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Erik Olson
          Father Bill O’Donnell talked with a parishioner recently outside St. Joseph the Worker church.
Erik Olson Father Bill O’Donnell talked with a parishioner recently outside St. Joseph the Worker church.
 

News

Father Bill Dies, City’s Beloved Activist Priest

By John Geluardi Special to the Planet
Tuesday December 09, 2003

Father Bill O’Donnell, often described as one of the last activist priests, died suddenly Monday morning while carrying out his duties at St. Joseph the Worker church. He was 74 years old. 

O’Donnell had been pastor and parish vicar at St. Joseph’s since 1973. 

“The paramedics were called by Father Crespin, who found him at his desk” shortly after he celebrated the 8:30 mass, said Berkeley City Councilmember Linda Maio. “Father Crespin said he died as he wanted to, at his desk, doing the work that he loved, in the community that he loved.” 

The cause of death has not yet been determined, but O’Donnell was known to have heart trouble. He had major heart surgery in 1993 and suffered a stroke in 2001.  

O’Donnell, who usually wore faded black jeans and a tattered leather jacket over his Roman collar, was well known in Berkeley and news of death shocked officials, activists and residents. 

As word of his death spread through the community Monday afternoon, parishioners and community members began to show up at the church offices to offer tearful condolences and pay their respects. 

“He was a great man, and I’ll miss him dearly,” said Federico Chavez, a Berkeley resident who came to know the priest through his work with Federico’s uncle, United Farm Workers Union founder Cesar Chavez. 

The late labor leader often stayed at the St. Jospeh Rectory during his visits to Berkeley, where he cherished the camaraderie and spiritual inspiration, said the younger Chavez, who had known the priest since childhood. 

“He had a passion for social justice and was the epitome of the activist priest,” said Father Jayson Landeza, the pastor of St. Columba’s in Oakland. “For Father Bill, the Kingdom of God was the Kingdom of Social Justice.” 

Over the last 30 years, O’Donnell’s passion for social justice resulted in nearly 300 arrests for civil disobedience at peace, labor and anti-nuclear protests. 

Last year, at the age of 73, he served six months at Atwater Penitentiary, a high security federal prison in Merced County for trespassing on the Western Hemisphere Institute of Security in Fort Benning, GA. Formerly known as the School of the Americas, the institute is alleged to train secret police in anti-revolutionary tactics in Central and South American countries. 

Over the years, O’Donnell’s sense of justice had led him to scale the barbed-wire fence at the Indonesian Consulate in San Francisco, march arm-in-arm with Cesar Chavez for farm workers’ rights and regularly protest nuclear weapons development at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. 

O’Donnell was associated with dozens of civil rights and human rights organizations both in Berkeley and nationally.  

He volunteered regularly at Options Recovery Services, a nonprofit organization that works with the most hardcore alcoholics and drug addicts who are often homeless and suffer from mental illness.  

ORS Director Dr. Davida Coady knew O’Donnell for 25 years. “He called me early (Monday) morning around 7:30 a.m. just to chat,” she said. “He was in a good mood and talked about getting more active with Options.”  

Coady was protesting with O’Donnell when he was arrested with 43 others at Fort Benning in November, 2001. “We had been warned that we would do jail time if we crossed the line and I reminded him “Bill their going to put you in jail,’ and he just barreled ahead.” 

O’Donnell was also a mainstay for the Hispanic community in Berkeley. He fought hard to bring Spanish-speaking priests into the county parishes. 

“He was a pillar of strength to us,” said Federico Chavez, who recalled with a breaking voice O’Donnell’s fearless confrontation with screaming anti-union mobs during the Coachella Valley organizing effort of 1973. 

“There he was, standing up to the goons who were ranting and raving, standing right out in front, not afraid of suffering physical violence, inspiring confidence in the workers,” Chavez said. “Father Bill sincerely believed that if Jesus Christ were here today, he would be there with those who were putting their lives on the line. He was a great man.” 

“He was an icon,” said Mayor Tom Bates, who keeps a framed photograph of O’Donnell in his office. “He was like the saint of the labor movement. He inspired hundreds of people to stand up for what they believe in even if it meant getting arrested.” 

Councilmember Kriss Worthington said his presence will be sorely missed in Berkeley. “He dressed and lived like the common person,” he said. “Father Bill never put on airs and made himself available to everybody.” 

Councilmember Maio hailed the priest as “a wise, courageous and loving soul.” 

Father Landeza said that O’Donnell was his inspiration to go into the priesthood. “I had a job working for the parish when I was 12 years old and it was Father Bill’s passion for justice that made me want to become a priest,” he said. 

“He saw the sacred in the downtrodden and never tired of fighting for their rights.” 

Landeza said that O’Donnell was one of the last of the activist priests who were known in the 1930s and 1940s for putting their collars on the line for labor issues in eastern cities and Chicago. He said that O’Donnell often found himself at odds with the Oakland Archdioceses for his activism. “If he thought someone was being treated unfairly, he would stand up to anybody,” he said. 

Coady said O’Donnell was kicked out of four parishes before finally finding a home at St. Joseph’s in 1973. 

O’Donnell’s Irish Catholic parents owned a farm in Livermore, where he was raised. He grew up with three brothers, one his twin, and two sisters. 

“My mother used to drive us to a small Catholic school in Livermore,” O’Donnell said in an interview with the Daily Planet shortly after he was released from prison last May. “I remember the nuns always saying the best thing you could do with your life was to be a priest. The seminary looked very good to me.” 

O’Donnell began studying for the priesthood when he was 13 years old and completed his studies 12 years later. He was first assigned to Corpus Christi in Piedmont but by 1965 his constant political activism got him removed to St. Joaquim’s in Hayward where he met Chavez and became involved with the farm workers movement.  

For more information about services for Father Bill O’Donnell, contact St. Joseph the Worker Church at 843-2244. 

Richard Brenneman also contributed to the story.


Berkeley This Week

Tuesday December 09, 2003

TUESDAY, DEC. 9 

Bay Area Coalition for Headwaters meets at 7 p.m. at the Rockridge Library, 5366 College Ave., near Rockridge BART. 835-6303.  

“The Geysers: The Nature, Development and Preservation of a Unique Resource” with W. T. (Tom) Box, Jr., VP, Geothermal Resource Management, Calpine Corporation, at 5:30 p.m. in 105 North Gate Hall, UC Campus. Sponsored by Water Resources Center Archives. 642-2666. 

“Translating the Ineffable” A reading and celebration of Professor Daniel Matt’s new translation of the Zohar at 7:30 p.m. in the GTU Library, 2400 Ridge Rd. Admission free. Sponsored by the GTU’s Richard S. Dinner Center for Jewish Studies. 649-2482. 

Daniel Ellsberg, author of “Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers,” will offer insights into the parallels between the war in Vietnam and the war in Iraq, at 7:30 p.m. at Easy Going Bookstore, 1385 Shattuck Ave. 843-3533. 

Tuesday Tilden Walkers We are a few slowpoke seniors who walk between a mile or two each Tuesday, meeting at 9:30 a.m. in the Little Farm parking lot. To join us, call 215-7672.  

St. John’s Prime Timers meets at 9:30 a.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. We offer ongoing classes in exercise and creative arts, and always welcome new members over 50. 845-6830. 

Berkeley Camera Club meets at 7:30 p.m., at the Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. Share your slides and prints and learn what other photographers are doing. Monthly field trips. 525-3565. www.berkeleycameraclub.org 

WEDNESDAY, DEC. 10 

Protest Against Wal-Mart from 5:30 to 7 p.m. at the former Macy’s store in Hilltop Mall, Richmond. Sponsored by the Contra Costa Central Labor Council. 925-250-5513.  

Epic Arts Annual Holiday Art Auction, featuring original works and prints, at 7 p.m. at 1923 Ashby. 644-2204. www.epicarts.org 

Fun with Acting class meets at 11 a.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Free, all are welcome. 985-0373. 

Prose Writers Workshop We're a serious but lively bunch whose focus is on issues of craft. Meets 7 to 9 p.m. at the Jewish Community Center, 1414 Walnut, at Rose. 524-3034. 

Free Marketing Workshops, sponsored by Sisters Headquarters, for women entrepreneurs, every Wed. from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. at 643 17th St. Oakland. For information call 238-1100. 

Berkeley Peace Walk and Vigil at the Berkeley BART Sta- 

tion, corner of Shattuck and Center. Vigil at 6:30 p.m. followed by Peace Walk at 7 p.m. www.geocities.com/vigil4peace/vigil 

Amnesty International Berkeley Community Group meets the first and third Wednesdays of the month at 7 p.m. at the Berkeley Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, 1606 Bonita Ave., at Cedar St. Join fellow human rights activists to help promote social justice one individual at a time. 872-0768. 

Berkeley CopWatch open office hours 7 to 9 p.m. Drop in to file complaints, assistance available. For information call 548-0425. 

Community Dances, traditional English and American dances, at 8 p.m. every Wednesday, $9. 7 p.m. first Sunday, $10. Grace North Church, 2138 Cedar St. 233-5065. www.bacds.org 

Free Feldenkrais ATM Classes for adults 55 and older at 10:30 and 11:45 a.m. at the Jewish Community Center, 1414 Walnut at Rose. For information call 848-0237. 

THURSDAY, DEC. 11 

Project Gutenberg, a presentation on the effort to digitize, archive, and distribute cultural works, at 7 p.m. at the Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge Street, 3rd Floor, Meeting Room. Sponsored by the Berkeley Public Library, Internet Archive and ibiblio. 981-6195. 

Examining Humanity’s Alienation from Nature, Animals and Each Other, an evening with grassroots animal liberationists, Kelah Bott and David Hayden, at 7 p.m. at the Ecology Center, 2530 San Pablo Ave, near Dwight Way. 548-2220, ext. 233. www.ecologycenter.org 

Boston Tea Party in Berkeley? Join the US Face to Face Voter Project, the national movement of citizens educating citizens about the current administration in time for the 2004 election. From 7 to 9 p.m. at Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists at Cedar and Bonita. 848-8848. join@usfacetoface.org 

Nonviolent Peaceforce Party featuring Mel Duncan, Co-Founder of Nonviolent Peaceforce, at 7 p.m. at the University of Creation Sprirituality/ 

Naropa Univ., 2141 Broadway, Oakland, two blocks from 19th St. BART. 415-751-0302.  

Berkeley Alliance of Neighborhood Associations Holiday Social from 7 to 9 p.m. in the Fireside Room at St. John’s Presbyterian, 2727 College Ave. Bring appetizers, desserts or drinks to share.  

East Bay Mac User Group meets on the second Thursday of the month from 6 to 9 p.m. in the 3rd floor Community Room, Berkeley Central Library, 2090 Kittredge St. http://ebmug.org 

FRIDAY, DEC. 12 

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon with Luanne Linnar-Palmer, RN, PhD, “Who Has the Final Say on Children’s Health?” Luncheon at 11:45 a.m. for $11.50 - $12.50, speech at 12:30 p.m., at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant St. For reservations call 526-2925.  

“So How’d You Become an Activist?” with Joe MacDonald, veterans advocate, singer and composer and Terri Compost, Food Not Bombs volunteer, at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists, 1924 Cedar St., at Bonita. Suggested donation $5. For more information call 528-5403. 

“Literacy and Beyond” hosts a scholastic book fair from 6 to 9 p.m. at the Downtown Berkeley YMCA., 2001 Allston Way. 665-3271. 

Literary Friends meets at the Berkeley Senior Center at 1:15 p.m. 232-1351. 

Women in Black Vigil, from noon to 1 p.m. at UC Berkeley, Bancroft at Telegraph. wibberkeley@yahoo.com, 548-6310, 845-1143. 

Meditation, Peace Vigil and Dialogue, gather at noon on the grass close to the West Entrance to UC Berkeley, on Oxford St. near University Ave. 655-6169. www.bpf.org 

Berkeley Critical Mass Bike Ride meets at the Berkeley BART at 5:30 p.m. 

Overeaters Anonymous at 1:30 p.m. at the Northbrae Church at Solano and The Alameda. 525-5231. 

SATURDAY, DEC. 13 

East Bay Sanctuary Covenant’s Holiday Crafts Fair, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the First Congregational Church, Channing and Dana. Items are fair trade and most are from indigenous women’s cooperatives in Central America, Asia, Haiti and Africa. Free admission. All proceeds benefit local work with refugees. 524-7989. 

Benefit Holiday Crafts Sale Handicrafts from reused and recycled materials, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at 1720 Rose St. Backpacks, purses, jewelry, slippers, carved coconut shell containers, and more, made in cooperatives in India and the Philippines. Affordable prices. All proceeds will be distributed by the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives, www.no-burn.org to communities working to stop waste around the world. 

Artists with Heart, art show benefit from noon to 6 p.m. at 2033 and 2041 Center St. More than 50 artists and community members are donating their work to benefit the individuals and families served by BOSS (Building Opportunities for Self-Sufficiency). 649-1930.  

Telegraph Avenue Holiday Street Fair between Bancroft and Dwight, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. 649-9500. www.telegraphberkeley.org  

Holidays on Solano Ave. with photos with Santa from 1 to 3 p.m. at Peralta Park, 1561 Solano. 

Berkeley Farmers’ Market Holiday Crafts Fair from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., with handcrafted gifts and music at Martin Luther King Jr. Civic Center Park. 548-333. www.ecologycenter.org  

Amsterdam Art Studios Holiday Sale, with a dozen artists’ paintings and crafts, from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. at 1007 University Ave., between 9th and 10th Sts. 

Studio 1509's Winter Open Studios from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. at 1509 San Pablo Ave. 

Berkeley Artisans Open Studios every weekend through Dec. 21. 100 professional artists and craftspeople at studio buildings in Berkeley open their doors to the public. Crafts include blown glass, functional and decorative ceramics, ornaments, Menorahs, clocks, lamps and lighting, painted and custom furniture, garden art, bird houses, egg dioramas, floor cloths, clothing, textiles, jewelry, sculpture, photography, paintings, original prints, and other works on paper. All work is handcrafted, many pieces are one-of-a-kind. A self-guided tour presents opportunities to meet the artists and see working craft studios. For a map of participating studios call 845-2612. www.berkeleyartisans.com 

33rd Annual KPFA Community Crafts Fair from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. at The Concourse, 8th and Brannan, San Francisco.  

High Tea at the Berkeley City Club with holiday decorations, sweets and savories from noon to 2:30 p.m. Cost is $24.95 adults, $14.95 children under 12. Call for reservations, 848-7800. 

East Bay Wetlands Restoration from 9 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Join us for our regular drop-in volunteer days at Arrowhead Marsh, for a fun chance to learn about the ecology of the Bay and see some of the last remaining wetland habitat in the East Bay. We will be planting for the native plant project. Gloves, tools and snacks are provided. Please dress in layers and bring sunscreen and water. All ages and physical abilities are welcome. Please RSVP groups with 10 or more. Martin Luther King, Jr. Regional Shoreline, Oakland. 452-9261. mlatta@savesfbay.org  

Greens at Work will be volunteering for the Berkeley Path Wanderers Association from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. We will be clearing ivy and other invasive plants from the Tamalpais Path. Meet at the intersection of Euclid at Eunice. Bring gloves, study shoes, and water.  

Winter Tonics and Herbal Remedies from the Kitchen and Yard Stay healthy this Winter with the aid of common plant allies from your kitchen and yard. Learn how to boost your system with herbs, spices, foods and weeds. Leave the class with a homemade remedy. The class is taught by Terri Compost, a naturalist specializing in the living world immediately around us. From 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Ecology Center, 2530 San Pablo Ave, near Dwight Way. Cost is $10 EC members, $15 general, no one turned away for lack of funds. 548-2220, ext. 233.  

Conifers, with Garth Jacober at 10 a.m. at Magic Gardens, 729 Heinz Ave. 644-2351. www.magicgardens.com 

Small Press Distribution Open House and Book Sale from noon to 4 p.m. at 1341 7th St. at Gilman. 524-1668. www.spdbooks.org 

Kol Hadash Brown Bag Family Shabbat with Rabbi Kai Eckstein, on “King Solomon,” from noon to 1:30 p.m. at the Albany Community Center, 1249 Marin Ave. Come and find out why King Solomon was special. Please bring lunch for your family, and (finger) dessert to share; juice provided. We also collect non-perishable food for the needy. 428-1492. kolhadash@aol.com 

Shamanic Journeying Meditation, starts at noon. Free. For information and directions call 525-1272. 

Yoga for Seniors at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant St., on Saturdays from 10 to 11 a.m. Open to non-members of the club for $8 per class. For further information and to register, call Karen Ray at 848-7800. 

Pet Adoptions, sponsored by Home at Last, from noon to 5 p.m., Hearst and 4th St. 548-9223. 

Car Wash Benefit for Options Recovery Services of Berkeley, held every Sat. from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Lutheran Church, 1744 University Ave. 666-9552. 

SUNDAY, DEC. 14 

Bamboo Building Strong as steel in tension, timber bamboo can grow three feet in a day, be sustainably harvested every year and uses a small fraction of the land required by trees. We will cover proper tool usage and joinery as well as design ideas that avoid the more difficult, time-consuming joints. From 7 to 10 p.m. at the Building Education Center, 812 Page St. Cost is $35. 525-7610.  

East Bay Sanctuary Covenant’s Holiday Crafts Fair, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the First Congregational Church, Channing and Dana. Items are fair trade and most are from indigenous women’s cooperatives in Central America, Asia, Haiti and Africa. Free admission. All proceeds benefit local work with refugees. 524-7989. 

Telegraph Avenue Holiday Street Fair between Bancroft and Dwight, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. 649-9500. www.telegraphberkeley.org  

Studio 1509's Winter Open Studios from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. at 1509 San Pablo Ave. 

Amsterdam Art Studios Holiday Sale, with a dozen artists’ paintings and crafts, from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. at 1007 University Ave., between 9th and 10th Sts. 

Holidays on Solano Ave. with photos with Santa from 1 to 3 p.m. at Sweet Potatoes, 1224 Solano. 

Teach-in on Militarism from 4 to 6 p.m., followed by spoken word, speakout on militarism, art dancing and music. Admission is $5-$15 sliding scale or free with a donation for homeless veterans shelter (blankets, gloves, hats, warm clothes, socks, shoes, etc.) No one turned away for lack of funds. Humanist Hall, 390 27th St. Oakland. 547-7486. 

Anti-Militarist Festival of Resistance, with poetry and music by Lynx, International Maggot Theatre, Six Pack Four, Live Ammo, and Tragedians of the City, at 6 p.m. at The Fellowship of Humanity, 390 27th St., Oakland, between Telegraph and Broadway. 547-7486.  

Free Sailboat Rides from 1 to 4 p.m. Bring warm, waterproof clothes - it can be wet! At the Cal Sailing Club at the Berkeley Marina 287-5905. www.cal-sailing.org  

Chanukah Celebration for the entire community. Activities, music, storytelling and, of course, latkes, from 1 to 4 p.m. at the Berkeley Richmond Jewish Community Center, 1414 Walnut St. 848-0237, ext. 112. www.brjcc.org 

MONDAY, DEC. 15 

Tea at Four Enjoy some of the best teas from the other side of the Pacific Rim and learn their cultural and natural history. Then take a walk to see wintering birds and dormant ladybeetles, from 4 to 5:30 p.m. at Tilden Nature Area, in Tilden Park. Registration required. Cost is $5 for residents, $7 for non-residents. Wheelchair accessible. 525-2233. 

Berkeley CopWatch organizational meeting at 6 p.m. at 2022 Blake St. Join us to work on current issues around police misconduct. Volunteers needed. For information call 548-0425. 

ONGOING 

Holiday Food Drive Help the Alameda County Community Food Bank help people in need. Offer to run a food drive, or donate healthy nonperishable food at Safeway stores, Berkeley Bowl and Bay Street Emeryville. For more information call 834-3663. www.accfb.org 

City of Berkeley Commissioners Sought If you are interested in serving on a commission, applications can be downloaded from www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/ 

commissions/general.htm#applications or contact the City Clerk, 981-6900.  

The Online Civilian Conservation Corps Museum is seeking the stories about the CCCs, CCC Enrollees, Staff, or Technical Advisors for publication to this online historical resource. If you would like to participate please send your stories, with name company number and location if known, to CCC Collection, PO Box 5, Woodbury NJ 08096 or email to JFJmuseum@aol.com 

Free Smoke Detectors for City residents and UC Berkeley students who live off-campus. Applications are available from the Environment, Health & Safety office of UC Berkeley, at any Berkeley Fire Station, or at the Fire Admin. Office located at 2100 MLK, Jr. Way. 981-5585.  

Free Energy Bill Payment Assistance The City of Berkeley has money to help low-income households pay their gas and electric bills. For applications contact the Energy Office at 644-8544. TDD: 981-6903. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/energy 

CITY MEETINGS  

City Council meets Tues., Dec. 9, at 7 p.m., in City Council Chambers, Sherry M. Kelly, city clerk, 981-6900. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/citycouncil 

Commission on Disability meets Wed., Dec. 10, at 6:30 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Paul Church, 981-6342. www.ci.berkeley. 

ca.us/commissions/disability 

Homeless Commission meets Wed., Dec. 10, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Jane Micallef, 981-5426. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/homeless 

Planning Commission meets Wed., Dec. 10, at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Ruth Grimes, 981-7481. www.ci.ber 

keley. ca.us/commissions/planning 

Police Review Commission meets Wed., Dec. 10, at 7:30 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Barbara Attard, 981-4950. www.ci.berkeley.ca. 

us/commissions/policereview 

Waterfront Commission meets Wed., Dec. 10, at 7 p.m., at 201 University Ave. Cliff Marchetti. 644-6376 ext. 224. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/waterfront 

Commission on Early Childhood Education meets Thurs., Dec. 11, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Marianne Graham, 981-5416. www.ci.berkeley. ca.us/commissions/earlychildhoodeducation  

Community Health Commission meets Thurs, Dec. 11, at 6:45 p.m., at the South Berkeley Senior Center. William Rogers, 981-5344. www.ci.berkeley. 

ca.us/commissions/health 

Zoning Adjustments Board Thurs., Dec. 11, at 7 p.m., in City Council Chambers. Mark Rhoades, 981-7410. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/zoning 

Design Review Committee meets Mon. Dec. 15, at 7:30 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Anne Burns, 981-7415. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/designreview


The Other Diaspora Israelis Must Confront

By George Bisharat Special to the Planet
Tuesday December 09, 2003

In early October, I meandered the shores of Lake Geneva, Switzerland with easy-laughing Mahmoud. We were bleary-eyed from international travel, and from many hours of animated discussions at our conference.  

Scholars, lawyers and activists had converged to explore ways to implement the rights of Palestinians to return to and regain their homes, seized by Israel in 1948. This fate had befallen Villa Harun ar-Rashid, the Jerusalem home of my late grandfather, Hanna Ibrahim Bisharat. We had been inspired by accounts of successful campaigns for housing restitution for refugees and other dispossessed peoples in Bosnia, South Africa and Rwanda. 

The sky was leaden, the wind off the slate lake bracing. But the fountain at the end of the lake lofted exuberant white plumes of water toward the heavens, and seemed to elevate with them our hopes and dreams for a more just and peaceful future. 

Little did we suspect that in other conference rooms across the same city, Israelis and Palestinians had been conducting covert, informal negotiations for two years toward what are now touted as the “Geneva Accord.” The agreement, while envisioning a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, studiously avoids mention of the very rights Mahmoud and I, and many others, are fighting to protect. The negotiators, prominent private citizens, include former Israeli Justice Minister Yossi Beilin and former Palestinian Information and Culture Minister Yasser Abed Rabbo. 

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has vehemently attacked the unofficial pact, and the negotiators have been condemned as irresponsible meddlers. The accord has no chance of adoption in the immediate future. 

Its principal objective may have only been didactic: to teach Israelis there is an alternative to the militaristic policies of Sharon. 

The pointed silence regarding the Palestinian right of return, however, means that an important opportunity has been missed to apprise Israelis, and the world, of a critical reality. No real or lasting peace will be achieved in the area until Israel finally admits the long-denied truth, accepts moral responsibility and apologizes for its forcible exile of Palestinian refugees 55 years ago. 

In 1948, three quarters of a million Palestinians were driven from what became Israel, their homes, land and possessions taken over by the new Jewish state. Most were victims of direct military attacks, forcible expulsion orders or a deliberate campaign of terror and intimidation, fueled by actual massacres. A post-war internal report from the Haganah (a quasi-official Jewish militia) stated that of 391,000 Palestinians who had fled by June, 1948, some 73 percent had done so in response to Jewish military operations. 

Palestinian villagers were often attacked at night, from two or three sides, while a road to the closest Arab country was left open. Their flight was hastened by news of massacres committed by Zionist forces, the most infamous of which occurred on April 9, 1948 in Deir Yassin. Up to 254 mostly unarmed Palestinians were slaughtered. Some were paraded in Jerusalem on trucks before being executed. 

Describing the July 10, 1948 attack on Kweikat, near Haifa, a villager attested: “We were awakened by the loudest noise we had ever heard, shells exploding and artillery fire...the whole village was in panic...Most of the villagers began to flee with their pajamas on. The wife of Qasim Ahmad Said fled [mistakenly] carrying a pillow in her arms instead of her child.” 

Exile involved more than material deprivation. Palestinians lost their homes, belongings, fields, orchards, workshops, possessions, professions -- but more than that they lost their human dignity. Any people that has suffered massive wrongs—African-Americans, Japanese-Americans, Jews—understand the special wound of victimization for who you are, not what you have done. 

Like slavery for African-Americans, internment for Japanese-Americans and the Nazi holocaust for Jews, the “Nakba” (“Catastrophe”) was a seminal event in the consciousness of the Palestinian people. No act of the Palestinians justified their expulsion. Their only “crime” was that they were born Christians and Muslims in a place coveted by the Zionist movement for an exclusive Jewish state, and refused to slink off into history as a vanquished people. 

As Israel's first prime minister, David Ben Gurion, once candidly admitted to a colleague: “If I were an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: We have taken their country. Sure, God promised it to us, but what does that matter to them? Our God is not theirs. We come from Israel, it's true, but 2,000 years ago, and what is that to them? There has been anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: We have come here and stolen their country.” (The comment was made to Nahum Goldmann, as reported in the latter’s book, “The Jewish Paradox.”) 

The U.N. quickly affirmed the right of the Palestinians to choose to return to their homes, or to receive compensation and support for resettlement. Israel stone-walled the entire international community, rejecting virtually any return by the refugees of 1948, a position the U.S. delegate to the U.N. Conciliation Committee on Palestine denounced as “morally reprehensible.” 

An official Israeli Transfer Committee under Yosef Weitz mobilized to block the return of Palestinian refugees, orchestrating the obliteration of entire Palestinian villages, or their resettlement with Jewish immigrants. 

The Transfer Committee also devised a propaganda plan to justify Israel’s rejection of the right of return. Israel soon claimed that Palestinians left their homes after radio broadcasts by Arab leaders bidding them to evacuate. Later review of broadcast transcripts proved this claim to be a fabrication. Israel argued that Jewish emigration from Arab countries, some of which flowed to Israel, constituted a “population exchange” that compensated for its expulsion of the Palestinians—as if two wrongs made a right. 

Israel also blamed Arab states for “failing to resettle Palestinian refugees”—something the Palestinians themselves actively resisted. Five and a half decades later, Palestinian refugees and their offspring number 5.5 million people. 

Israel’s denial of responsibility for the refugees, and rejection of their repatriation—unchallenged by the new “Geneva Accord”—is, at this stage, as galling and hurtful as the original expulsion itself. The pain of denial should be intuitively understood by victims of the Nazi holocaust—indeed, by all of us who are repelled by denial of that terrible episode in history. 

Thus the chances for long-term peace and reconciliation would be greatly advanced if the Israeli government were to stop hiding the truth. As remote as peace seems today, halting the 55-year cover-up and apologizing would place peace negotiations between the two peoples on an entirely different ground. At this stage, the dream of return to Palestine is for many Palestinians a shield against despair, and recognition of the right to return a matter of great principle. A sincere Israeli apology would be a milestone toward reconciliation that no Palestinian could ignore. 

Formidable obstacles lie in the path to apology. Many Israelis doubt that Israel deliberately expelled the Palestinians. But many others—elders who remember the events of 1948, or others who have read histories of the period based on recently declassified documents—know the truth. 

More difficult are Israeli fears about the consequences of such an admission, especially the possible return of large numbers of Palestinians to Israel, and the attendant threat to the Jewish character of their state. Yet establishing an ethnically exclusive state in someone else’s country may not be a “right” that merits protection. Accepting back refugees, who would form a larger Palestinian minority in Israel than has been deemed ideal for Jews, may be the price Israel must 

pay for establishing a Jewish state in Arab Palestine. 

