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New: As election day approaches, I miss Alex

Joanna Graham
Thursday June 02, 2016 - 11:21:00 AM

I still miss Alexander Cockburn—his deep intelligence and broad erudition, his passionate engagement and devilish wit, but, most of all, I miss his bubbly, irrepressible optimism. Whenever, after still another horrible something had happened and every other leftist had put a pistol to his or her head, finger on the trigger, Alex inevitably wrote a piece about why we should all be gladdened because, for reasons x, y, and z, the “something” presented unparalleled opportunities for human advancement.

What would he be writing during this surreally horrific presidential election year? I keep trying to figure this out, given what I know about his opinions. Of course he loathed the Clintons. Not surprising, who doesn’t? But one of his many idiosyncratic pet peeves was the relatively obscure and harmless Vermont politico Bernie Sanders, whom Alex detested as an absolute phony, a man who called himself socialist while always voting as a moderate—that is, right-wing—Democrat. In fact, I might never have heard of Bernie Sanders if Alex hadn’t devoted so many column inches over the years to attacking him.  

So would he now be cheerfully urging us to take a chance and vote for Donald Trump? Would he be crowing because this guy who thumbs his nose at Wall Street, refuses to take the pledge to destroy Social Security, and suggests we might be friends with Russia and that it’s time to wind up NATO came out on top in a field of 17 starters, and did it in large part because the mainstream media screwed itself, over the years turning politics into infotainment, creating instant celebrities via “reality,” blurring the lines between the real and unreal, the important and the trivial, deliberately mystifying and dumbing down the American public, already made supremely ignorant by American public schools? 

Alex actually loved and trusted the ordinary folk of the U.S.A. He was always flying out to Georgia or wherever it was where his favorite mechanic fixed up old classic American cars for him. He would then drive the latest back through the South, stopping to visit old friends, publishing opinions as he went on the best barbecue joints along his route. And of course he eschewed the “liberal” Bay Area, choosing instead to live in Humboldt County, among the rural working folk and hippies, where he happily hiked, hunted, and kept his horse and many other beloved animals. 

I am certain he would be cheering this year that the masses rose up and thumbed their noses at the entire stinking Republican establishment—and at the Clintons too, steeped in their corruption (although the Bernie problem remains). Not to forget that only Alex, quoting Hannah Arendt, recognized the Rodney King riot as a moment of “public happiness” and cheered the participants on. His desire to upend the existing rotten order burned within him so strongly that it blinded him sometimes to the real pain of disorder. 

For there is also Trump’s narcissism, detachment from reality, monumental ignorance, and misogyny. Would Alex have urged us to simply ignore these and other major character defects? (Having written this list, I’m realizing that the first three also characterize Hillary Clinton and the last one her husband as well—as I’m sure Alex would have quickly pointed out. Thanks, Alex.) 

How did we get to this pass, where both likely nominees are abhorrent, partly for the same, partly for different reasons? Where, in fact, as opposite as they may superficially appear, they both belong to and even sometimes cross paths in the same New York City circle, wealthy beyond imagining from finance, insurance, and real estate, the greedy FIRE sector that is gobbling its way through the American economy and American lives to feed its own insatiable appetite for more mansions, islands, airplanes, yachts. And both hover, in a sense, on the nervous edge of it: Bill and Hill, the arrivistes, cadging rides on other people’s private jets or giving quarter-million-dollar “speeches” in return for “access”; Trump, possibly the pretender, who may not be as rich as he claims, whose deals may not have been as successful as he boasts, who played a power broker on TV for umpteen seasons, while the real power brokers stay out of sight, sliding from meeting to meeting in their darkened limos, keeping their mouths tightly shut. 

How did we get to this pass, where the two likely nominees, equally of bad character, equally detested and rightly so, are both fringe members of the same financial one percent, panting to be richer, more important, more powerful than they are, terrified to wake up and find themselves back in Arkansas “dead broke” or standing in bankruptcy court with no state of New Jersey to bail them out. Bad characters, hypocrites, pretenders, liars, self-deluders—spawned by a culture in which lies are the norm, in which all day every day people are paid to lie, compelled to lie, and rewarded for lying well. How could we expect either to be capable of honesty or decency or fellow feeling? 

Quite a long time ago, even before the 17 Republican candidates filed, I started to panic, asking myself why, when the human race faces so many looming interlocking catastrophes, neither party was likely to come up with a candidate who was even adequate. And then I realized the question provides its own answer. The breakdown of the political system is part of the general crisis. 

What then is to be done? I, for one, intend to vote for Bernie in the upcoming primary in the hope that he will carry California. That way, both parties will go to their conventions understanding that they are in deep trouble, the Republicans with a nominee picked by the people the party cannot support and the Democrats, a.k.a. the Clinton machine, with a self-selected nominee crowned by the party whom the voters have rejected. 

“There’s a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part! You can’t even passively take part! And you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels…upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and got to make it stop! And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you’re free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!” Mario Savio, December 2, 1964. Remember? 


Euphemism and Autocracy: A report on the latest Adeline Corridor “Community Workshop”

Steve Martinot
Thursday May 26, 2016 - 02:36:00 PM

There is a strange mystique to the alleged planning process through which the Berkeley city government is leading the Adeline neighborhood, and the rest of the city. It knows that those who take the time to attend its "planning" workshops are simply trying to keep a diligent eye on what the city is doing. Yet it considers them representatives of the neighborhood, and thereby people who are empowered to make a plan for it. Even the title of the workshop invokes this aura. It is called “Building the Plan Together.” But a certain substance is missing. In order to represent the neighborhood, there would have to be local organizations throughout, in which people discussed what the city has in mind, and could actually make decisions with respect to it, which would then be represented in these workshops. If the city really wanted local participation, it would foster such local organization, insure a certain autonomy for local organization, and make those local discussions a basis for its planning. But the workshop process ignores this, and barges ahead. Ostensibly, the purpose is then to "workshop" those who attend.

This one, which occurred on May 21 at the South Berkeley Senior Center, was the fourth in a series. Its theme was transportation (meaning streets, bike paths, and crosswalks, not local bus routes or shuttle networks).  

 

As with the previous workshops, this one was half lecture on what the city’s agents have been doing, and half breakout groups. During the lecture portion, the organizers spoke about the surveys they have taken in the community, and about how they have interpreted the surveys, which they then summarized as the community’s visions and desires. There was no general discussion. That was left for the end. The meeting then broke into groups to discuss streets, bike paths, and crosswalks. There were reportbacks afterwards, and no time for general discussion. Time is always the wild card. 

Or perhaps that is something the organizers learned from previous experience. In the earlier workshops, they did allow people to address the whole workshop, and initiate broader discussion that way. The ideas and critiques and general attitudes of the people are a lot easier to control, however, if you leave that part out. 

So we heard about the “Planning Process Context,” and “The Emerging Community Vision Framework.” Planning and vision were the rhetorical terms for community participation. The workshop personnel summed them up with an additional term h:“community priorities.” 

You have to love a discourse that can throw words around like that. Vision. Planning. Process. Yet nothing was said about needs, what the community needs to survive. The communities of the bay area have dire needs because their economy and membership are getting shredded by the gentrification process. Instead, the notion of needs gets shifted to "plans" and "visions." Yet all the communities of the bay area are facing the same erosion of their infrastructure. They need, first and foremost, a plan that will guarantee that people won’t be thrown out of their homes in order to make money for someone else. This has been stated loud and clear in neighborhood meetings for over a year. 

And it’s serious. I’m not just being rhetorical here. When I left the "workshop," I went to a jazz festival in Oakland, and ran into a friend I hadn’t seen for a while. The first words out of her mouth, when I mentioned the workshop I had come from, were that she herself had just been told her rent was going up, and it was going to be more than she could pay. She was wondering where she could move to. What are the odds? How probable is it that the very same day, a mere couple of hours after leaving a city workshop in which dislocation was the catastrophic subtext, there it was, looking me in the face in the words of a friend. That is the face of crisis. 

But the idea of needs actually was present – in euphemism, however. That was the role given the term “community priorities.” The organizers distilled those priorities from their surveys. And in their lectures, that term got used a lot. But it had a funny ring to it, like a bell that someone has their hands on. You strike the bell and you get a metalic thud. 

That is because the term "priorities" is a serious term. It means that something has great importance. And that should mean that any plan concerning things of importance must reflect those priorities. But at one point, the organizers let something slip. One of the speakers (aka lecturers) said that the community priorities would feed into the city’s processes and goals. They almost whispered it, so that it wouldn’t attract too much attention. 

