2008 Election Specials
By MARTIN RICARD Nov. 6 — The mood was more subdued than celebratory in the room where a group of black graduate students from the University of California-Berkeley met to reflect the day after Tuesday’s historic presidential election. They shared their joy and ambivalence over having the first black president elected to office. They snacked on food. Most of all they concluded that, with Barack Obama in the country’s highest office, black people now have to continue to uplift themselves–that…
“Just like the body can be sick from being exposed to hot and cold,” the Reverend Roland Stringfellow said today, “my soul was sick from being exposed to jubilation over Obama’s election and defeat from the passage of Prop 8.”
Par BAGASSI KOURA Nov. 6 — O.N.’s Bagassi Koura, whose home country is the West African nation of Burkina Faso, worked hard throughout voting day last Tuesday. But his cellphone kept interrupting–one after another, calls from Burkina Faso, demanding updates on the American election. We asked Koura, a former Agence France-Presse reporter, to describe in French his efforts to reassure his friends that all would be well. An English translation follows. Le mardi 04 novembre, les Américains se rendaient…
By OAKLAND NORTH STAFF Nov. 6 – Before Dan Lopez left his house Tuesday night, he didn’t check to see whether a hot iron was plugged in or a pot of water left to boil over on the stove–he double-checked the digital video recorder. He needed to make sure he’d gotten it all. Lopez drove to the Rockridge BART station to pick up his wife, Meghan. Meghan was trying to ignore her cell phone, buzzing with text messages from friends…
By HENRY JONES and SAMSON REINY Nov. 6–The passage of Proposition 8 has set off statewide legal confusion as same-sex marriage advocates filed petitions before the California Supreme Court yesterday, calling for the suspension of the gay marriage ban until the court decides if the amendment is unconstitutional. Californians voted on Tuesday by a 52 to 48 percent margin in favor of the ballot measure, which amended the state’s constitution to define marriage as between a man and a woman….
By CLARE MAJOR Nov. 5 — A proposition to give additional funds to children’s hospitals passed with 54 percent of votes in favor and 45 percent against. Proposition 3 authorizes $980 million in general obligation bonds to fund grants for the construction, renovation, or related improvements of California children’s hospitals. The bonds will be repaid over 30 years, for a total estimated cost to the state of $2 billion, or $64 million per year.
By CHRISTINA SALERNO and MARTIN RICARD Nov. 5 – AC Transit board member Rebecca Kaplan won the race tonight for the at-large seat on the Oakland City Council, with 61 percent of the vote. Her opponent, Oakland school board member Kerry Hamill, trailed with 38 percent.
By MARTIN RICARD Nov. 4 — When Steve Kirkendoll was 4 years old, in 1960, he remembers sitting on his mother’s lap and watching on TV as black people in the South got hosed down and bitten by police dogs just for trying to register to vote. Kirkendall is 52 now. And after what he saw tonight, he said, he can now sit his 4-year-old granddaughter on his lap and tell her what happened on Nov. 4, 2008, when the…
By OAKLAND NORTH STAFF Nov. 4 – Cheering, honking, weeping mobs overtook the streets of North Oakland tonight when Barack Obama became the next president-elect of the United States. When the news hit at 8 p.m., the city went wild. From the Democratic Election party held at the Oakland Marriott, to neighborhood block parties, the excitement spilled out into the streets.