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Early closing at BA, Telegraph, Saturday. Protestors are banging on bank windows, making demands. Rev. Billy is seventh from left.
Ted Friedman
Early closing at BA, Telegraph, Saturday. Protestors are banging on bank windows, making demands. Rev. Billy is seventh from left.
 

News

Details About Berkeley Hills Killing Emerge Slowly--New BPD Release Lacks Name of Victim

Monday February 20, 2012 - 06:55:00 PM

Berkeley Police continue to withhold the name of the man who was killed by a trespasser outside his home in the Berkeley Hills on Saturday night. However, more details about the story have emerged in a variety of Bay Area publications. Some of these have been confirmed in a Saturday evening press release from the Berkeley Police.

A report in the San Francisco Chronicle identifies the owner of the home where the crime took place and the probable victim as Peter Cukor, 67, a consultant with a logistics business. 

A report in the Alameda Patch said that the suspect who is in custody, Daniel Jordan DeWitt of Alameda, was a 2007 graduate of Alameda High School and a member of a prominent Alameda family. According to the Alameda Patch, his late grandfather, Al DeWitt, was the first African-American to serve on Alameda's City Council. 

His mother, Candy DeWitt, was quoted in the Chronicle as saying that her son had a history of mental illness, and details about what occurred the night of the killing seem consistent with this explanation if her son was indeed the assailant. The Chronicle story, based on information from unidentified sources, said the intruder hit the victim with a potted plant, and Jordan DeWitt, the suspect, was apprehended within a block of the Cukor home, apparently having made little attempt to flee. 

Various reports indicate that the reason the Berkeley police were slow to respond is that they were monitoring Occupy Oakland's Saturday night march into Berkeley. The latest BPD press release describes the sequence of events thus: 

 

"BPD received a report of a suspicious person possibly trespassing. The caller calmly reported an encounter with a strange person on his property, and asked for an officer to respond. This call for service was queued for dispatch.  

"At that time, available Patrol teams were being reconfigured in order to monitor a protest which was to come into Berkeley from Oakland in the next hour. Only criminal, in-progress emergency calls were to be dispatched, due to the reduction in officers available to handle calls for service. 

"BPD subsequently received a call of an attack in progress on Park Gate Rd. Officers were immediately dispatched to that call." 

 

However, Planet reporter Ted Friedman, one of the few who covered the march, said that few City of Berkeley Police were visible at the Occupy protest. The BPD press release does not offer a timetable for the Saturday night events surrounding the murder, including the response times. 

 

 


Press Release: Berkeley Police Department; additional information re: 2/18/12 Homicide X

From Lt. Andrew Greenwood, Berkeley Police Department
Monday February 20, 2012 - 06:53:00 PM

Coverage of the February 18 homicide generated a number of questions today. We are offering this additional information regarding the homicide from Saturday night, February 18, 2012: 

BPD received a report of a suspicious person possibly trespassing. The caller calmly reported an encounter with a strange person on his property, and asked for an officer to respond. This call for service was queued for dispatch. 

At that time, available Patrol teams were being reconfigured in order to monitor a protest which was to come into Berkeley from Oakland in the next hour. Only criminal, in-progress emergency calls were to be dispatched, due to the reduction in officers available to handle calls for service. 

BPD subsequently received a call of an attack in progress on Park Gate Rd. Officers were immediately dispatched to that call. 

Officers located the victim and immediately provided first aid. Berkeley Fire Department paramedics had also been assigned to respond, and were en route. Paramedics arrived on scene and took over care of the victim. 

We are not identifying the victim at this time. 

We are not releasing the booking photo at this time. We are working to insure that any subsequent identifications are not compromised through release of the photograph. 

We have no further information available at this time. 

The investigation in this case continues and is on-going. The suspect, Daniel Jordan Dewitt, remains in custody.


New: Occupy Oakland Marches to Berkeley to Stick it To Cops and Memorialize

By Ted Friedman
Sunday February 19, 2012 - 09:26:00 PM
Occupy Oakland hits the streets of Berkeley, saturday night.
Ted Friedman
Occupy Oakland hits the streets of Berkeley, saturday night.
 Running Wolf, Saturday, giving a rousing speech at Occupy Oakland's Cal Berkeley appearance, perhaps to give each other mutual aid.
Ted Friedman
Running Wolf, Saturday, giving a rousing speech at Occupy Oakland's Cal Berkeley appearance, perhaps to give each other mutual aid.
Bad business Saturday might at Haas School of Business, a mutual aid protest, in which Occupy Oakland and Occupy Cal join to condemn business as usual at Haas School of Business.
Ted Friedman
Bad business Saturday might at Haas School of Business, a mutual aid protest, in which Occupy Oakland and Occupy Cal join to condemn business as usual at Haas School of Business.
Occupy Cal, which teamed with Occupy Oakland for this protest, secured permission, from International House, rear, to pitch tents on cramped lawn in return for agreeing to not camp on I-H steps.
Ted Friedman
Occupy Cal, which teamed with Occupy Oakland for this protest, secured permission, from International House, rear, to pitch tents on cramped lawn in return for agreeing to not camp on I-H steps.

When Berkeley's bad-ass brothers next door pay a Telegraph Avenue visit to its smaller uptown brothers, you might expect trouble on the Avenue. You might also expect that the marchers from downtown Oakland might be met by police. 

But expectations went unfulfilled, as OO made nice, with self-memorials, while sticking it to cops. 

The action had been billed as yet another "Fuck the Police," march, just the most recent in a series of FTP marches that often end in violence. 

It takes two to tangle, as the saying goes, and our cops didn't tango. Nor did they tangle. 

Based on a tip, I surveyed Telegraph, starting at 9:45, looking for cops. At 10:15, I headed for the Andronicos parking lot, an ideal police staging area. The lot was vacant, but by 10:20, I could hear the marchers approaching Derby and Telegraph. 

They blocked traffic, but some cars honked their approvals. “Fuck the police” was chanted not like a mantra, but like an exercise in oral interpretation. Still there are only so many ways to intone the weird idea, which could be analyzed by critics as a latent love of police. 

Love and hate have mated before, and often make a handsome twosome. 

By the time the marchers, fifty strong, reached the basement of university police headquarters at the south side of Sproul Hall, the FTP theme was at high pitch, and it perseverated. 

Three UCPD officers positioned themselves outside the doors of their headquarters, which are located beneath a flight of stairs to the ground floor. The stairs to the headquarters were barricaded. 

That the protestors were not going to fuck with the police now seemed likely. But then, the police seemed uninterested in fucking back, anyway. 

As one protestor explained, "without Oakland police beating on us, we're peaceful." 

I joined the march for its ascent up Bancroft Way to International House, a Rockefeller write-off in the 1920s, home, at various times, to six Nobel prize winners. The idea of men and women living under the same college roof was scandalous. 

Why march to I-House? To support Occupy Cal, and to support Occupiers who were speaking at an I-House event. Occupy Cal has ties to Occupy Oakland, but not to Occupy Berkeley, whose student members have thrown in with OC. 

While pretending to "Fuck the Police," the two neighboring Occupys rubbed each other’s backs. 

With the permission of I-House management, Cal Occupiers had pitched six tents on a small patch of ground out front. 

Four grim-faced university cops, at the I-H doorway in riot gear, blocked entry to anyone, but I-House residents. 

Occupy Oaklanders chanted Fuck the Police. It is the kind of slogan that grows on you—like sneezing. 

But there were also short speeches. Berkeley boy Zachary Running Wolf Brown, who recently turned 49, and announced he was again opposing Tom Bates for mayor, seemed greatly popular with OO. 

Brown drew many cheers and hoots of approval with his emotional account of the action four years ago at Memorial Stadium to save sixty-six oak trees, a two-and-a-half year protest which Brown claimed had been costly to the university. 

Brown claimed that his speech brought tears to the eyes of one of the cops. That's as intimate as it got at Fuck the Police. 

At 11:30, two jam-packed-with-cops black sedans passed I-House. Their glares almost seemed to say, "well fuck you, too," but they'll just deny it. It was a brief appearance. The police never returned. 

Nor did they stir, when later a thinned OO of mostly students left I-H to tour campus sites connected with Occupy—radical tourism. 

First tour stop, was the remains of the oak grove, which was acknowledged as the father of the Occupy movement. Then on to Haas School of Business, which was soundly drubbed for living up to its name, as a score of Haas hires were criticized for their economics. 

Next up, Doe Library, where tenters had surprised police by relocating their tents in the dark of night, Wheeler Hall where OB had dumbfounded university police by rigging a balcony so that any attempt to dislodge occupiers would have tossed them all to their deaths. 

"Even Cal cops couldn't do that," the tour guide noted. Last stop was the Sproul Hall steps, scene last year of protests reaching thousands. Fuck the Police was down to less than ten. But at least no one was hurt, except perhaps the police, and, they'll just deny it 


Ted Friedman finds most of his Planet stories on the South side. 


New: Rev. Billy's Roadshow in Berkeley Occupies Telegraph B of A—Sort Of

By Ted Friedman
Sunday February 19, 2012 - 06:04:00 PM
Rev. Billy working the crowd, which grew to 35, Saturday outside Caffe Med, on Teley. "Never trust a man in white shoes," he cautioned.
Ted Friedman
Rev. Billy working the crowd, which grew to 35, Saturday outside Caffe Med, on Teley. "Never trust a man in white shoes," he cautioned.
Early closing at BA, Telegraph, Saturday. Protestors are banging on bank windows, making demands. Rev. Billy is seventh from left.
Ted Friedman
Early closing at BA, Telegraph, Saturday. Protestors are banging on bank windows, making demands. Rev. Billy is seventh from left.
Reverend Billy blocking BA ATM, saturday, on Telegraph
Ted Friedman
Reverend Billy blocking BA ATM, saturday, on Telegraph

The whole bizarre incident started, as usual, in front of the Caffe Mediterraneum—center of the universe, where a tall man who resembles Jay Leno had attracted a crowd. 

Saying, "never trust a man in white shoes," he carried on like a Southern Baptist preacher, a white-suited version of Johnny Cash, as a Berkeley Poet Laureate, Julia Vinograd, later symbolized him for her next poem. 

For the past forty years Berkeley has hosted scores of entertaining street performers, such as Moon Man (selling lots on the moon), Polka Dot Man, Ricky Starr, Stoney Burke, Bubble Lady, the Nude Duo, Naked Man, and Hate Man. 

Reverend Billy, as he bills himself, is Billy Talen, a "comic preacher," performance artist, and anti-consumerist activist, famous in the big apple, and beyond. He has been a guest of Steven Colbert, and was arrested at Goldman Sachs last year, in an Occupy action organized by Cornell West. 

In Berkeley for a conference at the university, Billy wasted no time, Saturday afternoon, mounting an Occupy protest against Bank of America, whom he accused of being one of the worst threats to the world's survival, ecology-wise, and financially-wise. 

In less than an hour, he had worked up a group of passersby and a core of supporters recruited through social networking to march on the Bank of America at Telegraph and Durant—a bank so damaged by a quarter century of window-breaking protests, it now resembles a walled fortress against the world. 

Less than an hour was needed to mobilize more than thirty-five "congregants" to take aggressive action against the bank, while Occupy Berkeley, reduced to a rabble, continues its Hamlet-quibbles downtown. 

With the goal of "invading BA's secret vaults" to see the people's money, and striking a blow "to their genitals, their tender spot" Rev. Billy led his ecstatic congregation, northward—to BA, stopping briefly in front of Pappy's Pub, for more exhorting. 

The idea was to be worked, up, as in ecstatic religious fervor. Moans of ecstasy and angst reverberated on Telegraph, a street with a history of both. 

After going to the wrong BA door, thinking the exit, locked from inside, was an entrance—a mistake made even by locals, Billy steered his congregation around the corner to the entranceway leading to the "secret vault." 

And, of course, the bank's golden balls. 

Billy commanded his followers to enter the bank in groups of no more than four. It was then one hour before BA's weekend closing. Although the first wave of occupiers got inside the bank, the door was soon locked, locking them in. 

After getting some pictures I wanted from inside, I and four others, were asked, by the branch manager to exit through the side exit we had thought was a way in. This would have been a great opportunity for sitting-in, while the fevered congregation banged mightily on the bank's glass doorway from outside. 

But I took my last photos, and rejoined the group outside. The bank closed, 45 minutes before its usual closing. 

Billy, a veteran street performer, went to plan B—assaulting the ATM stations on the Telegraph side of the BA fortress. There were no police anywhere on the avenue. 

But the assaults to the ATMs, while gnashing, and forceful, were not destructive. 

Crossed forearms, a signal adopted by Occupy to block an idea or proposal, were used to angrily block BA and its policies. But the secret vaults, and, of course, the gold balls, were unscathed—although they took a pretty-good metaphorical beating. 

It was then back to the Med, and Billy was hungry. 

Seated with his fans, and dining on a big salad, a burrito—cappuccino in hand—Billy told the wondrous story of his mid-life transformation from play-producer at Fort Mason in the eighties to street performer on Times Square, performing as Rev. Billy across the street from the Disney store, and a block and a half from the New York Times. 

At first New Yorkers "thought I was really a preacher, and wanted to know my denomination ("Church of Stop Shopping," if you want to know)," Billy said. He had fielded just such questions on Telegraph. 

He told us that he owes his success to a now ninety-year old man, related to 

Tennessee Williams on the Lanier side of the family. "I talk to Sydney everyday," Billy said. It was Sydney, who goaded Billy to give up his job, wife, and SF ways for the big apple. 

Billy soon made the leap from street performing a block and a half from the New York Times, to the front page of its Sunday Magazine. His audience world-wide is in the millions. 

Quite a success story in big-apple-town, which may have more street-talkers than Berkeley. His seat-of-the-pants protests ain't too shabby, either. 

_________________________________________________________________  

Ted Friedman reports for the Planet from South side, stories center of the universe. 

 


New: Bay Bridge Reopens Early

By Bay City News Service
Sunday February 19, 2012 - 06:07:00 PM

The Bay Bridge's westbound upper deck will reopen this evening, more than 24 hours ahead of schedule following a planned holiday weekend closure for demolition and construction work.  

With all planned demolition and maintenance work completed, California Department of Transportation Officials say they will begin removing cones from the bridge and approaches around 7 p.m.  

The first vehicles are expected to cross the bridge around 8 p.m., Caltrans spokesman Bart Ney said.  

Motorists passing through the toll plaza are asked to drive carefully, since the merge will be different. While 20 lanes will still merge down to 5, they will curve slightly to the south, Ney said. 

California Highway Patrol officers will escort the first drivers across and drivers are reminded to follow their lead and use patience when crossing the bridge tonight.  

"Don't drive past any CHP vehicles unless told to do so, don't enter into any coned off areas," said CHP spokesman Officer Sam Morgan. 

The bridge was not scheduled to reopen until Tuesday at 5 a.m., but Ney said unexpectedly good weather had allowed work to progress quickly. "The next time we plan to close the Bay Bridge will be to open the new Bay Bridge, Labor Day weekend 2013," Ney said. 

The bridge's upper deck was closed at 8 p.m. Friday to accommodate demolition and maintenance projects related to the construction of a new eastern span. Crews demolished sections fo roadway to make way for an inclined section that will eventually carry eastbound traffic.  

The closure has pushed a surge of southbound traffic on to the Golden Gate Bridge. 

Unofficial numbers show that more than 67,600 vehicles drove south over the bridge on Saturday, up from 39,799 vehicles on the Saturday of Presidents Day in 2011, Golden Gate Transportation District spokeswoman Mary Currie said.


Flash: Berkeley Police Arrest Homicide Suspect in Berkeley Hills Killing

Press Release From Sgt. Mary Kusmiss, Berkeley Police Information Officer
Sunday February 19, 2012 - 01:59:00 PM

Overnight, members of the City of Berkeley Police Department (BPD) arrested a male suspect for homicide just a short distance from where the crime took place.

