Worker co-operatives: from hippy fringe to economic mainstream

By Rina Palta on Tuesday, Mar 9, 3:08pm

We hear a lot about job creation as a tool for getting people out of poverty. But let’s face it, even if you have a job that pays enough for the rent, food, and a couple movies each month, you may not be accumulating wealth. According to a recent study by the consulting group Asset Building Strategies, 22% of Americans -- and much larger percentages of women and minorities -- are what’s called “asset poor.” That means if their income went away, they would not have enough money or belongings to...

Arts and Culture

Behind the scenes at the San Francisco Asian American Film Festival

By Kevin Robinson on Tuesday, Mar 9, 3:12pm

The Asian American community here in San Francisco is incredibly diverse. To capture the many stories, histories and experiences of this community around the country, you can imagine that you’d need six theatres, ten days and over a hundred storytellers to get even close. That’s what’s promised at the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival, starting this Thursday.KALW’s Kevin Robinson spoke with Assistant Programming Director Vicci Ho about the festival lineup, and she says...

Health, Science and Environment

Empowering South Asian women against domestic violence

By Hana Baba on Tuesday, Mar 9, 2:56pm

Yesterday was International Women’s Day, celebrated by communities worldwide since 1975. Locally, the organization Global Arts and Education awarded six Bay Area women the “Extraordinary Public Service Award” at its International Women’s Day Awards Breakfast. Asian-American Assemblywoman Fiona Ma of San Francisco was one of them. She was recognized for her commitment to victims of domestic violence in California. The Bay Area is home to many Asian women’s support groups whose state funding has...

Education

KALW reports from protests in the East Bay

By Crosscurrents Producer on Thursday, Mar 4, 6:54pm

For the Day of Action to Defend Education, we sent KALW's Erica Mu to the UC Berkeley campus and KALW's Chris Hoff to Frank Ogawa Plaza in downtown Oakland. They each speak live to KALW's Hana Baba about the scenes they were observing there and about the people they had met. Note: These conversations were taped earlier in the day. To learn more about the events of the day, you can read Erica Mu's blogs from the protests and march at UC Berkeley and Chris Hoff's blog from Frank Ogawa Plaza...

Education

Students and teachers weigh in on the National Day of Action

By Ben Trefny on Thursday, Mar 4, 6:07pm

Children, parents, and teachers today marched to San Francisco's Civic Center plaza, and elsewhere around the state, marking a Day of Action to Defend Education. It's the culmination of a day of rallies, walkouts, strikes, sit-ins and speak-outs. A central issue is the package of budget cuts, layoffs, and tuition hikes at California's universities, but activists have added other causes for concern to fuel the fire -- from a thousand pink slips being levied to government employees, to the...

Education

Ralph Wolff: Higher education is evolving

By Nancy Mullane on Thursday, Mar 4, 7:16pm

This week, we've been sharing radical ideas from visionaries who are thinking outside the traditional campuses to consider more sustainable -- and possibly, more effective -- models for colleges and universities. Today, we speak with someone who is both an insider and an agent of change. Ralph Wolff is president and executive director of the senior college commission of the Western Association of Schools and Colleges. Wolff is working to fulfill the Obama Administration's goal of...

Recent Articles

Economy, Labor and Biz

Street Team: How the recession hits home daycare

By Crosscurrents Producer on Tuesday, Mar 9, 2:54pm

At KALW News, we’ve been documenting the recession through our Economic Edge project. This next piece is actually a success story and it comes from a member of our Street Team of community reporters. Street Team member Mitzi Mock spoke with Jasmine Ward, who recently opened a home daycare in her...

Economy, Labor and Biz

Bay Area jobs on the up and up!

By Max Jacobs on Tuesday, Mar 9, 12:12pm

If you didn’t get a chance to enjoy the sunshine today, you can at least enjoy the encouraging job market forecast. A survey released today indicates that hiring rates in the Bay Area are on the up and up. According to the Manpower Employment Outlook Survey (MEOS) released by the employment...

Arts and Culture

The pleasure kills

By Max Jacobs on Tuesday, Mar 9, 11:57am

The pleasure kills play the Rickshaw Stop in San Francisco on Wednesday March 10th. Here's the song "Smash Up the Radio" from the San Francisco band.

Politics and Watchdog Reporting

Connecting the Dots: top news stories for Tuesday, March 9th

By Ben Trefny on Tuesday, Mar 9, 10:18am

Let's start with the elephant in the state: the general budget. Late yesterday, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed a bill that called for more than $2 billion in spending reductions starting this summer...Meanwhile, the California Legislature approved a Democratic bill, yesterday, aimed at...

Cops and Courts

The Criminal Justice Conversations Podcast with David Onek, Part 2

By Rina Palta on Tuesday, Mar 9, 8:12am

The Criminal Justice Conversations Podcast, a co-production of the Berkeley Center for Criminal Justice and the Berkeley School of Journalism, features in-depth, thirty-minute interviews with a wide range of criminal justice leaders: law enforcement officials, policymakers, advocates, service...

Education

Critical problems with CA system designed to follow students' achievement

By Nancy Mullane on Monday, Mar 8, 12:44pm

A new computer system, designed to track California's 6 million students individually is so defective, the state's Superintendent of Public Instruction, Jack O'Connell, has all but shut down the California Longitudinal Pupil Achievement Data System for two months while they try to overhaul it....

Politics and Watchdog Reporting

Iraq election comes to Pleasanton

By Jude Joffe-Block on Friday, Mar 5, 8:16pm

Iraqis from all over the region are heading to the Alameda County Fairgrounds in Pleasanton this weekend to vote in Iraq’s parliamentary election. The Pleasanton polling station is one of just eight polling locations in the U.S. It will be open Friday through Sunday from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. to...