Public Comment

SAVE ICELAND 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I want to thank everyone who has expressed support for registering Berkeley Iceland as a Berkeley Landmark. This is the first step in saving the rink and skating in Berkeley. The hearing on the application before the Berkeley Landmarks Preservation Commission will be on Thursday, June 1 at the North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst St., from 7:30-9:30 p.m. Please join us to show the community support for saving Iceland. 

Tom Killilea 

SaveBerkeleyIceland.com 

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ANOTHER RELIGIOUS WAR? 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

What is the sense of trying to authenticate any religion, since it has been written and rewritten throughout the ages? The myths handed down are simply guidelines and can be beautiful. That is, if spiritually were incorporated with love and acceptance in their lives. Idealists and fanatics sanction their own beliefs only, creating retaliation, eventually wars. Is history merely repeating itself?  

Joy A. Flaherty 

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BUS RAPID TRANSIT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

On May 11, I attended a meeting at Willard Middle school on Bus Rapid Transit. According to information I learned there, AC Transit thinks this system, running through San Leandro, Oakland and Berkeley, will be a success because of the great numbers of people living and working near the route. However, at the meeting, I noted a tremendous amount of animosity because the reduction of car lanes on Telegraph Avenue is likely to push traffic into residential neighborhoods adjacent to the route. I would suggest to AC Transit that it is not a good idea to antagonize potential customers. Perhaps they can find a way to protect side streets from additional traffic. 

In addition, I think it is important to have some kind of incentive program. For instance, UC Berkeley charges for parking and offers discounted public transit tickets to employees. AC Transit could offer free rides the first month or 25 cent rides in the middle of the day when few people are on the bus. I’m sure that someone familiar with marketing could come up with far more ideas than I could. 

It will take some finesse to balance the needs of drivers, public transit users and residents, and I hope AC Transit will handle the project with grace. 

Sally Levinson 

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DAILY KOS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Thanks to the Daily Planet and Richard Brenneman for the article on Daily Kos blogger Markos Moulitsas. Though I spend lots of time on my computer I don’t do the blog scene, so it was very interesting to learn about the major impact of people like Kos. I will admit some envy that a young man half my age can say that up to a million people a day read and interact with his efforts. It’s quite an achievement. As an absurd comparison, our Retro Poll alternative public opinion research group’s website (www.retropoll.org) has received a paltry 20,000 hits in three years and the satiric novel I published (though available on the Internet as well as from Berkeley local booksellers Black Oaks and Cody’s) has sold about 50 copies. How foppish.  

On the other hand, Markos shows wisdom beyond his years when he projects phasing out of blogging into some other life pursuit in about five years. What I think (or hope) he intuits from his work—or we may intuit from the efforts of MoveOn.org, Working Assets’ Act for Change, Air America and others—is that regardless of the web’s popularity it will probably remain a force heavily restricted to operating within the market culture rather than a force organizing within institutions and geographic locales against that culture. The virtuality of the web “community” isn’t important to product marketeers but, for Kos and others who hope to effect substantive political and cultural change, it is an inherently co-opting factor, even when dealing with exciting ideas.  

Not at all meaning to denigrate the value of the marvelous experiment that blogging reflects I think it important to recognize this limitation: that the vast majority of people—those growing ranks relegated to the bottom of a collapsing society—who need to be energized to believe in their own power and self-organized to fight for justice and democracy live most of their lives in a different world, their interaction with the market (be it the market of commodities or ideas) programmed to the role of consuming objects. That majority, in the United States as anywhere, is marvelously approachable within the realm of real life—within its institutions, cultural organizations and communities.  

Marc Sapir 

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TIRED OF THE LEFTISTS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Margot Smith may be well-intentioned, but she is woefully ignorant of realities. She wonders why our working class doesn’t have the skills of illegal immigrants, buying into Bush’s notion that “illegals are doing jobs that Americans won’t do.” The truth is that undocumented people are working for slave wages which, understandably, don’t appeal to American workers who can garner more from unemployment insurance or welfare, along with medical care. Of course unemployed members of our working class would take such jobs if elite businessmen offered minimal living wages; but why should businessmen pay decent salaries when they can exploit illegal immigrants for next-to-nothing? In sum, undocumented workers have taken a terrible economic toll on minority workers with U.S. citizenship and hurt the middle and lower economic class as well with the enormous cost of social services oriented toward migrants. 

