Scoop has an Ethical Paywall
Work smarter with a Pro licence Learn More
Top Scoops

Book Reviews | Gordon Campbell | Scoop News | Wellington Scoop | Community Scoop | Search

 

Election Night, 2010, in Oakland, California

Election Night, 2010, in Oakland, California


Story and Images From Rosalea Barker


Click for big version

The California Nurses Association bus, which carried “Princess Carly” and “Queen Meg” to dog the two Republican candidates everywhere they went, parked opposite the Fox Theatre in Oakland.


Click for big version

The recently restored Art Deco theatre is home to the Oakland School for the Arts, one of the charter schools Jerry Brown started when he was Mayor of Oakland.


Click for big version

Scoop Media NZ being beyond the ken of Brown’s campaign staff, your not-so-intrepid columnist was ushered past the Honored Guest and General Admission signs to a side street, where she was ultimately refused entry to the Fox.

Advertisement - scroll to continue reading

Are you getting our free newsletter?

Subscribe to Scoop’s 'The Catch Up' our free weekly newsletter sent to your inbox every Monday with stories from across our network.

But I got some nice pix of the OSA students and those from the Oakland Military Institute—another of Brown’s charter schools—waiting until they were called on to do a turn when the old fella arrived to do his victory speech.


Click for big version

and


Click for big version

The side street was jammed with broadcast vans and their butterfly wings.


Click for big version

Only a couple of blocks away, in an empty lot next to Oaksterdam University from whence the statewide proposition to legalize and tax recreational use of marijuana stemmed (if you’ll forgive the pun), a crowd gathered to watch the election results come in.


Click for big version

Sadly, by 9:30, Prop 19 seemed to be losing.


Click for big version

And elsewhere, so were the Democrats.


Click for big version

Some desultory campaign workers sat in an Organizing for America storefront across the street from the Fox.


Click for big version

And in a corner of the store, were the tools of the Get Out The Vote trade—leaflets and ironing boards, and a sign saying Vote for Mom.


Click for big version

On the local scene, unless one candidate for Mayor of Oakland gets more than 50 percent of the vote tonight—which seems unlikely—the results of the Ranked Choice Voting tabulation won’t be available until Friday, November 5. That’s the same day on which former BART police officer Johannes Mehserle will be sentenced for his shooting of a young black man on the platform at Fruitvale BART station in the early hours of New Year’s Day, 2009.

I guess that must be why the Oakland Youth Radio building, across the intersection from where the Prop 19 event was being held, was having its windows boarded up. It is near where the mayhem occurred at the time of Mehserle’s conviction.

Then again…

*************

rosalea.barker@gmail.com
--PEACE—

© Scoop Media

Advertisement - scroll to continue reading
 
 
 
Top Scoops Headlines

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Join Our Free Newsletter

Subscribe to Scoop’s 'The Catch Up' our free weekly newsletter sent to your inbox every Monday with stories from across our network.