Features

Local Davids Battled Goliaths in 2006

By Riya Bhattacharjee
Tuesday January 09, 2007

Donning gas masks to protest against emissions from Pacific Steel Casting, risking arrest to save the People’s Park free box, organizing the city’s first ever international food festival and cooking up civic participation through a website were some of the ways in which Berkeleyans took control in 2006. 

 

Pacific Steel 

Entire families, with toddlers in arms, turned up in front of the West Berkeley- based steel foundry in November to rally against Pacific Steel—the third largest foundry of its kind in the country—and demanded an answer to when emissions of the noxious fumes would stop. 

Innumerable protests and three lawsuits later— one by the Bay Area Air Quality Management District against PSC—community members were informed earlier this month that the City of Berkeley had requested an extension of time for public review of the emissions inventory report. 

The Air District along with District 4 councilmember Linda Maio—in whose district PSC is located—will hold a community meeting on Feb. 7 where questions about emissions will be answered. 

While some West Berkeley residents would be glad to send the steel foundry packing off to somewhere else, there are those who would like to see it clean up its act and stay. 

 

People’s Park 

People’s Park free-box users sued the City of Berkeley in June for not holding to its 1994 agreement with UC Berkeley, which stated that a free-box, in which people put clothing and other items for others to pick up, must remain in People’s Park. 

The UC Berkeley Police Department tore down each free box that advocates built in the last year. 

UC Berkeley is accelerating efforts to clean up the park and make it drug and alcohol free. In November, the university unveiled its plans to bulldoze the berms (mounds) on either side of the park’s Community Garden to allow police officers to patrol the park better. 

But once again it was the people of Berkeley who prevailed, and their protests made university officials scrap the plans. However, the university is going ahead with its plan to hire a landscape design team that will help beautify this plot of land. 

 

The Wishing Well 

Currently the only free box in the city exists in the form of the 35-year-old recycling box on the sidewalk parking strip of the 1700 block of Channing Way.  

Known as the Wishing Well to local residents, this box was seen as an encroachment by the City of Berkeley and well on its way to being demolished in 2006 until neighbors stepped in to save it. 

 

Bateman Mall 

The Bateman Mall has been restored, but nothing has been done to fix the drainage problem. It was last reported in the Daily Planet on Nov. 28 that one of the neighbors had removed the rotting grass on the mall to solve the strong stench and the drainage issue, but neighbors told the Planet on Monday that nothing has been done to fix the problem permanently. 

It was also reported to the Planet that there has been “no apparent activity to fix the drainage problems, with the exception of several trips by city personnel to view the construction errors and take some measurements.” 

 

Willard Park declared rat-free 

Parents of children who were scared away by rodents at the Willard Park Tot Lot were relieved when the city decided to clean out the park in March. Neighbors complained that large quantities of food and human waste had contributed to a dramatic increase in rats. 

The city at first had decided to bait the rats, but health concerns limited the rat control efforts to trapping only. 

 

Kitchen Democracy 

For those who find it difficult to keep up with civic issues affecting Berkeleyans daily, help came in the form of kitchendemocracy.com. The husband-and-wife duo of Robert Vogel and Simona Carini promised to bring City Hall to you, courtesy of the Internet. 

Today the website is used by councilmembers, ZAB commissioners, Berkeley voters and even the curious Cal undergrad. A website that is probably the first of its kind, KD might just go on to become the Craigslist for Municipal Government in the near future. 

 

The naked guy dies in jail 

Andrew Martinez, who as a 19-year-old UC Berkeley undergraduate created a splash in the national media for getting suspended from the university for attending class in little more than a pair of sandals and a backpack in 1992, died in his Santa Clara County jail cell in May, leaving friends, family and community members shocked. 

The untimely death of 33-year-old Martinez caused people to question the American legal system, specifically the Santa Clara County Jail system, which had housed Martinez in solitary confinement even though he had been mentally disturbed. 

 

Ruby Harmon turns 100 

Berkeley resident Ruby Harmon celebrated her centennial birthday in May.  

Her amazing journey through life as a social worker and BUSD volunteer was celebrated by friends at the Trinity United Methodist Church. Although Ruby is unable to speak today, her memories of the Civil Rights movement in Louisiana, the segregated school system and the integration that followed thereafter live on in transcriptions. 

 

BAM curator quits over exhibit dispute 

Chris Gilbert—who served as a curator at the Berkeley Art Museum since September 2005—resigned in May because of rising conflicts with museum administrators over his controversial project “Now Time: Media Along the Path of the Bolivarian Process.”  

Peter Selz, founding director of the Berkeley Art Museum and a former curator of New York’s Museum of Modern Art, expressed shock over Gilbert’s resignation in May. 

When the Planet asked Connie Lewellen, BMA chief curator, to comment about the reasons for resignation stated in his e-mail in May, she said, “Chris couldn’t do the program as he wanted and therefore he wanted to resign.” 

Gilbert told the Planet that his decision to leave had started from an argument over a text panel for the ‘Now Time’ exhibit. “Their plan was to replace the phrase ‘in solidarity with revolutionary Venezuela’ with a phrase like ‘concerning revolutionary Venezuela,’ for another phrase describing a relation that would not be explicitly one of solidarity,” he said. 

 

Berkeley remembers the Waving Man 

Residents of South Berkeley and the Berkeley NAACP Youth & College Division found a way to remember the legacy of Mr. Charles, Berkeley’s “Waving Man,” in March.  

For 30 years, Mr. Charles stood on the busy intersection of Martin Luther King Jr. Way and Oregon to smile and wave hello to morning commuters, an act which earned him the title “Waving Man” and made him the “face of Berkeley” worldwide. 

On the morning of March 22, Mr. Charles’ 96th Birthday, a group of people stood at this very same intersection and greeted people just like Mr. Charles had and helped to make the world a happier place. 

 

First International Food Festival lands in Berkeley 

West Berkeley played host to the city’s inaugural International Food Festival in May. Organized by the West Berkeley Neighborhood Development Corporation and the City of Berkeley, the festival celebrated diversity in the city by bringing together Indian, Fijian, Filipino, Spanish, Mexican, Middle Eastern, Turkish, Lebanese, Jamaican and many more ethnicities in one place. 

 

Bleak future for Berkeley’s Sea Scouts 

The U.S. Supreme Court refused to review a ruling that allows the City of Berkeley to deny the Sea Scouts a free dock at the Marina because of discrimination against gays and atheists.  

The 74-year-old Sea Scouts are bound to the policies of their parent body, the Boy Scouts of America, which mandates that gays and atheists be excluded from the organization. 

Ever since the city began charging the Sea Scouts for the berth at the Marina, Sea Scouts’ Boat Skipper Evans has been paying $500 a month, something he said was gradually becoming a problem economically.