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Mojgan Deldari reads from Farsi poet Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh to Darya Massih and Lily Namdaran.
By Riya Bhattacharjee
Mojgan Deldari reads from Farsi poet Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh to Darya Massih and Lily Namdaran.
 

News

Albany Woman Killed Friday By Amtrak Train in Berkeley

By Richard Brenneman
Tuesday July 07, 2009 - 09:53:00 PM

A 69-year-old Albany woman died early Friday afternoon when she was struck by an Amtrak passenger train just north of the Berkeley Amtrak station. 

The Alameda County Coroner’s Bureau identified the victim Tuesday as Nancy Peterson. 

A Washington Avenue resident, Peterson was active in local politics and a volunteer for the Save Our Shoreline coalition that elected Joanne Wile and current Mayor Marge Atkinson to the Albany City Council. 

Their election spelled the end of a proposal to erect an upscale shopping center and condo complex in the Golden Gate Fields parking lot. 

A representative of the coroner’s office said the manner of death—accidental or suicide—is still under investigation. 

Peterson died after she was struck by Amtrak train 535, which was headed from Sacramento to San Jose. 

After an investigation at the scene, the train was given a new crew and continued on its way, only to hit and kill a second pedestrian in Oakland less than two hours after the first incident. 

A third fatality involving another Amtrak train occurred shortly before 9 a.m. Saturday just south of the Jack London Square Amtrak station. 

The train in that incident, Amtrak No. 11, was en route from Seattle to Los Angeles.  

A representative of the coroner’s office said he was not able to release the identities of the other two victims. 

 

Bay City News contributed to this report.


Flames Force Evacuation of Russell Street Apartments

By Richard Brenneman
Tuesday July 07, 2009 - 04:20:00 PM
A firefighter tosses a shovelful of broken wallboard out the window of a third-floor apartment in the 2300 block of Russell Street Tuesday afternoon. Layers of aluminum, melted by the intense flames, formed metallic icicles visible on the drainpipe and the bottom of the window frame.
Richard Brenneman
A firefighter tosses a shovelful of broken wallboard out the window of a third-floor apartment in the 2300 block of Russell Street Tuesday afternoon. Layers of aluminum, melted by the intense flames, formed metallic icicles visible on the drainpipe and the bottom of the window frame.
Dense black smoke pours from two third-floor residences in the Rus-Tel Apartments during a two-alarm blaze that began shortly before noon Tuesday.
Contributed photo
Dense black smoke pours from two third-floor residences in the Rus-Tel Apartments during a two-alarm blaze that began shortly before noon Tuesday.

Flames gutted most of the interior of two third-floor Berkeley apartments Tuesday as firefighters and neighbors worked to evacuate tenants. 

The flames broke out shortly before noon in a third-floor unit at Rus-Tel Apartments, 2321 Russell St. 

One neighbor said two other residents of the building had delayed calling 911 in hopes they could contain the fire themselves. 

Assistant Fire Chief Kevin Revilla said the fire began in apartment 3D and spread to an adjacent unit to the south. “It went to a second alarm before it was extinguished,” he said. 

While no firefighters were injured, one resident—the tenant of the apartment where the fire began—was taken to the hospital, “but that was mostly for an existing condition,” said the firefighter. 

Neighbors said many of the residents of the stucco-clad 1960s-era building have mobility problems and many are elderly, and the occupant of the second fire-damaged unit is confined to an electric scooter. 

Revilla said the occupants of both damaged apartments will have to be relocated, and shortly after the flames were quenched, Red Cross workers were interviewing the resident of the second apartment to find quarters for her and make arrangements with her caregiver. 

Iris, who did not want her last name used, discovered the fire after a three-story elevator ride up to her apartment. 

“When the elevator doors opened, the flames were shooting out his door. His apartment was totally engulfed,” she said. 

Iris made it to her apartment, gathered up essential belongings and headed back downstairs and to the street outside, where she waited for more than an hour until firefighters were able to recover her scooter and bring it down. 

Assistant Chief Revilla estimated the damage to the apartments as at least $50,000. 

At its peak, the flames were so intense that the aluminum frames of the windows in both apartments melted, flowing down the outside walls and collecting like icicles as it dripped off a rain-gutter drainpipe.


Richmond Man Convicted of Murder for Fatal Berkeley Shooting

Bay City News
Tuesday July 07, 2009 - 04:46:00 PM

A Richmond man was convicted today of first-degree murder and attempted second-degree robbery for the shooting death of 23-year-old Wayne Drummond of Oakland near the University of California at Berkeley campus three years ago. 

An Alameda County Superior Court jury deliberated for only three hours before delivering its verdict against 23-year-old Nicholas Beaudreaux for the Sept. 4, 2006, incident. 

Beaudreaux faces a term of 50 years to life in state prison when Judge C. Don Clay sentences him on Aug. 28. Sentencing guidelines call for him to get 25 years to life for his first-degree murder conviction and another 25 years for using a gun to cause Drummond’s death.  

Prosecutor Tim Wellman told jurors in his closing argument on Monday that the incident began shortly after midnight on Sept. 4, 2006, when Drummond got into a confrontation with 21-year-old Brandon Crowder of Berkeley outside Blakes on Telegraph at 2367 Telegraph Ave. in Berkeley. 

Drummond, who grew up in Southern California but attended a junior college in the Bay Area, had been friends with Crowder but their relationship had soured in the weeks before the shooting. 

Wellman said that for reasons that haven’t been made clear, Beaudreux, who has known Crowder since they were in middle school together but didn’t know Drummond, injected himself into the confrontation and told Drummond, “I don’t know how to fight, but I know how to use this metal in my waist.” 

Four witnesses testified that Beaudreaux then pulled out a gun, stuck it into Drummond’s neck and demanded Drummond’s wallet, Wellman said. 

The prosecutor said that instead of surrendering and handing over his wallet, Drummond chose to fight back and struggled with Beaudreaux over control of Beaudreaux’s gun. 

Defense attorney David Kelvin said the gun went off during the struggle and that Drummond may even have accidentally pulled the trigger himself, but Wellman said witness testimony and the angle of the single bullet that struck Drummond in his torso indicates that Beaudreaux deliberately pulled the trigger and shot Drummond from a short distance. 

Wellman said Drummond’s friends and a Berkeley police officer who came to the scene a few moments later attended to Drummond while he was lying on a sidewalk but they didn’t see any blood and didn’t take him to the hospital because they didn’t realize he had had been shot. 

Instead, Drummond’s friends drove him to a friend’s room at the Alpha Omicron Pi sorority at 2311 Prospect St., near the UC Berkeley campus, where he collapsed and died shortly after 2:30 a.m. that day. 

Beaudreaux and Crowder weren’t arrested until February 2008 because it took authorities time to develop sufficient evidence in the case. 

Crowder was initially also charged with murder in connection with Drummond’s death, as Berkeley police said they believed he had directed Beaudreaux to shoot Drummond. 

But prosecutors allowed Crowder to plead guilty to the lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter on June 15 in exchange for his testimony against Beaudreaux, and Crowder testified last week. 

Crowder, who was arrested for allegedly threatening a basketball player at a UC Berkeley facility in December 2007, could face up to six years in state prison when Clay sentences him on July 21, but Wellman said Crowder could also be freed at that time, after only 18 months in custody, if Clay determines that he testified truthfully. 

Beaudreaux, who was dressed in a light green shirt and dark brown pants, bowed his head when the verdict was read but smiled when he spoke with Kelvin afterwards. 

Kelvin said the verdict “was not good news” for Beaudreaux but declined further comment. 

Wellman wasn’t immediately available for comment because he rushed off to talk to the jurors in the case.


Judge Halts Chevron's Richmond Refinery Expansion

By Richard Brenneman
Monday July 06, 2009 - 06:01:00 PM

Chevron must stop all work on expanding its Richmond refinery until a new project environmental review is completed and approved, a Contra Costa County judge has ruled. 

Superior Court Judge Barbara Zuniga issued the second of two crucial rulings July 1 in a lawsuit brought by a coalition of environmental groups in opposition to the refinery expansion. 

Zuniga had already overturned Chevron’s environmental impact report (EIR) last month. 

About 100 workers have already been laid of as a result of the decision, Chevron representative Brent Tippen said Monday, “and over the next several weeks we will continue to release workers as we begin to safely demobilize the project.” 

Will Rostov, attorney for Earthjustice, and Adrienne Bloch of Communities for a Better Environment, represented their own organizations in the lawsuit along with Asian Pacific Environmental Network and West County Toxics Coalition. 

“It’s a big victory for the community and for environmental health,” Rostov said, “because as a result of Judge Zuniga’s ruling, everyone will now have a chance to learn what the true costs of the refinery expansion will be.” 

“Chevron is disappointed with the court's ruling,” Tippen said. “We feel both the evidence and the law amply supported the adequacy of the EIR prepared by the City of Richmond for the Renewal Project.”  

That document, approved by the Richmond City Council, had breached the California Environmental Quality Act by failing to include a comprehensive evaluation of the effects of the refinery expansion, the judge ruled. 

The Richmond City Council had certified the EIR even though the document failed to declare whether or not the project would enable the oil company to process heavier and potentially more pulling crude oils than are currently refined at the site, one of the reasons cited by the judge in her June decision that invalidated the EIR. 

The EIR was also invalid because it allowed the refinery to postpone a plan to mitigate any increase in globe-warming greenhouse gases generated by the expansion for a year after the city had certified the EIR and because the document failed to examine a hydrogen gas pipeline that is a key part of the project. 

In addition to tossing out the EIR, Judge Zuniga’s writ of mandate overturned the city council’s approval of the Richmond Planning Commission’s decision to issue conditional use and design review permits for the refinery expansion. 

Finally, the judge ordered Chevron to stop work on the project and gave the oil company “up to 60 days to complete any needed demobilization that does not include any new construction.” 

Tippen said a year’s delay in the project could mean the loss of more than a million labor hours and $50 million to $75 million in lost income to workers in the city and county. 

Other questions remain open, including the fate of the $61 million Richmond Community Benefits Agreement the refinery pledged in exchange for city approval of the project. 

Tippen said the decision places the agreement in jeopardy, and the loss of funds plus the loss of worker income “will result in significant revenue loss to the City of Richmond at a time when the local economy can ill-afford even more job and revenue losses.” 

Rostov said the court’s decision means that Chevron will have to disclose fully what its plans for the refinery are, and to disclose the real impacts of greenhouses gases generated by the project. 

Richmond Mayor Gayle McLaughlin said she veiws the judge’s decision as a victory for the city, and a critical step on the road the the creation of an environmentally just community. 

McLaughlin, who was among the council minority who opposed the project and the EIR, said Judge Zuniga’s decision will enable the development of a good project at the refinery, “one in which all the requirements and regulations are spelled out in the EIR.” 

“It’s an opportunity to bring about a project that has the health of the community at heart,” McLaughlin said. 

The mayor said that Chevron should also continue to pay its construction workers while the EIR is being rewritten. “There’s precedent for that,” she said.


Hearing Scheduled For Oakland Contractor Arrested For Underpaying Immigrant Workers

By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor
Monday July 06, 2009 - 03:13:00 PM

A July 20 hearing has been scheduled in Alameda County Superior Court in Hayward for a prominent Oakland general contractor arrested in an alleged scheme to defraud workers and illegally lower her company’s insurance rates.  

In a 48-page indictment, the Alameda County district attorney’s office charges Monica Ung, owner of NBC Contractors Corporation of Oakland, and two employees, Joey Ruan and Tin Wai Wu, with grand theft, insurance fraud, and the possible falsification of time sheets. The district attorney’s office is alleging that NBC’s actions resulted in an estimated $3.6 million dollars in unpaid wages to 19 construction workers, with losses due to illegally misclassifying workers costing the state an estimated $1.5 million. 

Ung, Ryan and Wu were arrested late last month and have been released on $535,000 bail, with court appearances scheduled in Alameda County Superior Court in Hayward for July 20.  

Many of the NBC workers who were allegedly victims of the company’s actions were Chinese immigrants who spoke little English. 

The office of the California insurance commissioner also participated in bringing the charges against Ung and the two NBC employees. 

As part of the insurance fraud section of the indictment, the district attorney’s office and the insurance commissioner’s office are alleging that NBC knowingly made false statements to the company’s insurance carrier in order attain lower rates. 

As part of the indictment, the California Department of Insurance said that workers employed by NBC told an Insurance Department investigator that “they worked 60-72 hours per week, and were paid $8-$9 per hour. However, their check stubs only showed that they worked 10 to 40 hours were week and earned $33 to $58 per hour.” NBC allegedly had their workers sign two blank time cards—one filled out with the correct time, one with the falsified time—in order to get around the clauses in their public contracts that required paying their workers at prevailing wages, as well as state overtime pay laws. 

Investigation of Ung’s company, which has participated in such public construction contracts as the Skyline High School, Highland Elementary School, and Piedmont Elementary School renovations, may have begun following the filing of a 2008 class action lawsuit by the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 595 and the Northern California Chapter of the National Electrical Contractors Association (NECA) on behalf of several of the NBC workers. The IBEW and the electrical contractors association have suspended action on their lawsuit while the criminal charges are pending. 

Oakland labor attorney Ellyn Woscowitz, who filed the original lawsuit along with Oakland attorney Sharon Seidenstein, said in a prepared statement following the arrests that “because of our lawsuit, dozens of exploited Chinese workers came forward and gave testimony, not only for their civil suit for wages, not just for economic justice, but for the criminal system as well.”  

NECA Executive Director Don Campbell added, “we are elated that a contractor is finally being held accountable for many years of illegal activities. Contractors that cheat workers out of wages, and cheat on insurance costs, undercut good, law-abiding union contractors.” 

Ung could not be contacted for this story. She initially hired high-profile East Bay attorney Michael Cardoza to represent her, but has since dropped him and hired another attorney. The identity of Ung’s new attorney could not be determined at press time.


Trial in Telegraph Avenue Murder Nears End in Oakland Courtroom

Bay City News
Monday July 06, 2009 - 03:12:00 PM

A prosecutor told jurors today that a Richmond man should be convicted of murder for shooting an Oakland man during a confrontation and an attempted robbery outside a Berkeley bar three years ago. 

Alameda County Deputy District Attorney Tim Wellman said Nicholas Beaudreaux, 23, of Richmond, shot Wayne Drummond, a 23-year-old Oakland man, after Drummond got into a confrontation with Beaudreaux and 21-year-old Brandon Crowder of Berkeley outside Blakes on Telegraph at 2367 Telegraph Ave. in Berkeley shortly after midnight on Sept. 4, 2006. 

In his closing argument in Beaudreaux’s murder trial, Wellman said Beaudreaux told Drummond, “I don’t know how to fight but I have some metal in my waist” and pulled out a gun, stuck it into Drummond’s neck and demanded Drummond’s wallet. 

The prosecutor said that instead of surrendering and handing over his wallet, Drummond chose to fight back. In a struggle over control of Beaudreaux’s gun, the gun went off and a single bullet struck Drummond in his torso, Wellman said. 

However, Wellman said Drummond’s friends and a Berkeley police officer who later attended to Drummond didn’t realize that Drummond had been shot and didn’t take him to the hospital immediately. 

Instead, was taken by his friends to the Alpha Omicron Pi sorority at 2311 Prospect St., near the UC Berkeley campus, where he collapsed and died shortly after 2:30 a.m. on Sept. 4, 2006. 

Crowder also was charged with murder in connection with Drummond’s death but he pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter on June 15, just after a jury had been selected for the murder trial. 

As part of his plea agreement, Crowder testified against Beaudreaux last week. 

Beaudreaux and Crowder weren’t arrested until February 2008 because it took authorities a while to develop sufficient evidence in the case. 

Beaudreaux’s lawyer, David Kelvin, will give his closing argument later today after which Wellman will give his rebuttal argument. 

Jurors are expected to begin deliberating Tuesday morning after receiving legal instructions from Alameda County Superior Court C. Don Clay, who is presiding over the case.


Two Wednesday Meetings Focus on City Land Use

By Richard Brenneman
Monday July 06, 2009 - 03:10:00 PM

Berkeleyans concerned about land issues may have a tough time choosing which city meeting to attend Wednesday night. 

While the Planning Commission meets at the North Berkeley Senior Center (1901 Hearst Avenue at Martin Luther King Jr. Way), planning staff will be conducting a second meeting on housing at the South Berkeley Senior Center (2939 Ellis St., just north of Ashby Avenue). 

Both meetings start at 7 p.m. 

Adding to the complications, the Planning Commission will also be discussing the same housing issue being discussed at the South Berkeley meeting. 

The housing issue focuses on a mandatory revision of a key section of the city’s General Plan, the so-called Housing Element, which describes city policies for housing its existing and incoming residents. 

Both the city Planning and Housing Advisory commissions are involved in the rewrite, though the City Council will have the final say. 

The revised document is also influenced by the Association of Bay Area Governments, which sets quotas on how much new housing cities must be willing to permit in order to access state funds allocated through the regional government agency. 

While the South Berkeley meeting is largely informational, seeking input from the public on proposed changes to the ordinance, planning commissioners could take action at their simultaneous session. 

The commission will also be taking up the politically thorny issue of designing a new master use permit process for West Berkeley, which would change the rules of the development game on larger parcels in the only area of the city zoned for industry and manufacturing. 

The City Council has directed commissioners to come up with ways to ease development rules, with an eye toward allowing both phased development of larger parcels and in permitting changes in use within those parcels. 

Mayor Tom Bates wants the existing law changed with an eye toward capturing and keeping high tech companies spun off from research generated at UC Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. 

One key question to be decided is just how small parcels can be that could be developed under the new permit system, with a considerable number of existing West Berkeley businesses and industries along with Berkeley’s dwindling populations of artists and crafts workers hoping to limit development to a few larger existing parcels, while developers are arguing for permits for smaller properties, and for the right to assemble smaller parcels to whatever minimum size is finally adopted.


Golestan Kids

By Riya Bhattacharjee
Thursday July 02, 2009 - 09:34:00 AM
Mojgan Deldari reads from Farsi poet Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh to Darya Massih and Lily Namdaran.
By Riya Bhattacharjee
Mojgan Deldari reads from Farsi poet Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh to Darya Massih and Lily Namdaran.

Iran is always on the minds of students and teachers at Berkeley’s Golestan Kids, but more so than usual in recent weeks. The adults at this Iranian culture, language and education program—perhaps the only one of its kind in the country—are busy teaching preschoolers about Iranian culture during the day and anxiously monitoring the news from Iran at night.  

Ever since protesters took to the streets of Tehran June 12 to protest the outcome of the Iranian presidential election, their relatives all over the world, including those in the Bay Area, have lost much sleep while compulsively checking YouTube, Facebook and Twitter posts, their peace shattered by images and reports of violence half a world away.  

“If you look at all the parents and the teachers, we all have dark circles under our eyes,” said Yalda Modabbar, who co-founded the program in 2005 and helped to get it incorporated into Golestan Kids last September. “We all put our children to bed, and we just go to the computer and look at the news.”  

Modabbar, who moved from Iran to the United States with her parents after the revolution of 1979, said that, although the organization was completely apolitical and secular and did not adhere to any religious or political affiliation, concern was natural.  

“I came here when I was 9—the reserves of my childhood memory for that period of my life, from the age of 10 to 14, is very blurry, but from 6 to 9 is very, very sharp,” she said. “I can give you directions from one place to the other in Tehran. I remember the revolution very clearly—it was very similar to what’s going on right now. People were screaming and chanting and there were curfews. I never went back, for no reason other than it hasn’t worked out, but that doesn’t mean I am not worried.”  

A young working mother, Modabbar placed an ad on the Berkeley Parents Network website three years ago searching for a nanny or a preschool for her son.  

“I was alone in Berkeley and didn’t have any family here,” she said. “I didn’t want my son to grow up without other people speaking Farsi.”  

Another Iranian parent responded, and soon a small playgroup was formed.  

“The group just grew organically—in fact it became too big,” Modabbar said. “Soon we had 30 families, and within months we had to hire a teacher, and then a teacher’s aide. Now we have pregnant mothers coming and filling out applications. We already have nine applications for 2011.”  

Tucked away inside Berkeley’s historic Heywood House at 1808 Fifth St., a block away from the Fourth Street shopping district, the kids at Golestan seem to be a world away from the land their parents were born in.  

But it’s here that 2- to 5-year-old Iranian-American, Iranian-Asian and Afro-Cuban toddlers (families where both parents are Iranian are in the minority at Golestan) play with one another while learning to speak and write the Farsi alphabet and hearing stories from Persian classics.  

“It’s a way for children to develop an identity as Iranians or Iranian-Americans, so that when they go to kindergarten they don’t feel like they are different,” Modabbar said. “At least once a week I get inquiries from other parts of the country asking for advice or help on how to raise their bilingual children. Our long-term goal is to become a resource for other communities.”  

On a recent Friday afternoon, about 10 students trotted into the dining room from the garden, which has its own vegetable patch complete with lemon, cilantro and tomato saplings from Iran.  

“It’s going to get chaotic in a while,” Modabbar said apologetically. “The kids will be coming in to eat.” The children, however, were very well behaved, pitching in to set the table, serve the lunch of saffron rice and grilled zucchini, and even carry dirty plates to the kitchen to be washed.  

The program, which borrows tenets from Montessori and Waldorf philosophies, and Persian culture, has 25 children. Students can choose from classes in theater, music, nature, science, language and cooking.  

Music is very important, and the children are exposed to a range of compositions, from Beethoven to old Persian folksingers.  

After lunch, a small group gathered around 4-year-old Darya Massih, singing “Happy Birthday.”  

“Mubarak, mubarak (congratulations)—come and blow the candles, so you’ll live for 100 years,” they sang, just as Darya’s father, Amir Massih, walked in to tell his daughter he was taking her out for an ice-cream sundae at Fenton’s.  

“Ahhhhhh,” Darya screamed in delight, bursting into Farsi as she hugged her father.  

Massih, who came to the United States when he was 8, described the program as a boon for Iranian parents in the Bay Area.  

“There was just a sense that there was a hole in the process for our kids in getting to know what their culture was like and being able to speak in the language their parents and grandparents understood,” he said. “This program is tapping into something that wasn’t there.”  

Massih, who still has aunts and uncles in Iran, said that he would like people to know that there is more to Iran than political unrest.  

“I think what’s going on right now is in the back of everyone’s mind, and probably in the forefront a lot, but I would like to separate the cultural parts we are celebrating here from the political parts. We are celebrating the cultural gifts Iran has given to the world. What is happening there is a political process that is ugly—I am hesitant to have it intermingle with what’s happening here. I don’t think it has anything to do with a 4- or 5-year-old born here. These are just kids.”  

Massih said that what was seen or heard on the news often distorted people’s opinion of Iran.  

“That’s not all there is to it,” he said, talking about the country’s contributions in art, literature and philosophy.  

“There are lots of beautiful parts to the culture. People have a great sense of humor. They don’t really take themselves or life too seriously. People like to laugh and enjoy themselves. If you were to see a picture of a party in Iran, behind closed doors, it doesn’t look much different than a party here. It’s a reflection of their desire to live a good life and to enjoy themselves in the same way that we do here. They just do it in a different language.”  

In an adjacent room, filled with hand-woven rugs and Eastern furniture, head teacher Mina Moubedi was trying her best to put the toddlers to sleep. Soft notes from a santoor played in the background.  

“I love how they are keeping Iranian culture alive here,” said Moubedi, who worked as an accountant at a knitting factory in Iran before the revolution. “In here, I am myself. I don’t worry about the differences of cultures. The words come from my heart.”  

One teacher, who didn’t want her name used for fear of retribution against her family in Iran, helped the older children carry their storybooks to a room filled with the bright afternoon sunlight. She moved to the East Bay from Iran two years ago to join her husband. Most of her family still lives in Iran. When asked whether she was surprised by the political situation in her home country, she said “yes and no.”  

“It can happen after each voting, because people don’t like the government,” she said. “If they are against something they don’t like, they will find a way to show their feelings.”  

Another teacher, who also didn’t want her name used out of concern for her family, teaches art and dance at Golestan. She was born in the United States but lived in Iran for 14 years after the revolution. She said this is the dawn of a new era for all Iranians.  

“I am very upset about it, because many innocents are getting killed. But at the same time I am happy Iranians are getting united for democracy, women’s rights and freedom of speech,” she said. “That’s really fantastic. They actually waited too long—30 years. Unfortunately, like any revolution, many have to perish for the major changes to happen, but I am hoping this is one of those changes.”  

The 35-year-old teacher, who describes herself as “neither completely American nor completely Iranian,” recalled her life in Iran after the Shah was overthrown, a time she compared to the “dark ages of Europe.”  

“When I went to school, every single day there were these women from the government who would check us and say ‘Oh, your pants are too short or too tight,’” she said. “They would check our nails for nail polish and whether we were wearing any makeup. But the funny thing is, all the girls who would cover themselves up at the front door would get into the university and put back their lipstick or open their hair. It’s kind of living in a duality. You try to look right for the government, but behind them you are having all these dance parties. But really, it’s not fun to live in that duality. In the street you have that fear, the fear of government.”  

Describing herself as “a child of revolution,” she said that when she was living in Iran, she wasn’t fully aware of the lack of freedom.  

“Sometimes when you live there and you haven’t been anywhere else, you adapt to it,” she said. “When you get out of there, you get to zoom out, and you realize that you have no freedom at all. It’s really sad.”  

Her parents, she said, stayed in Iran after the revolution in hope of getting a “good democracy. Many people didn’t know it was going to turn out to be that bad,” she said. “Things gradually got worse, and nobody could say anything, because the government would put you in prison.”  

When the pre-K class gathered around their teachers for “circle time,” the teacher announced that the theme of the week was heroism.  