Nor would an apology inevitably cause the return of millions of Palestinian refugees. It is entirely possible that, with the dignity of Palestinian refugees ameliorated by an apology, Palestinians’ decisions regarding actual return would be based on more purely pragmatic grounds. 

Of course, part of Israel’s political elite may still seek exclusive Jewish control over all of former Palestine, including the West Bank and Gaza Strip. If so—and there is much in current Israeli policy that supports such an inference—apology is the furthest thing from their minds, and the regional forecast is for blood. One must place hope in the small but growing number of Israelis who see through the curtain of fear behind which their leaders hide their expansionist policies, and in the desires of many other Israelis to live a simple life of peace. 

I can add personal testimony to the power of apology. Last May, I wrote about going to visit my grandparents’ home in Jerusalem, and my exchanges with its Jewish residents, and their attempts to deny my family’s connection to our home. After my story was published, I heard from three other Israelis who had lived there after its expropriation in 1948. Two of the three discussed the home only casually, without acknowledging my family’s dispossession. 

But the third person was different. His message to me began: “I read your article with special interest, and with an odd, but distorted sense of connection to you.” He explained that he was a native-born Israeli, and while a member of the Haganah during the 1948 war, was stationed in Villa Harun ar-Rashid for a period of three months. He ended by saying that he would like to meet me, and apologize for the taking of my family’s home. 

Fortunately, the gentleman lived nearby and, indeed, we met. After an hour of friendly conversation, this dear man reached across the table, extending his hand, and said: “I am sorry. I was blind. What we did was wrong, but I participated in it and I cannot deny it.” He added: “ I owe your family three months rent,” and we both broke into laughter. 

It is hard to fully describe what I experienced. But vindication was secondary to the tremendous surge of admiration I felt for this man’s moral courage. I was inspired, truly, to match his humanity. Just that response, writ large, is what awaits Israel if it could bring itself to apologize to the Palestinians. There is an untapped reservoir of Palestinian magnanimity and good will that could transform the relations between the two peoples, and make things possible that are not possible today. 

 

George Bisharat is a law professor at the University of California’s Hastings College of Law in San Francisco. This article previously appeared in the Sacramento Bee and the Electronic Intifada website.  

 

 

 

 


Shambhala Booksellers Closes After 35 Years

By ALTA GERREY Special to the Planet
Tuesday December 09, 2003

When Philip Barry told his son that Shambhala Booksellers had to close, his nine-year-old protested, “But Dad! I want to work there when I grow up!” The boy immediately made some bookmarks to sell to help the store make more money. 

In spite of the dedication of the staff and appreciation of the community, Shambhala did indeed have a closing ceremony Nov. 26. 

The founders, Sam Bercholz and Michael Fagan, both idealistic 20-year-olds when they started the business in a tiny side room of Moe’s Bookstore, were joined by current owner Philip Barry in saying farewell to this precious member of Berkeley’s bookselling community. 

When they began, their vision was to “create a space to propagate the Wisdom Traditions of the World.” So-called “new age” books were few, but the classics of spiritual and esoteric literature were carefully gathered and presented. As new spiritual leaders became published (many thanks to Shambhala Publishing, which came later and still continues), the stock outgrew the tiny space and moved into the larger space next door, becoming its own bookshop. The owners chose to call it booksellers rather than bookshop, to emphasize that it is people-based rather than product-based. 

I could not resist asking, “How did a spiritually based bookstore deal with shoplifters?” 

Philip folded his hands, “It depends. One man we still see on the street sometimes used to come in and lie on the floor, then get up and buy his favorite book. Every time he came in, he would buy the same book. As I was working the counter one day, he came in and kneeled at the center table. I thought, “Uh-oh,” and as soon as I had a moment, I walked over to him. He was trying to shove his favorite book—which is a large volume—into his unzipped pants. 

I shouted at him ‘Now you’ve made it bad for everybody! You can’t come in here anymore!’ So that’s what we do with shoplifters; we eighty-six them.” 

What was the book? Tools for Tantra. 

For 34 years, the store survived riots, the recession of l989 and the high-crime 1990s. I asked Philip for his favorite memory. “I was just leaving a shrine room where I’d been meditating, and found an urgent message: ‘Come to the store!’ I thought, ‘Oh, no—another riot.’ But in fact, Chogyam Trungpa Rimpoche had arrived in Berkeley, and had come to the store. 

The clerk had found a bottle of good champagne I was saving for another event and opened it. Rimpoche stood at the door, quaffing champagne and grinning and introducing himself to everyone who wandered in. He was so pleased with the sign over the stairs—YOU ARE ENTERING THE KINGDOM OF SHAMBALA—that he autographed it, and suggested adding a second “h” after the “b” to help Americans correctly pronounce it. The spelling was immediately changed on our sign to “Shambhala,” as he suggested. 

Recently, customers frantic to save the store suggested fundraising events. In an open letter, Philip responded, “We are a business…(we are) not asking for donations. The only way real change can come is if people realize what is at stake and support local businesses with ongoing patronage… Still, 35 years is a pretty good run for a little bookshop.” 

As irreplaceable stores close, such as Shambhala Booksellers and Juicy News on College Avenue, which carried 4,207 magazines, our access to information may continue on the Internet, but the serendipitous encounters that book lovers cherish are irretrievably lost. 

California poet Justice Putnam was upset to hear about Shambhala. “That’s so sad. Man, I guess I wasn’t even aware of that! Was it because of rents?” 

Indeed, expenses increased, but the loss of customers to chain stores and the Internet is what wipes out independent booksellers. The neighboring bookstores on Telegraph Avenue—Cody’s, Shakespeare & Company and Moe’s—all respected Shambhala’s focus and agreed not to carry their best-selling books so that the smaller specialty store would thrive. The large chains have no such concern for the independents. 

I encountered the chain store attitude when I ran Shameless Hussy Press. If it had not been for the independents, 42 of our 44 books would never have seen shelf space in a store. Of the two that that were carried by chains, their shelf life was a maximum of three weeks. Any copies that did not sell within that time frame were returned to us. My basement filled up with returned copies until I gave up and had a truck haul these irreplaceable but unsold books to the recycling center. 

Berkeley still has more bookstores per capita than any city in the world—49 stores for a population of 127,000. But even in this environment, Shambhala was special; whenever I entered that space, I came away feeling nourished. It was part of the gourmet section of international literature. Their loss means less arugula and more canned corn. Edmund Burke puts it more eloquently: “The bonds of community are broken at great peril for they are not easily replaced.” 

Four blocks away on Bancroft near Telegraph is a surviving independent bookstore, University Press Books, which just celebrated their twenty-ninth anniversary. In a beautifully designed space next to the only exclusively classical music shop in the world, they feature books published by university presses, most of which would never last past the allotted three weeks in a chain store. 

University Press Books’ anniversary party featured memorable l950s tasty food like bologna on sliced white bread with no lettuce. “Some party,” grumbled an employee, “when the friggin author doesn’t show up!” He did show up three hours later but was told it was all over. It was not. I was still happily chowing down bologna sandwiches and waiting for him to autograph my copy of his book on humor. Unfortunately he believed the clerk in front, and just walked out of the store before ever joining the historians in the back room busily arguing about who best embodied the 1950s: the Kingston Trio or Rosemary Clooney. 

Founders Karen and Bill McClung started University Press Books in the arcade off Dana Street before moving into this building redesigned by architect Thadeus Kusmierski. Now on Bancroft, they have their main customer base directly across the street, which helps explain their survival, when three other stores with the same focus have closed in London, New York and Boulder.  

As well as books by university presses, they now carry some trade academic presses and a few titles by Berkeley-based Heyday Books. 

Collected Thoughts, another independent shop owned by Lorraine Zimmerman, has been saved from closing by moving in to University Press Books and bringing their children’s books and cards.  

There are weekly book signings for the foreseeable future, and there are so many beautifully designed books on these tables that one customer claimed she considers it the most dangerous store to enter when she’s trying to stay within her budget. The staff is friendly, helpful and knowledgeable. Enjoy the ambiance and take your glorious new purchase next door for a quiet cup, where classical music thrives as well.


Arts Calendar

Tuesday December 09, 2003

TUESDAY, DEC. 9 

THEATER 

Shotgun Theatre Lab, “Heavy Days,” a collaborative ensemble piece about four women who resist and succumb to the allure of madness, at 8 p.m. at La Val’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid, at Hearst. Cost is $10. 704-8210. www.shotgunplayers.org 

FILM 

Yasujiro Ozu: “The Lady and the Beard” at 7:30 p.m. and “Tokyo Chorus” at 8:35 p.m.at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Courtableu at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cajun dance lesson with Patti Whitehurst at 8 p.m. Cost is $9. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Hanson Brothers, The Rotters at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $10. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Jazzschool Student Recitals from 5 to 9 p.m. at the Jazz- 

school. Free. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Dayna Stephens House Jam at 8 p.m. at The Jazz House. Donation $5. 649-8744.  

www.thejazzhouse.com 

Mimi Fox, solo guitar, at 8 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810. 

Jeffrey Foucault, original acoustic songwriter, at the 1923 Teahouse at 8 p.m. Suggested donation of $7-$15. 644-2204. www.epicarts.org 

WEDNESDAY, DEC. 10 

EXHIBITION OPENINGS 

The Garden, an exhibit on the theme of Mahayan Buddhism with objects dating from 200 B.C.E. to 2002. Berkeley Art Museum, 2626 Bancroft Way. 643-6494. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu  

THEATER 

A Little Puppet Show, with Music, puppetry by Wise Fool and Il Teatro Calamari, music by Mark Growden. Doors at 7 p.m., show at 8 p.m. at the Oakland Noodle Factory, 1255 26th St., corner of Union, West Oakland. Tickets are $5-$10 sliding scale, children $3. 415-905-5958.  

FILM 

Cuban Film: “Paradise Under the Stars” at 7 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $8-15, benefit for Pastors for Peace. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Standby: No Technical Difficulties: Program 5 at 7:30 p.m. Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Café Poetry and open mic, hosted by Kira Allen at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

“Images of Mary in Art: Our Lady of Guadalupe” with Katie Osanga, doctoral candidate at the GTU, at 7:30 p.m. at All Souls Episcopal Church, 2220 Cedar St. 848-1755. 

Berkeley Poetry Slam with host Charles Ellik at 8:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $7,  

$5 with student i.d. 841-2082.  

www.starryploughpub.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Tallis Scholars, Renaissance sacred vocal music, at 8 p.m. at First Congregational Church, 2345 Channing Way. Tickets are $42. 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

Ragas and Talas, classical Indian music open jam at 8 p.m. at The Jazz House. Donation $5. 649-8744. www.thejazzhouse.com 

Jazzschool Student Recitals from 5 to 9 p.m. at the Jazz-school. Free. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

NC Blues Connection at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. West Coast swing lesson with Nick & Shanna at 8:00 p.m. Cost is $9. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Nicole and the Soul Sisters at 9:30 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

Jules Broussard, Bing Nathan and Ned Boynton at 8 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810. 

Brian Wallace at 9 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

THURSDAY, DEC. 11 

EXHIBITION OPENINGS 

Kala Art Institute, Artists’ Annual Exhibition opening reception from 6 to 9 p.m. at 1060 Heinz Ave. 549-2977. www.kala.org 

THEATER 

Shotgun Players, “Death of Meyerhold,” opens at 8 p.m. at the Live Oak Theater, 1301 Shattuck Ave. at Berryman, and runs though Dec. 28, Thurs. - Sat. at 8 p.m. and Sun. at 7 p.m. Tickets are $12-$18. 704-8210. www.shotgunplayers.org 

FILM 

Yasujiro Ozu: “Woman of Tokyo” at 7:30 p.m. and “A Mother Should be Loved” at 8:40 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

Antero Alli: “Hysteria,” with the filmmaker in person, at 8 p.m. at 21 Grand, 449-B 23rd St., near Telegraph. Cost is $5-$10.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“America 24/7: 24 Hours. 7 Days. Extraordinary Images of One American Week” a photo documentary book produced by David Elliot Cohen, at 7:30 p.m. at Easy Going Bookstore, 1385 Shattuck Ave at Rose, 843-3533. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

World Beat Celebration with Neal Cronin, guitar, vocals and Joyce Wermont, percussion, vocals at 7 p.m. at Pomegranate Mediterranean Restaurant, 1585 University Ave. 654-1904. 

Jazzschool Student Recitals from 5 to 9 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Free. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Inka Star and Rachel Efron at the 1923 Teahouse at 8 p.m. Donation of $7-$15. 644-2204. www.epicarts.org 

Bill Kirchen & Too Much Fun, rockabilly, dieselbilly and truck-stop rock at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $15.50 in advance, $16.50 at the door. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Shabaz performs a blend of Indian, Pakistani Qawwali, and other strains from the East and West, at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $9. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Serena at 9:30 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

Ebb and Flow, Anton Barbeau at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $7. 841-2082.  

www.starryploughpub.com 

Keni El Lebrijano, flamenco guitar, at 8 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810. 

Aaron Novik’s Gubbish, the Toids, and Patrick Cress’ Telepathy perform modern jazz at 8 p.m. at The Jazz House. Donation $7-$15. 649-8744. www.thejazzhouse.com 

Bizar Bazaar at 9 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

FRIDAY, DEC. 12  

FILM 

Yasujiro Ozu: “There Was a Father” at 7:30 p.m. and “The Record of a Tenement Gentleman” at 9:20 p.m. at Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

THEATER 

Berkeley High School, “You Can’t Take it With You,” by Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman, directed by Rachel Rudy, at 8 p.m. at the Florence Schwimley Little Theater. Tickets are $10, $5 with student i.d. 

Oakland Opera Theater, “Four Saints in Three Acts,” an opera by Virgil Thomson and Gertrude Stein, at 8 p.m. at Oakland Metro, 201 Broadway, at 2nd St. Tickets are $15-$25 and are available from www.oaklandopera.org 

“The Christmas Revels” at the Scottish Rite Theatre, 1547 Lakeside Drive, at 8 p.m. Tickets are $17-$35 and are available from www.calrevels.org or by calling Frantix at 415-621-1216.  

“A Night of Drama and Music” presented by Arrowsmith High School at 7:30 p.m. at the Parish Hall, 2300 Bancroft Ave. Tickets are $5 for adults, free for students and children. 540-0440. 

California Shakespeare Student Company, “A Comedy of Errors” at 7 p.m. at Cal Shakes Rehearsal Hall, 701 Heinz Ave. Tickets are $5. 548-3422, ext. 130. www.calshakes.org 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Jean Shinoda Bolen reads from “Crones Don’t Whine: Concentrated Wisdom for Juicy Women,” at 7:30 p.m. at Boadecia’s Books, 398 Colusa Ave., Kensington. 559-9184. www.bookpride.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Mark Morris Dance Group, The Hard Nut at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $32-$56. 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

Berkeley Ballet Theater, “The Nutcracker,” at 7 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts. Tickets are $18 and are available from 843-4689. www.berkeleyballet.org 

Making Waves and Samsara, a cappella trios, with Storm Florez, Inka, and True Margrit at 7:30 p.m. at Rose Street House of Music. For location call 594-4000 ext. 687. www.rosestreetmusic.com 

“Shining Star” a hip-hop dance concert and fundraising event, featuring performances by the New Style Motherlode Dance Company and Diamond Dance Company, at 8 p.m. at The Regent’s Theatre, Holy Names College, 3500 Mountain Blvd., Oakland. Tickets are $25 available from 597-1056. www.newstylemotherlode.com 

Molly Holm, jazz tunes with trombonist Wayne Wallace, pianist Bill Bell, and drummer, Deszon Claiborne, at 8 p.m., at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $13 in advance, $15 at the door. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Jazzschool Student Recitals from 5 to 9 p.m. at the Jazz- 

school. Free. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Melanie O’Reilly and Sean O Nuallain, Celtic music and jazz night at the 1923 Teahouse at 8 p.m. Suggested donation of $7-$15. 644-2204. www.epicarts.org 

Pick Pocket Ensemble, Married Couple, Odd Shaped Case Ensemble perform modern jazz at 8 p.m. at The Jazz House. Sliding scale donation $10-$15. 649-8744. www.thejazzhouse.com 

Stephen Kent and Trance Mission at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Hot for Teacher, Damage, Inc. at 9:30 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $7. 848-0886. www.blakesontelegraph.com 

Kevin Cadogan, Jesse DeNatale, Noelle Hampton at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $6. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Autanna at 9:30 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

Danny Caron at 8:30 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810. 

Due West, contemporary bluegrass, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $15.50 in advance, $16.50 at the door. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Stolen Bibles at 9 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Toys That Kill, Frisk, Scattered Fall, Scissorhands, Love Songs at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $5. 525-9926. 

SATURDAY, DEC. 13 

CHILDREN  

Los Amiguitos de La Peña with Bonnie Lockhart at 10:30 a.m. at La Peña. Cost is $4 for adults, $3 for children. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Meet Ms. Frizzle at 1 p.m. at Lawrence Hall of Science, Centennial Drive. Cost is $4.50 to $8.50. 642-5132. 

THEATER 

Berkeley High School, “You Can’t Take it With You,” by Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman, directed by Rachel Rudy, at 8 p.m. at the Florence Schwimley Little Theater. Tickets are $10, $5 with student i.d. 

Destiny Arts Center Youth on the Move “Love in Action,” with dance, martial arts and spoken word at 7 p.m. at McClymonds High School, 2607 Myrtle St., at 26th near Market. This celebration marks the 15th anniversary of Destiny Arts arts education and violence prevention programs. 597-1619. www.destinyarts.org 

“The Christmas Revels” at the Scottish Rite Theatre, 1547 Lakeside Drive, at 1 and 5 p.m. Tickets are $17-$35 and are available from www.calrevels.org or by calling Frantix at 415-621-1216.  

California Shakespeare Student Company, “A Comedy of Errors” at 2 and 7 p.m. at Cal Shakes Rehearsal Hall, 701 Heinz Ave. Tickets are $5. 548-3422, ext. 130. www.calshakes.org 

“The Wakefield Cycle,” a selection of medieval religious miracle plays at 6 p.m. at All Souls Episcopal Church, 2220 Cedar St. A medieval-themed banquet will preceed the performance. Childcare provided. 848-1755. 

Oakland Opera Theater, “Four Saints in Three Acts,” an opera by Virgil Thomson and Gertrude Stein, at 8 p.m. at Oakland Metro, 201 Broadway, at 2nd St. Tickets are $15-$25 available from www.oaklandopera.org 

FILM 

Yasujiro Ozu: “Early Summer” at 4 and 8:45 p.m. and “A Hen in the Wind” at 7 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Rhythm & Muse holds its yearly all-open mic, sign-up 6:30 p.m., reading and performance at 7 p.m. Free. Berkeley Art Center, 1275 Walnut St. 527-9753. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Berkeley Ballet Theater, “The Nutcracker,” at 2 and 7 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts. Tickets are $18 and are available from 843-4689. www.berkeleyballet.org 

Berkeley Youth Orchestra’s Winter Concert, Prokofiev’s “Peter and the Wolf” narrated by John Grappone, and Holst’s “Jupiter” at 11 a.m. at the Laney College Theater, 900 Fallon St. in Oakland. Tickets are $5 at the door. 663-3296. www.byoweb.org 

San Francisco Early Music Society, The Concord Ensemble, performs ancient English carols, plainsong, Renaissance polyphony, and poetry at 8 p.m. at First Congregational Church, 2345 Channing. Tickets are $22 for SFEMS members and seniors, $25 for non-members, $10 for students. 528-1725. www.sfems.org 

Voci, “Voices in Peace III: The Promise of Peace” women’s vocal ensemble presents six centuries of Magnificat settings and other selections celebrating the promise of peace at 3 p.m. at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, 2300 Bancroft Way at Dana. Tickets are $15-$20, children under 12 free, and are available at the door or online at www.angelfire.com/la/VOCI 

Slavyanka - San Francisco Men’s Russian Chorus performs “Echoes of the Soul: Songs of Russian Spirit, Season and People” at 8 p.m. at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, 2300 Bancroft Way at Dana. Tickets are $15-$18, available from 866-468-3399. www.ticketweb.com 

Kensington Symphony Orchestra Holiday Concert, conducted by Tomothy Smith, performs Strauss, Corelli and Mendelssohn at 8 p.m. at Northminster Presbyterian Church, 545 Ashbury Ave. El Cerrito. Suggested donation is $10; seniors $8. Children admitted free. 534-4335.  

Oakland East Bay Gay Men’s Chorus, “I Got Yule, Babe,” at 8 p.m. at Lakeshore Avenue Baptist Church, 3534 Lakeshore Ave. Tickets are $12 in advance; $15 at the door. 800-706-2389. www.oebgmc.org 

Diana Stork, Holiday Harp Performance at 1 p.m. at Bansuri’s Spring Gallery, 3929 Piedmont Ave., Oakland. 415-259-8629. 

Rose Street House of Music with Emily Shore, Irina Rivkin, Maria Quiles, Lily Wilson, Kiki Ebsen, Rebecca Crump at 7:30 p.m. For directions call 594-4000 ext. 687. www.rosestreetmusic.com 

Singing Out Against War and Empire with Robert Temple and Soulfolk Ensemble, Errotator and Paradise Freejahlove at 8 p.m. at Temescal Arts Center, 511 48th St. at Telegraph. Cost is $10, no one turned away. wwwroberttemplemusic.com 

Bolshevik Cafe, a cabaret variety show featuring Bay Area music and comedy acts with and anti-capitalist slant, at 8 p.m. at Finnish Hall, 1819 Tenth St. Dinner available at 6:30 p.m. Come early as the dinner and show always sell out. 

Talent Show featuring Sapo Loco from the Funky Aztecs at the 1923 Teahouse at 9 p.m. All ages welcome. Suggested donation of $7-$10, no one turned away for lack of funds. 644-2204. www.epicarts.org 

“Shining Star” a hip-hop dance concert and fundraising event with a holiday theme, featuring performances by the New Style Motherlode Dance Company and Diamond Dance Company, at 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. at The Regent’s Theatre, Holy Names College, 3500 Mountain Blvd., Oakland. Tickets are $25 available from 597-1056. www.newstylemotherlode.com 

Married Couple at 9 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Jazzschool Student Recitals from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Free. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com  

Dmitri Matheny Winterfest at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $12-$18. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com  

Suzy Thompson celebrates the release of her solo album, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $15.50 in advance, $16.50 at the door. 548-1761.  

www.freightandsalvage.org 

Tom Rigney and Flambeau at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cajun dance lesson with Diana Castillo at 8:30 p.m. Cost is $13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Maria Marquez, CD release party, at 8 p.m. at La Peña. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Rogue Wave, Six Eye Columbia, The Red Thread at 9:30 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $6. 848-0886. www.blakesontelegraph.com 

Robin Gregory, jazz vocalist at 8 p.m. at The Jazz House. Sliding scale donation $8-$15. 649-8744. www.thejazzhouse.com 

Nicole McRory at 9:30 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

Pinback, Aspects of Physics at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $7. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Denise Perrier at 8:30 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810. 

The Phantom Limbs, Nigel Peppercock, Funeral Shock, Annihilation Time, Case of Emergency at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $5. 525-9926.


City, UC Disaster Meet Provokes Citizen Complaints

By MATTHEW ARTZ
Tuesday December 09, 2003

A town/gown disaster preparedness summit at the Berkeley City Club Friday brought out approximately 100 city, public utility and university top brass—including Mayor Tom Bates and Chancellor Robert Berdahl—but some community members complained about a glaring omission from the list of invitees: John Q. Public. 

“If the City of Berkeley is going to co-sponsor this event and put money and staff time into it, then the general public should know about it,” said Councilmember Kriss Worthington, adding that residents would have questioned university and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) officials about the wisdom of planning major new developments in the heart of an earthquake zone. 

“It’s a serious flaw when you get 100 top professionals together but you don’t address the single biggest issue about disaster preparedness,” he said. 

“That wasn’t factored into our thinking,” said Berkeley Assistant City Manager Arrietta Chakos, who worked with university officials to organize the summit. “There will be tons of time for more community discussion and review.” 

City and university officials convened the summit at a shared cost of about $5,000 to begin work towards a Community Mitigation Plan that could net both entities new streams of federal disaster funding. The city’s share was covered by a state grant, Chakos said. 

For a meeting on disasters, the tone was upbeat.  

In the years since the 1991 Berkeley Hills fire, the city has received roughly $30 million from the Federal Emergency Management Association (FEMA). 

Representatives from the city, school district and university boasted of their accomplishments during the past decade. Thanks to taxpayer largess and city incentive programs, all of the district’s K-12 schools, all local fire stations, and nearly 60 percent of single family homes have been retrofitted or seismically upgraded since 1991. 

The university has already retrofitted 31 of its 81 buildings as part of its roughly $800 million SAFER program, with 13 more buildings scheduled for completion within the next five years. 

Still, a magnitude 6.9 earthquake along the Hayward Fault which runs underneath Memorial Stadium—a 62 percent probability before 2032—could have devastating consequences, said Richard Eisner of the California Office of Emergency Services. 

Such a quake would kill an estimated 100 residents, ignite five major fires, damage 21,000 buildings, displace 3,000 - 12,000 residents and cause an estimated $1.5 billion in damages, he said. 

Homes most susceptible to collapse are the roughly 400 “soft story buildings” built around the campus during the ‘60s and early ‘70s that house about 5,000 residents. Similar buildings—which perch apartments above ground-level garages—suffered high rates of destruction in the 1993 Northridge earthquake, Housing Director Stephen Barton said.  

Friday’s meeting focused on coordinating disaster response efforts among the city, the university, public utilities and BART. 

Representatives from the East Bay Municipal Utility District (EBMUD) and Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) claimed their disaster preparedness programs—funded with billions of taxpayer dollars—would likely restore water and electricity within two weeks of a major temblor. However, BART General Manager Thomas Margro said that without funding for its proposed $1.5 billion retrofit program—rejected by voters in 2002—a major earthquake could shut down the Transbay Tube for two years. 

Coordinating transportation in the aftermath of an earthquake emerged as a primary concern. “The ability to move people in and out of places and get access will be significant,” said UC Berkeley Director of Parking and Transportation Nad Permaul. “If East Bay MUD has to bring water by truck, we need to decide what street do we have to have.” 

Berkeley Fire Chief Reg Garcia said the city has prioritized city response and evacuation routes, but that a decision on which street to open first will be based on “the nature and location of the emergency.” He said that since top city emergency personnel all lived within walking distance of the city’s new Emergency Operations Center in the Public Safety Building, the city would not be shorthanded during an emergency.  

Some members of the public were invited to the meeting. Members of commissions on housing, transportation, disabilities and zoning were present, but members of the Community Environmental Advisory Commission (CEAC) and the Community Health Commission—two of the biggest advocates for disaster preparedness—were excluded. 

“This was an absolute outrage,” said Pam Sihvola of the Committee to Minimize Toxic Waste. “Why were the most informed neighborhood and environmental groups excluded from the meeting?” 

Particularly galling, she said, was that attendees of an afternoon roundtable meeting on environmental health co-chaired by LBNL Radiation Safety Officer Gary Zeman never discussed ramifications of the Molecular Foundry, which is to be built within the Alquist-Priolo earthquake zone and a landslide zone. 

“We believe the best way to shield yourself from huge disasters is not to build at the most hazardous site in the city,” she said. “But any community individual who would have brought that up was excluded.” 

UC Berkeley Director of Community Relations Irene Hegarty said residents will get ample opportunity to weigh in on future UC development as the university continues to fine-tune its Long Range Development Plan. 

Chakos said space limitations at the City Club—a neutral venue—limited the number of participants, but promised that residents and commissioners would get plenty of opportunities to have their say. 

“This is a small first step in a larger community conversation that will be going on for a while.” 

She estimated the mitigation plan would go before commissions by January and be ready for Council approval by late spring. Implementation would not only qualify Berkeley for more mitigation funding, but—depending on the fate a proposed law now before Congress—could qualify Berkeley for more relief in the aftermath of a disaster.


Letters to the Editor

Tuesday December 09, 2003

RUBBER STAMP 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

There have been repeated requests from BUSD for volunteers to serve on BUSD committees, namely the Facilities Safety and Maintenance Committee, which was formerly the Maintenance Advisory Committee (MAC).  

This committee was created by our Bond Measure BB which provides BUSD with over $4 million a year of funding, to provide oversight, and strategic planning. Since Michele Lawrence’s ascension, she has abrogated the MAC committee’s strategic plan, violated the statutory requirements of the bond, failed to carry out the required audits, and not accounted for the funds spent.  

Now she wants citizens to rubber stamp these violations. No wonder there are no volunteers beating down the doors.  

