An application will not be filed to make U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris' childhood home in Berkeley a historic landmark, the man working on the application said Wednesday.

Steven Finacom, a member of Berkeley's Landmarks Preservation Commission, heard from the property owners Tuesday who are concerned greater attention to the home will disrupt the lives of neighbors.

Finacom said the property owners are part of a family that has been in Berkeley for a long time, and he thinks they place a high value on the connections they have with their neighbors.

"Berkeley does not require owner support for landmark designations, but in this case, and given the tumultuous times, I'm happy to honor the request of the owners and will not pursue submitting the landmark application," Finacom wrote in an email. -more-

So, last week we introduced the concept of the Pandemic Putsch, the quick and dirty drive by real estate speculators and their elected enablers to take the power to regulate land use away from local governments. We focused on the Berkeley version, helmed by District 8 Councilperson Lori Droste, aided and abetted by Mayor Jesse Arreguin and endorsed by a majority of the City Council with a resolution that was green-washed, black-washed and hogwashed with more than a spoonful of saccharin to make it go down.

The good councilpersons have been fooled by the, shall we say, unique version of Berkeley’s Black history promulgated by Droste and her YIMBY allies. Much of what she purports to know about the topic happened before she was born, certainly before she moved to Berkeley from her hometown of Centerville, Ohio (pop. ~23,000), so let’s review the facts.

She claims, for example, that Berkeley is the birthplace of single family residential zoning, and further, that the primary purpose of SFR zoning in Berkeley was to prevent African Americans from buying houses in Berkeley. In fact, Berkeley was indeed one of the earliest places to zone for single family homes, but the main purpose of the early 20th century legal device of residential zoning was to separate homes of all kinds from noxious industrial uses.

My old friend Marc Weiss explains all this in his seminal book The Rise of the Community Builders, a book councilmembers should be required to read before opining on zoning law.

Key quote: “Indeed, some of the more sophisticated zoning laws, such as Berkeley’s, actually created exclusive industrial use districts to protect factory owners from complaints and lawsuits by low-income residential neighbors.”

Residential zoning has never been only“single family”. Residential zoning has accommodated many kinds of buildings and living groups with a variety of classifications such as the multi-unit R2 zone. Already in Berkeley R1 zones now allow up to 3 units in the right circumstances. -more-

It's time that the New York Times and other publications stopped using the term "NIMBY" as a pejorative directed at those with whom they disagree about housing policy. It's no more appropriate than traditional ethnic slurs, and it's historically misguided. Not In My Back Yard was the slogan of the heroic mothers who finally exposed pollution at Love Canal.

Farhad Manjoo's attack in the New York Times on Berkeleyans who doubt that ending single family zoning will end our low-cost housing crisis was rife with factual errors. In particular he badly mischaracterizes former Councilmember Cheryl Davila as being "more skeptical of new housing." She's a plain-spoken middle-aged African-American whose principal sin was being skeptical of the blandishments of the White developers who funded Terry Taplin's successful campaign against her. She's been a strong and vocal supporter of social housing and other solutions which are not based on trickle-down economic models. She's well to Taplin's left politically, but no sucker.

Evidently Farhad Manjoo only talked to Taplin. The unanimous Berkeley vote on the zoning proposal was just a resolution, not an ordinance, simply announcing the Council's support for apple pie (gluten-free, of course). The devil, as always, is in the recipe. -more-

The quadplex upzoning item fast-tracked to council by members Rigel Robinson (D7) and Lori Droste (D8) contains some (to me, shocking and alarming) fabrications in the cornerstones of the authors’ arguments in favor.

Race-washing

The account of history they offer is highly distorted and, by misrepresenting actual racialized oppression, it “race-washes” the quadplex item, falsely presenting it as a major anti-racist move. People other than myself are already speaking about that and I won’t dwell on it here because it is too complicated for a short note. I will note that the policy promoted in the item originates with YIMBY corporate and major investor sponsors - big banks, large corporate developers, and so on - and so ironically, if we we are to believe the racial justice claims made in this item, we must accept those corporations as sudden and unexpected champions of racial justice. You know, Citibank for justice, I guess. -more-

The proposed rezoning is a huge public policy decision and should be put on the ballot and all candidates need to make their positions clear. A so-called "community process" is nothing more than a managed process with paid facilitators and a pre-determined outcome, worthy of a fascistic managed democracy/populism. I resent the fact that ambitious politicians looking for a signature issue and backed by newly-"woken" speculators and developers are claiming the moral high ground on a very complex and consequential matter. -more-

President Biden’s response to MBS’s role in the brutal torture and murder of Saudi dissident Khashoggi was extremely disappointing.

Desperate to deflect blame, MBS threw former deputy head of Saudi Arabia’s General Intelligence Presidency “under the bus” and said he was the ring leader responsible for the killing and named several other Saudi officials.

Biden said it was up Saudi Arabia to determine the path forward on their future leadership. Do US officials plan to host and shake hands with one the world’s worst assassins? What happened to the much touted American values?

While the U.S. continues to pummel Iran with unjust crippling economic sanctions for a 2015 nuclear treaty that America failed to uphold, the Biden administration is giving MBS a free pass. Swift action is paramount given King Salman's age and poor health. -more-

Amidst the raging COVID pandemic threatening the lives of millions of Indians, the Modi government is squandering precious resources to silence climate activists like Dishi Ravi. Ravi has been charged with sedition, incitement and involvement in an international conspiracy including but not limited to: protests by Indian farmers, the global pop star Rihanna, threats against yoga and chai, Sikh separatism and Swedish climate activist, Greta Thunberg.

Heaven forbid! Is Dishi threatening to ban my morning cup of delicious chai? Really? Perhaps, Modi harks back to the good old days when he was a happy chaiwalla!

