The Alameda County Board of Education is asking its 18 school districts to take a more aggressive stand concerning military recruiters, encouraging them to adopt a controversial “opt in” policy to inform students, parents and legal guardians “of their rights to withhold their child’s name and contact information to the military recruiters.” 

The “opt in” policy is so controversial that even the anti-war organizer who brought the military recruitment issue to the board believes that the policy is against federal law. The resolution was passed unanimously at Tuesday’s board meeting. 

Under President George Bush’s 2001 No Child Left Behind Act, federal funds can be withheld from any school district unless they provide military recruiters with access to the names, addresses, and telephone numbers of all secondary school students. 

The act provides a “consent” provision that parents or students can request that students’ personal information not be released to recruiters “without prior written parental consent,” and several local school districts—including Albany Unified and Fremont Unified—have interpreted this to mean that the districts must provide military recruiters with student information unless parents sign a form specifically requesting the district not do so. Some call this the “opt out” policy, because it gives parents the option to have their children kept out of the information network. 

However, other local districts, including Berkeley Unified, have adopted a more liberal interpretation of the “consent” provision, stating that they will presume that parents do not wish to have their children’s personal information released to military recruiters unless the parents fill out a form consenting to that release. Observers call this the “opt in” policy. 

In Tuesday’s resolution, county school board members noted that NCLB “requires school districts to inform your students and their parents of their ‘opt-out’ rights.” But the resolution went on to state that “students, parents and legal guardians should be informed that if a notice is not provided the high school will assume that they do not authorize the school to release the requested information and their child’s name and contact information will not be released.” 

In a 2003 letter to the Santa Cruz City High School District Board of Education, when that district was considering adopting the “opt-in” policy, American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California staff attorney Ann Brick wrote that the federal act is not clear on how schools must notify parents or the procedure the school must use to determine parents’ wishes concerning the release of student directory information. 

“The assumption that parents do not object to the release of this information simply because they have not expressed their wishes is very problematic,” he wrote, “particularly when the information is provided as part of a much larger packet of information sent to parents at the beginning of the school year. All too often parents will only learn after-the-fact that information they wished to be kept private has been released to the military when an unsolicited recruitment telephone call or letter is received.” 

According to a statement by Josh Sonnenfield with the Santa Cruz-based Resource Center for Nonviolence, one of the groups that lobbied for the Santa Cruz opt-in provision, “in the summer of 2003, the Federal Government sent out a letter to every State Secretary of Education noting their opposition to opt-in and their belief that opt-in was not legal. That led to a crackdown on districts with opt-in in California. However opt-in still exists in a few places on the East Coast.” 

Barbara Heringer-Swar, a military resistance organizer who brought the issue to the Alameda County Board of Education, said following the board vote she believed the “opt-in” provision was “against the law.” 

Heringer-Swar, who has a son at Hayward High School and is employed by the Central Committee For Conscientious Objectors in Oakland, said her concern was that county schools were not even informing parents that they could “opt out” of the information program. 

“I thought this was a no-brainer,” she told board members. “Parents ought to be able to choose who contacts their children. If we ask parents to give consent for their children’s’ pictures to go in a newspaper, we should be asking them to give consent about going to war.” 

Under Berkeley Unified’s military recruiter information provision, passed in 2003, parents of high school students are provided with a form in the Student/Parent Handbook asking the parents to check a box and sign their names stating: “Please DO release my student’s name, and address, and/or telephone number.” The form goes on to inform parents that if they “do not check a box and sign above, [the high school] will NOT release your child’s information to military recruiters.” 

BUSD Public Information Officer Mark Coplan said that under Berkeley Unified’s program, only 27 parents had chosen to opt in to the military information program. 

“Because we expected the numbers of ‘opt-in’ students to be so low in Berkeley, this partly a measure to minimize paperwork,” Coplan said. “We knew there would be far more forms to be filled out and handled by the district if we had asked parents to opt out.” 

Coplan added that he thought Berkeley’s system was “a better use of time for the military recruiters themselves. It means they don’t have to waste their time with students who don’t want to be contacted.” 

Fremont Unified School District Communications Director Gary Leatherman said that in the spring of 2003 the district began sending out letters to the parents of juniors and seniors in the district’s five high schools and one continuation school “informing them that unless the district has a request on file that the parent does not want such information released, when recruiters ask for their children’s names, addresses, and telephone numbers, it will be released.” 

Leatherman said that an “opt out” form is now included in the district’s Parents Rights Handbook. Leatherman said that of the district’s 4,320 junior and senior students, 730 have requested to opt out of the military recruitment information program. He called that number “fairly significant.” 

Leatherman said that Fremont Unified is also considering adding a provision to the form that allows parents to excuse their children from any presentations by military recruiters on campus. 

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Shortly after the clock struck midnight Wednesday, the City Council breathed new life into a pedestrian bridge proposed to rise 21 feet above Hearst Avenue. 

By a 6-3 vote (Wozniak, Spring and Olds, no) the council gave UC Berkeley conditional approval to build the bridge connecting dormitories at the Foothill Housing Complex. But before the council relinquishes the city’s air rights over Hearst Avenue, it is demanding that the university indemnify the city against a lawsuit threatened by a local property owner opposed to the project. 

The council rejected a second proposed condition: to lease the air rights to the university only at a yet-to-be-determined fair market price. 

The council also voted Tuesday to raise taxpayers’ sewer fees by 3 percent and to charge UC Berkeley sewer fees based on usage instead of accepting the current flat fee. UC has argued that it’s not legally required to pay the full cost of its sewer use. 

In other matters, the council overturned the structure of merit designation of Celia’s Mexican Restaurant, a building at Fourth and Addison streets which is scheduled for demolition to make way for a new condominium project. The council also requested that the school district hold off on choosing a new site for the city’s warm water pool.  

Additionally the council held a two-and-a-half hour public hearing on cuts in funding for community agencies. The agencies brought so many of their clients and supporters to the meeting that at one point while the council was in session more than 100 people, denied entry to the capacity-filled chambers, clamored outside Old City Hall. 

Foothill Bridge 

The council vote to allow the bridge was a split decision for UC Berkeley. The university has sought city permission for the air rights over Hearst Avenue at La Loma Avenue for nearly 20 years, contending that it wants to improve pedestrian safety for students and improve access to the La Loma dormitory on the north side of Hearst for disabled students. 

The university has agreed to pay Berkeley $200,000 for the right to build over a city street, and to ask the city to approve the bridge design. 

UC Berkeley planner Jennifer Lawrence said the university would probably have to ask the UC Regents for authority to repay the city for any losses which result from lawsuits now threatened against the proposed bridge. A possible plaintiff is New Education Development Systems, Inc, an organization with ties to the Unification Church headed by Rev. Sun Myung Moon, which owns a landmarked building at 2717 Hearst Ave., just uphill from the proposed bridge. 

The group’s attorney, Alan Seher, said that the university did not legally qualify for the encroachment permit under city law because it would not be “substantially damaged” if the city refused. On the issue of whether UC Berkeley had adequately studied alternatives to the bridge, he said that he’d found information that the university had a network of underground tunnels, including one under Gayley Road adjacent to the Foothill complex.  

Seher said that even though the council attached a condition to the permit, the vote triggered a 90-day window for his client to file suit against the city independent of the UC Regents’ vote on whether to indemnify the city. 

“The city I don’t think was thinking very clearly when they voted to demand the university to indemnify them,” he said, explaining that if the UC Regents declined the city could still face a lawsuit. 

UC students in attendance supporting the bridge plan cheered the council vote. Councilmember Gordon Wozniak, the council’s biggest proponent of the bridge, was resolutely against adding the indemnification clause and stormed out of the council chambers after the vote. He did not return for the remainder of the meeting. 

Also dissatisfied with the vote was Jim Sharp who lives near the proposed bridge site and has opposed the project. 

“The council is still giving [the air rights] away,” he said. “Had they gotten a bigger pot of money then maybe there would be some justice to this.” 

With only four votes in favor, the council failed to pass a proposal from Councilmember Kriss Worthington to add a second condition to the variance ordering UC Berkeley to pay an undetermined fair market value for the air rights over Hearst. Joining Worthington in support of the proposal were councilmembers Dona Spring, Betty Olds and Max Anderson. 

“I think this is a joke that we’re going to get a measly $200,000 and then we’re going to get sued,” Olds said, directing her anger at UC officials. “I can’t believe what a bunch of namby pambies you all are.” 

But City Manager Phil Kamlarz said that it would be difficult to assess the fair market value of air rights. 

Councilmember Linda Maio said charging fair market value for the rights might be too big a burden for the university. 

“We don’t want to have so many conditions that we’re denying it,” she said. 

Sewer Fees 

By a 8-1 vote (Worthington, no) the council voted to raise residents’ sewer fees 3 percent and also to charge sewer usage fees to UC Berkeley for the first time. When the council held a public hearing on the fees two weeks ago UC Berkeley attorney Jason Houghton, of Thelen Rein & Priest, argued that the action was illegal because the university and city have a 15-year agreement on sewers that hasn’t expired yet, and that as a state entity UCB is exempt from the type of fees the city sought to charge.  

Currently UC Berkeley pays a flat $470,000 for sewer services under an agreement which expires June 30. Under the new fee schedule, the university might pay as much as $2.18 million for operation, maintenance and replacement costs. 

Councilmember Worthington said he was concerned that the wording of the new fee schedule might give city officials too much leeway to charge public agencies like the university less than a fair market price. He also wanted to know whether the new fee schedules would affect the ability of taxpayers, including homeowners and businesses, to sue the city or university for in effect making them subsidize the university’s sewer costs.  

Celia’s Landmarking 

The developer of a condominium project has one less hurdle to overcome now that the council overturned the structure of merit designation for 2040 Fourth St. (Celia’s Mexican Restaurant). Had the council allowed the decision of the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission to stand, Urban Housing Group would have needed Zoning Adjustment Board approval to demolish the building. 

The landmarks commission had asked the council to remand the designation back to them in light of findings from Urban Housing Group’s consultant Jay Turnbull that the architect who designed Celia’s, Irwin Johnson, had designed 11 other buildings in Berkeley. 

“We find it fascinating to have new information,” said Landmarks Commissioner Leslie Emmington, arguing for the commission to take a second look at the designation. Noting that a 1985 survey of West Berkeley classified the building as significant, Emmington held that the proposed development had not influenced the commission’s vote. She also questioned why planning staff was recommending that the commission’s 5-4 vote be overturned. 

Addressing the council, Turnbull, an architectural historian said that Celia’s was not one of Johnson’s most important works and that the building had undergone extensive interior and exterior alterations. 

With hardly any debate, the council voted 7-1-1 (Worthington, no; Olds, abstain) to overturn the ruling. Olds hinted she might have joined the majority if they had a longer discussion. 

“I know we’re in a hurry today, but this is awfully important,” she said. 

Warm Water Pool 

At 12:29 a.m. Wednesday the council voted to request Berkeley Unified not to choose a location for a new warm water pool, a popular recreation facility for disabled residents, until the council reviews its options. On May 11 the school board is scheduled to vote on a plan to move the pool from Berkeley High’s Old Gym to the tennis courts across Milvia Street. The project is expected to cost about $7 million, however the city only has $3.25 million committed to the project. 

The council rejected a proposal from Councilmember Spring to ask the district to put $1 million towards the project. 

Funding For Community Non-profits 

Representatives of 30 Berkeley non-profits paraded before the council asking them to soften proposed cuts to their groups by transferring money currently recommended for capital projects like street repairs. 

Berkeley non-profits are facing tough times. With the city looking to close an $8.9 million structural deficit, City Manager Phil Kamlarz has proposed cutting funding to community agencies by a total of nine percent. Adding to the pain, the Bush administration has cut federal programs the city uses to fund the groups as well. 

On May 10, the council is scheduled to approve allocating more than $5 million in federal funds to local non-profits. The council plans to approve over $4 million in allocations from the city’s $115 million general fund when the council adopts its budget in June. 

The city manager’s recommendations target reductions based on performance. Not surprisingly those groups facing steeper cuts urged the council to restore their funding. 

“We’re not very happy about being treated inequitably,” said Marty Lynch, director of Lifelong Medical. The group’s acupuncture detox clinic has been targeted for a 20 percent cut that Lynch said would be a crippling blow. 

Moe Wright of Chaplaincy for the Homeless, which runs a homeless youth drop in center, questioned why overall funds for homeless youth were proposed to be slashed 40 percent.  

“Why make homeless youth a priority and then cut it more than other services?” he asked. 

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The struggle over Berkeley’s landmarks generated lots of heat for city planning commissioners Wednesday night during a spirited three-and-a-half-hour hearing in the North Berkeley Senior Center. 

At issue were proposed revisions to the city Landmarks Preservation Ordinance (LPO) and the role of the Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) in determining the fate of historic buildings in the city. 

First to speak was former Planning Commissioner Nancy Holland, who until earlier this year filled the seat now occupied by Gene Poschman. 

Holland praised the commission as “incredibly important,” hailing its role “as part of a very important effort which saved parts of our town from being totally demolished” while faulting her own former commission for “trying to change something overnight.” 

She declared, “It’s not the right way of doing things.” 

Next up was Daily Planet executive editor and former landmarks commissioner Becky O’Malley, who wasted little time in launching into her attack. 

“A lot of time and city money went into the revisions,” she said, “and to have a group of people who frankly don’t know what they’re talking about (proposing revisions) is frankly something of a joke. I do hope you do an environmental impact report (EIR), because there will be tremendous impacts” from the proposed changes. 

The need for an EIR was also raised in a letter by noted environmental and preservation attorney Susan Brandt-Hawley, who has been retained by the Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association (BAHA). 

The lawyer raised six specific provisions of the Planning Commission subcommittee’s proposed changes that could reduce protections to historic and cultural resources. 

Under the LPC recommendations, the landmarks panel would have authority to approve or deny demolitions to buildings designated as landmarks or structures of merit, with the Zoning Adjustments Board having the power to approve or deny demolitions under the zoning ordinance. 

The planning subcommittee proposed that the LPC’s role in demolitions would be restricted to advising ZAB. 

In cases where ZAB and the LPC disagree, the LPC revisions call for a resolution by the City Council, while the planning subcommittee version offered three alternatives without recommending any. 

While the LPC version calls for retaining control over modifications to structures of merit, the planning subcommittee offered no recommendations.  

The issue of demolitions was particularly thorny, but equally controversial was a planning subcommittee recommendation that seeks to establish a new procedure to allow any property owner to ask the LPC for a binding “request for determination” of their structure’s eligibility for landmark status. 

Under the current LPC procedures, such decisions are only made on the basis of completed applications for landmark status. 

Structures of merit proved particularly troublesome. This category allows buildings to obtain landmark protection even in the face of alterations of the original structure. The LPC wants to retain the category, subject to future review, while the planning panel would keep the category but reduce the protections for the structure under state environmental law. 

Two days before the Planning Commission meet, the Berkeley City Council overturned the LPC’s designation of the Celia’s Restaurant building. 

That structure, located on a block earmarked for construction of a multistory apartment and retail complex, was given the designation Feb. 7 in the same meeting where LPC members voted against designating Brennan’s Irish Pub, another structure slated for the wrecking ball. 

The structure of merit designation was picked because of later additions which had altered the architectural integrity of the structure. 

And the remaining major sticking point between the two version of the ordinance is concept of integrity itself. The LPC draft calls for applying the term strictly only in cases where the architectural merit of a structure is the primary basis for designation. The commission would loosen the definition when historical and cultural reasons dominated the application submission. 

Wednesday’s meeting drew the lion’s share of the current LPC members—Chair Jill Korte, Vice Chair Carrie Olson and members Fran Packard, Patricia Dacey, James Samuels, Robert Johnson and Steven Winkel. 

With the exception of Packard—a Tom Bates appointee—they rose to defend the commission and its version of the new law. Packard, however, reversed the position she had taken the year before and declared, “I no longer support giving the LPC authority to deny demolitions or to determine the level of environmental review. 

Two speakers from Livable Berkeley—Alan Tobey and Mike Friedrich—sided with the planning subcommittee. Tobey called for “pre-application review” of structures on the site of proposed developments, an end to the structure of merit, and to “improve efficiency by rejecting inappropriate requests to increase the landmarks commission’s power.” 

Tobey called the Celia’s designation “distasteful,” and charged that the structure of merit designation “is almost always granted as a politically motivated consolation prize.” 

John Norheim and Don Yost, two well-connected West Berkeley commercial realtors, also sided with the planning subcommittee in calling for an end to the structure of merit. Norheim went so far as to call for transferring the power to designate landmarks to ZAB, with the LPC acting only in an advisory role. 

Rena Rickles, an Oakland attorney who is perhaps the leading land use attorney in cases before the city of Berkeley, also called for an end to the structure of merit. 

“I also know about the elephant in the living room, because if you want to delay a project in the city of Berkeley, you take it to the Landmarks Commission,” she said. 

Also siding against the LPC was Michael Goldin, a member of the newly former West Berkeley Business Alliance (WBBA), an organization composed of corporations, Bayer being the biggest, realtors, and professionals. One member is developer Dan Diebel, who plans to build on the Celia’s site. Another is Ali Kashani, whose plans to build at the Drayage site sparked an ongoing struggle between the city and residents who don’t want to move. 

WBBA members called for strict compliance with architectural conformity, an end to the structure of merit and the “request for determination.”  

But the majority of speakers Tuesday sided with the LPC, including current landmarks commissioners Leslie Emmington, Dacey, Robert Johnson, Vice Chair Carrie Olson, and Chair Jill Korte. 

Olson noted that neither the structure of merit category nor the issue of integrity were included among the eight points the City Council originally asked commissioners to consider revising. She said the issues in Berkeley were reflective of a broader current in American society, “where developers are pitted against historic structures.” 

Johnson, who also serves on the board of the Green Belt Alliance, a group that, like Livable Berkeley, supports infill development in cities, strongly supported the dominant role for the LPC in reviewing proposed demolitions of landmarks. 

Former members testifying in support of the LPC’s proposals included Susan Cerny, author of Berkeley Landmarks, Susan Chase, and former LPC chair Laurie Bright. 

Burton Edwards, a former chair, differed from the others in calling for an end to the structure of merit and strict adherence to the standards of integrity set by the National Register of Historic Places. He sided with current commissioners on the issue of demolitions, and said that commissioners needed more training before they could make decisions on application of environmental law. 

Commission Chair Jill Korte spoke against granting ZAB the power to designate landmarks, pointing out that city ordinance demands that LPC members have strong expertise in historic, cultural, architectural and archaeological issues, while no such demand is placed on ZAB. 

She also cited a letter from the state Office of Historic Preservation to city Planning Manager Mark Rhoades calling for designation power to vest in the LPC. “This is not ZAB’s mission” she said. 

Wednesday’s meeting marks the end of public testimony before the Planning Commission. The group will continue its discussion of the proposed revisions at their next meeting on May 12.›

Hoping to rid themselves of a neighbor whose home has been targeted by police for over two decades as a drug hot spot, 15 South Berkeley residents filed suit Monday charging the homeowner has created a neighborhood nuisance. 

“I pick up used condoms and crack baggies from the front yard, I deal with shouting crackheads in the middle of the night and I wonder if there will be a drive-by,” said Paul Rauber, a plaintiff and neighbor. 

Rauber said he added his name to the lawsuit last October, when, on the morning after a police raid on his next-door neighbor’s house, his daughter picked up a hypodermic needle from his backyard and asked “daddy, what’s this?” 

“I can’t raise a child in an environment like that,” he said. 

In a suit filed in small claims court, the neighbors are each asking for the maximum $5,000 award from Lenora Moore, the owner of 1610 Oregon St. Group filings of such legal actions, known as nuisance suits, have become a popular and sometimes successful tool for residents seeking to force out neighbors they say damage their quality of life. 

Contacted by telephone at her home Wednesday, Moore, 75, said she hadn’t decided whether or not to bend to neighborhood pressure and sell the home she said her grandparents purchased nearly 90 years ago. 

“I’d like to stay here, I’d like to die here,” said Moore, a life-long Berkeley resident and former president of the South Berkeley Women’s Health Center. She added that family associates were working with her to address neighbors’ concerns and that authorities have issued stay-away orders against several of her family members, who neighbors blame for the drug activity at the house. 

“Things have quieted down,” she said. “I don’t think we are a nuisance.” 

The lawsuit this week is not the first time neighbors have gone to the courts to pressure Moore to sell her home. In 1992 a small claims court judge ordered Moore to pay neighbors $155,000 in damages for hampering their quality of life. 

She refused to pay. Then, on the same day the neighbors moved to freeze the family’s bank accounts, Carl Babcock, the lead plaintiff in the case, said a young man riding a bicycle hurled a Molotov cocktail at his home. 

“Luckily it hit the fence,” said Babcock, who left Berkeley shortly after watching the fence go up in flames. “I think the Moores are very dangerous people.”  

Sam Herbert, a plaintiff, said the reason only 15 neighbors joined the current suit was fear of reprisal. “The fear is real, it’s not baseless,” she said. “I’ve been followed. I’ve had someone drive by my house and point a gun at me.” 

Last October, police raided the house and found cocaine, heroin, packaging materials and a semiautomatic handgun.  

The bust and preceding surveillance operation resulted in five arrests, including two of Lenora Moore’s sons, Ralph Perry, 53, for sales of heroin, possession of cocaine and a probation violation and Alex Perry, 54, for sales of heroin, felony possession of a firearm and a parole violation. 

The brothers got off with probation despite each having a long criminal history. On Jan. 24, Alex Perry was arraigned on possession of a controlled substance (crack) with three prior convictions. He was also prosecuted in June 1993, April 1997, and last November for violating his probation. Ralph Perry’s first controlled substance conviction was on Aug. 2, 1985, though he was convicted of burglary in 1980 and of receiving stolen property seven months later. 

Last June he was arrested at the Oregon Street address on charges of possession of controlled substances and as an ex-felon in possession of ammunition. He was sentenced to 16 months in San Quentin for the drug charge, which was reduced to probation on July 28. After the October arrest for selling heroin, he was granted parole on Dec. 30, 2004 after serving 65 days in jail. 

In the arrest report last October, Berkeley Police Officer Mike Durbin wrote: “The 1600 block of Oregon Street is a heavily documented drug ‘hot spot’ confirmed by drug-related calls for service. 1610 Oregon St. is particularly problematic with numerous complains of street level drug dealing.” 

From Jan. 2003 through Dec. 2004, police received nearly 100 calls for service to 1610 Oregon, according to a city police report. 

“The nuisance at the Moore house has been a subject of constant discussion at every single neighborhood meeting,” said Laura Menard, president of the Russell Oregon California Streets Neighborhood Association and a plaintiff in the suit against Lenora Moore. She said city staff and police address the neighbors regularly with reports on actions at the Moore house. 

When police action failed to abate the problem during the 1990s, former Mayor Shirley Dean said city officials sent in building inspectors to look for code violations. “We were really trying to bring resolution to a long litany of problems at the property,” she said. 

The inspections turned up numerous code violations, but did not succeed in driving the family from the property, Dean said. Ultimately, in 2000, the City Council ordered the Moores to reside at a hotel for several weeks at city expense, while the family paid for repairs. 

When it comes to forcing homeowners from their homes, the city has few options, said Michael Caplan of Berkeley’s problem property team. “Because it’s between private parties on private property there is little we can do,” he said. “The city doesn’t have the power to put someone out of their house for nuisance activity.” 

Caplan said that in similar cases, the city has stepped up police activity at the properties. 

The neighbors are coordinating the case with Oakland-based Neighborhood Solutions. In the past two years, the company has won nuisance suits against UC Berkeley Student Co-op Le Chateau and James Ross, the former owner of a house at Ninth Street and Allston Way that neighbors said was the center of drug activity. Ross sold his house soon after losing a nuisance case and Le Chateau’s management have agreed to transform it into quieter graduate student housing. However, when it comes to collecting money, nuisance suit plaintiffs have been less successful.  

Grace Neufield of Neighborhood Solutions said her clients have not yet collected a dime from the roughly 10 cases they have won. 

“It takes a while to get to the point where you have a lien on the property,” she said, adding that defendants can sometimes use legal maneuvers to avoid paying damages. 

Moore managed not to pay damages from the previous neighborhood suit by filing for bankruptcy, Babcock said.  

If the Moores leave Oregon Street, Rauber said he would be happy not to receive a cent from the nuisance suit. 

“I just want the nuisance to stop. I’m convinced the only way that will happen is if she and her family move,” he said. “What else could we do? It’s worth a try.” 



On Sunday afternoon, architecture and history buffs will have the chance for a unique first-hand look at some works by the most famous names in architecture from Bernard Maybeck to Frank Lloyd Wright. 

The Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association is hosting its 30th annual Spring House Tour and Garden Reception on Panoramic Hill, an area which was recently unanimously nominated by the State Historic Preservation Commission for the status of a National Historic District. 

The tour, which runs from 1-5 p.m., features stunning homes offering what Los Angeles real estate agents call “jetliner views” of Berkeley and the Bay Area. 

One of the most visually intriguing homes on the tour is a 12-room two-story home on Orchard Lane, dominated by a three-story octagonal tower featuring uniquely framed windows that offer expansive views of Berkeley and the bay beyond. 

In addition to its sheer visual appeal, the home also embodies a love affair. It was designed by Walter T. Steilberg, an UC Berkeley graduate who worked for a decade under the legendary Julia Morgan—the designer of another home on the Panoramic Hill tour. 

Steilberg built the home for the mother of Elizabeth Ferguson, a UC Berkeley research assistant. The architect and the daughter fell in love, marrying the following year. Two other Steilberg homes are also on the tour. 

Berkeley’s pre-eminent architect, Bernard Maybeck, designed one of the more unusual homes on the tour, described from the start as a Swiss chalet. 

Internationally renowned as an exemplar of the Arts and Crafts movement, Maybeck designed the city’s first and most widely recognized landmark, the First Church of Christ, Scientist at the northeast corner of Dwight Way and Bowditch Street. 

The chalet on Panoramic Hill was designed for George H. Boke, a UC Berkeley law professor, who was one of the great reformers of the Progressive Era. 

Another home on the tour was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, whose most famous homes embody a continuation of the Arts and Crafts style. The home in the Berkeley hills was designed for a different locale, the Hollywood Hills, in 1939. High construction costs shelved the plans for 25 years, when the architect’s designs were sold to attorney Joseph Feldman along with furniture Wright had designed for the home. 

The furnishings were donated to the Victoria and Albert Museum in London four years later. 

Other homes on the tour feature designs by Walter H. Ratcliff Jr., Mabel Baird, William Wurster, Harwell Hamilton Harris and A.H. Broad—who designed many of Berkeley’s schools. 

From the start, the Panoramic Hills neighborhood has harbored a unique collection of residents and residences, including a sizable collection of UC Berkeley faculty. 

The State Historic Preservation Commission nominated the site for the National Registry of Historic Places in May. 

Marilyn Lortie, the state historian assigned to the Office of Historic Preservation Commission, sang the praises of the district and of the 61 homes singled out in the nomination. “In my 20 years with the office, this is one of the nicest residential districts I’ve ever seen,” she said. “It has all of the stars of California architecture, everyone from Maybeck to William Wurster. It’s really quite beautiful.” 

Tour tickets are $30 for the general public and $25 for BAHA members and guests. Tickets go on sale Sunday at a ticket booth which opens at noon at the entrance to the UC Memorial Stadium parking lot at the north end of Prospect Street one block north of Channing Way. 

Tickets may also be purchased online at the BAHA website at www.berkeleyheritage.com/housetours/2005_spring_house_tour.html.o

Berkeley’s two largest public employee unions blocked traffic outside city offices Tuesday to protest a cost-savings proposal requiring them to take mandatory time off without pay. 

Chanting “We say no to MTO,” more than 100 members of Service Employee International Union Locals 790 and 535, which represent about 1,200 city workers, walked off their jobs at about 10:30 a.m. Tuesday to attend the half-hour rally. 

“If the city does not remove MTO off the table we will be back here next week a little more forceful,” said Sandra Lewis regional vice president of Local 790. “If they think the streets are closed now, they haven’t seen anything yet.” 

Lewis’ speech was greeted with enthusiastic honks from drivers of garbage trucks, recycling trucks, public works pickup trucks, tree trimming trucks and parking enforcement gophers that clogged a block of Milvia Street between Center Street and Allston Way. 

The employees may get their wish. On Wednesday, the city offered workers an alternative to mandatory time off, according to Anes Lewis-Partridge, field director for Local 535. Neither Lewis-Partridge, nor city officials would reveal the city’s offer as of press time. 

To help close an $8.9 million structural deficit, City Manager Phil Kamlarz in February proposed closing non-essential city services one day a month starting in July to save $1.2 million. Police officers, firefighters and garbage collectors will not be subject to the closures. 

SEIU members, who comprise the majority of city office workers, public works employees and parks employees, say the proposal unfairly targets them while leaving higher paid police and firefighters unaffected. 

“I just want it to be equal throughout,” said Matt Shorgren, a parks department employee. He said the proposal would effectively negate the 5 percent raise he was scheduled to receive. 

Last year the city, looking to close a budget deficit, struck deals with nearly all of its unions, including police, to forgo scheduled salary increases in return for the city agreeing not to impose future give backs for the remainder of their contracts. 

Without the option of requiring unions to surrender scheduled raises to help close the budget deficit, Kamlarz has proposed the once-a-month layoffs. 

The city can implement the closures unilaterally, but Kamlarz said Tuesday that he remained open to listening to union proposals for saving money without the layoffs. 

Eric Landes-Brenman, of Local One, which represents city managers, said his union would present proposals for streamlining city operations to save money without one-day closures.  

“MTO is broadly opposed as an unimaginative an blunt instrument to get at savings,” he said. “It would really hurt morale.”

In a scene resembling a high school pep rally more than a library board meeting, the Library Board of Trustees Wednesday remained far apart on a new budget and the public feud between some library employees and library director Jackie Griffin remained far from settled. 

After repeated complaints that it was stifling the voices of library workers, the board granted employees two minutes apiece Tuesday to share their concerns. 

With Board President Laura Anderson reluctant to maintain order, the crowded South Berkeley Senior Center turned into a boisterous peanut gallery. The audience, comprised mostly of library workers opposed to Griffin’s leadership and their community allies, cheered the roughly two dozen speakers that opposed Griffin and booed and hissed at the few workers who stood up to praise her. 

When library employee Bob Saunderson credited Griffin for seeking to maximize efficiency and criticized the union for misrepresenting the facts, the boos were so unrelenting that Darryl Moore, the City Council’s representative on the board, asked if anyone had a gavel. 

One quickly appeared, but when it was passed to Anderson, the board president, she declined to pick it up and let the boos continue. 

Earlier, when library employee Sandra Schmitz credited Griffin for making long-needed technological innovations, a woman in the audience shouted for the board to dump the director, yelling, “Fire her.” 

Afterwards, Moore noted the lack of order and said that he had contemplated walking out of the meeting. 

The labor management rift at the library erupted after city voters rejected a library tax increase last November. With no new taxes to close what is now estimated as a $1.5 million deficit over the next two years, Griffin in January offered a reorganization plan that would have cost the jobs of about nine staffers, but no managers.  

At the same time, the library was moving ahead with a controversial program to install radio devices (RFIDs) on books. Free speech advocates have criticized the devices, which will cost Berkeley $650,000, for potentially violating privacy rights. Meanwhile several employees have fought them on grounds that they are being used to reduce jobs. Griffin’s reorganization plan currently calls for eliminating the equivalent of 4.5 full-time positions. 

The issue of technology was paramount at Wednesday’s meeting. Griffin’s supporters praised her for pushing through reforms that allowed customers to reserve books online, allowed librarians to order books electronically and allowed patrons to access to a greater variety of databases.  

The director’s opponents questioned if new technologies, especially RFID, would work as promised or make their jobs easier.  

Noting a recent computer breakdown at the library that meant some patrons were charged for books returned on time, Librarian Rachel Aronowitz asked, “How can I have faith in RFID?” 

Griffin attributed the system breakdown to the library’s inability to fill two technology positions because of a city hiring freeze. She added that she expected to fill the positions when the new fiscal year began in July and add three more over the next two years.  

Many of the employees said that a worker shortage had created a backlog of unshelved books and that Griffin was unresponsive to their concerns. 

“Things are a disaster,” said Library Aide Aayan Gates-Williams. “There are materials all over the place.” 

Claudia Morrow, a children’s librarian, questioned Griffin’s proposal to keep the library’s $150,000-a-year facility manager three years after the central library rehabilitation project has been completed. 

“That’s 80 hours a week of library aide work that could turnaround the shelving backlog,” she said. “Thicker layers of unresponsive management are not the answer.” 

When pressed on the subject of management jobs by Trustee Therese Powell, Griffin said that to reduce management during the roll-out of RFID and other new programs could put those programs at risk. 

With nearly the entire three-hour meeting taken up by public comment, the board had little time to talk about the budget, which must be finalized by the end of June.  

Beverly Marshall, the library’s new finance manager, offered some budget numbers, but said she was still working through the “convoluted, not understandable method of accounting from my predecessor.” 

The board voted 4-1 to ask the City Council to raise the library tax 4.8 percent, equal to the rise in the Personal Income Growth Index this year. The board’s other option would have been to ask for a 1.56 percent tax increase equal to the rise in the Consumer Price Index. Under city law, the library can ask for the council for tax rates increases based only on those two indicators. Griffin has said the higher tax rate will net the library an extra $300,000 and help it avoid layoffs this year. 

Trustee Powell, who cast the lone opposition vote, said that although she wants more funds for the library, she thought the 4.8 percent hike was contrary to the wishes of voters who rejected an increased library tax last year. 

The board also agreed to hold a town hall meeting on RFID sometime in June. Although the system is already up and running at the central library, Trustee Ying Lee said she did not think that reconsidering it should be out of the question. 

Lee also asked that at its next meeting the board discuss the union’s proposal to bring in a facilitator for negotiations over the reorganization at the library. 

