Features

Letters to the Editor

Friday October 28, 2005

NO DEAL 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

This is a response to Jill Posner’s letter claiming that the Sierra Club has made a deal with Magna/Caruso over development at the Albany Waterfront. I don’t know where Posner gets her information, but it is very, very wrong. The Sierra Club opposes the Magna/Caruso mall. It is completely contrary to the Sierra Club’s vision for the future Albany waterfront. If it is approved, we will lose our opportunity to get a real public shoreline with real public access for public use and enjoyment and we will keep the shoreline from becoming the private front yard to a huge shopping mall. Stopping the mall will also mean the chance for a real off leash dog park. If we stop the mall, we also stop Magna’s plans to build a race track and casino or “racino” as Magna’s CEO, Frank Stronach, likes to call his future vision for his race tracks. The track is on its last legs; it cannot survive without the mall and a casino operation. Once it goes, we can plan the future the way we want it, not the way Rick Caruso, a major George W. Bush financial contributor, wants for us. (Indeed, why should we help get him the profits to finance his support for the ultra-conservative agenda in the United States?) 

The proposed Magna/Caruso Mall also threatens the economic vitality of Berkeley’s Fourth Street, Solano Avenue, and the El Cerrito Plaza. Just as a Walmart sucks the economic vitality of local business out of a community, so will this upscale Super Walmart Mall (a Caruso Super W). The Sierra Club urges all residents of the East Bay to oppose the Magna/Caruso Super W Mall. 

Norman La Force 

Chair, Sierra Club San Francisco Bay Chapter  

East Bay Public Lands Committee 

 

• 

LIES AND INTOLERANCE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Andrea Prichett writes a long commentary full of lies and racial intolerance. The tagline identifies her political affiliation with CopWatch. What Prichett fails to disclose is that she is employed as a writing teacher at the Alternative High School. One can only hope that she is not inciting the same hostility and lies in her classroom. But this being Berkeley, where rights and freedoms are often granted regardless of responsibility, I have concerns. I think the school district needs to remind her that this community values integration and tolerance. 

I have been the chair of the neighborhood group for the past three years. Our meetings attract large diverse turnouts. There is no tension between residents as Prichett insinuates. The tension comes from our collective frustration at being the dumping grounds for the worst social problems, the lack of support from public officials, and the meddling of political opportunists like Stegman, Neumann, and Prichett. 

Stegman, Neumann, and Prichett try to put blame anywhere but where it belongs. Outside of those still involved in the drug trade, I blame these alleged do-gooders, who have consistently disrupted the development of a viable community standard in Berkeley These political opportunists makes it their cause to promote contempt and disregard for decency and reasonable community standards. 

Laura Menard 

 

• 

TEEN LIBRARIANS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I agree with Mark Bayless about the terrible tragedy of the loss of the teen librarians in the local neighborhood libraries where teens could easily drop in for help with finding books and learning about topics and how to write research papers and have kindly interesting young adults to talk to about their school experience and how they are learning and growing in the world. Now, thanks to the arrival of the current director, Jackie Griffin, we no longer have the teen librarians where the teens can easily go from their homes. Now, if a teen is in need of help after school they are left to themselves or have to find the money to go by bus or walk a long way or get a ride from someone to go to the main library for the few hours any teen librarian guides are available. Now, the chances of having individual attention in an ongoing way has been cut off for the youth of Berkeley. Now, at a time when they need and deserve more attention they are actually getting less than they had before the arrival of Jackie Griffin.  

Part of the sad turn of events is that some of the librarians who were so wonderfully serving our youth have had to look for work in other counties so even if the hours were reopened in the local branches, the youth have lost their mentors forever. A silent tragic diminishment in the lives of many children in Berkeley. And no one knows. But, if we look at how the new director, Jackie Griffin, treated the adults of Berkeley, it may be realized that she was no more considerate of our rights or needs as human beings. She actually implemented the entire installment of the questionable radio identification devices in our library books, throwing out thousands of books into special dumpsters to reduce cost of device installation and all without ever asking us. She dismantled our trust the same way she dismantled the healthy thriving teen assistance programs serving the youth after school from the local neighborhood branches. Perhaps a time will come when we will vote for library director like we do for city auditor, mayor, and councilmembers. Someway the real needs we have in community deserve to be recognized and honored by the director.  

Nancy Delaney  

 

• 

MARIN AVENUE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I do like the bike lanes on the new Marin Avenue.  

Better yet, planting Sycamore Trees the entire length in the center of the avenue shall complete the design. I want a well designed, complete, elegant avenue. There are very few elegant avenues in the Bay Area. Sadly! 

