One Slice At a Time

By Jowana George

This year’s senior projects ranged from Icebox pies to organic facial cremes.  Jowana George, 19, senior decided to focus her Senior Project, a requirement to graduate high school at McClymonds, on her longtime hobby: creating Icebox pies.

The Icebox pie is a combination of cream cheese and kool-aid pie. It consists of cream cheese, graham cracker, eggs, condensed milk, and on occasion ice cream.  The crust is fashioned out of of graham crackers or wafers, and the cream cheese filling takes about 30-40 minutes to settle.  It’s a southern pie that you do not bake; instead you put into a refrigerator.

“That’s the thing about Icebox.  You can add anything,” said George.

With the help of her great aunt, George made her first Icebox lemon pie just a year ago.

“It was so good I had to make another one,” said George.

Along with the mentoring of her aunt, George watches “Cake Boss” on TLC and admires Paula Dean for inspiration.  George claims that making the pies is easy but making a profit –“the math”– is the most difficult part.  A typical pie costs $20 to make and sells for $3 a slice.

“This is only for the senior project.  It’s too much to run a business.”

George sells out of a stand, equipped with a cooler to keep the pies refrigerated, in West Oakland, Lower Bottoms.  Her goal is to bring another type of flavor to the average traditional pies through Icebox pies.  Bringing southern styles to desserts.

Oakland Students Testify for Better Transportation and More Low-Income Housing

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by Brenda Barron

Street Academy

It took courage, patience (waiting for four hours and through chanting by the Tea Party) and brevity (each speaker allowed one minute or 60 seconds).

Despite the hurdles, three students from Oakland public high schools testified for better transportation and more low income housing last Thursday at a heated 4 ½-hour meeting hosted by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) and the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG).

No action was taken but the two groups unanimously voted to move forward with a deeply flawed draft of the “One Bay Area” plan, a $277 billion transportation and housing plan in the nine-county Bay Area that must also help meet greenhouse gas reduction targets set in California SB 375.

As one of the students and as a senior at Emiliano Zapata Street Academy. I spoke publicly about many problems in the community and the change that is needed.

I talked about taking public transportation since I was five years old when I started riding the bus to my mom’s work. I never thought transportation was a big deal until I grew up,  but it has changed a lot since I was five.

In the last few years, bus lines have been cut and changed so often that people get confused about which lines go to which place. People do not want see bus service cut. They want to see more bus routes, and more frequent buses.

Many people take buses because it costs less than BART, but BART takes you farther, and goes faster.   I would like to see the BART and buses cost less, especially for the young people — because we go to school and most of us don’t have jobs, so we can’t afford it. I would like to see more clean buses and BART.

Other speakers (including McClymonds graduate Devilla Ervin) pointed out flaws in the plan considered: that it does not restore  lost transit service, does not protect people from displacement, does not protect people from diesel fumes and does not create new affordable housing for people who live there.

Oakland Tech student Tanika O’Guinn and Street Academy student Eliezer Mendoza also spoke.

Pamela Tapia, a graduate from McClymonds, also representing New Voices Are Rising, talked about her own homelessness after her family lost its housing and was forced to relocate.

“My family in West Oakland lost our apartment,” Tapia said. “My mom was supporting three people on a minimum-wage job. She and my sister moved to Stockton but I had to choose between going with them and dropping out of school or staying here. The explosion of luxury homes has pushed out low-income people. As a homeless teen, I want to tell you to stop the displacement,” Tapia said.