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Jakob Schiller: Riding the Flood Waters in New Orleans. Jane Harrison, a member of the Humane Society of America, rescues dogs left behind by their owners in the Garden District of New Orleans last week. Daily Planet photographer Jakob Schiller was in New Orleans last weekend to cover the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. S
Jakob Schiller: Riding the Flood Waters in New Orleans. Jane Harrison, a member of the Humane Society of America, rescues dogs left behind by their owners in the Garden District of New Orleans last week. Daily Planet photographer Jakob Schiller was in New Orleans last weekend to cover the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. S
 

News

Commissioners Demand Role in Formation of UC-City Downtown Plan By RICHARD BRENNEMAN

Friday September 16, 2005

Berkeley Planning and Development Director Dan Marks unveiled the draft work program for the joint city/UC Berkeley Downtown Area Plan (DAP) at Monday night’s meeting of the Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC). 

Marks said he will present the work plan to the City Council on Sept. 27. 

Several commissioners made it clear they were uneasy with the notion of an expansive university in the midst of a massive buildout having a decisive say in the fate of the city’s landmarks-rich urban core. 

The DAP, the key provision of the settlement of the city’s lawsuit filed in response to the university’s Long Range Development Plan, is designed to ease the impacts of the university’s projected 800,000 square feet of development and 1,300 new parking spaces in the city center. 

The new DAP will cover an area between Hearst Avenue on the north and Dwight Way on the south and Oxford Street on the east and Martin Luther King Jr. Way on the west. 

Marks presented commissioners Monday with copies of his three-page letter to UCB Interim Assistant Vice Chancellor for Physical and Environment Emily Marthinsen, who is filling the shoes of the recently departed Tom Lollini until a permanent replacement is named. 

Marks wrote that the city is close to hiring a lead planner to work full-time on the project, with Principal Planner Jennifer Lawrence filling a similar role for the university. Both would serve on a staff-level planning committee tentatively consisting of himself, city Land Use Planning Manager Mark Rhoades, a city transportation planner and Kerry O’Banion, another principal planner from UCB.  

 

The pitch 

While Marthinsen accompanied Marks to the microphone, she left most of the speaking to her city counterpart. 

Marks said “both Tom (Lollini) and I were very excited by this opportunity” when they learned the results of city/university settlement’s provisions. 

He said that the university’s expansion was one of several developments which have arisen since the existing downtown plan was adopted that merited another go at the planning process. 

“Bus Rapid transit will bring profound changes,” Marks said, referring to AC Transit’s planned development of bus express lanes in downtown Berkeley and along Telegraph Avenue. 

A joint university/corporate development project, including a hotel, conference centers and art museums, slated for most of a two-block area between Center Street and University Avenue and Oxford Way and Shattuck Avenue, may go forward while the downtown plan is being decided, Marks said. 

As part of the information-gathering phase, Marks said a new survey of historical buildings in the planning area is needed, which would include participation of the LPC and the Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association. 

“I want to be sure we capture all the historical resources downtown,” Marks said. 

He then turned to the composition of the advisory committee. Marks said, city “staff does not want the committee to be a full public participation” process. 

“The ideal size would be 15 people,” said Marks. “The more you go beyond that, the harder it is to manage.” 

He said that he wouldn’t recommend that the city adopt the workshop model with open public participation. 

“There will be public workshops, though only to get input and not as a way to get consensus building,” he said. 

 

The response  

“I’m concerned it could become Novartis West,” said commissioner Carrie Olson, alluding to the university’s controversial deal between the College of Natural Resources and the international chemical giant. “The separation of the town’s needs from the gown’s needs is a big deal to me.” 

Commissioner Patty Dacey said she was concerned that “the new steroid-driven downtown area is now to include LeConte. No one in my neighborhood is applauding. They look with fear and loathing. It looks like the university will have veto power over our entire downtown plan if it’s not satisfactory. We see this as something that could take over our residences downtown.” 

In addition, she said she was also concerned both about what she said was the city’s surrender of sovereignty and the fiscal penalties the city will have to pay if the plan is not produced within the narrow time frame. 

Dacey said that “the only way this mistrust and fear can be dissipated is with an open and inclusive democratic process where stakeholder groups are acknowledged and can appoint their own members, rather than by appointment by the City Council.” 

Whatever the composition of the new committee, she said, she wanted to make sure that the LPC had a seat. 

Commissioner Steven Winkel agreed. “One person per councilmember might make sense” for a citywide plan, but with a more focused plan, the council “should select members not by district but by interests.” 

“The exciting thing about downtown Berkeley is that it unifies all the taxpayers,” said Commissioner Leslie Emmington. “It is the heart of the city, both physically and spiritually ... It’s everybody’s downtown. This is a serious thing.” 

While “27 stakeholders participated in the current plan,” Dacey said, in the current proposal “the university is a stakeholder, city council is a stakeholder and staff is a stakeholder, but where are the people?” 

Olson pointed out zthat in addition to property held in its own name, the university has effective use of property which foundations and other groups are holding for the school. She asked Marks to be sure all those sites were included in the list UC Berkeley gave the city on Aug. 27. 

“We are aware that the university holds property in different names, and we have asked them to include that,” he said. 

During the ongoing questioning, mostly from Dacey and Emmington, Marks said the UC hotel itself wasn’t part of the 800,000 square feet of new building that would be the focus of the plan. “It is a private project on land owned by the Bank of America ... the site would go in under the current downtown plan or we could change it.” 

Winkel, who offered up the resolution that won unanimous approval from his colleagues, calling for the LPC to be considered a coequal stakeholder on an “appropriately sized” task force appointed by the council with the specific proviso that the planning commission would be an equal and not dominant participant, “especially after what we went through with the (revisions to the Landmarks Preservation) Ordinance.” 

Taking a few weeks to consider an ordinance years in the shaping, the planning commission proposed significant changes that didn’t sit well with the LPC. 

 

The timeline 

Accompanying Marks’ letter to Martinsen was his proposed timeline for the process. Between now and next January, he said, city and university staff and the advisory panel, appointed by the City Council, will gather information and establish goals and visions for the area. 

Between next February and November 2007, staff and the panel will develop and consider various development scenarios, then select one for a draft plan to be reviewed by city commissions. The City Council and the UC Berkeley chancellor will make the final approval of the draft plan. 

Another year will be spent preparing an Environmental Impact Report that will consider the preferred plan along with alternatives. During the final eight months, the plan will be reviewed by city commissions. The Planning Commission will make a recommendation to the City Council, which will vote on the final document in May 2009. 

 

Last word 

Commissioner James Samuels, in his last meeting as a landmarks commissioner, wryly offered that representation selected by stakeholder groups could be considered a conflict with the goal of having a truly democratic process. 

Monday marked his last LPC meeting before heading to his new seat on the Planning Commission, where he was Councilmember Laurie Capitelli’s replacement for the outgoing David Tabb and thus he was able to hear Marks again two nights later.  


Planning Commission Seeks Lead In Changing Zoning Laws By MATTHEW ARTZ

Friday September 16, 2005

Planning Commissioners made clear Wednesday that they want to take the lead as the city and UC Berkeley begin rewriting downtown zoning laws. 

“It’s completely absurd that all we do is come in at the end and recommend a plan to the council,” said Commissioner Rob Wrenn after the meeting. “They can’t just shove the Planning Commission out of the way and then bring it back at the last minute.” 

As stipulated in a legal settlement last spring, the city and UC Berkeley are beginning work on a new land-use plan for downtown, where UC Berkeley intends to do the majority of its new construction over the next 15 years. 

While the Downtown Berkeley Association supports a new land use plan, which it believes can help coordinate several new buildings and transportation developments proposed for the city center, several commissioners have publicly criticized the undertaking. They fear a new downtown plan will lead to taller buildings and give the university too much say in city zoning. 

Before work can begin on the plan, the City Council must form a citizen task force to guide staff on preparing the plan. Several planning commissioners Wednesday sparred with city staff, demanding the Planning Commission lead the task force. 

“Given that we have statutory responsibility to advise the council on area plans, it is really important that the Planning Commission be at the heart of the process,” said Planning Commissioner Sara Shumer. 

But city staff said they would not make any recommendations to the City Council regarding the committee’s hierarchy. 

“Staff’s view is that the City Council ought to decide what it wants to do,” said Planning Director Dan Marks. He said that staff would offer several options for the council in forming the task force at its Sept. 27 meeting. Marks did say that he would recommend the task force be limited to between 15 and 20 members. 

“As it gets larger, it gets more difficult to reach a consensus,” Marks said after the meeting. 

The last downtown plan, which included a working group of more than 25 residents, took five years to complete. The area plan for South Campus neighborhoods is now in its eighth year. 

Shumer countered that the task force would need more members to give a voice to all downtown stakeholders. 

“The community is already worried about the legitimacy and democratic nature of this process,” she said. “If it’s not an open process, people won’t see the plan as legitimate.” 

Harry Pollack, the commission chair, said he thought the task force should be “a manageable size” and added that he hadn’t formed an opinion on whether the commission should lead the task force. “We’re going to have a significant role in the process,” he said. “There will be regular communication between the commission and whatever body is set up.” 

The Planning Commission will vote on recommendations to the council at its next meeting on Sept. 28—one day after the council is scheduled to consider the issue. Commissioner Wrenn said he expected the council to hold off on making a final decision on the task force until the commission offers its proposals. 

“We have to pass the final plan before it can even go to the council,” he said. “If they want us to pass it they should make sure they solicit our input before they decide the process.” 

Besides the process for formulating the plan, there is still debate on whether planners should ignore the Downtown Plan or use it as a base for the new rules. 

Planning Manager Mark Rhoades said the UC-City agreement stipulated a new plan. “It doesn’t say revise the Downtown Plan, it says enter into a collaborative process for a Downtown Area Plan.” 

While agreeing that planners were devising a new plan, Marks, the planning director, said the current plan would not be ignored. “My assumption is we will start with the existing Downtown Plan. How we change it I can’t say.”›


Voting Rights Activists Gather in Oakland To Urge Fair Elections By J. DOUGLAS ALLEN-TAYLOR

Friday September 16, 2005

Did George W. Bush steal America’s 2004 elections? 

For some 200 East Bay political activists gathered at the “Elections In Crisis!” symposium at Oakland’s Grand Lake Theater this week, that’s not even an issue any more. The question they posed, over and over, in speeches, PowerPoint presentations, and movie documentaries, was how to stop it from happening again. 

According to Dan Ashby of the Voting Rights Task Force of the Wellstone Democratic Club, the sponsoring organization for the one-day symposium, electronic voting machines continue to be the main problem. 

“Any electronically-counted vote on proprietary software produced by private companies is inherently insecure,” Ashby said. “We need to end elections run by private companies. We need to return to hand-counted paper ballots, which has the most measure of security.” 

The vulnerability of electronic voting machines to fraud and vote-manipulation was the subject of the slide show presentation by Washington State investigative reporter Bev Harris, the author of Black Box Voting, a recently-published book on ballot tampering in the 21st century. 

Because vote-altering subprograms can be introduced into voting machines through the insertion of source codes that do their work and then erase all trace of their own existence, “we will never know exactly how many of these elections were stolen,” Harris said. “If it’s done right, there will be no trail.” 

But Harris gave examples of how her organization hired computer experts to hack into Diebold voting machines to alter vote totals, sometimes within a matter of a few seconds, during authorized tests in which she said Diebold security personnel stood by and watched but did not detect the hacking. 

Diebold manufactures the touch screen voting machines that are used in Alameda County elections. 

Harris said that a major vulnerable point for the Diebold machines is not necessarily the machines themselves, but the electronic memory card—similar in appearance to an ATM card—which is used by elections supervisors to interface with the machines. 

“What our expert found was that the program to count the votes was not on the individual voting machines themselves, but in the cards,” she said, explaining that at the end of an election, the vote card is inserted into the individual machine. It downloads the machine’s vote totals, and then is inserted into a second machine that electronically transmits the total to a central tabulating computer assembling the votes from all of the machines. “Our expert also found that these vote cards were available on the Internet, for $300,” Harris said. 

Harris said that her source was able to write his own program on the purchased vote card that, when slipped into the Diebold voting machine, altered the vote totals. 

While most of the symposium’s speakers, as well as Voting Rights Task Force member Ashby, pointed to the Republican administration as the main manipulator of election vote totals. Harris said that electronic voting machine votes were subject to voter theft and fraud from any number of directions, including disgruntled computer company employees and local business interests seeking to change the outcome of bond measures. 

Pointing out that many of the companies involved in the production and operation of electronic voting machines were both interconnected and strewn with high-level operators who had previously been convicted for computer fraud and other similar crimes, Harris said that “the potential for manipulation is widespread, and it can vary from place to place.” 

The other main speaker, Bob Fitrakis, blasted American voting officials for allowing the country to operate elections that “don’t meet minimal international standards.” Fitrakis is an Ohio journalist and editor of the phonebook-sized Did George W. Bush Steal America’s 2004 Election?, a collection of documents related to Republican election actions primarily in Ohio. 

Noting that he served as an international observer in the El Salvador elections of 1999, Fitrakis said “if I had gone into a precinct and was told that the votes were going to be counted in secret, with no public access, by representatives of an organization with close ties to the ruling junta, I would have immediately written that the election was a fraud.” 

Fitrakis said this was exactly the situation in the 2004 Presidential election, when many votes were counted on proprietary-software machines operated by Diebold, a company whose founders had close ties to the Republican administration. 

Wellstone’s Ashby said that the major purpose of the symposium was “to bring together in one place and one time activists and organizers and experts” concerned about vote-stealing and vote-manipulation. 

“This is going to be a multi-pronged effort,” he said. “We’re hoping that people in the audience will become interested in one of the many proposals that were introduced.” 

Other speakers at the symposium asked support for legislation proposed by state Rep. Loni Hancock (D-Berkeley) to limit the influence of big-money donations on elections (AB 583), to urge Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to sign two pieces of legislation (SB 370 and AB 1636) that would provide for more secure and verifiable electronic voting, to support open source codes for electronic voting machines, and to conduct “parallel voting” activities during elections to verify whether the electronic vote totals accurately reflect the way people actually voted. 

Ashby said his organization’s next major concern was the upcoming November special election, where he said there will be no paper audit trail for electronic voting machines. Such an audit trail is not scheduled to go into effect in California until January 2006. 

“This is one reason we think the governor was in such a rush to hold this special election,” Ashby said. “We’re looking into what our organization can do to prevent an illegal Republican takeover of this election through manipulation of the voting machines.”


BUSD Officials Renew Disaster Response Plan By J. DOUGLAS ALLEN-TAYLOR

Friday September 16, 2005

With disaster preparedness suddenly on everyone’s minds, the Berkeley Unified School District published its District Emergency Response Plan in last week’s school board packet for the first time in what school officials called “many years.” 

Board members were quick to point out the obvious flaw in the plan: the same district staff which will be directing emergency response is presently housed in an unsafe facility. 

The four-page document envisions that in the event of a major disaster, an Emergency Operations Center will be set up at the Berkeley Alternative High School. 

With an earthquake being the most likely such disaster in the East Bay, BUSD Facilities Director Lew Jones told board members that the Alternative High School was chosen because it is a one-story building less likely to suffer earthquake damage than the district’s present administrative offices. 

But board members noted that the emergency staff personnel on the district’s command list to operate the Emergency Operations Center would all have to come from either the district’s administration headquarters at Old City Hall or from the district’s Oregon-Russell street facilities. Both of those facilities are considered earthquake unsafe, and the obvious but unstated implication was that in the case of a catastrophic earthquake, many of the staff members needed to manage the district’s emergency response might not even be able to make it out of the buildings. 

During the discussion, Superintendent Michele Lawrence shook her head in a gesture of dismay and frustration. Lawrence has made it a priority to move district operations out of the Old City Hall and Oregon-Russell street facilities to the West Campus property on University Avenue. But because of renovations needed for the University Avenue property, that relocation is still several years away. 

The Alternative High School facility is six blocks down Martin Luther King Jr. Way from the district’s administrative offices. Closer alternatives to the Alternative High School site would be the Berkeley High School facility across the street, or the City of Berkeley’s projected emergency operations center at the city’s Public Safety Building. That building is next door to the district’s administrative offices at Old City Hall. 

Part of the district’s emergency planning involves the stockpiling of emergency supplies at strategic locations and conducting ongoing emergency training for school and district personnel. 

District staff members presented the board with a disaster command chart which listed staff assignments, along with alternates, for the various disaster response responsibilities. 

Facilities Manager Lew Jones was the overall Incident Manager, with finance head Eric D. Smith and curriculum and instruction head Neil Smith as his alternates. Listed under the Incident Manager were staff assignments for liaison with the City of Berkeley and Alameda County, liaison with Berkeley High School, public information, safety, operations, planning and intelligence, logistics, and finance and administration. Many of those categories were broken down into sub-category assignments, including such items as medical, transportation, damage assessment, and care and shelter. 

Also included in the document was a Communication Plan based upon close to 200 district-owned two-way radios, which have been distributed throughout the district’s schools and non-instructional sites. The document said that the two-way radios were preferable to other forms of communication, which it said “are vulnerable to significant disruption in the event of an earthquake.” 

Board President Nancy Riddle said that school officials have been meeting regularly with city disaster planners, and that the district has been assigned a special emergency channel for its communications separate from other agencies. 

District officials said that the district’s emergency preparedness plan will be continuously updated, as well as being aligned with the various individual school safety plans..


UC Police Recover Stolen Computer By J. DOUGLAS ALLEN-TAYLOR

Friday September 16, 2005

Sensitive Data Said to be Uncompromised 

UC Berkeley police have recovered a university laptop computer stolen from the campus last spring, but UC officials said they do not believe that any of the sensitive data on the computer’s hard drive was ever accessed. 

When it was recovered, the computer’s original hard drive material had been erased and written over. 

The laptop was recovered by UC authorities from a South Carolina man, who purchased it over the Internet in April from a San Francisco man. That San Francisco man, who has not been identified, was arrested and charged with possession of stolen property. He is not considered by police to be the individual who actually stole the computer from UC. 

The laptop containing personal information of more than 98,000 UC graduate students and other individuals was stolen last March from the university’s Graduate Division. UC police believe that the theft was a crime of opportunity, done while the offices were momentarily left unstaffed and unguarded during lunchtime. 

The San Francisco man arrested reportedly told UC police that a woman had sold him the stolen computer and provided police with a description that matched reports of a woman seen leaving the UC Graduate Division offices shortly before the theft was discovered. 

UC officials said that detailed testing could not determine whether any of the personal information originally on the computer had been accessed, but said that since the theft, they have not detected any pattern of identity theft from any of the individuals whose information was on the computer. 


Brunner Pulls Plug on Proposed North Oakland Redevelopment By RICHARD BRENNEMAN

Friday September 16, 2005

Bowing to pressure from a well-organized opposition, Oakland Vice Mayor Jane Brunner has withdrawn her plan to expand an existing redevelopment district to include 800 acres immediately south of the Berkeley border. 

In an e-mail to constituents sent Tuesday, Bruner said that because “response to the proposal has been mixed ... I therefore have concluded that the current proposal does not have the kind of support that it would need to be successful. I have requested city staff to withdraw their proposal for expansion of the redevelopment area.” 

City staff had prepared a proposal which said the new district would bring in $196 million in additional revenues through tax increment funding which would funnel a total of $272 million into improvements in the district. 

The funding method would have fixed the share of property taxes going to local governments and schools at the current level and required the state to make up the estimated $120 million in school funding that would have otherwise been lost. 

Much of the money would have gone toward streetscape improvements and eminent domain buyouts of so-called blighted commercial properties to make way for new development. 

But the words “eminent domain” made neighbors nervous and skeptical of the city’s promise to target only run-down commercial property. The anxiety grew after the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Kelo v. the City of New London, which held that local governments can seize private property for private development if the project would benefit the public. 

That ruling galvanized opposition organized by neighborhood activists Bob Brokl and his companion Alfred Crofts, who turned out in force at an Aug. 28 meeting they organized in North Oakland. 

That meeting, attending by representatives of the several legislators and Oakland City Councilmember Nancy J. Nadel, brought together an unusual alliance of property rights libertarians like Orange Count Supervisor Chris Norby, anti-corporate progressives and residents and businesspeople who feared their homes and businesses were on the line. 

Nadel said she had “heard from a lot of people ... both at community meetings and here in the office.” 

While she said many were enthusiastic about the prospect of economic development, “many others are concerned about the impact of redevelopment on the General Fund and fearful about the potential for abuse of redevelopment powers.” 

She said the lack of a strong consensus led her to pull the plug.  

 


Council Says Sitting on Two Commissions is Legal By MATTHEW ARTZ

Friday September 16, 2005

Just 21 years old, Jesse Arreguin, a UC Berkeley senior and tenants’ rights advocate, has made a name for himself in Berkeley. 

He’s been elected to the Rent Stabilization Board, appointed to the Housing Advisory Commission (HAC), of which he is the acting chair, and at Tuesday’s City Council meeting he emerged victorious in what some of his opponents dubbed “The Jesse Arreguin Affair.” 

By a 6-2-1 vote (Wozniak and Olds, no, Capitelli, abstain) the council passed an ordinance so that Arreguin could continue to serve in both offices. 

“I think it was clear to everybody that there has been a partisan attack by the property owners to smear me,” Arreguin said after the meeting. 

The vote ended a dispute over the past week as the Berkeley Property Owners Association (BPOA) and its political allies mounted a campaign to unseat Arreguin from the HAC. They cited an opinion issued by the office of City Attorney Manuela Albuquerque last May, at Arreguin’s request, concluding that the two offices Arreguin holds present potential conflicts of interest under state common law. 

Tuesday’s vote by the council overrode the state doctrine. Councilmembers approved a city ordinance making it legal for a resident to sit on more than two decision-making boards that might have overlapping responsibilities. Had the council not acted, Arreguin would have had to resign from the HAC. 

As a member of the pro-tenant Rent Board and the HAC, Arreguin has been at the heart of the board’s long-running dispute with the BPOA. Most recently he has supported laws, set to go to the council next week, that would make it more expensive for property owners to convert rental units to condos and give tenants lifetime leases to protect them from condo conversions. 

“It’s true Jesse Arreguin is not a political friend of ours,” said BPOA President Michael Wilson. “But that doesn’t change the fact that the city attorney found instances where he would have conflicts of interest and it doesn’t mean those six councilmembers should sacrifice principle for the sake of a political ally.”  

The council majority held that it was the BPOA that was playing politics. “We’ve got a conflict here, but it’s a political conflict, not a conflict of interests,” said Max Anderson, a former Rent Board member. 

“This is quite political with the BPOA,” said Councilmember Linda Maio. “I see no reason for it.” 

In calling for the issue to be held over until next week, Councilmember Gordon Wozniak said the council, which had not seen the city attorney’s opinion, needed more information before voting. 

“I’m reluctant to overturn her opinion,” he said. “It’s not good public policy to change the law for one individual.” 

Years earlier Albuquerque issued an opinion that Wozniak had a conflict of interest by serving on the city’s environmental commission while working as a scientist at Lawrence Berkeley Lab. In that case as well, the council voted to overturn the city attorney and allow Wozniak to continue serving on the commission. 

Arreguin is not the first elected official to also serve as an appointee on a different decision making body. His colleague on the Rent Board, Chris Kavanagh, had also served on the HAC until last year. 

Arreguin, who has pledged to recuse himself from votes that could be construed as having conflicts of interests, requested the opinion from the city attorney’s office last March. At the time, the Rent Board was scheduled to vote on passing through $200,000 in affordable housing funds that the HAC administers. 

Arreguin said he voted for the transfer after the Rent Board’s attorney issued an opinion finding no conflict of interest. However Albuquerque found several instances where the jurisdiction of the two bodies overlap.  

For instance she wrote, in the case of the Drayage, the West Berkeley warehouse where building officials have ordered tenants to vacate, the HAC could be called on to hear appeals of city abatement orders. Yet, as a member of the Rent Board, Arreguin has already voted in favor of a resolution supporting the tenants and calling on the board to consider legal action if they are evicted. 

“Conflicts of interest can be about divided loyalties,” Albuquerque told the council. “It’s based on the notion that the role one plays on one body may make it difficult to play a role on the other.” 

Under the new rule, Albuquerque said it might be possible for a citizen to be appointed to several similar decision making bodies including the Planning Commission, Zoning Adjustment Board and Landmarks Preservation Commission. 

 

Other Matters 

• The council voted unanimously to call for the California National Guard to be immediately returned from Iraq. 

• By a 6-1 vote, the council called for a new public hearing on a proposed new house in the Berkeley hills, that one neighboring family says will obstruct their views. 

• A proposal to send new business quota rules in the Elmwood to the Planning Commission for review was held over while Councilmembers Wozniak and Kriss Worthington settle disagreements over the plan. 

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City Council Agenda

Friday September 16, 2005

The Berkeley City Council meets Tuesday at 7 p.m. Items on the agenda include: 

• A proposal to have the Planning Commission review proposed changes to the Elmwood Business District quota system. The council held off on the plan last week while Councilmembers Gordon Wozniak and Kriss Worthington began working on a compromise proposal. 

• Two proposals from the Transportation Commission. One proposal would request that the Water Transit Authority proceed with a comprehensive environmental review of ferry service for Berkeley. The second calls for including a commission member on any task force dealing with the Downtown Area Plan. 

• A recommendation from the Housing Advisory Commission (HAC) that the council add all four members of its subcommittee on the Density Bonus and Inclusionary Housing to the city’s Joint Density Bonus Subcommittee. The members are Jesse Arreguin, Marie Bowman, Victoria Liu and Andrew Murray. 

• An ordinance from the HAC to amend the city’s law on converting rental units to condominiums. The amendments would make it more expensive for property owners to convert units. 

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Library to Open Sundays Beginning Sept. 25 By MATTHEW ARTZ

Friday September 16, 2005

The Library Board of Trustees voted unanimously Wednesday to reopen the main branch of the public library on Sundays starting Sept. 25. 

The library will be open from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m., the same Sunday hours the library kept until last July when a lack of money forced the library to close on Sundays. 


A Reporter Confronts the Nightmare Left by Hurricane Katrina By JAKOB SCHILLER

Friday September 16, 2005

Last Sunday night I stood with another reporter in the middle of the street in a neighborhood near downtown New Orleans. I had been sent to capture photographs of the damage caused by Hurricane Katrina, but at that moment all I could see in front of me was blackness, interrupted only by the occasional lights from a passing police car and the yellow glow from a nearby light run by a generator. 

We were exhausted from a day of slogging through the submerged cities and towns around the region and felt overwhelmed by the devastation we had seen. This was the first moment we had to try to make sense of what we saw, but none of it seemed real as we stared into the blackness. 

When we drove through downtown the day before, the streets were filled with trash. Big spray-painted signs that read “Looters will be shot” had not saved most stores. The only cars on the street were army Humvees. Troops and BlackWater security workers stood guard on empty street corners. 

You could close your eyes as you drove through the city and tell when you passed a fast-food restaurant or grocery store. The smell of rotting meat was overpowering. 

The smell of the water was just as bad as I imagined. Feces, oil and chemicals made the water turn dark green, brown and sometimes black. We all knew that the stray dogs wandering around were going to die from disease because that was the only water they had to drink. 

A couple of days earlier we had been in Empire, La., a small town in the bayou, about 60 miles south of New Orleans. The town, and several others like it, was built on a narrow strip of land between the Mississippi river and the delta. When the hurricane hit, the winds and flooding waters from either side destroyed almost everything. 

As we drove down, I couldn’t process what I saw. House after house was flattened into piles of wood. A large delivery truck lay resting in the top of the tree, its trailer pierced by the trunk. The town church had moved completely off its foundation and come to rest over a tree that jutted out of its front door. Inside a muddy statue of Jesus lay on the ground looking up at the ceiling as if in disbelief. 

In the Empire harbor, 40- and 50-foot boats were stacked on top of each other. An RV lay smashed under a house that had floated off its stilts. Emaciated stray dogs hung around, begging for attention and food. 

Helicopters constantly passed overhead, shuttling National Guard troops and search and rescue teams to remote areas. Two New York City police cars passed by late in the afternoon. 

Sometimes the rescue effort seemed organized and efficient. Rescue teams piled through debris looking for bodies, dead or alive. They marked houses with spray paint signals that let people know if the house was clear, or whether they found a body. I never saw a dead body, but I had no doubt that many were hidden under the debris of the houses we passed. 

Other times it took rescue teams hours to get anything done. It was mid-afternoon before some teams got to work because they spent the whole morning loading their equipment and trying to map out where they were going. 

I had never been to New Orleans before. As I stood on that dark corner in the hot and muggy night, I wondered what the city once looked like with lights. 

In the roadway median I saw a few beads from Mardi Gras. Instead of the bright metallic gleam they usually give off, these beads were covered in the green/brown muck left over from receding water. 

I wondered, how long it would be before tourists and residents walked down this street again instead of National Guard troops? I heard some locals dispute whether there will be a Mardi Gras next year. Some say it will take years before Mardi Gras comes back. Others said Hurricane Katrina was an excuse to make this coming celebration the biggest yet. 

We were standing in a middle- to upper-class neighborhood on the border of where the flooding stopped. On the street there were downed trees and cars destroyed by the water; most of the houses seemed inhabitable. Clean-up crews had already started to clear the debris. 

Meanwhile, 50 percent of the city was still under water two weeks after the hurricane hit. Just north of where we were, we saw entire houses that had collapsed. I heard that in a neighborhood near one of the levee breaks only one house was still inhabitable. The water was receding several blocks each day, but I knew it would be weeks before it was all gone. 

?


The Ethical Confusion of Knight-Ridder’s Daily News By DON KAZAK Palo Alto Weekly

Friday September 16, 2005

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Palo Alto Daily News is a free daily newspaper published by Knight-Ridder, which also publishes Berkeley’s East Bay Daily News. The East Bay paper uses the same “Town Talk” format found in its Palo Alto counterpart.  

 

Like a light bulb flipping on in a dark room, like an epiphany sung sweetly by a choir, new ideas can open new worlds and teach us imaginative and creative ways to approach what we do.  

Since this column is written about people and events in the community, there is now a new policy for anyone who wants to appear in a future column.  

It’ll cost you.  

Checks are OK, but cash is greatly preferred.  

This is not an original idea, however. It’s borrowed from another publication.  

Grade the News, based at San Jose State University (formerly at Stanford University), is a small but respected non-profit effort that critiques Bay Area news media. It is currently publishing a three-part examination of free daily newspapers, including the Palo Alto Daily News.  

It was the first installment that sparked my idea to start charging for this space. The article—entitled, “At free dailies, advertisers sometimes call the shots,” by Associate Director Michael Stoll—is on the organization’s website: www.gradethenews.org.  

Stoll discovered that some editorial content in the Daily News is written by the newspaper’s advertising department.  

The paper’s “Town Talk” is a promotional column that masquerades as editorial content—written by the advertising department—and the paper’s “Buzz” entertainment section “is a seamlessly laid-out blend of articles penned by the advertising staff but presented as news,” Stoll wrote.  

For those unfamiliar with the newspaper business, reporters and editors are responsible for the editorial content (stories, columns, reviews, editorials) while advertising sales representatives persuade advertisers to buy ads to woo readers to become customers.  

This is generally known as the “separation of church and state” in journalism, Stoll notes. Others call it a “firewall” between a newspaper’s journalistic and business efforts.  

The problem is that when one part of a newspaper’s editorial content is bought and paid for it raises questions about all the other editorial content, too.  

Stoll also discovered that Daily News reporters are encouraged to write favorable stories about advertisers—as part of the Daily News’ philosophy, penned in 1995.  

It’s worth quoting in full: “In addition to covering business as a news beat, (the reporter) must also cover local business from the perspective of the business owner, or, as their partner. This means promoting the business as their own. This is the key to early and continued success. If we embrace our advertisers and help them promote with good writing and photos, they will become our strongest supporters.”  

If some news stories are tainted by the newspaper’s business interests, what about all the rest? Where is the line drawn? Is there a line?  

Instead of being rightfully embarrassed by any of this, the Daily News seems proud of it.  

“We’re not going to knock them (the advertisers). That’s our community. They’re our people,” Robby Schumacher, who is both a Daily News entertainment-guide columnist and an advertising sales representative, told Stoll.  

Stoll wrote that Daily News Publisher Dave Price “laughed off any suggestion that the ads-as-news printed in his paper could be misunderstood. ‘Do you have to label a duck a duck?’ Mr. Price said.”  

The Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics urges reporters and editors to “distinguish news from advertising and shun hybrids that blur the lines between the two.”  

So much for professional ethics.  

In the future, see my agent to place yourself or your business in this prime Page Four space.  

Are you a City Council candidate whose polls are lagging? Don’t give up! Is business at your store slow? The dinner trade at your restaurant leaving too many empty tables? That can be changed!  

Dr. Don’s Elixir of Magic Words can cure whatever ails you!  

I have a brand-new thesaurus with nifty words, called adjectives. I can learn to use them, especially the glowing ones. I also found the never! before! used! exclamation-point on my keyboard. 

And if you pay by check, make it a big one, please. I’ll only be renting this space, but I’ll be selling my soul.  

 

Republished with permission 


Robert Purdy 1920-2005 By MARGOT SMITH

Friday September 16, 2005

Robert Purdy, 85, a World War II veteran, ex-P.O.W., hero, and activist, died in Berkeley on Sunday, Sept. 11 after a short illness. 

The son of Elinor and Harry Purdy, he was born in Wisconsin and raised in Detroit. He began work as a machinist and tool and die maker in the auto industry. He worked for the Marchant Calculator Company, became an educator at the East Bay Skills Center and Southern Illinois University, and was a manufacturing engineer for SKS Die Casting until his retirement.  

In 1942, he and his two brothers enlisted in the Army Air Corps to fight Hitler’s fascists. He was a B24 pilot in Italy, where, after 17 missions, he was shot down and captured by the Nazis who sent him by boxcar from Vicenzia, Italy to Stalagluft I in Barth, near the North Sea, where he spent 18 months. He was freed by the Russians on May 1, 1945. Much to his sorrow, his brother Harry was lost over England. 

On his return, he settled in Detroit working in the auto industry, where his daughter Laura was born. After his marriage ended, he moved to California. In 1961, he and his friend Lionel Martin, a journalist, decided to go to Cuba to support Fidel Castro’s revolution. They arrived shortly after the Bay of Pigs invasion. In Cuba for nine years, Bob became the head of a small industry where he taught the tool and die trade to Cubans, was a member of the  

National Tool and Die Nomenclature committee, working under the Minister of Industry, Che Guevara. While in Cuba, he married and had his daughter Maida.  

In 1969, he returned to California and taught the machinist trade at the East Bay Skills Center for several years. He married Margot Smith and moved with her to Illinois for two years, where he taught engineers at Southern Illinois University.  

