Slain student, a taunted outsider, was fighting hard to grow up

17-year old Desiree Davis had spent her childhood excluded and taunted for never quite fitting in. “They gave her a real hard time her whole life,” said her mother, Dru Ann Davis, in an interview at her home this weekend. A Hurricane Katrina survivor, born blind in one eye, Desiree was working to find new strength and identity in Oakland before she was killed last week in a drive-by shooting. Story by S. Howard Bransford/Oakland North.

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Slain student’s family had fled New Orleans’ danger

Desiree Davis, the 17 year-old Oakland Tech student killed in a drive-by shooting Monday, had been trapped with her family in Hurricane Katrina’s floodwaters before they sought safety and a new life in California. Her uncle says they tried Santa Cruz for a while, but that Oakland had felt to them more like home.

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Oakland Tech kicks off new Green Academy

Five years ago, Oakland Technical High School  teacher Deirdre Snyder wrote some notes at a teacher meeting where the teachers were imagining a new kind of academy within Tech–a program that might help teach students how to make careers out of protecting the environment. At the kickoff celebration last night for Tech’s new Green Technology…

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Excitement still in air as voting slows midday

By ANNA BLOOM Nov. 4 — It seemed more like a sporting event than Election Day to Lewis McCutcheon, who had a front row seat as voters flocked to the Church of the Good Shepherd Baptist. McCutcheon, who works at the Children’s Hospital and Research Center valet parking lot that abuts the church on 52nd…

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