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Press Release: Berkeley City Council Requests Guidance on Homeless Measures But Snubs Service Providers, Homeless People, Cal Researchers, Homeless Commission, Homeless Task Force…

From SAFEBerkeley
Wednesday March 18, 2015 - 04:39:00 PM

Last night, Berkeley City Council voted six to three to instruct the City Manager to produce recommendations on eleven different proposals concerning homelessness. Six of these would be criminal sanctions for everyday activities. No new law has been passed, or can be passed prior to a future City Council vote on the City Manager's recommendations.

Elisa Della-Piana, Chair of the Homeless Commission, was disappointed by the lack of community process. "Berkeley has a Homeless Commission that was formed to vet and produce such proposals. The hours spent in Tuesday's meeting were a waste of time that showed no respect for the expertise available in this city from our service providers, the Homeless Commission, the Homeless Taskforce, or one of the best schools of social work in the state. We hope that the City Manager will consult with these bodies so that City Council has better information and more rationally formed proposals in front of them when they give this matter its second consideration." 

Dan McMullan, Chair of the Mental Health Commission, agreed. "Much of what the City Council was trying to address last night are the symptoms of a system that is still failing to adequately address some of the more severe mental health needs in our community. Councilmember Maio, who drafted this proposal, knows that incarceration is detrimental to people with mental health challenges, and ran partially on a platform of improved mental health services this past November. We would like to see her consult with the Commission about positive steps Berkeley can take to better serve people in crisis, rather than resort to failed policies she already knows don't work." 

Service providers and homeless community members were also frustrated by the lack of process. Bob Offer-Westort, who has worked with homeless youth for two years and who organized the campaign against 2012's Measure S, said, "After 2012, Councilmember Jesse Arreguín convened a community process to inform Berkeleyans about homeless policy and to develop recommendations for how the City could best move forward. In April, that body will make a whole slate of well-considered proposals that have been formed with input from homeless people and service providers. I think it's insulting that the proponents of this measure have chosen not to participate in the community process, and have chosen not to speak with the people who know the most about homelessness in Berkeley." 

The proposal was drafted by the Downtown Berkeley Association, a landlords' lobbying group that focuses on drawing consumers to the Shattuck commercial corridor. Attorney Osha Neumann said, "We're seeing the Downtown Berkeley Association yet again push the interests of landlords over small businesses by scapegoating homeless people to distract the public from the issue of exorbitant commercial rents. They've pushed law after law to criminalize homelessness over the years, but none of this has achieved anything but a deepening divide between the haves and have-nots in Berkeley. All research as well as our everyday experience shows that putting homeless people in jail does nothing to get people off the streets or support local businesses. About half of the small business public speakers at last night's meeting were opposed to this foolhardy measure." 

The Streets Are For Everyone Coalition (SAFE) has committed to fight criminalization of homeless people, and to engage in a actual consultative community process that involves homeless people, service providers, small businesses, and legal professionals.


Press Release: Effort By City Council to Criminalize the City’s Homeless Population

From Matthew Lewis, Director of Local Affairs, ASUC Office of the External Affairs Vice President
Tuesday March 17, 2015 - 11:06:00 AM

This Tuesday, the Berkeley City Council is scheduled to vote on a bill to more strictly enforce pre-existing city ordinances which criminalize the City of Berkeley’s homeless population, including prohibiting the placement of personal objects within three feet of a tree planter and prohibiting people from sitting against buildings. Vice President Quinn strongly opposes any effort to criminalize homelessness and thus strongly opposes this bill. 

In 2012, the ASUC Senate overwhelmingly voted to denounce Measure S , which the City Council placed on the November 2012 ballot and similarly would have criminalized the homeless population of Berkeley by making it a crime to sit down on a commercial district sidewalk between 7am and 10pm, calling the measure “deeply misguided” among other things. Similarly, the item on Tuesday’s agenda is deeply misguided and would serve no purpose except to criminalize people who are homeless. For that reason, Vice President Quinn strongly opposes this measure, as well as any future measure that criminalizes homelessness. Vice President Quinn calls on the Berkeley City Council to vote down this language on Tuesday. Rather than attacking one of the most vulnerable populations, the Berkeley City Council should increase funding for affordable housing and other services which benefit Berkeley’s homeless population. 

In Response to the City Council’s latest attempt to criminalize the city’s homeless population, Vice President Quinn has been working with community leaders throughout Berkeley to mobilize students and other community members to oppose the city’s proposal. In addition to mobilizing students and other community members to speak at Tuesday’s meeting, there will be a march and rally beforehand .


Opinion

Editorials

Whose Berkeley is it, anyway?

Becky O'Malley
Sunday March 15, 2015 - 09:46:00 AM

Looking over this week’s submissions after having attended the Berkeley Zoning Adjustment Board meeting on Thursday, I was reminded of the title of one of Flannery O’Connor’s s beautiful short stories: “Everything that rises must converge.”

That’s a quote from 60s guru Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, here in longer form: “Remain true to yourself, but move ever upward toward greater consciousness and greater love! At the summit you will find yourselves united with all those who, from every direction, have made the same ascent. For everything that rises must converge.”

Well, yes, I guess so.

But conversely, there’s that other 60s guru, Tom Lehrer, who taught us that “we’ll all go together when we go.” We seem to be sliding downhill pretty fast here in Berkeley. 

Lately I’ve been making the mistake of going to civic meetings where it’s possible to see this trend in action. Thursday night at the Zoning Adjustment Board commissioners were falling all over themselves trying to duck the responsibility assigned to them by the zoning code for monitoring downtown Berkeley. They’re supposed to decide who the lucky recipients of variances to build the three towers anticipated by the latest downtown plan will be. The winners are supposed to give back enough “significant community benefits” to the city and its residents to justify their hugely enhanced profits. 

