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LARRY WYATT hawks Street Spirit, a newspaper about homeless issues, in front of Reel Video. California is now ranked as the nation’s meanest state for those on the streets.
LARRY WYATT hawks Street Spirit, a newspaper about homeless issues, in front of Reel Video. California is now ranked as the nation’s meanest state for those on the streets.
 

News

Streets Grow Meaner

By RICHARD BRENNEMAN
Friday August 08, 2003

With continued high unemployment plaguing the nation, the stark specter of homelessness haunts America’s cities—and with growing numbers forced from their houses and apartments, life on the streets is becoming a way of life for more and more. 

Just how friendly are those streets to the adults and children who can’t find places for themselves in a rapidly polarizing society? 

Not very, according to a national survey just released by the National Coalition for the Homeless in Washington, D.C. 

Cities across the nation are proving increasingly hostile toward those unfortunate enough to lack roofs over their heads, with 70 percent of the 147 communities surveyed passing new laws aimed at the homeless since January 2002, according to “Illegal to be Homeless,” the 80-page report released this week. 

The coalition based its rankings on the number of anti-homeless laws, severity of penalties and enforcement, general political climate toward the homeless, input from local activists and groups, and pending and recently enacted laws. 

The survey didn’t include Berkeley, though three other California cities long regarded by the national media as bastions of liberalism made it on the group’s roster of America’s 20 Meanest Cities. San Francisco—where homelessness has emerged as a hot political issue—was rated America’s second-meanest city, described as “notorious for its systematic abuse and intolerance of the homeless.” Santa Cruz came in at 13 and Santa Monica at 17. Boulder, Colorado—another city of similar repute—rounded out the roster at 20.  

Two other California cities made the list: Los Angeles, in fourth place, and Sacramento at eleventh. 

Together they and the other California cities surveyed earned California the title of America’s second meanest state apart from Florida, which also placed five cities in the top 20. 

Las Vegas was judged the country’s meanest city, where Mayor and former mob lawyer Oscar Goodman has consistently made it clear that those without homes and jobs aren’t welcome in Sin City. 

Goodman told a reporter for the Las Vegas Review-Journal that he had no apologies for his actions, but claimed he was not the country’s meanest mayor, but “the kindest, most gentle soul” who ever held the top elective post in Sin City. Of course Goodman has also made kind and gentle claims about some of his clients back from the days he was Las Vegas’ top mob lawyer, including the late Mafia hit man Anthony Spilotro (the skull-squeezing thug portrayed by Joe Pesci in the DeNiro flick “Casino”). 

Nevada American Civil Liberties Union executive director Gary Peck said that for the homeless in Sin City, “there is a pattern and practice of abusing and harassing homeless people with the intention of making them invisible, because that’s what’s good for business.” 

The coalition’s second-meanest state, Florida, also tied with California for the most cities on the top twenty list: Key West, Orlando, Miami Beach, Jacksonville Beach, and Hollywood. 

Osha Neumann, Berkeley lawyer and advocate for the homeless with the community’s Suitcase Clinic, said that the areas addressed by the survey reflect only part of the confrontation between the homeless and officialdom. 

“If you look at Albany, there are no homeless there, so it doesn’t make it on the list,” Neumann said. He said many of Berkeley’s homeless had settled on a landfill site there after being pressured out of Berkeley. Then, in 1999, Albany police cleared the site and the community now has no homeless population. 

Another homeless reality not reflected in tables of statutes is the enforcement by police of policies reflected in no lawbook—police actions based not on municipal codes but on unspoken policies. 

“In the city’s commercial corridors, a few of the officers in the Berkeley Police Department seem to see it as their mission to protect the interests of merchants,” Neumann said. “The politicians, the city council and the mayor don’t seem to want to deal with it. 

“A few years ago the city council tried to pass a number of laws aimed at the homeless, but the American Civil Liberties Union challenged them and a new council was voted in and rescinded them. But the police often act as the sole authority of who can and cannot be on the sidewalks and will ‘enforce’ non-existent laws.” 

Neumann said the Suitcase Clinic has learned of a whole series of incidents involving elderly and disabled African-American women selling copies of Street Spirit, a newspaper sponsored by the American Friends Service Committee that covers homeless issues and is sold by the homeless to raise money. 

“Police tell them it’s illegal to sit on a milk carton or a bucket, or to lean against the building, but there are no such laws,” Neumann said. “But it happens in Berkeley. 

“As it is, we have plenty of laws already that make it impossible for a person who is homeless to survive on the streets without breaking some statute.” 

And as long as the national and regional economies continue to generate high unemployment, he said, the homeless will be a visible presence on the street. 

A decade ago much of that presence as reflected on Telegraph Avenue consisted of Vietnam combat vets struggling with the ravages of war, Neumann said, while today it is younger males. 

“There’s a whole population of older homeless women, many of them with children, who you never see, who live in the shadows and on the margins. There’s a tremendous shortage of housing.” 

 


Berkeley This Week

Friday August 08, 2003

FRIDAY, AUGUST 8 

Long Haul Infoshop Tenth Anniversary Party at 8 p.m. Celebrate the Infoshop’s 10th anniversary. Vegan chocolate cake, dancing, open house, and more. 3124 Shattuck Ave., across from La Peña, 1 block east of Ashby BART. 540-0751.  

Berkeley Critical Mass Bike Ride meets at the Berkeley BART the second Friday of every month at 5:30 p.m. 

Women in Black Vigil, from noon to 1 p.m. at UC Berkeley, Bancroft at Telegraph. wibberkeley@yahoo.com 548-6310, 845-1143. 

Meditation, Peace Vigil and Dialogue, gather at noon on the grass close to the West Entrance to UC Berkeley, on Oxford St. near University Ave. People of all traditions are welcome to join us. Sponsored by the Buddhist Peace Fellowship. 496-6000, ext. 135. www.bpf.org 

SATURDAY, AUGUST 9 

World Breastfeeding Day Celebration at 11:30 a.m. in Civic Center Park, followed at 12:30 p.m. by an attempt to set a new breast-feeding world record in the Berkeley Commu- 

nity Theater. Sponsored by the City of Berkeley Health Dept. 981-5344.  

Knitting Class for Afghans Kids Campaign Learn to knit a simple child’s cap on from 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at Berkeley Friends Church, 1600 Sacramento St. near Cedar, two blocks from North Berkeley BART. Suggested donation of $20 for AFSC Peace Work. Yarn, knitting needles, lesson, pattern, and snacks provided. 415- 565-0201 ext. 12. 

Howard Dean Precinct Walk meet at 10 a.m. at Au Coquelet Cafe, 2000 University Ave. We will supply maps, fliers, and strategies to help get your message out as you walk a precinct to tell your neighbors how we are going to take our country back. Please sign up and bring friends! After-party at Jupiter’s at 5 p.m. For information call Paul Hogarth 666-1260.  

Walk in Tilden Park with Solo Sierrans at 5:30 p.m. Meet at Lone Oak Picnic area for an hour walk through the cool woods. Optional dinner on Solano Avenue follows. We are mostly single, mostly over 50. You need not be a Sierra Club member to attend. For more information call Vera, 234-8949. 

Peace Lantern Ceremony at the north end of Aquatic Park, west end of Addison St., just south of University Ave. Make lantern shades and float them on the water in a beautiful Japanese ceremony remembering the victims of the atomic bombings and of all wars. Lantern-making begins at 6:30 p.m., music 7:15 p.m, and lantern launching from 8 to 9 p.m. For information, or to volunteer call 594-4088. www.ProgressivePortal.org/lanterns/ 

Free Emergency Prepar- 

edness Class on Shelter Operations, for anyone who lives or works in Berkeley, from 9 a.m. to noon at 997 Cedar St., between 8th and 9th Sts. Register on-line at www.ci.ber 

keley.ca.us/fire/oes or by calling 981-5506. 

Family Shabbat with Rabbi Kai Eckstein “What Happened on Noah's Ark?” from noon to 1:30 p.m. at the Albany Community Center, 1249 Marin Ave. Please bring lunch for your family, and (finger) dessert to share. We also collect non-perishable food for the needy. For more information email kolhadash@ 

aol.com or call 428-1492.  

SUNDAY, AUGUST 10 

Butterfly Mania for ages 5 and up, from 1 to 3 p.m. at Tilden Nature Area in Tilden Park. Take a closer look at our native butterflies. What do they eat and how? We will make butterfly trading cards and play games with them in our butterfly garden. Cost is $3. 525-2233.  

Top of the Bay Family Day with Lego Building, from 1:30 to 3:30 p.m. at Lawrence Hall of Science, Centennial Dr. 643-5961. www.lawrencehallofscience.org 

Stop the War Makers: Hands Around Livermore Nuclear Weapons Lab A nonviolent rally and march around Livermore nuclear weapons lab, at 1:30 p.m. at Robert Payne Park, 5800 Patterson Pass Rd, at Vasco, Livermore. For information call Tri-Valley CAREs 925-443-7148. www.trivalleycares.org 

Tanabata Star Festival, at Telegraph and Bancroft, from 1 to 4 p.m. Citizens of the Earth Network will dress in traditional summer kimono (yukata) and meet to acknowledge the lunar calendar’s “Tanabata /Star“ festival in order to raise awareness about the possible deployment of nuclear weapons in space, the legacy of U.C.'s involvement in the Livermore Labs as well as Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the effects of depleted uranium weapons.  

Free Hands-on Bicycle Repair Clinic, at 11 a.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. 527-4140. 

Permaculture Workshop Series Ongoing workshops every second and last Sunday of the month at the BerkeleyEco-House, 1305 Hopkins St. Call for information, 465-9439.  

Grizzly Peak Flyfishers, a group dedicated to the sport of fly fishing through education and conservation, invites you to its monthly meeting, a casting demonstration and clinic conducted by the Oakland Casting Club at the McCrea Park Casting Ponds, 4460 Shepherd St. at Carson St., Oakland, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., and will include a barbecue lunch. The club will provide hot dogs, hamburgers and soft drinks; attendees are encouraged to bring side dishes. Expert, beginner and “wannabe” fly fishers are all welcome. For more information, call 547-8629. 

Tibetan Buddhism, Lama Pal- 

zang and Pema Gellek on “Tranquil Awareness” at 6 p.m. at the Tibetan Nyingma Institute, 1815 Highland Pl. 843-6812. www.nyingmainstitute.com 

MONDAY, AUGUST 11 

Berkeley CopWatch meets at 6 p.m. at 2022 Blake St. Volun- 

teers needed. For information call 548-0425. 

TUESDAY, AUGUST 12 

Bay Area Coalition for Head- 

waters meets at 7 p.m. at the Rockridge Library, 5366 College Ave., near Rockridge BART, Oakland. 835-6303.  

Berkeley Camera Club meets at 7:30 p.m., at the Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. Share your slides and prints and learn what other photographers are doing. Monthly field trips. 525-3565. www.berkeleycameraclub.org 

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 13 

“Grabbing Headlines With Street Theater: A Media Workshop for Activists” world premier video screening at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Gray Panthers, 1403 Addison St. 548-9696.  

Berkeley Peace Walk and Vigil at the Berkeley BART Sta- 

tion. Vigil at 6:30 p.m. followed by Peace Walk at 7 p.m. www. 

geocities.com/vigil4peace/vigil 

Twilight Tour: Succulents for Your Garden at 5:30 p.m. at the UC Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Drive. Cost is $5, registration required. 643-2755. 

South Berkeley Mural Project Community members in South Berkeley are coming together to create a neighborhood mural on the side of the Grove Liquor Store on the corner of Ashby Ave. and Martin Luther King, Jr. Way. Meetings are held every Wednesday night at 7:30 p.m. at Epic Arts Studios at 1923 Ashby Ave. For further information on ways to get involved please call 644-2204. 

Community Dances, traditional English and American dances, 8 p.m. every Wednesday, $9. 7 p.m. first Sunday, $10. Grace North Church, 2138 Cedar St. 233-5065. www.bacds.org 

Free Feldenkrais ATM Classes for adults 55 and older at 10:30 and 11:45 a.m. at the Jewish Community Center, 1414 Walnut at Rose. For information call 848-5143.  

THURSDAY, AUGUST 14 

East Bay Watershed Forum Kick-Off Meeting from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. at Oakland City Hall, Hearing Room 4. Agencies, organizations, and citizens interested in East Bay creeks and watersheds are encouraged to come. The Forum is a project of the new East Bay Watershed Center at Merritt College. It is envisioned as a network for local creek and watershed groups to share ideas, pool resources, and collaborate on projects. For more information, call 434-3840 or 434-3841 or email ecomerritt@aol.com 

“Doing it Right - Hiring a Licensed Contractor,” video presentation at 1 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Individuals may borrow the video after today. 981-5190. 

Berkeley Liberation Radio 104.1 FM holds public meetings for all interested people first and third Thursdays, 7 p.m. at the Long Haul Info Shop, 3124 Shattuck Ave. 595-0190.  

Lawyers in the Library, at 6 p.m. in the South Branch, Russell at MLK Jr. Way. 981-6260. 

ONGOING  

Tilden Farm Week, for ages 8 to 11. Mon. Aug. 11 to Fri. Aug. 15, 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Come experience the old-time, country lifestyle during a week of farm camp fun! We'll learn about farm animals, dig, shovel, harvest, cook, have fun, and get dirty! At Tilden Nature Area, in Tilden Park. Cost is $135 residents, $149 non-residents. Registration required. 636-1684.  

Summer Fun Camps for Children and Teens, from age five and up are offered at Berkeley recreation centers and include such activities as arts and crafts, swimming and tennis lessons, yoga, organized sports and games, and field trips. The Summer Fun Camp Program runs through August 22, Mon. - Fri., 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. The fee, including lunch and snack, is $77 per week for Berkeley residents. Sponsored by the City of Berkeley’s Parks Recreation and Waterfront Department. Applications for the camps can be picked up at the Camps Office, located at 2016 Center Street, or can be mailed upon request. 981-5150. 

Echo Lake Youth Camp For ages 6 - 12 at Echo Lake, near South Lake Tahoe. One week sessions are offered between July 7 and August 22. Cost is $235 per session. For registration information please visit the City of Berkeley’s Recreation Programs Office at 2016 Center St., or call 981-5150.  

Free Marketing Workshops, sponsored by Sisters Headquarters, for women entrepreneurs, every Wed. from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. at 643 17th St. Oakland. For information call 238-1100. 

Vista Community College Program for Adult Education (PACE) Enrollment through Sept. 6. PACE is a college alternative for adults with job and family responsibilities. Enrollment in American Sign Language classes is also being accepted. For information call 981-2864 or 981-2800 or email mclausen@peralta.cc.ca.us  

Community Food Drive Make a cash or food donation to the Safeway/ABC7 Summer Food Drive, benefiting the Alameda County Community Food Bank and its 300 member agencies. The food drive will help thousands of local low-income children who lose access to school meal programs during summer vacation. Now through Aug. 9, put nutritious, nonperishable food donations in the red food collection barrels in all Alameda County Safeway stores or make a cash donation at Safeway check-out stands. 834-3663, ext. 318. www.accfb.org  

Free Energy Conservation Retrofits for Berkeley Residents CA Youth Energy Services is a nonprofit sponsored by the City of Berkeley that trains and employs high school students to provide conservation retrofits. Call for an appointment, 428-2357. 

Free Energy Bill Payment Assistance The City of Berkeley has money to help low-income households pay their gas and electric bills. For applications and more information, contact the Energy Office at 644-8544. TDD: 981-6903. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/energy 

CITY MEETINGS 

Waterfront Commission meets Wednesday, August 13, at 7 p.m., at 201 University Ave. Cliff Marchetti. 644-6376 ext. 224. www.ci.berkeley. 

ca.us/commissions/waterfront 

Commission on Early Childhood Education meets Thursday, August 14, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Marianne Graham, 981-5416. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commis- 

sions/earlychildhoodeducation 

Community Health Commission meets Thursday, August 14, at 6:45 p.m., at the South Berkeley Senior Center. William Rogers, 981-5344. ww.ci.berkeley.ca.us/ 

commissions/health 

Zoning Adjustments Board meets Thursday, August 14 at 7 p.m., in City Council Chambers. Mark Rhoades, 981-7410. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/zoning


Letters to the Editor

Friday August 08, 2003

MOUNTAIN MAJESTY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I enjoyed Zac Unger’s piece on the Thai brunch (Daily Planet, July 29-31). But I’m surprised when he says, “I’m still searching for the majesty of my first purple mountain. Zac, it’s an easy two-step process: 

1. Walk east until you arrive at the fruited plains. 

2. Look up. 

Walter Gray 

 

• 

CITIZEN COUP 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

OK, we all need to follow up on this. All of us. Tell your friends, tell your neighbors. Hey, tell your enemies. 

We can subvert the attempted corruption of the political process by conservative Republicans in the form of the recall election, and solve the state’s budget crisis, all with one simple act. Every registered voter in the state should pay the $3,500 filing fee and run for Governor of California in the recall election! There are approximately 15 million registered voters in the state; even if some cannot afford the $3500 filing fee up front, a large majority of voters probably can. The state could raise upwards of $40 billion, even $50 billion, if every voter followed through on this! 

Of course, the state would have to be flexible on payments: accept credit cards, work out installments, etc. But the beauty of this is that we, the people, solve both the crisis that precipitated the recall and the fiasco that this recall election is quickly becoming. 

Let’s go folks! There are only a few more days. I’ll see you all down at the County Registrar! 

John T. Selawsky 

 

• 

TIME, CLASS, CLARITY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

A petition from 274 neighbors of the Berkeley Adult School and Franklin School was delivered this week to the board of education, urging the board to delay its Aug. 20 vote on the proposed move of the BAS to Franklin. 

The petition represents a clear majority of residents who live near the sites. Neighbors are concerned that a decision affecting the very nature of our neighborhoods will be made on the basis of rushed planning, on data that are too often incomplete and contradictory, on dumb institutional momentum.  

Some wonder, despite assurances to the contrary, if the school district will have to come back and ask us for more money to complete its multi-site facilties project. Others believe the proposal would hurt the Adult School and its ability to serve its students. 

The design plan itself is drab.  

Moreover, respected planning experts have recently raised serious concerns about the district’s environmental and traffic analysis of the proposal and about its legality. The city manager has weighed in to ask the district for a plan that details the effects on all the school sites involved. There is obviously no time to seriously discuss these recent critiques before Aug. 20. The public hearing that night on the entire issue will be limited to the board’s regular 30 minute general comment period.  

To be fair, district officials and board members have regularly met with the community to explain themselves and hear us out. In the end, however, the vote is apparently seen by the district as more procedural than anything else, just another step in implementing a broad facilitates plan already adopted by the board. 

In fact, this vote would start in motion a series of relocation and construction projects that would permanently change the very nature of at least three neighborhoods.  

At Franklin, at least 1,200 students would be introduced into a residential neighborhood five days a week and into the nights. Many of these students would arrive by car. At West Campus, the current home of the Adult School, residents want the school to stay and worry that the planned administration and maintenance facility would not be a good fit. The vote would certainly have ripple effects on Oregon Street, where the current maintenance offices are located. These are all neighborhoods where the balance is always precarious between a busy, urban setting (which we enjoy) and chaos and congestion.  

We know this balance well, but there may be some district officials and even school board members who think that our concerns are just selfish “preferences,” in the words of one.  

Well, of course, if something major is going to be done to our neighborhoods and the way we live, we have to demand that it be done right. In the end, some residents may decide that these moves simply make no sense at all.  

But it’s also true that most of those active in this issue know and value the Adult School and want it to have a proper home (not shoehorned into another old building so that the district can go on to other things). People in these neighborhoods appreciate the importance of the district’s mission and care about its problems. It would be a shame for the board to waste this support. It might be a long time before it got it back. 

What we need now is, as one resident said, just more “class and clarity.” And more time. 

James Day 

• 

RECALL ‘EM ALL 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

What’s going on with Berkeley government? They claim to have a “Green Program” which preserves or creates play space for children yet won’t speak up to stop such amazingly mind boggling ideas as paving over the baseball field at Franklin Elementary school or filling in huge areas of irreplaceable nature at Lawrence Livermore labs, and for what? Parking space!!! Where are our progressives now? You hear them yelling and screaming and taking up all kinds of city time and city tax money (can you say deficit?), complaining about war, starvation and other social problems on the other side of the globe but do absolutely nothing for the local Berkeley constituency for whom they actually work and who pay them! We need to recall them all and let the parade be led by our fearless leader Gray Davis. 

Saul Grabia 

 

• 

BAS RELOCATION 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

With regard to the proposed move of the Berkeley Adult School into the Franklin School facility, all I want to know is, who dreamed up this idea and how do they think that it’s going to benefit this neighborhood? I would guess that the authors of this plan neither live in this neighborhood, nor do they have to contend with the increased traffic congestion or the ever decreasing availability of parking spaces.  

The parking situation is already bordering on ridiculous—one can scarcely even find a parking space in front of their own homes when they come home from work in the evenings. And just when you thought that things couldn’t get any worse, the relocation of the BAS to the Franklin School site will make an overcrowded situation even more difficult, by adding dozens of cars onto already choked streets. 

I was here in 1992 when the city proposed to build low-income housing units on the grounds of the then-derelict and abandoned Franklin School site (which they went ahead and built anyway despite overwhelming opposition from community residents). The explanation given by city proponents was that the facility could not be used for educational purposes anyway because it was structurally unsound, and failed to meet earthquake standards. To my knowledge, nothing has yet been done to upgrade this facility since that time, but now they’re in a big hurry to move the BAS into this building? Give me a break! 

My gut feeling is that this is a poorly conceived plan that will be a waste of already limited school funding, and ultimately benefit no one. Community residents should speak up and make their voices heard on this issue, otherwise we’re going to wake up and find ourselves saying “There goes the neighborhood.” 

Instead of trying to rush this thing through as has been done in the past, I would certainly be in favor of some better decision making by BUSD officials, who should make every attempt to consider more viable alternatives. Perhaps resources could be better utilized toward upgrading the present site at its current location on University Avenue. 

Dennis Perocier 

 

• 

GOOD NEWS TO SHARE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

At a time when there is so much bad news, it’s pleasant to have something good to share: 

Yesterday two teenagers from California Youth Energy Services came and improved the quality of my life as well as the environment—and it was free. The provided compact fluorescent lamps, a low-flow shower head, cabinet latches to prepare for the next earthquake and much more.  

The boys were prompt, pleasant, punctual and very efficient. An absolute joy! 

You too can enjoy this great service by calling 428-2357 and making an appointment. Participating in this win-win program is enough to make you feel good all day. 

Rhoda Levinson


Arts Calendar

Friday August 08, 2003

FRIDAY, AUGUST 8 

CHILDREN 

Stage Door Conservatory's “Kids OnStage” presents “Blame it on the Wolf,” a free mini-musical by Douglas Love, at 7:30 p.m. at Epworth United Methodist Church, 1953 Hopkins St. 527-5939. StageDoorCamp@aol.com 

FILM 

Czech Horror and Fantasy on Film: “Valerie and Her Week of Numbers” at 7:30 p.m. and “Morgiana” at 9:20 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4 members, UC students, $5 UC faculty, staff, seniors, disabled, youth, $8 adults. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

Hip Hop Film Fest at 6 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $5 per film. For film schedule email info@HipHopFilmFest.com or call 415-285-1416. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Jeremiah Tower talks about “California Dish: What I Saw (and Cooked) at the American Culinary Revolution” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books, 1730 Fourth St. 559-9500. www.codysbooks.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Ballet Counterpointe Rep of Berkeley, “Works in Motion” showcasing local choreographers and ballet artists from the independent dance scene, at 8 p.m. at ODC Theater, 3153 17th St. at Shotwell, SF. Tickets are $15-$20 sliding scale, available from 415-863-9834. 

The Soukous Stars from Congo at 9:30 p.m., at Ashkenaz. Cost is $18. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

The Weary Boys, Gilbert Dribblers at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $8. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Beatropolis performs nu-jazz, hip-hop, dNb and dub at 7:30 p.m. at The Jazz House. Cost is $6-$15 sliding scale. 649-8744. 

www.thejazzhouse.com 

Ellen Rowe, pianist, at 5 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $20 general, $10 students, $5 seniors. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Brenda Boykin and Folk- 

lorico 57, new traditions in jazz and blues, at 8 p.m. at the Jazz- 

school. Cost is $12-$18. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Michael McNevin, singer songwriter, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage Coffee House. Cost is $15.50 advance, $16.50 at the door. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Danny Caron and Friends at 9:30 p.m. at Downtown, 2102 Shattuck Ave. 649-3810. 

