Mahlia Posey

The Potential Project gives students a voice to help create solutions

Students in the West Contra Costa Unified School District can use their ideas to improve their school with the help of The Potential Project. The program gives students a voice in the district’s planning process, so they can help create solutions to challenges like increasing parent engagement and providing more access to technology. The project requires young people to create a plan, collaborate their teacher and classmates, and create measurable progress towards one of the goals outlines in the Local…

A new Great Migration: the disappearance of the black middle class

After the great recession of 2008, inequality widened along racial lines as people lost their homes, often their only major asset. Earlier this month the Institute for Policy Studies, a Washington, D.C. think tank, reported in “Billionaire Bonanza: The Forbes 400 and the Rest of US,” that the average white family today has net assets of $141,900, compared with the $11,000 for African American families. This hollowing out of the African American family asset base is a nationwide phenomenon that can be explained by the shrinking African American middle class. It’s even more a factor in “strong market” regions like the Bay Area, where housing costs are soaring.

First community briefing for the Berkeley Global Campus

UC Berkeley and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory are planning the new Berkeley Global Campus at Richmond Bay. The committee wants the university to sign a legally binding agreement aiding those such as disadvantaged workers, emancipated foster youth, homeless people and individuals with criminal records, and requesting the university pay a fee to the city, to improve affordable housing and displacement issues, among other suggestions.

Richmond Youth Council aims to lower voting age

Richmond youth have rallied together in an effort to lower the city’s voting age to 16. If successful, they would earn the right to vote in municipal and school board elections long before they can even buy tobacco.

PG&E to incorporate safety initiatives, remove obstructing trees

After the deadly San Bruno pipeline explosion five years ago, Pacific Gas & Electric Co. launched a statewide upgrade to its gas safety program. Richmond will receive its PG&E pipeline safety makeover in the upcoming weeks. PG&E said it was introducing its Community Pipeline Safety Initiative to improve access to transmission lines for first responders in the event of an emergency, partly by removing or replacing trees. The utility said Richmond has 43 trees on public property needing replacement, while…

UC Berkeley’s Richmond Global Campus expected to spur housing construction

During a City Council meeting Tuesday, Mayor Butt’s office and a number of development experts gave a presentation on public policy initiatives to improve the availability, quality and development of affordable housing. The presentation centered on how The University of California, Berkeley’s Richmond Global Campus will increase development in the city.

Contra Costa supervisors approve healthcare for undocumented immigrants

Lidia Arizmendi has been waiting a year and a half for kidney stone surgery. A diabetic, she has no health care insurance, and because she is an undocumented immigrant, she has had few options to find coverage. Now, that may be changing. Like thousands of other undocumented residents of Contra Costa County, Arizmendi will be offered access to primary health coverage under Contra Costa Cares, a pilot program approved Tuesday morning by the county Board of Supervisors on a 4-1…