Commissioner Hahn, supported by a couple of her colleagues, politely tried to explain this job to the other commissioners, by way of a carefully crafted resolution which asked the City Council for advice, not consent. But it was clear that several of her colleagues wanted the Council to be the deciders instead. 

Hahn was outflanked by Commissioner Pinkston, the Mayor’s appointee, who is a consultant to the building industry, who managed to muddy the waters enough with amendments to Hahn’s resolution that the council could end up doing almost anything, with little the ZAB commissioners can do about it. Though they serve in a quasi-judicial role, they are appointed by councilmembers and can be fired if they disobey their appointer. 

I’m still having a hard time believing that a respected long-time LPC commissioner was fired by the mayor because she thought the view of the Golden Gate from the U.C. Campanile is worthy of protection, and said so. This action seems to have been a favor to the Los Angeles money man who’s behind “The Residences at Berkeley Plaza”, who just can’t be bothered to step down his building to respect the view. 

The truth is that no one in Berkeley needs 18 stories worth of condos blocking the view of the Golden Gate, no matter how much baksheesh the promoters might offer to grease the civic palms. So the “significant community benefit” calculation is a meaningless exercise. The developers almost certainly will get their building, and thus their gold, no matter what. No worries for them. 

Then there’s the Downtown Berkeley Association’s wish list of yet more ways to harass the down-and-out who have the temerity to beg on the downtown streets, even perhaps in the very doorways of said luxury condos. That will be delivered to the City Council meeting on Tuesday by two councilmembers who should know better. 

Tuesday just happens to be St. Patrick’s Day. Father Bill O’Donnell, whose picture is prominent on the Romare Bearden mural which has been relegated to the hall outside the Council chambers in the Maudelle Shirek Building (Old City Hall), must be rolling over in his grave. 

Of course, no concrete step has yet been taken after endless hearings and demonstrations to address the very real concerns which arose from police actions on December 6. Oh yes, there might be another report in the works, delivery date uncertain, but that's all. 

Some members of the wearying, graying band of warriors who do know better have explained it all in this issue’s Public Comment section, should you care. One question which might be asked is, if things are so bad in downtown Berkeley, why are speculators jostling each other to invest there? 

Also pictured on the mural is the late Councilmember Maudelle Shirek, another champion of the poor, for whom the decaying building was named. I was once Maudelle’s appointee on the Landmarks Preservation Commission, at a point when the historic brown-shingle building where meetings which resulted in the Americans with Disabilities Act were first held was threatened with demolition. 

We saved that one, but now the building named for Maudelle herself is undergoing Demolition by Neglect, the City of Berkeley’s favorite cost-saving technique. The council majority is greedily eating the seed corn, allowing our beautiful inherited civic buildings, the ones which given Berkeley its fabled character, to fall to rack and ruin while upping the pay for their legions of aides. 

And yet, with all that new construction in the works, there are no real plans for adding affordable housing . There's a small per-unit assessment which is supposed to go to an affordable housing fund, but it's much, much less than San Francisco extracts from builders there. Trickle-down believers claim that lavish new condos will make other rentals available for low-income residents, but buyers won't be vacating Berkeley apartments, they'll be coming from elsewhere. 

Three new vapid 18-story towers will turn Berkeley into a destination for the same international 1%ers who are buying up the same sort of luxury condos in the same kind of buildings in San Francisco with no plans to live in them for more than weeks out of the year. At best Berkeley will become San Francisco’s spare bedroom for the over-paid techies whose lives revolve around BART, bikes and laptop cafés. 

As I sample civic meetings lately, I’ve noticed that the same core of activists is simultaneously attempting to save what’s good, prevent what’s bad, and protect the vulnerable in Berkeley. And the same core of greedy opportunists is behind most of the undesirable proposals. 

Is it true that everything that rises must converge? If so, is it possible that the assortment of people who are desperately trying to stand up to save Berkeley from itself could join together before the next election to find electable candidates who are not in hoc to the building industry for their campaign finances? 

It’s not liberals or progressives against moderates or conservatives any more. A new electoral coalition, based on a common resolve to tackle the problems which beset today’s Berkeley, is sorely needed. 2016 is just around the corner. 

 

 


Public Comment

Why Criminalizing Poverty Sells

Carol Denney
Friday March 13, 2015 - 12:17:00 PM

Criminalizing homelessness is the most expensive, least effective way to address homelessness. Studies prove it, reporters note it, and common sense suggests it since paying for a year of low-income housing or even a college education costs a lot less than a year in jail. So why does it sell like crazy? 

Nationwide we’re bristling with new anti-homeless and vagrancy laws according to a report by the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty. California leads with way with an average nine such laws per city according to the UC Berkeley School of Law Policy Advocacy Clinic’s recent study. The laws typically criminalize standing, sitting, lying down, sleeping, having belongings with you which might define you as “camping”, sleeping in your own car, sharing food with others, asking for money or help from others, and other behaviors which are unavoidable, especially for people who have no place to go. 

Why are these embarrassingly heartless laws so easy to pass and so popular? The answer is that there’s currently a political cost to any politician who insists on the creation of low-cost housing as a priority. But there is very little political cost at present to passing yet another law, even an unconstitutional law, which burdens the poor. 

