This week's new articles from the alternative weeklies…
- The American dream, for sale (San Francisco Bay Guardian)
(P)rivate companies are going overseas and recruiting investors with the promise of a little-known federal program: For half a million bucks, you can get yourself a green card. If you've got the cash, the promoters say it's easy. Invest that sum with a broker who's doing some sort of development in a low-income area and you're guaranteed the right to move to the United States, immediately, with your entire family. You can live anywhere you want (not just in the area where you invested). And you're on track to become a U.S. citizen. But the program, known by its federal moniker of EB-5, is riddled with loopholes and lack of oversight. It has a history of creating few or no jobs, and the projects it funds can harm low-income communities. The immigrant investors aren't safe, either.
- Shark's Fin — Understanding the Political Soup (SF Weekly)
The roiling rhetoric that has washed over San Francisco since two California assemblymen introduced a bill banning the statewide sale and import of shark's fin has left many people in the city sputtering. AB-376 has brought out a host of accusations of animal cruelty, ecological devastation, and racism. The roiling rhetoric that has washed over San Francisco since two California assemblymen introduced a bill banning the statewide sale and import of shark's fin has left many people in the city sputtering. AB-376 has brought out a host of accusations of animal cruelty, ecological devastation, and racism.
- Fruitvale the New Hipster Hangout? (East Bay Express)
When the weekend arrives, UC Berkeley physics major Laura Driscoll doesn't hang around campus. But she doesn't go to San Francisco, either. Like an increasing number of her peers, Driscoll hops on BART and heads to an unlikely destination — Oakland's Fruitvale district. The heavily Latino- and Asian-populated area of East Oakland is known for its plethora of taco trucks and thrift stores, but it's never earned the hipster cachet of that other Latino neighborhood across the bay. Among some Cal students, however, Fruitvale appears to be the new hot spot.