A surreptitious stalker slashed the robust rodent outside Berkeley Honda at high noon Thursday, briefly deflating the colorful symbol of striking union members. -more-
A publicly-financed election reform concept introduced two years ago to Berkeley voters by Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates—and soundly rejected by those voters in the 2004 election—has been reintroduced in the state Legislature by Assemblymember Loni Hancock, with Hancock’s chief of staff saying that “the time is now right” for the issue. -more-
January -more-
Planning commissioners will take a West Berkeley tour Saturday morning, looking at sites close to the freeway that could house car dealerships. -more-
The fate of a popular after-school tutoring program housed at a contaminated former chemical plant site dominated a Wednesday night meeting in Richmond. -more-
Revelations that the National Security Agency (NSA) has engaged in warrantless eavesdropping in violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act prompted President Bush to admit last month that in 2002 he directly authorized the activity in the wake of 9/11. -more-
At the end of each year, Dispatches gives out its annual IDBIAART (I Don’t Believe I Am Actually Reading This) Awards for special contributions to international relations during the past year. -more-
The Oakland Tribune published an interesting story earlier this week on Oakland police foot patrols. -more-
Many of us in the peace movement are praying for Ariel Sharon’s recovery even though we still see him as an obstacle to peace in the Middle East in the long run. While we would never wish for the death of anyone, even our enemies, we might have hoped that people like the president of Iran, or Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, or even President Bush would be peacefully removed from office quickly. Yet the developments of recent months have made many peaceniks hope that Sharon would stay in office at least through the completion of the next half-year. -more-
Just as a stone dropped into the middle of a calm lake produces concentric waves one after the other, so press reports emanate from Katrina. They range from the mundane like the effect of dislocation on Tulane’s football season to the momentous like the tens of billions of dollars needed to remake the levee system so as to restore the wetlands. Daily news ripples of culpable neglect and blatant hypocrisy reduce me to tears. -more-
Our planet’s climate is changing rapidly as greenhouse gas pollution accumulates in the Earth’s atmosphere. There is no longer any doubt that human activity (i.e., the production of gases from the combustion of fossil fuels, combined with an increasingly consumption-oriented human population and rampant deforestation) lies at the heart of climate change. All of us—from individuals to governments, and everyone and every institution in-between—must drastically reduce the greenhouse gases that we are responsible for producing, or we will experience increasing changes in the climate that will cause significant ecological, economic, and social upheaval. -more-
My friend and fellow former Berkeley City Councilmember Ira Simmons recently forwarded me the Daily Planet story from last summer on the return to the City Council Chambers of the mural by famed artist Romare Bearden. I appreciate the story in noting the genesis of the Bearden project when Ira and I challenged the council to modify its all-white picture display in the council chambers. We did this shortly after we were elected in 1971. -more-
When winter skies open up and drench the ground, thoughts of an outdoor weekend getaway pale. That’s the time for an indoor adventure—one that will take you places far removed from everyday life. Journey to other cultures, other times, while being awed by incredible architecture and outstanding art. In short, visit San Francisco’s de Young Museum. -more-
UC Berkeley dominated Berkeley’s land use news in 2005. -more-
While UC Berkeley projects dominated the politics of land use in the surrounding city, numerous other projects kept the city hopping in 2005. -more-
The biggest story in Oakland in 2005 was a story not actually scheduled to take place until 2006: the race to succeed Jerry Brown as mayor. -more-
Storm-related calls have kept Berkeley firefighters hopping over the past week, said Assistant Fire Chief Lucky Thomas. -more-
City officials, commissioners and the public spent much of 2005 not only debating the politics of development and land use but formulating proposals for new laws governing both new development and existing construction. -more-
Berkeley Gray Panther founder Lillian Rabinowitz died Wednesday, Dec. 21 at the age of 94. She lived at Chapparal House in Berkeley for the last few years. -more-
“Do I have to be a grandmother to come?” was the first question asked by recipients of an e-mail invitation signed by Pat Cody (co-founder, Cody’s Books, EB Women for Peace, DES Action), Clare Fischer (GTU Professor of Religion and Culture ), Marge Lasky (DVC Emerita, History), Joan Levinson (Media Consultant), Sydney Carson (CCA, Professor of Dramatic Arts), and Rita Maran (UC lecturer on Human Rights). -more-
To view Justin DeFreitas’ latest editorial cartoon, please visit -more-
In 18th century Russia, Grigori Potemkin purportedly tried to impress Catherine the Great by building elaborate fake villages along a route she traveled in Crimea and the Ukraine. Today, “Potemkin village” signifies a showy false front intended to hide embarrassing or disgraceful conditions. Sad to say, that description fits the project that the City Council endorsed Dec. 13 when it voted 8-0-1 (Spring abstained) to support an application from the city, in partnership with the South Berkeley Neighborhood Development Corporation (SBNDC), for a $120,00 California Department of Transportation Community-Based Transportation Grant. The money would be used to plan a 300-unit “transit village” at the Ashby BART west parking lot, where the city controls the air rights. -more-
January 2005: A former child star and talented song and dance man, but now a drug addled nincompoop, throws a rock at our upstairs front window and smashes the pane. I climb onto the porch roof to access the damage and find an entire quarry, leftovers from the times he missed. It is a double-pane window and he has broken only the front layer. Due to monetary restraints, I don’t replace it. -more-
Famed folk singer Odetta and award-winning lyric baritone Robert Sims will be featured along with Ghanaian drummer Pope Flyne and pianist-arranger Jacqueline Hairston in Sunday’s “Let The Spirituals Roll On,” a concert and fundraiser for Friends of Negro Spirituals at Oakland’s historic Beth Eden Baptist Church. -more-
The strike at Berkeley Honda is nearly half a year old now, and still the new owners refuse to acknowledge the quite reasonable request that workers should be treated decently, and a union should be allowed to represent them. -more-
“The long-jawed mudsucker is not a sexy fish,” admits UC Davis marine biologist Susan Anderson. No argument there. Gillichthys mirablis has a face only another mudsucker could love: beady little eyes and a huge mouth whose gape extends back to the gill covers. It’s small (8 inches long) and sedentary, spending its whole life on one patch of mudflat. This is one fish whose name will never be bestowed on a fast car or a major league sports franchise. -more-
Once in a while the New Times chain allows a good article which doesn’t follow the company line of cowboy libertarianism to slip past the editors of one of its magazines. The latest East Bay Express has a piece that’s well worth a read, even though it could have benefited from the services of a fact-checker in spots. Writer Eliza Strickland has capably documented the sad fate of the much-publicized Fruitvale Transit Village, where not much in the way of retail commerce has managed to take root, despite attractive design and millions of dollars in government subsidy. It should be a lesson to everyone who has hallelujah’d for the gospel of smart growth, one of whose tenets is that we can bring back the apartments-cum-retail design that worked pretty well in the streetcar suburbs at the turn of the 20th century. -more-
The news reports about California’s weather at the end of 2005 and its consequences in many communities around here, coupled with the downpour on Monday, the first workday of 2006 for some of us, have inevitably engendered out-of-control metaphor formation. Here in Berkeley we have no major river to overwhelm the city, which they have in Napa. We have little fresh hillside construction to create landslides as they do in Southern California. Granted, our antique storm drains and aging utility wires create a few flooded intersections and short-term power outages, but by and large Berkeley can seem like an island in the storm most of the time. As it does, by and large, in the storm now gathering on the national political scene. -more-
