In the biggest climate related protest in the Bay Area to date, thousands marched in Downtown Oakland calling for real climate leadership and a ban on fracking. 

350.org, one of the groups organizing the march, and whose members were much in evidence, estimates that 8,000 people attended, making it the biggest anti-fracking rally in U.S. history. 

When the front of the march was passing 19th and Lakeside, the rear or the march was passing the cathedral on Harrison near West Grand, a distance of over four tenths of a mile, or four long city blocks. They filled the street, spilling over onto the sidewalk at times. 

While most of the marchers were from the Bay Area, there were contingents from Fresno, San Diego, the Central Coast and other parts of California as well as from Pacific islands threatened by climate change. 

Marchers assembled first at Frank Ogawa Plaza in front of Oakland City Hall. From there they marched north on Telegraph to West Grand then marched along West Grand to Harrison and Lakeshore. The rally took place at the Lake Merritt Amphitheater. 

Participants in the day’s events want Gov. Jerry Brown to “be a real climate leader”. They want him to follow the example of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and support a ban on fracking. They want him to “Stand Up to Big Oil” and support a shift to 100% renewable energy in place of reliance of greenhouse gas generating fossil fuels. 

Some protestors also carried signs opposing the Keystone XL pipeline and opposing the Delta water tunnels that Brown supports. 

On Monday, 350.org will deliver more than 200,000 signatures to Gov. Brown demanding that he ban fracking now.

On Thursday night Berkeley police were searching for a vehicle involved in a drive-by shooting, with a helicopter audible all over the Berkeley flats . Multiple 911 callers reported shots in the area of Bancroft Way and Bonar Street around 9 p.m., according to Officer Jennifer Coats. 

Officers arriving in the area found evidence that a shooting had occurred, including some property damage, but no injured victims. 

A vehicle was seen fleeing from the area, traveling west on Bancroft from Bonar.

There is an old saying: If you want to make a killing in the stock market, hire a financial advisor who is a good Marxian economist. [[[FACT CHECK: There is no such saying.]]]

That "classic" saying is not pithy but it is sound advice. It is the job of Marxian economists to understand capitalism better than capitalists themselves. If anyone can show how to resolve a systemic crisis of capitalism, and rescue capitalism from itself, it is a good Marxian economist.

The large minority of the Greek people have placed SYRIZA in power. With this move they have gotten themselves a Finance Minister who is a very good Marxian economist: Yanis Varoufakis.

Many press accounts of the situation unfolding in Europe are confused and distorted, some out of genuine confusion, others out of an attempt at, let's call it, "bourgeois spin". This article very briefly attempts to paint a clearer picture. (Sources are acknowledged at the end.) 

The Crisis of Capitalism 

In 2008 the world economy all but collapsed. What happened? 

The centerpiece of Marxian economics is at heart a very simple argument that capitalism must, in the end, destroy itself. Roughly, the argument goes like this: 

Capital, such as factory machines and farm fields, has economic value only insofar as people's labor can be combined with capital to make commodities which sell for a profit. A factory machine is valuable because if you hire someone to operate it, you can sell the output of that work and not only pay wages to the worker, but also make a profit. Capital plus labor (ideally) produces profit. What can you do with your profit? For example you might buy a second factory machine so that next year you can make twice as much profit. 

Competition drives a struggle among capitalists -- among the owners of the machines and the fields. Competition encourages every capitalist to make his operations more productive. Productivity is a kind of ratio: wages vs. output. If my factory can make twice as many widgets as yours, without paying twice the wages, then I can lower my price for widgets and out-compete you. Capitalists constantly compete by becoming more productive. 

Killing jobs is the main goal of competition between capitalists. If one capitalist can get by with 10 workers, his competitor wants to produce the same output using only 5 workers. If 5 workers becomes the normal number, the next competitor will look for some breakthrough that let's him get by with just 2 workers. 

History shows the effects of competition in practice. 150 years ago, near the beginning of the industrial revolution, the majority of people on the planet helped to produce the food supply. Today, at least in the developed countries, almost nobody helps to produce food. Perhaps 2 or 3 or 4 percent of workers are involved in making food, compared to well over 50% of workers during Marx's lifetime. 

The problem for capitalists is that once productivity has gotten very high, and therefore wages very low, it is hard for money to circulate through the economy. This leads to crazy paradoxes: On the one hand it is very easy as a society to produce and distribute food throughout Greece, with very little effort! On the other hand, because unemployment is so high, many people with not enough wages can't afford to buy that food. 

Debt expansion is the way capitalism responds when money (and the goods that money buys) aren't circulating well through the economy. Banks gamble, essentially, betting that if they make more money available through easy loans, that somehow the demand for labor will pick up again and money will flow freely. 

Marx observed that once productivity in general, in many industries, was very high, even the system of lending would start experiencing massive crises. At that stage, people are forced not to rely on the circulation of money in a capitalist system. During capitalism people used money as a tool to organize how they cooperated. When capitalism stops working because of high productivity, banks go bankrupt, money stops flowing, and people need to find new ways to cooperate. 

The Nazi Threat in Europe 

Wouldn't it be nice if, when capitalism starts to spasm and struggle for life, all the people joined hands in solidarity and maturely struck out to create post-capitalist society (aka communism)? The real world is not so nice, of course. 

There is a particularly evil kind of promise that capitalist can offer to an impoverished people. It is the promise of fascism and it goes like this: 

"Many of you good people, my countrymen, are struggling for want of work. An honest days labor for an honest days pay and you could all have thriving families but today, as you see, there are not enough jobs." This is the starting premise of fascism. 