On Saturday, February 18, 2012 at about 8:45 p.m. a community member called BPD from Shasta Road and Grizzly Peak Boulevard to report a suspicious person/trespassing suspect near the garage when she and her husband returned to their home. The husband confronted the suspect and told him to leave. Minutes later, the husband walked outside and was assaulted.


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The first arriving BPD officer rendered basic first aid to the victim until Berkeley Fire Department (BFD) paramedics took over and transported the victim to a local trauma center. Physicians pronounced the victim deceased at the hospital. BPD is not releasing the victim’s name until extended family and friends can be notified.
Additional BPD patrol officers went to the area to support the community member who called, as well as complete other aspects of the investigation such as securing the crime scene, completing neighborhood canvasses, talking to witnesses and searching for the suspect. A BPD patrol officer spotted a man who matched the description of the suspect within less than a block from the crime scene. Officers detained him. He was identified as the suspect, Daniel Jordan Dewitt, 23 years old of Alameda. 

BPD Homicide detectives from the BPD Crimes Against Persons Unit were called in and have taken over the investigation. They have been working throughout the night and morning. This marks the second homicide of the year. 

BPD is urging anyone who may know anything about this crime to please call the BPD Homicide Detail at (510) 981-5741 or the 24 hour BPD non Emergency number of (510) 981-5900. If a community member wishes to remain anonymous, he/she is encouraged to call the Bay Area Crimes Stoppers (BACS) at (800)-222-TIPS (8477). Any additonal information may be critical in the efforts towards the charging and prosecution of this case.  


Two Vallejo Quakes, Felt in Berkeley, Were a Cluster, Says Expert

By James Lanaras (BCN)
Friday February 17, 2012 - 11:03:00 AM

The U.S. Geological Survey has downgraded the magnitude of the most recent earthquake near Vallejo from 3.7 to 3.5. 

The quake, which was centered two miles south of Vallejo and was felt by Berkeley residents, occurred at 9:13 a.m. Thursday. On Wednesday, a 3.5-magnitude temblor occurred at 6:09 p.m. three miles south of Vallejo, according to the USGS. 

Sue Simon, the assistant to the Vallejo city attorney, said she felt both. 

"It was a small jolt then a big jolt," Simon said of this morning's quake. 

She said the jolts were about a half-second apart, and that she felt them from City Hall. 

"I was told the large windows in the building flexed out a little," Simon said. 

The USGS has received responses from throughout the Bay Area about the quake, most of them from the cities of Vallejo, Benicia, Napa, American Canyon and Martinez. 

Richard Allen, director of the Seismological Laboratory at the University of California at Berkeley, said he felt the "weak shaking" this morning that lasted a less than a second. 

He said it occurred close to the continuation of the West Napa Fault, which runs east of Santa Rosa southeast to Vallejo and is parallel to the Rodgers Creek and Hayward faults. 

Because both quakes were of magnitude 3.5, he considers them a cluster. If this morning's quake had been of a lesser magnitude, it would be considered an aftershock, Allen said. Both quakes had a depth of 5.7 miles, Allen said. 

Clusters are not that unusual, Allen said, noting that there were three or four small quakes in Berkeley in October.


Man Arrested In Massive Caffe Med Cop-Op, Back On Streets In Four Hours

By Ted Friedman
Friday February 17, 2012 - 09:11:00 AM
Entering men's shelter.
Ted Friedman
Entering men's shelter.
Homeless man awaits an opening in one of three shelter "cells" at the Berkeley men's shelter, in the basement of the Veteran's Memorial Building.
Ted Friedman
Homeless man awaits an opening in one of three shelter "cells" at the Berkeley men's shelter, in the basement of the Veteran's Memorial Building.
We moved Michael's belongings, Sunday, including the broom, from behind a car in a parking space--to alongside the apartment building. Mid-week, he had not returned.
Ted Friedman
We moved Michael's belongings, Sunday, including the broom, from behind a car in a parking space--to alongside the apartment building. Mid-week, he had not returned.
Lockers for homeless gear, at Berkeley Men's Shelter.
Ted Friedman
Lockers for homeless gear, at Berkeley Men's Shelter.

After yet another Caffe Med Berkeley Cop-Op Friday, to restrain a mentally ill man, it seemed the man was on his way to a forty-eight hour mental evaluation. But that's not the way it went down, as the Cop-Op devolved into a cop-out. 

As we reported in the Planet Saturday, the latest in a string of BPD cop-ops at the Med, Berkeley's—if not the world's—most notorious coffee house/cafe, started out as what seemed a routine 5150. 

Routine or not, the police intervention at the Med had required five squad cars; and a fire-truck; and an ambulance; and a squad of police; and plenty of paramedics. 

To Southsiders, the 5150, a police action to protect the public and the mentally ill from harm, is part of the Southside scene. Although not always, a 5150 invariably leads to a minimum 48 hours psych-hold, for evaluation. 

But a tipster in the Med said that Michael, busted Friday night, was back in the Med Saturday morning. He was, inexplicably, sweeping the floor with a straw broom. 

I was incredulous, even talked my tipster friend into a case of mistaken identity. But the next day I saw Michael near the Med where he had been busted on Friday. 

He said that he had been released from an emergency room four hours after his arrest. 

"They shot me up with a drug cocktail, I lay around at a doctor's house, and they released me." 

Michael was desperate for cigarette money, saying if he didn't get some cash for smokes, he'd steal them. I emptied out the slim assets in my billfold, $12, and handed it over. 

"I can get two packs with this," he noted. 

Michael doesn't remember which emergency room he was in, but he knows he didn't have to go to John George, a mental health treatment facility, something he had demanded, when he was arrested. 

Michael and I headed downtown for an agency I believed could help him. It was Sunday. I just wanted to show him the offices where someone could save him once more. Michael had been saved, and been lost, many times. 

First we had to visit the site where Michael had parked his shopping cart packed with his most recent belongings. 

He had parked his cart in a parking space behind a car. I pointed out that the car's owner would have busted the cart, and we moved it to a nearby walkway.  

Michael wanted to carry his broom. The broom was one of his shopping cart treasures. He said the broom showed he was willing to work. I said we should leave it behind. 

So we set out for downtown, without the broom. On our way, we discussed mutual friends, especially David, who was a schizophrenic who died a few years ago. It was David whom Michael was "contacting" when he was busted at the Med, calling in artillery directed by David, his field commander. 

Michael told a story from his childhood in Traverse City, Michigan, when he and his pals had dug a deep hole to China to bury a squirrel He had lived on a lake on the outskirts of town, he said. 

I had lived on such a lake the summer I worked in Traverse City, 50 years ago. This had been the basis of our friendship over the years. 

We now made our way to the mental health agency offices, closed, I thought, where I wanted Michael to go Monday. I just wanted to show him where it was. I got briefly lost, myself, but when I knocked on the door, someone directed us elsewhere after we asked him for a belt.  

Michael now desperately needed a belt to support his ill-fitting pants. We headed for Goodwill, where Michael lifted a belt.  

"How do you do that?" I asked. "They don't bother me," he said. He showed me a wallet he had lifted. The world was his oyster. 

In a Berkeley Shelter 

The homeless outreach program's caseworkers operate out of a basement in Berkeley's historic dstrict, across from Civic Center Park, and old City Hall (1906). Our destination, the 1928 Veteran's Memorial Building, has seen better days. It houses such agencies as the Berkeley Historical Society,and a Berkeley historical museum. 

But the basement belongs to a local drug and mental health program and a men's shelter. Emerging from a side walkway, we entered what had once been a splendid courtyard, but now hosting homeless men sprawled helplessly on the ground, perhaps waiting for shelter beds, not yet available. 

Michael had probably been there before. He noticed that I had taken a wrong turn, and declined to use the men's room, for some reason. He said that he absolutely wouldn't use it. 

The few men we saw inside seemed depressed. The man in charge showed us where Michael would go to meet with a case manager the next day, when the offices would be manned. 

Michael said there was no way he would ever stay in the men's shelter to our right—caged. That's right, three small "cells" with bunk beds secured by a metal gate. 

The shelter would not open for hours. Most of the men we saw were probably there to secure a bunk for the night. 

I considered the possibility dim that Michael could find his way to a case worker who could help him get his meds and disability check. No more than six months ago, I had directed him to help downtown, but he never made it there. 

Our visit was one day too soon to get help. 

As Michael lit up outside the memorial building, I said I'd walk ahead to the Berkeley library, a few blocks away. He said he'd catch up, but he didn't. 

I wasn't sure how I could arrange with him to go to the case worker, Monday, and remembered my own morning-appointment with my shrink, a possible schedule conflict.  

Too late, I realized I should have arranged to meet Michael at the Med,Monday and been his advocate with the case worker.  

The next day, when the case worker was available, it rained in torrents. Good for farmers, and reservoirs, but as a friend said—"not for the homeless."By mid-week, Michael had not shown up to see a case manager, even though he said he was unable to get his meds, or his disability check. 


Most of Ted Friedman's Planet articles begin on Berkeley's Southside, magnet for the mentally ill.


New: Occupy Oakland Marches to Berkeley

By Scott Morris (BCN)
Sunday February 19, 2012 - 10:10:00 AM

The weekly Occupy Oakland anti-police march headed to Berkeley Saturday night to meet with other Occupy demonstrators holding a conference at the University of California at Berkeley campus this weekend. 

Around 100 protesters gathered in Oakland's Frank Ogawa Plaza at around 9 p.m. and headed to Berkeley via Telegraph Avenue, according to protesters streaming video of the march over the Internet. 

There was minimal police presence around the march, and protesters blocked traffic freely on their way to Berkeley. No incidents of violence or vandalism were reported, despite a few arguments with bystanders along the way up Telegraph Avenue. 

Once arriving in Berkeley, protesters stopped briefly by the university's Sproul Hall to confront UC police there. 

Protesters then moved on to the site of the conference, UC Berkeley's International House at 2299 Piedmont Ave. 

The "Occupy the Truth" conference began Friday with a panel discussion between Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern and retired U.S. Army Col. Anne Wright. 

The conference is intended to give Occupy activists from Berkeley and Oakland a space to brainstorm ideas and reflect on strategy, organizers said. 

When Occupy Oakland protesters arrived, several tents had been set up in the lawn in front of International House, and the march from Oakland merged with a small crowd already gathered in front of the International House. 

Several university police stood inside of the building's doorway, but did not confront the crowd on the front steps. 

One Occupy Cal protester announced to the arriving crowd that they were invited to spend the night on the front lawn of International House. 

The Occupy the Truth conference is scheduled to resume at 9 a.m. today for its final day. 

An anti-police march has been held weekly in Oakland since Jan. 8, when protesters organized the recurring event in response to what they call continued harassment and brutality by the Oakland police. 

In recent weeks the march has spread to other cities in the Bay Area, as a similar march was held last Friday in San Francisco. 

Two arrests were reported at last Saturday's march in Oakland following a confrontation around a traffic stop by the California Highway Patrol. 

No arrests were reported this week.


Flash: Berkeley Feels Second Vallejo Area Quake

Thursday February 16, 2012 - 09:10:00 AM

A second earthquake, also with estimated magnitude of 3.7, struck near Vallejo this morning at 9:13 a.m. and was felt in Berkeley.


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Flash: Appeals Court Rules for Berkeley Hillside Preservation--City Must Do a Full EIR on Mitch Kapor's Proposed House

By Becky O'Malley
Wednesday February 15, 2012 - 09:46:00 PM

Today the California Court of Appeals ruled that the City of Berkeley must do a full environmental impact report on software entrepreneur Mitch Kapor's plan, with his wife Freada Kapor-Klein, to build a house of close to 10,000 square feet with a ten car garage at 2707 Rose in the Berkeley Hills.

The court reversed a lower court decision by Judge Frank Roesch that an EIR was not required, and supported the contention of a group calling itself Berkeley Hillside Preservation, with named appellants Susan Nunes Fadley and Lesley Emmington Jones, that the proposed construction was not categorically exempt under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) and that environmental concerns should be reviewed in an environmental impact report (EIR). 

The court's decision said that the preservation group "presented substantial, and virtually uncontradicted, evidence that the proposed single-family residence to be constructed was unusual, based on its size... Of more than 17,000 single-family residences in Berkeley, only 17—or a tenth of a percent—are larger than 6,000 square feet, whereas the proposed construction will result in a residence that is more than 9,800 square feet." 

The court further concluded that because the proposed house was such an unusual size, and "because there was substantial evidence in the record to support a fair argument that the proposed construction will have a significant effect on the environment ... the application of a categorical exemption [exempting single family homes from CEQA review] was inappropriate here, and the trial court erred in denying appellants‟ petition for a writ of mandate." 

The trial court has been ordered to issue a writ of mandate directing the City to set aside the approval of use permits and its finding of a categorical exemption, and to order the preparation of an EIR. 

Appellants, represented by attorney Susan Brandt Hawley, were also awarded their costs on appeal,which means that attorney's fees must be paid by the defendants and respondents, the City of Berkeley, the Kapors and the firm of their architect, Donn Logan. 

The full text of the decision can be found here

Background information can be found here.


Press Release: Berkeley Hillside Preservation Wins CEQA Appeal Berkeley

From Susan Brandt-Hawley, attorney for appellants
Thursday February 16, 2012 - 03:26:00 PM

On February 15th, the First District Court of Appeal reversed the Alameda County Superior Court and ruled that the City of Berkeley’s approval of the 10,000 square foot Kapor residence and 10-car garage proposed for a steep lot in the Berkeley Hills was unlawful. The Court agreed with Berkeley Hillside Preservation that the project is not exempt from environmental review under the California Environmental Quality Act.  

Wide community opposition arose when the City failed to require any environmental study. The precedent-setting published appellate opinion clarifies the standard of review and holds that CEQA exemptions cannot be used when there is expert opinion or other substantial evidence that a project may have significant environmental impacts. Here, renowned geotechnical expert Dr. Lawrence Karp provided expert evidence of unstudied “massive grading” and potential for seismic lurching of hillside fills.  

The appellate court ruled that the Kapor house, which one appellate Justice characterized as “humongous” at the appellate argument, is not a typical single-family residence that merits exemption from CEQA. The Court ordered that a peremptory writ issue to order the City of Berkeley “to set aside the approval of use permits and its finding of a categorical exemption, and to order the preparation of an EIR” before further consideration of the project’s four required use permits. 

The Court said that “because there was substantial evidence in the record to support a fair argument that the proposed construction will have a significant effect on the environment, the application of a categorical exemption was inappropriate here, and the trial court erred in denying [the] petition for a writ of mandate.” “We are grateful for this comprehensive ruling and look forward to an EIR process that will take an objective look at the project, its environmental impacts, and feasible mitigation measures and alternatives, “ said appellant Susan Nunes Fadley.


Berkeley City Council Renews Mutual Aid Agreements Without Amendments

Wednesday February 15, 2012 - 05:36:00 PM

Last night, despite verbal protests from a long list of civil liberties organizations, the Berkeley City Council voted, with only one dissent, to renew a package of mutual aid agreements with a variety of organizations, which were supported by Berkeley's police chief and city manager. Councilmember Jesse Arreguin, in conjunction with a group of commissioners and civic organizations, had proposed modifications to the agreements which were intended to address their deficiencies, but the text of his proposed amendments was not delivered to the council until 8:30 during last night's meeting, enabling six councilmembers to avoid going on record as supporting them. Councilmembers Anderson and Worthington spoke in favor of the changes, but the amendments failed, and when the final vote on the agreements was taken, only Kriss Worthington voted no. Arreguin said after the meeting ended that the contracts will be up for renewal in a year, and in the intervening time the council and city staff will have time to prepare desired changes.

The testimony and council discussion can be seen below, despite the misleading heading at the beginning of the video clip.

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New: Earthquake Near Vallejo Felt in Berkeley

Wednesday February 15, 2012 - 06:36:00 PM

At 6:09 p.m. today Berkeley residents felt a magnitude 3.7 earthquake centered near Vallejo. 


