First, let’s get this out of the way: I voted for Eldridge Cleaver for President, in, what was it, 1968?

That was when I was living in Ann Arbor, and had been hard at work for at least 4 years trying to end the war in Vietnam.

I was one of the many who worked to dump Lyndon Johnson for being a despicable war-monger, and we were gleeful when he announced that he wouldn’t run again.

I also, however, despised Hubert Humphrey for being a war-monger, which he was, like many good Democratic liberals in those days, though I also despised Nixon for that reason and many others.

I wasn’t properly conscious of what Johnson had accomplished for civil rights. (What have you done for me lately?)

In those days Michigan, thanks to a powerful United Auto Workers union, was a reliably Democratic state, and the polls predicted that Humphrey would take its electoral votes, so I knew my vote for Peace and Freedom candidate Cleaver was a safe protest.

But as it happened in later years, the dashing Mr. Cleaver turned out even worse than either Humphrey or Nixon—at least neither of them became a conservative Republican or even a Mormon.

After that I was one of the early organizers of the Michigan campaign for Shirley Chisholm, running in the Democratic primary against George McGovern in 1972 as both the first woman and the first African-American to be a candidate for a major party nomination. I though he was a wuss, and she was a heroine with powerful appeal to both my feminist and my civil rights activist instincts.

We did a respectable job in that race, getting 5% of the primary vote statewide ( more in Ann Arbor), and she never did anything later to embarrass us. I was proud of her then and I’m proud of her now.

The next year I worked on the campaign of Ann Arbor mayoral candidate Benita Kaimowitz, the standard-bearer for the newly-minted Human Rights Party, a left alternative to the Democrats and Republicans, who also got about 5% of the vote. The HRP eventually had a fair amount of success in Michigan electoral offices and changed its name to Socialist, but by that time I’d moved to Berkeley, where every candidate claimed to be an authentic progressive, and I lost interest in electoral politics. I could no longer be a five-percenter.

I only rejoined the fray when “progressive” elected officials promoted a ballot measure criminalizing spare-changing by homeless people, an outrageous violation of the First Amendment. We stopped that one in court, but I decided it was time to pay attention to what the progressive label had become.

I recite all of these tedious creds to prove that my reluctance to jump on the Bernie bandwagon is not because I’m afraid to stick my neck out. 

A popular yardstick for evaluating candidates is which one you’d like have a beer with. By that measure, I’ve already vetted ol’ Bernie. I had lunch with him, along with a small assortment of our local self-described progressive officeholders, in our demographic’s equivalent of the neighborhood beer joint—Chez Panisse Café (upstairs, in the cheaper section). Of course I paid for the privilege. 

It was a few years ago, and he was on one of those trolling-for-cash tours that Democrats (excuse me, Democratic Socialists) from the East make in northern California where Republicans are scarce and elections are tepid. 

Bernie fit right in with the Berkeley bunch. I sat between him and the incumbent mayor, whose progressive halo was just starting to fade because of too many deals with developers. The conversation was just what you’d expect at a faculty dinner party—elevated, congenial, intelligent, a tad self-satisfied. 

Based on this encounter, there’s no doubt in my mind that Bernie Sanders is our kinda guy. He’s charming, handsome in a big-old-guy way, articulate, bright—what’s not to like? 

My thirteen-year-old granddaughter might have nailed it. She told her 50-something parents that Bernie seemed to be the candidate for her generation, while Hillary Clinton appealed more to theirs. 

Of course! What kid doesn’t like her grandpa, who comes with pockets filled with chocolates, tells great stories, and seldom says no to whatever she wants? 

Sadly, as you get older you learn that it’s not that simple. 

People like us (most Americans, really) surely want what Bernie Sanders is offering: a completely comprehensive and affordable healthcare system, single-payer in fact; free college tuition for everyone who wants it; a minimum wage of $15/hour; more taxes on the super-rich and enough benefits to elevate everyone else to a decent level. 

Oh, and while he’s at it, how about a pony in every pot? 

I applaud Sanders for setting a standard to which other Democrats and even some Republicans can aspire. The only problem is that under the current dysfunctional government system with a Congress well and truly gerrymandered to favor the conservative Republican minority, he will never be able to reach any of these lofty goals. 

Can Hillary Clinton do any better? Probably not—no, of course not. But you have to admire her for honestly admitting that she can’t. 

The reality is that either of them would be much, much better than the bizarre assortment of alternative candidates that the Republicans are contemplating. There’s just no need for me or anyone else to break their necks campaigning for one or the other of these two candidates in the Democratic primaries. 

One of them will win the nomination and must win the general election—and if they don’t win that one, we’re in real trouble. It will, inevitably, come down to just what it’s always been in most of the elections I’ve voted in over a half century: Hold Your Nose and Pull the Democratic Lever. 

Which is why I skipped watching the encounter in New Hampshire which was televised on Thursday night and went to a concert instead. Radio soundbytes of that show feature Bernie and Hillary hollering back and forth about who’s the real progressive in the race, a pointless endeavor if ever there was one. No word has been so debased in my lifetime as “progressive”, which popped back up sometime in the 70s as an alternative for “liberal”, a term which had been savaged by the Goldwater crowd. Most younger people in that decade had forgotten about (or never heard of) Henry Wallace’s Progressive Party, which in its era (the 1948 election) was in turn savaged by the McCarthyish anti-communists, which is why leftish-ists turned into liberals. 

These days around here the progressive mantle is enthusiastically donned by shills for big luxury developments as well as by advocates for the homeless. The operative analysis is that since everyone who’s anyone is now okay with abortion and marijuana, they must all be progressives, right? 

Yeah, sure. 

Meanwhile, what’s not okay with me is the growing temptation for Sanders fans to disparage the very real achievements of the Obama presidency to bolster The Case Against Hillary. First and foremost, I’m eternally grateful to have had eight years of my adult life with a president who has never embarrassed me, not even once. 

No sex scandals. No actual invasions of obscure countries. No gutting of valuable environmental or financial regs. Open acknowledgement of climate change. 

Yes, Obamacare is not now and never will be Nirvanacare. But lots and lots of people, some of them people I actually know, are now able to get health care that they never could have gotten before Obama, and that’s a miracle. 

When I was in the software business the expression “the best is the enemy of the good” was just gaining currency. Many times I was stuck with the job of demonstrating code that didn’t quite do what it was designed to do, but worked pretty well under the circumstances, and that turned out to be okay. Many functional and useful systems were produced by our customers using that imperfect technology. 

If I had my way, I’d probably opt for a third Obama term, but that’s not an option. 

By the time the late California primary takes place, the nomination will probably be a done deal. I’d been hoping to vote for Martin O’Malley to maintain my status as a five-percenter without doing any actual harm, and of course I already sport the O’Malley for President bumper sticker for obvious reasons. But it looks like he’s dropping out, so I might be stuck with choosing between Bernie and Hillary. 

