Features

END THE SLAUGHTER 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

It has recently come to my attention that scarce funds are being wasted in our public school system to teach kids to slaughter animals. 

Besides the ridiculous waste of money in support of big agribusiness, this practice of teaching the slaughter of animals helps to further brutalize our children in an already harsh world. 

There is a bill in Sacramento to be voted on May 4: AB1685. It would do two things: End the slaughter of any animal on school property and permit students the opportunity to opt-out of certain portions of the agricultural class. 

I hope every teacher and parent in the Bay Area urges their legislator to support this bill. 

Lindsay Vurek 

• 

SHAME 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

It’s good to see that Republican ideas are taking hold in progressive Berkeley. Some parents (consumers) are complaining that labor actions by the teachers (workers) are bad while the administration (management) is good and has the parents (consumers) interests at heart. 

They’ve even bought the old bosses line of, “I wouldn’t cut your benefits if I could afford it, but times are tight.” This is the same school district that gave sweet heart deals to top executives like McLaughlin and Lawrence and has squandered thousands of dollars dealing with lawsuits. 

When I went to the Berkeley Schools, I was always appreciative of the time spent by my teachers for such low compensation. I would never have expected them to give so much of their time if the administration was threatening to cut their pay. Being a Berkeley native, it’s embarrassing and shameful to see the vitriol directed at the teachers. Shame, Berkeley, shame. 

Dimitri Balmer 

Davis 

• 

POLICE MISCONDUCT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I am quite dismayed and saddened by recent opinion pieces run by the Daily Planet regarding alleged police misconduct. The first, by Carol Denney, a frequent contributor to this paper, contained no facts whatsoever (just some hazy allusions to orange cones) while managing to impugn the response of the police. The second written by the executive editor of this paper had more “facts” but was written with such a bias as to become completely inflammatory.  

How about looking at the situation described by Ms. O’Malley from another viewpoint: A woman alone in her home sees a woman she does not know at her door who will not go away. She is frightened, panics and calls 911. Imagine her relief and gratitude when the police show up so quickly, glad that they took her call seriously. After a few minutes the policeman ascertains that said woman is indeed not a criminal. He apologizes profusely to her and life goes on. 

Some of us have had similar experiences. My husband, a white male in his forties, had seven police cars converge on him, guns drawn, in broad daylight while walking down the street because he “fit the description.” It ended similarly to the story above but his conclusion was that they were doing their job, and as disconcerted as he was, he knew that being a police officer is a serious and possibly life-threatening business where you don’t take chances. If there is a possibility of criminal action they need to dominate the situation completely. 

Most of us in Berkeley rely on the prompt and courageous response of our police officers when we feel ourselves in some way imperiled. These kinds of baseless and libelous statements can only inspire ill will, mistrust and a general “us against them” mentality that doesn’t serve us well as a community. 

Phyllis Kamrin 

• 

SLIGHT OF REASON 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Concerning Becky O’Malley’s editorial on the budget crisis, I would like to draw attention to the fact that the “excessive spending on salaries, especially at the highest management levels” is seemingly undeserved, at least judging by management positions on landlord-tenant law. This is the only field concerning which I have developed some small measure of expertise, and I can assure you that the city manager, city attorney, and Rent Board staff are selling the city a bill of goods when it comes to the unnecessary deprivation and denial of tenants rights which they are constantly recommending. The City Council is constantly taking the word of its “experts” at face value, even though some of the councilmembers profess to know better, and the mayor and City Council display a degree of undemocratic unresponsiveness to criticism on these points that surpasses even the Bush administration. What does it all add up to? No taxation without representation. Do you get the message? It is high time for the second American Revolution.  

This time we must form an even more perfect union, by outlawing wage slavery (capitalism), even as we have outlawed outright slavery. Both were unfortunate by-products of the first American Revolution, and both were understood to be similar in character even by Abraham Lincoln at the time outright slavery was abolished. This does not mean, however, that we should hand over the reigns of our lives to leftist dictators. Far from it. We must retain our democratic institutions, with checks and balances, and strengthen them by eliminating the corrupting element of capitalism. We must develop a no tolerance policy toward any bureaucrat who would compromise the principles of democracy and simply throw them out on their ears. That is precisely what we should do with the host of bureaucrats who now pose as progressives and moderates in our present city government. Surely Berkeley can do better than this. Where is the Berkeley spirit of yesteryear? Surely it can be resurrected and emerge victorious over the present dark spell we are going through. Surely Berkeley has a role to play in leading the second American Revolution, but it cannot do so with the present host of hypocrites at the helm, who essentially vampirize the eternal spirit of revolution that belongs somewhat uniquely to Berkeley.  