Dub Vision, reggae and dancehall grooves, at 8 p.m. at Jupiter, 2181 Shattuck Ave. 843-7625.  

www.jupiterbeer.com 

Ghandaia, El Jefe, Tribolectic perform Latin Funk, Hip Hop, and Jazz Electronica at 9:30 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $6. 848-0886. www.blakesontelegraph.com 

The Locusts, Erase Errata, Hella, The Rah Brahs, My Name is Rar Rar perform at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $5. 525-9926. 

SATURDAY, AUGUST 9 

San Francisco Mime Troupe Veronique of the Mounties in “Operation: Frozen Freedom” at 1:30 p.m. in Live Oak Park. 415-285-1717. www.sfmt.org 

FILM 

“The Cockettes” free screening with costume party at 8  

 

p.m. at the Long Haul, a reading room, library and community center in South Berkeley lo- 

cated at 3124 Shattuck Ave. Wheelchair accessible. 540-0751.  

www.thelonghaul.org  

The Inquiring Camera: Tie Xi Qu: West of the Tracks - Part Two: “Remnants” at 7 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4 members, UC students; $5 UC faculty, staff, seniors, disabled, youth; $8 adults. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

Hip Hop Film Fest at 6 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $5 per film. For film schedule email info@HipHopFilmFest.com or call 415-285-1416. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Susan McDougal discusses “The Woman Who Wouldn’t Talk,” on her refusal to testify in the Whitewater investigations, at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

African Drum Workshop with Wade Peterson. Beginners from 10 to 11:30 a.m., experienced from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m., at The Jazz House. Cost is $15-$25, and advance registration is encouraged. 533-5111. 

Ballet Counterpointe Rep of Berkeley, “Works in Motion” showcasing local choreographers and ballet artists from the independent dance scene, at 8 p.m. at ODC Theater, 3153 17th St. at Shotwell, SF. Tickets are $15-20 sliding scale, available from 415-863-9834. 

North Indian Classical Music, Lakshmi Shankar, vocals, and Pandit Swapan Chaudhuri, tabla, at 7:30 p.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. Tickets are $12-$20. 415-454-6264. 

Adrian’s Music Salon with Michael La Macchia ensemble at 8 p.m. at The Jazz House. Cost is $6-$15 sliding scale. www.thejazzhouse.com  

Shawn Baltazor and Kenny Pexton, farewell concert, at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $10. 845-5373.  

www.jazzschool.com 

Caribbean Allstars perform reggae at 9:30 p.m., at Ashkenaz. Cost is $13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Luddites, Dead Science, Graham Connah’s Jettison Slinky, Good for Cows at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $8. 841-2082.  

www.starryploughpub.com 

Slow and Slower at 9:30 p.m. at Downtown, 2102 Shattuck Ave. 649-3810. 

Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Gram- 

my-winning folk music legend, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage Coffee House. Cost is $17.50 in ad 

vance, $18.50 at the door. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Hot for Teacher: A Van Halen Tribute and Blitzenhamer perform at 9:30 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $10. 848-0886. www.blakesontelegraph.com 

Married Couple, alt-jazz,, at 8 p.m. at Jupiter, 2181 Shattuck Ave. 843-7625.  

www.jupiterbeer.com 

Strike Anywhere, From Ashes Rise, They Live, Robot has Werewolf Hand, The Disaster, Stalker Potential (last show) perform at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $5. 525-9926. 

SUNDAY, AUGUST 10 

Opening Reception BACA National Juried Exhibition from 2 to 4 p.m. at the Berkeley Art Center. Exhibition runs until Sept. 13. 644-6893. www.berkeleyartcenter.org 

San Francisco Mime Troupe Veronique of the Mounties in “Operation: Frozen Freedom” at 1:30 p.m. in Live Oak Park. 415-285-1717. www.sfmt.org 

FILM 

W. C. Fields: “So’s Your Old Man” at 5:30 p.m. and “The Man on the Flying Trapeze” at 7:15 at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4 members, UC students, $5 UC faculty, staff, seniors, disabled, youth, $8 adults. 642-0808.  

www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

“East and West,” a 1923 silent film comedy, at 2 p.m. at the Jewish Community Center, 1414 Walnut St. Suggested donation $2. 848-0237. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Poetry at Cody’s with Dale Pendell and Dick Bakken at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. Donation $2. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

Roger King will read from his new novel, “A Girl From Zan- 

zibar,” which recently won the Bay Area Book Reviewer’s Award for Fiction, at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698.  

www.blackoakbooks.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Live Oak Concert, William Skeen, ‘cello, performs Bach Suites for solo ‘cello at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley Art Center. Cost is $10, BACA members $8, Students and seniors $9. Children under 12 free. 644-6893. www.berkeleyartcenter.org 

Third Annual Transbay  

Skronkathon BBQ from noon to 10:30 p.m. at The Jazz House. We supply the grills, tables and music, with fifty or so bands performing conceptual deconstruc- 

ted creative nonstandards, and you bring something for the grill, and enjoy the day. 649-8744. http://music.acme.com 

Flamenco Open Stage at Ashkenaz, at 7:30 p.m. Cost is $9. 525-5054.  

www.ashkenaz.com 

Phil Marsh, traditional and contemporary folk, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage Coffee House. Cost is $15.50 in advance, $16.50 at the door. 548-1761. 

www.freightandsalvage.org 

Steve Erquiaga and Trio  

Paradiso, originals with Argentine and Brazilian influences, at 4:30 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $10-$15. 845-5373.  

www.jazzschool.com 

Catholic Comb, Soular perform Alt Rock at 9:30 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $6. 848-0886.  

www.blakesontelegraph.com 

MONDAY, AUGUST 11 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Ezra Bayda reads from his new book, “At Home in the Muddy Water: A Guide to Finding Peace within Everyday Chaos,” at 7:30 p.m. Black Oak Books. 486-0698. www.blackoakbooks.com 

Poetry Express, Public Speaking for Poets Workshop, from 7 to 9:30 p.m. at Priya Restaurant, 2072 San Pablo Ave.  

TUESDAY, AUGUST 12 

FILM 

The Inquiring Camera: “Intoxicated by My Illness” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4 members, UC students, $5 UC faculty, staff, seniors, disabled, youth, $8 adults. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Berkeley Summer Poetry, with Julia Vinograd, from 7 to 9 p.m. at the Mediterranean Cafe, 2475 Telegraph Ave. Free, open mic, poetry, prose, short fiction, amateur and advanced artists welcome. 549-1128. 

Raymond Francis discusses his new book “Never be Sick Again” at 7:30 p.m. at Barnes and Noble. 644-0861.  

Diana Winston, Associate Director of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship in Berkeley, will discuss her new book, “Wide Awake: A Buddhist Guide for Teens,” at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698.  

www.blackoakbooks.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Courtableau at 8:30 p.m. with a Cajun dance lesson with Patti Whitehurst at 8 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $9. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Dayna Stephens House Jam at 8 p.m. at The Jazz House. Donation $5.649-8744. www.thejazzhouse.com 

Mimi Fox, solo guitar, at 8 p.m. at Downtown, 2102 Shattuck Ave. 649-3810. 

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 13 

FILM 

Excess of Evil: “The Brotherhood of Satan” at 7:30 p.m. Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4 members, UC students, $5 UC faculty, staff, seniors, disabled, youth, $8 adults. 642-0808.  

www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Berkeley Poetry Slam with host Charles Ellik at 8:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $7, $5 with student i.d. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Café Poetry and open mic hosted by Kira Allen at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Do- 

nation requested. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Hookside, rockin’ a cappella, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage Coffee House. Cost is $15.50 in advance, $16.50 at the door. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

African Music Series: Pape and Cheikh from Senegal at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $13 in advance, $15 at the door. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Jules Broussard and Ned Boynton at 8 p.m. at Down- 

town, 2102 Shattuck Ave. 649-3810. 

THURSDAY, AUGUST 14 

FILM 

The Inquiring Camera: “The Damned and the Sacred” at 8:50 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4 members, UC students, $5 UC faculty, staff, seniors, disabled, youth, $8 adults 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Ved Mehta will read from “Dark Harbor: Building House and Home on an Enchanted Island” at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698.  

www.blackoakbooks.com 

Grace Martin Smith and Richard Schwartzenberger, translators of “Listening to Istanbul: Selected Poems of Orhan Vei Kanik,” will read the poems and show slides of Istanbul at 7:30 p.m. at Easy Going Travel Shop and Bookstore, 1385 Shattuck Ave. at Rose. 843-3533. www.easygoing.com 

Stanton Friedman discusses the existence of a UFO cover-up and his new book “Top Secret/MAJIC” at 7:30 p.m. at Barnes and Noble. 644-0861. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Lúnasa, high energy traditional Irish music, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage Coffee House. Cost is $17.50 in advance, $18.50 at the door. 548-1761.  

www.freightandsalvage.org 

Danny Barnes, The Places at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $8. 841-2082.  

www.starryploughpub.com 

Keni El Lebrijano, flamenco guitar, at 8 p.m. at Downtown, 2102 Shattuck Ave. 649-3810. 

AT THE THEATER 

Aurora Theater Company, “The Accidental Activist” Aug. 8 and 9 at 7:30 p.m., Aug. 10 at 2 p.m. at 2081 Addison St. Tickets are $20. Buy your tickets online at www.Frantix.net or 415-621-1216 or 866-372-6849. www.auroratheatre.org 

Berkeley Music Theater Company, “Oliver!” Lionel Bart’s musical will be performed Aug. 8 and 9, at 8 p.m. at Albany High School, 603 Key Route, Albany. Tickets are $15 general, $10 seniors, students, and low-income. 524-1224. 

Oakland Summer Theater, “The Death and Life of Sneaky Fitch,” Aug. 8 and 9, Fri. at 8 p.m., Sat. at 3 and 8 p.m. Tickets are $10 in advance, $12 at the door, $8 seniors and students. Chabot School Auditorium, 6686 Chabot Rd. To reserve tickets call 597-5026. 

Shotgun Players, “Mother Courage and Her Children,” by Bertolt Brecht, translated by David Hare, directed by Patrick Dooley. Runs Saturdays and Sundays at 4 p.m. in John  

Hinkle Park, until Sept. 14. No show Aug 9. Show Sept. 13 is at Live Oak Park, Shattuck and Berryman. Free. 704-8210.  

www.shotgunplayers.org 

EXHIBITIONS 

ACCI Gallery, “Taste and Touch,” ACCI Members Exhibition with artists Toby Tover-Krein, Ellen Russell, Jean Hearst and Biliana Stremska. The exhibition runs to Aug. 11.  

Annual Seconds Sale Aug. 14 - 17. Gallery hours are Mon. - Thurs. 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., Fri. 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. and Sat. 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. 1652 Shattuck Ave. 843-2527. www.accigallery.com 

Addison Street Windows, “Windows” An all-media exhibit by San Francisco Women Artists, Thurs., July 10 through Mon., Aug. 11. 2018 Addison St. 658-0585. For more information on the artists call 524-8538.  

The Ames Gallery, “Conversations with Myself” Works by Barry Simons. Paintings and collages incorporating the artist’s original poetry. By appointment or chance. Exhibition runs until Aug. 15. 2661 Cedar St. 845-4949. www.amesgallery.com  

Berkeley Art Center, 19th National Juried Exhibition: “Works on Paper,” runs Aug. 6 to Sept. 13. Berkeley Art Center in Live Oak Park, 1275 Walnut St. Open Wed. - Sun. noon to 5 p.m. Admission is free. 644-6893.  

www.berkeleyartcenter.org 

Berkeley Historical Society, “Focus on Berkeley” A photography exhibit by the Berkeley Camera Club, Berkeley High School students and community photographers in celebration of the City’s 125th Anniversary. Exhibition runs until Sept. 13. Berkeley History Center, 1931 Center St. Sponsored by the Berkeley Historical Society,  

848-0181.  

Berkeley Public Library, “The Lighter Side of Crop Circles,” photographs by Ben Ailes. Runs until Aug. 30. First Floor Catalog Lobby, 2090 Kittredge at Shattuck. 981-6100. 

Berkeley YWCA, “Photo- 

graphs by Charles and Hilda Good - 1915 to 1921: Homesteading in Southern California” through Aug. 29. in the YWCA Main Lounge, 2600 Bancroft Way. 848-6375.  

Kala Art Institute, Kala Fellowship Exhibition, Part II Runs until Sept. 6. Call for gallery hours. 1060 Heinz Ave. 549-2977. www.kala.org  

A New Leaf Gallery/Sculpture Site, “Four Elements of Sculpture: Fire, Air, Water and Earth,” Exhibition runs to August 31. 1286 Gilman St. Call for gallery hours. 527-7621. www.sculpturesite.com 

Red Oak Realty “Mixed Media,” by Stan Whitehead. Reception for the artist on Aug. 8, 6 to 8 p.m. Exhibition runs July 31 through October 23, Mon. - Sat., 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. 1891 Solano Ave. 527-3387. 

Slater/Marinoff & Co., “All Animal Art” Forty photographers and artists have donated works to help fund the spay-neuter and food costs of the Milo Foundation’s work in finding new homes for abandoned dogs and cats. Exhibition runs until Aug. 31. Hours are Mon. - Sat. 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Sun. 11:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. 1823 Fourth St. 548-2001. 

Sway Gallery, “Secret Summer” paintings, installations, collages, prints, drawings, and mixed media by Nana Hayashi, Greg Moore, Marc Snegg, Gabrielle Wolodarski. Runs Aug. 12 - Oct. 5 Opening Reception on Tues., Aug. 12, 7-10 p.m. Gallery hours are 11 a.m. - 7 p.m. every day. 2569 Telegraph Ave. 489-9054.


Psychedelic Plant Quest Sends Teens to Hospital

By DAVID SCHARFENBERG
Friday August 08, 2003

Two teenagers in search of a psychedelic high got more than they bargained for Sunday after dining on flowers from a plant growing in People’s Park—three days in the hospital, some of it in drug-induced comas, according to police and UC officials. 

The pair had come to Berkeley to attend a college preparatory program at the university. 

According to UC Berkeley police, the teenagers consumed the flowers when “a local guy” at People’s Park told them the “angel’s trumpet” plant possessed hallucinogenic properties. 

The two 17-year-old boys each downed four of the yellow six- to 24-inch flowers. Another participant, a 16-year-old girl, ate just one and was not hospitalized. 

All three students were participating in Summer Focus at Berkeley, a program run by Education Unlimited, a 10-year-old Berkeley-based company which runs academic camps for about 1,000 students per summer at UC Berkeley, UCLA, UC Davis, the University of San Diego and Stanford University. 

Education Unlimited’s Executive Director Matthew Fraser defended the company’s supervision of the students and commended Summer Focus staff for taking appropriate steps when they discovered one of the boys in a “dazed” and “incoherent” state around 11 p.m. Sunday night after he returned from the park to the program’s on-campus dormitory. 

“Our normal policies were followed and the action our organization took was very prompt,” he said. 

Fraser said the Summer Focus camp director took the student to the hospital, while staff searched for other participants who exhibited similar symptoms. When staff found the second male student, showing signs of “delirium” and “confusion,” Fraser said, they called campus authorities. 

UC Berkeley Police Lieutenant Adan Tejada said two officers responded to an 11:20 p.m. call. Shortly after arriving, they summoned an ambulance, operated by the Berkeley Fire Department. Both were taken to Alta Bates Medical Center. Deputy Fire Chief David Orth said the student was “delusional” and “very combative” on the way to the hospital. 

Fraser said both boys were placed in drug-induced comas, to help them recover, for about 24 hours. Orth said the procedure is common when patients are convulsing. The were released Wednesday morning with no evidence of long-term damage, according to a program official. 

Summer Focus staff insisted that the 16 year-old girl go to the hospital Sunday night, according to Fraser, but doctors said she did not need to be hospitalized. 

UC Berkeley police confirmed that at least one of the three teenagers was from out-of-state. Fraser said the parents of the two boys came from “out-of-town” to see to their children’s medical care. He would not comment on the parents’ reaction to the incident. 

Fraser said he didn’t think the incident would do long-term damage to Education Unlimited’s reputation, arguing that teenagers are going to take risks and cannot always be protected. 

“People are going to do things—kids get in cars and get in accidents,” he said. 

UC Berkeley, which owns People’s Park—an icon of the political protest and counterculture of the 1960s—removed the troublesome bush from the northwest corner of the park Wednesday morning, said university spokesperson Marie Felde, replacing it with a non-toxic trumpet vine plant bearing smaller, yellow-white flowers. 

Felde said the university owns “several hundred” acres of land and does the best it can to make sure all its landscaping is safe. 

“We take every effort we possibly can to make sure there’s nothing dangerous out there and as soon as we find something, we remove it,” she said. 

A commonplace feature in East Bay landscaping, angel’s trumpet—also known as Brugmansia—has played a significant role in many cultures. The flowers, roots, and seeds of the plant have been used by Native Americans and in India for religious ceremonies and by thrill-seekers hoping for psychedelic highs. 

Dr. Kent Olson, medical director of the San Francisco division of the California Poison Control System, which covers counties from Marin in the north to Santa Barbara in the south, said his agency gets about 20 reports a year of people using angel’s trumpet and related plants as hallucinogens, most from Sonoma and Santa Cruz counties, with an occasional call from Berkeley. 

Olson said symptoms can include a rapid heartbeat, high body temperatures, combativeness, coma, and death. 

One of the more painful symptoms, he said, is an inability to urinate. “People feel like they’re going to explode,” he said. 

Long time People’s Park activist Lisa Stephens said she was concerned about the students’ health, but objected to the university’s decision to pull out the angel’s trumpet, which she says was planted by a community gardener about 13 years ago. 

“There’s all kinds of things that are poisonous in public gardens and all over Berkeley,” she said, arguing that the university should have erected a sign next to the plant warning of its dangers rather than replace it altogether.


Filling in the Details of Berkeley’s Infill Planning Award

By SHARON HUDSON
Friday August 08, 2003

As noted recently in the Planet, the Berkeley Planning Department has received an infill development award from the American Planning Association (APA). How can this be? you ask. After all, Berkeley has recently been engulfed in a storm of land use controversy, a stack of lawsuits and appeals, and new Big Ugly Buildings strikingly similar to those that initiated the Neighborhood Preservation Ordinance in 1973. Even the State wants Berkeley to straighten out its disrupted planning process! So just for fun, let’s examine the application’s own words—courtesy of the planning staff—and how they relate to reality. 

 

Application: “Beginning with its visionary 1977 Master Plan, Berkeley continues to demonstrate this commitment [to sustainability] through adoption of seven Area Plans and a new General Plan.” 

Reality: The Planning Department routinely runs roughshod over both the General Plan and our Area Plans, all of which attempt a delicate balance of our cultural, institutional, business, and residential components. Yet one of the award recipients, former Planning Director Carol Barrett, alienated Berkeley residents by advocating a “market-driven” cityscape in Berkeley (apparently the oxymoronic “market planning” idea), and then by attempting to stall the Southside Plan. Meanwhile, City legal and planning staff and certain Berkeley developers are openly delighted that a court has recently ruled that charter cities like Berkeley are not legally required to obey their general plans.  

 

Application: “With broad community support for these new [sustainable] policies, the implementation program could then disengage from ‘business as usual’ and engage in creative problem solving consistent with sustainability.” 

Reality: This sentence explains the Planning Department’s real approach to Berkeley’s carefully crafted plans: that is, to “disengage” from the plans and engage in highly “creative” interpretations designed to impose unnecessary and damaging forms of “smart growth” on Berkeley. 

 

Application: “There has always been generous public dialogue and input from citizens in developing plans and ordinances, and in response to development proposals. Developers have worked with neighbors and staff to design projects that are appropriate for their location[s].” 

Reality: Citizen input into long-range planning is excellent—which is why citizens are so astonished when their plans are entirely ignored by the current Planning Division. Developers sometimes work successfully with neighbors to create good and popular developments, but a long list of appeals, lawsuits, and despised large developments indicates a major problem. Staff routinely stonewalls, obfuscates, refuses to respond, and ignores neighborhood concerns. In contradiction to our own ordinances, staff makes no genuine attempt to facilitate cooperation between applicants and neighbors. Instead, propelled by their simplistic “smart growth” philosophy, staff encourages developers to build the largest possible projects over neighborhood objections. If a project is not big enough to suit their idea of “smart growth,” the staff also makes things hard for the developer, driving those who want to build modest, neighborhood-friendly projects out of Berkeley. Some developers have even had to band together with neighbors to resist the Planning Department’s lust for overbuilding. 

 

Application: “The City has successfully developed these plans and projects with a high degree of citizen involvement and engagement by appointed and elected officials, an enlightened development community, financial tools that help facilitate affordable housing, and a performance-based zoning ordinance. All of these ingredients provide a successful recipe for high-density, mixed-use infill projects…” 

Reality: Wow! This is a mouthful! “Citizen involvement” means stunned citizens trying to defend themselves against atrocious developments, followed by appeals and lawsuits. “Engagement by appointed and elected officials” is impossible on developments, precluded by Berkeley’s unique interpretation of “ex parte” communication, which means that these officials can have no meaningful dialogue about current projects. The “enlightened development community” must refer to the planning staff themselves, unless it refers to a public quickly being “enlightened” of its parking, open space, greenery, views, landmarks, and quality of life. The “financial tools that help facilitate affordable housing” means that Berkeley refrains from checking developers’ claims of financial hardship to justify zoning concessions, and that the City finances affordable housing through state and federal programs, and then exercises poor oversight over the spending of this “free” money. The “performance-based zoning ordinance” means that instead of following any definitive rules, staff must merely convince five decision-makers, who are completely dependent on staff advice because they are too busy to read very much and are prohibited from talking with their constituents, that a development will not be “unreasonably detrimental”—whatever that means. Our flexible, discretionary zoning code, originally written to foster reasonable development, has been subverted by lack of discretion. 

 

Application: “The City of Berkeley may be one of the only cities on track to meet ABAG’s housing projections, including affordable units.…The City does not anticipate any problem reaching the goal of 1269 housing units by 2006.” 

Reality: But this acknowledgement does not keep the staff from simultaneously claiming that projects cannot legally be denied because Berkeley is behind in its affordable housing goals. The Planning Department and City Attorney regularly browbeat the public, the Zoning Adjustments Board (ZAB), and City Council with the “we’re behind on housing” justification for terrible projects.  

 

Application: “The City allows deep parking reductions for projects located in the Downtown core and along major transit corridors. Most projects have been built with less than one parking space per dwelling unit. Some have been approved with no parking for the residential component.”  

Reality: This boast is not limited to the residential component, the Downtown, or transit corridors. But there is nothing in the Zoning Ordinance that allows or encourages an applicant to build without adequate parking; in fact, parking protection is written into the code. Reductions in parking are discretionary, based on a finding of “no detriment.” Unfortunately, the “City”—meaning staff and a majority of the ZAB and/or the City Council—finds that inadequate parking is good for Berkeleyans in almost all non-single-family areas.  

The Planning Department is well on its way to building a high-density downtown Berkeley that has almost no parking. Car-free residential buildings have their place, but as currently executed they exacerbate parking problems and may create cumulative demographic problems. The lack of off-street public parking could rapidly become a problem for our business community, especially since the mayor’s task force is looking to further lower some commercial parking requirements to make development easier, without any examination of the consequences.  

 

Application: “Berkeley allows the open space requirement for infill buildings to be designed and located on rooftops. … The spaces are well used by building occupants.” 

Reality: Although it sounds great, rooftop open space is no substitute for ground-level open space that is an amenity for the public as well as the building residents—even in commercial areas. Rooftops are often windy, shadeless, and inconvenient to access, and they require unsightly elevator towers. Developers themselves admit that tenants do not use them, and evidence supports this. 

 

Application: “Berkeley allows a one or two floor bonus for projects that incorporate certain square footage of cultural space on their ground floors.” 

Reality: This incentive applies only to Downtown, and we all hope it will be constructive. But so far, the only time it’s been tried, developer shenanigans drove the intended cultural facility out of business and the space now sits empty. But oddly, the two extra floors did not also disappear.  

 

Application: “To provide increased development potential and greater design flexibility, the City actively pursues the provisions of the State Density Bonus law that allows for modifications in development standards to increase the number of dwelling units [in projects with affordable housing].” And later, “The City uses the density bonus law as a tool to move project massing around to be responsive to neighborhood needs and impacts.” 

Reality: Yes, the planning staff loves the State Density Bonus law, even though in public they pretend to be its helpless victim. Berkeley has had its own generous affordable housing provision since 1973, and local developers and the City were able to work out the financing on these projects without massive zoning give-aways. But when the state law was passed recently, these same developers were suddenly unable to finance their projects without trampling all over Berkeley’s zoning code. And the density bonus as a neighborhood-friendly “tool”?—downright Kafkaesque!  

 

Application: “Berkeley has now used the State’s infill exemption [from environmental review] on three mixed-use projects that included a total of approximately 40 units each.”  

