By Tasion Kwamilele The Children’s Defense Fund (CDF) will gather 3,000 educators, researchers, teachers, and advocates to host its first national conference in nearly 10 years, from July 22 – July 25 in Cincinnati, Ohio. This year’s conference, “Pursuing Justice for Children and the Poor with Urgency and Power,” will focus on juvenile justice...
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By Post Staff Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and Gov. Jerry Brown joined local officials this week to celebrate a $15 million grant to help the Port of Oakland expands its rail yard. The grant is a contribution to the $80 million railroad expansion at the former Oakland Army Base, which is the first step...
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By Spencer Whitney In the spring of 2007, 23-year-old Sabrina Sadler was a victim of sexual assault while attending California State University Sacramento. Sadler had been enjoying a night out with her friends at a club and decided to go home by herself when she was abducted and raped. After surviving the brutal attack,...
Read more →Oakland is mourning the shooting death of 15-year-old Hadari Askari, a young man who dreamed of of one day becoming a firefighter. The teen was killed Tuesday night when someone shot him in the carport at his apartment building on Leona Creek Drive in East Oakland. He had a dream of becoming a firefighter...
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By Miracle Chavis Demonstrating a spread in diversity, African American athletes have won spots on the U.S. Olympic team in sports that have not been traditionally considered those in which Black people excel. Sixteen-year-old gymnast Gabby Douglas won the Olympic trials July 1, earning a guaranteed spot in the London Olympics. With a spectacular...
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By Faith, They “Go Yard” to Fight Breast Cancer The staff and inmates of San Quentin State Prison on July 7 and July 8 will be collaborating in a walk to end breast cancer. Four years ago, several San Quentin inmates were watching TV and saw the advertisement for the Avon Walk to End...
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Versie Ross who passed on January 13 surprised everyone when she left $43,000 to be contributed to the Adopt-A-Child program of the Dr. Herbert Guice Christian Academy’s Grandparents Club in Oakland. The generosity that Ms. Ross has shown even after her death has inspired her loved ones, “We believe in mom’s vision of...
Read more →By Paul Cobb and Post Staff The current plan to use the old Oakland Army Base, developed under the administration of former Mayor Dellums, will use the former base for logistics (research, warehouses, etc.) to support an expanding Oakland port. These uses are projected to create 8,000 new jobs. As part of the...
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By Tanya Dennis Curlee Dennis, affectionately known as Denise to close friends, passed peacefully in her sleep on May 31st . Mrs. Dennis was the wife of building contractor Benjamin Dennis. Together they built a real estate empire in the Berkeley-Oakland area. Mrs. Dennis graduated from Tennessee State University with a BA in...
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An urban farming workshop using the water-frugal, simple-to-use EarthBox – one of the United Nations choices for urban food production – will be held 10 a.m. to noon, Saturday, May 26 at 935 Union St., at the corner of 10th Street in West Oakland. These growing boxes are fully self-contained and require only weekly,...
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Hon. Chimbiko Akarolo, mayor of Port-Harcourt Local Government Area, Rivers State in Nigeria, along with other important leaders, will come to Oakland this week to discuss the relationship between Africans worldwide. The visit, designed to promote a better understanding and build common bonds and mutual commerce will be held from 4 p.m. to 8...
Read more →By Lee Hubbard The San Francisco Black Film Festival has grown after 14 years from a side event at the San Francisco Juneteenth celebration to a premiere event of its own. The festival was originally founded by Ave Montague as a way to show positive images of African Americans. The festival quickly began to...
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Congresswoman Barbar Lee recently toured LifeLong Medical Care in Berkley, celebrating a $1.1 million grant the center has received under the Affordable Care Act to support an innovative program to reduce the need for emergency room and hospital visits for more than 3,200 seniors and other low-income adults with disabilities. The three-year grant will...
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Funeral services for Bishop Hamel Hartford “H.H.” Brookins, a retired pastor of the First African Methodist Episcopal Church of Los Angeles, were scheduled for Friday at the church. Brookins, 86, had played a major role as a civil rights leader and a political kingmaker. He died May 22 at his home in Los Angeles....
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The Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) held a Faith Leaders Summit on Wednesday in conjunction with the Conference of National Black Churches during its Annual Consultation. Hundreds of the nation’s leading African American Church leaders gathered in Washington, D.C. to discuss major voting rights issues facing the Black community. Attorney General Eric Holder gave the...