One had the feeling of seeing a card being dealt from the bottom of the deck. The community’s priorities would be fed into the city’s priorities, which would constitute the “Planning Process Context” (as the agenda put it). Community priorities would lose their priority on their way to city hall. They are destined to be subordinate to the city’s priorities. That is, they will be divested of their priority character. They will only be "priorities" until we all “build the plan together.” Then, when that comes to pass, “community priorities” will get busted down to "visions." The community’s visions will be rendered subordinate to the city’s priorities, and that will be the planning process. 

I know that sounds prophetic. But if we take the city agents (the organizers) at their word – well really, it means taking them at their non-word. With all the talk about vision and planning, they still didn’t cover community needs – the need for survival as a community. Visions are not needs. Needs are priorities. In order to recognize needs as needs, they have to be given priority. Take all the surveys you like, and spend as much effort as you can muster to channel "workshop" discussions into where to put the bike lanes, and how to make crosswalks safer, but you already know what the community needs. 

It was said loud and clear in the preceding "workshop" (several months ago). When asked what the solution was to the problem of rising rents and the dislocation of residents, the city agent said, very concisely, “building affordable housing.” That is what the community needs in order to stop its hemorrhaging. It is bleeding low income people all over the landscape because there are no means of keeping them at home. Housing development based on rental markets have become wounds in the social body of this city. What is needed is housing whose costs are based on income ("affordable" means 30% of income). 

And with respect to this wounding of the community, this hemorrhaging of low income people to Antioch, Martinez, Modesto, and points further elsewhere, the workshop dealt from the bottom of the deck a second time. Speaking about the “emerging community vision,” they got to a slide in their PowerPoint presentation entitled “obstacles.” These were obstacles to being able to meet the community vision. And they listed four. Number three made the others irrelevant. It was: “rising rents.” 

I’ve played in some crooked games in my day, but this one took the cake. Rising rents are the very engine, the motor, the dynamic mechanism of the entire housing crisis!!! Whatever else is going on, if there were no rising rents leading to people being thrown out of their homes, there would be no crisis. And that force slashing open these communities gets categorized as an "obstacle"? 

But then, we have to remember that our political culture has been drowned in a sea of euphemism. An overt act of war, the bombing of towns in another country, is called a “defensive reaction strike.” The inviolate integrity of a woman with her body gets divided by proclaiming a relation in which she has “a right to privacy.” Massive dislocation of low income people is called "development." And rising rents are called an "obstacle." 

What this brought up, because it was so blatant, was the fact that these people who work for the city, whose constituents are the ones facing this crisis, have not once mentioned the need to repeal the Costa-Hawkins Act. 

The Costa-Hawkins Act is the state law that makes it unlawful for a city to institute any kind of rent control. To ordain a moratorium on rent increases until the city can provide affordable housing for those victimized by those increases would be in violation of that law. The city government cannot protect its own people because of that law. Yet it wants the people who need protection to participate in a housing planning process that assumes that they cannot be protected. It cannot see that, for its call to a workshop to be in good faith, it would have to oppose and expunge the state imposition that makes that protection impossible. It wants neighborhood people to participate in a planning process when it cannot even guarantee that they will still live in this city when the plan is finally promulgated. 

In discussing streets, bike paths, and crosswalks, it did not discuss who would still be in town to use them. That is the other face of the housing crisis. 

It is like when a person has fallen overboard and is floundering in the water, all you do is throw him a piece of candy called a “life-saver.” 

It is time to use the “D” word. Participation in a game played with a stacked deck is not democracy. Polite discourses insuring people that they have a say, and can influence their own destiny, are a con because spoken in an anti-democratic context. 

The Costa-Hawkins Act is a state government imposition on cities. It preempts those cities’ ability to make democratic decisions about what happens to people within their boundaries. As a state law, it destroys a city’s ability to confront and alleviate a process that has already victimized hundreds and promises to victimize thousands. That is the anti-democratic essence of the Costa-Hawkins Act. And its existence means that the Plan Bay Area, which was also promulgated by the state and which is now the political source for the emergence of the housing crisis itself, is also an anti-democratic measure. Together and separately, this law and this plan suppress and destroy the democratic rights of people to govern their own lives, their own rights, and to house themselves as a community. They violate the internationally recognized principle that “housing is a right.” 

The people who organize these workshops work for the city. The city refuses to initiate a general movement throughout the state to repeal this act so that it can fulfill its democratic responsibility to its own residents, its own constituents. Thus it renders dishonest the language that its organizers must use to call on people to participate in workshops. 

As long as Costa-Hawkins exists, any representation or expression of the vision or plan or desires or priorities of low or moderate income communities caught in the throes of a housing crisis is simply empty rhetoric. One does not have to be a prophet to see the gloom at the end of that tunnel. 

Community priorities will not be given priority. Community needs will continue to be ignored. The planning of the Adeline Corridor will be in the hands of the city and its developers, and there is nothing the community is going to be able to do to have their needs expressed in it – except to be given thanks for their "vision." 

 


David Swanson's Radical Bay Area Message: War Is A Lie

Gar Smith
Thursday May 26, 2016 - 02:04:00 PM

Author, activist, journalist, and radio host David Swanson is coming to the Bay Area this weekend to promote the new second edition of his classic anti-war exposé, War Is a Lie. Swanson is the director of World Beyond War and the host of Talk Nation Radio. His other books include When the World Outlawed War and War No More: The Case for Abolition.

Swanson played a key role in exposing Britain's "Downing Street Minutes" and other bits of "dodgy evidence" used to justify the US/UK invasion of Iraq. He has been twice nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize—in 2015 and 2016.

The first edition of War Is A Lie, published in 2010, became a popular hit with readers in the US, Europe, and China. The new edition expands on Swanson's masterful debunking of all the familiar arguments trotted out to justify war and offers a toolbox of practical strategies for resisting—and abolishing—war.

Swanson—who will be joined at various events by Daniel Ellsberg, Cindy Sheehan and Norman Solomon—will be speaking about the latest developments in military mischief-making abroad and "perception management" at home. He will also be taking questions and dialoging with the audience before signing copies of his new book.

Daniel Ellsberg has praised War Is a Lie as "a terrific tool for recognizing and resisting war lies before it's too late." (You can read some other praise for the book at the end of this piece.)  

 

 

Scheduled Bay Area Appearances 

May 28, San Francisco, CA 

11 a.m. to 1 p.m., David Swanson interviewed by Daniel Ellsberg, at San Francisco Main Public Library, 100 Larkin Street. 

May 28, Marin County, CA 

4 to 6 p.m., David Swanson in conversation with Norman Solomon, at Book Passage, 51 Tamal Vista Blvd., Corte Madera, CA 

May 29, Oakland, CA 

3 to 4 p.m., David Swanson interviewed by Cindy Sheehan, at Diesel: A Bookstore, 5433 College Avenue at Kales (near Manila), Oakland, CA 

May 29, Berkeley, CA 

7:00 to 9 p.m., David Swanson "War Is A Lie", with Cindy Sheehan, at Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists, sponsored by the BFUU Social Justice Committee and Codepink Golden Gate. 1924 Cedar St. @ Bonita, Berkeley, CA Contact: Cynthia Papermaster, papermasterc@gmail.com 

More Praise for War Is a Lie: 

"David Swanson is a truth-teller and witness-bearer whose voice and action warrant our attention."  

— Cornel West. 

"The world needs more true advocates of democracy like David Swanson!"  

— Thom Hartmann, author, radio host. 

"David Swanson predicates his belief that nonviolence can change the world on careful research and historical analysis."  

— Kathy Kelly, author, peace activist. 

"David Swanson is a longtime friend and one of my personal heroes because he is relentlessly and uncompromisingly against war. This is an important book that dispels any myths about 'good wars.'"  

— Cindy Sheehan, peace activist, author, talk show host. 

"David Swanson's War Is A Lie should be required reading. It lays bare the hypocrisy of American 'do-as-I-say, not-as-I-do' foreign policy, exposing the lies and the deliberate glorification of military disasters. Swanson advocates for endless diplomacy rather than endless war, a much cheaper and less bloody alternative to present U.S. militarism. War Is A Lie gives you the arguments, outrage and inspiration you need to take action. Read it. 

— Medea Benjamin, author, peace activist. 

More comments at http://WarIsALie.org.


Opinion

Editorials

Pistols at Dawn? The Boys Debate a Duel

Becky O'Malley
Friday May 27, 2016 - 04:08:00 PM

So, the California primary is less than two weeks away, and yes, Virginia, the national race for the Democratic nomination is over. You don’t believe me? You must be reading the same Bernie Sanders press releases they’ve been flooding my email with. It seems that no one’s told those guys that it’s time to stop pedaling so furiously—you’ve passed the finish line, and she got there ahead of you.

Suspension of disbelief is the only possible diagnosis for Sanders’ otherwise inexplicable decision to push Donald Trump into debating him on national TV. Why on earth would he want to give the most dangerous threat to the U.S. A. now appearing on the tiny screen near you yet another crack at the bully pulpit to promote his toxic ideas? Trump is already the darling of the media, and Sanders wants to help him out, get him a little more air time? Excuuuse me! 

