behind, a phoenix rising from the flames—a ceremonial visit to these hand-painted images, which adorn thousands of tiles at Rockridge’s Firestorm Community Mural Project, was one several Saturday events winding up the 20th anniversary week of the devastating 1991 Oakland Hills fire.
It’s been 11 days since Occupy Oakland took over Oakland’s Frank Ogawa Plaza, and now the tent city is bigger than ever and facing eviction. Over 550 people occupy Oakland’s plaza, even after they received an evacuation notice from the City Administrator’s Office on Thursday evening. Among the concerns listed on the notice are graffiti, vandalism to plaza infrastructure and “the historic tree,” and the disruption of the plaza for public use by groups who had to relocate events which had previously been scheduled at the plaza.
The 1991 wildfire, which shot out of control on October 20 and lasted almost 72 hours, was so large and fast-moving that it challenged the capacity of Northern California’s fire departments and wreaked havoc on the hills community. OaklandNorth.net remembers the fire and examines what has changed in the past 20 years.