Posted Thurs., March 20—Registered nurses at Berkeley’s Alta Bates Summit and Herrick Hospitals are walking out Friday for a 10-day strike against the Sutter hospital chain. 

It’s the third walkout called by the California Nurses Association (CNA) since contract talks stalled with the Sutter hospitals—which negotiate contracts individually for each hospital or group. 

Alta Bates Summit includes the Berkeley hospital on Ashby Avenue, the Summit Medical Center in Oakland and Herrick Hospital. 

CNA has called two previous job actions at the local hospitals, one called for two days in October and the second three years ago, a one-day action. 

In both cases Sutter locked out the nurses following the actions, extending their absence to five days—a move the hospitals said was needed to attract replacements. 

While the first walkout was supported by members of the Service Employees International Union, the two unions have since fallen out, most recently over rival organizing activities in Ohio. 

In California, CNA represents Registered Nurses, while the SEIU, as United Healthcare Workers West, represents Licensed Vocational Nurses and other hospital employees. RNs require a higher level of training than LVNs. 

A total of 4,000 RNs will walk out at Sutter’s bay area hospitals, starting at 7 a.m. Friday. 

Other hospitals affected include Sutter Delta Medical Center in Antioch, Miller-Peninsula Health Services in Burlingame and San Mateo, Eden Medical Center in Castro Valley, San Leandro Hospital, St. Luke’s Hospital and California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco and Sutter Solano Medical Center in Vallejo. 

San Francisco-Based HealthSource and Colorado-Based U.S. Nursing—agencies that specialize in hiring strike replacements—have both recruited nurses to fill in for striking Sutter workers. 

U.S. Nursing was offering $48 to $60 an hour for RNs, depending on speciality, with a guarantee of 84 hours of work or a minimum of $2,880 if the strike is settled after they arrive but before they start work. 

All travel and housing expenses would also be paid. 

In one of the more unusual press release issued over a labor conflict, Sutter blasted the union for “Promoting a ‘Party Like’ Atmosphere During the 10-Day Strike.” 

Apparently believing that strikes should be somber events, Sutter reprinted a union schedule which stated that family-oriented events would be held every day during the walkout, including face-painting, arts and crafts and a noon barbecue. 

However, Sutter’s hiring sources offer promises of their own, with HealthSource, however, noting in its call for replacements “Typically, you are housed in luxury hotels with all amenities available.”

Posted Thurs., March 20—Calling for immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq, participants in daylong events in Berkeley marked the fifth anniversary of the Iraq War on Wednesday with protests at the downtown Marine Recruiting Center and a rally in Civic Center Park. 

The protest grew to some 250 people when Civic Center demonstrators marched to the recruiting center after the noon rally, but for most of the day numbers were smaller, with police sometimes outnumbering protesters. 

The noon rally in the park featured a hip-hop band and Cindy Sheehan, peace activist turned candidate for Congress, running for Nancy Pelosi's seat on the Green Party ticket. Addressing the young people, Sheehan, whose son Casey was killed in Iraq, said the growing debt to pay for the war will fall to them. “They're robbing you of your future,” she said.  

“They send jobs overseas and think you'll join the military,” she said, urging the teens to “flip burgers,” if they have to.  

“Do not join the military,” she warned, adding, “We have a right to say, 'Marines, get out of our community.'” 

Calling on the crowd to become active opponents of the war, Sheehan asked, “Why are George Bush and Dick Cheney still there?” and answered, “We let them be there.” 

Organizers—the ANSWER Coalition, Code Pink and the World Can't Wait—held a second rally in the street outside the Marine Recruiting Center at 64 Shattuck Square, as police blocked traffic. Demonstrators maintained a presence all day at the recruiting center, which did not open. 

A group of five people, most of them members of the Berkeley College Republicans, held American flags and argued with some of the anti-war demonstrators. 

A counter-protester carrying an American flag, who identified herself only as Kimberly, told the Planet she had come because the Berkeley City Council had been disrespectful to the Marines in saying they were not welcome in the city. 

She was also there to support the war effort, which she called a “defensive war.”  

“We can't wait until we're attacked,” she said. Asked if the Iraqis were going to attack the U.S., she said it isn't the Iraqi people that would attack.  

“It's a threat from the Middle East,” she said. Without the defensive war, “9-11 could happen all over again.” 

Police Chief Doug Hambleton said the entire police force was on duty on Wednesday, with officers covering their regular beats and other officers working on their days off to cover the demonstrations. 

Asked why there were so many police—at times there were as many as three dozen police guarding the Marine Recruiting Center, with another dozen officers across the street and more stationed at a number of downtown street corners—Hambleton and City Manager Phil Kamlarz, both of whom had come to observe the scene at the recruiting center, said they had no idea how many demonstrators would be on the streets. 

“Even the organizers didn't know,” Kamlarz said. 

Police Review Commissioner Michael Sherman, also at the Marine Recruiting Center, said he thought the day had gone well. “It's like an insurance policy—you're prepared for the worst.” 

There were no arrests made, according to Sgt. Mary Kusmiss, Berkeley police spokesperson. 

Posted Wed., March 19—San Francisco police arrested 10 UC students who chained themselves to the doors of the UCSF Mission Bay community center this morning (Wednesday) in an attempt to prevent the UC Board of Regents from meeting. 

About 100 students from five UC campuses rallied against the undemocratic way regents are selected at “Free the UC Day,” organized by The Coalition to Free UC, Students Against War, and Direct Action to Stop the War. 

The students also spoke against fee hikes, UC's involvement in nuclear weapons and what they said was the Scholastic Aptitude Test's role in excluding underrepresented minorities from the UC system. 

Protesters arrived at the Mission Bay campus at 6 a.m., some driving from Santa Cruz and Davis. Thirteen students looped bicycle locks around their necks and clamped them to doorknobs. 

“Nobody stopped us at first,” said Keith Brown, a second year geography major at UC Berkeley. “Around 7 a.m., the police started to take people out. They used power tools while people were still chained on the doors. Eventually they took out the doorknobs.” 

Police and firefighters had to dismantle doors to take down the locks, a UC police officer said. 

Calls to the San Francisco Police Department to confirm the arrests were not returned by press time. Brown said he expected the students to be cited and released. 

The group also appealed to the regents to come out and be part of an alternative Regents meeting. 

“We wanted to show the regents how to hold a meeting,” Brown said. “But they didn't join us.” 

About 20 students spoke at the regents' meeting during public comment. 

“I told the regents that I had withdrawn all cooperation with the University of California until they stopped production of nuclear weapons,” said Pancho Ramos, a fourth-year Ph.D. student. 

“I don't want to receive a title from an institution which is putting at risk our survival. I am not against science, but I am against the unethical application of science. Clearly, the university's ethical prestige has been used to build nuclear weapons and atomic bombs ... It is the most unethical thing to do. We want to take part in the decision of the university. We don't want to be used.” 

Students also spoke before the regents against rising tuition costs. 

“Some students have to work multiple jobs to sustain themselves,” UC Berkeley sophomore Monika Roy told the Planet. “I think that we are paying a lot of money for public education ... Those who cannot afford to pay are usually minorities or from ethnic backgrounds. In comparison, Stanford University recently announced that it would eliminate tuition for students whose families make less than $100,000 per year.”  

Students also asked the regents to release the skeletal remains of 13,000 Native Americans held in UC Berkeley's Phoebe Hearst Museum of Anthropology. 

“People were speaking from their hearts but I think they went unheard,” said Maya Kelmelis, a UC Berkeley senior who listened to the public comments. “One or two were taking notes, but the majority were not listening. Some were talking and laughing with each other. There was no dialogue or discussion.” 

Zachary Runningwolf—who was also protesting against UC Berkeley's plan to raze the Oak Grove and build a student athletic center in its place—spoke at the students' alternate meeting. 

“They are making stands that help indigenous issues,” he said of the students. “We want to keep our ancestors in the Oak Grove, we want the 13,000 bones back from the Hearst museum, and we want to stop the corporatization of UC. These kids have a very good sense of direction. They are attracting a lot of attention.”  

Posted Wed., March 19—Flying in the face of his hosts' concerns regarding demonstrations at the Marine Recruiting Center, Mayor Tom Bates spoke out about his opposition to the War in Iraq and support for peaceful demonstrations. The speech was delivered Tuesday at a Chamber of Commerce luncheon where the mayor was the featured speaker. 

Bates also painted a rosy picture of the city's economy, with flourishing hotels and restaurants, lauded city efforts to build downtown (perhaps up to 18 stories), laid out plans to build green and more. 

Toward the end of his talk, the mayor introduced the topic of Marine Recruiting Center demonstrations on a lighthearted note: “Let me conclude with the topic of the day,” he said, “the battle of Code Pink vs. the United States Marine Corps. That's not a fair fight!” 

Bates went on to say that beyond what people think “of this Code Pink stuff,”-a recent photo on the Chamber website portrayed CEO Ted Garrett bringing donuts to a Marine recruiter-the war, whose fifth anniversary was the next day, had caused the deaths of some 4,000 U.S. military personnel and the injury of about 28,000 Americans. Some one million Iraqis have been killed and 4 million displaced, he said. 

Trillions of dollars have been spent on the war. “Can you imagine what that would mean if we had that for education? If we had that for housing?” he asked. “What a waste. We were lied to, to begin with.”  

Bates placed the current demonstrations in a historical context. “First of all, this city has protested wars and recruiting stations since I was in grammar school. People lay on the railroad tracks. People tied themselves to the recruiting station door,” he said. 

Since 2003 there have been protests at recruiting stations all over the country. “It's not like Berkeley is unique in this regard,” said Bates, a former Army captain, adding that  

he does not support young people going into the military and added that those who sign up have few options. 

The mayor spoke to the Jan. 29 council item calling Marine recruiters “unwelcome intruders.” The council was wrong to pass an item with inflammatory language that had not been properly vetted, he said.  

“It passed and I'm sorry,” he said. “I've apologized at every forum I can think of but I'm not prepared to apologize to the Marines who are recruiting our kids to go to this war.” 

He pointed out that Code Pink has been demonstrating in many venues other than Berkeley, including in front of Nancy Pelosi's house and at Congress. At the same time there are demonstrations by Move America Forward, billed as a grassroots organizations but which actually is “a bunch of right-wing shock jocks,” Bates said. 

Move America Forward wants to move the U.N. out of the United States and build a wall on the U.S.- Mexico border to keep immigrants out, he added. (Move America Forward is headed by former KSFO talk-show host Melanie Morgan.) 

Bates said that there have been boycotts of Berkeley in the past and that the current one will pass as they have before. 

“We need to take the high road. We need to talk about what is great about this community,” he said. 

No one in the audience criticized Bates overtly, but during the question and answer session one person-with anonymous written questions-asked about the high cost of overtime police for demonstrations, which Bates said he couldn't answer, and another made a statement asserting middle class youth sign up voluntarily for military service, countering Bates' view that people without resources join the service. 

After the meeting, the Planet asked Chamber Executive Director Ted Garrett whether he was disappointed in Bates' anti-war remarks, but Garrett said his primary concern was the protests' harm to local business, especially the businesses adjacent to the Marine Recruiting Center. 

He pointed to hotels and restaurants that received cancellations recently, but conceded that it's hard to know whether that was because of a boycott or because of the economy. Responding to a question, Garrett said he had not asked other businesses near the recruiting center whether their receipts have increased because of the increased numbers of people flocking downtown for protests. 

In response to another question, Garrett said it was too early to know whether the chamber would be making political endorsements and if so, whether it would endorse Bates, though Garrett said he works closely with the mayor to make sure the Chamber voice is heard in the decision-making process. 

Other questions addressed 

Economic development was a key component of Bates' talk. Speaking of business attraction, he said the city should take advantage of the $500 million UC Berkeley-BP partnership, which would create other opportunities in the city. 

“I know BP is controversial,” he said. “We have to capitalize on it.” 

Reached by phone for comment, Councilmember Dona Spring took exception to the remark. “He's a laissez-faire capitalist,” Spring said of the mayor, noting BP's “terrible environmental record.  

And, she said, “There's a lot of problem with biofuels,” notably its use of produce for fuel rather than for food. 

With pride, Bates told the Chamber: “Good old flakey Berzerkeley has the highest bond rating in the nation.” He thanked City Manager Phil Kamlarz, seated in the audience and said, “I'm trying to get him to agree to a lifetime contract.”  

What's being considered for a new contract for Kamlarz has been guarded behind closed doors, with a council subcommittee reviewing the manager's job performance, which city insiders say could lead to a hefty raise. City employee unions, on the other hand, have said they're looking at city reserves-to which the bond rating is tied-as funding for worker raises. 

Bates said the closure of downtown Ross Dress for Less shouldn't be seen as a loss for the city, as it could be a “great opportunity.”  

“That is the perfect site for a high-rise building,” Bates said. He also mentioned the possibility of turning the long-empty UC Theater into a music venue. 

The best-performing sector is hospitality, Bates said, noting there is increasing revenue from hotel taxes and the mostly booked-up Double Tree Hotel, where the luncheon was held. 

Posted Wed., March 19—One of the most highly anticipated Oakland election battles in years may have been knocked off the ballot when veteran District 3 Oakland School Board member Greg Hodge came up one signature short of qualifying to run in the June 3 race for the Oakland City Council.  

The West Oakland/Downtown District 3 seat is held by longtime council member Nancy Nadel, who is running for re-election. The boundaries for the school board and city council districts are identical.  

The determination that Hodge was one signature shy of the 50 needed to qualify for the ballot was made by the Alameda County Registrar of Voters office and Assistant Oakland City Clerk Marjo Keller. 

Hodge has until Friday to challenge the ruling. 

If the ruling stands, it will leave Nadel's only challenger as political newcomer Sean Sullivan, development director of the Oakland branch of Covenant House. 

Neither Hodge nor Nadel was available for comment.  

Nadel has served on City Council since 1996. Hodge first won the District 3 School Board seat in 2000 in a runoff. Both initially filed to run for mayor of Oakland in 2006, but Hodge dropped out after Ron Dellums entered the race. Nadel stayed in the mayoral race, eventually coming in third to Dellums and second to Councilmember Ignacio De La Fuente. 

Posted Tue., March 18—The embattled AC Transit District is considering its fifth fare change in the last 13 years, with a possible increase in adult fares of as much as 25 cents and increases to the youth and senior passes coming as early as this summer.  

AC Transit adult fares are currently set at $1.75. A public hearing on the proposed increase has been set for Wednesday, May 21, 4 p.m., at a location yet to be determined. 

District board members are looking at several different fare increase proposals, some of which would include automatic, regular bus fare increases in future years. In the past, the district has always considered fare raises on an increase-by-increase basis. 

Meanwhile, with district operating expenses rising four times as fast as revenues since 2005, at least one AC Transit board member—Greg Harper of Emeryville—also said last week that bus service cuts are also “inevitable.” 

In recent months, AC Transit has come under heavy criticism from riders and bus drivers over its increasing use of the Belgian-made Van Hool buses. In addition, the district has been the subject of several recent critical articles in both the Berkeley Daily Planet and the East Bay Express.  

The two-county transit district is also fighting to implement a controversial and ambitious plan to put bus-only lanes, a system known as bus rapid transit (BRT), along International Boulevard and Telegraph Avenue between Southland, or Bayfair BART, and UC Berkeley. 

Fifty-five teachers and counselors in the Berkeley Unified School District received pink slips over the weekend notifying them of anticipated layoffs in face of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s proposal to slash state education funds by $4.6 billion. 

Dozens of parents and teachers turned up to protest the cuts in front of the district headquarters at 2134 Martin Luther King Jr. Way Friday. They formed a human billboard spelling out “No Cuts. Raise State Revenue.” 

Berkeley Unified—which stands to lose up to $5 million if legislators approve the proposed cuts in Sacramento—could save between $3.7 and $4.5 million from the layoffs. 

“It’s very demoralizing for the teachers,” said Berkeley Federation of Teachers President Cathy Campbell. “You feel unwanted. Teachers face challenges in the classroom every day and on top of that they have to think about losing their job. The district can’t look at just teachers and counselors to solve the budget crisis. It’s just not fair ... It’s a direct hit to students. They need to look at the whole budget and cut fairly.” 

Campbell plans to organize another rally this Friday and a bigger one on April 9. 

Board president John Selawsky said that the potential layoff notices—which were issued by March 15 in keeping with state law—should not be confused with the final list of employees who will be laid off. He said that list would be mailed out in late May. 

“Increase revenues,” Selawsky said, as he joined the rally. “It all starts in Sacramento.” 

A budget advisory committee comprised of district staff and community members will work with District Superintendent Bill Huyett to recommend cuts to the Berkeley Board of Education. 

“We have worked very hard to keep cuts away from the classroom,” he said. “However, many of the reductions will be from counseling support.” 

Huyett, who has already made several trips to Sacramento to talk about the proposed cuts, said that several legislators were in support of saving Prop. 98, which the governor has proposed to cut. 

Beth Trevor, a third-grade teacher at Jefferson Elementary School, received a layoff notice Thursday. 

“It’s horrible .... Makes me very, very sad,” said Trevor, who was with her son, a kindergartner at her school. “Two other teachers at my school also got layoff notices. If nothing changes, if the district continues with the budget cuts, then I will get my final notice in May.” 

Malcom X Elementary School parents Leigh Raiford and Michael Cohen told the Planet that both their children’s teachers had received pink slips. 

“We are both university professors, middle-class parents who moved to Berkeley to put our kids in public schools,” Raiford said. “Teachers are doing such a wonderful job, but these cuts are going to gut the system. The governor is taking money out of the public schools and using it to build prisons. This is not the society we want to raise our children in.” 

Education Weekly recently gave California a D+ for public education spending. 

“We have been looting education for a long time now in this state and in this country,” said president of the classified employees’ union Tim Donnelly. “So those law makers who say they are pro education have to put their money where their mouth is.” 

Donnelly said that classified employees will receive layoff notices in late April. 

“I am sure it’s going to be bad,” he said. “We are all very anxious. Instructional assistants and clerical staff are already cut to the bottom.” 

The district will cut positions in order of seniority for employees, which means young and recently trained teachers will be the worst hit. 

The state education code mandates that the district retain certain positions, including those with credentials pertaining to bilingual cross-cultural language and academic development, specially designed academic instruction in English and certain advanced degrees.  

Special education and single-subject credentialed teachers, including those teaching math and science, will be retained in the 2008-2009 school year regardless of their seniority. 

The Oakland Unified School District plans to freeze hiring and dip into its reserve fund in order to prevent teacher layoffs. 

A group of teachers and parents from Berkeley High’s Independent Study program requested at the last school board meeting that the board reconsider laying off Independent Study coordinator Evelyn Bradley. 

“If we lose her, we would have lost three administrators in less than two years, which would not be good for the program or the students,” said Kate Karpilow, whose daughter attends Independent Study. 

“All kinds of students—teen moms, gays, lesbians, talented dancers and musicians, students who need sanctuary from violence at Berkeley High—depend on independent study,” said Christina Balch, who teaches in the program. “I urge you to reconsider cutting the coordinator’s position ... when we have six coordinators in nine years it’s a waste of time.” 

Parents also asked the school board to pay more attention to the program itself. 

“I don’t get why it is not seen as a jewel in the crown,” said Karpilow.  

“For some reason it’s seen as a secondary status program ... It’s not honored. I am baffled by this. Just as the small schools at Berkeley High School offer a menu of options for students and families, the option offered by Independent Study is critical to graduating students and offering them a solid education.”

Candidates in the hotly contested Democratic primary race to succeed Loni Hancock as District 14 Assemblymember are relying upon distinctly different fund-raising strategies, with a Richmond City councilmember dividing his contributions almost evenly between individual and business or labor group donors and Berkeley City Councilmember Kriss Worthington and Berkeley physician Phil Polakoff taking 98 percent of their donations from individuals, but with the majority of Worthington’s donations coming from inside District 14 and the majority of Polakoff’s coming from outside. 

Richmond City Councilmem-ber Tony Thurmond was the top fund-raiser in the District 14 race in 2007 with $84,215, several of them businesses with relationships with the City of Richmond. Polakoff was second in fund-raising at $58,150 and Worthington third at $56,375. Polakoff also loaned his campaign another $31,000. 

Thurmond said by telephone that his fund-raising lead came only because he has been raising money since the beginning of 2007, and he expected the other candidates to surpass him in contributions before the election. 

Polakoff began the year with $75,570 in the bank to spend on the campaign, Thurmond had $58,470, and Worthington had $48,625. 

Two of Worthington’s largest contributors were Berkeley Daily Planet owners Michael O’Malley ($3,600) and Becky O’Malley ($4,200 in two separate donations). Individual donors may give up to $3,600 for the June Democratic primary for the Assembly District 14 race, and another $3,600 for the November general election, so long as they are donated in separate checks. 

Filings for the fourth candidate in the race, former Berkeley City Councilmember Nancy Skinner, do not appear on the Secretary of State’s website list of 2007 contributions because Skinner says she did not receive any donations for the District 14 race in 2007 and did not organize her campaign finance committee until the first of this year. 

While District 14 is widely considered a “Berkeley seat”—the last three assemblymembers, Loni Hancock, Dion Aroner, and Tom Bates were all from Berkeley—the Richmond and Berkeley populations of the district are almost evenly divided, with 23.43 percent of the population coming from Richmond (99,216) and 24.27 percent from Berkeley (102,743). Other cities included in District 14 are Albany, El Cerrito, Emeryville, Kensington, Lafayette, Moraga, Pleasant Hill, and San Pablo. A portion of Oakland (7.5 percent, 30,103) is included in the district. 

Meanwhile, with a midnight Monday deadline for reported contributions to go on the next Secretary of State’s report, all four candidates were scrambling last week to pump up their donations. 

Calling the Monday filing deadline “Green Day” for both St. Patrick’s Day and finances, Skinner sent an e-mail to supporters last week saying, “Many will be watching this report to determine who can win this race. Now is the time to help the campaign send a strong message. … I am trying to raise $20,000 before Monday.”  

On Saturday she sent out a follow-up e-mail saying her campaign had reached 75 percent of that goal. 

Thurmond was also sending out fundraising e-mails last week, saying on Monday morning that the Secretary of State’s next finance reports “will drive the decisions of many groups and leaders whether to support our campaign.” 

Voting in the Democratic primary for the District 14 race will take place on Tuesday, June 3. With no Republicans or other party candidates filing (Democrats hold a 59 to 18 percent edge over Republicans in registered voters in the district), the winner of the Democratic primary will almost certainly take office following the November general election. 

Thurmond raised $29,745 in donations in 2007 from business interests. 

Several of those businesses have contracts or had bid on contracts with the City of Richmond or have development interests which must go through the city’s planning process, including approval by the City Council. Thurmond was appointed to the Richmond City Council in 2005 and elected to a full, two-year term in November 2006. 

The donation for Thurmond from the most controversial source is $3,000 from Upstream Point Molate LLC of Emeryville, the company that holds a multi-million dollar option on property on the Richmond shoreline on which it wants to build a Native American-based casino and convention center complex. The project, which has been the subject of several lawsuits, is currently being held up pending Bureau of Indian Affairs approval of the status of the Guidiville Band of Pomo Indians. Upstream officials have said that if the casino and convention center complex is not possible, they want to build condominiums on the site. 

Thurmond also received another $3,600 in an individual contribution from Upstream founder James Levine. 

The original Upstream development agreement with Richmond came before the City Council before Thurmond was on the council, but he said that he has since voted on “two or three” smaller issues concerning the development. 

Other Thurmond business contributors who have relationships with the City of Richmond are Veolia Water North America Operating Services of Houston ($3,000 donation), which has a $70 million contract to manage Richmond’s city-owned collection and stormwater systems (voted on in 2004, before Thurmond was appointed to the City Council); Richmond Sanitary Service ($2,395 donation), which holds the contract to recycle and collect solid waste for the City of Richmond (also voted on before Thurmond’s tenure); and W.R. Forde Associates construction company of Richmond and United Heritage Industries construction and development firm of Richmond ($3,600 donations apiece), both of which have bid on City of Richmond contracts. 

Thurmond also received a $3,600 individual contribution from Bay Cities Paving and Grading Company of Concord, which bids on City of Richmond contracts. Last January, Bay Cities won a $2,822,868.60 from the City of Richmond for the Nevin Park Improvement Project, with City Council voting 6-2 on the contract, Thurmond voting in favor. 

Thurmond said by telephone that he didn’t believe it was a concern that companies with interests before the Richmond City Council are coming to him with donations. 

“I let them know that their contribution has no bearing on my vote,” he said. “I tell them if it hinges on an expectation that I will vote favorably on their project or contract, then they should just keep the money.” 

Thurmond noted that while Chevron Corporation, Richmond’s major corporation, has not contributed to his assembly campaign, the company did give money to his 2006 City Council campaign, and “each time something concerning Chevron has come before the Council since then, I voted against their interest.” 

Thurmond has also collected $9,850 in labor organization donations, the only District 14 candidate to so far tap into that source. The total includes $2,500 from the Richmond Police Officers Political Action Committee and $2,500 from the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 302. 

As would be expected for the only candidate from Richmond, close to 50 percent of Thurmond’s individual donations from within District 14 ($8,925) come from that city. Close to a quarter of his individual contributions from within District 14 ($4,350) come from Berkeley. 

Polakoff, a Berkeley resident, is raising money heavily in his home town, with 63 percent ($14,150) of his individual contributions within District 14 coming from Berkeley. Fully a third of that total ($4,700) come from Berkeley physicians. But Polakoff’s single largest financial mine is San Francisco, from where fully 29 percent ($16,750) of his entire individual contributions have been received. Another $6,700 come from Oakland contributors. But because no contributor addresses are given, and only a portion of Oakland is in District 14, it is impossible to determine how many of these contributions come from inside the district or outside. None of Polakoff’s individual contributions comes from Richmond residents. 

Worthington is depending even more heavily on Berkeley than Polakoff. About 83 percent ($40,700) of the Berkeley City Councilmember’s contributions within the district come from Berkeley. Only 4 percent ($1,750) of Worthington’s individual contributions from within the district come from Richmond. 

Including Levine of Upstream, Thurmond had 10 individual contributions of $1,000 or more. They are: Remax Executive realtor Sheila Proctor of El Sobrante ($1,000), Bay Cities Paving & Grading President Ben Rodriquez of Concord ($3,600), California Assemblymember Alberto Torrico of Fremont ($1,000), retiree Clarence J. Thurmond of Palmdale, California ($1,050), developer J.R. Orton of Piedmont ($1,000), retiree Margaret McLaughlin of Melrose Park, Pennsylvania ($1,000), developer Richard Poe of North Palm Beach, Florida ($1,000), research and development specialist Brad Aronson of Avenue A Razorfish of Philadelphia ($3,600), and accountant Mia Aronson of Avenue A Razorfish of Philadelphia ($3,600). 

Polakoff had 21 individual donations of $1,000 or more in 2007: Crossroads CEO Walter Gerken of Berkeley ($1,000), consultant Peter Boland of Berkeley ($1,000), retired attorney Stanley Friedman of Berkeley ($1,000), Morethana Carpenter owner John Ferguson of El Cerrito ($1,000), attorney/developer Anthony Wilson of Oakland ($1,000), Bright Sound Energe CEO John Woolard of Oakland ($1,000), Charles Schwab Bank Manager Julia Brown of Oakland ($1,000), homemaker Darlene Gerken of Corona Del Mar ($2,000), The Westley Group venture capitalist and former governor candidate Steven Westley of Menlo Park ($1,000), Wells Fargo banker Christopher Lirely of Occidental ($1,000), Bentley School Director of Development and Communications Devereaux Smith of Piedmont ($1,000), Fleishman Hillard partner and Western Region Vice President Larry Kramer of Piedmont ($1,000), Thresold Pharmaceuticals researcher Joan Finnigan of Portola Valley ($1,000), Shartsis Friese LLP attorney Robert Friese of San Francisco ($1,000), Atherton Lane Advisors investment advisor Gary Patterson of San Francisco ($1,000), investor Alice Russell-Shapiro of San Francisco ($3,600), investor William Russell-Shapiro of San Francisco ($3,600), investor/philanthropist Stacey Case of San Francisco ($3,600), Capital Group Senior Vice President Gregory Wendt of San Francisco ($1,000), entrepreneur Douglas Carlston of San Rafael ($1,000), JP Morgan social venture capitalist Michael Dorsey of Woodside ($1,000), and New York State Budget Division Director of Budget Paul Francis of Pelham, New York ($1,000). 

Including the O’Malleys, Worthington had nine individual contributors giving $1,000 or more: retiree Ann Timmins of Berkeley ($1,000), book production consultant David Blake of Berkeley ($3,600), environmental advocate David Tam of Berkeley ($3,600), editor/consultant Nancy Carleton of Berkeley ($3,600), retiree Louise Larson of Richmond ($1,200), Cooper White & Cooper LLP legal assistant Martin Spence of San Pablo ($3,000), and Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson LLP attorney Jeffrey Siu-Yuen Chan of New York City ($3,600). 

Worthington also gave $7,200 to his own campaign in two separate donations. 

World War II veteran Selwyn Jones, 86, told the Police Review Commission at Thursday’s public hearing on the Berkeley Police Department’s response to recent demonstrations that he’d been pushed to the ground by police during a recent protest at the Marine Recruiting Station.  

Ry Cranor-Wellwood said he’d been stomped on by police at the Feb. 12 demonstration at Civic Center Park and brought along emergency room papers he said verified his injuries. 

After video documentation and oral testimony from about 30 people claiming faulty crowd control by Berkeley police during recent anti-war and anti-Marine recruitment demonstrations—one person blamed demonstrators for the problems—the Police Review Commission voted to review police policies on crowd control.  

A subcommittee will be appointed to determine if police are following crowd control procedures now in place and whether the procedures need revision. The commission may decide later to look at officer misconduct. If they do, they said they will not be able to hold hearings publicly, given a California Supreme Court decision and a pending court case involving the Berkeley Police Association that bans public discussion of complaints against specific police officers. 

And, responding to the crowd of about 60 people, many calling for immediate action, the commission promised to hold an emergency meeting with the city manager and police chief to discuss crowd control methods before demonstrations slated for Wednesday, the five-year anniversary of the war in Iraq. That meeting was slated for 4 p.m. Monday. 

Speakers told the PRC that police overreacted to peaceful demonstrations. They showed videotapes of dozens of police officers marching in formation along Shattuck Avenue, apparently pushing Jones off the sidewalk into the street and knocking over stands the demonstrators had set up on the sidewalk. Speakers said their crimes were scotch-taping signs to the Marine Recruiting Station windows and walking with picket signs on sidewalks without permits to demonstrate. 

“Over and over, the police set up awkward situations,” said Don Spark, of the World Can’t Wait. Moreover, police arrested the anti-recruiting young people “and gave the bigots a pass,” he said. 

Police did not attend the meeting. Police Spokesperson Lt. Andy Greenwood told the Planet on Monday he understood the PRC was going to establish a subcommittee to look into issues of crowd control and that the chief would cooperate with the committee.  

“The police department works very hard to insure the rights of everyone during a demonstration,” Greenwood said, noting that he could not address specific allegations. He cautioned, however, that one should beware of video footage that could be edited to remove the context of an event. 

Former U.S. Army Capt. Marca Lamore, a Berkeley resident, was alone at the hearing speaking in defense of police actions. “People were waving signs—they are potential weapons,” she said, adding, “Citizens are harassed by Code Pink.”  

Zanne Joi of Code Pink said protesters were treated differently from the Marines. While demonstrators had been cited for smoking near businesses, “a Marine came out of the office smoking and police said nothing,” Joi said. 

Army veteran Forrest Schmidt, a member of ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) said police treated the Marines and the pro-military demonstrators as “comrades.”  

“Police act as an auxiliary of the pro-war forces,” he said. 

Speakers complained that “rules” enforced were arbitrary and possibly fabricated. Joi said Code Pink was told it could not have a “honk for peace” sign. 

“We don’t know where these rules are coming from,” she said. 

“We’re looking at the general erosion of civil liberties,” said Michael Diehl, a member of the mental health commission who has been trying to get police officers to get crisis intervention training. 

Several speakers pointed to a lack of communication between protesters and police. Some said police failed to give warnings or orders to disperse before physically moving crowds with batons. One video showed protesters unsure of where police wanted them to go.  

Speakers said the number of police officers was excessive for a peaceful demonstration and police demeanor and riot gear portrayed an overreaction. “There’s never been an allegation of violence [committed] by World Can’t Wait,” one speaker said. 

“We are a peaceful group. We aren’t going to break anything,” said Cynthia Papermaster of Code Pink. 

PRC commissioners agreed there were serious problems. “I did see a marked change in crowd control,” said PRC Chair Bill White. “It’s a concern of mine.” 

Commissioner Jonathan Huang said the events described by speakers were not “isolated incidents.” Huang said he was concerned about the “culture of the police department.” 

“Some officers need to be retrained,” added PRC Vice-Chair Sharon Kidd, echoing another concern that had been raised by several speakers. 

Commissioner Michael Sherman noted that, with numerous retirements on the police force, there are many new officers in the city. Like Kidd, he said he wanted to know how police are being trained in crowd control. 

He further noted that the Crowd Management Team manual says nothing about giving verbal warnings, before pushing people out of the way.  

“Why are World War II vets being shoved in the street?” he asked.  

UC Berkeley’s local tree-sitter Michael Schuck—who calls himself Fresh—climbed down from his leafy perch outside Wheeler Hall Friday and was promptly arrested by university police for trespassing. He was issued a citation and released later that day. 

Schuck climbed an oak tree on Feb. 28 to draw attention to several campus issues, including what he said was the undemocratic structure of the UC Board of Regents, native remains being held by the Hearst Museum of Anthropology, the lack of a living wage for the university’s custodians, rising tuition and the need to end UC’s involvement in nuclear technology. 

The Facebook group Students Against Hippies in Trees, which boasts that it has 600 members, sent out a letter Friday morning organizing a noon rally against Schuck at the site. 

The group’s message to supporters read: “The real name of the tree-sitter, ‘Fresh’ is actually Michael Schuck, so the rally cry shall be ‘Michael Schuck, you SUCK!’ An acceptable alternative is ‘F__ Schuck!’” 

Around noon Friday, supporters of Schuck turned up to counter the Facebook group and formed a circle near his barricaded tree for open dialogue. 

About a hundred students crowded near them as UC policemen kept watch. Tree-sitters from the neighboring Memorial Stadium Oak Grove—protesting the university’s plans to raze the oaks to build an athletic training center—joined local activists to support Schuck, a former UC Berkeley student. 

Although UC Berkeley spokesperson Dan Mogoluf couldn’t confirm whether Schuck had gone to UC Berkeley, several people remembered him as a fighter for the university’s boxing team. 

“That’s Mike Schuck from Southern California,” said Gregory Pedemonte, who had worked with Schuck on the boxing team. “He fought for UC Berkeley for two years … Very bright kid … Always a crowd pleaser. Got into the semi-finals of the 2002 National Collegiate Boxing Association Championship and beat the defending champion—a Navy guy. Then he left school to go on a soul-searching journey to India with his girlfriend. When he came back, he was a changed guy. He looked like something straight out of Haight Ashbury in the 1960s.” 

A few Hare Krishnas played tambourines and Indian dhol drums as curious onlookers stopped by to ask questions. 

“He’s raising the issue right at the heart of almost every disagreement that the community has with the University of California,” said Save the Oaks at the Stadium director Doug Buchwald. “The UC regents are not accountable to anybody … Not to students, not to faculty, not to the community. The make-up of the regents is required to reflect the diversity in our state—economic, cultural, social and ethnic—and the balance of men and women. That has never been true since they were created and it is time the regents decided to obey the law and follow the requirement of the state constitution.” 

As students debated about the democratization of the regents and other related issues, Schuck moved from one branch to the other and answered questions from people. 

“He’s trespassing,” said Mogoluf. “The fact is he is not a current UC Berkeley student. The university has always been pretty tolerant to protests, but when you are taking over the university’s property, you are crossing the line. Today it’s a tree, what if they take over a lab tomorrow?” 

Mogoluf said that he had never heard of the Facebook group who had organized the rally. 

“It’s mainly made up of frat boys,” he said. “I do know that a significant number of students are perplexed by this. A small group of students are sympathetic with the tree-sitter, but the ASUC has supported the university’s position to build the athletic facility … there have been three editorials in the student newspaper condemning the tree sitters.” 

UC Police Department (UCPD) Assistant Chief Mitch Celaya told the Planet that Schuck had been given ample opportunity to climb down from the tree without facing arrest, but had ignored it. 

“He kept saying he would come down but never did,” he said. “Then we barricaded the tree to prevent individuals from contributing to the trespassing.” 

Sara Free Laughtin, one of the students participating in the dialogue, blamed the tree-sit on the police. 

“Fresh went up to put up the banner ‘democratize the students’ but at the end of the day the UC police said they would arrest him if he came down,” she said. 

“So he just stayed up there.” 

“Fresh is criminal,” posters stood side by side with banners reading “Does your grandmother know you are at a hate rally?”  

“It’s not OK that our university is wasting taxpayer money on this,” said Calum Wright, a UC Berkeley student. “I don’t want him on a tree in our campus.” 

“Would it be OK for me, a student, to climb up on a tree?” asked sophomore Suman Gupta in response. 

A little after 1 p.m., Schuck climbed down and was handcuffed by UC police officers. He was released around 2:15 p.m. with a warning to stay away from the campus for 7 days. 

His court date is set for April 16. 

Two Code Pink members who entered the Marine Recruiting Center at 64 Shattuck Square Friday and asked its officers to leave were arrested by Berkeley police for trespassing on private property. 

The group, which has been rallying to shut down the recruiting station since September, celebrated the last day of their 24-hour five-day green zone—actually covered in pink—with a press conference around noon. 

The anti-war group World Can’t Wait! Drive Out the Bush Regime! joined about 40 protesters, including members of CopWatch, who recently questioned crowd control measures by the Berkeley Police Department (BPD) at the recruiting station. 

Code Pink spokesperson Zanne Joi told the Planet Friday that the group had organized a “Kiss the Marines Goodbye” event and decorated the station with “goodbye” in 60 different languages. 

“Then we had a move-in crew ready who went inside the station to help the marines move around 3 p.m.,” she said. 

Sporting pink and black, Pamela Bennett of San Francisco, and Mari Blome, of El Cerrito went inside the station and sat down blocking the front door. 

“The marines just got greener and greener with envy when they saw our green zone,” Joi said. “We gave the officers a letter asking them to move. They didn’t know what we were talking about.” Then, she said, the police came and shut the door and arrested the protesters. 

BPD spokesperson Sgt. Mary Kusmiss told the Planet that the police officers had warned Bennett and Blome to leave the center several times. 

“They refused,” she said. “They were cited for a misdemeanor—trespassing on private property. They signed the field citations, then refused to leave again. Then they were arrested and booked into the BPD jail for trespassing on private property after being warned.” 

Joi told the Planet that she expected the two women to be cited and released.

The question of how to approach matters of peace and justice took center stage at the March 11 Berkeley City Council meeting. At the meeting the council also looked at a new report on pedestrian safety, asked staff to write a graywater permit process and more. 

Addressing peace and justice 

The discussion of how best to address questions of peace and justice was prompted by a Jan. 29 action the council approved, then rescinded two weeks later, which asked the city manager to write a letter to the U.S. Marines saying its recruiters were unwelcome in Berkeley. In the revised version, the council underscored support for the troops and reaffirmed its long-standing support for protests against the war.  

The original resolution calling the recruiters unwelcome caused an eruption of the right-wing blogosphere, and councilmembers received thousands of e-mails—against and for the resolution.  

After the matter exploded in the press, several councilmembers said they had failed to read the item carefully. 

That’s why the three peace and justice items before the council last week were on the action calendar for discussion, rather than on the consent calendar where they might have been quickly approved. 

One resolution called for sanctuary for military resisters in Canada; another opposed the use by the U.S. government of mercenaries, and the third supported human rights in Haiti. 

The council’s vote on writing to Canadian officials to ask for sanctuary for U.S. military resisters, on a resolution authored by Councilmember Kriss Worthington, was moved from the action to the consent calendar and approved 8-0. Mayor Tom Bates was absent. 

A measure authored by the Peace and Justice Commission stated the council’s opposition to U.S. government use of the Blackwater corporation in particular and mercenaries in general, and supported the city of Potrero (San Diego County), which is on record opposing Blackwater’s establishing training facilities there. 

Councilmember Gordon Wozniak said he shared the commission’s concerns about the large number of mercenaries fighting in Iraq, but he told Peace and Justice Commission Chair Bob Meola that he would have wanted more information on the question. 

Councilmember Laurie Capitelli did not argue against the item but told fellow councilmembers that given the volume of information contained in each council packet, “I need to take my energy and focus it on local policy more germane” to Berkeley. 

“We all have a responsibility to know what we’re voting for,” Councilmember Max Anderson shot back, noting that the question of use of mercenaries “has more impact in our lives than a pothole in the street.”  

“The atrocities of Blackwater have been documented,” commented Councilmember Darryl Moore, who chaired the meeting in Bates’ absence. 

Wozniak had the council narrow the scope of the measure to include opposition to use of mercenaries specifically in Iraq, rather than more generally; the measure continued to support the Potrero council’s opposition to Blackwater.  

The item passed 6-0-2, with Capitelli and Councilmember Betty Olds abstaining. 

On the question of Haiti, the resolution, also proposed by the Peace and Justice Commission, called for release of political prisoners, the guarantee of freedom of speech and assembly, compensation for victims of United Nations’ military raids and sexual exploitation, withdrawal of foreign occupying forces, including U.N. troops, debt cancellation and more. 

Councilmembers wanted to learn more before voting on the issue. Maio said references to the United Nations as an occupying force troubled her. The United Nations “is an organization we honor,” she said. 

Wozniak echoed Maio’s concerns, though he said he supports the call for cancellation of Haiti’s debt. 

“We have photographs of elementary school children in Cite Soleil (a slum in Port-au-Prince) with their bodies riddled with bullets” from the U.N. military, said Adrianne Aron of the Haiti Action Committee, which had brought the resolution to the Peace and Justice Commission. 

Sister Stella Goodpasture, also of the Haiti Action Committee, added that in visits to Haiti, she had seen U.N. “soldiers there, with their guns pointed at you.” 

Anderson told the council he is no stranger to Haiti’s history as having the “first successful slave revolt in this hemisphere,” but that he would support the council’s getting more information on the question before taking a vote on the resolution. 

The council voted 8-0 for four of its members to meet with members of the Haiti Action Committee for further information today (Tuesday), in advance of the resolution’s coming back on the agenda, and then, at a future date, the council would hold a workshop on the question of Haiti. 

Pedestrian plan 

The council addressed the pedestrian plan briefly. It will be discussed in detail at a Thursday workshop during the regular meeting of the Transportation Commission: 7 p.m., North Berkeley Senior Center 1901 Hearst Ave. 

Capitelli commented on what he said was an overabundance of signs on Solano Avenue—especially the yellow sign “with the guy pointing to the crosswalk”—intended to make people drive more carefully. Capitelli said he thought that if there were too many signs, people would ignore them. 

