On the day the Water Transit Authority announced it had received a major infusion of federal funds to all but guarantee a new ferry line in Berkeley, the City Council made clear that a terminal at the mouth of Gilman Street was off-limits. 

“Gilman Street is a non-starter for us,” Mayor Tom Bates told WTA head Steve Castlebury at Tuesday’s council meeting. “There’s no room for it there. We’re squeezing in sports fields as it is.” 

By an 8-1 vote, the council recommended that the WTA study only the environmental impacts of a ferry terminal at the edge of the Berkeley Marina.  

A Berkeley-to-San Francisco ferry is being planned to debut in 2010. WTA studies show that the ferry stop would generate about 500 to 700 daily trips. 

Berkeley is first in line among East Bay cities for the new direct ferry service to San Francisco, Castlebury said. Regional Measure 2, passed by voters in 2002, called specifically for a ferry line to connect Berkeley and San Francisco as long as the city or the WTA secured money for a Berkeley Ferry terminal, estimated to cost $10 million. 

On Tuesday, the WTA announced that it will receive $14 million from the recently passed federal transportation bill. With $4 million earmarked for a planned Oakland-South San Francisco Line, Castlebury said the WTA would likely spend the remaining funds to build the Berkeley terminal. 

If the Berkeley terminal somehow falls through, the WTA would then consider terminals in either Albany or Richmond, according to Castlebury. “Right now Berkeley is not in competition with Richmond or Albany for a ferry terminal, it’s in competition with itself.” 

Environmental groups have opposed a Gilman Street terminal because it would require dredging of the bay and threaten a bird habitat. 

Castlebury added that the WTA might still have to do a cursory study of a Gilman Street terminal to satisfy the requirements of Measure 2, but that the agency would honor the council’s wishes. 

“The council’s message was loud and clear and we’ll reflect that,” he said. 

The WTA is preparing an environmental review of alternative terminal sites to begin later this year. 

Councilmember Laurie Capitelli cast the lone dissenting vote, saying that the council didn’t have enough information to write off Gilman as a possible terminal site. 

Even if Berkeley gets a ferry terminal, the WTA could still put a second terminal in either Richmond or Hercules, Castlebury said. A Contra Costa County sales tax has put aside money for a terminal in either city."

East Bay little leaguers could have five new playing fields by 2007, after the State Department of Parks awarded $2 million in grants Tuesday for the Gilman Street Playing Fields in Berkeley. 

“This is a huge deal for us,” said Doug Fielding, chairman of the Association of Sports Field Users. “The grant lets us serve about 90,000 more people a year.” 

Before the state grants came through, the East Bay Regional Park District, which owns the 16.5-acre plot, had $3 million in grants for the project—enough to build two artificial turf soccer fields by next year. 

Fielding said the extra $2 million meant that by spring of 2007 Berkeley could now build out the entire park: the two soccer fields, two grass softball fields and one grass baseball diamond. He added that another million would be needed to build a field house with bathrooms. 

But Roger Miller, Berkeley’s manager for the field project, cautioned that rising construction costs might prevent the city from building all the fields right away. 

“We have to talk to our architect and see what can be built for $5 million,” he said. 

The entire project was originally budgeted at $6 million, but Miller said the estimates have risen as construction costs have surged. “Unfortunately what we’ve seen in the city is that when bids come in they’re way over the estimates,” he said. 

The fields are planned for the area just south of Gilman Street, along Frontage Road. East Bay environmentalists have backed developing fields as part of a compromise that kept playing fields out of the newly formed Eastshore State Park. 

“This is a win-win situation for everybody,” said Norman La Force of the Sierra Club’s East Bay Public Lands Committee. “We’re getting recreation that we need and better habitat protection as well.” 

The Sierra Club is working on a plan with the regional park district to set aside 10 acres further north at the Albany Bulb for owls that burrowed at the Gilman site. 

The proposed fields appeared at risk last year when the park district lost out on a $2.5 million state grant for the project. The $2 million it received this year was part of the state’s final allocation of money for public parks from Proposition 40, passed by voters in 2002. 

“This was the last big train of money for sports fields that’s passing through California,” Fielding said. “If we hadn’t gotten the grants we’d be stuck with two artificial soccer fields beside a nicely graded weed patch for a number of years. 

Fielding expects the five new fields to attract a total of 150,000 users annually. With 21 fields, Berkeley is squeezed for space, said Fielding, whose organization manages the fields. He said new athletic groups must wait at least six months for field space.  

“The shortage of field space doesn’t keep kids from playing, but it limits access, it forces too many kids onto one field, and it keeps us from doing outreach,” he said. 

The prospect of a baseball field at Gilman won’t stop his organization’s drive to put a regulation-sized diamond at Derby Street and Martin Luther King Jr. Way, he added. 

The Berkeley City Council is scheduled to vote next week on approving an environmental report for Gilman project. As the lead agency, Berkeley is managing construction of the fields and will then seek to turn over management to an outside organization, such as Fielding’s group. To help pool grant money, Berkeley entered into a Joint Powers Agreement with Emeryville, Albany, El Cerrito and Richmond. Those cities will also have access to the new fields. 

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Berkeley Unified got bad news and good news under the federal No Child Left Behind Act this week, with Rosa Parks Elementary entering the fifth year of low performance “program improvement” status, and John Muir Elementary winning national “blue ribbon” honors for program excellence. 

Under No Child Left Behind, public schools in the United States receiving Title I funding for disadvantaged students must make federally-mandated “adequate yearly progress” (AYP) goals based on standardized state tests. 

In addition, the State of California uses those same tests to judge public schools on a different standard: the Academic Performance Index (API). 

NCLB guidelines list certain steps that a school must take each year for five years if it remains on the “needs improvement” list. A spokesperson in the Berkeley Unified School District’s administrative offices said that because this is the first year that any schools in the state or the nation are entering the fifth year of such “needs improvement” status, it is still unclear what may happen if Rosa Parks remains on the list. 

“But we don’t expect that to happen,” BUSD Public Information Officer Mark Coplan. “We’re making steady improvement at Rosa Parks, and we expect it to get out of ‘needs improvement’ status at the end of this school year.” 

On the federal AYP standard, Rosa Parks Elementary made progress from the spring of 2004 to the spring of 2005, but not enough to satisfy the federal goals. While details of the 2005 AYP results were not yet available from the California Department of Education, department records showed that the Rosa Parks’ overall school test scores rose 9 points between the spring of 2003 and the spring of 2004, the same growth rate total for all of California’s public schools. But NCLB mandates that schools must meet a certain proficiency rate within each selected racial and socioeconomic group as well as for the overall school. In 2004 Rosa Parks had an 11.7 percent proficiency rate for African-American students in English and an 11.7 percent rate in Math, missing the NCLB standards of 13.6 percent and 16 percent respectively. In that same year, the school also missed meeting the NCLB proficiency criteria for socioeconomically disadvantaged students.  

Rosa Parks met its state-mandated API growth requirement in 2005, jumping almost 40 points from the year before (from 663 to 701). The State Department of Education had given the school a growth target of 7 points. 

According to BUSD Information Officer Coplan, Berkeley Unified has been taking a “series of steps” to bring up the Rosa Parks’ AYP scores ever since the school was placed on the program improvement list. 

“In the first year, NCLB mandates that 10 percent of Title I money going to the school must go directly to staff improvement, and that’s what we did,” he said. “But in addition, the district hired 60 extra tutors above and beyond the number of tutors we normally have in our schools.” 

In addition, Coplan said that the district set up a Parent Resource Center at Rosa Parks, supported in part by Alameda County, to provide tutoring, mental health services, and other services for Rosa Parks parents. 

In the second year on the “needs improvement” list, Coplan said that the district “rotated in a number of stronger teachers to the school, which is what helped cause a 30 point jump in the school’s API score,” and at the end of last year, BUSD moved veteran principal Pat Sadler over to Rosa Parks. 

“The NCLB says that the district must reorganize the ‘needs improvement’ schools in order to bring them up to state and national standards,” Coplan said. “That’s what the district has already done, and we expect that to pay continued dividends in the next year and beyond.” 

Meanwhile, BUSD Superintendent Michele Lawrence sent her congratulations to the staff and administration for John Muir Elementary for being one of 34 California public schools to be honored in the No Child Left Behind Blue Ribbon Honors Program, saying that “they should be very proud of this recognition, that they so richly deserve.” 

To receive the award, schools must meet API growth targets as well as federal AYP requirements. John Muir was one of only four schools selected from Alameda County, and one of only nine schools selected from the Bay Area. 

BUSD Superintendent Lawrence and Board President Nancy Riddle gave credit for the John Muir national award to former Muir principal Nancy D. Waters, who retired at the end of last year for personal reasons. At the time of the school’s nomination by the California Superintendent for Public Instruction last December, Waters called the nomination “way too cool” and said that “we’re flying pretty high around here, right now.”

Despite its name, the San Francisco Foundation showed this week that it has not forgotten the East Bay. Three of the four recipients of the foundation’s annual awards this year at Tuesday’s Herbst Theater ceremonies were either from the East Bay or were recognized for activities undertaken in the East Bay. 

• Former 9th District Congressman Ron Dellums received the Robert C. Kirkwood Award for outstanding community service and inspired leadership. 

• Retired Oakland Unity Council CEO Arabella Martinez received the San Francisco Foundation Award for her work in helping to create the vibrant Fruitvale Transit District in East Oakland.  

• Drummer and ethnomusicologist Kakarya Diouf, founder of the Oakland-based Diamano Coura West African Dance Company, received the Helen Crocker Russell Award, which is annually given to an under-recognized, mature artist making significant and ongoing contributions in the Bay Area. 

• The fourth award, the John R. May Award, went to Marin County-based Insight Prison Project for its rehabilitation work at San Quentin Prison. 

Dellums was honored for his “decades of courage, leadership, and vision in championing peace, justice, diversity, and economic equality, both locally and globally, and for his impact in moving the AIDS pandemic and its solutions to the top of the global agenda,” according to a Foundation spokesperson. 

In his acceptance address that drew a standing ovation from the Herbst Theater audience, Dellums said he was “glad to have been born in the Bay Area because activism is in our genes.” He spent much of his five minute speech on recent events in the gulf coast and Hurricane Katrina. 

“Katrina is a metaphor for what is wrong with America,” Dellums said. “There were 40 million poor people with us in America before the winds of Katrina. There are still 40 million poor people with us in America, afterwards. It would be criminal if the winds of Katrina blew the images of poor people into our living rooms and dining rooms, but then we allowed them to retreat back into the dark recesses of our minds once those winds have receded.” 

The San Francisco Foundation, founded in 1948, is a community foundation serving San Francisco, Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, and San Mateo counties in the areas of community health, arts and culture, neighborhood and community development, social justice, and the environment. In 2004, the foundation awarded grants totaling $64 million. 

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What began as one of the more contentious development/preservation battles in recent Berkeley history ends with both sides reasonably happy this Sunday when the First Presbyterian Church dedicates its new Geneva Hall and refurbished McKinley Hall facilities. 

Dedication services will be held twice during the day, once at 12:30 p.m. and again at 6:30 p.m. to accommodate the 1,800-member church’s morning and evening services, with ceremonies to include prayers, singing, ribbon-cutting, and a reception. First Presbyterian is located at the corner of Dana and Channing Way, and the dedication services, like almost all First Presbyterian functions, will be open to the public. 

The $25 million two-year building project included erecting the three-story Geneva Hall facilities, renovation and conversion of the historic landmark McKinley School building, and construction of a two-story underground parking facility. 

“I think this is a positive project,” said Berkeley Landmarks Commission member and Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association (BAHA) staff member Leslie Emmington Jones. “The church has done something very sophisticated, incorporating the original McKinley building into their plans in a way that knits together something which had only been a fragmentary reminder of the historic Telegraph Avenue area, as well as changing the original design of the new building so that it better interfaces with the historic one.” 

Calling the dedication services “a big deal for us,” First Presbyterian Administrator Julie Sept said that “we could have moved the church somewhere out in the country and got acres and acres of land, but over and over, we’ve affirmed part of our mission as staying in Berkeley. It’s not just about buildings.” 

That sort of mutual admiration could hardly have been predicted in the midst of the initial planning for the project, when church officials contemplated demolishing the old McKinley School and putting up a four- or five-story administration/education building with a design that Mark Gillem, present concept architect and project manager, called “just awful.”  

The church hired Gillem to replaced the original project designer, a move that both sides credit with helping to work out a compromise and move the project forward. Under Gillem, the cost of the project dropped from an estimated $45 million to $25 million. 

BAHA first raised the issue of the demolition of the historic landmark McKinley School building, prompting the City of Berkeley to require an Environmental Impact Report for the project. The church fought the EIR requirement in court and lost, which ultimately led to the compromise that saved the building. Instead of demolishing McKinley, church officials settled on a plan that turned the building 180 degrees, causing it to form part of the church’s inner courtyard plaza rather than facing outward to the street, and utilizing the structure for counseling services and youth rooms. 

During the building procedure, construction crews lifted up the McKinley Building and set it down in a corner of the lot, built an underground parking facility, and then lifted the building up again and set it on top of the parking structure. 

Founded in 1878, First Presbyterian Church is a day older than the City of Berkeley itself. The church considers its ministry to UC Berkeley students as part of its core ministry, and a portion of the new Geneva Hall will include a university student lounge.

A Berkeley organization that sends elementary school children from different income levels into nature together to help them better understand one another was awarded the Agape Foundation’s 2005 Peace Price. 

The prize, awarded to Mosaic, includes a $500 donation and technical consulting. 

“We’re in a situation we’re every penny helps a whole lot,” said Lara Mandel, Mosaic’s executive director. “We hope this help gets the word out about what we’re doing.” 

Since 2001, the Mosaic project has run a one-week course in Napa where three elementary school classes representing students of social and ethnic backgrounds learn to work together. 

The program works with 18 schools, including Malcolm X, Berkwood Hedge and Craigmont in Berkeley. 

Agape is a Bay Area philanthropic organization that offers money to small social justice organizations. It has raised approximately $9.2 million for local groups since starting out 36 years ago. 

Two years ago when Carl Farrington and his four partners bought the three-unit building where they now live, they hoped to one day convert it to condos.  

But Farrington says that a pair of recommendations which came before the City Council Tuesday would keep fees too high for them to convert, leaving them stuck with an undesirable tenancy in common. 

“If one of us loses our job, we could all lose our property,” he said.  

The council, which voted to hold over the issue for a month, is split on converting apartments into condos. 

Several councilmembers wanted conversion fees lowered to give middle-income residents a better opportunity to own homes in Berkeley, while others feared that more condos would mean fewer available rental units and higher rents. 

For years Berkeley’s condo conversion policy was clear: To maintain the supply of rental housing, the city slapped prohibitive fees on owners looking to convert apartment units to condos. Consequently, no units were converted. 

But that changed earlier this year when a state appeals court invalidated a San Francisco law similar to Berkeley’s ban on tenancies in common (TICs) for buildings with more than three units. 

TICs are considered a riskier investment than condominiums because shareholders own the entire building as a single entity rather individual apartments. Finding financing for TICs is more difficult, and since all the owners often cosign a single loan, if one partner goes bankrupt, the others are held liable for payments. 

Fearing that the city would see a surge in TICs, the council last May passed a temporary law making it cheaper to convert them to condos, in hopes that buyers would be willing to pay more for condos instead of buying riskier TICs. 

The law, scheduled to expire Oct. 26, set condo conversion fees at 12.5 percent of the unit’s sale price. (For an average condo, which sells for $440,000, the 12.5 percent fee would equal $55,000—less than half the fee required under the old law.)  

So far, lower fees have failed to yield many condo conversions. The city has received applications to convert 30 units in the five months since the council lowered fees, said Housing Director Steve Barton. 

Now the council, facing dueling recommendations from city boards, must reconsider the law. 

The Rent Board, fearing the loss of affordable rental housing, is urging the council to boost the fee to 15 percent. 

The Housing Advisory Commission has endorsed the 12.5 percent fee, and called for lowering the fee to 5 percent for owners of TICs with three or fewer units and where the owners have resided in the building for more than seven years. 

Farrington and his partners wouldn’t qualify because they’ve lived at their TIC for just two years. He said they bought the TIC relying on the opinion of city officials that condo conversions rules would be relaxed. 

“It doesn’t seem right that people in the hills can sell their homes for $2 million and keep the profit, while people on the bottom rung are the ones being forced to subsidize new affordable units,” he said. 

Councilmember Dona Spring countered that TIC owners should pay a hefty fee because converting to condos, a legally more secure form of home ownership, would dramatically increase the value of their property. She also credited city laws for making TICs affordable to lower-income residents. 

“The irony is that TICs were an affordable option because rent control and high condo conversion fees brought down the value of the properties,” she said. 

Spring, along with Councilmembers Kriss Worthington and Max Anderson, backed a 15 percent fee. 

On the other side of the aisle, councilmembers Gordon Wozniak and Laurie Capitelli suggested a smaller fee.  

“The city does a pretty good job building low-income housing, but we don’t do anything for the workers,” Wozniak said. “The librarians and employees who work downtown, condos could let them move into the ownership market rather than having them move outside of Berkeley.” 

The City Council meets Tuesday Sept. 27. Items on the agenda include: 

• A proposal from city staff for the council to appoint a Downtown Area Plan Advisory Committee to guide city staff in establishing new land use rules for downtown Berkeley in partnership with UC Berkeley.  

In his report to the council, Planning Director Dan Marks presents several public participation programs for council consideration, but advises against having the Planning Commission lead the discussion and against holding public workshops on the plan.  

Many city commissioners have objected to Marks’s proposal to limit participation. Last week members of the Planning Commission and a unanimous Landmarks Preservation Commission demanded that their members and the public be allotted a greater role in the downtown plan formation. The Transportation Commission asked the council to allow it to appoint one of its members to any advisory committee. 

Marks says in his report to the council that the Planning Commission “already has a full plate of other issues.” He recommends against public workshops saying that the format wouldn’t allow for in-depth discussion or consensus building, and says that the committee should be held under 20 people to keep it manageable. Marks also calls for the university to be allowed to send representatives to the committee, and asks that the council allow staff to establish a technical advisory committee composed of public agencies with a stake in downtown, such as BART and AC Transit and perhaps professional planners, architects, and designers. 

• A request from Councilmember Kriss Worthington that Berkeley review its laws regulating newsracks. Several local publications, Worthington wrote in his report to the council, have had their newsracks removed from city streets without notice. 

• A recommendation from the Homeless Commission that the council establish sites where homeless residents can park their cars. The commission also asked the council to waive time limits for homeless people to work off vehicle fines and keep fines from compounding so the homeless would be at less risk for having their cars impounded for unpaid fines.  

• A proposal to make nonprofit tenants of the Veterans Building pay for a portion of building maintenance costs. 

• A request from Councilmembers Linda Maio and Darryl Moore that the city ensure that a fuel pipeline running along the Union Pacific Railroad in West Berkeley is structurally sound enough to withstand an earthquake. 

• An appeal of a use permit granted by the zoning board to demolish a live/work unit and add a fourth floor with two apartment units at 2750 Adeline St. 

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Five years ago Theresa Johnson of South Berkeley headed off to work at Federal Express, a healthy 30-year-old woman with two jobs and a fiancee. 

A drunk driver, speeding 80 mph. on the wrong side of the Market Street plowed his Camaro into her 1996 Mazda 626. The crash left Johnson with a crushed pelvis and punctured lungs. Four surgeries later, Johnson, now separated from her fiancee, can walk short distances with the help of a cane, but doesn’t expect to be able to work again. 

“I’m still in a lot of pain,” she said. “I can’t stand for very long. It’s hard for me right now.” 

Earlier this year, Alameda County Superior Court Judge William McKinstry awarded Johnson $53 million in damages, one of the largest awards recorded for a drunk driving case and one of the 50 largest awards recorded this year. 

Last week, the case was designated a “Case of Note” by VerdictSearch—a legal resource that list major verdicts. 

“The court delivered a forceful message—drunk drivers will be held responsible for the destruction they cause,” said Robert Cheasty, the Albany lawyer who represented Johnson. 

Mothers Against Drunk Driving State Executive Director Paula Birdsong said, “This verdict should be a wake up call to those who drink and drive.” 

But so far Johnson hasn’t seen any of the settlement. 

“It’s not money that I’ll ever see,” said Johnson, who lives on disability checks. “I’m in a worse financial situation now than before the crash.” 

Cheasty said the driver, Tyrone Hazel, didn’t have insurance for his car making it difficult to collect. Hazel, who is unemployed, is out of jail after serving less than a year on a work furlough program, Cheasty said. 

Hazel has appealed the ruling, said Cheasty, who is representing Johnson before the appeals court. 

“My goal is to try to get her something from the settlement,” he said. 

Johnson said she hoped the verdict would be a warning to other drunk drivers and added she was more focused on overcoming her injuries than collecting the award. 

“I keep telling myself, I still have my life,” she said. “It might never be the same again, but I have that.”›

An article in the Sept. 20-22 issue about Jonathan Kozol mistakenly reported that a reception would precede his appearance at Martin Luther King Middle School tonight (Friday) at 7:30 p.m. There will be no reception. 

Police are have made no arrests in a suspected arson early Saturday that badly damaged the Tilden Park Golf Course offices. 

“There are no suspects at this time,” said East Bay Regional Park Police Sgt. Dale Davidson. “We’re treating this as an arson and the investigation remains open.” 

Park District police and firefighters responded to a fire alarm at the clubhouse at about 2 a.m. Saturday, Davidson said. Firefighters had the blaze contained by 4:30 a.m. Davidson said the clubhouse office annex and roof sustained significant damage, but other sections of the building went unscathed. 

No firefighters were hurt putting out the flames. The golf course remained open Saturday. 

—Matthew Artz 

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EDITOR’S NOTE: The avian flu virus, H5N1, has the potential to kill millions once it learns how to jump from human to human. So far, most people who become infected have worked with live chickens. But scientists say it’s a matter of time before avian flu makes the leap. The virus most recently surfaced in Indonesia, where four people have died. Pacific News Service and New California Media editor Andrew Lam spoke with Dr. David Relman, professor of medicine and of microbiology and immunology at Stanford University. Lam is author of Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora, forthcoming in October from Heyday Books. NCM is an association of over 700 print, broadcast and online ethnic media organizations founded by PNS and members of ethnic news media.  

NCM: Should we ask if avian flu will jump from animal-to-human transmission to human-to-human transmission—or is it a question of when?  

DR: It probably is a question of when, not if. This virus is progressing right down the path you would predict for a virus that will eventually become quite good at human-to-human transmission.  

NCM: Is there a timeline?  

DR: That’s the hard thing. Some people say it could be as early as this winter. Those of a more optimistic sort say maybe two years, or five. I think the really important question is, when it acquires that capability (human-to-human transmission), what will it cost the virus? Most people think it won’t be as virulent.  

NCM: Since the number of people who have died so far is small, can we really speculate about the number of fatalities avian flu could cause?  

DR: Right now, of the known cases of avian flu in humans, it has killed about 50 percent. The big question is, are there others out there walking the streets, sitting in their homes, eating dinner and talking to their family members who have become infected and didn’t even become sick? I don’t think there are many. There are some surveys out there of blood from people who are healthy to see if they have evidence of exposure to this virus, and there haven’t been many episodes or incidences of that. But it’s still possible.  

NCM: How will it be transmitted among humans? I imagine if it is airborne, like SARS, it is going to be very contagious.  

DR: Correct. It almost certainly will behave just like all the influenza viruses before it, meaning that it will be aerosol-transmitted. In fact, the current human-to-human flu viruses that we all experience each winter are more transmissible than SARS. They actually become transmitted easily through fine-particle aerosols, person to person. SARS required large droplets or even direct contact.  

NCM: I was traveling in Asia near the beginning and at the end of the SARS epidemic, and the attitude regarding SARS, especially in big cities, was one of sheer panic. Yet with avian flu the attitude is 180 degrees different. In Hanoi friends said to me, “Oh, it’s just farmers who get it, so just don’t eat chicken now and you’ll be OK.”  

DR: It probably reflects something about human nature. At the time you’re talking about, during the height of the SARS event, there were a lot of people who were sick. There were hospitals that were shut down. There was already a fairly substantial impact on the health care system in a few major world cities.  

We’re not there yet with avian flu. I think the inevitable course will be that this virus will become better at human-to-human transmission, and when it does that, SARS unfortunately may look like quite a small little blip.  

NCM: What about the new vaccine being developed against avian flu?  

DR: The vaccine does appear to induce what should be protective immunity in humans. That’s the good news. The bad news is that even with the prototype vaccine in hand, we still don’t have the production infrastructure to make enough doses quickly. If every vaccine producing factory in the world were devoted solely to the purpose of making this new influenza vaccine, at current levels of production we would only have enough for maybe 50 to 100 million doses worldwide, for a whole population that needs 10 times more doses.  

NCM: Why do you think the last few diseases of concern—SARS, avian flu and now swine flu—all seem to originate from one particular area, either Southeast Asia or South China?  

DR: For reasons that are still unclear, influenza, even yearly, seems to evolve out of the bird population of Southeast Asia. Nobody knows why. SARS seems to also have found a natural home in animal populations of China, and then moved into humans when those animals were moved about. But every continent has its sites for the origin of a new emerging infection.  

NCM: But are there common conditions that promote the development and spread of such viruses?  

DR: Where you see emerging infections around the globe, you see dislocations of animals, you see disease in animals because of crowding, you see displacements of humans, crowding of humans, poor sanitary conditions, poor hygiene, war, famine—anything that perturbs what might have previously been a fine-tuned balance in nature.  

NCM: Has our changing relationship with animals encouraged the rise of new diseases?  

DR: There have been major changes in the way we manage animal populations. One of the most important in the more developed world is the rise of very large-scale, industrial scale livestock management, farming that involves populations of hundreds of thousands of millions of animals all packed together. It’s easy to see where an infectious agent might have lived and died within a small population of animals, but now has the opportunity to move within millions very easily.  

We also move animals about the globe in ways that we never ever did ten, 20 years ago. Look at monkey pox, which showed up in the United States two years ago. How did it get here? We are importing millions of exotic strains and species of animals that have no place being in North America, due to Americans’ desires for exotic and unusual pets.  

NCM: So basically the rise of new diseases, or a lot of them anyway, are the direct cause of our human behavior?  

DR: Correct. We are at fault in many ways.  

NCM: But with technology we are also quicker in defining and isolating the cause of diseases.  

DR: Yes, you have to hope that on the one hand, while we’re the cause of many of our own problems, we are also the potential solution.  

T

HOUSTON (Sept. 13)—Outside the Houston Astrodome earlier this week, dozens of tents for State Farm Insurance, the Bank of America, Chase, Veteran’s Aid, and many more seemed to promise a quick return to something like shopping-mall normalcy. It was easy to sign up for a credit card. An ATM city had sprung up, so you could slide your new card in and get cash right away, and pay the bill later. 

At press briefings organized by local officials, the story was upbeat, a shining example of government, business, and charity coming together to do good. Thousands of evacuees were being processed, more than 500 children were been reunited with their families, and life went on. 

But behind the doors of the Astrodome, survival and frustration were the order of the d ay. Jamel Bell, who fled his flooded Ninth Ward in New Orleans, found no salvation here. “Inside it feels like prison,” he said. At curfew, he says, the evacuees were locked in. 

News teams from independent sources, such as our own, were continuously harassed by local officials and police. Reporters from KPFT, the Pacifica station in Houston, tossed their press badges for Red Cross volunteer badges in order to do their work. 

In Baton Rouge, hip-hop journalist and WBAI reporter Rosa Clemente was arrested and briefly detained after National Guardsmen attempted to confiscate her recording equipment. 

Despite news reports that evacuees were being moved through the system and out of the center efficiently and quickly, there were up to 35,000 evacuees daily in the building. Cots of weary people stretched across the floor. Celebrities, followed by television cameras, filed in and out. The food was terrible, the meat in the sandwiches sometimes served still frozen. Surveillance was heavy, and the tensions on the floor remained thick. 

Many evacuees tried to forget the brutal images of their evacuation: skin sores on a man wading through toxic waters, a chaotic stampede of evacuees on a bridge towards a line of buses, the traumatic separation of families at evacu ation checkpoints. An unnamed woman survivor told KPFT radio host Robert Muhammad that National Guardsmen had raped her friend and left her in the swamp. Amidst apocalyptic scenes that seemed biblical, Dionne Wright, a custodian in her mid-30s, tried to c alm her daughter. “This is not the end,” she said. “This is not the end.” 

Raver Price, a 19-year old woman from the largely black and poor Ninth Ward, felt she heard rumblings before the levee break, and wondered if they were the sounds of man-made dynam ite. When she and her hungry friends took food from a flooded store, she encountered a Guardsman who sneered at her, “I can’t wait to kill you bitches.” 

Among the displaced New Orleans youths in the Astrodome, some neighborhood rivalries did not go out w ith the tide, and fights sometimes broke out between different crews. Many evacuees said that when they went to sleep, they kept one eye on their belongings.  

Before dawn, often as early as 5:30 a.m., lines for basic services, including those to find hou sing or obtain the much-desired $2,000 relief check from FEMA and the $235 relief check from the Red Cross, began forming, and processing continued until 8 p.m.  

Many were mystified by FEMA rules. Households are only allowed to report one address for the one-time check to be sent to. But for families still in the midst of being reunited, or on the verge of being sent to another evacuation center or even another city, the logic seemed bizarre. 

Yet some families left without anything. Immigrants, includin g many of the estimated 30,000 displaced Vietnamese Americans here in Houston, were being turned away. Even legal residents learned that their green cards are not enough to qualify them for disaster aid. These realizations invariably came after hours of w aiting. FEMA and the Red Cross had no translators on hand. 

Au Huynh came down from Philadelphia to help in the relief efforts. “I was a refugee, I came here in 1989,” she said. “I don’t think there is a political mark on being a refugee. (Being a refugee means) being displaced because of political reasons or environmental reason. It’s important to recognize the rights of refugees, it shouldn’t be based on being a citizen in terms of getting relief.” 

Huynh had called the Red Cross to volunteer as a trans lator, but they said they had no need for her. So, through the Internet, she found a small Houston group called Save The Boat People SOS that was setting up relief efforts. The organization is one of the Asian American community organizations working with a network of Buddhist temples in Houston on an extraordinary parallel relief effort. 

With most Asian American evacuees being routed away from the Astrodome, volunteers took them in at the Hong Kong City Mall. In the parking lot, there are piles of donat ed clothing. At a card table, volunteers work on their own personal laptops and cellphones to find shelter, make urgent medical referrals, and reunite families.  

