Posted Mon., Feb. 25—Paul Robeson was something of a Renaissance man. A singer, actor, lawyer, writer, civil rights advocate, all-American athlete and political activist, Robeson was a powerful and eloquent spokesman for racial justice well before Martin Luther King, Jr., or Malcolm X, yet these successors have eclipsed him in the annals of history. -more-

Posted Sat., Feb. 23—Tears, sobs, angry words, whispered remembrances and promises of action punctuated Thursday night’s gathering in a South Berkeley church to honor the memory of a grandmother fatally shot by police on the night of Feb. 16. -more-

The battle of attrition between UC Berkeley and the Memorial Stadium tree-sitters flared again Tuesday morning. -more-

Flowers, small stuffed animals and a tight cluster of votive candles offered a silent tribute to the life of a Berkeley woman killed Saturday night in a controversial police shooting. -more-

Berkeley’s Police Review Commission and Copwatch are among the groups demanding answers to why five-year Berkeley Police Officer Rashawn Cummings used deadly force on Anita Gay, a 51-year-old South Berkeley grandmother. -more-

Despite public outcry, the state agriculture department is determined to use a controversial aerial spray to eradicate the Light Brown Apple Moth (LBAM). -more-

Berkeley police arrested two men they say killed 23-year-old Wayne Drummond Jr. of Oakland in 2006 following a fight outside a Telegraph Avenue bar. -more-

Cody’s is leaving Fourth Street for downtown Berkeley. -more-

The Oakland City Council appeared tantalizingly close to a possible compromise on the city’s divisive affordable housing issues Tuesday night, but while the outlines for such a compromise have begun to take shape, it was unclear who would be brokering a possible agreement, or the logistics of how it would take place. -more-

Longtime Berkeley resident and business woman Mabel Bolton has left Thousand Oaks Elementary School $150,000 as part of her will. -more-

The expected and the unexpected have joined the Oakland City Council and Oakland Unified School District Board of Directors party, adding to what is looking like an increasingly crowded slate for the June 3 elections. -more-

Posted Wed., Feb. 21—Cody’s is leaving Fourth Street for downtown Berkeley. -more-

Posted Tue., Feb. 19—The 444-day-old battle of attrition between UC Berkeley and the Memorial Stadium tree-sitters flared again Tuesday morning, with the university claiming the victory. -more-

www.youtube.com/watch?v=TyfxiVCVSEM -more-

For Rev. Andre Shumake Sr., head of a faith-based community alliance in the East Bay’s most troubled city, Richmond’s Green Party mayor has proved a strong ally. -more-

Posted Mon. Feb 18, 2008--An officer responding to reports of a domestic disturbance at a south Berkeley apartment building Saturday night used deadly force on a woman who allegedly confronted the officer with a knife, according to the Berkeley Police Department. -more-

The Berkeley Board of Education is investigating Willard Middle School Vice Principal Margaret Lowry for allegedly giving a student money to buy marijuana from another student, the Planet has learned. -more-

Pools, police, pipes, fire prevention, youth services: fulfilling city needs will take new funding—perhaps $30 million. And that greatly surpasses the dollars flowing into Berkeley’s coffers. -more-

Representatives of Oakland’s Children’s Hospital and many of the hospital’s North Oakland neighbors danced around each other at a North Oakland Senior Center community meeting for two hours last Wednesday night, with neither side seeming to be sure what music was being played, or even if the band had stopped altogether. -more-

A broken red heart with a band-aid taped on it peeked out of Westlake Middle School student Jabari Valentine’s pocket. -more-

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenneger’s proposed $4.8 million budget cuts from state education funds dominated the conversation during a reception held for Berkeley’s new superintendent of schools Bill Huyett at the City Council chambers Wednesday. -more-

Since the Marine Recruiting Center in downtown Berkeley was locked Friday morning when the World Can’t Wait protesters arrived around 7:30 a.m. aiming to shut it down and risk arrest, the group and its allies from Code Pink and ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and Racism) went to Plan B. -more-

With the presidential primary over, Alameda County voters will now have to turn their attention to several hotly contested local legislative races in the June 3 first-round voting, as well as a rare, contested Superior Court judge seat. -more-

Planning Commissioners and interested citizens will tour West Berkeley March 1 as the commission prepares to ease new zoning rules in the city’s core industrial area. -more-

At the top of the bad news on Monday morning: Vallejo’s about to capture the dubious distinction of being the first California city to declare bankruptcy, mainly because of the huge increases built into its public safety salaries and pensions. And it’s just the tip of the iceberg, with many others likely to follow. Sharp-pencil citizens and Planet reporters have documented Berkeley’s on-going liabilities in this department several times in these pages, and they’ll do it again, particularly as election-time draws near and city administrators’ plans to add more tax increases to the ballot are firmed up. Liberals that we are, Berkeleyans very seldom say no, either to our city or to our schools, but as the recession deepens into what some are already calling a depression, it could happen. -more-