Berkeley is a great example. Berkeley is a college town, notoriously liberal, consistently cast as comically out of touch with mainstream American politics in national press. But successive mayor after mayor has been more than willing to override community will, ignore the moral objections of religious and human rights groups, and go to bat in court for unconstitutional legislation on behalf of political groups who want the poor to just disappear. 

In an interview with Berkeley author John Curl, Mayor Tom Bates referred to rent control in particular as “a no-win position” for him and “a death knell” for politicians generally. Berkeley citizens, in the absence of honest leadership on the issue of low-income and affordable housing, cite their own frustration with panhandling and homelessness as reason enough to vote repeatedly for laws of dubious constitutionality which target poor people on the street struggling with unemployment, evictions, and skyrocketing rents. 

U.S. District Court Judge Claudia Wilken issued a temporary restraining order in 1995 against Berkeley’s 1994 anti-panhandling law, noting that "some Berkeley citizens feel annoyed or guilty when faced with an indigent beggar . . . Feelings of annoyance or guilt, however, cannot outweigh the exercise of First Amendment rights." 

Poor and homeless people are notoriously ill-equipped to hire lawyers and mount legal challenges to the anti-poor laws generated primarily by merchant associations which, in the case of the powerful Downtown Berkeley Association (DBA), get mandated “membership” payments from all the businesses within its expanding downtown footprint. The DBA’s board is dominated by large property owners who were the primary funders of the failed anti-sitting law campaign in Berkeley’s 2012 election. There is not a single representative on the board from the poorly funded non-profits and law clinics who work with the poor and homeless people caught up in the endless web of the criminalization of poverty. Those are the groups who will show up in opposition to new anti-homeless initiatives. But they are much less likely to be as able as wealthy investment and property companies to toss large campaign donations the council’s way come the next election. 

The Berkeley City Council knows that circling poor and homeless people endlessly through overburdened courts and jails over unpayable fines for innocuous offenses is dumb. They tend to be intelligent people who by now have had somebody toss a copy of Berkeley Law’s Policy Advocacy Clinic’s report on California’s New Vagrancy Laws or the No Safe Place report on the Criminalization of Homelessness in U.S. Cities from the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty (or both) on their desks. They may even have read the reports. 

But it takes courage to say no to merchant associations’ and the University of California’s short-sighted effort to make homelessness and poverty invisible. Courage is in short supply in the Berkeley City Council chambers. For all the opining in January and February 2015 about the Black Lives Matter campaigns, and even though the majority of those affected are people of color and people struggling with disabilities, the anti-homeless laws slated for passage at the March 17th Berkeley City Council meeting seem to be proof that the war on the poor will go on without interruption.


Press Release: Rally and March Planned to Protest Effort to Pass New Anti-Homeless Laws in Berkeley

Osha Neumann
Thursday March 12, 2015 - 10:07:00 PM

The Streets Are for Everyone Coalition (SAFE), is calling for an emergency march and rally on March 17 to protest efforts to get the Berkeley City Council to pass new laws targeting homeless people on the streets of the city.

The protest will precede a meeting of the Council at which it will consider a proposal by Councilmember Linda Maio for a raft of new ordinances, which would criminalize such innocuous activities as “lying on planter walls” and “deployment” of bedding on sidewalks and plazas during the day.

“Taken together with existing laws, these ordinances would essentially make it illegal for people who are homeless to have a presence on our streets and sidewalks,” said Osha Neumann an attorney with the East Bay Community Law Center. He has represented many homeless people who have received citations for, he says, “activities they engage in as part of their effort to survive.” 

Professor Jeff Selbin is the director of Berkeley Law’s Policy Advocacy Clinic, which recently published a study about the growing enactment and enforcement of anti-homeless laws in California. He commented: “The evidence from around the state and country is quite clear: criminalizing people who are homeless doesn’t solve any of the underlying causes or conditions of homelessness; in fact, it only makes them worse. It would be inhumane, ineffective and expensive for Berkeley to double down on punitive laws that will only hurt our most vulnerable residents.” 

Patricia Wall, Executive Director of the Homeless Action Center, expressed outrage that it was again necessary to fight for the rights of people who are homeless in the town with a supposed commitment to civil liberties. “Just under 2 ½ years ago,” she said, “Berkeley voters defeated Measure S, which would have criminalized sitting on the sidewalk. The same real estate interests that brought us that proposal are back again. And once again we need to show them that they don’t own this town, nor, hopefully, its politicians.” 

Bob Offer-Westort of the San Francisco Coalition on Homelessness and former head of the “No on S. Campaign,” was astounded when he learned of Maio’s proposals. “Berkeley’s continuing failure to pay any heed to reason, research, or fellow feeling when developing homeless policy is mind-numbing. This city has a homeless commission, a homeless task force, and one of the best schools of social work in California. But our legislators can’t be bothered to lend an ear to either homeless people themselves, service providers, or policy experts, but legislation seems to be driven by a relentless cycle of panic and whim.” 

The march will begin at 5 PM on the corner of Telegraph Ave. and Haste Street and proceed to the steps of Old City Hall at 2134 Martin Luther King Jr. Way, for a rally at 6 PM. 

Streets Are For Everyone Coalition (SAFE) : safecoalitionberkeley@gmail.com


New: Dallas Police and the deadly screwdriver

Jack Bragen
Friday March 20, 2015 - 03:07:00 PM

In the news there was a recent story of two Dallas policemen encountering a mentally ill man, Jason Harrison, holding a screwdriver. The officers commanded Jason to drop the screwdriver, and within a few seconds of that, shot the mentally ill man five times. There are many more examples of police killing mentally ill people without provocation. There are also numerous examples of police brutality in which excessive force is used to apprehend a mentally ill person.  