Of course, Smith is one of the new breed of misguided Sandalistas—“revolution tourists” who believe they have found the next socialist paradise in Venezuela. People like Smith are all too ready to embrace the growth of literacy while ignoring the burgeoning suppression of expression in Venezuela. This is so typical, after all locals like Global Exchange are still ready to close their eyes to the tyranny of 47 years of one-man rule in Cuba.  

And of course, the subject of Venezuela brings us to Chris Gilbert, who just resigned as curator of the Berkeley Art Museum. Petulant ideologue that he is, Gilbert just couldn’t understand that art should stand for itself and not be accompanied by didactic rhetoric. 

Speaking of leftist swill, Israel-basher supreme, cartoonist Kalil Bendib, said at a meeting of local “progressives” that he would like more non-European art taught in Berkeley schools. Just what Berkeley needs, more dumbing down of its students with allegedly “great” Third World creations superseding the teaching of truly magnificent Western literature and art! Don’t we already have enough of such bilgewater shortchanging our students? 

Dan Spitzer 

Kensington 

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CODY’S BOOKS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

It is too soon to accept the closing of Cody’s as inevitable. Berkeley stands to lose too much if this fine bookstore should close its doors after 50 years of service to the community and university. Those interested in developing solutions to the challenge of making it once again financially viable will meet on June 8, venue to be announced soon. In the meantime, both the city and the university need to hear from Berkeley residents, students, faculty, all those who value this fine independent bookstore, a pillar of Berkeley cultural life, that they need to play an active role in keeping Cody’s open. 

Charlene M. Woodcock 

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YMCA EXPERIENCE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I was born and raised in Berkeley and went to all Berkeley public schools and now attend Berkeley City College (formerly Vista). I love reading the Daily Planet but have never written to you guys. But today I write to you because I am upset about a policy that has been put upon our youth in our very own downtown Berkeley.  

I would like to inform you about a situation that happened in our own community of downtown Berkeley. On the night of Wednesday May 24, I arrived at the YMCA at 6:30 p.m. with my family. My family meaning my three young children ages 6, 3 and 1, my brother (15), and myself. As we were entering a staff member asked my brother how old he was, he replied 15. He was then told that he could not come in because teenagers were not allowed in after 6 p.m, Monday through Thursday. It is their policy. I asked if this was because they caused trouble. The staff member told me that it was because they tended to hang out. I explained to them that he wasn’t coming to hang out but to help me with my children and enjoy time together as a family. They refused. I explained to them that I was practically his guardian and made myself responsible for him. They still refused, I asked to speak to someone else. I asked this new staff member if the YMCA promoted family and community. He replied yes. So why weren’t they supporting this family? They still refused, his final words were, “If I let this one in I gotta let the next one in and then the one after that.”  

Of course you can imagine the frustration I felt. Of course this is not the reason why I am writing to you. I am not trying to be a “tattle-tale,” I totally love the YMCA, but it is upsetting that the Young Mens Christian Association would not let the only young man there enter.  

So are they telling young men and women to go hang out in the streets? They are discriminating against age and not promoting family or community. It was impossible to believe that they would not make an exception, or have an exception in their policy that a teenager can come in after 6 with his/her family. I think it’s great that they support and try to help the youth by letting them sell things at the snack cart they have, but what time are they giving them with their families? A youngster gets out of school at about 3, great if he wants to go work out and hang with his friends at the Y. But there are other family situations like mine, where my youngster has to wait for me to get off of work around 5; come home, gets things together to go out again and have fun as a family. All this to avoid him straying, to avoid him having to go to the street to look for what he can’t find at home. And then they tell me he can’t come in with his family.  

The YMCA has a designated “Family night” on Fridays from 7-9 which we have gone to. Unfortunately Fridays are somewhat unpleasant because the facility is so crowded, and on occasions my work schedule does not permit me to make it on Fridays. I don’t know if this is a story to follow or what. Maybe you can tell me if I am over exaggerating or doing the right thing. I am not usually a complainer. But do stand up for what I believe in. I just feel hurt that a place like the YMCA, which I love so much, would make all youth pay for the acts of others, and go against there own goal of bringing family and community together. 

