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Sen. Edward Kennedy rallies Barack Obama supporters at the Beebe Memorial Cathedral in Oakland on Friday. Photograph by Judith Scherr.
Sen. Edward Kennedy rallies Barack Obama supporters at the Beebe Memorial Cathedral in Oakland on Friday. Photograph by Judith Scherr.
 

News

Gordon, City, Elmwood Neighbors Settle on Wright’s Garage Project

By Judith Scherr
Tuesday February 05, 2008

Posted Thurs., Feb. 7—Neighbors say they are relieved: there won’t be a 5,000-square-foot restaurant and bar replacing the old Wright’s Garage at the corner of Ashby and College avenues. 

The Elmwood Neighborhood Association (ENA) agreed to settle their lawsuit against the city, in which they alleged that the permits granted to developer John Gordon for the project violated the California Environmental Quality Act, and that it would bring excessive noise and traffic to the small commercial area. It was settled out of court, with Gordon’s agreement and the City Council’s unanimous approval, in a closed-door session on Monday. 

“Settlements are always a little bit win, win and a little bit lose, lose.”  

said Harry Pollack, an attorney and member of the Berkeley Planning Commission who acted as spokesperson for Gordon. Nonetheless, Pollack added, “It’s a good settlement.”  

The lawsuit was causing delays in getting the project leased, he said. “Holding up the project is not good for the neighborhood,” he said. The settlement did not concede that any CEQA violation had taken place, however. 

Speaking for the ENA, Judith Epstein underscored that the neighborhood is not anti-development. “We wanted to get rid of the most inappropriate parts of the project,” she told the Planet, stating further in an e-mail: “The 5,000-square-foot restaurant, bar, lounge, and banquet facility with extended hours would have been disastrous for our community.”  

In March 2007, the city’s zoning board approved the project. The ENA appealed the ruling, which was heard by the City Council in June. The council mustered only four votes, with five needed to support ENA’s request for a public hearing, a critical step before the council may overturn a zoning board decision. (Voting in favor of holding a public hearing at the time were Councilmembers Linda Maio, Kriss Worthington, Dona Spring, and Max Anderson.) 

After losing the appeal, ENA attorney Amber Vierling filed the lawsuit on behalf of the neighborhood association. 

Based on the California Environmental Quality Act, the complaint names the city as defendant and Gordon as an interested party, and says that because the restaurant-bar would bring traffic and noise to the neighborhood, the developer was required to do an Environmental Impact Report. 

The lawsuit also cited Berkeley’s municipal code, saying that the proposed project violates the purpose of the Elmwood commercial district’s quota system, which is “’To maintain a scale and balance of retail goods and services in the district to compatibly serve the everyday needs of surrounding neighborhoods by: Providing locations for retail goods and service establishments to serve surrounding neighborhoods; preventing development which exceeds the amount and intensity of use that is compatible with adjacent residential neighborhoods; [and] limiting the space occupied by businesses that generate high traffic and/or parking demands….’” 

Councilmember Gordon Wozniak, who was advised by the city attorney’ s office to recuse himself from council discussions and from the vote on the project because he had publicly supported the project, told the Planet he thinks it is a “reasonable” settlement. 

“John can go ahead and develop the rest of the project,” he said.  

The settlement agreement specifies that Gordon agrees to relinquish four permits:  

• a use permit to exceed the district’s full-service restaurant quota 

• a use permit for extended hours of restaurant operation; 

• a use permit for a sidewalk café;  

• a use permit to allow alcohol sales and service within a full-service restaurant. 

If Gordon wishes to include a restaurant in the development, he will need to go back to the zoning board and begin the process anew.  

The $40,000 in the plaintiff’s attorney’s fees and $1,670 in costs will be paid jointly by the city and the developer, Pollack said. 

To date, no leases have been signed for space in the project due to the uncertainty that the lawsuit created, Pollack said, noting that up to seven commercial tenants can locate in the development. 

Pollack said Gordon expects leases to be signed within the next two-to-three months. “The project moves on,” Pollack said. 

 

 


Council to Reconsider Language Against Marine Recruiting Center

By Judith Scherr
Tuesday February 05, 2008

Posted Tue., Feb. 5—If the Berkeley City Council approves an item on the Feb. 12 council agenda, it will clarify city support for the troops—while continuing to condemn the war—and will rescind the part of the Jan. 29 council item that called the downtown Marine Recruiting Station “uninvited and unwelcome intruders.” 

Councilmember Laurie Capitelli is sponsoring the Feb. 12 revision, along with Councilmember Betty Olds.  

Capitelli told the Planet that while he opposes the war, he wants to be clear that the council action does not imply non-support for the troops. 

“My position is that policy makers send those people into harms way,” he said “I want to get them sent home.” 

“We failed to make it clear that while we continue to oppose what we consider an unethical and illegal war in Iraq, at the same time we respect and honor all the brave men and women who are serving or have served in the military,” Capitelli and Olds say in a joint press statement that also states: “We have erred by not adequately differentiating between the war and the warriors.” 

As for telling the marine recruiters they are not welcome, Capitelli said if the recruiters opt to stay, despite the legal demonstrations outside their office, that’s up to them.  

However, Capitelli and Olds say in the press statement: “…the recommendation to inform the Marine Corps recruiting office that they are not welcome in our city, was insulting, hurtful and wrong.”  

“I wish we wouldn’t have Marines anywhere,” Capitelli said. “But they have a legal right to be here.”  

Old agreed. “They do have a right to come,” she said, adding that service personnel should not be condemned: “They have to do what they are told to do.” 

Councilmember Gordon Wozniak, who, along with Olds, voted against the entire council item Jan. 29, told the Planet, “Laurie and Betty’s item is a step in the right direction.” 

He said he’d like to see the entire council item rescinded, along with an apology to the Marine Corps. The item has “pretty inflammatory stuff,” he said. “People are letting their opposition to the war interfere with their good judgment.” 

If the Olds-Capitelli council item passes the other two parts of the item will remain intact: asking the city attorney to research whether Berkeley’s anti-discrimination laws apply to the Marine Recruiting Center and supporting “residents and organizations such as Code Pink that may volunteer to impede, passively or actively, by nonviolent means, the work of any military recruiting office located in the city of Berkeley.”  

Councilmember Dona Spring told the Planet that she agreed, in part with Capitelli and Olds: “We could have been more diplomatic, politely asking them to leave,” Spring said. However, Spring said a clear statement needs to be made: U.S. policy “is the antithesis of life and liberty. We need to take a strong stand against this military regime that provokes violence, murder and torture. We need to reflect Berkeley values.” 

On Jan. 29, Capitelli, Councilmembers Linda Maio, Max Anderson, Dona Spring, Darryl Moore and Mayor Tom Bates voted for the three-part item. Councilmember Kriss Worthington opposed the section that called the Marines “unwelcome intruders” and supported the other two parts of the item. 

 


Kennedy Draws Oakland Crowd for Obama

By Judith Scherr
Tuesday February 05, 2008
Sen. Edward Kennedy rallies Barack Obama supporters at the Beebe Memorial Cathedral in Oakland on Friday. Photograph by Judith Scherr.
Sen. Edward Kennedy rallies Barack Obama supporters at the Beebe Memorial Cathedral in Oakland on Friday. Photograph by Judith Scherr.

In a countdown to today’s Super Tuesday vote, Sen. Edward Kennedy was cheered Friday by thousands of Barack Obama supporters, who had queued up for blocks along Telegraph Avenue and crowded into the pews and aisles of Beebe Memorial Cathedral in Oakland to hear Kennedy speak on behalf of the Democratic presidential candidate. 

Introduced by Rep. Barbara Lee, Kennedy opened the rally, saying: “One year from today, we will be here without George Bush!” 

That was just one of the dozen or more times Kennedy sent the 2,000 or so Obama supporters leaping to their feet, waving Obama signs and chanting “Obama ’08.” 

Calling this “perhaps the most important election of my lifetime,” Edwards called on the crowd to get out the vote to elect “someone who will get us back to the march of progress—someone who is going to inspire this country.”  

Congress is paralyzed over wiretapping and other issues, he said, contending Obama’s leadership would get Congress to address critical needs. 

“We have a lot of challenges to be ready for when we get rid of George Bush, and Barack Obama is going to be ready for them. Are you going to be ready for them?” he asked. 

“We’re going to do what we can to end the war, to stop the explosion of dropouts of children in our schools,” he said, calling for “new leadership around the world.” 

Speaking before Kennedy, Rep. Barbara Lee lauded Obama’s priorities: “ending the occupation in Iraq; universal healthcare; ending poverty,” HIV-Aids civil rights and more, Lee said. 

“There is only one senator in this race who was opposing this war from the start and that is Senator Obama,” Lee said, with a subtle jab at Clinton who has come out more recently against the war. “He is the candidate that is the real agent for change in this race …. I’m inspired about his ability to inspire young people to activists.” 

Lee had skipped the noon rally on the UC Berkeley campus where she was also scheduled to speak for Obama. Instead, Christopher Edley, Jr., dean of Boalt Law School, who had been Obama’s law professor at Harvard, rallied the 250 students that gathered there to listen to the speakers and hip hop artists. 

Clinton intern Kate Lewis was at a table supporting Hillary Clinton nearby the campus rally. “There’s really no one issue that divides Clinton and Obama completely and totally,” Lewis told the Planet. “It comes down to who can make the change happen, who can clean up after the Bush administration. I believe Hillary Clinton has shown she can make that change happen.” 

While Obama surrogates spoke all over California, Hillary Clinton came herself to speak in San Jose and San Francisco on Friday.  

According to Bay City News, Clinton addressed a crowd of about 2,300 people at the Orpheum Theater on Market Street, with her supporters cheering wildly when Clinton called the role of U.S. president “the hardest job in the world ... even harder following [President George] Bush and [Vice President Dick] Cheney.” 

Clinton stressed her experience: “I can make those tough decisions. I can lead from that very first day.” 

If she’s elected U.S. soldiers in Iraq would return home immediately, and their needs, “both visible and invisible,” would be met, Clinton said. 

 

 

Sen. Edward Kennedy rallies Barack Obama supporters at the Beebe Memorial Cathedral in Oakland on Friday. Photograph by Judith Scherr.


Protesters Chain Selves To Recruit Center Doors

By Judith Scherr
Tuesday February 05, 2008

The World Can’t Wait ratcheted up the protests at the downtown Berkeley Marine Recruiting Center Friday, when three demonstrators dressed in orange jump suits to symbolize the garb worn by prisoners at Guantanamo Bay chained themselves to the recruiting center doors at 64 Shattuck Square.  

Despite assurances by Lt. David Reece that police would be stationed across the street only to keep the demonstrators safe, a large group of police—“a wall of cops in riot formation,” according to Stephanie Tang of the World Can’t Wait—cut the chains and arrested the three demonstrators at around 2:30 p.m.  

“They said they had a request from the Marine Corps to move us,” Tang told the Planet on Monday.  

Lt. Andrew Greenwood confirmed that “they were arrested at the request of a person at the Marine Recruiting Center.”  

The trio was cited with infractions on charges of interfering with or obstructing a business operator. Two were cited and released and a third, with an outstanding traffic warrant, was held for a couple of hours and released, Tang said. 

“They were arrested without incident,” Greenwood told the Planet Monday. 

By 9:30 a.m., Mary Ann, Alex and Lou, all who declined to give their last names, had been chained to the door of the Marine Recruiting office for about two hours. 

Describing their protest as “civil resistance,” Mary Ann told the Planet the recruiting center “represents the immoral acts of this president—the Iraq war, wire tapping, torture, and ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] raids.”  

Two Berkeley police officers came by the gathering that had drawn about 15 people by 9:30 a.m. and told the group that they would station a police officer across the street for the demonstrators’ protection. Lt. David Reece said the city supports the demonstrators, but he wanted assurance that there would be no vandalism at the office. 

That was the last exchange with police before the arrests, Tang said. 

Meanwhile, Fox news, the right wing blogosphere and conservative U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint, R-South Carolina, have been having a field day responding to the city’s support for the protests.  

“This is a slap in the face to all brave service men and women and their families,” DeMint wrote on his congressional website. “The First Amendment gives the city of Berkeley the right to be idiotic, but from now on, they should do it with their own money.” 

DeMint says that he’ll be introducing legislation to cut Berkeley off from federal funds and reroute the money to the Marine Corps. 

At its meeting last week, the council passed two different resolutions. One (approved 8-1) allows demonstrators a weekly four-hour parking spot for six months in front of the Marine recruiting office where they can demonstrate. (Councilmember Gordon Wozniak voted in opposition.) 

A second, tri-part resolution supports the protesters’ acting to “impede, passively or actively, by nonviolent means, the work of any military recruiting office,” and asks city staff to investigate enforcing Berkeley laws “prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation with respect to military recruiting offices in Berkeley.” The military prohibits open homosexuals from joining its ranks. (This passed 7-2, with Wozniak and Councilmember Betty Olds in opposition.) 

The resolution also advised the Marines that their recruiting office “is not welcome in our city, and if recruiters choose to stay, they do so as uninvited and unwelcome intruders.” (This part of the resolution passed 6-3 with Councilmembers Kriss Worthington, Wozniak and Olds in opposition.) 

Virulent responses to the resolution included a letter sent to the City Council by Scott McDaniel of Marietta, Ga., that said: “Regarding the Marine recruiting station in Berkeley … let me tell you, you sniveling pieces of shit, I could just vomit. Preferably in your filthy little Socialist mouths.” 

In an attempt to counter the strident voices, Mayor Tom Bates, a retired Army captain, sent out a press release Friday, saying: “Let me be absolutely clear that this is not about the men and women who are serving our country in our armed forces … However, this community strongly opposes the war in Iraq and the foreign policy of the current administration.” 

The statement goes on to say that the protesters have been exercising their free speech rights. “Pro-war protesters have also attended to exercise their free speech rights,” he wrote. 

The statement continued: “On Jan. 28, the Berkeley City Council took action to waive the permit fee for anti-war protestors one afternoon a week. Any group, whether pro- or anti-war, can obtain such a permit.  

“In addition, the City Council indicated its desire for the Marine recruiting station, as a visible symbol of the war, to be relocated … I hope that our country will end the war in Iraq soon and bring our troops home safely.” 

Pro-war group Move America Forward, calling the city’s actions “treasonous,” is planning to present a petition to the council Feb. 12, supporting Berkeley’s Marine Recruiting Center. The World Can’t Wait is calling for a large anti-war demonstration at the recruiting center on Feb. 15.


Five Members Resign From People’s Park Advisory Board

By Riya Bhattacharjee
Tuesday February 05, 2008

Five members of the People’s Park Community Advisory Board resigned last week after falling out with UC Berkeley officials over the university’s reluctance to sponsor an open competition to choose a new design as part of ongoing efforts to remodel the park. 

At a Dec. 3 meeting, advisory board member and architect Sam Davis had suggested the idea of a competition based on the People’s Park Assessment and Planning Study prepared by San Francisco-based consultants MKThink. 

While advisory board members Joe Halperin, George Beier, Kristine Dixon and John Selawsky agreed with Davis that a competition would enhance plans to redevelop the park, others on the board resisted the move, calling it premature. 

The university was scheduled to formally announce its decision about the competition at a board meeting Monday (Feb. 4), after the Daily Planet’s deadline. UC officials informed Davis and Halperin during a private meeting on Jan. 23 that they were against the idea of an open competition. 

“It was clear to us they were not going to proceed with any design, and even more clear that they were not going to proceed with any kind of improvements,” Davis told the Planet Friday. “They told us that they didn’t want to do a competition as the campus might have some use for the land. They said that they would have to do a needs-based assessment first.” 

Davis and Halperin informed Beier, Dixon and Selawsky about the university’s intentions. 

“We decided to only tell the board members who had voted in favor of the competition,” Davis said.  

Then the group of five drafted their resignation letter and sent it to university officials on Jan. 27. 

Halperin and Beier did not return phone calls from the Planet for comment. Selawsky refused to comment on his resignation. 

Irene Hegarty, director of community relations at UC Berkeley, said that Davis’ decision to inform only five of the eleven board members had not violated the Brown Act since the advisory board was not subject to its regulations. 

“You could say it violated the spirit of the Brown Act,” she said. 

Hegarty added that the university had decided to inform Davis and Halperin of their decision prior to a formal board meeting since they were the principal proponents of the competition. 

“I am a little surprised by their resignation,” she said. “Some of them have been particularly engaging and I am sorry to lose them. But it’s their individual decision. They want a sweeping dramatic change overnight which was not possible.” 

Board member Gianna Ranuzzi said she had been surprised to see the resignation letter. 

“I find the letter inappropriate,” she said. “The arguments for not holding a competition have not been presented formally to the board ... But I agree with the university that it’s premature to have a contest for the design of the park. It’s important to work on the social issues first.” 

Ranuzzi said she agreed with Davis’ other suggestion—that of a university-appointed task force—which would provide social services to at-risk individuals frequenting the park. 

The letter blames the university for neglecting its obligations toward the park’s homeless population and for its inability to reduce crime and drug dealing in and around the park. 

Davis, Halperin, Beier, Dixon and Selawsky also refuted the university’s arguments against holding a competition in their resignation letter. 

“When the campus retained MKThink, their charge was to seek input from all the stake holders,” the letter said. “If the UC administration chose not to participate, or did not provide compelling information, it is testament to their lack of interest in real change and that they do not see any urgency for change ...The park has been in existence for 40 years. Why should we have any confidence that they will suddenly have an epiphany of how they want to use the land?” 

Hegarty, who was present at the private meeting, said that the university did not want to encourage the idea of a design competition at this point. 

“We did not think it was appropriate,” she told the Planet. “It has some concepts that haven’t been broadly discussed. Sam was very eager to move forward and wanted the university to aggressively pursue this but leaping to a strategy is not a good idea right now ... We are in a very tight budget year. The university cannot promise to implement what might come out of a competition.” 

According to Hegarty, another reason for rejecting the idea of a competition was the uncertainty about what kind of design the university wanted to see at the park. 

“Before getting into the design, we need to clarify the needs,” she said. 

“Design is a form of research and discovery that need not necessarily yield the definitive final result,” Davis said. 

 

Park Advisory Board meeting 

A People’s Park Community Advisory Board meeting was scheduled for Monday at the Trinity Methodist Church, 2362 Bancroft Way. 

Emily Marthinsen, UC Berkeley vice chancellor, was scheduled to present a plan to move forward with the People’s Park Assessment and Planning Study. The university was also planning to respond to the board’s Dec. 3 recommendation concerning the design competition and creation of a homeless services task force. 

Hegarty will introduce three new board members: UC Berkeley student Matthew Singh, park neighbor Cary Karacas and park regular Sang Ly, who will take the place of former board members Mike Bishop, Dana Merryday and Caitlin Berliner.


Richmond Design Board Gives Qualified Nod to Chevron Plans

By Richard Brenneman
Tuesday February 05, 2008

Richmond’s Design Review Board (DRB) voted to approve Chevron’s plans to upgrade its refinery, but before the vote was taken Thursday night, few folks had anything nice to say about the world’s seventh largest corporation. 

The DRB’s approval was hedged with a set of lengthy conditions after members accused the firm of arrogance and indifference to the community. 

“You got greedy,” said Ted J. Smith, the board’s oldest member. “All you’ve done is take out of this community and screw us every time you get the chance.” 

Smith, an African American, chided the company because, he said, none of the Chevron representatives at the meeting “looks like me.” 

Chevron Vice President of Marketing Curt Anderson, a former manager of the Richmond refinery, kept his composure, as did the other members of the oil company’s contingent who appeared before the board. 

“We are very pleased and excited about the project and the benefits that will come from it,” Anderson said. 

But board members and the overwhelming majority who rose to make public comment voiced skepticism and criticism of the oil company, which the next morning would announce record profits of $18.7 billion. 

The DRB meeting was marked by tensions between the board and city staff, with two attorneys and Richard Mitchell, the city’s director of building and development. 

While board members said they were entitled to consider issues of public safety, the repeated advice from staff was to focus solely on design issues. 

Citing a charge to the board by Mayor Gayle McLaughlin to consider public health and safety issues in their deliberations, board member Donald L. Woodrow repeatedly raised his concerns that Chevron hadn’t provided adequate information about seismic hazards. 

Woodrow insisted the company provide extensive mapping of the soils down to bedrock at the refinery site and reports on how soils and the plant would be affected by the impacts of a major earthquake on the Hayward Fault. 

“It will be earthquake-safe,” promised Dean O’Hair, the oil company’s Richmond external affairs director. He said all construction would meet current building and seismic codes. 

Woodrow was less than reassured, and the proposed condition remained when it came time for a vote.  

Chair Bob Avellar said he wanted approval contingent on the company’s grant of access to complete the last unfinished stretch of the Bay Trail in the city. 

During the public comment period earlier in the meeting, Bruce Beyaert, an ardent supporter of the trail and chair of the Trails for Richmond Action Committee, said negotiations with the company had stalled for two years, only to be rekindled as refinery project approval deadlines approached. 

Woodrow said the company should provide the access, co-fund the design costs and pay for operating costs, all of which were included in his motion for approval 

Member Diane Bloom added the proviso that the trail-siting decision would come back to the board for approval. 

Avellar added conditions for approving geodesic domes the company planned to install on new storage tanks included in the project, and called for an increase in the number of trees planted to screen both the tanks and the periphery of the refinery. 

When she suggested the board ask the company to plant trees in other cities and outside Contra Costa County wherever winds carried particulates from the refinery, Smith shook his head, saying “I won’t vote for trees outside Richmond. I’m not looking out for anybody else.” 

Woodward then said the company should also re-examine options for using the site to generate solar and wind power to offset some of the company’s energy needs. 

 

Comments heated 

Most of the public comments earlier in the meeting were critical of the oil company. While most focused on concerns about pollution, one speaker raised a key financial issue. 

“I’m concerned about the very nice-looking hokum we’ve received,” said Contra Costa County Assessor Gus S. Kramer, speaking from the audience. 

He blasted the company’s expensive color mailing which promised “millions in new revenues for the City of Richmond” from the project. 

He countered the corporate claim by citing the company’s own appeals to have the refinery’s property taxes slashed by two thirds for the prior three tax years. 

“I don’t want you to think that Richmond is going to get this windfall of services,” Kramer said. 

He got no response from company officials. 

Chevron’s appeal to the county’s Assessment Appeals Board was filed in December and seeks tax reductions for 2004-2006 that would result in a rebate of $60 million. 

Against an assessed value of $2.5 billion in 2004, the oil company seeks a reduction to $600 million, with comparable figures of $2.6 billion and $940 million for 2005 and $2.7 billion and $1.4 billion for 2006. 

Chevron’s only supporters were from the business and labor communities, while many nearby residents raised fears of toxic contamination and complaints of strong odors from the plant. 

Henry Clark of the West County Toxics Coalition charged Chevron with perpetrating environmental racism, which he defined as the practice of siting dangerous plants near poor communities of color. 

Anyone who voted in favor of the company would also be guilty, he said. 

Chevron officials said the replacement of two “reformers” designed to raise fuel octane content, along with the refinery’s power plant and its hydrogen production facility and power plant, won’t increase pollution from the facility.  

The changes, they said, will replace outmoded and inefficient facilities with modern, less polluting equipment. 

Chevron VP Anderson said the result will produce no increase in greenhouse gases, and that significant emissions of volatile organic compounds cited in the project’s draft environmental impact report had been “reduced to insignificance.” 

Company officials said concerns raised by audience and board members that the refinery might be used to process Canadian tar sands were unfounded, since the plant could only process lighter forms of crude oil. 

Sherry Padgett, one of the leaders in the drive to clean up polluted sites in southeast Richmond, said she was concerned because she hadn’t heard estimates of how much additional toxic waste might be stockpiled or buried in the community, and said the documentation before the board didn’t address multiple breaches of a contaminated pond near the shoreline. 

Asked about her concerns by Smith moments later, Chevron’s O’Hair dismissed them as “not part of this project” and “not part of Chevron property.” 

Board member Bloom said she was distressed at having to vote on a complex project less than a week after receiving a massive amount of documentation. She said she had perused one massive volume only to discover shortly before the meetings that there were two more volumes on a computer disk affixed to the back of the volume. 

One major concern repeatedly raised by board members was the vagueness of Chevron’s plans and their lack of detail. While some members at first indicated a desire to spend more time looking through the documentation and even floated the idea of outright rejection, they accepted the staff recommendation to add conditions—something they couldn’t do if they voted against the project. 

The design board is slated for abolition, as the result of a contentious City Council vote. 

The next step in the project is a public meeting called by the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, which will be held starting at 6 p.m. Feb. 13 meeting at the RRC Social Hall, 3230 MacDonald Ave. 

Within city government, the proposal now goes to the Planning Commission, with a likely appeal to the City Council regardless of which way the commissioners come down. 


Gill Tract Trees Begin to Fall

By Judith Scherr
Tuesday February 05, 2008

The first of the 184 trees slated for removal within two weeks on the Gill Tract at Buchanan Street and San Pablo Avenue was felled on Friday. 

The Albany City Council had threatened to get a restraining order if UC Berkeley refused to step back from its plan to cut down the trees. 

But the council is backing off for now. 

According to Albany Mayor Robert Lieber, the city got professional advice from arborists affirming that 184 trees are in fact diseased with pitch canker and must be removed for public safety reasons—if they fell, they would fall beyond the Gill Tract fence into public space. 

And they got advice form a wildlife biologist who said he found no Cooper’s Hawk nests, something that had also concerned the council.  

In fact, the expert encouraged the university to cut the trees down quickly before the birds arrive locally and begin nesting. 

While Lieber said he agreed at this point with the Phase I tree removal, this isn’t the end of Albany’s concerns with respect to the Gill Tract. There is a laboratory in the grove that is set for demolition. “We want it tested,” Lieber said. The concern is that tritium and carbon 14 from the laboratory would contaminate the area. 

Edward Denton, vice chancellor in charge of facilities services, wrote the council in a Jan. 30 memo, saying the “the presence of tritium and carbon 14 … are naturally occurring in the area.”  

Nevertheless, the university is planning to test for both substances before demolition. Test results will be shared with the public, Shaft said. 

Also, there’s a Phase II removal of 133 pines slated for a date yet to be scheduled, trees that Lieber says are “not necessary to remove.” 

UC spokesperson Sarah Yang said, however, that the pines slated for removal in the second phase are also diseased and hazardous. They are less a threat because “if they fall, they hopefully will fall within the fenced area,” she said.  

But they still could injure UC employees working within the property, she said, asserting that these trees will be cut down eventually. 

In the Jan. 30 memo, Denton said the university would give the city two months advance notice of plans to cut down the remaining pines.  

There are other trees on the property that would not be felled. The university plans to plant wildflowers and grasses in the area where trees are being removed. 

Albany councilmembers have said they believe the activity on the Gill Tract is related to a new shopping center the university would like to have built nearby at Monroe Street and San Pablo Avenue, south of the Gill Tract area. Albany councilmembers have numerous concerns about the commercial development and will perform an Environmental Impact Report on the project.  

The university says following its 2004 Albany Village Master Plan, the Gill Tract is to be left as open space or made into a recreation area.  

 

 

Trees were cut down Friday at Albany’s Gill Tract on San Pablo Avenue. Photograph by Riya Bhattacharjee.


New Schools Chief Takes Office

By Riya Bhattacharjee
Tuesday February 05, 2008

Bill Huyett, Berkeley’s new superintendent of schools, began his first day in the district with the most tedious of tasks: moving in. 

According to other district employees, Huyett—who was superintendent of the Lodi Unified School District before taking over from Berkeley Unified School District superintendent Michele Lawrence Monday—had a steady flow of managers and other district staff dropping into his office all morning even in the midst of all the unpacking. 

“He took a moment to stick his head into the conference room where negotiations with BCCE—one of the district’s five unions—were taking place,” said district public information officer Mark Coplan. “He also had a chance to meet a few of the parents and community members as they passed through the building on business.” 

Huyett did not return calls from the Planet. 

“He’s extremely busy,” Amber Spencer, assistant to the superintendent, told the Planet Monday afternoon. “I think it is going very well because I have heard laughter coming from his office all day.” 

In an earlier interview with the paper, Huyett had vowed to fight Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s proposal to slash K-12 funding by $400 million this year and $4.4 billion in 2008-09. 

“But I won’t let that take away time from other things, such as visiting the students in their classrooms,” he said. 

Huyett also faces major challenges: closing the student achievement gap, the controversy over relocating the warm water pool from the Berkeley High School Old Gym and increasing classroom space for high school students. 

Although the Lodi Unified School District is three times the size of Berkeley, it is predominantly rural. The district was created in 1967 when voters approved a measure to merge 18 elementary districts and a union high school district serving the cities of Stockton and Lodi. 

Michele Lawrence, who retired Friday as Berkeley’s superintendent, spent a good part of her last week at the annual Association of California School Administrators (ACSA) Superintendent’s Conference in Monterey.  

In the tradition of all retiring superintendents, she was recognized for her service to California public schools at the conference.  

ACSA also named Lawrence Superintendent of the Year for Region VI, which represents 1,300 school administrators in Alameda and Contra Costa counties. 

 

 


Housing Commission Eyes City Bonus Laws

By Richard Brenneman
Tuesday February 05, 2008

Berkeley’s Housing Advisory Commission (HAC) meets Thursday night to weigh in on three critical housing issues now before the Planning Commission. 

At issue are proposed density bonus and inclusionary housing ordinances which govern low-income housing and the city’s condominium conversion ordinance. 

The inclusionary and density bonus ordinances deal with requirements for low-income housing in new multi-unit projects and the additional size granted to developers in return for building new low-income housing. 

The condo conversion ordinance spells out requirements for transforming former rental housing into ownership units. 

Former HAC chair Jesse Arreguin said members are taking up the density bonus and inclusionary issues a year after making their recommendations. 

The controversial topics were first raised for reconsideration by the Zoning Adjustments Board, which created a subcommittee to consider the laws and policies that allow developers to exceed height and building mass regulations in exchange for providing lower-cost housing. 

At the City Council’s direction, the panel was expanded to include members from HAC and the Planning Commission. 

Planning commissioners have discussed the recommendations, but not in depth. 

Arreguin said he hopes that the Planning Commission will take up the measures soon. 

ZAB members initially raised the issue after confronting several building projects deemed out of scale with their sites. But city staff said the state density bonus law and city inclusionary policies mandated approval of the larger projects. 

The board then decided to create a subcommittee to understand the policies and how they related to their decisions in approving use permits for developments. 

The expanded building sizes are justified under city policy as a means of making developers responsible for the costs of applying below-market-rate housing. 

One factor leading to creation of the committee was the declaration by city planning staff that developers of the yet-to-be-built Berkeley Arpeggio (former Seagate Building) on Center Street would be eligible for 14 stories because of the costs of building inclusionary units in their condo project. 

The meeting begins at 7 p.m. in the North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst Ave. 


Parking Survey Skewed, Say Alta Bates Neighbors

By Riya Bhattacharjee
Tuesday February 05, 2008

Neighbors of Alta Bates Summit Medical Center are once again on the war path, this time over an e-mail which they said tipped off hospital employees about an annual traffic monitoring survey held last week. 

Alta Bates—which is required under a city zoning permit to do a parking and traffic survey every January—exceeded neighborhood parking regulations for the previous three years. 

The city’s Zoning Adjustments Board is re-examining the use permit, which was required since the hospital exceeded parking limitations for the third year. The board is scheduled to review the survey results in April. 

In her e-mail, Debbie Pitts-Cameron, the hospital’s manager of public affairs, informed the hospital’s Ashby campus staff that transportation consultants Fehr and Peers would be conducting an annual traffic monitoring survey over a two-week period. 

“Fehr and Peers’ staff members will be stationed at the front door, ED [Emergency Department] door and other locations throughout the medical center and surrounding neighborhood during these few weeks,” the e-mail stated. “They will be conducting surveys of patients and visitors. Please be sure your badge is visible so that you will not be asked to take the survey. You should have received an employee survey at home.” 

Neighbors complained that the message alerted employees about the monitoring survey, subtly reminding them not to park in the neighborhood during that period. 

“Whether the e-mail was deliberate or not, it put employees on notice and consequently they parked elsewhere,” said Peter Shelton, a neighbor. “In fact several neighbors, including myself, noticed a marked decrease in employee parking in the Bateman area for the last ten or fifteen days. Most of the usual suspects, the employees we recognize and whose cars we are familiar with, have been missing. I am sure they will return next week, like they did last year.” 

Last January, neighbors denounced what they said was an effort by the hospital to influence the results of the parking and traffic survey by reducing the number of employees parking in the neighborhood on the days of the survey.  

The hospital spent $70,000 to conduct another survey. 

City officials told the Planet that both surveys had yielded similar results. 

According to Pitts-Cameron, the message was a repetition of what has been sent out to employees since the hospital began its monitoring efforts in 1997. 

“It is important to notify employees as to why they are being stopped to be surveyed,” she said in an e-mail to some neighbors and city officials. “Each year I get calls from many employees, patients and visitors who feel harassed by this process. This is not new and if it skews the results this year, then it has skewed the results every year since we began the process ten years ago.” 

She added that the decrease in the number of cars parked in the neighborhood could mean that valet parking—one of the measures introduced to address the parking violations—was working. 

“If neighbors choose not to trust the process or the medical center then so be it,” the e-mail said. “We will not redo the study as this is exactly what I send out every year!” 

Bill Cain, another neighbor, called Pitts-Cameron’s response arrogant and unacceptable. 

“There should be punitive measures taken this time against Alta Bates for messing with the results,” he said. “The fact that the hospital has exceeded numbers repeatedly in prior years should be enough for substantial, neighborhood-agreeable modifications in their parking program.” 

Both Cain and Shelton stressed the need for repeating the parking survey at a later time, and without prior knowledge of the employees. 

“It is a violation of trust, fair play and common sense,” said Shelton, adding that the neighborhood would vigorously challenge the results. 

Wendy Cosin, the city’s deputy planning director, said that the e-mail had informed hospital employees about the traffic monitoring survey and not the parking survey. 

“I don’t know if that will skew the results,” she said. 

Cosin said she was talking to the Berkeley Police Department about enforcing the two-hour parking limitation on hospital employees who park in the neighborhood. 

According to residents, hospital staff go to great lengths every day to move their cars every two hours to avoid tickets. 

“I have seen guys wearing scrubs covered with blood come out from the hospital just to move their car from the front of my house,” Shelton said. “Some of them even rub off the chalk marks that parking enforcement officers put on the tires of cars illegally parked in the neighborhood. The city simply needs to figure out a way to enforce the two-hour limit.”


County Faces Big Cuts in Governor’s Budget

By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor
Tuesday February 05, 2008

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s proposals to fix a projected $14 billion state budget deficit could cost Alameda County as much as a half a million dollars in borrowing costs alone and millions of dollars more in federal matching money, according to a veteran county supervisor. 

Alameda County Supervisor Keith Carson spoke in a telephone interview this week as county officials moved through a series of state and local meetings to respond to the economic downturn and the state and local budget crises.  

In addition to proposing 10 percent across the board budget cuts in his 2008-09 budget, Schwarzenegger has declared a fiscal emergency in the state and has called on the legislature to meet in special session to meet the crisis.  

The governor has also proposed a one- to five-month delay of state payments to local jurisdictions in order to balance the state budget, a tactic that would hold up $55 million in payments to Alameda County alone in the areas of health, social services, and public works. 

“The delays would be for services which have already been provided,” Carson said. “We have to come up with the money to pay for those services while we would be waiting for the state payments to be received.” 

Carson said that even if the $55 million state payments were eventually paid, the estimated $500,000 needed to be spent on borrowing fees to bonding and financial institutions would not, and would have to be absorbed by the already-stretched county budget. 

Carson said he personally raised these issues with Schwarzenegger during a meeting with the governor last week. 

“The governor probably thought that local governments had a cushion in their general funds to absorb the delays, but I told him that it doesn’t exist for Alameda County,” Carson said.  

The supervisor said that since the early 1990s, when the state began withholding local payments in order to balance its own budget, Alameda County has lost an estimated $3 billion in operating revenue owed to it by the state.  

“We haven’t recovered from those losses,” Carson said. “There’s no rainy day fund. We’re not flush with cash.” 

Carson said the county is already suffering from a backlog in social service cases, longer waits for medical services, and deferments to road improvements in unincorporated areas that would be exacerbated by the state fund withholding.  

Close to half of Alameda County’s $2.3 billion annual budget comes from federal, state, and local financing. Of that, 28 percent goes to public assistance, 22 percent to health care, and 23 percent to public protection. 


As State Bill Dies, Activists Turn to Single Payer Bill

By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor
Tuesday February 05, 2008

Advocates of single payer health insurance in California are saying that the collapse of the Nuñez-Perata-Schwarzenegger health care bill is a good thing and are moving forward with reviving their own single-payer legislation. 

“We were opposed to the Nuñez bill,” Vote Health representative Kay Eisenhower said by telephone this week. “We considered it a step backwards.” 

Vote Health is an Alameda County-based health care activist organization. 

Eisenhower said statewide single-payer health care advocates will be holding a two-day conference in Los Angeles later this month to talk about ways to put State Senator Sheila Kuehl’s (D-Santa Monica-Los Angeles) SB 840 single-payer health care bill back on track. “SB 840’s not dead,” she said. “It’s only on ice.” 

Two years ago, it seemed dead. After SB 840 passed the state legislature in 2006, Gov. Schwarzenegger vetoed it. 

Kuehl revived her single payer bill a year later, and the bill passed the Senate on a 23-15 vote and the Assembly Health Committee on a 12-5 vote last summer, but it stalled in the Assembly Appropriations Committee as attention in the Assembly turned to a compromise bill being put together by Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez. 

The bill’s summary says it “would establish the California Universal Healthcare System (CUHS) under which all California residents would be eligible for specified health care benefits. The CUHS would, on a single-payer basis, negotiate for or set fees for health care services provided through the system, and pay claims for those services.” 

