Waking up in Oakland part 2

I meant to write more later the next day about my weaving drive through downtown Oakland on my way to work. I usually take a blink-and-you'll-miss-it tour of 880N but that day was different.

My car led me past City Hall and through the Oakland Chinatown I know well with Chinese characters on street signs, perched below their English counterparts. I stopped at a red light and glanced at my right to watch middle school kids finish recess on a concrete patch of playground squeezed between buildings and busy streets. Their teacher looked so young himself as he gathered the last basketball and walked the kids out. How far was their main school? The playground wasn't connected and they had to walk on city streets just to get from one class to another?

I drove by Lake Merritt with its famous globe lights dimmed for daylight and moms with strollers leisurely following the lake's gentle curves.

I saw the Fox Theater, the Paramount Theater, Frank Ogawa Plaza, and all the parts that make up my Oakland. Oakland is more than riots or violence or guns or endless parking tickets. Oakland is diversity and a 3.5 mile lake in freakin' downtown and farmer's markets and teachers making a difference every day and social workers healing families and refugees & immigrants & Californians making their home here and churches praising God while serving food to the hungry. Oakland is Joaquin Miller Park and bike coalitions and Children's Hospital and pho & burritos on International Blvd and Bakesale Betty's in Temescal and Arizmendi on Lakeshore.

Oakland is beauty and peace. It is, and we are making it so.