I am not seeing news of African American people rallying to condemn the shooting, even though the victim in this case was African American. I am not seeing any persons with mental illness getting out and demonstrating. This is probably because we are too sedated by medication and controlled by the treatment system to organize and produce demonstrations.  

When a mentally ill person is beaten or killed, even when this gets a lot of publicity, people will go "Ah well, that is unfortunate…" But the outrage is missing.  

That was a human life cut short. After the police killed Jason, his mother wailed with grief. The parents are filing a wrongful death suit, but that will not bring back their son. I ask you, where is the public outrage? I personally am outraged. That man Jason could have been me.  

It seems that police behavior is especially bad and especially corrupt in the southern states. My personal dealings with police when I have been acutely mentally ill have usually been okay, although with some exceptions.  

(I don't live in the south, and I am also Caucasian (Jewish). Police probably don't or haven't felt very threatened by me, probably because I am not a very big man and have, for the past fifteen years, gained an increasingly gray head of hair. On the other hand, maybe I have been lucky.)  

In the video that showed Jason being killed, it was clear that his stance wasn't threatening. Police are claiming that Jason came at them with the screwdriver. A couple of supposed experts on CNN claimed that police were responding appropriately and that Jason could have killed police with his screwdriver, and that this screwdriver could have penetrated their bullet-proof vests. However, the stories of the two officers did not corroborate each other.  

Part of the lesson of this incident is that all police should always wear a body cam, and it should always be operational. This is one of the few items that could potentially make cops accountable. The other lesson of this incident is that society, police, and government institutions do not value the lives of mentally ill people.  

How many more people have to die before society realizes that mentally ill people are human beings, not monsters? When will we receive equal protection under the law? Those two officers need to be prosecuted for manslaughter and sued for every penny they have. The Dallas police force ought to be sued for every penny it has, and all of its officers should be made to enroll in a remedial mental health class. But unfortunately, these things will not happen.  

To all mentally ill people, be sure and take your medication, and by all means, never pick up a screwdriver.  

 


Netanyahu’s Speech

Jagjit Singh
Thursday March 12, 2015 - 09:59:00 PM

Alarmist rhetoric theme has long been a staple of Mr. Netanyahu’s career. In an interview with the BBC in 1997, he warned that Iran was “building a formidable arsenal of ballistic missiles,” and urged nations to join him to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear capability, stressing that “time is running out.” Earlier, as a Member of Parliament, in 1992, he predicted that Iran would be able to produce a nuclear weapon within three to five years. His speech last Tuesday, bore a strong resemblance to his testimony before the House government affairs committee in 2002 warning of Iraq’s possession of Centrifuges “the size of washing machines.” His own intelligence service, the Mossad, categorically rejected Netanyahu’s dire warnings. So where is Netanyahu obtaining his information? He seems to be using President George Bush’s playbook in injecting massive doses of fear to rally feckless Congressional members behind his bogus claims. His speech was pure theatre designed to scuttle Obama’s effort to reach a peaceful accord with Iran, forestall further conflict and offer a workable paradigm to degrade ISIS’s reign of terror. 

Netanyahu maintains the mantra of existential threats to deflect from mounting criticisms of Israel’s illegal settlement activity, war crimes committed in Gaza, and the very legitimate aspirations of the Palestinians to have their own independent state. His ‘get tough on Iran’ speech was targeted to Israeli voters portraying himself as a ‘Churchillian’ personality deserving a third term in office. Finally, Israel should follow Iran’s example and sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.


Progressive in District 4 may as well elect an ultra-right conservative
(An open letter to the progressive voters of Berkeley)

Thomas Lord
Thursday March 12, 2015 - 09:53:00 PM

On March 17th the Berkeley City Council will consider expanding the authority and practice of police, especially in downtown Berkeley. The council will consider authorizing the police to treat the down and out even more harshly than they are already treated.

Jesse Arreguin and Linda Maio have brought this authoritarian measure before council.

Here is one good description of the proposals, via Copwatch: 

"1. Ordinance preventing panhandling within 10 feet of a parking pay station (akin to our ATM ordinance). 

"2. Review ordinances other cities use to address public urination/defecation and return with recommendations for implementation; ensure public restrooms are available and well publicized. Involve BART in exploring possible locations. 

"3. Ordinance preventing the placement of personal objects in planters, tree wells, or within 3 feet of a tree well. 

"4. Ordinance preventing lying on planter walls or inside of planters. 

"5. Ordinance preventing deployment of bedding, tenting, sleeping pads, mattresses, blankets, etc. on sidewalks and plazas from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. 

"6. Ordinance preventing personal items from being affixed to public fixtures including poles, bike racks (except bikes), planters, trees, tree guards, newspaper racks, parking meters and pay stations. Pet leashes exempt only as not prohibited in BMC 10.12.110. 

"7. Ordinance preventing unpermitted cooking on public sidewalks. 

"8. Survey business districts to determine adequacy of enforcement of current ordinances; develop an action plan for consistent enforcement as needed. 

"9. Clarify if "no trespass" signs on private property extend to sitting against buildings. 

"10.Assess adequacy of six-foot right-of-way to enable sufficient pedestrian and wheelchair passage particularly in high-traffic areas. 

" 11.Refer to the budget process extending transition-aged youth shelter hours beyond winter months" 

To that list we might add an item carried over from March 10th: Jesse Arreguin's proposal to compete against panhandlers with donation boxes downtown, branded "positive change". These new boxes would turn over donations to city bureaucracy, either directly or in the form of the Downtown Berkeley Association. The middle class will take a large cut of handouts meant for the very poor. 

