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This video is based on the lawsuit that Bob won and is discussed below and here. Kids Get $3M in Mom's Death Montereyherald.com June 20, 2007 Original Montereyherald.com article: Kids Get $3M in Mom's Death A Monterey County jury awarded almost $3 million to the children of a woman killed when a Monterey cypress toppled on her car on Highway 1 north of Moss Landing on New Year's Day last year. 'There was a message with this,' said Bob Schock, an attorney representing two of Jacine Calderon Sarmiento's children. 'After the verdict, the jurors said they hoped the state of California would do something about the trees along the highways.' Sarmiento, 45, was driving along Highway 1 during a raging storm on Jan. 1, 2006, with her 5-year-old daughter when the tree fell on her vehicle. Sarmiento was killed and her daughter, Athena, suffered minor injuries. At the time, emergency crews reported that two other cypress trees from the grove along the highway fell ...

From the Barack Obama website -- link in the title of this post. Oakland/Northern California HQ Opening with BLACKALICIOUS (Meeting) We are extremely excited to announce our FREE Grand Opening party with special musical guest Blackalicious! Live and in person, in the middle of 14th Street in downtown Oakland! "Like a few other West Coast rap acts, including the Pharcyde and Jurassic 5, Blackalicious has generally favored what hip-hoppers call the "positive tip"; in other words, its lyrics have often been spiritual and uplifting rather than violent or misogynous. Like a lot of experimental alternative rappers, Blackalicious can be quirky and eccentric; nonetheless, spirituality is a big part of the group's music." It's going to be AMAZING. Don't miss it. WHEN: Sunday, September 30, 1:00 PM WHERE: 436 14th Street, 3rd Floor - directly in front of the 14th Street exit of the Oakland City Center BART station, between Broadway and Franklin. WHO: Everyone! ...

VSmoothe attacks Mayor Dellums for taking credit for the Shorenstein Building on the T-12 site downtown. A building in the design and planning process since 2000.

Councilmember Laurence E. Reid City of Oakland 7th District Councilmember Laurence (Larry) E. Reid represents the interests of District 7 residents in the City of Oakland. Larry was elected in November 1996, and was sworn in to a four-year term on January 6, 1997. Larry's motto and mission is "to make a difference and improve the quality of life of those who elected me." Larry Reid is a native of Cincinnati, Ohio where he began his career in politics. Following a distinguished tenure in the military, Larry became a political aide to the Mayor of Cincinnati. Shortly thereafter, presidential hopeful Walter Mondale hired Larry to work on his campaign staff. During this period, Larry ventured to California where he met then Assemblymember Elihu M. Harris, which began a long and productive relationship. Larry accepted a position as legislative aide to Assemblymember Harris, serving in the State Assembly for six years. When Assemblymember Harris put in his bid fcr Mayor of Oakl...

The 55,000 square-foot Whole Foods Market has just opened today at 27th and Harrison and brings good news and the promise of reviatalization to an area that has been waiting for both for too long. I was given a tour of the new place one day before its opening by Jolyn Bibb, Marketing Specialist of Store Openings for Whole Foods. While the video shows the store and what Jolyn said, I can tell you its quite a place to be in. A breath of fresh air. There's an official opening today which begins with a "Bread and Baking" ceremony at 8:45 am before the doors open at 9 AM. Through the day there will be music, food samples, and a guest appearance by famous local chef Paul Bertolli. Plus, reusable Whole Foods Market Green Bags will be given to the first 5,000 customers with a purchase of $15 or more, and a raffle for a giant gift basket filled with a variety of products. There's a lot of food stations in this facility as well. There's something called a dine-i...

15X PC148 (A)(1) OBSTRUCT/RESIST/ETC PUBLIC/PEACE OFFICER/EMERGENCY MED TECH 11-Sep-07 23:21 301 E 18TH ST 15X PC242 BATTERY 13-Sep-07 17:05 745 CLEVELAND AV 15X PC243 (B) BATTERY ON PEACE OFFICER/EMERGENCY PERSONNEL/ETC 11-Sep-07 23:21 301 E 18TH ST 15X PC243 (E)(1) BATTERY:SPOUSE/EX SPOUSE/DATE/ETC 10-Sep-07 02:26 15X PC243 (E)(1) BATTERY:SPOUSE/EX SPOUSE/DATE/ETC 15-Sep-07 02:00 15X PC243 (E)(1) BATTERY:SPOUSE/EX SPOUSE/DATE/ETC 16-Sep-07 23:29 15X PC459 BURGLARY-NO FORCE RESIDENTIAL 13-Sep-07 13:00 655 MACARTHUR BLVD 15X PC459 BURGLARY-FORCIBLE ENTRY RESIDENTIAL 14-Sep-07 07:00 47 EXCELSIOR CT 15X PC484 (A) THEFT SHOPLIFTING 11-Sep-07 23:21 301 E 18TH ST 15X PC484 (A) THEFT:PERSONAL PROPERTY OTHER 13-Sep-07 00:00 1023 MACARTHUR BLVD 15X PC487 E GRAND THEFT:DOG OTHER 11-Sep-07 23:30 709 MACARTHUR BLVD 15X PC594 (A) VANDALISM 11-Sep-07 13:10 1000 MACARTHUR BLVD 15X PC594 (B)(4) VANDALISM [UNDER $400] 16-Sep-07 12:00 627 MONTCLAIR AV 15X VC10851 (A) VEHICLE THEFT - AUTO OTHER 10-Sep-0...

