Raphael Cohen
News ProducerRaphael Cohen is a writer and journalist committed to telling insightful stories about the urgent cultural and political issues of our time. With a focus on the Bay Area, his work frequently spotlights remarkable figures at the intersection of arts, athletics, and activism. Raphael’s profile of Yusef Wright, Stephen Curry's longtime barber, for KALW’s Bounce podcast won the Public Media Journalists Association’s Best Sports Feature award in 2020. More recently, he’s reported on Charley Nordin, an Oakland-raised Paralympic rower who used his sporting success to speak out against racial injustice, and Charley Crockett, a country and blues singer from the Rio Grande Valley who credits his time in Northern California with catapulting his career.
Raphael’s also the author of Rebel Elegant, a poetry book and solo performance paying tribute to 1990s NBA star Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf, whose principled protest of the national anthem led to his exile from the league in the prime of his playing days.
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CrosscurrentsSouth Texas singer/songwriter Charley Crockett lived an itinerant lifestyle for years, but his time in the Bay Area laid the foundation to launch his professional music career. -
CrosscurrentsOakland-raised Paralympic rower Charley Nordin overcame personal tragedy and earned a silver medal at the Tokyo Games. He brought a message of racial justice to the podium. -
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. -
CrosscurrentsFor 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.