“It’s because of what’s going on in Iran,” she said, reading aloud from the famous Farsi poet Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh, or Book of Kings, which chronicles the struggles and victories of Iran’s heroes. “It will help them to know about it—that people there are striving for human rights.”


School District Reduces Bus Services

By Riya Bhattacharjee
Thursday July 02, 2009 - 09:35:00 AM

State budget cuts to education will force more parents to take responsibility for dropping off and picking up their children from Berkeley’s 11 public elementary schools starting in August. 

The Berkeley Board of Education at a board meeting Wednesday unanimously ap-proved the extension of walk boundary perimeters in the district, which will reduce bus services and prompt more students to walk, bike or be driven to school. An estimated 400 elementary school children will be affected by the reduction. 

Schools will allow only students who live outside a 1.5 mile radius of an elementary institution in the Berkeley Unified School District to reserve a seat on their bus in the new school year. 

The change will not affect middle or high school students because the district does not provide them with transportation services, except in the case of special education students. 

Berkeley Unified’s new walk boundary will increase the district’s existing walk boundary—which district officials said had been established in 1995—by .5 mile.  

District Superintendent Bill Huyett said there was no cause for alarm yet. 

“It’s one of the small things that comes with the budget cuts,” he said. “Many districts have completely dropped transportation. Berkeley Unified did not have to take such drastic measures.” 

Huyett said Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was proposing to slash 65 percent from transportation funds while the Legislature was proposing a 20 percent cut. 

“We have to plan on the 65 percent cut,” Huyett said. “We are subsidizing transportation to a great extent. The state will not pay.” 

On May 27, the school board approved Huyett’s recommendation for the district’s 2009-2010 budget reductions, including laying off two bus drivers. 

The district’s Transportation Manager, Bernadette Cormier, told the board that data from 2008-2009 showed that the loss of the two drivers would affect transportation services, thereby making it necessary for the district to extend the walk boundary. 

Approximately 1,700 of the district’s 9,000 students use the district’s school buses. The cuts to transportation will result in a savings of $184,076 for Berkeley Unified. 

“These are choices none of us want to make, but we are in a tight budget year and every program has had an impact,” said Board Director John Selawsky. 

Berkeley Unified is divided into four geographic zones. The district often accommodates students living in one of these zones but assigned to a school in a different zone if they request it, there is capacity and it doesn’t change the time or cost structure of the routes. 

However, the reconfiguration of the walk boundary would mean that potentially 48 “out-of-zone” students would be excluded from bus stop assignments, because the stops would no longer be in proximity to where a student had requested one. 

Busing for private after-school programs may have to be reduced or eliminated, Cormier said, explaining that the district was taking a careful look over the next three weeks at how the routes would shape out. 

“If we have to reconstruct our boundaries, we might have to be a little tighter with these programs,” Cormier said. 

Berkeley Unified currently provides bus services to six to eight private after-school programs, which fall along the bus’s regular route, at no additional cost. 

School Board President Nancy Riddle suggested that, given the cuts to the transportation program, the district might consider charging families for transporting their children to non-public after-school programs. Board Vice President Karen Hemphill stressed the importance of having a district-run after school program at every elementary school, which she said provided parents with an alternative. 

Cormier told the Planet that in difficult budget climates, it was not unusual for districts to charge students for transportation services to programs outside their jurisdiction. 

She said the district’s transportation department was still working on what specific routes would be affected by the cuts, based on the 2009-2010 data. Her staff will collaborate with the district’s communications team to inform families likely to be affected by the service reductions. 

The schools, Cormier said, would work with Alameda County’s Safe Routes to School program to address the impact of the changes on traffic safety and street crossings. 

At present, most bus stops at the Berkeley elementary schools are located within certain neighborhood areas bound by busy streets. District staff make every attempt to avoid having students walk through heavy traffic while walking to these stops, Cormier said. 

Additionally, students who live on the boundary of the current 1 mile radius are allowed to take the school bus if they cite safety reasons for not walking to school. They are picked up from the bus stop situated closest to their residence. The district will continue to consider these requests for the new 1.5-mile walk boundary, Cormier said. 

The district, Cormier said, would work with Safe Routes to School and the city of Berkeley’s Injury Prevention Division to address traffic flow near the affected schools and provide resources on alternative traveling arrangements to parents. 

The school board at its June 10 meeting approved the launch of a traffic safety campaign to address reduction in congestion, traffic, noise and pollution around Berkeley’s public schools and promote walking and biking and pedestrian safety in classrooms as well as among parents. 

Traffic safety posters, assessment of crossing guard placements and traffic engineering upgrades are some of the other things that will be addressed. 

The push for bicycle and pedestrian safety was in response to a spike in pedestrian accidents in the school district over spring, the most serious of which led to the death of LeConte Elementary School kindergartner Zachary Michael Cruz. 

 


East Bay Green Corridor Meeting Long on Talk, Short on Details

By Richard Brenneman
Thursday July 02, 2009 - 09:36:00 AM
Mayors, university and college administrators, city officials and entrepreneurs gathered at the Oakland Museum of California to discuss the East Bay Green Corridor.
Richard Brenneman
Mayors, university and college administrators, city officials and entrepreneurs gathered at the Oakland Museum of California to discuss the East Bay Green Corridor.

If it’s not easy being green, as Kermit the Frog famously sang, it’s getting easier in the East Bay—at least for businesses spawning clean, green tech and for programs that train workers how to use it. 

But for Berkeley’s Tom Bates, the region’s first car-free mayor, “To me, greening is really the dollar bill”—a means, as Tom Lehrer famously sang, of doing well by doing good. 

That was the underlying theme permeating a Friday morning gathering of mayors, university and college administrators, city officials and entrepreneurs at the Oakland Museum of California for the second annual meeting of the East Bay Green Corridor. 

A collaborative effort created at the instigation of UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau, the corridor is designed to attract and hold green businesses—especially those created by the entrepreneurial scientists of UC Berkeley and its affiliated Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL). 

The first partnership representative to speak was Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums, who struck a more somber note than those who followed. 

“We live in a world that is increasingly interrelated, interdependent and mutually vulnerable,” said Dellums. “The whole notion of national security as we have known it in the past becomes an oxymoron.” 

Dellums offered the loftiest vision of any of the speakers during a session in which visions took center stage and facts lingered in the wings. 

With unprecedented levels of federal recovery funds available, Dellums said President Barack Obama “is telling you this moment is never going to come again, a time when billions of dollars are placed on the streets of America in a few months. This is a one-time opportunity.” 

But it is also the federal government that must come up with solutions and ways to combine them “in a comprehensive, constructive and concentrated way,” he said. 

Fittingly, the next speaker came from Washington—via satellite feed. Steve Chu, director of LBNL until Obama raised him to the cabinet with an appointment as secretary of energy, told the assembly that “the East Bay Green Corridor partnership can serve as a model of regional progress in green energy.” 

With jobs in the renewable energy sector growing at twice the rate of the national job market, they are precisely the kind of jobs that should be promoted during a recession, Chu said, especially with global temperatures expected to rise by four or five degrees centigrade during this century. 

“Many species, including humans, will have a hard time adapting” to global warming, said the Nobel Laureate. “We have two choices,” he said. “We can close our eyes, or we can recognize what’s happening and seize the opportunity.” 

Chu was followed by Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates, currently chair of the corridor partnership. Berkeley was a founding partner of the corridor alliance, along with Oakland, Richmond, Emeryville, UC Berkeley and LBNL. 

Four new cities joined the partnership Friday—El Cerrito, Alameda, Albany and San Leandro—along with another university, Cal State East Bay, and two community college districts, Peralta and Contra Costa. 

“It’s really been a wonderful year,” said Bates. 

Bates said the partnership’s efforts are expanding into business and workforce development, and a major effort is underway to keep and hold companies spawned by research at universities and the national lab. 

“We had 25 startups in the last year” from Cal and LBNL, Bates said. “We will have an inventory of all industrial land in the East Bay corridor that will be available to green-tech companies.” 

The Berkeley mayor repeated a call he has made as part of his push to ease zoning restrictions in West Berkeley, an effort now underway at the city’s Planning Commission: “We would like them to be able to scale up so that we can keep them.”  

Bates said the partnership is also working with venture capitalists and will be developing an inventory of “all the things the communities are doing in order to determine what can be carried across the entire East Bay community.” 

Richmond Mayor Gayle McLaughlin spoke next, the only Green Party mayor in the Green Corridor partnership. 

She recounted a series of her city’s green ventures, including the city’s Richmond Build solar-installation training program, which serves Berkeley as well as her own city, and a $1,000 rebate program for residents who install solar systems. 

“It’s a wonderful opportunity for us to advance a new economy development that not only takes on an environmental challenge but also takes in those in most need,” she said. The solar-installation program recruits young people and gives them training in a critical sector of the new energy economy. 

For Emeryville Mayor Richard Kassis, the green revolution is already here. 

“Science has always been important to us,” Kassis said. “There are over 50 companies in Emeryville doing biotech work, and more recently we’ve been trying to bring biofuel companies into the community. We’re excited about JBEI and Amyris, two leaders in the industry.” 

Both companies are the creation of LBNL/UCB bioengineer Jay Keasling, the day’s keynote speaker. 

“It’s really nice to have a secretary of energy who really knows the science of energy,” said Paul Alivisatos, who replaced Chu as LBNL director. “The lab is in a very strong position to become the leader in global research on developing green technology.” 

A key first step, he said, is incorporating energy efficiency in buildings. Farther down the road, capping carbon emissions is critical, with research focused on carbon sequestration and new forms of solar electricity generation through new types of photovoltaics and fuels.  

UCB Chancellor Robert Birgeneau rounded out the main panel, focusing on the $500 million, 10-year alternative-energy research grant funded by BP, the company formerly known as British Petroleum and earlier as the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. 

Berkeley receives $35 million of the annual $50 million, the rest going to its research partner, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where crops proposed as fuel sources are being bred and grown. 

“BP looked around the world and finally had to choose between the East Bay, San Diego, Boston, London and Oxford,” Birgeneau said, finally picking the East Bay “for very good reasons.” 

With the lab up and running, 170 graduate students, post-doctoral researchers and undergrads are “in training in the new science of biofuels,” Birgeneau said. 

While announcements for the meeting touted more that $75 million in Obama administration Recovery Act funds received by partnership members, the funds weren’t awarded to the partnership, which will gain its first paid staff member only this autumn when Carla Din comes on board as executive director. 

Din has served as Western Regional Director for the Apollo Alliance, a renewable-energy advisory group, and as environmental liaison for the United Steelworkers. 

Once paid staff is on board, the organization will be housed in the offices of the East Bay Economic Development Alliance, an alliance of public and private organizations in Alameda and Contra Costa counties founded in 1990 with a mission to “to establish the East Bay as a world-recognized location to grow businesses, attract capital and create quality jobs.”


School Board Approves New Contract for Teachers

By Riya Bhattacharjee
Thursday July 02, 2009 - 09:37:00 AM

The Berkeley Board of Education approved a two-year contract between the Berkeley Unified School District and the Berkeley Federation of Teachers at the board’s June 24 meeting.  

The 2005–2008 agreement expired on June 30, 2008, leaving the teachers’ union without a new contract for almost a year. 

After months of negotiations, the Berkeley Federation of Teachers (BFT) reached a tentative deal with the school district May 13, that gave teachers a 1 percent pay increase for the current academic year, in spite of state cuts to the school district budget, but left them without any raise for 2009–10. The current contract will go into effect July 1 and end June 30, 2010. Union representatives are scheduled to negotiate a “successor agreement” for 2010–11 in March of next year. 

Both parties came to an agreement in mid-June that seeks to maintain the current small-class sizes, upgrade maternity leaves for teachers, support National Board Certification, and provide professional development for substitute teachers and preschool parent-teacher conferences. 

BFT President Cathy Campbell told the board at the meeting that the contract demonstrated an improvement in labor relations between the union and the district. Unlike previous negotiations, this one did not require help from a state mediator. 

“The agreement represents tremendous hard work by all involved and should be celebrated for its successes in these difficult times,” Campbell said. 

Berkeley Unified Superintendent Bill Huyett called the agreement “a win-win situation.” 

“We had some differences, but in the end it benefits both the teachers and the school district,” he said. “It’s a collaboration that benefits everybody, and I know I speak for the School Board as well.” 

Campbell outlined Berkeley Unified’s efforts to staff critical psychologist positions at the Berkeley public schools by raising their salaries to a competitive level and providing more time for parent-teacher preschool conferences. 

She lauded the district’s move to update the union’s Equal Opportunity policy, which she said affirmed a common belief in nondiscrimination based on sexual orientation. 

“This agreement shows clearly the truth that all students in Berkeley deserve an excellent education, which means having excellent teachers, which means having excellent working conditions for our teachers,” Campbell said. “To separate the working conditions of our teachers from a ‘students first’ perspective is an oxymoron. The working conditions of teachers are the learning conditions of students.” 

Thus, she said, the negotiations included a lot of discussion about how various changes in the school district could affect students and their families and the district’s ability to achieve the goals of the 2020 Vision, a citywide plan to eliminate the achievement gap by the year 2020. 

Campbell said the agreement illustrated significant accomplishments in professional development for teachers, especially substitutes, by increasing its intensity and establishing weekly professional development time at Berkeley High. 

Founded in 1950, the Berkeley Federation of Teachers is made up of 800 teachers from K–12, the Berkeley Adult School and Child Development, counselors, substitutes, school psychologists, adaptive PE teachers, librarians and speech pathologists serving Berkeley public school students. 

For more information on the Berkeley Federation of Teachers and to read the tentative agreement, see www.berkeleyfederationofteachers.org.


Unions Challenge UC President’s Proposed Pay Cuts

By Richard Brenneman
Thursday July 02, 2009 - 09:38:00 AM

With California caught in financial turmoil, the University of California wants its employees to share the pain. 

In a June 30 letter posted to university employees, UC President Mark Yudof said staff are telling him they don’t want flat, across-the-board pay cuts.  

And unions representing faculty and staff who are paid from outside funding sources are asking why their pay should be cut as well. 

With the state budget in crisis and the Legislature adjourning without passing a budget, the state faces a fiscal emergency unlike any seen since the Great Depression. 

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger issued an order for all state employees to take a third unpaid day off monthly, in addition to the two he had already ordered, to help with the anticipated budget deficit he now estimates at $26.3 billion. 

UC Berkeley receives about 20 percent of its funding from the state, with the remainder coming from donors, federal and corporate grants and other public and private sector funding sources. 

After soliciting proposals from workers in a June 17 letter, Yudof wrote Tuesday that the university has been “strongly encouraged to develop a graduated approach for these reductions with higher compensated employees absorbing a larger reduction.” 

Such a move would clearly affect the UC president, whose annual pay and benefits package totals about $828,000. 

In his earlier letter, Yudof had written that pay cuts and unpaid time off have been earmarked to cover $195 million, one quarter of the system’s projected $800 million state budget shortfall. Already approved student fee hikes of $211 million would take up another quarter. 

“The remainder of the cuts will fall to the campuses, and likely will affect course availability, class size, student services, and other aspects of the educational program,” Yudof wrote in mid-June. 

“These are unprecedented times, and we are facing unprecedented challenges,” said the university system’s chief executive. “The university has never faced a funding crisis of this magnitude and responding to it will require sacrifice from every member of the university community.” 

Representatives of Berkeley University Professional and Technical Employees (UPTE) Local 1, a unit of Communications Workers of America UPTE local 9119, have questioned cuts for the 90 percent of their members who are funded by grants, a concern shared by Michelle Squitieri, UCB representative of the American Federation of Teachers Berkeley-San Francisco Local 1474. 

The AFT represents non-tenured lecturers, librarians and other faculty. Tenured UC faculty are not represented by a union, though they are free to join the AFT, Squitieri said.  

Both UPTE and the AFT include workers whose salaries are paid from grants, and the unions criticized Yudof’s proposal to include their salaries in the pay cuts. 

“A lot of us are up in arms, because about 90 percent of our workers are working under contracts and not paid from state funds,” said Joan Lichterman, who represents UPTE members on health issues. Many of the local’s members are technicians and researchers, she said. 

Lichterman said the university already takes cost of living adjustments built into grant contracts. “I don’t see how it will help the UC if they cut our pay,” she said. 

American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Local 3299 represents about 20,000 UC workers systemwide, including cooks, bus drivers, food service employees, licensed vocational nurses and nursing assistants and medical assistants and technicians. 

CUE, the Coalition of University Employees, represents the university’s clerical workers, and CUE Local 3 in Berkeley has been highly critical of the university’s call for pay cuts. 

Both unions have challenged the university’s proposals. 

In his June 17 letter, Yudof proposed a trio of options, all yielding an 8-percent salary reduction for those workers earning over $46,000 a year, including: 

• A flat 8-percent salary cut for all employees earning more than $46,000 a year, and 4 percent for those earning less. 

• A total of 21 unpaid days for those earning over $46,000, and 11 days for those earning less. 

• 12 unpaid days plus a 3.4 percent pay cut for those earning more than $46,000, and 6 unpaid days and a 1.7 percent pay cut for workers paid less. 

Retired UCB physicist Charles Schwartz has emerged as one of the university system’s leading financial watchdogs and has posted his extensive writings on university finances at http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~schwrtz. 

In the latest of his series “Financing the University,” Schwartz contends the university could survive with an overall reduction in salaries of three percent. 

“We don’t agree with everything he writes, but we are posting this on our website,” Squitieri said. 

Workers represented by unions have one key advantage over other workers. As Yudof noted in his latest letter, “implementation of systemwide furloughs and/or salary reductions for represented employees is subject to collective bargaining.”


AC Transit Gives Public First Look at Line Cuts

By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor
Thursday July 02, 2009 - 09:39:00 AM

AC Transit took its first steps June 24 toward implementing a December districtwide bus service cut. The bus district held a public board workshop to reveal the first details of its plan and set a Sept. 9 date for a formal public hearing. 

District officials say the cuts are necessary in order to keep AC Transit solvent over the next several years, as well as to plug a $9.74 million shortfall in the 2009-10 fiscal year budget. 

The workshop was held on the same day that the AC Transit Board officially declared a fiscal emergency, allowing the district to move forward with the proposed line cuts and adjustments. 

If the cuts are approved by the board, the district will drop 905 hours of bus service per day across the two-county district, 458 hours on weekends, for an estimated annual savings of $18 million. 

“We’re going to run less, but we’re going to run what we run better,” AC Transit Services and Operations Manager Corey Lavigne told board members at a special 3 p.m. workshop on the proposed cuts last week. 

The complicated service-cut proposal introduced by district staff contains some complete line cuts and the elimination of small pockets of service, as well partial cuts and consolidation of other lines.  

Lavigne said that the proposed changes “will mean additional transfers for riders on some of the adjusted lines” but told board members that staff had no recommendation yet on changes to the district’s transfer policy to adjust to the additional need. Transfers currently cost AC Transit riders an additional 25 cents and can be used for only one transfer. 

Trying to track the proposed staff changes between the written staff report and the existing AC Transit bus line map is next to impossible, and Lavigne promised board members that maps of the proposed changes would be made available to the public in the near future. 

Board members made few comments during the staff presentation on the proposed changes, which several board members had already seen and been briefed on in private sessions. Board members appeared resigned to the changes, and several suggested that this may not reflect all of the changes necessary. 

“I’m concerned that the work that [staff has] done [on the proposed line cuts changes] will not adequately address our budget situation,” Ward 5 Director Jeff Davis said, adding that, “I hope [staff has] left some reserve in your tank” for coming up with new line cuts. 

The AC Transit Board proposed taking a formal vote on the proposed cuts and changes when the board meets on July 8. 

The staff proposed eliminating three lines in the Oakland hills, including the 47 line between Fruitvale BART and 55th Avenue and MacArthur Boulevard, the 59 and 59A lines between the Lake Merritt BART and Rockridge BART stations, and the 41 line between Highland Avenue and Estates Drive. 

In Berkeley, portions of the 79 line between the downtown Berkeley BART and the El Cerrito Plaza BART are proposed to be eliminated, replaced by a “North Berkeley Neighborhood Shuttle,” described in the staff report as a “neighborhood service for implementation from downtown Berkeley to Pierce and Buchanan, the Target store on Eastshore, and University Village, then via Eighth Street to Cedar Street and returning to Martin Luther King.” The report says the new North Berkeley shuttle “replaces portions of the current 19, 52L and 79 lines.” What portion of the 79 line is to be eliminated is not clear from the staff report. 

AC Transit staff is also proposing eliminating the portion of the 74 line in Richmond that runs to Marina Bay from 23rd Street, as well as the portion of the 13 line between the West Oakland BART station and the old Oakland Army Base. 

The district proposes several completely new lines to help compensate for some line adjustments and cuts, including a shuttle between the Eastmont Transit Center on 73rd and MacArthur and the Oakland Airport, a crosstown line along Fruitvale Avenue connecting the Dimond and Fruitvale business districts and portion of Alameda, a West Oakland neighborhood line between MacArthur BART, Lake Merritt BART, and West Oakland BART, and a line connecting MacArthur Boulevard with Chinatown, downtown Oakland, and Jack London Square.


Bus Rapid Transit Advisory Committee Recommends Consolidating Stops

By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor
Thursday July 02, 2009 - 09:40:00 AM

AC Transit’s Policy Steering Committee has approved the bus district’s plan to consolidate station stops along the route of its prosped Bus Rapid Transit route in principle, but made it plain that any decisions on setting aside dedicated bus lanes must go to the governing bodies of the affected cities. 

Under the proposal, most local bus stops on Telegraph Avenue and International Boulevard would be eliminated, with AC Transit adding 14 additional stops to the 35 1R rapid stops currently operating in the proposed Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) line. 

BRT is a hybrid system between traditional bus service and light rail, combining the use of buses with light-rail-type boarding stations. AC Transit is proposing to run the rapid bus line along the route currently run by the 1R and 1 bus lines. While some BRT systems operate without lanes dedicated exclusively to buses, AC Transit is proposing using bus-only lanes for much of the project. 

The Policy Steering Committee, which met June 19, is made up of representatives of the AC Transit Board, the three cities to be affected by the proposed rapid bus line (Berkeley, Oakland, and San Leandro), and several other area transit officials, including the Metropolitan Transit Commission. While the committee has no decision-making power, its membership has considerable influence in the various local governing bodies that must give approval for some aspects of the BRT system. 

AC Transit is currently negotiating with city council and city planning representatives in Berkeley, Oakland, and San Leandro over those cities’ proposals for the final configuration of the system before completion of the environmental impact review process and the AC Transit Board vote on the completed BRT package. 

Those negotiations have already resulted in significant changes in San Leandro, where city officials have vetoed the set-aside of bus-only lanes in the city’s downtown corridor. 

The two Berkeley representatives split on the recommendation to consolidate the 1R and eliminate most of the 1 line stops, with Mayor Tom Bates making the motion to approve the proposal and City Councilmember Kriss Worthington the lone vote against it. The vote on the motion was 6-1. 

Worthington has been a solid advocate of some form of BRT. He told the Daily Planet that he objected to voting on only one piece of the total BRT package. 

“If the only question is taking away local bus stops being used by senior citizens and disabled bus riders, then I’ve got to say no,” Worthington said, adding that the proper procedure would be to have the Policy Steering Committee “be presented with a vote on the entire, completed package, where we’re able to weigh all of the benefits of the system against the minuses.”  

Worthington said he was concerned that disabled and senior citizen bus patrons would be “turned off” and “potentially be turned into opponents” of BRT if all they know of the system is the elimination of local stops. 

Bus stops along the 1R line are currently about half a mile apart (approximately six city blocks) while stops for the 1, a local line, average 900 feet apart (approximately two city blocks). 

Under the AC Transit proposal, the new configuration of BRT stations would average one third of a mile apart (approximately four city blocks). 

In Berkeley, for example, AC Transit’s BRT proposal would eliminate the current 1 local stops at Prince, Webster, Russell, Stuart, Parker, and Durant, while placing station stops at Alcatraz, Ashby, Derby, Dwight, Haste, and Sather Gate. 

An AC Transit staff analysis released at the Policy Steering Committee meeting estimated that 13 percent of Berkeley passengers and 16 percent of Oakland passengers would have to walk to a different bus stop from the one they currently use if the proposed BRT configuration is put in place. The staff reported that “many” of those passengers would not have to walk farther to their stop, simply “walk the same distance, but in the opposite direction.”


School Board Approves Sixth St. Property Sale, Berkeley High Late-Start Mondays

By Riya Bhattacharjee
Thursday July 02, 2009 - 09:41:00 AM

The Berkeley Board of Education approved the lease and sale of its Sixth Street property to the City of Berkeley at the June 24 School Board meeting in exchange for a two-year lease of Old City Hall. 

The seismically unsafe Old City Hall is the current headquarters of the Berkeley Unified School District. The district plans to move into the former Berkeley Adult School building on University Avenue in 2011. The building is currently being rehabilitated. 

Berkeley Unified Director of Facilities Lew Jones told the Daily Planet that the accord between the school district and the city had several components. 

Essentially, Jones said, both parties decided to trade the sale and seven-year lease of the Sixth Street property to the city for a two-year lease extension of the Old City Hall and its annex at 1835 Allston Way, five years of nursing services, and a payment by the city to the school district and waiver of payments due from the district to the city. 

The city will waive two years’ worth of sewer fees and other fees owed by the school district as part of the agreement. At the end of the seven-year lease period, the city, which does not have the necessary funds to purchase the Sixth Street property right now, will buy it for a quarter of a million dollars. 

Although the market value of renting the Old City Hall for two years is estimated to be $1.5 million, the school district will have to pay the city an annual rental fee of only $1 because the city agreed to waive the fair-market rental value as part of the agreement.  