Some 50,000 Vietnamese worked the Louisiana coast as fisherman and in New Orleans in the service and manufacturing sectors, alongside a large community of Filipino American shrimpers, the oldest Filipino community in North America. So the volunteers at the Hong Kong City Mall expect many more evacuees. 

But these efforts are short-term. Houston officials have been pushing to move all the evacuees out of the Astrodome and the Reliant Center by Saturday into the Reliant Arena. They say that they might not be able to complete the efforts until next week. 

Meanwhile, the evacuees wonder and worry about their future. Many want to return, and most believe they will be able to do so in a week or two. But while New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin has allowed the homeowners and business owners of the Garden District and the French Quarter to return this week, there are still no dates set for poor, largely African American neighborhoods like the Ninth Ward to reopen. 

Evacuees are being shipped off all over the country, San Francisco, Michigan, and New York, with no return ticket. As pundits and planners acros s the country have begun to call for neighborhoods like the Ninth Ward to be bulldozed and permanently abandoned, many evacuees have begun to ask if there is an agenda afoot to eliminate the city’s poor and people of color. Organizers from the New Orleans organization Community Labor United have begun calling for “evacuees from our community to actively participate in the rebuilding of New Orleans.” 

In the Astrodome, Dolores Johnson has another cold sandwich and shakes her head. She asks, “We are able-bodied. Why can’t we be involved in the process to rebuild our homes?” 

Third World Majority and Hard Knock Radio reporters Thenmozhi Soundararajan and Anita Johnson contributed to this article. t

When former Oakland resident, now Haiti-based filmmaker Kevin Pina and Haitian journalist Jean Ristil Jean-Baptiste were arrested Sept. 9 in Port-au-Prince while covering a police search of the home of a political prisoner/possible presidential candidate, the wheels of justice ground forward.  

That’s rare in Haiti these days. 

Freeing Pina and Ristil took action from Rep. Barbara Lee, e-mails from across the U.S. to Haiti’s justice minister, condemnation from a non-neutral Port-au-Prince press corps and pressure from U.S. Embassy officials.  

Victims of Haitian police and U.N. military violence do not have access to such clout; neither do the some 1,000 political prisoners incarcerated mostly without charges and the kids stuffed into the children’s jail.  

Pina, whose frequent reports on Haiti can be heard on KPFA’s Flashpoints, got a tip Sept. 9 that police were searching the home of Fr. Gérard Jean-Juste; Associated Press stringer Ristil also got the tip; both were at the St. Claire Church rectory to report on the search. Pina went inside.  

The police search of the priest’s living quarters was a particularly newsworthy event. Jean-Juste had been jailed since July 21 without charges, incarcerated after interim government officials accused him of murder. Around the time of the search, Lavalas leaders—Lavalas is the political party of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, forced out of Haiti’s presidency by U.S. officials Feb. 29, 2004—were calling on the jailed cleric to accept the party’s nomination for president. (As it turned out, the Haitian government squelched the candidacy, saying Jean-Juste had to be present at the election office to submit his name.)  

As Pina tells it, the judge overseeing the search told police to confiscate the journalist’s camera. Pina held onto the camera and the judge ordered his arrest on suspicion of “disrespecting a magistrate.” Ristil alerted Pina’s friends of the arrest via cell phone, then was also taken into custody.  

Along with other journalists, a Bay Area human rights delegation and Pina’s friends, I got to the jail Friday night a couple of hours after the arrest. Pina wore the detention, which he said was unjust, as a badge of honor, even crooning “Nobody Knows the Trouble I See” and vociferously criticizing guards for their lack of nametags.  

Ristil was more shaken by the incarceration. “I was doing my job,” he said through tears.  

The journalists were kept through the weekend, though after a visit from U.S. embassy folks, were moved to a “V.I.P.” cell, which had beds, color T.V., and access to a cell phone. They shared the cell with police officers accused of murder.  

Monday, the judge, who showed up at 1 p.m. for the 11 a.m. hearing, spent the afternoon arguing against the release, but finally assented. Pina and Ristil were represented by Mario Joseph, attorney for many of the country’s high-profile political prisoners; Guy Delva, a Reuters reporter who heads the Haitian Journalist Association and Alfred de Montesquiou, representing the Associated Press, which employs Ristil, attended the hearing to defend press freedom. Other press and the public were excluded.  

The pair walked free around 5:30 p.m. Justice had been slow, unfair jail time had been served, but in the end, justice won the day.  

That was the first and last time I saw signs of justice during my two-week stay in Haiti.  

Drive around Port-au-Prince and injustice jolts you like a Caribbean lightning storm. Masked police with guns appear from time to time along heavily trafficked corridors, peering into cars—looking for whom? Tanks carrying rifle-ready U.N. soldiers rumble through the narrow streets as if to claim them as their own.  

The streets of Bel Air, a shantytown whose avenues once bustled with vendors selling anything they could to eke out their hard-scrabble lives, now echo an eerie quiet, save for the lumbering U.N. tanks. “People are moving out of Bel Air,” one man told me, pointing to a neighbor’s vacant home. “And the market women have gone to Petionville,” a well-heeled suburb above Port-au-Prince.  

You can’t blame them—who would want to live and work under foreign occupation? But most people in Bel Air have nowhere to go.  

One afternoon I was in Bel Air with radio journalist Hervé Aubin of Radio Indigène and two Bay Area human rights workers, Ben Terrall of San Francisco and Sr. Stella Goodpasture of Oakland. A group of young men, seeing us speak with a neighborhood leader, called us over and asked for help. U.N. troops had opened fire during a demonstration earlier that day. No one was reported killed or wounded, but six of their friends had been arrested.  

The demonstration was called to support Fr. Jean-Juste’s candidacy for president. Demonstrators from Bel Air planned to meet up with demonstrators from Cité Soleil, the capital’s largest shantytown. They would march together to the elections office, where the candidature papers would be submitted.  

But in a show of force that angered the protesters, the U.N. with its guns and tanks prevented the separate demonstrations from merging. “I have only 150 soldiers with me,” Capt. Leonidas Carneiro, who commands the Brazilian troops in Bel Air, would say later. “One hundred fifty is not enough.”  

The young men feared the worst for their arrested friends, as detainees are often beaten and sometimes found in the morgue. Apparently the men thought we, as foreigners and press, might be able to prevent such an eventuality.  

Over at the Fort National lock-up, we were not permitted to see the prisoners, but we did have an opportunity to chat with Capt. Carneiro.  

We explained the fears of the detainees’ friends. “You know that the police beat and even kill prisoners, don’t you?” I asked. “Yes,” he answered, affirming press reports and interviews. The captain underscored, however, that police under his command are well-trained and law-abiding. U.N. Security Council’s Resolution 1608 of June 22 placed the Haitian National Police under U.N. control.  

Carneiro said his officers opened fire only after a demonstrator was sighted with a pistol and his soldiers were pelted with stones. They arrested “the guys with stones in their hands,” Carneiro said, and also the young person thought to have had the pistol whom they found hiding under a bed.  

The next day Bel Air residents reported seven new arrests there, and said five of the six arrested the day before at the demonstration had been freed. The one who continued to be detained, a 15-year-old, was sent to the children’s prison. If his case is treated like that of other children I saw in that jail, he is likely remain there a long time.  

The children’s jail, which I had visited a few days earlier with Sr. Stella Goodpasture, is located just behind the holding cell where Pina and Ristil were incarcerated. It is probably the saddest place I’ve ever seen.  

Four small cells sit in a row, each about 8 by 10 feet, just big enough to fit three bunk beds in a U-shape. The cells are dark, with light penetrating only through the barred cell door. There are 16 boys crowded in each cell; at least three of the 64 children are as young as 10.  

I spoke to each of the boys in the first cell. One 16-year-old had been in jail since July 5, 2004, picked up in a police “operation.” This is what they call a police sweep of the poor pro-Aristide areas. Like 80 percent of those I spoke to, he said he had never been brought before a judge to be arraigned, as the Haitian constitution requires.  

Another boy, 17, had been incarcerated since July 21, 2004, accused of being a “bandit.” He had not seen a judge. Another 17-year-old has been in jail since Sept. 24, 2004. He had been in a fight during which he injured someone with a rock. “The only one to help me to be released is God,” he said.  

A 15-year-old from Bel Air, was picked up May 29, 2004 for smoking marijuana; A 14-year-old had been incarcerated since May 12, 2004, accused of gang affiliation. Another 14-year-old, incarcerated since Dec. 5, 2004, was picked up in a police sweep.  

One guard told me many were incarcerated for “preventive detention.” Several of the boys who had hearings said the judge asked for large sums of money for their freedom—as much as $5,000. None complained of poor treatment—the guards walked out of earshot during the interviews—but several said police had beaten them at the time of arrest. They get no medical attention, although the Red Cross has been there to see them. They get out of their cells for a shower every day and have a couple of hours “recreation” in a small yard—they can use a toilet when they shower or recreate and have a common bucket they use at other times. None have legal representation.  

If there’s a lesson in all this, it may be that justice in Haiti under this unelected government is distributed in proportion to the pressure of eyes and e-mails. Were it not so, the kids in the children’s jail, Jean-Juste and the 1,000 other political prisoners, the Lavalas adherents in hiding within and outside the country, would be as free as Pina and Ristil, who, it should be noted, watch their backs at all times. 

Injury to Insult 

Upon witnessing five young men shove his motorcycle to the ground near the intersection of Adeline Street and Ashby Avenue Wednesday night, the 43-year-old motorcycle owner chased after them, Officer Joe Okies said. 

During the chase, one of the young men whipped out a motorcycle chain and struck the motorcycle owner with it. Another young man kicked a bystander, Okies said. 

No one was seriously injured and the four culprits remain at large. 

Starbucks Strife 

Two high school-aged boys started fighting outside the Starbucks at 2128 Oxford St. just before 11 a.m. Monday. Police arrived on the scene, but neither boy wished to press charges. 

Hands Off 

Police were called to a neighborhood squabble on the 1600 block of Russell Street Monday afternoon after one neighbor grabbed the other’s hand during an argument. No arrests were made.›

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

CITY-UC AGREEMENT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I appreciated Zelda Bronstein’s clear analysis (Daily Planet, September 13-16) of Councilmember Linda Maio’s puffpiece (Daily Cal, Sept. 6) about Berkeley’s City/University LRDP Litigation Settlement Agreement, known colloquially as the “Bates/Birgeneau Deal.” 

Bronstein incorporated several choice quotes from the settlement, which was approved by a majority of the Berkeley City Council through a process steeped in duplicity and subterfuge. One of the quotes bears repeating.  

The new joint plan between the university and the “city” completely excludes people who merely inhabit and pay for the city, rather than rule over it. Regarding development within the “downtown area”, which they define to include many residential parts of Haste Street, Berkeley Way, Fulton Street and others, the agreement states: “Whereas, the City and University agree this vision and plan shall be comprehensive, and shall encompass the entire scope of future downtown development, including all private and public sector landowners and developers”(Section I.L). 

This stunning agreement, a gift to the 800-pound gorilla in our midst (which is hardly in need of a larger piece of the town), was approved by Councilmembers Linda Maio, Max Anderson, Laurie Capitelli, Darryl Moore, Gordon Wozniak and our fearless leader, Tom “Building Boom” Bates. I thought they were elected to look after our welfare. 

Gale Garcia 

• 

PEOPLE’S PARK RANT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Your editor once wondered why people assume the Daily Planet has a target audience that scared away a potential advertiser. 

Well, Ms. Denney is one reason why that assumption exists. She typifies the anti-business, whining and bitching supposedly peacenik type. And yet, she isn’t for peace at all and is very willing to resort to violence to impose her views on others. 

I cannot believe you published her letter to the chancellor with not one but two threats against the man. “It’s a good way to avoid riots” is just another way of threatening to create a riot if Denney and her other whining friends don’t get their ways. 

You know, they say the trade embargo against Cuba will finally end when the old anti-Castro crowd dies off in South Florida because the young Cuban-Americans are obsessed with getting rid of Fidel. Well, I hope Carol and her bunch realize that once she finally dies (and frees us of her rants) that People’s Park will not live on but will be a parking lot or a dorm or something more useful than a place where drugs are sold and bums hang out and students are afraid to go. Sooner or later, Carol, People’s Park will be gone and no riots will occur. And you will just be some wacko terrorist that people laugh about when your name is mentioned. 

But in the meantime, Daily Planet—maybe you could refrain from printing blatant threats of violence. Hate and violence should be part of your target population. 

John Stillman 

• 

“PULLING STRINGS” 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I am writing today because I am so deeply offended by the words of one of the writers of a letter to the editor in your last edition titled “Pulling Strings” that I just cannot sit still. Ms. Leuren Moret, whom I have not had the privilege of meeting, has written one of the most vitriolic, hateful and racist diatribes, the likes of which I hoped to never see in this, the most “progressive” of towns.  

Like all who participate in a democratic society, I appreciate and respect everyone’s right to their opinions. I further understand that elected officials place themselves willingly in a position from which criticism of their actions will come from every conceivable angle. But come on, people! Whatever happened to the concept of civil discourse? I thought that Karl Rove had cornered the market on Willie Horton-style, attack, defame, and demean tactics? 

However much one might agree or disagree with the decisions of our local politicians, what gives anyone the right to viciously attack them on a personal level, let alone a racist one? Yes, I said racist! 

Ms. Moret characterizes Linda Maio as a “poodle”—which in itself is offensive. But she steps way over the line by painting Councilmember Darryl Moore as a “monkey.” There are a few other words in the history of African-American people that can evoke more outrage, pain, and outright disgust than that one, but not many! 

As one of Darryl’s constituents (and one, I might add, that has had occasion to both agree and disagree with his decisions), there is simply no other way to characterize this man than as a gentleman of the highest order. He carries himself with respect, and treats all those he encounters with the same respect. I have witnessed him in too many settings, public and private, to believe otherwise. Regardless, I hope that Ms. Moret takes time to take stock of herself, understand the full implications of what it means to call a black man a “monkey,” and hopefully realize that there has only been one animal-like behavior in this entire process.  

Disagree, yes. Hold accountable, by all means! But please….everyone….can we keep our disagreements on a humane and respectful level? Please? 

David W. Manson, Jr. 

• 

LEGALIZE BRIBERY? 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

“UC looks to donors to help pay executives.” Is the corruption blatant enough?  

“UC officials want to tap private donors to boost the salaries of their highest paid executives who already make more than $350,000 a year.” Excuse me?! (Quotes from the Sept. 20 San Francisco Chronicle.) 

First, If we want UC run in the interest of the students, faculty, staff, host communities and people of California, we do not want them paid by “private salary donations”!  

Second, I am sure we can find capable administrators with the public’s good in mind for much less than $350,000-$400,000-plus a year. Third, when UC President Robert Dynes says, “there are some donors who come to me and say that it is absolutely vital that we find a chancellor who is truly a leader,” one should be immediately suspicious of the way those donors want UC led and their willingness to pay for that control. 

If these donors and corporations were fairly taxed, the university would have plenty and democracy. 

That the current administration could consider this amoral, debatably illegal method to increase the wealth of top officials at a time when the university system has real financial needs, is a sign of deep corruption.  

Maybe we should consider a good cleansing of the administration. Start by democratizing the Regents and finding public university administrators willing to work for reasonable pay and for the public good. 

Cyndi Johnson 

• 

PARKER ON ATTENDANTS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Publication of Susan Parker’s column on Sept. 20 (“High Finance on Dover Street”) does a huge disservice to the hundreds of hard-working personal care attendants in our area. The article gives the impression that all attendants, as a group, spend their money on cigarettes, lottery tickets, hair products and beer. I found her condescension outrageous. 

More than ever, personal care attendants are essential to many of us who are aging and/or have disabilities. Ironically, for such an important position, attendant wages are frequently not enough to live on, and our governor only recently backed off from further decreases. Nonetheless, I and many others in Berkeley have been assisted for many years by a tremendous group of people who work in this capacity. I’m embarrassed to think that any of my personal care attendants might have read Parker’s damning and arrogant article. 

It seems that Ms. Parker and her husband have had considerable difficulty in relationships with attendants over the years. I highly recommend the workshop, “How to Succeed in Attendant Management”, at Herrick Hospital in October. It will be co-directed by Hannah Karpilow, a local treasure of expertise with many years experience in this field. 

Susan O’Hara 

• 

PRESIDENTIAL CRISIS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Those of us in our forties or older may remember two presidents who appeared on live TV to make dramatic announcements. The first was Lyndon B. Johnson who on March 31, 1968 stated, “...I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your President.” The second was Richard M. Nixon, who on Aug. 8, 1974 announced his resignation.  

Neither man went willingly. Nixon stated that leaving office was “abhorrent to every instinct in my body.” But he faced certain impeachment if he did not resign. Johnson presided over a divided nation with tens of millions opposed to the war in Vietnam. Both of them faced a crisis of legitimacy and were no longer able to successfully govern a divided nation. 

Today the U.S. faces a similar crisis. We have a president and a regime that is also having its legitimacy questioned. While many questioned the Bush presidency since the 2000 selection by the Supreme Court, many more question its ability to govern today. The Bush regime has gone from one crisis to another. The two biggest are clearly the war against Iraq and the handling of the manmade disaster of Katrina.  

Today we have a national government that has deliberately eroded civil liberties and openly tortures people. We have an attorney general who has written memos justifying this torture. We will soon have a Supreme Court chief justice who has no problem with incarcerating people indefinitely, with limited access, if any, to the courts. 

We have a president who thinks that god wants him to be president as we move our government closer to a theocracy everyday. This government suppresses science that does not fit its religious, political and economic agenda forcing present and future generations to pay a terrible price. 

This government is moving to deny women here and all over the world the right to birth control and the freedom to control their own bodies by choosing abortion. 

In Iraq and Afghanistan our government has killed so many that it does not even bother to keep track of the numbers. While here at home, in the areas hit by hurricane Katrina, the body count mounts daily. The Bush regime’s actions and inactions have made a natural disaster a much larger manmade disaster and brought untold suffering to millions. 

The world can not wait until the Bush regime is out of office on January 20, 2009. More than three years from now will be too late. We need to create the conditions to remove this regime now. We must drive the Bush regime from power. It can be done. Two presidents were driven from power in the last 40 years. It is time to add a third to the list. 

The future is unwritten. Which one we get is up to us. 

Kenneth J. Theisen 

Oakland 

• 

KATRINA AND ANIMALS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

It has been three whole weeks since the levees broke, but many animals are still awaiting rescue in the hurricane-riddled areas of New Orleans. Much has been shown written about the human tragedies surrounding hurricane Katrina. But little has been written about the forgotten animal victims of the hurricane. Animal rescue organizations like the Humane Society and the ASPCA have already saved thousands of animals, but there still many awaiting rescue, and untold thousands for whom it is too late. 

There are many sad stories; dogs that have been found drowned, still chained up, and animals that are emaciated, combing the streets for food. In the LSU Tulane laboratories, all 8,000 animals experienced the grizzly death of drowning in their own cages or starving. Yet in the media, they only gleaned a brief mention as researchers lamented the years of “lost data.” 

So often in these last few weeks the people refusing to evacuate have been taken to task for not heeding the hurricane warnings, but many of these people were caring pet owners. It is estimated that 65 percent of the American population owns a pet. There are many stories of residents refusing to leave their animals, or even shooting their companion dogs, rather than leaving them at home to die. Pet owners and lab administrators who fled knew the kind of death that might befall their animals—the very kind that they were fleeing. Some were just irresponsible. But many felt they had to make a kind of Sophie’s Choice, choosing to stay with their animals and perish, or leave some or all behind.  

Perhaps the bulk of the blame should lie on the federal and local government policies which prohibit pet owners from bringing pets with them to evacuation centers, and do not allow for animal and human rescue organizations to work in tandem with one another in a disaster. We have to question how we can live in one of the richest nations on earth, and yet not have an efficient plan for evacuating pets before and after disasters. Animal rescue groups were frustrated in their attempts to gain access to New Orleans by FEMA until a full six days after the disaster. For most animals, six days were too many. 

Most people don’t realize that none of the money donated to the large relief groups like the Red Cross and the Salvation Army goes toward animal supplies or animal rescue efforts. The Red Cross “is dedicated to meeting the needs of humans affected by the disaster only,” said Red Cross spokesperson Joyce Perry. They are not authorized to run animal shelters or care for animals. Admittedly, the human needs in the aftermath of this tragedy far exceed the resources of the Red Cross. But a separate donation should be made to large animal rescue organizations to address animal needs as well.  

Perhaps in the future, these two types of organizations should be linked under one relief effort, so there would just be one phone number to call at the bottom of our television screens. Having separate groups which work on separate parts of the equation is not a viable solution. 

Laura Wiley 

Castro Valley 

• 

NATIONAL GUARD 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In response to the letter of Suzanne Joi in your Sept. 20 issue, I would like to venture an answer to her challenge, from my own point of view. I, for one, am getting a bit sick of our “show democracy,” or “democracy for show.”  

Last things in her letter first, the Berkeley City Council is not in the “vanguard” of the movement to “Bring the Troops Home.” Under the leadership of Mayor Bates, they have acted on this only after it became politically advantageous to do so, i.e., after it was already the majority opinion around the country. It had always been the majority opinion here in Berkeley, so they cannot claim that they were merely representing their constituency.  

Moreover, showboating on matters over which they have no control reeks of hypocrisy when they renege again and again on matters over which they do have complete control. Mayor Bates sends out a questionnaire in his newsletter to determine the will of the people, but where was that questionnaire concerning the recent settlement of the LRDP lawsuit? That autocratic settlement will largely determine the future development of Berkeley for the next fifteen years, unless my petition now before the California Supreme Court is granted or another parallel lawsuit is successful. 

It would seem that on relatively small matters that have no major political or economic impact on the ruling class, which seems to be his real constituency, or on very large matters over which he has no control, Mayor Bates is all too ready to make a dramatic show of pro-people democracy-in-action. But on matters over which he has complete control that impact directly the ordinary people in his constituency, he again and again sells out the rights and lives of the people to the well-heeled developers and other exploiters of society. 

Mayor Bates seems to advocate development at all costs. He is the founder of that policy here in Berkeley, who has once and for all established it as public policy. But with unregulated development comes the need for more maintenance and renovation, until the toxic burden from hazardous particulate matter reaches dangerous proportions for every citizen of Berkeley. I have heard that studies in West Berkeley showed that as much as 10 percent of children there now have asthma and that the airborne particulate matter is indeed in the danger zone. I doubt that this is just a coincidence. 

My health took a dramatic turn for the worse about seven years ago, when I was exposed to two successive six-month renovations in my apartment building on Telegraph Avenue. The city failed to protect us from the deliberate inflictions of a landlord intent on a constructive eviction of his tenants under rent control.  

As a direct result of the impairment of my immune system from the toxic burden imposed on me at that time, I developed WPW syndrome, a life-threatening form of tachycardia. Just recently another long-brewing problem has come to the fore—I have been diagnosed with a usually fatal form of cancer. I will soon die on the cross for the sins of those who pretend to care about people, but really do not. I have no doubt that had I not been made sick seven years ago, these genetic proclivities for disease would never have germinated into life-threatening illnesses.  

Even now, I can possibly heal, through the miraculous power of the body and of God, if the City of Berkeley does not kill me by subjecting me to two successive renovations, totaling 18 months, in the building next door. That appeal of the ZAB decision comes before the Council on Oct. 18. That landlord is also trying to cause a constructive eviction of her one remaining tenant under rent control. A mere coincidence? 

So, as I said at the beginning of this letter, I, for one, am getting a bit sick of our “show democracy,” or “democracy for show.” Is this “show democracy” the real fruit of the genuine struggle here in Berkeley? I, for one, think Berkeley can do better. “Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted?” (Matthew 5:13, KJV.) A consistent radicalism through and through is the real heart of Berkeley. I call forth that Spirit of God in each and every one of you. 

Peter J. Mutnick 

• 

POINTLESS PRIMARY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The recently released report of the Carter-Baker Commission on federal election reform devoted 550 words to the problem of the presidential primary schedule, about the length of this editorial. It wastes most of that verbiage expounding on the obvious: things need to change. The commission’s recommendation actually contains only 75 words, so perhaps they just didn’t give this part of the report much thought: they endorsed a system of four regional primaries, the order of which rotates from one cycle to the next. 

Why this particular recommendation? This remains unexplained. You’re supposed to just accept this on faith. Will a rotating regional presidential primary system “allow a wider and more deliberate national debate?” Wider than what? 

When Bill Bradley and John McCain threw in their towels in early March 2000, just under half of the delegates to the Democratic and Republican national conventions had been selected. When the Howard Dean campaign collapsed in late February 2004, less than a quarter of the delegates had been chosen. The other way of looking at it is that more than three-quarters of the nation’s Democrats had absolutely no say in the nomination of John Kerry. That’s democratic? 

The rotating regional plan would permanently disenfranchise three-quarters of the electorate in both parties. Because the winner of the first regional primary would look like The Winner and the others would come off looking like also-rans, every candidate would spend all of his or her time, energy, and money in those first states in a do or die effort. The rest of the country would be completely ignored. Since no resources would remain for any real campaigning after this electoral Armageddon, the states in the remaining three regional primaries would get on the bandwagon with the winner of the first primary. Win one, get three free. Any politician can do that math. 

The lucky first 25 percent would rotate from one four-year cycle to the next. Your particular region would get to cast a meaningful vote once every four cycles, or once every 16 years. You would be privileged to choose your party’s nominee three or four times during your life. That’s enough voting privileges for one lifetime, right? 

The rotating regional presidential primary idea dates back to the early 1970s, when womanizing wonder Bob Packwood (R-OR) introduced a bill for such a plan in the U.S. Senate. The bill had only two cosponsors and it died in committee. Thirty-two similar bills have been floated in Congress over the past 30 years, and they have met the same fate.. Quite simply, this is a plan that can’t survive outside the committee room. 

It’s an idea that goes nowhere... again and again. Think about it. This plan was designed around the same time as the space shuttle. Its saving grace has been that, unlike the shuttle, thank God, it has never been launched. Now they’re seriously talking about reanimating this creaky old idea and launching it... duck and cover! 

According to H. L. Mencken, “For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.” This is one of them. There are much better alternatives out there, but politicians are ignoring them so they can continue riding their tired old hobby horses. That’s much easier than studying new solutions based on solid political science. 

Thomas Gangale 

Petaluma 

• 

LOOK AT PROP 73 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Let’s get past the publicly palatable statements made by the advocates of prop. 73 and take a look at what’s really going on. On the surface it looks simple, parents have a right to know if their teen daughters are having an abortion. That simple position will garner many votes. One must mine the proposition for its deeper meanings. 

Even a shallow dig uncovers wording that can and will certainly be used in further attacks on abortion rights. “Death of an unborn child,” is an inflammatory term, one that will eventually be used as an argument against all abortions. That should be a red flag to look even deeper. 

Picture yourself a 14-year-old girl. You’ve given in to temptation and seduction and have had sex with your boyfriend. Statistically, he is somewhat older and more sophisticated. Now you find yourself pregnant, and the loving boyfriend has, like a ghost, faded away. Adolescence, without complications, is difficult enough to get through, given all the biological changes and mixed messages. But, now you are pregnant and face the hurtle of telling your parents. As a typical teen, your relationship with your parents has gone from warm to confrontational, and they seem totally intolerant of your new needs for independence.  

Now picture yourself a person who has invested time and energy into promoting prop. 73.  

You are religious, not in the “God is love” mode, but rather the “wrathful God mode.” Your religion dictates that the truth has been given and is immutable, and those who deviate must be made to see the error of their ways. There is no OK, alternate way to take this world. 

Your religion closely ties sex and sin, and premarital sex is one of the biggest sins of all. You feel besieged on all sides by heathens and humanists, and you are sure that Satan has launched an all out campaign against God’s people. Teen sex is a sign of the degenerate times, and you are compelled to put an end to it. It doesn’t occur to you that teen motherhood can spell the end of education and perhaps a life of poverty and even crime. 

Now picture yourself a casual observer. The media promotes sex continually. Media stars are exalted for their sexual charm. In most families both parents work, and kids must fend for themselves for much of the day. The stigma of teen sex circa 1950 is a thing of the past. Kids tend to, by way of being immature, make really foolish decisions. Pregnant teens seldom complete their educational goals, so they are limited in their ability to provide for themselves and their children. Even the government promotes abstinence, without educating kids about condoms.  

Now picture yourself a voter, which you likely are. If you don’t look deeply into any issue, you run the risk of voting on the basis of a sound bite or a slogan on a bumper sticker. There are issues of basic human freedom and personal autonomy riding on this issue. You must forget the notion that the law has said you are not an adult until you are 18. If you are old enough to get pregnant, you are old enough for that event to shape the rest of your life. 

Meade Fischer 

Watsonville 

• 

LIQUOR STORES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

For the second time in as many months the Berkeley Daily Planet has gotten a story wrong, your article on Sept. 20, “Liquor Store’s Demise Spurs Neighborhood Hopes,” never seems to get the whole picture just like another article in august about South Berkeley liquor stores. I recommend that your reporters get more then one source for there story. My name is Hazim Elbgal and my father owned the business at grove liquors from 1993 tell August 2005 and in that time we have built a reputation as a good family operated liquor store. Your article mentions that there was drug dealing in front of our establishment which is incorrect. I have spoken to many Berkeley police officers who will tell you that Grove Liquors was a model for all Berkeley liquors stores, we have never had any major issues with the city, our neighbors and customers loved us and continue to do so. Although the damage has already been done by this story all we ask is for Mr. Mathew Artz to please have the common decency to at least try to get our side of the story before publishing a story like this. In closing we wanted to say thank you to all our customers for 12 wonderful years at Grove Liquors we wish you all the luck in the world and god bless you. 

Hazim Elbgal 

• 

LAND USE DEMOCRACY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I notice that any and all proposed courses of action in regard to land use or neighborhood development are uniformly controversial in our city, except one. Everybody justifies everything on grounds of making an environment “vibrant.” How has vibrancy escaped the meatgrinder of Berkeley’s participatory democracy? Where are the enemies of vibrancy, and why don’t we hear from them? Is the Planet fronting a vibrancist conspiracy? Are we as a community headed for a dull conformity of universal vibrancy? As a bona-fide senior citizen, AARP member and crotchety old man, I look upon vibrancy with a jaundiced eye - I’m not sure that too much of it is quite the thing. 

David Coolidge 

• 

TRAFFIC CIRCLES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

It’s hardly of major importance in the hierarchy of things to be concerned about these days, but I want to weigh in with the increasing number of Berkeley residents (most recently Nicola M. Bourne) asking, Why Traffic Circles? 