Yolanda Huang  

former MAC chair 2000-2002  

 

• 

OPEN FOR BUSINESS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

With regard to the stalled University Avenue Plan, not only are there already too many vacancies on University Avenue, but a valuable four-year-old business there is under threat. 

The city has given a permit for the contractor of the Darling Flower Shop project to place a cargo container on University Avenue in front of Cafe Tibet and the existing Darling Flower Shop. This large container blocks the cafe from view for anyone driving east on University Avenue. A sign has been placed on top of the container, but that does not lessen the terribly deleterious impact of hiding the business from people driving up University Avenue. 

Cafe Tibet has already suffered the loss of foot traffic that resulted from the sad demise of the UC Theatre. I think it would be a great loss to the city, to Samten’s customers, and to Tibetans in exile all over the Bay Area if a decline in customers endangers her business. As things now stand, she has to try to keep her restaurant alive when it is obscured from the street for a whole year (until August 2004). 

Surely a better place for the container can be found at the back of the work site. If the city wishes to improve the business climate on University Avenue, it must support rather than endanger existing businesses there. 

Charlene Woodcock 

 

• 

UNIVERSITY AVENUE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

It’s heartening to see so much discussion recently in the pages of the Daily Planet about the state of development along University Avenue. I agree wholeheartedly with the recent letter submitted jointly by Mayor Bates and Councilmember Maio calling for implementation of the long-neglected University Avenue Plan. We need to take a hard, critical look at the recent trend allowing oversized buildings with undersized parking allotments. 

The areas north and south of University Avenue still maintain a tenuous neighborhood charm and a livable pace and scale of living, but if the city allows construction of more Acton Courts on the avenue (that hulking behemoth west of Andronico’s), that fragile balance will be knocked permanently out of whack, with too much traffic, too much density, back yards without a shred of privacy, and a true degradation of the standard of living in our beloved Berkeley flats. 

I look forward to more thoughtful discussions in your pages about the future of University Avenue. 

Steven Saylor 

 

• 

A CASE FOR REALTORS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

An article in the Daily Planet (“Council Race Underway as Hawley Drops Out,” Dec. 5-8) refers to “a Realtor and former high school teacher” in town. If I hadn’t regularly encountered “Realtor” in the real estate pages of the local press, I would have assumed that the capital R was a typo.  

The Planet, an avowedly democratic publication, has to choose: Either elevate high school teachers and the rest of us to the orthographic heights claimed by Realtors, or bring Realtors down to the common level.  

Though I’m generally in favor of raising democratic standards, and indeed rather fancy the look of Citizen Activist and Writer (my own current designations), I think a cap on big tall letters is the best policy. But perhaps I’m confusing spelling with land use.  

Zelda Bronstein, Chair  

Berkeley Planning Commission  

 

• 

POSITIVE REVIEW 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I hope you will have more excellent art reviews by Peter Selz. It was so intelligent and reader-friendly, a real addition to your excellent newspaper. 

Estelle Jelinek 

 

• 

CLARIFICATION 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I’m writing to clarify a point about the use of a statement of overriding considerations when a proposed project’s environmental effects are significant and unavoidable, as the Environmental Impact Report shows for the Blood House at 2526 Durant Ave.  

The role of the Zoning Adjustments Board is not to ensure a profit for the developer as the Daily Planet suggested (“Not So Fast, ZAB Tells Blood House Developers,” Dec. 5-8). The role of ZAB is to implement the Berkeley General Plan and Zoning Ordinance, which calls for both increasing affordable housing and preserving Berkeley’s historic buildings. A statement of overriding considerations under the California Environmental Quality Act in this case weighs these two objectives to find if the social benefits outweigh the environmental costs. Even before we consider that question, it is important under CEQA to fully consider every feasible alternative, which is what the board decided to do last Thursday when calling for further study of the feasibility of an alternative that would preserve the house but allow for additional housing construction.  

Andy Katz 

Member, Zoning Adjustments Board 

 

• 

TAX ASSESSMENTS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Your recent Commentary piece by Ms. Gale Garcia (“City Staff Serves Developers As Kennedy’s Projects Prove,” Daily Planet, Dec. 5-8) questioned why the GAIA Building is assessed at a different rate from that of an apparently similarly sized Corder Building at 2322 Shattuck Ave. Ms. Garcia is not comparing apples to apples, for the GAIA Building has important differences with respect to the Corder Building that give rise to different evaluations. As far as I understand the city tax code and it application, there are at least three reasons: 

1) The city taxes commercial area at a higher rate than residential area. The Corder Building has much larger percentage of commercial space than the GAIA Building—an entire city block of commercial frontage (260 feet) versus 68 feet at the GAIA Building. 

2) The city does not tax garage areas, even though the square footage does in fact appear on assessors records. Roughly two thirds of the ground floor of the GAIA Building is dedicated to the parking of 42 cars; none of the ground floor of the Corder Building is. I believe that this alone accounts for a difference in the taxable area in the building of at least 25 percent. 

3) The city does not begin tax assessments on unfinished space that does not have an permanent or temporary occupancy permits, or which is not ready for permitted tenant improvements. The entire ground floor of the Corder Building has long been in use and is fully assessed. The ground floor of GAIA is still unfinished, uninhabitable, and awaits such permits—and assessments. 

I hope this sheds some light on Ms. Garcia’s inquiry. 

Patrick Kennedy 

 

• 

VISA HASSLES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I just wanted to thank you for the excellent article on the serious troubles that international graduate students on the Berkeley campus are facing because of the excessive and unclear process of visa issuance that is taking place today (“Students Face Visa Hassles,” Daily Planet, Dec. 5-8). 

I am an international student myself and have been trying to work on this issue within the graduate student government. Although we have managed to meet with university administrators over the issue, little information has been available, as officials have been reluctant to release any particulars about visa delays and denials. The Berkeley Daily Planet just filled in that void! Thank you for providing crucial information from which we can begin to work on this issue. 

I hope that you will recognize how deeply this affects students—even those who have not experienced troubles so far are constrained from traveling abroad, whether to conferences or to see their families—simply for the fear of encountering troubles on their way back. The lingering fear is affecting the academic endeavor and the quality of life of all students who come to study in the United States. 

Thank you again, and keep up the good work of uncovering problems that are suffered by people who otherwise lack voices. 

Takeshi Akiba 

UC Berkeley graduate student 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

• 

XXXXXXXXXX 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I wish to comment on the state of affairs of the Telegraph Avenue Street Artists, a group of licensed street art and craft vendors to whom the City of Berkeley owes much of its character. 

We are a poor but proud lot, all makers and vendors of handcrafted items ranging from jewelry and leather goods to art, clothing, hats, incense, soaps, candles, pens and much more. The operant word here is “handcrafted.” We spend our lives making these gifts, then enduring all kinds of weather to sell them on the street, the only roof over our heads (and the heads of our customers) is that which we bring with us. Some of us don’t make enough money at our art or craft to make a decent living, eat well, or provide ourselves with good living and working quarters; some of us are more fortunate because we have other sources of income, such as a husband or wife with a steady job, or we have wholesale and website customers. 

Nevertheless, we are real businesses selling products you won’t find anywhere else. Many of our items are one of a kind, many are made in quantity, but all are handmade from raw materials, the old-fashioned way. We have no factories making our wares, no underpaid sweat shop workers laboring to make cheap goods to the masses. We have no marketing department, no advertising budget, no professional association to support our endeavors. We just survive or thrive, depending on the mood of the crowd that day, or that week, or that month. And if sales are good, we eat and pay our rent; if not, we suffer. 

So why write about it? Simple: to get the local media to devote as much attention to us as we can get. To draw crowds of people to our booths, our street stores which we put up and take down every day and night. To support the local economy, the Berkeley economy. To get you people out of the malls, away from the cheap junk that’s sold for fashion, art or beauty, and to get you to stroll by our booths and spend your money on the beautiful crafts we make. You’ll find gifts 

for your family and friends that you’ll not find anywhere in the world. You’ll not be disappointed and, believe me, neither will we. 

Ed Livingston 

 

• 

XXXXXXXXXX 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Steve Geller writes (Letters, Daily Planet, Dec. 5-8) praising public transportation in Berkeley. I would be delighted if that were so, but just look at the schedules. My wife and I just spent a day in San Francisco using public transportation. The bus we rode came every four minutes in mid-day and was crowded. Too many buses in the East Bay seem to come about every 30 minutes in mid-day. San Francisco Muni transfers are free and are good in any direction for a generous period of time. AC Transit charges for transfers. BART, however, is fast, frequent, and comfortable, but then there is a charge to transfer to AC Transit from 

BART. The infrequent schedules of East Bay buses is discouraging; and when schedules have been revised to be even less frequent, there is even less reason to patronize AC Transit. 

Alan R. Meisel 

 

 

• 

XXXXXXXXXX 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Dear Council Member Hawley, 

Thank you for announcing your choice of a successor in District 5. Now I definitely know for whom not to vote. 

Your candidate’s willingness to be in consensus with other councilmembers appears to be of great importance in your estimation. I’m so glad he wants to be liked so that his dance card will be full! 

How about a candidate being of good moral character, committed to specific principles, with innovative notions about how a city in a financial crisis should move forward? 

When you ran, you specifically touted your financial expertise. However, now the only solution you have put forward to solve the financial crisis is to burden homeowners with an additional property tax. 

May I suggest that it would be an honorable thing for you to do is to recognize that you no longer represent the views of the majority of voters in District 5. This was demonstrated at the last NEBA meeting. 

You should graciously acknowledge this situation, resign, and let the person who polled the next highest vote assume the remainder of your term of office. This would save the city the cost a possible recall and another election. 

Viki Tamaradze 

 

• 

XXXXXXXXXX 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

When Gov. Schwarzenegger asked Californian Indians to pay their fair share of taxes, he never once asked the same fairness of wealthy Californians. It seems to me that Mr. Schwarzenegger doesn’t wan to offend his wealthy friends who donated millions of dollar to his campaign. I call it hypocrisy at its worst. 

Mr. Schwarzenegger only learned one half of the United States when he was still in his home country of Austria. He wasn’t taught about the other half of the United States which had to do with American Indian sovereignty. While there might be legitimate concern over Indian casinos, Gov. Schwarzenegger’s argument about fairness of taxes in California is one-sided. 

Billy Trice, Jr. 

Oakland  

 

• 

XXXXXXXXXX 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Thanks for the yummy info from Marty Schiffenbauer (“Decadent Delights Await the Chocoholic’s Palate,” Daily Planet, Nov. 28-Dec. 1). Here’s my two cents: You can be “chewing good while doing good” by buying free-trade organic chocolate at Global Exchange. They carry three brands from Germany and Switzerland, large and small bars, dark, milk, and bittersweet, powdered cocoa too. Global Exchange is in San Francisco at 24th and Noe and here in Berkeley at 2840 College Ave. Also, Global Exchange is one of the few places you can find organic free-trade coffee; they have a great assortment of handsome items to wear and for the home, most from small village collectives all over the globe. 

Rhoda Slanger 

 

• 

XXXXXXXXXX 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

UC’s proposal for a conference center and museums does not only include underground parking on the site. It also includes a new parking structure north of Addison Street.  

This parking structure is not really part of the conference center/museum project, and it should be studied separately. I would like to see the main project built as soon as possible, but not the new UC parking structure.  

This parking structure would be used by UC employees and not by the general public. It seems to be part of UC’s long range development plan, which calls for parking to expand more rapidly than the number of people on campus expands—actually promoting a mode shift from other forms of transportation to the automobile.  

On the more general question of whether downtown needs more parking to stimulate business, I think UC’s conference center/museum project shows that we can attract more customers without attracting more cars.  

Almost all of the people coming to conferences will arrive by air, and when they get to Berkeley, they will not need cars. The hotel will actually reduce demand for parking: Many people visiting UC now stay in hotels in Emeryville and drive to Berkeley, because there is not enough hotel space here.  

The museums will draw people whether or not they provide parking, particularly the museum of anthropology, which will be one of the largest museums of its kind in the country.  

Automobile use expands to fill the amount of parking that is available. If UC builds its parking structure north of Addison, more UC employees will commute by car. If the conference/museum center includes more parking than is necessary, more visitors will come by car. All this parking will not bring more people downtown, but it will cause more traffic congestion and leave us with a less livable city.  

In the long run, more parking will make downtown less attractive and less successful. Berkeley’s downtown will never compete successfully with freeway-oriented shopping centers by providing more parking than they do. Downtown will compete successfully by providing the liveliest, most interesting shopping area in the East Bay—and that requires an intensity of use that you can only get with transit-oriented development.  

Charles Siegel  


Indians Master the Language of the Raj

By DAVID SUNDELSON Special to the Planet
Tuesday December 09, 2003

When I was a boy in the 50s, I had a large wall map of the world. Much of it was still pink, the pink of the British Empire: Canada and much of the Caribbean, large swaths of East and West Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and the Indian subcontinent. At that age, I found something reassuring about the uniformity of color. It made the vast world look orderly and safe.  

Even then the map was outdated, of course, and in the 60s it became much more so, as colony after colony gained independence. But since that time, something remarkable has happened. A splendid body of literature has appeared, produced by writers who hail from these former colonies, although many of them live not in Calcutta or Bombay but in London or Toronto or New York.  

I am thinking of writers as different as Salman Rushdie, V.S. Naipaul, Derek Walcott, Chinua Achebe, Caryl Phillips, Jamaica Kincaid, Amit Chaudhuri, Rohinton Mistry, Bharati Mukherjee, Michael Ondaatje, Akhil Sharma, Anita Rau Badami, Vikram Chandra, and Jhumpa Lahiri. Whatever their differences, these writers have one thing in common: They all write in English. The Empire and the Raj are long gone, but one map of the world—the literary map—is still pink. 

Other languages have dominated a region or continent.  

Greek was the common language in the Hellenistic period even after Athens lost its power. Latin was preeminent in Europe long after the fall of Rome. But no language has been adopted by so many major writers from the four corners of the earth. English is the first world literary language. 

Writers born in India make up the largest group in this new literature. Among them, Salman Rushdie is a special case. His sheer linguistic and narrative virtuosity, sometimes delightful, sometimes difficult or just tiresome, puts him in the great modernist line that extends back through Joyce to Sterne’s Tristram Shandy.  

One can divide the other Indian writers, all more old-fashioned than Rushdie in terms of narrative technique, into two groups. The first includes Amit Chaudhuri, Rohinton Mistry, and Vikram Chandra. Their lives exemplify the Indian diaspora (Chaudhuri lives in England, Chandra in Washington, and Mistry in Toronto), but their fiction is set primarily in India.  

There the resemblance ends, however. Chaudhuri’s Freedom Song, three unrelated short novels published in a single volume, gives us dreamy miniatures, short on plot but rich with the sights, sounds, and smells of middle-class family life in Calcutta. The first, A Strange and Sublime Address, explores the perspective of a 10-year-old boy with particular delicacy and precision. Time stops as Sandeep registers the specifics of baths, prayers, meals, and naps and the small, meaningful shifts of inflection in the adult voices that surround him.  

The muscular stories in Chandra’s Love and Longing in Bombay are just the opposite, crammed with sex, intense feeling, and even a ghost. The powerful centerpiece, “Kama,” is a brooding, noirish account of a world-weary policeman, Sartaj Singh, who investigates a violent crime and simultaneously confronts his disintegrating marriage.  

Next to these short works, the two recent novels of Rohinton Mistry, A Fine Balance and Family Matters, seem titanic. Mistry combines Chaudhuri’s eye and ear for detail with effortless narrative flow and grand social sweep. A Fine Balance is set during the so-called Emergency, under the tyranny of Indira Gandhi. Mistry brings together a pair of poor tailors from a remote village, a student from a comfortable Kashmiri family, and a struggling single woman in a vast but unidentified “city by the sea.” For a while, they become an unlikely but genuine family, until their lives are shattered by an episode of grotesque caste violence.  

In Jumpha Lahiri’s novel The Namesake, the hero’s grandfather, a retired professor of European literature at Calcutta University, tells his son, “Read all the Russians, and then reread them. They will never fail you.” Mistry seems to have taken this lesson to heart. His tenderness for his characters and his attention to the nuances of attachment are no less remarkable than his broad social panorama. A Fine Balance, like its successor Family Matters, offers a reader the kind of pleasure it is difficult to find outside of Tolstoy or Chekhov. 

I would place Lahiri herself and Bharati Mukherjee in the second group of writers. These not only exemplify the Indian diaspora in their own ives—Mukherjee here in Berkeley as a Professor of English—but take it as their principal subject. Their works are about dislocation and its psychological consequences, in particular the subversion of identity. They raise, over and over, the unanswerable question that arises early in Mukherjee’s most recent novel, Desirable Daughters, in a conversation between the heroine and a mysterious stranger who claims to be her relative. 

“‘Who are you?’ I repeated. The strange young man smiled at me. ‘That’s what I’d like to know myself.’” 

Mukherjee begins in 19th century rural Bengal with the story of the “tree bride,” whose father forces her to marry a tree after her wedding to a more conventional bridegroom is disrupted. The tree bride’s fate suggests indissoluble connection with the land as well as the subservience and vulnerability of Bengali women in village society.  

These are the fates which Mukherjee’s trio of desirable daughters resists, with mixed success. Parvati escapes to a conventional wealthy husband in Bombay, Padma to New Jersey, where she becomes a star of Bengali-oriented television. The main character, Tara, escapes to California, first through marriage to a Silicon Valley millionaire, the richest Bengali in America, and then to single life in a Hayes Valley house. She shares the house with her son and her lover, an ex-biker turned retrofitter who professes to be (what else?) a Zen Buddhist. Eventually, her uneasy idyll of assimilation comes to an end, and a piece of sensational violence, never fully explained, propels her back toward her origins.  

Mukherjee attempts an overview of Bengalis in America, from San Francisco to New Jersey to Queens, but her prose lacks the grace of Mistry’s. Her perspective, filtered through her narrator Tara, tends toward satire but often has the flavor of pop sociology, at once abstract and over-explicit. Tara muses that “as sisters we were close, but we didn’t have a language for divorce and depression, which meant we couldn’t fit in concepts like powerlessness and disappointment.” Her son Rabi, she tells us, is “living with his mother in a nice condo in San Francisco, going to a freewheeling private school that seemed more like an extended playgroup than a learning environment.”  

There is far too much telling of this sort, and not enough showing, the showing that provides a principle pleasure of fiction. Moreover, the characterization is weak. Tara’s voice is believable and cranky, but the lesser figures, including the other two sisters, Tara’s artistic gay son, and her lover, are little more than cartoons or clichés.  

Jhumpa Lahiri succeeds where Mukherjee does not.  

Lahiri’s debut collection of stories, The Interpreter of Maladies, won a well-deserved Pulitzer Prize in 2000. Her new novel The Namesake is even better: a sustained and deeply moving meditation on the themes of assimilation and identity.  

Lahiri’s protagonist, born in Boston to Bengali parents, is at home in America in a way that his parents cannot be. His ease is undermined only by the nickname his parents chose: Gogol, after the Russian novelist whose work has a special meaning for his father. This name, neither American nor Bengali, sticks to him in spite of various efforts to change it, and marks his separateness from both cultures.  

Lahiri gives us the subtleties routinely overlooked in our interminable wrangles about what was called, in the recent debate by the candidates for governor of California, the “color-blind society.” Gogol is invited to dinner at the luxurious home of Gerald and Lydia, the parents of his Anglo girlfriend Maxine. Gerald and Lydia are old-money Manhattan sophisticates who can discuss with equal fluency the latest French movie, Indian carpets, or the rise of Hindu fundamentalism. They welcome Gogol, but a casual observation, intended as a compliment, defines the gulf between him and his hosts.  

“‘You could be Italian,’” Lydia says during the meal, as she looks at him. 

The unobtrusive irony is at Lydia’s expense but at Gogol’s too. For the Lydias of this world, Bengali and Italian are interchangeable. Gogol’s distinctive heritage disappears into a larger, non-specific otherness. This is the price of his apparently effortless ability to sit with Lydia and Gerald as their equal. The remark also suggests Gogol’s collusion in the process, his wish to blend in by burying anything, including his name, that might set him apart.  

For Gogol, Lahiri suggests, there are no easy solutions. After breaking off his affair with Maxine, he marries Moushumi, who belongs to his parents’ extended circle of Boston Bengali friends. The marriage is soon threatened by Moushumi’s own conflicts about identity and allegiance.  

Lahiri has a sharp eye for the flaws and errors of her characters, always balanced by a generous sympathy. Her style in The Namesake is graceful and self-effacing. There are no pyrotechnics to distract from the clear-eyed, elegiac tone, which becomes almost unbearably poignant as the novel draws to a close and Gogol comes at last to accept his name and what it signifies.  

Gogol’s struggle to find a home and accept an identity is the struggle not just of Bengali-Americans, but of African-Americans, Jewish-Americans, Italian-Americans, Native Americans—of all Americans, really, and many others as well (think of Jamaicans in London or Tunisians in France or Jews in South Africa). We need writers like Lahiri who can tell us about this struggle. We need her wisdom and compassion. We need her to remind us, as she does eloquently in the final pages of The Namesake, that books can provide a more enduring home than any city, that our connection to stories can be a way back to others and to our truest selves.


Berkeley School Board Faces Declining Enrollment, Deficit

By MATTHEW ARTZ
Tuesday December 09, 2003

Berkeley schools—already reeling from several rounds of spending cuts—must slash another $2.2 million to balance this year’s budget, according to a First Interim Report presented to the school board last week. 

Board members didn’t discuss strategies to eliminate the deficit, which is down from the $6 million carried over from last year. 

State funding cuts, escalating health benefit costs and years of financial mismanagement have all contributed to the deficit. 

Declining enrollment cost the district $1.9 million in state funding this year and will cost an estimated $1.5 million next year, while employee benefits costs have skyrocketed over 20 percent the past two years, said Director of Fiscal Services Song Chin-Bendib. 

To get their financial house in order the district initiated a spending freeze, cut programs, laid-off administrative staff and eliminated approximately 55 teaching positions. The moves have ballooned average class sizes to 32 for fourth and fifth graders and over thirty for ninth graders after the district had to drop out of a federal program to reduce ninth grade class size because it couldn’t afford to pay its share. 

The $2.2 million deficit doesn’t take into account an expected bailout of the district’s cafeteria fund—which is nearly $600,000 in the red—or projected savings from employee health enrollment and worker’s compensation insurance reforms. 

Despite the wide-ranging cuts, Smith forecast future funding imbalances with projected deficits ballooning to $15 million by 2006/2007 if deficits were allowed to compound. 

Those projections included assumptions that teachers and administrators will forego pay raises for the next three years—a measure that boardmember Terry Doran thought required more public input. 

“That’s an important message that we need to convey as widely as possible, not at 12:30 a.m. at a board meeting,” he said. 

The teachers’ contract expired in June. Union head Barry Fike acknowledged that the district’s coffers were bare, but added that “it wasn’t a given that for the next three years no one’s going to get raises.” 

On the good news side, Smith reported that unexpected state funding had bailed out the district’s Child Development Fund previously $235,000 in the red. 

Smith said that accounting and data management systems are getting “tighter” after years of mismanagement landed the district under the auspices of the Alameda County Office of Education. He said the district could now account for all teacher salaries at each school, but that it didn’t yet have a handle on accounting for hourly employees like substitute teachers. 

Smith added the district would soon introduce a plan to decrease cafeteria operation costs, which could receive an additional financial shot in the arm or a devastating blow, depending on the success of the return of a cafeteria at the high school in January.


Pictures Perfect: A Pair From Heyday Books

By RICHARD BRENNEMAN
Tuesday December 09, 2003

As a photographer with modest skills—I’ve shot for several newspapers, a magazine or two, and one book—I’m always awed by the truly gifted artists who capture so deftly the images that elude all my skills and hardware. 

Watching an inspired shooter in a darkroom is an awe-inspiring experience, as I discovered when watching the incomparable Bill Beebe, who shot for the L.A. Mirror, Life, a host of nature mags, and the late, lamented Santa Monica Evening Outlook. 

As a reporter—a writer—I’m acutely aware that words can never convey all the subtleties, hues, and shadows that bounce off my retinas. 

I’ve always had a weakness for black and white. Though color photography is glitzier, the infinite palette of grays between the absolute presence and the total absence of light can convey something of the essential nature of things far more clearly that the peacock hues of Agfa, Fuji or Kodak. 

Trees have always been a favorite subject for the lens of the succession of Mamiyas, Rolleis, Nikons, and Minoltas I’ve shot over the years because there’s something remarkable and mysterious in the way they seek the sun, bending and twisting into myriad labyrinthine forms to spread their green thieves of light. 

Once, many years ago, when I ran a photo of a eucalyptus in the late Oceanside Blade-Tribune, a reporter insisted I pull the photo because the picture struck her as obscene. It wasn’t, of course, but it was sensual. 

In Two-Hearted Oak, Heyday Books, a Berkeley publisher devoted to quality works of Californiana, has given us a work that would, undoubtedly, have provoked the Mrs. Grundy in my former colleague. 

The core of the book is a stunning collection of black-and-white landscape shots captured by Roman Loranc, a Polish emigre who settled in California’s Central Valley. 

The book isn’t all trees by any means. There’re vast plowed fields, marshes, rivers, grasslands. Humans are present only through their works: in the neatly planted ranks of vineyards and almond orchards, in achingly lonely windmills, in weathered barns, in a lamplight fog-shrouded path, and in a partially submerged abandoned shopping cart. 

The photographs in this coffee table volume are reproduced in exquisite detail—sometimes in sepia—on heavy coated stock, and the accompanying text and poetry by Lilian Vallee, Loranc’s spouse, plays off and illuminates the imagery. 

Evoking a sense of haunting alone-ness, Loranc’s images offer up a visual koan, contrasting the irresistible human impulse to dominate the landscape with life’s own uncompromising and passionate thirst for light, for water, and for air. 

And of all Loranc’s depictions, it’s the trees I find most moving. 

The Druids worshiped trees, and the Hindu likened consciousness to a tree. Trees capture light, building living explosions of wood to deploy their light- and carbon-dioxide-capturing green, and arraying an equal exuberant network of underground branches—roots—to inhale liquid and mineral nutrient. Mirror images, one visible, the other invisible. As above/so below. As within/as without. 

Even to the skeptic—a group to which this reviewer professes allegiance—at the very least, a tree is a living metaphor. In the intricate array of branches and roots are reflected the countless twists and turns of our lives in pursuit of desire and necessity. 

The presence of the hand of Homo sapiens, evident in Loranc’s canals, fences, buildings, and other artifacts, reminds the reader/viewer of the increasingly miserable way we’re treating the world around us, categorizing life and the earth itself as ‘resources,’ provided for our exploitation. 

Valle’s afterword informed me that my response was exactly what they’d intended: “This book is not meant just to register the heartrending beauty and mystery of what is still here in the Central Valley; it is also to honor the people who will not let it die, who will not leave, who are putting it back—grass plug by grass plug. May these images and words rouse the imagination of Central Valley residents to a greater appreciation of the Central Valley and to impassioned advocacy on its behalf.” 

California is a marvelous state, my home for the last 35 years, and my heart aches to see what we’ve done to our wild places. Books like Two-Hearted Oak remind me of what we’ve lost and what’s left. As a father and grandfather, I hope we leave something of what’s left to those who come after, a sobering but necessary thought.  

Two-Hearted Oak, The Photography of Roman Loranc, Great Valley Books/Heyday Books, Berkeley, 94 pages, $39.95. 

 

Where Loranc’s photos provoke, those in another Heyday offering—Hidden Treasures of San Francisco Bay—entertain. Dennis E. Anderson, a Marin County photographer, shoots in richly saturated color. From aerial shots of the colorful fractal landscapes that are salt evaporation ponds of the South Bay to a rare vermillion sunset, Anderson gives us scenes that reminder us that part of the Bay Area scene hasn’t been paved over, concreted, I-beamed, and bricked-up. 

The images are thematically organized, bridged with brief essays from biologist and nature writer Jerry George. While George spends part of the year aboard a boat in the Bay, Anderson lives year-round on a refurbished 76-year-old fishing boat moored in the same waters. 

Anderson’s images are journalistic, specific—they feature this delightfully painted wreck on the Albany Bulb, those Grizzly Island Tule Elk, the North Tower of the Golden Gate, that delighted, gray-haired woman grinning, resting the paddle of her kayak, her dog sitting before her, eager and alert. 

The photographs are all well exposed and neatly composed, and a celebration of what is, rather than a haunting reminder of what was or might yet be. 

Anderson’s underwater sea life shots provide some of the more provocative images, colorful proof that there’s another strikingly hued world, both close at hand and unimaginably remote. 

