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-
The jockeying over the future direction of Oakland’s economic development in the Ron Dellums Years—how much it will continue on the path laid down by former Mayor Jerry Brown and how much it will break new ground—began in earnest last week with the release of an Oakland Chamber of Commerce study that both implicitly criticized Brown’s failures and embraced his goal of concentrating commercial development in the city’s downtown core. -more-
It’s day six of the missing freeway link, and Berkeley is still standing. Friends have called from all over the country to reassure themselves about us—thanks, folks, but we’re just fine. -more-
The Berkeley Daily Planet accepts letters to the editor and commentary page submissions at opinion@berkeleydailyplanet.com and at 3023A Shattuck Ave., Berkeley, CA 94705. -more-
As part of the Measure G process, Berkeley should consider policies to give employees the option of down-shifting economically by working less. Though it is not much talked about, choice of work hours is one key to dealing with global warming. -more-
The official title is California Assembly Bill AB 1458, also known as the Boater Safety Education Bill now working its way through the various legislative committees in Sacramento. But if you look carefully at what it will do and who it will affect, you might be tempted to give it a different name. -more-
Should Berkeley’s City Council continue to rubber-stamp the Board of Library Trustees’ (BOLT’s) choice for trustee at its Tuesday May 8 meeting? Or, will the council hold off on re-appointing the incumbent trustee, Susan Kupfer, so that the ad hoc Committee for Sunshining Selection of Library Trustees, which the council itself set up, can continue and conclude the work it has begun? -more-
The issue of cell phone antennas and how the city of Berkeley deals with them is a perfect illustration of what Becky O’Malley was referring to in her article, “We’ll Have to Make Our Own Sunshine”( Daily Planet, April 27). In it, she advocates transparency in government. I first heard about Patrick Kennedy’s application for a permit to put up potentially dangerous cell-phone antennas in my neighborhood about eight months ago from a neighbor. I received no notification or warning from city staff, which was, and is aware of the many studies that indicate potential harm from the RF radiation that they emit, and I live in the immediate block. If there were a posting on the door of Kennedy’s Storage building, where he wants to put these antennas, it was small and not noticeable to the neighborhood. Essen-tially, we found out about the application for a permit by accident from one of the workers who was installing equipment for the cell-phone antennas before any legal permit for them had been issued. What hubris! -more-
I have been in the KPFA News Department for eight years. I was one of the journalists arrested in the newsroom on July 13, 1999. I don’t do much reporting now; I board op the Evening News several times a week because it pays. But it doesn’t pay much. I am scheduled for 11 hours a week and generally take on requests to fill in during holidays and vacations as the opportunities arise. I have no benefits. -more-
It is close to 10 years ago now that I sat in the waiting room of the Berkeley Free Clinic waiting for my interview. I had already submitted an essay stating my reasons for wanting to be a part of the medical collective there, and had carefully considered that it would mean training there every weekend, all weekend, for six months. I was ready for something in my life to make sense, and working as a waitress wasn’t quite getting me there. While I waited, I studied the posters on the walls, mostly various artists’ interpretations of the BFC dragon logo with their motto printed beneath it: “Healthcare for people, not profit.” “Sure, I can get behind that,” I thought. -more-
Last week eight Democratic presidential candidates met in South Carolina for a debate. The candidates were senators Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Joseph Biden, Chris-topher Dodd; former senators John Edwards and Mike Gravel; Gov. Bill Richardson; and Representative Dennis Kucinich. Although most of what was said during this so-called debate was no more than “campaign sound bites,” it is important to look at what was said and also what was unsaid to see the alternatives the Democratic Party is offering to replace the Bush regime in 2009. -more-
There is a way out of Iraq. There is one strategy which has not yet been tried, which may survive a Senate filibuster and possibly even a presidential veto. -more-
“So, Jane,” someone just asked me, “what have you learned from your trip to Iraq?” -more-