The Planet is only printing letters from locals regarding the ruling on the Marine Recruitment Station. Some of these letters were sent prior to the Feb. 12 City Council meeting and thus do not reflect the council’s most recent ruling. -more-

SAYING THANKS -more-

My interest was piqued by the editor’s quotation from Carole Norris in a recent editorial about Nancy Skinner: “Nancy ... worked with Berkeley ZAB members to organize support and approvals for a number of infill projects facing opposition including the Berkeley Bowl, several condo projects and the proposed mixed use project that includes Trader Joe’s.” My question is where was Nancy Skinner’s ‘work’ done? -more-

For the record, I voted against the Berkeley City Council motion authorizing a letter to tell the Marines they were unwelcome and uninvited intruders in Berkeley. I also made the motion to rescind that vote and to apologize for it. Since I am a lifetime activist for peace who has been arrested and beaten up while protesting for peace, some wondered if I was caving in to the right-wing pressure. Instead I would suggest that my position offered the best chance for intelligent effective advocacy for peace. -more-

On St. Patrick’s Day 2007 my friend and I participated in a peace march in Charleston, South Carolina; it was billed on the flyer as “Introducing Code Pink Charleston.” Then on Jan. 18 there was J. Douglas Allen-Taylor’s thoughtful and sensitive Undercurrents column, “Ghost of America’s Racial Past Lies Uneasy in South Carolina.” That however was followed by Senator DeMint’s not-so-sensitive response to the action of the Berkeley City Council. The Undercurrents piece should be followed with a more sensitive response to the present turn of affairs. -more-

Five members of the People’s Park Community Advisory Board resigned in January, disgusted with the University of California. In that respect, for a moment, this unrepresentative, chancellor-selected group represented the community well. -more-

In November 2000, a supermajority of Berkeley voters passed Measure R, a bond measure to “reconstruct, renovate, repair, and improve the warm water pool facilities at Berkeley High School (including restrooms and locker space) in order to prepare the facilities for greater community use by seniors, disabled adults and disabled children, some of whom use the pool for physical therapy” (to quote the description in the voter information pamphlet). -more-

While contemplating various actions of the City Council it struck me that the council is either hopelessly befuddled or dangerously devious. Either they don’t understand what they are doing or they are destroying this city on purpose. Certainly they cannot represent us, as a letter to this paper noted last week. -more-

CHEAP SHOT -more-

Becky O’Malley’s Jan. 22 editorial criticizes the Berkeley City Council for considering a new ordinance to replace out-dated ordinances that do a poor job of managing problems with the city’s alcohol outlets. Berkeley Daily Planet readers should know how this ordinance came about. -more-

Two reports in Science, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) journal, got considerable media coverage on Feb. 8-9 with results in both showing that expanding biocrops for energy will greatly increase the soil emission of greenhouse gases (GHGs) mainly carbon dioxide from the exposing of buried plant debris. The UN report released in Spring 2007 and prepared by the Scientific Expert Group (SEG) under the aegis of Sigma Xi said that “Even if human emissions could be instantaneously stopped, the world would not escape further climate change.” The Winter 2006 issue of AAAS Matters called for carbon dioxide sequestering. So we are going the wrong way with bioenergy thinking sponsored by BP at Berkeley and need to get a program that will actually remove some of the 35 percent overload of carbon dioxide mentioned in my Nov. 30, 2007, commentary. -more-

With the tree-sit protest at the UC Berkeley Memorial Oak Grove having reached its year-anniversary, the university’s tactics to thwart the protest have taken a have taken a harsh and dark turn. A double-fenced, barbed wire ghetto with blinding lights shining into the trees and street with loud generators running all night as an attempted form of mental torture to the tree-sitters is reminiscent of some state of siege. The university and its private police department’s interpretation of a recent civil injunction order constitutes a direct assault on basic American civil liberties and constitutional rights. An assault on these cherished rights and freedoms that amounts to, in my opinion, the first step into martial law. -more-

I would like to make just a few simple comments about the Marine Corps recruiting office stand-off. First, the U.S. Marine Corps is a military organization with a long history, dating back nearly to the time of the Continental Army. The Marine Corps has been involved in all of the nation’s conflicts since the revolution. The Marine Corps has a proud record of fighting with dignity that compares favorably to any other military organization in the world. It is an all volunteer force that draws its officers and men from across America and responds and is directed by the elected government of the United States. In other words, the Marine Corps is America and America is the Marine Corps. -more-

One of the many perturbing effects of the Berkeley City Council’s colossally stupid attack on the Marines is the re-emergence of UC professor and San Francisco resident David Kirp as an apologist for Berkeley City Hall. On Feb. 18 Kirk’s provoking tribute to the city’s officialdom, “Semper Fi, Berkeley,” appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle. -more-

