Development
Some attendees said Spirit & Soul spoke to Richmond’s uncertain future. Folks certainly enjoyed the craft beer, barbecue, and kettle corn, and the inclusion of Richmond’s many nonprofits which helped make social justice a focal point of the afternoon.
The unincorporated area of North Richmond, long a controversial issue for the city, is up for a vote on being officially made part of the city on Tuesday. Residents of the area are divided, some seeing it as a needed way to get access to local services and others seeing it as gentrification and a “land grab.”
Wine and Craft Beer makers are setting up shop in Richmond, saying that the city has great potential as a home for boutique alcohol.
On a warm Saturday morning, people began to slowly stroll into the Memorial Tabernacle Church in Oakland’s Bushrod neighborhood. They were gathered not for a morning service, but for a special kind of lawn party. Trail mix, cookies, apples, and fresh-cut pieces of banana were laid out in colorful bowls on a table, but nothing smelled more fresh than the two 4-foot piles of compost and wood mulch laid out on the road in front of the church. StopWaste, a public…
Marco Alberto had no desire to join an activist group. Still, resistance was in his DNA.
It is the first day back since spring break. Alana Banks still has her tan from Barbados. She walks onto UC Berkeley’s campus behind Sproul Hall to the Fannie Lou Hamer Center, a small tin building named after the voting rights activist. If you weren’t familiar with the place, it would be easy to miss, as it is hidden behind the English department and to the far left of the art studio. Banks, who is from Oakland, is one of the co-founders of the center, which opened in February. It is the first space set aside as resource center for black students on UC Berkeley’s campus.
Day after day, Criselda Feria waits for a phone call that will give her good news. Her name is stuck on a waiting list that will give her a slot for federally-subsidized child care. Feria’s 18-month-old son is one of the 2,074 children still on the Contra Costa County’s waiting list to receive Early Head Start child care.
A recent study suggests that not only do suspensions take a toll on students, they place a financial burden on their communities.
On Friday, March 17, staffers from KaBOOM! and Target gathered with members of the community to build a park for Richmond in one day. KaBOOM! is a nonprofit that provides new playgrounds and park equipment to cities that lack economic resources. The lot on Wendell and 24th Street had been empty for 15 years after the playground equipment was removed due to its hazardous conditions. Click the video above to see how people turned transformed it into a space for kids…