Crowded in the back of St. Vincent de Paul’s community center in downtown Oakland, dozens of people paint an extensive wood panel with a mosaic of images—trees, faces, buildings and flowers and words like “peace,” “love” and “kiss.”
Oakland is known nationwide for its reputation as one of the toughest, most urban, and unfortunately crime-ridden cities in America . Yet predicable newspaper headlines announcing the latest outbreak of violence paint a picture of “The Town” which only tells part of the story.
Hundreds of street murals brighten Oakland’s walls, painted by local artists, graffiti writers and collectives, like the Community Rejuvenation Project.
Local volunteers recently converged on a vacant lot at Seminary and Macarthur to install a native wildflower garden under the benevolent gaze of the freshly painted Egyptian deity Ptah Hotep.
A new mural is going up in Oakland, CA, courtesy of The Community Rejuvenation Project and the Arrow Soul Council of Oakland Unity High School.
So how do you rejuvenate a community? You can do it, one street at a time.
Early morning on New Year’s Day, 22-year-old Oscar Grant III was shot and killed in Oakland, California by a Bay Area Rapid Transit agency police officer. Grant was unarmed.
In other news, the Arrow-Soul Mural program at Unity High school recently completed a new mural for the school.