Read more →The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs announced it will collaborate with the “100,000 Homes” Campaign and its 117 participating communities to find permanent housing for 10,000 vulnerable and chronically homeless veterans this year. “President Obama and I are personally committed to ending homelessness among Veterans,” said Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric Shinseki. “Those who...
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By Jesse Jackon Sr. Terror haunts the streets of our cities. Since 2008, more than 530 young people have been killed in Chicago. Almost four-fifths of these killings were in 22 African-American and Latino community areas on the city’s South and Southwest sides. Each year, across the country, about 7,000 African Americans are murdered,...
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By Matt Schudel, Washington Post Otis G. Clark, 18, was living in Greenwood, a thriving African American section of Tulsa, when it was destroyed in one of the most deadly race riots in U.S. history. During a night almost erased from history, Clark dodged bullets, raced through alleys to escape armed mobs and saw his...
Read more →By Cathy Cockrell, courtesy of UC Berkeley Future physician Maria Garcia-Jimenez was planning a nutrition class for at-risk Latina teens when it became clear, in discussions with her community partner, that the girls had other, equally pressing needs. Which is how García, 23 at the time, found herself designing an eight-week sex-education workshop. Health...
Read more →By Chris McGreal, Guardian UK A federal appeals court has struck down the Defense of Marriage Act – Congress’s key legislation to block gay marriage – as unconstitutional in a ruling that will propel the issue to the Supreme Court. The Boston-based first district appeals court upheld a lower court decision that gay marriage...
Read more →The Richmond City Council recognized five recipients of the Judge George D. Carroll Community Service Awards at a special meeting held Tuesday, May 29. The annual service awards, sponsored by the Black American Political Action Committee (BAPAC), were presented with certificates of recognition by Mayor Gayle McLaughlin and City Council members Nat Bates and...
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Thousands of people flocked to San Francisco’s waterfront and onto Golden Gate Bridge on Sunday to celebrate the bridge’s 75th birthday. The daylong party attracted pleasure boats, tugboats and other vessels as people on shore enjoyed a number of events stretching from Fort Point south of the bridge to Pier 39 along The Embarcadero....
Read more →African American young men from the San Francisco Bay Area who are graduating from high school and going to college will be honored June 3 at a ceremony celebrating their achievements. The event is part of the Mitchell Kapor Foundation’s College Bound Brotherhood, a college readiness program designed to increase the number of young...
Read more →Senator Mark Leno’s first-in-the-nation bill requiring publicly traded corporations to report the amount of money their top five highest paid executives receive in retirement was approved by the Senate this week with a 21-15 vote. “It’s time to shed some light onto how executives at publicly traded corporations have enriched themselves by millions of...
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By Aneesah Dryver ArtEsteem, a program of Attitudinal Healing Connection (AHC), on Saturday, Jun 2 will hold its 14th annual exhibition titled, “Reflections of Me and My World,” a free community event that highlights students’ visual and performing art projects. The event will be held at 3 p.m. at Studio One Art Center at...
Read more →Oakland civil rights attorney John Burris will present “Trayvon Martin and Racial Profiling: Real or imaginary?” 10 a.m. to noon, Saturday, June 9 at the Museum of the African Diaspora, 685 Mission St. in San Francisco. Burris is known for his work on police brutality cases representing plaintiffs. He briefly represented Rodney King in...
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By Tanya Dennis Valerie Cordier-Rice, a Bay Area high school senior, is the winner of the Oakland Branch of the NAACP Imani Youth Council ACT-SO award, recognized for her performances in dramatics and oratory. A reception will be held immediately following baccalaureate a service for graduating seniors, 3 p.m., Saturday, June 9, at...
Read more →By Tasion Kwamilele Two of California’s largest counties, Alameda and Los Angeles, have announced they will protect foster teens facing a disruption in foster care coverage because of gaps in a law that gradually expands services to age 21 by 2014. Teens whose services are disrupted stand to lose housing, financial assistance, and medical...
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By Kia Croom, Contributing Writer Willis Burnett, one of the pioneers in Richmond’s real estate industry, has enjoyed a successful 37-year career at B & B Real Estate, which he established in 1975. He has made a lasting mark in the area as a founder of the North Bay Board of Realtors, which...
