State Assemblymember Loni Hancock, City Councilmember Kriss Worthington and Father Stephan of St. Joseph the Worker Church were among the 38 people arrested in front of the Woodfin Suites Hotel Thursday, committing civil disobedience to show support for 12 hotel workers fired April 27. -more-
A murder and three stabbings marked Berkeley’s most violent 24 hours so far in 2007, ending with the wounding of two firefighters inside their station. -more-
Telegraph area merchants, property owners, residents and city officials and their representatives took a field trip to San Francisco last week to find out how “the city” curbs inappropriate behavior on Haight Street. -more-
Charges of misconduct levied against two Berkeley police officers in the recent past spurred a five-member Police Review Commission subcommittee to look at creating more effective police policies. -more-
As in the recent successful battle to landmark Iceland, most advocates of landmarking the old Berkeley High School gymnasium are more concerned with its current use than its history. -more-
The Joe Lurie Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Fellowship was launched at the UC Berkeley International House’s 19th Annual Celebration & Awards Gala Thursday. -more-
A massive branch broke off from a pine tree in the Berkeley Hills late Friday afternoon and smashed into a home at 1570 Hawthorne Terrace, causing considerable damage. -more-
The Berkeley Zoning Adjustments Board will meet Thursday to discuss the following items: -more-
Velma Sykes worked hard to ensure that her children received a quality education at their public high schools in Sacramento. -more-
Efforts to limit family re-unification visas are the most dangerous, yet least known aspect of the immigration reform now being hatched in Washington, D.C. Karen Narasaki, executive director of the Asian American Justice Center, warns that the quota of family members being allowed to join their families in the United States may be halved. -more-
In the last week of April, more than five years into the “War on Terrorism,” Retro Poll asked a national sample of Americans this question: “Do you agree or not with the government’s assertion that people seized and detained at Guantanamo are presumed to be dangerous terrorists or they would not have been seized in the first place?” A slightly different wording last October had garnered 37 percent agreement. In the recent poll 48 percent agreed. We conclude that a substantial proportion of people do not grasp a key principle of democracy: Unless everyone is presumed innocent under the law until proved guilty of a crime in a fair trial, dictatorial powers of government achieve supremacy. Civil rights like this exist not just to protect criminals, but to protect the public from arbitrary government abuse of authority. The War on Terrorism promotes the denial of this democratic tenet. -more-
Telegraph Avenue quotas, West Berkeley car sales and new quotas for Berkeley housing top the agenda for Wednesday night’s Planning Commission meeting. -more-
The Berkeley Board of Education will vote on approving a proposal to establish a Community Day School on Wednesday. -more-
The 39th president of the United States, former peanut farmer and 2002 Nobel Peace Prize winner Jimmy Carter, got standing ovations and multiple rounds of applause from a packed Zellerbach Hall on the UC Berkeley campus Wednesday afternoon, where he had come at the invitation of two students to speak about his controversial book, Palestine, Peace Not Apartheid. -more-
An Emeryville City Manager’s report has concluded that the city does not discriminate against its African-American employees, but the City Council agreed Tuesday night with the city manager’s recommendation that an outside consultant should be hired to do a survey of possible morale problems within the city’s black workforce. -more-
Do people who rent or buy residences in so-called transit-oriented development really use mass transit? -more-
Ascend into central Berkeley via the steep escalator of subterranean BART, and you are met with a decidedly uncivic scene. People of every age and condition seem intent solely on crossing Center Street or Shattuck Avenue. You can also squeeze past a smaller, more youthful crowd waiting for the bus along the BART plaza edge or just hanging out. -more-
The country’s third largest steel foundry agreed to a settlement with the Bay Area Air Quality Management District Tuesday, which requires it to install a capture hood to control emissions and pay $150,000 in fines to the air district, though not all critics were satisfied by the agreement. -more-
Their signs declared unity in the face of government raids and called for amnesty for immigrants without documents, and their chants affirmed “Sí, se puede!” (Yes, we can!) as May 1 demonstrators marched through Berkeley streets, gathering forces before moving to larger demonstrations in Oakland and San Francisco. -more-
Berkeley High School (BHS) students skipped class Tuesday to attend the Immigration Day rally in San Francisco as many of them did last year, but this time they had permission from their teachers. -more-
The Oakland legislator who wrote the bill that authorized the state takeover of the Oakland Unified School District in 2003 has signed on as a co-author of new legislation designed to bring about a quicker return to local control of the Oakland schools. -more-
Timothy Burroughs will be writing the city’s greenhouse gas emissions reduction plan, the city’s Public Information Officer Mary Kay Clunies-Ross announced in a press release Thursday. -more-
An assertion this week by the general manager of AC Transit that the East Bay bus transportation agency was in a “partnership” with Belgian bus manufacturer Van Hool led transit board of directors members to say that the statement made them “concerned” and might send a signal to other bus manufacturers that the district wasn’t interested in buying their buses. -more-
Esther Krenn, mother of Andrew Martinez—known as the Naked Guy—sued Santa Clara County Jail Friday in federal court in San Francisco for failing to prevent his suicide in prison. -more-
KPFA’s Larry Bensky has spent much of his 70 years honing the craft of activist-journalist. -more-
The battle to improve physical education in California schools is intensifying following the release in late January of two new reports commissioned by The California Endowment, a private health foundation. -more-
An incomplete paragraph appeared in Arnie Passman’s April 27 commentary, “The Peace Symbol’s Golden Year is Here.” The complete paragraph is as follows: -more-
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