I guess with the open primary system I could always vote for the Green Party candidate, whose name I can never remember but who seems to be a nice lady. Any time or money I might have for campaigning in the primary will probably be allocated to Sandré Swanson, a stalwart veteran of progressive political action who hopes to replace Loni Hancock as our state senator, and to those Berkeley candidates who seem to be genuine old-school progressives, whatever that might mean, or at least seem to be “Unbossed and Unbought”, the old Shirley Chisholm slogan. 

The last word belongs to Paul Krugman, as it frequently does. It’s advice that I urge on my Berkeley friends, most of whom proudly display “Feel the Bern” buttons, bumperstickers and lawn signs. 

In his New York Times column today, Krugman says this: 

“The truth is that whomever the Democrats nominate, the general election is mainly going to be a referendum on whether we preserve the real if incomplete progress we’ve made on health, financial reform and the environment. The last thing progressives should be doing is trash-talking that progress and impugning the motives of people who are fundamentally on their side.” 

Amen, brother, amen. 

I want you to imagine eight years from now: 

The minimum wage is a living wage and students are graduating college without the crushing debt stifling their ability to pursue the career of their dreams. 

Health care is recognized as a right for every man, woman, and child, and the United States is leading the world in fighting climate change. 

There is no bank that is too big to fail, no banker too powerful to jail, and we’ve leveled the playing field so that the billionaire class is no longer able to buy and sell our candidates and elections. 

When that happens, they will say it all started tomorrow night in New Hampshire where we have overcome not just a forty point deficit in the polls, but the sneers of the corporate media and opposition from the state’s political elites and billionaire super PACs. 

.....

You feel sorry for the Police Review Commission. They discuss police policy while sitting in the same room with the police—who wear guns. They sit behind their name tags so there’s no hiding place at the Police Review Commission (PRC) meetings; people enter the room and realize their beat cop, who is sitting right there, doesn’t enjoy hearing his or her behavior criticized and might remember a complainant's name.

So it’s perhaps no wonder the PRC discovered they had a lot of agreement with the Berkeley Police Department’s (BPD) own assessment of the police response to the Black Lives Matter march on December 6, 2014. What many saw as a police riot was acknowledged by both the PRC and BPD as a carnival of idiocy.

Marchers were beaten, shot with beanbags, and gassed for failing to disperse in places where they couldn’t disperse thanks to being blocked on all sides by police. Orders to disperse from one location were somehow supposed to magically apply to locations blocks away with entirely different groups of people. The very few incidents of vandalism and violence were allowed to proceed unhindered by the police while people trying to non-violently express opposition to police misconduct were obstructed and even injured. Press officers were injured. Religious leaders were injured. People trying to help the injured were injured. 

The commissioners can’t roll their eyes when the sheer nonsense of police behavior becomes overwhelming, as documented in the report about the December 6, 2014 protest march. The people who attend and speak at their meetings are often traumatized, and represent only a fraction of the traumatized community that usually doesn’t bother to try to illustrate police misconduct to the commission. The commission's stoicism, which plays well with the police, is often misinterpreted by an often frustrated public. Despite this, the current commissioners have a commendable level of respect among themselves, with the police department, and with the public. 

But there's no excuse for their refusal to address two glaring omissions in their report. The first is the absence of competent leadership in the Berkeley Police Department. Crafting or improving police guidelines at all is an exercise in futility in a setting where the police's understanding of any demonstration is that once the black-clad, masked vandals in the fringe of a non-violent group break a window everybody gets the full monte; beaten, gassed, trapped between police lines, and thoroughly discouraged from ever attempting to exercise their civil rights again. 

Most of us who were there in December of 2014, including a few members of the Police Review Commission, watched the police use their vast array of quasi-military equipment to injure, scatter, even shoot aerosol chemical agents at the public in an effort to defend first the Public Safety Building, which is the new euphemism for police headquarters and was not in any way a target of the protesters, and then later the freeway on-ramp at I80 while letting vandals and fire-setters run through commercial districts smashing windows and setting fires. Citizens who tried to defend their homes from being burned to the ground[1] were on their own. 

There is some acknowledgement in the report from both the police and the Police Review Commission that leadership stuff went wrong. It's delicately put, but it's there; 

BPD Recommendation #5: "Tactical command decision-making and responsibility should be relocated from the Department Operations Center to the field. We recommend coordination of squad movements happen in the field." 

The Police Review Commission "endorsed BPD's Recommendation #5 as written" so it didn't have to say something like, "have somebody in charge who knows what's happening" or worse. This will isolate the Chief of Police from responsibility for what takes place, so it isn't a recommendation that should bother him. And if he wants to be part of the escalating waves of over-reaction building between frustrated protesters and equally frustrated police officers he can come out and join them; at least he'll have a gas mask unlike the public. 

The refusal to address leadership failures that night did not go entirely unnoticed, as some speakers at the recent public comment period regarding the report implied. It's just that it's buried in phrases which come even from the police officers who wrote the report. BPD Recommendation #7 states, "We recommend commanders in the field make redeployment decisions proactively based on known situational awareness." In other words, the people in charge of the police next time should have a clue. 

The second disturbing omission is the unwillingness of the PRC to take a united stand against the use of CS gas on protesters. CS gas is a chemical agent banned in warfare per the Chemical Weapons Convention of 1993. Nearly every nation in the world, including the United States, signed this agreement. CS gas, which is not technically a gas but rather an aerosol of a volatile solvent, causes an immediate involuntary burning sensation, temporary blindness, severe pulmonary damage, miscarriages, and can significantly damage the heart and liver. 

But it was used in Berkeley on the Black Lives Matter protest in December of 2014. The police insist that a provocative flier they saw before the march with a man sitting on a damaged police car entitled them to assume that it was a "Fuck the Police" protest, despite nationwide protests over police shootings at the time, and planned accordingly. Anyone who has attended demonstrations in the Bay Area in the last thirty years knows that the majority in any crowd have no interest in violence, vandalism, or trouble and will, as was the case in December 2014, try valiantly to de-escalate trouble, confront violence, protect beloved businesses, etc. 

Spraying that non-violent majority with chemical agents known to cause injury is inexcusable. The PRC can insist that civil rights of the non-violent majority be respected and even write it down in their report, but since they did not preclude the use of CS gas, a weapon precluded for use in war, the police can use it anytime they find, or craft, a flier implying that some of the crowd might be violent. Because that is what has happened again and again. 

The current leadership vacuum in Berkeley, both at the City Council and Police Department, leaves citizens at serious risk whether they join a civil rights march or not. Both the police and a majority of the current Police Review Commission insist that a volatile compound, an aerosol chemical agent with serious medical consequences and which can kill people with respiratory and cardiovascular vulnerabilities remain in the hands of a police department which, after two years of considered deliberation, is willing to describe itself as having no clear sense of what's going on and wants an even larger arsenal of quasi-military weapons. 

