It’s 9 a.m. in the morning, and more than 200 people have gathered at Columbian Gardens recreation center to wait for their weekly produce from the Alameda County Food Bank.

Thirty Fremont preschoolers at Glankler School got a head start in global learning skills last Thursday afternoon via a folk tale from Afghanistan and a visit from a member of Fremont’s Police department. By SHILANDA WOOLRIDGE

Surfing the world wide couch. from Alba Mora on Vimeo.
By Alba Mora/Special to Oakland North
Would you ever let two strangers crash on your couch? Recently reporter Alba Mora welcomed two couchsurfers into her Berkeley home.

Diana Montaño/OaklandNorth
Last month, a youth curfew ordinance was voted down by the City Council’s Public Safety Committee. And while the ordinance failed to become law, it did succeed in rousing the voice of Oakland’s youth.
[audio:http://oaklandnorth.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/curfew.mp3]

Brittney Johnson/510Report
Scenes from an Auction: As the number of Bay Area foreclosures skyrockets, so does the amount of auctions selling foreclosed homes at a fraction of their original price. Watch potential buyers vie for bargains at a recent auction.

Ali Winston/Special to the 510Report

East 14th Street, more commonly known as International Boulevard, runs from Lake Merritt, through the heart of East Oakland and down through San Leandro.
The boulevard cuts through Vietnamese, Mexican and African-American communities, reflecting city’s diversity. On weekends, the streets in Fruitvale and near Lake Merritt bustle with life.
Other stretches are more desolate – dust gathers in empty store windows, graffiti hints at tensions between street gangs and prostitutes ply their trade at all hours of the day.
Additional link: Exotic Escort on Craigslist

By Huda Ahmed/Oakland North
When I knocked on the door of an apartment building in East Oakland, a woman’s voice nervously asked who I was. The voice belonged to a 45-year-old woman who wishes to be identified only as S. Mohamad because she fears prosecution in her native Iraq; she is a former radiologist who came here as a refugee three months ago along with her husband and their three children. She hid behind the door because she was without a headscarf; Muslim women usually wear one to cover their hair …

BY CASEY MINER AND HUDA AHMED  The 12th St. corridor in Oakland is a 12-lane freeway sandwiched between two perfectly normal city streets. There are no crosswalks or traffic lights, but morning commuters don’t care; the quickest way to BART is to look both ways and hope for the best.

By Anna McCarthy
A peaceful demonstration over the recent fatal shooting by a BART police officer escalated into violence last night in downtown Oakland
Hundreds of demonstrators gathered at the Fruitvale BART station at 3 p.m .Wednesday to protest the death of 22-year-old Oscar Grant, a Hayward resident shot by the BART officer, 27-year-old Johannes Mehserle, in the early morning hours of January 1 on the Fruitvale BART station platform in front of dozens of witnesses.  Since the incident occurred, cell phone footage of the shooting, available on the Internet and other …

By Anna McCarthy/510 Report
“Happy New Year’s Eve, I love you, and may God Bless Your Family.”
That was the text that Cephus Johnson said he sent to his nephew, 22-year-old Oscar Grant III, at 12:49 a.m. on Thursday.  But Grant never responded, and a little more than an hour later he was shot in the back and killed on the Fruitvale BART station platform by a BART police officer, according to cell-phone videos and eye-witness accounts of the incident.
BART officials said there is no video footage of the incident available from …