And I’m not alone in thinking that Bernie’s lost his marbles on this one. See, for example, John Cassidy on the New Yorker blog: What Game is Bernie Sanders Playing with Donald Trump? 

He says: “Some Democrats fear that a Trump-Sanders encounter would turn into the sort of media circus that Trump revels in, and that it would only heighten the divisions in the Democratic Party at a time when it needs to unite against Trump. If a debate did take place, it would certainly get good ratings, and Trump would surely use the occasion to bait Clinton, appeal to the ‘Bernie or Bust’ contingent, and generally try to sow more dissension in the Democratic Party.” 

Josh Marshall, who runs the excellent TPM (Talking Points Memo) site is even more annoyed by this latest ploy. His reaction is the same as mine: Really? 

His comments are even more pointed than Cassidy’s: 

“It is only a spectacle by which both candidates, Trump and Sanders, can indulge their tacitly-agreed common interest in sidelining and diminishing Hillary Clinton, who of course will be the nominee. I don't want to speculate about Sanders' motives, other than that it is probably a good way to elevate himself into the appearance of an ersatz Democratic standard-bearer and to get media attention which has slackened as most of the attention has moved toward the general election. That would be perfectly understandable if we didn't know for a certainty that he is not going to be the nominee and that this would be bad for the person who is. Remember: President Trump.” 

But perhaps Sanders subscribes to the theory, much bruited about in my youth (as it was in everyone’s youth) that the best way to bring on the Revolution is to heighten the contradictions. One invitation to a Berkeley for Bernie fundraiser I received from a somewhat older friend (yes, there are some) invoked in loving memory the campaigns of Henry Wallace, Ralph Nader and George McGovern. (Now there’s a debate I’d like to see.) Winners all, just not yet. 

Debating Trump was Bernie’s very own idea, it seems. As I was contemplating how to discuss this without incurring the wrath of thousands or at least dozens in my usual haunts in Berkeley, word came over the wires that Trump had declined the invitation. Another press release from the Bernie Billet came right away: 

“In recent days, Donald Trump has said he wants to debate, he doesn’t want to debate, he wants to debate and, now, he doesn’t want to debate.

“Given that there are several television networks prepared to carry this debate and donate funds to charity, I hope that he changes his mind once again and comes on board.

“There is a reason why in virtually every national and statewide poll I am defeating Donald Trump, sometimes by very large margins and almost always by far larger margins than Secretary Clinton. There is a reason for that reality and the American people should be able to see it up front in a good debate and a clash of ideas.” 

I haven’t bothered to check all his stats online, but based on what I’ve found so far I strongly suspect the final claim in the penultimate sentence is a grayish lie, or at best a cleverly phrased half-truth. 

“Far larger margins” ? Uh-huh, sure. Well, “almost always”. 

He reminds me of the Captain of the Pinafore who was Never Ever Sick at Sea: “What, never? Well, hardly ever.” 

 

In any event, it doesn’t make a dime’s worth of difference at this point. Unless the Democratic convention in its infinite wisdom decides to second-guess all those people who voted in caucuses and primaries around the country, Clinton is the candidate. It doesn’t matter in the slightest whether Sanders could rack up a few more percentage points than she could in a national election, because all it takes is more than half. 

The best comment I’ve seen so far was on the TPM blog, from someone pseudonymed “pluckyinky”. 

"Six hours ago, here's what I said Trump would say: 

'I really wanted to do the debate with Bernie, he's very popular, you know, very popular, and the Democrats have been so unfair to him, so unfair. I was thinking I might give him a chance to debate me since he agrees with me on many things, like China and the bad trade deals. Unlike cheating, corrupt Hillary, he knows we're getting a very, very bad deal. So, I said sure, why not. Especially because he would've won if DWS hadn't cheated the whole thing for Hillary. I mean, it's criminal, criminal what they did to him. Somebody should look into it, I've heard what they did is illegal, very illegal. But they cooked the whole thing up for Hillary so she could win, and I thought I would like to give him a chance because I like to give people chances. That's the kind of guy I am, as a businessman I try to help people. That's why I'm gonna make America great again. So, I thought we should also do something for women, I like to take care of women. Women love me, I'm very good for women. And I wanted to raise tens of millions and millions for these women, but Hillary and Debbie said no. They are scared Bernie was going to expose them, so they said no. They wouldn't let him, wouldn't let him because they don't really care about women like I do. Hillary has been very, very bad for women, very bad. And she would rather hide Bernie than let him debate me and raise millions for women. But it's not all their fault, truthfully, truthfully, Bernie was probably a little scared he'd lose again. I've never lost a debate and he didn't want to lose to me either,' " 

So what did Trump himself actually say? Well, PluckyInky hit it right on the nose: 

"Based on the fact that the Democratic nominating process is totally rigged and Crooked Hillary Clinton and Deborah Wasserman Schultz will not allow Bernie Sanders to win, and now that I am the presumptive Republican nominee, it seems inappropriate that I would debate the second place finisher. Likewise the networks want to make a killing on these events and are not proving to be too generous to charitable causes, in this case women's health issues…therefore, as much as I want to debate Bernie Sanders–and it would be an easy pay day–I will wait to debate the first place finisher in the Democratic Party, probably Crooked Hillary Clinton, or whoever it may be." 

Will Bad Bernie persuade Devious Donald to change his mind? Will the big boys eventually get to shoot it out at the OK Corral, while little Miss H. watches from the sidelines? Stay tuned. 

Meanwhile, the low-information voters, many of them youngsters just barely old enough to vote, are getting Too Much Information from gossipy social media on the internet. A recent graduate I met, an earnest tattoed girl from a small town in Georgia, told me with an arm-pump that she’s supporting Bernie, Yes! Never Clinton, she said, since Hillary’s about to be indicted, she’d heard that from Bernie himself online. Well, not exactly, but it’s not impossible to understand why two loudmouth Old White Guys who have it in for Ms. Clinton are confused in her mind. 

An old white guy of my acquaintance calls Sanders an egotist. Yes, probably—he’s having a hard time letting go of the photo-ops. An old lady I know says he’s been acting like a jerk, but maybe it’s just the excitement of the campaign. 

Or maybe he actually is a jerk. We’ll see what he does between now and the Democratic Convention. 

 

 


The Editor's Back Fence

New: Bernie's War on Democrats

Wednesday June 01, 2016 - 09:36:00 AM

“I like Jerry Brown, but people can make their own choices,” Mr. Sanders said. “What we have had to do, and we have done pretty well in every state in this country, is taken on Democratic governors, taken on Democratic senators, taken on Democratic members of the House, Democratic mayors and all of their political apparatus. And yet we have won in 20 states, and I think we are going to win here in California.”

--as quoted by Adam Nagourney in yesterday's New York Times, spotted by Carol Polsgrove.  



Affordable Housing for Teachers? A New Idea

Calculations by Tom Hunt
Friday May 27, 2016 - 09:46:00 PM
If Berkeley teachers made 20% more, they could almost afford to live here.
Tom Hunt
If Berkeley teachers made 20% more, they could almost afford to live here.

There's been a lot of discussion lately about how Berkeley housing has gotten too expensive for teachers in Berkeley schools to live here. It's true that most of the construction boom visible all over town has been for apartments too pricey for BUSD employees, who would be required to spend at least 40% of their salaries to live here. But here's another idea: If Berkeley teachers got just a 20% raise, they'd be able to afford local rent. Could we give that a try?


Public Comment

Injustice never takes a vacation

Harry Brill
Thursday May 26, 2016 - 02:15:00 PM

A savvy community organizer correctly commented that "injustice never takes a vacation". As a result millions of Americans are victimized by the outrageous and growing inequality that dominates their daily lives. Their standard of living suffers and it is getting worse. Even a growing number of full time workers are compelled to support themselves and their families by being employed in poverty wage jobs. In fact, the hardships experienced by many workers is so oppressive that they rarely experience the joy of living.

Our East Bay Tax the Rich Group has for over 4 1/2 years attempted to address issues of inequality. Among our tasks has been to work in coalition with other organizations and activists to improve wages. As a result, the Berkeley City Council was persuaded to enact a minimum wage law. What was won is certainly better than before. But it is nowhere near enough. So a coalition of labor, community organizations, and activists have gathered enough signatures to place an improved minimum wage initiative on the ballot in November.

In Contrast, the majority of the Berkeley City Council, taking its cues from the Chamber of Commerce, wants no raise at all for poverty wage workers. But not surprisingly, they are attempting to kill the ballot measure in a way that makes them look like good guys and gals. Briefly, rather than enacting its own minimum wage law, the Council prefer to put on the ballot an alternative minimum wage measure. As those who are experienced with ballot measures realize, with two minimum wage options on the ballot box, the chances of either one obtaining over 50% will be at best extremely difficult. So the good fight continues--uphill of course. 

