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Esteemed writing program, WriterCoach Connection, has made its way to Richmond High School.
When the door opened at West County Detention Facility for Tamisha Walker, it was dark. After six months in jail, Walker was free. But she was alone. No one was there to pick her up. All she had was a bus ticket and a bag. “You just get on a bus,” Walker said. “And it’s a long, lonely ride.” Jeff Rutland knows the lonely freedom Walker spoke of. He’s reminded of it every time he sees a released inmate walk…
In the summer of 1975, Richmond Councilman Nat Bates received a call from Ben Brown, a Democratic campaign organizer in Atlanta. Brown needed Bates’ support rallying African American voters behind his candidate, Jimmy Carter, a little known peanut farmer from Plains, Georgia who had just finished his term as governor and was seeking the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination. Bates was split. Back in California, incumbent governor Jerry Brown was also running for the Democratic presidential ticket, and Richmond councilmembers were…
“Knock! Knock!” Compared to the red door, the woman’s head and shoulders, blurry through the window, look enormous. The weather outside is ominous, dark and cloudy. “Who’s there?” The door opens. The giant (surprise!) is City Council candidate Marilyn Langlois, and this is the inside fold of a slick red and olive political flier. Don’t vote for Langlois, the ad implores the reader—“She wants to raise your family’s taxes!” and, “She even refused to pay her own taxes!” The real…
Governor Jerry Brown signed a bill late last month making it illegal to visibly carry loaded or unloaded shotguns or rifles. In San Francisco the open carry ban has spurred debates and some protests by open carry advocates. But across the Bay in Richmond, the response has been more muted, and some citizens said the ban won’t have a substantial impact on their city. Kevin Muccular, a change agent with the Office of Neighborhood Safety, said that his organization hadn’t…
On a night when Barack Obama and Mitt Romney held most voters’ attention, the four candidates for the West Contra Costa Unified School District board spoke Tuesday to about 15 people at a candidate forum at Murphy Elementary School in Richmond. Todd Groves, Robert Studdiford, Antonio Medrano and Randy Enos are vying for two seats on the school board. “I thought all of them were very articulate and very knowledgeable,” said moderator Jackie Coulter-Peebles, a member of the League of…
There’s one outcome for the City Council election that Bea Roberson says she can’t let happen, and it’s the reason the first-time candidate decided to put her name on the ballot to begin with. “We cannot let the [Richmond Progressive Alliance] win again,” Roberson said, standing near the dais in the city chambers after a council meeting. She said if she can make it out of the election with her sanity, she doesn’t plan on running for any other political…
Eduardo Martinez sits at the front desk of the Richmond Progressive Alliance hunched over a pile of donor thank-you letters. It’s midday and the quiet of the office is punctuated by the hum of vehicles that pass by on Macdonald Avenue and the occasional police siren in the distance. As Martinez picks up the letters and shuffles them a bit, several stray postcards—decorated with antique cars and a family of raccoons and littered throughout the pile—pop out. The postcards are…
There wasn’t anything unusual or exciting about the white shirt, gray slacks, black shoes or the red, diamond patterned tie that Jael P. Myrick wore. Even the way he blended in with people didn’t make him seem out of the ordinary. Myrick is to all appearances a regular guy. But in a field of City Council candidates where many of the big names are part of a deep partisan division, the 27-year-old Myrick hopes his youth and regular-guyness brings a…