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Jesse Arreguin, who will become the Berkeley City Council’s youngest member after winning the election Tuesday, celebrates his victory with his parents Humberto and Cindy Arreguin and Councilmember Kriss Worthington (left) at his campaign headquarters on Uniiversity Avenue around midnight.
by Riya Bhattacharjee
Jesse Arreguin, who will become the Berkeley City Council’s youngest member after winning the election Tuesday, celebrates his victory with his parents Humberto and Cindy Arreguin and Councilmember Kriss Worthington (left) at his campaign headquarters on Uniiversity Avenue around midnight.
 

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Citizens' Sunshine Ordinance Heads to City Council

By Riya Bhattacharjee
Tuesday November 11, 2008 - 04:40:00 PM

Berkeley Councilmember Kriss Worthington, who for the last seven years has been advocating for a strong sunshine ordinance to give citizens access to government records and meetings, will put the Berkeley Sunshine Committee's draft ordinance-crafted as an alternative to one written by the city attorney-on the agenda for the Dec. 8 City Council meeting. 

At that time, Worthington will request City Manager Phil Kamlarz to present the document to the public and city officials. The city manager's office and the city attorney would then submit comments on the citizens' draft within a month. 

Councilmembers, Worthington said, could then hold a discussion on the draft, and could vote to approve the ordinance or parts of it, and if they were to pass a “watered-down version,” the citizens' group could take theirs to voters as an initiative. 

Worthington made the announcement at a public meeting with the citizens' committee at City Hall on Monday. Both Worthington and the citizens' group working on the draft over the last few years stressed that enforcing the ordinance was their most important concern.  

“I think because the general public is served by having strong enforcement, politicians might not think it is in their best interest, because they might end up getting caught,” Worthington said. “But I am hopeful our City Council will approve a strong ordinance.” 

If the ordinance were to be put on the ballot as an initiative in the 2010 general election, the citizens' group-which is comprised of members of Berkeleyans Organizing for Library Defense (SuperBOLD), The League of Women Voters, former Mayor Shirley Dean, lawyers and community activists-would need to collect thousands of signatures. 

“We want different groups to look at it now and not before the election,” Worthington said. “If we get a good ordinance-one that is well written and financially feasible-Berkeley voters will vote for it.” 

Both Oakland and San Francisco voters approved sunshine ordinances for those cities. 

Worthington told the committee to reach out to unions, ethnic groups, activists, racial justice groups, women's groups and neighborhood organizations among others, adding that neighborhood groups especially would be really passionate about sunshine laws. 

“It will be a good thing for us to be as sunshiny as possible,” said Sherry Smith from the League of Women Voters, adding that more public meetings were needed to get the word out. 

“The good thing about consulting people is that it makes them feel like a part of it,” Worthington said. “We need to go to community groups and get their input no matter what the City Council does.” 

Gene Bernardi of SuperBOLD suggested that a charter amendment might be more appropriate since it would give more power to the sunshine committee instead of the city manager. 

A charter amendment would also require more signatures. 

Worthington said it was vital that the group get an expert to provide statistics about how much it would cost to implement different sections of the ordinance, since those who opposed it could dismiss the ordinance as being too expensive. 

“For example, in this draft they have added a community engagement process,” he said. “It's not clear how much this process, which doesn't exist now, would cost and how many times it would kick in. So we need to know how it will be financed.” 

Metzger said a powerful ordinance would save citizens money since they would be able to get information from the city without having to sue, which often costs tens of thousands of dollars in attorney fees. 

Worthington said that the city attorney's analysis would prove valuable in terms of knowing which parts of the ordinance required more work. 

One of the sunshine committee's primary goals is to avoid lawsuits by raising awareness, integrating sunshine into the public process and gradually changing the culture of government, which it plans on doing by creating a sunshine commission to monitor whether a municipal government was in violation of the ordinance. 

The citizens' draft insists that the sunshine ordinance be enforceable in court, failing which it is meaningless. 

Metzger informed the audience that currently there wasn't a single ordinance in California that had effective enforcement. 

“So again Berkeley can be the first,” he said smiling. 

Worthington said that although he hasn't discussed the citizens' draft with the other members on the council yet, he was confident that he would be able to get several of them to sponsor referring it. 

The public will be able to comment on the citizens' draft on Dec. 8 

 

To view a copy of the citizens' draft sunshine ordinance, see the Planet website.  

To view the city attorney's draft sunshine ordinance go to www. ci.berkeley.ca.us/ContentDisplay.aspx?id=17770.  

 


Berkeley Encourages Greening Historic Buildings

By Riya Bhattacharjee
Tuesday November 11, 2008 - 04:19:00 PM

At the Landmarks Preservation Commission meeting Thursday, preservationists and architects warned against stripping historic buildings off their original windows, explaining that it could take away character-defining features, and advised homeowners to instead invest in sealing problem areas, weather-stripping and making use of natural ventilation. 

Called “Greening Your Historic Building,” the hour-long session was run by Billi Romain, Berkeley’s sustainability coordinator and Tom Dufurrena, principal at Page & Turnbull. They guided citizens through the city’s Residential Energy Conservation Ordinance (RECO) and sustainability measures as part of Berkeley’s Climate Action Plan, which proposes to cut Berkeley’s greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent by 2050. 

The public review and comment period for the draft has been extended till Jan. 16 and can be viewed at www.BerkeleyClimateAction.org. 

Although Thursday’s green tip mainly revolved around how to make residential buildings air-tight, Dufurrena told the Planet after the meeting that there was more to historic preservation than what meets the eye. 

“People that are maintaining historic buildings are already playing a part in preservation,” he said. “The embodied energy already put in the building is being recouped rather than it being demolished and going to a landfill. We should maintain buildings not just as a part of our physical resource but also as a cultural resource. A lot of the older historic buildings are not as efficient in terms of insulation but there is value there.” 

Dufurrena said that homeowners could choose from either the Greenpoint principles or LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification when it was time to evaluate buildings for restoration, adding that Greenpoint was geared principally toward residences while LEED’s primary focus was on commercial properties. 

LEED, he said, was mainly targeting new buildings and upgrading systems located inside buildings. 

“It doesn’t have a lot of emphasis on historic buildings but there are some projects out there,” he said. 

The National Trust for Historic Preservation—which provides a comprehensive guide to greening historic buildings—encourages development which is environmentally, economically and socially sustainable and calls on homeowners to re-invest in older and historic communities as an important way to address climate change. 

Insulating old buildings to lessen the heat which gets lost in them is a great way to green historic buildings, Dufurrena said. 

“Originally, woodframe buildings were not built for insulation,” he said. “But a lot of historic buildings have windows which are fairly distinctive. If you take them away or change them, you change the building. Sometimes impulsive homeowners will take away the windows and replace them with double pane ones. It does not make economic sense and defers from the historic characteristic.” 

Dufurrena said that homeowners should resist this temptation and instead try to install really good seals around windows and carry out air flow tests. 

“Most people are very interested in doing that,” he said. “Whenever there’s an opportunity to improve energy performance of a building people should take advantage of it. It doesn’t have to be a formal process, people can do it on their own.” 

Neal Dessno, the city’s energy planning officer, said that the Residential Energy Conservation Ordinance, put into effect in the 1980s, required residents to carry out 10 measures—including insulating attics and getting low flow installations—to help reduce energy loss every time a building was sold or remodeled. 

Dessno said that natural gas consumption in residential buildings had gone down drastically since the law was put into place and added that city was currently working to update it in order to make it more flexible and tailor-made for individual needs. 

Landmarks Preservation Commissioner Carrie Olson said that although she appreciated the city’s efforts to encourage historic preservation, she wanted to see the Climate Action Plan reflect it in more detail. 

“I am looking forward to what must be a new draft of the Climate Action Plan,” she said Monday. “Historic preservation wasn’t presented at all in the current draft. At this point I just consider it to be chatter. It doesn’t mean anything until the city actually has something to offer. Historic preservation is extremely important. These are 50 percent of our green house gases and yet the Climate Action Plan talks more about getting people out of their cars and into buses.” 

 

For more information on Greening Historic Buildings visit: www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/ContentDisplay.aspx?id=29154 or www.preservationnation.org/issues/sustainability 

For information on RECO visit: www.cityofberkeley.info/ContentDisplay.aspx?id=16030 

To review and comment on Berkeley’s Climate Action Plan visit: www.berkeleyclimateaction.org 


A Victorious AC Transit President Sets His Sights On The Bus District’s Challenges And Problems

By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor
Tuesday November 11, 2008 - 04:18:00 PM

AC Transit Board President Chris Peeples hit the election trifecta on Tuesday, but by Friday morning, he didn’t sound in the mood for celebration. 

By a 71.6 percent-28.4 percent margin, Alameda and Contra Costa voters passed Measure VV, a two-thirds measure extending AC Transit’s existing $48 per year parcel tax for another 10 years, ensuring a continuing source of needed extra cash for the two-county public bus system.  

In Berkeley, voters decisively rejected Measure KK by a 23.04 percent-79.96 percent margin, not ensuring that AC Transit’s Bus Rapid Transit plans will go forward in the city, but at least ensuring that they won’t hit an immediate citizen roadblock.  

And finally, Peeples himself beat back a spirited challenge to his at-large AC Transit board seat by AC Transit critic Joyce Roy, winning by a 64.3 percent to 34.9 percent margin. 

“I feel pretty good,” Peeples said by telephone when asked about the electoral victories for himself and AC Transit.  

But his mind was really on events currently going on in the state capitol, particularly in regards to the state’s continuing budget problems. While the legislature passed a budget last August for fiscal year ‘08-'09, gloomy economic forecasts that have since been released have caused Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to call a special legislative session to make substantial budget revisions. In the original budget, the legislature siphoned off some $1.7 billion in public transportation monies into the general fund in order to bring the state into balance. 

“I’m a little paranoid about Sacramento and the special session and if they’re going to whack at transit funding again,” Peeples said.  

Peeples said that there are “a whole lot of ugly choices out there” to balance the state budget, but only if Republican lawmakers are successful in holding to their united front against tax increases or any other revenue generating measures. If that Republican bloc can be cracked, Peeples said he would favor outgoing State Senate President Don Perata’s call for a return to the Vehicle License Fee as a way to keep state funding for local public transportation agencies intact. The VLF became a hot political topic in the 2003 recall election against former Governor Gray Davis, and Schwarzenegger abolished it as one of his first acts as governor. 

The VLF “was a pretty fair and progressive tax,” Peeples said. “The more expensive your vehicle, the more you had to pay. Readopting it would put $6 billion back into the state budget.” 

Asked if further state transportation budget cuts would trigger an AC Transit fare increase—something which was temporarily held off by the Measure VV campaign—-Peeples said, “I don’t know,” but added “I tend to think we won’t have one in the coming fiscal year.” The AC Transit board president said that state cuts would “probably mean service cuts” in the bus district, however. 

 

Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) 

The AC Transit Board President said he was “pleased” with the defeat of Measure KK, the Berkeley citizen initiative that would have required a ballot measure every time the City of Berkeley proposed to close a city street lane for the use of public transit. AC Transit is proposing just such a street lane set-aside, of Telegraph Avenue from the Oakland border to UC Berkeley, as part of its proposed Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) line from downtown San Leandro to downtown Berkeley. AC Transit is counting on BRT as a major part of its plans to revive its waning fortunes. 

“Regardless of its effect on BRT, KK was just bad government,” Peeples said. “Berkeley is a small city, but it’s not a 5,000-person New England village where you can hold quarterly town meetings to set town policy. Leaving the dedication of street lanes to a vote of the people was just crazy.” 

But even if Measure KK had passed, making it unlikely that the Berkeley portion of BRT could have used dedicated lanes, Peeples said, “I don’t think that would have killed BRT at all.”  

He called the proposed high-speed route a “combination of two major AC Transit routes” (the old International Boulevard-E. 14th Street lines and the Telegraph Avenue lines linking Berkeley and San Leandro to downtown Oakland) that will benefit from whatever form of BRT eventually comes out of the complicated planning process. 

Peeples' major concern for BRT, now that Measure KK has been defeated, is how to bridge the gap between the Draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIR), the document that began the public planning process, and the Environmental Impact Report (EIR) that will end it. 

At many public meetings in recent months, BRT critics have attacked some of the plans and proposals outlined in the DEIR, but Peeples said that AC Transit planners have made significant alterations and mitigations in response to public input since the DEIR was originally published. The problem of public perception about BRT, he said, is that those changes are not reflected in any public document. Peeples estimated that the final EIR is not due to be released for another nine months or a year. 

“A second draft EIR is a possibility, but there may be legal problems associated with that,” Peeples said. “But I’ve been urging (AC Transit) staff to come out with some sort of interim document so that the public can see the amount of work that’s been done.” 

Another alternative, Peeples said, might be to release AC Transit’s BRT changes and additions through working papers associated with the public process now going on in the three proposed BRT cities—Berkeley, Oakland, and San Leandro. City councils in each of these cities will be coming up with preferred local alternatives to AC Transit’s BRT plan, a process which will generate public documents in each of the cities. When the public process in each of the three cities is completed, AC Transit will then take the individual city's preferred local alternatives and try to work them into the finished BRT proposal. 

In the meantime, Peeples said that “at some point” while the final EIR is being worked on, the AC Transit board will hold a public workshop on BRT to include reports and documents from “our staff, our consultants, and the staff of the three affected cities” in order to bring both the AC Transit board and the public up to speed on the progress being made on the project. 

 

Defeated but Not Silenced: Roy Speaks Out 

Although she lost decisively to Chris Peeples in the at-large AC Transit race in last week’s election, retired Oakland architect and AC Transit rider activist Joyce Roy showed no signs of slowing down her criticisms of the bus agency in general or Peeples in particular. Following the election, Roy released the following email to supporters:  

“I lost by 196,506 to 107,341, about 65 percent to 35 percent,” she said. “It shows one does not need to do anything to serve bus riders and operators to be elected again and again to the board. In fact, you can promote a disservice to them by promoting a bus that they hate. All you need to do is belong to every political club ever invented with members that know nothing about what is going on at AC Transit and don’t ride buses. And schmooze every elected official who likewise don’t ride buses or know anything about AC Transit, except what AC Transit management and Chris tells them. Both management and Chris believe saying it is so makes it so, like ‘the Van Hools are the best bus in the world’ and their hydrogen fuel cell program which consists of three Van Hool buses which break down frequently, is ‘the best in the world.’” 

She continued: “I did not enter this race because I wanted to be an elected official and sit on a podium. I want to change AC Transit from an agency which serves the needs a foreign bus manufacturer and, instead, serves the needs of its bus riders and operators. Serving on the board seemed to be an effective way to do that especially by removing the biggest obstacle to that change. But I am not going to quit in my effort to change AC Transit. I have more arrows in my quiver, but I will need to call on you to help. I may have lost the battle but I haven’t lost the war.” 


City Calls Gaia Arts Center Public Nuisance After Rowdy Frat Party

By Riya Bhattacharjee
Saturday November 08, 2008 - 02:08:00 PM

An out-of-control party at the Gaia Arts Center in downtown Berkeley two weeks ago prompted Berkeley Police to label the venue as a public nuisance, leaving its owners susceptible to a fine from the city if a similar incident occurs there in the next four months, authorities said Thursday. 

Sgt. Mary Kusmiss of the Berkeley Police Department (BPD) said that around 11:20 p.m. on Oct. 25, BPD supervisor Sgt. Katherine Smith noticed a large crowd spilling out on the sidewalk of the 2000 block of Allston Way, trying its best to get into a party at the arts center, located inside the Gaia Building at 2010 Allston Way. 

Gaia’s owners Equity Residential—headed by real estate magnate and Tribune Co. proprietor Samuel Zell—have leased the Gaia Arts Center to Berkeley developer Patrick Kennedy, who built the Gaia Building and sold it to Equity last year. 

Calls to Kennedy at his firm Panoramic Interests and requests for comment made to Equity Residential through its attorney Allen Matkins were not returned. 

The Gaia Building has had a long and often controversial history with the City of Berkeley, with at least three Berkeley residents going as far as to sue the city for failing to impose the cultural use mandates listed in its use permit. 

Anna de Leon, who owns Anna’s Jazz Island, another first floor tenant in the building, has repeatedly complained to the city that the Gaia Arts Center was violating its permit by renting space out to churches, weddings and private parties. 

A recent Zoning Adjustments Board meeting tried to determine whether or not the building was in violation of the condition on its original use permit which required a certain percentage of cultural activities to take place in the space in return for allowing two extra stories above what area zoning ordinarily allows. The board voted to give Equity Residential six months to hire a marketing firm to promote the center for cultural events.  

At this particular Saturday-night party, Sgt. Smith learned from some of the young “predominantly college-age” boys and girls lining up outside that the event had been advertised as an after-Cal football game party hosted by Kappa Alpha Psi, a UC Berkeley black fraternity, which has chapters worldwide. The Cal Bears won the game against UCLA that Saturday. 

After speaking with Tyler Null, a Gaia Arts Center employee, inside the Gaia Building, Smith learned that the fraternity had rented the center’s theater and mezzanine level for the party—which was not serving any food or alcohol—and was charging a $2O entry fee per person. 

On Monday, Gerald Lee, the undergraduate advisor for the UC Berkeley student chapter of Kappa Alpha Psi, said that although its members had been present at the party, the event had not been sanctioned or endorsed by the fraternity. Lee said that he did not have any information about who had hosted the party. 

Kusmiss said that the total capacity of the theater and mezzanine together was 275, and that the fraternity had also hired American Liberty, a private security company, to manage the event. 

“It’s a very common practice for fraternities to hire private security guards,” she said. “With the ability to text these days word gets out very quickly. It’s a good measure to take because of the capacity issue.” 

Although the private guards were doing their best to control the crowd, Kusmiss said, several young men tried to crash the party by climbing through the windows of Anna’s Jazz Island, frightening the bar’s patrons. 

Calls to de Leon Friday were not returned. Her account of events appeared in the Planet's Public Eye column two weeks ago. 

Kusmiss said that a DJ was spinning loud music at the party, causing several neighbors to complain to the police. 

Smith also called for additional officers to control the raucous crowd outside the Gaia Building. 

“The people were yelling and making a lot of noise outside and they were also blocking traffic on Allston Way, causing a safety hazard,” Kusmiss said. “With the help of the private security guards BPD officers tried to move the crowd out of the area telling them that the party was filled to capacity and that they needed to go home. Once they heard the news, some of the young people became unruly and started throwing plastic bottles at the officers.” 

Kusmiss said that although no one was injured, the incident led to 17 Berkeley police officers being dispatched to the area around 11:43 p.m. and Smith issuing a public nuisance notice to the property, also called a second response ordinance notification—a law passed by the Berkeley City Council several years ago to address community concerns around loud parties, especially those taking place in North and South Campus. 

The notice warns that if the police were called to look into a similar disturbance at the Gaia Arts Center within the next 120 days of its issuance, the responsible parties would be fined by the City of Berkeley. 

“The event was violating the city’s noise ordinance by disturbing the peace after 10 p.m.,” Kusmiss said. “The people were yelling and rolling out on the streets and posing a threat to public safety. It created a significant impact. There were officers on the scene till a quarter to one. Officers were taken away from patrolling other parts of the city they are responsible for.” 

Kusmiss added that Berkeley Police had not had any problems from either Kappa Alpha Psi members—which she described as a highly reputable fraternity—or the Gaia Arts Center in the recent past. 

“BPD officers had a very fruitful meeting with the Gaia Arts Centers’ employees who were very concerned about the public nuisance posting,” she said. “They came to an agreement about renting out the spaces and making sure the property was properly managed.” 

Calls to Kappa Alpha Psi’s Berkeley Alumni Chapter in Oakland and Dr. Grahaeme A. Hesp, director of fraternity and sorority life at UC Berkeley, were not returned. 

 

 

 

 

 

 


More Journalists Lose Jobs At BANG’s East Bay Papers

By Richard Brenneman
Saturday November 08, 2008 - 02:07:00 PM

California’s leading newspaper publisher, Dean Singleton’s MediaNews, is shedding eight more jobs in the East Bay. 

BANG-EB, short for Bay Area News Group-East Bay, was created out of the Oakland Tribune, Contra Costa Times, Fremont Argus and other newspapers assembled by the media mogul and allowed him, briefly, to bust the Media Workers Guild by adding in the staff of the non-union Times to the union shops in Oakland and Fremont. 

The guild responded with an organizing drive that reinstated the union shops, adding the Times staff as a bonus. 

But the union’s efforts haven’t stopped the drastic downsizing that continued with Thursday’s announcement. 

In an e-mail to union colleagues, guild unit chair Sara Steffens notified them that still more newsroom positions were on the block. Steffens herself was the subject of one of the earlier rounds of downsizing. 

“In a note sent to the Guild office this afternoon, Human Resources director Laurie Fox said the company planned to cut eight jobs from our bargaining unit, effective Nov. 14,” Steffens reported. “They did not provide any details about which employees, departments or newsrooms may be affected by the proposed cuts.” 

The local currently represents 200 staffers in the East Bay papers. 

Steffens said more cuts will come from non-union positions as well. 

Previous layoffs had reduced the chain’s pool of journalist by 100 positions to a current level of about 200. 

“Members of our bargaining team will meet with the company first thing Monday morning to begin negotiations,” Steffens said in her email. “We intend to do everything we can to lessen the impact of this blow on our unit members and our already understaffed newsrooms.” 

The layoffs have hit hard, cutting back on the ability of the papers to cover local news. At just one paper, the Argus, the reporting staff is down by half and the editorial staff by two-thirds. 

Rumors of the coming layoffs had circulated through the chain’s newsrooms shortly before the election. 

Singleton owns most of the newsrooms in both the Bay Area and the Los Angeles basin, boasting a combined circulation greater than those of the combined circulations of the Tribune Company’s Los Angeles Times and Hearst’s San Francisco Chronicle. 


Angry Neighbors Voice Concerns About Cell Phone Towers

By Richard Brenneman
Saturday November 08, 2008 - 02:05:00 PM

Neighbors worried about cell phone antenna radiation and angry at city officials who have allowed it in their neighborhoods poured out their frustrations at the Berkeley Planning Commission meeting on Wednesday night. 

Planning commissioners listened, questioned, then decided to hold off on any decision for another two weeks—in part because of a recent federal appellate court ruling. 

But whatever the commission decides, Deputy Planning Director Wendy Cosin said she is obliged to make a recommendation to the City Council in January. 

That deadline was imposed in the settlement of a lawsuit brought against the city 15 months ago by Verizon Wireless, which obligated the city to consider—but not adopt—amendments to the existing ordinance by mid-January. 

And while angry neighbors around two antenna concentrations along Shattuck Avenue in the Gourmet Ghetto on the Northside and in South Berkeley are following developments with fierce concentration, a city councilmember and Berkeley's most prominent local developer are awaiting grilling under oath. 

The federal Telecommunications Act of 1996 bars states and localities from enacting laws which prohibit the provision of telecommunications services, including cell phones, so the question becomes just what limits a local government can apply. 

Wireless carriers, including Sprint and T-Mobile, are pressing the city to adopt regulations proposed before a ruling by the Ninth Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals on Sept. 11, which gave municipalities greater control over the location of cell antennas. 

Nick Selby, outside counsel for Sprint Nextel, urged planning commissioners to adopt the regulations drawn up before the court’s ruling in a lower court case brought by Sprint and Pacific Bell Wireless against San Diego County. “If I were a betting person, I would not be surprised if the decision” in the Ninth Circuit were appealed, he added. 

If commissioners don’t make new recommendations, Cosin told them, she’ll give the City Council the earlier version of the revisions they had approved before the recent court ruling gave them—at least for now—more discretion over placement. 

Commissioners Gene Poschman and Patty Dacey made it clear early in the meeting that they favored regulations that tightened control on the carriers and restored the discretion of the Zoning Adjustments Board (ZAB) to deny permits through findings of detriment. 

“We had general discretionary findings” in earlier regulations, Poschman told Selby, “but we took it out because of the district court decision” which was later reversed by the higher court, “and you were very happy and didn’t tell us to wait until the Ninth Circuit” had acted on the appeal.  

“But now you want us to make do with the original language that was reversed” in the San Diego case, said Dacey. 

Findings questioned 

Selby said that providing for a finding that a permit application can be denied because it is detrimental to the general welfare—one of the grounds cited in the original regulations developed by the Planning Commission —“is such a formless, standardless concept that the people behind me”— referring to the members of the public who had come to push for stronger regulations—“would say no cell site should be approved.” 

But Poschman responded that in the 16 years he had served on ZAB before coming over to the Planning Commission, “we never made a general finding about detriment to general welfare.” In each case, he said, specific grounds were cited in the facts and findings used to deny a permit, “and never once about general welfare.” 

The Ninth Circuit decision gives jurisdictions more power to regulate antenna placement in particular, which critics have hailed because the previous interpretations of federal law gave local jurisdictions little power to demand companies spread out rather than concentrate their antennas so long as the regulations don’t create an outright ban that would deny service to subscribers. 

None of the speakers who weren’t there on the payroll of Ma Bell’s progeny had anything favorable to say about the antenna farms sprouting in their neighborhoods. 

Harvey Sherback, a neighbor of the French Hotel, the northern Shattuck Avenue cell tower site of choice for one carrier, gave commissioners petitions signed by 65 merchants in the Gourmet Ghetto between Cedar and Rose streets, with world renowned restaurant proprietor Alice Waters among them. 

“They’re asking for this not to happen” he said. 

Speaking on the day after the election, he added, “Here comes the Obama era. In the Bush era, the telecoms were basically allowed to write their own legislation. That’s why they’re in such a rush because their backs are up against the wall ... We’re asking you, ‘Don’t put this on a fast track just because of men in suits ... you don’t have to be intimidated by them.” 

Sherback and others also complained they hadn’t been notified of the commission’s earlier meetings on the regulations Planning Commissioner David Stoloff, who has an office on Rose, initially suggested a proposal later adopted unanimously: to continue the hearing for a second session in two weeks to allow critics time to review the proposed revisions and Cosin’s staff report. These documents are available online here: http://www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/WorkArea/linkit.aspx?LinkIdentifier=id&ItemID=29150 

Strong words 

Laurie Baumgarten, who lives within 500 feet of the UC Storage building, is one of a group of neighbors who are suing the city over placement of antennas on that building. 

After a protracted battle before ZAB and an appeal to the city council, councilmembers eventually agreed to the placement of 11 antennas on the building, their presence marked by thick black cables that scale the building’s eastern wall. 

“This is not a public hearing,” Baumgarten told commissioners. “This is a joke.”  

Baumgarten said that in the three years she had been involved in fighting the placements, she had never received notice of official meetings on the ordinance. But Cosin said Baumgarten’s spouse, Michael Barglow, had been notified. 

But other neighbors said they hadn’t been notified either, and in the end a signup sheet was passed through the audience to collect addresses and emails for those who wished to be notified of upcoming sessions. 

Neither version of the ordinance—the draft prepared earlier before the Ninth Circuit ruling and the staff revisions included in the report—are likely to please critics, whose real fears are of possible impacts arising from living and working near high energy sources of electromagnetic radiation. 

Cell companies contend that even when clustered together, the towers pose no dangers to nearby residents. Neighbors charge that the current U.S. standards allow far more radiation than permitted in most European countries. 

Given that the Berkeley police called out extra manpower to handle the council session where the UC Storage antennas were approved, and the strong fears about the French Hotel placements, the Nov. 19 Planning Commission could prove interesting. 

Meanwhile, the lawsuit BNAFU—the Berkeley Neighborhood Antenna-Free Union—filed challenging the UC Storage placements continues, with one councilmember already deposed and more questions in the offing. 

 


BUSD Threatened By Mid-Year Budget Cuts

By Riya Bhattacharjee
Friday November 07, 2008 - 11:17:00 AM

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's proposal to make additional state education budget cuts to stimulate California's flagging economy set off alarm bells for school districts, many of which had been fearful of mid-year reductions when the governor released a delayed state budget in September. 

At a special legislative session Thursday morning, the governor announced an action plan to get the state budget back on track, calling for $4.5 billion in budget cuts-including $2.5 billion in Prop. 98 funding-and $4.4 billion in new revenue to address the state's $11.2 billion budget deficit. 

Prop. 98 is a voter-approved statute that establishes a minimum level of funding for California schools.  

The proposal, which district officials said the governor wanted the legislature to act upon immediately, would leave the Berkeley Unified School District with a loss of $2.8 million, taking away a 0.68 percent anticipated increase in cost of living. 

It would also reduce K-12 revenue limits by another $1.7 billion, which translates to a total of $350,000-$300 for every student attending school daily. 

Traditionally, mid-year reductions have been very difficult for school districts to make, some members of the Berkeley Board of Education said, since schools have to cut into their mid year reserves and look at ways of tightening spending. 

“It's really impossible to do mid-year cuts because everyone is under a contract,” said district Superintendent Bill Huyett in a telephone interview from Pennsylvania, where he is on vacation. 

“What school districts will end up doing is going broke. It's an impossible thing for school districts to do. I think the governor will find that out when he goes to the legislature. Some other solution needs to be there.” 

The Berkeley Unified School District already took a $2.5 million cut this year but was able to retain all its teachers, who at one point were facing layoffs. 

Javetta Robinson, the district's deputy superintendent of business services, said the proposal meant a substantial cut for Berkeley Unified, and eliminated a big chunk from the general fund. 

“Unfortunately because we are already in the middle of the year it will be very difficult,” she said, adding that the superintendent would have to summon his Budget Advisory Committee once again to figure out the best way to handle the cuts. 

School board Vice President Nancy Riddle said that structurally mid-year cuts were very tough for school districts. 

“We have been watching this because we knew it would be hard to react to mid-year cuts,” she said. “We are really worried, but at least in his remarks the governor is admitting that the state cannot cut its way through this situation, that revenues have to be created also. We will see what that looks like.” 

The governor called for a 1.5 cent increase in sales tax, which would last for three years and raise $3.5 billion in the current year and also proposed an oil severance tax worth $530 million. 

Riddle added that the governor's proposed cuts in higher education also made it a challenge for parents whose children were about to enroll in college since it meant less financial aid for them. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


East Bay Election Results

Friday November 07, 2008 - 11:30:00 AM

Berkeley  

Mayor 

• Tom Bates 25,432 61.56 percent  

• Shirley Dean 14,656 35.47 percent 

• Write-in 1,226 2.97 percent  

 

City Council, District 2 

• Darryl Moore 3,227 81.84 percent  

• Jon Crowder 669 16.97 percent  

• Write-in 47 1.19 percent  

 

City Council, District 3 

• Max Anderson 3,377 96.16 percent  

• Write-in 135 3.84 percent 

 

City Council, District 4 

• Jesse Arreguin 2,250 49.47 percent  

• Terry Doran 1,642 36.10 percent 

• Asa Dodsworth 277 6.09 percent  

• L A Wood 267 5.87 percent  

• N'Dji “Jay” Jockin 85 1.87 percent  

• Write-in 27 0.59 percent  

 

City Council, District 5 

• Laurie Capitelli 3,199 52.88 percent  

• Sophie Hahn 2.841 46.96 percent  

• Write-in 10 0.17 percent  

 

City Council , District 6  

• Susan Wengraf 3,955 76.56 percent  

• Phoebe Anne Sorgen 1,186 22.96 percent  

• Write-in 25 0.48 percent  

 

Rent Stabilization Board Commissioners 

(Top five win seats) 

• Nicole Drake 18,077 18.16 percent  

• Igor Tregub 17,968 18.05 percent  

• Judy E. Shelton 17,480 17.56 percent  

• Jack Harrison 15,670 15.74 percent  

• Jesse Townley 13,264 13.33 percent  

• Clydis Ruth Rogers 10,874 10.92 percent  

• Taylor Kelly 5,642 5.67 percent  

• Write-in 563 0.57 percent  

 

Berkeley School Directors  

• Beatriz Leyva-cutler 19,366 37.15 percent  

• John T. Selawsky 16,069 30.82 percent  

• Priscilla Myrick 9,882 18.96 percent  

• Toya L. Groves 6,619 12.70 percent  

• Write-in 194 0.37 percent  

 

Berkeley Measures  

Measure FF 

Needed 2/3 majority Yes votes t• pass 

• Bonds Yes 27,815 67.71 percent  

• Bonds NO 13,263 32.29 percent  

 

Measure GG 

Needed 2/3 majority Yes votes t• pass 

• Yes 29,805 71.69 percent  

• NO 11,769 28.31 percent  

 

Measure HH 

• Yes 30,158 76.93 percent  

• NO 9,043 23.07 percent 

 

Measure II 

• Yes 28,742 77.90 percent  

• NO 8,155 22.10 percent 

 

Measure JJ  

• Yes 25,211 62.30 percent  

• NO 15,257 37.70 percent 

 

Measure KK 

• NO 29,991 76.52 percent  

• Yes 9,201 23.4 percent 

 

Measure LL  

• NO 20,940 56.66 percent  

• Yes 16,015 43.34 percent 

 

Oakland  

City Council, At-Large 

• Rebecca Kaplan 61,431 61.95 percent  

• Kerry Hamill 36,845 37.16 percent  

• Write-in 889 0.90 percent  

 

Measure NN 

Needed 2/3 majority Yes votes t• pass 

• Yes 59,933 54.95 percent  

• NO 49,145 45.05 percent  

 

Measure OO 

• Yes 57,024 52.99 percent  

• NO 50,587 47.01 percent  

 

Albany  

City Council (top three win seats) 

• Peggy Thomsen 2,968 20.38 percent  

• Farid Javandel 2,557 17.55 percent  

• Robert Lieber 2,446 16.79 percent  

• Nick Pilch 2,278 15.64 percent  

• Le• Panian 2,187 15.01 percent  

• Ellen Toomey 2,107 14.47 percent  

• Write-in 23 0.16 percent  

 

El Cerrito  

City Council (Top three win seats)  

• Bill Jones (I) 4,553 24.23 percent 

• Greg Lyman 4,364 23.22 percent 

• Ann Cheng 4,852 25.82 percent 

• David Boisvert 2,477 13.18percent 

• Andrew W. Ting 2,514 13.38 percent 

• Write-in 33 0.18percent 

 

Richmond  

City Council (Top three win seats)  

• Jeff Ritterman 9,987 16.18 percent 

• Nathaniel 'Nat' Bates 9,556 15.48 percent 

• Tom Butt (I) 9,428 15.28 percent 

• Jovanka D. Beckles 9,002 14.59 percent 

• John E. Marquez (I) 7,929 12.85 percent 

• Courtland 'Corky' Booze 6,138 9.95 percent 

• Harpreet S. Sandhu (I) 4,665 7.56 percent 

• Rock Brown 2,156 3.49 percent 

• Chris Tallerico 1,491 2.42 percent 

• Navdeep K. Garcha 1,243 2.01 percent 

• Write-in 124 0.20 percent 

 

Alameda County  

East Bay Regional Park District Director, Ward 1 

(Alameda County)  

• Norman La Force 21,699 50.32 percent  

• Whitney Dotson 21,052 48.82 percent  

• Write-in 372 0.86 percent 

 

East Bay Regional Park Director, Ward 1 

(CoCo County)  

• Norman La Force 15,271 35.80 percent 

• Whitney Dotson 27,101 63.53 percent 

• Write-in 287 0.67 percent 

 

Measure WW-East Bay Regional Park District 

Needed 2/3 majority Yes votes t• pass 

• Bonds Yes 268,688 71.70 percent 

• Bonds NO 106,073 28.30 percent 

 

State Senator, 9th District (Alameda County)  

• Loni Hancock 183,253 76.59 percent  

• Claudia Bermúdez 37,376 15.62 percent  

• Marsha Feinland 18,075 7.55 percent  

• Write-in 556 0.23 percent  

 

State Senator, 9th District (CoCo County) 

• Loni Hancock (Dem) 16,616 81.74 percent  

• Claudia Bermudez (Rep) 2,352 11.57 percent 

• Marsha Feinland (Pfr) 1,299 6.39 percent  

• Write-in 61 0.30 percent  

 

State Assembly, 14th District (Alameda County) 

• Nancy Skinner 57,490 98.77 percent  

• Write-in 718 1.23 percent  

 

State Assembly, 14th District (CoCo County) 

• Nancy Skinner (Dem) 67,896 97.04 percent 

• Write-in 2,073 2.96 percent 

 

Source: Alameda and Contra Costa Registrar of Voters, all precincts reporting. For complete and updated results, see www.acgov.org/rov/ 


Bates Re-Elected, Arreguin Wins District 4, Wengraf Replaces Olds, Capitelli Retains Seat

By Richard Brenneman and Riya Bhattacharjee
Thursday November 06, 2008 - 09:41:00 AM
Jesse Arreguin, who will become the Berkeley City Council’s youngest member after winning the election Tuesday, celebrates his victory with his parents Humberto and Cindy Arreguin and Councilmember Kriss Worthington (left) at his campaign headquarters on Uniiversity Avenue around midnight.
by Riya Bhattacharjee
Jesse Arreguin, who will become the Berkeley City Council’s youngest member after winning the election Tuesday, celebrates his victory with his parents Humberto and Cindy Arreguin and Councilmember Kriss Worthington (left) at his campaign headquarters on Uniiversity Avenue around midnight.

Mayor Tom Bates handily won a third term, while two new faces will join the Berkeley City Council, Jesse Arreguin and Susan Wengraf. 

Bates defeated former Mayor Shirley Dean by 25,432 votes to 14,656, with 1,226 write-in votes in a race with three candidates asking voters to pen in their names. 

The mayor’s 61.5 percent compared with the 62.8 percent margin he compiled two years ago. 

Jesse Arreguin, a city housing commissioner and an aide to Councilmember Kriss Worthington, won the four-candidate battle to replace Dona Spring, who died earlier this year. 

Arreguin, with 2,250 votes, won 49.5 percent of the total, while Terry Doran, a former school board member and current member of the Zoning Adjustments Board, came in second with 1,642 votes, or 36.1 percent. Three other candidates split most of the remainder of the vote. 

At 24, he becomes the council’s youngest member and its first-ever Hispanic. 

The most hotly contested race pitted incumbent Councilmember Laurie Capitelli against challenger Sophie Hahn, with Capitelli winning by 3,199 votes, or 52.7 percent, compared to Hahn’s 47 percent, or 2,841 ballots. Only 10 write-ins were cast in the District 5 race. 

Susan Wengraf, aide to and designated successor of retiring District 6 Councilmember Betty Olds, easily defeated challenger Phoebe Anne Sorgen, capturing 3,995 votes to Sorgen’s 1,186—a margin of 77 to 23 percent. 

District 2 incumbent Darryl Moore defeated challenger Jon Crowder, capturing 81.8 percent of the votes compared to Crowder’s 17 percent (3,227 to 669). The remaining 47 votes were write-ins. 

Neither Moore nor District 3 incumbent Max Anderson bothered to form campaign committees or raise money. No one even bothered to file against Anderson, who captured 96.2 percent of the vote of 93,337 ballots, with the remaining 135 votes going to write-in candidates. 