Reality: Another revealing brag. The City avoids environmental review by any available mechanism, flying in the face of the sincere environmentalism of both Berkeleyans and real smart growth. What is so smart about building project after project, adding ever more to our urban environmental overload, without any assessment of their individual and cumulative environmental impacts?  

 

So what are Berkeleyans to make of this award, based on such a false picture of reality? Is the APA just a mutual admiration society? Are these awards intended merely to enhance résumés? As of this writing, we do not have the APA jury’s comments or the basis on which they made their judgments. But let’s not mistake this for an award for successful infill development, because some of the twelve projects submitted for the award may never be built, and there has been no study of the physical consequences of any of these projects, or user or public satisfaction. But, with a complete change of attitude and behavior, the planning staff may someday receive a meaningful reward: the appreciation of the citizens of Berkeley for effectively implementing Berkeley’s laws, plans, and progressive land use vision. This will lead to plenty of desirable infill. 

 

Sharon Hudson lives in an area with five times Berkeley’s average density, does not own real estate, did not own a car until she was 32, has never regularly commuted to a job by car, and donates most of her charitable dollars to the Nature Conservancy.


LBNL Agrees to Spare Creek

By PAUL KILDUFF Special to the Planet
Friday August 08, 2003

Bowing in part to community pressure, the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab (LBNL) announced this week that it won’t bury part of a creek on its property under a parking lot. 

The dirt in question comes from the excavation to level a site for their new office building in Strawberry Canyon. Originally LBNL planned to dump the soil into a nearby creek to create a parking lot. Now lab officials say the 26,000 cubic yards of dirt—about 2000 truckloads—will be taken offsite. 

“Basically the reason we changed the plan was in large part because of the community input that we received,” said LBNL spokesman Ron Kolb. He said that opponents at a recent public scoping meeting to discuss the plan voiced “concerns about the siting of the parking lot and what they described as a pristine canyon.” 

LBNL Facilities Director George Reyes said the Lab “is proud to be a part of Berkeley and is very appreciative of the open dialogue with city leaders, as well as of input from all members of our community.” 

Neighborhood activists who spoke out against the plan said they were elated, but not exactly surprised. 

“People all over Berkeley were very much against this,” said Daniella Thompson, who lives just down the hill from the lab on LeConte Street in Blackberry Canyon. She wrote protest letters to LBNL, the San Francisco Water Quality Control Board and other organizations that would have had to sign off on the parking lot plan. 

“I think there was a public outcry,” said Thompson, a member of the Native Plant society. “I can’t think of a single person who agreed to this with applause. It was universally decried as a very bad idea. And fortunately they listened, which often they don’t do. But in this case they did the right thing,”  

While Kolb admits that NBNL’s decision was greatly influenced by community opposition, there were other factors. “If we did not have a viable alternative, a non-intrusive alternative, we probably wouldn’t have changed our minds,” said Kolb. 

Kolb added that another reason NBNL shelved the plan was that the parking lot wasn’t urgently needed. 

“Since we don’t need it, we looked to other ways that we might be able to accommodate this huge amount of dirt without intruding on the environment,” said Kolb.  

Another factor in the decision was objections to the plan from LBNL workers who said they enjoyed looking at the creek from their lunchroom. About 300 feet of the Cafeteria Creek would have been buried under the parking lot plan. 

“There was at least one employee and probably several others who were concerned about it not only from its aesthetic point of view, but also just in terms of their concern that the woodland hillside setting would be disrupted,” said Kolb. “And so that input weighed on management’s mind.” 

There is no plan for the dirt as of yet, but Kolb said it could be headed for other construction projects in and around Berkeley or to a landfill. 

The new office plan will relocate 240 employees in a nearby building. The number of parking spaces needed is expected to remain the same. The proposed lot would have been 39,000 square feet with 120 spaces.  

While Thompson was happy that the parking lot will not be built, she’d like to see NBNL also scuttle their plans for the six-story, 65,000 square foot office known as Building 49. 

“They’re still going ahead with the building,” she said. “It would be nice if they didn’t. If would be nice if they didn’t dig into that hillside and excavate all of that soil. It would be nice if they cleaned up some of their polluted sites and put the building there. But, under the circumstances I’m just delighted that the creek is going to be left alone.” 

LBNL’s new plans are outlined in a notice of preparation (NOP) that includes a description of the project as well as details on the Environmental Impact Report (EIR) that will have to be filed before construction can begin. A copy of the NOP can be downloaded from the laboratory web site at http://www.lbl.gov/Community/env-rev-docs.html.  

A draft of the EIR will be available for comment by mid-September with public meetings on it to follow in October. LBNL expects to submit the final EIR to UC Regents for approval this winter. Construction could begin as early as next spring and completed by fall 2005. 

 

 


BPD Brass Ceiling Busted

By MEGAN GREENWELL
Friday August 08, 2003

Stephanie Fleming made history for the second time in her 25-year career with the Berkeley Police Department (BPD) on Thursday when she became the agency’s first female captain. 

In a swearing in ceremony at City Hall, Fleming took command of the department’s field support division, which encompasses community service, community policing, special enforcement, and traffic and parking enforcement. Fleming, who six years earlier had become BPD’s first African-American female lieutenant, took the captain’s oath from Police Chief Roy Meisner in front of a room packed with family, colleagues, and friends. 

A Berkeley native who graduated from Oakland Technical High School and UC Berkeley, Fleming acknowledged the significance of her achievement and said she was proud to pave the way for women coming up the ranks. 

“When I came into this department there were very few women in law enforcement,” she said. “I stand on the shoulders of those who came before me, and the 30 other women in this police force are welcome to stand on my shoulders.” 

Fleming, long one of the BPD’s most accomplished officers, never hid her ambition to move up in the organization. She has garnered awards and commendations including the PAL Officer of the Year award in 1993 and the Community Policing Award in 1999, as well as recognition from state Senator Don Perata and special awards from many community groups and churches. In 1999, when St. Mary’s College High School cut its drivers’ education program because of budgetary cuts, Fleming volunteered to teach the class for free, earning a Community Service Award from the city. 

"I do what I do because I wholeheartedly enjoy it," she said. "I like to see the results of what I put in, and that's why I work hard. It gives me energy."  

City residents and colleagues praised Fleming’s commitment to the department, dedication to communication, and strong leadership skills as the qualities which have made her stand out over the years. Meisner said Fleming’s is constantly overflowing with commendations from Berkeley citizens. 

“This selection is no coincidence,” said City Manager Weldon Rucker at the swearing-in ceremony. “Everyone who has ever worked around and in the department knew Captain Fleming’s quality. It was an easy choice.” 

Although the decision to promote Fleming was an easy one for Meisner, Fleming herself said the road to Thursday’s ceremony was rocky at times. When she joined the department in 1978 and found an overwhelmingly male-dominated group, some of whom had trepidation about a woman in the ranks. 

“Whenever I made a promotion there used to be some cloud over it,” she said. “Some of the old guard weren’t quite sure what to think. But amazingly, many of those old guys have come around—they have a whole new mindset.” 

Fleming said she looked forward to bringing a new perspective to administrative meetings, which include the chief, deputy chief, and division captains. As the highest-ranking woman ever in the city’s police force, Fleming broke the reputation of such meetings being a “boys-only” club. 

At Thursday’s swearing-in, Patrol Captain Doug Hambleton commented on the transition it will take to bring a woman into the traditionally male group. 

“We used to call upper-division meetings ‘the big boy staff,’” Hambleton said. “I guess we can’t do that anymore.” 

Fleming herself seemed a bit overwhelmed by the day’s special events. 

“I have these moments where I’m absolutely ecstatic,” she said. “Then the tears start coming. To be a product of this community and then make history in this community is a very powerful thing.” 

One highlight of Thursday’s ceremony came when her son Stephen, a rookie BPD officer, pinned on her new badge while her cousins, nieces and nephews, parents, siblings and children rose in applause. 

“It makes it all the more special to have everyone I love standing around me,” she said. “It’s an honor to be in this position.” 

 

 

 


Immigration Agents Arrest LBNL Staffers

By DAVID SCHARFENBERG
Friday August 08, 2003

The U.S. government’s new Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced the arrests of three foreign nationals working at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Wednesday. 

The three face deportation proceedings for criminal convictions unearthed during a post-Sept. 11 sweep of U.S. government laboratories. Their names were not released. 

None of the employees’ crimes—domestic violence, vehicle theft and cocaine possession—were committed on lab property, according to lab spokesman Ron Kolb, although all took place during the workers’ time of employment at the lab. 

Kolb also emphasized that no lab employees have access to sensitive intelligence or defense information. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LNBL), unlike Los Alamos National Laboratory and several other U.S. government labs, is focused on the life sciences, not defense technologies. 

Still, ICE spokesperson Sharon Rummery said the agency was concerned that the employees’ criminal records made them vulnerable to blackmail by people who could threaten to turn them in to immigration authorities. 

“It’s a sensitive facility,” she said. “It’s a place where a person who might be compromised could do some harm.” 

Rummery said she couldn’t speculate on what type of harm might be done at LNBL, which is operated by the University of California.  

Kolb said the three arrested employees were a computer network troubleshooter from Canada who had worked for the lab for 13 years, a biology lab technician from the Philippines who had worked at the lab six years and a Mexican maintenance worker who had been employed for 17 months. 

Kolb said he did not have information on the maintenance worker’s job performance, but said the other two employees had solid records at the lab. 

“There was nothing in their arrests that was related to work performance,” he said. 

ICE began its investigation of the lab last summer, combing through the records of about 4,000 employees. Kolb said the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, now subsumed within ICE, did a similar review in 1990. 

ICE was created March 1, 2003 as part of the federal government’s reorganization of its homeland security operation. The agency includes the old Immigration and Naturalization Service, the U.S. Customs Service and the Federal Protective Service.


Biker Spins Wheels For Trails

By MEGAN GREENWELL
Friday August 08, 2003

Jim Muellner believes America needs more bicycle trails to link its major cities, and he’s showing the rest of us just how much. Two converts to his cause, Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates and City Council member Kriss Worthington, will join him Friday as he bikes from Berkeley to Oakland. 

After setting off from Washington on May 2 on a cycle of his own devising, the 67-year-old inventor has been pedaling his way through 25 cities as part of the National Bicycle Greenway (NBG) Mayors’ Ride, which is scheduled to end in Santa Cruz Aug. 17. 

Friday’s ride will take the Great Lakes, Minn., resident and the two Berkeley officials from City Hall to downtown Oakland. 

“Berkeley is a great city for bike advocacy,” said Muellner, noting that Worthington has been “car-free” since 1983. “It’s an honor to get to be here representing NBG.” 

A legendary figure in the biking world, Muellner said Wednesday that his ride has been “an opportunity to educate people about the project and get them involved in helping make it a reality.” “The chance to bike from city to city on specially-designated bicycle paths is great for bike advocates.” 

Arrived in Berkeley after the 38-mile ride from Napa on Wednesday, Muellner said he was excited to continue on and ready to participate in the festival. 

“Some of the rides are a lot longer than 38 miles, so this was pretty easy,” said Muellner, who completed the 520 miles from Salt Lake City to Reno in just five days. “It’s a beautiful ride.” 

The founder of Just Two Bikes, a company that makes tricycles for adults, Muellner also invented the Smart Carte system for transporting luggage in airports, but left the firm to devote more time to riding and inventing bicycles. 

Muellner is one of the most beloved NBJ members and relay riders, attracting crowds at every stop. 

At Friday’s City Hall send-off , Muellner will be named an honorary Berkeleyan, and when he arrives in Santa Cruz for the festival that will mark the end of his run, he’ll be inducted into the NBG Hall of Fame as a rider who has made a significant difference in the life of the bikeway.


UC Berkeley to Cut 200 Positions

By DAVID SCHARFENBERG
Friday August 08, 2003

Facing a $25.5 million cut in state funding, UC Berkeley is planning to cut 200 staff positions, officials said Wednesday. 

The reductions will include an unknown number of positions that were left vacant in recent months in anticipation of the state funding cuts. But campus officials said they also expect real people to lose real jobs. 

“The implementation of layoffs is a last resort,” said UC Berkeley’s Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Paul Gray, in a statement. “But the magnitude of the shortfall we face makes these actions necessary.” 

Gray said the university has “worked hard to address budget cuts through consolidation and reorganization” rather than layoffs. But union officials disputed the claim. 

“I think it’s really amazing that they begin the discussion about budget cuts with layoffs,” said Margy Wilkinson, chief steward for the Coalition of University Employees, which represents 18,000 clerical workers at UC’s nine-campus system. “There’s been no attempt to look at alternatives. There’s been no dialogue with the people who work here.” 

Campus spokesperson Marie Felde countered that the decision to keep “a great number” of positions empty in recent months represented a significant attempt to reduce the number of active employees who will face layoffs. 

Those who do get laid off will begin receiving notice “within days,” Felde said. 

UC Berkeley is the first UC campus to formally announce that pink slips are on the way, although job cuts are widely expected throughout the system—which took a $410 million cut in the final budget signed by Gov. Gray Davis Aug. 2. 

“The state’s final budget cuts UC’s funding so deeply that job impacts of one kind or another at all UC locations now appear unavoidable,” said UC spokesperson Paul Schwartz. 

Schwartz said it is too early to know how many jobs will be lost system-wide. 

Faced with the $410 million cut, UC hiked student fees by 30 percent system-wide and is planning to borrow $47.5 million. But the campuses still face cuts in libraries, administration, research and outreach to traditionally low-performing high schools—a chief tool for the recruitment of minority students in California’s post-affirmative action era. 

“The instructional mission is the area with the highest priority—both for the university and for the legislature,” said Felde. 

Felde said the largest number of job cuts will likely happen in the university’s Business and Administrative Services control unit—which includes custodians, tradespeople, clerical staff, payroll staff, campus police, athletics staff and more. 

Wilkinson said the clericals’ union has not yet received formal notice of layoffs, but is bracing for heavy reductions. 

“I can say, from previous experience, that they lay off from the low end,” she said, calling for more cuts in the administrative ranks. 

Wilkinson, who works in UC Berkeley’s library system, said the impacts of layoffs can be long-term. The libraries, she said, are still short-staffed in the wake of the last major round of job cuts in the early-1990s. 

UC Berkeley launched its “Staff and Academic Reduction in Time” (START) program in May, allowing workers to reduce their work hours and take a cut in pay to help offset budget reductions. 

Felde said she had no data on the number of employees who have taken advantage of the program.


Saudi Secrets Are Safe With George W. Bush

By JOE CONASON New York Observer
Friday August 08, 2003

At the nexus of diplomacy and secret intelligence, governments almost never speak forthrightly about their purposes. When ranking officials decide what can be revealed and what must be concealed, political expedience is at least as important as national security. And on the rare occasion when such an official publicly demands the disclosure of embarrassing information, as the Saudi foreign minister did recently, an ulterior motive should be assumed. 

So regardless of any claims to the contrary, it seems prudent to remember that the White House and the House of Saud are likewise best served by keeping all the sensitive files locked away. Both houses would be unwise to risk speaking candidly about each other now—a caution that applies with special emphasis when the residents of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. bear the name of Bush. 

On July 29, Prince Saud el-Faisal paid an extraordinary visit to the Bush White House. For an hour, he and George W. Bush discussed the 28-page section of the joint Congressional report on Sept. 11 that evidently implicates agents of his country’s government in the terrorist attack. The prince’s ostensible reason for coming to see the President—whose family has long maintained close connections with the Saudi royals—was to ask Mr. Bush to declassify those 28 pages because, as he declared at a press conference: “We have nothing to hide, and we do not seek, nor do we need, to be shielded.” 

That glibly ridiculous assertion is contradicted by the repressive habits of his family’s autocratic regime, which has a lot to hide from its own people as well as ours. Besides, the prince knew before he landed in Washington that the President would decline his plea. Foreign ministers don’t meet with any head of state, particularly not the leader of the world’s only superpower, unless they already know what the meeting’s outcome will be. In this instance, the President’s negative answer could have been ascertained via embassy cable within hours, or by telephone within minutes. 

As Senator Charles Schumer suggested, the prince visited the President to improve the kingdom’s image rather than to inform the American public. The Saudis requested the release of the Congressional report’s incriminating pages with absolute confidence in a denial by their old friend George W., who insisted that releasing the report’s unflattering references to Saudi Arabia might somehow undermine the “war on terror.” 

The New York Democrat, like other legislators of both parties seeking to pry loose those 28 pages, discounts that clichéd excuse. Senator Richard Shelby, the Alabama Republican who oversaw the joint Congressional probe, has said that “90 to 95 percent” of the pages being withheld “would not compromise, in my judgment, anything in national security.” 

Why, then, is the Bush administration so determined to prevent the public from learning what Congressional investigators discovered about Saudi connections to Sept. 11? Conventional answers involve the kingdom’s control of the world’s largest oil reserves, its influence over the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, its potential assistance in achieving peace between Israelis and Arabs, and its proclaimed alliance with the United States against Al Qaeda. 

In steeply descending order of persuasiveness, all those stated reasons possess some merit. The problem is that the Bush administration—as well as the President’s family and its associates—is scarcely able to assess the merits with any degree of objectivity. After all, if they reveal damaging information about the Saudis, what might the Saudis reveal about them? 

For more than three decades, Saudi Arabia has sought to influence American politicians, often through investment in American business. While they have occasionally sought out Democrats, they are far more comfortable with Republicans—and in particular, with Bush Republicans. At the moment, for example, the kingdom’s defense attorney in a lawsuit brought by families of Sept. 11 victims happens to be James Baker, that ultimate Bushie whose résumé includes stints as Secretary of State and Treasury. (Mr. Baker’s last big court case was Bush v. Gore.) 

Commercial connections between the Saudis and the Bushes extend from limited-partner investments in George W.’s failed oil ventures more than 20 years ago to the Carlyle Group, a mighty merchant bank that currently employs Mr. Baker, former President George Herbert Walker Bush and a host of lesser family vassals. Saudi money has also figured in several of the most significant political scandals of the postwar era, notably the Iran-contra affair and the Bank of Credit and Commerce International blowup. Whatever the Saudis might say about any of those matters is probably better left unsaid—not only to protect state secrets, but also for the sake of Bush senior, the former CIA director and suspected Iran-contra conspirator. 

The U.S. government knows many unflattering stories about the Saudi rulers. Unfortunately, they know many and perhaps worse about ours. The preference for silence and secrecy is understandably mutual. 

 

Joe Conason writes a weekly column on politics for The New York Observer. His most recent book is: "The Hunting of the President: The Ten-Year Campaign to Destroy Bill and Hillary Clinton."


Local Environmentalist Targets Ethnic Restaurants

By DAVID SCHARFENBERG
Friday August 08, 2003

Ritu Primlani has a simple message: Environmentalism isn’t just for rich, white people with fancy degrees. 

“You don’t have to have a Ph.D. in environmental science,” said Primlani, a North Oakland environmental activist. “And you don’t need to be Bill Gates to afford it.” 

For the past year-and-a-half, the straight-talking, 30 year-old native of Delhi, India has been putting her philosophy to work. In just 17 months, Primlani, president and executive director of an Oakland-based nonprofit called Thimmakka’s Resources for Environmental Education, has knocked down language and cultural barriers at 44 family-owned ethnic restaurants in Berkeley, Oakland and San Jose and put all of them on the road to environmental responsibility. 

Twenty-three of the restaurants, including 12 in Berkeley, are officially “certified green businesses” and the rest are on their way. 

Primlani, working with a host of non-profits, utilities and other agencies, has installed hundreds of low-energy light bulbs at the restaurants, diverted tons of solid waste to recycling and composting and blocked a deluge of soaps and cooking oils from pouring down street sewer drains and into the ocean.  

In the meantime, the activist, who has won an award from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for her work, has saved the restaurant owners a bundle of cash on electricity builds and trash removal. 

“I talk to them about what every businessperson talks about—money,” said Primlani this week over an Ethiopian lunch at Cafe Colucci on Telegraph Avenue. “Saving the environment becomes incidental and not the primary interest at all.” 

According to Primlani’s own projections, the first 30 restaurants she helped to change will save more than $1 million over the course of five years. 

Those restaurants will also redirect 1,710 tons of solid waste (or, as she pointed out, the equivalent of 518 Asian elephants) to recycling and composting and conserve 5.2 million gallons of water—enough to fill a bathtub for every resident of Berkeley, according to Primlani. 

Chintala Reddy, owner of Kamal Palace Indian Cuisine on Allston Way in Berkeley, is a believer. He said he has saved $200 to $300 per month on electricity and about $1,000 total on garbage removal since he went green about a year ago. 

Reddy said the economic incentives and the environmental benefits of what Primlani calls her “Greening Ethnic Restaurants” program convinced him to make the shift. But it was the diligence of Primlani and her cast of experts and volunteers, from city of Berkeley employees to student interns, that made the change happen, he said.  

“They come here more often than I do,” he joked. “They did an excellent job.” 

Reddy, who speaks English and the Indian languages of Hindi and Telugu, said Primlani also made a difference by using volunteers who spoke Punjabi, the Indian language of his wait staff. 

“If someone can explain to them what is the advantage—in their native tongue—it sinks in,” he said. 

Primlani said cultural sensitivity is a key to the success of her program. She makes an effort to greet restaurant owners in their own languages, learn the correct pronunciation of their names and tap volunteers who know the culture and native tongue of the workers. 

“She’s very friendly,” said Senne Belete, owner of Das Cafe on Milvia Street, a small shop that sells bagels and falafel sandwiches. “She’s like family.” 

But some of Primlani’s work, she said, is translating environmental lingo that no restaurateur, regardless of language and culture, seems to understand. 

“If you say ‘stormwater management’ to someone who is fluent in English, they don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” she said. 

Primlani uses a simpler, more evocative term—“the ocean sewer”—to explain to restaurant owners that they should wash their rugs far from the sewer drains on the street, preventing soaps from pouring into the Bay. 

Jennifer Cogley, eco-business coordinator for the city of Berkeley, said Primlani’s work has been vital in getting a total of 27 Berkeley businesses—from restaurants to auto repair shops—certified by the Bay Area Green Business Program. 

The figure places Berkeley firmly in the lead among cities in the six Bay Area counties that participate in the program. Oakland is second with 17 businesses. 

Cogley said Primlani, who works 80 to 100 hours per week, is a dedicated activist who has proven that environmental progress and economic development can go hand in hand. 

“The debate has always been either-or. Either you can make environmental gains or you can have economic improvement,” Cogley said. “She really collapses that paradigm.” 

Primlani, who emigrated to the United States nine years ago and earned a combined masters degree in geography, urban planning and law at UCLA, said she has targeted restaurants because they gobble up food, electricity, water and resources at prodigious rates and because they are very public, accountable places—drawing thousands of customers per year who can flex their economic muscle to demand environmentally-friendly business practices. 

Primlani also sees restaurants as a powerful way to reach ethnic Americans. 

“Where do they congregate? Where do they gather?,” she asked. “If you’re religious, you go to church. But everyone goes to restaurants.” 

Primlani said she hopes “green business” stickers in restaurant windows and brochures on tables will get immigrants from Thailand, India, Ethiopia and elsewhere, who frequent their favorite local haunts, to talk more about environmentalism. 

“Most of them have environmentally-friendly lifestyles, but they gave them up to embrace the American, disposable lifestyle,” she said. 

In the end, she said, people, no matter what their language or culture, need to protect a planet that nourishes them. 

“We have a saying in my language: ‘You don’t make a hole in the plate you eat on.’” 

 

 


San Francisco UC Extension Students Balk at Berkeley

By PAUL KILDUFF Special to the Planet
Friday August 08, 2003

The closing of UC Berkeley’s main Extension campus in San Francisco may mean an influx of students from the school to Berkeley, but that’s not the first choice of UC administrators. 

The school would rather lease another property in San Francisco for the school’s more popular classes or move some of them to the other Extension campus on Market Street. For now, the Berkeley option remains on the backburner, but “I wouldn’t rule it out,” says UC spokesperson Janet Gilmore.  

Whatever is decided, moving 15,000 students and hundreds of faculty from the facility will not be popular—especially with the prospect of having to cross the Bay Bridge to Berkeley for classes. 

“I suppose I would go to Berkeley if somebody died and I had to get there, but I won’t get on that bridge. It scares me,” says retired student Norma Miller, 78, of San Francisco. Miller, a member of the 350 strong Center for Learning in Retirement (CLIR) student association, is not alone in her feelings about having to travel to Berkeley for classes. “I don’t like to go to Berkeley for any reason because it isn’t clean. I’ve seen incidents where I don’t feel safe, and I’m from Cleveland originally,” says 65-year-old Lynne Faust.  

Another factor souring senior students on the potential commute to Berkeley is the cost. 

“It’s expensive to get there. BART is expensive. It’s getting more expensive. The bridge is expensive,” says Faust. “I would rather pay $5 to go to Marin than $2 for the East Bay.” 