The year 2007 began with promises from many legislative sources to expand health care coverage in California, with State Senate President Don Perata (D-Oakland), Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez (D-Los Angeles), Gov. Schwarzenegger, and State Senate Republicans all putting up individual bills or proposals. Eventually, Perata and Nuñez consolidated their two bills into one, ABX1 1, which won Schwarzenegger’s backing. 

In contrast to Kuehl’s single-payer system, which would set up a state agency through which all insurance premiums and claims payments would be funneled, ABX1 1 would have required that all California residents “enroll in and maintain at least minimum creditable health care coverage … for themselves and their dependents,” but would continue to allow independent insurance companies to manage the actual coverage itself. 

ABX1 1 passed the Assembly 46-31 late last year, but after the economic downturn led to proposed steep cuts in the state budget, Perata withdrew his support, and the Senate Health Committee, which Kuehl chairs, voted 1-7 to hold the bill in committee, refusing to send it to the full Senate. 

Despite Perata’s abrupt about-face and ABX1 1’s defeat in committee, Schwarzenegger said he was not giving up on health care reform in California, telling the Sacramento Bee late last month that “just because the Senate has missed this golden opportunity to pass our health care reform doesn’t mean that we should walk away from reforming our broken health care system.” 

Eisenhower said among the biggest objections to ABX1 1 were the bill’s consumer mandates. 

In a statement entitled “Pledge to Continue Work for True Healthcare Reform” posted on her website shortly after the Senate Health Committee vote, Kuehl wrote: “As Senators [Leland] Yee [D-San Francisco] and [Elaine] Alquist [D-San Jose] indicated in their statements, explaining why they could not now vote for this bill, the bill as it is currently written does nothing to protect working class and middle class people from being burdened, to the point of breaking, by the individual mandate that requires each Californian to buy health insurance without adequate protection against unaffordable premiums and escalating out-of-pocket expenses. Furthermore, as Senator [Darrell] Steinberg [D-Sacramento] reminded us, we must conclude, especially after seeing the report from the legislative analyst, that this bill’s proposed revenues and expenses do not balance out and will leave the state exposed to increasing deficit costs as well.” 

And the California Nurses Association (CNA) put up a fact sheet on its website which read that the Nuñez bill “had serious failings on access, quality, and cost that were especially dangerous for working people,” among them that “employers would have had strong incentives to drop or sharply reduce union-negotiated benefits,” the bill “forced individuals to purchase insurance policies without knowing the real cost or what coverage they would have received,” and the bill provided “no restrictions on increases in premiums, co-pays, or deductibles.” 

The single-payer health care campaign in California is being coordinated through the One Care Now Organization (www.onecarenow.org), a coalition of California unions and health care advocate groups. 


Council to Evaluate Kamlarz, Discuss ‘Wright’s Garage Project’ at Closed Session Tonight

By Judith Scherr
Friday February 01, 2008

Posted Mon., Feb. 4—Berkeley city manager for five years, Phil Kamlarz will get his first City Council evaluation tonight (Monday) in a special closed-door council session. 

Special meetings require only 24-hour notice to the public. Tonight's meeting was announced Thursday afternoon. 

“I doubt if many members of the public are aware of the evaluation,” Councilmember Kriss Worthington told the Planet. The public is not permitted at closed session meetings but may comment before the meeting. 

Noting that the city has a council-manager form of government, Worthington said he thought the manager should be evaluated annually. 

Another hot-button issue to be discussed behind closed doors this evening is a possible settlement of the lawsuit brought against the city by the Elmwood Neighborhood Association, which has argued that the John Gordon “Wright’s Garage” project, approved by the city, is out of scale with the neighborhood. 

Public comment begins at 5 p.m. 

“In order to participate in the Public Comment portion of this meeting, you must arrive in the building prior to 5 p.m. Entrance to this building closes at 5 p.m.,” the notice says. 

Worthington pointed out that notice may impinge on the right of persons to speak before closed session if they arrive a few minutes late. 

The closed session begins at 5 p.m. at city administration building, 2180 Milvia St., 6th floor, the Redwood Conference Room.


Trees Show Their Bones and History in Winter

By Ron Sullivan
Friday February 01, 2008

Posted Sun., Feb. 3—Most of the public and literary appreciation for bare trees seems to come from wintry places like New England, but bonsai artists and fans and the landscape pruners who think along similar lines make a big deal of the “winter silhouette.” It’s one of the most refined criteria for judging a deciduous tree.  

One reason for that is that a deciduous tree in winter is naked indeed, and any mistakes you’ve made in shaping it will stick right out. In bonsai, the small scale makes errors even more obvious: it’s not so much miniaturization as abstraction, representing a wild tree in as few artistic strokes as possible, so any single part gets more attention.  

Once the leaves fall from landscape trees, it doesn’t take an expert to see what horrors have been wreaked upon them. There’s a row of poplars I have to look at every time I’m in the Union Bank parking lot; they’re up against a building on Channing Way and face west. In leaf, they look like so many toothbrushes; maybe some people think that’s an OK look. Naked, they’re just pitiful: nice straight trunks and then little awkward twigs sticking out in graceless desperate clusters.  

Maybe some people think that looks OK. There are those who go for pollarded trees, and some among them might be a bit uncritical of un-treelike forms for perfectly innocent trees. I find it hard to imagine, though.  

I’m a bit more tolerant of pollarding than I used to be—as long as it’s done right. Originally, pollarding was utilitarian, a way of harvesting firewood without killing the trees. Mulberries and sycamores will tolerate it well; it’s a classic urban way of treating London planetrees, a sycamore hybrid we often see in cities. If you try pollarding other species it’s riskier.  

Pollarding doesn’t mean just sawing pieces off at random. You have to start when the tree’s relatively young and take care to cut back to the same place on each scaffold limb every year. It gets easier to spot the place after a couple of years, as the tree forms big knobs at the cut places. You leave the knobs, taking off just the straight skinny branches that grew since the last pollarding.  

You also have to do it yearly, because those skinny branches are attached weakly, not to the central part of the tree. If they stay on the tree and get bigger, they just might fall off and bonk you on the head and it would serve you right.  

The trees still look funny to me, but I’m so old that low-rise pants look funny to me too: quaint. I wore them the last time they came around, in the ‘70s, and I remember how odd those old photos looked 15 years later. It’s just a matter of fashion, pollarding, until somebody blows it and then it’s tree abuse. (I suppose when somebody blows it with the pants it’s a gesture of solidarity with plumbers or somesuch.) Or maybe I’ve become more apathetic as I’ve noticed that both mulberries (the ‘Fruitless’ male clones planted as street trees) and planetrees are allergenic as well as ubiquitous. I’m Irish/Welsh; I bear grudges.  

One more positive reason for looking hard at a tree in winter is the revelation of the private lives of summers past. We see abandoned nests of squirrels and birds; there are field guides detailed enough to tell what species reared its young in each of them, in the shelter of last year’s leaves. Woodpecker holes and sapsucker drillmarks show up and winter residents become visible. The tree tells you what it and its tenants have been up to.  

The basic attraction of the winter silhouette is its sheer unlikely beauty. It’s so difficult to imitate the tree’s natural ramification, or just not to screw it up, because it’s not at all random. It obeys rules that are complex, mathematical, exigent, and organic, and while we sometimes know enough to approximate their effect, we rarely know enough to follow them precisely.  

Every cell in those twigs grows to reach toward light, to support a leaf that will catch as much light as possible, while responding to every other cell in the tree, pushing and dancing and proposing hypotheses, turning to bask in the sun and later lignifying, supporting its successors in the same quest.  

The tree makes its silent approximations every second of its growth, refining its formulae, adding to its suncatching surface, crystallizing to make its space while filling it, fracturing the sky into precise geometries. If we’re to do it justice, we must sit and learn, listen awhile, humbly shut up and hear what it has in mind.  


Richmond Design Board GivesQualified ‘Yes’ to Chevron Plans

By Richard Brenneman
Friday February 01, 2008

Posted Sat., Feb. 2—Richmond’s Design Review Board (DRB) voted Thursday to approve Chevron’s plans to upgrade its refinery, but before the vote was taken, few folks had anything nice to say about the world’s seventh largest corporation. 

The DRB’s approval was hedged with a set of lengthy conditions after members accused the firm of arrogance and indifference to the community. 

“You got greedy,” said Ted J. Smith, the board’s oldest member. “All you’ve done is take out of this community and screw us every time you get the chance.” 

Smith, an African American, chided the company because none of the Chevron representatives at the meeting “look like me.” 

Board member Donald L. Woodrow insisted that the company provide extensive mapping of the soils down to bedrock at the refinery site and reports on how soils and the plant would be affected by the impacts of a major earthquake on the Hayward Fault. 

“It will be earthquake safe,” promised Dean O’Hair, the oil company’s Richmond external affairs director. He said all construction wold meet current building and seismic codes. 

Woodrow was less than reassured, and the proposed condition remained. 

Chair Bob Avellar said he wanted approval contingent on the company’s grant of access to complete the last unfinished stretch of the Bay Trail in the city. 

During the public comment period earlier in the meeting, Bruce Beyaert, an ardent supporter of the trail and chair of the Trails for Richmond Action Committee, said negotiations with the company had stalled for two years, only to be rekindled as refinery project approval deadlines approached. 

Woodrow said the company should provide the access, cofund the design costs and pay for operating costs, all of which were included in his motion for approval 

Member Diane Bloom added the proviso that the trial siting decision would come back to the board for approval. 

Avellar added conditions for approving geodesic domes the company planned to install on new storage tanks included in the project, and called for an increase in number of trees planted to screen both the tanks and the periphery of the refinery. 

When she suggested the board ask the company to plant trees in other cities and outside Contra Costa County wherever winds carried particulates from the refinery, Smith shook his head. “I won’t vote for trees outside Richmond. I’m not looking out for anybody else.” 

Woodward then said the company should also reexamine options for using the site to generate solar and wind power to offset some on the company’s energy needs. 

 

Comments heated 

Most of the public comments earlier in the meeting were critical of the oil company. While most focused on concerns about pollution, one speaker raised a key financial issue. 

“I’m concerned about the very nice-looking hokum we’ve received,” said Contra Costa County Assessor Gus S. Kramer, speaking from the audience. 

He blasted a the company’s expensive color mailing which promised “millions in new revenues for the City of Richmond” from the project. 

He countered the corporate claim by citing the company’s own appeals to have the refinery’s property taxes slashed by two thirds for the prior three tax years. 

“I don’t want you to think that Richmond is going to get this windfall of services,” Kramer said. 

He got no response from company officials. 

Chevron representatives, including former plant manager and now Chevron Vice President of Marketing Curt Anderson, found themselves before a largely skeptical audience, with their only outright support coming from the business and labor communities. 

The next step in the project is a public meeting called by the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, which will be held starting at 6 p.m. Feb. 13 meeting at the RRC Social Hall, 3230 MacDonald Ave. 

Within city government, the proposal now goes to the Planning Commission, with a likely appeal to the City Council regardless of which way the commissioners come down. 

The refinery issue could be the DRB’s swan-song, as the city council has already voted to merge its functions with the Planning Commission. 

 

 


Three Chain Themselves to Marine Recruiting Center Doors

By Judith Scherr
Friday February 01, 2008

Posted Fri., Feb. 1—The World Can’t Wait ratcheted up the protests at the downtown Berkeley Marine Recruiting Center today (Friday), when three members, dressed in orange jump suits to symbolize the garb worn by the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, chained themselves to the recruiting center doors at 64 Shattuck Ave.  

Describing their protest as “civil resistance,” Mary Ann, chained to the door with Alex and Lou —the three declined to give their last names—told the Planet the recruiting center “represents the immoral acts of this president—the Iraq war, wire tapping, torture, and ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement].”  

Two Berkeley police officers came by the gathering that had drawn about 15 people by 9:30 a.m. and told the group that they would station a police officer across the street for the demonstrators’ protection. Lt. David Reece said the city supports the demonstrators, but he wanted assurance that there would be no vandalism at the office.  

 


Council Addresses Police Theft Case

By Judith Scherr
Friday February 01, 2008

It took more than two years for questions surrounding criminal activities in the Berkeley Police Department to reach the City Council, but when the Police Review Commission report on Evidence Theft was before them Tuesday evening, councilmember reactions were heated. 

They wanted to know why police supervisors had failed to see problems within the department and condemned the Berkeley Police Association for refusing to cooperate with the commission. They unanimously approved reports from both the city manager/police chief and from the commission, and asked for followup in March.  

In other actions, the council went on record calling on the governor to withdraw the California National Guard from Iraq, asking Congress to reaffirm the existence of the Armenian genocide and adopting a policy, where practical, to cease purchases from Chevron Corp. They also raised meter parking fees from $1 to $1.25 per hour, asked the city manager to look at how the lying-on-the-sidewalk ordinance would be implemented and made Berkeley a sanctuary for medical cannabis users and dispensaries. They also heard a presentation on a city plan to address global warming.  

The Police Review Commission report, unanimously approved by its members and written by a subcommittee that studied the issue for more than a year, focused on the theft of drug evidence from the locked police vault by former Sgt. Cary Kent, who was convicted in April 2006 on separate felony counts of grand theft, possession of heroin and possession of methamphetamine. 

Kent pleaded guilty, served a year of home detention and is now on probation. He was never interviewed by police or the district attorney. 

The council voted unanimously to accept the commission report and recommendations from both the city manager and the commission—the city manager’s report had rejected two of the commission’s recommendations—and to have the commission return to council in March, with details on unanswered questions. And the chief will report at that time on the reforms he has accomplished within the department. 

“I’m very concerned about the lack of response from the supervisors,” said Councilmember Linda Maio. “There seems to be no performance review.” 

Maio was reacting to sections in the PRC report that detailed aberrations that had been noticed in Kent’s behavior for more than two years before he was placed on a leave of absence and allowed to resign from his position, according him benefits and retirement pay for the approximate 18 years he served on the Berkeley force.  

The behavior included not showing up for work or meetings, showing up late and being at the police department at odd hours of the night looking disheveled. 

“What most disturbed me was a lack of cooperation [in the investigation] from line officers,” said Councilmember Laurie Capitelli. 

In fact the Berkeley Police Association attorneys told the commission that they would not submit to questioning by the PRC, alleging that such an investigation would be contrary to personnel privacy guarantees. 

“We come up against this wall of silence,” said Councilmember Max Anderson. 

“Our greatest problem in conducting this investigation was the lack of cooperation by the Berkeley Police Association, which, as it turns out, virtually controls, with the assistance of their lawyers, the behavior of the sworn police officers vis a vis the Police Review Commission,” said PRC Commissioner Sherry Smith, a subcommittee member. 

“Our investigation would have been completed much more expeditiously had we had a modicum of help from the rank and file.”  

A registered nurse, Anderson said he was particularly disturbed by a lack of tight controls over the drug evidence, controls he said are strictly maintained in hospitals where he’s worked. 

Capitelli said he didn’t understand why Kent had not been compelled to divulge information such as the quantity of drugs taken. Hambleton explained that it was not up to him, but up to the district attorney to demand he answer questions, to which Capitelli retorted: “You can send him to jail.” 

In the PRC’s 200-page report is a copy of a statement released by the city manager April 14 2006 the day Kent pled guilty to the charges. “Kent submitted a letter in March 2006 announcing his retirement rather than cooperate with BPD Internal Affairs staff regarding this audit.” 

When Hambleton responded to Capitelli that, as a first-time drug offender, Kent actually got a harsher sentence than most drug abusers, who are generally given diversion, a number of people still in the Council Chambers at the 11 p.m. hour groaned and jeered. 

While the chief and the commission agreed on most of the recommendations to tighten controls in the department, two issues divided them: commissioners said all the people working in the unit with Kent should be moved out of the Special Enforcement Unit (SEU) as a group.  

Hambleton told the council that would be unfair: “There was no evidence whatsoever of any misconduct on the part of the two employees. We don’t think it would be fair to transfer them because a transfer would be viewed as punitive,” he said. 

Subcommittee member Andrea Prichett told the council that in Boston officers were immediately transferred out of the unit when impropriety was suspected.  

An accounting of how Boston police are dealing with a suspected theft of drugs is detailed in a Jan. 5 Boston Globe story “Police find widespread drug tampering.” The article says that the drug evidence tampering sparked “an audit of all department units, including hiring and personnel.” 

The Globe story quotes Police Commissioner Edward Davis saying, “We’re really going to shake the place out and make sure that every department is up to national standards.” 

The other outstanding question was that the commission wanted a thorough investigation into the amount of drugs missing from 286 envelopes containing drug evidence that investigators found may have been opened. The police investigation only looked at a few envelopes, enough to charge Kent with the three felonies. 

The chief said it would be too expensive to have a lab investigate these envelopes, but he sent a memo to the commission last week, quantifying the amount of drugs recorded on the 286 envelopes. According to the memo, that added up to: 1.6 pounds of methamphetamine (powder and crystal), 9 ounces of heroin (tar, powder and liquid), 1.5 ounces of cocaine (rock and powder), 5 pounds of marijuana, 1 ounce of hashish, and 235 pills including Vicodin, ecstasy, Oxycontin, Tylenol/codeine and fentanyl. 

“I don’t believe he took drugs from every single one of those envelopes,” Hambleton said. Nevertheless, the chief said he checked with a number of experts, whose conclusion was that the amount of drugs in question was consistent with use by one person. 

In the memo, he wrote: “Except for the marijuana, there was a consensus [among experts] that these amounts are consistent with what a light to moderate user would consume within a one year period.” 

Attorney Jim Chanin, who served on the subcommittee, told the council the chief was wrong. “He’s talking about a light to moderate user. I don’t know what he’s talking about. I add this up at two grams of meth a day; the combination of drugs is not consistent with a single user.” 

In addition, Chanin told the council, “buried in the report that you have, there was evidence developed by the police department, that Cary Kent was buying drugs from a confidential informant while he was on duty, even though that was not his job.” This was not followed up in the investigation. 

Prichett told the council that the investigation was lacking because it never asked whether Kent was acting alone. “They decided that Kent was the guilty party and built a case against him,” she said. 

 

Lying on the sidewalk 

Councilmember Linda Maio said she had been concerned about an ordinance approved by the council in December which gives police the right to cite individuals lying on the sidewalk, though it makes citing at night low priority. 

She said she was concerned that people who had nowhere else to go would be given citations. 

So she and Councilmember Laurie Capitelli wrote a resolution, passed unanimously by the council Tuesday night, to ask the city manager to suggest a policy “that would require no (or low) enforcement of [the law against lodging on the sidewalk] at night if no shelter beds are available.”  

If they are available, the resolution says that, in addition to offering the person a bed, transportation by taxi to a shelter would be included in the mix, paid for by scrip. 

Councilmember Dona Spring had a number of questions regarding the proposal. She asked what would happen to people who want to go to a shelter, when the shelter has rules that they can sleep there for 30 days, then must wait 60 days before returning. And, she wanted to know if people could enter during the night, as most shelters have a curfew for entry. 

Maio said she had talked to service providers who said they would make exceptions for people entering the shelters late, but that she hadn’t considered the problem posed by shelters that don’t allow persons to stay there more than 30 days. 

 

Medical cannabis sanctuary 

The council unanimously approved a resolution sponsored by Councilmembers Darryl Moore and Kriss Worthington opposing attempts by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration to close medical marijuana dispensaries and declaring Berkeley a sanctuary for medical cannabis use, cultivation and distribution.  

The resolution directs the Berkeley Police Department and city attorney not to cooperate with DEA investigations against physicians, patients or their caregivers and medical cannabis dispensaries operating in accordance with California state and local law.  

At a press conference before the council meeting, Worthington said the DEA should not “use precious resources harassing patients, dispensaries and their landlords.” 

At the meeting, medical cannabis user Pat Crossman, who has arthritis and walks with the aid of two canes, told the council she has been using the medicine for 10 years. “It’s helpful for easing the pain,” she said. “I would be very upset if the feds came in and busted us or frightened us—we’re doing the best we can.” 

 


Police Launch Pedestrian Safety Decoy Operation

By Riya Bhattacharjee
Friday February 01, 2008

Berkeley’s Traffic Bureau came across a few snarls on the city’s streets this week. Not all were caused by clogged lanes and reckless driving. 

Police officers acting as decoys were booed, jeered and heckled while trying to monitor pedestrian right-of-way violations Tuesday. 

While some community members lauded the Berkeley Police Department (BPD) for their efforts, others said they should be chasing drug peddlers and robbers instead. 

“The community wants us to carry out decoys like this,” said BPD Community Relations Officer Sgt. Mary Kusmiss. “And yet when they happen there will always be a reaction ... there will always be some discomfort. Nobody likes getting cited.” 

The first of many focused enforcement projects kicked off Monday after City Manager Phil Kamlarz directed city officials to create a task force on traffic safety earlier this year. 

“Our goal is to collaborate and create a program of sustained education, enforcement and traffic engineering assessments,” Kamlarz told the Planet Wednesday. 

He added that he felt reasonably safe while walking on the city’s streets. 

“I have grown up walking on the streets,” he said laughing. “But there is a lack of awareness for pedestrian safety out there which we need to change.” 

Efforts to educate and enforce traffic laws on vehicle drivers, pedestrians and cyclists were carried out by the Traffic Bureau at Solano Avenue and Fresno Street—the site of two pedestrian fatalities last year—and Shattuck Avenue and Allston Way and Telegraph Avenue and Haste Street Monday. 

“We handed out over 2,000 informational flyers to community members,” Kusmiss said. “The focus in any traffic safety program is the 3 Es—education, enforcement and engineering. All three need to be employed to achieve some measure of success. The BPD Traffic Bureau always focuses on drivers, but we also know from our experience that pedestrians and cyclists also need some education and awareness.” 

Kusmiss pointed out that 16 of the 37 traffic collisions involving pedestrian fatalities that took place since 1984 were determined to be the pedestrian’s fault. 

“Of the four cyclists killed, all were the cyclist’s fault,” she said. 

Officers wrote 113 citations to pedestrians and cyclists on Tuesday.  

On Wednesday afternoon, the group carried out enforcement on drivers violating the pedestrian right of way at Shattuck and Berkeley Way using Officer Ross Kassebaum as a pedestrian decoy. 

“There are certain legal requirements we need to fulfill,” Kusmiss said pointing at two orange cones placed at a distance from each other on Shattuck Avenue. “They have been placed there in order to provide a vehicle with a reasonable amount of time to stop before the officer writes the citation. We don’t like to call it a sting, we like to call it focused enforcement.” 

As unsuspecting pedestrians jaywalked at the intersection of Shattuck and Berkeley Way with cellphones and iPods in hand, bike officers chased them down to applause from passers-by. 

“There were no cars coming so it was safe to walk,” said a teenager. 

“I jaywalked because there is a conspiracy going on with parking meters. It is espionage,” this from another young man. 

“I had to dash across because I left my baby in the car,” said a woman on Solano Avenue. 

According to Kusmiss, the woman was cited for leaving a 6-week-old baby unattended in her car while she went to get a bagel. 

Kassebaum, who had been out for three hours on Wednesday morning, admitted that there had been instances when he had been scared for his life. 

“Most of the drivers are not even looking,” he said. “They are either reading the paper or talking on the phone. Quite a few will even go by without seeing you. It’s impossible to read their mind.” 

Councilmember Dona Spring said she was concerned about the increase in the number of pedestrian accidents in the city. 

“Allston and Addison are the two most dangerous residential streets in the city,” she said. “The city needs to do something about that ... But again I don’t want overzealous enforcement. I think we need a pollution tax so that we can make drivers pay more and in the process create safety features for pedestrians.”  

Kamlarz said that a bike-pedestrian safety plan was scheduled to go before the City Council on Feb. 11. 

Julie Christiansan, who works in North Berkeley, praised the officers for their efforts. 

“It’s awesome,” she said smiling. “I have parked in this neighborhood for 20 years and I always cross the street with my life in my hands ... It’s treacherous.” 

“I just wish they would stop the robberies in the Southside,” said another gentleman who didn’t want to give his name. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


City Lets Protesters Have Their Own (Parking) Space

By Judith Scherr
Friday February 01, 2008

The question of dedicating space—a parking space—for Code Pink’s weekly demonstrations in front of the downtown Berkeley Marine Recruiting Center (MRC) raised hackles at Tuesday night’s City Council meeting, when Councilmember Gordon Wozniak likened the demonstrations there to protests at abortion clinics. 

“There’s a line between protesting and harassing,” Wozniak said, referring to possible harassment of recruits. 

Wozniak was the lone vote opposing a resolution authored by Councilmembers Linda Maio and Max Anderson designating a parking space in front of the recruiting center for the demonstrators from noon to 4 p.m. every Wednesday for six months. 

The dedicated parking space “is showing favoritism to one side of the argument,” Wozniak said.  

He added, “My concern is giving a parking space in front of the Marine Recruiting Center seems confrontational.” 

Move America Forward, which calls itself “the nation’s largest grassroots pro-troop organization,” weighed in on the question in a press statement issued Wednesday:  

“It is disgraceful that in the birthplace of the Free Speech Movement, anti-military activists would attempt to silence the same military men and women who serve this country and give their lives to protect the free speech rights of all Americans, including these ungrateful and despicable people on the Berkeley City Council,” said KSFO talk-show host Melanie Morgan, Move America Forward chair, quoted in the statement. 

Dori Schmidt, whose husband owns The Berkeley Review, a test preparation business above the MRC, told the council that the demonstrations disrupt the business with their noise. All the other public speakers, however, supported the parking space designation. 

“It’s not favoritism,” said PhoeBe Sorgen, a member of Code Pink and the Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists Social Justice Committee. Rather, it’s following the Berkeley “tradition to stand up for peace,” she said. 

Bob Meola, a veteran who has staffed hot lines for military personnel trying to leave the service, told the council that use of the parking space will help the demonstrators deliver the truth to possible recruits.  

“People get lied to. They don’t get the jobs and training” they’re told they will get, Meola said. “It’s a community service to warn youth about the criminal liars.” 

Anderson spoke as a former Marine who had protested the Vietnam War, addressing the unfair advantage of the Marines that have “millions of dollars at their disposal to bombard the nation with propaganda.” 

Councilmember Betty Olds, who originally intended to vote against the resolution, said she changed her mind after listening to one of the speakers, 90-year-old peace activist Fran Rachel. Olds said it would have been hypocritical of her to oppose the resolution, since she, like many others in Berkeley, “found a psychiatrist who said their kids were all crazy to get them out of the [Vietnam] war.” 

Olds added, “The Marines ought to have had the sense not to come here.” 

Earlier, at the Tuesday night meeting, the council passed a tri-part resolution from the Peace and Justice Commission 7-2 and 6-3 condemning the military presence in Berkeley. 

Olds and Wozniak opposed all three sections of the resolution: one clause asked the city attorney to consider whether the city can enforce a local anti-discrimination law on the basis that the military discriminates against people who are openly gay and lesbian; another clause praised the work of demonstrators who try to impede the work of the recruiters through nonviolent means. 

Councilmember Kriss Worthington joined Olds and Wozniak opposing the third clause of the resolution that asked the city manager to write to the marines, telling them that the recruiting office is not welcome in Berkeley “and if recruiters choose to stay, they do so as uninvited and unwelcome intruders.” 

Worthington told the Planet that, while he is a peace activist, he opposed this clause because “we need to be respectful of veterans.” He added, “It is important to build coalitions.” 

“This is pretty bad,” Councilmember Betty Olds said at the council meeting, commenting on the resolution. “I’m going to vote no—they serve a purpose of giving jobs to people without other opportunities.” 

 

 

 

 

 

 


Rally Launches Petition to Limit Military Recruiters

By Judith Scherr
Friday February 01, 2008

At a rally that attracted some 50 supporters outside the Marine Recruiting Center in downtown Berkeley on Wednesday, the Regulating Military Recruiting Coalition launched a drive to collect 5,000 signatures for a ballot initiative aimed at regulating where public and private military recruiters can locate offices in Berkeley. 

The measure would amend Berkeley’s zoning ordinance, requiring military recruiters to obtain a use permit that would mandate a public hearing if they want to locate within 600 feet of a residential neighborhood, hospital, school or park, according to attorney Sharon Adams, who wrote the initiative.  

“The military serves the civilian population. As civilians we have the right to regulate the military. We have the duty to regulate the military,” Adams said, addressing the rally. 

Library Trustee Ying Lee, former councilmember and former aide to Congressmembers Ron Dellums and Barbara Lee, pointed to the military recruiting office at 64 Shattuck Square: “This office is asking people to go to war to kill, be killed or injured. How do they get these young people?”  

By lying, she said. “We are sick of the lies. They are fighting an illegal war in our name.”  

Lee, peace activist PhoeBe Sorgen and former City Councilmember Carole Kennerly are the signatories proposing the initiative. 

Calling the initiative “a legal tool to level the playing field through the public hearing and public comment process,“ Kennerly said mandating public input means “we can shine a light on the ridiculous notion that the military is a great opportunity for the poor and youth of color. The truth is that military recruiters exploit the lack of other options for underprivileged young people, in a phenomenon, which is called a ‘poverty draft.’  

“The unfair burden of this illegal and unpopular invasion of Iraq is carried disproportionately by youth of color and poor youth,” she said.  

Recruiters inside the center referred the Planet for comment on the initiative to a public information spokesperson. Last week, Marine recruiting spokesperson Major Wes Hayes told the Planet by e-mail that the military follows local zoning ordinances. 

Acting City Attorney Zach Cowan told the Planet that federal and state government entities are not required to follow local zoning laws, but may opt to do so.  

Organizations endorsing the initiative include: CodePink Women for Peace Bay Area, Grandmothers for Peace, Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists Social Justice Committee, World Can’t Wait, Bay Area Iraq Veterans Against War, Berkeley Greens, Courage to Resist, Watada Defense Committee, National Lawyers Guild Bay Area, Berkeley Gray Panthers and more. 

For information on the initiative go to bayareacodepink.org or call 524-2776. 

 

Photograph by Judith Scherr. 

Former Councilmember Carole Kennerly speaks outside the Marine Recruiting Center at 64 Shattuck Square in a rally kicking off an initiative to make future military recruiter offices go through a zoning process that will include public comment. Also pictured are Library Trustee Ying Lee (left), peace activist PhoeBe Sorgen (behind), attorney Sharon Adams (center right) and Zanne Joi of Code Pink. 


News Analysis: Bush Sub-Prime Collapse Echoes Reagan Disaster

By Richard Brenneman
Friday February 01, 2008

When 60 Minutes tackled the FBI investigation of the mortgage implosion Sunday night, producers looked to Stockton, “ground zero for the current financial crisis and a microcosm of everything that went wrong.” 

But their coverage of the current crisis overlooked another foreshadowing crisis for which Stockton was also Ground Zero—another national financial disaster under another Republican president. 

The link was there, early in Steve Kroft’s opening remarks. “A few years ago, it was one of the hottest real estate markets in the country; today it is the foreclosure capital of America.” 

A few years before that, Stockton had given birth to a hometown S&L that rocketed into the deregulated stratosphere of the early Reagan years to become the nation’s largest, and the darling of Wall Street. 

State Savings And Loan transformed itself into American Savings, the linchpin of Financial Corporation of America (FCA), with its vast network of mortgage funds bankrolled by double-digit uninsured jumbo CDs. 

The eventual collapse of American Savings is still the largest-ever bank failure in the country’s history. What is less well known was that its crimes were known to the same law firm that produced the two federal prosecutors in charge of the case: the local U.S. Attorney in Sacramento and U.S. Attorney General—and for years Reagan’s personal attorney—William French Smith. Another senior attorney from the same firm sat on FCA’s board. 

The collapse was completely predictable to someone on the outside, too. 

I know this as an absolute fact, because I did predict it, and I got exiled to the night cops’ beat at the Sacramento Bee because I refused to stop trying to write about it. I still have the letter of reprimand I got when I shouted at my editor. “You insisted we were missing a national story,” he wrote. I give him credit for that. And night cops is the rookie’s beat, the same one I took when I hired on at the Las Vegas Review-Journal at age 19. 

The FBI had a good idea what was happening, enough to merit a thorough investigation. It was their prosecution of a former State S&L vice president who pulled off a trailer loan pyramid scam in partnership with a concessionaire who had previously been the proud proprietor of“Jesse James Motors,” a used car lot in Fresno. But that investigation died an odd death when the culprits entered plea bargains. 

One of the peculiarities of the case I discovered was a lawsuit filed by the fellow from Santa Rosa who had previously brokered the bank’s trailer loan concession. Alleging he was wrongly deprived of the loan business, the Santa Rosan laid out the details of the scam in the court records I found in Stockton. The bank settled after negotiations by its law firm, the same one that produced the attorney general, the U.S. Attorney and one of FCA’s directors. 

By the time I had devoured the trailer case papers, I was tumbling to other schemes, the biggest and most disastrous of which involved mortgages. The bank was lending vast sums for office buildings, shopping centers and subdivisions, but often not quite enough to get things finished—often in the range of 90 percent of final costs. But developers, being the world’s eternal optimists, presumed that once they’d consumed their 90 percent, the bank would cough up the rest. 

When the bank refused to loan the rest, the projects drifted into foreclosure—in the case of one subdivision I toured, minus all but carpets and lawns—and the bank then peddled off the loans for between a quarter and fifty cents on the dollar. 

When I ran the paper trails on the buyers, I found partnerships controlled by partnerships, sometimes as many as five or more levels deep, until I wound up in the telephonic presence of a couple of old fellows who had ties to the old Al Capone Outfit and who had made a fortune during World War II buying up property seized when many of California’s Japanese-Americans were sent to concentration camps. 

The State corporation itself was a circus, with the bankers playing their own financial games on the side. The spouse of FCA’s CEO owned a private jet airline which did business with the bank, and which had its offices furnished by FCA. The bank was buying the furnishings of its branches from another partnership that turned out to consist of another executive and his spouse. 

A group of executives owned a party pad over on the coast through a partnership named Wizbang. The bank president had a pole in his yard he called his “farting post,” where inebriated guests were encouraged to cut the cheese for the uproarious entertainment of all. 

I documented all of it. 

But I was told, in writing, that the Bee didn’t consider my stories worth the effort, despite frequent heartfelt pleas. Finally, when I produced yet another story after being told to drop it for the third or fourth time, I was dispatched to night cops. 

Later, after I had quit the Bee in frustration and not long after the FCA empire collapsed in bankruptcy, I dropped by the paper to talk to a friend. Walking down a hallway after a brief visit, I encountered the editor who had banished me. He greeted me with a nod. I nodded back. “Looks like you were right, Dick.” 

American Savings was the biggest of the banks that fell to a variety of forces, but all of it involved mortgage foreclosures and the reckless pursuit of anything that could pay the high rates promised on those jumbo certificates of deposit. The ensuing oversupply of downtown office buildings led to foreclosures and bankruptcies, while subdivisions stood empty and shopping malls filled only with echoes. 

The banking collapse threatened hundreds of billions in jumbo CDs, many payable at rates far above the post-debacle norms. Jumbo CDs aren’t insured—thus the rationale for the higher rates—but the feds reorganized the deposit insurance systems, and paid off all the certificate-holders. 

The reason the uninsured were so considerately protected was because so many of the notes were held by unions, churches, pension funds, school districts and other branches of local and state governments and a whole lot of very rich and powerful people. The whole thing cost the U.S. Treasury about half as much as the whole Vietnam War. 

I was one of several reporters working on the S&L crisis at the time, and all of us were sidelined in one way or another. I found out why later, when a Sacramento banker took me to lunch to explain why he’d told the paper to either kill the story or lose his advertising—which was substantial. That’s when I realized what “not worthwhile” meant. 

So when I watched the opening of the 60 Minutes segment and learned that Stockton was the center of yet another mortgage catastrophe I wasn’t all that surprised. 

What does have me wondering is just what were the forces this time that kept the press from screaming out something that should’ve seemed ridiculously obvious to anyone who took a good look at the wonderful world of deregulated banking. 

Where the hell was the press this time? Why didn’t admonitions become the dominant memes? Why weren’t a lot more questions on a lot more lips? 

In the conversation to come, as blame-throwers blast away at bankers, regulators and, increasingly, the borrowers themselves, save a few barbs for us, the folks who’re supposed to serve as your representatives to the rich and powerful. Ask us how we fulfilled our role as keepers of public forums. Ask us if we had questions, and what we did or didn’t do to give them voice.


Demolished Preschool Awaits New Building

By Riya Bhattacharjee
Friday February 01, 2008

The remnants of a red and yellow toy train mark the spot where the redwood building housing the King Child Development Center at 1939 Ward St. used to be.  

A bobcat hovers around in the background, clearing up debris in the cold January rain. 

There are no shrieks of joy from pre-schoolers, no parents bustling around to fuss over them after school. But all that will soon change. 

A notice put up by the Berkeley Unified School District informs passersby that the old building has been demolished and a brand new one will be ready for students in August. 

An artist’s rendering of the proposed structure—consisting of six classrooms, an administrative building and a garden—gives an idea of what will occupy this gaping hole across the street from the derelict Berkeley Iceland. 

Plans for the demolition and reconstruction of the King Child Development Center on Ward Street, as well as the Franklin Para Nursery at 1460 Sixth St., had been in place since Berkeley voters approved Measure AA, under then-Superintendent Jack McLaughlin, in November 2000. 

After district officials visited the Ward Street site and declared it to be in a state of disrepair last year, the Berkeley Board of Education hired WLC Architects in March to create a plan for the new buildings. 

The board in June unanimously approved the demolition and the proposed reconstruction, estimated to cost the district $6.4 million in bond funds. 

“The district applied for funding for seismic retrofit of all the schools right after the Loma Prieta earthquake,” said Jon Santoro, former director of Berkeley Unified’s early childhood education program. “For some reason the plans for developing the early childhood program were put on hold ... I am glad it’s finally been done. The buildings were not habitable for children. They were rotting.” 

Lew Jones, the district’s director of facilities, told the Planet that the district had decided to upgrade a host of facilities between 2000 and 2010. 

“The board votes on a yearly basis on what projects to approve,” he said. “Last year it was Franklin and King.” 

