Public Comment

Letters to the Editor

Friday February 02, 2007

CENTER STREET 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

As a member of DAPAC, I voted with a majority of the committee to express a preference for a pedestrian plaza on Center Street. The purpose of this vote was not to recommend building a plaza, or to declare that DAPAC supports a plaza as the right answer. Knowing that a majority of the committee members would prefer such a plaza is just the first step in a conversation. The second step is to produce some preliminary designs in consultation with downtown merchants and anyone else who is interested. With designs in hand, we can have a more directed and constructive discussion -- “This design is good, but it would be better if you change this feature..” “That one won’t work because there is not enough space for emergency vehicles.” “Here are our needs. Let’s find a way to accommodate them.” Having repeated public meetings where people just stand up to express general support or opposition to building a plaza won’t get us anywhere. DAPAC was not created to conduct a plebiscite, but to create a plan. Envisioning a plaza and seeing if it can work is the only way we will be able to determine whether it is the right thing to recommend. People who have reservations about a plaza can be part of this discussion, or they can just throw bricks. Which approach do you think will produce a more thoughtful result? 

Steve Weissman 

 

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ICELAND 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

How about the university purchasing Iceland not only for the Bears Hockey Team, but also as a its training center for student athletes, e.g., the Bears Football Team? 

Iceland is far enough away from the Hayward Fault to be much safer and eco-friendly than the Memorial Stadium oaks grove regarding the university’s building plans, yet at the same time, Iceland is close enough to the university campus itself without even venturing outside of Berkeley. 

Aaron Cohen 

 

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CROSSING TELEGRAPH 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I was wondering what they were doing to Telegraph. After reading the recent article in the Daily Planet, I am simply appalled! 

I don’t have a car for financial reasons. I walk a lot and take the bus a lot, and ride my bike occasionally. Crossing the street has become a terrifying experience because of the aggressive drivers who speed, ignore red lights and traffic signs, talk on cell phones, don’t look where they are going, and refuse to yield to pedestrians. I don’t intend to ride my bike on Telegraph even with the bike lane, because the same aggressive drivers will ignore it. I stick to the less busy streets. 

The islands were an important safety feature; without them, Telegraph will become almost as dangerous to cross as Shattuck. 

Mary Kazmer 

 

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MOVE SPORTS FACILITY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Football and track seasons normally don’t overlap. That’s why Cal should consider building a new, combined stadium and athletic facility on the relatively little-used site of the track stadium at Oxford and Channing. 

The site is closer to public transportation and to UC’s athletic and sports facilities immediately to the east. It would also be away from the Hayward Fault, and would not impinge on the residential neighborhoods already severely impacted by U-C development. Finally, it would be within walking distance of other downtown development U-C has in mind. 

Isn’t it about time for UC execs and planners to think of the City of Berkeley as a partner, not an obstacle? 

Alan Goldfarb 

Fremont 

 

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A OPEN CENTER STREET 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I applaud Berkeley’s Downtown Area Plan Advisory Committee’s recommendation to make Center Street between Oxford and Shattuck a pedestrian environment, possibly including a daylighted portion of historic Strawberry Creek. 

Currently I avoid the downtown as much as possible other than the theater district. A beautifully designed pedestrian space, particularly with an aesthetic open creek, would change that. I’d love to bring visitors and my family and children to a gracious plaza for lunch, dinner, a cup of tea. 

A public space for people of all ages to meet, rest, converse is often a feature of the world’s best-loved cities. With all it has to offer by way of education, arts, ideas and innovations, and with its citizen makeup, Berkeley is worthy of that aspiration. A carefully designed pedestrian space would continue the steps the city has already taken in that direction when they improved lighting and supported theater and jazz culture. A beautiful public space with an open waterway is in keeping with Berkeley’s commitment to environmental leadership as well as being harmonious with the Arts and Crafts tradition of celebrating nature in the built environment. 

A plaza facilitates social gathering whether it is meeting a friend or participating in a community event. Social connection is good for mental health and longevity. And, at the sight and sound of moving water, people slow down, lower their shoulders and sometimes their blood pressure. They take a deeper breath and become a bit more generous and expansive. The Center Street/Strawberry Creek project is good for our well-being. 

May the Berkeley City Council and Mayor Bates follow through on the DAPAC recommendation. 

