By Samson Reiny/Oakland North
Many of Oakland’s community health problems can be traced to a history of bad city planning and land use, an expert from the Alameda County Public Health Department (ACPHD) said last Wednesday during a panel discussion at the American Institute of Architects East Bay offices in downtown Oakland. 
 
Sandra Witt, the County’s deputy director of planning policy and health equity, referred often to a report published last year called “Life and Death from Unnatural Causes: Health and Social Inequity in Alameda County,” as she argued that historical segregation, …

by Elise Craig and Melanie Mason/Oakland North
Upstairs, cell phones are charging. In the kitchen, snapshots of kids in football jerseys plaster the fridge. And in the living room, auctioneer Danny Green is selling this family home to the highest bidder.
Green’s voice ping-pongs across the room, a jumble of syllables and numbers that mark that characteristic auctioneer dialect, albeit one lightly seasoned by his Texan twang. There are elements of the soft sell – “lot of house for the money!”- and sometimes a harder sell — “you’re missing the …

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.

Oakland’s “Unity for the Sake of Change” Presidential Inauguration
Community Viewing at the Oracle Arena
January 20, 2009
Presented in part by Alameda County Board of Supervisor’s Keith
Carson, District 5 Supervisor.

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 …

William Wong is a renowned journalist and writer who was born and grew up in Oakland’s Chinatown. He is the author of Yellow Journalist: Dispatches from Asian America and Images of America: Oakland’s Chinatown and a co-author of Images of America: Angel Island.
510report’s Guo Shipeng interviewed him for a story on the 65th anniversary of the repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act, which fell on Wednesday, December 17. Wong responded to Guo’s questions with long and interesting answers, in which he told about his parent’s hard journey for a better …

Special thanks to Chinese Historical Society of America for the exhibition photos. Click HERE to view the exhibition online.
By Guo Shipeng
It was a tranquil afternoon in the heart of the Oakland’s Chinatown on Wednesday, December 17.
Guan Shujuan was watching her four-year-old daughter playing around the “Junk Boat”, a replica of one used by early Chinese immigrants to sail across the Pacific and a popular play structure for kids on the Lincoln Square.
“What act? Anti-Chinese act?” the slightly built woman looked bewildered when asked if she had heard of the …

U Kovida is a 24-year-old monk living in Oakland as a refugee.  He is wanted by the Burmese military junta for leading protests in September 2007.