I’m a minority-viewpoint resident in the LeConte neighborhood (which is so enamored of these devices that the runic ‘this way around the circle’ sign has become a logo on our neighborhood association’s letterhead). Over the past seven years or so, traffic calming circles have proliferated in this already lightly-trafficked area, often at intersections which already had four-way stop signs. 

In fairness, I will admit that I have gotten used to the circles. I no longer flinch when I’m crossing the street on foot and a car seems to be veering into my path. I only rarely see drivers, who either don’t understand the signs or choose to ignore them, going around the wrong way. And I cannot fault the dedication of my neighbors to the upkeep of the circles—each one is beautifully planted and maintained; they do not attract trash and are mostly quite pretty. Although, the ones with shrubbery (like the Mexican sage at Carleton and Ellsworth) or bushy conifers make it extremely difficult to see, say, a child, a bicycle or even a low-slung car on the far side. 

The thing that raises my blood-pressure—still, after seven years—every time I negotiate a traffic calming circle, is the sheer redundancy and waste of our tax dollars. As far as I can see, stop signs do the job every bit as well. (And, as far as visibility is concerned, often better.) But, apparently, stop signs are boring; traffic circles are sexy. Can they be stopped? I doubt it. 

P.S.: I’ve wanted to write for some time to say what a gem you have in Joe Eaton! Your back-page nature pieces are always of interest, but Eaton brings such a breadth of knowledge and sparkle of wit to the study of our fellow creatures. Thank you! 

Alice Jurow 



At a recent performance, Bill Maher noted that 36 percent of Americans continue to believe that George Bush is doing a good job. The political comedian shook his head and wondered what it would take for them to change their opinion, “On [Bush’s] watch, we’ve lost almost all of our allies, the surplus, four airliners, two Trade Centers, a piece of the Pentagon and the City of New Orleans.” Despite his many blunders the President continues to get stolid support from his base; he’s viewed positively by 81 percent of Republicans. One factor accounts for this loyalty: Bush supporters trust that he is a Christian. 

The tragic aftermath of Hurricane Katrina coupled with the Iraqi constitutional crisis has amplified criticism of the President, and again called into question his morality, which stems from his Christian faith. George Bush has been unusually public with his religiosity, stating, for example, that he prays before making every decision. Nonetheless, many would argue that Bush’s spirituality is unorthodox—best described as “magical” Christianity. 

The President’s peculiar brand of Christianity seems devoid of the hard personal work that leads to deep religious devotion. It’s a watered-down version of the teachings of Jesus, long on form and short on substance, a creed of pat phrases—“I’ve taken Jesus Christ as my personal savior”—and confused ethics—opposing euthanasia but supporting capital punishment. The magic appears when Bush’s personal conduct is separated from his profession of faith; apparently, it’s not what he does, but what he says that should matter. 

George Bush’s presidency provides many examples of his magical morality: While his public comments appear contrite, “I admit I’m a lowly sinner;” his personal conduct shows little connection to conventional Christian ethics. Jesus taught that believers should tell the truth—“You shall not perjure yourselves … Let your ‘Yes’ mean ‘Yes’ and your ‘No’ mean ‘No’”—yet, the Bush Administration seems to revel in dissimulation; their claim that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction is one notable example. Moreover, George Bush has personally authorized assassinations, bombings of civilians, and the torture of detainees; none of these actions are consistent with Jesus’ admonition, “Don’t react violently against the one who is evil.” Over the past five years, the Bush Administration has been guided by a belief that “the ends justify the means,” an ethic which is totally inconsistent with the teachings of Jesus. 

In the Gospels, Jesus often spoke of sacrifice, for example, about the necessity for the rich to care for the poor. This moral value is the theme of the parable of the Good Samaritan, and Jesus’ encounter with the rich man who wanted to join Jesus’ entourage, “If you wish to be perfect, sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor.” In contrast, the policy of the Bush Administration is to ignore the ethic of sacrifice. Rather than taxing the rich to help the poor, Bush’s position has been to reduce taxes on the rich, and blame the poor for their misfortune. After 9/11 many expected George Bush to do what FDR had done, after the attack on Pearl Harbor, and ask Americans to make a common sacrifice to help out the war on terror; instead Bush encouraged people to go shopping and asked Congress for another round of tax cuts. 

A one-sentence encapsulation of the wisdom of Jesus would be that he believed that each individual makes a choice between good and evil, and those who choose the good, resolve to love God and their fellow humans. Jesus taught that each individual was accountable for this choice. Despite his claim to be a Christian, George Bush does not wish to be held accountable for any of the missteps of his administration: the failure to anticipate the attacks of 9/11, the unnecessary invasion of Iraq, the dreadful quagmire of the occupation, and the failure to protect New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. 

Finally, the Bible teaches, “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” Jesus offered a vision of a world where humankind could live together in peace and justice. In contrast, George Bush offers a vision of a world where there is perpetual war, where Americans—particularly rich, white Americans—are viewed as “good guys” and everyone else is presumed to be part of the evil empire. Jesus instructed his followers to reach out to all people and treat them as our brothers and sisters. Bush’s conduct suggest that he only feels comfortable reaching out to “my base … the haves and have-mores.” George has a short-term, win-at-all-costs mentality that flies in the face of conventional Christian morality, which takes a long-range view and rejects the ethic that the ends justify the means. 

Near the conclusion of his Sermon on the Mountain, Jesus warned his followers, “Be on the lookout for phony prophets, who make their pitch disguised as sheep; inside they are really voracious wolves.” It appears that a phony prophet, artfully disguised as magic Christian, has deceived those Americans who doggedly cling to the belief that George Bush is doing a good job. 

Bob Burnett is a Berkeley writer, activist, and Quaker. He can be reached at bobburnett@comcast.net. 

My children and I all have birthdays this week, mine sandwiched between theirs, usually neglected. This year my husband wanted to do something special so he packed up the kids and took them to New York for five days. My gift was to stay home alone and as it’s turned out, it has been a real treat. 

I just called to see what time my kids’ plane arrives—9:30 a.m. (Are you sure it’s not p.m.? It’s not? Oh. Uh, Great!) Which means today is my last day of peace and quiet and luscious freedom. Of lying around all day and never getting out of my PJs. Of chocolate for breakfast and wine and chocolate for dinner. Of using the bathroom without someone banging on the door with a “Mommy, I want this,” or a “Mommy, I need that.” Of answering my own phone calls (if I choose to). And of not asking politely then yelling then screaming at the kids to turn that music/tv/radio/your vocal chords down! Down! DOWN!  

There’s a certain joy that goes with being in the house all alone. A certain magic. I can clean the sink and go back to it the next day and it’s still clean! I can clear the entry way of clutter (basketballs, jackets, backpacks, mail) and the next day and the next and the next, it’s still clutter free! I can think, write, organize, plot and plan, do or not do whatever I damn please uninterrupted! Oh my God, I’ve found Nirvana! And all I had to do was to keep my mouth shut about the extravagance of this trip and wish them well. I can do that. I did it and oh, what a reward. 

A luxury, indeed. My children are not missing. I know exactly where they are and they’re having fun. I have a roof over my head and it’s not leaking. I have electricity, heat, food, water and more. If I choose to, I can call a friend and meet for dinner or a movie. Or both. And when I return home, I’ll turn on the alarm, snuggle into a nice warm bed with a good book and sleep soundly.  

There is so much we take for granted. During my five days of going solo, I took two days off from the news and listened to jazz, harps and rock’n’roll while I cleaned out my closet and cleared my head. I needed a break from Bush, Katrina, class disparity and other malfunctions and I took it. Because I could. For those still knee-deep in toxic sludge, still missing loved ones, still camping out under the worse conditions, there is no break. 

I know what it’s like to experience tragedy. Our firstborn child died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome when she was three months old. I know what it feels like to be overwhelmed with numbing shock and unspeakable grief. It’s difficult to imagine how the world can move along as though nothing has happened while you are dying inside. But, the world does. When it’s not happening to you or right in front of you, all that grief and tragedy doesn’t seem quite real. We see it on television and we empathize but then it passes. It’s somebody else’s pain. We have children to pick up, dinner to prepare, work to do. Their world is not our world. Not right now, not in this moment. 

I just received an e-mail from a New Orleans’ cousin who got out with her family just before the storm. They’re staying in a trailer outside of Baton Rouge waiting for the Archdiocese to relocate them. One neighbor has loaned Kathy a car, another, her computer. The local church is throwing a benefit for the flood victims and Kathy is grateful and sends us love and hugs. 

And here I am, relishing this time away from my family, from my precious children whom, not too long ago, I was terrified to let out of my sight.  

My little retreat into myself has been rejuvenating. I have taken myself stripped of motherhood and matrimonial ties and have looked at myself bare, remembering who I was and how I enjoyed living my life absent all the “stuff” of life. We are not our stuff, after all. That fact really came home for me two years ago when my mother passed away from breast cancer, right in my arms. I never would have thought that I could do that; that I could hold my mother, connect with her and actually assist her in her transition from this world into the next. Sometimes, we have no clue what we are capable of until we are right in it, knee-deep and getting deeper. Then, something happens and we rise to the occasion, meet the challenge, then rise even higher, well above our fears.  

This is what our Gulf Coast neighbors are struggling to get to now: how to meet the challenge and create new lives, new ways of being in the world. Certainly our government can and should help out, providing new opportunities for education, job training and home ownership. Brand new schools with decent supplies and dedicated, well-paid teachers. This tragedy can be turned into an opportunity. (By the way, are the wealthiest 2 percent Christians? Does this mean that because they are their brothers’ keepers they are, at this very moment, knee-deep and donating?) 

Don’t blow it, Bush. Now is not the time to focus on fear or greed, mistakenly thinking that giving to someone else means there’s less for you and yours. Change. Meet the challenge and you’ll grow inside. Where it really counts..

Even when you’re crawling around on the bottom by your own admission, it’s sometimes possible to sink to a new low. And so comes the item “Dellums vs. De La Fuente?” by East Bay Express columnist Will Harper in this week’s “Bottom Feeder” column about a possible heavyweight matchup in the 2006 Oakland mayoral race. 

Several months ago, the anticipated match was between Oakland City Council President Ignacio De La Fuente of the Fruitvale area and Councilmember Nancy Nadel of West Oakland. There are several other “name” candidates in the race-including Oakland School Board members Dan Siegel and Greg Hodge and Alameda County Treasurer Donald White—but it was Mr. De La Fuente and Ms. Nadel who were expected to get the most attention from the media. 

There was already an interesting spin in the race before the name of retired 9th District Congressmember Ron Dellums began surfacing as a possible candidate. Media outlets were saying that Mr. De La Fuente was the frontrunner in the race, even though the last time he ran for mayor he came in a distant fourth in an 11-candidate field. That was 1998, the year Jerry Brown first won, and to show how bad Mr. De La Fuente was defeated, he got a little over 5,000 votes in that election, while Mr. Brown got almost 44,000. 

One of the things that hurt Mr. De La Fuente in 1998 was high negative ratings among many Oakland voters. Those high negatives never went away. And so, while media outlets were consistently calling Mr. De La Fuente the 2006 mayoral frontrunner, Oakland political insiders were pointing to two unreleased but respected political polls that showed Oaklanders feeling more comfortable with Ms. Nadel than they did with Mr. De La Fuente. In my mind, even while Ms. Nadel was taking some peculiar turns away from her normally reliable progressive positions, she and Mr. De La Fuente were dead even last winter, and the race was up for grabs between them. 

That all changed when a group of Oakland black political activists began a very public campaign to woo Mr. Dellums into the race, and Mr. Dellums said that he was considering it, with an announcement to come by the first of next month. Even a possible candidacy by the powerful and still popular Mr. Dellums sucked all of the air out of Ms. Nadel’s room, taking away many progressives and black activists who would have supported her. 

It also set up a possible Dellums-De La Fuente 2006 mayoral race to succeed the outgoing Mr. Brown, if Mr. Dellums decides to run. That would pit two powerful, savvy, experienced, well-financed candidates against each other, candidates with contrasting visions and politics that would give the citizens of Oakland clear and distinct choices for the future direction of the city. Living in a democracy, you can’t ask for better than that. 

A Dellums-De La Fuente race would also bring a lot of media attention to Oakland, although Oakland citizens would probably prefer that it not be the type of attention that Mr. Harper demonstrates in his most recent “Bottom Feeder” column. 

In the Sept. 21 “Dellums vs. De La Fuente?” item in that column, Mr. Harper decides to focus on what he says is one thing that Mr. De La Fuente and Mr. Dellums have in common: serious criminal problems suffered by one of their adult children. 

“De La Fuente’s son, Ignacio Jr., currently faces rape charges,” Mr. Harper writes. “Dellums’ son, Michael, has spent the last 25 years in state prison for killing a man in 1979 over a $20 bag of weed. How the two dads have dealt with their troubled sons also shows their contrasting styles. De La Fuente, at least for now, has struck by his son, even attending some court hearings. Dellums, who has publicly lamented the plight of young black men who end up in prison, has seemingly forgotten his own imprisoned son: In his memoir, Dellums acknowledged all his kids except for Michael.” 

What, exactly, does that paragraph tell us about the character of either of these two men—Mr. De La Fuente or Mr. Dellums—or how they might govern as mayor of the City of Oakland? Nothing, as far as I can see. It doesn’t even tell us if they were good parents, since even children raised by loving and attentive parents sometimes go wrong and get into trouble, particularly in these difficult days, despite the best efforts. And the accounting of the two instances of how the two men have dealt with the two situations—Mr. De La Fuente showing up at court hearings and Mr. Dellums leaving an acknowledgment of Michael out of his memoir—also tells us absolutely nothing about the two men’s relationship with their sons, or exactly what they might be doing behind the scenes, one way or the other. 

It’s just gossip. And sometimes, even for a political gossip column, that’s not enough to pass the test for publication. 

The Dellums item has a history with the Express. In 2003, when Michael Dellums was coming up for parole on the murder conviction, Mr. Harper wrote a piece about the issue called “Not-so-favorite son” in the newspaper’s “7 Days” column, the predecessor to “Bottom Feeder.” In that earlier item, at least, Mr. Harper attempted to give some possible context to Mr. Dellums’ relationship with his son, stating that Michael “was born during the divorce proceedings that ended his first marriage” and adding that when asked in a 1988 East Bay Express interview “‘Your son by your first marriage is in jail for armed robbery and murder. Do you feel that you could have done something different, as a parent, to have prevented his troubles?’ Dellums tersely replied, ‘You’re in an area that I don’t want to get into. And I did not raise him. ... I don’t want to deal with that.’” 

I don’t have a clue as to Mr. Harper’s motivation in writing these pieces. I will simply note that I find it interesting that in the item when Mr. Dellums was retired and seemingly out of local politics and living in D.C., Mr. Harper included information that might explain Mr. Dellums’ actions—or non-actions—towards his son. But in the recent and later item published during a time in which Mr. Dellums is now considering running for political office in Oakland again, the explanatory information is left out, and you have to have a long memory—or do an internet search—to find it. 

In any event, sometimes the allegations against an adult child has the possibility of reflecting on their politician parent and in those instances, it is entirely proper for the media to link parent and adult child together. That’s the case with State Senator Don Perata and his son Nick, both of whom are under investigation by the FBI and a federal grand jury for allegations of working together for illegal political payoffs and kickbacks. The key phrase here is “allegations of working together.” 

But at least as far as the information available to the public goes, that is not the case with the problems of the sons of Mr. De La Fuente and Mr. Dellums. As far as we know so far, both Ignacio De La Fuente Jr. (the Councilmember’s son) and Michael Dellums acted on their own, as adults. Unless someone has some other information that changes that, the De La Fuente-Dellums sons “Bottom Feeder” item is something that should have been left on the bottom, where it belongs. 

›

John Gertz’s commentary titled “Anti-Israelism: Only in Berkeley” misses the mark on multiple levels. While the foundation of some observations are valid, his assumptions about people he doesn’t understand destroys any sense of context. 

Unknowingly, the writer contributes to the very strains of anti-Semitism, against which he rails. How? By failing to note the distinction between Judaism as a religion; and Zionism as a political ideology! Many ignorant people THINK they hate Jews, because they see the brutality of Israel’s “security excesses” as the most prominent expression of modern day Judaism. This is no more “Jewish” than the crusades were Christian. It is not a Jewish thing to expropriate land, pirate water and farming resources, close schools and cut people off from their families or jobs. Nor are those sins Israeli things, any more than the Bush Jr. vanity war in Iraq is an American thing. Bad leaders hijack their national agendas sometimes and bring shame to their country. The growing Israeli shame ultimately led to the evacuation of Gaza. And there’s still a long way to go. 

It is shocking that a “community leader” in Berkeley would dare to disparage the Judaism of many good Jews, on the basis of where they stand on Zionism. How dare he? In other parts of the country, I have experienced community leaders denigrating and marginalizing thoughtful Jews, who take exception to Israeli policy. But Ehud Barak got elected as Israeli prime minister for a while, on the basis of recognizing the need for a dialogue with the Palestinians. Barak had the courage to argue for evacuation of some occupied territories. Since Ariel Sharon administered the evacuation, does Gertz consider him to be an anti-Zionist too? 

Ultimately, Gertz assumes that the only thing driving the critiques of Israel in Berkeley is a dying strain of Trotskyite Communism. Oh, please! I haven’t heard that one since I was earning my master’s degree in Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Michigan in the late 1970s. The only thing I had in common with the Spartacus Youth League was . . . well, nothing. We even disagreed on WHY Israel was doing the wrong thing, and most of the “Sparts” weren’t big on historical context. But neither is John Gertz. 

Jewish community leaders have freely engaged in character assassination against their own for generations. Over the years, I’ve been called a “self-hating Jew,” among less kind things by rabbis and community leaders. I earned this enmity by publishing many articles and broadcasting radio commentaries arguing that: 

“Israel as a country has a right to exist and defend itself. But many things about Israel policy are self-defeating and downright suicidal, namely the insistence on establishing a Jewish presence in occupied areas where we are not welcome. Jews emigrated and lived peacefully in Palestine for at least 100 years before the advent of the political Zionist movements beginning in 1896. It was only when large-scale immigration began in the early-20th Century that conflicts began. For as long as Jews emigrated at a natural pace, they blended harmoniously with their Palestinian landlords. The influx of thousands at a time upset the natural order of these relatively primitive societies. Israel has a right to exist, but not to brutalize the Palestinians.” 

I’ve given talks on Israel and Middle Eastern history in a variety of synagogues and community forums. Most Jews are shocked to learn of the many parallels of Judaism and Islam. Some Jews actually refuse to believe that Islam recognizes all the Jewish prophets as vital to their own theology; that their system of Halal was derived from our Kashruth (Kosher); and that the Palestinian traditions of family and academic achievement rival our own. Why don’t some Jews want to believe these truths? Because it is inconsistent with what they’ve been taught about why it’s OK to hate Arabs. They become faced with dissonance, confusion and inconvenience, and it does not compute. 

Finally, Gertz begs the question as to why so much of the academic community, the global journalism trades and many thoughtful people criticize Israel. Since 1967, Israel has administered an occupying force in another country. No country in the world gets a free pass for that. During the 1967 war, there was never any intent to keep these lands. Abba Eban, the Israeli president at the time, made it clear he did not want to administer to a hostile population, and intended to use those lands as bargaining chips. When Menachem Begin became prime minister in the mid 1970s, Israeli politics made a brutal turn to the right that is now slowly self-correcting. That the pendulum is swinging back can be seen with the Gaza evacuation, and the widespread reluctance of soldiers to serve in occupied areas. 

There are all kinds of Jews in this world. And in Berkeley, the full spectrum is represented among the 25,000 in this town of 105,000. You gotta admit, our large number here has a lot to do with defining Berkeley for better or worse. 

Recently, I was at a Shabbat dinner in the home of a young rabbi. When the conversation revealed that I have academic credentials in Israeli-Palestinian relations, one of the guests became suspicious and hostile, demanding to know where I stood on various issues. In deference to Shabbat, I deflected his hostile questions, until he left the room, upon realizing he had made a total fool of himself. I might have expected such an inappropriate challenge in Memphis or Atlanta, but it was disheartening to find it in Berkeley. 

It is more shocking and downright sad, to see that a former president of the local Jewish Community Center appoints himself as judge of the validity of other people’s Judaism. How dare he denigrate Holocaust survivors, who are entitled to feel exactly as they do? Gertz’s interpretation of his “three strains of anti-Zionism” illustrate a vacuous misunderstanding of history and his own people. To equate thoughtful Jewish critiques of Israel with the brazen Uncle Tomism of Clarence Thomas is an expression of gross ignorance. In so doing, Gertz marginalizes himself.  

H. Scott Prosterman holds an M.A. in Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Michigan. He frequently publishes humor and political commentary in a variety of publications and websites. ›

Again I find myself having to respond to a commentary liberally spiced with mistruths and disinformation written by Tim Lubeck, an employee of Berkeley Honda (owned by Stephen and Tim Beinke and Steve Haworth.) Mr. Lubeck claims he is a service writer at Berkeley Honda. This is the person customers count on to tell them the truth about what services and or repairs are needed on their cars. If this commentary represents how he does his job at Berkeley Honda, I would hope he get more training quickly. Perhaps the fact that he acts like an assistant service manager and is being paid a guaranteed wage in the six-figure range when the old service writers were being paid well within five figures may explain some of the statements that Mr. Lubeck makes on behalf of his “benevolent” employers. By the way, nobody walked away from a six-figure job at Berkeley Honda; only the non-union new hires such as Mr. Lubeck were offered that kind of money.  

The employers have stated that merit was not a factor in determining pay rates because they did not have an understanding of individual abilities before, during, or after the interviews were being done. Additionally, the decision to replace highly qualified technicians with training school graduates and experienced service writers with anti-union service writers was made long before the interviews ever took place. It appears that Mr. Lubeck has no experience as a service advisor/manager prior to Berkeley Honda. Yet he was hired at a higher rate of pay that any of the experienced service writers that worked at Doten Honda or were retained by Berkeley Honda.  

Mr. Lubeck remarks about Future Ford are so far off base and separated from fact that I have to call into question his source of information or his honesty. Since the record of any proceedings in the National Labor Relations Board is public information, I would suggest that he does a little research next time. The union was never held to be in violation of any laws, labor or otherwise. The picket line was never deemed to be “illegal and without merit.” Mr. Lubeck quoted something that was the employer’s allegation as though it was a decision of the U.S. government. That decision does not exist.  

When I grew up that was called a lie. Shame on the employer for telling Mr. Lubeck such mistruths. 

Mr. Lubeck has attacked this union and the pension plan that he clearly does not understand or he is distorting for the employer’s benefit. Additionally, the employer refuses to listen to credible information about the pension. Instead his employer elects to listen to the attorney whose obvious agenda for years has been the destruction of all things union, including the pension.  

Mr. Lubeck statement that the pension plan is the only outstanding issue in the ongoing negotiations simply shows that ignorance or deceit is prevalent at Berkeley Honda. The union made a proposal in regards to the pension plan that insures that this new employer will not suffer any un-funded withdrawal liabilities. The employer rejected it and persists in instructing Mr. Lubeck to misinform the readers of the Daily Planet that the un-funded withdrawal liability potential is the only issue outstanding.  

When I grew up that was called deceit. Am I accusing the employer of deceit? 

Yes! The employer cynically displays the last editorial from Mr. Lubeck on the street side windows for the public to read despite the fact the employer knows that it is filled with misinformation and outright dishonest statements. The letter is displayed just under the “strike sale” sign that they put up immediately after the strike started.  

Let’s quit beating around the bush on the issue of Berkeley Honda. Stephen Beinke, through his son Tim Beinke, Steve Haworth and their attorney are engaged in pure and simple class warfare. These extremely rich people have decided to come into Berkeley, wrap themselves up in the potential-for-tax-revenue flag, and pull the eminent domain scam, if needed, to “redevelop” as much of Berkeley as they can for tremendous profits.  

Well some middle class working people working for Doten Honda didn’t like the obvious discrimination and disregard for working people and the public that these folks displayed when they took over Doten Honda. The employer is deliberately delaying negotiations to prolong the strike and “burn” the strikers down. The employer thinks this picket will go away when everyone has gotten a job somewhere else to make ends meet during this dispute. These workers don’t have the mega-dollars that the Beinke’s have to survive the pain of a strike. This “war” is mean-spirited and they are simply using their wealth as a weapon.  

This class warfare and the obvious disregard for the quality of work on the customer’s vehicles and the persistent cynical disregard for the truth and the intelligence of the people in this area should indicate to even the most casual observer that the agenda is not one that deserves anything better that the “RAT.” Indeed it deserves strong action by the citizens of Berkeley and the surrounding areas.  

Many citizens of Berkeley are currently helping with our strike and are seeing the agenda of this employer and are not pleased. I ask the people of the Berkeley area who do not subscribe to the agenda of class warfare and deceit to come to the picket line and spend a couple of hours helping us peacefully convince these wealthy people that the American working person doesn’t condone this insult. 

Michael S. Cook is a proud member of and business representative for East Bay Automotive Local 1546. 

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Amichai (Ami) Kronfeld’s death on Sept. 1 deeply saddened the extensive group of his family, friends, and colleagues here and abroad. It represents a major loss to the activist peace community. 

Ami was a very humane and effective worker for a just peace for Palestinians and Israelis, one of those who had been through a personal, philosophical, and political struggle with a very difficult past, with the horror and disillusionment he experienced as a young Israeli soldier in three wars (1967, the war of attrition with Egypt, and 1973).  

For the past 30 years he worked tirelessly for peace in the Mideast, never losing hope, constantly writing, translating, and publicizing important information about the situation on the ground. Ami greeted pessimists with a brilliant wry skepticism that only he could summon: “Even the Holocaust came to an end,” he would comment, an observation that kept us focused on continued political activity. 

His years with the Israeli army left him with absolutely no tolerance for war and military power. His devastating experience in three wars actually transformed him into an outspoken critic of Israel’s militarization of society and a fervent opponent of its brutal occupation and settlement of Palestinian lands.  

His unstinting political activism reflected his passionate concern: as a founder and organizer of peace groups in Ithaca, N.Y., in the early 1980s; co-founder of American Friends of Yesh Gvul (There is a Limit, an Israeli organization formed by those who refused to participate in Israel’s war against the Palestinians); and other groups, including New Profile, an Israeli feminist anti-militaristic organization which, according to Ami, was “the first to focus on militarism and the cult of power as major threats to Israel’s moral and political survival” and Courage to Refuse, soldiers (Refusniks) no longer willing to carry out government policies in the occupied territories. 

He was also a co-editor of the newsletter of Jewish Voice for Peace; and as one of the four who initiated Jews Against the Occupation, a Bay Area based campaign that drew several thousand signers nationwide to an advertisement in the New York Times. His e-mail messages and Internet columns during the Intifada constantly reminded us of the devastating cost of the occupation for both Palestinians and Israelis. 

Speaking with his usual candor at a fundraiser in 2001 for Yesh Gvul and New Profile, Ami tried to explain his difficult transformation from military warrior into peace activist. He refused a direct order to execute an Egyptian prisoner of war in 1967, but, as he said, “saw dozens of captured Egyptian soldiers summarily executed, Palestinian women and children shot at just because they were trying to return to their homes in the West bank, young Israeli soldiers in Gaza harass and humiliate Palestinian men old enough to be their grandfathers.” 

Although he believed the 1973 war was entirely unnecessary, he said, “I did what I was told and more or less followed the path I was expected to follow.” For years he struggled to understand why “I could not find it within myself to stand up and say hell no, I won’t go.”  

“Given the uniformity of Israeli culture at the time,” he continued, “and my need to be a part of it, there was simply no way for me (and people like me) to resist the overwhelming pressure to conform.” His recognition of the terrible consequences that resulted from the confluence of uniformity, conformity, and obedience underscored his passionate and very vocal support of soldiers who refused to participate in Israel’s brutal occupation.  

Ami saw in Yesh Gvul “the very first time in the history of Israel that soldiers dared question, collectively, the right of the government to use force whenever and wherever it felt like it. Yesh Gvul provides the absolutely crucial moral and social support for soldiers of conscience who, unlike me, dared to challenge the overwhelmingly powerful military establishment.” 

In 2003, in an essay entitled “The Shoe is on the Other Foot,” Ami, a philosopher by training, provided a philosophical basis for his position: that one must refuse to recognize and accept the intolerable, even criminal, authority and power of those who rule. The growing numbers of soldiers of Courage to Refuse brought another wonderful moment of Ami’s needed optimism: “What does matter,” he wrote in that essay, “is the fact (and it is a fact, whether one likes it or not) that an ever expanding number of soldiers no longer unconditionally recognize the power of the Israeli army to tell them what to do in the Occupied Territories. If this trend continues, the government would have to change its policies, because, as Brecht would have put it, the government cannot fire its subjects and elect new ones to rule over.”  

“It is important that the soldiers of Courage to Refuse understand how much power they wield,” he continued. “Not individually—as individuals each of them is powerless—but as a group.”  

So Ami had mapped the terrain from his experience as a young soldier to the growing refusal to allow the government to take soldiers’ obedience for granted. Ami’s life and thinking delivers a powerful political and moral message that needs always to be remembered.  

Amichai was born 1947 in Hadera, one of the first agricultural towns established in Israel and named for his uncle Amichai Honig, the first Jewish pilot from Palestine who died fighting with the British RAF in World War II. His mother’s family had lived seven generations in Palestine and Israel; his father’s family were founders of Kibbutz Gan Shmuel, part of the heroic saga of the building of Israel that Ami eventually viewed critically, partly because he had no tolerance for nationalistic jingoism, but also because he came to know the price the Palestinians paid for its fulfillment.  

In his teens Ami moved to the nearby Kibbutz Gam Shmuel, where the leftist ideology of the day nourished his concern for egalitarianism, candor, and justice. He flourished as an accomplished athlete, musician, modern dancer, and writer, and developed a passionate commitment to critical thinking and political engagement. But his youth was interrupted in 1967 when he was drafted into the military. 

Ami met Chana at Tel Aviv University where she was his teacher, and during their marriage of more than three decades, they shared a relationship in which each was both teacher and student. Their daughter Maya, now almost 20 years old, shares her parents’ critical, musical, philosophical, and literary interests.  

Chana and Ami arrived in Berkeley in 1975, where he earned a Ph.D. in Philosophy and she in Comparative Literature. He taught at Cornell University where he earned a Masters degree in Computer Science, concentrating on artificial intelligence. His book, Reference and Computation: An Essay in Applied Philosophy of Language, published by Cambridge University Press, focuses on these two fields of interest.  

