A group called “Save our City! Alameda” has launched a 30-second ad. Here’s a list of supporters of the group (you’ll have to scroll down to see all the names), which include David Howard, Pat Bail, Art Lipow and David Kirwin. You can watch the ad (which I happened to catch as I was flipping channels the other night) below.
Below is Obama in a speech today in Ohio. We could stand to take some optimism from it, hope for the future from it. Don’t forget, the election is next Tuesday.
In addition to local races—City Council, Measure P, School Board—Alamedans, along with the rest of California, will be voting on Proposition 8, the anti-gay marriage initiative. It’s a serious civil rights issue (I don’t see how we can, in good conscience, deny people who are gay all the rights that come with marriage). I’ve posted below a clip from a very funny woman, Ellen DeGeneres. She’s not talking specifically about Prop. 8, but she says, among other things, “Maybe it’s because I’m gay that I feel that I think we should all be equal but I feel that we’re all equal.” And, “People are going to be who they are going to be and we need to love them for who they are and let them love who they want to love.”
Recent polling has found that a good percentage of Americans harbor negative sterotypes of black people, views that could lead them to vote against Barack Obama not because of his views on the economy or trade or the war on Iraq but because of the color of his skin. Here’s the AFL-CIO’s Richard Trumka bringing the issue to the fore.
What with all the craziness on the federal level—Bush asked for what amounts to a $700,000,000,000 blank check to bail out our major financial institutions—I think it’s worth dedicating some blog space here to the situation. Here’s CNN’s Campbell Brown:
But for real fun, here’s David Letterman, all fired up that McCain called in his last-minute regrets for a guest appearance on Wednesday’s Late Show. Letterman said in part (reacting to McCain’s ‘suspension’ of his campaign because of the financial crisis), “This doesn’t smell right. This isn’t the way a tested hero behaves.” Watch all of Letterman’s comments on McCain here:
The news making the Alameda email rounds is that Clifford Lane, a Brooklyn resident and the husband of Alameda High School graduate Megan Fenstermaker (’88), will be appearing on Conan O’Brian tonight. He’ll be performing, with his band Detroit Octane, their song, “Barack Obama-sistible.” (The song was also featured on a CNN newscast in April.) According to Island resident Amy Fenstermaker (Clifford’s sister-in-law) we can catch the performance at 12 or 12:30 a.m. Or you can watch the song below (Clifford is the bass player).
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For those of you who didn’t get out to Alameda Point to participate in the Kids’ Chalk Art Project—and, too, for those of you who did—here’s some video of the massive drawing and of Mark Wagner, who inspired the effort. (There’s an ad that precedes the video.)
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Okay, so KRON 4 doesn’t quite have all the details right (Measure H is not a ‘sports bond,’ for example). But our little parcel tax is getting network air time. And that’s kinda nice.
[Below you should see a YouTube-style insert of the video of the KRON story...but I have heard a report (thanks, HLA) that it's not working with some browsers. So if the video's not below, try this link....and, because the video may be messing with my formating, you may have to scroll down to find the rest of the blog.]
Thanks to Rob Siltanen over at School 94501/94502 for the heads up! Check out this video of Alamedans talking about the importance of fully funding our schools. (It’s worth your four minutes.)
Below, for your enjoyment, is a brief (49 seconds) video of snowy egrets nesting in Alameda. I have seen them often along the bay trail, and they’re quite in amazing in their skinny, narrow whiteness. Watch them here building their nests and making their almost-human-sounding egret calls.
