News

Last Friday, when most of their friends were hanging out somewhere enjoying the Caesar Chavez holiday break from school, a group of mostly Latino Oakland middle school students were sitting in a classroom at Havenscourt Middle, taking in lessons. The subject? Gang Awareness. The teachers: high school students from an East Oakland youth advocacy group called Teens on Target (TNT) sponsored by the Youth Alive! anti-violence, youth leadership organization. -more-

When EBMUD director Andy Katz spoke to the City Council early in the year, he urged councilmembers and residents to conserve water, given the East Bay Municipal Utility District pipeline retrofit that affected the amount of available water from December through the end of February. -more-

After years of struggle, work began Monday at the site of what will become the city’s largest low-income housing structure and the home for a collection of cutting-edge environmental groups. -more-

Strawberries marked Cesar Chavez’s 80th birthday at Malcolm X Elementary School Friday. -more-

It’s more than just a house on a hill. For 76 years International House at UC Berkeley has been a second home to more than 60,000 scholars from around the world—a place where Palestinians have dialogues with Israelis, Christians share meals with Muslims and, most recently, an Iraqi made his first Iranian friend. -more-

While Iceland shuttered its doors Saturday, supporters are marshaling their efforts to save the facility—including a hearing Wednesday before the Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC). -more-

The plan for a possible local takeover of energy decision-making is moving forward, albeit at a slower pace than the City Council had projected—and much too slowly for Paul Fenn, who wrote the legislation making possible local takeover of energy decisions. -more-

DAPAC Chair Will Travis insists that a scenario for creating a new downtown Berkeley landscape studded with high-rise, apartment-filled “point towers” is solely for modeling purposes. -more-

Members of the St. Joseph the Worker Social Action Committee will join the Ecumenical Peace Institute, Seminarians to End War, Tri-Valley Cares and others at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory for the annual Good Friday protest April 6. -more-

In a revival of the sharp fiscal debate that often took place two years ago when newly elected board members sought to establish stricter fiscal controls on the district, Peralta trustees rejected a staff recommendation last week for a one-year renewal of a contract with ePaperless consultants for computer hardware work, agreeing instead to a month-to-month renewal until the scope of the contract work can be evaluated. -more-

The Peralta Community College District, which has gotten generally poor marks for the quality of its website, took a leap forward last week with board approval of a $55,000 three-year contract with Granicus, Inc. of San Francisco to provide web-based streaming videos of district board meetings. The contract provides for a setup fee and an $11,640 yearly charge for which Granicus will provide storage of Peralta’s video archives. -more-

UC recycling center demolished in blaze -more-

The union made some big wins at Berkeley High on Tuesday. Except that the students were acting as both management and labor and the cash was just play money. -more-

Rich Robbins of Wareham Development, Inc. has a vision for the seven-story West Berkeley building he recently bought for around $20 million. -more-

A $100,000 process to write a plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, approved by the City Council in February, will be carried out inside city government—with staff hired for the purpose—and not outsourced to Sustain-able Berkeley, as the Council directed last month. -more-

The Berkeley Board of Education voted to eliminate sixth grade from Berkeley Arts Magnet (BAM) Wednesday. BAM was the only elementary school in the Berkeley Unified School District (BUSD) that offered sixth grade to its students. -more-

Student assignments are in. Parents suffering from sleepless nights and frenzied nerves over their toddler’s kindergarten placement were finally able to rest in peace when the last of the 560 school assignment letters were mailed out from Berkeley Unified’s Office of Admissions and Attendance earlier this month. -more-

Finally, the Berkeley Planning Commission has elected a new chair, though the last one still fumed that Wednesday’s election wasn’t needed. -more-

Over objections raised by the city’s police union, the City Council voted 8-0 at its meeting Tuesday to add its support to Assemblymember Mark Leno’s bill, AB1648, which would re-open police complaint procedures statewide. Councilmember Gordon Wozniak was absent. -more-

AC Transit bus riders and drivers seeking to halt the Transit District’s purchase of more Van Hool buses got a distinctly chillier reception this week from the Metropolitan Transit Commission than they did when they first brought the issue to the MTC earlier this month. -more-

With no opposition and support from the Oakland Police Department and the offices of Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums and Oakland City Council Public Safety Chairperson Larry Reid, the California State Senate Public Safety Committee unanimously approved this week a bill that would reinstate the 30-day confiscation of cars who police say are involved in Oakland sideshows. -more-

NEW YORK—The recent scandal involving the firing of eight U.S. attorneys by U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has yielded mostly silence from the country’s pre-eminent Latino organizations. -more-

There is a special force that appears from time to time and steers imminent harm or danger away from me, like a proverbial guardian angel. I’ve never seen this force, and I cannot count on it coming, but it has happened too often for me to ignore it. -more-