Diana Divecha 

 

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WATADA'S COURAGE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In a Jan. 30 editorial (“Sorry Lieutenant”) the Sam Francisco Chronicle wrote: “As an officer, he (Lieutenant Ehren Watada) is in no position to refuse orders to go to Iraq.” 

Sorry, Chronicle editors, but in 1950 the Congress of the United States revised the Uniform Code of Military Justice to limit prosecution to soldiers and officers who refused to obey “lawful” orders. This was not an abstract exercise in legal precision. The Nuremberg trials of former Nazi officials, including military personnel, had just concluded and had repudiated, on a world stage, the “Nuremberg defense". War crimes could no longer be justified by the claim that “I was only following orders when I shot those kids.” 

Since it can be argued that the United States went to war in violation of the UN Charter, to which it is a signatory, there is a legitimate question whether any order issued in furtherance of this war is lawful. 

A court martial may rule for against Lieutenant Watada on the facts of the case but it is just those facts that the present administration does not want examined in a court of law. 

Lieutenant Watada’s courageous act deserves, not only applause, but full support. Especially in view of the spineless behavior of the U.S. Congress in refusing to use its powers to halt this criminal insanity. 

E. Haberkern 

 

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WATADA'S PATRIOTISM 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The following is my rebuttal to a letter written to the San Francisco Chronicle yesterday regarding Ehren Watada.  

I’m strongly opposed to the “Sorry, lieutenant” letter regarding Lt. Ehren Watada’s refusal to serve in Iraq because he believes that it is war based on lies. The writer’s a priori statements must be challenged: “As an officer, he’s in no position to refuse orders to go to Iraq.” 

He’s wrong. Our country is based on the rule of law, not a person, even elected. Watada’s oath to serve his military term is based on honesty. Of course his oath only holds if it is based on the truth as most of us understand it. 

Most people in the US now recognize that the attack against Iraq was based on the lie that Iraq was producing weapons of mass destruction. If my parent or my commanding officer orders me to kill an innocent person am I to follow these orders or am I to behave as a thinking, responsible American? 

We tried Nazi Germany’s highest officers in Nuremberg, and executed several for following orders to commit War Crimes. The Nuremberg Principles, which we used to execute top Nazis state: “The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him.” (note: this is one of six Nuremberg Principles). 

I commend Lt Watada for his courageous act and for being a true patriot in believing that our leaders should be honest, especially when he asks us to die. 

Ying Lee 

 

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CORRECTION ON THE HISTORY OF PEOPLE’S PARK 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

People’s Park was built by the spirit of many people taking their lives and their community into their own hands. Activists did not “pressure the university to create People’s Park ...by holding a series of protests” as Andy Stokols attributed to me saying in his article “New Team Appointed for People’s Park Plans". 

In 1969 “the people” saw the ruins of their neighborhood, torn down and abandoned by UC’s abuse of eminent domain, and THEY built the park. No architectural plans, no leaders, no budget..but rather by collective will and the joy of bettering their neighborhood. The power and beauty of a group of people creating together like this is important to remember. 

This is why the University spending $100,000 of your money to hire a corporate architect firm is a threat to the vision of this historical Park. It is antithetical to the nature of the Park, which, besides being created by, has been improved and tended by, volunteers. Through “user development” we’ve built picnic tables and gardens and Community, still visible through the chaos of holding together the edges of today’s society. 

The corporate landscape design firm that was just hired by UC will be doing its “needs assessment” this spring. They will call meetings and hand out surveys and collect data and then they will write up the conclusions that the University is paying them to present, undoubtedly proposing more concrete and less freedom. Next UC will want to hire the “design experts” to replace the work and unique process of the park community. 

Nevertheless it may be helpful to participate in the corporate firm’s input process if for no other reason than as an opportunity to meet others who care about the history and future of one of Berkeley’s most important sites. It could be a way to meet different others and to share concerns, desires, and ideas. Perhaps we can find common ground to improve the Park without violating it’s history and spirit. 

But in the mean time, the Park will go on being cared for by the people that go there and just do it. Please join us. Help plan the Anniversary concert for April 22, or volunteer to cook food, or play Frisbee, or do art, or meet homeless people, or grow vegetables, or plan a poetry jam or a picnic or ballroom dancing or... 

People’s Park needs some of this generation to know yourselves as the People and participate in this experiment of Common Land. Enjoy it, improve it, share it. Take it into your own hands, unmediated by the experts, the officials. Do it yourself. It is a thin slice of freedom in a society of hierarchical control. Claim it. 