After working for several years in the computer industry, he recognized that he could no longer be a part of the global corporate world and returned to Berkeley. He taught philosophy at UC, Berkeley and at Santa Rosa Junior College, and also returned to his life long passion, jazz, drumming with his band, “The Lincoln Street Brigade.”  

Music and philosophy finally converged in the last project on which he was working: the congruence of the mathematical structure of West African rhythm and jazz with the harmonic structure of classical music. This work was interrupted by his death after a very difficult two-year battle with brain cancer. 

Donations in Ami’s memory may be made to Jewish Voice for Peace (www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org). 

“In our town, we like to know the facts. About everybody.” 

So Barbara Oliver, as the Stage Manager, intones a wry commonplace, both pragmatic and self-aware, a scrap of the everyday that seems to define Our Town (now at the Berkeley Repertory Theater) as both parochial and worldly, spiritual in the way of a cosmology of changing seasons and human lives—and disappearing in the wake of progress. 

Berkeley High graduate Thornton Wilder’s masterpiece and Pulitzer Prize winner—“a little play with all the big subjects in it,” as Wilder wrote to Gertrude Stein—is a late entry (1938) in what began as an offbeat American genre, heralded by the “grotesques” of Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio and the poem cycle of small town epitaphs of Edgar Lee Masters’ Spoon River Anthology, published during the First World War. Critical, even mocking of American provincialism, these earlier “small town anatomies” were underpinned by the bittersweet awareness of the passing away of that once-defining stratum of American life. 

Nostalgia triumphed over critique, sensationalism over scandal, and “the dark underbelly of a small town” became a cliche, though notable additions to the canon have persisted, including Orson Welles’ film of The Magnificent Ambersons, some of John O’Hara’s and Edward Dahlberg’s prose, and poet Carl Rakosi’s “Americana” cycle.  

Wilder’s play is like a summing up, a quiet but insistent voice talking to the future about what can reach it only as an aroma, a rumor. In spite of the steady erosion of the integrity of ordinary life Wilder records, he manages a startling flash photo, an afterimage of the subliminal effect of that life, only realizable with its loss. As one of his characters says from beyond the grave, looking back is painful, seeing the beauty that nobody living notices. 

Theatrically, this was managed through a deliberate scarcity of means, a “poor theater”—no sets; the sense, almost, of a run-through of a village pageant introduced by the Stage Manager, who takes on a few parts himself, mingling with the townspeople-performers. 

Jonathan Moscone has combined his talents as director with the conceptions of designers Neil Patel (set), Lydia Tanji (costumes), Scott Zielinski (lights) and Mark Bennett (sound and music) and an accomplished cast to bring the Rep’s audience a lyrical, somewhat evocative interpretation of Wilder’s immortalization of late New England Puritanism. 

The collaborative effort strives to catch the fleeting sense of a first awareness of things—a first glimpse that’s also a memory.  

The three acts cover the microcosmic panorama of the town and its citizens, with young love beginning to blossom, then the humorous rites of the plunge into marriage, followed quickly by the stark deadpan realities of mortality.  

The Rep’s production peaks with the beautiful night scenes of moonlight— “terrible” moonlight, as lovestruck Emily Webb (Emma Roberts) calls its seduction—and the smell of heliotrope, as the whole town looks out at the moon. Lifelong neighbors Emily and George Gibbs (Bill Heck) are falling in love—in counterpoint to the careening drunken choirmaster (Ken Ruta) and his misanthropy, half tolerated, half a subject for gossip.  

The second act begins with a flash and a thunderclap, and the dry commentary of the Stage Manager: “ ... three years gone by ... here and there babies who hadn’t even been born talking regular sentences ... all that can happen in a thousand days ...” George and Emily are getting married; they recall how they first knew just what they meant to each other. Heck and Roberts are charming as the young lovers, performing well-choreographed physical comedy as a kind of ongoing mating dance. But their attractiveness becomes brittle as the play changes phase, cutting through the director’s conception. 

The deliberate anachronism of the original isn’t matched by inadvertent anachronistic touches in this production; spare simplicity and a penchant for showing and naming get overtaken by over-embellishment and a kind of agitated vivacity, which becomes cloying in the face of the awful serenity of the sublime.  

There’s a problem, too, with authenticity. Much of the behavior, as one spectator put it, is more early 21st century looking back to the films of the 40s and early 50s than the late 30s looking back to the very early 20th century. 

Ken Ruta’s hapless choirmaster—whose tombstone has no verses for epitaph, “just some notes of music”—strikes the right chord, but somehow the character lineaments of most of the rest of this talented cast, the children excepted, don’t seem to pass through the shadow, or the quiet subtleties of Wilder’s plainspoken vision, without getting spoiled a little. 

“Whenever you get near the human race, there are layers and layers of nonsense,” one character says. 

But a nonsense that in retrospect shines with humanity as well as self-disgust, and evaporates in the light. Wilder’s play, like the time capsule the citizens put in a cornerstone, is still fresh. It stands up. The Rep’s charming evocation of a modern classic does a dance around its original. 

The Berkeley Rep presents Our Town through Oct. 23 at the Roda Theatre, 2025 Addison St. For more information, call 647-2900 or see www.berkeleyrep.org. 

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Our Town author Thornton Wilder, winner of three Pulitzer Prizes, best remembered for his stage portraits of small town American family life, went to Emerson Grammar School in Berkeley’s Elmwood District, and was an alumnus of Berkeley High School class of 1915. 

Second son of a newspaper editor, Wilder was born in 1897 in Madison, Wis., that “heartland” whence much of the literature about small town Americana would originate, especially from the Chicago School of the second and third decades of the 20th century. 

But Wilder’s family didn’t stay put. His father, Amos Wilder, was appointed U.S. Consul General in Hong Kong in 1906. His family joined him for six months, then returned to the United States until 1911. The family briefly reunited accompanying Amos Wilder to his new post in Shanghai, and then returning to settle in Berkeley. 

After a lonely boarding school stint in Ojai, Thornton Wilder enrolled at Berkeley High for his junior and senior years, living at home with his sisters and his mother, Isabella Niven Wilder, who attended lectures at UC, joined foreign-language discussion groups and sewed costumes for her children’s walk-on parts in Greek Theatre productions. 

Thornton, who’d begun writing stories and plays in Ojai, began to frequent the Doe Library on the UC campus to read European Expressionist drama and newspaper accounts of the great German director Max Reinhardt. 

After graduating from Berkeley High, Wilder enrolled at Oberlin College, studying classics, then transferred to Yale, where his first full-length play appeared in the Yale Literary Magazine in 1920, though not to be staged until 1926. 

After a stateside stint in the artillery corps during World War I, Wilder studied archaeology at the American Academy in Rome, then earned a master’s degree in French Literature at Princeton in 1926 before embarking on a teaching career. 

Even after the success of his novel, The Bridge of San Luis Rey, which earned him his first Pulitzer Prize in 1927, Wilder continued to think of himself as a teacher, and became friendly with Gertrude Stein when both were lecturers in literature at the University of Chicago. 

Wilder continued writing and successfully publishing until his death in 1975. Among his best-known works are The Skin of Our Teeth (1942), which earned Wilder his third Pulitzer; the screenplay for Alfred Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt (1943, set in Santa Rosa); and The Matchmaker (1954), which was adapted into the musical Hello Dolly! in 1964. 

Though set in fictional Grover’s Corner in New Hampshire, a few slight traces of Wilder’s own family life may occasionally be detected in Our Town. The protagonist’s father is the town’s newspaper editor (Mr. Webb, played at the Rep by Paul Vincent O’Connor), who is somewhat ineffectually scornful of his wife’s constant “motivating” of their children, and a lecture on local prehistory and fossils by “Professor Willis from our state university,” (Jarion Monroe for the Rep). 

The younger characters of Our Town play a notable part in the script, and are played well by the junior members of the Rep’s cast, including Trevor Cheitlin, Jacob Cohen, Alex Kaplan, Gideon Lazarus, Sarag Smithton and Emily Trumble. 

Three are from Berkeley: Trevor Cheitlin, a seventh grader at Prospect Sierra and acting student at Berkeley Rep’s school and ACT, is in his first professional stage production, splitting a couple of parts with Gideon Lazarus, including a newsboy cynical about matrimony; Gideon, has attended two Rep Summer Intensives and plays double bass at The Crowden School, where he’s a sixth-grader; and Emily Trumble, playing little sister to George Gibbs, a seventh grader at King Middle School and veteran of the Willows Theatre in Concord and CalShakes in Orinda, as well as many other shows around Contra Costa, and as a spelling bee contestant in the new film Bee Season. 

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I have to say at the outset that I’m an old friend of Jerry Carlin, indeed, a fellow realist and sometime “plein air” artist. Such closeness and affinity make it difficult to lash-out at the odd picture or period that I don’t really like, as I probably would faced with half a cow suspended in formaldehyde in a plate-glass tank! Fortunately I love and admire most of Jerry’s work, so am urging readers to go see some of it for themselves, especially in such an enjoyable setting. 

For apart from the daunting business of parking, this modest show livens up two adjacent campus-side destinations, quite rewarding in themselves; the Musical Offering Café and CD store, and the fabulous University Press Books next door. Both are located on Bancroft Way just below Telegraph Avenue. 

Three distinct bodies of work are distributed between the two settings—small realistic paintings of Tilden Park and an exploration of a North Berkeley neighborhood in the bookstore, and Jerry’s much larger Imaginary Landscapes in the café. Fortunately three out of 11 of these big semi-abstract works are hung in the back room of the bookstore, close to some little Tilden pictures, enabling us to enjoy—or ponder—the huge leap in size and character from familiar Carlin realism to more flamboyant self-expression. 

But first the small works. These range from 11”x14” to 16”x20”, and in the case of the Tilden series, are, rather disarmingly, unframed. Completed on the spot, they have delightful freshness. The paint has been applied in broad vigorous strokes lush enough to make a watercolor-on-paper artist like me green with envy. And green they unashamedly are, especially the foreground meadow featured on almost every one. My own favorites are those where this grassy foreground has been tamed by, say, a left-to-right slope, and dark shadows cast by trees. “Tilden #18” is one I particularly like, with its inky blue-black pines and background hillside of brown eucalypts under a foggy sky. “Tilden # 16” and “Brazilian Room” are other well-integrated compositions. 

Apart from their similarly small size—typically 16”x16”—the Berkeley suburban views on the staircase wall near the store entrance are profoundly different from the fresher more spontaneous Tilden pictures. With the exception of “Edie’s Ice Cream Parlor” of 1976, the six street scenes, all painted in 1977, amount to a love affair with four little hillside avenues just below upper Spruce Street; Michigan, Florida, Maryland and Kentucky. Separated by as much as fifteen years from his more recent Tilden series, the paint has a drier, flatter quality, indicating perhaps you can’t be quite as spontaneous when coping with jigsaw-puzzle compositions of front gardens, street trees, curving avenues, stucco houses and cars. Kept a bit somber to calm the busy compositions, the colors here are admirable. Notice for instance the dark orange vehicle in “Maryland Street.” 

Carlin has a well-deserved reputation as a “plein air” painter, a term that deserves explanation. Meaning “painting in the open air” as opposed to painting in a studio, this method of working became popular only as romantic landscapes replaced heroic figure compositions, often huge, that required controlled conditions—and collaborations—of a workshop. In the mid-19th century, Camille Corot, among others, pioneered direct outdoor observation, at least by sketches, but by the time of the Impressionists and Monet in particular, it had become common to complete whole paintings “in situ.” 

Strict “plein air” painting however, is not Jerry’s only passion, which brings us to the big, radically different canvases he calls Imaginary Landscapes. Patently executed in a studio, these large invented compositions are a surprise in more ways than one. Before looking at the information sheets, available at both counters, I had assumed that such joyful uninhibited pictures must be very recent work, as if Jerry had “paid his dues” and ascended into final freedom, like late Chagall. But not so, for according to the listed dates, they were painted during and slightly after the North Berkeley urban landscapes, and a little before their natural opposites, the Tilden miniatures. It’s as though John Constable interrupted his gentle Suffolk scenes to dash off “Rain, Steam and Speed” before returning to his Salisbury Cathedral series. Perhaps they reveal a yearning for looseness, inventiveness and joyous color—bold reds, frothy pinks, and strident whites, oranges, and pale greens—that the artist had denied himself during his small streetscapes period of 1977. 

For what it’s worth, I like most the ones that have recognizable form, like “Farm,” “Cruise Ship,” or “Pink Mountain,” and least the scenes with figures like “City,” though individual preferences become highly subjective when all these pictures demonstrate equal technical skill. It’s your call, and even if they are not your cup of tea—or cappuccino—it’s very pleasant siting in this unpretentious space, enjoying the good food, and listening to the ever-changing classical music. 

Missing from this show, and certainly missed by me, are paintings from Jerry’s fairly recent work around Tomales Bay. Larger in some cases that the small works exhibited here, these somber-but-poetic portraits of that strange “seismic” coast, structured an d enlivened by ancient pilings and abandoned walkways are memorable, beautifully resolved paintings. 

Not many artist have started out in a profession as respectable and prestigious as the law. Wassily Kandinsky is perhaps the most celebrated. The English painter John Piper is another, as so also is Jerry Carlin. Those of us who value beauty at least as much as justice can rejoice that he as been able to devote the last 34 years to quite a special gift.  

Jerome Carlin paintings are on exhibit at the Musical Offering Cafe and University Press Books through October. 10 a.m.-8 p.m. Monday-Friday; 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Saturdays; noon-5 p.m. Sundays. 2430 Bancroft Way. For more information, call 849-0211.

FRIDAY, SEPT. 23 

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.  

Contra Costa Civic Theater, “You Can’t Take it With You” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. at Pomona Ave. at Moeser Lane, El Cerrito, through Oct. 22. 524-9132.  

DMCF Productions “Florence” by Alice Childress and “The Pot Mker” 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. 

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.  

Lunatique Fantastique “Executive Order 9066” Thurs.-Sat. at 7 p.m. at 2120 Allston Way. Through Oc. 21. Tickets are $15-$22. 415-826-5750.  

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

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: “The Roof of the World” at 5 p.m. “Angel on the Right” at 7:p.m. and “Osama” at 8:50 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Jonathan Kozol describes “The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America” at 7:30 p.m. at King Middle School, 1780 Rose St. Sponsored by Cody’s Books. Tickets are $8-$10. 845-7852.  

Dutch Voices: Jos de Putter and Peter Delpeut at 1:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. 642-0808.  

Ariel Levy examines “Female Chauvanist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Los Cenzontles in concert, and the documentary “Pasajero: A Journey of Time and Memory” at 8 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts. Tickets are $15. 925-798-1300.  

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.  

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

Sarah Cahill, solo piano recital at 8 p.m. at the Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St. Cost is $10-$15. 701-1787. 

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

Samora & Elena Pinderhughes, nine and 13 year old jazz musicians, at 7 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10, $5 for children 12 and under. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Stephanie Bruce & Her Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $7. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Groundation at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $11-$13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Pam & Jeri Show at 8 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Due West, progressive California bluegrass, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50-$18.50. 548-1761.  

Stephanie Rearick, Good for Cows, John Lindenbaum and Liam Carey at 7 p.m. at Mama Buzz Cafe, 2318 Telegraph Ave. Cost is $6.  

Julie Hardy Quartet at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

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

The Morning Benders, The Paranoids, The Family Arsenal at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $8. 841-2082.  

The Phenomenauts, The Sting Ray, The Knights of the New Crusade at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $7. 525-9926. 

Kofy Brown at 10 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $5. 548-1159.  

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

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 

SATURDAY, SEPT. 24 

EXHIBITIONS 

Institute of Mosaic Art Faculty Exhibition Reception at 6 p.m. at 3001 Chapman St., Oakland. 437-9899. www.instituteofmosaicart.com 

THEATER 

“The Art of Aging Festival” at 7 p.m. at the Julia Morgan Theater. Tickets are $20. Workshops on Sunday, 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sponsored by The Center for Creative Aging West and Stagebridge Senior Theater Co. 222-3988.  

FILM 

Farewell: A Tribute to Elem Kilmov and Larissa Shepitko at 7 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Watershed Environmental Poetry Festival from noon to 5 p.m. at the North Fork of Strawberry Creek, Valley Life Sciences Building lawn, UC Campus. www.poetryflash.org 

“Take Back the Power: Bread Roses and Revolution” in conjunction with UC Theater’s production of “The Cradle will Rock” at 4 p.m. at Zellerbach Playhouse, UC Campus. http://theater.berkeley.edu 

Huston Smith reflects on “The Soul of Christianity: Restoring the Great Tradition” at 7:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing Way. Donation $10. 845-7852.  

Rhythm & Muse with poet Zara Raab at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Art Center. Free. 527-9753. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Trinity Chamber Concerts presents Vicki Trimbach, pianist and composer at 8 p.m. at 2320 Dana St. Tickets are $8-$12. 549-3864. http://trinitychamberconcerts.com  

Katrina Benefit Show with the Scott Law Band at 9 p.m. at Shattuck Downlow. Cost is $10. 548-1159. 

Benefit Concert for the Friends Committee on Legislation with folksongs by local musicians at 7 p.m. at Friends Meeting House, 2151 Vine St. Donation $20-$25, no one turned away. 848-7357. 

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

The Fourtet Jazz Group at 9:30 p.m. at Albatross, 1822 San Pablo Ave. 843-2473.  

Megan Slankard, The Bittersweets, Keith Varon at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $6. 841-2082.  

Frankye Kelly & Her Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island. Cost is $7. 841-JAZZ.  

Eric Bogle, Australian singer-sonwriter, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761.  

Joe Vasconcellos from Chile at 9 p.m. at at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $20-$25. 849-2568.  

Hali Hammer and Rany Berge Family Concert at 7 p.m. at Spuds Pizza, 3290 Adeline St. Cost is $7 per family. 558-0881. 

Tom Peron/Bud Spangler Interplay Quartet at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $12-$18. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

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

Fog with Brian Maxwell, Peter Barshay and others at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

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

Verbal Abuse, Death Toll, Useless Wood Toys, One in the Chamber at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $6. 525-9926. 

André Similius Quartet at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

SUNDAY, SEPT. 25 

CHILDREN  

Space Station Mars, a book party with children’s author Daniel San Souci at 2 p.m. at Chabot Space and Science Center, 10000 Skyline Blvd., Oakland. Free with general admission. 336-7373. www.chabotspace.org 

FILM 

Dutch Voices: Jos de Putter and Peter Delpeut “Nagasaki Stories” at 2 and 5:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

“Sacred Sites” films about the struggle to protect sacred sites at 3 p.m. at Fantasy Recording Studios, 10 and Parker Sts. Donation $10. 525-1304. www.sacred-sites.org 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Poetry Flash with Peter Campion and Laton Carter at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. Donation $2. 845-7852.  

“Hurricane Dramathon” Six hours of staged readings of plays set in New Orleans, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. by the Teen Council at the Nevo Education Center, 2071 Addison St. Donations welcome, benefits victims of Hurricane Katrina. 647-2972. 

“From Africa to America: A Voicing Exploration” with Jacqui Hairston on black musical styles at 2 p.m. at Phoebe Hearst Museum, Bancroft and College. 643-7648. http://hearstmuseum.berkeley.edu 

“Modern Girls (Unless They’re French) Don’t Wear Kimono” a lecture by Lisa Dalby, the only American to have worked as a geisha, at 3 p.m. at Berkeley Art Museum Theater. 642-2809. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Pacific Collegium “Music from the Eton Choir Book” at 3 p.m. at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, 2300 Bancroft. Tickets are $8-$18. 459-2341. pacificcollegium.org 

James Tinsley, organist and pianist, “Five Centuries of Music” at 4 p.m. at All Souls Parish, 2220 Cedar St. Donation $15, $10 students. Benefits Open Door Dinner and Youth Arts Studio. 848-1755.  

Benefit Concert for the Friends Committee on Legislation with Jesse Palidofsky at 7 p.m. at Friends Meeting House, 2151 Vine St. Donation $20-$25, no one turned away. 848-7357. 

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

Robert Temple and His Soulfolk Ensemble CD release of “What Would You Do?” at 6 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10-$12. 849-2568.  

Art Lande/Mark Miller Duo at 4:30 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $20. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Ronnie Gilbert & Adrienne Torf at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $20.50-$21.50. 548-1761.  

Ryan Burke and Valerie Troutt at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island. Cost is $7. 841-JAZZ.  

Geezerpalooza at 3 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $8. 525-5054.  

Shotgun Ragtime Band at 10 a.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

Americana Unplugged: Jeannie & Chuck’s Country Round-Up at 5 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

MONDAY, SEPT. 26 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Arlene Blum, mountain climber describes “Breaking Trail: My Path to High Places” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852.  

“Science and the Soul: J. Robert Oppenheimer and ‘Doctor Atomic’” Peter Sellars and John Adams about the making and meaning of their opera at 8 p.m. at Wheeler Auditorium, UC Campus. 642-9988. 

Poetry Express Theme Night: “Beginnings and Endings” 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. 548-5198.  

Luciana Souza & Romero Lubambo at 8 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10-$16. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

TUESDAY, SEPT. 27 

FILM 

Madcat Presents: “The Time We Killed” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Tell on on Tuesdays Storytelling with Marjorie Mann, Maiyah Hirano, Jessica Ferris and Sandra Niman at 7:30 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts. Cost is $8-$12 sliding scale. www.juiamorgan.org 

Ken Goffman looks at “Counterculture Through the Ages” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com  

The Whole Note Poetry Series with Dr. Jeff and Dr. X at 7 p.m. at The Beanery, 2925 College Ave., near Ashby. 549-9093. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Coro d’Amici, a capella, at 8 p.m. at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. Tickets are $20. 525-5211. www.berkeleychamberperform.org 

Wild Catahoulas at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cajun dance lesson at 8 p.m. Cost is $9. 525-5054.  

Ellen Hoffmaan with Singers’ Open Mic at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. 841-JAZZ.  

Bohola, Irish-American folk trio, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50-$18.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Four Corners of the Round Table, with Adam Caroll, Beaver Nelson, Jud Neson and Steve Poltz at 8:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $10. 841-2082.  

Randy Craig Trio at 7:30 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Luciana Souza & Romero Lubambo at 8 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10-$16. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

Jazzschool Tuesdays at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Eric Swinderman, solo guitar, at 8 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810. 

WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 28 

FILM 

Tropical Punch: The Video Works of Tony Labat at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

Cine Documental: “Intermissions” on the 2002 Brazilian presidential elections, at 7 p.m. at the CLAS Conference Room, 2334 Bowditch St.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Jim Lynch introduces his novel “The Highest Tide” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

William Sloane Coffin introduces “Letters to a Young Doubter” at 7:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing Way. Donation of $10 suggested. Sponsored by Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

Berkeley Poetry Slam with host Charles Ellik and Three Blind Mice, at 8:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5-$7. 841-2082 www.starryploughpub.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Wednesday Noon Concert, with Garrett McLean, violin, Gabriel Trop, cello, and Inning Chen, piano at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Free. 642-4864. http://music.berkeley.edu 

Music for the Spirit with guest organist, John Walko at noon at First Presbyterian Church of Oakland, 2619 Broadway. 444-3555. www.firstchurchoakland.org 

Calvin Keys Trio Invitational Jam 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.  

Balkan Folk Dance at 8 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Lessons at 7 p.m. Cost is $7. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

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

Loosewig Quartet at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Dervish, traditional Irish music, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Mel Matin All Star Band with vocalist Jamie Davis at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $7-$14. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

THURSDAY, SEPT. 29 

EXHIBITIONS 

Closing Ritual for “Wholly Grace” Works by Susan Duhan Felix at noon at the Bade Museum, 1798 Scenic Ave. 841-1781. 

FILM 

Dutch Voices: Jos de Putter and Peter Delpeut “Felice... 

Felice...” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“L.P. Latimer: California Watercolor Painter” with Alfred C. Harrison, Jr. at 8 p.m. at The Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St. Donation $8-$12. Part of the Arts and Crafts Lecture Series. 843-8982. 

“Why I Commissioned ‘Dr. Atomic’” with Pamela Rosenberg, General Director, SF Opera at 8 p.m. at the Berkeley Public Library Central Reading Room, 2090 Kittredge. 981-6100. www.berkeleypubliclibrary.org 

“On Nuclear Time” A discussion of the marker to be placed over a New Mexico nuclear waste dump to warn future generations, with Julia Bryan-Wilson of the Rhode Island School of Design at 5 p.m. in Room 160, Kroeber Hall, UC Campus. 

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

Paul Anderson introduces “Hunger’s Brides: A Novel of the Baroque” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

Jacquelynne Baas describes “Smile of the Buddha: Eastern Philosophy and Western Art from Monet to Today” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com  

Word Beat Reading Series with Joan Gatten and Eliza Sheffler at 7 p.m. at Mediterraneum Caffe, 2475 Telegraph Ave., near Dwight Way. 526-5985. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Albany Music in the Park with The Shots, Irish, bluegrass, Cajun music at 6:30 p.m. at Albany’s Memorial Park. 524-9283. www.albanyca.org 

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.  

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

The Dave Bromberg Quartet at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $29.50-$30.50. 548-1761. 

LiveAndUnplugged Open Mic, acoustic music by local artists, at 7 p.m. at Unitarian Universalists, 1924 Cedar St. at Bonita. 703-9350.  

Terry Rodriguez Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $5. 841-JAZZ.  

Phillip Rodriguez, guitar, at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave. 548-5198.  

Michael Fracasso, Ana Egge at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5. 841-2082 www.starryploughpub.com 

Isaac Peña at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $6-$8. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Carlos Oliveira Duo at 8 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

Earl Klugh, contemporary jazz guitarist, at 8 and 10 p.m., through Sun. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is 20-$24. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

Selector: Smartbeat Sound- 

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

?

FRIDAY, SEPT. 23 

Reduced City Services Today Call ahead to ensure programs or services you desire will be available. 981-CITY. www.cityofberkeley.info 

Berkeley High School Class of ‘60 Reunion Tour of BHS at 4 p.m. followed by get-together at Beckett’s. RSVP to Suzanne Fowle Horning at 505-994-2660 or Susan Goodwin Chase at 526-4284. 

Watershed Nursery’s Fall Native Plant Sale from 3 to 7 p.m. and Sat. from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at 155 Tamalpais Rd. www.TheWatershedNursery.Com 

“The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America” with author Jonathan Kozol, at 7:30 p.m. at King Middle School, 1780 Rose St. Sponsored by Cody’s Books. Tickets are $8-$10. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

Activism Series with Ann Fagan Ginger and Aimee Allison at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Unitarian Universalists, 1924 Cedar St. 528-5403. 

Californian Indian Day from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Phoebe Hearst Museum, Bancroft and College. 643-7648. http://hearstmuseum.berkeley.edu 

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon with Sayre Van Young, author of “London’s War.” Luncheon at 11:45 a.m. for $13.50, speech at 12:30 p.m., at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant St. For information and reservations call 526-2925 or 665-9020.  

Lunar Lounge Express Music, movie shorts and a Sonic Vision planetarium show at 8 p.m. at Chabot Space and Science Center, 10000 Skyline Blvd., Oakland. Tickets are $15-$20. 336-7373. www.chabotspace.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. 

Jewish Cooking with Joan Nathan at 11:30 a.m. in a private home. For information call 839-2900, ext. 203. 

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, from noon to 1 p.m. at UC Berkeley, Bancroft at Telegraph. 548-6310. 

Kol Hadash Humanistic Shabbat with Rabbi Jay Heyman, music led by Bon Singer, at 7:30 p.m. at Albany Community Center 1249 Marin Ave. Please bring finger dessert to share, and non-perishable food for the needy. Info@kolhadash.org 

SATURDAY, SEPT. 24 

Berkeley High School Class of ‘60 Reunion Picnic at noon at Cordornices Park, Euclid Ave. Reception and Buffet Dinner at 6:30 p.m. at Golden Gate Fields Clubhouse. RSVP to Suzanne Fowle Horning at 505-994-2660 or Susan Goodwin Chase at 526-4284. 

Free Emergency Preparedness Class in Disaster First Aid from 9 a.m. to noon at 997 Cedar St., between 8th and 9th. To sign up call 981-5605. www.ci.berkeley. 

ca.us/fire/oes.html 

Watershed Environmental Poetry Festival from noon to 5 p.m. at the North Fork of Strawberry Creek, Valley Life Sciences Building lawn, UC Campus. www.poetryflash.org 

“Equal Day and Equal Night All Around the World” Explore past and present cultural celebrations from 2 to 4 p.m. at Tilden Nture Area, Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

“Going Native” Symposium on California native plants, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., field trip on Sun. Cost is $125, plus $45 for the field trip. Sponsored by the Friends of the Regional Parks Botanic Garden. To register call 527-9802. www.nativeplants.org 

Workshop on the Individual Education Program for parents of children with special needs from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge. To register call the Disability Rights Education & Defense Fund, 644-2555. 

“A Union Man: The Life and Work of Julius Margolin” a film by George Mann at 8 p.m., followed by discussion and music, at Berkeley Fellowship, 1924 Cedar St. Donation $5-$10. 841-4824. 

Berkeley Lawn Bowling Club Open House from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Free instruction and snacks will be available. All are welcome. 2270 Acton St. at BAncroft. 841-2174. 

Memorial for Marylin Davis Glover at 2 p.m. at the Berkeley Yacht Club, 1 Seawall Drive. 

Eldercare 101 Learn about care options for seniors, how to pay for it, and communication on difficult topics at 9:30 a.m. at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, 6013 Lawton Ave., Oakland. Cost is $39, registration required. 415-661-3271. eldercoach@sbcglobal.net 

Child Health and Safety Fair with games and activities, free immunizations and safety information, for families with children ages 1-12, from 1:30 to 5 p.m. at Highland Hospital, 1411 E. 31st St., Oakland. Sponsored by the Alameda County Medical Center. 437-4644. 

Kids’ Night Out Carnival Benefit for Berkwood Hedge School, with piñatas, slide shows, basketball and art projects. From 5 to 10 pm. at Berkewood Hedge in downtown Berkeley. Tickets are $40, siblings $25. 540-6025. 

Asthma Walk at Lake Merritt at 9 a.m. starting across the street from the Rotary Nature Center, 600 Bellevue Ave., Oakland. Sponsored by the American Lung Association of the East Bay. 800-586-4872.  

International Maritime Center Shoreline Stroll Walkathon Registration on-site begins at 8 a.m., walk begins at 9 a.m. The $75 entry fee will be waived for participants who obtain pledges for donations on a per-mile basis that total $75 or more. Korean-style barbecue lunch at 11:30 a.m. 839-2226. www.sfbayfarer.org 

Walking Tour of Old Oakland around the restored 1870s business district. Meet at 10 a.m. in front of G.B. Ratto’s at 827 Washington St. Tour lasts 90 minutes. Reservations can be made by calling 238-3234. 

