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I took my scissors to Joe Mathews’ op-ed “Please stop trying to ‘save democracy’” and taped this to my monitor: “…democracy isn’t something you save. It’s something you do – with other people…” 

Now when I sit at my computer until I am blurry eyed, trying to capture what happened in our government, wondering if it makes a difference, I look at that clipping and get a little smile: Democracy is something we do and this is a very big year. 

On Wednesday, March 13, I saw the giant mural by Berkeley High students on Allston at MLK with Ceasefire, Free Palestine and a figure wearing a keffiyeh in the middle with a book. I was disappointed to read in Berkeleyside that it was painted with water-soluble tempera paint instead of the permanent paint used in other street murals, but given the current opposition of the Berkeley mayor and City Council to a ceasefire resolution, paint that will wash away in the next rain is probably the safest for the students. The mural was too large to capture with my iPhone camera, so if you want to see it take a trip to the Civic Center. 

While I was waiting at the corner for the light to change I struck up a conversation with the woman next to me asking if she had noticed it. Yes, of course, was the answer, as she told me, the students painted it during their lunch break. She said “they need to stop telling lies about us.” I asked if she was a teacher. She answered yes, as we crossed the street before separating heading in different directions. 

At each Berkeley City Council meeting I count how many speakers call for a ceasefire during the non-agenda comment period and how many oppose the city taking any action. The total allotment for non-agenda comment speakers has been ten in-person speakers, ten on zoom with each person receiving one minute. Speakers can give away their minute to another person. When someone receives time from others I count the time slots. The actual number of speakers may be less. On Tuesday, March 12, I counted nine asking for a ceasefire, five opposed and three on other topics. Not all of the online time slots were used. The apparent neo-Nazi who called in online was quickly disconnected from zoom by the mayor and is not in the count. 

The big news on Tuesday, March 12, 2024, came in the special 3:30 pm meeting that was posted on Monday, with only ten minutes to spare to make the 24-hour notice requirement. The controversial housing project planned for 1900 Fourth Street on the West Berkeley Shellmound and the lawsuit Ruegg & Ellsworth v. City of Berkeley is done and over. In an incredible mediation settlement, the City of Berkeley paid the claim of attorney fees using city funds of up to $1.5 million, obtained release of all remaining claims in exchange for acquisition of 1900 Fourth Street and transferred the property to the Sogorea Te Land Trust, thereby returning the land to the Ohlone people. The 25 million dollars to finish the settlement came from the trust. https://sogoreate-landtrust.org/lisjan-history-and-territory/ 

In this case the land acknowledgement read at city meetings that recognizes the City of Berkeley occupies stolen unceded land of the Ohlone Tribes with a documented 5,000 year history to the West Berkeley Shellmound actually means something. 

The vision for the Shellmound was shared several years ago: https://shellmound.org/learn-more/ohlone-vision/ 

A few Berkeley City Council meetings ago a woman speaking against the city taking up a ceasefire resolution wanted to start history in 2005. 

The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917 – 2017 by Rashid Khalidi is at the top of this week’s best seller list. Just think how much further along we would be on peace between Israel and Palestine instead of the perpetual cycles of violence, retaliation and revenge, if Israel acknowledged that Israel was created and built through settler colonialism instead of the perpetual myth that Palestine was, “a land without people for a people without land.” 

Much of the reading I’ve been doing (almost done with my 10th book) starts with the rise of the Zionist movement in the 1800s (though some books go back centuries) and follows with the Balfour Declaration on November 2, 1917 to support the establishment of a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine before moving up to the present. 

After hearing clips from Senator Schumer’s speech on the Senate floor criticizing Benjamin Netanyahu, I read the entire speech. Schumer was blunt. https://www.timesofisrael.com/full-text-of-senator-chuck-schumers-speech-israeli-elections-are-the-only-way/ 

He listed four obstacles to peace: Hamas and the Palestinians who support and tolerate their evil ways, radical right-wing Israelis in government and society, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Schumer called out Finance Minister Bexalel Smotrich and Ministry of National Security Itmar Ben Gvir as the worst examples of radicalism in government. 

Saturday, March 16, 2024 was the 21st anniversary of the death of 23 year-old Rachel Corrie. Corrie was trying to protect the home of a local pharmacist in Gaza from demolition when she was standing to be visible and was run over and killed by an armored bulldozer operated by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). The stage play based on her diaries and emails is called “My Name Is Rachel Corrie”.  

