Public Comment
Letters to the Editor
OAKS, BEVATRON
Editors, Daily Planet:
You could solve both the oaks and Bevatron demolition controversies by building the proposed athletics training center on the site of the old Bevatron, sparing the oaks on the fault line and commemorating the Bevatron with a suitable bronze plaque on the new building.
Steve Juniper
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ENVIRONMENTAL INJUSTICE
Editors, Daily Planet:
Seeing the city map of cell phone antenna locations was a lesson in environmental injustice. Two locations in North Berkeley approved and 15 in South Berkeley—how surprising. Patrick Kennedy has done all the work on his building necessary to install 12 to 18 more antennas here in South Berkeley, abutting a residential neighborhood, across the street from Savo Island, a housing development with many seriously handicapped, vulnerable citizens, and one block from a child care center servicing our youngest, most of whom are minorities.
The Zoning Board denied his permit for these antennas and of course Kennedy will appeal, since most of the work is done and the only approval for it is missing. I’m sure there will be serious pressure put on the mayor, council and ZAB members by Mr. Kennedy and the cell phone companies to change the ZAB decision or override it. Will their concern be for the people of South Berkeley or out-of-town developers and international corporations? We await their decision.
The cell phone representative argued that UC Berkeley needs these particular towers in this particular location. Now that really caused me to guffaw—Cal owns half the town, has hundreds of buildings and a large hillside so they surely have a place for antennas and don’t need to add to ours down here.
Rosemary Vimont
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SPOTTY COVERAGE
Editors, Daily Planet:
Anyone with a cell phone knows that coverage in Berkeley is spottier than coverage in surrounding areas. My own business has suffered as a result. Perhaps our city leaders could add a new message to the Nuclear Free Zone signs: “Welcome to Berkeley: A Business-Free Zone.” Of course, they’d have to raise residential property taxes to pay for those signs, because business sales tax dollars are going to Albany and Emeryville.
Tom Case
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CELL PHONE ANTENNAS
Editors, Daily Planet:
Your Jan. 20 story, “ZAB Rejects Cell Phone Antennas on UC Storage,” 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 face. 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 artificial “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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INSINUATING LANGUAGE
Editors, Daily Planet:
I must protest a statement made in your Jan. 9 article “BSEP Extension Best News for BUSD in 2006.” Your writer insinuated that the former staff of B-Tech, or, Berkeley Alternative High School as it was known then, did not care about the students. My domestic partner was a teacher at Berkeley Alternative. I got to know the story of Berkeley Alternative, and saw how hard some of the staff worked to not only keep the students interested, but keep the students showing up. Knowing that my partner would get up at 4 a.m. to create curriculum, and stay up until 10 p.m., doing the same, I know she cared. I got to know other staff at the school through my partner. These were some genuinely dedicated people. I’d like to know how your writer concluded that these teachers didn’t care at all about their pupils. Unless you’ve worked with students, you really don’t have a right to pass judgment in such a sweeping way as your writer did in your paper. And I assume he/she has never worked with students, otherwise he/she would not have been so quick to put down a group of educators so casually. Trust, I know that things were not perfect at that school, but then, when you’re talking about a majority students-of-color school in an urban area, “perfect” is rarely a qualifier. But what your paper wrote was offensive and inappropriate.
I’ve worked with at-risk kids myself, and no matter how much you care and remain engaged in your work and your commitment to the children, you’re never really appreciated enough… but, boy, are folks ready to tear you apart at the slightest twitch, or in this case, glitch in the system! But it’s still not necessary to see it printed in such a careless, back-handed and unsolicited fashion. I hope that in the future you think twice about assigning topics to writers who probably don’t have a clue about what they’re being asked to comment on through a medium like the Daily Planet. No wonder we’re struggling to find folks who are willing to go into teaching. To be treated this way?
Pablo Espinoza
Oakland
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MOLLY IVINS
Editors, Daily Planet:
Molly Ivins was a woman of will and wit. Her death was not like a ship passing in the night, but more like a speed boat going full throttle across your front lawn—big, noisy and gunning for your living room, especially if the taxpayer furnished it.
Until her last published breath, Ivins’ engine was revved and running. Her final column of Jan. 11 stated “Stop it Now,” referencing the president’s proposed surge in troops. “Hit the streets,” Ivins implored, “banging pots and pans.”
She’d probably prefer demonstrators with big spoons and cookware at her funeral than flowers and eulogies. For Ivins, anti-Bush sentiments supersede all others.
Mary Alice Altorfer
New Braunfels, TX
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BROWER CENTER EXPENSE
Editors, Daily Planet:
I sat in the City Council chambers many years ago when inclusion of the David Brower Center in the Oxford Lot development was approved. The Planning Commission, HAC, ZAB, DRC and council have all publicly worked on this project for years. The city did a great thing when it decided to finance an affordable family housing project, especially downtown.