"There are too many among us," fascism continues, "who are like parasites on society. They are not productive. They take our jobs. They don't leave enough for the rest of us. Their presence prevents the system from working". 

"If together we remove those people from society abundance will again flow. Everyone of us will find a productive role in society. As a people we will enjoy the prosperity which is rightfully ours. First, though, we must eliminate all of these surplus, parasitic people from our midst." 

You see this fascistic "promise" in Nazi Germany, of course. You see it in the anti-immigrant movements of Europe and the united states. You see the fascistic "promise" in the United States whether you are looking at our massive rate of jailing Black men or the brutal non-citizen status imposed on many immigrant workers.". 

In Berkeley you can see the fascistic "promise" made against poor people and Black people regularly in Berkeleyside's endless fascination with commenters who assert the supposed innate degeneracy of "Black culture" or the need to punish and remove homeless people with whom, they say, we are burdened with more than our share. 

When the economic situation of society is particularly bad, as in Greece, the fascists among us seize their own parasitic moment. 

Thus it came to be, in 2013, that Yanis Varoufakis -- who today in 2015 is the finance minister of Greece -- could report to us that the neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn was going door to door in some regions providing impoverished Greek citizens with food, but only on one condition. To receive the free neo-Nazi food citizens must first prove their ethnic purity. 

An anti-Nazi Reaction from the Left. 

The disorganized left, in Europe, Never Forgot. 

Seeing the rise of Golden Dawn and similar neo-Nazi-ism throughout Europe, the left remembers: "This is how it started the last time." 

Indeed, Nazis in Germany came to power partly in response to austerity and debt-repayment measures imposed on Germany after World War I, and partly in response to a general breakdown of the world economy during the Great Depression. 

It is the state aim of SYRIZA to, on an emergency basis, help to lead the European economic system back to stability. To put at least a temporary end to the crisis. To make sure that people not only have enough work to keep themselves fed, without help from Nazis, but that people feel confident in the future. 

SYRIZA is a "radical left" party and as such their aim is to save capitalism from itself. That's how they roll. That's how radically left they are. 

Debt Negotiations Theater 

Much like the State of California, the government of Greece is required to balance its books. Government expenditures must be balanced by tax revenues and by government borrowing. 

For a long time the world's economy has been unable to create Greek jobs in sufficient amount to keep capital circulating. Greece has made up for this with government spending. Over fifty percent of Greek GDP is the direct result of government spending! 

(Do not feel too smug. In the U.S., "only" about 40 percent of GDP comes from government spending.) 

To keep up that level of spending the Greek government has been borrowing heavily, for many years. It's debt is roughly the equivalent of a half a trillion U.S. dollars. 

Greece's debt is something around 175% of its entire GDP. 

What this means, in the end, is that Greece has incurred a public debt that is so large it can never be repaid. 

Greece is bankrupt and everyone from Angela Merkel to Yanis Varoufakis know this quite well. The debt must be written off. The only question that remains is: on what terms will the bankruptcy unfold? 

The Proud, Left Demand 

SYRIZA has proposed a simple solution which, so far, Greek's creditors are rejecting: 

1. Half the debt shall be written off immediately. 

2. Half of the debt may be kept on the books but only on these terms: If Greece later receives an unexpected windfall (huge growth in GDP) then Greece will make some pennies-on-the-dollar payments. 

3. The Greek government under SYRIZA does not care that this will ruin its credit. The government will not be able to borrow heavily. It will have to run a budget balanced without debt. 

SYRIZA has committed itself to running a small government surplus. 

In fact, SYRIZA has already refused to receive bailout money that was arranged before they came to power. 

4. Somewhat symbolically, but as a sign of things to come, SYRIZA has been firing some highly paid, do-nothing corrupt consultants and hiring back, instead laid off government janitorial staff. SYRIZA aims to raise taxes on the rich to make sure they can keep this up for a while. 

5. Along the same lines, SYRIZA is restoring Greek social welfare payments. 

If this program can continue -- and there does not appear to be anything standing in the way -- money will again start circulating in Greece to restore dignity and confidence. 

If this program can continue -- and it must -- Golden Dawn can take their "free" fascist food for the ethnically pure and shove it up Golden Dawn asses. 

A Spectre is Haunting Europe 

If Greece were an isolated basket case of a nation the bankers would have little difficulty working with SYRIZA. 

After all, a half-trillion dollar write-down is painful but in the big scheme of things, the banks can absorb those kinds of losses without too much pain. It is pocket change. 

There are two big complications, though. 

The lesser complication is just among the capitalists themselves. The greater complication involves the workers, too. 

Among the capitalists, when they admit "on paper" that the Greek debt will never really be repaid it messes up the balance sheets of numerous banks and similar institutions. Banks within Greece, who themselves hold much of this debt, will fail (and are failing as we speak). Other institutions will also suffer. Austerity policies are the "pound of flesh" capitalists demand for these problems and further so-called "austerity" is what SYRIZA rejects. 

But the bigger problem -- for capitalists -- is the workers. 

If Greece is able to default and reject austerity, then who will be next? Will it be Spain? Ireland? Portugal? 

In the coming weeks and months the left in Europe will be organizing massive demonstrations in support of Greece, and in support of the end of austerity everywhere in Europe. 

Here, the threat to European and indeed all capitalists is quite grave. If the European capitalists refuse to take the write down, and insist on austerity, the entire economic system is at risk. 

Let Them Lie, for Now 

SYRIZA has responded to the imminent threat of a total collapse by offering to permit a euphemism. 

"We will agree that you keep Greek debt on your books," offers SYRIZA, "but only if the terms are changed so that it never really needs to be repaid. (Yes, we will still give you a few bucks if there is an unexpected windfall.)" 