Back to the city. 

There was more to the Berkeley Neighborhoods Council (BNC) meeting on March 9th than 2902 Adeline and eminent domain that I covered in my last Diary. 

If you don’t attend any other city or community meetings (or even if you do) signing on to the two-hour BNC zoom meeting on the second Saturday of the month from 10 am to noon is definitely an informative and worthwhile expenditure of time. 

The North Berkeley BART Project was the main subject at the March 9, 2024 BNC meeting with Jon McCall from BRIDGE and Daniel Simons and Josie Morgan from DBA (David Baker Architects) presenting for North Berkeley Housing Partners. The current state of the project is 739 units, with a little over the required minimum of 1000 bedrooms and a little over 50% of the units as affordable. The complex will have 50,000 square feet of publicly accessible open space, 6000 square feet of publicly accessible ground floor uses and around 300 parking spaces in a central garage with 176 allocated to residents. The current count of parking spaces at North Berkeley BART ranges from 620 to 700 depending on the source accessed.  

All the bedrooms will have windows [unlike others approved for Berkeley recently. The bike/pedestrian paths will be shared. There will be 70 units with case management services. There will be an evaluation of the project by bird-safe experts to identify locations where windows need to be reconfigured or bird-safe glass used. There are plans for a café and childcare space, but not a grocery.  

The questions that didn’t get answered with follow up requested were the breakdown/count of units by number of bedrooms and shadow studies to show how much natural light will reach internal units (around open space). 

I arrived at the Commission on Disability late and was surprised to learn that two members were attending on ZOOM. There was no announcement that the meeting was being conducted in a hybrid format, but then, members of the Commission on Disability have a lawsuit against the city for not providing meetings in the hybrid format so disabled commissioners can attend. It appears the city has come halfway with ZOOM for commissioners, but not the public. 

The City has not accommodated the blind commissioner for the Human Welfare and Community Action Commission (HWCAC) who needs documents in Braille. She left the HWCAC in the midst of the funding of service agencies. As described in the March 14th Activist’s Diary, It was hard enough for those of us in the room with vision to track, on our pieces of scratch paper and devices, the impact of changing allocation recommendations to squeeze $1,113,124 of requests into $563,266 of available funds. Imagine how that chaos landed on a commissioner who is blind and who was not accommodated with documents she could read.  

I was present for most of the discussion at the Commission on Disability on AB 413 the “Daylighting Bill” which prohibits drivers from stopping or parking within 20 feet of a crosswalk or 15 feet from crosswalks with curb extensions (bulb outs). 

While commissioners agreed that prohibiting stopping or parking near intersections will greatly improve pedestrian and traffic safety, there are issues for handicapped parking spaces that currently exist within the restricted zone, and AB 413 will add difficulties for handicapped persons whose handicapped spaces need to be moved. The handicapped space at the top of California at Rose is one that looks to be in the daylighting zone. 

There are also increased potential risks for disabled persons depending on how they access vehicles, especially for disabled persons who enter on the traffic side as vehicle drivers. Depending on the configuration of handicapped spaces and handicapped vehicles, disabled persons who enter from the rear or even on the passenger side may also be impacted. 

Between now and December 31, 2024 drivers will receive only a warning for parking in the daylighting zone unless the curb is marked with red paint or there is a sign. Starting January 1, 2025 stopping or parking in the restricted zone risks ticketing whether the zone or crosswalk is marked or not. The bill contains prohibitions of parking over a curb onto a sidewalk, something that is common practice on narrow streets in the hills. Parking in front of driveways whether public or private is prohibited (there is no exception in the bill if the driveway is to your own garage). 

If you are a driver, reading AB 413 in full (it is very short) just might save you from a hefty ticket. https://legiscan.com/CA/text/AB413/id/2845316 

The first major item of interest at the Parks, Recreation and Waterfront Commission was the parking study for the proposed ferry. Kittleson & Associates has been hired by the city to do the parking study. In general, I have a hard time believing ferry ridership will meet the early projections except on occasions when there are big events in San Francisco. 

I noticed the Waterfront Emergency Transportation Authority (WETA) stopped publishing the ferry occupancy rate during the busiest hour of the day in the Board meeting ridership reports. That usually hovered between 33% – 36% which meant that mostly near-empty ferries typically travel back and forth across the bay. I would expect that low utilization to be about the same looking at the current charts and tables. 