Quite simply, Jesse Arreguin and Linda Maio are launching a doubling down on the police attack on the down and out. 

Our supposedly progressive District 4 councilman, the supposed inheritor of Dona Spring's legacy, has joined with those who want to bum rush the poor and the crazy out of town, by means of police and court system violence. 

Let us be clear on the morality of this maneuver: 

Nobody likes being panhandled but proximity to a parking pay station has nothing to do with it. "10 feet from a parking pay station" is a feeble excuse to write tickets, to send random-down-and-out people to jail, to enrich the police forces, and to pretend for the sake of effete snobs that at long last Something Is Being Done. 

And what of "personal objects in planters, tree wells, or within 3 feet of a tree well"? Here, Jesse and Linda propose to penalize poor people for owning a few things, and setting them down where they are out of the way. 

What of an ordinance preventing stretching out on a planter wall, an architectural feature perfect for relaxing in public while not spending money for the benefit of local landlords? 

Jesse Arreguin and Linda Maio have taken the view that if you aren't giving money to Berkeley's landlords then you have little business downtown and should certainly not try to make yourself comfortable or set anything down. 

The measure goes on like this and only hypocrites and liars can find in this sorry excuse for legislation anything much more than an attempt to respond to a humanitarian crisis by penalizing the victims further. 

Linda Maio once declared that she trembled with rage on the dais at the assertion she was less than a progressive. 

For reasons that are hard to imagine, Jesse Arreguin is still presumed a progressive. 

Listen, folks: 

Nobody particularly enjoys an overly aggressive panhandler. 

Nobody thrills to the "fun" of encountering a homeless mentally ill person in mid-crisis. 

White people don't like being name called racial names. 

People of color don't like being eyed with obvious suspicion and disgust. 

Poor people don't like getting brushed off the sidewalk by aggro khaki'ed business bros. 

Nobody can stand dumb students who zombie through town deafened by ear buds and tunnel-visioned into their not-so-smart phones. 

Women righteously resent the cat calls and the "b word". 

The list goes on and on. 

Yet none of this justifies blue-suited men with guns and restraints violently punching down the most vulnerable. 

None of this justifies our society's failure to manage public restrooms and showers and shelter. 

None of this justifies the equally offensive sneering and snarky behavior of rich theater patrons, ice cream seekers, and khaki-and-hemp swells about town. 

Expanded police, and jail, and court system violence is not the answer and it will only make matters worse. 

It is the height of malevolent cynicism that Linda Maio and Jesse Arreguin propose such state sponsored violence as a condition of meager improvements to social spending. 

There will be protests at the March 17th council meeting and I have no idea if they will be large or small. Regardless, if Berkeley wants to keep going in this direction, our City Council will make Berkeley ground zero for a lasting confrontation. Berkeley will lead the nation, even if the council dais can not.


War Hawks trying to undercut the President

Tejinder Uberoi
Thursday March 12, 2015 - 09:47:00 PM

Secretary of State Kerry was right to condemn the action of 46 Senators who sent a letter to Iran attempting to scare their leaders from reaching an agreement with the US, warning that the next President could invalidate such an agreement with the stroke of a pen. It was yet another clumsy effort to undercut the president on a grave national security issue. War hawk Arkansas Republican Tom Cotton spearheaded the effort after receiving nearly $1 million in donations from The Emergency Committee for Israel and conducting a secretive meeting with weapons contractors. By their actions these senators have sent a dangerous message that the signature of a US president is not legally binding and is therefore meaningless. 

Once again Republicans have shown their appalling ignorance of international law, disdain for the president and put their own narrow political interests above the interests of the American people.


Columns

THE PUBLIC EYE:What Do Republicans Stand For?

Bob Burnett
Friday March 13, 2015 - 10:28:00 AM

20 months before the 2016 presidential election, the Republican Party is floundering. Unlike the Democrats, where Hillary Clinton is the clear presidential favorite, there’s no frontrunner for the GOP nomination. More important, it’s unclear what Republicans stand for – other than hatred of President Obama. 

During the last week of February, the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) occurred in Washington, DC. Speakers lambasted Obama and Clinton. Potential candidates competed for attention – Rand Paul and Scott Walker won the CPAC straw poll. Nonetheless, there was little agreement about a positive Republican domestic policy. 

The CPAC crowd did agree on foreign policy. Conservatives love the Iraq war, ridicule Obama as a wimp, are scared to death of ISIS, and don’t trust Iran. The GOP’s problem is that, at the moment, voters aren’t concerned about foreign policy. Poll after poll indicates that Americans are worried about US domestic policy, particularly the economy and jobs. 

The GOP domestic-policy vacuum is evidence of a deeper problem: Republicans don’t have a plan to move America forward. Voters understand the GOP is opposed to economic equality – or racial or gender equality. But what are Republicans for? 

Satirist P. J. O’Rourke once observed, “Republicans are the Party that says government doesn’t work, and then they get elected and prove it.” Three-months experience with a Republican-controlled Congress has demonstrated this truth. Republicans want to repeal Obamacare, but that train has left the station. (Unless the Supreme Court intervenes.) Republicans want to restrict the President’s ability to effect immigration or block the Keystone pipeline, but don’t have the votes. Republicans have no positive agenda. 