Carmen Navarro 

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CORRECTING CHRIS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Mr. Kavanagh accuses John Blankenship of operating “in tandem” with Michael St. John and the Berkeley Property Owners Association in a “carefully calibrated campaign” to relax Berkeley’s rules against condo conversions.  

As the person who has spoken the most for BPOA on this issue, I’d like to set the record straight. Mr. Blankenship is not a member of BPOA and his efforts against the current rule were unknown to me before last week. Indeed I never even met the man until after we had both spoken to the City Council on May16. Mr. St John, of course, is a member of the Housing Advisory Commission and so is known to everyone on all sides of the question.  

There are wide differences between our respective approaches. It appeared to me on May 23 that Mr. Blankenship thinks smaller buildings should be exempt from the current rules. Mr. St. John says that the 12.5 percent fee ought to be calculated on capital gains on sale of a converted unit rather than on the gross sales price. BPOA’s position, which has been submitted to HAC and to the council, is that the cap on conversions should be raised so long as rental vacancies remain high, and that a reduced fee should be charged up front so that the city gets immediate income for its housing trust fund.  

The petition now being circulated takes a fourth approach, in that much of the fee, instead of going to the city, would be paid to tenants wanting to own their own homes .  

These suggestions are all different from each other, and don’t indicate the sort of conspiracy alleged by Mr. Kavanagh. What they do indicate is that a lot of people do agree on one thing: The current law severely restricts affordable home ownership in Berkeley, and ought to be changed.  

David M. Wilson  

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CONDO RESPONSE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Thank you very much for publishing my May 16 commentary on the Condominium Conversion Ordinance. “Condo Conversion Taxes Unfair to Duplex Homeowners” would have been more accurate.  

1. The new conversion assessment (fee) amounts to a sales “tax“  

2. My duplex is my home, and I cannot have it without the rental.  

As I said in my commentary, I and others like me, do not see ourselves as “landlords.” We live in duplexes or triplexes because of our desire to be citizens of Berkeley, our desire to have some control over our own destiny through home ownership, our pride in ownership, our joy in working with buildings (me, as an architect), but most of all because we do not have the means to own a single family house in Berkeley. In order to afford the astronomical costs of purchase, maintenance and repair, but especially Berkeley taxation, we have been forced to subsidize our costs with a rental. 

Mr. Chris Kavanagh, who I have never met, and whose name I had not previously recognized, was unable to step back to admire the individual trees in the forest. This is especially distressing because he has a position on the Rent Stabilization Board. I do not have the available word count to nit pick my way through the inaccuracies and misrepresentations in Mr. Kavanagh’s May 23 letter to the editor. I also do not know from whom the man is getting his information , but he should “out” his source who is leading him astray:  

1. I do not belong to the Berkeley Property Owners Association (BPOA). I have never gone to one of their meetings. I have not read their ballot initiative, although I have since this letter, gotten a copy. I have intentionally not associated myself with BPOA because my perception, rightly or wrongly, has been that they are owners of multiple large properties and have a different approach to their work than me. My business is architecture; my rental is a part of my home, and I treat it as such.  

2. My “carefully calibrated campaign”? “Working in tandem with BPOA”? Is Mr. Kavanagh a conspiracy theorist? Is he trying to demonize people who don’t agree with him in the manner of Joe McCarthy? 

3. Mr. St. John is on the Housing Advisory Board and as such I have contacted him and others on the commission to discuss issues raised relative to the Condominium Conversion Ordinance. Not all have returned my calls, but Mr. St. John has. I don’t always agree with Mr. St. John’s approach, nor what he has to says, and he has not picked up on many of my ideas, but he happens to be one of several thinkers on the HAC who dares bring up an original thought and is not just the voice of his city councilmember.  

4. I have called and met with almost every councilmember with regard to the Condominium Conversion Ordinance, all but one of whom has returned my calls. Maybe Mr. Kavanagh can come up some with some “carefully calibrated campaign” from my council contacts as well. 

5. I hope his letter does not accurately reflect his inability to see the truth behind personal statement which he must be called upon to do often in his position on the Rent Stabilization Board. 

John Blankenship