Fours Years Later: African Americans in Oakland react to President Obama’s reelection

As President Obama was elected for a second time, the band played and the building came alive.

Four years ago, people danced in the streets in front of Everett and Jones BBQ Restaurant in Jack London Square. They embraced loved ones and high-fived total strangers. The news cameras rolled, and non-reporters became journalists as they documented history via grainy pictures from their camera phones. The first African American president in the history…

Read More

Bradley Manning supporters occupy Obama campaign office in Oakland

Barely one week after the Obama campaign office on Telegraph Avenue in downtown Oakland had one of its window panes shattered by Occupy protesters, at least 100 protesters calling for the release of jailed U.S. Army soldier Private First Class Bradley Manning invaded the campaign offices Thursday, occupying them for at least three hours and bringing business to a standstill before police forced them out.

Read More

The Votes and Voices project 2008

By OAKLAND NORTH STAFF Nov. 4 –Oakland North’s special multimedia project captures the faces and voices of emotional voters on election day 2008. Click here to hear North Oaklanders talk about what this vote meant to them.

Read More

The Big Day Archive: live from the neighborhood

by OAKLAND NORTH STAFF Starting at 9:01 on November 4, and for the next 14 hours, Oakland North reporters Christina Salerno and Linnea Edmeieir presided from our newsroom over a live conversation among the community–with input from other O.N. readers as far-flung as Switzerland.  From the first polling place lines to the street celebrations as…

Read More

“Allo, La Californie? Has he won?”

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…

Read More

Here, like rest of the U.S., an unforgettable night

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…

Read More

And at an Oakland AME church: “Hallelujah!”

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…

Read More

Cheers, honking, weeping as city reacts

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…

Read More

I-house foreign students cheer the new president

by BAGASSI KOURA Hundred of foreign students at Berkeley International house who gathered around big TV screens cheered and hugged each other to celebrate Barack Obama’s victory. Some of the students watched the elections results at the I-House, a residential house for international students at UC Berkeley. Dozen of others took part in a panel…

Read More