Oakland Focus News | Oakland News Online Blog

I'm writing this from the comfort of a suburban Atlanta home office, listening to Darrel Carrey talk to the Oakland City Council regarding the need for jobs and the importance of redeveloping the Army Base. He is one of 75 speakers and 165 speaker cards (double-counting plus?) and there's a lot of emotion. While the favorite to win the right to negotiate with the Oakland Redevelopment Agency is AMB/CCG over Federal Oakland Partners, it seems in failing to communicate with the Oakland Film Center people, Phil Tagami, who represents the developer team, has angered a ton of folks and they've come to the Oakland City Council to express their anger. Well, not Darrel. Long-time Oakland activist Joyce Roy asked how a developer could get this far without talking to the Oakland Film community. Yikes. This is going to be a long agenda item. After about 50 speakers, the council's talking. Even with the film community's issues with how they perceive Phil treated th...

More at Zennie62.com | Follow me on Twitter! | Get my widget! | Visit YouTube | Visit UShow.com It was only a matter of time. Just a matter of a few years before the crime we read about and see in the mainstream media news outlets hit the new media circuit, specifically video distribution services like YouTube and now it's a regular happening, largely ignored by the blogs. No more, at least here in my blog network. I warn you. What you're about to see are a series of videos created in Oakland, California that are violent but give a real view of what's happening in East Oakland. The YouTube channel creating the videos in this case, there are other examples, is called "EASTOAKAND106" which is to give the location that's the focal point of their vlogging activity: the neighborhood around 106th avenue and Mac Arthur Boulevard in East Oakland and the nightime (and some times, daytime) "sideshows" that take place. The sideshow is a va...

More at Zennie62.com | Follow me on Twitter! | Get my widget! | Visit YouTube | Visit UShow.com To some the title of this blog may seem like a turnabout considering that I suggested mixing the development teams with AMB/CCG as master developer and Federal Oakland Associates working for them in redeveloping the Oakland Army Base, and it is just that. After a lot of thinking about this matter I decided to go with the AMB / CCG team flat out. My initial reasons for suggesting a mix of the teams were borne of my concern that the Federal Oakland Assocates / AMB/CCG organizations show a racial split - the first black and of color, the latter far less so when AMB Properties is considered. But with that, and I've noted this before, the AMB/CCG team brings credibility and California Commercial Investments President Phil Tagami has worked hard to bring to Oakland a billion-dollar organization that normally would have looked past our city. Give Phil credit for his hard wo...

More at Zennie62.com | Follow me on Twitter! | Get my widget! | Visit YouTube | Visit UShow.com In the story that will not die, we now learn that John Edwards, the former North Carolina Senator and VP running mate to John Kerry, now reportedly has a sex tape. According to Rush & Molloy, the gossip columnists of the New York Daily News , Edwards former aide Andrew Young just finished a book proposal that described first, that he is not the father of the child of Rielle Hunter, John Edwards mistress, second, that Young just happened to see a sexually-explicit videotape as he was unpacking after moving to California from the East Coast, where he lived with Rielle Hunter, Edwards' mistress, and Young's wife and family. The story is known by now: in August of 2008 , after the heat of the Democratic Primary had cleared and just before the Democratic National Convention, former Senator Edwards admitted he cheated on his wife Elizabeth starting in 2006, while she ...

More at Zennie62.com | Follow me on Twitter! | Get my widget! | Visit YouTube | Visit UShow.com A few weeks back I took a hard look at the proposals for the redevelopment of the Oakland Army Base and concluded that given the weaknesses of both, AMB/CCG (AMB Partners with California Commercial Investments) lacking really good cash flow analysis, and Federal Oakland Associates not having as much fiscal firepower but a complete proposal, and the racial split between them, that the two groups be combined. Well, two days later I received a rather curious phone call from someone who said "Zennie, for the purpose of this call, I can't tell you who I am, but I read your column and have some information for you. I'm going to send it to the San Francisco Chronicle Oakland office for you." Well, the person who called didn't even leave his phone number for me to call, let alone meet him " on the bottom level of an underground garage just over the Key Br...

More at Zennie62.com | Follow me on Twitter! | Get my widget! | Visit YouTube | Visit UShow.com Apparently someone was paying attention to my call for videos from last week's Richmond City Council meeting where I reported that California Attorney General Jerry Brown visited a packed council hearing room and got passed a resolution to allow him to get involved in the issue of the stopped Chevron plant construction order. A number of comments on my blogs pointed to video links but then out-of-the-blue, Chevron itself stepped forward with their video, and it's a good one: The video shows the workers impacted telling their stories in much the same way that laid off plant construction electrician Dennis Roos told his story to me. The video was apparently created last Tuesday, at the Richmond City Council hearing. One worker in the video said "I've got a family. I've got four girls. I've got a house payment. A car payment. I was really depend...

More at Zennie62.com | Follow me on Twitter! | Get my widget! | Visit YouTube | Visit UShow.com On YouTube.com This Sunday, August 2nd (yikes, two days before my birthday!) The San Francisco-based Richmond / Ermet AIDS Foundation ( REAF.org ) features the 15th annual presentation of "Help Is On The Way: No Business Like Show Business." I've attended this gala over the last four years and I've got to tell ya it’s a load of fun; a mix of a little serious, a lot of energy, and a ton of talent. (The video above is from last year's event, where San Francisco luminaries like Harry Denton were holding court in the pre-show auction lounge, joined by "Austin Powers" , "Dean Martin" , and others.) Before I explain why you should attend, let me give you some background. REAF was founded by Barbara Richmond and the late Peggy Ermet in memory of their sons, John Richmond and Doug Ermet, who both lost their lives to AIDS. In 1995, t...