It's important to note that three members of the Police Review Commission issued a minority report. Commissioners Bartlett, Lippman, and Sherman dissented on the use of CS gas, or "tear gas" as it is sometimes inaccurately described, recommending a prohibition on its use in crowd control and crowd management. And there are good reasons for this. 

The Berkeley Police Department suffered absolutely no consequences for their refusal to differentiate between the fellow who is burning down a local business and the grey-haired couple who are strolling to the theater. Their objective seems to have been to indiscriminately clear the streets. Dispersal orders, even the few that were given, were often drowned out by the roar of news helicopters. Many university students reported hearing voices from garbled loudspeakers combined with the sound of helicopters and came out into the streets in a perfectly natural effort to find out what was going on. 

CS gas itself is equally indiscriminate. The severity of exposure is not a controlled or controllable matter, but depends on: 

a. whether or not the area is enclosed, or semi-enclosed 

CS gas is less likely to disperse in a setting such as a dense commercial district typical in Berkeley which often has residential units on second and third floors above a business. 

b. whether or not one has protective clothing or equipment 

Even clothing exposed to CS gas often cannot be washed or touched without secondary effects and often has to be thrown away, leaving medical personnel or protesters trying to assist the injured at severe risk of incapacitation. Exposure was reported inside the upper residential floors of commercial districts. 

c. the wind 

The wind, especially compounded by the tunnel effects in commercial districts, can carry chemical agents in unexpected directions and did so in December of 2014; the air in downtown parking structures where some tried to shelter was not safe to breathe. 

d. medical intervention 

The effects of CS gas, both immediate and long-term, can be affected by whether or not medical intervention is available for which there were no plans made in December of 2014. Medical providers would need to wear completely protective clothing and specialized breathing apparatus to avoid incapacitation. 

e. other uncontrollable factors 

If protesters or bystanders can't move, they can't get away from chemical agents wafting uncontrollably through air. In December of 2014 people trying as best they could to leave to comply with dispersal orders or avoid bean-bag rounds and CS gas were trapped by police lines. In at least one case a CS gas canister was picked up and thrown back behind the police lines. People with pre-existing medical conditions risk death. 

It's not possible to use an uncontrollable chemical agent in a controlled way. It's irresponsible to leave weapons banned for use in war in the hands of a police department which has in no way recognized this. And the PRC, if not the Police Department itself, has a responsibility to public safety. Sidestepping this responsibility is outrageous. 

A third omission, the unwillingness or inability to govern mutual aid forces, was highlighted in a letter by local attorney Osha Neumann, who notes that a 1992 mandate passed by the Berkeley City Council requires that "BPD take direct supervisory responsibility for all mutual aid units..." If the PRC ignores this mandate the current BPD practice of allowing mutual aid forces to ignore community standards creates a wide opportunity to sidestep local guidelines. 

J. George Lippman, a PRC commissioner, salutes the "determination and courage" of community members who protested and testified repeatedly about the abuses they witnessed, saying, "the community needs to continue to engage with the commission to address remaining issues such as ending gas deployments in crowd situations and supervising mutual aid agencies as mandated by law; and to build on this momentum to overturn a documented pattern of racial bias in stops and searches, and finally bringing true oversight and accountability to policing in Berkeley." 

A few weeks ago a panhandler was sprayed with a chemical agent on College Avenue by an unknown assailant. The chemical floated into a nearby cafe affecting employees and diners. The police, and perhaps others, may always been looking for the convenient weapon which will accomplish a perhaps dubious short-term objective. But our public health as a community is long-term, and our safety depends entirely on using the knowledge we already have about CS gas to make the same decision about it that the San Francisco Police Department has made. CS gas should be prohibited for crowd management and crowd control for the obvious reasons -- it creates confusion, panic, temporary blindness, and injury. It makes nonsense of any tactical plan with the mere introduction of the wind. 

CS gas is taboo for use in war under international law. CS gas, when used correctly in optimum circumstances, undermines public safety. The 2013 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) because it created the Chemical Weapons Convention defining the use of chemical weapons as prohibited "under international law" according to Thorbjørn Jagland, Chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee. Its use profoundly chills the First Amendment expression the city is legally obligated to protect. 

If the Berkeley City Council, the PRC, and the Berkeley Police Department think they've demonstrated that on the contrary there is a profound necessity for the use of chemical weapons in crowd management and crowd control, it was not in evidence in any of their collected video, first-hand accounts, or lengthy reports two years after a non-violent march for civil rights sadly missing not only nationwide, but in Berkeley, California. 

We talk up our American values.

In theory, we may not be prejudiced against people of color, but in our everyday life we seem to like only our own race or color. I am fed up reading silly comments about President Obama and his policy decisions. The Republicans hate him because he is black in color and has the Presidential power to veto bills. 

Why are our Republican friends so narrow-minded? Why do they hate President Obama's foreign policy or his health care laws? 

Should the President only sign bills helping billionaires? Should he only care for moneyed people? Should there be two presidents? One to fend for poor and middle class citizens, and another other to look after the wishes of rich people? English is the national language of the United States but we citizens are multilingual and multicultural people. We must shed all racist attitudes and foul language and debate our President's proposals respectfully. 

Do we want our young children to grow up to be racist bullies? I urge politicians from both sides to provide better example to our children. Otherwise the politicians will discover that the children have learned bullying and hatred all too well.

We cannot allow landlords and developers to change the character of Berkeley by raising rents and building market-rate only housing.

Many, probably most, kids who grow up in Berkeley cannot, as adults, afford to live in their hometown. This is unacceptable—they are the victims of unregulated capitalism and Berkeley needs to start regulating windfall profits.

We CAN deal with this urgent problem. 

We need immediately to put a meaningful tax on and regulate short-term rentals such as Air BNB. 

We need to put a realistic Housing Impact Fee into effect. It is outrageous that the developer who proposes to demolish our treasured landmarked Shattuck Cinemas and block access to our Public Library and, to a lesser extent our downtown Post office, YMCA, and Berkeley High School for the years of construction of his market-rate highrise was given a “discount” on his in-lieu fee.

Ban Ki-moon, the secretary general of the United Nations (UNSG), in an ‘op ed’ in the New York Times, vented his frustration at Israel’s messianic zeal to displace more Palestinians, demolish their homes and build more and more settlements. Palestinians are living in appalling segregated conditions increasingly reminiscent of White apartheid South Africa. 

The UNSG stated “Palestinian frustration and grievances are growing under the weight of nearly a half-century of occupation. No one can deny that the everyday reality of occupation provokes anger and despair.” 

Thumbing their nose at US demands to halt settlement expansion, the Israeli government has approved plans for over 150 new homes in illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank Last month, 370 acres in the West Bank were declared “state land,” a status that is typically a precursor for more settlements. Thousands more Palestinian homes are in danger of demolition subject to harsh discriminatory practices. Many young Palestinians are losing hope that Israel’s great benefactor, the United States, has abandoned its values and continues to support their oppressor.

