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Jakob Schiller:
          
          A scattering of students try the new Berkeley High School food court on its first day.
Jakob Schiller: A scattering of students try the new Berkeley High School food court on its first day.
 

News

Separate City Voting Could Cost Thousands

By JAKOB SCHILLER
Tuesday April 13, 2004

Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates recently threatened to explore alternative options to touchscreen voting machines if security problems aren’t worked out and the machines cannot ensure a secure and accurate vote. But City Clerk Sherry Kelly says that any switch would be an expensive project that might need approval from Berkeley voters before it could be implemented. 

On April 5, Bates wrote a letter to the Alameda County Board of Supervisors and Alameda County Registrar of Voters Brad Clark asking for a full investigation into the Diebold touchscreen voting machines, presently used in all Alameda County elections. Citing problems during last October’s gubernatorial recall election as well as the March, 2004 election, the mayor threatened to explore other voting options. Bates has also placed an item on the April 20 City Council agenda that, if passed by the council, would direct city staff to “investigate legal and procedural options if the council determines that the problems have not been resolved.” 

In a letter to the council sent the same day, Bates wrote that the Diebold touchscreen “voting irregularities [in Alameda County] have raised considerable concern in the community. Yet, we have no official information from the county on the nature of the problems or efforts to fix them. It is absolutely essential for democracy to work that voters have complete faith in our electoral systems. These problems are testing the faith of the electorate and cannot be allowed to persist.” 

“It’s a critical error that needs to be investigated as soon as possible,” Bates said in a telephone interview while vacationing in North Carolina. 

But according to City Clerk Sherry Kelly, any switch could cost the city hundreds of thousands of dollars. Such a move might also necessitate the city changing its charter, something that can only be done on the ballot and thus not before November. Neither Kelly nor a representative from the California secretary of state’s office were certain whether a charter change would be necessary. 

City use of optical scan or the old punch card machines—separate from the controversial Diebold touchscreen machines—could only be done in an entirely separate city-run election, whether or not such an election was held on the same day as county/state elections. Kelly estimates that each separate city-run election could cost the city between $400,000 and $500,000.  

Currently, Berkeley is one of several cities that consolidates with the county-wide election process. This allows it to use county machines, county ballots and county employees to run the election. Any switch would force the city to foot the entire bill for all of this. 

“Even if we could do it, there is the really big issue of would you want to do it,” Kelly said. 

If the city were to change voting systems, it could only run elections for local ballot measures and local officials such as mayor, City Council, rent board and auditor. Any county, state or national elections would still be run by Alameda county on the current touchscreen machines. 

In 1994 Kelly said a run-off for mayor and auditor run by the city cost Berkeley $300,000 in hard costs. That cost included the voting system, rental space for polling places, and salaries for poll workers. It did not include time spent by regular city officials. If the city ran its own elections, Kelly said she would have to hire extra staff. 

“I didn’t feel comfortable that we could administer it with the staff we had,” said Kelly. “They got through it, but it was hard.” 

The current election system still costs the city money but not nearly as much as running it on its own. Kelly said Alameda County charges the city anywhere from 80 cents to $1.50 for every voter plus a portion of the capital costs for things like voting equipment, polling staff and the paper ballots used for local ballot measures and officials. The costs are mitigated because Berkeley is just one of several cities in Alameda County that contribute to cover the entire bill. The more cities that participate in the election, the less costly it is for each city. 

“It’s a good deal in that we couldn’t do it nearly that reasonably,” said Kelly. “Because they do it on such a mass number.” 

Alameda county, in the meantime, is also trying to work out the kinks in its own system but no final decisions have been made yet. County Registrar Brad Clark has sent his own letter to Diebold demanding answers to the problems that plagued the last two elections. During the recall thousands of votes were switched from Democratic Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante to Southern California Socialist John Burton. The problem was eventually blamed on the county’s vote tabulating software, another Diebold product.  

During the March 2 primary hundreds of polling places county-wide experienced delays when Diebold’s card-encoder machines malfunctioned. 

So far Clark said he’s only received a preliminary report back from Diebold but no definitive answers. Clark said he’s waiting for another report from the company that they are supposed to deliver on April 26.  

Clark said the problems during the recall election were mitigated during the March 2 primaries because they had some time to try and isolate the problem. They’ve been working on strategies to do the same for the new problems that happened during the primaries. 

 

 

 


Most Ignore New BHS Cafeteria

By MATTHEW ARTZ
Tuesday April 13, 2004

Berkeley High students—already bombarded with a potpourri of culinary choices—were greeted Monday with the most conveniently located entry into the no-holds barred competition for student lunch money: a new school cafeteria. 

For the first time since 1993, when their old cafeteria was declared seismically unfit and demolished, an estimated 500 students waited in line this week while uniformed cafeteria workers heaped hot, freshly prepared meals onto their plates. 

And like any other day at the school, a couple of thousand more students poured out from the campus at lunchtime en route to downtown take-out restaurants, unmoved that their long awaited cafeteria was open for business. 

“I’ve gone off campus for over three years, I’m not going to stop now,” said Katri Foster as she returned with friends from a Chinese restaurant. 

That attitude spells trouble for the district, whose indebted cafeteria fund has cost it approximately $1.1 million over the past three years. Two months ago Director of Nutritional Services Karen Candito estimated the school would have to serve 900 meals per day at $3.50 apiece just to break even. Though an official tally was unavailable by press time, district spokesperson Mark Coplan estimated that only slightly more than one-fifth of the student body bought their lunches on campus Monday, 400 fewer than needed. 

The cafeteria is part of a $37 million construction project that includes a new gym, office space, a dance studio and a new library along Milvia Street. For the last 11 years the only food served at the school has been prepackaged entrees provided mainly to the 400 students on the free and reduced lunch program. 

“What we had before was so bad the only kids who would eat it would the ones who were getting it for free,” said Principal Jim Slemp. He hoped the new cafeteria could serve as a gathering place and foster an improved sense of community on campus. 

To attract the masses, Berkeley High is serving just about every type of food imaginable. Students can pick from 12 options including a burrito bar, salad bar with Annie’s Naturals dressing, pizza, rice and noodle bowls, burgers and pasta. There are two notable exceptions to the offerings, however. As part of the district’s nutrition campaign, students won’t find any fried food or sugary desserts and soft drinks. 

Student reactions to the cafeteria were as diverse as the entrees being served. Theo Wilson, a freshman, said his hamburger was better than most cafeteria food he’s eaten in Berkeley, but not quite on par with his favorite taqueria on Shattuck Avenue. 

For Kira Mandella the best part of the new cafeteria was not having to rush back from Shattuck during the 32-minute lunch period. “Usually the lines [at the off-campus food outlets] are really crowded and either we’re late for class or end up eating in class,” she said. 

Student complaints focused less on the quality of the food than the price. 

“I could go to Roundtable Pizza and get a Personal Pan Pizza and a drink for $3.50—here I just get a slice,” said Parris Moore, a freshman who brought her own lunch to the cafeteria. 

At $3.50, the lunch includes one entree, a drink and a piece of fruit. Candito said the price—50 cents more than smaller-portioned middle school lunches—is consistent with an across-the-board price hike the district implemented last year.  

Except for a slow moving line at the burrito bar, opening day appeared to go smoothly. Many students had already bought pre-paid debit cards to pay for lunches and Candito said lines would move faster when more students used cards instead of paying out-of-pocket. She didn’t have an estimate for how many students had already purchased the cards. 

Meanwhile, two blocks away, it was business as usual at Top Dog—a fast food restaurant—where Berkeley High students packed the line nearly to the door. “I don’t care what they have in the cafeteria, why would anyone want to stay in school during lunch?” said David Singer a 10th-grader walking back to campus after paying five dollars for two hot dogs and a drink. 

At optimum capacity the new cafeteria could serve 1,100 students, Candito said. While she doesn’t have to reach capacity, the new cafeteria remains a risky venture for the district. Usually, Candito said, elementary school cafeterias are the most profitable, but in Berkeley which has 11 small elementary schools with poor economy of scale that have historically lost money, the high school cafeteria must break even. 

To that end, Stephanie Allan said the district has laid off 11 food service workers at other sites and then rehired nine of them for the high school. Allan is the business representative for Stationary Engineers, Local 39, which represents Berkeley Unified School District’s food service workers. “They’ve melded everything else into the high school,” she said. “[Candito is] counting on serving one thousand kids a day and I’m praying she’s right.”›


Hotel Task Force Weighs Recommendations

By RICHARD BRENNEMAN
Tuesday April 13, 2004

As the Berkeley Planning Commission’s UC Hotel Task Force heads into its next-to-last session this afternoon (Tuesday, April 13), the 25 panelists are examining a sizable stack of suggestions. 

From the dozens of offerings submitted by task force members, individuals and community organizations, the panel will select the final recommendations to present to the City Council in early June. 

The proposed 12-story hotel, convention center and museum complex would occupy most of the two-block block area bounded by Shattuck Avenue and Oxford Street between University Avenue and Center Street. 

Today’s session, scheduled for 1-3:30 p.m. in the Sitka Spruce Conference Room at the city’s 2120 Milvia St. Permit Service Center, will focus on design, green building, preservation, transportation, possible daylighting of Strawberry Creek, labor and employment issues, economic impacts, taxes, and finance. 

Also scheduled is the appointment of a committee to draft the final report. 

Of the written suggestions submitted so far, design issues clearly rank near the top. 

• As the newest and tallest structure in the city center east of Shattuck Avenue, the hotel would dominate the urban skyline—and that worries panelist Peter Selz, a retired UC Berkeley professor and founder of the university’s art museum. 

In a memo to the task force on the project’s architecture, Selz wrote, “When I inquired about the [architecture of the building, an essential matter]. . .Kevin Hufferd the campus project director, was vague and evasive in his reply. The same noncommittal answer came from the representative of Carpenter & Company, the firm which has been chosen as the building’s developer.” 

Selz blasted Carpenter and Company’s St. Regis Hotel, nearing completion in San Francisco near the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, which he said “has no architectural distinction.” 

Selz called for creation of an architect search committee consisting of one representative each from the university, city government and the public to hold a national or international search for a suitably distinguished architect. 

• Retired planner John English issued a call to create mid-block passageways providing pedestrian access between Center and Addison and between Addison and the intersection of University Avenue and Walnut Street. 

• English and fellow task force members Burton Edwards and Austene Hall jointly offered 19 proposals, including limiting floors six and above of the hotel to a maximum width of 80 feet, limiting the height of the building adjacent to Shattuck to four stories or less, and designing the streetfront exposures to harmonize with the existing structures. 

Many recommendations have poured in concerning the fate of Center Street, the principal access from the university to downtown. 

Most proposals call for either eliminating or severely restricting vehicular traffic on the street, creating a pedestrian plaza, and “daylight” Strawberry Creek, which flows above ground on campus and through underground culvert pipes through most of the city below. 

• The Sierra Club calls for an outright traffic ban on Center, while allowing access to the convention center to AC Transit buses and UC shuttles and bicycle access to the plaza. 

• A coalition of 27 individuals and activist groups urged daylighting the creek and project designed incorporating sustainable and green design principals, including solar energy. 

The coalition also urged that no free parking be provided for the project’s employees, who would be encouraged to use public transportation, and recommended a study to determine if an underground tunnel could be built linking the project with the BART station just across Shattuck. 

• Nathan Landau, senior transportation planner for AC Transit, urged the city to consider opening an access tunnel to BART on the east side of Shattuck and the creation of an underground station for AC Transit buses to allow easy transfer between buses and BART trains. 

• The city Transportation Commissioners weighed in with proposals of their own, including a call for hotel guests to pay market rates for parking at the complex—with a minimum charge of $10—and a limitation on parking at the hotel to no more than 25 spaces per 100 rooms. 

The commission also wants a single level of underground parking with an entrance on Addison Street and what they called “very expensive” all-day parking fees for non-hotel guests. 

Though commissioners said Center Street “could” be closed to cars and delivery vehicles, they recommended it be off-limits to buses—with enhanced bus stops on Shattuck to be partially funded by the developer, who should also contribute part of the parking fees or the hotel room rate to a downtown transportation fund. 

• Marcy Greenhut, president of the Berkeley Ecological and Safe Transportation Coalition (BEST), urged creation of permanent vendor spaces in the pedestrian areas of Center Street for the sale of art, crafts and locally produced food. BEST also called for a permanent, canopy-covered outdoor stage to provide a venue for local performers. 

• Task force members Zelda Bronstein, a member of the Planning Commission, and Bonnie Hughes, who serves on the Civic Arts Commission, called for a ban on all car and bus traffic on Center Street. They want the plaza designed as a work of civic art by architects and other designers of the highest caliber to provide discrete pockets of activity, including dining, shopping and people-watching. 

• To alleviate pressures on “the already over-stressed storm drain system and Sewer collection system,” the city Public Works Commission called for the project to be designed in conformity with strict green building standards. That suggestion was reinforced by task force chair Rob Wrenn’s plea that “the developer set a goal of building the ‘greenest’ hotel in the United States.” 

• Wrenn also urged that the developer and university allow access to meeting rooms at a lower community rate, and that they work with the city to incorporate public art into the project’s design. 

• The city Labor Commission called for the university and the developer to negotiate labor and neutrality agreements “to ensure labor peace throughout the construction.” Commissioners also urged the university and developer to comply with the city’s prevailing wage, equal rights benefits, living wage and First Source hiring ordinances, to provide adequate housing and childcare for workers, and to contribute to the city job training program.ˇ


Bill Would Limit City’s Control Over In-Law Units

By MATTHEW ARTZ
Tuesday April 13, 2004

It’s Sacramento’s never ending tug-of-war. The Legislature tries to extend its control over local governments, while the affected localities scratch and claw to stop them.  

Wednesday, the Assembly’s Local Government Committee will hear a controversial bill that, if passed, could have a big impact both on Berkeley’s landlords and its tenant population. AB 2702, carried by Darrell Steinberg D-Sacramento, and sponsored by the California Association of Realtors, could diminish the city’s ability to regulate the development of second unit housing (so-called “in-law apartments”) just one year after a similar bill forced the city to revamp its ordinance. 

The bill is essentially a replay from 2002, when the Legislature passed a law that required all applications for second unit housing be approved without an administrative hearing as long as the addition was in compliance with city zoning. Many localities negated that provision by passing local ordinances that made administrative hearings practically mandatory. 

This year’s proposed state bill would take that option out of the hands of cities by specifying what zoning standards cities can apply to second unit housing. 

“[The bill] would make it much easier to build a second unit,” said Berkeley Planning Director Dan Marks. “It’s the state’s usual one-size fits all approach to laws even though every community is somewhat different.” 

Miriam Ng, a real estate agent with Berkeley-based Korman & Ng, countered that the bill would improve the supply of affordable housing by eliminating costly appeals from neighbors unhappy with the development of second unit apartments. 

“When you have to fight three years and hire two attorneys, that doesn’t make for affordable housing,” she said. 

Ng added that the bill was geared more towards cities like Piedmont, where the community has demonstrated it doesn’t want homeowners to construct second unit housing. 

Berkeley, on the other hand, amended its zoning ordinance to comply with the 2002 law and to encourage such development, Instead of requiring all applicants to go before the Zoning Adjustment Board, Berkeley’s amended ordinance grants the homeowner a zoning certificate if the landlord has complied with all standards outlined in the ordinance. 

The proposed new state law, however, would cut into Berkeley’s freedom to regulate new projects. The city would no longer be allowed to deny proposed additions except on grounds of “health or safety,” would have to strike its prohibition against second units being built by absentee landlords, and would diminish local parking requirements to one space per unit. The latter provision would eliminate Berkeley’s ability to request more parking to mitigate the increase in density caused by a new housing unit. 

So far, the city hasn’t experienced much fallout since the 2002 bill went into effect. The Berkeley Zoning Adjustment Board has faced roughly the same amount of hearings on second unit developments, said Commissioner and Realtor Laurie Capitelli. Most of last year’s appeals, Capitelli said, involved parking or density issues, which he believed the city would retain discretion over even under the newly proposed law. 

Berkeley Housing Director Steve Barton guessed that, under the proposed law, the city would still be able to regulate second unit housing in the Berkeley Hills because the narrow windy roads and lack of parking would qualify make new developments a safety issue. But he feared that even if the law affected just a few developments it could have a big impact on the city. “If 10 people decided to do it, that’s 10 neighborhoods that are affected and 10 fights over second-story units,” he said. 

 

 


Berkeley This Week

Tuesday April 13, 2004

TUESDAY, APRIL 13 

Morning Birdwalk in Wildcat Canyon. Meet at 7 a.m. at the end of Rifle Range Rd. in Richmond. 525-2233. 

“State of the City” address by Mayor Tom Bates at 11:30 a.m. at the Doubletree Hotel, Berkeley Marina. Cost is $25. 

“The Housing Crisis” with US Congresswoman Barbara Lee at 1:30 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Also speaking, Steve Barton, City of Berkeley Housing Director, and Wanda Remmers, Director, Housing Rights, Inc. Sponsored by Strawberry Creek Lodge Tenants and Gray Panthers of the East Bay. 548-9696. www.savehud.org 

“Diaspora and Homeland Development” A conference to discuss Haiti, the Philippines, Mexico, Palestine, Morocco, India, Pakistan, Armenia, Iran and Nigeria. From 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. in Room 223, Moses Hall, UC Campus. 642-2088. 

“How Animal Lineages Diversify: Implications for Evolutionary and Conservation Biology,” with David B. Wake, professor emeritus of Integrative Biology, UCB, at 5 p.m., Berkeley Art Museum Theater, 2621 Durant Ave. 

“Desalination Issues in the United States” with Kevin Price, Water Treatment Engineering, U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, at 5:30 p.m. in 105 North Gate Hall, UC Campus. Sponsored by the Water Resources Center Archives. 642-2666. 

“Where are You on Your Writer's Journey?” with Teresa LeYung Ryan, author, at 7 p.m. at Boadecia’s Books, 398 Colusa Ave., at Colusa Circle, Kensington. $10-$20 sliding scale donation. 559-9184. www.bookpride.com  

Writers Workshop on how to hire and work with a freelance publicist at 7:30 p.m. at Barnes and Noble, 2352 Shattuck Ave. 644-0861. 

Introduction to Yiddish Folk Singing Workshop with Michael Alpert, from 7:30 to 9:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church, 27th and Harrison Sts. Cost is $20. Registration required. 444-0323. www.kitka.org 

Berkeley Camera Club meets at 7:30 p.m., at the Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. 548-3991. www.berkeleycameraclub.org 

St. John’s Prime Timers meets at 9:30 a.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. Volunteer Recognition Luncheon. 845-6830. 

Tuesday Tilden Walkers We are a few slowpoke seniors who walk between a mile or two each Tuesday, meeting at 9:30 a.m. in the Little Farm parking lot. To join us, call 215-7672.  

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 14 

“Zapatista Women” a documentary about the indigenous women soldiers of the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (EZLN), at 7 p.m. at The Fellowship of Humanity, 390 27th St., Oakland 393-5685. 

Tai Chi Exercises for Two People with Jonathan Russell, senior student of Master T.T. Liang, from 7 to 9 p.m. at Elephant Pharmacy, 1607 Shattuck Ave. 549-9200. www.elephantpharmacy.com  

Intermediate/Advanced Yiddish Folk Singing Workshop with Michael Alpert, from 7:30 to 9:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church, 27th and Harrison Sts. Cost is $20. Registration required. 444-0323. www.kitka.org 

Berkeley Stop the War Coalition meets every Wednesday at 7 p.m. in 255 Dwinelle, UC Campus. www.berkeleystopthewar.org  

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

com/vigil4peace/vigil 

THURSDAY, APRIL 15 

The Berkeley Path Wanderers General Meeting from 7 to 9 p.m. at the Live Oak Park Rec Center, 1301 Shattuck Ave. Alan Kaplan, a member of East Bay Parks, will talk about East Bay birds. 524-4715. 

Golden Gate Audubon Society presents “An Exploration of Chile’s Birds” at 7:30 p.m. at the Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. 843-2222. www.goldengateaudubon.org 

“Taking Exception to the Rulers” An evening with Amy Goodman, Michael Franti and David Goodman. The film “Independent Media In a Time of War” will be shown. At 7:30 p.m., King Middle School, 1781 Rose St. Tickets are $15 advance, $20 door, available at independent bookstores. 848-6767, ext. 612. www.kpfa.org 

UC Berkeley Charter Day Events from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. with a ceremony honoring outgoing Chancellor Robert Berdahl at 3 p.m. in Zellerbach Auditorium. www.urel.berkeley.edu/charterday 

Matt Gonzalez on “The American City: A Tool for Progressive Change in the 21st Century” at 4 p.m. in Boalt Hall's Booth Auditorium, UC Campus. 

“Perspectives on a Changing Haiti” A discussion with Congresswoman Maxine Waters at 7 p.m. in the Lounge, Women’s Faculty Club, UC Campus. Sponsored by the Center for Latin American Studies. 642-2088. www.clas.berkeley.edu 

“The Snail as Architect” Design and construction with biominerals with Carole Hickman, UCB professor of Integrative Biology at 12:30 p.m. at the Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak Sts. 238-2200. www.museumca.org 

East Bay Kerry Happy Hour Fundraiser from 6 to 8 p.m. at Albatross Pub, 1822 San Pablo Ave. with special guest, Tom Bates, mayor of Berkeley. A $25 suggested minimum donation to John Kerry, $10 for limited income/student. 

FRIDAY, APRIL 16 

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon with Morris Cleland, retired businessman on “My Fun Family.” Luncheon at 11:45 a.m. for $12.50, speech at 12:30 p.m., at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant St. For reservations call 526-2925.  

Benefit for Jeff “Free” Luers with the film “Green with a Vengeance” at 7 p.m. at 6:30 p.m. at AK Press Warehouse, 674A 23rd St. Oakland. 208-1700. www.akpress.org 

“Sacred Allegiances: Decentralized Development and the Rhythm of Community Religion in Cuba” with Adrian Hearn and Michael Spiro at 4 p.m. in the CLAS Conference Room, 2334 Bowditch St. Sponsored by the Center for Latin American Studies. 642-2088. www.clas.berkeley.edu 

The Knitting Hour Come and learn to knit or regain old skills and meet other knitters at 4:30 p.m. at Berkeley Public Library, West Branch, 1125 University Ave. 981-6270. 

APOC Meet-and-Greet at 6 p.m. at the Long Haul Info Shop, 3124 Shattuck Ave. Registration material for the weekend APOC gathering will also be available. 540-0751.  

Berkeley Chess Club meets Fridays at 7:15 p.m. at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. Players at all levels are welcome. 652-5324. 

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. 655-6169. www.bpf.org 

Overeaters Anonymous meets at 1:30 p.m. at the Northbrae Church at Solano and The Alameda. 525-5231. 

SATURDAY, APRIL 17 

Berkeley Bay Festival from noon to 5 p.m. at the Berkeley Marina. Tours of the new Nature Center, exhibits, vendors, food, music and free sailboat rides. 644-8623. www.cityofberkeley.info/marina/marinaexp/bayfest.html 

Berkeley Art Center Anniversary Party from 4 to 6 p.m. with a silent auction, music and refreshements, at 1275 Walnut St. Tickets are sliding scale $20 to $50. 644-6893. www.berkeleyartcenter.org 

Berkeley Alliance of Neighborhood Associations meets at 9:15 a.m. in the Sproul Room, St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. 587-3257. www.berkeleycna.com 

Rhododendron Flower Show and Sale Hundreds of rhododendron flowers plus indoor garden of tropical Vireya rhododendrons, and a plant doctor to answer your questions. From noon to 5 p.m. and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Lakeside Garden Center, 666 Bellevue Ave., Oakland, in Lake Merritt Park. Free. 841-5402. www.calchapterars.com  

Tilden Park Plant Walk with Terri Compost. Meet at 12:50 p.m. at the Brazil Building in Tilden Park, or at 12:15 near the Berkeley BART, in front of Bank of America to catch the 67 AC Transit bus. Donation $5-$15, not including bus fare. 658-9178. 

Kids Garden Club Join us as we discover how bees are related to our garden and the world of plants. We will sample some honey also. From 2 to 4 p.m. at Tilden Nature Area, Tilden Park. For ages 7 - 12 years. Cost is $3, non-resident $4. Registration required, 525-2233. 

Conifers of California from 10 a.m. to noon at Regional Parks Botanic Garden. 525-2233. 