In Berkeley, he began to build a Veri-Easy foam fiberglass plane designed by Burt Rutan, and finished it in Illinois. He and Margot flew it across the country several times. They returned to Berkeley in 1980.  

After retirement, he took up video production under the tutilege of film maker Judy Montell. His best known videos were Canada’s Single Payer Health System: A Model for Reform (introduced by the late Senator Paul Wellstone) and Democracy in the Workplace: Three Worker-Owned Businesses in Action (about the Cheeseboard, Rainbow Grocery and Inkworks). They were shown on many local PBS stations. 

He was active in the peace movement, the Berkeley Gray Panthers and Democratic Socialists of America. As a youth Bob was a member of the Communist Party and was an ardent union member. He left the communist party when Krushchev revealed the abuses by Stalin in the USSR. However, he always believed that Socialism was a way to achieve a fair and just society and continued to work for a socialist America. 

His survivors include his wife, Margot Smith of Berkeley, his daughters Laura Purdy (married to John Coleman) of Ithaca, N.Y., Maida Purdy Salinas (Alejandro Salinas) and grandchildren Olivia and Alex of Havana, Cuba, and step-children Walter (Carolina), Peter (Nancy) and Larry (Maryellen) Smith and Janet (Bob) Linney, and their children. 

He is also be missed by his brother James (Lois) Purdy of Santa Cruz and the Santa Cruz clan, his brother Alan (Jo) Purdy of San Diego, and many nieces and nephews. His family would like to thank brother Jimmy and niece Catherine Cavette, nephew John Muster, and their daughter Cassy for their support in his final days. 

A memorial service in celebration of his life will be held on Sunday, Oct. 9 at 2:30 p.m. at the Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarians, 1924 Cedar St. Contributions in his memory may be made to the Berkeley Gray Panthers, 1403 Addison St. For information please call 486-8010. 

 

 


Plea Postponed in Willis-Starbuck Case By MATTHEW ARTZ

Friday September 16, 2005

Christopher Wilson, the 20-year-old charged with murder in the death of his friend, Berkeley High graduate Meleia Willis-Starbuck, was given a three-week extension to enter a plea. 

At Wilson’s request, Superior Court Judge Winfred Scott on Monday held over the plea hearing until Oct. 4. She also revised the terms of Wilson’s bail so that he can attend an evening class at Vista College. 

Wilson’s attorney, Elizabeth Grossman, said after the hearing that the postponement was necessary because she was still receiving new police reports and video statements. 

She added that Wilson intended to plead “not guilty” to the charge of homicide. 

Police say that last July when Willis-Starbuck, a 19-year-old Dartmouth sophomore, and her friends became embroiled in a late-night dispute with several men on College Avenue, she called Christopher Hollis and asked him to “bring the heat.”  

According to police, Wilson drove Hollis to the corner of College and Dwight Way, where Hollis jumped out of the car and fired shots into the crowd, striking only Willis-Starbuck. 

Hollis, 21, remains at large. Asked if Hollis’ disappearance might impact Wilson’s defense, Grossman replied, “I think it would be best for Mr. Hollis to come forward.”  

In July, Wilson was released on $326,000 bail to the custody of Robin Baker and Ralph Silber, the parents of a friend. After appearing before the court two previous times in shackles and a prison jump suit, Wilson seemed relaxed Monday, wearing a black shirt and tie. He smiled often and spoke with several with several of about 15 friends in the court room as they waited for the hearing to begin. 

Baker said after the hearing that besides studying at Vista, Wilson, who had attended Cabrillo College in Aptos, is also doing community service work. 

“I think he’s handling himself as well as possible,” she said. “He’s doing what he can to get through this somehow. We’re all heartbroken about what’s happened.” 


Breaking the Army’s Digital Trojan Horse By MICHAEL KATZ Special to the Planet

Friday September 16, 2005

Here’s the story of my attempt to virtually join the U.S. Army. 

This year, UC Berkeley supersized the old registration-week tradition of the freebie bag. For a two-day event called “Caltopia,” the cavernous Recreational Sports Facility hosted rows of exhibitors giving away brochures and free stuff. The organizers even bought a full-page ad in the Express to invite the community. 

So of course I went.  

And I got some great stuff. But my strangest bit of schwag came in an Associated Students bag handed to me (and perhaps 30,000 other attendees) at the front door. 

It’s a video game called “America’s Army: Special Forces,” subtitled: “The Official U.S. Army Game. Empower Yourself. Defend Freedom.” The sunblasted cover art unmistakably depicts desert combat. Its rating seal says “Teen,” “Blood,” and “Violence.” 

 

Intrigued by my new acquisition, I checked the game’s FAQ page at www.americasarmy.com. There I learned that “players progress toward the goal of wearing the coveted Green Beret by completing progressive individual and collective training missions,” which include indentification [sic] of vehicles” and “identifying friend from foe on the battlefield.” 

I could hardly wait to start. 

But my disappointment with “America’s Army” began as soon as I launched the installation program. It would proceed only if I agreed “to be bound by ... the government’s acceptable use policy and such other policies as it may from time to time establish.” 

Now why should I grant an advance blank check of approval to any “policies [the government] may from time to time establish” in the future? That sounded disturbingly like the “stop-loss” fine print by which the real Army has ensnared so many enlistees and reservists. Thinking they were signing up for a two-year tour of duty, or a few weekends of training per year, they’ve found themselves bound to perpetual involuntary servitude in Iraq. 

Still, my country called. Plus, how often do I get a chance to enter “a portal ... designed to provide young adults and their influencers with virtual insights into entry level Soldier training ... so that young adults can see how our training builds and prepares Soldiers to serve in units in defense of freedom?” 

The game’s website also reassured me that “just as is the case with the Army, the game has a firm grounding in values. For example, the game establishes rules for engagement and imposes significant penalties for violations of these rules.” Plus there are parental controls: “Parents can disable all the blood in the game” and can “enable a language filter” against naughty words. 

So I bit my lip, and clicked “I accept” and “Next.”  

But my second disappointment was seeing how long it took the game to install (a long slog from two CD’s) and to launch. I realized that this game, just like the real America’s Army, was a very slow-moving institution with excessive hardware needs. 

Still, I eventually got a main menu. There, I chose “Training.” The only available category was “Basic Training: Marksmanship,” so I clicked “Deploy.” 

Here, things soon improved. Now I had a huge automatic-rifle barrel in front of me, which already made me feel like more of a man. An impressive graphics engine allowed me to point it up, down, or 360 degrees around—aiming at buildings, trees, a mean-looking sergeant, and some blobs swathed in red burqas which (I assumed) represented hapless Iraqis whom Allah has placed atop Our Oil. 

But this quickly yielded to my third disappointment: I couldn’t fire at anything. An indicator at the bottom of the screen kept flashing “Reload.” I had no ammo! 

Oddly, this increased my respect for the simulator. I felt that I now better understood the plight of the young recruits in the real America’s Army, whom Rumsfeld’s Pentagon and Cheney’s Halliburton have stranded in Baghdad without body or vehicle armor. 

To get some ordnance, I needed to create a “Personnel Jacket”—an account on the game’s website. The registration page there required me to choose a user name and to enter a valid e-mail address, without which I could not complete registration. 

Here, I froze. I’m damned if I want to start receiving spam from military recruiters.  

But the game’s website soothingly told me that “privacy is a big concern for us ... the Army will not know the names and addresses of players unless these players deliberately request information.” 

“Within the Game,” it continued, “players operate under a nom-de-guerre that protects their anonymity. ... This veil of anonymity is only raised” if players click “web links through which players can connect to the Army of One homepage [where] you can explore Army career opportunities or contact a Recruiter.”  

Again biting the bullet, I typed in a real, but disposable, e-mail address. Drawing on my knowledge of military culture from Vietnam and Iraq combat films, I tried to create a realistic user name. 

That led to my next big disappointment—a major lapse in verisimilitude. The site told me that my carefully chosen user name (“fuckthis”) was “not a valid name.” 

At this point, I confess that I gave up on America’s Army. Just as I hope Cal students and teenage video gamers will give up on the real thing until our military gets better civilian leadership. Enlistees deserve a commander in chief who will task them to valid missions (like defending the nation from real threats, keeping the peace, and building flood-control levees)—not betray their courage by sending them on a desert suicide mission in order to settle a petty family score. 

Missions impossible (if I may coin a military phrase) rot downward from the top. A Pentagon survey last year revealed that 72 percent of Iraq-based troops felt their units suffered from low morale. Almost 75 percent rated their battalion-level commanding officers as poor. The Pentagon sat on those findings for three months. 

But just as with the real thing, it’s not so easy to leave “America’s Army.” After I clicked “exit” from the menu, I was prompted to confirm: “Are you sure you want to exit?” Yet the bloated game had so bogged down my computer that I simply couldn’t maneuver my wobbly mouse pointer over the “Yes” button. 

Recognizing this as the drug-compounded exhaustion depicted in grunt’s-eye films like Apocalypse Now, I resorted to drastic measures. I pressed Ctrl-Alt-Delete, and aborted the game. 

Except I wasn’t really free. “America’s Army” was so memory-hungry that it took down much of my computer’s video memory with it. I was left with a psychedelic, high-contrast, color-impaired display. Like an estimated one-third of Vietnam War veterans, my computer was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. 

These simulated flashbacks helped the game win back some points for both realism and immediacy. The military’s own surveys show that a sixth of its personnel are returning from Iraq scarred by psychological disorders. Experts predict that this grim statistic will eventually match its grimmer Vietnam-era counterpart.  

Thousands more enlistees have suffered physical injuries. And no video game could be expected to replicate the experience of the nearly 1,900 (and counting) servicemen and women who won’t come home at all. 

In fairness to Col. E. Casey Wardynski, Steven “TUFFENUF” Elton, Robert “ScrewJack” Gibson, and their fellow game developers, “America’s Army” evidently has a genuine following—with some five million registered accounts. My cousin Adam, who produces video games, says gamers seem to love its Internet-based, multiple-player features. 

So if you have the snappy 1.3 GHz processor and the 2 GB of disk space that this game needs to run acceptably, you might want to check it out. Just think twice before you sign on any dotted lines. 

And if you’re a Cal student, you might ask your favorite Associated Students officer why the ASUC chose to distribute this Trojan Horse on behalf of military recruiters.


Landmarks Commmission Favors Shattuck Hotel Proposal By RICHARD BRENNEMAN

Friday September 16, 2005

Landmarks commissioners gave their blessing to Roy Nee’s plans for the venerable Shattuck Hotel on Monday, while casting a more critical eye at Darrell De Tienne’s plans for the former Durkee Famous Foods warehouse at 740 Heinz Avenue. 

Nee’s plans for the hotel call for a major structural retrofit, a reconfiguration of the floor plans to create larger rooms and a major renovation of the old nondescript Hink’s Department Store building on Allston Way that will enlarge the structure and add a roofline and features that will bring it into architectural harmony with the larger hotel building. 

While Nee hopes to win approval by October, Planning and Development Director Dan Marks said the process could take longer. 

While Nee’s plans aren’t of such a scope as to require a full environmental impact report, Marks said a transportation analysis needs to be prepared before city staff could prepare a mitigated negative declaration, a prerequisite before the Zoning Adjustments Board can approve use permits, after which the project would come back to ZAB for a signoff. 

“This is a very high priority project for the city, and we’re very excited about it,” Marks added. “We’ll be moving ahead faster than we ever have for a project of this size.” 

The commissioners made it clear they liked Nee’s project. 

“The staff will take back information that probably surprises you because we have no major concerns,” said Commissioner Carrie Olson. 

The commissioners greeted De Tienne with more skepticism. 

He appeared in company with Chris Barlow of Wareham Properties, a major developer of office and laboratory space in Berkeley and the East Bay. Barlow told the commission his firm has already invested over a $1 million in various plans for the site. 

De Tienne noted that he had already received a demolition permit, but Marks said he wouldn’t rush the demolition of a landmark since the city didn’t consider the structure was in imminent danger of falling down. 

However, he said, “we are virtually certain it will fall down in the next earthquake.” 

While the developers said preservation of existing walls would require a costly brick-by-brick tear-down and reconstruction, Olson said that preservation of three walls would preclude the need for a costly and time-consuming environmental impact review. 

De Tienne disagreed, saying he believed the building was ready to fall down at any time. 

The developers asked the commission to help them select a structural engineer who specializes in historic buildings. The LPC voted to appoint a subcommittee to find someone to recommend to the city staff to assist in the environmental review process. 

 


What Immigrants Need to Know About the Chief Justice Nominee By RENE CIRIA-CRUZ Pacific News Service

Friday September 16, 2005

Immigrant and civil rights activists have managed to get several key questions, including some from Berkeley attorney James Brosnahan, into the confirmation hearings of Supreme Court nominee Judge John Roberts. The questions spotlight their growing concerns about the vulnerabilities of immigrants and ethnic minorities.  

Ted Wang, a public policy consultant for nonprofit groups and foundations, is concerned about a memorandum the nominee wrote criticizing the U.S. attorney general for not actively supporting a Texas law that allowed elementary schools to bar undocumented children. “I want to know why doesn’t he see immigrants as part of the U.S. community,” Wang says.  

Immigrant rights groups had sued the state (Plyler v. Doe), and the Supreme Court in 1982 struck down the Texas law in a 5-4 decision, at which point Roberts wrote the critical memo.  

Senators Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Dianne Feinstein (D-Cal.) raised the same question about the memo, but Roberts was evasive. He told Durbin that the memo was merely a reminder that the Justice Department’s hands-off position was inconsistent with the attorney general’s “litigation policy approach.”  

Durbin pressed on, saying millions of Hispanic children have benefited from access to education, a policy Roberts “apparently disagreed with 23 years ago.”  

Later, Feinstein also asked Roberts if he believed education should be made available for all regardless of immigration status. The nominee remained noncommittal, repeating that he was merely pursuing a legal issue, not a policy issue, as a staff lawyer.  

For Maria Blanco, executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights, the key question is about the independence of the court as a check on executive power and potential abuse of that power.  

“Does he believe that the U.S. Constitution guarantees the right of all persons not to be detained without charges brought against them?” Blanco asks.  

Blanco is referring to a recent 4th Circuit Court of Appeals decision upholding that suspected Al Qaeda member Jose Padilla, a U.S. citizen designated by the White House as an “enemy combatant,” can be indefinitely detained without charges.  

The Padilla case is expected to go to the Supreme Court, so Roberts will not go into its specifics. Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.), however, asked if he had any concerns about the United States secretly sending suspects to foreign countries where they could be tortured, or “the federal government using immigration laws to round up and detain people for months often without regard for whether they had any connection to the September 11th investigation?”  

Roberts declined to comment, saying a number of related cases were expected to be brought to court. He did agree with Feingold that the decision to incarcerate Japanese Americans during World War II was one of the Supreme Court’s worst rulings in history.  

Trial attorney James Brosnahan, who defended John Walker Lindh against charges of fighting for Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, would like ask Roberts about “an ethical matter.”  

Brosnahan wants to know why, when Judge Roberts was presiding over a terrorism case being pursued by the Bush administration (Hamdan v. Rumsfeld), he met with the White House and Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales for an interview as a prospective Supreme Court nominee.  

“Why didn’t he recuse himself, or at least step aside until the case was decided before meeting” with representatives of one side of the case, Brosnahan would like to know. Other legal experts said Roberts should have avoided the appearance of conflict or impropriety by not meeting with the administration while the case was being tried.  

Roberts’ three-judge panel ruled unanimously in favor of the administration, allowing the use of military commissions to try terrorist suspects held at the U.S. Guantanamo base in Cuba.  

Feingold grilled him on the same question on the second day of the hearings. Feingold told the nominee that a constituent came up to him saying Roberts’ role in upholding the government’s ability to try a Guantanamo Bay detainee by military commission “should disqualify you from being on the Supreme Court.”  

Roberts declined to comment, saying, “The case itself is still pending, I don’t think it’s appropriate for me to address that.”  

The next day, however, Roberts said the decision in favor of the administration was drafted before a vacancy occurred in the Supreme Court and was finished before he was interviewed by Bush for the nomination.  

 

Pacific News Service editor Rene P. Ciria-Cruz is also a long-time editor for Filipinas Magazine.  


September Morning in Maryland and Iraq By Conn Hallinan Special to the Planet

Friday September 16, 2005

In the pre-dawn hours of Sept. 17, 1862, a division of Confederate soldiers moved into place just south of a cornfield near where the Hagerstown Pike runs past a white, clapboard church on its way to the town of Sharpsburg, Md. Northeast of the Confederates, Union Major General Joseph Mansfield was getting his XII Corps into line facing a small forest. 

The lesson of what happened within the shadows cast by those trees—known in thousands of military histories as simply “the East Wood”—is something the Bush administration is letting the nation re-discover these days. 

The battle of Antietam, where simple place names like “the cornfield,” the “sunken road,” and “Piper’s farmhouse” became synonymous with almost unimaginable carnage, was the single bloodiest day in U.S. military history. In a single day, armed with muzzle loading rifles and cannons, 20,000 men were wounded, and 6,500 killed. More soldiers died that day than in all the American wars of the 19th century; four times more than fell storming the Normandy beaches. 

Early on that terrible day, two units came together in the East Wood. Recruited from small towns in the eastern part of the state, the 1st Texas was a hard-nosed regiment in John Bell Hood’s division. The 12th Massachusetts was Boston born and bred, marching off to war behind an enormous flag of white, blue and gold presented to them by the good women of Beacon Hill. 

Within less than a half an hour both units had essentially ceased to exist. The Texas regiment absorbed 82 percent casualties. The 12th took 334 men into the wood. It came out with 114, most of them wounded. Fewer than three dozen rallied around the colors after the retreat. 

Most regiments in the Civil War were recruited by towns or city neighborhoods. The idea was that you went off into the cauldron of war with your neighbors, friends, even family. Neighbors took care of one another because they had grown up together, worked together, raising barns, sowing and harvesting crops, or laying track. It made sense. 

Until they all died together. Then the heart went out of a New York neighborhood, a Boston ward, or a small rural town in Texas or Vermont. If you’re ever back East, driving the back roads of upstate New York or Connecticut, stop in the village commons and look at the modest granite monuments with their odd stone chains and cement anchored cannons. Read the names carved into the plaques and imagine what this meant to the town in 1862. That there were times—as in a copse of trees on a September morning—when a significant portion of a town, age 18 to 35, just vanished at the places whose names are chiseled on the memorial obelisks: Wilderness, Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, Cold Harbor.  

Multiply those names by siblings, parents, grandparents, spouses, children and friends, and you begin to understand the special way that particular war affected the country. 

After the Civil War, the U.S. Army realized it wasn’t a good idea to put a whole town or city in harm’s way. They got rid of local regiments, so if a unit took a beating, the burden wouldn’t fall on one town or region. It made sense. The exceptions were the National Guard and the Reserves, who were still recruited by locale. That made sense as well. These people were weekend warriors. If there was a real national emergency, like World War II, then you had some trained people in place, but most joined for the educational grants and small stipends that came with the job. And to hang out with people they knew. 

But if you happened to be in Iraq with the Georgia National Guard’s 1st Battalion, 108 Armored, serving together meant dying together. On the week of July 18, four of them made it into the New York Times’ death watch list. Don’t bother looking up their towns in your Rand McNally. Hiram, Norcross, Douglasville, and Sharpsburg (some irony there) are too small to show up. Most are probably not all that different from the towns those boys from the 1st Texas came out of more than 140 years ago. 

They died because the Bush administration changed the rules. 

The Guard and Reserves were mobilized only nine times between World War I and the Gulf War, so members figured it was a pretty good bet they wouldn’t be dying in a war. But they lost that bet. In the past 12 years they have been called up 11 times, with deployments lasting 12 to 15 months and more. Since Sept. 1, 2001, more than 300,000 have been mobilized, and they make up 35 percent of the troops in Iraq. 

The reason is simple: they are cheap. Reserve and Guard troops are much less expensive than regular troops, because the military only foots the bill for them when they are on active duty. When they come home, they’re on their own. As conservative Christopher Caldwell at the Weekly Standard notes, “It is hard not to see a similarity between the army’s shift to part-time soldiering and businesses’ preferences for part-time vs. full-time labor.” Think of it as a sort of temp agency armed with the latest in firepower. 

So is this about saving money? It certainly is not about saving lives or mental well being. According to the British Guardian, 75 percent of the troops shipped home for mental health reasons are reservists, and their casualty rate is greater per capita than regular troops. 

No, it’s about getting elected. The military budget is going up, not down. And don’t pay attention to that $419 billion figure because it doesn’t cover minor things like nuclear weapons, veterans’ benefits, Homeland Defense, or the actual cost of the war. Pull everything together, hit the add button, and the figure is more like $700 billion. 

The soldiers won’t see any of that money. The average front-line trooper makes $16,000, the same as a Wal-Mart clerk, and according to Nickel and Dimed author, Barbara Ehrenreich, more than 25,000 military families are eligible for food stamps. 

The arms corporations are another matter. Lockheed-Martin (the largest arms corporation in the world), Boeing, and Northrop Grumman will corner one out of every four of those dollars. 

In gratitude, the defense industry pours money back into the election cycle at a rate of 65 percent for the Republicans, 35 percent for the Democrats (and there are lots of them that take the 20 pieces of silver). Iraq has pretty much broken the Guard. Retired General Barry McCaffrey told the Senate that the organization is “in meltdown and in 24 month we will be coming apart.” Like the 12th Massachusetts, there won’t be many left to rally ‘round the colors. 

But if you’re a Republican or a Blue Dog Democrat, the only important thing is getting re-elected. So the Guard and the Reserves will be fed into the Iraq meat grinder until there aren’t any more of them, and then the aerospace industry can just flatten the place. 

In the meantime little towns in Georgia and Ohio will bury their dead, while Lockheed Martin figures out how to fix the next election. 

 

Conn Hallinan is a journalist and an analyst for Foreign Policy in Focus.


Choose to Make a Difference By Arthur I. BlausteinMother Jones

Friday September 16, 2005

The traditions of community service and citizen participation have been at the heart of American civic culture since before the nation was founded. Historically, our greatest strength as a nation has been to be there for one another. Citizen participatio n has been the lifeblood of democracy. 

As Thomas Paine put it, “The highest calling of every individual in a democratic society is that of citizen!” Accidents of nature and abstract notions of improvement do not make our communities better or healthier p laces in which to live and work. They get better because people like you decide that they want to make a difference.  

Volunteering is not a conservative or liberal, Democratic or Republican issue; caring and compassion simply help to define us as being h uman.  

It is within our power to move beyond a disaster and economic crisis like the one that has engulfed New Orleans and to create new opportunities. What it comes down to is assuming personal responsibility. If we decide to become involved in voluntar y efforts, we can restore idealism, realism, responsiveness, and vitality to our institutions and our communities.  

At her memorial service, it was said of Eleanor Roosevelt, the most influential American woman of the twentieth century, that “she would r ather light a candle than curse the darkness.” What was true for her then is true for us now. The choice to make a difference is ours. 

 

How to help those individuals and communities hurt by Hurricane Katrina through donations and volunteering 

The followi ng organizations and groups that provide direct emergency assistance: 

 

American Red Cross 

(800) HELP NOW (English) 

(800) 257-7575 (Spanish) 

www.redcross.org 

 

America’s Second Harvest 

(800) 344-8070 

www.secondharvest.org 

 

American Friends Service Committee 

(215)241-7000 

www.afsc.org 

 

B’nai B’rith International 

(888) 388-4224 

http://bnaibrith.org 

 

Catholic Charities, USA 

(703) 549-1390 

www.catholiccharitiesusa.org 

 

Christian Disaster Response 

(941) 956-5183 

www.cdresponse.org 

 

Church World Service 

(800) 297-1516 

www.churchworldservice.org 

 

Feed The Children 

(800) 525-7575 

www.feedthechildren.org 

Lutheran Disaster Response 

(800) 638-3522 

(no web site) 

 

Oxfam America 

(800) 77-OXFAM or (617)482-1211 

www.oxfamamerica.org 

 

Presbyterian Disaster Assistance 

(800)8 72-3283 

www.pcusa.org/pda 

 

Salvation Army 

(800 725-2769 

www.salvationarmyusa.org 

 

Southern Baptist Disaster Relief 

(800) 462-8657 

www.namb.net/site/c.9qKILUOzEpH/b.224451/k.F902/Hurricane_Katrina_Disaster_Relief_Update__Donations.htm 

 

Union For Reform Jud aism 

(212) 650-4140 

http://urj.org/index.cfm? 

 

Unitarian Universalist Service  

Committee 

(617)868-6600 

www.uusc.org 

 

United Jewish Communities 

(877) 277-2477 

www.ujc.org 

 

United Methodist Committee On Relief 

(800)554-8583 

http://gbgm-umc.org/umcor/ 

 

Volun teers of America 

(800) 899-0089 

www.voa.org 

 

YMCA of the USA 

(800) 872-9622 

www.ymca.net 

 

YWCA of the USA 

(800) YWCA US1 

www.ywca.org/site/pp.asp?c=djISI6PIKpG&b=284783 

 

 

 

The following organizations and groups provide direct or indirect assistance and/o r advocate for policies and programs to assist victims or stricken communities. This is particularly important because of the failure of the federal government and this administration to provide leadership and competence before and during the disaster. Vo luntary efforts should not be a substitute for government action, and advocacy groups must take the initiative to assure that the government fulfills its responsibility to the American people.  

ACORN 

(877) 55ACORN 

www.acorn.org 

 

Campaign for America’s Fut ure 

(202) 955-5665 

www.ourfuture.org 

 

Catholic Campaign for Human  

Development 

(202) 541-3000 

www.nccbuscc.org/cchd/ 

 

Center for Health, Enviroment and  

Justice 

(703) 237-2249 

www.chej.org 

 

Center on Budget and Policy Priorities 

(202) 408-1080 

www.cbpp.org 

 

Children’s Defense Fund 

(202) 628-8787 

www.childrensdefense.org 

 

City Year 

(617) 927-2500 

www.cityyear.org 

 

Coalition on Human Needs 

(202) 223-2532 

www.chn.org 

 

Common Cause 

(800)926-1064 

www.commoncause.org 

 

Community Action Partnership 

(202)265-7546 

www.communityactionpartnership.com 

 

Corporation for Supportive Housing 

(212) 986-2966 ext. 500 

www.csh.org 

 

Field Mobilization Department of the  

AFL-CIO 

(202)637-5000 

www.aflcio.org 

 

Habitat for Humanity 

(229) 924-6935 

www.habitat.org 

 

www.MoveOn.org 

 

NA ACP 

(877) NAACP-98 

www.naacp.org 

 

National Congress for Community Economic Development 

(877) 44-NCCED or 202 289-9020 

www.ncced.org 

National Council of La Raza 

(800)311-NCLR 

www.ncced.org 

 

National Neighborhood Coalition 

(202) 408-8533 

www.neighborhoodcoalition.org 

 

National Urban League 

(212) 558-5300 

www.nul.org 

 

National Mental Health Association 

(800)969-6642 

www.nmha.org 

 

People for the American Way 

(800) 326-7329 

www.pfaw.org/pfaw/general 

 

Project America 

(804) 358-1605 

www.project.org 

 

Sierra Club 

(415) 977-5500 

www.sierraclub.org 

 

In addition to contributing money, basic supplies and services; the healthiest response for individuals is to volunteer to do community service in your own home town. 

For a more complete in-depth list see: Make A Diffe rence: America’s Guide to Volunteering and Community Service by Arthur I. Blaustein (Jossey Bass/Wiley) 

Please contribute to the health and vitality of our communities by sharing this list with as many people as possible. 

 

Reprinted with permission. 

 

Art hur I. Blaustein is a professor at the UC Berkeley where he teaches urban policy and community development. He served as chairman of the President’s Council on Economic Opportunity under Jimmy Carter. His most recent books are Make a Difference and The Am erican Promise: Justice and Opportunity.  

 

› 


Editorial Cartoon By JUSTIN DEFREITAS

Friday September 16, 2005

http://www.jfdefreitas.com/index.php?path=/00_Latest%20Work 


Letters to the Editor

Friday September 16, 2005

UC THEATRE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Regarding the Daily Planet’s Sept. 9-12 front-page article, as a jazz fan I applaud converting the UC Theatre into a jazz club. However, Kimball’s would be a lousy choice. Witness that their poor programming ran the splendid Emeryville venue into bankruptcy at the same time that Yoshi’s thrived at remote Jack London Square. Why not consider Yoshi’s and others to reincarnate the UC Theatre as a jazz club, rather than Kimball’s which has failed in Emeryville and is likely to fail again in Berkeley?  

Bruce Beyaert  

Richmond 

 

• 

BROWER MEMORIAL 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Let me suggest a location for the David Brower memorial sculpture: the northeast corner of Bancroft and Oxford.  

Currently, this corner is occupied by a right-turn lane, a left-over piece of 1950s traffic engineering that was designed solely to speed up traffic.  

This corner could be redesigned as a conventional intersection and still accommodate all its traffic. It would need a wide turning radius for buses, but it does not need this right turn lane.  

This redesign would free enough land for the Brower memorial sculpture. It would also contribute to the revival of downtown by making the corner safer and more pedestrian friendly, with slower traffic and an easier crossing.  

This is an appropriate location for the Brower memorial because it is much more prominent than the other proposed locations. It is right next to downtown, right next to UC Campus, and only two blocks from the proposed Brower Center.  

Just as important, this is an appropriate location because it would take a corner that now looks like a freeway interchange and make it look more like a park. David Brower would undoubtedly approve.  

The city should refer this issue to the traffic engineer to determine the cost of rebuilding this intersection. Then the city should raise the needed money, so we can put the Brower memorial sculpture at the prominent location that it deserves.  

Charles Siegel 

 

• 

A PERFECT MATCH 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Let’s face it; the poor homeless blue ball sculpture belongs ... in the “arts district”! The hypocritical phoniness of the “arts district” and the alleged “memorial” to David Brower are a perfect match. Richard List is right: Install the ball!  

Carol Denney 

 

• 

EMERGENCY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

If it is true, as reported in the Daily Planet, that the City of Berkeley is now down to one part-time employee to work on emergency preparedness, then we are asking for big trouble. When the next disaster strikes—and surely it will when least expected—we could face unprecedented life-or-death situations throughout the region. Citizens and government at all levels may be hard pressed to overcome all the challenges. We have only to look at recent disasters to realize we could be on our own for a long time. 

Berkeley has done much to ready its public buildings and schools for earthquakes. But much remains to be done to keep our citizens, businesses, and government prepared. To short-change our staffing for emergencies, and the continuing coordination and planning that must take place at all levels, is to court disaster. 

Alan Goldfarb 

 

• 

WILDCAT CANYON 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Just a comment on Marta Yamamoto’s Sept. 12 Wildcat Canyon article. It is one of my favorite places, but there’s an important and extremely dangerous “unwanted hiking companion” that was not even mentioned: acorns. I know because about two months ago, out exploring Alvarado Park with a friend, while photographing a stately tree, I suddenly slid on what looked like leaves and wood shavings. I came down hard and dislocated and fractured my ankle in three places. It was like skating on ball bearings! This was only a few feet from the walkway with no warning signs to be seen. I am still in pain and still angry with the Parks Department for not giving me any idea that this was possible—not only the physical suffering, but of course the grave expenses for a senior like me. All for lack of a warning sign! 

It’s not only the snakes and ticks that bite, it’s the bite into one’s life that comes from a really preventable accident. Hikers beware!  

A.R. Tarlow 

San Pablo 

 

• 

BUS ROUTES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

A correction to Marta Yamamoto’s Wildcat Canyon piece: The No. 67 bus no longer serves the entrance to Wildcat Canyon Park. It doesn’t serve anything: the route was discontinued over a year ago. 

The route, which served sections of El Cerrito, Richmond, and San Pablo, and provided the only transit to unincorporated East Richmond Heights, didn’t have good patronage. Many people needed to find other ways to get around, usually by auto. The reasons were simple: 

• The buses ran only once per half-hour. 

• The buses were scheduled to arrive at the Del Norte BART station one minute after the San Francisco train left. 

• In the reverse direction, the No. 67 left the BART station one minute after the San Francisco train arrived at the platform, ensuring that the bus had left before passengers could get through the exit turnstiles. 

A San Francisco commuter had to endure 45 minutes every day standing around waiting for connections due to this Balkanized scheduling. Non rush-hour connections were the same, causing most off-peak riders to drive if they wanted to get to our major travel destination. I submit that half-hour transit scheduling is not practical for most people. And when this interval is compounded because there’s no coordination with connecting vehicles, failure is assured. 

The No. 67 bus was timed to drive away business and to ensure that the farebox recovery was dismal. It was a lose-lose situation. If we’re going to get people out of their cars, we need to have positive connections between vehicles, modes of travel, and our myriad of uncoordinated transit agencies throughout the region. The Europeans know how to do this, enabling people to get around on foot without pain. I’ve observed good integration in Boston, too, although the connections are provided by a single agency. So far, the only sign of progress that I’ve seen in these parts is the development of an integrated multi-agency fare card. We need more. 

Richard Steinfeld 

 

• 

PEACE AND JUSTICE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

On Aug. 2, I wrote a letter to the Daily Planet expressing the belief that difficulties in passing resolutions at the Peace and Justice Commission were due to procedural issues around absences and new appointments rather than political factionalism or supposed hostile takeovers. I wrote that I expected the commission to be able to pass resolutions by a clear consensus when we reconvened in September. 

I am pleased to report that I was correct. On Monday the Peace and Justice Commission voted on five resolutions. Two resolutions (on an international peace concert and supporting an investigation on Bush administration intelligence manipulations leading to the Iraq war) passed unanimously. Two resolutions (opposing the Lawrence Berkeley Lab demolition of the Bevatron and urging the City Council to join the international campaign against the death penalty) passed 13-0 with two abstentions. The resolution on withdrawing the California National Guard from Iraq passed with 10 votes. Those who did not vote for the resolution were evenly divided in saying it went too far and not far enough.  

Commission chair, Steve Freedkin is to be commended for his thoughtful opening remarks stressing respect, and for his fair and impartial leadership of the meetings. I would also like to thank all my fellow commissioners across the progressive spectrum for their thoughtful discussion and desire to make the world a better place. I think that citizens of Berkeley who come and see the Peace and Justice Commission in action will get a positive impression of its work, and I look forward to their attendance at a future meeting. 

Jane Rachel Litman  

Member, Peace and Justice Commission  

 


Letters to the Editor II

Friday September 16, 2005

• 

DERBY STREET 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The Sept. 13 letter from Doug Fielding is not totally correct. The first meeting about the park did present the proposed plans for the park with the full-size baseball field. That was over seven years ago. I live in the neighborhood and went to that meeting. I was excited about it and looked forward to a new park in our community. I was shocked that anyone would be against a park in Berkeley.  