By using the shotgun approach, hoping one the lubricious charges would stick, the BJP government has exposed itself to world-wide ridicule and condemnation. Cartoonists and editorial writers must be having a field day with the Dishi-Modi saga unless they are too terrified of Modi’s secret police. What happened to the India that boasted to be the world’s largest democracy?

Following nine days of intense interrogation (perhaps a new form of police filibustering?) the presiding judge released her issuing a scathing criticism of gross police misconduct stating the report was , “scanty and sketchy”, and there is not “even an iota” of proof to support the charges. Well said sir!

Much like the US, absurd anti-democratic loony conspiracy theories gain speedy traction on American social media platforms like Google, Facebook and Twitter, closely knitted WhatsApp’s groups, and private Zoom sessions. The Indian government has also used these media tools to turn the public against popular movements like the farmers' protests and climate activists. In practical terms these activists are voicing concern for the poor and survival of the planet emulating the spiritual messages in our sacred scriptures. After all wasn’t Jesus an ultra-leftie? Didn’t Guru Nanak target the insidious caste system denouncing the high-low construct of modern day Hinduism?

Indian politicians should applaud these brave activists, embrace democracy and abandon their satanic schemes. With all the tools of tyranny at its disposal, India is on the knife edge of descending into a nation of gross intolerance and mayhem. The Delhi riots targeting the Muslim minority in 2019 is just a small example of what might follow. Not a single indictment has occurred even though the guilty, including the Delhi police, are well known. Fear and intimidation continue to haunt the Muslim victims and the community at large.

At the same time, these social tools have been used in a coordinated pro-government messaging campaign to turn public sentiment against young activists' and farmers' protests , often in clear violation of the guardrails social media companies falsely claim to have erected to prevent violent incitement on their platforms.

India should follow Europe’s role in demanding these American companies exercise more stringent oversight or face heavy financial penalties. -more-

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

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

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

This is a Very Good Deal. Go for it! -more-

Donald Trump's February 28th Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) speech gave us a good idea of what to expect from him for the next two years. The speech introduced Trump version 2.0; not all that different from Trump 1.0. Bad news for the GOP. -more-

The human "psyche", "personality", "soul", or the thing within us that makes us function, is vulnerable, and it is fragile. This is apart from psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia and bipolar, that are believed to have physical, neurobiological causes. -more-

My wife and I just received our second dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 Vaccine. According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as of March 5, only 11.2% of the adult population in the U.S. has received both coronavirus vaccine doses, while 17.4% of California have received at least one dose. -more-

Your Under-COVID Reporter

I got my second COVID jab last week and, unlike the uneventful first poke, this one knocked me out for two days with a fever, headache, sore muscles, fatigue, and vomiting. While I was in bed, drinking hot tea, I found myself remembering the long wait in line for the inoculation and reading all the small print on a sign-in sheet that included—among other details—a complete list of all the ingredients in the Moderna vaccine.

Most of the more-that-a-dozen ingredients involved were long, complex, and unfamiliar chemical names—e.g., 1,2-dimyristoyl-rac-glycero3-methoxypolyethylene glycol-2000. There were, however, some ingredients that I did recognize. How many other Moderna recipients noticed that their injections included (1) acetic acid (think "vinegar"), (2) sodium chloride (think "salt"), and (3) cholesterol (think "clogged arteries")? -more-

I received an email this week from someone I talk with on occasion about housing and construction in Berkeley. It started with, “I learned from a friend of a friend who manages a 50 unit building that he has 50% vacancies…” The note goes on that the same person related that there are other buildings with 60% and 70% vacancies. -more-

It has been suggested that we exist in one of multiple universes. The Berkeley edition we seem to share is all too real, where civic passions often meet like a rubbing of sandpapers instead of cosmic inter-dimensionality.

Insight to a parallel world so similar as to be preferable at times has been brought to us, through which the lower campus of UC is revealed to be a golf course. These glimpses have reached us through the monthly foldover known as Pepper Spray Times. Dismissed (even by its editor) as a satire to spare us the truth of an alternate existence, its continuous and independent coverage of the otherworldly familiar since 1995 makes it the dean of all city news periodicals!

PST has provided coverage from the beyond of the local real-world outrages in a breezy to-the-point style reminiscent of old Shopping News fillers and progressive tabloids. When gathered in the new and complete two-volume collection Pepper Spray Paradise, however, we come to see these revelations not so much as porch-flier prose as Biblical writ. -more-

Most Americans think of Agent Orange as something from the distant and disagreeable past—as dated as hippie vans and tie-dyed T-shirts. But the truth is that Agent Orange is still with us. And will be for decades to come. -more-

Worth Noting:

Another full week ahead

Monday - At the 2:30 pm Agenda Planning Committee Item 6 Objective Standards for the Implementation of State Housing Law is listed as consent, it should be an action item as the committee assigned to establish objective standards did not reach agreement. Objective standards take on critical importance with the increasing number of proposals for ministerial approval (no public review) of major projects. The Agenda Committee may take up reorganizing Commissions. Those with concerns about the various proposals for restructuring should attend and be prepared to speak.

Tuesday – Regular City Council meeting at 6 pm

Wednesday – If you want to know more about what is happening with housing, watch the very interesting documentary film PUSH. BCA is sponsoring the virtual screening

Thursday – The Reimagining Public Safety Task Force meets at 6 pm

Saturday – BNC meets at 10 am. The new Police Accountability Board that we approved by ballot initiative is explained at 4 pm.



If you have a meeting you would like included in the summary of meetings, please send a notice to kellyhammargren@gmail.com by noon on the Friday of the preceding week. -more-