The plan is available on line at www.altaplanning.com/berkeleypedestrianplan. 

At the meeting the council also voted unanimously to: 

• Continue the public hearing on the question of building a house at 161 Panoramic Way until March 25. 

• Amend the contract with Lincoln & Associates to $53,500 to recruit a transportation manager. 

• Ask staff to develop a graywater permit process.

A number of events were held last weekend leading up to the five-year anniversary of the Iraq War—among them a demonstration at the Richmond Chevron refinery, where two dozen protesters were arrested, a rally in Walnut Creek and a town meeting with Rep. Barbara Lee in Oakland. 

On Wednesday events to mark the five-year anniversary will be held in Berkeley, San Francisco, Alameda and other Bay Area cities. 

Berkeley 

From 7:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. there will be a protest and non-violent civil resistance at the Marine Recruiting Station, 64 Shattuck Square. 

The sponsor, The World Can’t Wait, writes: “The war enters its sixth bloody year this week. One million Iraqi dead, four million more driven from their homes, thousands have been and are being tortured. This war is being carried out in our name.”  

At 5 p.m., Berkeley protesters will cross the Bay to join the march and rally at San Francisco Civic Center. 

Alameda 

At 6:30 p.m., the Alameda Peace Network, Move-On, United for Peace and Justice and others will hold a rally at Alameda City Hall, Oak and Santa Clara streets. At 7 p.m., they will march along Park Street.  

“The resignation of Admiral William Fallon, an opponent of an attack on Iran this week, as the head of the U.S. Central Command once again raises the very real possibility that the Bush administration will launch a bombing attack on Iran,” organizers say, urging people to join the march. 

San Francisco 

Beginning at 7:30 a.m., United for Peace and Justice and Direct Action to Stop the War will coordinate protest activities outside the office of Sen. Dianne Feinstein at the Montgomery BART station. 

There will be a “War Machine Tours of Shame” visiting various businesses that profit from the war, leaving from Market and Sansome throughout the day. There will be non-violent direct action at various sites throughout the city. 

Those arrested for civil disobedience can call the National Lawyers Guild legal hotline at (415) 285-1011. 

At 11 a.m., at the Montgomery BART: Words Against War—5 Years Too Many. Poets including youth will read at the event sponsored by City Lights Books and Direct Action to Stop the War.  

At 5 p.m., there will be a “March & Rally to End the War Now!” gathering at Civic Center, Polk and Grove streets. The event is initiated by the ANSWER Coalition. 

At the Board of Regents 

From 7:30 a.m. to 1 p.m., a coalition of UC Berkeley student organizations will attend the UC Regents meeting at UC San Francisco Mission Bay. 

Sponsors of the demonstration, including Berkeley Stop the War, Students for Justice in Palestine, Save the Oaks and more, say: “Five years ago, George W. Bush started a war against the Iraqi people. His justification? ‘Weapons of mass destruction.’ A lie. But we know where the WMDs are. Every single nuclear weapon in the U.S. arsenal was designed by the University of California. Tell the UC Regents: No more nuclear weapons! Money for education not war!” 

The coalition will join the 5 p.m. rally in Civic Center. 

Winter Soldier 

If you didn’t hear/see veterans and current military men and women speak out about their experiences in Iraq, the Winter Soldier gathering is archived at KPFA.org and IVAW.org. 

Other matters 

After the Berkeley City Council asked its city manager to write a letter to the Marines saying that the recruiters in Berkeley were “unwelcome intruders”—and despite the council’s rescinding of that action—U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint tried to strip the city of $2 million in federal funds, giving the money instead to the Marines.  

On Thursday, however, the Senate defeated the measure 57-41.“Senate Chooses Berkeley Over Marines,” DeMint announced on his website. 

Objections from the Berkeley Landmarks Commission and the Elmwood-Claremont Neighborhood Association over the Berkeley Unified School District’s proposal to paint John Muir Elementary School blue and green forced the Berkeley Board of Education to reject the proposed colors and stick to its original scheme instead. 

The school—a prominent structure in the Claremont-Elmwood district for the last 90 years—was designed in Tudor style by renowned architect James Placheck under the supervision of Walter Ratcliff Jr. The City of Berkeley landmarked the building in 1983. 

At its March 6 meeting, the Landmarks Commission voted to ask the school board to rethink the proposed color scheme. 

Board members said that the blue and green chessboard pattern would clash with the neighborhood’s architecture and upset residents.  

Some said that painting a building green did not mean that it would reduce its carbon footprint. 

Community members also protested the proposed changes in letters to the school board.  

District spokesperson Mark Coplan told the Planet that the school site committee—responsible for color schemes—was not legally obligated to obey the landmarks commission. 

“However, when Superintendent Bill Huyett heard that the neighbors didn’t want it, he suggested that we keep the original colors,” he said. 

In her letter to the school board, Claremont-Elmwood Neighborhood Association secretary Doris E. Willingham quoted from Susan Cerny’s book Berkeley Landmarks. 

“For close to a century the elegant, handsome building has seen thousands of Berkeley children go through its doors since opening in 1916,” she said in her e-mail to the board. “According to Cerny, the ‘English half-timbered’ building style was ‘meant to convey a friendly and informal atmosphere, and to harmonize with the surrounding residential neighborhood.’ And indeed John Muir School projects the charm and warmth of a private residence rather than the often cold, forbidding look of an institutional building. Moreover, and again according to Cerny, the school’s setting among trees near Harwood Creek reflected the philosophy of a California ‘open air’ school that was popular in those days.” 

Willingham described the “playskool color scheme chosen for John Muir” as inappropriate for both the school building and the neighborhood. 

“It would rob the building of its dignity and beauty, defile our neighborhood, and subject the school district, and indeed the City of Berkeley, to ridicule,” she said. “We do not need this ‘only in Berkeley’ venture into color for a venerable building of this style.” 

Wendy Markel, another member of the neighborhood association, said she was “absolutely horrified” by the idea of changing the school into a “recalled Mattel Barbie doll palace.” 

“Who on earth heard of a Tudor-style building with green boxes!,” she said in her letter to the board. “And the window mullions would be painted light blue! I do wonder what advice the school district has been seeking ... John Muir is part of the neighborhood and the site principal should be aware of this. Certainly the school board has the responsibility of supervising the school site, but in the final analysis it is the tax dollars paid by Berkeley citizens that will pay the bill. We are here as stewards of the past and caretakers of what we have inherited.” 

International Baccalaureate program approved at Berkeley High 

The International Baccalaureate Organization authorized Berkeley High School to accredit the program within the institution’s International High School recently. 

Based out of Geneva, Switzerland, the organization has programs in 2,145 schools in 125 countries, including seven Bay Area schools.  

A three-member team visited the high school in November to interview faculty and students before approving the program. 

As a smaller learning community program within the high school, the International High School focuses on international studies. The four-year interdisciplinary curriculum—which began with the ninth-grade in 2006—focuses on global culture, history, artistic expression, and political and economic systems. It now consists of two years, ninth- and tenth-grade.  

The school plans to adopt the organization’s Middle Years Program and Diploma Programe, expanding into grades 11 and 12.  

Students would transition from the Middle Years Program into the comprehensive Diploma Program after the 10th grade.  

Students will be able either to earn certificates in any of 12 areas of study or to pursue the full IB Diploma with examinations in six subjects.  

All courses from Berkeley International High school will meet the California Content Standards and UC/CSU entrance requirements.  

The Berkeley Unified School District’s student assignment system was once again challenged by Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF) Monday when the Sacramento-based right-wing public interest litigation firm appealed an April 2007 court decision which had ruled in favor of the district. 

The foundation sued Berkeley Unified for violating California’s Prop. 209 by racially discriminating among students with placements at elementary schools and at programs at Berkeley High in October 2006. 

An Alameda County Superior Court judge ruled that the district’s student assignment system and integration system was fair and legal. 

On behalf of the American Civil Rights Foundation, the foundation asked the California Court of Appeal (Second District) to review the judge’s decision affirming Berkeley’s “use of race as a factor to determine where students are assigned to public schools and to determine whether they gain access to special educational programs.” 

“Berkeley seems to think that you are not using race in public education if you use race along with several other factors,” PLF attorney Alan Foutz said in a press release Monday. “That’s like saying you are not using flour in your cake recipe because you also have baking powder, sugar, water, and oil. Berkeley still has race in their mix of factors for student assignments. And that violates Proposition 209 ... These plans and policies use students’ skin color to help determine how individual students will be treated. That’s unfair and transmits a harmful message to our kids that skin color matters.” 

Foutz could not be reached by press time Monday. 

District superintendent Bill Huyett defended the district’s assignment system. 

“We have been successful in defending our Student Assignment Plan in court on two occasions, and we are confident that we will be successful in this appeal as well,” he told the Planet in a statement. 

The foundation sued Berkeley Unified in 2003 on behalf of a parent who charged the district with race-based assignment of students in a different and earlier Berkeley program. 

The case was dismissed by Judge James Richman who ruled that voluntary desegregation plans or ‘race-conscious’ school assignment systems were not specifically prohibited by Prop. 209.  

The attack on Berkeley public schools by PLF last year came on the 10th anniversary of Prop. 209.  

Speaking to the Planet in an interview in October, then-superintendent Michelle Lawrence said that PLF had used the Berkeley schools to make a “public splash” during the anniversary.  

The lawsuit alleged that BUSD “uses race as a factor to determine where students are assigned to public schools and to determine whether they gain access to special educational programs.”  

In the press release, Foutz said PLF was concerned about the following: the elementary student assignment plan for Berkeley Elementary Schools, the admissions policy for Berkeley High School’s small schools and academic programs; and the admissions policy for Berkeley High School’s AP Pathways Project.  

Proposition 209 was enacted by California voters in 1996 as a provision of the California Constitution, and “prohibits discrimination or preferences based on race or sex in public education, employment, and contracting.”  

The assignment system in BUSD lets parents put in their first, second and third school choices, and then a computer runs a lottery—which takes into account factors such as race, ethnicity, student background and parental income and education—to give the final placement.  

Berkeley High Lady Jackets were soundly defeated by Long Beach Poly 55-31 Saturday in the state CIF Basketball Championship Div. I game at Arco Stadium in Sacramento.  

This was the third year running that the team was defeated in the finals by Poly’s Jack Rabbits. But since this was Cheryl Draper’s first year as head coach and since most of the girls will be returning, some say the championship is theirs to win in 2009. 

Jasmine Perkins, the Washington State-bound senior guard, finished with a season low of seven points, yet encouraged her younger teammates during the game. 

Expected returners include junior Camila Rosen, who had a team-high 15 points, and freshman center Chairese Culberson, who had nine rebounds.  

Court hearings are slated this week in two major Berkeley land disputes, one involving the university and the other the so-called Trader Joe’s building. 

The first, at 1 p.m. Thursday in Hayward, will feature the final arguments in the battle over the site near Memorial Stadium where tree-sitters have occupied the arboreal heights for the last 16 months. 

The university wants to ax the grove west of the stadium, where it plans a four-level, semi-subterranean high-tech gym and office complex. Zachary Running wolf and others took to the branches on Big Game Day 2006, and protesters have remained in the branches ever since, much to the vexation of university officials. 

The City of Berkeley, City Councilmember Dona Spring, the California Oak Foundation, Panoramic Hill Association and others have challenged the approval by UC Regents of the environmental impact report and funding plans for the gym and other structures in what the university calls Southeast Campus Integrated Projects. 

The project has been placed on hold pending the outcome of the litigation. 

The university has only been floating preliminary plans for the gym, though the EIR also spells out the university’s proposal to build a nearby underground parking lot, a large office and meeting facility to join functions and faculty of the law and business schools, as well as other projects and renovations.  

In the case of the gym, Judge Barbara Miller must decide if the new building is an addition to or an alteration of the stadium itself. If she finds that to be the case, state law governing construction within 50 feet of active earthquake faults could severely limit the project, as well as alterations planned for the stadium itself. 

Miller’s courtroom is located in the Hayward Hall of Justice, 24405 Amador St. 

Trader Joe’s 

The second court session, at 9 a.m. Friday in downtown Oakland, will feature arguments in the lawsuit challenging the city’s approval of a five-story mixed-use building at 1885 University Ave. 

Steve Wollmer and other members of Neighbors for a Livable Berkeley Way have challenged the city’s approval of the project, which granted an additional floor in exchange for creating parking spaces for the building’s ground-floor commercial tenant. 

Developers Chris Hudson and Evan McDonald said they have Trader Joe’s, a popular German-owned grocery chain, lined up as the major tenant. 

City Staff deemed bringing a grocer to the edge of the city’s downtown a public benefit worthy of a density bonus, an increase in size beyond the limits otherwise mandated by city zoning regulations. 

Wollmer and other nearby residential neighbors challenged the project in court, charging that it would be too large and that approval was illegal. 

Concern about the city’s interpretation of zoning regulations in the Trader Joe’s and other cases prompted the Zoning Adjustments Board to form a subcommittee, later expanded by the City Council, to draft a density bonus ordinance for the city. 

That proposal is currently under discussion at the Planning Commission. 

Alameda County Superior Court Judge Frank Roesch is scheduled to hear the case in his courtroom on the second floor of the Post Office building at 201 13th St.

Posted Fri., March 14—The Berkeley Board of Education approved possible lay-off notices for 50 certificated employees Wednesday to prepare for Governor Arnold Schwarzenneger’s proposed $4.6 billion state education budget cuts. 

Board president John Selawsky said that notices—which will be sent out by March 15 in keeping with state law—should not be confused with final list of employees who will be laid off. 

“We tend to notify more people than we end up laying off,” he told members of the Berkeley Federation of Teachers and staff from the Berkeley Unified School District’s Independent Study program who protested the cuts at the meeting. 

Final layoff notices are expected to be sent out around the first week of May.  

A group of teachers and parents from Berkeley High’s Independent Study program requested that the board reconsider laying off Independent Study coordinator Evelyn Bradley. 

“If we lose her, we would have three administrators in less than two years, which would not be good for the program or the students,” said Kate Karpilow, whose daughter attends Independent Study. 

“All kinds of students—teen moms, gays, lesbians, talented dancers and musicians, students who need sanctuary from violence at Berkeley High—depend on independent study,” said Christina Balch, who teaches in the program. “I urge you to reconsider cutting the coordinator’s position ... when we have six coordinators in nine years it’s a waste of time.” 

Parents also asked the school board to pay more attention to the program itself. 

“I don’t get why it is not seen as a jewel in the crown,” said Karpilow. “For some reason it’s seen as a secondary status program ... It’s not honored. I am baffled by this. Just as the small schools at Berkeley High School offer a menu of options for students and families, the option offered by Independent Study is critical to graduating students and offering them a solid education.” 

Cathy Campbell, president of the Berkeley Federation of Teachers, also urged the board to keep the coordinator position. 

“Elimination of that position would be damaging to the students, teachers and the program,” she said. “This program serves over 170 students, 65 percent of them students of color.” 

The teacher’s union will rally in front of the district headquarters at 2134 Martin Luther Jr. Way today (Friday) at 4 p.m. to protest the proposed lay-offs. 

The board also approved the criteria for determining order of seniority for employees with the same first date of paid probationary service. 

The state Education Code mandates that the district retain certain positions, including those with credentials pertaining to bilingual cross-cultural language and academic development, specially designed academic instruction in English and certain advanced degrees.  

Special education and single-subject credentialed teachers, including those teaching math and science, will be retained in the 2008-2009 school year regardless of their seniority.

Several hundred city workers converged on the steps of the city administration building Wednes-day. Some brought the tools of their trade: garbage trucks, pick-ups and code enforcement vehicles, the latter of which came in handy for blocking off the street for the noontime party. 

Many picked up purple shirts and hats and sat in the noonday sun, heads moving with the music coming from an improvised stage on a flat-bed truck. 

It was a party with a point: the largest city workers’ union, Service Employees International Union 1021, with around 1,000 members, was about to go into bargaining for a new contract. Negotiations would begin as soon as the rally ended at 12:30 p.m. 

“I’ve heard the city is one of the top 10 cities with a very large reserve,” SEIU 1021 Treasurer Sandra Lewis told the Planet before climbing up to the speaker’s platform for the rally.  

On stage, Lewis called for smooth bargaining with city negotiators and introduced City Manager Phil Kamlarz and Human Resources Director David Hodgkins, both of whom they would be facing at the negotiating table. “We’ll work our differences out at the table. We’ll work as a team,” Lewis said to the cheering crowd. 

Councilmember Kriss Worthington also spoke, calling for pay and benefit equity and noting that “police and fire get more benefits than all the other employees.” 

The undercurrent, however, was the near-bankruptcy of Vallejo and the downturn in the economy. SEIU 1021 contracts—for clericals, maintenance workers, non-sworn police and more—expire in June. 

Several Berkeley police officers jumped on a public bus full of elementary students last week and held a gun on their after-school teacher, misidentified as a robbery suspect, while he was taking students to a basketball game. 

Some parents and staff at Cragmont Elementary School have charged that the incident revealed the Berkeley Police Department’s bias against black males. 

Cragmont after-school basketball coach DeAndre Swygert told the Planet that he was taking 10 students from Cragmont’s after-school basketball team for a game against Emerson Elementary School when three to four police cars surrounded their AC Transit bus and pulled it over. 

“One of the kids said ‘look’ and I saw one of the officers banging on the bus window with his gun,” Swygert said. “Then six to seven officers approached the bus through the back door, put a gun by my face and told me to put my hands up. They did not handcuff me, but they made me put my hands behind my back. One of the officers grabbed me by my shirt and got me off the bus. They started searching my backpack and asked me who I was, where I was going and If I was with the kids. Then they said ‘sorry for the inconvenience’ and left.” 

Berkeley police spokesperson Sgt. Mary Kusmiss told the Planet Tuesday that the police had responded to a call for help from a community member. 

“Since the suspects were seen with a gun by the victim, officers, in keeping with tactics to ensure community and officer safety, will have their guns drawn,” she said. 

“If there is a suggestion or report that a suspect is armed, officers are well within policy in keeping with not just their own safety but also the community’s safety. The suspect could have posed a threat to the children.” 

According to Kusmiss, a UC Berkeley student was taking pictures with her digital camera on the 1100 block of Euclid when two teenagers jumped out of a maroon van and approached her. One of the teenagers pointed a semi-automatic pistol at the student and took off with her camera and some other belongings. The two boys then jumped back into the van and drove off. 

Kusmiss said that after the student yelled for help a community member from the 1200 block of Oxford Street called the police. 

“She heard a police department siren, then saw a maroon van quickly pull over and three 14-year-olds jump out and run east on Berryman and north on Spruce,” she said. “Officers located the van that was reported stolen from the City of Oakland. There were a few items of the student’s belongings inside, but officers did not find a gun, which led them to believe the suspect or suspects who had fled the van were still armed. Approximately eight officers did area checks and stopped a bus that was leaving the area.” 

Swygert, 21, said that the officers told him that he fit the description of an African American male with dreads and a sweatshirt only after they had finished searching him. 

“I understand they were doing their job, but what they did was inappropriate,” he said. “I had children with me ... Some of them started to cry. I think the police could have done a whole lot better. They singled me out because I am a young black male with dreadlocks. They stopped me for no reason. If they were looking for robbers who had hijacked a car then why did they have to stop the bus?” 

In a letter to Cragmont parents, Cragmont principal Don Vu described the incident on the bus as “traumatizing for both DeAndre and the students.” 

“Unfortunately, cases of mistaken identity happen way too often in our society and it is especially disturbing that this happened in front of our students,” the letter said. “DeAndre is a good young man trying to make a difference in the lives of our students by taking the time to mentor and coach them after school. We support him and appreciate the good work that he does at Cragmont.” 

Sgt. Kusmiss told the Planet that the officers were responding to the victim’s description of the suspect. 

“They were looking for a black male juvenile,” she said. “In this case they would not have been looking for anyone else.” 

A graduate of Oakland High School, Swygert joined Cragmont through AmeriCorps two years ago. 

In her letter to Cragmont after-school families last Friday, Cragmont’s after-school program director Angela Gilder called DeAndre’s encounter with the police “humiliating.” 

“Yet another case of ‘mistaken identity,’ Mr. Swygert was at the mercy of the officers in a very degrading and embarrassing manner,” she said. “No apology was given to Mr. Swygert or our students. All too often this ... is a situation that occurs numerous times with many young African American males.” 

Cragmont parent Kameka Goodwin said her son Alonzo, who was on the bus, was very upset by incident. 

“I thought it was crazy they drew guns, and that they dragged the coach down and asked him questions,” she said. “I am shocked they would do it in the presence of children ... I have grown up in Berkeley and it’s very common for the BPD to go out of their way to do this ... They think everybody with dreads and a sweatshirt is a suspect.” 

Alonzo told the Planet that he and some of his friends had put their hands up when they saw the police. 

“They asked us who Mr. Swygert was,” the 10-year-old said. “We told him he was our coach and we were coming from Cragmont.” 

U’Dwi Ashford, another Cragmont parent, said her son has had nightmares from the incident. 

“My son told me he didn’t know what was going to happen to him or DeAndre in the bus,” she said. “I told him it was unfortunate, but that if you were a young black male you were going to get stopped at least once, if not more, in your lifetime. We’ll probably have this conversation more than once.” 

Prinicipal Vu said he was trying to set up a meeting with the Berkeley Police Department to bring in counselors to meet with the students. 

In an e-mail to Cragmont parents Wednesday, Vu said that counselors would be available on campus Thursday to talk to students about the incident. 

According to the e-mail, Berkeley Police Officer Jerome Colbert, a former teacher and school resource officer, will meet with Swygert, students and parents today (Friday) to answer questions about the incident. 

King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in Saudi Arabia—which entered into a $28 million partnership with UC Berkeley last week to collaborate on research, curriculum and hiring of faculty—announced Thursday an $8 million grant to Paul Monteiro, professor of civil and environmental engineering at UC Berkeley. 

Monteiro was one of 12 scientists around the world to win KAUST’s Global Research Partnership Investigator competition. The grant money will be awarded over five years. 

The 12 KAUST investigators will spend up to three months annually on the KAUST campus to conduct research and give talks on desalination, creating stronger but lighter-weight composite materials and developing renewable energy sources. 

KAUST, which will open its doors to students in 2009, is a new international graduate-level re-search university being built on more than 36 million square meters on the Red Sea at Thuwal, Saudi Arabia. 

According to the UC Berkeley website, KAUST officials invited select world-renowned universities and colleges to submit proposals for partnerships in 2007.  

The proposal submitted by UC Berkeley’s Mechanical Engineering department was accepted by KAUST, following which the department’s professors voted 34-2 to support the agreement, with three abstaining and six choosing not to vote. 

Reactions to UC Berkeley’s deal with KAUST have been mixed.  

Some have said that the deal would help the university to offset state budget cuts while others have objected to a public institution partnering with a country which discriminates against women, homosexuals and Jews. 

UC Berkeley’s civil and environmental engineering department declined to join KAUST. 

Monteiro told the Planet that his application for the investigator competition had been independent of the $28 million deal with KAUST. 

“It was a truly international competition,” he said. “As to why the department declined to join the $28 million partnership, you’d have to talk to the department chair.” 

Department chair Lisa Alvarez-Cohen could not be reached Thursday. 

Monteiro said his research—which would focus on green concrete to cut down carbon emissions—would be based in Berkeley. 

“I will visit KAUST for four weeks to share information and give lectures once the campus is built,” he said. “I want to share information all over the world. It’s a wonderful opportunity for my research group to have an impact on sustainable construction. I have never been to Saudi Arabia before so I am looking forward to it. 

Although a UC Academic Senate committee was concerned about the possibility of discrimination against female, gay and Israeli faculty members, they decided that the partnership would help the university. 

“The task force, while regretting these laws and customs, received enough information regarding KAUST policies ... that we recommend approval of this proposal,” an Academic Senate report stated on Feb. 19. 

A press release on the UC Berkeley website stated that KAUST officials had decided that the university would be open to men and women from all cultures around the world. 

Article 4 of the KAUST bylaws states that KAUST “shall have complete freedom in governing and managing its colleges, institutes, schools and departments without any intervention by others. In this regard, the university shall be exempt from those regulations, policies and procedures applicable to other universities in the Kingdom and their respective faculty members. Within the university, the teaching staff shall have the academic and cultural freedom available in international universities.” 

Al Pisano, chair of UC Berkeley’s mechanical engineering department, said in the press release that the partnership would allow the department to work on mutual areas of interest and benefit—such as sea water desalinization, creating stronger but lighter-weight composite materials and developing renewable energy sources—as well as being a positive engagement in the Middle East. 

Pisano did not return calls from the Planet Thursday. 

Igor Tregub, an undergraduate in the university’s mechanical engineering department, said he was pleased with the agreement. 

“I believe that the partnership with KAUST is the latest step in recognizing that the pursuit of knowledge must have no geographical or cultural boundaries in order to meet the global challenges we face in the twenty-first century,” he told the Planet. “As a Jew and a citizen of Israel, I recognize that problems do exist within the framework of Saudi Arabia's hostile stance towards this nation, as well as the numerous documented instances of discrimination against women and gays by the Saudi Arabian government. Yet, since UC Berkeley’s agreement with KAUST demands that the partnership be conducted free of any attempts to hamper the free pursuit of knowledge on university grounds, I think this hurdle will be overcome.” 

Nick Smith, a recent UC Berkeley graduate who championed the Sweatfree Ordinance as chair of Berkeley’s Labor Commission, said that the university should refrain from partnering with entities that were engaged in exploitation, or an extreme unfairness of some kind. 

“If this is approved, it would mean that American taxpayer dollars would be sent to a country that we clearly disagree with in terms of treatment of many of its citizens,” he said. “I would support an international non-profit entities engaging in these efforts, but not a taxpayer-subsidized university such as Berkeley ... Berkeley benefiting financially smacks of the tunnel vision that helps maintain discrimination and division across the world.”

In the race for money to finance their campaigns to replace Don Perata as State Senator for District 9, Assembly-member Loni Hancock is drawing heavily on businesses, labor organizations, and associations from around the state, as well as on individual contributions from inside District 9, while former Assemblymember Wilma Chan’s main source is Asian-Americans living outside the district lines. 

Hancock, who represents Assembly District 14, raised $500,507 for the senate race during 2007, ending with a cash balance of $343,907. Chan, former assemblymember for District 16, raised $164,834, but ended the year with $526,641, almost $200,000 more than Hancock.  

Hancock’s main fund-raising edge came in contributions from associations, businesses, political action committees, and campaigns of other candidates and officeholders, where she outraised her opponent $257,573 to $43,350. Fifty-two percent of Hancock’s donations came from non-individual sources. 

Several of Hancock’s donations come from companies with interests in development in District 9. 

The donation from Hancock from the most controversial source is $3,000 from Upstream Point Molate LLC of Emeryville, the company that holds a multi-million dollar option on property on the Richmond shoreline on which it wants to build a Native-American-based casino and convention center complex. The project, which has been the subject of several lawsuits, is currently being held up pending Bureau of Indian Affairs approval of the status of the Guidiville Band of Pomo Indians. 

Other major Hancock business contributors with major business or development interests in the district are Wareham Develop-ment Corporation of San Rafael ($3,000), which owns and operates several properties in Emeryville and West Berkeley, and which the East Bay Business Times calls “the largest commercial developer of laboratory space in the East Bay;” the Seagate Properties real estate investment firm of San Rafael ($2,625), which operates a number of commercial buildings in downtown Berkeley, including the Berkeley Promenade, Bayer Corporation ($4,000); Clear Channel Outdoor ($4,000); Owens-Illinois General of Illinois ($3,500), the owner of food and beverage bottle manufacturer Owens-Brockway Glass Container with several local plants; and Clorox Corporation of Oakland ($2,000).  

Other large business donations for Hancock came from the Burlington Northern & Santa Fe Railroad ($2,000), Richmond Pacific Railroad ($2,500), and explosives manufacturer and U.S. Defense Department contractor MP Associates of Ione, California ($3,750). 

Hancock also received $3,600 from Artichoke Joe’s Casino in San Bruno. 

Almost 12 percent of Hancock’s contributions ($59,250) came from labor organizations, including $3,600 from the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1555 PAC, $3,000 from the Boilermakers Local #549, $3,600 from the California Association of Sheet Metal & Air Conditioning Contractors National Association PAC, $7,200 in two donations from the California Nurses Association PAC, $3,000 from the California Professional Firefighters PAC, $2,000 from the Drive Committee of the Teamsters, $3,600 from the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers COPE Political Action Committee and $7,200 from the IBEW Local 302 PAC, $2,500 from the Northern California Carpenters Regional Council, $3,600 from the Plumbing Industry Consumer Protection Fund UA Local 159, $3,000 from the Political Education Committee of Public Employees Local 1, $3,000 from the U.A. Local 342 PAC Fund, $2,000 from the United Services Automobile Association, and $2,000 from the Western States Council of Sheet Metal Workers PAC. 

Hancock raised $15,600 from political action committees based in the medical-dental field, including $3,000 from the Physicians For The Group Practice of Medicine PAC, $3,000 from the California Hospital Association PAC, $2,000 from the California Association of Psychiatric Technicians, and $2,000 from the Union of American Physicians and Dentists Medical Defense Fund. 

In addition, she received $3,600 from Abbott Laboratories, an Illinois-based pharmaceutical manufacturing and medical research firm. 

In the legal field, Hancock raised $3,000 from the Consumer Attorneys’ PAC and $2,000 apiece from the California Attorneys For Criminal Justice PAC and the California Applicants’ Attorneys’ Association. She received $3,500 from Furtado, Jaspovice & Simons personal injury attorneys of Hayward, $2,500 from Hanna, Brophy, MacLean, McLeer & Jensen workers’ compensation and employment-related litigation law firm of Oakland, $3,600 from the law firm of Kazan, McClain, Abrams, Lyon, Farrise & Greenwood of Oakland and $3,000 from the Levin, Simes, Kaiser & Gornick firm of San Francisco, both of which specialize in representing claims of victims of asbestos poisoning. 

She received $2,000 from California Beer & Beverage Distributors Community Affairs pac and $3,100 from horse racing interests, including $2,600 from the Pacific Racing Association and the Los Angeles Turf Club. 

The 14th District Assemblymember also raised $37,000 from campaign organizations of other candidates or political officeholders, including $3,600 apiece from Alan Lowenthal For State Senate, Friends of Anthony Portantino, Friends of Fabian Nuñez, Friends of Patty Berg, Kevin De Leon For Assembly, and Swanson For Assembly 2008, $2,600 from Karen Bass For Assembly (the new Assembly Speaker), and $2,000 from Charles Calderon For Assembly. 

Showing how quickly politicians are forgotten by their peers once they leave office, Chan received only $8,600 from other political campaigns in 2007, including $3,300 from Re-Elect Fiona Ma (Assemblymember from San Francisco), $2,000 from the State Board of Equalization President Betty Yee campaign, and $1,000 apiece from the John Chiang For Controller committee and the State Board of Equalization Member Judy Chu Campaign Committee. 

Chan received $3,600 in contributions from Harbor Bay Isle Associates, developers of the 1,000 acre Harbor Bay residential community in Alameda, $5,000 from SunCal Companies of Irvine, developers of the 770 acre Alameda Point mixed-use development in Alameda, and $2,000 from AGI Capital Group real estate development investment company of San Francisco. Chan only received $4,000 overall in contributions from labor organizations, $3,000 from the Steamfitters Local 342 PAC. 

But besides beating Chan overall in fund-raising during the year, Hancock also beat her opponent in almost every measure of fund-raising from individual contributors. 

Individual contributors are allowed to give a maxium of $3,600 per election to a political candidate in California. “Per election” is the operative phrase, since the primary and the general election are two separate elections. A donor may give a candidate up to $3,600 in separate checks earmarked for either the primary or the general election. In Chan’s case, two individual donors chose to contribute this way, putting them over $3,600 in contributions for the year.  

Overall, Hancock raised $236,697 in individual contributions to Chan’s $116,110 in 2007. From individual contributors living inside District 9, the disparity was even greater, with Hancock raising $161,098 to Chan’s $37,950. In Berkeley alone, Hancock raised over $95,000, a whopping 40 percent of her total individual contributions. Only in her hometown of Alameda did Chan outraise Hancock, $9,230 to $347.46. 

Chan’s major fundraising from individual donors came from California cities outside of District 9, where she took in $71,61, more than 61 percent of her total individual contributions. Chan raised $10,000 in San Francisco alone from 28 individual contributors. 

Nearly 73 percent of Chan’s contributions came from individual donors, most of them from citizens with Asian-American surnames. 

Chan had seven individual contributors of $3,000 or more during 2007: First Allied Securities financial consultant Michele Y.K. Hu of Atherton ($5,700 in three separate donations), homemaker Margaret M. Kung of Los Altos ($3,900 in three separate donations), United Way of Silicon Valley associate Angela Kung of Mountain View ($3,500 in two separate donations), KL Acquisitions Management property manager Hong Yao Lin of Pleasanton ($3,400), Signal Hill Golf Course manager Daniel Tsai of Dublin ($3,300), Bridgeport Consulting CFO Mei Chun Lin of Pleasanton ($3,300 in two separate donations), and actor/director Rob Reiner of Beverly Hills ($3,000).  

The former Oakland Assemblymember had 31 individual donations of $1,000 or more. 

Hancock had 20 individual contributors of $3,000 or more, including herself and her husband, Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates, who gave $3,600 apiece to her campaign: Meyer Sound Principal Helen B. Meyer of Berkeley ($3,600), farmers David and Galila Harrington (perhaps relatives--Hancock’s maiden name was Harrington) of Santa Fe, New Mexico ($3,600 apiece), retiree Jeanine Saperstine of Piedmont ($3,600), Keker & Von Nest attorney Jon B. Streeter of Berkeley ($3,600), Gillin, Jacobson, Ellis & Larsen attorney Luke Ellis of Orinda ($3,600 in two separate donations), Lawrence Livermore Nuclear Lab engineer Lynn Seppara of Livermore ($3,600), Alafi Family Foundation President Margaret Alafi ($3,600), Alafi Capital partner Moshe Alafi of Berkeley ($3,600), developer Soheyl Modaressi of Berkeley ($3,600), Key Curriculum Press publisher Steven Rasmussen of Berkeley ($3,600), Justice Matters policy advocate Susan Sandler of San Francisco ($3,600), Sunpower Corporation CEO Tom L. Dinwoodie of Piedmont ($3,600), retiree Tony Suh of Lafayette ($3,600), retiree Mary Friedman of Castro Valley ($3,000), Convera Corporation chairman Ronald J. Whittier of Belvedere ($3,000), homemaker Sara F. Sanderson of Berkeley ($3,000), and The Review Group architect Steven R. Winkel of Berkeley ($3,000). 

Altogether, Hancock had 83 individual contributors giving $1,000 or more. 

These days, Iraq War veteran Sean O’Neill speaks out against the war. 

The 25-year-old Fremont native wasn’t one of those who dreamed of joining the U.S. Marines. At 17, O’Neill didn’t know what he wanted to do after high school.  

“Growing up in a suburban environment, I just wanted to break out of it, have a little bit of an adventure. I read a lot of Hemingway—think that had something to do with it,” O’Neill told the Planet in an interview in a peaceful courtyard at UC Berkeley, where he is a senior studying political science. 

O’Neill thought the Marine Corps “would provide the experience I couldn’t find anywhere else—the weapons and the kind of operations they do—you can’t find anywhere else, not in law enforcement, the peace corps or anywhere.” 

And O’Neill thought he could provide service. “At the time I was hoping to participate in one of these humanitarian actions—obviously they were done for less than humanitarian purposes—but I was intrigued by a lot of missions that were going on in the ’90s and some places we didn’t go in, like Rwanda. I was hoping I would get to participate in missions like that.” 

He wasn’t influenced by recruiters—O’Neill and two friends talked it over and signed up together.  

In the fall of 2000, the 18-year-old shipped out for a three-month stint in boot camp in San Diego. The goal there was to get recruits to develop a greater degree of psychological toughness so they could master greater physical challenges, O’Neil said.  

“They focus more on building mental toughness and obedience to commands,” he said, adding that recruits also learned problem-solving and leadership skills. 

Next stop was the infantry school, also in San Diego, which O’Neill described as “kind of fun”—running through the mud, throwing grenades. He criticized the quality of instruction, however, calling some of his instructors “less than stellar.”  

“They are getting out of the Marine Corps,” he said. “They don’t care any more.” 

He went on to train as a crewmember of a light-armored vehicle, and in April 2001, he was ready to join his unit, Light Armored Reconnaissance. The unit shipped out and traveled around the Middle East and Australia, a “readiness” force able to intervene if a tsunami hit or an embassy needed protection. 

They trained with Jordanians and Kuwaitis. “We would exchange tactics,” he said. 

They came back to Camp Pendleton in December 2002 and everything changed. 

The war and the unanswered questions 

O’Neill flew to Kuwait the next month “to offload all the equipment from the ships and get ready for the invasion that was coming.” 

When they entered Iraq, O’Neill’s job was driving. “I didn’t really know why we were going in. The colonel said it was about weapons of mass destruction. So I decided, ‘all right.’ I had my doubts. When you’re in an environment where you don’t have access to any information sources, independent or otherwise, all you can do is conjecture. We didn’t have any access to newspapers or the Internet. 

“I tried to make the best of the situation and said, ‘this is what we have to do.’ It was pretty exhilarating the first couple of days.” 

While O’Neill was at the wheel, others were shooting. “It was throwing all societal norms out the window. Shooting at anything … some armored vehicles, mostly guys in bunkers, or vehicles with a heavy machine gun mounted on the back … Whoever is shooting at you, you shoot back.” 

At that point it wasn’t hard to identify the enemy, mostly in uniform. “As time went on that was more difficult,” he said. 

Then there was the first casualty: “A guy named Suarez [Lance Cpl. Jesus Suarez del Solar], who actually stepped on one of our own rounds. 

“They’re supposed to explode when they hit the ground but not all of them do. He stepped on one of these things and severed an artery and he bled out. It took him hours. That’s when you realize it isn’t much of a game any more. 

“It was pretty traumatic for me because I had to be a guard outside the vehicle where the medics were working on him.”  

O’Neill said he didn’t know what would have happened to his psyche if it was he who had been working to save Suarez’ life. “Just hearing it was bad enough,” he said. 

The incident caused a lot of anger in the unit. “People were pretty pissed off. Neither our own captain nor any other higher authorities told us that area was a no-go, because every time they use these munitions they’re supposed to let everyone know over the radio, ‘don’t go into that area.’” 

When people get frustrated, all they can do is grumble, O’Neill said. “There’s not much more you can do.” 

When the unit got to Baghdad, they posted a blockade around the city to prevent people from entering. Baghdad residents had fled to the country before the war, and, after the statue of Saddam fell—April 9, 2003—and they were ready to come home, O’Neill said. 

The marine’s job was to keep them out and away from danger. 

“They couldn’t come back in for their own protection,” he said. 

After the fall of Baghdad, the Marines launched a raid on Tekrit, which they secured a day or two later. “Then the actual invasion was pretty much over. Most the country was secured or something close to it,” O’Neill said. 

The unit was then stationed in a town in southern Iraq, where Saddam had been hated, in contrast to the north where people were Sunni loyalists. 

“We were out there with minimal body armor,” O’Neill said. Groups of Marines went to restaurants; they went shopping. “Things that would be unthinkable today,” he said. “We felt we could eat the food without there being broken glass or poison. It was a real positive feeling.” 

O’Neill thought it would be like invasions he’d read about: Topple the dictator and get out, but violence against the U.S. military was growing. 

It had become clear to O’Neill that there were no weapons of mass destruction “It was a farce,” he said.  

Still, having got rid of Saddam, O’Neill said he believed people would have “something close to democracy and it would all be worth it—so I thought at the time.” 

An occupation? 

The unit returned to the U.S. in May, but learned in November they would be going back to Iraq. “I was furious and thought: ‘This is like an occupation.’”  

He shipped back out in Feburary 2004, with just seven months left on his contract. He was angry. “I did my part—what the hell? That was a big feeling for a lot of people,” he said. 

“I started thinking, “What the hell is the mission? Are we going to police the society? We didn’t think it was our job to baby-sit the Iraqis or police them. We didn’t think that was our job.” 

In March the unit was stationed in a town called Al Qaim, where they were supposed to police the Iraq-Syria border. 

At this point, O’Neill no longer believed in the mission. The choice, however, was to quit and do six to eight months in the brig, or just go with it. He chose the latter.  

The situation felt increasingly like an occupation. “If there’s anything approximating an expression of popular will, the rapid increase in violence and bombings has to indicate that the Iraqis didn’t want us there,” he said. 

Within the unit, the men would talk about that among themselves. O’Neill said his speech wasn’t stifled. 

He did, however, choose his words carefully when talking to superior officers. Speaking to his staff sergeant, “in the most delicate of terms” O’Neill said while he didn’t agree with the mission, he would do his job and keep his men safe. 

April 1 the unit got hit hard with explosives and mines in Al Qaim; they learned they couldn’t trust anyone. “We were going to do a patrol with some Iraqi cops and the local insurgents—I don’t know, they had some deal, they were one and the same. The Iraqi cops told the insurgents when and where we’d be and gave them light machine guns and we got ambushed. It killed a Marine. Myself and a couple of guys got wounded.” 

If O’Neill felt any traces of ambivalence before, this incident pushed him to the other side with the realization: “We must withdraw.”  

He had also come to believe patrolling the extensive Iraq-Syria border was an impossible task. “We didn’t have the manpower and the locals knew the area better than us,” he said. 

Insergents used light trucks, more suitable to the terrain. The heavy U.S. vehicles got bogged down in the salt marshes. “And we didn’t have enough air support.” 

They couldn’t count on help from the Iraqis: “The locals didn’t trust us and we couldn’t provide them any protection if they worked with us.” Those who worked for the U.S. military became targets, as did their families. 

After Al Qaim, there were three or four weeks of raids in Falluja.  

Coming home, speaking out 

In July, toward the end of his contract, O’Neill was sent back to the U.S. He was home in Fremont in late August.  

Ties with family and friends helped smooth the transition back to civilian life. “I kept a good circle of friends around me. I ended up living with a guy from my platoon when I got out until I married my wife. I kept in contact with a lot of people from the platoons and started meeting other veterans.” 

Talking to other veterans was important: “We were able to strip away that ‘Oh god, it’s so terrible,’ to cut through all that sentiment that I think non-veterans have around the war, and just talk about it honestly, without looking at it through any kind of lens that says the experience has to conform to any sort of ideology.” 

Although he had been very critical, O’Neill hadn’t planned to speak out against the war. But through connections with the mother of a friend in the Marines who was a peace activist, and with Fernando Suarez del Solar, the father of the man in O’Neill’s unit killed by an unexploded cluster bomb—he has become a well-known anti-war activist—he met people in Iraq Veterans Against the War and he began speaking publicly about his experiences. 

“Wife, school, and speaking out were the best things for my sanity,” he said. “When you hear it out loud, it’s different than when you have a thought that’s just kicking around in your head.”  