ActivSpace Art and Crafts Sidewalk Fair Sat. and Sun. 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at 2703 7th St. 

School of the Madeleine Fall Festival from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at 1225 Milvia St. Live entertainment, children’s games, vendors, farmers market and more. 526-4744. 

“Deer Resistant Plants” with Aerin Moore at 10 a.m. at Magic Gardens, 729 Heinz Ave. 644-2351. 

Pacific Coast League Players’ Reunion at 11 a.m. at the Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak Sts. Meet the players and see the exhibition “Baseball As America.” 238-2200. www.museumca.org 

Free Quit Smoking Class for pregnant and parenting women from 9:30 to 11:30 a.m. at Alta Bates, first floor auditorium, 2450 Ashby Ave. Childcare provided. Free but registration requested. 981-5330. quitnow@ci.berkeley.ca.us 

Bilingual and Multicultural Program Orientation for Hispanic/Latino children ages 2-10 at 10 a.m. at Centro VIDA, 1000 Camelia St. For more information call 525-1463. 

Free Help with Computers at the El Cerrito Library. Workshops held on Sat. a.m. at 6510 Stockton Ave., El Cerrito. Registration required. 526-7512.  

SUNDAY, SEPT. 25 

How Berkeley Can You Be? Parade at 11 a.m. at University Ave. at Sacramento. Festival from noon to 5 p.m. at Civic Center Park. www.howberkeleycanyoube.com 

People’s Park Free Box Rebuilding using the natural building cob, from 1 to 6 p.m. at People’s Park. 548-2220, ext. 233. 

Re-Opening of the Berkeley Public Library Sunday Hours Celebration at 1 p.m. with a presentation of a check from friends of the Berkeley Public Library. 2090 Kittredge St. 981-6115. 

Out and About in Rockridge Street Fair from noon to 5 p.m. on College Ave. between Alcatraz and Broadway. Music, food and activities for children. Free trolleys up and down College Ave. www.rockridgedistrict.com 

Breakfast with the Beasts Bring a donation of fresh produce to share with the animals and learn how the animals are cared for. From 8 to 10 a.m. at the Oakland Zoo. 632-9525. www.oaklandzoo.org 

“Sacred Sites” films about the struggle to protect sacred sites at 3 p.m. at Fantasy Recording Studios, 10 and Parker Sts. Donation $10. 525-1304. www.sacred-sites.org 

Berkeley City Club free tour from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. Tours are sponsored by the Berkeley City Club and the Landmark Heritage Foundation. Donations welcome. The Berkeley City Club is located at 2315 Durant Ave. For group reservations or more information, call 848-7800 or 883-9710. 

Hurricane Relief Fundraising Dinner and Auction from 5 to 8 p.m. at Hs Lordships Restaurant, 199 Seawall Drive in the Berkeley Marina. $100 minimum donation per person to the charity of your choice: Berkeley Rotary Endowment - Hurricane Katrina Fund, Relief International, or The American Red Cross. 100% of your donation will go to charity. All event costs have been donated. Please RSVP to 848-0264. 

Fall Plant Sale at the UC Botanical Garden from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at 200 Centennial Drive. 643-2755. 

Meet the Guinea Pigs and learn about basic small animal care at 2 p.m. at Rabbitears, 303 Arlington Ave., Kensington. 525-6155. 

“Hollywood Hats” the film at 2 p.m. at Berkeley Richmond Jewish Community Center, 1414 Walnut St. Cost is $8-$10. 848-0237. 

Free Garden Tours at Regional Parks Botanic Garden in Tilden Park Sat. and Sun. at 2 p.m. Call to confirm. 841-8732. www.nativeplants.org 

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

“Probing the Interface Between Science and Religion” with David Lingenfelter at 9:30 a.m. at Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, 1 Lawson Rd., Kensington. 525-0302, ext. 306. 

MONDAY, SEPT. 26 

“Getting Adequate Rest As We Age” at 6 p.m. at Center for Older Adult Services, 828 San Pablo Ave. To register call 558-7800. 

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 

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. 

TUESDAY, SEPT. 27 

Return of the Over-the-Hills Gang Hikers 55 years and older who are interested in nature study, history, fitness, and fun are invited to join us on a series of monthly excursions exploring our Regional Parks. Meets at 10 a.m. to discover the Miller/Knox Shoreline. For information and to register call 525-2233.  

Tilden Explorers An after-school nature adventure program from 3:15 to 4:45 p.m. for 5-7 year olds, who may be accompanied by an adult. No younger siblings please. We will learn about birds and bird migration. Cost is $6-$8. Registration required. 636-1684. 

The Berkeley High School Site Council meets at 4:30 p.m. in the school library. bhs.berkeleypta.org/ssc 

“Issues in Dying: Learning from Terry Schaivo” An evening with Anne Wall, Ryan Lesh and Kathleen Kelly at 7:30 p.m. in the Tuscan Common Room, Church Divinity School of the Pacific, 2451 Ridge Rd. To register call 204-0720. www.cdsp.edu 

Mountain Biking Basics for Women at 7 p.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. 527-4140. 

“Why We Need Black Power” with Omali Yeshitela, chair of the African People’s Socialist Party, at 6 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St., Oakland. Donations accepted. 625-1106. 

Workshop on the Individual Education Program for parents of children with special needs at St. Paul’s AME Church, 2024 Ashby Ave. Free, but registration required. To register call the Disability Rights Education & Defense Fund, 644-2555. 

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 PC Users Group Problem solving and beginners meeting to answer, in simple English, users questions about Windows computers. At 7 p.m. at 1145 Walnut St. corner of Eunice. All welcome, no charge. 527-2177.  

Family Story Time at 7 p.m. at the Kensington Branch Library, 61 Arlington Ave., Kensington. Free, all ages welcome. 524-3043. 

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

Berkeley Camera Club meets at 7:30 p.m., at the Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. Share your digital images, slides and prints and learn what other photographers are doing. Monthly field trips. 548-3991. www.berkeleycameraclub.org 

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

St. John’s Prime Timers Annual Picnic at 10:30 a.m. at Lake Temescal. We offer ongoing classes in exercise and creative arts, and always welcome new members over 50. 845-6830. 

WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 28 

WriterCoach Connection Training Sessions Wed. Sept. 28 and Oct. 5 at 6:30 p.m. Help students improve their writing and critical thinking skills; become a mentor to students at Berkeley High, Willard, King or Longfellow Middle Schools. Commit to 1-2 hours per week during the school day. To register call 524-2319. www.writercoachconnection.org  

Green Business Tour of the Teleosis Institute to learn about ecologically sustainable medicine at 7 p.m. at 1521B 5th St. 558-7285. www.teleosis.org 

Berkeley Gray Panthers celebrates the 100th Birthday of Maggie Kuhn at 1:30 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 548-9696. 

An Evening for Educators at the Magnes at 6:30 p.m. Reservations required. 549-6950 ext. 333.  

Writers of the Storm: “Fake News and Public Decency in the Age of Terror” a writers panel moderated by Clinton Fein of the First Amendment Project, at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley Richmond Jewish Community Center, 1414 Walnut St. Cost is $10-$15. 848-0237. 

Bayswater Book Club meets to discuss “The Long Emergency” by James Kuntsler at 6:30 p.m. at Barnes and Noble, El Cerrito Plaza. 433-2911. 

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 every Wednesday 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. 

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 An ongoing group made up of friendly writers who are serious about our craft. All levels welcome. At 7 p.m. at BRJCC, 1414 Walnut St. 848-0237. georgeporter@earthlink.net 

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. 

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. 

Berkeley Peace Walk and Vigil at the Berkeley BART Station. Sing for Peace at 6:30 p.m. Peace Walk at 7 p.m. www. 

geocities.com/vigil4peace/vigil 

THURSDAY, SEPT. 29 

“Impacts of the Proposed Rezoning of Ashby and Gilman” Community Workshop on the potential displacement of industries, artisans, and artists; and impacts on traffic, jobs; neighborhood character and quality of life, at 7 p.m. at the West Berkeley Senior Center, 1900 Sixth St. 841-7283, ext. 304. 

WAGES: Women’s Action to Gain Economic Security celebrates ten years of work with women’s cooperatives, at 5:30 p.m. at Lake Merritt United Methodist Church, 1255 First Ave., Oakland. Donations welcome. RSVP to 532-5465. 

Funkytown Trunk Show by East Bay fashion designers at 6 p.m. at 510 17th St., Oakland. Salvation Army trucks will be on site to accept clothing for Katrina victims. Tickets are $10. 879-3724. www.at17th.com 

Protest Rally at Berkeley Honda, Shattuck and Parker every Thursday 4:30 to 6 p.m.  

World Affairs/Politics Group for people 60 years and older at 3:30 p.m. at Albany Senior Center, 846 Masonic Ave. Cost is $2.50. 524-9122. 

Science of Breath Seminar, for stress management, at 7:30 p.m. in the Home Room, International House, 2299 Piedmont Ave. For information call 894-2920. www.artofliving.org 

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

“Using Medications Safely” at 7 p.m. at Center for Older Adult Services, 828 San Pablo Ave. To register call 558-7800. 

World of Plants Tours Thurs., Sat. and Sun. at 1:30 p.m. at the UC Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Drive. Cost is $5. 643-2755. http://botanicalgarden.berkeley.edu 

CITY MEETINGS 

Parks and Recreation Commission meets Mon., Sept. 26, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Virginia Aiello, 981-5158. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/ 

commissions/parksandrecreation 

City Council meets Tues., Sept. 27 at 7 p.m in City Council Chambers. 981-6900. www.ci. 

berkeley.ca.us/citycouncil 

Citizens Budget Review Commission meets Wed., Sept. 28, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-7041.  

Civic Arts Commission meets Wed., Sept. 28, at 6:30 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Mary Ann Merker, 981-7533. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/ 

commissions/civicarts 

Disaster Council meets Wed., Sept. 28 at 7 p.m., at the Emergency Operations Center, 997 Cedar St. William Greulich, 981-5502. www.ci.berkeley.ca. us/commissions/disaster 

Energy Commission meets Wed., Sept. 28, at 6:30 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Neal De Snoo, 981-5434. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/energy 

Planning Commission meets Wed., Sept. 28, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Janet Homrighausen, 981-7484. www.ci.berkeley. ca.us/commissions/planning 

Police Review Commission meets Wed. Sept. 28, at 7:30 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-4950. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/policereview

Ever since he moved into the neighborhood earlier this year, Don Oppenheim wished for the demise of Grove Liquor in the heart of the fledgling Ashby Arts District. 

But when the liquor store on the corner of Martin Luther King Jr. Way and Ashby Avenue lost its lease last month, Oppenheim, who lives a block away, knew it was too early to celebrate.  

“A coffee shop, small cafe or even a pool hall could really help this neighborhood turn the corner,” he said.  

During the past few weeks, city officials and local merchants have implored the building’s owner, Sucha Singh Banger, who also owns the troubled Black & White Liquor at 3027 Adeline St., not to open a new liquor store at the Grove Liquor site. 

“Another liquor store would be devastating,” Oppenheim said.  

Reached at his store Monday, Banger said neighbors would likely get their wish. “It’s not going to be a liquor store,” he said. “It will probably be a cafe or a grocery store.” 

Days earlier, Banger’s brother told the Daily Planet that Grove Liquor would become “Black & White Two.” Banger said his brother must have been joking. 

A series of troubles at Black & White began in June when police arrested the night clerk, Satnan Singh, for buying stolen liquor. Then, a month later, a fire that Berkeley Deputy Fire Chief David Orth said appeared to have been intentionally set, gutted the shop and upstairs residence. A search of the apartment later turned up a cache of illegal military-grade firearms. 

Black & White is shut now due to the fire damage and Banger said he intends to reopen at the location, but did not know when. Some neighbors had speculated that Banger planned to move his operation to the now empty Grove Liquor site about a block away, but Banger said that was not his plan. 

Local merchants and city officials say Banger is charging too much rent for the location to lure potential cafe operators, sparking fears he still intends to open a second liquor store at the Grove site. 

A second Black & White is not what Ashby Arts District organizations have in mind. Anchored by Epic Arts, a community art center and concert space, and the Ashby Stage, home to Berkeley’s Shotgun Players, the area now has evening events but few food establishments to support the venues, said Shotgun Artistic Director Patrick Dooley.  

“A vibrant business that the community supports would do wonders for us,” he said. Dooley added that he often had to pick up empty beer bottles and plastic vodka containers from outside Grove Liquor and watch men selling drugs on the corner.  

“Since the store closed almost overnight all that traffic has gone away,” he said. “I don’t think it matters who’s running the shop. A liquor store and selling drugs go hand-in-hand.” 

Councilmember Max Anderson said he wants to see a book store or coffee shop on the corner, but cautioned that the city had few options to force Banger’s hand.  

City officials have put potential cafe operators in touch with Banger, but no one could hammer out a lease. 

“He’s asking for too much money,” said Dave Fogarty of the city’s Office of Economic Development. Banger said he is asking $4,500 a month for the shop, about $1,000 more a month than he charged to the operators of Grove Liquor.  

Epic Arts Executive Director Ashley Berkowitz said he also failed to sway Banger to either sell the building or agree to terms with a tenant that wasn’t a liquor store or dollar store. “He’s not being realistic about what the building’s worth,” Berkowitz said. 

According to Berkowitz, the storefront is a “tear-down,” and Banger hasn’t expressed much interest in making improvements that would attract a café operator. Banger told the Daily Planet that he was willing to fix up the building. 

Black & White Liquor is facing a 20-day liquor suspension and three-years probation for buying stolen liquor during a police decoy operation. Banger can’t escape the penalties by switching his liquor license to the former Grove Liquor, according to Alcohol Beverage Control District Administrator Andrew Gomez. 

“We would move to transfer the disciplinary history to the new shop,” Gomez said. He added that ABC couldn’t punish Banger for his tenant’s illegal weapon cache, and that Black & White received only a 20-day suspension because it was the night clerk, and not Banger, who police caught buying the stolen alcohol.  

However, Gomez said that if Banger, or any other potential liquor store operator, should seek a license to set up shop at the former Grove site, neighbors have the right to protest the license application.  

And if police and residents could show that the store was in an area with a high crime rate and an over-concentration of liquor stores, Gomez said the city could possibly block the license or at least restrict hours of operation or the types of containers sold in the shop.  

Michael Caplan, a City of Berkeley neighborhood services liaison, said Berkeley had few options to stop Banger from opening up a new liquor shop at the corner.  

“There’s no zoning mechanism to say it can’t be a liquor store,” he said. Caplan added that the city would have to go through its nuisance abatement process to fight the license. Showing that a liquor store on the corner would constitute a nuisance would be difficult, he added, because Grove Liquor didn’t generate many complaints.  

“It’s not that Grove was bad,” Caplan said. “It’s more that people would like to see it be something more beneficial.”

Berkeley police waited too long to call for paramedics as a man died in their custody last year, a three-person panel of the Berkeley Police Review Commission concluded. 

In a report issued last week, the panel sustained four allegations against Officer George Hamilton and Jailer Lee Erby for not following protocol when a man in their custody stopped speaking and was bleeding from inside his mouth. 

The commission ruled that the officers made mistakes by never searching the man’s mouth and waiting nearly an hour to call paramedics. 

Tyrone Hughes Jr. died in custody last March after he swallowed five plastic bags of cocaine when stopped in his car by police. 

The PRC panel did not blame the officers for Hughes’ death. In the autopsy report, Dr. Paul Herrmann wrote that Hughes had “the highest blood level of cocaine I’ve ever seen.” 

He concluded that Hughes would have died even if police had called paramedics earlier, according to PRC Secretary Dan Silva. 

Still PRC Commissioner Sharon Kidd wrote that the response from the two officers “was neither adequate nor timely, nor in accordance with BPD policies and procedures.” 

Hughes’ son Tyrone said the PRC ruling, which has no legal consequence for the officers, did not diminish his anger towards Berkeley police. 

“To watch a person die and not do anything?” he said. “I’m waiting for a white person to die like that.” 

The BPD’s Internal Affairs Unit also investigated Hughes’ death, but its findings are confidential. 

On the early morning of March 29, Officer Hamilton stopped Hughes’ car when he noticed the two-door convertible had no front license plate. A records check found that Hughes had an outstanding felony warrant for drug possession. Two baggies of illegal drugs were later recovered from Hughes jacket pocket by jailer Erby. 

Hughes arrived at Berkeley jail at 1:26 a.m. and while booking him, Hamilton noticed a couple of drops of blood coming from between Hughes’ lips, according to the PRC report. 

When Hamilton asked Hughes if he needed medical attention, Hughes shook his head indicating “no,” and Hamilton continued filling out paper work. 

As Hughes’ condition worsened, both Hamilton and Erby began wondering if Hughes was hiding drugs in his mouth, according to the PRC report. 

Hamilton put his hands on Hughes’ face but didn’t force open his mouth. Hamilton later told police investigators that he thought “there might be some medical circumstances going on and my pressing on [his mouth] wasn’t going to help him.... So I decided not to do that.” 

Hughes was then strip-searched by Erby. After the search, which did not involve looking inside Hughes’ mouth, Hughes slumped to the floor and the officers again saw blood coming from his mouth. 

Hamilton told BPD investigators that he then left the cell for a minute to ask other jailers what a “dope sick person looked like” because he “hadn’t seen one before.” 

Hamilton returned to find Hughes “lying and twitching on the floor as if he was having a seizure.” 

Then, according to fire department records, Hamilton called for paramedics at 2:21 a.m., nearly an hour after first seeing blood fall from Hughes’ mouth. 

Paramedics removed two pieces of chewed up plastic from Hughes’ mouth and rushed him to Alta Bates Hospital where he was pronounced dead at 3:27 a.m. 

The three-member PRC panel unanimously sustained one allegation against Erby for not providing prompt medical assistance. The commissioners were troubled that Erby gave conflicting testimony. He testified at the panel hearing that he knew Hughes was in trouble and was under the impression that the fire department had been called. However, in his interview with PRC investigators he said he had no reason to call paramedics and that the blood “could have been anything ... bleeding gums ... some kind of illness that made him bleed ...”  

By a vote of 2-1, the panel also ruled that Hamilton failed to provide medical assistance and that Erby and Hamilton had acted improperly by not searching Hughes’ mouth. 

In dissent, Commissioner Jack Radisch, a retired prosecutor, said there was no law requiring police “to make a violent, intrusive entry into the body cavity of a person.” Radisch continued, “There was probably little or nothing that could have been done to save the life of a man who refused to complain even when it must have been apparent that he had a serious problem.” 

›

Former gubernatorial and vice-presidential candidate Peter Camejo told a gathering of progressives in Oakland Saturday that recent events in New Orleans and the drop in American support for the occupation in Iraq “is a tremendous opening for the Green Party. This is a peculiar moment where we can win over people massively by explaining to them what is happening in our country and in the world.” 

The speech by Camejo, the Green Party co-founder, was the keynote of a “Back to School Not War” rally at Oakland’s Laney College, part of a two-day statewide conference sponsored by the party. 

The event was the first general gathering of California Greens in three years. 

Camejo said his comments on Iraq were prompted by a New York Times/CBS poll showing that 44 percent of individuals polled believed that the United States made the right decision in taking military action against Iraq, a figure the New York Times said was “the lowest rating since the question was first asked by this poll more than two years ago.” 

The newspaper also reported that 52 percent of people interviewed called for an immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq, “even if that means abandoning President Bush’s goal of restoring stability to that country.” 

The war in Iraq was also the subject of the speech by the rally’s other main speaker, rising local Green Party star Aimee Allison, a Gulf War conscientious objector who placed fourth last May in a nine-person race for the District 2 Oakland City Council race. 

“I am thinking that we know right now in this country what it must have felt like to be in Germany in the 1930s,” Allison said, “when ordinary Germans saw Hitler take over the courts, used an attack on the national legislature to take over the legislature, and waged war abroad as well as on the German people.” 

Without naming George W. Bush by name but in an obvious reference to the president, Allison declared to shouts and applause from the audience that “we have a war criminal in our midst. I don’t want to see him out of office. I want to see him jailed.” 

Allison announced that she will be a Green Party candidate for the Oakland City Council. 

Ragina Johnson, the campaign director for the November College Not Combat ballot advisory proposition asking San Francisco voters to call for the banning of military recruiters from the city schools, linked Iraq and Hurricane Katrina together, stating that “the war is being paid for with the lives of people in the gulf coast.” 

It was an allusion to the fact that National Guard troops were unavailable for rescue work following the hurricane and floods because many of them were on duty in Iraq. 

The rally’s third major speaker, former Black Panther Party Chairperson Elaine Brown, could not deliver her speech by telephone from Brunswick, Ga., because of technical problems. Brown is a Green Party candidate for Brunswick mayor. 

But Brown’s place on the program was taken by two last-minute additions recently returned from the New Orleans hurricane disaster, San Francisco paramedics Larry Bradshaw and Lorrie Beth Slonsky, who received a heroes’ welcome from the crowd. 

Bradshaw and Slonsky said they “happened to be in New Orleans when the hurricane hit,” and their e-mail account of their horrific experiences during the disaster was widely circulated around the Internet this month. The message included stories that Jefferson Parish sheriff’s deputies in neighboring Gretna, La., fired shots over the heads of New Orleans hurricane survivors to prevent them from walking across a Mississippi River bridge into Gretna, and charges that a Jefferson Parish deputy later looted food from those survivors after they were forced to disperse. 

Bradshaw said he wanted to dispel the myth that New Orleans citizens simply sat around following the hurricane and waited to be rescued. 

“We witnessed incredible acts of heroism being carried out by ordinary people,” he said, “maintenance workers using forklifts to carry out the sick and the wounded, refinery workers stealing boats so they could rescue people trapped by the floodwaters, engineers hotwiring cars and then using them to transport people out of the disaster area.” 

Slonsky contrasted those actions of “ordinary people” with their experiences with many police and National Guard officials, who they said often hampered relief efforts rather than helping them. 

“It was clear that if you were black and poor, you were not going to be able to get out of New Orleans immediately after the hurricane,” she said. Both Bradshaw and Slonsky are white. 

Workshops during the two-day event were divided between progressive issues—- such as education, American Muslims in the era of the Patriot Act, universal health care, for example—and strategies for building the Green Party and winning elections. 

Alameda County Green Party central council member Greg Jan said that the state party holds two to three decision-making sessions a year among party officials, but “wants to hold more informal gatherings on a regular basis so that we can network among ourselves and share information with other progressive organizations.” 

At one of the Saturday workshop sessions, a Green Party presenter said it “felt good to be able to debate some of these ideas in person; usually we’re just exchanging e-mails.” 

›

What is the shame of the American nation? 

Longtime American educator, civil rights advocate and activist, and award-winning author Jonathan Kozol believes it is the “restoration of apartheid schooling in American education,” and it is the subject of his recently released book The Shame of the Nation. 

An educator himself, Kozol began his teaching career in a black elementary school in his native Boston in 1964, shortly after the news of the assasination-murder of three Mississippi Freedom Summer workers had shocked the conscience of the nation. He has been an active advocate for reform of the nation’s education system ever since. 

Kozol brings his thoughts on the issue to Berkeley this Friday evening when he speaks at Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School on Rose Street at 7:30 p.m. A reception precedes the talk at 6:45, and a book-signing follows. 

Admission to the event is $10 ($8 for students), with proceeds to go to the Chez Panisse Foundation for Berkeley’s School Lunch Initiative. 

In The Shame of the Nation, Kozol charges that America’s public education system has reverted to a segregation that is in many ways worse than was seen before the Supreme Court’s historic Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954. As in many of his previous books (among them Death at an Early Age, Children of the Revolution and Savage Inequalities), The Shame of the Nation takes its main sources not from newspaper articles or academic studies, but from the author’s tireless wanderings of the nation’s inner city school hallways and cafeterias and classrooms, probing, observing, chatting with principals and teachers and students alike. His conclusions, therefore, are drawn from the “is,” rather than what politicians or educational professionals might either want it or believe it “to be.” 

The re-segregation of American schools, he writes, has turned into a situation where mostly-white suburban schools are often havens for critical thinking and holistic personal advancement, while mostly-black and Latino inner-city schools are relegated to prepare their charges for entering the low-income working class. He chides the corporate takeover of large portions of inner-city public education. 

“When business and the world of commerce are permitted to invade the precincts of our public schools,” he writes, “they tell the urban school officials, sometimes in so many words, that what they need the schools to give them are ‘team players.’” He adds that “there will, I am afraid, be fewer fascinating mavericks, fewer penetrating questioners, and fewer powerful dissenters coming from our inner-city schools before too long if this agenda cannot be reversed. Team players may well be of great importance to the operation of a business corporation, and they are obviously essential in the military services; but a healthy nation needs its future poets, prophets, ribald satirists, and maddening iconoclasts at least as much as it needs people who will file in a perfect line to an objective they are told they cannot question.” 

It is to Kozol’s credit that he is one of the few national figures who has continued to point out the value to America of the production of such individuals in the nation’s less-affluent schools. 

Kozol’s condemnation of the current national educational policy is unrelenting. 

“I went to Washington to challenge the soft bigotry of low expectations,” he quotes President George W. Bush in a 2004 re-election campaign speech. “It’s working. It’s making a difference.” And, according to Kozol, “it is one of those deadly lies which, by sheer repetition, is at length accepted by large numbers of Americans as, perhaps, a rough approximation of the truth.” Kozol calls the president’s claim that the national policies to uplift the education of minority and low-income students is “not an innocent misstatement of the facts [but] a devious appeasement of the heartache of the parents of the black and brown and poor.” 

But while he sees a bleak picture in many inner-city schools both from lack of money and motivation, Kozol has high praise for the many highly-competent educational professionals who have stayed in the inner city and dug in deep and fought to make a difference. 

With a writing style like a man who has so many words to get out so fast that they seem to pile upon themselves as they fall out onto the page, Kozol notes that “beneath the radar of efficiency technicians and the stern disciplines of instructional approaches based on strict ... controls, one still may find humane and happy elementary schools ... within poor neighborhoods in which affectionate and confident and morally committed teachers do not view themselves as the floor managers for industry whose job it is to pump some ‘added value’ into undervalued children.” Kozol praises these teachers for ‘com[ing] into this very special world of miniature joys and miniature griefs out of their fascination and delight with growing children and are thoroughly convinced that each and every one of them has an inherent value to begin with.” 

Amtrak passengers no longer have to leap onto commuter trains at Berkeley’s rail stop. 

On Saturday Berkeley opened its new rail platform at Third Street and University Avenue, giving passengers easy access to Amtrak trains.  

Since Berkeley lost its train station more than 30 years ago, the waiting area had consisted of two benches on a dimly lit street with no rain shelter other than the University Avenue overpass. Passengers had to board trains from the street-level track, a nearly impossible task for wheelchair users. 

“We were the worst stop on the line,” said Berkeley Redevelopment Manager Iris Starr, who managed the $2.4 million project. 

Besides a new platform, the new rail-stop renovation also includes trees, benches, lighting and a hub for AC Transit’s 51 bus that will serve the station. A rain shelter is nearly finished, and the Civic Arts Commission is deciding on a public art installation for the platform, Starr added. 

Amtrak makes 18 stops a day in Berkeley, serving about 80 passengers along its Capital Corridor line from San Jose through Sacramento, according to Starr. She said the city hoped the new platform would convince Amtrak to add Berkeley as a stop to the San Joaquin line that goes through Stockton on its way to Bakersfield. 

Amtrak spokesperson Vernae Graham said the rail agency would consider restoring a Berkeley stop to the line. Amtrak removed the stop several years ago because of a lack of ridership in Berkeley, she said. 

Graham said Amtrak had no plans to rebuild a full-service train station in Berkeley. Most stations outside the northeast are owned by cities or private owners, she said. 

A new platform had been the top priority for Berkeley’s Redevelopment Agency. The agency received just over $1 million in federal and state grants through Caltrans for the $2.4 million project. 

Along with the new platform, the city is installing six 10-hour parking meters for commuters, Starr said. Unlike many other train stations in the state, there is no free parking available at the Berkeley stop. 

In 1971, the Southern Pacific Railroad sold the Berkeley train station, which later became a Chinese restaurant, according to Phil Gale of the Berkeley Historical Society. That same year, he said, Amtrak, which took over Southern Pacific’s routes, stopped train service in Berkeley.  

In the 1980s, Amtrak reopened the Berkeley stop for its Capitol Corridor line. 

The original train station, designated a structure of merit by the city Landmarks Preservation Commission, might become the new home of Brennan’s Restaurant, which is being forced from its home on Fourth Street to make way for a condominium project.

String is not a material known for its lasting qualities. Just right for tying up a package, substituting for a shoelace or belt, fashioning a phone between two cans or serving as a memory enhancer tied around your finger, you wouldn’t expect to find your accountant’s office hung with string assemblages. String wouldn’t be your first choice for a grocery list or message to a friend. 

Yet in the Incan Empire, multiple strings with a series of knots were used for just these tasks. Recently new discoveries have been made in the difficult attempt to decipher their meanings. 

Peru’s “Children of the Sun” controlled over 5,000 miles of land, stretching from Ecuador to Chile, and over six million people. With great military strength the Incas conquered cultures and collected massive amounts of information regarding textile techniques, architecture, gold-working, irrigation, pottery and healing. The Inca state relied on a foundation of well-organized and efficient agriculture. Huge surpluses of food grown in irrigated deserts and on terraced mountainsides filled great storehouses.  

Armies marching thousands of miles had no need to carry provisions as a vast network of tambos (lodges with storehouses) were situated every six miles. Each major tambo and bridge employed a khipukamayaq, an accountant who kept track of all the people and goods moving along the road, and sent these records to the administrative heads in Cusco, the Incan capital. 

Khipukamayaqs were also in charge of levying the critical labor tax in the form of yearly workdays on state projects. Incans were organized into accounting units based on ten. Groups of 10, 50, 100 and 500 laborers were then organized into larger and larger administrative units. While the upper hierarchy controlled distribution, it was critical for local officials to maintain accurate records of laborers, units and work days completed. 

The one thing the Inca Empire did not have was any form of writing. How then was this massive amount of numerical data kept and transferred? 

Records were kept on khipu. Used as communication devices for census, financial and military data, they were, effectively, the ledger books for this far-reaching empire. Orders were issued down through the hierarchy then transferred between different accounting levels in the Inca administrative system on these assemblages of string. 