In the technical terms, that is what what SYRIZA means when it talks about "perpetual bonds" and "growth clauses": Greece might one day kick a few bucks to its friends for old time's sake, but for all practical purposes simply repudiates the debt

Last week Bay Area stand-up comic W.Kamau Bell created a minor flap by blogging about the way he was dissed by Berkeley’s Elmwood Café. In brief, his wife and some women friends were lunching at a sidewalk table outside the restaurant while he was at the bookstore next door.

He approached them with a book in hand which he’d just bought and wanted to show to his wife. From the inside of the café, an employee tapped on the window and motioned him to go away, twice, accompanied by a scowl and some sort of verbal chastisement.

An odd story, and why should we care? Here’s why: Bell is Black, and everyone else in this story is white. And he’s a good storyteller: here’s the account on his blog. He makes the case, convincingly, that if he were a white husband speaking to his wife the café worker wouldn’t have gone after him as she did. 

She later was quoted as saying she thought he was trying to sell something to the white women or otherwise annoying them. Why did she think that? 

As it happens, the week before I had lunch at the very same café on the very same sidewalk with white women friends, and a male friend came over to speak to me. He even detached the rope the proprietors had installed to section off the part of the public sidewalk where their tables were so he could get closer to me.  

Surprise! No one said anything to him. He’s white, of course. 

It’s hard not to conclude that the woman’s suspicions of Bell, consciously or subconsciously, were motivated by her perception that he is African-American. It’s the Sesame Street question: which one of these is not like the other? As the odd man out, he’s inevitably suspect. 

Two articles took up the story. First to appear, on the Berkeleyside local news site, Comedian W. Kamau Bell reports being victim of racism at Berkeley’s Elmwood Café, by Tracey Taylor and Frances Dinkelspiel, and later in the San Francisco Chronicle, Even Berkeley not immune from the social disease of racism, a column by Chip Johnson (who himself is Black). 

What’s remarkable, and sobering, is reading the readers’ comments on Berkeleyside (at least 700 at last count). Many, what appears without counting to be the majority, are vitriolic, blaming Bell for playing the victim unjustifiably. Most of them, presumably, are from Berkeley residents, since the site is devoted to local Berkeley news and probably not widely read elsewhere. I recognized some familiar voices of the usual suspects among the surlier citizens of Berkeley who are thrilled to have a platform for their numerous grievances. The “I’m not a racist, but…” plaint runs throughout. (Johnson’s column got only a few comments.) 

Berkeley used to have a substantial percentage of African-American residents, 23.5% in 1970 (when the census still called them Negroes.) Their homes were largely segregated in the southwestern quadrant of the city—the Flatlands—to the extent that bussing for integrated schools was necessary. A fair number of middle-class Black people owned homes west of Martin Luther King Way, which was then called Grove Street, the boundary which could not be crossed. They were able to buy in this part of Berkeley more easily than they could in the more segregated outer suburbs of San Francisco, but most of the rest of Berkeley was off limits to Blacks and even Asians well into the 70s. 

In the last census in 2010 the proportion of Berkeley residents listed as “Black or African-American” had dropped to only 10%. The formerly Black neighborhoods are rapidly gentrifying. White home buyers are paying premium prices there as Bay Area real estate prices soar. 

Perhaps this decline in Black representation in the population has somehow caused the insensitivity of those commenting on Bell’s experience this week. Or maybe the surly white citizens are people who resent having to live in the former African-American ghetto because they can’t afford the pricier hillside homes. Whoever they are, they make it clear that racism is alive here, with or without Bell’s little encounter. 

What’s remarkable about Kamau Bell’s story is that, for anyone who is Black or even has talked to a few Black friends, it’s so unremarkable.  

Black people go through life in this country with a permanent cloud of suspicion hanging over them, with petty insults of the kind Bell chronicles a daily occurrence. We are all occasionally subjected to rude encounters like this, but for African-Americans it’s all the time.  

And it escalates in seriousness. The son of New York Times columnist Charles Blow, a student at Yale, was recently subjected to a humiliating search at gunpoint on campus just because someone had spotted an African-American burglary suspect in the vicinity. What, do “they all look alike”? 

In Berkeley, just last September, eight police officers interrogated an interracial couple in a pizzeria for an hour on a Sunday afternoon in front of their child and a room full of shocked patrons for what turned out to be exactly nothing. The last time I checked, the city of Berkeley had not even responded to the white proprietor’s complaint about this unwanted police invasion. 

See, for the whole story: Even in Berkeley, Police Bully Citizens of Color. 

Recent protests have responded to the lethal extreme of this trajectory: the number of unarmed African-Americans who are shot on a regular basis by police. The worst instance recently was the kid in Cleveland, holding, just for a moment, a friend’s realistic toy gun, who was killed by a trigger-happy rookie cop. From the NY Times: In Tamir Rice Case, Many Errors by Cleveland Police, Then a Fatal One 

Melissa Bell spoke to the management of the Elmwood Café after the incident happened, and a different server apologized to her for what the co-worker had done. But her husband was still mad, too mad to participate in the discussion. 

When Bell put the story on his blog and people started asking questions, the owner of the Elmwood Café posted a temporizing statement on the café’s Facebook page. I called him the day the story came out, and he told me he was “horrified, appalled”, but had not spoken to the employee involved. 

To make a long story short, eventually various apologias were posted on the café’s website, though all of them had vanished as of this writing. At one point it was announced, somewhere, that the woman in question had been fired, though not at Bell’s request, after the owner questioned her about her actions. The Berkeley school district has offered to host a community discussion of the event. 