It is this enormous gap between the establishment's rhetoric and actual conduct that mostly explains why the Tax the Rich Group and other progressive organizations have been on the streets for so many years. It is immensely important to help others understand that what they think many elected officials are doing FOR them is actually being done TO them!  

But circumstances now require us to suspend our Tax the Rich group rallies until September. Monday June 6 will be our last rally until then. 

Although many of us work on different issues, there is something very important that we have in common. A major objective of our work is to do what we can to make the joy of living possible for others. There is no greater calling!


Vote for the real person

Romila Khanna
Thursday May 26, 2016 - 02:46:00 PM

I hear from candidates for President that their agenda will bring everyone a brighter tomorrow. In particular, they propose to make education free for all. I am happy to hear about the plan to make Americans well educated and therefore adaptive. But I do wonder where the money to support education will come from.  

We will need more schools and colleges all over the country. We will need qualified educators in our schools and colleges. We will need more diversified curricula. There will be special need for research in pedagogy suitable for first time college students from families. All these needs will require a bigger federal budget for education. But will the next congress allocate a big budget for education? I have noticed that our current Republican Congress pays more attention to the 1% than to the middle- and low-income population. I hope people will choose someone who can be the President for all, not just for the billionaires


Assault on Whistleblowers

Tejinder Uberoi
Thursday May 26, 2016 - 02:44:00 PM

A former senior Pentagon official, John Crane, has spoken out about how his superiors violated the law to punish a key NSA whistleblower, Thomas Drake, for leaking information about waste, mismanagement and an illegal widespread domestic surveillance program. Crane was a long time employee for the DOD Inspector General’s Office, whose mission is to expose federal abuse. Embarrassed by Drake’s revelations, the Pentagon charged him with espionage based on information he freely provided to the Pentagon inspector general. The unmistakable message is extremely troubling; expose our dark secrets and we will destroy you. 

This does not bode well for future whistleblowers who are left with no option but to go outside the system much like Snowden. Drake should have been rewarded and commended for his patriotic duty in trying to eliminate waste. Drake’s saga is documented in Mark Hertsgaard new book, "Bravehearts: Whistle-Blowing in the Age of Snowden”.


June Pepper Spray Times

By Grace Underpressure
Wednesday June 01, 2016 - 07:04:00 PM

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

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

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Columns

THE PUBLIC EYE:The Birth of the Stupid Party

Bob Burnett
Thursday May 26, 2016 - 02:20:00 PM

Republicans are handing their presidential nomination to a know-nothing billionaire bully, Donald Trump – the worst nominee in modern times. How did Republicans get to be so stupid? 

Of course, “stupid” is subjective. But by most standards, Republicans fit the bill. In September, Public Policy Polling found that “66% of [Donald] Trump's supporters believe that Obama is a Muslim... 61% think Obama was not born in the United States.” The same poll found that 54 percent of all Republicans believed the President to be a Muslim. (In September Donald Trump suggested Obama is a Muslim.) 

In 2013, Louisiana Republican Governor Bobby Jindal warned the GOP to “stop being the stupid party.” Jindal said Republican candidates should “stop insulting the intelligence of voters… with offensive and bizarre statements.” However, Jindal didn’t listen to his own advice; on May 10th, Jindal endorsed Donald Trump. Stupid is as stupid does. 

It wasn’t always like this. Fifty years ago, Republicans seemed wrongheaded but intelligent. What has happened to the Grand Old Party? Its transition to the stupid party had four stages: 

1. Republicans adopted an anti-intellectual strategy. Political historians have noted the long-term political consequences of Richard Nixon’s southern strategy which peeled Southern white voters – particularly evangelical Christians – away from the Democratic Party. What hasn’t received as much attention is the fact that southern evangelicals are not intellectual: they believe in the literal true of the Bible; for that reason, they believe the universe was created in seven days and decry evolution and science. Writing in The Weekly Standard, Henry Olsen observed the GOP southern strategy caused the “dumbing down of conservatism.” “Evangelicals have long shied away from engagement with the less-devout world… as a group they tend to lack intellectual curiosity and rigor.” 

In September, writing in the Daily Beast Ana Marie Cox observed, “Trump and [Ben] Carson are winning a huge slice of the GOP base because of [their] prideful ignorance, which to voters signifies not just a rejection of the establishment or elites but a release from the hard work of having to think.” 

Now the Republican nominee is Donald Trump, an anti-intellectual. For example, early in May, Trump cited a National Enquirer article linking Ted Cruz’s father to the JFK assassination. Trump’s policy positions are incoherent and GOP voters don’t care. 

2. Republicans accepted racism. When the GOP adopted the southern strategy, they tacitly accepted racism. With Trump this racism has come out in the open. 

Writing in Psychology Today, David Niose linked anti-intellectualism and racism: 

Critically thinking individuals recognize racism as wrong and undesirable, even if they aren’t yet able to eliminate every morsel of bias from their own psyches or from social institutions. An anti-intellectual society, however, will have large swaths of people who are motivated by fear, susceptible to tribalism and simplistic explanations, incapable of emotional maturity, and prone to violent solutions.
 

Ana Marie Cox commented on the state of today’s Republican Party: “You can’t spend 40 years tacitly making racists feel welcome in your party and expect the intellectual atmosphere not to suffer, or for that anti-intellectualism to stay bounded with race.” 

In 2015, Donald Trump brought racism out of the GOP closet. He damned “political correctness” and brought his hate-filled bigotry into mainstream political discourse. 

3.Republicans enabled hate. Writing in Mother Jones, David Corn observed that starting with Sarah Palin in the 2008 presidential campaign, GOP politicians and their cohorts in the conservative media launched a campaign of hatred towards President Obama (and scorched-earth obstructionism of his agenda): “It's been a long run of Republicans accepting, encouraging, and exploiting uncivil discourse, anti-Obama hatred, and right-wing anger.” 

The New York Times observed that Donald Trump feeds into this hatred by encouraging violence at his rallies. 

Writing in The Weekly Standard, Henry Olsen observed that over the past two decades Republicans have created “an alternative conservative media universe… [that] led to a conservative ghetto where well-meaning conservatives can live without ever coming into contact with people who disagree with them.” 

Since 1874 an elephant has been the Republican symbol. A better symbol for the current Republican Party would be the mushroom: voters who are kept in the dark and fed bullshit. 

4. The Republican rank-and-file separated from the Washington elite and embraced anarchy. The candidacy of Donald Trump is a logical outcome of the Tea-Party movement that first decried the Washington establishment and then bemoaned the failure of Republican congressional leadership to keep promises made during the 2012 and 2014 elections (abolish Obamacare; reduce the size of government; etc.). 

The GOP rank-and-file embraced Trump because he is an outsider – someone with no government experience – who embraces the core Republican values: anti-intellectualism, racism, nativism, and sexism. They love Trump because he is opposed to political correctness and tells them it is okay to be white. 

First came the stupid party. And then came Donald Trump. 


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


ON MENTAL ILLNESS: Presidential Contest Has Bad Effects on Mentally Ill

Jack Bragen
Thursday May 26, 2016 - 02:23:00 PM

The Presidency is up for grabs, and with it, the destiny of the U.S., as well as the rest of our Earth. For me, the election is having a somewhat destabilizing effect. I can't speak for other persons who have mental illness, but I can guess.

Millions are frightened of what will happen to us when we have a new President. Most are particularly fearful of what will happen of Donald Trump is elected, and I am guessing that some are worried that Hillary Clinton could put us at risk.

Either way, we are looking at change. A counselor once said to me that mentally ill people are not good at handling changes. Yet, to be perfectly cliché, change is the only thing we can be certain of.  

 

We do not live in a dictatorship, but we could. It is conceivable that our democracy could dissolve and could be replaced by a malevolent dictator. For example, Russia has had several regime changes in my lifetime. Russia is bigger than the U.S., and this shows that the size of a country isn't relevant. China doesn't have a democracy--it is still communist and lacks the human rights to which Americans are accustomed.  

This is the sort of thing that runs through my mind. I am worried that, if there is a major change in government, my income and housing could be eliminated. I am also worried that I could face retaliation for exercising my First Amendment rights.  

When someone has a chronic condition of paranoid schizophrenia or bipolar illness, excessive anxiety, which can sometimes occur due to a difficult situation, can lead to mental exaggeration of a perceived threat, this can lead to increasing paranoid symptoms, and this can snowball into a relapse of severe psychosis. I have been practicing cognitive exercises to ease my anxiety level and prevent this scenario from happening to me. This election is more anxiety producing than any election I have witnessed.  