District superintendent Michele Lawrence, who retires today (Friday), visited the sites in June and discussed plans with the schools’ staff about their temporary relocation this year to Malcolm X, West Campus and the Berkeley Arts Campus. The program was moved to these locations in July to prepare for the demolition. 

Calls from the Planet for comment on the project were not returned by Lawrence, who was attending a conference in Monterey. 

“The district determined that the facilities could not be renovated from a cost and space effective perspective,” said school board president John Selawsky. “It made sense to just start over. We decided on modular buildings because they were within our budget and the students would be able to get back to their old schools within a year.” 

Selawsky said that the planned prefabricated buildings, which will have metal roofs and stucco walls, would first have to be approved by the Division of the State Architect. 

According to Jones, the King buildings were built from hazardous materials. 

“Franklin caught fire a couple of years ago and we had to remove two out of the five classrooms,” he said. “The proposed project will have the same number of classrooms as King. Everything else will also be the same. Only the layout will be different.” 

King, which currently houses up to 84 children, would grow to 144 with the new plan.  

King old timers reminisced about the former redwood building during class Thursday. 

“They can say what they want about it but we made it work,” said Margie Kirk, who retired last year after teaching at the center for 27 years. “It helped a lot of young single parents and taught a lot of good things to children.” 

In the same breath she added that it was time for it to come down. 

“We are going to get a new building, so sacrifices have to be made for a few months,” she said. 

Alma Barrios, who teaches 3-year-olds at King, said that the transition to Malcolm X—where the kids occupy four after-school classrooms—had gone off smoothly. 

“There were a few minor hitches initially but parents and teachers were very responsive all over,” she said. “We are excited about moving into a new building.” 

LaSonia McCain, who took over from Santoro last year, said that teachers had wanted spacious classrooms for their students. 

“A place where they can play and get prepared for kindergarten,” she said. 

“We are moving into more academic goals now and trying to combine both play and child development. Teachers also wanted a building to collaborate and plan out their activities. For the small inconvenience that all of us will have to put up, we will get something better. As for the parents, the only thing they are concerned about is when their children can move into the new space.” 

 

 

Photograph by Riya Bhattacharjee. 

A train climbing structure is all that’s left of the King Child Development Center. 

 


Clinton, Lee, Kerry, Craig Newmark, Ted Kennedy Here Friday and Saturday

By Judith Scherr
Friday February 01, 2008

Superstars and locals are gearing up for “super-duper” Tuesday, Feb. 5. 

At noon today (Friday) at Sproul Plaza, Barbara Lee will join Craig Newmark of Craigslist and hip-hop artists to stump for Barack Obama. 

Down the street, at 2 p.m. Sen. Edward “Ted” Kennedy will speak on Obama’s behalf at Beebe Memorial Cathedral, 3900 Telegraph Ave. in Oakland.  

Tomorrow (Saturday) at 11 a.m. there will be a get-out-the-vote rally for Obama at Frank Ogawa Plaza at 14th Street and Broadway in Oakland. 

Also tomorrow, John Kerry will participate in a “canvass kick-off rally” at 9:30 a.m. at Everett Middle School in San Francisco's Noe Valley, 450 Church Street.  

Not to be outdone, rival Hillary Clinton is flying into the Bay Area, first for a 4 p.m. appearance at the San Jose Convention Center, then for a 7 p.m. rally at the Orpheum Theatre on Market Street. 

The Obama campaign has been running a grassroots operation in the ninth congressional district with captains organized in almost every precinct, according to Obama spokesperson Erin Callahan. The Daily Planet was unable to reach the Clinton campaign. 

The Obama campaign can be reached at www.barackobama.com—plug in a zip code for local events. The Oakland office is at 510-268-1008. 

The local Clinton campaign can be reached at http://www.hillaryclinton.com/hq/california/  

 


Legal Threat, Ignorance Cloud City Council Liaison Law

By Richard Brenneman
Friday February 01, 2008

Of 20 commissions listed in Title 3 of the Berkeley city code, stipulations that declare the “City Council shall appoint one of its members to act as a liaison representative to the commission” are found in the statutes creating only three commissions: Aging, Planning and Zero Waste. 

The only other mention of a council liaison is in the statute establishing the Parks and Recreation Commission, which declares both the council and the Berkeley Unified School District Board “may” appoint their own liaisons. 

In Planning Commission meetings covered by a Daily Planet over the past five years, attendance by any councilmember has been rare, and when it has occurred, it hasn’t been as a delegated representative of the city’s elected governing body. 

Typically, the council’s directives have been expressed by the city’s professional planning staff, and on significant occasions by Planning and Development Director Dan Marks. 

Christopher Lien, an attorney who lives in Berkeley and is active in the LeConte Neighborhood Association, raised the issue of the absent councilmember at the Planning Commission last week. 

Asked where the missing councilmember was, commissioners—and city staff—responded with blank stares. Similar responses came from city officials contacted a week later. 

But it’s there, in Section 3.28.040 of the code, “Council liaison representative—Functions.” 

The councilmember delegated to the commission is assigned: 

• “To attend the meetings of said commission;  

• “To advise the council of the background. attitudes and reasons behind decisions and recommendations of said commissions; and 

• “On request of any member of said commission to advise the commission of policies, procedures and decisions of the council that may bear on matters under discussion by the commission.” 

Acting City Attorney Zach Cowan said he didn’t ever recalling knowing of any council liaisons to the commissions, but their absence wouldn’t have any bearing on the legality of actions of either body. 

“It sounds like (the provision) is for the benefit of the council, not the commission,” Cowan said. “But there’s nothing that says the council can’t do without” a liaison. 

“I guess it’s a polite invitation,” he said. 

But Lien said the issue is deeper, and much more serious. 

The provisions, he said, aren’t for the council’s benefit but for the benefit of the citizenry. 

They are ordinances, and the city charter requires the city manager to enforce all ordinances in the municipal code, Lien said. 

The southside attorney said he was disturbed by the fact that the ordinance has been on the books throughout all the years Mayor Tom Bates has served on the council, yet neither the council, planning commissioners nor city staff seemed to be aware of the ordinances. 

Lien said Sharon Hudson has already emailed the council a demand that members follow the law and appoint the liaison to the Planning Commission. 

For Lien, the presence of the liaison is critical when commissions are dealing with matters of lasting consequence like the Downtown Area Plan and its potential for significantly increasing the city’s density. 

Should the council not appoint a liaison and the city manager not insist on an appointment, the next step would be in court, and a petition for a writ of mandate to enforce compliance. 

But Councilmember Kriss Worthington—who admits he wasn’t aware of the statute—said compliance could prove a mixed blessing for Lien and other neighborhood activists. 

“If the City Council were to vote on a liaison, I don’t know what one person would actually reflect the balance of opinion on so many complicated issues,” he said, given that members “come down all over the place on different issues.” 

City Planning and Development Director Dan Marks said he too wasn’t aware of the ordinance. 

“It’s news to me,” Marks said. “There may be such a person, but I’m not aware of it. Clearly, it’s not something that’s been actively used since I’ve been with the city.” 

The city’s top planning official said he’d be checking with City Manager Phil Kamlarz to find out what the statute might mean. 

Kamlarz was away from his desk when called Thursday afternoon.


OUSD Contract Talks Begin on Tense Note

By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor
Friday February 01, 2008

The potentially volatile Oakland Unified School District teacher contract negotiations—in the midst of a state budget crisis and as the district transitions from state takeover to local control—bubbled to the surface Wednesday night when shouting Oakland teachers forced a brief but tense administrator-board meeting recess while demanding that their contract proposal presentation not be bumped down lower on the agenda. 

School board members and state administrator Vincent Matthews sat in stony silence, staring straight ahead, while teachers chanted “Teachers have the right to speak! Teachers have the right to speak!” School Board President David Kakishiba eventually relented after consultation with Oakland Education Association (OEA) President Betty Olsen-Jones, allowing the teacher presentation to move forward immediately, but not before he himself had to shout down repeated interruptions of his remarks with calls to “Listen!” before finally being able to announce that he was giving in. 

The brief confrontation began after Kakishiba announced he was moving up a report on the financial implications of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s proposed state budget cuts, ahead of the OEA and district contract proposal presentations. 

Teachers later charged that district officials wanted to present the potential grim repercussions to the district of the Schwarzenegger budget cuts first, in order to blunt the impact of OEA’s sweeping requests for pay raises, increased support services, and lower class sizes. 

Wednesday’s meeting marked the first round of OUSD negotiations on a contract that expires in July of this year. 

Despite the fact that OUSD Director of Labor Management and Employee Relations Troy Christmas tried to smooth over the contract disagreements by saying that “even when [the district and the teachers union] differ on methods, my experience has been we’re working towards a common purpose,” the OEA and OUSD management appeared far apart on their initial proposals. 

Saying that “we’re presenting a bold proposal” and “we’re tired of having to continue to say that we are going to do more with less,” OEA President Olsen-Jones gave district officials what she called “demands” that included, among other things, a 20 percent across-the-board teacher salary increase, a freeze on any teacher payment on health insurance premiums, maximum class sizes of 20 students in both elementary and secondary schools, decreased caseloads for school nurses and school counselors, and a guarantee of a library and librarian for all district schools. 

OUSD pointedly played close-to-the-vest in its own proposal. On compensation, the district’s proposal said only that “within budgetary constraints, adjust compensation to best recruit and retain quality educators and supporting personnel,” and on health benefits, that “changes to this section will be proposed to the joint Health Benefits Improvement Committee.” The OUSD proposal was silent on the issue of increased support services. 

But in his presentation to the board, OUSD Labor Management Director Christmas appeared to throw cold water on any increased teacher compensation, saying that while “all of us in here believe education is underfunded,” the district “needs to ensure that our expenses do not exceed our income.” More directly, Christmas told board members that district revenue between 2002 and 2007 “did not go up as fast as teacher compensation.” 

The two sides are now scheduled to go into private contract negotiations. 

The public’s ability to sort out the two contract proposals was made more difficult Wednesday night by the discovery that agenda documents posted on OUSD website are not currently visible on a large number of computers, a possible violation of California’s open records Brown Act. 

OUSD used to provide hard copies of agenda background documents at board meetings, but stopped the practice when the district began attaching links to such documents on its online meeting agendas. When a reporter informed OUSD Board Secretary Edgar Rakestraw Wednesday night that agenda that the background documents could not be viewed on his Mac computer, Rakestraw said that the district configured its website to be used on PC computers using an Internet Explorer browser, and any inability to download or even view the documents was “the fault of the individual computer.”  

Immediately afterwards, however, Board President Kakishiba informed Rakestraw that the agenda background documents were not available on the PC computer placed by the district on the board table for his use during board meetings. A similar problem was later reported during the meeting by a citizen attempting to view the same agenda documents supplied by the district in the audience section of the board room. 

Rakestraw said he would look into the problem. 


OUSD Outlines Possible Harm of Proposed State Budget Cuts

By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor
Friday February 01, 2008

Saying that “the governor dropped a bombshell on the education community,” Oakland Unified School District interim Chief Financial Officer Leon Glaster painted a gloomy picture Wednesday night of the potential financial effects on OUSD of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s proposed 10 percent across-the-board budget cuts.  

The governor’s proposal was his initial response to the deepening national recession that has lowered California’s state income. If the 10 percent state budget cut actually becomes necessary, state legislators or the governor could eventually spread the reductions to hit different parts of the budget at different rates. But among the details Glaster outlined if the 10 percent state education cuts actually go into effect are: 

•1 percent required planned decreases in the current (2007-08) budget could mean a $1.067 million cut to the current OUSD budget by June. 

• The governor’s proposal would lead to a $15.6 million cut in the OUSD general fund budget in 2008-09, with a total budget reduction in excess of $22 million. 

• The governor’s proposal requires all unexpended school district 2007-08 categorical funds be sent back to the state if not spent by June 30, setting off a potential scramble of local spending to keep from losing that money. 

• The governor is proposing delaying the state Average Daily Attendance (ADA) payments to local districts from July 1 to September 30, meaning OUSD would either have to dip into its own reserves to pay its bills during that period, losing the interest income that money would earn the district, or take out a short-term loan to make up the difference. 

Board members, figuring out how to pay back the $100 million state loan that surrounded the state takeover of OUSD five years ago, immediately balked at any plan to take out new loans, and Board President David Kakishiba said that any such plan would need to be carefully considered and discussed in detail before being put into place. 

Meanwhile, Glaster told board members that on March 12, his office will do a “detailed analysis of what the governor’s proposal will do to the OUSD budget.” 

And OUSD state administrator Vincent Matthews said that on the issue of the loss of unspent money this year, he was meeting with district principals on Thursday (yesterday) “to appraise them of the budget situation and devise strategies for them to spend the money by June.” 

Under the bifurcated OUSD rule—in which board members have only regained local control of certain portions of district operations—the state administrator’s office retains complete authority over all district budget matters. State administrator Matthews, however, appears to be consulting board members on budgetary issues. 


UC Haas Planner Sought, Law School Bidders Announced

By Richard Brenneman
Friday February 01, 2008

UC Berkeley this week revealed the companies picked to bid on a new $56 million law school building and called for an architect to plan major changes to Haas School of Business. 

Officially described as the Law School Infill Project, construction includes a new 50,000-square-foot building to be erected in the courtyard adjacent to the existing building plus another 10,000 square feet of renovations to the current facility. 

The new building will consist of three floors, two of them underground, with the upper level covered by a green roof. 

University officials have narrowed the list of prospective bidders to four firms for the work at the School Formerly Known as Boalt Hall: Charles Pankow Builders of Oakland and Hunt Construction Group, McCarthy Building Companies and Plant Construction Company, all of San Francisco. 

The companies were among 14 which had picked up project plans. 

According to the original advertisement for bids, the project “will strive to comply with LEED Silver equivalent,” referring to the second lowest of four energy conservation standards developed by U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standards. 

Bids are due by 2 p.m. Feb. 22, and will be opened two minutes later. 

The second project is much broader, and seeks an architectural firm to develop a strategic facilities plan for the Haas School. 

The winner will be paid a lump-sum fee of not more than $185,000, according to the Request for Qualifications (RFQ) posted by the university. 

The plan “is envisioned as the first phase of a program of capital improvement which may include both renovations to existing facilities and construction of new facilities,” states the RFQ. 

The plan is to address near-, mid- and long-term needs of the school as they have developed since the school moved into its new buildings 12 years ago. 

The current complex housing 2,178 students, 74 permanent faculty, 80 visiting and non-permanent faculty members in buildings totally 234,000 gross square feet. 

The new plan is separate from the previously announced plans to create a “connection building” uniting offices and meeting spaces for both the law and business schools, said Dan Mogulof, executive director of the university’s Office of Public Affairs. 

But that project, estimated three years ago to cost between $100 million and $120 million, has been placed on hold. 

The reason? 

Calvin Hall, a circular building at the site of the proposed connection building, is currently housing the facilities of the Energy Biosciences Institute (EBI), the $500 million corporate/academic research program funded by BP, the Company Formerly Known as British Petroleum. 

The EBI is scheduled to get a new home in the purpose built Helios Building up the hill at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab (LBNL). 

But that project is several years from completion, forcing the delay in the connection building that was dramatically unveiled by Chancellor Robert Birgeneau as one of the keystones of the Southeast Campus Integrated Projects—themselves the subject of legal action in Alameda County Superior Court. 

The architect hired for the business school plans will evaluate the school’s needs and space and “prepare a space program that corrects existing deficiencies” while meeting long-term goals. The RFQ also calls for the winner to “identify and evaluate alternative investment strategies to accommodate the space program.” 

Work would begin immediately on the signing of the contract, with completion due by July 1. 

Michael Kelly of the Panoramic Hill Association is one of the plaintiffs in the suit challenging the Environmental Impact Report for the SCIP projects, and he said Thursday that he wondered if both projects were including scope of the SCIP EIR, which did cite improvements at both schools. 

“Thanks for the heads up,” he said when told the university had posted both projects on its website. 

The RFQ is at www.cp.berkeley.edu/CP/Projects/HaasSchoolofBusiness/RFQ_18217A_StrategicFacilitiesPlan.pdf; the notification of qualified bidders for the law school is at www.cp.berkeley.edu/AFB_12267A_LawSchoolInfill_afterPreq.pdf


Opinion

Editorials

Editorial: Now You Finally Have to Make Up Your Mind

By Becky O’Malley
Tuesday February 05, 2008

Thanks to my advanced age, it’s very rare that I have to talk to or even see another human before 8 a.m. anymore (except of course my husband.) Which is how I like it. I’m awake early, but definitely not conversational. So I was very surprised to find myself at Peet’s on Domingo at about 7 on Monday morning, fully clothed and relatively alert. I was even wearing Norine’s scarf, a flamboyantly-flowered number which I inherited from my flamboyantly-redhaired friend Norine Smith, who never hesitated to leap into any political controversy whenever she felt that God was on her side, which was pretty much always. I wear it when I feel the spirit moving me to take action, which sadly is not too often these days. 

The action in question, which started, thank goodness, at 7:30 after coffee, was sign-waving on the corner of Ashby and Claremont. The signs were Obama signs (I think Norine would have approved, though you were never sure), but unless you’re reading this on Tuesday morning and you haven’t voted, that shouldn’t make much difference.  

As far as I can remember, the last time I was out on the street with a sign was in 2003, right before the Bushies and their Democratic dupes launched the invasion of Iraq. Fat lot of good that enormous protest did. I also went to Washington, in freezing sleet, to protest Dubya’s first inauguration, an even more pointless exercise.  

This was a very different scene. My fellow wavers seemed to be earnestly attractive suburban ladies in the main, not from the immediate neighborhood. There were a couple of old folks like us, too. One of them, a man wearing a baseball cap, asked if he should get his American flag out of the car. I could see a couple of double takes, flag-waving having been out of style for at least 40 years now, but no one wanted to say no. “The flag attracts a lot of attention,” he said, and he’s right. Myself, I’ve always lobbied for taking back the flag from the rabid right, but it takes some nerve to actually do it.  

As per local custom, many passing cars honked and many drivers waved. Continuing my ongoing personal poll, I noticed the remarkable diversity of the enthusiasts: every single driver of serious work trucks (half of them Latino), SUV drivers from through-the-tunnel, women driving to work alone, multi-racial and two-or-more-gender car pools headed for UC, twenty-somethings talking on cell phones with one hand while waving with the other (we stepped back from the curb until they passed.) 

One older woman in a Volvo station wagon rolled down her window and shouted “Hillary, Hillary, Hillary...we need a woman in the White House.” That was a congenial exchange too, all parties smiling as they disagreed. It’s just possible that Norine, a dedicated feminist, would have stuck with Senator Clinton. 

In the end, in this election, it’s not going to matter much whom you supported in the primary. Kucinich and Edwards did heroic duty trying to remind the Democratic party of its historic ideals, and succeeded in that task beyond anyone’s wildest expectations as recently as two years ago. At this point, it’s not if we should get national health insurance or withdraw from Iraq, but simply when, a huge change in public opinion, and attibutable in part to those two campaigns.  

The time has come now for chronic fence-sitters to jump down and into the fray. Last weekend a friend hemmed and hawed, saying he might have to vote for Mike Gravel in Tuesday’s primary. Another one said he’d be tempted to vote for Edwards even though he’d withdrawn from the race. Come on, you guys, get with the program.  

A whole generation, one a half-step younger than mine, has made a career of holding back on commitment. Many of them have even been afraid to get married, even to people they’ve been living with for 10 or 20 years. And look where it’s gotten us. 

There was a mid-’60s refrain: “Did you ever have to finally decide?” which mirrored the ambivalence shared by many in that era toward engagement. Like Kucinich and Edwards now, Gene McCarthy and Bobby Kennedy by 1967 summoned the courage to question the unquestionable, though the president they challenged was like them a Democrat. Even though the immediate result was the election of Richard Nixon, the ultimate result was the end of the Vietnam War, even if a Republican had to do it.  

This time, regardless of who the eventual Democratic nominee is, everyone is going to have to fall to and make it happen in November. Whatever you might think about the inadequacies of the Democratic Party (and I’m with you on that), there’s not a candidate in the race who would be as bad as Bush, or even as McCain or (god forbid) Romney. That being the case, you’d be well advised to practice decision-making today (Tuesday) by choosing one of the two front-runners and casting your vote even in the primary.  

One more time, in case you didn’t get the memo. Unless you’re registered in another party, you can vote in the Democratic primary. Just go boldly into your polling place and ask for the Democratic ballot.  

Of course, if you’re still registered in the Green or Peace and Freedom parties, you’re out of the game for this round. Berkeley has more than its share of the slow-to-get-it folks whom life has passed by, people who are still living in the same rent-controlled apartment they moved into in college 30 years ago. Many of them will be tempted to self-righteously opt out of the political process one more time in November, to vote for grouchy old Ralph Nader if he decides to take one more ego trip on our watch.  

Give it up, folks. No matter what party you honor with your registration, you can vote for an actual candidate in November. Take a deep breath, hold your nose, and leap into the water. Your kids are doing it, and you can too. 

My old radical friend Michael Rossman, whom I’ve known since long before he was a leader of the Free Speech Movement, sent me this e-mail: 

“My son Jaime has asked me to forward this to you, which I do with glad pride, remembrance and hope:  

 

Dear Friends and Family; 

For the first time in my life, I am planning on voting for a Democratic candidate for President, Barack Obama. Choosing to do so marks somewhat of a departure from my political allegiance, since Obama’s voting record is less than ideal and his policies are sometimes less than progressive. But Obama offers something far more important to his potential success as our chief executive: a vision of governance based on hope and idealism, and a growing movement of traditionally marginalized people gaining inspiration from his leadership. 

Policies are not made by individuals. They are made by movements, and movements are made by inspired people. The real question we should each be asking during elections is this: Who will inspire me to pursue my own vision of the future? 

Aside from the catastrophic failures in vision, planning and practice which have dominated our government during my life, government has failed to inspire. The rampant myopia and crony-ism has hurt us most by coercing us into inaction, leaving access to government solely to those motivated by profit or revenge. It saddens me to say that Obama has not proven he would exclude these voices (as Edwards and Kucinich would claim to), but I have faith in this; he will listen to our voices as well. 

So in closing, I leave it to you to learn more about Obama’s policies, just as I will be doing now that I’ve joined his campaign. But I also ask you to think about the world you want to see, to imagine the next five, ten, twenty years of American politics, and to ask yourself whether that vision can start with Obama being elected. If that idea excites you, the time to act is now. In ... days, this race will be over, at least as far as most of us are concerned. If you decide to vote for Obama, here’s all I’m asking you to do; tell two people you wouldn’t normally have told. 

Much love,  

Jaime 

 

For California, it’s almost over now. If Jaime’s candidate doesn’t make it here, he still has a chance in other states. But I hope (and suspect) that whether it’s Clinton or Obama in November, young people like Jaime, who comes from a distinguished line of questioners and dissenters, will continue on the path of being active participants, not just spectators, in the political process. And whether he gets the nomination or not, Barack Obama should get a large share of the credit for that. 


Editorial: Hurry Up, Please, It’s Time to Vote

By Becky O’Malley
Friday February 01, 2008

It’s down-to-the-wire time now. On Wednesday a substantial number of my California relatives and friends told me that they’d finally filled out their absentee ballots and sent them in. What were they waiting for? Well, like all the rest of us, they were still trying to decide who to vote for in the Democratic presidential primary. Here’s the refrain: “I’d like to vote for Edwards, but if Obama and Clinton are very close I’ll probably have to choose Obama instead.” Some—a few—mentioned Kucinich instead of Edwards. 

If the truth be told, I expect that was John Edwards’ thought process too. His polls—and his not inconsiderable political instincts—told him that he just wasn’t going to win, and he didn’t want to be the spoiler for the candidate he likes. People in my chat circles think that would be Obama, but they do wonder why, if so, Edwards didn’t actually endorse him. Perhaps he’s saving his muscle for any tight spots that might develop between now and the convention. 

Obama is essentially irresistible. As many commentators have pointed out, Obama as symbol is even more potent than Obama as candidate. He represents a clean break with a political history that many Americans find distasteful for a multitude of unrelated reasons, going all the way back to Lyndon Johnson.  

The number of people in this country—north, south, in between—who would fail to vote for him just because his paternal ancestors lived in Africa is small and dwindling. Even the cultural racist who genteely deplores “the way some of those people act” can find nothing to fault in Barack Obama’s history or the way he presents himself in the campaign. Such people welcome the opportunity to prove that their prejudices are not actually racial but are based on “facts.” 

Obama is the epitome of what Jack Kennedy used to call “vigah.” He’s amazingly—and yes, I do know that the word is often a patronizing putdown of African-Americans, but it applies here in every primary sense—articulate. And articulate is exactly what Hillary Clinton is not. She often speaks well and clearly, yes, but she’s unwilling or unable to give the impression that she’s sure of what she believes and is ready to fight for it, in contrast to both Obama and Edwards. What she tries to pitch as experience comes across, to use a simile popular when I was a teenager, like a lead balloon. Her real-life lead balloon is Chairman Bill, lurking heavily in the background taking clumsy almost-racist potshots at Obama which fool no one. 

In a week of personal polling, I only found one person who’d admit to planning to vote for Ms. Clinton. She is a woman of a certain age whose symbolic buttons are most powerfully pushed by the idea of a female president. But many more women in that category (my contemporaries and close friends) say that they too long to see a woman president, but not this one, who has inherited all the negative baggage from her husband’s term. They’d like the first women president to win the office free and clear—a Barbara Boxer type perhaps. 

This paper as an institution has not traditionally made endorsements. On occasion the editorial “I” has revealed some personal electoral choices, which are almost always the same as my partner’s, but I don’t presume to speak for the other editors or anyone else in the news room. We—the publisher and I—have already endorsed Kriss Worthington for State Assembly, because we hoped to head off knee-jerk candidacies from local factional machines. That didn’t work anyhow, and it’s not on the ballot in this election. And we’ll now be voting for Barack Obama in the California Democratic Primary, unless he does something really stupid before Tuesday. We always wait to vote in person on election day if we can, because you never know. 

Nonetheless, we’re committed to keeping a tight eye on who else has endorsed which Democrats as the race enters the home stretch. On the local level, for example, a UC Berkeley professor who’s been a big proponent of ethanol fuels is speaking for Barack Obama at a campus rally today (Friday). Unfortunately, that triggers in the mind of an unreconstructed political junkie like me the old reports that Obama, at least in his early career, got big contributions from the main corporate ethanol pusher, Archer Daniels Midland. And most politically alert environmentalists now think that production of ethanol from vegetable sources to fuel cars, which ADM supports, threatens food sources and forests in the third world. Nothing is simple. 

And what about those ballot measures, if any voters out there haven’t made up their minds yet? The Planet has been pleased to print a large number of intelligent comments from people with varying points of view, with more in for today, and I hope you’ve all read them carefully.  

The consensus among people I personally know and respect seems to be to vote no on everything except Proposition 92. These people tend to regard government-backed gambling in any form as a regressive way of separating poor people from their money. (Obama is with them on that.)  

They’re voting no on Proposition 93 because they don’t want Don Perata and Fabian Nuñez to continue in the Legislature, though the idealistic view that we might sometime have some legislators we’d want to keep has a certain appeal. They’re voting against the Children’s Hospital bond issue in Alameda County (Measures A and B) because they see it as a threat to county-run Highland Hospital’s ability to raise needed funds, and because they’re annoyed at the ham-handed way the privately-run Children’s has tried to sneak both the funding and the building project past the public. Even 92 has its detractors among people deeply involved with K-12 education, but most people seem to buy the argument that community colleges are an endangered species that need protection. 

So it’s a simple template, if you want to vote like me: Obama and no on everything except Proposition 92. Planet readers, however, make up their own minds. 

 


Public Comment

Letters to the Editor

Tuesday February 05, 2008

PRIMARILY PRIMAL 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

This morning I opened the sports page of my local newspaper and was momentarily bewildered by stories about the usual basketball and football games, reports, and scores. I realized that I was expecting to see the latest results and stories regarding the presidential primaries...right there on the sports page! Although there was no mention of the primaries on the sports page (at least not yet), my expectation to see it written up in the sports section is indicative of how perverted presidential electoral politics has become. 

Instead of a composition of viewpoints and serious problem solving energies, we are left with an American Idol-like mentality juxtaposed by a battle of wit, rhetoric and interpersonal one-upmanship. What should be a platform for an assortment of perspectives and candidates has turned into a two-horse race for the democrats, and is quickly being whittled down to the same farce for the Republicans... and we’re barely out of the month of January! Meanwhile, no other ‘ratings-challenged’ candidate or party even gets a mention. 

Is this what why we fought in World War II, Vietnam, and now in Iraq? Perhaps the media is as much to blame for this facade of democracy as any party or persons. Driven by myopic and avaricious concerns for ratings, they have created a popular culture incapable of the patience required to see further than the interim images of bogus blowhards projecting their hyper-happy countenance in defiance of the grave threats that confront us all. 

What we need, instead of this posturing and posing, is for congress to declare a general state of emergency and reconstruct the electoral process as well as the office of the president. Any declared candidate should back up his or her ambition for high office with a commitment, win or lose, to serve on a team of consultants to the candidate that is elected “president.” This way we will be more likely to have a process representative of the constituent perspectives and energies that should ideally contribute to the critical decisions a person with as much power as president of the United States has invested in his or her office. 

Such a reconstruction of the process will assure that those who believe themselves worthy of presidential office are in pursuit such position out of a bona fide will to be part of an assiduous strategic and tactical problem solving process, contributing to something beyond their lust for power. If candidates are serious about “change” then they should start by recognizing and reforming the degrading nature of the circus-like spectacle that they, the viewers, and the media perpetrate....a spectacle in which we all are embroiled...a pageant of pomposity and pretense that, in the final analysis, will serve none of us. 

Marc Winokur 

 

• 

OVERREACTION 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In the commentary “Council, Police must enforce traffic laws,” Steve Douglas says “Most importantly, we need have the City Council direct the Police Department to enforce the existing laws...by having no tolerance for “failure to yield,” rolling stops, and other careless driving.” Taken literally, this is an insane statement. No, the City Council shouldn’t tell the police how to do their job. Rolling stops through empty intersections are not the issue. They do not deserve a sting operation (as he calls for). What does that even mean? Is there a conspiracy among drivers to constantly roll through stop signs? I really do not understand reactions like this one. If we were really concerned about deaths around us, we should be distraught about Oakland’s murder rate. Pedestrian accidents are awful, but don’t overreact. 

Damian Bickett 

 

• 

STUPID EDITORIAL 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Except for Ron Paul none of the “presidential” candidates are worth anything. Becky’s backing Obama for racist reasons solely because he’s half-black and the Clintons aren’t “left” enough for her and the ever diminishing numbers of true believers of the New Deal era. Oh, and anyone who denounces the vastly out of proportion percentage of black crime is a “cultural racist,” unlike the black bloc vote for Obama in South Carolina. 

Well, this is not a prejudice but a postjudice for many of us who have experienced the ongoing war against Whitey and other “progressive” causes. We have made our judgments after the facts, not before as in prejudge or “prejudice.” Cognitively speaking, Obama is running on empty as is Hillary, McCain, et al. As was JFK in 1960 with his notorious lies about a nonexistent “missile gap.” 

The good news is that the people in “your circle” are not typical. Most of them probably voted for the Gus Hall-Angela Davis ticket. Come November, you will be pulling the lever for Hillary along with the rest of the sorry ass left libs around here (I might too if the alternative is the McCainiac.) 

Becky, your stupid editorials are going to start reinforcing stereotypes about Berkeley and females. 

Michael Hardesty 

Oakland 

 

• 

REDISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Once again, the news reported that Exxon has “earned” record-breaking profits. Once again, its profits are higher than ever before, just as the profits last year, and the years before that broke those previous records. People are losing their homes and having to decide between food and fuel, while the richest of the rich are getting richer.  

Our senators and House representatives can reverse this malicious distribution of wealth—this ongoing theft—that is ripping our society apart. They can end the tax breaks for oil companies and the very, very rich. They can enact laws against oil and gas price-gouging. They can stop money being siphoned to off-shore hiding places like Dubai.  

Our prosperous democracy is being broken up into a third-world oil plutocracy so long as Congress fails to act.  

Bruce Joffe 

Piedmont 

 

• 

THIRD PARTY OPTIONS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I had to miss reading the four editions of the Daily Planet preceding this Tuesday’s election. I caught up on them yesterday. 

I was disappointed that none of the articles nor letters addressed the option of voting third party. All bought into the theory of one has to try to decide which democrat would be best. The mainstream media hype of choosing between Hillary or Obama. Does no one see the building of a third party as a viable possibility? Voting Green or Peace and Freedom is certainly a possibility I wish I had seen one writer raise. 

Ruthanne Shpiner 

 

• 

IRAQ 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In his last State of the Union Address, President Bush lauded the achievements of the Iraq troop surge. As I remember, however, the surge was supposed to improve security so that Iraq could find a political solution for its internal conflicts. In urging support for a surge, the president argued: “Victory in Iraq will bring something new in the Arab world—a functioning democracy that polices its territory, upholds the rule of law, respects fundamental human liberties and answers to its people.” That’s not today’s Iraq. Iraq is no closer to a functioning government or to a reconciliation among its various religious groups as when the surge began. In fact, a September 2007 BBC, ABC News, and NHK poll of 2,000 Iraqis found that about 70 percent believed that the surge “hampered conditions for political dialogue, reconstruction and economic development.” 

How will we know when it is time to pull our troops out? A recent analysis shows that President Bush and top administration officials have issued 935 false statements about the national security threat from Iraq in the two years following the 2001 terrorist attacks. I for one am extremely skeptical about anything this administration says about the war’s progress. How long should we wait? 2015? 2020? Forever? Meanwhile, the costs of the war mount. As of Feb. 2, there have been 3,944 U.S. military deaths and 39,298 wounded in the Iraq war; depending on the count methodology, there have been from 80,000 to 655,000 Iraqi “excess deaths” due to the war; and two million displaced Iraqis inside the country and another 2.2 million have sought shelter in neighboring countries.  

The dollar cost of the war exceeds $491 billion and could eventually reach $2 trillion. The trade-off is less money for health care, affordable housing, new elementary schools, college scholarships, homes with renewable electricity, Head Start places for children, and elementary school teachers. 

Clearly, there will be no troop withdrawal during this presidency. Let’s make sure each of the Democratic presidential candidates solemnly pledge to pull our troops out in 2009. 

Ralph E. Stone 

San Francisco 

 

• 

THE CANDIDATES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I find your recent editorial cartoons intemperate. Hillary-haters align themselves with the conservative right, whether knowingly or not.  

Obama supporters might want to check out a story published in the Feb. 3 New York Times article entitled “Nuclear Leaks and Response Tested Obama in Senate.” 

Both candidates exemplify politics as usual. Take your pick. I did not vote for either of them. 

Jenifer Steele 

 

 

 

• 

A DEMOCRATIC SCANDAL 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Richard Brenneman has given us a very good look at some of the many instances of skullduggery that followed from the deregulation of savings banks and savings and loan associations in 1980, and he rightly predicts that there is even more of the same in store for us in the sub-prime loan debacle. He is in good company. A few prescient economists, especially Robert Kuttner and Hyman Minsky, also predicted the inevitable consequences of elimination of federal controls over the financial industry.. 

But, your headline “Bush Sub-prime Collapse Echoes Regan Disaster” gets it all wrong. It should read “Clinton Sub-prime Collapse Echoes Carter Disaster.” The savings and loan disaster was a result of the Depository Institutions Deregulation and Monetary Control Act, signed by President Jimmy Carter in 1980. The sub-prime disaster is a result of the repeal of the Glasss-Steagall Act by the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, signed by President Bill Clinton in 1999, and of Clinton’s disastrous reappointment of arch-deregulator Alan Greenspan as Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board in 1997. 

The only relatively bright spot in this dreary history was the re-regulation of savings institutions by the Financial Institutions Recovery and Enforcement Act, signed by the first President Bush in 1989. 

There is a lesson in all this. Democratic administrations have been just as much in the service of Wall Street as Republican administrations and should not be given a free pass when their turkeys come home to roost. 

John G. McGarrahan 

 

• 

SAME OLD SAME OLD 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

As Dean Jones, that great icon of Disney and Americanism, used to say: “Lord love a duck!” I’m not sure why, but the fact that Kucinich didn’t get anywhere brings that unforgettable saying to my mind. Don’t ask why. I just held my head in shame and despair as the poor guy was trashed, and ignored by the corporate media and his running mates. Everything Dennis said I agreed with, with passion! It made me want to weep. And now, were going to get Hillary, or Obama. Same old same old. “Lord love a duck!”  

Robert Blau 

 

• 

BUS RAPID TRANSIT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Go look at a map. You will see that BART and the Telegraph-East14th BRT route is only a couple blocks away for almost the entire distance. If AC Transit and Bart were one agency, they would coordinate their services, making both more effective, rather than duplicate and compete for the same north-south customers. 

Any longer distance commuter would normally favor BART for more comfort, speed, and schedule reliability, making AC Transit’s argument of saving time relatively moot. For short distances, the wait time is the major factor, not the saved travel time. 

If AC Transit had the commuter’s best interest at heart, they would provide lots of local east-west routes as feeders to Bart and develop combined trip vouchers rather than compete in the north-south direction. 

Probably the major reason that AC Transit is proposing such an expensive $350 million BRT project is because of the potential “free-to-them” funds available for the project. The federal government may kick in 75 million dollars, and the increased bridge toll may add 65 million dollars. This is in addition to the sales tax and gasoline tax they get. 

Also read the excellent East Bay Express articles on the AC Transit and the van Hool buses at www.eastbayexpress.com. 

Osman Vincent 

 

• 

IDEALIST.ORG 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I just read Susan Parker’s column: “If You Mean It, Don’t Exploit Children” and am concerned with the accuracy of the reference to Idealist.org. The intro sentence reads: 

“A friend asks me to check out the website www.idealist.org. I click on their URL and up pops a paid plea from Children’s Hospital Oakland, (CHO). It asks for help distributing 50,000 “Vote Yes on Measure A” yard signs. That’s one helluva lot of soon-to-be-thrown-away plastic signs.” 

