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“This is an opportunity for businesses, organizations, and individuals along the San Pablo corridor to lift up any topic that they think is an issue; that they think our community should know about.”

— Annette Miller, Community Member

Hot off the presses, the first edition of the San Pablo Avenue Community News was distributed on Saturday, March 18th at the Hoover Foster Resident Action Council’s (RAC) Community Healing Block Party. The newspaper is a product of the San Pablo Area Revitalization Collaborative (SPARC)’s goal to “Hold Space,” which involves identifying and advocating for community-owned businesses, housing, and resources along the San Pablo Avenue corridor.

SPARC Newspaper Meeting – Photo Credit: Keith Arvinwine

Annette Miller, the paper’s Outreach Manager noted, “We don’t have the Oakland Tribune anymore, and just the Oakland Post on Saturdays, so we wanted the paper to be community led; for the residents to lead the articles and the vision of how the newspaper should go. This is an opportunity for individual folks and community leaders to have an option and an opinion about what’s moving forward in our community.”

Starting last fall, Annette, along with West Oakland advocate Dave Peters, met with EBALDC’s Creative Community Development (CCD) team to set the foundation for the newspaper: coming up with the editorial direction, visual design, name, and tagline – Keeping you informed of the changes in your community, asking for your vision and voice. Together, they worked with residents Jesse Williams, graphic designer, and Keith Arvinwine, photographer, to create a hyper-local, community-centered newspaper featuring stories by and about their neighbors. The team later expanded to include other neighbors who contributed stories and even deeper local knowledge.

Commented Annie Ledbury, Associate Director of CCD at EBALDC, “The power of creative actions is felt and seen during the process of creating the newspaper. Deep, long-lasting community building happens when people come together with others they have never met, but who do complementary work, to share and contribute their talents towards a community vision.”

Mock-up of the neighborhood map, highlighting community assets

Raine Robichaud, CCD Project Coordinator, agrees: “Everyone is active in the community in their own way. To have people come together in a creative project like this, they get to share feedback in a collaborative process that is tangible. The final project is an actual physical product — it’s printed, something you can hold in your hand and share with anyone who happens to be around. The impact is immediate and shared, and that’s exactly what we had hoped for.”

Continues Annette, “And since a lot of folks don’t have cell phones with apps, this is their opportunity to read a newspaper and look at things again that have to do with their community.”

Sharing the first edition of the San Pablo Community News

The result: a newspaper that features current stories — affordable housing development plans, predatory lending by big banks, redesign plans for San Pablo Avenue — as well as upcoming local events, helpful resources and support services available to community members, and even a crossword puzzle with clues based on the neighborhood.

The paper’s format includes photos and graphics in full color and incorporates QR codes for links to more detailed information that couldn’t fit on the page. Open up the centerfold, and the paper transforms into a map of the area that highlights local businesses and historical sites and is suitable for hanging on the wall. It is also available in a digital format.

Funding is in place for two more editions of the San Pablo Avenue Community News, which will be released in June and at end of the summer. Scheduling is underway for editorial meetings to plan the next edition. Members of the community are encouraged to get involved.

If you have an idea for a story or information that you would like to share, reach out to Raine Robichaud at rrobichaud@ebaldc.org. Click here to learn more about SPARC.