Technology
Renters in Oakland’s apartment buildings now have more control over their choice of internet service provider, a choice that San Francisco renters have had since 2016 and one that the Federal Communications Commission is currently addressing. The Internet Choice Ordinance was unanimously approved by the Oakland City Council in October and went into effect for tenants in January. It broadens ISP options for renters in buildings with four or more residences by prohibiting landlords from restricting tenants to a single…
At least 100 Bay Area residents from the Nigerian community met at Lake Merritt on Saturday, October 24, 2020 to raise awareness for #EndSARS, a campaign led by youth in Nigeria to demand the end to police brutality. For decades, Nigerian citizens have accused the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS), a police unit that was founded in 1992 by the Nigerian government, of assault, extortion and killings. In early October, reports circulated on social media of SARS police shootings that killed…
Riley Mitchell loves to cook. When the 55-year-old isn’t bragging about making the “best potato salad this side of the Mississippi,” Mitchell enjoys cozying up with a good book. Since the pandemic, Mitchell started to re-read classics like The Color Purple, mostly for pleasure. But since the library where Mitchell took adult literacy classes closed, being able to revisit some of his favorite books has helped him maintain his hard-won reading skills. “When they first shut it down, I shut…
Encrypted social media allows a broad range of people to communicate safely, from organizers of protests against police brutality to LGBTQ+ youth looking for a community to reach out to when they feel unsafe. A potential new federal law threatens to take away many of these secure methods of communication.
2019 brought a new group of student reporters to Oakland North from across the country and the globe. We covered a city that is always changing, but where tensions about city finances, policing, housing and the fate of the public schools run deep. We also produced three new episodes of our Tales of Two Cities podcast, which covers audio stories from Oakland and Richmond in collaboration with our sister site, Richmond Confidential. Click here to check out all episodes of the Tales of…
On Wednesday afternoon, Oakland residents prepared for the power to go out, anticipating cuts that were initially expected to begin in Alameda County at noon. Parts of the Oakland hills and East Oakland are the most likely to be affected by the outages, which Pacific Gas and Electric estimates will affect 32,680 county residents. PG&E officials plan to cut power to parts of more than 30 Northern California counties as a wildfire prevention measure. This decision followed the last two…
Ride share drivers say AB 5, which was signed into law last week, will give them a voice.
Only about half of foster youth graduate from high school, and of those students, only 20 percent make it to college. Franco’s goal for FConnect is to help them learn about resources that will help them get to college and, once there, make it to graduation.
A teaching artist with Thingamajigs taught a weeklong workshop at charter school East Bay Innovation Academy on “sound engineering,” where students learned about physics, design, and mathematics by making their own instruments and learning about how they make sound.