At some point, I might be forced, for the sake of my well-being, to mentally disconnect from the election. This is hard to do, and it would necessitate not watching or reading news. Watching the political contest on a daily basis is inescapable if I tune into or long onto the news whatsoever.  

I have been, in a small way, a participant, since I have written pieces for publication about the election. Anyone who votes is a participant. You are even a participant of you choose not to cast your vote, since that also affects the outcome.  

In general, when I face challenges, I don't let myself off the hook due to being disabled as often as I could. My standards for myself are high, sometimes unrealistically so. But, some of the time, I should be taking some time for myself on the basis of mental health.  

My guess is that a lot of people, not just mentally ill people, are getting continuously traumatized by the ongoing election, and that when it is over, we will all have a sigh of relief. This relief will only happen if we get leadership that is stable and competent, and that won't ruin all our lives or ruin our planet.  


Arts & Events

New: A Controversial CARMEN at SF Opera

Reviewed by James Roy MacBean
Sunday May 29, 2016 - 04:28:00 PM

On Friday evening, May 27, SF Opera opened its summer season with a new production of Bizet’s immensely popular opera Carmen. This Carmen was directed by the daring and controversial Catalan director Calixto Bieito, dubbed “the bad-boy of opera,” in his U.S. opera debut. This production, which premiered in Catalonia back in 1999 and has been performed on several continents since, is here staged by Bieito’s longtime collaborator, Joan Anton Rechi. A San Francisco Opera press release noted that “this production contains violence, nudity and suggestive behavior. Parent discretion advised.”

Well, let’s see about that. There was no nudity I detected on opening night, although Carmen, played in exquisitely sultry fashion by mezzo-soprano Irene Roberts, at one point hiked up her skirt and removed her panties before mounting a supine but fully clothed Don José. On the other hand, there was considerable violence, usually inflicted by men, (especially the Spanish soldiers of the Gaurdia Civil), against women, although some violence was directed against men, as in the savage beating of Lieutenant Zuniga, Don José’s superior officer, by Carmen’s gypsy men in Act II. Ultimately, what struck me as most controversial about this pro-vocative production was its initial premise, which situates the drama, at least in the opening two acts, in Ceuta, a Spanish enclave on the Mediterranean coast of Morocco.  

 

In terms of time and space, director Calixto Bieito says he wanted to situate the opera at a Spanish colonial crossroads of Europe and Africa during the mid-20th-century Franco regime in Spain. In this I think Bieito missed a promising oppor-tunity. Although this production contained anachronisms that looked forward to the present, such as smart phones used to photograph selfies and flat-screen TVs as contraband trafficked by Carmen’s Gypsy friends, these anachronisms did not belong in the Franco era but were very much part of our contemporary global culture. If Bieito wanted to set this opera, or at least its first two acts, in the colonial enclave of Ceuta, he would have been much better off situating it temporally in the ongoing 21st century present. 

Ceuta is a 7-mile-square urban enclave on the North African coast totally enclosed by barbed wire and electrified fences to keep out the hundreds of black Africans who flee Mali, Niger, Burkina Fasso, Senegal, and Gambia, among other African countries, in hopes of gaining entry to Europe. On reading that Bieito staged his Carmen in Ceuta, I hoped the opening curtain would reveal a colonial enclave entirely enclosed by a barbed-wire fence, with hundreds (or at least dozens) of black African young men, poorly clothed, gathered outside the fence, desperately seeking entry into Europe, even climbing the fence in their efforts. This is the reality of Ceuta today. This staging would have been a dramatic introduction to our contemporary reality, and it would have been highly suggestive regarding other plot developments in the story of Bizet’s Carmen. 

For example, if Bieito had staged the opening scenes of Carmen to include Carmen’s male Gypsy friends, El Dancairo and El Remendado, circulating insidiously among the black Africans striving to get inside the barbed–wire enclave of Ceuta and accepting money from them, this would suggest that the contraband Carmen’s Gypsy friends ran included human trafficking. This, after all, is an all too abrasive reality of the North African coast. Likewise, if in Act II of this production of Carmen the Gypsy band’s retreat into the nearby mountains featured their contraband as black Africans instead of equally anachronistic flat-screen TVs, this would have been a powerful indictment of our contemporary emigration onslaught on Europe and of the people-smugglers who profit from this onslaught. What I’m getting at is that the choice of Ceuta, a Spanish colonial enclave on the North African coast of Morocco, as the site of Bieito’s Carmen, immediately suggested to me extremely dramatic possi-bilities that might have enormously enriched our appreciation of the contemporary relevance of Bizet’s Carmen. 

Alas. Bieito entirely muffed this opportunity. Instead of the barbed-wire fence I imagined as the opening scene, Bieito gave us a bare stage with only a phone booth and a flagpole. At one point, Carmen, shortly after entering, entered the phone booth and seemed to carry on a conversation we never heard. As Carmen, mezzo-soprano Irene Roberts acted superbly and sang quite well but without much individual coloration in her vocal delivery. As for the flagpole, in this production the soldiers of Spain’s Guardia Civil ran up the Spanish flag. (Incidentally, Spain’s Guardia Civil, as I noted when travelling in Spain during the Franco regime, was almost an occupying armed force. Spain’s Guardia Civil, like Italy’s Carabinieri, is or was a para-military federal police force that ran roadblocks on all major highways and demanded identification papers from everyone seeking to pass.) The presence of this para-military armed force is really the only manifestation in Bieito’s staging of Carmen that suggests the oppressive militarization of Franco’s Spain. Moreover, given that Franco is now long dead and his fascist regime largely discredited, this allusion to the Franco era seems all too weak given the contemporary situation in Spain, which might have effectively been suggested in setting the drama in Ceuta. Finally, what in the world was intended by the plastic Christmas tree included in the opening scene of Act II? This seemed utterly senseless. 

Turning from the staging of this Carmen to the singing, mezzo-soprano Irene Roberts, a Sacramento native, gave a sultry, sexy performance as Carmen, her voice expressing every nuance of Carmen’s seductive arsenal. If she lacked something in vocal power and projection, she made up for it in dramatically effective acting, movement, and suggestive singing. As Don José, tenor Brian Jagde, who was justly applauded here recently as Pinkerton in Madama Butterfly and Cavaradossi in Tosca, sang effectively but without any particular emotional or vocal coloration in his role as Carmen’s brief lover, soon abandoned by her in a resolute search for her own freedom.  

Perhaps the best singing on opening night of this production was provided by Ellie Dehn as Micaela, the innocent country-girl sent to Don José by his mother. In her Act I appearance, Ellie Dehn’s Micaela was appropriately shy, cautiously intro-ducing the news that Don José’s mother has instructed her to give him a kiss from her. But Ellie Dehn made it clear that Micaela expects (or hopes) for more from this kiss than a peck on the cheek. When Don José gave her only this, she angrily hurled something at him as she exited. Later, in Act III, when Micaela followed Don José into the mountains where he has gone with Carmen and her Gypsy band, Ellie Dehn sang with great passion and a combination of fear and prayer at the obstacles Micaela faced in trying to persuade Don José to desert Carmen and return to his mother (and to Micaela who loves him). When she eventually succeeds in urging Don José to leave with her by telling him his mother is dying, Ellie Dehn’s Micaela brazenly confronted Carmen with a somewhat obscene flick of the hand from the chin gesture expressing her mistaken belief she has defeated her rival.  

Meanwhile, bass-baritone Brad Walker was a convincing Zuniga; tenor Alex Boyer was a creditable El Remendado; baritone Daniel Cilli was a fine El Dancairo; and baritone Edward Nelson ably performed the minor role of Morales. More prominent were the fine performances by Egyptian-born, New Zealand resident, soprano Amina Edris as Frasquita, and Renée Rapier as Mercédès. These two Gypsy women friends of Carmen seemed to play a larger role in Bieito’s production of Carmen than they usually play. Another innovation of Bieito’s production was the introduction of a new character, a barely adolescent young girl performed on opening night by Amalia Abecassis. Though this character doesn’t sing, she features prominently throughout this production, dancing in apparent imitation of Carmen and her Gypsy female maternal-figures early in the opera, and rushing to protect Carmen when she is menaced by her male Gypsy ‘keepers’. Baritone Zachary Nelson as Escamillo, the toreador who seduces Carmen and takes her away from Don José, was a bit weak in this macho role, his voice never rising to the occasion this role demands. 

Instead of Lillas Pastia’s tavern “near the ramparts of Sevilla,” Bietio gave us a vintage 1980s Mercedes Benz in Act II, and a bevy of vintage Benzes in Act III. The singers crowded around these cars, climbing inside them and atop them, carrying out various orgies of thumping and humping with the military Guardia Civil and anyone who happened to come by. Did it work dramatically? At best, only at a stretch. Largely, it seemed yet another opportunity missed. 

