If you are interested in reporting or blogging for OaklandSeen or submitting community news, please send an email to editor@oaklandseen.com.  We are interested in publishing your videos, photos and events as well.

Aimee Allison is the publisher and founder of OaklandSeen.com – and is host/producer of the KPFA Morning Show and Comcast Newsmakers in the Bay Area.  A graduate of Stanford University, she is the author of Army of None and recently completed the Knight Foundation Independent Journalist Training at the University of California at Berkeley.

Pamela Mays McDonald is the managing editor of OaklandSeen.  A former senior administrator with The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, and the creator of many memorable cultural events, she is the founder and CEO of Cultural Cross Currents, a San Francisco Bay Area consulting firm dedicated to making the world a better place and fostering change, by bringing people together through culture and the arts. Her specialty is research-based professional services for creative organizations and individuals.  She is an avid student of trends and social change, while having served as a mentor to many creative professionals in several countries. Her commentaries and presentations have been published in a variety of media venues and world languages.

Betty Olson-Jones was born in Minnesota and raised overseas in India, Italy and the Ivory Coast, where she became fluent in Hindi, Italian, French and Spanish.  After college she came to the Bay Area and became active in the anti-Vietnam war movement.  Betty settled in Oakland with her husband 30 years ago. Their son went to Oakland public schools where Betty became involved as a volunteer, and later as a bilingual Spanish teacher in Oakland. She taught at Allendale and Sequoia Elementary Schools before being elected four years ago as President of the 2,700 member Oakland Education Association, which represents public school teachers and other education professionals.  Though she misses being in the classroom, she finds it energizing to be on the front lines fighting for every child’s right to an excellent public education, and speaks out passionately wherever she can against the growing privatization of our education system.

Reverend Byron Williams has served as pastor of the Resurrection Community Church since 2002.  As the only pastor/syndicated columnist in the country, Williams writes a twice weekly social/political column for the Oakland Tribune. His column appears in numerous publications and several progressive web sites across the country.

Princeton professor Cornel West considers Byron’s work groundbreaking and historic.” The Rev. Dr. J. Alfred Smith, Sr. of Allen Temple Baptist Church calls Byron “the Reinhold Niebuhr of his day.”

Williams is also the author of “Strip Mall Patriotism: Moral Reflections of the Iraq War”, a series of essays covering a four-year span on America’s enterprise in Iraq.  His forthcoming book project is entitled “Inconvenient Love: Essays by African American Clergy and Theologians in support of LGBT Rights.” In 2010, Williams’ work was nationally recognized when was nominated by GLAAD as “Columnist of the Year.”

Williams has spoken throughout the country, he has appeared on numerous television and radio news programs, including CNN, ABC Radio, Fox News, and National Public Radio.

Joel Tena works for East Bay Housing Organizations (EBHO), an affordable housing advocacy group based in Oakland. Prior to EBHO, Joel worked for the Oakland City Council, taught in public schools, organized Latin American solidarity delegations, and worked on domestic violence issues. He has organized for numerous electoral contests, and has served for six years on the Board of Directors of Centro Legal de la Raza, a 40 year old legal aid organization in Oakland’s Fruitvale District. He is a long time Oakland resident and proud papa of budding social justice organizer and drummer, 2 year old Coyotzin.

John Knox White spends far too much of his time attending meetings about transportation, talking about transportation and reading about transportation. In his work for TransForm, he joins over 30 advocates working to create world-class public transportation and walkable communities in the Bay Area and beyond. He has worked on East Bay transportation issues for nearly a decade as a former member of the Alameda Transportation Commission, and active transit and bicycling advocate. He lives in Alameda with his wife and two sons, but spends much of his day in the great City of Oakland.

Richard Wright (aka dj fflood), a 1st generation Jamaican born in New York City and loving living in OAKLAND) is a dj, student, community organizer, and writer. As a dj he has been musically transporting crowds with his intuitive, driving, and eclectic style for 25 years. From the sound clashes of Kingston, to the warehouses of New York City, to the clubs of Europe, the art houses of San Francisco, and lounges and lofts of Oakland, his exceptional sense of selection and connection to the crowd has become his signature.