The lease does not include the second-floor City Council Chambers. The district will be responsible for payment of all utility bills. 

The school district has rented the Old City Hall building at 2134 Martin Luther King Jr. Way from the city in exchange for the district’s lease of the Sixth Street site since July 1, 1979. Both parties paid $1 a year for 30 years for the exchange. The three-decade agreement expired Tuesday, June 30. 

Jones told the board in a report at the meeting that Berkeley Unified has not used the Sixth Street property for anything since the accord was first reached. 

The city subleased the building at 2031 Sixth St. to LifeLong Medical Center’s West Berkeley Family Practice Center, which provides low-cost medical services to low-income families. 

Because the district was interested in either selling or leasing the Sixth Street property, it looked into ways to “surplus” it first, as mandated by district policy. A Surplus Facilities Committee was formed Jan. 19, 2005, and two years later, the board referred the property to the group. After meeting several times between August 2007 and January 2008, the surplus committee recommended surplusing the site, a decision that met with board approval on March 26, 2008. 

On Dec. 1, 2008, the City of Berkeley expressed interest in response to the school district’s query as to whether any public entity was interested in leasing or buying the property, which led to negotiations over the past seven months. 

Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates and several of the councilmembers expressed support for helping LifeLong continue its operation there. LifeLong’s doctors, patients and staff spoke at a public meeting urging the city to serve their facility, which has been a lifeline for many families who otherwise cannot afford health insurance. 

 

School Board approves late-start Mondays 

The Berkeley Board of Education approved late-start Mondays for professional development of teachers at Berkeley High School as part of the school’s recently approved restructuring. 

The school is also investigating an alternate schedule in place of the existing six-period daily schedule, which will not start until the 2010-11 academic year. 

Under late-start Mondays, Berkeley High School officials are proposing a delayed start for students on Monday morning, which they hope to balance by a slightly longer school day Tuesday through Friday. Teachers will use the time on Monday morning, before school starts, to collaborate among themselves. 

Berkeley High Vice Principal Vernon Walton told the School Board that the school was proposing to extend classes from 43 to 47 minutes on Mondays. He said that classes would be increased from 55 to 58 minutes Tuesday through Fridays. 

Funding for the program comes from a smaller learning communities program grant. 

The idea is very much in line with a model currently used in the K-8 schools, which have shorter Wednesdays and extended school hours on the other four days to ensure that total instructional time for students is not reduced. 

Berkeley High Principal Jim Slemp said that the total amount of instructional time would not be reduced under the new bell schedule. He said the school would provide the board with a report in the fall on how the new schedule was doing.  

Boardmember Karen Hemphill told the Daily Planet after the meeting that professional development time would allow teachers from the small schools to meet with their counterparts from the larger programs to discuss their concerns and focus on equity work across the school..


Downtown Development Tops Council Agenda

By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor
Thursday July 02, 2009 - 09:42:00 AM

Development of downtown Berkeley will be much on the minds of Berkeley City Council as they meet Tuesday, July 7, for the next-to-last meeting before the summer break. On the agenda is certification of the environmental impact report and adoption of the Downtown Area Plan. 

In addition, after several delays, the council has scheduled a discussion to set direction for changes to the city ordinance regulating cellphone towers. 

Earlier this summer, the council began consideration of two versions of the Downtown Area Plan—one by the Downtown Area Plan Advisory Committee (DAPAC) and the other by the Planning Commission—that would set the goals and directions of future downtown development. A divided council then approved a proposal by Mayor Tom Bates and Councilmembers Linda Maio and Laurie Capitelli that attempted to bridge the differences between the two original plans. Councilmembers Jesse Arreguín and Kriss Worthington voted against the Bates-Maio-Capitelli proposal, and Councilmember Max Anderson abstained; the somewhat testy and time-limited debate ended with Anderson telling Capitelli—following the meeting—that he was “tired of having these things rushed through like this.” 

City staff, in what is certainly a complicated process, has been working since then to compile the DAPAC and Planning Commission plans and Bates-Maio-Capitelli proposal into one document, to be presented for a council vote next Tuesday. That document is not yet available on the city’s website. 

Meanwhile, cellphone tower placement in the city limits has been an ongoing Berkeley controversy, with permit approval sometimes held up for years, legal action filed against the city by at least one cellphone company, and neighborhood groups fighting almost every application for a new tower placement. While a new state court decision has somewhat altered the powers that cities can exercise over cellphone tower placement, the City Council is still prohibited by federal law from considering the issue most on the minds of the complaining neighbors: the health aspects of cellphone tower electrical emissions. One of the proposals being considered for inclusion in a new ordinance is that rather than waiting for cellphone companies to come in with new tower requests in areas that neighbors don’t like, the city itself establish cellphone tower zones that would take into consideration citizen concerns, cellphone company needs, and federal restrictions. No new ordinance is yet on the table, and Tuesday’s discussion is designed only for the council to give directions to staff on how to write one. 

After Tuesday’s meeting, the council meets again on July 14 and then takes a two-month break until Sept. 22.


Westside ‘Fast Track’ Proposal Draws Ire

By Richard Brenneman
Thursday July 02, 2009 - 09:43:00 AM

West Berkeley residents and business owners voiced their concerns to planning commissioners Wednesday, June 24, about proposals to ease development rules on larger parcels in Berkeley’s only industrial area. 

The efforts of commissioners and city staff to implement the City Council directive to make zoning rules more flexible along the city’s western edge have sparked resistance from a growing coalition. 

Latest to join the critical ranks are residents of the sectors zoned for mixed use—residential, mostly areas near the San Pablo Avenue eastern border of the district. 

After asking for recognition as a stakeholder during the commission’s June 10 meeting, Principal Planner Alex Amoroso has held one meeting with the group and more are planned to bring them up to speed on proposed changes. 

As in past meetings on West Berkeley, there were speakers aplenty ready for the public comment section of the discussion—enough that Chair David Stoloff imposed a 90-second-per-speaker limit on remarks. 

Amoroso, who has been heading the staff effort to formulate zoning code revisions for the area, opened the discussion with the four specific changes he was proposing in response to the City Council’s directive to fast-track at least some code changes. 

Three of the proposed changes didn’t generate any significant controversy from either commissioners or the public: 

• Allowing existing businesses in the Mixed-Use Light Industrial zone (MULI) to allot up to 10 percent of their space to a retail shop to sell products manufactured on site, by obtaining an administrative use permit (AUP), an action that doesn’t require a public hearing before the Zoning Adjustments Board. Currently business are barred from adding shops unless they do so at the time their original permit for the property is obtained. 

• Allowing the interchangeability of the currently protected manufacturing, wholesale, warehouse and recycling businesses (“material recovery enterprises”), clarifying an issue that is currently a legally gray area. 

• Replacing the Standard Industrial Code (SIC) classification system now used in the city zoning code with the more contemporary North American Industrial Classification System, which includes a wide range of business categories not in existence at the time the SIC was created. 

But the fourth proposal, “Demising of space in existing buildings,” generated substantial kickback from one of West Berkeley’s leading real estate brokers, John Norheim, and from members of West Berkeley Artisans and Industrial Companies (WEBAIC), which represents existing businesses and the area’s artists and crafts workers. 

“Demising” is plannerese for subdividing space within a single site into smaller parcels 

Amoroso’s proposal to reduce subdivisions that require a use permit with a public hearing before ZAB to a staff-issued AUP has raised concerns among West Berkeley denizens who fear excessive subdividing of the small percentage of Berkeley land zoned for making things. 

WEBAIC offered its own counterproposal, which would allow subdivision of existing sites for two to five uses with an over-the-counter zoning certificate, an AUP for division into six to nine spaces, and a full use permit with a public hearing for ten spaces and up. 

“Obviously it’s a bad idea to allow any large building to be demised into a large number of spaces without a public hearing,” said John Curl, a woodworker and one of the original organizers of WEBAIC. 

“We agree with WEBAIC,” said Norheim, who has worked in West Berkeley for more than 25 years. He and partner Don Yost worked with WEBAIC to develop their counterproposal. Norheim said he and other West Berkeley people had worked for 13 years on the West Berkeley Plan, the document that sets the current development parameters for the area. 

In the end, commissioners agreed to consider the WEBAIC proposal along with the staff suggestion when they conduct a public hearing on the fast-track items during their July 22 meeting. 

Commissioners didn’t get to discuss the potentially most explosive proposal on their West Berkeley agenda during Wednesday night’s meeting—a revised master use permit (MUP) that would allow sequential development and new rules for large parcels. 

Just how big those parcels would be—and how many—pose thorny problems for the commissioners, with developers seeking smaller parcels and more of them than WEBAIC and its allies. 

WEBAIC seeks to confine the MUPs to a few of the area’s largest parcels, while developers have said they don’t want caps on number or size. 

Susanne Hering, who operates a West Berkeley laboratory that develops methods for measuring airborne particles, said that allowing interchangeable uses “effectively shuts down any lab use,” because the generators needed to keep operations working during power outages could cause noise problems for office and residential tenants. 

Other critical issues include allowed uses, with the staff proposing changes that could allow office-only buildings and high-rises of up to 90 feet, twice the current height limit for the area. 

Those proposals have drawn fire not only from WEBAIC but also from members of the new residential stakeholder group, who fear that tall buildings would shadow their homes and create traffic gridlock. 

“To me, the biggest issue is height,” said Judy Dater, a West Berkeley photographer who relies on natural light for illumination in her studio.  

“If a tall building were built next to my studio, I’d be out of business,” she said, literally overshadowed by the high-rise. “I’m not opposed to development if it’s within the existing height and zoning limits,” said Jack Van Euw, another resident. 

Commissioners will take up the MUP minefield during their next meeting on July 8.


Planning Commission Ponders Housing Law Update

By Richard Brenneman
Thursday July 02, 2009 - 09:48:00 AM

Mandated by state law to analyze the city’s Housing Element, a key section of the city’s General Plan, for constraints on building new housing, Berkeley Deputy Planning and Development Director Wendy Cosin couldn’t find any. 

That’s what she told the Planning Commission June 24, when commissioners held a hearing to see if any changes were needed to the Housing Element.  

While citywide development standards resemble those of other cities and can’t be restrictive of adding new housing units to the city, “in the commercial zones where there is no density set, it’s the opposite of a constraint,” resulting in high-density housing, Cosin said. 

The city’s No. 2 planning officer said the city may have to deal with one potential constraint, the requirement of a use permit for the construction of any new housing. 

Use permits require a public hearing in front of the Zoning Adjustments Board before new housing can be built, adding “delay and uncertainty, which we may need to address,” Cosin said. 

The city will have to examine all the new plans and regulations adopted by the City Council since the last time the housing element was updated, Cosin said. 

“We have met with developers to learn their concerns,” she said, and the Planning Department will be considering new policies for the future, “like a buffer zone that backs up to transit corridors.” 

Other changes could include definition of projects that could be built “by right,” rather than through a use permit. Another possible change would be easing regulations for accessory dwelling units, or ADUs—otherwise known as “mother-in-law apartments.” 

Steve Wollmer, a Berkeley resident who has been critical—sometimes to the point of legal action—of some transit corridor projects, said that the city’s density standards haven’t led to much affordable housing, of either the right price or the right type. 

The city has very little housing for people with very low incomes, Wollmer said. “The problem isn’t development standards in residential neighborhoods,” he said. “It’s the development standards in the commercial districts.” Up-zoning along transit corridors won’t help either, he said.  

Planning Commissioner Gene Posch-man also questioned the notion of a transit corridor buffer, and, when he asked for specifics, Cosin acknowledged that “we haven’t done the analysis yet.” 

Commissioner Teresa Clarke, a nonprofit sector developer, said the city should look at not only ADUs but also “areas where you can do four units,” such as 5,000-square-foot lots where “it’s cumbersome to go through a huge public process to add new units. If all R-2 zones had more units, they would be on a scale a lot of neighbors wouldn’t object to.” 

West Berkeley resident Edward Moore said he was troubled that he couldn’t add an ADU to his Victorian-era house because of lot size requirements. 

“I’d like to encourage us to have more mother-in-law units in R-1 zones,” now reserved for single-family dwellings, said Commissioner James Novosel, who said that tandem off-street parking, currently not allowed in the city but legal in Albany and El Cerrito, should be allowed if the units are built. Tandem parking allows cars to park off the street and end to end. 

Novosel said duplexes in R-2 zones should be allowed to include a single ADU each. 

Commissioner Harry Pollack said another way to encourage more units might be allowing buildings to downsize their units, “to make them affordable.”  

Chair David Stoloff said intensification of residential development by upzoning abutting properties behind transit corridors “doesn’t have to be a blanket thing for the entire city. San Pablo Avenue would be very appropriate.”  

Stoloff said the commission is also “ready for the idea of reducing lot size for secondary units.” 

The discussion ended without formal action..


Zoning Board Approves Housing Projects for Homeless

By Riya Bhattacharjee
Thursday July 02, 2009 - 09:49:00 AM

The Berkeley Zoning Adjustments Board on Thursday, June 25, approved use permits for two new residential projects that plan to make use of President Barack Obama’s economic stimulus funds to provide affordable housing for homeless youth and low-income seniors. 

Berkeley-based nonprofit Affordable Housing Associates proposes to build a new four-story, mixed-use development for transition-age youth at 3240 Sacramento St., including 16 residential units and about 800 square feet of social services offices and meeting space. 

Named Harmon Gardens, the building will have 15 units to be rented to low-income tenants as studio apartments and 1 unit converted into a two-bedroom space for the apartment manager. 

The board unanimously voted to allow AHA to demolish an existing seismically unsafe two-story, low-income, seven-unit apartment building on the site and approved several variances to let the project move forward, including permission to have a 43-foot-high building in an area where the zoning code allows a maximum of 36 feet. 

Neighbors have complained about squatters in the existing building, something AHA representatives said they had taken steps to prevent in the future. 

Teresa Clarke of AHA said the nonprofit had collaborated with the Fred Finch Youth Center to provide on-site social services for 18- to 24-year-olds who are homeless or at risk for homelessness because of their transition from foster homes or rehabilitation centers. 

“There is a pressing need for this kind of use in the city,” Clarke said, adding that it was estimated that 350 youth were homeless at any given time in Alameda County. 

Some neighbors expressed concern that because the building would be constructed in a neighborhood often caught in the middle of drug violence, it might not be the best place for homeless youth. However, a few seniors from the adjacent Mabel Howard Apartments said they welcomed the opportunity to interact with young people, even volunteering to help them. 

“It’s not a highly violent type of population,” Clarke said. “It’s for people who are ready to live on their own, after being shuttled from one place to another.” 

Zoning chair and the city’s former housing commissioner Deborah Matthews praised the project, calling homeless youth a “community that has not been addressed.” 

 

1200 Ashby Ave. 

The Berkeley Zoning Adjustments Board voted 7 to 1 to approve CityCentric Investment’s request for a use permit modification to convert a previously approved mixed-use building at 1200 Ashby Ave. into affordable senior housing. 

The original project approved by the zoning board would have built a five-story building, with 98 units—15 of them below market—and about 8,093 square feet of ground-floor commercial space. 

The new design would reduce the total floor area by 9,090 square feet, increase ground-floor commercial space by about 1,600 square feet and reduce the total number of parking spots from 114 to 44.  

Ali Kashani, who heads CityCentric, told the board that the current economic climate had forced his firm to develop the project as a low-income senior housing facility to take advantage of financing available through the Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) program and the City of Berkeley’s Housing Trust Fund.  

CityCentric is requesting a Housing Trust Fund allocation of $1,381,450. The total project has a price tag of $30 million.   

“The city doesn’t have any more money,” Kashani said. “The project has a very tight budget.” 

Kashani described the current site, which was last used in 2005 as a service station, as a “dilapidated, vacant lot.” 

“It is trying in this deteriorating economy to fund the building project,” he said. “At least five parcels of land in Berkeley don’t have money to build their projects. I have been doing affordable housing for 20 years. Five years ago I left it, and I thought I would never do it again. But here I am.” 

The project would provide service-enriched below-market-rate housing to low-income seniors, Kashani said, adding that at least two Berkeley councilmembers had called for the original project to have affordable housing at the time it was approved by the City Council. 

Commissioner Terry Doran said he supported the project because “low-income housing was a necessity that can’t be met in the city.” 

Although some Berkeley residents voiced concerns about the decrease in parking, Kashani said that 44 parking spots would suffice. He explained that they were well in line with what traffic engineers recommended for senior housing. Although several commissioners suggested car share and free AC Transit passes, echoing a proposal from the city’s traffic department, Kashani requested that they not be made mandatory. 

Commissioner Sara Shumer, who voted against the project, said that she objected to the approval of a variance to waive the required 15-foot setbacks at Ashby and Carrison Street. 

If the proposed project receives the LIHTC funding, it will need to adhere to low-income affordability levels and other provisions under the program for 55 years.


Fate of Wareham’s Bioscience Lab To Be Decided

By Riya Bhattacharjee
Thursday July 02, 2009 - 09:49:00 AM

After months of deliberation, Berkeley’s Zoning Adjustments Board and Landmarks Preservation Commission will meet Thursday, July 2, at the City Hall Chambers to decide the fate of Wareham’s proposed biosciences lab at 740 Heinz St., the site of the landmarked Copra Warehouse. 

Wareham’s proposal calls for tearing down one of the last three remaining buildings on the former Durkee Famous Foods property in West Berkeley and building a four-story, 82,000-square-foot research facility, an idea that has met with a significant amount of resistance from preservationists as well as neighbors. 

Others have voiced their support for the lab on the basis that it will bring new jobs to Berkeley and create a green corridor in the city similar to the one in Emeryville. 

The developers are asking for a variance on the building’s height, which will go over the neighborhood’s currently permitted 40 feet to stand at a towering 72 feet. 

In an effort at preservation, Wareham has proposed to keep the north and south red-brick facades of the old building, a move that has drawn scorn from a few landmarks commissioners, who view it as a demolition nonetheless. 

In the past, some members of the zoning board have expressed concern about issuing a variance for the project’s height, which they said has not occurred in the area in recent memory. 

The meeting will start at 6 p.m. with a public hearing on the project, followed by a joint discussion by the landmarks commission and the zoning board on the environmental impact report. 

The zoning board will then vote on whether to certify the final EIR, after which the landmarks commission will vote on whether to approve the demolition.  

 


UC Berkeley Seeks Bids for Stadium Renovation

By Richard Brenneman
Thursday July 02, 2009 - 09:50:00 AM

UC Berkeley has just issued a call for bids from builders for the $190 million “seismic safety improvement” overhaul of Memorial Stadium. 

The call, posted online at the University’s Capital Projects website, is the prelude to a Wednesday, July 1, meeting that builders had to attend if they were to compete on the project. 

The plans call for a complete transformation of the stadium’s seating, the addition of a new, raised press box atop the stadium’s western edge, lowering the playing field, installation of new seating (including a costly premium section), seismic strengthening, new scoreboards, and an excavation of earth along the stadium’s eastern side to create a new plaza level beneath the seating. 

Bids are scheduled to be opened at 2:02 p.m. July 16. 

The new contract is the second stage of a project that began with the destruction of the oak grove along the stadium’s western wall and the start of construction of the new four-level Student Athlete High Performance Center. 

Construction was delayed for more than a year by a tree-sit staged by activists who wanted to preserve the oak grove and by a lengthy legal battle waged by environmentalists. 

The stadium poses unique design challenges, given that the Hayward Fault—deemed by federal geologists the likely site of the Bay Area’s next major earthquake—runs directly beneath the stadium, from goalpost to goalpost. 

The bid call is available online at http://www.cp.berkeley.edu/AdsForBids. 

html. 


Arson Blaze Devastates South Berkeley Duplex

By Richard Brenneman
Thursday July 02, 2009 - 09:51:00 AM

A two-alarm arson fire caused nearly $200,000 in damage to a South Berkeley home early Saturday evening, the first in a series of three arsons on the same street that evening. 

Assistant Fire Chief Donna McCracken said the fire at 1711 Woolsey St. was reported at 5:17 p.m., and the first engine company arrived to find the front porch fully ablaze, with flames eating up through the eaves into attic. 

“They knocked down the fire on the porch fairly quickly, then took up the attic,” said McCracken. 

One neighbor reports that he had been fighting the blaze with his garden hose before the engine company arrived. 

“We managed to slow it down a bit,” he wrote to neighbors in an e-mail. “At some point my neighbor in the burning house came out the back door and got his tenant out, who lives in an upper flat accessed by an exterior set of stairs off the side of the house. The whole thing was pretty scary.”  

Firefighters called a second alarm after they axed their way through the attic roof and discovered that the space contained a maze of walls, which made battling the flames difficult in the early evening heat, McCracken said. 

“They got it knocked down in about a half hour,” she said. “There was extensive fire damage to the porch and the attic, and smoke and water damage to the rest of the house.” 

The assistant chief said arriving firefighters also faced another problem, a live power line arcing in the street after flames had burned it through.  

Firefighters finally cleared the scene at 8:50 p.m., said Assistant Chief McCracken. The emergency workers had to tread carefully, because PG&E’s emergency weekend crew was busy at another residential fire. 

Neighbors reported that the fire may have been set by children, but McCracken would only confirm that the blaze was “of suspicious origin” and is currently the subject of investigation by both the fire and the police departments of Berkeley. 

According to the Berkeley Police spokes-person, Officer Andrew J. Frankel, “While at the scene of the first fire, information came to light that there had been a second smaller fire set outside a home on the 1800 block of Woolsey Street, which had been extinguished by the resident.” 

Frankel said officers learned of the third arson attempt when, interviewing community members in the 1800 block of Woolsey, they were told that someone had attempted to set fire to a parked car. 

“The fire marshall responded to the scene and described all three fires as suspicious in their origins and most likely arson,” Frankel said. 

The officer asked anyone with information about the fires to call the Berkeley Police Property Crimes Detail directly at 981-5737 or through the department dispatcher at 981-5900.  

Those who wish to retain anonymity may call Bay Area Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-TIPS. Crime Stoppers calls are completely confidential, and up to a $2,000 reward is offered, said Officer Frankel.


Elderly Pedestrian Struck by Vehicle

By Richard Brenneman
Thursday July 02, 2009 - 09:52:00 AM

A 79-year-old man, recently arrived from Iran, was seriously injured Monday night, June 29, when he stepped into traffic on Gilman Street. 

The Berkeley Police Department’s spokesperson, Officer Andrew J. Frankel, said the man was walking eastward in the southern crosswalk at the intersection of Ninth Street and Gilman when, for unknown reasons, he abruptly turned and walked onto Gilman. 

The man was struck by a 1995 green Toyota Camry, said Officer Frankel, 

While the police spokesperson said the injured man was taken to Highland Hospital and is expected to recover, a close family friend said the injured man’s condition is critical. 

“He’s fighting for his life,” said the friend. 

Officer Frankel said no charges have been filed in the accident, which is still under investigation. 


Ted Vincent 1936-2009

By Paul Gackle, Special to the Planet
Thursday July 02, 2009 - 09:53:00 AM
Ted Vincent.
Ted Vincent.

Family and friends of the late Ted Vincent will remember him as a loving family-man, a selfless teacher, a natural entertainer and a devoted egalitarian, but for Berkeley and the rest of the world his legacy will rest in his five published books and the untold history he uncovered.  

Vincent, a regular contributor to the Daily Planet and a fixture in the community as a writer and an activist for over 40 years, passed away Sunday, June 14, from complications following a heart attack. But Vincent, who was 73, wasn’t just another zany Berkeley liberal; he was an independent scholar whose trailblazing research helped revolutionize academia’s approach to African-American history in the 1970s. 

Vincent was intensely passionate about everything he did, whether it was playing boogie-woogie on the piano or running ultra-marathons in the Sierra Mountains. He was uncompromising in his values, yet tolerant of everyone.  

“He had a strong sense of moral justice and a real compassion for racial minorities, the downtrodden and the poor,” said his son, Rickey Vincent, who received in Ph.D from UC Berkeley in ethnic studies. “He was an investigator who would tell these forgotten, unknown stories of people who were fighting for equality at these crucial moments in history.”  

Theodore G. Vincent was born in Washington D.C, on Feb. 24, 1936. He inherited his political convictions from his father, Tad Vincent, an idealistic union organizer for the CIO. Vincent’s upbringing was kind of like a leftist-union version of being an army brat; he attended 11 different grade schools while his father crisscrossed the country fighting for labor rights.  

Vincent was the oldest of Tad and Billie Vincent’s five children; he is survived by four younger sisters, Jenny, Joanie, Susan and Lucy. The Vincent kids grew up in a house where the union songs of Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie were being played constantly. But it was the years the family spent living in the south that left an indelible imprint on Vincent.  

When was Vincent 10, the family lived in Selma, Alabama for a year, where his father spent his days organizing food and tobacco workers and his evenings running a literacy program for African-Americans. Vincent’s family believes his lifelong compassion for racial equality was spawned by the experience of watching his father face threats from southern racists. 

“He was proud of my father for that kind of bravery,” said Jenny Warwick, the oldest of the Vincent’s sisters.  

Vincent was born to write. He was the sports editor at Manuel Arts High School in East Los Angeles—a completely integrated high school in the 1950s—and he later wrote for the college newspaper at Los Angeles Community College.  

“You couldn’t keep the pen out of his fingers. Until the day he died, he was always writing,” said Warwick. 

Vincent moved to the East Bay in 1961 and received a Master’s degree in History from UC Berkeley. Berkeley in the ’60s was the perfect breeding ground for Vincent’s revolutionary ideals, but he was only tangentially involved in the anti-war movement. His true passions were civil rights and the Black Power movement. In 1964, he taught an African-American history course at Merritt College in Oakland that was attended by Huey P. Newton, the eventual founder of the Black Panther Party. And he married Toni Vincent, who went on to become a Black Panther and with whom he had his first two children, Rickey and Teo Barry Vincent.  

