What's with Disability Justice? In 2025 the United States Mint issued the nineteenth coin of its American Women Quarters program, and it belongs to Oakland: it honors Stacey Park Milbern, who moved to the city at twenty-four and organized from East Oakland as a leader of the disability justice movement. She championed the belief that everyone is inherently valuable, built mutual-aid networks that carried her community through crisis, directed programs at a center for independent living, worked as an impact producer in film, and was appointed to a presidential committee. The quarter's reverse, designed by Elana Hagler and sculpted by Craig A. Campbell, shows her speaking to an audience — one hand near her trach, the other held palm-up in a gesture of open dialogue and allyship — beside the inscription DISABILITY JUSTICE. She is the first woman shown in a wheelchair on United States currency, and her coin carries a piece of Oakland in every pocket it reaches.
Oakland's character grew richer as the city did. The young Jack London prowled its waterfront before he ever wrote a word, and the wharves where he loafed are now Jack London Square. In the 1920s and '30s the city raised two of the finest movie palaces in the West — the Fox Oakland of 1928 and the great Art Deco Paramount of 1931, all gilt and neon. And in 1950, on the shore of Lake Merritt, Oakland opened Children's Fairyland, a storybook park that has enchanted generations of Bay Area kids. The Town had become a place of theaters, parks, and waterfront stories.
Why People Visit Oakland
Visitors come to Oakland for a Bay Area city with its own strong character: a wild lake at its center, redwood groves in the hills, a historic waterfront, and one of the most celebrated food scenes in California. The museums and Jack London Square sit minutes from the lake, and San Francisco is a quick trip across the bay. Equal parts oak-grove heritage and creative energy, Oakland rewards anyone drawn to the heart of the East Bay.