What makes this project expensive is not the Brower Center and it is not the Oxford Plaza housing—it is the public parking. Downtown merchants and others insisted on public parking to replace the spaces on the surface lot. And as many of us tried to explain at the time, parking spaces are extremely expensive to construct and parking fees do not pay for that cost. It is this cost which is driving the price so high and is no reason to oppose the project itself. If you feel that the city cost is too high, don’t sign an initiative to stop the project— just stop the parking garage and make the project car-free, saving the city several million dollars.
The Brower Center will be a four-story office building that will house environmental groups including Earth Island Institute. It is privately funded. It will be the first LEED platinum green building in Berkeley. It will serve as a model for how to build buildings that won’t guzzle energy. For information, see: www.browercenter.org.
The Oxford Plaza housing project next to the Brower Center will have 96 affordable housing units, the largest number built anywhere in Berkeley since the 1980s. It is one of the few projects built anywhere in Berkeley in the last 20 years that has affordable family-sized units. As with any below-market housing, the project is not viable without a city subsidy. The project has been hit hard by rising construction costs, as have other projects in Berkeley and in the Bay Area. Oxford Plaza will also be a green building. For more information see RCD’s website: www.rcdev.org/what_development_oxford.html.
The city’s requirement that parking at the Oxford lot be replaced underneath has greatly added to the costs. That is the real culprit and if anything has to be changed, that’s it. Let’s not throw out the baby with the dirty bath water.
Wendy Alfsen
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SUGGESTED READING
Editors, Daily Planet:
I just finished reading a Jan. 21 New York Times Magazine story about Vermont’s socialist Congressman, Bernie Sanders. Berkeley’s political leaders and Berkeley’s voters ought to read it. These lines were standouts: “(As mayor of Burlington) Sanders spoke out against poverty in the third world and made good-will visits to the Soviet Union and Cuba...But a funny thing happened on the way to what many had dismissed as a short-running circus. Sanders undertook ambitious downtown revitalization projects and courted evil capitalist entities known as businesses. He balanced budgets...” If socialists like Sanders are working to attract job-creating businesses, in what category shall we place most of our elected city leaders, and most of our city’s bureaucracy, who are busy chasing business away?
Russ Mitchell
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PROPAGANDIST
Editors, Daily Planet:
On the basis of his two op-ed pieces, there is little doubt Matthew Taylor is a Palestinian propagandist and not a reliable commentator. The symptoms could not be more pervasive: Selected details are repeated without context (a “home” demolished here, a road built there, but not a single mention of Kassam rockets, shootings at civilians or the barbaric suicide bombers culture); supporting “sources” are invariably among the worst detractors of Israel (Ilan Pappe, Uri Avnery, Jeff Halper, John Pilger, without any cross-checking from official Israeli sources); instances of baseless accusatory words, such as “colonization”, “colonial” “land theft” number over 30 in just two short articles; intentional distortion of official documents, such as the Mandate for Palestine, where he selectively notes the “civil and religious rights” of the Palestinian Arabs while he conveniently omits the “national rights” of Jews over the whole land.
Is there any point in engaging a propagandist with rational arguments? Not likely. True believers have their minds hopelessly twisted and the more they try to be convincing, the deeper they sink into a hole of their own digging. But it’s always a delight to see how ineffective any attempt to coherently defend Carter’s opinions can be!
And since Carter’s book was the object of Matthew Taylor’s misguided praise, the latter should know that during Carter’s presentation at Brandeis University last week, he himself apologized for his infamous passage on page 213 of his book where he condoned Palestinian terrorism. He even characterized the inclusion of this passage as “stupid.” But this did not seem to alter Taylor’s views of the matter. For him, the Hamas tactics are still a “comprehensible as a desperate and misguided response to oppression.” Need I say more?
Rachel Neuwirth
Los Angeles
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AMAZON PETITION
Editors, Daily Planet:
I would have been only too happy to sign Henry Norr’s petition [requesting that Amazon remove a negative description of Jimmy Carter’s book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid]—and I’m sure there are many others as well—had I known about it. I saw the obvious bias and was appalled.
M. McCormick
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THE SPIRIT OF MOLLY
Editors, Daily Planet:
Molly Ivins lives in me and in everyone who stands up and voices their opinion. “It’s up to us”! Seniors live on $600—that’s a sin and shameful. Our poor welfare moms and handicapped live on pennies—that’s shameful. We care so little for those that gave us life! I get sick when I hear the rich use tax loop holes to get a free ride and the average Joe is paying $2,000 a month in taxes! For what? To see Americans be killed—so we can make a group of Good Old Boys from Texas Rich! Come on America! Schools are in shambles with no books and prisons are decked with weights and TVs! That’s stupid! Buildings and transportation spend fortunes that could help our communities. What does this say about us? Nothing—we are not making all the rules! It says we are losers if we don’t do something about this mess were in! Are we losing our human spirit?