O’Neill has spent a lot of time reflecting on strategies to end the war. He’s moved away from the more radical groups such as Iraq Veterans Against the War and will not be participating in this weekend’s Winter Soldier Gathering in Maryland, where Iraq and Afghanistan veterans will share their stories.  

He fears that because the event is sponsored by more radical groups and broadcast on KPFA—a left-leaning radio station—the event will be dismissed by the mainstream. 

Activists sometimes just look at the war through one lens alone, whether the view is radical or conservative, O’Neill said. That results in “teasing out a political meaning of events which negates them as a human experience,” he said. 

“The tragedy is that the [radical] tactics undermine the good things they want to do,” he said, referring to street demonstations. 

O’Neill favors groups that engage with the electoral system. The system is messy; you don’t always get what you want, but it is through the electoral system that the war will be stopped, he said. 

“We have to play the political game and interject ourselves in the system,” he said. 

The Winter Soldier gathering, March 14-16, in which Iraq and Afghanistan veterans tell their stories, will be broadcast in its entirely on KPFA, 94.1 and streamed at KPFA.org.

Margaret Lowry, removed from her position as Willard Middle School vice principal last week and reassigned to a staff administrative position, has resigned and will leave the Berkeley Unified School District at the end of the school year. 

The district last week completed its investigation of Lowry for improper conduct involving two special education students at Willard. Parents of the students alleged that Lowry gave money to one of the students to buy marijuana from the other.  

Lowry had been put on administrative leave during the investigation and was then placed on special assignment with the district’s central staff last week.  

On Tuesday, however, Lowry’s name appeared on a list of resignations which the Berkeley Board of Education approved Wednesday.  

District spokesperson Mark Coplan told the Planet that Lowry will resign at the end of the school year. He added that Lowry had resigned on her own account and was not asked to leave. 

School Board President John Selawsky discounted reports last week that Lowry was attempting to set up a drug sting using the students. 

“Our investigation concluded that she did not put any child in harm’s way, and that the allegations of her running a sting operation are inaccurate,” he said. 

Selawsky said Lowry would be reassigned to work on developing summer programs. 

“I don’t believe she will be working with children,” he said. “We want to reassure the public and parents that we are taking the allegations against her very seriously.”  

Selawsky said that the district had investigated Lowry for “heavy-handed use of authority and cutting corners on due process.”  

Berkeley Adult School Vice Principal Thomas Orput—who was vice principal at Willard before Lowry took over the position in 2006—will be interim vice principal at Willard for the remainder of the school year. Neither Orput nor Lowry have been available for comment. 

The Planet also reported several other complaints against Lowry from current and former Willard parents. They alleged that Lowry repeatedly mistreated students, forced students to write false statements by threatening to expel them as well as pressuring students to inform on other students.  

The parents told the Planet that although they had filed official complaints with the district almost a year ago, they had not received any response.  

District Superintendent Bill Huyett told the Planet in an earlier interview that the district would try to resolve the complaints. Neither Huyett nor Selawsky was available for comment Wednesday. 

Lowry’s resume—acquired by the Planet through a public records act request— confirmed that Lowry was assistant principal at Oakland’s Skyline High School from 2003 to June 2006. She also served as principal of Skyline’s summer school program from 2003 to 2006. 

After receiving her bachelor’s degree in science and her teaching credential from CSU Hayward in 1989, Lowry taught at James Logan High School in Union City from 1989 to 2002 and then joined Castro Valley Adult School as assistant director where she remained for a year. 

A five-day anti-war camp-out at the downtown Marine Recruiting Station (MRS) aboard a Code Pink truck, designed to draw attention to the March 19 five-year anniversary of the Iraq War, turned nasty Tuesday afternoon: An attorney says the city may be using code enforcement to selectively stifle free speech at the Code Pink protest, and a Code Pink activist says she was assaulted by a city of Berkeley code enforcement supervisor. 

The large truck dubbed “Green Zone,” adorned with potted plants and trees, has been parked since Monday in front of the Marine Recruiting Station at 64 Shattuck Square. A half-dozen women are staying in the truck round-the-clock, with others joining them to sing, meet and distribute anti-war literature.  

The MRS is guarded by four to six—sometimes more—Berkeley police officers, with the number having been augmented since a bomb blast March 6 at the Time Square recruiting office. 

Police are also present to keep sidewalks clear. A March 10 bulletin from the city manager to the City Council says, in part “due to the constricted sidewalks, along this segment of Shattuck Avenue, we are enforcing all laws necessary to keep the sidewalk clear at all times. We will maintain access for pedestrians as well as businesses.” 

According to Deputy City Manager Lisa Caronna, who spoke to the Planet on Thursday, Code Pink may place nothing on the sidewalk—“No major pieces of furniture on the sidewalk,” Caronna said. “We’ve been very clear with them. Chairs are not going to be allowed.” 

And so, Tuesday afternoon, there were a number of Code Pink activists in and about the truck. As viewed in a police video shared by police with the Planet, there were two bicycles affixed to a telephone pole and a baby stroller next to the truck.  

Asher Wolf was sitting in a folding chair on the sidewalk, adjacent to the curb. The video shows that Asher’s knees extending just slightly beyond a parking meter. Wolf is disabled--she is able to stand and walk, but would find it difficult to climb into the truck. 

According to City Manager Phil Kamlarz, police called Greg Daniel, a code enforcement supervisor. “Police called him and asked him to enforce laws about placing [objects] on the sidewalk,” Kamlarz told the Planet Tuesday. 

In calling in Daniel, “The goal was to avoid confrontation,” Kamlarz said. “They can’t block the sidewalk. It’s a very narrow sidewalk.” 

What happened next is in dispute. 

The Planet interviewed Code Pink activist Zanne Joi outside the MRS some 45 minutes after the incident. “I heard a guy screaming at [Wolf], who is disabled and [was] in a chair on the edge of the sidewalk,” she said. “He told her she had to get up. She was asking, ‘Who are you?’” 

This interaction is not shown on the video. 

Wolf got up from the chair. Joi said, “I was reaching to get the chair and [Daniel] pushed me over.” Joi then fell into the street. “He was yelling—I expected police to do something,” she said. “It was shocking,” Joi said, noting that Daniel wore no city badge or form of identification. 

Caronna said she reviewed the police tape of the incident, in which physical contact between Daniel and Joi would have been obscured. The officer was filming from behind bystanders.  

“Everyone was in tight quarters,” Caronna said. “Whether there was contact or not, it is unfortunate that Zanne fell down. It was not intentional … People got tangled up. It was an unintentional bump. I don’t see an intentional act to hurt anybody. It was not done in anger.” 

Daniel was at work on Thursday, according to Caronna. “We think he acted professionally,” Caronna said.  

In a phone interview Thursday, Joi said she plans to file assault charges against Daniel next week, after the five-day protest. She said if the contact between herself and the code inspector, a large man of more than six feet, was in fact inadvertent, the inspector would have reacted apologetically or offered assistance, which was not the case. 

Joi, who had not seen the video, said that she expected that it would have shown Daniel screaming at the women; however, sound from the street is not available in the early part of the two-minute 11-second video.  

The video is shot in several segments. Caronna said nothing was erased. One does not see the approach of the inspector. One does see him speaking to a group of Code Pink supporters, then moving into a tight space, where he bends forward. For an instant, one glimpses a flash of pink as Joi, mostly obscured, falls. The contact between the two is obscured. 

Reached Thursday by telephone, Attorney Osha Neumann said he was concerned that the city was trying to enforce statutes that did not exist. “I don’t believe there is any violation of any city ordinance with a disabled woman sitting off to the side” of the sidewalk, he said. “I don’t think there was any cause at all to take her chair.” 

“I’m concerned about this pattern of very strict enforcement, going out of the way to hinder a protest,” Neumann said, adding that he thinks the enforcement stems from the city’s fear of getting bad press around the Marine recruiting station issues.  

It could be “selective enforcement to discourage protest,” Neumann said.

After Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, nobody’s thinking of nuclear power in the U.S. these days, right? 

Wrong—and UC Berkeley’s at the forefront of the drive to bring back nuclear, this time in the guise of a clean, green technology. 

For residents of the United States, the March 28, 1979 accident at a Pennsylvania nuclear power plant that led to a release of radioactive gases and a partial reactor meltdown spelled the end of a once-booming commercial reactor business. 

That the accident followed just 12 days after a popular film about a reactor system failure—The China Syndrome—helped seal the fate of an industry. 

Then came the April 26, 1986 disaster at the Soviet nuclear power plant at Chernobyl in the Ukraine, when an explosion caused by a runaway reactor send a cloud of deadly dust and gases spewing over the heart of the Eurasian land mass. 

Today, California has only two nuclear power plants, one at Diablo Canyon near Eureka in the north and the other at San Onofre on the coast between Los Angeles and San Diego. 

A third plant, Rancho Seco, south of Sacramento, was built by the same company, Babcock & Wilcox, that built Three Mile Island and was shut down three years after the Pennsylvania disaster after an advisory referendum by Sacramento voters call for closure. 

The plant had suffered repeated equipment failures, and had been shut down more frequently than it was on-line. 

But all that is in the past, said two nuclear scientists and an economist during a session on nuclear power at last week’s UC Berkeley Energy Symposium. The lone dissenting voice came from another physicist, Thomas Cochran, senior scientist with the National Resources Defense Council’s nuclear program. 

For the three proponents—Robert Budnitz, a senior scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Per Peterson, a professor of nuclear engineering at the university, and Stanford economist Geoffrey Rothwell—nuclear power has an important, though minor, role to play in the fight against global warming. 

But for Cochran, the controversial technology is a financial black hole for taxpayers, requiring $13 billion in federal subsidies over the lifetime of a single plant, and posing the threat of proliferation of nuclear weapons. 

“We will build as many as the U.S. government is willing to subsidize,” he said, thanks to the efforts of the nuclear industry’s lobbyists. 

Peterson said that delays of past decades had been resolved. In the 1980s, companies “had enormous problems getting their plants built on time,” and once built plants were faced with operational problems that kept them in shutdown mode 40 percent of the time. 

By the 1990s, he said, plants were running 90 percent of the time, and were forced to close only two percent of the time, and the remainder was spent primarily in refueling. 

And the dangers of nuclear waste? Overblown, he said, and much more tightly regulated than dangerous chemical wastes. 

Budnitz said that in 1986 when Diablo Canyon went on-line, nuclear plants around the country were logging between 500 and 700 scrams, or emergency shutdowns, every year. In 2007, he said, the total was 10, and most emergencies arose from human error because modern equipment had become much more reliable. 

While the two Berkeley scientists and the Stanford economist dismissed the subsidies of little practical importance, Cochran said, “They left the implication that this was a good idea. This is the mantra of the industry.” 

But among the companies receiving subsidies has been Exelon, the country’s largest nuclear power company and the world’s third largest, with revenues of $14 billion and over $1 billion in profit, “where the CEO makes $10 million a year.” 

Another nuclear economic power, GE, is the world’s second largest company, with assets valued at over $400 billion. “To subsidize those companies is just crazy,” Cochran said. 

Exelon has also figured in the Democratic president race, with Hillary Clinton’s campaign criticizing the Barack Obama team for taking $227,000 in donations from Exelon employees, while Burson Marsteller, the firm whose CEO is Clinton’s chief strategist, Mark Penn, has been paid $230,000 to lobby for a new nuclear plant in New Jersey. 

While the three proponents contended that even with subsidies, there won’t be a nuclear reactor boom at home, Peterson said government subsidies were appropriate if policy-makers wanted “to pull new technology into the market.” 

With an administration in Washington that has rejected taxes on carbon as evil, subsidies are appropriate, said Rothwell. “They haven’t even noticed that the climate has changed,” he said. 

But Cochran said subsidies distract policymakers from “the quickest way to solve that problem, which is to cap carbon. 

“NRDC’s highest priority is capping carbon,” he said, adding that restricting the primary culprit in global warming wasn’t even a priority of the Nuclear Energy Institute, the commercial reactor industry’s trade group, until he badgered them into adopting a carbon cap policy two years ago. 

The bottom-line concern of the NRDC remains nuclear proliferation, in which reactors play a central role. Current international safeguards are simply not adequate to the task of limiting the spread of nuclear weapons.

Could UC Berkeley’s first commercial ethanol partnership be headed for rough waters? 

Pacific Ethanol, the Sacramento-based company that has partnered with the Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) to build a cellulosic ethanol plant, announced this week that it would delay the release of its annual report till the end of the month. 

Delayed reports often mean that bad financial news may be coming, and the Fresno Bee reports that the company has burned through three chief financial officers in the last year.  

The Sacramento-based company was picked as JBEI’s partner to build a plant that will produce ethanol from plant fibers—cellulose—rather than the more easily processed sugars derived from corn, sugar cane and other traditional food crops. 

The demonstration plant, which would be built at the site of the company’s corn-based ethanol plant in Broadman, Ore., would be the first of its kind in the Northwest. 

JBEI, headed by UC Berkeley scientist/entrepreneur Jay Keasling, will be providing research support and work on enzymes designed to break down fibers into the constituent sugars, according to official announcement from the company. 

The Department of Energy, which provided the $135 million for the Emeryville-based JBEI lab, is providing $24.3 million for the Oregon plant, which will use patented technology from BioGasohol ApS, the final part in the project. 

Rising oil and grain prices have hit the previously booming ethanol industry, along with a recent report which charges that ethanol may be as environmentally damaging as petroleum-based fuels—a report Pacific Ethanol has challenged. 

Several companies have bailed on a planned refinery, including Pacific Ethanol. The company announced Dec. 10 that it was pulling the plug on a plant already under construction in California’s Imperial Valley. 

The company’s stock has been steadily declining, from a high of $11.24 per share on Sept. 21 to $5.37 at the close of trading Thursday. 

Planned refineries have also faced a flurry of lawsuits, and those that are running have been hit hard by soaring grain prices, which have in turn been impacted by high energy costs. 

Pacific Ethanol announced the delay in releasing its annual report Monday. Revenues had dropped sharply in the third quarter of 2007, with losses of $4.8 million compared to a profit of $2.2 million during the previous quarter. 

With a rapid increase in the nation’s production of ethanol, prices for the fuel have dropped at the same time gasoline prices have been soaring. 

JBEI is a partnership of UC Berkeley, three of its affiliated DOE labs (Lawrence Berkeley, Lawrence Livermore and Sandia) and the Carnegie Institute. 

It is a separate effort from the Energy Biosciences Institute, the $500 million research program funded by BP, the former British Petroleum, and administered by UC Berkeley. 

Blake Simmons, who holds the title of JBEI’s Vice President of Deconstruction, had cited the Oregon plant as one of the institute’s accomplishment during a panel session at the university’s annual Energy Symposium. He said plans called for an annual production of 10 million gallons. 

“We are happy that Biofuel 2.0 will be a resounding success,” he said.

The struggle to draft a Berkeley density bonus law ground forward Wednesday night, shadowed by the uncertain but foreboding impacts of a June ballot measure. 

While backers say the measure is a simple fix to stop government from using eminent domain for the benefit of private developers, critics said Proposition 98—a creation of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association and heavily backed by developers and landlords—may be a time bomb targeting city and county zoning laws. 

The measure also phases out all remaining vestiges of rent control, and critics say it could also destroy many eviction controls on landlords. 

Questions raised by members of the Berkeley Planning Commission—and still unanswered by city staff—focus on the measure’s impact on a proposed density bonus law created by a joint subcommittee of members of the Planning and Housing Advisory commissions and the Zoning Adjustments Board. 

Acting City Attorney Zach Cowan has said many of the subcommittee’s proposals are illegal, though Planning Commissioner Gene Poschman offers laws in other cities that he says enact the very measures Cowan says aren’t permissible. 

But with Proposition 98 on the June ballot and backed by a fat treasure chest of contributions, the City Council is faced with the choice of getting something passed before the election or perhaps losing much of its control over new construction in the city. 

Planning Commissioners voted Wednesday night to stage an end run around the measure, using the same gambit adopted the last time Berkeley faced a statewide ballot measure that threatened to limit its power to regulation construction: preparing a new ordinance that would quickly expire if the statewide measure failed. 

In fact, the city could adopt the same measure the City Council voted to approve in September 2006, when Proposition 90 posed an even more explicit threat than its current and much more nebulous successor. 

Commissioners voted to call for a public hearing where they would look at exactly the same alternatives the City Council had before it in 2006. 

The panel would then be able to continue deliberations on a more polished measure, which would go to the City Council if Proposition 98 fails. 

Neighbor fears 

One thing that’s undisputed is the friction generated by current or pending large construction projects along University and San Pablo avenues, where neighbors have bitterly contested projects they say shadow formerly sunny yards, add to congestion on the streets and make curbside parking increasingly difficult. 

Without a law governing the mass of buildings along San Pablo, neighborhood resident (and Zoning Adjustment Board member) Sara Shumer told commissioners, five-story projects “would tower over the neighborhood.” 

That’s because, under current city interpretations of the state density bonus law, developers are entitled to break the current four-story limit in a neighborhood of one- and two-story homes and duplexes, Shumer said. 

Michael Larrick, a neighbor of a major project planned by developer Ali Kashani at the southeast corner of the intersection of San Pablo and Ashby avenues, urged adoption of the subcommittee recommendations and presented petitions in support signed by his neighbors. 

“Ali said, ‘I can build this bigger because of the density bonus,’” Larrick said, describing the project as “a monolith.” 

Under the subcommittee proposals, even with the bonus, developers could only build up to four stories along San Pablo, and Larrick’s sentiments were shared by signers of other petitions circulated near the San Pablo/University avenues intersection. 

And while city staff and Cowan have said the subcommittee proposals restrict the discretion of the Zoning Adjustments Board, ZAB member Bob Allen told the commission that the city staff’s alternative proposal “will do nothing to improve the no-man’s-land that ZAB works in when addressing density bonus projects.” 

Allen, who sat on the joint subcommittee, said the panel had repeatedly asked the city for permission to consult an outside attorney, but “was repeatedly rebuffed with ‘we don’t have the money.’” 

“My suggestion,” he told the commission, “is that if you don’t like the city attorney’s position, then talk to another attorney.” 

Another subcommittee member, HAC chair and ZAB member Jesse Arreguin, urged planning commissioners not to act before they had heard from all of the stakeholders impacted by the staff’s interpretation of the ordinance. 

“It is clear that ZAB has a lack of discretion with the current procedures,” he said, while the subcommittee proposals had been extensively debated and would give ZAB discretion while keeping construction within reasonable limits. 

Minority to majority 

Only one subcommittee member voted against the proposals, David Stoloff, the appointee of Mayor Tom Bates. Stoloff has disparaged the recommendations as an attempt to control development. 

While a minority of one on the joint panel, Stoloff is regularly one of the five-member planning commission majority (along with Chair James Samuels, Harry Pollack, Larry Gurley and Susan Wengraf) on controversial issues. 

Another commissioner, Susan Wengraf, was a member of the subcommittee majority, as was Gene Poschman. 

As city policy and legal practice now stand, developers are allowed concessions to enable them to recoup the costs of any aspects of their project deemed of public benefit by the staff. In the case of the so-called Trader Joe’s project at 1885 University Ave., the benefit justifying a controversial fifth story was the provision of parking spaces for the building’s commercial tenant, the non-union but popular grocer. 

Subcommittee members want the density bonus exceptions granted only for creation of affordable housing, which is the stated purpose of the state density bonus law. 

But the City Council rejected the subcommittee’s earlier recommendations in Sept. 2006, when it voted for a staff alternative in adopting regulations designed to head off Proposition 90. 

Under Proposition 90, a landowner could sue a government agency for any action it took which could conceivably depress of the value of a property. Zoning restrictions that could restrict land use were included. 

The measure passed by the council included a sunset provision if 90 failed, and 10 days after the measure went down to defeat in November, the temporary regulations expired, leaving the city without a density law.  

A good part of Wednesday night’s meeting was devoted to just how much open space a developer would be allowed to put on a building’s roof versus more publicly accessible space of the ground floor or podium. 

While the committee urged a 25 percent rooftop limit, staff has called for a 75 percent maximum, and Samuels passed out photos of the rooftops of two apartment buildings built by Patrick Kennedy, until recently the city’s largest private landlord. 

Another issue was the mandatory setback between the outer walls of new projects in commercial zones and adjacent residentially zoned neighborhoods. 

Uncertain, vague 

But the commission took no action Wednesday on these and other issues, though members did vote to allow staff to prepare for a public hearing on the temporary legislation city councilmembers could adopt to stave off the worst impacts of Proposition 98. 

Just what 98 means is as unclear as the language of the measure itself, and passage would almost certainly mean lawsuits and court decisions spelling out the measure’s precise applications. 

At its worst, according to the Western Center on Law and Poverty, the measure would also strike down inclusionary housing laws like Berkeley’s which already make developers include affordable housing in their projects. 

In the March issue of Northern News, the newsletter for Northern California members of the American Planning Association, San Jose Senior Planner Juan Borrelli writes that the ban on government’s use of eminent domain to condemn property for private use embodies a very broad definition of “private.” 

Among other things, the measure would ban eminent domain actions that took property for a public agency for natural resource consumption. That would bar eminent domain actions to take land for reservoirs, canals and pipeline rights of way, Borrelli writes. 

Debra Sanderson, Berkeley’s Land Use Planning Manager, said she had read several interpretations of the measure, with some predicting very extreme impacts and others very moderate ones. 

“It’s very broad and very vague,” said Wengraf. 

Meanwhile, planning commissioners are left struggling with a controversial measure, and poised to adopt regulations—temporary or permanent—certain to arouse yet more heat and the threat of more litigation. 

While Wednesday was the commission’s fifth meeting on the density bonus, it was the first session where members sat down to discuss the specifics, as they began working through a staff memorandum, contrasting the staff’s recommendations with those of the subcommittee. 

The question remains, given the June statewide vote, just how relevant their discussions will be. 

Fans, foes and the simply undecided can hear the pros and cons of Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) Monday night, thanks to the efforts of the Claremont Elmwood Neighborhood Association. 

The meeting, which starts at 7 p.m. in the Fireside Room of St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave., will feature both proponents and opponents of the AC Transit proposal. 

Plans call for service along Telegraph Avenue from the UC Berkeley campus to the San Leandro BART station, with a loop to downtown Berkeley—though final details have yet to be hammered out.  

The most controversial proposal would create dedicated bus-only traffic down the center of the heavily traveled Telegraph corridor, along with possible elimination of street parking. 

While proponents say the measure is a necessary step to get people out of their carbon-emissions-generating cars, critics claim the buses will be lightly used, since the route parallels BART, will harm business through lost parking and increased traffic on neighborhood streets. The meeting comes as the deadline approaches for Berkeley city officials to make their routing and alignment recommendations. 

District One Oakland School Board member Kerry Hamill ended one part of the suspense in the June 3 Oakland election, filing her papers late Wednesday afternoon for the at-large Oakland City Council seat being vacated by incumbent Henry Chang. 

Filing for all Oakland City Council and Oakland School Board races has now closed. 

Signatures on Hamill’s petitions are now being looked over by the Alameda County Registrar of Voters office to see if there are enough valid ones for her to qualify. Each Oakland candidate for both at-large and district elections are required to turn in the names of 50 registered voters who support their candidacy. 

That is the case for the fifth at-large candidate, senior citizen activist, former Community Police Advisory Board member and retired U.S. postal worker Frank Rose, who took out filing papers only after filing was extended for five days, and also turned them in on late Wednesday. 

If their signatures and other filing information are approved, Hamill and Rose will join three other candidates for the at-large seat, all of whom have qualified: retired IT professional and public safety activist Charles Pine, attorney Clinton Killian, and AC Transit At-Large Board Member Rebecca Kaplan. 

In the Oakland School Board District One race to succeed the outgoing Hamill, the Oakland City Clerk’s office announced that the daughter of author Ishmael Reed, writer/editor Tennessee Reed, has qualified to run. The Daily Planet earlier reported erroneously that Reed was not running after the clerk’s office sent out a list of filed candidates that did not include Reed’s name.

To begin with, my father brought me to Herrick in 1990 when I was having a full-blown psychotic episode and my behavior was out of hand because I was quite delusional. It wasn’t my first or last psychotic episode. There would be one more in 1996 before I would swear to permanently stay medicated and cooperative with treatment.  

Once at Herrick, I was given antipsychotic medication, a sleeping pill and then a second sleeping pill. I remember I was out of it for several days. I was oblivious to my blood samples being drawn while I slept. 

Upon awakening, I got into arguments with the staff. There were several male and female belligerent nurses. They needed to be belligerent to get their job done—they were dealing with irrational people. That idea didn’t make the staff any more pleasant. They were obnoxious.  

The hospital had tile floors, vinyl upholstery and the industrial type look of a mental hospital that you might imagine. During morning group, a couple of patients got assertive, and two burly psychiatric technicians took away each one.  

On the ward, I talked to a woman who was terrified about “being brought upstairs again.” Looking back on it, I now know that this woman was probably receiving electroshock therapy when she was upstairs. 

There was also a ping-pong table in the ward that provided a pleasant distraction. It was in the room where smoking was permitted.  

It was about then that I started smoking cigarettes. A staff member who was more jovial than most, shared his smokes with me. He and I thought he was doing me a favor. I continue to smoke to this day.  

That described the older Herrick of 1990. I went back to a revamped Herrick in 1994 when I wasn’t really having a psychotic episode; I was just in a lot of pain.  

I had oral surgery to remove all four wisdom teeth, and temporarily had no access to food or the pain pills that were prescribed. I associated mental hospitals with sanctuary, so I had my mom bring me to Herrick to be taken care of.  

I found myself in a remodeled Herrick that seemed to have better people running it. The hospital ward was now carpeted and had cloth upholstery, and it had a gentler atmosphere. The food strengthened me and the Tylenol with codeine made a world of difference. My mouth began to heal rapidly. Staff was fairly nice for the most part.  

However, I found that the stay at Herrick was crazy-making this time around. I feared two of the other male patients, and I knew that staying in the ward, ironically, would worsen my mental condition. I talked to the psychiatrist at the earliest opportunity, and he agreed to let me out the front door of the hospital. I walked to Safeway and got cash with my ATM card, (it was now the beginning of the month and I had money) and walked to BART. I took BART and a bus home.  

Years later, when Herrick was renamed Alta Bates, my visit consisted of bringing a close relative to that hospital. When I visited that ward, I found a friendly atmosphere and kind staff. I hope this is so today. 

When you are a psychiatric patient, part of the mystery is whether psychiatrists are truly here to help you or are just a bunch of tormentors. The answer to this question changes depending on whether or not you are taking medication, and this fact intensifies the mystery. For a good answer, we can ask those people who are close to us. 

It can be difficult for psychiatric survivors to sort out the help vs. the hurt that they get from the system. That’s one reason why there is a lot of noncompliance. Often, a system intended to help the mentally ill has abusive aspects that end up alienating them. There’s a lot of anger among psychiatric survivors due to the abuse that has been received in the name of “treatment.” Yet it seems some kind of treatment is needed if we are to be well.

Warm pool rescue 

Deputy Fire Chief Gil Dong said the Berkeley Fire Department will be sending a letter to a lifeguard at the Berkeley High School warm pool for rescuing a 40-year-old man he hauled unconscious from the water. 

The 911 call came in at 5:30 p.m. Monday, and when firefighters arrived they found the man unresponsive but alive. He was rushed to the Alta Bates Summit Medical Center on Ashby Avenue, where he was admitted after emergency room treatment. 

“He is expected to survive,” said the deputy fire chief. 

The man had been underwater for between 15 and 30 seconds before his rescue. 

Fire-starter 

A smart move by a Berkeley Fire Department engine crew resulted in the apprehension of a 17-year old who had started two fires near the Ecole Bilingue de Berkeley at 1009 Heinz Ave. 

It was around midnight Wednesday when a crew returning from an emergency call decided to cruise by the school, where an earlier fire had destroyed a bench, said Deputy Chief Dong. 

“They found a juvenile starting another small fire with newspapers,” he said. 

The firefighters called police, who took the 17-year-old woman into custody. 

“We will be following up to change that behavior,” said the deputy chief. 

Neither fire endangered the school, he said.

On Oxford Street these days a massive pile of concrete and steel is starting to take shape. It’s already impossible to look past it to see the hills above to the east or a slice of ocean to the west. It comes right up to the sidewalk on the corner, leaving no room for a patch of green to refresh pedestrians. When the two buildings on the site are completed to the planned heights, that stretch of Oxford will become a canyon. 

There will be open space all right, but in a north-facing interior courtyard which will be dark almost all year long. And there might be play space for the family housing units on the roof—on the ROOF? Good luck, Mom and Dad, keeping the kids from going over the edge. Alternatively, they could cross six lanes of Oxford Street traffic to play on UC’s lawn.  

Oh, yes, these will be “green” buildings. Whatever that means to you. Green building expert Sandra Mendler was quoted in these pages last week as saying that the best way to build green is not to build at all, but to re-use existing buildings. 

That’s a hard concept for most Americans to get hold of, especially Westerners. Our longstanding tradition is that newer is always better. We’ve been gripped, since the first settlers showed up here, by what cynics call an “edifice complex.”  

Our politics is driven by the building industry. A cursory glance at the early campaign contributions gleaned by Loni Hancock, now looking to cap her eight years in the legislature with more in the state senate, shows that a sizeable percentage of the take came either from developers or from construction unions, and that’s almost always the case. There’s big money in big buildings, and builders are willing to share with their friends. 

The current flap over AC Transit’s Bus Rapid Transit proposal is another example of how the edifice complex works. There have been almost no objections to most of the plan to speed up bus trips on the route which goes roughly from San Leandro to Sather Gate. Computerized scheduling, changing lights to let busses go through, and other good ideas are already being implemented.  

But many observers have questioned the wisdom of a multi-million dollar capital investment in hardscape—dividers, islands, bus stations etc.—which will be hard to dismantle if the system doesn’t function as planned. The catch is that there’s a big pile of federal money which can only be allocated for capital improvements: building projects, that is. And which industry’s Washington lobbyists were responsible for getting transit funds earmarked that way, instead of for buses and drivers? Take a wild guess.  

But nothing deters true believers. Just to prove that no good deed goes unpunished, one long-time Berkeley transportation commissioner sent a venomous letter denouncing the councilmember who appointed him as “Kriss Worthless” for “playing political games with BRT” which the writer supports. Of course, there’s also a group of opponents denouncing Worthington for being too soft on BRT. You can’t win. 

Even benign-seeming concepts like building housing in cities near transit nodes aren’t exactly what they seem to be. Ever since the railroads went West speculators have known that it’s profitable to buy up land before the train gets there. The streetcar suburbs of the early twentieth century (e.g. Berkeley’s Claremont District) worked the same way. Do we think that the avid promoters of transit-oriented development don’t have similar financial interests, that they aren’t silent partners in the limited-equity real estate trusts which own big swaths of cities like Berkeley these days? Think again.  

And there’s absolutely no proof that building near transit nodes gets people out of their cars. Planning Commissioner Gene Poschman is fond of citing (for all the good it does) a study that shows that people who live in developments with parking garages just commute by car like everyone else, even if transit’s nearby. A recent Chronicle story by Carl Nolte, interviews with tenants of the brand-new One Rincon skyscraper, confirmed this. He quoted one guy who said that he liked living in his new tower condo because it’s so close to 280, making his Silicon Valley car commute even easier.  

Or consider culture. Jesse Green had a good piece in the New York Times entertainment section last week calling attention to the grandiose buildings being constructed, with big donor bucks, for regional theaters all over the country. He pointed out that little thought is given to how the companies are supposed to come up with operating expenses to actually put on plays. One of the theaters pictured was the Berkeley Repertory Theater.  

Then there’s the Broad Museum of Contemporary Art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. According to Martin Filler in the current New York Review of Books, “this redundant nomenclature was adopted at the behest of the $56 million project’s mastermind and principal patron, Eli Broad, who has prospered by building tract houses and providing investment services to retirees.” There’s a good bit of tongue-clicking going on now about the project, Filler reports, because Broad has decided not to give his art collection to L.A. County, but just to lend it. The writer notes tartly that “the Los Angeles County Museum of Art receives substantial public funds and many of its staff members are civil service employees of Los Angeles County. Thus the parties who acceded to Broad’s de facto privatization of a big chunk of LACMA—the cultural equivalent of a leveraged buyout, or taking a public company private—have done a grave disservice to the taxpayers of the county, who, whether they like it or not, will be footing the bill for much of Broad’s monument to himself.” But the architect and the builders will make out like bandits on the deal.  

The latest example of the edifice complex at work in Berkeley is the sudden push to re-zone West Berkeley to build more retail, offices and condos, which has everything to do with who already owns the property there. It again reflects the American economic reality that there’s a lot more profit to be made building new stuff, needed or not, than in maintaining artists’ studios and small enterprises which provide green jobs in already-existing old warehouses and factories. West Berkeley offers what builders really like, something much better than transit access: easy on and off the freeway.  

The collapse of the sub-prime mortgage market might change some of this. Despite Berkeley’s ritual genuflection to the idea of building affordable rental housing, what we’ve actually been getting is market rate condos-in-waiting from builders who never had any intention of cultivating long-term relationships with tenants. But selling condos in the sky to gullible first time homebuyers doesn’t seem so attractive any more now that financing is tight. And if the consumer economy continues to nosedive, retail will start looking dicey too.  

What about the much-touted “green corridor” which East Bay mayors hope will bail them out of all their budget woes? Might it be a good idea to re-zone to permit alternative energy companies to build along the bay?  

The February Harper’s magazine cover story by Eric Janszen was “The Next Bubble: Priming the Markets for Tomorrow’s Big Crash.” Concisely summarized: just as the sub-prime mortgage industry was the new dot.com bubble, the alternative energy boom is the new sub-prime mortgage bubble, inflating toward yet another big bust. Read it and worry. 

Is it too late to apply a little logic to poor old Gerry Ferraro’s comments about the effect of race and gender on the presidential race? Let’s approach it from the other direction. 

First, would Hillary Rodham even be in the running if she’d never been Mrs. Clinton? Doubtful. The world these days is full of articulate well-educated lawyers who have tired of corporate legal work and are looking for a more satisfying mid-life career. (Been there, done that.) Many of them are women, some are men.  

But only the women have been eligible for the position of a president’s domestic partner, the way things have worked in this country so far. (There’s been mention lately of the only “bachelor” president, James Buchanan, who lived with a male friend most of his life, but let’s not go there right now. Gay rights advocates are probably loathe to claim him because he did such a bad job.) So Hillary Clinton’s claim to have gained relevant experience as the First Lady is only possible because she is a Lady. Gender advantage, in other words. No way Obama could have been First Lady. 

Racial advantage? Well, if Bill had actually been black, instead of just appearing sympathetic to certain aspects of African-American culture, when he was starting out he wouldn’t have been elected governor of Arkansas, his launching pad for eventually attaining the presidency. Period. And he probably wouldn’t have been elected president either.  

And what if his wife had been black? Same analysis, squared, because mixed-race marriages weren’t a political plus back then. In fact, they only became unambiguously legal about six years before Bill and Hillary got hitched. So she pretty much had to have been white to be what she is today, an ex-First Lady and proud of it. 

Time to trot out the old cliché about George W. Bush being born on third base and thinking he’d hit a triple. It’s not clear why former Congresswoman Ferraro and/or the former First Lady and/or her advisors don’t see that Hillary Clinton started out at least on second base heading for third. 

What of it? One more time, folks. This isn’t about which candidate has overcome more disadvantages. Or which one has had more advantages. It’s about which one will do the best job going forward.  

One more time, then, let’s do the math, though it’s been done at least once before in this space. Both are good talkers, not surprising because both were admitted to and actually attended high status law schools. (He was president of his big-time law review, which is major brownie points for those who follow that sort of thing, though most voters don’t.) Both did some public service work. (She did some regular corporate work as well, if that’s something you admire.) Both have had short terms in the U.S. Senate, the only elective office she’s ever held. (He also served in the legislature of a major state.) On the negative side, both have had a few questionable friends over the years. But who in the race hasn’t? (Though some would say that she is married to one of them.)  

In this kind of calculation the resumes are pretty much a wash. She’s older, he’s younger. What should that count, if anything? It will count, you can be sure, just as it will count that John McCain is older than either of them. But how much will it count? 

Black friends have suggested that Ferraro was a calculated sacrificial surrogate, tasked with raising the racial question, as she did at least three times, and then exiting. But very few voters don’t know already, without Gerry Ferraro spelling it out for them, that Barack Obama is African-American, and most even know that he’s African-European-American. The kind of people who wouldn’t vote for him because of his racial heritage surely had already made up their minds before Ferraro spoke up. 

Here’s where it could get Byzantine. Maybe Gerry’s a closet Obama fan, doing what she’s done to make Hillary look bad. No, that’s just too weird.  

But if you don’t think that’s what’s happened anyhow, check out Keith Olbermann’s outraged commentary, archived at crooksandliars.com. It’s directly squarely at Senator Clinton, imploring her to “reject AND denounce” any of her so-called friends like Ferraro who are injecting racial innuendo into the contest. She hasn’t done it yet. So she looks bad. 

The business about African-Americans only getting wherever they’ve gotten to because of their race is a persistent and pernicious myth that will be with us for at least one more generation. It’s inevitably raised by those who are sure for some reason that they deserve a better position in the world than they’ve been able to attain on their own.  

Whatever happened, for example, to Allan Bakke, who carried his quest for a place at the bottom of the admissions list at Davis all the way to the Supreme Court? He was last heard from practicing anesthesiology in Minnesota, a respectable career but not a distinguished one. It obviously wasn’t the fault of his black competitors that he didn’t make the cut in the first round, but he had trouble believing that, and the court went along with him. 

It makes much more sense to say that there are still many reasons for failure in this country that are outside the individual’s control, but you have to achieve success on your own. Insofar as poverty and the unstable family life which often results from it have affected some groups, racial and/or cultural, more than others, there are explanations for not getting ahead. If your parents or grandparents lived a segregated life, that’s another disadvantage. And if your grandfather or great-grandfather was also a slave, that’s even more of a problem.  

But Barack Obama didn’t have most of these handicaps in his background. He does have whatever advantage or disadvantage might accrue to having a dark skin, but that’s mighty hard to quantify. His successes, however, are his own, or at least they’re mostly his own. To discount his having a mother and grandparents devoted to helping him succeed would of course be a mistake.  

There’s a sense in which Gerry Ferraro’s comments can be parsed as relevant if illogical. There are vast numbers of Americans today, black, white and in-between, who are eager to put this country’s racist past behind us. Such people take a certain pleasure in seeing any African-American advance to a position of prominence, even the likes of Condoleeza Rice, Colin Powell or Clarence Thomas. But very few of them are so foolish as to promote any of those three or any other unqualified black person for any important job. Racial goodwill does not equate to fecklessness—most of those who prefer Obama to Clinton are doing it for all the right reasons. And the same analysis applies to those who favor Clinton—they would like to see a woman as president, and why not Hillary? But it also applies to those who are now reluctantly rejecting her because of her unfortunate choice of associates. It’s painful to watch a plausible candidate shoot herself in the foot. 

HOW ABOUT MOVING THE MARINES’ OFFICE? 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I would like to suggest the Marines move their office to real office space that isn’t a store front. The occupants of that office themselves have casually commented that the protest didn’t bother them since they spent most of their time outside, making it clear that the Marines do not care about what’s going on. This is passive aggressive behavior. They would be much better in an unmarked office, as other federal agencies do, not attracting anyone’s attention and thereby contributing to making our city more peaceful. Perhaps their landlord has space elsewhere, and the store could become a store again. 

Guy Tiphane 

• 

WILLARD VICE PRINCIPAL 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Margaret Lowry must be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Mere dismissal, or transfer, is not enough, if we want to protect our children. Ms. Lowry must not be allowed to work with any child, or in education at all, in any capacity whatsoever. 

These children do not have voices. We do. Let’s use our voices to contact Berkeley Unified School District to demand the immediate dismissal (not transfer) of Margaret Lowry, and contact the Berkeley City Council to demand criminal prosecution. 

Yvette Deas 

• 

DUAL OBSESSIONS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Freudians may speculate on the origins of Mr. Hardesty’s dual preoccupation with guns and with anuses (Letters, March 11). I am reminded of Thomas Pynchon’s observation that guns are really just a way for men to “stick it in” at a distance. Hardesty’s personal insults in response to such overwhelmingly moderate views expressed by the editor lead me to suspect Hardesty of concealing a schoolboy crush—he wishes to smile and be part of the fun but finds himself belching and farting instead. 

Peter Josheff 

El Cerrito 

• 

PASCAL 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

There’s a Pascal quote which applies so well to our questionably “elected” president. “Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.” 

Harry Gans 

• 

RACE ISSUES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Its a shame that in the year 2008 America is still dealing with race issues; but that’s the way America is! That’s how America began! Even though it would appear that African-Americans have made some progress, it’s a myth! America is still as racist as it has always been! It seems as though nothing African-Americans feel or have to say or any complaints they have are heard or acknowledged! White America still comes up with a reason that it’s OK to discriminate against African-Americans! 

Herman Smith 

• 

ATTITUDES TOWARD WOMEN 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

This is just an observation about the American voter’s attitude toward women candidates. Perhaps Americans have to take a good look at these countries that produced women leaders in spite of the obstacles that that these women have had to overcome. The Philippines had two women presidents already. The Philippines is a very patriarchal society where the man is the head of the family and politics is a man’s game. Pakistan had Benazir Bhutto (God bless her) and Indonesia had Prime Minister Megawatti,. These are Muslim countries! India had Indira Gandhi when just a few years back women were not given equal status, and perhaps the pioneer of all was Prime Minister Bandanaraike of Sri Lanka. Yes, the odds were against women getting elected in these countries, but because they have the intellect, education and experience, they were given by their citizenry what is due them. 

U.S. voters, the way I look at it, with the women’s movement, women’s rights and equal rights amendments, are still reluctant to elect a woman president. America has a very qualified woman candidate in Hillary Clinton. I just don’t know why, but they’d rather vote for Barack Obama, whose qualification does not compare with Clinton. Is it because women voters are jealous that she is very intelligent? Or is it because, due to her persuasiveness, she is considered a bitch? Or is it that men don’t want to take direction from a woman? Looks like no one’s got balls here in America to lift a hand to elect a woman president for a change. 

Another thing that surprises me is that Oprah got into it. Is she nuts, or was her judgment marred by color? Does she back Obama so she will not have a rival for the title of most powerful woman on earth? Or does she just not want to back another woman who is more intelligent and smarter than she? Or is it just plain jealousy again? 

America, wake up. I do not have anything against Obama but when it comes to international diplomacy, I want a president that can face world leaders eye to eye.  

Nino Matocinos 

• 

ARCHITECTS AND HEROES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

My Berkeley public school has outstanding issues regarding race. Your school might be in the same position. But does your principal refuse to acknowledge it? When recently asked by a Berkeley community member if our school had race problems, our principal said, “No.” 

Really? 

Race is a social construct that everyone has bought into on some level or another. Being that racism is a discriminatory practice based on one’s position within our American social construct, it is extremely difficult for the Berkeley public school community to discuss race because it might suggest that each and every one of us harbors one racist practice or another—as I feel we do: intentional or not. 