At a recent CLIR meeting none of the 25 students in attendance said they would go to Berkeley for classes. CLIR students take courses during the day on the campus in art, theater, literature, foreign language and other subjects. While independent from UC Berkeley Extension, CLIR students have been taking courses at the site for 30 years. Now they’re looking for a new home.  

At night, students are generally younger and take certificate classes in accounting, marketing, interior design, computer programming and graphic arts.  

The sprawling campus, which takes up two city blocks on Laguna Street on the outskirts of downtown San Francisco, is being closed in part because enrollment has declined with the slumping economy. Since all UC Extension campuses must be self-supporting, a drop in enrollment means less money to operate campuses.  

Roughly 90 percent of campus income is generated from student enrollment fees. UC officials blame the dot com bust and other factors for the enrollment decline that’s affected the bottom line. During the fall 2001-2001 school year, UC Extension generated roughly $48 million at its seven Bay Area campuses. For the 2002-2003 school year, income dropped to $35 million. An estimated 15,000 students currently take 717 classes at the Laguna Street campus.  

Because all of UC Berkeley's Extension revenue is combined, there is no breakdown available for the drop in revenue at the Laguna Street campus. It is however the only campus that UC Berkeley Extension owns and as such is an asset. 

Another contributing factor for the closure is the building’s need for seismic repairs and improving access for the disabled—renovation costs that are estimated to be in the millions.  

When the site closes on Dec. 31, UC plans to lease it to an organization that will turn the campus into affordable housing units. Built in the 1920s, it is the original campus of San Francisco State. The site also once housed the French American school. UC Berkeley Extension bought the property in 1958 and has held classes there since.  

Faculty and staff at the campus were told of UC’s plans in a recent email, but the vagueness of the future plans for the school had many scratching their heads. 

“Where are they going to find another facility that’s large enough to hold as many classes as we do at this location?” said a UC employee who asked not to be identified. UC has instructed all 30 staffers and faculty to refer questions about the closure to UC spokespeople. 

The employee also cited the ample parking at the Laguna Street campus as a reason for staying put. “We have a lower lot and an upper parking lot and a lot on the side. We’re looking at a little more than 300 spaces. This is $5 parking. Our downtown center is $15 for parking and it’s only one floor, so there’s no way they’re all going to fit.” 

The staffer doesn’t see most of the students traveling to Berkeley for classes. “Honestly, I think they would rather go to City College or something else in the city that’s easier. This was convenient for them and I think that’s why most of them came here.” 

“The worst part about all of this is we don’t know if we’re going to have jobs,” said the employee. 

Besides the two in San Francisco, UC Berkeley Extension operates campuses in Berkeley, downtown Oakland, Fremont, San Ramon and Redwood City.  

 

 


When Worlds Collide, There’s Always a Flick

From Susan Parker
Friday August 08, 2003

Through circumstances slightly beyond my control I found myself in charge of two 13 year olds, one a city kid from San Francisco, the other a child of the East Coast suburbs. I was to be their East Bay chaperone for two days. I needed to do some quick, creative planning. 

After 24 hours together, I wasn’t sure that things were going well. They didn’t have a whole lot in common besides age and grade level. My friend from the city hasn’t been much further north than Vallejo and no further south than Santa Cruz. In contrast, my niece from New Jersey is practically a world traveler. She’s been everywhere and done everything. It was hard to think of activities that would be new to Bethanie, but not too overwhelming for Jernae.  

One is a fan of rap music, the other prefers groups with names like Trapt and Bowling for Soup. One wears tight bell-bottomed blue jeans and blouses that expose her navel. The other mopes around in sweatpants and a T-shirt. One carries a pocketbook with nothing in it. The other has a wallet full of money. All three of us slouched up and down Telegraph Avenue, trying to look cool. Then we slouched around stores like Old Navy and Wet Seal until I thought I’d go crazy.  

It finally dawned on me that perhaps the problem was me. Maybe I needed to step out of the picture and leave the two teens alone. “Do you want to see a movie?” I asked on our second evening together. “I could drop you off at a theater and pick you up afterwards.” They seemed to perk up for the first time in hours.  

I got out the movie guide and read aloud to them what was playing. “How ‘bout Pirates of the Caribbean.” I said. “Don’t you think Johnny Depp is hot?” 

“Been there, done that,” said Jernae. 

“Johnny Depp is definitely not hot,” said Bethanie. 

“Okay,” I said, “what about Finding Nemo or Bend it Like Beckman?” 

“Saw Nemo,” said Jernae. 

“Saw Beckman,” said Bethanie. 

“Hey, look at this. The Hulk, Sinbad, and Spy Kids are all playing at the same place!” I tried not to sound too enthusiastic. Maybe that was the problem. 

Both of them rolled their eyes. At least they were agreeing on something. 

“All right, listen up. Have you seen the whale movie or the horse movie?” 

“What whale movie?” asked Jernae. 

“What horse movie?” asked Bethanie. 

I was making progress. I read the reviews out loud for Seabiscuit and Whale Rider. They showed some interest. 

“No whales,” said Bethanie. “I don’t like fish.” 

“Yeah,” said Jernae. “I like horses better than whales.” 

“Great,” I said almost too loudly. Showing any kind of unbridled emotion might turn them against horse movies, just as it had turned them against poor Johnny Depp.  

I took them to United Artists of Emery Bay and bought them tickets to see Seabiscuit. Then I left them on their own and crossed my fingers that it would all work out. 

“How was the movie?” I asked when I picked them up out front at 9 p.m.  

“It was for old people,” said Bethanie. 

“Definitely,” said Jernae. “We were the youngest people in the place.” 

“By a whole lot,” added Bethanie. 

“I mean, there was nobody under at least 20 there except for us,” said Jernae. 

“And when the credits came on, well you know how you’re suppose to get up and leave, right?” asked Bethanie. “Well, nobody left. Maybe they couldn’t get out of their seats.”  

“It was pathetic,” said Jernae.  

“Nobody but old people stay for the credits,” stated Bethanie. 

“Yeah,” said Jernae. “Nobody.” 

“But how was the movie?” I asked again. 

“It was for old people,” they both said in unison. 

Finally, common ground. As soon as one flies back to New Jersey and the other heads over the Bay Bridge to Hunters Point, I’m going to buy myself a ticket to see Seabiscuit and stay until every last credit rolls by.


Dot Com to Dot Bomb Shift Wreaks Havoc on State, Bay

By HILARY ABRAMSON Pacific News Service
Friday August 08, 2003

I know where you can get a barely used $1,200 Aeron chair for less than $400. Here—where the high-end icon for dot-com rear ends was scattered in minimalist, million-dollar lofts like a flock of black butterflies. 

Of course, that was three years ago, before there was a “before” and “after” in America.  

When anyone in this city who wanted a job could find one.  

When you needed reservations weeks in advance at restaurants that served $500 bottles of wine and $16 foie gras ravioli appetizers with lobster truffle cream to entire staffs under the age of 35.  

When landlords expected to see a trail of people with references and cash lining up for a $4,000/month, large, two-bedroom, two-bath “with view” (without garage). 

Today, we can thank the U.S. Census Bureau for confirming what we knew anecdotally—San Francisco has lost a higher percentage of residents than any U.S. city with a population of 100,000 or more.  

And for the first time in its history, more people are leaving California for other U.S. states than are coming to it from other U.S. states. As one city tabloid wrote, Baghdad by the Bay has “joined weary old factory towns like Gary, Ind., and Hartford, Conn.” 

Blame it on the Dot Bomb—an economy built on hype that collapsed with the high-tech implosion. While the state capital and Central Valley enjoy a rollicking growth spurt, California as a whole has a higher unemployment rate than the national average. A report from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco concludes that California's dismal economy makes up the bulk of the nine-state Western regional problem.  

Everyone you know can name people they know who have been unemployed more than a year. (The Committee on Jobs estimates a three-year loss of 100,000 jobs since the end of the city's technology industry boom.) 

Blame it on the “yuppification” of San Francisco, where high-end businesses forced out mom and pop shops and inflated rents and home prices drove out families. What might be called a garage in Sacramento was a $500,000 “fixer-upper” in San Francisco at the height of the froth. 

In those days, every morning delivered material for fresh rage: the young driver weaving in traffic in a new, silver, BMW convertible at twice the legal speed while talking on her “cell”; the super young in black Prada, Kate Spade bags and Manlo Blanco stilettos; anxious twenty-something everybodies who hired walkers for their dogs, nannies for their children, cleaners for their houses and complained how hard it was to keep it all together. 

Three years ago, when I was facing knee surgery and zero parking nearby due to utility district construction, I asked the next door middle-aged financial consultant if she would park her vintage, burgundy Jaguar in her driveway to free up some street parking. The most I knew about her was that a staff of young, thin people dressed in black entered and exited her front door at all hours. And that, when she moved in, she had asked us to transfer our Solari bells to the other side of the deck because they kept her awake. 

“I paid $1.4 million for this house so that I could park anywhere I want,” she said with a big smile. 

“Then, could I park in your driveway so I don't have to limp for two blocks?” I asked. 

“I paid $1.4 million,” she repeated cheerfully, “so that I could look at my garden without having a car in the middle of it. But thanks for asking, because if you hadn’t, you wouldn’t have known the answer.” 

Dumbfounded, I told her that I was glad I asked, because otherwise I might have thought she was a good person.  

Afterwards, my biggest concern was over karma, because my husband, muttering that he was from New York, stomped out and hung the chimes back on her side. 

Today, some of us—even those of us who have been laid off for the first time in our lives—have had some positive sightings. The princes and princesses of smug have returned home to mooch off mommy and daddy until they can get into grad school and work their way up.  

Nonprofit organizations that had to leave town to find affordable downtown space are negotiating months of free rent in wired offices they could once enjoy only on magazine pages.  

Since the second quarter of 2001, the average Bay Area residential rent has fallen more than 18 percent. And the hottest new restaurant is “Home,” where you can get a heaping plate of tasty comfort food for as little as $10. 

These days, the woman next door and I exchange civilized nods. Her assistants have disappeared into the fog. Commuters barely remember gridlock.  

But sunrise lines of latte lovers, once united at Starbucks in exhilaration, now stand quiet and tense, living moment to moment in free fall. 

 

PNS contributing editor Hilary Abramson (hilary@pacificnews.org) is a veteran California journalist and former staff writer for the Sacramento Bee.


The High-Speed Chase That Wasn’t; Oakland Teacher Meets OPD Reality

J. DOUGLAS ALLEN-TAYLOR
Friday August 08, 2003

It would seem that Oakland police have begun to develop the uncanny ability to see a driver violate a traffic law, follow as the driver speeds away, either observe the ensuing accident from a distance or miss the accident altogether, and arrive just in time to either capture the suspect or secure the offending vehicle.  

The important OPD contention to be noted here is that while Oakland police are actively working to keep our streets free of reckless drivers, the police are not responsible for any intervening automobile crashes.  

At least, that’s what you will believe if you take Oakland Police at their word.  

This was the police department’s contention in the deaths of Oakland residents U’Kendra Johnson a year and a half ago and Breeona Mobley last spring, both in deep East Oakland. Now it’s come up again, in the recent North Oakland injury accident of Oakland schoolteacher Judi Hirsch.  

Hirsch says she was waiting to make the turn from Lawton onto 51st Street—a residential area two blocks from Emerson Elementary—on a weekday morning in early June when a late model Buick sped up 51st, tried to make the turn at Lawton, lost control, and slammed into Hirsch’s car.  

Hirsch says she closed her eyes just before the crash and when she opened them again, the Buick was gone, her car was totaled from two direct hits to its front and rear sides, and she felt lucky to have escaped “with only a broken rib and a lot of fear.”  

Hirsch remembered one other significant detail of her accident. Just before she closed her eyes, she saw a police car following the racing, out-of-control Buick, “so close, all I could see was the string of lights on top of the police car.”  

The emergency lights weren’t activated and she heard no warning siren, she says, or else “I might have pulled to the side, thus saving myself and my car.”  

And what disturbed Hirsch as much as the accident was that the police officer left the scene as quickly as the other driver, not stopping to check on her to see the extent of her injuries, not even calling an ambulance.  

So as soon as she began feeling better, Hirsch started making inquiries with the Oakland Police Department.  

She found out that the Buick had been carjacked in the parking lot of the Pleasant Valley Drive Safeway only moments before the accident and that the carjacker abandoned the Buick shortly after the accident, without being apprehended.  

Hirsch also learned that, contrary to what she had observed, police are contending that there was no police chase immediately preceding the accident.  

In mid-June, Hirsch wrote OPD Chief Richard Word, describing the incident and asking why an OPD officer was conducting a high-speed chase in a residential area, without warning lights or sirens, and why he didn’t stop to check on her condition after the accident.  

Hirsch says she never heard back directly from Word, but instead got a call back from a representative of Word, who insisted that there had been no police chase at the time of the accident.  

She also got more details from an email written by Deputy Police Chief Pete Dunbar, who replied to Councilmember Nancy Nadel’s inquiries about the accident. Dunbar wrote that Officer R. Williams “noticed the suspect vehicle at a high rate of speed in the area of 49th Street and Broadway. After following the vehicle [Williams] noticed that the driver failed to stop at a stop sign on 45th Street.”  

Dunbar says that Williams activated his emergency equipment and stopped the vehicle, but then “the suspect vehicle fled,” and Williams called in to headquarters that he was “not in pursuit.” (The official OPD Hirsch accident report tells a slightly different story, stating that “Officer Williams never activated his emergency lights or sirens.”)  

“Officer Williams informed me that at the point the suspect vehicle fled, he was only aware of the traffic violation and would not engage in a vehicle pursuit for traffic only,” Dunbar continued in his email to Nadel.  

Williams “continued to search the area” and finally located the abandoned vehicle on 41st Street. It wasn’t until Williams found the abandoned vehicle, Dunbar wrote, that Williams was informed of the carjacking.  

Significantly, there is nothing in either Dunbar’s email or the OPD accident report about where Officer Williams was when Hirsch’s car was hit, and the exact sequence of events between the carjacking and the crash.  

A frustrated Hirsch says she is going to continue her inquiries about the “phantom” police car following the vehicle that struck her, including bringing the matter to Oakland City Council. Convinced that a high-speed police chase led to her accident, she finds herself both furious and frightened.  

“There were children on the street when the accident happened” she says.  

“And I shouldn’t be afraid to get back in my car and drive.”  


A Colorful Passion for Unique African American Quilts

By SUSAN PARKER Special to the Planet
Friday August 08, 2003

My neighbor, Eli Leon, is an amazing man. A sixty-eight year old New York City transplant, Leon arrived in North Oakland over forty-three years ago, by way of the Bronx, Black Mountain and Reed colleges, the University of Chicago and the East Village. 

Rather than finishing his experimental psych dissertation, he escaped to the Bay Area where he got a job at an insurance company. The insurance company sent him to computer programming school and he wound up in a big room full of boxes, machines and punch cards. That didn’t last very long. Next he became a psychedelic poster artist (one of his creations was in the 1999-2000 Far Out exhibit at SFMOMA) and then he morphed into a counselor (Gestalt Therapy). From there it was an easy, if not logical transition to his next transformation. Leon started collecting quilts. He haunted flea markets and yard sales around the East Bay and beyond, looking for what he calls “standard traditional” pieces. 

But a funny thing happened. He was drawn to quilts that weren’t quite standard or traditional. The squares and triangles within the quilts he liked didn’t always match, the patterns didn’t exactly align, the repetitions didn’t necessarily repeat themselves in a logical way, the materials used weren’t always made of 100 percent brushed cotton. Sometimes they were created from terry cloth, denim, corduroy, velvet and stretchy polyester, fabrics that glittered and shined and felt funny to the touch. 

The quilts he liked were not always square. They didn’t necessarily fit on a king size mattress. Some were tiny, the size of a doll bed, others were huge, as if the quilter had lost control over her materials. It wasn’t until he had stashed away many of these eccentric spreads that Leon finally figured out what was going on. He was immensely, overwhelmingly attracted to quilts made by African American women, blankets that were made with the scraps of fabric that were on hand, to be used on the beds, sofas and chairs of their homes. Leon had, without even knowing it, become an African American quilt groupie. And not just any groupie. He now owns more African American-made quilts than almost anyone on earth, and he has become a knowledgeable, respected expert on this eclectic, idiosyncratic art form. 

I first heard about Leon years ago, through my feisty neighbor Mrs. Gerstine Scott. Gerstine, a quilter, had told me about the man up the street who had written a book about quilting called “Who’d a Thought It.” 

“It’s a real good book,” said Mrs. Scott. “You should check it out.” But it wasn’t until just the other day, long after Mrs. Scott’s heart gave way and she went to (and is no doubt presiding over) the big quilt show in the sky, that I finally got a chance to meet the gentleman Mrs. Scott referred to as “Eli, the quilt man.” 

Every couple of months Leon documents his acquisitions by hanging them outside his front window and taking photographs of them from the street. He invites quilters and fans to watch as he works. People, mostly women, come from all over the Bay Area to sit in the middle of the road and observe Leon as he unveils his trophies. I chatted with three women from Muir Beach, one of whom was multi-tasking. As she viewed the changing display she worked on her own quilt, a beautiful, softly muted cotton extravaganza. “What’s the pattern?” I asked her. “It’s a cross between a Courthouse Steps and a Log Cabin,” she answered. She then drew two complicated diagrams on a piece of paper for me to see. There were lots of squares, numbers, arrows and shaded areas. “But it’s not really either of these,” she said. “It’s something else altogether.” 

And that just about describes the more than twenty quilts Leon put on display that afternoon. There were necktie quilts and patchwork quilts, appliquéd numbers and samplers. The majority of them were pieced together by Richmond, California resident Rosie Lee Tompkins, and, as is often the case with African American-made quilts, contracted to another person to finish. 

Expert quilter Irene Bankhead completes Rosie’s work on her dining room table using piles of dinner plates to hold the three pieces—top, batting and backing—together. Irene, who stopped by to drop off one of Rosie’s newest pieces and to display one of her own string quilts, says that setting up a quilting frame is too much trouble and that it takes up too much space in her house. She prefers her “dinner plate” method. 

Originally from rural eastern Arkansas, Rosie’s quilts have been collected by Leon for many years. “Right now she’s in a very productive mood,” said Leon of the press-shy, reclusive Ms. Tompkins. “She’s making lots of little pieces that she hangs on the walls of her home. She says she never really learned how to make quilts,” he added. “She god’s instrument.” Indeed, many of the quilts had crosses of various sizes and colors imbedded within them, and none of her quilts were “traditional.” Leon calls them improvisational and others have said that these quilts follow the elusive rhythms and patterns of modern jazz. “I disagree,” says Leon. “I think they are more like the Blues or Gospel.” A quick check on the Internet reveals that Rosie doesn’t think about jazz when she’s quilting. She listens to disco. 

Halfway through the show, I shifted my seat and sat next to a 101-year-old woman whose daughter had driven her from Suisan City to take a peak at Leon’s quilts. “Are you a quilter?” I asked. “No,” she said, shaking her head slowly. “I just like to look at ‘em. You like ‘em too, don’t ya?” 

“Yes,” I said. “I sure do.” 

Collected by Eli Leon, Rosie Lee Tompkins’s quilts will be shown at the Anthony Meier Fine Arts gallery beginning Sept. 5.  

 

3007 Jackson Street, San Francisco; gallery@anthonymeierfinearts.com; 

415-351-1400; Tues – Fri 11am – 5 pm  

 


Police Blotter

By MEGAN GREENWELL
Friday August 08, 2003

Pickpocket arrested on Shattuck Avenue 

Employees of a coffee shop on the 2200 block of Shattuck Avenue chased down a man accused of taking a customer’s wallet from his pocket while inside the cafe, then called Berkeley Police officials and had the man arrested. 

Berkeley resident Ronald Johnson, 48, was arrested Wednesday afternoon about two blocks away from the coffee shop after one employee followed him out of the store while another called police. Berkeley Police Department spokesperson Officer Kevin Schofield said that Johnson was arrested for felony pickpocketing as well as a parole violation and booked into jail that evening. 

 

Knife-wielding muggers make off with man’s wallet 

Three men, two brandishing knives, accosted a man on San Pablo Avenue near Gilman Street around 8:30 p.m. on Tuesday, taking off with the victim’s wallet. 

Schofield said that the suspects escaped with miscellaneous personal papers of the victim’s, as well as an unknown amount of money. The suspects allegedly threatened the man with knives, at which point the victim handed one man his wallet. 

The suspects are described as a 5’10” black male in his 20s wearing a white t-shirt, a 40-something Hispanic male standing about 5’10” and weighing 140 pounds with a black beard and mustache, and a 5’10” black male with black braided hair. 

 

Napa resident arrested for peeping in Berkeley 

Police arrested an alleged peeper on the 2200 block of Dwight Way just before midnight Tuesday. 

The alleged peeper was seen looking through the bedroom window of a home Monday night, but police were unable to catch him. On Tuesday, the resident of the house called police officials once again, and officers succeeded in capturing Larry Russell, a 39-year-old Napa resident. Russell was charged with two counts of peeping and was booked into jail. 

 

Burglar absconds with power tools 

A man entered an unlocked garage on the 1500 block of Addison Street and walked away with a set of power tools. Police arrived on the scene but were unable to catch the burglar. 

Schofield said that an officer driving by the home was flagged down at 4:04 p.m. on Monday by a man standing outside his home. The suspect was described as a thin, six-foot tall black male, 30-35 years old wearing a black puff jacket.


Toasters to Typewriters: You Break It, They’ll Fix It

By MEGAN GREENWELL
Friday August 08, 2003

For many, products like vacuum cleaners, toasters, and shoes are items to eventually be replaced, not repaired. But in Berkeley, several old-fashioned “fix-it” shops are maintaining a customer base of those who want to keep their time-worn appliances and footwear. 

Berkeley boasts more than 10 fix-it shops, which specialize in everything from vacuums and sewing machines to high heels and radios. The number of old-fashioned repair locations is higher in Berkeley than in most other neighboring cities, a fact which many store owners and customers attribute to the city’s reputation for holding on to the past. 

“People around here don’t let anything go,” said Martha Supans, a Berkeley resident for the past 30 years. “So many people have these machines from 1958 or something, so of course there is a business to repair them. It is a very Berkeley attitude toward things.” 

One business that will repair such 1958 models is Berkeley Typewriter, located at 1823 University Ave. The typewriter shop, which now also oversees the adjacent Clark Business Machines, began in Berkeley during the 1930s and has continued to be the primary service location for Berkeley typewriter owners well into the 21st century. 

Berkeley Typewriters staff said that the sales levels have gone down as personal computers become more and more commonplace, but that the number of repair requests has consistently gone up. 

“Old typewriters start to need basic service and cleaning,” said co-owner Joe Lapira. “We’re one of very few places left, so if you want to get a typewriter fixed we’re a place to go. And not everybody likes computers.” 

Lapira, whose shop also repairs fax machines and other office appliances, said that many people have avoided switching to computers altogether because typewriters remain more convenient for printing forms and envelopes. 

“There will always be some need for typewriters,” Lapira said. “Even most offices still have one or two somewhere because it’s a lot faster to type a form that way.” 

Very near the Berkeley Typewriter location is another of Berkeley’s old-fashioned repair shop holdouts, the Berkeley Vacuum Center, at 2108 Berkeley Way. The vacuum repair shop has been in the city since the mid-1950s and says it can fix more than 20 brands of vacuum cleaners. The downtown store, which is still family-run, is popular for its friendly staff and loaner vacuum program, which allows customers to borrow a vacuum while their own is being repaired. 

“I’ve taken my vacuum in there a couple times,” said Oakland resident Cheryl Jensen. “They’re very nice, and I get to take a vacuum home with me while they work on mine, and then mine always comes back in great condition. I much prefer getting service there than sending the product back to the company and not knowing what’s happening with it.” 

Despite the name, Berkeley Vacuum Center sells and services a wide range of products from sewing machines to carpet cleaners and janitorial supplies. The store also rents out professional cleaning equipment, sharpens knives, and makes keys. 

“It’s a very handyman-type place,” Jensen said. “I feel like stores like this are kind of a dying breed, which is sad.” 

For Berkeley residents who cannot stand to replace anything prematurely, Jay’s Shoe Repair at 1869 Solano Ave. can help people avoid throwing favorite shoes away. The shop, which has been in the Bay Area for 20 years, offers a variety of services to keep shoes looking like new. 

“They fix my husband’s shoes when he needs it, and they can really spiff them up,” said Berkeley resident Patricia Larsen. “They do heels, soles, stitching, polishing—the works.” 

Though repairing a pair of shoes is often not vastly less expensive than buying a new pair, Jay’s customers say that getting favorite footwear fixed is the way to go. 

“I don’t want to lose these shoes until I absolutely have to,” said Berkeley resident Dick Goldberg. “If they can fix them, I’ll still wear them. I wear them every day, so to get rid of them would be a major decision that I’m not ready to make yet.” 

