Oakland police deployed a number of tactical teams this morning to serve 16 warrants in at least three counties, making 12 arrests while seizing drugs, cash and a number of firearms, according to Acting Deputy Chief Roland Holmgren.

Reports of unspecified police activity have surfaced in Berkeley this morning, involving the closure of northbound Shattuck Avenue near the University of California at Berkeley campus as well as a California Highway Patrol airplane circling overhead before dawn, waking a number of residents who complained on social media. 

Holmgren was interviewed, apparently by other Oakland police personnel, in a video released by the department shortly before noon today. 

"We're going after an infamous West Oakland gang we believe, and feel very confident, were responsible for terrorizing our community," Holmgren said.  

The suspects have been involved in shootings, robberies and murders in cities as far away as Pittsburg, Antioch, Tracy and Stockton, according to Holmgren. 

"They really knew no boundaries when it came to their criminal efforts," he said. 

He added that the law enforcement operations have taken place both within Oakland's city limits as well as in neighboring cities.  

So far, however, none of those law enforcement agencies have commented on whether their operations this morning are related to one another.

One high school student was hospitalized with stab wounds and another student was arrested after they got into a fight at the Martin Luther King Jr. Civic Center Park in Berkeley shortly before 10 a.m. today, Berkeley school officials said in a statement. 

In a somewhat conflicting statement, Berkeley police said a 17-year-old was stabbed and two 16-year-olds were arrested but didn't identify them as students. 

The school district said administrators and safety staff from Berkeley High School, which is across the street from the park, responded to the fight, which it said involved one student from the Berkeley Independent Study program and one from the Berkeley Technology Academy. 

Berkeley police spokesman Officer Byron White said the Police Department's school resource officer called for emergency cover at about 9:53 a.m. to assist him when he learned of a large fight at Civic Center Park. 

White said, "Officers found an agitated crowd of people in the area of an apparent fight and learned a female teenage juvenile, age 17, had been stabbed in the torso" so officers immediately called for medical assistance. 

White said officers found a second female juvenile, age 16, "who had been sprayed by an unknown assailant with a chemical irritant-possibly pepper spray." 

White said investigators later determined that the 16-ear-old juvenile who had been sprayed was responsible for stabbing the 17-year-old and she was arrested on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon. 

White said there was "a chaotic environment with multiple confrontations" and an officer who was kneeling down and attending to the juvenile who had been pepper-sprayed was approached by a third female juvenile, age 16, who yelled at him. 

White said the officer directed the third juvenile to stay back but ultimately a second officer had to come to the aid of the first officer "and ended up taking the interfering, non-compliant juvenile into custody." He said that juvenile was arrested on suspicion of obstructing a police officer and later was released to her parents. 

White said the 17-year-old girl who was stabbed was transported to a hospital with injuries that are not believed to be life-threatening. 

School district officials said they will share additional details about the fight later on if they deem them to be relevant or appropriate following a complete investigation of the incident.  

The officials said, "As always, campus safety and student safety will remain our priority."

The Berkeley City Council has voted by a narrow 5-3 margin to approve a resolution that orders the city's Police Department not to post photos of people arrested at protests unless they pose an immediate threat to the public's safety.

Councilmembers Cheryl Davila and Kate Harrison proposed changing the Police Department's photo policy after the department released mugshots of anti-fascist counter-protesters who were arrested at an anti-Marxism rally in Berkeley on Aug. 5.

Davila and Harrison wrote in a letter to the council that conservative news outlets publicized the names of the people who were arrested at that rally "to foment attacks against those who speak out against racism and fascism." 

Davila and Harrison alleged that by issuing the mugshots and names and addresses of those who were arrested the Police Department "contributed to 'doxing' people -- publishing personal information to be used to harass and threaten people at their homes and places of work." 

Davila and Harrison also said Berkeley should resist Public Records Act (PRA) requests for arrest photos and identifying information on people who have been arrested when doing so poses a risk to their safety as a result of threats against them.  

Their proposal did nothing to limit the restrictive policy to protest events.  

Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguin joined Davila and Harrison in expressing concern about the department's policy but at Tuesday night's meeting he offered a revised resolution limiting the new policy to arrests during First Amendment events, such as protests. 

No coherent definition of First Amendment events was provided in the revision.  

Councilmember Ben Bartlett opposed the change because he was concerned that interpretation and enforcement would be subjective. Bartlett, who is African-American, reminded his colleagues that the "racial element is always at play" in such decisions. 

Arreguin said in a letter to the council that he doesn't want the city to resist PRA requests because "the city currently has the power to withhold this information if there is a concern that its release will endanger a person." This is already city policy and state law, Harrison pointed out. 

After a lengthy debate the City Council approved a motion by Councilwoman Sophie Hahn that was similar to Arreguin's proposal in limiting the policy to barring photos from arrests at First Amendment events. 

Hahn, Arreguin, Linda Maio, Lori Droste and Susan Wengraf voted for that proposal and Harrison, Davila and Ben Bartlett voted against it. Kriss Worthington was absent. 

Arreguin's spokeswoman Karina Ioffee said today that the mayor didn't support the original proposal by Harrison and Davila because it was "too broad" and might have completely barred the Police Department from releasing photographs of suspects. 

But Harrison noted today that the original proposal would have allowed police to release photos of people who pose an immediate threat to the public safety of the community, such as being wanted for serial rape, homicide or felony assault. 

Harrison said she voted against the revised policy because it was "a significant change" from the original proposal.

This is not rocket science, folks.

“Innocent until proven guilty” is historically a central tenet of Anglo-American common law, of human rights law all over the world. It’s even been enunciated, recently and improbably, by Donald Trump on behalf of his pick for the Supreme Court job.

But it’s a rule for criminal prosecution, not a recipe for what should be on a resume for a job application. Supreme Court candidates, like anyone seeking a position, used to be required to demonstrate suitability for the work in question. That’s what the Republicans have been hoping Brett Kavanagh would be able to do, though contrary assertions by assaulted women have made his task more difficult. His naked display of assumed entitlement yesterday shows that even a batshit crazy drunk liar is presumed innocent if he went to the right prep school.

However, that’s not how things are supposed to work when a crime is suspected. In the criminal realm in this country, traditionally police agencies arrest suspected evil doers, prosecutors charge suspects with whatever violation of law seems provable, and only at the end of the process do juries convict and judges assign punishment.

This morning it seemed that if you’re Brett Kavanaugh you might skip all that nonsense. It appeared that police would have nothing to do with him and there would be no punishment. I hope that's wrong, though I still doubt that any charges will be filed.

That’s why the remarkable decision of the Berkeley Police, with or without the collusion of their civilian managers, to teach a lesson to self-described “anti-fascists” by publicizing their names and booking photos was deeply inappropriate. As of this writing most if not all of those arrested on August 5, mostly because they were carrying banned objects, have not been charged with anything.  

As reported in the East Bay Express by Darwin Bond-Graham, “Berkeley officials devised a plan to use social media to ‘create a counternarrative’ that the police were, in fact, confiscating weapons and making arrests. One way they attempted to spread this counter-narrative was by rapidly tweeting out the mug shots, names, and cities of residence of people arrested at the rallies.” 

Bond-Graham quoted a Berkeley Police Department document which boasted of numerous social media references to the arrests. 

" ‘The message had a deep impact on the narrative about the City's ability to enforce the rule of law,’ city officials concluded in the policy document. ‘Almost immediately, the narrative about BPD and the City changed online and in the media .’ " 

What? Since when has it been the job of police agencies and their management allies to create PR campaigns on topics of their choice? And who said they could use arrested but not charged citizens as bad examples to discourage future activities? 

Councilmember Kate Harrison, along with Councilmember Davila one of the authors of a proposal on last Tuesday’s City Council Agenda to rein in this inappropriate behavior, noted at the meeting that her first job out of college was working with the ACLU to analyse materials from the infamous Cointelpro program, which was a huge FBI effort in the ‘60s and ‘70s to discredit and disrupt domestic dissent of all kinds, including civil rights and anti-war activities.  