At Cal, Vincent wrote his first book, Black Power and the Garvey Movement, which would help reshape the direction of African-American studies. By exploring Garveyism and the competing political and cultural movements of its time, Vincent was the first historian to really examine some of the more radical elements in the black drive for equality. He followed it up two years later with another book, Voices of a Black Nation: Political Journalism in the Harlem Renaissance, which was a stark portrait of the Harlem Renaissance; a collection of the movement’s lesser told stories of racism, lynching and murder.  

Clayborne Carson, director of the Martin Luther King Jr., Research and Education Institute at Stanford, said Vincent’s work was revolutionary because it amplified voices that had been typically shoved into the margins of African-American history.  

“He was really breaking new ground in that time,” said Carson. “It showed some of the things that were possible when we were developing an approach to African-American history.” 

Vincent moved back to Los Angeles in 1972 to enter a doctoral program in History at UCLA. But he dropped out before he received his Ph.D. After getting entangled in an ethical conflict with a professor, Vincent decided academia required too much conformity for his tastes and he never looked back.  

Instead of joining a faculty at a prestigious university, Vincent taught history from the frontlines in the community colleges where the people resided. And he continued to write books, without a Ph.D, on his own terms.  

In 1981, he published Mudville’s Revenge: The Rise and Fall of American Sport, which chronicles how popular sports have been taken away from the people and “Romanized” for corporate profit. He debunked the presumption that black jazz arose out of the infrastructure of white clubs in his fourth book, Keep Cool: The Black Activists who Built the Jazz Age, published in 1995.  

Vincent’s final book, The Legacy of Vicente Guererro: Mexico’s First Black Indian President, which chronicles the history of Africans in Mexico, has had an enormous impact amongst both Mexican and American scholars. The book, published in 2001, is the first scholarly work in America to uncover the history of Yanga, who organized the first slave rebellion in the Americas against the Spanish Empire in the late 1500s.  

“It was a very outstanding history he wrote,” said Dr. Carlos Muñoz, Professor Emeritus in the Department of Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley. “My God, nobody in this country knew about Yanga or Vicente Guererro, so it was groundbreaking research.”  

Vincent was a consultant to the Oakland Museum’s current exhibit, “The African Presence in Mexico,” which runs through Aug. 23.  

Some say it was a tragedy that Vincent never completed his Ph.D. With a faculty position, he could have been one of the most influential historians in African-American studies. But Professor Muñoz believes Vincent was simply fulfilling his destiny.  

“We all pursue our particular paths. He didn’t want to feel obligated to an institution that demands a certain amount of conformity for survival,” he said. “Ted said, ‘The hell with that. I’m going to be me and do what I want to do and follow my passions to where it leads me.’ ” 

And history was just one of Vincent’s many passions. He was also a music lover, a sports nut and an ardent runner.  

Whenever Vincent stumbled upon a guitar or a piano, he had to play. At parties and family gatherings, he’d hammer on the piano and lead sing-a-longs of his favorite political anthems and rock ‘n roll tunes. And when his third wife, Bernice Brucker was ill, he’d often play the piano in the lobby of the Kaiser Hospital and hope that nobody would ask him to stop.  

Vincent was an intellectual, but he fancied himself a working-class intellectual. He was a baseball junkie, who collected decades of statistics and was known to meticulously keep score in the bleacher seats of the Oakland Coliseum. But as much as Vincent enjoyed professional sports, he almost preferred watching girls’ basketball games at Berkeley High School. And up to the final year of his life, he watched Cal football games from Tightwad Hill. 

“He didn’t want to be an ivory tower at all,” said Selma Spector Vincent, Vincent’s second wife and the mother of his only daughter, Mimi.  

In the late ’70s, Vincent found what might have been his true love— running. He ran marathons, he ran ultra-marathons; he ran over 70 miles around Lake Tahoe and every year he ran the Bay to Breakers, the race he considered the people’s race.  

Last year, Vincent missed his first Bay to the Breakers race in over 30 years after he received indications that he had a heart flutter. But this year, he was cleared to walk the race. He donned the shirt he wore every year, a red and white 1980 Bay to Breakers T-shirt—torn to shreds and speckled with rust stains from the pins of previous races. Spector Vincent, whom Vincent reconnected with in the later years of his life, walked half of the race with him. She said he was very happy and already looking forward to next year’s race.  

Spector Vincent remembers her lover’s last joyful moment. He was lying in a hospital bed and he couldn’t talk. 

“Our daughter, Mimi, was leaving for the day and he wrote us a little note that said, ‘I love you 2.’ He held our hands,” she said.  

Vincent’s niece, Julia Menard Warwick, summed up her uncle’s impassioned spirit in her eulogy at the funeral on June 25: “Whatever Ted did, he did it to the fullest…When I first heard he was dead, one of the first things I thought was, “But he was so alive!”  

Later that day, he was buried in that good old 1980 Bay to the Breakers T-shirt. Like Vincent, the shirt held on—strong willed and determined—right to the end.


Opinion

Public Comment

Letters to the Editor

Thursday July 02, 2009 - 10:00:00 AM

THE CAMPAIGN AGAINST  

THE DAILY PLANET 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I have been meaning to comment on the attack on the Daily Planet. If the paper had been attacked because of its NIMBY bias I could perhaps understand it—though censorship would still be beyond the pale. But anti-Semitism? Really? The O’Malley family is about as anti-Semitic as David Ben Gurion. Now anti-Likud, you may count me in that camp myself.  

The Jewish fascists who have set out to destroy the Planet may otherwise be perfectly nice people who don’t beat their spouses, contribute to the United Way, pay their rent (which seems to be Leon Mayeri’s criteria for appraising Dan Spitzer), etc. But they are objectively acting as fascists by attempting to censor the views of those they disagree with on a subject dear to their (collective) hearts. That they may (or may not) on other issues be liberal misses (or ignores) the point. And while I would usually admire anyone who Art Goldberg dislikes, a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, so I am willing to make an exception in the case of Dan Spitzer. Not for his alleged financial misdeeds, but for his overt attempt to conflate a distaste for Israeli misdeeds and crimes with a desire to wipe out the State of Israel and/or anti-Semitism. As far as I know I never met the man, yet I loathe his conduct, and that of John “Zorro” Gertz, Sanne DeWitt and Jim Sinkinson. That you printed one letter three years ago that was avowedly anti-Semitic, out of all the many letters over many years about Israel, is by now a dead horse that has been beaten to death already. It hardly stands as a beacon of the Planet’s own position, or that of the publishers. 

I would add one little point: the surest way for Israel to perish in the long run, in my opinion, is for it to continue to follow its present path of antipathy, conquest, occupation, rejection and war towards the Palestinians. Those who not only disagree with that position, but equate that view with a desire to see Israel eliminated are fools or liars. 

Mal Burnstein 

 

• 

WHITHER PALESTINIAN LAND? 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The paid advertisement which shows “Palestinian Loss of Land — 1946 to 2009” made me wonder why the neighboring Arab countries which won’t take in the Palestinians aren’t shown on the map, too. They are huge in comparison to Israel, as you know.  

I wonder also why the Arab-initiated wars that caused the advertised map probably to be accurate weren’t mentioned. 

Rita Wilson 

 

• 

FREE SPEECH AND THE PLANET 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I will say that I am perhaps one of the Daily Planet’s biggest cheerleaders and supporters. In this recent go round of a select few attempting to drive the Planet into the ground I support the Planet 100 percent. Yet I find I do not agree with the editorial decision not to post letters by the provocateurs at the bottom of the recent controversy. I will say up front that, as with most conflicts, it is probable that I do not know the full story. But from what I do know I think it is wrong that those making charges against the Planet are not given the space to voice them. From what I gather an offer of dialogue was made a while back and declined but that is the part of the story I admittedly do not know. 

I think it only fair if one is purporting to promote free speech that that include all speech—even speech designed to culminate in your demise. Please fill me in on facts I may be ignorant of. I think the letters offered and declined should be published. 

Ruthanne Shpiner 

El Cerrito 

 

EDITOR’S NOTE: This forum has been open to these men for years. John Gertz and Dan Spitzer have each had many letters published in these pages, most of them attacking the paper and fellow readers. Spitzer and Jim Sinkinson each declined to be interviewed for the story. None of the three have offered any substantive, verifiable challenges to the facts of the story; we have, however, made two clarifications at their request.  

Since the story’s publication, Mr. Sinkinson has distributed letters to advertisers alleging many inaccuracies; these were addressed in the June 25 letters column. Readers interested in learning more about Mr. Sinkinson’s views should have no difficulty getting their names added to his mailing list. Mr. Gertz has his own website—given plenty of ink in these pages—where readers can get a steady helping of his opinions. Mr. Spitzer has not contacted the paper since the article’s publication, although his landlord wrote a letter in his defense, which was also published in the June 25 edition. 

The paper no longer feels obliged to publish the falsehoods and allegations of three men who have taken advantage of this forum for years while making a concerted effort to shut it down and to silence the voices of their fellow readers. To decline the chance to speak on the record for our story and then accuse the paper of censoring their views is absurd. 

 

• 

CROWS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In her June 25 “Green Neighbors” column, “Everything’s Hitched,” Ron Sullivan seemed to find the flock of crows around her house amusing. I don’t like them.  

About three years ago a flock of 12-20 moved into the trees and gardens around our building. They started tearing nests apart, eating eggs, and killing nestlings. I think they were driven out of areas that have been subjected to housing developments in the outer suburbs. Then I read about a town in Indiana plagued by hundreds of crows. They hired a company that drives away pest birds and animals. This company used the danger call of the crows. They broadcast the call where crows were congregating in the evening, and beamed laser lights into the trees. It worked.  

I Googled “crow danger call” and found a site that let me download the call. When the crows congregated around our building, making a lot of noise and driving other birds away, I opened my door and windows, turned up the sound very loud on my computer and played the danger call several times. Immediate silence. Then one crow repeated the call and they all flew away. I repeated that whenever they came back for a few days, and now they only occasionally appear. The house finches, gold finches, tits, nuthatches, robins, towhees, doves, sparrows, hummingbirds, and the migrating songbirds are all back in their former numbers.  

Julie Keitges 

 

• 

POISONOUS MATERIAL 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I just read the somewhat cursory coverage, “Lab Plan Describes Bevatron Demolition” in your June 25 edition, and realize that while quite a roster of hazardous, poisonous material is mentioned, and we’re assured of various abatement and handling measures accordingly, I’m left wondering some significant things anyway. For instance, how dangerous is all this stuff, really? And just how, and where, is it all being transported locally for removal to another state? 

I’m guessing that such detail may be in the formal and official documentation for the project. But can I encourage your paper to help the community by providing us with a more insightful and accessible summary accounting for this? After all, with so many serious materials being disturbed and shunted around up on that hill (outdoors?) and then with the actual structural features being “demolished” in order to extract all this stuff and somehow then put it in containers or whatever, this could sound like there’s also some risk of messiness, even though at some point it’s all eventually properly wrapped and secured. 

I happen to have some training and background in some of the mentioned hazardous material abatement procedures and so realize how extensive and cautious it can be. But there are far, far worse materials listed up there which might compel all the more demanding and careful procedures. And the same could hold true when it comes to moving it anywhere else. It sounds like an awful lot of dangerous stuff that’s got to somehow get taken off that hill and trundled through town on its way out. 

As reported, some of this has been going on for some time already. Are those all the big trucks I’ve been spotting heading up Dwight Way? What’s the rest of the route? How about a map? 

Oh, and just how “radioactive” is the material that’s rated as that? And how much of that is being kept in a demolished form on the hill and being moved through Berkeley? 

Christopher Kohler 

 

• 

BERKELEY BOWL WEST 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

So why are people like Zelda Bronstein kvetching about Berkeley Bowl West? What do they hope to prove by ranting about square footage? As for the neighbors being “sold” anything, the only thing we are being “sold” is the opportunity to buy fresh, healthy and affordable food within walking distance of where we live and work. 

Since Bronstein certainly wasn’t there from the beginning when we first learned about Glenn and Diane Yasuda’s plans for a warehouse and office space on that long-vacant, weed-strewn lot, nor was she there when, in response to our wishes, they presented their idea to expand that plan to incorporate a full-scale supermarket (which turned out to be the exact size of the project which opened in early June). You see I was there, for those meetings and for the many public hearings and meetings afterwards. I was also there at a meeting attended by only a handful of local residents when, outsiders and planning commissioners like Bronstein and John Curl started to bandy loaded, hot-button terms like “big box store” and Wal-Mart to characterize the efforts of a local, family-owned green grocer.  

So people like Bronstein, and others whose points of view often appear in this newspaper, have their facts wrong. It really does no good to review how incorrect, and wrong-headed their positions were, and how their opinions were smokescreens for trumped-up fears of development taking over West Berkeley, and even worse, using this Berkeley-based enterprise to create a wedge-issue among neighbors. Fears of increased traffic haven’t materialized either. But what has increased is foot and bicycle traffic! Living around the corner from the Bowl, we actually get to witness the birth of a vibrant cityscape—similar to what Bronstein must enjoy in her Solano Avenue neighborhood—young families, seniors, workers from nearby businesses, neighbors all making their way to the market. This is a first for Potter Creek, as this small area (the least densely populated in Berkeley) is called. We were isolated from the rest of the city, and lived in what urban geographers and sociologists refer to as a “food desert.”  

But the Yasudas stepped up to turn our neighborhood into an enviable food oasis, and added a compelling reason for people to come here. This is a family who had the determination, grit and courage, to go through a long, drawn-out, very expensive and rancorous planning and permit process, that was partially imposed by process-loving politicos and, yes also by the likes of Bronstein and others from both inside and outside the neighborhood, that delayed construction and added millions to the cost of this project. I feel that Glenn and Diane Yasuda are local “green” heroes, and their success story should be celebrated. But for now I just urge everyone to visit their fabulous new store and show your support by shopping there. While there, do walk around and check out the Potter Creek neighborhood, there are great restaurants, like the charming 900 Grayson, arts and crafts businesses, lovely gardens and friendly neighbors there too. 

Claudia Kawczynska 

West Berkeley resident  

and business owner 

 

• 

TRUTH ABOUT  

BERKELEY BOWL WEST 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Can we set the record straight and stop arguing about the square footage of the new Berkeley Bowl West? I write this as a resident of the neighborhood that welcomed the Bowl’s recent opening—I live one block away from the new building, and was there at the neighborhood meeting when the idea of the Bowl was first presented. Zelda Bronstein writes (June 25) that the Berkeley Bowl West “was sold to the community as a neighborhood grocery store.” That is untrue. At the first meetings I attended (and Zelda did not, maybe because she lives in North Berkeley)—the owners of the Bowl and Kava Massih (the architect) presented plans that showed a warehouse-office space for the existing Berkeley Bowl store on Oregon Street—there was no store planned initially. It was only after neighbors requested a retail component that the idea for a store entered the discussion. The owners, after operating in the cramped, poorly designed space of the Oregon facility, agreed, if they could build the store they felt they needed—spacious and fully-equipped. The long, protracted battle over size, usage, permits and traffic ensued until the Bowl finally opened in early June.  

I do not speak for all of my neighbors but all of those whom I have spoken to seem quite happy to have a world-class market and green grocer within walking distance. West Berkeley has long wished for a food market, and anybody who knows the area can lament the large stretch between West Oakland and El Cerrito that is devoid of quality and affordable food shopping options ... until now. 

Yes, the new Bowl building is large. But I for one welcome its grandness and scale—and, most of all, the fresh, natural food that it now provides to West Berkeley residents. I encourage others from surrounding neighborhoods and cities to share in the bounty. Berkeley can certainly use the tax revenue. The nearly 200 new Bowl employees can surely benefit from the job security. What was in this location before the Bowl moved in? An empty lot with overgrown weeds and a metal warehouse that stored roofing refuse.  

Do I welcome the new Berkeley Bowl to my neighborhood? You bet I do. And so does everybody I see who lives, works and passes by, stopping into the Bowl to share in good, affordable, healthy food. It has added a fresh vitality to our often neglected neighborhood. The “food revolution” that other parts of Berkeley have enjoyed for so long, has finally made it’s way to the flatlands. Long live the Bowl. 

Cameron Woo  

 

• 

CITY BUDGET 101 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I’m writing in response to Victoria Peirotes’ commentary, “Berkeley City Budget 101,” which made my blood boil. I’ve lived in Berkeley for 20 years and have willingly paid my share of fees and taxes, unaware that so much of my money was going to salaries and benefits for our extravagantly staffed city government. I’m appalled at the measures our mayor and City Council have already instituted and are now proposing to address the city’s fiscal crisis, none of which touch on overstaffing and the level of compensation. I absolutely agree that instead, the mayor and City Council should consider a revision of our city budget in October that includes the implementation of a modest reduction of 12 percent of the city’s cost for employees. The city may say that such a reduction is impossible because of “union contracts”—I don’t believe it. San Francisco recently announced that 86.4 percent of Service Employees International Union members voted to accept contract concessions and that more than 1,600 jobs are to be eliminated under Mayor Gavin Newsom’s budget. What’s more, in Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums offered to himself take a 10 percent pay cut and proposed slashing his office’s budget by 20 percent, matching city council members proposals to cut their own staffs by 20 percent. Let’s follow the lead of our neighboring cities and cut staffing costs. As Ms. Peirotes’ article points out, it may then be unnecessary to cut services and raise so many fees. 

Carol Henderson 

 

• 

WHO IS PAYING ATTENTION? 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

On behalf of myself and other like-minded Berkeleyans, I want to thank Victoria Pierotes for the commentary in the June 25, “Berkeley City Budget 101,” in which she recounts the status quo of our city’s governance. The facts regarding such items as the egregious ratio of city employees to city residents; salaries and benefits for employees that far exceed those of the average citizen; and dispensations of the budget have been known by anyone paying attention for the past 20 years or so, but they bear repeating over and over.  

One question that comes begging is: just how many citizens have been paying attention? Considering that the current state of affairs is the result of a constant trend in the City Council’s governing policies, there are two possible answers. Either the voting majority is perfectly informed and likes the way the councilmembers have been running our town, or very few voters keep informed enough to know the facts recounted by Ms. Pierotes and to vote against the politicians responsible. 

With nothing to support my opinion but years of observation, I believe the latter is the case. Most people in Berkeley like to pride and congratulate themselves on being “progressive” but pay little to no attention to the full range of issues or councilmembers’ past performance and vote like sheep. (How else to explain the approval of the last two measures for “essential” services that by rights ought to have been covered by the general fund, which is habitually tapped to cover non-essential items—the kind of legerdemain that for years has allowed the council to avoid placing non-essential pet schemes on a ballot for citizen referendum.) 

While one major responsibility of a city council is budget management, in my experience it seems that, come election time, neither the mayor nor the incumbents are held accountable for their budget management. High fallutin’ rhetoric about social issues and city planning and “progressive” solutions resound through the campaigns, and the reigning political machines win the day, and the nuts and bolts of city management fall where they will (to be swept into a pile by the city manager). 

More of us should pay attention to such educational efforts as the Newsletter of the Council of Neighborhood Associations and to such astute observers of city government as Zelda Bronstein. Otherwise, our government won’t change. 

A. Chavkin 

 

• 

UNSUSTAINABLE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I think the Victoria Peirotes piece in the commentary section was well done, timely and raises issues which should concern us all. The situation she has drawn attention to is so clearly unsustainable that it cries out for more public scrutiny and action on the part the elected officials who we have entrusted to manage and guide our city in a responsible and sound way. I particularly like her suggestion that the mayor and council should direct city management to produce a plan to show alternative ways to reduce personnel costs during this time of financial stress. This needs to be done now so it can be considered in the up coming budget cycle. I hope the Daily Planet will use it’s editorial power and influence to make sure this issue receives the attention it deserves. 

Noel Marsh 

 

• 

DOWNTOWN PLAN 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Your Editorial, “What’s Wrong With Downtown Berkeley, and How to Fix It” hit the nail on the head. “What is wrong?” For one thing, I do not understand how the City of Berkeley can pass on a plan that does not consider the new, huge building, the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, that will sit one block from the BART station on Oxford Street, facing the University campus. Who is talking to who? Why is there no dialogue going on between the City of Berkeley and the planning committee of the university and the director and his staff at the museum? Just think how wonderful it would be for people of all ages if the city and the museum planners could create a green plaza around the new museum with walking streets on both sides. Think of the beauty added for everyone when small trees, gardens and various places for young children and their mothers could gather without the concern of traffic, and also senior citizens as well as numerous visitors to the exhibitions at the museum from around the Bay Area as well as the international crowds who come to see the action at the museum and in the City of Berkeley. 

One can only conclude that as of now, the City Council is in no way prepared to vote on a final downtown plan on July 7. 

Kati Casida 

• 

AC TRANSIT SHOULD  

RAISE ITS SIGHTS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

AC Transit has been hit hard by the state budget crisis. So far, the response seems to be “cut service and raise fares,” a sure-fire loser of a combination. Here are some alternative proposals for easing the budgetary pressures on AC Transit that wouldn’t jeopardize the future of the system. 

1) Transbay Deployment: Buses on 26 separate AC Transit lines currently make their way back and forth across the Bay Bridge every day. Many of these buses run virtually empty. Lightly-used AC buses cross the bridge almost 2,000 times a day and yet carry only 14,000 riders a day. Recent field investigations revealed that the loads on the buses leaving the Transbay Terminal during the peak evening period averaged about 17 persons per bus, with the off-peak loads being even more anemic. 

If the 26 lines were consolidated into say, six or eight frequently-operated trunk lines, thousands of empty transbay bus hours a year could be saved. Redeploying some of those saved hours into beefing up the neighborhood lines so as to better feed the trunk lines with timed-transfers would cause AC’s transbay ridership to rise. Result: better service and therefore increased ridership....at lower cost. 

2.) General Deployment: The same applies to the many other AC buses that one constantly sees operating throughout the East Bay with between 1 and 6 people on board. To increase ridership, the AC system should be simplified and clarified by: 

• Eliminating duplicate service, 

• Eliminating unnecessary turns and detours, 

• Shortening lines where required to ensure good schedule adherence, 

• Improving connections between AC lines, and between AC lines and other transit services, 

• Returning streets to two-way traffic where necessary to consolidate AC lines now operating inefficiently on separated one-way streets. 

• Ensuring that crowded buses run free of traffic congestion, at least during morning peak periods. 

3) Safety and Security: To voluntarily ride a bus, an individual must feel safe, not only from harm, but also from loud, vulgar and inconsiderate behavior. That means that the standards of behavior on AC buses....including in particular the behavior of junior high school and high school aged youth....must be high. Whatever steps are required to ensure a safe and comfortable bus ride for everyone at all times must be taken. 

4) Marketing: Once the above-indicated deficiencies were on their way to being eliminated, it would be time to begin explaining the improvements as part of a stepped-up marketing program. 

For the above reasons AC Transit would benefit from an objective outside operations and marketing analysis, whose ultimate aim should be to increase AC Transit ridership by at least 35 percent.  

Gerald Cauthen 

Transportation Engineer 

Oakland 

 

• 

CULTURAL AFFAIRS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

As self-declared “Berkeley Ambassador for Cultural Affairs,” I wish to express my appreciation for our splendid Berkeley Public Library. Closing its doors in November 1988 for extensive renovations, it re-opened on April 6, 2002—a striking art deco structure gracing the corner of Shattuck and Kittredge. In the seven years that have followed its re-opening, this wonderful library has offered an amazing wealth of free programs—films, lectures, and live concerts, to name just a few. 

An intriguing program now offered each Wednesday from 12 to 1 p.m. is “Playreading for Adults.” Led by Debbie Carton, the vivacious Art and Music Librarian, this program brings together actors, theater lovers, travel and science fiction writers. Sitting at a round table in the Fourth Floor Reading Room, a group of 20 of so participants are handed copies of the play being read, with each of us assigned a role, changing parts frequently so everyone gets a chance to read. (This while we munch on brownies and banana bread, courtesy of our leader.) 

Since the first meeting in February 2009, the plays featured have included Antigone, The Lady’s Not for Burning, Inherit the Wind, King of Hearts, and King Lear. At the moment we’re reading Arsenic and Old Lace, which is great fun. 

As Debbie points out, theater literature is hard to read to oneself; it needs to be read aloud, as it’s intended to be performed. Many lines which sound foolish when read to oneself work beautifully in this fashion. 

On one occasion, An ESL teacher brought her adult English Language students to read with us. This was while Inherit the Wind was being read. To hear this classic American play read aloud by Serbians, Asians and Spanish speakers was a unique experience for us all. 

On Thursday, Aug. 6 at 3 p.m. members of this Playreaders Group and the Teen Playreaders group will join together to read aloud the story of Sadko Sasaki, of Sasako and the Thousand Paper Cranes fame. As we’re all aware, Aug. 6 is Peace Day, the anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. 

I should mention that last Thursday noon the library presented a delightful program by the Berkeley Opera Company, offering excerpts from The Ballad of Baby Doe, directed and narrated by Jonathan Khuner, with roles sung by first rate soloists of that company. The opera, for those of you not familiar with it, is a true story set in the 1880’s in a Colorado silver mine. This program attracted an overflow audience in the fifth floor Art and Music Room. 

I think you’ll understand why I have such admiration for our Berkeley Public Library, which contributes so much to the enrichment and education of our community. You’re encouraged to keep up with these worthwhile activities by checking the Berkeley Daily Planet calendar. 