The latest design has been revised with input from East Campus, The Early Childhood people and the Fire Department, among others. It has fantastic upgrades for the farmers’ market, including power for each stall. The closed-Derby design is clearly superior to the open-Derby plan. 

The kids is my neighborhood were in ninth grade at the time the park was first proposed. They played sports in the street throughout their high school days. Now they are all moved out of the area. There are more boys and girls than ever participating in high school sports. The community benefits greatly from a big park and greenspace. I really see no reason not to build the biggest and best park we can. 

This is a park that will last for many generations and many years. No houses need to be torn down, no businesses moved. Lets not be shortsighted and go with an inferior design, just to save some money in the short term. We as neighbors need to trust the school district to hire the top planners, designers and architects, and let them do their jobs. Let’s build a park we can be proud of like the Rose Garden, Live Oak and Cordonices, to name a few. These well designed parks have stood the test of time.  

Beyond all the sports field issues is the fact that we have an opportunity to build a great park in a dense old city like Berkeley. Lets not get sentimental about 27,000 square feet of concrete. Close Derby and build a great park. 

Bart Schultz 

• 

JUDGE ROBERTS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Roberts confirmation hearing: Let’s hope John Roberts is not an ideologue on a mission.  

Do you get the feeling Supreme Court nominee Roberts is deceiving America much as George W. Bush did? We’ve had to wait five years to figure out Bush, and what he was up to. Will we have to wait another five years to figure out what Mr. Roberts is up to? He’s sure not telling anyone at the confirmation hearing. 

Look how President Bush has turned America upside down over the past five years. Where is America headed? Will Roberts do the same with the judicial system? 

Bush pushed his war agenda on America and now he is pushing John Roberts as Chief Justice for the Supreme Court—a flashing red light. 

Ron Lowe 

Nevada City 

 

• 

CONSTITUTION DAY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Walking through Sproul Plaza at UC Berkeley, the gathering point for my university, I heard a series of patriotic songs. Drawn by “God Bless America” and a country song that claims putting a boot up people’s behinds is the American way, I wandered to a series of tables where a group had set up flags, patriotic signs, and gave away Bush/Cheney stickers to passersby. These young men were getting a head start celebrating Constitution Day, Sept. 17. 

Starting this year, all educational institutions across the country receiving federal money are forced to commemorate yearly the signing of the Constitution. The law was slipped into an otherwise mundane spending bill by Robert Byrd, a Democrat from West Virginia. 

Constitution Day is being hailed across the country as a triumph for civic education, a law that will help supplant ignorance of the Constitution with knowledge and admiration. Andrea Neal, in the Indianapolis Star, says “the idea behind Constitution Day is to help more young Americans understand why the Constitution is special.” Others echo Neal’s enthusiasm, applauding a seemingly inoffensive inquiry into the most fundamental document of American government. Unfortunately, theory differs from practice. 

What Constitution Day really means for students across America is presaged by the ways we are told to celebrate it. Pamphlets and websites are adorned with flags, the preamble, dramatic lighting, and founding fathers—all juxtaposed to evoke a feeling of awe. Constitution Day, Inc., a non-profit group promoting Constitution Day, has dedicated it to the military, and endorses the reading of the preamble across the country. The day will finish with “bells ringing across America” they say. 

If the goal is to teach young people about American government, this event will do nothing to further the goal. The preamble is the only part of the Constitution that says nothing about how the government will actually work. The point of the event, it seems, is to provoke emotional reaction to the Constitution and the military. 

Students need thoughtful deliberation and reasoned criticism, not chauvinistic patriotism. Constitution Day, unless done in a thoughtful manner, will only lead to guttural responses toward government policy, which is exactly the opposite of what we need today. 

Gene Zubovich 

UC Berkeley student 

 

• 

HOUSING 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Construction of concentrated low-income housing, as advocated by Randy Silverman, rent control commissioner, is a natural step as the era of rent control recedes. But every experience of large low-income projects from Chicago to San Francisco also has a tale of woe attached to it. Dispersal of affordable units in larger market-rate buildings is better for the beneficiaries and the public. 

CSU East Bay, where I teach, does not endorse any political or economic model to the contrary of Glen Kohler’s statement. Berkeley succeeding as a city is the best living endorsement of the enlightened liberal politics I advocate. For that to happen the schools must be good, the crime rate low and the quality of life high even as the blessing of diversity is experienced.  

Berkeley does not succeed in showing what liberal policy can achieve if our schools do not perform. Currently one-third of students are testing below minimum standards. The unique policy of non-enforcement of residency is root to why the schools are always broke yet are uncommonly well funded. A city as intellectually and artistically gifted as Berkeley simply must do better. Parent and taxpayers yearn for some forum to reevaluate this policy.  

David Baggins 

 

• 

MIDDLE EAST HISTORY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Janet Sakamoto’s revision of Middle East history (Sept. 13) would make the stuff of great comic relief if it didn’t add to the expanding maw of ignorance and bigotry so prevalent in these parts.  

Sakamoto would have you believe that in 1967, Nasser’s army moved into the Sinai simply to take the sun. Apparently, she isn’t aware that Nasser openly stated that his intent was the destruction of Israel. Moreover, if the U.S. saw thousands of well-armed followers of Bin Laden on its borders, how do you think this country would respond? 

Later Sakamoto makes the outrageous claim that in 1948, the armies of five Arab nations moved toward the Israeli border specifically to protect the “new Palestinian state.” Ms. Sakamoto makes such a ludicrous pronouncement in utter disregard of numerous verbal and printed statements of Arab leaders stating unequivocally that their purpose was to eliminate the then embryonic Jewish state. Hey Janet, if you actually believe the Arab invasion was launched to simply protect the poor Palestinians, I have a bridge to sell you.... 

Now what is the source of such rich historian fiction? I once overheard pro-Palestinian propagandist Alison Weir advise those she wished to convert to read The Middle East for Dummies. Not surprisingly, Ms. Sakamoto cites the Encyclopedia Britannica—a Readers Digest for Dummies—as the source of her Middle Eastern fantasies.  

Gee Janet, I’d like to think it won’t have been beyond the scope of your intellect to have cracked open any of the myriad excellent examinations of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict written by highly regarded historians. Or would that be too much to ask of a Palestinian partisan?  

Dan Spitzer 

Kensington 

 

• 

MORE ON MIDDLE EAST 

To emphasize the core point of my recent letter, that those who dislike facts tend to sling insults, Janet Sakamoto of Albany says I “can’t help (myself) from lying,” and asks why I don’t invite readers to consult sources. 

First: If Ms. Sakamoto conclusively disproves any of the other 11 statements of fact in my recent letter, I will take her to Berkeley Honda and buy her a car. 

Second: I encourage anyone more interested in fact than in fundamentalism to read Politics, Lies and Videotape by Yitschak Ben Gad; Jewish Literacy by Joseph Telushkin, or Battleground by Samuel Katz. 

I would also like to request that the Daily Planet cease and desist from publishing libelous character attacks against me. 

David Altschul 

 

• 

STILL MORE ... 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Ms. Sakamoto calls David Altschul (who I don’t know) and myself “liars” for respectively asserting that the Arabs started the 1948 War and the Six Day War. Harsh stuff. She bases her accusations on information she uncovered in the Encyclopedia Britannica (EB). Fearing that Altschul and I have been deprived of new cutting edge research, I ran to Berkeley’s new downtown library. The entire EB contains only a few scant sentences on either war, mostly in an entry entitled, “Arab-Israeli Wars.” This is a mere half-page article covering all of the wars (no wonder the last time I relied on the EB was in the sixth grade). First, the 1948 War. Contrary to Sakamoto, the EB does not say that Israel started the war, but states the order of events as (1) the Arab armies occupied Palestinian areas, then (2) they attacked and destroyed the oldest part of Jewish Jerusalem, and then (3) they marched down the valley that leads to Tel Aviv, where they were repulsed. Elsewhere, in the entry under “Israel,” the EB clearly indicates who did start the war : “On May 14, 1948, the State of Israel was proclaimed and Egypt, Transjordan (later Jordan), Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq declared war on the new country. Israel won the war.” Altschul is vindicated. 

But has Sakamoto also wronged me?  

When one places a person’s written words within quotation marks, it is accepted practice to use the exact words, especially when the quote is used to justify an accusation of lying. Ms. Sakamoto explicitly calls me a liar based upon the following made up quote: “The War (1967) began when Nassar sent his armies into Sinai.” My actual words published in the Daily Planet’s Sept. 2 issue were: 

“Arafat’s attacks on Israel began in 1965 precisely because he did not recognize that [armistice] line, and the 1967 war was precipitated by the Arabs who felt that Israel’s true border should be the sea. The war began when Nasser famously boasted ‘I will throw the Jews into the sea.’ He then blockaded Israeli shipping (an act of war) and sent his armies into Sinai.” 

The venerable EB backs me up. Under “Palestine” EB writes that the PLO was created in 1964 and was dedicated to “the destruction of Israel.” There is only one short paragraph about the Six Day War in the half page “Arab-Israeli Wars” entry. It reads in its entirety: “In early 1967 Syrian bombardments of Israeli villages had been intensified. When the Israeli Air Force shot down six MiGs in reprisal, Nasser mobilized his forces near the Sinai border. During this war Israel eliminated the Egyptian air force and established air superiority.” A brief entry under “Nasser” indicates that “war broke out after Nasser had requested the U.N. to remove its peacekeeping troops from the Gaza Strip and Sharm ash-Sheykh [i.e., Sinai], then closed the Gulf of Aqaba to Israeli shipping.” For those who desire more details than these about the lead up to war, I recommend Michael Oren’s definitive history, Six Days of War, or simply go back to archived news accounts of those days, especially the period of May-June, 1967.  

With a score of 2-0, I believe that Sakamoto owes Altschul and me a published retraction and apology.  

John Gertzr


First Person: Teacher Anxiety Dreams By Mary J. Barrett Special to the Planet

Friday September 16, 2005

My teacher anxiety dreams started in mid-July, even though I retired in June. The dreams keep coming, warning me of my failings and of imminent disaster. Never mind that I will not ever have to step back in any classroom again. The dreams are vivid attacks on my confidence. They aren’t true nightmares, filled with chasing or falling, but they are enough to make the next day gloomy. 

The main scenario is repeated over several nights with different characters seen from different angles, as though my inner cinematographer is trying to perfect the shot. A young teacher I worked with last year is talking about me behind my back. 

“I like Mary,” she tells another teacher, “but she’s not ‘all that.’ Don’t let her into your classroom. She won’t be any help at all.” 

When the teacher sees me, she begs me to come help her again soon. “It’s all good,” she says to me. I smile but underneath my acquiescence, my heart is rent with self-doubt. 

Even as parents worry about their child’s schooling and children about homework and Nikes, most teachers are in the grip of anxiety dreams. One young teacher dreamed all summer that she hasn’t done what she needs to do. 

“It’s the night before school starts. I haven’t set up anything in my classroom at all. There’s no furniture in place, no name tags. I ask my mom and dad to come help me. They come but the chairs are not the right sizes for the little children. As I start to wake up, I think ‘it’s still early, if I get up now maybe I can get some things ready before the bell rings.’ Then I wake up all the way and realize it’s two months before school starts. My friend wants me to go to therapy to get rid of these dreams!” 

I assure her none of us, no matter how much therapy we’ve had, have gotten rid of these dreams. Blanche, who’s taught 40 years and has retired, too, reports she’s had three major anxiety dreams this summer. 

“They all have the same theme. My room is never prepared. Nothing is set up. The custodians left the furniture smooshed against the wall. I open the cupboards and they are completely bare. There aren’t even pencils. I have no money, so I get old shoe boxes and start cutting off the tops to make pencil boxes for the kids. It’s pitiful. Then my co-teacher, whose room is set up beautifully—it’s like Martha Stewart’s—offers to help me.” 

Carole, a veteran kindergarten teacher, is still anxiously dreaming too.  

“The basic outline is that I’m teaching and there’s hundreds of students. They come and go, in and out the doors. No one is paying any attention to me. Several parents and district administrators are observing the situation. My main concern is with the safety of the children. I’m appalled that there could be so many children. Then, in the next scene, I’ve lost my hearing; I can’t hear the bell ringing. The students are waiting outside but I don’t know it. Eventually I show up and discover they’ve raided another teacher’s storage cabinet.” 

Paul, a high school art teacher, has a recurring dream that he’s late and can’t find the class he’s supposed to teach. Next he dreams that someone finally notices his teaching isn’t good enough. The person sarcastically says, “You get paid for this?” 

Pamela, who teaches first grade in a private school, is in front of the class in her underwear. “I’m always in various degrees of disrobe. I realize something is not right and I had better do something fast, but I don’t know what it is. At first everything feels normal; but, then I realize I’m exposing myself.” 

Joe, a veteran first grade teacher in a public school, dreams short vignettes of field trips where every little thing goes wrong. “The bus is late, the lunches fall in the lake, a kid gets lost, but then is found. There’s never lots of detail; but there’s always lots of worried feelings.” 

Becky, an elementary teacher, dreams she’s been assigned to teach in junior high. She’s told, by an administrator, he can place her anyplace he wants, so there! In Jan’s dream, she’s naked during an interview. When she gets back out to her car, she wonders if the interviewers noticed. Barbara dreams that, as she teaches, the room expands and expands and there are students way, way off in the distance. She’s panicked because she knows her voice can’t carry that far. 

Rita’s anxiety is about the end of the year. She’s required to let go of the children next spring. She’s on a magic carpet flying over the city. 

“It’s a colorful Turkish carpet with fringes. I’m sitting on the magic carpet picking up kids. I reach down and pluck them. There’s laughter on the carpet but an underlying feeling of dread. I have to place the children with their next teacher. I’m afraid the next teacher won’t appreciate them especially because these children are the difficult ones. They are in my heart you know. ‘Where will they go,’ I wonder, but I have to let go of them. I’m moving on, and I put them down; it’s like they’re lost.”  

I hope there is a statute of limitations on my teacher dreams. Did my inspiring teachers dream? Are they still? 

 

Mary J. Barrett is a retired Berkeley Unified School District teacher of 35 years.  


Column: Undercurrents: Looking for Follow-Up Answers to Oakland Police Story By J. DOUGLAS ALLEN-TAYLOR

Friday September 16, 2005

You ever wonder what happens to sensational stories that hit the local media, get everybody talking for a few days, and then just drop off the face of the earth? How many times in these situations do you see a follow-up story—either in the media or in some government agency—to find out how much of the original story was true? And if we don’t have a follow-up, how much effect does the original story—true or not—have on city policies? 

An example would be the story about the seven shots that were supposed to have been fired at two Oakland police officers following a motorcycle club charity event at the Kaiser Convention Center on the last Saturday in August. (According to the reports, you may remember, nobody, including the officers, were hit with the bullets.) 

There doesn’t seem to be any doubt that the bullets were fired. But the question I’m still waiting to have answered is whether it’s ever been determined that anyone actually fired at the officers—as the newspaper and television stories said—or if the officers were unintended targets. 

Today’s lesson, however, is on another interesting thing that came out of that night. 

In its story following the Kaiser Convention events, the Oakland Tribune reported that the fundraiser was sponsored by four motorcycle organizations, which the newspaper identified as the Shadows of the Knight, Kings of Cali, Wiseguys and Goodfellas. The Trib story went on to say that “[Oakland Police] Lt. Paul Berlin said the group had another event planned for the Kaiser Convention Center next weekend. He said he would ask city officials this week to revoke the group’s permit because of the commotion Saturday night. ‘We have enough problems here in Oakland,’ Berlin said.” 

Yes, we do, but maybe one of those problems isn’t the motorcycle clubs. 

Me, I was curious about what happened to that event on the following weekend, so I checked the calendar website at the Kaiser Convention Center first, to see what actually had been scheduled. Sure enough, there was a motorcycle club event on the Convention Center calendar for Sept. 3, the Saturday after the “seven shots.” But it wasn’t being put on by the four motorcycle clubs that had put on the charity event the week before. It was the 47th Annual Dance sponsored by the East Bay Dragons. 

The Oakland Police Department still hasn’t released to the public—at least as far as I can find—any information that the four motorcycle clubs had anything to do with the problems that occurred after their Aug. 27 event. Those motorcycle groups have denied that the turmoil that happened afterwards was their fault. But even if it was—and, as I said, that hasn’t been determined yet—why should the Oakland police take it out on another group—the East Bay Dragons—who didn’t have anything to do with the original event at all? Because they’re all black motorcycle clubs? 

And if you think that maybe the Tribune reporter might have misinterpreted what Lt. Berlin was saying, other members of the local media were getting the same impression. The day after the shootings, CBS Channel 5 reported that “there is another Shadows of the Knight event scheduled for the Kaiser Convention Center next weekend.” 

Was this a deliberate falsehood by Lt. Berlin, or just an “honest” mistake by a police official who talked to the press without first checking his facts? I have no way of knowing. But it makes you sort of wonder, doesn’t it, what other sorts of incorrect information gets spread around by public officials hereabouts that never gets corrected, and so the public ends up believing that it is true. (I’ve got my own list, which I’ll be glad to share with you.) 

Anyway, I know a little bit about the East Bay Dragons, since their 88th Avenue and International Boulevard headquarters is within walking distance of where I grew up. In the ‘50s, the Dragons were considered a wild and rough group in our neighborhood. But like the rest of us, they’ve grown older and more responsible with the passing years and besides, what we thought was wild and rough in the ‘50s would be considered tame now by the sometimes-vicious standards of today’s mean streets of Oakland. 

Anyways, I walked around to the clubhouse last weekend and asked them what happened with their Sept. 3 event at the Kaiser. They said that it didn’t get canceled, and went on without any problems. But some of the members did have complaints about other OPD crackdowns on their weekend activities. 

On the Friday before Labor Day, they said that Oakland Police forced them to shut down a dance at their headquarters at 10 p.m. because the police said they didn’t have a cabaret license. The East Bay Dragons members said they’ve been holding the annual dance for years with no cabaret license and no problems; it’s set up for visiting motorcycle clubs who come into town for the Dragons’ Labor Day weekend gathering. 

And on the Sunday before Labor Day, Oakland police shut down the Dragons’ annual 88th Avenue block party at 5 p.m., and then conducted a sweep in which they ordered the crowds of people off of International Boulevard in the vicinity of the Dragons’ clubhouse. 

The Dragons do this every year on Labor Day weekend, blocking off 88th between International and A Street and playing music and selling sodas and barbecue. They have events for the kids as well as for teenagers, young adults, and the older crowd. It’s one of the yearly highlights of our neighborhood. The crowds are enormous, and club members handle both the security and the cleanup themselves. In fact, when the police wanted the block between 88th and 87th on International cleared of the crowds, they first went to the Dragons for assistance. One of the Dragons walked down the street with a bullhorn, telling people that the party was over and it was time to go home. Nobody voiced any complaints, and within minutes, the sidewalk was virtually empty. Oakland police, trying the same thing, usually get met with resentment and noncooperation. 

But since East Bay Dragon community gatherings are peaceful events, and since the people of East Oakland have been complaining that we don’t have enough things to do in our neighborhood, why did the Oakland police shut things down early, long before dark, while neighborhood people were still hanging out, enjoying themselves, with no signs of problem? And why was it necessary to cut off the Dragons’ Friday night dance so early, killing the dance altogether? Did OPD decide this on their own, or were they under orders from city officials? 

We keep hearing that the city can’t set up alternatives to the sideshows because, since they involve spinning cars, they would be too dangerous. But when East Oaklanders like the East Bay Dragons set up other long-term alternative events that don’t involve cars and don’t get violent, those things are now getting shut off, too. What, then, is the problem? 

I’m not going to speculate—not just yet, anyways—but I’d be interested in hearing if the OPD has an answer, or if either Mayor Jerry Brown or any of the members of the Oakland City Council have anything to say about it. 

 


Commentary: Cottage Subcommittee Excludes Neighbors By ROBERT LAURISTON

Friday September 16, 2005

Your brief Sept. 2 item on the ZAB subcommittee on 3045 Shattuck may have misled some readers to believe that the subcommittee’s purpose is to seek a compromise between neighbors and the developer, Christina Sun. In fact its purpose is simply to work with Ms. Sun’s architect to find a more attractive, less blocky, higher-quality design that she and ZAB would both find acceptable. 

Neighbors are not a party to these discussions, and our other concerns about and suggestions for the project are not on the table. Design issues aside, our main objections regard parking and due process. 

Ms. Sun, planning staff, and ZAB continue to flout the zoning code regulations regarding the number and location of off-street parking spaces. The current proposal for the property provides the required two parking spaces for the two residential units, but locates one of them within 10 feet of the property line with the adjacent residence. Per Berkeley Zoning Code section 23E.04.050, that would be allowed only if ZAB were to find that it provided “greater privacy or improved amenity” to a neighboring residence, when here the effect is clearly the opposite. 

The current proposal provides zero parking for the commercial unit, for the simple reason that there is nowhere to put one space, let alone the two required by the Zoning Code. This is fallout from Ms. Sun’s failed attempt to expand her illegal rooming house by passing it off as a two-story single-family house (one space required) over a first-floor cafe (two spaces). The City Council nullified her permits for that project after neighbors provided evidence that she had been running a rooming house and did not intend to use the expanded residence as a single-family house. By that time, Ms. Sun had already expanded the building’s footprint, leaving just enough room for three standard nine-foot spaces. 

Since the upstairs has now been split into two units, that leaves one for the commercial space. However, per state law the first space for the commercial unit has to be five feet wider to accommodate vans with wheelchair lifts. So, as a direct result of her scofflaw behavior, Ms. Sun has nowhere to put parking for the commercial space except in the building. To date she has rejected all suggestions that she do so. 

Instead, Ms. Sun has arbitrarily redefined all but 1149 square feet of the first floor as “owner storage.” Staff in turn are pretending (with ZAB’s blessing) that such storage is not a commercial use, rounding off the 149 square feet, and exempting the remaining 1000 square feet as provided by Zoning Code section 23E.52.080.C. Staff has offered no rationale for allowing that discretionary exemption. Nor has staff explained how it could enforce the requirement that the “owner storage” not be used by whatever business occupies the commercial unit. 

The Zoning Code gives ZAB the power to resolve all of these parking issues by holding a public hearing and issuing a use permit under section 23E.52.080 reducing the parking requirement. Unfortunately, Ms. Sun adamantly refuses to apply for any use permits. More unfortunately, instead of rejecting her application on that basis, staff (again with ZAB’s blessing) is pretending that no use permits are required. Thus, after two years of effort, thousands of dollars in legal fees, and thousands of hours preparing for and attending tangential hearings, neighbors continue to be denied our right to a public hearing on the required use permits. 

 

Robert Lauriston represents 150 neighbors of 3045 Shattuck Ave.


Commentary: A Streetcar Named Disaster By CLAIRE BURCH

Friday September 16, 2005

I have seen New Orleans clinging to a tower. 

Eighteen children on a roof. 

Intelligent design? A half a million terror. 

A thirsty baby's signs of ending life. 

Geraldo at his network microphone 

describes the scene and cries. 

Mothers and fathers in a sweaty daze. 

Where were the rescuers to keep them safe? 

 

Some trudge along in water mixed with shit. 

The cisterns overflowing and not yet 

clean water, bread and milk. 

Federal heart of stone 

until Geraldo fiercely shouted out. 

The huddled masses only stand and wait. 

 

Thank you Geraldo. You got the  

president going. 

Brown bodies left there still. All is not well. 

What is the half mast flag exactly  

saying? 

Body or soul. 

I hear New Orleans crying 

a summer's tale. 

 

Claire Burch is the artistic director for 

Art and Education Media Inc.›


Commentary: Progressive Alliance Will Be Launched at Monday Meeting By Laurence Schechtman, Judy Shelton and Jesse Townley

Friday September 16, 2005

Can Berkeley elect and maintain a government worthy of our progressive ideals? Can we once again ignite a movement? 

That is the challenge which you are invited to consider at 7 p.m. Monday Sept. 19, when the Berkeley Progressive Alliance will be meeting at the Unitarian Fellowship at Cedar and Bonita. We believe that it is possible to win elections AND work as a movement. 

Writing a political platform, for example, which the Berkeley left hasn’t done in a long time, can be an exercise in community organizing. If it is done right, then all the organizations from all constituencies have to talk to each other. Labor people, the peace community, people dealing with hunger, poverty and homelessness, with transportation, with neighborhood ecology, city gardeners, religious groups, people of color, students and youth; we all need to talk in order to write down our principles. And in so doing we gain in focus and strength, and become more enthusiastic campaigners for candidates who will implement our positions. Our job now is contact these organizations so that we can prepare a platform which will bring us together. 

Every constituency, however, needs to consider not only what it requires from government, but also what it can do for itself, and who its allies are. We should not wait for elections or platforms to start organizing.  

Consider labor, for example. The union at the Honda strike would not likely have lasted this long, nor have much chance of success, without the enthusiastic support of the Berkeley community, including some members of the Progressive Alliance. (You are always welcome to join the picket line at 2600 Shattuck, especially this Saturday at 1 p.m. when the Labor Chorus will be singing.) 

But on a larger scale, the time is right for a vibrant new labor-community coalition. The growth of “service industries,” health, education, retail, etc., means that workers and community members are more and more in touch. And although bosses can fire and outsource workers, they can’t fire the customers who are helping with strikes and boycotts. Unions know this, and have begun to create “associate” union membership for community people who will be eligible for union health insurance and other benefits.  

Should the Progressive Alliance help spread these associate memberships to Berkeley neighborhoods? Will neighbors then be more willing to help on picket lines, or even, with union training perhaps, help to organize new worksites? Unions and neighborhoods can become real partners. We will have to talk about these possibilities in our Labor and Union Support Committee. 

And while we’re talking about neighborhoods, why not a few pilot projects for ecological sustainability? We would have to bring together various ecological organizations: organic vegetable gardeners, community supported agriculture to ship in low cost food, bio-diesel brewers, solar energy, all focused in one neighborhood. 

We know we have to reduce the use of fossil fuels, both because of global warming and because of peak oil. We don’t know exactly when, but in not too many years the price of gas is going to shoot out of reach. Neighborhoods are going to have to prepare, with sustainability and with community, and our Progressive Alliance should help. 

But whether we are supporting labor or greening our neighborhoods, we are going to need the energy and idealism of students and youth, and of Berkeley’s religious communities. 

Religious people in Berkeley are doing indispensable work. The Ecumenical Chaplaincy for the Homeless, Berkeley Organized Congregations for Action, (BOCA) which works with immigration and with health care for children, and the Buddhist Peace Fellowship, are only a few. And we could learn a few things from spiritual groups about building community, and about listening quietly, even at meetings. So we will see what our Religious and Spiritual Liason Committee can do. 

Besides Labor and Religions we are also talking about work teams for the following.  

1) City Government Watch—which might subdivide into various topics (education, housing, etc) as we grow. 

2) Elections and Precinct Work. Our first job is to help defeat Arnold’s anti-labor initiatives this November. Also Instant Runoff & clean  

elections.  

3) Inclusiveness and Outreach—especially to people of color and to students and youth. 

4) Any other progressive project you can convince people to join. 

One thing we learned from New Orleans, if we didn’t know it already, is that the cavalry is not going to arrive on time (and watch out when it does.) If we want a world of justice and solidarity we are going to have to build it ourselves and with each other. Hope to see you on Monday, 7 p.m., Cedar and Bonita. 

 

Laurence Schechtman, Judy Shelton, Jesse Townley are members of the Co-ordinating Committee for the Berkeley Progressive Alliance. 

 

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Arts: Arthur Miller’s ‘The Price’ Shines at Aurora Theatre By KEN BULLOCK Special to the Planet

Friday September 16, 2005

“I ask you to remember: with used furniture, you cannot be emotional!” 

—Ray Reinhardt as Gregory Solomon 

 

Over a jumble of old-fashioned furniture, stacked every which-way, as if stored in an attic, is a smoggy skylight. Into this crowded room, empty of people, comes a cop, who muses over the scene. He rights an upended chair on which he places his unbuckled belt and holster with his cap rather than sitting down, all the while glancing at his watch. After hefting an oar and unpacking a fencing mask and foil, he starts spinning sides on a victrola—old novelty records, one just of laughter, which he joins in. 

These wordless moments introduce the Aurora Theatre production of Arthur Miller’s The Price on Richard Olmstead’s set, and its protagonist, Victor Franz (Charles Dean), a somewhat diffident man. When he is joined by his wife, Esther (Judith Marx) the dialogue begins and won’t let up; it only varies in intensity and tone until the last minutes of the play. 

The situation seems of the simplest familial obligation, though in this case, one long overdue: the disposal of Vic’s family household items, years after the death of his father, who was ruined in the Depression and a widower soon after.  

All the social complications of an Arthur Miller play arise out of the relentless dialogue, which starts out easy enough in conversational rhythms between man and wife, establishing that Vic left college and his pursuit of a scientific career to support his father (“a busted man like thousands of others”), while his brother Walter went to medical school.  

Vic is now 50-ish, desultorily putting off retirement, and the selling of the old furniture, on and off trying to contact the now-successful and aloof Walter about his wishes—and share—in its disposal, now that the old house is to be torn down. Esther urges Vic to seek Walter’s help in finding a new career that he loves, maybe going back to school. The two brothers haven’t spoken in 16 years. Vic’s cynical about his brother’s potential spirit of helpfulness: “That’s why he’s got Cadillacs—people who love money don’t give it away.” 

As they talk about old times and spoiled dreams—and the furniture —the dealer, Gregory Solomon comes in, flattering Esther shamelessly. Even after her departure, he remarks, “I like her. She’s suspicious ... a girl who believes everything, how can you trust her?” 

Ray Reinhardt’s Solomon is very much a humorous version of his namesake: the judge who divvies up everything literally and in equal portions. Unleavened in a way himself, he’s the comic leavening of the drama. Ever diffident, Vic at first seems to rebuff the ancient appraiser, but while going over the goods—an old laprug for a lavish open car, an opera hat—he begins talking about his once-rich father. 

The hybrid nature of Miller’s dramas is seldom discussed; mostly it is his often brilliant adaptation of dialogue and storytelling techniques from radio, though there are times when the unutterable and ineffable are mulled over with oratorical overkill. In this case, the counterpoint of the humorous Solomon offsets the almost turgid character of the family dispute that gradually surfaces. He is a genial grotesque who paces the tight-lipped morality play. 

Just as Vic has agreed to a price, and Solomon is counting out the cash in hand, brother Walter (John Santo) walks unexpectedly through the door. He is also complimentary to Esther, and declaring he doesn’t want anything‚ proceeds to offer Vic various deals. Esther sides with Walter. Slowly the Cain-and-Abel tale of their falling out emerges. 

Unlike Miller’s Oedipus tale of Death of a Salesman, there is no real primal scene that objectifies the breach, just a few insistent images from memories. Nothing is objectively settled; all is open to question, conditioned by each brothers’ character. Walter, the self-made man, erases a past he feels was a tissue of hypocrisy. Vic, who perhaps sacrificed his own dreams unnecessarily to make a lifelong ethical gesture to a ruined father, says, “I just didn’t want him to end up on the grass.” 

Miller said in a 1999 interview that The Price was in response to two issues: the so-called Theater of the Absurd—and the “seemingly permanent” war in Vietnam, which never mentioned in the dialogue. 

Set in 1968, this chamber play in a musty attic says something about both the humorous and pathetic absurdity of modern existence, and the personal backstory of the Depression and World War II survivors (now glibly dubbed “the greatest generation”) going into the crisis and breakup of the post-New Deal “Great Society” with, literally, all their baggage. 

With Joy Carlin’s direction, this quartet of actors delivers a real evening in the theater from Miller’s play—dense with dialogue that is peppered with off-beat repetitions, neatly constructed, if not filled with the inspired moments (as well as awkward ones) of his earlier dramas, yet resilient enough to rise above banality.  

 

The Price shows at 8 p.m. Wednesdays-Saturdays and at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. Sundays through Oct. 9 at the Aurora Theatre, 2081 Addison St. $38. 843-4822. www.auroratheatre.com.  


Arts Calendar

Friday September 16, 2005

FRIDAY, SEPT. 16 

THEATER 

Aurora Theatre “The Price” Wed.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 and 7 p.m., through Oct. 9, at 2081 Addison St. Tickets are $38. 843-4822. www.auroratheatre.org 

Impact Theater “Nicky Goes Goth” at 8 p.m., Thurs.-Sat. at La Val’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid, through Oct. 1. Tickets are $10-$15. 464-4468. www.impacttheatre.com 

Shotgun Players, “Owners” at 8 p.m., Thurs.-Sun. through Oct. 16 at The Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby Ave. Reservations suggested. 841-6500. www.shotgunplayers.org 

Wilde Irish Productions “Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me” Thurs. -Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 3 p.m., at Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave., through Oct. 2. Tickets are $18-$22. 644-9940. www.wildeirish.org 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Seamarks” works by Carol Dalton. Reception at 6 p.m. at Cecile Moochnek Gallery, 1809-D Fourth St. Exhibition runs to Nov. 13. 549-1018. www.cecilemoochnek.com 

FILM 

Films from Along the SIlk Road: “Taskir and Zukhra” at 7:30 p.m. and “Tenderness” at 9:20 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Gallery Talk on “Wholly Grace” works by Susan Duhan Felix at 1 p.m. at Bade Museum, 1798 Scenic Ave. Free. 

“Art, Activism and the New Hip Hop Aesthetics” A night of performance and conversation with Adam Mansbach, Aya de Leon, Keith Knight and Craig Watkins at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Oakland Opera “La Belle et la Bete,” Thurs.-Sun. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. through Oct. 2 at the Oakland Metro, 201 Broadway. Tickets are $18-$32. 763-1146. www.oaklandopera.org 

Hurricane Benefit with Ledisi at 8 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $25. 238-9200.  

Amy Likar, flute, Miles Graber, piano at 8 p.m. at Giorgi Gallery, 2911 Claremont Ave. Cost is $12-$15. 848-1228.  

National Ballet of China “Raise the Red Lantern” at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $36-$68. 642-9988.  

Community Action Series with Fuga at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10-$12. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Hal Stein Quartet at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $7. 841-JAZZ.  

Dick Hindman Trio at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $12-$18. 845-5373.  

Izum, world-beat and jazz-groove, at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

O-Maya at 9:30 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $10. 548-1159.  

Faith Winthrop Trio at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

Sila and the Afrofunk Experience at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $11-13. Benefit for Save the Children Fund in Niger. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

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

Berkeley Old Time Music Convention with Mike Seeger, Kenny Hall and Eric & Suzy Thompson at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $15.50-$16.50. 548-1761.  

Gomer Hendrix at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

Collisionville, Love Like Fire at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $6. 841-2082.  