“Creating a counter narrative” was a core Cointelpro goal. Sixties nostalgia to the contrary notwithstanding, we don’t want to revive Cointelpro in Berkeley in 2018. 

In the City Council’s discussion of the BPD scheme earlier this week, a lot of emphasis was placed on the use of trendy social media to distribute police propaganda, but that’s just a part of the problem. No matter how it’s distributed, publicizing people’s personal information—often called doxing—can be used to harm them in a variety of media. The technique has become newly popular as it works at internet speed.  

Here at the slow-news online Planet I got the names and photos as part of an old-school emailed press release. I pretty much ignored them as inappropriate. I did notice that one of the arrested was a young member of a family I’ve known and respected for more than 50 years, and that alone made me suspicious of the police accusations. 

There are only a couple of good reasons for publishing names and pictures of people who haven’t been charged. One is to warn the public about imminent danger when a violent suspect is at large. The other is to make sure that an arrested individual’s family and friends can find out what’s happened to them. 

The arrests under discussion were products of a questionable council decision to grant the city manager unilateral authority to ban anything that could conceivably be used as a weapon from the protest environs. Covering the face is also verboten under this policy.  

In practice, what this meant was that one of the arrestees was a 70-year-old woman who was carrying a banner with what she described on Tuesday as cardboard sticks to hold it with. Others reported similar innocuous-seeming objects as the contraband which caused them to be arrested. They said they were arrested even after the police had confiscated the supposedly dangerous object.  

Mayor Arreguin and Councilmember Hahn collaborated on a watered-down substitute motion of the Harrison-Davila proposal which limited the restriction on police doxing to “First Amendment” activities, showing that they’d completely missed the point. The tone was sanctimonious, especially after Lori Droste insisted on an amendment disavowing violence. 

Councilmember Bartlett warned that deciding what constitutes a First Amendment event would inevitably be subjective. 

“Inherently”, he pointed out to audience applause, “there is an erosion of [the principle] that people are innocent until proven guilty. … I’ve never understood why we publish people's photos that are not guilty, not even mentioning the racial elements that are always at play…Without even going too deep in that, we know that situation.” 

Doxing arrestees before they’ve been charged or convicted risks—no, just about guarantees—unfair punishment of citizens presumed to be innocent. And if they’re Black, their odds of being arrested increase dramatically, as Councilmembers Bartlett and Davila, both with personal experience of Existing While Black, realize, so they supported the Harrison proposal.  

I myself, a White woman over 70, am currently carrying a nice metal cane, courtesy of Walgreen’s. It’s more than conceivable that if I wandered into a demonstration with my cane I’d risk being arrested and doxed, even if I cared nothing about what was being protested. 

I might even be trying to report on said protest without participating in it. I did indeed spend some time talking to white supremacists at a couple of earlier events before I banged up my knee and acquired the cane. White Privilege will probably protect me in the end (and I did go to an appropriate prep school) but my Black family and friends are more at risk. 

Berkeley Police have plenty to do without deciding what’s a First Amendment Event. They are not tasked with creating counter-narratives on social media, nor should they be. 

If the City Manager or the Chief of Police participated in this Cointelpro-lite folly, the Berkeley City Council should have reprimanded them. And along with the five councilmembers who voted for the weak-as-water substitute motion, they should recall their high school civics class (do they still have them anymore?) to remind themselves that in our system it’s conviction first and punishment afterwards, not the other way around.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

sitting in the back with the polyester crowd
they don't get crazy and they don't get loud
swishing up the stairwell suits like paint
comforting each other with a soft lament
how sad these people are so confused
how sad these people don't know how to lose
or just stay home or stay in bed
and watch tv with a gun to their head
a little old joke and it goes right down
while the same old song goes round and round
how we got no class and we got no style
and they laugh so loud they all speed dial
and they just can't lose but if they do
it's a cocktail party and a brand new shoe
and a couple of forms and a minor pause
and a yellow brick road all the way to Oz
have you walked the road I'll bet you have
but you still end up on a different path
where the door slams shut and you're at square one
and you l can't figure out what you done
and the painted suits go tweet tweet tweet
and dust their hands and it's all complete
in a rocking blink of a winking eye
and you all get screwed and then you die 

 

On October 1st the legal minimum wage in Berkeley increases to $15 an hour. And to prevent inflation from eroding its value, beginning next year on July 1 the minimum wage will increase in tandem with the rate of inflation. Unlike most minimum wage laws, including the federal law, the Berkeley ordinance is among the very few that will adjust the minimum wage to the rising cost of living.