Terri Compost 

 

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GIVE PEDESTRIANIZATION A CHANCE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Much has been made in these pages and elsewhere about the Downtown Area Planning Advisory Committee (DAPAC) decision last week, on a 11-7 vote, to support full pedestrianization of Center Street between Shattuck and Oxford. As a DAPAC member who voted in favor of the motion, I say: “Give pedestrianization a chance!” 

Critics of the decision have said that it is too soon to select a design option for Center Street, that merchants’ concerns haven’t been heard, that first studies need to be made on all three options: 1) the current two-way traffic arrangement; 2) a slow street (or “woonerf”) with one way traffic on rough pavement with wide sidewalks; and 3) full pedestrianization. (Full pedestrianization would allow emergency access at any time and delivery access at certain hours every day.) Unfortunately, the clock is ticking; DAPAC must complete a Downtown Plan by next November, and until DAPAC acted last week, no planning assumptions had been adopted. Furthermore, these options have been under discussion since the UCB Hotel Task Force recommended full pedestrianization two years ago.  

Furthermore, major design elements needing space on Center Street, such as a possible creek and open space plaza that would compete with cars on the street, are waiting to be decided; therefore, a basic planning decision about the street had to be made. 

I understand and appreciate downtown merchants’ concerns about pedestrianizing Center Street. DAPAC’s decision in support of full pedestrianization is the preferred option; in other words, this decision is a starting point only and details need to be worked out. Concerns include but are not limited to: maintenance and security issues, street behavior, delivery access, emergency access, handicapped access, and parking. What’s needed now is a City process to work with downtown business interests and other stakeholders to identify and come up with a strategy to address those concerns. A good place to start would be to conduct a walking tour of that block of Center Street with stakeholders to identify issues and experience visually the relationships between buildings, street width, sidewalk widths, curb locations, etc. I urge the Mayor and City Council to initiate such a process sooner rather than later. 

Helen Burke 

 

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PSC CONTINUES TO POLLUTE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

They’re counting on you to keep your windows closed and your mouth shut. The recent Pacific Steel Casting consent decree with Citizens for a Better Environment is terrible because its missing several important parts that would have protected the people who live and work near the factory. Without these parts in the agreement, the neighborhood is still unsafe and PSC is officially allowed to continue poisoning the people who live and work there. 

Why the agreement stinks? 

There is no funding or plan for comprehensive community air testing in the neighborhood. 

There is no funding or plan for a health effects survey to learn what harm has already been caused to workers and residents by PSC and the toxic emissions. 

There is no funding or plan to release ALL test results to the public so the people who live near the factory can decide whether PSC should be allowed to continue to release chemicals known to cause cancer, reproductive disorders, respiratory disorders and other health problems. 

Remember, this factory is less than a mile from schools, parks, restaurants, and day care centers and the air still stinks in the neighborhood even after PSC added some new equipment that was supposed to fix the problem. Why should anyone celebrate an agreement that allows PSC to continue polluting people in Berkeley, Albany, Kensington, and El Cerrito? Why not ask the neighbors what they think about being poisoned just a little more slowly while Pacific Steel Casting and Citizens for a Better Environment and the Bay Area Air Quality Management District and Mayor Bates and Council Member Maio shake hands and celebrate a terrible job well done! 

They’re counting on you to keep your windows closed and your mouth shut. 

Andrew Galpern 

 

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ORGANIZING ACTIVISTS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I’m working with a group of neighborhood activists in an East Coast College town. They’re being overrun with college expansion and an autocratic, development-minded mayor, and there’s no discernible community sector to fight it. In one of my recent e-mails to them, I commented:  

“I’m not sure your town is any worse than anyplace else in terms of development, but I can tell you what we do have in Berkeley that I don’t see much evidence of there: organized neighborhood groups and activists that work together. I almost can’t keep up with all the condo conversion ordinances and measures to change them and referendums to block these changes, etc. If you Google the Berkeley Daily Planet (our free community newspaper, gone defunct but resurrected by a couple who sold their software company to do so), you’ll find many stories each week of the ongoing battles with city officials, college officials, and developers. Oftentimes they actually make some headway in forcing compromises because they won’t shut up and go away.  

And a young person on their end asked me: Why do you think Berkeley has such an activist population? I have always attributed [my town’s] lack of such activity to its growing affluence and transient nature of the student body, yet Berkeley faces the same issues.  