Conductor Carlo Montanaro led a briskly paced Carmen, and Chorus Director Ian Robertson contributed fine work from the Opera Chorus. Ultimately, if this production of Carmen failed to live up to its billing as thrillingly provocative, the fault in my opinion was entirely the responsibility of director Calixto Bietio and his revival director Joao Anton Rechi. The singers, chorus, and orchestra all did their part at least adequately, at times admirably. However, the staging was consistently disappointing and perplexing.


Around & About--Theater: Theater Explorations Summer Classes

Ken Bullock
Friday May 27, 2016 - 05:13:00 PM

Marion Fay's starting up her convivial and very interactive Theater Explorations adult ed class for the summer, running Mondays from 1-3 p. m., June 13 through July 25 (no class Monday, July 4) at the Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda, near the top of Solano Avenue and the tunnel.  

There will be six classes and four plays to see, at group discount ticket prices, including 'Red Velvet' at the SF Playhouse, 'Peter Pan at 70' at Berkeley Rep, and two more, including one at the Aurora. 

Playwrights, actors and directors will speak to the class during sessions. 

Registration is on the first day, Monday, June 13. Please tell Marion if you'd like to see 'Red Velvet' right away to receive full advance discount on the tickets. 

$60 plus discount ticket prices. marionf5@earthlink.net


Another Lost Venetian Opera Returns Thanks to Ars Minerva

Reviewed by James Roy MacBean
Friday May 27, 2016 - 04:56:00 PM

Ars Minerva ‘s Founder and Artistic Director Céline Ricci has done it again. Last year she brought us La Cleopatra, an opera by Daniele da Castrovillari that premiered in Venice in 1662 and was never performed since till Ricci revived it in San Francisco. This year she brings us Le Amazone nelle Isole Fortunate (The Amazons in the Fortunate Isles), an opera by Carlo Pallavicino that premiered at the Villa Contarini outside Venice in 1679 and was never performed since till Ricci staged it Saturday, May 21, and Sunday, May 22, at Marines Memorial Theater. Ricci discovered the existence of the scores for these long-forgotten operas in the Contarini Bequest collection in Venice’s Marciana Library.  

While The Amazons in the Fortunate Isles, unlike La Cleopatra, will not immediately invite comparison with the great operas of Claudio Monteverdi, it offers some lovely music and a plot that, well, is all over the place. Like any story about the Amazons, mythic women-warriors who shunned men, this opera takes place in fantasy-land. Here one encounters lesbianism, bi-sexuality, and rampant promiscuity. Céline Ricci, who directed this production, clearly set it in fantasy-land, opting for costumes that combined blue jeans, bikinis and huge feathered headdresses for the Amazons. When a shipwrecked man washes up on their shores, he too wears blue jeans. Later, after becoming the boy-toy love object of both Pulcheria, Queen of the Amazons, and Florinda, he sends a text message by smart phone to his commander, the Sultan of Egypt, warning him of Pulcheria’s plan to assassinate him after seducing him.  

Musically, two fine voices dominated this opera. As Pulcheria, French-born soprano Aurélie Veruni was excellent. As Florinda, local mezzo-soprano Kindra Scharich was sensational. Scharich’s voice is rich and lustrous, redolent with exquisite coloration. Veruni’s voice is bright-toned, with pleasantly piercing high notes. Vocally, Veruni and Scharich were outstanding. But they were by no means the only singers who offered fine performances. As Auralba, an Amazon in love with Florinda and jealous of her lover’s relations with Pulcheria, soprano Tonia D’Amelio sang beautifully and acted the part with great verve. Likewise, as Jocasta, the adopted daughter of Pulcheria, soprano Cara Gabrielson turned in a fine performance. A trio near the end of the opera brought wonderful singing from Gabrielson as Jocasta, D’Amelio as Auralba, and Scharich as Florinda. This trio was one of the musical highlights of the opera. Another highlight was the duet, “Wanting to love is wanting to suffer,” beautifully sung by d’Amelio as Auralba and Scharich as Florinda. Mezzo-soprano Molly Mahoney ably sang the role of Cillene, a woman gone mad for an imaginary male lover. Tenor Ryan Matos was less effective as the shipwrecked man, Numidio, though the role assigned to him was that of a wimpish, effeminate man who vacillates over which woman to love, Pulcheria or Florinda, and vacillates too over whether to side with the Amazons or with his Egyptian squadrons when they invade the Fortunate Isles. As the Sultan of Egypt, baritone Spencer Dodd sang capably, his robust voice ringing out powerfully. Two female dancers, Casey Lee Thorne and Coral Martin, added to the ambience with their intricately choreographed movements.  

The chamber orchestra was conducted from the harpsichord by Derek Tam. Addi Liu and Laura Rubenstein Salzedo were the violinists, Gretchen Claassen was the cellist, Adam Cockerham played theorbo, Henry Reed was the timpanist, and Amanda Cienfuegos and Jose Sanchez were the trumpeters. Together, this chamber orchestra played beautifully. Orchestral highlights included some lovely sleep-music to accompany Florinda’s nap, and rousing martial music when the Amazons gathered to fight the Sultan’s troops. Black-and-white images of imaginary ancient sites were the work of projection designer Patricia Nardi. Lighting was by Brian Poedy; and Muriel Maffre was choreographer. Ultimately, our thanks go to company director Céline Ricci for reviving yet another long-forgotten Venetian opera, this one having lain dormant for a mere 337 years! Given its outlandish plot and admittedly modest musical merits, it may lie dormant for another 337 years. 


San Francisco Silent Film Festival Is Next Weekend

Justin DeFreitas
Thursday May 26, 2016 - 02:16:00 PM
Laurel and Hardy’s Battle of the Century (1927)
Laurel and Hardy’s Battle of the Century (1927)

Take a break from the Bernie vs. Hillary battle and step back in time 100 years to an era when the idea of a woman governor, much less a woman president, was the subject of futuristic fiction.  

Just in time for California’s presidential primary, the San Francisco Silent Film Festival, running Thursday, June 2, through Sunday, June 5, at the Castro Theatre, presents a timely and topical century-old melodrama called Mothers of Men (1917), which depicts a future in which a woman holds high political office. Shot in the Bay Area and Santa Cruz, the film was released six years after California women won the right to vote and two years before passage of the Nineteenth Amendment. Showing at 4:30 p.m. Friday, the film depicts a determined heroine ascending to governor while fending off threats to her integrity.  

It’s just one of nineteen programs of silent-era treasures showing over four days, each presented with live musical accompaniment by some of the world’s best practitioners of the art. The festival opens and closes with two icons of the era: Louise Brooks kicks things off at 7 p.m. Thursday as a freight-hopping vagabond in Beggars of Life (1928) and Douglas Fairbanks calls it a wrap on Sunday with one of his pre-swashbuckling comedies, the kinetic and surreal When the Clouds Roll By (1919), at 8:30 p.m. In between those surefire crowd-pleasers is a diverse program — everything from Arctic adventure to Broadway murder mystery, from Japanese family drama to French farce.  

One of the festival’s centerpieces this year is Within Our Gates (1920), the earliest surviving film directed by an African American. Oscar Micheaux’s film depicts the early days of Jim Crow, the resurgence of the KKK, and the Great Migration in the story of a young woman who ventures to the North to raise money for a school in the South. The film will be accompanied by Michael Morgan conducting the East Bay Symphony and Chorus in a score composed by Adolphus Hailstork. 

A trio of expressionistic films starts at 7:15 p.m. Friday with Varieté (1925), one of the many great German films shot by über-cinematographer Karl Freund, whose “unchained camera” follows acrobats and trapeze artists in this melodrama of love and lust. Another German classic, Destiny (1921), heralded a series of landmark films by Fritz Lang, the Austrian-born director of M, Metropolis, and Dr. Mabuse. Destiny (Sunday, 3:45) tells the story of a bereaved young bride whom the figure of Death deters from suicide. The film features Lang’s usual predilection for spectacle, this time in a fantasy-adventure whose magic-carpet special effects and depiction of Death inspired everyone from Fairbanks to Ingmar Bergman. The debt owed to these and other German silent classics is on display at 3 p.m. Saturday in Shooting Stars (1928), the debut feature by Anthony Asquith, the British director of A Cottage on Dartmoor.  

The festival comes back down to earth for Laurel and Hardy’s Battle of the Century (1927), one of the legendary lost films of the silent era now restored to its full glory. The second reel, missing for more than sixty years, contains an epic pie fight that required an entire day’s output by the L.A. Pie Company to both satirize and elevate to its highest expression the most clichéd of comedy tropes. The missing reel was discovered last year by Jon Mirsalis, an East Bay film collector and musician who will accompany Battle of the Century on piano. 

