This piece was done in collaboration with the What’s Your Story? Project of KQED’s California Report. By Sabirah Mustafa I used to wish for a magic pill what would enable me to swallow away my […]
By Sabirah Mustafa If you attend town hall meetings, protests, and demonstrations, you may have heard the public demanding to be heard when public policies affect them. But when I recently attended two meetings – […]
By Sabirah Mustafa What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas. It’s an ad slogan with some truth to it. People take the phrase seriously, shunning those who come back from Sin City with perpetually loose […]
By Sabirah Mustafa If healthy is as healthy does, then the residents of Cleveland Heights just might live forever. Aside from the abundance of joggers, and the dogs walking their owners, there are free and […]
By Sabirah Mustafa Cleveland Heights has a lot of natural beauty, but requires diligent maintenance. Otherwise, leaves back up storm drains, and tree branches block out street lights and sidewalks. Blight and vandalism, while not […]
Like Sankofa – the mythical bird in West African culture that symbolizes going back to retrieve things lost in order to move forward – Michael Gibson also had to go back and reconnect, while he was incarcerated, with his own history. He regularly draws on his past struggles to help him improve his life, and those of others. […]
By Sabirah Mustafa Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes asked the question,”what happens to a dream deferred?” “Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?,” goes his famous poem Harlem, “or does it explode?” […]
By Sabirah Mustafa Do you want to feel good? Let go, and step into another world? If you live in Oakland, you don’t have to go far. Just downtown, at the corner of 14th Street […]
By Sabirah Mustafa – I began my journey through my family’s neighborhood in the Lake Merritt area of East Oakland. My starting point was on Lester Avenue. This diverse, working-to-middle class, ethnically mixed neighborhood, is what I’d like to call the “Oakland Riviera”. The name might seem misleading, because depending on which direction you walk, you might also find blight as well. Located within a three-block area of Lake Merritt, there is plenty of contrast – so much so that at times my journey felt like I crossed city limits into an entirely different town. […]
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