I should have a concise answer for this great question, but I don’t. I haven’t been involved in any activist issues before now, and I’m still not connected with my own neighborhood in Berkeley. Can you enlighten me with your current and historic perspective and/or print this question somewhere in the Daily Planet to invite answers? It seems like a fruitful one. Or can you recommend any books/articles/documentaries on the subject?  

Thanks so much for any help you can provide these unfortunate, rudderless activists in a small New England college town. I really appreciate all you’re doing to keep our democratic, free press going, and I know this is a crucial part of keeping activism alive in Berkeley!  

Ann Foley 

 

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BOWLS HALL EXPERIENCE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

There are always two sides of a story. Bob Sayles had a positive experience at Bowles Hall. I believe that he is telling the truth from his perspective. I was at Bowles Hall in the same period (1948-1952), and I found the atmosphere very chilling. Noisy, rowdy, inconsiderate. Upperclassmen who hazed lowerclassmen in a fraternity-like atmosphere. Drinking bouts. No perceptible guidance system—just a housemother who knew she was outnumbered and had to be a mascot. And an atmosphere in which I felt afraid, certainly never accepted When I moved to International House as a graduate student (1952--1955), I was amazed at the difference: nurturing, well-ordered, friendly, considerate. I should have moved there sooner.  

Adolescent behavior in residence halls is nothing new, but I see no reason to institutionalize it. I, for one, am more willing to trust the Housing Office at UC than some alumni who don’t know the campus today and who want to reinstate their vision of how they remember Bowles Hall. Old days can’t be relived, today’s world is different. And opposing each new move by the UC officials doesn’t seem a productive tactic. Why not let UC make choices in terms of today’s logistics, today’s students? And if the choices the Housing officials make don’t work, today’s students, not those of 50 years ago or more, should be the ones to help guide the system. They, not us oldtimers, are the consumers. 

Sherwin Carlquist 

Santa Barbara 

 

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SAVE BOWLES HALL 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In response to “Bowles Alums Lead Fight to Preserve Beloved Hall” I’m outraged to hear again that the university is ruining the undergraduate experience at Berkeley! Haas needs to redirect the focus of their efforts to create executive suites away from California’s oldest residence hall, Bowles Hall. 

In 1998, when I moved into Bowles Hall my freshman year, I was roomed with two upper classmen. These upper classmen, both of whom were in my major, were able to guide me in my academics and help me become comfortable in the new college environment. (Recently they were both groomsmen in my wedding.) 

It was a shame when they UC Berkeley Housing Office capped the percent of returning Bowlesmen to 17 percent the hall’s capacity in 1999 (previously 50 percent) and even more discouraging when they eliminated any chance to return to the hall in 2005. 

The thought of eliminating the chance for any undergraduate to have the type of wonderful experience I had in Bowles Hall deeply saddens me. I sincerely hope the university will reconsider the location of their executive suites as well as make efforts towards restoring the Bowles Hall experience. 

David Hornung 

 

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PROTEST AGAINST PROF. YOO 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

For the past year a small group of citizens has held a weekly vigil outside of Professor John Yoo’s class at Boalt Law School and in Sproul Plaza to protest his presence at a leading U.S. law college. Yoo’s cockamamie legal theories have buttressed the Bush administration’s claims of dictatorial power and laid the groundwork for the torture so horrifically depicted in Fernando Botero’s paintings on display in Doe Library. 

Every week, students, faculty, and staff chatting on cell phones and plugged into iPods hurry past color photos of screaming men and bloody bodies, averting their eyes as good Germans once did from that which their government is doing. Let us hope that Botero’s paintings and presence at UC will reawaken the moral conscience of this university—if any remains to be woken—to a faculty member so responsible for such reprehensible crimes and UC’s unacknowledged shame. 

Gray Brechin 

 

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MACARTHUR DELIVERY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

For the life of me, I cannot understand why it is so difficult to deliver your paper to the McArthur newspaper box, twice a week, as you do to every other Daily Planet box throughout “the greater Berkeley” area. I have called your office repeatedly to report this problem. All I’ve ever gotten have been half-hearted, unenthused responses bemoaning driver unreliability or scarcity. 