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According to the U.S Geologic Service, the epicenter was at a depth of 9.3 kilometers. (5.8 miles). No damage has been reported.


The Pacific Steel Casting Situation (News Analyis)

By Steve Martinot
Tuesday February 14, 2012 - 07:33:00 AM

People are back in the streets because of Pacific Steel Casting Company. In the past, it has been the issue of pollution. The workers have struck over the issue of health and safety (the same issue, as seen from inside). And now, some 200 workers are protesting unjust job termination, owing to intervention by ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement), in violation of the spirit of Berkeley as a sanctuary city. This factory remains a problem. There will be a march to publicize this problem on Friday, Feb. 17. 

Here's a bit of the story (aka history). 

The factory is a foundry, opened in 1934. It is the fourth largest foundry in the US. 

Last Feb, 2011, ICE demanded that the company provide I-9 info (Employment Eligibility Verification Form, for checking on resident status) for all employees, known as an I-9 audit. ICE didn't begin its audit until October, 2011, and submitted its report in Jan, 2012. The result of the report was that 200 workers were fired for not passing ICE muster, that is, not having proper residency. The plant employs some 600 people, of which 575 are in the union, a local of the Glass, Molders, and Pottery Union. The company has affirmed that there are upwards of 30 different nationalities represented among its employees. 

In June 2011, Berkeley City Council requested that Pacific Steel Casting not cooperate with ICE, because the I-9 audit could result in people losing their jobs, which would mean grave hardship for them and their families, and be detrimental for the overall employment and economic picture of the city of Berkeley. Berkeley again affirmed that it was a city of refuge (sanctuary), which means it provides services to all residents, regardless of status, and that would include the same standards of job security that all other workers have. Indeed, one worker, who has worked at Pacific Steel for 12 years, has recently been accepted for a kidney transplant at UCSF, having suffered from kidney disease years earlier. Without it, his life is threatened. But since he was one of the workers fired, UCSF is saying that they will not do the transplant, since he lost his health insurance. In other words, ICE and Pacific Steel are threatening his life. 

There had been a strike in March, 2011, because the company was demanding reduction in health benefits. The work is hard, the conditions toxic (as in any foundry), and people are forced to work without a break. One former employee, Roberto Rodriguez, who worked at Pacific Steel for 40 years and retired, is suing the company for several million dollars. The money he is demanding is back pay for having to work during contgract-provided lunch and coffeebreak periods. He is also suing for damage to his health from the pollution in the factory. 

There has been an on-going campaign among people in the neighborhood against the toxicity of the emissions from the factory. In 2006, several large marches of hundreds of people occurred targetting the factory, demanding that the factory stop polluting the area. A suit was filed demanding compliance with environemtnal law, and compensation to neighbors who have suffered harm and injury because of the factory. A spokesperson for the factory has stated that the anti-pollution suit of 2006 could force Pacific Steel into financial ruin, and thus reducing city employment. The pollution situation remains as it had been for the community near the plant, and the neighborhood continues struggling against the problem. 

In response to those who accuse immigrants of taking “American workers” jobs, it doesn’t appear that there are many people from the vicinity of the factory who are clamoring to be hired there. The workers fired from the plant last month are requesting support for being rehired on the basis of (1) they have been unjustly denied their jobs which they need and deserve as much as anyone else; (2) Berkeley is a sanctuary city because it believes that all people should have the same human rights, the main one being survival, for which one needs an income, and thus a job, and (3) they have been fighting their own struggle for cleaner and safer conditions in the plant, which links them to the neighborhood's own struggle. 

There will be a march by the workers fired from Pacific Steel on Friday, Feb. 17. They are asking that all people who believe in the primacy of human rights to join them in support. The march will begin after a rally at MLK Park in Berkeley (civic center, opposite City Hall) at 10 am, and proceed to the Pacific Steel plant. 

 

Steve Martinot


Appeals Court Considers Challenge to Affirmative Action Ban

By Julia Cheever (BCN)
Tuesday February 14, 2012 - 08:09:00 AM

Lawyers for 46 minority students and a civil rights group asked a federal appeals court in San Francisco today to allow them to go forward with their challenge to a voter-approved ban on affirmative action in University of California admissions. 

"We're asking that you give the students in this case their day in court," attorney Shanta Driver told a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. circuit Court of Appeals. 

The students and the Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action want the appeals court to overturn a lower court ruling dismissing their 2010 lawsuit and to allow a trial on their challenge to Proposition 209. 

The proposition, a 1996 voter initiative, prohibited government preferences for minority groups and women in public education, employment and contracting. 

The students' lawsuit contests only the part of the measure than bans affirmative action for minority students applying to UC campuses. 

George B. Washington, another attorney for the students, argued, "It is a special law, directed only at blacks and Latinos." 

In an earlier case, the federal appeals court upheld Proposition 209 in its entirety in 1997. 

But the students contend that circumstances have changed because a 2003 U.S. Supreme Court decision allowed the University of Michigan to consider race as a one of a number of admissions factors. 

The students also say that courts have never looked at the actual effect of Proposition 209, which they say has resulted in a sharp drop in the numbers of blacks, Hispanics and Native Americans at the flagship university campuses. 

Ralph Kasarda, a lawyer for Proposition 209 sponsor Ward Connerly, argued that the 1997 appeals court ruling definitively foreclosed the new lawsuit. 

He told the court that the initiative does not prevent students from seeking preferences to overcome other factors, such as economic disadvantages, that might hinder their admission to the university. 

Proposition 209 "is no barrier to the plaintiffs to petition the University of California to adopt any admissions policy that does not discriminate on the basis of race," Kasarda told the court. The panel took the case under submission after hearing 45 minutes of arguments and will issue a written ruling at a later date. 

Gov. Jerry Brown has weighed in on the case, asking the court to reopen the challenge to Proposition 209.  

Deputy California Attorney General Antonette Cordero, representing Brown, told the court, "We believe Proposition 209 does not level the playing field." 

Instead, Cordero argued, the measure creates "an unequal political structure" for minority groups.


Berkeley Neighborhood Leaders Meet, Set Priorities (Participant Account)

By Martha Nicoloff
Tuesday February 14, 2012 - 07:25:00 AM

For the first time in many years a city wide gathering of neighborhood leaders was held Saturday at the Hillside Club The objective of the meeting was to increase contact, explore local issues and to have more impact on City government. 

A priority list includes the following concerns; 

  • West Berkeley wants a reduction of 100 foot buildings permitted in the current plan for residential neighborhoods.
  • South of campus wants to stop mini-dorms in older houses that have been converted to as many as 19 bedrooms, often causing rowdy late night parties.
  • Save old city hall from demolition, it is a city icon, the first building to have historic designation. Find sources for funding for earthquake reinforcement.
  • Have a say in the selection of the new planning director. - Get on the city's list for email notices concerning zoning decisions and design review issues.
  • Stop commercial sized day care use in neighborhoods zoned for duplex units.
  • A group of citizens is researching the indebtedness of the city, and has discovered that promised reports have not materialized offering solutions. They are hoping to put an initiative on the November ballot.
The forty representatives attending approved meeting again in the near future. Council of Neighborhood Associations (CNA) organized the meeting. 


Martha Nicoloff is the co-author of the Neighborhood Preservation Ordinance. 


Occupy Oakland Spotlights Police Actions in Forum

By Scott Morris (BCN)
Tuesday February 14, 2012 - 08:08:00 AM

Occupy Oakland protesters sought to draw connections between police actions at recent demonstrations and what they say is a history of misconduct by the department at a forum held at the Grand Lake Theater on Thursday. 

Protesters gathered at the theater near Lake Merritt for Occupy Oakland's "Citizen Police Review Board" event, which was organized after a meeting by the city's official police review board on recent protests was canceled. 

One topic of discussion was the threat of the Oakland Police Department being placed under court-ordered federal receivership because of delays in making reforms required by a 2003 class action settlement. 

In that case, a group of 119 Oakland residents had alleged that a number of police officers who called themselves "the Riders" made false arrests, beat suspects and planted evidence, among other abuses.  

The deadline for implementing the reforms was initially 2008, and was later extended to 2010 -- but 10 of the 51 required changes still have not been made.  

U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson last month gave a court-appointed monitor more power over the Police Department and said he would not rule out receivership if the reforms weren't implemented. 

Jim Chanin, one of the attorneys who represented the plaintiffs in the Riders case, spoke at Thursday's Occupy event, saying that if he does not see major reforms by the department this year, he will press the judge to place the department under federal control. 

"It's taken too long," Chanin said. "We're going to move for receivership if there's not a radical improvement in this calendar year." 

Chanin said the department appears to be unable to accomplish the reforms on its own.  

"They really don't have very good perceptive powers about what they can do themselves," he said. 

Oakland Mayor Jean Quan and Police Chief Howard Jordan released a statement last month saying there would be "swift and decisive action" to implement the reforms. 

"We are committed to taking action and making demonstrable progress on the reforms necessary to ensure that we meet our collective goal," Quan and Howard said in a statement. 

Chanin also compared the recent clashes with protesters to an April 1, 2003, protest at the Port of Oakland at which police fired less-then-lethal weapons on protesters attempting to disrupt the operations of two shippers with government contracts related to the Iraq War. 

He said that after the 2003 protest, he helped draft a new crowd-control policy for Oakland police with the American Civil Liberties Union. He read from that policy during Thursday's event, and charged that police had repeatedly violated it during Occupy Oakland demonstrations. 

"Not only was there no medical aid on site, in some cases people who tried to give medical aid were themselves gassed by police," Chanin said. 

Following Chanin's talk, Occupy Oakland protester and citizen journalist Spencer Mills, who streams protests online, played video clips to show instances of when he said officers violated the crowd-control policy. 

Among the clips was footage of tear gas and smoke grenades being fired on crowds on Oct. 25, including at protesters attempting to help a wounded demonstrator on the ground. There was footage of police using batons on protesters on the ground and firing a beanbag round at a demonstrator filming police.  

"The goal here is not to demonize the police," Mills said. 

He alleged, however, that Oakland police have shown a lack of control. 

Mills has also been a vocal critic of violence coming from protesters, and has shouted on his streams at protesters throwing bottles, denouncing them as "cowards."  

Protesters have been violent toward police on a number of occasions, including during a Jan. 28 demonstration in which the Police Department claimed its officers were pelted with bottles, metal pipe, rocks and other objects. That same day, a group broke into and vandalized City Hall. Hundreds were arrested. 

Before Mills spoke, Stan Oden, a professor at Sacramento State University and a former Black Panther, drew connections between protests today and those in the 1960s. 

Patrick Caceras, assistant to the city administrator, appeared on behalf of the city of Oakland and the official Citizens Police Review Board, and told the crowd that, given recent developments, the review board forum had needed to be postponed. 

Caceras said the forum would be rescheduled, but that new considerations came up after the Jan. 28 demonstration. For example, he said, prosecutors sought stay-away orders to prevent protesters who were arrested that day from returning to Frank Ogawa Plaza, and because of that they would not have been able to legally attend any meeting at City Hall.  

He said the city is looking to find a venue that will allow everyone to attend, and to focus on more recent protests as well as demonstrations on Oct. 25 and Nov. 2. 

Police Chief Howard Jordan was invited by protesters for a question-and-answer session, but did not attend Thursday's meeting.


Press Release: Berkeley City Council to Discuss Mutual Aid and Other Police Reforms

From Anthony Sanchez, Aide to Councilmember Jesse Arreguin
Tuesday February 14, 2012 - 07:27:00 AM

In response to concerns of police involvement in activities ranging from domestic surveillance and reporting, to the use of mutual aid to crackdown on political demonstrations, Berkeley City Council will consider changes its policy on mutual aid requests and to agreements with local and federal law enforcement agencies this Tuesday night. 

City law requires that the Berkeley City Council review and approve mutual aid and other agreements with law enforcement agencies. These agreements are routinely approved without much discussion. However, the system of mutual aid has come under scrutiny after multiple law enforcement agencies were called to neighboring Oakland to respond to the removal of the encampment in Frank Ogawa Plaza and other demonstrations. Also last year other law enforcement agencies were called onto the UC Berkeley campus to remove the Occupy Cal encampment. In both cases, footage was taken of excessive use of force towards demonstrators. These incidents have raised important questions about whether mutual aid should be called for protests and how to best protect the civil liberties of those involved in civil disobedience and preventing excessive use of force.  

Berkeley City Councilmember Jesse Arreguin has proposed several recommendations to change Berkeley’s mutual aid policy, including not automatically responding to mutual aid requests involving civil disobedience where no other crimes have been committed. Additionally, the new policy asks that the Berkeley Police Department carefully evaluate all mutual aid requests, and, if tactics are being used that are unsafe or unlawful, the Police Department can remove all personnel from the scene, if necessary. 

In addition to adopting a new mutual aid policy which is attached, the Council will consider changing its relationship with federal intelligence gathering and reporting programs; modify its jail policy to prohibit handing over illegal immigrants to federal immigration authorities; and look at changing its criminal intelligence policy so that people involved in civil disobedience and First Amendment activities are not the subjects of police investigation. 

The purpose of these reforms is to ensure that Berkeley’s agreements comport with its values and policies, and the agreements include adequate civil and human right safeguards.


Man Arrested In Massive Caffe Med Cop-Op, Back On Streets In Four Hours

By Ted Friedman
Wednesday February 15, 2012 - 07:35:00 PM
Entering men's shelter.
Ted Friedman
Entering men's shelter.
Homeless man awaits an opening in one of three shelter "cells" at Berkeley men's shelter, basement Veteran's Memorial Building.
Ted Friedman
Homeless man awaits an opening in one of three shelter "cells" at Berkeley men's shelter, basement Veteran's Memorial Building.
We moved Michael's belongings, Sunday, including the broom, from behind a car in a parking space--to alongside the apartment building. Mid-week, he had not returned.
Ted Friedman
We moved Michael's belongings, Sunday, including the broom, from behind a car in a parking space--to alongside the apartment building. Mid-week, he had not returned.
Lockers for homeless gear, at Berkeley Men's Shelter.
Ted Friedman
Lockers for homeless gear, at Berkeley Men's Shelter.

After yet another Caffe Med Berkeley Cop-Op Friday, to restrain a mentally ill man, it seemed the man was on his way to a forty-eight hour mental evaluation. But that's not the way it went down, as the Cop-Op devolved into a cop-out. 

As we reported in the Planet Saturday, the latest in a string of BPD cop-ops at the Med, Berkeley's—if not the world's—most notorious coffee house/cafe, started out as what seemed a routine 5150. 

Routine or not, the police intervention at the Med had required five squad cars; and a fire-truck; and an ambulance; and a squad of police; and plenty of paramedics. 

To Southsiders, the 5150, a police action to protect the public and the mentally ill from harm, is part of the Southside scene. Although not always, a 5150 invariably leads to a minimum 48 hours psych-hold, for evaluation. 

But a tipster in the Med said that Michael, busted Friday night, was back in the Med Saturday morning. He was, inexplicably, sweeping the floor with a straw broom. 

I was incredulous, even talked my tipster friend into a case of mistaken identity. But the next day I saw Michael near the Med where he had been busted on Friday. 

He said that he had been released from an emergency room four hours after his arrest. 

"They shot me up with a drug cocktail, I lay around at a doctor's house, and they released me." 

Michael was desperate for cigarette money, saying if he didn't get some cash for smokes, he'd steal them. I emptied out the slim assets in my billfold, $12, and handed it over. 

"I can get two packs with this," he noted. 

Michael doesn't remember which emergency room he was in, but he knows he didn't have to go to John George, a mental health treatment facility, something he had demanded, when he was arrested. 

Michael and I headed downtown for an agency I believed could help him. It was Sunday. I just wanted to show him the offices where someone could save him once more. Michael had been saved, and been lost, many times. 