Some of the online commenters in the several venues opined that it was unfair to let the employee go for making an honest mistake. Though Bell has said repeatedly that he didn’t ask that she be fired, the letter writers are shedding buckets of crocodile tears over her termination. 

Her assumption that Bell was making trouble is understandable, though not defensible. What’s hard for many to grasp is that overt, conscious racism doesn’t have to be involved for stereotyping to cloud decision-making. Somehow, at the moment she rapped on the window, Kamau Bell must have looked threatening to her—even if it was all in her own head.  

Racism is not binary—it’s not the case that you’re either racist or you’re not. It’s a continuum, with a lot of irrational emotion buried beneath the surface. 

Nor, for that matter, is it true that all racial profiling reflects evil intent. But acting on unacknowledged racial preconceptions harms the person who is stereotyped regardless of motivation. A white man doing what Bell did would have been given the benefit of the doubt—Bell was an instant suspect. 

One question none of the participants have raised is that the table and chairs in question were set up on the sidewalk, effectively privatizing the public right of way. Should employees of small private businesses be allowed to order people they find annoying , for whatever reason, racial or otherwise, to clear off? 

Of course the management was right to let the woman go, because whatever the excuse she was rude to a customer, and that just won’t fly in a service business. The Elmwood Café in particular has a good-guy brand: fair trade coffee, profits to charity, the whole megillah—they don’t need this bad PR, even if the woman is merely officious by nature, regardless of her racial perceptions. 

This story is small potatoes compared to kids getting shot by police, which W. Kamau Bell surely knows. But when white people assume, consciously or unconsciously, that African-Americans are scary, it’s a slippery slope, one which all too often ends up with innocent Black people getting killed. 

Here in Berkeley, quite a few people do grasp this. That’s why a few hundred of them, especially University of California students, turned out on December 6 to demonstrate after Michael Brown was killed, only to be teargassed by the Berkeley police.  

Shamefully, the Berkeley City Council has yet to deal with that situation.  

They have postponed action on complaints from the demonstrators on three separate occasions for what’s now been two months, with no good excuse for doing so. It’s been promised (do you believe it?) that several proposals for modest reforms will really truly surely be taken up at the beginning of the council’s agenda on Tuesday, February 10.  

Maybe. Just to be sure, another protest march, this one to the council meeting, is being planned for Tuesday. 

Dan O'Neill

Dan O'Neill

I agree that both marijuana and tobacco smoke are extremely harmful to lungs, and I am not advocating ingesting either substance through smoking or otherwise.

The mentally ill people I have met who smoke seem to be far more enslaved to this addiction compared to those in the general population, many of whom have quit years ago. Non-smoke ingestion of tobacco such as nicotine patches and gum--none of them are very effective as an alternative to inhaling cigarette smoke when someone is both mentally ill and a nicotine addict.

I tried, at your suggestion, to find studies on the UCSF website that agree with your conclusions, and found that UCSF is strongly opposed to tobacco use, a perfectly valid stance. However, I was unable to locate the actual studies to which you referred.  

I am certain that persons with mental illness find it harder to quit smoking than members of the general population, and that a much higher percentage of mentally ill people smoke. Again, if tobacco became illegal, a lot fewer people would use it, and I wouldn't use it.  

Lastly, I do not agree that I am writing "nonsense."

Putin has become the new whipping boy, the new Saddam Hussein, the piñata beaten by the US media onto the march to a new proxy war with the big bad wolf, Russia.

Gorbachev is right - we have started a new Cold War encircling our old nemesis with military bases and missiles and vilifying Russia for any resistance. We have encouraged a coup in Ukraine, a coup that is wildly anti-Russian, and deeply hostile to the welfare of ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine who have lived there for centuries.

The separatists are not fighting in Kiev, but the Ukrainian military is fighting and killing ethnic Russians. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have accused the Ukrainian military of committing war crimes. 

In perhaps a careless unguarded moment, President Obama admitted that the CIA was directly involved in the ouster of the former democratically elected government in Kiev. Following crippling sanctions, which only hurt the poor (remember Cuba, Iraq), the Obama administration - fearing a backlash from war hawk Republicans, has promised to send military weapons to Kiev which would surely only intensify the conflict. 

America should back off and let Merkel (who speaks Russian) and Putin work out the details of a peaceful settlement – a federal system giving far more autonomy to eastern Ukraine allowing it to preserve its language and culture. The agreement should include a provision that Ukraine would maintain its independence from Russia and NATO.

I am writing to you to proudly announce the opening of a new small size store in Berkeley in a location that brought much trouble and problems to a quiet neighborhood in Berkeley.  

The store, which was years ago a liquor store that caused a lot of pain and troubles to the neighborhood, is now a family local business to serve the neighborhood.  

The store at 2440 Sacramento St., that was declared in 2006 a public nuisance for many troubles and violations, is now under a new owner, and is now a grocery store bringing a business much needed and welcomed in the area with a large selection of organic products and children's healthy snacks next to a large selections of groceries, frozen foods, juices and more.  

The owners are a young couple, Adel and Marianne, naming the store after their son, Alex, born on the same month the store was purchased, and they are looking to provide a service from their family to the families in the area.

Editor's Note: The latest issue of the Pepper Spray Times is now available.

You can view it absolutely free of charge by clicking here . You can print it out to give to your friends.

Grace Underpressure has been producing it for many years now, even before the Berkeley Daily Planet started distributing it, most of the time without being paid, and now we'd like you to show your appreciation by using the button below to send her money.  

This is a Very Good Deal. Go for it! 

