Topics
What is Gimme Props? The simplest answer is an experiment. We experimented here with data visualization, with quizzes, with games, and with interactives. Can you take what is typically dry material and explain it in a way that is more fun and engaging, hence broadening the audience that learns about these important ballot measures?
Born out of Code for America, a non-profit that serves as a kind of digital liaison between governments and residents, OpenOakland is a volunteer-based group of people interested in using technology to make government more accessible. It is led by Steve Spiker, who describes the group as the “Peace Corps for geeks.”
From Fruitvale to Rockridge, Oakland North reporters spoke recently to residents about the city council elections. We asked everyone the same question: If you could speak directly to the candidates, what would you like to know? We delivered the most frequent of the residents’ questions, in person to the seven candidates for the District 1 City Council seat. Their edited answers, one question at a time, will appear in Oakland North every week between now and Election Day.
This year, voters must choose whether to give a full four-year term to current City Attorney Barbara Parker or to longtime District 1 Councilmember Jane Brunner, both familiar faces in Oakland politics. When Oakland voters nixed Measure H in 2011, they decided how the city would select a city attorney this year. Until 1998, city officials appointed someone to the office, but under that year’s “strong mayor” initiative, the position became an elected one, which was held by John Russo…
Amy Lemley, the only woman among seven candidates competing for the District 1 seat, lists safety, the economy and education as some of her campaign’s top priorities. The Oakland Police Officers Association and the Chamber of Commerce are some of Lemley’s endorsers.
Accountant Len Raphael, one of the seven people running for a District 1 city council seat, plans to hire more police officers, using funds gained from cutting compensation for all city employees.
The five candidates vying for Oakland’s at-large seat on the City Council are revving up their campaigning and making their cases for how to tackle what they all agree is the city’s number one issue: crime.
Should voters approve Proposition 32, or the “Paycheck Protection Initiative,” it would change the law by prohibiting corporations, labor unions, government contractors and government employers from using employee payroll deductions for political purposes. It would also prohibit contributions from government contractors to officials on committees, which have the power to decide which companies receive government contracts.
When he was 78 years old, Don Link’s father, Richard, crashed the homebuilt plane he was flying over Hollister, California. The aircraft was demolished in the accident, and Richard walked away with a black eye and a few bruises.