It takes a conscious effort to address our own practices that are driven by our own individual views of someone’s race. Because we may have racist tendencies doesn’t make us intentionally racist, it only exposes our consciousness about it or lack thereof. But racist we all can be. I believe that intent is a discerning factor in racism, but intentional or not, racist action is racist action. Once discrimination becomes a concept that we can all own up to, we can begin to deconstruct our fear of others and begin to pave a path to embrace one another, honestly. 

And bury the “n-word.” 

A teacher grows a voluntary two-day-a-week writing program from an attendance of 12 students to 50 students in two years time, is a special guest assistant of the Annual Holiday Double Dutch Classic at the Apollo Theatre, and is awarded a grant to begin an after-school program at his school, is African-American, but is forced to resign “not based on performance or review...but the teacher tenure policy in Berkeley Unified School District”...intentional or not, within our eurocentric predominant world view culture, yes - here in Berkeley, that is a racist action. 

An African-American student, at the same school, is presented with the “n-word” by a white teacher in the same year...intentional or not, within our eurocentric predominant world view culture, yes—here in Berkeley, that is a racist action. 

A young adult, African-American, supervisor of children from my school is stopped, has guns drawn on him, on public transportation, in the presence of students he is overseeing, is questioned as cuffs are attempted to be applied, in a case of mistaken identity two weeks ago...intentional or not, within our eurocentric predominant world view culture, yes—here in Berkeley, that is a racist action. 

African-American children at my school being sent to the office on a daily basis in disproportionate numbers to the overall racial student body makeup...intentional or not, within our eurocentric predominant world view culture, yes— here in Berkeley, that is a racist action. 

In Berkeley we take many social stances that leave the world shaking its collective head, but our racism looks like everyone else’s: painfully misaddressed. 

At my school, our racism looks like everyone else’s, but the Principal just fails to acknowledge it...hence, it may never be overtly be addressed under their stewardship. 

But we can all address our own. We can all watch what we do and begin to observe our own actions. Our own racism might teach us something about ourselves. 

Byron R. Delcomb 

• 

SCARY STATEMENT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

“I’ve heard that the city [Berkeley] is one of the top 10 cities with a very large reserve.” 

This statement, attributed by the Planet to SEIU 1021 Treasurer Sandra Lewis, scares the daylights out of me, as it should all of us. It typifies the attitude of greedy CEOs, bankers, home loan brokers, and Wall Street Wonders and union bosses, not to forget our politicians who are always willing to spend a dollar of someone else’s money on pork. 

It is incredible that any responsible person would make such an irresponsible and incendiary statement in light of the mess the city of Vallejo has become involved in. Caving in to unreasonable union demands over prolonged periods has brought grief to a good many companies, think General Motors, Ford, Pan Am and United Airlines just to name a few. Their executives and negotiators probably thought at the time that the good times would never end, but then they did, saddling the businesses with untenable cost burdens just because they did not have the guts to hang tough. “Get yours while you can and the devil take the hindmost,” seems to be the continuing attitude of the new millennium. 

Come to think of it, the prison guards of our state seem to have similar power and influence to keep their incomes growing as well, even at a time when our education system takes budget cutbacks, despite growing enrollment. 

It is no wonder when on rare occasions, responsible public officials decide to rebate surplus funds to taxpayers, knowing that leaving such reserves will make them irresistible slush funds for any pressure group with sufficient muscle or influence. It is truly regrettable that we can’t accept the idea of maintaining reserves for hard times, but that seems to be symptomatic of our consume-now-pay-later society. Whatever money is there must be spent. 

Some of our elected city officials seem to be more interested in currying favor with union bosses and union members rather than represent the best interest of their constituents. Councilmember Kriss Worthington mentions that there is disparity between the pay and benefits of public safety employees and other employees. Indeed, the fire and police salaries, benefits and health and retirement plans are not just gold plated, they are solid gold. But our civilian employees’ salaries and benefits aren’t shabby. How did that ever come about? Oh yes of course, we take surveys of comparable cities and then try to beat their highest package. 

It is doubtful that Worthington had in mind that we should scale-back police and fire benefits for the sake of equity. So now he must be considering increasing the civilian payroll costs. Where is that money going to come from? Perhaps we can initiate a public library user fee, or a dog-walker license fee, or even close down some senior centers, that will save a few bucks. 

Peter Klatt 

• 

COLUMBIA 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Regarding Conn Hallinan’s column, “The Story Behind Columbia’s Attack”: Hallinan was either misinformed or extremely biased, or both. “Raul Reyes” and his gang got exactly what they deserved, and nothing less. And guerrillas, please, never sleep in pajamas (information confirmed by all of the hostages (human shields?) released in the last weeks. 

Another pearl: labeling “Reyes” as a “diplomat” is ridiculous. The thug had everything going for him except diplomacy. By the way, the president before Uribe, Andrès Pastrana, spent three and a half years talking to the guy and never got anything but more of the same: assaults on towns, drug trafficking, and destruction of the country’s infrastructure. 

That foreign military were involved in the hit? Maybe, so what! Results is what count. 

Robert Diaz 

• 

INSIGHTFUL ANALYSIS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Congratulations on a thoughtful, insightful, truthful piece on the reality of Colombia’s attack on FARC insurgents on Ecuadorean soil. Such writing is woefully hard to find in U.S. media. As a U.S. American living in Quito, Ecuador, I have been extremely dismayed to the extent the media in the United States has bowed to Bush’s rhetoric concerning the raid and its aftermath. 

I would like to make one comment on the column. In it Conn Hallinan states that FARC “does not pose a danger to any country outside the borders of Colombia.” It is true that FARC does not fight on Ecuadorean soil against Colombian forces. However, it must be said that some Colombian refugees in Ecuador seeking refuge after being kidnapped or persecuted by FARC in Colombia have continued to be persecuted and followed here in Ecuador. The same is true for the right wing paramilitary forces in Colombia who will also seek out people they were following and persecuting in Colombia, that they come to Ecuador to continue their persecution. So FARC’s and the paramilitary’s influence does go beyond Colombia. 

C. Morck 

Quito, Ecuador 

• 

CODE PINK LETTER 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I received this very moving, reality letter from Ron Kovac in a Code Pink e-mail. I hope the Planet will print it because every rational, factual response to the sad, ignorant support for the MRC ought to be blasted from our rooftops. 

“I am sending my complete support and admiration to all those now involved in the courageous struggle to stop military recruitment in Berkeley and around the country. Not since the Vietnam War protests of the late sixties has there been a cause more just than the one you are now engaged in. 

Over the past five years, I have watched in horror the mirror image of another Vietnam unfolding in Iraq. So many similarities, so many things said that remind me of that war thirty years ago which left me paralyzed and confined to a wheelchair for life. Refusing to learn from the lessons of Vietnam, our government continues to pursue a policy of deception, distortion, manipulation and denial. As we approach the fifth anniversary of this tragic and senseless war, I can not help but think of the young men and women who have been wounded, nearly 30,000, flooding Walter Reed, Bethesda, Brooke Army Medical Center and Veterans Hospitals all across our country. Paraplegics, amputees, burn victims, the blinded and maimed, shocked and stunned, brain damaged and psychologically stressed, a whole new generation of severely maimed who were not even born when I came home wounded to the Bronx Veterans Hospital in 1968. 

It is time to use every means of creative nonviolent civil disobedience to stop the war machine. Military recruiters must be confronted in every high school, every campus, every recruiting office, on every street corner, in every town and city across America. The days of deceiving, manipulating and victimizing our young people must end. I stand with you in this courageous fight and I am confident your actions in the days ahead will inspire countless others across our country to do everything they can to end this deeply immoral and illegal war!” 

Maris Arnold 

P.S. I thought the City Council’s first decision on the Peace and Justice Commission resolution was a thrilling attempt by a city government to turn swords into plowshares. May it prevail before there are no schools, no libraries, no parks, but only our mighty state prison system left intact.  

• 

FREEDOM OF SPEECH 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

What gives Kenneth Thiesen the “freedom” to espouse the nonsense that he does and gives me the right to call him a bonehead, is the very reason why we should support our troops! If we hadn’t supported our troops during World War II, Mr. Thiesen may very well be writing in German now rather than English.  

Our troops are doing their duty regardless of what we may feel about the armed conflict in which they are involved. They’re following orders, they deserve our support. I loathed Bill Clinton and didn’t care much for his foreign policy but, nonetheless, I still supported the troops in the armed conflicts in which he involved us. 

Thus, Mr. Thiesen and myself have the right to disagree. A wonderful thing, freedom, isn’t it, Mr. Thiesen? 

Marcus Beresford 

• 

BERKELEY VOICE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The Berkeley Voice seems determined to disseminate, without evidence, the assertion that a boycott due to the City Council’s stance on the Marine Corps recruiting station is costing the city’s business “thousands of dollars.” In addition to a front-page article last week (“Downtown businesses feel pinch of protests,” Feb. 29), there is Martin Snapp’s column this week (“Tolerance Should be the Top Priority,” March 14) “begging” us not to join in this boycott. What better way to substantiate something than to warn people against it? But like last week’s article, Mr. Snapp offers no evidence of any actual boycott; no businesses reporting losses due to a boycott, no cancellations of reservations, etc.  

While there could very well be a boycott that is harming Berkeley, let’s get some evidence before building a campaign against it! Otherwise it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. A responsible periodical would do more than offer hearsay such as this. 

Chris Gilbert 

• 

RACE AND GENDER 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In response to Becky O’Malley’s March 14 editorial titled, “How Much Do Race and Gender Matter?”: 

Since when is it not OK to be a strong white woman? The cruel criticism of Hillary Clinton is really unnecessary and it only makes some of us more protective of her. 

Diane Villanueva 

• 

SOLAR CALENDAR 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I read the March 4 commentary by Alesia Kunz, which, though well written, somehow missed the mark for me. The solar calendar that has been installed there is not at all intrusive to the surroundings. It is, in fact, an ideal location for an installation of this sort and has been put in place in a very respectful manner. There are no restrictive buildings or trees so that a 360-degree view can be had by everyone whether or not they are there to see the installation. 

Alesia seems to be angered just because there are a few stones placed in specific locations at the top of this hill. Rather than looking at them as impediments to her enjoyment she can simply think of them as objects for meditation or even to sit on while enjoying the view. She did correctly indicate that this portion of the park is outside the leash free zone so it won’t even hinder her dog from having any more fun or freedom than it would have without the calendar being there. 

The four stones she called tombstones are not at all intrusive in the area. They do not ever rise above the four rocks marking North, South, East, and West. These “large” rocks are themselves only three or four feet in size. They certainly should not cause the anguish that Alesia seems to have. Her life must be quite limited if this is all that she has to worry about. 

I have been at several of the solstice and equinox events held there during the last year or so. They have all been well attended by a group of respectful people interested in how our world fits into the larger scheme of things. It is always humbling when trying to grasp the larger picture of how we fit into the cosmos. One way to do this is to watch the sun rise or set. Hopefully Alesia can attend one of these gatherings and realize an installation like this is not just a monument to Cesar Chavez but on a larger scale is a monument to how we fit into the universe. 

Russell Nelson 

• 

NO NADER, NO BUSH 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In her commentary “Why the Nader-as-Spoiler Argument Carries Little Weight” Ruthanne Shpiner omits Florida exit polling data that would almost certainly have refuted her conclusion. In Florida, where Bush officially received 537 more votes than Gore, Nader received 97,488 votes. Based upon the assumption—unrealistically generous to Bush though it is—that, without Nader, Bush would have received 49 percent of Nader’s vote (47,769 votes) and Gore would have received 51 percent of Nader’s vote (49,719 votes), Gore would have defeated Bush in Florida by 950 votes. Based upon the more realistic assumption that, absent Nader, his votes would have split more than two to one in favor of Gore, as exit polls cited by Ms. Shpiner in Oregon and New Hampshire revealed, Gore would have defeated Bush in Florida by more than 32,000 votes. 

The outcome of the 2000 Florida election (as with all other elections usually) depends upon multiple factors. Had legitimate black voters in Florida, erroneously classified as ex-felons, not been denied their rightful vote, had the Supreme Court not ruled against a careful recount, had the judgment of people who voted for Bush not turned to mush, had Gore campaigned more effectively and so on, he would have won. In short, a number of factors caused Gore’s Florida loss; absent any one of them, including Nader running, Gore, not Bush, would have been president. 

All too many Nader defenders, when confronted with the above assertion by frustrated Gore supporters, respond selectively. They respond, appropriately enough, that Nader was right to run, but refuse to admit (as easily supported by the above statistics) that exercising that right gave Bush the presidency. 

Frank Hochfeld 

Oakland 

• 

CONFLICT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In his March 11 commentary (“Why I Don’t Support the Troops”) Kenneth Thiesen expresses the conflict many of us feel between disgust for our protracted occupation of Iraq and our empathy, if not support, for our personnel assigned there and in “over 700 military bases or sites located in over 130 foreign countries.” I think this must be viewed, however, from broader historical and geopolitical perspectives. 

The historical perspective: The bombing of Pearl Harbor by Japan jolted the United States out of its isolationist slumber and sparked a miracle of military and industrial mobilization that saved the world from Nazi domination. Germany was marching through Europe and, but for our lend-lease aid and ultimate invasion of France, would have defeated the Soviet’s valiant defenders, then gone on to occupy China, the Middle East, Asia, and Africa. Ultimate occupation of the Americas may have been unlikely, but our isolation would have been crippling. This rescue mission was the template for the US role as the world’s watchdog. Through the ensuing half-century that role has often been corrupt and self-serving, notably in the Shah’s Iran, in Vietnam, and in Iraq, where our presence is tainted by our competition for oil. 

The geopolitical perspective: The world today is a tinderbox—a chaos of contending nations, cultures, creeds and collusions, from thuggish African dictators to the reawakening of Marxism in South America to the tenth century mentality of Middle Eastern jihadis seething to shed each other’s blood, our blood, anyone’s blood—all vying for economic, military, even nuclear power. Suppose we could satisfy Mr. Thiesen’s outrage at “U.S. imperialist domination of the world” by recalling all those troops. Just what other world power would you then choose to become the stabilizing force necessary to offer rapid response to the myriad political brushfires that would immediately ensue? The U.N.?—don’t be silly! Until China comes of age and inevitably assumes that governing role, the United States must continue muddling through its “manifest destiny.” 

About Iraq: The U.S. response to the atrocity of 9/11 was on one hand reasonable—sending troops to Afghanistan, the home office of al Qaeda. But through official ignorance or duplicity the decision was made to overthrow the odious but irrelevant dictatorship of Saddam Hussein. All that our hideously costly five-year occupation has achieved is the separation of Sunnis and Shiites into a hundred isolated enclaves where they glare at each other with hatred from behind their walls. They only wait for U.S. troops to leave their streets so that they may rage into a bloodbath that will be an Iraqi replay of the Hutu-Tutsi massacres of Rwanda, and will leave Iraq an all-Shiite territory open to political manipulation by Iran. Abandoning Iraq abruptly is unthinkable, however much we may wish to. The rational course is a tripartite division into Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish sectors. Managed resettlement would cost less than a week of our current occupation. 

The answer to “U.S. hegemony” is not to recall or dissolve our military force, but to elect a government that will redefine its function in terms of world stability rather than corporate greed. 

Jerry Landis 

• 

DO WE REALLY WANT  

MORE WEAPONS? 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Just before last Christmas, the Department of Energy (DOE) announced its latest plans for revitalizing and rebuilding the U.S. weapons research, development, testing and production complex of the future. One of the eight sites for this “Complex Transformation” is Lawrence Livermore Lab. It is important to understand that the Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) guiding these plans is not a law, but a policy developed by the Bush administration.  

The plan essentially calls for a more efficient complex and includes the development of new nuclear and chemical weapons. The latest Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for this project, according to Jackie Cabasso, of Western States Legal Foundation, is “an attempt to rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic.” 

Some of the issues at stake are: 

• The safety and health of the surrounding community: A terrorist attack, an earthquake or an accident (of which there have been many), could release the existing plutonium, enriched uranium and as-yet-unidentified chemicals at Livermore Lab into the atmosphere, putting the lives of seven million people within a 50-mile radius of the lab at extreme risk. 

• The safety and health of employees: In the January/February Tri-Valley Cares newsletter, Marylia Kelly documents the cases of 178 Livermore Lab employees who were exposed to Beryllium without their knowledge, their subsequent health issues and the Lab cover-up. (This toxic metal, when inhaled, can cause incurable and life-threatening lung disease.) 

• The environmental impacts: Radioactive materials can last for thousands of years, lingering in the air, the water and the earth. 

• Squandered wealth: In light of the current recession, this obsession with weapons development is insane. According to Joseph Stiglitz, “The U.S. spends as much on weapons as the rest of the world all together.” 

The good news is that the plan is not final and we have the opportunity to influence these decisions in upcoming public hearings. Public hearings on Complex Transformation: 

Tracy-Tuesday, March 18, Holiday Inn Express, 3751 N. Tracy Blvd. from 6-10 p.m. (One session.)  

• Livermore-Wednesday, March 19, Robert Livermore Community Center, 4444 East Ave. from 11 a.m.-3 p.m. and 6 p.m.-10 p.m. (Two sessions.) 

If you can’t come to the hearings, you can register your opinion by writing to Mr. Theodore Wyka, Complex Transformation SPEIS Document Manager, Office of Transformation, NA-10.1, US Dept. of Energy/NNSA, 1000 Independence Ave., SW. Washington, DC 20585. Fax: (703) 931-9222. E-mail: ComplexTansformation@nnsa.doe.gov. 

Laura Santina 

WILPF, Berkeley/East Bay Branch 

• 

DEMOCRATIC BEHAVIOR 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The 2008 election should result in a landslide victory for the Democrats. The Iraq war is leading the nation into bankruptcy. The economy is headed into the worst recession since 1940 with millions losing their jobs and homes. And the Republicans offer nothing but more bailouts to multinational corporations and more war. But the Democratic Party is still at odds with itself. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have placed their own narrow political interests above the interests of the American people. Slash and Burn specialists Obama and Clinton are fighting about personality, race and gender when they have no significant policy differences between them. Clinton and Obama are catastrophically on the verge of handing the White House to John McCain. 

Nathaniel Hardin 

El Cerrito 

• 

TRADER JOE’S CASE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

On Friday, March 21, the citizens of Berkeley finally get to make their arguments before a neutral party who has the duty to apply the law as it is written rather than how it can be twisted and distorted to fit a preferred outcome. Unlike the vote before ZAB that was stacked by the last-minute removal of a skeptical member or before the City Council which had one of its most forceful advocates for affordable housing removed from the deliberations because of her husband’s lease, Superior Court Judge Roesch will listen to and rule on our arguments about how the city applies its Zoning Ordinance and interprets state law. That the process has cost citizens almost $40,000 in legal fees to finally obtain a fair hearing speaks volumes about how money politics plays out in Berkeley these days. 

We are asking Judge Roesch to rule on these questions: 

Can Berkeley re-write its zoning ordinance protections for homeowners adjacent to commercial projects and give a use permit for a project that doubles the required setback to one neighbor while reducing another neighbor’s setback to nothing, finding that is an acceptable outcome because it ‘on average’ improves privacy and offers an amenity, and that it is not as bad as some other project could have been? 

Can Berkeley withhold from the ZAB, the City Council, and the public an analysis proving that the project’s 63 percent density bonus was not necessary for the financial feasibility of its affordable housing units as required by State law but was granted to compensate the developer for Trader Joe’s free parking lot?  

Can Berkeley avoid the required CEQA analysis of a new and wide-reaching city policy of paying for such “public” benefits as a foreign-owned anti-union, but popular supermarket with market rate bonus units (and granting variances necessary to accommodate them) simply by maintaining they always had the power to ignore their own Zoning Ordinance for affordable housing projects? 

Can Berkeley hide behind its own absurdly low parking standards when evaluating a project’s impacts under CEQA, or must they divulge and consider the parking demand figures from the same national body that they use to evaluate traffic coming to shop at Trader Joe’s?  

Can Berkeley dismiss public controversy about a project and citizen CEQA comments about impacts as nothing more than “hand-waving, lay opinion, argument, and speculation” to simply to avoid evaluating feasible alternatives to the proposed project that as required under a full EIR? 

Stephen Wollmer 

• 

AC AMBULANCE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

That’s what I call the Van Hool buses. Not because they probably serve the handicapped well. (No arguments here!) But mostly because, if you are not yet an invalid, sooner or later you will become one, take my word. 

That happened to me on my first (and only!) ride: At the first turn I flew off that ridiculous perch of a seat, arms and legs vainly flailing the air for something to hold on to, falling, hurting my wrist. “What busload of fools got us this bus?,” flashed through my mind. 

But then I calmed down, in full grasp of AC Director Fernandez’s ingenious purpose: Give the public the most perfectly politically correct bus possible. Why not turn everybody into invalids? That will teach them! Call Mr. Fernandez (or maybe his bus?) the “Great Equalizer.” 

Juergen Hahn 

• 

NO RABBITS AS EASTER GIFTS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Over the next few days, many local adults will be tempted to buy an Easter rabbit for a beloved child, godchild, grandchild, niece, or nephew. And a few months from now, our local animal shelters will be, as they are every year, inundated by a flood of cast-off bunnies. The House Rabbit Society asks that everyone who is considering buying a rabbit this year stop and think about two important facts: 

First, although rabbits can make wonderful pets, they are naturally fragile and timid. An active child who expects a cuddly pet can easily terrify or even injure a rabbit. 

Second, a well cared for rabbit should live as long as a large dog (10 years or more) and will require just as much love, attention, and veterinary care as a dog or cat would. So don’t give an Easter rabbit to a child unless you know that the child’s parents will be happy to take on a decade-long commitment. 

If you want to make a child’s Easter happy, don’t give a live rabbit unless you know it will be loved and cared for throughout its natural life. If there’s any doubt, give a stuffed or chocolate bunny instead. 

Jack Doran 

Shelter Manager, House Rabbit Society International Headquarters 

Richmond 

• 

BUDGET CUTS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

On Wednesday, March 12, the Global Studies Club at Berkeley City College held an open mic and rally against the proposed budget cuts to education. With over 100 students in attendance, students spoke out on the topic of “What my education means to me and if I were to lose it.” One student said, “In a situation like this, it is impossible to be neutral. This affects us all.” Another student said, “There is really no excuse why our education should have to be cut in California, which is the seventh largest economy in the world. I think we can beat back these cuts. It is really up to us whether or not these proposals go forward.” Other students read their poetry of protest. A teacher addressed the issue of California’s budget crisis, alleging that, “The banks that are responsible for the sub-prime loan scam are the ones to blame for the budget deficit. We should not pay for their crisis.” Students and faculty were clad in T-shirts, made for the occasion and selling now for $5 with the message, “No cuts to education, education is a right, not a privilege,” and a fist holding a pencil. 

Another rally is scheduled for April 30th from 12-1 in the Berkeley City College Auditorium in which politicians from Sacramento will be in attendance. Currently, students and faculty are circulating petitions and writing letters to their representatives. They are currently planning to march in Sacramento against the budget cuts at the beginning of the fall semester. 

Sacramento’s budget proposals will result in the elimination of 50,000 community college students, a raise in tuition, reduction of full time employees in favor of part time employees, cuts to financial aid, grants and scholarships. Find out more at www.calcuts.blogspot.com or contact globalstudiesclub@yahoo.com. 

Jason Wins 

• 

STUDENTS’ NEEDS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

On a recent Wednesday in February I went as a Cragmont parent representative on a Berkeley delegation to Sacramento to talk to legislators about the needs of our students in public education and learn more about the budget crisis at hand.  

We are now ranked 46th in the nation in per pupil public school funding, $2,000 per pupil less than the national average. So how is it that we are being asked to cut funding by 10 percent? Clearly these are lean times for state coffers, but I believe we must not be asking the youngest members of our society to take the brunt of our political and financial problems. If we are going to continue to compete in a global economy while creating a desirable state in which to raise families, we must understand that quality public education is the cornerstone of our society and must be given the priority it deserves.  

I learned a few things on our visit. Did you know that it takes a two-thirds majority vote in the Legislature to increase revenues through taxes, whether it be a Vehicle License Tax, sales tax on luxury boats and planes, or income tax? Without members from both political parties no new revenues are possible. To do away with a tax, the Legislature must only secure a simple majority of over 50 percent. In flush times, the governor and our Legislature has cut taxes instead of saving for lean times. Now that monies are short, we are hard pressed to convince a two-thirds majority of Democrats and Republicans to create any new revenue streams. The floor of our funding formula is too low. 

Another disturbing impact of these affairs is that instead of being able to focus on our educational priorities, our district officials have to spend precious and long hours looking to make cuts in an already tight budget that will only weaken our service to students. While our district and community remain committed to not raising class size and not making cuts in direct service to students, ultimately the cuts do affect how much we can do for our kids. It also creates personal difficulties for the staff, who make valuable contributions to the running of our schools, and who are entering a period of job uncertainty. While the state can haggle for months to come over the budget, school districts are required by law to plan for the 10 percent cuts the governor has recommended by submitting a balanced budget for the coming school year by May, 2008. 

Because of our democratic government, there are things we can do. We need to educate ourselves and each other about the crisis at hand, we must insist that our representatives actually represent our interests, and we must be heard across the state in order to affect change in Sacramento. That means writing our government officials and insisting on a no cuts stance, no matter what. It means talking to friends and relatives in more Republican enclaves of the state and asking them to do the same. Time is of the essence. Please join me in fighting any cuts to our schools! 

Lea Baechler-Brabo 

• 

FREEDOM OF ASSEMBLY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

It is absolutely horrifying to learn that the City of San Francisco, led by Mayor Gavin Newsom, plans to limit exposure and access of public space to demonstrators speaking out against the violence occurring right now in Tibet at the hands of Chinese authorities during the April 9 Olympic torch run through San Francisco. San Francisco is not Beijing. We do not censor free speech and we cannot restrict the space in which free speech is conducted. 

The Tibetan people in Tibet and their friends and families worldwide are facing one of the most frightening moments in Tibetan history since Chinese occupation and the Tibetan resistance of 1959. The Bay Area’s reputation in the global community as a beacon of progressive thought and just political action is betraying its own nature by intending to confine protesters to “free speech areas” that are “associated with” the torch route, but not on the route itself. 

It is completely unacceptable that San Francisco will inadvertently partake in what the Dalai Lama has called “cultural genocide” in Tibet by complying with Beijing’s agenda to minimize and squash Tibetan resistance against the decimation of Tibetan culture, religion, language and ethnicity. 

Heidi Basch 

Oakland 

• 

PROPOSITION 98 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The majority of Californians should be aware of an initiative that is on the June ballot. That initiative is known as Proposition 98. The proponents of this initiative claim it is a way to stop eminent domain here in California. However, if people look carefully, the initiative will roadblock environmental regulations in the state, such as the Clean Water Act, which preserves clean water. 

It would be a disaster for the majority of Californians who are currently fighting global warming. Also Prop. 98 would do away with rent control laws all over the state and the result would be people being evicted from their homes. For example, in Oakland, the state initiative would overturn the city’s Measure EE law, which prevents people from being evicted from their homes because of greed. 

Prop. 98 must be defeated in order for both environmental regulations to be retained to preserve clean water and fight global warming, and for working class people to still live in California. 

Billy Trice, Jr. 

Oakland

The 20/20 Vision is a public declaration that sets a goal for the elimination of the “achievement gap” by the year 2020. 2020 is the year when our children who entered kindergarten in September 2007 are scheduled to graduate from Berkeley High School. United In Action (UIA), a multiethnic community coalition in Berkeley, conceived the declaration. It poses a challenging question: “On that graduation day in 2020, will we be able to beam with pride at our success?” 

According to a San Francisco Chronicle article, 10 of the 98 persistently low-scoring districts in the state are in the Bay Area and one of them is the Berkeley Unified School District.  

Currently 70 percent of African American and Latino students in Berkeley are scoring at basic or below on statewide tests, and they are not improving as they move from kindergarten to grade 12. Interesting word, “kindergarten”: of German origin, it means “garden where children grow.” How good is our garden?  

Testing 

By necessity we rely on testing as a measure of what we know to be the deepest problem of education today—the inability to fully engage all students in a relevant and meaningful education. However, testing is only one indicator of success, and it is flawed. 

The concept of the “achievement gap” has become so culturally pervasive, it feeds on itself as it fuels the stigmatization of children of color and the reinforcement of racial stereotypes.  

One of our UIA members was in tears recently as she shared that she was thinking of taking her child out of Berkeley High. She was struggling hard to keep her daughter engaged, looking to the future, to college enrollment only to find that her daughter seriously doubted her college potential. “White kids are smarter than us, Mom. They score so much better on the tests, don’t they?”  

Yes, they score better. But they are not smarter. Rather they have more “opportunity,” and they are expected to achieve at higher levels than black and brown children. How is that possible in Berkeley of all places? We who have so much pride in education and social justice. 

Is the promise of change in the air? 

We are edging up to a new season, Spring—a time in nature of rebirth and new beginnings, a time to plant the seeds of a beautiful new garden. Might we extend this metaphor to collectively kickoff a fresh and hopeful approach to the sad state of educational success in our schools and community? The promise of change may be hanging in the air. 

A new Superintendent of Education, Bill Huyett, has come into town. He was hired stating that closing the achievement gap would be a top priority for the BUSD. We all want him to be triumphant with that challenge. And UIA will diligently work with and support him. But no matter how passionate or dedicated he may be, the problem is bigger than he or any single institution can deal with alone. 

A Total Community approach 

United In Action is campaigning for a Total Community approach. The approach will require getting past many constraints—budgetary, jurisdictional and imaginative. It will take a galvanizing force that alters the way we look at things—one that shakes us out of our inertia or indifference and mobilizes the energies needed to sustain the effort.  

UIA’s total community approach proposes a partnership model pulling together the BUSD, City of Berkeley, University of California, Berkeley City College, Bay Area Coalition for Equitable Schools, Justice Matters, Policy Link, Greenlining Institute, other relevant non-profits and community based organizations, the business community, the teachers union, parents, students and the citizenry of Berkeley. It is an approach that does not look into the rear view mirror for blame but rather forward with a road map for the future.  

Such a partnership would bring together the economic, intellectual and innovative resources needed to comprehensively address what should be morally offensive to a community like Berkeley. 

According to a CEO’s for cities briefing paper on “How Business and Civic Leaders Can Make a Big Difference in Public Education, “Everybody who lives or works in a big city has a stake in the performance of the local public school system. Businesses and cultural institutions suffer when thousands of young school graduates are unprepared to do productive work or take a full part in civic life.” UIA is asking that: 

• The City of Berkeley issue a resolution and implementation plan declaring the elimination of the achievement/opportunity gap a city-wide priority. 

• The district adopt a plan with accountable yearly targets to eliminate the achievement/opportunity gap by 2020. 

• The city and superintendent invite all relevant public and private entities to become a part of a new city-wide partnership that will dedicate existing and new resources to eliminating the gap.  

• The city and superintendent convene a Community Commitment Conference to solidify a clear-sighted vision and to mobilize the will of the city. 

• The city and superintendent concurrently appoint an Equity Task Force, accountable to the city-wide partnership, which will bring together national scholars and innovative thought leaders.  

The clock is ticking 

Achieving the 2020 Vision will require a substantial percentage jump in equity each year. The cumulative benefits would be enormous—less time spent on remedial “catch-up,” more time spent on student advancement, and less conflict and resentment rooted in inequity. 

The 2020 generation is already seven months into it’s first year. We urge our community members to quickly support the partnership by talking with your mayor, school board director, councilmember, PTA representative, or any other appropriate individual or organized body.  

The clock is ticking. Every month is important as we move to that day in June of 2020 when we stand shoulder to shoulder with our children in a celebration of their success….and our success as a community. 

Our children are the fruits of our garden. Let us not fail them. 

Santiago Casal and Michael Miller are members of United In Action, representing Latinos Unidos (LU) and Parents of Children of African Descent (PCAD). 

Since my childhood, the Berkeley Marina has been a place of sanctuary and reflection for my wandering mind and feet. As a child I went to birthday parties there, flew kites on windy days, and rolled down the big hills with my hermana. It was a place of infinite beauty, with a panoramic view of the bay area and a sunset that no words could be tailored for. Before we’d leave, my father would always calm us to take a moment and appreciate our place in the universe. We would breathe in deep, feel the setting sun against our faces, and stare at the horizon with a humbling appreciation for the world we often forget is bigger than ourselves. To this day, I still frequent the Berkeley Marina and César Chávez Park, and am always met with the same feelings of reflection and awe during my peaceful visits. 

On the top of one of the far hills is an ancient looking arrangement of stones reminiscent of Mayan ruins or a Stonehenge—things of nature aligned to create a circle that catches your eye as you walk closer, three large boulders set along the horizon to the west, mirrored by another three lining the east. In the center is a small stone-cut pillar that only obstructs the grass around it enough for you to wonder how it got there. 

This is the César Chávez Memorial Solar Calendar, something ever so delicately lifted out of the ground to help guide your thoughts to a place of reflection. At first glance the stones seem themselves to be only loosely forming a circle, but if you read the description surrounding the center stone, it explains that every stone along the perimeter is a marker, direct alignments that provide a map of the of the seasons, the summer and winter solstice, of time, of change, and of our constant movement in the universe. It is a reminder of the very things I was told about in my childhood, about remaining humble, about appreciation, prompting self-reflection and healing from the petty damages we scar ourselves with during our mundane routines that become so irrelevant when reminded of the bigger picture.  

Engraved on four of the stones are values; hope, determination, courage, and tolerance. I can think of no better words of wisdom to guide these reflective moments. They bear such weight, and to a young man like myself amidst much confusion, such words are the daybreak of clarity I need to sort through the quarrels of right and wrong in a world of increasing grey areas.  

However, I am aware of my privilege, not all children get exposed to such wonderful experiences and spiritual guidance in their youth. I have brought many friends to the Berkeley Marina, and only since the solar calendar project have we been able to find these moments of reflection together. I see the project as the wisdom of our elders before us, forever reminding us that we must think outside ourselves. 

A big component of the project is bringing elementary school children to the park to experience it as I did as a child, using the calendar as a destination point for their break from PlayStation and Freeze-Tag. To reach young people on a common understanding of refection and contemplation, through four values carved into stones that they may have never learned or truly understood before their visit. While they are there, they will experience all of the wonders of nature that exist there, the wildlife, the spectacular view, the infinite space to run and play, but most of all, a chance for them to experience themselves in a safe calming space that few are fortunate enough to be exposed to.  

This project is about sharing the park with the next generation, passing down wisdom, providing guidance to young developing minds before the complexities of young adulthood set in. This project is for people of color who need more heroes than just Martin Luther King, for Latinos like myself who rarely find our triumphs understood and reflected in such a selfless way for us to learn from. This small arrangement in nature is a vessel for an aspect of education that is frequently passed over in the school system, and as a result leaves many without the guidance and mentoring that young people need in the most formidable years of their lives.  

In a March 4 commentary in the Planet, the author argued that someone should have checked with veteran guests of César Chávez Park before installing such a project. That it was an undeclared addition and that it obstructs the flow of nature and peace that exists when walking there. A reminder of our human footprint on the world in a place we go to try and get away from it.  

I am forever grateful that someone did not wait for my permission to give me hope, to reaffirm determination, to remind me to be tolerant. to instill me with courage when I have needed such reminders most. In a time when so much is fast paced, when young people are faced with so many obstacles, how dare someone offer guidance, offer a place to forget the day-to-day and be immersed in the change of the seasons, to watch a spectacular sunset and understand our movement through the universe, to be reminded that anyone can do great things in this world for their community, for their people, for us all. The person responsible for the solar calendar at César Chávez Park in Berkeley has done a great thing for his community, in ways that will trickle down through the generations that have and will benefit from its purpose.  

Thank you for your “obstruction.” Just the thing I need to stop me in my tracks and take a moment. If the solar calendar is a reminder of our footprint in nature, than what a huge step it is for us all.  

Rafael Casal is an Oakland resident.  

Becky O’Malley’s savaging of Ralph Nader and Matt Gonzalez (Editorial, March 10) is singularly unfair. Pollit’s editorial hit piece, which O’Malley cites, explicitly states that “Ralph Nader has a perfect right to run for president.”  

Then Pollit trots out the silly old canard about Nader costing Gore the election (in Florida) while neglecting to note that the Democrats have done absolutely nothing legislatively about abolishing the Electoral College, an anti-democratic instutution which reflects the most profound contempt for the American voter. This is probably because they believe that it may work in their favor in some future election. Gore lost in 2000 because he stood for little or nothing and ran a lousy campaign. He could not even carry his home state of Tennessee, and plenty of Dems voted for Bush. I might point out that Joe Lieberman, whom O’Malley accurately describes as both “smarmy and odious,” was Gore’s running mate. The Kerry campaign put out feelers to get McCain to join them as his 2004 running mate, and Lieberman is currently shortlisted for the McCain ticket’s VP spot. “Smarmy and odious” Lieberman is a former Democrat and his voting overall record is not that different from Clinton’s or Obama’s. Clinton voted for NAFTA and pushed her husband to support the socially disastrous “Welfare to Work” program; Obama supports a unilateral strike on Pakistan’s Taliban; and all three presidential contenders parrot unconditional support for the military budget, Israel, and the continuation of the military quagmire in Afghanistan. None of them will be pulling all troops, including the private mercenaries, out of Iraq. All support the death penalty while claiming, at the same time, to be devout Christians. 

While it is true that Guantanamo, the Patriot Act, and other heinous acts were Republican initiatives, plenty of Democrats both voted for them and actively support these endeavors as well as other violations of civil liberties. The Dems are too cowardly to impeach Bush, and both Clintons and Kerry have acted to give the president the power to send troops to an (undeclared) war, which is a subversion of the powers of Congress and hardly a democratic stand. While many Democrats may be pro choice, a significant number are not, and Democrats allowed John Roberts and other anti choice ideologues to ascend to the Supreme Court. Diane Feinstein, our own Republican in Democratic clothing, was instrumental in allowing the nomination of the ultraconservative Mukasey for Attorney General to go forward. Kucinich called for the impeachment of both Bush and Cheney, but it went nowhere. Left unchallenged, the Bush precedent will be undoubtedly have a rerun in a future administration, complete with signing statements that unilaterally alter the meaning of legislation and another set of undeclared invasions. 

Ralph Nader and Matt Gonzalez are performing a public service by running. Despite that Pollit believes that they are “Green Party candidates,” they are actually running as Independents. (Pollit should get off her ideological high horse and get her facts correct). If they were to be included in any debates, which they will almost assuredly will not be, they would be able to raise issues and problems that the Tweedledee and Tweedledum will fail to mention, such as the Dark Horseman of fiscal collapse hanging over the United States (and the world). While O’Malley maintains Gonzalez’s points about Obama are “thin at best,” she fails to substantiate this claim. Why is it that people can’t understand that having an African father and holding rather conservative positions does not somehow make you a “liberal” in the classic sense of someone who is antiwar, for reducing the military budget, and supporting social justice. Gonzalez intends to tour college campuses and educate the younger generation about ranked choice voting. As anyone who has seen the superb documentary “An Unreasonable Man” knows, Ralph has plenty to do to say that is relevant. And this is a great way for his voice (and that of Gonzalez) to be heard. 

A late entrant to the race who quickly gained momentum, Gonzalez lost the 2003 race to Gavin because the Democrats pulled out all the stops to defeat him. They poured money into Newsom’s campaign and brought in Gore and Slick Willie Clinton to stump, and Gavin was able to tap his anti-homeless PACs for funds and logistical support. For reasons unfathomable to many San Franciscans, the ineffective Gavin Newsom, a recovering alcoholic who slept with his campaign manager’s wife, remains quite popular with those who bother to go to the voting booth. None of the probable candidates believed they could defeat him in 2007. We had a good alternative, Quintin Miecke, but voters failed to rally behind him. 

As long as the United States is a society of inactive couch potatoes, so accurately described in Thomas Frank’s What’s The Matter With Kansas?, nothing will change. We all need to get on the phone more to our legislators, show up at demonstrations, write letters, and send e-mails. In Electoral College-insulated states like California, a vote for candidates such as Nader indicates that there is a constituency for change. Otherwise, nothing will happen. The “liberal” branch of the Democrats have nowhere else to go, and the party establishment will continue to target the more conservative voters. Budget deficits and Wall Street corruption and ineptitude mean that hard times are ahead, but we have to lay the blame for our current situation on bipartisan collusion. 

Most people do not vote because the candidates do not appeal. For all his emphasis on poverty, John Edwards is a multimillionaire trial lawyer who only recently discovered what it means to be poverty stricken in America. His way to “learn” more about it was to work for a hedge fund. Matt, on the other hand, is a guy you might run into in Adobe Books on 16th Street; he recently had an art opening of his collages made from found materials. He’s a genuine person, a logical thinker, and possibly the best debater ever to be a supervisor. That’s why he attracted such support and enthusiasm for his candidacy the last time around. Let’s hope Matt can bring some of this to the national arena. It is sorely needed. 

Harry S. Pariser is a Berkeley resident. 

In her autobiography, Living History, Senator Hillary Clinton portrays herself as an advocate for children, a defender of women and human rights. In fact, the Clintons have a long history of sacrificing the rights, even the lives of children, for political expediency. It is time to set the record straight. 

On September 6, 2006, a Senate bill—a simple amendment to ban the use of cluster bombs in civilian areas—presented Senator Clinton with a timely opportunity to protect the lives of children throughout the world. 

The cluster bomb is one of the most hated and heinous weapons in modern war, and its primary victims are children. 

Senator Obama voted for the amendment to ban cluster bombs. Senator Clinton, however, voted with the Republicans to kill the humanitarian bill, an amendment in accord with the Geneva Conventions, which already prohibit the use of indiscriminate weapons in populated areas. 

All senators are expected to inform themselves on the issues before they cast a vote. The evidence is overwhelming. It is hard to believe that Senator Clinton was unaware of the humanitarian crisis when she voted to continue the use of cluster bombs in cities and populated areas. A U.N. weapons commission called cluster bombs “weapons of indiscriminate effect.” For years the international press reported the horrific consequences of cluster bombs on civilians. On April 10, 2003, for example, Asia Times described the carnage in Baghdad hospitals: “The absolute majority of patients are women and children, victims of shrapnel, and most of all, fragments of cluster bombs.” Reporting from a hospital in Hillah, The Mirror, a British newspaper, became graphic: “Shrapnel peppered their bodies. Blackened the skin. Smashed heads. Tore limbs. A doctor reports that ‘all the injuries you see were caused by cluster bombs. The majority of the victims were children who died because they were outside.’” 

Even after wars subside, after treaties are signed, after belligerents return home, cluster bombs wreak havoc on civilian life. Up to 20 percent of the bomblets fail to detonate on the first round, only to become landmines that later explode on playgrounds and farmlands. Children are drawn to cluster bomb canisters, the deadly duds that look like beer cans or toys before they explode. 

