community
Nearly a year has passed since stories broke in February 2014, about disturbing living conditions in the Hacienda public housing complex. Now Hacienda residents will finally see the beginning of the end of their days at Hacienda.
Before the Tuesday night deadline, 18 candidates from diverse backgrounds filed applications to fill the empty seat. The council majority will only choose one of them.
Addison Escobar had never lined up at forward for Richmond High School before Thursday night. But when his coach, Rene Siles, asked the senior to move up from midfield, he didn’t ask questions. “Wherever I play I put it in, a hundred percent, I give my all,” Escobar said. “Because the team comes first.” Escobar’s goal just before halftime helped the Oilers overcome heavy legs en route to a comprehensive 5-0 win over Hercules Thursday night at Richmond High School….
In honor of Black History Month, the American Red Cross is commemorating the development of modern-day blood banking, pioneered by an African-American surgeon—Dr. Charles Drew. They have organized more than a dozen blood donation opportunities throughout February in the East Bay. “We need people of all ethnicities to donate,” said Sara O’Brien, the external communications manager of the American Red Cross for the Northern California region. The Northern California branch will be part a nationwide effort to encourage a diverse…
Richmond’s new mayor Tom Butt made his first State of the City address on Tuesday night, announcing that “Richmond is open for business” and saying that his office is checking on the Hacienda public housing complex resident relocation every day. Butt started his address by thanking former Mayor Gayle McLaughlin, City Manager Bill Lindsay and all city employees for the “8 great years” when McLaughlin served as the mayor. “Richmond has clearly changed for the better and we want to…
On Wednesday night, West Contra Costa Unified School District’s (WCCUSD) first board of education meeting of the year was packed with chatty bouncy children, a sea of blue shirt-wearing Caliber Beta Academy teachers, and people holding orange public comment sheets. Newly-elected school board president Todd Groves began the meeting promptly at 6:30 pm as eager parents and teachers waited to discuss pressing topics on the agenda, such as the charter petition renewal of Richmond College Preparatory Schools (RCPS), and the…
Long after the billboards come down, the campaign mailers rest in landfills and the New Year’s toasts come and go, 2014 may be remembered as Richmond’s big election year. We are honored to have been in Richmond’s streets and chambers, its homes and schools and everywhere else, helping write the first drafts of history in an important time and place. Chevron Corp. poured an unprecedented $3.1 million into the municipal races only to lose the open mayoral and city council seats to a progressive coalition on every…
Magaly Rodriguez, who came to the U.S. from Mexico when she was an infant, is not a U.S. citizen. To get Rodriguez to Brown University, ILC and university officials had to navigate a web of regulations that inhibit undocumented students. But they were also helped by a key new federal program—DACA.
It was on a regular night more than three decades ago when Shonda Dilliehunt woke to several masked gunmen raiding her home. Life wasn’t perfect at their small apartment in the Kennedy Park housing complex, but she never imagined something like this. All she heard was a distinctive boom, and men she didn’t know forced her and her family to the floor. “That was the first SWAT raid,” she said. “I didn’t know what was going on.” Memories of those…