Many persons with mental illness have more than average difficulty taking care of teeth. Since almost everything in life is harder for a mentally ill person compared to non-afflicted people, it follows that it is harder for us to have good oral hygiene.  

Medications also cause dry mouth, which can be bad for teeth. But what I really want to talk about is the disparity in dental care faced by disabled people who cannot afford to pay out of pocket for a dentist.  

While hypothetically you can blame bad teeth on the lack of care of the teeth's owner, not everyone has hereditarily good teeth, and some have taken excellent care yet still have dental problems. Furthermore, when someone has a period of acute symptoms of mental illness, tooth brushing during that time is usually out the window.  

Almost no dentists accept Medi-Cal for their work. Medi-Cal has a set of rules to save money that prevent any competent dentists (who can get customers otherwise) from wanting to deal with them. Medi-Cal will not pay for a small cavity which the dentist spots upon examination but which isn't big enough to show up on an X-Ray. It is rules like that, which defy common sense, that cause only bottom-of-the-barrel dentists and mass production dentists to accept Medi-Cal for their work.  

It is still a better situation than it was under Governor Schwarzenegger. His administration eliminated our dental benefits with the exception of emergency extractions. Under Brown, some benefits were restored.  

Not having a decent level of care for our teeth, which is something that can well be paid for, is nothing less than social cruelty. The physical pain of dental problems can be extreme. The disfigurement of having missing teeth is noticeable. And it will get us instantly branded as coming from a lower socioeconomic class.  

Our government on all levels is becoming increasingly cutthroat. At one time, we lived in a "kinder gentler nation." However, the politicians who have come into power are merciless and care about nothing other than personal prestige, money and status. You can't run a government like this. Not unless you want the U.S. to resemble Russia under president Putin. That's where we're headed if we are not careful. 

I know of several mentally ill people who have lost some or all of their teeth. This is due to a combination of bad circumstances. One of the biggest of these bad circumstances is the fact that most disabled people must use Medi-Cal to pay for a dentist rather than having a decent dental plan which would be paid for by a professional full-time job. This is another sad case in which for us, the good life is out of reach because we live with disabling conditions, and because it is a lot harder for a mentally ill person to get hired at a good job.  

The lack of dental care for disabled people is a symptom of the problem that is growing in the U.S., in which the rich are becoming fabulously richer, and the poor, in many instances, are subject to cruelty, incarceration, harsh conditions, and in some cases, dying off.

If you watched the Super Bowl, you probably noticed a bland McDonald’s commercial. It was part of their campaign to strengthen their brand. Too bad liberals didn’t run a commercial because they need to rebuild their brand. 

While liberals’ stock has been falling, MacDonald’s continues to be in a strong position as the world’s largest fast-food provider – by far the largest hamburger purveyor – with 35,000 restaurants and 1.5 million employees, making it the world’s second largest private employer (behind Walmart). According to industry sources, MacDonald’s has been rebranding to appeal to “new generations.” They switched from Ronald McDonald to famous athletes (Michael Jordan and Larry Byrd) and now to “I’m lovin’ it.” “The new brand position indicates that [McDonald’s] has been listening to their customers… The focus has changed from product to human value.” 

Liberals should consider a similar strategy, because over the last fifty years the liberal brand has weakened. “Liberal” and “conservative” once were held in equal esteem. Since the 70’s the conservative brand has strengthened, while liberal brand identification has diminished. In 1992, Gallup started polling political ideology self-identification. In 2014, 38 percent of respondents identified as conservative, 34 percent as “moderate,” and only 24 percent as liberal. 

In the latest Pew Research Center political typology poll, “Solid Liberals” are 21 percent of the “politically engaged.” They “express liberal attitudes across almost every realm – government, the economy and business and foreign policy, as well as on race, homosexuality and abortion – and are reliable and loyal Democratic voters.” The Pew findings are similar to the Gallup findings; there is a 14-15 percent gap between those who identify a liberal and those who identify as conservative. 

The sixties marked the zenith of the liberal brand. Leaders of the civil-rights, anti-war, and feminist movements were proud to call themselves liberals. The brand stood for peace and justice, a new egalitarian social order. 

Then conservatives fought back. John Kennedy, Martin Luther King junior, and Bobby Kennedy were assassinated. The Democratic Party split apart over civil rights and Vietnam. J. Edgar Hoover launched COINTELPRO. Richard Nixon was elected President. 

Beginning with a 1971 strategy memorandum by Lewis Powell, conservatives systematically strengthened their brand and undermined the liberal. Feminists became “Femi-Nazis.” Anti-war activists became “traitorous flag burners.” Anyone who spoke against inequity was tarred as a socialist. Liberal became an epithet. 

The conservative brand widened to include social values. Conservatives deplored what they described as liberal “sixties values” of rampant drug use and immorality. Conservatives became the defenders of “traditional” values: god, country, mom, and apple pie; patriots who believed “My country right or wrong.” 

Liberals were painted as agitators promoting inefficient, unnecessary social reforms: “big government,” “tax and spend.” Single women were characterized as sluts, blacks as dangerous freeloaders, and all those on welfare as shiftless. The desire to end US poverty was replaced by the conservative tomes of Reaganomics: “greed is good,” “poverty is a choice,” and “what benefits the rich ultimately benefits the entire economy.” 

In 1980, former Vice President Walter Mondale was the last true liberal to secure the Democratic nomination for President. Since then the Democratic candidates have been moderates who carefully avoided describing themselves as liberal: Michael Dukakis, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, John Kerry, and Barack Obama. Of course, many of these candidates have advocated a few liberal policies, but they have not been comfortable embracing the liberal brand; they have been moderates or closet conservatives. 