“I’m really interested in [that],” she said. “I don’t think the community, staff and management can deal with any more pain than we saw tonight.”›

Two bills designed to change the way California handles hazardous waste sites won the approval Tuesday of the state Assembly Committee on Environmental Safety and Toxic Materials. 

The bills, cosponsored by East Bay Democrat Loni Hancock and Cindy Montanez, a fellow Democrat who chairs both the Assembly Rules Committee and the Select Committee on Environmental Justice, were inspired in part by events at Richmond’s Campus Bay. 

Both bills now head to the Assembly Appropriations Committee, where decisions are expected within the next two weeks. If they pass that hurdle, the bills will then go before the full Assembly and from then on to the state Senate. If approved, the bills will go to Gov. Schwarzenegger, himself a real estate developer. 

Hancock’s Assembly Bill 1360 (passed on a 5-2 vote) creates a new category of toxic waste site called a “public health priority site” where a hospital, day care center or residential housing is planned on land where toxic waste has been stored and poses a potential threat. 

All such sites would come under the jurisdiction of the state Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC), which currently exercises sway over similar sites targeted for schools. 

Citing her inspiration as the protracted battle over the development of the Campus Bay site—where a developer has proposed to build 1,330 units of housing atop 350,000 cubic yards of buried chemical waste—Hancock said her bill was created to prevent so-called “forum shopping,” a practice whereby a developer could choose a less stringent agency to monitor toxic cleanup. 

Accompanying the East Bay legislator to Sacramento were three key figures in the battle over the site: Sherry Padgett, an activist with Bay Area Residents for Responsible Development (BARRD); Contra Costa County Public Health Director Dr. Wendel Brunner, and Peter Weiner, a San Francisco attorney and pro bono advocate for BARRD. 

Critics of Campus Bay have charged that cleanup of the site where a variety of dangerous chemicals were manufactured for a century was poorly handled under the jurisdiction of the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board. 

Because the City of Richmond issued an over-the-counter permit, demolition of the factory buildings, storage tanks and other remnants of the site’s industrial heritage occurred without an environmental impact report—a sore point with critics like Padgett, who say they were subjected to a wide range of toxins as a result. 

Most of the Campus Bay site was transferred to DTSC oversite after hearings last November where Bruce Wolfe, administrator of the regional water board, acknowledged his agency lacked even a single toxicologist on its staff. The DTSC, by contrast, is heavily staffed with toxicologists and other scientific experts. 

Padgett, who has worked next door to the site for the last eight years and has suffered from a variety of cancers and other ailments her physicians believe were caused by exposures to toxins, told the committee that 40 of 500 employees near the site have been stricken with unusual cancers, with 14 dead to date. 

“The water board is not equipped to monitor such a complex site,” she said. “They don’t have the internal expertise.” 

Brunner said the Richmond site was one of the most complex sites in Contra Costa County. 

“Over the last several years, the site characterization has changed, and there appears to be no systematic method” to deploy expertise at the site, he said. “The water board does not have the expertise or experience to handle the site... We need a mechanism in the California EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) to bring” the DTSC and water board together. 

Testifying against the measure were lobbyists for a coalition of home builders, the California Building Industry Association, the California Chamber of Commerce, and the California Center for Land Recycling. The latter group, a non-profit organization that supports development on reclaimed hazardous waste sites, counts San Francisco water board official Steve Morse among its advisors. 

While the industry associations charged that Hancock’s measure would conflict with existing law on cleanup sites, Hancock said the bill merely clarifies the law. 

“This is a very important step forward,” she said. 

“I agree,” said committee Chair Ira Ruskin. “It’s an important step forward in environmental justice.” 

The dissenting votes were cast by two Republicans, Vice Chair Van Tran and member Audra Strickland. Ruskin was joined in his vote by Democrats Judy Chu, Hector De La Torre, Fran Pavley and Jackie Goldberg. 

Tuesday’s hearing was a reunion of sorts for Goldberg and Wendel Brunner. Both were activists in Berkeley’s Free Speech Movement.  

“We’re delighted we got the bill out of committee,” Hancock said in an interview in her office after the vote. 

“It’s a very simple bill. It clarifies the process so the developer will know what to do, and it places jurisdiction with the department that has the expertise,” she said. “Note also that the bill passed despite powerful opposition.” 

Hancock held off from introducing another bill calling for a restructuring of the state EPA agencies handling oversite of toxic waste sites in order to spend more time refining the bill—which she said will be introduced in January. 

Water Board Strictures 

Montanez, who represents the city of San Fernando and the surrounding areas of the city of Los Angeles, has waged a long-running battle against the local water board’s handling of a landlocked site in her jurisdiction, making her a natural ally of Hancock. 

Her Assembly Bill 597 mandates new rules for cleanups conducted under the aegis of the state regional water quality control boards. 

Under current state law, cleanups are designed with no public participation before they are unveiled to the board for approval. The Southern California legislator’s bill would force a major restructuring, imposing the same strict public participation standards as now mandated for the DTSC. 

Her bill requires local water boards to: 

• Provide public notice of major decisions and planned activities at cleanup sites and gives the public access to site plans and assessments with 30 days to comment on them. 

• Post notices in English and other languages commonly spoken in the area notifying the public of their rights of review and comment. 

• Hold public meetings in the area to gather comments if requested by the public. 

• Consider public comments prior to acting on the site plan. 

• Consider posting site data in electronic form for public access and consider forming advisory groups to assist the board in disseminating information and gathering public input and holding public meetings and workshops. 

• Evaluate site plans in the context of environmental justice and impacts on low-income and minority populations.

Peralta Community College District Trustees gave the unanimous go-ahead Tuesday to the construction of the Laney College New Art Building by a San Joaquin County modular building firm. Meanwhile, with consideration of the long-delayed proposed contract to developer Alan Dones for a Laney-Peralta development plan failing to make the trustee’s agenda, opponents came out to oppose the proposal anyway. 

Trustee ratification of Chancellor Elihu Harris’ $8.1 million Laney New Art Building no-bid contract with Lodi-based Meehleis Modular Builders had originally been on the Peralta board’s agenda two weeks ago, but was put off after concerns were raised by the Alameda County Building Trades Council over union-pay issues. 

The chancellor’s office returned with approvals of the contract from Alameda County Building Trades Council Secretary-Treasurer Bill Luboviski, Peralta Chief Financial Officer Tom Smith, Peralta General Counsel Thuy Thi Nguyen, and the college district’s bond attorneys. Trustee Cy Gulassa said that he had been prepared to vote against the contract when it was on the agenda two weeks ago, but was now satisfied. 

Concerns over the Meehleis contract had risen because the building’s modular parts will be constructed at the company’s Lodi plant and then assembled on-site at Laney, leaving local union leaders worried that the building would be constructed at below-union wage rates. But under questioning from Trustee Gulassa at Tuesday’s meeting, Meehleis Project Manager Mike Sinclair said that the company “will be paying local prevailing wages” at the Laney site, where two-thirds of the work will be done. The prevailing wage in the Bay Area is union scale. Sinclair said that the fabrication work in Lodi is not covered by prevailing wage. 

Chancellor Harris said that while the trades council “still has general concerns about the modular industry in California and its effect on union wages,” he reported that Luboviski “has signed off on this project.” 

General Counsel Nguyen also said she was satisfied of the legality of what appeared to be a contradiction in the classification of the construction materials. 

The Meehleis contract was signed by Harris using the so-called “piggyback” clause of the State Public Contract Code, which allows one education district to ride—without a new bid—on an old properly-bidded contract already signed by another school district. Because the “piggyback” clause is restricted to the purchase of moveable property (called “personal property” in the law), districts have been classifying modular buildings as moveable “personal” property at the time they are purchased at the construction factories in order to qualify them under this clause. 

However, $1 million of the Laney New Art Building is being paid for with Measure E bond money, which is restricted to real (rather than “personal”) property. (The remaining $7 million is scheduled to be paid by CalTrans, which had forced the construction of the New Art Building because it needed the land currently being occupied by Laney’s present Art Annex.) In order to qualify for both “piggyback” contract money and Measure E money, Peralta was classifying the modular building in two seemingly legally-opposed ways. 

Peralta General Counsel Nguyen released a letter to trustees from Peralta bond counsel Charles F. Adams of Jones Hall attorneys, stating that “bond proceeds may be spent to acquire and install modular school facilities due to the fact that once these facilities are bolted to permanent foundations and are connected to utilities, they become ‘fixtures’ under California law, and, as such, may be treated as real property. We have always recognized that at the moment in time when modular school facilities are purchased, however, they have not yet been affixed to real property and therefore constitute personal property until they are affixed. … we believe it is entirely consistent—and certainly not inconsistent—for the District to treat the modular school facilities as personal property at the point in time when they are purchased, but for us to regard them as real property for the purposes of the constitutional restriction on spending Bond proceeds.” 

Adams said in his letter that the prefabricated parts of modular buildings should be treated no differently from any other type of building materials, including lumber and nails. Following the meeting, General Counsel Nguyen said she had reached the same conclusion prior to submitting her query to the bond counsels. 

Chief Financial Officer Smith said the Meehleis contract was “in the best financial interest of the district,” and called Ikharo’s use of the “piggyback” clause “a pretty neat trick.” 

Earlier on Tuesday, Laney College held a kick-off celebration for the Art Annex Construction, which is being built on land formerly occupied by the college’s tennis courts, and which will border the channel running between Lake Merritt and the estuary. 

Representatives of the District Academic Senate and the Laney College Faculty Senate spoke to trustees on the subject. Karolyn Van Putten, the Laney College representative on the District Academic Senate, said “we knew the contract was not on the agenda, but we felt so strongly about this that we wanted to attend anyway.” 

Outgoing Peralta trustees authorized Chancellor Harris last November to enter into a one-year contract with Dones and his Oakland based Strategic Urban Development Alliance to come up with a development plan for the Peralta Administration Building and certain Laney College properties. Harris indicated to district leaders that he was going to put the item on Tuesday’s agenda. 

›

The suicide hijackers behind the 9/11 attacks were reportedly each promised “70 virgins in Paradise.” But would they have proceeded if they’d realized that their recruiters might only be offering 70 white raisins? 

The Koran and Hadith (Muslim gospel) passages about the rewards to “martyrs” can be read either way, according to a linguistic historian quoted in Irshad Manji’s book, The Trouble with Islam Today: A Muslim’s Call for Reform in Her Faith. And among the book’s central points is the lethal danger of interpreting scriptural metaphor literally. 

“Every religion has its share of literalists,” Manji acknowledged in an April 19 talk at UC Berkeley’s Pauley Ballroom. “American Christianity has its evangelicals, some of whom still populate the highest office in the land. Jews have their ultra-Orthodox. ... Even Buddhists have fundamentalists.” 

But “the trouble” with her own faith, Manji said, is that “only within Islam today is literalism mainstream worldwide.” 

Even moderate Muslims, Manji said, often believe that because the Koran was written after the Torah and the Bible, it is a literal “manifesto of God’s will...it is ‘God 3.0,’ and none shall come after it.” Manji called this a dangerous “supremacy complex.” 

“When abuse happens under the banner of Islam today,” she said, even Muslims “with fancy titles and formal educations do not yet know how to debate and dissent with the jihadists. ... It’s because we have not yet been introduced to the possibility of asking questions about our ‘perfect’ holy book.” 

Manji’s book is a manifesto of a different sort—one devoted, she says, to “helping Islam rediscover its glorious humanitarian potential.” Manji challenges her fellow Muslims to recover a tradition of independent thinking and reasoning known as “ijtihad.” 

Although the word has the same root as “jihad,” meaning “to struggle,” Manji emphasized that neither term originally had violent connotations. 

“In the early centuries of Islam, thanks to ijtihad, 135 schools of thought flourished,” Manji said. “In Muslim Spain, scholars would teach their students to abandon ‘expert opinion’ about the Koran if their own conversations...came up with better evidence.” 

This pluralistic era produced one of the world’s first universities, in ninth-century Baghdad, said Manji. She also credited ijtihad with early Islam’s contributions to “Western pop culture.” 

“Muslims gave the world Mocha coffee (you’re welcome!). ... Cough syrup. The guitar.” 

The plain-spoken, sometimes glib Manji might seem an unlikely catalyst for what she calls an “Islamic reformation.” She’s an ethnically South Asian, Ugandan-born, Canadian-raised, spiky-haired, out lesbian who has been a legislative aide and political speechwriter, and who is best known in Canada as a television host and producer. Like a lot of Berkeley residents, she has a multifaceted identity, for which she makes no apology. 

She’s also a lay Muslim who got herself permanently thrown out of her madressa (Saturday religious school) at age 14 after years of asking too many “hard” questions about doctrine. But inspired by heroes who included Socrates, she kept asking those hard questions and kept studying Islam on her own. 

“I could have walked away,” she said, “and gone on with becoming a materialistic North American for whom the mall is the God, as some Muslims quietly do.” Instead, she said, she happily discovered “a truly progressive side of my faith.” 

Since publishing this book—her second—in 2003, when she was 35, Manji has received praise, condemnation, and death threats. She installed bulletproof glass in her Toronto home, and hired a bodyguard for her first book tour. Two uniformed UC police officers guarded her Berkeley talk. 

Why risk her safety by writing what she calls her “open letter” for reform? Manji said she saw it as an obligation. 

“The Islamic reformation begins in the West,” she writes, because “it’s here that we [Muslims] enjoy precious freedoms to think, express, challenge, and be challenged without fear of state reprisal.” 

“I speak as a refugee when I say this is a precious gift,” she told her Berkeley audience. “And I’m asking my fellow Muslims: What in God’s name are we doing with this gift?” 

The book indicts “desert tribalism” for restraining Islam’s progress in crucial areas: the ill-treatment of women in the Muslim world, the “Jew-bashing and Jew-baiting in which too many Muslims persistently engage,” “the continuing scourge of slavery” under Islamist regimes, and those regimes’ suppression of basic human rights. 

“In the last 100 years alone,” Manji said, “more Muslims have been tortured and murdered at the hands of other Muslims than at the hands of any foreign imperial power.” 

To address these problems, Manji believes, ordinary Muslims must ultimately gain the confidence to question received interpretations of their faith. For many outside the West, a first prerequisite is basic literacy. And for Western Muslims and non-Muslims who want to help, the book proposes a plan of action. 

“I call this thoroughly non-military campaign ‘Operation Ijtihad’,” Manji said. “It begins by liberating the entrepreneurial talents of women in the Muslim world, by providing them with ‘micro-enterprise’ loans.” These $100-$300 investments were pioneered by Bangladesh’s renowned Grameen Bank. 

“There is absolute consensus within Islam,” Manji said, “that when a Muslim woman earns her own assets—let’s say by starting a business—she gets to keep 100 percent of those assets, and do with them as she sees fit.” 

“What could Muslim women do with these assets?” Manji asked. “They could become literate. They could learn to read the Koran for themselves,” rather than “merely swallowing...the selective verses that mullahs and imams tend to shove down their throats.” 

Manji quoted a photographer friend’s encounter with a woman entrepreneur in Afghanistan who had followed exactly this path.  

“You know the progressive verses in the Koran that you identify in your book?” her friend told Manji. “She found the verses you’re talking about, she recited them to her abusive husband, and ever since then, he has not laid an unwanted finger on her.” 

“This,” Manji said, “is the power not just of the Koran, but also of literacy.” 

Manji also mentioned women in Kabul, Afghanistan, who have used their capital to open schools for girls. She quoted a banner there that read, “Educate a boy and you educate only that boy, but educate a girl and you educate her entire family.” 

“As economists might put it, the ‘multiplier effect’ of investing in Muslim women cannot be underestimated,” Manji said. She raised the prospect of wealthy nations “taking just a sliver of their defense budgets...and pooling them into a coherent program of micro-business loans for women in the Islamic world.” 

At a recent Stanford University conference, Manji was delighted to hear Lt. Gen. John Abizaid—who commands U.S. forces in the Middle East—independently propose investing in similar loans to Muslim women. 

Manji’s nonviolent struggles have sometimes taken place with her own mother, a devout Muslim who admonished her “not to anger God” in writing the book. When her mother first attended mosque after the book’s publication, she was brought to tears by an imam who denounced her daughter as “more criminal than Osama bin Laden.” 

But fellow congregants quickly came over to tell her, “I’ve read Irshad’s book, and what she’s saying absolutely needs to be expressed.” 

Manji proudly displayed a greeting card that her mother slipped into her suitcase shortly afterwards. It read, “Bravo! My dear daughter, I’m so proud of your achievement. You go, girl!”  

“I leave you with the same message that my mother gave to me,” Manji told Muslims and non-Muslims in her audience. “You go! Dare to ask questions out loud. That’s how open societies remain open.” 

THE TROUBLE WITH ISLAM TODAY: A MUSLIM’S CALL FOR  

REFORMING HER FAITH 

By Irshad Manji 

St. Martin’s Griffin, 240 pages, $12.95 

Israd Manji’s website:  

www.muslimrefusenik.com.

Click here to view the latest work by Planet cartoonist Justin DeFreitasê

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?

Poor, bleeding Oakland. In addition to losing its rights to run its own schools—two years and counting, now—it is now being blamed in the media for school district actions over which it has absolutely no control. 

In an otherwise excellent piece this week, San Francisco Chronicle columnist Jon Carroll accuses the Oakland Unified School Board of concocting a scheme in which OUSD teachers were required to meet with a “professional benefits counselor” to provide documentation on the dependents listed in their OUSD health care benefit files. The teachers were told in a memo that if they didn’t show up to scheduled interviews to provide the documentation, it would “result in your dependents’ coverage ending effective May 30.” As was revealed in a Nannette Asimov Chronicle article a week earlier, the “professional benefits counselors” turned out to be insurance brokers, who spent most of the time with the teachers trying to sell them life insurance. In other words, it was a coercive scam put together by the district to lure teachers in under false pretenses, which Mr. Carroll loudly and properly condemns. However, he gets the instigator wrong. 

“See the respect shown to teachers by the school board!” Mr. Carroll writes. He goes on to mention the school board three times in his column, noting that in conflicts between teachers and school boards, “I tend to favor teachers.” 

Problem is, as in any other action taken by the Oakland Unified School District in the last two years, the school board had no say in the matter. The Oakland schools were taken out of the hands of Oakland voters by the State of California two years ago after the Oakland school board and former Oakland Superintendent Dennis Chaconas discovered that they had a massive budget shortfall due to a teacher pay raise which they later found they couldn’t afford (it’s hard to get an exact amount on the shortfall; the general figure seems to be between $40 million and $50 million). The Oakland schools are now being run by California Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell through his state-appointed administrator, Randolph Ward. 

I know this is old news to many, but if a Chronicle columnist doesn’t know that Oakland ain’t running its own schools, I wonder how many other folks are ignorant of that fact. 

Anyways, last week—almost two years after the state Legislature passed SB39 (authored by State Senator Don Perata) authorizing the school takeover—state Superintendent O’Connell returned to a town hall meeting at Oakland Technical High School supposedly to tell Oaklanders how we could get our schools back. Forgive me for going into some detail here, but pay attention, children, this is one where you’ve got to read the fine print in order to understand how this game is being played. 

SB39 declared a fiscal emergency in the Oakland schools, and found that it was “necessary that the superintendent of public instruction assume control of the district in order to ensure the return to the district of fiscal solvency.” The Oakland school board was to remain in place, but only as an advisory group, with no powers to make decisions or set policy. 

The takeover legislation also provided that the state superintendent—through his hired administrator—had to provide a decent education for Oakland children, but also noted that this was only to advance along the lines of gains already being made in the district prior to the takeover. “The Oakland Unified School District has made demonstrable academic improvements over the last few years, witnessed by test score improvements, more fully credentialed teachers in Oakland classrooms, and increased parental and community involvement,” SB39 read. 

And to make sure we understood that they were serious that Oakland had been on the road to educational recovery prior to the takeover, the Legislature also noted in SB39 that “To the extent allowed by district finances, it is the intent of the Legislature that the [revised education program to be implemented by the state superintendent and his administrator] shall maintain the core educational reforms that have led to districtwide improvement of academic achievement, including, but not limited to, educational reforms targeting underperforming schools, new small schools, and other reforms that have demonstrated measurable success.” 

So in other words, Oakland hadn’t mishandled the education of our children. We had overspent our budget in trying to provide quality education, is all. That’s an important point to keep in mind while examining the question of under what circumstances Oakland will be able to get its schools back. 

Moving on. In return for taking over the schools, the State of California gave the Oakland Unified School District a $100 million line of credit in order to meet its May 2003 payroll and keep from going bankrupt. 

How much of that line of credit has actually been drawn on, and why, is an interesting subject for another time. 

Anyways, many observers were under the impression Oakland could only get its schools back when the line of credit was paid off. Actually, that’s not true. We can get them back before that, but under certain conditions. SB39 provides a multi-part recovery process in which 1) the state-financed, semi-autonomous Fiscal Crisis Management Assistance Team (FCMAT) must come up with an improvement plan for the Oakland schools, 2) the state superintendent and the state-appointed administrator must come up with a “multi-year financial recovery plan,” 3) the state-appointed administrator must negotiate collective bargaining agreements with the respective school unions “consistent with the terms of the improvement plan,” and 4) both the state-appointed administrator, the state superintendent, and FCMAT must agree that future compliance by the Oakland Unified School District with the improvement plan … and the multi-year financial recovery plan … is probable.” 

If all of these conditions occur, SB39 concludes sunnily, “the governing board of the Oakland Unified School District shall regain al of its rights, duties, and powers.” 

Careful readers will quickly note the “oddity” in this law: The Oakland schools will be run by the state superintendent and his administrator until the state superintendent and his administrator decide that they—the state superintendent and his administrator—are running the Oakland schools properly. As soon as the state superintendent and his administrator come to that conclusion, the Oakland schools will be turned back over to Oakland, presumably under the theory that this process will prove that Oaklanders can run our own schools. It’s like a thief—is that too harsh a term? let’s just say a “friendly” neighbor—promising to give you back your new car as soon as he learns how to drive it, giving you the reason that he’s only trying to ensure that you’ll be able to drive it yourself. 

If you think I’m making all of this up, friends, or misinterpreting the law somehow, look it up for yourself and draw your own conclusions. 

Last week, two years after the state takeover, State Superintendent O’Connell and state administrator Ward released a 107-page Multi-Year Fiscal Recovery Plan called for in SB39 and Section 41327 of the state Education Code, and that was the purpose for the town hall meeting at Oakland Tech. 

Thoughts on what happened at that meeting will have to wait until next week’s column. Meanwhile Oakland, poor Oakland, continues to bleed, while taking the blame for others’ actions. 

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Rape Suspect Arraigned 

A transient has been charged with 12 counts of felony rape and other sexual crimes in connection with three attacks in Albany and Berkeley earlier this year. 

Lonnie Torres, 36, was arrested by Berkeley police on Feb. 22 for possession of methamphetamine, stolen property and for obstructing a police officer. Realizing that Torres matched the suspect sketch for the rapist, patrol officers called in detectives, according to a released statement by Berkeley Police Public Information Officer Joe Okies. 

On Wednesday Torres was arraigned on five counts of rape and sexual assault, four counts of kidnapping and three counts of robbery. 

The charges stem from three attacks that took place in January and February. In the early morning hours of Jan. 12, two victims were confronted at gunpoint on Key Route Boulevard in Albany, Okies wrote. One victim was sexually assaulted and both were robbed. The second attack occurred late in the evening on Feb. 7. A woman was attacked trying to enter her house, but managed to break free from the attacker and call police. The third case occurred at about 7 a.m. Feb. 11 when a woman was raped and sexually assaulted at gunpoint on Delaware Street near San Pablo Avenue. 

Daytime Shooting 

Neighbors called police to respond to a shooting on the 1400 block Oregon Street Tuesday. Police found the 29-year-old victim lying in the street with a bullet wound in his thigh. 

Witnesses at the Spiral Gardens outdoor market at Sacramento and Oregon streets said while the victim was inside a car with the suspects they heard a gunshot. Canchan Miller said the victim was then shoved from the car onto the street. 

“He was just lying on the ground taking it,” Miller said, adding that she approached the victim to find him talking on his cell phone. “He just kept breathing hard trying to keep it together. He didn't want an ambulance or the cops or anybody involved.” 

Police say the driver and another passenger in the car, a white Chrysler, continued west on Oregon Street before turning onto Stanton Street. 

Daniel Miller, who runs Spiral Gardens, said daytime shootings were not uncommon in his neighborhood. The most recent one before Tuesday’s, he recalled, happened two months ago when a man was shot waiting for a bus on Sacramento Street. 

Accosted Pedestrian 

Two men, one flashing a silver pistol, approached a pedestrian near the corner of Ashby Avenue and Seventh Street on the afternoon of April 19 and demanded cash. 

Their victim complied, and the bandits sped away in a beige Datsun 280Z, said Berkeley Police spokesperson Officer Steve Rego. 

Beaned at Drop In Center 

A nurse at Alta Bates Hospital called police after a 23-year-old man wandered into the emergency room at 5:30 p.m. of April 20 with injuries and indicated he’d been struck on the nose with something very hard. 

Police arriving at the scene discovered that the weapon had been a can of frijoles refritos, wielded by an erstwhile friend the victim declined to identify. 

Scream for Help 

A resident of the 1700 block of Parker Street at 8:30 p.m. on April 20 to report that a woman had been screaming in the neighborhood. 

Officers discovered that the cries came from a 34-year-old woman who had been struck by one of two young men who approached her as she was sitting in her car. 

The victim told officers that the assailant had struck her, then tried to get her money. When she resisted, the two thugs departed. 

Stone Assault 

Police were called to San Pablo Park last Saturday morning after a caller reported a rock assault that had taken place in the park a day earlier. 

The perpetrator turned out to be a 12-year-old boy who had hurled his igneous missile at a 13-year-old. No arrests were made, said Officer Rego. 

iPod Robbery 

A pedestrian strolling along Dwight Way near Martin Luther King Jr. Way called police Saturday afternoon after a young man in a red sweatshirt flashed a knife and demanded his iPod. 

The victim surrendered his music machine and the robber hot-footed it outta there. 

Gang of Three 

Three robbers—one woman and two men—braced a pedestrian on Channing Way near San Pablo Avenue early Sunday morning. One slugged him in the jaw as they made off with his wallet and cell phone. 

They were last seen fleeing on foot. 

Carjackers 

Two adults and a teenager confronted a woman standing next to her car at the 76 Station at Seventh Street and Ashby Avenue Monday afternoon. 

The youngest of the three pulled a long-barrelled black pistol and aimed it at the woman and the trio made off with her 2004 Monte Carlo. 

The car was discovered later, abandoned on Eastshore Boulevard, said Officer Rego. No suspects have been arrested. 

Flees in Cab 

A middle aged robber with a limp entered the Bank of America at 2929 Shattuck Ave. and presented a note demanding cash. The teller complied, and the suspect then stepped outside and into a waiting cab. 

Police quickly located the cab and arrested a 39-year-old suspect on robbery charges. 

Grade School Knife Flasher 

Berkeley Police were summoned to Le Conte School Tuesday morning after the principal called to report that a 7-year-old second-grade boy had brandished a pocket knife at a 7-year-old girl. 

Police made no arrest, and the young offender was turned over to his parents. 

UC Davis and the City of Davis are like Siamese twins who share one body but have two heads. The interests of the two heads are not always the same. If one wants to grow and the other doesn’t, they’ve got a problem. 

That’s what has happened here. The un iversity’s administration, frustrated by Davis’s commitment to slow growth, decided to build its own town. And when it comes to the UC system, we do not have enough of the checks and balances that elsewhere serve American government so well. 

That this is a structural problem in California law is indicated by the fact that four UC growth plans are presently being sued or challenged by the communities hosting them, with more to follow. The city government of Berkeley brought a CEQA lawsuit against UCB much like West Davis Neighbors’ against UCD. Citizen groups in Merced have filed legal actions against UC Merced, and are planning more; and citizen groups are organizing in Santa Cruz, Irvine, and Santa Barbara to oppose UC growth policies. Berkeley’s govern ment is currently working to set up a task force of UC host cities to act collectively when faced with UC intransigence. All these actions are attempts to get the Regents to respond to local concerns after negotiations failed. 

The negotiations fail so of ten because the Regents feel they don’t really have to compromise. Here in Davis, university administrators keep referring to the 33 meetings they held, but they don’t mention that public objections to their neighborhood grew stronger at every meeting. In their last scheduled meeting, 320 people attended and 75 of them spoke, seventy against the development. Nothing changed. 

UCD’s planned housing development would have added 23,000 car trips a day to Davis’s main east-west street, which is already crowde d. The Davis City Council objected, but UCD ignored the objections and did not change the size or location of their development. 

At that point West Davis Neighbors filed a CEQA lawsuit against the Regents. A three-judge appellate court will make a ruling on the case later this year. 

Ours, however, is no longer the most important case in the matter, if judged by the fiscal impact on Davis residents. The California Supreme Court is currently reviewing a decision in the case City of Marina vs. CSUS, which forbade the CSU system from giving Marina any money to mitigate the environmental impacts of the new school. If the Court upholds the decision, the UC system too will be forbidden to compensate cities for the environmental impacts of new development. 

The UC Regents have made arguments to the Supreme Court asking them to uphold the decision, hoping to achieve that result. 

If that happens, we in Davis will be left to foot the bill for the impacts of a suburban development housing 4,300 people, meaning mil lions of dollars the city does not have. Various university officials say they have discussed payments with city staff and the school board, but these university officials all work for the Regents, who have meanwhile been arguing to the Supreme Court that they should pay nothing to local cities. So the UCD administration may not be able to fulfill any promises they make to us. That’s happened before; UCD officials signed a memorandum of agreement with the city, for instance, promising not to grow abruptly, but with the Regents’ “Tidal Wave 2” they acted as if the memorandum did not exist, making no reference to it. 

Now they are proceeding with their neighborhood before the Supreme Court decides the Marina case, despite the fact that they don’t know if they will be allowed to pay for any of its impacts. Clearly this is fiscally irresponsible, but that may be the point; the Regents appear to believe in strengthening their hand in uncertain legal situations by building first and worrying later. They did it at UC Merced, building before permits from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers were given, hoping to increase their leverage and get their way. You could call the strategy “Build it and they will fund.” 

This would work in Davis too. It is hard otherwise to explain why the university is forging ahead. After all, “Tidal Wave 2,” that sudden new influx of students and faculty, got canceled. The wave is not coming, extra new faculty are not being hired, and the unsolved state budget shortfall makes it unlikely any of that will change soon. It is unclear who would end up buying the 475 homes UCD still plans to build. 

If they build them, 4,300 more people will move to Davis at the same time that Covell Village may be adding a similar amount. That double strain w ill break Davis’s infrastructure. The first two parts to go will be the high school and Russell Boulevard, both already jammed. And the university may be forbidden by law to contribute anything to mitigate their impacts. 

Given this situation, it’s an ope n question why the Davis City Council does not take legal action to defend the town, as the City Council in Berkeley has done. At West Davis Neighbor’s urging they filed an amicus brief with the California Supreme Court, asking the Court to overturn the M arina ruling, but there are many other things they could do as well: warn UCD that annexation depends on moving the footprint north-south; join the other cities now challenging the Regents; join efforts to get the state legislature to pass laws forcing th e Regents to be more responsive to their host cities. They could fight harder for the city’s interests here, and they should. 

Until they do, West Davis Neighbors will continue in every way it can to fill the gap created by the council’s inaction. On April 30 at 7:30 p.m. we will celebrate the effort by hosting a second gala at Bogey’s Books, “Art For Davis 2.” Last year this was a great party, and it was beautiful to see all the art by local artists. It’s one of many ways to continue to defend Davis and the ag fields surrounding it, so come if you can, and urge our City Council members to join our common effort. 

It is hard to imagine the loss of open space before it happens, but I grew up in Orange County and know the experience well. People will be shocked and heartsick when those fields are torn up and replaced by the backside of a housing development. But at that point it will be too late. The time to act is now, before the bulldozers roll, when we and our City Council can still defend the interests of the town and its citizens. 

Kim Stanley Robinson is a fiction writer and Davis resident.›

While much attention and concern has been rightly directed towards the Bush administration’s erosion of civil liberties, the federal government is not alone. In fact, the City of Berkeley is in the midst of denying a number of its citizens their constitutionally guaranteed due process rights under the law. 

Approximately 35 residents of the West Berkeley live/work artisans residence known as the Drayage have been threatened with immediate eviction and criminal prosecution by the city for simply desiring to live in their homes. These tenants have lived here for over 15 years. These threats are the result of a process—or more accurately, no process—in which one person, the same person, has served the following functions: 

1. Investigator 

2. Witness 

3. Prosecutor 

4. Trial Judge 

5. Jury 

6. Sentencing Judge 

7. Executioner 

The person who has been and continues to perform all these roles is Berkeley Fire Marshal David Orth. The power wielded by the fire marshal is patently overbroad and unconstitutional—anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of due process can see this—except apparently the Berkeley city attorney who has stated publicly that there is no right to a hearing, review or appeal of a fire marshal’s decision.  

Thus, based on the opinion of one person, an entire community is on the verge of losing their homes. And the building owner is being fined an astronomical amount, as well as being deprived of the right to continue renting these units. The city has, in effect, ordered the owner to evict everyone in the building. All this without hearing, or an opportunity to confront the accuser, or to challenge the evidence against them, or to present contrary evidence, or to defend one’s self, or to appeal.  

The United States Supreme Court has long held that “the concept that due process mandates the right to notice and hearing prior to the taking of property has been held applicable even to temporary deprivations of property.” Sniadach v. Family Finance Corp. (1969) 395 U.S. 337; Fuentes v. Shevin (1972) 407 U.S. 67. Yet, in this instance, Berkeley has decided that its citizens are entitled to nothing. Berkeley rewrites, or better, writes off, the Fourteenth Amendment.  

