Page One

New: Searching for Hate—After His Eviction from People's Park

By Ted Friedman
Monday March 19, 2012 - 10:31:00 PM
This is all that's left of "Camp Hate," a bustling community of thinkers, boozers, and schmoozers, all under the direction of Hate Man. Shoes on the abandoned philosopher's log, Hate Man's roost. Two rakes resting on tree in background were Hates clean-up tools. Wednesday morning.

Hate Man was, reportedly, ordered by an Alameda County judge Monday to stay away from People's Park for three years.

The world-famous eccentric had been dodging trespassing tickets for years, managing successfully to stay one step ahead of the law, he has told me, but Monday, he misstepped.

Word of the eviction went out late Monday on local activists' Google lists. -more-



Occupy Protesters Arraigned, Ordered to Stay Away from Berkeley Campus

By Jeff Shuttleworth (BCN)
Monday March 19, 2012 - 10:18:00 PM

Four Occupy Cal protesters were arraigned today on misdemeanor charges for their involvement in a demonstration at Sproul Plaza at the University of California at Berkeley campus on Nov. 9. -more-



Editorial

Who's After Berkeley Police Chief's Scalp, and Why?

By Becky O'Malley
Friday March 16, 2012 - 10:40:00 AM

The subject lines on friends’ email forwards of the original Bay Area News Group article about PoliceChiefGate told the story. “OMG!” “Unbelievable!” and more. And who could argue with their reaction? Everyone in Berkeley and beyond, it seemed, even people who have never agreed on anything else before, agreed on this one:. “How could he? What could he have been thinking?”

And so did I. I’ve been a First Amendment absolutist for all of my adult life. I joined the ACLU before I was old enough to vote. I’ve many times quoted Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black on the constitutional ban on abridging freedom of speech: “When it says ‘no law’ it means NO LAW!”

After working for a number of years as a political agitator for civil rights and in the anti-war movement, I took up journalism. These experiences fueled my outrage at the report of the Berkeley Police Chief’s midnight messenger sent to press a reporter to correct an online story. I imagined myself hearing that ominous knock, reliving that fearsome confrontation with an armed officer on my doorstep.

There’s no question in my mind that what used to be called The Standard Liberal Position is that this should never have happened. We all have the right to be safe and secure in our homes, don’t we? And we shouldn’t have to be afraid when someone comes knocking after midnight, especially the police. I absolutely agree—or at least I do when I’m wearing my journalist’s hat.

But when the Berkeley Police Officers’ Association issued their first statement criticizing Meehan, I started to wonder. The BPOA is technically not a union, since they can’t strike under the law—but it’s a professional association which does collective bargaining on behalf of its members . And as luck would have it, collective bargaining is underway right now—and Chief Meehan is the boss with whom they’re negotiating. It occurred to me that there might be more than one reason the Association is looking askance at him.

When Berkeley attorney Jim Chanin, a veteran ACLU officer, a former chair of Berkeley’s Police Review Commission and a litigator who has brought and won many police misconduct lawsuits in many jurisdictions in his 40 year career, was quoted in the Chronicle as thinking that Meehan showed “a serious lapse in judgment”, but should not have to resign, I wondered more. So I called Jim to get his take at first hand. -more-


The Editor's Back Fence

Today is Bonnie Hughes Day in Berkeley

By Becky O'Malley
Tuesday March 20, 2012 - 11:54:00 AM

Happy Bonnie Hughes Day! Rumor has it that the Mayor and/or the City Council will issue a proclamation honoring arts impresario and civic gadfly Bonnie Hughes, and it couldn't happen to a nicer person. When I heard that this was in the works, I asked Bonnie if she might be suffering from a terminal illness, which is why sometimes people in Berkeley get proclamations, but no, she's fine. Whew!

Bonnie has put in an incredible amount of service to the people of Berkeley and the world in the 20 years or so I've known her and before. She's managed to combine two particular passions, the arts and civil liberties, in an amazing way which could only have worked as well as it has because her personal charm overwhelms any potential adversaries. -more-


Columns

FIRST DRAFT: The Trashing of the Public University

By Ruth Rosen
Tuesday March 20, 2012 - 12:51:00 PM

Editor's Note: Twenty years ago, journalist and historians Ruth Rosen, then a professor at U.C Davis and a columnist on the op-ed page of the Los Angeles Times, anticipated the public and state's unwillingness to stop the decline of the University of California. We reprint this to remind our readers that the gradual free fall of education in California has a long history.

Californians can no longer assume that their children can aspire to attend one of our public universities. In the next few weeks, legislators and administrators, faced with the state's whopping budget crisis, plan to raise student fees, chop departments, slice budgets and fire hundreds of faculty. Before long, access to California’s public universities will be sharply limited and higher education will become a privilege for the few. -more-


WILD NEIGHBORS: Game Change

By Joe Eaton
Monday March 19, 2012 - 10:20:00 PM
Tomato hornworm today, sphinx moth tomorrow.