This is from a Yahoo! Message board for the Adams Point community.. It expresses the outrage and pain of many who have been assaulted for no reason in downtown Oakland and the surrounding area. For me, I walk from BART to a restaurant many times at night and nothing has happened, but that's no reason not to have feelings for those who seem to appear vulnerable to attackers. Dear Mr. Mayor, My co-worker was mugged last night in downtown Oakland last night as we were talking on the phone about commuting to work in the morning. She lives a couple blocks from the area that prosecutors call the Axis of Evil because so many crimes occur there. Do you know where the Axis of Evil is? It is right outside of your office at City Hall. A sex offender across the street from me is suspected of participating in the kidnapping and repeated rape of a 15-year-old girl last month -- but our two child endangerment investigators are each carrying a load of more than 200 active cases and they don...

This has been a controversial issue in the Adams Point area. 401 Fairmount is currently a rather slumy dwelling not far from the new Whole Foods store still under construction. Apparently, AHA wants to obtain the City of Oakland's help in buying and then renovating this place. On the surface, it seems like a good idea. But for some reason, certain people don't want the City of Oakland to spend money on AHA to improve it. Check out this email message from one concerned resident: I just drove by the building the housing advocates want to buy. It is one of the two Pearl Street hell holes that have been repeatedly raided by OPD and the state bureau of narcotics. It's just up the block from where the man was murdered for his parking place. This makes me so mad. The building is owned by a couple who lives on Skyline Boulevard and who has two other properties in our neighborhood, also run down, though not as badly as 401 Fairmount. Indeed, 401 Fairmount is the most dilapidated...

C.J. Walton's a Richmond-based realtor who posted this at activerain.com But beyond the tragedy of the sellers, there was the tragedy of the perfectly prepared, and perfectly priced condos that are not getting the traffic that they deserve. My client has found a wonderful deal, and yet there is one Lake Merritt Condo that is still out there, that I can't get out of my head. Imagine coming home to an Italian spa every night. This condo had it all exquisite bathrooms, wonderful kitchen, smart use of light and space and it has sat on the market for over 2 weeks. This beautiful condo is the tragedy of a glut of inventory. It isn't that people don't want to buy, it is that there is so much inventory to get through that it is hard to find that needle in the haystack. By the way, this beautiful condo is not my listing. But if you want the address just email and I will give it to you. My point is this, of the many condos I visited, this one had most of competition out dist...

Yikes! This is totally terrible news. The blogger -- mparent7777-2 -- is right; who else has been doing this and getting away with it? This story represents a perfect example of why the government needs to be limited in its power and why our privacy as citizens needs to be protected. Benjamin Robinson, a 40-year old government agent from Oakland, CA within the Department of Commerce, has been charged with illegally accessing a Homeland Security Database in order to stalk his ex-girlfriend and her family. His indictment by a federal grand jury in San Jose this week was in connection with allegations that he accessed the Treasury Enforcement Communications System (TECS) over 163 times to track the woman’s movements. Robinson is being charged with making false claims to a government agency and unlawfully accessing data from a protected computer (seems the computer wasn’t very secure at all). If found guilty, Robinson could face a $500,000 fine and a maximum of up to 10 years in prison....

Paul Rosynsky, who writes for the Oakland Tribune, wrote this blockbuster article for the Oakland Post. It reveals major errors in that the Oakland Police failed to record interviews between the murder suspect and Yusuf Bey 1V, leading to an observation that some kind of deal was made. Here's Paul. By Paul T. Rosynsky Oakland Tribune Staff Writer Special to the Oakland Post For a high-profile murder case, the slaying of Oakland Post Editor Chauncey Bailey was solved with lightning speed. Less than 48 hours after Bailey was killed Aug. 2 as he walked to work in downtown Oakland, police had a taped confession from a Your Black Muslim Bakery handyman claiming responsibility. It was a victorious moment. The police had solved a crime that had brought national scorn on Oakland and its growing crime problem. Bailey was the first journalist since 1993 killed on U. S. soil for doing his job. But as the confessed killer, Devaughndre Broussard, 19, appeared in court Thursday to enter his...