The Eucalyptus Tree A walk to see these naturalized forest citizens and learn their stories, from 2 to 4 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center. 525-2233. 

Non-Toxic Solutions for Pests and Diseases with Jessie West at 10 a.m. at Magic Gardens Nursery, 729 Heinz Ave. 644-2351. www.magicgardens.com 

Jr. Skywatchers Club Learn how the sun and planets affect the weather. Watch clouds and predict the weather. From 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center. For ages 8-11. Fee is $4, $6 non-resident. Registration required. 525-2233. 

“Why We Joined the Green Party” with African-American activists Wilson Riles, Donna Warren and Henry Clark at 7 p.m. at First Unitarian Church of Oakland, 685 14th St. Free. 644-2293. 

Grassroots Activists from Three Continents with Fides Chade, Tanzania, Gloria Vilma Ortiz Núñez, El Salvador, and Che Lopez, from South Texas, at 6:30 p.m. at Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, Cedar and Bonita. $5 donation requested.  

Free Emergency Preparedness Class in Basic Personal Preparedness from 9 to 11 a.m. at 2100 Martin Luther King Jr. Way. To sign up call 981-5605. www.ci.berkeley. 

ca.us/fire/oes.html 

Acupuncture & Integrative Medicine College Open House from 10 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. at 2550 Shattuck Ave. RSVP to Taj Moore 666-8248, ext. 108. 

“Touching Our Youth To Curb the Violence” a community outreach forum hosted by St. Paul AME, 2024 Ashby Ave. at 8:30 a.m. with Berkeley Homicide Inspector Lionel Dozier, Retired SF Police Chief Earl Sanders, Contra Costa Probation Supervisor Daryl Nunley and Michelle Milam, Field Representative, Assemblywoman Loni Hancock. 848-2050. 

Black Women of Essence Information Meeting at 2 p.m. at the Harriett Tubman Terrace Rec. Room, 2870 Adeline St. 338-5236. www.bwoe.org 

“Balancing Act: Feng Shui” with Erin Alexander from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Changemakers, 6536 Telegraph Ave. Cost is $10 in advance, $15 at the door. Reservations required. 547-0964. 

“Manage Weight, Mood and Menopause” with Ed Bauman, founder of Bauman College natural chef training schools, from 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at Elephant Pharmacy, 1607 Shattuck Ave. 549-9200. www.elephantpharmacy.com  

Volunteer Information Fair for the El Cerrito community and beyond, from 12:30 to 4 p.m. at 6830 Stockton, near Richmond St., El Cerrito. 799-7819. 

California Writers Club meets at 10 a.m. at Barnes and Noble, 2352 Shattuck Ave. Panel discussion with people who have transitioned to become full-time writers. 644-0861. 

California College of the Arts Spring Sale from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at 5212 Broadway, Oakland. Ceramics, glass, jewelry, photography, textiles, drawin, painting and other media. 594-3666. 

Yoga for Seniors at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant St., on Saturdays from 10 to 11 a.m. Open to non-members of the club for $8 per class. 848-7800. 

Car Wash Benefit for Options Recovery Services of Berkeley, held every Sat. from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Lutheran Church, 1744 University Ave. 666-9552. 

Dream Workshop on Saturdays, from 10 a.m. to noon at 2199 Bancroft Way. Cost is $10. www.practicaldreamwork.com 

SUNDAY, APRIL 18 

Labyrinth Peace Walk at 3 p.m. at the Willard Community Peace Labyrinth, on the blacktop next to the gardens at Willard Middle School, Telegraph Ave. between Derby and Stuart, enter by the dirt road on Derby. Free. Wheelchair accessible. Sponsored by the East Bay Labyrinth Project. 526-7377. 

“Birds, Blossoms, and Bicycles!” Aquatic Park EGRET hosts Open Garden Day at the park’s southern entrance from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Enjoy close-up views of bayshore birds and coastal wildflowers in a car-free setting. 549-0818 or egret@lmi.net 

“Bloodlines: A Medical Mission to Iloilo, Philippines” a documentary film about a medical mission to the Philippines in 2003, at 6:30 p.m. at the Roda Theater, 2015 Addison St. Tickets are $8-$15 and proceeds go to the distribution of the film. www.manja.org 

Berkeley Cybersalon meets at 6 p.m. at the Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St. Meet the new social entrepreneurs who are successful in eradicating poverty, disease, hunger, and ignorance from the world. Donation of $10 requested. 527-0450.  

Klassic Kaiser Karz! classic and vintage Kaiser-Frazer automobiles from noon to 5 p.m. at the Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak Sts. 238-2200. www.museumca.org 

Golden State Model Railroad Museum open from noon to 5 p.m. Also open on Saturdays and Friday evenings from 7 to 10 p.m. Located in the Miller-Knox Regional Shoreline Park at 900-A Dornan Drive in Pt. Richmond. Admission is $2-$3. 234-4884 or www.gsmrm.org 

“Modern Mystics: Dorothy Day” with Dody Donnelly, author and theologian, at 9:30 a.m. at Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, 1 Lawson Rd. Kensington. 525-0302, ext. 306. 

Sacred Feminine Bookclub meets to discuss “Confessions of a Pagan Nun” by Kate Horsley, at 7 p.m. at Changemakers, 6536 Telegraph Ave. RSVP to 526-6454. 

“The Power of Now” the principles of Eckhart Tolle’s book with Jill Lebeau and Maureen Raytis at 3:30 p.m. at Elephant Pharmacy, 1607 Shattuck Ave. 549-9200. www.elephantpharmacy.com  

Tibetan Nyingma Open House from 3 to 5 p.m. with prayer wheel and meditation garden tour, yoga demonstration, and information on classes, followed by a talk “The Four Thoughts that Turn the Mind toward Dharma” at 6 p.m. at 1815 Highland Pl. 843-6812. www.nyingmainstitute.com 

MONDAY, APRIL 19 

Berkeley Schools Now! meets at 7 p.m. at the LeConte School library, on Ellsworth St., to discuss next steps and the BSEP process. For more information email info@BerkeleySchoolsNow.org 

Tea at Four Enjoy some of the best teas and learn their cultural and natural history. Then take a walk to see nesting birds and flowering shrubs, from 4 to 5:30 p.m. at Tilden Nature Area, in Tilden Park. Registration required. Cost is $5, $7 for non-residents. Wheelchair accessible. 525-2233. 

Same Sex Marriage Symposium from 1 to 5 p.m. at the Lipman Room, 8th floor, Barrows Hall, UC Campus. Sponsored by Inst. of Governmental Studies and Inst. for the Study of Social Change. 642-1474.  

“Allergy Relief with Homeopathy” with Edi Mottershead, homeopath, at 1 p.m. at Elephant Pharmacy., 1607 Shattuck Ave. 549-9200. www.elephantpharmacy.com  

Great Popular Fiction Bookgroup meets at 7 p.m. to discuss “Angels and Demons” by Dan Brown at Barnes and Noble, 2352 Shattuck Ave. 644-0861. 

Berkeley CopWatch organizational meeting at 8 p.m. at 2022 Blake St. Join us to work on current issues around police misconduct. 548-0425. 

ONGOING 

Project Open Hand’s Senior Lunch Program is welcoming new participants in the East Bay. For information, please call 415-447-2300 or email seniors@openhand.org. 

Help Protect Berkeley’s Public Trees by campaigning for a Berkeley Public Tree Act. To learn more and help call 594-4088, or visit www.BerkeleyIssues.org 

Art Show Submissions for The Oakland Animal Shelter Submissions for the May show can be sent to art@oaklandanimalservices.org or by mail to Megan Webb, Community Outreach Program Manager, 1101 29th Ave., Oakland, CA 94601. Samples will not be returned without a stamped/self addressed return envelope. All submissions should be received by April 20, 2004. 

CITY MEETINGS 

Council Agenda Committee meets Mon., Apr. 12, at 2:30 p.m., at 2180 Milvia St., Sherry M. Kelly, city clerk, 981-6900. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/citycouncil/agenda-committee 

Four by Four Joint Task Force on Housing Members of City Council and the Rent Board meet Mon. Apr. 12, at 5:30 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Stephen Barton, 981-5400. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/4x4/default.htm 

Landmarks Preservation Commission meets Mon. Apr. 12, at 7:30 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Gisele Sorensen, 981-7419. www.ci.berkeley.ca. 

us/commissions/landmarks 

Commission on Disability meets Apr. 14, at 6:30 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Paul Church, 981-6342. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/disability 

Homeless Commission meets Wed., Apr. 14, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Jane Micallef, 981-5426. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/homeless 

Library Board of Trustees meets Wed., Apr. 14, at 7 p.m. at 1170 The Alameda. Jackie Y. Griffin, 981-6195. www.ci.ber- 

keley.ca.us/commissions/library  

Planning Commission meets Wed., Apr. 14, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Ruth Grimes, 981-7481. www. 

ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/planning 

Police Review Commission meets Wed. Apr. 14, at 7:30 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center, Barbara Attard, 981-4950. www.ci.berkeley. 

ca.us/commissions/policereview 

Waterfront Commission meets Wed., Apr. 14, at 7 p.m., at 201 University Ave. Cliff Marchetti. 644-6376 ext. 224. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/waterfront 

Design Review Committee meets Thurs. Apr. 15, at 7:30 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Anne Burns, 981-7415. www.ci.berkeley. 

ca.us/commissions/designreview  

Fair Campaign Practices Commission meets Thurs., Apr. 15, at 7:30 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Prasanna Rasaih, 981-6950. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/faircampaign 

Transportation Commission meets Thurs., Apr. 15, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Peter Hillier, 981-7000. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/ 

commissions/transportation


The Tehran Factor in Iraq’s Shi’ite Uprising

By JALA GHAZI Pacific News Service
Tuesday April 13, 2004

When Iran’s influential former president, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani recently hailed the Shi’ite Muslim militia of wanted Iraqi cleric Muqtada al-Sadr as “heroic,” he might have been signaling that Iran is finally coming out from behind the scenes in the confrontation between the U.S. and al-Sadr that has left dozens dead. 

The U.S.-led coalition has said the main reason it has issued an arrest warrant for al-Sadr is because he is wanted for the murder of another Shi’ite cleric, al-Khoei, in the holy city of Najaf last year. But that line has few takers in Iraq. A survey of Arab television reveals a deep-seated suspicion about the real motives behind the arrest warrant. Ordinary Iraqis quoted on television wonder why the warrant came from Baghdad and not Najaf where the murder actually took place. And they point out that the murder happened last year. So why issue an arrest warrant for that now? 

The answer might lie in Tehran, Iran, which has huge influence on the Shi’ites in Iraq. The Shi’ites in Iraq are not unified. They can be divided into two groups—the moderates and hardliners. The moderates who want to work with the United States are led by Abdel-Aziz al-Hakim, who is a member of the Iraqi Governing Council. The hardliners, led by the likes of Muqtada al-Sadr, are opposed to the coalition forces and make no secret about wanting the Americans to leave Iraq.  

This split mirrors in many ways the tension between reformists and conservatives in Iran as well. But in the recent elections in Iran, the reformists—led by President Khatami—were outmaneuvered and defeated by the conservatives who ally with Supreme Leader Khamenei. Though the means were dubious since many reformist candidates were banned from running, the end result has been a strengthening of the conservatives’ power in Iran. Now they are able to come out more openly in support of al-Sadr. Previously when they had invited al-Sadr to Iran, President Khatami had refused to meet him, though he had met with the moderate al-Hakim. 

The hardliners have always supported al-Sadr because they agree ideologically. Both distrust the United States and do not wish to enter into deals with the Americans. They also would like the U.S. to be stuck in the Iraqi quagmire so as to make sure that it does not put Iran on its hit list next. 

What has been worrying the U.S. lately is that the increased Iranian support to the Shi’ites led by al-Sadr could actually lead to a transnational Shi’ite alliance hostile to Washington. The militant group Hizbollah in Southern Lebanon has already thrown its support behind al-Sadr, who responded by saying he would be their “striking hand in Iraq.” The U.S. has been watching these developments in alarm because they did not go into Iraq to create Iran Number 2.  

Paul Bremer, the Coalition Provisional Authority administrator, probably hoped that by taking on Muqtada al-Sadr, he could nip this alliance in the bud, send a strong message to Tehran, and empower the moderate Shi’tes like the ones on the governing council. By issuing an arrest warrant, he is hoping to force Shi’ites in Iraq to make a choice. But the choice may not be so easy to make. Iraq’s Grand Ayatollah al-Sistani is the figure many Iraqi Shi’ites are looking to for direction. There has historically been bad blood between al-Sistani and al-Sadr’s father who was assassinated by Saddam Hussein’s regime. But al-Sadr has already declared his own allegiance to al-Sistani, who will not want to come out openly against al-Sadr, Iran and Hizbollah. So he has been issuing ambiguous statements that call for calm but also criticize the American forces. 

While the final outcome might still depend on al-Sistani, the increasing confrontation between the U.S. and al-Sadr’s Imam Mehdi army shows Bremer may have underestimated al-Sadr as no more than a young firebrand with limited support. The danger in igniting this confrontation is that it raises the possibility of Iraq’s majority Shi’ites reaching out to the Sunnis who have already been fighting the coalition forces in places like Fallujah. There are already signs that this is happening as residents of dominantly Sunni Fallujah tell al Alam television, an Arabic news channel out of Tehran, that they view al-Sadr as a political hero that the U.S. is trying to silence him by shutting down al Hawza newspaper which supported him.  

But the biggest danger is that the turmoil will allow hardliners in Iran to openly take up a prominent position in the unfolding drama. If it declares its full support to al-Sadr, it could be the key that would help him come out on top of the struggle between the conservatives and the moderates for control of Iraq.›


Police Blotter

By RICHARD BRENNEMAN
Tuesday April 13, 2004

Suspected crack dealers busted 

Kofi Thomas and James Pryor, described by police as well-known South Berkeley crack cocaine dealers, were arrested by BPD officers executing searches on April 7. 

Thomas, on parole from a previous drug conviction, bolted when members of the BPD drug task force approached him on a parole search, said BPD spokesperson Kevin Schofield. 

A foot chase followed, and in the ensuing struggle, Thomas bit one of the officers on the hand. The policeman was briefly hospitalized. 

Found in possession of crack, Thomas was booked at the city jail. 

Shortly after 8 a.m. that same day, James Pryor, 25, on probation from a previous drug offense, was found in possession of crack at his residence in the 2800 block of McGee Avenue. He was booked on charges of probation violation and possession for sale of suspected rock cocaine.  

 

Road rage assault leads to jail 

A 47-year-old South Dakota man was arrested on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon Friday following a road rage incident that ended in the parking lot of the Whole Foods Market on Telegraph Avenue. 

The incident began with a dispute between the occupants of two cars, ending when the driver of one car pulled out a BB gun and fired a shot at the driver, striking him in the ear, said BPD spokesperson Kevin Schofield. 

George Miller was arrested for assault with a deadly weapon and booked at city jail. Bail was set at $20,000.›


Satiric ‘Billionaires for Bush’ Expose President’s Policies

From Susan Parker
Tuesday April 13, 2004

I’ve never been active in politics. Growing up on the East coast in the ‘50s and ‘60s, my parents expected my brothers and me to agree with them on political issues. Anything less resulted in enormous shouting matches, hurt feelings, and veiled threats. Even today, now that my brothers and I are practically senior citizens ourselves, we don’t discuss political views with my elderly parents. If you aren’t Republican and in support of George Bush, if you neglect to attend church, or if you don’t believe prison is full of people who need to be kept out of sight and out of mind, then it’s best to keep your opinions to yourself. We drink cocktails and talk about sports and the weather. It’s better for everyone’s nerves and high blood pressure. 

When I get around my parents I become the suburban 16-year-old I was 36 years ago: sullen, spoiled, and outwardly defiant. Back then I wore overalls, tie-dye t-shirts, mood rings, and moccasins, but my biggest act of rebellion was to temporarily forego underwear. 

I didn’t protest the Vietnam War or civil rights. I didn’t go to school with people of color. I only knew three people who went to Vietnam, one of whom escaped to Canada. I didn’t know anyone who’d been to jail, who was poor or foreign or sexually different. Perhaps you might think I was some kind of freak, but the truth is, everyone I knew was just like me. It’s nice to fantasize that we were a part of the wild, drug taking, sexually liberated ‘60s, but most of us stood on the sidelines and watched. I went to rock concerts every weekend, but I was always a little scared. 

Now I’m 52 years old and finally ready to join the “movement.” By that I mean, the work that needs to be done to get Bush out of office. No, I’m not going to protest rallies or planning any subversive activities. With a bedridden husband at home, medical bills to worry about, and house payments, I don’t have a lot of time or energy to devote to current politics. But like most things in my life, I’ve come to the left in a roundabout, unintentional way. 

Four years ago I went to an artists retreat and met Andrew Boyd, a young man who was trying (and failing) to write a humorous manifesto-advice book for men about feminism, entitled Enlightened Machismo. Andrew is a political pundit, and we became unlikely friends. What I didn’t know then was that he was an active radical, planning savvy theatrical protests against the corporate hijacking of America. 

Andrew is the co-chair and director of high-level schmoozing for Billionaires for Bush, a well-organized, liberal leaning media and street theater campaign whose mix of humor, satire and Internet know-how aims to expose the Bush administration’s lopsided economic policies. By impersonating the super-wealthy in an over-the-top manner, the Billionaires for Bush paint the president as a friend of corporate cronyism with sharp, surprising effectiveness. A photo of Andrew in his Billionaire identity, Phil T. Rich, dressed in top hat and tails, smoking an obscenely large cigar and drinking champagne, was recently featured in the New York Times Magazine. His grassroots campaigning is getting some big time notice. Already the Billionaires for Bush have 30 chapters nationwide, including one in the Bay Area. They’re planning a major action on tax day, April 15. 

So what’s my role in the Billionaires for Bush campaign? It’s easy and something I can handle. When Andrew comes to town for strategy meetings, as he did last week, I provide him with a roof over his head, clean towels and sheets, and chauffeuring services. I don’t attend his presentations or planning sessions. I don’t even talk politics with him because I still have emotional scars from my youth, preventing me from engaging in anything politically charged. I’m happy just to make sure Andrew gets to and from his meetings on time. It’s about as left as I get right now, but it’s a start. 

 

For more about the Billionaires for Bush (or to become a Billionaire—the website has everything you need to start your own chapter!) go to http://billionairesforbush.com. 

 


Dealing With Bullies Requires More Than Mere Mediation

By LAURA MENARD
Tuesday April 13, 2004

Thanks to the Reed family and the Daily Planet for the willingness to publicly address bullying in our schools. I too have navigated the institutional and family requirements to educate, keep healthy and resilient a student harmed by bullying and violence. For those students who have the unfortunate experience of persistent and pervasive harassment and abuse their childhood is quite different than others. Many students will encounter taunting and harassment in school, and may become wiser and stronger from the experience, but for many others the reality is disturbing and the problem and solutions are not completely in their control. Aggression in our schools is a constant; dismissing or pretending otherwise interferes with taking the right actions. Blaming the victim is a device of the ignorant. 

Because of my experiences my peers asked me to serve as PTA Council Parent Advocate. I have the honor and burden of assisting parents who have become desperate in their efforts to keep their kids safe. This past month three families contacted me, this is often the time of year when the kids can’t take it any more, the truth and pain come to the surface, and parents are frustrated. The parents who find me are coping with a degree of injury to their children and a wall of institutional dysfunction that is a nightmare. Bullying is a social dynamic, which means in any classroom, school, or family the situation will manifest differently. 

For many years committed parents have persisted together and contributed relevant resources as well as remedies specific to our local school system. I accept how overwhelmed the staff is and how difficult public education can be, however there are many missing safeguards which would improve the situation. I recognize that some preliminary and meaningful steps have been initiated, and I know it was collective parent pressure that produced district action. As overwhelmed as the staff is, families coping with these issues are equally overwhelmed. I say this in the hope that our school community can overcome the inherent “staff versus parents “ dynamic and the destructiveness it creates. Seven years ago school board members told me I was “wasting my time and banging my head against a wall” when I drafted reforms as opposed to a lawsuit. 

A few important facts: 

• The education code does allow for a student to defend himself or herself and not be suspended. 

• Parents and guardians can use a Uniform Complaint Process to formalize a complaint regarding a staff member, school practice or program. Forms and an explanation of the process can be found in the BUSD parent/student handbook, (This handbook was the result of PTA Council advocacy) 

• Bullying is primarily a power play, hence conflict resolution and peer mediation offer little help, in fact insisting the child participate often empowers the bully to continue. 

• Adults working in our schools are capable of behaving like bullies themselves. 

• Every school needs a functioning safety committee. 

• Well-established reporting practices and school procedures will reduce harassment and violence. 

• School safety monitors should be certified in first aid before being hired. 

• Education is lost when a student is a target of bullying. 

• The effect on the targeted child becomes a health issue.  

The responsibility to create resiliency in the life of a child is on the shoulders of the parents. When the school community fail to support the parents, we are further burdened and worn down. We are the most important adults in a child’s life. Listen to us, try to not judge us or dismiss us because we have to confront a problem that reflects negatively on the school. 

 

Laura Menard is PTA Council Parent Advocate and the parent of two Berkeley public school students. ›


UC on Collision Course With Traffic Jam

By ANDY KATZ, BRANDON SIMMONS and JESSE ARREGUIN
Tuesday April 13, 2004

What’s Berkeley like at rush hour? Traffic on Shattuck Avenue. Traffic on Ashby Avenue. Traffic on University Avenue. Berkeley’s major streets are at capacity, and are already clogged with traffic. This also affects commuters who take the bus, who are stuck in the same traffic.  

Now imagine almost 2,900 new commuter parking spaces constructed in Berkeley’s downtown and Southside. Berkeley’s traffic nightmare only gets worse. Not only are more cars caught in stop-and-go traffic jams getting through the city, but Berkeley will be less of a friendly place to live, work, go to school, and shop as the time to get in and around Berkeley increases. People getting to campus by bike and foot will travel to campus in clouds of car exhaust as 2,900 cars rest parked in the middle of major streets.  

This will be the future if UC Berkeley proceeds with its Long Range Development Plan (LRDP) as currently envisioned. The plan also proposes 2.2 million square feet of new classroom and office space and 2,600 additional beds of student housing (less than what may be needed) by 2020. However, the head count of faculty and staff is only increasing by 22 percent compared to the 41 percent increase of parking spaces, which includes the new Underhill parking garage.  

UC Berkeley should pursue a Transportation Demand Management approach to improving access to campus. Given the high rate of parking increase compared to the faculty and staff head count increase, it is apparent that this increase in parking will increase the faculty and staff drive-alone rate of 51 percent. At the same time, 1,060 faculty and staff who hold parking permits live within a mile of a bus stop and have a 20 minute bus ride to campus, according to UC Berkeley Parking and Transportation.  

UC Berkeley could reduce the demand for parking by providing a free transit pass to its faculty and staff, and pricing parking appropriately to encourage transit use. UC Berkeley should also actively maintain negotiations with BART to expand the class pass and a faculty/staff Eco-pass for BART. Especially in light of AC Transit’s planned Bus Rapid Transit on Telegraph, where one lane in each direction would be dedicated for a rapid bus every five minutes, UC Berkeley’s current course is set to collide with a preventable traffic jam for Telegraph. UC Berkeley should work with AC Transit’s planned improvements rather than make the situation worse.  

This strategy also perpetuates an increasing commuter campus mentality for UC Berkeley. The plan calls for the creation of 2,600 new beds of student housing in a “housing zone” located within a 20 minute bus ride to Doe Library. Though the campus has not specified specific sites, the plan should prioritize locating new undergraduate housing within the Southside and Downtown.  

The housing plan is also 1,150 beds short. The economy will not be sluggish forever, and only four years ago 2,100 students were ‘couchsurfing.’ Seven percent of students reported on the 2000 ASUC Housing Survey that they were homeless—-living at someone else’s place rather than their own. UC Berkeley identified a need for 3,200 new beds in the 1990 LRDP but only constructed 1,100 in the Underhill Area Projects. Given the 1,650 new students expected, UC Berkeley needs to plan for another 1,150 beds to provide enough housing.  

UC Berkeley can choose to strangle the streets of Berkeley, and starve the students of adequate housing, or take reasonable steps to improve the quality of life for students and the community. Let’s imagine paradise instead of the parking lot.  