Read more →LifeLong Medical Care in Berkley recently won a $1.1 million grant under the Affordable Care Act to support an innovative program to reduce the need for emergency room and hospital visits for more than 3,200 seniors and other low-income adults with disabilities. The three-year grant will support clients who receive Medi-Cal, Medicare or both....
Read more →By Chanelle Bell Pell Grants, a need-based federal program on which many university students depend, will be eliminated in the fall for as many as 100,000 students across the country. Effective July 1, students will only be eligible to receive Pell Grants for 12 semesters instead of the former 18. This affects many students...
Read more →By Tony Wilkinson Back in 1876, the Lorin Train Station, located at what is now the intersection of Adeline Avenue and Alcatraz Street, connected Berkeley with Emeryville and Oakland. Today, the Lorin Station site is a new kind of community connection. The Crop Swap at the Lorin Station, serving South Berkeley and North Oakland...
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James. D. Pachan, a former transit manager in Los Angeles, has been named Chief Operating Officer of AC Transit. Pachan has 30 years of transit management experience, primarily at the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (LACMTA), the fourth largest transit agency in the nation. In the Los Angeles position, he led several major...
Read more →The good news is that the East Bay has gained 27,000 new jobs. The bad news is that a Bay Area-based corporation is slashing 27,0000 jobs. Happy days are here again? It might be too early to break out the champagne. A new report released Thursday by the East Bay Economic Development Alliance (East...
Read more →By Lynda Carson A recent California Court of Appeal victory for a 70-year-old disabled tenant activist named Sharon Green who was evicted from her home could have an impact on similar evictions throughout California. “The California Court of Appeal for the Second District held that constitutional due process applies to an eviction from a...
Read more →By Chanelle Bell Pell Grants, a need-based federal program on which many university students depend, will be eliminated in the fall for as many as 100,000 students across the country. Effective July 1, students will only be eligible to receive Pell Grants for 12 semesters instead of the former 18. This affects many students...
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Alameda County mayors unanimously elected San Leandro Mayor Stephen H. Cassidy to serve as president of the Alameda County Mayors’ Conference for 2012-2013. Mayor John Marchand of Livermore was elected as vice president at the May 9 meeting. Terms of each position are for one year. “There is a long tradition of San Leandro...
Read more →By Mark Leno It is hard to believe that some insurance companies and agents would purposefully take advantage of older military veterans for monetary gain. Unfortunately, that is just what is occurring in community centers, nursing homes and assisted living facilities across the state when senior vets are talked into “quick overhauls” of their...
Read more →A new city ordinance requires the San Francisco Police Department to follow local and state standards when working with the FBI’s joint Terrorism Task Force, in order to protect Middle Eastern, Muslim and South Asian members of the community from racial and religious profiling. The ordinance was passed unanimously by Board of Supervisors and...
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Miguel Vargas and Daniel Mendoza are among the more than 100 military veterans who are graduating from SF State University this year, part of the California State University’s Troops to College initiative, which helps vets make a successful transition to academic life. The university’s commencement will be held on May 19. A special reception...
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The San Francisco Human Rights Commission has announced recipients of the agency’s 2012 Hero Awards, which recognize local residents for outstanding contributions in the field of human rights advocacy and local organizations that support equity in education for youth in vulnerable communities. Community members submitted nominations, and finalists were selected for their commitment to...
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The California Emerging Technology Fund and iFoster is launching a new partnership in Contra Costa County to help improve the lives of vulnerable children and youth, particularly those in the foster care community. During s kick-off event held Monday, iFoster presented a laptop computer to Bernard Naquin, a 19-year-old Richmond youth who emancipated from...
Read more →By Jeff Baker The legacy of Measure Y depends largely on whom you ask. Many applaud the inroads Measure Y purportedly made to reduce crime and violence among Oakland’s at-risk youth and re-entry population. Others point to the unfulfilled promise to hire an additional 63 neighborhood policing officers to bolster the ranks of the...
Read more →The Oakland Raiders is one of six NFL teams chosen to participate in the launch of a program to promote football safety and helmet replacement for youth in underserved communities. The initiative will remove helmets that are 10 years old or older and replace them with new helmets at no cost to the beneficiary...
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Andrew Frank Hatch, who is 113 years old, was born Oct. 7, 1898, the same year as the Spanish American War and the world’s first fatality from an automobile accident on a public highway. A native of a small town in Louisiana near the Texas border, he moved to Oakland in 1928. According to...
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