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California lawmakers extend fight to keep Alta Bates open in Berkeley

At the eleventh hour of this year’s legislative session, state lawmakers passed a bill that may stop Sutter Health from closing its Alta Bates Summit Medical Center in Berkeley. The proposed law, Senate Bill 687 by local state Sen. Nancy Skinner, would give the attorney general authority to review and approve any nonprofit hospital looking to close its doors. After a 42-23 vote by the Assembly this past Friday evening, it’s on its way to Gov. Jerry Brown’s desk. Sutter…

California lawmakers to vote on bill that could prevent closure of Alta Bates medical center

It’s the final week of this year’s legislative session, and East Bay lawmakers are pushing a bill that could stop Sutter Health from shuttering its Alta Bates Summit Medical Center in Berkeley. Senate Bill 687, by local state Sen. Nancy Skinner, would require the attorney general to review and approve the closure of any emergency rooms run by nonprofits. Proponents say the law would preserve Californians’ access to emergency medical services. Skinner authored the bill after Sutter announced it would…

We’re off for the summer — see you in September!

Richmond Confidential is a project of the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, and now that it’s summer, our students are on break to work internships at other publications. We’ll be back to train a new class of student reporters in early September. Please feel free to explore the site and our past coverage. Our student journalists have been covering Richmond since fall, 2009, and have created more than 4,000 articles, videos, audio pieces and multimedia projects about life in the city. You can…

At a mulching party, East Bay residents learn how to convert lawns to gardens

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…

Richmond sports community uses soccer as a vehicle for change

Alonzo Del Mundo and Nicolas Brenes Jr. are the first-ever  student-athletes from Leadership Public School-Richmond to receive full, Division I scholarships to play soccer at U.C. Berkeley and San Jose State, respectively. The Richmond duo is also setting the path for future soccer players to make their way out of the city and into the world of college soccer. The two are also part of a much bigger effort, one that sees sports as a way to change a community and its…

Portraits of East Bay Activists: Tassiana Willis

Long before the 2016 election, there was a civil rights culture that was created by Americans of color. Many of today’s political demonstrations are influenced by historical figures like Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, and the Black Panthers, all who fought in the long battle against racism. Even protests like the recent Women’s March, some would argue, derived from previous demonstrations of people of color. In 1997, in Philadelphia, for example, activist Phile Chionesu formed the Million Woman March,…