Khipu resembled a grass skirt: a single, long cord from which would be suspended up to 2,000 pendant strings, each with an array of knots. Three types of knots were used: simple overhand, long knots of two or more turns and figure eight knots. Simple knots were used for digits in the positions of ten or higher. Long knots represented digits in the units position, a figure eight knot represented one and no knot stood for zero. A pendant string with a cluster of six simple knots, followed by a cluster of four simple knots and a long knot with three turns would stand for the number 643. 

Today between 600 and 700 khipu remain, an amazing feat in itself. Information about how khipu were used died out long ago. Without written records, much that had been deciphered was compiled from investigations on a small scale. More and more, anthropologists are intrigued with the role khipu played. Could they be a three-dimensional form of textile-based writing? Could the sequences of knots represent more than mathematical information? Recent studies, especially the work done by Harvard’s Gary Urton and Carrie Brezine, have begun to answer some of these questions. 

The first large-scale study was done by Marcia and Robert Ascher of Cornell University, who catalogued over 200 khipu according to several factors: type of cord, placement, length, color, knot type and position. The Aschers’ studies determined that many cords represent numbers and mathematical operations but that a good percentage of the strands appear to represent something else, perhaps a place, person or object. Their work also sparked renewed efforts toward decoding khipu. 

In 1956 Peruvian archeologists working at Puruchuco, an Incan administrative center near Lima, unearthed a vessel hidden beneath the ruins of the floor of a small building near the palace. Inside what may have been the home of the khipukamayaq, they discovered 21 khipu. Anthropologist Gary Urton and mathematician-weaver Carrie Brezine developed a relational computer database for analysis of 7 of these khipu, of a type labeled “accounting hierarchy” khipu. 

Brezine found that the seven khipu all used a hierarchal arrangement of three interconnected, mathematically related levels. It is thought that successive officials utilized them in compiling totals where upward movements on the strands signified additions while downward movements were sub-divisions. In this way, values could be added or subtracted as the khipu moved between local villages and upward to the powerful central government in Cusco. 

Brezine’s computer database was used to search data on nearly half of the existing khipu. It located patterns in khipu consisting of 2 to 500 strands of varying colors and lengths. From this, Urton and Brezine concluded that a specific detail found at the beginning of all the 21 khipu—three figure eight knots—could code for Puruchuco, making it the first “word” derived from Inca khipu. 

Urton’s previous research suggested that khipu recovered from burial sites could also have been used as calendars. Containing 730 strings arranged in 24 sets, these khipu exactly represented the number of days and months in two years. 

Almost simultaneous research by Ruth Shady Solis of Lima’s National University of San Marcos supports the theory that khipu were more than numeric. Working at Caral, an ancient city north of Lima, Solis discovered ladder-like assemblages of twelve cotton strings between 4000 and 4500 years old. The pendant strings twisted around small sticks could be among the oldest means of communication. 

Though the Inca Empire no longer exists, its mysteries continue to intrigue both travelers and scientists alike. Computers offer new methods for unraveling ancient puzzles but questions remain. Were khipu more than mathematical ledger-books? If so, how were the identities of objects recorded in these knotted strings? As long as the strings exist, research will delve into their past and their meaning. ›

BATON ROUGE, La.—The New Orleans Stare. You can see it in the faces of Katrina survivors here at the evacuation shelter at the River Center in Baton Rouge.  

A woman looks blankly at nothing—rubbing her face and short graying afro with wrinkled brown hands, sitting on a lonely chair outside the complex. Old men sit on the curb smoking cigarettes and talking quietly to one another. Young men try to occupy themselves by talking with relief workers and National Guardsmen with M-16s. The stare—the facial manifestation of overwhelming loss—is in all of the evacuees’ eyes.  

About 2,000 people call the River Center home. The vast majority is African American. Though their immediate physical needs are being met, the mental health issues black people are dealing with are off the radar screen in the debate surrounding the recovery of the Gulf Coast region.  

Dr. Rasheda Perine, 32, a New Orleans native, is an assistant professor of psychology at Southern University in Baton Rouge and a practicing clinical psychologist. Her immediate family and a family friend are staying with her, all evacuees from New Orleans. The East New Orleans neighborhood where she grew up has been completely destroyed.  

Baton Rouge has added 260,000 new residents in the last 14 days, making it the fastest-growing city in America. Most of the newcomers are from New Orleans.  

Dr. Perine knows that seeking help through therapy is an issue for black people.  

“There is a lot of stigma in the black community about therapy,” Perine says. “You are supposed to deal with your own problems. We are like super-people—we’re not supposed to cry.”  

She says African Americans suffer “a lot of self-hatred because we won’t express ourselves,” and thinks that most Katrina victims will face Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.  

“When you go through something very traumatic, you re-live it over and over again,” Perine says. “You have nightmares, a lot of anxiety. You can’t function as you normally would for months and sometimes years.”  

Dr. Perine herself has the look. As she talks, the tears are just beneath the surface of her face, like river water behind a levee about to burst.  

“I don’t think I have actually cried about it yet,” she says, “I think it is going to happen soon but I have to be strong for my family.”  

She has, however, taken the time to process what the destruction of New Orleans means for American society, especially black people.  

“I think racism is so much a part of our culture that it is covert. I don’t think that President Bush outright dislikes black people, but it is so much a part of our culture that when you see a black face you don’t feel as much sympathy or empathy as you do a white face. If there were cameras showing the white faces, the evacuation would have been quicker.”  

Lenard Rochon, 32, is from the lower ninth ward in New Orleans. He got his rap name, Venom, by “doing sneaky things and living a sneaky life and learning the hard way, basically.” He’s lived at the River City shelter with 24 members of his family since August 28, the day before the storm.  

“It’s stressful, it’s hard, because I know I lost a lot of people down there in the ninth ward,” says Rochon, who hasn’t accessed any mental health services at the shelter. He deals with the stress by writing rhymes.  

“I don’t express my problems and my feelings by telling them to people,” Rochon says. “Most of the time I express them by rappin’ and thinking. I talk to my wife sometimes, but that’s about it.”  

Rochon wrote the following rap in the shelter, and as he busts it one of his young family members comes over. The child, no more than 5, knows the chorus and does the background vocals.  

“So where you at, Mr. President / You know we need help leaving us up in a situation by ourselves / Take a look all around you man see there’s nothing left / Except for problems in the streets no food up on the shelf / And the water is contaminated you can see that man / But they steady tellin’ lies I can’t believe that man.”  

Rochon sings the chorus softly with his young hype man.  

“So lord won’t you help me / I think I’m going crazy / Many of my people died / But most of them they really loved / If you look up in my eyes / I tell you this is for my people that find our passion see / They telling all these lies but if you sending help / Then tell your people come and rescue me / So won’t you help me lawd.”  

“The 9/11 people didn’t have to wait,” Rochon says. “The tsunami people didn’t have to wait. The people in Florida with the hurricanes didn’t have to wait. Why I gotta wait?”  

According to Dr. Perine, the black poor in New Orleans “already had issues of anger, feelings like life has no meaning, that (they) could care less about things—then this thing happens, and they feel like the nation does not care while we are basically drowning or sitting in the hot sun.”  

Ahmad Ellis, 17, is a dark chocolate-brown long and skinny youngster from the downtown area of New Orleans. Baby dreds jut out from all over his head, on top of a 6-foot frame. He is bouncing a ball inside the shelter, watching his homies play video games. Hundreds of people are resting and talking to one another—cots, tents and blankets line the walls and floor. The stare is everywhere.  

Ellis is having trouble sleeping. The flooded river city is never far from his mind. “I been thinking about New Orleans, how it’s gone,” he says. “I just don’t talk about it. I just, I be—I can’t take it no more. Can’t sleep right. I been having dreams about it. Bad weird dreams. I thought I was dead. The last dream I had, I was drowning and the rescue workers came and rescued me. I feel weird, it be hot but I’m waking up in cold sweats.  

“I have to deal with it. I don’t know what’s gonna happen. I don’t feel safe talking to anybody,” Ellis says.  

Dr. Perine says that for blacks in the South, the pastor or priest, not the therapist, is where people go to talk.  

“One of the things I tell people is, ‘Maybe God brought the therapist here to help alongside your pastor.’ And then I ask, ‘Can you tell your pastor everything without being judged? You are supposed to be able to tell your therapist everything without judgment. If you feel that way about your pastor, that’s fine as long as you are talking to someone.’”  

Stacie Condley Barthelemy, 29, is a statuesquely beautiful dark brown woman with a big smile and a quick tongue. She escaped from New Orleans just before the storm. She has been in and out of the shelter, where 12 of her immediate and extended family reside. Katrina destroyed her day-care business and her home.  

Barthelemy has talked to the many preachers who come to the shelter to counsel evacuees.  

“I have been leaning on faith all the way because you can’t depend on these people to help you. You call FEMA, and you can only get so much money per household. And when you apply you still don’t get it. It can take a toll on you.”  

Of the hundreds of therapists in the Baton Rouge area, only a handful—about 40, according to the Association of Black Psychologists—are African American. Dr. Perine has advice for her white colleagues who may counsel some of the evacuees.  

“Black people might want to get their feelings of anger out that they got left behind. If you can express empathy, I think that is the most important piece. You may see someone who talks about how they feel racism had an impact. It would hurt that person if a therapist tries to get away from that conversation.  

“You have to be willing to listen and not let your own biases get in the way,” Perine says.  

Kevin Weston is editor-in-chief of YO! Youth Outlook Multimedia, a journal of young life in the Bay Area..›

On Sept. 16, 1810, Father Miguel Hidalgo y Costillo gave the grito (shout) and launched the Mexican war for independence from Spain. Meanwhile, a convention in the Kingdom of Spain was debating a constitution for representative government for the homeland and the colonies. Similarities appear in having debates in Spain for a constitution for Mexico, and debating one for Iraq, not in Iraq proper, but in the Green Zone, under the watchful eye of the U.S. top representative. 

Significantly enough, the U.S. top man in Iraq a year ago was Paul “the Viceroy” Bremmer. Other similitudes between Mexico then and Iraq today include the actions of, and propaganda about, the insurgents, the home-grown ones, that is, Mexico had only a brief period with any notable number of foreign ones. 

The delegates to the constitutional Cortes (assembly) in Spain in 1810 were under intense pressure to produce, due to political developments which found their King held captive by the French of Emperor Napoleon. They felt they needed to reach out broadly for support, or Spain might be lost to the French. Thus, the constitution was to apply to the colonies as well as the homeland. 

Delegates from the colonies who swore allegiance to the Empire were allowed at the Cortes. They were only some 20 percent of those in attendance, when by population count the numbers should have been reversed. And the colonial delegates were an elite group of the wealthy and well educated. The stringent qualifications were such that no candidate was found to represent the province of Texas. 

Hidalgo initially had support within the elite, but quickly lost it. His peasant followers reacted with violent enthusiasm to his decrees abolishing tribute taxes, the discriminatory laws of the caste system and the institution of slavery. He ordered that masters must free their bond-servants immediately upon receipt of the decree or suffer the penalty of death. 

Mansions of Spaniards and rich Mexicans alike were attacked and many residents hacked to death by Hidalgo’s mobs. Spain’s Royal defenders said the insurgents functioned merely on hatred. A more nuanced assessment came from a cleric in Puebla who said the problem with the rebels was that they lacked a coherent program. Some “wanted democracy, others aristocracy and others monarchy.” It was three years into the war before rebel leadership found agreement on complete independence under a representative government.  

In Spain, the delegates were divided among those who genuinely desired a modern republic, and others who sympathized with the King and wanted safeguards in the constitution that ensured that the lower orders would not jeopardize power. The debates dragged through 1811. The option of granting Mexico self-rule was rejected. Supposedly, without Spain’s guidance, Mexicans would destroy one another. 

As one Royalist wrote, if warfare was so bloody between “enlightened countries among citizens of the same color, the same laws, religion and interests, what can we expect ... where there are European Spaniards, American Spaniards ... (and) Indians, Mulattos, Lobos, Negroes and other castes at odds among themselves.” 

Hidalgo was captured in the Summer of 1811 and beheaded and his skull hung in public to dissuade other European-looking Mexicans from siding with the insurgents. Talk in the mansions of Mexico City was that the revolution was in its last gasp. But the Mexican cause had been carried by a plentiful group, small town priests devoted to the poor, and after Hidalgo the revolution was rebuilt and given new strength by Father Jose Maria Morelos y Pavon, a small town priest who was of mixed African, Indigenous and Spanish heritage. 

The constitution appeared ready for passage in 1812. Agreement was reached on articles for free elections, freedom of assembly, a free press and voting rights. Then came Article 22. It denied the designated rights to anyone with any African ancestry. Members among the delegations from the Americans were irate. They pointed out, more than once, that in mixed race Spanish America, counting all the territories, those with at least a little bit or more of African blood were the biggest single group. To deny them rights would disenfranchise whole regions, for lack of qualified voters to fill a quorum—the province of Veracruz, for instance. American delegates warned that anger over Article 22 could cost Spain its colonies. The delegates intimated, but would not say directly, that the black exclusion meant that political office holders in the colonies would come from the ranks of those with little respect for representative government.  

On the matter of exclusion, the Spanish delegates circulated a petition that the Cortes had received from Spaniards living in Mexico City. The petitioners said their experience showed them that it was questionable to even give White Mexicans rights; that the Indigenous should be excluded by reason of a lack of intelligence for self-rule; and as for the blacks, they were deemed a devious people, who “congregate in the dark corners of our cities forming a class of unproductive ruined poor. They should not be given access to improve, for with more money they will only be better able to satiate their vicious indulgent habits...” 

To this, a delegate from Lima, Peru, a city with a sizable African population, declared that the petition should be burned for spreading discord and disturbing the peace of the Empire. 

The black exclusion article passed with overwhelming Spanish support. The constitution was promulgated. In Mexico, the grant of free press and assembly lasted only a few months before the Viceroy declared those clauses void. 

The insurgency spread. Royal propagandists declared Morelos an insane fanatic who promulgated a blasphemous religion. Morelos was indeed a fiery orator; his bushy hair made the scarf he always wore appear like a turban. “God is on our side,” he railed, “Stand in fear Gachupines (Spaniards in Mexico). Your end is near. Stand in fear of America, not only because of our bravery, a good amount of which you have experienced, but also because of the righteousness of the cause which we defend with all our hearts...” 

Morelos’s war program called for infrastructure destabilization: Mine shafts were flooded, haciendas torched, tobacco and cane fields set ablaze, bridges blown up. Belongings of Royalists were distributed half to the revolution and half to the local people in need. 

Morelos was captured and executed late in 1815. Many now quit the insurgency, believing it had fallen into chaos, and that the chances for success were slim. But Spain spent the next few years in continual mopping up exercises in which Royal troops descended upon “insurgent strongholds” with reportedly much success, only to repeat at the same place a few months later. Spanish soldiers tired of the chase, and increasing numbers of Mexicans had to be conscripted to fight for the empire. 

In 1820, Spain’s king, back on his throne, ordered a widespread conscription of his countrymen, declaring it was time to end the colonial uprisings once and for all. But great numbers of his soldiers and officers refused to get on the boats for the New World. The military revolt led to the dormant Cortes being called back in session. The delegates decided that the only way to keep the colonies was to give them genuine democratic power at the local level. It was granted. 

Across Mexico, newly formed town councils voted not to fund the militia, militia members being the majority of Spain’s fighters in Mexico. Guns piled up in the town squares. A top Spanish general was the Mexican Agustin Iturbide, who decided to seek out the Mexican Commander in Chief, Vicente Guerrero, for a deal unifying their armies against the foreigners. Significantly enough, Guerrero, a descendant of slaves and a former lieutenant under Morelos, insisted that he and Iturbide’s unity plan of Iguala include an equality clause. 

It read, “All inhabitants of New Spain, without distinction to their being Europeans, Africans, or Indians are citizens ... with the option to seek all employment according to their merits and virtues.” With the plan’s publication, conscripted Mexicans on the Spanish side deserted in massive numbers. 

In September 1821 the joint army of Iturbide and Guerrero marched into Mexico City. The war was over. Mexico was free. But the economy was in ruin; hundreds of thousands had been displaced from their homes; and handling the problems would create a long period of political instability. 

During the years of recuperation, eleven individuals who fought against Spain would serve as presidents of Mexico. Only one of the 146 Mexican delegates to the sessions of the Spanish Cortes received that honor. 

The Legacy of Vicente Guerrero: Mexico’s First Black Indian President (University Press of Florida, 2001) was the source for most of the history in this article.  

'

NEW DELHI—In Pakistan, Sarabjit Singh is an “Indian spy’’ whose death sentence has been upheld by the country’s Supreme Court for his alleged involvement in 1990 bomb blasts in Lahore. In India, Sarabjit is an innocent man, a farmer and father of two teenage girls, who mistakenly ventured into Pakistan 15 years back in an inebriated condition and was picked up by Pakistani security personnel, as happens quite often.  

Sarabjit has been in a Pakistan jail since along with hundreds of Indian prisoners, several of whom are said to be innocent—fishermen, petty traders, shepherds, farmers who live along the India-Pakistan border and are regularly detained when they accidentally stumble across. Many never make it back, are thrown into jails, tortured to make false confessions and live in horrible conditions. They are branded spies and terrorists, sometimes even by the country they belong. More are picked up if Indo-Pakistan relations happen to deteriorate. There are perhaps an equal number if not more Pakistanis languishing in Indian jails as well, with similar unfounded charges. 

In a way, death (even if in the form of a court sentence) could have been the only means to Sarabjit’s salvation. Apart from his family which has been pursuing his case with the authorities for the past many years, nobody has been interested in his fate and forcefully pleading his plight. Sarabjit’s sister has been knocking the doors of bureaucrats and politicians for more than a decade, to no avail until the death sentence rang a bell and the media spotlighted his case. Now any politician from Punjab, the state that Sarabjit comes from, is seen sharing the media space with her.  

Like elsewhere, when the Indian television channels find an issue, whether relevant or irrelevant, it becomes the subject of abundant talk which is very lucky for Sarabjit and his family. The voices of his sister and two daughters now resonate in every corner of the country, which has joined the chorus. Prayer meetings and protest marches have followed; TV channels run a ticker on the messages pouring in from hours of talk on the issue. An organization in Bhopal has organized 200,000 emails to be sent to Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf. 

India’s top Bollywood star Shahrukh Khan, who recently essayed the role of a person falsely implicated as an Indian spy by Pakistan, has also issued an appeal. In the movie, Sharukh makes it back. Many will wish the same for Sarabjit. 

In a live telecast, Sarabjit’s sister handed over a petition via the border security force officials to Musharraf at the Wagah border with Pakistan, near the city of Amritsar. The memorandum urges Musharraf “to rise above political considerations and legal ramblings, considering Allah has bestowed him grace and power to pardon.” She has also appealed to the Indian President. 

Predictably, with such attention the power-holders in the country, who had long forgotten the case of Sarabjit and countless others who will perhaps never be heard, have awakened to the pressure. Last week, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said “appropriate messages” have been sent to Pakistan on the issue. Foreign minister K. Natwar Singh has taken up the case with Pakistan High Commissioner Aziz Ahmed Khan and urged him to convey New Delhi’s hope that Islamabad treats it as a humanitarian issue. Cutting across party lines, the Indian Parliament expressed concern at the death sentence awarded to Sarabjit. 

In a minor breakthrough Pakistan has granted consular access to Sarabjit for the first time in 15 years, which means that he will be provided with legal help and a fresh look into the facts of the case. Two Indian officials have met Sarabjit. This is significant as Indian officials say that similar consular access has been denied by Pakistan to 107 other Indian detainees. The Sarbjit issue as well as the fate of prisoners will also figure in the ongoing two day home secretary level talks between India and Pakistan. 

The path to his release is still long drawn. Apart from the legal route of a review petition to the Supreme Court, Musharraf can pardon Sarabjit. Foreign Minister Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri said an appeal for clemency can be made to Musharraf, but it will not be an easy decision, given the various forces, that include the Islamic and the militant, that need to be balanced within Pakistan. Musharraf knows their hold on Pakistani society more than anybody else. 

Musharraf’s own Information Minister Sheikh Rashid has said that under Islamic law Sarabjit could be pardoned only by the relatives of the victims of the Lahore blasts. “As per the Pakistan Islamic law, only families of those who died in the bomb blasts can give him pardon and no other person. This is my understanding of the Islamic law. The President cannot pardon the accused,” said Rashid. 

Militant outfits have asked the Pakistan government to seek clemency for Mohammed Afzal, sentenced to death in India in the Parliament attack case, before granting pardon to Sarabjit. 

“Pakistan should first seek clemency for Kashmiri youth Mohammed Afzal before India seeks release of Sarabjit Singh, whose death penalty has been upheld by the Pakistani Supreme Court for his involvement in bomb blasts in Pakistan,” Hizbul Mujahideen leader and Chief of the United Jehad Council (UJC) Syed Salahuddin said in a statement. 

While the negative aspect of Indian prisoners in Pakistan jails or vice versa has been highlighted in the Sarabjit case, there is yet a silver lining to the entire issue.  

Like the case of Cindy Sheehan in USA which has rallied the anti-war protesters, Sarabjit now symbolizes all that is possible in the current context of improved Indo-Pakistan relations and peace talks.  

In the years of hostility that have marked Indo-Pakistan relations there will be wrongs that cannot be corrected overnight. However, it is important that once errors that have been committed in the past come to the fore, they are dealt with sufficient sensitivity as well as care about the needs of the other nation, its people and the families.  

Indian officials say Pakistani jails hold 371 Indian fishermen and 74 other civilian prisoners, while 611 Pakistan prisoners are being held in Indian jails. The peace process has seen both the countries swap prisoners. Pakistan released 589 Indians last year, and India released 182 Pakistanis, according to officials. India has offered to release another 177 Pakistani prisoners whose identities have been identified. 

The media has played a stellar role so far in highlighting the case of Sarabjit as well as engendering a public movement for his release. But, given the fickle nature of the media which will quickly move on to the next big news, it becomes important that both India and Pakistan continue to work the channels to eliminate the baggage of history. This includes a fair hearing for Sarabjit given any new evidence and more like him.  

Siddharth Srivastava is a New Delhi-based journalist.  

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

Rape 

A resident called police on the night of Sept. 13 to report hearing cries of help from a teenage girl. Police located the girl and several men in a home on the 1500 block of Allston Way, said Berkeley Police Public Information Officer Joe Okies.  

Police arrested Ryan Garvey, 23, and Lawrence Hardin, 29, for rape and lewd acts with a minor. Okies said the two men were acquaintances of the victim. 

Flying Manhole Covers 

A motorist driving at the intersection of Telegraph Avenue and Bancroft Way got a shock Monday afternoon when a manhole cover burst from the street and struck his car. The vehicle’s air bag deployed, but the driver was unharmed, Okies said. 

The manhole cover dislodged when a high tension wire shorted out underground, sparking an explosion. Berkeley firefighters extinguished the fire from wire and police rerouted traffic away from the scene. 

Music to piano owner’s ears 

Some alert residents near the intersection of Fairview and California streets called police Wednesday evening when they saw three men walking off with a neighbor’s piano. The robbers didn’t get very far, Okies said. Police arrested Troy Burton, Charles Rodgers and Myron Head for grand theft. 

Robbery at gunpoint 

Four men, including one armed with a pistol, robbed a man of his wallet and cell phone while he walking along Hearst and Milvia Street just after midnight Friday. 

Assault 

Two men got into a fight at the 700 block of Harrison Street Wednesday. When it was over, the victim called Berkeley police to report he had been struck with a blunt object, Okies said. 

Robbery 

The clerk at a grocery store on the 1500 block of San Pablo Avenue avoided being slashed by a knife-wielding robber last Tuesday evening. He did, however, surrender all of the money inside the store’s cash register. 

›

• 

AN OPEN LETTER TO CHANCELLOR BIRGENEAU 

Dear Mr. Chancellor, 

I recently got a letter from you asking for some money. I knew the campus had budget troubles, but I kind of thought you might throw some of that $200,000-plus salary you get into the pot before you came to me, since despite being a graduate and all, I still don’t make much. 

I wanted to ask you about that and about cutting the trees in People’s Park. We have these traditions there, which, being new and from Canada and all, I figure you might not know about, and I thought I better tell you. 

We try to show a little respect for other people and trees and stuff, and check in before we do anything dramatic like cutting down a tree. It’s not that hard to write a letter or post a poster or have a meeting or something, and it’s a good way to avoid riots. 

Anyhow, maybe you wanted to start a riot and I’m way off base. I just wanted you to know that if you, like all the other chancellors, want to put your mark on People’s Park, you don’t have to cut down trees to do it. 

Come on up and help build a bench with the salvaged wood from the tree, for instance. I think that would be a really nice gesture, or at least don’t arrest the rest of us when we go ahead without you. But don’t be afraid to join us, we’re kind of a nice bunch. And next time you get an urge to cut down a tree, please first give me a call. 

Carol Denney 

• 

OPEN LETTER TO BERKELEY HONDA 

To the owners and management of Berkeley Honda: 

I hope it’s becoming abundantly clear to you that you brought your management style to the wrong city. In Berkeley, we don’t give up easily on an institution that we’ve come to respect over the years—one that has given us excellent service. And we will not support any group or individual who attempts to deprive us of that service. Consequently, until you come to the table honestly and are willing to bargain fairly, we will continue to picket and make our voices heard, loudly. And we will take our business elsewhere. 

You will find us patient to the point of stubbornness. 

George Crowe 

A former patron of Doten Honda 

BHS ACCOUNTABILITY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

For years Berkeley High School has struggled with “how to institute accountability.” Now that the new administrative and governance structure has been designed and the whole debate about small schools vs. large schools has been decided, can we finally get real about accountability? 

What is the process of resolving a concern/complaint about a teacher’s methods, practices or actions? I have been informed by the administrations that Principal Slemp wants all concerns taken up directly with the classroom teacher. 

While there are some issues best resolved at this level, problems regarding the teacher’s ability to deliver curriculum can only be addressed by their supervisors. It is the responsibility of administrators to evaluate, monitor, mentor, train, and sanction their teaching staff. Expecting students and parents to do this job does nothing to improve the dysfunctional aspects and educational inequity that still occur at BHS. 

I would like to hear a clear policy from our principal as to how the administration monitors complaints and how they remedy problems. I hope the parent/student representative to the governing bodies make a thorough assessment of current practice and offer recommendations based on real experiences from the consumers of the system, the students/parents. Counselors can be a good resource as they have a clear picture of what is working and what is not. 

During the past several years of drama about “how to best educate,” there has been plenty of rhetoric and little development of systems of teacher accountability. During my last reading of the BUSD teacher’s contract it stated in bold text, “Teachers have a right to teach the curriculum as they see fit.” While state standards now dominate instruction, Berkeley has a history of staff independence and variation of materials covered within a similar class. This is a gap students can no longer afford. 

Laura Menard 

• 

TRAFFIC CIRCLES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I just returned from a two-week vacation to find a Public Notice for Traffic Circles that had been delivered to me during my absence. From it, I learned that yet another circle is planned for the intersection of Chestnut Street and Hearst Avenue. For the life of me, I can’t figure out why. To my knowledge, there haven’t been any traffic or pedestrian incidents at that intersection during the three years that I have lived in the neighborhood, and traffic proceeds through it in an orderly manner. If anything, a stop sign at the intersection of Chestnut and Berkeley Way would be appropriate to slow traffic that hurtles onto Chestnut from University Avenue, along with a size-limit notice for trucks proceeding west on Berkeley Way. Those factors regularly cause problems at that intersection. Otherwise, existing stop signs along Chestnut seem to do an effective job of keeping streets in the area safe.  

I also learned from the leaflet that the city proposes to encourage planting trees within the circles (many of which can be expected to add debris to the roadway). That, I fear, will raise the probability of accidents by seriously restricting visibility of oncoming traffic. I have already experienced the problem of trying to see where oncoming traffic intends to proceed at various circles, and am concerned about being forced to drive in the bicycle lane on Hearst in order to circumnavigate a circle there. In no case have I experienced or observed others experiencing any need to slow down in the blocks between circles. Rather, they create confusion and hazard where none previously existed.  

Lastly, the leaflet informs me that “[t]he neighborhood will plant and maintain the plants. The circles will not have irrigation systems.” Under what compulsion am I or anyone else in my neighborhood to undertake such an enterprise? No one consulted me or anyone that I know about our being either willing or able to be responsible for doing that.  

As far as I can discern, the new traffic circles are a massive waste of taxpayers’ money and a looming disaster for pedestrians, bicyclists, and motorists. Whose bright idea was it to put them in anyway, and why? Can they be stopped?  

Nicola M. Bourne 

• 

“UNDER GOD” 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Our pledge of allegiance used to have, “one nation indivisible,” which was changed to “one nation under God” in the 1950s. The country is divided now. Conservatives (who are really reactionaries), liberals, progressives, fundamentalist Christians, pro and anti-Iraq war activists .... We are separated down the middle. 

I suggest that we go back to being less divisible than we have become “under God.” 

Harry Gans 

• 

NATIONAL GUARD 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I speak for many when I tell you how deeply disappointed we are that the Berkeley Daily Planet did not cover to any meaningful extent the adoption of the Resolution to Bring Home Our Guard from Iraq Immediately by the Berkeley City Council on Sept. 13. 

We would expect a full report when our City Council takes action on something so vital and important to the ending of this war in Iraq, and so extremely timely and necessary to the protection and well-being of Californians, as bringing home our Guard. 

It has been made too painfully clear after Hurricane Katrina the price our citizens‚ pay when our Guard and our equipment is not around to do the job they signed up to do—assist citizens in times of emergencies. 

The warning from FEMA in the beginning of 2001 should be what we heed these days: not the fear tactics of our president who needs our Guard and Reservists to supply 45 percent of his fighting forces in Iraq. This warning alone should make all of us in California insist that our Guard be returned immediately. 

And the movement that is swelling in California to return the Guard, with Berkeley City Council once again in the vanguard, should be front-page news in our local paper. 

Suzanne Joi 

• 

PULLING STRINGS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

City government needs to be weeded out of highly paid lazy bureaucrats. There are more highly paid bureaucrats in the City of Berkeley than other city governments in the Bay Area. Library Director Jackie Griffith wants to lay off low-level workers and create more highly paid high-level bureaucrat jobs—padding and insulating herself by hiring loyal supporters and overpaying them. They sure are not going to be standing there checking and shelving books, so what are they going to do? You can’t have all chiefs and no Indians. The city government has too many corrupt individuals moving into key positions now. 

Capitelli, Wozniak and Olds live in districts with strong UC/LBNL constituencies. Maio worked at and is now retired from LBNL and has refused to recuse herself from voting on LBNL issues where she nearly always votes in their favor. She is Bates’ poodle. 