One of the reasons that three of the most pressing issues currently on Oakland’s city agenda—crime and violence, industrial zoning preservation vs. residential or commercial development, and affordable housing—are so naggingly difficult to settle is that, while there is an underlying current that runs through all of them and ties them all together, there is reluctance to talk about them, to engage that debate in the open. -more-

Of all the architects who resided in Berkeley during the first four decades of the 20th century, the one who received the most coverage in the local press was not John Galen Howard or Bernard Maybeck but William Hatch Wharff. And only occasionally was the press coverage related to his profession. -more-

“Music will be an Old Time Music Jam, bring yer fiddle,” is what Terri Compost, the exquisitely named point person of the Bay Area Seed Interchange Library (acronym’ed, equally exquisitely, “BASIL”) replied to my query. I wanted to know who would be playing the music promised for BASIL’s Ninth Annual Seed Swap tomorrow, Saturday February 23, 6:30 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. at the Ecology Center. Dang, I don’t have a fiddle. Guess I’ll just send the cat. -more-

I was inspecting a house out beyond the Naugahyde Curtain the other day (Walnut Creek, if memory serves; landing strip for white flight). The house was unillustrious but amongst the artifacts that brought me sufficient intrigue to set the day aglow was a brand new fireplace. -more-

I hate to sound like a broken record, but I’m fixated on keeping privately run Children’s Hospital Oakland (CHO) from eating me and my neighborhood alive. Soon there’ll be nothing left of me but a small oil slick in front of my 100-year-old house. That should make it easier for the bulldozers to roll down Dover Street. At least there’ll be no me to run over. -more-

It’s always dangerous to read too much into trends in popular culture. Nonetheless, there seems to be a strong relationship between the five movies nominated for best picture of 2007 and polls showing 67 percent of Americans believe the United States is headed in the wrong direction. -more-

Never mind that it’s caught me unarmed and ill-prepared, as usual; I love this sample of early spring we’re getting. We didn’t have it quite the same way last year, I guess. As happened, I was ‘way out of town and in another climate for most of last February on a most urgent and unfortunate errand, so I’m only guessing. -more-

FRIDAY, FEB. 22 -more-

Jovelyn Richards of Oakland is a born storyteller. When she was little, her mother would have visitors by for coffee “and I heard things that weren’t said; I put language to their secrets. After they left, I told my mother their story. She knew the truth from them and would say, ‘Where did you get that?’ I was putting language to their secrets. I didn’t know how to decode that for her.” -more-

A clerk at a Florida resort hotel during the 1920s property boom leaps out from behind his desk and joins in a lively production number. The villainess in an engagement con on a wealthy mother and daughter leads a line of dancers doing the Charleston. -more-

Of all the architects who resided in Berkeley during the first four decades of the 20th century, the one who received the most coverage in the local press was not John Galen Howard or Bernard Maybeck but William Hatch Wharff. And only occasionally was the press coverage related to his profession. -more-

“Music will be an Old Time Music Jam, bring yer fiddle,” is what Terri Compost, the exquisitely named point person of the Bay Area Seed Interchange Library (acronym’ed, equally exquisitely, “BASIL”) replied to my query. I wanted to know who would be playing the music promised for BASIL’s Ninth Annual Seed Swap tomorrow, Saturday February 23, 6:30 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. at the Ecology Center. Dang, I don’t have a fiddle. Guess I’ll just send the cat. -more-

I was inspecting a house out beyond the Naugahyde Curtain the other day (Walnut Creek, if memory serves; landing strip for white flight). The house was unillustrious but amongst the artifacts that brought me sufficient intrigue to set the day aglow was a brand new fireplace. -more-

FRIDAY, FEB. 22 -more-

TUESDAY, FEB. 19 -more-

A Korean-American architect and her African-American husband move with their baby daughter into a fixer-upper Brooklyn brownstone—holes in the plaster, boxes everywhere, a makeshift architect’s office—when a black neighbor, who seems to have been the original kid-on-the-corner, drops by repeatedly offering one deal after another, and the husband’s ne’er-do-well adoptive brother blows in from an Asian getaway, wanting to move in and start a business with his bro’—and the new Korean nanny inadvertently starts pushing a new mother’s buttons. Then a brick comes crashing through the window. -more-

Never mind that it’s caught me unarmed and ill-prepared, as usual; I love this sample of early spring we’re getting. We didn’t have it quite the same way last year, I guess. As happened, I was ‘way out of town and in another climate for most of last February on a most urgent and unfortunate errand, so I’m only guessing. -more-

TUESDAY, FEB. 19 -more-

From my sixth-floor living room window I have a glorious panoramaic view of the Berkeley and Oakland hills. I never tire of this view, gazing out at the Campanile, International House, the Claremont Hotel and numerous campus buildings. When I pull my drapes apart in the early morning, it’s almost as though I were opening curtains to a stage. This comparison may sound a bit fanciful, but is it really? -more-