Now we are seeing an organic movement to re-establish the liberal brand. This showed up in the 2014 midterm election when, in many states, liberal issues prevailed – raising the minimum wage and legalizing marijuana – even though moderate Democrats were pummeled. 

At this writing, it seems likely that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will be the 2016 Democratic Presidential nominee. Clinton, like her husband, is a moderate. Many liberals hope that liberal Senator Elizabeth Warren will run for President. However, Warren has repeatedly said she will not run. (A recent USA Today poll found that 51 percent of Democrats favored Clinton for President, 31 percent were undecided, and 5 percent favored Warren.) 

Once she secures the Democratic nomination in Philadelphia, Clinton will lead a Party that has a mushy identity: “We’re not as crazy as the Republicans.” Like MacDonald’s, Democrats must recognize that for their brand to prevail it has to connect with “new generations.” They must listen to their customers. Change their focus to human values. This is an opportunity for liberals. 

If liberal values and policies dominate the Democratic convention, Clinton will have no choice but to adopt them. The appropriate role for Senator Warren is to lead the charge to strengthen the liberal brand. Warren’s the right person to do this; she’s a fighter in the best liberal tradition: "The game is rigged, and the Republicans rigged it... We’re here to fight back… This is about democracy, about your future, and about the kind of country we want to build.” 

It’s time for liberals to rebuild their brand and take back the Democratic Party. 

Health, Housing, and Transportation are three huge concerns in the lives of many old people today… some would say the three, especially so-called low-income seniors. Five years ago, when I began the Senior Power column, I said I would focus on them.

The Berkeley Commission on Aging (a part of city government) held a Special Meeting on Sunday, November 9, 2014 “to seek public comment and broad community input on issues of health, safety, housing, transportation, communication, economic opportunity, ongoing education and community involvement.” The minutes are available online at the City website, or contact Leah Talley, Manager of Aging Services, at 1901 Hearst Ave., Berkeley, CA 94709, phone (510) 981-5178.

The Gray Panthers (not a governmental agency) met on Wednesday, January 28, 2015 at the North Berkeley Senior Center. The speakers’ focus was housing. The meeting attracted the largest attendance in a long time. Julia Kato, of the Berkeley Tenants Union, moderated. 

Eleanor Walden, the Gray Panthers’ housing person, spoke about tenant displacement issues around the capital improvements (new kitchens in the units, upgraded laundry rooms, etc.) at Redwood Gardens. There are concerns about the long term effects of the "gentrification" of units, with the hidden agenda of going to market rate rents. The "dictatorial” behavior of the property manager and the building maintenance and janitorial staffs are also threatening. 

Rent Board member Kathy Harr discussed proposed changes to the demolition ordinance that would allow the City’s building department to declare that units were never rent controlled, thus allowing demolition of multi-unit buildings without the currently required replacement of permanently affordable housing. This would be the death knell of what remains of rent control. 

Retired Rent Board Analyst, Steve (Dr. Stephen) Barton discussed (1) the 100 million dollar windfall profit that Berkeley landlords have reaped since the repeal of "vacancy control" (units going to market rate with the departure of rent-controlled tenants) with the 1996 Costa Hawkins decision, and (2) the need for a windfall profit tax to fund the $75,000 that it takes to finance a permanently affordable housing unit. 

Julia Kato spoke about Section 8 tenants losing their apartments because landlords would not make repairs. 

Councilmember Max Anderson (District 3) spoke about (1) the development of the Adeline Corridor being one of the few areas of the city that could have increased building affordable housing, (2) the cutbacks by the new owners of Harriet Tubman Terrace of "social benefits", (3) and the importance of senior citizens’ resident associations for dealing with autocratic housing management staff. [Not all senior housing projects in Berkeley have residents associations.] 

Councilmember Jesse Arreguin (District 4,) former Councilmember Laurie Capitelli, and Bay Area Community Land Trust’s Rick Lewis were present. [Note: Arreguin – to my knowledge -- has failed to appoint a representative to Berkeley’s Commission on Aging.] 

I cannot help but reflect on the ongoing ebola epidemic in West Africa when reading about the recent outbreak of measles due in large part to an anti-vaccination sentiment.  

Ebola spread rapidly because of poor existing medical infrastructure plus in large part to misinformation and fear about a disease the populace knew little about. And there is no known FDA-approved ebola vaccine or medicine available. Whereas with measles, we have a safe and cost-effective vaccine that had all but eradicated the disease until the recent outbreak.  

Yet, like West Africa, we see irrational fear, ignorance, and misinformation. Or to put it bluntly, the anti-vaccinators are letting ignorance or just plain stubbornness get in the way of controlling a controllable disease. And at what cost to public health?

The title of Mary Dore's spirited fem-doc throws a nice jab at a bit of chauvinistic jiu-jitsu that still haunts the English-speaking world. Truth to tell, an angry woman is anything but beautiful. In fact, the sight of an angry woman can be terrifying. Any man who has ever hoped to defuse righteous female anger with this tone-deaf compliment deserves every facial bruise that may come his way.

Director/Producer Dore's film comes to the big screen after scoring rave reviews in the festival circuit (including the Audience Award at the Boston Independent Film Fest). The film arrives at a critical time in America, when many of the rights won by women's struggles since the 1960s are either being threatened or reversed by neocon governors and the insurgent extremists in the Halls of Congress.

She's Beautiful focuses on the birth and development of the women's movement between 1966 and 1971 and tells its stories through a feast of interviews with more than 30 members of the long (and still continuing) campaign. Among those interviewed: Fran Beal, Heather Booth, Rita Mae Brown, Susan Brownmiller, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Muriel Fox, Jo Freeman, Kate Millet, Eleanor Holmes Norton, Trina Robbins and three Berkeley luminaries, Alta, Susan Griffin and Ruth Rosen. 