At all of the local fix-it shops, customers say they want to preserve their favorite appliances, tools, or footwear as long as possible, a goal that leads to many cross-overs between the different shops. Most customers at Berkeley Typewriter said they have been to Berkeley Vacuum Center, and several said they would seek repairs for a favorite pair of shoes. 

“It’s not about this particular vacuum or typewriter,” Supans said. “We want to save everything that we’ve had for a while. The people who go one place go to all of them. It’s our history.” 


City’s New Interim Planning Director No Stranger to Complex Local Politics

By DAVID SCHARFENBERG
Tuesday August 05, 2003

When he took over as interim director of the Berkeley Planning Department Monday, Dan Marks knew he was tackling what may well be the city’s toughest job. 

“Everything that happens in Berkeley is highly scrutinized,” he said. “People care about [planning]. They care about it a lot.”  

Marks, 53, should know. He served from 1995 to 1997 as Berkeley’s manager of Current Planning, handling development applications and enforcing the city’s zoning code before taking a job as Fremont’s planning director. 

Marks, who lives in Piedmont with his wife, said he took the Berkeley post so he could be closer to home and because he was ready for a new challenge. 

“I felt like it was time to move on from Fremont,” he said. “I’d been there for six years.” 

The interim director, who said he will decide in a few months whether to apply for the full-time job, was hesitant to lay out a roadmap for Berkeley development, arguing that urban planners have a different responsibility. 

“We don’t impose our vision,” he said. “Our goal is to articulate the vision of the community and implement that vision.” 

Marks inherits a department under siege. Vocal neighbors, aggressive developers and an activist Planning Commission have clashed loudly, publicly and repeatedly with planning staff in recent years—complaining about everything from phone calls that have gone unreturned, they say, to major planning decisions that have gone awry.  

That friction has contributed to high turnover throughout the department, starting at the top. Former planning chief Carol Barrett, citing conflict with the Planning Commission, became the third director to abruptly resign in five years when she handed in her notice five months ago. 

Phil Kamlarz, deputy city manager, took over the post temporarily in June when Barrett left. 

Planning Commission chairperson Zelda Bronstein, who often butted heads with Barrett, said Marks’ greatest challenge will be patching up relationships with the commission and neighbors who often feel ignored by the department. 

“There’s just been this rising tide of citizen questions and concerns about the fairness of the planning process of the city of Berkeley,” she said. 

Marks, who knows Planning Commissioners Gene Poschman and Susan Wengraf from his previous tour of duty in Berkeley, said he is confident that he will be able to build bridges. 

“I know some of the players,” he said. “I’ve had good relationships with these groups in the past.” 

Fremont City Councilmember Dominic Dutra, who raved about Marks, said the interim planning director should be able to handle the city’s competing interests. 

“His [completion of] three concept plans in our city—for the downtown and two historic districts—is a testament to his ability to work with people,” he said. “Historic areas can be very controversial.” 

Berkeley politicians and commissioners say Marks will also have to create a more user-friendly planning department. Homeowners and businessowners, they say, are not getting adequate help navigating a cumbersome permitting process. 

“This is one of the major, major problems facing the city,” said Mayor Tom Bates. “We need to take care of this.” 

Wendy Cosin, Berkeley’s deputy planning director, said the division has done the best it can in recent months balancing large and small projects and weighing the demands of neighbors and developers, while coping with a vacancy in the director’s chair and in a separate upper-level planning position. 

With Marks taking over this week and the “advanced planner” position due to be filled at the end of the month, Cosin said, “I think we will be in a better position to look at how we get our work done and respond more quickly to the demands of the job.” 

Cosin, who knows Marks from his previous work in Berkeley, said she was “very excited” about his arrival. 

While calling for better implementation of the current permitting process, Bates is also pushing to reform that process—seeking to streamline and improve a system that has lead to endless, litigious battles between developers and neighborhood activists. 

A mayoral task force on permitting and development that critics charge is slanted toward developers is scheduled to make a series of recommendations in September. 

Planning Commissioner Bronstein said handling the new recommendations will present yet another challenge for the interim director. 

Fremont Mayor Gus Morrison, who has known Marks for 20 years, said he will be up to the job. Marks is personable, he’s got a sense of humor and he’s straightforward, Morrison said. 

“He’ll tell you the truth,” Morrison said. “He’ll tell you what you need to know, not what you want to hear.” 

“He’s very energetic,” added Fremont City Manager Jan Perkins. “He’s very much a hard worker.” 

Perkins said that Marks was able to squeeze a high volume of quality work out of a relatively small planning staff of 25. 

Berkeley’s planning department is significantly larger, with 60 employees, and handles a dense, urban environment that contrasts sharply with the more suburban Fremont. 

But Dutra, of the Fremont City Council, said Berkeley’s progressive, urban setting will suit Marks well. Marks, Dutra said, was always a step ahead of a Fremont community that has been stumbling toward greater urbanization. 

“A lot of that is pretty new to us and I think Berkeley is a bit more progressive,” he said. 

For his part, Marks, who has also worked as a planner in the city of Napa and for BART, says he is ready to work in Berkeley. 

“I’ve done it before,” he said.


Berkeley This Week

Tuesday August 05, 2003

TUESDAY, AUGUST 5 

Art is Peace, “The Inkwell Communiques,” based on a true story of one artist taking on several agencies of the government over the course of three presidential reigns, at 7:30 p.m. on Berkeley Rep's Thrust Stage. A benefit for Amnesty International's peace action campaign. A $20 donation is suggested. Reservations required, visit www.Frantix.net or call 415-621-1216. www.upontheseboards.org/forthcoming/inkwell 

Tomato Tasting at the Farmers’ Market, Derby St. at MLK, Jr. Way, 2 p.m. to 7 p.m. 548-3333. www.ecologycenter.org 

Berkeley Camera Club meets at 7:30 p.m., at the Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. Share your slides and prints and learn what other photographers are doing. 525-3565. www.berkeleycameraclub.org 

St. John’s Prime Timers meets at 9:30 a.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727  

College Ave. We offer ongoing classes in exercise and creative arts, and always welcome new members over 50. 845-6830. 

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 6 

MeetUp for Howard Dean, at 7 p.m. at two Berkeley locations, Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. and Au Coquelet, 2000 University Ave. at Milvia. 843-8724. 

Botanical Garden Twilight Tour: Seasonal Highlights at 5:30 p.m. at the UC Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Drive. Admission is $5. Registration required. 643-2755. www.mip. 

berkeley.edu/garden 

Berkeley Peace Walk and Vigil at the Berkeley BART Station, corner of Shattuck and Center. Vigil at 6:30 p.m. followed by Peace Walk at 7 p.m. www.geocities. 

com/vigil4peace/ vigil 

Berkeley Communicators Toastmasters meets every 1st and 3rd Wednesday at 7:15 a.m. at Hide-A-Way Café, 6430 Telegraph Ave. For information call Fred Garvey, 925-682-1111, ext. 164. 

Amnesty International Berkeley Community Group meets at 7 p.m. at the Berkeley Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, 1606 Bonita Ave., at Cedar St. 872-0768. 

South Berkeley Mural Project Community members in South Berkeley are coming together to create a neighborhood mural on the side of the Grove Liquor Store on the corner of Ashby Ave. and Martin Luther King, Jr. Way. Meet at 7:30 p.m. at Epic Arts Studios at 1923 Ashby Ave. For further information call 644-2204. 

Introduction to Reiki Energy Healing, a free lecture by Tarra Christoff, MA, Reiki Master/ 

Teacher, at 6:30 p.m. at Phar- 

maca Integrative, 1744 Solano Ave. 527-8929. 

Free Feldenkrais ATM Classes for adults 55 and older at 10:30 and 11:45 a.m. at the Jewish Community Center, 1414 Walnut at Rose. For 

information call 848-5143.  

Community Dances, traditional English and American dances, 8 p.m. every Wednesday, $9;  

7 p.m. first Sunday, $10. Grace North Church, 2138 Cedar St. 233-5065. www.bacds.org 

THURSDAY, AUGUST 7 

Grizzly Peak Flyfishers meets at the Kensington Community Center, 59 Arlington Ave. A fly tying demonstration for beginners will be held at 6:30 p.m.; a light dinner will be available for a modest price at 7 p.m.; meeting begins at 7:30 p.m. Grizzly Peak Flyfishers is a non-profit, dedicated to conservation, education and fishing. For information contact rorlando@uclink4. 

berkeley.edu  

Rock Climbing 101, an introduction, at 7 p.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. 527-4140. 

Lawyers in the Library at  

6 p.m. at the North Branch, 1170 The Alameda 981-6250. 

FRIDAY, AUGUST 8 

Long Haul Infoshop Tenth Anniversary Party at 8 p.m. Celebrate the Infoshop’s 10th anniversary. Vegan chocolate cake, dancing, open house, and more. 3124 Shattuck Ave., across from La Peña, 1 block east of Ashby BART. 540-0751.  

Berkeley Critical Mass Bike Ride meets at the Berkeley BART the second Friday of every month at 5:30 p.m. 

Women in Black Vigil, from noon to 1 p.m. at UC Berkeley, Bancroft at Telegraph. wibberkeley@yahoo.com 548-6310, 845-1143. 

Meditation, Peace Vigil and Dialogue, gather at noon on the grass close to the West Entrance to UC Berkeley, on Oxford St. near University Ave. People of all traditions are welcome to join us. Sponsored by the Buddhist Peace Fellowship. 496-6000, ext. 135. www.bpf.org 

SATURDAY, AUGUST 9 

World Breastfeeding Day Celebration at 11:30 a.m. in Civic Center Park, followed at 12:30 p.m. by an attempt to set a new breast-feeding world record in the Berkeley Commu- 

nity Theater. Sponsored by the City of Berkeley Health Dept. 981-5344.  

Beginner’s and Ongoing Knitting Class for Afghans for Afghans Kids Campaign Learn to knit a simple child’s cap on from 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Drop in for as much time as you need at Berkeley Friends Church, 1600 Sacramento St. near Cedar, two blocks from North Berkeley BART. Suggested donation of $20 for AFSC Peace Work. Yarn, knitting needles, lesson, pattern, and snacks provided. 415- 565-0201 ext. 12. 

Howard Dean Precinct Walk meet at 10 a.m. at Au Coquelet Cafe, 2000 University Ave. We will supply you with a map, fliers, and strategies to help get your message out as you walk a precinct to tell your neighbors how we are going to take our country back. Please sign up and bring friends! After-party at Jupiter’s at 5 p.m. For information call Paul Hogarth 666-1260.  

Walk in Tilden Park with Solo Sierrans at 5:30 p.m. Meet at Lone Oak Picnic area for an hour walk through the cool woods. Optional dinner on Solano Avenue follows. We are mostly single, mostly over 50. You need not be a Sierra Club member to attend. For more information call Vera, 234-8949. 

Peace Lantern Ceremony at the north end of Aquatic Park, west end of Addison St., just south of University Ave. Make lantern shades and float them on the water in a beautiful Japanese ceremony remembering the victims of the atomic bombings (Nagasaki, Aug. 9, 1945) and of all wars. Lantern-making begins at 6:30 p.m., music 7:15 p.m, and lantern launching from 8 to 9 p.m. For information, or to volunteer call 594-4088. www.ProgressivePortal.org/lanterns/ 

Free Emergency Prepar- 

edness Class on Shelter Operations, for anyone who lives or works in Berkeley, from 9 a.m. to noon at 997 Cedar St., between 8th and 9th Sts. Register on-line at www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/fire/oes or by calling 981-5506. 

Family Shabbat with Rabbi Kai Eckstein “What Happened on Noah's Ark?” from noon to 1:30 p.m. at the Albany Community Center, 1249 Marin Ave. Please bring lunch for your family, and (finger) dessert to share. We also collect non-perishable food for the needy. For more information email kolhadash@aol.com or call 428-1492.  

SUNDAY, AUGUST 10 

Butterfly Mania for ages 5 and up, from 1 to 3 p.m. at Tilden Nature Area in Tilden Park. Take a closer look at our native butterflies. What do they eat and how? We will make butterfly trading cards and play games with them in our butterfly garden. Cost is $3. 525-2233.  

Top of the Bay Family Day with Lego Building, from 1:30 to 3:30 p.m. at Lawrence Hall of Science, Centennial Dr. 643-5961. www.lawrencehallofscience.org 

Stop the War Makers: Hands Around Livermore Nuclear Weapons Lab A nonviolent rally and march around Livermore nuclear weapons lab, at 1:30 p.m. at Robert Payne Park, 5800 Patterson Pass Rd, at Vasco, Livermore. For information call Tri-Valley CAREs 925-443-7148. www.trivalleycares.org 

Free Hands-on Bicycle Repair Clinic, at 11 a.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. 527-4140. 

Permaculture Workshop Series Ongoing workshops every second and last Sunday of the month at the BerkeleyEco-House, 1305 Hopkins St. Call for information, 465-9439.  

Grizzly Peak Flyfishers, a group dedicated to the sport of fly fishing through education and conservation, invites you to its monthly meeting, a casting demonstration and clinic conducted by the Oakland Casting Club at the McCrea Park Casting Ponds, 4460 Shepherd St. at Carson St., Oakland, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., and will include a barbecue lunch. The club will provide hot dogs, hamburgers and soft drinks; attendees are encouraged to bring side dishes. Expert, beginner and “wannabe” fly fishers are all welcome. For more information, call 547-8629. 

Tibetan Buddhism, Lama Palzang and Pema Gellek on “Tranquil Awareness” at 6 p.m. at the Tibetan Nyingma Institute, 1815 Highland Pl. 843-6812. www.nyingmainstitute.com 

MONDAY, AUGUST 11 

Berkeley CopWatch meets at 6 p.m. at 2022 Blake St. Volun- 

teers needed. For information call 548-0425. 

ONGOING  

Tilden Farm Week, for ages 8 to 11. Mon. Aug. 11 to Fri. Aug. 15, 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Come experience the old-time, country lifestyle during a week of farm camp fun! We'll learn about farm animals, dig, shovel, harvest, cook, have fun, and get dirty! At Tilden Nature Area, in Tilden Park. Cost is $135 residents, $149 non-residents. Registration required. 636-1684.  

Vista Community College Program for Adult Education (PACE) Enrollment through Sept. 6. PACE is a college alternative for adults with job and family responsibilities. Enrollment in American Sign Language classes is also being accepted. For information call 981-2864 or 981-2800 or email Marilyn Clausen at mclausen@peralta.cc.ca.us  

Community Food Drive Make a cash or food donation to the Safeway/ABC7 Summer Food Drive, benefiting the Alameda County Community Food Bank and its 300 member agencies. The food drive will help thousands of local low-income children who lose access to school meal programs during summer vacation. Now through Aug. 9, put nutritious, nonperishable food donations in the red food collection barrels in all Alameda County Safeway stores or make a cash donation at Safeway check-out stands. For more information or to sign up to host a barrel, call 834-3663, ext. 318 or visit www.accfb.org  

Free Energy Conservation Retrofits for Berkeley Residents CA Youth Energy Services is a nonprofit sponsored by the City of Berkeley that trains and employs high school students to provide conservation retrofits. Work includes weatherstripping, replacing lightbulbs with CFLs, cleaning refrigerator coils, replacing faucet aerators and showerheads with low-flow devices, installing earthquake preparedness measures, and a comprehensive audit. Available to home owners and renters. Call for an appointment, 428-2357. 

Free Energy Bill Payment Assistance The City of Berkeley has money to help low-income households in Berkeley, Emery- 

ville and Albany pay their gas and electric bills. For applications and more information, contact the Energy Office at 644-8544. TDD: 981-6903. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/energy 

CITY MEETINGS 

Fire Safety Commission meets Wednesday, August 6, at 7:30 p.m. at the Emergency Operations Center, 997 Cedar St. David Orth, 981-5502. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/firesafety 

Community Environmental Advisory Commission meets Thursday, August 7, at 7 p.m., at 2118 Milvia St. Nabil Al-Hadithy, 981-7461. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/environmentaladvisory


Letters to the Editor

Tuesday August 05, 2003

DAVIS’ DEFICIT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The recent emphasis of the cost of the recall at $66 to 67 million by Gov. Davis is a strange strategy at best, considering that one percent of this deficit (that Davis has watched and double and redouble to its present level of $38 billion) is $380 million dollars! The cost of the recall is less than two tenths of one percent of the deficit.  

Apparently Davis hopes to scare voters into supporting him, while giving his opposition the opportunity to explain to voters the enormity of the fiscal problem confronting our state, and of course the impact this fiscal mess will have on every California community!  

The only positive fiscal action Davis could have taken was to have resigned and let the Lt. Governor take over and save the cost of the recall while keeping a Democrat in office.  

John Cecil  

 

• 

KUCINICH OVER DEAN 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Charlene Woodcock claims in “For Doctor Dean,” (Daily Planet, Aug. 1-4) that progressives are supporting Dean because he opposes the war, has the intelligence, honesty, integrity and the energy to defeat Bush and is willing to stand up to the right wing. 

Dennis Kucinich is all of the above plus he supports key progressive ideals such as real campaign finance reform, single payer health care and the elimination of NAFTA and the WTO. 

Kucinich runs well against Republicans. He has a record of attracting swing votes and has ousted republican incumbents three times. 

Kucinich has a proven record of standing up to the right wing. In 1977 as mayor he prevented the privatization of power in Cleveland, an action that would cost him the next election. 

Howard Dean’s rise in the polls to the level of “first tier democrat” has been supported by his mainstream media exposure and their portrayal of him as a grass roots candidate. Indeed the mainstream corporate media has a vested interest in portraying Dean and not Kucinich as the peoples’ candidate. 

I urge progressives to get behind the progressive democratic candidate in the primaries. Dennis Kucinich’s positions can be found on the web at www.kucinich.us. 

George Palen 

 

• 

TOUCH AND GO 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Thanks for two good articles on election technology (Daily Planet, Aug. 1-4). As Thom Hartmann shows, results that shake voter confidence can come from old or new systems. Don Hazen is right that we should insist on a voter-verifiable audit trail in any new equipment. That ability was originally present with paper ballots, sacrificed in the switch to punch cards — with now-famous results — and regained with modern optical-scan systems. It is now offered by many, but not all, vendors of touch-screen voting equipment. 

The touch-screen systems potentially offer better accessibility to the disabled and to language minorities. As an engineer and a member of an IEEE committee developing technical standards for those machines, let me assure readers that providing a voter-verifiable audit trail need not in any way impair accessibility. A voter who is blind, for example, using headphones to receive the data normally sent to the video screen, can use the same method to hear the data sent to the printer. Voters with and without visual impairments can have the same ability to verify, independently and privately, that the ballot they cast is the vote they intend. 

An excellent site on which to follow progress toward such an audit trail requirement is http://verifiedvoting.org. 

Finally I must address Hazen’s fear that “worst case thinking” about election tampering will keep people from the polls. Those people would be drawing exactly the wrong conclusion. By any method, it is easier to steal a few votes than to steal a lot of votes. The challenge now is not only to vote, but to bring enough of your friends to the polls to ensure a tamper-proof margin of victory. 

David Aragon 

 

• 

UNSUNG HERO 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I have thought for 30 years that Dr. Donald Sebanc was the unsung hero of Telegraph Avenue.  

I’m really glad to see that you sang Dr. Donald Sebanc’s heroism in your current issue. 

Allen Walden 

 

• 

YARD DUTY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Possibly because I’m too ignorant, but I don’t understand why the adult school needs to move at all. If the BUSD administration needs a new site, why don't they move in to Franklin themselves and leave the adult school where it is? They could even use some of the paved playground as a parking lot. This would open access to the playground, which currently is only available to fence climbers. Just as the teachers do, administrators could do rotating yard duty, perhaps an hour a week, supervising the playground. 

Barbara Judd 

 

• 

BUB VS. BMD 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Ed Brodick had fun (Daily Planet, July 25-28) trying to get the right nuance to an acronym for editor O’Malley’s “Big Ugly Boxes.” Let me suggest an alternative for our high-rise boom that doesn't benefit by an acronym: “Buildings of Mass Destruction.” 

Victor Herbert 

 

• 

MORE TIME 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Regarding the meeting on Aug. 20, three minutes of possible speaking time concerning something as important as the Franklin School and surrounding neighborhood is an insult. Aren’t we taxed enough to speak at our own meeting? Not only is it on an arbitrary “Lotto” system, which guarantees other subject matter, three minutes is not nearly enough. As a voting member and citizen of the Berkeley community I demand more time for andy and all speakers who wish to give information concerning the Franklin School area and why it will destroy our neighborhood. There continues to be a cover up of pertinent information and a politically instigated “rush job” on all of us. 

Saul Grabia 

 

• 

TWO CHOICES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

What the heck is the City of Berkeley doing owning commercial property at 2446 Durant St.?  

This is not a proper activity for the City of Berkeley to be engaged in! 

Either put this property up for sale tomorrow and get it back on the tax rolls, or lower our tax rate. Those are your two choices. 

If you don’t do either, you will be liable for a class action lawsuit on behalf of all property owners in the City of Berkeley. 

Berkeley has no business using taxpayer funds to take property off the tax rolls and compete with local businesses. This is not socialist Russia. It is the United States of America. 

How many other properties do you have that are not on the tax rolls, not generating tax revenue and causing expense to the City of Berkeley?  

Sell them. Get them back on the tax rolls, generating tax revenue and put the money back in the city budget.  

Stephen Jory 

 

• 

FREE RADIO 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

About ten years ago. I was suddenly blasted by intruding voices and noise over the radio while listening to music. The sounds were clearly human, but were too distorted for discerning specific words. The volume was ten times normal listening volume. The shock impact of the sound definitely made my heart skip several beats each time. This interference continued about once or twice a week for several years. I was worried about damage to the electronics and speakers. I never figured out the source of this interference at the time. Many years later I learned that Berkeley Free Radio had rented a space down the block from me on Alcatraz during the corresponding time. Other people in the neighborhood also had similar problems.   

Vincent Osman 

 

• 

ADULT SCHOOL TRAFFIC  

Editors, Daily Planet: 

To all concerned: I was horrified to see that in the map included in the Traffic Impact Analysis dated July 3 the plan is to have the only entrance to the Berkeley Adult School parking lot on Virginia at the head of Kains Avenue. And the Main Entrance to BAS is at this same location. Kains Avenue is never once mentioned as a street that will be impacted by this and yet it is the only street that is a clear shot to the parking and the entrance. The Traffic Impact Analysis failed to see how this will impact Kains Avenue, and it definitely will. This will make Kains a main route to the BAS and change it drastically for the worse. This is unfair and unacceptable and everyone on Kains is against this.  

I am asking that you look seriously into this and make the appropriate changes which would eliminate the parking lot entrance on Virginia and the exit on Francisco and put them on San Pablo where they belong, leaving the main entrance where it is at present. Or reconsider the entire move of the BAS to Franklin, as it is located in the center of a small residential community. The Traffic Impact Analysis also fails to mention Stannage and Cornell and all the small streets surrounding Franklin that definitely will be impacted. 

Joyce Barison


Mulholland’s Drive Sparks This ‘Mother Courage’

By BETSY M. HUNTON Special to the Planet
Tuesday August 05, 2003

Trish Mulholland does a powerful job in the title role of Bertolt Brecht’s mind-boggling anti-war classic, “Mother Courage,” which opened Saturday at the theater in John Hinkle Park. This mesmerizing production is, wonderfully enough, a free performance: Shotgun Theater’s annual gift to the community. You can bet that some people will go back to see it more than once. 

Mulholland is supported by a talented cast. Among numerous excellent performances are the roles of Mother Courage’s three adult children: her two sons, “Eilif,” (Leith Burke) and “Swiss Cheese” (Andy Alabran) and her mute, largely ignored, daughter, Kattrin (Gwen Larsen). Mother Courage’s wagon full of overpriced, miscellaneous wares is pulled from place to place by her sons, following various armies—they’re just customers to her—as they go through the horrors of the 17th century’s Thirty Years War.  

That war was consciously chosen as the play’s background. It destroyed much of Europe in a futile struggle over power by Kings and Emperors. Two generations of German soldiers died in a war that ended in a truce that did not name either side as a winner.  

All in all, this is a curious play. Brecht wanted to establish a new form of drama in which would differ radically from the traditional Aristotelian tragedy. He may have succeeded. You could even argue that it’s actually a musical tragi-comedy. There are a number of songs, reminiscent of the music in “The Three-Penny Opera.” They’re accompanied by Henri Ducharme’s accordian and a collection of percussion instruments played by Josh Pollack. But, at least in this production, the music seems more decoration and comment than fundamental to the action of the play.  

