Most everyone attending Saturday’s forum on Mayor Tom Bates’ Public Commons for Everyone Initiative agreed on one part of the proposal: Berkeley needs more public toilets for everyone. -more-

Berkeley’s Memorial Stadium oak grove tree-sitters, who first took to the branches last Dec. 2 on Big Game morning, seemed at first to have suffered a legal setback on Monday afternoon when a Fremont judge issued a preliminary injunction. -more-

Last week, essential workers at two of Berkeley’s largest institutions said they were headed toward walkouts. By Monday afternoon, one strike threat had ended but the other was moving forward. -more-

U.S. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton won the running battle she held over the weekend for the attention of the Oakland electorate with her Democratic Presidential rival, Senator Barack Obama, announcing the endorsement of Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums during a hastily convened Monday afternoon appearance at Laney College. -more-

Fired in 1999 when, as KPFA’s general manager, she stood up to national Pacifica management, Nicole Sawaya will take the position of the boss she battled in the bloody KPFA vs. the Pacifica Foundation Board fight. -more-

Homicide detectives have arrested a pair of alleged gang members for the May 6 West Berkeley beating death of Agustine [CQ] James Silva Jr., 19, of Antioch. -more-

The Berkeley Police Department (BPD) is looking for two men who sexually assaulted a 27-year-old woman early Friday morning. -more-

Like Superman, Berkeley’s citizen downtown planners will be leaping tall buildings Wednesday night—though they’re already well past the traditional single bound. -more-

Two new names were added to Berkeley’s list of late-night dining spots after the Zoning Adjustments Board (ZAB) approved their permits Thursday. -more-

In what would appear to be the most stinging rebuke possible to the conduct of the Alameda County Registrar of Voters Office in the November 2004 Berkeley Measure R Medical Marijuana initiative election, a California Superior Court judge has ordered that a new Measure R election be held in November of next year, and that Measure R proponents be reimbursed for litigation and recount costs. -more-

Preserving California’s Japantowns will call upon Berkeley’s Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) Thursday to nominate the city’s pre-World War II Japanese heritage sites to the State Office of Historic Preservation. -more-

For many years I resisted the growing of roses. My mother, a passionate rose grower, employed a gardener whose name, extraordinary to recall, was Budd. Mr. Budd was my introduction to the professional horticulturist. I do not remember seeing him busy with spade or hoe. As with my father’s relationship with Peter-who-cleaned-the-car, work seemed to consist of employer and employed standing side by side, gazing at potential problems, in my mother’s case perhaps a grandiflora (of which she later grew an impenetrable 10- foot hedge, not as difficult as it looks) that needed to be shifted, or for my father, an engine requiring carburetor adjustment, my mother’s loquacity occasionally interrupted by a gruff Hampshire “argh” or “um,” my father’s silence only broken by the cough of partial combustion. -more-

Players on the Berkeley High School women’s field hockey team often spend more time riding a bus to their games than playing them. There are few nearby opponents and sometimes they have to ride as far as San Jose. -more-

UC Berkeley’s biofuel bonanza—$635 million in expected corporate and federal funding—got off to an early start Monday with word of an unexpected $10 million advance from Washington. -more-

MOVEON.ORG -more-

The only thing that really changes the problem of homelessness is housing. The rest of these comments are just for your entertainment. -more-

On this 138th anniversary of the birth of Mohandas K. Gandhi, and the first International Day of Nonviolence, as declared by the United Nations June 16 (celebrated in Berkeley with Lawrence Ferlinghetti reading at Moe’s), Peace For Keeps is pleased to hopefully propose a worldwide 50th anniversary celebration of the creation of Peace Symbol Feb. 21, 2008. In the wake of Sunday’s second annual Gandhi Statue Birthday Reading at the Gandhi Statue behind the San Francisco Ferry Building, great do’ers of great do’s—Yoko Ono, Kevin Wall, Richard Branscom, Earthdance, Sage Productions, Wavy Gravy, Green Century—are being contacted to make a deep winter of love 2008 (What a year, huh!) planetary do. -more-

While the protest that you staged in front of my office on Wednesday, Sept. 26th, was an exercise of your constitutional rights, the messages that you left behind were insulting, untrue, and ultimately misdirected. Additionally, from the comments quoted in the Berkeley Daily Planet article, it is clear that you have no idea what it is that I do here. Given that I was unaware of your planned protest, I was unable to contest your claims in person, so I will therefore address them here. -more-

Judging from the small audience at the screening of In the Valley of Elah I attended, and its limited release—326 theaters—Paul Haggis’s masterpiece isn’t going to be around very long. Perhaps Americans are put off by the title—Elah is the valley where David fought Goliath—or maybe we’re not ready for such an unsparing look at the consequences of the Iraq war. But don’t worry, if you don’t get to see In the Valley of Elah before it closes, you’ll probably get another chance early in 2008, after the Academy Award nominations are announced. -more-

A few weeks back I got a nice e-mail message from Fran Haselsteiner (and belated thanks to you), which read in part: -more-