The District 4 race to fill the remaining two years of the late Dona Spring’s term pitted at least three candidates with similar views on many issues against one candidate heavily backed by the majority of the current council, the chamber of commerce and the development community. 

Dona Spring had faced a similar challenge two years ago in what would prove her final run for office. Raudel Wilson managed to win only 28 percent of the vote against the highly popular incumbent in that race. 

Like Spring, Arreguin is a natural ally for Councilmember Kriss Worthington, whom he has served as an aide in addition to holding a variety of posts on city boards and commissions. Spring and Worthington often comprised the only two dissenting votes on a variety of issues. 

A last-minute infusion of developer dollars didn’t give Doran the margin he needed. 

The district represents downtown Berkeley, currently the subject of a new area plan which will go to the City Council in the coming months, with a deadline for final approval before the end of May. Many of Arreguin’s supporters had served with him on the Downtown Area Planning Committee which passed the first version of the plan. 

On the planning commission, newly elected Councilmember Susan Wengraf has generally sided with a pro-development majority, opposed by a minority that includes Spring appointee and Arreguin ally Gene Poschman. 

 

Jesse Arreguin 

Around 11 p.m., when Arreguin had solidified his lead over Doran by 400 votes, a string of supporters stopped by his campaign headquarters at 2040 University Ave., a space he had shared with school board President John Selawsky—who was also re-elected Tuesday night—over the last couple of months. 

“Now that the results are in, it looks like we pretty much won the election,” Arreguin said smiling. “I am just amazed, but we really did an incredible job. It’s a victory for everyone in the district. It’s part of the entire movement for change. We made history tonight with the presidential elections, and I am happy to be a part of it.” 

Arreguin said he looked forward to taking on a more community-based approach to improving the downtown, create green buildings and affordable housing and make the city more safe. 

Running on what he and his supporters called a “grassroots level campaign,” Arreguin was able to cut across the age barrier, which several City Council candidates have tried to do before but failed. 

“Jesse has volunteered thousands of hours to the people of Berkeley and people have paid him back by overwhelmingly electing him today,” said Councilmember Kriss Worthington, who stopped by the campaign office. “It’s a strong victory of grassroots activists. The insider developer mentality said he is not supposed to win, but the activists supported him. Once again, the activists are telling the politicians to listen to them.” 

Arreguin has been the chair of the Housing Advisory Commission and the Berkeley rent board and has also served on the city’s Zoning Adjustments Board. 

“He is extremely knowledgeable about affordable housing and environmental issues,” Worthington said. “I expect we will be competing to see who can appoint the greatest diversity [of commissioners].” 

Spring’s aide Nancy Holland said she was delighted with Arreguin’s victory. 

“He’s the right person for the job,” she said. “I am very pleased for Dona, and you can always trust the voters to make the right choice.” 

Zoning commissioner Sara Shumer, who was Arreguin’s campaign treasurer, said that although the Arreguin campaign had raised enough money to send out mailers to voters, most of the work had been carried out through volunteers, who put in hundreds of hours to make phone calls and knock on people’s doors urging them to vote. 

“Jesse himself walked the whole district meeting people,” she said. “Every time he talked with someone, he made a good impression. Someone told me, ‘I don’t know much about city politics, but I am going to vote for Jesse because he talked with me.” 

Arreguin’s mother Cindy stood watching as people congratulated her son. 

“I am just very proud,” she said. “He only had a short time. He got in the race in August, but he was determined to knock on every door.” 

 

Common Ground  

Wengraf and Capitelli celebrated their victories in a joint campaign headquarters on Solano Avenue, while Bates and Doran supporters gathered at 1941 University Ave., a block down from the headquarters where Arreguin and school board member John Selawsky had run their campaigns. 

Volunteers at both sites gathered to watch President-elect Barack Obama make his victory speech, and tears were visible in many eyes at both locales. 

Obama’s victory proved the one thing that all sides could celebrate, whatever their differences. 

While none of the council race outcomes is likely to change, a representative of the Alameda County Registrar of Voters reported early Thursday afternoon that at least 120,000 ballots remain to be counted—the vote-by-mail returns and provisional ballots turned in Tuesday. 

Mail-in ballots generally tend to be more conservative than election day votes at polling places.


Preservationists Defeat Council-Backed Landmarks Ordinance

By Richard Brenneman
Thursday November 06, 2008 - 09:45:00 AM

Berkeley’s battle of the buildings took another twist Tuesday, when Berkeley voters spurned the City Council’s changes to the city’s Landmarks Preservation Ordinance (LPO). 

According to the Alameda County Registrar of Voters office, Measure LL went down to defeat by a 57-43 margin, with 20,940 voting no and 16,015 in support. 

That leaves the ordinance in place, despite more than two years of efforts by Mayor Tom Bates and his allies on the council to effect changes that critics say would weaken support for maintaining the city’s historic buildings. 

After preservationists failed two years ago to win majority voter support for their initiative for their own new LPO in place of the council revisions, they took to the streets again to gather enough signatures to put the council’s version to the test at the ballot box. 

Turning defeat of Measure J in their first campaign into victory in the second required a great deal of effort, said Laurie Bright, one of the organizers of the campaign. 

Supporters of the old LPO collected enough signatures to call a referendum on the new ordinance, blocking its implementation until voters could have the final say. Instead of calling a special election, the council voted to delay the vote until Tuesday. 

One of the keys to victory, Bright said, may have been a mass mailing that opponents mailed out to coincide with the arrival of absentee ballots, while LL supporters sent out their mailing late in the campaign. 

Coalition for a Better Berkeley, sponsored by the Berkeley Chamber of Commerce, is the formal name of the major group that stepped forward to support LL, as well as the candidacy of Terry Doran, who was seeking election to the downtown seat on the City Council. 

While the PAC lost on both counts, Ted Garrett, the chamber’s CEO, is taking the losses philosophically. 

“After yesterday, today is a very good day to be an American,” he said, calling the race to elect Barack Obama “the most significant election in my lifetime.” 

The election was also Garrett’s first in Berkeley, he said, “and it helped crystallize my understanding of some of the issues around LL and preservation. The question now is how do we do this so everybody wins.” 

While the chamber may disagree with Arreguin on issues like downtown building heights, Garrett says he hopes the chamber will be able to work together with the new councilmember for the benefit of the business community and the city. 

Lesley Emmington, a former Landmarks Preservation Commissioner and activist with the Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association (BAHA), said the outcome of the vote “is so very nice for the city of Berkeley. It was a hard-fought little struggle, and ultimately the victory was the result of a small group of dedicated people.” 

The hardest part, she said, was getting the referendum on the ballot last December, gathering signatures in very cold weather and while many Berkeley residents were out of town for the holidays. 

“I think this will help the City Council understand two things,” said Steve Finacom, a member of the BAHA board. “First, that historic preservation has deep support in Berkeley, and second, that preservation is a progressive policy and an essential element in building healthy, sustainable communities.” 

Asked what the vote meant for his department, Dan Marks, the city’s director of planning and development, said, “We’ve been operating under the existing ordinance for quite some time, and I guess we’ll continue to do so.” 

Marks said the LPO “has caused us some difficulties in the past because of conflicts with other parts of the city’s zoning ordinance.”


Levya-Cutler, Selawsky Win Berkeley School Board Election

By Riya Bhattacharjee
Thursday November 06, 2008 - 09:46:00 AM

Community activist and leader Beatrice Leyva-Cutler led the Berkeley Board of Education elections Tuesday night with 37 percent of the vote, with incumbent and board president John Selawsky coming in second at 30 percent. 

As the top two vote-getters, Leyva-Cutler, with 19,366 votes, and Selawsky, with 16,069 votes, won seats on the school board. 

Priscilla Myrick, who worked in the Bay Area biotech industry for several years and has coached students in classrooms, got 18 percent of the vote, and at-risk teen coordinator Toya Groves had 12 percent. 

Selawsky said that even though only time would tell how the addition of Leyva-Cutler would change the dynamics of the school board, he was hopeful that his re-election and her victory would make the Berkeley Unified School District stronger. She replaces Joaquin Rivera, who did not run for re-election. 

Leyva-Cutler, director of the Bay Area Hispanic Institute for Advancement (BAHIA) for the past 20 years, has been a familiar face at school board meetings, PTA gatherings and after-school events.  

She led a strong campaign from the very start, focusing on the achievement gap and how she would help to carry out the 2020 Vision—a collaborative effort between the school district and the city—and went on to get the sole endorsement of the Berkeley Federation of Teachers, which she said played an important role in her victory Tuesday. 

She also won the endorsement of United in Action, the John George Democratic Club, Mayor Tom Bates, Assemblywoman Loni Hancock, and councilmembers Laurie Capitelli, Max Anderson and Linda Maio. 

At BAHIA, Leyva-Cutler worked to provide bilingual care to diverse communities in Berkeley for 28 years and was also active in Latinos Unidos de Berkeley and United in Action. 

Leyva-Cutler has taught child development in Spanish at local community colleges to help Latinos find job opportunities. 

On Tuesday night she celebrated her win with Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates, Senator-elect Loni Hancock and Councilmembers Max Anderson and Darryl Moore —who were also re-elected on Tuesday—and friends and family at the United Democratic Club on University Avenue. 

Although early absentee returns projected her as the leading candidate around 8:30 p.m., Leyva-Cutler said she was positive of her win only around 11 p.m. 

“I really look forward to working with the board,” she said. “We are all concerned about academic achievement and I really want to start working on the 2020 Vision as soon as possible. I want to help develop a city-wide task force and make sure that the eight priorities of the vision involve community members, teachers and students.” 

Board director Karen Hemphill, who stopped by the United Democratic Club Tuesday night, said she couldn’t wait to start work on the 2020 Vision with Leyva-Cutler. 

“She [Leyva-Cutler] has always said that every child deserves an equal start and I am a firm believer of that,” she said. “It’s good to have an educator on the board. Her commitment to the Latino community will bring forth a greater solidarity in the district.” 

Hemphill added that she was expecting president-elect Barack Obama to change the federal No Child Left Behind Act and invest more in education. 

“For Berkeley to have a group of African Americans and Latinos not doing as well as the county or the state has no excuse,” she said.  

At the Selawsky campaign headquarters at 2040 University Ave., which Selawsky was sharing with District 4 councilmember-elect Jesse Arreguin, people started congratulating the board president at 11 p.m., three hours after the early returns predicted that Leyva-Cutler and Selawsky were the top two contenders in the school board race. 

“I knew I would be re-elected,” Selawsky, who won his third term Tuesday, said. “I started to relax a few weeks ago and started to work on a few other campaigns, such as the library bond measure FF which passed by a slim margin and Jesse’s. I think we have a solid board and I would like to focus on student achievement and state budget issues. It’s going to be hard work.” 

Leyva-Cutler and Selawsky are scheduled to be sworn in on Dec. 10. 

Selawsky added he would continue working on solarizing the Berkeley public schools and improving the district’s facilities, issues he stressed while he was on the board for the past eight years. 

“I am sure new stuff will pop up,” he said smiling. 

Both Myrick and Groves congratulated the winning candidates and wished them luck. 

“Although I did not win, I am extremely proud of the effort that went into my campaign for Berkeley school board director,” Myrick told the Planet. “I wanted to raise substantive issues with respect to the Berkeley schools, and I think we accomplished this.” 

Myrick stressed the need for better teacher retention, strengthening math and science programs in schools and better management of school resources during her campaign. 

“I have raised questions about where bond monies have gone that were supposed to be used to build classrooms,” she said. “These issues have not gone away. I will continue to work for improvements in the Berkeley public schools.” 

Groves, who said one of her votes had gone to Leyva-Cutler, told the Planet that she looked forward to working with the school board member-elect as a youth service provider and parent. 

“I learned a lot of things through my campaign,” she said. “When people came up to me and told me they had voted for Obama and me, it was an inspiration for me. I was happy we were able to get out a lot of first-time voters and teens, and to be a known face to so many people.” 

 

 


Berkeley Celebrates Obama Victory

By Riya Bhattacharjee
Thursday November 06, 2008 - 09:46:00 AM

Berkeley celebrated Barack Obama’s victory as the 44th president of the United States way past midnight on Tuesday, but no one was complaining. 

Hundreds of people rolled out on the streets a little after the polls closed at 8 p.m. in California, the same time the networks announced Obama as the president-elect. 

Shouts and murmurs echoed through living rooms, front porches and driveways in South Berkeley, where a good number of families crowded around TV sets and radios to witness history. 

Around 8:30 p.m. a man stood in front of Shattuck and Ashby a avenues, yelling “Obama, Obama,” and the euphoria soon took over the city’s drivers, with all of them honking in unison at traffic lights or just at anyone they passed on the street. 

Cyclists sped down Shattuck Avenue, cheering and screaming out Obama’s name and waving the American flag. 

Bars, restaurants and shops that played Obama’s victory speech on TV were packed with visitors and random passersby dropping in to hear parts of it or simply pat strangers on the back. 

At Beckett’s Irish Pub, customers sat on the staircase and the floor, waiting for Obama to take the stage in Grant Park, Chicago. A young African-American girl ran down the sidewalk, carrying an Obama T-shirt and screaming the name of her new president at the top of her lungs.  

Her friends did a little jig as they ran next to her, lending their voices to her enthusiasm. 

At Venus, late-night diners raised their champagne glasses for a toast, and at the 24 Hour Fitness around the corner, exercise buffs got off their treadmills to watch Obama speak, all eyes glued to the flat-screen panels inside the gym. 

The homeless listened intently on their transistor sets, and Bruce W, an African-American homeless man, who was standing at the intersection of Shattuck and University avenues panhandling at the very moment Obama was speaking, paused for a second and said “congratulations.” 

At Bobby G’s, a pizza parlor on University Avenue, people spilled out on the streets, cheering when Obama said the words that will be forever etched in history: “If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible; who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time; who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.” 

Friends hugged each other, couples kissed and many started to cry. 

“We had a couple of Republicans. but we sheltered them,” said Robert Gaustad, who owns Bobby G’s, smiling. 

At the John Selawsky–Jesse Arreguin headquarters, a small group sat frozen in time in front of a tiny TV set. Al Winslow, a Berkeley resident, said he didn’t blink even once during the nine minutes that Obama spoke. 

“I started to cry,” he said. “And I looked around and I saw everybody else was crying as well. He makes you think about things. How do you explain that? I was struck by how many people were crying.” 

Tim Donnelly, former president of the Berkeley Council of Classified Employees, said the news had brought tears to his eyes. 

“I was home,” he said. “I heard John McCain’s secession speech, and I was very proud of the United States for electing Obama. I actually voted for Cynthia McKinney, but I am glad Obama won and not McCain.” 

John Selawsky, president of the Berkeley Board of Education who was re-elected to the school board on the same night, called Obama’s victory redemption. 

“I got a group of friends together and we agreed that if McCain was re-elected we were going to move to Sicily,” he said laughing. “I was going to grow olives and grapes. We had it all figured out. I have been saying this all along but this was our country’s one last chance at redemption. In the eyes of the world, we have been redeemed.” 

Selawsky’s wife Pam Webster, who sits on the Berkeley Rent Board, said she was not going to take a bus back home from the campaign office. 

“I am going to walk through it,” she said excitedly. “It’s history. There’s nothing more exciting than being a part of history. In my lifetime, it’s the most significant election. The people going out on the street, the jubilation, the overwhelming international joy is exhilarating. The only other time this happened was during V Day, after World War II.” 

Michael Barglow, a South Berkeley resident, called Obama’s victory a tribute to all teachers who have taught students about civil rights over the years. 

“It goes back to our civil rights movement, which gave African Americans a right to vote,” he said. “To have an African American in the White House is incredible.” 

Hector Rodriguez, a Latino construction worker who was clearing away the rubble from an office building at 2054 University Ave. as Obama finished his speech, said he was happy. 

“I voted for him,” he said, amid the dust from the debris. “I want the change. The other presidents take all the money, and I need him to fix the economy. I want to see the progress. I think he will be fine.” 

Lee Trampleasure, who worked at the voting booth inside the Congregation Beth Israel in North Berkeley, said voters had been really good at hiding their Obama T-shirts and buttons under their coats and jackets. It’s illegal to display political signs inside a polling place. 

“People were great,” he said. “I have been working at the same precinct for 15 years and I have never seen so many people campaigning for a presidential candidate near the precinct. People were handing out flyers on every corner. I am pleased Obama won, but I am worried that anybody who gets elected owes too much to corporations, major donors and politicians to make the kind of change I’d like to see—a greener America, a more peaceful America and an America that’s part of the United Nations.” 

Some Berkeley residents, who had been feverishly following the pollsters and the betting websites, said they were excited the predictions had been correct. 

“For a month now all the polls and online betting would say Obama would win,” said Tom Hunt. “As of last night, McCain had less than one percent chance of winning. I am very happy.” 

UC Berkeley students came out in groups near the campus to celebrate, calling friends on their cell phones and checking the news for updates. Most said they were thrilled but at the same time speechless. 

Jason Overman, who recently graduated from the university, said he was still in a daze around midnight. 

“I want someone to pinch me right now,” Overman, who is interested in working in politics, said. “We have been waiting a long time for this. We are finally turning a new leaf and it’s about damn time. As happy as we are tonight and should be, the real work starts tomorrow. We have to heal the pain and bring about the change that Obama believes in. It’s going to take every one of us.” 


Celebration Erupts in Downtown Oakland

By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor
Thursday November 06, 2008 - 09:47:00 AM

It was a historic night of celebration in Oakland, the like of which we have never seen in our lifetimes. 

On Broadway in downtown Oakland, cars began honking as soon as news of the Obama victory was announced, cheered on by whooping pedestrians on the curb. By 9:30 p.m., huge crowds of Oakland’s diverse racial mix had gathered in front of the Marriott Obama campaign headquarters, spilling out into the street, stopping traffic. 

Inside the Marriott, Congress-member Barbara Lee finished a speech to the crowd, just before Obama began his on the big screen televisions, and then walked through the lobby with a group of friends, grinning and stopping to do a little three-step dance in the hall before walking on. 

One African-American man stood on the corner of 14th and Broadway chanting, “History. History,” over and over, to no-one in particular but to anyone who would listen. 

Across the street, an Asian-American man did giddy maneuvers on a skateboard. 

Three young white women danced in a Druid circle near the 5th Street underpass singing “Ain’t no vict’ry like an election vic’try ’cause an election vict’try don’t stop!” 

Peralta Community College District Trustee Linda Handy—not on the ballot this year—was seen walking up 14th Street with a companion near 8:30, waving a little wearily and saying she had just come from a full day’s work at the polls and was glad the long day was over. Told that the presidential race had been called and Obama had won, she gave a little shriek, all weariness gone, and turned and ran upstairs to one of the many downtown celebrations. 

Walking down Broadway was like being out on the night of a hometown World Series back in the old days, when people followed such things. You could hear the entirety of President-elect Barack Obama’s speech, without missing a word, from the radios of passing cars and of those coming out of the bars and restaurants along the way. People passed each other with grins and nods and fist-bumps, as if they’d known each other for years or shared some special secret. 

Oakland police went into sideshow mode, blocking off Broadway south at 5th Street but otherwise letting the crowds and cars be. Overhead, a police helicopter hovered. 

At Everett & Jones Barbecue in the Jack London Square Area, 2nd Street was blocked off, a live band was playing on the stage, people had kicked away the chairs and were dancing in the street, and barbecue was being served free. Somewhere inside E&J, television monitors on several walls were continuing to broadcast reports and people were talking politics, but the restaurant was so crowded, you could not even get near either door. 

At the Marriott, a campaign worker for a local candidate tried to give a reporter a campaign button to wear. Reminded that the polls had already closed a half hour before and another button in the crowd probably wouldn’t do any good for his candidate, who was handily ahead in early returns, the worker looked a little sheepish, took back the button, and said, “I guess I’m still in the habit.” 

Earlier in the evening, at a packed celebration inside at Geoffrey’s Inner Circle, a center of Oakland’s African-American political life, Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums told the crowd a story of talking a few days with U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson—an old black radical compatriot from the ’60s—and hearing Henderson tell him, “We never could have conceived this moment back in the ’60s. We’ve lived to see this moment.”  

Dellums then told the story of asking his mother, one time, what her greatest dream was, and her telling him that it was to live in a country someday “where the highest public official looked like me.” 

“My mother passed away a few weeks ago,” the mayor said, “but you and I, we’ve lived to see that come about. This is a victory for all of humanity. Take joy in this moment.”  

The rest of Dellums remarks were drowned out in the roar of the crowd as the projected television monitor beside him announced that Barack Obama had been declared the winner of the 2008 presidential election. In a moment, people were dancing to old ’60s and ’70s civil rights-era standards, “Moving On Up” and “Ain’t No Stopping Us Now.” 

Outside, the celebration was spilling into the streets. It was a historic night of celebration in Oakland, the like of which we have never seen in our lifetimes.


Artists Charge Censorship at Addison Street Gallery

By Riya Bhattacharjee
Thursday November 06, 2008 - 09:47:00 AM
A poster by Jos Sances, one of the works in “Art of Democracy” banned from the Addison Street Gallery.
A poster by Jos Sances, one of the works in “Art of Democracy” banned from the Addison Street Gallery.
A poster by  Anita Dillman, one of the works in “Art of Democracy” banned from the Addison Street Gallery.
A poster by Anita Dillman, one of the works in “Art of Democracy” banned from the Addison Street Gallery.
A poster by Doug Minkler, one of the works in “Art of Democracy” banned from the Addison Street Gallery.
A poster by Doug Minkler, one of the works in “Art of Democracy” banned from the Addison Street Gallery.
A poster by Tony Bergquist, one of the works in “Art of Democracy” banned from the Addison Street Gallery.
A poster by Tony Bergquist, one of the works in “Art of Democracy” banned from the Addison Street Gallery.

Some community members are outraged that the City of Berkeley-run Addison Street Windows Gallery decided not to display posters from a national series of exhibitions called the “Art of Democracy” on the basis of curatorial judgment, and instead replaced them with pottery during election week.  

While supporters of free speech called the decision “censorship,” Carol Brighton, the curator of the gallery, and the city’s Civic Arts Coordinator Mary Ann Merker denied the allegations, explaining that it was not uncommon for public agencies to refrain from showing work that depicted violence or nudity. 

The posters were scheduled to go on display from Oct. 20 through Nov. 29, but never went up, Merker said, because the organizers decided to include work they had initially agreed not to. 

Organized by artists Art Hazelwood and Stephen Fredericks, the “Art of Democracy” is a national coalition of political art shows taking place this fall, leading up to the U.S. presidential election. 

It includes more than 50 shows all over the country, with fourteen exhibitions in Northern California, from Davis through the Bay Area and down to Santa Cruz and Monterey. 

“Berkeley has a censorship issue!” Hazelwood wrote in his e-mail to various members of the Bay Area art community Sunday, explaining that four posters from the “Art of Democracy” series had been “censored” in Berkeley at the Addison Street Windows Gallery. 

“The curator invented guidelines, which she attributed to the Berkeley City Arts Commission. No other venue among the fifty “Art of Democracy” exhibitions around the country have censored the show. Only in Berkeley, which ironically just erected a monument to free speech, has this show been censored.” 

Merker dismissed any role of censorship in Brighton’s decision-making process, saying that Brighton was under contract with the City of Berkeley to select artwork for the Addison Street Windows Gallery. 

“We pay her for her curatorial judgment,” she said. “I believe the curator [Brighton] made it very clear to Mr. Hazelwood that in her judgment she was not going to show any violence in the windows because of the site being on an open street across from children’s classrooms.” 

The windows of the Addison Street gallery face the Berkeley Repertory Theater and the Berkeley Jazzschool. 

“The windows are in the middle of an open downtown art district,” Merker said. “It’s not like having the artwork in a closed room where you can choose to go. I am willing to bet that the earlier locations displaying the posters are not in an open store across from a children’s school.” 

Merker said that Hazelwood agreed to Brighton’s guidelines last January, but when the time came to display the art, he brought different work, including the four posters depicting guns, violence and weaponry that he had agreed not to show. 

In a telephone interview to the Planet Tuesday Hazelwood said that Merker’s claim was false. 

“The show did not exist when Carol Brighton agreed to host the show,” he said. “She knew that the posters were being made. I did not give any guidelines of censorship to the artists. The “Art of Democracy” asked artists to make political art and that art would be displayed in 50 venues around the country. The work was being made up to the last minute.” 

Hazelwood said Brighton had informed him that there were guidelines about no violence but that when he brought the finished work to the curator he had assumed she would look at the artwork and judge it on its merits instead of “some arbitrary rules that she created on her own.” 

“Just because the posters have guns doesn’t mean they are violent,” he said. “Following her decision to censor the show, I asked the 40 artists involved what they wanted to do. It doesn’t matter what I wanted or didn't want. I was not going to censor the curator. The artists agreed that they would only show as a group.”  

In a voicemail message to the Planet Monday afternoon, Brighton, who is herself a Berkeley-based artist, defended her decision, calling it an “issue of curatorial judgment.” 

“Very much the same as all museum curators and gallery curators exercising curatorial judgment, and it’s particularly sensitive to this site,” she said. 

“The use of censorship is simply mistaken. Every curator judges stuff out of a show.” 

Dave Blake, a member of the city’s Civic Art Commission, said that Merker had told the commission on several occasions that the commission had a rule barring the depiction of guns in works of art. 

“The curator’s position is it’s not censorship to tell people in advance that certain things are not allowed,” Blake said. “My position is that it is pre-censorship. It’s the job of a curator to assess the value of a piece of art and then decide if it’s offensive. To have a categorical rule is censorship.” 

Artists whose work Brighton objected to included Tony Bergquist, Anita Dillman, Doug Minkler and Jos Sances, all of whose posters had guns in them. 

Sances’ poster depicts the threat of violence and shows a Native American, a Southeast Asian, an African-American slave and a Central American as victims of state terrorism, with guns pointed at their heads. 

“The poster is more than a gun being pointed at them,” said Sances, who has served on Berkeley's Civic Arts Commission for six years. 

“It shows how things are being taken from them by an imperialistic oppressive state. I was very surprised by the city’s decision. My poster went up in 50 different places all over the country, including the Mission Cultural Center in San Francisco, which used it in their mailers and never had any problems. It’s peculiar that they would be censoring the poster in Berkeley, home of the free speech movement.” 

The poster by Dillman has a picture of the 2008 presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain with the words “Vote Issues Not Image” and has pictures of an impoverished mother and her child, a rifle presumably standing for violence. 

“She [Brighton] is basically banning guns,” Sances said. “I think the city wants to control what kind of images are up on the window. I think it should reflect the people of the city and, honestly, most people in Berkeley would not be offended by these images. The city is afraid of censorship and wants everything to be nice and sweet. Unfortunately, art doesn’t work that way. Art is often dirty and tough. Now I have a better understanding of why in the last few years the artwork on the Addison Street gallery has been so boring.” 

The city’s original press release for the exhibition draws attention to the fact that the posters include a wide range of commentary on the American political scene, with some posters encouraging voting and others discounting its value. 

It includes examples of a poster by Fredericks proclaiming, “Vote, like your life depends on it … because it does,” and another by Nicholas Lampert of Milwaukee, which depicts a portrait of Emma Goldman with a quote from her: “If voting changed anything they’d make it illegal,” and notes that other images address issues such as immigration raids, police surveillance and lost liberty. 

The literature also acknowledges that historically artists’ posters have played an important role in political and social movements. 

Following Brighton’s decision not to showcase the four posters, the exhibit’s organizers scheduled an alternate viewing for the entire series at the Pueblo Nuevo Art Center, 1828 San Pablo Ave., from Nov. 8 to Nov. 20. 

“I think people need to be open-minded about what public art is,” said Ione Eliof, a member of the city’s Civic Arts Commission. 

“People have to be in conversation about political art and what it means. It’s difficult because people have different ideas about freedom of speech and these posters are tough. It’s particularly interesting because this is happening in Berkeley, a city which is founded on free speech.” 

 

To visit the city’s original press release visit: www.cityofberkeley.info/ContentDisplay.aspx?id=28090 

For information on the City of Berkeley’s Guide to a Public Art Process, visit www.cityofberkeley.info/ContentDisplay.aspx?id=9744. Copies of the guide book can be requested from Mary Ann Merker at 981-7533 or mmerker@ci. berkeley.ca.us. 

For more information on the exhibition visit the Art of Democracy website at www.artofdemocracy.org/galleries/ west/gallery_berkeley-censor.html 

 

 

 

 

 


Kaplan Easily Beats Hamill in Oakland Council Race

By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor
Thursday November 06, 2008 - 09:58:00 AM

In the Oakland City Council race, Tuesday’s general election runoff ended with the two candidates in almost the identical position they finished in last June: AC Transit At-Large Board member Rebecca Kaplan at 61.95 percent (61,431) and Oakland School Board member Kerry Hamill at 37.16 percent (36,845).  

In June, Kaplan and Hamill came in one-two in a five-person race, with Kaplan at 40 percent and Hamill at 22 percent. 

Kaplan will replace the retiring Henry Chang on the City Council, who flirted briefly with running for re-election but dropped out after State Senator Don Perata, one of his longtime backers, switched his support to Hamill. 

Chang had been a council ally of Council President Ignacio De La Fuente, but Kaplan is not. In fact, De La Fuente’s presidency itself may be in jeopardy, with rumors of possible challenges to his seat when councilmembers choose the leader for the new term next January. Asked last September who she might support for council president, Kaplan said at the time she had not made a commitment one way or the other. 

Kaplan could not be reached for comment following the release of the at- large election results. 

By telephone Wednesday morning, Hamill praised Kaplan for being a “tremendous campaigner. Her affiliation with the Democratic Party was very powerful and she did a lot of work on the inside game, getting endorsements from organizations and putting together associations. That’s critical in a city election.” 

Hamill, the outgoing North Oakland representative on the school board, said the most difficult part about running a citywide campaign was fundraising.  

“You can only do so in small amounts from each donor, which is good, but it’s so exhausting,” she said. “It devours so much of your time, instead of leaving you the time to work on policy positions or campaigning with voters. You need to spend about $200,000 for a citywide race, and I probably raised about half of that. I thought it would be comfortable for me, because I’ve done a lot of fundraising for educational foundations since I’ve been on the school board. But it wasn’t.” 

Asked if she had any further political ambitions, Hamill laughed and said, emphatically, “not today.” 

Instead, she was already back to work at her job as BART manager of local, government and community relations and looking forward to getting back to what she says is “really my passion”—education. She will return to volunteering at her children’s schools and will be asking to join the foundation board of Oakland educational pioneer Oral Lee Brown.  

“She’s doing such fine work,” Hamill said. “I want to help her raise money and do outreach.”


Voters Weigh-in on Oakland And County Measures

By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor
Thursday November 06, 2008 - 09:59:00 AM

Local voters picked and chose between non-Berkeley measures on Tuesday’s ballot, holding on to their money with one hand, giving out money with the other, and redistributing the money in one city budget with whatever appendage was available. 

 

Oakland School Measure N 

In Oakland’s Measure N, a large majority of voters supported the proposal by Oakland Unified School District’s state-selected administrator parcel tax, but not enough to pass the two-thirds threshold. The controversial measure lost even though it gained more votes, 61.46 percent (66,828) to 38.54 percent (41,903). 

Measure N would have set aside funds to retain qualified teachers in the district as well as funnel a smaller amount to city charter schools, but had the opposition of the powerful Oakland Educational Association teachers union and a majority of the district’s school board members, splitting state and local district leaders in a district that is run jointly by the state and locals.  

 

Oakland City Measure NN 

Another two-thirds majority measure, NN won the majority 54.95 percent, but not by enough to pass. 

NN was a parcel tax put on the ballot by Ron Dellums to increase the number of Oakland police above the currently authorized 803. Dellums, in fact, had supported the measure only to hold off a proposed citizen-sponsored measure that would have called for more police without a dedicated funding source. The measure ran into a decidedly mixed opposition coalition, including some who want more emphasis on violence-prevention programs and less on increased police, some who feel Oakland’s fiscal house needs some reordering before it takes on new money, and some who hoped to put a defeat on Mayor Dellums to weaken his possible re-election bid two years from now. 

 

Oakland City Measure OO 

Oakland voters approved a measure to set aside more money in the city budget dedicated to youth and youth programs, with 52.99 percent. The measure won over the opposition of several city leaders, including Mayor Ron Dellums and City Council Finance Committee Chair Jean Quan, who said that they supported youth funding, but felt the measure would reduce the city budget in other needed areas.  

 

AC Transit Measure VV 

AC Transit easily beat the two-thirds threshold, with 71.87 percent in support, on a measure to add $48 per year in parcel taxes to Alameda and Contra Costa County property owners. Officials suspended proposals for a fare hike after putting VV on the ballot, but cautioned before the election that rising health benefit and gasoline costs could cause them to put the fare hike back on the table sometime next year.  

 

East Bay Regional Park Measure WW 

The Park District also beat the two-thirds spread, winning 71.70 percent, on a bond measure for general park restoration, open space purchases, and other purposes. 

 

 

 


More Election Results: Area Incumbents Cruise to Victory

By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor
Thursday November 06, 2008 - 09:59:00 AM

Three area races saw incumbents easily beating off challengers. 

 

AC Transit Board 

AC Transit At-Large Board member Chris Peeples beat challenger Joyce Roy 64.1 percent (196,506) to 35 percent (107,341) in a race that Roy made a referendum on the district’s controversial Van Hool buses.  

Ward 2 AC Transit board member Greg Harper had an even easier time against perennial candidate James Muhammad, beating Muhammad 73.23 percent (50,316) to 25.63 percent (17,611). 

Losing to Harper is probably the least of Muhammad’s troubles, however. The Oakland Tribune reported late last month that the Alameda County District Attorney’s office has filed three perjury and three election code violation charges against Muhammad, based on their determination that the candidate lives in Richmond, outside the Emeryville-Oakland-Piedmont boundaries that he said he lived in to qualify to run for the Ward 2 seat.  

That revelation is even odder given that Muhammad had the option to run against incumbent Joe Wallace for AC Transit’s Ward One seat, which includes Richmond. Wallace was unopposed for re-election. 

 

Peralta District, East Bay Regional Park District 

In the only opposed Peralta Community College District Trustee seat, Area 2, incumbent Marcie Hodge beat Marlon McWilson 61.08 percent (10,352) to 37.91 percent (6,426). 

In the race to succeed newly elected District 14 Assemblymember Nancy Skinner for her East Bay Regional Park District Ward One seat, Norman La Force beat Whitney Dotson 50.32 percent to 48.82 percent in Alameda County, but Doston won the two-county race with large support (63.53 percent) in Contra Costa County.


Campaign Coffers Swelled As Election Day Drew Near

By Richard Brenneman
Thursday November 06, 2008 - 10:02:00 AM

As election day approached, District 4 council candidate Terry Doran finally saw some of the dollars developer Ali Kashani asked his colleagues to give—though most came from one company, Hudson McDonald. 

Of the $3,600 in new contributions reported Friday by Neighbors for Terry Doran, only $500 had no clear connections to people involved in the development and sale of property. 

Chris Hudson and Evan McDonald, who split off from Patrick Kennedy to start their own company, each came up with the $250 maximum for Doran, who had hoped to capture the downtown Council District 4 seat held by the late Dona Spring. 

Hudson McDonald LLC is developing the Old Grove building—better known as the Trader Joe’s building—at the intersection of University Avenue and Martin Luther King Jr. Way. 

Also donating identical $250 amounts were their spouses: Cindy Chang, a UC Berkeley physician, who is not only Hudson’s spouse but also head physician for the UC Berkeley football team, and Christine McDonald, a self-employed photographer. 

Sean McKinley, a Hudson McDonald developer, also gave $250, as did his spouse, Jessica, a research scientist with Solidus Biosciences. Both are Oakland residents. 

Another Hudson McDonald employee, Aaron Villaroya, gave $250. 

Doran also received $250 from David Teece, a Haas business school professor and silent partner with Patrick Kennedy in many of his Panoramic Interests projects, though he is described in Doran’s campaign filings as a self-employed economist. Teece is also facing major tax problems with the IRS. 

Another donor was Jennifer Ruzek, director of the Garfield Innovation Center, a Kaiser Permanente think tank that teams architects with health care practitioners for the design of medical facilities. 

Ronald Egherman of the Marvin Gardens real-estate brokerage gave Doran $100, while the California Real Estate Political Action Committee gave $250. 

The non-development cash came in two $250 contributions, one from Nancy Skinner’s assembly campaign and the other from Mary Piamonte, identified as a UC Berkeley preschool teacher. 

 

Other races 

While Doran was the winner of the largest chunk of development cash in the latest round of campaign finance reports, Mayor Tom Bates came in second. 

Bates, who handily won re-election, reported $850 in new support in late Friday filings, with $600 coming from the development sector: $100 from architect Burton Edwards and $250 each from Piedmont resident and Berkeley developer Patrick Kennedy and his spouse, Julie Matlof Kennedy. 

Challenger and former Mayor Shirley Dean had made no new filings in the same period. 

In the city’s 5th council district, incumbent Laurie Capitelli made two filings Monday, totaling $2,650, with only $350 coming from the development and real-estate community, including $250 from the Berkeley Association of Realtors PAC and $100 from attorney Martin H. Dodd, who lists real-estate law among his areas of practice. 

Most of Capitelli’s donors in the latest filings listed their occupation as “retired.” 

Challenger Sophie Hahn reported $1,750 in recent contributions. Of that total, $200 came from donors with an interest in development issues, $100 each from real-estate attorney Pamela Lakey and Mary Murtagh, executive director of nonprofit housing developer EAH. 

In the District 6 race, Susan Wengraf, aide to the retiring incumbent Betty Olds, reported no new contributions, while opponent Phoebe Anne Sorgen reported four in a Saturday filing. The four contributors donated $699 total. 

All the contributions in the council and local ballot measures races are available online at http://nf4.netfile.com/pub2/ Default.aspx 

 

Earlier reports 

In contributions filed the week before, council candidates also reported raking in cash from the real-estate and development sector, which has emerged as the dominant player in Berkeley political funding. 

In the District 4 race before Doran’s last reports, of his 10 reported contributions last week, half came from individuals connected with the land-use communities, including $100 each from architects Rebecca Hayden and David Trachtenberg, with another $150 from architect Erick Mikiten. 

Harry Pollack, a land-use attorney and city planning commissioner, gave $100 and Caleb Dardick, a public relations consultant who sometimes represents projects, gave another $100. 

The only other candidate in the District 4 council race to report contributions last week was Jesse Arreguin; none came from the development community. 

In District 5, Capitelli reported four contributions earlier last week. Loan processor Dawn Malatesta of MPR financial, a mortgage brokerage, gave $100, while real-estate lawyer/planning commissioner Pollack gave $150, and his partner, William Davis, gave $250. 