Out of the chaos of the Republican race emerged a probable centrist candidate. No, not Cruz and certainly not the loud, egotistical, bombastic bully, Donald Trump. The disaffected Republicans seem to have coalesced around Marco Rubio who adroitly wrapped himself in the mantle of God and the Bible thrilling the evangelicals which is altogether perplexing because none of the candidates have expressed concerns for the poor, a central theme of Jesus’s teaching. On the plus side Rubio is young, energetic, photogenic, highly articulate and Latino. Furthermore, Rubio polls well against the putative, Hillary Clinton. 

In the Democratic election, the networks cautiously refrained from announcing a winner because the results were too close to call, but the Clinton campaign went ahead and declared victory. Conversely, Bernie Sanders decided to wait until the final count saying the results were a virtual tie. Which candidate displayed more maturity and judgment, a critical quality to those seeking the most coveted job in Washington?

Today, the Department of Labor announced that unemployment had fallen to 4.9 percent and 151,000 U.S. jobs were added in January. This growth marks the 71st consecutive month of private sector job growth. 

Today’s job report shows continued progress in our economic recovery. January marked the 71st consecutive month of private sector job growth. This historic growth illustrates that President Obama’s policies are working as our economy continues to recover from the Great Recession. 

In particular, I was pleased to see a decrease in the Latino unemployment rate from 6.3 percent to 5.9 percent. Despite this decrease, the Latino unemployment rate is still higher than the unemployment rate of white Americans (4.3 percent). 

There are also deeply troubling elements in today’s report. The African American unemployment rate increased 0.5 percent to 8.8 percent. The unemployment rate for African Americans is now more than twice the rate of white Americans (4.3 percent). 

As our economy recovers, we cannot afford to leave anyone behind. Congress must act to address persistent poverty and unemployment, especially in communities of color, by creating good-paying jobs, expanding investments in workforce training and our nation’s vital infrastructure and raising the minimum wage while working towards a living wage.” 

In this article Bob Burnett writes that George W. Bush beat Al Gore in "1992" because he was more likable than Gore. Although I am not certain that is why George W. beat Gore—it may have been related to the U.S. Supreme Court awarding the presidency to Bush even though Gore won more votes—I am quite certain George W. and Al Gore ran against one another in 2000. 

I haven't looked it up but my recollection is that Bill Clinton defeated George Herbert Walker Bush in 1992, denying George H.W. Bush a second term in the White House and setting in motion our current national nightmare of Hillary's righteous belief in her inevitability in the White House as president beginning next year!

I.

Enough ale the color of

Leaded water in Flint to

Flood the Lower Ninth Ward  

Enough Bud brewed to drown  

Governments in bathtubs  

Enough melted cheese to sink  

Manhattan multiple times  

Enough pizzas to feed every  

Occupy, springing up 2011, for a week  

Enough chips to stretch from  

Earth to Uranus and back again  

Enough heartburn to backlog  

Every emergency room still open  

Enough gas to forget about fracking; 

and power an armada of nuclear subs 

Enough bullshit to flow Brooklyn Bridge 

to Golden Gate Bridge and back again, 

Pausing “Send In The Clowns—“ 

$election 2016—2/4 Dance where a dime’s 

Difference resides in war dancers, 

Bailout engineers, extraordinary renderers, 

Enhanced interrogators, collateral damagers, 

Drone devotees—Guantanamo groupies! 

thickness of a Trump card separates 

Warheads of a Cruz missile from those of a 

Golda-plated Iron Lady plundering Haiti— 

Grieving families still feel the Bern of Boeing’s 

Products and learn Northrup-Grummond’s another 

Name for death… 

Grandiose spectacle of declining empire, the 

Warfare state, causes chickens to tremble in terror 

This time of the year 

thinking of their wings, breasts, other body parts 

stuffing the Colonel’s buckets; chickens shudder 

at being stuffed in pepperoni holes of cops, klan, 

militia and poor black, brown, and white 

Working-class men in Couch Potato Pose 

for four hours… 

A week deep into African- 

American History Month—shortest 

Month of the year, and another 

Newton leads Panthers on Ohlone Land, 

Golden State, world stage, this Sunday— 

Not the 9.0 earthquake, 1960s… 

He entertains endless babbling about 

Arms, “arm-strength—“ armed self-defense 

Stuffed behind class war’s line of scrimmage 

like a failed fourth and one run; he addresses 

chatter of “moving the chains—“ Removing the 

Chains is out of bounds, like a receiver failing to tap 

dance before the white line… 

Pigskin pursuits like opponents clipping, chopping 

Black Lives down on streets, are out of bounds—so is 

Tackling land, bread, housing and other 10-Points 

Panthers played Sudden Death overtime for… 

II. 

ALERT: 

Before Broncos or Panthers wake up, 

Before buses caravan from hotels—before 

Coin toss—heads 1% wins, tails 99% loses: 

Playing field ain’t level, dice are loaded— 

Game’s rigged, fix is in: 

Fat Cats, too big to fail, stuffed Single Payer, strip- 

Sacked schools, jobs, pensions, 4o1Ks, blocked 

Housing, threw drinking water, air we breathe for 

Losses; bailed-out bull-rushing banksters on quick- 

Counts—ran endless, no huddle wars… And 64 people 

Own more wealth than all eyes viewing Super Bowl L! 

Voting is like talking12^th Man, Terrible Towel, Cheese- 

head claptrap, rant, rodomontade—until Colts become 

Broncos; Jaguars, Panthers; Raiders, Patriots— or some 

Slave Phone app is invented for saving the planet, 

Saving the working-class masses—February 31^st… 

We claim we want another world—say it’s 

Possible, we can hear it on a clear day, and 

can’t wait, and other incredibly beautiful things… 

Yet, classmates succumb to cancer and we talk 

“transitions,” “home-goings,” avoiding the 

hermeneutics of suspicion, not outliving our 

parents—our children not outliving us… 

We claim, “all lives matter” knowing some 

Have never mattered—and never will… 

We say, “Save the children,” watching fifty-four 

Schools closed, twenty-three prisons built— 

celebrating life, slicing 60% of the pie for death 

We say, “organic,” instead of calling out war- 

Poisoned Frankenfood; we say, “mainstream media,” 

knowing it’s minority, multibillionaire, big-lie 

Head-fixing… 

We say, “becoming a police state,” like $4.99 

Becomes $5.00— because bald-headed buffoons and 

lil’ fellas with funny mustaches are MIA—though 25% 

of all humans caged are under stars and stripes; some 

are gunned down daily! 