He is the founder of the Oakland Love Uprising known as New Life. He can be heard at Oakland’s new hot spot Era on 2nd Saturdays and 3rd and 4th Fridays, as well as places like Jupiter, Levende East and farmerbrown. Richard is one of the founders of MAAAN UP! (Men Of African Ancestry Action Network for Unlearning Patriarchy, and when he isn’t doing schoolwork for his Transformative Social Change MA, he writes in his fem.men.ist blog, where he expresses some of his feminist/activist/gender politic stances. fflood sees himself as community oriented, a strong feminist, an advocate of polyamory, and an unapologetic straight ally. He is a music lover who aims to build spaces where communities can find healing, rejuvenation, connection, and inspiration, and has a really good time doing it.

Roseann Torres was born in Stockton, California, and lived there until moving to San Francisco to attend SF State University.  She received a BS in Marketing in 1992, and worked for a few years in that area before attending law school at Albany Law School in Albany, New York.  She returned to California for the Bar exam and became an attorney in January 2000.

She initially worked as an attorney in Stockton where she was employed by San Joaquin County.  She worked at the County Counsel’s office for two years and a Deputy County Counsel.  There, she represented various county agencies in legal matters including litigation.  Then she worked at the District Attorney’s office also for about two years as a Deputy District Attorney.  For the past five and a half years, after moving to Oakland, she has been self-employed practicing in the areas of criminal defense, family law, bankruptcy and personal injury. She is in court on a daily basis, and employs two part time staff and one part time attorney.

For the majority of her career as an attorney, she has consistently volunteered in one way or another with community based organizations, or through youth programs.  For the past three years, she has been a volunteer at Centro Legal De La Raza at their family law clinic providing free consultations.  She also speaks at various events promoting diversity in the legal field, primarily targeting Black and Latino populations.  Overall, she is very active in her local community and civically engaged.

Tracy Watson is a self-love high-priestess who has been willfully and gleefully single most of her adult life. She has made several appearances on “The Last Single Girls” youtube webisodes. Her guide-book “be seduced! (the cheeky guide to being happily single)”, debunks the notion of singledom as a mere pit-stop to couplehood and presents a new paradigm for being “in love” as a state of life we can experience with or without a partner. Ms. Watson has lived in Oakland for the better part of 10 years, and when she’s not building her start-up publishing house, or working on the next book in her self-love series, she’s likely to be finding new and better ways to be in love everyday! Email your questions or comments to Tracy at tandt@ourworldbooks.net.

Partner Organizations:

EBASE advances economic and social justice by building power and raising standards for working families. In our vision, all workers earn enough to live in dignity. Economic opportunity is broadly shared, and all communities have a say in decisions that affect their lives. Sustainability also means protecting our shared environment and creating healthy communities. To make this vision a reality, we build grassroots power by forging diverse coalitions, develop the leadership of workers and community members, conduct strategic, hard-hitting research, and win policies that put our transformative solutions into action. Over the last 10 years, EBASE and allies have achieved important policy victories – from living wages to local hire policies – which have lifted many thousands of East Bay workers out of poverty and connected workers with good jobs in their own communities. These victories offer a hopeful roadmap to real recovery and shared prosperity.

The Movement Strategy Center is a national organization that partners with individuals, organizations and alliances to build a transformative movement for social justice that is creative, strategic, collaborative and sustainable.

Oakland Rising educates and mobilizes voters in the east and west to speak up for and take charge of the issues impacting their lives. We are a multilingual, multiracial collaborative with deep roots in Oakland’s flatland neighborhoods, proving that everyday residents working together have the power to change the way our city is run. With longtime Oakland families and our newest neighbors working shoulder to shoulder, we are building on Oakland’s incredibly rich history to advance educates and mobilizes voters in the east and west to speak up for and take charge of the issues impacting their lives. We are a multilingual, multiracial collaborative with deep roots in Oakland’s flatland neighborhoods, proving that everyday residents working together have the power to change the way our city is run. With longtime Oakland families and our newest neighbors working shoulder to shoulder, we are building on Oakland’s incredibly rich history to advance smart, community-first solutions for a thriving Town. www.OaklandRising.org