First we had to visit the site where Michael had parked his shopping cart packed with his most recent belongings. 

He had parked his cart in a parking space behind a car. I pointed out that the car's owner would have busted the cart, and we moved it to a nearby walkway.  

Michael wanted to carry his broom. The broom was one of his shopping cart treasures. He said the broom showed he was willing to work. I said we should leave it behind. 

So we set out for downtown, without the broom. On our way, we discussed mutual friends, especially David, who was a schizophrenic who died a few years ago. It was David whom Michael was "contacting" when he was busted at the Med, calling in artillery directed by David, his field commander. 

Michael told a story from his childhood in Traverse City, Michigan, when he and his pals had dug a deep hole to China to bury a squirrel He had lived on a lake on the outskirts of town, he said. 

I had lived on such a lake the summer I worked in Traverse City, 50 years ago. This had been the basis of our friendship over the years. 

We now made our way to the mental health agency offices, closed, I thought, where I wanted Michael to go Monday. I just wanted to show him where it was. I got briefly lost, myself, but when I knocked on the door, someone directed us elsewhere after we asked him for a belt.  

Michael now desperately needed a belt to support his ill-fitting pants. We headed for Goodwill, where Michael lifted a belt.  

"How do you do that?" I asked. "They don't bother me," he said. He showed me a wallet he had lifted. The world was his oyster. 

In a Berkeley Shelter 

The homeless outreach program's caseworkers operate out of a basement in Berkeley's historic dstrict, across from Civic Center Park, and old City Hall (1906). Our destination, the 1928 Veteran's Memorial Building, has seen better days. It houses such agencies as the Berkeley Historical Society,and a Berkeley historical museum. 

But the basement belongs to a local drug and mental health program and a men's shelter. Emerging from a side walkway, we entered what had once been a splendid courtyard, but now hosting homeless men sprawled helplessly on the ground, perhaps waiting for shelter beds, not yet available. 

Michael had probably been there before. He noticed that I had taken a wrong turn, and declined to use the men's room, for some reason. He said that he absolutely wouldn't use it. 

The few men we saw inside seemed depressed. The man in charge showed us where Michael would go to meet with a case manager the next day, when the offices would be manned. 

Michael said there was no way he would ever stay in the men's shelter to our right—caged. That's right, three small "cells" with bunk beds secured by a metal gate. 

The shelter would not open for hours. Most of the men we saw were probably there to secure a bunk for the night. 

I considered the possibility dim that Michael could find his way to a case worker who could help him get his meds and disability check. No more than six months ago, I had directed him to help downtown, but he never made it there. 

Our visit was one day too soon to get help. 

As Michael lit up outside the memorial building, I said I'd walk ahead to the Berkeley library, a few blocks away. He said he'd catch up, but he didn't. 

I wasn't sure how I could arrange with him to go to the case worker, Monday, and remembered my own morning-appointment with my shrink, a possible schedule conflict.  

Too late, I realized I should have arranged to meet Michael at the Med,Monday and been his advocate with the case worker.  

The next day, when the case worker was available, it rained in torrents. Good for farmers, and reservoirs, but as a friend said—"not for the homeless."By mid-week, Michael had not shown up to see a case manager, even though he said he was unable to get his meds, or his disability check. 


Most of Ted Friedman's Planet articles begin on Berkeley's Southside, magnet for the mentally ill.


My Eventful Visit to a Zen Temple (First Person)

By Jack Bragen
Tuesday February 14, 2012 - 07:40:00 AM

My visit of a couple of years ago to a Zen place of worship has left me with some loose ends that I don't know exactly how to resolve. When I went there I had already practiced meditation of another sort, and had done this diligently. By the time I went to this Zen temple, I believe I already had achieved some degree of meditative attainment, and yet was not accustomed to Zen practices. 

I went there to the Zen temple to take a beginning class. However, I had been to a different Zen center before and I had read numerous books on Zen. So I was not completely unfamiliar with my surroundings. When one of the Zen masters said that I was holding the laminated sheet, and standing there with hands together in a "good" way, I instantaneously felt self conscious in the sense of awkwardness. I was surprised by my own reaction, and I was surprised by my reaction with receiving a compliment not being pleasurable. 

I was intimidated by the customs at this Zen center. There was a particular way the blanket was to be folded, and I couldn't master this. I was wearing shorts, which I was told I wasn't supposed to wear. I wondered what I would wear the following week, since I did not own sweatpants. I was surprised at the rationale for not wearing shorts. It was out of the concern that someone would be sexually aroused, and this would take away from the focus of that person upon the Buddha. When changing positions, one was not supposed to point one's legs toward the statue of the Buddha at the front of the meditation room, this was said to be obscene. However, my thought was that we were dealing with a statue which is an inanimate object, and so I believed that this rule made no sense. When bowing, there was a certain thing we were supposed to do with our hands that I could not master. Altogether, I was finding my visit to be an awkward enterprise. 

When finally meditating (and they had asked me to sit on the side since I could not fold my legs, I am too fat) I heard a voice in my head asking if I didn't want to be acknowledged, apparently as someone with attainment. My mental health background wanted me to classify this voice as a delusion. However, my meditative background did not urge me to do this. 

When taking shoes off and putting them back on, someone provided me with a stool, since I am a "big" man. I was dealing with people who, despite being very traditional, were extremely aware as well as being extremely considerate. 

After we meditated, either in the meditation hall or in the classroom, one of the Zen masters announced that the following week, they would be picking people for a discussion group. At that point, in the back of my mind, I was aware that I wouldn't be back. Discussion groups about meditation make me too "attached" concerning the amount of progress I have made. It is a way that my ego gets reinforced, and it seems to detract from my meditation attempts. This is a real issue for me regardless of whether my meditative progress is real or imagined. 

Later, there was some kind of hubbub among the Zen masters, and I could tell that the head Zen master was very upset about something. I was terrified at some point that an object might have fallen from my pocket during walking or sitting meditation. This object whether it rested on my seat or on the floor could have been perceived as a defilement of their meditation temple. No one confronted me about it, and it was probably my imagination that this happened. However, the head Zen master was upset about something, and I had no way of knowing what it was. 

When the master was exiting, one of the students in the classroom issued the word, "Fake." And I saw, for just an instant before he regained composure, the Zen master's head snapped toward the gentleman in anger. 

One of the points illustrated by this story is something that was said by a meditation practitioner who was a master or close to it, who worked at a Zen temple I went to in the 1980's: Becoming an ordained master in Zen Buddhism is not an indication of attainment, it is one of commitment. Secondly, you can devote your life to enlightenment and you can practice meditation for ten, twenty, or thirty years, yet you could still retain the seed of anger, which is an indication you're not "there" yet. There are some people who enter the doors of a Zen temple, or even some of those who enter the priesthood in the Christian religion, who do so because they can't deal with the messiness, disorganization and lack of safety in the normal, non meditative world. Escapism, it's called. 

My practice has always been directed toward getting some relief from my internal suffering, while at the same time, not depriving myself of any of the goodies or the difficulties of the non meditative world. It is not in my character to be a renunciant. Secondly, my life is too short to have the goal of being a perfect practitioner. If I feel somewhat better after meditating, I have accomplished something. 

I am sure that over the thousands of years since the Buddha lived, just as in Christianity, the original message has been distorted. Sometimes I try to imagine traveling back in time and being in the Buddha's or Jesus' presence so that I could receive the original message undiluted.


Opinion

Cartoons

Odd Bodkins: The Hot Dog Man (Cartoon)

By Dan O'Neill
Friday February 17, 2012 - 02:42:00 PM

 

Dan O'Neill

 


Public Comment

People with Potential: Providing Sanity to the US’ Struggle for Israel’s Peace

by Wendy Kenin @greendoula
Friday February 17, 2012 - 02:58:00 PM

For Americans who are burnt out by the negative and aggressive public dynamic between opposing political factions on Palestine-Israel peace, hope lives! I am thrilled to introduce you to some incredible people with their priorities in order who are coming from the Holy Land and speaking sanely about how to move forward. These people have already demonstrated the ability to reach a diverse political spread of people, and they are only in the earliest stages of their work. 

Izzeldin Abuelaish
Palestinian Father who lost his daughters in the Gaza War 

Izzeldin Abuelaish, a Palestinian OBGYN who worked at an Israeli hospital delivering Palestinian and Israeli babies, does not advocate for BDS. This man, who loves and respects women, is unabashedly for peace. He won the hearts of Israeli and American Zionists alike, when he travelled on speaking tours after his daughters and niece were killed by IDF blasts to their home in January 2009. The incident shook up Israel, as Abuelaish was being interviewed on Israel television network news immediately after the shelling took place. The Gaza War ceasefire followed several days after. Since then, Dr. Abuelaish has won awards and been hosted by many faith and community organizations around the world. 

Noteably, in Greenwich, Connecticut last year, two Zionist Jews wrote heartfelt appreciation and praises for Dr. Abuelaish. 

Don Synder wrote for the Stanford Advocate May 12, 2011: We hope apostles of peace such as Dr. Abuelaish prevail in this long-festering conflict. 

Alma Rutgers devoted her 2011 Father’s Day piece in the Greenwich Time to Abuelaish: How many could experience such devastating loss and not feel hatred toward the perpetrators of injustice? And not desire revenge? Dr. Abuelaish refuses to succumb to hatred. “Hatred is an illness,” he says. “It prevents healing and peace.” 

Author of the autobiographical book, “I Shall Not Hate,” Abuelaish is currently a professor in Toronto, Canada and has created a foundation Daughters of Life to support education and leadership for girls and women, in memory of his daughters. If you ask Dr. Abuelaish, he will tell you that women should be in charge. 

Aisha Saifi and Leslie Wolf
Midwives together promoting simple newborn and maternal wellness through bonding 

Aisha Saifi, a Palestinian midwife, and Leslie Wolff, an Israeli midwife, are two women collaborating to promote the practice of skin-to-skin contact after birth to improve health outcomes. Working together through a coexistence program with other midwives, currently fiscally-sponsored by the Interfaith Encounter Association, Saifi and Wolff were well received when they presented their campaign at Sweden’s Kangaroo Mothercare Conference. 

Many incredible Palestinian – Israeli coexistence efforts are simultaneously taking place across Israel, ranging in form from environmental volunteer days, to intentional dialogue groups, to interfaith programs, to educational institutes, and inter-generational cultural exchanges. 

The skin-to-skin campaign by Aisha Saifi and Leslie Wolff, a transnational effort resulting from a coexistence program, exemplifies the potential powerful outcomes of coexistence work. 

The impact of the war on women and families is well-understood. Yet these midwives who serve people directly affected by the Israel-Palestine conflict have risen above the tension to raise awareness of a universal human health need, in turn nurturing humanity’s interpersonal bonding and connectedness during a time of great fragmentation. 

The effects of modernization on women are in some respects as damaging as war, in the way that maternal instincts and practices have been replaced with technology and lifestyles that are void of wisdom and continuity and that interfere in critical familial relationships. Progressive reproductive justice advocates in the United States have much to gain from these midwives who are responding to an urgent crisis with brilliance, love and wisdom. 

Alon Tal
Environmentalist brings Global Greens universal values to Israel Politics 

Other advocates who stand at the forefront of a livable future are environmentalists. Possibly the most-known environmentalist in Israel, Alon Tal might be the best qualified progressive Zionist to address the left wingers in the US who are furious with Israel. Co-Chair of the Israel Green Party, Tal speaks the language of Green Party members around the world – including that of the Green Party of the United States. 

In 2010, Tal crafted a “constructive” response to Amnesty International’s biased report on water access for Palestinians, published in the Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs

On his current visit to the US, Tal has been talking about his work as founder of the US-based Green Zionist Alliance, and as founder of Israel’s Aravah Institute, which involves cross-border collaborations and environmental studies and advocacy. On tour, he decries the current state of democracy in Israel, presenting an honest and hopeful, socially-conscious outlook. 

The US Green Party has been boycotting Israel now for almost a decade, and its national platform calls for a one-state solution – two misguided positions built on disengagement with Israel. Being the Israeli leader of a sister party to the US Green Party, Tal is in a position to create collaborative opportunities between like-minded party members who agree on the principles described in the Global Greens Charter, through international Green channels – which are parallel to the values and global structures of today’s international spring and occupy movements. 

Local Green elected officials and candidates in the US are generally supportive of coexistence efforts, which are aligned with the Green Party of the United States’ 10 Key Values, and are open to cultural exchange with their Israeli and Palestinian counterparts despite the national US Green Party’s exclusionary policies. It’s likely Tal has the mental capacity and skill to conduct critical bridge-building civility diplomacy while simultaneously running for and winning a pioneering seat for the Israel Green Party in the Knesset. 

These four people’s primary work, before politics, is in the profession of life. Dr. Abuelaish an OBGYN, midwives Aisha Saifi and Leslie Wolff, take care of human beings at the beginning of life. Environmentalist Alon Tal advocates for responsible practices that heal and protect the living environment, human and earthly habitat. Spiritually it makes sense to see these birth-oriented persons at the head of a rational and loving process that offers hope to a future of peace. 

These inspirational people, while being very special, do not only exist in silos. There are thousands of people working together to make social change in Israel, and addressing these same dynamics amongst communities around the world. 

It’s very likely that these and other reasonable and inspirational people are coming through your area. But if they’re not, no one with social media has an excuse any more to stay out of societal issues. We all have a responsibility to search until we find and pursue the avenues we think will lead to peace. 


Wendy Kenin serves on the Berkeley Peace and Justice Commission, and is a California Delegate to the National Committee of the Green Party of the United States. By day she is the Community Engagement Specialist at UpStart Bay Area, a Jewish social innovation hub based in San Francisco. A member of the Occupy Oakland Media Committee, Wendy tweets @greendoula. Founder of the Jewish childbirth assistance network Imeinu Doulas, Wendy is a Shabbat-observant, kosher-keeping mother of 4 children in Berkeley, California. 


This piece was first published in the ACCESS blog of the American Jewish Committee.


The Activism Entry Point: Critiquing The Cancer in Occupy Debate

By Joseph Anderson
Tuesday February 14, 2012 - 07:31:00 AM

Well, by now everyone in the Occupy movement is hotly debating "nonviolence" vs. "diversity of tactics", as recently so in, "Chris Hedges and Kristof Lopaur of Occupy Oakland debate black bloc, militancy and tactics," February 8, 2012, on KPFA in Berkeley, California.

Both Lopaur and Hedges made some critically weak, flawed, at times somewhat disingenuous or self-contradictory and, in Lopaur's case, often specious arguments in their radio debate. This so, even though I politically agree with Hedges, and although Hedges' recent commentary, "The Cancer in Occupy," seemed, journalistically, poorly supported. But, Hedges is dead on about, 'Go do violence under your own name, not the Occupy movement's.' 

Hedges would have been better off just writing his opinion, presented analytically, but he deserves great credit for using his stature to get an "Anarchist"-suppressed, but mortally important, debate firmly out in the open and over progressive airwaves. Let me say that both of them have respectively done very good progressive work. 

This is my partial, but most important, analytical response to Kristof Lopaur's (and those he represents) support for Black Bloc, or otherwise, "diversity of tactics" in the Occupy Movement. My main point: Occupy Oakland, and the Occupy movement, cannot have both a diversity of people and a "diversity of tactics" at this time – and the movement can't shortcut the process of attaining, and retaining, the first by jumping to the second. 

As most Occupy activists know by now, "diversity of tactics" is primarily, so-called, "Anarchist"/Black Bloc code phrase euphemism for advocating autonomous vandalism and gratuitous property destruction (against even small businesses and movement-sympathetic owners or managers) and recently a program of regular, police confrontation marches (lately toned down). 

However, all these kinds of actions – either disconnected from, transiently tangential to, or occurring long after the main events – actually involve a tiny percentage of marchers or limited instances; nevertheless, when especially played up by the media, the public are quite unsympathetic and even hostile to them. Among the latest instances were the vandalism at, followed by the American flag-burning on the very steps of, City Hall. 