Life is not a video game! We need a new sheriff in town and I’m voting for Hillary! Come on girls, this place stinks—high gas prices, no healthcare, pollution... Shall I go on? Please, let’s let the girls give the place a shot. We are better homemakers and the country is our home! End Iraq! End War! Begin life!
Julie Parker
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QUAKE THREAT
Editors, Daily Planet:
While I love trees as much as the next guy, I’m more concerned about a possible misunderstanding stemming from suggestions that the proposed gym would be safer somewhere else on campus.
The Alquist-Priolo Act attempts to mitigate the specific danger of a surface rupture (tear along a fault line). But earthquake danger isn’t limited to a rupture and doesn’t stop a few feet from the fault.
Please recall that Loma Prieta (Santa Cruz) collapsed the Cypress Structure (Oakland). When the Hayward Fault goes (and it is overdue), it won’t matter where in Berkeley you’re doing pushups if your building is unsafe.
Homeowners, install an automatic gas shutoff valve and bolt your foundation! Renters, nag your landlords!
John Vinopal
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SCHOOLS
Editors, Daily Planet:
I am preoccupied with the question of how we can make elementary school classrooms places of self discovery for our children. Two things are lacking: a supply of teachers who love to teach, and training in restoring the self-confidence of children who come from stressful family situations. How shall we encourage the idealism of teachers? How shall we recognize the imperfect character of the home environment for many children? We want all our children to become self-learners. More is needed to achieve such a goal than the No Child Left Behind Act.
Romila Khanna
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COMMISSIONER TERM LIMITS
Editors, Daily Planet:
In a surprise move against Berkeley’s long-standing democratic political traditions and values, the Berkeley City Council on Jan. 16—by a one-vote margin—forwarded a proposal to the city attorney that, if implemented in the future, would effectively remove progressive-leaning Berkeley citizen volunteers from the city’s most high-profile commissions and boards.
If passed again by the council in March, the measure would remove—and bar future—citizen volunteers from serving on two or more commissions or boards simultaneously.
Originally initiated by Councilmember Laurie Capitelli, the proposal is a thinly-veiled attempt to target and remove progressive commissioners who currently serve on Berkeley’s four most powerful and influential commissions: the Planning Commission, Zoning Board, Housing Commission and Landmarks Preservation Commission.
The four above commissions effectively determine Berkeley’s city-wide public policy directions for new and existing commercial/residential development, affordable housing, transportation and city land use policies.
Mr. Capitelli’s proposed regulation would remove current commission volunteers with years of public policy experience and expertise from providing their input, concerns—and votes—on the four above commissions.
More significantly, the regulation would unilaterally strip City Councilmembers of their sovereign prerogative to appoint the commission members they see fit for volunteer positions.
Mr. Capitelli’s proposal strikes at the heart of the council’s democratic process: It removes each councilmembers’ right to select the representative of their choice to city commissions. This goes against the grain of Berkeley’s long established democratic traditions and values.
I urge Berkeley citizens to attend the council’s March meetings when Capitelli’s proposal will again return before the council for a vote. It is critical that Berkeley citizens demand that their respective councilmembers vote against this blatantly anti-democratic measure.
Chris Kavanagh
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OPEN OUR STREETS
Editors, Daily Planet:
Not every street in town needs to be paved. Consider an ordinary street, where space is reserved for sidewalks, bike lanes, parking, and so on. Although sandwiching these spaces together seems to be the democratic way to share our city, experience shows that it amounts to an absolute monopoly in favor of cars. It’s both unsafe and unpleasant for the unmotored masses to dodge through endless armies of traffic. What we need is a network of paths dedicated to walking, wheelchairs, and bikes, which criss-cross the city, overlaying a fresh and open alternative to the stifling world of gray and dangerous roads. I hear that the lucky and illustrious residents of Boulder, St. Paul, and even Walnut Creek for God’s sake, already have such networks.
We could do even better: imagine if every fourth street were overturned—made into gardens, slow and flowered paths, amphitheaters, block parties, trolleys sheltered from rush hour traffic, bazaars... anything, really.
Opening Center Street to foot traffic will create a sorely needed oasis among downtown’s pestilence of swiftly-erected towers. The fight may be bitter, and the petro-maniacs are generally richer and more powerful. Fortunately for Center Street, the usual bogeymen of parking shortages and muffled shopping can be brushed aside. Assuming we will win, hats off to a future Berkeley wisely chosen. A standing ovation to the real visionaries fighting from within the bowels of city policy, within the hostile corridors of the new downtown planning “DAPAC.”
