Opinion

It wasn’t despair, exactly, but it was with a feeling akin to despair that I watched the clueless City Council majority on Tuesday night enthusiastically endorse a program to make loans to wannabe developers who couldn’t even come up with the standard city permit fees to get their projects started. -more-

MARCH 19 EDITORIAL -more-

A few days ago I had the pleasure of taking three Italian men from Parma to view some community gardens and a school garden. They were in Berkeley to see what the Bay Area does with its trash, as they are opposing their city council’s desires to build a large incinerator. As fathers of small children, they are concerned about their health, as well as the health of the planet. They were impressed to see our recycling efforts, and learned that our garden trimmings and food scraps are recycled into rich compost, which is then dug into gardens all across town. Although the United States has only 23 incinerators left still working (and none has been built in the past 15 years), Italy has 50 incinerators, and 50 more proposed! Italians have just begun to organize to fight the incinerator owners and the Mafia, who run all the trash collections in Sicily and much of the rest of Italy. -more-

As an Oakland-based preservationist, I’ve always been amazed by the political savvy of the Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association (BAHA), of which I’m a member. The organization even defeated the gutting of Berkeley’s landmark ordinance in the recent election. -more-

I have been thinking for days about a response to the editorial cartoon featured in the March 5-11 issue of the Berkeley Daily Planet about the Skirt Rally that took place on UC Berkeley’s campus. -more-

When four Oakland police officers were killed last weekend, Rep. Barbara Lee wasted no time before speaking out. The very next day—on a Sunday, no less—she issued not one but two press releases expressing condolences to the victims’ families and support for their colleagues. The following day she took to the floor of the House and for more than six minutes paid tribute to these “fallen heroes,” as she put it. The press statements promptly appeared on her official website, and a video clip of her remarks to the House was posted to her YouTube channel. -more-

By Paul Kamen -more-