Available either in hardcover or as an oversize trade paperback, Hidden Treasures is an excellent gift to remind friends and family that there’s more to the Bay than bridges and the TransAmerica tower. It’s also a pleasant book to keep around the house, reminding us there’s more out there than we encounter on our daily rounds and commutes. 

Hidden Treasures of San Francisco Bay, photography by Dennis E. Anderson, text by Jerry George, jointly published by Blue Water Pictures, San Rafael, and Heyday Books, Berkeley, 176 pages, hardbound $49.95, trade paper $29.95.  

 


38 Options Recovery Graduates Honored

By JOHN GELUARDI Special to the Planet
Tuesday December 09, 2003

Berkeley’s Options Recovery Services held a graduation ceremony on Friday for 38 clients who successfully completed a drug and alcohol treatment program designed for hardcore substance abusers who have no resources and nowhere else to go. 

About 300 friends, family members and city officials gathered in the cavernous Veterans Memorial Building theater to enjoy a tasty lunch and observe the ceremony that one council member called “a very moving experience.” 

The graduates, many who struggle with mental illness, homelessness and legal trouble, are often referred to the program by the Alameda County court system. By the time they arrive at Options Recovery Service, they are likely to have lost hope and been forsaken by social services, friends and family. 

“We want to help the people who have no other resources and have not been able to make it anywhere else,” said Dr. Davida Coady who founded ORS in 1996. 

Nearly all of Friday’s graduates described a sense of rebirth and all said they were grateful to ORS for taking a chance on them. 

“The program brought me out of the grave,” said Oakland resident David Stamper, an ex-convict who was homeless and struggling with a longtime addiction to drugs. “I was a walking dead man waiting to go back to prison or die.” Von Segerberg, who abused crack cocaine for 13 years, said her life has been renewed. “When I was using drugs, I was a loner. I was isolated probably because of shame,” Segerberg said. “Now I can really trust people again. I have friends, and I can work with others.”  

Coady has designed a comprehensive 12-step program that works closely with clients to fulfill a variety of their needs such as detoxification, healthcare, treatment for mental illness, court obligations, housing and literacy. Once those issues have been addressed, ORS clients can focus on their recovery. 

“We make every effort to start working with the clients right away,” Coady said. “Some only show up once and don’t come back, but of the ones who come a second day about 80 percent make it.” 

ORS takes in more than 1,000 clients annually and has had a high success rate with those who commit to the program. The program has an operating budget of nearly $1 million a year and relies mostly on contributions and government and foundation grants. 

The high success rate has earned the program widespread support from elected officials, churches, businesses and county health agencies. Among the local dignitaries attending the graduation were councilmembers Linda Maio and Betty Olds. The ceremony was also one of the last events attended by the late Father Bill O’Donnell of St. Joseph the Worker Church. 

“It’s amazing that they have such a high success rate with some of the hardest cases,” Olds said. “It’s always moving to come to these graduations.” 

ORS also enjoys a close relationship with the Berkeley Police Department. Chief Roy Meisner attended the graduation along with Capt. Bobby Miller, who is on ORS’s board of directors, volunteers as a drug counselor and conducts men’s group meetings. And Officer Tom Jeremiason, affectionately referred to as “Officer Tom” by ORS clients, made a special diploma presentation to Stamper. Just about a year ago, Jeremiason found Stamper in very bad shape and sleeping on the Veteran Memorial Building’s front stairs. He helped Stamper take the few remaining steps into the building where he joined the ORS program. Since then the two men have shared a special bond.  

“I’ve been a police officer for 24 years and police get used to seeing people at rock bottom and you can begin to forget they are human beings,” Jeremiason said during his introduction of Stamper. “Well I’m here to tell you that my name is Officer Tom and I’m a recovering cop.” 

Dr. Coady, who one client called the “mastermind of recovery,” said she sees the results of the ORS program whenever she goes shopping. “We have Options people working at stores all over Alameda County,” she said. “Every time I’m at Office Depot, Orchard Supply or Home Depot, I see someone who has graduated the program. Sometimes they come up and give me a hug.” 

For more information about Options Recovery Services and opportunities for contributing to the program, call 666-9552 ext. 21.


Cody’s Books Co-founder Leads an Activist’s Life

By DOROTHY BRYANT Special to the Planet
Tuesday December 09, 2003

When I told Pat Cody I wanted to write about her role in starting up social action projects, her first words were typical. “Only if you don’t imply that I did it alone. No one person can do anything alone!”  

First, a skeletal early bio: She was born Pat Herbert in 1923, in New London, Conn., earned her B.A. at Eastern Connecticut State University in 1943, then went to Columbia University, where she met Fred Cody. They married in 1946. After finishing her M.A. in economics in 1948, she and Fred lived in Mexico and in England where she helped put Fred through graduate school by writing economic reports for the business research division of The Economist. 

Pat and Fred settled in Berkeley in 1956, the year the first of their four children was born. It was also the year they founded Cody’s Books, which is one of six major, ongoing successful projects (not counting their children, all of whom, Pat says proudly, grew up to work in public interest jobs) in which Pat played a starting, then a sustaining role. 

“The ‘50s was the start of the paperback revolution,” Pat says. “Most people can’t remember or even imagine the days when bookstores carried only costly hardbound books, and drugstore racks sold pulpy mass paperbacks. People like Roy Kepler (one of the pacifist founders of KPFA, as well as of Kepler’s Books) and Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Fred were realizing the possibilities of bookstores specializing in the new ‘quality’ paperbacks.”  

Cody’s Books began (on a borrowed $5,000) in a tiny shop on Euclid. In 1960, they moved to an abandoned grocery store Pat found on Telegraph (now the rebuilt site of Moe’s Books.) In 1964, with the help of one of their employees (“We didn’t realize his father was a millionaire!”) they hired a building designer to create the gleaming glass-walled store on Telegraph and Haste. Pat and Fred got a 20-year lease on it. 

“Fred and I made a good partnership, Fred out on the floor, dealing with book reps and customers, me in the back office doing the accounts.” 

When pressed, Pat admits that during those politically tumultuous years, while she and Fred struggled to play a responsible mediating role in the conflicted community, her writing of economic reports kept the store afloat. 

Some have called Pat’s second great project the birth of the peace movement on the West Coast. In 1961, concerned mothers like Pat, Frances Herring, Madeline Duckles, June Brumer and others decided to stage a Women’s Strike for Peace, organizing visits to local government offices to protest nuclear testing and our early involvement in Vietnam. 

What was to be a one-day demonstration became Women For Peace (still going on Ellsworth Street). One of the early WFP projects was an ongoing Sunday afternoon vigil at city hall and on the university campus. They carried signs like BRING THE 20,000 ADVISORS BACK FROM VIETNAM. “People would look at our signs and ask, ‘Vietnam? Where’s that?’” 

When the 1964 Free Speech Sit-ins hit the media, floods of disaffected young people began pouring into Berkeley. 

“To some people they looked adventuresome, romantic, but the truth is they got sick, they got raped, they overdosed. They really needed help, and often they were too broke and too confused or scared to get it,” she explains. 

Pat says that a coalition of graduate students and activists started going out on the street, offering health services, collecting coins in cups to finance a Berkeley Free Clinic that was soon deluged with every kind of medical need and emergency. 

“Fred said to me, look, if this is going to survive, you’d better handle the money.” Pat sighs, “Every single Sunday night for five years, we had staff meetings,” with Pat as treasurer. The Berkeley Free Clinic continues, serving an ever more needy clientele. 

In the mid-1970s, the Berkeley Women’s Health Collective was formed to offer information, services, and advocacy for young women—focusing on abortion, venereal disease, contraception, but not menopause and other health questions of older women. 

In 1976 Pat helped gather an older women’s support group meeting at the Health Collective. “We met only a few times, talked over immediate issues, shared information.” Pat shrugs. “That one never really went anywhere.” In this case Pat was ahead of the times, planting seeds that, as baby boomers matured, later grew into health advocacy for mothers and older women. In addition, she was unknowingly training herself for her major health advocacy project. 

In 1971 Pat learned about the dangers of DES, a supposedly anti-miscarriage prescription drug she had taken during her first pregnancy. In 1974, her worst fears were confirmed when daughter Martha was examined and found to have abnormal, possibly pre-cancerous reproductive tissue. 

Pat called a dozen or so health advocates and professionals (all those good folks she had met during earlier projects) to a meeting at (where else?) Cody’s Books. 

Pat named their effort DES ACTION, and during the next decade it grew to become a national organization, absorbing more and more of Pat’s interest and time, especially after she and Fred sold Cody’s Books to Andy Ross in 1977. 

Then, in 1983, personal tragedy threatened to stop Pat dead in her tracks. Fred died. “I was devastated, paralyzed. I couldn’t stop crying and crying.” 

Pat looked for a support group and, incredibly, there were none. “I said, I can’t believe this. Berkeley has a support group for everything, but not for grief?” 

So, together with two therapists, Ahna Stern and Marcia Perlstein, she began one. They agreed on two firm criteria: “It had to be free, and it had to be egalitarian, no authority passing down the official word on how we were supposed to feel. It would meet in a neutral location—a schoolroom or church—and would be led by two facilitators, one a grieving person, the other a trained, (volunteer) group leader.” 

For the next five years, Pat helped start and run groups until many agencies and organizations began to offer them. “It was essential for me, because giving back to the community is part of healing.” 

Another part of healing was Pat’s continued work for DES ACTION, soon an international association, helping thousands of women who were injured by a useless and harmful drug prescribed by doctors for more than twenty years. For thirty years, DES ACTION has continued to grow in services and influence. 

Among many activities, DES ACTION offers education for possibly affected mothers and their children; makes referrals to doctors and lawyers; monitors research, pointing scientists in directions suggested by anecdotal evidence; publishes the DES Newsletter, still edited by Pat; lobbies for legislation, winning victories like a recent Congressional appropriation of $5 million for DES research and treatment. 

Another recent triumph: the Center for Disease Control put out a handsomely printed, free DES UPDATE, which recently won an award from the Public Relations Society of America. “We are thrilled to see the hard work of the CDC group recognized.” Ever the advocate reaching out, Pat insists that this article include the DES ACTION Web site www.desaction.org. 

Recently the subject of a San Francisco Chronicle series titled “Unsung Heroes,” Pat commented, “Unsung? Well, if you’re busy blowing your own horn, there’s no time to do anything.” 

But Pat, who just celebrated her 80th birthday, is facing defeat in her struggle to blend into the background. On Jan. 31, 2004, at the Berkeley Public Library Foundation Authors’ Dinner, Pat will be honored as the first recipient of what is to be an annual award “to a Berkeleyan with a distinguished career related to books, literacy, and literature—The Fred and Pat Cody Award.” 

For information about celebrating Pat at this fundraiser, call 981-6115.


Council Gives First Glimpse at Austerity Plans

By J. DOUGLAS ALLEN-TAYLOR
Tuesday December 09, 2003

Berkeley citizens get their first look tonight (Tuesday, Dec. 9) at just how lean and mean City Council is willing to become when Council holds its first meeting in the belt-tightening, post-parcel tax era. 

Council must decide on what to do with close to $43 million in what is called “unencumbered carryover” funds: money which was allocated in last year’s budget, is not tied up in a contract, and was not spent by the end of the year.  

According to the city manager’s report, such funds are normally stay with the original budgeted item until the project is completed or the budgeted money runs out. But these aren’t normal times. 

City Manager Phil Kamlarz and Budget Director Paul Navazio have recommended that Council hold back nearly $3 million in carryover funds and transfer them to the Reserve Fund to “provide the City Council with increased flexibility in addressing projected budget deficits.” 

Among the larger items recommended for the budgetary ax are $395,000 in window replacement at the Civic Center Tower, $457,000 work on the Public Safety Building Communications Tower, and $264,000 in Clean Storm Water funds. 

At its discretion, of course, Council can hold back more of the unexpended funds than the city manager’s office recommends. Or it can keep all of the rolled-over money in the budget. 

In other fiscal matters to be taken up tonight, Council is scheduled to consider, on first reading, an ordinance increasing the amount the city manager can expend for capital improvements, supplies, and equipment without Council approval. The city manager’s office uses the money primarily in what it calls emergency situations. The item was held over from the Nov. 4 Council meeting at the request of Councilmember Kriss Worthington. 

Council has also scheduled two neighborhood-interest items held over from previous meetings. A public hearing on the Solano Avenue Business Improvement District was postponed from Nov. 18 to attempt a compromise with Solano Avenue businesses who felt that the district would not serve their particular needs. Held over from the same meeting is an appeal by neighbors of the city’s Corporation Yard, who have complained that the proposed demolition of buildings at the yard will disrupt the peace of their neighborhood. 

Tonight’s meeting will feature dueling bridge toll increase recommendations, with Councilmember Worthington favoring State Sen. Don Perata’s bill to raise area bridge tolls from $2 to $3 and Councilmember Miriam Hawley asking that Council take no position. The money raised would be set aside for Bay Area transportation projects. 

Hawley has complained that not enough of Perata’s proposed toll increase money would go to what she calls “transit-friendly” projects, while too much will be set aside for what she calls “less cost-effective” projects such as highway improvements, construction of parking lots, digging a fourth bore to the Caldecott Tunnel, and extending BART to Warm Springs. Worthington argues that the transportation infrastructure improvements are needed. 

Finally, Council will be asked to authorize a staff review of the Council Agenda Committee, including soliciting comments from the public, with a report to come back to Council in March.  

The Agenda Committee, made up of Mayor Tom Bates and councilmembers Linda Maio and Miriam Hawley, currently organizes the placement of items on Council’s agenda. A recent suggested amendment to the Agenda Committee rules, allowing them to keep city commission reports off of the agenda for one week for what committee members have called management purposes, has caused some concern among some of the city’s commission members.


Protest Targets Wal-Mart

By J. DOUGLAS ALLEN-TAYLOR
Tuesday December 09, 2003

A Wednesday night candlelight Holiday Vigil scheduled for the Hilltop Mall in Richmond isn’t designed so much to bring peace on earth to the Contra Costa County city as it is to keep a big-box retailer out. 

Several local politicians—including State Assemblymember Loni Hancock, Contra Costa County Supervisor John Gioia, Richmond Mayor Irma Anderson, and Richmond City Councilmember Rev. Charles Belcher—are expected to join the Contra Costa County Central Labor Council in a “Bringing Hope To Richmond” demonstration against the proposed Wal-Mart store at Hilltop. The vigil is scheduled to last from 5:30 to 7 p.m. Organizers are expecting up to a hundred participants. 

While Wal-Mart has announced plans to locate a retail store at Hilltop, it has denied that the location will be turned into a supercenter. Supercenters, or big-box stores, are retail stores the size of several football fields that sell groceries as well as traditional retail goods at discounted prices. They have created controversy in cities throughout the country, with charges that they have driven out smaller, locally based businesses. 

Hancock said she would attend the demonstration because “I share the concern of many people in the community about the spread of Wal-Marts. They adversely compete with local retail, they often do not pay a living wage, they do not provide health insurance. In the past, they have suggested that their employees join Healthy Families, which meant basically passing the cost of a decent standard of living for their employees to the State of California.” 

In California, the Healthy Families program is a joint federal and state project that provides low cost health care to children of low-income families who do not qualify for Medi-Cal. 

Earlier this year, Contra Costa County supervisors voted to ban supercenter stores from unincorporated areas of that county. The ban wouldn’t affect the Hilltop Mall store, and Wal-Mart has gathered enough signatures to put a referendum on the March ballot to overturn the ban. 

A Wal-Mart spokesperson told the Tri-Valley Herald that her company “believe[s] the voters will vote to repeal this ordinance, and I think that will send a message to other communities in Contra Costa that people don’t support ordinances like these. I think that our customers really appreciate the one-stop shopping where they can purchase a myriad of items right under one roof.”


Berkeley Briefs

J. Douglas Allen-Taylor
Tuesday December 09, 2003

A group of Berkeley citizens have filed ballot arguments against the March charter amendment referendum that would change requirements for running for office in the city. 

City Council authorized the ballot measure last month that would, among other things, require prospective candidates for mayor, City Council, school board, and other city offices to turn in any combination of 150 dollars and signatures to earn a spot on the ballot. 

Berkeley Peace and Justice Commissioner Elliot Cohen, who authored the argument against the proposed electoral changes, called the charter amendment “self-serving, undemocratic, and...an abuse of power.” 

The argument against the measure was co-signed by vice-chair of both the Commission on Aging and Commission on Disability Charlie Betcher, former City Council candidate Budd Dickinson, Berkeley Association of Neighborhood Associations President Marie Bowman, and local musician and teacher Hali Hammer. 

The citizens contend that while “winning against an incumbent is extremely rare, ... the ability to campaign against sitting incumbents allows a candidate to call attention to issues. ... This Charter Amendment will prevent potential candidates from participating in the debate and endorsement process. All of Berkeley [will be] worse off...” 

—J. Douglas Allen-Taylor 

 

Berkeley’s youngest artists will be showing their works Thursday evening when Habitot Children’s Museum, 2065 Kittredge St., unveils its 5th Annual Preschool Art Show from 5 to 7 p.m. 

The exhibition features the creations of children between the ages of 2 and 7. There is no admission charge, and refreshments will be provided. Call 667-1111 for information.


Does Everything Tasty Have to be Bad For Me?

From Susan Parker
Tuesday December 09, 2003

Recently, I met Kim Severson at Andronico’s on Telegraph Avenue. We weren’t there to shop. We were looking for hidden trans fats. 

These are the man-made fats that food manufacturers love to add to their products. Unfortunately trans fats can raise cholesterol levels, clog arteries and lead to heart attacks, strokes, obesity, diabetes and possibly cancer, but it won’t be until 2006 that the FDA will require trans fats to be listed on food labels .  

Kim, who lives in Oakland, has written The Trans Fats Solution, Cooking and Shopping to Eliminate the Deadliest Fat from Your Diet. Published by Berkeley’s Ten Speed Press, it is available in book stores now, in time for the holiday eating frenzy.  

Together Kim and I cruised up and down Andronico’s narrow aisles. Kim pointed out what products to avoid, while I grew hungrier by the minute. 

“Think of trans fats as sprinkles of sand inside your watch,” Kim suggested. “It won’t screw it up immediately, but eventually your watch won’t work. That’s what trans fats do to your body. It messes with the cell structure.” 

Kim pulled a jar of peanut butter off the shelf. “You know how nice and smooth this stuff is? Creamy and spreadable? That’s the trans fats doing their job. Food manufacturers love this stuff because it makes their products taste fresh.” She reads the list of ingredients on the label. “Look for this,” she said, pointing to the words hydrogenated oil. “That’s peanut-flavored trans fat.”  

Kim returned the jar to the shelf and motioned me to follow her. “See these?” she asked, picking out a package of Pepperidge Farm Milano cookies. “My beloved Milanos,” she sighed. “I let myself eat just one occasionally.” She hesitated before she put the bag back on the shelf, then pointed to the Alice Stick cookies. “These are expensive but they’re made with real butter, not hydrogenated oil. Most bakeries love to use Crisco. It’s a killer.”  

Further down the aisle we came to the crackers and snack foods. “You can eat some pretzels and old-fashion popcorn that you pop in a pan, but not the microwavable kind. That stuff is trans fat city.” I pointed to my favorite crackers, Stoned Wheat Thins. “Sorry,” said Kim. “You should buy the Ak Mak crackers instead.” 

We had wandered into the aisle that had pastas and noodles on one side and frozen foods on the other. “Marie Callender’s pot pies will just kill you,” said Kim. “That’s probably why they taste so good.” I pointed to the frozen fish sticks and Kim shook her head. I looked at the frozen quiche and Kim muttered, “Trans fatty crust.” On the other side of the aisle she gazed at the inexpensive packages of Top Ramen. “They fry that stuff in hydrogenated oil to get it dry. It’s dangerous.” 

“Kim,” I asked, “what are you having for dinner tonight?”  

“Probably something from the book. Maybe Spicy Buttermilk Fried Chicken with a salad tossed in vinegar and olive oil. What about you? Now that we’ve had this little tour, what will you have?”  

I thought about the measly contents of my refrigerator and kitchen shelves. There probably wasn’t a thing available that wouldn’t hurt me in some way. “Water,” I said. “I think I’ll just have water.” 

“No,” said Kim. “Don’t go extreme on me. Use common sense. Remember back when your grandmother cooked from scratch and used real butter and fresh ingredients?” I thought about my Grandmom Daniels, who always held a spatula with her left hand while holding a martini and a cigarette in her right. “Kind of,” I said  

“Eat sensibly,” said Kim.  

I went home and found in my mailbox another book from Ten Speed Press, the new recipe tome just out from Cesar, the oh-so-cool tapas bar on Shattuck Avenue in North Berkeley. It’s a beautifully rendered, sumptuous recipe book that is jam packed with color photographs of extravagant drinks and elegant platters. In it I found directions on how to make Gin Rickeys, Chocolate Martinis, Cosmopolitans, Old Fashions, Mojitos, Margaritas, and Sidecars, to name just a few of the dozens of cocktail concoctions gathered together on its lavish pages.  

I lay my copy of The Trans Fat Solution beside Cesar, Recipes From a Tapas Bar. What would Grandmom Daniels do? The answer was obvious. I followed the recipe for a traditional Manhattan:  

 

11/2 ounces whiskey, 1/2 ounce sweet vermouth, 2 dashes of angostura bitters and a maraschino cherry. Not a trans fat in sight. I simply substituted one bad thing for another, but hey, it’s the holidays and Grandmom Daniels would definitely approve.  

 

The Trans Fat Solution, Cooking and Shopping to Eliminate the Deadliest Fat From Your Diet, by Kim Severson with Recipes by Cindy Burke, Ten Speed Press, $12.95 

Recipes From A Tapas Bar, by Olivier Said and James Mellgren with Maggie Pond, Ten Speed Press, $29.95.


Police Blotter

By MATTHEW ARTZ
Tuesday December 09, 2003

Attempted Rape 

A UC Berkeley student fought off a would-be rapist who entered her bedroom just after 2 a.m. Saturday morning. According to police, the woman awoke at her co-op in the 2400 block of Ridge Road to find a man walking into her bedroom. 

When the intruder leaped on top her and made sexual comments, she managed to get out from underneath him and race out of the room. Police were summoned and arrested Kandarp Patel, 26, of Mountain View on suspicion of burglary and attempted rape. 

 

Police Stop Car, Find Gun 

A police officer stopped a driver at Ashby Avenue and King Street late Monday after noticing the car lacked a front license plate. Standing outside the car, he spotted a handgun sticking out from beneath the seat, and promptly arrested Saga Llewellyn, 29, of Oakland for possession of a concealed and loaded firearm. 

 

Armed Robbery 

A gunman welcomed the new Longs Drugs to the 1900 block of San Pablo Avenue with an old-fashioned stick-up Thursday evening. Police said the robber entered the store, waited in line and then demanded money from the clerk—then raced out the door with an undisclosed amount of cash. 

 

Robbery Via Threat of Gun 

A man walking through south Aquatic Park Friday night was robbed by an acquaintance. According to police, the victim was “looking to meet somebody” when he was approached and later robbed by a man who claimed to have a gun. Nearly three hours later officers found a man hiding in the bushes who the victim later identified as the robber. Terry Johnson, 38, of Oakland was busted for robbery and violating parole.


Police Blotter

By MATTHEW ARTZ
Tuesday December 09, 2003

Attempted Rape 

A UC Berkeley student fought off a would-be rapist who entered her bedroom just after 2 a.m. Saturday morning. According to police, the woman awoke at her co-op in the 2400 block of Ridge Road to find a man walking into her bedroom. 

When the intruder leaped on top her and made sexual comments, she managed to get out from underneath him and race out of the room. Police were summoned and arrested Kandarp Patel, 26, of Mountain View on suspicion of burglary and attempted rape. 

 

Police Stop Car, Find Gun 

A police officer stopped a driver at Ashby Avenue and King Street late Monday after noticing the car lacked a front license plate. Standing outside the car, he spotted a handgun sticking out from beneath the seat, and promptly arrested Saga Llewellyn, 29, of Oakland for possession of a concealed and loaded firearm. 

 

Armed Robbery 

A gunman welcomed the new Longs Drugs to the 1900 block of San Pablo Avenue with an old-fashioned stick-up Thursday evening. Police said the robber entered the store, waited in line and then demanded money from the clerk—then raced out the door with an undisclosed amount of cash. 

 

Robbery Via Threat of Gun 

A man walking through south Aquatic Park Friday night was robbed by an acquaintance. According to police, the victim was “looking to meet somebody” when he was approached and later robbed by a man who claimed to have a gun. Nearly three hours later officers found a man hiding in the bushes who the victim later identified as the robber. Terry Johnson, 38, of Oakland was busted for robbery and violating parole.


Maybeck Designed Rose Walk

By SARAH WIENER-BOONE Special to the Planet
Tuesday December 09, 2003

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is one in a continuing series by UC Berkeley students on the paths of Berkeley. 

 

Cathy Powers opens up her balcony doors, points toward San Francisco Bay, and smiles. “On a clear morning or a sunset,” she says, “there’s nothing better.” Powers, a 30-year resident, lives in a story book home. It graces the cover of Susan Cerny’s book Berkeley Landscapes, and is deemed a cultural asset by the author. Powers doesn’t really care. 

“The cover is nice and everything, but the ambiance of the place is what is important to me.”  

What makes this house and others nearby so unusual is what begins outside their front door: Rose Walk, between Euclid and Le Roy avenues, one of the most celebrated paths in the North Berkeley Hills.  

Powers uses the path every day and passes through the Euclid entrance, high-walled and dipping in the middle like two petals, and molded in rose and cream concrete. She smells the roses and walks the sweeping set of stairs that flank the entrance. 

When her walks take her to the Le Roy entrance, she sees benches nestled in corners, boulevard lamps, gnarled as well as newly planted lemon trees, and abundant flowers. All are tucked between the path designed by Bernard Maybeck in 1913, and homes built 10 years later by architect Henry Gutterson to be an integral part of Rose Walk. 

“From time to time as a child, my grandmother would take me [to Rose Walk], and we would play on the steps. It sure was fun,” says John Underhill, tour guide and Rose Walk historian. On his tours, organized by the Berkeley Path Wanderers Association, he tells about his grandfather’s involvement in the walk’s creation.  

About 1910, Underhill and his neighbors raised money to build the path to allow residents to circumvent long, winding roads to reach the City Street Car line, which had been extended from Hillgard to Berryman Reservoir. By the time the street cars were replaced by city buses in 1948, Rose Walk had become a Berk-eley institution.  

“The irony of this story,” says John Underhill, “is although my grandfather was so helpful in getting it built, he never got to see it finished.” At a party seven months before completion, Underhill died of a heart attack. 

Today, Cathy Powers revels in her view and her ambiance, and kids still have fun on the steps. John Underhill looks forward to the 2013 centennial of Rose Steps. “I’d like to do something special for that,” he says, “If I’m still around.” 


Council Race Underway As Hawley Drops Out

By J. DOUGLAS ALLEN-TAYLOR
Friday December 05, 2003

Berkeley’s political establishment—scarcely having drawn a breath since the abortive battle over the parcel tax measure—has jumped into the next round of City Council elections fully eleven months before voters head to the polls. 

Confirming rumors circulating throughout the city for at least a year, one-term 5th District Councilmember Miriam Hawley announced this week that she won’t run for reelection next fall. Her district sits in the northwestern corner of the city, beginning at Vine Street, ending at the northern city limit, and including the upper Solano Avenue business district. 

“I just thought it would be good to clear the air,” Hawley said. “I’ve been getting questions daily from people who were suspecting, and had heard the rumors. And if I’m going to be a lame duck, it may as well be official. And it gives people who want to run a chance to think about it.” 

One recent rumormonger was Mayor Tom Bates, who said during last week’s Council meeting that he understood “at least two, and maybe three, councilmembers will not be running for re-election next year.” 

Though Bates didn’t say which councilmembers, the terms of Margaret Breland (District 2), Maudelle Shirek (District 3), and Betty Olds (District 6) all end next year. 

In a prepared press statement, Hawley said she was retiring because of “family obligations.” Although the statement didn’t cite personal health issues, Hawley suffered a minor stroke during her Council term, and walks with the aid of a cane. 

While Hawley’s announcement came as no surprise, the last line of her press statement—sent out from her official city e-mail address—ignited the first controversy of the still-infant campaign to replace her. “Ms. Hawley,” it read, “is encouraging Berkeley businessman and long-time resident Laurie Capitelli to run for the District 5 seat next November.” 

Capitelli, a Realtor and former high school teacher, is the president of Berkeley’s Zoning Adjustment Board. He also chairs the Mayor’s Advisory Task Force on Permitting and Development. 