What concerns me the most, besides the impact on marine life, is that the ferry looks like another money sink for city residents to shoulder so that high income earners can have a boutique subsidized ferry service. WETA lowered the fare to increase ridership. From their own surveys the majority of the subsidized fares support high income earners. 

Any increase in parking demand will be felt on the weekends when families access the waterfront. Once more charging for parking slipped into the presentation. I saw little interest from the presenter on receiving input from the commission or public on their parking studies. 

There are plans for six weekday and 4 weekend “intercept surveys” when persons parking at the waterfront will be asked about their destinations, activities, parking duration and parking issues. 

The Zoning Adjustments Board (ZAB) met for a total of eighteen minutes to approve three Use Permits on consent. The next ZAB meeting on March 28 will be on 2136-2154 San Pablo, a 6-story SB 330 state density bonus project with 122 units (including 10 very low-income density bonus qualifying units), 3 live-work units and 50 ground floor parking spaces. This is the project that occupied the rest of the Parks Commission meeting and initiated a lively discussion. 

The discussion started with whether the San Pablo project which backs up to the George Florence Park on Tenth Street should have its own gate from the private property into the park. 

When I saw the plans at the Design Review Committee, my issue was that the gates (there were several in the initial design--now there is one) opened right into the pollinator garden in the park, so anyone entering from the development would trample the garden volunteers have been working so hard to create. 

George Florence Park was a problematic neighborhood eyesore in the middle of a city block that has been completely restored by neighbors, volunteers and the City Parks Department into a delightful neighborhood resource with new play equipment for children. In this built up densely populated city with a shortage of parks and tiny yards between housing units if there is any yard at all, these little “mini” parks fill the gap where children can play. 

The commission focused on whether the project should have direct access through the fence into the park or residents should walk to the park like the other neighbors. The park is currently fenced on three sides and completely open on Tenth Street. 

The commissioners were mixed on whether to allow a gate and in the final vote dropped that question appropriately in the lap of the Parks Director and voted to require that the project applicant meet with the volunteers of the pollinator garden and that the entire project be required to install bird-safe glass. 

Commissioner Abshez noted that Berkeley has a Civic Arts fee for mixed use projects, but does not have a parks fee which is common in other cities. With the shortage of public parks in Berkeley, the increasing population expected with large projects and decreased requirements for open space in new projects such as the rezoning approved for the Southside, the impetus to propose a parks fee with new construction is going to be on future agendas. 

In closing, the Alabama Supreme Court ruling on IVF (in vitro fertilization) defining embryos as children released on February 16, 2024, was the reason for finally finishing the book that has been recirculating in my reading list for months 

The opinion written by the Chief Justice Tom Parker filled with biblical quotes and references and writings by Christian Theologians treads all over separation of church and state. 

In summary, the theologically based view of the sanctity of life adopted by the People of Alabama encompasses the following: (1) God made every person in His image; (2) each person therefore has a value that far exceeds the ability of human beings to calculate; and (3) human life cannot be wrongfully destroyed without incurring the wrath of a holy God, who views the destruction of His image as an affront to Himself. Section 36.06 recognized that this is true of the unborn human life no less than it is of all other human life – that even before birth all human beings bear the image of God, and their lives cannot be destroyed without effacing his glory.  

The book is, The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism is UN-AMERICAN by Andrew L. Seidel. Seidel, a constitutional attorney for the Freedom from Religion Foundation, takes apart the myth that the U.S. Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were founded on Judeo-Christian principles step by step using the ten commandments and biblical references with lots of quotes. 

If you dip into The Founding Myth you will be grateful the framers of the Constitution were very skeptical of religion and wrote into the Constitution the separation of church and state. Seidel writes how religious fundamentalism cultivates submission to extreme authority and adulation to a punishing vengeful god and goes on to connect fundamentalism to the cultish adulation for the vengeful Trump who demands loyalty above all else and boasts if he is reelected of being “a dictator for a day”. 

If we’re paying attention, Trump promises to pardon the January 6th seditionists, calls those convicted of crimes committed on January 6, 2021 “hostages” and describes immigrants as less than human and “poisoning the blood of our country”. 

Things can change quickly if a wannabe dictator is elected. 2024 should not be a close election, but it is.