Peter Mutnick 

• 

MORE PARKING? 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I cannot understand why Robert Lauriston wants more parking at the proposed development at 1885 University Ave. I hear the developer has agreed that residents will not be allowed to buy parking permits, so each added parking space in the development will just mean that one more resident will have a car.  

I live in the neighborhood (unlike Lauriston), and I can testify that it is easy to live here without a car, but that neighbors who do own cars use them frequently. They do less local and more regional shopping, and they drive even on trips when they could easily walk or bicycle.  

By encouraging more driving, Lauriston would not only make the neighborhood noisier, more congested, and less livable. He would also add, in a small way, to larger environmental problems such as global warming and the resource scarcity that causes wars for oil.  

Lauriston identifies himself as a pro-democracy activist. But his demands for more parking show that he is also an anti-environment activist.  

Charles Siegel 

• 

IN SUPPORT OF BFT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

We are the parents of kids who have attended Berkeley schools from elementary through Berkeley High. During those years the school community has experienced some periods of financial stability, but more often financial instability that ultimately resulted in reduced programs and services for our kids. All along, there have been constants--great kids, active parents, dedicated teachers and classified staff, and district administrators and board members working to do the right thing.  

The teacher union’s labor dispute with administration is difficult for all of us, and no one wants to see a strike. But, despite the difficulties, we support the teachers because we cannot support the position taken by the board to cap employer contributions to health care premiums. Each time an employer makes the decision to cap its contribution, it adds to the trend to diminish wages for the middle class. Capping employer contributions also relieves pressure on our policymakers to address the growing costs of health care in the United States.  

Unions helped create the American middle class by drawing lines in the sand. Good for them. 

Susan Henderson 

Vikki Davis 

Julia Epstein 

Stephen Rosenbaum 

• 

TRAFFIC CIRCLES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

This is response to Brenda Benson’s letter on the value and costs of traffic circles. Research has shown that they result in a major reduction in traffic accidents even when some drivers take the short cut in front. The key is that ALL drivers must slow down and pay more attention.  

The cost per circle was about $18,000 each when we installed the most recent ones in our neighborhood.  

The other major benefit is that, at least in LeConte, residents at each intersection agreed to plant, water and maintain each circle without any costs to the city. This encourages better cooperation and a sense of pride by creating a mini garden where only pavement existed before.  

Karl Reeh 

President, LeConte Neighborhood Association 

• 

A BAD AND COSTLY IDEA 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Six traffic circles have just been installed along Allston and Addison, one of which is visible from my front room. This was done in the name of “traffic calming.” I would like to suggest that this is a poor label. 

1. If a circle is put in an intersection that already had four way stops signs, how much slower will traffic be? 

2. At a regular intersection pedestrians, bicyclists and other motorists know pretty well when a car is about to make a left turn. With the circles this is not known until there is just barely time to respond. 

3. The circles put cars much closer to pedestrians to the discomfort of both. 

4. When the paint was just dry on the street at Grant and Allston, a car hit the circle and ended up in a corner lot destroying a fence and a fender. This driver did not look “calmer.” I also noticed skid marks of three other cars on the new paint.  

5. While I have no evidence to back this up it appears to me that cars that used to stop at these stops signs are now much more likely to glide through. 

Sometimes an idea seems right in the beginning but occasionally it ends up being a bad idea. Too bad this one cost so much. 

Gary Herbertson 

• 

FOR THE CHILDREN 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Most of our school officials undoubtedly care about children, but they should be careful not to overuse and hide behind phrases such as “the best thing for our children” to explain each and every controversial decision. 

We didn’t band human nature along with nuclear materials at the city borders (though we often like to think we did), and it’s cheap and it gets tiresome to hear school board members or the superintendent pretend that their positions in turf battles with the city, fights with the union or fights with a neighborhood are always born of some immaculate passion for kids. 

As a means to stifle debate, such phrases rank with “public safety,” “process” and “weapons of mass destruction.” 