City Attorney Manuela Albuquerque said she first learned of the Capitelli endorsement from a reporter. “They called me and said they had the press release and there seems to be a statement in it that would be improper because it appears to be endorsing a candidate,” Albuquerque said. 

“I hadn’t seen the press release before that. It was completely fine, except that it had this almost throwaway last sentence in there about encouraging someone else to run. I thought that was improper to put that in the e-mail, the problem being that it was sent out from her City of Berkeley e-mail address. It could be construed as improperly using city resources to promote a candidate, which is against the law.” 

Albuquerque called Hawley’s office and recommended that the press statement be reissued with the offending paragraph deleted. Hawley’s office immediately complied, sending out a new release asking all recipients to “please disregard and discard the previous press release.” 

Albuquerque called the incident an “inadvertent mistake. Sometimes these things happen.” 

Capitelli confirmed his candidacy for Hawley’s seat. But even with Hawley’s endorsement, he can’t be considered the favorite in the race—not until the giant looming in District 5, former Mayor Shirley Dean, decides what course she will take. 

Dean held the District 5 seat from 1986 until her election as mayor in 1994, and with Hawley’s announcement, rumors raced through the city that she was considering a run for her old seat. Dean was defeated for mayor by Tom Bates last year. 

“Shirley Dean would be a formidable challenge, given her ability to raise money,” said Berkeley progressive political activist Carrie Olson, one of three candidates who lost to Hawley in the 2000 District 5 election. She said Capitelli “would be an excellent candidate, if he’s interested”—and that was before she learned that Capitelli was running. 

The Dean-as-the-800-pound-gorilla sentiment was expressed even more strongly by former public interest lawyer Tom Kelly, a Green Party member who came in second in the 2000 District 5 race. “If Shirley Dean says yes early enough, then everybody else will scoot,” Kelly said. “I wouldn’t be surprised to hear her say that she’s going to take it on.” 

Dean would neither commit to the race, nor rule it out. 

“My comment is ‘no comment,’” she said, laughing. Asked if she had any interest in running for the District 5 seat at some point in the future she laughed and offered another “no comment.”  

“I think what we all ought to do is enjoy the season, and put our minds to work about the city’s fiscal crisis and not get all embroiled in political things at this point,” she said. 

Dean then proceeded to embroil herself in political things. 

On Hawley’s anointing of Capitelli, the former mayor said she thought it was “a little early to be out there making an endorsement.” Dean also took issue with Hawley’s position on the recently dropped parcel tax. It was Hawley who made the motion at Council to put the tax on the ballot, stating that her constituents were in favor of it. 

“I disagreed with Mim Hawley’s comment that the district was in favor of it,” Dean said. “I personally was not in favor of [the parcel tax], and many people in the district told me they were opposed to it. Nobody told me they favored it, and I heard from a great many people.” 

If Dean isn’t a declared candidate, she’s certainly sounding like one—or at least like someone itching to get back into public life in one form or another. Asked how she’d get the city out of its present budget crisis, Dean said, “I think that the city has to stop spending. I listened to the conversation very carefully about the deficit that they’re in on this year’s budget, let alone next year’s budget. Yet the Council took no action whatsoever on that meeting to stop their own spending.” 

For his part, Capitelli said he needed to do more studying of the city budget process before advancing any suggested solutions.  

“I haven’t been following the budget debate on council closely,” he admitted. “I wouldn’t say that at this stage of the game that I’m an expert on the city budget. I do think that everybody needs to come to the table, including the unions, to talk about how the pain should be shared. Everybody needs to come to the table with that perspective. Not, ‘How am I going to protect my turf?’ And that’ll be a tough one. I think people need to act in good faith and acknowledge that we are in a pickle.” 

Capitelli, who moved into the District in 1972, said he felt he’d fit in well with a council that needed to bring a host of competing economic interests together. “My business is problem-solving and negotiation,” he said. “That’s what I do as a Realtor.” 

But even without Dean, next November’s election might still be crowded. At least two potential candidates don’t rule out a run. 

Asked if she might run, former Dean aide Barbara Gilbert answered, “Maybe. I’m considering it.” 

Gilbert, one of the leaders of the drive to keep the parcel tax off the ballot, said the early timing of Hawley’s re-election announcement was “part of an effort to shore up a political machine that is scared. It’s scared because of the huge outpouring against the proposed parcel tax and a new definition of what the real issues are. 

“And there are more people in the city questioning what had been previously accepted assumptions about housing development, about taxation, about the labor unions.” 

Kelly, laughing, said his take on a run for Hawley’s seat depending on what time of day he was asked. “Early in the day, I’ll probably say yes. Late in the day after I’ve been run over by things, I’ll say no. I’ve thought about it, and sometimes I’ve thought that I might do it again. It’s a lot of work. I’m not saying no. I’m not saying yes.” 

Whether or not he’s the one to be sitting on City Council, he said a distinct change in the demographics is needed. “If you look at the makeup of the city council, the only people who can really afford to run are either retired people or people that have their own private source of income,” he said. 

“Working people cannot get on the city council, because it doesn’t pay enough. It doesn’t pay a living wage. And yet it’s a full-time job. I think that that hurts the city in a way, because there’s a whole group of people that are in their 30s or 40s that are raising families who could probably make a real contribution to the city but just can’t consider it, because it would mean that they couldn’t afford to live here.” 

Three years into a job she’ll soon be relinquishing, Hawley has distinct ideas about the type of councilmember who should replace her. “I think it should be somebody who’s pretty well known in the district as a person who’s thoughtful,” she said. 

“Our district is very fond of thoughtful people who will be responsive to them when they call in with problems. Somebody who’s already had leadership position in the city, so that they know something about government. Somebody who can probably be a conciliatory person, who can continue to work with everyone on the Council, and who knows how to come to consensus.” 

While the ability to reach consensus is a prerequisite for whoever replaces Miriam Hawley as the next District 5 Councilmember, consensus over who that next Councilmember will be still seems a long ways away.


Berkeley This Week

Friday December 05, 2003

FRIDAY, DEC. 5 

“The Streets are Watching” a film by Jacob Crawford on police accountability through the eyes of three communities: Denver, Cincinnati and Berkeley. At 8 p.m. at Transparent Theater, 1901 Ashby Ave. at MLK Jr. Way. $5-20 sliding scale, no one turned away for lack of funds. A benefit for Berkeley Copwatch. 548-0425. 

“Follow the Star …” an exhibit of over 250 Crèches from 70 countries, from 5 to 8 p.m. at St. Clement’s Episcopal Church, 2837 Claremont Blvd. Suggested donation $15, this is a fund-raiser to bring the church lighting up to code. 843-2678. 

“Already Home in West Berkeley,” with author Barbara Gates, a memoir that explores the connections between local history, the environment, the body, and the spirit. At 7 p.m. at the Ecology Center, 2530 San Pablo Ave. 548-2220, ext. 233.  

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon with William Coffin, consulting computer engineer, “Three Weeks in the Heart of Islam.” Luncheon 11:45 a.m. $11.50 - $12.50. Speech at 12:30 p.m., at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant St. For reservations call 526-2925.  

Berkeley Youth Alternatives, Blue and Gold Basketball Tournament, 11 years and under, Dec. 5-7, at the BYA Gym, 1255 Allston Way. Team fee is $75, individual fee $15. For information call 845-9066. 

Women in Black Vigil, from noon to 1 p.m. at UC Berkeley, Bancroft at Telegraph. 548-6310, 845-1143. 

Meditation, Peace Vigil and Dialogue, gather at noon on the grass close to the West Entrance to UC Berkeley, on Oxford St. near University Ave. 655-6169.  

Overeaters Anonymous meets at 1:30 p.m. at the Northbrae Church at Solano and The Alameda. 525-5231. 

SATURDAY, DEC. 6 

Celebrate December with Chiquy Boom, South American clown extraordinaire, at 11 a.m. at the Library West Branch, 1125 University Ave. Free. Piñata and snacks follow performance. 981-6270. 

Artists with Heart, art show benefit from noon to 6 p.m. at 2033 and 2041 Center St. More than 50 artists and community members are donating their work to benefit the individuals and families served by BOSS (Building Opportunities for Self-Sufficiency). 649-1930. 

Amsterdam Art Studios Holiday Sale, with a dozen artists’ paintings and crafts, from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. at 1007 University Ave., between 9th and 10th Sts. 

Studio 1509's Winter Open Studios from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. at 1509 San Pablo Ave.  

“Follow the Star …” an exhibit of over 250 crèches from 70 countries, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at St. Clement’s Episcopal Church, 2837 Claremont Blvd. Suggested donation $3-$5, this is a fund-raiser to bring the church lighting up to code. 843-2678. 

Holiday Crafts Fair, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Saturday Berkeley Farmers’ Market, Center St. at MLK, Jr. Way. 548-3333. 

Holidays on Solano Ave. with photos with Santa from 1 to 3 p.m. at Peralta Park, 1561 Solano. 

Holiday Plant Sale and Wreath Making at 10:30 a.m. at the Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Dr. 643-2755. http:// 

botanicalgarden.Berkeley.edu  

Breakfast with Santa from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. at the Claremont Resort and Spa. Tickets are $30 for adults, $25 for children 3 and older, and $5 for children 2 years and under. Benefits Junior League of Oakland-East Bay community projects. To order tickets call 925-284-3740. www.jloeb.org  

Native Plant Restoration At Wildcat Creek, from 1 to 4 p.m. We will be installing creek-side plants from Native Here Nursery and the Regional Parks Botanic Garden. Call for directions. 558-8139.  

Fall Permaculture: Introduction to Permaculture Design This workshop will cover ecological landscape design basics and will be held indoors at the Ecology Center from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Bring paper, pencils, and ideas for working out a sketch for your garden and photographs if possible. The series is taught by Christopher Shein of Wildheart Gardens. Ecology Center, 2530 San Pablo Ave, near Dwight Way. Cost is $10 EC members, $15 others, no one turned away. 548-2220, ext. 233. erc@ecologycenter.org  

The First Flush: Canoe Outing with Save The Bay in Oakland Join Save The Bay on a canoe paddle in the Oakland Estuary and learn about the impacts of the “first flush” of polluted runoff from our streets, parks, gardens and homes into the Bay. From 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., $30 for Save The Bay members, $40 for non-members. To register or for more information call 452-9261. www.savesfbay.org.  

Holiday Plant Sale and Wreath Making from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Dr. 643-2755. http://botan 

icalgarden.Berkeley.edu  

Winter Pruning and Maintenance, with Garth Jacober at 10 a.m. at Magic Gardens, 729 Heinz Ave. 644-2351.  

Sunset Walk in the Emeryville Marina, sponsored by the Solo Sierrans. Meet at 3:30 p.m. on the west side of Chevy’s Restaurant at the Public Shore sign for an hour’s walk through the Emeryville Marina with views of San Francisco and the Golden Gate Bridge. Rain cancels. 234-8949. 

“Defending the Rights of the People in the Age of Ashcroft,” featuring Clark Kissinger, a member of the National Council of Refuse & Resist! At 7 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Oakland, 2501 Harrison St. 704-5293. 

“September Songs: The Music of Kurt Weill” a film hosted by the Peace and Freedom Party at 7 p.m. at 2217 1/2 McGee. Donation $3-$5. 527-9584. 

Pet Adoptions, sponsored by Home at Last, from noon to 5 p.m., Hearst and 4th St. 548-9223. 

Car Wash Benefit for Options Recovery Services of Berkeley, held every Sat. from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Lutheran Church, 1744 University Ave. 666-9552. 

Yoga for Seniors at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant St., on Saturdays from 10 to 11 a.m. Open to non-members of the club for $8 per class. To register, call 848-7800. 

Flu Shots from Sutter VNA & Hospice Flu Prevention and Wellness Program. Flu vaccinations are $20 and pneumonia vaccinations are $25, from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. at Pharmaca Integrative, 1744 Solano Ave. 

“Your Money or Your Life! Why Not Both?” Led by Dody Donnelly, Ph.D. and Hank “Waablez” Adams, from 9:45 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Unitarian Church, 1 Lawson Rd., Kensington. Bring a lunch, beverage provided. Suggested donation $30. To register call 724-6862. 

SUNDAY, DEC. 7 

Holiday Festival: Arts and Crafts Show and Sale Paintings, photography, crafts and greeting cards on view and on sale, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Free admission. Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, 1 Lawson Road, Kensington. 525-0302. 

Chanukah Bazaar Food, gifts, and silent auction, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Congregation Beth El, 2301 Vine St.  

Studio 1509’s Winter Open Studios from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. at 1509 San Pablo Ave. 

Artists with Heart, art show benefit. See listing for Dec. 6.  

Pottery Show and Benefit for Bay Area Community Resources from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. at 871 Indian Rock Ave.  

Amsterdam Art Studios Holiday Sale, with a dozen artists’ paintings and crafts, from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. at 1007 University Ave., between 9th and 10th Sts. 

Decorate the Lorax Way “Speak for the trees” while you make holiday wrapping paper, gift tags and decorations from recycycled products, from 12:30 to 2:30 p.m. at Tilden Nature Area, in Tilden Park. 525-2233.  

“Follow the Star …” from noon to 3 p.m. See listing for Dec. 6. 

Holidays on Solano Ave. with photos with Santa from 1 to 3 p.m. at Sweet Potatoes, 1224 Solano. 

Bike Afrika Bring a bike in good working condition or requiring minor parts/repairs and we'll donate it to AIDS doctors in Africa. Free food and music from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Smokey Joe’s Restaurant, corner of Cedar and Shattuck. 472-3983. 

Women for Peace Anniversary Luncheon with Minoo Moallem, Ph.D., Dept. of Women’s Studies, SF State, at 12:30 p.m. at Venezia Restaurant, 1799 University Ave. Cost is $37, reservations required. 849-3020.  

“Uncovered: The Truth About the Iraq War” Film screening in various locations in Berkeley, and across the United States. For a location near you visit http://action. 

moveon.org/meet/parties.html 

Plant Families Learn to recognize common plant families with naturalist and gardener Terri Compost. Meet at 1 p.m. in the West End Community Garden of People’s Park. Heavy rain cancels. 658-9178.  

Solar Electricity for Your Home Learn how to size, specify and design your own solar electrical generator. Includes a short field trip to a functioning house/system in Berkeley. From 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Building Education Center, 812 Page St. Cost is $75. 525-7610.  

“Intelligence & Empire” with Marshall Windmiller, retired professor of International Relations at SF State Univ. at 7 p.m. at Epworth United Methodist Church, 1953 Hopkins St. Vegetarian dinner at 6 p.m. Donation $15 and up, no one turned away. RSVP to 548-4141. 

Eckhart Tolle Talks on Video Free gathering at 7:30 p.m. to hear the words of the author of “The Power of Now” at the Feldenkrais Ctr., 830 Bancroft Way. 547-2024. 

MONDAY, DEC. 8 

KPFA Press Conference, at 10 a.m., celebrating Pacifica’s win in the struggle for a democratic network. Community invited. 1929 MLK, Jr. Way. 848-6767, ext. 626. 

Tea at Four Enjoy some of the best teas from the other side of the Pacific Rim and learn their cultural and natural history. Then take a walk to see wintering birds and dormant lady-beetles, from 4 to 5:30 p.m. at Tilden Nature Area, in Tilden Park. Registration required. Cost is $5 for residents, $7 for non-residents. Wheelchair accessible. 525-2233. 

Women’s Cancer Resource Center, volunteer training, every second Monday of the month, from 6 to 8 p.m. at 5741 Telegraph Ave. To sign up call Emily at 601-4040, ext. 109. emily@wcrc.org 

Grief Information Session at the Women’s Cancer Resource Center. If you have lost someone you love to cancer, come for gentle guidance through the basic steps of grieving. RSVP 420-7900. For more information call or visit www.wcrc.org 

Berkeley CopWatch organizational meeting at 6 p.m. at 2022 Blake St. Join us to work on current issues around police misconduct. Volunteers needed. For information call 548-0425. 

TUESDAY, DEC. 9 

Friends of Strawberry Creek will meet at 6:30 p.m. at the Central Library Public Meeting Room, 2090 Kittredge. Please note this is a new meeting place. For more information email jennifemaryphd@hotmail.com 

Bay Area Coalition for Headwaters meets at 7 p.m. at the Rockridge Library, 5366 College Ave., near Rockridge BART. 835-6303.  

“The Geysers: The Nature, Development and Preservation of a Unique Resource” with W. T. (Tom) Box, Jr., VP, Geothermal Resource Management, Calpine Corporation, at 5:30 p.m. in 105 North Gate Hall, UC Campus. Sponsored by Water Resources Center Archives. 642-2666. 

“Translating the Ineffable” A reading and celebration of Professor Daniel Matt’s new translation of the Zohar at 7:30 p.m. in the GTU Library, 2400 Ridge Rd. Admission free. Sponsored by the GTU’s Richard S. Dinner Center for Jewish Studies. 649-2482. 

Daniel Ellsberg, author of “Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers” will offer insights into the parallels between the war in Vietman and the war in Iraq, at 7:30 p.m. at Easy Going Bookstore, 1385 Shattuck Ave. 843-3533. 

Tuesday Tilden Walkers We are a few slowpoke Seniors who walk between a mile or two each Tuesday, meeting at 9:30 a.m. in the Little Farm parking lot. To join us, call 215-7672.  

St. John’s Prime Timers meets at 9:30 a.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. We offer ongoing classes in exercise and creative arts, and always welcome new members over 50. 845-6830. 

Berkeley Camera Club meets at 7:30 p.m., at the Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. Share your slides and prints and learn what other photographers are doing. Monthly field trips. 525-3565. www.berkeleycameraclub.org 

WEDNESDAY, DEC. 10 

Epic Arts Annual Holiday Art Auction, featuring original works and prints, at 7 p.m. at 1923 Ashby. 644-2204. www.epicarts.org 

Fun with Acting class meets at 11 a.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Free, all are welcome. 985-0373. 

Prose Writers Workshop We're a serious but lively bunch whose focus is on issues of craft. Meets 7 to 9 p.m. at the Jewish Community Center, 1414 Walnut, at Rose. 524-3034. 

Free Marketing Workshops, sponsored by Sisters Headquarters, for women entrepreneurs, every Wed. from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. at 643 17th St. Oakland. For information call 238-1100. 

Berkeley Peace Walk and Vigil at the Berkeley BART Sta- 

tion, corner of Shattuck and Center. Vigil at 6:30 p.m. followed by Peace Walk at 7 p.m. www.geocities.com/vigil4peace/vigil 

Amnesty International Berkeley Community Group meets the first and third Wednesdays of the month at 7 p.m. at the Berkeley Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, 1606 Bonita Ave., at Cedar St. Join fellow human rights activists to help promote social justice one individual at a time. 872-0768. 

Berkeley CopWatch open office hours 7 to 9 p.m. Drop in to file complaints, assistance available. For information call 548-0425. 

Community Dances, traditional English and American dances, at 8 p.m. every Wednesday, $9. 7 p.m. first Sunday, $10. Grace North Church, 2138 Cedar St. 233-5065. www.bacds.org 

Free Feldenkrais ATM Classes for adults 55 and older at 10:30 and 11:45 a.m. at the Jewish Community Center, 1414 Walnut at Rose. For information call 848-0237. 

THURSDAY, DEC. 11 

Project Gutenberg, a presentation on the effort to digitize, archive, and distribute cultural works, at 7 p.m. at the Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge Street, 3rd Floor, Meeting Room. Sponsored by the Berkeley Public Library, Internet Archive and ibiblio. 981-6195. 

Examining Humanity’s Alienation from Nature, Animals and Each Other, an evening with grassroots animal liberationists, Kelah Bott and David Hayden, at 7 p.m. at the Ecology Center, 2530 San Pablo Ave, near Dwight Way. 548-2220, ext. 233. www.ecologycenter.org 

Boston Tea Party in Berkeley? Join the US Face to Face Voter Project, the national movement of citizens educating citizens about the current administration in time for the 2004 election. From 7 to 9 p.m. at Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists at Cedar and Bonita. 848-8848. join@usfacetoface.org 

Nonviolent Peaceforce Party featuring Mel Duncan, Co-Founder of Nonviolent Peaceforce, at 7 p.m. at the University of Creation Sprirituality/ 

Naropa Univ., 2141 Broadway, Oakland, two blocks from 19th St. BART. 415-751-0302.  

Berkeley Alliance of Neighborhood Associations Holiday Social from 7 to 9 p.m. in the Fireside Room at St. John’s Presbyterian, 2727 College Ave. Bring appetizers, desserts or drinks to share.  

East Bay Mac User Group meets on the second Thursday of the month from 6 to 9 p.m. in the 3rd floor Community Room, Berkeley Central Library, 2090 Kittredge St. http://ebmug.org 

ONGOING 

Holiday Food Drive Help the Alameda County Community Food Bank help people in need. Offer to run a food drive, or donate healthy nonperishable food at Safeway stores, Berkeley Bowl and Bay Street Emeryville. For more information call 834-3663. www.accfb.org 

City of Berkeley Commissioners Sought If you are interested in serving on a commission, applications can be downloaded from www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/ 

commissions/general.htm#applications or contact the City Clerk, 981-6900.  

The Online Civilian Conservation Corps Museum is seeking the stories about the CCCs, CCC Enrollees, Staff, or Technical Advisors for publication to this online historical resource. If you would like to participate please send your stories, with name company number and location if known, to CCC Collection, PO Box 5, Woodbury NJ 08096 or email to JFJmuseum@aol.com 

CITY MEETINGS  

Community Environmental Advisory Commission meets Fri., Dec. 5, at 7 p.m., at 2118 Milvia St. Nabil Al-Hadithy, 981-7461. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/ 

commissions/environmentaladvisory 

Council Agenda Committee meets Mon., Dec. 8, at 2:30 p.m., at 2180 Milvia St., Sherry M. Kelly, city clerk, 981-6900. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/citycouncil/agenda-committee 

Landmarks Preservation Commission meets Mon., Dec. 8, 7:30 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Gisele Sorensen, 981-7419. ww.ci.ber 

keley.ca.us/commissions/landmarks 

City Council meets Tues., Dec. 9, at 7 p.m., in City Council Chambers, Sherry M. Kelly, city clerk, 981-6900. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/citycouncil 

Commission on Disability meets Wed., Dec. 10, at 6:30 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Paul Church, 981-6342. www.ci.berkeley. 

ca.us/commissions/disability 

Homeless Commission meets Wed., Dec. 10, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Jane Micallef, 981-5426. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/homeless 

Planning Commission meets Wed., Dec. 10, at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Ruth Grimes, 981-7481. www.ci.ber 

keley. ca.us/commissions/planning 

Police Review Commission meets Wed., Dec. 10, at 7:30 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Barbara Attard, 981-4950. www.ci.berkeley.ca. 

us/commissions/policereview 

Waterfront Commission meets Wed., Dec. 10, at 7 p.m., at 201 University Ave. Cliff Marchetti. 644-6376 ext. 224. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/waterfront 

Commission on Early Childhood Education meets Thurs., Dec. 11, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Marianne Graham, 981-5416. www.ci.berkeley. ca.us/commissions/earlychildhoodeducation  

Community Health Commission meets Thurs, Dec. 11, at 6:45 p.m., at the South Berkeley Senior Center. William Rogers, 981-5344. www.ci.berkeley. 

ca.us/commissions/health 

Zoning Adjustments Board Thurs., Dec. 11, at 7 p.m., in City Council Chambers. Mark Rhoades, 981-7410. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/zoning


Letters to the Editor

Friday December 05, 2003

WHAT A DIFFERENCE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

It’s great to see that Mayor Bates has grown so much in his first year in office. Last year he was stealing newspapers that criticized him; now he just attacks them for publishing letters that criticize him. 

Albert Schnitzler 

 

• 

HEARING VOICES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The mayor is right that the Daily Planet did have a major role to play in the parcel tax debate: allowing the citizens of Berkeley to be heard.  

Thank You! 

Dave Fogarty 

 

• 

A TRADEOFF 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In a recent editorial (“Berkeley Blame Game,” Daily Planet, Nov. 28-Dec. 1) a point was made emphasizing that the voices opposing the mayor’s proposed tax are loud and predominant. What an echo of Proposition 13 (to which Berkeley was opposed) and the current anti-tax sentiment in Washington. 

No one wants to pay higher tax bills, but in the minds of many there seems to be a lack of connection between those taxes and the services they pay for. After the passage of Proposition 13 the city and the schools suffered mightily and there were layoffs and cuts to city services. And Proposition 13 is still with us. 

The recently proposed tax would have cost $250 a year or around $20 a month. There would, most likely, be complaints against paying that. But without that $20 a month the complaints about cuts in police and fire personnel, less efficient service in city hall, fewer open hours and special programs at the library will reverberate around Berkeley. It will remain for everyone to assess the tradeoff. 

Barbara Sargent 

 

• 

NO BETRAYAL 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Your article regarding the proposed fire tax (“Mayor Kills Parcel Tax Vote After Firefighters’ Rejection,” Daily Planet, Nov., 25-27) could lead people to think that the firefighters’ union reneged on a deal to support it. Nothing could be farther from the truth. 

The Berkeley Fire Fighters Association Local 1227 is always willing to stand up for the health, welfare, and safety of the Berkeley community through the delivery of emergency services, fire suppression, fire prevention, emergency medical response, and other service calls. 

Local 1227 wants to work collaboratively with the Berkeley community to maintain vital services. We are committed to ensuring that the residents of Berkeley receive the services that they already pay for, deserve and value. 

Every day that we can help bring a new life into this world, save a life, or help a homeless person obtain the support that they need, we know that we make a difference. What is important to us is that we continue to make that difference—every day and in every Berkeley neighborhood. That is our mission. That is what we remain committed to.  

We ask the residents of Berkeley to provide us with the support that we provide every day. Random station closures will result in random service. We don’t think that that is what Berkeley residents want or deserve. Please contact the mayor and City Council and let them know that you do not favor playing budget roulette with your vital services. Keep the stations open every day. Lives depend upon it.  

Marc Mestrovich, President 

Berkeley Fire Fighters Association  

Local 1227 

 

• 

NOT WISHFUL THINKING 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

When I suggested that the hotel/conference center, planned for the Bank of America site, might get by with minimal parking, Revan Tranter (Letters, Daily Planet, Nov. 28-Dec. 1) called it “wishful thinking,” because most people would come by car. 

Not necessarily. I was thinking that because UC Berkeley is a world-class institution, people attending conferences will more often arrive by air from Athens or Calcutta, rather than drive from Alameda or Concord. BART now provides direct service from our two major airports. Locally, there’s abundant bus service between the hotel site and campus. UC runs many of its own buses; there’s a major stop near the hotel site. I often share the UC hill bus with foreign visitors, chattering in various languages, bound for a conference at the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute. 

Cal students, using their class pass to ride buses around Berkeley, may have been surprised to read Tranter’s claim that Berkeley’s bus service is “dwindling, sometimes unreliable or even non-existent.” Bus service here is very good. Berkeley actually suffered much less than Oakland and other places did when AC Transit had to cut some local service. Public transit would be very much a viable option for people attending conferences at the hotel. 

Frank Snapp has the right idea. The hotel project is a great opportunity to bring to Berkeley the ideas used in Europe to “efficiently implement planned pedestrian/public-transit-only urban centers.” 

We definitely could cut back on car use and free up more downtown parking. That was the conclusion of the Traffic Demand Management study. All we have to do is convince some of the all-day parkers to get to work on the bus. 

I object to the notion that a personal car always has to be the first choice for any local trip. This attitude would be fine if there were no downsides to dependence on cars. Cars themselves are not evil, and of course driving can be convenient, but when cars are used in large numbers to come downtown, there are evil side effects. Parking takes up space that is better used for housing and businesses. Car exhaust pollutes the air, and may bring on such illnesses as asthma and cancer. Horn-honking cars, zooming around the downtown streets, their road-raged drivers frustrated by congestion, are enough of a danger that Berkeley pedestrians have to wave yellow flags to safely use a crosswalk. 

The hotel and conference center project should not be encouraging more car congestion in downtown Berkeley, when there is a good viable public transit alternative. I don’t think the hotel needs that parking garage; the money would be better spent on adding another floor for the hotel—or daylighting the creek. 

I don’t see why Tom Brown thinks daylighting would turn Strawberry Creek into a garbage disposal. The other creek restoration projects have brought back natural beauty. Daylighting is not an unworkable notion; much of the cost could be absorbed as part of construction of the hotel. This is particularly true if a portion of the creek becomes a feature of the conference center. We don’t need to daylight the whole creek anyway. 

I understand the university expects to receive large gifts to finance the relocation of the museums. Perhaps the donors should be alerted that the creek needs some gift money too. 