For readers who have not been following this story over the past six weeks, here is an update: The folks living at the Drayage have openly lived in the approximate 25 residential and studio spaces since the early 1980s. They are intelligent people who have taken care of their spaces and have not lived in fear of fire. In mid-March, the fire marshal unceremoniously gave them two weeks to leave their residences, claiming an imminent fire danger. Several items noted by the fire marshal which seemed to be of concern—e.g. the use of propane stove tanks—were immediately removed by the tenants. The residents then installed 50 new smoke detectors and placed 50 functioning fire extinguishers throughout the building and residences—apparently to no avail, as the city continues to pursue an aggressive policy towards these long-term Berkeley residents. The Drayage is not in danger of combusting, spontaneously or otherwise. 

Curiously, in the 1980s, the city Building Department issued permits for construction of 12 units within the building. These units were built out to code by professional contractors. In 1984, when notified that there were people living at the Drayage, the Building Department wrote: “OK for live/work” in response. In the early ‘90s, the then Drayage owner specifically asked the Fire Department by letter if there were any fire code violations at his building. None were noted, despite years of inspections. Now, it appears that everything said before was wrong. 

Ironically, May 1—usually celebrated in these parts as International Workers Day—is also “Law Day,” so consecrated by President Eisenhower during the chilliest cold war era of the ‘50s. It might do the City of Berkeley good to reflect on the Eisenhower version of May 1. Perhaps then, the City Council might consider a resolution acknowledging that the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution is applicable within its borders, and guarantees due process of law to all of its citizens, including the residents and owner of the Drayage.  

Jeffrey J. Carter is an attorney and advisor to the Drayage residents. 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

We would like to respond to Matthew Artz’s April 8 article regarding the Berkeley Thai Temple’s use of the newly acquired lots that formerly housed the South Berkeley Community Garden, run by Spiral Gardens. 

We were deeply affected and sad to hear that the gardeners were brokenhearted to see that what they worked so hard on had disappeared. We hear that they and some of the neighbors are upset at the temple for removing the garden that they love. We care very much about our neighbors and how we as a temple represent both Buddhism and the Thai community in the Bay Area. Therefore, we think it is important to address these concerns in order to strengthen our relationship with the community. 

We would like to extend our sincere apology to those whom we have unintentionally offended. We offer the following explanation in the spirit of reconciliation. We did not intend to be unclear to Spiral Gardens about the impact to the plot. Perhaps the language barrier created a problem in communicating to one another. Here are our intentions, which we want the larger community to know: 

Due to the temple’s growing needs, we decided to purchase the lots adjacent to the temple, which is owned by the Trust of Weston Havens. Spiral Gardens had leased this plot from the trust until the temple acquired it. When we bought it, we let Spiral Gardens continue to use the land for an additional three to five months, without charge, so that they would have time to take what they needed from the garden. Evidently, no one came to remove any plants from the garden at all. We would like to be able to use the land to fulfill our pressing needs, which include building either a sanctuary for the Buddha, a place for temple events, or additional parking. We will plant trees, add rose bushes, an herb garden and a Buddha garden as a place of respite for visitors. 

We feel very badly that we should have notified the city before we removed any trees and should have informed our neighbors of the changes on the land. We apologize for this as we did not know the rules and regulations pertaining to the trees’ removal. We do intend to follow procedures from now on. 

We kindly ask the public to understand that we do not harbor ill will or ill intentions to mislead any one. We sincerely hope that by explaining our view to the public in this manner, will help eliminating misunderstandings about our temple and the Thai community. 

Sincerley, 

Ajahn Manatt 

Head Monk  

On behalf of the Berkeley Thai Temple

For a brief respite from the present era of posturing machismo in politics and public life, as well as a thoughtful tour through California’s past, a new exhibit, “Our Collective Voice: The Extraordinary Work of Women in California,” is well worth visiting on the University of California campus. 

The exhibit is up through June 4 in the Bernice Layne Brown Gallery at Doe Library, but there’s also a special opening reception today (Friday) from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. on the North Terrace of the library.  

Reception and exhibit are free. Today’s event features a panel of, and readings by, several notable local women, including Sylvia McLaughin and Marian Diamond, as well as musical entertainment by the women of the California Golden Overtones. 

The exhibit organizers and designers, a group of talented librarians, historians, and others at the university too numerous to name here, drew on the amazingly varied and rich archives of the Bancroft Library to create a complex and rewarding display. 

Dozens of women from California pre-history to the modern era are profiled. Most come across as capable and courageous individuals who made waves, questioned convention or the commandments of men, or just simply worked for the public good. 

The scope extends from Kathleen Norris, the early 20th century novelist, to Kathleen Cleaver, the late 20th century Black Panther spokeswoman, to native American women whose names are lost to history. 

Marble columns in the exhibit gallery—which doubles as the main entrance hall to the library—are posted with photographs and biographical descriptions of women. Life-sized photo enlargements of women from the exhibit stand about the hall. 

Glass exhibit cases are thematically divided, and cleverly titled, from “Sisterhood and Social Reform” to “Literary Lionesses”, “Be-mused” (women in the arts, including Ina Coolbrith and Joan Brown) and “Designing Women”, the latter featuring Julia Morgan and other women architects and planners such as housing advocate Catherine Bauer Wurster. 

The exhibit curators and designers organized a lively, appealing, mix of images, objects, and text. There are evocative items such as a teapot owned by Gertrude Stein and filled with rose petals from her garden, drawings by Berkeley architect Lillian Bridgeman, baskets woven by native American women, and a number of diaries, journals, and other handwritten records. 

There are deeply moving stories here, including the accounts of Japanese-American women interned during World War II and native and Spanish-Mexican Californios who saw their cultures submerged in the rapid influx of Gold Rush Americans. 

I especially enjoyed the case on “Wilderness Watchers” including Berkeley’s own Marian Randall Parsons, Caroline LeConte, whose 1898 journal is on display, and Sierra Club leader Peggy Wayburn, whose amusing list of “Don’ts for returning Sierrans” is included. 

The selection of quotes and arrangement of items is incisive and exciting. Gems lie scattered throughout the exhibit. 

For example, there’s this delicious quote from 19th century author and ornithologist Florence Merrian Baily: “What injustice! Here an innocent creature with an olive-green back and yellowish breast has to go about all her days known as the black-throated blue warbler, just because that happens to describe the dress of her spouse!” 

University history is evoked with several great items, including a beautiful color rendering of the 1917 version of the Phoebe Apperson Hearst Plan for the Berkeley campus, the typescript of a famous speech by Joan Didion about Berkeley, and Jane Sather’s handwritten letter to University officials trenchantly defining “the difference in nude and naked” in reference to classical carvings installed on Sather Gate.  

Other fascinating campus items on display in the “Cal Grrrls” case include the handwritten 1920s impressions of a first day on campus written by a newly arrived student, and co-ed Elsie McCormick’s ironic “women’s etiquette” essay from 1916, in which she skewered that era’s widespread male student chauvinism. 

“If a man speaks to you, always preface your answer by ‘Tee-hee’ “ she writes, and “Do not be the only women in the College of Mechanics. To know anything about the anatomy of an automobile is immodest.” 

Many of the visual vignettes provide accounts of historical events in the still uncomfortably recent past such as the experiences of Vera Schultz, the first woman County Supervisor in Northern California, elected in 1952. 

Schultz, the exhibit relates, once arrived for an official gathering of regional office holders to find a “No Women Allowed” sign. Advised to sedately go to lunch with the wives of her fellow elected officials, she tore up the sign and took a seat at the right meeting. 

The lengthy and heated early 20th century campaign for women’s suffrage, both nationally and in California, garners considerable attention in the exhibit, with a display of creative and provocative ephemera. There are campaign ribbons, meeting announcements, and even postcards with pro-suffrage poems. 

One of the most interesting items is a letter from Susan B. Anthony to activist Mary McHenry Keith, dubbed Berkeley’s “Mother of Suffrage” and also the first woman to earn a law degree from Hastings Law School in San Francisco. 

“When women come to write their books out of their hearts and consciences, instead of writing just what will sell on the market, we shall have some truths told that men have never yet heard, but when the time will come that women will be free, and speak their full thought, I hardly know.” 

Once you view this exhibit you'll realize, at least in part, that time is now. 

For more information on the exhibit, call 643-0397 or see www.lib.berkeley.edu/news_events/exhibits/women.html. 

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It’s hard to recall, to represent the atmosphere—the immediate sense, much less any deeper one—of the scandals and violent deaths in November 1978, in the Bay Area and Guyana. The People’s Temple, now in its world premiere at Berkeley Rep’s Roda Theatre, in association with San Francisco’s Z Space, which originally commissioned and developed the piece, begins with traces, voices and images. 

Out of a white storage box, from metal stacks full of shelves of such boxes, a man (James Carpenter) takes a red choir robe, which he holds with a far-away expression of remembrance, as Miche Braden appears in such a robe singing gospel—a memory—the presence of a community member, of the community itself, all gone.  

Other cast members open boxes, costume themselves in “personal effects,” start clapping and singing along, while Carpenter, still distant, moves his lips to the lyrics; after the song he plays Tim Carter, a Jonestown survivor, describing aerial photos of the site, telling of flying to Jonestown over rivers, saying that Guyana means “many rivers”—“from the size of a footpath ... we cleared over 1,000 acres by hand ... I saw future generations, my grandkids, playing in Jonestown.” 

The show loops back through the founding of the Temple in 1955 in Indianapolis, by minister Jim Jones and his wife, Marceline, and its career of feeding the poor, faith healing—and self-promotion. John McAdams plays Jack Beam, a founding member and on the board of the temple, describing Jones’ split from the Disciples of Christ in 1961 to create a fully integrated congregation: “ ‘God is no respecter of persons’ ... I was still racist back then; people still had that problem. They wanted the healing, but they were all tore up over the race problem ... he had to phrase it all in loving Biblical terms.” 

After moving to Redwood Valley, near Ukiah—apparently in response to an Esquire article citing its safety in case of nuclear war!—a new recruitment begins. Cast members play different converts, all with different backgrounds and reasons for joining—though the one reason most have in common is articulated by Lauren Klein, playing Liz Forman Schwartz, Jewish red diaper baby: “What did they have that I always wanted? Community!” 

The show—which emphasizes moving forward rather than looking back—scores with its impressionistic strokes (“sculpting interviews” and staging them, like its predecessor, The Laramie Project) in giving a sense of both the trajectory of the Temple into political wheeling and dealing and internal policing, and the prismatic viewpoints of members, associates and outsiders on the group and its doings and intentions. Colman Domingo plays a street brother, recruited on a sweep through the Midwest, who sees Jim Jones as a con-man, but joins up to find himself with more friends than he ever had, and a sense of purpose—and, with the making of Jonestown out of jungle, accomplishment. Domingo also does a brief, funny sketch of Willie Brown introducing Jones at a rally as “a combination Martin King, Angela Davis, Albert Einstein and Chairman Mao.” 

Bob Ernst is, for a moment, San Francisco Supervisor Robert Mendelsohn, telling a Chronicle reporter (Barbara Pitts) “everybody loves this guy, he gets things done,” then calling back to say “maybe you shouldn’t quote me about it.” 

Jones’ rhetoric, the hallmark of his “socialist temple,” is given in soundbites by John McAdams and James Carpenter: 

“All of you are God, you, I ... heaven is on earth ... our romance together is on a higher plane.” Others tell of how families were broken down, of sexual games, of the large percentage (75 percent of the Jonestown dead) that were poor and older black people. 

Margo Hall plays a convert who had been a Father Divine follower. Adam Wade, suspiciously checking out the temple for his family, remarks that Jones, in a velour shirt and shades, didn’t look like a minister: “He was cool!” 

There are grim reminders, too, of the crudest racism used to manipulate both black and white members. Lauren Klein and James Carpenter play Barbara and Rev. John Moore of Glide Memorial, whose two daughters “with the social worker instinct” died at Jonestown. They hear from one daughter (Kelli Simpkins): “I was born into capitalist sins, racist sins—and he’s the only one who could deliver you,” Her calm, bitter letter from Jonestown’s last hour is one striking testimony, and her father’s “Hundreds of actors in that tragedy—I was one of them,” another, one that sums up the piece’s method in a way. 

One testimony flows into another almost seamlessly. The excellent cast of 12 (including San Francisco Mime Troupe’s Velina Brown, as well as veterans of The Laramie Project) and the writers (Leigh Fondakowski, who also directs, chief writer of The Laramie Project; Stephen Wangh; and cast members Margo Hall, of San Francisco’s Campo Santo and Word For Word, and Greg Pierotti) have made a very professional production, and an affecting one. Something comes out of it—but it’s more a feeling, something indefinite, than that imaginative concentrate the audience takes away from a dramatic form like Tragedy. 

Cleverly pieced and dovetailed together, these various voices out of a somewhat undefined past (a confused social-political situation, many cults and “orgs” attracting followers from a broad social spectrum) may do something to open up the deadlock that began nine days after the Jonestown tragedy, with the strangely related assassinations of San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk by ex-Supervisor Dan White, when “all real dialogue ... ceased.” 

But this impressionism can become a blur, with no grounded point of view, no more than sound-bites. Are they meant to incite questions, conversation? To put a tragedy to rest? These and other intentions are stated or implied, but not given enough context, either historically or in relation to the present. Certain voices challenge the media image, endlessly repeated, of Jonestown: “I want to take anybody that says it was suicide and choke their throats!” But the questions arising from these fragments would be necessarily vague questions, nothing easily pursued conversationally, communally. 

Threads of stories, monologues and soliloquies from interviews, letters, Temple archive oral histories remain powerful. There are testimonies to the more than 900 dead (who John McAdams, as Jones’ son Stephen says, need to be given names.) And then there are those who had to find a way to go on. These are family, friends and even those who were there, who carry the label, a stigma, (as Margo Hall, playing Shanette Oliver, finds when she Googles her name): Survivor.  

The People’s Temple plays at the Berkeley Repertory Theater through May 29. $20-$55. 647-2949, or www.berkeleyrep.org.V

FRIDAY, APRIL 29 

EXHIBITIONS 

Annual Quilt Show at the North Berkeley Public Library, 1170 The Alameda, at Hopkins, and runs through May 21. 981-6250. 

THEATER 

Actors Ensemble of Berkeley, “Working,” inspired by Studs Terkel, Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m. at Live Oak Theater, 1301 Shattuck Ave. at Berryman. Through May 7. Tickets are $13-$15. 649-5999. www.aeofberkeley.org 

Aurora Theatre, “Blue/Orange” Wed.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 and 7 p.m., 2081 Addison St. through May 15. Tickets are $28-$45. 843-4822. www.aurora.theatre.org 

Berkeley Repertory Theater “The People’s Temple” at the Roda Theater, through May 29. Tickets are $20-$55. 647-2949. www.berkeleyrep.org 

Black Repertory Group “Bubbling Brown Sugar” the musical Fri. at 8 p.m., Sat. at 2:30 and 8 p.m. to May 14 at 3201 Adeline St. Tickets are $7-$15. 652-2120.  

Contra Costa Civic Theatre “Jekyll & Hyde: The Musical” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m. at 951 Pomona Ave., El Cerrito, through May 21. Tickets are $12-$20. 524-9132. www.ccct.org 

Eastenders Repertory “A Knight's Escape” and “WWJD,” Thurs. - Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 3 p.m., through May 15 at The Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby Ave. Tickets are $15-$18 available from 568-4118. 

Impact Briefs 7: “The How-To Show” Thu.-Sat at 8 p.m. at La Val’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid Ave., through May 28. Tickets are $10-$15. 464-4468. www.impacttheatre.com 

Opera Piccola and Stagebridge Senior Theater, “Being Something: Living ‘Young’ and Growing ‘Old’” Fri. and Sat. 8 p.m., Sun. at 3 p.m. at Oakland Metro, Jack London Square, through May 1. Tickets are $15. 444-4755. www.stagebridge.org 

“Proof” by David Auburn, Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m. through May 7, Sun. May 1 at 2:30 p.m at The Masquers Playhouse, 105 Park Place, Point Richmond. Tickets are $13. 232-4031. www.masquers.org 

Traveling Jewish Theater “Blood Relative” at the Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, Thurs., Fri. at 8 p.m., Sat. at 2 and 7 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. Tickets are $23-$34. 415-285-8080. www.atjt.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Presidio Ensemble at 8 p.m. at Giorgi Gallery, 2911 Claremeont Ave. Tickets are $10.  

Andy Canepa, piano recital at 8 p.m. in the PSR Chapel, 1798 Scenic Way. Suggested donation $10-$20. 704-7729. 

Street to Nowhere, Desa, The Wildlife at 9:30 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $5-$7. 848-0886. www.blakesontelegraph.com 

Sovoso at 8 p.m. at the Jazz- 

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

Potingue, contemporary flamenco and Latin music at 8:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10-$12. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Stompy Jones, East Coast Swing, Lindy Hop at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Swing dance lesson with Nick & Shanna at 8 p.m. Cost is $$11-13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Acoustic Son at 8 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

The Bills at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50-$18.50. 548-1761.  

Candice & Company at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

Pete Madsen at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Avalon Rising, The Dead Guise at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $6. 841-2082. www.starryplough.com 

These Days, Stop at Nothing, Count the Hours at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $6. 525-9926. 

Beatropolis at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

The Chick Corea Elektric Band at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square, through Sun. Cost is $24-$28. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

SATURDAY, APRIL 30 

CHILDREN 

Los Amiguitos de La Peña with Orange Sherbert at 10:30 a.m. at La Peña. Cost is $5. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Shadow Light” Black and white photographs by Len Blau. Reception for the artist at 6 p.m. at Photolab Gallery, 2235 Fifth St. Exhibition runs to June. 11. www.photolabgallery.com 

THEATER 

Living Arts Playback Theater, an evening of improvisational theater at 8 p.m. at Berkeley Richmond Jewish Community Center, 1414 Walnut St. Tickets are $12-$18. For reservations 655-5186, ext. 25. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Poetry Flash with Albert Flynn DeSilver and Chris Stroffolino at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. Donation $2. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Trinity Chamber Concert “New Pacific Trio” at 8 p.m. at Trinity Chapel, 2320 Dana St. Cost is $8-$12. 549-3864. http://trinitychamberconcerts.com 

Catacoustic Consort, operas of the Italian Baroque at 8 p.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. 528-1725. www.sfems.org 

Berkeley Broadway Singers “Future Broadway” at 8 p.m. at St. Ambrose Church, 1145 Gilman St. Free concert. 604-5732. www.berkeleybroadwaysingers.org 

Perfect Fifth Spring Concert, a capella, featuring early and modern settings of sacred texts at 7 p.m. at Hearst Memorial Mining Building, UC Campus. Tickets are $5-$10. http://tickets.berkeley.edu 

The Third Art-Jazz-Jam to celebrate Jazz Appreciation Month at 5:30 p.m. at the Adeline Artists’ Lofts, 1131 24th St., Oakland. Donation $5.  

Peter Cincotti, jazz vocalist, at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $22-$42. 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

Meli at 7 and 9 p.m. at Spud’s Pizza, 3290 Adeline St. Cost is $5. 597-0795. 

Jody Stecher & Kate Breslin at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50-$18.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Mujeres: Carolyn Brandy with Ojala and Las Locas of Loco Bloco at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $18-$20. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Emmanuel Vaughn Lee Group at 8 p.m. at the Jazz- 

school. Cost is $15. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Kotoja at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. African dance lesson with Comfort at 9 p.m. Cost is $11-$13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Fingertight, Alexic, Forthmorning, alt, progressive, punk at 9 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $8-$10. 848-0886. www.blakesontelegraph.com 

The Rio Thing at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

Stevie Harris at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Conscious Cabaret “Been There, Undone That” at 8 p.m. at Unity of Berkeley, 2075 Eunice St. Tickets are $15-$25. 528-8844. www.unityberkeley.org 

Greg Lamboy, Christie McCarthy, Mokai at 8 p.m. at McNally’s Irish Pub, 5352 College Ave., Oakland. Fundraiser for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. 415-710-0207. 

Michael Mewborne, Dawn Thomas, indy pop rock, at 8:30 p.m. at Epic Arts, 1923 Ashby Ave. Cost is $5-$10. www.epicarts.org 

Sandy Coates, Willow Willow, Yea-Ming at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $6. 841-2082. www.starryplough.com 

Midnight Laserbeam, Apocalipstick, Pigeon at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $6. 525-9926. 

CV1 at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

SUNDAY, MAY 1 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Moments Seized” photographs reconstructed in glazed graphite paintings by Mary Cook. Reception from 6 to 8 p.m. at Cafe DiBartolo, 3310 Grand Ave., Oakland. 832-9005. 

“Exhibit A” Photographs by Mark and Michele Nelson, through May at Lanesplitter Pub & Pizza, 2033 San Pablo Ave. 845-1652. 

FILM 

“Under a Shipwrecked Moon” by Antero Alli at 8 p.m. at Finnish Brotherhood Hall, 1970 Chestnut St. Cost is $5-$10. 464-4640.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“Across Oceans of Sound: Music of the African Diaspora” a panel discussion at 2 p.m., concert at 3:30 p.m. at Hearst Museum, Bancroft Way at College Ave. 643-7648.  

“Behind the Prints of Christopher Brown” with the printmaker at 3:30 p.m. at the Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak Sts. Cost is $4-$8. 238-2200. www.museumca.org 

Judy Chicago introduces “Kitty City: A Feline Book of Hours” from 2 to 4 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500.  

Poetry Flash a reading for Milvia Street Magazine at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. Donation $2. 845-7852.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Berkeley Broadway Singers “Unforgettable” Choral works, solo pieces and standards at 4 p.m. at St. Augustine’s Church, 400 Alcatraz Ave. 604-5732. www.berkeleybroadwaysingers.org 

Berkeley Community Chorus and Orchestra Duruflé “Requiem” at 4:30 p.m. at St. Joseph the Worker Church, 1640 Addison St. Free, donations accepted. www.bcco.org 

Kronos Quartet at at 7 p.m. at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $42, available from 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

UC Chamber Chorus performs music composed during the Counter Reformation in Italy at 3 p.m. at Berkeley Art Museum, 2626 Bancroft Way. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

“Duke Ellington’s Sacred Concert” with the Sojourner Truth Community Choir at 3 p.m. at the John and Jean Knox Center, Castro St. and El Portal Dr., San Pablo. Tickets are $25. 222-2020. 

Maria Marquez at 4:30 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $12-$18. 845-5373. www.jazz- 

school.com 

Twang Cafe, americana, at 8:30 p.m. at Epic Arts, 1923 Ashby Ave. Cost is $5-$10. www.epicarts.org 

Redbird with Peter Mulvey, Kris Delmhorst and Jeffrey Foucault at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50-$18.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Phil Berkowitz & Louis Blues at 7:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $9. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Minerva, Empathy at 4 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $8. 848-0886. www.blakesontelegraph.com 

From Ashes Rise, Paint it Black, Coliseum at 5 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $7. 525-9926. 

Haverfan, Revolve, Exposure 411, alt rock, at 9 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $8. 848-0886. www.blakesontelegraph.com 

MONDAY, MAY 2 

FILM 

Buddhism and Film: “Little Buddha” at 3 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

EXHIBTIONS 

“Be Animated at NIAD” an exhibition of cartoons, anime, and cartoon characters by artists with disabilities and local professional animators at NIAD Gallery, 551 23rd St., Richmond. 620-0290. www.niadart.org 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“Page to Stage” A conversation about the making of “The People’s Temple” with playwright and director Leigh Fondakowski at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Rep, 2015 Addison St. Free. 647-2949. www.berkeleyrep.org 

Actors Reading Writers “The Intimacy of Strangers” stories by Richard Bausch and Flannery O’Connor at 7:30 p.m. at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. Bring a book and take a book in our monthly book exchange. www.juliamorgan.org  

Greil Marcus looks at Bob Dylan and his music in “Like a Rolling Stone” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852.  

David Watt reads from “Bedside Manners: One Doctor’s Reflections on the Oddly Intimate Encounters Between Patient and Healer” at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698. www.blackoakbooks.com 

Poetry Express with Jim Lyle at 7 p.m., at Priya Restaurant, 2072 San Pablo Ave. berkeleypoetryexpress@yahoo.com 

Last Word Poetry Open Mic Marvin Hiemstra and Jan Steckel, at 7 p.m. at Pegasus Books, 2349 Shattuck Ave. 649-1320. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Bill Bell & The Jazz Connection at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

TUESDAY, MAY 3 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Challenging Wood – Beyond the Wooden Frame” a woodworking exhibit through May 26 at the June Steingart Art Galley, Laney College, 900 Fallon St., Oakland. Reception from 5 to 8 p.m. 464-3586. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

David Rothenberg describes “Why Birds Sing: A Journey into the Mystery of Bird Song” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

NoMeansNo at 9 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $10. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Front Porch, The Trainwreck Riders, JD Buck, Jr. at 9:30 p.m. at The Stork Club, 2330 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. Tickets are $5. 444-6174.  

Lynne Arriale Trio at 8 and 10 p.m. Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10-$14. 238-9200.  

Duncan James, jazz guitar, at 8 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810. 

WEDNESDAY, MAY 4 

FILM 

Fim 50: “The Saddest Music in the World” at 3 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Rush Kidder talks about “Moral Courage” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852.  

Katy Turchin, poet, at 6:30 p.m. at at Belladonna, 2436 Sacramento St. Donations benefit battered women. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Holy Names University Chorus and Chamber Singers at 7:30 p.m. at 3500 Mountain Blvd. Tickets are $5-$15. 436-1130. 

Del Sol String Quartet at 8 p.m. at The Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby Ave. Tickets are $7-$21. 

Ned Boynton Trio at 8 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

Yair Dalal, Holocaust Memorial Concert at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $13-15. 525-5054.  

Deepak Ram with Debopriyo Sarkar, Indian bansuri flute, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50-$18.50. 548-1761.  

Whiskey Brothers at 9 p.m. at Albatross, 1822 San Pablo Ave. 843-2473.  

Stilleta, CD release, at 9 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $7-$8. 848-0886.  

Marcus Shelby Jazz Orchestra at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square, through Fri. Cost is $8-$12. 238-9200.  

THURSDAY, MAY 5 

EXHIBITIONS 

Alvarado Artists Group Show at Giorgi Gallery, 2911 Claremont Ave. Reception at 6 p.m. 848-1228.  

“Drawn by the Brush: Oil Sketches of Peter Paul Rubens” guided tour at 5:30 p.m. at Berkeley Art Museum, 2625 Durant Ave. 642-0808.  

THEATER 

“Ancestral Body Navegante,” spoken word performance by María Elena Fernandez at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $7-$10. 849-2568.  

FILM 

Festival Follies: “Words in Progress” at 5:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Free screening. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Lunch Poems with student poets at 12:10 p.m. at Morrison Library in Doe Library, UC Campus. 642-0137.  

Robert Morris’s “Blind Time Drawings” Gallery talk with Eve Meltzer at 12:15 p.m. at Berkeley Art Museum, 2625 Durant Ave. 642-0808.  

David Kirby discusses “Evidence of Harm—Mercury in Vaccines and the Autism Epidemic: A Medical Controversy” at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698.  

John Markoff, introduces “What the Dormouse Said: How 60s Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852.  

Word Beat Reading Series at 7 p.m. with Max Ventura and celebrating the release of David Lerner’s book, at Mediterraneum Caffe, 2475 Telegraph Ave. 526-5985.  

Diane Kirsten, poet, at 7 p.m. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave. 526-3720, ext. 17. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Les Ballets Trocadero de Monte Carlo at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $26-$48. 642-9988.  

Beth Custer Ensemble at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $10-$12. 525-5054.  

Za’atar, Jewish music from Arab lands, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50-$18.50. 548-1761.  

Danny Caron and John Wiitala at 8 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810. 

Lee Ritenour & Friends at 8 and 10 p.m. through Sun. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square., through Sun. Cost is $15-$24. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

David Siegel, Jenn August, Jason Miller, folk, at 8:30 p.m. at Epic Arts, 1923 Ashby Ave. Cost is $5-$10. #

Metamorphosis. Dull caterpillar, easily overlooked, to striking butterfly. Insect Biology 101? No—Dublin. Now a vibrant, energized city, moving forward economically and culturally. Today visitors are buffeted by stimuli—masses of people, miles of traffic, a cacophony of sounds. So much to do: museums, galleries, historic sites, cafes, pubs, and clubs.  

So there I was, a writer in search of a story. Where should I go? What’s my theme? How can I connect with this eclectic city? What will I write? 

Finding something to write about was never a problem with Ireland’s abundance of great writers; Irish literature was integral to Dublin’s history and tradition. From the Book of Kells in the ninth century, through the cultural movements of both the 19th and 20th centuries, Ireland produced more than two dozen writers of renown, including four Nobel prizewinners. 

A theme emerged. To journey through Dublin. To celebrate Irish literature and poesis—the act of writing itself. 

I headed north, crossing the River Liffey. Will the flow of its currents inspire the flow of my prose? My destination was the Dublin Writers Museum, established to commemorate and promote interest in Irish literature and its writers. The two museum rooms in the beautifully restored Georgian mansion were already quite full by 10:30 a.m., one half hour after opening. Plugged in to the excellent audiotape included with the entrance fee, I chronologically traced the greats of literature: Jonathan Swift of Gulliver’s Travels, Dracula’s Bram Stoker, playwrights George Bernard Shaw and Oscar Wilde. Using rare manuscripts, diaries, letters, photographs and posters, the exhibits continue through the 20th century’s Abbey Theatre and Samuel Beckett, James Joyce and Sean O’Casey. These Irish authors continued to write about their home, especially Dublin, even while in exile, their works censored by the strong influence of the Catholic Church and Ireland’s turbulent political history. 

The quality of these exhibits and the elegance of the setting set the mood for inspiration, as well as the need for sustenance. The Christopher Café, downstairs, nourished my mind and body. In my experience, museums, historic sites, and refectories provide excellent homemade food at very reasonable prices. Seated at the outdoor Zen Garden, enjoying a pot of tea and a fresh scone, what else, I happily planned my day. 

Across the road at the Garden of Remembrance I savored the warm air and the sense of peace. Considering Dublin’s busy pace, it’s nice to know that areas of the city have been set aside for greenery and relief. Here, as well as at St. Stephen’s Green and Merrion Square, landscaped grounds, bright flowers, fountains, sculpture, and comfortable benches attract those wanting to pause in their busy schedules, whether at work or at play. This small, attractive garden was opened in 1966, 50 years after the Easter Uprising, and is dedicated to the men and women who lost their lives fighting for Irish freedom. An ideal spot for people watching and character study. 

Walking back toward the River Liffey I came upon a scene as colorful and delightful as the garden I just left. The Moore Street Market is a rainbow of fresh fruits, vegetables, and cut flowers, accompanied by the cries of their vendors. Bright red tomatoes, purple plums, multihued peppers, peaches and nectarines blushed by the sun. My feeling of discovery was magnified by its unexpectedness. A chance meeting between two characters or a secret rendezvous? 

Writers, books, library. The National Library of Ireland is housed in a magnificent building designed by Sir Thomas Deane and contains first editions of every major Irish writer as well as copies of almost every book ever published in Ireland. The domed first floor Reading Room is open to the public. It featured prominently in James Joyce’s epic novel Ulysses so it seems fitting that “James Joyce and Ulysses” is on exhibit here. The exhibition focuses on the artistic processes Joyce employed in writing his masterpiece. Notebooks, manuscripts, posters, photographs and the first copy of Ulysses ever published show that Dublin in 1904 was as vibrant and colorful as it is today. Using digital technology, visitors can magnify sections and turn pages of this book, an intimate experience bringing Ulysses 100 years forward. It was fantastic to see the pages of Joyce’s notes, scribbled randomly on paper, with items crossed out or underlined; it was almost like watching the author at work. 

Eighteen episodes, each in a different style and each tied into Homer’s Odyssey. All taking place in Edwardian Dublin on one day, June 16, 1904. So much has changed for this country yet this one book remains such a strong influence that each year Bloomsday celebrations revisit these immortal characters as they move through Dublin. 

Throughout Ireland’s recent history and on to the present, Trinity College looms as the center of learning. Forty acres in the city center, the stately buildings of Ireland’s oldest college remind us of the past while the bustle in Parliament Square brings us into the present – the atmosphere is alive. The line is long for Trinity’s most famous archive, the 9th century illuminated gospels, the Book of Kells. Beautifully displayed in the Old Library, “Turning Darkness into Light” and the barrel-vaulted ceiling of the Long Room exert their pull, making it hard to leave. This lavishly decorated book, representing so many hours of painstaking work, inspires one to spend a few more hours with pen and paper. 

Outside, Fellow’s Square is a natural gathering place for people of all ages. The large, green lawn ringed with comfortable benches called me to sit for a while with my journal, enjoy a coffee, people watch, and reflect. Next to me, two elderly ladies sat chatting away. What changes they must have witnessed here over the years! 

A city tour of perpetual motion is not the ticket for enjoyment. To know an area requires you to be in one place long enough to absorb its molecules. As I wrote in my journal, I thought back to Dublin in 1904, when Trinity College featured largely in Joyce’s tome, and how today it remains a driving force in city life. 

To ease the mind and the hand, I headed over to the Old Jameson Distillery. An audiovisual presentation began my education: Irish whiskey is “Uisce Beatha,” the water of life, and its distilling process is quite different from that of scotch or bourbon. The lively tour through the old distillery and whiskey tasting at the Jameson bar left me ready to tackle any writer’s block.  

Temple Bar, a warren of narrow streets and alleyways, at times appears to have been taken over by the young, becoming, in a sense, their playground. Restaurants, pubs and nightspots are present in large numbers, but the arts are equally represented in craft shops, film centers and galleries. At the Gallery of Photography I experienced a meeting of two arts—that of writing and photography. In an exhibit of over 75 haunting black and white photographs, Erich Hartman revisited Joyce’s Dublin, in 1964. For his journey of discovery Hartmann searched out every location from Ulysses, taking over 3000 images. His goal was to understand the city that inspired Joyce while as the same time repelling him. 

