"Unbridled Passion"

"The attack, like many others to come during his decades on the political battlefield, never fazed him.
"'If it's radical to oppose the insanity and cruelty of the Vietnam War, if it's radical to oppose racism and sexism and all other forms of oppression, if it's radical to want to alleviate poverty, hunger, disease, homelessness, and other forms of human misery, then I'm proud to be called a radical,' he told a scrum of reporters at his campaign headquarters."

Rachel Swan at the San Francisco Chronicle reports the death of former congressman and Oakland mayor Ron Dellums.

"It's Ground Zero in the United States Right Now for This Kind of Intensity of High Housing Costs and Displacement"

"If Josephine Hardy’s landlord successfully evicts her from her home of 47 years in July, she said her first stop would probably be a relative’s couch hours away. After that, she doesn't know.
"Three generations of Hardy’s family are now being forced out of their home of five decades, a painful process that began after an engineer at Intel purchased the three-unit property they have long rented in West Oakland."

Sam Levin at The Guardian reports on how black working-class residents are being pushed out of Oakland, California.

"I Don't Think We Should Forget How It Was"

"Heavily based on Pond's life experiences, 'Over Easy' starts in 1978 during the death throes of the hippie era. Margaret, Pond's adorkable alter ego, has to drop out of the California College of Arts and Crafts for lack of finances. Next thing she knows, she's indulging her fantasies of being blue collar, working as a dishwasher at Imperial Cafe (a.k.a. Mama's Royal, still open to this day in Oakland). In this grease trap for frustrated artists and nascent punks, Margaret gets a freewheeling education in drugs, sex, punk rock, and slinging hash browns."


In the Los Angeles Times, Margaret Wappler talks with Mimi Pond about Pond's new graphic novel.

"A System of Higher Education that Is So Broken for So Many"

"That’s bad news for the Bay Area and California, bad news for the nation, and especially bad news for the working class. With nine out of the top ten skilled job openings in the next decade in California alone expected to require a post-secondary credential of some sort, the failure of the community colleges in a region otherwise characterized by booming growth will levy a major blow not only to the economy, but also to the very notion of upward mobility in this country."

In the Washington Monthly, Haley Sweetland Edwards claims that the San Francisco Bay Areas has "America's Worst Community Colleges."

"A Novel with the Grooviest Soundtrack since 'High Fidelity'"

"There are moments here and there in 'Telegraph Avenue' where Mr. Chabon, himself sounds as if he’s trying very hard 'to sound like he was from the ’hood,' but for the most part he does such a graceful job of ventriloquism with his characters that the reader forgets they are fictional creations. His people become so real to us, their problems so palpably netted in the author’s buoyant, expressionistic prose, that the novel gradually becomes a genuinely immersive experience—something increasingly rare in our ADD age."

Michiko Kakutani in The New York Times reviews Michael Chabon's Telegraph Avenue.

"Um…What Message?"

"Occupy started out well with its, 'We are the 99%' slogan. Simple and powerful, those remarks really did help to change the conversation in our political culture to one that at least addressed issues of income and wealth inequality. But…now what? There’s no demand in 'We are the 99%.' Just an assertion of aggrieved identity."

Rich Yeselson at the Washington Monthly criticizes Occupy Oakland.

So Gallantly Streaming

"Ramparts was very much a creature of the Bay Area's rebellious climate. It identified with the uprisings at Berkeley, endorsed the authority-questioning ethos of the Beats (although Hinckle spurned the hippies) and drew on the region's radical tradition. Scheer even ran for Congress in 1966, challenging an incumbent liberal Democrat in a district that included Oakland and Berkeley. (He lost.)"

 

In The New York Times, Jack Shafer reviews Peter Richardson's A Bomb in Every Issue: How the Short, Unruly Life of Ramparts Magazine Changed America.