Steve Geller 

 

• 

ETHNIC DISPARITIES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Thanks for documenting that ethnic disparities we’re all aware of still persist—that “Whites” are way out front, “Asians” are next, “Latinos” rank third, that “African Americans” are far behind, and that the gap widens in the higher grades (“City School Test Reveal Sharp Ethnic Disparities,” Daily Planet, Nov. 25-27). 

It’s significant that “district officials will use the results to improve instruction,” but “cautioned that until they get detailed analysis...they wouldn’t 

read too much into the results.”  

These test results convince me that Ward Connerly’s right, and that we’d be far better off if we tracked student performance in consideration without reference to race or ethnicity. What can “district officials” possibly learn from these statistics and additional studies that hasn’t been apparent for decades, and what strategy for improving instruction must wait until there’s been more testing and race-based analysis? 

I’m convinced that the emphasis on race-based analysis and solutions are part of the problem, and that the sooner we abandon them, the better off we’ll all be—but especially the underperforming minorities. There’s ample evidence that Latino students were betrayed by a “bilingual education” scam that segregated them from the mainstream population and systematically downplayed English fluency—a more important skill and educational tool of all the rest. These programs were ostensibly intended to accommodate an underperforming minority, but every indication is that it caused far more problems than it ever solved.  

An obvious problem with undue emphasis on the ethnicity of students is that it excludes consideration of other factors that may be far more important. For example, what’s the value of considering “Latino” test performance without making clear distinctions between recent immigrants whose families only speak Spanish at home, and sixth generation Hispanics whose parents and grandparents are fluent English-speakers?  

And wouldn’t it make a lot more sense to drop the race-related research and the implied presumption that blacks are so genetically different from whites and 

Asians that they need special, different instructional methods, and check out other, nonracial factors that correlate with strong and poor test performance? 

It would be far more instructive and useful to refrain from grouping students by ethnicity for the next five years, and consider correlations between test scores 

and absenteeism, completion of homework, bed times, TV viewing habits, and other factors. I’m convinced that the primary determinant of academic performance is the attitude of students and extent to which they apply themselves, and that undue emphasis on race encourages underperforming students and their families to blame institutions and resist adopting the best or only solutions—cultivating the right attitude, maintaining regular attendance, consistent completion of homework, and self-discipline in the classroom.  

Even if race, resources and instructional strategies do put some ethnicities at a disadvantage, what’s the use of an insight that blacks are three times less 

likely to be proficient at math than white and Asians? Black students can’t change their race or ethnicity in the hope of improving their test scored, but if we 

discovered (or confirmed) that 80 percent of students who weren’t proficient missed three times more school days and did half the homework of proficient students, we’d know how to solve the problem and who has to do it.  

Indeed, we already know that the indifferent effort or resistance to education that characterize many students is the primary cause of their poor test performances, and that poor attendance, and extreme lack of effort, and overt hostility towards standard English and such irrelevant subjects as math and history are more pervasive among black students. And we also know or should muster the guts and sense to recognize that investing our hope in more computers, innovative instructional methods, and an ongoing search for a politically correct explanation for the abject academic shortcomings of African American students perpetuates the problem by obscuring the discomforting reality, and extent to which the initiative and discipline of underperforming students and their families is what’s most lacking, and makes most of the difference in who scores high or low, and succeeds or fails. 

Kemper Stone 

Kensington 

 

• 

A NEW AD CAMPAIGN 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Let’s make Berkeley a tourist destination! Reasons, for a start: 

1. Great handcrafts, coffee, and bookstores on Telegraph Avenue. 

2. Some of the beggars are really funny (meaning intentionally entertaining—I’m not insulting anyone). 

3. Gateway city to Oakland, Albany, El Cerrito, and Richmond. 

4. Great music and theater and art museums and galleries. 

5. Bush-free zone—he won’t drop in on your festivities. 

There’s a start, at least, to our ad campaign. 

Ruth Bird 

 

 

 

• 

PLAYING SCRABBLE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

So what if the commander-in-chief of the world’s largest and most aggressive armed forces makes a secret trip to territory under the control of said army? What special daring does that represent? He can go wherever his army paves the way. Further, what special “hands-on” management does a two-hour photo opportunity represent? Scarcely none at all. Finally, what better use could be made of the president’s time and the taxpayers’ money? Well, perhaps his advisors decided that the government functions best when the president is far away, playing Scrabble on Air Force One. 

Bruce Joffe 

Piedmont 

 

 

• 

HEALTH CARE  

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Watching Congress is far more consequential than watching the NFL (NBA, MLB or NHL) but no less entertaining. The recent contest between the Elephants and the Donkeys over how and how much to subsidize prescription drugs for seniors was every bit as fascinating and suspenseful as a Big Game and the narrow margin of the win in the House and Senate was no less sweet, or bitter depending on which side you rooted for.  

Legislators who had to speed-read 1,200 pages in four days delivered impassioned speeches one after the other to an empty chamber. Behind the scenes their votes were bought and bartered for while distinguished figures on the sidelines, such as AARP Director Norvelli, led the cheers.  

In post-vote interviews many supporters of the bill (like Senator Feinstein) justified their ‘Yes” vote with: Time was running out, so if we didn’t get this bill through we wouldn’t get any. In other words, a bad bill is better than no bill or a bad play on third down is better than no play. Absurdity is delicious entertainment. 

On the serious side, though, comparing legislative contests with football games hides critically important, real and devastating differences.  

Congressional law-making is not really a game, merely game-like. Thus, for instance, while the next Super Bowl Champion will be decided in Houston on February 1, 2004 no one knows for sure what the far-reaching effects of the Medicare reform bill will be years from now when baby boomers get old. 

Secondly, in football, taunting an opponent can get you penalized. In Congress, however, Elephants vilify Donkeys and visa versa as often as they please. Furthermore, legislators’ lies are not penalized and may even help their cause because even if they are caught they can barter their way out.  

The law-making season, with frequent scheduled and unscheduled suspensions of play, lasts for two years after which we get to change a few players and then let the games begin again. 

Marvin Chachere  

San Pablo 


Oakland Showcases Nelson’s Captivating Art

By PETER SELZ Special to the Planet
Friday December 05, 2003

The visitor to Keiko Nelson’s exhibition, called “Wave,” at the City of Oakland’s Craft and Cultural Arts Center, will encounter examples of her forceful sculptures before entering the gallery space. 

Three green-patinaed conical columns with spiral forms are set in square bases. They are strong sculptural statements by themselves, but they also serve as fountains with small spyras effusing from the top and covering the bronze surfaces with fine sprays of water. There are also dynamic rust-colored metal arches, appropriately entitled Arches of Energy. 

The large gallery space itself is an installation abounding with over 60 paintings that vary in size from eight by four feet to two by two inches. The whole impression is one of organic life. The titles of the pieces, such as Fire, Water, Air, Earth, and also Wind, Sand, Wave, speak of their meaning. These appellations reinforce the viewer’s feeling of seeing the elements of nature and its spirit. 

To create these paintings, the artist worked with spontaneity and with speed to build up protrusions with plaster and sand. Then, using quick-drying acrylic pigments, she took her brush and at times a construction tool to achieve the circular ridges. She put glued sand over parts of the surface and, finally, an airbrush, to complete the construction of the painting. 

These pieces seem to have been done with rapid-fire energy. The viewer may well relate them to Abstract Expressionist work, or Action Painting—described by the critic Harold Rosenberg as an arena in which the painter acts. But then we realize the close relationship of these paintings to Japanese calligraphy, which Keiko, growing up in Kyoto, has practiced since childhood. 

In Japan calligraphy has always been appreciated as an art form. One style of Japanese writing, called SPSHO, is written rapidly, exposing the personality of the writer through pictorial signs. An avant garde post-war school of painting in Japan, based on the tradition of calligraphy, preserved only fragmentary resemblance to actual words and legibility and was largely incidental. Keiko Nelson, coming from this tradition, continued her studies in a Bauhaus-related school of art and design in Hamburg, which, like the original Bauhaus, sought to find a balanced relationship between intellect and emotion. Laszlo Moholy-Nagy entitled his pivotal 1942 Bauhaus book Vision in Motion, a title which could well be applied to Keiko Nelson’s recent painting. 

These paintings were made by the artist responding to the material, the matter with which the artist was working. As we look at these pictures, we become aware of the process in which they were made by a swift hand. Little explanatory analysis is called for to respond to these sensuous organic forms which stand out against their grainy, sandy surfaces. 

At the opening of the exhibition, Japanese dancer Mary Sano-Duncan gave a graceful reinterpretation of the paintings, many of which evoke the rhythm of the dance. Our response, however, is open-ended. We may associate the canvases with topographical maps, or land seen from the air, or the sea and clouds. 

In addition to the amplitude of the paintings in the exhibition, there are also many display cases in which small hand sculptures are shown, as well as lengths of steel tubing with snake-like forms emerging. And, appropriately, one case contains actual pieces of nature such as small sticks found at the beach, sea horses, shells, corals, and sand. The total installation is held in colors varying from copper to light gold and fine grey—very much the color of the landscape and seascape in a California summer. 

Much of the art we see today is produced by computer and lives in cyberspace. Here, however, is art celebrating the earth. 

The exhibition will be on view through Dec. 26 at the Craft and Cultural Arts Center in the State of California Building, 1515 Clay St., Oakland. 

Peter Selz is Professor Emeritus, History of Art, at UC Berkeley and author of numerous books and articles.


Arts Calendar

Friday December 05, 2003

FRIDAY, DEC. 5 

THEATER 

Berkeley High School, “You Can’t Take it With You,” by Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman, directed by Rachel Rudy, at 8 p.m. at the Florence Schwimley Little Theater. Tickets are $10, $5 with student i.d. 

Aurora Theatre Company, “The Play of Daniel” with Pacific Mozart Ensemble at 8 p.m. at St. Mark’s Church, 2300 Bancroft. Tickets are $22-$24. 843-4822. www.auroratheatre.org 

Maybeck High School, “Arcadia,” by Tom Stoppard, at 7 p.m. at Oakland Box Theater, 1928 Telegraph Ave. Oakland. Tickets are adults $15 in advance, $18 at the door, students $7 in advance, $10 at door. 841-8489.  

Oakland Opera Theater, “Four Saints in Three Acts,” an opera by Virgil Thomson and Gertrude Stein, at 8 p.m., at Oakland Metro, 201 Broadway, at 2nd St. Tickets are $15-$25 and are available from www.oaklandopera.org 

FILM 

Yasujiro Ozu: “An Inn at Tokyo” at 7:30 p.m. and “The Only Son” at 9:10 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Joe Sacco introduces his graphic novel, “The Fixer,” about war correspondents at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

California Bach Society, “Christmas Vespers” by Francisco Guerrero, at 8 p.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. Tickets are $12-$25. 415-262-0272 or tickets@calbach.org 

Sweet Honey in the Rock, female a cappella group, at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $22-$42. 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

Berkeley Ballet Theater, “The Nutcracker,” at 7 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts. Tickets are $18 and are available from 843-4689. www.berkeleyballet.org 

Berkeley City Ballet, “The Nutcracker,” at 7 p.m. at Zellerbach Playhouse, UC Berkeley Campus. Tickets are $25. 642-9988 www.berkeleycityballet.org 

Moodswing Orchestra at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Swing dance lesson with Nick and Shanna at 8 p.m. Cost is $13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Simon Stinger, Castles in Spain, Hazerfan at 9:30 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $6. 848-0886. www.blakesontelegraph.com 

JP Orbit at the 1923 Teahouse at 8 p.m. Donation of $7-$15. 644-2204. www.epicarts.org 

Jucifer, Bottles and Skulls, Race Bannon at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $7. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

“A Context for Peace” an evening of new work from Bay Area musicians, authors and poets at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $13 in advance, $15 at the door. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Crater performs modern jazz at 8 p.m. at The Jazz House. Sliding scale donation $10-$15. 649-8744. www.thejazzhouse.com 

Collective Amnesia at 8:30 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810. 

Peter Case, roots music original, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $15.50 advance, $16.50 at the door. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Sterling Dervish at 9:30 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

Grand Unified Theory, Forget the Jonses, The Apples, The Silence, Static Thought at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $5. 525-9926. 

SATURDAY, DEC. 6 

CHILDREN  

Los Amiguitos de La Peña with Derique the High Tech Clown at 10:30 a.m. at La Peña. Cost is $4 for adults, $3 for children. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

EXHIBITION OPENINGS 

Barbara Bordnick, “Searchings: Secret Landscapes of Flowers” opens at the Pacific Center for Photographic Arts, with a lecture at 5 p.m. and reception at 6:30 p.m. 4221 Hollis St. at Park Ave., Emeryville. 

Margo Mercedes Rivera-Weiss, “La Frutería,” tropical fruit paintings, opens with a reception from 6 to 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Exhibit runs until Jan. 4. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

THEATER 

Berkeley High School, “You Can’t Take it With You,” See listing for Dec. 5. 

Aurora Theatre Company, “The Play of Daniel” See listing for Dec. 5. 

Maybeck High School, “Arcadia,” by Tom Stoppard. See listing for Dec. 5.  

Oakland Opera Theater, “Four Saints in Three Acts,” at 8 p.m. See listing for Dec. 5. 

FILM 

Yasujiro Ozu: “What Did the Lady Forget?” at 3 and 7 p.m. and “The Brothers and Sisters of Today” at 4:35 and 8:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Terry Wolverton reads from “Embers: A Novel in Poems” at 7:30 p.m. at Boadecia’s Books, 398 Colusa Ave., Kensington. 559-9184. www.bookpride.com 

Yu Hua reads from his new book, “Chronicle of a Blood Merchant,” set during the early years of China’s Cultural Revolution, at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

California Writers’ Club hosts Joyce Jenkins, editor of “Poetry Flash” at 10 a.m. at Barnes and Noble. 644-3635. 

Bay Area Poets Coalition holds an open reading from 3 to 5 p.m. at the South Branch Berkeley Public Library, 1901 Russell St. 527-9905. 

Tanya Holland introduces her new cookbook, “New Soul Cooking” at 3 p.m. at Barnes and Noble. 644-3635. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Berkeley Ballet Theater, “The Nutcracker,” at 2 and 7 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts. Tickets are $18 and are available from 843-4689. www.berkeleyballet.org 

Berkeley City Ballet, “The Nutcracker,” at 1 and 5 p.m. at Zellerbach Playhouse, UC Berkeley Campus. Tickets are $25. 642-9988 www.berkeleycityballet.org 

“Looking Through the Eyes of Love” Fund raising event presented by Connecting Through Dance, featuring visually impaired partner dancers, as well as Bay Area professionals at 7 p.m. at Lake Merritt Dance Center, 200 Grand Ave. Oakland. Tickets are $20.00 in advance, $25.00 at the door. 501-4713. www.connectingthroughdance.org 

Berkeley Community Chorus and Orchestra perform Handel’s “Messiah” at 8 p.m. at St. Joseph the Worker Church, 1640 Addison St. 964-0665. www.bcco.org 

“A Musical Night in Africa” with Kotoja, West African Highlife Band, New Life Band of Tanzania, Babá Okulolo and the Nigerian Brothers, at 8 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $16 in advance, $18 at the door. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Blues Holiday Concert with Rev. Rabia, Bay Area blues- 

woman, at 8 p.m. at the Berkeley Public Library’s Reading Room, 2090 Kittredge. 981-6100. 

Yuko Maruyama, jazz pianist, in a benefit for Chez Panisse Foundation, at 1 p.m. at Yoshi's at Jack London Square, 510 Embarcadero West, Oakland. Tickets are $15-$25. 843-3811.  

Jamie Davis sings music of the masters with an emphasis on romance at 8 p.m. at the Jazz- 

school. Cost is $12-$18. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

“Isis: The Great Goddess” a multimedia event of music, spoken word and video at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

John Gorka, folk troubador, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50 advance, $18.50 at the door. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Sterling Highway, The Zachary Tree, Hazel at 9:30 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $6. 848-0886. www.blakesontelegraph.com 

Original Intentions at the 1923 Teahouse at 8 p.m. Suggested donation of $7-$15. 644-2204. www.epicarts.org 

Brian Melvin at 8:30 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810. 

Nicole McRory at 9:30 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790.  

www.beckettsirishpub.com 

Yaphet Kotto, Erase Eratta, the Yellow Press, Burmese, Bottled O.G. at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $5. 525-9926. 

Adrian’s Music Salon featuring Lavender Grace and Teja Gerken, singer-songwriters at 8 p.m. at The Jazz House. Donations of $8-$15 suggested. 649-8744. www.thejazzhouse.org 

7th Direction and Pocket at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

SUNDAY, DEC. 7 

CHILDREN 

Gayle Schmidt and the Toodala Ramblers, bluegrass and old time music for children at 3 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $4-$6. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

THEATER 

Berkeley High School, “You Can’t Take it With You,” See listing for Dec. 5. 

Oakland Opera Theater, “Four Saints in Three Acts,” at 2 and 7 p.m. See listing for Dec. 5.  

FILM 

Yasujiro Ozu: “That Night’s Wife” at 5:30 p.m. and “Dragnet Girl” at 7 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

“To Be or Not To Be,” 1942 classic with Jack Benny at 2 p.m. at the Jewish Community Center, 1414 Walnut St. $2. 848-0237. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Guided Tour: Gene(sis): Contemporary Art Explores Human Genomics, at 2 p.m., Berkeley Art Museum, 2626 Bancroft Way. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

Poetry Flash with Clayton Eshelman at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. Donation $2. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Cantare Chorale and Chamber Ensemble, “O Holy Night,” 115 voices accompanied by winds, brass and organ at 3 p.m. at First Presbyterian Church, corner of 27th and Broadway, Oakland. Tickets are $5-$25. 925-798-1300. 

Handel’s “Messiah” Sing at 2:30 p.m., First Church of Christ Scientist, 2619 Dwight Way. Conducted by William Ludtke with organist Lynn Finegan and soloists. Donations benefit Building Restoration Fund. fccsb@mindspring.com 

Berkeley Community Chorus and Orchestra perform Handel’s “Messiah” at 4 p.m. at St. Joseph the Worker Church, 1640 Addison St. 964-0665. www.bcco.org 

Mimosas and Music, a recital of 17th century German, Italian and French music at 11 a.m. at Giorgi Gallery, 2911 Claremont Ave. $15 donation. 848-1228. www.giorgigallery.com 

“Winter Songs with Kitka,” women’s vocal ensemble performs seasonal music from Eastern Europe at 7 p.m. at Lake Merritt United Methodist Church, 1330 Lakeshore Ave. Oakland. Tickets are $15-$20. 444-0323. www.kitka.org  

Berkeley Ballet Theater, “The Nutcracker,” at 2 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts. Tickets are $18 and are available from 843-4689. www.berkeleyballet.org 

Berkeley City Ballet, “The Nutcracker,” at 1 and 5 p.m. at Zellerbach Playhouse, UC Berkeley Campus. Tickets are $25. 642-9988 www.berkeleycityballet.org 

Rose Street Art Meets Rose Street Music with a concert by Irina Rivkin and Maria Quiles at 6 p.m. at Boadecia’s Books, 398 Colusa Ave., Kensington. Suggested donation $5-$10. 559-9184. www.bookpride.com 

Flamenco Open Stage at 7:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $9. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

The Cottars, youthful Celtic roots, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $15.50 in advance, $16.50 at the door. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Eid-Ul-Fitr, Islamic Cultural Celebration, marking the end of Ramadan with music, poems and stories, at 3 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

San Francisco Saxophone Quartet performs works of Mozart, Brubeck and others at 4:30 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $12-$18. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

ACME Observatory Contemporary Performance Series Fluxus Concert featuring Bibiana Padillo Maltos at 8 p.m. at The Jazz House. Sliding scale donation $0-$20. 649-8744. www.thejazzhouse.com 

Total Fury, Harto, Deadfall, Cross the Line at 5 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $5. 525-9926. 

Sol Rebelz and Occupied Thought perform Hip Hop at 9:30 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $5. 848-0886. www.blakesontelegraph.com 

MONDAY, DEC. 8 

THEATER 

Shotgun Theatre Lab, “Heavy Days,” a collaborative ensemble piece about four women who resist and succumb to the allure of madness, at 8 p.m. at La Val’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid, at Hearst. Cost is $10. 704-8210. www.shotgunplayers.org 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Poetry Express, featuring Garrett Murphy, from 7 to 9:30 p.m., at Priya Restaurant, 2072 San Pablo Ave. berkeleypoetryexpress@yahoo.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Sonos Handbell Ensemble, “Sounds of the Season,” under the direction of James Meredith, at 8 p.m at Dean Lesher Regional Center for the Arts, 1601 Civic Drive, Walnut Creek. Tickets are $14-$19 available from 925-943-7469. 

Jazzschool Student Recitals from 5 to 9 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Free. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Steve Gannon Band and Mz. Dee at 9:30 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $4. 848-0886. www.blakesontelegraph.com 

TUESDAY, DEC. 9 

THEATER 

Shotgun Theatre Lab, “Heavy Days,” See listing for Dec. 8.  

FILM 

Yasujiro Ozu: “The Lady and the Beard” at 7:30 p.m. and “Tokyo Chorus” at 8:35 p.m.at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Courtableu at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cajun dance lesson with Patti Whitehurst at 8 p.m. Cost is $9. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Hanson Brothers, The Rotters at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $10. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Jazzschool Student Recitals from 5 to 9 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Free. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Dayna Stephens House Jam at 8 p.m. at The Jazz House. Donation $5. 649-8744.  

www.thejazzhouse.com 

Mimi Fox, solo guitar, at 8 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810. 

Jeffrey Foucault, original acoustic songwriter, at the 1923 Teahouse at 8 p.m. Suggested donation of $7-$15, no one turned away for lack of funds. 644-2204. www.epicarts.org 

WEDNESDAY, DEC. 10 

EXHIBITION OPENINGS 

The Garden, an exhibit on the theme of Mahayan Buddhism with objects dating from 200 B.C.E. to 2002. Berkeley Art Museum, 2626 Bancroft Way. 643-6494. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu  

THEATER 

A Little Puppet Show, with Music, puppetry by Wise Fool and Il Teatro Calamari, music by Mark Growden. Doors at 7 p.m., show at 8 p.m. at the Oakland Noodle Factory, 1255 26th St., corner of Union, West Oakland. Tickets are $5-$10 sliding scale, children $3. 415-905-5958.  

FILM 

Cuban Film: “Paradise Under the Stars” at 7 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $8-15, benefit for Pastors for Peace. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Standby: No Technical Difficulties: Program 5 at 7:30 p.m. Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Café Poetry and open mic, hosted by Kira Allen at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

“Images of Mary in Art: Our Lady of Guadalupe” with Katie Osanga, doctoral candidate at the GTU, at 7:30 p.m. at All Souls Episcopal Church, 2220 Cedar St. 848-1755. 

Berkeley Poetry Slam with host Charles Ellik at 8:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $7,  

$5 with student i.d. 841-2082.  

www.starryploughpub.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Tallis Scholars, Renaissance sacred vocal music, at 8 p.m. at First Congregational Church, 2345 Channing Way. Tickets are $42. 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

Ragas and Talas, classical Indian music open jam at 8 p.m. at The Jazz House. Donation $5. 649-8744. www.thejazzhouse.com 

Jazzschool Student Recitals from 5 to 9 p.m. at the Jazz- 

school. Free. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

NC Blues Connection at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. West Coast swing lesson with Nick & Shanna at 8:00 p.m. Cost is $9. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Nicole and the Soul Sisters at 9:30 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

Jules Broussard, Bing Nathan and Ned Boynton at 8 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810. 

Brian Wallace at 9 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277.


Students Face Visa Hassles

By Xiaoli Zhou Special to the Planet
Friday December 05, 2003

When Zhirong Li, a second-year Ph.D. student at UC Berkeley, flew back to China last December to visit her family and boyfriend, she bought a return flight booked for Jan. 23. 

And then, while she was getting ready to come back to California, came word from the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, informing her that she couldn’t return until she’d undergone a new security check. 

“The visa officer asked me to wait for two weeks until they called me back,” said Li. “I believed him.” 

Half a world away in Washington, her visa application had triggered an interagency security review, and two weeks stretched out into nearly eight months. The reason: Her major—plant biology—is deemed sensitive. 

The ordeal finally ended when she was cleared in mid-September. 

“It’s just too stressful,” Li recalled, sitting in her office on campus one recent weekend afternoon. “I had been waiting, and waiting, and waiting, without being able to see the ending.” 

As part of a series of measures the U.S. government adopted to tighten immigration laws and regulations after the 9/11 attacks, stricter scrutiny of visa applications have delayed many foreign students and scholars seeking to enter or re-enter the U.S. for some specific fields of study or research. 

According to the website of the House Committee on Science, many colleges and universities have reported that registered students and scholars—in particular, those from China and India—have had difficulty returning. 

At UC Berkeley, where international students and scholars make up 20 percent of graduate community, at least ten Chinese graduate students said they’d been forced to go through a lengthy security review this year when applying for re-entry visas to come back after vacation or business trips. 

A couple of those interviewed are still stuck in China, pending decisions from the involved agencies in Washington. According to the students, the review could last months, sometimes even over a year, and could end in a visa denial. 

“In the case of where they are waiting eight months, we certainly understand this is causing them inconvenience, but these are security measures,” said Kelly Shannon, a spokesperson for the State Department’s Bureau of Consular Affairs. “It’s called erring on the side of caution.” 

But to students like Li, it’s not just “inconvenience.” She said her life was suddenly all about long distance phone calls, faxes, e-mails, and of course, anxious waiting. She said she had made every possible effort to obtain information about her visa status. 

In May, when SARS was rampant in Beijing, Li braved the risk, running to the U.S. Embassy. Refused entry, she had to shout at the Chinese staff inside, asking for information with a thick mask covering most of her face. 

“I wasn’t very hopeful when I went there,” Li said. “And I was less hopeful after I had been there.” 

While waiting in Beijing, Li still had to pay her rent and many other monthly bills in Berkeley, though all her living stipends for the new semester were cut. 

Li estimated her direct financial loss at about $20,000, but still worse, she had to postpone her PhD. qualifying exams for nearly a year, which caused a major interruption of her studies. 

“I was very upset by the delay, because it disrupted my teaching and research,” said Professor Kris Niyogi, Li’s principal instructor. “I was frustrated by the entire process because there was nothing that I could do to help.” 

Professor Niyogi said he didn’t know why Plant Biology is considered a sensitive topic, but Li said the visa officer in Beijing told her two courses listed on her transcript, Genetics and Biochemistry, led to the check. 

“I don’t think I’ll go back to China again before graduation,” Li said. But she needs another four years to complete her program.  

On the other side of the Pacific, Jun Yang is still stranded. 

Yang is a PhD. candidate with the Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management at UC Berkeley. After attending an international conference in Australia a few months ago, he returned China in July to apply for his re-entry visa.  

Since starting school here in 1999, Yang had filed for similar visas four times before, always receiving his visa within a week. But this time, he was checked. 

“What are they checking?” Yang asked over the phone from Beijing. “Are they checking my name against a database? Even if it’s against several databases, how could it take so long?” Nor can Yang understand why his major poses any danger to U.S. national security, he said. 

“There are many reasons that certain technologies and sciences are of concern,” said Shannon. “We work very carefully with (the involved agencies) to help streamline the process without compromising any security.”  

Yang said he understands the general terrorism anxiety in the U.S.—but to work things out more effectively, he said, the U.S. government shouldn’t target such a big pool, but should sharpen their focus. “The money can be used in a better way to keep American people safe,” he added. 

Since this April, Chinese students from 93 U.S. universities including UC Berkeley have started lining up to collect and share information about such visa security check. As of early September, over 600 Chinese “checkees” have posted their status online. Some reported delays of over a year and the majority said they were still pending. 

According to Kara Haas of the House Science Committee staff, the committee chairman has directed the General Accounting Office to investigate the lengthy delays and report back to the Congress. The final report is due early next year, she wrote in an e-mail. 

Ivor Emmanuel, director of Services for International Students and Scholars at UC Berkeley, said his office is working with the other departments on a project to determine the campus wide impact of the extra visa security checks on the academic mission of the university. They are also offering travel workshops to review the visa application process for re-entry into the U.S. for the international students.  

Meantime, some U.S. academic professionals are concerned that the visa delays and denials not only have adversely impacted multi-million dollar federally funded research projects, but may be hampering the ability of U.S. schools to compete for top students. 

Chinese media reported that the number of students who took the most recent TOEFL test in Beijing dropped by over 50%. Many stories attributed it to “the difficulty in obtaining the U.S. visa.” 

“It has become a bigger hassle now for Chinese to seek education in the U.S.,” said Yang. “It will be better for students to find a similar good program in Australia, England and Canada.”