Brecht wrote “Mother Courage” in 1938, presumably as a warning to Sweden and Germany about Hitler’s politics. The play, however, is easily read as being not so much anti-Nazi as it is anti-war. It could be argued that the work is actually a scathing indictment of the role of capitalism as a basis for war. The present national concerns about the purpose and costs of the military actions in the Middle East are uncomfortably relevant. 

Brecht had hoped for immediate performances but was forced to flee the continent as the Nazis invaded. There was one wartime production in Switzerland in 1941 without Brecht’s participation. That audience saw Mother Courage as a victim, which prompted Brecht to make a number of subtle but important changes to the script. Mother Courage’s deliberate choice to be involved in, and make a livingfrom, war was clarified.  

Director Patrick Dooley has elected to use a 1995 translation by British playwright David Hare (“Skylight” and “The Blue Room”) which emphasizes the play’s sarcastic humor. Dooley says that most English translations don’t tend to be as funny as the original. And it is this humor that adds to the play’s complexity. 

It would be easy for the figure of the hardworking mother who suffers such losses to be sentimentalized. Just look at her name. But the act of “courage” referred to was scarcely noble: She ran through gunfire to retrieve the bread that she wanted to sell. She lies and cheats and seems to have no ideas other than those connected to material gain. And there’s certainly nothing soft and fuzzy about her mothering. Her idea of soothing her injured daughter is to assure her that her scars will make her so ugly that nobody will want to rape her. 

Petty, materialistic, unscrupulous, insensitive, she is still a mother. Arguably she could be seen as a more of comic than tragic figure. Probably this is one of the few plays which truly deserves the classification “tragi-comedy.”  

Several actors play multiple parts. If there is a weakness in this production, (and it seems small-minded to nit-pick such fine work) it is the fact that budget issues required so much multi-tasking. There are times when a few of the actors become identifiable as the person who played another character in a previous scene. That said, it’s pleasing to notice the quality that is maintained among the actors in general. 

All told, an excellent production of a terrific play. 

“Mother Courage and Her Children” plays at 4 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays through Sept. 14 in John Hinkle Park. The Sept. 13 show will be held in Live Oak Park. Admision is free.  

There will be no performance Aug. 9.


Arts Calendar

Tuesday August 05, 2003

TUESDAY, AUGUST 5 

FILM 

The Inquiring Camera: “Ah! The Hopeful Pageantry of Bread and Puppet” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4 members, UC students, $5 UC faculty, staff, seniors, disabled, youth, $8 adults. 642-0808.  

www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“How to Get Your Novel Published,” hosted by James Rollins of The New York Times, Alan Jacobson of USA Today, and Kurt Bryan, suspense author, at 7:30 p.m. at Barnes and Noble. 644-0861. 

“Galapagos: Land of Enchantment,” lecture and slide-show by Susanne Methvin at 7:30 p.m. at Easy Going Travel Shop and Bookstore, 1385 Shattuck Ave. at Rose. 843-3533. www.easygoing.com 

Harry Potter Discussion Group at 7 p.m. Black Oak Books, 1491 Shattuck Ave. 486-0698.  

www.blackoakbooks.com  

Berkeley Summer Poetry, with Lynn Breedlove, from 7 to 9 p.m. at the Mediterranean Cafe, 2475 Telegraph Ave. Free, open mic, poetry, prose, short fiction, amateur and advanced artists welcome. 549-1128. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

California Music Festival, Olivia Stapp directs opera scenes at 8 p.m. at the Julia Morgan Center for the Arts. Tickets are $12-$18, available from 925-798-1300. www.juliamorgan.org 

Mimi Fox, solo guitar, at 8 p.m. at Downtown, 2102 Shattuck Ave. 649-3810. 

Top Dog Run and Rumen Shopov & Friends at 8:30 p.m., at Ashkenaz. Balkan dance lesson with Lise Liepman at 7:30 p.m. Cost is $10. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 6 

FILM 

Excess Evil: “Rosemary’s Baby” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive, with Larry Cohen in person. Cost is $4 members, UC students, $5 UC faculty, staff, seniors, disabled, youth, $8 adults. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

Hip Hop Film Fest at 6 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $5 per film. For film schedule call 415-285-1416.  

www.lapena.org 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Sue Fishkoff will discuss “Rebbe’s Army: Inside the World of Chabad-Lubavitch,” at 7:30 p.m. Black Oak Books. 486-0698.  

www.blackoakbooks.com 

Berkeley Poetry Slam Chicken Grease! a hip-hop slam hosted by Nazelah Jamison and Karen Ladson, featuring Clare Lewis, at 8:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $7, $5 with student i.d. 841-2082.  

www.starryploughpub.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

California Music Festival, “Die Fledermaus,” directed by Olivia Stapp, conducted by Monroe Kanouse, at 7:30 p.m. at the Julia Morgan Center for the Arts. Tickets are $18-$25, available from 925-798-1300. www.juliamorgan.org 

Kenny Cahn, country and western with a touch of city and eastern, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage Coffee House. Cost is $15.50 advance, $16.50 at the door. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Stella Chiweshe from Zimbabwe at 9 p.m., at Ashkenaz. Cost is $12 in advance, $14 at the door. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Jules Broussard and Ned Boynton at 8 p.m. at Down- 

town, 2102 Shattuck Ave. 649-3810. 

Gail Brand with Pseudo- 

model and PlanterBox at 8 p.m. at The Jazz House. Cost is $6-$15 sliding scale. 649-8744. 

www.thejazzhouse.com 

Second Shot, Green Hell, The Caps, Stigma 13 perform Punk Rock at 9:30 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $6. 848-0886. www.blakesontelegraph.com 

Mark Wright Quartet, Berkeley native trumpeter, at 8 p.m. at Jupiter, 2181 Shattuck Ave. 843-7625. www.jupiterbeer.com 

THURSDAY, AUGUST 7 

FILM 

The Inquiring Camera: “Trial” and “The Lost Film” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4 members, UC students, $5 UC faculty, staff, seniors, disabled, youth, $8 adults. 642-0808.  

www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

Fragments From the War on Terror “Metal of Dishonor,” a film by the Depleted Uranium Education Project, at 6:30 p.m. at the Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge. A free film series co-sponsored by Berkeley Peace Walk and Vigil. For more information see www.geocities. 

com/vigil4peace/vigil 

Hip Hop Film Fest at 6 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $5 per film. For film schedule email info@HipHopFilmFest.com or call 415-285-1416. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Mystery Night, with authors Kent Gilmore, Max Isaacson and Katherine Shephard at 7:30 p.m. at Barnes and Noble. 644-0861. 

Joe Anastasi, Global Leader of Deloitte & Touche’s Forensic Investigations practice, looks at corporate crime in “The New Forensics: Investigating Cor- 

porate Fraud and the Theft of Intellectual Property,” at 7:30 p.m. Black Oak Books. 486-0698. www.blackoakbooks.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

California Music Festival, “Die Fledermaus,” directed by Olivia Stapp, conducted by Monroe Kanouse, at 7:30 p.m. at the Julia Morgan Center for the Arts. Tickets are $18-$25, available from 925-798-1300. www.juliamorgan.org 

Todd Sickafoose Group and Scott Amendola Band perform jazz improv at 8 p.m. at The Jazz House. Cost is $10-$20 sliding scale. 649-8744. 

www.thejazzhouse.com 

The Reverend Screaming Singers, Joe Rut, and Sophie at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5. 841-2082.  

www.starryploughpub.com 

Keni El Lebrijano, flamenco guitar, at 8 p.m. at Downtown, 2102 Shattuck Ave. 649-3810. 

Mitch Greenhill and Mayne Smith, traditional music duo, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage Coffee House. Cost is $15.50 advance, $16.50 at the door. 548-1761.  

www.freightandsalvage.org 

FRIDAY, AUGUST 8 

CHILDREN 

Stage Door Conservatory's “Kids OnStage” presents “Blame it on the Wolf,” a free mini-musical by Douglas Love, at 7:30 p.m. at Epworth United Methodist Church, 1953 Hopkins St. 527-5939. StageDoorCamp@aol.com 

FILM 

Czech Horror and Fantasy on Film: “Valerie and Her Week of Numbers” at 7:30 p.m. and “Morgiana” at 9:20 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4 members, UC students, $5 UC faculty, staff, seniors, disabled, youth, $8 adults. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

Hip Hop Film Fest at 6 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $5 per film. For film schedule email info@HipHopFilmFest.com or call 415-285-1416. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Jeremiah Tower talks about “California Dish: What I Saw (and Cooked) at the American Culinary Revolution” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. www.codysbooks.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Ballet Counterpointe Rep of Berkeley, “Works in Motion” showcasing local choreographers and ballet artists from the independent dance scene, at 8 p.m. at ODC Theater, 3153 17th St. at Shotwell, SF. Tickets are $15-$20 sliding scale, available from 415-863-9834. 

The Soukous Stars from Congo at 9:30 p.m., at Ashkenaz. Cost is $18. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

The Weary Boys, Gilbert Dribblers at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $8. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Beatropolis performs nu-jazz, hip-hop, dNb and dub at 7:30 p.m. at The Jazz House. Cost is $6-$15 sliding scale. 649-8744. 

www.thejazzhouse.com 

Brenda Boykin and Folk- 

lorico 57, new traditions in jazz and blues, at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $12-$18. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Michael McNevin, singer songwriter, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage Coffee House. Cost is $15.50 advance, $16.50 at the door. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Danny Caron and Friends at 9:30 p.m. at Downtown, 2102 Shattuck Ave. 649-3810. 

Dub Vision, reggae and dancehall grooves, at 8 p.m. at Jupiter, 2181 Shattuck Ave. 843-7625.  

www.jupiterbeer.com 

Ghandaia, El Jefe, Tribolectic perform Latin Funk, Hip Hop, and Jazz Electronica at 9:30 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $6. 848-0886. www.blakesontelegraph.com 

 

 

The Locusts, Erase Errata, Hella, The Rah Brahs, My Name is Rar Rar perform at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $5. 525-9926. 

SATURDAY, AUGUST 9 

San Francisco Mime Troupe Veronique of the Mounties in “Operation: Frozen Freedom” at 1:30 p.m. in Live Oak Park. 415-285-1717. www.sfmt.org 

FILM 

“The Cockettes” free screening with costume party at 8 p.m. at the Long Haul, a reading room, library and community center in South Berkeley lo- 

cated at 3124 Shattuck Ave. Wheelchair accessible. 540-0751.  

www.thelonghaul.org  

The Inquiring Camera: Tie Xi Qu: West of the Tracks - Part Two: Remnants” at 7 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4 members, UC students; $5 UC faculty, staff, seniors, disabled, youth; $8 adults. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

Hip Hop Film Fest at 6 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $5 per film. For film schedule email info@HipHopFilmFest.com or call 415-285-1416. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Susan McDougal discusses “The Woman Who Wouldn’t Talk,” on her refusal to testify in the Whitewater investigations at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

African Drum Workshop with Wade Peterson. Beginners from 10 to 11:30 a.m., experienced from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m., at The Jazz House. Cost is $15-$25, and advance registration is encouraged. 533-5111. 

Ballet Counterpointe Rep of Berkeley, “Works in Motion” showcasing local choreographers and ballet artists from the independent dance scene, at 8 p.m. at ODC Theater, 3153 17th St. at Shotwell, SF. Tickets are $15-20 sliding scale, available from 415-863-9834. 

North Indian Classical Music, Lakshmi Shankar, vocals, and Pandit Swapan Chaudhuri, tabla, at 7:30 p.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. Tickets are $12-$20. 415-454-6264. 

Adrian’s Music Salon with Michael La Macchia ensemble at 8 p.m. at The Jazz House. Cost is $6-$15 sliding scale. www.thejazzhouse.com  

Shawn Baltazor and Kenny Pexton, farewell concert, at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $10. 845-5373.  

www.jazzschool.com 

Caribbean Allstars perform reggae at 9:30 p.m., at Ashkenaz. Cost is $13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Luddites, Dead Science, Graham Connah’s Jettison Slinky, Good for Cows at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $8. 841-2082.  

www.starryploughpub.com 

Slow and Slower at 9:30 p.m. at Downtown, 2102 Shattuck Ave. 649-3810. 

Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Gram- 

my-winning folk music legend, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage Coffee House. Cost is $17.50 advance, $18.50 at the door. 548-1761.  

www.freightandsalvage.org 

Hot for Teacher: A Van Halen Tribute and Blitzenhamer perform at 9:30 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $10. 848-0886. www.blakesontelegraph.com 

Married Couple, alt-jazz,, at 8 p.m. at Jupiter, 2181 Shattuck Ave. 843-7625.  

www.jupiterbeer.com 

Strike Anywhere, From Ashes Rise, They Live, Robot has Werewolf Hand, The Disaster, Stalker Potential (last show) perform at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $5. 525-9926. 

SUNDAY, AUGUST 10 

Opening Reception BACA National Juried Exhibition from 2 to 4 p.m. at the Berkeley Art Center. Exhibition runs until Sept. 13. 644-6893. www.berkeleyartcenter.org 

San Francisco Mime Troupe Veronique of the Mounties in “Operation: Frozen Freedom” at 1:30 p.m. in Live Oak Park. 415-285-1717. www.sfmt.org 

FILM 

W. C. Fields: “So’s Your Old Man” at 5:30 p.m. and “The Man on the Flying Trapeze” at 7:15 at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4 members, UC students, $5 UC faculty, staff, seniors, disabled, youth, $8 adults. 642-0808.  

www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

“East and West,” a 1923 silent film comedy, at 2 p.m. at the Jewish Community Center, 1414 Walnut St. Suggested donation $2. 848-0237. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Poetry at Cody’s with Dale Pendell and Dick Bakken at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. Donation $2. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

Roger King will read from his new novel, “A Girl From Zan- 

zibar,” which recently won the Bay Area Book Reviewer’s Award for Fiction, at 7:30 p.m. Black Oak Books, 1491 Shattuck Ave. 486-0698.  

www.blackoakbooks.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Live Oak Concert, William Skeen, ‘cello, performs Bach Suites for solo ‘cello at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley Art Center. Cost is $10, BACA members $8, Students and seniors $9. Children under 12 free. 644-6893. www.berkeleyartcenter.org 

Third Annual Transbay  

Skronkathon BBQ from noon to 10:30 p.m. at The Jazz House. We supply the grills, tables and music, with fifty or so bands performing conceptual deconstruc- 

ted creative nonstandards, and you bring something for the grill, and enjoy the day. 649-8744. http://music.acme.com 

Flamenco Open Stage at Ashkenaz, at 7:30 p.m. Cost is $9. 525-5054.  

www.ashkenaz.com 

Phil Marsh, traditional and contemporary folk, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage Coffee House. Cost is $15.50 in advance, $16.50 at the door. 548-1761. 

www.freightandsalvage.org 

Steve Erquiaga and Trio  

Paradiso, originals with Argentine and Brazilian influences, at 4:30 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $10-$15. 845-5373.  

www.jazzschool.com 

Catholic Comb, Soular perform Alt Rock at 9:30 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $6. 848-0886.  

www.blakesontelegraph.com 

MONDAY, AUGUST 11 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Ezra Bayda reads from his new book, “At Home in the Muddy Water: A Guide to Finding Peace within Everyday Chaos,” at 7:30 p.m. Black Oak Books, 1491 Shattuck Ave. 486-0698. www.blackoakbooks.com 

Poetry Express, Public Speaking for Poets Workshop, from 7 to 9:30 p.m. at Priya Restaurant, 2072 San Pablo Ave.  

AT THE THEATER 

 

Aurora Theater Company, “The Accidental Activist” Aug. 8 and 9 at 7:30 p.m., Aug. 10 at 2 p.m. at 2081 Addison St. Tickets are $20. Buy your tickets online at www.Frantix.net or 415-621-1216 or 866-372-6849. www.auroratheatre.org 

Berkeley Music Theater Company, “Oliver!” Lionel Bart’s musical will be performed Aug. 8 and 9, at 8 p.m. at Albany High School, 603 Key Route, Albany. Tickets are $15 general, $10 seniors, students, and low-income. 524-1224. 

Oakland Summer Theater, “The Death and Life of Sneaky Fitch,” Aug. 8 and 9, Fri. at 8 p.m., Sat. at 3 and 8 p.m. Tickets are $10 in advance, $12 at the door, $8 seniors and students. Chabot School Auditorium, 6686 Chabot Rd. To reserve tickets call 597-5026. 

Shotgun Players, “Mother Courage and Her Children,” by Bertolt Brecht, translated by David Hare, directed by Patrick Dooley. Runs Saturdays and Sundays at 4 p.m. in John Hinkle Park, until Sept. 14. No show Aug 9. Show Sept. 13 is at Live Oak Park, Shattuck and Berryman. Free. 704-8210.  

www.shotgunplayers.org 

 


Squeezing Lemonade For Berkeley Schools

By MEGAN GREENWELL
Tuesday August 05, 2003

In a new twist on an old summertime tradition, Berkeley children put up a lemonade stand on Saturday to raise money for their schools. 

The children and their parents selling lemonade in front of Old City Hall on Saturday morning were volunteers for Berkeley Schools Now (BSN), a parent-organized group dedicated to raising $500,000 by Dec. 31 for the city’s 16 public schools. The group’s organizers prepared fliers to hand out to passersby, and their children gave impassioned impromptu speeches about programs at their school that are in danger of elimination as a result of budget cuts at the local, state, and federal levels.  

Saturday’s event was timed to coincide with the mailing of a letter from State Assembly member Loni Hancock (D-Berkeley), encouraging all Berkeley parents to donate their tax refund checks to BSN. Any residents who declared dependent children on their 2002 tax returns will receive a $400 rebate this summer, money that Hancock said should return to the schools that are suffering because of such tax cuts. 

“This is tax money that should have gone to schools in the first place,” Hancock wrote. “I urge you to invest your tax dollars in Berkeley’s children today. The return on your investment is incalculable.” 

The parents and students hosting the refreshment stand on Saturday handed out copies of Hancock’s letter, then asked pedestrians to donate whatever money they could on the spot. In return, children handed each donor a cup of lemonade, many of which ended up costing the customers $10 or $20. 

“I handed a little boy a $10 bill because I want him to grow up in good schools, which Berkeley has the capability, if not the resources, to provide,” said Berkeley resident Alan Park. “But the cold lemonade was a nice bonus.” 

BSN co-founder and executive board member Zasa Swanson said that the lemonade stand provided a good opportunity to get children involved in raising money for their own education. 

“It was all about having the kids participate,” Swanson said. “They would just go up to people without any prompting and ask them to help their school. It’s important to see the faces of the people this affects the most.” 

Swanson’s son, Tyler, said he was glad that many people gave him money when he worked at the lemonade stand. 

“We need to support our schools because they’re a little short on funds,” said Tyler, a fifth-grader at Arts Magnet School. “I hope it will help teachers’ pay at my school.” 

Although Swanson and other organizers were unsure of exactly how much money they raised at Saturday’s event, they said they were pleased with the turnout and community support. 

“Berkeley people in general are extremely helpful,” Swanson said. “This is a problem for all of us, and people recognize that. They really want to help.” 

The lemonade stand was only one of a number of fundraising activities put on by BSN, who will allocate the funds they raise to individual schools’ site councils based on enrollment at that particular school. Parent volunteers have been tabling at local supermarkets and farmers’ markets, and the group has sponsored a series of community meetings where attendees “pass the hat” to solicit donations. Swanson said future fundraising opportunities will include phone calls to Berkeley residents as well as more activities involving students. 

In her letter, Hancock commended BSN for their commitment to raising the $500,000 for Berkeley’s 16 public schools, citing a meeting at which a small group of parents raised $5,000 and pledges from single working parents to contribute $1,000 each by combining their tax rebates with monthly credit card payments. 

“While $500,000 will by no means address all the problems created by $10 million in budget cuts, it will make a difference in the education of all Berkeley’s schoolchildren,” she said. 

“I think everybody needs to help when the schools are in trouble,” said her son Tyler. “I want to help all the schools.” 

 

The next BSN meeting will be held at the Berkeley Unified School District annex at 1835 Allston St. at 7:30 p.m. To make a tax-deductible contribution, address checks to the Berkeley Public Education Foundation and write “Berkeley Schools Now” in the memo line. 

 


A Message For Democrats

By ARIEL PARKINSON
Tuesday August 05, 2003

To the leaders of the Democratic Party: 

You, your party, and all Democrats, are poised to lose. You are on the brink of losing the Presidency, Congress, and elected office at every level. 

Your party and its leadership have been articulate in opposing Bush domestic policy—in its simplest and broadest terms, “enrich the rich at all costs.” Yet Bush domestic policy is inseparable from Bush foreign policy: again, in broad terms, the overt redefinition of America as a Miltary Imperium. It entails the flow of the country’s discretionary wealth, not into the physical preservation of this country and the well-being of its population, but into military bases, new generations of every form of weaponry, and the abrogation of the treaty which staved off world-scale conflict for 40 years. Half the military expenditure of the entire world is drawn from the American taxpayer. As in all totalitarianism, each step engenders the next -- the next enemy, the next level of security, the next equipment for and exercise of power. 

While the polls showed “growing support for war,” they also showed, and show, equivalent support for challenge to those policies, in Congress and on the streets, and even more massive support for cooperation with the United Nations. 

Although many distinguished Democratic leaders have spoken out, their voices, taken one by one, are negligible in the sweeping torrent of newspeak emanating from the White House each day. Invoking patriotism, insistent and carefully engendered fear, and the adroitly shifting, continual attack that nullifies rebuttal, Bush and Rove keep the fight where they can win: abstract heroics, unassailable platitudes, and a fictive image of the world. And the right-owned media march in lockstep. “The War is Over. Long Live the War.” 

This is a rich country—with crowded classrooms and closed libraries; neglected public services; unprotected natural resources; decaying infrastructure; withering arts support; and systematic withdrawal of the safety net constructed through Democratic leadership in the 1930s. 

This list defines the choice between acceptance of and payment for the United States as a Military Imperium, or the channeling of our wealth toward Life. At this point members of the minority party in Congress are the only agents with the power to frame the message and deliver it.  

We appeal to you to act now and to win. Here is a 3-point program. 

1. UNITE  

Your adversaries have a common resolute, coherent policy. Underneath identity politics and the bickering for place, so do you. Surely a majority of Democrats in Congress support increased aid to education, maintenance and extension of medical care and public health, protection of the environment, maintenance of the physical infrastructure of the country; and prevention of crime, misery, and starvation in the streets. Unite in saying so. Unite in castigating Republicans for their flagrant destruction of these basic values, item by item. There is already discussion of alternative uses of the billions assigned to cutting taxes. The even more costly and much more far-reaching military spending remains largely unchallenged. Unite in connecting the destruction of America with the shift of wealth to war and tax cuts.  

2. ATTACK 

Every lawyer knows it is more effective to attack than to defend. What takes a moment to allege takes years to disprove. No sooner was one “reason” for invading Iraq challenged, than another took its place. Invasion of Iraq saved George Bush Sr. from national focus on the Savings and Loan scandals; invasion of Iraq has spared his son from explaining his and his advisors’ intimate involvement with corporate corruption and fraud. 

When it is relevant— with this administration it is very relevant—attack ad hominem—another successful Republican tactic. Once the adversary uses it, it must be matched. The overwhelming preponderance of evidence is on your side. While the Republican right engaged in irresponsible, daily, and widely disseminated vilification of the Clintons, the politically significant conflicts of interest, shady deals, and illegal actions of Bush, Cheney, and Rove are rarely if ever mentioned by their political challengers, and often confined to the miniscule circulation of the progressive press. 

Even on national security—their trump card—the Bush administration has failed. The most likely sources and ports of entry for weapons of mass destruction have been left unguarded. The numbers of people in the world deeply motivated to trade their lives for death of an American, any American, has increased under Bush foreign policy, and will continue to increase. 

3. USE THE PRESS 

Mass media are the infrastructure of the country. Not the Constitution, not the right to vote, not community—but television, that glass panel of flashing light and moving images, and billboards, and print, that slam into consciousness most of the waking hours for most of us, every day. The media have become our consciousness, our nervous system.  

The strong, able Democrats in Congress must do what the Marchers did—engineer a series of events that the press cannot ignore. It took 150,000 marchers assembling in the Capitol for the whole media apparatus to at last direct its lens to the street, but they did. Although the politburo ignored them, two-thirds of the electorate saw, heard, and said the president should listen to the message. 100 Congressional Democrats, with their own “Contract for America,” stepping over the line together at a giant press conference will not be ignored. You are leaders. You still control the purse.  

When the Labor Party in England staged a similar manifestation of dissent, it was world news. We suggest a continuing series of press conferences on the Capitol steps, programmed with real information and argument, presented in a way that will be picked up by the press. You must take back your share of the press.  

