Education
Hands slapping against plastic, followed by the beep of a digital clock, were the only sounds heard over the constant hum in the Richmond Recreational Complex during the weekly community chess night. Two boys, Ayanius Saucer, 10, and Akai Strong, 8, were looking intently at the board in front of them, pondering every move. As decisions became less obvious, and strategy more important, the boys took longer and longer to decide. When they did, their eyes would get wide and…
As part of a system-wide initiative to increase its African American student population, officials from California State University, Sonoma visited St. Luke Missionary Baptist Church in Richmond on Sunday with a message: “Send us your best and brightest,” CSU president Rueben Armiñana said to church members from the pulpit.
Every holiday season Nancy DeWeese and her husband, Gary, host a Christmas party. But it’s not your average family gathering, because this is not your average family. At these parties, three dozen children from all walks of life, including the couple’s four biological kids, gather to share in a common experience: Each child has spent part of their lives growing up at the DeWeese family home in Moraga. “They see each other and they’re like, ‘Oh, we started out as…
With frantic little-kid energy, the Panthers under-10 boys basketball team races around the pavement lot next to the Shields-Reid Park in North Richmond. The kids are fresh from a 42-0 victory over the El Cerrito team, their third straight victory in their youth league. Some of the kids play a pick-up game against their coaches—older boys, brothers, cousins, neighbors—who shout directions and jokes. Around the edges of the court, kids drift in and out of the game, jousting with each…
When Carlos Martinez, an undocumented college student who lives in Contra Costa County, checked his bank account last Sunday he could not believe what he saw. Like at the start of most college semesters, he logged on to his account expecting to see a bill for close to $500, payment for his courses at the City College of San Francisco. But this time, the account showed a bill for only $23. “I logged out and logged back in again, and…
Bibliophiles from throughout the Bay Area gathered Sunday at Richmond’s Craneway Pavilion for the first day of the Codex International Book Fair, which will be open until Wednesday, February 13. The fair was hosted by the Codex Foundation, a not-for-profit group that partners with book arts organizations around the world to preserve the hand-made book as a form of art. The fair featured 180 exhibitors who came to Richmond from around the world to display and sell their creations. The…
At halftime of the Richmond High School girls’ soccer team’s regular season finale against St. Joseph-Notre Dame High School, the conversation between the Richmond High coach and players was not focused on the game. The Oilers had lost all 19 of their games so far in the season, in what had been a challenging and frustrating year. Unlike earlier matches, when the Oilers were down by scores of 4 or 6 to nothing, the game with the Pilots was tied…
Richmond Artists With Talent will perform Saturday a one-night-only urbanized version of Romeo and Juliet, swapping William Shakespeare’s iambic pentameter verse for street slang and slam poetry in a familiar tale of two star-crossed lovers — this time from the wrong sides of the tracks. Te’s Harmony, written by Donte Clark of RAW Talent, presents a gritty, albeit artistic, view of Richmond, a city divided by a North-versus-Central gang turf war through the eyes of Te (Clark) and Harmony (D’neise…
It was less than two weeks until Contra Costa’s Poetry Out Loud recitation contest and 9th grader Allyson Gayoso, a 14-year-old from Richmond’s Salesian High School, was reciting a poem from memory with the confidence of a seasoned orator. Inside a small, quiet office, Gayoso practiced the words of “On an Unsociable Family,” an 18th century poem by English poet Elizabeth Hands. Her audience consisted of her mother, who had arrived a moment before to take her home. Gayoso read…