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Backpack giveaway a success at Richmond PAL center

On Tuesday morning, hundreds of kids and parents descended on the Richmond Police Activities League (PAL) gymnasium for a giveaway of free backpack full of school supplies. Kids were able to play on the two inflatable jump houses while music was provided by band members from the Richmond PAL center.

Local derby teams face off this weekend

All four B.ay A.rea D.erby Girls teams will compete in the league’s Double Header Coastal Clash bout on Saturday night at The Craneway Pavilion in Richmond. The first match will be between the Oakland Outlaws and the San Francisco ShEvil Dead, followed by the Richmond Wrecking Belles and Berkeley Resistance. This Bay Area All-Stars team will compete later this summer against the Kansas City Warriors on July 7, and the B.A.D. Championships are scheduled for August 4. For those new…

BART shut down between East Bay and San Francisco due to station fire

As of 9:30 am, BART is still reporting a total shutdown of service between Oakland and San Franciso due to an early morning building fire that broke out at a senior housing center near the station which caused track damage. The agency states that it hopes to have single track service running between the two cities by the afternoon, and in the meantime urged passengers to take other forms of transit to work including ferry, casual carpool or bus service. BART…

Richmond 2011: Images of a time and place

It was a year of indelible images in Richmond, and we were privileged to be behind the camera lens to capture a few of them.
Winnowing down the thousands of images we gathered in Richmond’s streets, parks, boardrooms, shores, restaurant halls and other spots was no easy task, and the results are no doubt imperfect. Undaunted, we present to you a handful of the images that hit us hardest, with some candid reflections from the photographers who captured them.

City Council moves forward with soda tax

The City Council voted 5-2 last Tuesday to support placing a soda tax on the ballot next November – a measure that proposes a 1-cent charge for every ounce of sugary beverages sold in Richmond. In a second measure, the city proposes to use the revenues from this tax to fight childhood obesity in Richmond.

City approves three medical marijuana collectives

In the chambers of the City Council, there are rules. There are procedures to be followed – motions, amendments, voting, establishing a quorum. These are Rosenberg’s Rules of Order, a simplified version of parliamentary procedure that governs how the Richmond City Council conducts its meetings. In the early morning hours of the council’s final meeting of the year, Rosenberg’s Rules were questioned and debated en route to approving three medical marijuana collectives to operate within the city. Medical marijuana became…

North Richmond mourns Marquis Hamilton

Mourners and clergy remembered Hamilton, 20, as a fun-loving prankster who snatched the bed covers off his seven brothers and five sisters and borrowed friends’ bicycles without their knowledge – only to return them with a laugh.

Union files request with state over Kaiser staffing

November proved to be one of the most tumultuous months in the now year-and-a-half-long contract negotiations between Kaiser Permanente and its mental health clinicians. Mid-month, the National Union of Healthcare Workers released a 35-page report that made a number of bold claims against Kaiser, including a suggestion that Kaiser violates California laws that ensure mental-health patients are seen in a timely manner, and that Kaiser falsifies its records to avoid the backlash of violating those laws. By the end of…

Healthy Steps: A hospital administrator’s struggle to save Doctors Medical Center

Dawn Gideon remembers walking down the steep stadium steps of the Ashland Regional Medical Center auditorium, staring at the backs of the heads of 100 hospital workers, each step taking her closer to the front of a crowd filled with people she had known for only a month. It would be her first attempt at saving a hospital. “Oh my God, I have to save these people’s jobs, and I haven’t even looked in their eyes yet,” Gideon remembers thinking….