Challenger Sophie Hahn had reported a dozen contributions, with one definitely from the development community—Nancy Hendrickson, an engineer with CH2M Hill, a global engineering and construction firm, who gave $250. She also received $100 from Fatemeh Heidari, director of the Live Edge design studio. 

Jay Keasling, one of UC Berkeley’s biofuel researchers/entrepeneurs gave her $250, while preservationist Austene Hall gave $250, making Hahn the recipient of perhaps the most eclectic set of donations. Robert Krumme, one-time mayoral candidate and self-employed “Promoter of Liberty,” gave her $200. 

In District 6, only Susan Wengraf reported any contributions last week, and she received just one, $100 from architect Gordon Chong. 

Mayoral candidates Bates and Dean both reported new contributions in the last week before the election, with Bates solidly in the lead as the recipient of choice of the development industry.  

Among the Bates contributions reported last week were: 

• Three contributions of $250 each from members of the family of developer Bill Falik, who has already given a similar sum, for a total of $750; 

• Sheet Metal Workers Local 104 Political Action Committee gave $250; 

• Berkeley Bowl owner Diane Yasuda gave $250; 

• West Berkeley developer Doug Herst gave $25O; 

• Real-estate investor Tony Kershaw provided $250; 

• General contractors Michael McDowell and Karen Springer each gave $100; 

• Brickworkers and Allied Craftsworkers Local 3 PAC gave $150; 

• Dealer Steve Beinke and two employees of Berkeley Honda, which seeks to build a new dealership in West Berkeley, each gave $250. 

Of Shirley Dean’s contributors for the week, only two appear to have ties to the land-use sector. The most directly tied to the development industry is David Shiver, a $250 donor, who is principal of Bay Area Economics, a real-estate economist/consultant. Donor Jana Olson does restoration lighting rather than new installations. She gave $150.


Heavy Turnout, Upbeat Mood Prevail as South Berkeley Votes

By Richard Brenneman
Thursday November 06, 2008 - 10:02:00 AM

Turnout was heavy in South Berkeley Tuesday, with voters lined up outside the Black Repertory Theater on Adeline Street even before polls opened. 

And just down the block, at the corner of Adeline and Harmon streets, another line was waiting to start making calls across the country from the Northern California headquarters of the Barack Obama campaign. 

Long after midnight, when the final speeches had been made and the final punditry had been dispensed over the big- screen televisions in neighborhood hangouts, the streets were still filled with the sounds of honking horns and cheers from a jubilant neighborhood, elated at the victory of the nation’s first African-American president. 

“We’ve had a great big turnout,” said Lani Borgwardt, who served as inspector at one of the precincts voting in the Black Rep. “Everything’s been busier than in the past elections, and I see a lot of enthusiasm. People are excited,” she said. 

“I’ve been here since six o’clock,” said Darnell Johnson, a volunteer at the Obama headquarters late Tuesday morning. “It really got busy about 6:05,” he said. 

Ruby Reid, a site coordinator at the headquarters, said “We’ve had hundreds of volunteers at the site every day. Today we’re doing get-out-the-vote calls.” 

Democratic Party volunteers were making arrangements to bring voters to the polls. 

“You should have been here Saturday,” Borgwardt said. “The whole street was lined with people making calls on their cell phones.” 

For Sean Vaughn Scott, the Black Rep’s development director, Tuesday’s election held a special resonance. 

High on a wall above the table where precinct volunteers sat checking off voters and handing out ballots is a black-and-white photo from 1972. 

The image features a 6-year-old Scott and his parents standing with Shirley Chisholm, who sought the Democratic nomination that year. George McGovern, the eventual victor, was handily defeated by incumbent Republican Richard Nixon. 

Grandson of the theater’s founders and son of the woman who founded the Black Studies program at the University of San Francisco, Scott said this year’s election has a special meaning for him. 

While the Black Rep has hosted elections almost since its founding 44 years ago, “this year the turnout has been exponentially larger,” he said. “The beauty of it is that it’s really galvanized the community.” 

Even before the polls had closed, a crowd had gathered at La Pena on Shattuck Avenue to watch election returns and Adeline Street was alive with jubilant Obama supporters. 

The exuberant sounds were still resonating through the streets at midnight. 

Max Anderson, the nighborhood’s city councilmember, was also handily re-elected in a race in which he faced no challengers on the ballot. 

Offered congratulations, he replied. “Thanks, but it was the presidential race that really gives me hope.”


East Bay Students Rally Against ICE Raids

By Riya Bhattacharjee
Thursday November 06, 2008 - 10:02:00 AM
photos by Riya Bhattacharjee

Hundreds of students and activists from all over the Bay Area marched from Ferry Park near the Embarcadero to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office in downtown San Francisco Friday to protest what they called atrocities committed against undocumented immigrants by code enforcement officials in sanctuary cities. 

Dressed up as ghouls, ghosts and goblins, the marchers said they were skipping Halloween festivities to show their solidarity toward all immigrants, and they demanded that the ICE detention center in San Francisco—a sanctuary city—be shut down immediately. 

ICE raids on immigrant families, including one in Berkeley, were reported this past summer, leading to vehement protests from immigrant groups and advocates. 

“We are here as a coalition to take a stand against sanctuary cities not being respected,” said Aurora Castellanos, a freshman from UC Berkeley who was one of the organizers of the rally. 

“Elections are coming up. We want to make sure our next president is looking at immigration issues,” said Castellanos, a graduate of the Oakland Unified School District, who said she has been organizing for causes related to justice and equality for the last three years. “We want to make sure our families are safe and that our lives are not being threatened. It’s really unfair, trying to scare high school students. We want to make sure sanctuary cities are respecting immigrants. It’s not about documents, it’s about being safe. We haven’t done anything wrong so far. The only thing we did wrong was contribute to the economy.” 

Rumors about ICE vans circulating outside Berkeley—also a sanctuary city—and Oakland public schools in June to pick up immigrant students were dismissed by ICE officials at that time, who said that immigration authorities were mindful of the sensitivity surrounding enforcement actions near educational institutions. 

Some demonstrators spoke of heightened raids in the past few weeks and told stories about people who had been picked up from their homes and were now facing charges for deportation in detention centers all over the state. 

ICE spokesperson Lori Haley acknowledged that raids on undocumented immigrants had increased in the past few months but added that, in the absence of immigration reform by the Congress, ICE officials would continue to enforce the law. 

“Sanctuary cities don’t have anything to do with the laws federal law enforcement officers have taken on a responsibility to enforce without bias to race, gender, religion or country of origin,” she said.  

“Our mandate is protection of national security and public safety, and we work to restore the integrity of the country’s deportation system. All undocumented immigrants have access to due process and a right to fight their deportation before an immigration judge, failing which they will be sent back to their country.” 

Terrence Valen, director of the Filipino Community Center in San Francisco, said he was at the rally to show support for Filipinos, Latinos, Africans and Arabs who were being unfairly targeted by ICE police and separated from their families. 

“Just yesterday a father was picked up from his house in Pacifica and separated from his wife and two children,” he said. “They took him away to Yuba County, which makes it all the more difficult for our attorneys to fight.” 

Valen added that authorities were gradually treating San Francisco less and less like a sanctuary city. 

“They are backing off from their promise,” he said. “We are pushing for municipal IDs in San Francisco, so that people have access to services in the city and can report crime without fear. It gives them an opportunity to be safe even if they don’t have documents.” 

Miguel Astudillo, who works with La Voz Latina, a housing project in the Tenderloin, said police officers were stopping immigrant families at traffic checkpoints for parking violations and demanding to see their paperwork. 

The march, which started from Drumm Street, snaked down Sansome Street, coming to a halt in front of the ICE headquarters at 630 Sansome St., which was being heavily guarded by officers from the San Francisco Police Department. 

Six Native American drummers from D-Q University—a tribal college in Davis—inaugurated the march with some tribal beats. 

“We are humans, not illegals. Stop the raids,” the marchers chanted, as people came out of stores and offices to watch them. 

Ixel Chavez, an administrative assistant at UC Berkeley, said she had joined the march after learning that her friend’s mother and brother had been deported from Sacramento Thursday to Tijuana. 

“That’s one reason,” she said. “The other reason is this is just injustice. They need to look at the roots and causes of why so many people are crossing the border. Is it famine, poverty, war? U.S. foreign policy is causing people to make these choices. We didn’t cross the borders, the borders crossed us.” 

A group of students from Richmond High School stood watching as two Aztec dancers lit frankincense and performed a dance titled “mother tierra” in front of the ICE building. 

Norma Bautista, a junior at the school, said 30 students had walked out of their classrooms to fight for their families’ rights. 

“I have Latino parents who are undocumented,” she said. “And we are living in fear. We don’t know when they will be taken away. I was born here but my brother, my grandmother and my cousins are all from Mexico.” 

Bautista’s friend, Beatriz Dominguez, a first-generation Mexican-American, said she woke up one morning to find her father gone. 

“They took my dad away,” she said, blinking away her tears. “He just wasn’t there anymore. That’s why I am here today to make my voice heard, for my family and for all the students who couldn’t be here because they were afraid of ICE.”


SEIU Workers Violate Noise Law, Anger Alta Bates Neighbors

By Riya Bhattacharjee
Thursday November 06, 2008 - 10:05:00 AM

A group of neighbors of the Alta Bates Summit Medical Center have always had a good relationship with the hospital’s workers, they say, until early last Wednesday. 

When members of SEIU United Healthcare Workers West descended upon the hospital’s Ashby Avenue campus on Oct. 29 to protest what they called unfair labor practices by Sutter Healthcare, Alta Bates’ parent company, some Prince Street residents complained of being awakened from their sleep at 5:45 a.m. by chanting and screaming with bullhorns. 

Peter Shelton, an area resident, said the noise from the megaphones woke up his entire family, including his 5- and 7-year-old sons. 

Shelton said that when he approached Jonathan Mello, the union’s hospital division representative, to complain about the noise, Mello apologized for it and called the incident an “unintended, unfortunate consequence” but refused to ask the strike leader to turn down the volume. 

“I was cursed, screamed at and touched inappropriately by a striker,” he said. “It is difficult for me to support them under these circumstances.” 

When reached by the Planet Thursday, Mello refused to comment. 

Another neighbor, Laurie Ann Doyle, wrote to City of Berkeley officials, saying that the sound initially reminded her of a woman being abused. 

“The female shouts were so loud and intelligible,” she wrote. “If they had started at 7 a.m., no problem. That would make more sense because that’s when night-shift workers flood out the doors and visitors arrive. Strikers impinging on our rights while fighting for their own is only counterproductive.” 

Doyle said that when her husband asked the strikers to be quieter, he was asked to “find a new place to live.” 

“This is the same as management telling them to get another job,” she said. “The strikers could have had our support, if they had been considerate. History shows that community support can make or break a strike. It’s a sad day in Berkeley.” 

Fred Medrano, director of the city’s Health and Human Services Department, said that the union had violated their permit since they were not authorized to start the amplification that early in the morning. 

Medrano said that the city issued the union a special event permit for 8 p.m. to 5 p.m. and a sound permit for 12 p.m. to 4 p.m. 

“I understand their [the neighbors’] concern,” Medrano said. “If there was noise in front of my house I would feel the same way. We will make a note of the problem and, if we get requests for a permit like this in the future, we will have a discussion with the union about the conditions of the permit.” 

John Borsos, vice president of SEIU United Healthcare Workers West, said that the union was open to working with neighbors if a similar problem occurred in the future. 

“When healthcare workers strike, it’s to call attention to a significant problem at the hospital,” he said. “We want to be sensitive to neighbors and patients. I am not aware that any of the residents or neighbors came over and asked the strikers not to make noise. It was a lack of communication.” 

Borsos added that the union wanted to maintain a good relationship with the hospital’s neighbors. 

“Alta Bates has a long history of being insensitive to the needs of neighbors and they are treating their caregivers the same way,” he said. “We have much more in common with the neighbors than we have with Alta Bates.” 

The strike, Borsos said, was scheduled to start all over the Bay Area at 6 a.m. 

“I am not sure that the amplification started at 6 a.m.,” he said. “There might be some noise when strikes start. We sent out notices to the hospital about it.” 

Debbie Pitts, Alta Bates’ manager of public affairs, told neighbors in an e-mail that the hospital had set out letters to area residents Tuesday, alerting them about the strike. 

Shelton said that he had not received any notices and did not know of any neighbors who had. Calls to Pitts were not returned. 

“The biggest concern is nobody is taking responsibility for this,” Shelton said. 

The neighbors affected by last week’s incident said that the beat officer on the scene provided them with inaccurate information, claiming that state law allowed strikers to use amplification at any point during a strike. 

In an e-mail to the neighbors, Berkeley Police Department Chief Doug Hambleton said that the police department was taking responsibility for its officers’ failure to handle the noise complaint appropriately. 

“When I learned of this situation late yesterday, I gave direction to officers that strikers and labor protesters are not exempt from the city’s noise ordinance, in particular the requirement for permits for amplified sound,” he wrote. 

Hambleton added in another e-mail that the city’s Environmental Health Unit, not the police, was primarily responsible for enforcing the noise ordinance. 

“I do know they have been in touch with the strikers, and their behavior the other morning will be factored into future decisions regarding their applications for sound permits as well as any required future enforcement,” he said. 

Councilmember Kriss Worthington, who represents the neighborhood, said, “I am a passionate pro-union activist, but that doesn’t mean you can wake people up in the middle of the night. It’s illegal and irresponsible.” 

Worthington said he would be scheduling a meeting to discuss the neighbors’ concerns.


Long Slog Through Downtown Plan Provokes Tempers, Occasional Quips

By Richard Brenneman
Thursday November 06, 2008 - 09:57:00 AM

Whatever shape the new downtown plan takes before the City Council signs off on the document next May, it’s certain to be very different from the draft prepared by the citizens the council chose to draft it. 

Planning commissioners are now preparing their own revisions of the document crafted by the Downtown Area Plan Advisory Committee (DAPAC), the 21-member panel composed of two citizens each chosen by Berkeley’s nine city councilmembers plus three commissioners. 

Mandated by the settlement of a city lawsuit challenging the impacts of the University of California’s plans to add 800,000 square feet of new off-campus facilities in downtown Berkeley, the new plan will define the possible shape of the city’s skyline through the end of the second decade of the 21st Century. 

“Possible” is the operative word, given the unknown depth and extent of the economic crisis now devastating region, nation and globe and its inevitable impacts on development in Berkeley—a reality Mayor Tom Bates acknowledged during Monday night’s Planet candidates’ debate. 

Planning commissioners are working through the DAPAC’s draft chapters, making both wholesale and line-by-line, word-by-word revisions. 

One thing already clear is that the commission’s draft will be far friend- lier to developers than DAPAC’s version and is likely to prevail at the City Council, regardless of the outcome of Tuesday’s election. 

DAPAC Chair Will Travis presided over a divided committee, casting his votes with the development-friendly minority. He was been sitting in on the Planning Commission in place of Susan Wengraf, who was busily campaigning to fill Betty Olds’ seat on the City Council. 

On the commission, where he finds himself with a like-minded majority, Travis has occasionally openly disparaged decisions that were made by the majority of the committee he once chaired. During Wednesday night’s session, he called DAPAC’s vote to close Center Street between Shattuck Avenue and Oxford Street to create a public plaza “a strange procedure.” 

“We never fully evaluated it,” he said. 

Planning commissioners softened the language from “close” to “consider closing.” 

Travis was clearly at odds with the majority over the number and height of high-rise structures that would be permissible under the new plan and over the proposal to commission a study of the economic feasibility of high-rise buildings, which was rejected by DAPAC and then approved by the commission. The study ultimately reported that only the tallest high-rises are likely to be economically feasible. 

The two most thorough vetters of the plan revisions are former DAPAC members Roia Ferrazares and Gene Poschman. 

Both have given the revisions close scrutiny, often finding fault with obscure phrasings, apparently to the dismay of Travis, who snapped at Poschman near the end of Wednesday’s session, “You’ve got one speed, and that is filibuster.” 

But even Planning Director Dan Marks, who has been guiding many of the commission’s sessions on the plans, has admitted on several occasions that Poschman has made some good catches. 

When both Poschman and Ferrazares praised staff revisions to one section of the plan’s chapter on access, Marks responded first with a simple thanks, then added, “My God, we got compliments.” 

Larry Gurley, invariably a member of the developer-friendly majority, quipped during the same meeting, “It’s another of those times I agree with Gene, so I’ll have to go home.” He didn’t leave, and even found himself agreeing with Poschman a second time. 

The conflicts between the DAPAC’s vision and the commission’s reflect, in part, the reality of urban politics in the post-Proposition 13 world. The Jarvis-Gann amendment cap-ped property tax increases to a maximum of two percent a year, well below the rate of inflation. 

The biggest pressure may come indirectly because of the dwindling share of real estate revenues coming from corporate property holdings—the most valuable real estate of all, consisting of factory buildings, high-rises and agricultural holdings—that are typically held for decades. 

Since Proposition 13 limited tax increases on existing factories, refineries, office high- rises, apartment buildings and shopping malls, cities have become more reliant on revenues from the sales of homes—which typically turn over much faster than commercial buildings—along with new construction to make up for the ever-dwindling revenues from existing properties in the institutional sector. 

As voters became less willing to add new sums to their home property tax bills, governments have become even more dependent on new construction simply to remain afloat. 

In the brave new post-13 reality, even the most progressive of local governments now embraces the corporate sector—both to fuel imperiled social programs and to fund threatened basic services.


Group Gets Ready to Take Draft Sunshine Ordinance to Council

By Riya Bhattacharjee
Thursday November 06, 2008 - 09:58:00 AM

The citizens’ group working on an alternate version of the Berkeley city attorney’s draft sunshine ordinance has released its final draft and will meet with Councilmember Kriss Worthington Monday to discuss a plan to introduce it in the City Council agenda for December. 

Dean Metzger, a spokesperson for the group, said the group was hopeful that the citizens’ draft ordinance would be passed by the council, failing which it could also be passed by a ballot initiative. 

Seven years ago at a request from Worthington, the City Council voted to ask the city manager’s office to look into improving the city’s sunshine policies, including creating an ordinance, to make it easier for people to get access to public records and meetings. 

After then-city attorney Manuela Albuquerque created a draft sunshine ordinance, some community members and Worthington called it a watered down version of a strong ordinance, setting off a movement by a number of Berkeley residents, activists, and members of the League of Women Voters to craft their own draft. 

“The city attorney’s draft was more like a twilight ordinance,” Worthington said Tuesday. “We want this ordinance to help the public get as much information as possible. The citizens’ group is trying to make the ordinance a better one.” 

Worthington said that if the council failed to vote on the citizens’ draft, it would have to be taken to voters in the next election. 

“It will need a significant number of signatures to get it on the ballot,” he said. “We should be prepared.” 

Terry Francke, an attorney for Californians Aware, said the most important thing for the citizens’ group right now would be to get all the councilmembers to support the ordinance. 

“They should make the best effort to encourage as many members as possible to go behind it,” he said. “I suggest good old-fashioned lobbying. There have been all kinds of approaches to get sunshine ordinances passed in different cities. Sometimes it’s drafted by people and taken up by members of council. Sometimes it’s an independent initiative by a member of a body without having any kind of backing from a grassroots group. There are different approaches.” 

Francke said that the sunshine ordinance that seems to have had the most extensive citizens’ support was the one in San Jose. 

Metzger said the group was getting ready to have their draft critiqued by City of Berkeley officials. 

“We will be listening to their suggestions,” he said, adding that the draft had not changed significantly since the group showed it to the public almost two months ago. 

At a public meeting on Sept. 9, the citizens’ group gathered input from community members and former and current city officials about the draft and worked hard over the next few weeks to include some ideas which would make it better. 

One of the changes, Metzger said, was made after Mayor Tom Bates had a problem with a section of the document which stated that a citizen could put an item on the council agenda with 25 signatures of registered voters in Berkeley. 

The updated version now has a minimum of 50 signatures. 

“We also re-organized the whole document so that it’s more of a chronological nature,” Metzger said. “That’s going to help.” 

Some of the other changes include a provision for speakers of non-agenda items to get a chance to speak at the end of a City Council meeting and a mandate asking council to meet for a minimum of 40 times annually, not counting council agenda committee meetings. 

“We are also asking that council meetings be adjourned at 11 p.m.,” Metzger said. “If they extend it after that, they will have to explain to the public why they are doing so. The whole thrust of this is to make agendas small and to provide more public input.” 

 

To view a copy of the citizens’ draft sunshine ordinance, see the Planet website. To view the city attorney’s draft sunshine ordinance go to www. ci.berkeley.ca.us/Content  

Display.aspx?id=17770.


Remembering Jerry Thomas

By Jonathan Wafer
Thursday November 06, 2008 - 10:06:00 AM
Jerry Thomas
Jerry Thomas

Jerry Thomas, office administrator at the Berkeley Drop-In Center on Adeline Street died of complications from asthma last month. Jerry worked as a disability check distributor and general office administrator for the past 10 years. She was 54. 

Born in Louisiana, Thomas came to California in 1972 after living in Dallas for two years, where she participated in the Job Corps.  

Those who knew Jerry loved her. Carmen Spencer knew Thomas for many years and credits Thomas with encouraging her to seek help in an alcohol and drug program. “Jerry had a love for human beings,” Spencer said. 

Emmitt Hutson, Drop-In Center program coordinator and Thomas’ boss, described her as “a very loving and caring person.” Rose Ranson, Jerry’s co-worker for some four years, said Jerry was “inspirational.”  

Another co-worker, Sandra Romero, said Jerry was “always bright. She set the atmosphere. She was fun to work with and was like a sister to me.” 

Joycee Thomas, Jerry’s daugh-ter, said of her mother, “She always helped people unconditionally.” 

Thomas was my payee for over a year when I first went on disability. She was very helpful paying my rent and bills when I was sick and needed assistance. She had a very warm personality, a good sense of humor, and I felt like I could talk to her about almost anything. When I no longer needed her services and moved to Oakland, I would drop by to see Jerry whenever I could.  

On the wall outside Jerry’s old office is a large card with many messages of love and praise for Jerry Thomas from the community. 

Jerry Thomas is survived by two boys and two girls.


First Person: Another Life

By Jade Moss
Thursday November 06, 2008 - 10:18:00 AM

The security guards had broken us up, trying not to hurt us. For five minutes we had swung at each other, landing punch after punch and calling each other names. The Longfellow schoolyard, filled with active students, watched all this. 

“My little cousins got hand. She took off on her,” one girl said. 

“The girl in the sweats got her licks in too” said another. 

I was first to reach the office. On the way there I felt anxious and scared. I didn’t want to get in trouble but again I still wanted to fight: so I walked very slowly. It seem it took me forever to reach the office. When I got there they were waiting for me. Meetings with the principal never go the way you planned. My discipline was a three-day suspension. I felt scared when he hung up the phone with my mother. He explained that my mom couldn’t pick me up at that moment, so my step-mom would come… which was better for me because she was more relaxed when it came to me getting in trouble at school. 

The ride with my step-mom to her job was relaxed but tense. It was completely silent; that confused me. It made the situation I was in a problem, made me think about what I just did. My step-mom worked at Alta-Bates Hospital; it wasn’t long until she would talk to me.  

“Are you hungry? Did you eat before you got into trouble?”  

“No, I’m fine. But thank you."` 

She seemed like she was happy exiting the car. We walked into the hospital and quietly headed toward the elevator, we entered quietly. The nursery room smelled like baby vomit and milk. I thought she was going to yell at me, but all she said was to sit down and behave myself. I was kind of happy being in public because she couldn’t yell at me like she would if we were at home. The last thing I needed was her to be mad at me while she was pregnant. With all those unstable emotions, I didn’t want to be her target. I started to do my homework, until I heard her scream. I was frozen solid; I didn’t know what happened but I was scared for her and the baby. Then I found out the baby was born, but in her mother’s pants leg. She was a preemie so it made me feel baffled. I was happy about the birth but still confused about the situation.  

“What happened?", I asked one of the nurses. 

During the time that I watched them wheel her away, I learned that the baby died and was taken to a room where they would try to bring her back to life. Suddenly, I felt a cold rush, I was terrified for my sister’s life, Not knowing what to do, I sat afraid. I then decided to comfort my step-mom, who was crying. The lights were bright, and time felt slower by the second. My mind kept repeating my stepmother’s screams. That sound made it hard for me to believe that this was real. My step-mom’s words caught me off guard. 

“Why would this happen to me? Why?” she said. 

This was real. 

Suddenly there was a halt, a halt that made me realize how special life is.  

Now the doctor walked up to us and explained that my sister had been brought back to life again. We were all just too happy; everything just made us happy. Suddenly my grandmother arrived out of nowhere to tell us about a phone call from a Stockton hospital. My Uncle had just passed, she told us, and we were all sad again, crying and hugging each other. That made me realize you can die instantly, that life is not a game, it can do the worst for you. That hour took a hold on us all. Life wasn’t the same anymore. Sukari, my baby sister, was the miracle baby who put us all back together. 

That day was so awkward: the way I got into trouble, the way the baby died, the way my uncle passed, and the way my sister was brought back to life. The way the baby came out looking, she had nothing but a softball for a head and a stalk of celery for a body. Later I had a flashback and remembered seeing her slide down her mothers’ pants leg, with umbilical fluid and streaks of blood. It all seemed fake, the way everybody was asking. “What’s going on?” Like everybody was concerned about what was going on with my step-mom.  

This experience was a life lesson learned. It taught me how to live life and be full of laughter. 

 

Jade Moss is a student in Berkeley High School’s Life Academy, a program for freshmen.


Opinion

Editorials

Heading for the Freedom Land

By Becky O’Malley
Thursday November 06, 2008 - 10:09:00 AM

“It’s been a long time coming,” said the president-elect on the big screen. From the back of the packed room at Bobby G’s Pizzeria, an earnest youthful voice: “Twenty months!” 

From a fortyish man at our table of folks ranging from older to seriously old (my 94-year-old mother), “More like 20 years!” 

Twenty years? It’s been 50 years of my own life alone that we’ve been waiting for a person of African descent to take his rightful place among the citizenry of the United States. 

Most of the crowd at Bobby G’s watching the election result on the big sports bar TV screen looked like graduate students, judging by the sprinkling of wedding rings and babies among them. That would put them in their mid-twenties, none of them even born when we first started picketing Woolworth’s in the north in 1960 to support the freedom riders in the south, none of them even in the world when my cousin Elsa crossed the bridge at Selma with Martin Luther King in 1965. 

And in the lives of those that went before us, more than a hundred years had passed before that since emancipation. Slavery time added more hundreds of years of waiting...it’s been a long time coming, indeed. 

At our old folks’ table last night we had three grandparents and two great-grandparents, as well as two more who were hoping to be grandparents in due time. We were all well aware that we’d seen a full turn of the wheel of time in our lifetimes, and we were happy and proud to have been there when it happened.  

More than once, the talk turned to Madelyn Dunham, Barack Obama’s grandmother who raised him from the age of 10. These days it’s sometimes hard to remember what agonizing hopes and fears she must have had in 1961 when she learned that she would be the grandmother of a mixed-race child. 

In 1961 a woman of my acquaintance in Michigan gave birth to a mixed-race baby, and she was denounced and banished by her family in Hamtramck, Detroit’s Polish enclave. She suffered two years of depression so severe that she couldn’t leave her apartment, though she kept the records for the local civil rights group the whole time, communicating with organizers by passing papers through a crack in her door. Then she pulled herself together and raised a fine son who eventually graduated from Morehouse, but it was not an easy path, with racism rampant everywhere in those days. 

Among our friends in the 1960s who had what were then called “mixed marriages,” some chose not to have kids because they were afraid they’d be stigmatized. Others were estranged from their families of origin, raising their children with no contact with grandparents. The active, involved, enthusiastic grandparent was rare, and usually on the African side of the union.  

The opprobrium against “mixed marriage” even extended to religious mixes, and even to mixed ethnicity in the Midwest’s tribal cities. We had friends who had to leave Cleveland when they got married because she was Irish and he was Slovak, and their families were furious, even though they were both Catholics. Hawai’i at that time was a lot more rational, but the couple from Kansas must still have been worried about the future of their African-American grandson.  

Nowadays it’s the rare parent in my circle of friends who doesn’t have at least one child or grandchild who’s somehow “mixed”—racially, ethnically, nationally or all of the above, and often enough with same-gender parents too. Even though things are much, much better than they used to be, we still can’t help worrying that somehow our beloved offspring will be mistreated in some way because of lingering prejudices. Some of us might have hoped that one of our descendants would be the first African-American president, but we’re happy to cede that honor to Madelyn Dunham’s grandson. 

We were everywhere in the time leading up to the election, just to make sure the results were right. My Chicago friend whose grandchildren’s father came from Mexico worked in Michigan and Wisconsin, and takes full credit for bringing those two states in line. A friend in Richmond, whose grandchildren’s other grandparents came from Korea, worked hard to turn Virginia over.  

My friend Claudine made the ultimate contribution to the cause: her French-African son, a newly-minted American citizen who cast his first vote for Barack Obama by absentee, since he’s visiting Maman in Paris this week. They tried to go to the American celebration at a famous Paris bar, but the crowd was so huge they couldn’t even get into the street, let alone into the bar, so they called me instead.  

I got a celebratory cell phone call early this morning from a Berkeley African-American friend who’d gone back to Ohio to make sure that everyone there behaved themselves—her own granddaughter is in Japan with her American father and Japanese mother. She said she was standing on a bridge which commemorates Harriet Tubman’s route on the Underground Railway. My children’s great-great-grandmother, an Ohio Quaker described in her obituary as a “Lady Abolitionist and Classical Scholar,” took part in that campaign too.  

Harriet Tubman was often called the Moses of her people. Like the original Moses, Madelyn Dunham lived long enough to see the Promised Land from afar, though not quite long enough to enter it. Barack Obama’s presidency, in and of itself, will not put an end to racism or other forms of prejudice, but it’s a major signpost on the road to that Promised Land, which we hope will be reached, if not in our lifetime, at least in the lives of our grandchildren. And when it finally happens, Madelyn Dunham’s name should be inscribed in big gold letters on the commemorative plaque as one of those who made the journey possible. 

As for me, I sympathized with Michele Obama when she said she was finally proud to be an American, even though later she had to soft-pedal her remarks. Our house came with a big American flag and a bracket to hang it from, which we’ve never used in the 35 years we’ve lived here. We hung our flag out yesterday, and it’s up again today. We might not be at the Promised Land yet, but we’re getting close. 


Cartoons

We, Not You, Shall Overcome

By Justin DeFreitas
Monday November 10, 2008 - 05:05:00 PM


Obama's Victory

By Justin DeFreitas
Thursday November 06, 2008 - 09:04:00 PM


Proposition 8

By Justin DeFreitas
Thursday November 06, 2008 - 09:04:00 PM


Public Comment

Letters to the Editor

Monday November 10, 2008 - 03:04:00 PM

NO ENDORSEMENT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

It has come to our attention that Mr. Zachary Running Wolf claims us as endorsers of his write-in mayoral campaign. We were not asked and did not endorse.  

Gray Brechin 

Ignacio Chapela 

 

• 

IN SUPPORT OF CURATORIAL JUDGMENT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I support Carol Brighton's decision to use curatorial judgment on the "Art of Democracy" show at the Windows on Addison Gallery. Carol is a sterling person of incredible integrity, generosity and intelligence. Art Hazelwood had an opportunity to select another gallery for the show, knowing full well the gallery's policy. Carol Brighton has an e-mail from Art Hazelwood, early on agreeing to the gallery's position. Why didn't he find another gallery for his show? I find this curious. 

Nancy McKay 

 

• 

VIOLENCE TO DEMOCRACY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

“Curatorial judgment” does not mean individuals can censor public images because of their content. Doing so, as Carol Brightman and Mary Ann Merker have done, is not respectful of art, artists, or Berkeley citizens. Their arbitrary censorship of anti-violence images at the Addison Street Windows Gallery is a public stance in favor of totalitarianism and should not be allowed. Their censoring does violence to democracy. 

Tim Drescher 

 

• 

FREE THE WINDOWS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In February Melanie Cervantes and I drafted a number of letters alerting the city that there was a serious problem involving arbitrary unnecessary curatorial censorship of the Windows on Addison Gallery. Since that time I have learned that there have been others that have not been allowed to show their work in the Berkeley's Addison Street Windows. The curator, Carol Brighton and the Berkeley Art Commission's decision to back her ban on military symbols in this public space was an unconstitutional act. To limit debate on a most central issue of our times—war—through abolition of war objects is not legal. The embedded journalist/embedded art commissioner model does not reflect the community of Berkeley nor the Bay Area. Our three months of meetings and letter-writing trying to correct this policy accomplished little. No one we wrote or spoke to at the city wanted to take on this censorship issue. 

Today the community of Berkeley has again been denied an opportunity to view important work (the Art and Democracy Exhibit) due to this absurd ban on artists who show military armaments in their work. This is like telling poets they can't use the word death in their poems because it might be unsettling to the children that read their poems. All poets that use the word death are banned from exhibiting in the Addison Street Windows by order of the City of Berkeley. Context is everything. 

I support the current attempt being launched by the "Art of Democracy" artists to have these precious windows freed from the current censorship policy. The First Amendment, free speech, means nothing if we do not enforce it. Please speak up. 

Doug Minkler  

 

• 

CENSORSHIP AT ADDISON ST. GALLERY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I am a former art curator, museum educator and an artist living in Berkeley. I am dismayed at Mary Ann Merker and Carol Brighton's decision not to display the “Art of Democracy” exhibition at the Addison Street Gallery. This is censorship, plain and simple. 

Would they have decided not to exhibit Picasso's Guernica because it contained disturbing images and nudity? Would they have denied the public the right to view Goya's Disaster's of War because it contained violent images? Would they have passed on the opportunity to show Rauschenberg's Vietnam War-era work because it might frighten or offend people? 

I have been working on a series of anti-war ceramic pieces and the Richmond Art Center showed my work, entitled, Will They Never Learn?; it contained graphic images of war. Apparently, Richmond, has more integrity and courage than the City of Berkeley's Civic Arts department. What a pity that this should happen in Berkeley, home to the Free Speech Movement. It is a shame that our community, with its large political and anti-war movements was denied the chance to view the “Art of Democracy.” 

Nancy Becker 

 

• 

FREE SPEECH 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Once again: Berkeley is not "home of the free speech movement" because it honored speech, but quite the opposite. The oppression of free speech in Berkeley is so outrageous that people, from time to time, understandably revolt. 

Carol Denney 

 

• 

BAIL ME OUT! 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Here is a short thought about the current financial crisis in America. On the one hand you have the corporate world, and on the other hand you have the American people. In the middle you have the Federal Reserve (and to a lesser extent you have the American government).  

The Corporate world needs help, as well as the American people need help. But, strange things happen on the way to the bank. The corporations get to stand in a different line than the American people. The corporations get to stand in the cash bailout line, while the people get to stand in the loan restructuring line.  

In other words corporations get all the cash infusion they collectively need to right their ships, while the average American gets no real cash, no real debt forgiveness, no congress fighting to bail us out, and no fund for the beleaguered to tap in case of an emergency. The only reprieve that the people get out the deal is a postponement in foreclosures, while the banks that the taxpayers are bailing out get to restructure our debt. Is it just me, or is this kind of ironic? 

I wish that the American public was 70 percent of the Gross Domestic Product instead of the corporations. Oops, Americans are 70 percent of GDP. Why let 70 percent of America’s GDP suffer while at best the corporate world makes up 30 percent of GDP. Saying that the corporate world is too big to fail, then letting the American people fail is not smart thinking. I cannot find the logic in this practice of the Fed and the American government. It looks to me that the people are too big to fail—not the corporate world.  

Kevin Thomas 

Hercules 

 

• 

UNSUBSTANTIATED ACCUSATIONS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The commentary by Ayodele Nzinga is disconcerting. The Berkeley Police Department isn't perfect, but I've never known them to display the kind of behavior that Ayodele Nzinga accuses them of. 

Further, I think that Daily Planet should start displaying better standards of journalism. I've nothing against someone airing a grievance in a public forum, but if this accusation is true and not merely a smear campaign against the BPD, then the officer involved and his badge number should be mentioned in the public accusation. Anyone can see a BPD car driving down the street, take down the car number and make a vague complaint. 

Finally, doing this bit of fact checking before publishing something that is inflammatory for our community is not difficult to do. All you need is the time, date, and address of supposed incident, then you can cross reference the beat officer assignment list (www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/ContentDisplay.aspx?id=6934) and knock on a couple of doors where the incident supposedly happened and see if there were witnesses. 

There are a lot of blind accusations in this city against the police and it seems that the community forgets at times that BPD officers put their lives on the line every day to help us out when drug dealers, gangs, rapists, carjackers, prostitutes etc., start taking over in different neighborhoods. I don't always see eye to eye with the BPD, but when that happens I do try my best to get my facts straight and support it with hard evidence, especially if I air a grievance in a public forum. 

Jarad Carleton 

 

• 

DISTRICT 3 RESULTS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Regarding your statement (in the Nov. 6 article "Bates Re-Elected, Arreguin Wins District 4, Wengraf Replaces Olds, Capitelli Retains Seat") that Max Anderson "captured 96.2 percent of the vote of 93,337 ballots" for the District 3 City Council seat, per the partial count released by the Alameda County registrar's office, Anderson got 3,377 votes. What percentage that is of ballots cast is currently unknown, since the registrar has so far reported only votes and write-ins, not blanks. 

My understanding is that roughly a third of the ballots remain to be counted. Once the registrar issues the official final results, we can see what percentage of District 3 voters expressed their dissatisfaction or apathy by leaving the City Council choice blank. 

Robert Lauriston 

 

• 

BIGOTRY WINS ... FOR NOW 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I am disappointed that Proposition 8 has passed, but I am glad to be living in a county that voted Proposition 8 down. 

I donated time in an effort to defeat Proposition 8, and I met a lot of really great people in the process. Good people came out together from all walks of life to fight this terrible Proposition. I live in Berkeley with my partner and it is a good feeling knowing that I live in a place where bigotry and hate is not what people value. The Bay Area (excluding Solano County), and all of the counties where Proposition 8 failed to pass are what I like to call "Enlightened America." 

The fight for marriage equality is not over! It has just begun. In the words of Gavin Newsom: "The door's wide open now. It's gonna happen..." 

Ian Griffith 

 

• 

THE MESSIAH 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

As an amateur psychologist, I'd like to point out an important factor that the pundits (left, right and center) failed to mention about the election. And that was the powerful messianic quality that Barack Obama exuded. Here, on some deep level, was a black messiah who seemed to appear out of nowhere, awesomely eloquent, youthful, handsome, and Harvard smart; a person to "deliver us from evil.....Amen!"  