For those who wait tables at restaurants there is very good news. The tips belong entirely to these employees. The mandated $15 an hour wage is in addition to the tips.

Also, employers are required to pay sick leave, which is up to 48 hours in businesses that employ under 25 employees. That's the equivalent of six days for full time workers. For larger businesses, the law entitles workers to sick leave up to 72 hours, which is the equivalent of 9 days.

Especially important, the law has teeth. Employers who violate the ordinance could be fined as high as $1,000 for retaliation against an employee for exercising his or her rights, and up to $500 for other violations including the failure to post notices that inform employees of their rights.

The organizations and individuals who have been involved in persuading the Berkeley City Council to enact the minimum wage law were engaged in an uphill battle. Two years ago, when the minimum wage law was proposed, a majority of the City Council members were adamantly opposed to it. But as a result of an unrelenting organizing campaign and the tremendous community support for a minimum wage law, the ordinance was approved unanimously. 

However, one important concession that was made is to allow nonprofit and governmental entities to hire young people at lower wages provided the job includes a serious training and education component. But many nonprofit corporations, whose CEO's earn annually millions of dollars, are nonprofit in name only. There is concern that some of these placements entail no training, and serve only as an excuse to pay sub-minimum wages. These businesses should be required to pay substantial fines to assure that they obey the law. Violators should not enjoy an advantage over the majority of employers, most of whom will abide by the ordinance. 

Although wage issues are immensely important, it is also crucial to address the conditions of work. At the request of Council Member Kate Harrison, the Berkeley City Council recommended to its Labor Commission that they draft a proposal to the City Council for the purpose of requiring employers to give sufficient advanced notice of schedule changes. For many workers,such as women with young children, too short a notice could impose an immense hardship. Requiring employers to provide adequate advance notice to employees is among our next challenges. 

Employees working in Berkeley who would like more information or believe that their rights have been violated, should contact Nathan Dahl, Coordinator of the Community Development Project. 

Email Address: ndahl@cityofberkeley.info

We have no voice in city politics. Today, we have a government that is a mirror of the corporate structure, complete with its cultural and ethical corruption, and its backroom deals. Go to any City Council meeting, even a banal one like the last one on Sept. 25, 2018, and you will see all that at work. The work of business comes first, people’s participation, politely called “public comment,” is done for show, and policies are made that turn people against each other.

In other words, the people become nothing more than the raw material which the corporation called city government uses to produce the city as a product. We are economic objects, the props of procedure the output from which is called administration.

You know how you know that politics is the backroom kind? Elected officials don’t talk to each other when deciding on an issue. They talk about themselves, with no time wasted on dialogue because they already hashed it out somewhere else and know how they are going to vote.

It hasn’t always been this way. There was a time when thousands of people on the street forced the forces of corporate comportment to meet the needs of the residents. And as a result, people were elected to City Council that did things for the benefit of the people. No more. Now, the City Council does things for corporate business (telecommunications, advertising, the police, real estate, construction, etc.), and leaves the existence, let alone the well-being, of ordinary humans to be washed away under a flood of money (a new stadium, 18 story hotels, police overtime for homeless encampments raids, and police surveillance technology – Stingray, Automated License Plate Readers, Lapel Cameras). They buy instruments of torture (pepper spray), but won’t recondition the warm water pools to ease people’s pain. 

You would think that, with a flood of money pouring through the town, that some of it would adhere to people, or trickle down. Think again. Whole communities are dislocated and are now living elsewhere out of impoverishment. That’s what corporate economics does, it impoverishes. They pay some people to call it the “income gap,” as if it was just part of existence. But that’s bull. One side does it to the other. 