At the National Photographic Archive, “Fadographs of a Yestern Scene”, by Robert French, documented Dublin as Joyce experienced it at the turn of the century. French captured the everyday life of all strata of society, from the mansions of Merrion Square to the poverty of the inner city slums. Once again, the profound effect of Joyce’s Ulysses cannot be denied and is evident up through the present.  

On my final day in Dublin, I headed out to the coast. It was time for the sea breezes to rearrange the muddle of facts crowded into my mind. My destination was village of Howth, nine miles from Dublin. Aptly named, from the Norse “hoved” meaning headland, Howth Head dominates northern Dublin Bay. Since medieval times into the present, the waters have provided a living in this lovely coastal setting. 

The DART train from Dublin left me steps from Howth’s dominant attraction, its harbor, which supports a large fishing fleet. Always attracted to working ports and anxious for a walk without the need to sidestep crowds, I explored the West Pier. Here were the buildings and storehouses supporting the commercial side of Howth’s economy, ship chandlers and fresh fish markets doing brisk business, as well as fishermen at work. 

To reach the East Pier I walked along Howth Village past a multitude of cafes and restaurants and a few galleries and craft shops. At Maud’s Café I indulged in a favorite—a fresh prawn sandwich. Restored, I was ready to continue. 

The East Pier acts as a breakwater to Balscadden Bay and the Irish Sea, while forming a sheltered marina for the many pleasure craft moored here. The brisk winds off the water cleared my mind as I walked down this long pier. This would be a great place to write, protected by the sea wall. At pier’s end stood the lighthouse, its attractive red trim vibrant against the industrial colors of the boats. Across the channel, Ireland’s Eye, a small island once the site of a 6th century monastery. 

A coastal walk provided further spectacular views of the bay, the Irish Sea, and the heather topped rocky headland. I followed the trail toward Bailey Lighthouse and a Martello Tower, bringing me, once again, to Ulysses. Yes, even this headland and tower featured prominently in Joyce’s far-reaching novel. 

Back in Dublin, I joined the crowds crossing against the light, in defiance of the endless traffic. Moving forward. One hand reaching out to the future, the other holding steadily to the past. My journey complete; literary Dublin alive and well. 

Where to stay: 

Eliza Lodge: 23/24 Wellington Quay, Temple Bar, Dublin 2. (011) 353-1-6718044, http://dublinlodge.com. Doubles $120 per night. 

Hotel Saint George: 7 Parnell Sq. E, Northside, 1. (011) 353-1-8745611. Doubles from $100 per night. 

What to do: 

Dublin Writers Museum: 18 Parnell Sq. N, Northside. (011) 353-1-8722077. www.visitdublin.com. Adults $8. 

Garden of Remembrance: Parnell Sq., Northside National Library/ James Joyce and Ulysses: Kildaire St., Southside. (011) 353-01-6618811. www.nli.ie. Free.  

Trinity College/ The Book of Kells: College Green, Dublin 2. (011) 353-1-6082320. www.tcd.ie/library/kells.htm. Free admission to college grounds. Admission to Library $7 adults.  

Student-led Trinity Tours meet inside front gate; $10 includes entry to Book of Kells. (011) 353-01-6082320. 

Old Jameson Distillery: Bow St., Dublin West. 011 353 01 8072355. www.irish-whiskey-trail.com. Adults $7. 

Gallery of Photography: Meeting House square. S, Temple Bar. (011) 353-01-6714654. www.irish-phtography.com. Free. 

National Photographic Archive: Meeting House Sq., Temple Bar. (011) 353-01-6030371. www.nli.ie. Free. 

Historic Walking Tours of Dublin: 2 hour walking tours of city. (011) 353-01-8780227. Adults $12. 

For more information: 

www.irishabroad.com and www.irishsights.com. 

›

FRIDAY, APRIL 29 

Protest Action: Campus Bay and UC Field Station to demand better oversight of these toxic sites and protection for the community at 7 a.m. at South 47th and Meade Sts., off the Bay View exit, west of 580, in Richmond. Dress warmly. 496-2722. 

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon with Izaly Zemsovsky on “Islam in Russia” Luncheon at 11:45 a.m. for $13, speech at 12:30 p.m., at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant St. For information and reservations call 526-2925 or 665-9020. 

Celebrating South Berkeley Seniors A presentation of murals in progress, storytelling, food and music at 6 p.m. at South Berkeley Senior Center. Sponsored by the California Council for the Humanities, California Stories Project. 704-0803. 486-8213. www.calhum.org 

Malcolm X Consciousness Conference A 3-day event with speakers, concerts, awards and fashion show at Laney College, Oakland. Tickets are $75. 997-0075. www.unlockyourroots.com 

Alameda County Bike to Work Kick-Off Lunch at noon at the MTC Metrocenter, 101 Eighth St., Oakland. to RSVP call 530-3444. www.511.org 

Berkeley School Volunteers Training workshop for volunteers interested in helping in Berkeley Public schools at 1:30 p.m. at 1835 Allston Way. 644-8833. 

“Exploring Quantum Phenomena” with Cornelia Jarica at 7 p.m. at Unity of Berkeley, 2075 Eunice St. Cost is $15. 528-8844. www.unityberkeley.org 

“Three Beats for Nothing” a small group meeting weekly at 10 a.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center to sing for fun and practice, mostly 16th century harmony. No charge. 655-8863, 843-7610.  

Berkeley Chess Club meets Fridays at 7:15 p.m. at the East Bay Chess Club, 1940 Virginia St. Players at all levels are welcome. 845-1041. 

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 

SATURDAY, APRIL 30 

See Our Snakes Meet the resident snakes of Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park at 10:30 a.m. and learn about their behavior. 525-2233. 

Berkeley High School Family Day Picnic from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Berkeley High School on the “Campus Green,” 1980 Allston Way. Children’s jumper, games, music, basketball shoot-out, food and more. Sponsored by BHS Parent Resource Center. 644-8524. 

Green Home Expo and Energy Symposium from noon to 5:30 p.m. at Civic Center Park. Information on energy conservation, sustainable and non-toxic building products and renewable energy technology. www.GreenHome EXPO.org 

Cinco de Mayo Celebration with BAHIA and the City of Berkeley at 1 p.m. at James Kenney Park, 1720 Eighth St., at Delaware. Health fair, music, children’s games, crafts, and food. 525-1463. 

Berkeley Historical Society Walking Tour of “Holy Hill,” site of the Graduate Theological Union and the Flora Lamson Hewlett Library led by Allen Stross, from 10 a.m. to noon. Cost is $8-$10. 848-0181. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/histsoc/ 

Illuminated Cards Craft Event Make your own illuminated card in the style of the Middle Ages from 2 to 4 p.m. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave. Free and open to all ages. 526-3700, ext. 17. 

Civil Rights Celebration honoring James Forman, Joanne Grant and Ossie Davis at 6 p.m. at SEIU Local 250, 560 Thomas L. Berkley Way (formerly 20th St.) Between San Pablo and Telegraph Aves. Donation $5-$10. 

International Family Fair sponsored by The New School of Berkeley from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Bonita St. between Cedar and Virginia. Live entertainment, games, food and raffle. Free. 548-9165. www.newschoolofberkel0ey.org 

Spring Plant Sale from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the UC Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Drive. 643-2755. http://botanicalgarden.berkeley.edu 

Berkeley Potters Guild Annual Spring Show Sat. and Sun. from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. at 731 Jones St. 524-7031. www.berkeleypotters.com 

New Women’s Program Benefit Sale from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. in the KPFA parking lot on Berkeley Way just east of MLK Way. 527-2784. 

Self Defense for Daughters & Parents from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center, 2640 College Ave. Cost is $75 for a parent and child. 845-8542, ext. 302. 

Good Night Little Farm Help with the afternoon feeding, learn about our rare breeds and help tuck the animals in for the night, at 3:30 p.m. at Tilden Little Farm, Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

Choosing the Right Rose and Keeping an Organic Rose Garden with Ken Jose, rose expert, at 10 a.m. at Magic Gardens Nursery, 729 Heinz Ave. 644-2351. www.magicgardens.com 

Botanizing California A series of local and overnight field trips to highlight California’s plant communities. Cost is $80-$95. Registration required. 845-4116. www.nativeplants.org 

Drawing and Painting the Birds of the Garden A two day class in the Botanic Garden of Tilden Park. Cost is $90-$95. Registration required. 845-4116. www.nativeplants.org 

“In the Light of Reverence” a documentary with Chief Sisk-Franco of the Winneman-Wintu Tribe on the development of the Shasta Dam at 6 p.m. at the Richmond Main Library. Sponsored by West County Native Americans for Environmental Justice. 236-1631. 

“The Teachings of Light and Sound” with Sri Gary Olsen from 1 to 3:30 p.m. at the Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. www.masterpathpath.org 

Art Deco Society Preservation Ball Dinner, silent auction and entertainment, and presentation of the 2005 Art Deco Preservation Awards at Sweet’s Ballroom, 1933 Broadway, Oakland. Tickets are $85-$100. 415-982-3326. www.artdecosociety.org 

Reel Kids Films Inc. Gala Benefit at Sequoyah Country Club, 4550 Heafey Rd., Oakland. For ticket information call 978-0002. www.reelkidsfilms.com 

Integral Transformative Practice Workshop Sat. and Sun. at the Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. Cost is $125. For reservations call 415-927-0913.  

Living More With Less, A day of conversation about living simpler, slower and smaller from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Oakland, 2501 Harrison St. Cost is $12-$15. 548-2220, ext. 233.  

Free Emergency Preparedness Class in Disaster Mental Health from 9 a.m. to noon at 2100 Martin Luther King Jr. Way. To sign up call 981-5605. www. 

ci.berkeley.ca.us/fire/oes.html 

Small Press Distribution Spring Open House from noon to 4 p.m. at 1341 Seventh St., off Gilman, with books, entertainment and guest of honor Andrei Cogrescu. 524-1668. www.spdbooks.org 

Free Garden Tours at Regional Parks Botanic Garden Sat. and Sun. at 2 pm. Regional Parks Botanic Garden, Tilden Park. Call to confirm. 841-8732.  

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. 

Kol Hadash Passover Seder at 6 p.m. at the Albany Community Center. Reservations required. 925-254-0609. greensu@comcast.net  

SUNDAY, MAY 1 

Berkeley Architectural Heritage Spring House Tour of Panoramic Hill from 1 to 5 p.m. Cost is $25-$30. For details and reservations call 841-2242. www.berkeleyheritage.com 

May Day Workers’ Party with the Network of Bay Area Worker Co-ops. Music, dancing, food and activities for children at noon at the Tinkers Workshop at Aquatic Park. 452-1912. mayday@designaction.org 

Miller/Knox Shoreline Hike to learn the history of Rancho San Pablo. Meet at 10 a.m. in the first parking lot off Dornan Drive near Pt. Richmond. 525-2233. 

Build It Green Home Tour from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. covering homes that have been built or remodeled green. 614-1699. www.buildgreennow.org 

Elmwood Spring Clean Up Day Meet at 10 a.m in front of the Elmwood Theater, 2966 College Ave. to weed, plant flowers, paint out graffiti, and enjoy our neighborhood. 290-9036. 

Crowden Music Center’s Anniversary Gala at 5 p.m. in the Rotunda, 300 Frank Ogawa Plaza, Oakland. Honoring Robert Cole and Susan Muscarella. Tickets are $200. 559-6910. www.crowdenmusiccenter.org  

Lake Merritt Neighbors Organized for Peace Meet at 3 p.m. at the colonnade at the NE end of the lake. 763-8712. lmno4p.org 

Tibetan Buddhism with Jack Petranker on “Mind in Nature” at 6 p.m. at the Tibetan Nyingma Institute, 1815 Highland Pl. 843-6812. www.nyingmainstitute.com 

May Day Maimouna with Achi ben Shalom at 3 p.m. at 2746 College Ave. 843-3131.  

MONDAY, MAY 2 

Tea and Hike at Four Taste some of the finest teas from the Pacific Rim and South Asia and learn their natural and cultural history, followed by a short nature walk. At 4 p.m. at Tilden Nature Area, in Tilden Park. Cost is $5-$7, registration required. 525-2233.  

“History of Local Creek Restoration” A slide show sponsored by Friends of Five Creeks in obeservation of California Watersheds Month, at 7 p.m. at Albany Community Center, 1249 Marin Ave. 848 9358. www.fivecreeks.org 

National Organization for Women, Oakland East Bay Chapter, meets at 6 p.m. at 1515 Webster St. Renee Walker will discuss Abstinence-Only Education in Bay Area Public Schools. 287-8948. 

Iraq War Veteran and Resister Camilo Mejia speaks at 7 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Oakland, 2501 Harrison St. at 27th. Tickets are $5 - $15 sliding scale, no one turned away. Benefits Veterans for Peace. 415-255-7331. www.veteransforpeace.org 

World Affairs/Politics Discussion Group for people 60 years and over meets at 10:15 a.m. at the Albany Senior Center, 846 Masonic Ave. 524-9122. 

Berkeley CopWatch organizational meeting at 8 p.m. at 2022 Blake St. 548-0425. 

Trivia Cafe at 6:30 p.m. at Ristorante Raphael 2132 Center St. 644-9500. 

TUESDAY, MAY 3 

Mid-Day Meander on favorite trails for bird songs, ferns and flowers. Meet at 2:30 p.m. at Tilden Nature Area. 525-2233. 

Bird Walk at 3:30 p.m. at Martin Luther King Jr. Shoreline to to try to find the elusive Burrowing Owl. 525-2233. 

Community Budget Workshop with City staff on the two-year City budget cycle which begins July 1, at 7 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Co-sponsored by the League of Women Voters. 981-7004.  

Alvaro Vargas Llosa on “Liberty for Latin America” at 6:30 p.m. at the Independent Institute, 100 Swan Way, Oakland. Tickets are $10-$35. For rservations call 632-1366. 

Vision Screening for Toddlers at 10 a.m. at Habitot, 2065 Kittredge St. Cost is $5-$6. 647-1111. www.habitot.org 

“Osteoporosis: Learn the Facts” with at 7 p.m. at El Cerrito Library, 6510 Stockton Ave. Free. 526-7512.  

Berkeley Salon Discussion Group meets to discuss dreams from 7 to 9 p.m. at the Berkeley Richmond Jewish Community Center, 1414 Walnut St. Please bring snacks and soft drinks to share. No peanuts please. 601-6690.     

Introductory Buddhist Meditation Class at 7 p.m. at Dzalandhara Buddhist Center, in Berkeley. Suggested donation $7-$10. For directions call 559-8183. www.kadampas.org 

Family Storytime at 7 p.m. at Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave. 524-3043. 

Sing-A-Long every Tues. from 1:30 to 2:30 p.m. at the Albany Senior Center, 846 Masonic. All ages welcome. 524-9122. 

Brainstormer Weekly Pub Quiz every Tuesday from 7:30 to 9:30 p.m. at Pyramid Alehouse Brewery, 901 Gilman St. 528-9880. 

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. 845-6830. 

WEDNESDAY, MAY 4 

Tilden Tots Join a nature adventure program for 3 and 4 year olds, each accompanied by an adult (grandparents welcome)! We’ll explore the nature area ponds from 10 to 11:30 a.m. Cost is $6-$8. Registration required. 636-1684. 

Bilingual CPR Skills Workshop at 11 a.m. at Habitot, 2065 Kittredge St. Cost is $5-$6. 647-1111. www.habitot.org 

“The Nation’s Growing Fiscal Imbalance: Perspectives and Issues” with David M. Walker Comptroller General of the U.S. at 5 p.m. at Andersen Auditorium, Haas School of Business, UC Campus. 642-4670. http://gspp.berkeley.edu/  

“The Impact of the Central American Free Trade Agreement” with Eduardo Stein, VIce President of the Republic of Guatemala, at 4 p.m. in the Howar Room, Faculty Club, UC Campus. 642-2088. www.clas.berkeley.edu 

Red Cross Blood Services Volunteer Orientation at 10 a.m. at 6230 Claremont Ave., Oakland. Advance sign-up needed 594-5165. 

Circle K’s 25th Blood Drive with American Red Cross from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Thurs. from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. in the Pauley Ballroom, UC Campus.  

Healing Ourselves and the World through movement, visualization, artwork and writing from 7 to 9 p.m. at 6536 Telegraph Ave. Cost is $15-25 sliding scale. 286-7915. 

The Berkeley Lawn Bowling Club provides free instruction every Wednesday at 10:30 a.m. at 2270 Action St. 841-2174.  

Berkeley School Volunteers Workshop for volunteers interested in helping in Berkeley Public Schools at 4 p.m. at 1835 Allston Way. 644-8833. 

Artify Ashby Muralist Group meets every Wed. from 5 to 8 p.m. at the South Berkeley Senior Center, to plan a new mural. 704-0803. 

Sing-Along every Wed. at 4:30 p.m. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave. 526-3720, ext. 17. 

Walk Berkeley for Seniors meets every Wednesday at 9:30 a.m. at the Sea Breeze Market, just west of the I-80 overpass. Heavy rain cancels. 548-9840. 

Fresh Produce Stand at San Pablo Park from 3 to 6:30 p.m. in the Frances Albrier Community Center. 848-1704. www.ecologycenter.org 

Berkeley Peace Walk and Vigil corner of Shattuck and Center at 6:30 p.m. www.geocities.com/vigil4peace/vigil 

THURSDAY, MAY 5 

Very Early Morning Bird Walk to hear the morning chorus. Meet at 5:30 a.m. at the Tilden Nature Area. 525-2233. 

Tilden Tots Join a nature adventure program for 3 and 4 year olds, each accompanied by an adult (grandparents welcome)! We’ll explore the nature area ponds from 10 to 11:30 a.m. Cost is $6-$8. Registration required. 636-1684. 

Tilden Explorers An after school nature adventure for 5-7 year olds who may be accompanied by an adult. No younger siblings please. From 3:15 to 4:45 p.m. Cost is $6-$8. Registration required. 636-1684. 

“Aging in America: The Years Ahead” a documentary with the director, Julie Winokur, in person at 1:30 p.m. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave. 526-3720. 

Holocaust Remembrance Day with Dr. Tirza True Latimer at 6:30 p.m. at Judah L. Magnes Museum, 2911 Russell St. Cost is $4-$6. 549-6950. www.magnes.org 

Running Your Car on Ethanol with David Blume at 7 p.m. at the Ecology Center, 2530 San Pablo Ave. Cost is $5-$25 sliding scale. 548-2220, ext. 233. 

East Bay Mac User Group meets from 6 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. at Expression Center for New Media, 6601 Shellmound St.  

www.expression.edu 

ONGOING 

Cross County Hybrid Car Rally May 9 to May 14, starting from Art’s Automotive, 2871 San Pablo Ave. to Saratoga Springs, New York. Art’s Automotive will verify tire pressure, hand out special logs to record your progress and place a special seal on your gas tank cover. At certain checkpoints your fuel mileage will be recorded before you refill your tank. You can chose any route you want as long as you arrive no later than noon May 14th in Saratoga Springs. Sponsored by the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association and Autocareers.org Details available at the website www.TourdeSol.org  

CITY MEETINGS 

Creeks Task Force meets Mon. May 2, at 7 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Erin Dando, 981-7410. www.ci. 

berkeley.ca.us/planning/landuse/Creeks/default.html 

Council Agenda Committee meets Mon., May 2, at 2:30 p.m., at 2180 Milvia St. 981-6900. 

www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/ 

citycouncil/agenda-committee 

Berkeley Rent Stabilization Board meets Mon. May 2, at 7 p.m. in City Council Chambers, Pam Wyche, 644-6128 ext. 113. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/rent 

Peace and Justice Commission meets Mon., May 2 at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Manuel Hector, 981-5510. www. 

ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/peaceandjustice 

Youth Commission meets Mon., May 2, at 6:30 p.m., at 1730 Oregon St. Philip Harper-Cotton, 981-6670. www.ci.ber- 

keley.ca.us/commissions/youth 

Community Environmental Advisory Commission meets Thurs., May 5, at 7 p.m., at 2118 Milvia St. Nabil Al-Hadithy, 981-7461. www.ci.ber 

keley.ca.us/commissions/environmentaladvisory 

Housing Advisory Commission meets Thurs., May 5 at 7:30 p.m., at the South Berkeley Senior Center. Oscar Sung, 981-5400. www.ci.berkeley.ca. 

us/commissions/housing 

Public Works Commission meets Thurs., May 5, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Jeff Egeberg, 981-6406. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/publicworksª

The future of Berkeley’s warm water pool, a popular recreation choice for disabled residents, remains unsettled after a city study released last week found that rebuilding the current facility at Berkeley High School’s Old Gym or constructing a new one would cost between $6.3 and $7.5 milion—roughly twice the amount the city has on hand for the project. 

Public Works Director Rene Cardinaux will present the report from Glass Architects to the City Council Tuesday. City staff has requested that the council ask the school district to refrain from recommending a permanent home for a new warm water pool until the city determines its preferred location. 

Under a 1998 memorandum of understanding between the city and the district, the city accepted responsibility for maintaining the pool, while Berkeley Unified retained responsibility for maintaining the building. 

“The council needs to decide which option it wants and we need to see what we can do to get more money,” said Henry DeGrassa, manager of capital projects for the city. 

The report is the latest setback for warm water pool users, who in the four years since voters approved a $3.25 million measure to refurbish the pool have seen cost estimates skyrocket while the bond money has remained unspent. 

“I’m a little bit worried,” said Mark Hendrix, a leader of warm water pool users. “The question is can we get a new pool sometime before this building becomes so dilapidated that swimmers can’t use it anymore?” 

Some disabled residents said the warm water pool is one of the few places they can exercise. 

“I’m like a beached whale out of water, but I’m like Flipper in the pool,” said Corbett O’Toole, who had polio and rides in a wheelchair. 

Arthritis-patient Shirley Naylor said she walks out of the pool in a lot less pain than when she enters. “The warm water is the best thing for my joints,” she said. 

City officials charge that the district has neglected the Old Gym in recent years, effectively ending hope that the building could be preserved. 

“It’s deteriorated significantly over just the last three to four years,” Cardinaux said. “Problems we thought could be repaired now mean the building has to be torn down.” 

The consultant’s report found that the Old Gym was too unsafe to renovate. It also studied possibly relocating the warm water pool to the site of the current West Campus pool, but pool users are opposed to that idea since only a smaller warm water pool could fit on the site. 

Meanwhile, the school board is scheduled to vote May 11 on a plan for the southern portion of the high school campus that calls for tearing down the Old Gym and reserving a portion of the tennis courts across Milvia Street for a new pool, said Lew Jones, the school district’s facilities director. Jones said the district was under the impression that the city supported the district moving forward with the proposal to move the location of the pool. 

The benefits of the plan to build a new pool on the tennis courts site, Jones said, would be that swimmers could continue to use the current pool while the city builds the new pool across the street. However, the city doesn’t have the roughly $7 million needed to build a new pool. City Manager Phil Kamlarz has proposed allocating $1 million towards the project, which combined with the still unspent $3.25 million bond would still leave the city roughly $3 million short. 

Kamlarz said one option would be to go back to voters next year and ask for a new bond. But Councilmember Dona Spring argued that seeking voter approval would take too long and further drive up costs as the prices for steel and concrete continue to rise. 

“We can’t dilly dally anymore,” she said. “If we wait two years the pool will end up costing $10 million.” 

Spring is proposing that the city seek at least $1 million from the school district for the new pool and pay for the balance of the project through a Certificate of Participation, by which the city would borrow money and repay it within 10 years. 

Adding to the sense of urgency for warm water pool users, the pool, according to Glass Architects, “is in a state of substantial decay.” 

The building’s poor condition has led many pool advocates to conclude that the district isn’t interested in keeping the pool. 

“The BUSD has always been opposed to having people other than high school kids on the south campus,” said pool user and advocate Josephine Arasteh. 

“I do feel the district has played a waiting game to see if the building could get so decrepit that we would have to leave,” Hendrix said. 

New ceiling vents stopped working shortly after they were installed in 1999, presumably from corrosion; the new roof, installed at the same time, is unfinished and shows signs of staining; electrical conduits are exposed and recessed light fixtures and junction boxes are significantly rusted with some dangerous exposed wiring visible, the consultants found.  

Moreover, Cardinaux warned that the ceiling over an adjacent pool no longer in operation was at risk of collapsing. The roof over the warm water pool is also in subpar shape, Cardinaux said, despite the fact that the school district several years ago installed a new roof with roughly $300,000 supplied by the city. 

“I don’t think [the roof repairs] were done as well as they could have been done,” Cardinaux said, adding that the new wooden roof was never painted or finished. 

Jones said that the district had not done any significant maintenance on the Old Gym in the past few years because the school district assumed that the building would have to be torn down. “We were reluctant to spend major money when there’s uncertainty how long the building will be there,” Jones said. 

Sasha Futran, the consultant hired jointly by the city and the district to figure out how to raise money for the pool, questioned the district’s intentions from the start. 

“I don’t think the school district ever wanted to renovate that pool,” she said. Futran said that in 2000 former Superintendent Jack McLoughlin wanted the warm water pool project to be folded into the school district’s bond measure on the ballot. When Futran learned that rehabbing the pool was the district’s lowest priority project for the bond money she said she lobbied progressive councilmembers to make sure that the pool bond would be a city-funded measure, independent of the schools. 

Relations between the district and swimmers have soured since 2000. 

Shortly after the election, McLoughlin ordered the architecture firm Akol and Yoshi to draw preliminary designs of a refurbished warm water pool at the Old Gym. But according to Jones, as part of their work, the architects contracted an engineering firm that found the building might collapse in a major earthquake. 

“Their testing showed that the concrete was much weaker than we had thought,” Jones said. The report was released just as McLoughlin, long considered an advocate of the warm water pool, resigned and was replaced by current Superintendent Michele Lawrence. Facing a mounting budget deficit, Lawrence halted the project. 

“Jack didn’t have the knowledge that Michele had,” Jones said. “She wanted to have a better handle on what the district’s needs were and not run willy-nilly into a building project.”  

Although the four-year delay for additional planning has increased project costs, Jones said building a new pool across the street was “the only viable solution we know to preserve the warm water pool.” Under the district plan, Jones said the pool would be serviced by plenty of disabled parking spaces and have a wider deck. 

Jones added that he wasn’t clear if the district’s bond could pay for the new pool, and said the available funds had already been assigned to other projects. 

The warm water pool serves students as well and is the primary gym option for disabled students. If the district needed a temporary home for student swimmers, Berkeley YMCA Director Fran Gallati said the Downtown Y, which has three swimming pools, could accommodate the students, and possibly the adults as well, if the district pool closed for rebuilding on the same site or elsewhere.?

Angry words and heated questions surfaced anew Thursday night when West Campus neighbors confronted Berkeley public school district officials and their consultant on the future of the site on the south side of University Avenue between Bonar and Curtis streets. 

One of the bombshells dropped Thursday night came from Berkeley Unified School District Trustee Terry Doran, who said the district might not accept city jurisdiction over development at the site. 

“You may not like it, but I’m a school board member and not a city councilmember,” Doran said, citing his obligation “to act in the best interests of the children of Berkeley.” 

Doran, noting that he’s lived three blocks from the site for the last 30 years, said he understood neighbors’ concerns. “I’m committed to working with neighbors to come up with a project to give the best education possible while doing the best I can to protect the interests of the community,” he said. 

Doran’s declaration worried West Berkeley City Councilmember Darryl Moore, who has been a regular at the school district sessions. 

“I’m hoping to get a legal opinion from the city attorney” on the oversight issue, Moore said. “It’s quite apparent that if 85 percent of the site is used for administration purposes, this project should come to the city for permits and approvals.” 

Buildings devoted to instructional purposes are overseen by the state architect’s office and are exempt from local zoning and building department oversight. But the district’s plans for the West Campus site are primarily administrative, which led Moore and most in the audience to call for city oversight. 

Moore said the school district’s relations with neighbors have deteriorated since last session on April 7. 

“I’m concerned, because I hear a lot of citizens in West Berkeley saying they don’t like the process,” he said. “They want a site committee.” 

And that they did, with one audience member after another asking to be named to an official district site committee for the project. 

Some recalled the battle over the move of the Adult School from the West Campus site to Franklin School last year. Franklin neighbors filed suit, claiming the district violated state law when they didn’t discuss future plans for a vacated West Campus in their environmental report on the move. 

The district resolved the suit by naming neighbors to a site council which negotiated a successful resolution to their concerns about traffic and other problems at the new site.  

Drawing a larger turnout than a similar session two weeks earlier, the meeting was, if anything, testier, with intense questions from audience members derailing the timing of the planned agenda by more than an hour. 

Some of the questions concerned the role of the BUSD’s hired consultant who has been running the meetings, David C. Early—who has himself become a lightning rod for criticism. 

While the district hired Early as head of Design, Community & Environment, a private firm that assists local government in bringing community involvement into the planning process, neighbors saw a conflict with his position as chair of Livable Berkeley, an advocacy group whose philosophy is best expressed by the slogan emblazoned on the T-shirts and magnets the group sells—YIMBY, for “Yes In My Back Yard,” a play on the well-known NIMBY, substituting Yes in place of Not. 

A Livable Berkeley subcommittee met in his offices on April 5 to discuss the West Campus project, prompting a reporter to ask if providing a meeting space to an advocacy group might have compromised Early’s professional role as a neutral arbiter. 

Early insisted again Thursday that there was no conflict—then read a prepared statement. “The committee only discussed the project in general terms, and no alternatives were discussed,” he said. 

Early said he will recuse himself from any of the group’s meeting where the project is discussed and he won’t discuss the project with members. While Livable Berkeley will continue to meet in his office, “there will be no meetings at the office where this is discussed.” 

So long as he abides by the rules, he said, BUSD staff has agreed that there’s no conflict of interest. 

Early also drew criticism for failing to fulfill a promise made at the last meeting, when he said he would post photos of the types of vehicles the district plans to keep on the site. 

Another Early error brought relief to many in the audience. 

While he had told participants in the previous session that the district would open a facility on the site to teach students expelled from regular schools for acts or violence and other anti-social behavior, Early said Thursday that he’d been wrong. Such students will continue to go to an Alameda County school. Those send to classes at the West Campus site would be those students who couldn’t attend regular schools for religious, agoraphobic and other similar reasons. Homeless students will also be included.  

Though a few in the audience said they were confident the school district would exercise proper concern in handling site development, they were in the minority. Calls for a site committee, first broached by Franklin School neighbor John McBride, were quickly echoed by most of the rest. 

At one point, a shouting match ensued between Doran and Curtis Street resident Rachel Boyce, who confronted the school board member in a loud, angry voice. Doran later apologized; Boyce didn’t. 

Costs of site development under three alternatives presented Thursday ranged between $12 million and $20 million, not including landscaping and some other costs. Some of the money would come from remaining measure AA funds, 

Proposals formulated by the public during the last two meetings—working with a list of givens presented by the district—varied on issues such building private mixed-use housing and commercial projects along part of the site’s University Avenue frontage, but all neighbors were concerned that truck traffic be kept off all but short stretches of Curtis and Bonar streets and excluded from Addison Street altogether. 

The last session was scheduled for May 12 at the site, where the district will present a draft of the preferred alternative plan, but an additional session is now scheduled for June 2, when the district will unveil the draft site master plan. 

Whatever alternative is selected, the district has required that the site must include 35,700 square feet for administrative offices and the district board room, a teacher development center, independent study and day school facilities, a child care program, a district kitchen, buildings and ground shops, a small warehouse, a document storage center and 75,500 square feet of parking.›

After repeated delays, the City Council appears ready to vote today (Tuesday) on whether to allow UC Berkeley to build a bridge 21 feet over Hearst Avenue. 

The vote on the street bridge, which has been sought by campus officials for nearly 20 years, will force the council to weigh the benefit of the $200,000 the university is offering the city for permission to build against the concerns of many North Berkeley residents. 

The council is also set to vote at the meeting on charging the university for city sewer fees. UC attorneys have insisted that, as a state institution, UC is exempt. UC Berkeley has also ignored the city’s demand to collect Berkeley’s parking tax from motorists who use university garages. On Monday, the council met in closed session to further discuss filing a lawsuit to compel the university to pay for both parking and sewers. 

Also Tuesday the council will hold public hearings on allocations to local non-profits and on an appeal to the designation of the building that formerly housed Celia’s Mexican Restaurant. If the council reverses the ‘structure of merit’ designation for the building at Addison and Fourth streets, developer Urban Housing Group Inc. will have one less obstacle to building a condominium development at the site. 

Foothill Bridge 

Two weeks ago, the council held a lengthy public hearing on the Foothill Bridge project, a proposed footbridge connecting the two halves of the Foothill Housing Complex near Hearst and La Loma avenues. UC Berkeley has argued that it would improve pedestrian safety for dorm residents and open the dormitory to disabled students. In return for the right to build over the city street, the university is offering $200,000 for future pedestrian improvement projects. 

Opponents of the project argue that air rights above Hearst Avenue are worth more than the university has offered to pay. They have suggested various compensation deals more advantageous to the city, such as leasing the air space to the university rather selling it outright, charging the determined fair market value of the air space and forcing the university to indemnify the city against a threatened lawsuit from the owner of a nearby building if the bridge is built. 

Those opposed to the project further argue that the bridge won’t solve the desired accessibility issues for wheelchair users since the housing complex is near the top of a steep hill and is not served by wheelchair accessible paths. Though the city’s disability commission favors the bridge, no students in wheelchairs have lobbied the council in favor of the project. 

Previously two councilmembers, Dona Spring and Betty Olds, said they opposed the bridge, while Gordon Wozniak, who represents Foothill students and neighbors, offered his support. 

University officials this week acknowledged that the structure, estimated to cost $1.7 million, will be paid for out of student rental fees. Additionally, the university said that the UC Regents would have to approve any decision to lease the air space for a continuing fee, pay the determined fair market value of the air space or to indemnify the city against a threatened lawsuit from the owner of a nearby building. 