The trove of archival footage includes Eisenhower-era print and TV ads (designed to infantilize and marginalize women) and an early feminist panel hosted by (gasp!) Norman Mailer. The film documents a shocking-in-retrospect segregation of labor. This was an age when a newspaper's Help Wanted ads were separated by gender. Hard to believe, but in the 1960s, newpapers ran separate-but-unequal employment sections—one for "men" and one for "women." The executive jobs were all for men. The jobs offered to women were all "secretarial" or "clerical." As one entitled advertiser wrote: "Wanted: World's Best Looking Exec Secy to Assist World's Most Charming Boss." 

Author Jo Freeman (We Will Be Heard and Berkeley in the Sixties) correctly notes that feminism "brought about a social revolution in the US. While it was painful, it had to be done." She's Beautiful is true to this message: it contains images and events that are both empowering and painful. 

The film salutes the work of feminism's Founding Mothers, including Betty Freidan's prairie-fire bestseller, The Feminine Mystique, which torpedoed generations of gender stereotyping and had millions of women reading about a previously taboo topic—institutionalized male domination. (And, 51 years later, what is today's bestseller sensation? Fifty Shades of Gray. Discuss among yourselves.) 

In the Sixties, one vet reminisces: "There was no Internet. There were mimeographs, letters and stamps. That's all we had to work with." Nonetheless, by 1966 the early feminist crusaders had succeeded in founding the National Organization of Women (NOW), a "civil rights organization for women's rights." NOW schooled women in their rights and gave them tools to reform the workplace—even if it meant suing their bosses. 

In a clip of black-and-white footage of an anti-war protest in the streets of Berkeley, a reporter asks Free Speech Movement activist Bettina Aptheker: "What is the point of your march." Without missing a step, she replies: "There are hundreds of women who want peace. And we want peace now!" 

Like the Free Speech Movement, the nascent women's lib movement drew its energy and hope from the struggles of the Civil Rights movement. Many of the women who became active in free speech and social justice issues had risked their lives to help register voters in the segregated South. In the backwoods of Mississippi, they met fearless women and witnessed the power of organized community. 

Sensitized to social injustice, they returned home only to realize that their lives were compromised by the unquestioned dictates of men. Ironically, even in Berkeley's Free Speech Movement, the women felt muzzled. It was the men who were first to grab the microphones—and the last to speak. Female FSM vets recall being ignored or told to "sit down" at meetings. Berkeley poet-author-playwright Susan Griffin recalls: "We licked the envelopes. We did the grunt work. We did the real work of organizing." 

The resistance to gender justice was, at times, unnerving. One of the most shocking archival clips comes from a massive anti-war rally called to protest the election of Richard Nixon. It was to have marked the first time a woman's organization participated publically in a major antiwar demonstration. But when Marilyn Webb walked to the microphone, thousands of male voices drowned her out. The footage shows a sea of scowling men, with their angry fists shaking in Webb's direction. Jumping to their feet in anger, the young men yell disapproval and fling the thumbs-down sign at the stage. Some of the Left-centric males even called for Webb to be driven from the stage and sexually assaulted as punishment for her effrontery! 

Webb saw women's rights as just another step up the civil rights ladder but many young men—who clearly understood the justice of liberating black voters in the South—suddenly started behaving like White Southern bigots when their female cohorts started demanding similar rights and opportunities. 

She's Beautiful packs a lot of history into its 92 minutes. Among the many topics covered by film clips and interviews are Female Liberation Centers, Abortion Rights, Lesbian Rights, the Women's International Conspiracy Theory from Hell (WITCH). Magic Quilt. Redstockings. The Mount Vernon Group. Black Sisters United. Shameless Hussy Press. It Ain't Me Babe. No More Fun and Games. The Furries: Goddesses of Vengeance. Women Unite to Reclaim the Night. The National Women's Strike. There's also some rousing footage of the Chicago Women's Liberation Rock Band performing onstage at full throttle. 

She's Beautiful includes plenty of agit-prop, including footage of daring and disruptive protests at the Miss American Pageant, Slut Walks in the streets of New York to protest the rape culture and some tasty examples of in-your-face street theatre—like the day teams of women descended on Wall Street to sexually harass the men passing by in their business suits. "Hey, beautiful! I like the way you fill out those trousers!" 

Women began talking with one another and comparing notes and the result was electrifying. As one activist recalls, "I suddenly realized, I wasn't alone." A more profound realization was that discrimination wasn't the "fault" of women as individuals; it was the fault of the existing social structure. Traditionally, there was little sympathy for women who were sexually assaulted. It was assumed the victims bore responsibility for the attacks. (Unfortunately, this mindset still holds sway in many parts of the country.) Feminists redefined rape as "The All-American Crime" and argued that it was not a forgivable "crime of passion" but an institutionally protected "political crime against women." 

Even married women started asking why their lives had to stop evolving as soon as they became mothers and housewives. "Overthrow Male Supremacy!" became the battle cry. 

Women at college campuses began demanding the administration provide day care for women students with children. Journalist and UCB professor Ruth Rosen recalls joining a public protest on the Berkeley campus where women graduates assembled to display their degree certificates (some of them, PhDs). "And we burned them." (Isn't it odd that the burning of draft cards and bras is remembered but the burning of diplomas is not?) 