Lights Out, Life-Long Tragedy, Jealous Again, Never Healed at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $7. 525-9926. 

SATURDAY, SEPT. 17 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Darkroom Drawings” black and white photographs and mixed media by Robert Tomlinson. Reception at 6 p.m. at Photolab Gallery, 2235 Fifth St. Exhibition runs to Oct. 22. 644-1400.  

THEATER 

California Shakespeare Theater, “Nicholas Nickleby” Parts 1 and 2 Sat. and Sun. at 8 p.m. at Bruns Amphitheater, 100 Gateway Blvd., Orinda. Tickets are $10-$55. 548-9666.  

FILM 

Rediscovering British Silent Cinema: “The Triumph of the Rat” at 7 p.m. and “Downhill” at 9 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Charles Mann describes “1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852.  

Jon B. Eisenberg looks at “Using Terri: The Religious Right’s Conspiracy to Take Away Our Rights” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

String Band Contest including a Youth Showcase, and over 20 competing string bands from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Berkeley Farmers’ Market, Civic Center Park. 548-3333.  

Richard Koski, Finnish-American master of two-row accordion, at 3 p.m. at Finnish Kaleva Hall, 1970 Chestnut St. at University. 524-6217. irmatj@aol.com 

National Ballet of China “Raise the Red Lantern” at 2 and 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $36-$68. 642-9988.  

San Francisco Early Music Society “Lute Concertos of Karl Kohut” at 8 p.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. Tickets are $10-$25. 528-1725. www.sfems.org 

Broceliande “Songs of Autumn and Harvest” at 7:30 p.m. at the Emil Melfi Clubhouse, 555 Pierce St., Albany. Donation $10-$15. 569-0437. 

Melanie O’Reilly and Tir Na Mara at 8 p.m. at Valley Center for Performing Arts, Holy Names Univ., 3500 Mountain Blvd. Oakland. Tickets are $20. 436-1240. www.hnu.edu 

Hurricane Benefit with Sunny Hawkins at 8 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $15. 238-9200.  

Jazz Foundation of America Hurricane Benefit at 2 and 5:30 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $10. 845-5373. 

Robin Gregory & Rudy Mwongozi Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $7. 841-JAZZ.  

Art Maxwell Quartet at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

Dynamic, jazz, funk, at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Lunar Heights, The Attik, Illa-Dapted at 10 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $8. 548-1159.  

Dance Naganuma “Voices of the Powerful Child” at 8 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts. Tickets are $12-$15. 925-798-1300. www.juliamorgan.org 

Araucaria, traditional songs and dances from Chile, at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10-$12. 849-2568.  

Faith Petric, 90th birthday celebration, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Old Time Square Dance with caller Bill Martin and music by the Government Issue Orchestra at 8 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $15. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Megan McLaughlin with cellist Patty Espeth, at 7 p.m. at Spuds Pizza, 3290 Adeline St. Cost is $7. 558-0881. 

7th Direction, AJ Roach, Claire Holley at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $6. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Dr. Know, Naked Aggression, Retching Red, New Earth Creeps at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $6. 525-9926. 

SUNDAY, SEPT. 18 

CHILDREN  

Asheba at Ashkenaz at 3 p.m. Cost is $4-$6. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

EXHIBITIONS 

Matrix 218: Carla Klein “Scape” opens at Berkeley Art Museum, 2626 Bancroft Way. Artist’s talk at 4 p.m. 642-0808. 

“Exquisite Corpse Show” collaboratively made art pieces opens at the North/South Gallery, 5241 College Ave. at Broadway. www.geocities.com/ 

exquisitecorpseshow 

FILM 

“8 1/4” A film by Claire Burch at 2 p.m. at at 5:30 p.m. at the Paci- 

fic Film Archive. Free. 547-7602. 

Dutch Voices: Jos de Putter and Peter Delpeut “The Making of a New Empire” at 5:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808.  

Found Footage Festival at 6 p.m. at The Parkway Theater, 1834 Park Blvd., Oakland. Cost is $6. 814-2400.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

California Poets in the Schools with Linda Elkin, Grace Marie Grafton, Tobey Kaplan, and John Oliver Simon at 7:30 p.m. at Pegasus Books, 2349 Shattuck Ave. 649-1320. 

Poetry Flash with Karen Benke, Kathy Evans and Prartho M. Sereno at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. Donation $2. 845-7852.  

David Zirin reads from “What’s My Name Fool? Sports and Resistance in the United States” at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Hurricane Benefit with Taj Mahal at 8 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $30. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

Chanticleer “Earth Songs” at 7 p.m. at First Congregational Church, 2345 Channing Way. www.chanticleer.org 

National Ballet of China “Raise the Red Lantern” at 3 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $36-$68. 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

Live Oak Concert with Cuban pianist Almaguer Martinez at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley Art Center, 1275 Walnut St. 644-6893.  

Broceliande “Songs of Autumn and Harvest” at 4 p.m. at Montclair Presbyterian Church, 5701 Thornhill Drive, Oakland. Donation $10-$15. 339-1131. 

Organ Recital with Jonathan Dimmock, organ and Christine Brandes, soprano at 4 p.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. Tickets are $15. 845-8630. 

Rudolf Buchbinder, piano, at 3 p.m. at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $42. 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

Joan Getz & Ellen Hoffman Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $7. 841-JAZZ.  

Kim Nally Quintet with Allen Smith at 4:30 p.m. at the Jazz- 

school. Cost is $18. 845-5373.  

Old Time Cabaret from 2 to 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

MONDAY, SEPT. 19 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Kay Trimberger looks at “The New Single Woman” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852.  

Zigi Lowenberg and Raymond Nat Turner from the jazzpoetry ensemble UpSurge! at 7 p.m. at Barnes and Noble, Jack London Square, Oakland. 527-1141. 

Aurora Script Club, moderated by Paul Heller with guest director Tom Bently, at 7:30 p.m. at Aurora Theater. 843-4822. 

Poetry Express with Kirk Lumpkin at 7 p.m. at Priya Restaurant, 2072 San Pablo Ave.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Trovatore, traditional Italian music, at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Doug Wamble at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $6-$12. 238-9200.  

TUESDAY, SEPT. 20 

CHILDREN 

“Germar the Magician” at 6:30 p.m. at the Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave. 524-3043. 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Fascinated with Faces” Works by Ted Gordon, Attilio Crescenti and Willie Harris through Dec. 10 at The Ames Gallery, 2661 Cedar St. 845-4949. www.amesgallery.com 

FILM 

Madcat Presents: “The Phantom of the Operator” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Maafa 2005: Hurrican Katrina Poetic Protest Fundraiser at 7 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center, 3105 Shattuck Ave. Suggested donation $5-$25. 849-2568. 

Milvia Street’s 15th Anniversary Reading with past and present contributors at 7 p.m. at the Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. 981-6132. 

Shana Penn reads from “Solidarity’s Secret: The Women Who Defeated Communism in Poland” at 5 p.m. in the Dinner Boardroom, GTU Hewlett Library, 2400 Ridge Rd. RSVP to 649-2420. 

Culinary Historians of Northern California read from recent works at 4 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852.  

John Hubner reports on “Last Chance in Texas: The Redemption of Criminal Youth” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

African Showboyz, from Ghana, at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Ellen Hoffman and Singers’ Open Mic at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $5. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Veretski Pass at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50-$18.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Uroboros at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Celso Fonseca, from Brazil, at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10-$16. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

Jazzschool Tuesdays, a weekly showcase of up-and-coming ensembles from Berkeley Jazzschool at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Dred Scott, solo jazz piano, at 8 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810. 

WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 21 

EXHIBITIONS 

“All Dolled Up” A exhibition of works by California doll makers to Sept. 30 at ACCI Gallery, 1652 Shattuck Ave. 843-2527. www.accigallery.com 

“Exquisite Corpse Show” collaboratively made art pieces. Reception at 7:30 p.m. at the North/South Gallery, 5241 College Ave. at Broadway. www.geocities.com/exquisitecorpseshow 

“Laughter is the Best Medicine” Art, Healing and Humor Reception at 5 p.m. at the Richmond Health Center, 100 38th St., Richmond. Exhibition runs to Jan. 1. www.artschange.org 

FILM 

Tropical Punch: The Video 

works of Tony Labat “Left Jab” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Café Poetry hosted by Paradise at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña. Donation $2. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Terry Prachett reads from his new novel “Thud!” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852.  

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  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Wednesday Noon Concert, with Christy Dana Quartet at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Free. 642-4864.  

Whiskey Brothers, Old Time and Bluegrass at 9 p.m. at Albatross, 1822 San Pablo Ave. 843-2473. www.albatrosspub.com 

Calvin Keys Trio Invitational Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

 

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

Omar Torrez & Cuchata, guitar, at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Candela at 9:30 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Dance lessons at 8 p.m. Cost is $5-$10. 548-1159.  

James Whiton at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Celso Fonseca, from Brazil, at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10-$16. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

THURSDAY, SEPT. 22 

FILM 

International Latino Film Festival “A Silent Love” at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña. Cost is $7. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Dutch Voices: Jos de Putter and Peter Delpeut “Alias Kurban Said” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

THEATER 

DMCF Productions “Florence” by Alice Childress and “The Pot Maker” by Marita Bonner, Thurs.-Sat at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. at Malonga Casquelourd Center, 1428 Alice St., Oakland. Tickets are $12-$25. 633-6360. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“Patsy Krebs: A Decade” Lecture and reception at 5 p.m. the Flora Lamson Hewlett Library, 2400 Ridge Rd. 649-2500. 

Nomad Spoken Word Night at 6 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Jill Soloway describes “Tiny Ladies in Shiny Pants” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

Barbara Ehrenriech describes “Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com  

Word Beat Reading Series with Mike Hardy and David Gollub at 7 p.m. at Mediterraneum Caffe, 2475 Telegraph Ave., near Dwight Way. 526-5985. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Albany Music in the Park with La Familia, Afro-Cuban music at 6:30 p.m. at Albany’s Memorial Park. 524-9283. www.albanyca.org  

Dhol Patrol at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Bhangra dance lesson at 9 p.m. Cost is $12-$15. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Mark Morris Dance Group at at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $30-$58. 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

Crasdant, music from Wales, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50-$18.50. 548-1761.  

Za’tar and The Klez-X, Jewish music benefit for Congregation Netivot Shalom, at 7:30 p.m. at 1316 University Ave. Tickets are $10-$20. 549-9447. 

Loose Wig Jazz Quartet at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $5. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Mia and Jonah, Austin Willacy, Jason Miller at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5. 841-2082 www.starryploughpub.com 

Dave Weckl Band at 8 and 10 p.m., through Sun. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $12-$24. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com  


Arlene Blum Explores the Climbing Life in New Memoir By KEN BULLOCK Special to the Planet

Friday September 16, 2005

Arlene Blum, a chemist who contributed to the banning of three toxic chemicals, leader of mountaineering expeditions and founder of Berkeley’s annual Himalayan Fair, will appear at two local celebrations of her new book, Breaking Trail: A Climbing Life. 

Blum will speak about her book at REI on Tuesday and at Cody’s Books on Sept. 26. Breaking Trail is scheduled to be published by Scribners-Lisa Drew on Oct. 15. 

Blum led the all-women expedition to scale Annapurna in the Himalayas in 1978 and wrote A Woman’s Place is on Top about the climb. She said, “I recently learned that it is one of the most difficult and dangerous mountains to climb. That’s not what we were looking for! We expected something easier. My first book, which has amazingly become a little classic, took a year to write. Breaking Trail, in which I ask how and why I, who consider myself a fairly reasonable, not risk-taking person, started climbing, took me 20 years to write.” 

Blum said that by the time she was 25, half her friends had died climbing. 

“I had to ask these questions,” she said. “And I never found a model in another adventure book in which you could learn about a great adventure as well as the psychological motivations, what goes on inside as well as outside.” 

A Woman’s Place is on Top has been named one of the 100 best adventure books ever by National Geographic Adventure magazine and Fortune included it on the magazine’s 75th anniversary list of the 75 best business books. 

“The 5 percent of Breaking Trail about myself took the longest to think over and write,” Blum said. “The rest is all adventures. I learned about myself, solved a few family mysteries, and found out something about why people try such hard things and a little about how they succeed.” 

Coming from a Chicago family of “people with strong and difficult agendas,” Blum said she had to, “from an early age, be extremely tactful.” 

Later, she said, that helped her develop leadership skills for leading expedition teams.  

“They made me want to escape that house into the freezing cold,” Blum remembered. “I’ve always gone out into the cold. And I got a lot of flak for doing things girls weren’t supposed to. What seemed like adversities gave me a lot of strength.” 

Her remarkable achievements in science and in climbing weren’t made according to a plan. 

“I was afraid of science and math,” she explained. “Girls couldn’t do them! Then Sputnik went up, and I had to take them in school. And I found out I loved them. I’ve done theoretical work on the structure of nucleic acids. Then, in Bombay—which is an industrial town overpopulated with very poor people—I had a conversion experience: I wanted my scientific work to help problems like overpopulation.” 

She came to realize that such problems are like scissors that cut with two blades: overpopulation in the developing countries and the proliferation and abuse of chemical substances in the United States. 

“I wanted to wake people up to how these chemicals in the body, accumulating in body fat, are more dangerous than terrorists from the skies,” Blum said. 

She also began a research project on examining fire retardants in children’s sleepwear. 

“I found two that did cause mutations, that were persistent organic pollutants, that later were found to be carcinogenic,” she said. “I wrote papers on them, about banning them, and later about an agricultural fumigant that helped caused sterility in workers in Richmond. All three toxic chemicals have been banned.” 

Mountain climbing “just seemed to happen,” Blum said. 

“I always loved nature and it was the first thing I tried,” she said. “My lab partner in Portland was handsome and a climber, so I went along with him. I did it in spite of the risk, not because of it. I talk in the book about how connections in my scientific work arose in my mind while climbing. That’s part of the reason for climbing, too—it’s an extreme meditation; where you place your hands and feet determine whether you live or die. That empties the mind, makes room for creativity.” 

In 1981-82, Blum spent 10 months walking across the Himalaya region, “and fell in love with the people there, so hardworking, incredible and so poor.” Determined to “channel back” something, she remembered “the wonderful music and dancing we saw all the way across the region, and wanted to share it back home.” The Himalaya Fair was the result in 1983. 

“We didn’t know if anybody would come; 6,000 people attended that weekend. It struck a chord from the beginning.” The Himalayan Fair contributes about $35,000 a year to charities in the region. 

Writing Breaking Trail led Blum to discover “that my family led to climbing, led to liberating myself, to widening horizons,” she said. 

 

Arlene Blum will read from Breaking Trail: A Climbing Life at 7p.m. Tuesday at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave., and at 7:30 p.m. Sept. 26 at Cody’s Books, 2454 Telegraph Ave. For more information, see www.Arlene Blum.com.e


Berkeley This Week

Friday September 16, 2005

FRIDAY, SEPT. 16 

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon with Andrew E. Barshay, PhD on “Japanese POWs in the Gulag,1945-56” Luncheon at 11:45 a.m. for $13.50, speech at 12:30 p.m., at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant St. 526-2925. 

“Redemption - The Stan ‘Tookie’ Williams Story” a special screening with Barbara Becnel, hosted by the Fr. Bill O’Donnell Social Justice Committee, at 7:30 p.m. at St. Joseph the Worker Church, 1640 Addison St. Donations accepted. 482-1062. 

Berkeley Folk Dancers begins a 13-week course of beginners’ lessons at 7:45 p.m. at Live Oak Park, 1301 Shattuck. Cost for the series is $40. 655-9332. www.berkeleyfolkdancers.org  

Spirit Walking Aqua Chi A gentle water exercise class at 10 a.m. at the Berkeley High Warm Pool. Cost is $3.50 per session. 526-0312. 

Environmental Science Activities for Children from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. at Whole Foods, Telegraph Ave. at Ashby. www.kidsforthebay.org 

Movement: Chi Gung to improve energy and health, at 1 p.m. at Elephant Pharmacy, 1607 Shattuck Ave. 549-9200. 

Scottish Country Dancing Enjoy the traditional social dances of Scotland at a free introductory party at 6:30 p.m. for youth, 8 p.m. for adults at Grace North Church, 2138 Cedar St. 234-8985. 

“The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear” a BBC docmentary at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Unitarian Universalists, 1924 Cedar St. 528-5403. 

“The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity” a workshop led by Mac Lingo, Fridays at 1:30 p.m. through Nov. 4 at Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, 1 Lawson Rd., Kensington. Donation $30. To register call 525-1881.  

Berkeley Chess Club meets at 8 p.m. at the East Bay Chess Club, 1940 Virginia St. Players at all levels are welcome. 845-1041. 

Women in Black Vigil noon to 1 p.m. at UC Berkeley, Bancroft at Telegraph. 548-6310. 

SATURDAY, SEPT. 17 

California Coastal Cleanup Day in Berkeley, from 9 a.m. to noon. Meet behind the Seabreeze Market. Everyone needs to sign waivers. We give you trash /recycle bags, pencils, tally cards and a map of the areas we need to clean. There are seven sites, most within walking distance. There are also clean-up sites in Emeryville and Albany. 981-6720. www.ci.ber 

keley.ca.us/marina/marinaexp/cleanup.htm For Oakland venues call 238-7611. www.oaklandpw.com/creeks 

Cerrito Creek Coastal Cleanup Meet at at 10 a.m. at the south end of Yosemite St. (two blocks west of San Pablo Ave., south of Central Ave.) in El Cerrito. Bring your own picnic. Sponsored by Friends of Five Creeks. 848-358. www.fivecreeks.org 

Marina Bay Beach Cleanup Meet at 9 a.m. at Shimada Friendship Park in Richmond. Wear old clothes, sturdy shoes and work gloves. Followed by BBQ at noon. 374-3231. 

Discounted Bay-Friendly Car Wash from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Kaady Car Wash, 400 San Pablo Ave., Albany. 452-9261, ext. 130. www.savesfbay.org  

Berkeley Firefighters “Three-Alarm Barbeque” A fund-raiser for Berkeley Rep at 11:30 a.m. at 2015 Addison St. Tickets are $15-$25. Additional cost to see matinee of “Our Town.” 647-2949. www.berkeleyrep.org 

Back to School - Not War A day of workshops on peace and social justice at Laney College, Oakland, from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. with an Anti-War Rally at 6 p.m. Tickets are $20-$40, $10 for students, includes breakfast and lunch. Sponsored by the Green Party of Alameda County. www.BackToSchoolNotWar.org 

String Band Contest and Crafts Fair from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Berkeley Farmers’ Market, Civic Center Park. 548-3333. www.ecologycenter.org 

Celebrate Berkeley’s New Rail Stop at University and 3rd St. from 1 to 4 p.m. with music, food, speeches, tours and the ribbon-cutting. Sponsored by Berkeley Redevelopment Agency. For more information, contact Marti Brown at 981-7418. 

Berkeley Historical Society Walking Tour of the Claremont - Elmwood to discover a variety of early 20th century houses, estates and paths, from 10 a.m. to noon. Cost is $10. 848-0181. www.cityofberkeley.info/histsoc/ 

“Hot Tips: A Fire Safety Program” from 10 a.m. to noon at the Tilden Nature Center. 981-5506. 

Cajun/Zydeco Festival for Hurrican Relief with Tommy Michot & Edward Poullard, Lost Bayou Ramblers, Brian Jack and the Zydeco Gamblers and many more, plus Lousiana cuisine, from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. at Ardenwood Historic Farm, Fremont. Tickets are $18 at the gate, children $1. Sponsored by the East Bay Regional Park District. 

Bay Area Rockin’ Solidarity Labor Heritage Chorus performs on behalf of the Berkeley Honda striking workers at 1 p.m. at Shattuck and Parker.  

Friends of the Albany Library Book Sale from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at 1247 Marin Ave., Albany. Fiction, mysteries, children’s books, library discards, magazines and records. 536-3720, ext. 5. 

California Writers Club Berkeley Branch meets with Joshua Braff, author of “The Unthinkable Thoughts of Jacob Green” at 10 a.m. at Barnes & Noble, Jack London Square, Oakland. 482-0265.  

Untraining White Liberal Racism introductory workshop from 1to 5 p.m. at the Berkeley High School Library, 1980 Allston Way. Donation $10-$50, no one will be turned away for lack of funds. 

“Salud!” A Celebration of Latino Art, Health and Community from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Women’s Cancer Resource Center, 5741 Telegraph Ave. 420-7900. 

Klezmer and Yiddish Culture Festival at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley Richmond Jewish Community Center, 1414 Walnut St. Tickets are $12-$15. 415-789-7679. 

Peace Corps Cultural Festival Learn about different cultures with Returned Volunteers. Displays, crafts, live performances and games. Bring a picnic. From 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Peacock Meadows, Golden Gate Park, SF. peacecorpsfestival@yahoo.com  

Walking Tour of Historic Oakland Churches and Temples Meet at 10 a.m. at the front of the First Presbyterian Church at 2619 Broadway. Tour lasts 90 minutes. For reservations call 238-3234. 

Luna Kids Dance Open House with free parent/child dance class at 11:30 a.m. at Grace North Church, 2138 Cedar St. 644-3629.  

Feng Shui for Home and Office at 10 a.m. at Elephant Pharmacy, 1607 Shattuck Ave. at Cedar. 549-9200. 

“Untold Stories: Baseball and the Multicultural Experience” at 7 p.m. at the Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak Sts. 238-2200. www.museumca.org 

Historical and Botanical Tour of Chapel of the Chimes, a Julia Morgan landmark, at 10 a.m. at 4499 Piedmont Ave. at Pleasant Valley. Reservations required 228-3207.  

“Making a Backyard Wildlife Garden” with Glen Schneider at 10 a.m. at Magic Gardens, 729 Heinz Ave. 644-2351. 

Oakland Outdoor Cinema “The Station Agent” at 8 p.m. on Washington St. between 9th and 10th Sts. Limited seating, bring chairs and blankets. 238-4734. www.filmoakland.com 

SUNDAY, SEPT. 18 

“Feed the Nation” Concert with Jennifer Johns. Support black farmers from the Mandela farmers’ market, at 10 a.m. at Splash Pad Park, Grand Ave. and Lakeshore Blvd., Oakland. 415-454-0174. www.mobetterfood.com 

Klezmer and Yiddish Culture Festival from 9:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. at BRJCC, 1414 Walnut St. Tickets are $18-$20, teens and children free. 415-789-7679. 

Bike Tour of Oakland A leisurely-paced tour covering the history of Oakland. Meet at 10 a.m. at the 10th St. entrance of the Oakland Museum of California. Registration required, 238-3514. 

“Viva Chile!” Views and Voices, a slide show by photographer Thea Bellos at 6 p.m. at La Peña, 3105 Shattuck Ave. 849-2568. 

Omulu Capoeira Annual Children’s Batizado at 2 p.m. at the Malonga Casquelord Center for the Arts, 1428 Alice St., Oakland. Donation $5. 286-7999. www.omulu.org 

Family Exploration: Shadow Puppets at noon at the Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak Sts. 238-2200. 

Sycamore Japanese Church Bazaar from noon to 5 p.m. at 1111 Navellier St., between Schmidt and Moeser Aves., El Cerrito. Japanese food, baked goods, BBQ, handcrafts, door prizes and games for children. 525-0727. 

Berkeley Cybersalon with Jim Dolgonas, President and CEO of CENIC at 6 p.m. at The Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St. Cost is $10-$20. whoisylvia@aol.com 

International Women’s Writing Guild with Jordan Tircuit at 3 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. www.codysbooks.com 

Hands-on Bike Maintenance Learn how to do a bicycle safety inspection at 10 a.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. Bring your bike and tools. 527-4140. 

Fall Equinox Goddess Circle from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Changemakers, 6536 Telegraph Ave. RSVP to 690-0467. 

Shamanic Journeying: Meeting Your Spirit Animal Allies at 1 p.m. at Rabbitears, 303 Arlington Ave., Kensington. Cost is $60. Registration required. 525-6155. 

Alternative Healing, using the Inner Dowsing Method, with Cea T. Hearth, at 2 p.m. at Changemakers, 6536 Telegraph Ave. Cost is $5. 415-282-2287. 

“Odessey: My Spiritual Quest and the Violin” with Donna Lerew at 9:30 a.m. at Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, 1 Lawson Rd., Kensington. 525-0302, ext. 306. 

Kol Hadash Brunch Program Bernie Rosen on “Jewish Viewpoint in Medical Ethics” at 9:30 a.m. at Albany Community Center, 1249 Marin Ave. Donation of $5 requested. programs@kolhadash.org 

“Martin Buber’s A Land of Two Peoples” re-release party at 2 p.m. at Kehilla Community Synagogue, 1300 Grand Ave., Piedmont. 547-2424. 

MONDAY, SEPT. 19 

Berkeley Progressive Alliance meets at 7 p.m. at Unitarian Fellowship, Cedar and Bonita. Choose a work team: City Gov. Watch; Elections-precinct work; Labor Support; Religious Liason; Outreach. 540-1975.  

“What’s My Name, Fool?” Sports and Resistance in the United States with author Dave Zirin at 7 p.m. at Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak St. 238-2200. www.museumca.org 

Critical Viewing An ongoing group to examine short films and television productions and its effects on our daily lives, at 1 p.m. at the BRJCC, 1414 Walnut St. Free. 848-0237. georgeporter@earthlink.net 

Tibetan Qigong for People Living with Parkinson’s Disease at 10 a.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Everyone is welcome. 528-8853. 

TUESDAY, SEPT. 20 

Berkeley Garden Club “Great Vegetables for East Bay Gardens” with Pam Peirce, author of Golden Gate Gardening plus tomato tasting and produce exchange, at 1 p.m. at Epworth Methodist Church, 1953 Hopkins St. 527-5641. 

Breaking Trail: An Evening with Climber Arlene Blum at 7 p.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. 527-4140. 

Maafa 2005: Hurrican Katrina Poetic Protest Fundraiser at 7 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center, 3105 Shattuck Ave. Suggested donation $5-$25. 849-2568. 

Berkeley Salon Discussion Group meets to discuss “Crossroads for Planet Earth” from 7 to 9 p.m. at the BRJCC, 1414 Walnut St. Please bring snacks and soft drinks to share. No peanuts please. 601-6690.  

“Race, Racialization and Colonialism” with Steve Martinot, Tues. at 7 p.m., through Oct. 3, at Unitarian Fellowship, Education Building, 1606 Bonita St. 528-5403. 

Introduction to Rosen Method to transform muscle tension at 7 p.m. at Elephant Pharmacy, 1607 Shattuck Ave. at Cedar. 549-9200. 

Free Prostate Cancer Screening for uninsured or low-income African-American and Hispanic men, at Alta Bates Summit Medical Center, Oakland. To make an appointment call 869-8833. 

Tuesday Tilden Walkers Join a few slowpoke seniors at 9:30 a.m. in the parking lot near the Little Farm for an hour or two walk. 215-7672, 524-9992. 

Berkeley Camera Club meets at 7:30 p.m., at the Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. S 548-3991. www.berkeleycameraclub.org 

“Driving and Aging” at 4 p.m. at Center for Older Adult Services, 828 San Pablo Ave. To register call 558-7800. 

“Clinical Trials of Medications for Fibromyalgia” at noon at Maffly Auditorium, Herrick Campus, Alta Bates, 2001 Dwight Way. 644-3273. 

St. John’s Prime Timers meets at 9:30 a.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. 845-6830. 

WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 21 

International Day of Peace Activities and music from 4 to 7 p.m. at Civic Center Park, followed by Peace Walk at 7 p.m. 981-7170. 

“Peace One Day” a documentary about British actor/filmmaker Jeremy Gilley’s successful attempt to have the United Nations declare Sept. 21 an international day of cease fire. At 7:30 p.m. at the Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar, wheelchair accessible. Cost is $5. www.hillsideclub.org 

“Immigration Wars: Open or Closed Borders for America?” with Peter Laufer, author of “Wetback Nation: The Case for Opening the Mexican-American Border” at 7 p.m. at The Independent Institute, 100 Swan Way, Oakland. Cost is $10-$35. For reservations, call 632-1366. 

Berkeley Communicators Toastmasters welcomes curious guests and new members at 7:15 a.m. at Au Coquelet Cafe, 2000 University Ave. at Milvia. 435-5863.  

Entrepreneurs Networking at 8 a.m. at A’Cuppa Tea, 3202 College Ave. at Alcatraz. Cost is $5. 562-9431.  

Walking Tour of Oakland Chinatown Meet at 10 a.m. at the courtyard fountain in the Pacific Renaissance Plaza at 388 Ninth St. Tour lasts 90 minutes. Reservations can be made by calling 238-3234. www.oaklandnet.com/walkingtours 

Grizzly Peak Cyclists meets at 7:30 p.m. at The Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St. Gordon Wozniak will talk on bicycling in Berkeley. 527-0450.  

North Berkeley Senior Center Book Group will discuss “English Creek” by Ivan Doig, at 1 p.m. at the NBSC. All welcome. 558-7232. 

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

Walk Berkeley for Seniors meets at 9:30 a.m. at the Sea Breeze Market, just west of the I-80 overpass. Everyone is welcome, wear comfortable shoes and a warm hat. 548-9840. 

Sing your Way Home A free sing-a-long at 4:30 p.m. every Wed. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave. 526-3720. 

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

Prose Writer’s Workshop at 7 p.m. at BRJCC, 1414 Walnut St. 848-0237. georgeporter@earthlink.net 

Stitch ‘n Bitch Bring your knitting, crocheting and other handcrafts from 6 to 9 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave. 548-5198. 

THURSDAY, SEPT. 22 

Autumn Equinox Gathering at 6:15 p.m. at the Interim Solar Calendar, Cesar Chavez Park, Berkeley Marina. Bring your questions about the workings of sun, moon and earth. www.solarcalendar.org 

Oakland Car Free Day A Transportation and Smart Growth Festival from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Frank Ogawa Plaza, 14th and Broadway.  

WriterCoach Connection Training Sessions Thurs. Sept. 22 and 29 at 6:30 p.m. Help students improve their writing and critical thinking skills. To register call 524-2319. www.writercoachconnection.org  

Easy Does It Disability Assistance meets at 6:30 p.m. at 1744A University Ave.All Welcome. 845-5513. 

“The Mistresses of Zorro” A conversation with Isabel Allende and Sandy Curtis at 7:30 p.m. at International House, 2299 Piedmont Ave. Cost is $5. 642-9460.  

Center for Art and Public Life Open House from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the California College of the Arts, 5275 Broadway. 594-3763. 

Venezuela Update with Margaret Prescott at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Unitarian Universalists, 1924 Cedar St. 528-5403. 

The Revolutionary Communist 4 with Carl Dix, Joe Veale, Akil Bomani, and Clyde Young at 7 p.m. at Longfellow Middle School Auditorium, 1500 Derby St. Donations requested. 848-1196. 

“Does Religion Matter?” A conversation with Huston Smith and Katherine Gumbert at 7:30 p.m. at College Prep School, Buttner Auditorium, 6100 Broadway, Oakland. Cost is $5-$10. 339-7726.  

“Don’t Be Six-Feet Under Without a Plan” Learn about creating a Living Will, Powers of Attorney and making final arrangements at 6 p.m. at Chapel of the Chimes, 4499 Piedmont Ave. at Pleasant Valley Rd., Oakland. 562-9431. 

Communication for Caregivers An ongoing free Berkeley Adult School class at 1 p.m. at the South Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5170. 

“How To Prevent Falls” at 4 p.m. at Center for Older Adult Services, 828 San Pablo Ave. To register call 558-7800. 

Center for Buddhist Studies “What Mahayana Sutras Mean” with Jonathan Silk, Dept. of Asian Languages and Cultures, UCLA, at 5 p.m. at the IEAS Conference Room, 2223 Fulton St., 6th Flr. http://ieas.berkeley.edu 

CITY MEETINGS 

Creeks Task Force meets Mon. Sept. 19 at 7 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Erin Dando, 981-7410. www.ci. 

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

City Council meets Tues., Sept. 20, at 7 p.m in City Council Chambers. 981-6900. www.ci. 

berkeley.ca.us/citycouncil 

Citizens Humane Commission meets Wed., Sept. 21, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Katherine O’Connor, 981-6601. www.ci.berkeley.ca. us/commissions/humane 

Commission on Aging meets Wed. Sept. 21, at 1:30 p.m., at the South Berkeley Senior Center. William Rogers, 981-5344. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/aging 

Commission on Labor meets Wed., Sept. 21, at 6:45 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Delfina M. Geiken, 981-7550. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/ 

commissions/labor 

Human Welfare and Community Action Commission meets Wed. Sept. 21, at 7 p.m., at the South Berkeley Senior Center. Kristen Lee, 981-5427. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/welfare 

Zoning Adjustments Board meets Thurs., Sept. 22, at 7 p.m., in City Council Chambers. Mark Rhoades, 981-7410. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/zoningÌ


Council Takes Aim At Elmwood Quotas By MATTHEW ARTZ

Tuesday September 13, 2005

Shortly after John Moriarty opened his Elmwood District jewelry shop nearly three decades ago, the two-block shopping district on College Avenue had a cobbler, pharmacy, gun store and the most restrictive business regulations in Berkeley. 

Those shops have all since closed, and now Moriarty, head of the Elmwood Merchants Association, is at the forefront of a neighborhood-merchant alliance working to undo the quota system designed to protect neighbors from losing shops they rely on and merchants from rising rents. 

“It just didn’t work,” Moriarty said. “The city has never enforced the quotas, several of the neighborhood serving shops have closed and rents have gone up.” Moriarty pays $3,500 a month for the storefront he rented for $400 in 1978. 

The Elmwood Business District Advisory Committee, comprised of merchants and leaders from surrounding neighborhood associations, has proposed scaling back the quota system from nine business categories to two: food service and beauty salons. The group also recommends barring businesses from expanding into neighboring shops as the clothing store Jeremy’s did earlier this year. 

“We believe in the free market,” said Kimberly Tinawi, owner of the Elmwood Market and the co-president of the Claremont Elmwood Neighborhood Association (CENA). “The quotas didn’t allow businesses to adapt to changing needs of customers.” 

Tonight (Tuesday) the City Council will vote whether to send the group’s recommendations to the Planning Commission for review.  

The most vocal opponent is Tad Laird, who recently bought the struggling Bolfing’s Elmwood Hardware Store. “Eliminating the quota system will force my business out,” Laird said.  

He predicted that open competition would lead to higher rents that would make a neighborhood-serving hardware store on College Avenue unfeasible. Laird, who owns the building housing his shop, also called for easing zoning restrictions so he could build condos above the store to help him underwrite the hardware business. 

“I bought this store under the premise that the community supported neighborhood-serving stores,” Laird said. “Now the feedback I get is that maybe we’re not supposed to be here anymore.” 