As City’s Budget Ax Falls, Question is Where?

By Ann-Marie Hogan
Friday December 05, 2003

When the Berkeley City Council voted not to ask for voter approval for a parcel tax increase in next March’s election, the critical factor may have been a failure to communicate. City officials failed to successfully communicate a message that no one—not the voters, not the employees, neither unions nor management—wanted to hear: that, without a tax increase, significant reductions in police, fire, and youth services are in the immediate future.  

It’s understandable that Council did not want to commit resources to placing a measure on the ballot when it seemed unlikely to garner the needed two-thirds vote. However, it’s unfortunate that the city will have to decide on program priorities without an objective measure of what choices the voters would like them to make.  

Over the years, as decisions made at the state and federal levels have slowly and inexorably squeezed local jurisdictions’ ability to control taxing and spending, a variety of special taxes and special funds have been put in place for specific programs in Berkeley. Among them are the Library Fund, Sewer Fund, Landscape/Parks, and Paramedics Fund.  

Because of this, in the short term, the revenue reductions in the city’s General Fund must be addressed by program reductions in the General Fund. This means that the police and fire departments will bear the lion’s share of the cuts. 

The current year General Fund budget includes over $76 million in police and fire costs, and about $23 million in costs for other operating programs and departments. In order to keep public safety at the current budgeted level, assuming cuts are made only to program areas (rather than support services), other General Fund front line services would have to be reduced by 65 percent, since money from “special” funds are restricted and can’t be used for public safety expenditures. 

 

Other General Fund Services 

Transportation, Animal Care Services, and Economic Development are each budgeted in a range of $400,000 to $1.4 million annually; Public Works and Planning have annual General Fund budgets of less than $1 million each (since most of the work of both departments is funded by “special” funds); the Housing Department and Health and Human Services are budgeted at about $4.7 million and $9 million each in General Funds. In both departments, General Fund dollars are used to leverage substantial additional grant revenues. The Parks, Recreation, and Waterfront departments also incurs General Fund costs of over $4.7 million, to pay for services that can’t be funded by the Parks Tax or the Marina Fund, such as youth services. 

 

General Fund Support and Oversight Costs 

Other General Fund expenditures are in the “nondepartmental” category, which is made up of mandated costs such as debt service, and in the support and oversight departments. The support department with the largest General Fund budget, Finance (at about $5 million) also provides revenue collection and management services.  

Other support and oversight services (Auditor, Police Review Commission, City Manager, Information Technology, City Attorney, City Clerk, Human Resources, and Mayor and Council) have budgets ranging from less than $400,000 to about $3,000,000 annually. In the short term, it does not appear that cutting programs in operating departments will cause significant workload reductions or cost savings in support services, which limits their ability to contribute to expenditure reductions. 

In the long run, focusing support department resources on solving some of the operational and structural problems that foster inefficiencies and waste of resources could pay off in a more smoothly functioning (and smaller) organization. Reducing workers’ compensation costs, improving oversight over city contractors, and improving the city’s budgeting and cost accounting systems are three of the most obvious areas for action.  

 

Short Term Decisions 

Over the next few months, city staff will recommend to Council a budget that picks and chooses between various levels of service for all of the programs funded by the General Fund. Over the next few years, the level of service that is practical for the “special fund” services (the Library, Parks, and most of Public Works) will also need to be addressed. If the city goes forward on the assumption that the current level of local property taxes should not be increased, then the larger question of which services need increases in funding, and which services should be reduced, will have to include an examination of all of our local spending, including the school district and other local special districts.  

 

Questions? Comments? Ideas for the Audit Plan? Contact the city auditor Ann-Marie Hogan at hogan@ci.berkeley.ca.us or 2180 Milvia St., 3rd floor, 94704. Audit reports available on line at ci.berkeley.ca.us/Auditor. 


Performers Bring Beckett Play to Life at City Club

By BETSY M. HUNTON Special to the Planet
Friday December 05, 2003

So what if it isn’t Christmasy—some people might even see that as a plus. 

The knockout production of Samuel Beckett’s modern classic Endgame that opened at the Berkeley City Club last weekend could still be considered an early present. Anybody with any kind of interest in theater who hasn’t seen the play is bound to have a nagging plan to get around to it someday. And people who are familiar with it undoubtedly still have some questions that they’d like answered. 

Okay; now’s their chance. And a splendid one it is. The four actors who inhabit the characters are little short of terrific. (They don’t “play” their roles; they “inhabit” them and, frankly, I’m not eager to run into any of these people on the street). These are four powerful performances which make a difficult text far easier to comprehend on the stage than it is to read. 

The excellence of the performances is the result of laborious and time-consuming casting by director and co-founder Gemma Whelan. Although Wilde Irish Productions is a new company, and this is only its second production, the founders are veteran theater people and more than ready to meet the challenges of their sophisticated repertoire. 

In addition to her lengthy history in both acting and directing, Whelan is current chair of Mills College’ theater department. Her co-founder and executive director, Breda Courtney, has a long resume’ as an actor and playwright. In this production she embodies the touching role of the mother, Nell.  

While the play maintains its currency, it may still be useful to remember that it opened in 1957 when the threat of nuclear war with the Soviet Union had seemed very real for over a decade. “End game,” of course, is the term used for the last part of a chess game, when the final moves determine the outcome. In this staging, the chess imagery is quietly maintained through the physical appearance of the two dominant characters, Hamm (Robert Hamm) and Clov (Steve Nye).  

The play opens with the entrance of the crippled Clov, all-purpose servant and quasi-son to the blinded, immobilized, sometimes infantile, yet overpowering Hamm. (There is a curious coincidence in that the character—who may have been named after one of the biblical Noah’s sons—is actually played by an actor named “Hamm”—Robert Hamm, who claims, perhaps accurately, that he “was born to play the role.” The actor is gifted with an extraordinary voice which he uses to great effect in this production).  

The interaction between the two as they face the end of their world is the dominating movement of the play. Clov, that curious mixture of childish dependency and manager-in-charge-of-everything, is the only person who seems to have any hope of escape from this strange, and perhaps doomed, world. 

It’s a fair argument to say that both characters are modeled on their chess prototypes: Clov’s jerky steps are odd and perhaps reminiscent of the knight’s moves on a chessboard. Hamm, who has monarch-like authority over the tiny world of the play, is confined to a throne-like chair whose precise location is of critical importance to him. 

But the chess symbolism is muted (and perhaps overemphasized in this review); it’s quite possible to go through the entire play blissfully unaware of the whole idea. These are two uncomfortably human characters whose mutual dependency is a terrifying kind of reality that makes quite enough sense in and of itself. 

Martin Waldron (Nagg) and Breda Courtney (Nell) are quietly heartbreaking in their brief but significant roles as aged, discarded parents. They relate only to each other, but there is an honest kind of love between them that serves as pathetic contrast to the contorted emotions of the two main characters. Perhaps the ease with which they have been discarded from what passes for life with the main characters is in itself one of Brecht’s comments on the world he has drawn. 

Within the context of the play, the famous symbolism of the trash cans in which these two characters live is neither obscure nor silly. It is just part of the curious world the play presents. There is a certain inevitability about them and the symbolism, while blatant, fits flawlessly. 

Perhaps the most curious thing about this play is that it is actually not a depressing experience. One could argue that the content is actually pretty scary. But the abstract world which is drawn keeps this from being a raw appeal to emotions. It’s a tremendous play, and this is one terrific production. 

Endgame runs through Dec. 11 at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. 644-9940.


Police Commission Marks 30 Years of Controversy

By MATTHEW ARTZ
Friday December 05, 2003

Today’s Berkeley Police Department bears little resemblance to the force that fired on People’s Park protesters in 1969 and prompted voters to approve one of the nation’s first citizen review commissions four years later. 

Now the SWAT Team doesn’t shoot first and negotiate later in hostage situations, chokeholds are banned, and minorities are more numerous on the force, and less hassled on the street. 

But for the Police Review Commission—which spearheaded those reforms and celebrated its 30th anniversary Thursday—little has changed. It’s still fighting for relevance and still steeped in controversy.  

“It’s a biased venue that does a disservice to the community,” said Randolph Files, president of the Berkeley Police Association—which has considered the PRC to be a knee-jerk anti-cop panel since its inception. 

Increasingly, though, the sharpest criticisms have come from advocates for the accused, who argue that the commission has lost its activist zeal and retreated from the community whose support it needs to remain relevant. 

“[The PRC] isn’t loved by the bureaucracy, so if it’s not loved by the people, I don’t see them having a 40th anniversary,” said Andrea Pritchett of Copwatch, an independent organization that monitors alleged police misconduct. 

Though not passed by voters until 1973, the commission is rooted in the free speech movement of the 1960s, when protesters often complained of police misconduct. The defining moment came during the People’s Park protests of 1969 when Berkeley police and Alameda County Sheriff Deputies fired on crowds and helicopters sprayed tear gas on the UC Berkeley campus. 

As veterans of the movement began flexing their muscles in city government, police reform became a top priority in an era when no African American BPD officer had ever risen to sergeant. 

“The police viewed us as the enemy, even though we paid their taxes,” said James Chanin, a Berkeley civil rights attorney who sat on the first commission. “It was a white male-dominated department that was hostile to the politics of Berkeley.” 

The ballot effort forged an alliance that remade Berkeley politics—uniting the April Coalition, forerunner to today’s progressive faction, and the Black Panther Party, some of whose members recalled a time two decades earlier when the BPD kept close tabs on African Americans who crossed east of Martin Luther King Jr. Way (then Grove Street). 

Their victory was met with immediate antagonism from the BPA, which filed a string of lawsuits aimed at abolishing the fledging commission. 

Though the commission survived, one lawsuit dealt it a devastating blow. Originally intended to replace Internal Affairs—the police department’s internal investigation and disciplinary unit—a judge ruled that only a charter amendment, not a ballot initiative, could give the commission authority to discipline officers. 

Reduced to a role as advisors to the city manager—who reviews the commission’s findings and controls its funds—the commission wields little institutional power. 

“It’s only as strong as the commitment and energy of the commissioners,” said Osha Neuman, who served from 1984-1992. During his first year, an activist commission witnessed UC Berkeley police indiscriminately use chokeholds on student protesters decrying U.S. business ties with the apartheid regime in South Africa. 

After taking testimony, the commission effectively lobbied Council to ban the chokehold for city police.  

A decade earlier, the first commission used its influence to bring in a hostage negotiator for the department’s SWAT team and change its training methods. 

Still, when it comes to actual complaints against officers, the PRC’s findings carry little weight. No one interviewed could recall a case when an officer was fired or disciplined as the result of a commission finding. 

A 2002 California Court of Appeals ruling further eroded the commission’s disciplinary power by mandating that cities with citizen review commissions set up appeal bodies for officers seeking to strike sustained allegations from their record. 

According to commissioners, since the process started last year, the three-person appeal board selected by then-City Manager Weldon Rucker has overturned nearly every commission finding against officers. 

“I’m astounded by their decisions. It’s ridiculous,” said Commissioner David Ritchie. 

Sgt. Files maintains that the appeals board vindicates BPA claims that the PRC—composed of nine council-appointed residents, instead of staffers like most cities—has always been home to those predisposed against the police. 

“It’s a detriment to police officers trying to help people to get Monday morning quarterbacked by people who don’t know what’s going on in the real world,” said Files. And while he said he supports the concept of citizen review, Files said Berkeley’s model has damaged morale and made police more reluctant to take proactive measures, especially in circumstances where the suspect could accuse the officer of racial bias. 

Barbara Attard, the commission’s secretary and lead investigator, countered that Berkeley’s system which requires the accused officer and the complainant to appear together before the board helps both sides to better understand each other. 

Sometimes even when a police officer didn’t violate a rule, he realizes he could have handled a situation in a way that wouldn’t have caused resentment, she said. 

Statistics show that commissioners side with the police in most cases. In 2002, commissioners sustained allegations in 21 of the 46 cases filed. Forty-six officers were accused in cases last year, 12 in multiple cases. Currently 28 officers have sustained findings on their records. 

Last year’s 46 cases were the fewest since 1998, which commissioners attributed to fewer mass demonstrations and improved relations between police and Critical Mass bicycle protesters, but also to a lack of funding to promote the commission’s work. 

In 2002, BPD’s Internal Affairs Board received nearly 120 complaints, including the 46 that it automatically received from the commission. That means many Berkeley residents with complaints about the police either didn’t know about the commission or didn’t bother to bring it to their attention. 

“If I had a serious complaint, I wouldn’t go to the PRC,” Prichett said. “Often you’re left to deal with the bureaucracy and present your case by your lonesome, and if you lose, it hurts your court case.” 

She said that, unlike previous boards, current commissioners aren’t hitting the streets to promote their activities or monitor police conduct. 

Commissioners past and present disagree, saying the PRC has provided an invaluable outlet for police-community dialog that has improved policing in the city and helped Berkeley steer clear of the expensive misconduct suits that have plagued Oakland and San Francisco. 

“It’s been really important for people in the community to have a place they can go and have grievances heard and confront the police officer,” Neuman said. “Police say we’re not experts, but we are experts in that we know what it’s liked to be policed. The process is never over; it’s the only way to know what’s happening in the community.”


City Staff Serves Developers As Kennedy’s Projects Prove

By GALE GARCIA
Friday December 05, 2003

For several years I’ve watched in shock as the “development community” took over this town. When the escaped tax issue came to light, I thought this outrageous loss of revenue in the face of a deficit might remind city staff that their salaries are actually paid by the taxpayers of Berkeley. 

My hopes were dashed when I read a Nov. 4 memo from Acting City Manager Philip Kamlarz to City Council detailing the agreement reached between Patrick Kennedy and city staff over how much Mr. Kennedy would pay for his unbilled (escaped) special assessment property taxes. I found multiple errors in the computations—not one to the advantage of city coffers.  

A letter I wrote to Mr. Kamlarz and the City Council on Nov. 6, explaining each discrepancy and undercount, was forwarded to Finance Director Frances David for response. At the Council meeting on Nov. 18 Ms. David restated the tax estimates from the memo as though the figures were undisputed. The sum of $163,317 to be billed for the Kennedy properties for three years of escaped taxes is, I believe, tens of thousands of dollars short.  

I’ll give one example of several discrepancies: According to county records, the Gaia building is very close in usage and square feet (upon which the special assessments are based) to the Corder building at 2322 Shattuck Ave. The current year special assessments bill for the Corder building is $63,229, yet our staff are satisfied to ask only $37,014 for the same time period for the Gaia building. 

Finance Director David replied to my letter Nov. 20 but provided few answers. Rather than explain the exemptions Mr. Kennedy had been granted, she stated: “… space leased to nonprofit organizations may be exempt from taxes.” The Gaia Building Limited Liability Corporation, under which Mr. Kennedy owns the building, is not a nonprofit organization. Is Ms. David implying that he’s receiving some tax break for the alleged 19 (or is it 12) units of affordable housing in the building? Absurd. New buildings are not, and never will be, under rent control. The only buildings which really provide affordable housing are controlled units with historically low rents, and owners of these properties are definitely not receiving any tax breaks. 

In fact, the Corder building has, according to rent board records, 17 units which rent for under $550 per month, including three for under $450! I doubt the new projects in town contain even one unit for which the owner receives so little compensation. 

The one tax break received by the Gaia building which has been explained is that parking lot space is not taxed at all. A parking slot in the stacked parking of the Gaia rents for $150 per month, yielding $450 per month for a stacked trio of cars, more than the entire price for some of the truly affordable apartments in the Corder Building.  

Staff of several city departments have been knocking themselves out to promote for-profit development, and the even more profitable “nonprofit” development, while treating the citizens dreadfully. One of the prime offenders is the Planning Department—the exuberance of certain staff members for big development in spite of neighborhood opposition is legendary. 

It has become a common belief that city staff aren’t serving the community, but have focused on serving developers. Now that revenue has been lost, it’s time for the favors to stop. 

 

Gale Garcia is a longtime Berkeley resident and taxpayer.


No So Fast, ZAB Tells Blood House Developers

By MATTHEW ARTZ
Friday December 05, 2003

The Blood House battle—pitting a Berkeley historical landmark against a prominent developer in the arena of California’s complex environment law—entered a new phase this week when the city ordered developers back to the drawing board. 

After three hours’ debate including testimony from developers and about a dozen preservationists, Zoning Adjustment Board (ZAB) commissioners voted to delay their decision for the second time in three months, unsatisfied that the building’s owner, Berkeley development firm Ruegg & Ellsworth, had made a good faith effort to incorporate the building in their proposal. 

“I don’t think we got a serious project from the applicant showing they want to make money from the land,” Commissioner David Blake said. 

The first phase of the confrontation began in 1999 when the Blood House, a stuccoed-over Victorian sandwiched between the Beau Sky Hotel and the Albra Apartments at 2526 Durant Ave., was landmarked as one of three remaining 19th Century homes in the immediate neighborhood, a ruling Council later upheld. 

In June of 2000 Ruegg & Ellsworth sought city permission to tear down the building to make way for a planned housing and commercial development on the site. 

But the structure’s landmark status placed it under the protection of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), which places tight restrictions on what can and can’t be done with the building. 

Under CEQA, a developer can only tear down a landmarked structure by convincing the city that demolition is the only feasible way to ensure them a reasonable profit on their investment. 

To win approval for the 44-unit mixed-use development, Ruegg & Ellsworth must show that any alternative plan that preserves the Blood House—now an office building and an officially designated “structure of merit”—is unfeasible. 

In September, the firm presented ZAB with plans for a 20-unit, 5-story L-shaped building that looped around the Blood House. Commissioners greeted the plan with skepticism, worried that the firm—wanting to win approval for its original plan—had purposely designed the project to lose money and ordered the firm to return with a more viable design. 

The firm presented a new plan Monday, which they said would lose an estimated $2.8 million. It moves the Blood House to the northwest corner of the lot, adjacent to a 14-unit three-story development. Moving costs alone would run $800,000, said project consultant Evan McDonald of Panoramic Interests. 

Again questioning the firm’s intentions, commissioners ordered it to return in January with analyses of three plans: Moving the house to the corner of the plot beside a five-story building; leaving the house in the middle of the property, and building a five-story building around it without a driveway or the planned second floor balcony (which, they said, would unnecessarily reduces space for apartments); or extending the complex to unused parts of the neighboring parcels, which the city contends Ruegg & Ellsworth also owns. 

They also asked the firm to consider removing the planned 18 parking spaces or adding a sixth floor to make the project more financially viable. 

McDonald insisted that the neighboring properties were off limits because a different partnership owned them, and said that without the 44 apartment units in the original plan, the development would actually reduce the value of the land.  

Ruegg & Ellsworth Project Manager Paul Dyer said his firm had already ruled out erecting a five-story building beside the relocated house, which they determined would lose $2.4 million. 

City Planner Debra Sanderson rejected a request from Commissioner Blake to have the planning department conduct an independent analysis of the proposals, maintaining such a move was politically dicey and put planners in the role of developers. 

An Environmental Impact Report found no way to mitigate the loss of the building—which means that to proceed with demolition, the firm must convince the ZAB to adopt a Statement of Overriding Considerations, showing there is no feasible alternative that will ensure developers an adequate profit. 

The developers contend that their inclusion of retail space and three units of affordable housing outweighs the value of preserving the house.


UC Official, City Discuss Plans for Hotel Complex

By MATTHEW ARTZ
Friday December 05, 2003

Berkeley’s city planning commissioners got their first chance to question the man behind UC Berkeley’s proposed downtown hotel and convention center Tuesday afternoon, and—among other things—they learned that the complex will likely be shorter than the twelve-story tower sketched in the university’s conceptual drawings. 

Project Manager Kevin Hufferd met with about 20 Berkeley officials and residents, detailing the university’s vision for the property and fielding questions during a cordial two-hour inaugural meeting of a Planning Commission subcommittee on the new development. 

UC plans to acquire the Bank of America branch at the corner of Shattuck Avenue and Center Street and replace it with a conference center, bank and a hotel of between 175 and 225 rooms. 

During the project’s second phase, Hufferd said, the university will relocate three museums to UC-owned land which currently houses a printing press and a parking lot to the east of the bank. 

Hufferd also revealed that: 

• Eight to ten major hotel operators have expressed interest in the project, and the university has set a Dec. 15 deadline for submittals to their Request for Qualification. 

• A planned underground parking lot at the hotel would hold 100-plus cars, and a new parking lot would be developed on the parallel block of Addison Street to compensate for the demolition of the lot on the corner of Addison and Oxford Street. 

• Relocation of the Berkeley Art Museum, Pacific Film Archive, and Phoebe Hearst Anthropology Museum would likely lag up to two years behind the hotel development while the university worked to secure private funding for that phase of the project. 

Hufferd said he was willing to work with advocates for unearthing Strawberry Creek along Center Street, though he and Mayor Tom Bates cautioned that the budget for the planned development doesn’t include funding for creek restoration. 

Creek proponents—who want to turn the block into a pedestrian-only, environmental showcase anchored by the daylighted creek—suggested that more intensive development, including housing and retail shops, could generate money for creek restoration. They also sought to reduce the anticipated height of the new hotel by building hotel rooms over the adjoining museums. 

Hufferd didn’t discount their ideas and said the university hoped to make the hotel “an environmental showcase.” 

Bates called on creek proponents to work with the city and university to find funding for the restoration, but said he was inclined to put any mitigations the city might receive from the UC project “back into the buildings” and not into the creek plan. 

Ultimately, the UC Board of Regents probably has the final say over the project, but Hufferd promised extensive community involvement, adding he expected community boards would be a part of the planning process.


Pact Settles Threatened UC Strike

By MATTHEW ARTZ
Friday December 05, 2003

The University of California reached a tentative labor contract with its student instructors Tuesday, two days before a scheduled system-wide strike threatened to leave some students without last-minute instruction or final grades. 

Though neither side would discuss the deal, an internal union e-mail reported that the contract ensured the union’s right to stage sympathy strikes and called for a 1.5 percent retroactive raise for those employed during the fall semester. 

Members of United Auto Workers Local 2865, which represents roughly 13,000 mostly graduate student instructors, graders and tutors across the system and about 2,200 at UC Berkeley, are winding up their vote on the contract today (Friday). Union negotiators enthusiastically recommended approval. 

“[The contract] makes significant improvements in the rights, wages, and benefits of Academic Student Employees (ASEs) at UC,” union leaders wrote in the e-mail. 

Both sides faced pressure to avert the potentially devastating strike. 

Assemblywoman Loni Hancock had circulated a memo signed by 33 legislative Democrats calling on UC to drop the sympathy strike provision. 

Union representatives at UC Berkeley have tried to mollify internal dissent, especially among science students, some of whom circulated e-mails to colleagues critical of union leadership and voicing skepticism about the wisdom of staging a strike during finals week. 

Although the union retained its right to hold sympathy strikes, it failed to achieve its other chief aim—an independent arbitrator to settle workload disputes. The contract instead calls for a clearer description of job duties to preclude future disputes. 

In addition to the 1.5 percent raise effective in January, the contract ties future 1.5 percent pay hikes to senate faculty merit increases, which occur annually. 

ASEs expressed relief that they wouldn’t have to strike during the busiest time of the semester. “It’s one less thing to worry about,” said Shay Boutillier, who added she would have honored picket lines even though she questioned the timing of the proposed strike. 

Since ASEs often grade final exams and conduct review sessions, a strike risked leaving students less prepared for tests and forcing overburdened professors to relax grading standards. 

Tuesday’s tentative settlement ends eight months of negotiations on a new contract to replace the pact that expired Oct. 1.


E-book Project Duo Offers Talk, Texts at Library

Friday December 05, 2003

The founder and CEO of Project Gutenberg—the nonprofit venture which makes thousands of books available free through their website, www.gutenberg.net—will appear at the Berkeley Public Library Dec. 11, and all who attend the session will walk away with either a CD containing about 3,500 e-books or a DVD containing nearly 9,400. 

Michael Hart and Greg Newby will tell how the project has expanded from 100 titles on the Dec. 10, 1993 launch, to over 10,000 today. 

The free public meeting begins at 7 p.m. in the library’s third floor meeting room, 2090 Kittredge St. Guests are reminded not to wear scented products.


‘Crowds,’ ‘Sideshows’: The ‘Usual Suspects’ Renamed

J. DOUGLAS ALLEN-TAYLOR
Friday December 05, 2003

Was it Machiavelli who said “the prudent prince needs an enemy at the gate, always, to draw the attention of the populace from scandal within the court”? Or it could have been Sun Tzu, maybe. Age advances, memory fades, and I get my 60s icons confused. The optimum enemy in this situation, in any event, ought to be one who is both anonymous and seemingly dangerous, but not so dangerous that he can actually cause harm. 

These days, Oakland’s enemy is the sideshows, and they play their part quite adequately. 

In response to my last column on the sideshow issue, posted to an Oakland political newsgroup, a reader wonders how I can ignore such a threat to the public decency, and offers his own description of the events: “Neighbors complain about the donuts. Unruly crowds gather. Drinking and driving occur.” 

Note, for reference, the anonymous “crowds,” in the passive voice. “People” do things. Fight. Cry. Talk. Crowds, on the other hand, gather, like malevolent forces of nature. 

Another reader is more colorful: “The ‘side shows’ are also pretty scary to see. I ran across one on a Friday afternoon after picking up my son... It was about three-thirty in the p.m. as I turned the corner toward 106th. A crowd toting hefty forties of malt liquor was howling with glee as a car spun donuts in the intersection, blocking my way out. … When I discussed this with a local police officer a few days later, he told me that a lot of ‘side show’ cars get trashed because they’re stolen from East Oakland residents, who can’t afford to replace them, before the festivities.” 

Here, the anonymous “crowd” again, howling, now, as do animals and other lower creatures, with the added bonus that sideshows are actually responsible for our stolen car problem. Another reason to break them up. 

A third reader believes that my skepticism that Highway Patrol officers roaming International Boulevard, stopping cars and stray prostitutes at will, has much to do with solving Oakland’s murder problem. He calls that a “bum rap.” “The way that the CHP is supposed to be helping the Oakland Police,” he explains, “is by concentrating on the ‘side shows’ and other related traffic related problems, primarily on East 14th/International, so that the Oakland Police can spend more time investigating murders.” 

Yes, so we’ve been told. I would be less skeptical if I knew what my Oakland police were actually doing, now, with their free time, no longer having to cruise East 14th. Perhaps someone will enlighten us. 

A week ago or so, Channel 11 of San Jose thoughtfully provided us with some comments from a CHP officer involved in these infamous East Oakland patrols. Their purpose was combating the sideshows, explains the officer (to the best of my memory), which was difficult, because the sideshows come and go, in random spots, without advance notice. So the CHP breaks them up (so says the CHP officer) by stopping cars along International Boulevard with “busted taillights” and “expired tags.”  

One wonders how this breaks up the sideshows. Whose cars are targeted for stops? (Wink-wink…don’t ask too many questions son…we’re out here doing our job, so you can sleep safe behind your closed doors.) How does a fix-it ticket for a busted taillight or expired tag—the prescribed remedy for such infractions—prevent the driver from going down the street aways, turning a corner, and swinging a donut or two? We are left to use our own imaginations as to what other remedies our state police may be employing once they make their initial stop. (Again, wink-wink.) 

The CHP officer, by the way, does actually mention murders as a byproduct. As a result of the increased taillight-and-tags patrols along International, murders in Oakland have ground to a halt.  

Well, yes, “Stop a thousand cars in East Oakland, after all, and the odds are you’ve got to come up with at least one that contains a driver (or a passenger) who might consider shooting somebody, somewhere, sometime in their life” (to quote myself, if I may be permitted, from last week’s column). 

Within the week, however, we see that the murderers are not impressed. Oakland had three more killings, one in Montclair, one during an East Oakland robbery, and one found stabbed in a house later set afire in the Sobrante Park area of 105th Avenue, the area where our newsgroup reader says he witnessed the howling crowd at the sideshow event. Perhaps one of them, drunk off a 40, wandered off from the crowd to do his neighbor in. You know how these people are. 

Contra Costa County employs its gatherings of police in a different manner. This month, Channel 4 reports that 85 officers from 25 different police agencies in the county are serving old DUI warrants, the stated aim being to get accused drunk drivers off the local streets. That’s a thought. Perhaps Oakland police, so many of whom choose to live east of the tunnel, might take note.


Controversy Colored Clark Kerr’s Berkeley Reign

By MATTHEW ARTZ
Friday December 05, 2003

Friends and colleagues remembered Clark Kerr—the first chancellor of UC Berkeley and the father of the modern public university system—as a man blessed with a spirit as strong as his intellect. 