 

Andy Katz and Brandon Simmons are the student representatives to the UC Berkeley Long Range Development Plan Steering Committee. Jesse Arreguin is the ASUC city affairs director.›


Young Local Choreographers Take Dancers From Hip-Hop To Ballet

By ROBYN GEE Special to the Planet
Tuesday April 13, 2004

A product of sheer hard work, self-discipline, and enthusiasm, the En Pointe Youth Dance Company’s spring show “Young Syncopations” brings together six pieces, each with a unique style of choreography.  

This is their fourth annual spring show. The show is completely produced by youth. Sixteen year-olds Joanna Poz-Molesky and Anne Rigney founded the company in 2000, consisting of dancers ages 12-18. The dancers have trained at schools including Berkeley Ballet Theater, Berkeley City Ballet, Piedmont Ballet, East Bay School of the Arts, Dance Space and others. Members of the company choreographed all six pieces. 

The music sets the mood and the black tutus set the look for the first piece, entitled “Sentimientos” and choreographed by Gemma Stuart. The piece consists of four movements: a solo, a duet, a quartet, and a finale. The soloist, Sara Real, lights up the stage with her impressive jumps. The use of fans and beaming smiles in the duet, danced by Elizabeth Gow and Imogene Roach, add to the exciting movements and Spanish theme.  

The show changes pace quickly with a hip-hop trio next on the program. Performed to Usher’s “Yea,” and choreographed collaboratively by Mollie Gilles-Strain, Stuart, and Real, this piece demonstrates the versatility of the dancers. Their musicality and punctuation of the movement is awesome. Each one dances with a unique style, but there’s a consistent playful attitude that comes through to the audience throughout the dance. The dance incorporates some crowd-pleasing gymnastics as well. 

“I have a secret passion for hip-hop,” said Gilles-Strain. “It’s the complete opposite of ballet. In ballet you’ve got to be lifted, and in hip-hop, you’re grounded.” 

The next piece, “April Showers,” choreographed by Rigney, is easy to watch with the dancers in white, flowing dresses. The first section (out of five) is slow and serene, providing contrast to the exhausting petite allegro trio, which follows it. This piece is packed with challenging movement, including quick jumps and fuetés, and is very well staged.  

“Kissing You,” choreographed by Tenaya Kelleher, was performed during last year’s En Pointe show, and is being reset this year, with a live vocalist and pianist accompanying the dance. The choreography is a mixture of abstract modern and ballet and is performed by Stuart, Poz-Molesky, and Brie Connor.  

“Carnival,” choreographed by Sophie Bridgers, Theodora Boguszewki, and Linnea Snyderman, is a contemporary piece with funky turned-in moves that are skillfully executed. The vibrant colored skirts, handmade by Poz-Molesky, add an aesthetic appeal.  

The show finishes with “Pajaro Enjuavlado (Cageling),” choreographed by Poz-Molesky. The first movement of the piece is danced to Gounod’s “Ave Maria,” and has a somber, lyrical quality. The dancers move elegantly in long black or white skirts. The climactic group finale concludes the show. 

The company and production is funded solely on donations from local businesses and supporters.  

“The show gets better every year,” said both Poz-Molesky and Rigney. “Since the first year, it has improved one hundred percent.”  

If you’re looking for an evening of original choreography and visible passion for dance, En Pointe has a show for you. 

 

En Pointe Dance Company performs “Young Syncopations” Friday, April 16 at 1:30 p.m. and 8 p.m. in the Roda Theater on Addison Street in Berkeley. $6/ $8. For information write to enpointedance@yahoo.com. 


Urban Plans Etched in Acid: Ant Farm at BAM

By MICHAEL KATZ Special to the Planet
Tuesday April 13, 2004

Citizens: Please report to the Berkeley Art Museum (BAM) by April 25. That’s the last date to catch “Ant Farm 1968-1978” before it leaves on a five-city tour. For your own protection, don’t miss this retrospective of architecture, urban-planning, and media pranks. It’s thought-provoking, transparent, and great fun. 

You might already know the Ant Farm troupe, if not by name, from two iconic images. “Cadillac Ranch” (1974) is the “modern Stonehenge” the troupe created off Texas’ Route 66 by half-burying 10 vintage Cadillacs, nose down, tailfins up. “Media Burn” (1975) features another Cadillac—customized into something resembling a spacecraft—crashing through a pyramid of burning televisions. 

Ant Farm gestated in Texas and hatched (“founded on a platform of educational reform”) in San Francisco. “We are underground architects,” the founders declared to a Bay Area friend. “Oh, you mean like an Ant Farm?” she replied. The name stuck. 

Mainstays Chip Lord (now teaching at UC Santa Cruz), Curtis Schreier, and the late Doug Michels worked out of San Francisco, Houston, and Washington, D.C., joined by a changing cast of co-conspirators. 

At the Berkeley Art Museum exhibit, you can watch both projects unfold on cycling videos. And you can examine Media Burn’s “Phantom Dream Car” itself—still intact, with conning tower, working fore and aft video cameras, dashboard TV monitor, escape hatch, and lunar-module-style Plexiglass cockpit. 

But the retrospective also presents 10 years of the group’s less famous countercultural interventions—some just as interesting. You literally can’t miss “ICE 9,” a ceiling-high inflatable shelter that occupies much of the gallery. Named for the apocalyptic catalyst in Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Cat’s Cradle, it looks like a cross between the Space Shuttle and trippy ‘70s soft furniture. “Sleeps 5, weighs 20 pounds, inflates in 10 minutes—$500 w/fan,” its designers claimed. 

Ant Farm’s early work focused on portable structures and temporary communities—or “nomadics.” “ICE 9” was one of several rounded, cheap, inflatable designs that the museum’s press release calls “symbolic of their opposition to the mainstream Brutalist architecture of the 1960s.” (Such as, ironically, the BAM building itself.) The group’s 1970 “Instant City” plan looks like a blueprint for today’s Burning Man phenomenon.  

The core of Ant Farm’s work playfully satirized the grand public projects of the future-oriented ‘60s and early ‘70s. For the 1972 “Time Capsule” they sealed kitschy consumer products inside a refrigerator. (Why a fridge? To “open doors to the American Dream,” an Ant Farmer explains on video.) Three years later, they buried a similarly laden Oldsmobile station wagon. 

Ant Farm’s LSD-inspired “House of the Century, 1972-2072” was built near Houston without one square corner. The award-winning structure looks like a cross between a lunar lander and a giant Groucho nose/glasses disguise. 

One of their last playful projects was the 1977 “Dolphin Embassy,” a floating outpost for “bringing modern technology to the least developed nation of all.” A 1978 fire destroyed their San Francisco studio and ended Ant Farm as we know it. 

Ant Farm’s projects drew on earlier outsider architects like Buckminster Fuller and Britain’s Archigram (whose elaborate plans for mobile cities filled a wing of SFMOMA in 1999). And their videos and assorted happenings echoed, and inspired, a long chain of conceptual artists. 

But unlike solemn utopians and snide poseurs, Ant Farm did everything in good humor. BAM’s retrospective is a nostalgic flashback to a time when architectural pranksters were rewarded with laughter instead of million-dollar commissions. 

Don’t miss the video of their 1976 opera “CARmen,” performed in the Sydney Opera House’s parking lot. It’s played on 35 cars’ horns, “conducted” by an Ant Farm member hopping around in a ridiculously floppy kangaroo suit. (Two hours of videos are projected at 11 a.m., 1 p.m., and 3 p.m., each Wednesday through Sunday.) 

One last nostalgic angle: Ant Farm’s most trenchant pranks satirized the ‘60s orthodox American Dream of excessive consumption, automobile dependence, mass-media addiction, militarism, and dubious space adventures. Yet pervading Ant Farm’s work is real love for the optimistic, Kennedy-era ideals of mobility, shared affluence, and inclusion. The “Artist-President” who presides over Media Burn is a miraculously resurrected JFK or Bobby Kennedy. 

Some sacred cows that Ant Farm targeted—like network television, or the notion of cars as liberation—have fallen a notch or two. These days, people think they’re achieving liberation by sitting behind computer screens with the “right” logo or innards. Particularly in this town, today’s official dogma is to force people out of their cars, and to force every possible inch of height and floor area out of every construction plot. 

One longs for the next generation of Ant Farm-style provocateurs, who might construct a “Density Ranch” out of half-buried skyscrapers, or videotape a Critical Mass of self-righteous bicyclists riding through a wall of smoking Macintoshes. And stream it on the web, dude.›


Arts Calendar

Tuesday April 13, 2004

TUESDAY, APRIL 13 

FILM 

Optical Poetry: Oskar Fischinger Classics at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Peter Everwine reads from “From the Meadow: Selected and New Poems” at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698. www.blackoakbooks.com 

Nona Mock Wyman reads from her memoirs, “Chopstick Childhood in a Town of Silver Spoons” at 7 p.m. at the El Cerrito Library, 6510 Stockton Ave. 526-7512. 

“Harlequin Novels, African Style” with Lydie Moudileno, visiting professor, French Dept. at 4 p.m. at 652 Barrows Hall. Sponsored by the Center for African Studies. 642-8338. 

Nuriddin Farah, contemporary African writer, discusses his new novel “Links” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

Andrew E. Barshay, Prof. of History, UCB, “The Social Sciences in Modern Japan: The Marxian and Modern Traditions” at 5:30 p.m. at University Press Books, 2430 Bancroft Way. 548-0585. 

Beatriz Manz, “Paradise in Ashes: A Guatemalan Journey of Courage, Terror and Hope” at 7:30 p.m. at Easy Going Bookstore, 1385 Shattuck Ave. 843-3533. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

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

Dayna Stephens House Jam at 8 p.m. at The Jazz House. Donation $5. 649-8744.  

www.thejazzhouse.com 

Tee Fee Swamp Boogie at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz, with a Cajun dance lesson with Annie Byrd at 8 p.m. Cost is $9. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Homespun Rowdy performs honky-tonk bluegrass at 4 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 14 

CHILDREN 

Craft Program Make “Wild Things” masks at 2 p.m. at Berkeley Public Library North Branch, 1170 The Alameda. 981-6250. 

THEATER 

“The Mystery of Irma Vep,” Charles Ludlam’s theatrical cult classic opens at Berkeley Rep’s Thrust Stage at 8 p.m. through May 23. Tickets are $39-$55. 647-2949. www.berkeleyrep.org 

FILM 

Film 50: “The Art of the Political Film” and “Lifeguard” at 3 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Joan Blades introduces “MoveOn’s 50 Ways to Love Your Country: How to Find Your Political Voice and Become a Catalyst for Change” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

Frederick Turner discusses “In the Land of Temple Caves: From St. Emilion to Paris’s St. Sulpice--Notes on Art and the Human Spirit “at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698. www.blackoakbooks.com 

Mark Bittner introduces his new book “The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill” at 7:30 p.m. at Barnes and Noble. 644-3635. 

Stephanie Elizondo Griest talks about “Around the Bloc: My Life in Moscow, Beijing and Havana” at 7:30 p.m. at Easy Going Bookstore, 1385 Shattuck Ave. 843-3533. 

Berkeley Poetry Slam Semi-Finals for the National Slam Team competition 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. Donation $2. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Poetry Writing Workshop with Danna Zeller at 7 p.m. in the Edith Stone Room, Albany Public Library, 1247 Marin Ave. 526-3720, ext. 20. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Red Archibald & The Internationals at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Swing dance lesson with Nick and Shanna at 8 p.m. Cost is $9. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Deepak Ram and Anuradha Pal, bansuri and tabla, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50 at the door. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

La Verdad performs salsa music at 8 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $5-$10. 548-1159.  

Jules Broussard, Bing Nathan and Ned Boynton at 8 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810. 

Sebastien Martel plays Cuban French acoustic grooves at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

THURSDAY, APRIL 15 

FILM 

Vertical Pool: “Hysteria” A film by Antero Alli at 8 p.m. at Finnish Hall, 1970 Chestnut St., near University Ave. with the filmmaker in person. Admission $5. 464-4640. www.verticalpool.com/hysterinfo.html 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“Ant Farm 1968-1978” Guided Tour at 12:15 and 5:30 p.m. at Berkeley Art Museum, 2626 Bancroft Way. 642-0808. 

Amy Goodman discusses her book “The Exception to the Rulers” at 7:30 p.m. at M.L. King Middle School, 1781 Rose St. Sponsored by Cody’s Books. Tickets are $15. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

Daniel Boyarin introduces “Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity” at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698. www.blackoakbooks.com 

Micheline Marcom reads from “The Daydreaming Boy” a novel of a survivor of the Armenian genocide, at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. www.codysbooks.com 

Joseph A. Califano, Jr. describes his memoir, “Inside” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

Japanese Architect Fumihiko Maki will speak at 8 p.m. at Dwinelle Hall, UC Campus. 464-3600. www.aiaeb.org 

Word Beat Reading Series with featured readers Mark Schwartz and Selene Steese at 7 p.m. at Mediterraneum Caffe, 2475 Telegraph Ave. 526-5985. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

ROVA, avant garde saxophone quartet, at 8 p.m. at The Jazz House. Cost is $10-$15. 649-8744. www.thejazzhouse.com 

Kevin Seconds and Anton Barbeau at the 1923 Teahouse at 8 p.m. Donation of $7-$15. 644-2204. www.epicarts.org 

Famous Last Words, Lizanah, Essence at 9:15 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Nerissa & Katryna Nields, contemporary folk, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50 at the door. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

FRIDAY, APRIL 16 

EXHIBITION OPENINGS 

“Watercolors” by Howard Margolis Reception from 6 to 8 p.m. at Schurman Fine Art Gallery, 1659 San Pablo Ave. Exhibit runs through May. 524-0623. 

Paintings by Julia Ross Reception from 4:30 to 7:30 p.m. at The French Hotel, 1538 Shattuck Ave. Exhibit runs through April 30. 527-0173. 

THEATER 

Actors Ensemble of Berkeley “The Sisters Rosensweig,” a comedy by Wendy Wasserstein, opens at 8 p.m. at Live Oak Theater, 1301 Shattuck at Berryman, and continues on Fri. and Sat. through May 15. Tickets are $10. 649-5999. www.aeofberkeley.org 

Aurora Theatre Company “Antigone Falun Gong” at 8 p.m. Wed.-Sat., Sun. at 2 and 7 p.m. at 2081 Addison St. through May 16. Tickets are $28-$40 available from 843-4822. www.auroratheatre.org 

Black Repertory Group Theater “Trilogy of One Act Plays” Gala reception at 6 p.m., show at 8 p.m., Sat. at 2:30 and 8 p.m. Tickets are $15. 652-2120. www.blackrepertorygroup.org 

“The Mystery of Irma Vep,” Charles Ludlam’s theatrical cult classic at Berkeley Rep’s Thrust Stage, through May 23. Tickets are $39-$55. 647-2949. www.berkeleyrep.org 

Shotgun Players “The Miser” opens at 8 p.m. at the Julia Morgan Theater, Thurs. - Sun. through May 2. Free. 704-8210. www.shotgunplayers.org 

FILM 

47th SF International Film Festival at 5 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Marc Cooper discovers “The Last Honest Place in America: In Search of Paradise and Perdition in the New Las Vegas” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

Bob Randolph at the Fellowship Café & Open Mic, 7:30 p.m. at Fellowship Hall, Cedar and Bonita Sts. A donation of $5-$10 is requested.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

“Young Syncopations” En Pointe Dance presents original works by six young choreographers at 1:30 and 8 p.m. at the Roda Theater, 2015 Addison St. Tickets are $6 in advance, $8 at the door. enpointedance 

@yahoo.com 

University Dance Theater, directed by Marni Thomas, with premieres by Christopher Dolder and Carol Murota at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Playhouse. Tickets are $8-$14, from 866-468-3399. www.ticketweb.com 

“Isadora ... No Apologies” a dance play recounting the life of Isadora Duncan at 8 p.m. at Lisser Hall at Mills College, 5000 MacArthur Blvd. Tickets are $10-$15 at the door. www.isadoraduncan.org 

Redmeat at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $7. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Musicians from Marlboro at 7:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing Way. Pre-concert talk by violinist Scott St. John at 7 p.m. Tickets are $38. 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

Palenque performs Cuban music at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Andrew Tosh & The Tosh Band, Sister I-Live, the Reggae Angels at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $15. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Double Standards, jazz trio, at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Original Intentions at the 1923 Teahouse at 8 p.m. Suggested donation of $7-$10. 644-2204. www.epicarts.org 

Laura Risk with Steve Baughman, Irish fiddle and guitarist, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $16.50 in advance, $17.50 at the door. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Danny Caron, jazz and blues guitar, at 8:30 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810. 

Seek, Dynamic at 9 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $8. 548-1159. www.shattuckdownlow.com 

Hot Cross, Lickgoldensky, Cat on Form, Heart Cross Love at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $5. 525-9926. 

ROVA, avant garde saxophone quartet, at 8 p.m. at The Jazz House. Cost is $10-$15. 649-8744. www.thejazzhouse.com 

Bobby Vega and Chris Rossbach Group at 9 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Point Blank at 9:30 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

SATURDAY, APRIL 17 

CHILDREN  

Juanita Ulloa will perform original and traditional Mexican songs for the whole family at 11 a.m. at Berkeley Public Library, West Branch, 1125 University Ave. 981-6278. 

“Wild About Books” storytime at 10:30 a.m. at the Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. 981-6223. 

Los Amiguitos de La Peña with Bonnie Lockhart at 10:30 a.m. at La Peña. Cost is $3-$4. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Dance Jammies, a multi-generational dance event from 6 to 9 p.m. at the Motivity Center, 2525 8th St. Cost is $9. 832-3835. 

FILM 

47th SF International Film Festival at 1:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Berkeley Public Library’s Teen Playreaders present a multilingual poetry reading at 2 p.m. at the North Branch Library, 1170 The Alameda. 

Andrew Todhunter shares his gastronomic adventure of working in a Paris restaurant in “A Meal Observed” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books, 1730 Fourth St. 559-9500. www.codysbooks.com  

Gary Bogue and Chuck Todd give advice on living with urban wildlife in “The Racoon next Door” at 7:30 p.m. at Barnes and Noble. 644-0861. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

University Dance Theater, directed by Marni Thomas, with premieres by Christopher Dolder and Carol Murota 8 p.m., Sun. at 7 p.m. at Zellerbach Playhouse. Tickets are $8-$14, from 866-468-3399. www.ticketweb.com 

Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra performs Scarlatti’s “Vespers of St. Cecilia” at 8 p.m. at First Congregational Church, Dana and Durant. Tickets are $29-$60 available from 415-392-4400. www.philharmonia.org 

Trinity Chamber Concerts with Christine Mok, violin and Miles Graber, piano, performing works of Beethoven, Kreisler, Ravel and Stravinsky at 8 p.m. at Trinity Chapel, 2320 Dana at Durant. Tickets are $8-$12. 549-3864. 

All Bach Concert with David Ryther, violin, Aria Di Salvio, cello, Marvin Sanders, flute, at 7:30 p.m. at the Berkeley Art Center. Tickets are $15-$50, benefits the Berkeley Art Center. 644-6893. www.berkeleyartcenter.org 

Aux Cajunals at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $20. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Vieques Si, Marina No, celebrating a victory for social justice at 9 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10, $5 students. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Charlie King and Karen Brandow In Concert, politically affirming harmonies, at 7 p.m. at Redwood Gardens Community Center, 2951 Derby St. at Claremont Blvd. Suggested donation $5-$20.  

Naked Barbies, Frankie’s Dream at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $7. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com  

True Blue, traditional bluegrass, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $16.50 at the door. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Wil Blades Quartet at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $10-15. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Songwriter’s Showcase with Forest Sun, Alexis Harte and Adrian West at 8 p.m. at The Jazz House. Donations of $8-$15. 649-8744. www.thejazzhouse.org 

Fourtet Jazz Quartet at 9:30 p.m. at Albatross, 1822 San Pablo Ave. Cost is $3. 843-2473. www.albatrosspub.com 

Mystic performs hip hop at 9:30 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $12-$15. 548-1159. www.shattuckdownlow.com 

Odd Shaped Case at the 1923 Teahouse at 8 p.m. Donation $7-$15. 644-2204. www.epicarts.org 

Nika Rejto, Brazilian jazz, at 8:30 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810. 

Vitamin X, Holier Than Thou, Deadfall, Our Turn, League of Struggle at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $5. 525-9926. 

SUNDAY, APRIL 18 

CHILDREN  

Family Explorations: Clay Day from noon to 4 p.m. at the Oakland Museum of California, Oak and 10th Sts. Admission is $5-$8. 238-2200. www.museumca.org 

Theater Workshop: Circus Skills for children of all ages from 1 to 3 p.m. at Berkeley Rep School of Theater, 2071 Addison St. Free, bring a children’s book to donate to the John Muir School library. 647-2972. 

EXHIBITION OPENINGS 

Julie Mehretu: Matrix 211 opens with an artist’s talk at 3 p.m. at Berkeley Art Museum, 2626 Bancroft Way. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

FILM 

47th SF International Film Festival at 1:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

“A Brivele der Maman” about a Jewish mother’s efforts to keep her family together. Made in Poland in 1938 in Yiddish, with English subtitles. At 2 p.m. at the Berkeley Richmond Jewish Community Center, 1414 Walnut St. Suggested donation $2. 848-0237. www.brjcc.org 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Poetry Flash with Jenny Browne and Bruce Snider at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. Donation $2. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

Annie Koh will discuss the new anthology “How to Get Stupid White Men Out of Office (And by the Way, Some People of Color Are Just as Stupid and Need to Go Too)” at 3 p.m. at Eastwind Books, 2066 University Ave. 548-2350. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Organ Recital with Brian Swager at 4 p.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. Celebrating the 25th Anniversary of the Brombaugh Organ at St. John’s. 845-6830. 

Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra performs Scarlatti’s “Vespers of St. Cecilia” at 7:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church, Dana and Durant. Tickets are $29-$60. 415-392-4400. www.philharmonia.org 

The Country Joe Band, featuring former members of Country Joe & the Fish, at 8 p.m. at Berkeley Richmond Jewish Community Center, 1414 Walnut St. Tickets are $20. Benefit for Options Recovery Services. 848-0237. 

Berkeley High School Jazz Gala, at Berkeley Rep’s Roda Theatre, 2025 Addison, 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. Tickets are $25-$75. 527-8245. www.berkeleyhighjazz.org 

California Friends of Lousiana French Music Dance and music lessons from 2 to 4 p.m., music jam and dancing from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $5-$8. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

ACME Observatory’s Contemporary Music Series with Jacob Lindsey, Scott Looney & Gino Robair at 8 p.m. at The Jazz House. 649-8744. www.thejazzhouse.com 

Odd Shaped Case at the 1923 Teahouse at 8 p.m. Donation of $7-$15, no one turned away for lack of funds. 644-2204. www.epicarts.org 

Betsy Rose and Judy Fjell at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $15.50 in advance, $16.50 at the door. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Marcus Shelby Jazz Orchestra at 4:30 and 7 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $15. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Opressed Logic, Resistoleros at 5 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $5. 525-9926.


Eye-Pleasing, Fish-Stunning Horsechestnuts

By RON SULLIVAN Special to the Planet
Tuesday April 13, 2004

Red horsechestnuts are blooming now. It’s an interesting phenomenon: the rosy-red flowers are in great big stacks, but somehow easy to miss as you drive by. You walk by, or sit at a stoplight, and suddenly they’re astonishing. In a big mature tree like the handsome one at the southeast corner of Sacramento and Hopkins, the foliage is deep and thick enough to make the flowers less prominent to the fast-passing eye; in younger trees like those near the Berkeley Bowl, they’re like big candles on the twigs. 

Red horsechestnut has a scanty history, being a fairly recent hybrid: its formal name is Aesculus x carneus (that middle initial betrays its bi-species origin). Its lineage is distinguished and interesting on both sides, though. One parent is the European horsechestnut. The other is an eastern American native, red buckeye. Horsechestnuts are so called because they’re bitter and inedible to humans, but can be processed into a feed supplement for horses and cattle—though pigs, who relish true chestnuts, won’t eat it. (Or fide some sources, because the leaf scar on a twig looks like a hoofprint.) 

“Horsechestnut” and “buckeye” are generally interchangeable when people talk about the fruits. They do look like chestnuts, usually a bit less flattened and with that attachment scar on one side that makes the “eye.” There’s a folk belief that carrying one in your pocket protects against rheumatism, or brings luck. There’s also a trade in folk or “alternative” medicine using extracts of horsechestnut for assorted vein problems like swollen legs. I think I’d stick to wearing compression stockings myself, as the compounds are said to interact badly with such ordinary drugs as aspirin. 