If Susan can re-create her experience for me, I would appreciate it. Idealist.org does not accept any advertising—paid or unpaid—on our website. We never use pop-ups and are very careful about harassing our visitors in such a way. In addition, I just visited the Children’s Hospital Oakland page on Idealist and there is no pop-up (I didn’t expect there to be, but I wanted to double check). There is no reference at all to the campaign mentioned in the editorial. If Susan did experience a pop up by visiting Idealist.org, I would very much like to know about it so that we can investigate further. 

Here is the link to the page on Idealist: www.idealist.org/en/org/84316-213. 

I would appreciate having this inaccurate reference to Idealist.org removed from the editorial. Thank you for your help in this matter. 

Lorene Straka 

Chief of Staff 

Idealist.org 

 


Readers Respond to Council’s Ruling on Marine Recruitment

Tuesday February 05, 2008

OUT OF CONTROL 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The recent action on the part of the City Council to “ban” the marine recruiting center should be a strong wake up call to all Berkeley residents that the City Council is out of control and it is time to elect new leaders. As a longtime and now former resident (over 20 years), I have watched with increasing disdain as the elected officials in this town destroy piece by piece the once proud legacy of free speech and expression. That the city government would take a stand in suppression of the free speech rights of the marines is unfathomable. Just as protesters have every right to voice their disapproval of military actions overseas, the marines have a right to their free speech in this town as well. To have a governmental body take sides suppressing the free speech of another is an embarrassment, and is just one in an increasing number of actions by the City Council that is quickly leading this city to being the most repressive and closed-minded enclave in our country. The City Council has again taught us and our children that free speech is only our right when we agree with the City Council, otherwise we are uninvited and unwelcome. 

Matt Krebs 

 

• 

NOT A QUESTION OF  

FREE SPEECH 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

A lot of noise is being made about the attempts of Berkeley citizens to shut down the Marines Recruiting Station on Shattuck Avenue, only a few blocks from the local high school, the newly opened community college and the University of California. 

Part of the disinformation campaign against the citizens includes the allegation that the home of the Free Speech Movement should somehow protect the “right” of the recruiters to sell their product to the young people of the community. 

I was a part of the class of 1965 of the University of California at Berkeley. The Free Speech Movement is something I saw close up and was in support of. I remember well what happened. 

In the fall of 1964, many of the students at Berkeley were returning from a summer spend registering black voters in the south. Proposition 14 was on the November ballot, which would have erased laws on the books prohibiting racial discrimination in housing and would have forbidden the writing of new laws against such discrimination. The powers that be correctly realized that Berkeley students could be expected to spend the fall registering black voters in Oakland. This would have significantly changed the power structure in Oakland. Someone contacted the highest ranking member of the UC administration on campus in the early days of the semester, Dean of Women Katherine Towle, an ex-Marine. She issued the edict that students would not be permitted to set up tables on issues of political importance on the University campus. 

Students were almost universally shocked and outraged. We managed to organize for voter registration anyway, working out of local student organizations such as the Wesley Foundation and Stiles Hall. Nevertheless, students who wanted to organize politically on campus were being denied their rights as citizens. They joined together across political lines to ask the University to retract the ban. The steering committee included everyone from the Young Socialist Alliance to Youth for Goldwater. Many meetings with the University were held, but the higher levels of administration stood behind Dean Towle’s action. (President Clark Kerr in a much later article in the Alumni Association paper stated he regretted not having overturned the ban.) 

To return to the present, I want to say that the Free Speech Movement was clearly focussed on the right of political expression of the students as citizens. To invoke the FSM as a support for the Marines Recruiting Station is to twist history. It is documented that recruiters lie to young people about the supposed benefits of joining the military. Recruiters falsely claim that the recruit will not be sent into combat. 

The FSM was about the right to political expression, not the right of anyone to engage in false advertising to lure young people into an institution in which they will be forced to kill or be killed and from which they will returned wounded in body and in mind and spirit.  

I will also point out that when we won the right to free speech and political action, the next big action on the University campus was the Vietnam teach in where we sat in the thousands in Edward Field and learn from I.F. Stone the true history of Vietnam, the French colony whose liberation the United States had opposed and was trying to reverse, where we organized ourselves in the beginning phases of the anti-war movement. 

Carolyn Smith Scarr 

 

• 

APPALLED 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

We are appalled and dismayed by the 8-1 vote of the City Council last Tuesday telling Marine recruiters they are not welcome in Berkeley and if they stay, “they do so as uninvited and unwelcome intruders.” It’s inconceivable to us that the Berkeley City Council would provide anti-abortion activists a designated parking space in front of an abortion clinic and a free sound permit as granted to the Code Pink protesters. (Unfortunately, it is conceivable to us that the City Council would find a way of limiting the anti-abortion speech if it were as loud and aggressive as the Code Pink protesters, as is their right, are reported to be.) Would the members of the City Council do away with the Marines and other branches of the military? The world is a rough place. As much as we abhor the presence of U.S. forces in Iraq, we are profoundly grateful to the men and women who serve in the military. We thank Gordon Wozniak for his calm and rational consideration of this matter. We can only hope that the Council will revisit this matter with the level of mature deliberation it deserves. 

Brad Smith 

Dianne Woods 

 

• 

UNWELCOME? 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

As a Berkeley citizen, I’m disappointed by the recent City Council vote condemning the Marine Recruiting Station as an “uninvited and unwelcome intruder.” When did American citizens who are willing to lay down their lives for the rights of the rest of us become uninvited and unwelcome? 

I am against the war, but I support the men and women who choose to serve our country. 

I’m appalled that Code Pink is choosing to use the same misguided, gruesome, and intimidating tactics used by far right anti-abortion protesters. 

I encourage the Berkeley City Council to reconsider their support for this resolution. 

Carolyn Murphy 

 

• 

SADDENED 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I was saddened by María Ryan’s letter complaining that the Berkeley City Council is giving Code Pink a parking space. She writes, “their message is already getting out” and that shoppers need those spaces. She states that they are guilty of loitering, creating a nuisance and parking violations. She does not say if she has an opinion about the morality of the war Bush has taken our country into. So I don’t know if she is bothered by the crime of preemptive aerial bombing of civilian populated cities in Iraq. Or the pictures of the hooded torture victims from Abu Ghraib. Or the fact that we are approaching four thousand U.S. deaths and countless wounded, including many head injuries. Or that our cities and schools are rapidly going broke as we waste all our money on weapons of death and destruction.  

The fact that our soldiers are volunteers makes us as citizens no less responsible for their safety, especially as these soldiers were lied to about the reasons for this war. We need to demand they be brought home safely now, and anything we can do to protect our youth from being recruited into this madness should be done. May I suggest for anyone feeling apathetic about our troops that you rent the Vietnam era film “Coming Home”. 

Personally I am grateful that members of Code Pink continue to have the courage and the selflessness to put themselves out there week after week. And I’m in favor of the City Council doing anything they can to support them. I would suggest any American citizen who knows this is an illegal and immoral war should be joining them in finding ways to hinder it and bring it to an end. As Edmond Burke said, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” 

Neil Doherty 

 

• 

WOZNIAK GOT IT RIGHT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Except for what was reported in the Daily Planet, I do not know what was or wasn’t said in last week’s City Council meeting, regarding the dedication of a parking space on Shattuck Avenue to those protesting the presence of the Marine Recruiting Center. Gordon Wozniak appears to be the one person who got it right—this is showing favoritism. The council is taking sides in a free speech issue when it should be upholding a larger principal—the right of free speech itself. It certainly is disgraceful that, in the home of the Free Speech Movement, the Council took favored position over the other. It is also disgraceful that the only voice articulating this disgrace in Judith Scherr’s article is that of Melanie Morgan of Move America Forward. 

But the most disgraceful thing of all is that the City Council in the home of the Free Speech Movement did not stand up as one and unanimously declare to protect the rights both of the demonstrators and recruiters. Instead, a large majority favored one side over another, based on a partisan point of view rather than on a larger principal that sanctions our freedom to have partisan points of view. Here in Berkeley you can say whatever you want and get the Council’s support, as long as it suits the prevailing political wind. (Our illustrious mayor is excused, since his stance on free speech was made clear early one morning seven years ago when he was caught stealing hundreds of copies of the election day Daily Californian—oh, I forgot, fatigue had clouded his judgment.) But what else should we expect from City Council members who are politicians first and foremost, and who, as a Massachusetts sage once observed of certain people, would rather that you love them than love the truth. 

A. Chavkin 

 

• 

MILITARY RECRUITING 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Teens are vulnerable to the great pressure that military recruiters have to sign them up. They are told—almost always incorrectly—that they will not be sent to a war zone and that they can get education and training for whatever skill and position they want. Then they sign a contract that turns out to be worthless. Once they get to boot camp, they are told that all agreements are void and that, in fact, the military now owns them outright—lock, stock and barrel. And, yes they can do whatever they want with you. 

Certainly, those who defend the recruiter’s location near schools, etc. (for that appears to be the main issue in Berkeley), should be respected. But I can’t help noticing that they live inside a mythology that has little to do with reality. This mythology states that America is a constant force for good in the world, that we are out there “defending democracy.”...and that military service is a reasonable and good “career” option even in times of open, and probably endless, war. All myths. 

I am not a member of Code Pink, nor am I personally inclined to engage in sidewalk protests. But the Code Pink members strike me as caring, and very wide-eyed and grounded in the genuine reality that these young people will face. I can’t help but admire them for speaking out and for trying to show some light on the issue. 

Kerry McDaniel 

 

• 

FREE SPEECH? 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

No matter what you think about the military, the war in Iraq or the Marines in Berkeley, the ongoing saga of protests by Code Pink and other groups against the recruiting office has gotten just a bit out of hand. With the mayor and the City Council getting involved it’s actually going way over the top. The council’s 6-3 vote to ask the Marines to leave is again a hypocritical move against their legal right to stay in Berkeley. The council has taken sides, poured fuel on the fires of a vocal minority and again, drawn more public attention to those who want to find any reason to punish Berkeley. Unfortunately the majority of the council tends to think more along ideological lines than practical ones. This, as a result, ends up taking up valuable council time on issues that actually have little local impact (unlike the coming city budget deficit). 

National media including conservative talk radio pun dents who love to bash Berkeley have helped polarize the silliness of this whole thing. Again, make Berkeley look like the soul bastion of radical thinking and one-sided opinion. Having lived here just about my whole dang life I would say Berkeley, is a great mixture of opinions and yes there are a very vocal minority who continually think they can push their opinion down everyone’s throat. You know, like the Moral Majority once tried to do nationally. 

Since the 1960s when the Free Speech Movement took center stage on the Berkeley campus this city has been the supposed bastion of free speech. Doesn’t that mean things that are totally legal and involve self-selection (like joining the Marines) have the right to exist? You can not like it, you can hate, you can protest it—that’s all part of free speech, but to ban them from doing this or to force them out is well, fanatical, one-sided and against free speech. 

The irony of this whole thing is the Marines have continually said that they support the right of the protesters to protest them. And, that their job is to actually protect the rights of all Americans, including Code Pink protesting them, according the U.S. Constitution. 

And, lets top this off with the fact that many of the protesters are not from Berkeley but use Berkeley and the Marine Recruiting office as a publicly visible way of making their cause known nationally. 

So, the ultimate result is the Marines are getting tons of free publicity and are probably having record recruitment efforts, Code Pink is getting lots of press, while Berkeley is being laughed at (again) nationally and becoming the whipping boy of the far right as some federal legislators who hate us look for any reason to cut funds or punish Berkeley. 

In a town with enough brain power and PhD’s to probably solve global warming we’ve again gotten wrapped up in a linear non-thinking response to a non-issue for ideological reasons that solves nothing but gives Berkeley it’s noted reputation for extremist radicalism. 

Steven Donaldson 

 

• 

THE CORPORATE EMPIRE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In the statement by the pro-war Move America Forward in the Daily Planet, the City Council is roundly blasted for an alleged attempt to “silence the same military men and women who serve this country and give their lives to protect the free speech of all Americans....” 

But protecting “free speech” is not the reason why the troops are in Iraq. It’s to serve the bloody expansion of the American corporate empire to control the oil resources of the Middle East. Well-intentioned but ill-informed young people are bamboozled into joining the military on the basis of saving our liberties and an uncritical “my country right or wrong” nationalism. 

Enlistment would hardly sound attractive to potential recruits if they were told they would be sent to die for the profit greed of Big Oil. 

I’m a nearly 82-year-old World War II Navy vet who also believes in free speech. I refuse to be silenced for my condemnation of this militaristic folly which portends a war without end for the sake of empire. 

Harry Siitonen 

 

More Letters Regarding the Council’s Ruling on the Marine Recruitment Station 

 

EDITOR’S NOTE: Below are signed letters from non-locals and letters addressed to third parties regarding the Berkeley City Council’s ruling on the Marine Recruitment Station. These letters do not appear in the Planet’s print edition; only letters written by locals will be published in the print edition. Unsigned letters will not be published on the web or in the print edition. 

 

 

 

Residents of Berkeley, I suppose your city council members and Code Pink like to think of themselves as law abiding, freedom loving citizens, but their actions speak for themselves. 

You should be ashamed of your city council for many reasons, one they are favoring common vandals and law breakers over law abiding “Heroes” who are willing to die for them so they can do what they are doing, and two they are letting their personal emotions and disagreements cloud their judgment of decency and fair play, and third, they use the youth of Berkeley as a pawn in their hatred by claiming to be protecting their health and welfare when in fact they are taking away their freedom of choice. 

I would also like to ask. Would your city council kick out of your city any manufactures that have DOD contracts and provide hundreds of jobs over their disagreement over the war and would they kick out the likes of Camp Pendleton and other bases that provide jobs and economic benefit to your city and state? 

Lastly, will you expect the military to come to your aid and protect your person and your property when the “big one” hits or when you need defending?  

Rest assured no matter what you think of the Marines they will come when you call them. They are honorable men not like most of your city council and Code Pink. 

You don’t have to agree with the war but you should at least respect the men and women who are willing to fight them for you. 

Michael Smith 

Bartlesville, Oklahoma  

 

 

With news of such distasteful treatment of our people in uniform from you jerks I can only suppose that your city is populated by cowards. Surely this will not go unnoticed by the terrorists. If someday you receive a visit from them, do not call on me.  

Ken Camp 

San Antonio, Texas 

 

I am enclosing a web sight, because it is to long for you to print! It is very important and eye-opening: www.Youtube.com/watch?V=VuBo4E772Xo. 

We in Montana would like to know what you are thinking! What if your city was under attack! Could you protect your children and yourselves? How many of you have family and friends in Iraq and surrounding countries? The people in Montana love our Country and want to protect it. We are a NATION UNDER GOD and GOD BLESS AMERICA and our TROOPS!!!! 

Sherry Noel 

Hardin, Montana  

 

 

It’s the hippie mentality of Berkeley denizens which is an outrage and an embarrassment to Americans. It’s because of our soldiers since the Revolutionary War who have kept our country free to enjoy the freedoms we have such as freedom of speech. But to abuse those freedoms and to be so arrogant as to think our military is not needed or wanted is indeed an obvious lack of knowledge of what it takes to protect a nation. Freedom is dear, but it comes at a high price. Without our military to protect us your pink ladies and city council, and all those who think as they do should be the first to start speaking Arabic and to endure the public stoning and beheadings of those who show their faces or speak out. When Berkeley becomes the first Islamic city in America I for one will not feel pity for them. 

These people have forgotten, or perhaps never learned what our ancestors sacrificed for us, their heirs. These people need to move to Iraq, Iran, Syria or some other Muslim country. They are not welcome in my America. 

God Bless the U. S. A. and God bless all of our military, and may Berkeley be damned. 

An American and proud of it, 

Stephanie Duncan 

Broken Arrow, Oklahoma 

 

Dear Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates, 

While I’m sure your intentions were just and honorable, I write to discuss my opposition to the anti-United States Marine position taken by you and the City Council. I have lived in Berkeley for 31 years, and never in that time have I been ashamed of my city. Today I am.  

I have never been a Marine, never served in the armed forces, was opposed to the Vietnam War, probably would have left the country if drafted, and am deeply opposed to President Bush, all that he stands for, and the Iraq war he has mired us in. 

Nonetheless, I do NOT carry my opposition to the war and the president to the various services lawfully fulfilling their duty to defend this country and all that it stands for.  

I strongly believe that in taking on the Marine Corps directly, you have taken a step too far, and actually given “ammunition” to our mutual political enemies, the extreme right and neo-cons who have gotten us into this terrible mess. We can oppose the wrong policies of the present administration without seeming to reject and oppose the various services such as the Marine Corps, in doing that we fulfill the extreme charges of those who would say that Berkeley and the Peace Movement are opposed to the TROOPS. 

BY SEEMING TO ATTACK NOT JUST THE POLICY BUT THE US MARINE CORPS, BERKELEY PROVIDES THE RIGHT WITH JUST ANOTHER EXCUSE TO IGNORE WHAT WE BELIEVE TO BE MOST IMPORTANT, opposition to an unjust war…don’t you understand this? 

Perhaps you and the Council believe we already live in a world that can simply do away with a military for self-defense. You and the council may hope to live in that world some day, in that hope I would join you, in the belief that we NOW inhabit that world, well, good luck my friends… 

To summarize, I believe that the actions taken against the Marine Corps by the City of Berkeley are unjust, wrong-headed, bad policy, and bad politics. It is not wise to give your enemies weapons with which to destroy (or at least marginalize) you. The City of Berkeley has done just that…for which I am saddened and ashamed. 

Sincerely, 

Michael Steinberg 

Instructor of History 

 

 

Dear Senator De Mint (R-SC), 

We support your efforts to cut funding to the City of berkeley-HOWEVER LETS BE CLEAR, no “gay agenda” exists on the issue of our men and women in the military, and the recent actions of The City of “Bizerkly.” This city has a well documented history of being out of touch with mainstream society. It has consistently pushed the limits of the law and in some cases violates the law when ever it thinks it can get away with it. 

While, we feel that members of the gay community should be permitted to serve in the armed forces-that is/was not the motivation for the actions of Berkeley’s City Government. This action was pushed forward by those traitors call “Code Pink” and “Move On.org”! The fact is this city has a long standing history of being a renegade city that dates clear back to the 1960’s-70 and the Vietnam War. Nothing has changed since the 1960’s in this city and the violent riots on the Campus of US Berkeley. 

Back in the mid 1960’s, this city tried to legalize pot, until the Alameda County Sheriff came in a nearly took over their police department. The City of Berkeley gave in and fell into line with mainstream society-this is what needs t be done now with respects to our US Marines-cut off the funding and get their undivided attention! This city and all the “crazies” that live there were some of the very first in California to violate Federal Drug laws in its support of marijuana after the State of California decided to legalized personal possession of marijuana 1992. Now they have stores that sell marijuana (an illegal drug under federal law) right over the counter! So, why you are at it cut off all the funding to their police department as well! 

In Berkeley they want free speech, but if you are a conservative living in this city they want you out, and are intolerant of your different views. We clearly agree that any federal funds that are being sent to this city should be stopped at once! We clearly support the efforts of U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., when is says “the City of Berkeley, Calif., no longer deserves federal money.” The city of Berkeley needs to be brought in to line with the rest of the USA. So, the more funding that can be cut off from them the better! It sends a clear message to others who may want to follow them down this slippery slope-like the City of West Hollywood here in Southern California. 

While we maybe gay, we also believe that the actions of “Code Pink” are nothing more than “Treason” and “Anti-American”. 

John and Robert 

Los Angeles 

Cc: City of Berkely 

Fox news 

Commander in Chief-G. Bush 

 

Mayor, 

I write to offer my condolences to you and the City Council for your loss of common sense, common decency, and your complete and utter loss of patriotism. You can wax poetic all you want about how this is not about the brave troops but rather the displeasure for the War in Iraq, but your words only add insult to injury for those of us who have served this great country and have also been blessed to be part of the Marine brotherhood. You are old enough to remember the sting inflicted on the Vietnam veterans by many of their fellow Americans who also opposed that war and took it out on the very men and women who did their sworn duty to carry out the mission...... no matter how contentious that war may have been. You obviously have not learned from that blemish in our nation’s history, to even be a part of this shameful action. Shame on you, shame on the City Council and be assured that if any harm was to fall to any of you as a result of hostile action, the very Marin es that you are trying so desperately to remove would be the first to defend you. I hope you all lay your heads on your pillows nightly and mull that thought over. We live in a very dangerous world and I thank God daily that our youth still will step to the plate and choose to stand between the enemy and us. I suspect that my email is just one of thousands that have arrived in your mailbox and if the sheer numbers don’t convince you how out of step your views are, then I don’t know what will. 

As it has happened many, many times on our nation’s history, the irony is that no matter how distasteful your actions and words may be, every Marine will stand and die for your right to your opinion. However, that doesn’t make you right. 

I ask my fellow Marines to also email you and carry out their right of free speech as well. 

A proud Marine 

Bruce Carter 

Charlotte, North Carolina 

 

 

Mayor Bates, 

I am not a political activist, unless one considers my love of America or the fact I served as a United States Marine for thirty years as “activism.” While I absolutely support and applaud the First Amendment to the Constitution , I am distressed by your City’s stance against the United States Marine Corps and against our military recruitment efforts. Your position makes it very difficult to take pride in being a Californian.  

In fact, I am dismayed...and ashamed. Your actions go beyond the pale...well beyond. Frankly, you should be embarrassed. I am.  

It appears you have forgotten the horrors of 9/11...and the lessons we learned...or should have learned...you demean the patriotism of those Americans who choose to serve our Country. 

It is evident your City, which prides itself as a beacon of tolerance and understanding, is only tolerant and understanding of its own views. Shame on you, Mr. Mayor, and Shame on your City Council and Shame on Berkeley.  

May God Bless the United States, and all of those who defend it. 

Semper Fi, 

Tom Spencer 

Colonel, USMC (retired) 

El Cajon, California 

 

 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I am extremely curious if the Mayor’s opinion that he represents the will of the people of Berkeley is, in fact, accurate. I can’t believe that the majority of any city would support this resolution regarding the Marine Recruiting office. If so, then I am saddened even more than before, when I figured this action was taken by a few who THINK they represent the many. 

Bruce Carter 

Charlotte, North Carolina 

 

 

I understand that you have listened to complains from all across the country about your City Councils opinions about the Marine Recruiting Center but as a retired Army Captain, you should understand how this is perceived by our men and women serving in the armed forces. You, as a mayor, in the country they are trying to fight for and protect, are just as much the enemy as the terrorist across the water. You say this is not about the men and women serving this country, but as a women who serves this country, I am appalled with the remarks, statements and decisions of your city. 

I am sure in the history of your city there have been men and women who have given their life for their country. And I am sure there are little boys who still play soldier and one day want to become one. Your city is closing them off from that opportunity. My father always told me, you have the ability to become whatever you want. Luckly for me, after September 11, Columbus, Ohio recruiting stations made this possible for me. I am honored to put on that uniform. I was honored to take that vow for my country, president, and the United States Air Force. Right now you are only thinking of the majority in your city and forgetting about that little boy or girl who only wants to serve their country and be loyal to their flag. 

I lost a boyfriend in the War in Iraq in 2005. He IS a UNITED STATES MARINE. The night we packed his sack to head off for deployment, he looked at me and said, “I do not know what I am doing. I do not know if I even support what is going on.” A few weeks later during one of our phone conversations he said, “I see it, I know why I am here now.” These MARINES, are the reason we in the United States are still free. 

Your community might oppose the war and they might not support the foreign policy of the administration in office but are you willing to close off the future for your children. I find it hard to believe that there is not one person in that city that believes in the war, the president, and the UNITED STATES ARMED FORCES. I find it hard to believe that a Mayor, who is looked up to by so many, who has served his country and his flag, does not understand how what his city is doing is wrong. My suggestion is to think about EVERYONE in your city. Think of how you would feel if your child was over fighting in Iraq and your Mayor what supporting the opposing to the Marine Recruiting Station. How would you feel? If you were my mayor, and my son was overseas fighting, I would not respect you! That is what makes this country great. That we can feel and say whatever we want. So they do not support the war. Then don’t go to the recruiting center. Are they bothering the residents in your community? Does their uniform offend them? If it does, maybe they should think about why they are allowed to have opinions. Or why they are allowed to be so disrespectful to the men and women who fight for their freedom. It is because those men and women for decades have sacrificed their lives for your resident’s freedoms. WAKE UP, if it was not for the United States Marine Corp, we would of lost World War II! We would have not freedom or rights. And your liberal residents would not be able to complain about how horrible it is to have a Marine Corp Station in their city. 

I have been to 20 Marine’s funeral because of the war. Do you think that is easy for someone who is 22 years old to face? No, but I understand that these men and women love their country, they are will to fight for their country so that your liberal residents can have a voice. Maybe they should think about that! Maybe they should open their minds to see that the Marines have a right to be there just like they have the right to not like them there. But trying to force them out, what does that say about you and your people. My grandfather, a World War II Vet, was outraged after hearing about your city. He even said before we finish Iraq, maybe we should just finish off California. Look at the picture you are sending the Veterans in your country. Do you really want to be THAT city? That city that no one respects? Well congratulations, you got it


Commentary: Children’s Hospital Belongs to Us All

By Frank Tiedemann
Tuesday February 05, 2008

For 95 years, Children’s Hospital has cared for the children and families of this community. From day one, in 1912, our mission has been to serve any child, no matter the family’s ability to pay. We have never wavered from that mission. Over the years we have cared for hundreds of thousands of children. 

Children’s Hospital is faced with the greatest challenge of its history. We must build a new hospital by 2013 to meet the state’s earthquake safety mandate or face losing our license. We are located one mile from the Hayward fault. 

We also must rebuild to keep pace with a growing population in our region and the healthcare needs of children. There is an epidemic of chronic pediatric illnesses—asthma, diabetes, obesity, cancer—that is taxing the resources of our 61 services, 31 subspecialties and our facility. We’ve run out of room and lease a 20-bed unit at nearby Alta Bates Summit Medical Center to meet the needs of Alameda County’s kids. 

To help finance the rebuilding project, estimated to cost $700 million, Children’s is asking Alameda County voters to support Measure A, a $2-a-month parcel tax. 

Children’s is a not-for-profit hospital created for a public good. Sixty-seven percent of our patients receive their healthcare coverage through MediCal and other government programs such as Healthy Families, programs that pay far less than private insurers. Do these less-privileged kids deserve the same care as kids with private insurance? We believe they do. 

Sixty-six percent of Children’s patients come from Alameda County. Measure A will provide about 40 percent ($300 million) of the building’s cost. 

Children’s Hospital fills a vital role as the only pediatric hospital in Alameda county. We have the county’s only Level 1 pediatric trauma center. Fifty-three-thousand kids passed through our Emergency Room last year. In 2007, we had more than 10,000 inpatient stays and more than 220,000 outpatient visits. 

In placing our measure on the ballot, we followed the constitutional process and asked county voters to sign our petitions. More than 61,000 did, in about half the time we anticipated it would take. When the Board of Supervisors voiced concerns about some of the details of the measure, we agreed to modify the language and they voted unanimously to put Measure A on the ballot. 

Neighbors are concerned about rebuilding the hospital in their neighborhood. Children’s has a 95-year history in this location. We were founded on this very spot in 1912. Beyond the hospital we have infrastructure, a modern outpatient center, a parking garage, a utility plant, and a world-renowned research center already here. It’s simply a matter of efficiency of resources for us to stay in our present location. We did look elsewhere, but it would have been far more expensive to move our current services and build a new hospital. 

Children’s Hospital belongs to us all. To build a new hospital will take a partnership between the public and private sectors. Our foundation is doing its share by raising funds from private donors and foundations. With these resources, plus Measure A and the continued support of our community, we will keep world-class pediatric healthcare accessible and available to all kids in our county for many decades to come.  

Please vote yes on Measure A. 

 

Frank Tiedemann is president and CEO of Children’s Hospital and Research Center, Oakland.


Commentary: Take Care of Both Neighborhood and Children

By Elizabeth O’Hanlon Maier
Tuesday February 05, 2008

I’m a resident of North Oakland, and Ms. Roy’s comments in the Daily Planet regarding the expansion of Children’s Hospital are profoundly disturbing to me—not least since I’m also the sister of a little girl who died in childhood of a rare form of cancer that strikes only children (Wilmes’ tumor). Today, thankfully, almost all forms of children’s cancer are treatable. If my sister, Cathy, had been born just a few years later, chances are she’d be alive today. 

So when Ms. Roy talks about “children with cancer,” she’s talking about my family’s experience. Yet, despite having had to watch my sister endure seven surgeries and numerous bouts of radiation and chemotherapy, I still think the plan Children’s Hospital is offering is a bad one. Ms. Roy’s argument amounts to a guilt-trip. She righteously declares that because Children’s Hospital cares for very sick children, those of us who live nearby should just shut up and let the administrative decision-makers at the hospital have their way.  

Yet it’s quite possible to want the best for the sick children at the hospital and want the best for the neighborhood. The problem is that CHO has failed to formulate a plan that takes both needs into account. They imply that the importance of the work they do overrides the needs of the people who live around their hospital. That amounts to bullying—it’s bullying cloaked by moral righteousness, but it’s still bullying. 

That’s simply unacceptable. It is possible to take care of the sick children and take care of the neighborhood. CHO simply needs to think more creatively about how they can re-build their infrastructure without harming the neighborhood in which they do business. (And yes, health care in America is a business, a very big business—even for those corporations that have tax-exempt nonprofit status. The nonprofit hospital that treated my sister sent us bills for years after she had died.) 

Those of us who live here have a right to preserve the qualities that make this a walkable, livable neighborhood. We have moral reasons for our concern, too: the importance of local cultural heritage, wanting our city to remain human-scaled, feeling concerned about how the “ecosystem” of the neighborhood may be harmed. As it happens, I’ve worked in numerous urban hospitals, including Maimonides in Brooklyn and Memorial Sloan-Kettering in Manhattan. It is quite clear to anyone who takes a careful look at the neighborhoods around those hospitals that large institutional structures do harm to surrounding neighborhods. Large scale structures destroy the walk-ability and bike-ability of the neighborhood—surely an important quality to preserve in an age when children’s diabetes rates are skyrocketing from too little walking! 

Let’s not fall into the trap of having the administrators at CHO guilt-trip us into accepting what’s easiest for them. I would wager that the tower plan appeals to their financial officers and decision-makers because it’s the cheapest, easiest way to add beds. But the fact is that Oakland taxpayers already pay HUGE property taxes, yet the city is still struggling to provide adequate schools, police force, etc. There are many pressing needs competing for our dollars. We need to think through decisions carefully, not let the financial decision-makers at CHO run roughshod over our lives and homes. 

It amounts to this: CHO needs to listen to the people who live here. They need to be good neighbors and make the effort to create a plan that respects the lives of those around them. If I put up a 15-foot fence that destroyed my neighbors’ apple tree by blocking the light to her garden, I would be in violation of her rights. I would have done harm to her. So to the bullying voices at Children’s Hospital, I quote the founding principle of the Hippocratic oath: “First, do no harm!” Children’s Hospital Oakland needs to form a “treatment plan” for the problems they are having that does not harm others. It’s that simple.  

 

Elizabeth O’Hanlon Maier is a North Oakland resident. 


Commentary: Why We Will Regulate Military Recruiting in Berkeley

By PhoeBe Anne Sorgen
Tuesday February 05, 2008

As a mother of a teenager, I am proud that Berkeley High School was the last high school in the nation to cave in to federal pressure and give students’ contact info to the military. Though the elected school board had voted to opt out, the school had to comply eventually to preserve federal funding. Parents may opt out, as I did, but signing up for college info opted us back in, so we are receiving deceptively seductive, glossy brochures that don’t mention that enlistees are trained to harden their hearts and kill, possibly torture, and may be killed. 

I know of a case in which 17- and 18-year-old potential recruits were raped by Marine recruiters. In another case, two young fathers signed up for one year only under the “Try One” program, only to be “stop lossed.” They learned too late about the “back door draft.” The military can keep them against their will, enslaved until the year 2035. There have been many other cases of deceptive recruitment, young people who were promised that they would not be sent overseas or into combat, signing up without reading the fine print, and returning from Iraq in coffins. It is not easy, but it is never too late to declare conscientious objector status and the GI Rights Hotline will help: (800) 394-9544. 

Women in Berkeley are carrying on this city’s proud tradition of peace advocacy and standing firm to distance our young ones from deceptive recruiting that could entice them to sign away their rights and their lives. The initiative to regulate military recruiting will help shield our young ones from a culture that glorifies violence. Violent influences should be prohibited at least near places where children pass, such as schools and parks. We have taught our children, “Don’t hit. Use your words. Work it out. Be honest. Be fair.” Real patriotism means taking responsibility and volunteering to help transform our culture into a democratic and well-informed one where more people stand up for dialogue and peace and caring. Petitions for the initiative may be signed in the Code Pink office at 1248 Solano Avenue and at events in the Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists Hall at 1924 Cedar St. 

This is not about weakening the military. We need to solve conflicts intelligently instead of escalating violence. How about strengthening our nation’s moral standing and reputation by taking care of our vets and by abiding by our own laws and our own Constitution! When our soldiers follow orders to torture, disregarding the Geneva Conventions, the supreme law of our land, they only ensure that U.S. prisoners of war will be tortured, they obtain only false or highly unreliable info, and they injure their own psyches, often permanently since help for vets is woefully inadequate. There are 195,000 homeless vets! 

I would not mind dying in effective defense of democracy here. I intend no disrespect to courageous, well-intentioned young Americans who want to defend their country, but I particularly grieve those brave souls who enlist “to protect our freedom” but end up killing and being killed, instead, to protect Haliburton, Bechtel, Lockheed Martin, Blackwater, the oil industry etc. Bring democracy to Iraq? Ha! What we have here in the U.S. is no longer democracy, but an auction, a corporatocracy. 

Yes, we still have the right to protest, and thank goodness we are exercising that right. I especially appreciate CodePINKers and other volunteers who protest for peace in front of the Marine Recruiters Station at 64 Shattuck Square day after day, and seniors who protest at Acton and University Ave every third Friday afternoon. We call on all caring people to join us in defending the core values we share such as negotiation instead of violence, objective and accurate reporting, respect for differences, responsibility as members of families and communities to protect our young ones, and security including economic security with access to education, health care and other necessities for human dignity. 

The military industrial propaganda machine is oiled by billions of our tax dollars. Imagine a future when all the taxes that are spent on military recruiting are spent instead on education and health care. Hold that vision. We are out funded, but because we have the numbers, because we are passionate and creative, and because we work for what is just, we will prevail! 

 

PhoeBe Anne Sorgen is a voice teacher, singer, CodePINK activist and a Berkeley Peace and Justice Commissioner.


Letters to the Editor

Friday February 01, 2008

ADIOS, BERKELEY! 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Many thanks for the update on the attempt to ban recruiting for our military in your fair city. As one who visits annually with three friends for a long weekend of Cal and Raider football (while staying in the Berkeley Marina area and paying huge taxes on the rooms and rental car and other miscellaneous items and services) we won’t be coming back due to this continued effort. Its racial, unpatriotic and downright wrong. We’ll take in a Raider game in another more rational city and try to do the same with Cal.  

Thanks for the memories.  

Wesley W. Brumback 

Oviedo, Florida 

 

• 

DOCTOR FAUSTUS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Since the Aug. 2, 2007 murder of Oakland Post editor Chauncey Bailey, the media has increasingly focused on the late Yusuf Bey, his family and followers, and Your Black Muslim Bakery. I see some similarity between the unhealthy relationship between Yusuf Bey and East Bay politicians, and Jim Jones, the Peoples Temple leader and power broker in San Francisco. Remember Doctor Faustus, who sold his soul to the devil for power and knowledge? Why were politicians so easily taken in by Bey and Jones? Or were they? There isn’t anything extraordinary about Bey’s or Jones’ power. It was pure politics. They could deliver what politicians want, which is power. And how do you get power? By votes. And Bey and Jones could deliver the votes. The people who warned about Bey and Jones were ignored, intimidated, or marginalized. And many of the same politicians continue in power. Will we learn from these experiences? I am not optimistic. 

Ralph E. Stone 

San Francisco 

 

• 

PROPOSITION 93 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Randy Shaw writes that progressives should reject Proposition 93, claiming “Prop. 93 is a disaster for progressive interests.” I think he is 100 percent wrong, and that the defeat of Prop. 93 will kill the effort to relieve us from the pernicious effects of term limits for at least a decade.  

The argument in favor of Prop. 93 is really very simple, to wit: 

1. Term limits bad. 

2. Prop. 93 weakens term limits. 

3. Therefore, Prop. 93 good! 

That is true despite the blatant self-interest of some who are responsible for Prop. 93 being on the ballot. The bottom line is that, if Prop. 93 passes, it leaves us with a better public policy than we have now. We need to look beyond the parochial down-side and recognize the enormous benefits to all of us of legislators who have sufficient time on the job to have a chance to learn the ropes and accomplish complicated and time-consuming legislative goals before they are arbitrarily removed from office (in most cases despite the wishes of their constituents). 

Of course, if you support term limits — an anti-democratic method of telling people who they can and can’t vote for—then I suppose you oppose Prop. 93. And we simply agree to disagree. But if you recognize the noxious effects of term limits, then it must be obvious that Prop. 93 is a way to loosen their iron grip and allow legislators to gain sufficient experience and longevity in their job to be able to accomplish something. For example, Loni Hancock, assembly member for the 14th Assembly District, is termed out this year. She is the legislative author of clean money. If we lose her fervor, knowledge and experience in working that legislation, how will it ever become law? Sheila Kuehl is now termed out of the senate. If we don’t have her as our champion, who can or will effectively fight for single payer health insurance? Do we really want to leave the legislative process to legislators who barely have time to find their office before they are termed out? And, do we really want to have un-elected staff and lobbyists the only ones who know how things work in Sacramento? 

