The Alameda City Council continued this week to move forward with a $23.7 million multi-faceted project that would restore the long-abandoned 77-year-old Art Deco Alameda Theater in the heart of the city’s downtown, as well as building an adjoining seven-screen cineplex and an adjacent six-story parking garage. -more-
Berkeley Court Commissioner John Rantzman heard several hours of testimony from neighbors of a South Berkeley homeowner on Thursday describing the personal and economic damages they claim they have suffered living near what they say police call “the most notorious house in Berkeley.” -more-
Seacology, a Berkeley nonprofit dedicated to saving the imperiled ecologies of islands and coral reefs around the world, racked up another honor this week. -more-
A demonstration outside the gates of Richmond’s ChevronTexaco refinery Tuesday morning ended in a massive police turnout, two arrests and conflicting reports about what happened. -more-
A juvenile court judge today referred a 17-year-old Oakland girl who admitted stabbing a 75-year-old woman at the Berkeley Rose Garden in March to a California Youth Authority facility for evaluation. -more-
The board of directors of the East Bay Regional Park District has postponed an eminent domain action on 238 acres along the Richmond shoreline in order to allow all the parties the chance to attempt to work out an agreement. -more-
“I’ll tell you why I am a fundamentalist Muslim,” said a Sri Lankan city council member named—I kid you not—A. Marika. “When you are grading a grammar test, if the student writes, ‘I will get a apple from the store,’ will you grade it correct or incorrect? The meaning is clear; is it correct or not?” -more-
If you see nothing on the screen but snow when you turn on a Berkeley Community Media (BCM) TV channel Monday, it’s not the fault of your television: It’s a protest. -more-
Bangkok, Thailand—Traveling through South East Asia, the rapid pace of development confronted us everywhere: once remote Laotian villages now have electricity, clean water, and public schools; small Cambodian towns, where Mercedes sedans share the road with Vespas and water buffalo, support Internet cafes; and tourists and goods cross borders with unparalleled ease. Yet, lurking behind this progress are disturbing problems: many of our trading partners are democracies in name only, horrendous damage is being done to the environment, and women are treated as chattel—denied basic human rights. -more-
Suppose you heard the news that there were, say, 30 arrests at last weekend’s Dias De Los Muertos celebration in Oakland’s Fruitvale District. There weren’t actually 30 arrests at last weekend’s Dias De Los Muertos celebration, not even any reports of the kinds of problems that might lead to such arrests, but for the sake of this discussion, let’s pretend that there were. -more-
In the mid 1970s, the Supreme Court extended First Amendment Constitutional protection to the corporate financing of elections. Since that historic decision, corporations have virtually taken over the electoral process. Unlike individuals and other groups, corporations are able to amass huge concentrations of shareholder wealth and have demonstrated a willingness to spend it within the political system to ensure that they are able to pursue their self-interests (i.e.: profits and returns for investors) without interference. -more-
Four years ago many Berkeleyans were involved in a passionate debate over a proposal to divide Berkeley High entirely into small schools. The School Board eventually resolved that controversy by adopting a compromise plan which called for a Berkeley High School with half its students in small schools and half its students in a large, comprehensive school. -more-
This Tuesday, Californians will vote on a ballot measure that, if approved, will place some teenagers in “serious jeopardy.” -more-
When Beverly Hill chanced to open mail from the Berkeley Chamber of Commerce 10 days ago, she saw red—as in red state. The owner of Rainbo Graphix, just over the city line in Emeryville, she had been a proud member of the Berkeley Chamber for years. Knowing Berkeley, she took it for granted that the chamber, if it took political positions, would be as liberal as the whole city is. That’s not what she found. -more-
Where has the time gone? Late summer wildflowers have morphed into sere grasses and again into autumn foliage greedily drinking in the first rains as we head for the final Challenge hike. It’s worthy of a graduation jaunt and a good test of skills acquired since June. Trails will lead through two parks, so be prepared to look for signposts and carefully follow directions. On this trek the Challenge booklet is a must. -more-
Agreeing with critics and city staff that their planned five-story, two-building project at Martin Luther King Jr. Way and University Avenue wasn’t the best piece of design Berkeley has ever seen, the developers tried to get a city board to come up with an alternative Thursday. -more-
With only City Councilmember Kriss Worthington’s two appointments yet to be named, the panel responsible for helping to formulate a new downtown plan is almost in place. -more-
Peralta Community College District Trustee Marcie Hodge stepped up two campaigns last week—one against Peralta’s Office of International and Global Education, the other for the 6th District Oakland City Council seat currently held by Desley Brooks. -more-
Were drums of radioactive waste from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory buried in South Richmond? -more-