Many forgotten "movement moments" are revisited. African American women recall arguing for abortion rights with men in the Black Nationalist movement who believed "abortion is genocide" and that women had a responsibility to "have babies for the revolution." In another internal dispute, Betty Friedan is shown trying to squelch the call for lesbian equality, fearing that the issue was divisive and would allow opponents to target the feminist movement as a tool of dykes. Rita Mae Brown was forced out of NOW because many feared "it was too soon" to embrace lesbians. Some found it supremely ironic that even arch-feminists could wind up treating their lesbian sisters "the same way the men treat all women." 

When the Second Congress to Unite Women rolled around, it failed to include any panels on lesbianism. Refusing to be marginalized any longer, a group calling itself The Lavender Menace infiltrated the event and cut the house lights. When the lights came back on, the audience found itself completely surrounded by lesbian activists who had left their seats in a show of numbers. They took over stage and demanded recognition. It worked. 

She's Beautiful happily spends a good deal of time reminiscing with assembled members of the Boston Women's Book Collective, which self-published the historic Our Bodies Ourselves, a radical self-help book that took an uncensored, independent look at women's health "from birth to death." The first edition sold 240,000 copies. It became a publishing sensation. 

But what do you do in a era where abortions are illegal? Chicago's abortion alternative, simply called "Jane," allowed young women to secure medical abortions—from providers known only as "Janes"—without having to deal with organized crime or risking a jail sentence. (In those days, three people discussing an abortion on the phone constituted a "conspiracy to commit felony murder.") It was illegal and risky but the underground service successfully provided more than 10,000 safe abortions for needy women. 

In 1971 Congress passed a historic Child Care Bill. This progressive piece of legislation is largely forgotten because Nixon vetoed it, saying: "We don't want our women to be like Soviet women." Instead, Nixon encouraged the forced sterilization of poor and minority women. (In Puerto Rico, Washington went on to quietly sterilize one-third of the island's women.) 

The early birth control debates in Congress were exclusively male procedures—until the day women in the chamber stood up to protest the lack of "informed consent" on the dangers of birth control chemicals. It seemed reasonable to protest when decisions about women's health were being made exclusively by male politicians, male scientists and male doctors. But this protest in the Halls of Congress was enough to put the Women's Lib movement on J. Edgar Hoover's enemies list. Hoover sent female agents to "inform" on the women as "a national security threat." 

On the 50^th anniversary of the Suffragette's victory in securing the Right to Vote was celebrated in cities across the US. She's Beautiful revisits the Women's March in the streets of Manhattan—a massive display of surging urgency—along with footage of simultaneous mass marches in Boston, Chicago, Washington, DC and San Francisco. The demonstrations also included the (well-planned but illegal) unfurling a banner on the Statue of Liberty. Photos of the banner—reading, "Women of the World Unite"—were flashed around the globe. 

In the film, author Susan Brownmiller (Against Our Will) remarks ruefully that the US is "a country that doesn't like to recognize any of its radical movements." She's Beautiful provides a major service by recognizing and celebrating this history. 

Feminist production note: The film was shot, edited and produced entirely by women. And it was funded by a Kickstarter campaign that raised $81,000 from 1,231 donors, most of whom were women.

Two plays by Catherine Treischmann, a younger American playwright whose work's been staged Off-Broadway, around the US and in London and received commissions from Manhattan Theatre Club, South Coast Rep and the Denver Theatre Center, will have their Bay Area premieres by two separate theater companies in Oakland and San Francisco this month. 

'Crooked,' about a 14-year-old young woman with a twisted back and the desire to write, who moves with her mother to Oxford, Mississippi, meeting another young woman with a strong belief in Jesus, setting the scene for a family crisis, will be staged by Virago Theatre Company at the Flight Deck, 1540 Broadway in Uptown Oakland (near 12th Street BART), Friday-Saturday at 8, Sunday at 2 and 7 (preview Friday, February 19 at 7), February 20-March 1. $25. viragotheatre.org 

'How the World Began,' about a female high school biology teacher who moves to rural Kansas and gets embroiled in a controversy between faith and science, will be staged by Custom Made Theatre Company at the Gough Street Playhouse. Audience members who've attended a show from one of the productions can see the other for half price. Check with the box office. 

Gough Street Playhouse, 1620 Gough (at Bush), San Francisco, Thursdays-Saturdays at 8, Sundays at February 14-March 12, with previews on February 12 and 13. $20-$40. custommade.org

Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra musical director Nicholas McGegan will conduct the Orchestra, the Philharmonia Chorale (led by Bruce LaMott) and soloists soprano Sherezade Panthaki, countertenor Clifton Massey, tenor Brian Thorsett and baritone Jeffrey Fields in the program The Cousins Bach, with choral works by Johann Sebastian's cousins Johann Ludwig Bach: Trauermusik (Mourning Music), in three parts (funeral music with setting from the Book of Psalms, brisk cadences--an inspiration for J. S. Bach's St. Matthew Passion), Johann Christoph Bach: cantata: "Herr, wende dich und sei mir gnädig"--and a G. P. Telemann sinfonia from Schwanengesang. 

Phillip Greenlief, excellent Oakland saxophonist and woodwinds player, maybe best-known locally for his 20 years and counting with The Lost Trio, who has collaborated with many fine improvisors, will be reunited onstage at 9 p.m. Thursday, February 12 at Berkeley Arts Festival with the brilliant Provençale double bassist Joëlle Léandre, who has played with a great range of international musicians and performing artists, from Pierre Boulez and John Cage to Steve Lacy and Marilyn Crispell, Anthony Braxton and Derek Bailey, some of whom have written music for her. The duo put out a CD on the Relative Pitch label in 2009, That Obscure Desire of Object. Opening at 8 will be trumpeter Mazen Kerbaj from Beirut.