Last month, I attended and told you about a racial healing circle at the Attitudinal Healing Connection Center. What I didn't mention in the blog was that when I walked in everyone was talking about a drive-by shooting that happened at the 100 Families Oakland event earlier that day at the YMCA at 3265 Market St .
Aeeshah Clottey, director of the Attitudinal Healing Center and coordinator of the 100 Families program said no one was hurt, but everyone was clearly upset by the violence that had put them all in danger.
Clottey said that one of the families who witnessed the incident told her that some young men in a white car drove down Brochhurst to Market Street and opened fired. They shot directly at some of the youth standing in front of the M. Robinson Baker YMCA.
The 100 Families Oakland program is a weekly gathering of residents from East Oakland, Fruitvale, Chinatown and West Oakland who share a meal together and work on art projects. This year’s theme is Art is Change – Collaboration is Power, Creating Connections. The purpose of the program is also to demonstrate and celebrate the power of families, the creative spirit of Oakland and how art can connect families to families, families to neighborhoods and neighborhoods to neighborhoods.
After the traumatic event, Clottey, residents from the 100 Families Oakland program and community and faith based organizations decided to organize a meeting to listen and talk about ways to build a violence prevention strategy. The Community Building to Eliminate Violence meeting will be held on Monday, April 7 at St. Mary’s Center, 925 Brochurst St.
After the shooting, Clottey said she spoke with the police officer who was doing the report. She asked for his support to meet with some of families who participate in the program. She asked if he would like to come to the gathering for dinner and to join them while they created art. Clottey said his response was: "This community does not like the police." She told him she lives in this community and pays taxes and that tax dollars pay the salaries of police officers. "If there is a perception that the community does not like the police then we must do something about this perception, because it impacts the safety of the community," she told him.
-- Kamika Dunlap -- Oakland Tribune
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Racial Healing Circle - LAST WEDNESDAY OF THE MONTH
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Wednesday, March 26, 2008 - 7:30PM to 9:30PM
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FILM: RACE: THE POWER OF AN ILLUSION
The division of the world's peoples into distinct groups - "red," "black," "white" or "yellow" peoples -
has became so deeply imbedded in our psyches, so widely accepted, many
would promptly dismiss as crazy any suggestion of its falsity. Yet,
that's exactly what this provocative, new three-hour series by
California Newsreel claims. Race - The Power of an Illusion questions the very idea of race as biology, suggesting that a belief in
race is no more sound than believing that the
sun revolves around the
earth.
Yet race still matters. Just because race doesn't exist
in biology doesn't mean it isn't very real, helping shape life chances
and opportunities.
Episode 3 - The House we Live In
asks, If race is not biology, what is it? This episode uncovers how
race resides not in nature but in politice, economics and culture. It
reveals how our social institutions "make" race by disproportionately
channeling resources, power, status and wealth to white people.
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