Robert Blau 

 

• 

INTERMITTENT COLOR BLINDNESS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In middle school in 1960s San Francisco, Terry was my best friend. His eyes were brown like mine. His hair was brown like mine, but wavier. His lips were full like mine, but not much more so. His skin was darker than mine, but no darker than I can get in a week of California sun. I thought nothing of it. Then I met his father. He looked like Willie Brown. I thought, "My God, Terry's father is black! That must mean that my best friend is black." I just hadn't noticed, and now that I did, it just didn't matter, even though inner cities were burning and we white folks were supposed to be afraid. Terry and I went on being best friends until one of us moved away and we lost touch. More than friendship was lost. Over the years, I looked back on that experience of color blindness as an innocence of youth, never to be recaptured, and I have always cherished it. 

In 2008, I supported a presidential candidate, and he won the election. I certainly knew that he was an African-American, but it just didn't matter. The media touted the historical significance of his candidacy from the beginning of his campaign, growing louder as he drew nearer to the goal, but that steady din, increasing by imperceptible degrees over the many months, just seemed so much background noise to what I hoped he could accomplish for our nation. On election night, I saw the television images of Jesse Jackson and Oprah Winfrey listening to the most moving speech I have heard since John F. Kennedy, and tears welled in my eyes as well, for I shared their joy. A couple of days after the election, an image was circulated by e-mail: a group photo of the future First Family with the presidential seal behind them, and I was struck by the enormity of the deed we had accomplished as a nation. I thought, "My God, the First Family is black!" In that moment, I realized that I had been color blind again. 

It just didn't matter.  

And yet, it does matter. 

Thomas Gangale 

Petaluma 

 

 • 

THE BUSH-CHENEY LEGACY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Howard Zinn says: "There is a general understanding among Americans who follow politics, and certainly among students of constitutional law, that the Bush administration has committed outrageous violations of both constitutional and statutory law." 

Now, after the election, each of us has a new job to do: Undoing the Bush/Cheney Legacy. So Meiklejohn Civil Liberties Institute has just published a handy book with that title, subtitled: Tool Kit for Congress and Activists. 

Our interns and I did not even realize the size of our problem until we got into it! We found 70 Bush-Cheney laws that could/should come before the new Congress in the first 100 days for amendment or repeal—and several signing statements and executive orders President Obama could immediately reject. If everyone who worked on the election started working on their Congress members now, this could happen! 

On every issue, from agriculture and anti-trust to veterans and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the book gives: 

• Name of Bush law. 

• Where to find it. 

• Who is hurt by this law. 

• What the law provides. 

• What basic law the Bush law ignores, both sections of the U.S. Constitution and articles in treaties ratified by the U.S. that are, under the Constitution, "the supreme law of the land." 

• Bills already introduced into Congress amending or repealing the laws. 

• Names of representatives and senators who have introduced good bills on each issue. 

Zinn says about the book: "But no one has documented these violations as meticulously, as dramatically, as [Editor] Ann Fagan Ginger has done in this concise and very important volume. It will give both scholars and citizens the information they need to contest what has been going on, in order to restore the liberties taken away by this administration." 

El Cerrito Democratic Club vice chair Betty Brown says the Tool Kit is "an invaluable and timely guide." 

If Planet readers would like to discuss the issues in the book, give us a call at (510) 848-0599, or get your copy: www.mcli.org. 

Ann Fagan Ginger 

 

• 

WHERE IS THE COMPASSION?  

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The other day I met a woman who had been beaten and after a cataract operation she had no where to go. She had just left a slum single room occupancy hotel in Oakland where the landlord had ignored the rats and the mice which were harmful to her well being while she lay helpless after the injury. Normally I do not take in strangers. Years ago I was a street artist and I started missing work. I would go to the food truck sometimes just to hear "good morning" even when I had coffee at home. Recently I return to working at a real job writing comedy and copy for local hotels and other businesses which is important to me. I had been lonely before when I was forced to rest following my own experience of being assaulted, robbed, threatened and almost killed living and consequent breakdown in a so called low income apartment. In light of my own experience I took in this blind defenseless woman rather than see her die on the streets of Berkeley. I did this in the spirit of the Golden Rule of do unto others what I would have done unto me. I am now trying to help her get into senior housing searching the papers. I feel compelled to help her. 

Our homeless sisters and brothers will be cold and hungry in the winter in our parks and on the streets, dying, at times with walkers physically disabled while the rich will be in the hills gorging on wonderful holiday feasts. I want to ask them and you the reader to give housing back to those without. The $150,000 bailout to the Berkeley Housing Authority has not visibly made any difference on the streets as the new authority enjoys brunch out at the Hilton Doubletree. Where did the rest of the money go? Why do we see the hiring of Tia Ingram as director of the BHA when she left under a cloud of $400,000 missing money from when she was at Richmond Housing Authority? A former BHA director Jackie Foster was taken away in handcuffs for letting her boyfriend near the petty cash. We have seen the previous indictment of Franklin Raines former head of Fannie Mae before the recent federal bailout. We have seen badly managed properties under the Oakland Housing Authority. Why is the very poorest, the most neediest fail to get help into housing when those who have gamed the system on top go unpunished? Does anyone care? 

Diane Arsanis 

 

• 

NOVEMBER 4 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I just finished writing to Representative Barbara Lee asking her to initiate the process for Congress to set aside Nov. 4 of each year as a National Day of Unity in recognition of the monumental mark in history that was made on Nov. 4, 2008. This presidential election has brought together and accomplished the dreams of diversity in action, racial unity, with the great overshadowing of hope for the future of this nation. When President-Elect Barack Obama and Vice-President-Elect Joe Biden, along with their families, embraced one another and walked forward on that platform last night, chills ran through my body as I saw unity in action; an action only just beginning.  

The will and the power of the people have prevailed. This election has restored faith in our hearts and healed wounds laying in wait for this moment. President-Elect Obama has set the stage for a new United States of America. A new time and a new world is about to emerge. 

Join with me now by writing your representatives and asking that this date be marked not only in history books but as a National Day of Unity. 

Serena Nova 

 

• 

OBAMA ELECTION OPENS FLOODGATES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

From the most virulent Obama opponent to the most zealous supporter, everyone agrees that the election of our 44th president was an event of profound historic significance. I have read several dozen commentaries, op-eds, letters, poems, and hallelujahs but despite universal consensus as to the event’s great extraordinary moment, taken together there is not a single line that might encompass the vast range of reactions.  

Ignore the stupid (Obama is a Marxist/socialist), the malicious (Obama pals around with terrorists) and the inane (McCain’s main man Sen. Lindsay Graham’s promise to drown himself if Obama “…took North Carolina” and Sen. Joe Lieberman’s assertion that unlike his idol McCain, Obama did not “…always put America first”). What one hears from scanning 360 degrees of Babel in the dominant media is a shrieking cacophony of mostly biased reactions. Here’s a brief incomplete survey. 

The New York Times asks provocatively and without acknowledging inherent speculative bias, “Will a President Obama fall captive to liberal interest groups and the Democratic Congress?” (Online edition, “Bloggingheads”, Nov. 8). The same illustrious newspaper of record reported that “a Jihadi leader” declared that “…the election of Barack Obama represents a victory for radical Islamic groups,” yet failed to recognize the poison implicit in that anonymous assertion. Several members of the hard-right punditry whined in harmony that McCain lost not because he ran a bad campaign or because Obama was the better man but because the economy, collapsing when it did, tilted the game in Obama’s favor; Obama just lucked out. 

There’s more but by headlining this kind of nonsense the dominant media distracts us from the fact that we have a president, almost the opposite of the incumbent, that we have long hoped for, a president who is not only “…young, handsome and suntanned” according to Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi who ought to know, but is, articulate, intelligent, sensitive, diligent and sincere.  

We couldn’t wish for anything more.                                                                        

Marvin Chachere 

San Pablo 

 

• 

IMPEACH BUSH 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Now that Democrats have the ultimate say, what could possibly be the reason for not upholding the Constitution and impeach Bush for the many crimes against the state that he's committed? The world is watching to see if now, finally, the Democrats will fulfill their appointed duty to hold our officials as accountable for their actions as the average citizen is held for theirs. 

Both Kucinich and Wexler have given to the Congress all the evidence necessary to begin the investigations and proceedings. 

It will be to the shame of Nancy Pelosi and all Democrats to ignore the Constitutional directive for impeachment for crimes against the State. It will be the shame of our entire nation to let these immense wrongs that have killed and maimed and traumatized so many, go unpunished. 

Sabriga Turgon 

Oakland 

 

• 

ELECTION REFLECTIONS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The recent election results of the election of our nation's first black president, combined with the passage of Proposition 8 to ban same-sex marriages, has resulted in many heated discussions: particularly given the exit poll statistics that 70 percent of black voters voted yes on Prop. 8. Letters have appeared expressing dismay that a group who has historically experienced so much oppression voted so overwhelmingly to discriminate against another minority group. Discussions I observed also often contained comparisions between the suffering or oppression of different groups, in one case with a black man who voted yes on 8 arguing vehemently that no one has experienced the type of suffering that blacks in America have experienced.  

A couple reflections. First, I have always found something repugnant about any oppressed group's attempt to make their history of oppression/suffering into a bank account or cash cow whereby they can extract equity, obtain leverage and/or moral authority, and basically use their suffering to either devalue another person's experience or figuratively "hit" someone on the head or assign blame. "We're the biggest victims of all so the rest of you better shut up" is not a very noble argument. Secondly, the attempt to compare types of suffering in order to find "who's had it worst of all" is equally repugnant, and in that move to glorify victimization and assert the "superiority" of one's experience of oppression, we not only devalue and belittle the experiences of other groups or individual's pain, but we denigrate suffering and pain itself. The experience of suffering cries out with its own innate eloquence, and in itself can open hearts. I think of the song sung by Nina Simone, "Strange Fruit." That powerful song simply opens hearts. Leave it alone. Once you attach to it the argument, "and you white folks did this to us, you nasty racists!" immediately the pureness, power and poignancy of that song is lost in the distasteful and misguided, corrupted move to assign blame. Will we ever learn that there is no one group or people who is innately evil, and no one group who's got the monopoly on suffering? Let's just listen to each other, valuing all our stories, and stop trying to compare and find the "winner." 

When a legacy of suffering simply becomes a bank account or a cash cow to gain wealth from, a weapon to assign blame, or a tool with which to cow others into obedience or to manipulate, we've corrupted our experience of suffering.  

Deborah Cloudwalker 

Oakland 

 

• 

WOMEN SEALED THE DEAL 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

For the last two years, I've been writing and telling anyone who would listen that American women could elect the next president, if only they voted. 

Well, this time they did, and there is no doubt that women were a decisive factor in the election of Barack Obama. 

To listen to the pundits, however, you'd think that only youth (bless them!) and minorities turned out in overwhelming numbers to stand on endless lines to elect the first African American and liberal and brilliant president. 

Frank Rich, whom I admire tremendously, even missed the boat. In his Sunday New York Times column in The Week in Review, Rich never mentioned the amazing gender gap that catapulted a young and relatively unknown senator to become our 44th president. 

Just take a serious look at the numbers. As the data in the Week in Review in the New York Times reveals, women constituted 53 percent of the electorate, while only 47 percent of men voted. Among those who voted for Obama, 56 percent were women and 43 percent were men. Among unmarried women, a whopping 70 percent voted for Obama. 

There are many variables in this data that need to be explained. The extraordinary female vote almost certainly came largely from minority and young women. But even white, married women, who usually vote more conservatively, went for Obama. 

Does this matter? Yes, and here's why. For years, women have been saying that we are invisible in this political culture. The consequence of this invisibility is that our poverty, our economic insecurity, our need for health care, child care, elder care, and equality in wages and training are also ignored. 

So, with all due respect to those who are praising the young and minorities, and rightfully blessing their energy and enthusiasm, take a good hard look and notice that it was women who, in the end, sealed the deal. 

Ruth Rosen 

Professor Emerita of History, UC Davis 

Visiting Professor of History, UC Berkeley 

 

• 

CAMPAIGN CASH 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I hate to sound like a spoiler while the Bay Area celebrates the election of Barack Obama. But am I the only one concerned that he raised almost a billion dollars in campaign contributions? Who will he be indebted to? Unless we have real election reform so obscene amounts of money aren't involved in elections, the corporations and the banks will always run this country. 

Stacy Taylor 

 

• 

ABOUT UNDERCURRENTS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

With every issue, the Berkeley Daily Planet devotes an entire page of space to J. Douglas Allen-Taylor's discussions of either current incidents of racism, or, if he can't find those, incidents from 50, 100, 200 or 300 years ago. Clearly the Planet readership is by now well educated about issues of racism. Given the outcome of the recent elections, where racism in whites did not prevent the nation from voting in a black president, but prevalent homophobia in the black community may well have caused the proposition banning gay marriage to pass, I think new priorities are in order. The Planet should cease devoting so much space to Allen-Taylor's lectures about real or imagined racism in whites and more to education of the black community about their heterosexism.  

Arthur Levin 

 

• 

ROAD TO HAPPINESS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

At Monterey Market this morning, the couple before me at the cash register, who I had never met, insisted on treating me to the muffin I was about to purchase. I was amazed. They explained that they were feeling very happy about the election, and this was one way of expressing it. On Shattuck Avenue, right after Obama¹s acceptance speech, huge crowds of people were hugging each other and dancing in the street. Much of the Bay Area was raining with joy.  

The defeat of Bush and the election of an African American to the nation¹s highest political post is a monumental event, which is already having a tremendous personal impact upon us. It has certainly given us a glimmer of what is possible. For most people, the realization that emerged from the election has shown that years of psychotherapy is unnecessary to access our capacity for happiness and our social selves. These wonderful qualities are right beneath the surface. And they can be realized by making important political gains. 

But we are also mindful of the unfortunate vote on Proposition 8. I have no doubts, though, that defeating the right of gay people to marry will be overcome. The civil rights movement of gay people to achieve equality deserves our support and involvement. Human and civil rights belong to all of us. No exceptions. 

Harry Brill 

El Cerrito 

 

• 

METROPOLITAN TRANSPORTATION COMMISSION 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

These pages have hosted vigorous discussion about AC Transit bus service, but have largely been silent on the critical role of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC). MTC, the regional transportation funding agency that is soon to adopt a $223 billion regional transportation plan (RTP), holds the purse strings for AC Transit. 

For years, MTC has chosen to expand freeways and costly rail projects at the expense of urban bus service. The resulting funding disparity has led to repeated service cuts and fare hikes for AC Transit riders, hurting our most vulnerable neighbors and communities. Recognizing the importance of the issue, and the role of MTC in starving bus service, we filed a federal civil rights class action lawsuit, Darensburg v. MTC, that went to trial last month. Our contention is simple: MTC should fully fund operating expenses for existing bus service before it diverts scarce public dollars to costly expansion projects. For instance, a mile of new BART track from Fremont to Warm Springs will cost more than $400 million. With that sum, AC Transit could operate vastly expanded service for 10 years. 

The California attorney general has reached the same conclusion by a different route. In recent comments on the Environmental Impact Report of MTC’s new RTP, he asks MTC to revisit $29 billion in “committed” projects that have not been shown to help meet California greenhouse gas reduction (GHG) goals, and concludes: 

“If low-performing ‘committed’ projects were eliminated where feasible to do so, funding would be available to cover transit shortfalls, particularly for BART, Muni, and AC Transit, which together carry 80 percent of the transit riders in the Bay Area. If these shortfalls are not addressed, or if they are addressed through fare increases, as recently proposed, ridership may fall, with a concomitant increase in GHG emissions.” 

Equal access to every kind of opportunity depends on transportation, usually meaning bus service for low-income people of color living in urban areas. The effects of global climate change must be altered. MTC can address both by doing the right thing and fully funding AC Transit. They should be held accountable for doing so. 

Richard A. Marcantonio 

Managing Attorney 

Public Advocates Inc. 

San Francisco 

 

• 

A GOOD GLOBAL CITIZEN 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Mr. Stone describes the state of Israel as a major arms dealer. However, his list of products, beginning with "high-tech fences" and ending with "prisoner interrogation systems" is entirely defensive in nature. Not one of them is designed to kill anyone. What he describes is a good global citizen. 

James D. Young 

Oakland 

 

• 

ISRAEL 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

After all the ridiculous vituperation that rained down upon the Planet and myself following my Oct. 2 commentary on the shenanigans of Zionist promotions of the Jewish State of Israel, I was convinced that my Power Point presentation at the Unitarian Fellowship a couple of weeks ago would be at least picketed. Sad I was that no Israeli flags appeared, no picketers, no provocative questioners, and the Planet controversy even failed to energize a sizable audience. There were about 25-30 people present when I asked how many people attending were Jewish. About five hands did not rise. An almost all-Jewish 100 percent sympathetic audience. I'll tell you, dear reader, you missed a good presentation. Invite me to your school, church, community center and you'll see.  

I'm writing this letter, as I did my op-ed, to make a simple point. Jews who oppose Zionism and its mythology and dishonesty had better begin to make themselves known and heard not just as individuals but as Jews. How else can other Americans know that Zionism does not represent the Jewish people. Zionism has no right to take away our voices, no right to intimidate us with their brazen accusations of anti-Semitism and self-hatred. Certainly the Zionists do represent most of the powerful and institutional sectors of the Jewish people, but very many Jews without power do not approve of this. We do not accept that Ashkenazi European, American and Russian Jews lay claim and lay waste to the land and subjugate the indigenous Palestinian people.  

Marc Sapir 

 

 


Letters to the Editor

Thursday November 06, 2008 - 10:10:00 AM

NEXT TIME 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I think the Daily Planet-sponsored mayoral debate was a great idea. Next time, do it earlier so it makes a difference to the mail-in voters. 

Brian Reinbolt 

 

• 

NEO-NAZI SKINHEAD THREATS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The thought has occurred to many of us—a thought so disturbing we try to put it out of our minds. Then comes newspaper and television accounts of the neo-Nazi skinheads’ threat to behead 80 people and murder Barack Obama! 

I’m appalled by these stories, given the sick people and copycats in our society who might pick up on the assassination plot. In making public such demonic threats, the media are doing this country a disservice. To repeat, many of us do have fear of the unimaginable, but we keep those fears to ourselves. I would hope the media will show more restraint and publish no more sensational stories of the skinheads. 

Dorothy Snodgrass 

 

• 

TRANSIT-BASED GROWTH 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

An older person expressed concern to me yesterday about the “transit-based growth” article in the Daily Planet, and she asked me to send a comment. I just checked out the city’s website, set up an account for posting comments, and read a good part of Chapter 3, Sustainable Transportation and Land Use. Well, my comment didn’t appear to get posted. I’ll give it to your readers here, just in case. 

Two issues with the transportation/land use section: 

I was pleasantly surprised to see the amount of detail in this part of the city’s plan. But two issues occur to me. 

1. BRT is an example of favoring public transportation over “regular” multi-lane thoroughfares. If this trend continues, how are drivers supposed to manage? Suppliers of food and other items for sale in farmers markets and stores are included in that category, as are car-share drivers. It seems certain that hybrid and zero-emission vehicles will get snatched up as soon as they become cheaper and more widely available. But how will they fare on the streets of Berkeley?  

I watched a travel show recently, and noticed that the EuroEuropean city featured had both pedestrian-friendly areas and really wide thoroughfares for vehicles. 

2. Personal vehicles will be around for a long time. I’d love to buy a Smart Car, but I live in a multi-story dwelling (no place to plug in). Has the city explored the idea of making metered electric-charging stations available for apartment-type dwellers? I’m not saying the city would necessarily pay for such stations—although such stations might conceivably benefit the city, as in providing power to the grid. 

Thanks for listening. 

Jean Hohl 

 

• 

ZIONISM 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

After all the ridiculous vituperation that rained down upon the Planet and myself following my Oct. 2 commentary on the shenanigans of Zionist promotions of the Jewish State of Israel, I was convinced that my Power Point presentation at the Unitarian Fellowship last night would be at least picketed. Sad I was that no Israeli flags appeared, no picketers, no provocative questioners, and the Planet controversy even failed to energize a sizeable audience. There were about 25-30 people present when I asked how many people attending were Jewish. About five hands did not rise. An almost all-Jewish 100 percent sympathetic audience. I’ll tell you, dear reader, you missed a good presentation. Invite me to your school, church, community center and you’ll see.  

I’m writing this letter, as I did my commentary, to make a simple point. Jews who oppose Zionism and its mythology and dishonesty had better begin to make themselves known and heard not just as individuals but as Jews. How else can other Americans know that Zionism does not represent the Jewish people? Zionism has no right to take away our voices, no right to intimidate us with their brazen accusations of anti-Semitism and self-hatred. Certainly the Zionists do represent most of the powerful and institutional sectors of the Jewish people, but very many Jews without power do not approve of this. We do not accept that Ashkenazi European, American and Russian Jews lay claim and lay waste to the land and subjugate the indigenous Palestinian people.  

Marc Sapir 

 

• 

PEOPLE’S PARK ANNIVERSARY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

We are beginning to organize the 40th Anniversary of People’s Park, which is this April 2009. Talk of a week of events and a larger concert than usual are afoot. What would you like to see? Can you add your visions and energy to manifest this relevant reunion revitalizing revolution and responsibility through revelry? 

Please get involved. The first organizing meeting is on Sunday Nov. 9 at noon at the Cafe Med on Telegraph Avenue between Haste and Dwight. 

We are hoping to have a vibrant diversity of activities and encourage anyone interested in helping this manifest to come share your ideas and energies. 

Please come on Sunday or get back to us with your ideas and desires! Let us know if you want to be noticed for future meetings. 

Terri Compost 

• 

LONG HAUL RAID 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

How about a story detailing updates on the Long Haul Raid and the UCPD investigation that ensued? It’s been over two months and many of your readers would like to see an update on this seemingly illegal raid. 

Liz Dellums 

 

• 

ROBO CALLS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I got a call last Saturday from former President Bill Clinton. So did a few thousand other people. It was an automatically dialed recorded political message. If I am sure of how I am going to vote on the particular issue, I immediately hang up. If I am not sure, I listen to the message. Then I vote against the position of the calling organization. I figure that this is the surest way of stopping this intrusive practice. 

Robert Gable 

 

• 

CURATORIAL CENSORSHIP 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I’m adding my voice to the chorus of those complaining about misguided curatorial censorship at the Addison Street Windows Gallery. I understand that the person in charge believes that she is exercising good ethical standards, but she fails in at least two areas. First, guidelines for participation in a public gallery should be transparent and open to review, and it appears that her control is neither. And more important, the notion that eliminating any images of weapons encourages a peaceful citizenry misunderstands the value of socially engaged critical art. The examples that have recently been censored in no way glorify violence, but in fact are good examples of art that challenges the acceptance of violence as public policy. 

This sort of private control has no place in Berkeley public art spaces. I suggest that such an approach is indefensible, and can easily be carried to the absurd level of prohibiting such imagery as the Seal of the State of California. 

I encourage city officials to review this matter and seek a swift and just solution. 

Lincoln Cushing 

 

• 

ELECTION RESULTS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Headline: “Enthusiastics Thump Ecclesiastics.” 

Arnie Passman 

 

• 

BERKELEY AT ITS BEST 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

For quite some time I have been thinking about that attractive sign that says “Berkeley at its Best.” It is a great slogan but what does it refer to? The city as a whole or the city as an agency or the land or the buildings? It is not clear that this slogan includes the people, most particularly the people of Berkeley. 

Mabel Clark 

 

• 

SCULPTURE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The new sculpture on the Pedestrian Bridge is a public sculpture, yet none of us can see it while walking or riding on the bridge, unless we happen to be 10 feet tall. We are instead assaulted by four large, unattractive poles hoisting “our Berkeley statement” high above our heads. 

wrought but inappropriate in its present use and context. It would be better seen at eye level. 

If the intent of this sculpture is more for freeway-traffic viewing than for pedestrian viewing, then bold high-looming simplicity is in order so that people in cars can “get it.” 

Please, let us not have yet another piece of work hoisted high above our heads to that no one—pedestrians or drivers—can easily take it in. Please place the second piece somewhere down at eye level. No more ridiculous poles.  

But many overdue thanks to the city and designer for the great pedestrian bridge. 

Sara DeWitt 

 

• 

THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE DISTORTED 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The featured article by Matthew B. Stannard in a Insight section of San Francisco Chronicle did good by connecting a contemporary phenomenon with a similar pattern in the era of our founding: tracing today’s divide between elitists and populists back to the time of our founding when Federalists, elitists of the time, argued to keep the mob (demos in Greek), populists of the time, out of politics. Such historical perspective is enlightening but Mr. Stannard over does it.  

He did bad by implying that today’s media-exploited elitism/populism divide adequately characterizes the body politic of today. Far more typical of our era is the widening gap, egged on by the Bush administration’s tax cuts, between the very rich and the rest of us.  

In 1973 the wealthiest 20 percent of household accounted for 44 percent of U.S. total income but by 2002 the percent of the wealthiest 20 percent had increased to 50 percent (Census Bureau, reported by Associated Press, August, 2004). Two generations ago the ratio of the pay of CEOs to the hourly wage of production workers soared from 93 times that of workers to 419 in eleven years (Wealth and Democracy by Kevin Phillips, Broadway Books, 2002, Chapter Three).  

Mr. Stannard’s account is distorted and simple-minded, if not simply false, because it rests in his depiction of our government as a two party system. It is not. It is a one party system, the party of business, with two factions, Democratic and Republican. (Thank you Prof. Chomsky.)  

For every Washington elected legislator there are 60-some registered lobbyists, 535 of the former and over 30,000 of the latter. Out of 435 members of the House of Representative 123 are millionaires and in the Senate one-third are millionaires (2003). By comparison less than one percent of Americans earn seven figures. 

The prepositions “of,” “by” and “for” that used to connect government to the people have been erased, or more accurately, overwhelmed by the power of riches.  

Marvin Chachere 

San Pablo 

 

• 

IRISH OBAMA 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Thank you for your story regarding the song “There’s No One as Irish as Barack O’Bama,” recorded at the Starry Plough, your local favorite public house bar just down the road from your office. My rendition of the song now has almost a half million hits on YouTube, and continuing publicity in Ireland has ensured that the hits are increasing by many thousands daily. Your report told the story of some disagreement between the writers, the Corrigan Brothers in Ireland, and myself regarding the authorship of the words. To clarify, I did get permission to write some extra verses, but it seemed that some lazy bloggers used the shorthand of “a song by Shay Black” to mean “a song (sung) by Shay Black.” I attempted to contact many websites and bloggers to correct the attribution, but many did not see a problem and continued to call it “a song by Shay Black.” 

My reluctance to remove the song was based on the fact that once taken down from YouTube, it would disappear from thousands of links and forwarded e-mails. Many people had written to me to say that it was new information to them that Obama claimed Irish ancestry on his mother’s side. Hard nosed Irish Republicans (of the American ilk) found in the song yet another reason to identify with him, rather than the lies they were fed regarding him being Muslim, “Arab” and possibly a terrorist.  

The good news to all this is that after a clarifying trans-Atlantic phone call with The Corrigans in County Limerick, we resolved all our differences, and they withdrew all objections to the extra verses that were included in the Berkeley version. To see this version, go to YouTube and search for “O’Bama Shay.” On Sunday Nov. 2, at the weekly Irish music session, all 21 verses were sung with gusto by a packed Starry Plough house. The Corrigan Brothers have re-written and re-recorded the song to include new verses and references to “President O’Bama,” and also have sent an invitation for me to join them to perform at the Irish Democrats Inaugural Ball in Washington D.C. in January. 

The Berkeley O’Malleys will be glad to hear we intend to substitute the “O’Reilly” reference for an “O’Malley” mention. 

Shay Black 

 

• 

B-TECH HONORING  

DIA DE LOS MUERTOS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

For several weeks, the Youth Together group and the rest of Berkeley Technology Academy planned a Day of Celebration for Dia de los Muertos on Oct. 30. As school began, a few of the students wore their Rest In Peace shirts and sweaters. 

My fellow students had mixed feelings and were unsure of what to expect, but when 5th period started, students got seated for the performance that was awaiting them. As each student got seated, one of the Berkeley Danza Azteca groups, let by Adriana Betti, opened the assembly with two prayer dances. One of the Danza dancers started beating the drums and another dancer blew a shell horn. The dancers made this assembly a great event to remember. Following the Danca Azteca, one of our very own teachers, Miss Dawn Williams welcomed energy into our space through libations. There were students singing and reciting poetry in remembrance of their loved ones who have passed. Our West African dance group also performed one of their dances that they have been practicing after school. 

We closed this powerful performance with one of Bay Area’s very own Spoken Word artists, D’Andre Johnson. Throughout the performance, students took time to reflect and remember those who have passed. The overarching theme is: Live life to the fullest in honor of those that have passed! 

After the performance, students came up to the front and spoke about the people in their lives who passed away, and how they are never going to be forgotten. At the end, students came up to our community altar to place candles, flowers and names in honor of the loved ones. The B-Tech community found this event as a time to heal, remember, and to love life. Many emotions came out. One of our alumni mentioned that, “many people are feeling relieved and at peace because this event provide a space to do so.”  

Kevin Sarat-Guzman 

Berkeley Technology Academy student 

Student organizer, Youth Together 

 

• 

MEASURE FF: HISTORY REPEATS OR AT LEAST RHYMES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Circa April of 1998, I met with the then mayor, representatives of the Library Board and staff, and their engineering consultants with the objective of forcing public review of the library retrofit plans for the Central Library to be funded by a $50 million bond measure (Measure S). The context for this meeting and request for increased transparency was the repeated failure of the library to present any meaningful plans, structural performance objectives, reliable cost data, or indeed any of the information relevant to an effective review of a costly public safety initiative to the Seismic Technical Advisory Panel (STAP) of the city, which panel was chartered to do exactly that. From one perspective, the refusal of the library to cooperate with the STAP was surprising, if not even astonishing, in that STAP review of other seismic programs in the city (Public Safety Building and Civic Center) had already resulted in millions of additional funding for the city as well as an award for innovation in seismic policy from the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute. From the more realistic if sorrowfully sordid perspective of the library, the refusal to admit light to their seismic plans through a prize-winning peer review process was perfectly understandable. Their objective was neither a cost-effective seismic program for the Central Library nor the even more public-spirited goal of providing an objective comparison of the library’s seismic retrofitting costs with other (perhaps more urgent and life-critical) seismic retrofit needs of the city (e.g. soft-story buildings, reinforced masonry buildings, high occupancy movie theaters, etc.). Indeed, their objective was to suppress discussion of these considerations in the fear that their special interest would lose in an open informed debate. Like all true believers they could not tolerate competition—even in a situation where lives are at stake. 

Now with Measure FF we are confronted with a reprise of the same arrogant (or is it fanatic) behavior by the library with its conceit that its needs trump all others. A rational seismic policy would provide detailed peer-reviewed seismic plans for not only the actual branch library retrofits (including cost and safety trade-offs of replacement with retrofit) but also a comparative analysis of the opportunity costs of allocating vast sums to library retrofit in the context of the other life-critical and economic-critical seismic needs of the city. For too long the library has diverted excessive resources from the public purse without rigorous and objective review of its own efficiency much less of the very-substantial (if not devastating) opportunity costs to the city’s safety and fiscal capacity. Once again it seeks to grab substantial funds through appeals to fear and sentimentality. Voters of Berkeley should not be ashamed to refuse to be duped once again. Indeed, in my opinion they should be ashamed to once again turn away from the hard task of objectively allocating resources where truly many lives are at stake. Let the library get the funds it needs in informed competition with all the pressing needs of the city and not through one more sentimental appeal. 

Robert Krumme 

 

• 

POST-ELECTION CHATTER  

AT THE LOCAL COFFEE SHOP 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The coffee shop was abuzz this morning with new hope and exuberance. The foregone conclusion was that John McCain and Republicans made the blunder of all blunders counting on the Palin factor (the white religious vote) to carry it to another victory. All vice presidential picks of the past pale in comparison to the Palin misstep. Republicans got hammered. 

Best comment of the morning: “I voted my conscience because I knew we (Obama) had it in the bag.” 

One can only hope that the country has learned its lesson from years of GOP divide and conquer politics. 

Ron Lowe 

Nevada City 

 

• 

CLIMATE ACTION PLAN 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In a message dated Sept. 26, Alan Tobey writes, “But make no mistake about the real core of the Climate Action Plan (CAP)— the very much changed transportation and land use chapter. It does say as recommendation number one that we must ‘increase density near transit corridors’—something we should be actively working toward, not just passively accepting. It even uses the phrase “zoning changes” more than once.” 

In other words, my accessible, already dense neighborhood shall bear the burden of offsetting the energy profligacy of others? 

Hmm. What sacrifices are other neighborhoods making while mine is being asked the Ultimate—to “die” upon the cross of activist-mandated density? 

I am uneasy not with density but with the process by which it arrives. Twenty-six years ago my family passed up more “chic” but less accessible neighborhoods to buy a house near Telegraph Avenue and Ashby BART. We valued lessened dependence upon automobiles over “chic”-ness. We knew that the oil would run out eventually. (On this maybe we jumped the gun.) We don’t love cars. We expected such a neighborhood to grow denser. 

Never did we dream that our neighborhood would one day fight for its self-determination not against “bad guy” developers but against activist city officials and citizens with time to spare who reside in neighborhoods of higher per-capita energy consumption. 

It goes without saying that my neighborhood is not a carbon-offset colony but possessed of rights of self-determination equal to those of other neighborhoods of Berkeley. My compliments to the activists who have devised schemes such as “Climate Action,” Bus Rapid Transit, “Transit Village,” etc. in which my neighborhood is to play the pivotal role. We consider these virtuous proposals. We will decide what works for us. 

Bruce Wicinas 

 

• 

SUSPECT EVENT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

A well-attended program, sponsored by College Republicans, with hundreds of students waiting in line in vain to get tickets for the sold-out event, took place Oct. 29 at UC Berkeley. It featured two speakers, Walid Shoebat and Kamal Saleem who claim to be former Arabs/Muslims terrorists who saw the light, converted to Christianity and now present themselves as insiders on a holy mission to warn the world about Muslims’ design to wipe out Christians and Jews. No one was informed of an important detail: the two men are known frauds. The Jerusalem Post investigated claims by Shoebat, a Palestinian who grew up in Bethlehem area, and established that his claims 

are lies. 

Following a similar event by the same two speakers, and a third cohort, at the Air Force Academy last February, journalist Chris Hedges called the speakers “the three stooges of the Christian right.” Hedges adds, “These men are frauds, but this is not the point. They are part of a dark and frightening war by the Christian right against tolerance” and that, “These three con artists are not the problem. There is enough scum out there to take their place. Rather, they offer a window into a worldview that is destroying the United States.” 

Why do Jewish and Christian Zionists pour money into the fraud called Shoebat foundation? Are hate, incitement and intolerance protected by free speech? Should lies and fraudulent claims be perpetuated at an institute of higher education? What does the program say about the sponsors and the university administrators who approved the event? 

Hassan Fouda 

Kensington 

(The author serves on the Board of Directors of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolition 


Police Misconduct Complaints: The Right Not to Remain Silent

By Terry Francke
Thursday November 06, 2008 - 10:11:00 AM

The legal secrecy surrounding police misconduct and discipline is all but absolute, but not quite as strong as the free speech tradition championed in Berkeley. 

The California Court of Appeal decided earlier this month that because of the mandatory secrecy of peace officer’s personnel files and their contents (including but not limited to complaints) under state law, the Berkeley Police Review Commission may not hold open meetings when it reviews complaints against particular officers. No local sunshine ordinance such as the one proposed by a group of Berkeley residents could change this legal limitation. Only the legislature or the state Supreme Court could do that, and neither would soon, if at all. 

But there’s still the First Amendment and the free speech guarantee of the California Constitution, and the state’s Civil Code protection for publishing statements made in the course of official proceedings. Under that privilege (in Civil Code Section 47), the persons filing the complaints against peace officers are immunized from tort or other liability in publishing the text of their complaints—sharing their grievances with the world. And thanks to their constitutional rights, they cannot be judicially restrained from doing so. 

Moreover, the same law that forbids employers of peace officers from disclosing citizen complaints against the officers requires that complainants be given a copy for their own use. Subdivision (b) of Penal Code Section 832.7 states, “a department or agency shall release to the complaining party a copy of his or her own statements at the time the complaint is filed.”  

Accordingly, nothing—including either court action or legislation—could prevent a locally adopted ordinance from providing the following:  

“The Police Review Commission and any other office of the city receiving complaints against employee peace officers pursuant to Penal Code Section 832.5 shall, at the time of receiving the complaint, provide the complainant immediately with a photocopy or other exact copy of his or her complaint, time and date stamped to acknowledge receipt, together with the following written advisory statement: 

 

Your Right to Publicize Your Complaint 

You have just been provided with a copy of your complaint, with a time and date stamp to verify that you filed it. If you were not given a copy, please call 000-0000 between the hours of ___ and ___. The City of Berkeley and its agencies, including the Police Department and the Police Review Commission, are forbidden by law from disclosing to the public either the fact that you have made this complaint or what it says. But you have the constitutional right to publicize your complaint as you choose, and also absolute immunity from lawsuits if you make public the contents of your filed complaint form. For example, you are free to send a copy of your complaint to: 

• any public official at the local, state or federal level; 

• any newspaper, magazine, broadcast station or Internet news or comment website;  

• any political, social, labor or civil liberties organization; and/or  

• any person or organization listed with contact information on the Berkeley Police Review Commission Internet home page as a “Complaint Copy Requester,” having expressly requested to receive copies of such complaints. 

A copy of this advisory statement shall also be posted conspicuously at the location or locations at which complaints are received from physical visitors, and also posted conspicuously on the Internet home page of the Berkeley Police Review Commission, next to the list or link for Complaint Copy Requesters. 

 

Supplementing this requirement could be another provision, requiring the commission to advise complainants due to appear in a board of inquiry hearing (where complaints are actually examined through witness testimony) that they are free under the law: 

 

• publicly to repeat (for example in a press interview) or otherwise report what they or anyone else said in the hearing; 

• to publicize or otherwise share the copies, provided by the commission, of their interview transcript and redacted police report; and 

• to publicize or otherwise share the copy, provided by the commission, of its findings concerning the complaint. 

 

In short, the government may gag itself from revealing police complaints and discipline and close board of inquiry hearings to the public, but it cannot gag complainants from revealing to the community whatever they say and discover as participants in the process. Nor could officers prevail or even get a toehold in a lawsuit for defamation or privacy invasion, in my view, given the Civil Code Section 47 privileges and the anti-SLAPP law, if all the complainant does is report what he or she says, hears or learns in the commission process. 

Thanks to its chronic invertebracy in the face of police lobbyists, the legislature has compelled those who employ peace officers to keep silent about the misbehavior of the worst in the ranks—what the complaints are, whether they are substantiated after due inquiry, and what if anything has been done by way of discipline or correction. But those in Berkeley or elsewhere who believe themselves or others to have been mistreated by this tiny minority of misfits for the badge have the right to file a formal complaint about them, the right to have their complaint evaluated and answered, and the right not to remain silent. Responsible city leaders will see to it that complainants are advised of these rights in a candid and timely manner. 

