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It’s the First Friday in October, and Art Murmur is in full swing. Local ’zines, art depots and thrift shops are peddling their wares in between galleries packed with inebriated merrymakers. The atmosphere is hardly political, and yet mingling with the crowd is Don Macleay, one of Oakland’s ten mayoral candidates. “Let me tell you,” he says, thrusting fliers into the hands of passersby, “say ‘Hi, I’m a politician,’ and people will shy away from you. But say, ‘Hi, I’m with the Green Party,’ and people will take your card.”
If you had to use ranked choice voting today, would you know what to do? That’s the question Oakland North asked voters in the lobby of the Grand Lake Theater last Sunday, and even after watching a two-hour spy flick, theatergoers explained the process admirably.
“I’ve never been arrested. I never wanted to be arrested,” said Laura Wells, Green Party candidate for governor, who was taken into custody on Tuesday outside the debate between California’s leading candidates for governor, Meg Whitman and Jerry Brown.
As the Giants hosted the San Diego Padres on October 3, a long white banner peeked above the right field wall of AT&T Park. The sign, attached to the rigging of a yacht anchored in what Giants fans call “McCovey Cove,” did not support either team. Instead, the banner spelled out a political message in black block letters: Free Johannes Mehserle. Strung along the base of the boat was another banner listing a website, Justice4Johannes.com.
Oakland’s Asian Cultural Center forum brought the ten mayoral candidates together to share their views on issues important to Asian American communities including equal language access, crime prevention and business revitalization.
On Monday, eight of the ten candidates running for mayor of Oakland faced the city’s progressive community in a relatively lighthearted forum at Humanist Hall in downtown Oakland. The format of the event, co-sponsored by thirteen left-leaning organizations, including the Alameda County Green Party and the Niebyl Proctor Marxist Library, broke away from standard debate protocol.
On Thursday, UC Berkeley students and employees protested rising student fees, cuts in the number of classes offered, and the state’s plan to cut $3 billion from education funding—a familiar theme on California college campuses over the past year.
The run-off election between John Creighton and Victoria Kolakowski for a seat on the Alameda County Superior Court shows how complicated choosing a judicial candidate can be. From evaluating each candidate’s credentials to speculating about how each might act from the bench, Alameda County voters have a lot of thinking to do if they want to avoid the dartboard approach this November.
The largest medical marijuana store in California, previously named iGrow, re-opened on Sunday as a national enterprise called weGrow, attracting dozens of reporters and hundreds of visitors. Watch this video for glimpse of the megastore some wags have nicknamed the Walmart of Weed.