So, for years, we have had the same old example, which City Council refuses to deal with in a human non-corporate way – homelessness, created by the city’s inability to save people from impoverishing rent hikes and subsequent community displacement. People living on the street need toilet facilities. The city refuses to provide them in order to create hostility in the neighborhoods between the housed and the homeless. The latter end up soiling areas of neighborhoods, creating hostility which the city then uses as a reason to raid the encampments and eject its residents. It’s called social control, and it’s done by a control-oriented government, acting like any other corporate middle-management would act. A human-oriented government would have provided toilets for the homeless out of concern for the neighborhoods. 

At the last City Council meeting (Sept. 25, 2018), the 8^th Amendment argument for why homeless encampment raids are illegal was mentioned by a few people. It is refreshing that it is becoming a household concept. Since the city is not empowered to set aside an area for an encampment, it can’t say that it can still evict an encampment from one public area, to move it to another. Moving homeless people who have committed no overt illegal acts, without offering them shelter as per the 8^th Amendment decision, is a form of illegal punishment as such. But the corporate mentality will look for loopholes in such a prohibition in order to get around its human responsibility. 

We Have No Voice

Here’s how the City Council scenario works. First step, the consent calendar is modified and voted on. The mayor then decides the order in which action items are going to be discussed. Each item is introduced by a councilmember. This generally also involves some extemporaneous remarks on the issue by the Mayor. The Mayor then calls for public comment, and people line up to speak. You get a long series of disorganized monologues, for and against, all vying for space that becomes cacophonous and thus ignorable. After this public comment period, council then discusses the item, and votes on it as a motion. When the motion carries, policy is made. When it doesn’t, a problem is left unresolved (human-oriented motions are generally voted down or turned into money; business-oriented motions generally pass). 

That’s four steps. In each of these steps, the people have no voice, though they get to speak. The irony of corporate existence is that to speak and to have a voice are not the same thing.  

1- Modifying the consent calendar. Any councilmember could take any item off consent, in order to have it discussed as an “action item.” It used to be that if four people from the audience spoke against an item being “on consent,” it would be taken off consent. That rule has been changed recently, so that now, only councilmembers can take an item off consent. The people have lost that tiny ability to affect the agenda. 

What does this mean? Something being on consent implies that the council is favorably unanimous on the item. What the old system did was to enable the people to override council unanimity if the people wanted the chance to speak on the issue, and perhaps call for its modification or non-acceptance. The people no longer have the ability to override that unanimity. We are reduced to begging councilmembers for that small benefice. 

2- The Mayor decides the action agenda. After the consent calendar is passed, what is left is the action calendar, items that might need to be discussed. Items generally fall into one of two categories, those that pertain to the business of governing, and those that pertain to the welfare of people in the city that is governed. The first category is generally uncontroversial unless the business decision will have a serious effect on the people governed. The second are generally controversial because they involve the interests of the people, which is separate from the interest of the government as a structure. To neutralize complication to administrative interest, City Council will very often look for ways to turn the interests of one group of people against those of another. 

For instance, when council voted not to allow the homeless RVs to remain in the Marina area, they were making a problem for whatever neighborhood the RVs would move to (knowing many would move together since they had formed a kind of community among themselves—essential to surviving homelessness). When the council refused to allow the RVs to stay where they were, it was creating a problem for the governed – intentionally. In June, the city booted the RVs out of the Marina area, and in the Sept, like clockwork, neighbors from west Berkeley came and complained about the RVs in their neighborhood. No “RV-land” was identified, so the police were given another chance to torment the “RV-residents.” 

And this is what creates controversial issues. The council knows that such issues will bring many people to the council to speak in their own interest. It deals with this by placing such controversial issues at the end of the agenda. The later it gets, the more people who came to speak will leave, having gotten tired of waiting. This is also intentional. It is called corporate management. You create conflict between groups as a way of silencing people (each voice gets lost in the cacophony of disorganized voices speaking at once), and you create time barriers to speaking, both as a way of silencing people and to erode their organization. 