We speak truth to power. Yet, power creeps like 

Weeds into our lexicon: 

“boots on the ground” isn’t a Barney’s blowout 

sidewalk sale; “enhanced interrogation” ain’t discourse 

on Douglass intersecting Du Bois, in Robeson’s 

Cultural Work, or King’s ‘67 Riverside Church speech; 

“signature strikes” aren’t ILWU refusals to 

Unload South African and Israeli apartheid cargo 

“high value targets” ain’t good department store deals 

Game planning from the Peoples’ Playbook— 

Marching holes in soles, walking out, sitting-in, 

Striking, boycotting—meeting more than four corners; 

Nurturing the new—paying attention to children in 

Chitown, babies in Baltimore, front-liners in Flint and 

Ferguson—remembering Occupy, drawing lessons— 

putting forehead to history, theory getting us to the 

Red Zone—struggle for socialism’s our Super Bowl! 

Raymond Nat Turner © 2016 All Rights Reserved

Self-affinity, in which we feel comfortable within our own skin, and in which we value and appreciate ourselves, can be hard to achieve. I am not entirely there yet.  

Regardless of what anyone tells you including those who are antagonistic and think they know better, there is nothing wrong with liking yourself. It is not the same thing as conceit. And, even if it did qualify as conceit or egocentricity, no one else has the right to say you can't have that.  

When it is combined with obnoxiousness, as is the case with Donald Trump, it can create a lot of enemies. However, in its pure form, self-affinity can coexist with being considerate of others. Liking yourself isn't the same thing as being a sociopath.  

Liking yourself should be unconditional and should not be contingent on achieving something, being "important," having a college degree, or being employed. When self-appreciation requires that you live up to someone's or your own expectations, it isn't the real thing.  

Muhammed Ali a great boxer, who later became a great statesman, when interviewed by sports commentators in the 1970's, would say "I am the greatest." Other role models, individuals who decided they are good enough, include Erin Brockovich, Hillary Clinton, and Suze Orman. These people decided they were "good enough," and great success followed. Liking oneself doesn't mean that you must be famous. However, valuing oneself sometimes leads to tangible success.  

Yet, fame and/or success do not bestow the ability to like oneself. There are numerous examples of people who have achieved big fame and fortune, who are nonetheless insecure people. This is why a number of famous people have had disastrous and sometimes tragic lives. Liking oneself has to come from the inside, and not through external circumstances.  

Many persons with mental illness have problems with self-image due to how they react emotionally to their diagnosis. It doesn't help that those in charge of treatment presume to be intellectually and otherwise superior to those being treated. This can lead to resentment or it can lead to buying into the falsehood that we are "less." When we think we are a lesser person, we become a lesser person.  

However, if we disbelieve other people's fiction of us being inferior, and as a result are resentful, we need to learn positive ways of channeling that. Anger doesn't have to lead to behaving in a hostile manner. I have heard it said that "the best revenge is living well." Anger can be converted into the motivation to do better.  

Having a psychiatric disability doesn't have to stop us from liking ourselves. We don't have to be rich and famous, an overachiever, or even employed, in order to create self-approval. Self-approval is an end in itself, and it provides a much better feeling on the inside. When you are okay with yourself, it won't matter as much what gets accomplished or not accomplished.  

How is self-approval attained? It is something that can be learned, and it is a structure made of thoughts. Cognitive exercises can lead to self-approval. An exercise could be to get out a pen and paper and start to identify self-trashing thoughts, and then decide that each of those thoughts are unnecessary. You could also identify thoughts that say something good about you, and confirm those thoughts. Simply repeating to oneself and incorporating the thought that says, "I am okay," is yet another exercise. You can also devise your own exercises.  

If we feel bad about ourselves, this is composed of negative thoughts that falsely say we are a bad person. To combat negative thoughts in general, it can help to realize this is just something that the subconscious mind is producing and that these are merely thoughts, and these thoughts are probably not accurate.  

If you have schizoaffective disorder, it is a mood disorder in combination with psychotic symptoms. Depression for someone with schizoaffective can be severe and should be combatted with a combination of antipsychotic medication, possibly an antidepressant, and definitely a lot of cognitive therapy.  

I have learned to be happy even during those times when my mind would otherwise make me miserable. This is achieved by looking beyond the output of my mind and seeing that there is a lot about which to be thankful.  

When in any type of conflict, I have learned to be on my own side rather than siding with an opponent and helping them trash me, verbally, physically or otherwise. There is nothing wrong with looking out for oneself, so long as this doesn't become nastiness in various forms.  

The mental health treatment system tries to convince us that we are intrinsically ill and need their help and their guidance. The mental health treatment system tries to tell us who we are. We do not need to allow treatment providers or anyone other than us define us. Who we are is up to us to decide, and efforts to better our condition and our predicament follow from there.  

“They sent forth men to battle.

But no such men return;

And home, to claim their

welcome.

Comes ashes in an urn.”

Ode from “Agamemnon”, in the Greek tragedy The Oresteia by Aeschylus

Aeschylus—who had actually fought at Marathon in 490 BC, the battle that defeated the first Persian invasion of Greece—had few illusions about the consequences of war. His ode is one that the candidates for the U.S. presidency might consider, though one doubts that many of them would think to find wisdom in a 2,500 year-old Greek play.

And that, in itself, is a tragedy.

Historical blindness has been much on display in the run-up to the Iowa and New Hampshire primaries. On the Republican side candidates were going to “kick ass” in Iraq, make the “sand glow” in Syria, and face down the Russians in Europe. But while the Democratic aspirants were more measured, there is a pervasive ideology than binds together all but cranks like Ron Paul: America has the right, indeed, the duty to order the world’s affairs. 

This peculiar view of the role of the U.S. takes on a certain messianic quality in candidates like Hillary Clinton, who routinely quotes former Secretary of State Madeline Albright’s line about America as “the indispensible nation” whose job is to lead the world. 

At a recent rally in Indianola, Iowa, Clinton said that “Senator [Bernie] Sanders doesn’t talk much about foreign policy, and, when he does, it raises concerns because sometimes it can sound like he really hasn’t thought things through.” 

The former Secretary of State was certainly correct. Foreign policy for Sanders is pretty much an afterthought to his signature issues of economic inequality and a national health care system. But the implication of her comment is that she has thought things through. If she has, it is not evident in her biography, Hard Choices, or in her campaign speeches. 

Hard Choices covers her years as Secretary of State and seemingly unconsciously tracks a litany of American foreign policy disasters: Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Georgia, Ukraine, and the “Asia pivot” that has dangerously increased tensions with China. At the heart of Hard Choices is the ideology of “American exceptionalism,” which for Clinton means the right of the U.S. to intervene in other countries. As historian Jackson Lears, in the London Review of Books, puts it, Hard Choices “tries to construct a coherent rationale for an interventionist foreign policy and to justify it with reference to her own decisions as Secretary of State. The rationale is rickety: the evidence unconvincing.” 

Clinton is undoubtedly an intelligent person, but her book is remarkably shallow and quite the opposite of “thoughtful.” The one act on her part for which she shows any regret is her vote to invade Iraq. But even here she quickly moves on, never really examining how it is that the U.S. has the right to invade and overthrow a sovereign government. For Clinton, Iraq was only a “mistake” because it came out badly. 