Mr. Shaw rails against Don Perata and Fabian Nuñez. I agree with him that they are rotten legislators. But there is a democratic answer to rotten legislators: vote them out of office. And if you can’t do that (and if the federal government won’t do it for us—in Perata’s case), don’t take out your frustration and pique on all the other legislators in the state, and the voters that want them in office. Progressives have no business, or self-interest in supporting an anti-democratic public policy because of unhappiness with any particular politician. (And I note parenthetically that Wilma Chan comes out of the Perata machine, so I wonder what real advantage we would have replacing him with her.) 

Progressives, of whatever party, should not be so inherently childish that they are willing to scuttle a much-needed reform of a very bad policy because it also benefits an undeserving politician. With respect, I think for progressives supporting Prop. 93 is both an easy and an eminently correct decision. 

Mal Burnstein 

Co-chair Progressive Caucus 

California Democratic Party 

• 

PUBLIC ENEMY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

If you steal $1.5 billion a week (present cost of Iraq occupation) of a nation’s wealth, destroy almost all of its international alliances, totally scatter and weaken its army, kill thousands and wound tens of thousands of its soldiers, and make all of its citizens more vulnerable to terrorist attacks, public health emergencies and natural disasters, plus destroy its environment, what does that make you? 

An enemy of that nation. 

Remember all those years that our government was worried about America being infiltrated by communists? 

Well, now we have been infiltrated by an actual enemy, and our country is being destroyed. 

It seems that if a person had even a shred of ability to think logically, the Bush government would meet every definition of the word “enemy.” It’s ironic that after we became so strong that nobody could defeat us, we attacked ourselves! 

Jeff Syrop 

Hayward 

 

• 

AC TRANSIT AND 12TH STREET 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I am writing about the surprised reaction of the AC Transit Board to the idea that humans may someday be able to cross 12th Street. 

Recently-elected AC Transit directors may not realize that the 12th Street project has been on the radar for a long time. As a founding member of the Coalition of Advocates for Lake Merritt, I clearly remember discussing 12th Street with an AC Transit planner in 2001. The 12th Street improvement plan is as old or older than the detailed planning of the bus rapid transit system. Our citizen-generated plan, drawn up with the help of experienced architects and planners, was covered in all the newspapers in 2001 and 2002. The Lake Merritt Master Plan then incorporated the idea, later included in the Measure DD bond measure passed by 80 percent of Oakland’s citizens. 

The concept of rapid public transit must go hand in hand with creating a pedestrian-friendly, bike-friendly, and child-friendly East Bay. A one-to-two-minute delay at 12th Street will not doom bus rapid transit. The folks who may slightly slow the rapid buses are the same ones who form the ridership, after all. 

I have reduced my automobile use drastically, and use the bus. In order to reach the bus stops, commuters, park visitors, bicyclists and pedestrians will need to cross 12th Street. I am confident that AC Transit and the City of Oakland can work out an elegant solution, enhancing Lake Merritt and its park, providing opportunities to remain alive while crossing the street, and increasing transit use at the new open spaces and improved lakeshore. 

Cooperation is a green skill! I’d be happy to assist. 

Naomi Schiff 

Member, Coalition of Advocates  

for Lake Merritt 

 

• 

HELIOS APARTMENTS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I’m just taking a moment to write a note from my “cell” in the “mayor’s crown jewel at the corner of University and Sacramento” rather than walk the “long, meandering halls.” 

As a resident of the above described Helios Corner Senior Apartments, I struggled to connect my experience here with Ms/Miss/Mrs. Wiggins description. My spacious—granted, not huge—one-bedroom apartment opens onto a long terrace, I have many amenities as standard equipment, the insulation is great (only used the heat three times so far), there are many community rooms for resident gatherings and activities, a wonderful array of classes are offered onsite through Berkeley Adult School, West Berkeley Senior Center provides door-to-door transportation for shopping, public transportation is very convenient (enabling environmentally sound living), the entire roof area is solar panels, the staff is courteous and warm, there are beautiful public outdoor gathering areas, the other residents are friendly and intelligent people. 

Best of all, the rent is lower than I was paying in an old, drafty studio in a declining neighborhood that has experienced several shootings in the past six months. I love it here, my neighbors love it here. We’re sorry Constance Wiggins misrepresented our beautiful new home in her letter. 

Gary Wilson 

 

• 

DISABILITY RIGHTS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I’m a budding disability rights advocate (particularly for Asperger’s and related conditions) and budding environmental advocate. There should be no doubt that protecting the environment against gross over-development is the same as protecting the health of our society.  

I am also disabled; I have Asperger’s and related conditions. I was also beaten by a UCB cop on Jan. 28. His foot kicked my head against the concrete on more than one occasion, he used a sharp portion of his handcuffs to cut my hand and generally used excessive force on me just because I took a brief moment that day to say hi to a good dear friend, who happens to live in a tree, and show her a photo. The only reason he stopped before I was serious hurt is because I know as an Aspie that when cops go bad I can always cry for help and draw a crowd to witness brutality. 

Those of us who are differently abled are still brave enough to fight for what we believe in, even though we are dealing with handicaps that slow us down a bit. I may have Asperger’s, but that doesn’t make me less of a person. And doesn’t make me love the planet or my friends any less. I will stay strong as will all friends of the trees. The cops can’t assault my spirit. 

For the naysayers, the good people of Landmark Security video-taped the assault and the tape will be used as evidence in my trial to show the brutality of UCB against the friends of the trees. Especially the brutality used against people who are disabled. The tape will show me explaining my condition to the cops. 

For those curious, I was showing my friend a photo of the Weld Pirate Ship. Look it up, it’s amazing and inspirational. 

Nate Pitts  

 

• 

ADMISSIONS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

UC Berkeley, followed by a group including UCLA, UC San Diego, and UC Irvine, are public ivies. Preliminary figures show applications for the fall 2008 term by international applicants to all UC campuses rose 25 percent. This year, our first group of 51 graduating seniors here at Hankuk Academy of Foreign Studies, Yongin, Gyeonggi-do, South Korea, who applied early admission, were accepted into: Stanford (2), Amherst, Brown, Georgetown (2), U Penn (2), Duke, Johns Hopkins (2), Northwestern (2), and Columbia. Several of our seniors applied to the four UCs mentioned above, during November (notifications for early admissions were mailed in December). Last year, freshman Asian-American admissions outnumbered whites at UC Berkeley by 730. Asian-American admissions outnumbered whites at UCLA by 1,168. Asian-American admissions outnumbered whites at UC San Diego by 2,411. Asian-American admissions outnumbered whites at UC Irvine by 4,034. Go Bears!  

Richard Thompson 

San Diego / South Korea 

 

• 

ASIAN ECONOMIES TO ENJOY OUR ‘REFUND’ 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The tax refund being pushed by the president and Congress is ridiculous as the refund will quickly get spent by most Americans on products of Asian origin doing very little to stimulate our economy. I would suggest that we should have that money put into a resurrected WPA for rebuilding many run-down public housing projects put up decades ago. That would provide jobs for many workers in the fast collapsing housing industry; workers, who will soon start drawing unemployment benefits to burden the government more due to the workers not paying income tax then. 

I also suggest much more stimulation of the economy can occur if the money were to be put into developing the program for pyrolysis of organic wastes that I outlined in my Nov. 30, 2007 commentary. Those wastes are an already harvested biofuels crop wasted, and they have trapped carbon dioxide that we needlessly let get reemitted especially in the much touted composting now going on. Some energy and/or fuel can be gotten from the pyrolysis process, and charcoal to be buried, thereby actually remove some from the globe to help reduce albeit slowly the overload of carbon dioxide on the globe causing warming. Ever increasing amounts of megabucks being spent every year to maintain dumps containing organic wastes could be greatly reduced by pyrolysis of such wastes as germs and toxics would be destroyed. Most of the money spent in maintaining dumps is to be sure that germs and toxics do not leak out, and the cost reduction in paying for maintaining dumps might end up putting more money in your pocket yearly than the refund. 

I call on Planet readers to wake up Berkeley and their elected officials to using pyrolysis hoping that some of that refund money might be put to better use than stimulating Asian economies.  

James Singmaster 

Environmental Toxicologist, Retired 

Fremont 

 

• 

BOYCOTT KFC 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Regarding KFC’s treatment of our feathered friends, consider the following and then frequent KFC with a clean conscience, if you can! 

KFC’s suppliers scalds many birds to death while they’re still conscious. 

KFC’s suppliers breed and drug birds to grow so fast that many may become crippled under the weight of their massive upper bodies. 

Birds raised for KFC live in extremely crowded sheds and have barely enough room to spread a wing. 

PETA is urging KFC to make the changes that its own animal welfare advisors have asked it to make. 

PETA’s recommendations would prevent birds from having their wings and legs broken, suffering painful and crippling diseases, having their throats slit, and being scalded to death while still conscious. 

If KFC executives were abusing dogs, cats, pigs, or cows the way that they’re abusing chickens, they could go to jail on felony cruelty-to-animal charges. 

Thank you for this opportunity to protest this malicious practice. I only hope that people will take to heart the suffering of these creatures and boycott KFC. 

Janet Butler 

 

• 

PRIVATIZE BERKELEY TRAFFIC ENFORCEMENT! GO, RON, GO! 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

From reading the Berkeley Daily Planet opinions and letters, it seems libertarian, Second Amendment- and NRA-loving Ron Paul will do well in Tuesday’s Berkeley election. Bernie Lenhof’s favorite arm to bear on Berkeley roads is his 2.5 ton missile (Planet, Jan. 15), while Doug Buckwald likes his sleek 1.5 ton model (Jan. 25). Unfortunately for Sandra Gruber, one misguided weapon user thought it’s fine to deploy his arms while blinded by the sun. Various members of the libertarian choir sing that’s OK, for pedestrians shouldn’t cross streets when it’s sunny, dark, rainy, cloudy, or while cars have any metal blocking the driver’s view. I don’t encourage recklessness, but yielding to cars reinforces motorists’ bad behavior. I agree with Steve Douglas (Jan. 25) and Laurie Capitelli (Jan. 11) that Berkeley must change the paradigm via effective enforcement. 

Though the misguided weapon user was driving on Colusa, not Marin, the libertarian choir sings that all government traffic-calming interference should be removed. They ignore Preston Jordan’s data (Jan. 15) that average speeds on Marin have dropped significantly, perhaps because it doesn’t support their goal of saving precious nanoseconds while speeding. And, many (Jan. 29) praise Mike Katz (Jan. 25) for “thoughtful commentary,” yet what data supports his claim that Marin area residents used safety as a ruse “to divert traffic elsewhere [and] raise property values”? How about diverting unsafe, inconsiderate drivers to Ron Paul’s more sparsely populated East Texas district? Affordable housing awaits, near warm beaches. 

My observations about Berkeley’s four-lane roads, such as pre-reconfigured Marin, are that most drivers speed significantly. Usually, when one car starts to slow for pedestrians, the trailing cars assume a turn without signaling, and zig into the next lane, to save their lives’ precious nanoseconds. Oops! Too bad the selfish pedestrians’ heirs didn’t inherit maximized property values. 

Mike also thoughtfully considers cost effectiveness. With this in mind for our libertarian Berkeley drivers, why doesn’t Berkeley raise money by PRIVATIZING traffic enforcement for speeding, blinkerless turns, improper stops and failure to yield to pedestrians? Let them squeeze out every last profit, and make our streets safe enough to walk or bike, thereby reducing congestion and global warming. 

Mitch Cohen 

 

• 

BRT PROBLEMS IN OAKLAND 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I want to thank J. Douglas Allen-Taylor for letting us know about some very troubling BRT complications in his piece, “BRT Runs into Delay in Central Oakland.” (Jan. 25). It is clear that establishing an exclusive bus-only lane in central Oakland would cause significant traffic delays—slowing not only automobile and truck traffic but also the buses themselves! The consulting engineer’s estimated traffic delays of up to two minutes on a 1,000-yard stretch of roadway are indeed problematic—and show that implementing BRT might actually lengthen the travel time current bus riders spend on that part of the route, as well as increasing the overall time along the entire route. It’s no wonder that AC Transit Board Vice President Rebecca Kaplan stated recently, “That is enough of a delay to destroy the whole purpose of rapid transit.” 

For a problem of this magnitude to appear so late in the process shows how poorly conceived the entire BRT scheme is, and illustrates a wholesale failure of AC Transit officials to plan adequately to meet our transit needs. Instead of spending taxpayer money on trying to fit a poorly-suited and costly BRT system into this area, they should have been working to develop a fleet of smaller local buses that would serve more people and link up more effectively with BART for regional travel. 

It’s time for AC Transit to change its approach and begin to work with the people in the communities it serves to find out what transit improvements they would prefer—instead of just working with insiders who stand to benefit from the construction of BRT. Either that, or it’s time to consider recalling the entire AC Transit Board. 

Doug Buckwald 

 

• 

CAN A LEOPARD  

CHANGE ITS SPOTS? 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I currently support Barack Obama, but I also believe Hillary Clinton is qualified as well to be president, especially in comparison to the dysfunctional administration which has been in office for the past eight years. I am leaning more toward Barack, not because he’s black, but because I think he represents a new agenda and can connect with a broader constituency than has ever been seen in this America.  

However, with my many years of experience with the politics of the United States and the bigotry, good old boy networks, assassinations, and hypocrisies that have led to so many disappointments in my family’s, and people of color’s, lives I am less than optimistic that this leopard can change its spots! I think that in the privacy of the voting booth that most people (black, white, Asian, Hispanic etc.) vote racist, sexist and for whatever personal and private agenda they might have while no one is looking. I still haven’t met anyone that has admitted they voted for George W. Bush, but I hope I’m wrong this time!  

I’ve said in the past that we in the Bay Area are almost a separate nation from the rest of the country, the state, and the other side of the Caldecott Tunnel. We believe we are able to put our prejudice aside and vote for the best person. I think if either Barack or Hillary were elected president it would send a message that we’re now capable of viewing the world differently and avoiding the mistakes of the past. Who knows? Maybe it will change how other nations view us, and offer hope to the rest of the world too. But beware! That leopard is still lurking. So let’s get out and vote! 

Winston Burton 


Commentary: Yes on Prop. 92, the Community College Initiative

By Cy Gulassa
Friday February 01, 2008

The Peralta Board of Trustees, faculty and staff urge voters to support Prop. 92, the Community College Initiative, which will appear on the Feb. 5 statewide ballot. Its passage is vital to our Peralta colleges—Alameda, Berkeley City, Laney, and Merritt—as well as to the 109 California community colleges and 2.5 million students.  

California community colleges are one of the state’s greatest success stories. They provide millions with the knowledge and skills that lead to personal development and high-wage jobs that pump billions back into the economy. For every dollar spent on community college students, the state gains $3, thanks to the greater earning power of graduates. On average, students who earn a vocational degree or certificate see their wages double within three years of graduation. Compared with CSU and UC, community colleges are an amazing bargain for taxpayers. For each full-time freshman or sophomore, the state pays community colleges only one half of what it pays to CSU and one-third to UC. In other words, for every tax dollar, community colleges are twice as productive as CSU and three times that of UC.  

So why do we need Prop. 92? This landmark measure corrects a serious flaw in community college funding, which is tied to and driven by K-12 attendance. As attendance shrinks or expands in K-12, so does funding for community colleges. Today the two systems are out of sync; while K-12 attendance is falling, community colleges are expanding. Further, as the economy worsens, community college enrollment accelerates because laid-off workers return in thousands to retrain or upgrade skills.  

Complicating matters, while community colleges are guaranteed in statute a fixed percentage of the combined K-12/community college pot of money (together called K-14), the actual percentage fluctuates during the annual battle over the state budget, with community colleges often the loser. In effect, K-12 and community colleges play together in the same dollar sandbox, but being politically much bigger, K-12 can take some of the community college share when convenient. 

Tying community college funding to the fate of K-12 attendance not only makes no sense, in lean years it destabilizes planning, forcing last-second across-the-board cancellation of classes and reductions in high-cost programs like nursing. 

At fault is the assumption that K-12 provides the bulk of students to community colleges. In fact, K-12 graduates in any given year constitute only a minority of total enrollment. The average age is 28, 60 percent are female, and there are more Latinos, Asians and African Americans than in CSU and UC combined. In the fall of 2006 at Peralta, only 31 percent of students were 19-24 years old, while 51 percent were between 25 and 54. Because of the statewide principle of open access, Peralta students comprise one of the most diverse and complex populations in the state, with a staggering array of needs. They include high school dropouts, immigrants in dire need of basic skills, re-entry women, mature people upgrading skills and retraining for better jobs, as well as university bound students whose careers require high-end classes and state-of-the-art technology. A version of this profile applies to all California community colleges.  

How would Prop. 92 restore common sense to community college funding?  

• It would stabilize funding by creating two separate funds, one for K-12, governed by attendance, another for community colleges, governed by the young adult population (17-24), and it would limit growth in any given year to 5 percent. The split does not raise taxes and does not affect K-12 funding. In fact, for the next two years, both K-12 and community colleges would annually receive an infusion of $150 million. This is a tiny fraction of the state’s $141 billion budget and a solid investment in turning the economy around.  

• It would fix at 10.64 percent the CC share of the combined K-12 and community college allocation, eliminating annual, politically inspired fluctuations. 

• It would lower fees from $20 to $15 per unit and severely limit increases. Instead of $600, a full-time Peralta student would pay $450 per year. A typical student, however, also spends over $1,000 per year for text books, hundreds more for transportation, rent, fees and incidentals, and has less time available for essential full or part-time work. It’s estimated that the annual cost for a full-time community college student exceeds $7,000 per year. As with K-12, community colleges were originally intended to be free because the social and economic benefits far outweigh the cost. This is especially true today when many careers require at minimum two years of college. 

• It would establish in the state constitution a system of independent public community college districts and Board of Governors, similar to UC CSU, and K-12 governance structures.  

Admittedly, as written, Prop. 92 is confusing and subject to negative attack, principally by K-12 organizations that prefer to have political control over CC funding. When the details of Prop. 92 are explained, however, skeptics become enthusiastic supporters. Recently and remarkably, every single elected official in Berkeley endorsed Prop. 92 after Peralta Trustee Nicky Gonzalez-Yuen explained the details. We hope you will likewise support Prop. 92. Your vote will help improve the social and economic welfare of all California.  

 

Cy Gulassa is president of the  

Peralta Colleges Board of Trustees. 

 


Commentary: Community Priorities Require No Vote on Measures A and B

By Katina Ancar
Friday February 01, 2008

In her Children’s Hospital’s Expansion Tax Measure commentary, Joyce Roy concluded with a question: What are our community’s priorities? As an Oakland resident and child advocate, I am compelled to list a few:  

 

To ensure that private companies treat Alameda County residents with respect 

Children’s Hospital of Oakland (CHO) has run roughshod in Oakland, believing that it need not engage our community. CHO has wholly refused to seek or accept input on its planned $700 million expansion. The hospital chose its site without consulting the county, the city, or the neighboring residents (some of whose modest homes CHO has now disclosed it intends to take by eminent domain and bulldoze for its 12-story high-rise). 

CHO’s use of children in its misleading $1 million campaign mailings is exemplary of its shameful tactics. Purportedly written by children (“Adriana, age 14, Leukemia”), they state that CHO will use the tax for a retrofit and “will have to close” otherwise. Both claims are patently false. And using vulnerable children to deliver the deception is revolting and exploitative. 

The pursuit of an admirable mission does not provide a license to treat our community in an arrogant, underhanded, and manipulative manner. We must demand that CHO respect our community and its children. 

 

To finance county-owned services 

Alameda County owns and operates Highland Hospital. Yet, Highland struggles financially. The estimate for Highland’s state-mandated seismic retrofit is a whopping $600 million, which our community will have to pay through a tax measure. If the $300 million proceeds from Measure A went to Highland instead of a private entity, we would be half-way there already. 

At a recent meeting with a councilmember, I learned that Oakland’s law enforcement does not pursue certain felony and misdemeanor charges because there are not enough courtrooms and judges to handle the volume of arrests. When someone set fire to Peralta Elementary School, the school district had few funds to assist in the repair. Would $300 million help? 

As taxpayers, our community already shoulders the burden of paying the Medi-Cal reimbursements that CHO receives for treating its patients. We need not pay for their decision to expand. Instead, our community must prioritize financing our own public services before taking the unprecedented step of funding a private, tax-exempt hospital’s expansion. To do otherwise would be fiscally irresponsible. 

To build and safeguard a livable Oakland and Alameda County 

Oakland is among Alameda County’s most diverse cities. The small neighborhood that CHO’s downtown-sized skyscraper would tower over is one of our community’s most diverse: economically, racially, and professionally. It includes retired widows, young families of all races and ethnicities, teachers, nurses, writers, firefighters, scientists, artists, bakers, urban gardeners, lawyers, contractors, government employees. These residents bought homes in (or stuck through) bad times and improved them their homes (without taxpayer assistance), so that the neighborhood is now experiencing good times. 

The modest homes on its tree-lined streets are as desirable as the ones in wealthier Rockridge—which is also adjacent to Highway 24—so desirable that strangers approach and ask if owners are willing to sell. The owners do not want to sell. They do not want a private hospital to take their homes by eminent domain. They do not want to be forced out by the specter of a skyscraper with helipad. They appreciate the members of our community who recognize that neighborhoods like this one make Oakland and Alameda County livable —that neighborhoods like this one are the glue that keeps our community together. They will vote no on Measures A and B. 

 

Katina Ancar is an Oakland resident.


Commentary: Don’t Forget the Casino Workers

By David Brody
Friday February 01, 2008

As Super Tuesday looms, mail boxes across California have been stuffed with slick fliers, plus a thick Voter Information Guide, about Propositions 94-97, which ask voters whether or not they approve new gaming compacts that would triple the slot machines—by 17,000—at the casinos of four Southern California tribes. I can imagine the head-scratching over the claims and counterclaims: Is so much gambling capacity healthy for the state? How big a tax windfall? How adequate the accounting safeguards? What kind of impact on poorer tribes? On the environment? Then my eye spied a paragraph by the legislative analyst about labor relations at the casinos. And on that, fellow citizens, I can shed some light. 

The legislative analyst is talking about collective bargaining. She tells us that casino workers have a right to union representation, under ground rules that encourage the flow of information but prohibit intimidation, and that let them decide by secret ballot. Then the zinger: “No union currently represents the [fill in any name you want] tribe’s casino employees.” Why, if they can have it, wouldn’t casino workers want union representation? All they have to do is look across the desert to unionized Las Vegas, where working people just like themselves are earning good wages, getting full benefits, buying homes, and entering the middle class. Are they blind? No, they’re afraid. 

The truth is, the system the Legislative Analyst describes is a swindle. Casino workers are not free to have union representation. The casino operator can interrogate them, one on one; he can make them attend captive-audience meetings; he can say their jobs are at stake; and he doesn’t have to put up with troublemakers. He fires them. These problems are not unique to the casinos. They are endemic under our national labor law, but with this difference. Other workers at least have recourse to the National Labor Relations Board. There’s no NLRB for the Indian casinos; they essentially police themselves. No wonder that casino workers keep their heads down. 

So the unions have come up with a simple reform. They propose that casino workers be permitted to signify by authorization cards whether they want union representation. Card check would deny casino operators a platform for coercion, just like that. In 2004, six northern California tribes accepted card check and their casinos operate today under collective-bargaining agreements. But 17,000 slots wasn’t enough to lure the southern gaming tribes. They adamantly resisted the card-check reform, and they prevailed. That’s why you’ll see California’s unions, across the board, right up there, prominent among the groups urging a No vote. 

But scan the campaign literature for who’s missing. The governor is out front for the yes side. But where are the other key players, Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata and Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez? They’re nowhere to be seen, and for good reason. Card check is a Democratic issue. That’s literally true. It’s the core provision of a major Democratic labor bill that every presidential candidate backs and that every Democratic state legislator in Sacramento, including Perata and Nunez, signed a letter in support of. Then they turned around and, on their say-so, got the Democratic legislature to approve Schwarzenegger’s compacts. 

This is exactly the kind of politics that, for all its faults, justifies the referendum process. People don’t have to sit still when they are betrayed by their leaders. And in this case, they shouldn’t. 

The gaming tribes are simply rolling in money, and they are not shy about throwing it around politically. If you’re curious about why they got their way in these compacts, look no further. Everybody—the casino execs, the high-priced consultants, the politicians, the state’s General Fund—is feeding at the trough, everybody except the mostly minority workers who clean the toilets and empty the tills lack even the most basic protections because the tribal lands are beyond the reach of California’s anti-discrimination, workers’ compensation, minimum wage, and health and safety laws. 

Yes, low-wage workers will be lining up for those casino jobs. But California shouldn’t want low-wage workers. It should want workers who are lifting their families out of poverty, buying homes, and becoming active citizens, like the union chamber maids, baristas, and food servers who participated joyously in Nevada’s recent Democratic caucuses. Californians can make that happen. All they have to do is vote No and send the 17,000 slots back to the negotiating table. 

 

David Brody is professor emeritus of history at UC Davis. 


Commentary: The New Political Divide

By John F. Davies
Friday February 01, 2008

A great change is now happening, one that’s only now beginning to bubble up in the national consciousness, and this change is shaking our established institutions to their very roots. Yet this fact is barely registering among the so-called mainstream media, or for that matter, even the progressive one. Put simply, the old political definitions of left and right, liberal and conservative, Democrat and Republican, are eroding away. They are indeed becoming irrelevant as the new concerns of this new Century trump the politics of the past. It’s now no longer the right against the left, but rather: “Wall Street against Main Street.” 

The roots of this go back about 35 years. What occurred was, as one writer put it, a “revolt of the haves.” The American moneyed interests were quite terrified by the specter of an aroused and united American people. It’s also apparent from the literature of the time that both Democrat and Republican leaders were voicing the same concerns. One study from a Democratic-sponsored think tank even proclaimed that the public had become “ungovernable” and had to be returned back to their normal state of apathy. Apparently having had enough of an activist public interfering with their plans, the powers that be decided to do something about it. Using all legal and institutional means at their disposal, the powerful stymied all further attempts at real reform. 

For many, the experience of the 1960s and ’70s revealed the hidden hands of power that actually rule this republic of ours. To the generation that rebelled, they realized that the organs of national security would use all means necessary to crush any hint of real change in this country. To working people, they saw the power of their earnings erode, and once secure jobs were now being sent overseas. Independent businesses began to be overwhelmed by newly emerging corporate monopolies. To those who served and bled in Vietnam, they saw the privileged avoid the ordeal that they themselves suffered. And the poor, who were just getting by, became completely destitute. These were the beginnings of the economic disenfranchisement that is now sweeping America by storm. For the last three decades the message from those above was “consume, spend, and get with the program” or starve. And the public did indeed spend themselves into a frenzy of debt. Unfortunately, Economics 101 says that an economy based on debt creation is ultimately unsustainable. We Americans have all been using a giant credit card to finance what is so arrogantly called our “Lifestyle,” and now the bills are coming due. 

With the cold wind of recession starting to blow in our faces, we the people find that neither established political party offers any real solutions to our present crises. And there’s a reason for this, it’s because both parties are in the thrall of the politically connected rich. As the chair of the corporate sponsored Democratic Leadership Council recently stated, “No Democrat can win without our support.” And, as in the cases of Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul, any candidate who directly challenges the corporate establishment will be ignored, trivialized, and even forced out of debates by the leadership of their parties. Simply put, these corporate masters will not tolerate any challenges to their authority, and to deny this hard fact is to deny the realities of power in this country.  

In my conversations with younger people, their greatest gripe is that all they hear from progressive leaders is just more warmed over ’60s rhetoric. What they say today may have been relevant in 1968, but we now find ourselves facing a far different world than we had forty years ago. One now finds that the travails of the liberal Democrat are also those of the conservative Republican. These mutual concerns are starting to bring together groups that years ago would never have spoken to one other. For instance, abuses of eminent domain and redevelopment have brought together alliances of Greens and Libertarian Republicans. Climate Change issues unite many environmentalists with evangelical Christians. The so-called “Patriot Act” and other privacy-related matters have allied lifetime NRA members with established supporters of the ACLU. Common ground is apparently being found, yet we don’t hear very much about it. Why is this? I suspect that these new alliances are upsetting the agendas of those who would still have us living in the past. Perhaps they see a potential groundswell as something that could make them irrelevant. I will even guess that maybe this could be an even greater threat to the designs of the moneyed few than what there was in the ’60s. Perhaps this maelstrom that we see around us will finally make us aware that our salvation is not with the major parties, but rather with ourselves. I will add here that whomever wins this coming November, they will be facing a new and ever-increasing popular movement that transcends any label. I for one, am looking forward to it. 

 

John F. Davies is a Berkeley resident.


Commentary: UC: The Wal-Mart of Higher Education?

By Hank Chapot
Friday February 01, 2008

If you love the University of California, you may be interested in a study released Jan. 15 by the Center for Labor and Community Research, titled, “Failing California’s Communities: how UC’s low wages affect surrounding communities.” 

For those who pay attention to UC’s labor issues, the story is depressingly familiar. This study of zip codes and census data for roughly 20,000 low paid UC service and patient care employees at ten campuses and five hospitals asked the question; if UC paid market-rate wages, what would be the economic impact, or “multiplier effect,” and where would it show? It was produced with help from AFSCME local 3299. 

The conclusions were clear, UC’s lowest paid workers are concentrated in low income communities most in need of economic improvement and UC is failing those communities by paying wages significantly below other colleges and hospitals in California (25 percent below overall). Comparisons were made to wages at regional hospitals and large community colleges. Citing a 2005 study by the National Economic Development and Law Center, one-third of UC’s 124,000 employees do not earn sufficient wages to pay for food, rent and other basic necessities and many are eligible for public assistance. Nearly half of UC patient care and service workers live in neighborhoods with a poverty rate 50 percent higher than those surrounding the campuses. In the Bay Area, the percentage is probably higher. 

That study recognized that compensation practices of large employers affect entire communities. CLCR researchers note that as one of the largest employers in the state, if UC paid prevailing wages, it would have significant direct economic impact on struggling communities, including Oakland and Richmond, Inglewood and Hawthorne, plus 55 other working class communities near the UC system, where incomes run 15 percent lower than average. CLCR researchers conclude that, “the economic impact of UC matching prevailing wages is estimated to add $147 million in spending on local goods and services in those communities, create nearly nine hundred new jobs, add $9 million in state and local taxes and contribute $23 million in local business earnings.” Obviously, if UC were to provide market-rate wages, the social returns in low and moderate income communities would be far greater than any increase in sales of luxury goods in upscale districts adjacent to UC campuses from payoffs and perks lavished on top management. 

Old-timers tell me UC used to say, “it is a privilege to work for the greatest university in the world, and because of our interest in public service and the egalitarian mission of the university, you will gladly accept a little less.” 

More recently they said, “the economy is bad, we have to raise fees, tuition, health care costs, and no, no equity increases this year.” Seems every year, good or bad, UC’s primary customers, students, classroom educators and hospital patients take the hit. 

This year the mantra is, “Arnold won’t give us the money, $14B deficit you know.” But the state budget slice for service workers at UC is just 8.6 percent, the rest comes from hospital revenues, the feds and non-governmental funding such as food services and parking. While tuition costs explode, students fees, the ultimate battering ram of UC’s excuses, provide barely 1 percent of service costs. 

And I’m talking about unionized workers here, usually the most stable members of working class communities, whose wages UC is keeping down. People end up taking second jobs, putting their teen-aged children into the workforce and even collecting cans during breaks for a little extra cash. 

Sources in current contract negotiations say the university has acknowledged that it is not about money, rather, they claim it would be “fiscally imprudent” to raise workers pay to prevailing wage. That from a public entity with 22 billion dollars in net assets(assets minus expenses), up 18 percent in the last two years, a university system that is the largest recipient of Federal R&D funding in the nation, $4 billion last year alone. Current Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau recently cited low turnover at the bottom as justification for underpaying workers, and it is true that we need our jobs and UC can be a good place to work. However, we have less employment mobility than UC’s elite and are therefore ripe for exploitation. 

Readers will be unsurprised that labor contracts within the UC system are in flux. One of the largest employers in every jurisdiction where it resides, UC seems determined to continue depressing wages, in contradiction of its stated ideals. 

From the study’s conclusion; “What is at stake is the economic future of West Sacramento, San Pablo, Watsonville, El Cajon, East Oakland and other poor communities that would greatly benefit if UC made a greater economic investment in California’s communities.” 

A PDF version of the study “Failing California’s Communities: how UC’s low wages affect surrounding communities” is at www.clcr.org/index.php. 

 

Hank Chapot is a gardener at  

UC Berkeley.


Columns

Column: The Public Eye: Why Not the Best?

By Bob Burnett
Tuesday February 05, 2008

Today, “Super Tuesday,” millions of Americans will select either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama as the Democratic candidate for president. Both carry historic liberal values and are capable of doing an excellent job as president. The question voters will have to decide is not who can do the job “on day one”—they both can—but rather who would be the best fit for these tumultuous times. 

Each candidate has strong points. Sen. Clinton is smart, experienced, and has the advantage of having been part of the 1992 and 1996 presidential campaigns of her husband, Bill Clinton. Although some pundits describe her as a centrist, in comparison to the likely Republican presidential candidates she is a progressive. Ms. Clinton has retained contact with many of the people who served her husband for eight years; there is no doubt that if she were to be elected President, she would hit the ground running on Jan. 20, 2009. 

Sen. Obama is the surprise candidate. Five years ago, few Americans would have predicted that an African American with the unlikely name of Barack Hussein Obama would be a contender for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination. Although he has only been a member of Congress since January 2005, Mr. Obama has a compelling personal history: the first black president of the Harvard Law Review, he has worked as a community organizer as well as a civil-rights attorney. He has surrounded himself with experienced advisers—Sens. Durbin, Kennedy, Kerry, and Leahy, among others—and would probably have no difficulty making the transition to the 44th presidency. 

Although the details of their proposed policies differ, both Clinton and Obama offer a stark contrast to the Republican position. Iraq? Clinton and Obama want a plan for withdrawal; Republicans want to stay until we “win.” Healthcare? Clinton and Obama favor a national plan that serves the most needy; Republicans want to deal with the problem by “tax incentives.” Recession? Clinton and Obama favor tax credits to help average Americans and programs to create jobs; Republican want tax cuts that favor corporations and the rich. On issue after issue, the differences between Clinton and Obama are barely perceptible, while they and their possible Republican adversaries are miles apart. 

The important difference is how the two candidates conceive of the presidency. During the Jan. 15 Democratic presidential debate in Nevada, Sen. Clinton said, “I do think that being president is the chief executive officer… you have to be able to manage and run the bureaucracy.” Sen. Obama disagreed: “Being president is not making sure that schedules are being run properly or the paperwork is being shuffled effectively. It involves having a vision for where the country needs to go. It involves having the capacity to bring together the best people and being able to spark the kind of debate about how we’re going to solve [problems]; and then being able to mobilize and inspire the American people to get behind that agenda for change.” 

Ms. Clinton countered that George W. Bush also promised to be a “uniter,” implying Mr. Obama was naïve. He pointed to his record as a community organizer and a politician, where he had proven effective bringing people together to form a broad consensus. Many pundits argue Hillary Clinton is less capable of doing this, as she is seen as divisive. 

Sen. Clinton espouses what might be termed the “executive” view of the presidency: the role of the president is to formulate programs and get them through Congress. Sen. Obama supports the “leadership” view: the role of the President is to inspire the American people and create the conditions for change. Both models have proven successful in recent American history: LBJ was an executive who got major programs through Congress, for example the Civil Rights Act. Ronald Reagan was a conservative leader who created the conditions for change—many of them negative. 

Hillary Clinton is an unusually strong politician who happens to be a woman. Barack Obama is an inspirational leader who happens to be black. When you listen to their speeches, one difference is the use of pronouns: Clinton emphasizes “I,” as in “I will do this.” Obama emphasizes “we,” as in “we can change America.” 

Deciding which candidate will be better for America depends on how one conceives of the job of the next president. If you see it as passing lots of legislation, ramming reversals of Bush policies through an obdurate Congress, Sen. Clinton may be the best candidate. If you see the job of the 44th president as creating the conditions for fundamental change, as I do, then Sen. Obama prevails. I can imagine him convincing Americans to simplify their lives and quit using fossil fuel; it is difficult to see Ms. Clinton doing this. 

The next president will have to inspire Americans to make sacrifices and work for the common good. I think Barack Obama is best prepared to do this. We should elect the person who will be the best fit for these times. 

 

Bob Burnett is a Berkeley writer. He can be reached at bobburnett@comcast.net.


An Open Letter to the Men and Women in the Military and to the Citizens of Berkeley

By Councilmembers Laurie Capitelli and Betty Olds
Tuesday February 05, 2008

(Posted on Feb. 5, at 11:45 a.m.)—On several occasions since the war began in 2003, the Berkeley City Council has publicly and passionately stated its opposition to the war in Iraq. On January 29, 2008, the Berkeley City Council approved a series of recommendations intended to impede the recruiting activities of the downtown Berkeley Marine Corps office, which for many people in Berkeley has become a symbol of that war. 

Specifically, the recommendation to inform the Marine Corps recruiting office that they are not welcome in our city, was insulting, hurtful and wrong. We failed to make it clear that while we continue to oppose what we consider an unethical and illegal war in Iraq, at the same time we respect and honor all the brave men and women who are serving, or have served, in the military.  

In our passionate opposition to this war, and in our horror and frustration over the thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands Iraqis who have died in it, we have erred by not adequately differentiating between the war and the warriors. It is understandable that the unnecessarily inflammatory language included in the Council_s action offended and insulted many Marines and their families. We apologize to all those in the military and their families, who took personal offense. This was not our intention. 

In a completely separate action, the Berkeley City Council granted fee waivers for permits to an organization actively protesting the Marine Corps office. To grant a privilege to one group while actively seeking to eliminate the legal presence of another is discriminatory and contrary to our long-standing support of free speech. In retrospect, the City Council should have considered the impact such an action would have on the rights of free speech and expression for all citizens. These rights must be paramount and must be preserved and protected for all of us. 

If Berkeley is truly to remain the home of free speech, then our priority should be to preserve it for all citizens, so that personal and governmental decisions can be made through informed debate. 