At the last large march, on January 28, corrugated metal or long wooden 'battle shields' were futilely deployed at the front line ostensibly to protect other marchers – dramatic but ineffective actions – but the TV news visuals made it appear from a distance as if their true purpose was aggressive. (On TV or in news photos, from a distance, you couldn't necessarily see the peace signs on the shields, a mixed visual anyway.) 

When the public sees these visuals, they can easily be manipulated by the police, mayor and media into believing virtually any lies or distortions about Occupy Oakland events. This enables the media – portraying out-of-chronology or even geographically unrelated, exaggerated, TV news video repetitions of vandalism (including graffiti defacings) – to easily convince the public that there was "widespread violence," thus providing a pretext to justify the indiscrminate police beatings and torturously drawn-out mass arrests (using bitingly cinched plastic wire handcuffs) that took place long before any vandalism occurred. On the January 28 march, *409* marchers were arrested – virtually all of them guilty of only being "kettled" by the cops! 

But, there has always been opposition within Occupy Oakland to violence (as commonly understood). That opposition within understands, in addition to any possible violence (or "diversity of tactics") from within an Occupy, the ability of the police, and ultimately the 1%, to exploit such violence by even inspiring or instigating it (especially, childish, indiscriminate or politically unintelligible acts). Thus, this also leaves an Occupy vulnerable and open to police agent provocateur actions that create alienation within the movement or a huge public opinion backlash against it – which is, after all, exactly what provocateur work is meant to accomplish!: discredit the movement, scare people from joining it, and thus divide the working public. 

Highly sectarian leftist militant ideologues constantly show that they don't even know how to relate to, or verbally and, just as importantly, visually communicate with ordinary people (by comparison, right-wing organizers understand this far better). Very few people are ready to jump directly from political inactivity (except merely voting) straight to hardcore militant, 'armed,' so-called, 'revolutionary' action, as Lopaur apparently advocates – let alone to start The Worldwide Armed Revolution To Overthrow Global Capitalism and Western Imperialism – today! 

But, political movements not only open to, but enthusiastically calling on, the general public to join need to first build up mass numbers – a diversity of people – before they can (as economic and political times get much more dire, urgent and, otherwise, essentially futureless, as in Greece) then support various forms of growing militancy for fundamental, perhaps even radical, change. 

This could be militancy, like greater direct mass action, like general strikes, or tens of thousands of people shutting down a major port or other critical centers, nodes or points of capitalist commerce or production. This so, even then not necessarily engaging in violence, but rather engaging people power – mass action's greatest resource – to pursue actions which are not only militant but hugely popular! The marchers acclaimed and the public didn't scorn the huge banner, "DEATH TO CAPITALISM!!," boldly strung across the intersection of Oakland City Center during the massive Oakland "General Strike" rally there. 

Actually, I never considered social, global and economic justice and human rights to be a morally "militant" or "radical" cause; to me, mass oppression, systematic injustice, violating people's human rights, the patriarchal control of women, legalized state murder, or neo-/colonial theft of another people's land, is what's militant and radical. 

But, those mass numbers for mass actions will only continue to build up – and be retained – if there is an entry point mass movement, even if nonviolently militant, that many political activism newcomers feel relatively safe in joining and participating with in mass direct actions – and where these newcomers feel they can reasonably trust the judgements of the organizers. 

I couldn't risk the further judgement of those, especially organizers, in Occupy Oakland who have an absolute ideological stranglehold against ANY "nonviolence" resolution. That stranglehold failed to realize that such a resolution was critical to Occupy Oakland's actions, public perception and success: to define itself based on nonviolence regardless of the actions of others. 

A generous but failed resolution, called a "Proposal on 'Action Agreements'," that I and others presented, was critical, so that the mayor, the chief-of-police, the chamber of commerce, and the mainstream media couldn't repeatedly blame and try to smear Occupy Oakland for increasing crime and for every act of violence that occured literally anywhere in Oakland, as though crime had never been happening in this big city before. Their #1 weapon is to directly associate Occupy Oakland with violence. 

In fact, downtown Oakland felt a lot safer at the time, instead of steadily and ominously semi-deserted at night, while the police chief and the mayor hid the following information: except for, then and afterwards, a huge spike in violence in downtown Oakland by the police, crime in Oakland actually dropped by 20% during the Occupy Oakland encampment. 

The now national Occupy movement, acting as it began at this stage of great public disaffection with the economic and political state of affairs, even against the 'Good Cop, Bad Cop', duopolistic, corporatist and militaristic political parties, starts as just such an entry point – especially with highly visible, physical, citizen centers, the Occupy encampments themselves. There was a place people could go to politically talk to people 24 hours a day, create a community oriented to human needs, and even creatively organize direct mass actions. 

OWS began a mass, public, political, citizens' civic engagement and organizing hub for many ordinary, but finally 'had-it,' people who realize that the current economic and political system is not serving "us" – not serving human needs (the 99%, especially of the world), but rather corporate greed (the 1%). A diversity of people were interacting and even living with a diversity of people ! 

Given this groundswell ferment, Occupy movement activists should be most concerned with building up that level of engagement and participation – gaining a diversity of people – rather than ideologically pushing autonomous "diversity of tactics," an "Anarchist"/ Black Bloc agenda to jump-start and lead "The Revolution!" And "autonomous" means too few people, or individuals, too unaccountable, deciding too important decisions, with too critical consequences for us all: sounds like the system of government we have now! The consequences on the rest of us are not "autonomous." 

The ideological agenda, imposed on the movement, would contain the seeds of the movement's own destruction. Or, at least the destruction of Occupy Oakland as a movement: it could otherwise survive paramilitarized police excesses and brazen brutality – exposing that the city can come up with millions of dollars for that and, perhaps, a million more in the always almost inevitable legal costs negotiating lawsuits for committing egregious bodily injuries and un-Constitutional mass arrests. 

In order to achieve a diversity of people, there has to be at least one general mass movement that is an entry point for people to get involved in the original goals of OWS, including demanding an alternative to the political and even economic system. But, Kristof Lapaur and the "Anarchists"/Black Bloc want this entry point movement to be one that is not committed to nonviolence (as commonly understood, not ideologically hairsplit), but indeed advocates violence (or whatever Kristof and the parochial ideologues ideologically want to call it) from the start! 

The "Anarchists"/Black Bloc (and Kristof) really seem to want to turn the Occupy movement into some kind of 'armed' guerrilla or, at least, Black Bloc, movement!: "We have to learn how to move cohesively through the streets, to take offensive [it originally said "attack"] and defensive initiatives..." (Pgh. 7, Statement of the OO Move-In Cmte's, reading like all sanguine PR releases, talking about everything but the critical problem: it never once mentioned continuing, headline-stealing, public-alienating vandalism or, lastly, flag burning). 

Lately, at certain, especially, much smaller, weekly, nighttime, "F The Police!" marches, organizers and leading participants would appear to engage in regular passive-aggressive confrontations (again, recently toned down) with the police. They played cat-&-mouse, with the march aimlessly winding over the entire downtown area and, often, surrounding neighborhoods, with no particular, practical goal. A weekly schedule of nighttime, traffic-snarling, merchants-angering exercise of directly confronting the cops – however much they do deserve it – in the streets of Oakland might make us – often brutalized by the police – feel good, but begins to lose its message, displaces that of the Occupy movement, and confuses the general public, turned off, after a while. 

What the "Anarchists"/Black Bloc contingent within Occupy Oakland has really done is, too often, snatch movement dismay or public anger from the jaws of complete victory, or 'would-be' victory. (Like, the January 28, "Move-In" march, another relatively large, peaceful [except for the police], festive turnout, showing sustained interest, even if, with the planners' methods, an ill-considered objective, Occupying the mammoth Kaiser Auditorium.) This so, 'actually doing the work of the 1%,' by subsequently generating: 

(a) negative TV news video headlines and great public disappointment (over indiscriminate downtown vandalism, naturally played up and generalized by the TV media), after an otherwise unimaginably successful day of the Oakland General Strike rally and, respectively, two massively huge nonviolent port shutdowns by up to 50,000 people, with the, otherwise, overwhelming support of a public that was awed, deeply moved, and morally with us; 

(b) later, even more negative TV news video headlines (distracting the public from even more OPD excesses and brutality that would have been the headlines) and public backlash (after city hall vandalism and American flag-burning on its very steps), instead of the same overwhelming public sympathy that UC Berkeley and Davis students and academics – who sustained the moral high ground – when they suffered brazen police brutality (the only TV news headline videos available because the students didn't 'cooperate' with the mainstream media's penchant exaggerations of, hypothetically, any student violence); 

Given the above, how is the ordinary person – who doesn't want to directly provoke, goad or engage in weekly, nighttime, mock, let alone any real, streetfighting against the police, who doesn't want to advocate, condone, or physically associate with vandalism and gratuitous property destruction in the streets of their city (let alone flag-burning and accusations of destroying children's art at City Hall), who doesn't want to be a part of that particular kind of group or movement, and who doesn't know what possible escalation of violence to expect next from such a group – supposed to feel comfortable (or even physically or legally safe) participating in such a movement? 

How do self-indulgent Black Bloc advocates compare smashing a few local business windows, setting a couple of overturned dumpsters on fire, or burning the flag for a moment, back in downtown Oakland, to, instead, a major port shutdown by 50,000 peaceful marchers for miles!? And what do you think the TV news would lead with?: "Violence again from Occupy Oakland...!" But, the greatest successes of Occupy Oakland have always been nonviolently achieved. 

Under "diversity of tactics," would an ordinary person want their employer and workplace, their church, synagogue or mosque (especially given state surveillance or criminal entrapment against Muslims), or any other social institutions to which they belong, to find out – let alone their friends and neighbors find out – that that they are actually a participant in such a movement? That kind of movement is going to alienate most people – the very kind the organizers claim they want to attract. But, I have my doubts about that claim, to hear those parochial ideologues at Occupy Oakland, including Kristof, who smack more of insular, elite vanguardism. 

Without any safe entry point mass movement for newcomers to join, the movement, especially the Occupy Oakland movement, will stagnate, dwindle down, and turn into just another politically irrelevant, small, narrow group of ideological true believers and buzzflies, incapable of any unsuppressed, true, open self-examination and, thus, who, themselves, will never succeed in meaningfully changing anything in society. 

Or, as one veteran activist anguishedly said to me, "It's sad to think that this could be just another promising [but illusory] burst of energy that's just going to wither away with sharp dissension [and regularly alienatingly controversy that fatigues people's souls and steals the main goals and successes] and flagging interest." Like, 'Oh, no..., those people again...' 


FYI: see "Proposal on 'Action Agreements'," November 20, 2011; ref. under OccupyOakland.org, Open Forum tab, Discussion, "Did DOT Pass GA?," posted February 7, 2012:by Joseph Anderson, February 8, 2012: "Nonviolence" resolution proposal presented to the Occupy Oakland General Assembly... 

_______________________________________________________________________________________________ 

Joseph Anderson is a Berkeley, CA, resident; a longtime, progressive, grassroots political and global justice activist; an occasional political commentary contributor to various publications on issues usually ranging from Black-stereotyping (including by white liberal- & media-coronated Black-on-Black 'tough-love celebrities'), police brutality, and the Israel lobby and Zionism from a true leftist perspective; has occasionally been interviewed on KPFA and elsewhere in the media; has contributed on-the-scene citizen reporting for the prominent progressive Bay Area-based journalist, Davey D; and author of, "Same-old-same-old from the corporate media [and police]: the Oakland Justice for Oscar Grant protests".


Columns

THE PUBLIC EYE:Class Warfare: Which Side Are You On?

By Bob Burnett
Friday February 17, 2012 - 11:11:00 AM

Are we in the middle of a Class War? Billionaire Warren Buffett thinks so, “There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.” Most Americans agree; a recent Pew Poll found “Two-thirds of Americans said they think there are ‘very strong’ or ‘strong’ class conflicts in society.” But there’s a notable lack of enthusiasm for making fundamental change. 

One would think that with the success of the Occupy Wall Street movement, there would be a strong push for radical social reform. After all, 49 percent of Americans believe the US economic system to be “unfair.” But a recent Gallup Poll found that most Americans are not militant on this issue; they would rather promote policies to “grow and expand the economy” than they would to “reduce the income and wealth gap between the rich and the poor.” 

This result is perplexing. Time Magazine asked respondents if they agreed with the positions advocated by Occupy Wall Street and discovered extraordinary concurrence. 86 percent agreed that, "Wall Street and its lobbyists have too much influence in Washington." 79 percent agreed that, "The gap between rich and poor in the United States has grown too large." 71 percent agreed with "Executives of financial institutions responsible for the financial meltdown in 2008 should be prosecuted." And 68 percent agreed that, "The rich should pay more taxes." Nonetheless, there was a 45-50 percent enthusiasm gap, because many Americans, who expressed these strong positive sentiments, didn't support Occupy Wall Street. On the one hand the 99-Percent are concerned about the growing economic divide, but on the other hand they appear unready to do much about it. 

Perhaps working Americans do not understand how grave the situation is. A recent Mother Jones article graphically illustrated the problem: in the last 30 years the income of the one-percent has quadrupled and everyone else has experienced no growth. The Washington Post noted that in 2008, the average family income for the bottom 90 percent was $31,244 and that was a 1 percent DECLINE from 1970. During the same period, the top .1 percent saw their income increase by 385% to $5.6 million. (The wealth divide is even more extreme; while the top 1 percent earn 21 percent of the nation’s income, they now control 36 percent of our wealth.) 

The good news is that there is growing awareness among the 99-percent that they’ve been ripped off; that they’re engaged in a decades-long class war and their side is losing. As a result working Americans are in favor of raising taxes on the 1-percent. And there’s some evidence that the 99-percent are waking up to the problem of big money in politics, the problems caused by the Citizens United Supreme Court decision. The bad news is that this may not be enough to save our Democracy. 

Over the last thirty years, the United States has been looted. The rich and powerful, the 1-percent, have taken a disproportionate share of the economic gains that we’ve all worked for. As a consequence America is teetering on the brink of Plutocracy. To remedy this inequity and restore Democracy, fundamental changes must be made. 

The first step is recognition that we’re in a class war and must take sides. Recently ani difranco updated the words to the old Union song, “Which Side Are You On?” They aptly summarize the current political situation: 

Thirty years of diggin’  

Got us in this hole 

The curse of Reaganomics 

Has finally taken its toll. 

Lord knows the free market 

Is anything but free 

It costs dearly to the planet 

And the likes of you and me. 

I don’t need those money lenders 

Sucking on my tit 

A little socialism 

Don’t scare me one bit! 

Which side are you on now 

Which side are you on? 

 

On one level, the 2012 election will be a referendum on the economy and Obama’s leadership. But at another, deeper level the election will be about class warfare: are Americans prepared to stop the looting? Are they prepared to take sides? 

Barack Obama is not a perfect candidate but at least he is willing to talk about class warfare and to propose common sense steps towards economic justice. That’s a big difference from Mitt Romney who doesn’t think we have a class problem or issues with economic fairness and says of people who suggest this “[It's] about envy. It’s about class warfare.” 

Which side are you on? 

So are we just consumers Or are we citizens? 

Are we gonna make more garbage 

Or are we gonna make amends? 

Are you part of the solution 

Or are you part of the con? 

Which side are you on now 

Which side are you on? 

Bob Burnett is a Berkeley writer. He can be reached at bburnett@sonic.net


ECLECTIC RANT: Time to Protect Kid's Privacy Online

By Ralph E. Stone
Friday February 17, 2012 - 11:06:00 AM

Privacy has become a major issue in the United States and Congress is paying attention. H.R. 1895, "The Do Not Track Kids Act," , a bi-partisan bill sponsored by U.S. Representatives Ed Markey (D. MA) and Joe Barton (D. TX), is pending in Congress. H.R. 1895 would amend the "Children's Online Privacy Protection Act" (COPPA) by introducing additional provisions to govern the collection and use of teens' personal information. 