Meanwhile, Democrats have a powerful story to tell. The American economy continues to improve; the latest jobs report indicated the US added 295,000 jobs in February – 60 months of jobs growth. the President’s approval ratings are the highest they’ve been in months. A recent Associated Press-GFK poll found there is growing support for the President’s economic policies and “51 percent approve of his handling of unemployment.” In addition, more than 11 million people have enrolled in Obamacare

Since the 2012 presidential election the primary GOP message has been “stop Obama.” This has inflamed their base – and contributed to their victory in the 2014 midterm election – but it doesn’t give true Independent voters a reason to vote Republican in 2016. 

Republicans are “hoist on their own petard;” victims of their own tactics. At one time, Republican had a domestic identity: “fiscal restraint.” They were for “small government.” Somewhere during the George W. Bush administration they lost their “small government” message – witness the explosive growth of the Department of Homeland Security. This development put Republicans into a box: it’s hard to be for “small government” and simultaneously support the world’s largest defense establishment -- the US spends as much on defense as the next eight countries combined. 

As a consequence of this cancerous tactic, recent Republican presidential nominees have been hamstrung. In conservative gatherings like CPAC they tell each other that they hate government, but in Washington, and on the campaign trail, they can’t use this line because they actually love the behemoth national security state. 

The 2012 GOP presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, ran as, “I’m not Barack Obama.” Romney had a lame domestic message: “As President… I will cut marginal tax rates across the board for individuals and corporations... I will repeal burdensome regulations, and prevent the bureaucracy from writing new ones… Instead of growing the federal government, I will shrink it.” Romney tried to adapt Ronald Reagan’s 1980 message: government is the problem; helping the rich get richer will inevitably help everyone else; and markets are inherently self correcting and therefore there’s no need for government regulation. But after thirty years, voters were suspicious of Reaganomics and Romney. 

It’s easy to dismiss the GOP malaise as a consequence of their embrace of the status quo. Republicans don’t want to break up big banks, or raise the minimum wage, or shutdown polluting industries, or provide women with access to health services, or close military bases, or feed and educate our children, or do anything of substance, because that would change the social order. After all, Republicans get most of their funding from rich white men and party leaders don’t want to piss them off. 

Contemporary American politics are all about money – billions of dollars. And Republicans, more than Democrats, are behest to a relatively small number of rich, white, male donors. 

The Republican moneybags want lower taxes and fewer government regulations. They don’t care about the poor or women or people of color or the elderly. If the Republican plutocrats had their way, they would role back the social safety net: Obamacare, Medicare, Social Security, and so forth. 

The problem for Republicans, in a presidential election year, is that these policies aren’t popular with most voters. So the GOP has to go negative because they don’t have a positive agenda. 


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


ON MENTAL ILLNESS: Limited Resources in the Community for the High Functioning

Jack Bragen
Friday March 13, 2015 - 10:08:00 AM

In the past twenty-five years, programs to help high functioning mentally ill persons have evaporated. A lot of this is attributable to funding cuts. Yet when funding is restored, helping those who do a bit better hasn't been a priority.  

I have met numerous people with mental illness who are very "high functioning," and it seems clear that there aren’t very many resources for help available in the community. Most of the resources go toward those who are either the most severely impaired, and perhaps those who are potentially the worst nuisances.  

When employed and self-employed in my twenties, I was helped by Department of Rehabilitation and by a mental health organization which at the time was called Phoenix Programs. They both withdrew support when I needed ongoing help.  

It seems as though these two organizations counseled me and provided emotional support up to a point, and then assumed I would live happily ever after. In order to be successful in the long-term, I would have needed ongoing encouragement--from someone. It was too difficult to try to be successful in somewhat of an emotional vacuum.  

There aren't a lot of employment opportunities for a disabled, mentally ill, middle-aged man or woman. A chronically mentally ill but reasonably intelligent person may not have the work history or the educational background to obtain a decent job. And manual labor jobs aren't doable for someone a bit older who may be heavily medicated. Furthermore, if there is some position that might possibly be workable, we would still require something part-time--another factor making it far more difficult to get hired.  

In 2003, I was employed in a "special" opportunity for mentally ill people to do data entry from home. The host organization couldn't get contracts. Also, the director, who also was mentally ill, did some kind of indiscretion, and this resulted in the conclusion that she continued to be impaired. The program was terminated.  

Another deficiency in the community in terms of resources for persons with mental illness is a devastating lack of affordable housing. People capable of living independently are economically unable to do so, and may be forced into institutional type housing.  

HUD seems to have an agenda of getting as many people off their list as possible. It is likely that the operative ethic is to save taxpayer money. Their annual inspections occur more frequently than annually--sometimes twice within a year. Additionally, on the initial inspections, nitpicking defects in the unit are cited, necessitating a re-inspection. Secondly, minor details in paperwork get cited in the income certifications, necessitating action to fix the paperwork, often on very short notice.  

The amount of assistance provided by HUD only allows a tenant to live in the poor (and sometimes dangerous) neighborhoods--unless you get lucky on a good rental. The amount allowed by Section 8 is about five hundred below the going rates. 

If living on SSI or SSDI, the amount you get doesn't allow so much as renting a room. A room is $600 or $700 minimum, while SSI provides about $800 total. In short, a number of disabled people are either going to be homeless, or forced by lack of money to live in an institutional situation.  

Thus it is dogmatic and false to assert that mentally ill people should just take our medication and then we would be fine. It's not fine. Mentally ill people are deprived of good living conditions.


ECLECTIC RANT: Black Farmers in America

Ralph E. Stone
Thursday March 12, 2015 - 09:49:00 PM
John Francis Ficara, the American Black Farmers Project

Last year, my wife and I visited for the first time the sights in Philadelphia, which included an informative exhibit "Distant Echoes: Black Farmers in America" at the African American Museum there. The exhibit featured the poignant, award-winning photographs of John Francis Ficara. The photographs depict what Ficara considers the last decade of black agriculture in the United States. Ficara spent several years documenting the experience of black farmers, which for many years has been in crisis after decades of prejudice and discrimination. According to the exhibit, Black farmers are losing their property at approximately 1,000 acres a day. 