 

Berkeley Councilmember Betty Olds, District 6 

Berkeley Councilmember Laurie Capitelli, District 5 


Green Neighbors: Trees Show Their Bones and History in Winter

By Ron Sullivan
Tuesday February 05, 2008

Most of the public and literary appreciation for bare trees seems to come from wintry places like New England, but bonsai artists and fans and the landscape pruners who think along similar lines make a big deal of the “winter silhouette.” It’s one of the most refined criteria for judging a deciduous tree. 

One reason for that is that a deciduous tree in winter is naked indeed, and any mistakes you’ve made in shaping it will stick right out. In bonsai, the small scale makes errors even more obvious: it’s not so much miniaturization as abstraction, representing a wild tree in as few artistic strokes as possible, so any single part gets more attention.  

Once the leaves fall from landscape trees, it doesn’t take an expert to see what horrors have been wreaked upon them. There’s a row of poplars I have to look at every time I’m in the Union Bank parking lot; they’re up against a building on Channing and face west. In leaf, they look like so many toothbrushes; maybe some people think that’s an OK look. Naked, they’re just pitiful: nice straight trunks and then little awkward twigs sticking out in graceless desperate clusters.  

Maybe some people think that looks OK. There are those who go for pollarded trees, and some among them might be a bit uncritical of un-treelike forms for perfectly innocent trees. I find it hard to imagine, though.  

I’m a bit more tolerant of pollarding than I used to be—as long as it’s done right. Originally, pollarding was utilitarian, a way of harvesting firewood without killing the trees. Mulberries and sycamores will tolerate it well; it’s a classic urban way of treating London planetrees, a sycamore hybrid we often see in cities. If you try pollarding other species it’s riskier.  

Pollarding doesn’t mean just sawing pieces off at random. You have to start when the tree’s relatively young and take care to cut back to the same place on each scaffold limb every year. It gets easier to spot the place after a couple of years, as the tree forms big knobs at the cut places. You leave the knobs, taking off just the straight skinny branches that grew since the last pollarding.  

You also have to do it yearly, because those skinny branches are attached weakly, not to the central part of the tree. If they stay on the tree and get bigger, they just might fall off and bonk you on the head and it would serve you right.  

The trees still look funny to me, but I’m so old that low-rise pants look funny to me too: quaint. I wore them the last time they came around, in the ‘70s, and I remember how odd those old photos looked 15 years later. It’s just a matter of fashion, pollarding, until somebody blows it and then it’s tree abuse. (I suppose when somebody blows it with the pants it’s a gesture of solidarity with plumbers or somesuch.) Or maybe I’ve become more apathetic as I’ve noticed that both mulberries (the ‘Fruitless’ male clones planted as street trees) and planetrees are allergenic as well as ubiquitous. I’m Irish/Welsh; I bear grudges.  

One more positive reason for looking hard at a tree in winter is the revelation of the private lives of summers past. We see abandoned nests of squirrels and birds; there are field guides detailed enough to tell what species reared its young in each of them, in the shelter of last year’s leaves. Woodpecker holes and sapsucker drillmarks show up and winter residents become visible. The tree tells you what it and its tenants have been up to.  

The basic attraction of the winter silhouette is its sheer unlikely beauty. It’s so difficult to imitate the tree’s natural ramification, or just not to screw it up, because it’s not at all random. It obeys rules that are complex, mathematical, exigent, and organic, and while we sometimes know enough to approximate their effect, we rarely know enough to follow them precisely.  

Every cell in those twigs grows to reach toward light, to support a leaf that will catch as much light as possible, while responding to every other cell in the tree, pushing and dancing and proposing hypotheses, turning to bask in the sun and later lignifying, supporting its successors in the same quest.  

The tree makes its silent approximations every second of its growth, refining its formulae, adding to its suncatching surface, crystallizing to make its space while filling it, fracturing the sky into precise geometries. If we’re to do it justice, we must sit and learn, listen awhile, humbly shut up and hear what it has in mind.  

 

 

 

Photograph by Ron Sullivan. 

The delicate geometry of deciduous trees in winter at the MLK Jr. Shoreline from Arrowhead Marsh, Oakland.


Column: Homes For Sale — Maybe

By Susan Parker
Friday February 01, 2008

Fighting Measures A and B on next Tuesday’s ballot has pushed me over the edge. I’ve lost weight, acquired more wrinkles and lost my sense of humor. Sometimes I don’t even speak in coherent sentences. I’ve put my clothes on inside out, forgotten to zip my fly, backed out of the driveway without looking left or right for oncoming traffic. 

I broke my hand in October. The cast was supposed to come off in November but the bone didn’t heal properly. In December, a Kaiser Permanente technician sawed off the cast. Now I have a permanent bump on my middle metacarpal bone. I’d like to blame Children’s Hospital Oakland, (CHO) for the disfigurement, but that wouldn’t be fair, or would it? 

Nothing seems very fair to me these days. How can CHO, a private outfit, get two measures on the Feb. 5 ballot that will allow them to use taxpayers’ money to build a 12-story high-rise in a residential neighborhood? Why am I being asked to help foot the bill at the same time they are threatening the use of eminent domain to take away our homes?  

My house is not in the footprint of the hospital’s proposed 196-foot tower. I live five doors away but I’m pretty sure CHO wants my home as well as my neighbors’ homes. They’ve already bought one house outside the proposed site. When asked why, Mary Dean, senior vice president of CHO External Affairs, told me, “It was an opportunity.”  

And now they have another opportunity because the neighbors across the street from me have fled to Berkeley. Their home goes up for sale in February. Please someone buy their charming 1914 California bungalow before Children’s snaps it up. 

I’m not the only one feeling harassed and frazzled. Mr. and Mrs. Odom, the last remaining “real” residents on 52nd Street between Dover and MLK Jr. Way, have been feeling like this since the early ‘80s. “Children’s Hospital has been after me to sell my house for years,” Mr. Odom tells me. “Realtors call all the time. They don’t say they work for Children’s but I know they do. Back when Children’s was building the outpatient building and parking garage, black realtors came to black-owned houses, and white realtors came to white-owned homes. What they offered us depended on what color we were and what they thought we’d settle for.”  

Mr. Odom shakes his head, “But I ain’t movin’.” 

Mr. Odom is interviewed by KGO Channel 7 News. He tells a reporter about the man across the street from him who worked for CHO, but wouldn’t sell his home to them. He says the man lost his job before he retired, and later died. His widow died last year and CHO bought their house. It’s now the Yes on Measure A campaign headquarters and stocked with thousands of yard signs. 

My neighbor Yasmin and I run around the neighborhood gathering signatures, distributing bumper stickers, passing out fliers. Yasmin puts on a hat that once belonged to my husband, Ralph. She wears it sideways by mistake. The earflaps cover one of her eyes, and like me, she too has lost weight, so her pants hang down around her hips. She looks like a homeless person. 

We talk to an urban planner. He studies the site plans CHO has up on its website. He tells us that 55th Street is the natural buffer zone for a project of this magnitude. He says that to do it properly, CHO will have to take out all the homes between 52nd street and 55th. 

I glance at Yasmin as his words sink in. She looks horrified, and I know I look the same. Skinny and scared. Clothes on backwards and inside out. We look like two people who have washed up under a freeway overpass. I think about Mr. Odom. Thirty-six years on 52nd Street and he says he ain’t gonna move. I wish I could say the same, but I may not be as tough.


Column: Undercurrents: The Nexus Between Van Hools, Bus Rapid Transit

By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor
Friday February 01, 2008

I am a longtime supporter of public transportation, and have been so since my youth when I used to ride around Oakland on AC Transit, often getting off and walking the last 10 blocks home along East 14th only because I thought it extravagant to pay the extra 10 cents it used to cost to go past 73rd Avenue. I was born too late to ride on the old Key System, but I fell in love with light rail when I worked, for a time, in San Jose, and thereafter thought that its reintroduction into Oakland would help ease the city’s traffic and parking problems in our city, and might also help to reinvigorate the downtrodden parts of International Boulevard east of High Street as well as West Oakland’s floundering business and commercial districts. 

I say that because some of the more vocal supporters of AC Transit’s new Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) proposal often make the charge that any criticism or even critical analysis of AC Transit or BRT automatically equates to opposition to public transit and rapid transit, and that to support the latter two, you must ever and always beat the drum for the former two.  

The charges most recently surfaced in the online reader comment section of the first of a two-part East Bay Express series by investigative reporter Robert Gammon on AC Transit’s relationship with the Van Hool bus company of Belgium. 

On Jan. 28, reader Robert Kruger posted “The Van Hool story is further complicated by neighborhood opponents of Bus Rapid Transit (BRT), who have realized that stirring up outrage over the Van Hools helps them build opposition to the whole BRT project. Mr. Gammon's article plays right into their hands, without any critical examination of the motives they might have for painting the Van Hools in such a negative light.” Five days earlier, an East Bay blogger, dto510, took off after Mr. Gammon himself, writing that: “This harmful tirade represents a wholesale embrace of the anti-transit agenda sweeping the East Bay, which seeks to prevent the establishment of the world's most popular mass transit system, BRT, to preserve a handful of parking spaces.” And NovoMetro columnist V Smoothe, who I just praised in last week’s column for her analysis (sigh), wrote in her A Better Oakland Jan. 23 blog (www.abetteroakland.com) “I cannot overlook or forgive this week’s insane cover story [in the East Bay Express] which appears to be an attempt to turn the whining of a handful of Van Hool haters into yet another bullshit excuse to bitch about BRT.” 

There is, actually, a nexus between the Van Hool buses and BRT, although it is not in the manner in which Mr. Kruger, (Mr.? Ms.?) dto510, and Ms. Smoothe portray it. The Van Hools are intended to be the backbone of BRT. The 60-foot, articulated versions (the two-part buses with the “accordion” in the middle) currently operate along AC Transit’s 1-1R Telegraph Avenue-International Boulevard-East 14th Street route that is intended to eventually become the BRT route, and one can reasonably assume that the district intends that these buses—or some other Van Hool model—will run along BRT if BRT becomes a reality. 

If BRT is to attract a large number of new riders—necessary for it to become a success—a large majority of those new riders will therefore need to like the Van Hool riding experience. If too many riders stay away from BRT because they don’t like the Van Hools, BRT will end up being the kind of East Bay public project disaster that will remain with us the rest of our lives, much like, say, the Raiders deal. Prudence dictates, therefore, that we take this process slowly and examine it carefully before we move forward with BRT approval. 

But at least where it involves Van Hool, there is a considerable body of evidence that AC Transit has not moved forward carefully at all. Instead, in the Van Hool dealings I have observed and reported on in the last year, the district has too often acted like the octopus, throwing up an obscuring cloud of ink in the water whenever thoughtful and serious questions are raised. 

I was not covering AC Transit during the time the original Van Hool contract was negotiated and signed, and I don’t know enough about that contract to have formed an opinion. But last year, I did cover AC Transit’s odd 16-bus NABI-Van Hool trade-and-buy deal, and that transaction raised serious doubts about how AC Transit was doing business with the Belgian bus manufacturer. Those articles were originally published in The Berkeley Daily Planet; they are available on the Planet’s website, as well as collected on my personal website at www.safero.org/vanhool.html. 

Under the deal—too complicated to explain in detail in this column—AC Transit proposed to sell 16 of its North American Bus Institute (NABI) manufactured buses to the American Van Hool distributor, the buses eventually to be bought by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) for use in the Gulf Coast, with the buses to be replaced by newer Van Hools. One of the complications was that AC Transit wanted the federal government to put aside any financial penalty to the agency for getting rid of the NABI buses years short of their federally-mandated street life. The federal government refused, and in one of his articles this week (“Thwarting Buy American Laws to Buy Belgian”), Mr. Gammon quotes AC Transit General Manager Rick Fernandez as saying that the NABI-Van Hool swap “didn’t pan out.” 

The problem was, there was always a problem with the NABI-Van Hool bus swap “panning out” that was evident from the beginning. As I reported in my Daily Planet stories, while Mr. Fernandez repeatedly told AC Transit board members that the bus swap was a “no-brainer” and a good deal for the district, in the “Fiscal Impact” section of his recommending memos in both March and April 2007, the general manager did not disclose a bottom-line figure, instead writing that “the fiscal impact will be determined by the proceeds of the sale” and associated costs. 

The AC Transit Board of Directors, therefore, went in blind, not knowing what the NABI-Van Hool transfer might save or cost the district. A majority of the board members went along with the deal anyway, an act of public irresponsibility which is not a good precedent if we are supposed to trust the board and AC Transit management in the BRT project. 

I ran into other red flags during my coverage of the NABI-Van Hool bus swap. 

As I noted earlier in this column, the success of BRT is predicated on the rapid transit line attracting new riders. If significant rider disaffection with the Van Hool buses keeps too many new riders from using the new system, its finances will collapse. 

You can find passionate riders on both sides of the Van Hool issue—many say they love the buses, many say they hate them. Let us give these riders the benefit of the doubt, and say that all of them are giving their honest opinions. The question is, how, then, can AC Transit decide whether public opinion over the Van Hools would be a drag or a benefit to its proposed BRT? 

A prudent transit agency—concerned with the interests of their own agency rather than its “partnership” with an outside bus manufacturing company (as Mr. Fernandez once described the AC Transit-Van Hool relationship)—would have long ago hired an independent outside polling firm to conduct a bus rider public opinion survey. During last year’s debates over the NABI-Van Hool swap, General Manager Fernandez often noted that AC Transit did such a study, and that opinion was favorable to the Van Hools. The rider opinion study was done, however, just as the Van Hools were originally being introduced in the district, and before riders had enough experience with them to form their final opinions. 

It’s past time for the district, if it wants the general public to have confidence in its decisions, to find an independent agency to conduct such a survey. How else can the district management make informed recommendations and the district board make informed decisions on future bus purchases? 

Meanwhile, in the second of Mr. Gammon’s three Van Hool articles, “Belgium Or Bust,” a quote from former AC Transit Board President Greg Harper shows that opposition to Van Hool buses does not necessarily mean opposition to BRT. 

“Harper,” Mr. Gammon writes, “who is … a strong proponent of BRT [emphasis added], said in an interview that the Van Hools enjoyed such overwhelming support on the board that he would have lost his ability to get things done had he publicly opposed them.” Mr. Gammon goes on to say that when asked if newly requested modifications of Van Hool buses—making them closer in internal design to buses from other manufacturers—“meant that buying the Belgian buses was a waste, [Mr. Harper] responded: ‘I'd say pretty much it was.’” 

Were the AC Transit Van Hool bus purchases a waste, and do they threaten public support for the district’s rapid transit plans, however those plans may eventually take shape? 

It would seem like the many vocal and passionate BRT supporters in the area might want an answer to these questions. It would also seem that East Bay taxpayers—who foot the AC Transit subsidy bills but rarely pay attention to district board activities—might want to know as well. AC Transit needs to do better—much, much better—in answering. It does not mean that you are an opponent of public transit if you’re asking these questions. In fact, the supporters of public transit ought to be the first ones in line doing the asking. Mr. Gammon’s recent articles take us a step further in shedding light on what, so far, has been largely a shadowy public finance transaction. 

I am a supporter of public transit, and I am a supporter of the development of some sort of rapid transit system in the East Bay that bridges the gap between AC Transit’s current inter-city bus system and BART’s fixed-rail intra-city transit line. Whether or not ACT Transit’s BRT proposal would fill that need remains to be seen. I am willing to listen. But I am not yet convinced. 


The Rasputin of the Plant World

By Jane Powell
Friday February 01, 2008

Some 10 years ago I was out in my backyard pulling up ivy. My next door neighbor was doing the same. As we both neared the fence he muttered, “Gardening in California—it’s all about killing things.” He was right.  

While I occasionally get to plant something, most of my gardening for the last twenty years has consisted of hacking back out-of-control plants and weeds. It’s not that I long for the Midwest, where I was born, but I do have to admit that snowy winters kill a few things off, or at least give one a respite from the battle. I always laugh when I read that some task should be performed when the plant is “dormant”—when exactly would that be? The bouganvillea blooms all year, the lemon tree always has lemons, and it’s always the season for weeds. 

Because I have always bought fixer-uppers, I have never been blessed with what the real estate ads call “mature landscaping.” Well, possibly it’s mature, but it always seems to be mature blackberries, bamboo, Bermuda grass, ivy, or the Ultimate Plant From Hel—oxalis pes-caprae. Blackberries are annoying—but at least you can eat them. Oxalis has no obvious redeeming value, yet is pretty much the Rasputin of the plant world. 

You have to grudgingly admire its will to live. It grows from bulbs, yet its connection to the bulb is so tenuous that if you pull it up the bulb stays in the ground. When the bulb gets big enough, it splits into more bulbs. But that’s not all—if allowed to flower, it also produces up to twenty microscopic bulblets at the base of the stem. And it sends out an underground rhizome as well. 

There is conventional wisdom about how to get rid of it. Use Round-up (glyphosate), they say. Ha! It barely notices. Use newspaper or cardboard with mulch on top. Yeah. It will grow three feet sideways till it finds the edges of the cardboard and come up there. Even if you overlap it by twelve inches. Soil solarization (putting down clear plastic) is mentioned. Uh-huh. That’s like sending it for a lovely spa vacation. Pull it up while it’s green—it will weaken the bulbs. Sure. They’ll only be able to bench-press 200 pounds after that. Landscape fabric? Oxalis grows right through it. Put on a high-nitrogen fertilizer and they’ll grow themselves to death? What?—Risk that they’ll mutate into a giant indestructible plant that will take over the yard? Oh wait—that’s already happened. Dig up the bulbs and sift the soil to make sure you get all of them. Impossible. You never get all of them. 

How do I know this? Because I have spent the last four years in my current house doing all of these things. And that’s only in the backyard. Recently I have spent weeks obsessively digging down twelve inches and removing every visible oxalis bulb in an area of about 10 square feet. The same area in which I spent weeks last spring (and the three springs before that) pulling up oxalis. Then the first rain of the season arrives—and two days later, the entire area is covered with happy green oxalis, looking no different from the rest of the yard. 

It’s like I have Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. It’s worse than Obsessive Weeding, with which all gardeners are familiar. I sit out there and sift through the soil, filling a bucket with bulbs. I don’t eat; I keep at it until it’s too dark to see. I have fantasies—mostly having to do with bulldozers, flamethrowers and Agent Orange. Occasionally I have another fantasy, one in which the garden is lovely, I have legions of gardeners, and all I ever have to do is wander out to pick flowers. In this fantasy I am also much younger, richer, and better-looking. I think longingly of this day when the oxalis is finally conquered, and there are no other weeds either. Then I remember the five million wild onion bulbs in the front yard, and despair. 

I ask myself, though frankly, not as often as others ask me, why I continue to fight this battle if it’s so futile. Well, there are many things in life which are repetitious and pointless, yet still need to be done—washing the dishes, for instance. Or I could say that I am doing my part in the battle against an invasive plant which is threatening many natural ecosystems. In a ploy for sympathy, I could compare it to my ongoing battle with a chronic form of Non-Hodgkins lymphoma—you know, all those out-of-control cancerous lymphocytes that must be killed before they colonize some other organ. Frankly, I was never much for all that cancer visualization stuff anyway. My battle with oxalis isn’t really a metaphor, it’s just an excuse to sit outside in the sun and air and think about stuff while doing a really mindless task. Not unlike fishing. Besides, deep down I hold on to the expectation that ultimately I will prevail. I’ve been told that old carpeting really will smother oxalis for good—maybe I’ll use Astroturf and pretend it’s a lawn. And I hear goats will eat anything.  

 

Jane Powell is the author of several books about bungalows, available at www.bungalowkitchens.com. Send your oxalis-killing suggestions to janepowell@sbcglobal.net. 

 

 

 

 

 


Garden Variety: The Edifice Complex Strikes Again

By Ron Sullivan
Friday February 01, 2008

Speaking truth to power is all very well. Sometimes, though, I just lose my temper and feel the need to speak truth to cockamamie. 

The same people, beings, places, systems that get routinely threatened by the powerful are just as vulnerable to the thoughtless deprecations of any bliss ninnies who get hold of a half-baked notion and enough bucks to get it started.  

If they don’t do more than dig a hole before the foundation grants run out, they’ve still obliterated whatever was there before them and set the stage for the invasion of the nasties. Remember that parable Jesus told that ended with the re-possession of the victim by not one but seven devils? 

Gardens are as invisible to such visionaries as natural systems and places. Is it because of the merely mortal, living beings that inhabit and compose them? It’s amazing that such beings seem to be so disposable; maybe it’s that humans can’t quite conceive of our own mortality, no matter how often or hard we get our noses rubbed in it. 

What ticked me off this week is a ballot proposition in San Francisco, and the full-page ad in Monday morning’s Chronicle promoting it. They want to pave Alcatraz and put in a porking lot. 

I don’t think this porkbarrel proposition will pass, given the lean times and general electoral impatience: the right thing for the wrong reason.  

“The Light Party” proposes in its “Alcatraz Conversion Project” that “By Converting Alcatraz Island, a place of pain and suffering, into a ‘Jewel of Light,’ We will activate powerful forces for cooperation, reconciliation and healing.” [All sic.] 

Evidently these bozos haven’t deigned to set foot on the island in the last few years, or weren’t paying attention. There’s a lot more going on at Alcatraz than an “old and decaying prison.” One of the most interesting experiment in actual cooperation between species is happening there right now. 

The gardens of Alcatraz are being renewed. These were planted and maintained for food and beauty by prison employees, their families, and sometimes by prisoners over the years.  

The interesting bit is that the Garden Trust and the National Parks people are clearing off smothering blackberry and ivy and propagating what plants they find around and under it to populate the gardens. These plants have persisted over some four decades of complete neglect, including watering—they’ve survived on rainfall alone. Alcatraz has no natural fresh water. 

The survivors include surprises like fuchsias, ten kinds of roses, pelargoniums, edible figs, artichokes (!), tulips, chasmanthe, aeoniums—nearly 200 species or cultivars so far.  

There’s also a thriving seabird colony: western gulls, Brandt’s and pelagic cormorants, and pigeon guillemots breed here. So do snowy egrets, black-crowned night herons, ravens, and song sparrows; I’d bet hummingbirds too.  

Let’s not pretend that demolition and construction wouldn’t screw all this up. 

Ignorance is not a virtue. Allowing oneself to persist in ignorance is wicked. Proceeding through ignorance toward destruction of our planet, one place at a time, is evil. Shame on these people.  

 

 

Gardens of Alcatraz 

Essays by John Hart, Russell A. Beatty, and Michael Boland; photographs by Roy Eisenhardt. 1996, Golden Gate National Parks Foundation. ISBN 1-883869-17-X (trade paperback) 

http://www.nps.gov/alcatraz/ 

http://www.gardenconservancy.org/ 

http://www.globalpeacefoundation.org/ 

 

Ron Sullivan is a former professional gardener and arborist. Her “Garden Variety” column appears every Friday in the Daily Planet’s East Bay Home & Real Estate section. Her column on East Bay trees appears every other Tuesday in the Daily Planet. 

 


About the House: Contracts and Contractors

By Matt Cantor
Friday February 01, 2008

Murphy must be in the contracting business. You know, the one who wrote that famous law: Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong. He (or she, we’ve never met in the flesh, although I’ve fallen victim to his/her epistemology a time or two) was either a contractor or the client of one for enough time to codify the law and its corollaries. 

When working with contractors it is inevitable that things will go wrong. Many of them will be small and of little consequence but some can go very wrong and lead to tears. Some lead to lawyers (always a bad sign) and most have some relationship to poorly written contracts (there is no accident that they’re called contractors). 

To minimize fretting and gunfire, a clearly written contract is a darned good thing and I would recommend that you demand such in advance of any work you have done by a G.C. (general contractor). Even the setting of a toilet usually involves a short proposal on an NCR form or receipt book. 

A contract doesn’t have to define everything imaginable but the more it does define, the less likely one will experience discontent. Further, I would argue that most of the really bad workmanship that keeps me in business (I get called when things go wrong) is generated by those who are incapable of producing a cogent and detailed proposal. How can you do it if you can’t even write it down?  

So, this is a sort of test or gateway for contractors and I assure you that if you do nothing beyond reviewing a proposal (agreement, contract or what have you) with some care, you will easily eliminate the bottom tier of contractors.  

This will of course eliminate the cheapest ones but I think you need to do that anyway. I have often found that those who seemed to be cheap, were, in the long (or short) run, no bargain at all. There is no job so expensive as the one you have to do twice.  

If you’ve managed to get a proposal out of your G.C. (or, ideally, several G.C.s), what you want to start looking for is very specific information about what will be done. You can’t be too picky here. Let’s say you are doing a bath remodel.  

The contract should specify the physical area that will be worked upon; how the area will be masked off, if that is to be done; which walls will be fully demolished (or ideally, all of them); what will be done with any decay, rot or damp that is revealed; identify which portions of plumbing will be removed and replaced; which material will be used; how old and new piping will be joined; what fixtures will be used.  

The document should state if the subfloor is to be replaced; what kind of membranes will be used to line showers, tiled floor or other surfaces. If I’m painting a clear enough picture, you may begin to understand that there are actually a huge number of specifications and details relating to the way in which work will be done and that pinning them down will eliminate questions later on. 

There are also many areas in which a contractor may simply be doing it the way they are accustomed to operating that you may wish to have a say in. By seeing it in the contract, you have gained the possibility of inquiry and potential change. This applies to many things that you may or may wish to get on board with. It also induces discussion of methods and choices between you and your contractor that may never have happened were it not in writing.  

What you don’t want to hear is “don’t worry your little head, Ma’am. We’ll take care of everything,” Right? Even if you don’t understand a lot about construction methods, trust me, you want to be educated invited & involved.  

This also forces the contractor to stop and think about how they do things. They may have been doing a particular procedure or using a particular material so long that they’ve stopped thinking about it. By seeing it in the proposal, it becomes possible to question it and potentially alter it (was Heisenberg a contractor?). 

A contract also helps define and clarify the specific details that you’re asking for. A particular medicine chest that fills three stud bays (is framed into the wall several feet wide), a particular brand of toilet, a specific brand of paint that you’ve come to like. 

If it’s in the contract, you’ll know what you’re supposed to get and, if you don’t, you have a clear statement signed by both parties that eliminates the often encountered controversy over how it was supposed to be. 

I’ve been involved in too many cases where an unhappy client asked me to support his or her claim that they’d been, shall-we-say “mistreated” (you know that’s not the word they used) by that %$#*ing contractor and when I asked them what the contract specified, there was usually a long silence and then the shuffling of papers. Ultimately, most complainants don’t have the paper to back up their beef and benefit only from the learning experience. It’s very hard for a small-claims judge to do much for a client when there’s nothing in writing that clearly states what was to be expected. Yes, there are minimum standards for workmanship but they say little about what paint was to be used, which toilet was to be selected and whether a bath fan was included in the bid. 

If it’s not written down, it’s less likely to happen the way you thought it was supposed to go. Now, some smaller contractors work very intimately with their clients and the client gets just what they wanted, although they may not have a clear notion of the total cost in these situations, but, this is the less common case. 

If you are presented with a contract that seems a bit too sketchy and you like the contractor on other grounds (or they’re simply the only one you could get to actual produce a proposal), you can offer a counter-proposal that contains many more details that you’re aware of.  

Naturally, they will need to amend their proposal (you can and should try to write the contract) to include the new details and you can also ask for more specificity on the items you don’t understand also. 

Murphy has a few colleagues and my favorite is Hanlon. Hanlon’s razor says: Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity. 

Contractors are rarely malicious but a few … well, you know. 

 

 

Got a question about home repairs and inspections? Send them to Matt Cantor at mgcantor@pacbell.net.


Arts & Events

Arts Calendar

Tuesday February 05, 2008

TUESDAY, FEB. 5 

CHILDREN 

Chinese New Year Program with Elaine Chui at 7 p.m. at Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave. 524-3043.  

EXHIBITIONS 

“Eye Gotcha Covered” multi-media exhibit by Milton Bowens. Opening reception at 4 p.m. at The June Steingart Gallery of Art, Laney Tower Lobby. 464-3161. 

FILM 

Experimental Documentaries “F is for Phony” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808.  

“Iron Ladies of Liberia” A documentary on a new generation of leaders in Africa at 6:30 p.m. at Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak St. Panel discussion follows. Free. 238-2022.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

H.D. Moe, Garrett Lambrav, Blake More at 7:30 p.m. at Moe's Books, 2476 Telegraph Ave. 849-2087. 

James Martel reads from “Subverting the Leviathan: Reading Thomas Hobbes as a Radical Democrat” at 6 p.m. at University Press Books, 2430 Bancroft Way. 548-0585.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Fat Tuesday Mardi Gras Celebration with the Lloyd Family Players, Joyfull Noise Brass Band and The California Honeydrops at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $12. 525-5054.  

Singers’ Open Mic with Ellen Hoffman at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $5. 841-JAZZ.  

SF Bluegrass & Old-Time Festival with Huckleberry Flint and Mighty Crows at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $15.50-$16.50. 548-1761.  

Barbara Linn and John Schott at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave. 548-5198.  

Larry Coryell with Bombay Jazz at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $12-$20. 238-9200.  

WEDNESDAY, FEB. 6 

FILM 

History of Cinema “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari” at 3 p.m. and Jazz at the Movies “Paris Blues” at 6:30 p.m., “All Night Long” at 8:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Dahr Jamail discusses his book “Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches From an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq” at 7 p.m. at Revolution Books, 2425 Channing Way. 848-1196. 

Ying Chang Compestine talks about “Revolution is not a Dinner Party” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Music for the Spirit Celebrating Black History Month at 12:15 p.m. at First Presbyterian Church of Oakland, 2619 Broadway. 444-3555. 

Wednesday Noon Concert “Baroque and New Music for Viola” at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Free. 642-4864.  

Hugh Masekela’s Chissa All-Stars at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $28-$52. 642-9988.  

Calvin Keys Birthday Party at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ.  

Whiskey Brothers at 9 p.m. at Albatross, 1822 San Pablo Ave. 843-2473.  

Fourth Legacy, Armenian, at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $10. 525-5054.  

The Wayside State at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

Beckett’s Musical Forum, hosted by GG Tenaka, at 10 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790.  

Steve James with Eric & Suzy Thompson at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761.  

Quartet San Francisco at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $14. 238-9200.  

THURSDAY, FEB. 7 

FILM 

African Film Festival “Two By Sembene” at 5:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Free First Thursday. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Lunch Poems with Arthur Sze at 12:10 p.m. at the Morrison Library, inside the Doe Library, UC Campus. 642-0137. 

Lester Brown, Earth Policy Institute president, at 7:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing Way. Tickets are 45-$13. 415-255-7296, ext. 253. 

“The Exquisite Art of Brazilian Guitar” with Jesse “Chuy” Varela at 5 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall Lobby Mezzanine, UC Campus. Free. 642-9988. 

Richard Thompson Ford discusses “The Race Card: How Bluffing About Bias Makes Race Relations Worse” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 559-9500. 

Bill Joyce and Ella Lawrence read from “The Bicycle Book: Wit, Wisdom & Wanderings” at 7 p.m. at Black Oak Books, 1491 Shattuck Ave. 486-0698. 

Beth Lisick introduces “Helping Me Help Myself: One Skeptic, Twelve Self-Help Programs, One Whirlwind Year of Improvement” at 7:30 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloway’s, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

The Bridge Crawl, Don’t Lokok Back, Settledown, rock at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $TBA. 525-5054.  

Brazilian Guitar Festival with Sergio, Badi & Odair Assad at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $24-$46. 642-9988.  

SF Bluegrass & Old-Time Festival with Carolina Chocolate Drops at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761.  

Denny Berthiaume Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ.  

Alexis Harte Band, Kate Isenberg & Cindi Harvell at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave. 548-5198.  

The Famous, Emily Herring, The Hooroders, alt twang and rock at 9 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $6. 841-2082  

Fred O’Dell and the Broken Arrows at 10 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790.  

Eliane Elias, sings and plays Bill Evans, at 8 and 10 p.m., through Sun. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $12-$20. 238-9200.  

FRIDAY, FEB. 8 

THEATER 

Actors Ensemble of Berkeley “Barefoot in the Park” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m. at Live Oak Theater, 1301 Shattuck Ave. at Berryman, through Feb. 16. Tickets are $10-$12. 649-5999.  

Altarena Playhouse “Wait Until Dark” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. at Altarena Playhouse, 1409 High St., Alameda, through Feb. 16. Tickets are $17-$20. 523-1553.  

Aurora Theatre “Satellites” at 8 p.m. at 2081 Addison St. through March 2. Tickets are $40-$42. 843-4822.  

Berkeley Rep “”Wishful Drinking” with Carrie Fisher, at the Roda Theater, 2015 Addison St., through March 30. Tickets are $33-$69. 647-2949. 

Black Repertory Group Theatre “A Raisin In The Sun” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2:30 p.m. at 3201 Adeline St. Tickets are $5-$25. 652-2120.  

Contra Costa Civic Theatre “The Cocoanuts” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., some Sun. matinees at 2 p.m., at 951 Pomona Ave., at Moeser, El Cerrito, through March 2. Tickets are $15-$24. 524-9132. www.ccct.org 

foolsFURY Theater “Monster in the Dark” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m. and Sun. at 5 p.m., through Feb. 17, at the Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby Ave. Tickets are $12-$30. 800-838-3006.  

Masquers Playhouse “Angel Street” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2:30 p.m. through Feb. 23 at 105 Park Place, Point Richmond. Tickets are $18. 232-4031. www.masquers.org 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Real or Surreal” Art by Mari Kearney. Reception at 7:30 p.m. at Cafe Diem, 2224 MacArthur Blvd., Oakland. 

FILM 

Jean-Pierre Léaud “The Mother and the Whore” at 7 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808.  

“The Invisible Forest” A film by Antero Alli at 8 p.m. at 21 Grand, 416 25th St., Oakland. TIckets $8-$12. www.21grand.org  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Charles Wollenberg reads from “Berkeley: A City in History” at 7:30 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloway’s, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

Carol Gilligan talks about her new book “Kyra” at 6:30 p.m. at Bette’s Oceanview Diner on Fourth St. 559-9500.  

Last Word Reading Series with featuring poets Grace Grafton and Cherese Wyneken at 7 p.m. at Nefeli Caffe, 1854 Euclid Ave. 841-6374. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Anatolian Folk Music at noon at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Free. 642-4864. 

Triskela, celtic harp trio,at 7:30 p.m. at the Arlington Community Church, 53 Arlington Ave. Tickets are $5-$15. 526-9146. 

History and Harmony Black History Concert Series with Khalil Shaheed and 2nd Line New Orleans Jazz Band, James Tinsley at 7:30 p.m. at Allen Temple Baptist Church, 8501 Internationl Blvd., Oakland. Tickets are $5-$10. 544-8924. 

Catalina Claro, pianist from Chile, at 8:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $15. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Pamela Rose & Danny Caron Quartet at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island. Cost is $12. 841-JAZZ.  

Slammin, Crosspulse at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $12-$15. 525-5054.  

Justin Hellman at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $15. 845-5373.  

Amy Meyers at 7:30 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

SF Bluegrass & Old-Time Festival with The Freight Hoppers, Crooked Jades at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761.  

Bosssa Five-O, jazz, at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

David Silverberg, Christina Kowalchuk at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

Scott Amendola, Matthais Bossi and Devin Ray Hoff at 9 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $10. 841-2082.  

Jimmie Reign, Rozi Crane, R&B, at 9 p.m. at Maxwell’s Lounge, 341 13th St., Oakland. Cost is $10-$15. 839-6169. 

A.P.P.L.E., Resistant Culture, Armistice, at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $5. 525-9926. 

Kevin Beadles at 10 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790.  

The Jelly Roll Souls at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

Eliane Elias, sings and plays Bill Evans, at 8 and 10 p.m., through Sun. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $12-$20. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

SATURDAY, FEB. 9 

CHILDREN  

Children’s Book Marathon in Celebration of Black History Month from 1 to 4 p.m. at the African American Museum & Library, 659 14th St., Oakland. Free, but reservations strongly encouraged. 637-0200. 

Los Amiguitos de La Peña with Gary Lapow at 10:30 a.m. at La Peña. Cost is $5 for adults, $4 for children. 849-2568.  

Music and Puppets with Jen Miriam at 11 a.m. at Studio Grow, 1235 Tenth St. Cost is $7. 526-9888. 

“The Wizard of Ahhhhs” Magic show with Blake Maxam Sat. and Sun. at 1:30 and 2:30 p.m. at Children’s Fairyland, 699 Bellvue Ave., Oakland.  

EXHIBITIONS 

“The Art of Living Black” and “Emory Douglas: The Art of Political Protest” Opening reception with Emory Douglas in person at 3 p.m. at Richmond Art Center, 2540 Barrett Ave., Richmond. 620-6772. 

National Institute of Art & Disabilities “NIAD Faculty & Artists” A 25th Anniversary Celebration. Opening reception at 2 p.m. at 551 23rd St., Richmond. 620-0290.  

“Tilden Odyssey” Textured paintings, collages, and monotypes by Sheila Sondick on display at the Tilden Nature Center, through Feb. 28. 525-2233 

“Double Vision: Artist Partners” Opening reception at 6 p.m. at Chandra Cerrito Contemporary, 25 Grand Ave., upper level, Oakland. Exhibition runs to March 15. www.chandracerrito.com 

“Yea We Said It, And No We’re Not Sorry” works by Malik and Milton Bowens for Black History Month. Opening reception at 5:30 p.m. at Joyce Gordon Gallery, 406 14th St., Oakland. Exhibit runs to Feb. 29. 465-8928. 

FILM 

African Film Festival “Clouds Over Conakry” at 8:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Poetry Flash with Gillian Conoley and Jane Miller at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 559-9500. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Moiseyev Dance Company at 2 and 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $24-$48. 642-9988.  

Community Women’s Orchestra at 4 p.m. at Lake Merritt United Methodist Church, 1331 Lakeshore Ave., Oakland. Suggested donation $10, children free. 463-0313.  