COPPA, effective April 21, 2000, was passed before cookies and other tracking technologies were being used, and doesn't cover teens, who frequently use social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. COPPA applies to the online collection of personal information from children under 13. COPPA spells out what a website operator must include in a privacy policy, when and how to seek verifiable consent from a parent, and what responsibilities an operator has to protect children's privacy and safety online. COPPA is enforced by the Federal Trade Commission. The FTC has promulgated regulations to enforce COPPA. For more information on COPPA, see the FTC's "Frequently Asked Questions about the Children's Online Privacy Protection Rule.

H.R. 1895 takes COPPA even further by prohibiting Internet companies from collecting personal information from anyone under 13 without parental consent, and from teens without their consent, and prohibits companies from profiling kids and teens for advertising. It also requires websites to have an "eraser button" to get rid of information collected about kids and teens. 

H.R. 1895 is motivated by sincere concerns for the collection of children and teens' personal information online. The Act, however, could result in mandatory age verification and increased collection of personal information from all users, and thus, could infringe the rights of teenagers to access completely appropriate, lawful speech online. One change to COPPA is to the entities covered by COPPA from sites that know they are collecting information "from a [specific] child" to sites that know they collect information "from children" generally. While the amendment from "a child" to "children" seems minor, It could effectively expand COPPA to apply to most general-interest websites, rather than just websites directed at children. Although teens are known to surf the internet and visit general websites as wll as those directed at children. These websites would be faced with the choice of risking violations of COPPA, or adopting a more rigorous screening system that would validate the age and identity of every user, in order to obtain appropriate parental consent from child users. Are these requirements too burdensome? 

Does H.R. 1895 raise First Amendment concerns by inadvertently blocking material that is constitutionally protected by depriving children of access to information that everybody would agree they should see? Children clearly do not have the same First Amendment rights as adults, but they do have some First Amendment rights. Children's speech rights are diminished in direct proportion to age -- the younger the child, the greater degree of permissible regulation. H.R. 1895 would seem to be permissible regulation. 

COPPA should not be confused with the Child Online Protection Act (COPA), enacted on October 23, 1998. COPA sought to prohibit online sites from knowingly making available to minors material that is “harmful to minors.” Enforcement of this law was immediately subject to legal challenge under the First Amendment. In June 2004, the Supreme Court upheld a lower court injunction against the law, ruling that it was most likely unconstitutional. COPPA and the proposed amendment thereto, on the other hand, strike an appropriate balance of protecting children from marketers and sexual predators online, while allowing children to take advantage of the many benefits of the Internet. 

While no privacy protection law will ever be perfect as kids can enter fake ages when they sign up at websites and too much protection can limit kids' access to the good things on the internet, on balance H.R. 1895 is good step toward making kids safer online. 

Let your members of Congress know how you feel about H.R. 1895, "The Do Not Track Kids Act."


WILD NEIGHBORS: The Duck in the Cave

By Joe Eaton
Friday February 17, 2012 - 11:27:00 AM
Two nene on Kaua'i: relatively normal geese.
Alejandro Barcenas, via Wikimedia Commons.
Two nene on Kaua'i: relatively normal geese.

Yes, it’s another Hawai’i column. “Neighbors” is a relative term.

I’ve written before about the extraordinary birds called Hawai’ian honeycreepers, or more technically drepanine finches (“dreps” for short.) They’re a classic evolutionary radiation: some generalized ancestral finch gave rise to over 50 descendant species with diverse plumage colors and specialized bill shapes and functions. For a long time there’s been speculation as to whether the ancestor originated in Asia and North America. In an earlier piece for a now-defunct magazine, I imagined a house finch or lesser goldfinch flying from California to Hawai’i with the seed of a tarweed—itself the ancestor of the equally extraordinary silversword plants—clinging to its feathers. 

Well, the geneticists have smashed that all to hell. The latest analysis of drepanine phylogeny indicates the founding species was a Eurasian rosefinch—a close relative of our house, purple, and Cassin’s finches, but no cigar. Something else must have introduced the proto-tarweed; maybe the solitaire that gave rise to the Hawai’ian thrushes, or some other North American species that died without issue. 

North American ancestry remains likely for other Hawai’ian birds, though. The nene, or Hawai’ian goose—the state bird, except on Kaua’i where the feral chicken rules—is considered to be an offshoot of the Canada goose. 

Hawai’ian waterfowl are an interesting assortment, with varying degrees of modification for island life. The nene, despite a few quirks like reduced webbing between its toes, is a pretty standard goose. And the koloa, the only surviving native duck, could pass for a female mallard (and in fact is at risk of genetic swamping by introduced mallards.) 

Other ducks evolved in bizarre directions once they reached the islands. An earlier dabbling duck colonization resulted in the moa- nalo lineage: large flightless browsers with heavy beaks like the jaws of a tortoise. The evolution of prickly leaves in island plants of the lobelia family may have been a defensive response to the foraging habits of these birds. Fossil and subfossil moa-nalo remains have been found on all the main islands except Hawai’i, the Big Island. “Moa” is the word for “chicken” in most Polynesian languages and was applied to anything at all poultry-like, as with the giant birds of New Zealand. “Moa-nalo” is a modern coinage; the Hawai’ians left no oral traditions or other records of these birds, not even recipes. 

The most bizarre of all Hawai’ian ducks was discovered about ten few years ago, during the excavation of the Makauwahi Cave on the south shore of Kaua’i. David Burney, a paleoecologist and director of conservation at the National Tropical Botanical Garden, which has three units on Kaua’i, has been digging at Makauwahi for a couple of decades. His work, chronicled in his book Back to the Future in the Caves of Kaua’i, has allowed the reconstruction of a lost ecosystem, which has already begun in the cave’s vicinity. 

Burney has found the remains of other extinct creatures in the cave, but nothing to rival Talpanas lippa, the mole-duck, described in 2009 on the basis of a single specimen from Makauwahi. It was a small duck, about the size of a female mallard, and apparently flightless: Hawai’i’s approximation of a kiwi. Talpa is the Latin word for “mole,” anas for duck. Andrew Iwaniuk, Storrs Olson, and Helen James, authors of the description, concluded that the bird had “reduced visual abilities, as reflected externally by its small orbits and optic foramen.” But it compensated with a hyperdeveloped tactile sense.

“The hole in the skull for the nerve carrying the sense of touch is over ten times the diameter measured in ducks of comparable size, suggesting that it may have been more heavily reliant on the sense of touch for foraging than any living species of bird in the world,” writes Burney. Iwaniuk et al note that the living duck-billed platypus also has an enlarged trigeminal nerve. The platypus relies on electrosensory input as it hunts in murky water; the mole-duck might have done the same. It might be fair to call the bird a platypus-billed duck. 

With its small eyes and sturdy legs, Talpanas appears to have been nocturnal and land-based. There’s nothing remotely like it among contemporary ducks, although ruddy ducks and other stifftails use tactile cues rather than vision to locate prey. Burney’s conclusion is apt: “It seems that we have dug up something that nobody would have even remotely imagined to exist, had it not been for the discovery of these bones.” 

The mole-duck is long gone, of course. Its remains were found below vegetable matter that was carbon-dated as at least 5305 years old, when the cave site was a lake; one more tantalizing piece of a lost world.


SENIOR POWER The eyes have it…

By Helen Rippier Wheeler
Friday February 17, 2012 - 12:32:00 PM

Your first indication may be that notorious newspaper fine print. Held at the usual distance from your eyes, you find yourself holding the paper farther from your eyes to focus the image.  

Some gerontologists believe that it is not the graying of the hair but changes in the lens of the eye that come closest to being a universal normal age change in humans. The lens becomes thicker and heavier with age, reducing the ability to focus on close-up objects. The condition, called presbyopia, occurs in about 42% of people aged 52-64, 73% of people aged 65-74, and 92% of people 75+.  

There are things we can do when we recognize changes in our senses. The eye has the ability to adjust to see near and far objects, shading and colors, variations in lighting from almost complete darkness to sudden emergency into light. Age-related changes in vision occur in two primary areas of the eye: the lens and the retina. Presbyopia is the term used to describe slowness in changing the focus from far to near; stemming partly from the loss of elasticity in the lens. If you need simple magnification in both eyes and have no other conditions that require correction, you may try over-the-counter reading glasses, now available in some states. Always begin with the weakest glasses with which you can read. For dry eyes, use artificial tears.  

A regular complete eye examination to check for glaucoma and other serious eye diseases may detect such other undiagnosed systemic conditions as diabetes and hypertension. Four diseases are the principal causes of visual impairment and blindness in older persons: cataracts, glaucoma, macular degeneration, and diabetic retinopathy.  

Formation of cataracts is generally considered a disease, although some believe that if you live long enough, it’s inevitable. This is one of several examples that illustrate the difficulty in distinguishing between some normal age changes and disease.  

In (too) many communities, cataract surgery is regarded as “day surgery” or “ambulatory surgery” wherein the medical community expects the patient to deliver her/himself to the hospital at the crack of dawn (try getting a taxi then) and, in a few hours, to be picked up by friends or relatives, taxi prohibited. That s/he may have no family and or live alone is not considered. 

Nevertheless, I urge anyone whose ophthalmologist has diagnosed need for cataract surgery to proceed! It is amazing what a difference it can make. I was stuck for transportation to and from the hospital… until I mentioned it to a senior center staff member. Of course, that was in olden days… 

A Japanese friend’s 84 year old mother, who lives alone in the Greater Tokyo area, had cataract surgery on both eyes, one at a time, a day apart. If a patient is living with someone, s/he can go home. Okaa-san chose to remain in the hospital “for some days because she preferred to do so. It was costly, but she didn't want to go home until she was able to go out for grocery shopping, etc..” The total cost was $720. She paid $520.00, mainly for the hospital stay. Japan has a mandatory (universal) health care system. Her monthly health insurance payment is $70. 

Eye floaters are spots in your vision. They may look like black or gray specks, strings or cobwebs that drift about when you move your eyes. Most are caused by age-related changes that occur as the jelly-like substance (vitreous) inside your eyes becomes more liquid. When this happens, microscopic fibers within the vitreous tend to clump together and can cast tiny shadows on your retina, which you may see as floaters. 

If you notice a sudden increase in the number of eye floaters, contact an eye specialist immediately — especially if you also see flashes of light or lose your peripheral vision. These can be symptoms of an emergency that requires prompt attention. Spots may eventually settle down and drift out of the line of vision 

“Age-related vision problems” is a slide show by the Mayo Clinic staff, available online. 

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An ophthalmologist is a doctor of medicine (M.D.) who diagnoses and treats eye diseases and performs eye surgery. Ophthalmologists used to expect the patient to have the prescription filled by an optician, and then return to have it checked! That too was in olden days. 

Forty three ophthalmology physicians in or near Berkeley, California are listed as accepting the Medicare-approved amount on all claims. This is called “accepting Medicare assignment.” Always consult My Medicare for the names of physicians who accept Medicare assignment in your area. Medicare will respond “Accepts Medicare-approved amount on all claims.” Nevertheless, double check when making your initial appointment.  

It’s becoming difficult for senior citizens to feel for physicians’ alleged money problems. When attempting to make a doctor’s appointment, you are asked about your insurance; it can be unwise to respond “Medi Medi” (stands for Medicare and Medi-Cal), or “Medi-Cal” or even “Medicare!” Some physicians require a senior citizen (even a long-time patient) with Medicare to also have a secondary insurer other than Medi-Cal. These tend to be eeking out a living in sports med, orthopedics, cosmetic surgery… 

Let me know of senior citizen deny-ers!  

Medicare does not cover eyeglasses other than one prescription following cataract surgery. 

An optometrist is a doctor of optometry (O.D.) who is trained to examine, diagnose, and treat conditions of the visual system. Both can prescribe corrective lenses.  

An optician fits and makes eyeglasses and, in some states, fits contact lenses from a doctor’s prescription.  

I am not a medical doctor. 

Here’s a tip. When you get “new glasses,” i.e. when your lens prescription is updated or otherwise changed, the optician may ask you if you “want the old lenses.” Always say Yes! Keep them in a safe place.  

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Meredith M. Whiteside, OD, FAAO, Associate Clinical Professor; Director, Geriatric & Elder Care Outreach Clinic, shares with Senior Power information about general eye care and the University of California, Berkeley Optometric clinic, which is open 7 days a week. For those who have a medical condition that prevents them from leaving their home or nursing facility to receive eye care, there is the Home Visit Clinic. In order to ensure that those who really need in home care receive it, documentation is required from (typically) the patient's physician who certifies the person's disability and gives a summary of the medical conditions including medications. The scheduling person for this program at U.C. Berkeley Optometry is Theresa Bertero, who can be reached at 510 642-2020x1. 

Whiteside mentions another clinic that may be of use to Senior Power column readers who are patients at the Over 60 Health Center. There is an optometry clinic that runs 2 days per week. She points out that the Lions Club does some vision screenings for seniors at well. The person in charge of that program is Ed Schroth (pronounced "Sch-rOat"). He can be reached at (925) 432-3013. 

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NEWS 

President Obama's budget request for fiscal year 2013 includes investments in some programs for seniors, but cuts in others. Older Americans Act funding would generally be frozen, and Medicare spending would be reduced by $302.8 billion over 10 years. 

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MARK YOUR CALENDAR: Be sure to confirm. Readers are welcome to share by email news of future events and deadlines that may interest boomers, seniors and elders. Daytime, free, and Bay Area events preferred. pen136@dslextreme.com.  

Current-March 4, 2012. STAGEBRIDGE presents the World Premiere of Counter Attack!, a new play by Joan Holden, starring Joan Mankin as Marlene, an aging waitress who discovers that her lifelong position is suddenly under attack. You¹d be surprised to discover what really goes on behind the counter. Inspired by Candacy Taylor¹s 2009 book, Counter Culture, the American Coffee Shop Waitress. The Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby Ave., Berkeley. For show times and to reserve ticketst: www.stagebridge.org or 510-444-4755 x114. 

Current-March 30. “Berkeley Women Vote: Celebrating California Suffrage 1911-2011.” An Exhibit at the Berkeley History Center, 1931 Center Street. 510-848-0181. 

Friday, Feb. 17. 9:30-11:30 A.M. Mastick Senior Center, 1155 Santa Clara Ave., Alameda. Creating Your Personal Learning Network. Join Mike McMahon, Volunteer, Learn to use the Internet and tools like Twitter. With the rise of social media tools like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, individuals can now create virtual learning classes on any topic of their choosing. Sign up. 510-747-7506. 

Tuesday, Feb. 21. 9:30 A.M. Mastick Senior Center, 1155 Santa Clara Avenue, Alameda. Mastick Non-Fiction Book Club. Members will review Stormy Weather: The Life of Lena Horne by James Gavin and/or Paul Newman: A Life by Shawn Levy. 510-747-7510. 

Tuesday, Feb. 21. 12:30 P.M. San Francisco Gray Panthers General Meeting. Fireside Room, Unitarian Center, 1187 Franklin St. (at Geary). # 38 (not 38L) bus. 415-552-8800. 

Tuesday, Feb. 21. 1 P.M. Mastick Senior Center, 1155 Santa Clara Avenue, Alameda.  

A representative from the Health Insurance Counseling Advocacy Program (HICAP) will provide an overview of Medicare coverage and options including the Medicare Program (eligibility, costs, benefits, and recent changes); Medicare Supplement Plans (Medigap), Medical Advantage Plans and Medi-Cal; and provide information on Medicare’s Prescription Drug benefit. Sign up in the office or call 510-747-7506. See also Feb. 28. 

Wednesday, Feb. 22. 12:15 – 1 P.M. Jazz x 2: Free Noon Concert Series. UC,B Music Dept. Hertz Concert Hall. UC Jazz All-stars, Ted Moore, Director. Berkeley Nu Jazz Collective, Myra Melford, Director. 510-642-4864. 