Clinton on landmines 

Of course Senator Clinton did not expect her vote on cluster bombs to become an issue in a presidential campaign. But that vote is one of many examples in a pattern of indifference to the welfare of children in the Developing World. 

Because Clinton is now taking credit for the White House years, when she was a partner in power, we should also look closely at the Clinton policy regarding landmines, an issue of great concern to parents, to all those who care for children. The United States is the leading manufacturer of landmines. For families across the rest of the globe, landmines are buried terror. More than 100 million landmines are deployed in over 60 countries worldwide—nine million in Angola, 10 million in Cambodia. About 20,000 M14 antipersonnel mines are buried in the mountain areas of Yong-do, South Korea. According to U.N. estimates, 26,000 people, mostly civilians in developing countries, are killed or mutilated by landmines every year. In rural areas landmines are so ubiquitous and lethal, peasants risk their lives to earn a living tilling the soil and planting crops. 

The worldwide movement to ban landmines burgeoned in the Clinton years. It was a visionary U.S. citizen, Jody Williams of Vermont, who won the Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts to end the ignominy of landmines. And it was primarily in defense of children that Princess Diana, speaking from a minefield in Angola, raised international awareness about devastation caused by weapons from the West. 

In December 1997, 137 nations, more than two-thirds of the world, signed the Ottawa treaty, an agreement to ban the use, production, stockpiling and transfer of anti-personnel landmines. How did the Clintons respond to world opinion, to the humanitarian movement against landmines? 

President Clinton flat out refused to become party to the Ottawa Convention. As he put it, “I could not sign in good conscience the treaty banning landmines.” In “good conscience”?! 

Landmines are not good for children, Hillary. 

Paul Rockwell is a columnist living in the Bay Area.

Daily Planet Executive Editor O’Malley and many of the readers of this newspaper have been affected with a dangerous infection of the mind recently identified as the “anti-Nader” virus. This virus was created by leaders of the Demopublican Party after the narrow victory of their candidate Al Gore in the 2000 presidential selection. When Republican Party apparatchiks and Cuban-American thugs barged into the Dade County elections office and forced a stop to a recount, when winning candidate Gore refused to call for a full recount, when tens of thousands of Floridians and New Mexicans of color were deliberately prevented from voting, when the Supreme Court unconstitutionally intervened to steal the election in a bloodless coup d’etat, these so-called “leaders” did nothing to defend the constitution or the right to vote. 

Instead of accepting the blame for their outright complicity in the coup d’etat and doing something (anything!) about it, they decided to blame someone else. Who better to blame than the most prominent and incorruptible advocate for the rights of everyday Americans, Ralph Nader. 

The “leaders” used the method first formalized by the Third Reich’s Joseph Goebbels (later carefully refined by the CIA/NSA etc) and started a black propaganda smear campaign against Nader and the Green Party: “It’s all Naders’ fault! If it hadn’t been for him, we wouldn’t have Bush or these horrible wars.” 

The virus that has infected so many Demos curiously has not affected many Repubs. There has been no outbreak of outraged Repubs demanding the crucifixion of that stupid egotist and spoiler, Ross Perot, for stealing votes away from the rightful President, George H.W. Bush. 

Perhaps Editor O’Malley and readers of this paper are too embarrassed by their own inaction and complicity in the coup d’etat? Perhaps they are too embarrassed by their total lack of action AGAIN in 2004 when that election was stolen again by the same Repub criminals, and when the Green Party, not the Demos, demanded a recount to expose the fraud? Perhaps they are embarrassed by their past mindless support of candidates who are war criminals, i.e. Clinton, Gore and Kerry? Perhaps they’ve forgotten that their candidates supported NAFTA, GATT, WTO, the 1996 give away of our precious airwaves, the 1996 Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (aka Patriot Act #0), Patriot Act #1, the destruction of unions via Gore’s “Re-inventing Government” measures, the breaking of promises to not renew the 1872 Mining Act, torture, and warrantless spying? Perhaps they’ve forgotten that their candidates oppose single payer healthcare for all, oppose real public financing of elections or any electoral reform, refuse to say when they might end our current wars, support bloated military and secret spy budgets, and support the death penalty? Perhaps they’ve forgotten that there was no “Golden Age” in 1993-1995 when the Demopublicans controlled the White House and both houses of Congress? 

If readers and Executive Editor O’Malley would awaken from their black propaganda virus-induced nightmare, they would see that it’s insane to support a Party or its candidates who oppose virtually everything most of us Berkeleyans believe in, and blame the one candidate who bravely stands for everything we think is right! 

Yes, there are important differences between Demopublican and Republicrat Parties… for example, hedge funds and stock brokerage firms give more money to Demos, whereas oil companies prefer Repubs. McCain voted to extend the Patriot Act, whereas Clinton and Obama also voted for it, oops! Repubs favored tax cuts for the rich, whereas our Demo Senator Feinstein also voted for them, oops! Repubs don’t want to impeach arch-criminal Dick Cheney, whereas the Demo Party…. oops, I keep missing those important differences that O’Malley believes are so obvious! 

In contrast, Nader understands what democracy is and why it’s important to stand up and speak out for what you believe in, no matter what. Apparently, the editor and many of the readers of this paper do not. Apparently, the editor and many readers think everyone should vote against what they believe in. Apparently, the editor and many readers think it’s just fine to denigrate those who refuse to cave in to intimidation, those who fight for our rights as citizens, those who are not dozing in a propaganda virus-induced coma. It is very, very important that each and every reader of this newspaper work to cure him/herself of the delusion that the National so-called Democratic Party stands for anything at all, or will work as a body for any real change that would improve the lives of ordinary Americans. Why support a party whose motto appears to be “We suck less!” ? 

All of us need to see that our criminal government cannot function without the active collaboration of the so-called Democratic Party. That party is responsible, and so are we if we vote for it or its candidates. 

Hope is not a strategy! If we want to live in a civilized country, we are going to have to work for it, and stop mindlessly voting for candidates who oppose everything we believe in. 

Bob Marsh is a Berkeley native who is mad as hell and is not listening to any nonsense from Democrats anymore.  

DOWNTOWN 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

To summarize Becky’s March 11 editorial: Berkeley’s downtown has not had any commercial relevance since the 1950s. It’s only value is as yet another reason to try to oust Mayor Bates. Let’s thank Cody’s for disagreeing with Becky. 

Any story about the neighborhood’s economic decline should at least mention the end of commercial rent control. Too many landlords have wet dreams about Starbucks, et al., moving into their building to fund their Tahitian retirement home. They think it’s better to leave their building vacant, to allow that ephemeral rich tenant a quick set-up, than to maintain the neighborhood’s viability. 

Thank you, Becky, for your “fair and balanced” editorial. Yogi Berra might opine, perhaps more briefly and logically: No one goes there because it’s too crowded. 

Mitch Cohen 

• 

IRRELEVANT? 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I was astonished and appalled by Ms. O’Malley’s arrogant editorial cavalierly writing off Downtown Berkeley as irrelevant and therefore worthy of being allowed to further decay. I moved to Berkeley in 1978. Years ago Downtown was a charming area that boasted: an upscale department store, two candy stores, two fabric stores, a jewelry store, a children’s shoe store, a man who repaired almost anything, a sewing machine repairman, a vacuum store, cinemas, restaurants, furniture stores, a toy store, an art glass gallery, a bakery, a music store, a specialty video store, a store that sold surfing gear, a Gateway computer store, a lingerie store, clothing stores, a hardware store, a paint store, bike stores, bookstores, a stereo store, the Berkeley Rep, and the library’sCentral Branch—to name just a few. It was certainly not irrelevant to me. 

Berkeley’s anti-business stance, unwillingness to admit why the homeless are on the streets and gravitate to Berkeley, and willingness to tolerate the endless complaints and agendas of vocal minorities, have resulted in a once pleasant area turning into a Skid Row harboring drug addicts, alcoholics, unemployable ex-felons, and the mentally ill.  

Is it possible for Berkeley’s downtown to experience a renaissance? Only if we get a city government dedicated to intelligent leadership and economic growth rather than political theater.  

J.K. Zimbler 

• 

CLARIFICATION 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I was glad to see the Planet’s March 11 story detailing actions by the Landmarks Preservation Commission at their March 6 meeting. But I was also chagrined to see myself quoted so extensively on the Hezlett’s Silk Store issue, without a mention of the author of the landmark nomination. 

Robert Johnson, a member of the commission, researched and drafted the landmark application for 2277 Shattuck Ave., which housed both Hezlett’s Silk and Tupper and Reed over the decades.  

He was justifiably congratulated and applauded at the meeting by his fellow commissioners and the audience for a thorough and solid nomination.  

All the credit for bringing this building before the commission and establishing its significance belongs to Mr. Johnson and his volunteer efforts. 

I was simply a speaker at the public hearing adding my two-cents worth in favor of the nomination, as did other members of the public who spoke. I didn’t even know about the nomination until about a week before the meeting, when I saw the public hearing notice posted on the facade. 

Steven Finacom 

• 

VICE PRESIDENCY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Since Hillary claims that she and McCain are the only qualified, experienced candidates, why doesn’t she offer McCain the vice presidency ? 

Harry Gans 

• 

BROKEN SYSTEM 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Democracy is broken, and you haven’t noticed. In the March 7 edition, an editorial was printed by Becky O’Malley, that suggests voters vote in a way that pretty much breaks the democratic system the way it was intended. This partisan method of putting in a vote is breaking my country, and as pleased as I was to get away from the corrupt conservative government that runs my hometown of Miami, I’ve found that politics in Berkeley has sharper teeth. 

We are not intended to consider a candidate’s chance of winning as a determining factor in our vote. We are intended to make a choice that represents our own interests, and aligns itself with our personal philosophies. If every person casts such a vote, a measure of the preferences of the majority may be taken. The suggestion that it is more sophisticated to consider a mediocre candidate with heaps of support over a candidate that represents the most ideas one may believe in is a betrayal of our system of government. 

The biased statement that if too many people vote for Republicans, things are bound to get worse, is disappointing at best. Democrats aren’t any more the answer to our problems than Republicans. We need to get our noses out of this good-cop/bad-cop game. Smart, independent, and diverse voters, who don’t buy into the team mentality of partisan politics and genuinely consider all candidates for their best option—these are what we need. 

Armando Garcia 

Miami, Florida 

• 

POSITIVE I.D. 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I was pleased to see Mr. Hardesty’s March 11 letter. I’d been wondering what sort of person would vote for a Nader/Gonzalez ticket. 

Dick Bagwell 

• 

DANNY HOCH INCIDENT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I was shocked to read in the Daily Planet about the treatment given Jean Stewart at Berkeley Rep! 

I wonder if the house manager ever took the House Manager 101. What does she think she is there for? What right has she to be so severe with the patrons? Was she beaten into submission when she was a child and wants to make others miserable? This is beyond reason. I know Berkeley Rep has had difficulty in keeping house managers because of the scope of their responsibility; however, this seems to come down to finding a new house manager or losing patronage. 

I am also chagrined to hear how Jean Stewart was treated by Danny Hoch. Audience participation is one thing, but he went too far. I hope in the future that Berkeley Rep will give some guidance to the performer as well. I thought he was a brilliant performer when I saw him; however, after reading this commentary, I have lost all respect for him as an artist. 

Anne Thompson 

• 

COME TO THE WARM POOL 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Message to Jean Stewart regarding the Danny Hoch incident: Jean, come to the warm pool where people are kind, considerate and helpful. Where people know about pain and struggle. Where you can grab a couple of “noodles” and float like a Portuguese Man-of-War, taking pressure off all your uncomfortable body parts. Where the plight of some of the children will rip your heart out and make you glad you can take your own problems back from the Wailing Wall. Where it’s 93 degrees and only costs $2 and there is lots of handicapped parking and everyone has a way to get in and out of the pool. 

Come join us and let the warm waters help wash away that terrible encounter with Danny Hoch. 

Rosemary Vimont 

• 

WILLARD MIDDLE SCHOOL 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I am writing in response to the recent series of articles about the former vice principal of Willard Middle School. I do not know the details of this incident but wish to speak about the climate of the school and its community. 

As a former parent and a current volunteer at Willard I want to draw attention to the incredibly dedicated staff that support these students everyday. 

The teachers are a thoughtful, talented, fun-loving group who work together in a collegial and caring fashion, devoting countless hours to their students and each other. The principal, Mr. Ithurburn, gives his all and can be found in the halls or roaming the campus during the school day, staying late into the evening and weekends to attend events and to improve systems and strategies for student success. At Willard my children and I made lifelong friends and found a compassionate community. I felt lucky to have been able to count on these amazing professionals to help my children navigate the changing landscape of adolescence. 

Karen Meryash 

• 

IRAQ WAR ANNIVERSARY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I propose we observe the fifth anniversary of the Iraq invasion in meditation on two topics. 

1. The leaders who were so sublimely confident and tragically wrong in predicting what would happen are the same people, with different names (Gates for Rumsfeld, Patreaus for Franks, Rice for Powell, etc.), telling us with equal confidence what would happen if we left. 

2. The debate over an exit strategy is exaggerated political showmanship because, obviously, we get out the same way we got in. 

Marvin Chachere 

San Pablo 

• 

RIGHTS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Holly Harwood (Letters, March 7) says “…Great Britain lacks the rights we have in this country.” Asthis statement is echoed by others from time to time, I thought I might comment. One example of the contrary is that Britain did not, during World War II, jail citizens living in Britain, whose ancestors came from countries with which it was at war. Indeed, it only jailed foreign citizens until such time as they could appear before tribunals to ascertain their allegiances. In the same period the United States jailed, for about three years, over 70,000 American citizens of Japanese ancestry, without accusation or trial. Is not a long period in jail, without trial, or accusation, the most egregious violation of civil liberties there is, short of capital punishment? And where is Britain’s Guantanamo, holding people indefinitely without trial or access to lawyers? Do these internments support Ms. Harwood’s contention that Britain lacks the rights we have in this country? She may defend her statement by noting that this was in a time of war. But the acid test of commitments to civil liberties is when the country is under stress, not when everything is sailing along smoothly. 

Stuart Pawsey 

• 

APPLE MOTH 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Department of Agriculture spokesperson Steve Lyle recently commented that the light brown apple moth (LBAM) threatens the environment and our food supply as justification for applying chlorpyrifos to our nurseries, cat poison (permethrin) to our yards, pesticides along our streets and in our schools and parks, and then blanketing our communities with aerial pesticide applications. Someone needs to educate Mr. Lyle about the basic biology of LBAM, which rightfully should be called the “eats hardly anything moth.” Not only will it not threaten our food supply it will become a primary protein source for a large number of beneficial insects that are an inherent part of a healthy ecosystem including ants, earwigs, and spiders; and when it is fully mature, it will be bird food. 

In disputing the findings of the Harder report which shows that LBAM is not the moth of mass destruction as portrayed by the Department of Agriculture, Lyle further writes that comparing impacts on the environments of New Zealand and California “is like comparing apples and oranges.” This causes one to speculate as to why Lyle’s agriculture department is spending part of their $75 million in “emergency” funding carrying out their primary LBAM studies in New Zealand. In point of fact, as in California, LBAM is an introduced pest and the prime growing regions of New Zealand (e.g. Hawke’s Bay) provides a close comparison to the prime growing range of the Monterey Bay in terms of climate and terrain. Mr. Lyle probably should have also been told that his own entomologists have demonstrated that native California wasps attack LBAM larvae and that LBAM is so similar to some native California moths that it requires genetic testing to distinguish between the species. It is clear that no widespread pesticide programs against LBAM are utilized or needed in New Zealand agriculture and there is absolutely no reason to believe that pesticide spraying of residential areas is needed here. 

Even a cursory review of the State’s justification for the “emergency” and the subsequent development and implementation of every part of their program reveals that there is little scientific justification for their actions and that the products being used are both inadequately tested and unsafe. The true cost of their spray: one child almost dead, more than 600 reports of people injured, and 750 dead sea birds. I hope the $75 million is worth it. 

Roy Upton 

LBAM Liaison, Citizens For Health, 

Soquel 

• 

SPRAYING GUIDELINES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Some of the practical things about spraying that should be said are as follows: 

1. Spraying should be done only on days when there is no wind blowing. 

2. When spraying is to be done, it should be publicly announced through all the radio and TV stations, so people can stay inside. 

3. Hospitals and doctors’ offices should keep track of any illnesses which are beginning to be noticed and report them to the Health Department. 

4. The cost of treating anyone who gets sick should be able to be collected from the company that provides the spray. The spray company should provide a central place where payments will be made. 

5. Our politicians should see to it that these procedures are carefully followed. Formal notification of these procedures to all the persons involved in spraying should be required before spraying is commenced. 

Charles Smith 

• 

GREEN 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

As a CAL alumnus, Berkeley resident and life-long environmentalist, I share the enthusiasm described by Richard Brenneman at the UC Berkeley Energy Symposium about the future of green energy. I’d love to see a vibrant green tech corridor in the East Bay with UC Berkeley playing an integral part. 

But I wonder how much of the wealth created by the various partnerships among the university, venture capitalists and, to some degree, the government, will go towards achieving excellence in education and the student experience on campus in all its schools and departments. Certainly this flow of investment will allow professors and graduate students in bio-engineering and relevant fields to perform cutting-edge and socially relevant research. This in turn will serve to attract and keep high quality professors and graduate students in these fields of whom the university and alumni are justifiably proud. 

I believe that “green capitalism,” technological innovation and political will be the answer to global warming (although the growing consensus in the environmental movement is chiefly efficiency, solar and wind with plug in vehicles not bio-fuels). But how will these partnerships, or even start-ups such as professor Jay Keasling’s LS9, “the Renewable Petroleum Company,” help reduce the shamefully high tuition students must pay to attend this great university? A tuition rate of $8,000 or so per year for undergraduates undermines the basic tenet of a public university in providing affordable education to all qualified candidates. In fact, it might very well be less expensive to attend Stanford for middle-class and economically disadvantaged students these days after factoring in the generous scholarships that university gives. 

I wonder if all this enthusiasm in general and focus by university administrators on the benefits of “green tech boom” partnerships does not serve at the same time to mask the lamentable reality that the passing of proposition 13 and the so-called “taxpayers revolt” has thrown higher education in California into something of a perpetual a state of economic emergency for the past 30 years, one that is particularly acute at this time. A clear-eyed assessment of the financial benefits from these green-energy partnerships promises very little in terms of abating this state of economic emergency at CAL, it seems to me. 

In the end a public university must be funded by the public, a sacrifice that is made by individual citizens for the very tangible benefits to society that a public university affords, the foremost of which was argued for by Thomas Jefferson at the founding of this nation, the education necessary for the great hope of participatory democracy. 

David Weinstein 

• 

WEDNESDAY NOON CONCERTS  

AT HERTZ HALL 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Settling into my seat for the Hertz Hall Noon Concert this past Wednesday, I noted from the program that these concerts have been going on for 55 years. That caused me to speculate on just how many of these wonderful programs I personally have attended. My mathematics might not be totally accurate, but going back to the many decades I worked at Boalt Hall School of Law to the present time, when I regularly attended these Wednesday (and sometimes Friday) concerts, I came up with the astonishing figure of 2450! What magnificent concerts they’ve been—student and professional recitals, piano, cello and violin virtuosi, Brazilian jazz, Baroque, Javanese Gamelan, the full University Symphony and Chorus—all for free! 

This week’s concert featured the University Chamber Chorus under the direction of John Kendall Bailey in an all-French recital of composers such as Gabriel Faure, Camille Saint-Saens, Maurice Ravel, Olivier Messiaen and Maurice Durufle. With soloists Christa Pfeiffer and Edward Betts, accompanied by pianist Pheaross Graham and a magnificent chorus of 34 voice and small chamber group, we were treated to a truly sublime program. I’m quite sure no program at Davies Hall could surpass the beauty of this program. I might mention that an unfortunate incident occurred when a member of the chorus fainted, thereby interrupting the program. It was announced that an ambulance had been called, which would delay the concert, but if the audience was willing to put up with this delay, the final two numbers would be performed. Attesting to the appreciation of this concert, the audience did indeed remain for the conclusion of the program. (We were assured that the young singer was just fine, such news being heartily applauded.) 

Leaving Hertz Hall, my friends and I agreed that Berkeley and the entire East Bay are blessed to have this opportunity to enjoy outstanding programs of music and the arts week after week, year after year, thanks to the University of California! 

Dorothy Snodgrass 

• 

BRT DEDICATED LANES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The intent behind Bus Rapid Transit is to motivate car drivers to become bus riders, because the BRT trips take about as long as car trips. A surprising number of people don’t understand that this has to cause some inconvenience to cars. That’s the whole idea behind the bus-only lanes. 

If we can’t inconvenience cars by taking a lane or taking parking, then we shouldn’t expect the BRT to be any more attractive than other buses, and it certainly will continue to be less attractive than driving a car. 

Are we serious about reducing car traffic, or do we insist that nothing be yielded to the cars? Is all this “climate action plan” talk just hot air? 

Steve Geller 

• 

UNDERSTAND THE LAW 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

James E. Vann (Letters, March 11) states: “Congress must oppose retroactive immunity for phone companies that participated in the Bush-Cheney administration warrantless surveillance program.” 

Obviously, Mr. Vann, like all the other Democrats who espouse this, or a similar statement, do not understand the law. For the record, again, here is the United States Code (legal authority, for uneducated folks like Mr. Vann): 

According to 50 U.S.C. §1801(a)(1), (2), (3), the president has total authority to authorize the attorney general to survey, electronically, anyone in the US without a court order for a period of up to one year, provided that it is only for foreign intelligence information. 

And please, do not insult everyone’s intelligence by making false accusation that Americans are being eavesdropped on; there are no verifiable data to even suggest that...unless you are a New York Times journalist (and I use that term lightly). 

It is easy to say Bush broke the law, but it is a simple issue of knowing the law. Mr. Vann, and a myriad of other hateful people, obviously do not. 

T.J. Conrads 

Boise, Idaho 

• 

STEALING ELECTIONS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I was an Edwards supporter and when he dropped out I would have supported any candidate on the Democratic ticket. My first ballot was cast for FDR back in the 1940s and I have remained faithful to the Democratic Party ever since. I voted twice for Bill Clinton. 

I am now faced with who to support in November—Sen. Clinton or Sen. Obama? Following the campaign closely, I cannot understand why the Democratic Party stands passive amid the self-destruction now taking place. As of now, neither one of the two remaining candidates has a sufficient number of delegates to be crowned at the convention and with all possible calculations it is virtually impossible for either candidate to achieve that magic number before the convention. Therefore, superdelegates have to choose who will be the Democratic candidate.  

Right now Sen. Obama has well over 100 delegates more than Sen. Clinton. Millions of enthusiastic new voters have flocked to the Democratic Party, giving Obama a victory not only in delegates but in states as well as in voters. No matter what happens, the margin of victory may increase or decrease, but he will remain the winner. 

The superdelegates have to decide whose name will be on the ballot and they are being bombarded to make a decision. It is obvious who is the winner, no matter what spin is presented. The world saw how Bush stole the elections and the incalculable damage that resulted. God forbid the superdelegates steal this election by placing the losing candidate on the ballot. 

Otherwise, I shudder to think of the nightmare that would follow. It would split the Democratic Party in two. African Americans have been the most loyal voting block in the party and without their support the Democrats simply cannot win an election. Can you imagine how an African American would be shellshocked into feelings of betrayal, seeing a fellow member who played fairly by the rules, is superbly qualified , has won the delegates, states and voters, and is then relegated to the back of the bus so that a white lady got preferential treatment? Where is our civil rights struggle? Do we expect millions of enthusiastic new voters who have swelled our ranks into a phenomenal grassroots movement to support dirty politics as usual? Is this what we have come to? Doesn’t it occur to anyone that Sen. Clinton’s negative rating is so high for a reason? No amount of kitchen-sink campaigning will hide the truth. 

I am a white female, an old Democrat, and I cannot betray the principles of what the Democratic Party represents and I will not take part in any scheme to steal the elections of 2008. I trust the leadership of the Democratic Party will wake up and recognize its responsibility, stop the senseless bloodletting and instead, bring us together to defeat the well-oiled Republican machine in November. I hope I can continue to be proud of calling myself a Democrat.  

Helen M. Harris 

• 

THANK THE TROOPS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I believe Kenneth Thiesen should be thanking our U.S. military and supporting them. Without our past, present and future military Ken, most likely, would not be able to pen such articles voicing his opinion against our fine men and women who serve in the U.S. military. Although I must say, it might be a blessing if he could not write and therefore not reveal his ignorance and stupidity. Ken, I hope you never need military assistance because I don’t believe they will come to your aid. 

Gina McBride 

Prairieville, LA  

• 

SUPPORTING THE SOLDIERS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

To Kenneth Thiesen: If you “support the troops” in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the other more than 100 countries in which they are located, you also objectively support U.S. hegemony in the world. I believe that the vast majority of people who say they support the troops do not wish to support U.S. imperialism, but that is what they are really doing by putting forth the slogan of “support the troops.” 

Kenneth, that and many of the other things you say in the article sound a whole lot like “you’re either with us or with the terrorists.” 

But I thought that only conservative republicans were black and white absolutists! 

Jon Davison 

Sheridan, Indiana 

• 

A FOOL SUCH AS THIESEN 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Mr. Theissen’s recent commentary in you paper leads me to believe that he has limited his studies to the newspapers and commentaries that were published during the anti-Vietnam War era. He sounds just like the folks that were writing to end that war. I’m sure he also believes that the whole 9/11 incident was a government conspiracy. I’m not going to waste my time trying to debate with him as only a fool argues with a fool but he needs to broaden his reading horizons. 

Just one thing, the military has been there to protect our freedoms for over 200 years and without them we would all be talking with British or German or Japanese accents. They aren’t perfect. No organization is. But supporting them is not supporting so called American Imperialism. It is merely supporting our brothers and sisters who are willing to put their lives on the line. Something I’m sure Mr. Theissen was never willing to do. 

William Seiler 

• 

MISGUIDED IDIOTS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Glad to see the commie slime is still alive and well in Berkeley. Those of us who left and found out what the real world was all about are truly embarrassed. It is hard to imagine that after all these years and the recognition of the misguided anti-war policies of the leftist scum how things are still the same. 

We need a cultural revolution and force all these misguided idiots out into the mud of the fields and see what life is about. Once properly reformed, they would be allowed to return to spread truth and loyalty to the masses. 

Robert F. Tulloch  

Munith, Minnesota 

Former Berkeley resident 

• 

PERVERTED WORLD CONCEPT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Mr. Thiesen seems to have a very perverted concept of the world we live in and the activities of the U.S. Military in that world. He also lacks perspective of reality. 

One of his contentions is that we halt all enlistments into our military. If there is no enlistment there is consequently no military. If there is no military there is/are no inhibiting force(s) to prevent invasion of our country and the destruction of our society. In today’s world we will quickly be dominated by either the drug lords from Central and South America , the Islamic radicals and their sharia law, or both. Neither of these is especially appealing. 

Domination by either of these groups will, by comparison, make Bush’s supposed fascism look like a Sunday picnic. Does Mr. Thiesen really want all female members of society forced to wear body length burlap sacks with only eye slits. Does Mr. Thiesen really want all female members of society confined to their home allowed to exit their homes only with the permission of their husbands. Does Mr. Thiesen really want others to control every aspect of his life, telling him what he can eat, trying to control his every spoken or written word? Does Mr. Thiesen want to live in fear of wearing the wrong clothing on the wrong side of the street and offending a gang member? 

Would Mr. Thiesen have preferred that the American military had not participated in the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Civil War, World War I or World War II? 

John Lobenstein 

Angier NC 

The future of West Berkeley’s 320 industrial production, distribution, and repair (PDR) businesses, their approximately 7,000 living wage jobs, and the 800 artisans and artists working in West Berkeley’s 225 studios is now being decided. The city’s Planning Department is proposing fundamental changes to the West Berkeley Plan, the area’s guiding zoning document, that would likely lead to the ultimate loss of many of these enterprises. 

To educate, spark discussion, and inform decision-making by the citizenry at this pivotal moment, a forum on the West Berkeley Plan and Sustainability: Economy, Environment and Equity will be presented by West Berkeley Artisans & Industrial Companies (WEBAIC) at 6:30 p.m. Thursday March 20 at the West Berkeley Senior Center (Sixth Street and Hearst Avenue). 

The following speakers with expertise in various aspects of sustainability will share their informed perspectives: 

• Karen Chapple, PhD., UC associate professor of city and regional planning, and director of UC Berkeley’s Center for Community Innovation, will speak on “The Industrial Land Debate: Arguments, Assumptions and Alternatives.”  

• Raquel Pinderhughes, PhD., SFSU professor of urban studies, author of The City of Berkeley’s Green Collar Jobs Report, will speak on “Green Collar Jobs and the capacity of green businesses to provide high quality jobs for men and women with barriers to employment.”  

• Abby Thorne-Lyman, senior associate with Strategic Economics, will speak on “Making The Case for Industrial Land: The Future for the Bay Area’s Industrial Lands.” 

• Kate O’Hara, community benefits coordinator for East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy (EBASE), will speak on “Preserving Industrial Lands, Growing Good Jobs.”  

As municipalities across the United States (including Oakland) are coming to a deeper understanding and valuation of their industrial and artisan/artist sectors, the Berkeley Planning Department has fast tracked these rezoning proposals without the inclusive, meaningful participation of all stakeholders in the community that was the hallmark of the widely respected and innovative West Berkeley Plan process. The opportunity for collaborative public involvement is especially critical as these proposals could significantly alter the vital and unique economic and cultural mix of businesses, the ethnic and economic diversity of the workforce and population, and the environmental balance of the city and region.  

The comprehensive concept of sustainability is often discussed today as including “The Three E’s”—economy, environment, and equity. As such the concept can be understood as a way to actively move toward conduct that offers the Earth, its people, and the web of life the best chance for true, long-term viability. We would be so bold as to consider adding to the three E’s a C for culture. 

The West Berkeley Plan has provided the habitat for sectors comprising key elements of this sustainability to thrive. Those of us who live and work in West Berkeley know it as a successful, urban ecology of sustainable systems. A complex web of nourishing interrelationships provides needed goods and services (many of which contribute to environmental improvement), living wage jobs including green jobs (especially for the majority of the population without higher education, many of which are minorities and immigrants), a historically stable and significant source of revenue for the City, and that food for the soul that only the arts can provide a culture.  

In the industrial sectors, as parts move in multiple steps within West Berkeley from basic formulation in machine shop or lab to manufacturer to finisher to warehouser/distributor to finished product used by local business, and ultimately back to a recycler/reuser, this interdependent web begins to reveal itself, with its extensive economic multipliers and transportation advantages to the environment. These relationships among suppliers, producers, distributors, recyclers, repair/service providers, and end users form a web that works because the innumerable threads create a structural integrity supporting the whole, which is abraded at great risk to all.  

Recognizing that cities change and constructive improvements to zoning are desirable, WEBAIC in concert with local real estate professionals, jointly proposed changes almost two years ago that would institute a new and constructive flexibility in West Berkeley’s zoning. This constructive flexibility would benefit everyone by easily allowing the now-difficult subdivision of large spaces, allowing the now-prohibited interchangeability of industrial and arts/crafts uses, and encouraging a sensible streamlining of the permitting process. These changes facilitating positive development and utilization of space were forwarded by the City Council to the planning director where they have languished for almost two years. Meanwhile Berkeley has continued losing both new and existing companies due to lack of implementation of these no-nonsense proposals. 

Instead of acting on these proposals, the Planning Department is instead proposing an extreme, deregulated form of flexibility aimed at the very core of the West Berkeley Plan and its zoning. Targeting existing “permitted uses, protected uses, purposes of the districts, development standards, and definitions” as containing “obstacles,” the staff proposals would almost certainly put industry and the arts in the sure-lose position of being in direct competition for land with high-end office, retail, R&D, and possibly housing. This new staff direction turns upside-down the core West Berkeley Plan understanding and policy that to maintain the economic and social “goods” that flow from vibrant industrial and artisan sectors, the land base these uses rely upon should be buffered from the vagaries of the latest market trends and real estate fads. That this many enterprises and jobs in these sectors still thrive in West Berkeley is testament to the wisdom and success of this policy that is now on the chopping block.  

As a counterbalance to the projected loss of this land base, companies, and jobs, the city proposes to “harvest” monies from development fostered by these proposed changes that would theoretically go toward securing permanent, affordable space for the arts and industry. Leaving aside the “hypothetical” aspect of this proposed carrot, this concept is akin to allowing clear cutting of the ancient North Coast forests to generate funds to preserve a few specimen groves like Muir Woods. We have the privilege of now living in a time with West Berkeley’s sustainable, urban ecosystem still largely intact. And we have been given the honor and rare opportunity to begin to fully understand its value before doing irreparable harm. Will we be guided by our collective wisdom and vision of the common good or by our shortsighted bottom lines? Please join us on March 20 to explore the evolving understanding of how economy, environment, equity, (and culture) can come together to create an inspiring and viable path toward a sustainable future for our city and society.  

Rick Auerbach is writing on behalf of West Berkeley Artisans and Industrial Companies. Auerbach is a WEBAIC staffer, a West Berkeley resident and a business owner.

I will say that, contra Michael Hardesty (Letters, March 11), I usually agree with and appreciate the positions Becky O’Malley takes in her editorials. Yet I found I disagreed strongly with her position on third party voting. 

I am middle-aged so am a remnant of the 1960s and ’70s. I don’t think I fit Becky’s caricature of the remnants of the ‘60s. Yet I do not think I will live to see the “revolution” in my lifetime but I also I do not hold out hope that significant change will result from voting in Democrats. I do see a difference between the two parties and clearly think we would have been better off (in some but not all ways) with a Gore rather than Bush presidency. Yes, egregious legislation like NAFTA would have remained as would have welfare reforms and growth of the prison industrial complex. But I do not think Gore would have packed the Supreme Court with conservatives as has Bush. I doubt Gore could have implemented the policies he speaks of now with respect to the environment because I don’t think he would have been able to combat the pressure and lobbying Congress receives from industry. In his professorial role now he can speak and craft films about such things more easily than if he were actually in political life. 

But I whole heartedly disagree with anyone who honestly believes that Nader cost Gore the 2000 election. I am a registered Green Party voter. In 2000, perhaps more than now, there was true momentum that could have garnered the Green Party the requisite 5 percent of the vote needed for matching federal funds. In the interest of promoting the viability of a credible third party, I registered and voted Green in that election. The same thieves who stole the election from Gore may well have stolen the votes necessary to secure the 5 percent to the Greens. I do not know. Building a credible third party is the best hope I see. I put far more faith in that than in promoting Democrats. 

I do know that polls show that in the presidential 2000 race, in the swing states of New Hampshire, Oregon and Florida even if Nader were not running, Bush would have won. To say nothing of Gore losing his home state of Tennessee. 

See commentary in Znet Nov. 9, 2000 by Tim Wise (“No More Mister Fall Guy”) that lays out the exit poll statistics for why blaming Nader is misguided. 

In our electoral college way of counting votes there are key swing states in presidential elections. In 2000 those swing states were New Hampshire, Oregon and Florida. To quote Wise : 

“Looking at New Hampshire first, it is true that Bush’s margin of victory was only about 7,500 votes, and that Nader received about 22,000 votes there. But based on the exit polling data, if Nader hadn’t been in the race, only a little less than half of those Nader votes would have gone to Gore, and a fifth would have gone to Bush, so that in the end, Bush would have still won New Hampshire by about 1,500 votes in all.” 

Next, Oregon: 

“In Oregon, where it is a virtual article of religious faith that Nader is to blame for the Bush victory, the hype, is once again overblown and flatly wrong. Yes, Bush won the state by a margin of only about 23,000 votes, and Nader received the votes of 54,000. But once again, based on the exit polls, had the race been only between Gore and Bush, Gore would have gotten 47 percent of those 54,000, for a total of around 25,400, Bush would have received 21 percent of those 54,000, for a total of about 11,300, and in the end, Bush would still have squeaked out a victory, by about 8,000 votes.” 

Finally we have the debacle in Florida. As I said above, this debacle may well have sabotaged both Gore’s win and the Green’s securing 5 percent of the vote. Wise explains: 

“Consider this: Gore lost in Florida among white women (many of those soccer moms who Clinton carried, and many of whom would normally have been reached by a Democratic candidate talking about education, health care, abortion, and other key issues) by a 52-45 margin, with the Nader factor being negligible among this group. And he lost among seniors: a group that rightly should have been concerned about Bush’s plans to partially privatize social security: a plan that 12 years ago, rendered Pierre DuPont (the only Republican willing to float the concept), an asterisk in American political history, and a laughingstock. Here too, among the traditionally Democratic constituency of seniors, the Nader factor was negligible. 

Even more to the point, Bush received the votes of 12 times more Democrats than Nader did, and 5.25 times more self-identified liberals than Nader did in Florida, indicating that progressive voters and those who might have been seen as a natural lock for Gore, actually were stolen not by the Greens, but by the Republicans.” 

So I am agreeing with Michael Hardesty that “Gore cost Gore the election,” but just expanding it a bit to include the Republican role in the mess. 

And I partially agree with Becky O’Malley. I do vote for progressive Democrats locally—in fact I worked extensively on Kriss Worthington’s last race even though he does not represent my district. I believe in thinking globally and acting locally. I think progressive democrats can make a difference locally and this is a reason I think it important to promote the Green Party both locally and nationally. As such I do not regret for a second working and voting for Nader in 2000 and will continue to work to strengthen third party credibility. And that is why I think the spoiler argument carries little weight. 

Can anyone counter this with actual statistics? 

Ruthanne Shpiner is a Berkeley resident.

As a second year business student at UC Berkeley, I have become particularly interested in the issues surrounding extension of business hours in the immediate vicinity of the UC Berkeley campus. Having enrolled in two city planning courses the last two consecutive semesters, I have been interested to learn how land use and stakeholders in the area are integral parts of an equation that I had previously felt was limited to issues of supply, demand, and business models. I urge the City Council to continue pushing for extended business hours for several reasons: there is a mutual benefit for both store owners and students, a more vibrant night life will also mean a safer Telegraph commons as well as increased sales tax revenues for the city of Berkeley.  

Let me begin by stating that as a student, I can identify a real need for more merchants to be open later at night. UC Berkeley is an incredible campus with over 30,000 young college-age people living around the perimeter of campus. While the city of Berkeley is no doubt an extraordinary place with very unique characteristics, one thing we definitely lack is a vibrant night life scene. If the surrounding perimeter streets of the campus are to be considered a true “college town” there needs to be improvements made in how businesses are structured for late night hours. Telegraph has seen a steady and rapid decline in the number of successful businesses on the avenue, as seen in the recent closing of long standing establishments such as Cody’s Books last year. There are current limits imposed by the Zoning Adjustments Board to have businesses stay open no later than 2 a.m. for non-alcohol serving establishments. It would be terrific if all of these potential merchants honored the Board’s rules and stayed open until 2 a.m.—few of them actually do that.  

The Zoning Board is trying to do its part in making Telegraph once again a vibrant space bustling with night activities. The Berkeley Planning Commission unanimously passed a group of proposals in March of 2007 that will help ease the establishment of new businesses as well as modifications of business hours for current businesses. Commission members highlighted the idea that with more foot traffic yields a safer environment, as they passed five of eight points of the Telegraph Assistance Economic Development package. Similarly, in September of 2007, a new late night café was granted late night hours by the Zoning Adjustment Board in a 6-1 vote. Clearly there are trends that say the city government realizes the needs for an improved Telegraph business district, and now is the time to finalize this movement with legislation that urges all businesses to stay open as late as legally possible.  

It is time that students on this campus gather together in support of something tangible: an improvement in their lives as students. I urge the City Council to push harder on this topic: engage a mixed-land use approach to allow for effective use of space, but keeping the businesses open is a positive step for not only the students, but also residents of Berkeley and the overall financial well being of the city. Longer business hours mean happier students, a safer environment, and an accelerated business model with higher revenues for the city to use at its discretion. I am excited about the opportunity to see real change before I leave this campus in two years.  

Scott Silver is a student at UC Berkeley.

On Jan. 7, a neighbor and I requested the city of Berkeley to provide us a copy of all communications regarding the eleven cell antennas scheduled to be installed at 2721 Shattuck Ave. Access to these communications is our right and in accordance with the California Government Code 6251, the Public Records Act. According to this act, we have the right to receive this information within a 10-day period. Instead, I received a letter from City Manager Phil Kamlarz, stating he would need more time because of the inter-departmental nature of the communications. A month later, on Feb.7, I received a second e-mail from him stating that we could finally make an appointment to review the communications.  

There was just one problem: some of the communications were exempt from disclosure. According to Kamlarz under Government Code 6255 e-mails containing notes and comments of city staff which were not prepared in anticipation of public scrutiny need not be disclosed. Does this mean that when our local officials and staff think no one is watching, they can do whatever they want, legal or not?  

The rationale for this position must be that disclosure might hamper the freedom of employees—but freedom from what…freedom to do what? Kamlarz’s e-mail states further that the city has decided that its interest to keep documents secret outweighs the public’s interest in these documents. But since when are the city’s interest and the public’s interest not one and the same? 

To understand Kamlarz’s logic, I applied it to my own experience working as a teacher in the Berkeley Unified School District for over 30 years. I wrote lots of notes to people during that time- notes to principals, to other teachers, to school psychologists, to downtown managers. But I never dropped the mantle of professionalism expected of me in those written communications. I could have been fired if I had. 

Freedom means being able to have open debate about all ideas, even those expressed through informal memos. Freedom does not give people in government the right to commit illegal acts or break the trust of public stewardship. 

If our city did indeed make deals with the developer Patrick Kennedy or Verizon/Nextel or if the city did manipulate the democratic process in any way, then the public has a right to know. Deliberations insulated against public scrutiny too easily become corrupt. 

In his e-mail, Kamlarz goes on to say, “the city is also withholding from disclosure several written communications by electronic mail by the city attorney to city staff…” But, here again there is a problem. Although legal discussion in Council Executive sessions between councilmembers and lawyers are considered privileged and confidential, this same secrecy does not apply to other city staff and their communications. But Kamlarz does not mention the council; he mentions the city staff. Certainly the city staff is not the client. They are supposed to work for us, the taxpayers.  

If the city manager gets to decide what documents can and cannot be seen by the public, then the idea of Freedom of Information is a sham. This arbitrary decision making is reflected elsewhere as well. As I was combing through the documents, I came upon a set of communications that certainly raised my eyebrows. 

On Nov. 16, at 6:18 a.m., a week after the council granted Verizon a permit, Tom Miller, the head of the project, informed city planning staff person, Pamela Johnson, that Verizon wanted to shift some of their antennas 30 feet from the north side of UC Storage to the west side. Verizon wanted to be allowed this modification without re-opening the public hearing process. At 8:15 a.m. the same day, Ms. Johnson informed city planner Debra Sanderson, who has promoted this project from the get-go, that this was a use permit modification and “that yes, they will need to go back to ZAB with public notice.” Sanderson replied at 9:26 a.m., “Yes, indeed!” Then, on Nov. 19, Zach Cowan, assistant city attorney, informed the lawyer for Verizon that instead of a public hearing, the Planning Department would handle this modification administratively. 