Like most drugs, they come from a source that has its own dangers. The flowers of red horsechestnut are toxic to eat, and can be used to stun fish if for some reason you want to stun a fish. Why do that? I’m told that a compound of the local family member, California buckeye, was used by the original people here for grocery shopping—a handful in a pond or backwater would stun the fish in it; they’d rise to the surface for easy choosing, and when the stuff dispersed and diluted in the water, the rest would come to, shake their (presumably slightly hung-over) fishy heads and go on about their business. 

In the Pennsylvania neighborhood where I grew up, there was a great big European horsechestnut growing in a great big yard just up the hill. We took part in the great kid tradition of throwing the plentiful nuts—”conkers”—at each other when they ripened and fell every year. Really mean kids would pick up the ones with the spiky seedcoat still on them, very carefully, and throw those—the same kids who’d put a rock in a snowball. 

Red horsechestnuts don’t seem to drop many nuts, at least here. If you find one, you can grow your own tree, as this is one of the few hybrids that come true from seed.<


Judge Approves School Diversity Plan

By MATTHEW ARTZ
Friday April 09, 2004

An Alameda County Superior Court judge Tuesday dismissed a challenge filed by the conservative Pacific Legal Foundation that threatened to undo Berkeley’s plan for integrating its schools. 

Judge James Richman ruled that a Berkeley Unified School District policy that uses race as a factor for assigning children to elementary schools did not, on its face, violate Proposition 209. 

That measure, enacted by California voters in 1996, forbids racial preferences in public education, employment and contracting. 

John Findley, an attorney from the Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF), which filed the lawsuit on behalf of Berkeley resident Lorenzo Avila and his two school-age sons, said he plans to appeal the case. 

Judge Richman’s decision means that Berkeley Unified—which in 1968 became the first school district in the country to voluntarily desegregate—can, for the time being, continue to use race as a factor to produce diversity in schools. 

Although the ruling only holds for Berkeley, civil rights advocates hope that, if upheld in the court of appeals, the decision would halt what they see as the Pacific Legal Foundation’s campaign to overturn race-based desegregation plans throughout California. 

“This is a whole new ballgame. The tide is starting to turn in public education,” said Michael Harris, assistant director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area.  

At the same time Judge Richman ruled on the plan, the judge also granted the lawyer’s committee, the American Civil Liberties Union, the NAACP, the Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action By Any Means Necessary and more than 300 Berkeley residents legal standing to join the opposition to the lawsuit should the decision be appealed. 

The rush by civil rights proponents to defend Berkeley Unified underscored the importance of the case, Harris said. “This could set a new precedent for all school districts in the state.” He added that since the passage of Prop. 209, several districts had pulled back from using race in school assignments under threats of possible legal action from PLF. 

Berkeley School Board Director Terry Doran said the decision vindicated the district for “having the courage of their convictions to fight the case.” 

Though PLF won a similar case against a school district in Huntington Beach two years ago, the group had a tougher challenge against Berkeley Unified, said Goodwin Liu a Boalt Hall Professor with a specialty in education law and policy, because the Avila children never claimed to have suffered adversely from the district’s policy. 

Since the Berkeley plan considered several factors other than race, Judge Richman concluded the possibility existed that the plan could be implemented without ever taking race into account. “If the implementation of the plan might not result in a single pupil’s school assignment being changed based on the pupil’s race, the plan cannot be unconstitutional on its face,” he wrote.  

Richman also distinguished the Berkeley case from the ruling in Huntington Beach, which Findley argued that the judge was bound to follow. Richman wrote that the Huntington Beach transfer policy in question was a “one-for-one same race exchange policy” that essentially created a “non-white opening” and prevented white students from transferring from a minority white school unless another white student took his place. Since the Berkeley plan contained “no such differential criteria for school assignment,” it didn’t apply, Richman wrote. 

Liu said he believed Richman’s ruling was correct, but that if PLF returned with a plaintiff who could make a claim of being denied his first choice of schools based on race, “it might be a different story.” 

Other professors, however questioned the underpinnings of the decision. “The ruling doesn’t grapple with 209 very successfully,” said Vikram Amar, a UC Hastings law professor with a specialty in constitutional law and civil procedure. Amar said the Berkeley plan might be defensible on other grounds, but “just because race is used as one factor among many, doesn’t take it outside of 209.” UC affirmative action plans also took race into account among many factors, he said, and Prop. 209 “was clearly intended to overthrow that.” 

David Levine, another UC Hastings law professor, predicted the appeals court would overturn Richman’s ruling. Levine was one of the attorneys who represented a group of Chinese American students who, in 1999, won a federal court order ending race-based enrollment in San Francisco. 

“The judge has given PLF something easy to shoot at,” Levine said. “He strained to distinguish the Berkeley case so he didn’t have to follow precedent. I don’t think it’s very convincing.” 

The Berkeley school assignment plan in question requires the racial mix for each grade to fall within five percent of the district-wide tally. To achieve that goal, parents must fill out a form indicating their child’s race and list their top three choices of schools, with the district retaining ultimate control to produce a racial balance. 

Earlier this year, while it was preparing its defense against PLF, Berkeley amended its school assignment policy to alter how it accounted for ensuring racial diversity. Beginning this fall, instead of individually assigning a race to each student the new plan will assume a racial and socioeconomic profile for students based on the U.S. census data of the roughly four-block neighborhood in which each student lives.  

The school board approved the new plan after debating alternatives for four years, during which PLF repeatedly threatened litigation. One school assignment plan proposed by a community committee appointed by the superintendent would have done away with race as a factor altogether. Pacific Legal Foundation had said that would have staved off a lawsuit, but a majority of the school board refused to consider the proposal. 

Amar said the new plan would stand a much better shot at passing muster on appeal under Proposition 209. He questioned why PLF would bother to proceed against the old plan, especially considering they weren’t trying to reverse a school assignment for a student harmed under the previous rules.  

“This is not the way litigation works,” he said. “Just because [Pacific Legal Foundation] wants to send a message to other districts doesn’t mean there’s a case here.” 

By granting the district’s motion to demur, Judge Richman essentially threw out the case before it went to trial. Though such rulings are rare in most types of cases, Levine said they are fairly common when, as in the Berkeley case, the issue at hand is the purely legal question of whether or not Berkeley’s plan violates Proposition 209. 

PLF’s Findley—who voluntarily dismissed the Avila’s claim for damages after the judge’s ruling—said he never expected the case to go to trial even if Judge Richman had ruled otherwise, and that he was satisfied to expedite the case to the court of appeals. He added that PLF had no intention to seek a new plaintiff who might make a stronger claim against the district. Avila’s children attend magnet schools, which are not bound to the rules of the assignment plan.  

Although Findley said his client could renew his claim for damages if the appeals court ruled in his favor, Jon Streeter, the attorney representing Berkeley Unified School District free of charge, insisted the district faced no threat of a damage claim. “Those kids were not affected by the school assignment,” he said. “Anyone who argues that there is damage exposure in this case simply doesn’t understand what’s going on here.” 

 

 

ˇ


Protesters Return to Port in Peace

By JAKOB SCHILLER
Friday April 09, 2004

On the first anniversary of the bloody waterfront confrontation between Oakland Police and antiwar protesters, officers did their best to stay out of the way of several hundred anti-war protesters—including a large group from Berkeley—who demonstrated Wednesday along the docks of the Port of Oakland. 

During last year’s demonstration, called to protest the invasion of Iraq, members of the Oakland Police opened fire on demonstrators with supposedly “less-than-lethal” weaponry. Several protesters came away with serious injuries.  

A report issued last week by Hina Jilani, a Pakistani human rights lawyer who serves as U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan’s Special Representative, suggested that Oakland police used excessive force against protesters. The document was then referred to the U.N. Human Rights Commission.  

Wednesday’s protest was noticeably peaceful. Demonstrators say they had no intent to shut down the port again. Unlike last year’s early morning action, they said they purposely arrived in the afternoon after most of the truck traffic had already left. The few trucks that remained on the docks were escorted out by police.  

But according to Jack Heyman, a business agent for the International Longshoremen and Warehouse workers union (ILWU) Local 10—whose was among the protesters assaulted last year—the protest halted all ship traffic from the Stevedoring Services of America (SSA) and American President Line (APL) ports Wednesday. 

Jackie Thomason of People United for a Better Oakland (PUEBLO) said, “We have an obligation to go back. Of course because of the Iraq war, those issues have not gone away, but we also have to speak about the larger issue of war at home.” 

This week’s protest targeted both the Oakland Police Department as well as several of companies doing business at the Oakland port, including SSA and APL, which organizers claim are guilty of war profiteering. According to Direct Action to Stop the War (DASW), one of the sponsors of Wednesday’s action, SSA received a $14. 3 million no-bid contract to run the port of Umm Qasr in Iraq. DASW organizers also accused SSA of union busting at home and abroad. 

OPD Public Information Officer Danielle Ashford said the department made several changes to their demonstration control procedures after last year’s protest, including an end to the use of wooden dowels—projectiles fired at protesters that leave large welts—and the use of motorcycles to corral the crowd. 

Ashford said OPD officials have also limited the use of bean bag guns and are requiring officers to wear their badge numbers on their riot helmets. Clearly identified and trained liaisons will communicate any orders for crowd dispersal.  

Willow Rosenthal and Lindsay Parkinson, both injured during last year’s protest, carried signs with photos of their scars and bruises during Wednesday’s demonstration. Rosenthal has undergone two surgeries including a skin graft on her calf, where she was hit either with a wooden dowel or bean bag, she says she still suffers from pain in her knee, hip and ankle. 

“We’re here to show that we’re not scared of the police,” said Parkinson. “We need to reclaim the streets.” 

Several people who had been recent victims of what they claim is police brutality spoke at a smaller rally at the police department before the march to the docks. 

According to organizers from Direct Action to Stop the War (DASW), one of the groups who sponsored last year’s protest, an initial push for an independent investigation into the OPD’s reaction never materialized. The Oakland City Council created a commission to investigate the police action, which was later aborted. 

Other fallout from last year’s protest includes the cases of 24 demonstrators who still face criminal charges, including creating a public nuisance, failure to disperse and interfering with a business. They are scheduled to appear in court again April 22. 

A total of 46 protesters from last year’s port demonstration, including several of those who face charges, have filed a civil suit demanding damages and a court decision mandating changes in the way OPD deals with protesters. 

“It’s important. This was perhaps the most violent attack towards any anti-war protesters in any protest leading up to the war,” said Berkeley’s Osha Neumann, one of the lawyers who filed the civil suit. “It’s really critical that the message be sent by the courts that this is not acceptable, that this is a violation of the Constitution. We want them to change explicit policies that will assure that they never again shoot less-than-lethal weapons at peaceful non-violent protesters.”


Citizens Praise UC Hotel Project at Last Input Meeting

By RICHARD BRENNEMAN
Friday April 09, 2004

The Planning Commission’s UC Hotel Task Force’s final public input session Wednesday focused on the project’s likely impact on the downtown business community. 

During the nearly three-hour long session, the Berkeley Convention and Visitors Bureau, a city official, the Downtown Berkeley Association, the chair of the Civic Arts Commission and a BART planner sang the praises of the massive complex. 

The towering new hotel, a collection of museums and a hotel parking lot proposed by the University of California would occupy most of the two-block area bounded by Shattuck Avenue, Oxford Street, University Avenue and Center Street. 

The task force now heads into its final two sessions on April 13 and 27, where members will hash out the slate of recommendations they’ll present to city officials who have the final say on the controversial project. 

Convention and Visitors Bureau President Barbara Hillman led off with high praise for the project, which she said will recapture business lost to Emeryville and Oakland, attract new businesses to the city, and generate significant revenues for cash-strapped city coffers. 

Ted Burton, project coordinator for the city’s Office of Economic Development, said a 200-room hotel and conference center should bring the city at least $1 million a year from the 12 percent transient occupancy tax paid by guests. Property taxes should bring in another $100,000 a year, with more revenues coming from license fees and the facility users tax. 

The money guests would spend with city merchants would generate more tax revenues and provide the economic stimulus to revitalize the downtown business community, he said. 

Burton cautioned that the city hasn’t yet estimated the additional costs the complex could impose on the city, including the need for additional emergency services and the possible need for a larger sewer line to serve the site. 

Planning Commission and task force chair Rob Wrenn allayed concerns expressed at earlier meetings with his announcement that state and university employees who stay at the hotel will be charged the full occupancy tax. 

Derek Miller, chair of the Downtown Berkeley Association Economic Development Committee, said the new complex will finally make Berkeley a destination city, a place for travelers to stay as well as visit. 

One downtown merchant sponsors a major comic book fan convention, but the lack of hotel and meeting space forced them to hold it out of town, Miller said, “but they could have it in Berkeley if the hotel is built.” 

David Snippen, chair of the Civic Arts Commission, said the facility will provide a major boost for the local arts community, “the fourth largest industry in the city. The arts have led the revitalization of cities across the country, and Berkeley has some of the highest numbers of artists. There are over 300 nonprofit arts and cultural organization.” 

Hillman said the recent and pending closings of Eddie Bauer, Gateway Computers and See’s Candy make the arts community even more important to the revitalization of the downtown commercial core. 

“We think the hotel is a really valuable resource for the business community,” said Deborah Badhia, Executive Director of the Downtown Berkeley Association. “People favor that this should be a beautiful hotel that will really serve the community and be an environmental showcase.” 

Panelist and Planning Commissioner Zelda Bronstein urged that any renovations to the downtown sewer system be accomplished quickly. “Replacing the sewers on lower Solano (Avenue) forced some businesses to shut down for a couple of months, and some of them were forced to close because they couldn’t afford the loss of revenues,” she said. 

“Is there anyone here who’s against the hotel?” asked Badhia. 

“No member of this task force has ever said anything to the effect that we shouldn’t have the hotel,” Wrenn answered. 

“We are concerned that there are substantial costs to the city in terms of infrastructure, and we’d like to hear more about them,” said panelist Juliette Lamont, environmental consultant and a member of the Urban Creeks Council. 

“It depends if it’s a distinguished building,” added Peter Selz, a UC professor emeritus and the founder of the university’s art museum. “So far we haven’t heard anything about the architecture.” 

“Some of us have expressed reservations about the location,” said planner and task force member John English. “Some of us might prefer it to be built on university land.” 

“We haven’t heard anything about the cost of daylighting the creek,” said Barbara Gilbert, an activist not on the panel who has faithfully attended the meetings. Uncovering and restoring Strawberry Creek down the middle of Center Street has been urged by many of the panelists. 

Answered Wrenn, “It’s reasonable that this task force should make financial recommendations about who should be paying for what.” 

“Everyone at BART is excited about the project,” said Nashua Kalil, a senior planner for transportation agency. She cautioned that daylighting the creek could have implications for the light rail line beneath Shattuck Avenue, and recommended a preliminary study, which could cost the city about $50,000. 

Kalil also suggested that the hotel developers might be eager to have an underground tunnel under Shattuck to provide direct access to the downtown BART station. 

When one of the panelists suggested adding another track to provide more service, Kalil responded with a sobering cost estimate—$14 billion—effectively closing the issue. 

Daylighting Strawberry Creek and ending vehicular traffic on a block-long section of Center Street could have significant implications for both pedestrian and vehicular movement downtown, and Wrenn and other task force members spent three days in March monitoring both. 

Center and Telegraph Avenue are the city streets most heavily used by pedestrians, while Shattuck is a magnet for bus traffic. 

Wrenn said the single biggest car attractor on Center is the Bank of America at the northeast corner of the Shattuck Avenue intersection—the site of the planned 12-story hotel—which draws a constant stream of cars to the bank parking lot. 

Wrenn asked all panel members to prepare their lists of recommendations prior to the final two sessions, when the final list will be hammered out. 

“We should always strive for consensus” when it comes to which proposals to adopt,” Wrenn said. “I expect there will be a few instances when we will have to vote on particular issues, but I hope that, to a great extent, we be able to arrive at a consensus.” Once the proposals are accepted, Wrenn added, “we need two or three people to serve on a drafting committee” to prepare a final report for presentation to the City Council in early June on “what we want them to be considering and thinking about when they work out the final terms.”


Berkeley This Week

Friday April 09, 2004

FRIDAY, APRIL 9 

“So How’d You Become an Activist?” with Medea Benjamin, Co-Founder, Global Exchange and Fernando Suarez del Solar, anti-war activist after his son was killed in Iraq war, at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists, 1924 Cedar St., at Bonita. Suggested donation $5. 528-5403. 

Best of the Banff Mountain Film Festival at 7 p.m. at Wheeler Auditorium, UC Campus. Cost is $12 for REI members, $15 others. 527-4140. 

“Wild Style” a film of outlaw artists in the South Bronx, at 8 p.m. at the Long Haul Info Shop, 3124 Shattuck Ave. 540-0751.  

“When the Storm Came” A film screening and discussion with Shilpi Gupta, UC Berkeley graduate student in Journalism and International Studies, on her film about a village in Indian-Administered Kashmir that survived a mass rape by Indian security forces in 1991. Winner, 2004 Jury Prize in Short Filmmaking, Sundance Film Festival. At 6 p.m. at FSM Café at Moffitt Library, UC Campus. 

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon with Don Olander, Prof. Nuclear Engineering, UCB, “Scientific Fraud and Hoaxes.” Luncheon 11:45 a.m. for $12.50. Speech at 12:30 p.m., at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant St. For information and reservations call 526-2925 or 665-9020. 

“If the Buddha Came to Dinner” a lecture and book signing with Halé Sofia Shatz at 3:30 p.m. at Pharmaca Integrative Pharmacy, 1744 Solano. 527-8929. 

“The Importance of Spirituality in Human Life” with Shaykh Hisham Kabbani, representative of the Naqshbandi Sufi Order, at 6:30 p.m. at Julie’s Healthy Food Café, 2562 Bancroft Way. www.naqshbandi.org 

Berkeley Chess Club meets Fridays at 7:15 p.m. at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. Players at all levels are welcome. 652-5324. 

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. 655-6169. www.bpf.org 

Passover Seder with Kol Hadash at 6 p.m. at the Albany Community Center, 1249 Marin Ave. Reservations required. 428-1492. www.kolhadash.org 

Overeaters Anonymous meets every Friday at 1:30 p.m. at the Northbrae Church at Solano and The Alameda. Parking is free and is handicapped accessible. For information call Katherine, 525-5231. 

SATURDAY, APRIL 10 

Mini-Gardeners A garden exploration program for 4-6 year olds accompanied by an adult. We’ll look at dirt and look for worms, at 2 p.m. at Tilden Nature Area. Fee is $3, $4 non-resident. Registration required. 525-2233. 

Wildflower Walk A hike through Big Springs Canyon to see what is in bloom. Meet at 10 a.m. at the Big Springs Canyon sign on South Park Drive in Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

Make Wildflower Trading Cards Discover Tilden’s wonderful wildflowers, for ages 8-12, from 1 to 3 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center. Fee is $3, $4 for non-residents. Registration required. 525-2233. 

Greens at Work will help Friends of Sausal Creek remove invasive Cape Ivy at the Upper Watershed in Joaquin Miller Park at 10 a.m. The patch of land is home to California native plants that are being smothered by the ivy. Meet at the beginning of the Sunset trail. Bring water and gloves. Take Joaquin Miller Road east from Highway 13 to the Woodminster Amphitheater parking lot. The Sunset Trail begins where the driveway enters Joaquin Miller Road. For more info e-mail greensatwork@yahoo.com  

Native Plant Walk in Strawberry Creek Canyon with Terri Compost. Meet at noon in the parking lot of the Strawberry Canyon Fire Trail head, below the UC Botanical Gardens on Centennial Drive. Cost is $5-$15 sliding scale, no one turned away for lack of funds. 658-9178. 

Aesthetic Pruning of Tress and Shrubs with Marie Miller. Learn how to shape your plants, including Japanese Maples, for maximum beauty, at 10 a.m. at Magic Gardens Nursery, 729 Heinz Ave. 644-2351. www.magicgardens.com 

Free Emergency Preparedness Class in Disaster First Aid from 9 a.m. to noon at 997 Cedar St. To sign up call 981-5605. www.ci.berkeley. 

ca.us/fire/oes.html 

“Riding the Rails” a documentary of teenagers during the Great Depression, at 8 p.m. at the Long Haul Info Shop, 3124 Shattuck Ave. 540-0751.  

Spring Festival at Bay Street Emeryville, with arts and crafts, live music, spring bunny and more, from noon to 2 p.m. 

“Awaken the God or Goddess Within” with Lolita Thomas-Kendrick, performance life coach and strategist, at 3 p.m. at Elephant Pharmacy, 1607 Shattuck Ave. 549-9200. www.elephantpharmacy.com  

Yoga for Seniors at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant St., on Saturdays from 10 to 11 a.m. The class is taught by Rosie Linsky, who at age 72, has practiced yoga for over 40 years. Open to non-members of the club for $8 per class. For further information and to register, call Karen Ray at 848-7800. 

Car Wash Benefit for Options Recovery Services of Berkeley, held every Sat. from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Lutheran Church, 1744 University Ave. 666-9552. 

Dream Workshop on Saturdays, from 10 a.m. to noon at 2199 Bancroft Way. Cost is $10. www.practicaldreamwork.com 

SUNDAY, APRIL 11 

Before Sunrise Birdwalk Greet the dawn and learn the songs of our avian friends. Meet at 6 a.m. at Tilden Nature Center. 525-2233. 

Easter Sunrise with Epworth United Methodist Church at 6:39 a.m. at the foot of Cesar Chavez Park overlooking the Bay. We will greet the sunrise with music, readings and hot cocoa. 524-2921. 

Who Was Easter? Look for sign of spring and learn the lore and customs of Eostre and her bunny companion. From 1 to 2:30 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center. 525-2233. 

Golden State Model Railroad Museum open from noon to 5 p.m. Also open on Saturdays and Friday evenings from 7 to 10 p.m. Located in the Miller-Knox Regional Shoreline Park at 900-A Dornan Drive in Pt. Richmond. Admission is $2-$3. 234-4884 or www.gsmrm.org 

“Cracking the Easter Egg” with Sarah Lewis of the GTU, at 9:30 a.m. at Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, 1 Lawson Rd., Kensington. 525-0302, ext. 306. 

Tibetan Buddhism, with Lama Palzang and Pema Gellek on “Cultivating the Essential Link of Devotion” at 6 p.m. at the Tibetan Nyingma Institute, 1815 Highland Pl. 843-6812. www.nyingmainstitute.com 

Eckhart Tolle Talks on Video, free gatherings at 6:30 p.m. to hear the words of the author of “The Power of Now” at the Feldenkrais Ctr., 830 Bancroft Way. 415.990.8977 or mayahealer@yahoo.com.  

MONDAY, APRIL 12 

Tea at Four Enjoy some of the best teas from the other side of the Pacific Rim and learn their cultural and natural history. Then take a walk to see nesting birds and flowering shrubs, from 4 to 5:30 p.m. at Tilden Nature Area, in Tilden Park. Registration required. Cost is $5 for residents, $7 for non-residents. Wheelchair accessible. 525-2233. 

“Peace and Prosperity in Colombia?” a talk on indigenous communities’ response to drugs and warfare with Floro Tunubalá at 4 p.m. in Room 223, Moses Hall. Sponsored by the Center for Latin American Studies. 642-2088. www.clas.berkeley.edu 

“Iron Jawed Angels” a film depicting the strength, courage and perseverance of the 2nd generation suffragettes in their struggle to secure the vote for women. At 1 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Everyone welcome. Refreshments will be provided. 644-0480. 

Women’s Cancer Resource Center, volunteer training, every second Monday of the month, from 6 to 8 p.m. at 5741 Telegraph Ave. To sign up call Emily at 601-4040, ext. 109. emily@wcrc.org 

Fitness for 55+ A total body workout including aerobics, stretching and strengthening at 1:15 p.m. every Monday at the South Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5170. 

Baby Yoga Learn how to soothe your infant. Bring a pillow, blanket, mat and olive oil. at 11 a.m. at Belladonna, 2436 Sacramento St. Admission by donation. 883-0600. 

Yoga and Meditation for Children from 2:45 to 3:45 p.m. at at Belladonna, 2436 Sacramento St. Admission by donation. 883-0600. 

Berkeley CopWatch organizational meeting at 8 p.m. at 2022 Blake St. Join us to work on current issues around police misconduct. Volunteers needed. For information call 548-0425. 

