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  I attended the opening event for what promises to be a great restaurant called Pican, when Councilmember Larry Reid informed me that Cleveland Bellow, a long-time friend who I got to know first when I was a columnist for The Montclarion between 1993 and 1996 passed away and his memorial is tomorrow, Thursday, at Taylor Methodist Church.   It's sad when a person who was known for so much life leaves this Earth.  Cleveland was a ball of creative, expressive energy who never seemed to age and was always a joy to be around.  This description of him on his website says it all: Oakland Bay Area artist, Cleveland Bellow, began his lifelong career as an "activist" artist back in the heady days of the Civil Rights Movement. Influenced by the words and deeds of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, the leaders of the Black Panther Party, and campus reformers, he became a dedicated and tireless contributor to the community. Edu...

My good friend Hala Hijazi  has a firm called " Professionals VIP  " which over the past five years has developed into a kind of meeting place for the Bay Area's movers and shakers and last night's event, held at the Neiman Marcus Rotunda and hosting Morisson and Forrester Partner and Obama For America Northern California Chair Attorney Tony West, was no exception with about 150 people in attendance. At the affair I had the pleasure of talking with both former Mayors of Oakland and San Francisco respectively Elihu Harris and Willie Brown about the chances of Don Perata winning the Oakland Mayor's Race and both gave answers at separate times but said the same thing: that Perata would win the Mayor's Race...if he's not indicted, first.   Sources including those reported earlier this year in the East Bay Express  , believe that the State Senator will be indicted on public corruption charges, but that was as far back as July; it's December and nothin...

Ok, how does one explain an unprecedented KTVU video report on Mayor Ron Dellums spending and "high life" habits as leader of our City? Hey, Jerry Brown's not cheap either, but he never got that kind of coverage at all. Someone's out to get Dellums, and what's blocking his ability to recover his image is the fact that he does not believe in working with image-makers, the press, or PR people. That's a fact, folks. Dellums' staff has asked him to "get help" in this area, but he's resistant to the whole deal. Now, I think someone sees Dellums as vulnerable to bad press, so they piled it on. But the simple fact is that Jerry Brown also "lived it up" you just didn't read about it much, or cared. Mayor Elihu Harris didn't do that. It's not his style and he really cares about the office and what people would think. So it's not a case of someone picking on Dellums for reasons of race, just to get that out of the way, b...

This is a 20 minute movie on the dramatic event that was the convention held in Oakland, CA to elect delegates to represent the 9th Congressional District in Oakland and Barack Obama. It drew 2,000 people. If you live in Oakland and are politically involved, you're going to see someone you know in this video. It was really a kind of homecoming for people in Oakland politics and of course Oaklanders who have been involved with the Obama campaign. I thank the people in the video from Peralta Community College District Chancellor Elihu Harris to my friends, all of whom are in the movie and listed, and the delegate winners in this movie who are just some of the Oaklanders that will represent Barack Obama at the Democratic National Convention, Jennifer Pae, Fred Feller , Mark Friedman, Ayelet Waldman , and Darlene Brooks. The estimate of 2,000 people was my own and came from first, eyeballing the event, second from figuring that of 101 candidates, each had perhaps 10 people aver...