Adam Wight
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EARTHQUAKES AND A
FLU PANDEMIC
Editors, Daily Planet:
The slow governmental response to Hurricane Katrina convinced many Bay Area residents to prepare to fend for themselves for at least a week after the inevitable big earthquake that’s coming. Emergency preparedness courses here are now oversubscribed, and one thing people are learning is that they should store at least one week’s supply of food and water for themselves, their families, and their pets.
A bird flu pandemic is not inevitable, but it is a real possibility. Can one prepare for it? Federal guidelines concerning a flu pandemic, issued Feb. 1, advocate that in such an epidemic sick people and their families, including apparently healthy members, stay home for seven to 10 days. So while you’re stocking up to survive the Big One, you might store a bit more food in case there is a flu pandemic during which public gatherings might well be discouraged. Since normal business transactions at banks and filling stations will be disrupted, you might also visit your ATM now and keep your gas tank at least half full at all times. You could also purchase now some face masks to reduce the spread of the virus; ask your local health department about the type of mask they recommend.
Dick White
Member, Berkeley Disaster and
Fire Safety Commission
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OIL DRILLING
Editors, Daily Planet:
President Bush is at it again. In his State of the Union address concerning energy, Bush insisted on drilling oil at the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, which is home of the Gwich’in people. The Gwich’in people live their own way of life, which includes being with nature and living among the caribou and other animals.
The Arctic National Wildlife refuge is their sovereignty and it shouldn’t be disturbed by oil drilling.
Billy Trice, Jr.
Oakland
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DETAINEES
Editors, Daily Planet:
The detainees are not the worst of the worst: The government’s own documents show that few of the men had ties to Al Qaeda or the Taliban, and most were, in fact, turned over to the United States in exchange for bounties.
Demand that the fundamental right of habeas corpus and the Geneva Conventions be upheld, despite attempts to legislate their demise. The men at Guantanamo deserve their day in court. Respect for these rights is essential to democracy.
Holly Brownscombe
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THE NEW PLAN
Editors, Daily Planet:
President Bush’s address to the nation Wednesday evening has left many people, politicians, and specialists in doubt about the “success of his “new”/revised plan of action in Iraq. Indeed, many of us could not even understand exactly what “success” in Iraq is to the President.
Will the sending of 20,000 plus troops change the course of the War in Iraq? No.
This President’s inability to look at the world situation with clear eyes and a respect for the many issues involved will preclude this success. In addition, Mr. Bush has engaged in a pattern of communication with his country and with the world in which his words, his intentions and his actions have been shown to be in conflict with one another.
Since the beginning of his presidency, Bush’s lack of dealing with North Korea—until a crisis erupted recently—shows his lack of judgment, ability, and skill in foreign relations. North Korea’s erratic dictator does have the real WMDs. Bush’s dismissal of working to avoid a nuclear maelstrom casts doubt on his “intention” of going to Iraq to stop Saddam’s procurement of WMDs. The publication of the Downing Street memos show that the US knew there were no weapons.
George W. Bush is a proverbial wolf in sheep’s clothing. His appearances (sheep/wolf/good natured Texan), his words, and his intentions cannot be trusted. As John Knowles wrote in A Separate Peace, “wars were not made by generations and their special stupidities, but wars were made instead by something ignorant in the human heart.”
We must stop this bearer of an ignorant, inauthentic heart. Support Congress in stopping all funding of the war and the movement of more troops to Iraq. Bush and Cheney must be impeached. The deaths of over 600,000 innocent Iraqis, 3,000 US soldiers, and the severe disablement suffered by people of both countries demand the condemnation of the world. Never again should the leaders of our country be able to pursue such wanton murder, torture, and terror on the world. It is time to say “enough”!
Teresa Paris
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HEADLINE QUESTION
Editors, Daily Planet:
Above a Jan. 5 article, written by Richard Brenneman, the headline reads “UC Stadium Tree-Sitter Arrested for Tresspassing.”
I have a question: Why would anyone be arrested for passing bunches of hair around?
Is there a law? Just asking.
B.M. Jensen
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TWO FILMS
Editors, Daily Planet:
We saw to films at one go. The juxtaposition of Children of Men with Freedom Writers was astonishing. P.D. James had the brilliant idea of paring away the non-essentials of our suicidal earthly romp so that we might, just possibly, see the truth. From there, in that light, to view the reality of our children’s live, affirmed the earlier warning, and solution. See them. Both. Together.
Pamela Satterwhite
