Features
Letters to the Editor
GARDENING
Editors, Daily Planet:
I want to let you know that I really enjoyed the article by Shirley Barker (“Cucumbers: A Treat That Predates Agriculture,” Daily Planet, April 16-19) and hope you will continue to publish stories on local “experts.” The Berkeley Daily Planet has been a routine read in the mornings during dog walks since I moved to the Bay Area in 1999. I pick up my copies at a paper box on Alcatraz for my morning walk between the Rockridge and Elmwood neighborhoods.
Ann Stovel
Oakland
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SIREN TESTS
Editors, Daily Planet:
Can you imagine a fireman coming to your house to slap you in the head? Unimaginable? Put on your thinking cap. Sirens will be tested on April 22 and 29 at four different locations in this city, that supposedly cares about its residents. People and animals (including birds) close to the places the sirens will scream are the most vulnerable. The decibel level of the noise produced is in the range of 118 to 123 decibels. Sound is pressure. The sound strikes your ears. BANG! You've just been hit, a huge slap to your ears. The level of sound the sirens produce is louder than adult humans should be exposed to because noise at that loudness can impair hearing. For information, see www.nonoise.org.
Sirens in Berkeley? Sirens that must be tested on a regular basis? At what price?
Ann Reid Slaby
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CYA ABUSE
Editors, Daily Planet:
In January, California Youth Authority staffers Delwin Brown and Marcel Berry (at Chaderjian Youth Correctional Facility) were caught on tape, showing them viciously beating two youths while two other staff members held them down and two others watched. One youth is seen on tape lying motionless and handcuffed on the floor as he is beaten and kicked repeatedly. The San Joaquin county D.A.’s office has publicly reported that it won’t file charges against the six staff. Is California now like pre-60s Mississippi?
The odious message being sublimally broadcast through CYA, a state agency, is that California takes care of its children with brutality, cruelty, and by starving/closing school systems.
Concerned citizens need to urge Atty. Gen. Lockyear (fax: (916) 445-6749 or (916) 327-7892) that he respond immediately to the vicious beating; he has the jurisdiction to do so. At the very least, he has the obligation to prosecute the CYA employees. Correctional officers are not above the law.
Justice isn’t served when defenseless youth are brutally beaten in the man-made hell the CYA has become.
Maris Arnold
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EXPORTING DEMOCRACY
Editors, Daily Planet:
I am happy to hear that President Bush is planning to install a western-style democracy in Iraq by the end of June. Does this mean the whole nine yards?
Does it include freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of religion? Does it mean ownership and control of Iraqi oil will revert to Iraqis? Does it mean that Iraqi tribes will be able to build tax-free casinos on their tribal lands?
And what about same-sex marriage?
Marion Syrek
Oakland
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PLACING BLAME
Editors, Daily Planet:
Attorney General John Ashcroft recently blamed Clinton administration intelligence policies for failures that led up to 9/11. Apparently, after nearly one year into the Bush administration, it was Bill Clinton who was responsible for any problems that might have contributed to that horror! Okay, it may have been the lies of the liberal media, but, by golly, I’d thought George Bush was the president! Clearly that’s absurd!
Michael Steinberg
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JUSTICE, COMPASSION
Editors, Daily Planet:
Many faith groups flourish in freedom throughout California, and, as our founders would have wanted it, hold a wide variety of differing beliefs on issues ranging from theology to foreign and social policy. However, all hold that we are called to care for one another when we are ill or suffer from disease, and provide healing.
As faith leaders, we are often called upon to console and care for the sick and dying in our community. But when our neighbors are unable to get the medical attention they need because they do not have health insurance coverage, we must do more than console or pray. We must speak out.
That’s why leaders of different faiths throughout Oakland, Alameda, and the entire Bay Area are joining with countless others across the nation to speak out for health coverage for all in America during Cover the Uninsured Week, May 10-16. We encourage people of all faiths to unite in a common call to ensure that all Americans have access to health care coverage, private or public.
We ask for a more just and compassionate society that does not stand by while nearly 44 million Americans go without health insurance for a full year. These men, women and children who are uninsured are not strangers to us. Some of them are in our families. Others live in our communities. They pray, work, and study with us. Uninsured Americans are found in every neighborhood. They include followers of every religion and members of every race.