Controversial issues could go first, based on how many show up for the issue. Council could become a meeting place for people to enter dialogue with each other, and with councilmembers, in order to resolve their problems with each other amicably. The Council refuses to do that, just as consistently as it refuses to recognize the primary benefit for the homeless of the communities they form to take care of each other. Thus, the Council prefers to create an atmosphere of dissention rather than of dialogue, which leaves all policy-making in the hands of council. Because the people have no voice, policy-making is not even representation; it is elite political hierarchy. 

To set up forums of people, right there in the council meeting, as a flexibility of procedure that would allow dialogue between groups, and with councilmembers (no longer elitists behind their podium), would be a powerful move toward social understanding in a democratic fashion. This would give people a voice in resolving conflicts between them. Unfortunately, it would mean that the non-controversial business-oriented items would be the ones to be postponed until later, or to a special meeting. To choose to prioritize the business-oriented items is to intentionally maintain the silencing and the conflicts. 

 

3- After an item is introduced. If "experts" are needed to give a presentation on an item, they go first, and then field questions from the councilmembers. After that, there is public comment. This is the most hypocritical aspect of the City Council procedure. People line up, each getting two minutes to speak, unless there are more than ten, in which case each person gets one minute. One minute is not enough to allow a person to express complex thoughts in a logical manner, or describe a situation in which one has interests. Thought is essentially reduced to sound-bytes. If council was interested in public opinion, or the reasoning of people in describing their real interests as affected by an issue, it would give people more time when many show up (rather than less). In the absence of real concern for neighborhood interests, such as for anti-displacement measures or affordable housing to counteract rent-gouging, the “public comment” period is purely for show. 

But the council is governing a city, in a manner similar to the way a Board of Directors governs a corporation, so it acts in the interests of its structure, rather than those of real people. That’s what it means when councilmembers say we have to reduce speaking time so that each person gets a change to speak. Structure rather than content. Council knows that if people could make policy for themselves democratically, even under council authority, it would undermine the culture of corporate governance that councilmembers as elected representatives have come to depend on. 

Democracy means that those who will be affected by a policy are the ones who make the policy needed. 

 

4- Council then discusses the item. What is both astounding and frustrating at the same time about council meetings is that there is very little discussion or debate or argument between councilmembers. They do not address the issue involved from the perspective of their constituency (whom they "represent"). That would presuppose meetings and dialogues with those constituents, which doesn’t happen. They don’t talk to each other about it. They didn’t ask each other what they think about it. They speak about possible modifications of the item, or amendments to it. It is like people who talk about a map and think they are talking about the land that map represents. In speaking about the item in the terms of the item itself rather than the people they represent, these councilmembers fail to represent. 

For instance, a company came in with a proposal for what it called “IKE Smart City Kiosks.” These would be interactive computer screens set up in public places that would carry advertising for major companies and local businesses, as well as lists of local events. Public comment on the proposal could only be in the abstract because few in the audience had even heard of this until the techies gave their presentations. So public comment could not address the issue of cameras on these kiosks, since they weren’t mentioned. A couple of councilmembers thought they would have district meetings to see if people wanted them in their neighborhoods. But since this occurred after public comment, the public could not bring up the fact that this had not happened with the installation of Ford bike-for-hire racks, so what was going to insure that it happens for these kiosks. Thus, by the time council started to discuss the item, whatever thoughts the people in the audience might have developed were already obviated. And there were important issues, like what effect the federal Telecommunications Act would have on council’s ability to make decisions on these kiosks. 

In general, what most councilmembers said were versions of ooh-and-aah. They had already thought it through among themselves (in a backroom somewhere). And the Mayor would gavel down the kibitzers from the back of the room who saw through the whole thing. 

This is a crucial point, however. It is after the people hear what their councilmembers think about an issue that the people should have public comment. And more than public comment, they should have an ability to dialogue with the councilmembers, so that they can reason with them, speak directly to what they consider to be misconceptions on the part of the councilmembers. Not only would this allow council discussion to occur in the context of community input (in dialogue), but community input would no longer be a cacophony of monologues, but would have the council discussion as its unifying context, something to which to relate specific interests. 