The San Francisco Silent Film Festival, Thursday, June 2 through Sunday, June 5, at the Castro Theatre, 429 Castro, 415-621-6350.


What's Up, Docs? 15th SF Documentary Film Festival—June 2-16, 2016

Gar Smith
Thursday May 26, 2016 - 02:11:00 PM

The 15th San Francisco Documentary Film Festival (aka SF DocFest) is revving up its traditional rambunctious roster of party-nights and screenings DocFest with run for two weeks, from June 2-16. This year's line-up includes 32 premieres—including seven world premieres. Screenings are set for the Roxie Theater (16th & Valencia), Vogue Theater (Sacramento & Presidio) and Chinatown's newly restored Great Star Theater (Jackson & Kearny). 

Note: The following list of films is only a small selection of the DocFest's 45 feature-length and 50 short films from 16 countries. Complete information is available online at www.sfindie.com. For more details, contact DocFest at 415-662-FEST or info@sfindie.com

 

 

Opening Night: Don't Call Them 'Surf Bunnies' 

Thursday, June 2 at 8PM at the Great Star Theater.  

This year's DocFest begins with a splash—the World Premiere of It Ain't Pretty, a big screen tribute to the female big wave surfers who are challenging what used to be a traditionally all-male sport by riding the breakers from Ocean Beach to Pacifica and Half Moon Bay. Local filmmaker Dayla Soul (and several of the women surfers who star in the film) will be on hand for the screening. Following the screening, there will be an after-party with the cast and crew. 

 

Vogue Opening Night Film – 14 Minutes from Earth 

Thursday, June 10 at 7:45PM at the Vogue Theater 

DocFest's opening treat at the historic Vogue Theater features the West Coast premiere of 14 Minutes from Earth, which documents an amazing, odd-ball adventure undertaken by a 57-year-old Google Executive named Alan Eustace. On October 24, 2014, Eustace climbed into a spacesuit and strapped himself to a ginormous balloon that slowly lifted him to the edge of space. And then Eustace took a "great leap for all Googlekind," plunging into nothingness for a 14-minute plunge back to Terra Firma. This now ranks as the world record for the highest flight and free fall human history. 

Centerpiece Film – Kate Plays Christine 

Thursday, June 9 at 7PM at Roxie Theater.  

This new film by 2013 DocFest award-winner Robert Greene, capped the Sundance Film Festival's Documentary Special Jury Award for Writing. Greene's lens shadows actress Kate Lyn Sheil as undertakes the grim challenge of portraying Christine Chubbuck, a TV news anchor who shocked viewers when she committed suicide—live, on air—in 1974. Greene is expected to be in attendance for the West Coast Premiere. 

 

Closing Night Film – Silicon Cowboys 

Thursday, June 16 at 7PM at Roxie Theater. 

Berkeley filmmaker and Academy Award nominee Jason Cohen's Silicon Cowboys has been selected for the closing screening. These "silicon cowboys" are a trio to Texas engineers who decided—kind of on a whim—to start a new business together. Their first idea was to open a Mexican restaurant. Their second idea was more momentous. They wound up creating the Compaq computer and, in the process nearly toppled IBM, whose computers previously ruled the 1980’s unchallenged. Cohen and some of the Texas "Davids" who challenged the Big Blue "Goliath" will be in attendance. 

Special One-of-a-Kind Cine-Parties 

Saturday, June 3: The Bawdy Caste—a live sing-a-long to the music of Rocky Horror Picture Show. At the Great Star. 

Sunday, June 4: Between the Beats—with some of the SF rave scene's best DJs. At the Great Star. 

Friday, June 10: Prince—Music video sing-a-long to commemorate the Artist Formerly Known As. At the Roxie. 

Saturday, June 11: The Principle—The Dark Room hosts a "Movie Roast" of a "notorious Sun-revolves-around-the-Earth doc." 

Local Filmmaker Highlights 

 

Daughters of the Forest by SF's Samantha Grant follows a band of youngsters from Paraguay's revolutionary Forest Girls School on their quest to discover how to protect one of the planet's most remote forests. 

San Francisco filmmaker/archivist Rick Prelinger's Lost Landscapes of Los Angeles, goes time-traveling via a rare collection of photo and video archives depicting the Los Angeles of the 1920’s-1960’s. 

Ken Kesey’s son Zane has directed Going Further, an ode to his father’s Prankster legacy. 

French filmmaker Charles Redon’s taut and fraught In California offers a visual and visceral autopsy of his troubled relationship with his ballerina girlfriend as she vies for a place on stage with the San Francisco Ballet. 

Finally, Taggart Siegel and his SF-based company Collective Eye present Seed: The Untold Story, with interviews that elevate the work of the dedicated eco-activists fighting the corporate agenda of Big Seed monopolists in hopes of safeguarding the planet's threatened crop diversity. 

Additional Highlights 

SF's Tracy Droz Tragos returns to DocFest with her HBO documentary Abortion: Stories Women Tell. 

Joey Skaggs, the godfather of the media hoax, is the subject of Andrea Marini’s Art of the Prank

 

Pablo Alvarez and Tony Massil capture the world of 80-year-old Frank Furko and his 20-pound performing house cat, Pudgie Wudgie, in Frank and the Wondercat

Melody Gilbert's The Summer Help, exposes the summertime travails of international students who flock to US resorts and tourist spots each summer to tidy hotel rooms, clean dishes and cook burritos for vacationing Americans. 

Josh Bishop's Made in Japan provides a peek into the world of Brooklyn artist (and Dungeons and Dragons entrepreneur) Stefan Pokorny in The Dwarvenaut

William Kirkley’s Orange Sunshine illuminates the untold tale of the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, a cult of hippy-surfers from Southern California that emerged as the world's largest supplier of psychedelic drugs. 

Shawn Stutler’s Rocky Horror Changed My Life steps into the lives of the die-hard "Time-Warp" devotees who have made the Rocky Horror Picture Show the longest-running movie in the history of the galaxy. 

And Jay Cheel captures the improbable tale of two inventors who become so obsessed with H.G. Well’s novel, The Time Machine, that they actually attempt to turn fiction into reality in How to Build a Time Machine

Musical Doc Spotlights 

 

Angela Boatwright’s Los Punks: We Are All We Have explores the punk rock subculture in the backyards of South Central and East Los Angeles. 

Shaun Colon’s A Fat Wreck is an inspirational salute to the SF-based music label, Fat Wreck Chords. 

Martin O’Brien’s world premiere of Between the Beats travels back to the 1990s when San Francisco was ground zero in the world of rave music. 

And Bobby J. Brown’s serves up a revealing behind-the-scenes/inside-the-band doc called Tear the Roof Off: The Untold Story of Parliament Funkadelic

Non-Fiction Vanguard Award: Sean Dunne 

Friday, June 3 at 7PM at Roxie Theater and the Bad Art Gallery 

"SF DocFest is proud to honor filmmaker Sean Dunne with its 2016 Non-Fiction Vanguard Award. As both a documentary filmmaker and internet phenom, Brooklyn-based Sean Dunne has built a burgeoning reputation for himself with a series of web distributed short and feature films that have demonstrated a strong visual sense and a fascination with everyday people and the extraordinary stories that exist all around us. 

"This award is a celebration of that attitude and Sean Dunne's films that have their own off-beat approach to documenting the human condition. Filming in a guerrilla-style, his interviews have a strangely intimate style as he delves deep into the lives of his subjects that could be categorized as living on the fringes of society. However, his films don't view his subjects as "fringe" and it is instead his empathy and rapport with them that is evident in the (sometimes shockingly) open manner of his subjects on screen." 

Saturday, June 4 at 12PM at Roxie Theater.  

DocFest is screening Dunne’s feature-length doc, Cam Girlz, an intimate exploration of the world of webcam sex workers that reveals the unexpected perks of being a stay-at-home escort. 

Saturday, June 3 at 7PM at Roxie Theater.  

A retrospective of Dunne’s short films—including Trump Rally (2016), Florida Man (2015), The Archive (2011), The Bowler (2010), and Man in Van (2009) will be presented the day before the Cam Girlz screeing. 

 

General Information about DocFest 

Regular tickets: 12/advance, $13/at the door. All access DocPass: $200. 