Max Anderson and Darryl Moore are mysteries to me—but they sort of go along with the bully boy Bates. Darryl has some disgusting alliance with Wozniak, the smirking monkeys who sit side by side at the council meetings and constantly turn to each other smirking and throwing their heads back. 

Through the physical violence, verbal abuse, and dirty politics on the environmental commission, I got a very good idea of who and how UC/LBNL is pulling the strings on the commission and on the city council. 

Wozniak kicked a chair into the back of a citizen Barbara George at a public meeting on UC property and she ended up in the hospital. The UC cop said he saw nothing and LA Wood caught Wozniak on tape with a demonic grin. Betty Olds appointed someone named Krumme to the commission and he kicked a Peace and Justice Commissioner (my boyfriend) in a wheelchair taping my presentation on radiation as Krumme stormed out the door. He returned and angered a black woman from Richmond so much by denying that dioxins are a health risk that she stood up and started hollering at him for ten minutes. The very next day Betty Olds walked by me in City Hall and gave me a sickly sweet simpering smile.  

Many many other horrible things have been perpetrated by the UC/LBNL faction and then they blame us for the bad behavior —including Arietta Chackos and the former City Manager Weldon Rucker. 

You are right, its time to fight back... if Cindy Sheehan can stand up to President Bush—in his own back yard (the rancher next door to Bush has just given Cindy 130 acres to use so she can “get closer to Bush”) then we can certainly stand up to what is going on here now in Berkeley... and it is primarily a major takeover of the town by UC and LBNL—facilitated by our “progressive Trojan Horse mayor. Thank god we have a great paper... what town has anything like the Berkeley Daily Planet?  

Leuren Moret 

• 

FIX THE LEVEES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I want to express my condolences to the people in New Orleans and the rest of the Deep South, who are suffering from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. I was seeing on TV, the water that is flooding New Orleans as a result of the levees breaking. 

One thing people should understand however is that the levees in New Orleans would have been prevented from breaking if the city of New Orleans had been given the funds from the federal government to fix the levees. However, President Bush and the Republican-controlled Congress had cut off the funding so that they can spend billions of dollars on the so-called war in Iraq instead of domestic priorities such as fixing the levees. 

By cutting off funding to fix the levees, President Bush and the Congress should be held accountable for the deadly flooding in New Orleans. 

Billy Trice, Jr. 

Oakland 

• 

KPFA’S SCHEDULE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I am a pretty regular listener to KPFA, and have been for about six years now. I especially listen to three programs: “Democracy Now!” at 6 a.m. when I am getting up and getting my kids off to school and me to work, “Sunday Salon” on Sunday mornings, and the 6 p.m. news on most days. 

I don’t understand when so-called “peoples” or “democratic” groups who seem to use KPFA as their playpen for personal power games and political one-upmanship think they can intrude on listener habits and preferences, and as we’ve seen in a bunch of Daily Planet columns recently, pester the obviously professional and accomplished (and in my mind, indispensable) staff people who host these programs. 

Moving “Democracy Now” to another time is not putting it into what the power trippers around KPFA call “prime time.” I wouldn’t be able to hear it, for example. And I imagine even more people would miss it at 9 a.m. But the further point is: there doesn’t seem to have been any survey, outreach or discussion of the change, merely a cabal of “democratic” outsiders—some of them “elected” by the tiny minority of listeners who bother to vote in station elections. 

KPFA has enough problems without insider/outsider manipulations. Most of us listen to it for the programmers, not the background static of the endless pressure groups and power trippers who “democratically” continue to destabilize this precious resource. 

Mary Constantinu 

• 

MELEIA’S KILLER? 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The West County Times newspaper has urged the man accused of killing Meleia Willis-Starbuck to turn himself in—which could be more to his advantage in court than for him to be captured—and unless you, as apparently your columnist J. Douglas Allen-Tayor does, sympathize with him, I wish you would also urge him to surrender to the police, and also I wish you would publish a picture and description of him and ask anyone who sees him to immediately notify the police. Since I do not believe it could be possible for him to have for so long avoided capture if he did not have the support of many persons who sympathize with him, I hope that all those who are harboring that fugitive will also be captured and prosecuted. The trouble is that there are so many people who identify with such a man, the same as they identify with Malcolm X or any other demagogue who tries to project himself as the champion and defender of the black underclass. As to Mr. Taylor’s attempts to justify that fugitive’s carrying a gun, I remember that when somebody told Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. that he should buy and carry a gun, he said that he would not have a gun even if someone gave him one. I wish everybody would say that. 

If, instead of sympathetically identifying with such people as the man accused of killing the Dartmouth College young woman, black persons and white persons would read and study intensely Dr. King’s book of sermons entitled “Strength to Love” (Fortress Press, 1963, Philadelphia) they could, by applying what they learn there, solve many of the problems we now have, including the worst of all problems in this state of black men killing black men and white men killing white women. The same success in problem -solving could also be achieved by the Palestinians, the Iraqis, and the contentious parties in Ireland by the application of what was preached and taught by Dr. King. The first sermon in Dr. King’s book was preached on the text where Jesus said, “Be wise as serpents and harmless as doves.” (Matthew. 10”16), and in more than seventy years of attending churches, and more than fifty of those years as an organist and choir director, I have never heard any other clergy preach a sermon on that text. If that is because they do not know how, then I would be glad to demonstrate for them how that can be done—even though if I did I would probably not know when to stop. Religious ritutals—or sacraments, if you want to call them that—never have and never will solve problems among us humans on this earth, and clergy could be of great help if they would put aside all their gaudy vestments and rituals as the eighth century prophet Amos demanded and concentrate their attention on learning and teaching non-violent attitudes and behavior. 

Charles J. Blue. Sr. 

• 

ON THE MEDIA 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

“Nowadays, so efficient are the media, one can participate daily and vicariously in the horrific misfortunes which befall others. As one sits comfortably sipping a drink, pictures of death, agony and catastrophe, bounced off satellites between commercials, are skillfully presented on the tragic lantern. The results of the latest famine, earthquake, war or bomb outrage blend into weather forecasts, football scores and advertisements for cat food and breakfast cereals. The newspapers flourish on the offal of other people’s disasters. It has become easy to satisfy a fundamental, human, ghoulish instinct and appetite.” 

(J.A. Cuddon, writing in the introduction to the Penguin Book of Horror Stories) 

Randall Reed  

• 

SOLUTIONS AND IDEAS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I’ve read stories on the Internet, and am putting together some facts, my intuitive impressions, and some guesses on my part. I believe that there are people in our government and military, who are trying to take over the U.S.A., overthrow the Bush administration through a military coup, and are putting New Orleans under Martial Law. I hear rumors of FEMA officials turning back many buses, supplies, rescue personnel, and other needful things, from the people still stuck in New Orleans. 

I am assured by one of my New Age e-newsletters that America won’t be put under Martial Law, and that a violent coup against Bush and Co. is NOT the answer. But NESARA is! 

NESARA is the acronym for the National Economic Salvation and Reform Act. It’s been in the works for years, and it says it will restore constitutional law in America, stop all American war activities immediately, and help ensure a fair, honest re-distribution of wealth. You haven’t heard much, if anything, about this, because it’s been under a Gag Order. Whether or not this is an Urban Legend or “too good to be true,” it IS a very good idea! I believe NESARA is real, true, and about to come. This is the economic side of world peace, and will help get our troops home. Do an Internet search on it to find out more. 

My solutions and ideas: I highly suggest that everybody learn to pray and meditate daily. That you learn to put your mind and body into a state of sustained ecstasy and happiness. This will be a different process for everybody. It won’t help to sit around and get angry at Bush and Co., FEMA, and so forth. What you put out, you get back, according to Universal Laws of Consciousness. You will hear all kinds of rumors on the news, Internet, TV, papers. Some of this will be false. A lot of it is very scary and spooky. Therefore I strongly, strongly suggest that everybody learn to listen to their intuition, their heart, their love, their higher psychic senses, to see what is REALLY going on in the world today. 

Why meditation, prayer, and ecstasy? Because your thoughts and feelings of peace, love, and sheer joy WILL bring about world peace faster! And you’ll feel better. Since when has worrying about all the bad news actually improved your life? 

My name is Linda. I live in Berkeley. I know that World Peace is coming. Cindy Sheehan and the CodePink people and many, many others not named here are working to bring it. 

My final suggestion: It’s probably a much better idea to not waste time dwelling on fearful things or the scary rumors. It is much more useful to all of us to build up strong, specific mental pictures of world peace. Visualize everybody cooperation. Visualize all the kids getting education and food, and freedom for gays and lesbians and other such to MARRY, not just get domestic partnership. Visualize a better world for all. Use your heart-radio to radiate love for all of creation. Extend a smile or a hug or a kind word to strangers as well as people you know. 

I could go on about some of the wilder rumors I’ve heard; true or not, God’s love and We the People of Planet Earth, will WIN this game in the end. 

Linda Smith

“Pregnant,” people echo, their faces lighting up—most with true hormonally induced baby fever, others because they sense it’s expected of them. And then—“Congratulations!” 

I squirm. And squeeze out my own slightly unnatural expected reaction. “Thanks!” 

Six months into gestation, I have still not been able to pinpoint my discomfort with these generally heartfelt offers of congratulations, other than the fact that they feel unjustly earned. In my understanding of the concept, congratulations are offered upon hard-won achievement—completing one’s education, saving enough to buy a house, getting a sought-after job. 

What level of achievement am I boasting with the fact that I had sex with my husband for the umpteenth time and the arrow happened to hit the mark? What kind of achievement is it for which a million horny teenagers every year would by that logic earn our congratulations? 

Of course, horny teenagers achieve the same result largely unintentionally so presumably it’s our wish fulfillment that people are congratulating. Only, most of them really don’t have a clue whether it’s wish fulfillment—for all they know it’s an unhappy accident we are making the best of. It isn’t, in this case, but they don’t know that. 

Perhaps it’s the sheer act of generating new life people are congratulating. Hooray, they’re thinking, one more to swell our ranks in case of global disaster. Or maybe congratulations are proffered in admiration of the unmitigated gall it takes to believe you have What It Takes to raise a Good Person—or the fearless (er, reckless?) optimism underlying the decision to introduce a new person to humanity’s dwindling supply of natural resources, societal opportunities, and basic civility. 

Whatever the reason, “congratulations” continues to feel like a bizarre non sequitur when I share the news. I make an instinctive half-turn to see who else they might be talking to. “Congratulations, your parts are in working order” seems a pale occasion to accept kudos. Congratulate me instead when I don’t accidentally kill the fragile thing in its first six months. Congratulate me when he learns to speak and his first words aren’t “Bad mommy.” Congratulate me when I figure out how to balance parenthood with the other beloved activities and relationships that have fulfilled me all my life. 

Congratulate me when I stop feeling ambiguous about the decision and am wholeheartedly excited about the impending miracle myself. 

Oops—unintentional self-revelation. I suppose the bottom line of my discomfort with procreational congratulations is of the “it’s not you, it’s me” variety. While hurdling inexorably towards babyville, I still have one foot stubbornly planted in my former life—and that foot twitches whenever it’s reminded that it will soon have to join its twin. 

Maybe Brittany Spears had the right idea after all, I find myself musing—do the baby thing before you amass a couple decades of solitary life experiences to mourn the loss of. 

I guess that’s the ultimate function of congratulations to pregnancy news, whether or not the well wishers even realize it—a reality check. A reminder that, um, yes, those words (“I’m pregnant”) came out of ‘your’ mouth, you idiot: get used to it, and get ready! In which case I say, bring it on—congratulate me up the wazoo. About three more months worth and I will be ready. 

Won’t I? 

Sonja Fitz is 39-year old mom-to-be and 19-year veteran of career ambiguity, so why would parenthood be any different?

I have to go to the bank today because it is payday at our house. Every day is payday at our house so, in fact, it will be my 292nd visit to the bank this year, but who’s counting? 

I go to the bank every day because I do not like to keep extra cash on me. It has a way of disappearing in the form of loans to the people who help me with my husband Ralph’s care.  

It is payday every day here because our housemates/employees do not have ATM or credit cards, pin numbers, checkbooks, passbooks, or savings accounts. Several years ago there was a man who lived with us who had an ATM card but his relationship with the card ended badly. Another man in our employ had a credit card but that didn’t work out either. And there was one caregiver who had multiple checking and saving accounts at multiple banking institutions and lending operations around the Bay Area, but he is no longer welcome at any of those establishments. 

I pay the people who work for us in paper currency because they are unable to cash checks anywhere but the nearby check cashing joint, and, as they have pointed out to me, that costs money.  

They spend their pay on cigarettes, lottery tickets, hair products, and on an occasional St. Ides beer, bought one can at a time at the corner liquor store. 

The rest of their daily wage goes to paying off the people they owe money to. I was formerly that person until I started going to the bank every day so that I wouldn’t be. It got very confusing, and I did not like the idea of loaning money to the people who live with me, even when they informed me that the loan was money they would eventually earn. In theory that would be correct, but it didn’t always transpire in that way. 

Today I go to the bank earlier than usual because Hans, a former employee (and someone I used to loan money to until I announced a zero tolerance decree on lending), needs a cash infusion. Ralph says he will make Hans a loan, because Hans already owes him money anyway. Ralph keeps a running tab in his head and adds new transactions onto Hans’s old bill. But today Ralph doesn’t have any money to loan Hans because he has loaned his stash to Andrea. Hans asks me to go to the bank for Andrea so she can pay back Ralph’s loan, and then he, Hans, can borrow from Ralph. I think about this for a minute and then I say OK, because, even though I’m not 100 percent sure that this explanation makes sense, I still have to pay Andrea for today’s work. 

Hans leaves and says he’ll come back later, but before I can get out of the house someone knocks on the door and asks for Andrea. It is the person who Andrea borrowed money from last weekend, the person she has borrowed money from Ralph in order to reimburse.  

I go to the bank. I look at my account balance and make calculations that involve food, transportation, and the number of days left in the month. I come home and pay Andrea. Andrea pays Ralph the cash she owes him. Hans returns and Ralph issues him a loan. 

A new person appears on our front steps. It is a friend of our housemate, Willie. He says Willie borrowed 10 dollars from him and told him to get it from Andrea because Andrea owes Willie a 10 spot. Andrea says that isn’t true, that Willie, in fact, owes her money from a loan she made to him yesterday.  

I go upstairs to my bedroom and close the door. I have already been to the bank today and I won’t be returning until tomorrow.  

›

Jonathan Wornick, Councilman Wozniak’s appointee to the Peace and Justice Commission, has already written at least two op-eds in the Daily Planet attacking a U.S. Department of Peace (DOP). His most recent, entitled “Is Free Speech Dead in Berkeley?”, not only continued that attack, but personally tried to brand me and others in the peace movement as radical leftists. In fact, he used that term no less than eight times. 

Any attempt to place simplistic labels on citizens should be considered both reprehensible and offensive. It is nothing less than a politically motivated ploy to marginalize people into convenient groups in order to divide the citizens of Berkeley and confuse the issues. 

Does he actually believe Berkeley’s citizens are proud that the radical-right sent our National Guard to secure Iraq’s oil fields and left our country defenseless in time of natural disaster? Shouldn’t he be appalled by what we have recently witnessed in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina by the slow response of the Guard and FEMA? Recent polls even before Katrina show Bush’s approval rating has never been lower?  

Wornick states that I am a man with limitless amounts of free time and a self-described long-time advocate of progressive causes. I consider that a compliment. 

The last 12 years I spent working with children, advocating for school butterfly gardens, promoting nonviolence and founding Musicians and Fine Artists for World Peace that now has over 1,260 members, including Patti LaBelle, Pete Seeger, the Dalai Lama, Dr. Patch Adams, Holly Near and Country Joe. My work was acknowledged by the City of Berkeley and by the conservative Republican-dominated legislature of Pennsylvania, which gave me a citation for what they said was my “inspiring work in raising global consciousness, promoting environmental stewardship, education, conservation and world peace through the symbolic beauty of butterflies.” In 1999 we organized 10,000 children in the East Bay to raise butterflies for Earth Day. Planet readers can check that out at www.butterflyspirit.org.  

Wornick justifies his opposition to national peace initiatives by saying, “Nowhere in our job descriptions does it say that the mayor or the City Council is supposed to have a position on issues like Middle East politics or war.” Now he claims, “I strongly believe our local officials have been elected solely to run the City of Berkeley.”  

He accused me of attacking his negative vote on the DOP and that I believe he doesn’t belong on the commission. I never brought up the issue until he wrote an editorial opposing the DOP after the council passed it. Why does this self-proclaimed advocate for free speech complain when others use it only in refuting his outrageous accusations?  

Wornick states that I obfuscated his actions and words and that he is truly an advocate for peace, but with a different view on how to achieve it. If anyone is trying to obfuscate the issue, it is Wozniak’s appointee. How can this man proclaim to be an advocate for peace when he attacks the very mission the Peace and Justice Commission was created to fulfill time and time again, a commission that he took an oath of office to support? 

Once again I ask, has this commissioner forgotten the commission’s mandate passed by City Council? That ordinance established the Peace and Justice Commission to advise the City Council and the School Board on all matters relating to the City of Berkeley’s role in issues of peace including the issues of ending the arms race and abolishing nuclear weapons.  

He claimed that he “dared” to vote against a resolution supporting a DOP because in his analysis the legislation would fail and was seriously flawed, yet he didn’t bother to elucidate. I suppose since he claims to be a student of political science we should all accept his opinion. 

Peace and Justice Commissioner Elliot Cohen wrote an op-ed claiming that Wornick harbors a secret agenda. He claims that in being opposed to DOP, Commissioner Wornick deceitfully omitted his father’s role as founder of the Wornick Company, the largest supplier of military food rations and to vote against a DOP while his family profits from war raises ethical conflicts requiring investigation.” Wornick claims his family no longer owns the company, but perhaps his family’s previous connections to the military has tainted his ability to see the benefits a DOP might bring. Has his past influenced his views on Peace and Justice issues?  

He asks, “Is free speech dead in Berkeley? Is the radical left so fragile that it can’t tolerate an opposing view?” 

If he is interested in free speech, why is he portraying himself as a victim while going about placing labels on anyone that questions his hypocrisy? He has a right to free speech, but when he speaks dishonestly and evasively as a public official, he deserves to be challenged and held accountable. 

If he has a different view on how to achieve peace, perhaps the citizens of Berkeley would better be served by his explaining what they are? Why not come forth with some meaningful answers, rather than with vague and misleading attacks. 

It is my opinion that Wozniak’s appointee is not fit, honest or deserving enough to be called a Peace and Justice commissioner, not only because he has shown disrespect for his oath, but because of his continuing efforts to undermine the very mission of the commission. If obstructionists like Wozniak’s appointee don’t believe in the commission’s mission and impede the good work of those that do, they deserve to be exposed. 

Wornick’s tactics are more reminiscent of a radical right-winger than the moderate Democrat he professes to be. I wouldn’t be surprised that his real motives are designed to grab publicity for the expressed purpose of duping Berkeley’s conservative voters into supporting him in some future run for office.  

Will we be fooled again when the big bad wolf comes into our midst disguised as a peace-loving sheep? I certainly hope not. We have too much to lose. Perhaps the best way to prevent that is for people to attend the commission meetings and act as watch dogs.  

Alan Moore is a member of East Bay DoPeace Committee, Musicians and Fine Artists for World Peace and the International Association of Educators for World Peace.  

›

“We don’t care, we don’t care” was the chant of pro-war, pro-Bush hecklers across the street from the Camp Casey peace vigil in Crawford, Texas, in late August 2005. This “we don’t care” chant pretty much sums up the attitude of the Bush Syndicate toward the rest of us in America. Actually, Bush, Cheney and the rest of this idiotic neoconical government believe that the only true function of the federal government is to create private moneymaking opportunities for themselves, their friends, and their corporate contributors. Any activity other than waging aggressive war to invade, colonize and steal other countries’ natural resources falls into the category of “we don’t care.” 

The breaking of the New Orleans levees happened after the massive Hurricane Katrina had passed the city. It was both predictable and preventable. The Bush flood and the slow-as-Texas-molasses-in-January Bush response to it has ripped off the facade of the inept Bush Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and its subsidiary, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). The upper echelons of both of these massive federal bureaucracies have been staffed by incompetent and uncaring Bush buddies, cronies, hacks, frat brothers, former roommates, horse attorneys, duct tape dudes, political contributors and other miscellaneous nincompoops. In making his appointments to the executive management of DHS and FEMA, Bush gave little if any thought to their actual qualifications in the field of emergency management. 

Over the last several years, Bush and the GOP-controlled House and Senate have poured over one hundred billion tax dollars into the highly touted “Homeland Security.” What did we get as the federal response to Hurricane Katrina? We got homeland stupidity. After the massive flooding of New Orleans, which initially covered about 80 percent of the city, thousands of residents were herded to the Superdome where they were denied water, food, medicine, bedding, toilet facilities, police protection and bus transportation out for several long days. Meanwhile, the Bush gang partied and carried on with their “business as usual” and “let them eat cake” imperial attitudes. George strummed his guitar, raised campaign funds, cut cake with Senator McCain, while Connie Rice did her best Imelda Marcos imitation, shopping for expensive shoes in New York City before going to a Broadway play, while Cheney first went on a Wyoming fishing vacation and then did mansion shopping in Maryland, while Rumsfeld made do with going to a professional ball game.  

In the first several days of the flooding of New Orleans cable news reporters had shown us many searing images of human suffering and had to point out the severity of the suffering of thousands of people in the Superdome to the heads of FEMA and DHS. These two bureaucrats had apparently followed the lead of the ever-clueless Bush by not watching the unfolding disaster being revealed on television. Now we are told that several days after Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, a Bush staffer had to make up a special cable news DVD to show Bush about the flooding disaster of New Orleans. And this clown brags about not watching television news. Start watching, buster: you claim to be in charge... 

The conduct of the inept corrupt Bush regime in this unnatural disaster is nothing short of criminal. Since the illegitimate Bush regime came to power in January 2001, they have been severely cutting back on federal funds for levee strengthening and levee rebuilding in the New Orleans area. They have also have allowed and encouraged developments in the natural low-lying wetlands around New Orleans. The presence of these wetlands traditionally helped to protect New Orleans from the storm surges that accompany hurricanes. One of the first actions of FEMA after Hurricane Katrina and Flood Bush struck New Orleans was to try to stop almost all of the volunteer, state and federal help from coming into the disaster area. FEMA blocked volunteer help from WalMart, the Coast Guard, the Red Cross, AMTRAK, hundreds of airboats from Florida, the City of Chicago emergency teams, Loudoun County (Virginia) sheriffs, the Nevada police, the New Mexico National Guard, fire fighting planes from the U. S. Forest Service and even the U. S. Bataan, a hospital ship stationed in the Gulf of Mexico. FEMA also stopped or ignored offers of help from foreign countries including Canada, Cuba and Venezuela, over twenty European counties and Asian countries including Iran and India.  

One supposes that volunteer help and aid undercuts the Bush Syndicate’s system of private corporations making bags of money off of the Bush war on Iraq and the Bush expedited flooding of New Orleans. It is troubling to see many no-bid federal contracts being given to large corporations for reconstruction along the Gulf Coast. The concepts of “no-bid contracts” mean that the corporations get to charge their profits as a percentage of costs incurred, so there is no incentive to be thrifty; in fact, it is the opposite, the more money that the corporate contractor spends on construction, the higher their corporate profits. Add to this the fact that Bush just signed an executive order that suspended the traditional requirement of the Davis-Bacon Act of 1931 that required federal contractors to pay labor the prevailing wages, instead the federal contractors can now pay workers as little as minimum wage. So the folks who are the poorest and who have suffered the most, again get kicked by Bush. New Orleans should be rebuilt on a cooperative local basis. Habitat for Humanity should be the model used for the reconstruction of the many flood-damaged homes in New Orleans. As many physically-able local residents as possible should be quickly trained and then employed in the reconstruction of their neighborhoods. All of the poor renters who were flooded out in New Orleans should be given title to their newly rebuilt homes and the land underneath them, after the landlords have been properly compensated for the fair pre-flood value of their properties. We owe these people a great deal as some compensation for the years of neglect that they have suffered at our hands.  

James K. Sayre is an Oakland resident. 

›

In the year 2001, the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) was created in response to the lack of international presence in Palestine. ISM aims to support and strengthen the Palestinian popular resistance by providing the Palestinian people with two resources: international protection and a voice with which to nonviolently resist an overwhelming and brutal military occupation force—a military occupation fully funded by U.S. tax dollars.  

From the very beginning, ISM has been attacked by those who support the continuing military policies of the Israeli government. This includes a few readers of the Daily Planet, and even a few members of the Berkeley Peace and Justice Commission. They seek to mislead people about ISM and the Palestinian struggle for dignity and justice. ISM does not support any attacks against civilians, Palestinian or Israeli. Yet our opponents continue these false accusations, and even stoop to dishonoring a young woman, Rachel Corrie, who was killed while protecting the home of Gaza residents.  

We must be clear: Rachel Corrie was killed by the Israeli military while she was protecting a home threatened with destruction by that same military. Rachel was concerned that the home of her friends, the Nasrallah family, would meet the same fate as hundreds of other homes in Gaza. Instead of bulldozing the home on that day, the Israeli military driver of the Caterpillar bulldozer ran over Rachel Corrie. The destruction of the Nasrallah family home was carried out months later, when no internationals were present.  

The ISM, the Corrie family, Amnesty International and even the U.S. State Department all agree that the investigation carried out by the Israel military with regard to Corrie’s death has been inadequate. What we sought by the City Council speaking out was nothing more than what is supposed to be done for any other citizen killed under suspicious circumstances in a foreign country, an independent investigation. Instead, the U.S. government has failed to do an investigation of its own, independent of the Israeli military, which may be complicit through negligence or intention in Corrie’s death. You can be sure that the Israeli government and the U.S. government worked together to thoroughly investigate each death of those U.S. citizens thought to be killed by Palestinians. Why was Rachel Corrie’s death an exception?  

The International Solidarity Movement continues to do the work it set out to do from the beginning. In the West Bank village of Bil’in, villagers have waged an astonishing and creative campaign for months to stop Israel’s Wall of Shame that will effectively destroy that village if completed. The villagers have welcomed Israelis who have come as guests and work for peace for both peoples. ISM volunteers from around the world, including some from the Bay Area, have also been there to witness and support what is really one of the most remarkable nonviolent struggles of our time. 

We anticipate hosting two leaders of this campaign in late October. Ayed Morrar, known as a “Palestinian Gandhi,” and an Israeli coworker, Jonathan Pollak, will speak to Bay Area audiences. Please see www.norcalism.org for details.  

We will not back down, despite the barrage of falsehoods spread by a few. We will continue to be part of this march toward freedom, standing in solidarity with the people of Palestine who have suffered so much. We will not be silent as U.S. politicians continue to loot the treasury to fund the despicable Israeli occupation of Palestine, sending bombs, bullets, and bulldozers to dispossess Palestinians from their homes. This represents a theft from poor Americans who are being denied funds so they can build homes and strengthen their communities here. Therefore, this is both a global issue and a local issue, and more than anything, a human issue.  

Jim Harris and Paul Larudee are members of the NorCal International Solidarity Movement. 

›

As we longtime residents know, Berkeley can be an odd place. We have led the nation in some great directions. But sometimes our national reputation for nuttiness is actually well deserved. I happened to be in Germany the day the Berlin Wall fell. It was an amazing scene watching hordes of East Germans flood across the old barrier for their first look at freedom. Several days later I arrived back at SFO and grabbed a cab home. As soon as I said I was going to Berkeley, the driver identified himself as a Berkeleyan. He proceeded to give me a long harangue about how wonderful it was that the Wall had fallen because now everyone will know what an evil Stalinism had been, and what an evil Leninism had been. Now the whole world, at long last, will welcome the great truth of Trotskyism. Right! Only in Berkeley. 

Raging anti-Israelism is a study in such nuttiness. As far as I am aware, this is unique in all the country to our fair city and seems to rest on a confluence of four intertwined sources: 

1) The Peace and Justice Commission, which was until recently peopled almost exclusively by Berkeley’s radical left. Peace and Justice found support on the City Council for their hateful anti-Israelism from Linda Maio and Kriss Worthington.  

2) The Daily Planet’s editor, Becky O’Malley, who has turned this paper into a bastion of anti-Israelism. She has even gone so far as to recently appoint Henry Norr as her Middle East reporter, even though Norr is in the Middle East as a member of ISM, an anti-Israel group which praises and supports Palestinian terror. I will, however, allow that Ms. O’Malley has the integrity to consistently publish the letters and commentaries of her adversaries in this matter. 

3) KPFA, where one can routinely hear some of the most vile and hateful anti-Israelism and even anti-Semitism imaginable in America. KPFA does not generally share Ms. O’Malley’s integrity by inviting knowledgeable people to rebut their propaganda. 

4) A cohort of anti-Israel activists who claim to be Jews. Their letters appear frequently in the Daily Planet. They usually begin with words to the effect, “I am a Jew, and here is why I hate Israel.” Some of them are, frankly, liars—they are not now and never were Jews (they share this feature with many of the members of Jews for Jesus, another Bay Area group). Two such people I met, who claimed to be Holocaust survivors, couldn’t even name the camps they were in. But some really are Jews. In Berkeley, they are noisy and they are organized. But they have no national footprint whatsoever, and even in Berkeley these Jews represent a tiny minority of the community at large.  

Here some history is in order. Prior to World War II, there were three major strains of European Jewish anti-Zionism. There were the assimilationists who felt that a Jewish particularism should be forsaken for the benefits of European hoch cultur. These people were given up by their highly cultured non-Jewish neighbors and for the most part perished in the ovens. There were the ultra-orthodox, who believed that the establishment of a secular democratic Israel was a sin. According to them, Israel could not be established by the hand of man before the arrival of the messiah. They, too, mostly perished in the ovens. There were the communist Jews of Eastern Europe and Russia, who believed in a new Universal Man. They mostly perished in the gulags and the purges. The rump survivors of all three strains of anti-Zionism found their way to America and brought their bankrupt philosophies with them. The ultra-orthodox anti-Zionists now reside mostly in New York; the assimilationists have melted away in the sun of Southern California; and Berkeley seems to be the nexus of the communist strain of anti-Zionism. Even those rabid Israel bashers who are bona fide Jews are Jews only in the sense that Clarence Thomas is black. Their Jewish identity has been entirely superceded by their radical left identity, just as Thomas’ blackness has been obviated by his radical right ideology. 