 

Terry Francke is a member of Californians Aware. 


Do Police Get Any Cultural Sensitivity Training?

By Ayodele Nzinga
Thursday November 06, 2008 - 10:12:00 AM

I am proceeding with the filing of multiple complaints against officers of the Berkeley Police Department. I don’t think it will help. The Berkeley Police lack cultural sensitivity and by all evidence common courtesy and sense. They are, by and large, an incendiary gang in blue that should be curtailed in Southwest Berkeley. 

There have been two other serious incidents since my 20-year-old daughter was assaulted by the officer in car 1522 on Oct. 10. 

Last week an African American officer on a bike told my son “he was not the nigger to fuck with.” This is dismaying in all sorts of ways. Why does the brother riding with white officers identify himself so readily as a nigger? And what does it mean he is “not to be fucked with?” It sounded like a threat to my son. It sounds like a threat to me. The officer said my son could take it how he liked. We don’t like it at all. We have no intention of taking it. 

So what do we do? A 75-day process will not alleviate the stress we are under right this moment. 

The police officer decided my son was drunk today. He told him to take his drunk ass back in the house with his gun. This was after the officer engaged in a yelling match with an 18-year-old (my son) that was so heated a passerby felt it necessary to rescue my son who was not being detained, just harassed. 

How unprofessional is this? How provocative. How un-officer-like. If there had been anything remotely passing for “cause,” there would have been an arrest or a ticket ... something. The stops are bogus. It is clearly harassment. It is unacceptable. 

Is it the policy of this city to allow its officers to court lawsuits for harassment under the color of law? I ask because that’s where we are heading. This is intolerable. 

Some officers, it seems, should be checked for psychological disorders, Their vitriol and often demonstrated fixation on a handicapped 18-year-old is misplaced and indicative of some deep seated problems. Some are not fit for duty. Some are provocateurs with an agenda for my children. We are not in accord. 

Is it legal to search someone without probable cause, to do a four-way search on someone not on paper, to intimidate, harass and belittle citizens from the protection of a badge in Berkeley? 

Many officers are bullies and should pick on someone their own size. Perhaps they could use their aggression to actively investigate the attempted murder of my son, but that sounds too close to right. 

When this comes to a head, as it will, someone is going to want to know who knew and what they did to intervene. It should be enough that we are allowing ourselves to be drummed out of Berkeley. Is it necessary that we be tarred and feathered in our exit? The stress of this is taking a serious toll on our family. If no one else cares, we do. 

I worry about the image of law this presents to all youth not just my own. If there are no rules for the police, then why should they worry about being lawful? When police abuse their power, they encourage lawlessness. 

My family is starting to fail the tone test. You know, the strategy North America African moms give their youth in order to help them survive an encounter with the gang in blue: modulate your tone, be ultra respectful, cooperate to the fullest extent and you may leave the encounter unscathed. How can they take me seriously when time after time they are abused under the color of law? I can’t even take my own advice any more. I am full to overflowing with angst and righteous anger. 

I don’t know if I told you before but Berkeley is where my granny brought me when she moved from the south to California. I have always had great love for this city. Now I am clear on the duality that rests in Berkeley. Its enlightened reputation is created by the white (in the majority) students at the university. These students bring not just money into Berkeley’s coffers but provide it with an image that belies its true narrow, conservative, repressive self. The lived experience of those cosigned to “the hub” of Berkeley is measurably different than that of city residents of “real” Berkeley. That’s a damn shame in a country that has just elected a black president. 

I am starting to wonder about hard facts: What is the conviction-to-arrest ratio for the BPD? How many convictions are straight guilty pleas and how many are the bogus deals people take even when they are innocent? What are the homicide resolution statistics? How are officers evaluated for continuing fitness for duty? Is there any cultural sensitivity training in place in the police department? Who does it? How is its effectiveness measured? Are there others with complaints similar to mine, (class action)? How many complaints against specific officers? What are the community policing standards for this city? Is there any more direct way to deal with my concerns? Who do the chief of police and the city manager answer to? Who do you sue when your city puts your life on the crap table? 

Does the city have any more immediate solution for me other than a long bureaucratic process that may not stop something awful from happening tomorrow? 

 

Ayodele Nzinga is a Bay Area theater director.


UC Democracy: After 140 Years, It’s Time for Change

By Matthew Taylor
Thursday November 06, 2008 - 10:14:00 AM

For those who care about the University of California and its relations with our broader world, the catalyzing opportunity for real change is for distinct groups to find common cause and democratize the UC. Collectively, can we reverse the widening chasm between a concerned public and an aloof, unaccountable Board of Regents composed of elite, wealthy businessmen. The Phoenix Project for UC Democracy aims to build a coalition to democratize the UC Regents, and our kickoff event will be Tuesday, Nov. 18, 7 p.m. at the Hillside Club in Berkeley (www.UCdemocracy.org for more info). 

A public institution severed from the social contract grows alarmingly dysfunctional: scandals over outrageous administrative salaries, corporate pacts, skyrocketing student fees, nuclear weapons production, poor community relations, poverty wages for workers, unfulfilled minority enrollment, and token environmental gestures. Constantly, disparate concerned groups hoist banners, go to meetings, and knock on doors—all to little or no avail because of the UC’s unaccountable, undemocratic governing structure. 

With few exceptions, rivers of petitions, letters, and pleas rarely receive even a response from the Regents. This year, some students fight arbitrary cuts to East Asian Languages, others fight the elimination of the UC Center for Labor Studies. Some protect trees, others are concerned about tobacco funding for health research. Unions march over contract negotiations, and every year hundreds of students head to Sacramento, but hit wall after wall. Usually, Regents who bother to show up for the one-minute public comment sessions smirk or sit aloof. 

This can change, starting now—if you help. 

United by common challenges to specific concerns, a statewide movement across all 12 UC campuses has begun. We seek nothing less than to amend the California Constitution to democratize the UC. 

While the UC Regents have fought this for decades, democratization has already been implemented via elected Regents and Boards of Education at many top American universities, including Michigan, New York, Colorado, Nebraska, North Carolina and Florida. 

In fact, efforts to democratize the UC began shortly after its establishment in 1868, sparked then as today by concerns about corrupt state politicians and a university led astray by unrepresentative elites. Reforms were implemented after pressure from student movements and progressive politics in the 1960s, over Regents’ objections. The California legislature mandated that Regents’ meetings be public and required Senate ratification for nominated Regents. The legislation also mandated the Regents to be “broadly reflective of the economic, cultural, and social diversity of the state,” a mandate that remains unfulfilled. 

In the early 1990s, the Committee for a Responsible University formed a “Plan to Democratize the Regents,” sparked by wage cuts, fee hikes and a $2.4 million golden parachute for then UC President Gardner. “The Regents are completely out of touch with the people of California,” noted Andy Shaw of the UC Students Association. Even Ralph Nader joined the fray: “You cannot run an institution that large, that’s funded by taxpayers, that’s supposed to be operating in a democratic society, in an autocratic and top-down manner.” 

Elites have sought to protect their privilege by feigning concern that democratization would expose long-term planning to the vicissitudes of short-term political winds. But even 35 years ago, people saw through this smokescreen. Assembly member Vasconcellos said “The group that’s on the board now is the most political of all, representing only 2 percent or 3 percent of the wealthy individuals and established corporations of the state.” 

So while the California Constitution requires that “The university shall be entirely independent of all political or sectarian influence and kept free therefore in the appointment of its Regents,” this, in practice, is farce. The idea that 12-year terms insulate Regents from political winds should be recognized as fantasy. 

Currently, the governor appoints 19 of the Regents, the majority. Students only have token representation—one student Regent, chosen by the Regents! 

Consider the two most recent nominations by Gov. Schwarzenegger. Last month the governor nominated real estate tycoon and Republican moneyman Hadi Makarechian after Makarechian contributed $289,000 for Schwarzenegger’s political campaigns. Makarechian—a co-founder of the Republican lobby group “New Majority”—sells exclusive McMansions like Ritz Pointe and Point Monarch to the uber-rich. Makarechian’s firm failed to pay $718,000 in fees to local governments, raising serious questions about civic responsibility while UC battles with local communities about land use and cost sharing. 

The governor’s other nominee this year, John Hotchkis, and his firms gave more than $470,000 since 2000 to Republican politicians. While Hotchkis was serving on the UC Regents’ investment advisory board, the Regents gave a $430 million contract to a firm in which Hotchkis had a financial stake. Democratic Governor Davis did much the same, appointing as Regents allies who’d funded Democratic political campaigns: Hotchkinson ($145,000), Marcus ($215,000), Pattiz ($300,000), etc. 

New UC President Mark Yudoff—hired at an outrageous salary of nearly $900,000 per year—acknowledges problems of accountability, but only proposes narrow changes in his recent “Accountability Framework.” 

Real accountability requires democratization. Possible options include electing most or all regents on a statewide or district basis—with public financing, or required media slots, to eliminate expensive media campaigns. Another option would be local elections, prioritizing the choices of students, workers, faculty, and community members. Reform must be joined with ongoing self-reflection and watchdogging. 

We don’t have all the answers yet. A detailed, positive program for a democratic UC will emerge as our wide coalition coalesces. Let’s bring together student groups, state universities, unions, environmental organizations, community groups, legislators, administrators, faculty, workers, high-school students, and researchers in wikis, conferences, classrooms, boardrooms, open spaces, committees, and lunch breaks. 

A democratic UC is a fundamental human right, an historic challenge, and an opportunity that can rejuvenate our sense of purpose. Hear more and contribute at the Hillside Club on Thursday Nov. 18, and look out for a summit Jan. 19-22. The UC can again be an inspiration to California and the World. Fiat Lux—and Fiat Pax. 

 

Matthew Taylor is a co-founder of the Phoenix Project for UC Democracy (www.ucdemocracy.org). 


Obama Is My Lama ... And also My President

By Boona Cheema
Thursday November 06, 2008 - 10:14:00 AM

It will work, as a certain number of mantra recitations bring a desired outcome, so at 1 million it’s a given….I am getting close. 

As a struggling Buddhist in an effort to do the least harm, I attend as many of the teachings given by His Holiness the Dalai Lama as I can. This summer I dutifully went to Madison, Wisconsin and attended the Long Life Ceremony and received the teachings of Shantideva, the great Indian master, Barack Obama, to whom I had committed resources, time and, yes, spirit. This work kept entering my so-called empty mind and in the midst of thousands of people I kept feeling like I was cheating on His Holiness. Lucky for me the Great Lama is of the forgiving kind and I know my transgression of discovering a new little lama would be received with compassion for my tortured political soul. 

Upon returning from Madison I proceeded to get a few friends to help me design a bumper sticker, surrounded by the colors of the Tibetan flag, which of course says OBAMA IS MY LAMA. There have been sightings of these stickers in town, and each sighting adds to the recitation of the mantra…each sighting also infuses the soul of the reader with increased desire to take action in compassion. 

This journey to find a politician who has the discipline of a lama and a mind which cuts through perceptions and conceptions began a long time ago…actually in 1984 when I became a citizen of this country just to be able to vote for Gary Hart…ooops. I believe Kucinich has this combination, but we know that story, you have to be of a certain height to be the president of the United States of America. Well, Bill did good…oops again. And Gore and Kerry almost, but none of them made me start chanting politically spiritual mantras. 

Small sentences started to make huge impressions upon my spirituality and my politics, and they were all coming from this someone named Barack Obama. Of course I had watched the first big speech…..but now something else was happening…We were being asked, “In the end, that is what this election is about. Do we participate in a politics of cynicism or politics of hope?” We were being asked to believe that, “In a tolerant America your name is no barrier to success.” 

Then came Obama’s speech on race, followed by the acceptance speech at the Democratic convention, and my mantra became energized and infused with the intention to manifest a different future…dedication only a novice Buddhist can give to the purpose of deep practice touched by some silliness. In collective consciousness of those of us who are constantly seeking something better, systems that do less harm, relationships that empower us…..we have been touched by “That One” and life will never be the same. 

 

boona cheema is a Berkeley resident. 


Mayor Bates: Taking and Giving Nothing Back

By Reya Aimes
Thursday November 06, 2008 - 10:15:00 AM

I grew up in this city and I am so disappointed in it I could just spit. How its citizenry can keep electing someone as mayor who quite obviously doesn’t care about their wants, needs or rights escapes me. 

Are my fellow Berkeleyans who voted for Bates aware that he now plans to extend the parking meters until 10 p.m. to milk his individual taxpayers further but continues to refuse to have the sprawling University of California pay for the city resources with which we increasingly provide it? 

Bates has been obsessed with aggressive development to win and woo outside industry and big business at the expense of his actual citizens: the small business owners, the residents, the parents and the children living in his city. 

He refuses to enact a Sunshine Ordinance to allow these citizens to know what he’s doing with city funds, policy and planning. Meanwhile, he gives developers, UC and other agencies carte blanche to carve up and pollute this city and throw up high rises that may not even be occupied but will block the sun from families’ yards for good. 

As a resident of Northwest Berkeley, I have watched Tom Bates engage in a transparent charade skirting the serious air pollution problem caused by Pacific Steel Casting, a company releasing dangerous manganese, other heavy metals and carcinogenic binding agents into Berkeley’s air next to preschools, shopping districts and the city’s oldest, historic residential neighborhood where thousands of children live. 

Bates has stood by while Pacific Steel fails to follow mandates and clean up the problem. Yet he likes to call himself a “green” mayor and Berkeley a “green” city as he lets this 70-year-old decrepid factory operate and pollute through its failing walls as though it were an acceptable modern structure. If it weren’t so serious, it would be laughable. 

He fails to allow the objective scientific data collected to be made available to the experts or affected residents. He fails to mention that his PR firm is the same as Pacific Steel’s. He sits on the Bay Area Air Quality Management District Board and fails to mention it was formed 70 years ago by a Pacific Steel chairman. He claims the problem, which in residents’ opinion is worsening, is improved by citing that complaints in the area have gone down. He fails to mention that he and the Air Quality Board have made the process of filing a complaint increasingly difficult to nearly impossible and the inspection process completely unscientific as inspectors are young, inexperienced and not allowed to work with monitors or instruments. 

This kind of covert, duplicitous behavior and total lack of integrity is not surprising from someone who stole and destroyed all the Daily Cal newspapers in 2002 when the paper endorsed his opponent. What IS surprising is that a city with residents as savvy as Berkeley would re-elect this person. What is going on? 

Bates sold our city’s air rights to developers building high rises for one fifth of the value at which they were appraised in a back room deal and says he’ll do the same in South Berkeley neighborhoods near Ashby BART. So we’ve reelected a mayor who is essentially purposefully underfunding the city’s budget? And then we are told that times are tough and our parks, libraries and resources need to be cut back or further funded by us with bonds and taxes?? 

Tom Bates can call himself progressive, fiscally responsible and environmentally sound when it suits him but his record says 180 degrees otherwise. I hope all you Bates voters think twice when you pay your 10 p.m. parking meter tickets—this guy is taking from you and giving nothing back. He needs to be held accountable. It’s our children he’s stealing from. 

 

Reva Aimes is a Berkeley resident.


The Devil You Know: Dean Vs. Bates

By Carol Denney
Thursday November 06, 2008 - 10:15:00 AM

By the time this story hits print, either Tom Bates or Shirley Dean will have won the election for mayor in Berkeley. The Berkeley voters will be able to count on one thing for certain; a back burner for civil rights, police accountability, and honestly affordable housing. 

Both candidates have been Berkeley mayor before, so it seems fair to observe that under both administrations the concept of “affordable” housing has evolved to mean $100,000 condominiums and a pro-development atmosphere in which no one objects to Berkeley’s first million dollar condominiums with views of the bay. 

Both candidates, in successive administrations, offered no objection to first the slow starvation of the Police Review Commission, once a national model, by cutting its budget so far back that it couldn’t function sensibly, then its assault by the courts, which has forced it to operate entirely in secret due to officers’ privacy rights. Dean and Bates may abhor this development, as do supporters of police accountability nationwide, but have yet to say a public word of regret, or take any compensatory action. 

Berkeley has a shameful history of attacking the poorest, most vulnerable people on its streets: its aging homeless veterans, its runaway youth, its marginalized, mentally challenged people of all ages. The efforts have come under both Dean’s and Bates’ administrations in the form of efforts to criminalize panhandling, efforts to curtail panhandling in commercial areas, efforts to criminalize utilizing shopping carts or having large amounts of belongings, efforts to criminalize public sleeping, sitting down, lying down, urination, defecation, and smoking—all behaviors which have no effect on the housed or the rich, but which overwhelmingly complicate the lives of the poor on the streets. 

It would be unfair not to note the wholehearted participation of the Downtown Berkeley Association (DBA) in these efforts. Under both administrations, this business lobby, once publicly funded and largely governed by out-of-town downtown property owners, has been allowed to literally write the wording of anti-poor ordinances with the willing help of city staff and elected officials, who know that if they allow this undemocratic interference, their future elections will be well funded by grateful DBA members. 

It would also be unfair not to add that the voters of Berkeley have proven only too willing to pass even unconstitutional measures to try to avoid their personal discomfort at confronting poverty on their streets. The DBA was usually more than willing to throw serious money at deceptive political campaigns against the rights of the poor, but a majority of Berkeley’s voters has, at least in the past, been willing to lend its support to the shameful criminalization of poverty. 

It is our job, the current poor, the poor-to-be, and those who care about equality, to be at least as persuasive as the DBA’s well-heeled business lobby, which makes it politically tenable to target the poor. Especially in this economy, both former Mayor Dean and former Mayor Bates will have an easy time enlisting an army of resources to disparage  

and undermine the poor and the underfunded community groups trying to assist them, and keep the pathetically inadequate number of shelter beds at the same number it’s been for decades (240). 

We know the playbooks, we know the players, and we know the game. Unless we re-write the rules, we know exactly what to expect. We’re at a critical point no matter who wins the elections locally or nationally, and we need our creative communities more than ever to find new paths to a better, more equitable world. 

 

Carol Denney is a Berkeley musician and activist. 


Choice Voting Is the Way to Go

By Preston Jordan
Thursday November 06, 2008 - 10:16:00 AM

As a resident of Albany, I have read Sharon Hudson’s series on the problems created with Berkeley’s electoral system with fascination. Her commentaries, published in the Oct. 9, 16 and 30 issues of the Berkeley Daily Planet, present a brief history of Berkeley’s previous “at-large” system of electing the City Council, the current district system of election, and the problems created by each.  

For 100 years, Albany has used the at- large system to elect its councilmembers. This certainly makes sense due to Albany’s small size, but has led to the same problems Berkeley experienced wherein the largest voting bloc gains all the representation while smaller blocs gain none. Ms. Hudson notes this problem as a reason Berkeley switched to district elections. She then elucidates the many pitfalls of districts elections, including a lack of representation for large groups of voters, parochialism on the part of district councilmembers, and the creation of safe seats through the power of incumbency. 

Ms. Hudson’s final commentary offers some possible solutions, including hybridizing the district and at-large systems. She demonstrates considerable creativity and civic goodwill in putting forth these solutions. For any citizen to take time out from all the other demands of life to examine and critique the foundation of our representative democracy is crucial to its continual renewal (as it was to its creation). 

Ms. Hudson variously proposes switching to two-member districts with staggered majority elections, to district elections that provide out-of-district voters some input via a fractional vote, and/or to districts combined with at- large election of some councilmembers (such as in Oakland). Unfortunately, all of these increase complexity relative to the current system. There is another much simpler reform that incorporates all the advantages, and more, of district and at-large elections, while avoiding their disadvantages. It is called Choice Voting. 

Choice Voting is the multiple seat equivalent of Instant Runoff Voting (which Berkeleyans passed by 72 percent in 2004, but has not been implemented due to the same election vendor problems plaguing much of the country). When Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) is implemented (almost certain for 2010), voters will be able to rank the candidates. This allows “instant runoffs” if necessary to determine a majority winner in one election. Ranking the candidates also eliminates the “spoiler effect” and provides an incentive for candidates to campaign positively in order to garner the highest ranking possible from each voter. Despite these positives, IRV will not overcome the inherent problem of single-seat districts. They preclude representation for large groups of voters. 

Choice Voting resolves this anti-democratic pitfall. It allows voters to rank candidates in multi-seat elections, and candidates win in proportion to voter support. What does this mean? Posit that Berkeley returns to city-wide elections. In a conventional at-large election, the largest group of voters would elect all the councilmembers, excluding all representation for smaller groups of voters. With Choice Voting, though, if 50 percent of the electorate holds a particular set of values/point of view, this group will elect only 50 percent of the council rather than 100 percent. If another 25 percent holds a different set of values/point of view, this group will elect 25 percent of the council rather than 0 percent. 

The effect of this change is profound. Whereas districts impose a rigid electoral geography from above, Choice Voting allows the electoral geography to emerge from the people. For instance, under city-wide Choice Voting, some voters may value representation for their particular area of the city. The successful candidate addressing these voters will garner a high proportion of their support from that particular area. Other voters may value representation concerning particular city-wide issues. The successful candidate addressing these voters will need only a low percentage of support in any particular area, but that same level of support throughout the entire city. 

Choice Voting is consequently the most graceful solution to the problems of single-seat districts versus winner-take-all at-large systems. It affords the people the power to reorganize their representation from election to election without preconception. This is in contrast with the district system that rigidly divides voters into groups by fiat, affording success to those politicians that cynically choose who is worth representing and who is not. 

Choice Voting may seem like a dream to many, and a horror to a few (like those in power). To the dreamers, I say it is attainable. Our forebears attained it. Choice Voting was brought forth to combat the machine politics of the early 1900s. At its peak, it was used in two dozen cities across the country, including Sacramento. It allowed the first election of the first African-Americans to the council in many of these cities.  

Ultimately, because it so reduced the power of the political machines, they were almost completely successful in gaining its repeal during the Cold War. The only holdouts are the citizens of Cambridge, Massachusetts, another university town. They still use Choice Voting to elect their nine city councilmembers, as they have done since 1941. 

History shows that Choice Voting in the East Bay will have to come from us, the people, the dreamers. Our politicians generally prefer the current blood sport of winner-take-all, having been weaned on it for their entire careers. 

More on the history of Choice Voting can be read at www.fairvote.org/ ?page=647. If you would like to continue the discussion, please contact me at albanycv@yahoo.com. 

If you have read this far, I thank you for your interest in democracy. Take care. 

 

 

Preston Jordan is an Albany resident.


Barack Obama and the Great Yearning

By Jean Damu
Thursday November 06, 2008 - 10:16:00 AM

The election of Barack Obama as 44th president of the United States is a benchmark event in African American’s long, long history in this country. However the overwhelming support Obama received from the nation’s black communities, support that saw unprecedented numbers of African Americans marching as one to the polling booths, stemmed from emotions and events far removed the world of modern politics. 

The massive support Obama received from the nation’s black communities was an expression of most of African America’s long and historic yearning to be a part of America, to be perceived, accepted and respected as equal citizens; a respect and acceptance that eludes many blacks to this day. 

This historic yearning to be a part of America should not be interpreted to mean that masses of blacks yearn to meld into white America, but rather a yearning that they, their institutions and their communities be nurtured and respected and that individuals be treated accordingly. 

Many commentators have assumed that Obama’s successful campaign began with the Civil Rights movement and Martin Luther King’s 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial. Lots of evidence supports these theses. Others have noted Obama stands on the shoulders of black politicians who were successful during the post-Civil War Reconstruction Era. Lots of evidence there also. 

While it is important to recognize that Obama won because he had the support of broad sections of the U.S. electorate, no section of the U.S. electorate supported him in a proportion equal to that of black America. 

Therefore it is important to trace to its origins Obama’s massive black support and equate that support to black America’s historical yearnings to be an equal part of America.. 

This desire was possibly first articulated on Jan. 15, 1817 at a meeting held at Philadelphia’s Bethel Church, pastured by Richard Allen, founder of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. 

The meeting, called by Rev. Allen, shipping entrepreneur Paul Cuffee and others, was to discuss a proposal made to Cuffee by the newly formed American Colonization Society to re-colonize free blacks in West Africa. 

For many years previously Cuffee had supported emigration efforts on the part of blacks who wished to re-settle in Africa after suffering lifetimes of abuse at the hands of white Americans. Richard Allen, who had found it necessary to establish a black church because free blacks were unwelcome in white churches, was sympathetic. 

From Charles Johnson and Patricia Smith’s Africans in America: America’s Journey through Slavery, we learn that Cuffee in his remarks to the 3,000 men who had assembled at Bethel Church to discuss the emigration proposal noted that he and others on the stage including the ubiquitous Absalom Jones were now old warriors and recalled their unsuccessful struggle 20 years earlier to repeal the Fugitive Slave Act. He made these observations to defuse any notions some might have had that he was quitting the fight for equal rights and against slavery. But he said he was also a realist. He had been to Sierra Leone, a colony of free blacks who had resisted slavery by supporting the British during the American Revolution, and finally resettled from Nova Scotia to West Africa. There, he said the multitude of blacks “enjoyed all the rights that are withheld from us here.” 

“Here in America we face an uphill struggle. Our victories can be taken away with a single stroke of the pen by men like former president (Thomas) Jefferson. He and others like him have always envisioned the United States as a white man’s nation…” 

The debate on whether or not to accept the American Colonization Society’s (an organization that refused to accept black membership) proposal to emigrate raged throughout the entire day. Finally the measure was put to a vote. 

According to the Jan. 16, 1817 edition of the Philadelphia Liberator newspaper, as ballots were handed out to the 3,000 in attendance and then counted, the Bethel choir entertained the guests. After just two hymns attendants announced that the voting results had been tabulated. 

As the Rev. Mr. Allen stepped to the podium and cleared his throat, the audience drew quiet. 

“You, the people, have voted unanimously against your leaders. You have rejected returning to Africa. Whatever our future is to be, you have decided that it will be here on these shores. God help us all.” 

As decisive as this unanimous vote was, it did not end for all time the emigration issue among African Americans (13,000 newly freed blacks were to re-settle in Liberia and even today there is a mini-movement among well to do blacks to establish dual citizenship in an African country) but it did lay the basis for what we refer today as the African American identity, and it was a signal that after almost 200 years in what became the United States, African Americans in 1817 felt themselves to be as much a part the U.S. fabric as anyone else. 

It was this yearning to belong, to be able to claim for itself equal membership in a nation in which they are neither American nor African which drove African Americans collectively to the polling booths. 

The next stage of the African American journey will determine how Obama’s presidency addresses African American’s yearnings to become equal partners in America. 

 

Jean Damu is a Berkeley resident.


Silence on Immigration

By David Bacon
Thursday November 06, 2008 - 10:18:00 AM

The first of the 388 workers arrested in the immigration raid on the Agriprocessors meatpacking plant in Postville, Iowa, were deported in mid-October, having spent five months in federal prison. Their crime? Giving a bad Social Security number to the company to get hired. Among them will be a young man who had his eyes covered with duct tape by a supervisor on the line, who then beat him with a meathook. The supervisor is still on the job. 

The Postville raid was one of the many recent immigration operations leading to criminal charges and deportations for thousands of people. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff calls this “closing the back door. “ Meanwhile, his department seeks to “open the front door” by establishing new guest-worker programs, called “close to slavery” by the Southern Poverty Law Center. 

Something is clearly wrong with the priorities of immigration enforcement. Hungry and desperate workers go to jail and get deported. The government protects employers and seeks to turn a family-based immigration system into a managed labor supply for business. Yet national political campaigns say less and less about it. Immigrant Latino and Asian communities feel increasingly afraid and frustrated. Politicians want their votes, but avoid talking about the rising wave of arrests, imprisonment, and deportations. 

This month national demonstrations across the nation are protesting the silence, asking candidates to speak out. Immigrant communities expect a new deal from a new administration, especially from Democrats. They want a new U.S. president to take swift and decisive action to give human rights a priority over fear, and recognize immigrants as people, not just a source of cheap labor. 

 

Agenda for the Next President 

In its first 100 days, a new administration could take these simple steps to benefit immigrants and working families: 

• Stop Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from seeking serious Federal criminal charges, with incarceration in privately run prisons, for lacking papers or for bad Social Security numbers. 

• Stop raiding workplaces, especially where workers are trying to organize unions or enforce wage and hour laws. This would help all workers, not just immigrants, to raise low wages. 

• Double the paltry 742 federal inspectors responsible for all U.S. wage and hour violations and focus on industries where immigrants are concentrated. The National Labor Relations Board could target employers who use immigration threats to violate union rights. 

• Halt community sweeps, where agents use warrants for one or two people to detain and deport dozens of others. End the government’s campaign to repeal local sanctuary ordinances and drag local law enforcement into immigration raids. 

• Allow all workers to apply for a Social Security number and pay legally into the system that benefits everyone. Social Security numbers should be used for their true purpose - paying retirement and disability benefits - not to fire immigrants from their jobs and send them to prison. 

• Reestablish worker protections ended under Bush on existing guest worker programs, force employers to hire domestically first, and decertify any contractor guilty of labor violations. 

• Restore human rights in border communities, stop construction of the border wall between the U.S. and Mexico, and disband the Operation Streamline federal court, where scores of young borders are sent to prison in chains every day. 

 

Alternatives 

After the first 100 days, Democrats will have to decide what reforms to bring before Congress, and when. Some would delay action for a year or more. But the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and dozens of trade groups won’t sit on their hands. They’ve been pushing for years for big guest-worker programs, more raids and enforcement, and a weak legalization program. But many immigrant and labor rights activists advocate three steps toward an alternative, more progressive reform: 

1. A moratorium on raids, while protecting human and labor rights, in the first 100 days. 

2. A law to give green-card visas to the undocumented and clear up the backlog of people already waiting for them. If visas are more easily available abroad, people won’t have to cross the border without them. That law could also create jobs in unemployed communities, repeal employer sanctions laws that make work a crime for immigrants, and encourage labor law reform to protect workers’ rights. Guest-worker programs with a record of abuse should be ended, as they were in 1964. 

3. A new approach to trade policy and renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), so they stop causing poverty and uprooting communities, making migration peoples’ only alternative for survival. Reject new trade agreements with countries like Colombia, which will cause job loss in the U.S. and spread low wages, labor violations, and displacement abroad. U.S. tax dollars, instead of being spent on the Iraq War, could expand rural credit, education and health care in Mexico and other countries, easing the pressure behind migration. 

There’s common ground here among immigrants, communities of color, unions, churches, civil rights organizations, and working families. Legalization and immigrant rights, tied to guaranteeing jobs for all working families, can bring people together. All workers, including immigrants, need the right to organize and enforce labor standards, the same goal sought by unions in the Employee Free Choice Act. Changing trade policy will benefit working-class communities in the U.S. while helping families of immigrants back home from Oaxaca to El Salvador. 

The diverse communities who need these reforms can and will find ways to seek them together. In fact, if Barack Obama wins the presidency and a larger Democratic majority takes hold in Congress, they will owe their victory to this coalition. 

After the election, this same coalition will need jobs and rights. But immigrant workers are going to jail now. The wave of raids continues to divide families, even as candidates hold rallies and ask for votes. In Los Angeles’ Placita Olvera, activists have begun a hunger strike to stop the deportations. Marches and demonstrations are making the same point from coast to coast. 

Promises of change aren’t enough. For candidates who want working-class votes, the first step is to speak out. 

 

For more articles and images on immigration, see http://dbacon.igc.org/ Imgrants/imgrants.htm. 

 

This article orginally appeared in Foreign Policy In Focus.


Measure KK Aftermath: Perish by the Sword

By Alan Tobey
Thursday November 06, 2008 - 10:17:00 AM

As Jesus says in Matthew 26:52, “those that take up the sword shall perish by the sword.” In the case of just-defeated initiative Measure KK, the “sword” its proponents took up was their conviction that the issue would be considered an up or down vote on one specific Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) project—AC Transit’s proposal to run dedicated-lane buses on Telegraph Avenue and on into downtown. As mayoral candidate Shirley Dean said at a neighborhood meeting early in the campaign, “Measure KK is the best way we have to stop the BRT in Berkeley.”  

This rhetorical sword was one of their own choosing—it was not something built in to the measure. In fact, Measure KK had absolutely nothing to say about the parameters of the specific BRT project, and the vote on KK had nothing to do with directly deciding its fate. The initiative would only have changed the way some major transit projects including BRT are decided in the future; upgrading a street lane from auto to transit or carpool use would have required an affirmative vote of the people.  

Most electoral officials—and the League of Women Voters—opposed KK solely because of that proposed procedural change, feeling that transit decisions should remain within the scope of established Council authority, and fearing that KK’s bad precedent would encourage further such electoral mischief-making.  

The formal campaign against KK, which I helped to manage, also stayed away from expressing any opinion about the one proposed project. As well as the procedural points, we focused on the undesirable consequences of delaying good transit projects for up to two more years AFTER the City Council already approved them—and after dozens of meetings, workshops and public hearings had been held to allow vigorous citizen participation. Our No campaign’s own “sword” was primarily an environmental one—we maintained that the climate-saving and other environmental benefits of major transit improvements like BRT should not be delayed any more than necessary. In an election that we knew would skew young, left and green, we were willing to risk “perishing” by our advocacy of better and greener transit as soon as possible. 

In the end Berkeley voters were not persuaded by the anti-BRT campaign, and they turned down Measure KK by a substantial 77 percent-23 percent majority.  

The defeat leaves KK proponents still holding their anti-BRT-project sword—by which their cause is now in danger of perishing. Fairly or not, the City Council will now be encouraged to accept the framing KK proponents chose to run on, and to see the defeat of KK as a citywide endorsement of both BRT in general and the Telegraph/Downtown project in particular. There is no longer any reason for thinking that “nobody wants BRT” in Berkeley—most voters, in fact, have just said they’re open to the idea. 

That doesn’t mean that future BRT project approval will be either automatic or reached in haste. The Council must first help to define the final current project by selecting “local preferred alternatives” from among several possibilities for routes, dedicated-lane blocks, station locations and the like. With that information, AC Transit will complete a Final Environmental Impact Report. That document will further analyze the potential negative impacts of the project that have so exercised opponents. It will also now be able to propose specific mitigations for those impacts—in areas such as parking, traffic and merchant impact—in order to make the resulting BRT service far more acceptable even to near neighbors. AC Transit has already said, for example, that any parking taken away by BRT construction in areas where parking is currently in short supply will be replaced. 

Herman Melville wrote in Moby Dick that “Ignorance is the father of fear.” The ultimate decision on the BRT project may still be more than a year away, but we can be grateful that it will be much more informed by real facts than by the partial ignorance that still prevails today. As new facts replace current fears, the decision should continually become less a matter of irrational concern—even for those now left to ponder the losing sword they took up. 

 

Alan Tobey is a Berkeley resident.


Unlikely Prospect for Peace in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

By Ralph Stone
Thursday November 06, 2008 - 10:17:00 AM

In her book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, Naomi Klein posits that Israel’s embrace of disaster capitalism has diminished the need for it to engage in meaningful peace negotiations with the Palestinians and its Arab neighbors. For years, it was conventional wisdom that you needed political stability to have steady economic growth. However, Israel has turned this conventional wisdom on its head. Israeli occupies Gaza and the West Bank, engages in violence with the Palestinians, is experiencing political turmoil, yet the country is experiencing an economic boom. How?  

According to Klein, Israel has exploited the chaos by pioneering a successful defense and home security-related economy and thus, enjoys a booming prosperity while it is in conflict with its neighbors. Thus, it could be said that Israel’s economy is based on the prospect of continual conflict and deepening disasters.  

Today, Israel is the leading source of home security gadgetry and anti-terrorist technologies. Israel has over 600 security and homeland-security related companies. In 2006, Israel exported $3.4 billion in defense products—well over a billion more than it received in U.S. military aid. That makes Israel the fourth-largest arms dealer in the world. By the end of this year, Israeli exports in the sector may reach $1.2 billion. The key products and services are high-tech fences, unmanned drones, biometric IDs, video and audio surveillance gear, air passenger profiling and prisoner interrogation systems, precisely the tools and technologies Israel has used to lock in the occupied territories.  

How does Israel’s burgeoning economic boom relate to the prospects for meaningful peace negotions? At one time, Israel needed the Palestinians as a cheap source of labor. However, after the breakup of the Soviet Union in the 1990s, about 700,000 Russians immigrated to Israel, now making up about 15 percent of the working age population. This influx of new labor made the Palestinians surplus humanity. In 1993, Israel began its closure of the occupied territories. The closure was supposed to be temporary. This changed after Sept. 11, 2001, when the rise of Israel’s high tech industry began. This corresponded with its diminished need to have friendly relations with its Arab neighbors. Israel is now a fortified gated community, surrounded by locked out people. Gaza and the West Bank are now surplus humanity. 

Thus, it can be argued that a continued war on terror is good for Israel’s defense and home security-related industries. And Israel has less incentive to engage in meaningful peace negotiations with the Palestinians and its other Arab neighbors. As Klein observed, the “Apartheid” Wall serves at least two purposes: to keep the Palestinians caged in and to advertise its defense and home security-related industries. 

 

Ralph E. Stone is a retired Bay Area attorney. 


Columns

Dispatches From The Edge: A New Foreign Policy

By Conn Hallinan
Thursday November 06, 2008 - 10:08:00 AM

Over the next four years the U.S. will confront several key foreign policy decisions. While the president and the executive branch—in particular the Departments of State and Defense—will play an important role in this, Congress has abrogated its constitutional responsibilities in the making of foreign policy. Here is Dispatches wish list for the coming administration. 

Europe 

Put a halt to North Atlantic Treaty Organization's (NATO) expansion. The recent Georgia-Russia War was a direct outcome of the misguided and provocative strategy of recruiting former members of the Soviet bloc into NATO. The Russians quite rightly see this as a potentially threatening military alliance and are justly angry with the Americans for breaking their promise not to recruit former Warsaw Pact nations into NATO. 

The U.S. Congress must halt the deployment of U.S. anti-missile ballistic systems (ABM) in Poland and the Czech Republic. ABMs will increase tensions in the region and put thousands of nuclear weapons on hair trigger alert. ABMs were not designed to stop attacks, but to absorb an enemy's counterstrike following a first strike. First use of nuclear weapons is current U.S. military policy, so it is understandable why the Russians are deeply concerned. While the anti-missile system is supposedly aimed at Iran, Teheran has neither the delivery systems nor the weapons that could pose a threat to Europe. A group of American physicists recently concluded that the ABMs are indeed aimed at the Russians. 

A corollary to halting deployment the ABMs is to reverse the Bush administration’s withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, and to dismantle the current U.S. ABM system deployed in Alaska. These moves would not only reduce tensions in Europe, but with China as well. 