TUESDAY, APRIL 13 

Morning Birdwalk in Wildcat Canyon. Meet at 7 a.m. at the end of Rifle Range Rd. in Richmond. 525-2233. 

“How Animal Lineages Diversify: Implications for Evolutionary and Conservation Biology,” with David B. Wake, professor emeritus of Integrative Biology, UCB, at 5 p.m., Berkeley Art Museum Theater, 2621 Durant Ave. 

“The Housing Crisis” with US Congresswoman Barbara Lee at 1:30 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Also speaking, Steve Barton, City of Berkeley Housing Director, and Wanda Remmers, Director, Housing Rights, Inc. Sponsored by Strawberry Creek Lodge Tenants and Gray Panthers of the East Bay. 548-9696. www.savehud.org 

“Diaspora and Homeland Development” A conference to discuss Haiti, the Philippines, Mexico, Palestine, Morocco, India, Pakistan, Armenia, Iran and Nigeria. Co-sponsored by the Institute of International Studies, the Center for Urban Ethnography, the Center for Latin American Studies and the Institute of Governmental Studies. From 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. in Room 223, Moses Hall, UC Campus. 642-2088. 

“Desalination Issues in the United States” with Kevin Price, Water Treatment Engineering, U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, at 5:30 p.m. in 105 North Gate Hall, UC Campus. Sponsored by the Water Resources Center Archives. 642-2666. 

“Where are You on Your Writer's Journey?” with Teresa LeYung Ryan, author, at 7 p.m. at Boadecia’s Books, 398 Colusa Ave., at Colusa Circle, Kensington. $10-$20 sliding scale donation to support this independent bookstore, no one will be turned away for lack of funds. 559-9184. www.bookpride.com  

Writers Workshop on how to hire and work with a freelance publicist at 7:30 p.m. at Barnes and Noble, 2352 Shattuck Ave. 644-0861. 

Introduction to Yiddish Folk Singing Workshop with Michael Alpert, from 7:30 to 9:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church, 27th and Harrison Sts. Cost is $20. Registration required. 444-0323. www.kitka.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. Monthly field trips. 548-3991. www.berkeleycameraclub.org 

St. John’s Prime Timers meets at 9:30 a.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. Volunteer Recognition Luncheon. We offer ongoing classes in exercise and creative arts, and always welcome new members over 50. 845-6830. 

Tuesday Tilden Walkers We are a few slowpoke seniors who walk between a mile or two each Tuesday, meeting at 9:30 a.m. in the Little Farm parking lot. To join us, call 215-7672 for information or check our web page, http://home.comcast.net/~teachme99/tildenwalkers.html or email teachme99@comcast.net 

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 14 

“Zapatista Women” a documentary about the indigenous women soldiers of the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (EZLN), at 7 p.m. at The Fellowship of Humanity, 390 27th St., Oakland 393-5685. 

Tai Chi Exercises for Two People with Jonathan Russell, senior student of Master T.T. Liang, from 7 to 9 p.m. at Elephant Pharmacy, 1607 Shattuck Ave. 549-9200. www.elephantpharmacy.com  

Intermediate/Advanced Yiddish Folk Singing Workshop with Michael Alpert, from 7:30 to 9:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church, 27th and Harrison Sts. Cost is $20. Registration required. 444-0323. www.kitka.org 

Fun with Acting Class every Wednesday at 11 a.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Free, all are welcome, no experience necessary.  

Berkeley Stop the War Coalition meets every Wednesday at 7 p.m. in 255 Dwinelle, UC Campus. www.berkeleystopthewar.org  

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

com/vigil4peace/vigil 

THURSDAY, APRIL 15 

The Berkeley Path Wanderers General Meeting, free and open from 7 to 9 p.m. at the Live Oak Park Rec Center, 1301 Shattuck Ave. Alan Kaplan, a member of East Bay Parks, will talk about East Bay birds. 524-4715. 

Golden Gate Audubon Society presents, “An Exploration of Chile’s Birds” at 7:30 p.m. at the Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. 843-2222. www.goldengateaudubon.org 

“Taking Exception to the Rulers” An evening with Amy Goodman, Michael Franti and David Goodman. The short film “Independent Media In a Time of War” will be shown. This event celebrates the 55th anniversary of KPFA Radio. At 7:30 p.m. King Middle School 1781 Rose St. Tickets are $15 advance, $20 door, available at independent bookstores. 848-6767, ext. 612. www.kpfa.org  

“Perspectives on a Changing Haiti” A discussion with Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-CA) at 7 p.m. in the Lounge, Women’s Faculty Club, UC Campus. Sponsored by the Center for Latin American Studies. 642-2088. www.clas.berkeley.edu 

“The Snail as Architect” Design and construction with biominerals with Carole Hickman, UCB professor of Integrative Biology at 12:30 p.m. at the Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak Sts. 238-2200. www.museumca.org 

UC Berkeley Charter Day Events from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. with a ceremony honoring outgoing Chancellor Robert Berdahl at 3 p.m. in Zellerbach Auditorium. www.urel.berkeley.edu/charterday 

ONGOING 

Project Open Hand’s Senior Lunch Program is welcoming new participants in the East Bay. For information, please call 415-447-2300 or email seniors@openhand.org. 

Help Protect Berkeley’s Public Trees by campaigning for a Berkeley Public Tree Act. To learn more and help call 594-4088, or visit www.BerkeleyIssues.org 

Find a Loving Animal Companion at the Berkeley-East Bay Humane Society Adoption Center, from 11 a.m. - 7 p.m. Tue. - Sun. 2700 Ninth St. 845-7735. www.berkeleyhumane.org  

Medical Care for Your Pet at the Berkeley-East Bay Humane Society low-cost veterinary clinic. 2700 Ninth St. For appointments call 845-3633. www.berkeleyhumane.org  

Art Show Submissions for The Oakland Animal Shelter The art gallery in the large adoption area displays art from local artists that depicts animals in a positive light. Submissions for the May show can be sent to art@oaklandanimalservices.org or by mail to Megan Webb, Community Outreach Program Manager, 1101 29th Ave., Oakland, CA 94601. Samples will not be returned without a stamped/self addressed return envelope. All submissions should be received by April 20, 2004. 

Spring Bulb Bonanza at the Botanical Garden, 10:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. to April 15, 200 Centennial Drive. 643-2755. http:// 

botanicalgarden.berkeley.edu 

CITY MEETINGS 

Council Agenda Committee meets Mon., Apr. 12, at 2:30 p.m., at 2180 Milvia St., Sherry M. Kelly, city clerk, 981-6900. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/citycouncil/agenda-committee 

Four by Four Joint Task Force on Housing Members of City Council and the Rent Board meet Mon. Apr. 12, at 5:30 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Stephen Barton, 981-5400. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/4x4/default.htm 

Landmarks Preservation Commission meets Mon. Apr. 12, at 7:30 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Gisele Sorensen, 981-7419. www.ci. 

berkeley.ca.us/commissions/landmarks 

Commission on Disability meets Apr. 14, at 6:30 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Paul Church, 981-6342. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/disability 

Homeless Commission meets Wed., Apr. 14, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Jane Micallef, 981-5426. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/homeless 

Library Board of Trustees meets Wed., Apr. 14, at 7 p.m. at 1170 The Alameda. Jackie Y. Griffin, 981-6195. www.ci.ber- 

keley.ca.us/commissions/library  

Planning Commission meets Wed., Apr. 14, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Ruth Grimes, 981-7481. www.ci. 

berkeley.ca.us/commissions/planning 

Police Review Commission meets Wed. Apr. 14, at 7:30 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center, Barbara Attard, 981-4950. www.ci.berkeley. 

ca.us/commissions/policereview 

Waterfront Commission meets Wed., Apr. 14, at 7 p.m., at 201 University Ave. Cliff Marchetti. 644-6376 ext. 224. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/waterfront 

Design Review Committee meets Thurs. Apr. 15, at 7:30 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Anne Burns, 981-7415. www.ci.berkeley. 

ca.us/commissions/designreview  

Fair Campaign Practices Commission meets Thurs., Apr. 15, at 7:30 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Prasanna Rasaih, 981-6950. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/faircampaign 

Transportation Commission meets Thurs., Apr. 15, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Peter Hillier, 981-7000. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/ 

commissions/transportationÅ


Former BHS Standout, NFL Champion Dies at 46

By MATTHEW ARTZ
Friday April 09, 2004

Lawrence McGrew, a Berkeley High football standout who finished his NFL career a Super Bowl champion, died last Friday of a suspected heart attack. He was 46. 

McGrew was celebrating his tenth wedding anniversary with his wife Charyce at their home in Lancaster, in north Los Angeles County, when he suddenly collapsed. “We were having a good time, then he just walked over to my left and started to slump,” she said. “I could just tell by the way he was falling down that something was wrong.” 

The 6-foot 5-inch, 260-pound former linebacker was taken to an area hospital where he was pronounced dead. A representative for the county coroners office said a toxicology report had not been completed. McGrew suffered from high blood pressure, his wife said. The couple had two children together, ages 4 and 7. 

Charyce McGrew described her husband as a jokester, who never got caught up in his fame and remained totally devoted to his family. When he was on the road, she said, he would call 10 times a day. “I would pick up the phone and tease him and say ‘what do you want stalker?’ If he went two hours without calling, I knew something was wrong,” she said. 

McGrew spent plenty of time dialing his friends too, said Wendell Tyler, a former running back for the San Francisco 49ers. “He’d always get up early and call all his buddies and wake them up, he said. “You could expect a call from Larry ever day.”  

Harold Williams, a friend of McGrew’s since they attended the now defunct Franklin Elementary School in Berkeley together, said he could only remember two or three days that McGrew hadn’t called him since he retired from the NFL in 1991. 

The two met one Saturday while riding their bikes on competing paper routes. Williams was distributing the Berkeley Gazette and McGrew worked for the Oakland Tribune. They began talking and learned they both had dogs named Sparkly. 

“It was instant karma—we had the same off-beat sense of humor,” Williams said. The two spent their days playing sports and walking the trails at Tilden Park, sometimes jumping out from the bushes to scare people. 

At Berkeley High, Williams said, McGrew was a beloved cut-up. “We’d put on shows for people. People wanted to see us act goofy,” he said. McGrew, though, took football seriously. He lifted weights religiously and made second team all-county as a senior, despite suffering a broken ankle. 

After a year at Contra Costa College, he enrolled at USC where he starred on a team that won a share of the national championship his junior year. Artie Gigantino, the press secretary for the Oakland Raiders, joined the team as an assistant coach for McGrew’s senior year, and remembered the linebacker as a cool customer. “My first game as a coach I was literally upchucking in the locker room and Larry put his arm around me and said, ‘Relax, we’re USC, we always win.” 

McGrew spent most of his 11-year NFL career with the New England Patriots. He led the team in tackles in 1985, the year the Patriots made it to the Super Bowl, but is best known for being the defender William “The Refrigerator” Perry stampeded over for a touchdown in the Chicago Bears victory over the Patriots in the championship game. His friend Williams said that when a teammate asked McGrew if he was all right as he lay on the ground after the play, McGrew replied, “I’m OK, but I’m going to be on ESPN for the rest of my life.” 

Injuries took their toll on McGrew, who ended his career as a reserve on the 1990 Super Bowl Champion New York Giants. Though his skills deteriorated, Charyce said, McGrew’s spirits were always high. “Larry never sulked. I can’t remember him ever complaining,” she said. “For him, it was just work.” 

An inoperable neck injury made it difficult for McGrew to work after his football days were over, Charyce said. Tyler, also a resident of Lancaster, said he and McGrew often exercised together at a local gym. He said McGrew made friends with everyone and never played up his NFL past. “He was never Lawrence McGrew the football player, he was always just Larry.” 

But even though McGrew didn’t want to play up his days as a pro football player, someone wanted to do it for him. Last year McGrew was the victim of a highly publicized case of identity theft. A Nevada resident, Fred McGrew, made headlines when he was arrested for posing as the football star to get a job as a football coach at Gavilan College in Gilroy.  

“He wasn’t a happy camper about that one,” said Charyce. Not only was the impostor only six feet tall, he claimed to have gone to school in Cincinnati. 

McGrew moved his family back to the Bay Area after his playing days were over to be close to his parents and his three children from a previous marriage. After a few years the couple moved to Lancaster to be closer to Charyce’s family. Tyler said McGrew would drive to Berkeley every month to visit his mother and children. 

During their last conversation, the day before he died, Tyler said McGrew was planning to go Berkeley Friday to visit his mother, who is on dialysis, but then realized Friday was his anniversary. “That was Larry,” he said. “He was always on the go helping others.” 


Police Blotter

By RICHARD BRENNEMAN
Friday April 09, 2004

Inebriated student sparks campus hazing probe  

The collapse of a 19-year-old UC student on a South Berkeley sidewalk last Friday has triggered a UC Berkeley police investigation of what they suspect may have been an incident of sorority hazing. 

Just one week earlier, police were summoned to the Regent Street apartment of a 21-year-old university student, Steve Saucedo, who had died from acute alcohol poisoning following a drinking binge with friends from Southern California. 

The incidents come as state Alcoholic Beverage Control (ABC) officers—teamed with officers from the Berkeley and UC police departments and underage decoys—have been running stings on city booze sellers. 

The first raids in early January targeted San Pablo Avenue merchants, where more than half the stores sold booze to minors. A March 19 sweep along Telegraph Avenue and other locations near campus found 14 of the 26 targeted stores willing to sell to minors. 

The stings are being run with the help of $50,000 ABC grants to police departments in Berkeley, Santa Barbara, Los Angeles, Irvine, San Diego and Santa Cruz. 

State Attorney General Bill Lockyer Thursday announced the formation of a expanded statewide program designed to curb underage drinking by targeting stores, restaurants and bars. 

“We have seen too many tragedies involving underage drinking, and we all must do our part to prevent them,” Lockyer said. 

Target Responsibility for Alcohol Connected Emergencies (TRACE) evolved from a task force Lockyer formed last year after a 20-year-old student was killed by a drunk driver in March, 2003. 

TRACE combines the efforts of the Attorney General’s office, ABC, the California Highway Patrol, the state Office of Traffic Safety, the California Police Chiefs Association, the California State Sheriff’s Association, and Mothers Against Drunk Driving. 

 

South Berkeley home invasion arrest  

Berkeley Police arrested a 31-year-old Oakland man following a home invasion robbery shortly after midnight Wednesday that resulted in minor injuries to the resident of a home in the 2500 block of Dana Street. 

Two suspects remain at large, said BPD spokesperson Kevin Schofield, who also said the robbery doesn’t appear to be a random incident. 

Twayne Dill was booked into city jail and held in lieu of $20,000 bail. 

A three-hour search that included Oakland Police dogs, turned up a handgun believed to have been used in the crime, but not the other two suspects. They remain at large. 

 

Armed suspect pepper sprays merchant  

Armed with a pistol and a canister of pepper spray, a bandit walked into the Unitech Electronics store at 2594 Telegraph Ave. shortly before noon Tuesday and demanded cash. 

The cash register drawer was empty because the store had just opened for the day, so the frustrated thief blasted with hapless victim with a pungent stream of capsacin and fled in a white four-door car. 

The clerk was rushed to Alta Bates Summit medical Center, where he was treated and released. 

Police have made no arrests in the case, said Officer Schofield. 

s


Reports of Bio-Diesel Ban Are Untrue, Says Eco Center

—Jakob Schiller
Friday April 09, 2004

Recently-circulated reports of a ban on the sale of bio-diesel in California are not true, according to Dave Williamson of the Ecology Center in Berkeley. 

  Williamson, Recycling Operations Manager for the Ecology Center, said that despite efforts by both the Engine Manufacturers Association and ChevronTexaco Corporation to put roadblocks in the bio-diesel fuel regulation process, the California Department of Weights and Measures has opted only to regulate the fuel more thoroughly, not ban it outright.   

  In Berkeley, the entire public works fleet of diesel vehicles runs on bio-diesel. That includes fire trucks, school busses, recycling trucks and solid waste trucks. Williamson said that even if there were a state ban on the sale of bio-diesell fuel to consumers, Berkeley would be exempt because the city is classified as a fleet and not a consumer.  

 

—Jakob Schiller


West Contra Costa Hospital May Close

Friday April 09, 2004

SAN PABLO —A hospital that provides the majority of emergency care to West Contra Costa County residents could be shut down unless voters approve Measure D, a $1 per week parcel tax that would fund hospital operations, Contra Costa County Supervisor John Gioia and West Contra Costa Healthcare District officials said in a news conference on Thursday. 

Doctors Medical Center in San Pablo is a 234-bed hospital that sees 43,000 emergency room visitors a year and has the only helicopter pad in the area. 

“Two hundred thousand West County residents depend on the hospital and this issue is a matter of life and death,” Gioia said. 

The West Contra Costa Healthcare District owns the hospital and pays Tenet Healthcare Corp. to manage it. Tenet has decided not to renew its contract and as of July 31, the district will take over operations, Tenet spokesman David Langness said. 

To stay open, the district needs a $40 million loan to pay hospital employees and to fund operational expenses for three months, West Contra Costa Healthcare District Director Beverly Wallace said. 

If voters pass Measure D, the district would use the money generated to repay the loan, Wallace said. If the measure doesn’t pass, the hospital will be shut down, district officials said. 

The district paid an outside agency to determine the potential impact of closing the hospital. The agency’s findings were revealed in a report released at today’s news conference. The report said shutting down the hospital will have a “substantial effect on local health care providers and the public’’ and it will “disproportionately affect Kaiser Permanente, the only other medical facility in the area.’’ 

“Let me put it into perspective: people are going to die,” said Dr. Laurel Hodgson, assistant director of the emergency room at Doctors Medical Center. “By 10:15 a.m., Kaiser will be diverting ambulances to other hospitals so between the hours of 10:00 a.m. and 10 p.m., don’t let your kids fall off the monkey bars,’’ she said. 

The fate of Measure D will be determined by West County voters who will receive ballots sometime after May 10, according to Measure D spokesman Raymond Ehrlich. Voters must send in their ballots for this special election by June 8. 

 

—Bay City NewsÃ


Civil Lawsuit Settled In Reddy Sex-Slave Case

Friday April 09, 2004

SAN FRANCISCO—A civil lawsuit filed against a Berkeley landlord by four natives of India who claimed they were sexually abused or exploited for cheap labor was settled in federal court in San Francisco on Wednesday just before the start of a trial. 

The lawsuit was filed against Lakireddy Bali Reddy by a teenage girl, by the estate of the girl’s deceased sister and by another man and woman who came from India to work in Reddy’s businesses. 

The lawsuit alleged that both girls were raped, defrauded and denied minimum wages in businesses owned by Reddy after Reddy brought them to Berkeley in 1999. 

The alleged abuse came to light after one sister, 14-year-old Vani Prattipati, died of carbon monoxide fumes in a Berkeley apartment owned by Reddy in 1999. The surviving sister, identified as Jane Doe, was 15 at the time. 

The other two plaintiffs claimed they were fraudulently lured to the United States for non-existent jobs and then denied minimum wages in menial jobs. 

Reddy, 67, pleaded guilty three years ago in a separate federal criminal case to charges of violating immigration laws and bringing girls from India to the United States for illegal sexual purposes. 

He is serving an eight-year prison sentence at Lompoc federal prison but appeared in federal court in a business suit this morning for the scheduled opening statements in the civil trial. 

But instead of opening the trial, U.S. District Judge William Alsup told the jury, “Part of this case has now been eliminated.’’ 

The remainder of the lawsuit was settled later in the day, according to lawyers in the case. 

Attorneys on both sides declined to give the amount of the financial settlement, but said their clients were pleased with the resolution. 

Michael Rubin, a lawyer for the surviving sister and for the family of Vani Prattipati, “They will now have financial security. They’re never going to be able to forget what happened, but they have gained some amount of justice and they’re satisfied with the result.” 

Rubin said the surviving sister, who is now 19, and her parents have been granted political asylum and live in an undisclosed location in Northern California. 

The attorney said the parents and Jane Doe also settled a separate wrongful death and personal injury lawsuit pending against Reddy in Alameda County Superior Court. 

In addition to Reddy, the defendants in the federal lawsuit were two of his sons, two of his brothers, and nine businesses allegedly owned by Reddy and other family members. 

Michael Bolechowski, a lawyer for Reddy, said, “The whole Lakireddy family is just grateful that the whole case is behind them. They are looking forward to getting their lives in order just as the plaintiffs are going to be able to get their lives in order.’’ 

Bolechowski said preparing for the now canceled trial “was a painful experience for everyone.’’ 

In the criminal case, Reddy was ordered to pay $2 million in restitution to four victims. Bolechowski said Reddy paid the restitution within several days of being sentenced in 2001. 

 

—Bay City Newsœ


UnderCurrents: Just Say Go: An Exit Strategy for the Iraq War

J. DOUGLAS ALLEN-TAYLOR
Friday April 09, 2004

A friend and I were speaking this week about events in Iraq—what else?—and she posed the questions that haunt many Democrats who came of age in the Vietnam war era: If John Kerry wins in November, how does he extricate the country from the Iraqi war? Even under a Kerry presidency, aren’t we looking at months—perhaps even years—of continued American military occupation while the new administration seeks out that elusive “peace with honor”? 

Back to that, in a moment, while I collect some random thoughts... 

I’m no religious scholar, but it’s my understanding that the differences between the Shi’ite and Sunni Muslims began shortly after the Prophet Muhammad died in 632 of the common era, almost 1,400 years ago. It is clear that the division between the Iraqi Shi’ites and Sunnis was fairly significant prior to the American invasion of Iraq a year ago, and—if one recalls both television and newspaper accounts during the past year—the Bush administration counted pretty heavily on those divisions in plotting their occupation plans. Former President Saddam Hussein, we are told, oppressed the Shi’ites and favored the Sunnis in his administration, and the Shi’ites, therefore, would welcome our presence in the country. 

And up until this week, it appeared that Iraqi resentment of and opposition to the U.S. occupation was centered in the Sunni neighborhoods. 

That, we now know, is no longer completely true, if it was ever true. We find that over here in the states, we know very little about Muslims in general and Iraqis in particular, and we are beginning to choke on that ignorance. 

The Shi’ites and the Sunnis have been at odds for the past 1,400 years or so, and if their coming together to fight a perceived common opponent in the dusty Iraqi backstreets invites jokes of “well, after all, Bush did say he’d be a uniter”…with the body bags loading up on American transport planes and graves springing up like spring flowers in Iraqi stadiums, it just doesn’t seem quite funny. 

Our good friends, the British, and our used-to-be-good-friends, the French, might have given us a bit of advice on the subject of the perils to be avoided in empire-building, had we taken the time to listen. One might even try a taking look at Gibbons’ Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire, somewhere amongst its three volumes one might be expected to find some useful clues. 

The Bush administration, however, insists that we are not in Iraq to build American empire, but to bring democracy to the Iraqi people. Democracy, we are told—or at least, Thomas Jefferson told us, and he’s supposed to be one of the world’s leading authorities thereon—begins with a free press. Our present troubles with the Shi’ites began when we shut down the newspaper of a Shi’ite leader which was publishing things of which the Americans did not approve. We have also been teaching the Iraqis on the intricacies of elections, informing them that they are free to choose for their leaders anyone they want when we turn the country back over to them this summer, so long as the leaders they choose are not on the list of those banned from the Iraqi political process by the American occupying forces. 

Thus, we introduce our views of government to the world. 

President Kennedy, no stranger to war-making or empire-building himself, once said that the way to spread democracy to other countries was to strengthen it at home, making it so desirable a system that everyone in his right mind would want to adopt it. I have no idea how serious Kennedy was on the subject, but it was an interesting thought. Gone are the days, aren’t they? 

If the Bush administration does not want to look to the Democrats for examples, there are plenty to be had among former Republican presidents. Theodore Roosevelt—another made famous by both war-making and empire-building—is most known for the motto “speak softly and carry a big stick,” an admonition to not boast, or unnecessarily stir up enemies. Contrast that to President Bush’s call of “bring it on!”, one of the least-thoughtful admonitions of our time. Sure, they cheered it in Crawford. But the were also listening in Kut and Najaf and the backstreets of Baghdad. 

“I can call spirits from the vasty deep,” says Glendower. “But will they come when you do call for them?” Hotspur replies. This time, unfortunately, they may have complied. 

Anyhow, having declared that we are not in Iraq to build empire, we see no useful value in a public discussion of the perils thereof. And since there is not much public discourse of the problems of spreading democracy—of which we insist we are about—that pretty much leaves us to chart our own territory. 

