In what one prominent Berkeley progressive—Jaqueline DeBose—angrily said “appears to be a gentrified left-wing conspiracy,” the 20-year City Council career of Berkeley legend Maudelle Shirek may have come to an abrupt end last week when her campaign for re-election was disqualified by the Berkeley city clerk’s office. -more-
Three challengers will be taking on two incumbents for two seats on the school board for the Berkeley Unified School District (BUSD) in the November elections. Norine Smith, a San Francisco native and 33-year-resident of Berkeley, will repeat her 2000 challenge to longtime incumbent Councilmember Betty Olds for the District 6 Berkeley City Council seat. Filing remains open until Wednesday evening for council districts 2, 3, and 5, and for four seats on the nine-member Rent Stabilization Board. -more-
Following howls of protest from libraries across the nation, U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft has rescinded a controversial order demanding that libraries destroy copies of a federal statute and accompanying regulations and documents. -more-
Why are progressive staffers disappearing from San Francisco’s leading paper? In the past month, two staffers at the San Francisco Chronicle have quietly disappeared from their posts. Ruth Rosen, a progressive opinion columnist, was suspended without pay after she wrote a column criticizing the CEO of Curves for Women for supporting anti-abortion groups. Her supervisors accused her of spreading misinformation and of “disloyalty,” and Rosen eventually agreed to leave the paper. Two weeks later, William Pa tes was taken off his job as editor of the letters page after management learned that he had donated $400 to John Kerry. -more-
OWERRI, Nigeria—All summer long I’ve been a celebrity. Schoolboys clamor to greet me. Housewives invite me to their homes. Teenage girls scoop up and kiss my children. Burly security guards open doors for me. Thin roadside hawkers, confidently balancing on their heads baskets of eggs or consumer electronics, cluster excitedly around my car window. Everyone smiles, waves, shouts, “Oyibo! (Foreigner!) Welcome!” -more-
Mayor Tom Bates, Councilmember Kriss Worthington, LeConte neighborhood resident Paul Rabinow and two city employees toast the new sign on Derby advertising the City of Berkeley’s ban on heavy vehicles, which applies to more than three dozen small residential streets. -more-
Gunshots Hit Homes, Cars on Ashby -more-
I received an e-mail about a column I wrote several weeks ago. The writer said, “Tell your friends, the Scrabblettes, that they’re not following Scrabble rules. The first player must start with a four-letter word. Unless my ability to count is off, kea, a word your co-player Louise used, does not have four letters. Plus, you left out an important part of the definition of a kea. It is a green New Zealand parrot that kills sheep by TEARING AT THEIR BACKS TO EAT THE FAT THERE (Webster’s New Universal Unabr idged Dictionary, page 996). If you want to lead off with an acceptable parrot, try the kakapo, also green, and also from New Zealand. It does not have a breastbone and so it is the only bird of the parrot species (psittaciformes) that cannot fly. It is o ften misidentified as an owl, eats only at night, and stays in holes in the ground during the day.” -more-
We have read the report of the external review of the collaborative research agreement between Novartis Agricultural Discovery Institute, Inc. (NADI) and the Regents of the University of California. We were pleased to learn the history of the “bidding approach” suggested for selecting corporate partners for the university. We were also pleased to receive assurance from the reviewers that the UCB agreement (the UCB-N deal) had minimal direct impacts on the university, but not excluding the College of Natural Resources (CNR). This conclusion was reached without asking the question “what would have happen if the UBC-N deal had not been brought to light?” by a courageous CNR Executive Committee (EXCOM) ably chaired by a vulnerable untenured Assistant Professor Ignacio Chapela. EXCOM (one of us was a member, APG) enabled a faculty review despite excessive pressure from the dean’s office to rapidly ratify the agreement. The report also assumes at Berkeley that the rise of biotechnology and the fall of applied agricultural fields such as biological control, plant pathology, soils and others is just part of the natural progress of science; a mere part of the process of modernization. In fact, according to the review, the “deal” appears consistent with the universities adjusting to the emerging norms of university-based economic development” and gives the impression that science at Berkeley is protected from the influence of politics and corporate power. -more-
On Aug. 3, about 120 staff from the remaining three county community medical clinics in Newark, Hayward and Oakland walked off the job and confronted the Alameda County Board of Supervisors. The supervisors were holding a retreat in an off-site location and the workers let them know what they think of planned new and deep cuts in staffing and services for the public. At that event I handed the following letter to each member of the board individually. -more-