 

The Middle East 

The absolute chaos the Bush Administration has inflicted on this region of the world will take decades to repair, and the hostility that those policies have engendered will take decades to dissipate. But there are some immediate things that can be done to start the process: 

A rapid withdrawal from Iraq. The argument that such a withdrawal would create chaos misses the point that the U.S. is the cause of the chaos. Current U.S. policy is to support the Shiite government of Noui al Maliki against the Sunnis and nationalist Shiites (who make up the majority of Shiites in Iraq) led by Muqtada al Sadr. As long as the U.S. remains, tensions between Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds will simmer without resolution. Might it explode into civil war? It might, but all the players have reasons to avoid one. In any case, the current occupation is no longer sustainable and the Iraqis want us out. 

A nationwide ceasefire in Afghanistan—including ending cross-border attacks into Pakistan—and immediate negotiations with the Taliban. Tentative talks have already begun, but they must be expanded to include regional players, in particular Pakistan, Iran, China and Russia, all which border Afghanistan. The U.S. and NATO will have to recognize that there is no military solution to the Afghan War, a point France and Britain have already made. A “surge” of troops into Afghanistan will do nothing more than increase the number of civilian casualties and continue propping up a government that has no authority outside of Kabul’s city limits. 

Indeed, the entire concept of the “war on terrorism” must be jettisoned. “Terror” is a tactic of the powerless against the powerful, it is not a vast worldwide conspiracy by a disciplined group with a common ideology. Elevating “terror” to the same level as a state-to-state conflict means fighting a forever war, with all of the vast expense, suffering, and erosion of rights that such an endeavor entails. 

Justice for the Palestinian people, which must include an immediate renunciation of the Bush administration’s support for West Bank settlements. Such settlements are a violation of international law and insure a never-ending battle between Palestinians and Israelis. The settlements must go and Jerusalem should be divided. Both sides have a legitimate claim to the city.  

A new administration could begin by condemning the current wave of right-wing settler-instigated violence aimed at driving Palestinians out of Hebron, Acre, and other towns. The U.S. should publicly condemn the Israeli plan to build more than 1300 houses in East Jerusalem and the drive to dominate the West Bank. From 2006 to 2008, the settler population has grown from 250,000 to 300,000, not counting those in East Jerusalem. 

There are a number of other initiatives the U.S. could take, from ending its political and economic blockades of Syria and Iran, to refraining from interfering in the internal affairs of Lebanon. 

 

Africa 

Current U.S. policy has created the single greatest humanitarian crisis on the continent: Somalia. While Sudan gets all the attention, according to the United Nations conditions in Somalia are far worse, because in 2006 the U.S. and its client, Ethiopia, overthrew the Islamic Courts Union (ISU), the umbrella organization that had finally brought peace to that war-torn country. Sudan is a long-term crisis with complex roots, but the Somalia crisis was made in the USA. The U.S. should end its support of Ethiopia's occupation and call for an all-Somali peace conference with a prominent role for the ISU.  

The U.S. should roll back the militarization of its African policies, including dissolving Africom, the military command recently created to fight “terrorism” and “insecurity” on the continent. No African country will host Africom, because they quite rightly see it as an extension of U.S. military power in the region. The U.S. is also currently training the armed forces of more than a dozen African countries, as well as selling arms on the continent. It also has a significant military presence in Djibouti. Africa needs aid, it does not need U.S. troops and more weapons.  

 

Latin America 

While it is doubtful the U.S. will renounce the 1823 Monroe Doctrine-which in any case is increasingly a dead letter—Washington must declare that it will no longer intervene in the internal affairs of Latin America.  

To this end it must end its illegal blockade of Cuba, curb its hostility toward Venezuela and terminate its meddling in Bolivia. The U.S. should release CIA and U.S. Defense Department documents on the 2001 coup against President Hugo Chavez, so that all Americans can see what role the U.S. played in that debacle. The new administration might also want to read investigative journalist Jeremy Bigwood’s “New Discoveries Reveal U.S. Intervention in Bolivia” at Upsidedownworld.com for an update on what the National Endowment for Democracy, USAID and the American Embassy have been up to in the restive eastern provinces of that country. 

Rather than reactivating its Latin American Fourth Fleet and building a new military base in Colombia, the U.S. should de-militarize its approach to the region. The Colombian government must be held accountable for the fact that it has done nothing to halt the murder of over 3,000 trade unionists, and for its documented ties to right-wing death squads. Support for land reform and a war on poverty in Latin America would do far more to curb the drug trade than U.S.-sponsored aerial spraying and counterinsurgency warfare.  

The U.S. must realize that while it will always play a significant role in Latin America, it is no longer the only game in town. India, China, Russia, South Africa, and Iran are the new kids on the block, and south-south relationships are becoming as important for the continent as its traditional north-south ties. 

 

Asia and the Pacific 

The U.S. should recognize that the Pacific Ocean is no longer an “American lake.” To this end it needs to recognize that countries like China have legitimate economic, political and security interests in their own backyard. The push to ring China with military bases and sign countries like Japan, Australia and India onto the U.S. ABM system should stop. China is not a threat to the U.S., or to other nations in the region. For all its bombast aimed at Taiwan, Beijing has no intention of fighting a war with one of its major trade partners. It is far too busy making money. 

The U.S. should immediately terminate the so-called 1-2-3 Agreement with India, which not only violates the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, but also will ignite a nuclear arms race between India and Pakistan, two countries that came perilously close to a nuclear war in 1999. 

The push to bring NATO into the Pacific Basin should be halt forthwith. NATO, originally created for Europe, has now metastasized into an international military alliance. The history of alliances is that they cause far more wars than they prevent, and the U.S., Canada and Europe have no business injecting their militaries into a region that is just beginning to come into its own. 

 

There are any number of other areas that Dispatches cannot address here given space availability. Among these are whether the U.S. will strengthen the United Nations, join the war on global warming, recognize the International War Crimes Tribunal and close the illegal and immoral prison camp at Guantanamo. 

It is time for the U.S. to end its adherence to the concept of the national security state. This is the claim that the U.S. reserves the right to intervene politically, economically and militarily into the affairs of other nations if we decide U.S. interests are at stake. Challenging the national security state will be a long fight, but in the end, ending it is central to everything listed above.  

And Nov. 5 is a good time to begin. 

 

 

 


Undercurrents: The Road To Social Change Does Not Pass Through Character Assassination

By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor
Thursday November 06, 2008 - 10:09:00 AM

If one wanted to put a human face on the historical reason African-Americans sometimes seem so, well, ambiguous about our American experience, Nathan Bedford Forrest would be as good a place to start, as any. The Tennessean Forrest was probably the most brilliant and feared cavalry commander in the Confederate Army, a slash-and-burn fighter dubbed the “Wizard of the Saddle” by his contemporaries.  

Forrest’s hatred of the “damned Yankees” seems to have been surpassed only by his hatred of African-Americans. Like many of his Confederate Army contemporaries, Forrest appeared to believe it an abomination and a sin against God that former captive Africans would raise their hands against those who thought to be their masters, and felt that captured African-American Union soldiers should not be afforded the rights of other soldiers. 

In 1864, Forrest’s command of 6,000 cavalry soldiers overran Fort Pillow, a federal garrison of 600 soldiers on the Tennessee side of the Mississippi River. Forrest’s men later claimed approximately 330 Union soldiers killed or wounded, a 50 percent casualty rate that was fairly high for soldiers in so brief a fight on well-protected ground. Witnesses later said that Forrest’s men continued to fire on Union soldiers after they had dropped down their weapons and attempted to surrender. Two hundred and twenty-six of Fort Pillow’s Union soldiers survived to be captured. Only 75 of those captured were African-American, even though the garrison had been evenly divided, black and white. 

“The slaughter was awful,” a soldier with the 20th Tennessee calvalry (Confederate) later wrote. “Words cannot describe the scene. The poor, deluded, negroes would run up to our men, fall upon their knees, and with uplifted hands scream for mercy but they were ordered to their feet and then shot down. I, with several others, tried to stop the butchery, and at one time had partially succeeded, but General Forrest ordered them shot down like dogs and the carnage continued. Finally our men became sick of blood and the firing ceased.”  

Later, following the end of the Civil War, Forrest was one of the founders of the Ku Klux Klan, the white terrorist militia that made its reputation by assassinating black officeholders and burning black people off their lands, trying to drive them back into slavery.  

I knew all this history several years ago when I began reading Shelby Foote’s epic three-volume The Civil War. A Narrative. I hated Forrest as much as one can hate someone of whom they’ve only read, and every time I came upon an account of some battle in which he was involved, some close call or miraculous escape which he engineered, I would think, if only they had gotten him, then, he wouldn’t have outlived the war, the KKK would never have been formed, and the bloody and terrible hundred years of terror between Appomattox and Selma would never have happened. 

It took me a while to realize how wrong that supposition was. There is nothing inevitable in human events, and it is not inevitable that the Klan would have formed following the Civil War. Some single event, or series of events, could have sent U.S. history in a completely different direction. It’s possible that event might have been the death of Nathan Bedford Forrest. It’s also just as possible that Forrest’s death during the war would have had only a fragmentary effect on the reign of white Southern terrorism that followed, and that if this were the only difference, the so-called Ray Bradbury “butterfly effect,” then the burnings and the beatings and lynchings might have easily gone on along the same horrible, horrific course. 

I seek to make no association between the actions of Nathan Bedford Forrest and the politics of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, and if you think I am in some hidden way, you’re wrong, and please, respectfully, go back and read the previous paragraphs. But I bring Forrest into the discussion to make a point about a mistake I believe our progressive friends are making with Ms. Palin. 

Even while the general election was still in full swing, there was a nagging concern in progressive circles about what role Ms. Palin would play in national affairs post-election, particularly that she might become a populist rallying point for the national conservative movement with the possibility of sweeping the country and sweeping back the gains so recently won by progressives and the Democratic Party. And so, with one eye on the just-past November 4th but another on future Novembers, many progressives have gone after Ms. Palin personally and with a vengeance, seemingly in the hopes that in stopping the person, they can abort the incipient movement. 

I think they are wrong about Ms. Palin—not about her politics, but that she will take on the role of a long-term messianic national leader such as, say, Ralph Nader or George Wallace—but that is besides the point right now. More important, I think that while political attacks on an individual can work for an individual election or even drive someone permanently out of the political arena, doing so in an attempt to stop a young political movement is like trying to prevent earthquakes by filling up the San Andreas fault cracklines with braces and cement. Even if that were geophysically possible in the short-run, you’d only make the buildup to the postponed and inevitable explosion that much greater. 

Maybe more precisely, we seem to approach battles with these far-right personalities like a kid playing one of those pop-up toys in which the object is to knock down the heads of the plastic figures coming up through the holes. The kids think they’ve won when they’ve knocked all the heads down with their plastic hammer, but that never happens, because the heads never stop popping up through the holes, ready to take their whacks. That’s the way of life, friends. 

For a season of our lives, the demon of progressive dreams was the right-wing commentator Anne Coulter—“Coulter-geist,” as Keith Olbermann loved to call her—and for a time the vitriol she stirred was at a fever boil. Nothing could get a response on a progressive blog quicker than a Coulter comment, something she knew and exploited to no end to promote a series of books. Ms. Coulter’s attacks on liberals and progressives were pointedly personal and irredeemably vile and, to their discredit, our progressive friends often attacked back in kind (one of the worst, in my opinion, was the charge that Ms. Coulter was a transvestite, an odd damnation from a sector of the community purportedly in favor of a more liberal definition of gender lines). 

But there was something even odder about the Coulter phenomenon. Sometime in the middle of the Obama-McCain election—an epic liberal-conservative battle in which one would have thought Ms. Coulter would have delightedly plunged—Ms. Coulter disappeared. For weeks—months—she was completely silent. The notable thing was not that she disappeared—that was the odd part—but that not many people seemed to have noticed, only doing so after she resurfaced, very briefly, a day or so before the election. 

Ms. Coulter disappeared, for whatever reason, and the right-left battles went on without pause. 

There are large numbers of people in this country—some of them good friends of mine—who believe that radio commentator Rush Limbaugh and television commentator Bill O’Reilly are the devil incarnate, either whose spawn should be wiped clean from the earth or, at the very least, whose tenure on the airwaves should be ended. To them, I offer the name Father Edward Coughlin. Mr. Coughlin was a Roman Catholic priest who came to fame during the Depression years as a radio commentator—the “radio priest,” he was commonly called, and sometimes the “father of hate radio”—starting as a Franklin Roosevelt supporter but quickly turning against the president.  

While he was a vocal opponent of the “capitalist bosses,” an easy target for a populist in the Depression, Mr. Coughlin became most famous or infamous, for his attacks against Jews. After starting with CBS he eventually formed his own radio network—operating 30 stations nationally-and his own weekly newspaper, and he regularly spoke at rallies numbering in the thousands. In his time, which was considerably more volatile than today, Mr. Coughlin was probably more powerful and influential than Mr. Limbaugh and Mr. O’Reilly combined. And yet, eventually, both his power and his movement faded, and though he was a formidable force in his time, today he is barely a blip in the national memory bank. 

So if this is a for-point story, what’s the point, the young pupil asks. A simple one I think. 

There is much temptation—and, frankly, much reward—in making personal attack the preferred strategy in social movement. I have done so myself on occasion, to some effect, though far less in recent years. However, to engage in those actions as a strategy rather than a temporary tactic is something of the opposite of the teach-a-guy-to-fish adage. You can stop an individual with such tactics-sometimes permanently if you’re good at it, or lucky. But the underlying balance of forces have not really changed, and if your point is to change the world, you’ve missed your mark. To do that, you have to do battle with the ideas that lie behind. 

There will always be a Sarah Palin, or somebody like her. And there will always be a far-right for them to lead. The question is, how large a far-right will that be, and how far-reaching. That is up to us, and something to remember and consider as we relax and enjoy the moment, temporarily, in the euphoric waters of the recent historic elections. 


Not Black President Obama, Just President Obama

By Earl Ofari Hutchinson New America Media
Thursday November 06, 2008 - 10:19:00 AM

The instant Barack Obama tossed his hat in the presidential ring nearly two years ago, the twin mantra was that he could be the first black president, and if that happened, America would finally have kicked its race syndrome. 

The twin mantra has been repeated ad infinitum, and it’s dead wrong. The early hint that race was overblown and over-obsessed came from Obama himself: He didn’t talk about it, and for good reason—he was not running as a black presidential candidate. He was running as a presidential candidate. 

He had to make that crucial distinction for personal and political purposes. 

The ritual preface of the word “black” in front of any achievement or breakthrough that an African American makes is insulting, condescending and minimizes their achievement. It maintains and reinforces the very racial separation that much of America claims it is trying to get past. Dumping the historic burden of race on blacks measures an individual’s success or failure by a group standard. That’s a burden whites don’t have. They succeed or fail solely as individuals. 

Obama’s personal history—his biracial parents, his upbringing, his education and his relative youth—defies racial pigeonholing. He was influenced by, but not shaped by, the rigid race-grounded civil rights struggles of the 1960s as older whites and blacks were. 

The institution of the presidency, and what it takes to get it, demands that racial typecasting be scrapped anyway. Obama would have had no hope of bagging the presidency if there had been the slightest hint that he embraced the race-tinged politics of Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson. His campaign would have been marginalized and compartmentalized as merely the politics of racial symbolism. 

He could not have raised record amounts of campaign cash. He would not have been fawned over by legions of Hollywood celebrities, corporate and union leaders. He would not have netted the endorsements of Colin Powell and packs of former Reagan and Bush Sr. administration stalwarts, and prepped by W. Bush political guru Karl Rove on how to beat Hillary Clinton. The media would never have given him the top-heavy favorable coverage, endorsements, nor relentlessly hammered Republican rival John McCain. 

If the media had so chosen, it could have torpedoed Obama’s campaign by playing up the connection to his race-focused former pastor Jeremiah Wright. But the media bought his protest of racial bewilderment at the Wright race revelations, and dropped the matter. 

Obama had to cling closely to the centrist blueprint Bill Clinton had laid out for Democrats to win elections, and to govern after he won. 

It meant that during the campaign, and at least in the early days of his presidency, he would focus on strong defense, the war against terrorism, a vague plan for winding down the Iraq War, mild tax reform for the middle class, a cautious plan for affordable health care and for dealing with the sub-prime lending crisis, and a genteel reproach of Wall Street. 

The old axiom that you can tell a president-elect by his staff and cabinet picks will very much apply to Obama. A cast of governors, senators and ex-senators, former Clinton and Democratic party operatives, and even a few Republicans have been floated for Obama’s staff and cabinet picks such as Al Gore, Tom Daschle, Tim Kaine, John Kerry, Larry Summers, Robert Rubin, Paul Volcker, Chuck Hagel, Tom Vilsack, and, as improbable as it seems, even California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger as Secretary of Energy. The list reads like a who’s who of the Beltway and Heartland America establishment. 

Obama’s cautious, center-governing, non-racial, likely staff and cabinet are plainly designed to blunt the standard Republican rap that Democrats, especially those branded liberal Democrats, inherently pander to special interests, i.e. minorities, are pro-expansive government, and anti-business. They will be watching for any sign of that from Obama. 

As president, Obama will be pulled and tugged at by corporate and defense industry lobbyists, the oil and nuclear power industry, government regulators, environmental watchdog groups, conservative family values groups, moderate and conservative GOP senators and house members, foreign diplomats and leaders. They all have their priorities and agendas and all will vie to get White House support for their pet legislation, or to kill or cripple legislation that threatens their interests. 

An Obama White House will, of course, be a historic and symbolic first. However, it will be a White House that keeps a firm, cautious and conciliatory eye on Middle America public opinion, and corporate and defense industry interests in making policy decisions and determining priorities. All other occupants of the White House have done that. 

Obama would not and could not have attained the White House if he didn’t do the same. This has nothing to do with race, or the nonsense of being tagged a black president. It has everything to do with the requirement of White House governance. 

 

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His latest book is The Ethnic Presidency: How Race Decides the Race to the White House (Middle Passage Press, February 2008).


Wild Neighbors: How Brainy Should a Raccoon Be?

By Joe Eaton
Thursday November 06, 2008 - 12:27:00 PM
Raccoon up an oak tree, displaying social skills, Mount Diablo.
By Ron Sullivan
Raccoon up an oak tree, displaying social skills, Mount Diablo.

Enough with the murderous female arthropods. It’s time for something furry. 

Intelligence is hard enough to get a handle on in our own species. When it comes to other critters, even our fellow mammals, things get even trickier. Some are just not amenable to testing in a lab setting. I understand that at least one scientist has tested spotted hyenas in the field, with interesting results, but you can imagine how difficult the logistics would be. Interpreting the data is another can of worms. 

Take the raccoon. We think of them as anywhere from fairly bright to fiendishly clever. But when I started looking for lab studies, even Google Scholar failed me. We know that they’re very good with their hands and can count up to three, and that’s about it. (Long ago, there was an institution in Hot Springs, Arkansas called the IQ Zoo, whose inmates included a basketball-playing raccoon. I once saw him in action. He could shoot with reasonable accuracy, as I recall. But his defensive game was weak.) 

That data gap is one reason biologists have been tempted to use brain size, or some permutation thereof, as a proxy for animal intelligence. Among other advantages, that allows for comparison of living and extinct-even fossil-species, as long as you can measure their braincase volume. And it’s kind of intuitive, especially if you start with big-brained Homo sapiens as a reference point. 

The pioneer in brain-size measurement was Harry Jerison, who published the key work Evolution of the Brain and Intelligence in the ‘70s. What Jerison looked at was not just the size of the brain-larger mammals have larger brains-but the ratio of actual brain size to expected brain size based on body size. He called the resulting number the Encephalization Quotient, meaning, as Richard Dawkins explains it, “how much bigger, or smaller, the brain of a particular species is than it ‘should’ be, for its size…”  

If you plotted brain/body ratios for every mammalian species from pygmy shrew to blue whale, an animal whose values just fit the curve would have an EQ of one. With less than one, you’re below the curve; more than one, above. 

Humans, naturally, have the highest EQ around: 6.28 according to a later revision of Jerison’s formula. Primates as a group score higher than other mammals, as do dolphins, followed by carnivores, then hoofed mammals. Opossums, at 0.39, are near the bottom of the mammalian ranks, along with armadillos and moles. 

I’m sure Jerison’s book includes an EQ for the North American raccoon. But it’s too wet out, finally, to track it down at the UC library. Instead I’m going to rely on another set of calculations published in 2005 in the journal Brain, Behavior and Evolution by Dieter Kruska, who seems to have picked up where Jerison left off, although his terminology is a little different (Kruska uses Encephalization Index, or EI, rather than EQ, and a best-fit value of 100 rather than one.) The other caveat is that Kruska gives an EI for the tropical crab-eating raccoon (Procyon cancrivorous) rather than the North American raccoon (P. lotor). However, they’re very close relatives and it wouldn’t be a big surprise if their scores were similar. 

Anyway, Kruska assigns the crab-eating raccoon an EI of 162, equivalent to an EQ of 1.62. This is higher than the typical range for its next of kin, the other procyonids (ringtails, coatis and the like), bears, and pandas, who score between 92 and 135. Mongooses, hyenas, and weasels are lower than the carnivore average. In fact, according to Kruska, a weasel’s brain shrinks as it matures. He provides no numbers for cats, and I’d rather not get into that sensitive subject in front of Matt. 

There’s a lot more in Kruska’s article, including a fascinating discussion of brain size under domestication. The gist is that we’ve bred domestic mammals, even recent domesticates like mink and gerbils, for smaller brains. A dog’s brain is significantly smaller than a wolf’s. Moreover, when domestics go feral their brains don’t get larger. The dingo, which has been on its own in Australia for thousands of years, still has a dog-sized brain. 

Not that this has anything to do with what raccoons are doing with their relatively large brains. There’s another way of looking at intelligence-specifically social intelligence, the mental skills required by group living-and brain size, and I’ll get to that next time.  


About the House: Have a Prioritized Plan for Home Maintenance

By Matt Cantor
Thursday November 06, 2008 - 12:25:00 PM

I have a terrible confession to make. I feel really bad about it, but it’s probably not going to change any time soon. I don’t care if your roof leaks. Okay, I know that I’m supposed to make a big deal about this sort of thing but I’m not going to. There, I said it and I feel a whole lot better. 

Well, maybe that’s not entirely true. I do care if your roof leaks, but not that much. And I would argue that you shouldn’t, either. If the thought of dripping water bugs you so badly that you’re compelled to fix it immediately, I would say, “Get on with it, then,” and hand you the phone to call the roofer. However, for most of us, it’s just not all that important because roof leaks don’t kill people.  

I’m interested in everything about the house but I’m most interested in things that can kill people or hurt them seriously or cause a massive loss of value. This is what might be called worst-case scenario inspecting and is what I try to do every day.  

It is very easy to lose perspective when looking at a large list of maintenance issues and, to the credit of many of my clients; they will intuit and communicate this when we’re looking at their house, skyscraper or aircraft hangar. Most will say, “Please tell the things that you think matter the most” or “Can you tell me the five things that you’d do first after I’ve moved in?” This is a darned good start, to be sure, but it’s not enough. These questions should also include, “What’s going to kill me?” and perhaps “What’s going to end up costing me a bucket of money?” Even if I’m not asked, this robot comes preprogrammed to process all of these questions. Maybe it’s because I’m a worrier, but it doesn’t make any sense to me to look at a range of home inspection issues and to fail to list them by hazard level. Another criterion that must be made a part of this thinking is: What’s the cost and what’s the benefit? 

So let’s take a look at a few things that I would place near the top (and near the bottom) of my worst-case scenario inspecting list. I would virtually always begin with those things related to fire. In my world, there’s not much worse than death by fire and although we can’t prevent all fires, we can certainly do a lot about preventing deaths caused by fires. So, my favorite inspection item is the smoke detector: low cost, high benefit.  

CO (carbon monoxide) testers are similar. While fire is much worse and far more common than CO, CO still remains a killer that can be addressed with a $25 device and a $2 battery. By the way, let’s not forget batteries. Installing fresh batteries for smoke and CO detectors has an extremely high yield in our index of safety vs. cost. It’s amazing how many smoke detectors I see that lack only a $2 battery to make a life or death difference. 

Fire escape is also very high on my list. This can include removal of window bars, installation of rope or chain ladders, training of children and accounting for the needs of the disabled (e.g. can they get oustside?). Window size and type is also a pretty large issue here. If a window doesn’t open enough to climb out (or for a firewoman to climb in!) it’s a BIG problem. Window locks that require a key are a huge hazard and have serious cost/benefit and worst-case indexes. The same applies to “double cylinder” door locks that require a key to escape. 

Let’s jump down to the low end of the worst-case-scenario list and look again at our leaking roof (actually, your leaking roof; mine’s fine). If the roof leaks, it is almost impossible for this to cause a death (although my mind, like yours, is now rushing to picture all the wild Rube Goldberg linkages in which a wet spot overhead could be fatal.) In fact, for the most part, most roof leaks usually become extremely noticeable—if not unsightly—before they’ve done any significant structural damage. (I always like to remind people that wood is not easily damaged by water; they build boats out of it!) For the most part, roof leaks damage ceiling finishes and if allowed to advance can then damage other components such as wiring and framing. Yes, sheetrock and plaster are quickly damaged and possibly destroyed by roof leaks and this is sort of sad—but sort of not very much. It shouldn’t be anyone’s worst-case scenario. 

I won’t miss the chance to throw in my personal dead-horse-celebre (would Mme care for her metaphores mixed or on-the-side): the earthquake. While you may never experience a very large earthquake, the worst-case scenario is very, very serious. There can be death (most likely by fire) and there will almost certainly be a great deal of property damage and loss after a very large earthquake. For my friends in the Bay Area, earthquake concerns definitely should take precedence over roof leaks. I would sooner see my client spend seven grand on seismic retrofitting for an earthquake that they may or may not experience than spend one grand fixing a leak that’s occurring today! If you live where earthquakes are less likely, substitute your own local disaster (tornado, locusts, Sarah Palin) and adjust your funding and action accordingly. 

Now, I’m not actually suggesting that you simply let the roof leak. I am suggesting that you have a rational plan for home maintenance. It’s fine and good and terrific to spend money on the things that make you crazy as they present themselves to you, dirty paws and all, but it’s vital that we focus a portion of our energy to manage the things that might do great harm to us and those we love, even if the potential harm seems way off in the distance.  

And of course, remember to eat out more often, smile a lot and get more hugs. 


Arts & Events

Arts Calendar

Thursday November 06, 2008 - 12:23:00 PM

THURSDAY, NOV. 6 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Bay Area Landscape” Works by Vladimir Berberov, Francesca Giorgi, Michael Grove, Britt Marie Pazdirek, David Platford, opens at the Giorgi Gallery, 2911 Claremont Ave. 848-1228. 

FILM 

DocFest: “Operation Filmmaker” at Shattuck Cinemas, 2230 Shattuck Ave. 415-820-3907. www.sfindie.com 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Composer Colloquium with Merce Cunningham Dance Company musicians and composers at 4 p.m. at 125 Morrison Hall, Bancroft at College. Free. 642-9988. 

Artist Talk with Merce Cunningham at 7 p.m. at Wheeler Auditorium, UC campus. Free. 642-9988. 

Raj Patel describes “Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System” at 7:30 p.m. at Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave. 649-1320. 

Mark DeWitt discusses “Cajun and Zydeco Dance Music in Northern California” at 6 p.m. at University Press Books, 2430 Bancroft Way. 548-0585.  

Carlotta Caulfield, Rebecca Foust and Mari L’Esperance read their poetry at 7:30 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

“The John Cage Legacy: Chance in Music and Mathematics” at 5:30 p.m. at Simons Auditorium, Mathematical Sciences Research Institute, 17 Gauss Way, near the intersection of Grizzly Peak Blvd. and Centennial Dr. 642-0143. 

Chris Caswell at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Kelly Park & Friends at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Daughters of Zion International Reggae Tour at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $13-$15. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

The Sonando Project, Latin funk, at 9 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5-$7. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Broadcast Live, hip hop, indie rock, and spoken word at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $tba. 849-2568.  

The Courtney Nicole Trio at 10 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

Jacob Fiss-Hobart Ensemble at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave. 548-5198.  

FRIDAY, NOV. 7 

THEATER 

Aurora Theatre “The Devil’s Disciple” Wed.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 and 7 p.m. at 2081 Addison St. through Dec. 7. Tickets are $40-$42. 843-4822. www.auroratheatre.org 

Actors Ensemble of Berkeley “Doctor Faustus” Fri. and Sat at 8 p.m. at Live Oak Theater, 1301 Shattuck Ave., at Berryman, through Nov. 22. Tickets are $10-$12. 649-5999. www.aeofberkeley.org 

Berkeley Rep “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone” at 8 p.m. at the Roda Theater, 2015 Addison St, through Dec. 14. Tickets are $13.50-$71. 647-2949. berkeleyrep.org 

Central Works “Blessed Unrest” by Paul Hawken, Thurs, Fri, Sat at 8 p.m., Sun at 5 p.m. at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. through Nov. 23. Tickets are $14-$25. 558-1381. centralworks.org 

Masquers Playhouse “Do I Hear a Waltz?” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2:30 p.m. at 105 Park Place, Pt. Richmond, through Dec. 20. Tickets are $20. 232-4031. www.masquers.org 

Youth Musical Theater Company “Fiddler on the Roof” Fri. and Sat. at 7:30 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave. Tickets are $8-$20. 800-838-3006. 

FILM 

Movie Classic “North by Northwest” at 8 p.m. at Paramount Theater, 2025 Broadway. Tickets are $5. 625-8497. 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Veteran’s Voices” Art by Bay Area veterans. Opening reception at 6 p.m. at K Gallery, 2513 Blanding Ave., Alameda. Runs to Nov. 30. 865-5060. www.rhythmix.org 

“Rabblerousers: the Art of Reuse” Opening reception at 7 p.m. at Oakopolis, 447 25th St., Oakland. 663-6920. 

“Portals” A paired show of painting and installation by Robin Kuypers-Witte and Lisa Rasmussen. Opening reception at 6:30 p.m. at The Warehouse, 416 26th S.t, Oakland. http://reddoorgalleryandcollective.blogspot.com 

“Nature Speaks: Art from the Heart of Nature” Photography by Marianne Hale. Reception at 5 p.m. at Awaken Café, 414 14th St., Oakland. 836-2058. 

“Double Exposure” Works by Kevin Chen, Eleanor Harwood, Nicole Neditch, Narangkar Glover, Pete Glover, Carrie Lederer, Michelle Mansour, Jen Elia, Daniel Healey, and Margaret Tedesco. Reception at 7 p.m. at Blankspace, 6608 San Pablo Ave., Oakland. 547-6608. www.blankspacegallery.com 

“Rejoyce!” Group show of works by painters, photographers, and sculptors. Opening reception at 5:30 p.m. at Joyce Gordon Gallery, 406 14th St., Oakland. 465-8928. 

”Reverie” Works by Tarra Lyons and Anna Vaughn. Reception at 6 p.m. at Mercury 20 Gallery, 25 Grand Ave., Oakland. 701-4620. 

“Suenos Mensajeros/Dream Messengers” Works by Luz Marina Ruiz. Reception at 6 p.m. at NoneSuch Space, 2865 Broadway at 29th St., 2nd flr., Oakland. 625-1600. 

“October 9, 1969” by Scott Reilly. Reception at 7 p.m. at The Compound Gallery, 6604 San Pablo Ave., Oakland. 655-9019. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Gallery Talk with Peter and Maureen Langenbach on “Evolution of a Sacred Space: Dias de los Muertos 2008” at 4 p.m. at Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak Sts. Cost is $5-$8, free for teachers. 238-2200. www.museumca.org 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

The Blind Boys of Alabama in a fundraiser for Ever Widening Circle and World Institute on Disability at 7 p.m. in the Main Ballroom, Oakland Marriott City Center, 1001 Broadway, Oakland. Tickets are $75. 800-838-3006. 

Nina Haft & Company “One Becomes Two” A dance installation, Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m. at Shawl-Anderson Dance Center, 2704 Alcatraz Ave. Tickets are $12-$15. www.shawl-anderson.org 

Big Moves Bay Area “Dance At Large” featuring the Phat Fly Girls at 8 p.m. at Laney College Theater, 900 Fallon St., Oakland. Tickets are $8-$12. www.bigmoves.org 

Candido Oye Oba and Friends at 5 p.m. at Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak Sts. Cost is $5-$8. 238-2200. www.museumca.org 

Merce Cunningham Dance Company at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $26-$48. 642-9988. www.calperformances.net 

Starry Plough 35th Anniversary Kickoff with The Buffalo Roam Reunion Show at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $10. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Happy Hour Jazz ensemble at 8 p.m. at the Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St. Cost is $10-$15. 845-1350.  

Peter Anastos & Iter at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $12. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Hurricane Sam & The Hotshots at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $14. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Bay Area African Drum & Dance Festival with Ousseynou Kouyate at 9 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $10-$112. 548-1159.  

Locura and Dgiin, Latin, flamenco, reggae at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is tba. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Ray Cepeda at 8 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Femi at 9 p.m. at Maxwell’s, 341 13th St., Oakland. Cost is $15. 839-6169. 

Opa Cupa at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Insect, The Holy Kiss, Swann Danger at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $5. 525-9926. 

3rd Date at 10 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

Jerry Kennedy, acoustic soul, at 7:30 p.m. at 33 Revolutions, 10086 San Pablo Ave., El Cerrito. 898-1836. 

Will Squared at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

D’Wayne Wiggins at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $25. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

SATURDAY, NOV. 8 

CHILDREN  

Los Amiguitos de La Peña with Alphabet Rockers at 10:30 a.m. at La Peña. Cost is $5 for adults, $4 for children. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Maggie the Clown Sat. and Sun. at 1:30 and 2:30 p.m. at Children’s Fairyland, 699 Bellevue Ave., Oakland. Cost is $6. 452-2259. www.fairyland.org 

Storytelling & Puppet Theater from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at Habitot Children's Museum, 2065 Kittredge St. 647-1111. www.habitot.org 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Plein Air Watercolors” by Anne Poley, Annetta Fox, and Linda Oppen. Reception for the artists at 2 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. Open Tues.-Sun. from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. through Dec. 28. 525-2233. 

“Dear Delhi and Rajasthan” Black and white photographs by Ilona Sturm. Reception at 2 p.m. at Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. Exhibit runs through Jan. 4. 981-6100. 

“Walls” Paintings by Joel Isaacson on contemporary social and political concerns, at Flora Lamson Hewlett Library, 2400 Ridge Rd. Exhibition runs to Jan. 30. 649-2500. www.gtu.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“East Asian Influences in Contemporary Art” A symposium with with Jacqueline Baas, curator and former director of the University Art Museum, William T. Wiley, artist, Fred Martin, artist, writer and Dean Emeritus of the San Francisco Art Institute, Mark Levy, professor and author, and others, from 1 to 5 p.m. at JFK University Arts & Consciousness Gallery, 2956 San Pablo Ave., 2nd Floor. Enter at Ashby Ave. 649-0499. www.jfku.edu/asian  

Works in Progress Women’s Open Mic, hosted by Linda Zeiser, features Jan Steckel. Potluck at 6:30 p.m. at The Home of Truth, 1300 Grand St., Alameda. Cost is $7-$10. 238-7344.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Young People’s Chamber Orchestra “Autumn Harvest” performs Smith, Handel and Martin at noon at St. John's Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. Suggested donation $5 youth, $10 adults. www.ypco.org  

Big Moves Bay Area “Dance At Large” featuring the Phat Fly Girls at 8 p.m. at Laney College Theater, 900 Fallon St., Oakland. Tickets are $8-$12. www.bigmoves.org 

Nina Haft & Company “One Becomes Two” A dance installation at 8 p.m. at Shawl-Anderson Dance Center, 2704 Alcatraz Ave. Tickets are $12-$15. www.shawl-anderson.org 

Merce Cunningham Dance Company at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $26-$48. 642-9988. www.calperformances.net 

The Berkeley Baroque Band “Ground Round” at 8 p.m. at St. Alban’s Episcopal Church, 1501 Washington Ave., Albany. Suggested donation $15.  

Starry Plough 35th Anniversary with The Unreal Band, The Naked Barbies, Pat Nevin’s Ragged Glory and many others from 3 p.m. on at The Starry Plough. Free. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

University Chorus & Chamber Chorus “Zigeunerlieder: Gypsy Music” at 8 p.m. at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $5-$15. 642-4864. http://music.berkeley.edu 

Alex Calatayud’s Brasil! at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $14. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Oscar Reynolds & Karumanta at 8 p.m. at Wisteria Ways, Rockridge, Oakland. Not wheelchair accesiible. Cost is $15-$20. Reservations required. info@WisteriaWays.org 

Tito y su son de Cuba at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cuban dance lesson at 8:30 p.m. Cost is $13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com  

Eric & Suzy Thompson, Disciples of Markos with Hank Bradley and Cathy Whitesides at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Frank Jackson Trio at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $20. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Dave Ridnell & Friends, Brazilian jazz, at 7:30 p.m. at 33 Revolutions, 10086 San Pablo Ave., El Cerrito. 898-1836. 

Larry Stefl Jazz Quartet at 9:30 p.m. at Albatross, 1822 San Pablo Ave. Cost is $3. 843-2473. www.albatrosspub.com 

Charlie Wilson’s War at 10 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

Dave Matthews Blues Band at 8:30 p.m. at Royal Oak Pub, 135 Park Place, Pt. Richmond. 232-5678. 

Corrupted, Asunder, Amber Asylum at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $10. 525-9926. 

D’Wayne Wiggins at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $25. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

SUNDAY, NOV. 9 

FILM 

“Cage/Cummingham” at 5:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Scott and Lauren Springer Ogden discuss “Plant-Driven Design” at 7:30 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Merce Cunningham Dance Company “Craneway Event” a site-specific performance at the landmarked Ford assembly plant in Richmond, at 1 and 3 p.m. Tickets are $40. 642-9988. www.calperformances.net  

Chamber Music Sundaes SF Symphony musicians perform works by Rossini, Dittersdorf and Dvorak at 3 p.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. Tickets are $20-$25. www.chambermusicsundaes.org 

Chalice Consort “Manchicourt's Requiem” at 4 p.m. at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, 114 Montecito Ave, Oakland. Tickets are $10-$20. www.chaliceconsort.org 

Inti-Illimani at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña. Cost is $35-$40. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

The Austin Lounge Lizards at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Com Voce at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

The Everlovin’, Americana, at 3 p.m. at 33 Revolutions, 10086 San Pablo Ave., El Cerrito. 898-1836. 

Bandworks at 1 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $5. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Tyler Johnston and Jazzschool alums at 4:30 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $12. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Fireworks, The Time Next Year, First to Leave at 5 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $7. 525-9926. 

MONDAY, NOV. 10 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“Question of Identity” A panel discussion with three Jewish reporters, Frances Dinkelspiel, Lisa Alcalay Klug, Yoav Potash, at 6 p.m. at North Gate Library, Hearst and Euclid. Sponsored by Magnes Museum. 549-6950. 