It is time for leaders of this state, and our nation, to ensure that all of us have the health care coverage we need in order to live in the fullness of health that we are intended to live.
We encourage everyone to log on to the Web site at www.CoverTheUninsuredWeek.org, to learn more about the uninsured and to find out how you can become involved in your community.
Rev. Kelvin Saulsw
Downs Memorial United Methodist Church
Rabbi Allen Bennett
Temple Israel
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DOWNTOWN PARKING
Editors, Daily Planet:
Malcolm Carden writes that downtown Berkeley needs more parking to become “a vibrant retail center, along the lines of Walnut Creek” because people will never take transit to go shopping. (Letters, Daily Planet, April 13-15).
Apparently, he does not know that the most successful shopping district in the Bay Area is the Union Square area of San Francisco, where there is relatively little parking and most shoppers come by transit.
Downtown Berkeley will never succeed by trying to provide better automobile access than Walnut Creek or suburban malls. It is too far from the freeway, there is limited capacity on local streets, and there is limited land left for parking.
Downtown Berkeley will succeed by providing pedestrian-friendly streets and a mix of uses that is much more interesting than anything you can find in suburbia. The university’s proposed convention center and museums and the new residential development in downtown will help create the mix of uses that will draw more people and will create a thriving retail center.
We certainly need some customer parking, but if we provide too much parking, downtown will become so congested that it will be less attractive to shoppers. Many intersections in downtown are already at a D or E level of service. If we try to provide as much parking as Walnut Creek, those intersections will reach the F level of service -- commonly known as gridlock.
People who drive everywhere and who complain that it is difficult for them to shop downtown should face the fact that downtown Berkeley cannot accommodate every car that wants to come here, any more than downtown San Francisco can. If they have chosen to live someplace where they drive every time they leave their homes, then they are going to have to do much of their shopping in suburban malls, and they are going to have to miss some of the most interesting parts of the Bay Area, such as downtown San Francisco and downtown Berkeley.
Maybe these people should consider moving to a transit-oriented neighborhood. They would have less trouble getting around, and they would do less damage to the environment.
Charles Siegel
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MARRIAGE AMENDMENT
Editors, Daily Planet:
President Bush and other conservatives have been accused in recent weeks of seeking to “put bias in the Constitution” by endorsing an amendment that would define marriage as solely the union of one man and one woman. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Gay marriage has never been a constitutional right in America—or any other civilized nation. Those who support the amendment aren’t trying to deprive homosexuals of any of the legal protections they currently enjoy; instead, they are trying to prevent runaway courts from creating out of thin air new “rights” that would prove detrimental to society.
Yelling “discrimination” is not the only strategy liberals have unleashed to defeat this amendment, though. They also have argued that gay marriage is a civil rights issue akin to the African-American struggle for equality. No less a civil rights icon than Jesse Jackson has denounced that claim, noting that “gays were never called three-fifths human in the Constitution.”
This aggressive campaign to undermine marriage as it’s always been known can be defeated—but only if we all stand up to support the Federal Marriage Amendment.
Marlene Friedlander
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IRAQ OCCUPATION
Editors, Daily Planet:
Although domestic opposition to the U.S. occupation and war against Iraq is growing, serious confusion about U.S. purposes remain. Many who say, how can “we” leave before “we get the job done” or “fix the mess” are sorely misguided. The U.S. did not invade Iraq to bring democracy, nor has it any intent to do so. That was and remains a subterfuge just like the lie that Iraq was a threat to our security. In fact the U.S. will try to control Iraq indefinitely and for a different reason: the loss of control of Iraq can damage U.S. political and economic dominance (of Europe, Japan, Russia, China, as well as the Israeli-U.S. dominance of the Middle East—all well documented in “Oil, Power and Empire” by Larry Everest). Barring fierce public opposition, the Iraq war could become longer and worse than Vietnam leaving no peace for a generation. Getting the U.S. out of Iraq may test our nation’s democratic institutions even more than ending the Vietnam war did because the American people are facing off against a faltering U.S. imperialism with more to lose now.
Marc Sapir
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