Richard Splenda 

 

• 

WINDFALL PROFIT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Today we were treated to the news that Exxon/Mobil and other oil companies are earning their highest profits ever in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. In the meantime, the White House is attempting to cut Medicaid, privatize Social Security and reduce educational funding in order to make the tax cuts for the rich permanent, and pay for rebuilding New Orleans and an illegal war in Iraq. Oil company newspaper ads ask us to let them know if we see price gouging at the pump. I see price gouging all right, and it’s taking place at the top levels of corporate America and this government. How much privatization/piratization are we supposed to tolerate? 

So how about our representatives in Washington getting off their duffs while waiting for the Libby/Rove perp walk and introducing a 100 percent corporate windfall profit tax? They might want to haul in a few oil executives and the vice-president for questioning while they’re at it. Despite what the lobbyists in DC tell them, their job description says they work for the people of this country, not the oil companies.  

David Eifler 

 

• 

HURRICANE WILMA 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I wrote a letter after Hurricane Katrina had decimated New Orleans and left the city under five feet of water about the majority of black residents stranded there without water, food and electricity for five days. I posed the question, what if it had been white folk who had to go through the same experience as the left-behind residents of New Orleans?  

Lo and behold, in the aftermath of Hurricane Wilma, millions of Floridians are having trouble securing water, food, gas and have been without electricity for three days. Tempers are flaring and again the infrastructure for handling crisis has proved to be woefully inadequate. 

Ron Lowe 

Nevada City 

 

• 

UNION-BUSTING 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Gov. Schwarzenegger made a big deal about his Screen Actors Guild membership in peddling his anti-labor ballot propositions during his grandstanding at the so-called Sacramento debate. He said: “I’m very proud to be a union member.” I, too, am a SAG member, of 15 years standing, and urge voters to reject the Terminator’s proposals which are injurious not only to my fellow workers in state employment, but by extension, to those of us in private industry, as well. SAG itself as a union opposes them. It seems that Arnie is following in the footsteps of two former SAG presidents, Ronald Reagan and Charlton Heston, who also sold their souls for a mess of corporate pottage. But I’m sure the vast majority of SAG members will support the union’s stance in big business’s assault on the conditions of the working folks of California.  

Harry Siitonen 

 

• 

BUSH ADMINISTRATION 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The Iraqi war is a meat grinder of the Bush administration’s own cynical making. They lied about WMDs to gain approval. Invading Iraq hasn’t captured Osama bin Laden, nor diminished Al Qaeda. On the contrary, more people have joined the insurgents to fight U.S. occupation. While we kill more Iraqis and lose more of our soldiers, grinding up more lives will not bring stability, nor peace, and certainly not democracy. Eventually, we will have to leave. Will it be soon, with 2,000 dead American sons and daughters, or later, when the body count is even greater? 

Bruce Joffe 

Piedmont 

 

• 

REPULSIVE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I wonder if other people, as I am, are so intensely repulsed by Bush, the man, and his speeches, that we cannot watch him on television. And thus, screaming in disgust, we turn him off and switch to another channel. Perhaps we should steel ourselves to the task of listening to Mr. Bush, no matter how high the gorge rises in our throats. I’m sure liberal Germans during the rise of the fuhrer turned off the radio in disgust and listened to Strauss waltzes to calm them down much to their detriment...as well as to the world’s detriment.  

Robert Blau 

 

• 

TOWING HEARING 

I am writing regarding a request to the Berkeley Police Department for a towing hearing which was made by phone this morning by Trevor Anthony Sherard. His car was taken on Sunday, Oct. 23 by Berkeley police for driving on a suspended license. 

I completed paperwork for Mr. Sherard to file motion-to-dismiss documents with the Berkeley court to dismiss charges against Mr. Sherard. This would establish that Mr. Sherard had his license improperly suspended over a year ago and that his car was illegally impounded by the Berkeley Police Department. He was not notified by the court of the original license suspension which was sent to a different address from where he lived. 

In addition, he was told by the officers who wrote up the charges and ticketed him, that impounding his car was “...no big deal—you’re just part of a quota, we have to get five cars today... it’s about money...” 

How many cars per day is the Berkeley Police Department mandated to impound, and how many cars per day is each police officer required to impound? What revenue does this generate for the Berkeley Police Department per year? What other agencies share this revenue and what is their cut? What happens to officers who do not meet their quota? Did the fact that Mr. Sherard is a young African American male have anything to do with the police stopping him, since he was driving properly and obeying the speed limit? 

Mr. Sherard was informed by the officers that he had three days to request a towing hearing, after which he would be charged a mandatory fee for 30 days of storage, and was given a phone number to call. He called the number this morning, got an answering machine in the Berkeley Police Department, where he left a message, and has had no response. 

Why is it mandatory to pay 30 days of storage for an impounded car if it is not released at a towing hearing which must be requested within three days of the impoundment? What happens if the call is made within the three-day period but the Berkeley Police Department fails to respond? 

I would like the Berkeley Police Department to answer my questions. 

Leuren Moret 

 

?