Poetry Express with Lynn Werner at 7 p.m. at Priya Restaurant, 2072 San Pablo Ave. 644-3977. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

John Schott and Friends at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave. 548-5198.  

Stephen Bell, Philip Rosheger, Pepino D’Agostino at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage Coffee House. Benefit for Carol Denney. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761.  

Willem Breuker Kollektief at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10-$18. 238-9200.  

TUESDAY, NOV. 11 

THEATER 

“SubHuman: True Tales from Beneath the Sea” a Veteran’s Day performance of life aboard a diesel submarine in the 60s at 8 p.m. at Rhythmix Cultural Works, 2513 Blanding Ave., Alameda. Tickets are $15. 865-5060. www.rythmix.org 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Harold Luft in conversation with John Ellwood on “Total Cure: The Antidote to the Health Care Crisis” at 6 p.m. at University Press Books, 2430 Bancroft Way. 548-0585. www.universitypressbooks.com 

Van Jones on “The Green Collar Economy: How 1 Solution Can Fix Our Biggest Problems” at 7:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Oakland, 2501 Harrison St., Oakland. Tickets are $12-$15. 848-6767, ext. 609. www.kpfa.org 

Rose Aguilar on “Red Highways: A Liberal’s Journey into the Heartland” at 7:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing Way. Cost is $10. berkeleyarts.org 

Estalla Halbal on “San Francisco’s International Hotel: Mobilizing the Filipino Community in the Anti-Eviction Movement” at 7:30 p.m. at Moe’s Books, 2476 Telegraph Ave. 849-2087. 

Alison Bechdel on “The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For” at 4 p.m. at Cal Student Store, UC campus, Telegraph and Bancroft. 642-9000 ext. 654. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Bandworks at 7:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $5. 525-5054. 

Singers’ Open Mic with Kelly Park at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $5. 841-JAZZ. 

Freight Open Mic at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $4.50-$5.50. 548-1761.  

Howard Barkan Trio at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Cyro Baptista & Banquet of the Spirits at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10-$18. 238-9200.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

WEDNESDAY, NOV. 12 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“Loss” Artists’ Talk at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Art Center, 1275 Walnut St. 644-6893. www.berkeleyartcenter.org 

Candace Falk and Barry Pateman discuss “Emma Goldman: A Documentary History of the American Years” at 5:30 p.m. at University Press Books, 2430 Bancroft Way. 548-0585. www.universitypressbooks.com 

Annie Barrows reads from “The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society” at 6 p.m. at the North branch, Berkeley Public Library, 1170 The Alameda at Hopkins. 981-6250. 

Berkeley Poetry Slam with host Charles Ellik and Three Blind Mice, at 8 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $7. 841-2082 .www.starryploughpub.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Music for the Spirit at 12:15 p.m. at First Presbyterian Church of Oakland, 2619 Broadway. 444-3555. 

Double Vision at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $12. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Sean Hodge with High Heat, Singing Bear and Butterful Bones at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $5. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Conjunto Rovira 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.  

Eric Ronbinson at 9 p.m. at Maxwell’s, 341 13th St., Oakland. Cost is $15. 839-6169. 

Peter Mulvey at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Los Cenzontles at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $30. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

THURSDAY, NOV. 13 

FILM 

“CRWSDSPCR” with an introduction by Merce Cunningham Dance Company archivist David Vaughan at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“The Influence of Japanese Art on Design” with Hannah Sigur on Japanese art and America’s journey to modern architecture and design in the Gilded Age, from the Centennial of 1876 through the Louisiana Purchase Exposition of 1904 at 7:30 p.m. at the Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St. Sponsored by Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association. Tickets $15. 841-2242. 

Caroline Grant, Lisa Harper, Irena Smith and others discuss “Mama, PhD: Women Write about Motherhood and Academic Life” at 6 p.m. at University Press Books, 2430 Bancroft Way. 548-0585. www.universitypressbooks.com 

Austin Grossman reads from his novel “Soon I Will Be Invincible” at 7:30 p.m. at Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave. 649-1320. 

Sylvia Brownrigg reads from her novel “The Delivery Room” at 7:30 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Damian Masterson at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Carmen Cansino’s “Listen Here!” at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Avery Mast, acoustic/folk rock at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Seneca, The New Centuries, Demons Wear Muted Colors at 9 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $6. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Beat Boxing Concert with Soulati, Infinite, Syzygy, Eachbox and many others at 8:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $8-$10. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Dave Ridnell & Friends, Brazilian jazz, at 7:30 p.m. at 33 Revolutions, 10086 San Pablo Ave., El Cerrito. 898-1836. 

Diablo’s Dust at 10 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

Jessica WIlliams at 8 and 10 p.m., through Sun. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10-$25. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

FRIDAY, NOV. 14 

EXHIIBITIONS 

“Walls” Paintings by Joel Isaacson on contemporary social and political concerns, at Flora Lamson Hewlett Library, 2400 Ridge Rd. Exhibition runs to Jan. 30. 649-2500. www.gtu.edu 

Eclectix Group Show Opening reception at 7 p.m. at Eclectix Gallery, 10082 San Pablo Ave., El Cerrito. www.eclectix.com 

THEATER 

Aurora Theatre “The Devil’s Disciple” Wed.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 and 7 p.m. at 2081 Addison St. through Dec. 7. Tickets are $40-$42. 843-4822. www.auroratheatre.org 

Actors Ensemble of Berkeley “Doctor Faustus” Fri. and Sat at 8 p.m. at Live Oak Theater, 1301 Shattuck Ave., at Berryman, through Nov. 22. Tickets are $10-$12. 649-5999. www.aeofberkeley.org 

Berkeley Rep “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone” at 8 p.m. at the Roda Theater, 2015 Addison St, through Dec. 14. Tickets are $13.50-$71. 647-2949. berkeleyrep.org 

Berkeley Rep “The Arabian Nights” Tues.-Sun. at the Thrust Stage, 2025 Addison St., through Jan. 4. Tickets are $27-$71. 647-2949. berkeleyrep.org 

Central Works “Blessed Unrest” by Paul Hawken, Thurs, Fri, Sat at 8 p.m., Sun at 5 p.m. at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. through Nov. 23. Tickets are $14-$25. 558-1381. centralworks.org 

Contra Costa Civic Theater “Greater Tuna” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. at 951 Pomona Ave., El Cerrito, through Dec. 7. 524-9132. www.ccct.org  

Impact Theatre “Tallgrass Gothic” Thurs.-Sat at 8 p.m. at La Val’s Subterranean, to Dec. 20. Tickets are $10-$17. 464-4468. impacttheatre.com 

Masquers Playhouse “Do I Hear a Waltz?” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2:30 p.m. at 105 Park Place, Pt. Richmond, through Dec. 20. Tickets are $20. 232-4031. www.masquers.org 

UC Dept. of Theater “Top Girls” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. to Nov. 23 at Durham Studio Theater, UC campus. Tickets are $10-$15. 642-8827. 

Youth Musical Theater Company “Fiddler on the Roof” Fri. at 7:30 p.m., Sat. at 2 and 7:30 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave. Tickets are $8-$20. 800-838-3006. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Paul Unschuld discusses “Chinese Medicine and Natural HIstory: The Huang Di Nei Jing Su Wen” at 6 p.m. at University Press Books, 2430 Bancroft Way. 548-0585. www.universitypressbooks.com 

Jeanne Powell and Stephen Kopel, poets, at 7 p.m. at Nefeli Caffe, 1854 Euclid Ave. as part of the Last Word Reading Series. There is also an open reading. 841-6374.  

Open Mic Literature and Poetry at 7 p.m. at Expressions Gallery, 2035 Ashby Ave. 644-4930. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Nina Haft & Company “One Becomes Two” A dance installation, Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., sun. at 3 p.m. at Shawl-Anderson Dance Center, 2704 Alcatraz Ave. Tickets are $12-$15. www.shawl-anderson.org 

Merce Cunningham Dance Company at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $26-$48. 642-9988. www.calperformances.net 

Panorama: Multi Media Happening with dance, theater, robotics, and digital games from 5 to 7 p.m. at Pauley Ballroom, MLK Student Center, UC campus. Free. 642-9988. 

The KTO Project, featuring Kelly Takunda Orphan Martinez at 8 p.m. at First Unitarian Church of Oakland, 685 14th St., Oakland. Tickets are $10-$18. brownpapertickets.com 

JazzSchool’s Advanced Jazz Ensemble at 8 p.m. at the Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St. Cost is $5-$10. 845-1350.  

Sandy Owen, Spencer Owen & Sean Smith at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10-$12. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

The Taylor Texas Corrugators and Jambang at 9 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $10. 848-0886. www.blakesontelegraph.com 

Terry Disley Experience at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $14. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Dan Zemelman Quartet at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $12-$15. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

The Vowel Movement, beat box, at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $15. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Judy Wexler, jazz, at 8 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Martin Simpson at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Jerry Kennedy, acoustic soul, at 7:30 p.m. at 33 Revolutions, 10086 San Pablo Ave., El Cerrito. 898-1836. 

Bernie Worrell and the Woo Warriors, The Eric Mcfadden Trio at 9 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $15. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Trash Talk, Never Healed, Landmine Marathon 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. 

The P-PL at 10 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

Cole Davis, Navery EAP at 9 p.m. at Maxwell’s, 341 13th St., Oakland. Cost is $15. 839-6169. 

Harley White Jr. Trio at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

The Kenny Werner Trio at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square, through Sun. Cost is $22. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

SATURDAY, NOV. 15 

CHILDREN  

Los Amiguitos de La Peña with Rafael Manríquez & Ingrid Rubis at 10:30 a.m. at La Peña. Cost is $5 for adults, $4 for children. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

“Coppelia, the Doll with the Porcelain Eyes” a puppet show at 11 a.m., 2 and 4 p.m. at Children’s Fairyland, 699 Bellevue Ave., Oakland. Cost is $6. 452-2259. www.fairyland.org 

THEATER 

“Mrs. Pat’s House” A musical performed by Jovelyn Richards at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $12-$15. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Made of Spirit” Mische technique oil paintings by Krista Augius. Reception at 6 p.m. at Studio 40, 933 Partker St. at 8th. Cost is $5. 415-548-0498. 

“Plasma Nation” Group show of plasma and neon sculptors. Opening reception at 6 p.m. at Float Gallery, 1091 Calcott Place, #116., Oakland. 535-1702. www.thefloatcenter.com 

FILM 

Jewish Film Series “Prime” at 7 p.m. at Temple Israel, 3183 Mecartney Rd., Alameda. Cost is $10. 522-9355. 

“Sherlock Jr.” A Buster Keaton comedy for all ages at 3 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

Cinema Dreaming: Spirited Away Anime followed by discussion 2 p.m. at The Dream Institute, 1672 University at McGee. Cost is $10-$12. 845-1767. dream-institute.org 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Taubman Piano Seminar with John Bloomfield, Robert Durso, Marc Steiner, Elizabeth Swarthout, and Debbie Poryes. Lectures, master classes and demonstrations, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sat. and Sun. at Berkeley Piano Club, 2724 Haste St. Suggested donation $110. 523-0213. eswarthout@sbcglobal.net 

Frances Dinkelspiel reads from “Towers of Gold: How One Jewish Immigrant Named Isaias Hellman Created California” at 4 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

Roshni Rustomji and Aamina Ahmad, contributors, introduce the new anthology “And the World Changed: Contemporary Stories by Pakistani Women” at 3:30 p.m. at East Wind Books of Berkeley, 2066 Universtiy Ave. 548-2350. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Nina Haft & Company “One Becomes Two” A dance installation at 8 p.m. at Shawl-Anderson Dance Center, 2704 Alcatraz Ave. Tickets are $12-$15. www.shawl-anderson.org 

Merce Cunningham Dance Company at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $26-$48. 642-9988. www.calperformances.net 

Dimensions Dance 35th Anniversary Celebration at 8 p.m. at Oakland Inter-Stake Center, 4780 Lincoln Ave., Oakland. Tickets are $20-$25. 652-2344. 

Philharmonia Baroque “A Classic Triple” Beethovan, Haydn and Mozart at 8 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing. Tickets are $30-$72. 415-252-1288. 

“Music of Aaron Blumenfeld” at 8 p.m. at Trinity Chapel, 2320 Dana St. Tickets are $8-$12. 549-3864. www.trinitychamberconcerts.com 

Taubman Faculty Piano Concert with John Bloomfield, Robert Durso, Marc Steiner, Elizabeth Swarthout, and Debbie Poryes at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley Piano Club, 2724 Haste St. Suggested donation $20. 523-0213. 

Robin Gregory & Her Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $12. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Kalbass Kreyol, Haitian Liberation from Slavery Celebration, at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $12-$15. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com  

Collie Budz at 9 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $20-$25. 548-1159. www.shattuckdownlow.com 

The Bobs at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $20.50-$21.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Sol do Brasil at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $15-$20. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Jazz Fourtet at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Revtones, The Mighty Lynchpins at 9 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $8. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Five Dollar Suit at 7:30 p.m. at 33 Revolutions, 10086 San Pablo Ave., El Cerrito. Albany Adult School performs jaz vocals at 2 p.m. 898-1836. 

Peligro Social, A.D.T., Sista Sekunden at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $7. 525-9926. 

SUNDAY, NOV. 16 

EXHIBITIONS 

“We Celebrate Together” figurative paintings by Salma Arastu and ceramics and textiles by Josie Jurczenia. Reception at 3 p.m. at the Community Art Gallery, Alta Bates Summit Medical Center, 2450 Ashby Ave. Exhibition runs through Jan. 22. 204-1667.  

“October 9, 1969” by Scott Reilly. Tea at 3 p.m. at The Compound Gallery, 6604 San Pablo Ave., Oakland. 655-9019. 

FILM 

Talk Cinema Berkeley Preview of new independent films with discussion afterwards at 10 a.m. at Albany Twin Theater, 1115 Solano Ave., Albany. Cost is $20. http://talkcinema.com 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“Berkeley Women in the Book Business” A panel discussion featuring Pat Cody, with participants from Moe’s Books, University Press Books, Pegasus Books, Mrs. Dalloway’s, and Rebecca’s Books, at 2 p.m. at the Berkeley Historical Society, Veterans Memorial Bldg., 1931 Center St. 848-0181. 

Day of the Dead Artists’ Talks with Guillermo Galindo, Gustavo Vazquez and Mary Andrade at 2 p.m. at Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak Sts. Cost is $5-$8. 238-2200. www.museumca.org 

Egyptology Lecture “The Amduat and its Relationship to Early Eighteenth Dynasty Tombs” with Barbara Richter, PhD Candidate, University of California, Berkeley at 2:30 p.m. at Barrows Hall, Room 20, Barrow Lane and Bancroft Way, UC campus. 415-664-4767. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Nina Haft & Company “One Becomes Two” A dance installation at 3 p.m. at Shawl-Anderson Dance Center, 2704 Alcatraz Ave. Tickets are $12-$15. www.shawl-anderson.org 

“Artiste—Portrait of Django Reinhardt” with Hot Club of San Francisco at 4 p.m. at Crowden Music Center, 1475 Rose St. Cost is $12. Freen for under 18. 559-2941. concerts@crowden.org 

Philharmonia Baroque “A Classic Triple” Beethovan, Haydn and Mozart at 7:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing. Tickets are $30-$72. 415-252-1288. 

Cançoniér “Brumas est Mort” Medieval Music from Times of War, Plague and Death at 4 p.m. at St. Alban’s Church, 1501 Washington Ave., Albany. Tickets are $12-$15. 486-2803. 

Pacific Collegium “Miserere mei” at 4 p.m. at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, 144 Montecito Ave., Oakland. Tickets are $10-$20. www.pacificcollegium.org 

Berkeley Symphony Under Construction conducted by Paul Haas at 8 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley. Tickets are $10-$20. 841-2800. www.berkeleysymphony.org 

Concerto Auditions at 8 p.m. at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Free. 642-4864. http://music.berkeley.edu 

Albany Jazz Big Band at 2 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

“Jazz at the Chimes” featuring The Marcus Shelby Trio at 2 p.m. at Chapel of the Chimes, 4499 Piedmont Ave., Oakland. Tickets are $10-$15, children under 12 free. 228-3218. 

Junius Courtney Big Band with Denise Perrier at 7 p.m. at La Peña. Cost is $12-$14. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

John Scott Quartet at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Pappa Gianni & the North Beach Band, Italian opera and song at 2 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

The Winners, family square dance, at 3 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $4-$6. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

David Pinto & Syncopated Colors at 4:30 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $15. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Take the State Concert at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $8.50-$9.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Zap Guru, jazz, rock, jam band, at 2 p.m. at 33 Revolutions, 10086 San Pablo Ave., El Cerrito. 898-1836. 

 

 

 

 

 


Berkeley Playhouse Stages Children’s Classics

By Ken Bullock Special to the Planet
Thursday November 06, 2008 - 10:19:00 AM

Roald Dahl’s classic story, Big Friendly Giant, is onstage now at the Ashby Stage, produced by Berkeley Playhouse; Fiddler on the Roof opens this weekend, produced by Youth Musical Theater Co. (YMTC) at the Julia Morgan Center.  

Berkeley Playhouse features professional adult actors. YMTC puts their professionally trained youth company onstage with full orchestra. What both companies have in common is a mission to bring professional standards to family theatrical entertainment. 

“I realized at some point that if audiences didn’t know what they were missing,” said Elizabeth McKoy, artistic director of Berkeley Playhouse, “the future of theater would be in trouble.” 

“The demand is there among young people for professional training,” said Jennifer Boesing, stage director of YMTC. “And they rise to those expectations when they experience it. But there’s not a ton of opportunity for training, especially year-round programs. In school, they can put on shows, but they don’t get that kind of training.” 

They echoed each other in their commitment to nurturing the love of live performance, building informed audiences for the future. “It’s keeping the muscle of the imagination in practice,” said McKoy. “We can’t compete with multimedia and special effects. But we can provide the illumination of the human character. And the audience has different physical reactions to theater in real time. When there’s music, toes have to tap, bodies have to move.”  

Boesing took it further: “Cultivating audiences of theater lovers makes for engaged citizens. They see what collaboration means, that articulateness makes for authenticity, being able to speak with your own voice.” 

There’s a giant mural—literally—outside the Ashby Stage, and the lobby is decorated with props from the show for interactivity with audience members. There’s a wall to write on, and the actors appear, in character, to meet the audience offstage.  

Inside, onstage, on Kim Tolman’s Victorian attic set, the cast of 15 characters are becoming giants together, several actors to each giant, using found objects—recycled coke bottles, an empty laundry basket—and it’s all to scale.  

“We use a stuffed doll, with an actor speaking the lines, as Sophie, whose birthday it is,” Boesing said. “So it’s a believable transformation, to have actors as giants. In the second act, there’s a helicopter scene using hula hoops and flashlights. The actors descend, making the sounds. All 15 engage in telling the story. It’s an actors’ production.” 

The audience is asked to make a card for Sophie that’s put up in the lobby. A play-within-a-play,  

Big Friendly Giant follows Sophie, from the present her father gives her—an empty box—into giant land. “It’s about a father-daughter relationship,” says McKoy. 

YMTC brings the excitement of a full production, with live orchestra, of the great musicals to family audiences. Last summer they put on Into the Woods—Sondheim’s take on fairytales that’s normally considered adult fare. 

Next summer, it’s Les Miserables, an ensemble epic if there ever was one.  

“It’s on the model of summer stock theater,” said Boesing. “We open it up to alumni, to university students—and some of our trainees are in the most prestigious programs now. Last summer some people thought we had ringers brought in from New York among the cast!” 

The fall and summer shows are competitive—and more and more students compete to be cast. 

“They’re not good in spite of being kids,” said Boesing, “But because they are. They have incredible energy. They pull it off, and with excitement. So much theater you go out to see seems phoned in.” 

YMTC began with a one-man show. “Bruce Wicinas was a parent who saw his kids didn’t have enough opportunity to learn and play in musical theater,” she said. “He put shows on in his living room, at first, paid out of his own pocket. He hired me as musical director; at first, for Kiss Me Kate in 2000. It was then Youth Musical Theater Commons. We played in middle school auditoriums, rehearsed where we could—and he was recruiting kids for the shows. In 2003, we staged Les Miz at Longfellow, became a 501-C3 in 2004, with Pam Crane as managing director, and Bruce stepped aside. We helped build the black box at Willard School Metalshop. We hired a professional music director, bigger and better orchestras of pros—and are now year-round, from our non-competitive Pocket Broadway spring show, which attracts younger students, to our competitive summer and fall shows. We want to give them the skills to be competitive, to be full singer-actors. And we have outreach programs, but aren’t recruiting anymore. 16 Bay Area schoolsare represented by the 35 castmembers of Fiddler.”  

Berkeley Playhouse began eight years ago when McKoy started Imagination Players. “My kids didn’t want any more of my two week camps,” she said. Since starting in her living room “with talented friends,” they’ve done 16 shows since being subsumed by Berkeley Playhouse.  

“We’re not a one-show wonder,” McKoy said. “We have a multi-pronged approach.” That includes classes with parents and their “walkers”—1-year-olds—singing together, all the way up through the family age chain. There’s an educational outreach, a partnership with Malcolm X School, workshops for kids—and a youth company besides the adult troupe now at Ashby Stage.  

“The kids are taught by professionals,” she said. “They get the real thing. People think there are teachers and then there’re artists. This way, we can bridge the gap.” 

Both McKoy and Boesing are mothers, and both come from theater backgrounds. Boesing’s from an artist family in Minneapolis. McKoy is from Manhattan, trained in New York and was with Seattle Children’s Theater before moving to Berkeley 9 years ago.  

“The care about the quality of the process is greater here,” she said. “There’s much more collaboration than in New York.”  

She singles out Kimberly and Patrick Dooley of Shotgun Players in particular. “We never could’ve started without such great friends.” 

BIG FRIENDLY GIANT 

Adapted from the Roald Dahl book by David Wood. Directed by Jon Tracy. Ages 5 and up. 7 p.m. Thursday and Friday, 7 p.m.; 3 and 7 p.m. Saturday; 1 and 5 p.m. Sunday through Nov. 23 at Ashby Stage 1901 Ashby Ave. Adults $28, Kids $22 (pay what you can Nov. 6 and 13) www.berkeleyplayhouse.org. 665-5565.  

 

FIDDLER ON THE ROOF 

7:30 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays (Nov. 7, 8, 14, 15); 2 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 9 at the Julia Morgan Center, 2640 College Ave. $20; seniors, $15; 18 and under, $8. brownpapertickets.com or 1-800-838-3006. For information, call 595-5514. 

 

 


Merce Cunningham in Residence at Zellerbach

By Ken Bullock Special to the Planet
Thursday November 06, 2008 - 12:24:00 PM

Choreographer Merce Cunningham—whom the New York Times has called “the high priest of the dance avant-garde,” and who, approaching 90, is one of the last great living figures of the postwar generation of American artists—will be making appearances beginning this afternoon (Thursday) in a two-week Berkeley residency. 

He will appear with his 14-member dance company, four multi-instrumentalists (music director Takehisa Kosugi, John King, David Behrman and Christian Wolff), as well as local artists, soprano Aurora Josephson and percussionist William Winant, both of Oakland.  

The Merce Cunningham Dance Company will perform for Cal Performances at Zellerbach Hall (8 p.m. Friday-Saturday, Nov. 7, 8, 14, 15), as well as in a just-announced site-specific performance, Craneway Event, this Sun., 1 p.m. and 3 p.m. at Ford Point in Richmond.  

Other events include a film series (5:30 p.m. this Sunday and 7:30 p.m. Thurs. Nov. 13 at Pacific Film Archive); a multimedia event, Panorama, featuring artists, dancers, engineers, roboticists and digital game makers from UC Berkeley, directed by UC Dance Program director Linda Wymore (5-7 p.m. Fri., Nov. 14, at Pauley Ballroom).  

Two events with Cunningham are today (Thursday) at UC Berkeley: a colloquium with his composers and musicians (including Stephan Moore), 4-5:30 p.m. at 125 Morrison Hall, followed by an artist talk with Cunningham at 7 p.m. in Wheeler Auditorium. 

This Friday’s Program A at Zellerbach features Suite for Five (1956), set to John Cage’s music and “laced with balletic themes”; “eyeSpace” (2006), a 20-minute version to Mikel Rouses’s score, “iPod shuffle friendly,” and a live, ambient environmental soundscape performed throughout the hall (iPods distributed for performance); and Biped (1999 world premiere in Berkeley), music by Gavin Bryars, using motion capture sensors on dancers transformed into projections.  

Program B Saturday, Nov. 8, features Second Hand—from a solo Idyllic Song (1944) set to Erik Satie’s Socrate, as arranged for solo piano by John Cage. Denied permission by Satie’s estate, Cage based a new work, Cheap Imitation on a rendition of Satie’s structure and phraseology, with Cunningham also renaming his work; and Split Sides, originally played by Radiohead and Sigur Ros, British rock band and Icelandic experimental ensemble.  

Program C, Friday, Nov. 14, will be a 40-minute version of “eyeSpace,” with additional music by David Behrman and Annea Lockwood.  

Program D on Saturday, Nov. 15, opens with Views on Stage (2004), filmdance with Charles Atlas set to John Cage’s music; Crises, “a dramatic though not narrative, dance ... between a man and four women,” according to Cage; and Cunningham’s most recent work, Xover (”Crossover,” 2007), set to two 1958 Cage compositions, Aria (with soprano Aurora Josephson) and Fontana Mix, set and costumes designed by late renowned painter, Robert Rauschenberg, longtime Cunningham-Cage collaborator. 

Craneway Event will be held at the 517,000-square-foot former Ford assembly plant in Richmond, designed by architect Albert Kahn in the 1930s, on the National Register of National Historic Places since 1988, where Jeeps and tanks were made during World War II. It boasts hundreds of windows and a panorama of the bay. The event will be choreographed on multiple stages, with live composed and improvised music, using chance operations, the audience encouraged to move around and view the performance from different angles. Cunningham has staged nearly 800 such events since the first in Vienna in 1964, a collaboration with Rauschenberg. 

Merce Cunningham, born in April 1919, in Centralia, Wash., was a soloist for Martha Graham from 1939 to 1945. He presented his first New York solo concert with John Cage, who would be his lifelong partner and collaborator, in April 1944.  

The Merce Cunningham Dance Company was formed in the summer of 1953 at Black Mountain College in North Carolina, during that school’s moment in the vanguard of interdisciplinary education and experimentation. Cunningham has choreographed nearly 200 works for the company. Long interested in contemporary technology, he has created a computer program, DanceForms. 

MERCE CUNNINGHAM 

Tickets for Zellerbach Hall: $26-48 (half off, UC Berkeley students; $10-20 rush tickets announced 2 hours before performance); Craneway Event: $40 (sold out; returns may be available). Colloquium and artist talk, free. 642-9988 (#2 for rush tickets announcements), www.calperformances.org, or Zellerbach Hall box office.


‘Mrs. Pat’s House at La Peña Cultural Center

By Ken Bullock Special to the Planet
Thursday November 06, 2008 - 12:25:00 PM

Jovelyn Richards of Richmond, a lifelong tale-spinner with her own twist on the traditional style of African-American storytelling, is staging her brand-new narrative with music, Mrs. Pat’s House, the story of a Midwestern Depression-era madam, in an unusual East Bay performance at La Peña Cultural Center, 8 p.m., on Saturday, Nov. 15. 

“Where I grew up in Milwaukee,” Richards said, “brothels were not just the place where people went to have sex. The madam and the other ladies took care of the community around them, of the families of the women whose men didn’t have steady work in those days. It was an African-American community, mostly, but included Latinos and Asian Americans. The madam would pay the grocery store to deliver eggs and milk to families, and loved the fact they didn’t know where these were coming from, that they could make up their own stories about how the box of groceries or the coal got to be on the front porch. One woman, whose man had died, told everyone his spirit had provided.” 

Storytelling, then, isn’t just the mode Richards uses to get her perspective on the past across; it’s a theme in itself. “There’s that old tale that the very first prostitute was a storyteller!” 

Richards plays Scheherazade to her own Arabian Nights. In costume as Mrs. Pat, she moves hypnotically cross-stage to the music, taking on the different voices and mannerisms of the characters in her tale in the telling. Backed by violin, piano, lead guitar, flute and percussion, with her musicians’ voices joining hers as she intones a snatch of song, Richards remarked that a collaborator “noted I’m dancing even more in this than the last piece.” (Come Home is her tale of black soldiers returning from World War II to lynchings in rural Arkansas—but framed as a love story.) 

Her characters include “three women and a drag queen. One, Miss Lucy, leaves home when her son returns from World War I, violent and a dope fiend; she doesn’t want to watch him destroyed. The second had been passing for white, marrying a prominent upstate New York man she met in Europe; the neighbors tip him off to her background when they return together. The third woman, a Pentacostal, left the South because they thought she was a witch, making it snow in Alabama by the way she moved! The drag queen was found stabbed in a sequined dress and sheer stockings by the men who had had sex with him but couldn’t share another part of themselves. They go in and out of the story—as do the men who visit them. ‘It’s evening time and the shadows have brought you home to me’—because they come in shame. Miss Lucy has a funky blues tune that repeats, ‘I’ll be obliged.’” 

The contradictions of society are all there. None of the women has children with them, but they take care of others, “and everybody tells their children, ‘Don’t go up to that door, walk on that side of the street,’ then whisper up from the alley, ‘Is my husband in there?’ 

“The local women, with babies hanging off them, look at this beautiful house across the street with flowers, where the women sleep all day and suddenly at night come out dressed beautifully, not having to ask a husband for money. Fantasy and fear! They laugh with men freely, sit them down and offer them a drink.” 

Richards went on: “But they had a code of honor. They didn’t go after neighborhood men. They’d try to help when someone’s husband was lost in a dream, drinking and gambling. The women I knew like that understood what segregation was, how difficult it was to make a home—which was so important—and how to use their bodies, control them. Men with responsibilities would come to that house to gain back their own spirit. They were looking for something; the ladies would tell them stories. So I tell the history behind who shows up in Mrs. Pat’s house. At the core of all that is a storyteller.”  

Richards described one woman who inspired her: former jazz singer, club owner and stripper, Satin Doll. “Being in her club, getting to know her before I left the Midwest—and knowing my grandmother made her clothes ... She was connected to Richard Pryor, schooled him when he was new in the business, once got him out of a club before he was beaten up. He pays tribute to her in ‘Jo Jo Dancer,’ coming out in drag in her costume.” 

Another longtime woman in show business, Richards’ friend Mila Llauger, will be at the show, and Richards hopes she’ll sing. “I knew her in Minneapolis. She’s from Puerto Rico—and Harlem. She lived for years in San Francisco, brought up her children here, had a jazz club in Chicago. An old singer and dancer. And cook! Her dinner parties in Minneapolis had people uttering such sounds of pleasure, anybody passing outside must’ve thought they were orgies!” 

There is great—and sly—humor to Richards’ tale-spinning. Reflecting on the bordello origins of the music, she says, “Ragtime may’ve come about when all the women in a house had their cycles in line with each other—and were out of action at the same time! So the madam, I’ve heard, would order the funkiest music be played, the drinks kept coming, dancing, laughing—the customers wouldn’t even remember they didn’t have sex!” 

Humor and high spirits, with an undertow of the most serious things in life. “I want to bring the audience into the heart of a woman’s passion. But not modern-day sex like on TV. I want to slow it down, like the original strippers did, who might take an hour to get a glove off, make music in conversation, so we can actually feel. To me, we have the obligation to live—not just the breath in ourselves but the energy to engage.” 

MRS. PAT’S HOUSE 

One night only: 8 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 15 at La Peña Cultural Center, 3105 Shattuck Ave. $12 advance, $15 at the door. www.lapena.org. Box office hours: 1-6 p.m. Wednesday throug Friday; 1-5 p.m. Saturday.


More Japanese Classics on DVD

By Justin DeFreitas
Monday November 10, 2008 - 04:50:00 PM

If your impression of Japanese cinema consists entirely of samurai films, Pacific Film Archive's "Cinema Japan" series, running through Dec. 17, should set you straight. But these 24 films, which embody the breadth and depth of Japanese film in the post-World War II era—great as they are—may only whet the appetite. For viewers interested in delving further, three recent DVD releases from Criterion offer a great place to start.  

 

High and Low (1964) 

Kurosawa is represented well in the PFA series, but one film missing is High and Low, the director's bold adaptation of a novel by Ed McBain.  

Kurosawa, more than any other filmmaker, is strong associated with the samurai genre. And with a body of work that includes Yojimbo, Sanjurio, Throne of Blood, Rashoman, Seven Samurai and Ran, it is certainly understandable. But Kurosawa was not limited to period pictures.  

High and Low could be called a genre masterpiece, and yet it is hardly limited to any particular genre. Tense psychological drama gives way to police procedural which in turn gives way to noirish, expressionist melodrama.  

The film begins with a long sequence that never ventures outside the protagonist's home. Toshiro Mifune is introduced as business tycoon Kingo Gondo, and quickly enough the plot develops — a child has disappeared, though as it will turn out, it is not the right child. An unknown kidnapper seeks ransom from Gondo but has accidentally abducted the child of Gondo's chauffeur. No matter — the extortion plan will continue as planned. 

What follows is an extended sequence of beautiful widescreen compositions within a room full of people — Gondo, his wife and chauffeur, and a bevy of policeman on the case. Kurosawa choreographs a tour de force of shifting compositions as actors move across the space, their relationships and dilemmas exemplified as they turn toward and away from each other, move forward and recede and traverse the wide frame, crossing, blocking and boxing each other in. 

A moral dilemma is being systematically examined here, and Kurosawa sticks with it, milking every bit of tension, every scheming angle to full effect. It is a dilemma of some complexity: Is one child more valuable than another? Is a child's life worth a man's dreams and goals and wealth? Can Gondo be expected to throw away the dreams of a lifetime with no certainty of recompense, or of even of getting the child back? Kurosawa fills the frame with people, using his camera to make their relationships manifest. And the panoramic view of the city from Gondo's house on a hill reminds us of his vulnerability. The man who once seemed to stand above the city like a lord is now held captive by an unseen enemy below; the house on the hill is no longer a watchtower, but a cage that can be assaulted from any angle. 

To this point the film has essentially been a chamber piece, but once Gondo makes the decision to pay the ransom the film leaps into action with a breathtaking sequence aboard a train. Kurosawa insisted on a real train, with real cramped passenger cars and real scenery rushing past. He used eight cameras to capture the action almost entirely in real time. The result is a stunning sequence of taught action, compelling drama and unyielding suspense. And once the sequence comes to its emotional conclusion, at the film's one-hour mark, it is the end of a chapter and the beginning of what amounts to an entirely new film. 

In the next hour High and Low becomes a gripping police procedural, following investigators as they follow leads and report their findings. Their excursions into the field are interspersed like flashbacks much like in Fritz Lang's M. Gondo slips out of the spotlight as the plot shifts to the battle between the police inspector and the kidnapper, one dedicated to ensuring Gondo's sacrifice doesn't go unavenged, and the other bent on the great tycoon's destruction.  

Kurosawa maintains the tension throughout, as clues unravel into facts and facts lead to the criminal. Credulity may be strained slightly with the police delay the kidnapper's capture in order to hit him with more serious charges, resulting in a death, but the film never lets up. And once he is apprehended, the film once again adopts another tone, delving further into social commentary as the kidnapper and Gondo confront one another before the window slams shut and the film comes to an end.  

 

High and Low (1964). 143 minutes. $39.95. www.criterion.com. 

 

 

An Autumn Afternoon (1962) 

 

By contrast with the dynamic action of Kurosawa, Yasujiro Ozu sought to minimize the kinetic drama of his films. Ozu does not reach out and grab ahold of the viewer with startling compositions and frenetic movement; he holds his camera still and makes the viewer come to him.  

Ozu's style is like haiku. His imagery, his characters and dialogue are stripped to their essence; performances are purged of nuance, of subtley, of naturalism, reduced to precise movements. Endless takes where the director chiseled away at his actors' mannerisms might have resulted in stilted performances, but instead Ozu and his company produce pure, streamlined poetry. Like the decor and architecture surrounding them, the actors are spare and minimalist by design, and Ozu uses similarly spare and minimalist camerawork to film them, keeping his camera as still, as zen-like and as patient as he asks his actors and his audience to be. 

The reticence of his characters and the austerity of his style may leave the impatient viewer wondering after a time why they are watching. The first 20 minutes or so of an Ozu film may seem both slow and confusing as characters are introduced almost in mid-conversation. Ozu doesn't insert clumsy expository introductions into his thir' mouths to help orient the viewer. Instead he thrusts us directly into the scene and allows relationships and connections to gradually become clear. On the surface it may appear that we are simply listeningin on a series of polite conversations, broken up here and there by a few of Ozu's characterisitic transition shots — still life images of rooms, hallways, furniture, streets and buildings. But situation piles upon situation and character upon character until a full and rich world has been created, almost imperceptibly, and suddenly it dawns on us that not only do we know these characters, we care about them and have somehow become invested in them.  

This is not the identification that comes from cheap pandering or directorial manipulation, from simpering, soft-focus close-ups or crescendos of tear-jerking orchestral notes; it is instead the measure of Ozu's artisanship, of his unique talent for rendering a film with the depth of a novel — his ability, as both a writer and director, to fully and eloquently express the thoughts, dreams, emotions and desires of his characters to the point that we cannot help but take an active interest in their welfare.  

An Autumn Afternoon, Ozu's final film, reflects his late-career interest in the shift to post-war modernity. Japan's increasingly Americanized culture is a central issue in the director's later work, with new attitudes, priorities and interests widening the gap between old and young, between parents and their adult children. The nation's newfound prosperity simultaneously enriches, distracts and destroys the lives of the middle class; wealth purchases convenient appliances and luxury goods but opens the door to the creeping malaise of materialism and threatens to undermine the old social order.  

An Autumn Afternoon dwells on a theme he had worked before, that of a parent facing the unwelcome decision to marry off a daughter and thus embrace a new life without her presence. Ozu's films often deal with such generational issues, of the young leaving behind the aged. It is one of several themes that he returned to in film after film throughout his career, using different characters and situations to more fully examine the complexity of the issues at hand. It is a common joke that Ozu's films are essentially interchangeable, in style, in theme, and in the similarity of their titles: Early Spring, Late Spring, Late Autumn, Autumn Afternoon, etc. And while there is some truth in that observation, once you immerse yourself in Ozu's world you see that though nearly all of his films share a certain aesthetic, they are remarkably distinct from one another, each as rich, as engaging, as distinct as the faces of the actors he photographed.  