Wednesday, Feb. 22. 12:30-1:30 P.M. Albany YMCA/Albany Library Brown Bag Lunch Speaker’s Forum. Albany Branch, Alameda Country Library, 1247 Marin Ave. Free. 510-526-3720 x 16. 

Wednesday, Feb. 22. 1:30 P.M. Berkeley-East Bay Gray Panthers. North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst, corner MLK. 510-981-5190. Note: Gray Panthers Berkeley office is now located in the Center for Independent Living (CIL) building on Telegraph (between Dwight and Parker), 2539 Telegraph Ave, Suite B, Berkeley, CA 94704. Phone: 510-548-9696. 

Thursday, Feb. 23. 1:30 P.M. Mastick Senior Center, 1155 Santa Clara Avenue, Alameda. Music Appreciation Class. Join William Sturm, Volunteer Instructor, for a piano recital and discussion about “The Classical Romantic: Johannes Brahms.” Register in the Mastick Office or call 747-7506. Free. 

Friday, Feb. 24. 9 A.M.-4 P.M. Annual convention. United Seniors of Oakland and Alameda County. 510-729-0852. www.usoac.org 

Friday, Feb. 24. 12:15 – 1 P.M. Chamber Music in C Major. Noon concert. Music Dept. event. Hertz Concert Hall: Mozart: String Quintet No. 3 in C major, K.515. Michael Hwang, Michaela Nachtigall, violins. Sally Jang, Melissa Panlasigui, violas. Cindy Hickox, cello. Beethoven: String Quartet in C major, op. 59 no. 3. Vivian Hou, Jason Wu, violins. Marissa Sakoda, viola. Michael Tan, cello. Tickets not required. 510-642-4864. 

Tuesday, Feb. 28. Mastick Senior Center, 1155 Santa Clara Avenue, Alameda.  

Low Income Assistance. A representative from the Health Insurance Counseling Advocacy Program (HICAP) will provide an overview on getting help with health care costs including the Medicare program, Medi-Cal, SSI, Medicare Savings Programs, and Low Income Subsidy (extra help) for prescription drugs. The eligibility and application process will be reviewed. Sign up in the office or 510-747-7506. 

 

Wednesday, Feb. 29. 12:15-1 P.M. Gospel Chorus, Old Made New: Free Noon Concert Series. UC, B Music Dept. Highlights - University Gospel Chorus, D. Mark Wilson, director. Old Songs in New Clothes: Old hymns given new life and meaning in contemporary compositions by African American composers. 510-642-4864 

Wednesday, Feb. 29. 7:00 PM. Kensington Library Book Club. 61 Arlington Av. 

February's book is The Trial by Franz Kafka. The book group alternates classic and contemporary literature on a monthly basis. Each meeting starts with a poem selected and read by a member. 510-524-3043.  

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Thursday, March 1. 10 A.M. Computers for Beginners. Central Berkeley Library, 2090 Kittredge. 510-981-6100. 

Friday, March 2. 12:15-1 P.M. UC,B Dept. of Music students perform chamber music. Free. Hertz Concert Hall. 510-642-4864. 

Tuesday, March 6. 1 P.M. Mastick Book Club. Mastick Senior Center, 1155 Santa Clara Ave. , Alameda. Book Club members will review House Rules by Jodi Picoult. 510-747-7506. 

Wednesday, March 7. 12:15-1 P.M. University Wind Ensemble: Robert Calonico, drector Ron Nelson: Savannah River Holiday, Vaughan Williams: English Folk Song Suite 1. March: Seventeen Come Sunday 2. Intermezzo: My Bonny Boy 3. March: Folk Songs from Somerset Morten Lauridsen/arr. H. Robert Reynolds: O Magnum Mysterium Steven Bryant: Stampede Henry Fillmore/arr. Loras Schissel: Lassus Trombone. Hertz Concert Hall. Free. 510-642-4864. 

 

Wednesdays, March 7 and 14. 9 A.M. – 1 P.M. Mastick Senior Center, 1155 Santa Clara Ave. , Alameda. AARP Driver Safety Program. Designed for individuals 50+, this 8 hour course is taught in 2, 4-hour sessions over a 2-day period. Preregistration required; cost is $12 per person for AARP members, $14 non-AARP members. Registration payable by check ONLY, made payable to AARP. Sign up in the Mastick Office. 510-747-7506. 

Thursday, March 8. 4:30 P.M. Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Av. eReader Workshop. Please bring your own device and library card to the workshop. Free. No reservations needed. 510-524-3043. See also March 15. 

Thursday, March 8. 6:30 P.M. El Cerrito Library, 6510 Stockton Avenue. Join board certified psychologist Dr. Marshall Zaslove for an evening meditation workshop and interaction. He will base his presentation on the book, Inner and Outer Peace through Meditation, by Rajinder Singh. 510-526-7512. 

Monday, March 12. 7 P.M. Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Avenue. Berkeley Repertory Theatre discussion. A docent from the Berkeley Repertory Theatre will discuss the current production, Moliere’s A Doctor in Spite of Himself. This is the traditional story of a girl, who feigns illness to avoid an unwanted wedding. (And a contemporary condition as well.) Free. 510-524-3043 

Tuesday, March 13. 1:30 P.M. . Mastick Senior Center, 1155 Santa Clara Ave., Alameda. Douglas Borchert, J.D., SBC, underwriting counsel, columnist, will present “The America’s Cup: Racing the Wind.” The story of the America's Cup begins in the mid-19th century with the family of Colonel John Stevens and an invitation to the Crystal Palace Exhibition in London. Mr. Borchert will pick up the story from there and outline the fascinating history of the event. Sign up in the Mastick Office or call 510-747-7506. This program is sponsored by the Mastick Senior Center Advisory Board. 

Wednesday, March 14. 12:15-1 P.M. University Baroque Ensemble: 59th Annual Free Noon Concert Series. Hertz Concert Hall. 510-642-4864. 

Thursday, March 15. 4:30 P.M. Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Av. eReader Workshop. Please bring your own device and library card to the workshop. Free. No reservations needed. 510-524-3043. 

Wednesday, March 21. 12:15 – 1 P.M. Noon concert, UC, B. Music Department. Hertz Concert Hall. UC Berkeley Symphony Orchestra, David Milnes, director. Weber: Bassoon Concerto, Drew Gascon, soloist. Debussy: Nocturnes. Tickets not required. 510-642-4864. 

Friday, March 23. 12:15-1 P.M. Bustan Quartet. Free Noon Concert Series. Lecture/demonstration: Co-sponsored event: Highlights: Hertz Concert Hall. Visiting Israeli group demonstrates their work in crafting new means of musical expression from diverse resources. Tickets not required. 510-642-4864.  

Monday, March 26. 7 P.M. Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Av. Book Club. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peal Society by Mary Ann Shaffer. Each meeting starts with a poem selected and read by a member with a brief discussion following the reading. New members are always welcome. Free. 510-524-3043. 

Current-March 30. “Berkeley Women Vote: Celebrating California Suffrage 1911-2011.” An Exhibit at the Berkeley History Center, 1931 Center Street. 510-848-0181. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


EATS, SHOOTS 'N' LEAVES:Amyris Drops Out of the Agrofuel Business

By Richard Brenneman
Tuesday February 14, 2012 - 12:05:00 PM

Yep, Amyris [previously], the UC Berkeley-spawned company born of Bill Gates bucks to create an antimalarial drug then reincarnated as a corporation dedicated to creating fuels from plants, is dropping out of the fuel game — in precisely the same way it left the drug business. 

Ken Bullis of MIT’s Technology Review explains: 

Amyris said it’s giving up making fuels too. Instead, it will to focus on higher value products, such as moisturizers for cosmetics. The company learned firsthand just how difficult it is to achieve the kind of yields seen in lab tests in large-scale production. In an update call for investors, CEO John Melo said he is “humbled by the lessons we have learned.” 

This is a common theme for advanced biofuels companies. Range Fuels, one of the first of the current crop of companies, recently went out of business. Others are giving up on making biofuels too, also hoping to break into markets for higher value chemicals. Although they may be able to get more money per liter of product, some experts warn that these markets are also highly competitive. 

Amyris’s technology may still be used to make renewable fuels, but this will happen not at Amyris, but under joint ventures established with Total and Cosan. These ventures will need to build up their own production capacity, Melo told analysts. 

Read the rest

Amyris was created by Jay Keasling, who holds appointments at both UC Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, with money from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. 

The firm’s original purpose was to produce a low-cost version of artemisin, an antimalarial drug normally derived from the artemisia, the wormwood plant. 

Amyris bioengineers genetically tweaked microbes to excrete the chemical, but dreams of lowering costs failed to materialize, and the technology was handed over to pharmaceutical giant Sanofi-Aventis to produce the drug for no profit. 

Meanwhile, thousands of small farmers who relied on growing artemisia face the prospect of loss of livelihood, given the pharma giant’s powerful marketing machinery. 

So having failed to produce a low cost drug, Amyris turned to tweaking microbes to digest cellulose, in hopes of producing fuels. 

But again costs got in the way, even after French oil giant Total invested heavily in the company, along with other investors. 

The company went public on 28 September 2010, with shares trading at $16.50, rising to a peak of $33.89 four months later. Today, as we write, they’re trading at $6.77, after hitting an all-time low of $6.59 last week. 

Lo, how the dreams of the technocrats have fallen. First it was cheap drugs to save the world, then fuel to survive the end of the oil age. Now it’s cosmetics. 


This first appeared on Richard Brenneman's blog.


Arts & Events

FILM REVIEW: Red Tails: May the Air Force Be With You

By Gar Smith
Friday February 17, 2012 - 11:34:00 AM
A Red Tail Air Battle
A Red Tail Air Battle
The cast of Red Tails
The cast of Red Tails

There is a quick-and-easy way of describing Red Tails, George Lucas' new film about the Tuskegee Airmen: "Star Wars with propellers." Red Tails is a film to see and a film to support but it is not the film event it could have been. 

Lucas and director Anthony Hemingway deserve props for spectacle but, if you're expecting a historical drama about the African American struggle to win a cockpit seat in WWII, this isn't that film. Boondocks creator Aaron McGruder, an admitted Star Wars fan, claims he convinced Lucas to abandon a history-rooted version and, instead, turn Red Tails into a battle-action film that would make Obi wan with envy. The result is a movie that looks more like it was drawn from a graphic novel than from the pages of US civil rights history. 

The first clue is the on-screen caveat that precedes the film: "Inspired by True Events." This tells us what we're about to see is even further from the truth than a film "Based on a True Story." So, instead of taking us to the fields of Alabama or to the halls of Congress, Red Tails begins (like an episode of the Star Wars Trilogy) with a blazing full-bore battle. Only this time, we're not zipping around in a Galaxy Far, Far Away, we're in the skies over Italy, smack in the middle of WWII. It's not a space battle; it's an airspace battle. IOW: Same thing. 

Lucas deserves a ringing ovation for insisting on executive-producing this film in the face of resistance from major studios who, as Lucas explains, had no interest in financing a film with "an all-Black cast." And it's a pleasure to see the film (which Lucas had to finance out of his own pocket) drawing enthusiastic audiences — and millions of dollars — into theaters across the country. 

Lucas has (perhaps jokingly) invited other directors to step forward and produce a "prequel" and "sequel" to create a Red Tails Trilogy. Not a bad idea. In the meantime, we only have the portion of the story that Lucas has given us. 

As Red Tails begins, it is 1944 and the Tuskegee Airmen are already in harness, diving through the clouds and picking off enemy trucks and trains. The problem is, they've been relegated to the rear seat of the war effort and they've been stuck with the kind of hand-me-down planes that come with second-class military citizenship. 

Red Tails exists primarily as a vehicle for high-octane film spectacle. The CGI air battles are incredible. At times there appear to be hundreds of planes in the air at the same time—US bombers, escort fighters and German attackers. (Were these air-battles really so epic or is Lucas inflating history to the proportions of fantasy?) When a plane catches fire, explodes, or slams into a pasture or summersaults down a landing strip, the details of mechanical destruction are rendered with obsessive attention. 

And then there's the story. 

The characters seem earnest enough and their plight is easy to sympathize with but these characters just aren't believable. Watching Red Tails begins to feel like watching a mash-up of MASH and Inglorious Basterds. This is partly due to the artifice of staging a war story in an anachronistic era of prop-driven aircraft but the characters are also anachronisms. Lucas (perhaps under McGruder's tutelage) has created a cast of characters that looks and sounds like it was cloned from the DNA of a 1950's war film. 

Instead of a group of interesting strangers that we slowly get to know, Lucas gives us one familiar archetype after another. There's "Lightning" (David Oyelowo), the dashing ladies' man whose derring-do is matched only by his seething resentments. There's "Easy" (Nate Parker), Lightning's tent-mate and immediate superior, who drowns his self-doubt with an ever-ready bottle of whiskey. There's "Junior" (Tristan Wilds), the newcomer who needs to prove his bravery, regardless the cost. There's the "Old Man" (Terrance Howard), dealing with the powers-that-be back in Washington. We also have "Smokey," "Joker," "Winky," and "Sticks." Finally, there's "The Major," a grimacing, pipe-chomping Cuba Gooding, Jr., who takes the art of scenery chewing to new, literal heights. 

The screenplay hobbles the actors with scenes that make it impossible to "suspend belief." For starters: I can accept a scene where a single pilot armed only with a pair of blazing wing-guns managing to disintegrate a speeding locomotive but Lightning's "meet-cute" with a leggy Italian sweetie just doesn't fly. Here's what director Hemingway gives us: Roaring back from a mission, Lightning soars over the nearest Italian town (a scenic coastal village that appears untouched by war). Looking down, he spots Sofia (Daniela Ruah) on her rooftop hanging laundry. She looks up and smiles. He looks down and grins. She looks up and blows him a kiss. He looks down and blows her a kiss. And half the audience is thinking: This couldn't happen even if he was driving by in a run-down Volvo, let alone at the controls of an airplane blasting by a 400 mph. 

One of the other Great Improbabilities occurs when the Red Tails are given brand-new P-51 Mustangs and assigned to escort a fleet of bombers on a critical run to attack Berlin. The Red Tails, however, are told they will only be allowed to shadow the bombers for the first leg of the trip, after which the Top Gun White Guys from the 54th Squadron will take over to make sure the job is done right. So what happens? As the airborne armada crosses over the German border, a bomber pilots asks rhetorically: "Where's the 54th?" You guessed it. The other squadron is nowhere to be seen and the Red Tails have to take charge. Again, half the audience is now thinking: "Somebody in the Air Force is going to get court-martialed for that blunder!" 

The attack on Berlin is particularly disturbing. It's been a long time since Germans have been cast as The Western World's Most Subhuman Villains. Many people who go to see this film will have spent time in Europe on vacation and many will recognize the River Spree as it winds through the city—now framed in the bombsite of an Allied bomber. Because of the passage of time and shifting political alliances, there is no joy in watching US bombs starting to rain down on the rooftops of central Berlin. 

This leads to another fundamental problem with Red Tails. For anyone who has grown tired of war or has become too aware of the use of "governing falsehoods" designed to steer nations into bloody combat, Red Tails raises an uncomfortable question: Why are we celebrating the fact that Black Americans have been given the opportunity to kill foreigners in a White Man's War? (This in no way diminishes the courage and competence of the extraordinary individuals who broke the Pentagon's blue-sky color barrier. But it does place their sacrifice—and those of the majority of conscripted and volunteer soldiers—in a more somber and morally fractured frame.) 

So hats off to Lucas and crew for a rousing, CGI-assisted potboiler that offers lots of easy action and cartoon exuberance. Red Tails was worth the price of a ticket but I'm setting my money aside for the prequel. If we're lucky, Spike Lee will do it. 