For more information visit sfindie.com or contact DocFest at 415-662-FEST or info@sfindie.com


50 Years of Bringing Music to the People
June 3, 4 & 5 at UC Berkeley
Berkeley Community Chorus & Orchestra Performs Anti-War Masterpiece

Sally Douglas Arce
Thursday May 26, 2016 - 02:06:00 PM
Mary Borders (left) has sung with the Berkeley Community Chorus and Orchestra for 39 years.  She and  Joanne Ricketts (right), who has been with BCCO for 9 years, will join some 220 fellow chorus members in performances of an anti-war classical masterpiece on June 3, 4 and 5 at Hertz Hall on the U.C. Berkeley campus.   For the past five decades, BCCO has operated on the principle that great music should be available to all.  BCCO’s concerts are always free.
Ama Torrance
Mary Borders (left) has sung with the Berkeley Community Chorus and Orchestra for 39 years. She and Joanne Ricketts (right), who has been with BCCO for 9 years, will join some 220 fellow chorus members in performances of an anti-war classical masterpiece on June 3, 4 and 5 at Hertz Hall on the U.C. Berkeley campus. For the past five decades, BCCO has operated on the principle that great music should be available to all. BCCO’s concerts are always free.
Eugene Jones, the founder of Berkeley Community Chorus and Orchestra, was its director from 1966 to 1988.  Celebrating its 50th anniversary, BCCO will perform Benjamin Britten's War Requiem, an anti-war classical masterpiece, on June 3, 4 and 5 at Hertz Hall on the U.C. Berkeley campus.   For the past five decades, BCCO has operated on the principle that great music should be available to all.  BCCO’s concerts are always free.  For information, visit http://bcco.org or phone 510-433-9599.
The Eugene Jones' family
Eugene Jones, the founder of Berkeley Community Chorus and Orchestra, was its director from 1966 to 1988. Celebrating its 50th anniversary, BCCO will perform Benjamin Britten's War Requiem, an anti-war classical masterpiece, on June 3, 4 and 5 at Hertz Hall on the U.C. Berkeley campus. For the past five decades, BCCO has operated on the principle that great music should be available to all. BCCO’s concerts are always free. For information, visit http://bcco.org or phone 510-433-9599.
The Eugene Jones' family
The Berkeley Community Chorus and Orchestra (BCCO) celebrates its 50th anniversary.  Under the leadership of director Ming Luke, BCCO will perform Benjamin Britten's War Requiem, an anti-war classical masterpiece, on June 3, 4 and 5 at Hertz Hall on the U.C. Berkeley campus.   For the past five decades, BCCO has operated on the principle that great music should be available to all.  BCCO’s concerts are always free.  For information, visit http://bcco.org or phone 510-433-9599.
Bill Hocker
The Berkeley Community Chorus and Orchestra (BCCO) celebrates its 50th anniversary. Under the leadership of director Ming Luke, BCCO will perform Benjamin Britten's War Requiem, an anti-war classical masterpiece, on June 3, 4 and 5 at Hertz Hall on the U.C. Berkeley campus. For the past five decades, BCCO has operated on the principle that great music should be available to all. BCCO’s concerts are always free. For information, visit http://bcco.org or phone 510-433-9599.

The Berkeley Community Chorus & Orchestra (BCCO) marks its 50th anniversary with performances of an anti-war classical masterpiece concerts on June 3, 4 and 5 at Hertz Hall on the U.C. Berkeley campus. For the past five decades, BCCO has operated on the principle that great music should be available to all. BCCO’s concerts are always free. 

On June 3, 4 and 5, the 220-member chorus will perform Benjamin Britten's War Requiem Op. 66 at Hertz Hall on the UC Berkeley campus. Britten was a pacifist. He was commissioned to write this work to mark the consecration of the new Coventry Cathedral, which was built after the original fourteenth-century structure was destroyed in a World War II bombing raid. This anti-war piece includes poetry interspersed with the chorus and orchestra parts. 

“We call it our first 50 years and its about the power of singing in community,” says Mary Borders, who lives in North Oakland and has been with BCCO for 39 years. Borders, a soprano, has sung under all three music directors. Eugene Jones, an Oakland firefighter and accomplished professional musician, founded BCCO. He believed that anyone who wanted to sing could sing. Arlene Sagan, a passionate educator, also believed that people did not need to be professionals to sing. Through hard work and the support of fellow BCCO chorus members, they performed classical masterworks. Jones and Sagan had completed other careers and they brought enthusiasm and intensity to directing BCCO. 

Current director Ming Luke is an innovator, who has initiated a mentoring program for assistant directors. He has written, arranged and performed over 120 education concerts with the Berkeley Symphony, for whom he is the associate conductor. He conducts and guest conducts for other orchestras. 

Eugene Jones founded BCCO in 1966, under the auspices of the Berkeley Adult Education Program. With persistence, charisma, talent, and devotion he realized his dream of creating a chorus of non-auditioned singers and an orchestra drawn from the community that together would perform choral masterworks in free concerts for the general public. 

Borders has fond memories of Eugene Jones and his zeal for classical music. “He went beyond teaching us music theory and how to sing,” Borders says. “He gave the chorus a way to relate to the feelings in the music and a way to bring the music to life.” 

Jones’s daughter, Jeneane Jones, says her father taught with humor. During concerts, he would open his tuxedo to reveal specially made t-shirts with instructions to the chorus. Text included: “Watch the stick” and “Watch the body language,” the latter reminding singers to check their posture and sing from their diaphragm. 

Borders is a BCCO singer from earlier years, who is an active chorus member today. Berkeley residents, Linda Morris, a tenor, and Liz Raymer, an alto, Jan Murota, an alto, and Rhishi Limaye, a tenor, sing with BCCO. 

Liz Raymer, who is 86 year, joined BCCO for 22 years ago. "I sing because it gives me incredible joy,” Raymer says. “I love this kind of music and always have. I’ve probably sung 20 different requiems and classical pieces. It’s been proven that singing helps your emotional state and your brain." 

Ten years ago, Linda Morris began to sing with BCCO 10 years ago. She is a retired English professor with a specialty in American humor, women’s humor, and Mark Twain. Morris is a member of BCCO’s board of directors and past president of the board. 

Rhishikesh Limaye, who is in his 30s and a BCCO tenor, grew up in India and listened to Indian classical music. While taking coursework at UC Berkeley to complete a master’s degree in electrical engineering, he took a sight-reading class to learn more about Western music and classical music. “I like singing with BCCO,” Limaye says. “It gives me an opportunity to experience a big choral work by being a part of it and not just an audience member.” 

Janice Murota, a Berkeley native and retired physician, joined BCCO five years ago. “Singing in BCCO has opened up a world of music previously unknown to me,” Murota says. “BCCO combines the unusual traits of pursuing serious music at the highest level with a large, warm community.” 

With director Luke’s urging, BCCO has developed collaborations with orchestras and choruses, including the Oakland-East Bay Gay Men’s Chorus and the San Francisco Girls Chorus. In addition, this June, at Luke’s urging, BCCO chorus members will embark on their second international tour. 

Murota says, “It's astounding to me that we, amateur singers, work with the distinguished Ming Luke. He has raised the musical artistry of the BCCO chorus to new heights. I'm sure he has other plans to expand our reach and further our goal of bringing great music to everyone.” 

Joanne Ricketts, an alto, calls BCCO a musical inspiration. Over her nine years with the chorus, Ricketts sees BCCO as a bridge connecting each individual’s experience, no matter how different those experiences might be. 

“For me BCCO represents everything heaven represents,” Ricketts says. “It’s community. It’s open acceptance. Music allows for the expression of emotions that can’t always be put into words.” 

Ricketts’ musical experiences started with playing the flute in the fourth grade. She continues to play the flute, sings with her church choir and with BCCO, which has been her go-to place to sing. 

BCCO is a non-auditioned community chorus dedicated to performing major classical works with orchestral accompaniment, free to the public. BCCO draws singers from the broader Bay Area regardless of musical training or experience. It is rare for a chorus to accept singers without an audition. It is even more extraordinary to offer choral masterworks with full orchestration of this caliber free of charge. Chorus members pay tuition. 

Under the leadership of director Luke, BCCO will present three performances of Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem celebrating its 50th anniversary on Friday, June 3, at 8 p.m.; Saturday, June 4, at 4 p.m.; and Sunday, June 5, at 4 p.m. All BCCO concerts take place at Hertz Hall on the U.C. Berkeley campus. Concerts are free and open to the public; donations are encouraged. A pre-concert talk begins one hour before each of the three concerts. 

For information about BCCO concerts and events, call 510-433-9599 See http://bcco.org/ 

 

 

 


Hidden Life in Berkeley Subject of Talk on May 28, 2016 at the Berkeley Public Library, Central Branch

Thursday May 26, 2016 - 02:49:00 PM

Richard Schwartz will give an illustrated talk on the hidden Indian Life in Berkeley and the evidence surrounding it. He will demonstrate how the discovery and protection of artifacts and history combine as a powerful tool to begin to understand the extent Native Americans lived within what became the city of Berkeley. He will demonstrate how a culture can be learned or lost by the efforts and actions of current residents and how this history might exist in your own back yard. Community Room, Berkeley Main Library, 2090 Kittredge St., Berkeley, 94704. 1pm. tel 981-6100.