There are certain situations, we learn in the wisdom of our eldering age, where there is simply nothing we can do to help, and our very presence makes things worse. The most skilled police domestic crisis intervention officers understand that, and know when it is best simply to leave so that the parties themselves can work out a solution. 

Americans—big and bold and brash that we are—operate under the impression that just about any problem we set out to solve can be solved…it’s merely a matter of will. Curing cancer or AIDS. Returning to the moon, or venturing beyond, to Mars. We could do them, we tend to believe, if only we could rally the country and put our ingenuity, energy and pocketbooks to the task. 

Maybe. But there are some problems which are beyond our ability to solve. Not someone else’s ability. Our ability. And the mess we have made in Iraq might be one of them. 

Aside from all the other bad things about it, the American occupation of Iraq has made the world more dangerous for Americans, not less dangerous. We cannot correct the chaos we have caused in Iraq, no matter how hard we might want to, and our continued presence is a magnet drawing violence and bloodshed to it. 

What could a President Kerry do next January to extricate the United States from Iraq? Sign the order. Withdraw the soldiers. Someone else will have to clean up the mess because, unfortunately, all we have in our power to do right now is to make it messier.


Letters to the Editor

Friday April 09, 2004

ONE YEAR 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I congratulate the Daily Planet for hanging in there a whole year—the first of many, I hope, giving us facts to set beside the abstract slogans we hear too often. I never miss an issue, and this is the only publication I read in which I never skip the ads. I want your advertisers to know that if it they are selling anything I need, they are the first people I’ll patronize. 

Dorothy Bryant 

 

• 

DOWNTOWN VACANCIES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Your story quoted the city’s Economic Project Coordinators as not having had an update (on downtown vacancies) since a year ago (“See’s, Gateway Closings Jolt Downtown Retail Outlook,” Daily Planet, April 2-5). What, pray tell, is in the person’s job description? 

Two other reasons for the vacancies, which your interviewees were too polite to mention, were 1) the deplorable conditions on Shattuck Avenue with encampments and spare change artists, shopping carts, etc. which discourage anyone with a choice from coming to downtown Berkeley to Shop and 2) the inordinate expense of time and money it takes to get a business permit through the morass at City Hall. 

Out of town business owners have a choice of where to locate, and they take these factors into their decision-making process. Wouldn’t you? 

Steve Schneider 

 

• 

OPEN ARMS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I was really puzzled by the remark made by John Gordon in the article about commercial storefronts in Berkeley (“See’s, Gateway Closings Jolt Downtown Retail Outlook,” Daily Planet, April 2-5). He said “The worst news I’ve heard in a long time is that the former Pier One Store [at 1814 University Ave.] is becoming a Salvation Army.” What nonsense on several levels.  

For starters we don’t need more empty storefronts sitting empty waiting for the “perfect” tenant. The City of Berkeley has a habit of subsidizing these so called perfect tenants (Eddie Bauer, etc.) only to have them leave on the whim of a faceless corporate board. I’ve also noticed that thrift stores don’t go out of business that often. As I understand it, Salvation Army also provides valuable services to people who are down and out seeking a second chance. 

If a business isn’t doing anything illegal and its goods and services are in demand why not welcome them with open arms? I own a business on University a block a way and I look forward to having them as neighbors! 

Richard Crowl  

 

• 

CERRITO THEATER 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Dave Yandle (Letters, Daily Planet, April 2-5) and others interested in updated news about the Cerrito Theater might want to check out the website cerritotheater.org. I believe they will be quite happy to hear the status of the Cerrito, not the least of which is that Speakeasy Theaters, operators of Oakland’s Parkway, is planning to operate the Cerrito as well. 

Now if only something could be done with the UC... 

Garrett Murphy 

Oakland 

 

• 

SIERRA CLUB 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Ms. Burke’s letter (Daily Planet, March 26-29) reminds me of why I quit the Sierra Club the last time the immigration issue came up. In 1998, if you expressed an interest in discussing or exploring the impacts of population growth and immigration on the environment it was promptly construed as an anti-immigrant bias, with overtones of racism. The same things appear to be happening this time. Ms. Burke claims that the “anti-immigration slate” wants to redirect club priorities into anti-immigration issues. This is certainly not what I wanted, and it is not what I have been reading in the communications from the Sierrans for U.S. Population Stability (SUSPS). 

I hope that most people recognize that population control is a necessary component of any long-range plan for environmental protection. It may be that you can deal with population growth without dealing with immigration, but you can’t know that unless you are willing to first ask the question and do some work to find the answers. I find it disturbing that “mainstream” Sierrans are unwilling to ask this question themselves, but I find it even more disturbing that they denigrate the motives of those who do wish to. The message this sends to people makes the Sierra Club part of the problem instead of part of the solution. 

My response to the club’s disappointing attitude towards open discussion was to redirect my money and efforts to some of the many other environmental organizations available, and to join two groups that are involved in the population issue: EngenderHealth (www.engenderhealth.org) and the Population Connection (www.populationconnection.org). Current Sierrans may want to consider similar options if the club still refuses to consider the environmental effects of population growth. 

Robert Clear 

 

• 

ACACIA TREE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Today my respect for Berkeley City Government increased tenfold. 

Three days ago, I discovered a notice on the Black Acacia tree in Oak Park, informing the neighborhood that the tree’s days were numbered. At some unspecified time during the next 30 days, the Berkeley Parks, Recreation and Waterfront Department would chop down this beautiful Acacia which shades the entire park. The notice invited me to contact Jerry Koch, the department’s Senior Forestry Supervisor, with questions or comments. 

Serendipitously, the next day I threw a big “Beat Bush” event for Party For America, and found myself surrounded by my neighbors. No one wanted to loose the tree, so we all signed a petition requesting that it be allowed to live out its years into peaceful retirement. 

Yesterday I left messages both for Jerry Koch and my council representative Gordon Wozniak. This morning, Jerry called me back. When I told him about the neighborhood consensus, he was pleased to change the plans - “the tree is not in immediate danger of falling” he told me, and there is no problem with leaving it standing.  

Thank you Jerry. Together, we all saved the tree. Now I’m that much more confident that working together, we can beat the Bush. 

Robert Vogel 

 

• 

AC TRANSIT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Thanks to Daily Planet reporter Richard Brenneman for a detailed story about the just-passed federal Transportation Equity Act funding ACT’s “controversial” and outrageous Telegraph Avenue express bus lane reconfiguration scheme (“Local Projects Pass in House, Senate,” Daily Planet, April 6-8). Those details you wrote correctly inform readers of what’s been cooked up for our communities central and major arterial by the public transportation bureaucrats—without the communities knowledge or consent. 

I question ACT’s accuracy when they claim 40,000 current ridership on Telegraph Avenue buses, and that projected 20,000 ridership increase figure being used by ACT’s planners to justify shrinking Telegraph Avenue down to a one-lane street from Broadway in downtown Oakland to UC Berkeley. Your factual details are helping the community to understand that a possible regional transportation disaster is being planned by AC Transit. 

Robert Pratt 

 

• 

BOALT HALL BLUES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The annual U.S. News and World Report rankings of law schools, released earlier this month, show the University of California, Berkeley, slipping once again: seventh place two years ago, tenth last year, now thirteenth (“Boalt Hall Maintains Solid Reputation,” April 6). No law school in the top 20 has fallen as sharply as Boalt Hall has in the last two years. While lawyers say that the rankings do not matter, a slip of nearly 100 percent does. 

The bad news is that the rankings were affected by Boalt’s poor student-faculty ratio and meager financial resources, which are among the lowest in the nation. 

And Boalt’s rank is not the only thing falling. During constitutional law class today, I leaned back slightly in my chair to sip some water, and it broke. I spilled the water on my shirt and pants as I fell backward, in front of my classmates and professor. 

Despite the bad news, Boalt is still the second ranked law school west of the Mississippi River, trailing Stanford. And, with lower fees than our rival across the Bay, Boalt may be the best value in legal education between Chicago and the Pacific Ocean. 

The real blessing of the rankings, however, is that Boalt’s lackluster performance will call attention to Governor Schwarzenegger’s untimely budget proposal. It recommends 40 percent fee hikes for law students, after we endured a 48 percent increase last year. This proposal is also unfair, because the extra money taken from law students would go toward paying California’s debt—not a dime to Boalt Hall. 

If California wants Boalt Hall to remain the model of public legal education, Sacramento politicians should take heed of the rankings by repairing our classrooms and chairs and by hiring more professors. Legislators should then reduce the proposed fee increase and return to its rightful place the money that students shell out for their law degrees. 

Mark Massoud 

UC Berkeley School of Law (Boalt Hall) 

 

• 

BULLYING 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Jan Goodman’s assertion that bullying and harassment exists in all schools is probably correct (“Bullying Article Was a One-Sided Attack on MLK Middle School,” Daily Planet, April 6-8). But, as the parent of a former Berkeley middle school student who endured months of intimidation and brutality from his fellow students, I would feel more optimistic if Ms. Goodman spent less time defending and more time explaining what the school has done to protect students.  

It sounds like everyone at King is doing a l lot of talking and discussing. How about some concrete action? Are the targets of bullies, like Dominique Reed, still put in solitary confinement at recess? Can students count on getting help if they ask for it? Or do they still need to defend themselves, and possibly face suspension?  

I think your reporter, Matthew Artz, was accused of a one-sided attack because he ignored King’s “sea of words” and focussed instead on the incident reporting system recently established at Willard. Unlike Ms. Goodman’s litany of discussions and training, the incident reporting system is a concrete change that will help the school identify chronic bullies and their targets. That kind of system could have helped my son. 

Laurie Leiber 

Oakland 

 

• 

TAKING AN OATH 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Recently at the public library I read in the January issue of Vanity Fair David Rose’s detailed and horrifying article “Guantanamo Bay on Trial.” This evening I watched on public television a two-hour long review of the cowardice of the developed countries of the West, and of the U.S. in particular during the holocaust in Rwanda. 

Put aside “under God,” Allah, Yahweh, Buddha, or who-or-what-ever. To strengthen their children’s ability to think critically, and to help them make sound moral judgments, present-day U.S. parents who still believe rote oath-taking has merit would do well to have their off-spring recite this up-to-date pledge to the flag: 

“I forswear allegiance to the flag of the Dis-united States of America and to the republic for which it stands, on nation now divided, denying liberty and justice for all—especially at Guantanamo, and for non-whites.” 

Judith Segard Hunt 

 

• 

POPULATION BOOM 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I read with horror that “in the next 10 years thousands of new residents” will be jammed into University Avenue (“Fighting to Save What We Have on University Avenue, Daily Planet, March 26-29). And I’m here to tell you: This is just the beginning! The California population is projected to increase form 34 million to 60 million over the next 20 years, almost entirely from our insane level of Mass Immigration. Does anybody out there happen to know where the endless millions of new homes are where these people are going to live? There’s only one solution to the looming nightmare that is now staring us in the face. Will the geniuses of Berkeley be able to figure out what that solution is? 

Peter Labriola 

 

 

 


State Law Should Back Volunteer Efforts

By Susan Schwartz
Friday April 09, 2004

As a gray-haired 60-year-old whose activism, such as it is, started with Free Speech Movement sit-ins, I find it ironic to be back to civil disobedience.  

But as volunteers with one of the Bay Area’s many local creek-restoration groups, here we are lawbreaking—from schoolchildren who pick up litter and plant flowers, to working folks who get their exercise by building trails on weekends, to retired ladies who chat while pulling invasive weeds.  

Why? The California Department of Industrial Relations is enforcing a poorly written state law that says that anyone who works on a state-funded public works project must receive prevailing wages. This now been interpreted to include volunteers. There are some exceptions, but they are narrow and require case-by-case approval—not workable for the thousands of small volunteer groups who just want to give something back to their communities. 

Violators—like a Redding-area nonprofit that let students earn course credit for watershed restoration, or volunteers caring for grass on kids’ ballfields—face heavy fines. A major grant program that requires community partnership in restoration projects has been put on hold. Projects are being redesigned to do less at higher cost, using only paid work. If state funds are involved (think parks, schools, clinics) hands-on education is out, as is enjoying your free time by doing something positive with others. 

Almost everyone recognizes this as absurd. Legislators who wrote and supported the laws say that’s not what they meant. Organized labor is not clamoring to outlaw volunteerism. Nevertheless, enforcement has gathered momentum for almost four years, and the only bill introduced so far (AB 2960, by Assemblywoman Loni Hancock, D-Berkeley) deals only with environmental projects. Too bad about those who want to work on low-income housing or kids’ playgrounds.  

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger may or may not be able to change the rules administratively—various legislators say yes, various agency spokespeople say no. If this is impossible, what is needed is a bill passed on an urgency basis, going into effect as soon as signed. It should protect pay of those who work for wages. But it also must welcome volunteer contributions, without bureaucratic hoops, delays, and paperwork that will choke any citizen’s outpouring of generosity and make sure that no good deed goes unpunished. Please write your representatives to ask for action! 

 

Susan Schwartz is head of Friends of Five Creeks, an all-volunteer group working on creeks and watersheds in North Berkeley, Albany, Kensington, and south El Cerrito and Richmond. 

 


Taking Away Parking Did Not Increase Europe’s Traffic Congestion

By ROB WRENN
Friday April 09, 2004

When Jon Alff generalizes about Europe based on what he has seen in Bilbao and says that removing parking increases congestion, he is just plain wrong. (Letters, Daily Planet, April 6-8) 

Consider the example of Copenhagen. Copenhagen has reduced traffic as it has gradually reduced parking in the city center, according to Peter Newman and Jeff Kenworthy in their book Sustainability and Cities. 

I have visited Copenhagen. It has traffic but not major congestion. During morning commute hours near the center of town, you can see as many bicycles as cars waiting at intersections for the light to change. And there is a huge pedestrianized area that has been increased in size over the last 40 years. It has much less parking in its center than the average American city.  

I have walked through residential areas near the center where you see far more bicycles than cars parked in front of apartment buildings. Copenhagen has experienced neither increased congestion nor reduced commercial viability. What it has instead is a thriving pedestrianized commercial center. 

Both London and Paris are also moving to deal with traffic. London has implemented congestion charging which has reduced traffic in the center. Paris has converted traffic lanes on streets to bus-only lanes and has closed a major highway along the right bank of the Seine during summer months. 

The European cities that have made the most progress in reducing traffic and increasing livability seem to be those that aggressively work to re-allocate space from cars to pedestrians, bicycles and transit. Some parking is removed. Streets are closed to cars and pedestrian zones are created. Dedicated lanes for buses and trams and separate lanes for bicycles are created. 

Even in cities that have not done all these things, Europeans drive less. According to Newman and Kenworthy, people who live in 13 major American 

cities travel an average of 16,045 kilometers per capita per year in private passenger cars, while people who live in 11 major European cities travel 6,601 kilometers per capita. In addition, all 11 European cities that they studied had a majority of people commuting to work by alternative modes. 

Overall, European cities have much less parking than American cities and have much less driving and many more people commuting by alternative modes. 

Mr. Alff makes his statements about Europe as part of an effort to argue that Berkeley isn’t requiring enough parking to be built with new development and that this failure will somehow lead to increased traffic congestion. 

When we look at Berkeley, there are certainly areas such as the Southside and the downtown where living without a car is a viable option because of all the transit service available within a few blocks walk. Requiring any parking at all for new development in these areas makes no sense. A majority of people who currently live in these areas don’t own cars. 

People who have occasional need for a car have the option of joining City CarShare, which is certainly less costly than owning a car. The fact that you may want or need to drive sometimes does not mean that you need to own a car or have a parking space provided. 

University and Shattuck avenues in downtown have blocks with no driveways. Requiring someone who wants to redevelop a property on those blocks to put in a curb cut for parking makes no sense and would be very bad for the many pedestrians walking on those driveway-free sidewalks. 

In areas of the city where the quality of transit service is not as good, requiring some parking for new development makes sense, though there is no need to increase parking requirements for new development and no compelling evidence that the city is not requiring enough parking. 

The whole idea of “transit-oriented development,” which is central to the city’s General Plan, is a good one. If the city is going to encourage new development, it should be located in areas served by transit, so that new development doesn’t just clog Berkeley street’s with more traffic. 

Unfortunately, the development that is occurring now on Berkeley’s commercial corridors is happening at the very time that AC Transit is cutting service. There are grounds for concern. 

But there are some bright spots. 

AC has implemented a rapid bus on San Pablo Avenue that has reduced travel times. And plans for Bus Rapid Transit on Telegraph with dedicated lanes for buses will also improve and expand transit service. Ultimately, Berkeley also needs light rail or bus rapid transit on University Avenue as well. 

Our City Council needs to make improving transit service in Berkeley a priority. If we are going to have more development, we need improved transit 

to go with it. One first step the council can take toward improving transit is to approve the Transportation Commission’s recommendations for the use of 

Vista College mitigation funds, which calls for some of the money to go to transit. 

Some people have the mistaken impression that almost everyone in Berkeley has to drive and that cars are a necessity for everyone, except maybe for a few students. But Berkeley residents actually drive less than residents of most other cities in the U.S. We are different from other Bay Area cities of 

similar size. 

Berkeley ranks number seven among all cities in the U.S. with 100,000 population or more in the percentage of non-car commuters. Forty-two percent commute by means other than a car. Berkeley ranks number one in the percentage of bicycle commuters and number two in the percentage of pedestrian commuters. 

Even with a transit system that does not adequately serve all sections of the city, lots of people still get around without cars. With a concerted effort to upgrade transit service, people can become even less reliant on cars. Adding a lot more parking along with new development is certainly not going to accomplish anything other than to increase traffic throughout the city’s neighborhoods. Traffic congestion results from too much parking in relation to street capacity not from too little. 

 

Rob Wrenn is a Berkeley Planning Commission and chairman of the UC Hotel Task Force.  

 

 

 

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Film Shows Need for Complex Interpretation of History

By MARC WINOKUR
Friday April 09, 2004

Months before Mel Gibson’s picture The Passion of the Christ was even released, the public was counseled by a plethora of spiritual mentors to avoid autonomic assumptions that the Jews were responsible for Christ’s death. Although there is little coherent evidence that has put the issue of culpability to irrefutable rest, there is nothing inductively impossible in the gospels’ telling of the social-political denouement leading to the crucifixion of the Nazarene, Jesus Christ.  

Yet, there has arisen a determined and insistent effort to disavow any possible or significant Jewish collaboration in the seizure and execution of one of our own great teachers. This has become an unfortunate, specious defense of the people of Judea, as if they were beyond reproach and somehow immune to the existential fragility of their antecedents. The impassioned, almost obsessive need to reinterpret Jewish participation amidst those epic proceedings in Jerusalem impedes our abilities to interpret human nature with the integrity that our intelligence should command today. 

Of course, this apprehension is understandable, given the enormous struggle of the Jewish people to survive wave upon wave of anti-Semitism and outright plunder that has burdened our history, particularly in the last century. However, to dismiss this film as patently inaccurate, or dangerous because of these concerns, encumbers the future of Judeo-Christian conciliation as well as the potential unity and breadth of the Hebrew liturgy. To insist that Jews of first century Judea were not engaged, at least in some way, in the crucifixion of Christ, is taking refuge in a moral comfort zone that serves only to punctuate inveterate denial. This in turn perpetuates a divisive dynamic, not only between Jews and Christians, but between Jews and the best of their spiritual legacy: the traditions of empathy, activism and theological polemics. 

No one knows exactly what events during those infamous days almost 2,000 years ago spawned a mythology enveloping the lives and beliefs of so many people. There is no instant replay available here. But at the core of our imperfect understanding, we can assume with reasonable certainty that Jesus confronted the Jewish ruling and commercial classes. He also may have brought on the antipathies of the “Zealots,” as he did not teach strict adherence to the Law while, at the same time, associating with sinners and people outside that Law. Furthermore, some historians have claimed he dangerously supported the movement for Jewish independence from Roman control, thereby evoking a double threat to both the Jews fearing Roman retaliation and to Roman authority itself. 

While there is no indisputable proof that the Romans, who were known to crucify dissidents with abandon, didn’t just round him up with the rest of the usual suspects, the Bible is quite consistent in maintaining that other forces and complexities were in play. For political purposes, the gospels may very well have exaggerated the Jews’ guilt and betrayal of Jesus. But it is hard to believe that the travesty did not involve the Jewish high priests, the Pharisees, the Sadducees and perhaps some of the quotidian population. What is easily inferred from this is that our renegade Rabbi, along with his aphoristic musings on peace, love, forgiveness, and the kingdom of heaven, was very much an agitator, considered blasphemous, and a perceived menace to the power structure of the Roman and Jewish establishments in their various forms. Even the questionable Barrabas story has some plausibility considering the almost unreachable standard of spiritual and social behavior that Jesus may have demanded from his people.  

Adherence to simple psychological sense suggests that along with awe and veneration, there may have been resentment, as well, for Jesus’ preachings. His exhortations and orations must have put a great deal of pressure on both the ordinary and well-appointed Jews to change their ways—no small matter for any prophet to sustain without an inevitable backlash. Again, to pretend, under these circumstances, that some of the Jews did not have an interest in his departure from the social-political landscape simply flies in the face of human nature. 

Ask yourself, what possible purpose does it serve to support this cloak of innocence, given that the people who felt threatened by his challenge to the status quo were only behaving as human beings behave, even to this day? Although, complicity with the capture, and likely mutilation of one’s own ethnic, corporeal relation is not a laudable evocation of the best in human nature, it was not, and is not, a weakness specific to the people of Judea, or Jews in general. The roots and residue of treachery go far back, and way beyond that of the Jews in Christ’s time. After all, the Bible, particularly the First Testament, is fraught with horrific acts of betrayal, violence and human iniquity.  

For Jews to consistently proclaim their impeccability in this matter only sets up a kind of transcendental ethic that we are implicitly ascribing to ourselves. Claiming that any suggestion of responsibility in the matter is intrinsically anti-Semitic, or beyond the moral compass of first century Judaism, implies an unreal spirituality. It is a counter intuitive conceit that ultimately does as much to alienate us from our Christian brethren, and a potential universal sodality, as does any subjective cinematic recreation of the gospels. In the hopes of defusing anti-Semitism, this pressing zeal for vindication may, indeed, only exacerbate it. 

Some Jewish “revisionists” take this repudiation of responsibility to the point of asserting that neither Christ, nor his crucifixion, has a legitimate basis in reality. Of course this begs the question of the Old Testament as well, and virtually obviates any discussion whatsoever concerning scriptural ethics and their contemporary implications. Regardless of the definitive authenticity of the ‘holy word,’ the drama known as “The Passion” will remain pertinent to understanding ourselves and our social-spiritual parameters.  

Moreover, the sooner we come to grips with both our perceived and interpreted past, the easier it will be to make peace with our future. Habitual denial, aided by well-intentioned but spurious arguments advanced by Christian revisionists, only circumvents the ever-haunting ghosts of biblical yore. Perpetuating a supposed scrupulous relation to the notorious episode of that Passover in Jerusalem merely exacerbates accusation and controversy while denying us potential entry to a traversable bridge into the coming era. 

Crossing that bridge requires that we finally recognize the inimitable contribution that this Jewish man has made toward sustaining some semblance of humanity and faith in a continuing, very treacherous world. Yes, senseless slaughter has been committed in the codified political entrenchment of Jesus’ name. But without his life, and the mythology it has engendered, a good part of civilization may have pummeled itself into oblivion, far before any of us had the chance to even review it.  

Whether or not Jesus was the “Son of God,” the “Son of Man” the “Messiah” incarnate or just a courageous, iconoclastic rebel can be debated indefinitely. But the propensity to dismiss his ministry to humanity, fostered by the practicing Hebrew faith and its community, is a grievous misinterpretation of our own ancient culture and sacramental demeanor. Consider that in the United States alone, 80 percent of the population shows at least a cognizance and respect for the man’s pivotal place in the pageant of our spiritual infrastructure. The canonical Jewish relegation of this courageous teacher beyond the hinterlands of its liturgy and ritual is an ancestral oxymoron at best, and perhaps a heresy within the wailing walls of our own faith. The mantras of rejection, and deflection of his relevance have isolated the hallowed halls of the temples, and divided the contiguity of Judeo-Christian heritage for far too long. Let’s be clear: Jesus was a Jew...and few better have we seen, or heard from since!  