The Real Story of the Tuskegee Airmen

By Gar Smith
Friday February 17, 2012 - 12:29:00 PM
The Real Tuskegee Airmen
The Real Tuskegee Airmen
Eleanor and C. Alfred Anderson
Eleanor and C. Alfred Anderson

George Lucas' Red Tails is a serviceable introduction to the accomplishments of the Tuskegee Airmen but a richer and more honest story can be found in Adam White's Red Tail Reborn, which was originally broadcast on PBS and is now available in a two-disk set that includes extended bonus interviews with a number of surviving "Red Tails." (www.redtailreborn.com), including Col. Charles McGee, a man who has flown more combat missions than any other American (409 missions; 6,100 hours in the air) and who — as the film shows, is still proudly flying. 

The film begins with a visit to the crumbling barracks and abandoned airfield in Tennessee where the airmen trained. The weathered base serves as a visual metaphor, underscoring the fact that, until recently, the story of the Tuskegee pilots had remained as forgotten as their long-abandoned base. There was a time (not too long ago) when people would insist that no African Americans ever flew airplanes during WWII. Most history book made no mention of their role. As one of the veterans wryly notes during an interview, "It wasn't until the 1970s that we even heard the name 'Tuskegee Airman.'" 

The odds against these pilots were immense. A secret 1924 War College Report concluded: "Blacks [are] unfit for leadership roles and incapable of aviation." One senior Army commander had no hesitation in saying outright what the War College Report was claiming in private. "The Negro type has not the proper reflexes to make a first-class fighter pilot," he proclaimed. 

That kind of thinking didn't deter C. Alfred "Chief" Anderson. He had wanted to fly since he was a child but, when no one would let him near a plane, because of the color of his skin, Anderson, now a young man, borrowed, $2,500 from family and friends and bought his own plane. He taught himself to fly, earned a coveted Air Transport certificate and went on to become the chief instructor at the Tuskegee training base. 

The 'Tuskegee Experiment' Gets Off the Ground 

When President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed a law calling for the "training" of black pilots in 1941, critics hoped the program would prove a disaster. But the equation was dramatically altered when Eleanor Roosevelt took it upon herself to visit Tuskegee. Despite the protests of her secret security protectors, she climbed into the back seat of an open-cockpit plane and insisted that the plane take off for a short flight with a broadly smiling African American pilot at the controls. 

"That one picture in the plane did it," an elderly Airman remembers fondly. "She wasn't afraid of flying with these so-called 'inferior beings.'" And, with that, the "Tuskegee Experiment" took off. 

For many of these would-be pilots (who had grown up and graduated from colleges in the country's large, northern cities), this was their first visit to the Deep South where racism was still in full force. They found themselves segregated on their own base where the US Army provided them with separate barracks and a separate mess hall. 

The officer in charge of the training base was General Benjamin O. Davis, Jr. An exceptional leader, Davis had survived four years as the first non-white candidate at West Point. For four years, no one would speak to him; he was given his own room, with no roommate; he was forced to eat his meals alone. But Ben Davis refused to accept defeat. Instead of striking back, he hit the books — and graduated at the head of his class. 

Under Davis' strict command, the training was rigorous, with as many as 65% of the aspiring fliers being sent home. Eventually four squadrons consisting of nearly 1,000 men had been trained to fly but, as the war raged, they were kept on the ground—forced to continue "training." It wasn't until 1943 that the fliers were finally ordered into battle. Flying dated P-40s, they initially were dispatched to Africa and confined to attacking "ground targets only" (trains, trucks and convoys). 

When the Tuskegee pilots were finally allowed to accompany a fleet of bombers headed toward Munich, the results confounded the critics. With only 39 planes, the Airmen went up against 100 German fighters, shot down five, and didn't lose a single US bomber. 

A good part of this remarkable record was attributable to a command decision that required the Red Tails stay with the bombers and not to go off chasing German planes in an attempt to "score kills" (which had been the preferred practice of the white "aces"). Ironically, another explanation for the Red Tails' success was their enforced period of extended training. White pilots were expected to be "90-day Wonders," trained to fly and sent into combat missions in three-months' time. By contrast, when the Tuskegee fliers finally hit the clouds, they were an incredibly cohesive and accomplished flying force. 

Out-Flying the Bounds of Racism 

The "Red Tails" quickly won the admiration and praise of the generally all-white ranks of US bomber pilots. As one of 85-year-old veteran of those WWII bombing missions recalls in the film: "They were the best. As a pilot, I wouldn't want to be covered by anyone else." The bomber pilots started to call their escorts "the Red Tailed Angels of the Sky." And, as White's narrator notes, their accomplishments provided "a miracle our country didn't even know it needed." 

Between June 1943 and April 1945, the Tuskegee Airmen flew more than 1,500 missions, downing more than 260 enemy aircraft and sinking one destroyer. The ability and valor they demonstrated during those challenging months won the Airmen's 332nd Fighter Group a Distinguished Unit Citation for "outstanding performance and extraordinary heroism" and lead directly to President Harry Truman's desegregation of all military branches in 1948. 

Later in his career, Gen. Davis would remark: "With the enemy, I only had to die once. In the Army Air Corps and in life, I had to live with the day-to-day suffering of degradation and racism." 

One of the more remarkable observations that came out of the WWII experience was a story told by a Tuskegee pilot who had been confined in a German prison. After the war, he told his family and friends: "The first time I didn't face segregation in the military was in a Nazi prisoner-of-war camp after being shot down in Austria." Surprisingly, German soldiers seemed well aware of the problem of racism in the US. More than one US airman heard a German captor ask the question: "How can you fight for a country that treats you unfairly?" 

Airman Charles "A-Train" Dryden had a response. "Because it was still my country. And I believed the country had the capacity to change." 

"The Tuskegee Airmen have a unique legacy worth preserving," writes Harold Brown, PhD. "We fought two wars — one against the Nazis overseas, the other against segregation." Prof. Brown should know. He was the Tuskegee Airman who was shot down and spent time as a POW in German captivity. 

The mistreatment of the heroes of Tuskegee did not end with the conclusion of WWII. "In spite of [our] impressive combat record," Brown recalls, "we were excluded from WWII victory parades." And he suffered a further indignity as one of a group of black soldiers who were ordered to "give up our seats on a train [to make room for] Nazi POWs." 

The Plane that Restored a Buried History 

The larger portion of White's Red Tail Reborn is devoted to the long struggle to restore an abandoned P-51C Mustang — the signature warplane of the Tuskegee Airmen. 

Sold for $1 to a Montana school, where it sat untouched for 20 years, the plane was purchased by an entrepreneur who sawed off both wings to fit it onto a cargo trailer. During more years of storage, the plane's near-pristine internal parts and engine were seriously damaged by salt-water corrosion when the plane was covered by hurricane-driven ocean water. 

The damaged plane crisscrossed the country several times in failed attempts to begin needed repairs. Eventually the remains were donated to the Commemorative Air Force, a nonprofit that has restored more than 150 military planes — including bombers and fighters — to flying condition. 

Don Hinz, a former military pilot turned businessman, discovered the hidden story of the Tuskegee Airmen and decided to devote his time and money to restoring the battered P-51 so it could be used as a teaching tool, bringing the story of America's forgotten flying aces to people across the country — one air show at a time. "Our objective," Hinz declared, "is to carry the lessons of the Tuskegee Airmen into every classroom." 

Working with two former crop-duster pilots who had joined forces to create one of the world's leading military aviation restoration workshops, Hinz and a team of volunteers, managed to get the plane back in the air. In 2001, bearing the new name "Tuskegee Airmen," it flew again for the first time in 56 years. 

This flying antique became "one of the most-photographed planes in the nation" and, as it traveled the air show circuit, it brought the story of the Tuskegee Airmen to hundreds of thousands of plane-lovers. There was an unexpected bonus. As the plane landed at airfields across the nation, former Airmen began showing up to marvel at the plane, to speak with the men who had saved it, and to reminisce about their lives. As the CAF members (almost all white) grew to know these veterans, they forged a bond and became determined to help spread the story of their incredible service. (And here is a great side order of irony: the CAF for most of its history was known as the "Confederate Air Force.") 

The restoration of this single plane provided a major boost to restoring the lost history of the men who had flown it in aerial combat over Africa, Italy and Germany. In appreciation, Don Hinz was inducted as an "honorary Tuskegee Airman." 

Tragically, Hinz died at the controls of the P-51 when an engine failure (caused by a single small metal nut) sent him falling from the sky during maneuvers at Wisconsin's Red Wing Airshow. Somehow, Hinz managed to dive under some neighborhood powerlines and plant the plane safely between two homes. No one on the ground was injured but Don Hinz died the next day and the plane was ravaged. 

At Hinz' funeral it was agreed that, "as a tribute to Don," the plane would fly again — with his oldest son Kelly at the controls. 

Rebuilding a Dream from Bits of Metal 

Anyone who believes that America is no longer a country where individuals can manufacture anything of value, needs to watch the second half of Red Tail Reborn

The mangled metal left in the wake of Hinz' crash was hauled to a warehouse and eventually into the care of Tristate Aviation, a North Dakota firm that specializes in restoring Mustangs. Rebuilding the plane would take five long years. Parts that once were mass-produced for wartime assembly lines, now had to be recreated from scratch using bafflingly complex blueprints scavenged from government microfiche archives. 

And because the work was costly and time-consuming, the labor depended on a team of a half-dozen dedicated volunteers. Some of them would drive great distances to spend a weekend working on the damaged plane. 

Before the work was finished, time claimed another casualty when the head of TriState crashed while flying his own Mustang. And during the course of the restoration, Don Heinz's son Kelly was killed when his Marine jet crashed during a flight in Iraq. 

Finally, on July 22, 2009, this amazing group of machinists, engineers, metalworkers and devoted tinkerers looked on and cheered as the plane was once again rolled out on the tarmac. It's Rolls-Royce engine roared to life, tossing off a blue cloak of engine smoke, and the reborn P-51 once again headed down an airstrip and leaped into the sky. 

Looking to the Future 

"The Tuskegee Airmen served a nation not willing to serve them," General Colin Powell once said. "I stood on their shoulders. They made America better for all of us." 

"The perseverance of the Tuskegee Airmen in adverse conditions is a story that all young people could benefit from hearing," says Airman Harold Brown. Sadly, Brown adds: "Time is running out for the Tuskegee Airmen and the WWII generation. But there is no reason that our record of accomplishment and ability to overcome adversity should die with us. The CAF's Red Tail Squadron's educational mission will help ensure our legacy." 

The CAF's Red Tail Squadron leader is Brad Lang, the son of a Tuskegee veteran and one of the two men who now flies the rebuilt P-51 at air shows. In addition to showcasing the plane, the Red Tail Squadron is now building a "RISE ABOVE Traveling Exhibit"— a 53-foot rolling "theatre van" that will appear at air shows wherever the "Tuskegee Airmen" is scheduled to appear. The van will be filled with films, photos and historic memorabilia intended to enhance public understanding of the Red Tailed Angels. In addition to honoring the 996 men who won their wings at Tuskegee, the Red Tail Squadron also pays tribute to "more than 10,000 black mechanics, armament and communication specialists and administrators" who also deserve to be recognized as Tuskegee Airmen "because of the important role they played" in their support of the pilots. 

Anyone who wishes to contribute to the Red Tail's educational campaign will qualify for an array of souvenirs ranging from flight caps and educational playing cards to DVDs (including the Red Tail Reborn box-set). One of CAF's unique gifts is a commemorative dog-tag inscribed with the six Red Tail Principles: "Aim High. Believe in Yourself. Use Your Brain. Never Quit. Be Ready to Go. Expect to Win." 

For more information or to learn how you can contribute to the Red Tail's RISE ABOVE project, contact: The Commemorative Air Force, PO Box 8039, Topeka, Kansas 66608. (888) 928-0188. www.redtail.org


AROUND & ABOUT POETRY, THEATER AND BLACK CULTURE: Exhibit Marvin X

By Ken Bullock
Friday February 17, 2012 - 12:46:00 PM

Marvin X has been one of the great spokesmen of Black culture in the Bay Area—and the United States—for decades. Every time Amiri Baraka, one of the country's best-known poets and playwrights, comes here for a reading or talk, Marvin's always on the bill. His plays have been presented by different troupes around, lately—and notably—by Ayodele Nzinga's Lower Bottom Playaz in Oakland and at the San Francisco Arts Fair. 

This month, Exhibit Marvin X has been running at 1222 Dwight Way (at Browning), with two more events scheduled: 

On the 18th, 7-10 pm, Dr. Oba T'shaka, Professor Emeritus of Black studies at SF State University, and Norman Brown will discuss the life and work of the late Honorable John Douimbe, founder of the Black Men's Conference, a mentor to both speakers and to Marvin X, with contributions by Charlie walker, "the Mayor of Hunter's Point," and Will Usury. 

On the 25th, Marvin X will read from his work, and Mechelle LaChaux will perform his play, 'Woman on the Cell Phone.'< 

(There are other possible performances of Marvin's work by Aries Jordan and others during these evenings.) 

$10-$20 donation requested—but no-one will be turned away. Space is limited. call 575-2225 for reservations and information. Check blackbirdpressnews.blogspot.com for program reports and information.


AROUND AND ABOUT THEATER: Central Works' 'Mesmeric Revelation' at the Berkeley City Club

By Ken Bullock
Friday February 17, 2012 - 02:09:00 PM

              Joe Jordan as Franz Anton Mesmer and Theo Black as Antoine Lavoisier at Julia Morgan's "Little Castle" Berkeley City Club
Joe Jordan as Franz Anton Mesmer and Theo Black as Antoine Lavoisier at Julia Morgan's "Little Castle" Berkeley City Club

Central Works is bringing back Aaron Henne, who wrote and directed that most interesting production, 'A Man's Home ... an ode to Kafka's Castle' for the company a little while ago. This time Henne and the Central Works team will open (after two days of previews) his 'Mesmeric Revelation' on Saturday, inspired by tales of Poe--but about an encounter between Lavoisier, "father of chemistry," and Dr. Mesmer, the first famous hypnotist, promoter of "Animal Magnetism." It could prove to be one of the more unusual shows of the year. 

Central Works at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Avenue (between Ellsworth & Dana). $25 online, sliding scale ($14-$25) at door. Previews, February 16 & 17 (& February 23, March 1), pay what you can. Thursdays-Saturdays at 8, Sundays at 5 until March 18. Talk-backs: February 19 (playwright), March 11 (actors). (800) 838-3006 (tickets); centralworks.org


AROUND AND ABOUT THEATER: 'In Search of My Father ... Walkin' Talkin' Bill Hawkins'

By Ken Bullock
Friday February 17, 2012 - 02:03:00 PM

W. Allen Taylor performed the multi-character solo show he wrote, 'In Search of My Father ... Walkin' Talkin' Bill Hawkins' in Berkeley, 2006, to critical acclaim and a Critics Circle award for best solo show. (My review was published in the Planet, now archived above: January 10, 2006). Now it's coming back—see below ... 

The show's Taylor's own story about trying to find out about his father, the first black radio DJ in Cleveland, who he met only once as an adult, not knowing the relationship. He was only told of Hawkins being his father after Hawkins' death. Taylor's own experience, the rich world of postwar black radio (which not only white radio, TV and music profited from, but which such white comedians as Lord Buckley and Lenny Bruce assiduously imitated)—and some fantasy, in the person of The Kid, a streetwise, sassy alter ego for Taylor. 

Taylor talks, acts out different personae, jives, dances—emotes. 

He can be heard being interviewed on PBS' Lost & Found Sound on his website, walkintalking..com/audio 

Now, Taylor's dusted it off, changed it a little, and is giving it another go, directed by Ellen Sebastian Chang, starting with a pay what you can preview Friday at 8, and a Saturday at 8, Sunday at 3 run through March 4, at the East Bay Cultural Center for Arts, 339-11th Street at Macdonald in downtown Richmond. $10-$15. Secure parking across the street. 221-6353; eastbaycenter.org