Dorothy Snodgrass 

 

• 

LOCAL 123 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

On June 14 we opened Local 123 in West Berkeley. The café has a warm atmosphere and already serves as a community gathering place. Our simple menu features locally sourced foods, excellent coffee and an assortment of homemade items. Additionally, we hope to feature a number of handcrafted beers and wines made in the East Bay and the greater Bay Area. As our name implies, a core tenet of our mission is to serve and participate in the local economy. 

In mid-February, we began our application process for a beer and wine license with the City of Berkeley and State of California. At that time, a Berkeley Senior Planner told us told that it would take three to six months for our public hearing. Most recently, we were informed that our hearing is now scheduled for Feb. 10, 2010, nearly 12 months after we submitted our application. We have been forced to reassess our business plan and cash flow expectations and hope that our other revenue streams will support us for now. 

By contrast, California’s office of Alcoholic Beverage Control took less than two months to process our application. The state required us to mail letters to any resident or business owner within a 500-foot radius of our building, and to post a sign in our window alerting passerby to our pending application. We sent letters to nearly 600 neighbors and landlords and received no complaints. 

We are aware that the city and its Planning Commission are considering a proposal to simplify the application process for on-sale beer and wine permits in downtown. Surely the city is enacting this change to encourage economic development, so why isn’t the change being extended to the West Berkeley San Pablo Corridor, an area similarly targeted for development? 

Beer and wine consumption in an eating establishment is one of the most innocuous forms of alcohol consumption, particularly in a quiet, safe setting such as a café. 

We urge the city to support business growth in West Berkeley and simplify the application process for on-sale beer and wine licenses. This change will aid many small business owners like us, thereby encouraging a healthier local economy. 

Frieda Hoffman and Katy Wafle 

Owners, Local 123


Commentary: Why You Should Support the Proposed Refuse Rate Increase

By Kent Lewandowski
Thursday July 02, 2009 - 10:01:00 AM

There are two primary reasons that environmentalists support the 20 percent refuse rate increase currently proposed in Berkeley.  

The first is the reduction in greenhouse gases that would result from less waste being produced, as folks are charged more for their garbage pickups, and the second is the reduction in waste hauling when the waste transfer station (also known as the materials recovery facility, or MRF) at Fourth and Gilman gets modernized and can recover more reusable materials. In order to modernize this facility, more revenue is needed. The proposed fee increase will provide some of this needed revenue to the Berkeley Solid Waste Division for the purpose of modernizing this facility. 

Currently, most of Berkeley’s solid waste is hauled by truck from Berkeley to the Altamont Landfill in far eastern Alameda County. According to figures supplied by David Tam, vice chair of the Berkeley Zero Waste Commission, refuse shipped out to Altamont last year was 52,993 tons out of a total amount of 76,980 tons. 

This approximate 90-mile round trip contributes considerably to Berkeley’s greenhouse gas emissions (Note: We are not sure if this figure is included in the carbon emission profile the city is using in the Climate Action Plan approved last month, since these greenhouse gasses are emitted outside the city).  

One of the best ways to reduce these trips would be for Berkeley residents to generate less waste. The other way is to increase the “recovery” of reusable materials in Berkeley from municipal waste before it gets shipped out to Altamont and other places. We in the Sierra Club feel that the proposed refuse rate increase of approximately 20 percent (which will affect most households using a 32-gallon container to the tune of $4.20 per month) is a fair and reasonable charge for the service provided by the city. In fact, Berkeley’s current rates are below Richmond and Oakland, and after the 20 percent increase, will be about the same. Berkeley’s new rate after the increase will be $27.10, which compares to $26.95 in Richmond, $26.51 in Oakland, $30.19 in El Cerrito and $44.53 per 32 gallon container in Piedmont. 

Berkeley residents can still decrease their refuse rates by downsizing their can by one size. Any one-size reduction will decrease fees by about 25 percent, offsetting the increase in rates. And, of course, this encourages residents to think further about what winds up in the “trash can.”  

The new rate structure also establishes a citywide rate and eliminates the previous districts. Residents in specific neighborhoods will continue to pay a fire surcharge for the additional services they receive (no increase is planned to this surcharge). 

The Sierra Club encourages you to support the Berkeley refuse rate increase by recycling your protest cards and not mailing them to the city. 

 

Kent Lewandowski is chair of the Northern Alameda County Group of the Sierra Club.


Commentary: A Brief Update on Iran

By Sally Williams
Thursday July 02, 2009 - 10:02:00 AM

Ralph Stone knows his 20th century Iranian history (“Reflections of the Iranian Election,” June 25), but we discovered some new concerns from Iranians when we went there this past April. We expected Iranians to dislike Americans because of our involvement in the coup that Stone described that put the Shah back into power in 1953 and caused the take-over of the American Embassy in 1979. We found that Iranians like Americans and have concerns about the American government just as we like Iranians and have concerns about their government.  

Since we were a small group of 10 that included young Australians and British, we sometimes stayed with very hospitable local families in rural and urban areas. (There is always room in homes for guests because it is fairly common to eat and sleep on the floor.) Everywhere we went while touring we were approached by Iranians of all ages wishing to talk with us and take photos with their cell phones. (The teaching of English begins in elementary school. Cell phones are ubiquitous.)  

We learned that young Iranians have heard about the Shah and the hostage-taking in history books, but they were more concerned about the Iraqi invasion of Iran and the eight-year war (1980-1988) that took the lives of 500,000 Iranian men. They also were aware that the Americans supported Saddam Hussein when he invaded Iran and used poison gas on the population. As a consequence of the Iraq/Iran war, 70 percent of Iranians are under the age of 30 and, upon completion of school, young men are subject to the draft for the regular Army. Because so many educated Iranians have left Iran, young men cannot get a passport, even to study abroad, until they complete their service. Iranians are proud patriots and. from their point of view, the proximity of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the fact that many countries surrounding Iran have nuclear power, puts Iran in harms way. These facts intensify their concerns about the military draft because most families would rather not have more family members becoming martyrs.  

Another of the many interesting things we learned was that the source of power of the clerics is not limited to the interpretation of the Koran or their control of the government, but includes the clerics control of funds. Most of the wealth from the Shah’s era went into bonyads: tax-exempt state-religious foundations contolled by the clerics. Religious Muslims make annual donations to the clerics and rival clerics compete for control of the large donations made to shrines during pilgrimages. Thus the foundations continue to grow in wealth and power. Banks are expanding, but since Sharia law disallows charging interest, the foundations are very important in this oil-rich economy that is able to withstand most sanctions. There are other major financial systems including a private money exchange, revenues from drug smuggling and bribery. According to Tranparency International, foreign companies in Iran are particularly guilty of bribery.  

A severe drought is changing rural Iran and how Iran feeds itself. Now 68 percent of Iranians live in urban areas and the unemployment rate is high. An Iran elite lives in cities and there are many minorities that live in poverty. The government, even though hand-picked by clerics, is divided and Ahmadinejad likes to express opposition to wealthy clerics. Iranians are very proud of the diverse ethnic, regional or religous communities that represents their family. This includes the Jewish, Christian and Zoroastrian communities. Farsi is the language of the Persian group and widely used in Iran. An Arab minority speaks Arabic. Muslim Iranians use Arabic when reciting the Koran. The Azaris of northern Iran speak Turkish and Farsi. The Nomads speak Farsi and several dialects and there is a large population of Farsi speaking Kurds in the north.  

Iran also has been coping with approximately two million refugees: Kurds from Iraq and Afghans escaping the Taliban. Some local laborers are concerned that the refugees are taking their jobs. Iranian youth are very intelligent, cultured, caring, poetic and, as some youth have recently demonstrated, very clever and technically savvy. Sixty percent of the university students are women and 77 percent of the population is literate. There are active women’s groups. We have great hope that the youth will soon will be in a position to have a positive influence on the 21st century development of Iran. Age and education is on their side. 

 

Sally Williams is a Berkeley resident.


Commentary: Why We Need the Employee Free Choice Act

By John Logan
Thursday July 02, 2009 - 10:02:00 AM

The Employee Free Choice Act, one of the most bitterly contested bills currently facing Congress, would strengthen workers’ right to choose a union and bargain with their employers over issues of wages and benefits. When making the case for this landmark legislation, its supporters often point to the actions of the country’s most aggressively anti-union employers. And there are plenty of good examples to go round. According to a report just released by Cornell University, both legal and illegal anti-union tactics have become much more widespread in recent years. 

But to fully appreciate why we need labor-law reform, we should look instead at the actions of firms that claim, often with considerable justification, to be good corporate citizens. Let’s consider the case of the UK–based Tesco, the world’s third largest retail chain, which operates under the name Fresh & Easy in California, Nevada and Arizona. Since 2007, Fresh & Easy has opened over 100 stores throughout the western United States and has plans to open hundreds more.  

Tesco cares deeply about its corporate reputation. The company’s Human Rights Policy states, “Employees have the right to freedom of association and collective bargaining. We recognize the right of our staff anywhere in Tesco around the world to join a recognized trade union and bargain collectively where this is allowed within national law.” In the UK, Tesco has a pioneering and successful partnership agreement with the shop-workers union, Usdaw. For more than a decade, Tesco and Usdaw have cooperated successfully over issues of job training, employment security, work rules, and other issues of critical importance to both the company and employees. One British Member of Parliament has called the company a “hallmark of employee involvement” and the partnership agreement between Tesco and Usdaw has benefitted the company, employees and consumers. 

In the United States, however, Tesco has taken a more troubling and adversarial stance, especially in the area of workers’ rights. The company has declined to meet with a broad coalition of community, environmental and consumer groups in Los Angeles, and it has refused numerous requests to meet with the United Food and Commercial Workers union. In 2008, Tesco’s steadfast refusal to meet with these groups caught the attention of then-presidential candidates Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton, both of who wrote letters to Tesco CEO Tim Leahy asking him to reconsider the company’s policy of non-engagement. Senator Obama urged Leahy “to reconsider your policy of non-engagement ... and advise your executives at Fresh & Easy to meet with the UFCW. I am aware of Tesco’s reputation in Britain as a partner to unions. I would hope that you would bring those values to your work in America.” 

Fresh & Easy’s determined opposition to unions and collective bargaining doesn’t stop at a policy of non-engagement. In addition to refusing to meet with representatives from the union, Fresh & Easy has advertised for a human resource director with responsibility for “maintaining non-union status and union avoidance activities.” (In U.S. labor relations, union avoidance is widely understood as code for “union busting”—an inelegant but accurate term.) Management has instructed employees not to talk about union issues at work, even while it forces them to listen to anti-union speeches, and has distributed anti-union literature and coordinated supposedly organic employee opposition to the union.  

The contrast between Tesco’s behavior in the U.S. and the UK is striking. When employees at Fresh & Easy’s store in Huntington Beach presented a petition to the company requesting union representation signed by a majority of the employees in 2008, they were told that the company would not recognize their demand because they did not represent an “informed majority.” The company also argued that U.S. labor law is different from UK law (which encourages firms to recognize unions without forcing employees to go through a lengthy and confrontational election process), and thus it would be “irresponsible” to behave in the same way in the U.S. as it does in the UK. So much for respecting employees’ free choice. 

So in the UK Tesco practices cooperation and partnership with labor unions, while in the United States it is dedicated to union avoidance, even when the majority of its employees want union representation. And Tesco is not alone in this respect. Several other multinationals that cooperate with unions in Great Britain, Germany, Sweden, Japan, Korea and elsewhere fight aggressively against employees’ efforts to form unions in the United States. And labor law currently offers American workers little protection against the actions of hostile employers. Or even against those of the “good ones.” This is why we need the Employee Free Choice Act.  

 

John Logan is research director for the Labor Center at UC Berkeley’s Institute for Research on Labor and Employment.


Commentary: City Needs to Rethink Emergency Services Hierarchy

By Martin J. Alperen
Thursday July 02, 2009 - 10:03:00 AM

Berkeley is about to implement a wrong decision that will impact its emergency services for decades. Specifically, my comments are about the placement of the emergency services coordinator (ESC) within the City of Berkeley hierarchy, i.e., as a third level reporting employee of the Fire Department—and the restrictive role of emergency services that such positioning supports.  

My education, training, background, and experiences, plus what I learned having just applied for the ESC position, permit me to comment on this matter. Very briefly, I have been a police officer, a practicing attorney for 20 years including 11 in private practice and seven as an assistant attorney general (criminal prosecutor). For six years I was in charge of a search-and-rescue group. In 2006 I received a master’s degree in Homeland Security from the U.S.–government-sponsored, Naval Postgraduate School’s Center for Homeland Defense and Security. CHDS is the nation’s premier homeland security educator. My graduate thesis was about preparedness. 

Fire Chief Pryor demonstrated far-sighted leadership by seeking to reorganize the Office of Emergency Services (OES). My concern is that its implementation is way off the mark. The current arrangement and hierarchical placement in the Fire Department severely limits the development of emergency services.  

Berkeley’s Disaster Plan goal is to “make Berkeley a disaster-resistant community that can survive, recover from and thrive after a disaste.” Berkeley’s goal is an excellent description of the concept of “resiliency.” Resiliency is not synonymous with preparedness. 

Preparedness is a component of resiliency. In engineering, resiliency is the ability of metal, for example, to return to its original state after being deformed. The same concept applies to social systems and communities. As currently configured, the OES/ESC is not best suited to reach Berkeley’s goal.  

It does not matter what we name the office. The focus and name of our country’s public safety-type activities has evolved over the years. During the Cold War, we called it civil defense. Later our focus was natural disasters and after 9/11, it was terrorism. Our preparedness is now directed toward “all hazards.”  

Emergency Services is greater than fire, rescue, EMS, and police. The planning and skills required to thrive after disaster are very different from those required to respond and survive one. Emergency services required to meet Berkeley’s goal include contributions from: Health and Human Services because of its Public Health, Mental Health, Environmental Health, and Aging Divisions; Parks, Recreation, and Waterfront (for emergency “staging areas,” the waterfront for emergency provisions, equipment, and evacuation); the Department of Transportation (for pre-disaster contracts for emergency evacuation); Public Works (for pre-disaster contracts for rubble removal); Housing (for pre-disaster contracts for housing both in and out of Berkeley); Information Technology (continuity of government and operations, and communications both voice and data); the city attorney; the city clerk; Human Resources to coordinate volunteers; Finance; City Council, of course; and the Animal Shelter.  

The position at issue was approved by Measure GG, November 2008. Between 1992 and 2000, Berkeley has voted six special taxes related to preparedness. The electorate is active in the area of emergency services and preparedness. For this reason and many others, including its physical size, population, geographical and political relationships with San Francisco and Oakland, UC Berkeley, a committed and educated citizenry, open minded government, and well trained, professional infrastructure (EMS, Fire Department, Police Department), Berkeley has the potential to be the state’s most resilient community and a nation-wide model.  

The current ESC job description is as follows: “equivalent to graduation from an accredited four-year college or university with major coursework in emergency management, public policy, planning, public or business administration or a closely related field; and two years of professional experience in emergency management, emergency preparedness, disaster response, emergency response and/or public education programs.” 

Candidates with much higher academic credentials, such as a master’s degree from CHDS, are available. Persons with more than two years of professional experience are available. Career paths other than those listed may provide an excellent background. 

One of the questions asked of me during my interview was have I taught first-aid courses. With a broad, big picture, 50,000-foot view of emergency services, teaching first aid becomes less important. The Red Cross has many people capable of teaching first-aid classes. There are very few practitioners with advanced degrees. 

Measure GG also funded the position of “assistant fire chief in charge of the OES” yet, according to the job description, only one sixteenth of the assistant fire chief’s proposed duties relates to OES. The maximum salary for the assistant chief is $162,360 annually. Of this amount, only $10,147.50 is directed toward the OES while the remaining $152,000 goes somewhere else. 

In addition, according to the job description, the assistant fire chief who is to supervise the OES and the ESC, has fifteen other, additional “duties” to be responsible for. Not one of the 12 “knowledge and skills” or nine “abilities” listed in the job description relates to the OES. Not only are the OES functions ignored in the job description, one person could not possibly do all of the other job requirements and run a first-rate OES. 

 

Recommendations 

1. The Fire Department has already chosen two persons to move forward in the hiring process. I recommend the City Council immediately pause the hiring process for the ESC while rethinking the job specifications and description. I am willing to help with that and would be honored to lend my assistance. Repost the job requiring the broad and in depth knowledge that is developed in the CHDS master’s program. Select a person with an expansive and long range view of emergency services, and enthusiasm, and passion for the subject. 

2. Relocate OES to a position of equivalent autonomy as any other agency. 

3. City Council’s OES authorization should state that all agencies are to cooperate and assist OES to the extent possible as long as such assistance will not adversely affect the agency’s traditional mission, and also specifically state OES has no authority to direct other agencies.  

4. Reverse the already allocated funding. Remove supervision of the OES from the assistant fire chief and send that salary to the director of the OES. The ESC salary should go to an eventual assistant. 

 

Suggestion  

Consider advertising this position for a six-month trial for a person as I have suggested to run the OES while City Council evaluates this position. This way progress can start now. 

Following this suggestion will cost Berkeley less than the amount already budgeted for the assistant fire chief and emergency services coordinator in Proposition GG.  

I am confident you will have applicants to be the director of the OES as an employee at will, a short-term contract, independent contractor, consultant, or whatever terms you request, for some period of months at the current ESC salary, with a review in six months and if satisfactory, a good faith reconsideration of the position and salary increase to what would have been paid to the assistant fire chief, and ability to hire an assistant. There should be monthly reports. 

Berkeley has highest per capita investment in risk reduction in California. It should have the highest return on its investment.  

 

Martin J. Alperen is a San Francisco resident.


Columns

Dispatches From The Edge: Of North Korea; Lebanon’s Vote; Irish Shame

By Conn Hallinan
Thursday July 02, 2009 - 09:55:00 AM

Most Americans think of North Korea as a nation of belligerent crazy people with a political succession system more akin to the 15th century than the 21st. Indeed, it is a repressive place, with a bizarre personality cult, but the United States, Japan, and South Korea share much of the blame for the current crisis over nuclear weapons and long-range missiles. 

A little history. 

In June of last year, North Korea dutifully carried out “Phase Two” of the 2007 Six-Party talks by giving China the details of its plutonium program. In a separate agreement with the United States, Pyongyang agreed to disclose its uranium enrichment program and any technology proliferation to other countries. In turn, the United States would take North Korea off its “state sponsor of terrorism” list.  

However, under pressure from the right-wing governments of Japan and South Korea, the Bush administration moved the goal posts and demanded strict verification procedures before it would fulfill its end of the bargain. Verification, however, was not part of Phase Two, as then Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice admitted in a speech to the Heritage Foundation last year. “What we’ve done, in a sense, is to move up issues that were to be taken up in Phase Three, like verification, like access to the reactor, into Phase Two.” 

North Korea responded by halting the dismantlement of its plutonium-producing Yongbyon reactor.  

The United States then backed off and agreed to modify the verification procedures and, when North Korea accepted these, the White House took Pyongyang off the terror list. But when Japan and South Korea again protested, the Bush Administration reversed course and refused to take North Korea off the terrorism list unless it agreed to the new demands.  

If your foreign policy is schizoid you are liable to make people act crazy. And sure enough, North Korea began testing long-range missiles and carried out a nuclear explosion. 

Unfortunately, the Obama administration is using the same carrot and stick approach that failed so dismally for the Bush administration. “I’m not sure who is giving the president his advice on North Korea, but it is all wrong,” says John Feffer, Korea expert and author of North Korea, South Korea: U.S. Policy at a Time of Crisis. Feffer says Obama’s “show of ‘resolve’ has only made matters worse.” 

When Secretary of State Hillary Clinton went to Asia she met with relatives of Japanese civilians who have been kidnapped by North Korea. Japanese Prime Minster Taro Aso, a right-wing nationalist who has angered nations throughout Asia with his defense of Japanese behavior in World War II, has used the kidnappings as a way to derail any progress in the Six Party talks.  

While the kidnappings were horrendous, Japan can hardly claim the moral high ground in relations between the two nations. Japan’s colonial regime in Korea was especially brutal, a fact that the Aso government refuses to acknowledge. Indeed, Japan still claims several islands that it took from Korea during its 35-year occupation of the peninsula.  

Feffer argues that sharp condemnations, like the United Nations resolution that followed the April missile launch, are counterproductive. “We should have treated it [the missile launch] as a satellite launch and pressed forward with negotiations,” he said. Instead the UN passed an angry resolution, which Feffer compares to “hitting a problem with a baseball bat—except that the problem in this case was a hornet’s nest.”  

Feffer says the United States also exaggerates North Korea as a military threat. While Pyongyang has a large army, its yearly military budget is about $500 million, one fortieth of South Korea’s and pocket change compared to U.S. arms spending. 

According to Leon Siegel, author of Disarming Strangers: Nuclear Diplomacy with North Korea, this “punishment approach has never worked in the past and it won’t work now.” Siegel, who also directs the Northeast Cooperative Security Project of the New York Social Science Research Council, says “Sustained diplomatic give-and-take is the only way to stop future North Korean nuclear and missile tests and convince it to halt its nuclear program.” 

In short, more sanctions, more threats, and searching ships on the high seas is likely to make the situation worse, not better. 

 

Lebanon’s June 7 election is being represented as a triumph for the Washington-backed coalition and a defeat for Hezbollah. Thomas Friedman of the New York Times even characterized it as a showdown between President Barack Obama and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, that the White House won. 

Not really.  

What happened was that the Lebanese voted for their respective communities, whose representation was constitutionally enshrined by a 1936 population survey that has very little to do with current reality. Under the survey, Christians are guaranteed 50 percent of the seats in parliament, even though today they constitute only about 36 percent of the population. Shiites—who are closely allied with Hezbollah—are allotted 20 percent of the seats, but make up about 40 percent of the population, a plurality of the electorate. 

Shiites voted for Hezbollah, Sunnis Muslims for their parties, and the Druze for Walid Jumblatt’s Progressive Socialist Party. The Christians split between a party allied with Hezbollah led by Michel Aoun, and a pro-western party headed by Saad Harari, the son of former president Rafik-al-Hariri. The elder Hariri’s assassination in 2005 touched off the “Cedar Revolution” that swept his son and a pro-western, anti-Syrian coalition into power. 

Aoun’s Christian allies took a beating—voters were still upset over the thrashing that Hezbollah gave the Sunni militia in Beirut last spring—but his party emerged as the largest Christian party in the Parliament, and the pro-Hezbollah coalition took more votes than the anti-Hezbollah coalition. It was certainly a bare-knuckle affair. 

Saudi Arabia poured in vast amounts of money to back Harari and defeat Iran’s ally, Hezbollah. The United States also threatened to cutoff aid if the Hezbollah-Aoun coalition won, and Christian Maronite Patriarch Nasrallah Sfeir said a Hezbollah victory would turn the country over to Iran and threaten Lebanon’s “Arab identity.” 

And then on the eve of the vote, Der Spiegel leaked a story that the United Nations Special Tribunal investigating the death of Rafik al-Hariri found that Hezbollah, not Syria, had committed the murder. Hezbollah vigorously denied the charge—and the story has since vanished—but it undoubtedly did some damage. 

So, things are about where they were before, except that the Hezbollah coalition can legitimately claim that they have the backing of a majority of Lebanon’s diverse population. 

An indication of that was a June 19 meeting between Jumblatt and Hezbollah General Secretary Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah. The four hour get-together patched up a frosty relationship between the Progressive Socialist Party—part of the Harari coalition—and Hezbollah. According to the Daily Star, after the meeting Jumblatt condemned the “absolute extremism” of the Israeli government, and called on “all our people in Palestine to reject sectarian and non-sectarian violence” and to “confront Zionist projects that promise to be more dangerous and fiercer in the coming phase.”  

 

Racist criminals” was how Northern Ireland Deputy First Minister and Sinn Fein member Martin McGuinness described gangs of thugs who attacked Romanians living in south Belfast. 

More than 100 Roma from 20 families were forced to take shelter in a church when gangs chanting racist slogans besieged their houses in a Protestant area called the “Village.” According to the Irish Republican News, “bigots scrawled slogans supporting the neo-Nazi group Combat 18 and the fascist British National Party.” The newspaper reports that, following the attacks on the Roma, Protestant gangs invaded a cemetery in West Belfast and “desecrated Republican graves.” 

“Republicans” are those who support a united Ireland and include much of the Catholic community. The Protestants who want to remain tied to Great Britain are called “Unionists” or “Loyalists.” 

Following the attack, Combat 18 distributed an email that read, in part, “Romanian Gypsies beware, beware. Loyalist C18 are coming to beat you.” 

According to witnesses, the newly formed Police Services of Northern Ireland (PSNI) did nothing to stop the assaults, but instead encouraged the Roma to leave their houses and take refuge in the church. 

The attacks were apparently a spin-off from an earlier confrontation between Protestant youth and Eastern Europeans following a soccer match that pitted a Polish team against a local Irish team. A polish family was recently driven out of County Tyrone. According to the Associated Press, Protestant gangs have also terrorized Chinese and Africans living in Belfast. 

In the Village incidents, gangs threw bottles and bricks at homes, smashed windows and threatened people with handguns. Roma Maria Fechete said a gang broke into her house and threatened to kill her two children. “They made signs like they wanted to cut my brother’s baby’s throat,” she said. 

Sinn Fein assembly member from West Belfast, Paul Maskey, said that “Racist attacks coming from the Unionist community in Belfast are not new and did not just start this week with attacks on the Romanians. This has been a long standing problem and one which clearly has not been properly addressed either by political representatives of that community or indeed by the PSNI, otherwise these attacks would have stopped years ago.”  

Sinn Fein is the political arm of the Provisional Irish Republican Army. 

