Author: Hilary Abramson

Violence and Faith in East Oakland

In the past three years, two bullets shattered the front window, a teenager was shot just outside and the downstairs neighbor was mugged. Before that, a woman’s lifeless body was unearthed from a dumpster less than a block away. But this area of East Oakland — where the neighborhoods of Fruitvale and San Antonio meet — is where Dr. Joan Jie-eun Jeung chooses to live with her husband and their six-year-old son.

On the line with unemployment

Go to your local unemployment office to get information about a claim and they will sit you at a bank of phones so you can call — the unemployment agency. You will wait on hold, and wait and wait and wait, and then get a person on the other end who will hang up on you if you make one false move. If this sounds crazy to you, read HIlary Abramson’s account of her Kafka-esque experience dealing with the EDD.

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