She also demonstrates an inability to see other people’s point of view. Thus the Russians are aggressively attempting to re-establish their old Soviet sphere of influence rather than reacting to the steady march of NATO eastwards. The fact that the U.S. violated promises by the first Bush administration not to move NATO “one inch east” if the Soviets withdrew their forces from Eastern Europe is irrelevant. 

She doesn’t seem to get that a country that has been invaded three times since 1815 and lost tens of millions of people might be a tad paranoid about its borders. There is no mention of the roles of U.S. intelligence agencies, organizations like the National Endowment for Democracy, and of openly fascist Ukranian groups played in the coup against the elected government of Ukraine. 

Clinton takes credit for the Obama administration’s “Asia Pivot” that “sent a message to Asia and the world that America was back in its traditional leadership role in Asia,” but she doesn’t consider how this might be interpreted in Beijing. The U.S. never left Asia—the Pacific basin has long been our major trading partner—so, to the Chinese, “back” and “pivot” means that the U.S. plans to beef up its military in the region and construct an anti-China alliance system. It has done both. 

Clinton costumes military intervention in the philosophy of “responsibility to protect,” or “R2P,” but her application is selective. She takes credit for overthrowing Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, but in her campaign speeches she has not said a word about the horrendous bombing campaign being waged by Saudi Arabia in Yemen. She cites R2P for why the U.S. should overthrow Bashar al-Assad in Syria, but is silent about Saudi Arabia’s intervention in Bahrain to crush demands for democracy by its majority Shiite population. 

Clinton, along with Samantha Power, U.S. Ambassador to the UN, and Susan Rice, the Obama administration’s National Security Advisor, has pushed for muscular interventions without thinking—or caring—about the consequences 

And those consequences have been dire.. 

Afghanistan: Somewhere around 220,000 Afghans have died since the 2001 U.S. invasion, and millions of others are refugees. The U.S. and its allies have suffered close to 2,500 dead and more than 20,000 wounded, and the war is far from over. The cost: close to $700 billion, not counting the long-term medical bill that could run as high as $2 trillion. 

Libya: Some 30,000 people died and another 50,000 were wounded in the intervention and civil war. Hundreds of thousands have been turned into refugees. The cost was cheap: $1.1 billion, but it has created a tsunami of refugees and the war continues. It also produced one of Clinton’s more tasteless remarks. Referring to Gaddafi, she said, “We came, we saw, he died.” The Libyan leader was executed by having a bayonet rammed up his rectum. 

Ukraine: The death toll is above 8,000, some 18,000 have been wounded, and several cities in the eastern part of the country have been heavily damaged. The fighting has tapered off although tensions remain high. 

Yemen: Over 6,000 people have been killed, another 27,000 wounded, and, according to the UN, most of them are civilians. Ten million Yeminis don’t have enough to eat, and 13 million have no access to clean water. Yemen is highly dependent on imported food, but a U.S.-Saudi blockade has choked off most imports. The war is ongoing. 

Iraq: Somewhere between 400,000 to over 1 million people have died from war-related causes since the 2003 invasion. Over 2 million have fled the country and another 2 million are internally displaced. The cost: close to $1 trillion, but it may rise to $4 trillion once all the long-term medical costs are added in. The war is ongoing. 

Syria: Over 250,000 have died in the war, and four million Syrians are refugees. The country’s major cities have been ravaged. The war is ongoing. 

There are other countries—like Somalia—that one could add to the butcher bill. Then there are the countries that reaped the fallout from the collapse of Libya. Weapons looted after the fall of Gaddafi largely fuel the wars in Mali, Niger, and the Central African Republic. 

And how does one calculate the cost of the Asia Pivot, not only for the U.S., but for the allies we are recruiting to confront China? Since the “Pivot” took place prior to China’s recent assertiveness in the South China Sea, is the current climate of tension in the Pacific basin a result of Chinese aggression, or U.S. provocation? 

Hillary Clinton is not the only Democrat who thinks American exceptionalism gives the U.S. the right to intervene in other countries. That point of view it is pretty much bi-partisan. And while Sanders voted against the Iraq war and criticizes Clinton as too willing to intervene, the Vermont senator backed the Yugoslavia and Afghan interventions. The former re-ignited the Cold War, and the latter is playing out like a Rudyard Kipling novel. 

In all fairness, Sanders did say, “I worry that Secretary Clinton is too much into regime change and a bit too aggressive without knowing what the unintended consequences may be.” 

Would Hillary be more inclined toward an aggressive foreign policy? Certainly more than Obama’s—Clinton pressed the White House to directly intervene in Syria and was far more hard line on Iran. More than the Republicans? It’s hard to say, because most of them sound like they have gone off their meds. For instance, a number of GOP candidates pledge to cancel the nuclear agreement with Iran, and, while Clinton wanted to drive a harder bargain than the White House did, in the end she supported it. 

However, she did say she is proud to call Iranians “enemies,” and attacked Sanders for his remark that the U.S. might find common ground with Iran on defeating the Islamic State. Sanders then backed off and said he didn’t think it was possible to improve relations with Teheran in the near future. 

The danger of Clinton’s view of America’s role in the world is that it is old fashioned imperial behavior wrapped in the humanitarian rationale of R2P and thus more acceptable than the “make the sands glow” atavism of most the Republicans. In the end, however, R2P is just death and destruction in a different packaging. 

Aeschylus got that: “For War’s a banker, flesh his gold.” 

It’s Super Bowl week on the Left Coast but the number one topic of conversation is not the Broncos or the Panthers, it’s Hillary versus Bernie. That’s a big change from three months ago, when we talked about the Warriors and the awfulness of Donald Trump. But now we have a real contest for the Democratic nomination. 

The Hillary versus Bernie controversy divides Berkeley households. While there are many females who argue that Clinton deserves a shot because “It’s time the US elected a woman President,” there are others plenty of others who support Sanders. 

Many Berkeley residents knew Hillary, in 1971, when she did a legal internship at the liberal Oakland law firm of Treuhaft, Walker, and Burnstein. From that and other contacts, Berkeleyites like Clinton but many believe she is not as liberal as she once was. In contrast, Bernie Sanders never lived here but some activists knew him when he was involved in organizations such as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and Students for a Democratic Society. Almost without exception, Berkeleyites accept Bernie as a liberal. 

There are two lines of thought: whether major social change can happen suddenly or must occur incrementally. The other is whether Clinton or Sanders has the best chance of beating the Republican nominee. 

Many Berkeley Democrats ask, “How is Bernie going to accomplish his agenda?” They accept the legitimacy of leveling the playing field and getting big money out of politics, but doubt that Bernie can accomplish this. 