From 1999 to 2002, Ficara traveled around the country photographing 60 farmers and their families in Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, Mississippi, North Carolina, and South Carolina. Farmers described their struggles to keep their farms sufficiently productive to provide income. To many, this is land their parents and grandparents plowed, seeded, and harvested. 

As a result of slavery, blacks were not allowed to own land or real property. African Americans began to equate land ownership to independence, wealth, and full citizenship. Despite their efforts to keep land in their families, aging black farmers are losing property to farm conglomerates or by family members' departure from the land. 

The saga began with "40 acres and a mule." On January 16, 1865, Union General William T. Sherman issued Special Field Order No. 15. Sherman prescribed the 40 acres in that Order, but not the mule. The mule would come later. This idea for massive land redistribution was the result of a discussion that Sherman and Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton had with 20 leaders of the black community in Savannah, Georgia. The meeting was unprecedented in American history as the federal government had confiscated private property -- some 400,000 acres -- formerly owned by Confederate land owners, and redistributed it to former Black slaves. 

However, three months after Sherman issued his Field Order No. 15, the U.S. Congress created the Freedman's Bureau, which was supposed to ensure the welfare of the millions of slaves who were being freed by the war. One task of the Freedmen's Bureau was to be the management of lands confiscated from those who had rebelled against the United States. The intent of Congress was to break up the plantations and redistribute the land so former slaves could have their own small farms. In April 1865, Andrew Johnson became president following the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. And on May 28, 1865, Jackson issued a proclamation of pardon and amnesty to citizens in the South who would take an oath of allegiance. As part of the pardon process, lands confiscated during the war would be returned to white landowners, thus thwarting the mass redistribution of land. Approximately 40,000 former slaves received grants of land under Sherman's order and then the land was taken away from them. 

Denied the opportunity to own their own land, the former slaves were forced to live under sharecropping where they would work a plot of the landowner's land and receive a share of the crop as payment. Basically, sharecropping replaced the plantation system. 

Since 1865, when President Johnson rescinded General Sherman's Special Field Order No. 15, Black farmers in America have been largely forsaken and forgotten by failures of government resettlement programs, relentless droughts, and the discriminatory practices of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.  

In 1920, Black farmers comprised nearly 14 percent of all farmers in the U.S., working over 16 million acres of land. At that time, almost 25 percent of all Americans worked as famers.  

The 2012 Census shows that there were over 33,000 black farmers across the country. Almost half of the country saw a decrease in the number of black farmers over the past five years with 19 states reporting fewer black farmers in 2012 than reported in 2007. In 2007, about 1.3 percent of all farmers were Black. Black farmers are most heavily concentrated in the Southeast, with eastern Texas and Mississippi having the highest numbers of black farmers. Other top states include Alabama, Louisiana, South Carolina, Georgia and North Carolina — which closely follows the states with some of the greatest concentration of African Americans in general. Despite their efforts to keep land in their families, aging Black farmers are losing property in disparate proportions to farm conglomerates or by the departure of family members from the land. 

John Francis Ficara's photographs may not change the course of history, but they do document the plight of Black farmers in America. 


Arts & Events

Theater Review: 'Enemies: Foreign and Domestic' by Central Works at the Berkeley City Club

Ken Bullock
Friday March 13, 2015 - 01:17:00 PM

"It never occurred to you that living with our mother--our mother!--might turn somebody against America!"

With that would-be wake-up call, Margaret Mary Mahoney (Central Works co-founder and co-director Jan Zvaifler in an often-funny yet harrowing turn) confronts her sisters Bridgett (Maura Halloran) and Kathleen (Danielle Thys) in their mother's home over the presence of a young Somali woman in hijab, their mother's caregiver Siara (Desirée Rogers), and what to her is the mystery of their terminally-ill mother's very recent and sudden demise without pronouncement or death certificate in the midst of the action of Patricia Milton's telling new play, 'Enemies: Foreign and Domestic.' 

Margaret Mary's an unemployed nurse, the self-proclaimed black sheep of the family whose return to the fold may be less a hopeful reconciliation, to pray with her mother, than to foul the nest. Her crusade to spew out the dysfunctional family sewage, documented in decades of diaries, has been cut short by mortality--and now the gamey crusader turns on her fellow survivors--and the demure but upright Siara--over the circumstances of death ... are they linked to a bigger, extra-familial conspiracy? 

The other two sisters are excellently portrayed, as are all four female characters, and round out the Family Romance, their mother in permanent absentia: Bridgett, the baby girl grown up with her own child and a violent husband at home, brandishing her copy of 'Catholic Remedies for Co-Dependents,' and overcompensating to make everything right, flashing a nervous smile when challenged; Kathleen, the dominating older sibling, practically a swaggerer, now employee of a private security company contracting with the government to resettle refugees from foreign places suffering "nation-building" or disintegration, hence Siara's connection ... After Kathleen declares "Let's forget about Bridgett's alleged molestation and think about happy memories!," Margaret Mary counters her big sister: "I don't think you can use your manual for US foreign policy!" 