Finally, it might be worthwhile to revisit the plea, “never again,” that has resonated throughout the Jewish-humanitarian fellowship for over half a century. It surely would behoove us to extend this invocation to the most ill-famed execution in Western history, a murder of a human being who put his life behind his transcendent vision and faith. Any doubt whatsoever about a cultural collaboration to put one of its best to death for political purposes demands serious scrutiny and collective redress. Although it is comfortable to pretend that we can interpret this tragic cornerstone of Western spirituality strictly as a statement of universal generosity, by way of intentional sacrifice, it is also a visceral testament to human weakness. It is this weakness we must face up to and get beyond, not by denying conscience, but by learning from it. 

 

Marc Winokur sometimes writes under the name Marcus O’Realius. 

 

 

 


Did Richard Clarke Do Us a Favor?

By GEORGE COHEN
Friday April 09, 2004

Richard Clarke’s recent televised apology during the commission investigating 9/11 was a rarity in public American life. It not often that a high ranking public leader takes responsibility for the failure to protect the American people and for the ultimate disaster of 9/11. The issue, however, goes way beyond 9/11. It speaks about our inability to act humanely and decently in a variety of situations. No one, especially our leaders, wants to be seen as “weak.” Somehow we’ve come to confuse apology with weakness. The myth is that real men and women do not make large and serious mistakes, and that the effort to deal with these errors will only compound the sin. For a variety of reasons the act of apology is taboo. It has been in serious disrepute for as long as we can remember. 

We believe that an apology is a nettlesome can of worms that can only lead to more problems. We act as though it is a prelude to public humiliation and that it will invite a full-fledged attack by political and other opponents. Our collective attitude has become, “My God, never let your guard down, who knows where it may all end!” So, instead we have developed our own macho ethic, wherein you hang tough, you say little or nothing, and you hope and pray it will all pass quickly. When horrific situations do occur, and the buck cannot be passed, we aim for a passive apology with euphemisms in the third person, such as “mistakes were made, … or…serious errors of judgment occurred…” By removing ourselves to the passive voice we think we will deflect the anticipated harsh retribution, which will follow a direct and personal apology. 

This dodging of personal responsibility comes at a very large price. We frankly do not expect our leaders, let alone one another, to act honestly or decently when the stakes or consequences are high. Our leaders regularly set a very low bar for the admission of blame or error. Every manner of excuse, and equivocation has become the norm. When our leaders are exposed for lying, cheating and stealing it is handled not with apology, but with good public relations. High-priced consultants are at the service of people in public life who have been somehow disgraced, or caught with their hand in the till. 

Like it or not, this is the norm. 

Politicians are, of course, the most notorious dodgers of apology, to the point that we don’t take them seriously. They regularly pollute our airwaves. It would be bad enough, however, if it were limited to our politicians, but unfortunately it is not. 

Similarly, we routinely expect bad behavior and the denial of responsibility by Wall Street and corporate moguls. In these highly paid regions of American life there is a long-standing taboo on telling the truth. But how about the priests who committed sexual abuse of minors, and much of their religious hierarchy who refused to fully accept responsibility for the abuse of thousands of vulnerable individuals over a 30-year period, perhaps longer. Is even this shocking? Not really. Nothing shocks us anymore. 

The denial of responsibility is deeply woven into the fabric of American life. We expect lies because we cannot accept the simple truth—that the good people as well as the bad ones are very imperfect, and often fail miserably despite good intentions or valiant efforts. Ultimately, we are probably as much to blame as our leaders for the decline of public honesty. Our unrealistic demands for perfection help create the need for their evasions and their lies. The ethic of the sacrificial lamb is also certainly part of the problem. We demand that someone must inevitably take the blame. Heads will certainly roll, and it's better if it’s not mine!  

In a better society there might be fewer guillotines and more encouragement of truth. The guilty, no matter what the deed, might be tried or publicly admonished without being banished to Siberia or the equivalent. We might relish the notion that people can learn from large mistakes, and that taking responsibility might be the first step in that process. A businessman once told me that one of his loyal employees made a mistake that cost the firm $50,000. He said, “I could let him go but I know him to be an honest man who is truly remorseful. He has learned painfully from this mistake and he is now worth $50,000 more to me.” Is this attitude too idealistic? 

One of the roots of the problem is that we see serious errors and mistakes as a revelation of bad character. This is not necessarily true. It is the cover-ups and deceptions which follow these mistakes, that are in fact, not just criminal, but are far more damaging and toxic to our public life. And this pollution is pervasive.  

On a local level we have a former chancellor of the Oakland schools, Dennis Chaconas. He is basically a good man who never really took responsibility for a devastating million-dollar deficit that recently occurred under his watch. Never mind all of the excuses and evasions—it happened here in Oakland and this man has never fully apologized to the community. I believe he has just won election to another local public office. Has he learned from his mistakes? Probably not. Sadly, he, like most others was raised and trained in a system whereby an apology is seen as "unmanly" and the kiss of death.  

Apology is not only good for the soul; it’s crucial for public life. You can barely count on the fingers of one hand the instances of direct and honest apology in public life. Whatever else you may think of Richard Clarke he has set in motion an opportunity to reconsider the positive contributions of an honest apology. By admitting fault and apologizing he has shamed his superiors. If only others would follow suit and accept responsibility for their deeds—who knows where it could all end? 

 

George Cohen is a psychotherapist and the author of How To Test and Improve Your Mental Health (Prima Publishing, 1994). He has also written for the Christian Science Monitor and the Utne Reader.R


Mailblocks Program Stops Spam, Saves Hassles

By HENRY NORR Special to the Planet
Friday April 09, 2004

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Berkeley Daily Planet extends a hearty welcome to Beyond Chron, (www.beyondchron.org) the Voice of the Rest, a new online publication launched by Randy Shaw, the director of the Tenderloin Housing Clinic. His announced goal is to “provide coverage of political and cultural issues often distorted or ignored by the Bay Area’s largest newspaper, the San Francisco Chronicle... with a critical look at the cutting edge issues of the day.” The Daily Planet has agreed to provide a newsprint outlet from time to time for interesting articles from Beyond Chron. We are pleased to launch this collaboration with part one of an article on spam blocking by Berkeley resident and technology expert Henry Norr. Part two will appear next week. 

 

Just over a year ago—on March 21, 2003, to be precise—I sat down at what was then my desk at the San Francisco Chronicle to bang out a column about Mailblocks, a spam-blocking e-mail service that was set to debut the following Monday. I’d been trying out the product for two or three weeks, and I was sold—I gave it a rave review. 

Unfortunately, hardly anyone ever got to see that column. The bosses at the Chron killed it—and shortly afterwards fired me—because I’d been among the tens of thousands of people demonstrating in the city’s streets against the attack on Iraq the day before. I told my supervisors they were making a mistake: even if they were going to can me, I argued, they should run that column anyway, because Mailblocks offered a neat solution to a real problem, and they had a chance to be the first publication anywhere to review it. But they stood on principle—how, after all, could readers trust someone openly opposed to the war to review an e-mail service? 

Since then, Mailblocks has managed to make a name for itself without my assistance. As its website (www.mailblocks.com) boasts, it has garnered glowing reviews from, among others, PC Magazine, PC World, and Wall Street Journal personal-tech columnist Walt Mossberg. But when Beyond Chron founder Randy Shaw contacted me with an invitation to contribute to the project, he confessed he hadn’t heard of Mailblocks before, and my guess is that a lot of other Bay Area folks who might benefit from the service still don’t know about it, either.  

Besides, since my Chronicle career ended with Mailblocks, I can’t resist the symmetry in starting with it at Beyond Chron. 

 

Death to spam 

Here’s how my year-ago review was to begin: 

“Who would pay $10 a year for a web-based e-mail service when you can get Hotmail or Yahoo Mail for free? Well, suppose the service in question offered a clean, elegant look, faster and simpler access to your mail (through your browser or almost any mail application of your choosing), more storage space for old mail, and—get this—no spam whatsoever? And suppose you could even keep your old address at Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, America Online or a standard Internet mail server, but use the new service to retrieve the real messages from those accounts and leave the spam behind?” 

Some of the details have changed, but that’s still the basic picture. I’ve been relying on Mailblocks ever since I lost my Chron e-mail a year ago, and in all that time only about a dozen pieces of spam have shown up in my inbox. And that’s certainly not because the spammers don’t know where to find me—my Mailblocks inbox handles all messages sent to two widely publicized e-mail addresses, as well as others I’ve used to register at countless websites. For a while I even had it set up to hunt for meaningful messages in my ancient Yahoo and America Online inboxes, until I finally decided that was pointless.  

In this day and age, when spam is said to account for nearly two thirds of all e-mail traffic and fighting it has become a major industry, can anyone report better results than I’ve had with Mailblocks over the last year?  

Granted, you could do as well with a so-called “white list” system—one that allows no mail into your inbox unless the sender is on a list of addresses you’ve authorized. The problem with that approach, aside from the racist terminology, is that most of us can’t afford and don’t want our inboxes to be quite that closed off to the world. Think of the long-lost childhood chum, or the friend who just got a new e-mail address when she changed jobs or Internet service providers, or the stranger who could become a client or customer—if their addresses aren’t on your white list, their messages won’t get to you. 

The beauty of Mailblocks is that it slams the door on spam but offers a key to folks like those. And if you, like me, still feel some humanistic ambivalence about technology, you’ll probably get some satisfaction from knowing that the whole system relies on the inability of even today’s powerful computers to meet a challenge most 8-year-olds could toss off in a few seconds. 

 

Challenge/Response 

Mailblocks’ approach is actually akin to classic “white list” systems, in that it relies mainly on a database of authorized addresses to determine which messages to deliver to your inbox. (You don’t have to create the database manually—for starters, you can just import the address book from whatever program you now use for mail, and any address you write to is added automatically.) 

What Mailblocks adds is a technology known as challenge/ response. (Other companies, including other e-mail services and anti-spam software vendors, use variations on the idea, but Mailblocks claims to own the key patents on it; besides, no one else has integrated it into a full service as smoothly as Mailblocks.)  

Here’s how it works: Whenever a message to you from someone not on your authorized list arrives at the Mailblocks servers—whether it’s sent directly to your Mailblocks address or to any other account you’ve asked Mailblocks to monitor—the service delivers it not to your inbox but to a separate folder called Pending. At the same time it fires off an automatic reply to the sender, in your name. You can add your own wording, but the heart of the message reads “Because this is the first time you have sent to this e-mail account, please confirm yourself so you’ll be recognized when you send to me in the future.”  

To do so, the sender is invited to click on a URL, which in turn opens a page displaying seven digits, printed at varying angles against a multicolored, pointillist-style background, with instructions to type the number into an empty field.  

Now, for most people, this isn’t much of challenge. Just type in the seven digits and hit return, and Mailblocks automatically moves your message from the recipient’s Pending folder to his inbox and adds your name to the authorized address list. For spammers, however, it’s a different story. They’re blasting out messages by the billions and getting paid only a fraction of a cent for each one—even if they were to see the Mailblocks challenge (which is unlikely because they usually transmit their pitches from phony addresses), there’s no way they could afford to pay a human even for the seconds it would take to hit the link and enter the number. 

The obvious solution, from the spammer’s perspective, would be to automate the process. But for now at least there’s evidently no practical way to do so—computers simply don’t “see” well enough to recognize digits displayed the way Mailblocks does.  

Of course, many humans don’t either. Even simple color blindness, I’m told, can make it difficult to meet the challenge. But Mailblocks provides a workaround for the visually impaired: they need only forward the challenge message to the service’s support team, and their name will be authorized. A sufficiently motivated spammer could no doubt set up a system to take advantage of this back door automatically, but so far they apparently haven’t found it worth the trouble. 

As long as that remains true, Mailblocks’ challenge/response system provides practically bullet-proof protection against machine-generated mail. There’s a problem, though: not all machine-generated mail is spam—the category also includes electronic newsletters you’ve subscribed to, confirmations for orders you’ve placed at online shopping sites, and various other kinds of messages you might actually want to appear in your mailbox. For these cases Mailblocks provides a couple of pretty good solutions. There’s a special option in the address book, for example, for mailing lists, or you can enter entire domains (e.g., beyondchron.org) if you’re willing to accept mail from anyone at the organization. 

The best workaround, though, is something Mailblocks calls (oddly) “trackers.” These are additional addresses each subscriber to the service can create and give out when subscribing to a listserv or making an online purchase. Messages sent to your tracker addresses are delivered automatically, without challenge, to your inbox. If a spammer somehow gets hold of one of your trackers—something that happened to me once—you can easily delete it and create a new one; the only hassle is that you have to provide the new address to any site that had the deleted one on file, or else you’ll never see anything else it tries to send you.  

The other big problem with the challenge/response system, I’ve found, is not technical but social: a significant percentage of the people writing to me for the first time—including my wife, the first time she used my Mailblocks address—don’t respond to the service’s challenge message. Maybe they’re scared it’s some kind of trick, like the mail sent out by the online swindlers known as “phishers;” maybe they’re just too busy to bother, or resent the modest hassle.  

In these cases, you can easily authorize the sender yourself—just drag and drop the message from the Pending folder to your inbox, or use a popup menu, or reply to the message. To do so you have to locate the legitimate messages in your Pending folder, which implies wading through the swamp of spam accumulating there. If that’s a price you’re not willing to pay, you could just decide you don’t really care about mail from anyone too lazy or unmotivated to bother responding to the challenge; in that case, Mailblocks will automatically delete the message, like everything else left in your Pending folder, after four, eight, or 14 days (one of the many configuration options Mailblocks provides). 

 

 

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Shotgun Players Serve Up Some Serious Silliness

By BETSY HUNTON Special to the Planet
Friday April 09, 2004

No question but that the Shotgun Players are on a roll. Ever since last summer’s terrific production of Mother Courage they’ve been showing their stuff by leaping from one high point to another—all equally fine shows, but extraordinarily different in content and style. 

Their last production, The Death of Meyerhold, was so avant garde that it was difficult to even describe the acting—except to mutter “Great stuff. Really great.” So now Shotgun’s gone to the opposite extreme. 

What they’re serving up now at the Julia Morgan Theatre is a classic farce, centuries old. So old, in fact, and so classic, that people may have forgotten that the revered playwright, Moliere, gained his status as a playwright simply because he was enormously good at what he did. And what he did in The Miser is produce one of the great bubbles of pure fun in theatrical history.  

If you absolutely insisted upon it, you might be able to drag some huge meaningful truth out of this hilarious evening’s entertainment, but you probably won’t make many friends that way. The Miser is funny, simply funny and silly as the dickens, carrying no message and with no lessons to teach.  

The play’s a piece of brilliantly conceived fluff, circumambulating around the antics of the extraordinarily miserly miser, Harpagon, played with enormous agility by Clive Worsley. All of the characters are one-dimensional, enacted in a hilariously exaggerated mock-melodramatic style. They take themselves and their absurd issues with absolute seriousness; but absolutely no sense of real pain ever touches their antics. Their very seriousness is the source of the comedy. 

The plot is silly and exaggerated, of course. Harpagon is determined to get through life without spending so much as a cent unless it’s forced out of him. This presents a problem in an era in which a dowery is a vital part of marriage arrangements. Since both his son and daughter are determined to marry the totally perfect mates they’re certain they’ve found—and Harpagon himself has eyes for the same young woman that his son has already co-opted, there are definitely issues to be resolved.  

The company at times almost dance their roles. What we have here is a group of ten actors who in the course of the rehearsals of this play have indeed managed to become a true ensemble. It goes beyond the fact that they each can and do turn out fine performances—it as if they are almost fingers of the same hand. It can be as much fun to watch some of the actors who are only background to whatever absurdity is currently going on as it is to follow the main course of the action.  

Shotgun Theatre has every reason to be proud of themselves: Moliere lives!


Questions and Answers on Home Repair Problems

By ANTHONY ELMO Special to the Planet
Friday April 09, 2004

Q. I hired a contractor to remodel my bathroom and expected it to be finished while I was out of town. When I returned, the job was not completed and the contractor keeps stalling. I’m really frustrated. What should I do? 

 

A. First of all, check your written contract. A home improvement contract should include, among other items, the approximate dates when the work will begin and be completed. For example, the contract should read “Begin approximately April 20 and end approximately April 30,” not “Complete the job in 10 days.” This eliminates the possibility that the contractor will take 10 days to finish the job but spread them out over the span of a year. The dates should be approximate since external factors such as the weather or a delay in materials shipment are beyond the control of the contractor. 

Your home improvement contract should also include a description of what is a substantial commencement of work. Failure by the contractor, without lawful excuse, to substantially begin work within 20 days from the approximate start date is a violation of contractor law. In that case, the homeowner can postpone the next payment to the contractor for a period of time that is equivalent to the time between when substantial commencement was to have occurred and when it did occur. 

You can allow the contractor to take more time to finish the project; however, get it in writing. Require that the contractor prepare a written change order specifying the new approximate completion date. 

 

Q. My mother lives in a mobile home park for seniors. Someone came to her door stating that her roof needed to be fixed and offered to do the work. What should she do about these kinds of solicitors? 

 

A. First of all, your mother shouldn’t feel intimidated, but she should beware of door-to-door solicitors. If sales people have come uninvited to her door, she is under no obligation to entertain their sales pitch. Solicitors in mobile home parks and communities for seniors are the source of many complaints to the Contractors State License Board (CSLB). Some unscrupulous, unlicensed contractors target senior citizens for overpriced repairs that are unnecessary, and then they either do a shoddy job or never complete the work at all. They give phony names, telephone numbers and business addresses, so they can’t be tracked down later. 

Seniors are often targeted for a number of reasons: they have discretionary funds accumulated from a lifetime of saving, their homes are often old and in need of repair, they have a trusting nature, they often live alone and feel intimidated, and they hesitate to report fraud. 

Crooked contractors will use high pressure or scare tactics to get a senior citizen’s attention by claiming that the roof, plumbing or electrical system is faulty and dangerous and work must be done immediately. These fraudulent contractors often claim that they have just finished a painting or driveway repair job at a neighbor’s house, have leftover material, and can give the homeowner a good deal—only if a decision is made immediately. Usually these claims are phony. All too often, they take the senior’s money and run. 

The CSLB urges senior homeowners to follow these tips when dealing with solicitors and when hiring a contractor: 

• Take your time in making a decision about hiring a contractor 

• Don’t be pressured into hiring a door-to-door solicitor 

• Check to see if the contractor is licensed on CSLB’s website at www.cslb.ca.gov 

• Get three bids 

• Get a written contract 

• Pay only 10 percent down, or $1,000, whichever is less, of the contract amount 

• Never pay cash 

• Don’t let your payments get ahead of the work 

• Ask a friend, neighbor or relative to verify that work needs to be done and to look over the written contract 

• Go to CSLB’s website at www.cslb.ca.gov for free consumer publications, including “What Seniors Should Know Before Hiring a Contractor” 

 

Anthony Elmo is the Chairman of the Contractors State License Board, and the Director of Building and Safety for the City of Temecula. The Contractors State License Board operates under the umbrella of the California Department of Consumer Affairs. The CSLB licenses and regulates California’s 278,000 contractors, and investigates 25,000 complaints against contractors annually.


Arts Calendar

Friday April 09, 2004

FRIDAY, APRIL 9 

CHILDREN 

Easter Treasury at 10:30 a.m. at Barnes and Noble. 644-3635. 

FILM 

Sound of Music Sing-A-Long to April 15 at 7 p.m. (except Aprril 11, 12) at the Landmark California Theater, 2113 Kittredge St. Tickets are $10-$15 available from 866-468-3399 or on-line at www.ticketweb.com 

Charles Burnett: “Glass Shield” at 7:30 p.m. at Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

THEATER 

Aurora Theatre Company “Antigone Falun Gong” at 8 p.m. Wed.-Sat., Sun. at 2 and 7 p.m. at 2081 Addison St. through May 16. Tickets are $28-$40 available from 843-4822. www.auroratheatre.org 

Berkeley Repertory Theater, “Ghosts” by Henrik Ibsen, at 8 p.m. and runs through April 11. 647-2917. www.berkeleyrep.org 

Shotgun Players “The Miser” opens at 8 p.m. at the Julia Morgan Theater, Thurs. - Sun. through May 2. Free. 704-8210. www.shotgunplayers.org 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Katya Kamisaruk introduces “Beat the Heat: How to Handle Encounters with Law Enforcement,” at 7 p.m. at AK Press Warehouse, 674A 23rd St., Oakland. 208-1700. www.akpress.org 

College National Poetry Slam opens at 6 p.m. and continues to April 10. Tickets are $7-$10 available from www.virtuous.com 

“By the Light of the Moon” open mic for women at Changemakers, 6536 Telegraph Ave. Cost is $3-$7. 655-2405. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

“Company” a musical performed by UC Choral Ensembles at 8 p.m. in the Choral Rehearsal Hall, Room 20 (basement level) of Cesar Chavez Student Center, UC Campus. Tickets are $8-$10. 

“Ancestories ... Stories from Beneath the Skirts,” dance and drum works of the African Diaspora at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $12 in advance, $15 at the door. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Dandeline at the 1923 Teahouse at 8 p.m. Suggested donation of $7-$15, no one turned away for lack of funds. 644-2204. www.epicarts.org 

Joel Futterman, Ike Levin, Alvin Fielder Trio, at 8 p.m. at The Jazz House. Sliding scale donation $15-$18. 649-8744. www.thejazzhouse.com 

O-Maya at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Ralph Stanley & the Clinch Mountain Boys at 5 and 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $29.50 in advance, $30.50 at the door. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Oakland Wolf Walk Bluegrass Festival with The Crooked Jades at 9:30 p.m. at Oakland Metro, 201 Broadway, Cost is $10. 763-1146. www.oaklandmetro.org 

The Case Worker, Minmae, Built Like Alaska at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $7. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Quarteto Sonado, Afro-Cuban jazz, at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Thriving Ivory at 9:30 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

Jackie Ryan with the Jeff Pittson Trio at 8:30 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810. 

DJ & Brook, jazz trio, at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Wil Bernard and Mother Bug at 9 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $7, $5 with student i.d. 548-1159. 

www.shattuckdownlow.com 

Look Back and Laugh, Iron Lung, Add-C, Ashtray at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $5. 525-9926. 

SATURDAY, APRIL 10 

CHILDREN  

Los Amiguitos de La Peña with Music Together at 10:30 a.m. at La Peña. Cost is $4 for adults, $3 for children. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

“Wild About Books” storytime at 10:30 a.m. at the Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. 981-6223. 

EXHIBITION OPENINGS 

Fibers and Dyes Exhibit Plants are the origin of the most popular fibers we use in our daily lives and of the dyes that provide us with colors. Feel fabrics, see and smell dyes and look at the many uses of fibers from around the world. In the Botanical Garden’s Conference Center during Garden hours 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Free with Garden admission. UC Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Drive. 643-2755. http://botanicalgarden.berkeley.edu 

FILM 

Volker Schlöndorff: “Circle of Deceit” at 7 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Charles Burnett A panel discussion on the film director’s work at 2 p.m. at Berkeley Art Museum, 2626 Bancroft Way. 642-0808. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Youth Movement Records Artists at 8 p.m. at Youth Radio Cafe, 1801 University Ave. Cost is $3. 435-5112.  

Berkeley High Jazz Combo at 2 p.m. at Down Home Music, 10341 San Pablo Ave., El Cerrito. 525-2129. 

10th Annual A Cappella Against AIDS Benefit Concert with the UC Choral Ensembles at 7:30 p.m. at 155 Dwinelle Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $5-$10 available at the door. 642-3880. 

Angel Amkgik at 9 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $20. 548-1159. www.shattuckdownlow.com 

Gomer Hendrix, ska humor band at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Val Esway, Karry Walker and Kim Norlen at the 1923 Teahouse at 8 p.m. All ages welcome. Suggested donation of $7-$10, no one turned away for lack of funds. 644-2204. www.epicarts.org 

Suzy Thompson at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $15.50 in advance, $16.50 at the door. 548-1761.  

www.freightandsalvage.org 

Go Jimmy Go, Chris Murray, Solemite and The Soul Captives at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $10 in advance, $12 at the door. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Oakland Wolf Walk Bluegrass Festival with The Papermill Rounders at 9:30 p.m. at Oakland Metro, 201 Broadway. Cost is $12. 763-1146. www.oaklandmetro.org 

“Blaze” Hip Hop Dance Showcase with New Style Motherlode at 6:30 p.m. at Sweet’s Ballroom, 1933 Broadway Blvd., Oakland. Tickets are $10 in advance, $15 at the door. 597-1056. www.newstylemotherlode.com 

John Santos Quintet at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $12 in advance, $14 at the door. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Mark Hummel, harmonica virtuoso, at 8 p.m. at the Jazz- 

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

Sam Rivers, an evening of conversation and music, at 8 and 10 p.m. at The Jazz House. Tickets are $15 in advance, $20 at the door. 649-8744. www.thejazzhouse.com 

Spikedrivers, Anna Coogan & North 19 at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $7. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Famous Last Words at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Collective Amnesia at 8:30 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810. 