While Bay Area folks often claim that California is two states, with a virtual political border crossing the state on an East/West line somewhere south of San Jose, perhaps the real second state begins north of Marin County—dividing the sparsely settled rural California of decades past from today’s postmodern urban landscape. -more-
If you’ve been on the UC campus lately, you may have noticed the oval blue plaques warning against dumping waste into Strawberry Creek, and their logo: a truculent-looking fish with three spines along its back. That’s a three-spined stickleback, part of the creek’s original fauna, and maybe still there. I’ve found conflicting sources on that point. A Strawberry Creek walking tour guide says the sticklebacks were reintroduced during restoration efforts, but were flushed downstream and now congregate where the creek enters the bay, near the Berkeley Marina; another site, though, suggests that some remain. -more-
More than a year after the organizing started, and nine months after they lost an initial vote to verify the union, Berkeley Bowl employees have won. -more-
The alliance between Berkeley’s most controversial developer and the city’s biggest backer of high-density residential buildings has reached an impasse, according to Berkeley City Councilmember Dona Spring. -more-
Richmond residents turned out in force for two separate meetings at the Civic Center Wednesday night, each dealing with sites for proposed casinos that could turn the East Bay into a haven for gamblers. -more-
Star Smith saw her life collapse a few years ago when her partner walked out on her. She was left with a small child and nowhere to go. She immediately applied for welfare and tried to get a job, but hit a brick wall because she had a drug felony conviction on her record. -more-
The California Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) has launched a six-to-nine-month study of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s (LBNL) report on hazardous materials in the soils and groundwater near the lab. -more-
Two weeks to the day after Berkeley’s first homicide of the year, a 64-year-old South Berkeley man was gunned down Sunday evening in his apartment at 1820 Alcatraz Ave. -more-
California cities and counties have been tightening their belts over the last decade, partly due to raids on their treasuries by the state government. Now, with an historic local-state tax revenue agreement in place and the state’s fiscal year 2004-05 bu dget passed and signed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, local governments find they must also hold their collective breaths until November. That’s when California voters will decide on a state constitutional amendment—Proposition 1A—that would put restraint s on the ability of the state to shift tax money away from cities and counties. -more-
Berkeley Police are seeking the public’s help in identifying the gunman who has robbed at least 13 business in Berkeley and North Oakland during the past month. -more-
Jury Finds Beretta Not Responsible For -more-
Sitting far from the main stage and stretching out seemingly forever up the Fleet Center embankment, the 502-person California delegation at the Boston Democratic Convention was impressive in size, even if it was but a distant speck in the context of the swing state mania now sweeping the party. To put it bluntly, the California delegation was not very celebrated at this particular convention. Since the Golden State is not a swing state—Kerry leads by more than 10 points here—the royal treatment was rese rved for Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Mexico, and Iowa. These state delegations were treated with kid gloves during convention week 2004 and were seated almost on top of the speaker’s platform. All of these states are running neck-in-neck in the Bush-Kerry po l ls, and the DNC wanted to send these delegates home feeling like the outcome of the presidency is up to them. -more-
Maxine Waters has represented South-Central Los Angeles (includes Gardena, Inglewood, Lawndale, and Hawthorne) for seven terms in the U.S. House of Representatives. She has one of the most liberal voting records in Congress. When Gary Webb of the San Jose Mercury News wrote about the CIA-backed Contra crack cocaine link between Central America and South-Central Los Angeles in the mid-1980s, she held town hall meetings to investigate and took a leading role in searching out the truth. When Haiti’s President Jean-Bertrand Aristede was taken to the Central African Republic recently (Waters says “kidnapped”) she was one of a handful on a plane bound for Bangui, the capital, to rescue the deposed leader. In fact, she was arrested in front of the White House recently while advocating for justice for Haitian refugees and the restoration of democracy in Haiti. -more-