James Day 

• 

VAN HOOL BUSES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

It seems that enough has been said about the bad design of the new AC Transit buses, but I have a very simple suggestion for any one of them who want to experience it for themselves. 

I suggest that they sit in the first seat next to the driver in one of those new buses. From that seat, not only is it difficult to locate a button to have the driver stop, it is physically impossible to reach any of them, even without passengers around to block you. 

Every time I end up in that seat, I have to tell the driver to stop, assuming that the driver hears me (who sometimes don’t because they’re talking on the cell phone). And in case I offended the proper protocol (to press a button), each time I do this I explain that I could not reach any button. 

Further, this seat, which requires stepping up and down a high step, which on numerous occasions I’ve seen people stumble on, is nominally designated for disabled persons. I do not know how such persons are supposed to stand up and look for buttons to push while the bus is moving. 

Takeshi Akiba 

• 

COMEDIAN IN TRANSIT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

It warms my heart when an unemployed or retired comedian finds something to keep him busy, which is obviously the good luck of H. E. Christian Peeples, at-large director of the Alameda Contra Costa Transit District. When I read his defense of the Van Hool buses—a tour of European proof-of-payment (POP, isn’t that cute?) fare systems and bus manufacturers—I recognized the style immediately. Peeples must have been a writer for Monty Python’s Flying Circus, and is obviously the author of the “Dead Parrot” skit, in which the customer keeps waving a bird corpse in the face of the pet store owner, who keeps saying, in many different ways, that the parrot looks fine to him. Hilarious. 

I look forward to Peeples riding these buses to pick up new material, maybe another skit for the “Department of Funny Walks,” as he watches people, old and young, lurching toward and away from seats, climbing up and down, while clutching for non-existent hand-holds. This fun will never end, even if the POP system is ever instigated, because riders who don’t have “a monthly pass, a transfer or some group pass,” (meaning most of the older riders) will still begin at the fare box and stagger on from there. There are no limits here—how about a “Department of Funny Falls and Crawls” joke. I can’t wait. 

Dorothy Bryant 

• 

SEE FOR YOURSELF 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Chris Peeples is the board member I alluded to in my April 14 commentary (“AC Transit’s Van Hools Hated by Riders, Drivers”) so it is appropriate that he respond with a letter (April 22) on the Van Hool, otherwise known as “the Bus from Hell.”  

I would simply say the proof is in the pudding. Don’t take either my word or Chris’s for it. Check it out yourself. To quote myself, “ride one of the Rapid Transit Van Hool buses on San Pablo then get off and transfer to one of the green buses on the same route.” Which one would you rather ride, particularly, if you had mobility problems? There is no value to having a narrow low-floor aisle all the way to the unnecessary third door unless one is on a walk-thru. Even if AC Transit goes to proof-of-payment, two doors are plenty. In fact, it would work better with the NABI (green buses) because both of their doors are quite wide. 

So, take a field trip and check them out. And you can let AC Transit know what you think by speaking up at their public meeting at 3 and 6 p.m. Wednesday, May 18 at the Scottish Rite Center located at 1547 Lakeside Dr., near 17th Street in Oakland. 

Joyce Roy 

Oakland 

• 

DANGEROUS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

On April 18, I read a letter in the Daily Planet from an AC Transit rider who talked about her experience on the No. 40 bus. I am glad that this situation is being brought to the attention of the public and AC Transit. 

I have not ridden on an ACT transit bus since August 2004 because I am afraid to, after my experience on a No. 43, traveling from downtown Berkeley to Albany. The buses in current use are not really accessible, in that passengers have to climb into the seats and the seating for those with mobility difficulties is in the middle of the bus. 

I have mild cerebral palsy, which causes me to lose my balance easily, and I have the use of my left hand only. I have difficulty putting the fare into the slot and maintaining my balance, especially if the driver does not wait till I am seated, which is what happened on that occasion. 

I saw other passengers having difficulties too, in particular, one elderly lady, who had trouble getting out of her seat and then fell on her back when the bus stopped. The driver did not check to see if she had hurt herself and other passengers helped her off the bus. 

As we got close to my stop, I found I could not reach the bell and when I tried to stand to ring it, I was knocked off balance and fell back in my seat. I went past my stop. Like the other letter writer, I , too, felt battered and that is not the way any passenger should feel. 

I know I should have written this letter immediately after the incident, and I regret that I did not. 