Mayor Ron Dellums made a decision to avoid adding more police to help deter the ever-present spectre of crime in Oakland. Not surprisingly, some people are up in arms about this. Here's what I found on the Topix site: Oakland Dimond... ya gotta be kidding me! he says he wants to form a community policing program. WTF is that? so, on top of me paying $13,000/year in property taxes, i have to be a guardian angle for Oakland. fine, PAY ME THEN! excerpt: Dellums says he has no plans to significantly increase the number of Oakland police officers, despite the reality that Oakland's under-sized force of nearly 740 officers is roughly half the size of cities of comparable size. "I don't believe the (Oakland) residents support the idea of a huge increase in the police force," he said. "Measure Y was passed to accommodate those needs. "In lieu of more police, we think community policing is the answer." On this point the mayor and I agreed to disagree, bec...

From the RCPC website at Rockridge.org The Rockridge Kitchen Tour, a fundraiser for the Rockridge Community Planning Council (RCPC), debuted in 1995 and has continued to be a sterling biennial fall event ever since. This year’s tour is our seventh and it features, as always, nine remodeled or renovated kitchens in the Rockridge neighborhood. The 2005 tour attracted over 750 guests who were treated to unique kitchens such as the Hudson Street kitchen, personalized for easy accessibility for its wheelchair-bound owner, and the owner-renovated 1914-inspired kitchen on Taft Avenue. This year, the selection committee considered a record number of exquisite kitchens—twice as many as ever before. The final selections are remarkable not only for their spectacular designs, but for their innovative use of materials and clever tailoring to suit homes small and large, Craftsman and contemporary. This year’s tour proudly includes a resident artist’s kitchen with its owner’s paintings adding bril...

I hate to write this, but if someone comes to me at Strada like the way this person did they're off to jail. What's so bad is that others allowed this to happen. I know we're not supposed to fight back, but -- why? Why not? I mean if someone's going to come up to me and try to take my business possessions, why can't I fight them? Crime wave targeting Cal students Armed robber snatches 6 laptops in one of many brazen offenses By Doug Oakley, STAFF WRITER Article Last Updated: 09/13/2007 08:38:54 AM PDT Click photo to enlargeAlison Duncan Kerr, right, works with her back against the wall at Cafe Strada across from UC...«123»University of California, Berkeley, students are being kicked, punched and robbed at gunpoint in an alarming wave of violent crime on and around campus. Armed robberies on campus and in the nearby neighborhood usually increase at the start of the school year, according to police. But this year, the number of robberies has gone way up since sch...

Phil Tagami , developer of The Rotunda Building and The Fox Theater, and always interested in the new and innovative, has embarked on something very new media, and that's because it's new media. It's called "Tagami Vision" and is less an expression of his point of view and more a presentation of what others -- including me -- think of Oakland. Phil started dabbling in video-blogging at the behest of his brother Ted Tagami, who's established a great reputation in buying ads for new media companies. Ted, like myself, has a video channel on Blip.tv and had Phil start his own channel . But that idea and channel have morphed into the high quality presentation that is Tagami Vision . Tagami Vision has District Attorney Tom Orloff, Oakland City Attorney John Russo, and others as guests and more people in the future. It's only a matter of time before it becomes appointment Internet viewing. It's that good.

SF Chronicle Columnist Chip Johnson and The ANG Newspaper Group is calling for Oakland School Board Member Chirs Dobbins to step down. Here's the story, but I'm not using Chip's column here as to read his account makes the matter sound as if they were having regular sex. There's no proof of that kind of relationship, but it doesn't look good, that's for sure. I have to admit that much of this seems like people wanting to engage in gossip. BUT, Chris should have had better judgement than to take up the kind of association that's being reported. But I only met him once, during a rally to save the Oakland A's. It's too bad all around because Chris seemed to be totally into his position on the school board. On second thought, maybe too much so. Here's another account... Oakland school board member Chris Dobbins went on several dates with a 17-year-old girl, sent her inappropriate text messages and e-mail, and had several late night rendezvous...

This wonderful video was passed to me via a link by a YouTube contributor. You simply must watch it. I'm very happy that we as a group are finally coming together to take control of our image and debunk myths. Click here for more information on "What Black Men Think."