Structure of Merit Appeal 

City staff is recommending that the council reverse the designation of 2040 Fourth St. (Celia’s Mexican Restaurant) as a structure of merit. In February, the Landmarks Preservation Commission voted 5-4 to landmark the building, citing that it is the only known Berkeley work of highly respected architect Irwin Johnson. The staff report, approved by Planning Director Dan Marks, noted that the commission didn’t identify any physical reasons why the building is a historic resource and relied on a conflicting report from a proponent of the development that Johnson had actually designed 11 other buildings in Berkeley. 

Urban Housing Group, Inc. has proposed demolishing Celia’s and nearby Brennan’s Restaurant to build approximately 200 condominiums above ground floor retail space at Fourth and Addison streets. Celia’s future remains uncertain and Brennan’s would be rebuilt on the project site. 

If Celia’s designation as a structure of merit is not reversed, Deibel will not be able to demolish the building without the approval of the Zoning Adjustment Board. 

Non-profit Funding 

At a public hearing, the council will get its first look at a proposed 9 percent cut to general fund allocations for local non-profits. The cuts are based on relative merit and mostly follow the recommendations made by city commissions. Overall, City Manager Phil Kamlarz is proposing to allocate $4.286 million to non-profits from the general fund, down from $4.720 million last year. 

The Berkeley Community Coalition, an umbrella group of non-profits, met with Mayor Tom Bates and city leaders last week urging them to restore funding with proceeds slated to go for capital projects. The coalition has also questioned whether the city should have made across-the-board cuts rather than targeting specific organizations. 

“Unless they truly evaluated every program in the city with the same methodology you can’t back these cuts up,” said Boona Cheema, executive director of Building Options for Self Sufficiency. Her group is slated to lose nearly $60,000 in city funding. 

Other allocations on the chopping block include Berkeley Youth Alternatives youth employment program, and the Berkeley Boosters Downtown Berkeley guides and BART escorts programs. The proposal also calls for cutting civic arts grant funding from $289,797 to $229, 306.  

Among programs slated for more funding next year are Rubicon, which took over Berkeley’s jobs training program, and Youth Emergency Assistance Shelters (YEAY), which is supposed to receive funding previously given to Berkeley Ecumenical Ministries Chaplaincy to the Homeless.  

Last year, the chaplaincy stopped their free clothing program due to mismanagement that resulted in their host church asking them to leave, according to a report from the Homeless Commission. YEAY Executive Director Sharon Hawkins-Leyden said the two groups were in preliminary talks to consolidate their programs.  

The council is not expected to vote on general fund allocations to community agencies until it approves the 2006 fiscal year budget in June. Councilmembers, however, are scheduled Tuesday to vote to approve the allocation of over $5 million in federal funding to local non profits. Most of the money ($4.1 million) is from federal Community Development Block Grants, a program the Bush administration has proposed eliminating next year. 

Vista College President Judy Walters gave Peralta Community College District Trustees a power-point view last week of what the college’s new Center Street campus will look like when it opens next fall, in hopes of showing that the six-story downtown structure is worth its $65 million price tag and the years of meetings, litigation, and struggle it took to bring it into the world. 

The trustees seemed convinced, with Trustee Nicky Gonzalez Yuen calling the long road to the building’s construction “an incredible story. It’s something that should be written in a book, when all of this is finished.” 

During a late afternoon special trustee meeting at Vista’s current Milvia Street campus last Thursday, Walters, Peralta General Services Director Sadiq Ikharo, and representatives of construction project designers Ratcliff Architects described a gleaming, spacious structure centered around a glass-topped atrium running the entire six stories of the building. 

Highlights of the new building included 35 classrooms, 10 laboratories, a multimedia and an animation studio, a bookstore, and a 225-seat basement auditorium. Space is at such a premium that until the college reaches its projected 7,500-student maximum capacity, expected sometime around 2016, the college plans to rent out some of its rooms to outside agencies and organizations. The meeting was attended by trustees Gonzalez Yuen, Cy Gulassa, Bill Withrow, and Marcie Hodge. A representative of Swinerton Management & Consulting, the project managers, was also there. 

The district commitment to build Vista’s new building came out of a 1998 court settlement between Berkeley residents and the Peralta District, after Berkeley residents moved to separate Vista from the district and the district sued to keep it in. Walters called the struggle “10 years of angst” and described the new campus as a “miracle building” that many new campus supporters dubbed “the not-in-my-lifetime” building because they never thought it would be built. 

Ikharo said that construction became so contentious at one point that “police had to be called to settle disputes between the district and the general contractor.” SJ Amoroso Construction Company of Redwood Shores is the Vista general contractor. 

The new building, currently under construction and expected to be completed in the spring of 2006, will be a far cry from Vista’s present campus, which has narrow hallways that resemble coal mine tunnels, and classroom walls so thin and porous that students can stand outside the closed doors and take notes on the lectures within.  

But at the end of the presentation, after trustees praised Vista, Peralta, and Ratcliff officials for the work so far done, Trustee Gulassa told President Walters and Peralta General Services Director Ikharo that this wouldn’t stop continued close oversight of the building project by the trustee board. 

“I agree with others about the profusion of thanks that are appropriate, but that won’t stop the board from asking tough questions,” Gulassa said. “It’s our fiduciary responsibility. You’re forewarned.” 

In recent months, Peralta trustees have questioned several change orders at the Vista construction project, leading to the passage of a new board policy earlier this year that gives trustees more oversight over alterations to construction contracts. 

At Thursday’s meeting, Ikharo said that a little over half a million dollars has been spent for various changes to the Vista project plan. The “change orders,” as they are called, accounted for 1.26 percent of the total $65 million price tag. “We don’t expect to get anywhere near 5 percent,” Ikharo said. 

Walters said she expects to present trustees with a package of new requested change orders within the next few weeks, including several to change classroom configurations. Walters blamed the need for those changes on former Peralta chief operating officer Charles A. Taylor, who she said “cut off communications between Vista and Ratcliff in November of 2003. We knew back then that these changes were needed but for whatever reason, Charles Taylor told Vista representatives they couldn’t talk to the architects.” 

Walters said she hopes to have the movers come in the day after graduation in May 2006 to transfer the school to the new building. Walters said that may delay the college’s 2006 summer session for a month or so, “but we don’t want to give the summer session up entirely.” 

Walters and Ikharo said a decision on the exact moving timetable would be made later this year, after construction gets closer to completion.

Walking through the cavernous interior of what was once California’s largest winery, Jim Levine bubbles with enthusiasm. 

“If you look at the economic model, this is a site that will really attract visitors and conventions. We expect $150 million in additional local income along with new jobs and purchases from local vendors,” he said. 

If the Berkeley developer has his way, the venerable structure by the shore of Richmond’s Point Molate will become a magnet for Asian tourists, drawing the dollars to an economically depressed community. 

Many question his vision, but he’s drawn the enthusiastic endorsement of many in Richmond’s elected and appointed officialdom who see his plans for a posh casino resort complex at the foot of the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge as the city’s economic salvation. 

While critics claim the gambling palace will siphon dollars from the pockets of those who are the most desperate and least able to afford the losses, Levine says his primary market is players from Asia where gambling has long been part of their culture. 

Unlike two other casinos proposed for the Richmond area, Point Molate is the only one that plans to offer luxury accommodations, shops and a Las Vegas-scale entertainment venue to draw internationally known performers. 

With 1,100 rooms, a 300,000-square-foot retail mall, a dozen or so restaurants and convention facilities to boot, Point Molate would rival any resort in Las Vegas or Atlantic City.  

In other words, Point Molate will compete for “whales” and other high-rollers, and not for the trade that arrives by bus and car to the gambling rooms of other tribes who count on dollars from California residents. 

“Richmond has an extraordinarily unique site,” he said, pointing from the roof of Winehaven toward the high rises of San Francisco still visible in the gathering clouds that would bring rain a few minutes later. 

“The jobs that came here in World War II aren’t coming back, especially because of increasing development in China, so the city is going to have to rely on tourism and other aspects of the economy,” he said. “What we have to do is to make this a world-class facility.” 

Many in Richmond hope he’s right, and he’s drawn strong support from an African American population ravished by a struggling economy and overseas job flight. 

From Toxics to Slots  

While Levine made his initial fortune in the toxic waste cleanup business when he ran LFR-Levine Fricke, an Emeryville-based firm which handles cleanups in many countries, he said his involvement in the gambling trade stemmed from economic development studies he conducted for tribes, often on a pro bono basis. 

The site of his planned casino project had been a U.S. Navy refueling station until it was shut down during the round of base closures in the mid-1990s and was transferred to the city for $1 in September, 2003. 

Before the city acquired the site, councilmembers hired a Colorado consulting company to evaluate the site’s casino potential. When the report said a gambling spa could generate $500 million in economic activity annually along with $1.2 million in sales taxes and 4,462 new jobs, the city decided any would-be developer’s plans had to include a casino alternative. 

The council awarded Levine’s Upstream Investments an exclusive six-month agreement to negotiate a project for the site in December 2003, and the firm quickly established a relationship with the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, the leading lender in the world of tribal casinos. 

“They performed financial analyses, and then gave introductions to the top four gaming companies in the U.S.” Levine said. 

Upstream’s final choice was Harrah’s Entertainment, the world’s reigning casino giant, which leant its own weight to the deal. Upstream also went out and recruited its own tribe, the Guidiville Band of Pomos, to take the land as a reservation and claim formal ownership of the site. 

Heated council meetings and an unsuccessful ChevronTexaco lawsuit to block the sale delayed the sale until last Nov. 10, when a bare majority of Richmond councilmembers gave Levine his deal. 

Other participants in Upstream’s plans are the Odermatt Group, a Berkeley urban design firm which is doing much of the planning work. Levine’s old firm is tackling some of the environmental and infrastructure issues. Lowe Enterprises, a leading hotelier originally involved in the project, has dropped out.  

One major addition was William Cohen, the powerfully connected Maine Republican who served as Secretary of Defense in the Clinton administration and now runs his own Washington consulting firm. 

While Cherokee Investment Partners, a firm involved in planned developments on two controversial hazardous waste sites in Richmond, was originally considered as a potential funding source, Levine said he had found less expensive money through Harrah’s. 

Two other potential partners were also dropped, Levine said, “because we decided we didn’t want to wind up with too many cooks.” 

If his proposal clears federal and state approval, the aging Winehaven building will be restored to its earlier glory, with the interior transformed from a stark concrete warehouse into a gambling palace with offices in the lowest level, 2,500 to 3,000 slot machines and 125 to 160 table games on the main floor, and a gourmet restaurant and bar on the small third level. 

Because Winehaven and many of the other structures are on the National Register of Historic Places, Upstream is legally obligated to maintain the historic exteriors, an expensive task for developers. 

“The costs are not trivial,” Levine said. “Who else could afford to spend $20 million to fix just one building?”  

Winehaven’s brick facade is showing its age, with much of the mortar crumbling to powder and large sections of brickwork on the verge of breaking free. Levine said restoring the 29 landmarked housing units—contaminated by asbestos and lead paint—represents another major expenditure. 

Meanwhile, legal fights continue. Though Levine says he’s not concerned, attorneys for two groups who are challenging the city’s sale of the land without prior environmental review are hailing the intervention of the state attorney general’s office on their behalf. 

That suit alleges the awarding of the property to Upstream was invalid because the city hadn’t yet completed an Environmental Impact Statement or Review on the transfer. Levine said the transfer won’t be complete without the document, which is mandated in Upstream’s agreement with the city. 

He also said that his agreement is the only tribal agreement that mandates that the development be subject to the California Environmental Quality Act. 

The two litigants, Citizens for East Shore Parks and the East Bay Regional Park District, want to preserve shoreline under public ownership, but Levine argues that all his site has been developed, and that he would be restoring more shoreline green space than currently exists. 

That litigation could be decided by late September or early October. 

A second lawsuit by a rival, Florida-based tribal gaming developer is seeking a billion dollars from Levine’s group on that grounds that they improperly enticed the Guidivilles out of an existing deal. 

Levine’s side scored a major victory in that case on April 13, when the office of the secretary of the interior issued a finding that the original agreement was not legally binding because it hadn’t been approved by the secretary’s office. 

Shrewd Political Player 

Critics charge that Levine is master of the political game. But what critics see as a negative, Levine sees as a positive. 

“I have friends who are powerful in both parties,” Levine said, and he gives money to both sides. 

“Although I’m a Democrat, my personal belief is that our system works best when neither party has all the power,” he said. 

Levine’s a longtime supporter of Rep. Barbara Lee, the outspoken East Bay congressional Representative, and he gave $27,500 to Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante’s campaign in the gubernatorial recall election. He also contributed to the Al Gore presidential campaign in 2000. 

But he’s been giving to the GOP more recently, including a $10,000 donation to the Republican National Committee last June, and $2,500 to Pioneer PAC, which funds GOP candidates for the House. 

Levine insists his contributions are dictated by personal beliefs, not business reasons. 

“I also gave a few thousand to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee,” he said. “And Barbara Lee’s really my hero. I’ve supported her throughout my career.” 

Levine’s casino dreams now rest in political hands. Before he can build a casino, he needs approval from the Interior Department, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger—another new political friend—and the state legislature. 

And should his casino plans fail, Levine has a backup plan that calls for 1,100 housing units on the site.ª

Small groups of political activists across the country have been working for decades to make the United States accountable for a variety of human rights violations and to resist government repression of those who work for political change.  

Organizers defending the U.S. constitution and opposing imprisonment and mistreatment of Puerto Rican, Haitian, Palestinian, Filipino, Iraqi and U.S. dissidents came together at St. Joseph the Worker Church Friday evening and on the UC Berkeley campus Saturday, in a conference called “Attica to Abu Ghraib.”  

“Why we’re all here—it’s about saving our country,” outspoken Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney (D-Georgia) told the cheering crowd of about 200 Friday evening. The theme, she said, “is a striking juxtaposition of what America really is. Attica is an incredible story of prisoners with restricted rights, protecting their constitutional rights.”  

One doesn’t have to go back to 1971 and the Attica prison revolt to find abuse of government power, McKinney said, pointing to the early April “Operation Falcon,” a nation-wide law enforcement sweep where some 10,000 people were arrested. While the arrests were lauded by “corporate media,” most arrested were street level drug dealers, McKinney said. The CNN coverage of Operation Falcon is emblematic of the problems of today’s mass media: “They don’t quote anybody opposed to the dragnet. They don’t quote the ACLU or anybody except the government itself.”  

McKinney didn’t confine her condemnation to the Republican administration and the media, but took aim at her own Democratic Party. While she supports UC Berkeley linguistics professor George Lakoff, who has criticized the Democratic Party for lacking clarity in its message, she said she sees a more fundamental problem.  

“Suppose you’re trying to tell an organization or political party to frame its message and the political party has no message, it has no vision, it has no passion, it has no mission,” she said. Without that, you won’t make fundamental change. “That’s why we’re here in this room tonight, because we want fundamental change.”  

Activist attorney Lynne Stewart made a surprise appearance just before McKinney spoke. Stewart represented Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, who was sentenced to life in prison for masterminding the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. To visit him in prison after his conviction, Stewart had to promise that she wouldn’t transmit messages from him to the outside world. However in 2000, she sent out a press release on behalf of her client, who was in isolation, and two years later was indicted on charges of giving material support to terrorism. Along with a paralegal and translator, Stewart was convicted in February and faces up to 30 years in prison. She is yet to be sentenced.  

“I couldn’t see missing a conference called ‘Attica to Abu Ghraib,’ ” Stewart said. “Human rights—it’s what my whole long career has been about.” The day she was sentenced, Stewart said the wider implications of her imprisonment hit her hard: “They can’t lock up the lawyers;” the accused are “so vulnerable without defense, if the lawyers are locked up.”  

Stewart said she doesn’t regret having sent out the press release and said she would do it again: “I’m not going to be rehabilitated, so there’s no reason to send me to jail,” she said as the crowd rose in a standing ovation.  

Activists regrouped Saturday on the UC Berkeley campus to share their work and strategies for change. The United States government’s role in repressing the work of activists was a theme throughout the day. Holding her infant, Michelle Morales of Jose Solis Defense Committee talked about how Puerto Rican activist organizations had been infiltrated and how political prisoners from that movement languish in United States jails.  

Others spoke about former Black Panthers who have been imprisoned for decades, of Filipino political prisoners in jail at the behest of the U.S. government and Haitian political prisoners jailed by United States Marines, who occupied Haiti for two months after the U.S. removed the democratically-elected president from Haiti in February, 2004. (The Marines have since been replaced by United Nation forces.)  

Although attacks on the freedom to organize and the freedom of speech predates the Patriot Act, the legislation and its consequences for organizers was one of the day’s principal themes. 

“If you can make people afraid, you can get away with criminalizing activism,” said Jeff Mittman of the ACLU.  

Parts of the Patriot Act will end at the end of December unless renewed, he said. A few of the clauses include:  

• The expansion of the government’s ability to execute criminal search warrants (which need not involve terrorism) and seize property without telling the target for weeks or months;  

• Allowing the FBI to seize sensitive personal information and belongings—including medical, library and business records;  

• Lowering the standards for issuing “national security letters,” issued at the sole discretion of the Justice Department, imposing a blanket gag order on recipients without judicial review. They can be used to seize a variety of business and financial records and, in certain instances, can be used to access the membership lists of organizations that provide even limited Internet services (see www.aclu.org/sunsets).  

Activist Gene Bernardi brought the discussion of the repression of individual rights home, calling on Berkeley residents to oppose the move of the library administration to insert radio frequency identification technology, known as RFID tags, into books. “I’m worried that books can be tracked while people are carrying them,” she said.  

Mittman added that there’s a proposal to insert RFIDs into driver’s licenses and passports. “They can be read without you knowing they’re read,” he said.  

Rose Braz, director of Critical Resistance, an organization that addresses the negative role prisons play in society, said the organization wanted “to debunk the myth that prisons make it safer (for those on the outside) and that more surveillance makes the nation safer.”  

The idea that locking people promotes public safety is not new, Braz said. “It’s about social control, the removal of a segment of the population that is not wanted.” 

After Sept. 11, 2001 about 1,100 people were detained without charges, Braz said, pointing to one case where a Muslim hospital worker was arrested because a co-worker had reported that he “wore a surgical mask longer than necessary.”  

Conference participants agreed to regroup in July, according to Judith Mirkinson, an organizer with the sponsoring group, the International Human Rights Initiative.  

“If there’s going to be globalized repression, there has to be globalized resistance,” she said. “We need to build broad coalitions—that’s our job.”  

For information on future organizing efforts, see www.attica2abughraib.com/index.html.  

A conference sponsored by the Ethnic Studies Department at UC Berkeley covering many of the same issues will be held Thursday, beginning with a rally in Sproul Plaza on the UC Berkeley campus and moving to the Berkeley Repertory Theatre at 2025 Addison St. for panel discussions. For more information, go to http://ist-socrates.berkeley.edu/~ethnicst/torture.  

For additional information on Lynne Stewart’s case, see www.LynneStewart.org; she will appear tonight (Tuesday) at 8 p.m. at a rally sponsored by the African People’s Solidarity committee at Humanist Hall at 390 27th Street, Oakland and on Wednesday at 7 p.m. at 145 Dwinelle Hall on the UC Berkeley campus at a rally sponsored by the campus chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, the Berkeley Stop the War Coalition, the Campaign to End the Death Penalty and others. For details, call 333-7966.  

The practice of Islam, like the practice of other religions, responds to the cultural context of the countries where it takes root. Scholars discussed the many faces of Islam and addressed Islam’s intersection with democracy in a day-long conference, “Democracy and Global Islam,” at UC Berkeley on Friday.  

“In a world where people travel and immigrate, we have a marketplace not only of goods but of ideas,” said panelist Oliver Roy, research associate at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris. In many countries, especially where Islam is a minority religion as in China, India and Western Europe, there is a disconnect between the dominant culture and Islam. However, where Islam dominates, as in Afghanistan, “people don’t differentiate between religion and culture,” Roy said.  

So in France, where they account for just 5 to 10 percent of the population, Muslims may have difficulty finding halal meat; they may change their dietary practice accordingly. Second generation Muslims may further modify the way they practice Islam.  

The issue of whether women wear the veil is a cultural one, one panelist said. It is actually a question of what is considered dressing with modesty in a particular cultural setting.  

In France, the government banned students from wearing religious symbols to school, purportedly to encourage secularism in education. This impacted young women who wear the veil and inadvertently resulted in the establishment of private Muslim schools. “Rather than helping integration, people view the state antipathetically,” Roy said.  

Abdoulaye Kane, assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Florida spoke to the question of the “Africanization of Islam,” which, he said, is not unlike the Africanization of Christianity. Modifications take place in the setting to which a religion is transported. One reason Islam transforms in Sub-Saharan Africa is because “They don’t speak Arabic (and) Koranic study is low,” Kane said.  

Discrimination plays a role as well in keeping mainstream and African practices separate. In France, Middle Eastern Muslims “don’t want to be guided by African Imams,” Kane said.  

The Senegalese form of Sufism is so distanced from that practiced in America that when Senegalese Muslims living in New York have a question on spiritual practice, they won’t go to a neighboring mosque for the answer, but call or e-mail home to Senegal. African forms of Islam, as well as African forms of Christianity, are contested outside of Africa, Kane said.  

Americans understand little about their Muslim neighbors; they don’t separate the Middle East and Islam, Roy said, noting, “There are new trends that have nothing to do with the Middle East. To understand Islam, one needs to look outside the Middle East.”  

Hatem Bazian, lecturer in Near Eastern and ethnic studies at UC Berkeley and adjunct professor of religion at St. Mary’s College, Moraga agreed: “There’s an overemphasis on the Middle East because of U.S. geopolitical interests; we are addicted to oil.”  

Many Americans would be surprised to learn that African American Muslim converts make up the largest percentage of Muslims in the United States, 35 to 40 percent, Bazian said. Indo-Pakistanis make up the second-largest group, with Muslim of Middle East origin as the third largest.  

Islam is growing in the Bay Area. In 1985, there were three mosques in the area and now there are 50. “They’re not sleeping cells for Al Qaeda. They’ve sprung up for Silicon Valley engineers,” Bazian said.  

While many Silicon Valley Muslims are living the American dream with million-dollar homes, others, particularly Iraqis and Yemenis, may have achieved a lower level of economic success, Bazian said, underscoring the need to understand the diverse nature of American Muslims.  

Globalism also means that the influences of the outside world flood into the nations where Islam dominates. In Amman, Jordan, for example, Mark LaVine, history professor at UC Irvine, found ads for cable TV’s “Sex in the City” in the Mecca Mall. And in Iraq, Syria and Morocco, LaVine found a number of “religiously inspired” Islamic heavy metal bands.  

LaVine told another story about globalization: sitting in an Egyptian hotel room, he was watching an Islamic preacher on TV talk about why adultery is bad; there were stock quotes running at the bottom of the screen. Tongue in cheek, LaVine summed up the process of Islamic globalization: “People go back and forth to Europe and their home countries, not just to bomb buildings, but to bring back heavy metal music.”  

When it came to discussing Islam and democracy, participants agreed that democracy has little to do with the religion of Islam. Democracy is more closely related to the culture of a particular nation.  

Should western-style democracy be transplanted to the Islamic Middle East? “The idea is not to impose democracy,” Roy said. Rather, nations such as the United States can promote democracy by withdrawing support for authoritarian regimes, he said.  

Forcing people to hold elections can bring the opposite of a desired outcome. “Mr. Bush is the best recruiter (for extremist movements) and Bin Laden is his sergeant,” said Nadia Yassine, spokesperson for the al-Adi wal-Ihsan (Justice and Charity) Islamist Movement in Morocco. Yassine said the best way to bring democracy is for developed nations to assist in providing education and eradicating poverty. The United States’ way is adopting “democracy Nescafe—quickly made. We have to have real democracy,” she said.  

Defining democracy in terms of elections is oversimplifying the concept. Elections as imposed in Iraq, where a large segment of the population refused to participate, is not democracy, said Saba Mahmood, professor in UC Berkeley’s Department of Anthropology. On the other hand developing women’s mosques in Egypt, grounded in traditional Islam, empower women and therefore should be seen as institutions that promote democracy.  

Islam should not be viewed as a political problem, something to watch and to fix. “The main problem is that America follows its geo-political interests,” said Gunter Mulack, ambassador at the German Foreign Office in Berlin and the Minister’s Commissioner for Germany’s Dialogue with the Islamic World. “America is responsible for the negative outfall of its policies. You cannot impose democracy. You cannot export American democracy to the Middle east.”  

Conference sponsors included the Institute of Governmental Studies, Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Center for Southeast Asian Studies, French Department, Graduate Theological Union, Institute of European Studies, International and Area Studies, The Townsend Center for the Humanities, French Studies Program and Insitut d’Etudes de Sécurité de l’Union Européene.

Two Laney College development contracts go in opposite directions on this week’s Peralta Community College District Trustee agenda, with the expected appearance of developer Alan Dones’s proposal failing to materialize, and the New Art Building “piggyback” modular contract returning after a two-week delay. 

The regular Peralta Trustee meeting will be held today (Tuesday), 7 p.m., at the Peralta District headquarters on 333 East Eighth St. in Oakland. 

The Dones development proposal has been on hold since last December, one month after the outgoing Board of Trustees authorized Peralta Chancellor Elihu Harris to enter into an exclusive, one-year contract with Dones’s Oakland-based Strategic Urban Development Alliance (SUDA) to draw up commercial development plans for the Peralta Administration Building and certain Laney College properties. 

Harris backed off negotiating a contract with Dones after complaints from Laney College faculty, staff, students, and administrators, and after critical articles appeared in local newspapers. Three weeks ago, Harris appeared ready to move forward with the contract, reluctantly, telling participants at a chancellor’s meeting that he was going to present the contract proposal to trustees at this week’s board meeting, but without his recommendation. 

The Dones contract proposal failed to appear on this Tuesday’s agenda, however, without explanation. 

The Laney New Art Building contract resurfaced after local union leaders gave it their go-ahead. Trustees are being asked to ratify a contract already reached between Chancellor Harris and a San Joaquin County modular building contractor. 

The proposed $8.1 million art building is scheduled to be constructed on the East 10th Street site presently occupied by the Laney tennis courts, and will replace the existing art annex. Laney must vacate the existing art annex by December to make way for CalTrans work on the site. CalTrans will pay $7 million of the construction costs. 

Last month, Chancellor Harris reached an agreement with Meehleis Modular Builders of Lodi to construct the building out of modular parts prefabricated in the company’s San Joaquin County plant using a controversial piggyback clause of the California Public Contract Code. That piggyback clause—under which school districts can circumvent bidding on construction contracts by attaching themselves to a contract already reached between another school district and a modular builder—is currently being reviewed by the state attorney general’s office. 

But local labor leaders complained of the proposed Meehleis contract on other grounds—that the construction work on the New Art Building would be done at less-than-union rates. It was union complaints that reportedly caused Harris to withdraw the Meehleis contract from consideration at the trustees meeting two weeks ago. 

But Peralta Federation of Teachers President Michael Mills said last week that “that issue has been fully vetted” with representatives of the Alameda County Building Trades Council during a meeting with Peralta General Services Director Sadiq Ikharo, “and the building trades unions are happy. There will be union wages paid on-site.” 

In his memorandum to Harris for Tuesday’s meeting, Ikharo noted that Meehleis would “pay prevailing wage in the market in which this public work is to be performed” and would “affiliate with unions. Nearly all the subcontractors are either union members or affiliated with unions.” That language was not included in the general services director’s backup material when the issue originally came before the board April 12. 

Representatives of the Alameda County Building Trades Council were not available for comment. 

In other agenda items scheduled for Tuesday’s meeting, trustees will review the district’s Athletic Facilities Use Fee Schedule and Philosophy for Use of Facilities Statement. The issue of fees for outside use of Peralta Colleges athletic facilities surfaced at the April 12 meeting, held at the College of Alameda, when representatives of the Alameda High School track team complained that what they called “excessive fees” were preventing their team members from practicing on the College of Alameda track.ª

The University Students Cooperative Association board voted last week to shut down Berkeley’s most infamous student co-op, Le Chateau, this summer and eventually transform it into a “graduate-themed” co-op. 

The move comes less than two months after a small claims court judge declared the housing complex a nuisance and awarded neighbors of the housing complex $63,500 in damages. The USCA has appealed the ruling. 

USCA Community Relations and Development Director Kathryn McCarthy said the board hoped that a newly-themed Chateau would improve relations with neighbors and reduce vacancies in the three building complex at Hillegas and Parker. 

“We are pleased with this,” said George Lewinsky, the lead plaintiff of the nuisance suit brought against the Chateau by 22 neighbors. “Reforming the culture of Le Chateau has always been a neighborhood objective and this has the potential towards doing that.” 

Le Chateau Manager Ian Latta called the board’s decision “shameful.”  

“It ignores all our efforts to improve the situation,” he said. Latta added that residents, sensing the board was not satisfied with the current state of affairs at Le Chateau, had offered to remake the co-op with a focus towards community service. 

The USCA board is scheduled to meet again this Thursday to iron out details for the remaking of Le Chateau, McCarthy said. She predicted that the UCSA board would keep the complex closed at least until spring semester while renovations are completed. McCarthy estimated that renovation work to make Le Chateau attractive to graduate students could cost as much as $600,000. 

She added the board would consider converting all of the bedrooms to singles, which the UCSA hoped would reduce vacancies and lower capacity. 

This year, according to Latta, about one-third of the Le Chateau’s 75 beds have been empty. Had the co-op remained open for current residents this fall, McCarthy said only 14 residents had planned to return and another 14 incoming students had expressed interest in moving in. 

Latta said student co-ops have experienced higher vacancies recently because of new dormitories and declining rents for private housing. 

“The UCSA isn’t the cheapest option for students anymore,” Latta said. 

Co-op residents pay $730 for room and board, although McCarthy said that the UCSA would likely institute a different fee structure for Le Chateau once it becomes available to graduate students.  

Current Chateau residents will be relocated to other houses in the student co-op system, McCarthy said.ª

In the latest blast against Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s 2005-06 budget proposals, Berkeley parents and students will be joining a statewide caravan to the state capitol in Sacramento Thursday to protest state education cuts. Buses will be leaving from Berkeley at 9:30 a.m. from the West Campus pool at the corner of Browning and Addison streets. 

The local contingent for the “Caravan For Kids” is being organized by the Berkeley PTA Council in coordination with the Berkeley Unified School District, which has been distributing local leaflets for the event. 

“We’ve been patient in the past, but this budget [proposal] is the last straw,” said California State PTA President Carla Niño in a prepared statement. “It breaks a promise that parents and their kids were counting on. We will not sit back and watch the continued underfunding of our schools and the assault on Proposition 98.” 

Proposition 98 was the 1996 voter-passed California Constitutional amendment that was supposed to guarantee minimum levels of funding for California public schools. Last year, Schwarzenegger withheld $2 billion in Prop 98-mandated school funding with the promise that he would restore it in this year’s budget. Instead, the governor has moved to make much of the education budget cuts permanent. 

Local caravan coordinator Cynthia Papermaster—a former Berkeley PTA Council President—said that a rally will be held on the steps of the state capitol at noon, and that “we are setting up appointments with State Senator Don Perata and State Assemblymember Loni Hancock” to be held afterwards. 

Papermaster said that two buses have been chartered to attend the rally from Berkeley, and that reservations for seating can be arranged by calling her at (415) 393-8248 or or by writing to Cynthia_papermaster@yahoo.com. 

She also said that middle and high school students, with the exception of seniors, will not be attending the Sacramento rally due to the STAR tests scheduled for the same day.  

The statewide event is being jointly coordinated by the California State PTA and the Community for Excellent Public Schools (CEPS), a Santa Monica-based organization working to improve public schools. 

The Library Board of Trustees will meet Wednesday to approve a budget that looks to be far less controversial than it appeared two weeks ago. 

A greater-than-anticipated increase in the Bay Area personal income growth index, which is used to set the percentage increase for the library tax, and the implementation of mandatory time off will each add about $300,000 to the library’s bottom line next year, said Executive Director Jackie Griffin. 

Griffin’s plan to lay off employees and reorganize staffing to close a $850,00 budget shortfall over the next two years was criticized by library staffers, and she has since ruled out layoffs. The library employee union’s refusal to reopen its contract, which doesn’t expire until 2008, has stymied a part of her reorganization plan. She had proposed upgrading the classification of library aides to library assistants with the aim of creating a more flexible workforce. The union still opposes other facets of Griffin’s plan, including centralizing children’s librarians at the main branch.  

Mandatory time off means that the library, which last year reduced hours and closed its doors on Sundays, will be closed an additional day every month. Griffin had originally opposed the idea, which City Manager Phil Kamlarz has proposed for other city workers, but she said that to avoid complications, Kamlarz wanted mandatory time off to apply to library staff as well. 

The mandatory time off is officially a one-day layoff, Griffin explained. If the library were to remain open on a day when other city offices were closed, another city employee with a similar classification in a different department could insist on working in place of a library employee with less seniority, she said. 

The owner of an illegal West Berkeley live-work complex has broken off negotiations to sell the building to a public trust and is moving ahead with evicting tenants, according to his attorney Bill Berland. 

Lawrence White, owner of the Drayage Warehouse, will serve his remaining tenants with eviction papers possibly by the end of the week, Berland said. 

After negotiations with the Northern California Land Trust broke down last week, White hired Berland to replace attorney Don Jelinek, who refuses to litigate evictions. 

“White doesn’t want to evict, but he’s got two guns to his head,” Berland said. “The city is ordering him to evict and the tenants are saying we won’t leave.” 

Berland confirmed that White is now asking $2.7 million for the property. The land trust, according to tenants, had offered in the neighborhood of $2.05 million, the same price for which White two months ago had agreed to sell the property to Developer Ali Kashani.  