I recently met an AC Transit bus driver and when I told her about this incident, she told me that bus drivers rarely have time to wait for passengers to sit down. The drivers have to keep to their schedules as best as they can, to ensure that they get their breaks when they reach the end of the line.  

This is perfectly understandable, but AC Transit needs to find a way to accommodate their drivers and to ensure the safety of their passengers. 

I do not drive, and fully support public transit and do not want to be afraid to use it. 

Margaret Tong 

Albany 

• 

EARTH TO PEEPLES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

How blessed we are to be informed by the Almighty H.E. Christian Peeples that the Van Hool buses are, in fact, wonderful buses. As one of the directors of AC Transit, he has been on a one-man crusade to force these buses on the riders. Despite an avalanche of complaints, and almost near-universal loathing by the people who actually have to endure these buses, Peeples has done nothing for the last two years except to contradict what his own constituency says, and to dictate to us that the buses are good and we are just too ignorant to realize this obvious fact. Peeples even used this issue as his single campaign platform in 2004, promising to “better inform the ridership” of the quality of Van Hool buses, in the face of overwhelming hatred of them. (Being an incumbent, running essentially unopposed, he coasted to victory in any event.) 

To rebut just a few of the many distortions, absurdities and irrelevancies in his letter in the April 22 issue of the Daily Planet: 

It doesn’t matter why the seats are inaccessible; it doesn’t matter how common this ill-conceived design is in other transit districts, and it doesn’t matter whether other bus designs are equally bad; all that matters is that AC Transit’s ridership hates these buses. Period. All his rationalizations are without purpose. 

Peeples then goes on to say that “one of the advantages” of the new buses is that is has a third door, without ever listing any other supposed advantages. In fact, this is the only “advantage” he can point to. And what is the point of having a third door, according to Peeples? Because the third door “allows a proof-of-payment (POP) fare system to work much more efficiently.” Well, isn’t that nice? Too bad AC Transit doesn’t have a proof-of-payment fare system. In other words, there is no advantage to having these buses. Oh, but Peeples will counter, by having the buses we can implement a POP system. See—they do it in foreign countries, even on San Francisco’s Muni rail system. 

Earth to Peeples...Earth to Peeples...Can you read me? Have you ever ridden on the N-Judah at rush hour or late at night? Almost everybody cheats. Very few people actually pay the fare, knowing that inspectors are extremely rare. (I’ve never seen one.) Same goes for Paris and the Netherlands, where (in the poorer areas at least) fare-dodging is de rigueur. The Parisian transit authority knows this, and sees giving essentially free transport to the unemployed youth from the banlieus as a form of welfare. But what the result has been is a massive financial crisis in the transit system, which is exactly why (as Peeples foolishly pointed out) they are switching to “smart cards,” to crack down on ubiquitous fare evasion. 

As Peeples revealed in his final paragraph, the entire Van Hool fiasco is part of a grandiose attempt at social engineering on his part, when he admits, “I hope that we can...implement POP on an experimental basis soon.” The only way he’ll be able to implement POP is by getting these buses in place first, come hell or high water. And why does Peeples want to implement POP? Hmmm? Well, I’ll leave the readers to come to their own conclusions on that one, other than to say: Encouraging fare evasion is his goal. 

As a result, the rest of us have to spend our days unable to find seats, standing shoulder-to-shoulder next to other disgruntled passengers nursing their bruised shins and staring resignedly at the chipper “Bus of the Year, 2003!” signs plastered on every diabolical Van Hool, while the Grand Poobahs down at AC Transit HQ pitably reenact the same failed social engineering blunder that Paris is in the process of abandoning after it practically destroyed their economy. 

In other news, the grain harvest was better than ever this year in the Ukraine. 

Gerald Mannell 

• 

LUCKY TO HAVE ‘EM 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Reading Joyce Roy’s commentary on the Van Hool buses is disturbing to hear. I think riders in the San Francisco area should be looking at the Van Hools has a privilege to have. Where I’m writing from in Toronto, the TTC (second-largest transit system in North America) runs the oldest fleet of buses with some at 30 years old. The GM New Look buses comprise of half the fleet and are almost non-existent in large American systems anymore. We also run cheap low floor buses similar to New York City built by Orion, a few have burned up and retired. Riders in San Francisco should be considered lucky to have a (double the cost of a North American) bus, unless they want an Orion burning on their street.  

Wilson Wu 

Toronto, Ontario?