No public hearing, no public notification—even though these antennas will now face across Shattuck/Adeline and into Savo Island Cooperative Homes and the Early Childhood Center, which is being rebuilt to house approximately 90 African-American three and four year-olds. Both of these locations are only one block away from UC Storage and within range of possible health risk from cell antenna radiation. 

Over the last year and a half I have submitted, for the public record, several compilations of scientific and epidemiological health studies that indicate adverse health effects from RF radiation emitted from cell phone base stations. This information has been submitted to all councilmembers and to the city clerk at council hearings. 

However none of this information is in the official documents that we were shown. For example, missing is my analysis of the report submitted by Berkeley Health Officer Fred Medrano, in which Mr. Medrano clearly states that more research is necessary before any conclusion regarding the bio-effects from antenna emissions can be reached. Now the only scientific studies that are in the public record are those showing no ill health effects. Is this omission intended to absolve our policy makers from any future guilt or responsibility should these antennas prove to be harmful to our health? 

Let us not forget that the staff of City Hall refused to have cell antennas installed on the top of City Hall, in which case the city could have collected $30,000 a month from telecommunications companies. Instead, city staff shepherded these antennas down to our homes where we spend more time than just the eight-hour working day. But these antennas were never really meant to serve our community. We proved early on that we have excellent coverage. The documents we saw make it clear that the antennas to be installed on the UC Storage building are meant to provide service all the way down Martin Luther King, Jr. Way to Center Street, which includes City Hall. Who knows how far into the hills these antennas are meant to serve? 

Are we being alarmists? Far from it. We neighbors believe in the precautionary principle and in preserving a healthy environment. We believe we have the right to know about all deliberations, informal or formal that went into making all city decisions, including the ones to drop requirements for public oversight when permit specifications were changed. We have the right to know, the whole scoop! 

We hope there is a public interest or land use lawyer out there who will kick in some pro bono legal work for us. We desperately need it. We are very grateful to Anna de Leon who has helped us with legal work so far, totally free and on her own time. In my neighborhood, people can’t pay their taxes, their health care, their food bills, their mortgages or rents, their kid’s college tuitions, and also hire expensive lawyers to protect them from a callous or corrupt local government. Joining the struggle means hard-working people work overtime and do not get a penny for it. In this spirit, we in Berkeley Neighborhood Antenna-Free Union say no to more cell antennas near South Berkeley homes and in all residential areas until definitive studies show that living near them is safe. 

Laurie Baumgarten is a South Berkeley resident. For further information, please contact JLLIB@aol.com. 

Berkeley’s very limited debate over Bus Rapid Transit so far has concentrated on sexily symbolic aspects of the proposal, such as the contributions BRT might or might not make to more “liveable” cities or to reducing global warming. And these “big” questions don’t always produce the expected answers. 

What’s more important at this point when evaluating BRT is to frame and answer some practical questions about how BRT would operate and would relate to Berkeley. 

I offer the following questions and observations as a sample of just some of the issues the city staff and City Councilmembers should be researching, then discussing in public, over the next several months. 

Let’s start with two fundamental questions. Who owns the streets? Who controls the streets? (These are not necessarily the same question.) 

The city should first establish what rights it has to control and allocate the use of its “city streets.”  

Next, the city should clearly define what AC Transit must do to request and acquire exclusive control over certain portions of those streets. What form of agreement must be negotiated between agency and municipality?  

And what specifics should be in that agreement to protect the interests of the City of Berkeley? 

Most people seem to think, in somewhat vague terms, of a symbolic City Council vote approving or rejecting Bus Rapid Transit, then we move on. But the devil will be in the details of the actual agreement and contract, and those details must be clearly spelled out, publicly discussed, and enforceable. 

Details? What details? How about these, for starters. 

How will the streets be maintained? Who will pay for the maintenance? 

If AC Transit is granted exclusive or near-exclusive use of miles of pavement in Berkeley, then shouldn’t the transit agency also pay for the maintenance and upkeep of that pavement? 

A few years back, this question was asked of an AC Transit representative at a neighborhood forum. The dismissive non-answer was that AC Transit is funding research into more durable pavement materials.  

Now AC Transit can believe in Magic Asphalt all it wants, but I hope the City of Berkeley will continue to worry about real potholes and such. When those potholes occur in the bus lane—and particularly when they spread across to the regular traffic lanes—who will be responsible for fixing them, and paying for the fix? 

More important, what happens when a street with reserved bus lanes comes up on the city’s schedule for repaving—a very expensive proposition—and AC Transit says, sorry, we don’t feel our portion needs to be repaved and we won’t fund it?  

The city’s Public Works Department should prepare a careful and cautious analysis of street repair and upkeep costs (including cost escalation over the life of any agreement with AC Transit). 

And any deal with AC Transit should spell out how that upkeep is undertaken and funded, and which agency has the authority to manage the street work and accept or reject the outcome. 

Who will police the bus-only lanes? 

AC Transit is proposing side-by-side lanes, where only some vehicles can use certain lanes.  

So let’s consider Telegraph Avenue. Imagine there’s a back-up of private vehicles in the single “public use” lane in each direction and, for a moment, no buses in the “dedicated lanes.” A few frustrated drivers decide they’ll cut out into the bus lanes for a block or two to bypass the traffic. 

This occurs thousands of times each day in Bay Area freeway carpool lanes. It will happen in Berkeley, too. 

Do those drivers get tickets? If not, what is the practical mechanism to enforce the “bus-only” nature of the lanes and keep them from filling up with private cars, negating the whole concept of “dedicated lanes”?  

If there is consistent enforcement, who provides it?  

AC Transit has a security contract with the Alameda County Sheriff’s Department. My understanding is that if a bus is involved in an accident or criminal incident, a sheriff’s deputy responds to take the report.  

So will AC Transit pay for sheriff’s deputies to regularly patrol Telegraph Avenue, Bancroft, and Shattuck, issuing tickets for traffic violations in the bus only lanes?  

If so, should staff from a law enforcement agency entirely beyond the control, review, or management of the City of Berkeley be regularly patrolling Berkeley streets with the specific assignment of local traffic enforcement? 

And if the sheriff doesn’t do the patrols, will Berkeley police be responsible for this enforcement? If Berkeley Police become AC Transit’s de-facto traffic cops, what does that mean for levels of Berkeley police service and staffing?  

Will the police officer who might otherwise be responding to my home security alarm, or phone call about an altercation on the street, be delayed because she’s stuck in traffic over on Telegraph, handing out lane violation tickets to commuters? 

The Berkeley Police Department needs to carefully think all this through and give its analysis to the City Council. 

What are the actual Berkeley impacts of AC Transit’s vague and changing descriptions of BRT?  

AC Transit’s draft environmental impact report says, for example, that AC Transit might “replace” parking displaced from streets like Telegraph Avenue that are reconfigured for “dedicated lanes” and bus “stations.” Where? 

Some statements imply that AC Transit might fund spaces in existing or new parking garages. That might work in places like Downtown Berkeley, but is irrelevant to areas like the Willard, Le Conte, or North Oakland neighborhoods along Telegraph where there are no off-street public garages (and—thank goodness—no plans for any). 

Other statements imply AC Transit might just fund moving parking meters off Telegraph onto side streets, thus “replacing” parking by commercializing and converting street spaces on residential blocks. 

Are my South Berkeley neighbors going to end up with parking meters in front of their homes? Inquiring residents would like to know.  

This is the sort of question where City of Berkeley staff should press AC Transit for formal and coherent answers. 

Finally, what sort of level of service will AC Transit be obligated to provide if it’s granted special rights to the street? 

If Berkeley turns over exclusive use of major portions of its streets to a regional agency, what absolute, iron-clad, enforceable guarantees will there be that the service will actually be provided? 

During my entire time in Berkeley, the repeated story about AC Transit has been one of funding shortfalls, service cuts, poor service (or lack of service), and fare increases. There’s no reason to expect that this will change with Bus Rapid Transit, which will only increase the demands on AC Transit’s operating funds. 

(I’ve read that when BART was being proposed and funded, promoters talked about trains every few minutes, round-the-clock. We can all see how that worked out.) 

Berkeley—like Oakland, and San Leandro—needs to have an enforceable means to say we gave you our streets, now give us the service you promised—and if you don’t, we take back the street. 

Berkeley should set, with citizen and rider input, a specific list of measurable performance criteria that AC Transit must meet, and the contract should also include means and funding to monitor that performance and a “sunset” clause and penalties if AC Transit doesn’t use a valuable loan of Berkeley streets as promised.  

For example, how frequently and regularly do the buses arrive? Is there sufficient capacity? Are the service needs of special populations, such as the elderly and the disabled, properly accommodated? Are the buses safe and comfortable? Are “local” and “feeder” bus lines still sufficiently funded and operated, or have they been starved to feed BRT? 

Nothing will focus the minds of AC Transit managers more carefully on providing promised service than the knowledge that they could lose their bus lanes due to poor performance. 

And Berkeley must be willing and have the legal means to pull the plug—in essence, take back the streets—if the service isn’t provided as specified.  

Steven Finacom is a Berkeley resident. He works for the University of California and has worked on transportation issues in past years, but is not currently assigned any work on BRT. This essay represents his personal views, not necessarily those of the university. 

The March 11 Mississippi primaries signaled the end of the second of four acts in the competition for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination. Act I began on Jan. 5 with the Iowa caucuses and ended on Jan. 26 with the South Carolina primary, where the race was winnowed down to Sens. Clinton and Obama. Act II began on Feb. 5, Super Tuesday, and plodded on for five weeks. Act III begins with the Pennsylvania primary on April 22 and ends on June 3 or possibly later if Florida and Michigan have to revote. Act IV will be the convention beginning Aug. 25, where the nominee will be selected. 

For many of us, the past 11 weeks have been a rollercoaster ride. If you are an Obama fan, you were exhilarated by his victory in Iowa and his string of victories from Feb. 5 to March 4. If you are a Clinton devotee, you were thrilled when she fought back from the brink of defeat in New Hampshire and Texas. 

So far 2,687 delegates have been selected: Obama has 1,403 and Clinton 1,239. A total of 2,025 delegates are needed to win and the remaining contests feature 566. Even if the 366 delegates from Florida and Michigan are reselected—a prospect that seems increasingly likely—it is improbable that either Clinton or Obama will secure the nomination before the convention. 

Obama leads in all the important metrics: pledged delegates, total popular vote, and states won. It is likely that when the Denver Democratic convention convenes on Aug. 25, his ranking will be unchanged. 

Why then does Clinton continue to pursue the Democratic nomination? An obvious answer is that in politics, as in sports, the game isn’t over until it is over. There exists the possibility that Obama may commit some dreadful gaffe that would see his popularity plummet and send delegates scurrying to her camp. But given how coolly Obama has handled himself to this point, that prospect seems increasingly unlikely. 

Another answer is that Clinton’s supporters believe she has more experience than does Obama—particularly political sophistication gained as the wife of former President Bill Clinton—and would match up better with the Republican presidential nominee, Sen. John McCain. However, this argument has not proven effective—Obama has questioned both her experience and her judgment—and most polls suggest Obama does better against McCain than does Clinton. 

In recent days, the Clinton campaign, faced with the prospect of an insurmountable Obama lead and, therefore, a seemingly inevitable Obama victory, has marshaled a new argument: the rules aren’t fair. Senator Clinton and her surrogates have asserted the traditional metrics—raw numbers of delegates won, votes cast, and states carried—are not the proper basis for the final selection of the Democratic nominee. The Clinton campaign contends some states are more important than others and, therefore, the votes of these states should have more impact. Thus Ms. Clinton speaks of Ohio, which she won, having more importance than Virginia, which he won. 

Following this line of reasoning, the Clintonistas posit that if Hillary Clinton wins Pennsylvania, the last big primary state, then she should be awarded the Democratic nomination because she will have won the states that count. (Wink, wink. Nudge, nudge.) 

For many of us the posture of the Hillary Clinton campaign is an unhappy reminder of concerns we had about the Bill Clinton presidency: that, on occasion, he didn’t play by the rules. That isn’t to say that Bill or Hillary Clinton are immoral, but rather that they sometimes appear to have “situational” ethics where their decisions are made on the basis of political expediency rather than on principle. For example, it’s hard to imagine that Senator Clinton voted to authorize President Bush– someone she surely recognized as a demagogue—to go to war in Iraq on the basis of anything other than a pragmatic calculation that to do so would enhance her perception as a “tough” leader. 

Some Democratic leaders, such as Speaker of the House Pelosi, are beginning to be concerned about Clinton’s desire to win the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination no matter the cost, no matter what damage is inflicted on the party. Regardless of our feelings about the candidates, all Democrats should be concerned about the Clinton campaign’s seeming unwillingness to play by the rules. 

Will Rogers famously quipped, “I am not a member of any organized Party—I am a Democrat.” The quarrel about delegates threatens to divide Democrats, to cause them to lose focus on the ultimate goal: victory in the November elections. 

No Democrat relishes the notion of five more months of the Clinton campaign grousing that they want to change the rules of the game. Unless Hillary Clinton wins the April 22 Pennsylvania primary by a decisive margin—two to one—party leaders must intervene and tell her that the competition is over and for the good of the party she must concede. 

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

On the median strip under the BART tracks along Martin Luther King Jr. Way, just a few blocks past the city line and into Oakland, there lives a flowering quince I’ve always thought of as The Brave Little Toaster. Aside from the fact that it’s nothing like a toaster at all, I find the name apt.  

This is a shrub that thousands of people must pass every day without noticing at all. It’s huddled up against a big concrete support pylon; it’s only a foot, foot-and-a-half tall; it’s scrubby and clearly neglected. Its branches, like those of most flowering quinces, are tangly and spiny and confused-looking. It’s not even as conspicuous as those dirty, tired-out junipers that a city crew tore out last year, farther down the street.  

I first noticed it at a most inopportune time, while being tailgated in the left lane by some bozo in a Jeep. In the corner of my good eye, I got a flash of yellow from a very odd place, and then I was back to calculating the relative positions, velocity, and likely functional driver-IQ of the three vehicles surrounding me: you know the fear-sharpened brainwork that goes on in the background when you’re on the road. 

But the odd color stuck in my head. The next time I drove past it, I had leisure for a quick look. Amid this grumpy mass of spindly sticks I could see half a dozen perfectly ripe quinces.  

It was only what remains of my good judgment that kept me from slamming on the brakes and fetching enough for a couple of koreshes and tagines then and there. In fact, I never did get around to it. 

Nevertheless I’d marked the spot and from that moment saw the little bush every time I passed it. For years I’ve watched, a flicker at a time like snapshots, as it greened up modestly—it never did look prosperous in its leaves—and shivered in its naked twigs, as it bore a mass of gloriously off-red flowers-most of them within the barbwire protection of those twigs-and then, most improbably, those offerings of big fat quinces.  

Quinces bloom at the tag end of winter, through early spring. Look around: they’re blooming now, and there’s nothing in the landscape to mistake for their bold color, a sort of salmon-red gone all high-saturation. The flowers are tissue-thin petals around a small cheerful yellow center, and they and the coral color contrast with the knuckled, jumbled, spiky dark twigs that bear them.  

They’re traditional décor here for Chinese New Year, and they’re certainly cheerful enough, encouraging to see as the winter grudgingly yields to the year’s turn. 

It’s not a color I’d wear much of, but I like seeing it on quinces. Elizabeth Lawrence, one of my favorite garden writers, didn’t share my opinion: she wrote in her 1942 book A Southern Garden: “Ranging in color from apple blossom to rose, and from palest salmon to deep red, a profusion of delicate and lovely tints, the Japan quince, Cydonia japonica, is seldom met with except in the hideous orange-red in harmony with no other color, possible only with white.” 

In fact, I do agree that the deep coral we see most often looks best against, say, a budding white flowering pear or plum. That’s no reason not to admire such a distinctive shade. The shrub can grow to smallish-tree size, pruned up to a standard. They make great bonsai, with their angular rugged trunks. Also there are dwarf varieties that stay as short as my median-strip chum. If these bear fruit, it’s of the standard fat-apple size; some bonsai artists show it off by way of aesthetic/cognitive dissonance. In fact, if the fruit ripens and falls, they might reattach it with a tiny peg.  

Making a shrub quince look more orderly is simple. Stand at your favorite viewing angle to the quince, and mentally mark its center, as if it were the center of a fan. Keep the branches that fan out from this center, and cut the ones—always at their base, where they spring from another branch!—that contradict the flow, that move toward the center from the outside.  

If you keep the varying lengths of the remaining branches, your quince will have a harmonious balance of order with “wild” randomness. The light and airflow you encourage will keep it healthier too. 

The brave little quince under the BART tracks is currently surrounded by bare dirt. Work crews killed off the grass and ripped out a lot of sick shrubs in that median, and then stopped. I don’t know what “beautification” will happen next, but I suppose the awkward little warrior will be lost in the grand operation. Well, we’re all mortal. 

Colombia’s March 1 attack on an insurgent camp in Ecuador appears to have been an effort by the right-wing government of Alvaro Uribe to derail efforts by Venezuela and France to free hostages held by the group, intimidate a growing movement against Bogotá’s close ties to rightwing death squads, and put the squeeze on the U.S. Congress to pass a joint trade agreement. 

According to Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa, the attack—which killed 24 people, including Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) leader and diplomat Raul Reyes—spiked efforts to release French-Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt and 11 other FARC hostages. 

French diplomats say they were negotiating with Reyes with the full knowledge of the Colombian government. “In the framework of the efforts that we—Spain, Switzerland, France—were making, we had contacts with Raul Reyes,” French foreign ministry spokeswoman Pascale Andreani told Reuters, “and I can tell you the Colombians were aware of it.” 

The nighttime attack on the FARC camp was also aimed at undermining ongoing efforts by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to free these and other hostages. Uribe sabotaged a Chavez initiative last December by refusing to demilitarize the area where hostages were to be released. The hostages were finally turned over to Venezuelan officials Jan. 10, much to the embarrassment of the Colombian government.  

Three days after FARC released another four members of the Colombian congress, the Uribe government struck the Ecuador camp. 

“What was Colombia’s objective?” asks Ana Maria Sanjuan, director of the Center for Peace and Human Rights at the Central University of Venezuela. “Clearly the whole operation was planned and executed. I think it had a lot to do with the humanitarian exchange.” 

But scotching hostage releases was only one thing on Bogotá’s agenda. 

According to James Brittain and Jim Sacouman, two Canadian researchers and experts on the Colombian civil war, another target was a March 6 demonstration called by the National Movement of Victims of State Sponsored Terrorism, the International Trade Union Confederation, and social justice organizations. 

The groups are protesting close ties between the Uribe government and paramilitary organizations like the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (USDF) and the Black Eagles. Uribe, Colombian Vice-President Francisco Santos, Uribe’s brother, Santiago, Uribe’s cousin, Senator Mario Uribe, plus almost 100 governors, mayors and politicians have direct and indirect ties to the death squads. According to human rights organizations, some 90 percent of the people who have died in the Colombian civil war have done so at the hands of the Colombian Army and USDF. 

According to the two Canadians, “media outlets, such as El Tiempo (which has long-standing ties to the Santos family), have been parading photographs of the bullet-ridden and mutilated corpse of Raul Reyes throughout the country’s communication media.” The photos, argue Brittain and Sacouman, are being used to “intimidate those preparing to demonstrate against the atrocities perpetuated by the state over the past seven years.” 

Urbie’s top political advisor, Jose Obdulio Gaviria, recently charged that the March 6 demonstration, and the groups supporting it, should be charged as “criminals.” In Colombia those are words that can get you killed. 

The Bush administration—and the timing here is suspicious—is using the crisis to press Congress to pass the free trade agreement. Democrats are holding up the legislation because of human rights violations by the Uribe government, in particular the murder of trade unionists. 

“If we fail to approve this agreement, we will let down our close ally, we will damage our credibility in the region and we will embolden the demagogues in our hemisphere,” said Bush. 

But U.S. credibility is currently at an all-time low in Latin America, and the circumstances surrounding the raid suggest some level of U.S. participation, hardly something that will improve that image.  

The United States leases an airbase at Manta, Ecuador, flying reconnaissance missions into Colombia. It also supplies $600 million a year in military aid to Colombia, more than for any other country in the hemisphere. 

The Colombians claimed that the attack was a case of “hot pursuit.” Uribe said Colombian helicopters were fired on in Colombian territory and that the Army returned fire. But the FARC camp was 10 kilometers inside Ecuador. “President Uribe was either misinformed or he lied bare-facedly to the President of Ecuador,” said Correra. 

The bombing took place in the middle of the night, and most of the dead were in their pajamas, not garb soldiers normally wear into combat. Nighttime bombing attacks are extremely complex and notoriously inaccurate unless the weapons are laser or satellite guided. The weapons appear to have been cluster bombs, and the suspicion is that the U.S. was directly involved, both in pinpointing the camp and in aiding the air strike. 

“It seems that they used state-of-the-art technology to track the FARC group at night,” said Correa, “undoubtedly foreign powers assisted.”  

The Organization of American States (OAS) quickly denounced the attack as a violation of Ecuador’s sovereignty, and Venezuela, Ecuador and Nicaragua temporarily broke relations with Colombia. Colombia’s only support has come from the U.S.  

There is also suspicion that the attack was aimed at torpedoing growing pressure in the region and in Europe for a negotiated settlement to the civil war. The United States and the Bogotá government classify FARC as a “terrorist” organization. “We do not have a war in Colombia,” says Uribe, “We have a terrorist problem.” 

But it is not a label that a number of other countries are comfortable with.  

The FARC’s tactics are irregular, but the organization controls 40 percent of the country and has been in existence since 1964. It also does not pose a danger to any country outside the borders of Colombia. 

“While there is little doubt regarding the global reach of terrorist organizations like al-Qadea,” argues political scientist Garry Leech, editor of the Colombia Journal, “there is no evidence that the FARC is anything but one of the armed actors in Colombia’s long and tragic domestic conflicts.” 

The Uribe administration, however, says it found a laptop at the bombed camp indicating that the FARC was trying to buy uranium. “This means that the FARC are taking big steps in the world of global aggression,” says Colombia’s National Police Director, General Oscar Naranjo. “We’re not talking of domestic guerrilla but transnational terrorism.” 

Colombian Vice President Santos accused FARC of trying to manufacture a “dirty bomb.” 

But according to Associated Press, “documents didn’t support the allegation, indicating that rebels were trying to buy uranium to resell at a profit.” Santos eventually backed away from his “dirty bomb” charge.  

In the end, the raid may backfire on the Uribe administration’s strategy of pursuing a military victory over FARC. 

Colombian journalist Simone Bruno and Ecuadorian journalist Edwardo Tamayo write that the attack is likely to increase the pressure for negotiations. Colombia’s neighbors are “exhausted … with the entry of a number of armed actors in their territory. They have also had to take in displaced people and refugees, which in Ecuador alone have reached a population of over 300,000.” 

The attack came within weeks of a call by Venezuela and Ecuador for negotiations between FARC and the Uribe government. Mexican Deputy Ricardo Cantu Garza, Co-Coordinator of the Labor Party Parliamentary Group, has been pressing for negotiations, as have many countries in the OAS. 

There is also pressure within Colombia to demilitarize the civil strife. Polo Democratico Alternativo, the main opposition party, opposed the Ecuador attack, saying it would expand “the conflict to neighboring countries” and encourage “growing U.S. intervention, facts that affect sovereignty and democracy at the region level.”  

While Venezuela, Colombia and Ecuador have defused the crisis, the raid, coupled with ongoing U.S. efforts to destabilize the leftist government of Bolivia, suggests that the Bush administration is using regional proxies to ramp up a more aggressive stance in the region.

One ought to avoid writing political commentary when angry. It doesn’t make for coherent thought. But it is difficult not to get angry about recent events in the Democratic Presidential race between Democrats Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. It’s even more difficult to try to ignore it, and write about something else. So let’s give it a shot. 

The Clinton campaign has introduced race as a wedge issue in the election, as a way to elevate her chances to overtake Mr. Obama and win the Democratic Party nomination. It is nasty. It is vicious. It is reprehensible. It is inexcusable. 

The legacy of what Ms. Clinton has allowed—and is allowed—is like a backed-up toilet, overflowing, the political and social and racial repercussions of which will last for many years, and take many hours of toil to wash away again. 

We had thought this was over in South Carolina, with the failed attempt by the Clintons to diminish the importance of the vote in that state because—after all—there were so many African-Americans there. We were told that after that debacle—which Obama won over Clinton, 55 percent to 27 percent, propelling him towards the frontrunner status that he has never since relinquished—Ms. Clinton’s husband, the former President and the hit man on the Carolina trail, would be put on a short leash, the implication being that the tactics which brought him the muzzle would also be put on the back burner. 

The day after the South Carolina primary, in case we now forget, the Washington Post wrote: On Saturday, as Sen. Barack Obama was sweeping up the South Carolina primary, former Pres. Bill Clinton was busy downplaying the significance of Obama’s impending win, casting it as a function of the state’s demographics and the Illinois senator’s heavy African American support. “Jesse Jackson won South Carolina in ’84 and ’88,” Clinton said at a rally in Columbia. “Jackson ran a good campaign. And Obama ran a good campaign here.” 

For the younger among us, this might have no meaning. But those of us who lived in the era when African-Americans were first winning the right to vote in major portions of the country—including South Carolina—remember in Mr. Clinton’s framing the old white Southern dictum that “niggers only vote for niggers, and don’t need no other reason for it except they’s niggers,” a philosophy that fueled resistance to African-American voting rights in the 1950s and 1960s, as well as the violent overturning of African-American voting and political rights in the post-Reconstruction ninety years before. 

It’s the kind of wink-wink, nod-nod catering to racial preference that we’ve come to expect from the Republicans from Mr. Nixon through Mr. Reagan and beyond, but had thought had been purged from public display among those in the Democratic Party who are supposed to be friends of the African-American. It’s the type of tactic the old folks in South Carolina used to call “throwing a brick and hiding your hand,” that is, saying or doing something reprehensible that will accrue to your advantage, but doing it such a sly way that you can later deny you had that intent. 

Thus, for example, did George Bush interject the term “crusade” at the beginning of the Iraq War, later insisting, over and over, that the American effort was not to be considered a war of Christians against Arabs. 

It is also the type of tactic which allows the perpetrator to accuse the victim of the attack of being “overly sensitive” or “raising the race question” when they protest. Insidious. 

While Ms. Clinton was doing well through the 24-state Super Tuesday primaries, the issue of race was put on the back burner by her campaign. But with Mr. Obama holding a consistent delegate lead and the cold reality of delegate math making the prospects of a Clinton nomination more difficult even as she won in Texas and Ohio last week, the tactic got dusted off and put up for display. 

A week ago Geraldine Ferraro, a former Congressmember and vice presidential candidate and a fundraiser for Ms. Clinton, told the Daily Breeze newspaper of Torrance that Ms. Clinton’s role as a possible first woman president was being overshadowed by Mr. Obama’s role as a possible first African-American president, with the dig that Black is the flavor of the day, and Mr. Obama’s major qualification is that he happens to be that color. 

“I think what America feels about a woman becoming president takes a very secondary place to Obama’s campaign—to a kind of campaign that it would be hard for anyone to run against,” the Daily Breeze quoted Ms. Ferraro as saying. “For one thing, you have the press, which has been uniquely hard on her. It’s been a very sexist media. Some just don’t like her. The others have gotten caught up in the Obama campaign. If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept.” 

That Mr. Obama is “lucky” to be an African-American man—in America—was probably the most galling and egregious of the statements. You look up the statistics, if you want. The libraries and the college classrooms and the Internet are all full of them. Or come along on a tour of the streets of East and West Oakland, or Santa Rita or San Quentin or Pelican Bay, if you’d like to know where such “luck” is likely to land you, these days.  

But it got worse. When Ms. Ferraro was called to question on her comments, she complained that she was the one who was being victimized, but in a tone so flippant as to call into question how seriously she took the problem of racism.  

“Any time anybody does anything that in any way pulls [Obama’s] campaign down and says let’s address reality and the problems we’re facing in this world, you’re accused of being racist, so you have to shut up,” Ferraro said in a followup interview with the Daily Breeze. “Racism works in two different directions. I really think they’re attacking me because I’m white. How’s that?”  

Ms. Clinton immediately distanced herself from Ms. Ferraro’s remarks, but the effect was akin to distancing oneself from a pile of feces one’s friend has left in the middle of the sidewalk. Is there not some responsibility to clean it up? And that Ms. Ferraro has since resigned from the Clinton campaign—with a defiant and unapologetic parting word that she will continue to speak her mind—does not bode well toward where this is going. 

One doesn’t have to wait or look far to see. Witness a March 12 posting by someone calling himself/herself the Unreconstructed Southerner on the website of a group calling itself the Council of Conservative Citizens (http://cofcc.org). I quote at length, so there can be no misunderstanding where this is all leading. 

“It is amazing that in this age of political correctness that it took a very liberal Democrat to articulate to the nation what many of us knew all along,” Unreconstructed writes. “Ferraro is exactly right ... Barack Obama has won 90 percent of the black vote in nearly every major contest so far in the Democratic primary while lagging in the white votes in states that are more racially divided. One need only look at last month’s cover of the ethnic Ebony magazine to know that black citizens take immense pride in the success of one of their own. Likewise many women are encouraged by the candidacy of Senator Clinton and the historic implications that it means which is easily reflected in almost every exit poll, including those where Obama defeated Clinton. Are these positions wrong? If not wrong they are at least very shallow and reflective of the priorities of Democratic primary voters that they put the race and gender of their candidates ahead of a candidate’s qualifications. America’s Left is caught up in the notion that our nation must atone for slavery and Jim Crow and the election of Obama would be a symbolic gesture akin to the old tradition of sackcloth and ashes. Can any of us name how many one-term Senators fresh from the state legislature that have come to the brink of the presidency? Call it the real Inconvenient Truth of the day but it nonetheless true and those who would deny it are either naive or caught up in Obamamania so much that [they] refuse to acknowledge that Obama’s ethnicity has played an essential role in his appeal and success to date. The politics of tribalism are never politically correct nor will they ever be. It is the politics of tribalism that allowed New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin to proclaim the need for a chocolate city and still be reelected with the majority support of the city’s black population as well as Durham DA Mike Nifong to win reelection despite the utterly groundless charges against the Duke Lacrosse team. America has never and will never be uniquely immune to this reality of tribal and ethnic politics and it took courage on the part of Geraldine Ferraro to not only say it but to stand by her comments despite the whirlwind of criticism she has received.” 

“They sow the wind, and reap the whirlwind.” (Hosea 8:1-14) The question is, whose whirlwind are we talking about, and who will get swept away in it? It is not likely to be those who would halt the progress of African-Americans or the progress of American women. And so, like the proverbial crabs in a barrel, it is more difficult for any to escape oppression because many of the ones temporarily left behind see their path to freedom lies in pulling down those who have temporarily gotten ahead. Sad, and angry, that we have come backwards to this, at a time when there could be so much to celebrate. A woman and African-American, major presidential candidates. Most of us thought we’d never live to see either, and backbiting may destroy any gains that might have come. 

Mercy, as my old Charleston Chronicle editor, Jim French, used to say. 

Coming up on 35 years, our relationship gets ever more harmonious. I have a stapelia—a starfish flower that attracts flies to pollinate it—on the office windowsill, and Joe has a collection of carnivorous plants on the front porch. When my stapelia blooms, I cope with its decidedly rank fragrance by putting it on the porch with the Venus’ flytrap and the sundews and the various sarracenias and they all have a party. 

Most of Joe's modest collection comes from California Carnivores in Sonoma County. When we first visited, over a decade ago, Peter D’Amato’s nursery was in a building just behind a winery. Some folks were grateful to fortify themselves with a drink before entering.  

The enterprise has since relocated to a space next to a newer, if more conventional nursery and a stone’s throw from a couple of the area’s surviving antique shops. It’s just off the Gravenstein Highway between 101 and Sebastopol, so it’s handier to us than ever. This could lead to economic difficulties: Joe’s better at resisting temptation of that sort than I am, but I’m reflexively a cheerleader, OK, an accomplice when it comes to plants. 

If you visit right now, you’ll see a lot of brown, as many of the plants are winter-dormant. Enough individuals of the junglier sort are awake all year, though, to keep it entertaining. If you’ve ever visited the San Francisco Conservatory of Flowers, you’ve seen the like: baroquely ferocious sarracenias, with their red- or white-dappled hoods; variations on flytraps; glistening butterworts and prismatic-jeweled, inviting sundews; various nepenthes that might be Klingon codpieces.  

Some species of that last genus get big enough to trap and digest small rodents in their dangling wells. It’s at that point that people tend to start taking it all personally. 

D’Amato has always had a flair for appropriate décor, and it’s traveled to the new location intact. I suspect he and Ron Cauble of The Bone Room must swap Martha-Stewart tips, and/or shop at each others’ stores. (If not, they should.) So you’ll see tillandsias planted in little ceramic skulls, and plenty of odd bones, plastic serpents, reptile replicas, and Hallowe’eny tchotchkes strewn artfully among the plants. 

Joe got a crucial Hot Tip from D’Amato when we visited the first location, and it’s repeated in the latter’s excellent book The Savage Garden. The way to keep most carnivorous plants alive is to keep their pots standing in water-distilled water. Carnivory is an adaptation to living with a paucity of nutrients, especially nitrogen.  

The plants usually hail from bogs, fens, or swamps whose water, contrary to stereotype, is naturally quite clean. It might be dark, as in Florida’s Blackwater River, but that’s tannic acid, like the stuff that colors your cup of tea.  

It’s not very expensive to get a five-gallon jug of distilled (or “purified”) water from the delivery guy every month or so in summer; Joe’s plants do fine on rainwater in winter. What the heck, it’s not like buying live mice for your nepenthes. Not quite.  

California Carnivores 

2833 Old Gravenstein Highway, South 

Sebastopol 

(707) 824-0433 

Open Thursday-Monday 10 a.m. 4 p.m. 

http://www.californiacarnivores.com 

The Savage Garden 

Peter D’Amato, 1998 

Trade paperback $19.95 

Ten Speed Press 

ISBN 0-89815-915-6 

I’m a Sci-Fi buff from way back and one of my favorite writers was always Robert Heinlein. Robert said the following: 

“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.” 

I hope you agree because I certainly do. He even strikes pretty close to my subject here as well, that being that a human being should be able to build a wall. 

I was in a crawlspace the other day and saw an atrocity that had been done to the front wall of the building (we’d call this a cripple wall. Terrible term.) The electrician, in an effort to bring their circuits through from the huge panel that they’d installed on the front of this fourplex (a chopped up manor), had carved blithely through several uprights as well as a seismic bracing panel. There was clearly no more thought applied to the effects on the supportive framing of this two-and-a-smidge-story house than one might apply to noshing the final crumbs of a scone. It was in the way, they had a saw, end of story. 

The problem is that, if one does enough of this pruning, very bad things start to happen. Continuing the Sci Fi theme, I’ll quote Mr. Spock, who said "If I drop a hammer on a planet that has a positive gravity, I need not see the hammer fall to know that it has actually fallen.” 

Walls and floors don’t continue to stand or remain erect regardless of how much we cut into them. At some point, things begin to sag, crack or just fall down. In my world, an earthquake of unknown size is coming and I’m quite sure that it will do all sorts of fun things with framing that’s been cut into excessively, not to mention those houses that are simply unbraced or badly modified. 

There are rules about these things but before I start laying these out, and I will give some specific rules you can use before I’m done, I’d like to say that, in my very unhumble opinion, this stuff is largely obvious (thus our Heinlein quote). It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that if you start cutting into the framing of a house, something bad might happen. 

Building experts like to talk about the level of redundancy in construction and the notion that we size everything about four times as big as it needs to be. I think that these are reasonably accurate notions and am much glad of them. They allow for tolerance and the inevitable screw-ups that inhabit all vocations. But walls don’t stand up on their own and Mr. Spock might have said, “If I cut through all the cripple studs below your house, I need not observe the house to know that it has collapsed.”  

These margins we allow are also being quietly spent on fungi, termites, beetles and mistakes past or future. They should not be squandered. 

The framing of floors and walls can be cut into to a limited degree. Here are some of the current rules as expressed in the 2006 International Residential Code to give you a point of reference: (you can also skip the next four paragraphs if rules make you break out in a rash) 

You can notch into one side of a stud up to twenty five percent (about seven-eights of an inch on a two by four) and forty percent if it’s non-bearing (that means that the framing above it doesn’t really rely upon that wall for support and this is almost never true of an outside wall). 

You can also bore holes through these same studs of up to forty percent of the width on bearing and sixty percent on non-bearing walls. This is better for all sorts of reasons and is why they’re allowed to be so much larger. If we leave both edges of a stud intact, it’s far less likely to crack and fail. 

With joists, the big wooden boards that run horizontally across the building below the floor and above the ceiling, the cutting allowed is less. First, no cutting should be done along the critical bottom edge. This edge is held in tension as you and your Scottish dance troupe bound across the floor and a small cut in the bottom edge can tear right through leaving bits of kilt and small broken pieces of bagpipe everywhere. What a mess, so don’t do that. 

You can notch into the end where the lower edge of joist rests on wall but this can be no more than a quarter of the depth of the joist. You can notch a little (also one quarter) on the top of a joist but only when it’s near the ends (the third on either end, no cuts in the middle third where most of the dancing is taking place). Lastly, you can bore a hole, again in the outer thirds only, up to a third of the joist depth but not within two inches of top or bottom, Whew.  

Sorry about that. I hope didn’t lose you. If you are only left with general impressions about what’s unacceptable you are way ahead of our electrician. By the way, electricians aren’t the only ones doing this. Heating installers cut huge sections out of beams and floor joist as they run ducting and install furnaces, plumbers cut through walls and floors to run four-inch pipes and set toilets and carpenters who are only that in name, cut through whatever’s left over.  

Each of these parties has an obligation, as Mr. Heinlein might say, to know at least a little about how to build a wall or how not to unbuild one. Just because someone isn’t a carpenter or a general contractor is no excuse. If you’re not sure what you can cut, ask someone, right? This is not rocket science. It’s really pretty simple. I’d say that the vast majority of the substandard framing alterations I’ve seen in this arena would have been obvious to the average person and was tolerated solely because it was hidden below the floor or up in the attic.  

Nobody’s paid enough and everyone’s in a hurry. Carpentry gets outsourced to day-laborers (my friend, Harold calls this “slavery-light”) who can’t be held accountable, instead of being done by trained workers. 

So, here’s what I suggest for the homeowner being currently carved upon. Get a look at whatever you can see of the work being done on your house. There are certainly dangers below the house and touching wires is to be avoided but you might want to see if you can get a look at (or see some pictures of) the area being worked on. Hire the man or woman who comes well recommended and charges a little more. Experienced contractors know this stuff and they’re rarely the low bid. 

Take an interest in what day-laborers seem to be doing (drawing plans?) and consider having a consultant oversee larger bodies of work (this is just the sort of thing that they’re looking for). 

You know, it’s fine for your electrician, heating contractor or plumber to have a sense of humor but please, don’t let him (or her for that matter) be a cut-up. 

Got a question about home repairs and inspections? Send them to Matt Cantor at mgcantor@pacbell.net.

TUESDAY, MARCH 18 

CHILDREN 

Flying Calamari Brothers A magic and comedy show for ages 3 and up at 6:30 p.m. at Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave. 524-3043.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“Architecture, Print Culture, and the Public Sphere in 18th-Century France” with author Richard Wittman, at 5:30 p.m. at University Press Books, 2430 Bancroft Way. 548-0585.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Swamp Coolers at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cajun dance lesson at 8 p.m. Cost is $10. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Singers’ Open Mic with Ellen Hoffman at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $5. 841-JAZZ.  

Cheryl Wheeler, Kenny White at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $26.50-$27.50. 548-1761.  

Ari Chersky Trio, jazz, at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave. 548-5198.  

Dmitri Matheny at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $12-$16. 238-9200. 

Jazzschool Tuesdays, a weekly showcase of up-and-coming ensembles from Berkeley Jazzschool at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 19 

EXHIBITIONS 

“California Textural Landscapes” works by Patti Heimburger in mixed media through oil paint, fabric and yarn opens at Christensen Heller Gallery, 5829 College Ave. Hours are Wed.-Sat. 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., Sun. noon to 5 p.m. 655-5952. www.christensenheller.com 

FILM 

FIlm 50: “Wild Strawberries” at 3 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Music for the Spirit with Ron McKean on harpsichord at 12:15 p.m. at First Presbyterian Church of Oakland, 2619 Broadway. 444-3555. 

Wednesday Noon Concert, with the University Symphony Orchestra at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Free. 642-4864.  

Oakland Youth Chorus Benefit for Chirstopher Rodriguez at 7 p.m. at First Unitarian Church of Oakland, 685 14th St., Oakland. Tickets are $15-$20, children under 12 $5-$10. 287-9700.  

Cheryl Wheeler, Kenny White at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $26.50-$27.50. 548-1761.  

Helios, traditional Balkan music at 7 p.m. at Le Bateau Ivre, 2629 Telegraph Ave. www.lebateauivre.net 

Whiskey Brothers, old-time and bluegrass at 9 p.m. at Albatross, 1822 San Pablo Ave. 843-2473. www.albatrosspub.com 

U.C. Jazz at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $5. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Speak the Music, beatboxing with Syzygy, Monkstilo, Constant Change, and others at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $8. 849-2568.  

El Cerrito High School Jazz Ensemble and Jazz Band at 8 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $3-$7. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Avance at 9:30 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Salsa dance lessons at 8:30 p.m. Cost is $5-$10. 548-1159.  

Pacific Manouche at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

New York Voices at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $16-$22. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

THURSDAY, MARCH 20 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Here: Oakland Through the Arts” Works by Excel High School Students. Opening reception at 5 p.m. at the Craft & Cultural Arts Gallery, State of CA Office Bldg., Atrium, 1515 CLay St., Oakland. 622-8190. 

Enrique Chagoya: Borderlandia Guided tour at 12:15 p.m. at Berkeley Art Museum. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

“Propagations” Paintings and computer animations by Tadashi Moriyama. Opening reception at 6 p.m. at Johansson Projects, 2300 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. 444-9140. www.johanssonprojects.com 

“Jingletown Junction” Works by ten artists from the Jingletown neighborhood. Opening reception at 6 p.m. at ProArts Gallery, 550 Second St., Oakland. www.proartsgallery.org 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Poetry for the People with Mohja Kahf of Muslim Women Speak Out, and Ananda Esteva and Imani Uzuri, at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $7-$15. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Join author Marti Kheel "Nature Ethics: An Ecofeminist Perspective.". Thursday, March 20, 5:30 pm to 7:00 pm Literary event: University Press Books, 2430 Bancroft Way, Berkeley, CA 94704510-548-0585, www.universitypressbooks.com 

Fritjof Capra reads from “The Science of Leonardo: Inside the Mind of the Great Genius of the Renaissance” at 7:30 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

Third Thursdays in South Berkeley Multi-generational poetry conversation at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $7-$15. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Artist Support Group Speaker Series with Dara Solomon, Asst. Curator, Contemporary Jewish Museum, at 7 p.m. at the Berkeley Art Center, 1275 Walnut St. in Live Oak Park. Cost is $8-$10. 644-6893. 

