I’m running for BART Board

Two months ago I abandoned this blog, and I apologize for that. Soon after BART Director Bob Franklin announced that he would not seek reelection and would instead run for Oakland City Council, I decided to run for the open District 3 BART seat. The campaign has taken up the vast majority of free time in my life, including the time in the early mornings and late evenings that I used to dedicate to blogging.

As has happened in the past when I got busy, I optimistically thought I’d find some time to write a blog post here and there, but clearly that has not happened. So today I wanted to let Living in the O readers know that I’m taking a blogging hiatus, and I of course wanted to share the news that I’m running for BART Board.

Two great Oakland parties for two great causes

In the next few days there are two fundraising events happening in Uptown for causes that I care deeply about. I hope you’ll consider joining me at one or both of these events.

Emerge California East Bay Reception
Saturday, January 14th from 6:30-8:30pm at Make Westing

I wrote about Emerge California when I graduated from the 2011 class back in June. Emerge California is the premier training program for Democratic women who want to run for office. The goal of Emerge is to increase the number of Democratic women in public office.

I learned so much through the seven month training program and met some amazing women leaders from throughout the Bay Area. I want to do everything I can to make sure women – particularly Oakland women – have the same opportunity as I did, which is why I’m on the host committee for this Saturday’s East Bay reception.

Emerge and the next generation of Oakland women leaders

You might have noticed a small change here, on my Twitter account and on Living in the O’s Facebook page. For years I’ve been writing this blog semi-anonymously, but my identity has long been an open secret and by now is entirely public. I’ve been thinking for a while of fully coming out into the open and identifying myself by my real name here, but I just hadn’t gotten around to it.

Well, that’s changed. From now on, I’m Rebecca Saltzman (though it’s too late to entirely shake Becks, as plenty of people including councilmembers call me Becks and I respond).

Why the change? Well, like I said, I had been thinking about it for a while, but I finally made the decision at a social media training in a program I graduated from two Saturdays ago, Emerge. Emerge California is the premier training program for Democratic women who want to run for office. The goal of Emerge is to increase the number of Democratic women in public office.

Blog roundup – green jobs, running for delegate & Safeway design review

No time for a full blog post today, but I wanted to point you to a couple blog posts I wrote elsewhere and an important A Better Oakland post.

A few weeks ago I started working at the California League of Conservation Voters (CLCV) as online organizer and program associate. Part of my job includes tweeting, posting on Facebook, writing emails, and blogging. I wrote my first blog post last week, about a green jobs report released by Next 10. The report has some amazing, colorful graphs that inspired me to want to include more graphs and visual representations when writing:

I’ll be blogging at CLCV’s blog Groundswell regularly so if you’re interested, sign up for our RSS feed. We tend to post 2-3 times per week so the feed shouldn’t be too overwhelming.

I also wrote a blog post last week for Emerge America. I’m currently in the Emerge Califonia program, which trains Democratic women to run for office. It’s an incredible program. We meet once a month for ten hours, followed by a two hour reception – the grueling schedule alone is good training for what it will be like to run for office! As part of the program, we all have to write blog posts and Emerge America decided to publish my post about running for delegate.

One last post you should read is A Better Oakland’s post about the Pleasant Valley Safeway design review, which will be happening this Wednesday evening. The project is somewhat improved from the initial design that united (probably for the first time) ULTRA, STAND and RCPC in our objections to the proposal. The Planning Commission largely agreed with the concerns the community raised at the 2009 scoping session so Safeway has made some changes, like slightly reducing the parking, orienting more of the retail towards the street, and moving the 51 bus stop closer to the development.

Unfortunately, the Safeway store is still way at the back of the lot so to get there, pedestrians, bicyclists and bus riders will have to move through a sea of parking to get there. Our comments made a difference last time so it’s important to to continue asking for improvements, as the project could still change. If you’d like to voice your thoughts, please come to the Design Review Committee meeting this Wednesday at 5pm at Oakland City Hall, Hearing Room 1.