Laurent Dejanvry, co-president of CENA, said the notion that Elmwood stores should primarily serve local residents was “a very old view of Elmwood. I think it’s a combination of neighborhood-serving stores and a regional destination area—much like Fourth Street,” he said. 

 

Quotas Never Enforced 

Jason Wayman, owner of Elements, an Elmwood District clothing store, said he refused to participate in crafting a new quota system out of frustration with the city. “In reality, there has never been a quota system because the city refused to enforce it, he said. “This is like closing the door after the cow done left.” 

Last year Wayman was one of several merchants who fought unsuccessfully to keep Jeremy’s from expanding its Elmwood clothing store into neighboring storefronts. Even though the quota for clothing stores had been filled, the city allowed the expansion, which Wayman said has cut into his bottom line. 

“If Jeremy’s is going to expand to five units, then the quotas don’t matter,” said Desiree Alexander, owner of the Elmwood clothing store Dish.  

Dave Fogarty of the city’s Office of Economic Development acknowledged that “the city has misadministered quota system permits.” He said that by simplifying the system, city officials would be better able to enforce the rules. 

According to Moriarty, the district already is beyond its quota for full-service restaurants. He said restaurant owners got around quotas by opening as take-out restaurants when there were open quota slots in that category. Then, once they were established, they went to the Zoning Adjustments Board to get a variance to install tables, Moriarty said. 

 

Rationale of Recommendation 

The proposed system has been written primarily to prevent a repeat of Jeremy’s expansion and to close the restaurant loophole. Instead of dividing restaurants into three categories—carry-out, quick-service and full-service—the new system will have food service as a single category, in theory preventing full-service restaurants from starting out as take-out establishments. Twenty-one restaurants will be allowed in the district.  

For many Elmwood merchants, restaurants pose the biggest threat to their businesses because they typically can pay higher rent and attract patrons at night when other shops are closed.  

As an example of the lucrative restaurant business climate in the Elmwood, Tinawi said that the deli counter at her market, which features Middle Eastern products, constitutes about 80 percent of her business. “People aren’t supporting a neighborhood grocery store here,” she said. Under the new rules, Tinawi, who already has a quota slot as a carry-out restaurant, could turn the business into a full-service restaurant if the changes pass. 

Moriarty said the Elmwood committee chose to eliminate shop expansions because they feared it would lead to a few dominant retailers and the loss of diverse stores.  

“If Jeremy wanted to sell his shop, its big enough now for something like The Gap to move in,” he said. “That’s not the kind of store we want here.” 

Elmwood shops have held up fairly well during the recent economic slowdown, Fogarty said. City reports show that sales tax revenue from the district has remained virtually unchanged over the past two years. The only commercial vacancies are in a building at College and Ashby avenues being refurbished by Berkeley Real Estate Developer John Gordon. 

 

Why Now? 

The Elmwood committee is hoping to fast-track the changes so they are in place before Gordon rents out all of his spaces. The committee reasons that if the new quota system is in place, Gordon will probably have an easier time finding non-restaurant tenants and will have less incentive to seek variances to bring in more restaurants. Gordon has already contracted for an ice cream parlor to rent one of the spaces in the new building. 

“I think the new rules will help me get my building rented,” Gordon said. “I’ve gotten a lot of calls from clothing stores and shoe stores and I’ve had to tell them that I can’t put them in because the quota is full.” 

Councilmember Laurie Capitelli will probably have to recuse himself from the council vote tonight because he owns commercial property in the Elmwood District. 


Union Calls Off Alta Bates Strike By RICHARD BRENNEMAN

Tuesday September 13, 2005

Plans for a strike at the Alta Bates Summit Medical Center hospitals in Berkeley and Oakland were canceled Monday morning. 

The walkout, called by SEIU-United Healthcare-West, was part of an action threatened against 13 Sutter Health medical facilities in the Bay Area. 

The union’s Sutter Health bargaining union voted Sunday to call off the planned strike against 10 of the Sutter hospitals and to strike only the three San Francisco Sutter facilities of the California Pacific Medical Center (CPMC), said union representative Thea Lavin. 

Federal mediator David Weinberg had proposed a settlement at CPMC on Aug. 28 which he also distributed to the other 10 hospitals facing strikes. CPMC turned it down, leading to the union’s strike decision. 

When the union announced its willingness to accept the proposal, Democratic lawmakers joined the call for a quick settlement. 

Citing Weinberg’s report, U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer sent a letter Thursday to Sutter Health CEO Patrick E. Fray expressing “my strong hope that Sutter and its affiliates accept this compromise settlement proposal.” 

She was joined by California’s other senator, Dianne Feinstein, and by state Treasurer Phil Angelides. 

The war of words between the union and Alta Bates Summit had heated up over the past week. 

After the union released Weinberg’s proposal for CMPC and told of its submission to the other hospitals, Alta Bates Summit released a scathing Sept. 6 “Local 250 Update” declaring that they had “received no proposal from the federal mediator.” 

Three days later, in a memorandum to trustees, staff and volunteers, Alta Bates Summit CEO Warren Kirk acknowledged receiving the document, then dismissed a large part of Weinberg’s recommendations as “simply SEIU’s proposals by another name.” 

That same day, CMPC spokesperson Christine McMurry called the document a “discussion document” for the center, rather than a formal recommendation. 

In addition to strike woes, Sutter learned last week that it has become the target of an legislative inquiry into its tax-exempt status led by Johan Klehs, chair of the Assembly Committee on Revenue and Taxation. 

Two U.S. House committees and one Senate committee have also been looking into Sutter. 

In an unsigned statement released Monday evening, Alta Bates Summit greeted the decision not to strike their hospitals as a union move made because of “overwhelming” opposition of union members to the planned walkout.›


Berkeley Firefighters Return With Hurricane Katrina Rescue Stories By RICHARD BRENNEMAN

Tuesday September 13, 2005

Two Berkeley firefighters are back from emergency duty in hurricane-ravaged Mississippi, while a third remains on duty in New Orleans, following a dramatic rescue of a young girl. 

The rescue workers are part of a five-member Berkeley contingent working under the direction of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). 

Deputy Chief David Orth said firefighter Dave McPartland’s Swift Water Rescue Team discovered the girl when searching through a flooded neighborhood which had already been subjected to a preliminary search. 

“They were pounding on roofs to see if anyone was trapped inside,” Orth said. “They use sophisticated acoustical gear.” 

Tapping on one roof, they picked up a faint sound. 

“They cut through the roof the way firefighters are trained to do when there’s a fire, and they found this young girl who had been alone in the house since the hurricane began and retreated into the attic as the water rose,” Orth said. 

The team’s tour of duty was extended through Friday, but Orth said that the chiefs of their departments are “pretty adamant that they come back Tuesday (today) because they’re worn down.” 

Currently, he said, the team is working on recovery of bodies, “which is not their mission.” 

In exchange for their early return, Urban Search and Rescue Team Task Force 4 would send replacements.  

 

Mississippi 

For Lt. Darren Bobrosky of the Berkeley Fire Department, Hurricane Katrina was embodied in the 14-square-block neighborhood of Biloxi, Mississippi. 

“Our job was to clear the area for the local fire department,” he said Monday, the day after he returned from a week’s tour of duty on the hard-hit coast. Searching in 90 degree heat and 90 percent humidity, the rescuers on Bobrosky’s team found four bodies in the rubble. 

It wasn’t the firefighter’s first encounter with massive disaster—he was dispatched four years ago to New York. 

“Having rolled up on the World Trade Center, anything after that seems anti-climactic,” he said Monday. 

The two things that impressed him most about Katrina were the scale of the disaster—90 miles of coast versus the one square block of the World Trade Center—and the sense of displacement. 

“The destruction was pretty much the same,” he added. “There weren’t many houses standing, and those that were had been blown intact off their foundations and carried about five blocks,” he said. “But mostly, there were just foundations, swept clear of everything. And then you’d look up and see a boat in a tree. There was a huge amount of displacement.” 

Bobrosky said his team encountered very few local residents. 

“Once in a while a few people would drift by and ask us what we were doing and what we knew, but not many,” said the firefighter. 

Morale among emergency workers was high, he said. 

Also returning Sunday was Firefighter David Sprague, who served as the information systems specialist for Bobrosky’s team. The firefighters were greeted with a small reception at the airport. 

The pair remains under FEMA control through two mandatory time-off days, after which they’ll have more time off granted by the city. 

Two other members of the Bay Area team left Sunday morning to drive emergency vehicles back from Houston, the city from which Bobrosky and Sprague flew home later in the day. 

 

Health workers 

Berkeley Public Health Nurse Barbara Morita—whose normal assignment is Berkeley High School—remains on duty in the South. 

The fifth person called up, social worker David Wee, who is nationally recognized for his work in stress debriefing, remains in Berkeley, Orth said. Morita and Wee are members of the FEMA’s disaster Medical Aid Team.


Berkeley Plans to Provide Aid To Hurricane Katrina Evacuees By MATTHEW ARTZ

Tuesday September 13, 2005

As families from the Gulf Coast continue arriving in the Bay Area, Berkeley began mobilizing Friday to provide hurricane victims with homes and services. 

As of Thursday 122 families rendered homeless by Hurricane Katrina have arrived at the Red Cross’ Oakland center, said Helen Knudson, a Red Cross worker at Berkeley’s relocation summit, on Friday. In total, 513 families have arrived in the six Bay Area counties as of Monday, said Joyce Perry, a Red Cross spokesperson.  

“Many have come to be with family members, but several of them don’t have support systems here,” she said. 

On Friday, Berkeley officials, affordable housing providers, local nonprofits and churches gathered to coordinate Berkeley’s response to additional evacuees coming to the East Bay. 

Whether Berkeley becomes a major base in the relocation effort remains uncertain. Last week, federal officials, citing that many hurricane victims saw California as too far from home, rejected California’s offer to host up to 1,000 of them. Over the next month, Bay Area officials are anticipating accepting pets hundreds of pets made homeless by Katrina. 

To help evacuees that come to Berkeley, the Rotary Club announced Friday that it is setting up a charitable trust for hurricane victims living in Berkeley. The group has raised $15,000 for the fund, said Rotary Club president Pate Thomson. 

Mayor Tom Bates said the fund would give the city the opportunity to take in hurricane victims without seeking aid from the major relief organizations. A $100-a-plate fundraiser to contribute to the Rotary fund and other hurricane relief efforts will be held at HS Lordship restaurant Sept. 25. 

So far the city has offered food and services only to the family of Shirley Thompson, who last week welcomed 13 family members into her North Berkeley home. But other hurricane victims are trickling into the city. Ursula Morris, 52, who grew up in Berkeley, returned on Thursday to stay with an aunt. “The bottom line is I need money and vouchers for clothes and food,” she said. 

Elsewhere, the school district enrolled three hurricane victims into Berkeley High last week, said District Spokesperson Mark Coplan. 

UC Berkeley has enrolled 138 students from the Gulf Coast, said Irene Hegarty, UC’s community relations director. She added that the university is searching for available studio or in-law apartments near campus to house the students for the semester. 

Steve Barton, Berkeley’s housing director, said that Berkeley has 40 Section 8 housing vouchers that could be used to shelter hurricane victims who intended to remain in Berkeley. Also, Susan Friedland, executive director of Affordable Housing Associates, said AHA had 10 units that could be made available to hurricane victims. 

Amy Dawson, executive director of Rebuilding Together, said the organization, which upgrades homes and community centers in low-income neighborhoods, was open to working with homeowners or affordable housing agencies to fix up rooms and apartment units to house hurricane victims. 

The city is still working out details on a team of city workers and nonprofit agencies to intake evacuees and set them up with services while they wait for federal relief funds. The YMCA is seen as a possible candidate to serve as an intake center. “Since we’re right downtown, we’re a natural location for that process to take place,” said Fran Galatti, who cautioned that plans for the intake center remained incomplete. 

Local church leaders said their parishioners would be open to housing evacuees, but that they were focusing charitable efforts toward victims still in the Gulf Coast. Rev. Marvis Peoples, pastor of Liberty Hill Baptist Church, said his congregation had raised money to help victims taking refuge in Lake Charles, LA. 

“We’re taking supplies to where the people are,” he said.  

 

 

 


Tame Election This Year for Berkeley High Site Council By J. DOUGLAS ALLEN-TAYLOR

Tuesday September 13, 2005

With concerns over Berkeley High School’s Academic Choice program not quite the hot-button issue it was a year ago, elections to this year’s School Site Council (SSC) last week were decidedly less volatile than they were last September. 

SSC parent members Marilyn Boucher and Regina Simpkins were re-elected to seats on the council, while Federal District Judge Claudia Wilken and parent Janet Wise won this year after being defeated in last year’s elections. 

Two members of last year’s council, Janet Wise and Da’Rand Shariah, did not run this year. 

Berkeley High’s 16-member site council plays a large role in setting the academic direction for the school and in deciding how some school funds are allocated. Four of the council’s members consist of parents elected at the first PTSA meeting of the school year, with runners-up serving as alternate members. 

Academic Choice began in 2001 as a program that allowed Berkeley High School students to attend accelerated academic programs while still participating in the school’s popular elective classes. It soon fell into controversy amidst charges that it was becoming a segregated, mostly-white conclave within Berkeley High, leading Berkeley Unified School District Board Vice President Terry Doran to once ask if the program “leads to a better Berkeley High School or a better Berkeley High School for some students.” 

Marilyn Boucher, an Academic Choice supporter and an SSC member, later argued in support of the program in a Daily Planet op-ed article, writing that “A better Berkeley High ... is a Berkeley High that offers many excellent choices so that every student can find a program or school that meets their personal needs.... We don’t claim that Academic Choice is the best option for every student... But we do believe that it is an excellent option for any student who plans to go to college.” 

A year ago before the SSC elections, members of a Berkeley group identifying itself only as “Parents and Families in Support of Marilyn Boucher, Regina Simpkins, Juliann Sum, and Janet Wise” circulated leaflets announcing that “Academic Excellence at BHS Is Threatened!” and called on the election of the slate of four candidates to save the program. Boucher, Sum, and Simpkins all won seats on the council, along with parent Da’Rand Shariah who declared himself an Academic Choice supporter. 

Federal District Judge Claudia Wilken was defeated for a seat on the council in that election, although she often served during the year as an alternate. Wilken had served as SSC president for the past five years and had expressed concerns that Academic Choice was leading to segregation at Berkeley High. 

While excitement over the Academic Choice issue made last year’s election a standing-room only affair, this year’s election had only roughly one-fourth the participants. 

“There really wasn’t any issue over Academic Choice this year,” said Berkeley PTA Council president Wanda Stewart. The PTA Council is separate from the Berkeley High PTSA. “What I heard was a number of people saying that what was needed was equal representation on the council by all sides.” Stewart said she believed there was a lessening of concerns because “we’re not hearing the kinds of complaints about class assignments that we heard last year. My impression is that 90 percent of the students got one of their top three class choices, and that relieved a lot of the angst.” 

In addition, in part to answer the concerns about segregation, the Berkeley High Board of Directors approved a reorganization of the BHS Academic Choice program last year. In one of the provisions approved, incoming Academic Choice students will be brought into the program with the same diversity mix as the high school as a whole.›


Brower Center Permits Win ZAB Endorsement By RICHARD BRENNEMAN

Tuesday September 13, 2005

Members of Berkeley’s Zoning Adjustments Board approved the use permits that would allow construction of the David Brower Center on the city’s Oxford Street parking lot. 

Bob Allen was the only member who voted against the permits for the two-building complex. 

Allen said he would support what was otherwise “a wonderful project from the ground up” if his fellow board members would send the project to the City Council with a call for two levels of underground parking instead of one. 

Deborah Badhia of the Downtown Berkeley Association, which wanted two levels of parking, said her group endorsed the project with either one or two levels. Similarly, bicycle activist Jim Doherty—an outspoken opponent of any parking at the complex—gave his blessings. 

By the time the hearing closed, no one from the audience had spoken against the project, and the board approved it, subject to the addition of a note to the council that members preferred—but did not insist on—two levels of parking. 

Board member Jesse Anthony noted that the poor often need cars to commute to work. 

“Not everyone can ride bicycles and motorcycles and certainly not everyone can walk. We saw in New Orleans what can happen when people can’t get out of town,” he said. “But I’m going to vote for it, though I hope you keep in mind what I said.” 

The project consists of two buildings. One, the four-story David Brower Center itself, would house offices of environmental organizations, a restaurant and a Patagonia outdoor gear shop. The second structure, the six-story Oxford Plaza housing component, would include 96 housing units—many with two and three bedrooms—reserved for lower-income tenants. 

Funding issues still remain, particularly with the housing structure. 

2538 Hillegass Ave. 

David Meyers, the landlord who is seeking approval of his plans to add three units and a third story to the two-floor, four-unit student housing building he owns at 2358 Hillegass Ave. was back before ZAB Thursday in a more conciliatory mood than in his last appearance in August. 

“I realize I could be a better neighbor,” Meyers said. 

And to prove it, he offered to meet one of the demands of members of the Willard Neighborhood Association (WNA), who had called for a resident manager they could contact in the event of loud parties. Meyers also said he would post hours at the expanded apartment house as well as at the four-building complex he owns at 2609 Hillegass. 

Cell woes 

Members also voted to delay a decision on Cal Com Systems’ request to install four wireless cell phone antennae and a series of ground-level equipment cabinets at the Phillips Temple at 3332 Adeline St. 

Betty Jay Gray, who lives next to the building, objected, saying that cell equipment already installed at the building wakes her up in the middle of the night. 

“It’s like having a refrigerator running in the corner of your bedroom,” she explained. Cal Com representative Linda Spranz agreed to a request to conduct a noise test on site before the equipment was installed. 

The proposal was tabled until the Sept. 22 meeting to allow time for testing.


Peralta Board Starts Year With Old Issues Still on the Table By J. DOUGLAS ALLEN-TAYLOR

Tuesday September 13, 2005

If the Peralta Community College District Board of Trustees were a college football team, we would be saying that “Peralta’s crop of rookie recruits enters its second season tonight with high hopes, after a tumultuous year filled with both fumbles and mastering team fundamentals.” 

Trustees hold their first meeting following the summer break tonight (Tuesday) at the district’s headquarters, 333 East Eighth St. in Oakland. 

Agenda highlights are two issues that have been carried over from last year: construction change orders and the upgrade to the district’s management software. 

Trustees will be asked to approve more than $94,000 in change orders for site demolition and preparation at the new Laney College Art Building, bringing the total change orders requested for the project to 38 percent of the original $360,000 cost of the job. District officials say the extra work is needed because the actual on-site conditions encountered by the contractor differed from the drawings provided by the district. 

In addition, trustees will be presented with a request for a $90,000 version upgrade for its PeopleSoft Human Resources software. The district is in the middle of a conversion of its management software to PeopleSoft. 

Last November, the seven-member Peralta board witnessed a virtual makeover, with four new trustees elected to take the place of retiring members. Newcomers Cy Gulassa, Bill Withrow, Marcie Hodge, and Nicky Gonzalez-Yuen took their seats at the end of the year alongside veteran board members President Bill Riley, Vice President Linda Handy, and Alona Clifton. 

By the time they took their summer break, trustees had implemented a number of new initiatives that increased trustee oversight over district operations.  

Controversy over cost overrun change orders were a main theme of the new board’s first year, many of them concerning the ongoing construction of Vista College of Berkeley’s $65 million new campus. The Peralta board eventually passed a new board policy giving trustees more oversight over alterations to construction contracts. In addition, the board passed a new policy that required the district’s fiscal manager and general counsel to sign off on many proposals before they come to the board. 

And concerns over the district’s Internet technology operations led trustees to order an independent assessment of IT operations. Last June, the board approved a $30,000 contract with Hewlett-Packard for the study, scheduled to start this month. 

The district’s new PeopleSoft information management system is being installed in portions, with full implementation scheduled for October 2006. 

Peralta’s biggest controversy of the new board’s first year is not expected to be repeated. Shortly before the outgoing board left office last November, they directed Peralta Chancellor Elihu Harris to enter into negotiations with Oakland developer Alan Dones to produce a development plan for certain district and Laney College lands. Controversy over the proposal simmered throughout the year, and was so high that Harris suspended negotiations with Dones for several months, and Dones himself withdrew the project from consideration last May. 

But two other issues are expected to carry over into the new board year. 

Last January, the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC) warned Peralta that its four colleges—Merritt, Laney, College of Alameda, and Vista—were in danger of losing their accreditation because of a lack of a districtwide strategic educational and financial plan, the failure of the district to implement a plan to fund the district’s long-term health liability, and what WASC called “interference of the district’s trustee board in the day-to-day operation of the district.” 

The district has hired Berkeley’s MIG Corporation to assist its strategic plan development. MIG facilitators met with faculty, staff, administrators, and students at individual colleges last week, and expects a draft strategic plan to be produced by the end of the school semester. 

Another holdover issue is Peralta’s new policy of switching from temporary staff workers to 19-hour-a-week workers, a move designed to keep those employees below the threshold needed to qualify for health benefits. Representatives of Local 790 of the Service Employees International Union demonstrated against the policy at a trustee meeting last July.


Study Shows City Has Cut Greenhouse Gas Emissions By MATTHEW ARTZ

Tuesday September 13, 2005

Berkeley announced Monday that it has reduced emissions of greenhouse gases from city operations by 14 percent since 2002.  

By contrast, the Kyoto Protocol requires nations to reduce greenhouse gases by 7 percent between 1990 and 2010. 

The analysis, performed by auditors for the Chicago Climate Exchange, found that in 2004 the city emitted 2,066 fewer metric tons of carbon than in 2002—the equivalent of planting 52,000 trees or removing 450 cars from the road.  

“We pride ourselves on being leaders in the environment; now we have the data to prove it,” said Mayor Tom Bates at a Monday press conference. Bates added that programs to reduce carbon emissions had saved the city $370,000 in lower energy bills. 

Since 1998, Berkeley has reduced carbon emissions from city vehicles by 48 percent and from heating and cooling city buildings by 16 percent. At the same time, the city has seen carbon emissions rise 5 percent for electricity use. Bates attributed the increase to opening the renovated public library and the new city offices at 1947 Milvia St. Both buildings, he said, needed to be made more energy efficient. 

Another source of concern for the city is its program to power its fleet with 100 percent biodiesel, a derivative of soybean oil. The program was the biggest contributor to the reduction in carbon emissions from city vehicles, but earlier this year, Berkeley returned to using mostly regular diesel after a bad batch of the fuel damaged truck engines. 

Although city staff had proposed using a fuel blend with 50 percent biodiesel, Mayor Bates Monday pledged the city intended to return to 100 percent biodiesel after supply issues were resolved. 

The greenhouse gas emissions study was done as part of Berkeley’s entrance into the Exchange, which consists of more than 100 members, including corporations and government entities. Berkeley is the fourth city to join; the other cities are Chicago, Boulder, Colo., and Oakland. 

The exchange binds its members—which include Bayer Corp., Amtrak and the American Coal Ash Association—to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 1 percent every year from its base study year. Members that fail to meet requirements must buy credits from those that have achieved or surpassed their goals. 

Although the biodiesel issue could result in higher carbon emissions this year, since Berkeley has already reduced greenhouse gases 14 percent since 2002, Cisco De Vries, chief of staff to Mayor Bates, said the city doesn’t have to worry about being made to buy credits on the Chicago Climate Control Exchange in upcoming years. 

 

 


Improved Berkeley Path Maps Could Prove Vital in Earthquake By ZELDA BRONSTEIN Special to the Planet

Tuesday September 13, 2005

In the last two weeks, getting ready for the Big One has suddenly engaged many Bay Area residents. With the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina serving as a heads-up, people are replenishing their stock of water, batteries, canned foodstuffs and first aid kits. Those who live in or frequent the Berkeley hills would do well to add another item to their earthquake preparedness lists: the recently published third edition of the Berkeley Path Wanderers Association’s popular map of all city-owned footpaths and stairways.  

During the Berkeley-Oakland firestorm of 1991, paths were important evacuation routes in areas where streets had become impassable.  

According to a letter sent to Berkeley hills residents last week by Fire Chief Debra Pryor, the city has spent part of a $413,000 Fire Prevention and Safety grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, a grant supplemented with $177,000 in city funds, to improve the upper Glendale path by adding steps and a handrail. 

But Berkeley’s paths are much more than emergency evacuation routes. They also offer quiet beauty, historic interest, recreation and convenience—all made even more accessible by the Path Wanderers map. First published in 2002, the paths map soon appeared on the local Top Ten List of Nonfiction Bestsellers. A second edition followed in 2003. Twelve thousand maps have already been sold, a figure that the BPWA cites with understandable pride.  

In preparing the third edition, the association’s all-volunteer Map Committee walked and researched the mapped area to check for accuracy. The latest version includes 75 changes, most of which clarify features that were absent from or confusing in earlier editions, or that correct known errors.  

The most noteworthy revisions, says BPWA Boardmember Will Schieber, are those that show 10 newly completed paths. They include two segments of Stevenson Path, which with Stoddard Path, extends from Keeler Avenue to Grizzly Peak Boulevard; and three segments of Glendale Path. 

Those additions reflect the Path Wanderers’ extensive path-building efforts in the past two years. Built under the general direction of the Berkeley Department of Public Works, with the help of BPWA volunteers, local Boy Scout troops and other civic groups, the new paths are located on some of the approximately 40 city-owned rights of way that were set aside for paths but never completed.  

When the Berkeley hills were first developed in the early 20th century, the city was a streetcar suburb. The original developers deeded to the city 136 rights-of-way for paths. The paths that were built provided ready access to the streetcar lines that then wove through the city. After the Key Route line was dismantled in the 1950s, and people increasingly depended for transport on the private automobile, the momentum to finish the planned paths waned. In many places, projected pedestrian routes were overtaken by weeds and brambles, and by encroachments from neighboring properties. Indeed, some homeowners have been surprised to learn that a strip of what they regarded as their land is actually a city-owned right-of-way destined for a footpath.  

The newly revised path map sells for $4.95 and can be purchased directly from the BPWA by mail or on one of the organization’s walks. It’s also available at bookstores around the city, as well as other shops that sell maps and outdoor gear. Members of the Path Wanderers get a $1 discount if they buy maps directly from the association. See the BPWA website at www.berkeleypaths.org.  

If you’d like to get a firsthand introduction to the Berkeley Path Wanderers Association—now 500 members strong—and its activities, consider attending the BPWA annual general meeting on Thursday, Sept. 15, 7 p.m., at the Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St. 

The featured speaker will be Jonathan Chester, local photographer and author most recently of Berkeley Rocks—Building with Nature. Illustrated with color photos, the book highlights the prominent rock outcroppings that stud the city’s Northside parks and neighborhoods and discusses the ways in which pioneering architects, landscape designers and developers artfully incorporated the local geology into their plans and works. 

?


Editorial Cartoon By JUSTIN DEFREITAS

Tuesday September 13, 2005

http://www.jfdefreitas.com/index.php?path=/00_Latest%20Work


Letters to the Editor

Tuesday September 13, 2005

THE HAND OF GOOD 

Last week Professor David Baggins at Cal State East Bay valiantly toed the conservative line in the face of facts to the contrary.  

In his sarcastic rebuttal to a Daily Planet article about the dangers of letting housing prices rise above the reach of most Americans he asserted: “As middle-income families increased ...” Has the good professor missed the recent news (to some) that poverty in this country is on the rise? The middle class has been shrinking ever since the Republican Party de-emphasized formal education and political experience for its candidates—though you probably don’t see the effects if you live in Orinda.  

At Cal State East Bay, where the comical Doc works, Adam Smith’s “mysterious hand of good” (unproved “economic science” used to shove “Reaganomics” down our throats) is still being drilled into first-year business students—presumably to allay any remnants of social conscience that may impede their progress in the business world.  

Glen Kohler  

 

• 

DEPLORABLE 

I find the substance of Professor David Baggins’ letters morally deplorable.  

Professor Baggins regards Berkeley as a bastion reserved for relatively high-income people. Inside this bastion, none of the problems afflicting the rest of the country should be permitted to manifest themselves. 

The professor believes that the foremost threat to the ability of BUSD to provide an excellent education is its failure to bar children who live outside the bastion. These “outsiders” doom BUSD’s efforts to boost test scores. The reason the alleged non-residents have such a damaging impact is unstated but nonetheless clear: It is their less-than-affluent backgrounds. 

On the other hand, he welcomes housing developments with few units affordable to low- and moderate-income people. The high economic status of those who are able to pay what it costs to live in the new apartments and condominiums assures that they will spend money downtown and not commit street crimes. 

Despite occasional attempts to suggest that he is a leftie like the rest of us, Professor Baggins shows little concern for economic fairness or diversity in his vision of Berkeley. 

There should be nothing exceptional about Berkeley’s commitment to social justice; it should be a universal goal. I would be sympathetic if Professor Baggins rejected Berkeley’s fighting the good fight alone, and called for equitable nationwide funding of public schools or creating an effective mix of public investment and regulation to ensure that every community provided its proper share of affordable housing. But in his letters he is concerned only with well-off people within the bastion. 

Professor Baggins seeks to shut this city’s doors to the rabble. He wants Berkeley to be as exclusive as Piedmont. Fortunately, most of the people who live here disagree with him. 

Randy Silverman 

 

• 

DIVERSITY 

“Does Berkeley Still Believe in Diversity?” Yes! Does the Daily Planet believe in Berkeley? Apparently not. 

Berkeley today is the most diverse it has been in its history. By ethnic group, Asians have become the second largest at 17 percent, Latinos have risen to 10 percent, Blacks have fallen to the national average of 12 percent. The New York Times recently rated our city as the second most diverse economically in the country. Fear of absence of diversity in Berkeley can only be interpreted as masking another agenda. 

Berkeley had 40 years ago a non-diverse segregated concentration of low-income African-Americans. This community helped to sponsor the spirit of revolution pronounced in Berkeley’s 1960s politics. It also became crime ridden, violent, downwardly mobile, and ultimately dispersed itself out of a need to survive. African Americans growing up in Berkeley today enjoy a much better chance of thriving than the prior generation did. Their odds would improve further if the School Board allowed the schools to reflect the diversity of Berkeley rather than trying to achieve a concentration of poverty borrowed from other districts. 

We the residents of Berkeley can enjoy a city of intelligence, diversity, artistry and beauty. Developers with their condominiums and apartments are playing a role in the renaissance of Berkeley. The university taking an interest in long beleaguered downtown is also a blessing for the city. It would be nice if the Daily Planet was sometimes on the city’s side. If this is out of the question then it is just as well that other papers have emerged to provide the most meaningful form of diversity: perspective. 

Professor David Baggins 

 

• 

SCHOOL FOR THE ARTS 

Thank you, J. Allen Douglas-Taylor, for your article on Oakland School for the Arts. My son was at OSA for his ninth-grade year and half of his tenth-grade year. There was constant turnover, among staff and students alike. Twenty-six families didn’t return after the winter break our first year, many more than that didn’t re-enroll for the following school year. We lost count of how many teachers came and went.  

The problem at OSA is the administration. We never heard of any staff or student body changes from Mr. Berry or his staff. Calls were rarely returned and all the news came from the kids. (This was in a school with a student population of 200 and an administrative staff of eight! Most public schools have a principal and a secretary; they return calls!) The impression was that anyone, teacher or student, who didn’t toe the line was out. It was very disheartening in many ways. Obviously we were disappointed that it didn’t work out for our family.  

More than that, I am still heartbroken by the squandering of such a wonderful idea and so much money by an autocratic and inexperienced administration. Many unhappy families have contacted Mayor Brown about this; I don’t know of any responses from his office. Mayor Brown has talked about wanting this school to be his legacy to Oakland. If he continues to ignore the problems with the administration at OSA, he’ll be leaving a very compromised legacy indeed. If it survives. 

J. Hurth 

Oakland 

 

• 

VENDETTA 

May I inquire as to whether your reporter J. Douglas Allen-Taylor or the Daily Planet has a particular vendetta against the Oakland School for the Arts? On Sept. 3, you published an article based heavily on the views of one Oakland parent who transferred her daughter to Skyline High School after only one semester at OSA. Why her and her child’s undoubtedly unhappy experience from nine months ago is news today as the new school year begins is not evident in the lengthy article. This attack comes on the heels of another article by Mr. Allen-Taylor from Feb. 4, which was based substantially on an anonymous “report card” that was said to be available in local coffee shops. The portion of the story featuring information from the anonymous flyer was buttressed by quotes from an anonymous source. Comparing the two articles, the anonymous source from February is evidently the same parent who was the impetus for this week’s story (i.e., a parent of a ninth-grader wanting to transfer her daughter to ...?) 

Perhaps I missed it, but I have yet to see Mr. Allen-Taylor or any other Daily Planet reporter do a story featuring either the fabulous artistic performances or the strong test scores of OSA students. This week’s article mentions the scores, but only briefly in the fourth paragraph; needless to say, the paragraph does not compare the scores to the considerably lower ones of Berkeley High or Skyline High, the two schools mentioned in the article. OSA is getting these results with a student population that is majority African-American. I have also yet to see an article discussing the current state of the plans to renovate the Fox Theater as the permanent home of the school. Once completed, this will be a fabulous home for the school, as well as a keystone in the revitalization of that area. 

As a parent of an OSA student in the theater department, I readily acknowledge that the school has felt its growing pains. The school is not every child’s cup of tea, nor is the demanding schedule for every teacher. I deeply regret the loss of some of the students and teachers who have left, but at least some were clearly poor fits for the OSA environment. However, my child—as is true for many, many others—is thriving, happy, and learning in a highly diverse environment. In sum, I hope that the Daily Planet will find a little space to write the good news stories about OSA as well as the snarky ones based largely on one disgruntled source.  

David Levine 

 

• 

SEX OFFENDERS 

Open season on sex offenders. Two registered sex offenders who had their addresses listed on the Internet were executed in Bellingham, Wash.; they had committed transgressions, but their killer committed an even greater transgression by exacting an eye-for-an-eye vengeance. These former sexual predators, who had become law-abiding citizens, were murdered by some holier than thou vigilante. For the less close-minded of you is there any doubt who is worse? 

Ron Lowe 

• 

ISM 

It saddens me to read letters in the Daily Planet calumniating wonderful human rights organizations like the International Solidarity Movement. These same young people who risk their lives in courageous efforts to nonviolently remind us all of our common humanity are those who, if they had been born in a different era, would have been the ones risking their lives to hide or rescue Jews in Nazi Germany, not because of religion or ethnicity but simply because of our common human rights.  

Vivian Zelaya 

 

• 

DERBY STREET PLAN 

The Sept. 8 letter from members of the East Campus Neighborhood Association regarding the Derby Street plan is a perfect example of why planning for this facility has been such a difficult process. First, in the current planning there hasn’t been one single public planning meeting discussing a closed Derby plan—not one. According to the consultants running the planning process the topic of closed Derby was not to be discussed. Why aren’t they letting your readers know about that important “issue”? 