Mystery Writers Panel Discussion including Rita Lakin, Peggy Lucke, Penny Warner and Simon Wood at 6 p.m. at the South Branch of the Berkeley Public Library. 981-6260. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Perú Negro, Peru’s African heritage on traditional instruments, at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $22-$42. 642-9988. www.calperformances.net 

Portola Jazz Ensemble, Jazz Workshop and Jazz Band with special guest artists Larry de la Cruz, Marvin McFadden, Jeremy Steinkoler and Wayne Wallace at 7 pm, at Mira Vista Golf and Country Club, 7901 Cutting Blvd, El Cerrito. 417-5896.  

Eric Bibb at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $19.50-$20.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Noam Lemish Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Teed Rockwell and Joel Rudinow, raga-blues, at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Vibrafolk at 7:30 p.m. at Central Perk Cafe, 10086 San Pablo Ave., corner of Central, El Cerrito. www.centralperkcoffee.net 

Kenny Garrett Quartet at 8 and 10 p.m., through Sat. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $12-$22. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

FRIDAY, MARCH 21 

THEATER 

Altarena Playhouse “Chicago” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. at Altarena Playhouse, 1409 High St., Alameda, through April 12. Tickets are $17-$20. 523-1553. www.altarena.org 

Berkeley Rep ”Wishful Drinking” with Carrie Fisher, at the Roda Theater, 2015 Addison St., through March 30. Tickets are $33-$69. 647-2949. 

Central Works “Wakefield; or Hello Sophia” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 5 p.m. at Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave., through March 23.Tickets are $14-$25. 558-1381. 

Impact Theatre “Jukebox Stories: The Case of the Creamy Foam” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m. at La Val’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid Ave., through March 22. Tickets are $10-$15. 464-4468. http://impacttheatre.com 

Masquers Playhouse “Tartuffe” Fri.-Sat. at 8 p.m., some Sun. matinees at 2:30 p.m. at 105 Park Place, Pt. Richmond, through April 26. Tickets are $18. 232-4031. www.masquers.org 

Shotgun Players “Mrs. Warren’s Profession” by George Bernard Shaw. Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 5 p.m., through April 27, at The Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby Ave. Tickets are $17-$25. 841-6500. www.shotgunplayers.org 

FILM 

“The Invisible Forest” A film by Antero Alli, with teh filmaker in person, at 8 p.m. at Grace North Sanctuary, 2138 Cedar St. Cost is $10. 548-2153.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

David Hajdu reads from “The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books at 2201 Shattuck, next to the almost open new store. 559-9500. www.codysbooks.com  

Linh Dinh with Marisa Libbon, poets, as part of The Holloway Series in Poetry, at 6:30 p.m. at 315 Wheeler Hall, The Maude Fife Room, UC Campus. 642-3467. http://holloway.english.berkeley.edu  

Norman Woods & Band, aazz poetry, followed by open mic at 7 p.m. at Expressions Gallery, 2035 Ashby Ave. www.expressionsgallery.org 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Junior Bach Festival, featuring young performers, at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley Piano Club, 2724 Haste St. 843-2224. www.juniorbach.org 

Faik Ibragim olgy Chelebi, Azerbaijani classical music at 8 p.m. at The Berkeley Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St. Cost is $10-$15. 845-1350. 

Vox Flores “Pope Marcellus Mass” at 7 p.m. at Arlington Community Church, 52 Arlington Ave., in Kensington. Free.  

“Songs of Spirit” Candlelight Meditation Concert with Norma Gentile at 7:30 p.m. at Unity of Berkely, 2075 Eunice St. Tickets are $15. www.healingchants.com 

Becca Burrington, soprano, Kymry Esainko , piano, perform works of Debussy Faure, Copland, Rorem and more at 8 p.m. at Giorgi Gallery 2911 Claremont Ave. Cost is $10. 648-1228. giorgigallery.com 

Los Materos, Latin American fusion, at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $12-$14. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Peking Acrobats at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $24-$46. 642-9988. www.calperformances.net 

Danny Caron Quartet at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $12. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Stomp the Stumps Benefit for Bay Area Coalition for the Headwaters and Earth First with Grapefruit Ed, The Funky Nixons and The Gary Gates Band at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $12-$15. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Pam & Jeri Show, from Blame Sally, at 8 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Pierre Bensusan, Bob Giles at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $20.50-$21.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Carla Kaufman Trio at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

The Mundaze at 10 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

Amanda Abizaid, Walty at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Dave Matthews BLUES Band at 8 p.m. at the Warehouse Bar and Grill, 402 Webster St., Oakland. 451-3161. 

Darondo & Nino Moschella, soul, r&b, funk, at 9:30 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $5-$7. 548-1159.  

Little Muddy at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

Jon Bibbs, Shadia P, R&B, at 9 p.m. at Maxwell’s Lounge, 341 13th St., Oakland. Cost is $10-$15. 839-6169. 

Kenny Garrett Quartet at 8 and 10 p.m., through Sat. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $12-$22. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

SATURDAY, MARCH 22 

CHILDREN  

Los Amiguitos de La Peña with Uncle Eye and The Strange Change Machine, interactive songs, at 10:30 a.m. at La Peña. Cost is $5 for adults, $4 for children. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

THEATER 

Playback Theatre “In Celebration of Women” Personal stories about women shared by audience members will be transformed by the ensemble into improvised theatre pieces, at 8 p.m. at Laney College Theater, 900 Fallon St., Oakland. Tickets are $12-$18. 595-5500, ext. 25. 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Tonal Words” Photographs by Misako Akimoto. Reception at 2 p.m. at Berkeley Public Library, Central Catalog Lobby, 2090 Kittredge St. 981-6100. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Richard Bermack on “The Front Lines of Social Change: Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade” at 2 p.m. at Alta Galleria, 2980 College Ave., Suite 4. 421-1255.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

23rd Jewish Music Festival “A Night in the Old Marketplace” Jewish, jazz, rock, and world beats with a dose of Kurt Weill and Tom Waits, composed by Frank London, at 8 p.m. at Berkeley Repertory Theater, Roda Stage, 2025 Addison St. Tickets are $24-$28. 848-0237. www.jewishmusicfestival.org  

Junior Bach Festival, featuring young performers, at 3 and 7:30 p.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2723 College Ave. 843-2224. www.juniorbach.org 

Rhythm & Muse Music & spoken word open mic series featuring Tracy Koretsky, spoken word, with Eliza Shefler, piano, at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Art Center, 1275 Walnut St., between Eunice & Rose Sts., behind Live Oak Park. Free. 644-6893.  

Tommy Dorsey Orchestra at 8 p.m. aboard the USS Hornet. Tickets are $45-$95, benefits the USS HornetMuseum. 521-8448, ext. 282. 

Moment’s Notice Improvised music, dance and theater at 8 p.m. at Western Sky Studio, 2525 8th St. Cost is $8-$15, sliding scale. momentsnoticeinfo@gmail.com  

Peking Acrobats at 2 and 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $24-$46. 642-9988. www.calperformances.net 

Rudolf Buchbinder, piano, at 8 p.m. at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $42. 642-9988. www.calperformances.net 

Think Outside the Box: Clitoris Celebration at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $15-$20. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Bayside Jazz with Dan Hicks at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $12. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Itals, reggae, at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $15. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com  

Randy Moss & Friends at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Mucho Axé at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

Nell Robinson & Red Level, Matt Dudman & Richard Brandenburg at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Five Cent Coffee, junkyard blues, at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

Steve Carter, jazz, at 9:30 p.m. at Albatross, 1822 San Pablo Ave. Cost is $3. 843-2473. www.albatrosspub.com 

The American Economy at 10 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

Despise You, Lack of Interest, Pretty Little Flower at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $8. 525-9926. 

SUNDAY, MARCH 23 

CHILDREN 

Oakland Hebrew Day School “The Music Man” at 1 p.. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave. Tickets rea $5-$7 at the door.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“Philosophers: G.E.M. Anscombe & Celia Green for Women’s History Month” A lecture by H. D. Moe at 3 p.m. at Humanist Hall 390 27th St., Oakland. 528-8713, 451-5818. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Junior Bach Festival, featuring young performers, at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley Piano Club, 2724 Haste St. 843-2224. www.juniorbach.org 

Jewish Music Festival with Benzion Miller, Hasidic cantor, at 7:30 p.m. at Netviot Shalom, 1316 University Ave. Tickets are $21-$25. 848-0237. www.jewishmusicfestival.org  

Rudolf Buchbinder, piano, at 3 p.m. at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $42. 642-9988. www.calperformances.net 

Peking Acrobats at 3 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $24-$46. 642-9988.  

Judy Fjell & Nancy Schimmel “Malvina Reynolds Songs & Stories” at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761.  

Oakland Interfaith Gospel Choir at 7 and 9 p.m., through Sat. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10-$16. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

MONDAY, MARCH 24 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Leah Garchick in Conversation with John Carroll on Garchick’s new book “Real Life Romance: Everyday Wisdom on Love, Sex, and Relationships” at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Rep’s Trust Stage, 2025 Addison St. Fundraiser for Park Day School Tickets are $18-$25. www.parkdayschool.org 

Rick Dakan, Jen Angel and Josh McPhee read at 7:30 p.m. at Moe’s Books, 2476 Telegraph Ave. 849-2087. 

Poetry Express with Tom Odeard at 7 p.m. at Priya Restaurant, 2072 San Pablo Ave. 644-3977. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Musica ha Disconnesso at 7 p.m. 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 $20.50-$21.50. 548-1761  

Benefit for Christopher Rodriguez with John Santos, Kai Eckhardt, Roger Glenn and many others at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $18-$25. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

Coming down the escalator at El Cerrito BART last Wednesday afternoon, I heard jazz. It sounded live, but musicians were nowhere in sight. Had BART started piping music into its stations along with its public safety and elevator messages? Out in front of the station, the surprising source of the music appeared: Five young people—three saxophonists, a trumpeter and a drummer—were swinging away. 

A man standing in front of the group—the tenor sax player’s dad, as it turned out—handed me a leaflet and told me that they were there to advertise the Portola Middle School Department of Music’s Jazz Explosion VII concert and fundraiser, to be held March 20 at Mira Vista Golf and Country Club in El Cerrito. Portola’s three jazz groups will perform; KCSM Music Director Chuy Varela will be the Master of Ceremonies; and the young artists will be joined by professional musicians Larry de la Cruz, Marvin McFadden, Jeremy Steinkoler and Wayne Wallace. 

Portola Middle School is part of the West Contra Costa Unified School District. The school district pays the salary of the Portola music teacher, Tiffany Carrico, who also teaches the school’s three concert bands. One hundred ten of Portola’s 620 students choose to participate in the school’s elective music classes. Portola’s jazz activities are funded by the City of El Cerrito’s After-school Program. Each jazz band rehearses three times a week, with practices both scheduled at 7:15 a.m. and after school.  

“It’s a huge commitment for the kids,” says Carrico. 

It’s also a commitment for their parents. Jazz Explosion VII is a project of the Portola Middle School Music Parents’ Association, an all-volunteer group of about 80 families.  

“Parents are crucial,” Carrico told me. “My parent group is great.”  

This year, says Association Co-Chair Diane Egelston, the group has a budget of $25,000. Proceeds from Thursday’s concert and from the association’s other events fund everything from sheet music to reeds to field trips. Every year the two Portola’s Jazz Workshop and the Jazz Ensemble go to the Reno Jazz Festival, where thousands of young musicians attend workshops and compete for honors. Members of the Jazz Band sometimes go along as “roadies.”  

“We charter a bus,” says Egelston, “and pay the $1,200 entrance fees.” The Music Parents’ Association also pays for students to attend Cazadero Performing Arts Camp. Egelston says that they “send all of our kids who want to go.” 

Egleston’s 13-year-old son, Aidan Brorsen, is an eighth-grader who plays first trumpet in Portola’s Jazz Ensemble, first trombone in the Jazz Workshop and first trumpet in the advanced Symphonic Band. Music, says his mother, “gets to a different part of the brain. It allows [Aidan] to explore mathematics without thinking about it.”  

It also provides kids with “a common purpose” that offers opportunities for both teamwork and personal creativity, she says. One person “takes the lead and then fades back into the background ... We have some very shy performers, but when they get beind their instruments, they shine.” 

The coordinator of Thursday’s Jazz Explosion event, Jose Umali, is another Portola parent who waxes enthusiastic about the middle school’s music program. Teacher Carrico, he says, “relates really well to the kids.” Indeed, the “kid” playing trumpet at the BART station was Carrico herself, who, at 41, looks far younger than her years.  

Umali’s daughter, eighth-grader Caroline Umali, plays first tenor sax in the Jazz Ensemble and clarinet in the Portola advanced Symphonic Band. Like Egelston, Umali thinks studying music aids other kinds of learning. Pedagogical benefits aside, “if you join a band,” he observes, you have “an automatic group of friends.” And music is “something you can do for the rest of your life.” 

It was Umali who came up with the idea of Portola jazz musicians playing at the BART station. “We want to show off,” he says. “We want El Cerrito residents to know that we have a really good public school jazz program.” 

For the same reason, the Jazz Explosion show is being held at the Mira Vista Golf and Country Club. “It’s a private club,” says Umali, “but it’s local.” Community recognition matters because West Contra Costa Unified School District “doesn’t have a huge tax base.”  

At Portola Middle School, “there are very few instruments that can be loaned” out to students. “A good used student saxophone,” Umali notes, can cost $1,000 to $1,500.” He would like to raise enough money to make the music programs at Portola accessible to all families and then to make it possible for the kids in those programs “to flourish.” 

At a time when the arts have been deemed a frill by many misguided policymakers, and when public education in general is under the budgetary axe, any public middle school music program that can field one jazz group, let alone three, deserves congratulations and all the support it can get. “The quality of musicianship [at Portola],” says Egelston, “is unreal.”  

See and hear for yourself this Thursday evening. 

JAZZ EXPLOSION VII 

7 p.m. Thursday at Mira Vista Golf and Country Club, 7901 Cutting Blvd., El Cerrito. $20 adults, $10 students (6-18), children 5 and under free. More information: 417-5896, karenepfeifer@yahoo.com.

Since she died in 1978, if people now know of Malvina Reynolds at all it’s mostly as the writer of “Little Boxes” and “What Have They Done to the Rain,” among many memorable progressive and children’s songs. Even here, during her lifetime, she was known mainly from afar as The Singing Grandmother of Berkeley, a screechy fountain of song for noble, poorly funded causes. Few looked beneath this action-costume of a quirky, homegrown Superhero to recognize the astute sociologist and cornucopia of life-affirming spirit at work within.  

On March 23, Freight & Salvage will host an evening celebrating Malvina’s music and life, with singers Judy Fjell and Nancy Schimmel, her daughter 

This brief memoir came from interviewing her shortly before her death. “‘Old age’ is a set of cultural conventions,” she observed, “you can choose differently.” I knew that already, of course, but there was still a touch of magic in having her tell me so. Half my life later, well along in choosing differently among so many of us choosing differently now, she remains even more visible as a life-blessing pioneer. 

“Don’t push me, don’t shove me!” scolds my 2-year-old, quoting that record of kids’ songs he plays all the time. He doesn’t care that Malvina’s voice is as hoarse and stringy as an old crow. He knows that everyone has their own way of singing—she probably told him this too—and he loves her songs. And I’m glad Malvina’s legacy is still around telling our children too to stick up for themselves, as she told us in so many ways for decades, sticking up for herself, for us.  

Malvina was reborn as a maker and singer of songs during her late forties and the 20th century. As the witchhunts gathered that left the Left and so many of its people broken in retreat, and at an age when most people were preparing to sign off as social discards, Malvina began to sing. After long years of motherhood and making do at this and that, she came to flower in her own strength and power, offering us lessons about ageism and feminism long before we thought to look together for them.  

After taking her Ph.D. in English, Malvina had written fitfully for years. Finally she realized how unnatural the academicized world had become, torn from its sound, and transformed herself into songmaker/singer to implement her conclusion. What flowed from her thereafter took no education to understand or seemingly to write; one had to listen thoughtfully to catch the intellectual still at work beneath the deceptively simple words and rhymes, and to grasp her triumph in this concealment. 

Old age is a complex of cultural customs that Malvina didn’t care to adopt. Though she came to carry herself justly as an elder of the tribe, a rare link with the past for a reborn New Left without a sense of history, she did so largely by becoming as a child herself. I don’t mean she became a creampuff—she was an egotistical fighter shrewd enough to develop a decent business from unlikely materials, tough enough to take a hundred concerts a year on the road at 70. Yet in them she remained as when she learned to sing in public, her shy youth hidden inside the withering body as her songs’ spirit hid inside the husk of her voice. 

She became as a child in a time when society and lives were coming dreadfully apart in new ways piled upon the old, in a class uprooted from the blood-lore of culture; and saw and wrote of our complex condition as a child might even in her adult songs, which are marked by their spontaneity and childlike perception, and by a richly juvenile wit.  

This put Malvina in natural tune with a new wave of social activism, in a way that few political people of her generation were able to manage. Her connection with my generation’s activism, her sense of its legitimacy, were less ideological than metabolic. She let herself be moved by the diverse and widening variety of our concerns as they emerged, took them as her own—from civil rights to whales, from hot rain to sugar metabolism—and left in her hundreds of songs not only a topical guide to three decades’ changes of perception, but a testament of deeper continuity. For indeed the values grounding our explorations were implicit in the broad humanism of the Old Left, too easily forgotten in remembering its didactic Stalinism. 

Some of what she left will be sung and re-sung for a long time to come, by our children and theirs in turn—songs slipped like pebbles into the common stream, become polished, durable, anonymous, all trace of where they came from gone. Only a few academics and cherishers of history will be able to connect “What Have They Done to the Rain?” back to its maker’s inspiration by the small group of singing Lefties who revived the folk-song movement after World War Two. No one will remember Malvina herself as the Singing Witch of Berkeley, cynical and faithful, dispensing blessings and judgments, the myths of blood and purpose, in small stitches mending the torn fabric of culture itself. 

(This is the original of whatever survived cutting to be published as “Just an Old-Fashioned Left Song” in the California Monthly 87:2, Dec. 1976, noted in the author’s bibliography as “Biographical memoir on political singer-composer Malvina Reynolds.”) 

MALVINA REYNOLDS’  

SONGS AND STORIES 

Performed by Judy Fjell and Nancy Schimmel at 8 p.m. Sunday, March 23 at Freight and Salvage. $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761.  

Tickets are available through info@freightandsalvage.org, www.sisterschoice.com, www.judyfjell.com.

On the median strip under the BART tracks along Martin Luther King Jr. Way, just a few blocks past the city line and into Oakland, there lives a flowering quince I’ve always thought of as The Brave Little Toaster. Aside from the fact that it’s nothing like a toaster at all, I find the name apt.  

This is a shrub that thousands of people must pass every day without noticing at all. It’s huddled up against a big concrete support pylon; it’s only a foot, foot-and-a-half tall; it’s scrubby and clearly neglected. Its branches, like those of most flowering quinces, are tangly and spiny and confused-looking. It’s not even as conspicuous as those dirty, tired-out junipers that a city crew tore out last year, farther down the street.  

I first noticed it at a most inopportune time, while being tailgated in the left lane by some bozo in a Jeep. In the corner of my good eye, I got a flash of yellow from a very odd place, and then I was back to calculating the relative positions, velocity, and likely functional driver-IQ of the three vehicles surrounding me: you know the fear-sharpened brainwork that goes on in the background when you’re on the road. 

But the odd color stuck in my head. The next time I drove past it, I had leisure for a quick look. Amid this grumpy mass of spindly sticks I could see half a dozen perfectly ripe quinces.  

It was only what remains of my good judgment that kept me from slamming on the brakes and fetching enough for a couple of koreshes and tagines then and there. In fact, I never did get around to it. 

Nevertheless I’d marked the spot and from that moment saw the little bush every time I passed it. For years I’ve watched, a flicker at a time like snapshots, as it greened up modestly—it never did look prosperous in its leaves—and shivered in its naked twigs, as it bore a mass of gloriously off-red flowers-most of them within the barbwire protection of those twigs-and then, most improbably, those offerings of big fat quinces.  

Quinces bloom at the tag end of winter, through early spring. Look around: they’re blooming now, and there’s nothing in the landscape to mistake for their bold color, a sort of salmon-red gone all high-saturation. The flowers are tissue-thin petals around a small cheerful yellow center, and they and the coral color contrast with the knuckled, jumbled, spiky dark twigs that bear them.  

They’re traditional décor here for Chinese New Year, and they’re certainly cheerful enough, encouraging to see as the winter grudgingly yields to the year’s turn. 

It’s not a color I’d wear much of, but I like seeing it on quinces. Elizabeth Lawrence, one of my favorite garden writers, didn’t share my opinion: she wrote in her 1942 book A Southern Garden: “Ranging in color from apple blossom to rose, and from palest salmon to deep red, a profusion of delicate and lovely tints, the Japan quince, Cydonia japonica, is seldom met with except in the hideous orange-red in harmony with no other color, possible only with white.” 

In fact, I do agree that the deep coral we see most often looks best against, say, a budding white flowering pear or plum. That’s no reason not to admire such a distinctive shade. The shrub can grow to smallish-tree size, pruned up to a standard. They make great bonsai, with their angular rugged trunks. Also there are dwarf varieties that stay as short as my median-strip chum. If these bear fruit, it’s of the standard fat-apple size; some bonsai artists show it off by way of aesthetic/cognitive dissonance. In fact, if the fruit ripens and falls, they might reattach it with a tiny peg.  

Making a shrub quince look more orderly is simple. Stand at your favorite viewing angle to the quince, and mentally mark its center, as if it were the center of a fan. Keep the branches that fan out from this center, and cut the ones—always at their base, where they spring from another branch!—that contradict the flow, that move toward the center from the outside.  

If you keep the varying lengths of the remaining branches, your quince will have a harmonious balance of order with “wild” randomness. The light and airflow you encourage will keep it healthier too. 

The brave little quince under the BART tracks is currently surrounded by bare dirt. Work crews killed off the grass and ripped out a lot of sick shrubs in that median, and then stopped. I don’t know what “beautification” will happen next, but I suppose the awkward little warrior will be lost in the grand operation. Well, we’re all mortal. 

TUESDAY, MARCH 18 

Fifth Anniversary Living Graveyard at noon at the Oakland Federal Building, 1301 Clay Street, two blocks from 12th Street BART. www.epicalc.org 

“Does Your Vote Count in California?” A community forum that examines how our electoral system represents the many voices of California with Barry Fadem, President of National Popular Vote, Kathay Feng, Executive Director of California Common Cause and Steven Hill, Director of the Political Reform Program of the New America Foundation, moderated by Richard Gonzales, National Public Radio, at 7 p.. at Oakland Museum of California, James Moore Theatre, 1000 Oak St. Reservations recommended, email chris_holbrook@itvs.org  

“The Book of Revelation” with Elaine Pagels, Prof. of Religion, Princeton Univ. at 7:30 p.m. at Wheeler Auditorium, UC Campus. Sponsored by the Townsend Center for the Humanities. 643-9670. 

National Nutrition Month with cooking demonstrations at 2:30 and 3:30 p.m., free samples and free recipes, at the Berkeley Farmers’ Market from 2 to 6 p.m. at Derby St. and Martin Luther King Jr. Way. 548-3333.  

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 Tilden Nature Area. Call for meeting place and if you need to borrow binoculars. 525-2233. 

The Berkeley Garden Club “Grafting Scions and How to Prune Your Fruit Trees” with Idell Weydemeyer of the California Rare Fruit Growers, at 1:45 p.m., at Epworth United Methodist Church, 1953 Hopkins St. 845-4482. www.berkeleygardenclub.org  

“Hiking Denali National Park” with Chris Poissnat, former Denali National Park interpretive ranger, at 7 p.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. 527-4140. 

Docent Training for Tilden Nature Area Learn to assist the naturalists in providing interpretive programs at the Little Farm and nature area gardens, from 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Fee is $35. Application required. For information call 544-3260. 

Fying Calamari Brothers A magic and comedy show for ages 3 and up at 6:30 p.m. at Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave. 524-3043.  

"Ahimsa and Knowledge” with Nik Warren at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley Buddhist Monastery, Institute for World Religions, 2304 McKinley Ave.  

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. 

Street Level Cycles Community Bike Program Come use our tools as well as receive help with performing repairs free of charge. Youth classes available. Tues., Thurs., and Sat. from 2 to 6 p.m. at at 84 Bolivar Dr., Aquatic Park. 644-2577.  

Fresh Produce Stand at San Pablo Park from 3 to 6 p.m. in the Frances Albrier Community Center. Sponsored by the Ecology Center’s Farm Fresh Choice. 848-1704. 

Berkeley Camera Club meets at 7:30 p.m., at the Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. Monthly field trips. 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 always welcome new members over 50. 845-6830. 

Sing-A-Long Group from 2 to 3 p.m. at the Albany Senior Center, 846 Masoni Ave., Albany. 524-9122. 

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 19 

Center Street Plaza Design Exposition Presentation by Walter Hood at 4:30 p.m. at Gaia Arts Center, 2120 Allston Way. Sponsored by Ecocity Builders. RSVP to 419-0850. 

The Oakland Bird Club “Breeding Bird Atlas of Santa Clara County” with Bill Bousman at 7:30 p.m. at Oakland Public Library, Rockridge Branch, 5366 College Ave., 444-0355. 

Five Years of Illegitimate War! End It! All-day rally at the Marine Recruiting Station, 64 Shattuck Square.  

Rally and March on the Fifth Anniversary of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq at 6:30 p.m. at Alameda City Hall, Oak and Santa Clara Sts. Sponsored by the Alameda Peace Network. www.alamedapeacenetwork.org 

Peace Vigil to Mark the Fifth Anniversary of the War in Iraq at 6 p.m. at Grace Cathedral, 1100 California St., at Taylor, San Francisco. 

Berkeley Simplicity Forum “Reexamining Our Relationship with Money” at 6:30 p.m. at Claremont Library, 2940 Benvenue Ave.  

“Horns and Halos” A documentary on tangled lives of Dubbya and two others at 7:30 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St., Oakland. Donation $5. www.Humanist Hall.org 

10th Annual Alameda Community Job Fair Learn about current job openings, network with key contacts, and learn about upcoming opportunities, from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. at College of Alameda student lounge and cafeteria, F Building, 555 Ralph Appezzato Memorial Parkway, Alameda. 748-5215. 

“Problems in Life and the Buddhist Way of Dealing with Them” Lecture and discusstion with Bhante Sellawimala, a Theravada Buddhist monk at 7 p.m. at Jodo Shinshu Center, 2140 Durant Ave. Free. 809-1460. 

Cycling Lecture with Brett Horton, bicycle memorabilia collector, at 7 p.m. at Velo Sport Bicycles, 1615 University Ave., enter at 1989 California St. RSVP to 849-0437. 

Radical Movie Night: “Duck You Sucker” An exiled IRA demolition expert falls in love with a Mexican bandit, at 8:30 p.m. at the Long Haul, 3124 Shattuck Ave. 540-0751. 

Tilden Explorers An after-school nature adventure program for 5-7 year olds. We will hunt for amphibians from 3:15 to 4:15 p.m. Cost is $6-$8. Registration required. 1-888-327-2757. 

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 

Teen Chess Club from 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. at the North Branch Library, 1170 The Alameda at Hopkins. 981-6133. 

Theraputic Recreation at the Berkeley Warm Pool, Wed. at 3:30 p.m. and Sat. at 10 a.m. at the Berkeley Warm Pool, 2245 Milvia St. Cost is $4-$5. Bring a towel. 632-9369. 

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. 

THURSDAY, MARCH 20 

Forum on The West Berkeley Plan and Sustainability: Economy, Environment, & Equity with Karen Chapple, UC Associate Professor of City and Regional Planning on The Industrial Land Debate: Arguments, Assumptions, and Alternatives; Raquel Pinderhughes, PhD SFSU Professor of Urban Studies, author of The City of Berkeley’s Green Collar Jobs Report; Abby Thorne-Lyman, Senior Associate of Strategic Economics on The Case for Industrial Land: The Future for the Bay Area’s Industrial Lands; and Kate O’Hara, East Bay Alliance For A Sustainable Economy on Preserving Industrial Lands, Growing Good Jobs at 6:30 p.m. at West Berkeley Senior Center, 1900 Sixth St., corner of 6th St. & Hearst Ave. Presented by WEBAIC - West Berkeley Artisans & Industrial Companies. 549-3213. webaic.org  

Equinox Bell-Ringing at noon at Berkeley City Hall, 2180 Milvia St. Celebrate the first day of Spring with the annual ringing of Berkeley’s massive Peace Bell, made from the metal of melted guns. 981-6900. 

Spring Equinox Gathering at 6:30 p.m. at Interim Memorial Solar Calendar, Cesar Chavez Park, Berkeley Marina. A mini-workshop on the seasons will be led by David Glaser. Dress warmly. www.solarcalendar.org 

Tilden Tots Join a nature adventure program for 3 and 4 year olds, each accompanied by an adult (grandparents welcome)! We’ll look for amphibians from 10 to 11:30 a.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. Cost is $6-$8. Registration required. 1-888-EBPARKS. 

“Against Cognitive Imperialism” A lecture by Hal Roth, Ph.D., Professor, Religious Studies and East Asian Studies, Brown Univ., at 7:30 p.m. at Chapel of the Great Commission, Pacific School of Religion, 1798 Scenic Ave. 848-9788. 

Persian New Year: Norouz with egg painting, storytelling and dancing from 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at Habitot Children’s Museum, 2065 Kittredge St. 647-1111.www.habitot.org 

LeConte Neighborhood Association meets at 7:30 p.m. at LeConte School, Russell St. entrance. karlreeh@aol.com.  

Preconception Healthcare at 7 p.m. at Elephant Pharmacy, 1607 Shattuck Ave. 549-9200. 

Teen Book Club meets to discuss urban fantasy at 4 p.m. at Claremont Branch Library, 2940 Benvenue. 981-6121. 

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. 

World of Plants Tours Thurs., Sat. and Sun. at 1:30 p.m. at the UC Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Drive. Cost is $5. 643-2755.  

Avatar Metaphysical Toastmasters Club meets at 6:45 p.m. at Spud’s Pizza, 3290 Adeline at Alcatraz. namaste@avatar.freetoasthost.info  

FRIDAY, MARCH 21 

Good Friday Witness at Livermore Nuclear Weapons Lab at 6:45 a.m. at Vasco & Patterson Pass Rd. , Livermore Nuclear Weapons Lab. Prayer service and nonviolent civil disobedience action with Father Louie Vitale. Following the action, there will be a community gathering in Livermore, to share our concerns and work. Sponsored by Ecumenical Peace Institute & Livermore Conversion Project. 655-1162. www.epicalc.org 

Support the Iraq Moratorium! Demonstrate against the war! From 2 to 4 p.m. at Acton and University Aves. Bring your signs and determination. Sponsored by the Strawberry Creek Tenants Ass’n., Berkeley Gray Panthers and Iraq Moratorium. 841-4143. 

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon with Dr. Georgia Wright on “Using Nuclear Technology to Analyze Medieval Sculpture” 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.  

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, MARCH 22 

Rainbow Ramblers Hike in Wildcat Canyon Led by naturalist Bethany Facendini, from 10 a.m. to 3p.m. Explore nature’s diversity during this invigorating 5-miler over varied terrain especially for the gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and queer community. Everybody is welcome! Meet at the Rifle Range Road trailhead. Bring water and lunch. Call 525-2233. 

Spring Egg Hunt for ages 1-7 and treasure hunt for ages 8-10, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Willard Park, corner of Hillegass and Derby. There will also be a petting zoo, and arts and crafts. Cost is $5. 981-5140. 

GPS Scavenger Hunt Follow the directions on the GPS for clues along the trails, from 9 a.m. to noon at Pt. Pinole, Richmond. GPS units and instruction provided. Cost is $12-$14. Registration required. Class #17385. 1-888-EBPARKS. 

Plant Portraits and Garden Images Learn how to take better plant and flower photographs. Class designed for beginning photographers with digital cmaeras capable of close-up imaging. From 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at Tilden Park Botanic Garden. Cost is $50-$55. Registration required. 841-8732. www.nativeplanets.org 

Ferment Change! A Benefit for West Oakland’s City Slicker Farms Come join us for a fermented food feast and celebration of urban agriculture at 7 p.m. at Ecology Center, 2530 San Pablo Ave., near Dwight Way. Donation of $10-$30 requested, no one turned away due to lack of funds.. 548-2220, ext. 233. max@ecologycenter.org 

Volunteer to Help Remove Non-native Plants Help remove non-native vegetation and promote the health of our recently planted native plants like sticky gumplant, California sagebrush, and marsh coyote bush. Other activities include planting native plants, shoreline cleanup, and work in our native plant nursery. From 9 am. to noon at Martin Luther King, Jr. Regional Shoreline, Oakland. 452-9261, ext. 119. www.savesfbay.org/bayevents 

Safe Routes to Schools Bike Workshop for children and parents at 9:30 a.m. at Washington School. Bring your bike and helmet. Cost is $10. Space limited, reservations required. RSVP to 740-3150, ext. 332. 

Workshop for Children: Naturally Dyed Easter Eggs A hands-on workshop using natural dyes to careate Easter eggs. From 2 to 3 p.m. at UC Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Dr. Cost is $15 for one adult and one child, $8 for each additional child. 643-2755, ext. 03. http://botanicalgarden.berkeley.edu . 

“Womens’ Power” A video by Max Danshu at 7 p.m. at Redwood Gardens Community Room, 2951 Derby St. Donations welcome. www.suppressedhistories.net/womanspowerdvd.html 

Re-envisioning Revolution and Communism: What is Bob Avakian’s New Synthesis? A presentation followed by discussion at 2 p.m. at Black Repertory Theater, 3201 Adeline St. Cost is $10, sliding scale. 848-1196. www.revolutionbooks.org 

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.  

Around the World Tour of Plants at 1:30 p.m., Thurs., Sat. and Sun. at UC Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Drive. 643-2755.  

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, MARCH 23 

Berkeley City Club Tour of the “Little Castle” designed by Julia Morgan at 1:15, 2:15 and 3:15 p.m. at 2315 Durant Ave. 883-9710. 

“Cooking for Peace” Food Not Bombs co-founder Keith McHenry will talk about the history, principles and future of Food Not Bombs’ gobal work at 7 p.m. at the Long Haul, 3124 Shattuck Ave. 540-0751. 

Philosophers: G.E.M. Anscombe & Celia Green for Women’s History Month A lecture by H. D. Moe at 3 p.m. at Humanist Hall 390 27th St., Oakland. Donations welcome. 528-8713, 451-5818. 

Easter Egg Hunt for children under 10 at 1:30 p.m. at Elephant Pharmacy, 1607 Shattuck Ave. 549-9200. 

Youth Musical Theater Auditions for “Into the Woods” for students in grades 7-12. Appointments required. 595-5514. infor@ymtcberkeley.org 

Free Garden Tours at Regional Parks Botanic Garden in Tilden Park Sat. and Sun. at 2 p.m. Call to confirm. 841-8732.  

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 

Berkeley Chess Club meets every Sun. at 7 p.m. at the Hillside School, 1581 Le Roy Ave. 843-0150. 

Tibetan Buddhism with Betty Cook on “Awakening to Freedom and Good Fortune” at 6 p.m. at the Tibetan Nyingma Institute, 1815 Highland Pl. 809-1000 www.nyingmainstitute.com 

Sew Your Own Open Studio Come learn to use our industrial and domestic machines, or work on your own projects, from 4 to 8 p.m. at 84 Bolivar Dr., Aquatic Park. Also on Fri. from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Cost is $5 per hour. 644-2577. www.watersideworkshops.org 

MONDAY, MARCH 24 

Three Mile Monday A hike along Sobrante Ridge to search fo rhte rare Alameda manzanita, from 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Bring poles, as portions of the hike are steep, water and lunch. For information on meeting place call 525-2233. 

Leah Garchick in Conversation with John Carroll on Garchick’s new book “Real Life Romance: Everyday Wisdom on Love, Sex, and Relationships” at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Rep’s Trust Stage, 2025 Addison St. Fundraiser for Park Day School Tickets are $18-$25. www.parkdayschool.org 

Berkeley CopWatch organizational meeting at 8 p.m. at 2022 Blake St. Volunteers needed. 548-0425. 

Free Boatbuilding Classes for Youth Mon.-Wed. from 3 to 7 p.m. at Berkeley Boathouse, 84 Bolivar Dr., Aquatic Park. Classes cover woodworking, boatbuilding, and boat repair. 644-2577. www.watersideworkshops.org 

CITY MEETINGS 

Citizens Humane Commission meets Wed., March 19, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-6601.  

Commission on Aging meets Wed., March 19, at 1:30 p.m., at the South Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5344.  

Commission on Labor meets Wed., March 19, at 6:45 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-7550.  

Disaster and Fire Safety Commission meets Wed., March 19, at 7 p.m., at the Emergency Operations Center, 997 Cedar St. 981-5502.  

Human Welfare and Community Action Commission meets Wed., March 19, at 7 p.m., at the South Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5427.  

Housing Advisory Commission meets Thurs., March 20, at 7 p.m., at the South Berkeley Senior Center. Oscar Sung, 981-5400.  

Pedestrian Plan Workshop at the Transportation Commission meeting, Thurs., March 20 at 7 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-7060.  

FRIDAY, MARCH 14 

THEATER 

Altarena Playhouse “Chicago” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. at Altarena Playhouse, 1409 High St., Alameda, through April 12. Tickets are $17-$20. 523-1553. www.altarena.org 

Berkeley Rep ”Wishful Drinking” with Carrie Fisher, at the Roda Theater, 2015 Addison St., through March 30. Tickets are $33-$69. 647-2949. 

Golden Thread Productions “What Do the Women Say?” An International Women’s Day performance on the Middle East at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10-$12. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Central Works “Wakefield; or Hello Sophia” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 5 p.m. at Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave., through March 23.Tickets are $14-$25. 558-1381. 

Impact Theatre “Jukebox Stories: The Case of the Creamy Foam” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m. at La Val’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid Ave., through March 22. Tickets are $10-$15. 464-4468. http://impacttheatre.com 

EXHIBITIONS 

“In the Round” A celebration of seven sculptors: Robert Cantor, Diana Keevan, Traudel Prussin, Andrew Shaper, Zahava Sherez, Lidija Tkalcevic, Susan Wells. Reception for the artists at 6 p.m. at ACCI Gallery, 11652 Shattuck Ave. 843-2527. 

Ed Dwight “Paintings and Bronze Sculpture” Opening reception at 5:30 p.m. at Joyce Gordon Gallery 406 14th St. Oakland. 465-8928. 

FILM 

“The Princess of Nebraska” with filmmaker Wayne Wang in person at 7 p.m., “The Terrorizer” with actor Cora Miao in person at 9 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

May Garsson and Tom Odegard will read at 7 p.m. at Nefeli Caffe, 1854 Euclid Ave., followed by an open reading.  

Haleh Hatami and Rosemary Toohey, poetry and staged reading at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $8-$10. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Paul Watsky and Barbara Joan Tiger Bass, poetry, followed by open mic at 7 p.m. at Expressions Gallery, 2035 Ashby Ave. www.expressionsgallery.org 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Oakland East Bay Symphony “Notes From Persia” with pianist Tara Kamangar and mezzo-soprano Raeeka Shehabi-Yaghmi at 8 p.m. at Paramount Theater, 2025 Broadway, Oakland. Pre-concert lecture with John Kendall Bailey at 7 p.m. Tickets are $20-$65. 625-8497. 

Chanticleer “From the Path of Beauty” with The Shanghai Quartet at 8 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing Way. Tickets are $25-$44. 415-392-4400. www.chanticleer.org 

“Makings” music based on the unpublished writings of Tillie Olsen at 8 p.m. at Avonova Studios, 417 Avon St., Oakland. Tickets are $8-$15. For reservations call 707-823-5008. www.deconstructmyhouse.org 

Friday Noon Concert at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Free. 642-4864. http://music.berkeley.edu 

Junior Bach Festival, featuring young performers, at 7:30 p.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2723 College Ave. 843-2224. www.juniorbach.org 

Angélique Kidjo, West African singer at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $22-$42. 642-9988. www.calperformances.net 

Sara and Swingtime at 7 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $15, $60 with dinner. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Dave Mathews Soultet with Tony Lindsay, at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $12. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Sister Carol, Women’s History Month Reggae Celebration, at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is tba. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Edo Castro, bassist, at 8 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Tin Hat at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Fernando Tarango and Tiffany Joy at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Kinsella Brothers at 10 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

Kev Choice, Prince Ali & The Destruments, The Bayliens at 9 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $5-$7. 548-1159.  

Bulk at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

Sakai, R&B, at 9 p.m. at Maxwell’s Lounge, 341 13th St., Oakland. Cost is $10-$15. 839-6169. 

SATURDAY, MARCH 15 

CHILDREN  

Stagebridge Theater Company “Chicken Sunday” A musical adaptation of Patricia Polacco’s book, Sat. and Sun. at 3 p.m. at Arts First Oakland, 2501 Harrison St. at 27th. Tickets are $5-$12. 444-4755. www.stagebridge.org 

Los Amiguitos de La Peña with Mariela & Monica, songs in Spanish, at 10:30 a.m. at La Peña. Cost is $5 for adults, $4 for children. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Boswick the Clown at 11 a.m. at Studio Grow, 1235 Tenth St. Cost is $7. 526-9888. 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Private Collection of Contemporary California Plein Air Paintings” Reception at 2 p.m. at Alta Galleria, 2980 College Ave Suite 4. 421-1255. 

“Material Evidence” Mixed media work of Peter Boyer, and sculptor Ed Kirshner. Closing party at 6 p.m. at FLOAT Art Gallery 1091 Calcot Place, Unit # 116 , located in a store front loft of the historic cotton mill studios, Oakland. www.thefloatcenter.com  

“In Our Own Backyard” A celebration of the East Bay Regional Parks. An exhibition of photographs by Bob Walker opens at the Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak St., and runs through Oct. 12. Cost is $5-$8. 238-2022.  

“Open Range” The art of Douglas Light, Michele Hofherr and Scott Courtenay-Smith. Artist reception at 6 p.m. at Esteban Sabar Gallery, 480 23rd St., Oakland. 444-7411. www.estebansabar.com 

FILM 

“Slingshot” with filmmaker Brillante Mendoza at 7 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

82nd Annual Poets’ Dinner and contest results at 11:30 a.m. at Francesco’s Restaurant, 8520 Pardee Dri., Oakland. Lucille Lang will speak on “Poetry, Ecology and the Brain” Tickets are $27-$28.  