Philharmonia Baroque Beetoven’s “Emperor” piano concerto with Robert Levin, at 8 p.m. at First Congregational Church, 2345 Channing Way. Tickets are $30-$72. 415-392-4400.  

“Love Songs & Chocolate” at 7 :30 p.m. at Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, One Lawson Rd., Kensington. Suggested donation $15, includes a variety of desserts. 525-0302. 

Powell St. John at 2 p.m. at Down Home Music, 1809b Fourth Street. 525-2129. 

Gateswingers Jazz Band, for dancing or just listening, at 8 p.m. at Central Perk, 10086 San Pablo Ave., El Cerrito. 558-7375. 

Ed Reed & his Quartet at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island. Cost is $14. 841-JAZZ.  

Yarie Toure, Djekouria Fanta Conde at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Guinean dance workshop at 9 p.m. Cost is $15. 525-5054. 

Kurt Maire, Jesse Rubin at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

Junius Courtney Band with a staged reading of “The Billy Strayhorn Session” at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50-$18.50. 548-1761.  

Kally Price Old Time Music at 9:30 p.m. at Albatross, 1822 San Pablo Ave. Cost is $3. 843-2473. 

Ray Obiedo & Mambo Caribe, Latin jazz, at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

Mikie Prasand Band at 10 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub. 647-1790.  

Beatbeat Whisper, Or, the Whale, Emily Jane White, indie folk country, at 9 p.m. at Starry Plough. Cost is $8. 841-2082.  

Terrence Brewer Trio at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

Izzy Osbourne, Everything Must Go at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $7-$10. 525-9926. 

SUNDAY, FEB. 10 

CHILDREN 

Oliver Chin reads from “The Year of the Rat” at 2 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 559-9500. 

Matt Faulkner introduces “The Taste of Colored Water” at 4 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 559-9500. 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Homage to the Motherland” Oil paintings by Hongyun Suriwong. Opening reception at 4 p.m. at Albany Community Center Foyer 1249 Marin Ave. Albany. 524-9283. 

FILM 

Human Rights Film Festival “Strange Culture” at 5:30 p.m., “City of Photographers” at 7:05 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

“Celebration of Music” with the Music School at Piedmont Piano Company to benefit Christopher Rodriguez who was shot while taking a piano lesson, from 2 to 7 p.m. at Chapel of the Chimes, 4499 Piedmont Ave. Tickets are $25. 547-8188. www.piedmontpiano.com 

Jen Baker, solo trombone, at 4 p.m. at 2213 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $5-$10. www.berkeleyartsfestival.com 

Live Oak Concert Jazz Duo with Laura Klein, piano, Ted Wolff, vibraphone, at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley Art Center, 1275 Walnut St., near Eunice. TIckets are $10-$12. 644-6893. www.berkeleyartcenter.org 

San Francisco Chamber Orchestra and Piedmont Choir in a family friendly concert at noon at Julia Morgan Theater, 2640 College Ave. Free. 415-248-1640.  

Moiseyev Dance Company at 3 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $24-$48. 642-9988.  

Organ Recital with John Karl Hirten at 6 p.m. at St. Mark's Episcopal Church, 2300 Bancroft Way. 845-0888.  

Philharmonia Baroque Beetoven’s “Emperor” piano concerto with Robert Levin, at 7:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church, 2345 Channing Way. Tickets are $30-$72. 415-392-4400. www.philharmonia.org 

Aleph Null Sextet at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ.  

Magic Carpet, world fusion, at 11 a.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

Debbie Poryes Trio at 4:30 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $15. 845-5373.  

Ledward Kaapana & Mike Kaawa at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $19.50-$20.50. 548-1761.  

La Plebe, Carnal Knowledge, Zomo at 5 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $6. 525-9926. 

MONDAY, FEB. 11 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Charles Wollenberg describes “Berkeley: A City in History” at 7:30 p.m. at Pegasus Books Dowmtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave. 649-1320. 

Aurora Theatre “Kings Play Chess on Fine Green Satin” reading followed by discussion at 7:30 p.m. at 2081 Addison St. Free. 843-4822. www.auroratheatre.org 

David Roche describes “The Church of 80% Sincerity” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

Poetry Express with FrancEye from Los Angeles at 7 p.m. at Priya Restaurant, 2072 San Pablo Ave. 644-3977. 

Poetry Reading with Lynn Knight at 6:30 p.m.,at Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave., Kensington. 524-3043. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Berkeley Arts Festival Jerry Kuderna Monday Lunch Piano Concert from noon to 1 p.m. at 2213 Shattuck Ave. Free. www.berkeleyartsfestival.com 

Luciano Chessa “Nodi d'amore” at 8 p.m. at 2213 Shattuck Ave. Tickets are $5-$10. 665-9496. www.berkeleyartsfestival.com 

Dazzling Divas Opera at 7 p.m. at Le Bateau Ivre, 2629 Telegraph Ave. 849-1100.  

Parlor Tango at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

West Coast Songwriters Competition at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage Coffee House. Cost is $5. 548-1761 www.freightandsalvage.org 

Dave Eshelman’s Jazz Garden Big Band at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $15. 238-9200.  

 


The Theater: FoolsFURY Stages ‘Monster in the Dark’

By Ken Bullock, Special to the Planet
Tuesday February 05, 2008

In gathering darkness from a storm—or in a dark prisoner’s cell—a disparate group of characters find themselves confronting fears over safety, security, their own behavior—primal fears. What’s in the darkness? A monster? Am I becoming a monster?  

As foolsFURY’s premiere of Monster in the Dark goes on, the individual characters telling stories to themselves or others (or just consoling themselves about their fears) begin to meet as their stories overlap and interpenetrate against the dark backdrop of impending disaster—a deluge which official channels continue to downplay, as torrential rains fall and waters rise.  

The personae are various, eccentric, and all a little bit humorous: an Ancient Mariner type, clinging to the rigging of a ladder on the edge of the stage; a bonneted proselytizer for faith and salvation, waiting for an ark; a prisoner in a tower, who writes his way through the wall; a spinsterish schoolteacher who departs from the approved tales in her storybook and finds herself meeting the prisoner in the darkness of a spooky story. 

Weaving these vignettes together is the talented cast assembled by foolsFURY, the decade-and-a-half-old San Francisco-based physical theater troupe, which performed a workshop version of the origins of Monster in the Dark at Ashby Stage three years ago, as part of Shotgun Lab. It’s called a spectacle on the program. Ben Yalom, foolsFURY’s founder and artistic director, has guided his performers through Doug Dorst’s tale of snowballing disaster—and stories—a little like acrobats in an arena (the audience is on two sides of the playing area), who not only take on sometimes shifting identities, but become an ensemble of, say, waves and victims borne away in pas-de-deux.  

The six onstage seem, at times, like many more: Beth Wilmurt, Blythe Foster, Deborah Eliezer, Jessica Kitchens, Peter Rucco and Ryan Tasker (Eliezer is the only member of foolsFURY’s standing company). Adroit at shifting identities—and identities that shift—these half-dozen grip the audience with both soliloquies and dialogue, with monologues delivered by one to another listening as well as by pure theatrics, kinetic stage artistry—all action.  

Doug Dorst has worked with foolsFURY before, as dramaturge for three other productions. The long, painstaking process to make Monster in the Dark (which runs over two hours) is sometimes almost palpable in the interstices between the vignettes, as they merge and become a full-fledged, multi-character story. Dorst is a novelist and creative writing instructor. There are moments in the second act that seem closer to narrative—especially with a 1984-ish backdrop like Monster in the Dark’s The Structure, with its ever-present Umbrella Men keeping the peace. There’s something of a switch to a different pace, a different density, once the frame of the whole story becomes more apparent.  

But the flurries of action and dialogue provide much pure theater-in-the-round, and the spectacle ends on two striking images—a kind of ark, or ship of fools (appropriately enough), and a solitary, if buoyant, expression of hope amid the sea of waves.  

Interestingly enough, Ben Yalom related that during the Shotgun Lab process, audience members seemed to split on generational lines over their comprehension of vignettes, whether framed or not by a comprehensive story. In the unfolding—or is it folding?—of this tale, the more mysterious fragments of voice and action, gesture and tableaux seem at first more theatrically suggestive than when the ensemble gets on more equal footing—albeit in a cataclysm.  

Yalom also said foolsFURY, in residence the past few years at SF’s Traveling Jewish Theatre, where they hold their Fury Factory festivals of experimental troupes from around the country, intends to perform in Berkeley more in the future. This is good news for spectators who value—or who’d like to discover—such accomplished seekers of spectacle, of the art of presenting a living, mobile image composed for all the senses, as foolsFURY is. 

 

MONSTER IN THE DARK 

8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday and 5 p.m. Sunday through Feb. 17 at the Ashby Stage, 2901 Ashby Ave. $12-$30. (800) 838-3006.


Around the East Bay: Berkeley: A City in History

Tuesday February 05, 2008

Charles Wollenberg, history professor at Berkeley City College, will speak about his new book, Berkeley: A City in History, Friday at Mrs. Dalloway’s Books, 2904 College Ave., at 7:30 p.m., and on Monday at Pegasus Books, 2349 Shattuck Ave., at 7:30 p.m. He will also discuss the book at University Press Books on Bancroft Way on Feb. 14, at 5:30 p.m., at the San Francisco Public Library on March 5, at 6 p.m., and at the Berkeley Public Library on March 31, at 7 p.m.  

In the book’s preface Wollenberg writes, “I have tried to present an impressionistic survey of the city’s history, giving residents a sense of how their hometown developed and how their individual experiences and those of their families, neighborhoods and communities fit into a larger historical framework. For nonresidents, the book describes the history of a city that, given its modest size, has had a remarkable influence on the state, the nation, and even the world.” 


Green Neighbors: Trees Show Their Bones and History in Winter

By Ron Sullivan
Tuesday February 05, 2008

Most of the public and literary appreciation for bare trees seems to come from wintry places like New England, but bonsai artists and fans and the landscape pruners who think along similar lines make a big deal of the “winter silhouette.” It’s one of the most refined criteria for judging a deciduous tree. 

One reason for that is that a deciduous tree in winter is naked indeed, and any mistakes you’ve made in shaping it will stick right out. In bonsai, the small scale makes errors even more obvious: it’s not so much miniaturization as abstraction, representing a wild tree in as few artistic strokes as possible, so any single part gets more attention.  

Once the leaves fall from landscape trees, it doesn’t take an expert to see what horrors have been wreaked upon them. There’s a row of poplars I have to look at every time I’m in the Union Bank parking lot; they’re up against a building on Channing and face west. In leaf, they look like so many toothbrushes; maybe some people think that’s an OK look. Naked, they’re just pitiful: nice straight trunks and then little awkward twigs sticking out in graceless desperate clusters.  

Maybe some people think that looks OK. There are those who go for pollarded trees, and some among them might be a bit uncritical of un-treelike forms for perfectly innocent trees. I find it hard to imagine, though.  

I’m a bit more tolerant of pollarding than I used to be—as long as it’s done right. Originally, pollarding was utilitarian, a way of harvesting firewood without killing the trees. Mulberries and sycamores will tolerate it well; it’s a classic urban way of treating London planetrees, a sycamore hybrid we often see in cities. If you try pollarding other species it’s riskier.  

Pollarding doesn’t mean just sawing pieces off at random. You have to start when the tree’s relatively young and take care to cut back to the same place on each scaffold limb every year. It gets easier to spot the place after a couple of years, as the tree forms big knobs at the cut places. You leave the knobs, taking off just the straight skinny branches that grew since the last pollarding.  

You also have to do it yearly, because those skinny branches are attached weakly, not to the central part of the tree. If they stay on the tree and get bigger, they just might fall off and bonk you on the head and it would serve you right.  

The trees still look funny to me, but I’m so old that low-rise pants look funny to me too: quaint. I wore them the last time they came around, in the ‘70s, and I remember how odd those old photos looked 15 years later. It’s just a matter of fashion, pollarding, until somebody blows it and then it’s tree abuse. (I suppose when somebody blows it with the pants it’s a gesture of solidarity with plumbers or somesuch.) Or maybe I’ve become more apathetic as I’ve noticed that both mulberries (the ‘Fruitless’ male clones planted as street trees) and planetrees are allergenic as well as ubiquitous. I’m Irish/Welsh; I bear grudges.  

One more positive reason for looking hard at a tree in winter is the revelation of the private lives of summers past. We see abandoned nests of squirrels and birds; there are field guides detailed enough to tell what species reared its young in each of them, in the shelter of last year’s leaves. Woodpecker holes and sapsucker drillmarks show up and winter residents become visible. The tree tells you what it and its tenants have been up to.  

The basic attraction of the winter silhouette is its sheer unlikely beauty. It’s so difficult to imitate the tree’s natural ramification, or just not to screw it up, because it’s not at all random. It obeys rules that are complex, mathematical, exigent, and organic, and while we sometimes know enough to approximate their effect, we rarely know enough to follow them precisely.  

Every cell in those twigs grows to reach toward light, to support a leaf that will catch as much light as possible, while responding to every other cell in the tree, pushing and dancing and proposing hypotheses, turning to bask in the sun and later lignifying, supporting its successors in the same quest.  

The tree makes its silent approximations every second of its growth, refining its formulae, adding to its suncatching surface, crystallizing to make its space while filling it, fracturing the sky into precise geometries. If we’re to do it justice, we must sit and learn, listen awhile, humbly shut up and hear what it has in mind.  

 

 

 

Photograph by Ron Sullivan. 

The delicate geometry of deciduous trees in winter at the MLK Jr. Shoreline from Arrowhead Marsh, Oakland.


Berkeley This Week

Tuesday February 05, 2008

TUESDAY, FEB. 5 

Remember to VOTE Today  

If you experience, see or hear about voting problems, please call the toll-free, nonpartisan Election Protection Hotline at 1-866-OUR-VOTE.  

Absentee Ballots 

If you have not sent your Absentee Ballot in by mail yet please do not mail it in now. Your ballot can be dropped off an any polling place. Find the polling place nearest to you at SmartVoter.org 

Tuesdays for the Birds Tranquil bird walks in local parklands, led by Bethany Facendini, from 7 to 9:30 a.m. Today we will visit the the EBMUD Velle Vista Staging Area. Call for meeting place and if you need to borrow binoculars. 525-2233. 

“Iron Ladies of Liberia” A documentary on a new generation of leaders in Africa at 6:30 p.m. at Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak St. Panel discussion follows. Free. 238-2022.  

“The U.N. Mission in Haiti” with Juan Gabriel Valdés, Chile’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations (2000-03) at 4 p.m. in Room 554, Barrows Hall, UC Campus. 642-2088. 

Teen Playreaders meets to read and discuss Hamlet and related plays at 4:30 p.m. at Claremont Branch Library, 2940 Benvenue. 981-6121. 

End the Occupation Vigil every Tues. at noon at Oakland Federal Bldg., 1301 Clay St. www.epicalc.org 

Tuesday Tilden Walkers Join a few slowpoke seniors at 9:30 a.m. in the parking lot near the Little Farm for an hour or two walk. 215-7672, 524-9992. 

Berkeley Camera Club meets at 7:30 p.m., at the Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. 548-3991. www.berkeleycameraclub.org 

St. John’s Prime Timers meets at 9:30 a.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. We welcome new members over 50. 845-6830. 

WEDNESDAY, FEB. 6 

Tilden Mini-Rangers Hiking, conservation and nature-based activities for ages 8-12. Dress to ramble and get dirty. From 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. Cost is $6-$8, registration required. 1-888-EBPARKS. 

Walking Tour of Old Oakland in Celebration of Black History Month “New Era/New Politics” highlights African-American leaders who have made their mark on Oakland. Meet at 10 a.m. and the African American Museum and Library at 659 14th St. 238-3234. www.oaklandnet.com/walkingtours 

“Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches From an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq” with author and journalist Dahr Jamail at 7 p.m. at Revolution Books, 2425 Channing Way. 848-1196. 

“Security in the Americas” with Juan Gabriel Valdés, Chile’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations (2000-03) at 6 p.m. in the Home Room, International House, Piedmont and Bancroft Aves. Free. 642-2088. 

“Peace is Every Step” a documentary on the life and work of Tich Nhat Hanh at 7:30 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St., Oakland. Donation $5. www.Humanist Hall.org 

“Hiking the Pacific Crest Trail” with Ken and Marcia Powers at 7 p.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. 527-4140. 

“Preachers Peasants, and Soldiers” Pure Land Teachings in medieval Japanese society at 7 p.m. at Jodo Shinshu Center, 2140 Durant at Fulton. 809-4160. 

Writer Coach Connection Volunteers needed to help Berkeley students improve their writing and critical thinking skills from 6:30 to 9:30 p.m. To register call 524-2319. www.writercoachconnection.org  

Red Cross Blood Services Volunteer Orientation from 10 a.m. to noon at 6230 Claremont Ave., Oakland. Registration required. 594-5165. 

Teen Chess Club from 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. at the North Branch Library, 1170 The Alameda at Hopkins. 981-6133. 

“Omega-3’s & Optimal Health” at 4 p.m. at Elephant Pharmacy, 1607 Shattuck Ave. 549-9200. 

“Weight Loss 101” at 7:30 p.m. at Elephant Pharmacy, 1607 Shattuck Ave. 549-9200. 

Walk Berkeley for Seniors meets every Wednesday at 9:30 a.m. at the Sea Breeze Market, just west of the I-80 overpass. Everyone is welcome, wear comfortable shoes and a warm hat. Heavy rain cancels. 548-9840. 

Berkeley Peace Walk and Vigil at 6:30 p.m. atthe Berkeley BART Station, corner of Shattuck and Center. www.geocities.com/ 

vigil4peace/vigil 

Morning Meditation Every Mon., Wed., and Fri. at 7:45 a.m. at Rudramandir, 830 Bancroft Way at 6th. 486-8700. 

THURSDAY, FEB. 7 

“Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization” with Lester Brown, Earth Policy Institute President, at 7:30 p.m. at the First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing Way. Tickets are $5-$13, available at independent bookstores. 415-255-7296, ext.253. 

The “War on Terror” and Human Rights with Major General (Ret.) Antonio M. Taguba at 7 p.m. at International House, Chevron Auditorium, Piedmont Ave. at Bancroft. Free admission, registration requested. http://www.acteva.com/booking.cfm?bevaid=150262 

“No Easy Victories: African Liberation and American Activists 1950-2000” A gathering of veteran activists of the anti-apartheid movement in the Bay Area at 6 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center, 3105 Shattuck Ave. 238-8080, ext. 309. 

Seniors Exploring Albany Hill Walkers age 50+ explore Cerrito Creek and Albany Hill from 9 aa.m. to 11 a.m. Meet at Peet’s Coffee, San Pablo and Carlson, El Cerrito (AC Transit 72). The pace will be moderate, but the walk gains almost 300 feet elevation. Wear shoes with good traction; bring walking sticks if you use them. Registration required. 848-9358. 524-9122. 

African-American Heritage Celebration Assembly at 1:15 p.m., soul food pot luck dinner at 6 p.m. at Cragmont Elementary School, 830 Regal Rd 

The Café Literario, book discussion group in Spanish, meets to discuss “El Túnel” by Ernesto Sábato at 7 p.m. at the West Branch Library, 1125 University Ave. 981-6270 or 981-6140.  

Teen Book Club meets to discuss books taht became movies at 4 p.m. at Claremont Branch Library, 2940 Benvenue. 981-6121. 

“Eight Twenty Eight” Lavi Ben Gal’s documentary of life on a kibbutz at 7:30 p.m. at JCC of the East Bay, 1414 Walnut St. tickets are $10-$12. 848-0237. 

“Elderhostel: Learn, Travel, Enjoy” Learn about the benfits of Elderhostel travel, a program for older adults at 1:30 p.m. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave., Albany. 526-3720. 

Demystifying Organic Wines at 1 p.m. at Elephant Pharmacy, 1607 Shattuck Ave. 549-9200. 

Stroke and Osteoporosis Screening from 9 a.m. on at La Quinta Inn, 920 University Aven. Cost is $159. Appointments required. 1-888-754-1464. 

Quit Smoking Class for LGBT Smokers Three sessions from 6 to 8 p.m. at the Pacific Center for Human Growth, 2712 Telegraph Ave. Free, but registstion required. 981-5330. 

Babies & Toddlers Storytime at 10:15 and 11:15 a.m. at Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave. 524-3043.  

Fitness Class for 55+ at 9:15 a.m. at Jewish Community Center, 1414 Walnut St. 848-0237. 

Avatar Metaphysical Toastmasters Club meets at 6:45 p.m. at Spud’s Pizza, Adeline and Alcatraz. namaste@ 

avatar.freetoasthost.info  

FRIDAY, FEB. 8 

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon with Jennifer Watts, State Water Resources Control Board, on “Environmental Impacts of Fish Farming.” Luncheon at 11:45 a.m. for $14.50, speech at 12:30 p.m., at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant St. For information and reservations call 526-2925.  

Textile Society of America Luncheon with selections from the Hillside Club’s costume collection at 12:30 p.m. at the Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St. Cost is $15, reservations required. 316-3528, president@hillsideclub.org 

Womansong Circle An evening of participatory singing for women at 7:15 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, Small Assembly Room, 2345 Channing Way. Suggested donation $15-$20.no one turned away for lack of funds. betsy@betsyrosemusic.org 

Berkeley Women in Black weekly vigil from noon to 1 p.m. at Bancroft and Telegraph. Our focus is human rights in Palestine. 548-6310. 

Circle Dancing, simple folk dancing with instruction at 7:30 p.m. at Finnish Brotherhood Hall, 1970 Chestnut St at University. Donation of $5 requested. 528-4253. www.circledancing.com 

SATURDAY, FEB. 9 

Pondering Ponds Listen to a tale about ponds, then explore this dynamic habitat filled with a variety of life, from 2:30 to 3:30 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

Waterfalls of Berkeley Join Berkeley Path Wanderers and Greenbelt Alliance for a 5-mile walk with a 500 ft. elevation gain to vist two waterfalls and climb a volcanic rock. Meet at 10 a.m. at Liaison Cafe, NE corner of Shattuck and Hearst. Bring lunch and liquids, wear stur/dy shoes and dress in layers. www.berkeleypaths.org 

Dawin Day A celebration of the contributions of Charles Darwin with a short course on global climate change and evolution, diversification from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Museum of Palentology. For information and to register see www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/about/shortcourses/shortcourse08.php 

Bookmaking with Recycled Materials Learn how to make a book using coptic binding and creatively recycled materials from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Cost is $10-$15. Reservations required. 548-2220, ext. 233, erc@ecologycenter.org 

Children’s Book Marathon in Celebration of Black History Month from 1 to 4 p.m. at the African American Museum & Library, 659 14th St., Oakland. Free, but reservations strongly encouraged. 637-0200. 

NAACP meets at 1 p.m. at 2108 Russell St. All are welcome. 845-7416.  

“Evolution is in Action All Around Us” A discussion of the book “The Science of Evolution and the Myth of Creationism” at 7 p.m. at Revolution Books, 2425 Channing Way. 848-1196. 

“A Celebration of Diversity” with art and games, and a community potluck, from 2 to 4 p.m. at Peralta Historical Park, 2465 34th Ave., Oakland. Free. 532-9142. www.peraltshacienda.org 

The Great War Society meets to discuss “Killers of the Sea” and “The Log of U-35” by Andrew Melomet at 10:30 a.m. in the West Berkeley Library, 1125 University Ave. 527-7118. 

“The New Eugenics: Stem Cell Research and Cloning, What the Public Doesn't Know” sponsored by the Alameda Public Affairs Forum, at 7 p.m. at the Alameda Free Library, Conference Room A, 1550 Oak St. at Lincoln, Alameda. 814-9592.  

Healthy Gardens Learn how to minimize or eliminate the use of toxic chemicals in the garden, at 10 a.m. at Magic Gardens, 729 Heinz Ave., off 7th St. 644-2351. 

“Lead-Safety for Remodeling, Repair and Painting of Older Homes” HUD & EPA approved class from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Alameda County Lead Poisoning Prevention Program, 2000 Embarcadero, #300, Oakland. 567-8280. www.aclppp.org 

Mindful Drumming: The Secret Power of Rhythm and Sound at 5:30 p.m. at Attitudinal Healing Connection, 3278 West St., Oakland. Cost is $20. 652-5530. 

Kids Go Green Activities centered on ecology and climate change from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Chabot Space and Science Center, 10000 Skyline Blvd., Oakland. Cost is $9-$13. 336-7373.  

Preschool Storytime, for ages 3-5, at 11 a.m. at Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave. 526-3720, ext. 17. 

Adopt a Bunny Learn about habitat, feeding, playtime and grooming of rabbits at 1 p.m. at RabbitEars, 303 Arlington Ave. at Amherst, Kensington. 525-6155. 

Teen Knitting Circle at 3 p.m. in the 4th flr Story Room, Central Library, 2090 Kittredge St. Bring your own knitting needles in size 8, sample yarns provided. 981-6107. 

Free Garden Tours at Regional Parks Botanic Garden Sat. and Sun. at 2 pm. Regional Parks Botanic Garden, Tilden Park. Call to confirm. 841-8732. www.nativeplants.org 

Around the World Tour of Plants at 1:30 p.m., Thurs., Sat. and Sun. at UC Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Drive. 643-2755. http://botanicalgarden.berkeley.edu 

The Berkeley Lawn Bowling Club provides free instruction every Wed. and Sat. at 10:30 a.m. at 2270 Acton St. 841-2174.  

Oakland Artisans Marketplace Sat. from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Sun. from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Jack London Square. 238-4948. 

SUNDAY, FEB. 10 

Green Sunday: “Courage in Life and Politics: The Dona Spring Story” with a film about Dona Spring, the longest serving Green Party elected official in the United States, and Berkeley City Council member for 15 years, at 5 p.m. at Niebyl-Proctor Library 6501 Telegraph Ave. at 65th in North Oakland. www.acgreens.org 

Lunar New Year Celebration and Parade starting at 1 p.m. at the top of Solano Ave. at 1 p.m. and ending with performances at the Main Stage at Cornell School, Solano and Cornell, ALbany at 2 p.m. 527-5358. www.SolanoStroll.org 

Golden Gate Audubon Society Field Trip “Tilden Regional Park” with Della Dash. Meet at 9 a.m. at the parking lot at north end of Central Park Drive near the Little Farm for a 4 mile hike to look at wintering birds. 843-2222. 

Darwin Day: “The History of Life on Earth” A talk by David Seaborg, evolutionary biologist, at 1 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St., Oakland. Donations accepted. www.Humanist Hall.org 

“Latin America’s New Political and Economic Independence: Implications for a Multi-Polar World” with Mark Weisbrot of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, Washington D.C., at 3 p.m. at Berkeley Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, 1924 Cedar St. Suggested donation $10-$20. 415-924-3227. 

Sushi Basics Learn the natural and cultural history of this cuisine as you prepare and taste seven basic types of sushi. From 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. Cost is $25-$39. Parent participation required for children 8-12 years. Registration required. 1-888-EBPARKS 

Kensington Farmers’ Market from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at 303 Arlington Ave. at Amherst, Kensington. 525-6155. 

Fullpower Workshop Learn simple effective skills to keep yourself safe from 6:30 to 10 p.m. in Berkeley Cost is $105, no one turned away. To register and for location call 831-426-4407 ext. 1. safety@kidpower.org 

Mantras of Henry Marshall, led by Marcia Emery, PhD. at 2 p.m. at Peralta Community Garden, Hopkins and Peralta. If by chance it rains, we will postpone until the following month. 526-5510. 

Berkeley Chess Club meets every Sun. at 7 p.m. at the Hillside School, 1581 Le Roy Ave. 843-0150. 

Free Garden Tours at Regional Parks Botanic Garden in Tilden Park Sat. and Sun. at 2 p.m. Call to confirm. 841-8732. www.nativeplants.org 

Lake Merritt Neighbors Organized for Peace Peace walk around the lake every Sun. Meet at 3 p.m. at the colonnade at the NE end of the lake. 763-8712. lmno4p.org 

Sew Your Own Open Studio Come learn to use our industrial and domestic machines, or work on your own projects, from 5 to 9 p.m. at 84 Bolivar Dr., Aquatic Park. Cost is $3 per hour. 644-2577. www.watersideworkshops.org 

Tibetan Buddhism with Robin Caton on “Keeping an Open Heart” at 6 p.m. at the Tibetan Nyingma Institute, 1815 Highland Pl. 809-1000 www.nyingmainstitute.com 

MONDAY, FEB. 11 

“Berkeley: A City in History” with author Charles Wollenberg at 7:30 p.m. at Pegasus Books Dowmtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave. 649-1320. 

“Genomic Advances to Improve Biomass for Biofuels” with Jerry Tuskan, Joint Genome Institute, Co-Lead on Laboratory Science Program at 5:30 p.m. at Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Thrust Stage, 2025 Addison St., Berkeley. Free. Presented by Berkeley Lab Friends of Science. 486-7292. www.lbl.gov/friendsofscience 

Berkeley CopWatch organizational meeting at 8 p.m. at 2022 Blake St. Join us to work on current issues around police misconduct. Volunteers needed. For information call 548-0425. 

Dragonboating Year round classes at the Berkeley Marina, Dock M. Meets Mon, Wed., Thurs. at 6 p.m. Sat. at 10:30 a.m. For details see www.dragonmax.org 

CITY MEETINGS 

Community Environmental Advisory Commission meets Thurs., Feb. 7, at 7 p.m., at 2118 Milvia St. Nabil Al-Hadithy, 981-7461.  

Housing Advisory Commission meets Thurs., Feb. 7, at 7 p.m., at the South Berkeley Senior Center. Oscar Sung, 981-5400.  

Landmarks Preservation Commission meets Thurs., Feb. 7, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-7419.  

Public Works Commission meets Thurs., Feb. 7, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-6406.  

West Berkeley Project Area Commission meets Thurs., Feb. 7, at 7 p.m., at the West Berkeley Senior Center. 981-7520.  

ONGOING 

E-Waste Recycling St. Vincent de Paul of Alameda County accepts electronic waste including computers, dvd players, cell phones, fax machines and many other ewaste products for disposal free of charge at many of its locations throughout Alameda County. Free bulk pick-up available. 638-7600. www.svdp-alameda.org 

Help a Newt Cross the Road Every year newts migrate across Hillside Drive to reach their breeding pools in Castro Creek. Volunteers prevent many of these creatures from being crushed by cars. We need volunteers every evening during January and February in El Sobrante. The newts are most active on rainy nights. annabelle11_3@yahoo.com 

Free Tax Help If your 2007 household income was less than $42,000, you are eligible for free tax preparation from United Way's Earn it! Keep It! Save It! Sites are open now through April 15 in Alameda and Contra Costa counties. To find a site near you, call 800-358-8832. www.EarnItKeepItSaveIt.org 

Donate the Excess Fruit from Your Fruit Trees I’ll gladly pick and deliver your fruit to community programs that feed school kids, the elderly, and the hungry. The fruit trees should be located in Berkeley and organic (no pesticides). This is a free volunteer/ 

grassroots thing so join in!! To scehdule and appointment call or email 812-3369. northberkeleyharvest@gmail.com


Correction

Tuesday February 05, 2008

In the Jan. 29 issue, the article “Feds Say Teece Must Pay $12 Million for Tax Dodges” had an incomplete last sentence. The full sentence was: “Recipients of [David] Teece contributions include President George W. Bush, state Senator Don Perata, former Berkeley Mayor Shirley Dean and Berkeley Councilmember Gordon Wozniak.”


Arts Calendar

Friday February 01, 2008

FRIDAY, FEB. 1 

THEATER 

Actors Ensemble of Berkeley “Barefoot in the Park” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m. at Live Oak Theater, 1301 Shattuck Ave. at Berryman, through Feb. 16. Tickets are $10-$12. 649-5999.  

Altarena Playhouse “Wait Until Dark” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. at Altarena Playhouse, 1409 High St., Alameda, through Feb. 16. Tickets are $17-$20. 523-1553. www.altarena.org 

Aurora Theatre “Satellites” at 8 p.m. at 2081 Addison St. through March 2. Tickets are $40-$42. 843-4822.  

Black Repertory Group Theatre “A Raisin In The Sun” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2:30 p.m. at 3201 Adeline St. Tickets are $5-$25. 652-2120. blackrepertorygroup.com 

Contra Costa Civic Theatre “The Cocoanuts” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., some Sun. matinees at 2 p.m., at 951 Pomona Ave., at Moeser, El Cerrito, through March 2. Tickets are $15-$24. 524-9132. www.ccct.org 

foolsFURY Theater “Monster in the Dark” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m. and Sun. at 5 p.m., through Feb. 17, at the Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby Ave. Tickets are $12-$30. 800-838-3006. www.brownpapertickets.com 

Masquers Playhouse “Angel Street” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2:30 p.m. through Feb. 23 at 105 Park Place, Point Richmond. Tickets are $18. 232-4031. www.masquers.org 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Tilden Odyssey” Textured paintings, collages, and monotypes by Sheila Sondick on display at the Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park, through Feb. 28. 525-2233. 

“Double Vision: Artist Partners” Opening reception at 6 p.m. at Chandra Cerrito Contemporary, 25 Grand Ave., upper level, Oakland. Exhibition runs to March 15. www.chandracerrito.com 

“Yea We Said It, And No We’re Not Sorry” works by Malik and Milton Bowens for Black History Month. Opening reception at 5:30 p.m. at Joyce Gordon Gallery, 406 14th St., Oakland. Exhibit runs to Feb. 29. 465-8928. 

Huey P. Newton Photography Exhibit Celebrating the achievements and influence of the founder of the co-founder of the Black Panther Party at the West Oakland Branch of the Oakland Public Libray, 1801 Adeline St., through Feb. 29. 238-7352.  

“Heart Attack: The Ying & Yang of Love” Group art show opens at Eclectix, 7523 Fairmunt Ave., El Cerrito. 364-7261. www.eclectixgallery.com 

“L I N E” Drawings by Keiko Ishihara. Opening reception at 7 p.m. at Front Gallery, 35 Grand Ave, Oakland. 444-1900. 

FILM 

The Medieval Remake “Lancelot of the Lake” at 7 p.m. and “The Knithgt” at 8:45 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Kelly Corrigan reads form “The Middle Place” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 559-9500.  

MUSIC AND DANCE  

Noon Concert, with Kai Chou, cello and Wiggin Wi, piano at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Free. 642-4864. 

Zydeco Flames in a celebration of Black History Month at 5 p.m. at Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak, Oakland. Cost is $5-$8. 238-2002. 

Andrea Prichett & Friends of Carol Denney, Funky Nixons, Phoenix, After Buffalo, MC Che X in a fundraiser for Carol Denney & Berkeley Liberation Radio at 7 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center, 3105 Shattuck Ave. Tickets are $12-$15 sliding scale. 849-2568. 

Dwight Tribble & Muzuki Roberson Quintet at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $14. 841-JAZZ.  

Soja, Rebellion, reggae, at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $12-$15. 525-5054.  

Palm Wine Boys at 8 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Darryl Henriques at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $19.50-$20.50. 548-1761.  

Andrew Sammons and Friends, jazz, swing, at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

Trick Kernan Combo, rock, jazz, at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. 

Dave Matthews Blues Band at 8 p.m. at The Warehouse Bar & Grill, 402 Webster St., Oakland. 451-3161. 

The Connie Lim Band, Tara Tinsley, Rabbitmotaei at 9 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $8. 841-2082.  

Kevin Seconds, Ryan Stark, Eric Core and others at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $6. 525-9926. 

3rd Date at 10 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790.  

The Immortals at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

Greg Scott, R&B, pop, at 9 p.m. at Maxwell’s Lounge, 341 13th St., Oakland. Cost is $10-$15. 839-6169. 

SATURDAY, FEB. 2 

CHILDREN  

Los Amiguitos de La Peña with Joe Reilly singing environmental songs at 10:30 a.m. at La Peña. Cost is $5 for adults, $4 for children. 849-2568.  

Active Arts Theatre for Young Audiences “Little Women” Sat. and Sun. at 2 p.m., through Feb. 3, at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave. Tickets are $14-$18. 925-798-1300.  

African Tales with storyteller Kirk Waller Sat. and Sun. at 1:30 and 2:30 p.m. at Children’s Fairyland, 699 Bellvue Ave., Oakland.  

FILM 

Screenagers: Bay Area High School Film Festival at 1 and 3:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808.  

Human Rights Watch Film Festival “Everything’s Cool” at 6 p.m. and “The Unforeseen” at 8 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

18th Annual African American Celebration through Poetry from 1 to 4 p.m. at the West Oakland Branch of the Oakland Public Library, 1801 Adeline St. 238-7352.  

David Rieff reads from his tribute to his mother “Swimming in a Sea of Death” at 3 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 559-9500. 

Bay Area Poets Coalition holds an open reading from 3 to 5 p.m., at Strawberry Creek Lodge, 1320 Addison St. Park on the street, not in Lodge parking lot. 527-9905.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Berkeley Arts Festival: Sarah Cahill, pianist, new music at 8 p.m. at 2213 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $10. 665-9496. 

The Laurel Ensemble, “French Romance and American Modernism” at 8 p.m. at Trinity Chapel, 2320 Dana St. Tickets are $8-$12. 549-3864.  

La Richie & Co. “Indoor Fireworks: The Pyrotechnics of Handel and his London Oboists” at 8 p.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College at Garber. Tickets are $10-$25. 528-1725. www.sfems.org 

Ethiopian Arts Forum: Either/Orchestra, led by Russ Gershon, with special guest Mulatu Astatke at 9:30 p.m. at Historic Sweet‚s Ballroom, 1933 Broadway, Oakland. Tickets, available at the door, are $20, $30 for VIP area. 501-3413.  

Young People’s Symphony Orchestra Winter Concert at 8 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing Way. Tickets are $12-$15. 849-9776. 

Winds Across the Bay “Winds Goes to the Movies” with music from Star Wars, The Aviator, Henry V, Lord of the Rings, Fiddler on the Roof, King Kong, and more, at 2 p.m. at the Hilltop Community Church, 3118 Shane Drive, Richmond. Tickets are $5-$10. 243-0514. www.windsacrossthebay.org 

Mardi Gras Countdown with Chelle and Friends at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $12-$15. 849-2568.  