Communique, Kissing Tiger, The New Trust, Pistolito, The Killer Watts at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $5. 525-9926. 

SUNDAY, APRIL 11 

CHILDREN 

Asheba at Ashkenaz at 3 p.m. Cost is $4 for children, $6 for adults. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

FILM 

“Jesus, You Know” at 5 and 7 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Poetry Flash with Joanna Goodman and Tucker Malarky at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. Donation $2. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

“Ant Farm 1968-1978” Guided Tour at 2 p.m. at Berkeley Art Museum, 2626 Bancroft Way. 642-0808. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Alfred Brendel, piano, at 7 p.m., Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $32-$62, available from 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

Chamber Music Sundaes with musicians from San Francisco Symphony performing Schumann, Brahms and Grieg at 3:15 p.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. Tickets are $7-$18, available at the door. 415-584-5946. 

Joel Futterman, Ike Levin, Alvin Fielder Trio, at 8 p.m. at The Jazz House. Sliding scale donation $15-$18. 649-8744. www.thejazzhouse.com 

Queens of Boogie Woogie at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $16.50 in advance, $17.50 at the door. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Flamenco Open Stage with Carolla Zertuche at 7:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $9. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

MONDAY, APRIL 12 

EXHIBITION OPENINGS 

Joanna Katz, “Landscapes and Watercolors” at Gallery 940, 940 Dwight Way. Exhibition runs to May 28. Gallery hours Mon.-Fri. 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. 

THEATER 

“Jane Austen in Berkeley” Andrea Mock’s one-woman play at 8 p.m. at Epic Arts, 1923 Ashby Ave. Tickets are $7. 841-9441. 

FILM 

“The Agronomist” a documentary on the life of journalist and human rights activist Jean Dominique of Haiti, at 7 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Sponsored by the Center for Latin American Studies. 642-2088. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Herb Kohl discusses the public education system in “Stupidity and Tears” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

TUESDAY, APRIL 13 

FILM 

Optical Poetry: Oskar Fischinger Classics at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Peter Everwine reads from “From the Meadow: Selected and New Poems” at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698. www.blackoakbooks.com 

Nona Mock Wyman reads from her memoirs, “Chopstick Childhood in a Town of Silver Spoons” at 7 p.m. at the El Cerrito Library, 6510 Stockton Ave. 526-7512. 

“Harlequin Novels, African Style” with Lydie Moudileno, visiting professor, French Dept. at 4 p.m. at 652 Barrows Hall. Sponsored by the Center for African Studies. 642-8338. 

Nuriddin Farah, contemporary African writer, discusses his new novel “Links” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

Andrew E. Barshay, Prof. of History, UCB, will present his new book “The Social Sciences in Modern Japan: The Marxian and Modern Traditions” at 5:30 p.m. at University Press Books, 2430 Bancroft Way. 548-0585. 

Beatriz Manz, “Paradise in Ashes: A Guatemalan Journey of Courage, Terror and Hope” at 7:30 p.m. at Easy Going Travel Shop & Bookstore, 1385 Shattuck Ave. 843-3533. 

“Tongan Tapa Cloth and Kava Demonstration” at 11 a.m. at Far West School, 5263 Broadway Terrace, across from CCA Oakland campus. 594-3763. www.cca.edu/canter 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

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

Dayna Stephens House Jam at 8 p.m. at The Jazz House. Donation $5. 649-8744.  

www.thejazzhouse.com 

Tee Fee Swamp Boogie at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz, with a Cajun dance lesson with Annie Byrd at 8 p.m. Cost is $9. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Jazzschool Tuesdays, a showcase of ensembles at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 14 

CHILDREN 

Craft Program Make “Wild Things” masks at 2 p.m. at Berkeley Public Library North Branch, 1170 The Alameda. 981-6250. 

THEATER 

“The Mystery of Irma Vep,” Charles Ludlam’s theatrical cult classic opens at Berkeley Rep’s Thrust Stage at 8 p.m. and continues through May 23. Tickets are $39-$55. 647-2949. www.berkeleyrep.org 

FILM 

Film 50: “The Art of the Political Film” and “Lifeguard” at 3 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Joan Blades, co-founder of MoveOn.org, introduces “MoveOn’s 50 Ways to Love Your Country: How to Find Your Political Voice and Become a Catalyst for Change” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

Frederick Turner discusses “In the Land of Temple Caves: From St. Emilion to Paris’s St. Sulpice--Notes on Art and the Human Spirit “at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698. www.blackoakbooks.com 

Mark Bittner introduces his new book “The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill” at 7:30 p.m. at Barnes and Noble. 644-3635. 

Stephanie Elizondo Griest talks about “Around the Bloc: My Life in Moscow, Beijing and Havana” at 7:30 p.m. at Easy Going Travel Shop & Bookstore, 1385 Shattuck Ave. 843-3533. 

Berkeley Poetry Slam Semi-Finals for the National Slam Team competition 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. Donation $2.849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Poetry Writing Workshop with Danna Zeller at 7 p.m. in the Edith Stone Room, Albany Public Library, 1247 Marin Ave. 526-3720, ext. 20. 

Poetry for the People with Mitsuye Yamada at 3:15 p.m. in the All Purpose Room, Unit 3, UC Campus. 642-2743. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Red Archibald & The Internationals at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Swing dance lesson with Nick and Shanna at 8 p.m. Cost is $9. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Deepak Ram and Anuradha Pal, bansuri and tabla, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50 in advance, $18.50 at the door. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

La Verdad performs salsa music at 8 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $5-$10. 548-1159.  

Jules Broussard, Bing Nathan and Ned Boynton at 8 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810. 

Sebastien Martel plays Cuban French acoustic grooves at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

THURSDAY, APRIL 15 

FILM 

Vertical Pool: “Hysteria” A film by Antero Alli at 8 p.m. at Finnish Hall, 1970 Chestnut St., near University Ave. with the filmmaker in person. Admission $5. 464-4640. www.verticalpool.com/hysterinfo.html 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“Ant Farm 1968-1978” Guided Tour at 12:15 and 5:30 p.m. at Berkeley Art Museum, 2626 Bancroft Way. 642-0808. 

Amy Goodman discusses her book “The Exception to the Rulers: Exposing Oily Politicians, War Profiteers, and the Media That Love Them” at 7:30 p.m. at M.L. King Middle School, 1781 Rose St. Sponsored by Cody’s Books. Tickets are $15 available from Cody’s. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

Daniel Boyarin introduces “Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity” at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698. www.blackoakbooks.com 

Micheline Marcom reads from “The Daydreaming Boy” a novel of a survivor of the Armenian genocide, at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. www.codysbooks.com 

Joseph A. Califano, Jr. describes his memoir, “Inside” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

Japanese Architect Fumihiko Maki will speak at 8 p.m. at Dwinelle Hall, UC Campus. 464-3600. www.aiaeb.org 

Word Beat Reading Series at 7 p.m. with featured readers Mark Schwartz and Selene Steese followed by an open mic, at Mediterraneum Caffe, 2475 Telegraph Ave., near Dwight Way. For information call 526-5985 or 205-1749.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

ROVA, avant garde saxophone quartet, at 8 p.m. at The Jazz House. Cost is $10-$15 sliding scale. 649-8744. www.thejazz- 

house.com 

Kevin Seconds and Anton Barbeau at the 1923 Teahouse at 8 p.m. Suggested donation of $7-$15, no one turned away for lack of funds. 644-2204. www.epicarts.org 

Famous Last Words, Lizanah, essence at 9:15 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Nerissa & Katryna Nields, contemporary folk, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50 in advance, $18.50 at the door. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Swoop Unit at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

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


To Avoid Lyme Disease, Watch Where You Sit

By RICHARD BRENNEMAN
Friday April 09, 2004

Each no bigger than a poppy seed, a host of minuscule critters lurks in Northern California woodlands, loaded with bacteria capable of inflicting misery on campers, hikers and picnickers who take to the woods this spring. 

The western black-legged tick harbors the spiral-shaped bacterium that causes the dread Lyme disease, named for the Connecticut town of Old Lyme where the affliction was first recognized in the mid-1970s. 

Though the bacterium wasn’t identified until 1982, UC Berkeley professor Robert Lane says evidence now indicates the disease had been around for millennia. 

“Californians who had it in the 1800s and 1900s were misdiagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis or neurological disorders,” said Lane, who teaches in the Division of Insect Biology of UCB’s College of Natural resources. 

Lane and two other students of insect biology are the authors of a study in the current issue of the Journal of Insect Etymology. 

But where Lane is concerned, don’t call ticks insects. “They’re arachnids, eight-legged animals like spiders, scorpions and mites. And of all the arachnids, ticks are the most significant carriers of disease,” he says. 

Officially, Lyme disease strikes about 100 people a year in California, and 17,000 to 18,000 nationally. “But a lot of cases go unreported by doctors, so the actual numbers are probably several times higher.” 

While California cases are concentrated to the north of San Francisco Bay in Mendocino, Humboldt, Trinity and Lake counties, the tick is no stranger to the East Bay, 

“We’ve found them in Tilden Regional Park in the 1990s,” Lane said. “We looked in picnic areas and along the trails and found the rate of infected ticks to be very low, less than one percent to zero. We later look for nymphal ticks, which are so small they’re very hard to find, and on one trail slightly less than six percent of them carried the disease.” 

The nymphal—infant—ticks are the size of poppy seeds, between 1/25th and 1/20th of an inch long, he said. 

Lane’s been studying the critters for decades. His first job after receiving his doctorate from UCB in 1974 was looking into ticks for the state health department. Then, in 1982, Willy Burgdorfer, the discoverer of the Lyme disease organism which bears his name—B. burgorferi—invited Lane to join his team. 

Two years later, Lane joined the Berkeley faculty, where he set up a program to study the epidemiology of the disease, which he’s been doing ever since. 

Lane, graduate researcher Denise Steinlein and Jeomhee Munn, a UCB insect biology research specialist, are spreading the word about how not to catch the debilitating disease. 

They earned their expertise the old-fashioned way, by trekking into the black oak forests of southeastern Mendocino county and finding out just which behaviors produced the greatest tick exposures. 

The highest risk comes from sitting on logs in California’s hardwood forests. “We sat on logs for only five minutes at a time, and in 30 percent of the cases, it resulted in exposure to ticks,” Lane said. Second in risk was leaning against a tree, which produced tick exposure 23 percent of the time, followed by gathering firewood, which also gathered ticks in 17 percent of their trials. 

Once the nymphal tick contacts skin, its small size makes detection difficult, he said. 

Once Lyme disease was discovered, researchers found it and its close bacterial kin scattered across the temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere, Lane said. “It’s particularly common in Central Europe.” 

Lyme disease isn’t the only tick-borne infection. The spotted fevers were known much earlier, and are caused by rickettsia bacteria. 

While pharmaceutical companies once manufactured vaccines for both Lyme disease and Rocky Mountain spotted fever, slow sales and lawsuits triggered by side effects in a small number of patients ended their production, Lane said. 

The ailments can be treated by antibiotics, with good outcomes likely when the ailments are diagnosed early, Lane said. Later diagnosis can result in ongoing affliction. 

Tick season starts in April, and the arachnids become abundant in late April and on into May. The season can extend into August in higher elevations and in more northerly latitudes. 

The creatures love leaves and moisture, although sitting in fallen leaves produced exposure in only eight percent of their trials. 

Lane said the high risk from log sitting may result from their use as favored perches by the western fence lizard, a favorite host for the ticks. The relatively high exposure rate on the Tilden Regional Park trail likely stemmed from another host, the wood rat. 

Genetic tests are most commonly used to diagnose the disorder in humans, and a new test is currently in development. 

“We really want to get the word out about risky behaviors,” Lane said, “and now’s the time to do it.” ›


Opinion

Editorials

Letters to the Editor

Tuesday April 13, 2004

DOWNTOWN 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Rob Wrenn’s commentary on traffic in Berkeley (“Taking Away Parking Did Not Increase Europe’s Traffic Congestion,” Daily Planet, April 9-12) can be summarized in one phrase: cars bad, pedestrians and cyclists good. It doesn’t, however, address a rather fundamental issue, which is what the nature of downtown Berkeley really ought to be. Every time I open a copy of the Daily Planet I read an article about another Berkeley retail store closing its doors—most recently Tower Records—usually accompanied by considerable hand wringing and gnashing of teeth. The connection that people don’t seem to make—Mr. Wrenn included—is that less vehicular traffic (and parking) means lower retail sales. The simple reason for this is that people don’t like to schlep their shopping bags large distances from the stores to their cars. It’s a peculiar human trait, but not a surprising one. Consequently, if you restrict parking, or vehicular access, to the center of Berkeley, you are automatically restricting the growth and profitability of retail businesses. 

I think the Berkeley community as a whole needs to decide what sort of downtown it wants. If it wants a vibrant retail center, along the lines of Walnut Creek, it needs to provide adequate vehicular access and parking. If it wants a totally pedestrianized downtown, with nice open spaces, but small service shops and fast food parlors (which is what it is rapidly becoming), that’s fine, but don’t complain about the absence of quality retail stores. You can’t have your cake and eat it. 

Malcolm Carden 

• 

SOURCE OF BLIGHT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In his reporting of recent losses in downtown retail business (“See’s, Gateway Closings Jolt Downtown Retail Outlook,” Daily Planet, April 2-5), Richard Brenneman states that Berkeley’s office vacancy rate is the lowest in the East Bay. This observation may be true in general, but it overlooks one important factor in the decline of Shattuck Avenue: the loss of 200 office jobs and $10 million in annual payroll at the still-vacant former premises of California Continuing Education of the Bar (CEB) at the corner of Bancroft Way when that organization relocated to downtown Oakland in 2001. That partly boarded-up building also housed other now-closed businesses. 

All of these businesses were driven out by the excessive rent demands of the building’s owner L.B. Reddy, currently serving a federal prison sentence for his crimes. Reddy refused to let CEB seismically upgrade the building at its own expense and exercise its option to renew the existing lease paying him $500,000 per year, unless CEB agreed to pay increased rent and employ his contractors. 

Reddy’s insatiable greed in this transaction has already cost him $1.5 million in lost rent, in addition to degrading the quality of life all over the downtown area. If Shattuck Avenue is indeed suffering from blight, the source of the blight is clear. 

Robert Denham 

 

• 

PUNKS, PIT BULLS, BUMS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I was saddened to read in your paper that See’s Candy is going to move its store to Emeryville— saddened but not surprised. Berkeley is a mess of punks, pit bulls, bums, drunks, and the mentally ill. Oh, and dirty, smelly sidewalks as well. Who’d want to do business here? This is pretty much what I replied when asked by a surveyor for High Tech Burritos on Shattuck if I had ever eaten there. I wonder if High Tech’s downtown location is doing poorly. I am sure one of the reasons may be the oft-noted one that Berkeleyans tend not to like chains. There are the above reasons to consider which hardly anyone expresses publicly. Why is this???? 

Millicent Wilson 

 

• 

THE PASSION 

Editors, Daily Planet, 

Mark Winokur’s commentary piece on Mel Gibson’s The Passion makes a good point (“Film shows Need for Complex Interpretation of History,” Daily Planet, April 9-12). Any filmic depiction of historic events inevitably distorts, by exaggeration or oversimplification, the “true” events, in the process replacing them in “real” history.  

Winokur calls in a lengthy analysis for a calm recognition by Jews of Jewish involvement in Jesus’ crucifixion. He points out that at least some Biblical Jews must have been offended—for various reasons—by Jesus’ ideas and behavior, and may have overtly or covertly displayed their disapproval.  

Therefore, he says, modern Jews should openly accept this as fact and cease “a determined and insistent effort to disavow any possible or significant Jewish collaboration” in that event. Present protestations by modern Jews of ancient innocence “[do]… much to alienate us from our Christian brethren and may…only exacerbate [anti-Semitism].” 

While acceding to the historic deadly outbreaks of anti-Semitism, Winokur speaks as though dealing with a moderate affliction such as flu: Inoculate against it by rational acceptance of some ill-defined ancient responsibilities, and rest easy. Excesses such as those in the film will have no effect.  

Wrong! Those very excesses demonstrate the persistence of the virus, to which millions over the world are still susceptible: “The Jews killed Christ!” In a world of complex religious schisms (Christianity itself is replete with them) where bitterness is often deep, hard, and incisive, that short mantra still can ring out clear and distinct. 

Excesses such as those in The Passion must be challenged promptly every time, as must be all expressions which carelessly impugn any entire group or class. 

Morris Berger 

 

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PARKING AND TRANSIT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I am fortunate to live in the Berkeley hills with one of the most beautiful views in the world, and I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else. But I’m beginning to feel ignored in all the discussions about parking in Berkeley. I would happily take public transportation whenever possible, but AC Transit comes to my area only every 30 minutes, and only hourly on weekends. This is not my idea of adequate public transit. When I lived in San Francisco I could easily manage without a car; the Muni wasn’t perfect, but it had convenient routing and fairly frequent schedules. 

There is no way that we can shop for groceries, go to medical and dental appointments, go to movies or cultural events, or do anything else without using our car. Increasingly, I find that I am going to Emeryville or El Cerrito to shop because of the difficulty in finding a parking place in downtown Berkeley. Even the public garages are frequently filled. Having pedestrian zones downtown is a great idea, but we need to be able to get to the pedestrian zones if we don’t live near them. 

Jerrie Meadows 

 

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HONORING OUR TROOPS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

MoveOn.org sent out a message entitled “Honoring Our Troops” stating “it’s a good time to take a moment to honor the sacrifices our troops there and their families are making.” We felt it important to respond. Here’s what we said: 

“Dear friends at MoveOn, 

“Whenever we have heard others remark about the importance of supporting our troops even though one may oppose the war itself, we’ve felt a sense of unease, a kind of intuition that says that there is something inconsistent with supporting those that are conducting the war. Sure, it is Bush-Cheney and their cabal that got us into this, but it’s the regular soldiers who are firing the rockets, dropping the bombs, shooting at shadows that turn out to be children, terrorizing families, torturing prisoners, and then coming home, traumatized by the horrors they’ve seen and those they have themselves perpetrated. 

It is much better in our opinion, to honor those soldiers who have refused to fight or refused to go. They deserve our support. And in so doing, we should be encouraging all soldiers to refuse. This is an immoral war, and the soldiers who are carrying it out should be given a very clear message that their willingness to follow orders makes this war possible. 

MoveOn might consider some form of financial or legal support for any soldier who refuses to go to Iraq via a campaign similar to those you’ve undertaken to rid us of Bush. Look to the Israelis who are supporting their Rufuseniks to see how to make this happen. This is the type of action that we should all be supporting. 

Tom and Jane Kelly 

 

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XXXXXXXXXX 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Richard Clarke did nothing more than attempt to shift blame from the administration which had done nothing of any true consequence, Bill Clinton’s, to George W. Bush’s administration. His self-serving apology not only made him a hero to Democrats, it also sold thousands of books for him. It is a shame that this false apology, given under dubious circumstances, is given such high praise by George Cohen. Why didn’t Clarke make this apology months or years ago? Could it have something to do with the release of his book and his malice toward the Bush administration? Not according to Mr. Cohen. Mr. Cohen believes that Clarke is acting in a completely forthright manner. 

Never mind the contradicting testimony of Richard Clarke, where he constantly says one thing in his book and testimony and something completely different in the memos and e-mails he sent while in office. According to Mr. Cohen, Richard Clarke should be believed at face value. Like P.T. Barnum said, “There’s a sucker born every minute.” 

Peter McClellan 

Sacramento 

 

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XXXXXXXXXX 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Regarding our progress in getting the City of Berkeley to paint a crosswalk between Berkeley High School and the civic center park, we are chugging right along. Today (April 8) my daughter Ashley and I were scheduled to meet with the 2x2 committee at City Hall. What is 2x2? That’s a meeting between two City Council members and two School Board members. However, today’s meeting was canceled at the last minute. 

I had talked with various city officials earlier about how to get an initiative on the November ballot and was told that the 2x2 was a better way to go. However, the 2x2 isn’t rescheduled to meet again until May and if we wait that long, we won’t have time to collect the 2,007 signatures we need to get the crosswalk on the November ballot. Sigh. 

So this morning, a rather sleepy Ashley and I filed a petition to get the crosswalk initiative on the ballot. Next step? The city’s attorney will review our petition to see if it sez all the right stuff. THEN we will have to collect A LOT of signatures by May 31. Are you up for it? How badly do you want this crosswalk? WARM UP YOUR WRITING HAND! 

And while we are at it, perhaps we should circulate a petition to get America out of Iraq and George Bush into jail. Input? 

Jane Stillwater 

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Editorial: Subverting Citizen Planning

Becky O'Malley
Friday April 09, 2004

The most arresting fact so far uncovered in Richard Brenneman’s ongoing series on rental vacancies in Berkeley was this quote from Ted Burton, the city’s Economic Development Project Coordinator: “The last update I had was a year ago, and we were running about 10 percent [commercial] vacancies downtown then.” This is the reason that Berkeley observers of the hectic pace of building projects to which Berkeley has been subjected in the past four years are tempted to call the city’s planning department “The Department of Data-Free Development.” We have no current data showing that we need more commercial space, and in fact our old data shows that we don’t, but let’s just build some anyhow. 

It’s not fair, of course, to ask city employees to take all the bla me for the thoughtless building spree of the recent past. Elected officials, notably the last mayor and the current mayor, have acted as enthusiastic cheerleaders for a process which has resulted in the destruction of historic buildings, the consumption o f open space, the constriction of neighborhoods, and the proliferation of “for rent” signs in tenantless ground floor windows on all of the city’s main streets. It’s gotten so bad that when we printed an architect’s photo-shopped conceptual rendition of y et another Big Ugly Box on University Avenue, we joked about adding a “for rent by John Gordon” sign in the obligatory ground floor retail space depicted in the drawing.  

Builders, of course, love building sprees, because that’s how they make their money. But as a city we have the responsibility to delve more deeply into why proposed buildings are needed, and especially IF they are needed at all. We need more viable businesses and more affordable habitable dwellings, not more empty storefronts and office s and more over-priced studios, which is what we’ve been given by city officials, both elected and employed, so far. In addition, they’ve engaged in activities either devious or thoughtless which undermine the sensible planning which has been done, agains t all odds, by citizen commissioners in the past. 

Two cases in point: the West Berkeley Plan and the University Avenue Strategic Plan. When I was running a high-tech business in West Berkeley, in an office space converted from a small manufacturing compa ny, many property owners, including my otherwise estimable landlord, were whining that the West Berkeley Plan made such conversions overly difficult. Flash forward to 2004: Because of the foresight of the West Berkeley Plan participants, the city is not b urdened with the glut of office vacancies which now plagues San Francisco. But now formerly progressive councilpersons Breland and Bates have colluded in packing the Planning Commission with proponents of mindless retail expansion on Gilman in West Berkeley—at the same time that the city’s already developed commercial districts are experiencing devastating vacancies.  

Discussions of the University Avenue Strategic Plan, currently receiving perfunctory attention from the now-neutered Planning Commission, promise the same outcome. Planning Department staff has proferred a thinly disguised subversion of the eminently sensible goals of the Strategic Plan in the guise of implementation of the zoning contemplated by the plan. In fact, as drafted by staff, it w ould be upzoning, pure and simple, but at least the citizens aren’t fooled by it. People who track planning follies, including some who live near University Avenue, have put together a web site which shows all and tells all, planberkeley.org. It also documents what’s going on San Pablo, another target of the brainless building battalions.  

Next week’s Planning Commission meeting hosts another public hearing on the proposed zoning changes. Not waiting for input, however, city staff have put on the agenda for the same meeting commissioners’ approval of a Negative Declaration for the zoning changes. In CEQAspeak, that means that commissioners are being asked to say that the proposed changes won’t make much difference to the city. Here’s a mission for the sm art folks in the Plan Berkeley organization: Find out if this is true. We’ll look forward to seeing the results. 

Becky O’Malley is executive editor of the Daily Planet.