Opinion

The cover photo of this week’s issue of the French magazine Le Nouvel Observateur shows an armored vehicle labeled “state police tactical unit,” manned by grim-faced booted and helmeted figures with clenched jaws, wearing dark glasses, and carrying big guns, staring straight ahead. In the lower right-hand corner, we see two middle-aged African-American women looking up at the truck. One, wearing a red floral muu-muu, hair in curlers, raises her arm in supplication to the men, who ignore her. The headline is stark: “L’Amérique mise a nu”—America laid bare (literally, nude). The sub-head says that “The hurricane reveals the fissures in the society of everyone for himself.” -more-

A curious development in Berkeley’s social evolution has recently surfaced in these pages. Despite the fact that the official city logo is derived from the multi-hued faces which are part of the mural Romare Bearden created for the City Council chambers, it’s apparent that the city has a residual population of pull-up-the-ladder cultural isolationists. Embedded political commentator Zelda Bronstein’s recent column documented and lamented the fact that Berkeley’s building boom has still produced almost no housing for low-income people (anticipated more than a year ago in an article by Rob Wrenn). It has elicited responses from seemingly well-educated and articulate residents who ask why anyone would want to live with such people anyhow. -more-