Eric Swinderman Quintet “In Pursuit of the Sound” at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $12. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Mardi Gras with Hot Pink Feathers and Blue Bone Express at Café Van Kleef, 1621 Telegraph Ave. Oakland. Cost is $10.  

Creole Belles with Andrew Carriere and Suzy Thompson at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cajun dance lesson at 8 p.m. Cost is $13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com  

Rodney Brillante, Lily Virginia, guitar, ukulele, at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

Jim Post “Mark Twain and the Laughing River” at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $19.50-$20.50. 548-1761.  

Brian Pardo Group at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $15. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Caroline Chung Trio, jazz, at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

Apple Pie Hopes, The Hobo Gobbelins and Jonathan Beast & the Bathroom Floors at 9 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $7. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Mo’Fone at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

Tera Mellos, Planets, Car at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $6. 525-9926. 

SUNDAY, FEB. 3 

EXHIBITIONS 

California Society of Printmakers Valentine Show from 11 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at Chamber Arts, 2924 Ashby Ave. between College and Claremont. art@lilahands.com 

Watercolors by Emily Weil Opening reception at 4 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

FILM 

The Medieval Remake “The Seventh Seal” at 2 p.m. and “the Virgin Spring” at 4 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Rumi: and 800th Birthday Party with Coleman Barks and musicians Stephen Kent, Geoffrey Gordon, Sukhawat Ali Khan and Kris Yenny at 8 p.m. at King Middle School, 1781 Rose St. Tickets are $15-$20 at Cody’s and at www.kpfa.org 

Jim Wallis on “The Great Awakening: Reviving Faith and Politics in a Post-Religious Right America” at 7:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing Way at Dana. Suggested donation $10. 559-9500.  

“Radical Fatherhood and Political Parenting” Reading and discussion with Tomas Moniz and Rahula Janowski at 5 p.m. at Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave. 649-1320. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Young People’s Symphony Orchestra Winter Concert at 2 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing Way. Tickets are $12-$15. 849-9776. 

Live Oak Concert Solo Violin with Donna Lerew at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley Art Center, 1275 Walnut St., near Eunice. TIckets are $10-$15. 644-6893.  

Angela Kraft-Cross, organ concert at 3 p.m. at First Presbyterian Church of Oakland, 2619 Broadway. 444-3555. 

Mamak Khadem Ensemble, Middle Eastern fusion, at 7 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $25. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Plays Monk at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761.  

Ana Nitmar at 7 p.m. at La Peña. Cost is $10-$12. 849-2568. 

Grupo Falso Baiano at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Az Samad, Shelley Leong at 11 a.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

MONDAY, FEB. 4 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Real or Surreal” Art by Mari Kearney opens at Cafe Diem, 2224 MacArthur Blvd., Oakland. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Art, Technology and Culture Colloquium “Giant Robot Architecture” with Greg Lynn and Angewandte at 7:30 p.m. at 160 Kroeber Hall, UC Campus. 643-9565.  

“The Adventures of a Wildlife Photographer” with Eleanor Bricetti at 12:30 p.m. at Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave. 526-3720, ext. 17. 

David Lance Goines will present an illustrated lecture on the process of making posters at 7:30 p.m. at the Hillside Club. 

Actors Reading Writers “Transformational Romance” stories by N.M. Kelby and Jonathan Lethem at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. 932-0214. 

Aurora Theatre “Our Dad is in Atlantis” reading followed by discussion at 7:30 p.m. at 2081 Addison St. 843-4822.  

Poetry Express with Cherise Wyneken at 7 p.m. at Priya Restaurant, 2072 San Pablo Ave. 644-3977. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Berkeley Arts Festival Jerry Kuderna Monday Lunch Piano Concert from noon to 1 p.m. at 2213 Shattuck Ave. Free.  

Quake City at 7 p.m. at Le Bateau Ivre, 2629 Telegraph Ave. 849-1100.  

SF Bluegrass & Old-Time Festival with Town Mountain, Spring Creek and Homespun Rowdy at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage Coffee House. Cost is $15.50-$16.50. 548-1761  

Larry Coryell with Bombay Jazz at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $12-$20. 238-9200.  

TUESDAY, FEB. 5 

CHILDREN 

Chinese New Year Program with Elaine Chui, for ages 3 and up, at 7 p.m. at Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave. 524-3043.  

EXHIBITIONS 

“Eye Gotcha Covered” multi-media exhibit by Oakland artist Milton Bowens. Opening reception at 4 p.m. at The June Steingart Gallery of Art, Laney Tower Lobby,one block south of Lake Merrit BART Station. 464-3161. 

FILM 

Experimental Documentaries “F is for Phony” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808.  

“Iron Ladies of Liberia” A documentary on a new generation of leaders in Africa at 6:30 p.m. at Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak St. Panel discussion follows. Free. 238-2022.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

H.D. Moe, Garrett Lambrav, Blake More at 7:30 p.m. at Moe's Books, 2476 Telegraph Ave. 849-2087. 

James Martel reads from “Subverting the Leviathan: Reading Thomas Hobbes as a Radical Democrat” at 6 p.m. at University Press Books, 2430 BAncroft Way. 548-0585.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Fat Tuesday Mardi Gras Celebration with the Lloyd Family Players, Joyfull Noise Brass Band and The California Honeydrops at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $12. 525-5054.  

Singers’ Open Mic with Ellen Hoffman at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $5. 841-JAZZ.  

SF Bluegrass & Old-Time Festival with Huckleberry Flint and Mighty Crows at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $15.50-$16.50. 548-1761.  

Barbara Linn and John Schott at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Larry Coryell with Bombay Jazz at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $12-$20. 238-9200.  

WEDNESDAY, FEB. 6 

FILM 

History of Cinema “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari” at 3 p.m. and Jazz at the Movies “Paris Blues” at 6:30 p.m., “All Night Long” at 8:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Dahr Jamail discusses his book “Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches From an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq” at 7 p.m. at Revolution Books, 2425 Channing Way. 848-1196. 

Ying Chang Compestine talks about “Revolution is not a Dinner Party” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Music for the Spirit Celebrating Black History Month at 12:15 p.m. at First Presbyterian Church of Oakland, 2619 Broadway. 444-3555. 

Wednesday Noon Concert “Baroque and New Music for Viola” at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Free. 642-4864.  

Hugh Masekela’s Chissa All-Stars at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $28-$52. 642-9988.  

Calvin Keys Birthday Party at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ.  

Whiskey Brothers at 9 p.m. at Albatross, 1822 San Pablo Ave. 843-2473.  

Fourth Legacy, Armenian, at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $10. 525-5054.  

The Wayside State at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

Beckett’s Musical Forum, hosted by GG Tenaka, at 10 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790.  

Steve James with Eric & Suzy Thompson at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761.  

Quartet San Francisco at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $14. 238-9200.  

THURSDAY, FEB. 7 

FILM 

African Film Festival “Two By Sembene” at 5:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Free First Thursday. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Lunch Poems with Arthur Sze at 12:10 p.m. at the Morrison Library, inside the Doe Library, UC Campus. 642-0137. 

Lester Brown, Earth Policy Institute president, at 7:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing Way. Tickets are 45-$13. 415-255-7296, ext. 253. 

Richard Thompson Ford discusses “The Race Card: How Bluffing About Bias Makes Race Relations Worse” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 559-9500. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

The Bridge Crawl, Don’t Lokok Back, Settledown, rock at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $TBA. 525-5054.  

Brazilian Guitar Festival with Sergio, Badi & Odair Assad at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $24-$46. 642-9988.  

SF Bluegrass & Old-Time Festival with Carolina Chocolate Drops at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761.  

Denny Berthiaume Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ.  

Alexis Harte Band, Kate Isenberg & Cindi Harvell at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

The Famous, Emily Herring, The Hooroders, alt twang and rock at 9 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $6. 841-2082 www.starryploughpub.com 

Fred O’Dell and the Broken Arrows at 10 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790.  

Eliane Elias, sings and plays Bill Evans, at 8 and 10 p.m., through Sun. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $12-$20. 238-9200.  


Magic Circle Hosts Annual Banquet

By Ken Bullock, Special to the Planet
Friday February 01, 2008

The Oakland Magic Circle, the oldest independent magic club in the United States west of the Mississippi, is hosting its annual Installation Banquet and Show this coming Tuesday at the Bjornson Hall at 2258 MacArthur Blvd. 

“It’ll be a very international show,” said Scott Alcalay, new president of the Oakland Magic Circle. “Our headliners, Goldfinger and Dove, have played the Crazy Horse in Paris and have twice won the best of the year award at The Magic Castle in Hollywood. They’re true ambassadors of magic. Their act is fast-paced, with music and dance—all kinds of surprises from a repertoire so large,”  

Other performers include Patrick Martin of Palo Alto, who’s played the Easter Egg Roll on the White House Lawn “for two or three presidents,” Benny Benedini and his silent, quick-change act that was called “150 faces under a hat” in 1920s vaudeville—and KTVU Channel 2’s Bob McKenzie, member of The Circle “for decades,” performing his mentalism act, “The Mysteries of Mind.” 

Spectators at Magic Circle events will recognize Alcalay as the usual M.C., genial and witty. On Tuesday, he’ll be inducted as president, along with vice president Mark Tarses of Berkeley, secretary Byron Walker of San Leandro, treasurer Monya Casto of Walnut Creek, sergeant-at-arms Dagmar Thielson of Berkeley and librarian David Sament of San Francisco. Walker, a longtime Circle member, is an antiquarian magic book dealer with the largest independent collection on the West Coast. 

The Circle meets at 6:30 p.m. on the first Wednesday of every month.  

“We’re always welcoming new members,” said Alcalay, “And at all meetings, members always have an audience, so they can stand up and perform, practice their skills, show us what they’re working on. We also have magic teach-ins.Magic enthusiasts who don’t perform are also welcome.”  

This April’s meeting will feature The Circle’s annual magic swap meet and flea market, the largest in Northern California. “You’ll find selections of how-to DVDs, illusions, packet tricks, books, great presentation books, parlor tricks, close-up and stage magic,” he said. 

If the banqueters come early (doors open at 6:30 p.m.), they’ll see close-up magicians circulating through the tables. “It’ll be one of the best shows ever,” said Alcalay. “They seem to get better and better every year.” 

The Magic Circle was founded in 1925 by Arthur Bullo, who performed as El Tap. 

 

 

OAKLAND MAGIC CIRCLE 

INSTALLATION BANQUET  

AND SHOW 

Tuesday, Feb. 5, Bjornson Hall, 2258 MacArthur Blvd. (near Fruitvale Boulevard). 

$20 for adult dinner and show, $10 for kids dinner and show, and $10 show only. Only tickets for the show (without dinner) will be sold at the door. For more information and to buy tickets, see www.oaklandmagiccircle.com.


The Rasputin of the Plant World

By Jane Powell
Friday February 01, 2008

Some 10 years ago I was out in my backyard pulling up ivy. My next door neighbor was doing the same. As we both neared the fence he muttered, “Gardening in California—it’s all about killing things.” He was right.  

While I occasionally get to plant something, most of my gardening for the last twenty years has consisted of hacking back out-of-control plants and weeds. It’s not that I long for the Midwest, where I was born, but I do have to admit that snowy winters kill a few things off, or at least give one a respite from the battle. I always laugh when I read that some task should be performed when the plant is “dormant”—when exactly would that be? The bouganvillea blooms all year, the lemon tree always has lemons, and it’s always the season for weeds. 

Because I have always bought fixer-uppers, I have never been blessed with what the real estate ads call “mature landscaping.” Well, possibly it’s mature, but it always seems to be mature blackberries, bamboo, Bermuda grass, ivy, or the Ultimate Plant From Hel—oxalis pes-caprae. Blackberries are annoying—but at least you can eat them. Oxalis has no obvious redeeming value, yet is pretty much the Rasputin of the plant world. 

You have to grudgingly admire its will to live. It grows from bulbs, yet its connection to the bulb is so tenuous that if you pull it up the bulb stays in the ground. When the bulb gets big enough, it splits into more bulbs. But that’s not all—if allowed to flower, it also produces up to twenty microscopic bulblets at the base of the stem. And it sends out an underground rhizome as well. 

There is conventional wisdom about how to get rid of it. Use Round-up (glyphosate), they say. Ha! It barely notices. Use newspaper or cardboard with mulch on top. Yeah. It will grow three feet sideways till it finds the edges of the cardboard and come up there. Even if you overlap it by twelve inches. Soil solarization (putting down clear plastic) is mentioned. Uh-huh. That’s like sending it for a lovely spa vacation. Pull it up while it’s green—it will weaken the bulbs. Sure. They’ll only be able to bench-press 200 pounds after that. Landscape fabric? Oxalis grows right through it. Put on a high-nitrogen fertilizer and they’ll grow themselves to death? What?—Risk that they’ll mutate into a giant indestructible plant that will take over the yard? Oh wait—that’s already happened. Dig up the bulbs and sift the soil to make sure you get all of them. Impossible. You never get all of them. 

How do I know this? Because I have spent the last four years in my current house doing all of these things. And that’s only in the backyard. Recently I have spent weeks obsessively digging down twelve inches and removing every visible oxalis bulb in an area of about 10 square feet. The same area in which I spent weeks last spring (and the three springs before that) pulling up oxalis. Then the first rain of the season arrives—and two days later, the entire area is covered with happy green oxalis, looking no different from the rest of the yard. 

It’s like I have Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. It’s worse than Obsessive Weeding, with which all gardeners are familiar. I sit out there and sift through the soil, filling a bucket with bulbs. I don’t eat; I keep at it until it’s too dark to see. I have fantasies—mostly having to do with bulldozers, flamethrowers and Agent Orange. Occasionally I have another fantasy, one in which the garden is lovely, I have legions of gardeners, and all I ever have to do is wander out to pick flowers. In this fantasy I am also much younger, richer, and better-looking. I think longingly of this day when the oxalis is finally conquered, and there are no other weeds either. Then I remember the five million wild onion bulbs in the front yard, and despair. 

I ask myself, though frankly, not as often as others ask me, why I continue to fight this battle if it’s so futile. Well, there are many things in life which are repetitious and pointless, yet still need to be done—washing the dishes, for instance. Or I could say that I am doing my part in the battle against an invasive plant which is threatening many natural ecosystems. In a ploy for sympathy, I could compare it to my ongoing battle with a chronic form of Non-Hodgkins lymphoma—you know, all those out-of-control cancerous lymphocytes that must be killed before they colonize some other organ. Frankly, I was never much for all that cancer visualization stuff anyway. My battle with oxalis isn’t really a metaphor, it’s just an excuse to sit outside in the sun and air and think about stuff while doing a really mindless task. Not unlike fishing. Besides, deep down I hold on to the expectation that ultimately I will prevail. I’ve been told that old carpeting really will smother oxalis for good—maybe I’ll use Astroturf and pretend it’s a lawn. And I hear goats will eat anything.  

 

Jane Powell is the author of several books about bungalows, available at www.bungalowkitchens.com. Send your oxalis-killing suggestions to janepowell@sbcglobal.net. 

 

 

 

 

 


Garden Variety: The Edifice Complex Strikes Again

By Ron Sullivan
Friday February 01, 2008

Speaking truth to power is all very well. Sometimes, though, I just lose my temper and feel the need to speak truth to cockamamie. 

The same people, beings, places, systems that get routinely threatened by the powerful are just as vulnerable to the thoughtless deprecations of any bliss ninnies who get hold of a half-baked notion and enough bucks to get it started.  

If they don’t do more than dig a hole before the foundation grants run out, they’ve still obliterated whatever was there before them and set the stage for the invasion of the nasties. Remember that parable Jesus told that ended with the re-possession of the victim by not one but seven devils? 

Gardens are as invisible to such visionaries as natural systems and places. Is it because of the merely mortal, living beings that inhabit and compose them? It’s amazing that such beings seem to be so disposable; maybe it’s that humans can’t quite conceive of our own mortality, no matter how often or hard we get our noses rubbed in it. 

What ticked me off this week is a ballot proposition in San Francisco, and the full-page ad in Monday morning’s Chronicle promoting it. They want to pave Alcatraz and put in a porking lot. 

I don’t think this porkbarrel proposition will pass, given the lean times and general electoral impatience: the right thing for the wrong reason.  

“The Light Party” proposes in its “Alcatraz Conversion Project” that “By Converting Alcatraz Island, a place of pain and suffering, into a ‘Jewel of Light,’ We will activate powerful forces for cooperation, reconciliation and healing.” [All sic.] 

Evidently these bozos haven’t deigned to set foot on the island in the last few years, or weren’t paying attention. There’s a lot more going on at Alcatraz than an “old and decaying prison.” One of the most interesting experiment in actual cooperation between species is happening there right now. 

The gardens of Alcatraz are being renewed. These were planted and maintained for food and beauty by prison employees, their families, and sometimes by prisoners over the years.  

The interesting bit is that the Garden Trust and the National Parks people are clearing off smothering blackberry and ivy and propagating what plants they find around and under it to populate the gardens. These plants have persisted over some four decades of complete neglect, including watering—they’ve survived on rainfall alone. Alcatraz has no natural fresh water. 

The survivors include surprises like fuchsias, ten kinds of roses, pelargoniums, edible figs, artichokes (!), tulips, chasmanthe, aeoniums—nearly 200 species or cultivars so far.  

There’s also a thriving seabird colony: western gulls, Brandt’s and pelagic cormorants, and pigeon guillemots breed here. So do snowy egrets, black-crowned night herons, ravens, and song sparrows; I’d bet hummingbirds too.  

Let’s not pretend that demolition and construction wouldn’t screw all this up. 

Ignorance is not a virtue. Allowing oneself to persist in ignorance is wicked. Proceeding through ignorance toward destruction of our planet, one place at a time, is evil. Shame on these people.  

 

 

Gardens of Alcatraz 

Essays by John Hart, Russell A. Beatty, and Michael Boland; photographs by Roy Eisenhardt. 1996, Golden Gate National Parks Foundation. ISBN 1-883869-17-X (trade paperback) 

http://www.nps.gov/alcatraz/ 

http://www.gardenconservancy.org/ 

http://www.globalpeacefoundation.org/ 

 

Ron Sullivan is a former professional gardener and arborist. Her “Garden Variety” column appears every Friday in the Daily Planet’s East Bay Home & Real Estate section. Her column on East Bay trees appears every other Tuesday in the Daily Planet. 

 


About the House: Contracts and Contractors

By Matt Cantor
Friday February 01, 2008

Murphy must be in the contracting business. You know, the one who wrote that famous law: Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong. He (or she, we’ve never met in the flesh, although I’ve fallen victim to his/her epistemology a time or two) was either a contractor or the client of one for enough time to codify the law and its corollaries. 

When working with contractors it is inevitable that things will go wrong. Many of them will be small and of little consequence but some can go very wrong and lead to tears. Some lead to lawyers (always a bad sign) and most have some relationship to poorly written contracts (there is no accident that they’re called contractors). 

To minimize fretting and gunfire, a clearly written contract is a darned good thing and I would recommend that you demand such in advance of any work you have done by a G.C. (general contractor). Even the setting of a toilet usually involves a short proposal on an NCR form or receipt book. 

A contract doesn’t have to define everything imaginable but the more it does define, the less likely one will experience discontent. Further, I would argue that most of the really bad workmanship that keeps me in business (I get called when things go wrong) is generated by those who are incapable of producing a cogent and detailed proposal. How can you do it if you can’t even write it down?  

So, this is a sort of test or gateway for contractors and I assure you that if you do nothing beyond reviewing a proposal (agreement, contract or what have you) with some care, you will easily eliminate the bottom tier of contractors.  

This will of course eliminate the cheapest ones but I think you need to do that anyway. I have often found that those who seemed to be cheap, were, in the long (or short) run, no bargain at all. There is no job so expensive as the one you have to do twice.  

If you’ve managed to get a proposal out of your G.C. (or, ideally, several G.C.s), what you want to start looking for is very specific information about what will be done. You can’t be too picky here. Let’s say you are doing a bath remodel.  

The contract should specify the physical area that will be worked upon; how the area will be masked off, if that is to be done; which walls will be fully demolished (or ideally, all of them); what will be done with any decay, rot or damp that is revealed; identify which portions of plumbing will be removed and replaced; which material will be used; how old and new piping will be joined; what fixtures will be used.  

The document should state if the subfloor is to be replaced; what kind of membranes will be used to line showers, tiled floor or other surfaces. If I’m painting a clear enough picture, you may begin to understand that there are actually a huge number of specifications and details relating to the way in which work will be done and that pinning them down will eliminate questions later on. 

There are also many areas in which a contractor may simply be doing it the way they are accustomed to operating that you may wish to have a say in. By seeing it in the contract, you have gained the possibility of inquiry and potential change. This applies to many things that you may or may wish to get on board with. It also induces discussion of methods and choices between you and your contractor that may never have happened were it not in writing.  

What you don’t want to hear is “don’t worry your little head, Ma’am. We’ll take care of everything,” Right? Even if you don’t understand a lot about construction methods, trust me, you want to be educated invited & involved.  

This also forces the contractor to stop and think about how they do things. They may have been doing a particular procedure or using a particular material so long that they’ve stopped thinking about it. By seeing it in the proposal, it becomes possible to question it and potentially alter it (was Heisenberg a contractor?). 

A contract also helps define and clarify the specific details that you’re asking for. A particular medicine chest that fills three stud bays (is framed into the wall several feet wide), a particular brand of toilet, a specific brand of paint that you’ve come to like. 

If it’s in the contract, you’ll know what you’re supposed to get and, if you don’t, you have a clear statement signed by both parties that eliminates the often encountered controversy over how it was supposed to be. 

I’ve been involved in too many cases where an unhappy client asked me to support his or her claim that they’d been, shall-we-say “mistreated” (you know that’s not the word they used) by that %$#*ing contractor and when I asked them what the contract specified, there was usually a long silence and then the shuffling of papers. Ultimately, most complainants don’t have the paper to back up their beef and benefit only from the learning experience. It’s very hard for a small-claims judge to do much for a client when there’s nothing in writing that clearly states what was to be expected. Yes, there are minimum standards for workmanship but they say little about what paint was to be used, which toilet was to be selected and whether a bath fan was included in the bid. 

If it’s not written down, it’s less likely to happen the way you thought it was supposed to go. Now, some smaller contractors work very intimately with their clients and the client gets just what they wanted, although they may not have a clear notion of the total cost in these situations, but, this is the less common case. 

If you are presented with a contract that seems a bit too sketchy and you like the contractor on other grounds (or they’re simply the only one you could get to actual produce a proposal), you can offer a counter-proposal that contains many more details that you’re aware of.  

Naturally, they will need to amend their proposal (you can and should try to write the contract) to include the new details and you can also ask for more specificity on the items you don’t understand also. 

Murphy has a few colleagues and my favorite is Hanlon. Hanlon’s razor says: Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity. 

Contractors are rarely malicious but a few … well, you know. 

 

 

Got a question about home repairs and inspections? Send them to Matt Cantor at mgcantor@pacbell.net.


Berkeley This Week

Friday February 01, 2008

FRIDAY, FEB. 1 

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon with Andrew Stern, Emeritus Journalism School Professor, UCB, on “Photojournalism Today: Including Photos from Pamplona, Running of the Bulls.” Luncheon at 11:45 a.m. for $14.50, speech at 12:30 p.m., at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant St. 526-2925.  

“Redefining the Occupation in Palestine” A presentation and discussion with Mark Turner at 7 p.m. at St. Joseph the Worker Church, 1640 Addison St. $10-50 donation, no one turned away for lack of funds. 499-0537. 

“King: A Man of Peace in a Time of War” A documentary of Martin Luther King Jr. with rare footage from the Mike Douglas Show and his views on the Vietnam War, at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley Friends Church, Sacramento at Cedar St. 684-9303. 

“The End of Suburbia: Oil Depletion and the Collapse of the American Dream” A documentary on how “peak oil” affects life as we know it at 3 p.m. at Berkeley City College, 2050 Center St. Followed by discussion with Berkeley Oil Independence Task Force. www.relocalize.net/groups/oilindependentberkeley  

“The Story of Stuff” A documentary on the underside of our production and consumption patterns at 7 p.m. at Center for Urban Peace, 2584 Martin Luther King, Jr. Way. 549-3733. ext. 6. 

Friday Films for Teens at 3:30 p.m. at the Berkeley Public Library, 3rd flr., 2090 Kittredge St. For details call 981-6121. 

“Enlivening the Chakras” with Anodea Judith at noon at Elephant Pharmacy, 1607 Shattuck Ave. 549-9200.  

Mahea Uchiyama Center for International Dance Open House from 6 to 9 p.m. at 729 Heinz Ave. 845-2605. 

Berkeley Women in Black weekly vigil from noon to 1 p.m. at Bancroft and Telegraph. Our focus is human rights in Palestine. 548-6310. 

Circle Dancing, simple folk dancing with instruction at 7:30 p.m. at Finnish Brotherhood Hall, 1970 Chestnut St at University. Donation of $5 requested. 528-4253.  

SATURDAY, FEB. 2 

“Education is Everybody’s Business” Latino Education Summit with information on applying to college, financial aid, with workshops in both English and Spanish. From 8:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. at CA State Univ. East Bay, 25800 Carlos Bee Blvd. Free, but registration required. 885-3516.  

Save the Bay Trash Removal Technology Tour at Lake Merritt from 10 a.m. to 1 pm. Cost is $25, free for Save the Bay members. Call for details 452-9261, ext. 119. 

Masked Bandits Learn about clever racoons through a craft and a nature walk, for ages 6+ at 2 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

Grounhog Day Children’s events from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Storytelling at noon at Habitot Children’s Museum, 2065 Kittredge St. 647-1111.  

Winter Bird Walk at 9 a.m. at UC Botanical Garden. Cost is $12-$15. Registration required. 643-2755, ext. 03.  

Treasure Under Glass Tour of the Arid House, and Orchid, Fern and Carnivorous House from 10 a.m. to noon at UC Botanical Garden. Reservations required. 643-2755, ext. 03. “Where Have All the Rosies Gone?” with Betty Reid Soskin of the Rosie the Riveter/Home Front National Park at 2 p.m. at Rockridge Library, 5366 College Ave. 

Know Your Rights Training A workshop on your rights if you are detained or arrested, and how to be an effective police observer, from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. at 2022 Blake St. Free. Sponsored by Berkeley Copwatch. berkeleycopwatch@yahoo.com 

Politcal Affairs Readers Group meets to discuss”Africa Today” by Libero Della Piana and “The Eagle Flies Over Africa” by Vijay Prashad at 10 a.m. at Niebyl-Proctor Marxist Library, 6501 Telegraph Ave. Sponsored by the Communist Party (Oakland Berkeley). 595-7417.  

Preschool Storytime, for ages 3-5, at 11 a.m. at Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave. 526-3720, ext. 17. 

The Berkeley Lawn Bowling Club provides free instruction every Wed. and Sat. at 10 a.m. at 2270 Acton St. 841-2174.  

Oakland Artisans Marketplace Sat. from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Sun. from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Jack London Square. 238-4948. 

SUNDAY, FEB. 3 

Lunar New Year Celebration with activities for the whole family from noon to 5 p.m. at the Oakland Museum of California, Oak and 10th St., Oakland. Cost is $5-$8. 238-2002. 

Toddler Nature Walk, for 2-3 year olds, to look for salamanders at 10:30 a.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

An Amphibian Amble A walk to look for newts, ensatinas and salamanders in local puddles, ponds and under logs, from 2 to 3:30 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

Alan Rinzler’s Writer’s Workshop on “Getting Published” at 3 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. Other sessions on March 9 and April 6. 559-9500. 

“The Great Awakening: Reviving Faith and Politics in a Post-Religious Right America” with Jim Wallis at 7:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing Way at Dana. Suggested donation $10. 559-9500.  

“Radical Fatherhood and Political Parenting” Reading and discussion with Tomas Moniz and Rahula Janowski at 5 p.m. at Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave. 649-1320. 

Berkeley Rep’s Family Series Monthly theater workshop for the entire family at 11 a.m. at Berkeley Rep School of Theatre, Nevo Education Center, 2071 Addison St. Free, but bring a book to donate to the library at John Muir Elementary School. 647-2973. 

Old Time Radio East Bay collectors and listeners gather to enjoy shows together at 5 p.m. at a private home in Berkeley. For more information email DavidinBerkeley at Yahoo.com. 

Kensington Farmers’ Market from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at 303 Arlington Ave. at Amherst, Kensington. 525-6155. 

Lake Merritt Neighbors Organized for Peace Peace walk around the lake every Sun. Meet at 3 p.m. at the colonnade at the NE end of the lake. 763-8712. lmno4p.org 

Tibetan Buddhism with Steve Randall on “A New Way of Inquiry” at 6 p.m. at the Tibetan Nyingma Institute, 1815 Highland Pl. 809-1000 www.nyingmainstitute.com 

MONDAY, FEB. 4  

Golden Gate Audubon Society Field Trip “Arrowhead Marsh, Oakland” with Bob Lewis. Meet at 9:30 a.m. From 880, exit at Hegenberger, and head west. Turn right on Pardee and then left on Swan and right into the park. 843-2222. 

Building a Movement in Oakland in Solidarity with African Liberation from 7 to 9 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St., Oakland. Sponsored by the Uhuru Solidarity Movement. www.apscuhuru.org 

Berkeley School Volunteers Orientation from noon to 1 p.m. at 1835 Allston Way. Come learn about volunteer opportunities. 644-8833. 

Free Boatbuilding Classes for Youth Mon.-Wed. from 3 to 7 p.m. at Berkeley Boathouse, 84 Bolivar Dr., Aquatic Park. 644-2577.  

Berkeley CopWatch organizational meeting at 8 p.m. at 2022 Blake St. Join us to work on current issues around police misconduct. 548-0425. 

TUESDAY, FEB. 5 

Tuesdays for the Birds Tranquil bird walks in local parklands, led by Bethany Facendini, from 7 to 9:30 a.m. Today we will visit the the EBMUD Velle Vista Staging Area. Call for meeting place and if you need to borrow binoculars. 525-2233. 

“Iron Ladies of Liberia” A documentary on a new generation of leaders in Africa at 6:30 p.m. at Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak St. Panel discussion follows. Free. 238-2022.  

End the Occupation Vigil every Tues. at noon at Oakland Federal Bldg., 1301 Clay St. www.epicalc.org 

Tuesday Tilden Walkers Join a few slowpoke seniors at 9:30 a.m. in the parking lot near the Little Farm for an hour or two walk. 215-7672, 524-9992. 

Berkeley Camera Club meets at 7:30 p.m., at the Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. 548-3991. www.berkeleycameraclub.org 

St. John’s Prime Timers meets at 9:30 a.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. We welcome new members over 50. 845-6830. 

WEDNESDAY, FEB. 6 

Tilden Mini-Rangers Hiking, conservation and nature-based activities for ages 8-12. Dress to ramble and get dirty. From 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. Cost is $6-$8, registration required. 1-888-EBPARKS. 

Walking Tour of Old Oakland in Celebration of Black History Month “New Era/New Politics” highlights African-American leaders who have made their mark on Oakland. Meet at 10 a.m. and the African American Museum and Library at 659 14th St. 238-3234. www.oaklandnet.com/walkingtours 

“Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches From an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq” with author and journalist Dahr Jamail at 7 p.m. at Revolution Books, 2425 Channing Way. 848-1196. 

“Peace is Every Step” a documentary on the life and work of Tich Nhat Hanh at 7:30 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St., Oakland. Donation $5. www.Humanist Hall.org 

“Hiking the Pacific Crest Trail” with Ken and Marcia Powers at 7 p.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. 527-4140. 

Writer Coach Connection Volunteers needed to help Berkeley students improve their writing and critical thinking skills from 6:30 to 9:30 p.m. To register call 524-2319. www.writercoachconnection.org  

Red Cross Blood Services Volunteer Orientation from 10 a.m. to noon at 6230 Claremont Ave., Oakland. Registration required. 594-5165. 

Teen Chess Club from 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. at the North Branch Library, 1170 The Alameda at Hopkins. 981-6133. 

“Omega-3’s & Optimal Health” at 4 p.m. at Elephant Pharmacy, 1607 Shattuck Ave. 549-9200. 

“Weight Loss 101” at 7:30 p.m. at Elephant Pharmacy, 1607 Shattuck Ave. 549-9200. 

Walk Berkeley for Seniors meets every Wednesday at 9:30 a.m. at the Sea Breeze Market, just west of the I-80 overpass. Everyone is welcome, wear comfortable shoes and a warm hat. Heavy rain cancels. 548-9840. 

Berkeley Peace Walk and Vigil at the Berkeley BART Station, corner of Shattuck and Center. Sing for Peace at 6:30 p.m. followed by Peace Walk at 7 p.m. www. 

geocities.com/vigil4peace/vigil 

Morning Meditation Every Mon., Wed., and Fri. at 7:45 a.m. at Rudramandir, 830 Bancroft Way at 6th. 486-8700. 

After-School Program Homework help, drama and music for children ages 8 to 18, every Wed. from 4 to 7:15 p.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. Cost is $5 per week. 845-6830. 

Stitch ‘n Bitch at 6:30 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

THURSDAY, FEB. 7 

“Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization” with Lester Brown, Earth Policy Institute President, at 7:30 p.m. at the First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing Way. Tickets are $5-$13, available at independent bookstores and at www.globalexchange.org. 415-255-7296, ext.253. 

The “War on Terror” and Human Rights with Major General (Ret.) Antonio M. Taguba at 7 p.m. at International House, Chevron Auditorium, Piedmont Ave. at Bancroft. Free admission, registration requested. http://www.acteva.com/booking.cfm?bevaid=150262 

“No Easy Victories: African Liberation and American Activists 1950-2000” A gathering of vteran activists of the anti-apartheid movement in the Bay Area at 6 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center, 3105 Shattuck Ave. 238-8080, ext. 309. 

Seniors Exploring Albany Hill Walkers age 50+ explore Cerrito Creek and Albany Hill from 9 aa.m. to 11 a.m. Meet at Peet’s Coffee, San Pablo and Carlson, El Cerrito (AC Transit 72). The pace will be moderate, but the walk gains almost 300 feet elevation. Wear shoes with good traction; bring walking sticks if you use them. Registration required. 848-9358. 524-9122. 

The Café Literario, book discussion group in Spanish, meets to discuss “El Túnel” by Ernesto Sábato at 7 p.m. at the West Branch Library, 1125 University Ave. 981-6270 or 981-6140.  

“Eight Twenty Eight” Lavi Ben Gal’s documentary of life on a kibbutz at 7:30 p.m. at JCC of the East Bay, 1414 Walnut St. tickets are $10-$12. 848-0237. 

“Elderhostel: Learn, Travel, Enjoy” Learn about the benefits of Elderhostel travel, a program for older adults at 1:30 p.m. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave., Albany. 526-3720. 

Demystifying Organic Wines at 1 p.m. at Elephant Pharmacy, 1607 Shattuck Ave. 549-9200. 

Stroke and Osteoporosis Screening from 9 a.m. on at La Quinta Inn, 920 University Aven. Cost is $159. Appointments required. 1-888-754-1464. 

Quit Smoking Class for LGBT Smokers Three sessions from 6 to 8 p.m. at the Pacific Center for Human Growth, 2712 Telegraph Ave. Free, but registration required. 981-5330. 

Babies & Toddlers Storytime at 10:15 and 11:15 a.m. at Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave. 524-3043.  

Fitness Class for 55+ at 9:15 a.m. at Jewish Community Center, 1414 Walnut St. 848-0237. 

Avatar Metaphysical Toastmasters Club meets at 6:45 p.m. at Spud’s Pizza, Adeline and Alcatraz. namaste@ 

avatar.freetoasthost.info  

CITY MEETINGS 

Council Agenda Committee meets Mon., Feb. 4 , at 2:30 p.m., at 2180 Milvia St. 981-6900. 

Community Environmental Advisory Commission meets Thurs., Feb. 7, at 7 p.m., at 2118 Milvia St. Nabil Al-Hadithy, 981-7461.  

Housing Advisory Commission meets Thurs., Feb. 7, at 7:30 p.m., at the South Berkeley Senior Center. Oscar Sung, 981-5400.  

Landmarks Preservation Commission meets Thurs., Feb. 7, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-7419.  

Public Works Commission meets Thurs., Feb. 7, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-6406.  

West Berkeley Project Area Commission meets Thurs., Feb. 7, at 7 p.m., at the West Berkeley Senior Center. 981-7520.  

ONGOING 

Help a Newt Cross the Road Every year newts migrate across Hillside Drive to reach their breeding pools in Castro Creek. Volunteers prevent many of these creatures from being crushed by cars. We need volunteers every evening during January and February in El Sobrante. The newts are most active on rainy nights. annabelle11_3@yahoo.com 

Free Tax Help If your 2007 household income was less than $42,000, you are eligible for free tax preparation from United Way's Earn it! Keep It! Save It! Sites are open now through April 15 in Alameda and Contra Costa counties. To find a site near you, call 800-358-8832. www.EarnItKeepItSaveIt.org 

Donate the Excess Fruit from Your Fruit Trees I’ll gladly pick and deliver your fruit to community programs that feed school kids, the elderly, and the hungry. The fruit trees should be located in Berkeley and organic (no pesticides). This is a free volunteer/ 

grassroots thing so join in!! To scehdule and appointment call or email 812-3369. northberkeleyharvest@gmail.com http://botanicalgarden.berkeley.edu 

 

 

 

EDITOR’S NOTE 

The Planet has been notified that an individual is using our calendar listings to ask for cash donations for listed organizations, in particular for school tutoring. Donations should not be given to anyone on the basis of a calendar listing. We try to include a telephone number or website for all of our listings, and urge you to contact the organizations directly if you suspect that someone is using their name improperly. If you have any questions about our calendar, please e-mail calendar@berkeleydailyplanet.com or call 841-5600, ext. 102.