Free Republic

I'm lost amid boxes strewn about my apartment in Oakland, packing. This wasn't my intent when I moved here three years ago. Far from it. I moved West to live near family after 20 years of cold Cambridge winters. First stop: San Francisco. I found an apartment just blocks from the bay. Sailboats raced by with spinnakers flying; foghorns lulled me to sleep. But a new job in the East Bay beckoned. Tired of bridge traffic and high pump prices, I moved east again, only this was a shorter hop. I scouted neighborhoods for months. At the time, burglars were...

Susan Gluss may be one of the most recent Oakland residents to move on to safer, saner confines in the Bay Area, but she is by no means alone in her decision to call it quits. Gluss, and countless others like her, are the collateral damage - the civilian fallout - from the city's timid efforts to stem a series of crimes that have terrorized residents much of this year. The steady increase in crime since 2006 has raised residents' concern about personal safety and security to the level where that now vies with the city's underperforming school system as...

OAKLAND — Mayor Ron Dellums told hundreds of business leaders at the Oakland Marriott on Friday that city and state officials are on the verge of an "unprecedented" effort to work together to revitalize 470 city blocks across Oakland.His remarks were offered at the San Francisco Business Times' "Building Oakland" breakfast, and came one day after high-ranking city and state officials met in Oakland to discuss the project, called the California Urban Communities Collaborative.The effort will focus on four separate areas of Oakland, but Dellums offered little information on how it will work. He said more details will be available...

OAKLAND — After a 13-year-old boy threatened the lives of school staff members Thursday morning, police searched the boy's home and found seven loaded guns near his bedroom, school officials and police said today. Police confiscated the weapons, which included two rifles and a shotgun, and took the boy into custody on suspicion of making terrorist threats and threats to a public employee with intent to cause deadly or bodily harm. The boy attended Oakland Community Day School, an alternative school in the hills for middle and high school children who have been expelled. On Thursday morning, he appeared distraught,...

Berkeley's City Council will delve into national policy again next week when it votes whether to demand the United States charge Berkeley resident and former Bush adviser John Yoo with war crimes. Yoo, a tenured professor at UC Berkeley's Boalt Hall School of Law, wrote the memos offering legal justification for torture while he worked for the White House from 2001 to 2003.The five measures attacking Yoo were drafted by the city's Peace and Justice Commission, the same group that recommended that the city tell the Marines they were "unwelcome intruders." The City Council will vote Monday on the five...

Oakland, in the Jerry Brown years, practiced an unofficial policy of what might be called “community cleansing.” This is not to be confused with “ethnic cleansing,” the horrific activity in parts of, say, Eastern Europe or Central Africa where whole ethnic populations are violently and bloodily removed, either through exile or actual genocide. No, Mr. Brown’s “community cleansing” policies were far more genteel, involving little violence (though some—that’s what the whole Oakland Riders police scandal was about) and targeting not whole ethnic groups, but rather portions of the population that were considered as being “undesirables.” Part of this involved harassment,...

Sam Cooke's 1963 R/B single "A Change Is Gonna Come" was written during the civil rights movement. In the song Cooke sings, "It's been a longtime coming but I know a change is gonna come". Now 43 years later that change has come with the election of an African American President of the United States Barack Obama. Much work still needs to be done. At the Facing Race, A National Conference held November 13-15, 2008 at the Oakland Marriott people came together to start the process. In 2004 four years ago at the Race and Public Policy Conference held by...

Armed robbers terrorized Oakland restaurants and small businesses in three separate crime sprees over the past year. The first wave targeted Asian eateries and struck during the 2007 holiday season. The second arrived last spring and was more indiscriminate. The third struck in July and August. All three made newspaper headlines and led television newscasts, shining a spotlight on the city's out-of-control crime problem and the Oakland Police Department's apparent inability to cope with it. In fact, the department's public response to the takeover robberies was both odd and illuminating. The department's mantra for dealing with the city's crime spike...

OAKLAND — Leon Wiley laughed as an Alameda County Superior Court Judge today ordered the 30-year old to spend the rest of his life in prison. The former member of the notorious "Nut Case Gang" chuckled some more when family members of one of the three people he either killed or ordered to be killed talked about their loved ones. And, as Wiley was led out of the courtroom after a stern talking-to by Judge Joseph Hurley, he made sure to look both the judge and then family members in the eyes as he shouted his allegiance to the gang...