A second event, designed to coerce media attention, is a vigil, from now until the election, of the people who maintain this country: teachers and professors, medical personnel, receptionists, postal employees, librarians, artists, firemen, etc.—all of whom are being fired, squeezed dry, deprived of facilities and equipment, asked to do the impossible—all in the interest of tax cuts and military expansion. And without leaders, without political instruction, they don’t know how to voice their complaints.  

Every week a new representative group of the decent, industrious, and at this point helpless people who make this country a good place to live, would share their problems and their lives in a vigil. Their slogan, on their own behalf and on behalf of the people whom they serve: We Want Our Money Back.  

The deplorable reshaping of democracy, world governance, the nature and extent of war, and the most recent world Imperium was a long time building. The presidency of George W. Bush has pushed it to critical mass. Human life, and the conditions for life cannot support an equally long time for correction. The rapid defeat in the next two elections of the Bush troika that rules the world will go a long way toward restoration.  

They are few and we are many. You are stronger than you think.  

Ariel Parkinson is a Berkeley painter, designer and poltical activist. 


UC Economist Calls For Civil Disobedience

By RICHARD BRENNEMAN
Tuesday August 05, 2003

When George Akerlof talks, the world listens. Especially when he tosses barbs at the White House. 

The Nobel prize helps, of course, but an observer can’t help wonder if much of the attention comes because the UC Berkeley professor has a knack for saying things that are widely covered everywhere else but in the American press—as in his recent call for civil disobedience to protest Bush administration fiscal policies he decried as “a form of looting” the poor and elderly to hand more wealth to wealthy supporters. 

A fixture at the UC campus since joining the Economic Department staff 37 years ago, Akerlof’s specialty is a much-neglected side of the Dismal Science. 

Traditionally, economists have posited the existence of Homo economicus, a thoroughly rational being who takes all facts into account, weighs them carefully, then acts in a manner designed to maximize self-interest. 

Of course, people don’t always act that way, as the long lines at Krispy Kreme and the Golden Arches make abundantly clear. 

Seeking to expand his understanding of humans as economic players, Akerlof reached beyond the traditional confines of his profession to the disciplines of psychology, sociology, and anthropology. 

Akerlof’s work has shown that self-perception, not just the rational play of market forces, enters into consumer decisions, a fact long known to any gifted seller. 

In a seminal 1970 paper, he looked at lemons—not the sorts that hang from trees, but those dumped on unsuspecting customers by used car dealers. Far from being the well-informed consumers of the traditional economic model, the customers Akerlof examined often wound up as dupes to unscrupulous sellers who worked very hard to make sure their marks didn’t have all the relevant facts. 

But it’s not his contributions to economic theory that have landed the celebrated professor in news pages and web sites around the world. It’s his harsh, unrelenting criticism of the occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. 

Ever since George W. Bush started peddling his tax cut cure-all, Akerlof has been raising his voice, alone and with Nobel laureates like his frequent collaborator Joseph Stiglitz, calling the attention of public and press to what he charges are serious and dangerous flaws in the President’s economics policies. 

But the widely respected academic’s latest remarks have ignited a firestorm on the Internet while attracting very little attention from the American media. 

“I think this is the worst government the U.S. has ever had in its more than 200 years of history. It has engaged in extraordinarily irresponsible policies not only in foreign and economic but also in social and environmental policy. This is not normal policy,” he told the German publication Der Spiegel (www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/0.1518.258983.00.html). 

So far Akerlof had said little more than he had in past statements on President George W. Bush’s policies, albeit this is the first time he ranked Bush dead last in the Presidential sweepstakes. 

The electronic firestorm was triggered by the eleven words that followed: 

“Now is the time for civil disobedience.” 

Akerlof’s remarks received little attention on the day they appeared, but in the days since, they’ve popped up on an ever-growing number of sites at opposite ends of the political spectrum, especially in the world of weblogs, where partisans of every stripe have found the modern-day agora from which to air their diverse views. 

Links to the German site can now be found on Rush Limbaugh newsgroups, where Akerlof has been labeled a “pinko” and “socialist” just as he has been lionized as a hero by those of the newly invigorated Left. 

When the German reporter asked if he would advocate withholding taxes as did Henry David Thoreau, the great popularizer of the term “civil disobedience,” Akerlof demurred. 

“No. I think the one thing we should do is pay our taxes. Otherwise it’ll only make matters worse.” 

Akerlof hailed the President’s father for committing “a great act of courage by actually raising taxes,” which he described as George H.W. Bush’s “best public service.” 

The Nobel laureate is no stranger to politics, being married to his frequent collaborator, fellow UC Berkeley economist Janet Yellin, who served as chair of President Bill Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisors. Yellin too is a major critic of the current administration’s economics policies, most recently in a July 22 New York Times op-ed piece attacking what she called the White House’s “binge mentality.” 


A Soldier’s Father Calls To Bring The Troops Home Now

By STAN GOFF
Tuesday August 05, 2003

On July 23, my son, who is assigned to the 82nd Airborne Division, was told along with the rest of his company at morning formation, to get his affairs in order. They are going to replace the 3rd Infantry Division in Iraq. 

Jessie spent his first thirteen years around the military, from which I retired just seven years ago right there in Ft. Bragg. It's no surprise, then, that in the face of all my protests he joined the army anyway. The military is ‘normal’ to him. 

His mother and I have been scrupulously ‘normal’ for the last few days, self-consciously so. We show great attention to detail in our day-to-day activities. We stay busy. 

I reassure her and myself that he is a light wheeled vehicle mechanic, that he won’t be participating in convoys when his unit goes to Iraq in September, that Baghdad airport, where the motor pool probably is, has by now been turned into an impregnable fortress, that perhaps there wasn’t as much depleted uranium fired there as in some Baghdad neighborhoods, that he won’t be obliged to take lives and lose that little piece of his soul, that he won't fall into the habit of calling Iraqis ragheads or hajjis, that he can just save some money, do his job, and stay busy and out of harm’s way. 

This is what people say to each other who are in our position, because there is no alternative way to think and still go to work, still attend to the needs of other children, still manage relationships, and still maintain some modicum of self-control. 

On July 3, I wrote a piece for Counterpunch expressing my reaction to George W. Bush’s remark about “bring ‘em on.” I went after this remark for its counterfeit courage, for its puerility, for its utter hypocrisy and insensitivity. But now I am reminded, now that my son is going to go there (at his age I was already in Vietnam), that George W. Bush and his coterie are more than offensive. They are obscenities with a lot of blood on their hands, and their wretchedness is something far more terrifying and unspeakable—viewed as a parent—than this bit of schoolyard mouth. 

The Counterpunch column about this Texas preppy’s remark elicited a stunning reaction. My email was hit by a tidal wave, hundreds of responses an hour at first, reactions of empathy and outrage that told me there is a vast reservoir of doubt, fear, and rage filling up beyond the ken of the cringing institution that calls itself the press. Around 40 percent of those responses came from troops, military families, and veterans. There is a great well of sullen anger smoldering out there against these pop-opera generalissimos.  

Now, as parents facing our son’s first combat tour, we are even more part of that burning. 

The recent news stories about the Bush adminstration’s mountain of lies was not news to those of us who learned long ago to seek sources outside offcialdom. 

Millions of us said they were lying over a year ago. And we parents—many of us—know that our enemies are not in Iraq. Our enemies are in office, and they have the blood of children—some of them ours—on their hands. Everyone is someone’s child, even when they are grown. Even when they take paths we don’t approve of. 

Even when they become soldiers, and are sent to pay for lies with their bodies and hearts and the blood of others. 

I replied to every email, most perfunctorily, some at length. I skimmed at first, until I realized I had overlooked a letter from a woman whose son struggled for four years with post traumatic stress disorder before he took his own life. Not long after, his young wife did the same. This bereaved mother wrote to say thanks for giving her a voice. But it was she and others like her who are giving us a voice. 

I made calls, and the people I called made calls, and within four days a small group of activist veterans and military families had formed a coordinating committee to figure out how we might find those other voices and amplify them. We bought a web domain, made more calls, wrote statements of purpose, developed outreach literature, conferred for two hours at a time on the phone from the west coast to the east. We did more 

organizing in two weeks than I have seen with most initiatives in six months. As the word has leaked out, we are getting phone calls and email. What is this thing you are doing? Military Families Speak Out, Veterans for Peace, Vietnam Veterans Against the War, Citizen Soldier, and others—these dissident military communities have networks! 

So we are going to give troops, their families, and critical veterans a voice. That’s the reason-for-being of “Bring Them Home Now!” We are using our web site www.bringthemhomenow.org as a communications clearinghouse to publish the voices of military communities and to link them to the networks and resources they will need to organize themselves. When military families rebelled recently at Ft. Stewart, the brass didn't hesitate to issue veiled threats that criticizing the war might impact on their loved ones’ careers. The brass will have no control over us, however, and those same people (mostly courageous women) will be able to say what they want, when they want, and we'll protect their identities if that’s what they need. Through them, we will communicate with the troops in combat zones, whose recent public dissent brought a swift and clear injunction from the CENTCOM commander threatening retaliate with the full force of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. 

We are going directly to those upon whom our would-be emperors depend to carry out their grandiose and deadly vision—the military. A friend of mine who passed away this year once said, “Soldiers [and their families] are political scientists. No-one cares as much as they do about what it is they are asked to die for.” For these political scientists, ‘Bring Them Home Now!’ will be a conference room, a classroom, and a loudspeaker. 

We will turn up the volume and the political pressure to bring our loved ones home, NOT ‘replace’ them with more of our children and spouses, and to leave the people of Central and Southwestern Asia to determine their own futures without Bush’s bombs and bullets. 

Stan Goff is the author of “Hideous Dream: A Soldier’s Memoir of the US Invasion of Haiti.” He is a member of the BRING THEM HOME NOW! coordinating committee, a retired Special Forces master sergeant, and the father of an active duty soldier.


A Soldier’s Father Calls To Bring The Troops Home Now

By STAN GOFF
Tuesday August 05, 2003

On July 23, my son, who is assigned to the 82nd Airborne Division, was told along with the rest of his company at morning formation, to get his affairs in order. They are going to replace the 3rd Infantry Division in Iraq. 

Jessie spent his first thirteen years around the military, from which I retired just seven years ago right there in Ft. Bragg. It's no surprise, then, that in the face of all my protests he joined the army anyway. The military is ‘normal’ to him. 

His mother and I have been scrupulously ‘normal’ for the last few days, self-consciously so. We show great attention to detail in our day-to-day activities. We stay busy. 

I reassure her and myself that he is a light wheeled vehicle mechanic, that he won’t be participating in convoys when his unit goes to Iraq in September, that Baghdad airport, where the motor pool probably is, has by now been turned into an impregnable fortress, that perhaps there wasn’t as much depleted uranium fired there as in some Baghdad neighborhoods, that he won’t be obliged to take lives and lose that little piece of his soul, that he won't fall into the habit of calling Iraqis ragheads or hajjis, that he can just save some money, do his job, and stay busy and out of harm’s way. 

This is what people say to each other who are in our position, because there is no alternative way to think and still go to work, still attend to the needs of other children, still manage relationships, and still maintain some modicum of self-control. 

On July 3, I wrote a piece for Counterpunch expressing my reaction to George W. Bush’s remark about “bring ‘em on.” I went after this remark for its counterfeit courage, for its puerility, for its utter hypocrisy and insensitivity. But now I am reminded, now that my son is going to go there (at his age I was already in Vietnam), that George W. Bush and his coterie are more than offensive. They are obscenities with a lot of blood on their hands, and their wretchedness is something far more terrifying and unspeakable—viewed as a parent—than this bit of schoolyard mouth. 

The Counterpunch column about this Texas preppy’s remark elicited a stunning reaction. My email was hit by a tidal wave, hundreds of responses an hour at first, reactions of empathy and outrage that told me there is a vast reservoir of doubt, fear, and rage filling up beyond the ken of the cringing institution that calls itself the press. Around 40 percent of those responses came from troops, military families, and veterans. There is a great well of sullen anger smoldering out there against these pop-opera generalissimos.  

Now, as parents facing our son’s first combat tour, we are even more part of that burning. 

The recent news stories about the Bush adminstration’s mountain of lies was not news to those of us who learned long ago to seek sources outside offcialdom. 

Millions of us said they were lying over a year ago. And we parents—many of us—know that our enemies are not in Iraq. Our enemies are in office, and they have the blood of children—some of them ours—on their hands. Everyone is someone’s child, even when they are grown. Even when they take paths we don’t approve of. 

Even when they become soldiers, and are sent to pay for lies with their bodies and hearts and the blood of others. 

I replied to every email, most perfunctorily, some at length. I skimmed at first, until I realized I had overlooked a letter from a woman whose son struggled for four years with post traumatic stress disorder before he took his own life. Not long after, his young wife did the same. This bereaved mother wrote to say thanks for giving her a voice. But it was she and others like her who are giving us a voice. 

I made calls, and the people I called made calls, and within four days a small group of activist veterans and military families had formed a coordinating committee to figure out how we might find those other voices and amplify them. We bought a web domain, made more calls, wrote statements of purpose, developed outreach literature, conferred for two hours at a time on the phone from the west coast to the east. We did more 

organizing in two weeks than I have seen with most initiatives in six months. As the word has leaked out, we are getting phone calls and email. What is this thing you are doing? Military Families Speak Out, Veterans for Peace, Vietnam Veterans Against the War, Citizen Soldier, and others—these dissident military communities have networks! 

So we are going to give troops, their families, and critical veterans a voice. That’s the reason-for-being of “Bring Them Home Now!” We are using our web site www.bringthemhomenow.org as a communications clearinghouse to publish the voices of military communities and to link them to the networks and resources they will need to organize themselves. When military families rebelled recently at Ft. Stewart, the brass didn't hesitate to issue veiled threats that criticizing the war might impact on their loved ones’ careers. The brass will have no control over us, however, and those same people (mostly courageous women) will be able to say what they want, when they want, and we'll protect their identities if that’s what they need. Through them, we will communicate with the troops in combat zones, whose recent public dissent brought a swift and clear injunction from the CENTCOM commander threatening retaliate with the full force of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. 

We are going directly to those upon whom our would-be emperors depend to carry out their grandiose and deadly vision—the military. A friend of mine who passed away this year once said, “Soldiers [and their families] are political scientists. No-one cares as much as they do about what it is they are asked to die for.” For these political scientists, ‘Bring Them Home Now!’ will be a conference room, a classroom, and a loudspeaker. 

We will turn up the volume and the political pressure to bring our loved ones home, NOT ‘replace’ them with more of our children and spouses, and to leave the people of Central and Southwestern Asia to determine their own futures without Bush’s bombs and bullets. 

Stan Goff is the author of “Hideous Dream: A Soldier’s Memoir of the US Invasion of Haiti.” He is a member of the BRING THEM HOME NOW! coordinating committee, a retired Special Forces master sergeant, and the father of an active duty soldier.


Gala Benefit Celebrates City’s Newest Addition: The Ashby Arts District

By MEGAN GREENWELL
Tuesday August 05, 2003

As Berkeley artists and their patrons gathered for a Saturday night fundraiser, Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates bestowed official city recognition on the newly created Ashby Arts District. 

Formed to unify area arts organizations and raise awareness about arts activities, the district will “encourage cooperation, communication, and respect within this culturally rich district,” Bates said, and “provide recognition and support for the creative work and opportunities that exist.”  

Benefit performances on Saturday and Sunday featuring musical theater group Rosin Coven and the duet of Alexander Tsygankov and Inna 

Shevchencko on domra and piano served as the district’s inaugural event. 

Joint sponsoring the district are the Epic Arts Studio and several area arts organizations. Epic, a non-profit organization that works to promote community development through arts programs, initiated formal partnerships with existing area arts venues to better publicize neighborhood arts events. 

“[The venues] are all here already,” said Epic community organizer Tanya Hurd. “The problem is that most people don’t know about them. Since people do not know they are here, they go downtown to find art and entertainment.” 

Downtown Berkeley’s popularity as an entertainment hub had created problems for South Berkeley artists and residents, Hurd said, because as the downtown facilities were renovated, smaller arts organizations, unable to pay rising rents, were driven out. 

The recently established Downtown Arts District features several venues—including The Jazz School, the Berkeley Repertory Theater, and the 

Downtown restaurant—which frequently host musical performances. 

“Many local talented artists were ‘priced out’ of the mainstream and thus relegated to a lesser status,” Epic Arts staff wrote in a press release explaining the new Ashby Arts District. “We are convinced that art is ‘priceless.’” 

With that ideal in mind, Epic Arts set out to give the new district an identity as “Berkeley’s own ‘Off-Broadway’”—away from the town center but hosting a vibrant art scene. 

Representatives of Epic and the other organizations that created the new district say they hope to make art a more important part of the South Berkeley community by bringing local groups together to share resources to emphasize the project’s neighborhood focus. 

“Some of the plans we have for the future are collaborations so that our spaces are not all competing for audiences, but rather sharing them,” Hurd said. “The [benefits] were a wonderful example. Epic Arts and Transparent Theater worked together rather than hosting events at the same time.” 

Bates’ official proclamation, presented to Epic Arts Saturday night by a member of the mayor’s staff, recognized the effort to unite neighborhood groups as a key aspect of the official designation. 

“We saw a need for artists and arts organizations in this area to come together to create a stronger base,” Hurd said. “It’s one of the easiest, 

most direct ways of bringing community together.” 

Funds raised through the weekend’s benefit concerts and other activities will fund a community arts calendar for distribution to South Berkeley residents. Epic Arts is now looking for neighborhood sponsors to design, print, and distribute the calendar both to minimize costs and to make the calendar a true community creation. 


San Pablo Avenue Project Killed, Developer Cites City Constraints

By DAVID SCHARFENBERG
Tuesday August 05, 2003

Citing five years of neighborhood opposition and bigger fish to fry, leading Berkeley developer Panoramic Interests has pulled the plug on a proposed San Pablo Avenue housing and commercial project in southwest Berkeley. 

The demise of the project, set to replace an old gas station, has revived concerns about a permitting and development process that routinely yields endless, litigious battles between developers and neighborhood activists. 

“I don’t consider this a victory,” said Douglas Press, a Mathews Street resident and attorney who unsuccessfully sued to block the project last year. “I think the problem here is that, as a community, Berkeley needs a better way to grow and develop.”  

Panoramic and its nonprofit partner, Berkeley-based Jubilee Restoration, have placed the 2700 San Pablo Ave. property on the market in the last two weeks and are asking for $1.44 million, according to their real estate broker, Don Yost of Berkeley-based Norheim & Yost. 

Panoramic project manager Chris Hudson said his company, headed by controversial developer Patrick Kennedy, is selling the property because neighborhood opposition has led to years of delays and Panoramic now wants to focus on larger projects. He said the company has no specific plans for the proceeds of any sale.  

Hudson said the designs and permits for the San Pablo Avenue project—a four-story development with commercial space on the ground floor and 35 housing units above—are included in the asking price. He said he hopes someone else will build it. 

“We think it’s a good project,” Hudson said. “The plans are good. The design is good.” 

As required by law, the project sets aside 20 percent of the housing units—or seven total—for low-income tenants. 

Yost, the real estate broker, said several large developers have passed on the project in the last two weeks because it is too small. He said most large builders say they won’t look at any proposal with less than 75 units. 

“It’s probably going to require more of a local buyer who understands the ropes of Berkeley,” he said. 

Yost added that several people interested in opening an automobile service business at the old gas station have called, but Panoramic and Jubilee have declined to sell it to those parties.  

Hudson said Jubilee Restoration is interested in buying out Panoramic, the majority partner, but has been unable to come up with the money. Jubilee did not return several calls seeking comment. 

The proposal has gone through a number of changes in the last five years, bouncing around from the Zoning Adjustments Board to City Council to the Alameda County Superior Court as neighbors have raised concerns about everything from parking to building size to the project’s potential impact on the city’s sewer system. 

City Council approved the final 35-unit project, scaled down from a one-time high of 60 units, in July 2002. This spring, the project survived a legal challenge from several of the neighbors and was ready to proceed. 

But Hudson said Panoramic, which has constructed seven buildings in Berkeley and has five more in various stages of planning and construction, has grown significantly since it first acquired the San Pablo Avenue property in 1998, and no longer wants to pursue smaller projects. 

If the neighbors had not put up such a fight, Hudson said, Panoramic would have built the project years ago. He said the demise of the plan shows that, in Berkeley, a “self-appointed” group of neighborhood activists can derail a project that would ultimately benefit their neighborhood. 

“Did they get what they wanted?,” he asked. “Did they want a gas station, or a vacant lot?” 

But neighborhood activist Julie Dickinson blamed Panoramic Interests, saying residents were always willing to accommodate a three-story project that was more in scale with the neighborhood, but Kennedy, Panoramic’s chief, refused to budge. 

“It was way too out of scale for the neighborhood—and that’s his M.O. all over Berkeley,” Dickinson said. 

Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates has formed a task force on permitting and development that is scheduled to make recommendations in September for streamlining and improving the city’s often-contentious process for approving new development projects. 

Critics have charged that the task force is stacked with development interests, but Bates says it is well-balanced.


Police Blotter

By DAVID SCHARFENBERG
Tuesday August 05, 2003

Drive-by may be linked to border feud 

A drive-by shooting that left no one wounded Thursday night may be linked to an apparent border feud between rival groups in South Berkeley and North Oakland, police said. 

Four to five men in a late model gray sedan fired several shots at the corner of Sacramento and Fairview streets at 7:21 p.m., police said, one of them piercing the window of the non-profit Western Institute for Social Research at 3220 Sacramento St. 

Institute President John Bilorusky said a bookkeeper was in the office during the shooting but was unharmed. He said staff are “not particularly happy” about the incident, but are not changing their habits  

“Unfortunately, a lot of us know that there are too many shootings affecting innocent people,” he said. 

Berkeley Police Department spokesperson Officer Kevin Schofield said police do not know who the intended victim or victims of the shooting were, but have ruled out the Institute as the target. 

He said investigators are looking into any possible link to an apparent border feud that has been raging since June, but could not yet make a determination. 

“They’re looking into that—we’re not saying yea or nay at this point,” Schofield said. 

 

Stabbing at party 

After brandishing a gun, an uninvited guest at a West Berkeley Party was stabbed Saturday night, according to police. 

Police got a call at 11:21 p.m. reporting a fight between 20 to 30 partygoers on the 1800 block of Seventh Street. Officers arrived to find about 100 young people loitering outside the party, at the corner of Hearst Avenue. 

Berkeley Police Department spokesperson Officer Kevin Schofield said police received a call from Alta Bates Medical Center later in the evening reporting that a stabbing victim had arrived in the emergency room. 

Police determined that the victim had wielded a gun at the party and had been stabbed. The department arrested the victim for brandishing a firearm and released him on the spot, pending an upcoming court date. 

Police have no one in custody for the stabbing. 

Schofield said the gun-wielder was one of a large group of people who crashed the Seventh Street party, sparking the fight. He said there is no reason, at present, to suspect gang activity. 

 

Burglar arrested in park 

Police arrested a suspected burglar in Ohlone Park early Monday morning shortly after a resident chased the alleged thief from a Francisco Street front porch. 

Berkeley Police Department spokesperson Officer Kevin Schofield said a resident of a home on the 1500 block of Francisco heard the alleged burglar leaving through the front door and confronted him on the porch. 

The suspect, 42 year-old Richmond native Michael Vance, then fled to Ohlone Park where police, responding to a 3:16 a.m. call, found him hiding in a bush. Police arrested Vance for burglary and being in the park after hours. 

 

Pizza delivery man mugged 

Five juveniles robbed a pizza deliveryman in South Berkeley early Sunday morning, according to police. 

The robbers, who appeared to be 14 to 17 years old, forced a Mr. Pizza Man employee to the ground at the corner of Martin Luther King, Jr. Way and 63rd Street at 1:20 a.m. and stole a wallet, keys, cell phone and $300 before running away, according to Berkeley Police Department spokesperson Officer Kevin Schofield. 

National Night Out 

At least fifty neighborhood watch groups will take to the streets Tuesday night as part of a National Night Out to combat crime, according to police. 

Marches, barbeques, musical performances and ice cream socials will be part of the festivities. The event, happening for 20 years in Berkeley, will allow neighbors, police and city officials to intermingle. 

“This is a great opportunity for Berkeley residents to meet the police officers and city staff who protect and serve the community,” said City Manager Weldon Rucker, in a statement. 

This year’s event comes amid an apparent border feud pitting rival groups in South Berkeley and North Oakland. 

“This is the worst year for the kids yet,” said South Berkeley resident Laura Menard. 

“Especially with all the recent violence, this is an opportune time for the neighbors to get to know each other” and for the police to ramp up community policing efforts, said Berkeley Police Department spokesperson Officer Kevin Schofield. 

Festivities will generally take place between 6 p.m. and 10 p.m. National Night Out, which takes place across the country, traditionally includes a display of outdoor lights and front porch vigils in a symbolic move to reclaim the night from crime.