“It’s really unfortunate that somehow the price has gone up $700,000 in a matter of weeks,” said resident Marisa Danielsen. “If he was going to sell it to Kashani for $2.05 million why won’t he sell it to us?” 

Under a deal with the land trust, current tenants would have been given the option to purchase their units after they were brought up to code. 

Danielsen said she and many of the 16 other remaining tenants intend to fight eviction proceedings in hopes of pressuring White to reenter negotiations with the land trust.  

Berland said White was seeking fair market value for the property and that Kashani “would have been getting the property for a bargain basement price.” 

Kashani has said he pulled out of the deal after learning that the warehouse had residential tenants. His request for an address verification while he was in negotiations prompted city building officials to focus their attention on the property. 

Last month Berkeley Fire Marshall David Orth declared the warehouse a fire hazard and ordered the building evacuated by April 15. Since the deadline expired, the city has fined White $2,500 a day for failing to comply with the evacuation order. Orth has also ordered White to post two security guards at the site at White’s expense. 

The tenants and White have filed separate appeals to the fire department’s evacuation order. 

Berland said he was researching city law to determine if the circumstances of the case would allow White to serve tenants a three-day eviction notice. Such notices are typically issued for cases in which tenants have violated their lease. Otherwise, he said, White would have to serve 60-day notices for tenants who have resided at the warehouse for more than a year and 30-notices for newer tenants. 

So far about 14 tenants have moved out said Claudia Viera, a tenant. She added that White had offered tenants $7,000 to vacate their homes. 

If residents fight the eviction notices, Berland expected litigation to last at least a few months. Should White prevail, Michael Caplan of the city manager’s office said, Berkeley police would not evacuate the building. 

“Ultimately it’s the owner’s responsibility,” he said. “If it came down to it they’d have to bring in county sheriff’s deputies.”

The UC Berkeley fraternity accused in a BB-gun hazing incident has been temporarily suspended by the university pending further investigation. 

Members of the Pi Kappa Phi fraternity have been implicated in the alleged April 8 BB-gun assault on a 19-ye ar-old fraternity pledge at the intersection of Channing Way and Prospect Street. The pledge was reportedly shot at least 30 times, and required attention at a local emergency room. UC officials are investigating whether the alleged assault took place dur ing a hazing of the fraternity pledge. Hazing is prohibited at UC Berkeley. 

UC officials say that the interim suspension bars members from the fraternity from engaging in any fraternity activities. The chapter house remains open, but can only be used for residential purposes. 

A hearing on any permanent sanctions against the fraternity will be held by the campus Student Judicial Affairs office, but no date for that hearing has yet been set. 

Janet Gilmore in the UC Berkeley Media Relations office said sh e had no estimate on how long the interim suspension would be in effect. “It could be weeks or months, depending on what happens with the investigation,” she said. 

In addition to sanctions against the fraternity itself, individual fraternity members accused in the alleged hazing assault also face possible individual disciplinary charges by the Student Judicial Affairs office, as well as possible criminal charges currently being investigated by Berkeley police.  

Planning commissioners will tackle the city’s Landmarks Preservation Ordinance Wednesday night, while the Zoning Adjustments Board will handle a controversial pop-up and by-right additions after they get their first look at a major new proposal for University Avenue. 

The planning commission is considering additions to the landmarks ordinance and accompanying city zoning codes in a meeting that begins at 7 p.m. in the North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst Ave. 

If past meetings of the commission and its landmarks ordinance revisions subcommittee offer any clues, Wednesday’s meeting could grow heated. 

ZAB’s meeting Thursday kicks off at 6 p.m., an hour earlier than normal, to accommodate a preview of plans for a pair of five-story buildings with 186 units along Martin Luther King Jr. Way between University Avenue and Berkeley Way. 

The structure would be built at the site of an existing strip mall which houses Kragen Auto Parts and a Pet Food Express store. That structure would be demolished to make way for former Panoramic Interests developers Christopher Hudson and Evan McDonald to build a structure that has been drawing fire from neighbors. 

The city staff has granted HudsonMcDonald LLC the right to build 48 “bonus units” on top of the baseline total of what they define as a baseline of 135, creating a structure neighbors say has too little parking and too much shadow for their tastes. 

ZAB will also consider the thorny issue of by-right additions—the up to 500 square feet of additional space a homeowner can add to a previously unexpanded dwelling without required a city administrative use permit—and their impacts when they address a proposed addition to a home at 1737 Grant St. 

Neighbors appealed a proposed addition, and board must decide if and how it wants to handle the cumulative impacts of the addition combined with a previous by-right addition. 

Also on the ZAB agenda is the controversial “Flying Cottage” at 3045 Shattuck Ave., to which the owner says she added another story-plus after her then-contractor told her she could do it by right. 

Neighbors protested the structural inflation to city officials, who ordered a halt. Revised plans failed to clear the city’s Design Review Committee, and it’s up to ZAB to decide Thursday if the house remains a nuisance. 

Click here to view the latest work by Planet cartoonist Justin DeFreitasw

CIVIC CENTER FOUNTAIN 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The current conflict between restoration of the fountain in Civic Center Park and the community of swimmers in Berkeley is a manufactured conflict. The restoration of the long neglected fountain was intended to be done with bond money approved by voters in Berkeley in 1997. Measure S was written to obtain money for expansion of the Central Library, earthquake retrofit of the Civic Center Building at 2180 Milvia, and improvements for the downtown. A portion of the money for the downtown was to be used for revitalization of Civic Center Park. After their bond issue passed a group of interested citizens from all over Berkeley joined with a subcommittee of the Parks and Recreation Commission to discuss how the bond money would best be spent. There were workshops, committee meetings, consultants, much time spent planning for the improvements to the park. The most time consuming and expensive item was always the fountain, but it was also the job which had to be done first. We set priorities on which jobs were to be funded immediately and which jobs should wait for later funding, either from grants or the general fund. The fountain was not to be funded from the general fund but from the bond money. 

Of course the City of Berkeley should not be closing its swimming pools. People need them for their health. Employees of the City of Berkeley also should not change the money source for major infrastructure jobs when a long delayed project finally is ready to be completed. The fountain and the children’s play area are the most important jobs to be done in Civic Center Park and should be done immediately with the bond money. Many people enjoy festivals in the park. It serves as open space for the people who live in or near downtown. We as a city should respect our infrastructure by keeping all of it in good condition. Nearby residents would be more than happy to help with the construction and maintenance of the fountain and the play area. 

Carrie Sprague 

• 

WEST BERKELEY BOWL 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Why is it that we who live in the neighborhood of the proposed West Berkeley Bowl are expected to allow people such as John Curl, Mary Lou Van De Venter and Zelda Bronstein to decide what is best for us? All of these people are interested in serving commercial interests (imaginary ones at that). 

The land on which the proposed Bowl would sit had sat vacant for decades, as an eyesore. As for traffic problems, so what if a number of people from other areas want to bring money into this area? As for parking and congestion, why doesn’t the city buy up the railroad property adjoining the site in question? I hear they are planning to construct a four-block bicycle route to nowhere on that land. I am an avid biker, and I cannot think of any reason for such a stupid idea. 

There are many senior citizens who live in this neighborhood, who are extremely inconvenienced by the lack of a market in this area—that is, one where one can obtain healthy nourishing food at an affordable price. We all need for this market to happen. 

I hope that this won’t just turn into one more example of the City of Berkeley shooting themselves in the foot. 

Christina Ramer 

• 

FLOWER CIRCLES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I’m wondering why, in this time of severe budget cuts, the City of Berkeley is constructing all of these flower circles at neighborhood intersections in West Berkeley? I’ve counted around eight at intersections from Shattuck down to San Pablo, and from Ashby over to Delaware. 

I understand the flower circles help to control traffic flow. I also see more motorists, than not, completely ignore the directions for going around the flower circles and make the sharp left turn. At the same time these flower circles are slowing down traffic, they are also slowing response time to crime scenes and firemen to respond to emergencies, so why does the city feel it is necessary to put up these expensive, decorative impediments to their jobs? 

The City of Berkeley is cutting services to its citizens citing budget constraints, yet they find the money to tear up perfectly fine intersections, build the flower circles. I don’t have the figures on what it takes to build, plant and maintain (year after year) these flower circles, but instead of flower circles I would like the City of Berkeley to fix the pothole on Parker just above Sacramento. That fucker is four inches deep and popped my bike tire last month. 

Brenda Benson 

• 

OAKLAND DEVELOPMENT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I find it telling that planners at the Oakland Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce (“Closed Meeting Held on West Lake Merritt Plans”, April 19-21) have not yet learned how to tell direction. I suspect they spend too much time in the “metropolitan” and not enough time in Oakland. 

The conference discussed developments planned south of Lake Merritt. 

It concerns me, too, that the chamber may not be fully informed as to the public trust status of the greatest portion of that land, and brought private developers into the discussion who are looking opportunities for speculation. 

Perhaps someone at the chamber should do some land-title research while they pull out a map, before hosting conferences to lure developers to Oakland. 

Steven Lavoie 

Oakland 

• 

POLICE ACTION 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Your latest editorial reports a police action in which police initially demanded momentary conformance and submission from a citizen in order to resolve a situation created by a 911 call. Once resolved, the police “profusely” apologized when it became clear that the call was a false alarm. 

Some details are that a person went to the wrong door, knocked, and tried to enter. The occupant, frightened and confused, called 911. 

The editorial asks “why are you not surprised to learn that she’s [the would-be entrant] a dark-skinned person?” 

The answer, for me, is that if you randomly select a person who makes such an innocent mistake in Berkeley, the odds, while probably less than 50 percent, are not small that that person will have dark skin. There are many dark-skinned people who live here. Pick a random person and you shouldn’t be surprised if they happen to have dark skin: You’ve made an only very slightly lucky selection. 

In other words, I am not surprised, but not for the reasons the editorial proposes. I am also not alarmed and I think it is quite a stretch to claim that this is racism. 

The editorial asks me to believe that the response would have been different for a white-skinned person. I don’t believe that at all, based on experience. 

The editorial ridicules the idea that a woman with a baby carriage in broad daylight could possibly be a serious threat. The bombed bus from Israel that recently visited Berkeley is refutation enough. 

Please don’t add fuel to a fire, Daily Planet. 

The real issues here are: 

(a) Was the police response rapid and ample enough? 

(b) How can we can educate people that such momentary interruptions of their routine are not much of a problem if they take the police seriously rather than trying to resist helping them or insist on picking pointless fights with them? 

We live in interesting times. 

Tom Lord 

• 

PEDAL EXPRESS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In an attempt to address massive funding shortfalls, the City of Berkeley is drastically cutting some departmental budgets. One contract on the chopping block is with our company, Pedal Express, which has been delivering interoffice mail to outlying city buildings by bicycle for over 10 years. We are still delivering Commission packets for the time being. 

We originally won this city contract as part of the city’s Resource Conservation and Global Warming Abatement Plan, which calls for a 15 percent reduction in greenhouse gases by 2010. In these 10 years, we have proven to not only decrease pollution and traffic with bicycle delivery, but also provide timely, efficient service at significant savings to the city.  

As a small worker-owned cooperative, we pay ourselves a living wage, while saving the city money through the use of efficient vehicles and a non-hierarchical management structure. The current city plan calls for city employees driving city vehicles to take over these tasks. This increases fuel, insurance, repair and parking costs, as well as adding to downtown congestion and pollution, while increasing the strain on already-overworked employees. 

We will hopefully be on the agenda at the May 10 City Council meeting to address this change. Please support us. 

Kristin Hale 

Keeeth Kohler 

Barbara Murphy 

Cynthia Powell 

Robert Webb 

Pedal Express Cooperative 

• 

FOOTHILL HOUSING 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

He said it, not I.  

David Snippen, Chair of the Civic Arts Commission, at the City Council’s regular meeting on April 12 characterized the service entrance to UC Berkeley’s Foothill Housing dining commons as the “armpit” of Hearst Avenue’s 2700 block. 

Mr. Snippen’s eyesore abuts one of four 15-year-old concrete pylons—two on each side of Hearst—residuals of the long-running Foothill bridge proposal, reintroduced in 2003, the fourth time since 1988.   

The applicant is none other than the UC Regents.  

At issue is whether the Berkeley City Council should grant or deny a “major encroachment permit” for a mid-block pedestrian bridge linking the northern (La Loma) section of the Foothill Student Housing Complex with the southern (Hillside) section. 

The council is currently scheduled to render a decision on this matter at their regular meeting on April 26.  

Unfortunately for the university, a careful reading of BMC 16.18.080 suggests that our city mothers and fathers—should they choose to uphold city law—will be severely challenged to make the “findings” required to grant the permit. 

Hence, the university is offering “mitigation” capital to sweeten the deal.   

“The presence of the bridge will provide a certain level of detriment to the neighborhood,” acknowledge our city manager and public works director.  However, they assert, this detriment would be “sufficiently offset” by public infrastructure improvements in the “Hearst Corridor” contributed by the applicant “in the amount of $200,000.” 

Before you condemn city staff for recommending a swap of undervalued public air space for some vague infrastructure mitigations, why not look at the positive side?   

Creation of a pedestrian bridge over Hearst Avenue could help obscure a street armpit and: 

• Create a highly visible structure which the applicant could enhance with “THIS IS BEAR TERRITORY” banners.  

• Enable La Loma residents with midnight munchies to browse after-hours food-service offerings across the street while clad in pajamas.  

• Reduce orientation time for short-term La Loma residents who attend one or more of UC Berkeley’s many “summer camps” (eg, football, rugby, academic enhancement, and cheerleading).  

• Simplify the job descriptions of Foothill service personnel responsible for maintaining habitability, dispensers, and vending machines on the La Loma side.  

• Guarantee that another $600,000 to $1,500,000 of business for UC contractors (and overhead for UC administrators) could be siphoned out of student fees.  

• Provide an excellent platform for viewing the thousands of trucks laden with toxic soil and radioactive debris that are expected to descend from the LBNL’s Bevatron demolition site (circa 2006-2012).  

• Test, following the next big jolt on the Hayward Fault, whether the University’s design and engineering consultants have done their homework correctly.  

Jim Sharp 

• 

OAKLAND POLICE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I am neither a friend nor an enemy of the police. They have a job to do, and when it is well done, everybody benefits. When it is badly done, everybody loses. The recent story about the alleged refusal to help a shooting victim is a case in point. 

The police arrived at a scene of illegal activity (armed robbery at the least) with gunshots fired. There were abandoned cars and people fleeing, which would indicate a need for both action and caution (“Friends Say Oakland Police Denied Aid to Shooting Victim,” April 22-25).  

The friends may have had the best intentions in the world, but the police had no way of knowing that. They could have been friends of the victim, but incompetent (i.e., their cell phone ran out of battery or time), or friends of the shooter(s) looking to silence a victim. They might or might not have known how to give first aid. They might or might not have been attempting to lure police away from the well-lit activity scene onto darkened streets with hostile purpose. The police went with the by-the-book scenario to control the area (i.e., get witness statements, clear the scene of bystanders/unidentifiable participants, and impound anything that looked like evidence.)  

The young man had fled and was several blocks away, in hiding. He was no longer a part of the scene and was apparently in no immediate danger. If he had come forward to ask for help or to give a witness statement, that would require action. But police, as I understand it, are not supposed to do hot pursuit in this sort of situation because the possible complications are much worse than misplacing one witness or one participant.  

I agree the officers could have been more helpful. That is why a chaplain often rides with the police, because the chaplain can assist friends/ traumatized bystanders, etc., in a safe zone set up near but outside of the police action. Since chaplains are volunteers and most do not get paid, there is always a need for more to assist in these kinds of situations.  

I sincerely hope and pray that the young man recovers well. He undoubtedly got the best of trauma care at both Children’s and Highland. I also hope that the police do not get so much hostility behind this crime (which they had no part in) that people forget that the young man was not shot by police; b. was not harmed in any way by the police; and was in good enough condition that his friends moved him themselves rather than calling an ambulance to get him the fastest possible care.  

The Rev. Teddy Knight 

• 

ON THE ENVIRONMENT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Since another Earth Day has recently passed, now is the perfect time to evaluate the effects our everyday choices have on the environment. When most people think of protecting the Earth, they may consider driving less, recycling, or conserving water. These are all positive, but there is another simple, powerful action that makes a huge difference for the environment: eating less meat. 

About 450,000 factory farms produce most American meat, using an enormous amount of resources and contributing to virtually every environmental problem we face. Factory farms are responsible for about half of our total water use, and animal waste causes water pollution that devastates ecosystems and poisons groundwater. Waste and chemicals from factory farms also cause air pollution and human health problems. Cows and manure pits even produce greenhouse gases, contributing to the climate crisis. 

Changing our diet is critical to the health of the planet. Happily, vegetarian options have never been more delicious or plentiful, and choosing a plant-based meal is an easy way to protect the earth. Readers can learn more about meat production’s environmental effects at www.small-planet.org and can find local veg-friendly restaurants, recipes, and other resources at www.VegSF.com.  

Erin Williams  

President, Small Planet  

• 

TRAFFIC CAMERAS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Yes, people who run red lights should be punished. Yes, there is a safety concern. Yes, a slap in the pocketbook is an appropriate punishment. Yes, police and fire personnel are over-paid with generous salaries and pensions, but they are generally informed and courteous. No, for a fine of $321, citizens should get more than a robotized traffic cop with an anonymous officer reviewing the photos. Ironically, a Berkeley police office (with real, live police officers) is right at the intersection of the Adeline Street and Martin Luther King Jr. Way where one of the three cameras is installed. 

Robert Gable 

• 

ACHIEVEMENT GAP 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In response to Michael Larrick’s April 19 commentary: I fail to see any cohesive evidence he has that the “achievement gap” is a problem of blacks being “perennial victims.” He starts the article with “blacks and their leaders”??? I am an African-American male and the only leaders I have are my father and mother; the thought of having a “leader” speak for their whole community is nonsense. Is President Bush the leader of “whites”? I attended Berkeley schools in late ‘60s and have three young boys growing up here in Berkeley; believe me, the problem is socio-economic. Many children, as high as 60 percent to 70 percent, are attending the Berkeley schools from “other districts” so we are not getting children who are initially “educated in Berkeley.” Come on, how silly is it for Larrick to try and connect “rap music” with low achievement! Rap music is “theatrical” just as heavy metal sends messages of death and the devil. I see Larrick has quite a narrow view of the world...and lemme guess: Got any black friends? I doubt it. 

Carlton Jones 

• 

STEREOTYPING BLACKS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Michael Larrick’s and Peter Schorer’s comments indicate that they have only one very clear stereotype of African Americans: unsuccessful. Perhaps because that is the picture the popular media is most comfortable showing us again and again, they fail to take into account the many African Americans, like myself, who are college educated, home owners, responsible parents, taxpayers, and deeply proud of their heritage. 

We know that we did not get where we are today on our own. We are here and we thrive because of the incredible strength and power of our ancestors who endured, resisted, and survived millions of atrocities committed against them during over 300 years of American chattel slavery. We are here and we thrive because of the strength of character which allowed our grandparents and parents to keep going everyday—in spite of daily racist and dehumanizing treatment at their schools and workplaces. We are here and we thrive and we do not want to forget, or allow others to forget, whose shoulders we stand upon. 

I enjoy civil rights, not because of Thomas Jefferson, but because of my forbears’’ courageous demands to share in the benefits of this wealthy nation which was in large part built by their forced and underpaid labor. In suggesting a name change for Jefferson School we ask the community to learn about the true history of our ancestors, rather than continue to minimize and marginalize it. We seek, not a magic pill to right all wrongs and cure all injustices, but acknowledgment and respect for the lives and experiences of our families. 

Marguerite Talley-Hughes  

• 

PUBLIC LIBRARY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

While I am happy to learn that the Berkeley Public Library has canceled its plan to lay off employees, I am concerned by the way the restructuring process has occurred throughout this year. Although there have been proposals from the Union as well as library staff addressing financial and staffing issues, as well as significant public comment, Library Director Jackie Griffin seems unwilling to take into account any of these sources’ opinions in shaping her own proposals. 

For example, the proposal to move all the teen librarians from the branches to Central has remained on the table, despite the nonsensical nature of the proposal and public outcry at the idea of losing beloved members of branch library communities. Griffin claims that the branch teen programs are ineffective and lack diversity, and wants the librarians to try for more inclusion. As a former member of the Playreaders at the North Berkeley Branch, I object to the idea that the Teen Program is unsuccessful—Playreaders is probably, by almost anyone’s count, one of the most successful library programs at any branch. Bringing it to Central would not increase its diversity, as it already has all ethnicities, income brackets, and sexual orientations represented among the 48 people on its mailing list.  

I am sure that all the teen librarians are open to suggestions and innovations as to how to create programs that will bring more youth of all backgrounds to the libraries. But centralizing the teen program as a way of fostering this goal makes very little sense. Teenagers do not like to go out of their way to find someone; indeed, having trusted adults readily available to teens in their neighborhoods is one of the most important ways to keep them safe. Teen librarians in all the branches value their time at the desk when they can see and greet teens who come in, and invite them to participate in local programs. The proposed changes in the teen program would drastically reduce this face time, and probably would cut some teens out altogether.  

It may be that the teen program needs some restructuring, but it should keep the teen librarians at their branches, and should actively involve them in coming in up with new strategies and programs that will attract a larger portion of the teen community. Jackie Griffin needs to put more trust in her staff and less trust in her ego. 

Joanna Taylor 

• 

PRIVATE SOCIETY 

Editors, Daily Planet:  

Our president is using the political capital he thinks he won last Nov. 2 to inject a large dose of privatization into a healthy Social Security system, a debilitating inoculation for a mild ache decades in advance of its happening.  

Look for his “Campaign for Change” to follow a pattern of “Operation Iraqi Freedom”: having declared what he wants, the president then puts his men and women to work finding reasons for doing it, reasons on which all can agree. For “regime change” read “ownership society” and substitute “crisis” for “WMD.”  

Such arrogant and simplistic strategies are impervious to rational opposition because they are impervious to truth as was painfully demonstrated by the inability of more people than voted for him to stop or even delay his war whistle. The fact that Social Security has made retirement a bit more comfortable for millions and millions, among them, my dad who was one of the first to receive benefits, will not deter the president.  

The Bush network knows how to turn catastrophe into success and make a fantasy look like the real thing. It’s too early to tell whether privatize means abolish, but if privatization follows the prototype in which “liberate” is the same as “occupy” and “Iraqi freedom” equals “freedom to support the U.S.,” then there is reason to worry. Young workers will be enticed with happy visions of hands-on control of their own, hard earned money, reaping huge profits, changing bread into cake, as it were. Older people will be blasted with arousing songs, seductive chants that assuage fear—pay less now or pay more later.  

Numbers may be overlooked but they cannot be erased. Almost 50 million people currently receive monthly Social Security payments contributed by 150 million workers totaling $492 billion annually. Subtract my share and the fund shrinks to $491,999,999,074, a number that is difficult to read much less understand. 

In Middle East policy the Bush team’s success was based on the fear of WMD; this time their fear mongering rests on large numbers. They recently used a calculation “at infinity” to predict a “$10 trillion shortfall,” “pulling a number out of the air” (New York Times editorial, Jan. 3).  

Large numbers are both fascinating and frightening. Expect “bad math [and] faulty logic…” to fig leaf the lies (Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research). 

The trust fund’s future inadequacy is a fraud because is not static, it is not subject to wear like an auto tire that you need to start saving now to replace some years down the line. It changes, and although it is inversely affected by decreases in mortality rates it only needs patching such as was done 20 years ago when “baby boomers” threatened its sustainability. 

George W. was not alive in 1935 when Social Security became law and not one of his supporters will be alive to benefit from or, indeed, answer for the consequences if it’s privatized. People not yet born will.  

Marvin Chachere 

San Pablo 

• 

SUPREME COURT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The size of the Supreme Court is not fixed by the Constitution. Called for by the Constitution but established and limited by congressional legislation, the original court had only six members: five associate judges and the chief justice. Congressional law raised the possible court complement to 10 in 1863, but in 1866, at odds with an unpopular post-Civil War president, Congress voted for the court to shrink to seven, as vacancies occurred. Consequently, the court shrank to eight, until in 1869, when Andrew Johnson left office, Congress restored the complement to nine, where it remains. 

The history of that turbulent long-past decade of the 1860s, should be remembered in our present circumstance. Before the horse runs away, we should close the barn door, permanently. Faced with possibly impending loss of Rehnquist and several other justices, together with the frightening realization that on Sept. 11, 2001, all nine of the justices could have been killed at once by a hijacked airplane, wouldn’t it be well for Congress to prevent appointment, ever, by one man, of an overwhelming number, or, at worst, the totality of members of the Supreme Court to serve for life in either our near or distant future? 

Is it not advisable for Congress to limit every president during this tenure to seating on the court only two, even when only one judge comprises the court, or to three when a catastrophic event had eliminated the entire court (not an impossibility at any time), in either case the court to grow to its maximum in subsequent administrations. Could such limitation really be worse than if, as at present, following a sudden extinction of the court or undue multiple vacancies one man can at once seat nine judges or an overwhelming majority? 

A reasonable limitation of any president’s replacements on the Supreme Court should be a bipartisan goal. With court members constitutionally seated for life, bar only resignation or impeachment, restricting replacement to two (or three after a wipeout) by any one president (constitutionally restricted to two terms) should guard against to abrupt fortuitous retrenchments of popularly-discarded or even abhorrent views. The delay to more than one administration, of the replacement of close-spaced multiple vacancies should favor a healthy diversity of age, sex, race, ethnicity, social and economic status on the court. 

Judith Segard Hunt 

• 

BOLTON HEARING: 

A BETTER CHOICE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Instead of going to the Berkeley City Council Meeting Tuesday night, or even watching it on cable TV, I watched instead the hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on C-SPAN. My foregone disappointment with the undemocratic and unresponsive modus operandi of the Berkeley City Council was quickly assuaged by the splendid demonstration of democracy conducted by Senators Dodd, Biden, Kerry, and Obama. By their eloquent speeches, which must have stirred the very spirits of the founding fathers, they won over several key Republicans and even melted the glacier-like ice of Senator Lugar, the chairman of the committee, which was no small accomplishment. Of course, such efforts should not have even been necessary in such an obvious matter of democratic procedure, and it only goes to remind that we are still in the kindergarten stage of democracy and not in the institutions of higher learning, if we are under a democracy at all. 

Peter Mutnick 



I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard fellow Berkeleyans holding forth on the difficulty of parking downtown. The complaint puzzles me, since I almost always find a space at the city’s Center Street garage.  

At last Thursday’s workshop on downtown parking, sponsored by the Transportation Commission, I discovered that my personal impression is backed up by numerous studies, including a March 2005 report that postdates the closure of the Hinks garage. Except for weekdays between noon and 3 p.m., there’s ample parking in downtown garages. On a typical weekend evening, said Transportation Commission Chair Rob Wrenn, “a thousand spaces go begging.” Even during crunch time, only some garages may reach 90 percent or a bit more capacity on some weekdays for a period ranging from a few minutes to two to three hours.  

So it was disconcerting to hear leaders of the Downtown Berkeley Association argue that the $3.5 million Vista parking mitigation funds should all go toward the $10 million that it would cost to add 411 spaces to the city’s Center Street garage when that facility is seismically retrofitted. What matters most, contended DBA Treasurer John DeClercq, is people’s perception that there’s not enough parking in the garages.  

Perception does matter. But instead of pandering to ignorance, why not educate the public? BDA, in league with the Chamber of Commerce and the city’s Office of Economic Development, ought to launch a “myth vs. reality” campaign that publicizes the actual availability of parking in downtown garages. “Parking educators” could spread the word through formal presentations at neighborhood association meetings around town. Ads in the local press and articles in the city’s newsletter would also be a good idea.  

Beyond education, we need better management. After the workshop, the Transportation Commission approved the first phase of a parking information guidance system that, when fully implemented, will use computer-driven signs to tell drivers how many spaces are available in specific downtown parking facilities at any one moment. Berkeley, of all places, ought to enjoy the benefit of such sophisticated technology, which has long been employed in many European cities and some American ones.  

Then there’s the inadequate enforcement of on-street parking. It turns out that the real shortage in downtown parking is not in the garages but on the street, and that it’s largely due to meter-feeding by employees of downtown businesses. This was the revelatory finding of the fall 2002 study conducted by Professor Betty Deakin, director of the UC Berkeley Transportation Center, and her students. At Thursday’s workshop Deakin, emphasizing the lost sales tax and meter revenue, called meter-feeding “a very serious problem that the city needs to start addressing.” 

One way to do so, she said, would be to provide transit passes to all downtown employees, while addressing the financial challenges that such an arrangement would present to smaller businesses. Rob Wrenn has suggested using some of the Vista parking mitigation monies to fund a pilot program along these lines. At Thursday’s meeting, North Berkeley resident Austene Hall told how in Providence, R.I., she had recently encountered a city employee with a gizmo that recorded both a specific vehicle’s license number and its length of stay in a parking space. We could use that machine in Berkeley. We could also use vandal-resistant parking meters that work. Let’s hope that the new ones on Shattuck Avenue are tougher than their predecessors. (And how about gearing old and new alike to a maximum 90 minutes instead of an hour?)  

My own dubious gripe about downtown parking has to do with the new rates in the Center Street garage. Since the first free hour was replaced with a charge of $1.50, rising at 61 minutes to $3, I’ve often parked in a nearby neighborhood. (Little-known fact: The first 15 minutes are still free.) At Thursday’s workshop, I felt a twinge of guilt when central Berkeley resident Carrie Sprague complained about people parking in her neighborhood to avoid paying to park downtown. City staff report that since the new rates were put in, use of the Center Street garage has declined. In fact, the rates are still below-market: On weekdays, the private garage on Allston charges $2.50 per hour or a fraction thereof.  

I know I should park in a garage or, better yet, take the bus downtown. I am negotiating these matters with my inner environmentalist.  

• • • 

Kudos to Councilmembers Anderson, Maio, Spring and Worthington for opposing Mayor Bates’ scheme to rezone Ashby Avenue and Gilman Street west of San Pablo Avenue for retail. At the council’s April 12 meeting, Maio asked that the motion then on the floor, to approve the Planning Department’s work priorities for fiscal year 2006, be amended to provide that in the event of such rezoning, the balance of industrial, commercial and residential uses mandated by the West Berkeley Plan would be maintained. The maker of the motion, Councilmember Capitelli, rejected Maio’s request. Spring then severed the rezoning issue from the main motion, forcing a vote on the rezoning alone.  

The mayor did his best to squelch the dissent. First he tried to cut off discussion by invoking the rarely used “20 minute rule,” only to be told that it didn’t apply because a motion was on the floor. Next he called for a vote on whether to sever the rezoning, only to be informed that severing is not subject to a vote.  

The rezoning was approved as a fiscal year 2006 priority. Councilmember Moore, disregarding the interests of his West Berkeley constituents, gave the Bates’ faction its fifth, tie-breaking vote.  

Zelda Bronstein, a former chair of the Berkeley Planning Commission, is still active in Berkeley politics. ª

“Jerry’s apartment is on fire,” shouted Willie as he sprinted out the door. Someone had called and told him that one of the buildings at the Sojourner Truth housing complex for seniors on Martin Luther King was ablaze. Before I could respond, Willie was gone. 

I checked on Ralph. Andrea was on the phone, trying to call Omar, who lives down the hall from Jerry and lets him use his telephone. There was no answer. 

“I’ll drive up there and see what’s going on,” I said. “There’s three Sojourner Truth buildings. Maybe the fire is in one of the other apartments.” 

Dover Street, which runs in front of my house, is usually quiet, but it was obvious by the number of cars on the street that traffic was being rerouted. I turned left on 60th and left on MLK. I was one block above Jerry’s building. I could tell that his complex was okay. It was the building just south of his that was burning. 

I’d hoped to find Jerry and Willie outside the apartment, but traffic was blocked and I had to take a circuitous route behind the burning complex. I drove home and waited for news. 

About an hour later Willie and Jerry arrived. Jerry was dressed like he’d just gotten out of bed and put on the first thing he found on the floor. He had on an old t-shirt I recognized as once belonging to me, baggy jeans, and untied sneakers. He appeared shaken up.  

“You’re okay,” I shouted, giving him a hug. 

“Yeah boy, but other people ain’t. It’s not a good situation up there.” 

He came into the kitchen, sat on a stool and kicked off his shoes. “Like to scare me to death,” he said. “You never know what those old folks up there might do. Mixin’ cigarettes with oxygen tanks is what I heard. Damned near killed me.” 

This was, of course, an exaggeration as Jerry lives a block away from the burned building, but I understood his point. He was close enough to see the flames and smell smoke; close enough to want to be as far away from there as possible. At the moment, that was our house. 

We were quiet for a moment as we considered the gravity of the situation on MLK. Then I noticed that Jerry wasn’t wearing socks. “What’s wrong with your feet?” I asked, looking down at his toes. His heels were dry and cracked, but it was his digits that were alarming. They were black, as if he’d dipped them in ink or painted the nails with ebony polish.  

“You know I got athlete’s foot,” he said. “Had it all my life. Comes from wearin’ funky basketball shoes for the last 70 years. These toenails are about to fall off.” 

“I don’t like the idea of you walking around my house with diseased feet,” I said. “I might catch it.” 

“You’re not gonna catch this fungus from me, so don’t trip,” he said. Then he got serious. The fire had given him pause. “Some men are all ate up by cancer and others by V.D., but me, I’m full of foot fungus. When I go, it ain’t gonna be no fire, car wreck or heart attack. It’s this goddamn athlete foot thing that’s gonna bring me down.” 

“Is there anything you can do about it?” I asked. 

He shook his head slowly, and looked at his feet. “They got some medicine that you can take that’ll cure it. Flush it right outta your system. But you know what the side effects are, don’t you?  

“What?” I asked.  

“It’ll kill you!” he shouted. “Ain’t that somethin’? I could die of foot fungus or I could die from the medicine that’s supposed to fix it.” 

