personal stories
Oakland’s Friday farmer’s market and its vegetable vocabulary of love
April 27, 2017The market attracts immigrants from many countries. You can hear a dozen languages in the people filling its four blocks.
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Armando Ramirez, modest but tough fighter for the people, passes on
April 25, 2017“Armando was one of the kindest, gentlest, most modest people I ever met, but a deep thinker and fierce fighter for working people and against injustice."
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Remembering Mike Smith, postal worker and labor stalwart
March 23, 2017Till his last day, Mike Smith was 100 percent union. Doug, his son, called the union office the morning after his death. His words to me: “You guys were his life.”
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Fired for attending his son’s birth – but story has happy ending
February 13, 2017"A lot of people in life don’t have these opportunities. If they did, they would take advantage of it."
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They shall not pass: Fighting fascism in 1930s Britain
November 18, 2016"My dad told me about Oxford’s anti-fascist students, many of them members of the Communist Party of Great Britain."
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