Insect metamorphosis is a strange and stirring phenomenon. Complex metamorphosis, that is, the process as it occurs in beetles, butterflies, bees, and flies. Whereas grasshoppers, say, just get larger at each successive molt, a moth completely reorganizes itself at every life stage. Gross anatomy, internal organs, physiological processes—everything changes when it transforms from larva to pupa, and again from pupa to adult. -more-


ON MENTAL ILLNESS: The Limits of Medication

By Jack Bragen
Monday March 19, 2012 - 10:20:00 PM

Antipsychotic and other types of medications, when used to help people get well, are moderately good things. Before these medications existed, countless mentally ill persons spent a lifetime literally being chained up, and had nothing added to them to hold their horrific disease in check. If not chained up in an asylum, persons with severe mental illness often became the “town idiot” or the “town drunkard.” It isn’t accurate to claim that mental illnesses didn’t exist prior to the invention of the medications. They did exist, and they who suffered from them had a very sorry lot in life. -more-


Odd Bodkins: Focus (Cartoon)

By Dan O'Neill
Monday March 19, 2012 - 11:46:00 PM

Arts & Events

EYE FROM THE AISLE: Octopus’s Garden in SF—A Tale of Two Mommies—great acting, lesser writing.

BY John A. McMullen II
Monday March 19, 2012 - 10:27:00 PM
Gabrielle Patacsil, Nandi Drayton and Leah Shesky.

Produced by PianoFight, OCTOPUS’S GARDEN by Scott Herman premiered Saturday at 414 Mason Street near Geary.

It is a domestic drama of the conflicts of a lesbian couple in choosing the sperm donor for their planned pregnancy. Told in reverse chronology, it has some very talented actors. However, the writing is mundane; it contains a few amusing moments of situational tension that evoke laughter, but it is the actors who carry the show by the easy believability of their performance and the emotional connections between them. -more-


Back Stories

Opinion

Editorials

Who's After Berkeley Police Chief's Scalp, and Why? 03-16-2012

The Editor's Back Fence

Today is Bonnie Hughes Day in Berkeley 03-20-2012

Hiring and Firing Department Heads in Berkeley's City Government: A Legal Sidebar 03-16-2012

Check Out This Link: UC's Edifice Complex 03-16-2012

Cartoons

Odd Bodkins: Focus (Cartoon) By Dan O'Neill 03-19-2012

Public Comment

Letters to the Editor 03-16-2012

A Crisis of Legitimacy in Berkeley By Steve Martinot 03-16-2012

Building a School-Based Local Food System By Hannah Kopp-Yates 03-16-2012

News

New: Searching for Hate—After His Eviction from People's Park By Ted Friedman 03-19-2012

Occupy Protesters Arraigned, Ordered to Stay Away from Berkeley Campus By Jeff Shuttleworth (BCN) 03-19-2012

New: Man Found Dead at Berkeley Marina Identified By Bay City News 03-18-2012

Berkeley Hires Law Firm to Conduct Independent Probe of Police Chief's Actions By Jeff Shuttleworth (BCN) 03-16-2012

More than a Dozen Berkeley Occupy Cal Protesters to be Arraigned By Sara Gaiser (BCN) 03-16-2012

Berkeley Library Branch Van Vanishes By Helen Rippier Wheeler 03-16-2012

Press Release: Police Union Calls for a Formal Investigation of Chief Meehan “Error in Judgment” in 12:45 a.m. Visit to Reporter’s Home From Officer Tim Kaplan, Rocky Lucia, Mary Jo Rossi 03-16-2012

Press Release: Statement from Berkeley Interim City Manager Christine Daniel From Mary Kay Clunies-Ross, City of Berkeley Public Information Officer 03-15-2012

Press Release: Berkeley Patients Group to Remain Open -- Medical Cannabis Dispensary Plans to Relocate in Berkeley From Sean Luse, Chief Operating Officer, Berkeley Patients' Group 03-15-2012

New: Body Found at Berkeley Marina By Bay Area News Service 03-17-2012

AC Transit Will Buy New Buses in Hayward By Jeff Shuttleworth (BCN) 03-16-2012

Columns

FIRST DRAFT: The Trashing of the Public University By Ruth Rosen 03-20-2012

WILD NEIGHBORS: Game Change By Joe Eaton 03-19-2012

ON MENTAL ILLNESS: The Limits of Medication By Jack Bragen 03-19-2012

DISPATCHES FROM THE EDGE: Ireland’s Debt & the Heart of St. O’Toole By Conn Hallinan 03-16-2012

THE PUBLIC EYE: Sarah Palin and the Republican Identity Crisis By Bob Burnett 03-16-2012

SENIOR POWER: Bells are Ringing… By Helen Rippier Wheeler 03-16-2012

Arts & Events

EYE FROM THE AISLE: Octopus’s Garden in SF—A Tale of Two Mommies—great acting, lesser writing. BY John A. McMullen II 03-19-2012