He looked at me for a moment so that the information could sink in. 

“Sometimes, girl,” he said, “You just can’t win.”ª

There’s no police blotter today because the Berkeley Police Department didn’t post their police bulletins this week or return calls from the Daily Planet. 

Police were also unavailable last Thursday, which accounts for the absence of a blotter in Friday’s paper as well.ª

As a Berkeley homeowner for over 30 years and a life-long Berkeley Public Library user, I have been following the recent controversies surrounding the library and its director very closely. I’ve also been doing some thorough investigation in the matter. 

Never in all my years have I witnessed such a debacle of community trust as is happening to our most cherished institution, the Public Library. From what I can assess, all blame must be brought to the feet of the director, Jackie Griffin. Furthermore, it is beyond me, considering the overwhelming PR disaster which the library faces, why the library’s board of trustees has not asked for Ms. Griffin’s resignation. 

Here’s what we know of Ms. Griffin’s most egregious acts: 

• Failed to actively campaign and persuade the voters to accept a library tax that would restore staff and operating hours. 

• Managed to anger and alienate the majority of her employees. 

• Allowed staff’s morale to “sink to an all-time low,” as one beleaguered employee was quoted. 

• Has accepted some 20+ resignations or early retirements in the past three years. 

• When faced with a budget crisis, her immediate proposal was to lay off 14 of the lowest paid and least benefited positions and where most of the library’s youth and diversity are found. 

• At the same time, the director is retaining a $150,000-a-year salaried employee whose contract, (to oversee the move into the newly remodeled Central Building) expired a couple of years ago. 

• The director pushed through a $650,000 radio frequency identification (RFID) self-checkout technology with very little if any public awareness or input. 

• Dismissed and rejected employees’ budget saving suggestions as alternatives to layoffs. 

• Has created an atmosphere of fear among the employees who may wish to speak out, while she is free to propagandize and have the last word in television and newspaper reports. 

• Has contradicted herself several times with budget figures and presented conflicting accounts before the library’s board of trustees. 

• Despite workers efforts to reduce repetitive stress injuries to zero in 2004, Ms. Griffin continues to use workers comp and repetitive stress injury dollars to justify the purchase of RFID. 

• Has encouraged an aggressive book weeding with the dumping of some 20,000-plus volumes, while the shelves remain less than half full. 

• Has made it clear that she wants more “popular materials” (ala Barnes & Noble) and that academic and/or esoteric titles can be gotten at the university libraries. Ms. Griffin seems indifferent to the intellectual capacity of the community, and to how difficult it is to get access to UC Berkeley’s book collection. 

• Has allowed constant computer malfunctions since mid-February, and at one stretch tens of thousands of checkout transactions were lost. 

• Has insisted on pushing through her layoff and reorganization plan (with many changes in job descriptions) without going through the process of Meet and Confer with the local union. 

• She finally backed off the layoff plan when she magically found $300,000, and then announces it to the public as if she performed a benevolent miracle. 

• Has allowed the library users’ morale to sink to all all-time low as well. In talking to dozens of library users, it’s evident that there is a frustration with too much unreliable technology (particularly voiced among seniors) in what should be the simple steps to searching, reserving and renewing books. 

• Closed the Central Library on Sundays without polling the public as to which day would be the best to close, leaving many users angry, particularly families and the elderly. 

• Finally, Ms. Griffin ignores the public by not responding to letters and phone calls as has been expressed in this paper and at Library Board of Trustees meetings. 

I call upon every book-loving person in this town to attend the next Library Trustees meeting at the South Berkeley Senior Center Wed. April 27th at 6:45 p.m. (to put your name in for a chance to speak) and to demand the resignation of Jackie Griffin and call the Trustees to account for their complicity in the erosion of service and welfare of the library. It is OUR library. It should reflect OUR needs and values. And its director should conduct operations in a fair and transparent manner. 

Rosemary Vimont is a Berkeley resident. ª

On Thursday, April 28, at 6 p.m., the Zoning Adjustments Board will consider a proposal by Hudson McDonald LLC to demolish the one-story strip mall (Kragen, Pet Food Express) on the west side of Martin Luther King Jr. Way between Berkeley Way and University Avenue and replace it with a massive, boxy two-building complex containing 186 apartments and a few tiny retail spaces. (This project was originally proposed by Patrick Kennedy’s Panoramic Interests. Kennedy’s former affiliates Christopher J. Hudson and Evan McDonald took the project with them when they left to start their own firm: see “Reports Cite Chill Between Developer, UC Prof Backer,” August 6, 2004.) 

This proposal flouts many of the relevant policies and development standards in Berkeley’s zoning code and general plan. The zoning code allows up to three stories, the proposed design has five. The code requires 126 parking spaces, HMcD proposes to provide only 71 (56% of the requirement). The code requires 200 square feet of usable open space per unit, for a total of 37,200; by HMcD’s count, which includes arguably unusable areas, the project provides less than half that. The code requires a 15-foot setback along Berkeley Way, and a 20-foot setback from the property line of the adjacent residence; HMcD proposes to build to the sidewalk and within five feet of the fence. 

The most egregious excess is in the project’s density. Per the general plan, density for this “Avenue Commercial” area ranges from 20 to 40 units per acre, or around 1100 to 2200 square feet of lot area per unit. HMcD proposes 185 units per acre, which is just 235 square feet per unit. This is almost five times the density envisioned for the area in the general plan, 85% higher than the general plan’s vision for the densest parts of downtown, and close to the 200 square-foot maximum allowed in San Francisco’s densest neighborhoods, such as Chinatown. 

The primary rationale for setting aside these regulations and policies? The project includes 30 units of--by the state’s definition--affordable housing. By state law, that entitles HMcD to a 25% density bonus. Through creative interpretation of that law, foot-dragging on updating the zoning code with numerical density standards, and the tacit support of a majority of the City Council, Berkeley planning staff have repeatedly managed to turn that into an effective 65 to 100% height and mass bonus. 

Perhaps that’s a fair tradeoff. These affordable units would get homeless people off the street, provide better housing for poor families, and give elderly people on fixed incomes a secure place to live--right? 

Wrong. First, the rents aren’t below market rate, they’re just at the low end of the market range. According to the state’s perverse calculation of “below market rate” rents, HMcD could charge up to $863 for studios, $925 for one-bedrooms, and $1110 for two-bedrooms. In Craig’s List’s Berkeley rental listings today, I found 65 studios, 35 one-bedrooms, and 12 two-bedrooms offered for less. 

Second, the so-called affordable units aren’t reserved for genuinely low-income renters. The maximum annual household income is $34,530 for studios, $36,990 for one-bedrooms, and $44,400 for two-bedrooms. Since the average annual income for Berkeley tenant households is under $30,000, those units are rentable to the majority of apartment seekers. 

The truth is this building, like Patrick Kennedy’s projects, is for-profit, market-rate student housing with a smidgen of ill-conceived retail space tacked on to benefit from Berkeley’s more lenient regulation of mixed-use projects. Student housing’s not necessarily a bad use of the property, but it’s not something we need so desperately as to justify throwing out all of our development standards. Instead of rubber-stamping this monstrosity, the ZAB should tell HMcD to come back with a design for a much smaller building, with more and better-designed retail space, including all the parking and usable open space required by the zoning code, and that reflects the height, setback, and other suggestions made by the Design Review Committee on April 17, 2003. 

Pro-democracy activist Robert Lauriston lives in South Berkeley 

ª

The staff at the Berkeley Public Library recognizes that the library faces budgetary constraints and must make difficult decisions on staffing and services. Unfortunately, library management has made unilateral decisions on what services are important and what should be cutback without consulting either library staff or the users of library services. These arbitrary decisions have eroded staff morale and aggravated relations with the library user community. As long-time library staff, we want to propose a set of principles that could guide decisions about maintenance of library services and the staffing to ensure them:  

• Books, CDs, DVDs available on the shelves (not sitting in the sorting area) brought to you by enough shelvers to get the job done, and done safely, preventing repetitive strain injuries. The elimination of one library management position could pay for 12 15-hour-a-week shelving positions. 

• Each branch library tailored to the service needs of the surrounding neighborhoods. In Berkeley, the communities served by the different branches are somewhat different and therefore shouldn’t be subject to a generic franchise approach to library staffing. 

• An up-to-date, reliable computer network for staff and public before introducing unproven technologies that do not enjoy community and staff support. Recently, the computer network that allows you to access our collection and allows us to serve you by checking out and ordering books, has been out of order for weeks at a time. Despite repeated requests, library workers do not even have a connection to the Berkeley City Intranet so we can give you up-to-date information on city government and services. And unlike most Berkeley coffee houses, the public library does not have wireless Internet access (WiFi). We are spending a lot to introduce RFID when we have not met more basic technology needs. 

• Library employees that have enough time to interact with you, whether it be to check-out your books, answer your information and reference questions, find that song you can’t quite remember, or help your child find another compelling book about trains. Those long lines at the circulation desk and at the reference desk are a stressful hardship and can be alleviated by allocating more staff to the frontlines, and less to management and administrative posts. 

• Opening the Central Branch again on Sundays. We see this as essential, because you are working people and families that often can’t visit the library during the week. You pay taxes and want access. The elimination of one Library Management position could pay for Sundays. 

Berkeley Public Library staff, who work directly with you, want to be part of the process to make sure your library functions as best as possible, even during hard times. There are difficult decisions to be made balancing new services while maintaining our beloved library traditions.  

We ask you to support our union’s proposal to resolve our differences through “Interest Based Bargaining.” This is a form of contract negotiation where a facilitator helps management and staff find common interests to achieve common goals. It’s a way for all voices to be heard, a way to return to a climate of harmony and collaboration that will heal the library community.  

We need your help. Please write to your councilmember and to the Board of Library Trustees. And, please come to the library board meeting this Wednesday, April 27, at 7 p.m., at the South Berkeley Senior Center, at the corner of Ashby and Ellis. 

Jane Scantlebury is a reference librarian at the Central Library. Andrea Segall is an art and music librarian at the Central Library. 

Growing up Protestant and Lower Middle Class in a Northern English milltown is not the best preparation for appreciating Rubens. It was about as difficult to warm up to those big fat naked ladies as it was to take seriously Italian Opera. “Well, I only ‘ope YOU can sing while you’re dying!” 

Going through architecture school deepened the distaste. According to our instructors, the previously brilliant Italians buggered-up High Renaissance by letting it debauch into writhing theatrical Baroque, an episode of deplorable taste that never really “took” in England. 

Molded by this lofty mindset, exacerbated by the even more self-denying Modern Movement, those of us with any feeling for painting at all settled for the calm static figures of Fra Angelico, Filippo Lippi, and—ultimate sophistication—the sublime restraint of Piero Della Francesca. Botticelli’s diaphanous, almost-modern blondes were the most exuberant we ever got. Fledgling architects contemptuous of art history, we jumped for Piero to Seurat with very little in-between. The Bauhaus led us to Paul Klee and Kandinsky, Le Courbusier to Leger and Cubism.  

Only too aware of this anti-mystical Cromwellian background, I accepted with some misgivings the invitation to comment on an artist as whole-hog Catholic as Rubens—grandmaster of the Flemish Baroque, but now I am glad I did. For quite apart from viewing the strange somber little exhibition, in Mario Ciampi’s still remarkable museum, the assignment prompted me to learn a lot in a short time about a brilliant multi-talented likable celebrity in a time of political and spiritual upheaval. 

Younger son of an eminent lawyer in Spanish-controlled Antwerp, a Protestant who fled to Germany to escape religious persecution, Peter Paul Rubens, born in 1577, returned at age 10, a Catholic child with a widowed mother, to a war-ravaged Antwerp that was fast becoming an important center of the Counter Reformation. Blessed with a resourceful and well-connected parent, the 13-year-old boy, tall, handsome and already the recipient of a Classical education, was placed as a page in the establishment of a nearby countess. This was unusually privileged cultural training, so he must have shown some special art talent for his mother to change the plan and have him apprenticed to a local master painter. 

The boy flourished, becoming a master himself at age 21, before moving to Italy, the world-center of advanced painting. After eight years of successful commissions and court employment there, he returned to Antwerp and a special appointment as court painter to the Spanish regent, with freedom to establish a large workshop and a varied practice of independent work. By this time, he had long been respected as a confidential advisor and emissary, and entrusted with important diplomatic missions, a combination of activities almost unimaginable today. One such trip in 1629 took him to England and resulted in a warm friendship with the ill-fated King Charles I, for whom he painted the Allegory of Peace, and who knighted him in return. This visit, though a diplomatic failure, also led to a commission to decorate the ceiling of Inigo Jones’s new Banqueting House, nine paintings celebrating the House of Stuart that remain one of the art-sights in London. 

All this by the age of about 57, in the glorious autumn of his life, which had begun, symbolically, by his re-marriage at age 54 to an attractive 16-year-old—Hélene Fourment, whose beauty he celebrated in numerous portraits and allegories. By now, he had finally abandoned the diplomatic career, bought himself a country estate, and was spending more time close to nature and away from the pressures of court life. 

Landscape elements that had previously been limited in his large dramatic works to backgrounds carried out by assistants now took his full attention, and resulted in, for him, a new genre paintings such as “Landscape with Rainbow,” and “Landscape with Het Steen,” his country house, take their place among his major achievements. In modern terms, he had finally become his own master, working to please himself rather than those in high authority. 

There’s really no equivalent today for this kind of career, unless we imagine Picasso and Henry Kissinger combined in one awesome personality. Politicians don’t paint, while major artist hide from public view. As for the art itself, painting in Catholic Baroque 1620—major religious and political celebration—is hardly the same activity as painting today—visual expression of a private state of mind. The closest equivalent now to a group of talented assistants collaborating on a huge altarpiece under the supervision of a Rubens would probably be the making of a fine film under a distinguished director. 

Thus it is easier for most of us secular moderns to admire and empathize with the sober tender portraits—Rubens and Isabella Brant of 1609, or Hélene Fourment with her Firstborn Son—than to identify comfortably with the Great Last Judgment of 1614, or the floating-in-the-sky bodies of Women of the Apocalypse in Munich—not to mention his superb, light-suffused drawings. 

Indeed, the trouble with this current show in the University Art Museum is that it contains none of the pleasures of the tender family portraits, or the amazingly timeless chalk drawings, or, for those who love the big stuff, the overwhelming presence of great dramatic painting. These oil sketches are quite small—about the size of a modest watercolor—while the final “Woman of the Apocalypse” measure approximately 13 by 18 feet, and the “Raising of the Cross” triptych in Antwerp an impressive 15 by 22. 

Typically executed to show a patron the proposed composition, to guide his own assistants, or as the basis for later engraving, they inevitable lack the vibrancy of final masterworks, and their florid dominating faded-gilt frames make this slightness worse. It would be interesting to see these 33 very uneven studies set in off-white mattes and simple wood frames! Or better yet, double-size photo-prints in a well-lit room, instead of these ill-framed ‘authentic artifacts’ on depressing mid-blue walls under subdued light. People seeking an aesthetic experience comparable to facing Manet’s Bar at the Folies Bergére or a Juan Gris still-life will not find it here in this impressive yet joyless show. It’s perhaps revealing that the cover of the tempting-looking catalog is dramatized by the powerful and timeless “Head of a Negro (No. 32)”— the only arrestingly ‘modern’ image in the room. 

Visitor advice: Save yourself a lot of money in the Museum bookstore by just buying the Prestel Art Guide “Rubens” ($7.95), an amazing little summary. Background Reading: Simon Schama’s “Rembrandt’s Eyes” has a splendid four-chapter introduction devoted to Rubens. 

“Drawn by the Brush: Oil Sketches by Peter Paul Rubens” runs through May 22 at the UC Berkeley Art Musuem, 2626 Bancroft Way, Wed.-Sun. 11 a.m.-5 p.m., Thur. 11 a.m.-7 p.m. 

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Though he talks with a distinctive Chicago accent—a family inheritance—Richard Bermack is finally willing to admit the reality. 

“I was born in L.A.,” he says. “Growing up in the ‘50s, I was always being told that everything was perfect. But something underneath it all didn’t feel right, and I wasn’t quite sure of what it was.” 

To disguise his Lala-Land roots, Bermack said he used to tell people only that he was born in 1968, the year he moved to Berkeley. 

The year before, President Lyndon Johnson had made the last public speech of his administration that wasn’t delivered on a military base. The massive anti-war protest outside the Century Plaza Hotel, where Johnson was staying, was finally ended by the batons and tear gas of the Los Angeles Police Department. 

“Police beat the shit out of the kids, and a lot of them were from Beverly Hills,” Bermack recalls. 

The L.A. demonstration proved too much for Johnson, and from then on he spoke only in front of tightly controlled audiences—much like George W. Bush today. 

And then, in April 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. fell prey to an assassin’s bullet in Memphis. 

Frustrated with L.A.—“My folks had moved to the San Fernando Valley, which was my version of hell”—Bermack came to Berkeley. “It was just in time for People’s Park,” he recalls, including the events of “Bloody Sunday” on May 15. 

Less than four weeks later, Robert F. Kennedy, the man many in the New Left hoped would succeed Johnson, was gunned down in the kitchen of L.A.’s Ambassador Hotel just moments after declaring victory in the California presidential primary. 

Safely ensconced in Berkeley, Bermack said, “I was enthralled by the sense of community, feeling part of something bigger than myself—especially coming from L.A. where there is no community.” 

Berkeley’s New Left was flourishing, an evolution of the same sense of moral outrage that had fueled the Free Speech Movement and the earlier protests against the House Un-American Activities Committee protests in San Francisco, where Berkeley people had played leading roles. 

“We had a lot of energy and vitality, but not a lot of analysis,” Bermack recalled. “We thought we could reinvent everything without regard to the past. But we couldn’t, and things started falling apart.” 

One project of the New Left was the Radical Elders Oral History Project, which was an effort to preserve the stories of the men and women from an era when the Left was stronger and well organized. 

Bermack started out taking pictures, then realized he was equally capable of conducting the interviews themselves. 

“It was like the New Left learning from the Old Left,” Bermack said. From the inchoate radicalism of the Sixties he found himself turning to the study of Marxism because “it gave me a sense of my roots, my identity,” he said. 

Among those who had the most profound impacts on the young radical’s life were veterans of two epic struggles, the labor movement and the Spanish Civil War—which would point him toward a new direction in his life. 

Bermack’s involvement, first behind the lens and then as an interviewer and writer, provided not only the means to an engaging new livelihood but decades later to his first book, just published by Berkeley’s own Heyday Books. 

The Front Lines of Social Change: Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade portrays in photography and prose the lives of the poorly armed men and women of the Old Left who battled for the Spanish Republic against Francisco Franco’s fascist army during the Spanish Civil War. 

While the labor struggle remains very much alive today, the Spanish Civil War—once an epochal event—has receded from popular memory. Yet the veterans of that forgotten war have played a part in countless struggles since. 

Bermack quickly discovered that the same zeal that had inspired their willingness to die on a foreign battlefield continued to motivate their lives long after Franco’s forces had slaughtered their way to victory. 

Though their numbers are dwindling, they remain active in the fights against the ongoing war in Iraq and for better lives for the poor, for victims of racial prejudice and for a society no longer dominated by a small, wealthy elite. 

Bermack speaks of them with a mixture of awe and affection. 

“Doing the book I realized you can keep your own ideals, though it’s not an easy thing to do at all,” he said. “The point of the book is to show that none of them left the struggle.” 

The Lincoln Brigade began withdrawing from Spain in October 1938, when it had become clear that Franco’s victory was at hand. A month later, Hitler’s war against the Jews took a new, more virulent turn when he unleashed his stormtroopers on Jewish stores and homes on Kristallnacht. 

The following March, Franco’s forces took Madrid, the last remaining Republican stronghold. 

Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade was formed after the war, giving its men and women an organizational base as well as a means of staying in touch. 

Because the Abraham Lincoln Brigade was largely the creation of the American Communist Party, the veterans’ organization soon landed on the U.S. Attorney’s list of subversive organization, and FBI agents became frequent visitors at the homes and workplaces of the veterans, sometimes costing them jobs. 

Many veterans dropped out of the party in bitterness after Soviet Premier Nikita Krushchev revealed the murderous crimes of Josef Stalin in 1956, “but they remained devoted to the cause of social justice,” Bermack said. 

The veterans also produce their own newsletter, and Bermack was a natural choice to produce it, which gave him an ongoing connection to the organization and the lives of its members. 

Immersion in Marxism and his encounters with labor activists who helped create the golden age of organized labor in the U.S. also led to his ongoing involvement in the labor movement. 

“With a bachelor’s in existential psychology, there wasn’t a lot I could do, so I went out and did projects about work and the labor movement,” Bermack said. “There’s just something about the labor movement, and as long as you’re dealing with the rank and file, it’s tremendous.” 

It was the computer that gave him the final tool he needed. 

“I had a lot of trouble writing because I couldn’t spell,” he said. “Then the computer came along and saved me.” 

THE FRONTLINES OF SOCIAL CHANGE: VETERANS OF THE ABRAHAM LINCOLN BRIGADE 

By Richard Bermack 

Heyday Books, 145 pages, $19.95›

Given our intimate relationship with the 800-pound gorilla in our midst, Berkeleyans should be racing to bookstores to buy the new book University Inc. by Jennifer Washburn, subtitled The Corporate Corruption of Higher Education, or, as I like to call it, Universities Behaving Badly. If you are interested in the integrity of higher education, academic freedom, the responsible treatment of employees and students, quality undergraduate education, the continued vitality of the liberal arts and social sciences, unbiased research, and public ownership of the discoveries funded by your tax dollars—this might well be the most important book you will ever read. But be forewarned: this is a tragedy, so keep the Kleenex handy. 

University Inc. describes, chronicles, and substantiates what Washburn calls the “single greatest threat to the future of American higher education: the intrusion of a market ideology into the heart of academic life.” Covering private and public universities nationwide, Washburn focuses on the impact of the university’s marketization on the academic and scientific communities. The consequences of this intrusion are so deep and broad, so intertwined, and so disturbing as to be beyond summarizing here.  

Instead I ask: How might the new University Inc. affect the broader Berkeley community? Three of Washburn’s themes shed light on this question: the university as a laundry for federal subsidies to private industry, the university as a profit-making enterprise, and the university as an “engine of economic growth.” 

Historically, the American university has entertained a shifting balance between utilitarianism (which gave rise to university business, law, engineering, and medical schools), and “pure” intellectual inquiry, academic independence, and teaching. During and after World War II, scientific research became an important national resource, and universities became vital if ambivalent partners in military and industrial research and development. Later, in the 1970s, America’s perceived lack of industrial competitiveness culminated in the 1980 Bayh-Dole Act. This critical policy change permitted and encouraged universities to patent and profit from their research, and to partner with private industry in this venture.  

This act essentially made American universities a funnel for money that it would have been politically unpalatable for the federal government to give directly to private industry. It also opened the doors for increasing control over university research by their private industry partners. Unfortunately, “no one bothered to consider how routing industrial support through the university would affect academic freedom—or scientific investigation over the long term.”  

UC Berkeley’s very own Novartis affair, and the accompanying tenure battle of “whistleblower” Ignacio Chapela, illustrates the problem. Investigators concluded that UCB “effectively [allowed] one company to exert a monopoly over the department’s best research, regardless of whether it was funded by Novartis or by U.S. taxpayers.” Translation: American tax money was funneled through UC to Novartis. Worse, a qualified professor was denied tenure by the “budget” committee after he questioned corporate interests. 

According to Washburn, “industry now directly influences an estimated 20 to 25 percent of university research funding overall.” This means that when UCB exercises its immunity from Berkeley’s land use laws and taxes, private industry is a major beneficiary. The federal government funds about 58 percent of university-based research, with universities vigorously lobbying and competing for federal dollars. UC skims up to 40 percent of those dollars off the top for its own overhead, but refuses to give the city any infrastructure support. Meanwhile, the state, which should be safeguarding the university’s educational function, has reduced its UC funding to the point where former Chancellor Berdahl described UC as a “state assisted” rather than a public institution.  

When the profit motive entered university research, universities began to behave like for-profit corporations. Chasing money—and the prestige that attracts it—has created distortions in education. Do undergraduates subsidize research? Some universities now pay “star” professors up to a half million dollars per year, while undergraduate education is “farmed out to the growing army of part-time instructors who receive no benefits and meager pay.” In 1969, 97 percent of professors were on tenure track; now it is 40 percent; America now has an army of Ph.D.s scrounging for steady jobs. Tuition has increased at three times the rate of inflation, while students have become “customers” to be gratified with lifestyle luxuries and high grades rather than outstanding education. Funding is diverted from the humanities and social sciences into the science departments that can bring in industrial dollars.  

In the lucrative sciences, academic collegiality is giving way to squabbles over patent rights, and the “knowledge commons” is increasingly privatized and hoarded. When professors object, universities assuage them by making them stakeholders in university business enterprises. Ironically, most universities make no profit on their patenting operations, so opening the Pandora’s Box of academic damage yields them no benefits. And in the final twist, American universities have gotten so greedy that now their private partners are complaining—and starting to take their research subsidies overseas! 

As Washburn points out, the profit-motivated behavior of universities is a gross violation of the public trust that universities have earned over a hundred years. Universities receive public funding and tax exemptions because they serve the public good, providing well-rounded education, unbiased research, and accessible knowledge. But if universities behave like businesses, shouldn’t they be treated like them—legally and fiscally? And, Washburn asks: “Would alumni continue to give so generously to their alma maters if they perceived them as increasingly motivated by profit rather than serving the public good? Would politicians and taxpayers continue to issue tens of billions of dollars annually to colleges and universities in the form of grants, tax exemptions, and student financial aid?”  

Unfortunately, for the politicians, the answer may well be “yes.” Because as universities view themsleves as for-profit corporations, and compete for bucks and breaks from state and local governments, they have repackaged themselves as “engines of economic growth.” These governments, strapped for money and hoping to duplicate Stanford’s impact on Silicon Valley, are more than eager to take the bait.  

Leaving aside the question of whether “economic growth” is necessarily a good thing, most universities are not up to the task. UC campuses, for example, increasingly keep profit-making projects such as convention centers “in-house,” while deflecting their costs onto their host communities—but what kind of “engine” doesn’t even pull its own weight? And no university can single-handedly jump-start the economic growth of a city or region, which depends on a healthy existing infrastructure and an attractive quality of life. “Any high-tech regional initiative must include the development of vibrant communities…the kinds of places that knowledge workers who drive the new economy gravitate toward and prefer to live in.”  

In other words, the university is embedded in a community that sustains it and is prepared to capitalize on its contribution. UCB has for years been reducing the benefits it provides to the community, while callously increasing its detriments. The city is attracted to flashy projects like the proposed downtown museum complex, perhaps convinced this UC project will be the “engine” that rescues our struggling downtown from decades of bad planning. But when it comes to reaping benefits and avoiding costs, this engine always comes in first. We know that from the fiscal drain and quality-of-life damage that UC creates in other parts of the community. So far University Inc. doesn’t see any “profit” in addressing those problems, preferring to let the city pick up the tab. 

UNIVERSITY INC.:  

THE CORPORATE CORRUPTION OF HIGHER EDUCATION 

By Jennifer Washburn 

Basic Books, 326 pages, $26?

TUESDAY, APRIL 26 

CHILDREN 

First Stage Children’s Theater “The Case of the Ancient Artifacts” at 7:30 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts. Tickets are $5 available at the door. www.juliamorgan.org 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Katherine Ellison describes “The Mommy Brain: How Motherhood Makes Us Smarter” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

The Whole Note Poetry Series honoring Allen Cohen, with Ann Cohen and Clive Matson at 7 p.m. at The Beanery, 2925 College Ave. 549-9093. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Courtableu at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cajun dance lesson at 8 p.m. Cost is $9. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Rory Block at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50- $19.50. 548-1761.  

Graham Connah, solo jazz piano, at 8 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810. 

Over the Rhine, Kim Taylor at 8 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $13. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Michael O’Neill with Kenny Washington at 8 and 10 p.m. Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

Jazzschool Tuesdays at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 27 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Habillements” Multifoiled drawings and prints by Karen Ruenitz, paintings by Thomas Clayton at California College of the Arts, 5241 College Ave. Reception at 5:30 p.m.  

FILM 

History of Cinema: “Capturing the Friedmans” at 3 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Vistor Navasky describes his journalistic experiences in “A Matter of Opinion” at 7:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church, 2345 Channing Way. Sponsored by Cody’s Books. Free. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

Michael Joseph Gross reads from his stories in “Starstruck” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

Writing Teachers Write with Floyd Salas and his students from Foothill College at 7:30 p.m. at Barnes and Noble, 2352 Shattuck Ave. 644-0861. 

Steve Almond reads from his new collection of short stories, “Evil B. B. Chow” at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698. www.blackoakbooks.com 

Berkeley Poetry Slam with host Charles Ellik and Three Blind Mice, at 8:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5-$7. 841-2082 www.starryplough.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Ned Boynton Trio at 8 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

Ooklah the Moc, Hawaiian reggae at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $12. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

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

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

Andre Nickatina and Equipto at 9:30 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $12-$17. 848-0886. www.blakesontelegraph.com 

Tristan & Iseult at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761.  

The Chick Corea Elektric Band at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square, through Sun. Cost is $24-$28. 238-9200.  

THURSDAY, APRIL 28 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Drawn by the Brush: Oil Sketches of Peter Paul Rubens” guided tour at 12:15 p.m. at Berkeley Art Museum, 2625 Durant Ave. 642-0808.  

“Blind at the Museum” guided tour at 5:30 p.m. at Berkeley Art Museum, 2625 Durant Ave. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

FILM 

Latino Film Festival: “Sexo con Amor” a comedy from Chile at 7:30 p.m. at La Pena, 3105 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $8. 849-2568. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Sarah Vowell describes her “Assassination Vacation” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com  

Elizabeth Gaffney reads from her debut novel, “Metropolis” at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698. www.blackoakbooks.com 

Cecil Castellucci discusses “Boy Proof” the story of a high school outcast at 7:30 p.m. at Barnes and Noble, 2352 Shattuck Ave. 644-0861. 

Berkeley Live and Unplugged Open mic featuring music and spoken word at 7 p.m. at 1924 Cedar St. 703-9350. www.LiveAndUnplugged.org 

Word Beat Reading Series with Andy Fong and Stephen Berry at 7 p.m. at Mediterraneum Caffe, 2475 Telegraph Ave. 526-5985. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Berkeley High School Orchestra at 7:30 p.m. at the Berkeley Community Theater, Berkeley High School. 

Oakland Choreographer’s Showcase at 8 p.m. at Haas Pavillion, Mills College, 5000 MacArthur Blvd., Oakland. Free. dance@mills.edu 

Piano Music by Tim Ross and Jack Kruscup from 5 to 7 p.m., Thurs. and Fri., at the Berkeley Faculty Club, Kerr Dining Room, UC Campus. 540-5678. 

Dhol Patrol, Bangra and Pan-Arabic beats at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $6. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Alex de Grassi at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Andrew Cheiken, Kinnie Star at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $6. 841-2082 www.starryplough.com 

Andre Bush Duo at 8 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

FRIDAY, APRIL 29 

EXHIBITIONS 

Annual Quilt Show at the North Berkeley Public Library, 1170 The Alameda, at Hopkins, and runs through May 21. 981-6250. 

THEATER 

Actors Ensemble of Berkeley, “Working,” inspired by Studs Terkel, Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m. at Live Oak Theater, 1301 Shattuck Ave. at Berryman. Through May 7. Tickets are $13-$15. 649-5999. www.aeofberkeley.org 

Aurora Theatre, “Blue/Orange” Wed.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 and 7 p.m., 2081 Addison St. through May 15. Tickets are $28-$45. 843-4822. www.aurora.theatre.org 

Berkeley Repertory Theater “The People’s Temple” at the Roda Theater, through May 29. Tickets are $20-$55. 647-2949. www.berkeleyrep.org 

Black Repertory Group “Bubbling Brown Sugar” the musical Fri. at 8 p.m., Sat. at 2:30 and 8 p.m. to May 14 at 3201 Adeline St. Tickets are $7-$15. 652-2120.  

Contra Costa Civic Theatre “Jekyll & Hyde: The Musical” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m. at 951 Pomona Ave., El Cerrito, through May 21. Tickets are $12-$20. 524-9132. www.ccct.org 

Eastenders Repertory “A Knight's Escape” and “WWJD,” Thurs. - Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 3 p.m., through May 15 at The Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby Ave. Tickets are $15-$18 available from 568-4118. 

Impact Briefs 7: “The How-To Show” Thu.-Sat at 8 p.m. at La Val’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid Ave., through May 28. Tickets are $10-$15. 464-4468. www.impacttheatre.com 

Opera Piccola and Stagebridge Senior Theater, “Being Something: Living ‘Young’ and Growing ‘Old’” Fri. and Sat. 8 p.m., Sun. at 3 p.m. at Oakland Metro, Jack London Square, through May 1. Tickets are $15. 444-4755. www.stagebridge.org 

“Proof” by David Auburn, Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m. through May 7, Sun. May 1 at 2:30 p.m at The Masquers Playhouse, 105 Park Place, Point Richmond. Tickets are $13. 232-4031. www.masquers.org 

Traveling Jewish Theater “Blood Relative” at the Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, Thurs., Fri. at 8 p.m., Sat. at 2 and 7 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. Tickets are $23-$34. 415-285-8080. www.atjt.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Presidio Ensemble at 8 p.m. at Giorgi Gallery, 2911 Claremeont Ave. Tickets are $10.  

Andy Canepa, piano recital at 8 p.m. in the PSR Chapel, 1798 Scenic Way. Suggested donation $10-$20. 704-7729. 

