Continuing our annual tradition of listing our most popular stories of the year, here’s #5 (first posted 3.9): Opp Now co-founder Christopher Escher took a ride on BART this March, only to realize he'd wandered into an anarchic, intimidating environment where regular citizens feel powerless to respond to menacing behavior. An Opp Now exclusive.
Read MoreContinuing our annual tradition of listing our most popular stories of the year, here’s #6 (first posted 1.21): Bad ideas often reveal themselves in time—and so it was with SJ City Council's rushed decision on 12.5.22 to appoint CM's to open seats, bypassing historic precedent and citizen rights for a district vote. In the six weeks after Council's poorly-crafted resolution passed, what looked like a dubious idea turned into a train wreck, as promises of transparency and competence went off the rails. The Opp Now team surveyed the wreckage and the unsound nature of the appointment undertaking. An Opp Now exclusive.
Read MoreContinuing our annual tradition of listing our most popular stories of the year, here’s #7 (first posted 3.14): In March, Stanford students/a DEI admin aggressively heckled controversial guest speaker Judge Kyle Duncan, disrupting and cutting short his prepared talk. Tim Rosenberger, Jr., president of Stanford Law’s Federalist Society chapter, sat down with Opp Now for an exclusive breakdown of Stanford’s dangerously “comfort”-driven student/faculty culture—and his proposed steps to restore diverse thought to the revered university.
Read MoreContinuing our annual tradition of listing our most popular stories of the year, here’s #8 (first posted 2.10): In 2003, San Jose released a Homeless Strategy plan, which promised it would “eliminate homelessness in ten years.” Whoops. It’s been 20 years, billions spent, and homelessness only rises in our fair burgh. Scott Beyer of the Market Urbanist untangled the flawed thinking that contributed to our ongoing housing catastrophe. An Opp Now exclusive.
Read MoreContinuing our annual tradition of listing our most popular stories of the year, here’s #9 (first posted 6.5): An Opp Now contributor (anonymized by request) recently participated in a graduate program at a Bay Area public university. Rampant social justice conditioning and closed-minded conversations? Check and check. But here, they reflected on an overlooked consequence of systematic Leftist indoctrination: It can render young free thinkers numb to shock, outrage, and action. An Opp Now exclusive.
Read MoreContinuing our annual tradition of listing our most popular stories of the year, here’s #10 (first posted 5.5): Any hopes that Sylvia Arenas' exit from the SJ City Council would signal the end of wild comments from the dais were dashed on 4.25 as District 5's CM Peter Ortiz picked up Arenas' mantle with gusto. Ortiz proclaimed that votes against a memo to expand SJ's housing preservation efforts were "violence against working families." In an Opp Now exclusive, the team unpacked Ortiz’s hyperbolic falsehoods.
Read MoreHoliday Season in Silicon Valley: A winter view through the bare trees. An unexpected shower. Lost clouds lingering along the bottom of Monte Bello Ridge. For many of us locals, this is a distinctive time of year: full of reflection about change, about remembering, about forgetting, about hope. Peter Coe Verbica hits many of these notes in his lyrical poem that journeys from Costa Rica to the crests of the Diablo Range. An Opp Now exclusive. And from all of us at Opp Now—Lauren, Jackson, Lucy, Jeff, & Christopher—we wish you an inspirational Holiday Season and a New Year full of (we had to say it) unlimited opportunity. :-)
Read MoreSan Jose's Mayor Matt Mahan and Councilmembers Dev Davis, Bien Doan, Domingo Candelas, and Arjun Batra cover the intellectual waterfront with their perspectives on the movies, podcasts, and games from 2023 that inspired them to better serve and unite our local community. An Opp Now exclusive.
Read MoreDistrict Attorney Thien Ho recently filed a lawsuit against Sacramento for looking the other way on dangerous street encampments. The DA claims these homeless camps are contaminating Sactown's once-beautiful waterways (and leave residents shaken after violent encounters with folks who need mental health/substance abuse treatment). Below, Ho chats with the Globe to unpack our local homeless crisis.
Read MoreFor the latest in our exclusive Opp Now series about the media that most impacts Silicon Valley movers and shakers, we check in with candidates and influential thinkers from around the Valley, and find a vast constellation of differing, compelling, and intriguing books, songs, podcasts, and videos.
Read MoreTom Rubin—boasting decades of experience assisting gov't agencies with capital, operational, and financial planning—is no stranger to the Golden State's outmigration crisis. Indeed, SJ lost 50k folks in just four years, losing its place in the top 10 most populated U.S. cities. For Opp Now, Rubin exclusively breaks down the tax/cost of living barriers excluding even longtime locals from CA living.
Read MoreSome media we consume is pure brightness, lilting and inviolate joy amidst an oft-downtrodden world (did you know Chat GPT's more optimistic about DTSJ than some local pols?). Other pieces of media, as Kafka poignantly remarks, are more of an “axe for the frozen sea within us.” In this Opp Now exclusive, Irene Smith, Sheridan Swanson, Pat Waite, Lance Christensen, Elizabeth Weiss, and Tom Rubin chime in with their most impactful reads/watches of 2023.
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