Criterion has released many of Ozu's films on DVD over the years, both in stand-alone editions and in the more recent line of Eclipse box sets. The "Silent Ozu" collection presented three of his early silent family comedies, and "Late Ozu" presented five of his late-career films. But Criterion did not include An Autumn Afternoon in that collection, opting instead to release it as a separate title. It was a good decision. While all of Ozu's later films are excellent, An Autumn Afternoon is essentially the culmination of a directorial style that evolved over several decades. The spaces Ozu leaves between scenes and between characters are deftly handled, wistful and open-ended; his compositions are as balanced and precise and idiosyncratic as ever; his use of color bold yet understated, with blacks and whites offset by strategic dashes of red; and his everyday, universal themes as sincere, as universal, and as heartrending as the medium will allow.  

 

An Autumn Afternoon. 1962. 113 minutes. $29.95. www.criterion.com. 

 

 

Mizoguchi's Fallen Women 

Director Kenji Mizoguchi secured his international reputation in the early 1950s with such films as Sansho the Bailiff, The Life of Oharu, and Ugetsu. His output was prolific and varied, but the plight of women was a recurring interest throughout his career, with many of his films centered on strong, resilient women characters.  

Criterion has released "Kenji Mizoguchi's Fallen Women," a box set in the company's Eclipse series that features four films that focus on the plights of women among the lower strata of Japanese society. 

The set includes two of Mizoguchi's early sound films (Osaka Elegy and Sisters of the Gion, both from 1936), a mid-career gem (Women of the Night, 1948) and the great director's final film (Street of Shame, 1956). All use the topic of prostitution to examine the hardships faced by women in a patriarchal society that renders them helpless without the aid of men. 

Sisters of the Gion follows two sisters and their vastly different approaches to life and their profession. Omocha (Isuzu Yamada) is ruthless, manipulative and grimly pragmatic, determined to use whomever she can to claw her away above her meager station. Her bold, gritty crassness calls to mind Barbara Stanwyck's Lily Powers from the 1934's Baby Face. Omocha's sister Umekici (Yoko Umemura) is far more fatalistic, resigned to her station in life. Neither approach works out too well in the end as the women are still unable to get ahead and are finally reduced to despair.  

Mizoguchi's final film, Street of Shame, was originally to be shot with a documentary approach, taking his camera and crew to the Yoshiwara, Edo's red-light district. However, ongoing political battles seeking to ban prostitution made brothel owners wary of participating in a project that would bring them unwanted attention at a sensitive time, forcing Mizoguchi to return to the studio. 

Street of Shame tracks the lives of five prostitutes at a brothel called Dreamland. Again, one is manipulative and ruthless; Yasumi lends money to her colleagues at ever-increasing interest rates, and entices a young, lovestruck businessman to embezzle from his employer with the false hope that she will one day marry him. Mickey, a brash young beauty who dresses like a 1950s American high school girl, has sought the geisha life as an almost welcome reprieve from life under the oppressive reign of a neglectful and possibly abusive father. Yorie clings to the idea of marriage as her salvation, but when she finally takes the plunge she finds she has only escaped into a life of loveless drudgery. Hanae has a young child and an unemployed husband and is thus the only breadwinner in the family. When her husband attempts suicide, she tackles him and hits him, demonstrating with her wordless fury that his supreme act of self-pity would have rendered moot the enormity of her sacrifice. Yumeko left the country to work as a prostitute in order to support her son, hoping that he would be able to support her when he grew to manhood. Now a young man, the son comes to the city to inform his mother that he will be taking a job at a factory, but when he learns how she has been supporting him over the years, he turns on her. 

Street of Shame was a commercial success and a few months after its release, prostitution was outlawed in Japan, with many attributing at least some of the credit to Mizoguchi and his final film. 

 

Kenji Mizoguchi's Fallen Women. $59.95. www.criterion.com. 

Osaka Elegy. 1936. 71 minutes.  

Sisters of the Gion. 1936. 69 minutes. 

Women of the Night. 1948. 74 minutes. 

Street of Shame. 1956. 85 minutes. 

 


Japanese Cinema Classics at Pacific Film Archive

Thursday November 06, 2008 - 12:22:00 PM

Pacific Film Archive is presenting “Cinema Japan,” a series of two dozen classic Japanese films as a tribute to Kashiko Kawakita, who along with her husband under the auspices of the Kashiko Film Institute, played a major role in bringing Japanese cinema to the attention of the western world.  

The series spotlights the post-World War II work of eight internationally acclaimed directors: Akira Kurosawa, Kon Ichikawa, Kaneto Shindo, Seijun Suzuki, Sumiko Haneda, Yoji Yamada, Shohei Imamura and Nagisa Oshima. Some of the films presented here—such as Kurosawa’s Stray Dog (1949) and Rashomon (1950) and Imamura’s Vengeance Is Mine (1979) and Intentions of Murder (1964)—are well known and readily accessible on home video. But many—including nearly all of the extraordinary films of Kon Ichikawa—have not been released on DVD, and thus this series provides a rare opportunity to see these works. 

“Cinema Japan” shows Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays through Dec. 17 at Pacific Film Archive. 2575 Bancroft Way. www.bampfa.berkeley/edu. 


East Asian Influences in Contemporary Art

Thursday November 06, 2008 - 12:23:00 PM

A symposium with with Jacqueline Baas, curator and former director of the University Art Museum, William T. Wiley, artist, Fred Martin, artist, writer and Dean Emeritus of the San Francisco Art Institute, Mark Levy, professor and author, and others, from 1 to 5 p.m. at JFK University Arts & Consciousness Gallery, 2956 San Pablo Ave., 2nd Floor. Enter at Ashby Ave. 649-0499. www.jfku.edu/asian


Starry Plough 35th Anniversary Party

Thursday November 06, 2008 - 12:23:00 PM

The Starry Plough, South Berkeley’s Irish pub, celebrates its 35th anniversary this weekend. Festivities begin at 9:30 p.m. Friday with the Buffalo Roam Reunion Show and continue with live music all day Saturday. $10. 841-2082. 3101 Shattuck Ave.


About the House: Have a Prioritized Plan for Home Maintenance

By Matt Cantor
Thursday November 06, 2008 - 12:25:00 PM

I have a terrible confession to make. I feel really bad about it, but it’s probably not going to change any time soon. I don’t care if your roof leaks. Okay, I know that I’m supposed to make a big deal about this sort of thing but I’m not going to. There, I said it and I feel a whole lot better. 

Well, maybe that’s not entirely true. I do care if your roof leaks, but not that much. And I would argue that you shouldn’t, either. If the thought of dripping water bugs you so badly that you’re compelled to fix it immediately, I would say, “Get on with it, then,” and hand you the phone to call the roofer. However, for most of us, it’s just not all that important because roof leaks don’t kill people.  

I’m interested in everything about the house but I’m most interested in things that can kill people or hurt them seriously or cause a massive loss of value. This is what might be called worst-case scenario inspecting and is what I try to do every day.  

It is very easy to lose perspective when looking at a large list of maintenance issues and, to the credit of many of my clients; they will intuit and communicate this when we’re looking at their house, skyscraper or aircraft hangar. Most will say, “Please tell the things that you think matter the most” or “Can you tell me the five things that you’d do first after I’ve moved in?” This is a darned good start, to be sure, but it’s not enough. These questions should also include, “What’s going to kill me?” and perhaps “What’s going to end up costing me a bucket of money?” Even if I’m not asked, this robot comes preprogrammed to process all of these questions. Maybe it’s because I’m a worrier, but it doesn’t make any sense to me to look at a range of home inspection issues and to fail to list them by hazard level. Another criterion that must be made a part of this thinking is: What’s the cost and what’s the benefit? 

So let’s take a look at a few things that I would place near the top (and near the bottom) of my worst-case scenario inspecting list. I would virtually always begin with those things related to fire. In my world, there’s not much worse than death by fire and although we can’t prevent all fires, we can certainly do a lot about preventing deaths caused by fires. So, my favorite inspection item is the smoke detector: low cost, high benefit.  

CO (carbon monoxide) testers are similar. While fire is much worse and far more common than CO, CO still remains a killer that can be addressed with a $25 device and a $2 battery. By the way, let’s not forget batteries. Installing fresh batteries for smoke and CO detectors has an extremely high yield in our index of safety vs. cost. It’s amazing how many smoke detectors I see that lack only a $2 battery to make a life or death difference. 

Fire escape is also very high on my list. This can include removal of window bars, installation of rope or chain ladders, training of children and accounting for the needs of the disabled (e.g. can they get oustside?). Window size and type is also a pretty large issue here. If a window doesn’t open enough to climb out (or for a firewoman to climb in!) it’s a BIG problem. Window locks that require a key are a huge hazard and have serious cost/benefit and worst-case indexes. The same applies to “double cylinder” door locks that require a key to escape. 

Let’s jump down to the low end of the worst-case-scenario list and look again at our leaking roof (actually, your leaking roof; mine’s fine). If the roof leaks, it is almost impossible for this to cause a death (although my mind, like yours, is now rushing to picture all the wild Rube Goldberg linkages in which a wet spot overhead could be fatal.) In fact, for the most part, most roof leaks usually become extremely noticeable—if not unsightly—before they’ve done any significant structural damage. (I always like to remind people that wood is not easily damaged by water; they build boats out of it!) For the most part, roof leaks damage ceiling finishes and if allowed to advance can then damage other components such as wiring and framing. Yes, sheetrock and plaster are quickly damaged and possibly destroyed by roof leaks and this is sort of sad—but sort of not very much. It shouldn’t be anyone’s worst-case scenario. 

I won’t miss the chance to throw in my personal dead-horse-celebre (would Mme care for her metaphores mixed or on-the-side): the earthquake. While you may never experience a very large earthquake, the worst-case scenario is very, very serious. There can be death (most likely by fire) and there will almost certainly be a great deal of property damage and loss after a very large earthquake. For my friends in the Bay Area, earthquake concerns definitely should take precedence over roof leaks. I would sooner see my client spend seven grand on seismic retrofitting for an earthquake that they may or may not experience than spend one grand fixing a leak that’s occurring today! If you live where earthquakes are less likely, substitute your own local disaster (tornado, locusts, Sarah Palin) and adjust your funding and action accordingly. 

Now, I’m not actually suggesting that you simply let the roof leak. I am suggesting that you have a rational plan for home maintenance. It’s fine and good and terrific to spend money on the things that make you crazy as they present themselves to you, dirty paws and all, but it’s vital that we focus a portion of our energy to manage the things that might do great harm to us and those we love, even if the potential harm seems way off in the distance.  

And of course, remember to eat out more often, smile a lot and get more hugs. 


Community Calendar

Thursday November 06, 2008 - 10:06:00 AM

THURSDAY, NOV. 6 

“Greening Your Historic Building” A talk by Billi Romain, City of Berkeley Sustainability Coordinator, and Thomas Dufurrena, Principal at Page & Turnbull on preservation and sustainable design at 7 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst. Sponsored by the City of Berkeley Landmarks Preservation Commission. RSVP to 981-7488. 

Berkeley Historical Society Walking Tour of South of Campus Churches from 10 a.m. to noon. Cost is $8-$10. For reservations and starting point call 848-0181. 

LiveTalk@CPS with Adair Lara, former SF Chronicle columnist, at 7 p.m. at College Prepatory School, Buttner Auditorium, 6100 Broadway. Tickets are $5-$15 at the door. www.college-prep.org/livetalk 

Human Rights Fellows Conference with reports on work with non-governmental organizations in 14 countries from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. in Toll Room, Alumni House, UC campus. 642-0965. 

Cheesemaking Learn how to make simple, healthy cheeses using organic goat and cow milks, at 7 p.m. at Women’s Cancer Resource Center, 5741 Telegraph Av., Oakland. Free, but registration required. 601-4040 ext. 111. www.wcrc.org 

“Tupperware: Building an Empire Bowl by Bowl” a film on the tupperware parties and the women who hosted them, at 1:30 p.m. at Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave. 526-3720. 

Away With All Gods Reading and discussion of the book by Bob Avakian at 6 p.m. at North Branch, Berkeley Public Library, 1170 the Alameda. 

Straight2Screen Writers’ Group monthly meeting at 7 p.m. at Kensington Circus Pub, 389 Colusa Ave., Kensington. straight2screen@yahoo.com 

Baby & Toddler Storytime at 10:15 and 11:15 a.m. at Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave. 524-3043.  

Three Beats for Nothing South Mostly ancient part music for fun and practice meets every Thurs. at 10 a.m. at the South Berkeley Senior Center, Ellis at Ashby. 655-8863. asiecker@sbcglobal 

Fitness Class for 55+ at 9:15 a.m. at Jewish Community Center, 1414 Walnut St. 848-0237. 

Toastmasters Berkeley Communicators meets at 7:30 a.m. at Au Coquelet, 2000 University Ave. Rob.Flammia@gmail.com 

Avatar Metaphysical Toastmasters Club at 6:45 p.m. at Spud’s Pizza , 3290 Adeline at Alcatraz. namaste@avatar.freetoasthost.info  

FRIDAY, NOV. 7 

Golden Gate Audubon Society Walk at Jewel Lake in Tilden. Meet at 8:30 a.m. at the parking lot at the north end of Central Park Dr. for a one-mile, two-hour plus stroll through this lush riparian area. Berries are ripening and migrants are here. Sponsored by Golden Gate Audubon Society. 843-2222. ggas@goldengateaudubon.org 

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon with Howard Maccabee, MD on “Natural Global Warming and its Positive Consequences for Our Health” 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 524-7468. www.citycommonsclub.org  

“Can Unarmed Civilians Break the Siege of Gaza?” with Paul Larudee of the Free Gaza Movement, Jewish Voice for Peace, Fr. Bill O'Donnell Social Justice Committee at 7 p.m. at St. Joseph the Worker Church, 1640 Addison St. Free, donations accepted. www.stjtwc.org 

New Deal Film Festival The Dust Bowl Years “Grapes of Wrath” with Peter Fonda at 1 p.m. at North Oakland Senior Center, 5714 Martin Luther King Jr. Way, Oakland. Sponsored by the Berkeley-East Bay Gray Panthers. 548-9696. 

“Dare to Struggle, Dare to Win” A film about the strike at the Renault factory in France in May/June 1968 at 7 p.m. at Niebyl-Proctor Marxist Library, 6501 Telegraph Ave. 595-7417. www.marxistlibr.org 

“Healing Ourselves, Making Connections” A weekend gathering for adoptees and foster care alums of African descent in downtown Oakland. For details email afaadinfo@gmail.com 

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. 

Three Beats for Nothing Mostly ancient part music for fun and practice meets every Fri. at 10 a.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center, Hearst at MLK. 655-8863. asiecker@sbcglobal 

SATURDAY, NOV. 8 

Wildlife Rescue Training and Recruitment To help strengthen a community’s response to wildlife casualties WildRescue is offering this training class designed for wildlife rehabilitators and their volunteers, from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Shorebird Park Nature Center, 160 University Ave, at the Marina. Registration required. Cost is $30-$40. 831-869-6241. http://wildrescue.org 

Quarry Lakes/Alameda Creek/Coyote Hills Bicycle Trip Meet at 8:20 on the east side of the Fremont BART Station in the parking lot. Trip lasts to 3 p.m. Sponsored by Golden Gate Audubon Society. 843-2222. ggas@goldengateaudubon.org 

Greywater Workshop at 10 a.m. at Magic Gardens, 729 Heinz Ave. 644-2351. www.magicgardens.com 

“Autumn in Asia” A tour of the Asian Area of the garden at 10 a.m. at UC Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Drive. Registration required. Cost is $12-$15. 643-2755. http://botanicalgarden.berkeley.edu 

“Mushrooms for Color” with dyer and artist Dorothy Beebee, learn how to identify mushrooms, extract dyes, and use them, from 1 to 4 p.m. at UC Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Drive. Cost is $40-$45. Registration required. 643-2755. http://botanicalgarden.berkeley.edu 

Orchid Society of California Show and sale. Sat and Sun. from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Lakeside Park Garden Center, Lake Merritt, 666 Bellevue, Oakland, just south of Children's Fairyland. Free. 

“The American Economy After the Elections: What Are the Causes of this Crisis and What Can We Expect from the New Administration?” A panel discussion at 7 p.m. at Alameda Free Library, Conference Room A, 1550 Oak St. at Lincoln, Alameda. Suggested donation $5. www.alamedapublicaffairsforum.org 

“The Elections: What Happened and What Now” A discussion with the Political Affairs Readers Group of the Communist Party at 10 a.m. at the Niebyl-Proctor Library, 6501 Telegraph Ave. 595-7417. www.marxistlibr.org 

NAACP Berkeley Branch meets at 1 p.m. at 2108 Russell St. Officers will be elected. 845-7416. 

Math and Science Classes from the Lawrence Hall of Science for families with children in kindergarten through fifth grade from 1 to 2:30 p.m. at Richmond Public Library, 325 Civic Center Plaza, Richmond. Free. 620-6557. 

Berkeley Lab Job Fair from noon to 4 p.m. at Berkeley Lab Cafeteria, 1 Cyclotron Rd. Job openings fro drivers, electricians, facilities managers, admin staff and others. Bring several copies of your resume. 486-5627. 

Red Cross: Alameda County Heros Awards Gala at 6 p.m. at Hilton Oakland Airport Hotel. Tickets are $150. 595-4460. 

Video Production Seminar Learn production interview techniques, audio, lighting, Studio & Field w/HD & SD Cams from 9:30 a.m. on at East Bay Media Center, 1939 Addison St. Cost is $125. 843-3699. www.eastbaymediacenter.com 

“Ancient Tools for Successful Living” Workshops from 11:30 a.m. on, at Ausar Auset Society, 2811 Adeline St., Oakland. For details call 536-5934. 

Preschool Storytime, for ages 3-5, at 11 a.m. at Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave. 526-3720, ext. 17. 

Free Garden Tours at Regional Parks Botanic Garden Sat. and Sun. at 2 pm. Regional Parks Botanic Garden, Tilden Park. Call to confirm. 841-8732. www.nativeplants.org 

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. 

Car Wash Benefit for Options Recovery Services of Berkeley, held every Sat. from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Lutheran Church, 1744 University Ave. 666-9552. 

SUNDAY, NOV. 9 

Honoring Veterans Day 2008 from 3 to 6 p.m. at Chapel of the Chimes, 4499 Piedmont Ave. Oakland. 228-3207. 

Friends of the Alameda Wildlife Refuge Workday Help us prepare habitat for California Least Terns. Meet at 9 a.m. at the main refuge gate at the northwest corner of former Alameda Naval Air Station, Alameda. Sponsored by Golden Gate Audubon Society. 843-2222. ggas@goldengateaudubon.org 

Little Farm Goat Hike Join a short hike with the Little Farm goats as we explore the historic connections between humans and our ungulate friends. For ages 6 and up, at 10:30 a.m. at Tielden Little Farm, Tilden Park 525-2233. 

Little Farm Open House Come grind some corn to feed the chickens, pet a bunny or groom a goat, from 1:30 to 3 p.m. at the Little Farm at Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

Purr-casso Art and Craft Sale with decorative, wearable and functional art pieces celebrating our feline friends from noon to 4 p.m. at Hollis Street Project, 5900 Hollis St., Emeryville. Benefits the Berkeley-East Bay Humane Society. 845-7735, ext. 13. www.berkeleyhumane.org 

“The Middle East in the Post Olmert/Bush Era” with Yakov Katz of the Jerusalem Post, at 7 p.m. at Congregation Netivot Shalom, 1316 University Ave. Donation $10. 525-3582. 

“Odessey: My Journey from Childhood Faith to a Universalist, Eclectic Spirituality” with Martha Helming at 10 a.m. at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, 1 Lawson Rd., Kensington. 525-0302, ext. 306. 

“May-June 1968: An Occasion Lacking in Workers’ Autonomy” A discussion with personal accounts at 1 p.m. at Niebyl-Proctor Marxist Library, 6501 Telegraph Ave. 595-7417. www.marxistlibr.org 

Family Day at the Magnes Museum and viewing of the installation “The Atheon: A Temple of Science for Rational Belief” from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at 2222 Harold Way. 549-6950.  

Let’s Go Strolling: Donate A Stroller Bring your clean and working stroller to donate to East Bay families in need, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at 344 Thomas L. Berkley Way, Harrison and 20th St. in the Kaiser Center Mall building, downtown Oakland. 834-2229. www.letsgostrolling.com 

Red Cross Blood Drive from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. at United Methodist Church, 1188 12th St., Oakland. To schedule an appointment go to www.BeADonor.com 

Free Garden Tours at Regional Parks Botanic Garden in Tilden Park Sat. and Sun. at 2 p.m. Call to confirm. 841-8732. www.nativeplants.org 

Lake Merritt Neighbors Organized for Peace Peace walk around the lake every Sun. Meet at 3 p.m. at the colonnade at the NE end of the lake. 763-8712. lmno4p.org 

Berkeley Chess Club meets every Sun. at 7 p.m. at the Hillside School, 1581 Le Roy Ave. 843-0150. 

Tibetan Buddhism with Erika Rosenberg on “Relaxing the Mind” at 6 p.m. at the Tibetan Nyingma Institute, 1815 Highland Pl. 809-1000.  

Kol Hadash Community Reception at 2 p.m. at the Albany Community Center, 1249 Marin Ave. Suggested donation $5. 428-1492. 

MONDAY, NOV. 10 

Birding at Martin Luther King, Jr. Shoreline, Arrowhead Marsh, Oakland with Bob Lewis from 9:30 a.m. to noon to see returning shorebirds and waterfowl. Meet at the last parking lot at 9:30 a.m. Sponsored by Golden Gate Audubon Society. 843-2222. ggas@goldengateaudubon.org 

“Climate Change, False Solutions and the Road to Climate Action” with Orin Langelle and Anne Petermann, Co-Directors of Global Justice Ecology Project on the mounting global resistance to market-based and corporate-controlled “false solutions” to climate change, including agrofuels, genetically engineered tree plantations, carbon trading, “clean coal” and nuclear power at 7 p.m. at Niebyl-Proctor Library, 6501 Telegraph, Oakland (near Alcatraz). Suggested donation $10. suzannebaker@earthlink.net 

“Rosalind Franklin and the Discovery of DNA” with Lynn Elkin, Prof. Emerita, Biological Studies, CSU East Bay at 12:15 p.m. at Room 150, University Hall, 2199 Addison St. Free for OLLI members, $5 others. 642-5254. 

El Cerrito Art Association meets at 7:30 p.m. at the El Cerrito Community Center, 7007 Moeser Lane near Ashbury Ave. Speaker will be Julie Cohn, Bay Area watercolorist and instructor. There will be a mini art show before the talk and those wishing to show their work should arrive at 7 pm. 234-5028. 

East Bay Track Club for girls and boys ages 3-15 meets Mon. at 6 p.m. at Berkeley High School track field. Free. 776-7451. 

Red Cross Blood Drive from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Mills College Student Union, 5000 MacArthur Blvd, Oakland. To schedule an appointment go to www.BeADonor.com 

World Affairs/Politics Discussion Group, for people 60 years and over, meets at 9:45 a.m. at Albany Senior Center, 846 Masonic Ave, Albany. Cost is $3.  

Berkeley CopWatch organizational meeting at 8 p.m. at 2022 Blake St. Join us to work on current issues around police misconduct. Volunteers needed. For information call 548-0425. 

Dragonboating Year round classes at the Berkeley Marina, Dock M. Meets Mon, Wed., Thurs. at 6 p.m. Sat. at 10:30 a.m. For details see www.dragonmax.org 

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 

TUESDAY, NOV. 11 

Veteran’s Day Ceremony aboard the USS Hornet at 1 p.m. at the former Naval Air Station, Alameda, 707 W. Hornet Ave., Pier 3. Cost is $6-$14, complementary admission for veterans with identification. 521-8448. www.uss-hornet.org 

Celebrate the 90th Anniversary of the End of the Great War at 10:30 a.m. at the Albany Veterans Memorial Building, 1325 Portland Ave. Sponsored by The Great War Society, this event will honor our veterans of all wars. 526-4423. 

Veteran’s Day with the Women of Color Resource Center and a screening of “Do Tell” digital storytelling by women of color and LGBTQ veterans, at 7 p.m. at Eastside Arts Alliance, 2277 International Blvd., Oakland. 444-2700, ext. 304. 

“The Green Collar Economy: How 1 Solution Can Fix Our Biggest Problems” with Van Jones at 7:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Oakland, 2501 Harrison St., Oakland. Tickets are $12-$15. 848-6767, ext. 609. www.kpfa.org 

East Bay Green Tour to visit green businesses, restaurants and more from 8:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. beginning at Amanda’s restaurant. Cost is $50. To register call 704-0379. 

Family Storytime at 7 p.m. at Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave. 524-3043.  

“Bottle Rocket” Film by Wes Anderson in a benefit for City Slicker Farms, at 9:15 p.m. at The Parkway Theatre, Oakland. Cost is $7. www.parkway-speakeasy.com 

“Know Your Rights” training for citizens and non-citizens on how to handle interactions with the police from 7 to 9 p.m. at 2022 Blake St. Sponsored by Berkeley Copwatch. 548-0425. 

Red Cross Blood Drive from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Mills College Student Union, 5000 MacArthur Blvd., Oakland. To schedule an appointment go to www.BeADonor.com 

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. 

End the Occupation Vigil every Tues. at noon at Oakland Federal Bldg., 1301 Clay St. www.epicalc.org 

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. www.watersideworkshops.org 

Berkeley Camera Club meets at 7:30 p.m., at the Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. Share your digital images, slides and prints and learn what other photographers are doing. 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 offer ongoing classes in exercise and creative arts, and always welcome new members over 50. 845-6830. 

Sing-A-Long Group from 2 to 3 p.m. at the Albany Senior Center, 846 Masonic Ave., Albany. 524-9122. 

Caribbean Rhythms Dance Class begins at 5:30 p.m. at Redwood Gardens, 2951 Derby St., and meets every Tues. eve. Donations accepted for Community Rhythms Scholarship Fund. 548-9840. 

Ceramics Class Learn hand building techniques to make decorative and functional items, Tues. at 9:30 a.m. at St. John's Senior Center, 2727 College Ave. Free, materials and firing charges only. 525-5497. 

Yarn Wranglers Come knit and crochet at 6:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

WEDNESDAY, NOV. 12 

Sudden Oak Death Preventative Treament Training Session Meet at 1 p.m. outside Tolman Hall at the oak tree, Hearst Ave. and Arch/LeConte, UC Campus for a two hour field session, rain or shine. Pre-registration required. SODtreatment@nature.berkeley.edu 

Sink or Swim: Navigating the Legendary Rapids in the Grand Canyon” with river guide Steven Law at 7 p.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. 527-4140. 

“Emergent Thoughts on High School: What Teenagers Really Need to be Successful in High School, College and Life” with Dr. Michael Riera at 7 p.m. at Redwood Day School, 3245 Sheffield Ave., Oakland. 534-0800. www.rdschool.org 

“Pathways Through the Holidays” A workshop for people coping with grief at 6:30 p.m. at Pathways, 333 Hegenberger Rd. Suite 700., Oakland. Free, but RSVP to 888-905-2800, ext 4241. 

 

 

 

 

 

American Red Cross Blood Services Volunteer Orientation at 6 p.m. at 6230 Claremont Ave. To learn more or sign up, call 594-5165. 

“Breema: The Art of Being Present” A free workshop at 6 p.m. at 6076 Claremont Ave. at College, Oakland. 428-0937. 

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. 548-9840. 

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. 

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. 

Morning Meditation Every Mon., Wed., and Fri. at 7:45 a.m. at Rudramandir, 830 Bancroft Way at 6th. 486-8700. 

Berkeley CopWatch Drop-in office hours from 6 to 8 p.m. at 2022 Blake St. 548-0425. 

Stitch ‘n Bitch at 6:30 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

THURSDAY, NOV. 13 

Codornices Creek Environmental Education Community Design Workshop at 6:30 p.m. at Four Corners Room, University Village, 1125 Jackson St., Albany. 759-1689. codornicescreekwc@gmail.com 

“Facing Race” A conference examining race in the presidential election, racial justice, race and the global economy and other topics, Thurs.-Sat. at Oakland Marriot City Center, 1001 Broadway, Oakland. Sponsored by Applied Research Center. To register see www.arc.org 

“Give Thanks” A Benefit for the Elders of Big Mountain, with songs, stories, and visions to bring aid and awareness of the struggle of the Dine’ People (Navajo), at 7:30 p.m. at Cafe de la Paz, 1600 Shattuck Ave. Donation $5-$10 and organic food donations for the caravan to Black Mesa. 464-4615. 

Berkeley School Volunteers Orientation from noon to 1 p.m. at 1835 Allston Way. Come learn about volunteer opportunities. Bring photo ID and two references. 644-8833. 

East Bay Mac Users Group meets to discuss Miro and iDVD at 7 p.m. at Expression College for Digital Arts, 6601 Shellmound St., Emeryville. http://ebmug.org 

Circle of Concern Vigil meets on West Lawn of UC campus across from Addison and Oxford, Thurs. at noon and Sun. at 1 p.. to oppose UC weapons labs contracts. 848-8055. 

Baby & Toddler Storytime at 10:15 and 11:15 a.m. at Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave. 524-3043.  

Three Beats for Nothing South Mostly ancient part music for fun and practice meets every Thurs. at 10 a.m. at the South Berkeley Senior Center, Ellis at Ashby. 655-8863. asiecker@sbcglobal 

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 

FRIDAY, NOV. 14 

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon with Frederick Rolf on “Berlin-Shanghai-New York: My Family’s Flight From Hitler” 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 524-7468. www.citycommonsclub.org 

Senior Driver Traffic Safety Seminar to help you improve driving skills, refresh knowledge of rules of the road, and identify normal age-related changes and how to adjust to become a safer driver, from 9 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst Ave. Free, but RSVP required. 268-5376. 

“An Evening with Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo” Book signing at 7 p.m., talk at 8 p.m. at at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, 1 Lawson Rd., Kensington. Suggested donation $30. 525-0302, ext. 306. 

“Fiat in the Hands of the Workers: The ‘Hot Autumn’ of 1969 in Turin” A discussion of the book at 7 p.m. at Niebyl-Proctor Marxist Library, 6501 Telegraph Ave. 595-7417. www.marxistlibr.org 

New Deal Film Festival Artists at Work “WPA and Public Art of the 1930s” at 1 p.m. at North Oakland Senior Center, 5714 Martin Luther King Jr. Way, Oakland. Sponsored by the Berkeley-East Bay Gray Panthers. 548-9696. 

Cancer Prevention and Survival Cooking Class meets Fri. for four sessions, from 6 to 8 p.m. at Alta Bates Summit Cardiac Rehabilitation, 3030 Telegraph Ave. Free. To register, please call 869-6737. 

Womensong Circle An evening of participatory singing for women at 7:15 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, small assembly room, 2345 Channing Way at Dana. Donation $15-$20. 525-7082. 

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. 

Three Beats for Nothing Mostly ancient part music for fun and practice meets every Fri. at 10 a.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center, Hearst at MLK. 655-8863. asiecker@sbcglobal 

“Why Do Jews Pray?” Explore this question at a no-experience-necessary Shabbat dinner at 6:15 p.m. at Jewish Gateways, El Cerrito. RSVP to 559-8140. rabbibridget@jewishgateways.org  

SATURDAY, NOV. 15 

Guided Community Creek Walk on Codornices Creek with Diana Benner, native plant specialist and co-owner of the Watershed Nursery, and the Codornices Creek Watershed Council. Meet at 10 a.m. at Codornices Creek Bridge at 5th St., one block of Harrison west of San Pablo. 759-1689. codornicescreekwc@gmail.com 

Invasive Plant and Trash Removal at Martin Luther King Jr. Shoreline, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Enter the park from Swan Way and follow the road to the end parking lot. Then look for the wooden observation platform, currently bring remodeled, adjacent to Arrowhead Marsh. Sponsored by Golden Gate Audubon Society. 843-2222. ggas@goldengateaudubon.org 

Explore the Albany Mudflats with Oliver James, and search for waterbirds on the mud and land birds on the bulb, from 8:30 to 10:30 a.m. Bring a scope if you have one. Exit Buchanan in Albany and turn west. Park near raised wooden platforms. Sponsored by Golden Gate Audubon Society. 843-2222. ggas@goldengateaudubon.org 

Reptile Rendevous Learn about the reptiles that live in Tilden Park, and meet some up close, from 2 to 3 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center. 525-2233. 

Close the Farm Help us close the Little Farm and tuck in the animals for the night, from 3:30 to 4:30 p.m. at Tilden Little Farm, Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

Vegetarian Cooking Class Thanksgiving for the Birds Learn to make harvest-stuffed acorn squash, mashed potatoes with caramelized onions, roasted brussels sprouts, mushroom gravy, apple cobbler and more from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at First Unitarian Church of Oakland, 685 14th St. at Castro. Cost is $50, plus $5 food and material fee. Advance registration required. 531-COOK. www.compassionatecooks.com 

Math and Science Classes from the Lawrence Hall of Science for families with children in kindergarten through fifth grade from 1 to 2:30 p.m. at Richmond Public Library, 325 Civic Center Plaza, Richmond. Free. 620-6557. 

“Mushroom Hunt in the Garden” Learn to identify mushrooms with biologist Debbie Veiss at 10 a.m. at UC Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Drive. Cost is $12-$15. Registration required. 643-2755. http://botanicalgarden.berkeley.edu 

“Life After Lawn: Toward New Naturalism” Learn about regionally appropriate ornamental grasses and grass-like plants for gardening at 1 p.m. at UC Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Drive. Cost is $20-$25. Registration required. 643-2755. http://botanicalgarden.berkeley.edu 

“The Green and Yellow Festival” A Ugandan Marketplace from 6 to 10 p.m. at Piedmont Veterans Memorial Building, 401 Highland Ave. Proceeds will benefit KIDA, a grassroots charity in rural Uganda that provides education and medical help. Cost is $35. 925-376-0519 or www.FriendsOfRuwenzori.org  

Gratitude Art Faire with arts and crafts, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Bridgeside Shopping Center, 2671 Blanding Ave. Alameda. Sponsored by the Frank Bette Center for the Arts. 

Albany Library Book Sale, Sat. from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Sun. from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at 1247 Marin Ave., Albany. 526-3720, ext. 16. 

Music Business Seminar sponsored by Califonria Lawyers for the Arts from 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. at Expression College for Digital Arts, 6601 Shellmound St., Emeryville. Cost is $10-$70. 415-775-7200.  

California Writers Club meets to discuss self-discovery and publishing with D. Patrick Miller at 10 a.m. at Barnes & Noble, Jack London Square, 98 Broadway, Oakland. www.berkeleywritersclub.org 

Jewish Literature and Discussion Series meets to discuss “The Mind-Body Problem” by Rebecca Goldstein at 2 p.m. at the Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave. 524-3043. 

Stress Reduction Workshop from 1 to 3 p.m. at Tibetan Nyingma Institute, 1815 Highland Pl. Free but please RSVP. 809-1000. www.nyingmainstitute.com 

Red Cross Blood Drive from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Alta Bates Summit Auditorium, 2450 Ashby Ave. To schedule an appointment go to www.BeADonor.com 

Free Garden Tours at Regional Parks Botanic Garden Sat. and Sun. at 2 pm. Regional Parks Botanic Garden, Tilden Park. Call to confirm. 841-8732. www.nativeplants.org 

Around the World Tour of Plants at 1:30 p.m., Thurs., Sat. and Sun. at UC Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Drive. 643-2755. http://botanicalgarden.berkeley.edu 

The Berkeley Lawn Bowling Club provides free instruction every Wed. and Sat. at 10:30 a.m. at 2270 Acton St. 841-2174.  

Oakland Artisans Marketplace Sat. from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Sun. from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Jack London Square. 238-4948. 

Car Wash Benefit for Options Recovery Services of Berkeley, held every Sat. from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Lutheran Church, 1744 University Ave. 666-9552. 

SUNDAY, NOV. 16 

Tales and Traditions of California Indians A program for families to learn about the food, tools and art of California’s First Peoples, from 1 to 4 p.m. at Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak Sts. Cost is $5-$8. 238-2200. www.museumca.org 

Fungus Safari Hike Join a hunt for mycelium, its fruiting bodies and learn about their natural history, from 10:30 a.m. to noon at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. For ages 6 and up. 525-2233. 

The Story’s in the Tracks Join a hike to look at the muddy footprints in the park, from 2 to 3:30 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

Community Labyrinth Peace Walk at 3 p.m. at Willard Middle School, Telegraph Ave. between Derby and Stuart. Everyone welcome. Wheelchair accessible. 526-7377. info@eastbaylabyrinthproject.org  

“Cornucopia” West Berkeley Arts Festival from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at 2016 7th St. Hosted by Black Pine Circle School. 644-1023, ext. 15. www.blackpinecircle.org/cornucopia 

Albany Library Book Sale from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at 1247 Marin Ave., Albany. 526-3720, ext. 16. 

“Embodied Landscapes: Prayer of the Earth” with Barbara Bye at 10 a.m. at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, 1 Lawson Rd., Kensington. 525-0302, ext. 306. 

Byron Katie Workshop on silence, listening, and meditation. led by Eduardo Zambrano, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. at 1929 Russell St. For cost see www.eastbayopencircle.org 

Free Garden Tours at Regional Parks Botanic Garden in Tilden Park Sat. and Sun. at 2 p.m. Call to confirm. 841-8732. www.nativeplants.org 

Lake Merritt Neighbors Organized for Peace Peace walk around the lake every Sun. Meet at 3 p.m. at the colonnade at the NE end of the lake. 763-8712. lmno4p.org 

Berkeley Chess Club meets every Sun. at 7 p.m. at the Hillside School, 1581 Le Roy Ave. 843-0150. 

Tibetan Buddhism with Robin Caton on “Attaining Inner Confidence” 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 

CITY MEETINGS 

Community Environmental Advisory Commission meets Thurs., Nov. 6, at 7 p.m., at 2118 Milvia St. 981-7461.  

Housing Advisory Commission meets Thurs., Nov. 6, at 7 p.m., at the South Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5400.  

Landmarks Preservation Commission meets Thurs., Nov. 6, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-7419.  

Public Works Commission meets Thurs., Nov. 6, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-6406.  

Council Agenda Committee meets Mon., Nov. 10, at 2:30 p.m., at 2180 Milvia St. 981-6900. 

www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/citycouncil/agenda-committee 

Youth Commission meets Mon., Nov. 10, at 6:30 p.m., at City Council Chambers, Old City Hall. 981-6670.  

Commission on Disability meets Wed., Nov. 12, at 6:30 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-6346. TDD: 981-6345.  

Police Review Commission meets Wed., Nov. 12, at the South Berkeley Senior Center. 981-4950.  

Commission on Early Childhood Education meets Thurs., Nov. 13, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5428.  

Community Health Commission meets Thurs., Nov.13 , at 6:45 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5356.  

West Berkeley Project Area Commission meets Thurs., Nov. 13, at 7 p.m., at the West Berkeley Senior Center. 981-7520.  

Zoning Adjustments Board meets Thurs., Nov. 13, at 7 p.m., in City Council Chambers. 981-7410.