So what is it? You manage to deliver your newspaper to Piedmont, El Cerrito del Norte and Grand Lake. I have found it as far as Mountain Boulevard and Point Richmond. You should know that very many people in North Oakland spend money in Berkeley, patronizing some of the very businesses that advertise in your publication. We routinely cross the border to go to events, to activate, to socialize, to work and to shop. 

Other free publications, which may or may not be worth reading, don’t seem to have a problem stocking their boxes. However varied (the demographics of) their readership, they seem to not single-out any particular area for non-delivery. 

Please step up to the plate and show us the same respect you show everyone else. 

Jimena Pérez, 

Oakland 

 

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CELL TOWERS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Your recent story, “ZAB Rejects Cell Phone Antennas on UC Storage” (Jan. 30) was quite interesting. It seems that some activist-citizens in Berkeley did not want to see Verizon Wireless and Nextel Communications be able to improve their local cellular telephone service offerings. I trust that none of these activist-citizens are currently users of cell phones or any other modern electronically-based technology including television, radio, Internet, e-mail, WiFi or even the traditional telephone. For if they are, they are thus being schizophrenic, plain silly or as the folk saying goes, cutting off their noses to spite their faces… Many people seem to want to enjoy the fruits of modern technology without allowing the needed supporting infrastructure to be placed locally in their neighborhoods. 

As for alleged health concerns, we are all already taking a 24/7 daily bath in a cornucopia of electromagnetic energy: electricity, radio waves, television broadcasts, microwaves, radar, WiFi and satellite television signals. This is on top of all the natural electromagnetic radiation, which we receive from the sun, plus cosmic radiation originating from beyond our solar system. This radiation has been showering down on our Earth for billions of years; all species of plants and animals have evolved and lived in this radiation bath. There is also radioactivity from natural sources in the earth’s rocks. 

In a similar vein to our Berkeley protests, some of the good citizens through the tunnel out in Lafayette are up in arms about whether to continue to allow cell phone service antennas to be disguised as artifical “trees” with their blue-green needles and branches. And I thought that the corporations were quite smart in making these broadcast antenna/trees an obviously artificial blue-green color to stop ignorant woodsmen or tree trimmers from cutting down the antenna-trees in a fit of harvesting or pruning mania. Hmm, artificial Christmas trees are fine and dandy, but artificial cell phone tower/trees are not… Wonders never cease with the human species.  

James K. Sayre 

Oakland 

 

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ABAG HOUSING NUMBERS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Steve Martinot in his Jan. 16 commentary, “ABAG Allocations Equal Top-Down Decision Making,” misses the point about housing policy and the City of Berkeley’s decision-making and leadership role in meeting Berkeley’s and the region’s housing needs. The City of Berkeley’s elected officials and staff have worked closely with other city and county representatives from the nine Bay Area counties on the ABAG Housing Methodology Committee. Together they helped develop a draft process to distribute the regional housing need required by state law so that local governments can identify appropriate housing sites and policies to meet these planning goals. This Regional Housing Need Allocation (RHNA) process is happening state-wide in all the regions. 

Martinot’s statements that this process and RHNA formula for housing distribution in the Bay Area was pre-determined, dictated top-down, kept secret, and even dominated by the Bay Area’s outer rim city interests, just aren’t true. The Draft RHNA formula has been reviewed intensely and constructively these past two months by all our region’s local governments. Berkeley and other cities have had multiple critical discussions across the board about how to allocate housing need equitably by income level to all our Bay Area communities. With ABAG Executive Board and staff they have wrestled with regional and local challenges like land use, availability of land, jobs, current housing, transportation systems, and strained infrastructure. The final revised RHNA Methodology, which was adopted on January 18th after a public hearing and additional lengthy review, reflects their articulated concerns and priorities. It also recognizes the critical need to secure incentives at the state and regional level to help our cities and counties meet their housing commitment. 

Martinot characterized this whole housing needs process and regional/local collaboration as “a new shift of power” to the region. In fact, the City of Berkeley has been at the forefront of facilitating a regional collaborative and problem solving process since 1961, when ABAG was formed and became the first council of governments in California. Former Berkeley Mayor Claude Hutchison was the first president of ABAG and one of the founding local government leaders to call for a regional local government body that would help Bay Area local governments find creative solutions to local issues they shared and maximize the resources and authority of local government in its dealings with the state. For 46 years, ABAG has continued this commitment.  

Kathleen Cha 

Senior Communications Officer 

Association of Bay Area Governments