Apartment Choice

by Lynda Carson Oakland – On March 3, the same day that Oakland tenant activists filed a ballot initiative to strengthen renter protections called the “Renters Upgrade,” the California Apartment Association (CAA) announced that they were keeping an eye on things and are coming up with their own plan to counter the tenant’s movement efforts somehow, including in Richmond and Alameda. Tenants fight gentrification as apartment buildings are flipped and rents raised in Highland Park, Los Angeles. – Photo: Michael Robinson Chavez , LA Times" /> Tenants fight gentrification as apartment buildings are flipped and rents raised in Highland Park, Los Angeles. – Photo: Michael Robinson Chavez , LA Times The CAA announced to its 13,000 members, affiliates and partners: “Tenant advocates in Richmond and Alameda have filed preliminary paperwork to place rent control initiatives on the November ballot. In both East Bay cities , the initiative efforts are in the early stages, and in...

We’re pleased to share the prelude, titled Freundschaft, of Kristen Ghodsee’s upcoming book Red Hangover: Legacies of Twentieth-Century Communism. In Red Hangover Ghodsee reflects on the lived experience of postsocialism and how many ordinary men and women across Eastern Europe suffered from the massive social and economic upheavals in their lives after the fall of the Berlin Wall. This text is not final, but we hope it gives you a taste of this impactful new book, to be published in late October. Two pairs of earrings, four bracelets, and a mixtape inspired me to write this book. I was in the Stadtmuseum in the German city of Jena, peering into the various display cases of an exhibit called Freundschaft! Mythos und Realit ät im Alltag der DDR (Friendship! Myth and reality in everyday life in the GDR [German Democratic Republic]). The exhibit ruminated on the official and unofficial uses of the word “friendship” in the context of communist East Germany between 1949 and 1989. In one c...

They were the seven days that shook the world, from the death of Princess Diana to her funeral at Westminster Abbey.  In this poignant series to mark the 20th anniversary, Jonathan Mayo reconstructs those momentous events as they happened though the eyes of Royal Family members , politicians, the Princess’s family, and a heartbroken public . . . Monday, September 1, 12.15am Paris time/ 11.15pm UK time  Jill and Ernie Rees-Jones are walking down the Champs-Élysées in Paris to get some air. Their son Trevor, the Princess’s bodyguard and sole survivor of the crash that killed her, is lying unconscious in the nearby Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital. There is huge media and public interest in Trevor’s recovery, as his memories may unlock the cause of the crash. Suddenly a car races towards them, and Ernie pushes Jill out of its way just in time. He kicks the car as it passes and yells at the driver. But Jill can see the funny side: if she’d been hit, she could’ve ended up in a bed next to Trev...