Many of us have had just about enough of Berkeley’s hateful witch’s brew of anti-Israelism. I pointed out in a recent letter to this newspaper that Berkeley mirrors the UN General Assembly. Last year, with its automatic Islamic and third world majorities, it passed 88 separate anti-Israel resolutions, while passing a total of only four such resolutions about all other issues in the entire world put together. Someone wrote back that this must only mean that Israel deserves it. Only, dear Berkeley, if justice is to be measured by the size of a lynch mob that metes it out. 

John Gertz is s former president of the Jewish Community Center. 

In a stark circle of light a man sits on the floor, shackled, humming “Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me,” the title—not title song—and the opening scene of Frank McGuinness’s play about hostages in Beirut, now at the Berkeley City Club as staged by Wilde Irish Productions. 

Another spot of light opens up on another chained man vigorously doing push-ups, who identifies the song as an Ella Fitzgerald hit, one of his desert island wish-records—along with a book on beermaking and a beermaking kit—“And Ella would sing to me, and I’d be happy on a desert island.” 

But no such luck. These two are Adam (D. Anthony Harper), an American, and Edward (Mike Vaughn), an Irishman, held hostage in Beirut by captors we never see, but whose offstage presence we can watch them feel.  

The two men are caught in a vicious circle, cut off from the world, but never alone, only able to keep talking and playing games to pass the time, verbally sparring to stay in mental shape for tougher battles that may come—and as hostage Brian Keenan said upon his release in 1990, “hanging by ... fingernails over the edge of chaos and feeling ... fingers slowly straightening.” 

“Hostage is a mutant creature, full of self-loathing, guilt, and death-wishing,” Keenan again, and this is what is acted out onstage, both for real and, provocatively, as a counter-irritant to the reality, an innoculation to the dangers of hysteria. 

This provides what would be a grim, too-literal “chamber play” with a good deal of play indeed. The men are in a twilight state, exposed and hidden, too desperate and too hopeful, each thrown back on himself, yet depending on the other. 

When they’re joined by a third, it changes from the verbal volleys of a mock tennis match to real theater. 

“Fighting is our business,” Edward says. “What do you do about the fighting?” 

Adam is a doctor come to study the effects of civil war on young minds. But Michael (Robert Hamm, in a strong, sensitive performance) is a seemingly effete teacher of Old and Middle English whose school has been downsized. Arriving in Beirut to teach English, he’s been kidnapped while at the marketplace to buy pears for a flan. Apolitical and deliberately ignorant of Beirut and the terms of its civil war, a textbook Little Englishman, Michael is himself schooled by his fellow prisoners in the hard lessons they have learned and taught each other during their months in captivity, first one alone, then two together. 

Sometimes the tensions between limey and mick flare up from “joking,” casual taunting to battling reprisals of history or outbursts of sheer paranoia. They act out in many ways, and catch themselves and each other when slipping down the narrow crack between honest fear and self-pity. And slowly each is revealed in strength and weakness. 

There are games of shooting movies. They mix each other imaginary drinks and toast a future they are brash with made-up confidence over. Their only reading matter is the Bible and the Qu’ran, and D. Anthony Harper’s readings from certain Surahs both find unexpected lines bespeaking dignity and hope: “The Night of Power—greater than a thousand months ... angels and spirits descend; peace it is from night until dawn; peace it is in the house,” giving some sense depth of Muslim scripture. This is paralleled by The Song Of Songs: “Make haste, my beloved. Why have you turned aside from me?” 

The unbelieving Irishman, lonesome for his wife, says, ”I can see how someone could go for that.” 

But there is more than what is on the sacred page. The English teacher recites a George Herbert poem as a kind of elegy. Comforting one of the others, he tells of his wife’s accidental death. The Irishman recites the names of towns at home with longing. They talk out the letters they can’t write. Sharing everything they have--hopes and self-loathing—they depend on each other, even through wariness. 

The simplicity of Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me belies an internal motor that revs up more and more as we watch, and absorb. Gemma Whelan’s direction of a good cast follows the acting out of a triple inwardness, sometimes with humor and boisterousness. Paradox follows paradox; the end is neither unexpected nor as expected, not all broad daylight nor complete shadow. There is a streak or two of sentimentality, but gripped by the action of the play, we’re most with these captives the farther away they roam in speech, in scorn—but not denial—of their chains. 

›

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. 

Wavy Gravy, clown, satirist, last of the hippies, speaks at 7:30 p.m. at Moe's Books, 2476 Telegraph Ave. 849-2087. 

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” 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.  

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. 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. 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.  

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. 

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  

FRIDAY, SEPT. 23 

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.  

Contra Costa Civic Theater, “You Can’t Take it With You” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. at Pomona Ave. at Moeser Lane, El Cerrito, through Oct. 22. 524-9132.  

DMCF Productions “Florence” by Alice Childress and “The Pot Mker” 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. 

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.  

Lunatique Fantastique “Executive Order 9066” Thurs.-Sat. at 7 p.m. at 2120 Allston Way. Through Oc. 21. Tickets are $15-$22. 415-826-5750.  

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

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: “The Roof of the World” at 5 p.m. “Angel on the Right” at 7:p.m. and “Osama” at 8:50 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Jonathan Kozol describes “The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America” at 7:30 p.m. at King Middle School, 1780 Rose St. Sponsored by Cody’s Books. Tickets are $8-$10. 845-7852.  

Dutch Voices: Jos de Putter and Peter Delpeut at 1:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. 642-0808.  

Ariel Levy examines “Female Chauvanist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Los Cenzontles in concert, and the documentary “Pasajero: A Journey of Time and Memory” at 8 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts. Tickets are $15. 925-798-1300.  

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.  

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

Sarah Cahill, solo piano recital at 8 p.m. at the Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St. Cost is $10-$15. 701-1787. 

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

Samora & Elena Pinderhughes, nine and 13 year old jazz musicians, at 7 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10, $5 for children 12 and under. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Stephanie Bruce & Her Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $7. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Groundation at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $11-$13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Pam & Jeri Show at 8 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Due West, progressive California bluegrass, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50-$18.50. 548-1761.  

Stephanie Rearick, Good for Cows, John Lindenbaum and Liam Carey at 7 p.m. at Mama Buzz Cafe, 2318 Telegraph Ave. Cost is $6.  

Julie Hardy Quartet at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

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

The Morning Benders, The Paranoids, The Family Arsenal at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $8. 841-2082.  

The Phenomenauts, The Sting Ray, The Knights of the New Crusade at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $7. 525-9926. 

Kofy Brown at 10 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $5. 548-1159.  

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

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 

SATURDAY, SEPT. 24 

EXHIBITIONS 

Institute of Mosaic Art Faculty Exhibition Reception at 6 p.m. at 3001 Chapman St., Oakland. 437-9899. www.instituteofmosaicart.com 

THEATER 

“The Art of Aging Festival” at 7 p.m. at the Julia Morgan Theater. Tickets are $20. Workshops on Sunday, 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sponsored by The Center for Creative Aging West and Stagebridge Senior Theater Co. 222-3988.  

FILM 

Farewell: A Tribute to Elem Kilmov and Larissa Shepitko at 7 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Watershed Environmental Poetry Festival from noon to 5 p.m. at the North Fork of Strawberry Creek, Valley Life Sciences Building lawn, UC Campus. www.poetryflash.org 

“Take Back the Power: Bread Roses and Revolution” in conjunction with UC Theater’s production of “The Cradle will Rock” at 4 p.m. at Zellerbach Playhouse, UC Campus. http://theater.berkeley.edu 

Huston Smith reflects on “The Soul of Christianity: Restoring the Great Tradition” at 7:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing Way. Donation of $10 suggested. Sponsored by Cody’s Books. 845-7852.  

Rhythm & Muse with poet Zara Raab at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Art Center. Free. 527-9753. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Trinity Chamber Concerts presents Vicki Trimbach, pianist and composer at 8 p.m. at 2320 Dana Street, between Durant & Bancroft. Tickets are $8-$12. 549-3864. http://trinitychamberconcerts.com  

Benefit Concert for the Friends Committee on Legislation with folksongs by local musicians at 7 p.m. at Friends Meeting House, 2151 Vine St. Donation $20-$25, no one turned away. 848-7357. 

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

The Fourtet Jazz Group at 9:30 p.m. at Albatross, 1822 San Pablo Ave. 843-2473.  

Megan Slankard, The Bittersweets, Keith Varon at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $6. 841-2082.  

Frankye Kelly & Her Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island. Cost is $7. 841-JAZZ.  

Eric Bogle, Australian singer-sonwriter, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761.  

Joe Vasconcellos from Chile at 9 p.m. at at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $20-$25. 849-2568.  

Hali Hammer and Rany Berge Family Concert at 7 p.m. at Spuds Pizza, 3290 Adeline St. Cost is $7 per family. 558-0881. 

Tom Peron/Bud Spangler Interplay Quartet at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $12-$18. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

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

Fog with Brian Maxwell, Peter Barshay and others at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

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

Verbal Abuse, Death Toll, Useless Wood Toys, One in the Chamber at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $6. 525-9926. 

André Similius Quartet at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

SUNDAY, SEPT. 25 

CHILDREN  

Space Station Mars, a book party with children’s author Daniel San Souci at 2 p.m. at Chabot Space and Science Center, 10000 Skyline Blvd., Oakland. Free with general admission. 336-7373. www.chabotspace.org 

FILM 

Dutch Voices: Jos de Putter and Peter Delpeut “Nagasaki Stories” at 2 and 5:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

“Sacred Sites” films about the struggle to protect sacred sites at 3 p.m. at Fantasy Recording Studios, 10 and Parker Sts. Donation $10. 525-1304. www.sacred-sites.org 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Poetry Flash with Peter Campion and Laton Carter at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. Donation $2. 845-7852.  

“Hurricane Dramathon” Six hours of staged readings of plays set in New Orleans, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. by the Teen Council at the Nevo Education Center, 2071 Addison St. Donations welcome, benefits victims of Hurricane Katrina. 647-2972. 

“From Africa to America - A Voicing Exploration” with Jacqui Hairston on black musical styles at 2 p.m. at Phoebe Hearst Museum, Bancroft and College. 643-7648. http://hearstmuseum.berkeley.edu 

“Modern Girls (Unless They’re French) Don’t Wear Kimono” a lecture by Lisa Dalby, the only American to have worked as a geisha, at 3 p.m. at Berkeley Art Museum Theater. 642-2809. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Pacific Collegium “Music from the Eton Choir Book” at 3 p.m. at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, 2300 Bancroft. Tickets are $8-$18. 459-2341. pacificcollegium.org 

James Tinsley, organist and pianist, “Five Centuries of Music” at 4 p.m. at All Souls Parish, 2220 Cedar St. Donation $15, $10 students. Benefits Open Door Dinner and Youth Arts Studio. 848-1755.  

Benefit Concert for the Friends Committee on Legislation with Jesse Palidofsky at 7 p.m. at Friends Meeting House, 2151 Vine St. Donation $20-$25, no one turned away. 848-7357. 

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

Robert Temple and His Soulfolk Ensemble CD release of “What Would You Do?” at 6 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10-$12. 849-2568.  

Art Lande/Mark Miller Duo at 4:30 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $20. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Ronnie Gilbert & Adrienne Torf at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $20.50-$21.50. 548-1761.  

Ryan Burke and Valerie Troutt at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island. Cost is $7. 841-JAZZ.  

Geezerpalooza at 3 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $8. 525-5054.  

Shotgun Ragtime Band at 10 a.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

Americana Unplugged: Jeannie & Chuck’s Country Round-Up at 5 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

MONDAY, SEPT. 26 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Arlene Blum, mountain climber describes “Breaking Trail: My Path to High Places” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852.  

“Science and the Soul: J. Robert Oppenheimer and ‘Doctor Atomic’” Peter Sellars and John Adams about the making and meaning of their opera at 8 p.m. at Wheeler Auditorium, UC Campus. 642-9988. 

Poetry Express Theme Night: “Beginnings and Endings” 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. 548-5198.  

Luciana Souza & Romero Lubambo at 8 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10-$16. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

Long before Labor Day, the shorebirds began moving south. I’ve been seeing good numbers since early August: black-bellied plovers still in their dapper breeding plumage, least and western sandpipers working the tidelines, red knots, dowitchers, curlews. Among the migrant throngs, in singles and small clumps, are a couple of personal favorites, the small chunky sandpiper relatives called turnstones. 

There are two species, the wide-ranging ruddy turnstone and the strictly-east-Pacific black turnstone. These odd birds have been shunted back and forth between the sandpiper and plover families and even assigned a family of their own; current thinking places them among the sandpipers, close to the knots. Black turnstones are in fact mostly black with white streaking on the face, white bellies, and blackish legs; ruddies have black-and-white heads, red-brown wings, and orange legs. In flight, both turnstones have a striking black-and-white pattern, with white back, wingstripes, and tail.  

The name is descriptive. Both turnstone species forage by looking under things—stones, shells, seaweed, all kinds of beachwrack and jetsam—and flipping them over with their short, slightly upturned bills. (Turnstones are not quite as anatomically specialized as another shorebird, the wrybill, a plover whose beak curves to the right. If I ever get to New Zealand, I intend to look up the wrybill.) Under the stones or whatever are tiny crustaceans called amphipods and isopods, worms, and snails. At Bodega Bay, black turnstones have been observed flipping over the edge of algal mats and using their bills and heads to push the algae away in a snowplowing motion. They like clams, too, and follow clam diggers across the mudflats, scavenging their leftovers. 

But turnstones have more than one card to play. Both species are pretty opportunistic in their foraging methods and adventurous in their tastes. At some seasons, the diet of black turnstones consists largely of herring roe. They use those stout bills to hammer open barnacles and mussels and pry limpets off rocks. They’ll also head-butt clumps of seaweed to flush out kelp flies and other arthropods. Bradford Torrey described this technique in 1913: “…they drew back a little and made a run at [the seaweed] as men do in using a battering ram.” In southwestern Alaska, they follow streams inland to feed on the carcasses of spawned-out salmon. 

Ruddy turnstones have an even more diverse diet, with seasonal variations. During their breeding season in the far north, they switch from seafood to vegetarian fare, mainly the seeds of rushes and sedges; later, to insects and spiders. Ruddies don’t mind carrion, either, or the meat scraps they find around human homes and hunting camps. The population that migrates up the Atlantic coast in the spring gorges on horseshoe crab eggs at Delaware Bay, a key shorebird stopover threatened by overexploitation of the adult crabs for fishbait, fertilizer, and medical uses.  

What ruddy turnstones are most notorious for, though, is egg predation. When their migrations coincide with the breeding seasons of other seabirds, they can wreak havoc in nesting colonies. Almost 80 years ago, ornithologist Alexander Wetmore watched turnstones attacking the eggs of sooty and gray-backed terns on remote Laysan Island. As his party of scientists and sailors walked through the tern colony the turnstones followed, going after the nests when the terns rose to protest the intrusion: “The turnstones ran quickly about driving their bills into the eggs without the slightest hesitation, breaking open the side widely and feeding eagerly on the contents, sometimes two or three gathering for an instant to demolish one egg and then with this one half-consumed running on to attack another.” 

In 1977, Robert Loftin and Steve Sutton watched a gang of ruddy turnstones wipe out a royal tern colony in Florida’s Nassau Sound. 

Although they would defend their nests against larger predators like gulls, the terns seemed nonplussed by the turnstone assault. They eventually abandoned the colony. Other reports of nest depredation come from colonies of sooty terns in the Dry Tortugas, common terns off Long Island and near Toronto, and multiple seabird species in Finland. 

Black turnstones have been caught in the act too, but only on their Alaskan breeding grounds. Pairs of turnstones drive incubating phalaropes and longspurs off their nests, then puncture the eggs. But the black turnstone’s oddest dietary quirk has been documented here in California where many winter. Burney Le Boeuf of UC Santa Cruz, who has studied the northern elephant seal colony at Año Nuevo for years, has seen the birds picking at open cuts and sores on the seals’ bodies, feeding on their blood. 

Vampire birds? As odd as that seems, the blood-drinking habit has evolved several times among birds. The closest parallel is a small songbird called the tussockbird that feeds on the blood of southern elephant seals in the Falkland Islands. The red-billed and yellow-billed oxpeckers of Africa, aberrant starlings that usually pluck ticks from the bodies of large mammals, sometimes eliminate the middleman. And on Wolf and Darwin Islands in the Galapagos, the sharp-beaked ground finch uses its sharp beak to peck the wings and tails of the large and notoriously dim seabirds called boobies, and drinks the blood that flows from the wounds. 

The natural world is full of extreme specialists—insects that feed on the nectar of a single species of flower, parasites that live not only on a single host species, but a specific body part of that species. In his ever-timely essay entitled “Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution,” Theodosius Dobzhansky mentioned a fungus that grows only on the rear portion of the wing covers of one species of beetle, itself confined to a couple of caves in the south of France. But resources are always unpredictable, and in the long run it often pays to be a generalist. Creatures like the black and ruddy turnstones, willing to eat anything from seal blood to garbage, may be around long after more specialized species have died out.›

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 

“Honoring the Families of Incarcerated Children” with Books Not Bars and Van Jones at 7 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Oakland, 2501 Harrison St. at 27th. Donation $10, no one turned away. 428-3939, ext. 228. www.ellabakercenter.org 

“Cancer in So Many Words” Authors read to cancer patients at 6 p.m. at Fontain Auditorium, Alta Bates, 400 Hawthorne Ave., Oakland. Donation $10, no one turned away. To register call 800-870-8705. 

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 

Protest Rally at Berkeley Honda, Shattuck and Parker, every Thursday 4:30 to 6 p.m.  

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 

FRIDAY, SEPT. 23 

Reduced City Services Today Call ahead to ensure programs or services you desire will be available. 981-CITY. www.cityofberkeley.info 

Berkeley High School Class of ‘60 Reunion Tour of BHS at 4 p.m. followed by get-together at Beckett’s. RSVP to Suzanne Fowle Horning at 505-994-2660 or Susan Goodwin Chase at 526-4284. 

Watershed Nursery’s Fall Native Plant Sale from 3 to 7 p.m. and Sat. from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at 155 Tamalpais Rd. www.TheWatershedNursery.Com 

“The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America” with author Jonathan Kozol, at 7:30 p.m. at King Middle School, 1780 Rose St. Sponsored by Cody’s Books. Tickets are $8-$10. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

Activism Series with Ann Fagan Ginger and Aimee Allison at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Unitarian Universalists, 1924 Cedar St. 528-5403. 

Californian Indian Day from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Phoebe Hearst Museum, Bancroft and College. 643-7648. http://hearstmuseum.berkeley.edu 

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon with Sayre Van Young, author of “London’s War.” Luncheon at 11:45 a.m. for $13.50, speech at 12:30 p.m., at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant St. For information and reservations call 526-2925 or 665-9020.  

Lunar Lounge Express Music, movie shorts and a Sonic Vision planetarium show at 8 p.m. at Chabot Space and Science Center, 10000 Skyline Blvd., Oakland. Tickets are $15-$20. 336-7373. www.chabotspace.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. 

Jewish Cooking with Joan Nathan at 11:30 a.m. in a private home. For information call 839-2900, ext. 203. 

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, from noon to 1 p.m. at UC Berkeley, Bancroft at Telegraph. wibberkeley@yahoo.com 548-6310, 845-1143. 

Kol Hadash Humanistic Shabbat with Rabbi Jay Heyman, music led by Bon Singer, at 7:30 p.m. at Albany Community Center 1249 Marin Ave. Please bring finger dessert to share, and non-perishable food for the needy. Info@kolhadash.org 

SATURDAY, SEPT. 24 

Berkeley High School Class of ‘60 Reunion Picnic at noon at Cordornices Park, Euclid Ave. Reception and Buffet Dinner at 6:30 p.m. at Golden Gate Fields Clubhouse. RSVP to Suzanne Fowle Horning at 505-994-2660 or Susan Goodwin Chase at 526-4284. 

Free Emergency Preparedness Class in Disaster First Aid from 9 a.m. to noon at 997 Cedar St., between 8th and 9th. To sign up call 981-5605. www.ci.berkeley. 

ca.us/fire/oes.html 

Watershed Environmental Poetry Festival from noon to 5 p.m. at the North Fork of Strawberry Creek, Valley Life Sciences Building lawn, UC Campus. www.poetryflash.org 

“Going Native” Symposium on California native plants, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., field trip on Sun. Cost is $125, plus $45 for the field trip. Sponsored by the Friends of the Regional Parks Botanic Garden. To register call 527-9802. www.nativeplants.org 

“A Union Man: The Life and Work of Julius Margolin” a film by George Mann at 8 p.m., followed by discussion and music, at Berkeley Fellowship, 1924 Cedar St. Donation $5-$10. 841-4824. 

Memorial for Marylin Davis Glover at 2 p.m. at the Berkeley Yacht Club, 1 Seawall Drive. 

Eldercare 101 Learn about care options for seniors, how to pay for it, and communication on difficult topics at 9:30 a.m. at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, 6013 Lawton Ave., Oakland. Cost is $39, registration required. 415-661-3271. eldercoach@sbcglobal.net 

Child Health and Safety Fair with games and activities, free immunizations and safety information, for families with children ages 1-12, from 1:30 to 5 p.m. at Highland Hospital, 1411 E. 31st St., Oakland. Sponsored by the Alameda County Medical Center. 437-4644. 

Kids’ Night Out Carnival Benefit for Berkwood Hedge School, with piñatas, slide shows, basketball and art projects. From 5 to 10 pm. at Berkewood Hedge in downtown Berkeley. Tickets are $40, siblings $25. 540-6025. 

Asthma Walk at Lake Merritt at 9 a.m. starting across the street from the Rotary Nature Center, 600 Bellevue Ave., Oakland. Sponsored by the American Lung Association of the East Bay. 800-586-4872.  

International Maritime Center Shoreline Stroll Walkathon Registration on-site begins at 8 a.m., walk begins at 9 a.m. The $75 entry fee will be waived for participants who obtain pledges for donations on a per-mile basis that total $75 or more. Korean-style barbecue lunch at 11:30 a.m. 839-2226. www.sfbayfarer.org 

Walking Tour of Old Oakland around the restored 1870s business district. Meet at 10 a.m. in front of G.B. Ratto’s at 827 Washington St. Tour lasts 90 minutes. Reservations can be made by calling 238-3234. 

ActivSpace Art and Crafts Sidewalk Fair Sat. and Sun. 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at 2703 7th St. 

School of the Madeleine Fall Festival from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at 1225 Milvia St. Live entertainment, children’s games, vendors, farmers market and more. 526-4744. 

“Deer Resistant Plants” with Aerin Moore at 10 a.m. at Magic Gardens, 729 Heinz Ave. 644-2351. 

Pacific Coast League Players’ Reunion at 11 a.m. at the Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak Sts. Meet the players and see the exhibition “Baseball As America.” 238-2200. www.museumca.org 

Free Quit Smoking Class for pregnant and parenting women from 9:30 to 11:30 a.m. at Alta Bates, first floor auditorium, 2450 Ashby Ave. Childcare provided. Free but registration requested. 981-5330. quitnow@ci.berkeley.ca.us 

Bilingual and Multicultural Program Orientation for Hispanic/Latino children ages 2-10 at 10 a.m. at Centro VIDA, 1000 Camelia St. For more information call 525-1463. 

Free Help with Computers at the El Cerrito Library to learn about email, searching the web, the library’s online databases, or basic word processing. Workshops held on Sat. a.m. at 6510 Stockton Ave., El Cerrito. Registration required. 526-7512.  

SUNDAY, SEPT. 25 

How Berkeley Can You Be? Parade at 11 a.m. at University Ave. at Sacramento. Festival from noon to 5 p.m. at Civic Center Park. www.howberkeleycanyoube.com 

Re-Opening of the Berkeley Public Library Sunday Hours Celebration at 1 p.m. with a presentation of a check from friends of the Berkeley Public Library. 2090 Kittredge St. 981-6115. 

Out and About in Rockridge Street Fair from noon to 5 p.m. on College Ave. between Alcatraz and Broadway. Music, food and activities for children. Free trolleys up and down College Ave. www.rockridgedistrict.com 

Breakfast with the Beasts Bring a donation of fresh produce to share with the animals and learn how the animals are cared for. From 8 to 10 a.m. at the Oakland Zoo. 632-9525. www.oaklandzoo.org 

“Sacred Sites” films about the struggle to protect sacred sites at 3 p.m. at Fantasy Recording Studios, 10 and Parker Sts. Donation $10. 525-1304. www.sacred-sites.org 

Berkeley City Club free tour from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. Tours are sponsored by the Berkeley City Club and the Landmark Heritage Foundation. Donations welcome. The Berkeley City Club is located at 2315 Durant Ave. For group reservations or more information, call 848-7800 or 883-9710. 

Fall Plant Sale at the UC Botanical Garden from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at 200 Centennial Drive. 643-2755. 

Meet the Guinea Pigs and learn about basic small animal care at 2 p.m. at Rabbitears, 303 Arlington Ave., Kensington. 525-6155. 

“Hollywood Hats” the film at 2 p.m. at Berkeley Richmond Jewish Community Center, 1414 Walnut St. Cost is $8-$10. 848-0237. 

Free Garden Tours at Regional Parks Botanic Garden in Tilden Park Sat. and Sun. at 2 p.m. Call to confirm. 841-8732. www.nativeplants.org 

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

“Probing the Interface Between Science and Religion” with David Lingenfelter at 9:30 a.m. at Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, 1 Lawson Rd., Kensington. 525-0302, ext. 306. 

MONDAY, SEPT. 26 

“Getting Adequate Rest As We Age” at 6 p.m. at Center for Older Adult Services, 828 San Pablo Ave. To register call 558-7800. 

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 

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. 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/zoning›

A professor friend called me on Thursday morning, furious. She’d just heard a radio report on a committee formed to advise the University of California Board of Regents which is recommending that seven U.C. executives, who already make more than $350,000 a year, now need to have raises funded by private donations. Why did that make her so mad? Well, she’s the chair of a science department at a state university, and with seven years experience and a four-course teaching load she has yet to take home $60,000 a year. I was already planning this editorial on the topic, because I’d seen an excellent piece by Tanya Schevitz in the Chronicle earlier in the week with all the facts and figures. An example of shocking data: one senior vice president, a committee member who is listed as making $350k, actually pays taxes on more than $450k, probably because of bonuses on top of his salary. And, if we are to believe the report, he and his cohorts want even more. That’s greed, plain and simple. Obscene greed, actually. 

The excuse the committee gives is that it’s hard to recruit competent executives because other institutions and private businesses are now paying so much more. Sorry, but I can’t believe that somewhere in the United States there’s not a competent woman or man who can handle a vice-president’s job at UC for less than half a million dollars a year. That’s what some of these compensation packages could net out at, if you add in jobs for significant others, like the one offered to the partner of the latest UC Santa Cruz chancellor.  

And we all know employees of educational institutions up and down the line who are living on wages more like $25,000 a year. It’s probably easier to get food service employees than to get executives, but is there a ten-or-fifteen-to-one value differential? I doubt it. Even if you concede that a university executive might feel entitled to a comfortable upper-middle-class standard of living, that can be achieved, even in the expensive Bay Area and even with only one breadwinner for a family, for a lot less than $350,000 and up.  

The new proposal, that the “and up” should be financed by private donations, offers extensive opportunities for corruption. Corruption doesn’t necessarily mean stealing—it can mean distortion of the university’s historic mission by entanglement with for-profit enterprise whose goal is not necessarily education. If university executives have private sponsors, divided loyalties are an ever-present temptation.  

Talking to my friend, I started riffing sarcastically on the idea of selling naming rights to university executives, along the lines of the late PacBell Park, whatever it’s called now. We could have, for example, the Bechtel President of the University of California. He could agree to wear Bechtel logo t-shirts at all university sports events, and for formal gatherings, a tasteful lapel rosette with the logo in diamonds. His official car could have a Bechtel-logo license plate. His house could sport a Bechtel billboard on the roof. The opportunities are endless. Well, as usual, reality has outstripped satire.  

My professor friend tells me that her university has already been sold off in every particular. The building she works in, like most university buildings, is named after a major local industrialist. But even worse, the classroom where she teaches about, among other things, how California’s climate has been degraded by the power industry, is named after PG&E, and has a plaque to prove it. Does this kind of corporate branding affect her teaching? No, but it undoubtedly has a subtle effect on her students’ perception of society and its goals. And Bechtel? It’s UC’s new partner in the bid for managing Los Alamos National Laboratory.  

America is being torn apart by the greed of the elite and the powerful, just as it was in the Gilded Age at the turn of the 20th century. The poor of New Orleans are left to die while the rich hire mercenaries from South Africa and Israel to defend their possessions. It is wrong (how old-fashioned that word sounds) to choose leaders for educational institutions, especially public institutions, who contribute to this widening gulf by exemplifying the concept that greed is good.  

From a recent UC press release: “The University of California President’s Task Force on Faculty Diversity has formally launched its program review of faculty diversity efforts at each UC campus. The task force met Sept. 16 at the Office of the President here to begin its review. To assess the status of faculty diversity, UC President Robert C. Dynes appointed an 11-member systemwide task force to review faculty diversity.” It doesn’t take yet another task force to tell UC that women and some “minority” populations (now a majority in California) are seriously underrepresented in the UC system. The reasons for this have been exhaustively studied. Among other things, faculty women like my professor friend don’t make enough money in starter jobs to support families. 

Here’s an idea: Perhaps the seven overpaid UC executives, instead of lobbying the private sector for even more loot, could take a voluntary 25-percent salary cut, which they could contribute to a fund for recruiting more faculty members from the underrepresented groups. That’s another old-fashioned concept, what used to be called “setting an example.” But it’s not likely that the seven high-rollers are the kind of people who are motivated by the idea of public service, because people like that are cut out of the pack in today’s corporate university culture.  

B

The Berkeley Unified School District Board of Directors meets Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. at the Old City Hall at 2134 Martin Luther King Jr. Way. Items on the agenda include: 

• Second reading of a revamped district policy on the sale, lease, and/or rental of district-owned property. The district is currently contemplating the future of one of its unused properties, Hillside School, which has been ruled unsuitable for public school use because it sits directly on the Hayward earthquake fault. Last January, the board authorized the creation of an advisory committee to review the possible sale of the building and property at the school. 

• An update of the district’s facilities and construction plan. The district has either recently finished or is still in the midst of a number of major construction projects, including renovations at Berkeley High School, Willard Middle, and several elementary schools. The report will give information on projects already finished, as well as outline the district’s goals for future construction projects. 

• A report on class size reduction. Such reductions are mandated by the Berkeley Schools Excellence Project bond monies and were a major issue in last spring’s BUSD teacher job action and contract talks.