Stanford Art Exhibit Captures Gardening Through The Ages

By STEVEN FINACOM Special to the Planet
Tuesday August 05, 2003

“The Changing Garden: Four Centuries of European and American Art,” currently on exhibit at the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University provides ample incentive for Berkeleyans to travel south for a day visit to our intellectual sister community on the Peninsula.  

The title of the exhibit is somewhat misleading. Although there are a scattering of home garden images and references, including an idyllic “small suburban garden” plan by Beatrix Ferrand (on loan from UC Berkeley’s Environmental Design Archives), you’re not likely to personally identify with the household “gardens” displayed here unless your family heritage happens to contain a palace, hunting lodge, French vicomte, English baron, or Italian cardinal.  

Nomenclature aside, the exhibit contains a clever and coherently arranged selection of works—plans, maps, photographs, etchings, paintings--that educate, illuminate, and entertain. It is topically organized around notable landscapes from Europe and North America—Central Park, the Villa d’Este, Versailles, Windsor, Stowe, and so forth—as well as topical sections such as “Water Displays,” “Gardeners at Work,” “Parterres, Mazes and Hedges.”  

The exhibit organizers had some fun with the theme. For example, a print of a 1746 costume reception in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles seems at first glance to bear no relation to the exhibit until you read that Louis XV and six members of his retinue “inspired by Versailles’s formal gardens, came disguised as pruned yew trees.”  

And there they are, looking like aliens at a Halloween gala. We know what to do when the “emperor has no clothes,” but how to behave when your head of state is, figuratively, a shrub? 

Elsewhere is a 1846 cartoon by Paul-Guillaume-Sulpice Clevalier, showing a smug burgher holding a pot containing a six inch twig; “My Cedar of Lebanon” the caption proclaims. Every confirmed home gardener will identify with both the hope and humor contained in that scene. 

Even if you are uninterested in the evolution of designed landscapes, go for the art. There are intriguing oils and watercolors, including three by John Singer Sargent, one of them a literally luminous scene from 1879, “The Luxemborg Gardens At Twilight.”  

Turn 180 degrees from that painting and you’re facing “Promenade in the Luxemborg Gardens,” circa 1907, by Maurice Pendergast. Close up, it appears an utterly abstract composition of large daubs of paint with much of the underlying wood panel still visible; stand back several feet and it resolves into a wonderful impressionistic landscape. 

Turn again and there’s a Whistler lithograph, “Conversation in the Luxemborg Gardens,” 1893. So the exhibit proceeds, showing several interpretations and impressions of each setting. 

Most of the exhibit—which contains some 200 items, but is quicker and easier to view than that number would suggest--examines landscapes designed and built prior to the 20th century. There are a few images of Central Park in later years, and a few token pieces—including plans for the grounds of the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, and San Francisco’s Crissy Field renovation—which sketch in a modern context.  

The exhibit venue, Stanford’s Cantor Arts Center, is a fine small museum (“one of the last, best, free museums” a friend calls it) refurbished and expanded from the Stanford Art Museum that was seriously damaged and temporarily closed by both the 1906 and 1989 earthquakes.  

The visible permanent collection provides a digestible and respectable survey of art and design across ages and cultures, from ancient Greek ceramics to Chinese jade, Western landscape paintings, and numerous Rodin bronzes.  

I was happy to see large landscapes by William Keith, and entertained to note that he was described here in Stanford territory as a “favorite of the Stanford family…”, “a California resident of Scottish descent,” and an artist who originally “settled in San Francisco.” All true, but no mention of the fact that he made his home in Berkeley for many years, a stone’s throw from the UC campus. 

It is all well worth an afternoon, including a look at the building’s architecture, which (for the most part) harmoniously merges old and new. 

The collection on display is manageable, not exhausting; it seems scaled for a half-day’s visit. There are two floors of permanent galleries in the old building, grouped around an impressive marble entrance foyer, newer galleries to the rear, and a number of small outdoor sculpture courts and plazas.  

The museum contains those ubiquitous commercial twins, gift shop and café, the latter offering the tasteful but slightly overpriced fare--salads, sandwiches, and soups--obligatory in such venues. Both spaces are pleasant, small-scaled, and serviceable, and the café has an outdoor dining terrace that overlooks lawns and a Rodin sculpture garden.


Recruiter Offers Lethal Bargain: Education For the Risk of Death

By JIMMY BRESLIN
Tuesday August 05, 2003

Reprinted from Newsday, July 29 

 

There was no ceremonial viewing of the body of Pfc. Raheen Tyson Heighter on July 28. His remains have not arrived here from Iraq. He was a spectacular 21-year-old who was killed when a convoy in which he was riding was attacked early in the morning outside of Baghdad. 

His mother, Cathy Heighter, spent yesterday afternoon sitting with relatives in her mother's house on Long Island. She expects the body back next week. Then there will be a public viewing. 

“I want to let people know he died for this country,” the mother was saying. “He died an American hero.” 

“He was supposed to be home in June,” one of the women in the living room said. 

“Been there too long,” an aunt, Barbara Adams, said. 

“They wanted to come home,” one of the others said. 

“They’ve been there too long,” Cathy Heighter said. 

She is a pretty woman of 45. She wore a cream blouse and blue pants and sat on a living room couch underneath front windows. She has a respiratory ailment that causes her to cough persistently. 

“The field commander called me,” she was saying. “He talked so very highly of Raheen. He said the troops looked up to him. He fought to the end. He emptied his gun. 

“I loved him,” she said. 

“He loved you,” one of the women said. 

Already her son has written the moving, memorable lines of the war. They were in a letter sent on June 20 and arriving at his mother’s house on July 2: “Today is a blissful day ... today is the first time I realized you have tried your hardest to bring the bestowed, hidden, optimistic and spontaneous qualities out of me ... as I sit here in tears, I thank you.” 

The mother never liked the idea of the Army from the start. He was 17, and she was in her beauty shop, “Beyond Images of Beauty” on Main Street in Bay Shore, when an Army recruiting officer came in. He said that he had seen Raheen in high school and the young man told him that he wanted to join. 

“The recruiter said he just needed my signature,” she said. “I told him, ‘Don’t even ask. Get out of here.’” 

Her son, however, saw his life ahead as something that he had to run right up to like a train on the tracks outside. 

Let me tell you what this country lost in Iraq the other day when Rasheen Heighter was shot dead because he was there. 

At 14, he came home from school and took a number two pencil and drew a father holding his son. Holding the child to his chest with a powerful left arm protecting the child from a world that the father, his face strong and simultaneously haunted by pain, could see ahead for the son. 

It is a wonderful drawing. 

He and his mother, who sells art out of her bright beauty shop, made prints of the drawing and sold them. He thought that was a good enough start, but he was going to go so much higher. He was going to pierce the sky.  

When he graduated from high school, he worked in a brokerage, and he studied for a license exam, but he saw so much more dancing on horizons that only he could discern. He wanted to go to college outside of New York. He had to. Sure, he would use such a place, with its walks through trees, with its professors, as an exciting studio for his art. But there were so many other things on his mind. He found the romance of thought overwhelming. 

The combined income of his mother and father, who was in construction, wasn’t spectacular but it was over the limit for scholarships and loans. 

There was one way. Out there in the high school halls and the gym and the football field were the military recruiters with their dark bargains. You put your body up and if nothing happens you get college paid for. Raheen took the Army. That is the contract signed by so many in the country. The Army buys them for a college degree. It works unless you wind up in Iraq and come home in a box. 

On Aug. 7, 2001, he walked into his mother’s shop and said he was leaving for the Army the next day. He had sold himself. He was now old enough to enlist without her written permission. “He put me in shock,” she said yesterday. “We got up at 5:30 the next morning. He had three big duffel bags packed. They told him to bring only one. I hugged him. I told him I loved him. I told him be a man.” Which was redundant. 

The other day at 10 a.m., she was on the phone in her beauty shop with a customer who was late and wanted to change times. Her oldest son, Glynn, and two Army officers walked in and stood nervously. “You think you’re seeing ghosts,” she was saying yesterday. “I’m standing there on the phone and I know they are there to tell me that my son is dead. How can this be happening? They are ghosts. I told the woman on the phone, ‘You can come anytime.’ I hung up. And then they told me.” 

“Why do we stay there?” an aunt said. “They don’t want us there.” 

“Shooting at us. They don’t want us there.” 

“They don’t want us there.” 

“Do they know why they’re there?” they were asked. 

“No. They don’t know. They’re there for their country. That’s what they know,” the soldier’s mother said. 

“Do you know?” one aunt was asked. 

“Oil.” 

“Oil,” Cathy Heighter said, softly and so sadly. 


Bring the Troops Home, Repeal the Patriot Act, Says SF Labor Council

Tuesday August 05, 2003

Resolution of the San Francisco Labor Council 

Bring the troops home now—End the occupation of Iraq—Money for human needs, not war—Repeal the Patriot Act. 

Whereas, the people in Iraq want the US occupation to end, and the US soldiers in Iraq want to come home. We ask: Who is benefiting from this war, and who is paying the price?; and  

Whereas, every day, people are dying as a consequence of this illegal occupation—Every day human misery expands in the drive for world Empire and corporate globalization—Every day, jobs are lost and vital social programs that serve and protect working people are being looted and destroyed, as the Bush administration cynically manipulates the so-called “war on terrorism” to carry out the social transfer of wealth from the bottom to the top; and 

Whereas, the Bush administration lied to the people, to the Congress, and to the United Nations as it raced to wage war against Iraq. Now tens of thousands of Iraqis and many hundreds of GIs have been killed or maimed—by Rumsfeld’s count over 1,000 attacks on US forces since May 1. As the anger of the Iraqi people inevitably grows, the body count on both sides will sharply increase; and 

Whereas, as the anti-war movement predicted, the Iraqi people view US forces as colonial occupiers, not liberators. American soldiers are killing and being killed in a war that serves only the interests of U.S. oil monopolies and corporate elites—George W. Bush’s real constituents. Soldiers and their families are realizing that high government officials, mostly millionaires who shuttle between corporate boardrooms and government posts, are using U.S. troops as a private security detachment for the multinational corporations’ plunder of Iraq's oil riches; and 

Whereas, the Pentagon now admits they will have 150,000 troops in Iraq for the “foreseeable future,” at a cost of nearly $4 Billion a month—on top of the cost of maintaining US troops and bases in 130 other countries—and this rapid rise in the power and reach of the military is closely linked to the unprecedented assault on the civil rights, union rights, benefits (including veterans’ benefits), and living standards of working people going on right now in the United States; and 

Whereas, the Bush administration—which only came to power due to massive racist disenfranchisement and voting fraud—has used the excuse of their “endless war” to sponsor a wholesale assault on the Bill of Rights, institutionalize racial profiling, assume extraordinary powers for the Executive branch, and adopt new repressive laws like the Patriot Act; and 

Whereas, on October 25, 2003 the anti-war, civil rights, social justice and labor movements—joined in ever increasing numbers by family members of military personnel and veterans and international delegations—will march on Washington, D.C. to demand an immediate end to the US war and occupation in Iraq, repeal of the Patriot Act, and money for human needs, not for war; therefore be it 

RESOLVED, that the San Francisco Labor Council, AFL-CIO, demands: 1) an immediate end to the US/British war and occupation in Iraq—Bring the Troops Home Now; 2) repeal of the Patriot Act and other repressive laws; 3) reordering of national priorities toward the human needs of our people. We need jobs and real security, not militarism and empire-building; and be it further 

RESOLVED: that the council endorse the October 25, 2003 International March on Washington, D.C. behind the banner: Bring the Troops Home Now-End the Occupation of Iraq-Repeal the Patriot Act-Money for Human Needs, not for War and Empire—and will urge affiliated unions, other labor councils, state federation and AFL-CIO to do the same. 

Adopted unanimously, July 28, 2003. 


Choice Talk and Good Food at Farmers’ Markets

By ALAN S. KAY Special to the Planet
Tuesday August 05, 2003

There is no more “Berkeley” topic of conversation than what, where and how we eat. Sure, the discussion may begin as a consideration of presidential candidate options or your feelings about Patrick Kennedy’s new building on University Avenue. But before long you’ll be discussing which Indian restaurant you like best, or Berkeley Bowl vs. Monterey Market, or gelato downtown. 

No wonder, then, that we love our farmers’ markets—perhaps a bit too much. We now have three, not counting the offerings in neighboring El Cerrito and Oakland, and now, I’m told, even Emeryville (real fruit on a fake Main Street!). Even the North Berkeley mini-market, which happens in too small a space on one of the Elephant Pharmacy parking lots for a scant four hours on Thursday afternoons, draws nearby residents and passers-by. (Why not four?—a Sunday market in West Berkeley, perhaps, on Spenger’s parking lot or near the waterfront.) 

The Tuesday afternoon market on Derby near MLK is as much a scene as a place to stock up on organically grown fruit—the local cherries are gone, but peaches and nectarines are everywhere, and the tomatoes and melons have finally come in. 

Topping the social as well as comestibles hierarchy, though, is the downtown Saturday market. At this time of year, it fills the Center Street block between Milvia and MLK, and you’re as likely to come across an old friend as you are to find some tasty snap peas. Families shop together, dogs and bicycles are everywhere (though officially dogs aren’t allowed in the market itself), and the offerings are far broader than at most outdoor markets.  

Walking eastward, you’ll wander past pretty good kettle popcorn and locally prepared ethnic foods, breads and pastries that rival any you’ll find offered in upscale food stores, artisan-roasted coffees, organic produce trucked in from Watsonville or the Foothills or exotic Bolinas, California oils and vinegars, seedlings and plants for your garden, and fish freshly caught off the North Coast. There’s also music, with buskers scattered about.  

Want to people-watch? This is the place to do it. Alice Waters has been spotted here, as have the mayor and his wife, the assemblywoman. Students shop alongside octogenarians, the strait-laced and the funky.  

Want to learn about the food you eat? Far more easily than can be done at most local stores, you can ask a question of someone who may actually have grown the unfamiliar leaf vegetable you’re curious about, or strike up a conversation about varieties of nectarines with someone who truly cares about that topic.  

There’s much to be said for allowing those of us who are city-bound to feel more fully the rhythms of nature. Shopping for produce in stores masks the local patterns of growing seasons—did that apple grow in Sebastopol, Boise, on Long Island or in New Zealand? It’s one the many subtle ways that helps us to live more sensibly in this part of the world. 

But oughtn’t it also to be the case that shopping at farmers markets would also allow us to live more economically? Anyone who’s shopped at a big Bay Area farmers market knows that’s not the place to find bargains.  

True, the produce is more likely to be organically grown, and that’s still a comparatively expensive way to grow things. Nonetheless, prices at the Berkeley farmers markets are likely to be comparable to the prices being charged for similar, if not the same, produce at high-margin local stores like Andronico’s and Whole Foods, and they’re often higher than at Berkeley Bowl and Monterey Market. I can recall buying strawberries from one of the Saturday regulars, an organic, union-supporting grower down around Monterey Bay, only to find those same strawberries from that same grower in Monterey Market later that day for 75 cents less a basket.  

Some farmer-vendors say they set prices on a cost-plus basis, but that’s hardly universal. For a demonstration of how extreme pricing can be based on what the traffic will bear, check out the weekend market at the redone San Francisco Ferry Building—stone fruit for $6 a pound, for heaven’s sake! 

Many vendors decide what they’ll charge at the start of the season, then stick to it. That means prices become competitive for a given crop only at the season’s height, when additional vendors show up. Overall, though, pricing seems not to matter that much as a factor in shopping volume. People come and buy because the food is fresh, it’s healthily produced, its being sold by the people who grow it, and because the market is an event, a scene. They don’t come to buy food inexpensively. Which is a good thing, because often it isn’t.


Summer Noon Concerts in Downtown Berkeley

Tuesday August 05, 2003

The Downtown Berkeley Association (DBA) presents Summer Noon Concerts 2003, a unique series of nine free concerts, Thursdays at noon in June & July, beginning June 5th. From Rhythm & Blues to Brazilian capoeira, these concerts at the Downtown Berkeley BART Plaza (Shattuck Ave. at Center St.) are a showcase of the culturally rich performing arts in Berkeley. This outdoor summer celebration of Berkeley-based musicians & dancers is just a small sampling of the performing arts happening nightly in clubs, cafes, schools, theaters and concert halls in Downtown Berkeley. 

 

On Thursday, June 5th, our concert series opens with Rhonda Benin and Soulful Strut performing some of the best in R & B, with a splash of jazz and a solid helping of the blues. Soulful Strut appears regularly at many Bay Area nightspots such Enricos Sidewalk Café and Restaurant. 

 

On Thursday, July 31st, our concert series closes with SoVoSó, a highly visual and imaginative a capella ensemble that sings a compelling mix of jazz, gospel, rhythm and blues, world, pop, and improvisational music. The ensemble is made up of former members of Bobby McFerrin’s Voicestra, and McFerrin says, “SoVoSó is tight, soulful, and a whole lotta fun.” 

 

This event is easily accessible by transit and there is one hour free parking daily from 9 am to 5 pm in Center Street Garage. Seating will be available. 

 

For a complete schedule of entertainers for the Downtown Berkeley Summer Noon Concerts 2003 visit the Downtown Berkeley Association website at www.downtownberkeley.org


Opinion

Editorials

Indonesia Frees Jailed Writer

By PAUL KILDUFF Special to the Planet
Friday August 08, 2003

William “Billy” Nessen, a former Berkeley activist turned freelance investigative journalist was freed last Sunday by the Indonesian government after being held for 40 days on immigration charges.  

Nessen, who was filming a documentary on the conflict in the Aceh province of northern Indonesia between a rebel group, known as GAB, fighting with the Indonesia government to free the region. While in Aceh he also wrote stories about the war for the San Francisco Chronicle and England’s Observer newspaper. 

“We’re very happy that the Indonesian government decided to let him go rather than jail him,” said the Chronicle’s Foreign Service Editor Jack Epstein who’s worked with Nessen since 2000. Nessen was being held for visa violations.  

The Indonesian government has barred journalists from reporting from Aceh. He had been in the region with GAB rebels for several weeks before surrendering to the Indonesian Army last month. Although convicted, he was sentenced to time served and cannot enter the country again for a year. He was deported earlier this week.  

Epstein, who along with Chronicle Executive Editor Phil Bronstein, wrote letters on Nessen’s behalf to the Indonesian embassy and the country’s president, says the pressure put on the country by the international journalism community played a key role in his release. 

“I think the journalists community lead the way,” said Epstein who noted that the Bay Guardian as well as the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) also came to Nessen’s aid.  

“We are relieved that Nessen is now free to leave the country,” said CPJ deputy director Joel Simon. “But he was unjustly imprisoned for his work as a journalist. We again call on Indonesian authorities to lift the harsh restrictions on journalists trying to cover military operations in Aceh.” 

CPJ had strongly protested Nessen’s imprisonment, noting that his prosecution is part of a broader effort by the Indonesian government to control reporting on the war in Aceh 

Berkeley journalist John Lavine, a member of the city of Berkeley’s Peace and Justice Committee, was also pleased to hear of Nessen’s release. “The wonderful thing is that he’s received so much publicity and international attention which is rare” for a journalist, said Lavine. 

Epstein says the reason the Indonesian government doesn’t want journalists working in Aceh are that the government has something to hide. 

“They don’t want the world to know what the military’s doing in Aceh,” said Epstein. “Every time they’d mention Billy there was the criticism that what they were doing was sending a message to stifle the press.” 

Nessen was reporting on the Indonesian Army’s forcing Acehians out of their homes into internment camps and the killing of civilians. An estimated 600 people have been killed in the conflict since hostilities resumed in the region in May.  

“It could be an East Timor all over again and they remember what happened then. Journalists reported what the Indonesian military did and the United States stopped military aid because of it,” said Epstein. 

Esptein wouldn’t speculate on whether the publicity from Nessen’s arrest and incarceration would help his career or documentary, but he did say the incident “may have put Aceh on the map a bit. The war with these rebels has been going on since 1976 and it’s called the ‘Forgotten War’ because folks never heard of it.” 

In addition to the efforts made by journalists, three U.S. Senators also intervened on Nessen’s behalf. Richard Lugar (R-Indiana), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, contacted the Indonesian government calling for Nessen’s release as did both Democratic Senators Charles Schumer and Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, Nessen’s home state.  

First active in the successful effort to get the UC. system to divest from South Africa in the mid-1980s, Nessen, 46, went on to work for anti-nuclear weapons campaigns with the Livermore Action Group and for human rights in Central America. In the late 80s he received his masters in journalism from the Columbia School of Journalism. He has worked as a freelancer since graduating on stories such as East Timor’s recent successful battle for independence.


Berkeley Briefs

Tuesday August 05, 2003

 

Remembering A-bomb victims 

As a remembrance of a bombing, a group of East Bay volunteers will stage a call for peace this weekend. The Saturday event will mark the 58th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, Japan, during World War II. For the second year in a row, participants from Bay Area groups including Women For Peace, ProgressivePortal.org, and the Berkeley Peace and Justice commission will float “peace lanterns” in the San Francisco Bay from the Berkeley Aquatic Park.  

The ceremony will feature an opportunity for participants to make their own paper lanterns to float in the water, as well as a performance of traditional Japanese music. The lantern floating ceremony will include a remembrance for the 74,000 killed in Nagasaki on Aug. 9, 1945, as well as victims of all wars. This is the second year for Berkeley’s commemoration event. Similar ceremonies are held every August in Japan. 

“I would like to extend my sincere respect to you all for holding this ceremony every year to console the souls of the victims of the atomic bombings and to pray for the everlasting world peace,” wrote Nagasaki mayor Iccho Itoh in a letter addressed to the city. “I would like to extend my warm wishes for the … continued prosperity of the City of Berkeley.” 

The Peace Lantern ceremony will take place this Saturday at the Berkeley Aquatic Park on the west end of Addison Street. Lantern making will begin at 6:30 p.m., followed by a musical performance at 7:15 p.m. and the lantern floating ceremony at 8:00 p.m. 

 

—Megan Greenwell 

 

Out to best breastfeeding record 

More than a thousand Bay Area women will set out Saturday to defend their own world record for the most number of women breastfeeding at one place and time. 

Organizers said they did not know how many women would turn out on Saturday, but said they expected more than the 1,130 they had last year to capture the world record. The Berkeley group broke the previous world record held by Sydney, Australia. 

Later this year, the women of Sydney plan to stage their own demonstration again, hoping to beat Berkeley and win back their title. 

The simultaneous breastfeed is sponsored by the California Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, as well as the City of Berkeley and Alameda County Public Health Departments and the Native American Health Center. 

The breastfeeding competition is organized as part of the celebration of World Breastfeeding Week and California Breastfeeding Awareness Month, which are designed to promote awareness about the health benefits of breastfeeding. Former U.S. Surgeon General David Satcher will speak at the event to encourage mothers to keep their infant children on breast milk instead of formula. 

“It’s a very important thing because in the U.S. many mothers rely on formula instead of breast milk, which is better for babies,” said Melody Hansen, a national spokesperson for La Leche League, an international organizations that helps educate mothers about breastfeeding.  

“Marketing and free distribution of formula, as well as commercials that make it seem like formula is better than breast milk, really hurt our push to show women that breast feeding is the best way to keep their babies healthy.” 

The breastfeeding count will take place at the Berkeley Community Theater on the Berkeley High School campus on Saturday. Registration for mothers and musical performances will begin at 11:30 a.m. in Civic Center Park, followed by Satcher’s speech at noon. The procession to the theater will start at 12:45 p.m., and the official count will commence at 1:30 p.m. Results will be announced at 3:30 p.m. 

 

—Megan Greenwell 

 

 

BPD Captain breaks glass ceiling 

Stephanie Fleming becomes the Berkeley Police Department’s first woman to reach the rank of captain Thursday when she takes the oath in the Berkeley Council Chambers, 3124 Martin Luther King Jr. Way, at 1:30 p.m. 

A 25-year department veteran and Berkeley native, in 1997 Fleming became the department’s first African-American lieutenant. 

“I’ve had my challenges along the way, but nothing I could not overcome,” Fleming said in a statement released Monday. “I feel like a pioneer of sorts because I’m laying the stepping stones for the other women in my department.” 

Fleming, a graduate from Oakland Technical High School, earned a Bachelor of Arts in sociology at UC Berkeley in 1975. She was joined the Berkeley Police Department in 1978, working in the Patrol Division, Property Crimes and the Community Services Bureau. 

Promoted to sergeant in 1985, Fleming was elevated to the rank of inspector five years later when she was assigned to the Internal Affairs Bureau. Most recently she headed the department’s Bureau of Inspections and Control. 

Among her honors, Fleming was named PAL Officer of the Year in 1993 and earned the Community Policing Award in 1999. 

 

—Daily Planet Staff