This is the last of three articles summarizing my impressions of the Democratic convention. Here I compare John Kerry to George Bush (Kerry’s speech is at www.johnkerry.com/pressroom/speeches/spc_2004_0729.html). -more-
So, you invited a bunch of Democrats to town. They came, they convened, and they went. Was it successful? Did the Dems do what they needed to do? Where do they go from here? Here are some observations by a totally non-objective bystander about where the Democrats came from, where they were at the Boston convention, and where they are going next. -more-
It’s a tough game, newspaper reporting, especially when you want to be meaningful. But sometimes you get lucky. -more-
The New Zealand government calls him an “economics rock star” and Accenture, the global management consulting and outsourcing giant, named him one of the world’s top 50 business intellectuals. -more-
Last week, we talked about how Mayor Jerry Brown got himself stuck on the Tarzaghibaby…that dilemma in which he was running for California attorney general while dragging the sexual harassment of his longtime aide and confidante, Jaques Barzaghi. This we ek: the miraculous unstucking. -more-
When my husband had a bicycling accident 10 years ago and became wheelchair bound, unable to move below the shoulders, besides going crazy I also went in search of help. I didn't know anyone personally with his kind of injury, C-4 quadriplegia. I had find advice and resources any way that I could. It wasn’t easy. -more-
The proposed David Brower Memorial Sculpture is simply preposterous. The time of bronze statues of generals on horseback disgracing our parks is long behind us. Now, it is proposed that the City of Berkeley accept a huge bronze statue of David Brower cli mbing a globe. This monster will weigh 350,000 pounds. It is to be 20 feet high and 15 feet wide and will withstand “any ground motion, even an earthquake.” It is to be made of Brazilian blue quartzite with bronze pieces in clusters to represent the seven continents with a bronze likeness of David Brower trying to scale the globe. It is named “Spaceship Earth,” a name coined by Buckminster Fuller, who would surely turn in his grave. It is the work of a retrograde Finnish sculptor, Eino, a longtime friend of Brian Maxwell, the founder of Powerbar, and will be offered by Maxwell’s widow to the City of Berkeley. It is to be erected at the traffic circle at the end of Spinnaker Way and thus dominate the great view to the Bay. The area is already blemished by the horrible “Guardian,” which was plopped down one dark night without approval of the Civic Art Commission. -more-
I’ve met Medea Benjamin. She is dedicated, hard working, selfless, courageous and inspiring. I usually have the utmost respect for her and find myself in agreement with her. However, I do not feel that it was productive or appropriate for her to attend t he Democratic National Convention with the intention of being an issue-provoking and disruptive influence. -more-
“Drop dead!” “No way!” “Ha! Are you kidding?” “What? Are you crazy?” “Are you a Republican?” “I’m not a hippie!” “I hate him!” -more-
Patrick Dooley, the Shotgun Players’ founder and Artistic Director, is determined not to do Shakespeare in John Hinkle Park. “Anything,” he says, “But not Shakespeare. Not in the park.” He seems to feel—with some justification—that it’s an idea that’s become a little tired with overuse. -more-
In this season of mists and mellow fruitfulness that we call our Berkeley summer, there may be little to do in the garden beyond watering. In contrast, the kitchen can be a hive of activity. -more-
Murray Bail wrote a novel, Eucalyptus, with a plot that hinges on one of those marry-my-daughter contests that show up in fairy tales: The successful suitor must name all the eucalypts on the father’s property, and the father has planted at least one of pretty much all of them. That’s hundreds of species —and as things get studied and shuffled, it’s hard to say how many species there are, let alone which any tree belongs to. -more-
The ongoing plans to turn the Richmond area into Vegas-by-the-Bay last appeared in this space around the middle of June. This was right after our intrepid reporter had uncovered a hither-to-secret scheme to put a massive tribal gaming complex right smack in the middle of Point Molate, a former Navy fuel depot with gorgeous bay views, charming historic buildings, and lots of open space. The property was transferred to the City of Richmond a few years ago, with Navy promises to clean up serious on-site toxic waste problems. -more-
One last convention retrospective, and then we’ll get down to business again. Many of the publications we read, including this one, have devoted a lot of space to analyzing the effect of the recent Democratic gathering on the political landscape. We have, however, missed getting a comment from the one person whose opinion would be most relevant: our theater critic. So I’ll just usurp her job for a moment and take a quick look at the spectacle formerly known as the Democratic National Convention. -more-