The recently concluded European elections saw some dramatic gains for the right in Holland, Italy, Britain, and Eastern Europe. Europeans have long targeted the Roma population—thought to be between seven and nine million—and their communities have been attacked in Italy, Hungry, Slovakia and Romania.  

The Belfast riots suggest that when the authorities turn a blind eye to racist violence, it tends to escalate.


Undercurrents: Finding Other Lines of Discussion About East Bay Crime

By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor
Thursday July 02, 2009 - 09:57:00 AM

One of the iconic call-and-response chants of the hip-hop world comes when a rapper shouts out to the audience, “Somebody make some noise!” It’s a phrase often overlooked by both the hip-hop youth themselves and any adult observers who might come across such an event while flipping channels, but it has a deep and profound meaning. Almost every human born to this world wants to be noticed, wants to make some noise. In many cases, that is all they ask of society and the people around them. And when they cannot get recognition for their place in the world in the accepted ways, they find other—less acceptable—means to make the point. 

It is a point so often overlooked in human relations, as we pointed out in last week’s column, when we said that the discussion of violence in the East Bay was running on two distinctly different and parallel tracks, the official discussion on one line, the one by the area’s young people on a second. There is actually a third line running, which I will bring up in a moment. 

Despite the fact that they constitute the largest group of victims of violence in the East Bay, youth of color are largely left out of the official discussions of the causes and cures of the epidemic. 

It’s not as if these youth are indifferent. In fact, if spoken word and rap lyrics are any key, the effect of the East Bay’s violence appears to dominate a good part of their thoughts. While the young people of my generation spoke of racism and the Vietnam war, the young people of this generation speak of the funerals of classmates and relatives and neighborhood friends shot down in the East Bay’s bloody street wars or confrontations with police, the inevitable incarcerations, or the plaintive wails of spirits lost amidst our neighborhood’s clutter and broken family structures: 

Oakland spoken-word artist Donnie from the Poetry & Prison Project from Youth UpRising begins, in “Awake On The Streets.” 

 

6:38, God, and I ain’t been sleep yet 

Gotta get my mind offa’ shit I been thinking 

I ain’t been drinking so what the hell wrong with me? 

Gotta be my mama on my mind cause I can’t sleep 

I remember how she left me when I 

was only about three. 

Fuck! Bad memories coming back, 

They trying to haunt me 

 

And “Imagine” by Yung16, also from Youth UpRising, gives a haunting portrait of jail, the revolving-door destination of many of the area’s youth: 

 

Close your eyes and imagine sitting in jail 

Close your eyes and imagine living in hell 

Close your eyes and think, is it worth it or not? 

Ask yourself a question, is these jails working or not? 

The jails ain’t helping us, they ain’t want to see us succeed 

They want us to be failures, they just trying to breed 

More and more each year, more and more each day 

They want us to retaliate, why you thinking we can’t wait 

And they don’t even care about our mental aid 

That’s why we go in okay and come out insane 

 

Oakland’s progressive hip-hop poet, Ise Lyfe, who penned a fiery rap, “Hard in the Paint,” calling for direct action following the police shooting death of Oscar Grant, spoke directly to the area’s homeboys, asking them to “Imagine Peace” and to stop shooting themselves: 

 

I mean, we use our imaginations to create so much 

We imagine a new dance and make it real 

Take a bucket and imagine it on paint and rims 

Imagine ways to get money and hustle for real 

All right then, let’s imagine the day when all the killing ends 

Make that day for real 

Make that day bright as them rims, and as important as them ends 

 

These are not voices or ideas that are being suppressed. You can hear them by wandering into one of the many spoken-word venues around the area, or tuning to a Davey D radio broadcast, or doing a simple Internet or YouTube search, or, for that matter, riding the back of a 1 or a 1R bus as it goes down International, or even waiting for the bus at the Broadway plaza near 14th, across the street from DeLauer’s. The voices of our youth talking about violence are everywhere. They are not just spitting rhymes. They are also analyzing and thinking up solutions. But in official Oakland, they are being overlooked or, worse yet, pointedly ignored. That was most evident during the Oakland sideshow showdowns of a few years back, when young people offered their expertise early on as to how the street confrontations could be stopped. The problem is not so much that their suggestions were not adopted by the city, it’s that youth input was never taken seriously. An opportunity was lost, and the city continues to pay, with an ongoing estrangement between young people and elders that causes a nagging unrest in our streets. 

But there is another set of voices that ought to be brought into the common discussion on the causes and prevention of East Bay violence, and that is from the people who have been convicted of perpetrating that violence themselves. 

Organizations like All of Us or None and Critical Resistance have been advocating for ex-offenders for years, and their views have begun to get some traction during these Dellums years, with the hiring of Isaac Taggart as Re-Entry Specialist, a euphemism for running a program that seeks to overcome the hurdles of former penitentiary inmates re-entering society while keep themselves from being drawn back into the world of criminal activity. This is an especially important issue for a city like Oakland, since California parole rules dictate that parolees most often are placed back in the county in which they committed the crime or crimes that put them in prison in the first place. Recidivism—that is, the commission of a new crime by a person released from incarceration for a previous crime—is high, with Oakland’s Measure Y website noting that 75 percent of California’s juvenile parolees end up re-incarcerated. And the Alameda County Violence in Oakland study showed that 48 percent of the identified suspects of Oakland homicides are on parole or probation. 

But even more important than hearing the voices of those who have made it out of prison is listening to the people who are still in. 

One set of those voices comes from an organization called No More Tears, which its website says began seven years ago when “watching the revolving door of the prison system from the inside, a group of concerned inmates came together at San Quentin and formed [the organization]. With the support of community members and partners, they are building a program that assists inmates to implement transformative change in their own lives and become mentors for positive change in their communities.” 

But that hardly tells the story. 

For several years, Alameda County Supervisor Keith Carson has been acting as a liaison with the men from No More Tears, bringing in public officials, community activists, and journalists to attend organization meetings on the prison grounds. I went to one of those meetings last month, along with Oakland City Councilmember Desley Brooks (a regular attendee and No More Tears supporter), State Senator Loni Hancock, and a few other familiar faces, including former Oakland City Councilmember and now American Friends Service Committee official Wilson Riles Jr. Some 20 of us—many of them women, a good portion of them white—sat on metal folding chairs in a dingy meeting room intermixed with the incarcerated men—mostly African-American and Latino—dressed in various aspects of prison garb. 

It might have been a typical West Oakland or North Richmond community meeting, except for the “accepted” way—that is the only word I can use to describe it—that the San Quentin men described their own history of violence. Lonnie Morris, the frail, bearded, bespectacled, cane-carrying co-founder of the group, was talking about the beginnings of the group, almost in the tones of a community college professor, when he remarked—almost in passing, with no change in tone—that he had been in San Quentin for more than 30 years “because I killed a man.” There was none of the bravado that you hear when such things are said out in the streets, certainly not in the movies or in television shows. He said it without the tone of a man with anything to prove, either his “manhood” or his regret. But the remarks sent a sobering chill through the room of those not used to being in the company of incarcerated men, perhaps even more so when, talking about the Lovelle Mixon murders, Morris said, “I’m not against police. We need police. The kind of predator I was when I was out on the streets, the kind of mentality I had, regular society couldn’t have stopped me. Only the police could have stopped me. I didn’t care about nothing.” 

Even more sobering was the fact that several of the men talked about Mixon not as the infamous killer of four police officers but as someone whom they used to see “up on the tier” in San Quentin, and whom they regret they didn’t turn around before he was released. 

But perhaps the most sobering moment of the day came during a talk by a 19-year-old, a baby-faced, husky Hunter’s Point man who looked like he should still be playing halfback on a high school football team. He told the group that he had artistic talent, but even if he was back out in the street, “having fun” would probably interfere with his pursuing an artistic career. “Why can’t you do both, have fun and be an artist?” one outside participant asked him, thinking, perhaps, that the “fun” involved some weekend partying and inability to get up and get to work in the weekday mornings, something that a little discipline would cure. “Well, maybe you and I have a different idea of what ‘fun’ is,” the young San Quentin man answered, in a quiet voice. “See, for me, fun was hanging with my boys and seeing somebody walk down the street with something we liked, and putting a hurt on them.” Asked if, when he got back on the streets, he could make it without carrying a gun, the young man said, “I don’t know. I’d try, but I don’t know.” 

The men of No More Tears are actively working to prepare inmates from the inside, so that they are ready to turn their lives around and meet the challenges of the world when they get on the outside. We’ll talk about that more, at another time. 

More important, the men of No More Tears know the nature and the character of East Bay street violence far better than most of us could ever know—know its nature, know its perpetrators not as mug shot faces on a television screen but as neighbors and partners. They want their voices added to the discussion on how to prevent that violence. And like the young people of our community, we should add them. 

In what way and in what forum? That, I’ll discuss, on another day. Today, we only have time to talk about who should be at the table. 

 

 


Wild Neighbors: Force of Nature: How Beavers Build the World

By Joe Eaton
Thursday July 02, 2009 - 09:58:00 AM
 One of several dams built by the beaver family in residence in Martinez.
Ron Sullivan
One of several dams built by the beaver family in residence in Martinez.

Although you may not think of beavers as Bay Area wildlife, they’re common along the Contra Costa shoreline and even more abundant in the Delta, a major source for the 19th-century fur trade. The beaver family that moved into lower Alhambra Creek in Martinez three years ago is still going strong. The founding pair had their third litter of kits this year, around the time the surviving 2-year-olds struck out on their own. The yearlings are helping care for the new arrivals. 

There’s some ambivalence about having beavers downtown, and some merchants in particular see the rodents more as a flood hazard than a tourist draw. For details, including this summer’s Aug. 1 Beaver Festival, see the website (www.martinezbeavers.org) maintained by beaver advocate and Worth a Dam founder Heidi Perryman. 

One of the striking things about the Martinez beaver story is the way other critters have moved in to the habitat created by the damming of the creek. Observers have seen many more fish-eating birds: cormorants, black-crowned night herons, belted kingfishers. Muskrats have shown up—a mixed blessing, as they’re more likely than the beavers to tunnel into banks—as have river otters. A mink, probably interested in the muskrats as prey, was photographed this year. Piece by piece, a new biological community is assembling. 

The notion of beavers as ecosystem engineers is nothing new. We’ve long been fascinated by the way these rodents alter the environment with their dams, lodges, and canals. Beaver works can raise water tables, change stream temperatures, keep intermittent streams from drying out during the hot months. They transform landscapes from aspen forest to pond, and eventually to meadow. They create habitat for a host of other species, from clams and midges on up. 

Richard Dawkins, Darwin’s pit bull, used beavers and their constructions to illustrate his concept of the “extended phenotype” in his book of that name—phenotype being the physical traits that the genes code for. To Dawkins, the beaver’s phenotype included more than the flat tail, the chisel teeth, and the special mite-removal claw. It also incorporated the lodge, the dam, and the pond—all equally products of the genetic template. 

More recently, a group of British and American scientists—John Odling-Smee, Kevin Laland, and Marc Feldman—have given this an interesting twist in what they call “niche construction theory” (www.nicheconstruction.com). “Niche,” one of the few terms that have migrated from ecology to economics, is a matter of what a species does for a living and where it does it. The niche-constructionists’ work bristles with math, but the basics are straightforward. 

Odling-Smee and his colleagues question the idea that evolution is just a matter of organisms being passively shaped by their environments. The whole natural selection thing is about fortuitous adaptation to changing external conditions, as when a few lucky elephants with more body hair were born into a cooling world. Organisms that pass on more of their genes than their less-well-adapted kin win the selection game. 

What if adaptation is not just a one-way street, though? What if an animal (or plant, or fungus) changes its environment enough to create a whole new set of selective pressures? That, it’s argued, is what happened over time with beavers. They changed their world, and changed their own evolution in the process. 

That’s fine for beavers, but how typical are they? One species may seem like a shaky foundation for a theory. (Or two, if you include that other world-changer Homo sapiens.) Some niches are pretty narrow. How could a limpet, whose niche consists of sitting on a submerged rock and grazing on algae, affect its own evolution?  

But the niche-construction folks offer a long list of species that alter their surroundings enough to feed back into the selection process. Consider the climate-controlled megacities of the termites, the subterranean fungus farms of the leaf-cutter ants, the tons of soil shifted by earthworms. Consider the chaparral plants whose resinous leaves kindle the fires that help their seeds germinate. Every bird that builds a nest is physically modifying its niche, in however small a way. Everything that breathes, eats, or excretes changes its environment. 

And the ripple effects can go far beyond the constructing species. When they dam a creek, beavers are altering the evolutionary trajectories of caddisflies, trout, and wood ducks. This, I think, is the part that bothers Dawkins so much. But think about it. We know that human-modified environments affect the destinies of other species. What’s so different about beavers—or earthworms? 

That aspect of niche construction theory makes for messy flow charts. Dawkins dislikes the whole concept and is said to have called it “pernicious.” It makes you think, though, and its authors claim it can generate testable propositions. I’ll be interested to see where it all leads.


About the House: Avoiding Floods with Hoses, Pans, Sensors and Pressure

By Matt Cantor
Thursday July 02, 2009 - 10:11:00 AM

Your washing machine is following you. OK, so I’m being a bit dramatic but it’s true. Your washing machine is trying to get into your bedroom.  

Decades ago, before the invention of the washing machine, houses were provided with concrete sinks in the basement with an inclined front edge just right for a washboard. (Now you only see washboards in antique stores or hanging on restaurant walls for ambiance.) The sinks were mounted in pairs so that one was for washing and the other for rinsing. They even had pairs of hot and cold faucets for each. You might have one of these in your basement and you’ll note that the old faucets have no threading on them because they were never intended to have hoses attached to them. 

Eventually, the faucets got changed, hoses were attached and washing machines were installed beside the old concrete basin. The years rolled by and eventually dryers were invented to the detriment of fabrics everywhere. The clotheslines sat lame and mothers went off to jobs in defense plants. 

More time passed and we all got even busier. Mom went back to school, moved into the working world alongside Dad and laundries began to appear in the small room beside the kitchen to save time. The laundry peered down the hallway and, when nobody was looking, crept down the hall into a closet with a pair of sliding doors. This is when things began to get a bit threatening—but I won’t get ahead of myself. Eventually, when the kids were off at school, the stacked pair (dryer on top) sneaked upstairs into a small closet across from the master bedroom where it stands, waiting for its chance to dart across the hall and into the master bedroom closet. It’s not there yet, but it’s just a matter of time.  

See, people want to do their laundry when they’re done with dinner, and if possible, during a late-night commercial break. They’re tired. They just don’t want to go down to the kitchen or, “Please G-d, No!”, the basement. This is why the laundry has been gradually creeping upward through the house all these years. 

The problem is that washing machines leak every now and again, and when they do, they can cause enormous damage inside the home. When they were in the garage or the basement, this wasn’t such a big deal. But the further up in the house they go, the more devastating a washing machine leak becomes.  

There are, however, solutions. The first thing I will always recommend is the easiest and the cheapest because that’s the kind of guy I am. This is to replace the rubber hoses with the “No-Burst” type. They go by various names but are easily identified by the metal woven jacket around the entire length of the hose. They look a bit like the steel belts on a tire when the rubber is worn away. These prevent the most common laundry leak, that being the one that occurs when the hose eventually becomes so cracked and worn that it bursts forth with as much water as can escape prior to your unpleasant return home. This most often occurs to lawyers who’ve recently bought a lot of art work which is still sitting on the floor downstairs. 

A more expensive secondary step (but well worth the money) is the installation of a pan below the washing machine with a drain that carries overflow to a safe locale. This can be quite difficult to achieve if the washing machine is well inside the house on the second floor but is not nearly so difficult if the laundry backs up to an outside wall. There’s also nothing wrong with terminating the drain just outside the wall up on the second floor. It’s just for emergencies and sure beats a saturated interior. Architects, take note: Adding a drain during construction in almost any location is easy but very expensive after the interior is complete. 

A third method is to employ one of the new “Floodstop” products that not only senses a leak but actually turns off the water leading to the washing machine (or water heater, dishwasher, etc.). Like the pan and drain method, they are also quite suitable to water heaters that are inside the house and especially for those machines located in the upstairs. The devices are available for washing machines, water heaters, dishwashers and icemakers. The same company also markets a device for sump pumps to alert you to an overflow. 

These devices cost around $70-$90, which is cheap when you consider the damage that can be caused by a washing machine or water heater leak. 

As noted, this issue extends to a range of other pieces of equipment and there are a few other ways to prevent flooding in the home that are well worth pointing out. While a sink drain might leak and cause damage to the sink cabinet, the greater concern is a burst water line to the faucet. The flexible connectors below sinks and also those connected to toilets are often the flexible plastic/fiberglass type and can burst just like their washing machine counterparts. The “No Burst” connector is available for these as well and the low cost makes this sort of safety hard to turn down. 

So, let’s say that you’ve put a pan with a drain below your washing machine and your water heater and you’ve changed all the plastic or rubber flexible water connectors in the house to the metal braided type. What’s left? Well there is one remaining item and it’s something you can do even if you do nothing else. For many of us, the water pressure in our houses is quite high. If it’s over 80 pounds (PSI), it’s kind if high and if it’s well above 100 it’s serious. I occasionally see a house that’s over 150 and they’re usually in the hills where the water pressure gets a big boost to make it to the top. Houses with high pressure, not surprisingly, have more floods and there is, once again, a fairly simple fix, that being the installation of a pressure regulator (or pressure reducing valve). This devices mounts near the main water valve to the house and lowers the pressure of the entire system, thus reducing the propensity for pipes, connectors and devices to leak. If your plumbing is badly corroded and filled with mineral deposits this may reduce your shower flow somewhat but it may be best to tackle that problem with some new piping. 

So with these things in mind, it’s no big deal that the washing machine is now upstairs across from your bedroom but if you’re like me, you probably still won’t be able to get the laundry done.  


Arts & Events

Arts Calendar

Thursday July 02, 2009 - 10:04:00 AM

THURSDAY, JULY 2 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Bongo Love at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $10-$13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Chris Caswell at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761.  

Kelly Park Trio and Friends at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. 841-JAZZ.  

The Deep at 10 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790.  

These United States, Mushroom at 9 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $8. 841-2082. 

FRIDAY, JULY 3 

THEATER 

Aurora Theatre “Jack Goes Boating” through July 19. Tickets are $28-$50. 843-4822  

Contra Costa Civic Theatre “Thoroughly Modern Millie” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. at 951 Pomona Ave., El Cerrito, through July 19. Tickets are $15-$24. 524-9132.  

Masquers Playhouse “Lady Windermere’s Fan” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2:30 p.m. at 105 Park Place, Point Richmond, and runs through July 4. Tickets are $18. 232-4031. 

Pinole Community Players “Pump Boys & the Dinettes” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. at Community Playhouse, 601 Tennet Ave., Pinole, through July 11. Tickets are $17-$20.  

Opera Piccola “The Play’s the Thing” staged readings at 7:30 p.m. at Oakland Museum of California, 1000 Oak at 10th, Oakland. Cost is $5-$8. 238-2200. www.museumca.org 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Help Me Remember How Beautiful the World Is” Works by YaChin Bonny You. Opening reception at 7 p.m. at the Compound Gallery, 6602/6604 San Pablo Ave., Oakland. Exhibition runs through July 26. 655-9019. 

“This Town” Group art show of cities, people, cultures of Northern California. Opening reception at 7 p.m. at Exlectix Galery, 10082 San Pablo Ave., El Cerrito. www.eclectix.com 

“just because there are questions, does not mean there are answers” Installation by Sam Lopes, Joy Fritz and others. Opening reception at 7 pm. at Blankspace Gallery, 6608 San Pablo Ave., Oakland. 547-6608.  

“Wood and Water” Works by Mary Curtis Ratcliff and Anna Vaughan and “Forecast” Works by Julie Alvarado, Aaron Geman, Kathleen King and Joan Weiss. Opening reception at 6 p.m. at Mercury 20 Gallery, 25 Grand Ave., Oakland. Exhibition runs to Aug. 1. 701-4620.  

“Painting from a Deep Place” Works by Leigh Hyams and others. Reception at 7 p.m. at Oakopolis, 447 25th St., Oakland. Exhibition runs to July 11. 663-6920. 

“Shedding” Works by Kimberley Campisano and Yasmin Lambie-Simpson on the creative expression of change. Opening reception at 6 p.m. at Red Door Gallery, 416 26th St., Oakland. www.reddoorgalleryandcollective.com 

FILM 

The Afro-Mexican Presence in Film with sceenings of “The Forgotten Robot” and “The Third Root” at 7 p.m. at Oakland Museum of California, 1000 Oak at 10th, Oakland. Cost is $5-$8. 238-2200.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

UpSurge! Jazz poetry for the 3rd Annual Fredrick Douglass Day/Alternative 4th of July Celebration with the Frederick Douglas Youth Ensemble at 8 p.m. at Oakland Public Conservatory of Music, 1616 Franklin St., Oakland. Barbeque at 6 p.m. www.opcmusic.org 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Independence Day Celebration with the Oakland East Bay Symphony at 7 p.m. at Craneway Pavilion, inside the historic Ford Point Building, 1414 Harbor Way South, Richmond. Free. www.craneway.com 

Technohop Danceparty: In-degenerate’s Day Edition at 9 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10-$12. 849-2568.  

Danny Caron Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $12. 841-JAZZ.  

Justin Ancheta, Stitchcraft at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $8 with bike, $10 without. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Darol Anger’s Monster String Quartet with Brittany & Natalie Haas and Lauren Rioux at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761.  

Green Machine at 10 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790.  

Terrence Brewer Trio at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

SATURDAY, JULY 4 

THEATER 

Disney’s High School Musical: Summer Celebration at 7:15 p.m. at Craneway Pavilion, inside the historic Ford Point Building, 1414 Harbor Way South, Richmond. Activities from 5 p.m. on. Performance followed by fireworks. www.craneway.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Macy Blackman & The Mighty Fines at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $14. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Youssoupha Sidibe in a benefit for SEVA, at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $110-$13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Joshi’z 3 at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

SUNDAY, JULY 5 

EXHIBITIONS 

Squeak Carnwath: Painting Is No Ordinary Object, docent tour at 2 p.m. at Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak Sts. Admission is $5-$8. 238-2200. www.museumca.org 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Amy André, Sherilyn Connelly, Kimberly Dark, Daphne Gottlieb, and others read from “Visible: a Femmethology” at 6 p.m. at Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave. 649-1320. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Sing Out for Single Payer with Anne Feeney, Jon Fromer, Roy Zimmerman and many others at 5 p.m. at 33 Revolutions Cafe, 10086 San Pablo Ave., El Cerrito. 898-1836. www.33revolutions.com 

Americana Unplugged: Ragged but Right at 5 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

Jaz Sawyer’s Eight Legged Monster at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $12. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

MONDAY, JULY 6 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Subterranean Shakespeare “Henry VI, Part 2” Staged reading at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley Unitarian Fellowship, 1924 Cedar at Bonita. Tickets are $8 at the door. 276-3871. 

Aurora Theatre Company Script Club with Education Director Michael Mansfield on Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot” at 7:30 p.m. at 2081 Addison St. 843-4822.  

John and Pam Walker: From Chicago actors to the Academy Awards with bumps, reversals and triumphs at 7 p.m. at The Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St. Donation $5. 848-3227.  

Poetry Express with “Alexander” at 7 p.m. at Priya Restaurant, 2072 San Pablo Ave. 644-3977. 

TUESDAY, JULY 7 

FILM 

In the Realm of Oshima “Violence at Noon” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Zydeco Flames at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Dance lesson at 8 p.m. Cost is $10. 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. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

WEDNESDAY, JULY 8 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Zak Smith at 7:30 p.m. at Moe’s Books, 2476 Telegraph Ave. 849-2087. 

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 

Wade Love Band, soul, at noon at Oakland City Center, 12th and Broadway. 

Julian Pollack Group at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

The Itals, roots reggae, at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $15-$20. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Mestiza at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

Chip Taylor with Kendel Carson at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

THURSDAY, JULY 9 

CHILDREN 

Caddwynn the Magician at 3 p.m. at the Richmond Public Library, Main Children’s Room, 325 Civic Center Plaza, Richmond. 620-6557. www.richmondlibrary.org 

FILM 

Free Outdoor Movies at Jack London Square “Dead Calm” Come at 7:30 p.m., movies begin at sundown. Bring blankets and stadium seat. 645-9292. www.jacklondonsquare.com 

In the Realm of Oshima “The Man Who Left His Will on Film” at 6:30 p.m. and “Dear Sumer Sister” at 8:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Richard Whittaker: Works and Conversation Panel on art, nature and the environment, with Sam Bower, John Toki and Kathleen Cramer at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Art Center, 1275 Walnut St. Cost is $7, free to artist members. 644-6893. 

Tea Party Magazine: The Free Issue with poetry readings at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Peter Jan Honigsberg reads from “Our Nation Unhinged: The Human Consequences of the War on Terror” at 7:30 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Farallon Recorder Quartet with Annette Bauer, Letitia Berlin, Frances Blaker, and Louise Carslake perform works from the 14th century to the present at 8 p.m. at St. Alban’s Episcopal Church, 1501 Washington Ave., Albany. Tickets are $15-$20.  

Ed Gerhard at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Kelly Park Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Country Joe’s Open Mic with Mugg Muggles, Man of Many Manifestations at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists, 1924 Cedar St. Donation 45-$10. 841-4824. 

BASSment, Whiskey Hill at 9 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $7. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Mojo Stew at 10 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

FRIDAY, JULY 10 

THEATER 

Altarena Playhouse “Spitfire Grill” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. at Altarena Playhouse, 1409 High St., Alameda, through Aug. 16. Tickets are $17-$20. 523-1553. www.altarena.org 

Aurora Theatre “Jack Goes Boating” through July 19. Tickets are $28-$50. 843-4822 or visit auroratheatre.org.  