SAN FRANCISCO—Officials here want residents to celebrate Christmas this year without killing another tree. The San Francisco Department of the Environment and Friends of the Urban Forest say residents can pay $90 for a potted tree in their home that will be picked up and planted on a city street after the holidays. The trees offered—southern magnolia, small leaf tristania, strawberry and New Zealand Christmas trees—may not look traditional, but they all thrive in the area's climate. http://www.sfenvironment.org/greenchristmas

The Fox Theater restaurant is proving a hard hole to fill. Dozens of restaurateurs have toured the 3,000-square-foot space, and no fewer than eight have said they can’t make a project pencil out at that site due to Oakland’s living wage requirement. The Fox hole’s fortunes could be turning, however. Business proposals from restaurateurs were due Nov. 17, and three were submitted. Phil Tagami, whose firm, California Capital Group, has managed the Fox rebirth, said that two other parties unaware of the formal proposal process expressed interest in the site, despite the wage requirements. He declined to say who submitted...

OAKLAND — A 15-year-old gang associate was in critical condition Friday after he was wounded twice by his own gun during a struggle with a 32-year-old he pointed the weapon at, police said. The man, who police said was a former paratrooper in the Honduras army, was not hurt and waited for police to respond to where the confrontation happened. He gave a statement to investigators before he was arrested on suspicion of assault while the district attorney's office determines whether he acted in self-defense. Police would not release the name of the teen or the adult pending the district...

Call it the Anti-Mall. The tree-lined stretch of College Avenue heading south from the Rockridge BART station in Oakland is a shopping mecca for miles around. But no hordes of desperate customers lined up for steep discounts on Friday. In this shrinking economy, the small, independently owned shops that anchor the Rockridge district are pinning their survival not on cost-cutting but on the loyalty of a limited customer base whose lives and values they study closely. Nishan Shepard, the founding owner of the toy and baby supply store Rockridge Kids, can tell you that 740 infants are born at nearby...

Michael Dellums, the son of Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums, was denied parole once again today for his second-degree murder conviction for killing a reputed drug dealer in Oakland in 1979, according to Alameda County Deputy District Attorney Bill Boselli. Michael Dellums, 50, has been denied parole numerous times, most recently on Jan. 8, 2007, the same day that Ron Dellums was sworn in as Oakland's mayor. The California Board of Prison terms panel that presided over Michael Dellums' hearing today at the California State Prison, Solano, in Vacaville, where he is being held, decided he won't be eligible for another...

Less than two-thirds of Oakland schoolchildren tested in spring had a healthy body composition, according to state fitness measures, and less than half of the city's seventh- and ninth-grade students passed muster on tests of aerobic health, according to results released Tuesday by the California Department of Education. Each spring, public schools measure the strength, flexibility, aerobic capacity and body weight of students in the fifth, seventh and ninth grades. Children in Alameda schools did significantly better, on average, than children in Berkeley and Oakland. More than 76 percent of the Alameda district's fifth-graders were determined to be in good...

Indian chef explains the stories behind curryCurry is yummy and it is everywhere in the Bay Area. From the South Bay to North Bay, whether we are going out to eat Indian, Thai or Vietnamese food, chances are we are going to eat a dish filled with a lovely curry. It is that very reason that world-class chef Ranjan Dey, star of the PBS show "My India" and owner of New Delhi Restaurant, will break down the history and the stories behind curries from around the world. Dey will discuss the history of curry, including its spread and cultural effect...

OAKLAND — Oakland had the fifth-highest crime rate among U.S. cities in 2007, according to a widely followed but controversial report released Monday by the publishing company CQ Press. Richmond ranked No. 9. Oakland dropped one spot in the rankings after finishing No. 4 in last year's report. That was of little consolation for Oakland officials, even as they said they believe the city is on the right track with its public safety programs. "We are obviously disappointed that we're not the fifth-safest city in the nation," police Chief Wayne Tucker said. "To explain why we're (No. 5), I think...

OAKLAND — She was a familiar sight in the upper Fruitvale neighborhood: a quiet, tiny, 80-year-old Chinese woman who wore a straw hat while collecting cans and other recyclables to earn spending money for her grandchildren. She would smile when residents would try to talk to her, but her lack of English made conversation impossible. The woman, who never bothered anyone, was fighting for her life Friday, the day after three men beat her unconscious with fists and feet and the broomstick she used to carry the plastic bags filled with her haul, then stood over her and laughed, police...

(11-23) 18:07 PST -- The idea of making San Francisco the first city in the nation to combat congestion by imposing a toll on motorists who drive on the local roads is "totally doable" from an administrative standpoint, a top city transportation official deemed. But clearing the necessary political and public opinion hurdles is another matter altogether. Charging people more for anything is always a tough sell. Talk about reaching deeper into people's pockets when the economy is in the tank is even more difficult. "We're going to have to get buy-in," said Jose Luis Moscovich, executive director of the...

A Millbrae high school teacher who was arrested after installing a video camera in the ceiling of a girls' restroom at the school was sentenced this morning to two years in state prison, San Mateo County Chief Deputy District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe said. David Lista, 36, will also have to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life and was ordered to pay $6,700 in restitution to the San Mateo Union High School District, Wagstaffe said. Lista, a Belmont resident who taught English and leadership at Mills High School, pleaded no contest on Aug. 28 to felony...