Second, the people supporting the open Derby plan have written and said things that are not factually correct, thus misleading people who are not really involved in what is going on. In the most recent letter they stated that the costs do not include soft costs such as construction contingencies, which they state, “will add 30-40 percent to the cost of the project,” but in fact, the budget figures include 45 percent in soft cost charges including a design contingency of 20 percent.  

Third, and most importantly, when you actually ask these people, “OK, so what is the real issue about closing Derby?” you get these blank stares and vague answers. Uh, it will destroy the Farmers’ Market. Well, actually, no that’s not the case because in the closed Derby scenario, the Farmers’ Market will actually have a physically better facility with higher visibility and more space. Uh, closing Derby will cause overwhelming traffic problems. Well, actually, no that’s not what the traffic studies done for the initial EIS found and anyone who has a detached perspective on urban traffic would find the amount of east west traffic down Derby and the adjacent streets to be extremely light. Uh, it’s too big a scale for the neighborhood. Well actually no because Derby open has about 175,000 square feet of field space and 27,000 square feet of pavement for a total of 202,000 square feet. Derby closed has 166,000 square feet of field space and 36,000 square feet of pavement for a total of 202,000 square feet.  

But saving the best for last they ask the mayor to seek a “more suitable” non-residential site. More suitable for whom? For the athletes and coaches who could just walk from school to the Derby site but would be forced to bus or drive to this mystery non-residential site? For the non-athlete students who want to see their high school team play but will now have to drive to get there? Every single public high school in this area has a baseball field in a residential neighborhood. 

The question here is what is the real issue? Why is closing Derby such a big deal? Facts please. Not hysteria, not factually unsupported statements of doom and gloom, not concerns about various groups and programs who don’t seem to feel the need to express the same fears that you do, and not issues of cost which will be something for the BUSD board to assess.  

Doug Fielding 

 

• 

BERKELEY HONDA 

The ongoing labor dispute at Berkeley Honda has provided an abundance of copy for this newspaper. The chronicling of the protest is a regular subject in the letters section. One letter however has put this entire affair into perspective. 

Donna Mickleson implores all your readers to “come on down and join the party” because “it’s fun.” She likens the entire affair to a neighborhood potluck. Well Donna, there is nothing “fun” about a labor dispute. There is nothing “fun” about technicians not being able to bring a paycheck home. There is nothing “fun” about the effect that the protest has on the dozens of employees who work at Berkeley Honda. There is nothing “fun” about trying to destroy one of the major generators of revenue for the City of Berkeley. 

Perspective is very important and can only be achieved with an understanding of all sides of an issue. I doubt that Donna or any of the other “partiers” have taken the time to find out what the issues really are. I am not suggesting that she needs to agree with any one particular side, but I am suggesting that knowing the whole scenario before picking up a sign is more important than knowing who’s bringing the chips next Thursday. 

How sad it is to see so much energy expended by people to enjoy a party only 10 feet from where homeless people can be found sleeping at night. It begs the question, “Is there perspective in Berkeley?” Sadly, the answer is no. 

Thank you Donna, for giving us the perspective that the caricature that comes to mind when most people think of Berkeley is not a misrepresentation. People clearly care more about the protest (read: party) than they do the issues at stake. Likening this dispute to a social gathering is not only demeaning to business in this community, it is demeaning to the employees who may actually like to work again. 

How sad it would be for the labor dispute to be settled, and for Berkeley Honda and it’s employees to prosper, because then where will Donna go for her party? 

Chris Regalia 

 

• 

REBUTTING LUBECK 

It’s a good thing that Assistant Manager Tim Lubeck is doing so well at Berkeley Honda because he sure couldn’t make it as a reporter. The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has not held any “meetings” or hearings over the Berkeley Honda situation. Rather, there is an ongoing investigation into the company’s unfair labor practices. 

While the union did withdraw one set of charges, new evidence has come to light and the board is investigating those charges. They have certainly not found that “the hiring practices at Berkeley Honda were fair and conducted without bias.”  

I find it very interesting that Berkeley Honda management is telling people that “the only issue that clearly remains” is the pension plan, because that’s sure not what they are saying in negotiations. We agreed to accept the company’s medical plan, which includes full family coverage. They now claim that was only “temporary” and used as a hiring inducement (also known as bait and switch). Management’s new proposal is to cover the employee only. 

The union agreed to the pay scale Berkeley implemented on June 1. Management now says that “won’t be the norm” and is proposing pay cuts of $6 to $8 per hour.  

Contrary to Mr. Lubeck’s claims, the pension fund is not in any danger of bankruptcy. It is currently 91 percent fully funded. IRS regulations require employers who leave plans that are not fully funded to pay their withdrawal liability. This ensures that the plan will not be dumped in the government’s lap like United Airlines. There is a five-year “safe harbor” for new employers that precludes them from paying anything if they leave the plan. We offered Berkeley Honda the right to opt out automatically within four years, so there would be no possible liability. They summarily rejected the idea. 

Clearly, the Beinkes of Blackhawk are not interested in a union contract under any circumstances. But, what seemed like a good idea at the Country Club isn’t playing in the streets of Berkeley. 

Don Crosatto  

Machinists Local 1546 

Oakland 

 

• 

CIVIL MARRIAGE 

State civil marriage licenses are not a religious nor even majority issue. They are a simple fact of civil rights to all sovereign citizens as guaranteed in our Constitution. Allowing the religious beliefs of one particular faith to deny the rights of the minority citizens would be unconstitutional, wouldn’t it? 

Holly Blash 

Pleasanton 

 

• 

WHY LIE? 

Even after Gerald Schmavonian in his Aug. 16 commentary rebutted John Gertz, David Altschul, and Lawrence White for their purposeful distortion of history, John Gertz and David Altschul are at it again. They obviously can’t help themselves from lying. Gertz writes (Sept. 2) “The War (1967) began when Nassar sent his armies into Sinai.” But as Mr. Schmavonian pointed out Sinai was then and is now part of Egypt. To say what Mr. Gertz is saying is akin to saying that WWII began when the U.S. stationed troops in California. 

David Altschul (Sept. 6) writes that after the U.N. Partition Resolution of 1947 “The armies of Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq invaded Israel.” In fact, those armies never entered Israel but only the land taken by Israel from the Palestinian state that was supposed to be created by that same U.N. Partition Resolution of 1947 (but never was due to Israeli aggression against it).  

I cite the Encyclopedia Britannica that the Israeli army learned that the British planned to withdraw ahead of the scheduled date of May 14, 1948, and the Israelis attacked first in order to “gain strategic objectives in advance” conquering much of what was to become the new Palestinian state. The “Arab hordes” of five nations, that Gertz and Altschul want to frighten and alarm readers with, numbered less than 10,000 poorly-equipped soldiers in total who fought bravely against a Western-equipped Israeli army of 50,000 soldiers. 

Gerald Schmavonian urges readers to consult any encyclopedia, including the Jewish Encyclopedia, for the facts. Why don’t Gertz or Altschul ever ask readers to do that? How is it that the U.S. public alone, among all the world’s publics, is under these misimpressions and deceptions? Dare we call it conspiracy? Because Gertz and Altschul and their pals know as Anne Cromwell pointed out (Aug. 23) that if you can control the sound bites, you can control the message.  

Otherwise why would they continue lying? Would it weaken Israel’s claim that its armed forces are ludicrously called IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) if people knew they always attacked first (Israeli Offensive Forces) in all their wars. 

Janet Sakamoto 

Albany 

 

• 

PERFECT STORM 

If storms were animated—as many prehistoric peoples believed—Katrina was perfect. She bobbed, she weaved, and she parried her opponent (us) as she picked the perfect place—a city below sea level, picked the perfect time—when other suitors were off fighting a war, and she had the perfect mate—a man without a clue. 

Gerald Shmavonian 

Fresno 

 

• 

NATURE ON RAMPAGE 

And it came to pass that the people insisted on building their homes, their dreams, yeah, their very lives in the city of — known far and wide for its social amenities and its joys of living. Alas, this was a place where mother nature was statistically certain to come roaring through every few generations, destroying everything in her path. Experts warned the inhabitants time after time after time: “There is no question that nature will huff and puff and turn this town into ruins...the only question is WHEN.” 

New Orleans? Oops, I’m just thinking about our beloved city of Berkeley and our inevitable upcoming earthquake(s). And whose fault will that be? 

Victor Herbert 

 

• 

GLOBAL WARMING 

Of course Hurricane Katrina is a terrible tragedy with all the deaths, suffering and destruction right in our own country. It is beyond comprehension. And we need to help in whatever we can, which Americans are known for doing, especially for the people who are still suffering or at risk of dying. But at the same time we need to wonder why only half-way through the hurricane season there has all ready been such huge hurricanes, especially this recent very destructive one. The answer for the most part is two words: global warming. The biggest threat to this country and to the world is not terrorism but the destruction we are doing to the environment, and now it is coming back to haunt us. As a society we need to live in a more sustainable way, but instead we’ve been consuming and polluting like there is no tomorrow. Well, tomorrow is coming and unfortunately Katrina may be just the beginning. And forget about the present administration doing anything about this environmental crisis or any crisis for that matter; for the most part they are in denial of it all and are just contributing to the crisis. There is that famous old saying “Don’t mess with Mother Nature,” and we sure have been messing with her.  

Thomas Husted 

Alameda 

 

• 

EARTHQUAKE 

I was pleased to read Mr. Townley’s impassioned article reminding us of the natural hazards we face here in the Bay Area. There is clearly an opportunity for us to learn more about what we can do to minimize the social and economic impacts of our own looming losses from future earthquakes. We need to take action—sustained, consistent action—so that with every week that goes by we are a little bit more prepared.  

In that sense, I fully support the steps outlined in his article, not the least of which is support of the proposed soft-story ordinance that will soon be placed before the City Council. 

In reading Mr. Townley’s article, though, I noted a small factual error regarding the magnitude of our estimated seismic risk. The article states, “A major quake is coming on the Hayward fault (66 percent chance in the next 30 years).” It appears that the statement is a misinterpretation of an on-going USGS project prepared by the “Working Group On California Earthquake Probabilities” (see 

http://quake.wr.usgs.gov/research/seismology/wg02/). The USGS recently estimated that there is a 62 percent chance of a magnitude 6.7 or larger earthquake occurring on one or more of the many faults in the Bay Area (between Monterey and Santa Rosa). Of all of the faults, the risk is greatest on the Hayward fault. The estimated risk, however, of a large earthquake on the Hayward fault is 27 percent, not 66 percent, between 2003-2032. 

I think it is important to be realistic about such information. While the problems with complacency are greater, we should not overstate when and where the next large earthquake will occur. There may be a catastrophic earthquake that strikes the Bay Area before this letter is read or there may not be a large earthquake in the Bay Area for another 50-years. 

As a structural engineer who is constantly assessing these risks for building owners and helping them with the design and construction of seismic upgrades, I know these numbers are not precise and discussions of risk often lead to inaction, in part because it seems unreal and confusing. Situations like the hurricane in the Southeast and other earthquakes in California often have the positive effect of getting us to take some action locally. 

In the long run, though, I think the best thing to do to take sustained and consistent action so that with every week that goes by we are a little bit more prepared. 

Michael Fretz 

 

• 

ANOTHER PERSPECTIVE 

“The Berkeley public schools have been almost unique in that they offer an excellent public education in a multicultural environment.” 

How can you possibly call it “excellent public education” when tests have to be altered to accommodate the lack of intelligence of those being tested? 

If you are interested in presenting an accurate view of the issue then another perspective is necessary.  

Don’t you understand that Negros are being used as scapegoats for an evil agenda of the people who brought them here originally? 

Use the Internet: truth is just a few clicks away and your readers would be wiser. 

Google keyword search: slave trader. 

Ronald Branch 

 

• 

DIEBOLD 

I am baffled. In his response to my Aug. 16 op-ed entitled “How Many Diebolds to Screw up an election?” why would Diebold Vice President Dave Byrd mischaracterize the tests held in Stockton in late July?  

The testing wasn’t designed as a simple process of tabulation in which the outcome must be entrusted to Diebold. How do we know that “not a single ballot was lost?” 

The purpose of the testing was to demonstrate whether Diebold’s electronic voting machines could accurately provide a paper receipt for voters to verify their votes, which is now required by state law. As I had pointed out, his company’s machines failed at the rate of 20 percent, not the 10 percent reported by Secretary of State McPherson’s office (19 out of 96 machines).  

We have known that Diebold’s touchscreen voting machines can record 10,000 votes. The question at hand is whether the votes go to the voter’s intended selection and if this can be verified in print. From the latest testing, at least we now know beyond any doubt that Diebold can take a handful of voters and generate 10,000 votes. 

Peter Teichner 

 

• 

BIG BUSINESS 

This not the first time that Diebold has been discussed in the news. They have acquired quite a notoriety in the matter of both monopolizing the market and screwing up services, thanks to friends in high places. 

I agree with your article by Richard Steinfeld in as much that yes, our government has done plenty of laudable work for us all and yes our government should work hand in hand with corporations to deliver needed services. 

I am one who has had enough of the old Reaganite contention of “getting big government off our backs.” Successive Republican administrations have replaced “big” government with big business and we are seeing the results of it all. 

As a physician, I have found for 20 years the government-operated Medicare program has functioned well for patients as well as the vast majority of doctors. Those doctors who initially complained about it later found private insurance to be more draconian and intractable. 

Besides there are many western democracies that have and are doing well with many government-run services; the Scandinavian countries, the U.K. and Canada for example. 

Byravan Viswanathan 

 

• 

SPACE OF THEIR OWN 

The work of schooling is to develop the latent ability of the child. To do that we have to provide a safe environment for the child where interactive play and imagination can be at work without danger. In such a classroom or home situation all children will feel interconnected and visible; they will also feel stress-free and happy. Thus the school or home will have fewer administrative problems. I think we must place more emphasis on art and music in our curriculum to build self-confidence in our children. When we sing or play musical instruments, we feel relaxed. We reveal our emotions. We allow our true selves to be creative and we feel optimal energy. 

As teachers or parents we must have informal conversation with children about their day. Our attentive, non-judgmental listening will allow children to be honest about their feelings. Such a link to the true experience of our children will be beneficial for parents as well as teachers. At the same time we should also have group discussions in the classroom about current issues with which children can relate. Group discussions build social connections and develop the student’s capacity for critical thinking. 

When children get frequent opportunity to decide what to do, they become independent thinkers. Child development centers should provide children every opportunity for making choices, allowing them to work with peers, allowing them to roam around their favorite stations till they find a site that stirs their curiosity. In order to strengthen their interest in science, art, reading, mathematics and computers, children should be allowed time to explore and experiment. Educators should not disturb the attention of children when they are deeply involved in a project. 

Children love this kind of freedom to choose. They feel empowered and happy. We as educators have to create a very friendly environment so children love to learn. When we read to the children a literary bond is established with them. Children seek a connection between the story and their own selves. They exercise their imagination. In their minds they explore the new pathways opened out by the story. 

Parents should try to be motivators and great role models for developing a child’s natural curiosity. They should share with their children their own sense of wonder at the cycles of nature and at the mystery of creation. I would like to request all teachers and parents to create this link of sharing their sense of wonder. Such a link will help their children to become lifelong learners. Such children will become an asset to the family and to the nation. 

Romila Khanna 

 

• 

NATURE AND WILDLIFE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Regarding Mike Vandeman’s odd Aug. 19 letter about a mountain bicyclist’s injury five years ago: Mr. Vandeman, a self-appointed wildlife fanatic, is quite familiar to readers of local letters pages. 

His past missives have viciously attacked cyclists, wheelchair users, and any other human who dares to venture onto a trail. He once even gloated about a cougar’s fatal mauling of a jogger. 

This nasty conduct may have earned Mr. Vandeman the first-ever expulsion from the Sierra Club. And his claims are willfully ignorant of scientific research. 

His notion that mountain bicyclists do any more damage to trails than hikers do was disproved by a 2001 Canadian study and a 1994 Montana study. You can find summaries at www.uoguelph.ca/mediarel/01-08-16/biking.html and http://www.imba.com/resources/science/impact_summary.html. 

I’m happy that at least his latest letter implies empathy—whether sincere or not—for someone else who “ended up brain damaged and divorced.”  

Marcia Lau 

 

• 

SMOKING 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I recently attended the James Taylor concert at the Greek Theater and sat on the lawn and was horrified to find that the facility allows smoking! 

1. There is a fire danger (late summer). 

2. There is a health danger (secondary smoke). 

3. Some of us are allergic (this caused me three days of severe coughing). 

4. This is state property and as a taxpayer I deserve to have smoke-free facilities. 

One cannot smoke at the Oakland Coliseum. One cannot smoke at SBC Park. Why allow smoking at the University of California facility? 

Mary Ciddio 

 

• 

DAN SPITZER’S PLANET 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Welcome to Berkeley, new readers. Permit me to introduce you to the Daily Planet. You hold in your hand what purports to be a publication covering the local scene. In reality, the Daily Planet is a reflection of publisher/editor Becky O’Malley’s simplistic ideological posturings and overt bias. Some of us have come to call it “The Daily Jihad.” 

While there are innumerable important local issues to cover, this publication, in its reportage, editorials, and op-eds, is obsessed with bashing Israel. Indeed, you will eventually see that it crosses the line from reasonable criticism to something far darker, the mirror image of its publisher’s anti-Jewish prejudices.  

The most recent example of the above is O’Malley’s hiring of Henry Norr to convey his observations about the Palestinian territories. Asking Norr to provide yet the slightest pretense of objective reportage on this issue is akin to believing that you might find honest commentary on the Third Reich by Joseph Goebbels. 

Those unfamiliar with Mr. Norr should know that once employed by the Chronicle, he was fired for plying his mindless propaganda in countless public forums. Norr, you see, is a member of the International Solidarity Movement, a pro-Palestinian organization which—-according to Mother Jones and other progressive publications—has aided and abetted the cause of Palestinian terrorist organizations. Hence, O’Malley’s hiring of Norr to write about the Israeli/Palestinian situation has about as much credibility as George Bush’s claims that Saddam had WMDs!  

What next, Ms. O’Malley? An embrace of the Palestinian Authority’s charter which still calls for the destruction of Israel? 

Dan Spitzer 

Kensington®


Letters to the Editor: Category Five News

Tuesday September 13, 2005

If we measured news coverage the way we measure hurricanes then Katrina’s Category 4 destruction of New Orleans would rate a Category 5. Everything imaginable and much that is not imaginable is said, repeated and illustrated. Print and electronic media stuff the public with countless graphic morsels of courage, fortitude, resilience, tenacity, evil, looting, anger, neglect, mendacity, incompetence, finger pointing and blame aplenty—a full rainbow of emotions, a microcosm of the American psyche, a mesmerizing surreal orgy of humanity in extremis.  

New Orleanians above a certain resource level had the wherewithal to heed the evacuation order (equate “resource level” with “class” if you prefer.) My three brothers and their families are displaced; their homes and all they own are either destroyed or severely damaged; they suffer but they are safe. My youngest sister lived below that imprecisely drawn resource line and consequently had to endure five days in indescribable misery before she was rescued.  

New Orleans is loaded with history—pre-U.S.A. slave auctions, pirate hangouts, voodoo magic, Cajun myths, quadroon balls and post-U.S.A. military triumph in the war of 1812, art and culture center, world admired cuisine. Its nicknames—Crescent City, Big Easy, Fun City, Jazz City—indicate a rich diversity of life. It existed apart from the rest of America and yet on two levels it epitomized America’s soul, a schizophrenic world that is fittingly symbolized by two climactic parades on Mardi Gras Day: the floats of Rex metaphorically parading the white life and those of Zulu boasting the black life. New Orleans was never “the white man’s burden.” For at least two hundred years before Katrina New Orleans changed from being a place where people were separate but equal to being the quintessential American Dilemma.  

Katrina effectively and forever washed away the thin veneer that covered America’s boastful noble ideals; it resolved that dilemma. Category 5 news helped the world see the shabby incompetence of government and the uncaring hypocrisy of officials. The flag we so proudly hail does not wave; it droops heavily soiled with delta mud. We are not one nation under God, but a house divided.  

America was hated for invading Iraq and the aftermath validated that hatred. Today America is revealed to contain within its borders a sub-world populated by mostly black faces where poverty is endemic. Today the world’s disaffection takes a new turn. Today the world looks on incredulously as Americans who had nothing before Katrina are reduced to having less.  

Their slave ancestors survived in a netherworld world, a world alive in the biological sense but marginally so in the human sense. French, Spanish and African cultures intermingled. From desperation slaves escaped using jungle methods, recreated themselves after the days‚ grinding labors combining African music with Christian lyrics, hopelessness was defeated by jubilation “laisez le bon temps roulez!” producing new art. New Orleans is more a people than a place.  

In his journey through Hell and Purgatory Dante described in poetry how God punished sinners but he could not have imagined and even less describe the hellish inferno that must have existed for five days in the New Orleans Superdome. What sins were those hapless descendants of slaves guilty of?  

Michelangelo’s wall fresco in the Sistine Chapel depicts divine judgment in horrifying images of twisted, naked bodies, tortured, screaming writhing in pain. Category 5 news transmitted to our living rooms a sort of electronic update of The Last Judgment: tens of thousands of real people isolated inside a state of the art sports arena that was transformed before our eyes into a huge container sealed and cut off from everything that makes human life possible. Many were children. What did they do to deserve this judgment? 

Lincoln was largely responsible for the survival of our divided house but Katrina may have posed a critical test of whether and for how long it will continue to stand.  

If it does, then the Category 5 news should begin to report the story of government agents going among the survivors, taking their names, ages, education, work experience, skills, aspirations, etc. The small screen should report how resumes are matched with employment opportunities. So far there have been anecdotal stories but nothing resembling a policy. FEMA is more than a fraud, it is a deceit; it applies a very expensive bandage where the prognosis calls for surgery. 

No one wants to live off the largess of others. Everyone wants a life they can control. Those above a certain resource level have had their lives interrupted but the very resource that enabled them to evacuate will probably enable them to get their lives back. My three brothers will get their lives back; it will not be the same but they’ll be in control again. Whether my sister will get hers remains to be seen.  

Those below that level have gone through hell and now reside in a Diaspora. If our government is not strong enough to get them out their unmerited Limbo condition, to save them from punishment for sins they did not commit then I fear that our divided house will not long stand. They don’t want their lives back; what they want is a life stolen from their ancestors, a life they never had, an ordinary human life. 

 

Marvin Chachere 

San Pablo


News Analysis: Al Gore: Where There is No Vision, The People Perish By BOB BURNETTSpecial to the Planet

Tuesday September 13, 2005

Friday morning, when they arrived at the opening plenary session of the first-ever Sierra Club convention held at San Francisco’s Moscone Center, several thousand activists got a surprise. Instead of an address by Executive Director Carl Pope, they heard a rousing speech from former Vice President Al Gore. (The schedule change arose because Gore was to have given a speech to state insurance commissioners in New Orleans.) 

Many in the audience remembered that Gore once had a reputation as an impassioned defender of the environment and an eloquent spokesman for human rights. Somewhere during the Clinton presidency, Al Gore went into hibernation; his unsuccessful 2000 presidential campaign featured robot Al—the mechanical policy wonk best known for putting crowds to sleep, rather than stirring their emotions. Gore joked that he now is a “recovering” politician; perhaps the role of an outsider empowered him to be unusually candid. Whatever the reason, the “old” Al Gore showed up on Friday. 

Gore’s theme was based upon the quote from Proverbs, “When there is no vision, the people perish.” He dwelt at length on the catastrophe of Hurricane Katrina observing, “It is important that we learn the right lessons from what happened, or else we will repeat the mistake s that were made.” Gore identified three basic lessons that the American people must grasp. The first is deceptively simple: Presidents should be expected to pay attention. The former vice president recalled that on Aug. 6, 2001, President Bush received a n intelligence briefing, “Bin Laden determined to strike in U.S.,” but took no action since “it was vacation time.” Four years later, the Bush administration received dire warnings of the damage that would be done to New Orleans, and the Gulf Coast if Hur ricane Katrina kept to its projected course. Nothing was done. “It was, once again, vacation time.” 

The second lesson, according to Gore, involves presidential accountability: “There has been no accountability for horrible misjudgment and outright falseh ood … [leading to] the tragedy of Iraq.” The former VP argued that this has produced an atmosphere, in the White House, where “there is no fear of accountability” for the federal missteps surrounding Hurricane Katrina. Gore opined that the management phil osophy of the Bush administration has been dictated by conservative lobbyist, Grover Nordquist, who famously boasted, “my goal is to get [government] down to the size where we can drown it in a bathtub.” Gore indicated that, as a result, the president del iberately shrunk the size of FEMA, rendering it “weak and helpless.” 

The former vice president’s third lesson is that presidents ought to heed warnings. The Bush administration ignored distress signals about Al Qaeda and the frailty of the New Orleans le vees, and continues to disregard warnings about global warming. “The average hurricane will get stronger because of global warming, he said, noting a scientific study, recently reported in Nature magazine, that concluded, “Since 1970, the average hurrican e has been 50 percent stronger,” specifically because the oceans have grown warmer. 

Gore passionately compared present-day America to Great Britain on the eve of World War II. He recalled the words that Winston Churchill spoke after Prime Minister Nevill e Chamberlain’s infamous 1938 appeasement of Hitler: “They are decided to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all powerful to be impotent … This is only the beginning of the reckoning. This is only the first sip, the first foretaste of a bitter cup which will be proffered to us year by year unless by a supreme recovery of moral health and martial vigor, we arise again and take our stand for freedom as in the olden time.” 

Noting the chilling similarities between the crisis-management style of Bush and Chamberlain, the former VP declared that it is time that Americans, “recover our moral health and demand accountability.” 

Buoyed by a prolonged standing ovation, Gore concluded his speech by observing that the United States is at “a moral moment … This is not about scientific debate or political dialogue, but about who we are … [It’s about] our expectation to rise to this new occasion, to see with our hearts as well as our heads.” 

Gore remembered that, after the end of the civil war, Abraham Lincoln remarked, “As the problems are new, we must disenthrall ourselves from the past.” Gore implored his audience to help America be similarly disenthralled, “to shed our illusions that have led us to ignore the consequenc es of the global warming that has already begun.” 

Those present at the opening of the Sierra Club convention got much more than they expected—a rousing speech by the old Al Gore. He urged members, as they deliberate on Sierra Club priorities, to make glo bal warming a central theme. The former vice president ended with a rallying cry, “We know what to do. We have everything we need save the political will—which is, after all, a renewable resource. This is the time. This is our moral moment and [I am confi dent] we will rise to the occasion.”  

 

Bob Burnett is a Berkeley writer and activist. He can be reached at bobburnett@comcst.net. 

 

 

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News Analysis: Those Peaceniks Are At It Again! Kucinich Brings Department of Peace Bill Before Congress By Christopher Krohn Special to the Planet

Tuesday September 13, 2005

Washington, D.C.—As an in-tractable and hopeless war in Iraq continues, a nightmare famine in Darfur lingers, and a post-hurricane catastrophe scenario plays itself out at home along comes a campaign to initiate a United States cabinet-level Department of Peace (DOP). 

Tomorrow morning (Wednesday), Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) will take to the floor of the 109th Congress and put forward a Department of Peace bill. It will be the third time this bill, H.R. 1673 (number from the 108th Congress) has been read. It has never gone to a committee and therefore has never actually been voted upon on the floor of Congress. But maybe, just maybe, this time the outcome will be different.  

Never before in the bill’s existence have more than 1,800 Americans died in a foreign land, nor have hundreds of thousands been left homeless in a major American city, nor has the president ever had approval ratings lower than Richard Nixon had in 1974 at the height of Watergate. The mood of the country has changed since July 2001 when the bill was first introduced, and clearly the fervor and numbers of DOP activists supporting the bill has changed too.  

The Department of Peace will address all of the above—war, homelessness, and poverty—and even more, according to Dorothy Maver, executive director of the Peace Alliance and former national coordinator of Rep. Kucinich’s (D-Ohio) long-shot 2004 run for the Presidency. 

The Peace Alliance is based in Michigan, and under Maver’s leadership turned out more than 500 pro-DOP activists, post-new-agers, politicos and celebrities for this, the third Department of Peace Conference. Even as a bizarre contingent of Pentagon-organized, pro-Bushies paraded through this nation’s capitol on their way to hear country musician Clint Black’s Patriot’s Day (“Iraq and Roll”) post-march concert, the pro-DOPers’ patriotism was practiced in laborious sessions of honing their lobbying message.  

Among the conference’s pro-peace contingent were Walter Cronkite, Dr. Patch Adams, Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), writers Jonathan Schell and Marianne Williamson, former U.S. Ambassador John McDonald, and futurist Barbara Marx Hubbard. Clearly “love, understanding, and peace” were the themes, but organizing and training the activists to lobby their congressional representatives to support the Kucinich bill was the immediate task at hand. While California had the most representation with 84—Michigan was second with 48—the overall gathering hailed from some 46 states and 265 congressional districts, just three shy of a U.S. House of Representatives majority. But hold on! While all present held varying degrees of hope about when a DOP would become a reality and actually displace the current GOP war agenda, all of those interviewed did not see anything but a protracted, long-term campaign struggle.  

Currently, 54 Congress members are signed on to the Kucinich bill proposing a Department of Peace. The list reads like a who’s who in what passes lately as the liberal-progressive wing of the Democratic Party. Of course Barbara Lee has signed it and so have the Bay Area’s George Miller, Lynn Woolsey and Fortney “Pete” Stark, but San Francisco’s Nancy Pelosi and San Jose’s Zoe Lofgren and Anna Eshoo are conspicuously absent from the bill’s co-sponsorship list. And these are precisely the types of Congressmembers which The Peace Alliance’s training of citizen-activists wants to target. 

The crowded Grand Ball Room at L’Enfante Plaza Hotel saw a credible organizing strategy imparted throughout the sometimes grueling 2-day organizing conference—with sessions running past 10 p.m. each night—in an attempt to reach out and make the case to U.S. Representatives not already co-sponsoring the bill. The conference was presided over by the Peace Alliance’s co-founder and post-new age pragmatist and author Williamson. 

Part cheerleader and part sermonizer, Williamson is noticeably skilled in cajoling, coddling, and politicking. With her head on a cloudy prayer wheel, (“Current policy does not reflect the better angels of our nature”) and both her feet planted firmly in Washington political lobbying reality, (“We will not prevail unless we become a serious political constituency”), she presided over sessions like, “Creating a New Priority for Congress—Tips on Talking About the Department of Peace with Your Congress member,” “Practicing Speaking About the Bill (with Burt Wides, Senior Counsel for the House Judiciary Committee),” and “Group Dialogue and Best Practices.” 

She was at her best when quoting the poetry and prose of the Rev. Martin Luther King and the rational, get-it-done politics of Rep. Conyers from her home state of Michigan. 

While this gathering was perhaps overly serious and extremely hopeful, it became at times a bit raucous, especially when Williamson invoked the uphill struggles of the Abolitionists and Suffragettes. “The first Abolitionists would have thought abolition not possible, the first women suffragettes too,” she said. Then she declared from the ballroom podium with an air of guarded optimism, “This (creation of a DOP) is doable within the next five years.”  

There was a pervading message of optimism as well as an if-not-now-then-when attitude among conference participants. Many of the activists see the period the country finds itself in—post-hurricane Katrina—as a strategic time to organize for a Department of Peace (DOP) and to make right many of the social and political wrongs which the current administration in this town has wrought. Maver said the realization of a DOP would be, “a shift in consciousness that will bring forth the vision of our founding fathers.”  

Yesterday following their conference preparation, the peace activists took to the streets to lobby their Congressmembers to vote tomorrow to send the DOP bill to committee. In the words of Executive Director Maver, the creation of the DOP is an institutionalized, serious, and “fiscally responsible effort to end poverty, hunger, and homelessness,” with the U.S. taking the lead at home and around the world. 

 

Christopher Krohn is the former mayor of Santa Cruz. 


Police Blotter By RICHARD BRENNEMAN

Tuesday September 13, 2005

Former Berkeley student slain 

Armon Green, an 18-year-old man who Oakland Police said had attended Berkeley schools, was fatally shot Saturday night in the West Oakland neighborhood where his family lives. 

The young man was gunned down about 8:40 p.m. at the corner of 12th and Peralta streets. Multiple shots were fired, several striking two cars parked in the area. Police said they have not been able to determine the motive for the slaying in a neighborhood which has seen several shootings in recent weeks, though none with injuries. 

 

September 2 

Three bandits, one of them armed with a pistol and another with a crowbar, shoved a cyclist off his wheels in the 1200 block of Peralta Avenue just before 8 p.m., relieving him of his cash and backpack, said Officer Okies. 

At about the same time as the Peralta Avenue crime, a rat pack of four or five young men kicked and robbed a 20-year-old man in the 2300 block of Channing Way. 

Another suspect was apprehended that evening. A man who had hit another fellow on the head with a stick in the 1200 block of Ashby Avenue was booked on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon shortly after the incident which occurred an hour after the first two crimes. 

 

September 3 

Two large men punched a pedestrian from behind in the 2400 block of Prince Street at about 1 a.m. and fled eastbound on Prince with his wallet, said Officer Okies. 

An attempted purse snatch about 8 p.m. near the corner of Parker and regent streets turned into an attempted strong-arm robbery when the 25-year-old victim refused to let go, setting off a tug of war she eventually won. 

An argument that escalated into a fracas near the corner of Fairview and Sacramento streets shortly before 11:30 p.m. took a more dangerous turn when one of the young men pulled a knife, inflicting what proved to be a minor injury on another young man. 

The alleged knife-fighter, a 19-year-old, was booked on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon. 

 

September 4  

Police arrested a 22-year-old woman on suspicion of strong-arm robbery at 3:21 p.m. after she allegedly robbed and assaulted a 15-year-old youth near the corner of Shattuck Avenue and Center Street. 

 

September 5  

Crime didn’t take a holiday on Labor Day.  

When a drug peddler kicked off the holiday by approaching a pedestrian near the corner of Solano and Tacoma avenues at 1 a.m., he wouldn’t take no for an answer. 

After his offer to sell intoxicants was spurned, the dealer whipped out a knife and robbed the fellow, said Berkeley Police spokesperson Officer Joe Okies. The suspect remains at large. 

Another holiday bandit, described as between 19 and 20 years of age, punched a 61-year-old man near the corner of Stanton and Russell streets 12 hours later, making off with his valuables. 

He too was not apprehended. 

A third Labor Day thief was less fortunate. A citizen called 911 to report that a fellow was breaking into cars on Ellsworth Street near the corner of Durant Avenue. 