Contra Costa Civic Theatre “Thoroughly Modern Millie” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. at 951 Pomona Ave., El Cerrito, through July 19. Tickets are $15-$24. 524-9132. www.ccct.org  

Masquers Playhouse “Copenhagen” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sat. and Sun. at 2:30 p.m. at 105 Park Place, Point Richmond. Tickets are $10. 232-4031. www.masquers.org 

Pinole Community Players “Pump Boys & the Dinettes” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. at Community Playhouse, 601 Tennet Ave., Pinole, through July 11. Tickets are $17-$20. www.pinoleplayers.org 

Woodminster Summer Musicals “Peter Pan” at 8 p.m. at Woodminster Amphitheater in Joaquin Miller Park, 3300 Joachin Miller Rd., Oakland, through July 19. Tickets are $25-$40. 531-9597. www.woodminster.com 

EXHIBITIONS 

Patricia Leslie, animal portraits, watercolor and ink, from 5 to 8 p.m. at 2427 San Mateo St., Richmond. Enter gallery around corner, on Sacramento Ave. 

“Heart of the Mountain” Poems and paintings from Heart Mountain, Wyoming relocation camp by members of the Tachibana Ginsha poetry group while interned during WWII. Opening reception at 6 p.m. at K Gallery, Rhythmix Cultural Works, 2513 Balnding Ave. Alameda. www.rhythmix.org 

“Up Against the Wall: Berkeley Posters from the 1960s” at the Berkeley Historical Society, Veterans Memorial Building, 1931 Center St. Exhibit runs to Sept. 26. 848-0181. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Debra Grace Khattab and Leah Steinberg will read their poetry at 7 p.m. at Nefeli Caffe, 1854 Euclid Ave. 

David Watts reads from “The Orange Wire Problem and Other Tales from the Doctor’s Office” at 7:30 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Cafe Americain, gypsy jazz, at noon at the Kaiser Center Roof Garden, on top of the parking garage, 300 Lakeside Drive, Oakland. Free. www.KaiserCenterRoofGarden.com 

Point Richmond Summer Concert with Michael Van, Americana, at 5:30 p.m. and Still Time, groove rock, at 6:45 p.m. at Park Place at Washington Ave., Point Richmond. www.pointrichmond.com 

Gateswingers Jazz Band at 7:30 p.m. at 33 Revolutions Record Shop amd Cafe,10086 San Pablo Ave. at Central, El Cerrito. 898-1836.  

Bossa Five-O at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $14. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Sambada and Tambores Remelxo, Brazilian, at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $10-$13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Alexis Harte at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761.  

The Real Sippin Whiskeys, The Family at 9 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $8. 841-2082.  

The Dave Stein Bub-Hub at 10 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790.  

Terrence Brewer Trio at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

SATURDAY, JULY 11 

CHILDREN  

“Ciguapas” Stories from the Dominican Republic Sat. and Sun. at 12:30 and 3 p.m. at Children’s Fairyland, 699 Bellevue Ave., Oakland. Cost is $7. 452-2259. www.fairyland.org 

“Happy To Be Girls” with illustrator Jenny Matteson at 1 p.m. from 1 to 4 p.m. at Museum of Childrens Art, 538 9th St., Oakland. 465-8770.  

THEATER 

Woman’s Will “The Taming of the Shrew” at 1 p.m. at John Hinkle Park. Free.  

FILM 

In the Realm of Oshima “Pleasures of the Flesh” at 6:30 p.m. and “Empire of Passion” at 8:20 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Moe’s 50th Anniversary Party from 3 to 8 p.m. at Moe’s Books, 2476 Telegraph Ave. 849-2087. 

Bay Area Poets Coalition open reading from 3 to 5 pm. at Strawberry Creek Lodge, 1320 Addison St. Park on the street. 527-9905. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Berkeley Opera “The Ballad of Baby Doe” at 8 p.m. at Julia Morgan Theater, 2640 College Ave. Tickets are $18-$48. 925-798-1300, www.berkeleyopera.org 

Bob Ernst & Ruth Zaporah, improvisers, at 8 p.m. at Western Sky Studio, 2525 8th St. Cost is $20. momentsnoticeinfo@gmail.com 

Aguacero with Rico Pabon, Sandra Garcia Rivera and Lina G. Torio at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10-$12. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Bayside Jazz with Dan Hicks at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $14. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Baba Ken & Kotoja at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. African dance lesson at 9 p.m. Cost is $10-$13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com  

Jim Kweskin at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

David Jeffrey Jazz Fourtet at 9:30 p.m. at Albatross, 1822 San Pablo Ave. Cost is $3. 843-2473. www.albatrosspub.com 

The Luke Thomas Trio at 10 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

Joshi’z 3 at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

Christopher Fairman, Pomegranate, Rocking Chairs at 9 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $9. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

SUNDAY, JULY 12 

EXHIBITIONS 

Meet the Museum Docent tour at 1 p.m. at Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak Sts. 238-2200. www.museumca.org 

Squeak Carnwath: Painting Is No Ordinary Object, curator tour at 2 p.m. at Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak Sts. 238-2200. www.museumca.org 

THEATER 

Woman’s Will “The Taming of the Shrew” at 1 p.m. at John Hinkle Park. Free.  

FILM 

Tribute to Hayao Miyazaki “My Neighbor Totoro” at 4 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Lee Goland Lives Tribute concert to the late songwriter at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña. Cost is $6-$12. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Gina Harris & Jason Martineau at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $12. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Americana Unplugged: The Backyard Party Boys at 5 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

Israeli Folkdance with Allen King at 1:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $7. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Jack Williams at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org


Alphonse Berber Gallery Opens on Bancroft

By Peter Selz, Special to the Planet
Thursday July 02, 2009 - 10:06:00 AM

A spirited new gallery opened recently on Bancroft Way in the former J. Goode men’s clothing store, which was designed by Julia Morgan. The new owners had the good sense to retain the fine mahagony racks which are now used as frameworks for showing paintings. The space was launched with an innovative group exhibition that included amazing kinetic sculptures by Margolin. 

Now showing is the work of three distinctive artists. The Alphonse Berber Gallery, which offers performance art, opened the current show with a work by the Macedonian artist Igor Josifov, who performed most recently at the inauguration of the new Modern Art Wing at the Art Institute of Chicago. At the gallery in Berkeley, he was joined by San Francisco performance artist Michael Ryan Noble. Josifov moved his naked body on a narrow ledge as well as up and down a stairway while his head was covered by a white cube, making it impossible for him to see where he trod. Only the head of his performance partner, Noble, was visible during the dynamic action, called Being You Uses Me. While the audience socialized, the two performers were an integral part of everyone’s peripheral vision.  

On the gallery walls there are evocative photographs by Josifov, many of them of the artist himself, wearing a mask, others addressing Christian and Moslem iconography. Many of them are rather frightening, indicating the artist’s awareness of the cultural and moral realities of contemporary life. 

Joshua Dildine, a young painter—in fact, still a student at Claremont Graduate University—is represented with a number of paintings, which prove that Abstract Expressionism is still alive and kicking. These are not latter-day appropriations of Action Painting, but a vigorous continuation of a 20th century tradition. They remind us of Joan Mitchell’s abstract landscapes. Dildine knows how to wield a wide brush to apply a mixture of oil and acrylic to canvas and achieves an effect of pulsing energy. I was particularly impressed by a 30x40-inch drawing in which a web of lines converge on or diverge from great black knots. 

The visitor of the exhibition will also be rewarded by Dana Costello’s delightful pictures of little girls in crisp school uniforms, standing in line, playing blind man’s bluff or just walking about. In the New York Times review of a previous Costello exhibition, Julia Leach compares her paintings to Henry Darger’s canvases with which the artist must be familiar. Her paintings too, are dream-like, but they are not weird pictures of little girls with penises. They are uncomplicated and enchanting.


Some Old Town Fun: ‘Millie’ Takes the Stage in El Cerrito

By Ken Bullock, Special to the Planet
Thursday July 02, 2009 - 10:07:00 AM

A Midwestern gal takes a bite of the Big Apple, gets her hair bobbed, dances the Charleston in a speakeasy and is busted in a raid; falls for the first ne’er-do-well she meets, instead of the successful boss she’s determined on; evades the toils of White Slavery—and lives happily ever after. 

That’s the lowdown on Thoroughly Modern Millie, the musical on stage at Contra Costa Civic Theatre in El Cerrito, carrying the torch of the ’60s film spoof of the Roaring ’20s that it’s fashioned after. (Which, in hindsight, looks like a crazy quilt of crossed talents: Julie Andrews, James Fox, Carol Channing—and the glorious Bea Lillie in her silver screen swan song—directed by Ross Hunter! Oh those eclectic ’60s ...)  

Summer ups the demand for frothy fare—as does the air of uncertainty around state and national issues, especially the economy. But Millie isn’t just a pleasant airhead, even if that’s how a few of the kids on the corner type our heroine. With Daren A. C. Carollo directing and Joe Simiele conducting the sextet that powers Liz Caffrey’s choreography and the singing of cast and ensemble—the production numbers are exciting, the pacing is crisp—if it’s frothy, that’s what it all gets whipped up into. 

Besides the street Millie arrives on, divested of purse, hat and scarf in the process, and the aforementioned speakeasy, as well as the precinct office for booking and a conga line of mug shots, the plot propels our novice flapper into a “theatrical” hotel, filled with forlorn Broadway wannabes; the typing pool of a high-powered office downtown; and the swank precincts of Cafe Society, if also its kitchen when dishwashing passes for legal tender.  

Millie (Morgan Breedveld) meets man-about-town Jimmy Smith (Ron Houk), a jack-of-all-trades, as well as other hyphenated non-professions; Mrs. Meers (Laurie Strawn, playing Bea Lillie’s nutty role as a would-be diva posing as crossover dragon lady), who runs the hotel, and her behind-the-scenes accomplices Ching Ho (Bryan Pangilinan) and Bun Foo (Natalie Tse); statuesque ingenue Miss Dorothy Brown (Hannah M. Newton), the girl (in the hotel room) next door; Miss Flannery (Marisa Borowitz), who runs the corps-de-bureau with an iron hand for adored (if frenetic) boss Trevor Graydon (Tom Reardon); and socialite/chanteuse (on the Red Hot Mama side), Muzzy Van Hossmere (Patty Penrod). 

A show like this is dependent on a few elements: competent leads to further plot and romance; a gallery of eccentric characters and the actors who can bring them to zany life; and a hardworking ensemble that can swing into action, yet turn on a dime, going from auditioners to barflies, stenographers to haute monde ... and back again. CCCT manages well in all categories, not always a given in community theater, which just adds to the warmth of its neighborly, family-oriented feeling. 

It all gets nutty as soon as Millie checks in to Mrs. Meers’ sinister hostelry—and when Ching Ho and Bun Foo burst out in a Cantonese reprise, replete with supertitles (and other operatic exaggerations), of Millie’s brave little number, “Not for the Life of Me,” giving pre-talkies Al Jolson a run for his Hong Kong dollar. The show switches into high gear right after intermission with Millie, Miss Flannery and a phalanx of lovelorn typists avowing to “Forget About the Boy.” 

If I’m evading the story more than a little, it’s because it’s a mixture of surprises and camped-up clichés—all in the cleverness of the doing, a kaleidoscope of off-the-wall burlesques of oldtime big-town fun that still delivers the goods, revolving around Lisa Johnson’s great Manhattan set, with Adam Fry and Travis Rexroat’s lights and sound and costumer Melissa Anne Paterson’s period dress sprucing up nearly two dozen livewire performers intent on having fun—and conveying it. 

 

THOROUGHLY MODERN MILLIE 

8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays; 2 p.m. Sundays through July 19, at Contra Costa Civic Theatre, 951 Pomona Ave., El Cerrito. $15-$24. 524-9132. www.ccct.org. 

Contra Costa Civic Theatre will host a cast reunion party, an event in their ongoing 50th anniversary celebration, Saturday, July 24. Cast members from 1960 through the present are invited.


Fabulous and Loopy ‘Jack Goes Boating’ at the Aurora

By Ken Bullock, Special to the Planet
Thursday July 02, 2009 - 10:08:00 AM

Jack Goes Boating, Bob Glaudini’s play now onstage at the Aurora, is a little bit of a double work-buddies comedy—Jack and Clyde drive limo for Jack’s uncle; Lucy supervises Connie, selling grief seminars in a funeral home phone tank—combined with a couples comedy, though these four are no Bob, Carol, Ted and Alice, much less the lost souls of Carnal Knowledge.  

There’s a sense of the hybrid about Jack Goes Boating; it never breaks down into its constituent elements, as many contemporary comedies seem to, becoming protracted, live theater versions of TV sketch or situation comedy. Neither does it define an idiosyncratic form of its own.  

Most interesting, most important: although Jack operates off a basic premise, a comic situation that develops (if sometimes sideways, even verging on shaggy dog) as well as acquiring tempo and volume by employing running gags and goofy situations that build up, almost vertiginously, the truest humor is conveyed by texture, by the feel of the characters and events, a kind of studied over-familiarity that becomes at times an almost grotesque strangeness, without losing a basic warmth, its humanity.  

There’s a tradition—or perhaps overlapping traditions—in American humor for something like the kind of tone Jack achieves, maybe closest to the work of two writers who were inspired by Sherwood Anderson, started out with stories about the children of ethnic immigrants, then went into theater or screenwriting, living the lives of Hollywood or New York celebrity or professional: William Saroyan and John Fante. 

Glaudini himself has worked as a director. In his program bio, he singles out playwrights whose work he has directed who all espouse one or another form of absurdism or alienation: Beckett, Genet, Ionesco, Brecht, Pinter, Sam Shepard. Joy Carlin, who directed the Aurora show with both a light touch and sense of focus amid the attention deficiency of this menage, has directed a few absurd comedies, and one by Arthur Miller, The Price at the Aurora, which both incorporated and scrutinized absurd humor. It would seem Glaudini would be a director’s playwright in a field that often puts the director on the spot. 

The casting works very well: Danny Wolohan as deadpan, obtuse Jack, naive to a fault in his determination to be somehow positive; Beth Wilmurt, who took on a similar role under Carlin’s direction in Bosoms and Neglect at Aurora last year, here playing Connie, as intense and eccentric—and absent-minded—a loner as Jack. 

The two are brought together by the very different, long-bonded (perhaps in dysfunctionality) and more urban, if not exactly urbane Clyde. Gabriel Marin takes the role and poses his swaybacked orations on life with a vertiginous Body English; it’s great physical comedy. His better half by mutual consent, Lucy—played with pert layers of contradictory mood and wilfullness by Amanda Duarte—is the one mover-and-shaker on the scene, though whether she’s steaming straight ahead is hard to catch; still, her wake’s a formidable one. Their constant activity and verbosity prove counterpoint to Connie and Jack’s diffidence, and give the play much of its atmosphere. 

Atmosphere’s the thing, and a tangible part of it is hempen; one running, situational gag produces bigger—and presumably better—means to smoke. Another, really the axis or crux of the play, is Jack’s determination, assisted by an unlikely mentor in Clyde and the unseen third—or is it fifth?—wheel of “The Cannoli,” to master swimming so he can take Connie boating, study cuisine so he may cook for her, which she swears no other man has. 

Things go surprisingly well, though the coefficient to easy hopefulness is sudden disaster. A few of these moments cut through the genially nutty sociality of this unlikely little community, all towards middle age—will they see it through together or alone?—while doggedly displaying badges of protracted post-adolescence, against the background of New York, where every gesture or recognition seems “named into anonymity,” as poet Lew Welch put it. 

Melpomene Katakalos’ set, lit by Jim Cave, and Chris Houston’s sound design and music anchor this loopy tale, yet at moments, render it fabulous.  

 

JACK GOES BOATING 

8 p.m. Wednesday-Saturday; 2 and 7 p.m. Sunday through July 19 at Aurora Theatre, 2081 Addison. $28-$50. 843-4822. www.auroratheatre.org.


Moe’s Books Celebrates 50 Years

By Ken Bullock, Special to the Planet
Thursday July 02, 2009 - 10:10:00 AM

Who could have foreseen, in 1959 when Moe and Barb Moskowitz founded fabled, semi-eponymous Moe’s Books, that the 50th anniversary would be celebrated in the Telegraph Avenue store from 3 to 8 p. m., Saturday July 11, at full gale force, with hula dancing by Hui Hula o na Pu’u i ka Noe, cake, balloons, door prizes—and The Duke of Windsor as host? 

Moe, if not in the Almanach de Gotha, was certainly used-book gentry, elevated from yeoman shelver to the manor. (He also once played that sublime, potty-mouth usurper, King Ubu, on the boards for the Living Theare.) But his surprise would certainly be tempered by discovery of The Duke’s full title—prefixed by “DJ.” 

So there’ll be helium and sweets, and dancing in the stacks. And for the first 50 guests, a commemorative bag designed by Gregoire Vion, featuring an image of Moe offering a toast.  

“We have survived and even enjoyed the turbulence of these exciting decades,” remarked Doris Moskowitz, Moe and Barb’s daughter. “We protested in the ’60s, relished hot new tunes from all genres in the ’70s and ’80s, ate wonderful food from the Gourmet Ghetto in the ’90s, and shared our green consciousness with everyone.” 

Sadly, the celebration won’t feature the namesake himself, the fragrance of his cigar or his triumphant roar, equally of glee and irritation. But Moe’s presence pervades the store, on all its four levels, with photos, placards, memorabilia—and the green consciousness of “Moe Money,” the tradeslips bearing a Lincoln—or Ahab—esque rendering of the Founder on its face. 

Moe, née Morris, hailed from Queens, via the East Village. A dropout from his own Bar Mitzvah, he was affiliated with the Young Communist League and various anarchist circles, protesting the Second World War as a pacificist, enduring arrest several times. 

Merchant Marine A. B., poolshark, housepainter, Good Humor man, standee at the opera, frequenter of jazz clubs, closet violinist (till a shipmate chucked it overboard), Moe brought his motley resumé west in 1955, bound for Berkeley, where he married Barbara Stevens, a founder of Walden School. The two opened The Paperback Bookshop on Shattuck; Moe made picture frames in the back room. 

In 1963, the store—which has had five locations—relocated to Telegraph Avenue, just as the scene there went into full swing. In the basement was a pool table, then used LP’s. Just as several other bookstores figured as predecessors or descendents of Moe’s (though mention of affiliation was not always welcome), so a few of the best-known music stores, small presses and poster businesses came through or out of the store on Telegraph. (One version of the tale, told by various players, is featured as an issue of Cometbus, on sale at the Moe’s counter.) 

Views of the store were featured in the 1967 Mike Nichols film, The Graduate (a still of the Ave. and Moe’s storefront, out the window of Cafe Med past Dustin Hoffman’s face, is behind the counter.) Moe was busted for selling “dirty books”—Zap and Snatch Comix, the Scum Manifesto, Ron Cobb cartoons—in 1968; in the ’70s he debated members of GASP (Group Against Smokers Pollution) and went to court over his right to smoke Macanudos and Upmanns in his own shop. (The judge ruled he could smoke behind the counter.) David LanceGoines designed a sign for the store: “Everything Not Prohibited Is Compulsory.” 

Moe died, appropriately enough for a devotee of Rabelais, April 1, 1997, at age 76, after a full shift at the store. April 21, a “Moe-Morial” hosted by the store, was declared Moe Day in proclamation by Mayor Shirley Dean: “Whereas, Moe probably would’ve laughed at a proclamation like this ...” The Cal Jazz Band played, Julia Vinograd read poetry ... and the store carried on. 

“You have to understand, I’m a businessman by default,” Moe once said, “ ... I could have been an employee, but I couldn’t have gotten along with an employer.” 

(A letter from—and reply to—the future anarchist bookseller, querying an article in Politics, 1944, by Dwight Macdonald, may be found online at moesbooks.com, along with more Moe info and photo archives.) 

Maybe the best tribute came years before Moe trekked West, when Judith Malina of the Living Theatre said, “Moe Moskowitz, the anarchists’ Isis, is our Ubu.” 


Habimah Resurrects ‘The Dybbuk’

By Ken Bullock, Special to the Planet
Thursday July 02, 2009 - 10:09:00 AM

Habimah, Israel’s national theater—which is first associated with Stanislavsky, the Moscow Art Theatre and the stylized direction of Yevgeny Vakhtangov in 1917 in Moscow—will perform its signature play, The Dybbuk, in its only West Coast performances, July 8, 9 and 12. This new production, featuring live actors and puppets, will be at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in downtown San Francisco, complementing the ongoing exhibition, Chagall and the Artists of the Russian Jewish Theater 1919–1949, through Sept. 7. The exhibition features Natan Altman’s “faux-naif” color drawings for sets and costumes, as well as a set model, poster and program, and photographs of the original 1922 Habimah production—and Marc Chagall’s celebrated 1920 murals for the Moscow State Yiddish Theatre (GOSET). 

The Dybbuk, or Between Two Worlds, written by S. Ansky, after a folklore expedition during the early 20th century through the shtetls of Eastern Europe, is a Romeo and Juliet tale of the love between a young Talmudic scholar, Khanan, and Leah, the daughter of a wealthy merchant. The scholar engages in Kabbalistic studies to gain power to win Leah. When her father announces her engagement to a wealthy groom, Khanan dies, coming back on the eve of Leah’s wedding as a dybbuk, a dislocated soul become a malicious spirit, to possess her. A rabbi battles with the dybbuk over Leah in a ritual of exorcism. 

The first Habimah production, in Russian, featured the radical new production styles of Soviet theater and visual art, variously described as or compared to Cubism, Futurism, Expressionism, Suprematism and Constructivism. Vakhtangov, a protégé of Stanislavsky’s who had taken up the reins of the Moscow Art Theatre’s experimental First Studio after the stormy departure of the great stylized director, V. S. Meyerhold, directed the play in an aesthetic derived from what he had developed in the First Studio, along with others like Mikhail Chekhov, nephew of the playwright, described by Bertolt Brecht as “Stanislavsky plus Meyerhold—but before the split!” 

“For the Habimah, The Dybbuk has been a blessing and a curse,” said Dr. Donny Inbar, associate director for Arts and Culture of the Israel Center of the Jewish Community Federation, co-sponsors of the performances with the Israeli Consulate and the museum. “The Habimah was young, a dramatic studio, not even really a company at the time, and they start with a production that’s still considered one of the top theatrical events of the 20th century. A blessing! George Bernard Shaw was crazy about it, the King of England saw it: it was played for decades on every tour through Europe and America.  

“The curse? In many ways, Habimah has been on the decline ever since. No one could top this! There were some other good things, but the company was so closely identified with The Dybbuk that when Hana Rovina, who originated the role of Leah, got the part of a prostitute in a play ten years later, there were protests: ‘Leah cannot become a prostitute!’ She played the role of a virginal bride into her late 60s. They wouldn’t let her leave. Finally, after 40 years in the repertoire, well over a thousand performances, the production was closed by Habimah.” 

Indeed, the photograph of Rovina as Leah from the Moscow production became the icon of the Habimah—and of Jewish theater generally. 

After two further attempts to mount new versions of their signature play, both times with American directors and indifferent results, “the Habimah had the brilliant idea, for their 90th anniversary celebration last year, to produce three fringe productions, three new looks at the play—one, in dance; another, as storytelling theater from folktales, and the third, with three actors, who come onstage with suitcases and unpack props and puppets at a weird angular table, taken from Natan Altman’s original, which becomes a graveyard. It’s right out of Russian Futurism—and fits the angles of the Contemporary Jewish Museum.  

“The actors change places back and forth with the puppets,” Inbar recounted, “and with exaggerated makeup, bring in some humor, and a little bit of parody. Like Hamlet, The Dybbuk has become a cliché in Israel, and part of our lingo there parodies the play.” 

The puppets themselves may look familiar. Inspired by the stop-action animation puppets of Tim Burton’s The Corpse Bride, “which were in turn inspired by another Yiddish folktale with dybbuk elements,” according to Inbar, they put the show on “a scale of Vakhtengov to Tim Burton!” 

“This fringe production exorcised the curse from The Dybbuk,” Inbar said, “and breathes fresh air into the play. When I saw the exhibit on theater art that would open here, the first thing that came to my mind was to bring something with that breath of fresh air.” 

Inbar spoke of the wry contradictions surrounding every development in the history of the play’s success. “Ansky gave the play to Stanislavsky, in Russian, the outcome of his ethnographic journeys, meant to showcase what Jewish life was before the Revolution. To perform for audiences who didn’t know what Jewish experi- 

ence was, and also for Jewish audiences  

... Stanislavsky, a Christian, adds a  

major character, the Messenger. And Vakhtengov, an Armenian, steps in,  

Jewish audiences ... Stanislavsky, a Christian, adds a major character, the Messenger. And Vakhtengov, an Armenian, steps in, cuts two-thirds of the play, and makes magic with his incredible stylization.” 

Inbar continued with the parodox of The Dybbuk’s backstory and legacy. “The man who created what’s often considered to be the utmost Jewish religious experience on stage was the ultimate atheist! Ansky even wrote the anthem for a Jewish socialist group with lyrics saying something like, The Messiah is dead, Jewish labor is the Messiah. And Ansky plagiarized a satirical book from almost 50 years before, which parodies a rabbi trying to exorcise a dybbuk, something almost mega-anti-religious, anti-rabbinical, just leaving the jokes by the side. Some of it’s almost word for word. Usually, such things start with something serious, then become a parody!” 

