Fruitvale

[laughs] Yes.

So talk about how you got from the catering into actually having a brick-and-mortar restaurant, and there in Fruitvale.

Well, um-

The Fruitvale neighborhood-

Yes

... of Oakland.

We're part of the same, uh, community, intentional community called Canticle Farm.

We're about 45 residents living in the Fruitvale district of Oakland, California, trying to figure out how to live in village together and heal across generational divides, racial divides, class divides.

And yeah, it, it, it's one of my great honors, right, is that not only do I get to hear these stories from Watani as the activist and re- and revolutionary, but I've gotten to know him as a person, and he, like, I, I feel like I see either him or his daughter pretty much every day.

He's become close friends with my mother, and so I see them hanging out all the time.

I'm Tasneem Raja, Editor-in-Chief of the Oakland Side, Oakland's independent nonprofit newsroom.

In today's episode, we'll start with the week's headlines, including the Oakland Police Department escaping from federal oversight after 23 years, a close look at Mayor Barbara Lee's record, why the city still hasn't signed its contract with Flock Safety, frustrated AC Transit riders, and a 30-foot Katrina that just arrived in Fruitvale.

After that, City Hall reporter Eli Wolfe will join me to talk about a scary accident that happened at Temescal Pool earlier this month and why the city has no pool technicians on staff, even though it has the money to hire them.

It is part of a much bigger story about Oakland's struggle to fill city jobs.

Instead, riders say the opposite has happened.

EC Transit says the main problem is a shortage of drivers, which caused about 14,000 missed trips in the first half of this year.

And finally, Fruitvale has a new resident who is hard to miss.

A 30-foot-tall, two-ton Katrina statue now stands in the Fruitvale Transit Village Plaza.

It's still performance art, but it has this really deep historical references.

Now you have that and you have a huge street festival, which, again, has that carnivalesque booths and artists and food on a stick and performance artists and concerts all in one place in what's called the Fruitvale District, which is where the predominant sort of immigrant

Latino communities live.

Rachel, how does this event and everything you've described reflect Oakland's unique history and the culture there?