Street to Nowhere, Desa, The Wildlife at 9:30 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $5-$7. 848-0886. www.blakesontelegraph.com 

Sovoso at 8 p.m. at the Jazz- 

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

Potingue, contemporary flamenco and Latin music at 8:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10-$12. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Stompy Jones, East Coast Swing, Lindy Hop at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Swing dance lesson with Nick & Shanna at 8 p.m. Cost is $$11-13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Acoustic Son at 8 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

The Bills at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50-$18.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Candice & Company at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

Pete Madsen at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Avalon Rising, The Dead Guise at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $6. 841-2082. www.starryplough.com 

These Days, Stop at Nothing, Count the Hours at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $6. 525-9926. 

Beatropolis at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

The Chick Corea Elektric Band at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square, through Sun. Cost is $24-$28. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

SATURDAY, APRIL 30 

CHILDREN 

Los Amiguitos de La Peña with Orange Sherbert at 10:30 a.m. at La Peña. Cost is $5. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

THEATER 

Living Arts Playback Theater, an evening of improvisational theater at 8 p.m. at Berkeley Richmond Jewish Community Center, 1414 Walnut St. Tickets are $12-$18. For reservations 655-5186, ext. 25. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Poetry Flash with Albert Flynn DeSilver and Chris Stroffolino at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. Donation $2. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Trinity Chamber Concert “New Pacific Trio” at 8 p.m. at Trinity Chapel, 2320 Dana St. Cost is $8-$12. 549-3864. http://trinitychamberconcerts.com 

Berkeley Broadway Singers “Future Broadway” at 8 p.m. at St. Ambrose Church, 1145 Gilman St. Free concert. 604-5732. www.berkeleybroadwaysingers.org 

Peter Cincotti, jazz vocalist, at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $22-$42. 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

Meli at 7 and 9 p.m. at Spud’s Pizza, 3290 Adeline St. Cost is $5. 597-0795. 

Jody Stecher & Kate Breslin at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50-$18.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Mujeres: Carolyn Brandy with Ojala and Las Locas of Loco Bloco at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $18-$20. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Emmanuel Vaughn Lee Group at 8 p.m. at the Jazz- 

school. Cost is $15. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Kotoja at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. African dance lesson with Comfort at 9 p.m. Cost is $11-$13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Fingertight, Alexic, Forthmorning, alt, progressive, punk at 9 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $8-$10. 848-0886. www.blakesontelegraph.com 

The Rio Thing at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

Stevie Harris at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Conscious Cabaret “Been There, Undone That” at 8 p.m. at Unity of Berkeley, 2075 Eunice St. Tickets are $15-$25. 528-8844. www.unityberkeley.org 

Greg Lamboy, Christie McCarthy, Mokai at 8 p.m. at McNally’s Irish Pub, 5352 College Ave., Oakland. Fundraiser for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. 415-710-0207. 

Sandy Coates, Willow Willow, Yea-Ming at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $6. 841-2082. www.starryplough.com 

Midnight Laserbeam, Apocalipstick, Pigeon at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $6. 525-9926. 

CV1 at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

SUNDAY, MAY 1 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Moments Seized” photographs reconstructed in glazed graphite paintings by Mary Cook. Reception from 6 to 8 p.m. at Cafe DiBartolo, 3310 Grand Ave., Oakland. 832-9005. 

FILM 

“Under a Shipwrecked Moon” by Antero Alli at 8 p.m. at Finnish Brotherhood Hall, 1970 Chestnut St. Cost is $5-$10. 464-4640. www.verticalpool.com 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“Across Oceans of Sound: Music of the African Diaspora” a panel discussion at 2 p.m., concert at 3:30 p.m. at Hearst Museum of Anthropology, Bancroft Way at College Ave. 643-7648. http://hearstmuseum.berkeley.edu 

“Behind the Prints of Christopher Brown” with the printmaker at 3:30 p.m. at the Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak Sts. Cost is $4-$8. 238-2200. www.museumca.org 

Judy Chicago introduces “Kitty City: A Feline Book of Hours” from 2 to 4 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500.  

Poetry Flash a reading for Milvia Street Magazine at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. Donation $2. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Berkeley Broadway Singers “Unforgettable” Choral works, solo pieces and standards at 4 p.m. at St. Augustine’s Church, 400 Alcatraz Ave. 604-5732. www.berkeleybroadwaysingers.org 

Berkeley Community Chorus and Orchestra Duruflé “Requiem” at 4:30 p.m. at St. Joseph the Worker Church, 1640 Addison St. free, donations accepted. www.bcco.org 

Kronos Quartet at at 7 p.m. at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $42, available from 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

UC Chamber Chorus performs music composed during the Counter Reformation in Italy at 3 p.m. at Berkeley Art Museum, 2626 Bancroft Way. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

Maria Marquez at 4:30 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $12-$18. 845-5373. www.jazz- 

school.com 

Redbird with Peter Mulvey, Kris Delmhorst and Jeffrey Foucault at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50-$18.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Phil Berkowitz & Louis Blues at 7:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $9. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Minerva, Empathy at 4 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $8. 848-0886. www.blakesontelegraph.com 

From Ashes Rise, Paint it Black, Coliseum at 5 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $7. 525-9926. 

Haverfan, Revolve, Exposure 411, alt rock, at 9 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $8. 848-0886. www.blakesontelegraph.com 

MONDAY, MAY 2 

EXHIBTIONS 

“Be Animated at NIAD” an exhibition of cartoons, anime, and cartoon characters by artists with disabilities and local professional animators at NIAD Gallery, 551 23rd St., Richmond. 620-0290. www.niadart.org 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“Page to Stage” A conversation about the making of “The People’s Temple” with playwright and director Leigh Fondakowski at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Rep, 2015 Addison St. Free. 647-2949. www.berkeleyrep.org 

Actors Reading Writers “The Intimacy of Strangers” stories by Richard Bausch and Flannery O'Connor at 7:30 p.m. at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. Bring a book and take a book in our monthly book exchange. www.juliamorgan.org  

Greil Marcus looks at Bob Dylan and his music in “Like a Rolling Stone” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852.  

David Watt reads from “Bedside Manners: One Doctor’s Reflections on the Oddly Intimate Encounters between Patient and Healer” at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698. www.blackoakbooks.com 

Poetry Express with Jim Lyle at 7 p.m., at Priya Restaurant, 2072 San Pablo Ave. berkeleypoetryexpress@yahoo.com 

Last Word Poetry Open Mic featuring Marvin Hiemstra and Jan Steckel, at 7 p.m. at Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave. 649-1320. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Bill Bell & The Jazz Connection at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

ª

I see the city’s planting some podocarps along Dwight Way just east of Shattuck Avenue. I don’t see that often as a street tree; the plant is more likely to be in a lobby or courtyard, or next to some institutional doorway. As it generally gets used, it’s kind of a 1960s Sunset décor plant, with a poolside aura. It looks natural—which is to say, not quite natural at all—next to an Eames chair or one of those round plastic tables that look like exaggerated hourglasses. 

In fact, the foliage of this tree, sometimes called African fern pine, has an oddly plastic look. Maybe that’s because it’s fairly uniform, all its needly leaves about the same size and color except for the newest growth. That’s paler green, tender and a bit smaller; it gives the tree a sprightly fresh look in spring. 

On the street, though, it looks good—what landscapers call a “clean” look goes well there. Maybe the less sheltered life agrees with it, or maybe those on Dwight Way are just young trees, loose and airy in habit, and not pruned into stiffness yet. The tree does tolerate heavy pruning, which can make it denser for better or worse. I know this because it’s one species that my tree teacher set me on when he was hoping I’d make a new mistake for a change, by pruning too heavily. I did, and the tree is just fine, healthy and handsome now nevertheless. 

I’m not sure whether it’s about having been a good Catholic girl or having been a scholarship student who needed good grades (and was sternly notified of this at about grade six) but making mistakes has always been the scary part of schooling to me. I don’t think I ever really grasped the concept of creative screw-ups until I studied with Dennis Makishima, and I was nearly 40 then. The closest I came before that was that my father had taught me to deliver a good straight-line for a bad joke. Hey kids! Here’s my advice: Screw up now, while you can. And enjoy it! 

Podocarpus gracilior’s English name isn’t quite a mistake, confusing as it is. It’s from east Africa, and though it only looks ferny, it has something real in common with pines: It’s a gymnosperm. Gymnosperms are “primitive” flowering plants—in a sense in which “primitive” means “basal”—that is, basic, a big, senior limb on the tree of life. They include all the conifers, like pines, firs, redwood; and some more stereotypically ancient taxa like cycads, ginkgo, araucarias, ephedra (our own desert tea) and that oddest of desert plants, Welwitschia. (You can see one of those at the UC Bot Garden.) 

You can see araucarias around town, too—the Norfolk Island pines, bunya-bunyas, and monkey puzzle trees that the Victorians were so fond of, and planted in their gardens. Like them, podocarps are plants of ancient Gondwanaland, one of the ur-continents of really ancient Earth. This makes them an odd inhabitant indeed of magazine gardens and decorator lobbies, a souvenir of a time not only before Martha Stewart but before Mrs. Beeton or Eve or even Lilith’s favorite aesthetic daemon. Far from being plastic, it’s not far from being a component of some of the petroleum deposits from which plastic was made… or at least of brown coal. 

Podocarps are semitropical in origin, so one might wonder how they’ll do in the next freeze. Will they be as wimpy as, say, the jacarandas over on Gilman Street, who stagger back from every hard frost just barely able to look gorgeous next flowering season? Podocarps, like jacarandas, are more common as street trees in Los Angeles—maybe the Berkeley tree folks are anticipating global warming. 

But I know a few big ones around town that have soldiered on through the last 25 years or so, and look as good as the necessities of building maintenance and the exigencies of awkward siting could allow. What the hey, they’ve survived continental drift, a few ice ages, the slings and arrows of outrageous landscaping. I like the idea of giving them a crack at surviving Berkeley in the early 21st century.›

TUESDAY, APRIL 26 

Early Morning Bird Walk Meet at 7 a.m. at the far parking lot of Bear Creek entrance to Briones to look for warblers and woodpeckers on the Seaborg Trail. 525-2233. 

Return of the Over-the-Hills Gang Hikers 55 years and older who are interested in nature study, history, fitness, and fun are invited to join us on a series of monthly excursions exploring our Regional Parks. Meets at 10 a.m. For information and to register call 525-2233.  

Homeschooling Options Panel Discussion from 7 to 9 p.m. at Epworth United Methodist Church, 1953 Hopkins St. Cost is $5. 877-648-KIDS ext. 86. www.npnonline.org  

“China Digital Times” with Xiao Qiang of the Berkeley China Internet Project at 4 p.m. at IEAS Conference Room, 2223 Fulton St. 642-2809. http://ieas.berkeley.edu 

Berkeley PC Users Group Problem solving and beginners meeting to answer, in simple English, users questions about Windows computers. At 7 p.m. at 1145 Walnut St. corner of Eunice. All welcome, no charge. 527-2177.  

Vision Screening for Toddlers at 10 a.m. at Habitot, 2065 Kittredge St. Cost is $5-$6. 647-1111. www.habitot.org 

Taiko Drum Lessons at Tatsumaki Taiko, 725 Gilman St. fora ges 12 and up. Cost is $12 per class. Class runs for 6 weeks. For information email tatsumaki@email.com  

Introductory Buddhist Meditation Class at 7 p.m. at Dzalandhara Buddhist Center, in Berkeley. Suggested donation $7-$10. For directions call 559-8183.www.kadampas.org 

Trance Drumming Workshop with Sondra Slade at 7 p.m. at Belladonna, 2436 Sacramento St. Cost is $30-$40. www.belladonna.ws 

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. 845-6830. 

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 27 

“The Education Crisis in California” with Greg Hodge, Oakland School Board, Terry Doran, Berkeley School Board and Fannie Brown, Oakland Acorn at 1:30 p.m. at North Berkeley Senior Center. Sponsored by Berkeley Gray Panthers. 548-9696. 

Landmarks Preservation Ordinance Proposed Amendments Public Hearing at 7 p.m. at the Planning Commission, North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-7410. 

“Reproductive Rights: Different Views” A panel discussion sponsored by the ACLU at 7 p.m. at Richmond’s Main Public Library, 325 Civic Center Drive. 558-0377. 

Codornices Creek Watershed Restoration Plan Community meeting at 7 p.m. at St. Mary’s College High School, 1294 Albina Ave. 540-6669. www.urbancreeks.org 

Bayswater Book Club meets to discuss “Conspiracy of Fools,” by Kurt Eichenwald at 6:30 p.m. at Barnes and Noble Coffee Shop, El Cerrito Plaza. 433-2911. 

“Urban Futures: Planning for Sustainable Urban Development” with Prof. Raquel Pinderhughes, SFSU, at 7 p.m. at the Ecology Center, 2530 San Pablo Ave. 548-2220, ext. 223. www.ecologycenter.org 

Poison Control with Barbara Cheatham, Alameda County Health Dept. at 11 a.m. at Habitot, 2065 Kittredge St. 647-1111. www.habitot.org 

Berkeley PTA Rally to protest the Governor’s proposed education budget at 3 p.m. at Old City Hall, 2134 MLK Jr Way. 333-6097. 

Study Skills and Organization Workshop for Teens at 7 p.m. at Classroom Matters, 2607 7th Street, Suite E. Free. 540-8646.  

“Work with Meaning, Work with Joy” with Pat Sullivan at 6:30 p.m. at Unity of Berkeley, 2075 Eunice St. Cost is $20. 530-0284. www.unityberkeley.org 

Walk Berkeley for Seniors meets at 9:30 a.m. at the Sea Breeze Market, just west of the I-80 overpass. 548-9840. 

The Berkeley Lawn Bowling Club provides free instruction every Wednesday at 10:30 a.m. at 2270 Action St. 841-2174.  

THURSDAY, APRIL 28 

Early Morning Bird Walk Meet at 7 a.m. at the Pack Rat Trail, Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

Green Building 101 covering the basics of building or remodeling a green home, energy and water conservation and air quality issues at 7 p.m. at Albany Community Center, 1249 Marin Ave. To register call 845-5106, ext. 230. www.BuildGreen.Now.org 

Dining Out for Life Over 60 East Bay restaurants will donate 25% of their sales to support the Center of AIDS Services, 5720 Shattuck Ave. Oakland. For a list of participating restaurants call 282-0623. www.diningoutforlife.com 

The First Place Fund for Youth “There’s No Place Like Home” benefit at the Asian Cultural Center, downtown Oakland, from 5:30-8:30 p.m. Tickets are $55. 272-0979, ext. 26. 

Teach-in on Torture Human rights experts, and litigants against the government, and academics will challenge U.S. government sponsorship of torture, from 1:30-9 p.m. at the Thrust Stage, Berkeley Rep, 2025 Addison. www.tortureteachin.org 

Easy Does It Disability Assistance Board Meeting at 6:30 p.m. at 1744A University Ave. All welcome. 845-5513.  

Advance Directives What are they, and how can they help you and your loved ones? A panel discussion at Alta Bates Health Education Center, Fontaine Auditorium, 400 Hawthorne St., Oakland. Free, reservations recommended. 869-8276. 

Legal Issues for Relative Caregivers A workshop for grandparents and relatives who are raising grandchildren, nieces and nephews at 7 p.m. at Bananas, 5232 Claremont Ave., Oakland. To register call 658-7353. 

Older People United A discussion group for elders over 75 at 1:30 p.m. at Berkeley Gray Panthers, 1403 Addison St. 548-9696. 

Latino Film Festival: “Sexo con Amor” a comedy from Chile at 7:30 p.m. at La Pena, 3105 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $8. 849-2568. 

Karen Vogel co-creator of the Motherpeace Tarot deck at 7 p.m. at Belladonna, 2436 Sacramento St. www.belladonna.ws 

FRIDAY, APRIL 29 

Protest Action: Campus Bay and UC Field Station to demand better oversight of these toxic sites and protection for the community at 7 a.m. at South 47th and Meade Sts., off the Bay View exit, west of 580, in Richmond. Dress warmly. 496-2722. 

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon with Izaly Zemsovsky on “Islam in Russia” Luncheon at 11:45 a.m. for $13, speech at 12:30 p.m., at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant St. For information and reservations call 526-2925 or 665-9020. 

Celebrating South Berkeley Seniors A presentation of murals in progress, storytelling, food and music at 6 p.m. at South Berkeley Senior Center. Sponsored by the California Council for the Humanities, California Stories Project. 704-0803. 486-8213. www.calhum.org 

Malcolm X Consciousness Conference A 3-day event with speakers, concerts, awards and fashion show at Laney College, Oakland. Tickets are $75. 997-0075. www.unlockyourroots.com 

Alameda County Bike to Work Kick-Off Lunch at noon at the MTC Metrocenter, 101 Eighth St., Oakland. to RSVP call 530-3444. www.511.org 

Berkeley School Volunteers Training workshop for volunteers interested in helping in Berkeley Public schools at 1:30 p.m. at 1835 Allston Way. 644-8833. 

“Exploring Quantum Phenomena” with Cornelia Jarica at 7 p.m. at Unity of Berkeley, 2075 Eunice St. Cost is $15. 528-8844. www.unityberkeley.org 

“Three Beats for Nothing” a small group meeting weekly at 10 a.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center to sing for fun and practice, mostly 16th century harmony. No charge. 655-8863, 843-7610.  

Berkeley Chess Club meets Fridays at 7:15 p.m. at the East Bay Chess Club, 1940 Virginia St. Players at all levels are welcome. 845-1041. 

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 

SATURDAY, APRIL 30 

See Our Snakes Meet the resident snakes of Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park at 10:30 a.m. and learn about their behavior. 525-2233. 

Green Home Expo and Energy Symposium from noon to 5:30 p.m. at Civic Center Park. Information on energy conservation, sustainable and non-toxic building products and renewable energy technology. www.GreenHome EXPO.org 

Cinco de Mayo Celebration with BAHIA and the City of Berkeley at 1 p.m. at James Kenney Park, 1720 Eighth St., at Delaware. Health fair, music, children’s games, crafts, and food. 525-1463. 

Berkeley Historical Society Walking Tour of “Holy Hill,” site of the Graduate Theological Union and the Flora Lamson Hewlett Library led by Allen Stross, from 10 a.m. to noon. Cost is $8-$10. 848-0181. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/histsoc/ 

Illuminated Cards Craft Event Make your own illuminated card in the style of the Middle Ages from 2 to 4 p.m. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave. Free and open to all ages. 526-3700, ext. 17. 

Civil Rights Celebration honoring James Forman, Joanne Grant and Ossie Davis at 6 p.m. at SEIU Local 250, 560 Thomas L. Berkley Way (formerly 20th St.) Between San Pablo and Telegraph Aves. Donation $5-$10. 

International Family Fair sponsored by The New School of Berkeley from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Bonita St. between Cedar and Virginia. Live entertainment, games, food and raffle. Free. 548-9165. www.newschoolofberkeley.org 

Spring Plant Sale from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the UC Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Drive. 643-2755. http://botanicalgarden.berkeley.edu 

Berkeley Potters Guild Annual Spring Show Sat. and Sun. from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. at 731 Jones St. 524-7031. www.berkeleypotters.com 

New Women’s Program Benefit Sale from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. in the KPFA parking lot on Berkeley Way just east of MLK Way. 527-2784. 

Self Defense for Daughters & Parents from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center, 2640 College Ave. Cost is $75 for a parent and child. 845-8542, ext. 302. 

Good Night Little Farm Help with the afternoon feeding, learn about our rare breeds and help tuck the animals in for the night, at 3:30 p.m. at Tilden Little Farm, Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

Choosing the Right Rose and Keeping an Organic Rose Garden with Ken Jose, rose expert, at 10 a.m. at Magic Gardens Nursery, 729 Heinz Ave. 644-2351. www.magicgardens.com 

Botanizing California A series of local and overnight field trips to highlight California’s plant communities. Cost is $80-$95. Registration required. 845-4116. www.nativeplants.org 

Drawing and Painting the Birds of the Garden A two day class in the Botanic Garden of Tilden Park. Cost is $90-$95. Registration required. 845-4116. www.nativeplants.org 

“In the Light of Reverence” a documentary with Chief Sisk-Franco of the Winneman-Wintu Tribe on the development of the Shasta Dam at 6 p.m. at the Richmond Main Library. Sponsored by West County Native Americans for Environmental Justice. 236-1631. 

“The Teachings of Light and Sound” with Sri Gary Olsen from 1 to 3:30 p.m. at the Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. www.masterpathpath.org 

Art Deco Society Preservation Ball Dinner, silent auction and entertainment, and presentation of the 2005 Art Deco Preservation Awards at Sweet’s Ballroom, 1933 Broadway, Oakland. Tickets are $85-$100. 415-982-3326. www.artdecosociety.org 

Reel Kids Films Inc. Gala Benefit at Sequoyah Country Club, 4550 Heafey Rd., Oakland. For ticket information and reservations call 978-0002. www.reelkidsfilms.com 

Integral Transformative Practice Workshop Sat. and Sun. at the Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. Non-strenuous movement, meditation and energy exercises. Cost is $125. For reservations call 415-927-0913. pam_kramer22@yahoo.com  

Living More With Less, A day of conversation about living simpler, slower and smaller from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Oakland, 2501 Harrison St. Cost is $12-$15. 548-2220, ext. 233. www.metafoundation.org/ 

simplicity 

Free Emergency Preparedness Class in Disaster Mental Health from 9 a.m. to noon at 2100 Martin Luther King Jr. Way. To sign up call 981-5605. www. 

ci.berkeley.ca.us/fire/oes.html 

Small Press Distribution Spring Open House from noon to 4 p.m. at 1341 Seventh St., off Gilman, with books, entertainment and guest of honor Andrei Cogrescu. 524-1668. www.spdbooks.org 

Free Garden Tours at Regional Parks Botanic Garden Sat. and Sun. at 2 pm. Regional Parks Botanic Garden, Tilden Park. Call to confirm. 841-8732. www.nativeplants.org 

Junior Rangers of Tilden meets Sat. mornings at Tilden Nature Center. For more information call 525-2233. 

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. 

Kol Hadash Passover Seder at 6 p.m. at the Albany Community Center. Reservations required. 925-254-0609 or 925-254-1908. greensu@comcast.net  

SUNDAY, MAY 1 

Berkeley Architectural Heritage Spring House Tour of Panoramic Hill from 1 to 5 p.m. Cost is $25-$30. For details and reservations call 841-2242. www.berkeleyheritage.com 

Crowden Music Center’s Anniversary Gala at 5 p.m. in the Rotunda, 300 Frank Ogawa Plaza, Oakland. Honoring Robert Cole and Susan Muscarella. Tickets are $200. 559-6910. www.crowdenmusiccenter.org  

Lake Merritt Neighbors Organized for Peace Peace walk around the lake every Sun. Meet at 3 p.m. at the colonnade at the NE end of the lake. 763-8712. lmno4p.org 

Tibetan Buddhism with Jack Petranker on “Mind in Nature” at 6 p.m. at the Tibetan Nyingma Institute, 1815 Highland Pl. 843-6812. www.nyingmainstitute.com 

May Day Maimouna with Achi ben Shalom at 3 p.m. at 2746 College Ave. 843-3131.  

MONDAY, MAY 2 

National Organization for Women, Oakland East Bay Chapter, meets at 6 p.m. at 1515 Webster St. Renee Walker will discuss Abstinence-Only Education in Bay Area Public Schools. 287-8948. 

“History of Local Creek Restoration” A slide show sponsored by Friends of Five Creeks in obeservation of California Watersheds Month, at 7 p.m. at Albany Community Center, 1249 Marin Ave. 848 9358. www.fivecreeks.org 

Iraq War Veteran and Resister Camilo Mejia speaks at 7 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Oakland, 2501 Harrison St. at 27th. Tickets are $5 - $15 sliding scale, no one turned away. Benefits Veterans for Peace. 415-255-7331. www.veteransforpeace.org 

World Affairs/Politics Discussion Group for people 60 years and over meets at 10:15 a.m. at the Albany Senior Center, 846 Masonic Ave. 524-9122. 

Berkeley CopWatch organizational meeting at 8 p.m. at 2022 Blake St. 548-0425. 

Trivia Cafe at 6:30 p.m. at Ristorante Raphael 2132 Center St. 644-9500. 

ONGOING 

Bike Chain Response is organizing an interfaith bike ride from the Nevada Test Site to Los Alamos National Laboratory, June 19 to July 17, to raise awareness of alternative modes of transportation and the tragedy of the nuclear weapons industry. 505-870-2-ASK. www.lovarchy.org/ride/ 

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 

CITY MEETINGS 

Parks and Recreation Commission meets Mon., April 25, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Virginia Aiello, 981-5158. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/parksandrecreation 

City Council meets Tues., April 26, at 7 p.m in City Council Chambers. 981-6900. www.ci. 

berkeley.ca.us/citycouncil 

Citizens Budget Review Commission meets Wed., April 27, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-7041. www.ci.berkeley.ca. 

us/commissions/budget 

Civic Arts Commission meets Wed., April 27, at 6:30 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Mary Ann Merker, 981-7533. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/ 

commissions/civicarts 

Disaster Council meets Wed., April 27, at 7 p.m., at the Emergency Operations Center, 997 Cedar St. William Greulich, 981-5502. www.ci.berkeley.ca. us/commissions/disaster 

Energy Commission meets Wed., April 27, at 6:30 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Neal De Snoo, 981-5434. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/energy 

Library Board of Trustees meets Wed., April 27, at 7 p.m. at the South Berkeley Senior Center, Jackie Y. Griffin, 981-6195. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/ 

commissions/library  

Planning Commission meets Wed., April 27, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Janet Homrighausen, 981-7484. www.ci.berkeley. ca.us/commissions/planning 

Police Review Commission meets Wed., April 27, at 7:30 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-4950. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/policereview 

Zoning Adjustments Board meets Thurs., April 28, at 7 p.m., in City Council Chambers. Mark Rhoades, 981-7410. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/zoningw

The central political question at this point in time is not what to do when your candidate loses elections—it’s what to do when your candidate wins. 

Case in point: probably very few of the voters who pulled the lever or punched the card or pressed the button for two worthwhile Democratic congressmen, George Miller and Ron Dellums, understood that their votes were contributing in a significant way to the expansion of organized gambling in Northern California. And yet, Miller, an otherwise excellent legislator, sponsored the shady deal with an obscure tribe which fast-tracked the San Pablo casino, which Diane Feinstein and others are now trying to reverse.  

Dellums sponsored the bill which delivered Point Molate, a regional resource which was formerly a navy base, into the hands of the desperately needy Richmond city council, and thence to the hands of casino developer Jim Levine, a big-time contributor both to Dellums’ hand-picked successor Barbara Lee and the Republican National Committee.  

It’s possible that none of these three fine liberals, Miller, Dellums and Lee, understood the full implications of what was going on with these casinos. Or perhaps they did, and didn’t care, or even approved. But it’s certainly true that Democratic voters up and down the East Bay were not told when they voted for these three that they were voting for more and bigger casinos. Some voters undoubtedly would like more and bigger casinos, but many wouldn’t.  

And how about those who voted for the Oakland school board? See the UnderCurrents column, this issue, for details about what they didn’t know and when they didn’t know it. 

Did the Albany voters for its current leaders realize they might be voting to turn Golden Gate Fields into an enormous themed mega-mall? Maybe not. Do they know it now? 

Did El Cerrito voters know that they were voting support of a utility tax on solar power? I don’t think so, and the courts subsequently agreed. 

Closer to home, did the Berkeley progressives who organized the “draft Tom Bates” campaign three years ago realize they were getting a guy who would do everything he could to grease the skids for big developers? Did they intend to vote for a mayor who would enthusiastically orchestrate gutting the ordinance which has protected our historic resources for more than 25 years? (Department of Self-Defense: I took part in the original draft meetings myself, before I rejoined the ranks of the press. However, I was saved from the ignominy of having attended the “Coronation Convention,” at which the last act of the draft-Tom drama played out, by the birth of my granddaughter in San Francisco.)  

Are many Berkeley progressive or just plain liberal voters watching the City Council meetings often enough to figure out that deliberation has gone out the door? These days, the mayor presides over the meetings in a slap-dash fashion that completely ignores rules of order, both Roberts’ and the council’s own rules, in the interest of speedily rubber-stamping decisions made elsewhere so that Berkeley’s elders can get home to bed. What old-time radicals used to call “the interests” are catered to; needy citizens take second place. Don’t believe me? Watch the proceeding on cable TV or the Internet. 

Case in point: on Tuesday two public hearings were scheduled for the Berkeley City Council. First on the agenda was the hearing on the allocation of public funds to Berkeley’s struggling non-profits. More than two hundred people showed up for this hearing. Second on the schedule was the pro-forma hearing at which the Planning Department advanced its air-tight advocacy for overturning the Landmark Preservation Commission’s designation of the building which houses Celia’s Restaurant as a historic resource. Between five and 10 people were there for this one. 

Now, I yield to no one in my belief that it’s important to consider carefully which historic buildings will be sacrificed to development sites. I know that the company which wants to build on the University Avenue site did an excellent job of working the corporate media to present their case, which put pressure on Berkeley’s Planning Department and City Council to act quickly in their behalf. I am well aware that Berkeley’s preservation proponents who were there to argue the other side are volunteers, with day jobs and families.  

But still, it was wrong, very wrong, for the mayor to insist, and most of the council to agree, that the Celia’s matter should be taken up first on the agenda. This meant that the 200 workers and clients from the non-profits had to sit through 45 minutes of someone else’s public hearing before they had their chance to speak. There could be no clearer demonstration of the priorities of the current mayor and his council allies from all three parties: ex-mods, ex-progs and dead armadillos alike. Yet I don’t think that the majority of Berkeley voters would agree that putting buildings before people is the right thing to do. 

The next Berkeley election is about a year and a half away. Now, not a year from now, is the time for Berkeleyans (and residents of other East Bay cities) to be seeking out and persuading people to run for office who are genuinely committed to acting in the public interest. In the last Berkeley election councilmembers Spring and Worthington spearheaded the ill-fated draft effort. They continue to speak consistently on behalf of all citizens—homeowners, renters and homeless—as well as for protection of Berkeley’s environment, both built and natural. Berkeley knows who they are and what they stand for. This time one of them should be talked into running.  

—

Old-time vaudeville conjurers, before they went Las Vegas, used to rely on a series of clever effects known as “hat tricks.” The magician, elegantly attired in white tie and tails, would produce a series of unexpected objects out of his top hat: playing cards, brightly colored silk scarves, and for the grand finale, a live rabbit. Audience members, particularly small boys, would avidly watch the magician’s hands to see how he did it, but they seldom figured it out. A friend of mine used to do a funny imitation of the patter with which the magicians accompanied hat tricks: “At no time do my hands leave my arms!” It was designed to do what’s called “misdirection” in the trade. The idea is that you keep the watcher’s attention focused one place while the trick is actually being done someplace else. Sleight of hand, as the stage magician’s craft is sometimes called, is also practiced in other places, notably in “the shell game,” where con artists on the street move around peas under walnut shells and lure gullible watchers into betting on where they are.  

Berkeley citizens in the past few weeks have been treated to a masterful demonstration of sleight of hand by our sophisticated and charming city manager. It’s Budget Workshop time once again, and we’re being given the illusion that our opinions on how the city spends its money will really make a difference.  

First, a few facts. Almost all of every city budget is spoken for before this process ever starts. The biggest share—perhaps three quarters—of the total, goes to employee salaries, up and down the scale. When those already at the table have consumed most of the meal (to mix in a new metaphor), the bones are thrown to the dogs to fight over. In Berkeley, the leftover funds amount to less than one per cent of the total budget, which is now close to the $300 million mark.  

This year, something like $10 million has been left to squabble over, mainly from increases in real estate transfer taxes and paybacks for revenues previously withheld by the state. But before the council’s discretionary allocation process for this fractional amount started, the city manager asked for big chunks to be set aside for expensive information technology purchases slated to replace similar systems which were lemons. A majority of the council members acceded. We hope the new models won’t be as buggy as the old ones. 

So now we’re down to maybe a couple of million in crumbs. And here’s where the sleight of hand begins. Those of you who read the gullible metro dailies will have seen a lot of recent hype about the fountain in the park behind City Hall, which has been dry for as long as I’ve been in Berkeley. One of our always dependable citizen correspondents has documented the true history of the plan to restore the fountain—see the first letter opposite—so I won’t have to bother doing it myself. Here’s the con: No one ever intended to spend general fund money to fix the fountain. 

The city manager’s recent proposal to allocate an enormous percentage of the remaining budgetary crumbs from the general fund to fixing the fountain was nothing but a clever piece of misdirection. It fooled a lot of people, notably swimmers in city pools, into believing that the reason their favorite programs were going begging was spending on frivolities like fountains. It gave the equally gullible (or perhaps disingenuous) City Council an opportunity to appear fiscally prudent by voting it down. And it gave the city manager, who has been managing the purse strings at City Hall for years as assistant to a long line of predecessors, a way to keep the audience distracted while he seemed to pull that rabbit out of his hat once more.  

The con is not working so well this time, however. A behind-the-scenes coalition of unlikely allies—people formerly known as mods, progs, grumpies and greens—has been circulating sharp-pencil documents on the Internet. These are people who could never get along in the same meeting room, but whose analyses all add up to the same result: excessive spending on salaries, especially at the highest management levels. There are also many complaints about management’s new practice of earmarking most of the small number of remaining dollars even before the so-called citizen budget workshops have happened.  

The City Council seems to be the last to get the word, unfortunately. The only one who gets it at all is Kriss Worthington. He’s that rarest of birds, a progressive who’s also thrifty—he watches the money carefully because he’d really like to have some left over for social services. He’s resigned to the 99 percent of spending that’s fixed already, but he’s still keeping track of what’s left. He’s voting no on every budget allocation vote as a protest against the hypocrisy of giving the impression that real decisions are ever made as a result of budget workshops.  

In theory, the final vote on the budget won’t happen until June. If all the people who have figured out how the rabbit gets in the hat could manage to talk to one another, they might be able to go together to talk sense to their City Council members in time to make a difference. But don’t hold your breath—constructive consensus is one magic trick Berkeley citizens haven’t managed to pull off yet.