Nobody knows whether Ansky wrote the original play in Russian or Yiddish, Inbar said; the original manuscript was lost. Stanislavsky had urged Ansky to translate the Russian version he was given into Yiddish. Ansky died of consumption in late 1920. The first production was mounted during the 30-day period of mourning by the Vilna Troupe, “one of the first Yiddish art theaters,” in Yiddish, and moved almost immediately to Warsaw. A year later, it was produced by New York City’s Yiddish Art Theatre. “Then H. N. Bialik, the national poet of Hebrew, translated it—and later the Hebrew was retranslated back into Yiddish. The Yiddish theater took it up everywhere in the world. Then the revolutionary Habimah production came along and changed Jewish theater forever. Both Yiddish and Hebrew versions come from the same original; it belongs to both canons. Yet there is nothing ‘authentic’ about this play!” 

The Habimah production will be in Hebrew with English supertitles. Donny Inbar will speak at the Museum at 7 p.m. August 13 on “The Theatrical Synagogue on the Secular Stage.” “The young secular Jewish theater, from 1876, was a massive secularizing force, at first dividing the Hasidim.” 

The Dybbuk was also made into a Yiddish feature film, one of the few now in existence, in 1937 in Warsaw, as well as “at least two other features in Israel, one placed in contemporary Jerusalem, a modern love story with fantastic imagery, that was at the Jewish Film Festival in San Francisco about 10 years ago, starring the actress who plays opposite Tom Hanks in the sequel to The Da Vinci Code. 

There’s even been a Noh version of The Dybbuk in Japan!” 

Leonard Bernstein composed a ballet score based on The Dybbuk. And Aaron Copland used a traditional melody collected by Ansky and incorporated into the play, in his piano trio, Vitebsk, named after Ansky’s birthplace. 

Ironically, Stalin helped preside at the Habimah’s birth, as People’s Commisar of the Affairs of Nationalities. The troupe left the Soviet Union in 1926, touring until coming to Palestine in 1928, making its home in Tel Aviv. Since 1958, Habimah has been officially Israel’s national theater. 

 

THE DYBBUK 

7 p.m. Wednesday-Thursday July 8-9; 5 and 7:30 p.m. Sunday, July 12 at the Contemporary Jewish Museum, 736 Mission St., San Francisco. $15-20, including museum admission, except Wednesday. A free, family-oriented puppet demonstration will be presented at 3 p.m. Sunday, July 12. $8-10; under 18, free; $5 after 5 p. m. Thursday. (415) 655-7815. thecjm.org.


About the House: Avoiding Floods with Hoses, Pans, Sensors and Pressure

By Matt Cantor
Thursday July 02, 2009 - 10:11:00 AM

Your washing machine is following you. OK, so I’m being a bit dramatic but it’s true. Your washing machine is trying to get into your bedroom.  

Decades ago, before the invention of the washing machine, houses were provided with concrete sinks in the basement with an inclined front edge just right for a washboard. (Now you only see washboards in antique stores or hanging on restaurant walls for ambiance.) The sinks were mounted in pairs so that one was for washing and the other for rinsing. They even had pairs of hot and cold faucets for each. You might have one of these in your basement and you’ll note that the old faucets have no threading on them because they were never intended to have hoses attached to them. 

Eventually, the faucets got changed, hoses were attached and washing machines were installed beside the old concrete basin. The years rolled by and eventually dryers were invented to the detriment of fabrics everywhere. The clotheslines sat lame and mothers went off to jobs in defense plants. 

More time passed and we all got even busier. Mom went back to school, moved into the working world alongside Dad and laundries began to appear in the small room beside the kitchen to save time. The laundry peered down the hallway and, when nobody was looking, crept down the hall into a closet with a pair of sliding doors. This is when things began to get a bit threatening—but I won’t get ahead of myself. Eventually, when the kids were off at school, the stacked pair (dryer on top) sneaked upstairs into a small closet across from the master bedroom where it stands, waiting for its chance to dart across the hall and into the master bedroom closet. It’s not there yet, but it’s just a matter of time.  

See, people want to do their laundry when they’re done with dinner, and if possible, during a late-night commercial break. They’re tired. They just don’t want to go down to the kitchen or, “Please G-d, No!”, the basement. This is why the laundry has been gradually creeping upward through the house all these years. 

The problem is that washing machines leak every now and again, and when they do, they can cause enormous damage inside the home. When they were in the garage or the basement, this wasn’t such a big deal. But the further up in the house they go, the more devastating a washing machine leak becomes.  

There are, however, solutions. The first thing I will always recommend is the easiest and the cheapest because that’s the kind of guy I am. This is to replace the rubber hoses with the “No-Burst” type. They go by various names but are easily identified by the metal woven jacket around the entire length of the hose. They look a bit like the steel belts on a tire when the rubber is worn away. These prevent the most common laundry leak, that being the one that occurs when the hose eventually becomes so cracked and worn that it bursts forth with as much water as can escape prior to your unpleasant return home. This most often occurs to lawyers who’ve recently bought a lot of art work which is still sitting on the floor downstairs. 

A more expensive secondary step (but well worth the money) is the installation of a pan below the washing machine with a drain that carries overflow to a safe locale. This can be quite difficult to achieve if the washing machine is well inside the house on the second floor but is not nearly so difficult if the laundry backs up to an outside wall. There’s also nothing wrong with terminating the drain just outside the wall up on the second floor. It’s just for emergencies and sure beats a saturated interior. Architects, take note: Adding a drain during construction in almost any location is easy but very expensive after the interior is complete. 

A third method is to employ one of the new “Floodstop” products that not only senses a leak but actually turns off the water leading to the washing machine (or water heater, dishwasher, etc.). Like the pan and drain method, they are also quite suitable to water heaters that are inside the house and especially for those machines located in the upstairs. The devices are available for washing machines, water heaters, dishwashers and icemakers. The same company also markets a device for sump pumps to alert you to an overflow. 

These devices cost around $70-$90, which is cheap when you consider the damage that can be caused by a washing machine or water heater leak. 

As noted, this issue extends to a range of other pieces of equipment and there are a few other ways to prevent flooding in the home that are well worth pointing out. While a sink drain might leak and cause damage to the sink cabinet, the greater concern is a burst water line to the faucet. The flexible connectors below sinks and also those connected to toilets are often the flexible plastic/fiberglass type and can burst just like their washing machine counterparts. The “No Burst” connector is available for these as well and the low cost makes this sort of safety hard to turn down. 

So, let’s say that you’ve put a pan with a drain below your washing machine and your water heater and you’ve changed all the plastic or rubber flexible water connectors in the house to the metal braided type. What’s left? Well there is one remaining item and it’s something you can do even if you do nothing else. For many of us, the water pressure in our houses is quite high. If it’s over 80 pounds (PSI), it’s kind if high and if it’s well above 100 it’s serious. I occasionally see a house that’s over 150 and they’re usually in the hills where the water pressure gets a big boost to make it to the top. Houses with high pressure, not surprisingly, have more floods and there is, once again, a fairly simple fix, that being the installation of a pressure regulator (or pressure reducing valve). This devices mounts near the main water valve to the house and lowers the pressure of the entire system, thus reducing the propensity for pipes, connectors and devices to leak. If your plumbing is badly corroded and filled with mineral deposits this may reduce your shower flow somewhat but it may be best to tackle that problem with some new piping. 

So with these things in mind, it’s no big deal that the washing machine is now upstairs across from your bedroom but if you’re like me, you probably still won’t be able to get the laundry done.  


Community Calendar

Thursday July 02, 2009 - 09:54:00 AM

THURSDAY, JULY 2 

Berkeley Recycling Center BBQ & Open House See Berkeley’s recycling program in action with tours of buyback and donation operation, watch sorting and baling equipment, observe off-loading of curbside trucks, from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Berkeley Recycling Center, 2nd St. and Gilman St. 524-0114.  

Come Play Board Games at 3 p.m. at the Richmond Public Library, Main Children’s Room, 325 Civic Center Plaza, Richmond. Most of the games are only suitable for ages 3 and up. 620-6557.  

Red Cross Blood Drive from noon to 6 p.m. at the American Red Cross bus at 2106 Shattuck Ave. To schedule an appointment go to www.BeADonor.com 

Circle of Concern Vigil meets on West Lawn of UC campus across from Addison and Oxford, Thurs. at noon and Sun. at 1 p.m. to oppose UC weapons labs contracts. 848-8055. 

Summer Dance Party EveryThurs. at 7:30 p.m. at Live Oak Park. Teachers will lead a variety of dances from around the world. All ages at 7:30, teens and adults at 8:30. Cost is $2 children, $5 adults. 

Fitness Class for 55+ at 9:15 a.m. at Jewish Community Center, 1414 Walnut St. 848-0237. 

FRIDAY, JULY 3 

Kensington First Friday Art Walk from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m., with street musicians, free refreshments at participating businesses on Colusa Circle, as well as works by local artisans. 525-6155.  

Circle Dancing, simple folk dancing with instruction at 7:30 p.m. at Finnish Brotherhood Hall, 1970 Chestnut St at University. Donation of $5 requested. 528-4253. www.circledancing.com 

Sideshow weekend at Playland-Not-At-The-Beach Celebrate P.T. Barnum's birthday with a trip to the sideshow Fri.-Sun. from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at 10979 San Pablo Ave., El Cerrito. Cost is $10-$15. 932-8966. www.playland-not-at-the-beach.org 

Berkeley Women in Black weekly vigil from noon to 1 p.m. at Bancroft and Telegraph. Our focus is human rights in Palestine. 548-6310. 

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 

Berkeley Chess Club meets every Fri. at 7 p.m. at the Hillside School, 1581 Le Roy Ave. 843-0150. 

SATURDAY, JULY 4 

4th of July at the Berkeley Marina with entertainment, food, games, arts and crafts booths and more, from noon to 9:30 p.m.. Fireworks at the Berkeley Pier at 9:30 p.m. No cars after 7 p.m. 

Walking Tour of Jack London Waterfront Meet at 10 a.m. at the corner of Broadway and Embarcadero. Tour lasts 90 minutes. Reservations can be made by calling 238-3234. www.oaklandnet.com/walkingtours 

El Cerrito’s Fourth of July Celebration, with carnival games, rides, circus performances and live music, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. at Cerrito Vista Park on Moeser Lane, El Cerrito. www.el-cerrito.org 

Fireworks at Jack London Square with music at 7 p.m., fireworks at 9:15 p.m. Free. www.portofoakland.com 

Disney’s High School Musical: Summer Celebration at 7:15 p.m. at Craneway Pavilion, inside the historic Ford Point Building, 1414 Harbor Way South, Richmond. Activities from 5 p.m. on. Performance followed by fireworks. www.craneway.com 

Independence Day on the Aircraft Carrier USS Hornet with live music, interactive games and tours of the carrier, from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. at 707 W. Hornet Ave., Pier 3, Alameda. Cost is $10-$25. 521-8448, ext. 282. www.hornetevents.com 

People’s Weekly World Celebrates the 50th Anniversary of the Cuban Revolution, as well as the 40th anniversary of the first Venceremos Brigade with music, Cuban food and art exhibition from 1 to 5 p.m. at 2232 Derby St. Cost is $12. 548-8764. 

Adbusters July 4th Event with Adbusters contributing editor on the future of the anti-corporate movement in America at 6 p.m. at The Long Haul Infoshop, 3124 Shattuck Ave. micah@adbusters.org 

Free Sailboat Rides from 1 to 4 p.m. at the Cal Sailing Club, Berkeley Marina. Wear warm, waterproof clothing and bring a change of clothes in case you get wet. Children 5 and over welcome with parent or guardian. www.cal-sailing.org 

Free Garden Tours at Regional Parks Botanic Garden Sat. and Sun. at 11 a.m. and 2 pm. Regional Parks Botanic Garden, Tilden Park. Call to confirm. 841-8732. www.nativeplants.org 

Lawn Bowling on the green at the corner of Acton St. and Bancroft Way every Wed. and Sat. at 10 a.m. for ages 12 and up. Wear flat soled shoes, no heels. Free lessons. 841-2174.  

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. 

Open Shop at Berkeley Boathouse from 1 to 5 p.m. at at 84 Bolivar Dr., Aquatic Park. Take part in constructing a wooden boat or help out with other maritime projects. No experience necessary. First time is free, cost is $10 per day. 644-2577. www.watersideworkshops.org 

SUNDAY, JULY 5 

Bay Trail Bike Bash Brunch for the grand opening of the new Ford Point Bay Trail at at 8 a.m. at Craneway Pavilion, 1414 Harbor Way South, Richmond. Ribbon-cutting at 9:30 a.m. www.craneway.com 

Social Action Summer Forum with Carson Perez, Program Associate for the Children’s Defense Fund California on “Freedom Schools, Children’s Sabbath, and the Goals of the Children’s Defense Fund” at 10 a.m. at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, 1 Lawson Rd., Kensington. 525-0302, ext. 306. 

Free Garden Tours at Regional Parks Botanic Garden in Tilden Park Sat. and Sun. at 11 a.m. and 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 

Huston Smith on “Tales of Wonder” at 11:30 a.m. at Epworth UMC, 1953 Hopkins St.  

Tibetan Buddhism with Judy Rasmussen on “Creating Positive Community” at 6 p.m. at the Tibetan Nyingma Institute, 1815 Highland Pl. 809-1000. www.nyingmainstitute.com 

MONDAY, JULY 6 

Sunset/Moonrise Waterfront Walk Join Friends of Five Creeks to explore the Berkeley waterfront at dusk, including new and upcoming restorations. Meet at 6 p.m. at Sea Breeze Delicatessen, 598 University, just west of I-880/580. This is an easy, mostly level walk of about 2.5 hours. No dogs allowed on parts of trail. 848- 9358. www.fivecreeks.org 

Make a Scraper Bike Come and decorate your wheels, we will provide foil, candy wrappers, and other flashy stuff to decorate with. Bring your bike. At 4 p.m. at the West Side branch library, 135 Washington Ave., Richmond. 620-6557. www.richmondlibrary.org 

“Castoffs” Knitting Group at 7 p.m. at Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave., Kensington. 524-3043. lodea@ccclib.org 

Community Yoga Class 10 a.m. at James Kenney Parks and Rec. Center at Virginia and 8th. Seniors and beginners welcome. Cost is $6. 207-4501. 

Three Beats for Nothing South Mostly ancient part music for fun and practice meets every Mon. at 3 p.m. at the South Berkeley Senior Center, Ellis at Ashby. 655-8863. asiecker@sbcglobal 

East Bay Track Club for girls and boys ages 3-15 meets Mon. and Wed. at 6 p.m. at Berkeley High School track field. Free. 776-7451. 

Morning Meditation Every Mon., Wed., and Fri. at 7:45 a.m. at Rudramandir, 830 Bancroft Way at 6th. 486-8700. 

Small-Business Counseling Free one-hour one-on-one counseling to help you start and run your small business with a volunteer from Service Core of Retired Executives, Mon. evenings by appointment at Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. For appointment call 981-6148. www.eastbayscore.org 

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. 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 

TUESDAY, JULY 7 

Birds and Butterflies: Easy Garden Enchantment Learn about water-wise, wildlife friendly gardening with the Audubon Nature Studies Class. Meets for five Tues. from 7 to 9 p.m. at Albany Adult School, 601 San Gabriel. Register at http://www.albany.k12.ca.us/adult/birding.html 

“The Conscience of Nhem En” with filmmaker Steven Okazaki at 7 p.m. at Jewish Community Center East Bay, 1414 Walnut St. Also showing “Smile Pinkie.” RSVP to https:www.homeboxoffice.com/rsvp/oscarshorts. 888-684-0385. 

“Fresh” Screeening of film about our food system at 8:30 p.m. at Saul’s Restaurant and Deli, 1475 Shattuck Ave. Suggested donation $10. saulsdeli.com 

Make a Scraper Bike Come and decorate your wheels, we will provide foil, candy wrappers, and other flashy stuff to decorate with. Bring your bike.At 4 p.m. at the Bayview branch library, 5100 Hartnett Ave., Richmond. 620-6557. www.richmondlibrary.org 

Red Cross Blood Services Volunteer Orientation from 6 to 8 p.m. at 6230 Claremont Ave., Oakland. learn about ways to greet, inform and thank our community’s blood donors; deliver blood; call donors; or help with special projects.Registration required. 594-5165. 

Introduction to Improv Theater and Acting with Pan Theater in downtown Oakland, from 8 to 10 p.m. For ages 18 and up. Free. Advance registration requested pantheater@comcast.net 

“On Communism, Leadership, Stalin and the Experience of Socialist Society” A discussion at 7 p.m. at Revolution Books, 2425 Channing Way. 848-1196. 

Tuesday Tilden Walkers Join a few slowpoke seniors at 9:30 a.m. in the parking lot near the Little Farm for an hour or two walk. 215-7672, 524-9992. 

Street Level Cycles Community Bike Program Come use our tools as well as receive help with performing repairs free of charge. Youth classes available. Tues., Thurs., Sat. and Sun. 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. 

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. 

Bridge for beginners from 12:30 to 2:15 p.m., all others 12:30 to 4 p.m. Sing-A-Long at 2:30 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5190. 

WEDNESDAY, JULY 8 

Walking Tour of Old Oakland around Preservation Park to see Victorian architecture. Meet at 10 a.m. in front of Preservation Park at 13th St. and MLK, Jr. Way. Tour lasts 90 minutes. Reservations can be made by calling 238-3234. www.oaklandnet.com/walkingtours 

“Salvador: I Want My People to Live” a documentary about the FMLN victory in the 2009 Salvadoran elections at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña. 849-2568. 

Free Screening of “Is the Crown at War with Us?“ as part of the Radical Film Nite with free popcorn and post-film discussion, at 8 p.m. at the Long Haul Infoshop, 3124 Shattuck Ave. 540-0751. www.thelonghaul.org 

“The Real Dirt on Farmer John” A documentary about a mavarick midwestern farmer at 7:30 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St., Oakland. Donation $5. www.Humanist Hall.org 

Backpacking Kings Canyon National Park at 7 p.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. 527-4140. 

Square Dancer Program A new 14-week series begins at the Montclair Women's Center, 1650 Mountain Blvd. Oakland. For details esirbu@sbcglobal.net or 531-6843. 

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 6:30 p.m. followed by Peace Walk at 7 p.m. at Berkeley BART station. 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. 

Berkeley CopWatch Drop-in office hours from 6 to 8 p.m. at 2022 Blake St. 548-0425. 

THURSDAY, JULY 9 

Creeks, Parks, & Gardens Walk for walkers age 50+ to discover community gardens, restored creeks, environmentally friendly landscaping, and a “hidden” Albany park on a level, 3.5 mi. walk. Meet at 9 a.m. at the garden next to Berkeley Bagels, 1281 Gilman, near Santa Fe. Wear comfortable shoes, bring water and snack. Walk is free but numbers are limited. Please register at Albany Senior Center, 846 Masonic. 524-9122, or Albany Community Center, 1249 Marin. 524-9283. 

East Bay Mac Users Group With presentations of the Omni Group's OmniFocus and OmniGraffle by David Alter and Howard Cohen at 7 p.m. at Expression College for Digital Arts, 6601 Shellmound Street, Emeryville. http://ebmug.org 

Caddwynn the Magician will present her magic show at 3 p.m. at the Richmond Public Library, Main Children's Room, 325 Civic Center Plaza, Richmond. 620-6557. www.richmondlibrary.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.m. to oppose UC weapons labs contracts. 848-8055. 

Summer Dance Party EveryThurs. at 7:30 p.m. at Live Oak Park. Teachers will lead a variety of dances from around the world. All ages at 7:30, teens and adults at 8:30. Cost is $2 children, $5 adults. 

Fitness Class for 55+ at 9:15 a.m. at Jewish Community Center, 1414 Walnut St. 848-0237. 

FRIDAY, JULY 10 

Tsukimi Kai Fundraiser with Nikkei and Latino music and dance, raffle and silent auction at 7 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10-$20. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Water Safety Skills Class for parents and caregivers from 10:30 a.m. to noon at Habitot Children’s Museum, 2065 Kittredge St. 647-1111. www.habitot.org 

Circle Dancing, simple folk dancing with instruction at 7:30 p.m. at Finnish Brotherhood Hall, 1970 Chestnut St at University. Donation of $5 requested. 528-4253. www.circledancing.com 

Red Cross Blood Drive from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Kaiser Permanente Office, Dining Conference Room, 1950 Franklin St., Oakland. To schedule an appointment go to www.BeADonor.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. 

Berkeley Chess Club meets every Fri. at 7 p.m. at the Hillside School, 1581 Le Roy Ave. 843-0150. 

SATURDAY, JULY 11 

The Crucible’s 9th Annual Fire Arts Festival Wed.-Sat. at 8 p.m. at Fire Arts Arena, W. Grand Ave. and Wake Ave., Oakland. www.thecrucible.org 

Impact Theatre Benefit Poker Tournament at La Val’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid Ave. Tickets are $50. impacttheatre.com 

“Breads and Tortillas: Eat Your Way Through History” from 2 to 4 p.m. at the Peralta Hacienda Historical Park, 2465 34th Ave., Oakland. Cost is $1. Tours of the house also available. Wear socks. 532-9142. www.peraltahacienda.org 

Common Agenda Regional Network Meeting on the California budget crisis, U.N. Durban Review Conference, alternatives to the death penalty and John Yoo, at 2 p.m. at Gray Panthers’ office, 1403 Addison St., 527-9584. 

Rabbit Adoption Day from 1 to 4 p.m. at RabbitEars, 377 Colusa Circle. 525-6155. 

Introduction to Improv Theater and Acting with Pan Theater in downtown Oakland, from 10:45 a.m. to 12:45 p.m. For ages 18 and up. Free. Advance registration requested pantheater@comcast.net 

“Bamboo” Learn about the right types to plant in your garden at 10 a.m. at Magic Gardens, 729 Heinz Ave. Free. 644-2351. 

Adventure Weekend at Playland-Not-At-The-Beach Sat. and Sun. from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at 10979 San Pablo Ave., El Cerrito. Cost is $10-$15. 932-8966. www.playland-not-at-the-beach.org 

Free Garden Tours at Regional Parks Botanic Garden Sat. and Sun. at 11 a.m. and 2 pm. Regional Parks Botanic Garden, Tilden Park. Call to confirm. 841-8732. www.nativeplants.org 

Lawn Bowling on the green at the corner of Acton St. and Bancroft Way every Wed. and Sat. at 10 a.m. for ages 12 and up. Wear flat soled shoes, no heels. Free lessons. 841-2174.  

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. 

Open Shop at Berkeley Boathouse from 1 to 5 p.m. at at 84 Bolivar Dr., Aquatic Park. Take part in constructing a wooden boat or help out with other maritime projects. No experience necessary. First time is free, cost is $10 per day. 644-2577. www.watersideworkshops.org 

 

 

SUNDAY, JULY 12 

Medicinal Plants in Strawberry Canyon Learn the historical and modern medicinal applications with any utilitarian potential, from 10 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Bring water, snacks/lunch, hat/sunscreen, a notebook, and a camera. Cost is $25. To register call 428-1810 or email bluewindbmc@yahoo.com 

“Specter of Revolution Stalks Iran’s Theocratic Rulers” A discussion at 10:30 a.m. at Niebyl-Proctor Marxist Library, 6501 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. 658-1448. 

Free Hands-on Bicycle Clinic Learn how to repair a flat, from 10 to 11 a.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. Bring your bike and tools. 527-4140. 

Social Action Summer Forum with Antonio Medrano, Board Member for the West Contra Costa School District on “What’s Happening in the District?” at 10 a.m. at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, 1 Lawson Rd., Kensington. 525-0302, ext. 306. 

Huston Smith on “Tales of Wonder” at 11:30 a.m. at Epworth UMC, 1953 Hopkins St.  

Silpada Designs Jewelry Show and Sale to benefit the Adult Day Service Network of Alameda County from 2:30 to 4 p.m. at Salem Lutheran Home, 2361 East 29th St., Oakland. 534-3637. 

Free Garden Tours at Regional Parks Botanic Garden in Tilden Park Sat. and Sun. at 11 a.m. and 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 

Tibetan Buddhism with Erika Rosenberg on “Emotions in Mind” 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 2 to 6 p.m. at 84 Bolivar Dr., Aquatic Park. Also on Thurs. from 2 to 6 p.m. Cost is $5 per hour. 644-2577. www.watersideworkshops.org 

CITY MEETINGS 

Community Environmental Advisory Commission meets Thurs., July 2, at 7 p.m., at 2118 Milvia St. Nabil Al-Hadithy, 981-7460.  

Landmarks Preservation Commission/Zoning Adjustments Board Meeting meets Thurs., July 2, at 6 p.m., in City Council Chambers. 981-7429. 

Council Agenda Committee meets Mon., July 6, at 2:30 p.m., at 2180 Milvia St. 981-6900. 

www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/citycouncil/agenda-committee 

Housing Element Community Meeting Wed., July 8, at 7 p.m., at the South Berkeley Senior Center. 981-7416.  

Planning Commission meets Wed., July 8, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-7416. 

Police Review Commission meets Wed., July 8, at the South Berkeley Senior Center, 981-4950. 

Waterfront Commission meets Wed., July 8, at 7 p.m., at 201 University Ave. 981-6737.  

Commission on Early Childhood Education meets Thurs., July 9, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5428.  

Community Health Commission meets Thurs., July 9, at 6:45 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5356.  

West Berkeley Project Area Commission meets Thurs., July 9, at 7 p.m. at the James Kenney Recreation Center, 8th & Virginia. 981-7418.  

Zoning Adjustments Board meets Thurs., July 9, at 7 p.m., in City Council Chambers. 981-7430.  

Housing Element Community Meeting Thurs., July 9, at 7 p.m., at the South Berkeley Senior Center. 981-7416.