This mutual contextualization is one of the aspects of political decision-making that is missing from the representationism exemplified by this City Council. 

In order for the people of Berkeley to have a voice in its affairs, the structure of council meetings would need to be transformed, as a primary consideration. 

In the high stakes drama, Dr. Blasey was clearly the winner. Dr. Blasey had everything to lose and nothing to gain. She waited until the very last day hoping someone other than Kavanaugh would be selected from the short list as the Supreme Court nominee terrified of the ordeal she might have to undergo. She expressed unequivocal certainty that her attempted rapist was Kavanaugh aided by the elusive Mark Judge who remains conveniently hidden from the long arm of the law. In sharp contrast, Kavanaugh was intemperate, disrespectful bombastic and filled with self-righteous indignation. 

Such poor self-control and contempt for the Senate should disqualify him from his current appointment on the U.S. Court of Appeals and most certainly from the highest court in the land. 

The heroes, other than Dr. Blasey, were the courageous women who confronted Senator Flake in the Senate elevator who implored him to reconsider his important vote. 

Finally, the Republicans betrayed their cowardice by commissioning a hired gun, Rachel Mitchell, to do their dirty work for them.

20 percent of U.S. women have been raped and another 40 percent have experienced some other form of sexual violence. I mention this because as the Kavanaugh confirmation has veered from his conservative beliefs to his veracity and then to his sexual behavior, the contentious hearing entered territory that was traumatic for many women. For this reason, September 27th represents a tipping point in American politics. A point where U.S. women declared they have had enough abuse.

In retrospect, it's not surprising that Donald Trump, an unrepentant sexual predator, would nominate a Supreme Court Justice from the same mold. At first we thought that Kavanaugh was a clone of Justice Neil Gorsuch, a deeply conservative jurist hand-picked by White House Counsel Don McGahn and a few other archconservatives. (Gorsuch and Kavanaugh knew each other in high school, Georgetown Prep, and both clerked for Supreme Court Justice Kennedy.) It was not until Dr. Christine Blasey Ford came forward that we realized that Kavanaugh suffered from a sinister pathology -- as an (alleged) sexual predator. 

Trump and Kavanaugh's decision to dispute Blasey's accusations -- and the accusation of other women -- and push forward with Kavanaugh's nomination, led to the September 27th Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. That all-day hearing triggered traumatic memories for many women who have been the victims of sexual abuse. If this weren't bad enough, Kavanaugh and Republican (all male) members of the Senate Judiciary Committee insulted female Democratic Senators Feinstein and Klobuchar. 

As a result, the women I know are incensed. They feel that continued Republican support for Kavanaugh's nomination is a another attempt by Republican men to minimize and dismiss the trauma of sexual assault. These women have been reminded that Donald Trump is an unrepentant sexual predator. American women are mad and want to even the score. 

Whatever happens to the Kavanaugh nomination -- at this writing it's been postponed pending an FBI inquiry -- it's likely that Republicans will suffer at the ballot box. 

Before the Kavanaugh debacle, we knew that a record number of women are running for office in the 2018 mid-term elections -- overwhelmingly as Democrats. Furthermore, a June CNN poll found that 58 percent of likely female voters planned to vote for a Democratic candidate in November -- versus 33 percent of women that planned to vote for a Republican candidate and 9 percent who were undecided. (The 25 point gender gap is unprecedented -- and this was before Kavanaugh's hearing.) 

Christine Blasey Ford's testimony is a turning point in American politics. It's a moment where American women collectively re-experienced their trauma and decided: "This has gone on long enough. It's time to put an end to sexual violence... It's time for women to take power." 

Donald Trump is too dense to understand this. And, for whatever reason, most male Republicans don't get it, either. 

There's a blue wave coming. A blue tsunami. Many elements have contributed to this -- one of which is Trump's feckless behavior. But Christine Blasey Ford's testimony was the tipping point. 

---

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