Raphael Cohen
News ProducerRaphael Cohen is a writer and journalist committed to telling compelling stories about the pressing cultural, social, and political issues of our time. A former Fellow at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, he authored Rebel Elegant, a poetry book and solo performance paying tribute to 1990s NBA star Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf, whose protest of the national anthem on the basis of U.S. racial and economic injustice predated Colin Kaepernick’s by two decades and led to his exile from the league in the prime of his playing career. More recently, Raphael's profile of Yusef Wright, Stephen Curry's Oakland-based barber, for KALW's Bounce podcast won the Public Media Journalists Association’s Best Sports Feature award for 2020.
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Following months of debate, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors is set to vote on a contentious SFPD surveillance policy. -
Richmond has experienced the sharpest rise in homelessness among all Bay Area cities since 2019. -
A highly anticipated Indigenous restaurant opens tomorrow on the UC Berkeley campus. The restaurant features foods and traditions of the Ohlone people, native to the Bay Area. -
An assembly bill seeking to drastically curtail the use of solitary confinement heads to the Senate appropriations committee for review on Thursday. -
An infusion of $6 million in state funds to Oakland’s Department of Violence Prevention aims to reduce the city’s gun violence. -
For nearly a century, the Morcom Rose Garden in Oakland’s Grand Lake neighborhood has provided beauty and respite to locals and visitors alike. Boasting a dazzling array of several thousand roses, multiple winding walkways, a reflection pool, and fountain cascades, it’s hard to deny the public park’s magic. -
After running out of monkeypox vaccines last week, Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital reopened today, administering doses of the drug to high-risk patients. -
The SFPD has just proposed a new surveillance policy to guide its use of non-city surveillance cameras. Critics claim it gives the police far too much power to tap into private cameras for live monitoring. -
Leena Barakat, an activist and the daughter of Palestinian immigrants, is set to become the new president and CEO of Women Donors Network – an organization that uses grantmaking to foster a just and equitable society. -
The City of Oakland has agreed to pay $1.5 million to cover attorneys fees and damages for 25 people – settling a lawsuit filed last year that alleged police violated their rights during the George Floyd protests in 2020.
