Berkeley’s medical cannabis advocates issued a clear threat to the Berkeley City Council at last Tuesday night’s (April 20) regular meeting: If the council doesn’t pass Councilmember Kriss Worthington’s medical marijuana plant increase measure next week, the activists will go to the voters next November with a ballot initiative that would potentially make Berkeley the most pot-friendly city in California. -more-

  Students from five student-run outreach and retention centers on the UC campus gathered in front of California Hall on Thursday afternoon to express their frustration over the state of recruitment and enrollment for minority students at the university, and to present a list of demands to correct what they feel is the problem. -more-

Without taking a formal vote Wednesday night, directors of the Berkeley Board of Education vaulted ahead of their superintendent and left no doubt that they will present voters with a November ballot initiative that could raise property taxes by as much as $12 million. -more-

Six months after losing their union election battle on a disputed 119-70 vote, Berkeley Bowl workers might still get union representation. -more-

Four years after it struck out in its bid to close a block of Derby Street to build a baseball field in South Berkeley, the Berkeley Unified School District is proposing a far more modest field of dreams. At least for now. -more-

Looking across the bay from Berkeley to the drama around District Attorney Kamala Harris’s decision not to seek the death penalty for the young tough accused of killing an undercover San Francisco police officer, I am struck by how much times have changed, and at the same time how much things remain the same. A central argument of the early suffragists was that when women had the vote and were elected to public office their decisions would be more humane and thoughtful. From my perspective, Kamala Harris seems to embody that image of the woman as leader: humane, because she recognizes that nothing would be gained by executing a young person who seems to have acted without premeditation, using a weapon he should never have been able to buy, against a challenger that he may not even have known was a police officer; thoughtful, because seeking the death penalty would be an expensive and pointless symbolic gesture, since San Francisco (as well as Alameda County) juries almost never vote for death sentences. -more-