But putative terrorist Siara's late husband, it turns out, was shot in the States, coming home from a farmers market; it's his Qur'an Mary Margaret finds on a sideboard. The facts of each case that comes up, whether of national or familial security, is fraught with contradictions--and that's the modus of this absorbing play, which is, after all, a comedy, not quite a door-slammer, but with many comings and goings while Desirée Rogers as Siara--in the tradition of the pert, prescient servant characters from Roman comedy through the Commedia and Shakespeare to Mozart's last operas and LaBiche and Feydeau--endeavors, constantly interrupted, to explain what really happened, each fragmentary edition seeming to contradict, even incriminate ...  

'Enemies: Foreign and Domestic,' performed in the round in the intimate salon of the Berkeley City Club--a space Central Works has played in much of its 25 season history, every inch of it creatively utilized by director (and company co-director) Gary Graves, the production team (with particular subtlety by music and sound maestro Gregory Scharpen) and the splendid, true ensemble--is like a gyroscope, spiraling down to the bitter truth, yet whirling out complexities of dialogue and gestural action, riding on a string of dark humor ... More than charity begins at home.  

Thursdays through Saturdays at 8, Sundays at 5 (a post-show talk-back on March 15) at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Avenue, between Ellsworth & Dana. $28 online ( centralworks.org ), $28-$15 sliding scale at the door; Thursdays: pay what you can.


AROUND & ABOUT: Music--Philharmonia Baroque ... Vivaldi with Rachel Podger

Ken Bullock
Friday March 13, 2015 - 10:11:00 AM

Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, led by Rachel Podger—who the BBC Music Magazine has called "Britain's finest period violinist"—will play an all-Vivaldi concert of nine violin concerti, for one, two and three violins, Saturday, March 14 at 8, Sunday, March 15 at 7:30, at the First Congregational Church, 245 Channing Way at Dana. $25-$100. philharmonia.org


AROUND AND ABOUT: Music. Hugh Masekela & Vusi Mahlasela at Zellerbach Hall for Cal Performances: Now 21 Years of Freedom

Friday March 13, 2015 - 04:05:00 PM

"What people don't realize is that war against occupation in South Africa began when the first Dutch settlers came in 1652, and it didn't stop till 1994. I don't consider myself a political musician; a consider myself a person who learned music from people who were resisting an oppression." 

So South African trumpeter-fluegelhorn player-songwriter-bandleader Hugh Masekela put the message across in an interview, as he spoke it onstage at Zellerbach Hall last Wednesday for Cal Performances, on the tour he and singer-songwriter Vusi Mahlasela embarked on last year to celebrate the first two decades of democratic government in their homeland--and in Berkeley to pay personal tribute from the stage to the assistance the Anti-Apartheid Movement received from the constant efforts of local activists (Masekela introduced "Brother Danny Glover," who performed in Athol Fugard plays and served the cause as a constant organizer and witness)--by performing songs and popular music from the decades of struggle. 

It wasn't all political-social material, by a long shot: there was a broad range of the remarkable music of their country, much carrying-on and humor, a lot of Township Jive by these two natives of those native settlements around the then-white only cities. Masekela's sharp horn-playing on his number one US hit of 1968, when he played the Monterey Pop Festival, "Grazing in the Grass," got the audience up on their feet, "swaying gently from side to side," as its writer urged, "we don't want to excite you! if you know this song, you must be almost as old as I am! There're a bunch of old geezers here tonight!"  

Vusi Mahlasela, a generation younger than Masekela, one of those who stayed and was imprisoned at home (he wryly introduced "a short number" by an imprisoned friend called "Jail Break," just sawing sounds scratched on the amplified strings of his guitar), who shared the stage with Masekela at Nelson Mandela's Presidential Inauguration in 1994, only performing together with him on this joint tour, is a big, lusty singer with a piquant, octave-leaping voice, somewhat reminiscent of the great Leadbelly. A member of the Congress of South African Writers, his first guitar lessons were sponsored by CSAW colleague--and later Nobel Laureate--Nadine Gordimer, who said of him, "Vusi sings as a bird does, in total response to being alive." His song "When You Come Home," addressed to exiles, was a major anthem of the movement in the day.  

Masekela, who was one of the most prominent of those exiles, had just recorded the first South African jazz album (with Dollar Brand, later Abdullah Ibrahim, on piano) and triumphed at unprecedented shows in the South African cities when the Sharpesville massacre took place in 1960. He left the country, only returning in 1990, when Mandela, a family friend, was released from prison and the ban on the African National Congress was lifted.His international hit song, "Bring Him Back," was composed spontaneously after reading a letter from Mandela. 

Masekela was helped by Yehudi Menuhin, John Dankworth, Harry Belafonte and Miriam Makeba, to whom he was briefly married (and to whose memory the first dedicated number went out), becoming a big international star. His free performance with his Union of South Africa Band in the Greek Theatre at the "all-black" UC Jazz Festival here 45 years ago this summer was a revelation to many of us of the range and depth of South African--indeed, of African--popular music, a nonstop flow of great playing, singing (some from the gospel choirs of the African Methodist Episcopal Church), wonderful tunes set to unusual harmonies in various styles, extraordinary rhythms, and exuberant dancing and stage presence ... 

Masekela's humor and the geniality of the whole troupe--Mahlasela and the quartet backing them--grew as the evening progressed through blockbuster, show-stopping tunes like "Stimela," in which Masekela imitated the sounds of a coal miners' train, taking blacks to what amounted as an internal exile, slavery in all but name, to "Maybe We Don't Know What he Looks Like," a song about Mandela when he and the other ANC leaders had been imprisoned many years--and it was illegal to possess photos of them--making the hanger-like Zellerbach expanse like a community hall, something intimate, even when the big crowd got up again to dance and cheer at the end of the long show, and through the encore of Township Jive.