The arrival of the black-and-whites prompted the 41-year-old suspect to attempt to make “foot bail” with a computer he’d swiped from one of the cars. 

Officers set out in pursuit, and quickly caught their man, who sustained a minor injury to one hand as he attempted to avoid capture. The computer was saved for its rightful owner. 

Though the two men who robbed and assaulted a 21-year-old motorist near the corner of Seventh and Addison streets shortly before 1 a.m. weren’t able to complete their attempted carjacking, they did make off with their victim’s wallet, cash and credit cards, as well as some of his stereo equipment, said Officer Okies.  

Two bandits in their early 20s robbed a man in his early 40s in the 2200 block of San Pablo Avenue just before 8 p.m., dislocating his shoulder in the process. They remain at large.  

 

September 6 

Burglars entered a home in the 2500 block of Regent Street sometime before 7:30 p.m. and made off with $1,400 in cash, a $340 money order and $2,000 worth of jewelry belonging to a 23-year-old Berkeley woman. 

 

September 8 

Arriving for work at a construction site near the corner of Eighth and Gilman streets Thursday morning, workers discovered that someone had broken into locked storage containers and made off with their tools. 

The owner of Berkeley Tanning at 2359 Telegraph Ave. called police at 2:39 p.m. to report his suspicions that an employee had been embezzling cash from the business. 

 

September 9 

A 50-year-old Berkeley woman called police from a gas station at Ninth Street and Ashby Avenue at 6:48 a.m. to report that she had been attacked by a man in his late 20s about a half hour earlier who had grabbed her from behind, exposed himself and briefly held her. 

A 42-year-old woman was accosted by a strong-arm robber in the 2100 block of Ninth Street about 3:30 p.m. and relieved of her cash. 

Berkeley Police arrested two boys, ages 14 and 15, after the police were flagged down in the 1900 block of Allston Way outside Berkeley High School by a citizen who reported a fire in a trash can. A quick investigation turned up to the two teens, who were booked on suspicion of arson. 

A gang of six youths aged between 13 and 15 accosted a 19-year-old man near the corner of Channing Way and Fulton Street just after 9 p.m., punched him with their fists and made off with his wallet, said Officer Okies. 

A 26-year-old San Francisco man sustained critical injuries when he was shot in the face and thigh outside the Designer Brands 4 Less Shop at 3014 San Pablo Ave. about 10 p.m. Friday night. Witnesses told officers that two men had fled the scene in a black Mercedes station wagon. Police were keeping secret both the victim’s name and the location of the hospital where he is being treated. 

 

September 12 

Police arrested a 25-year-old man for burglary and possession of methamphetamine after a 5 a.m. pedestrian stop in the 2000 block of Kittredge Street. 

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Column: The Public Eye: Councilmember Maio Spins The UC Settlement Debacle By ZELDA BRONSTEIN

Staff
Tuesday September 13, 2005

For a few days after Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast, the Bush White House doled out the sort of upbeat rhetoric with which it customarily responds to disasters that are at least partly of its own making. The public was advised by Vice President Cheney that “tremendous progress” was being made in Louisiana. On Sept. 2, the president told FEMA Director Michael Brown, “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job.” 

Spin is what we’ve come to expect from the Bush administration. But it’s not what we expect from civic leaders in Berkeley. 

That’s why Councilmember Linda Maio’s op-ed in the Sept. 6 Daily Californian comes as something of a shock. On its face the article is a fulsome tribute to the UC Berkeley chancellor and the “new partnership” between the campus and the community that he allegedly helped to forge during his first year at Cal. But once you know enough to read between the lines, you see the piece for what it really is: an attempt to whitewash the awful settlement of the city’s lawsuit against the university administration, approved by the City Council in May on a secret 6-3 vote. 

The object of the city’s suit was the University’s Long Range Development Plan (LRDP) and its environmental impact plan (EIR). Maio herself describes the LDRP as “deeply flawed.” But its flaws are never specified in her essay. Neither is a single detail of the city’s lawsuit or the May settlement agreement. 

Instead, we’re offered feel-good verbiage. The settlement, we’re told, “was a powerful statement of good faith on both sides.” It laid the foundations of “our mutual and equal partnership.” Addressing the paramount issue of off-campus university development, the “settlement sets up a model joint planning effort that, if successful, will protect the community’s interests.” 

These claims are fanciful. Far from establishing a “mutual and equal partnership,” the settlement handed over control of future planning for the city’s downtown to the university administration. The agreement calls for the preparation of a so-called Downtown Area Plan (DAP). 

Referring to the plan’s preparation, Maio writes: “we will be looking for the chancellor to fully engage the community as partners. This means regular meetings with elected officials, neighborhood associations, community groups and the business community.” 

She neglects to say that the settlement itself cuts the community out of the planning process. It puts city and campus planning staffs, notorious for their exclusionary procedures, in charge of drafting the DAP (Section II.B.3 - 4). The Planning Commission, designated by the city’s charter as the lead agency in land use policymaking, isn’t even mentioned. Though the settlement makes no provision for involving any downtown property-owners except the city and UC, the DAP “shall encompass the entire scope of future downtown development, including all private and public sector landowners and developers” (Section I.L). 

Here’s the topper: the university administration will not be bound by the DAP. “UC Berkeley reserves the right to determine if the DAP or [its] EIR meet the regents’ needs. The basis for making such a determination would be that the DAP or EIR does not accommodate UC Berkeley development in a manner satisfactory to the Regents” (Section II.B.7). 

In another mind-boggling passage, Councilmember Maio asserts that “the creative solutions” developed by the chancellor, council and mayor “kept us from spiraling into a never-ending cycle of litigation and recriminations.” Reading Maio’s op-ed, you’d never guess that five days before it appeared, a group of Berkeley citizens sued her, the mayor and the four other councilmembers who voted for the settlement (Anderson, Capitelli, Moore and Wozniak), the city manager, the city attorney and the UC Regents. The plaintiffs asked the California Superior Court in Oakland to void the settlement because “it contracted away the City Council’s right to independently exercise its police power in the future.” So much for having put an end to litigation and recriminations. 

If, as Maio says, she wants to make “a powerful statement of good faith,” the best thing she could do at this point is to admit openly that in voting for the settlement, she opted to surrender the city’s rightful sovereignty to the university administration. Indeed, she implicitly admits as much in her laudation of Chancellor Birgenau. 

The City Council, she writes, “made a decisive and controversial choice” to give the chancellor “an opportunity to change our relationship from one rooted in conflict to one based on cooperation.” (We are left to wonder: if the settlement was as advantageous as Maio claims, why was its approval controversial?) Because he seized that opportunity, we now have a chance to work “through cooperation, collaboration, ... relying on the good offices of our leaders, especially Chancellor Birgeneau.” 

To designate Chancellor Birgeneau as the foremost among “our leaders” is to disregard the fact that every UC administrator, no matter how personally solicitous of the larger community, is ultimately accountable not to the public but to the regents. 

But if the settlement is upheld in court, and the DAP is instituted, the community will indeed have no choice but to rely on the Regents’ offices, good or bad. Unhappily, the LRDP is only the most recent of many precedents suggesting that, as far as university expansion in Berkeley is concerned, those offices will not be beneficent ones. 

Whether the settlement is upheld or struck down, Berkeleyans will be able to choose whether to continue relying on the offices of the six elected officials who voted for it. (Three of them—Mayor Bates, Councilmember Wozniak and Maio herself—will be up for re-election in November 2006.) After acknowledging that their support for the settlement was a mistake, these six should join the three councilmembers who voted against the agreement—Olds, Spring and Worthington—and sue the university for the $1.2 million to $2.4 million in sewer fees that city staff have determined the campus owes the city. Such a suit would automatically terminate the settlement (“Settlement Agreement,” Section VI). Then, working with their elected and appointed colleagues in City Hall, the mayor and council should persuade Chancellor Birgenau to commit the university administration to a long range development plan for UC that, unlike the current LRDP, respects city and state law and honors the community’s needs and democratic traditions. 

Whatever else they do, our city officials should level with us. This is Berkeley, not Crawford, Texas. 

 

The text of the UC-City settlement agreement is online at www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/ 

2005citycouncil/closed/pdf/2005-05-25LDRPsettlement.pdf. 

 


Column: The Little Miracle of Collard Greens By SUSAN PARKER

Tuesday September 13, 2005

Last Tuesday was the fourth anniversary of the death of my neighbor Mrs. Gerstine Scott. I think about her a great deal, but during this time of year she is especially on my mind.  

Mrs. Scott died five days before the collapse of the World Trade Center and the attack on the Pentagon. I often wonder what she would have thought about those events had she been alive. Even in death, she was affected by the trauma. Her coffin, en route to her family home in East Texas, sat on a tarmac at Oakland Airport for several days waiting for air travel to resume. 

Mrs. Scott came into my life at a time when I desperately needed a friend, someone who wasn’t afraid to tell me what to do, and who was willing to stick around to make sure I did it. There were times when I literally wanted to crawl into her soft lap and go to sleep, but she wouldn’t allow it. Mrs. Scott was all about confrontation, not avoidance.  

She was a very big woman and she carried a large kitchen knife “for protection” in her enormous black pocketbook. Additionally, she always walked with a cane, and I don’t doubt for a second she would have used it as a weapon if she had felt threatened, or if she thought someone she loved was in danger.  

She told me she once hit a burglar on the head with a frying pan full of hot grease, and another time she chased an intruder over her back fence. When Mrs. Scott heard our out-of-town guests had been mugged on the corner of Dover and 54th streets, she came over to our house and gave a rousing lecture on the parts of a man’s body a woman should grab, squeeze, and twist in self-defense. Thirteen years later, the details of the mugging are forgotten, but Mrs. Scott’s speech is seared into our collective memory.  

Last night our housemate Andrea brought home collard greens grown in a neighbor’s garden. The leaves were as big as a small child and so luminously green, I wondered if we could turn off the overhead lights and cook by the glow of their iridescence.  

“Comfort food,” said Andrea, as she set about removing the stalks and tearing the leaves into small pieces. “We need it after all the bad news comin’ out of Louisiana.”  

The house became engulfed with a sweet, loamy pungency, and I was once again reminded of Mrs. Scott. Collard greens were a staple in her diet. She grew them in our backyard and cooked them for us, along with biscuits and gravy, and red beans. 

Andrea put the shredded greens in a pot and filled it with water. She left it on the counter to soak overnight, and by morning the house smells different. The water has drawn the acidity out of the leaves and the kitchen is filled with sharp, earthy fumes.  

“Andrea,” I say, “can we cook these greens for breakfast?” 

“No,” she answers. “We’ve got to wait ‘til all the dirt and spider webs are gone, and then we’ve got to cook ‘em down until they’re soft.” 

I take the dog for a walk. I run into my neighbor Floyd, who points out to me collard greens growing in the sewer culvert at the corner of 54th and Dover streets. “The seeds from Ramone’s garden must’ve run wild,” he says.  

I bend down and look closer at the plant. It is strong and sturdy despite its precarious attachment to a clump of hard dirt.  

“What do you make of it?” asks Floyd. I think of Mrs. Scott, of the greens soaking in the pot back at my house, and of the mugging that took place on this very corner thirteen years ago. 

“I don’t know,” I tell Floyd. “But I’m taking it as a sign that something good is about to happen.” 

And it does. Tonight we’re having greens for dinner. 

 

 

 

 


Commentary: KPFA Workers Call for Violence-Free Station, No Harassment By KPFA UNION STEWARDS

Tuesday September 13, 2005

Marc Sapir’s op-ed in defense of KPFA’s General Manager Roy Campanella II (“Coup Crystallizes Inside KPFA—Again?” Aug. 19) abandons reasoned analysis for a one-sided polemic, riddled with errors and hyperbole. Sapir appears to be singularly misinformed about the facts of the disturbing labor dispute at KPFA—a conflict that should concern all who care about this crucial 56-year-old institution and the vitality of the left in the Bay Area and Central Valley. If Sapir had bothered to check his facts, instead of repeating Campanella’s spin almost verbatim, he would have found that he was being sold a bill of goods. 

Here are the charges, compiled from multiple sources: 

• Within weeks of being hired, Campanella propositions women workers at the station, makes sexual and inappropriate comments to women, offers one the job of her colleague while making sexually suggestive remarks to her, spreads rumors about plans to fire a woman who stands up to him, and creates a pervasively hostile work environment for KPFA women. (Only one woman even alleges that Campanella invited her to the movies, contrary to Sapir/Campanella’s claims.) When challenged about his actions, he claims that the women came on to him, and then retaliates against women who organize themselves at the station. He publicly belittles women who turned him down and participated in an investigation into his conduct, threatens to cut their funding, criticizes their work to their supervisors, and other retaliatory behavior. 

• Pacifica conducts an investigation into the multiple complaints about Campanella by the women at the station; unfortunately the investigation is full of errors and the women involved see it as a whitewash. While Pacifica states it is unable to “determine conclusively” whether sexual harassment has taken place, it finds that Campanella has acted a manner not consistent with “Pacifica’s expectations of a general manager” and he is told that he must change his behavior or could face consequences up to termination. 

• Campanella allows a woman worker to be forced off a program where she was facing a hostile work environment, saying that he could do nothing to protect her, despite her pleas to him as manager of the station. 

• On May 5, Campanella threatens Hard Knock Radio executive producer Weyland Southon and follows him out of the building to the sidewalk to fight, in violation of Pacifica’s “Zero Tolerance for Violence Policy” which states: “Any employee engaging in any type of threatened or actual violence against any employee, or the Pacifica Foundation itself, will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. 

• Eight women workers at the station file with the Department of Fair Employment and Housing, alleging sexual harassment and retaliation by Campanella. The women specifically choose to go to the DFEH because it will not monetarily harm the station. If the state agency finds their claims to be correct, the DFEH will demand the station take action to rectify the problem, rather than awarding a cash settlement to the women. 

• The union of the paid staff, CWA Local 9415, files with the National Labor Relations Board on behalf of seven male and female workers at the station for Campanella’s multiple violations of labor law, which guarantees workers the right to organize and assemble freely, as well as guarantees a safe and violence-free workplace. 

• The Local Station Board, which hired Campanella last November, employed a lawyer to investigate the allegations. As board member Joe Wanzala has told the press, the lawyer recommended that Campanella be terminated. Shockingly, in spite of this, the highly politicized board votes to keep Campanella in the job, despite the mounting liability in which he has mired the station. Even before the board completed its investigation into Campanella’s conduct, three board members publicly attack workers’ motives and dismissed their complaints. 

Unfortunately, despite the struggle to save KPFA from hijacking by Mary Frances Berry and the Pacifica National Board in 1999, the station has been left with another out-of-control board. Members of the Local Station Board were elected with as few votes as 400 each—out of a listener-membership of 25,000 and an estimated listenership of 200,000—and as a consequence, the board is made up of many people who have narrow political agendas and regularly attack the workers that produce KPFA’s programs (for example, circulating an e-mail suggesting that one long-time programmer used to be on the payroll of the CIA). Animosity to the staff is veiled by sweeping claims that KPFA workers are resistant to change and participation by the listeners. 

Sapir’s odd tale about coup plots and hostility to listener input raises some basic questions: Why would 91 workers on whom the progressive community of northern and central California rely daily for news and analysis on injustice, labor struggles, war and empire, as well as diverse music and arts programming, conspire collectively to ask for the termination of a manager without cause? How would that even be possible in a group known for healthy differences in opinion? How is it that 80 percent of the paid staff and 20 percent of the unpaid staff make up a “dissident group” at the station? And if opposition to Campanella at KPFA is really motivated by an aversion to diversity and change at the station, then why are the central characters in the dispute younger people and people of color? Could it be possible that the workers claims are valid? 

Sapir’s commentary also gets other facts wrong, including the number of workers at the station (approximately 225, not 300) and the financial health of KPFA. Contrary to Sapir’s claims, expenditures do not exceed income. Sapir claims that KPFA has 42 full-time workers when in fact the accurate number for full-time equivalences (FTEs) is 38. Of those, 1.8 FTEs are funded by grants and cost KPFA nothing, bringing the number of FTEs paid for by KPFA to about 36.2. Additionally, Sapir alleges that the number of FTEs increased dramatically by comparing an inflated version of today’s numbers to the artificial low following the 1999 lock out, when there was an exodus of workers from KPFA and a hiring freeze was imposed on the station by Pacifica. It’s also worth noting that KPFA workers currently raise twice the money that they did before the lockout. 

We believe that Pacifica should not allow workers and women to be treated by the manager in ways that justifiably outrage progressives when they happen to workers at Mitsubishi or Denny’s. The Pacifica National Board has the power to overturn the Local Station Board’s vote and remove Campanella, but it needs to hear from concerned listeners. To contact the National Board, or to find out more about the workers‚ allegations, go to www.kpfaworker.org. 

 

KPFA Union Stewards: 

Lisa Ballard, Webmaster 

Sasha Lilley, Against the Grain 

Philip Maldari, Morning Show 

Mark Mericle, KPFA News 

 

 

 


Commentary: Advocating for My Foster Daughter By ANNIE KASSOF

Tuesday September 13, 2005

This is the story of my foster child who I’ll call “Katrina.” Like many of the hurricane victims, she too has been jerked around by a bureaucratic system rife with finger-pointing and incompetence.  

Only in this case it’s not the U.S. government (or the county social services system) that’s failed her, but the Berkeley Unified School District.  

It’s a warm morning, the second week into the school year, and we’re on a noisy elementary school playground. 

Katrina is sucking nervously on the collar of her dress, hiding behind me. She doesn’t want to meet her new teacher in what will become the fourth school she’s attended in two years. She doesn’t want a whole new crop of curious grade school kids to question the physical affliction that causes her limp, or to ask about the brace she wears. She’s tired of responding to the same questions that children at her former schools always asked: “Where’s your real mom?” “Why don’t you have a dad?” Katrina would prefer to talk about things like the pet hamster her sister (my daughter) bought her.  

It’s likely the kids at the new school will ask about me, who she refers to as “Miss Annie,” and then she’ll think she has to explain about being a foster kid all over again. I’ll bet she’ll answer all the questions as patiently as she can even so, because Katrina’s mighty resilient as foster children are apt to be. She’ll probably charm her teacher in no time flat, just as she charmed me when she joined my family this past April. Eventually her classmates’ curiosity will be sated and perhaps by the time her birthday rolls around this winter she’ll even have a few friends to invite to a party. 

In April when Katrina moved in, possibly for the long-haul, it was a no-brainer that she’d go to the same school my daughter attends. It’s public school—right? After I filled out the requisite paperwork it wasn’t long before I was waving goodbye to the girls each morning as they climbed onto the school bus. They’d come home all smiles and inside jokes, talking about kids they knew, teasing about boyfriends.  

When I’d enrolled Katrina in April, the manager of the Admissions and Attendance Office told me that he couldn’t guarantee her a spot in the same school for September. There’s that 20-student-per-class limit that we’d all voted for, see. Yet by allowing her to attend the same school as my daughter from April through June, she became the twenty-first child in her class even so. At the time, I assumed that the sibling-preference rule would continue to supersede the class size rule in her case, and that by September Katrina would be firmly anchored in the school’s community—accepted, and gradually shedding the stigma of being a foster child with a disability. 

Wishful thinking. Just before the start of this school year, I learned that Katrina would not be able to stay where she was, but would be assigned to a school that starts an hour earlier—promising extra-chaotic mornings. 

I couldn’t believe it. I kept Katrina out of school for the first three days in hopes of space opening up at the school she longed to return to. That first afternoon I listened as my daughter told us about the many questions she’d fielded from students who’d asked where Katrina was. On Friday I went to the Admissions office and talked to the district’s Public Information Officer. He spewed numbers and statistics at me but what I remember most is the thousands of dollars a week he said the district would lose if Katrina were to stay at the same school she’d been permitted to attend in the Spring. 

Why was Katrina booted out of a public school she was allowed to attend before? 

An image came to mind, of children as dollar signs—faceless, but with arms and legs. I wanted to scream, but I restrained myself and finally spoke to the Manager of Admissions who assured me that he was doing all he could for Katrina. 

Really? 

So now here we are in the second week of school—and my foster daughter’s fledgling friendships that began to blossom last Spring are likely to wither. Most people believe that foster kids’ stability is tantamount to their success, but now Katrina has to start all over again thanks solely to bureaucratic blundering. 

At her newest school, I explained our saga to a sympathetic teacher who claims it’s illegal for Admissions to “de-enroll” a student from public school. He suggested I talk to the Superintendent and sue the district if I had to, but the Public Information Officer had insisted that the Superintendent wouldn’t be able to change anything. 

After Katrina’s first day at the new school I had to throw away the dress she had on. Its collar was all chewed up. 

 

Freelance writer Annie Kassof lives in Berkeley with the two children in this story as well as her teenage son and a foster baby.›


Arts: Old Time Music Festival Comes to Berkeley By LAWRENCE KAY Special to the Planet

Tuesday September 13, 2005

As summer comes to a close, musicians from up and down the Pacific coast will converge on Berkeley for a series of shows at the Freight and Salvage Coffeehouse, Jupiter, Ashkenaz and the downtown Saturday farmer’s market. 

The four-day Berkeley Old Time Music Convention, Sept.15-18, includes numerous performances and musical workshops in honor of the odd, craggy acoustic style known as “old time” music, which is sort of like bluegrass music’s cranky, elderly inlaw, full of squeaky fiddles, plangent banjos and odd, twisted rhythms. The event includes the second annual Berkeley Farmer’s Market Stringband Contest, held Saturday from 11 a.m.-3 p.m. with up to 20 bands competing in a no-holds-barred twangfest that is the centerpiece of the festival. 

Just what constitutes “old time music” is often a matter of contention. Generally speaking, it refers to Appalachian mountain music from the 1930s or earlier, and is seen as the precursor to the sleeker, more commercial bluegrass style pioneered in the 1940s by artists such as Bill Monroe and the Stanley Brothers. Some old-time purists still view bluegrass as an apostasy; others, like volunteer organizer Suzy Thompson, are more flexible and forgiving. 

“I don’t think there’s as big a separation as some people seem to think,” she said. “Certain kinds of bluegrass are old-time music, but other kinds are not. It all depends on who you talk to.” 

Thompson, a veteran fiddler who’s been in a number of Bay Area bands over the last three decades, feels that the definition should be expanded to embrace other ethnic styles beyond the Appalachian music it has been identified with. 

“To me, old-time is music that you might have heard in the 1920s or ‘30s (including) the Memphis Jug Band or Amade Ardoin, or Belf’s Romanian Orchestra,” she said. “It has something to do with real actual regional music, that has a real accent and personal feel and hasn’t gone through the maw of the commercial music industry.” 

To that end, this year’s event has been broadened to include non-Appalachian music, including Mexican, Balkan and Canadian music—whatever style, just as long as there’s at least one fiddle or banjo per band, and no amplification. Thompson sees the appeal of this old-fashioned acoustic music as being something that hasn’t been repackaged by the corporate media—and isn’t likely to be anytime soon. 

“One of the things that appeals to younger people about this music is that it’s basically noncommercial,” she said. “It’s hard to play it really, really well, but it’s easy to play it, and it’s something you can do with other people. The community aspect of it is really appealing. People are tired of the television and tired of everything being controlled by some huge corporate entity—and this isn’t.” 

The current event came about when the Berkeley Ecology Center, which sponsors three weekly farmer’s markets, asked Thompson to help organize musical events for the Saturday markets. At first Thompson focused on Cajun music—another of her interests—but soon she turned her attention to old-time stringband music. The idea expanded when Steven Baker of the Freight and Salvage Coffeehouse asked her to organize similar concerts at the club, and slowly the idea of a festival emerged. Thompson and her cohorts reached back into Berkeley’s musical past to link the new festival to an older, odder, event from the misty past of the local acoustic music scene. 

The original Berkeley Old-Time Fiddler’s Convention was held three times—in 1968, ‘69 and ‘70—and featured ragtag talent shows respectively labeled as the 35th, 17th and 22nd “annual” event. The conventions were puckish, anarchic events—paperwork filed with the city to obtain permits listed “Nobody” as the event’s official organizer—and offered absurd, fanciful prizes for the talent contests. The first contest enticed contestants with a grand prize five-pound sack of rutabagas, the following year awarded contestants with homemade pies and the final fiddler’s convention, held in 1970, boasted a grand prize of a free trip to Emeryville. These days the prizes are more prosaic—a $150.00 Farmer’s Market gift certificate, which can still get you a lot of rutabagas ... if they’re in season. 

The Bay Area, and Berkeley in particular, has long been recognized as a haven for bluegrass and old-time music. Some of the finest acoustic musicians in the country hang their hats here, and some, like songwriter Larry Hanks and Thompson’s husband, guitarist Eric Thompson, were even in attendance during the original convention over three decades ago, and will perform onstage at the Freight later this week. Also appearing are newer local bands such as the Stairwell Sisters, Mercury Dimes (from San Francisco) and the Government Issue Orchestra, from Portland, Ore. Headliners include Fresno-based bandleader Kenny Hall and old-time elder Mike Seeger, one of the founders of the folk revival of the late 1950s and early ‘60s. 

Even with all the high-powered locals and out-of-town talent onstage, the convention organizers see to it that the event’s true emphasis is on the front porch, do-it-yourself amateurism that is the hallmark of the old-time music scene: the real fun is getting people to learn to make the music themselves. 

Several small workshops are being held in conjunction with the concerts: old-time fiddling, regional banjo techniques, harmony singing and square dance calling will be taught. There’s also a youth category, looking for tomorrow’s stars singing the songs of yesteryear. Details about the concerts, contest and various workshops can be found online at www.berkeleyoldtimemusic.org, or through the Freight and Salvage website at www.thefreight.org. 

 

 

Thurday, Sept. 15:  

The Stairwell Sisters, The Roadoilers, Larry Hanks at Freight and Salvage, 1111 Addison St., 8 p.m. $15.50 adv. $16.50 door 

 

Friday, Sept. 16:  

Mike Seeger, Kenny Hall Band, Eric & Suzy Thompson at Freight and Salvage, 8 p.m. $15.50 adv. $16.50 door 

 

Saturday, Sept. 17:  

Berkeley Farmer’s Market will hold a stringband contest. Downtown Berkeley Farmers’ Market, Center Street between Milvia Street and Martin Luther King Jr. Way, 11a.m.- 3 p.m. 

Square dance with the legendary caller Bill Martin, of Portland, Ore., with music by the Government Issue Orchestra, the Mercury Dimes, Rafe Stefanini with Amy and Karen at Ashkenaz, 1317 San Pablo Ave., 8 p.m. $15 (12 and under free). Clogging workshop with Evie Ladin, 6:30–7:30 p.m., $10, at Ashkenaz. 

 

Sunday, Sept. 18:  

Old-time Cabaret at Jupiter, 2181 Shattuck Ave., 4-8 p.m. 

Music and dance workshops at various locations, check convention website or call.›


Arts Calendar

Tuesday September 13, 2005

TUESDAY, SEPT. 13 

FILM 

Margaret Tait: Subjects and Sequences “Islands” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Anthony Shadid, author of “Night Draws Near, Iraq's People in the Shadow of America’s War” at 12:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

Joe Conason describes “The Raw Deal: How Bush Republicans Plan to Destroy Social Security and the Legacy of the New Deal” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852.  

Laura Joplin offers some insight into her older sister in “Love, Janis” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

The Whole Note Poetry Series with Randy Fingland and Bert Glick at 7 p.m. at The Beanery, 2925 College Ave., near Ashby. 549-9093. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Samarabalouf, music inspired by gypsy jazz, from France, at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $15. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Dred Scott, solo jazz piano, at 8 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810. 

Ellen Hoffman Trio and Singers’ Opn Mic at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $5. 841-JAZZ.  

Brandi Carlile at 9 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $8. 841-2082. 

Carla Bley & Her Lost Chords at 8 and 10 p.m. Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10-$18. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

Barbara Linn at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 14 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Kazakh: Paintings by Saule Suleimenova” opens at the Doreen B. Townsend Center for the Humanities, 220 Stephens Hall, UC Campus. Appointments recommended. 643-9670. 

“CCA Faculty New Work” Reception at 5:30 p.m. at Oliver Art Center, California College of the Arts, 5212 Broadway, Oakland. 

“Taisho Chic: Japanese Modernity, Nostalgia and Deco”opens at the Berkeley Art Museum, 2625 Durant Ave. 642-0808. 

FILM 

Artificial Expressionism: Semiconductor at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

THEATER 

Berkeley Rep, “Our Town” opens and runs through Oct. 23. Tickets are $45-$59. 647-2949. www.berkeleyrep.org 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Michael Kimmelman describes “The Accidental Masterpiece: On the Art of Life and Vice Versa” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

Jacques Leslie discusses “Deep Water: The Struggle Over Dams, Displaced People and the Environment” at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698.  

Berkeley Poetry Slam at 8:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5-$7. 841-2082.  

Café Poetry at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña. Donation $2. 849-2568.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Wednesday Noon Concert, New Traditions in American Indian Music and Dance at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Free. 642-4864. http://music.berkeley.edu 

TapRoots and New Growth: Contemporary Ghazal singer Kiran Ahluwalia. Lecture and demonstration at 8 p.m., concert at 9:15 p.m. 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $12-$15. 525-5054.  

Horacio Franco, recorder, at 8 p.m. at Wheeler Auditorium, UC Campus. Tickets are $32. 642-9988.  

Calvin Keys Trio Jam at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. 841-JAZZ.  

La Verdad, salsa, at 9:30 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low.Cost is $5-$10. 548-1159.  

Will Blades Quartet at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Carla Bley & Her Lost Chords at 8 and 10 p.m. Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10-$18. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

THURSDAY, SEPT. 15 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Dress: Clothing as Art” reception at 6 p.m. at Richmond Art Center, 2540 Barrett Ave., Richmond. 620-6772.  

Third Thursdays Open Studios between 4 and 8:30 p.m. at 800 Heinz Ave. 

FILM 

Films from Along the SIlk Road: “Revenge” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808.  

“Raise the Red Lantern” film and discussion in conjunction with the performances of the National Ballet of China, at 7 p.m. at Wheeler Auditorium, UC Campus. 642-2809. 

Cine Documental: “El Dia Que Me Quieras” a documentary deconstructing the myth of Che Guevara at 7 p.m. in the CLAS Conference Room, 2334 Bowditch St.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“Yosemite in Time” Gallery talk with Rebecca Solnit at 5:30 p.m. at Berkeley Art Museum, 2626 Bancroft Way. 642-0808. 

“African Material Culture Between Everyday and Ritual Contexts” with Mariane Ferme at 5:30 p.m. at Phoebe Hearst Museum, Bancroft and College. 643-7648.  

Victor Navasky, publisher The Nation magazine, discusses his new book “A Matter of Opinion” at 7:30 p.m. in Room 105, North Gate Hall, UC Campus. Co-sponsored by the Mass Communication Dept. and the Grad. School of Journalism. 642-3383. 

Nomad Spoken Word Night at 6 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

Arnaud Maitland describes “Living Without Regret: Growing Old in the Light of Tibetan Buddhism” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852.  

Word Beat Reading Series with Juan Sequeira and Jan Lewis at 7 p.m. at Mediterraneum Caffe, 2475 Telegraph Ave. 526-5985. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra “Musical Tribute to Laurette Goldberg” at 8 p.m. at First Congregational Church, 2345 Channing Way. Free. 528-1685. 

Albany Music in the Park with Mark Russo and the Classy Cats, swing music at 6:30 p.m. at Albany’s Memorial Park. 524-9283. www.albanyca.org 

Lost Bayou Ramblers at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cajun dance lesson at 8 p.m. Cost is $12. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Live AndUnplugged Open Mic, acoustic music by local artists, at 7 p.m. at Unitarian Universalists, 1924 Cedar St. at Bonita. 703-9350.  

Berkeley Old Time Music Convention with the Stairwell Sisters, the Roadoilers, and Larry Hanks at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $15.50-$16.50. 548-1761.  

Fourtet Jazz Quartet at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is. $5. 841-JAZZ.  

The Other Side, Dora Flood, The Mandarins at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5. 841-2082 .  

Dave Matthews & Peter Barshay, piano and bass, at 8 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

Hurricane Katrina Benefit at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square, through Sun. Cost is $25. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

Selector, lap-top funk, at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

FRIDAY, SEPT. 16 

THEATER 

Aurora Theatre “The Price” Wed.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 and 7 p.m., through Oct. 9, at 2081 Addison St. Tickets are $38. 843-4822. www.auroratheatre.org 

Impact Theater “Nicky Goes Goth” at 8 p.m., Thurs.-Sat. at La Val’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid, through Oct. 1. Tickets are $10-$15. 464-4468. www.impacttheatre.com 

Shotgun Players, “Owners” at 8 p.m., Thurs.-Sun. through Oct. 16 at The Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby Ave. Reservations suggested. 841-6500. www.shotgunplayers.org 

Wilde Irish Productions “Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me” Thurs. -Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 3 p.m., at Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave., through Oct. 2. Tickets are $18-$22. 644-9940. www.wildeirish.org 

FILM 

Films from Along the SIlk Road: “Taskir and Zukhra” at 7:30 p.m. and “Tenderness” at 9:20 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Gallery Talk on “Wholly Grace” works by Susan Duhan Felix at 1 p.m. at Bade Museum, 1798 Scenic Ave. Free. 

“Art, Activism and the New Hip Hop Aesthetics” A night of performance and conversation with Adam Mansbach, Aya de Leon, Keith Knight and Craig Watkins at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Oakland Opera “La Belle et la Bete,” Thurs.-Sun. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. through Oct. 2 at the Oakland Metro, 201 Broadway at 2nd. Tickets are $18-$32. 763-1146. www.oaklandopera.org 

Amy Likar, flute, Miles Graber, piano at 8 p.m. at Giorgi Gallery, 2911 Claremont Ave. Cost is $12-$15. 848-1228. giorgigallery.com 

National Ballet of China “Raise the Red Lantern” at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $36-$68. 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

Community Action Series with Fuga at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10-$12. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Hal Stein Quartet at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $7. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Dick Hindman Trio at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $12-$18. 845-5373. www.jazz 

school.com 

Izum, world-beat and jazz-groove, at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

O-Maya at 9:30 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $10. 548-1159.  

Faith Winthrop Trio at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

Sila and the Afrofunk Experience at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $11-13. Benefit for Save the Children Fund in Niger. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

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

Berkeley Old Time Music Convention with Mike Seeger, Kenny Hall and Eric & Suzy Thompson at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $15.50-$16.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

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

Collisionville, Love Like Fire at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $6. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Lights Out, Life-Long Tragedy, Jealous Again, Never Healed at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $7. 525-9926. 

Hurricane Benefit at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $25. 238-9200.  