Gayle Greene reads from “Insomniac” part memoir, part scientific analysis, at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

“People Like Me 2008: It’s My Nature” Interactive theatrical performance for families with dance, music and puppetry. Pre-show workshop at 11 a.m., show at noon at Regent’s Theater, Holy Names University, 3500 Mountain Blvd., Oakland. Cos tis $6-$12. 415-392-4400. www.cityboxoffice.com 

14th Annual Norouz Show Presented by the Iranian Students Cultural Organization at 12:30 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave. Tickets are $5-$15 at the door.  

Collage de Cultures Africaines “The Journey Back is the Journey Forward” Dance and drum performances at 8 p.m. at the Malonga Casquelourd Center for the Arts, 1428 Alice St., Oakland. African marketplace at 6 p.m. Tickets are $20-$30 from www.urbanevents.com 

Berkeley Opera “L’Elisir d’Amore” at 8 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave. Tickets are $10-$44. 925-798-1300. www.berkeleyopera.org 

Junior Bach Festival, featuring young performers, at 3 and 7:30 p.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2723 College Ave. 843-2224.  

WomenSing “Sounds and Sweet Airs” at 8 p.m. at Holy Names University Chapel, Oaklnd. Tickets are $10-$25. 925-974-9169. www.womensing.org 

Spring Equinox Concert and Ritual “One Soul Sounding” with Linda Tillery, Evelie Delfino Såles Posch, Lisa Rafel, and Eda Maxym at 7:30 p.m. at Lake Merritt United Methodist Church, 1330 Lakeshore, Oakland. Tickets are $15-$24. 654-3234. www.lisarafel.com  

Metropolitan Opera “Peter Grimes” broadcast live from The Metropolitan Opera in New York City at 10:30 a.m. at Bay Street 16, 5614 Bay Street, Ste 220, Emeryville. Tickets are $15-$22. www.FathomEvents.com 

Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra “The Queen of Egypt” with Canadian-Armenian soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian at 8 p.m. at First Congregational Church, 2345 Channing Way. Pre-concert lecture 45 minutes prior to performance. Tickets are $30-$72. 415-392-4400. www.philharmonia.org  

Steven Strauss, multi-instrumentarian, ukeleleiast, at 3 p.m. at Down Home Music Berkeley store, 1809b Fourth St. www.downhomemusic.com 

Irina Rivkin & Tamra Engle at 8 p.m. at Rose Street House of Music, 1839 Rose St. Donation $8-$20. 594-4000 ext. 687. www.rosestreetmusic.com 

“Makings” music based on the unpublished writings of Tillie Olsen at 8 p.m. at Avonova Studios, 417 Avon St., Oakland. Tickets are $8-$15. For reservations call 707-823-5008. www.deconstructmyhouse.org 

SFJAZZ Collective at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $34-$52. 642-9988. www.calperformances.net 

Jon Fromer, emma’s revolution, at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $13-$15. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Robin Gregory & Her Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $12. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Lakay, Abu Simel and the Venutians, Ashkenaz 35th Anniversay Party, at 7:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com  

The Jazz Fourtet at 5 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Jumoke Hill, Chris Clavey at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Melanie O’Reilly & “Aisling” at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Andrea Fultz, German songs from the 1930s, at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $15. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Jack Tone Riorden Trio, jazz, at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

Kinsella Brothers at 10 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

Wayward Monks at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

Gonzalo Rubacaba at 8 and 10 p.m., through Sun. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $12-$22. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

SUNDAY, MARCH 16 

CHILDREN 

Celebrating California’s New Cultures with music and activities for the whole family from 12:30 to 4:30 p.m. at the Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak St. Cost is $5-$8. 238-2022.  

Stagebridge Theater Company “Chicken Sunday” A musical adaptation of Patricia Polacco’s book, at 3 p.m. at Arts First Oakland, 2501 Harrison St. at 27th. Tickets are $5-$12. 444-4755. www.stagebridge.org 

EXHIBITIONS 

Loom Lathe: The Art of Kay Sekimachi and Bob Stocksdale Opening reception at 2 p.m. at Berkeley Art Center, 1275 Walnut St. in Live Oak Park. 644-6893. www.berkeleysrtcenter.org 

FILM 

“Never Forever” with filmmaker Gina Kim at 7:50 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Richard Wright Centennial Project Readings by the Oakland Public Theater at 6 p.m. at Chapel of the Chimes, 4499 Piedmont Ave., Oakland. 534-9529.  

“Borderlandia in Mind” Panel discussion of the works on Enrique Chagoya at 3 p.m. at Berkeley Art Museum Theater. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

Takács Quartet pre-performance talk with Paul M. Ellison at 2 p.m. at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Free to ticketholders. 642-9988. www.calperformances.net 

Toni Mirosevich and Annie Holmes read at 4 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

The Wayne Wallace Latin Jazz Quintet at 2 p.m. at Chapel of the Chimes, 4499 Piedmont Ave., Oakland. Tickets are $10-$15 for concert and reception. Children under 12 free. 228-3218. 

Berkeley Opera “L’Elisir d’Amore” at 5 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave. Tickets are $10-$44. 925-798-1300. www.berkeleyopera.org 

Junior Bach Festival, featuring young performers, at 3 p.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2723 College Ave. 843-2224. www.juniorbach.org 

Berkeley Symphony “Under Construction” at 7 p.m. at Berkeley City Club, 2345 Durant. Tickets are $10-$20. 841-2800. www.berkeleysymphony.org 

Prometheus Symphony Orchestra performs Stravinsky, Delius and Rutter at 3 p.m. at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, 116 Montecito Ave., Oakland. Free, donations accepted. www.prometheussymphony.org 

Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra “The Queen of Egypt” with Canadian-Armenian soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian at 7:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church, 2345 Channing Way. Pre-concert lecture 45 minutes prior to each performance. Tickets are $30-$72. 415-392-4400. www.philharmonia.org  

Takács Quartet at 3 p.m. at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $546. 642-9988. www.calperformances.net 

Bay Area Flamenco Partnership with Juan del Gastor from Spain, at 7 p.m. at La Peña. Cost is $25. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Michael Coleman’s “Beep” at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Doctor Sparkles at 11 a.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Jody London at 2 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Pappa Gianni & the North Beach Band at 2 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Robert Stewart Experience “Tribute to Eddie Harris” at 4:30 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $15-$18. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

The Angry Philosophers at 10 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

MONDAY, MARCH 17 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Poetry Express with Cat Ruiz at 7 p.m. at Priya Restaurant, 2072 San Pablo Ave. 644-3977. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Blind Duck Irish Band at 7 p.m. at Albatross, 1822 San Pablo Ave. Cost is $3. 843-2473. www.albatrosspub.com 

Helios, Greek and Bulgarian, at 7 p.m. at Le Bateau Ivre, 2629 Telegraph Ave. 849-1100. www.lebateauivre.net 

Swing Farm at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Kinsella Brothers at 10 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

Black Brothers, Triskela at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage Coffee House. Cost is $20.50-$21.50. 548-1761  

Terrence Brewer at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $8-$14. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

TUESDAY, MARCH 18 

CHILDREN 

Flying Calamari Brothers A magic and comedy show for ages 3 and up at 6:30 p.m. at Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave. 524-3043.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“Architecture, Print Culture, and the Public Sphere in 18th-Century France” with author Richard Wittman, at 5:30 p.m. at University Press Books, 2430 Bancroft Way. 548-0585.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Swamp Coolers at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cajun dance lesson at 8 p.m. Cost is $10. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Singers’ Open Mic with Ellen Hoffman at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $5. 841-JAZZ.  

Cheryl Wheeler, Kenny White at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $26.50-$27.50. 548-1761.  

Ari Chersky Trio, jazz, at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave. 548-5198.  

Dmitri Matheny at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $12-$16. 238-9200. 

Jazzschool Tuesdays, a weekly showcase of up-and-coming ensembles from Berkeley Jazzschool at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 19 

EXHIBITIONS 

“California Textural Landscapes” works by Patti Heimburger in mixed media through oil paint, fabric and yarn opens at Christensen Heller Gallery, 5829 College Ave. Hours are Wed.-Sat. 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., Sun. noon to 5 p.m. 655-5952. www.christensenheller.com 

FILM 

FIlm 50: “Wild Strawberries” at 3 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Music for the Spirit with Ron McKean on harpsichord at 12:15 p.m. at First Presbyterian Church of Oakland, 2619 Broadway. 444-3555. 

Wednesday Noon Concert, with the University Symphony Orchestra at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Free. 642-4864.  

Oakland Youth Chorus Benefit for Chirstopher Rodriguez at 7 p.m. at First Unitarian Church of Oakland, 685 14th St., Oakland. Tickets are $15-$20, children under 12 $5-$10. 287-9700.  

Cheryl Wheeler, Kenny White at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $26.50-$27.50. 548-1761.  

Whiskey Brothers, old-time and bluegrass at 9 p.m. at Albatross, 1822 San Pablo Ave. 843-2473. www.albatrosspub.com 

U.C. Jazz at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $5. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Speak the Music, beatboxing with Syzygy, Monkstilo, Constant Change, and others at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $8. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

El Cerrito High School Jazz Ensemble and Jazz Band at 8 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $3-$7. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Avance at 9:30 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Salsa dance lessons at 8:30 p.m. Cost is $5-$10. 548-1159.  

Pacific Manouche at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

New York Voices at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $16-$22. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

THURSDAY, MARCH 20 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Here: Oakland Through the Arts” Works by Excel High School Students. Opening reception at 5 p.m. at the Craft & Cultural Arts Gallery, State of CA Office Bldg., Atrium, 1515 CLay St., Oakland. 622-8190. 

Enrique Chagoya: Borderlandia Guided tour at 12:15 p.m. at Berkeley Art Museum. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

“Propagations” Paintings and computer animations by Tadashi Moriyama. Opening reception at 6 p.m. at Johansson Projects, 2300 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. 444-9140. www.johanssonprojects.com 

“Jingletown Junction” Works by ten artists from the Jingletown neighborhood. Opening reception at 6 p.m. at ProArts Gallery, 550 Second St., Oakland. www.proartsgallery.org 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Poetry for the People with Mohja Kahf of Muslim Women Speak Out, and Ananda Esteva and Imani Uzuri, at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $7-$15. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Join author Marti Kheel "Nature Ethics: An Ecofeminist Perspective.". Thursday, March 20, 5:30 pm to 7:00 pm Literary event: University Press Books, 2430 Bancroft Way, Berkeley, CA 94704510-548-0585, www.universitypressbooks.com 

Fritjof Capra reads from “The Science of Leonardo: Inside the Mind of the Great Genius of the Renaissance” at 7:30 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

Third Thursdays in South Berkeley Multi-generational poetry conversation at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $7-$15. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Artist Support Group Speaker Series with Dara Solomon, Asst. Curator, Contemporary Jewish Museum, at 7 p.m. at the Berkeley Art Center, 1275 Walnut St. in Live Oak Park. Cost is $8-$10. 644-6893. 

Mystery Writers Panel Discussion including Rita Lakin, Peggy Lucke, Penny Warner and Simon Wood at 6 p.m. at the South Branch of the Berkeley Public Library. 981-6260. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Perú Negro, Peru’s African heritage on traditional instruments, at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $22-$42. 642-9988. www.calperformances.net 

Portola Jazz Ensemble, Jazz Workshop and Jazz Band with special guest artists Larry de la Cruz, Marvin McFadden, Jeremy Steinkoler and Wayne Wallace at 7 pm, at Mira Vista Golf and Country Club, 7901 Cutting Blvd, El Cerrito. 417-5897.  

Eric Bibb at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $19.50-$20.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Noam Lemish Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Teed Rockwell and Joel Rudinow, raga-blues, at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Vibrafolk at 7:30 p.m. at Central Perk Cafe, 10086 San Pablo Ave., corner of Central, El Cerrito. www.centralperkcoffee.net 

Kenny Garrett Quartet at 8 and 10 p.m., through Sat. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $12-$22. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

“The pure products of America go crazy,” intoned poet William Carlos Williams, and Carrie Fisher, a pure product of the American dream factory, who jests about the craziness of her life and icon status in her solo extravaganza, Wishful Drinking, is being held over at Berkeley Rep through April 12.  

She holds forth on the Roda Stage—holds court, at one point sitting demurely, but usually pacing, wound up with nervous energy, hands constantly in motion, tracing big patterns in the air. 

Wishful Drinking is something of an interactive show, as she “reaches out” to the audience, bringing spectators on stage or Carrie into the audience. On opening night, she directed causticly funny lines to (and at) George Lucas in an orchestra seat, and her parents, Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher, seated on opposite sides of the balcony, making sure they answered, even if tersely. 

Her schtick is all her own as the child of Hollywood “royalty,” center of attention since birth. She jokes about the incestuousness of her family, their many marriages, quipping that she hopes she doesn’t resemble one of the Hapsburgs, whose portrait is projected above the stage, features stricken with the grotesqueness of inbreeding. 

In a way, the show is beyond autobiography or memoir, as everything is cannibalized, including the cannibalism itself. Tragedy is part of the joke, and that—again—is the tragedy of a survivor who lives to tell the tale. Who lives for telling the tale. 

It isn’t Moby Dick, or even Oprah. From donning a Princess Leia wig, to confronting a Princess Leia sex statue dropped from the flies, to charting her extended family tree (Liz Taylor briefly as step-mother) on a blackboard lifted from a Mort Sahl outine, to the headlines projected in montage on the starry sky above her, the valiant attempts by Tony Taccone, the Rep’s artistic director, to flesh out Carrie’s exposition as theater just lends apparatus to an open-house-style chat. It’s not even stand-up, which the show has been compared to, as too many lines are thrown away, like an overheard cellphone conversation in a public place. Her relation to the audience does not carry the dynamic of engagement of the comic or the monologist. 

Her wit can crackle, or cackle a little hysterically, and there is no shortage of laughter as she charts the loopiness that is her normality. As a real-life twist on that old chestnut, the Poor Little Rich Kid, Carrie’s story is rife with funny vignettes and nuances that just never quite reach the level of actual humor. 

There is no form at all to the show, despite its gestures towards theatrical respectability (whatever that really is). But it is pure spectacle of a sort, with a little bit of the rawness of real and simulated reality that so much mass entertainment is striving to display. It’s all Carrie, transparent onstage, as if in a plastic bag—the type kids carry home from a fair, with a goldfish inside, ceaselessly opening and closing its mouth. 

WISHFUL DRINKING 

Through March 30 at the Roda Theater, 2015 Addison St.  

$33-$69. 647-2949.

The Oakland East Bay Symphony, conducted by director Michael Morgan, will present a unique collaborative program, Notes from Persia, at 8 p.m. tonight (Friday) at the Paramount Theatre. 

The program features the U.S. premiere of Aminollah Hossein’s Piano Concerto No. 2 (1946), played by Tara Kamangar, the suite from Loris Tjernavorian’s opera Rostam and Sohrab (1963), with the composer present, and six folk songs from different regions and cultural traditions of Persia, sung by mezzo-soprano Raeeka Shehabi-Yaghmai in new orchestral arrangements by composer David Garner. The program will open with Rachmaninoff’s “Rhapsody on a theme by Paganini” and Richard Strauss’ tone poem “Don Juan.” 

The concert will coincide with Nowwuz, the ancient Persian New Year’s and spring holiday, dating from Zoroastrian times, which is celebrated over much of the Middle East and Central Asia with picnics, music, poetry recital and song. 

“It has all been a person-to-person connection in putting this together,” said an enthusiastic Michael Morgan. “It was Patrice Hidu, who is the project manager running our office, who pointed out to me that there is a large, music-loving community in the Bay Area nobody has really reached out to. And at a Christmas party for Festival Opera, I heard Raeeka Shehabi-Yaghmai sing a Persian folk song. She got David Garner of the S.F. Music Conservatory to arrange six diverse songs for orchestra, and helped greatly to publicize the concert in the Persian community.” 

Morgan talked about the very personable—and very Persian—way the program unfolded.  

“Omid Zoufonoun, my conducting student, whose father was a rather famous performer of Persian classical music, told me about Tara Kamangar, who sent a CD,” Morgan said. “She is not only a great pianist, but has proven to be a wonderful collaborator—the real thing. She told me about Tjeknavorian. He just flew in last Sunday from Tehran. I would love to do his whole opera. He has an English version prepared. I have learned so much putting this together. It is wonderful music, but even more wonderful are the incredible people I have met.” 

Morgan commented on Hossein’s concerto and Tjeknavorian’s opera, based on stories from the medieval Persian epic poem, the Shanameh (Book of Kings) by Firdosi: “You notice right away how closely the modern pieces are melodically—and rhythmically—related to the traditional folk songs. They are very melodious modern music. Especially Tjeknavorian’s. The rhythms are enormously complicated, especially in his finale. I am going into rehearsal right now with the mezzo—who can’t make the dress rehearsal (She’s starring in Carmen at Livermore Opera)—to go over the material together, so I am up on all the characteristics and can teach the orchestra. There is only so much you can write down, and we are all trying to do, deciding how to beat out the Persian 6/8, which seems to us more like a 3—‘I Like To Be In America,’ like that—to work out the groove in these rhythms.” 

Asked if Persian music swings, Morgan answered, “It does!” 

“Putting together this concert has been one of my favorite projects,” Morgan concluded. “It has been a continuation of the symphony’s mission, to reach out to all sorts of corners and parts of our community ... Given the current political tensions between our two countries, I thought this would be a good time to reach out to the Bay Area Persian community, to showcase their extraordinary musical heritage. What better time than now to use the power of music to bring our people together?”  

Aminollah Hossein was born in 1905 in Samarkand, but spent the majority of his professional life in exile in France after musical studies in Russia and Germany. A master of the Persian stringed instrument, the taar, he was deeply influenced by Persian classical music. A prolific composer—20 film scores, three piano concertos, and extensive works for ballet, symphony orchestra and solo piano—his major works include the “Persepolis Symphony” (1947), a 1951 symphony based on the ruba’i (quatrains) of poet and astronomer Omar Khayyam and his ballet “Miniatures Iraniennes” (1975). 

Loris Tjeknavorian, born in 1937, studied at the Tehran Conservatory, to which he returned, becoming a faculty member, after advanced studies at the Vienna Music Academy. He was later named director of the National Music Archive and composer-in-residence and principal conductor of Tehran’s Rudaki Opera House Orchestra. Tjeknavorian has conducted many of the world’s leading symphonies and has made over 100 recordings. The opera Rostam and Sohrab is one of over 75 diverse works. 

Tara Kamangar has played solo piano in venues ranging from London’s Wathen Hall and Leighton House Museum to the Wattis Room in San Francisco’s Davies Hall, and will play in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. She has recorded works by Hossein, Tjeknavorian, Hormoz Farhat and Behzad Ranjbaran. 

Shehabi-Yaghmai has sung leading roles with Oakland Lyric and Festival Operas in the East Bay, West Bay Opera and Merola Opera, and Opera Brasov in Romania. She will perform with the New Music Ensemble in San Francisco and Santa Cruz.

Coming up on 35 years, our relationship gets ever more harmonious. I have a stapelia—a starfish flower that attracts flies to pollinate it—on the office windowsill, and Joe has a collection of carnivorous plants on the front porch. When my stapelia blooms, I cope with its decidedly rank fragrance by putting it on the porch with the Venus’ flytrap and the sundews and the various sarracenias and they all have a party. 

Most of Joe's modest collection comes from California Carnivores in Sonoma County. When we first visited, over a decade ago, Peter D’Amato’s nursery was in a building just behind a winery. Some folks were grateful to fortify themselves with a drink before entering.  

The enterprise has since relocated to a space next to a newer, if more conventional nursery and a stone’s throw from a couple of the area’s surviving antique shops. It’s just off the Gravenstein Highway between 101 and Sebastopol, so it’s handier to us than ever. This could lead to economic difficulties: Joe’s better at resisting temptation of that sort than I am, but I’m reflexively a cheerleader, OK, an accomplice when it comes to plants. 

If you visit right now, you’ll see a lot of brown, as many of the plants are winter-dormant. Enough individuals of the junglier sort are awake all year, though, to keep it entertaining. If you’ve ever visited the San Francisco Conservatory of Flowers, you’ve seen the like: baroquely ferocious sarracenias, with their red- or white-dappled hoods; variations on flytraps; glistening butterworts and prismatic-jeweled, inviting sundews; various nepenthes that might be Klingon codpieces.  

Some species of that last genus get big enough to trap and digest small rodents in their dangling wells. It’s at that point that people tend to start taking it all personally. 

D’Amato has always had a flair for appropriate décor, and it’s traveled to the new location intact. I suspect he and Ron Cauble of The Bone Room must swap Martha-Stewart tips, and/or shop at each others’ stores. (If not, they should.) So you’ll see tillandsias planted in little ceramic skulls, and plenty of odd bones, plastic serpents, reptile replicas, and Hallowe’eny tchotchkes strewn artfully among the plants. 

Joe got a crucial Hot Tip from D’Amato when we visited the first location, and it’s repeated in the latter’s excellent book The Savage Garden. The way to keep most carnivorous plants alive is to keep their pots standing in water-distilled water. Carnivory is an adaptation to living with a paucity of nutrients, especially nitrogen.  

The plants usually hail from bogs, fens, or swamps whose water, contrary to stereotype, is naturally quite clean. It might be dark, as in Florida’s Blackwater River, but that’s tannic acid, like the stuff that colors your cup of tea.  

It’s not very expensive to get a five-gallon jug of distilled (or “purified”) water from the delivery guy every month or so in summer; Joe’s plants do fine on rainwater in winter. What the heck, it’s not like buying live mice for your nepenthes. Not quite.  

California Carnivores 

2833 Old Gravenstein Highway, South 

Sebastopol 

(707) 824-0433 

Open Thursday-Monday 10 a.m. 4 p.m. 

http://www.californiacarnivores.com 

The Savage Garden 

Peter D’Amato, 1998 

Trade paperback $19.95 

Ten Speed Press 

ISBN 0-89815-915-6 

I’m a Sci-Fi buff from way back and one of my favorite writers was always Robert Heinlein. Robert said the following: 

“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.” 

I hope you agree because I certainly do. He even strikes pretty close to my subject here as well, that being that a human being should be able to build a wall. 

I was in a crawlspace the other day and saw an atrocity that had been done to the front wall of the building (we’d call this a cripple wall. Terrible term.) The electrician, in an effort to bring their circuits through from the huge panel that they’d installed on the front of this fourplex (a chopped up manor), had carved blithely through several uprights as well as a seismic bracing panel. There was clearly no more thought applied to the effects on the supportive framing of this two-and-a-smidge-story house than one might apply to noshing the final crumbs of a scone. It was in the way, they had a saw, end of story. 

The problem is that, if one does enough of this pruning, very bad things start to happen. Continuing the Sci Fi theme, I’ll quote Mr. Spock, who said "If I drop a hammer on a planet that has a positive gravity, I need not see the hammer fall to know that it has actually fallen.” 

Walls and floors don’t continue to stand or remain erect regardless of how much we cut into them. At some point, things begin to sag, crack or just fall down. In my world, an earthquake of unknown size is coming and I’m quite sure that it will do all sorts of fun things with framing that’s been cut into excessively, not to mention those houses that are simply unbraced or badly modified. 

There are rules about these things but before I start laying these out, and I will give some specific rules you can use before I’m done, I’d like to say that, in my very unhumble opinion, this stuff is largely obvious (thus our Heinlein quote). It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that if you start cutting into the framing of a house, something bad might happen. 

Building experts like to talk about the level of redundancy in construction and the notion that we size everything about four times as big as it needs to be. I think that these are reasonably accurate notions and am much glad of them. They allow for tolerance and the inevitable screw-ups that inhabit all vocations. But walls don’t stand up on their own and Mr. Spock might have said, “If I cut through all the cripple studs below your house, I need not observe the house to know that it has collapsed.”  

These margins we allow are also being quietly spent on fungi, termites, beetles and mistakes past or future. They should not be squandered. 

The framing of floors and walls can be cut into to a limited degree. Here are some of the current rules as expressed in the 2006 International Residential Code to give you a point of reference: (you can also skip the next four paragraphs if rules make you break out in a rash) 

You can notch into one side of a stud up to twenty five percent (about seven-eights of an inch on a two by four) and forty percent if it’s non-bearing (that means that the framing above it doesn’t really rely upon that wall for support and this is almost never true of an outside wall). 

You can also bore holes through these same studs of up to forty percent of the width on bearing and sixty percent on non-bearing walls. This is better for all sorts of reasons and is why they’re allowed to be so much larger. If we leave both edges of a stud intact, it’s far less likely to crack and fail. 

With joists, the big wooden boards that run horizontally across the building below the floor and above the ceiling, the cutting allowed is less. First, no cutting should be done along the critical bottom edge. This edge is held in tension as you and your Scottish dance troupe bound across the floor and a small cut in the bottom edge can tear right through leaving bits of kilt and small broken pieces of bagpipe everywhere. What a mess, so don’t do that. 

You can notch into the end where the lower edge of joist rests on wall but this can be no more than a quarter of the depth of the joist. You can notch a little (also one quarter) on the top of a joist but only when it’s near the ends (the third on either end, no cuts in the middle third where most of the dancing is taking place). Lastly, you can bore a hole, again in the outer thirds only, up to a third of the joist depth but not within two inches of top or bottom, Whew.  

Sorry about that. I hope didn’t lose you. If you are only left with general impressions about what’s unacceptable you are way ahead of our electrician. By the way, electricians aren’t the only ones doing this. Heating installers cut huge sections out of beams and floor joist as they run ducting and install furnaces, plumbers cut through walls and floors to run four-inch pipes and set toilets and carpenters who are only that in name, cut through whatever’s left over.  

Each of these parties has an obligation, as Mr. Heinlein might say, to know at least a little about how to build a wall or how not to unbuild one. Just because someone isn’t a carpenter or a general contractor is no excuse. If you’re not sure what you can cut, ask someone, right? This is not rocket science. It’s really pretty simple. I’d say that the vast majority of the substandard framing alterations I’ve seen in this arena would have been obvious to the average person and was tolerated solely because it was hidden below the floor or up in the attic.  

Nobody’s paid enough and everyone’s in a hurry. Carpentry gets outsourced to day-laborers (my friend, Harold calls this “slavery-light”) who can’t be held accountable, instead of being done by trained workers. 

So, here’s what I suggest for the homeowner being currently carved upon. Get a look at whatever you can see of the work being done on your house. There are certainly dangers below the house and touching wires is to be avoided but you might want to see if you can get a look at (or see some pictures of) the area being worked on. Hire the man or woman who comes well recommended and charges a little more. Experienced contractors know this stuff and they’re rarely the low bid. 

Take an interest in what day-laborers seem to be doing (drawing plans?) and consider having a consultant oversee larger bodies of work (this is just the sort of thing that they’re looking for). 

You know, it’s fine for your electrician, heating contractor or plumber to have a sense of humor but please, don’t let him (or her for that matter) be a cut-up. 

Got a question about home repairs and inspections? Send them to Matt Cantor at mgcantor@pacbell.net.

FRIDAY, MARCH 14 

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon with Dr. Tom Gold on “China Today and Tomorrow” 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.  

Healthy Living for Seniors A day of workshops for seniors, their families and caregivers. All About AC Transit, at 10 a.m., Seniors Driving Safely: DMV Resources for Older Adults at 10:45 a.m., All About East Bay Paratransit, at 12:15 p.m., Aging and Sexuality, at 2 p.m. at JFCS/East Bay’s Suse Moyal Center for Older Adult Services, 828 San Pablo Ave., Suite 104, Albany. Free, lunch provided. RSVP required 558-7800.  

Global Business and Human Rights Symposium beginning at 1 p.m. at Room 105, Boalt Hall, UC Campus. Keynote speech at 4:30 p.m. with Professor David Weissbrodt, reception to follow. Sponsored by The Berkeley Journal of International Law. RSVP to BJIL.Symposium@gmail.com 

Womansong Circle Participatory singing for women at 7:15 p.m. at the First Congregational Church of Berkeley, Small Assembly Room, 2345 Channing St. Suggested donation $15-$20. 525-7082. 

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, MARCH 15 

Chevron Direct Action and Rally: Against the Wars, Against Pollution Rally at 11 a.m. at Judge G. Carroll Park, W. Cutting Blvd & S. Garrard Blvd, Richmond. Nonviolent Direct Action at Chevron Refinery 100 Chevron Way, Richmond at 1 p.m. Free shuttle buses will leave from Richmond BART and Point Richmond, 3rd St. and Chesley Ave., at 9:30, 10:30 and 11:30 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. Cosponsored by Greenaction, West County Toxics Coalition, Amazon Watch, Richmond Progressive Alliance, Richmond Greens, and others. 

“The Fifth-Year Anniversary of the Occupation of Iraq” A Town Hall meeting with Congressmember Barbara Lee, and screening of the documentary “War Made Easy” at 9 a.m. at Grand Lake Theater, 3200 Grand Ave., Oakland. 763-0370. 

South Berkeley Community Church Annual Crab Feed from 5 to 8 p.m. at 1802 Fairview St. Tickets are $35, children aged 7-12, $15. 652-1040. 

Mini-Farmers in Tilden A farm exploration program, from 10 to 11:30 a.m. for ages 4-6 years, accompanied by an adult. We will explore the Little Farm, care for animals, do crafts and farm chores. Wear boots and dress to get dirty! Fee is $6-$8. Registration required. 1-888-EBPARKS. 

Bay Area Ridge Trail Walk Join Berkeley Path Wanderers on a 5.5 mile walk on the Bay Area Ridge Trail from Tilden Path to Huckelberry Botanic Regional Preserve, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Morris Older of Tilden-Wildcat Horsemen’s Assn. will lead this up-and-down walk with great views. Bring lunch and liquids; wear sturdy shoes and layered clothing. Meet at the Upper (overflow) parking lot by the Tilden Park Steam Trains, off Lomas Cantadas Rd. just east of Grizzly Peak Blvd. 925-254-8943. www.berkeleypaths.org 

“Gardening from the Ground Up” Learn simplified garden care starting with healthy soil, backyard composting and mulching basics, with Bay-Friendly gardeners, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Bay-Friendly Demonstration Garden, 666 Bellevue Ave., Lakeside Park, Oakland. Free. 444-7645. www.bayfriendly.org  

UC Botanical Garden’s School Garden Conference A one-day conference to discuss new curricula and activities. Cost is $25. Pre-registration required. 643-4832. manoux@berkeley.edu 

“Alternative Materials: Cob and Strawbale” A seminar on two natural building methods from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Building Education Center, 812 Page St. Cost is $85. 525-7610. 

NAACP Berkeley Branch Meeting at 1 p.m. at 2108 Russell St. 845-7416. 

Berkeley Alliance of Neighborhood Associations meets at 10 a.m. at First Presbyterian Church of Berkeley, Westminster Bldg, 2407 Dana St. 388-4850. 

Church Miniature Altars and Memory Boxes A hands-on workshop using recycled materials, writing and art, from 9:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. at Unitarian Universalist. One Lawson Rd. Cost is $45. To register call 415-505-7827. 

Fibers and Dyes Discover the history of using plants for fibers and dyes in a walk-through exhibit, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. at UC Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Dr. Free with garden admission. 643-2755, ext. 03.  

Collage de Cultures Africaines “The Journey Back is the Journey Forward” Dance and drum workshops through Sun. at the Malonga Casquelourd Center for the Arts, 1428 Alice St., Oakland. For details call 733-1077. www.DiamanoCoura.org 

California Writers Club “Badness or Madness?” with Terry Kupers, forensic psychiatrist, prison-system expert at 10 a.m. at Barnes and Noble Event Loft, Jack London Square, Oakland. 272-0120. 

“In Our Own Backyard” A celebration of the East Bay Regional Parks. An exhibition of photographs by Bob Walker opens at the Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak St., and runs through Oct. 12. Cost is $5-$8. 238-2022.  

“Creating Your Own Garden Paradise” with Aerin Moore at 10 a.m. at Magic Gardens, 729 Heinz Ave., off Seventh St. 644-2351. 

“Paper Story Dress” workshop to commemorate women who have influenced our lives, from 1 to 4 p.m. at the North Berkeley Branch Library. 981-6250. 

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, MARCH 16 

Wolf Spiders on the Morning Dew Join us as we stalk the elusive wolf spider at 10 a.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

Compass Clues Learn how to use a compass to find your way around and participate in a hidden treasure hunt at 2 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

Celebrating California’s New Cultures with music and activities for the whole family from 12:30 to 4:30 p.m. at the Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak St. Cost is $5-$8. 238-2022.  

Community Labyrinth Peace Walk at 3 p.m. at Willard Middle School, Telegraph Ave. between Derby and Stuart. Everyone welcome. Wheelchair accessible. Rain cancels. 526-7377.  

Berkeley High Jazz Club Spring Funraiser Auction from 3 to 6 p.m. at Crowden School, 1475 Rose St. 414-2236. 

Solo Sierrans Hike in Point Pinole Regional Park Meet at 3 p.m. in the parking lot. Bring binoculars for shorebirds viewing. Optional dinner after walk. 234-8949. 

Benefit for “Modesto Anarcho” the Central Valley’s journal of class struggle, at 7 p.m. at The Long Haul, 3124 Shattuck Ave. Donation $5. 

Berkeley Chess Club meets every Sun. at 7 p.m. at the Hillside School, 1581 Le Roy Ave. 843-0150. 

East Bay Atheists Berkeley Meeting to watch and then discuss Part One of “A Brief History of Disbelief” the Jonathan Miller documentary, at 1:30 p.m., Berkeley Main Library, 3rd Floor Meeting Room, 2090 Kittredge St. 222-7580. 

Tibetan Buddhism with Rosalyn White on “Healing Through Mantra” at 6 p.m. at the Tibetan Nyingma Institute, 1815 Highland Pl. 809-1000.  

MONDAY, MARCH 17 

Berkeley Green Monday: “the Food Fighters: The Politics of Food” with Chef Ann Cooper, Nutrition Services for the Berkeley Unified School District (BUSD), Martin Bourque, Ecology Center, John Selawsky, Chair Berkeley School Board, at 7:30 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Open to all. www.berkeleygreens.org 

March for Good Jobs and Clean Air Meet at 4:30 p.m. outside Oakland City Hall, near the 12th Street BART station for a march to the Port of Oakland to push the port to adopt a strong, clean trucks program. 893-7106, ext. 24. 

Berkeley School Volunteers Orientation from noon to 1 p.m. at 1835 Allston Way. 644-8833. 

Berkeley CopWatch organizational meeting at 8 p.m. at 2022 Blake St. 548-0425. 

TUESDAY, MARCH 18 

Fifth Anniversary Living Graveyard at noon at the Oakland Federal Building, 1301 Clay Street, two blocks from 12th Street BART. www.epicalc.org 

“Does Your Vote Count in California?” A community forum that examines how our electoral system represents the many voices of California with Barry Fadem, President of National Popular Vote, Kathay Feng, Executive Director of California Common Cause and Steven Hill, Director of the Political Reform Program of the New America Foundation, moderated by Richard Gonzales, National Public Radio, at 7 p.. at Oakland Museum of California, James Moore Theatre, 1000 Oak St. Reservations recommended, email chris_holbrook@itvs.org  

“The Book of Revelation” with Elaine Pagels, Prof. of Religion, Princeton Univ. at 7:30 p.m. at Wheeler Auditorium, UC Campus. Sponsored by the Townsend Center for the Humanities. 643-9670. 

National Nutrition Month with cooking demonstrations at 2:30 and 3:30 p.m., free samples and free recipes, at the Berkeley Farmers’ Market from 2 to 6 p.m. at Derby St. and Martin Luther King Jr. Way. 548-3333.  

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 Tilden Nature Area. Call for meeting place and if you need to borrow binoculars. 525-2233. 

The Berkeley Garden Club “Grafting Scions and How to Prune Your Fruit Trees” with Idell Weydemeyer of the California Rare Fruit Growers, at 1:45 p.m., at Epworth United Methodist Church, 1953 Hopkins St. 845-4482. www.berkeleygardenclub.org  

“Hiking Denali National Park” with Chris Poissnat, former Denali National Park interpretive ranger, at 7 p.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. 527-4140. 

Docent Training for Tilden Nature Area Learn to assist the naturalists in providing interpretive programs at the Little Farm and nature area gardens, from 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Fee is $35. Application required. For information call 544-3260. 

Fying Calamari Brothers A magic and comedy show for ages 3 and up at 6:30 p.m. at Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave. 524-3043.  

"Ahimsa and Knowledge” with Nik Warren at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley Buddhist Monastery, Institute for World Religions, 2304 McKinley Ave.  

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. 

Street Level Cycles Community Bike Program Come use our tools as well as receive help with performing repairs free of charge. Youth classes available. Tues., Thurs., and Sat. from 2 to 6 p.m. at at 84 Bolivar Dr., Aquatic Park. 644-2577.  

Fresh Produce Stand at San Pablo Park from 3 to 6 p.m. in the Frances Albrier Community Center. Sponsored by the Ecology Center’s Farm Fresh Choice. 848-1704. 

Berkeley Camera Club meets at 7:30 p.m., at the Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. Monthly field trips. 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 always welcome new members over 50. 845-6830. 

Sing-A-Long Group from 2 to 3 p.m. at the Albany Senior Center, 846 Masoni Ave., Albany. 524-9122. 

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 19 

Center Street Plaza Design Exposition Presentation by Walter Hood at 4:30 p.m. at Gaia Arts Center, 2120 Allston Way. Sponsored by Ecocity Builders. RSVP to 419-0850. 

The Oakland Bird Club “Breeding Bird Atlas of Santa Clara County” with Bill Bousman at 7:30 p.m. at Oakland Public Library, Rockridge Branch, 5366 College Ave., 444-0355. 

Rally and March on the Fifth Anniversary of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq at 6:30 p.m. at Alameda City Hall, Oak and Santa Clara Sts. Sponsored by the Alameda Peace Network. www.alamedapeacenetwork.org 

Peace Vigil to Mark the Fifth Anniversary of the War in Iraq at 6 p.m. at Grace Cathedral, 1100 California St., at Taylor, San Francisco. 

Berkeley Simplicity Forum “Reexamining Our Relationship with Money” at 6:30 p.m. at Claremont Library, 2940 Benvenue Ave.  

“Horns and Halos” A documentary on tangled lives of Dubbya and two others at 7:30 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St., Oakland. Donation $5. www.Humanist Hall.org 

10th Annual Alameda Community Job Fair Learn about current job openings, network with key contacts, and learn about upcoming opportunities, from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. at College of Alameda student lounge and cafeteria, F Building, 555 Ralph Appezzato Memorial Parkway, Alameda. 748-5215. 

“Problems in Life and the Buddhist Way of Dealing with Them” Lecture and discusstion with Bhante Sellawimala, a Theravada Buddhist monk at 7 p.m. at Jodo Shinshu Center, 2140 Durant Ave. Free. 809-1460. 

Cycling Lecture with Brett Horton, bicycle memorabilia collector, at 7 p.m. at Velo Sport Bicycles, 1615 University Ave., enter at 1989 California St. RSVP to 849-0437. 

Radical Movie Night: “Duck You Sucker” An exiled IRA demolition expert falls in love with a Mexican bandit, at 8:30 p.m. at the Long Haul, 3124 Shattuck Ave. 540-0751. 

Tilden Explorers An after-school nature adventure program for 5-7 year olds. We will hunt for amphibians from 3:15 to 4:15 p.m. Cost is $6-$8. Registration required. 1-888-327-2757. 

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 

Teen Chess Club from 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. at the North Branch Library, 1170 The Alameda at Hopkins. 981-6133. 

Theraputic Recreation at the Berkeley Warm Pool, Wed. at 3:30 p.m. and Sat. at 10 a.m. at the Berkeley Warm Pool, 2245 Milvia St. Cost is $4-$5. Bring a towel. 632-9369. 

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. 

THURSDAY, MARCH 20 

Forum on The West Berkeley Plan and Sustainability: Economy, Environment, & Equity with Karen Chapple, UC Associate Professor of City and Regional Planning on The Industrial Land Debate: Arguments, Assumptions, and Alternatives; Raquel Pinderhughes, PhD SFSU Professor of Urban Studies, author of The City of Berkeley’s Green Collar Jobs Report; Abby Thorne-Lyman, Senior Associate of Strategic Economics on The Case for Industrial Land: The Future for the Bay Area’s Industrial Lands; and Kate O’Hara, East Bay Alliance For A Sustainable Economy on Preserving Industrial Lands, Growing Good Jobs at 6:30 p.m. at West Berkeley Senior Center, 1900 Sixth St., corner of 6th St. & Hearst Ave. Presented by WEBAIC - West Berkeley Artisans & Industrial Companies. 549-3213. webaic.org  

Spring Equinox Gathering at 6:30 p.m. at Interim Memorial Solar Calendar, Cesar Chavez Park, Berkeley Marina. A mini-workshop on the seasons will be led by David Glaser. Dress warmly. www.solarcalendar.org 

Tilden Tots Join a nature adventure program for 3 and 4 year olds, each accompanied by an adult (grandparents welcome)! We’ll look for amphibians from 10 to 11:30 a.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. Cost is $6-$8. Registration required. 1-888-EBPARKS. 

“Against Cognitive Imperialism” A lecture by Hal Roth, Ph.D., Professor, Religious Studies and East Asian Studies, Brown Univ., at 7:30 p.m. at Chapel of the Great Commission, Pacific School of Religion, 1798 Scenic Ave. 848-9788. 

Persian New Year: Norouz with egg painting, storytelling and dancing from 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at Habitot Children’s Museum, 2065 Kittredge St. 647-1111.www.habitot.org 

LeConte Neighborhood Association meets at 7:30 p.m. at LeConte School, Russell St. entrance. karlreeh@aol.com.  

Preconception Healthcare at 7 p.m. at Elephant Pharmacy, 1607 Shattuck Ave. 549-9200. 

Teen Book Club meets to discuss urban fantasy at 4 p.m. at Claremont Branch Library, 2940 Benvenue. 981-6121. 

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. 

World of Plants Tours Thurs., Sat. and Sun. at 1:30 p.m. at the UC Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Drive. Cost is $5. 643-2755. http://botanicalgarden.berkeley.edu 

Avatar Metaphysical Toastmasters Club meets at 6:45 p.m. at Spud’s Pizza, 3290 Adeline at Alcatraz. namaste@avatar.freetoasthost.info  

CITY MEETINGS 

Council Agenda Committee meets Mon., March 17, at 2:30 p.m., at 2180 Milvia St. 981-6900. 

Berkeley Rent Stabilization Board meets Mon., March 17, at 7 p.m. in City Council Chambers. 981-7368. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/rent 

Citizens Humane Commission meets Wed., March 19, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-6601.  

Commission on Aging meets Wed., March 19, at 1:30 p.m., at the South Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5344.  

Commission on Labor meets Wed., March 19, at 6:45 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-7550.  

Disaster and Fire Safety Commission meets Wed., March 19, at 7 p.m., at the Emergency Operations Center, 997 Cedar St. 981-5502.  

Human Welfare and Community Action Commission meets Wed., March 19, at 7 p.m., at the South Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5427.  

Housing Advisory Commission meets Thurs., March 20, at 7 p.m., at the South Berkeley Senior Center. Oscar Sung, 981-5400.