Features

Berkeley Briefs

Friday October 24, 2003

Hate Crime 

Workers at a Palestinian rights organization found swastikas scrawled on a bathroom poster Monday, in what police are investigating as a possible hate crime. 

Middle East Children’s Alliance co-founder Barbara Lubin said she walked into the bathroom Monday afternoon and noticed the defaced poster of 12-year-old Palestinian girls. 

“It’s really upsetting that someone could look at these beautiful children and see them as Nazis,” she said. 

The poster was marked over in ball point pen with about 7-8 swastikas drawn among the scribble, said BPD Spokesperson Kevin Schofield.  

Monday’s vandalism is the 25th reported hate crime in Berkeley this year, though the police department’s homicide unit—which investigates hate crimes—may ultimately change some of those classifications. Berkeley has seen a sharp increase in hate crimes since Sept. 11, rising from 10 in 2000 to 23 in 2001 to 38 in 2002.  

Police have no suspects in the case. The nonprofit, which advocates for children in Palestine and Iraq, shares its office with a graphics company also run by the founders. The company generates a lot of visitors, Lubin said noting that many people used the office bathroom Monday morning. 

Monday’s crime was the latest in a seemingly perpetual stream of low level property crimes at the West Berkeley nonprofit. In July, someone defaced a mural of Palestinian children, writing “I’m a terrorist,” in a bubble coming from the mouth of the children. Earlier this year an office window was broken and employees car locks were glued shut. 

The defacing of the poster was the first time a vandal struck inside the offices and was also the first hate crime since Alison Weir of Pro-Palestinian group If Americans Knew received a death threat warning her not to come to her office. 

Lubin remained unfazed. “I was on the school board for four years in Berkeley,” she said. “Nothing is spookier than that.” 

—Matthew Artz 

 

 

Rally Opposes University Village Teardown 

Members of the University Village Residents Association have planned a noontime rally for Monday on the steps of Sproul Hall to protest UC Berkeley’s plans to demolish 564 Albany apartments to make way for new units that will rent for twice the price of the existing apartments. 

Members of the VRA say the new rents will be higher than the monthly take-home pay of Graduate Student Instructors and campus researchers. 

Following the Sproul Hall gathering, protesters say they will march to California Hall to present their case directly to UC Chancellor Robert Berdahl.