The East Bay’s self-styled “social capitalist” organization Rubicon Programs officially opens in Berkeley Thursday morning with a celebration at its downtown offices. -more-
Neighbors of the Berkeley Adult School (formerly Franklin School) planted the northeast corner of the site (Curtis and Virginia streets) on Saturday. Schoolhouse Creek Commons, which is allied with Partners-for-Parks, welcomes donations and assistance with the project. For more information, contact James Day at 559-8368 or dayork@infinex.com.. -more-
The Zoning Adjustments Board voted unanimously Thursday to declare Dwight Way Liquors a public nuisance and to order its closure. -more-
Dolores Huerta is coming to Berkeley this Friday to advocate against the School of the Americas where Latin American soldiers are trained in torture techniques. -more-
Prosecutors have filed felony charges against the 46-year-old Oakland man whose car ran a red light and killed a 20-year-old UC Berkeley student at about 2:30 a.m. Thursday. -more-
To view Justin DeFreitas’ latest editorial cartoon, please visit -more-
In the morning, before anyone is awake, I go downstairs and make coffee. From the living room I hear the pop and bubble of my husband’s oxygen machine. In the kitchen I feel the cold, uneven, sticky floorboards under my bare feet and I am annoyed. -more-
After reading Paul Rauber’s commentary “South Berkeley’s Crime Enablers,” I feel sure that he misunderstood my opinion piece. Mr. Rauber refers to my “venomous Oct. 25 commentary” accuses me of “tossing around incendiary” charges of racism and then concludes by saying that my opinions “Make a firebomb look kind of benign by comparison.” Mr. Rauber’s choice of language and metaphor suggests that by merely raising the question of racism, I have somehow caused a harm comparable to the destruction of a firebomb. This is a surprising repudiation of the value of free expression coming from a man who makes his living as a writer. -more-
It’s me again, lead plaintiff for the 14 South Berkeley citizens suing our South Berkeley drug house, responding to the latest distortions of our case in the editorial pages of the Daily Planet. In her Oct. 28 editorial, Executive Editor Becky O’Malley’s paints us ordinary neighborhood folks as vindictive harpies “with blood in their eyes” intent on unconstitutional punishment of Lenora Moore, owner of the drug house at 1610 Oregon Street. “If anyone . . . has broken a criminal law,” O’Malley asks, “shouldn’t they be charged and tried in accordance with the Constitution?” -more-
It had just started to drizzle and I had ducked under a freeway overpass to keep dry. I was tired from walking all day and sat down on a worn, discarded mattress. I looked around at bottles and trash strewn everywhere and a rat scurried near my foot. It was starting to get dark so I decided to take my chances in the rain. I headed out, not sure where I was going, hungry, getting cold and I had to go the bathroom. My cell phone rang. It was my wife. She was finally home! I had locked myself out and left my wallet home. Homeless for a day? No, I was keyless. -more-
“I sing the wrath of Achilles ...” If The Iliad doesn’t recount the fall of Troy so much as it does the seemingly endless war of attrition that preceded it, and of deeds of arms on the field, and vanity and wounded pride in the tents behind the lines—then Gary Graves’ Achilles and Patroklos (staged by Central Works at the Berkeley City Club) isn’t just a deliberately anachronistic parallel between Homeric heroics and the quagmire of occupation following the invasion of Iraq, as it is more an attempt to view the different facets of interpersonal experience as conditioned (and distorted) by an interminable war. -more-
The little Crataegus trees—hawthorns, thorntrees—in that grassy strip of Sacramento Street between Dwight Way and University Avenue bloom in the spring with pretty white flowers, but this is the season when they come into their own. They dress themselves in red berries while they still have leaves, then drop the leaves and keep the berries. On their slender horizontal branches, the berries hang gracefully and usefully all winter. -more-
Thanks to the dogged work of the fearless Martin Snapp, the Knight-Ridder newspaper chain’s embedded reporter who is a member of Berkeley’s Veterans’ Day Committee, you can now read about the latest permutation of the city’s Nov. 11 observance in the San Jose Mercury News, the Contra Costa Times, the West County Times, the Berkeley Voice and the East Bay Daily Snooze, and perhaps in many more of the chain’s saturation coverage outlets in the Bay Area. Tuesday’s bottom line, if we think the Merc’s story was the end of the tale: Bill Mitchell, co-founder of Gold Star Families for Peace, has decided to skip the Berkeley event in favor of a Santa Monica one, and that means the local Disabled American Veterans are back in the line-up. -more-
Monday’s “revelation” that the Tonkin Gulf resolution, the basis for U.S. entry into the Vietnam conflict, was somehow “doctored” provides yet another opportunity to marvel at the apparent inability of the people who are supposed to be running this country to find out what’s going on. If we are to believe Robert McNamara, Lyndon Johnson’s secretary of defense, it’s news to him. According to the New York Times, “Mr. McNamara, 89, said he had never been told that the intelligence might have been altered to shore up the scant evidence of a North Vietnamese attack.“ -more-