SATURDAY, SEPT. 17 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Darkroom Drawings” black and white photographs and mixed media by Robert Tomlinson. Reception for the artist at 6 p.m. at Photolab Gallery, 2235 Fifth St. Exhibition runs to Oct. 22. 644-1400.  

THEATER 

California Shakespeare Theater, “Nicholas Nickleby” Parts 1 and 2 Sat. and Sun. at 8 p.m. at Bruns Amphitheater, 100 Gateway Blvd., Orinda. Tickets are $10-$55. 548-9666. www.calshakes.org 

FILM 

Rediscovering British Silent Cinema: “The Triumph of the Rat” at 7 p.m. and “Downhill” at 9 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Charles Mann describes “1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852.  

Jon B. Eisenberg looks at “Using Terri: The Religious Right’s Conspiracy to Take Away Our Rights” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

String Band Contest including a Youth Showcase, and over 20 competing string bands from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Berkeley Farmers’ Market, Civic Center Park. 548-3333.  

Richard Koski, Finnish-American master of two-row accordion, at 3 p.m. at Finnish Kaleva Hall, 1970 Chestnut St. at University. 524-6217. irmatj@aol.com 

National Ballet of China “Raise the Red Lantern” at 2 and 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $36-$68. 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

San Francisco Early Music Society “Lute Concertos of Karl Kohut” at 8 p.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. Tickets are $10-$25. 528-1725. www.sfems.org 

Broceliande “Songs of Autumn and Harvest” at 7:30 p.m. at the Emil Melfi Clubhouse, 555 Pierce St., Albany. Donation $10-$15. 569-0437. 

Jazz Foundation of America Hurricane Benefit at 2 and 5:30 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $10. 845-5373. 

Robin Gregory & Rudy Mwongozi Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $7. 841-JAZZ.  

Art Maxwell Quartet at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

Dynamic, jazz, funk, at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Lunar Heights, The Attik, Illa-Dapted at 10 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $8. 548-1159.  

Dance Naganuma “Voices of the Powerful Child” at 8 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts. Tickets are $12-$15. 925-798-1300. www.juliamorgan.org 

Araucaria, traditional songs and dances from Chile, at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10-$12. 849-2568. www.lapena.org  

Faith Petric, 90th birthday celebration, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Old Time Square Dance with caller Bill Martin and music by the Government Issue Orchestra at 8 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $15. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Megan McLaughlin with cellist Patty Espeth, at 7 p.m. at Spuds Pizza, 3290 Adeline St. Cost is $7. 558-0881. 

7th Direction, AJ Roach, Claire Holley at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $6. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Dr. Know, Naked Aggression, Retching Red, New Earth Creeps at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $6. 525-9926. 

SUNDAY, SEPT. 18 

CHILDREN  

Asheba at Ashkenaz at 3 p.m. Cost is $4-$6. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

EXHIBITIONS 

Matrix 218: Carla Klein “Scape” opens at Berkeley Art Museum, 2626 Bancroft Way. Artist’s talk at 4 p.m. 642-0808. 

“Exquisite Corpse Show” collaboratively made art pieces opens at the North/South Gallery, 5241 College Ave. at Broadway. www.geocities.com/ 

exquisitecorpseshow 

FILM 

“8 1/4” A film by Claire Burch at 2 p.m. at at 5:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Free. 547-7602. 

Dutch Voices: Jos de Putter and Peter Delpeut “The Making of a New Empire” at 5:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

Found Footage Festival at 6 p.m. at The Parkway Theater, 1834 Park Blvd., Oakland. Cost is $6. 814-2400.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

California Poets in the Schools with Linda Elkin, Grace Marie Grafton, Tobey Kaplan, and John Oliver Simon at 7:30 p.m. at Pegasus Books, 2349 Shattuck Ave. 649-1320, pegdowntown@sbcglobal.net 

Poetry Flash with Karen Benke, Kathy Evans and Prartho M. Sereno at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. Donation $2. 845-7852.  

David Zirin reads from “What’s My Name Fool? Sports and Resistance in the United States” at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Hurricane Benefit with Taj Mahal at 8 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $35. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

Chanticleer “Earth Songs” at 7 p.m. at First Congregational Church, 2345 Channing Way. www.chanticleer.org 

National Ballet of China “Raise the Red Lantern” at 3 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $36-$68. 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

Live Oak Concert with Cuban pianist Almaguer Martinez at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley Art Center, 1275 Walnut St. 644-6893. ww.berkeleyartcenter.org 

Broceliande “Songs of Autumn and Harvest” at 4 p.m. at Montclair Presbyterian Church, 5701 Thornhill Drive, Oakland. Donation $10-$15. 339-1131. 

Organ Recital with Jonathan Dimmock, organ and Christine Brandes, soprano at 4 p.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. Tickets are $15. 845-8630. 

Rudolf Buchbinder, piano, at 3 p.m. at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $42, available from 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

Andy M. Stewart & Gerry O’Beirne at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50-$18.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Joan Getz & Ellen Hoffman Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $7. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Kim Nally Quintet with Allen Smith at 4:30 p.m. at the Jazz- 

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

Old Time Cabaret from 2 to 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

MONDAY, SEPT. 19 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Kay Trimberger looks at “The New Single Woman” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

Zigi Lowenberg and Raymond Nat Turner from the jazzpoetry ensemble UpSurge! at 7 p.m. at Barnes and Noble, Jack London Square, Oakland. 527-1141. 

Aurora Script Club, moderated by Paul Heller with guest director Tom Bently, at 7:30 p.m. at Aurora Theater. 843-4822. 

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

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Trovatore, traditional Italian music, at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Doug Wamble at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $6-$12. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

 

?


Autumn Color Comes Early To East Bay Street Trees By RON SULLIVAN Special to the Planet

Tuesday September 13, 2005

The informal consensus among the plant folks I know is that we’re having an unusually early autumn. That might be true; that poor plum tree that hangs over our fence is bald already, and started dropping leaves in early August. It’s been badly stressed though, since it was butchered so ineptly last year, so I’d thought it was an exception. 

But the native-plant cabal’s e-mail correspondents in the Sierra and the foothills said the aspens and maples were turning early, and some local street trees seem to be jumping the gun a bit too. People are tossing assorted theories around—warm wet spring, hot fog-poor summer, bug populations, water table … I’ll stay agnostic for a while, myself. I’m pretty sure that there are lots of reasons.  

The poor street sycamores, the London planes and their kin, are losing leaves fast and unglamorously and I suppose that’s because it’s been such a prosperous year for anthracnose, a leaf fungus they’re susceptible to. They’ve looked gray in the leaf all summer. 

But what goes on in a leaf in autumn is a complicated chemical dance, and it’s ruled mostly by day length. Its intensity, in some places and species, is influenced by sunny or cloudy days, cool nights, the arrival of frost and freezing weather. But the great change itself is kicked off by shorter days, longer nights, a critical point in the amount of light a tree gets. 

We have only a few native deciduous trees here, species like California buckeye (Aesculus californica, which normally starts undressing in late summer) and bigleaf maple (Acer macrophyllum) and the alders and willows that grow along wild creeks. But some of our street trees, the various ashes, mulberries, and especially the sweetgums (Liquidambar styraciflua) have been flashing gorgeous colors at us for the past few weeks. These species are giving us an exotic treat, a précis of what goes on in the deciduous forests back east. When I visited Pennsylvania last in autumn, I realized I’d forgotten how saturated those colors are, how intensely sweet to the eye. 

What’s going on inside those leaves is as amazing as the beauty on the surface. Some of the new colors have been present in the leaves all along: yellow xanthophylls and orange carotenoids. They’ve been overshadowed by the chlorophyll that the tree uses to make food, in a chemical process fueled by sunlight’s energy. Chlorophyll is delicate; it breaks down fast in sunlight, and the leaf is replacing it constantly.  

The waning days signal less usable light, and in many deciduous trees’ homelands, the coming of freezing weather. Among other effects, freezing makes groundwater unavailable to be absorbed by the trees’ roots—an effective seasonal drought. Deciduous leaves typically transport a lot of water out of the tree through their stomata, and get expensive to keep in a drought.  

The tree starts making its abscission layer, a corky band of cells between the leaf’s petiole and the twig. It slows and stops traffic between the leaf and the rest of the tree: as less food (carbohydrates) flows out of the leaf, less mineral and water support flows in. Chlorophyll stops being made, and the sturdier xanthophylls and carotenoids are unmasked.  

Another pigment set, the red and purple anthocyanins, forms in autumn in some trees, made of the sugars left over in the leaf. These show as reds where the leaf’s cell sap is very acidic, purples where it’s closer to neutral. (Anthocyanins are responsible for apples’ red skin, the purple of grapes, and some flower colors too. The result from a reaction between plant sugars and light, which is why an apple is redder on the sunny side.) 

Anthocyanins are a bit more responsive to the tree’s prosperity than other pigments: if it’s been a good summer, with enough water and sun to make lots of sugars, there will be more leftovers to make more red or purple colors.  

Domestic sweetgums are good showcases for all these pigments right now. Their varieties and cultivars show assorted color habits: ‘Burgundy’ is almost purple; ‘Festival’ is gaily multicolored. Some hold their bright leaves all winter in our climate. You can pick up a brilliant boutonniere from the sidewalks anytime from now to March, free and freely given.w


Berkeley This Week

Tuesday September 13, 2005

TUESDAY, SEPT. 13 

Tuesday Tilden Walkers Join a few slowpoke seniors at 9:30 a.m. in the parking lot near the Little Farm for an hour or two walk. 524-9992. 

WriterCoach Connection Training Sessions Tues. Sept. 13 and 20 from noon to 3 p.m. Help students improve their writing and critical thinking skills. To register call 524-2319. www.writercoachconnection.org  

“Hetch Hetchy Valley: Water and California’s Future,” a panel discussion on the feasibility of dismantling the O’Shaughnessy Dam to restore the Hetch Hetchy River Valley, at 5:30 p.m. at Goldman School of Public Policy, Room 150, UC Campus. 642-2666. 

Youth Arts Studio Demonstration Class in visual arts for ages 10-13 at 3:15 p.m. at All Souls Episcopal Church, 2220 Cedar St. Youth Arts Studio is a non-profit after-school program. 848-1755. 

Day Hiking with Your Dog with Thom Gabrukiewicz and dog trainer Jen Worth at 7 p.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. 527-4140. 

“Elections in Crisis” documentary films on voter fraud from noon to 5 p.m. followed by a speaker event at 7 p.m. at Grand Lake Theater, 3200 Grand Ave., Oakland. Tickets are $6 for the afternoon, $10 for the evening. Sponsored by the Wellstone Democratic Renewal Club. 848-6767, ext. 609. 

“Race, Racialization and Colonialism” with Steve Martinot, Tues. at 7 p.m., through Oct. 3, at Unitarian Fellowship, Education Building, 1606 Bonita St. 528-5403. 

Red Cross Blood Drive from 1 to 7 p.m. at Berkeley Community Media, 2239 MLK, Jr. Way. To schedule an appointment call 848-2288, ext. 13. www.BeADonor.com 

Kundalini and Meditation Therapy with Dr. Hari Simran Singh Khalsa at 7 p.m. at Elephant Pharmacy, 1607 Shattuck Ave. at Cedar. 549-9200. 

“Medicare: Understanding Your Drug Coverage” at 4 p.m. at Center for Older Adult Services, 828 San Pablo Ave. To register call 558-7800. 

“Applied Buddhism” a workshop led by Marilee Baccich and Lynette Delgado, Tues. at 12:15 p.m. through Dec. 6 at Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, 1 Lawson Rd., Kensington. Donation $40. To register call 526-8944.  

Berkeley Camera Club meets at 7:30 p.m., at the Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. 548-3991. www.berkeleycameraclub.org 

WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 14 

“Quilters Comfort America” Help make quilts at the quilt-a-thons, Wed. and Thurs. from 10:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. at New Pieces 2, 1605 Solano Ave. New Pieces will provide the tables, chairs, irons and ironing board. Please bring anything else you have that could be of use. All quilts will be hand delivered to Red Cross Volunteers at evacuee shelters in Houston. To reserve a place please call 527-6779. 

“Himalayan Quest” book-signing with Ed Viesturs, the first American to successfully climb all 14 of the world’s highest peaks without supplemental oxygen, at 1 p.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. 527-4140. 

“Lori Berenson: Convicted by an Image” and “La Noche de los Lápices” two films from Latin America at 7:30 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St., Oakland. 393-5685. 

Walking Tour of Old Oakland “New Era/New Politics” highlights African-American leaders who have made their mark on Oakland. Meet at 10 a.m. at the African American Museum and Library at 659 14th St. 238-3234. www.oaklandnet.com/walkingtours 

Youth Arts Studio Demonstration Class in dance for ages 10-13 at 3:15 p.m. at All Souls Episcopal Church, 2220 Cedar St. Youth Arts Studio is a non-profit after-school program. 848-1755. 

Pain Free Movement Learn exercises to rehabilitate joints and muscles at 1 p.m. at Elephant Pharmacy, 1607 Shattuck Ave. at Cedar. 549-9200. 

Eco-Medicine: Greening Primary Health Care A free presentation at 7 p.m. at the Teleosis Institute, 1521B 5th St. 558-7285 www.teleosis.org  

Poetry Writing Workshop led by Alison Seevak at 7 p.m. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave., Albany. 526-3720, ext. 17. 

“The Day I Died” BBC documentary on near-death experiences at 7:30 p.m. at Unity of Berkeley, 2075 Eunice St. 395-5684. 

East Bay Genealogical Society with Barbara Smith, docent at Mountain View Cemetery at 10 a.m. at the Family History Center, 4766 Lincoln Ave. Oakland. 635-6692.  

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.  

“Mindfulness Meditation” a workshop led by Kendra Smith, Wed. at 9:30 a.m. through Nov. 2 at Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, 1 Lawson Rd., Kensington. Donation $30. To register call 527-4816.  

Prose Writer’s Workshop An ongoing group made up of friendly writers who are serious about our craft. At 7 p.m. at BRJCC, 1414 Walnut St. 848-0237. georgeporter@earthlink.net 

THURSDAY, SEPT. 15 

The LeConte Neighborhood Association meets at 7:30 p.m. at the LeConte School cafeteria. Discussion topics will include our request to be represented on a committee to study the Downtown Area Plan, the “flying cottage” status. 843-2602. 

Berkeley Path Wanderers Association, “Berkeley Rocks, Naturally” with Jonathan Chester on the movement to “design with nature,” at 7 p.m. at the Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St. 848-9358.  

“Cuba Today: Achievements, Roadblocks, Failed US Policy” with Lee Zeigler, Stanford Univ., at 7:30 p.m. in the Home Room, International House, 2299 Piedmont Ave. Cost is $5. 642-9460.  

“Cordell Bank National Marine Sanctuary: Research and Resources” with Jennifer Stock on one of the most biologically rich areas of the West Coast at 12:30 p.m. at the Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak Sts. 238-2200. www.museumca.org 

Golden Gate Audubon Society “Why Do Birds Sing and How?” with George Bentley at 7:30 p.m. at Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. 

Berkeley Community Gardening Collaborative Potluck and meeting at 6 p.m. at the Edible Schoolyard Garden, Rose and Grant Sts. 883-9096. 

Communication for Caregivers Ongoing free Berkeley Adult School class meets Thurs. at 1 p.m. at the South Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5170. 

“Alzheimer’s and Other Dementia: Current Treatment” at 4 p.m. at Center for Older Adult Services, 828 San Pablo Ave. To register call 558-7800. 

Puppy Prep, socialization skills, a four week class, at 6:30 p.m. at Rabbitears, 303 Arlington Ave., Kensington. Cost is $100. 525-6155. 

FRIDAY, SEPT. 16 

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon with Andrew E. Barshay, PhD on “Japanese POWs in the Gulag,1945-56” Luncheon at 11:45 a.m. for $13.50, speech at 12:30 p.m., at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant St. 526-2925. 

“Redemption - The Stan ‘Tookie’ Williams Story” a special screening with Barbara Becnel, hosted by the Fr. Bill O’Donnell Social Justice Committee, at 7:30 p.m. at St. Joseph the Worker Church, 1640 Addison St. Donations accepted. 482-1062. 

Berkeley Folk Dancers begins a 13-week course of beginners’ lessons at 7:45 p.m. at Live Oak Park, 1301 Shattuck. Cost for the series is $40. 655-9332. www.berkeleyfolkdancers.org  

Spirit Walking Aqua Chi A gentle water exercise class at 10 a.m. at the Berkeley High Warm Pool. Cost is $3.50 per session. 526-0312. 

Environmental Science Activities for Children from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. at Whole Foods, Telegraph Ave. at Ashby. www.kidsforthebay.org 

Movement: Chi Gung to improve energy and health, at 1 p.m. at Elephant Pharmacy, 1607 Shattuck Ave. 549-9200. 

Scottish Country Dancing Enjoy the traditional social dances of Scotland at a free introductory party at 6:30 p.m. for youth, 8 p.m. for adults at Grace North Church, 2138 Cedar St. 234-8985. 

“The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear” a BBC docmentary at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Unitarian Universalists, 1924 Cedar St. 528-5403. 

“The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity” a workshop led by Mac Lingo, Fridays at 1:30 p.m. through Nov. 4 at Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, 1 Lawson Rd., Kensington. Donation $30. To register call 525-1881.  

Berkeley Chess Club meets Fridays at 8 p.m. at the East Bay Chess Club, 1940 Virginia St. Players at all levels are welcome. 845-1041. 

Women in Black Vigil noon to 1 p.m. at UC Berkeley, Bancroft at Telegraph. 548-6310. 

SATURDAY, SEPT. 17 

California Coastal Cleanup Day in Berkeley, from 9 a.m. to noon. Meet behind the Seabreeze Market. Everyone needs to sign waivers. We give you trash /recycle bags, pencils, tally cards and a map of the areas we need to clean. There are seven sites, most within walking distance. There are also clean-up sites in Emeryville and Albany. 981-6720. www.ci.ber 

keley.ca.us/marina/marinaexp/cleanup.htm For Oakland venues call 238-7611. www.oaklandpw.com/creeks 

Cerrito Creek Coastal Cleanup Meet at at 10 a.m. at the south end of Yosemite St. (two blocks west of San Pablo Ave., south of Central Ave.) in El Cerrito. Bring your own picnic. Sponsored by Friends of Five Creeks. 848-358. www.fivecreeks.org 

Marina Bay Beach Cleanup Meet at 9 a.m. at Shimada Friendship Park in Richmond. Wear old clothes, sturdy shoes and work gloves. Followed by BBQ at noon. 374-3231. 

Discounted Bay-Friendly Car Wash from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Kaady Car Wash, 400 San Pablo Ave., Albany. 452-9261, ext. 130. www.savesfbay.org  

Berkeley Firefighters “Three-Alarm Barbeque” A fund-raiser for Berkeley Rep at 11:30 a.m. at 2015 Addison St. Tickets are $15-$25. Additional cost to see matinee of “Our Town.” 647-2949. www.berkeleyrep.org 

Back to School - Not War A day of workshops on peace and social justice at Laney College, Oakland, from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. with an Anti-War Rally at 6 p.m. Tickets are $20-$40, $10 for students, includes breakfast and lunch. Sponsored by the Green Party of Alameda County. www.BackToSchoolNotWar.org 

String Band Contest and Crafts Fair from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Berkeley Farmers’ Market, Civic Center Park. 548-3333. www.ecologycenter.org 

Celebrate Berkeley’s New Rail Stop at University and 3rd St. from 1 to 4 p.m. with music, food, speeches, tours and the ribbon-cutting. Sponsored by Berkeley Redevelopment Agency. For more information, contact Marti Brown at 981-7418. 

Berkeley Historical Society Walking Tour of the Claremont - Elmwood to discover a variety of early 20th century houses, estates and paths, from 10 a.m. to noon. Cost is $10. 848-0181. www.cityofberkeley.info/histsoc/ 

“Hot Tips: A Fire Safety Program” from 10 a.m. to noon at the Tilden Nature Center. 981-5506. 

Friends of the Albany Library Book Sale from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Most items are priced at just 50 cents and include fiction, mysteries, children’s books, library discards, magazines and records. The sale will be held at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave., Albany. 536-3720, ext. 5. 

California Writers Club Berkeley Branch meets with Joshua Braff, author of “The Unthinkable Thoughts of Jacob Green” at 10 a.m. at Barnes & Noble, Jack London Square, Oakland. 482-0265. www.berkeleywritersclub.org 

Untraining White Liberal Racism introductory workshop from 1to 5 p.m. at the Berkeley High School Library, 1980 Allston Way. Donation $10-$50, no one will be turned away for lack of funds. 

“Salud!” A Celebration of Latino Art, Health and Community from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Women’s Cancer Resource Center, 5741 Telegraph Ave. 420-7900. 

Klezmer and Yiddish Culture Festival at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley Richmond Jewish Community Center, 1414 Walnut St. Tickets are $12-$15. 415-789-7679. 

Peace Corps Cultural Festival Learn about different cultures with Returned Volunteers. Displays, crafts, live performances and games. Bring a picnic. From 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Peacock Meadows, Golden Gate Park, SF. peacecorpsfestival@yahoo.com  

Walking Tour of Historic Oakland Churches and Temples Meet at 10 a.m. at the front of the First Presbyterian Church at 2619 Broadway. Tour lasts 90 minutes. Reservations can be made by calling 238-3234. 

Luna Kids Dance Open House with free parent/child dance class at 11:30 a.m. at Grace North Church, 2138 Cedar St. 644-3629.  

Feng Shui for Home and Office at 10 a.m. at Elephant Pharmacy, 1607 Shattuck Ave. at Cedar. 549-9200. 

“Untold Stories: Baseball and the Multicultural Experience” at 7 p.m. at the Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak Sts. 238-2200. www.museumca.org 

Historical and Botanical Tour of Chapel of the Chimes, a Julia Morgan landmark, at 10 a.m. at 4499 Piedmont Ave. at Pleasant Valley. Reservations required 228-3207.  

“Making a Backyard Wildlife Garden” with Glen Schneider at 10 a.m. at Magic Gardens, 729 Heinz Ave. 644-2351. 

Oakland Outdoor Cinema “The Station Agent” at 8 p.m. on Washington St. between 9th and 10th Sts. Limited seating, bring chairs and blankets. 238-4734. www.filmoakland.com 

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 

SUNDAY, SEPT. 18 

“Feed the Nation” Concert with Jennifer Johns. Support black farmers from the Mandela farmers’ market, at 10 a.m. at Splash Pad Park, Grand Ave. and Lakeshore Blvd., Oakland. 415-454-0174. www.mobetterfood.com 

Klezmer and Yiddish Culture Festival from 9:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. at Berkeley Richmond Jewish Community Center, 1414 Walnut St. Tickets are $18-$20, teens and children free. 415-789-7679. 

Bike Tour of Oakland A leisurely-paced tour covering the history of Oakland. Meet at 10 a.m. at the 10th St. entrance of the Oakland Museum of California. Registration required, 238-3514. 

“Viva Chile!” Views and Voices, a slide show by photographer Thea Bellos at 6 p.m. at La Peña, 3105 Shattuck Ave. 849-2568. 

Omulu Capoeira Annual Children’s Batizado at 2 p.m. at the Malonga Casquelord Center for the Arts, 1428 Alice St., Oakland. Donation $5. 286-7999. www.omulu.org 

Family Exploration: Shadow Puppets at noon at the Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak Sts. 238-2200. 

Sycamore Japanese Church Bazaar from noon to 5 p.m. at 1111 Navellier St., between Schmidt and Moeser Aves., El Cerrito. Japanese food, baked goods, BBQ, handcrafts, door prizes and games for children. 525-0727. 

International Women’s Writing Guild with Jordan Tircuit at 3 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. www.codysbooks.com 

Hands-on Bike Maintenance Learn how to do a bicycle safety inspection at 10 a.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. Bring your bike and tools. 527-4140. 

Shamanic Journeying: Meeting Your Spirit Animal Allies at 1 p.m. at Rabbitears, 303 Arlington Ave., Kensington. Cost is $60. Registration required. 525-6155. 

Alternative Healing, using the Inner Dowsing Method, with Cea T. Hearth, at 2 p.m. at Changemakers, 6536 Telegraph Ave. Cost is $5. 415-282-2287. 

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 

“Odessey: My Spiritual Quest and the Violin” with Donna Lerew at 9:30 a.m. at Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, 1 Lawson Rd., Kensington. 525-0302, ext. 306. 

Kol Hadash Brunch Program Bernie Rosen on “Jewish Viewpoint in Medical Ethics” at 9:30 a.m. at Albany Community Center, 1249 Marin Ave. Donation of $5 requested. programs@kolhadash.org 

“Martin Buber’s A Land of Two Peoples” re-release party at 2 p.m. at Kehilla Community Synagogue, 1300 Grand Ave., Piedmont. 547-2424. 

MONDAY, SEPT. 19 

Berkeley Progressive Alliance meets at 7 p.m. at Unitarian Fellowship, Cedar and Bonita. Choose a work team: City Gov. Watch; Elections-precinct work; Labor Support; Religious Liason; Outreach; or your choice. 540-1975.  

“What’s My Name, Fool?” Sports and Resistance in the United States with author Dave Zirin at 7 p.m. at Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak St. 238-2200. www.museumca.org 

Critical Viewing An ongoing group to examine the art/craft(iness) of short films and television productions and its effects on our daily lives, at 1 p.m. at the BRJCC, 1414 Walnut St. Free. 848-0237. georgeporter@earthlink.net 

Tibetan Qigong for People Living with Parkinson’s Disease at 10 a.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Everyone is welcome. 528-8853. 

Berkeley CopWatch organizational meeting at 8 p.m. at 2022 Blake St. Join us to work on current issues around police misconduct. Volunteers needed. For information call 548-0425. 

CITY MEETINGS 

City Council meets Tues., Sept. 13, at 7 p.m in City Council Chambers. 981-6900. www.ci. 

berkeley.ca.us/citycouncil 

Commission on Early Childhood Education meets Tues. Sept. 13, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Angellique De Cloud, 981-5428.  

Commission on Disability meets Wed., Sept. 14, at 6:30 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Don Brown, 981-6346. TDD: 981-6345.  

Homeless Commission meets Wed., Sept. 14, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Jane Micallef, 981-5426.  

Planning Commission meets Wed., Sept. 14, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Janet Homrighausen, 981-7484.  

Police Review Commission meets Wed., Sept. 14, at the South Berkeley Senior Center. 981-4950.  

Waterfront Commission meets Wed., Sept. 14, at 7 p.m., at 201 University Ave. Cliff Marchetti, 981-6740.  

Transportation Commission meets Thurs., Sept. 15, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Peter Hillier, 981-7000. ›


Opinion

Editorials

Editorial: Starting Now: The Battle for New Orleans By BECKY O'MALLEY

Friday September 16, 2005

Looks like the jackals are already gathering in New Orleans, before the flood waters have been pumped away. The areas which took the worst of the flooding were the homes owned and rented by poor people, who have traditionally lived in the bottom lands of southern American cities, where the residents were subject to malaria, cholera and other hazards of life in swampland. Despite all the evidence that the Katrina disaster was made worse by disregarding environmental axioms about building in marshes, the speculators are clearly looking at the ravaged zones as one big building site, this time controlled by the right people. On the radio Thursday, a New Orleans economic development honcho was interviewed saying that from now on it was going to be a city for middle-class people, and another city employee rhapsodized about how new programs were going to turn all those poor folks middle class. (Tell me again about the rabbits, George….) 

New Orleans, the Big Easy, is not famous for its shopping malls, like Milpitas. It’s not famous for its electronics industry, like San Jose. It’s not even famous for moving money, as San Francisco once was.  

Another optimistic New Orleans economic development official opined that the city could be rebuilt as “Hollywood South,” with movie production and video editing and all that great stuff. But when they do make movies in New Orleans, it’s not because of its studio space. It’s the history, as reflected in its gorgeous people and buildings, that makes New Orleans a prime location for film shoots. And the musicians are part of the scene too. 

One tool which has just been sharpened up by the Supreme Court will be a big help for the speculators. Eminent domain will make it possible for politicians, famous as a class in New Orleans for their adeptness at wheeling and dealing, to decide that little guys, both small-time landlords and homeowners, aren’t rebuilding fast enough, aren’t making the highest and best use of their property. They’ll be able to seize damaged buildings and empty lots and turn them over to anyone who floats a big-time building scheme.  

You think that can’t happen? There’s a guy in Santa Cruz right now whose lot on Pacific Avenue, the main shopping street, is being taken by the city because he didn’t rebuild right out to the street after the Loma Prieta earthquake, despite the fact that his family runs the best restaurant in downtown Santa Cruz on the back part of the property. Never mind, the city of Santa Cruz in all its wisdom thinks that yet another t-shirt boutique would be nice there instead. And in Oakland, we have the family-owned tire business which has been taken for Jerry Brown’s redevelopment dreams.  

Under the headline “Redevelopment as Ethnic Cleansing” the blog “World War Four” reprints a Wall Street Journal article which quotes New Orleans industrialist James Reiss: “The new city must be something very different, Mr. Reiss says, with better services and fewer poor people. ‘Those who want to see this city rebuilt want to see it done in a completely different way: demographically, geographically and politically,’ he says. ‘I’m not just speaking for myself here. The way we’ve been living is not going to happen again, or we’re out.’”  

Exactly where does Mr. Reiss think the poor people are going to go? Eminent domain will establish the fair market value of their now-empty lots as approximately bupkas, not enough even to rent an apartment in the distant suburbs. And what kind of city will remain if all those colorful po’folk leave? Some sort of Dallas East perhaps, relying on the legendary charm of shopping malls, parking garages, and high-rise condos to attract tourists?  

The next Battle of New Orleans might be starting now. There does seem to be a movement developing to put the re-building of New Orleans in the hands of the people who were living there until Katrina came. A key organizer is Community Labor United (CLU), a coalition of the progressive organizations throughout New Orleans, which has set up a People’s Hurricane Fund that will be directed and administered by New Orleanian evacuees. Donations can be made out to:  

 

The People’s Hurricane Fund 

c/o Vanguard Public Foundation 

383 Rhode Island St., #301 

San Francisco, CA 94103 

 

There are also a variety of websites where donations to this organizing effort can be made, including one administered by Ben Cohen’s True Majority fund: https://secure.truemajority.org/03/clu. 

The most cynical view is that the redevelopment machine is already grinding away, devouring everything in its path, and nothing can be done to stop it. Many commentators have noted the presence of the Halliburton Corporation on the scene, salivating. And of course, even on the left it will be tempting to see this as an opportunity to enact all of the schemes for “improving” cities that are always percolating in Washington think tanks. NYU Professor Paul Light, who used to be at the Brookings Institution, said in a radio interview that he thought interest groups and lawmakers, left and right, see hurricane relief as an opportunity to get money to do what they’d been wanting to do anyway, whether the locals want it or not. Chances are that contributing to CLU is the best way to avoid that outcome, but even the progressive organizations need to be watched for a couple of years. 

 

 

B


Editorial: The World Sees America Laid Bare By BECKY O'MALLEY

Tuesday September 13, 2005

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.”  

You don’t have to read the articles inside or see the wrenching photos which accompany them to get the analysis. The cover pretty much sums it up. That’s how our American society looks these days to the rest of the world. BBC coverage painted a similar picture.  

Even conservatives, even the ones quick to condemn the shots of poor people commandeering merchandise (“looting,” if they were poor black people) are able to understand that those women on the magazine cover are not the enemy. Even Republicans agree that such people should not have been left to their fate while better-off residents evacuated themselves in their private vehicles. Everyone concedes that plans should have been made for people without cars, regardless of race.  

But what the events in New Orleans have shown the world most clearly, most graphically, is who America’s urban poor still are: the descendants of African slaves, those who haven’t managed to extricate themselves from their historic underdog status. And America’s vulnerability has been laid bare before the world. Jean Daniel’s editorial in the French magazine sums it up: “Since Sept. 11, 2001, Americans have known that they were not masters of all humanity. Since Aug. 29, 2005, they know that they can’t master their own society.” Daniel compares the huge New Orleans tragedy in the United States with a smaller scale but still wrenching series of fires in France, which claimed the lives of many poor black immigrants. He speculates that a rich state, a super-power, might just be a country where the poor people have gotten even farther behind than they used to be.  

In a much less dramatic way, the statistics coming out of UC Berkeley’s freshman class also reveal that we’re failing to achieve our announced social goals. According to an Associated Press story on Friday, the 4,000-student freshman class this year has just 129 black students. Chancellor Birgeneau is quoted in the story expressing distress at this poor showing, as well he should.  

The Ward Connerly why-can’t-they-pull-themselves-up-by-their-bootstraps-like-I-did school of sophistry is given the lie by the statistics in Jonathan Kozol’s invaluable new book, previously mentioned in this space, The Shame of the Nation (he’ll be in town to talk about it this month). He charts spending in six big mostly-black cities and their mostly-white suburbs. Students in the suburbs get up to twice as much money spent on their education as inner city kids—and then we wonder why there aren’t more outstanding black applicants for prestige colleges like UC Berkeley. The cliché is that people who don’t even have shoes can’t pull themselves up by their bootstraps. 

It’s nice, of course, to know that voluntary immigrants and their children are doing well. The AP story says that about 11 percent of the freshmen class will be Hispanic, about 47 percent Asian-American. But we owe the descendants of our involuntary immigrants, whose ancestors were brought here as slaves and kept as slaves for many generations, more than that. Their kids should be getting the best schools, and instead they’re getting the worst.  

And I don’t want to hear from whiners who will say that their immigrant ancestors came to America too late to be slaveholders. That’s not the point, never has been the point. Some of my own ancestors were slaveholders, others abolitionists, but it doesn’t matter. It has always been in the best interest of this country to give people on the bottom what they need to move up the ladder: that’s what settlement houses for immigrants in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were all about.  

Fragmentary well-meaning attempts have been made to extend a measure of economic justice to the descendants of slaves, but they’ve been too little, too late. The new UC/Bill Gates charter school in Oakland is intended to produce some college applicants in a few years, but the numbers are so small as to be meaningless. What’s really needed is a massive effort, on the scale of the post-World War II Marshall Plan, to build the institutions which serve African-American citizens so that they can take their proper place in American society.  

Some have suggested that restitution payments, like those made to Japanese-Americans who were wrongfully imprisoned during World War II, are the answer. That’s fine, but similar per-person dollar amounts won’t begin to rectify the economic damage done to African-Americans by generations of slavery. Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty was on the right track, but it never really got off the ground. It’s sometimes said that it was a failure, but in fact it was never really tried except in a few isolated programs. And it didn’t make a distinction between poverty caused by the residue of slavery and poverty from other causes. That’s what we have to face squarely as a nation, and soon. Don’t, however, expect the current administration to take the lead. What we have now, as Le Nouvel Observateur succinctly puts it, is the government for the society of everyone-for-himself.