Clinton leads with voters who value her experience. At the January 17th Democratic debate, when asked what she would do in her first 100 days in office, Clinton replied, “I would work quickly to present to the Congress my plans for creating more good jobs in manufacturing, infrastructure, clean and renewable energy, raising the minimum wage, and guaranteeing, finally, equal pay for women's work… I would also be presenting my plans to build on the Affordable Care Act.” 

In contrast, Sanders said, “So, what my first days are about is bringing America together, to end the decline of the middle class, to tell the wealthiest people in this country that yes, they are going to start paying their fair share of taxes, and that we are going to have a government that works for all of us, and not just big campaign contributors.” 

University of California Economics Professor Robert Reich observed the two candidates have contrasting views about how Presidents make decisions. He described Clinton’s perspective as the president as “deal-maker-in-chief…by which presidents buy off or threaten powerful opponents.” Reich described Sanders’ perspective as a kind of “agitator-in-chief, “ where the president mobilizes “the public to demand [big things] and penalize(s) politicians who don’t heed those demands.” 

Clinton is running as an extension of President Obama. At the January 17th debate she said, “I want to be a president who takes care of the big problems and the problems that are affecting the people of our country everyday.” 

At the same debate Sanders said, “Very little is going to be done to transform our economy and to create the kind of middle class we need unless we end a corrupt campaign finance system which is undermining American democracy….And what we have got to do is create a political revolution which revitalizes American democracy, which brings millions of young people and working people into the political process.’ 

While some liberals question Sanders’ “political revolution” notion, other remember that in the hardest slogging of the civil-rights era, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., called for a revolution of values: “We must rapidly begin … the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism and militarism are incapable of being conquered.” 

This inevitably leads to the concern about electability: Who has the best chance of defeating the republican nominee? 

Many Berkeley residents feel that Hillary has the best shot at beating Trump or Rubio or whomever. But in the latest Huffington Post ratings, Sanders beats Trump by 5.5 percent while Clinton beats Trump by 6.4 percent; Sanders beats Rubio by 4.5 percent, Clinton beats Rubio by .9 percent. 

The “elephant in the room” are Hillary’s unfavorability ratings. In a recent Gallup article pollster Frank Newport observed that Donald Trump has a 60 percent unfavorable rating, “he has a higher unfavorable rating than any nominated candidate from either of the two major parties going back to the 1992 election.” Newport noted that Hillary Clinton has a 52 percent unfavorability rating compared to Bernie Sanders 31 percent. (Among Democrats Sanders “net favorable rating” is 4 points higher than Clintons. 53 percent to 49 percent.) 

The good news is that we have a real contest for the Democratic nomination and we will have lots of opportunity to talk about this between now and the July Democratic convention. 

With all the hoopla surrounding Super Bowl 50, news that the late Kenny Stabler suffered from chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), shines light on the health dangers of playing American football. 

Stabler was a former quarterback for the Oakland Raiders, who died of colon cancer on July 8, age 69. An autopsy revealed Stabler had CTE, believed to be caused by repeated blows to his head. Stabler played high school football, college football at the University of Alabama and played in the National Football League (NFL) from 1970 to 1984. 

The symptoms of C.T.E. include memory loss, confusion, impaired judgment, impulse control problems, aggression, depression, anxiety, suicidality, parkinsonism, and, eventually, progressive dementia. These symptoms often begin years or even decades after the last brain trauma or end of active athletic involvement. 

As of September 2015, the Department of Veterans Affairs and Boston University identified CTE in 96 percent of NFL players, 79 percent of all football players, and found in the brain tissue in 131 out of 165 individuals who played football either professionally or semi-professionally, in college or in high school. CTE can only be positively identified post-mortem. 

But football players wear helmets. Shouldn’t helmets protect players from the trauma of a head-on collision? No, helmets are designed to protect the skull, not the brain. The brain can be damaged as it smashes against the skull, causing a range of symptoms including headaches, concussion and loss of consciousness. 

Despite the dangers, football may be too big to ban. According to Bloomberg, the NFL’s annual revenue is $9.5 billion with the overall market value of the 32 teams estimated to be $46 billion. And colleges and universities – the NFL’s minor leagues – are valued in the hundreds of millions. For example, Ohio State is valued at $948 million, Texas at $885 million, Michigan at $811 million, and Notre Dame at $724 million. In many colleges and universities, income from football pays for most, if not all, collegiate sports. 

Football is not a safe sport. US health officials should finally recognize there is a national public health crisis in American football and act accordingly. 

The only way to prevent football-related CTE is by not playing football.

A team of Bay Area filmmakers has produced a gripping animated tale of human courage and loss that has garnered a great deal of praise—including awards at 15 international film festivals and an Oscar nomination (Best Documentary Short) from the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences.

Last Day of Freedom is a 31-minute animated collaboration by British-born UC Santa Cruz art professor Dee Hibbert-Jones and Nomi Talisman, a freelance editor and animator born in Israel.

Last Day of Freedom offers an unusual and visually arresting film experience. Using the simplest of pen lines (covering more than 32,000 hand-drawn frames) the filmmakers sketch their story with faultless economy and surprising depth.

Anyone who is a fan of the Moth Radio Hour and National Public Radio's StoryCorps will relish this film.
 

A team of Bay Area filmmakers has produced a gripping animated tale of human courage and loss that has garnered a great deal of praise—including awards at 15 international film festivals and an Oscar nomination (Best Documentary Short) from the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences. 

Last Day of Freedom is a 31-minute animated collaboration by British-born UC Santa Cruz art professor Dee Hibbert-Jones and Nomi Talisman, a freelance editor and animator born in Israel. 

Set in the Bay Area, Last Day of Freedom uses simple line art and a single voice to recount the true-life story of a young man whose childhood is handicapped by race and further compromised by a traffic accident and resulting learning disabilities. Against all odds, he struggles to come to grips with life through two failed marriages, a tour of duty as a Marine fighting in Vietnam, and winds up hobbled by the social estrangement that frequently dogs a returning combat vet. 

Last Day of Freedom offers an unusual and visually arresting film experience. Using the simplest of pen lines (covering more than 32,000 hand-drawn frames) the filmmakers sketch their story with faultless economy and surprising depth. 

Anyone who is a fan of the Moth Radio Hour and National Public Radio's StoryCorps will relish this film. 

At its core is an emotionally open 35-minute taped conversation with Bill Babbitt who tells the story of his little brother, Manny—an innocent child who grew up to become a US Marine and a combat hero, only to stumble into homelessness as a result of physical injuries and the unseen wounds in his head. 

Bill clearly still feels a great love for his younger brother but also has to deal with his responsibility for actions that eventually lead to his Manny's arrest and death. 

The tragedy peaks late one Bay Area night, as Manny wanders through the dark streets, spooked by the bomb-like sounds of backfiring autos. Mistaking the lights of cars rolling down the hilly streets for helicopters descending from the sky, a flashback of paranoia pushes him into panic-mode and leads him to commit a terrible crime. 