There aren’t lots of them around, but many are in bloom now so it’s a bit easier to spot them: silk oak, Grevillea robusta. Their leaves have a distinctive profile, a bit like an exaggerated oak-leaf shape, verging on the fernish; I suppose that might account for the name, but the Aussies have a habit of calling any old thing some kind of “oak”—casaurina is “she-oak” for example, and that genus has foliage that looks like pine needles. -more-
One of the reasons it can be so important—and valuable—to have several media outlets covering the same issue or event is that individual observers tend to have their own take on things, and it is only by reading more than one account—several, if possible—that you can get a clear account of what’s really going on. Of course, that doesn’t happen when our good friends in the media go chasing after each other’s tails, yard-dog fashion, without trying to figure things out for themselves, but that’s another story. -more-
John Hopkins Spring, the developer of Thousand Oaks, always knew how to attract attention. On December 23, 1915, World War One was raging in Europe, and the newspapers were reporting that British losses at the Battle of Gallipoli had climbed to 112,921. But the war did not make top headline in the Oakland Tribune that day. -more-
Word is that the “recommendations” and “suggestions” from the agriculture officials about the recently discovered infestation of the light brown apple moth (Epiphyas postvittana, hereinafter LBAM) has grown into a state-declared quarantine. -more-
Dear Mr. Cantor: I want to thank you for the very informative and interesting article in the Daily Planet about strapping water heaters. Moreover, I want to say that I am a devoted reader and always find your pieces interesting and informative. -more-
The opera opens with all the characters placing themselves, one by one, facing out toward the audience on an open stage set with stylized arches, stairs and doorways portraying Renaissance Verona. The music swells tempestuously as the cast recites the prologue of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet: “Two households, both alike in dignity …” At verse’s end, the cast sweeps from the stage and the action starts. -more-
The Jazz House, under the aegis of the Berkeley Arts Festival, will produce the Zipper Festival, its first festival of jazz this weekend, from Friday night, with acts 6-9 p.m., Saturday 2-8:30 p.m., and Sunday 2-8:30 p.m., featuring acclaimed local players like saxophonists Howard Wiley and Dayna Stephens, Sacramento guitarist Ross Hammond, drummer Weasel Walter, saxophonist John Gruntfest, and Damon Smith on bass, at the old Fidelity Bank Building, 2323 Shattuck Ave. -more-
“You brought in a different war.” -more-
There aren’t lots of them around, but many are in bloom now so it’s a bit easier to spot them: silk oak, Grevillea robusta. Their leaves have a distinctive profile, a bit like an exaggerated oak-leaf shape, verging on the fernish; I suppose that might account for the name, but the Aussies have a habit of calling any old thing some kind of “oak”—casaurina is “she-oak” for example, and that genus has foliage that looks like pine needles. -more-
Andrea Arnold’s Red Road, a Scottish film opening this weekend at Shattuck Cinemas, draws the viewer in immediately with its quiet intensity. The film begins with Jackie (Kate Dickie) silently watching a bank of monitors at her job at a security company, each screen presenting a different view of urban Glasgow from cameras positioned around the city. -more-
Whether it’s the Weird Sisters on the heath, a dagger hovering in mid-air, Birnham Wood marching on Dunsinane, or “No man of woman born,” the Bard’s “Scottish Play”—so-called to guard against its very own evil eye—is usually drenched with atmosphere and gore, and served up as a kind of Hallowe’en blowout with cultural credentials. -more-
John Hopkins Spring, the developer of Thousand Oaks, always knew how to attract attention. On December 23, 1915, World War One was raging in Europe, and the newspapers were reporting that British losses at the Battle of Gallipoli had climbed to 112,921. But the war did not make top headline in the Oakland Tribune that day. -more-
Word is that the “recommendations” and “suggestions” from the agriculture officials about the recently discovered infestation of the light brown apple moth (Epiphyas postvittana, hereinafter LBAM) has grown into a state-declared quarantine. -more-
Dear Mr. Cantor: I want to thank you for the very informative and interesting article in the Daily Planet about strapping water heaters. Moreover, I want to say that I am a devoted reader and always find your pieces interesting and informative. -more-