“He was a very egalitarian person. I never saw him pull rank on anybody,” said Neil Smelser, a UC Berkeley professor emeritus of sociology who worked with Kerr towards the end of his career and wrote the foreword to Kerr’s memoirs.  

Kerr died at his El Cerrito home Monday of complications from a fall. He was 92. 

Born on a Pennsylvania apple farm when fewer than five percent of American 18-year-olds attended college, Kerr devised the University of California’s Master Plan for Higher Education, which opened the state system to every student and served as a model throughout the country. 

Kerr’s concept—which blossomed into UC, California State University and the state community colleges—strove to maintain top-notch research centers, while complementing them with various types of schools to meet the state’s exploding population. 

In his nine years as UC President—before a political rift with Governor Ronald Reagan ended his tenure in 1967—Kerr doubled enrollment to 87,000 students, oversaw the creation of UC Irvine, UC San Diego and UC Santa Cruz, and increased the number of Nobel Prize winning professors from five to 12. 

“He was the most distinguished university president in the history of the 20th century,” said Martin Trow, UC Berkeley professor emeritus of public policy, whose first year on the UC Berkeley faculty was Kerr’s last as chancellor. 

Kerr’s first taste of university life came as an undergraduate at Swarthmore, where he studied labor economics and became a committed Quaker. 

“He was always able to see other people’s point of view,” Trow said. “At his heart he was interested in peaceful resolution of conflict.” 

Kerr’s diplomatic skills served him well through most of his career. During World War II, he served as a labor mediator in the Pacific Northwest and later belonged to a group that sought a diplomatic settlement to the Korean War. 

As UC Berkeley chancellor, Kerr nudged the campus to the left, making the ROTC voluntary, and relaxing speaking prohibitions against communist sympathizers. 

“He was painted by the left as an antagonist to free speech, but on the Berkeley campus he was a liberalizing force,” Smelser said. 

During his early years as UC president, Kerr found fertile legislative ground to lobby for his master plan. In 1960 legislators desperately wanted new local colleges to supplement UC Berkeley and UCLA, Smelser said. The master plan provided a framework to manage the growth and won near-unanimous support. 

But a vastly changed political dynamic cut short his presidency. With UC Berkeley students protesting restraints on political speech and state conservatives calling for Kerr to clamp down on demonstrators, Kerr found himself targeted by both sides. 

When Gov. Ronald Reagan assumed power in 1967, he allied with Kerr’s conservative opponents on the Board of Regents, which voted to oust him.  

“That’s the fate of a middle-of-the-road leader,” Smelser said. “He was a negotiator coming up against social movements that had an absolute quality to them.” 

Kerr quickly moved on to head the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education through 1979 and continued to write scholastic papers well into his retirement.  

“He was an absolute miracle in that he could write new and fresh papers well into his late 80s,” Trow said, adding that on visits back to the Berkeley campus he always remembered faces of people he had met and was quick to strike up conversations. 

In his final days, Smelser said Kerr feared for the university system he spearheaded. “He was worried that the state wasn’t going to continue to give the university financial support.” He knew it was vulnerable.” 

Kerr is survived by his wife, Catherine, three children, Alexander, Clark and Caroline, half-brother Bill, seven grandchildren and one great grandchild.


Police Blotter

By MATTHEW ARTZ
Friday December 05, 2003

Indecent Exposure 

Police arrested a Sunnyvale man last week for masturbating in a parked truck while staring at two teenage Berkeley girls. Police said the girls were walking on Shattuck Avenue and Haste Street when they noticed the man fixated on them while he masturbated. They flagged down a passing police officer, who arrested the man for indecent exposure and performing lewd acts in the presence of a minor. 

 

Liquor Store Dispute 

Police tracked down a man who waved a gun in the face of a liquor store owner at his shop on the 2100 block of San Pablo Avenue Tuesday evening. According to police, the customer began arguing with the clerk, brandished a handgun, and poked the clerk in the eye. Police responded and found the man fleeing down Allston Way. Police pursued and arrested Marlon Whitmore, 31, of Berkeley for brandishing a gun, battery, and probation violation.  

 

Robbery 

A gang of five to six teenaged boys robbed a 19-year-old Berkeley resident Monday night on the sidewalk in the 2100 block of Fulton Street. According to police, the youths accosted the victim at 9:35 p.m., and when he refused to hand over his wallet, one boy pushed him into a car. The man then surrendered his wallet to another boy, who fled on foot along with his companions.


Prof, Editors Capture MLA Awards

—Jakob Schiller
Friday December 05, 2003

Three UC Berkeley luminaries have landed in the literary limelight after receiving two awards from the prestigious Modern Language Association of America (MLA).  

Priya Joshi, Associate Professor of English at the College of Letters and Sciences, won the 10th annual Prize for a First Book for her work “In Another Country: Colonialism, Culture, and the English Novel in India.” 

Michael B. Frank and Harriet Elinor Smith, principal editors with UC Berkeley’s Mark Twain Project at the Bancroft Library, received the Morton M. Cohen Award for a Distinguished Edition of Letters for their editing of the book Mark Twain’s Letters: Volume 6: 1874-1875—described by the MLA as an “exemplary collection of the correspondence of a major American author.” 

Recognized as an “innovative and ambitious book [that] challenges simplistic hegemonic perspectives on colonialism and culture,” and for “[gleaning] new understandings of how English books were read in India in the 19th century and of the process by which consumers of those books became producers of Indian literature in English,” Joshi’s book also recently captured the Sonya Rudikoff Prize for best first book in Victorian studies from the Northeast Victorian Studies Association, and an honorable mention from the SHARP Book History Prize. 

The Mark Twain Project’s award was the second honor the project has received from the MLA. Back in 1995 they received the MLA Prize for a Distinguished Scholarly Edition for their edition of Mark Twain’s Roughing It, co-edited by Harriet Smith. 

The latest award also singled out the book’s “Guide to Editorial Practice,” prepared by Project General Editor Robert Hirst. 

“From our point of view it’s quite a distinction,” Hirst said about the award. 

Previous winners of the Cohen Award include The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, The Correspondence of William James, and The Selected Letters of Tennessee Williams: Volume 1, 1920-1945. 

—Jakob Schiller


Musician’s City Hall Feud Carries a Hefty Price

Jakob Schiller
Friday December 05, 2003

For Michael Masley, Wednesday was the day the music died—at least for a day. That’s when Berkeley Police hit Masley, a well-known local street performer, with two citations totaling $800. 

A cymbalom player who usually sets up on Telegraph or Shattuck avenues, Masley was slapped with a $500 citation for vending his CDs without a permit and a $300 citation for using an amplifier without a permit. 

Berkeley residents will quickly recognize Masley—whose instrument is a precursor to the piano—for the Edward Scissorhands-like finger attachments he invented to help him play. 

Two decades of pedestrians have gathered—or sometimes fled—the unique and somewhat indescribable sounds Masley creates. 

Credited as the inventor of new cymbalom techniques by the Bakers Biographical Dictionary of Musicians, Masley has a fairly long list of musical credits, including studio sessions with Ry Cooder, Tom Waits and Butch Vig from the group Garbage. His work was also included on the National Public Radio collection CD, All Songs Considered. 

Wednesday’s citations weren’t Masley’s first, but they’re certainly the most severe. Back in 1993 he was issued a citation at the same spot—Channing and Telegraph—and spent a night in jail for failure to obtain a permit for vending.  

According to the Berkeley Police Department’s Public Information Officer Kevin Schofield, Masley was issued a warning three weeks ago for selling without a permit, and was issued another non-permitted amplifier ticket on Tuesday—a ticket Masley said was prompted by a complaint from inside one of the buildings at Center and Shattuck where he was playing. That citation didn’t carry the steep fines of those issued Wednesday. 

“I don’t begrudge a ticket when there is a complaint,” he said. Nonetheless, he said his last ticket was over the top. 

“I thought I must be seeing an extra zero. They were thrilled to give this to me and wanted to max it out,” he said. 

According to Roy Phelps from the City of Berkeley’s finance department, the citations issued Wednesday followed standard rules that require permits for street vending. Under rules enforced by the city’s Office of Environmental Health, amplified music, including Masley’s small battery powered speakers, also requires permits. Phelps said the steep fines resulted from a policy where citations for repeated offenses carry heftier punishments. 

Phelps said he’s offered Masley a vendor’s permit on numerous occasions, a process that he says can be completed in a day. Masley acknowledged Phelp’s offers and said he tried to acquire a permit after he first came to Berkeley almost 20 years ago. 

After borrowing the $104 needed for permit fees, he went to the finance office, where he said he was laughed out when he expected to acquire the permit that same day and was instead told the wait was six months. The experience was enough to dissuade him from ever going back. 

Since then he’s bounced around town and done his best to avoid citations by asking for donations instead of advertising CD sales with signs and leaving his music un-amplified. 

But because he supports himself on CD sales, he continues to vend whenever he can. With sales down 60 percent this year and his income well below the poverty line, he said there’s no way he can pay the fines and may end up spending time in jail. 

“I certainly don’t want to go to jail, but I don’t have $800,” he said.  

BPD spokesman Schofield said the vending citation is a civil offense and won’t immediately result in jail time. Like parking tickets, however, failure to pay can lead to an arrest warrant, followed by time behind bars.  

But the amplified music citation is a criminal offense and jail time is also likely if the fine is not paid. 

Besides his concern with the fines, Masley said he’s upset that the city is charging street musicians. 

“Given that I’ve lasted this long, what’s going to be achieved by removing me from the streets? If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” he said. 

He’s also concerned that the citations were issued because of the high shopper volume downtown and on Telegraph Avenue. 

Alan Ross, owner of Cody’s Books on Telegraph, said he is generally very supportive of street vendors and street performers. 

“I have no problem at all with people who play the violin and don’t drive you crazy,” said Ross. “They contribute to the street and make it more interesting. Some people however, are more annoying than others. It’s a difficult public policy issue.” 

He says amplified music is fine as long as the decibel levels are within the permitted range.  

“I have had some very annoying problems with people who are very unresponsive about turning [their amplifiers] down,” he said. 

“I certainly don’t object to [street vendors and musicians] being here, there should be more of them, but I also think its okay for the city to ask for a license if people are on the street.”  

He said he couldn’t comment specifically on Masley, who has never performed near his store. 

Masley, who was back at it again on Thursday, performing at the Rockridge Bart, says he’ll test out the scene and continue to play. “I’m a survivor, this is all I have to live on,” he said.


Samarra Killings Spark Questions, Outrage

By William O. Beeman Pacific News Service
Friday December 05, 2003

U.S. commanders say their troops killed at least 54 Iraqis in the northern city of Samarra on Nov. 30. Townspeople say far fewer died, but that they were mostly civilians. Either way, it was a massacre, and the shocking surprise for Americans is that the organized Iraqi troops who provoked the attack are being hailed as heroes. 

Of all the places to incur a military attack in the area that has quixotically become known as the “Sunni triangle,” Samarra was the worst. It is not only a Sunni Arab stronghold, it is also a shrine city sacred to the Shi’a population of Iraq. In its action, the U.S. military has thus offended almost everyone in Iraq at one fell swoop.  

The U.S. troops were provoked into attack, but in retaliation they not only fired on a kindergarten and a mosque, they also fired on those trying to evacuate the wounded. 

Such actions make the hearts of Middle East specialists sink, because they create such long-lasting resentment -- the kind that breeds terrorists. Eventually such events lead to perpetual cycles of revenge. Already the residents of Samarra are vowing retribution. 

The U.S. government has made much of the fact that the battle was instigated by members of the Fedayeen, the elite guards loyal to Saddam Hussein, who appeared in uniform to bait the U.S. troops. It appeared that they were trying to attack a U.S. military convoy carrying new Iraqi bank notes designed to replace those bearing Saddam Hussein’s portrait. Radio Free Europe, in reporting the battle, claimed that the Fedayeen (whose name means sacrificers) were wearing their uniforms on purpose in order “to send a message to the local population that the Fedayeen remains a fighting force able to carry out complex operations.” 

The black uniforms of the Fedayeen have additional symbolic value. They are reminiscent of the Black Flags of the Abbassid Empire, the great Persian-Arab empire founded in 750 C.E. in Baghdad that ushered in the Golden Age of Islamic civilization. No one in Iraq can see the solid black color without having this association. Because the founders of the Abbassid Empire usurped the weaker Umayyids, conquerors from outside, the symbolic message is clear to the residents of the region. 

The U.S. Army clearly sent another message. For the Shi’a population of Iraq an event such as this calls up images of martyrdom, such as that suffered by the central religious figure of Shiism, Hussein, grandson of the prophet Mohammad. Hussein was killed by illegitimate external forces in 680 C.E. Two of Hussein’s most important descendants—the 10th and 11th Shi’a Imams—were martyred and buried in Samarra. The mystical, messianic 12th Imam disappeared there in 878 C.E. He will reappear at the Day of Judgment according to Shia tradition. Thus the Fedayeen become representatives of perfect heroes and perfect martyrs in one fell swoop. 

Events such as this highlight the degree to which the Bush administration fails to appreciate the impact of cultural symbolism on the Iraqi population. As hard as American troops try to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi population, a massacre like this wipes out huge swaths of good will, establishing the hometown fighters—whatever crimes they may have committed in the past—as the true heroes. An American “victory” is tough to eke out under these circumstances. 

The solution is to internationalize the military operation in Iraq as soon as possible, and reconstitute the Iraqi army, giving Iraqis some other local body of fighters than the Fedayeen to identify with. The Bush administration, eager to claim personal credit for anything positive that might happen, is loath to turn over control to an international or a local Iraqi force for fear that the administration might be seen as having given up, and not “staying the course.” 

However, this prideful attitude will only hurt U.S. efforts in Iraq. As long as the United States can be personalized as the outside enemy, a negative relationship will continue to exist between the local Iraqis and the U.S. troops. It is frustrating for Americans to realize that as many times as they shout the mantra, “We liberated you from a dictator!” the message will fall on deaf Iraqi ears. Americans are usurpers. They have been defined as the enemy, and when the heroes in black show up, the Iraqis are going to root for the home team.  

 

William O. Beeman teaches anthropology and directs Middle East Studies at Brown University. He is author of the forthcoming book, Iraq: State in Search of a Nation.


Schwarzenegger Deploys Surprising Political Skills

By PILAR MARRERO Pacific News Service
Friday December 05, 2003

Arnold Schwarzenegger is proving to be a more skillful politician than many expected. 

Only a few weeks into his administration, California’s new governor is using the explosive issue of driver’s licenses for undocumented immigrants as a bargaining chip with state Democrats, scoring quick political points to further other issues on his ambitious agenda and showing progress on keeping campaign promises. 

Five days after becoming governor, Schwarzenegger sat down with state Sen. Gil Cedillo (D-Los Angeles) to talk about driver’s licenses, and offered him a deal: the governor would support a driver’s license bill similar to the one that was vetoed by former governor Gray Davis last year and help kill a referendum against it set for the March ballot. 

In exchange for that, Cedillo would have to support the repeal of his own driver’s license law, SB60, for which the senator fought for more than five years, and deliver enough Democratic votes in the State Assembly to give Schwarzenegger the two-thirds majority he needs to repeal the law. 

“He had kind of a sophisticated understanding of the issue. I thought it was remarkable,” Cedillo says, talking about his 45-minute meeting with the governor on Nov. 21. Schwarzenegger, according to the Democratic senator, agreed with Cedillo’s demand not to support any efforts to create a different license for the undocumented that could open the door to discrimination. He also accepted the idea of providing licenses to everyone as long as effective background checks were included and driver’s insurance was available. 

“He said that we could reduce the number of people who oppose the licenses, which now stands at 70 percent according to polls, if we worked on it together,” Cedillo says. “It would be one thing for the conservatives to oppose me and the Democrats, and another altogether to fight Schwarze-negger and the Republican leadership.” 

The non-politician “governor of the people” is learning fast the art of speaking to both sides of an issue, and it shows in small details, such as when he mentioned repealing SB60 in his inaugural address without qualifying what it was or even saying the word “immigrants.” Those who knew what SB60 was got the message. 

During the recall campaign, killing the bill to grant driver’s licenses for “illegals”—signed during the recall campaign by the Davis administration—was aggressively pushed by the Republican candidates and by conservative talk show hosts, who screamed about two “evil” policies fueling middle class anger: the tripling of California’s car registration tax, and immigrant driver’s licenses. Schwarzenegger used the issue again and again, capitalizing on the fears of mass immigration that always resonate with a huge segment of California voters. 

Some activists in the pro-immigrant community are calling on Cedillo not to trust Schwarze-negger. They say the senator trusted Gray Davis on the issue and was burned several times. They argue that the conservative hard-liners who started the referendum against SB60 would not follow the governor’s lead anyway. 

“They will not stand for this, and will not sit idly and allow a driver’s license for undocu-mented immigrants to become a reality,” said Angelica Salas, from the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA). “Cedillo says there’s a commitment by the governor, but there’s nothing in writing.” 

Bill Bird, spokesperson for Sen. Rick Oller (R-Sacramento), who carried the bill to repeal SB60 at the request of the governor, said Schwarzenegger ap-proached Oller, asking him to take the lead on this issue. “Some on the other side are suggesting that they have an assurance by the governor that he’ll support a bill in the future,” Bird says. “The governor didn’t mention any of that to the senator.” 

Schwarzenegger and his spokespersons do say the governor is open to considering an alternative driver’s license bill that includes security measures such as a background check and assurances that drivers are able to buy insurance. During the recent hearing on the repeal of SB60, Senate Republican leader Jim Brulte, who had been helping to fund the referendum against SB60, apparently worked in tandem with the governor to help secure a commitment from the California Republican Assembly that it would not submit signatures for an anti-driver’s licenses ballot initiative if SB60 is repealed. Other individuals or groups, however, may collect signatures and submit a ballot initiative in the future. 

What Schwarzenegger and the Republicans get are headlines heralding their triumph on a big issue, as well as the first time in recent memory that “major legislation favored by the Republicans has been approved” in California, Bird says. “It’s refreshing.” 

Democrats who joined the governor in voting for the repeal are showing him good will so they can negotiate other issues they consider more important, such as the budget, workers compensation and taxes. 

In the meantime, 2 million undocumented immigrants will continue to drive without licenses or insurance. 

Cedillo says he sees no other choice than to do it the governor’s way—for now. But the issue won’t go away. “There’s a whole community of people waiting for this. There’s a little girl in South Gate who’s waiting for her father to get a license so he can take her to the zoo. There’s a woman whose father was killed by an unlicensed driver who believes that if all drivers were tested her father would be alive,” the legislator says. “My goal is to get the licenses.” 

 

Pilar Marrero is political editor and columnist for La Opinion newspaper in Los Angeles.


Women for Peace Going Strong After 40 Years

By Becky O’Malley
Friday December 05, 2003

As Madeline Duckles tells the story, she and a loosely organized group of Berkeley women were hosting an informational house party for neighbors, with the idea of spreading the word about the risks of American presence in Vietnam, when the television news came on. The Cuban missile crisis had started. 

The year was 1963. 

The casual student of recent history might think that opposition to the Vietnam War started somewhere in 1967. The more sophisticated student might think it began nearer to 1964, and connect it somehow to the beginnings of what became the Free Speech Movement. But the real genesis of the anti-war movement, in Berkeley and a few other parts of the United States, started in 1961, when mothers around the country became aware that fallout from above-ground testing of nuclear weapons was depositing radioactive Strontium 90 in their children’s teeth and bones.  

Madeline Duckles (then the wife of a music professor and mother of five sons) and some of her friends put together an informal coalition of concerned “mothers and others” to work against nuclear testing. They identified the problem as being not only nuclear testing, but militarism in general. Some of them were already member of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, an old pacifist organization which was started in 1915 by Jane Addams. But WILPF decision-making in those days was slow and bureaucratic, and the Berkeley women thought that quick direct action was needed. So they formed Berkeley Women for Peace to publicize the nuclear threat. 

“We had no leaders,” she said in an interview this week, “we were all leaders.” 

When the first reports of “American advisors” in Vietnam surfaced in 1963, they were ready to get to work. Forty-two years later, she and women like her are still working for peace. Only a few of the founding mothers like Madeline are still alive (she’s now a vigorous 87), but others have taken their place. In between, there have been many struggles, many victories and a few defeats. 

President John Kennedy ended atmospheric nuclear testing in 1963, but the war in Vietnam, continued un-derground nuclear tests and related issues have kept Berkeley Women for Peace busy for the last 40 years.  

They’ve made a lot of friends in unexpected places along the way. Madeline reminisces about taking the “gambler’s special” cheap flights to Las Vegas for one anti-nuclear demonstration in the desert in the 1980s. On the plane back, tired, dirty and sunburned, the demonstrators ordered drinks. The women in the flight crew were so sympathetic with the cause that they insisted that drinks were on the house.  

In recent years, Berkeley Women for Peace have turned their focus to the Middle East. They leafleted early against both Iraq wars, and continue to organize letter writing campaigns and demonstrations. Middle East peace is now one of their current study areas. 

At WFP’s annual fund-raising luncheon on Sunday, Dec. 7, Dr. Minoo Moallem, Associate Professor of Women’s Studies and Department Chair at San Francisco State University, will speak on peace and women’s and gender issues in the Middle East. The luncheon will take place at Berkeley’s Venezia Restaurant, 1799 University Ave. To reserve a place, call Women for Peace, 849-3020.


Opinion

Editorials

UC Professor Creates Guidebook for Volunteers

By JAKOB SCHILLER
Tuesday December 09, 2003

As the holidays approach, volunteer opportunities abound—part of a seasonal tradition. Unfortunately, after New Year’s rolls around, this burst of good will seems to get packed away with the decorations. 

But one gift just might ensure that the giving goes on. 

Arthur I. Blaustein’s revised and updated Make A Difference: America’s Guide to Volunteering and Community Service makes the perfect present for anyone interested in year-round volunteer opportunities, providing a comprehensive guide to well over a hundred organizations within a wide variety of interest areas. With a brief description of each organization and their volunteer opportunities and contact information, the book is a must-have for anyone whose commitment stretches beyond December. 

Blaustein, who teaches community development, social history and urban policy at UC Berkeley, knows his subject matter first-hand as a volunteer, program administrator and advocate for civil and community service programs. His many accomplishments include chairing President Jimmy Carter’s National Advisory Council on Economic Opportunity, a John Dewey Award for Distinguished Public Service, his current appointment to the National Endowment for the Humanities, and his position as faculty advisor to the AmeriCorps program at Cal. 

His book is more just a list. In the introduction, Blaustein provides an analytical discussion of the values of volunteerism. For those of us who are drawn to volunteer, this section is especially important—offering both a clear explanation of why people want to help and a compelling argument about why it is more important than ever to re-establish our civil authority as citizens of a democracy through action such as volunteerism. 

“From Plato to the present, civic virtue has been the core of civilized behavior,” he writes. Civic participation, like volunteerism, helps us “enhance human dignity,” and “nourishes the moral intellect required for critical judgment and mature behavior.” 

In a society that is already based on quantitative values such as competition and privatism, he writes, civic participation offers the most direct way to re-establish those values that nourish a healthy society. 

I recognize this moral drought and am drawn to activism and volunteerism. Yet I couldn’t articulate why until I read Blaustein’s book. Like any theoretical work, Blaustein forced me to think about my reasons and interests, a good exercise for anyone interested in pursuing volunteerism seriously. 

As a further enticement to volunteerism, he includes a section called “Now More Than Ever,” analyzing why volunteerism and exercising one’s civil authority has become more important under the Bush administration. 

He argues that Bush and his administration have eroded our already narrow opportunities for civil participation—mouthing a supposed commitment to society while enacting policies that contradict their message, policies that are making it increasingly difficult for people to survive and drastically reducing their time to think about their moral and civil power. 

“A vital and healthy federal government is indispensable to the well-being and sovereignty of a self-governing people. That is, after all, what democracy is all about. Without this protection, whole segments of our society—especially those who can least afford it—will give up hope, will become more frustrated and alienated, and this can serve only to undermine the very social fabric of all our communities even more.” 

Nowhere in this chapter does Blaustein suggest that volunteerism is the cure for all our current social ills, but his argument is intriguing and motivating, especially for anyone worried about the current state of affairs under President Bush. 

For someone who initially looked at the book as a cheat sheet for volunteering, I was pleasantly surprised by Blaustein’s balance between theory and information. At a time when many of us, especially here in Berkeley, are actively pursuing exactly what Blaustein is giving us the tools to do, the book is an excellent addition to anyone’s collection.  

There’s also an added perk at the end. The last chapter, “Recommended Readings: A Novel Approach,” lists works of fiction he thinks will help readers understand society and provide insights for effecting change. As he explains, “[Novels] inform us, as no other medium does, about the state of our national soul and character—of the difference between what we say we are and how we actually behave.”  

 

The updated version of Make A Difference: America’s Guide to Volunteering and Community Service is published by Jossey-Bass and is 149 pages. It sells for $12.95 in paperback.


Editorial: Anatomy of a Failed Tax Vote

Becky O'Malley
Friday December 05, 2003

An old lefty labor organizer, someone I’ve known slightly for a while, came up to me at a party in The City this week. “How come no one asked me if I’d support a parcel tax increase?” he said. “I live in Dona Spring’s district…I get mail from Linda Maio all the time…but no one asked me!” He has a point. As the former head of a big public service union, his opinion is predictable—he favors a tax increase. But we discussed the bigger question of What Went Wrong at some length. He wondered where all the opposition came from.  

Another person at the same party, a union member who works for the City of Berkeley, asked me the same question. She told me that her union colleagues had been gearing up internally to make a big push for the parcel tax ballot measure during the holidays, and were taken by surprise when the item was pulled. “Who are those people?” she asked about the opponents. Her conclusion: “They must be neighborhood people.” Well, yes. But in Berkeley, where almost everyone, even students, can tell you the name of the neighborhood they live in, “neighborhood people” covers a lot of different political points of view. 

For example, because of rent control, renters have often lived in the same place for many years, and care a lot about what goes on in their neighborhood. So “neighborhood people” is not synonymous with “homeowners.” Conversely, not all homeowners are “neighborhood people.” The higher hills and the Claremont district are increasingly populated by Piedmontesque rich people whose connection with Baha Berkeley is tangential at best. They shop in San Francisco or Walnut Creek, they read the New York Times, they summer on Cape Cod, and their kids (if they have any at home, and many don’t) go to private schools. School closings, barrier placement, location of fast food joints, “big ugly boxes”—they don’t care about that stuff, and why should they? They probably don’t read the Daily Planet, because they seldom set foot to earth in places where we can have pickup boxes. 

Most UC faculty members with kids used to live in Berkeley, but many now don’t, preferring the clean and spacious public schools of Lamorinda or Albany since they can’t easily afford private schools. (They would indignantly deny a racial motivation for choosing suburban school districts.) Some even live in Piedmont. They’ve opted out of Berkeley’s problems. 

But the hard-core neighborhood people are those whose everyday life is strongly impacted by city decisions. No one in the hills has to face enormous delivery trucks rumbling past their houses and making the windows vibrate at all hours of the day and night, but the people in Le Conte Neighborhood do. When City of Berkeley traffic planners just didn’t get it together to solve the problem, Le Conte neighbors suffered the consequences, and after enough suffering they got tired of paying the bills and came out against the tax increase. Ironically, many of this new breed of tax objectors are dedicated leftists who have stayed in Berkeley and kept their kids in the public schools because of their political convictions. So it’s not just another “Prog” vs. “Mod” battle. 

The mayor still lives in the Le Conte neighborhood, in his wife Loni Hancock’s longtime family home, but because he was in Sacramento for so long, and has been traveling a lot in retirement, he’s in it but not of it. (Folklore says that one reason he convened a task force on permits is that he did have a lot of trouble with permits for one retirement project, building a fence.) He can still count, however, and he knows that his neighborhood association has 1,400 members, and they vote.  

The only city service high hills homeowners really count on is firefighting, since they live in the most dangerous wooded fringe areas. They would have voted for the parcel tax increase if it were packaged as a “fire tax.” Since it was based on square footage, it represented a modest percentage of their high property values anyhow. When the firefighters came out against the tax (now there’s one I can’t explain) hills votes were jeopardized, another good reason for taking the measure off the ballot at this time.  

Where do we go from here? Same old answer you’ve read in this space before: Open public process produces the best decisions. There’s still time, barely, to go back to square one and start talking. Many people now know the details of city employees’ generous scheduled pay increases. Union members might think these hikes are still deserved, even in the face of changing state revenues, but they have to convince the voters. The city unions absolutely must engage in direct dialogue with citizens in open public forums. In Berkeley, that takes more than leaflets dropped on porches to be swept away with the leaves, or boiler room phone banks staffed by retirees.  

Becky O’Malley is executive editor of the Berkeley Daily Planet.