Between tears, Bill confesses how even he came to fear his little brother and finally was forced to steer him into the arms of the police. Bill believed the police when they told him that Manny would not be hurt; that he would be given medical and emotional care. That didn't happen. 

When it came to a trial, Manny's war record, his symptoms of PTSD, and the shrapnel wounds in his skull were supposed to assure that he would escape a death sentence and, instead, be confined to a mental hospital. That's not how it turned out. 

In 1999, Manny was executed in San Quentin, under the orders of Governor Gray Davis. 

While society failed Manny at many levels, the Pentagon, at least, gave him some respect in his last hours. Washington belatedly awarded Manny with a Purple Heart and a Marine Honor Guard was deployed to present the medal to the prisoner, as he stood bound and chained, inside Death Row. 

When the Marines crisply saluted, Bill recalls, Manny struggled desperately to return the salute. "But he couldn't. His hands were shackled to a chain around his waist." 

The film is now also available on Netflix in streaming digital format. 

ROXIE SCREENINGS 

Best Documentary Shorts Part A—2:30 PM: 

Body Team 12, A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness,
Last Day of Freedom 

Best Documentary Shorts Part B—5:00 PM: 

Chau, Beyond the Lines,
Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah. 

This coming Saturday night the Verismo Opera company brings its performance of Verdi’s Otello to the intimate performance space of the Hillside Club in Berkeley, with Fred Winthrop as Otello, Eliza O'Malley as Desdemona and Michael Moran conducting. 

Otello is the story of a man who has defied convention by rising to the rank of general in the Venetian army despite his African ancestry and is now governor of Cypress. He has recently shocked the court by falling in love with and marrying the Venetian noblewoman Desdemona who had been thrilled by his heroic acts. 

It has long been a tradition to cast white tenors in the role of Otello and artificially darken their complexion. The Metropolitan Opera recently made headlines because they decided to abandon this practice in favor of using make-up that doesn’t change the skin tone of the actor. Although company members have always supported race-blind casting, it’s noteworthy that at the moment Verismo may be the only group in the world offering a tenor of African descent in the role of Otello. 

Not only does tenor Fred Winthrop “look the part”, but after 45 performances of this role he knows it backwards, forwards and inside out and delivers every line with the authority of someone who lives and breathes Verdi. Desdemona in this fully-staged production, sung in Italian with English supertitles, is Berkeley soprano Eliza O’Malley, with Michael Moran conducting the Verismo Chamber Orchestra. 

Verismo specializes in presenting affordable productions of classic operas in diverse locations throughout the Bay Area and northern California. The same cast will play in Otello at two Sunday 2 p. m. matinees at the Downtown Theatre, 1035 Texas St., Fairfield, CA 94533, on February 14 and February 28.  

Tickets $30 (general) $25 (seniors), $20 (students), free (under 12 yrs.)  

Buy tickets at the door, online from Brown Paper Tickets, or call (707) 864-5508.  

Berkeley Symphony’s Music Director Joana Carneiro was unable to conduct this program due to illness, so Tito Muñoz, Music Director of The Phoenix Symphony, was called in to replace her at the last minute. Muñoz arrived in time to conduct the first rehearsal on Tuesday, and the performance itself took place Thursday evening in Zellerbach Hall. Featured on the program were Witold Lutoslawski’s Concerto for Orchestra (1954) and Ludwig van Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-flat Major, “Emperor,” with Conrad Tao as soloist. 

Lutoslawski’s Concerto for Orchestra has been hailed as one of the most outstanding works of the mid-20^th century. It premiered in 1954 with the Warsaw National Philharmonic Orchestra. Modeled in part after Béla Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra of 1944, Lutoslawski’s work is a showpiece of orchestral coloration, featuring a scintillating soundscape of ever-changing, ever-contrasting sonorities. It is scored for a large orchestra consisting of 3 flutes (2^nd and 3^rd doubling piccolo), 3 oboes (3^rd doubling English horn), 3 clarinets, 3 bassoons (3^rd doubling contrabassoon), 4 horns, 4 trumpets, 4 trombones, tuba, timpani, tom-toms, snare, tenor and bass drums, cymbals, tam-tam, tambourine, xylophone, chimes, celesta, piano, 2 harps, and a large string section. 

The work begins in 9/8 meter with a relentlessly repeated F-sharp beaten out by the timpani. Later, this opening gambit is inverted and the material is played in the upper registers by piccolo and celesta. Folk music from the Warsaw region serves as the inspiration, but, as Lutoslawski insists, it serves only as the “bricks” from which he creates a highly colored orchestral edifice. The second movement begins with squeaky strings that soon introduce a whirring sound. Trumpet blasts intrude, creating a contrast of loud/soft, until the brass section intones a powerful climax. The complex third movement opens with a passacaglia played by the double-basses and two harps. A brief folk-derived theme undergoes many variations – 18 in all, before it turns into a toccata, which in turn becomes a chorale first heard in the woodwinds. The toccata music returns in the work’s coda, building to a powerful, shrieking climax. Conductor Tito Muñoz led a taut, energetic reading of this brilliant Concerto for Orchestra by Witold Lutoslawski. 

After intermission Muñoz returned to lead the orchestra and soloist Conrad Tao in Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-flat Major. In his opening remarks, Muñoz told of his first encounter ten years ago with Conrad Tao at the Aspen Music Festival, where the then 11 year-old Conrad Tao played violin in the orchestra. Now 21 years old, Conrad Tao has blossomed into one of the leading young pianists, performing with many symphony orchestras in the USA and abroad. 

From the opening chords of Beethoven’s “Emperor” Piano Concerto, pianist Conrad Tao tore into the three brilliant cadenzas that follow each of the three orchestral chords. It is a striking beginning, and it presages a heroic, almost militaristic first movement. Commentators have noted that Beethoven was working on this concerto at the very moment in 1809 when Napoleon’s armies were bombarding Vienna. However, far from glorifying Napoleon, this opening movement seems to embody the glorious struggle of the artist. In the nimble, forceful hands of Conrad Tao, this artistic struggle was glorious indeed. 

The second movement, an Adagio, is, by contrast, lyrical and dreamy. Here Tao played with a lighter touch, bringing out the gossamer quality of this movement. Just as it seems about to end, Beethoven enacts a startling tonal transition, from the Adagio’s distant B Major back to the home key of E-flat Major, as the work proceeds without a pause into the final movement. A rondo introduces a typical “hunting” theme, augmented by Beethoven’s energetic rhythmic accents. Ultimately, the rondo itself almost comes to a halt, and only the timpani continues to beat out the rhythmic motto. However, the pianist suddenly enters with a cascade of scales, thereby heightening the drama, until the orchestra takes up the rhythmic theme and builds it to an emphatic climax. The combination of pianist Conrad Tao and conductor Tito Muñoz inspired the orchestra to great heights. 

As an encore, Conrad Tao returned, having shed his suit jacket to play in his open-neck white shirt, and he performed a brief, energetic piece by Elliot Carter.