Staff members and patrons of the North Branch of the Berkeley Public Library have been devastated by the loss of Library Assistant Charlene Rochelle Agos, who was killed in a traffic accident in Oakland the night of Aug. 15. 

Her car was broadsided by an sports utility vehicle that ran a red light at the intersections of Foothill and Havenscourt boulevards. The occupants of the SUV reportedly continued driving for several blocks, then abandoned the car and ran. 

The four men had been drinking at a nearby bar where they had participated in a fight that resulted in a patron being badly beaten and hospitalized. Oakland police are still looking for the perpetrators of this crime.  

Charlene, born in Oakland in 1966, attended St. Benedict’s Elementary School and graduated from St. Elizabeth High School in 1984. A memorial service was held for her at St. Benedict’s Catholic Church on Aug. 23. She leaves behind Hoche Agos, her husband of 13 years, twin 3-year-old daughters, Kyelle and Arden, her parents, in-laws and a large, extended family. 

“It’s no surprise that the North Branch’s staff is reeling with shock, sorrow and anger over the unnecessary loss of our co-worker,” said Teen/Reference Librarian Debbie Carton. “We are a lively, active group and Charlene’s calm, easy, helpful, and serene presence was needed to pitch in at just the right moment to ease traffic at the circulation desk or solve a problem.” 

Vivian Vigil, Charlene’s immediate supervisor, said, “Charlene worked here for 10 years and was dedicated to her job and her family. Her girls would visit the library and use the computers like they were 7-years-old, not 3. They are very bright, curious, outgoing kids.”  

The North Berkeley Library staff is taking up a collection on behalf of Charlene’s daughters. Photographs of Charlene, her husband and children are displayed at the Information Desk, along with candles and flowers. 

A small book is available for patrons to write their thoughts and wishes for Charlene and her family. The donation box has collected over $2,000.  

“Patrons see the sign,” said Debbie Carlton. “Their faces lock and freeze as they read the news. They reach into their wallets and pull out bills, coins, and checks. They reach into their hearts and write the most wonderful things in the book for her family.” 

Indeed, many moving tributes to Charlene can be found in the journal. 

“I was always touched by her kindness and quiet containment,” writes one library patron. Another adds, “What is worse than staying behind? Watching a figure recede. Saying good-bye, remembering…” 

To make a contribution in Kyelle and Arden’s behalf, stop by the North Branch of the Berkeley Library during operation hours, (Monday, Tuesday, Friday, Saturday, 10 a.m. – 6 p.m., Wednesday and Thursday, 12 p.m. – 8 p.m.), or send a check made out to Kyelle and Arden Agos, North Branch, Berkeley Public Library, 1170 The Alameda, Berkeley, 94707. For more information call 981-6250.›

Why did about 400 students at Berkeley High get shut out of classes in one of the school’s most popular programs just eight days before the start of school?  

It depends on who you ask. 

According to the official version, the students were primarily the victim of a giant scheduling snafu. But others believe the last-minute scheduling edict by Principal Jim Slemp amounts to drawing a line in the sand against Academic Choice, the controversial program praised by some for trying to restore academic rigor to Berkeley High and decried by others who fear the program’s majority white-classes will further segregate the school. 

“Blaming scheduling is a rhetorical device to ignore the issue,” said Academic Choice teacher Doug Powers. “It’s Berkeley’s version of attacking Saddam Hussein to get rid of terrorism.” 

Academic Choice, since its inception in 2001, has been at the heart of a simmering debate over how education reform ought to be accomplished at Berkeley High. 

The program, which includes some of Berkeley High’s most experienced and respected teachers, focuses on higher level classes and teaches some of the school’s AP courses with the goal of offering students a more challenging curriculum.  

Although it’s open to all, its ranks have been filled disproportionately with white and Asian students. Last year Powers said about 400 students in tenth through twelfth grades took the program’s classes in a variety of subjects. About 56 percent of the program’s students were white, he said. 

Academic Choice’s demographics have made it a target for community members whose top priority is diversity in the classrooms, especially supporters of small schools, the district-approved reform drive to bridge the achievement gap between white and Asian students and African American and Latino students. 

By next year nearly half of Berkeley High students are scheduled to attend four autonomous schools inside Berkeley High, all of which must reflect the ethnic diversity of the student body, which is about 37 percent white and 32 percent African American. 

Since Academic Choice opted not to seek small school status, it will remain in the big school, where critics—including the majority of parents on the influential Berkeley High School Site Council, comprised of parents, students and faculty—have warned it could further segregate classes, especially in social science and history, where students aren’t tracked based on aptitude. 

When class enrollment figures, released last spring, showed a surge in enrollment for Academic Choice classes—initial figures counted as many as 1,200 students, although the number was later pared down to over 600—the School Site Council voiced its displeasure.  

“We were concerned that if half the school was Academic Choice and Academic Choice was largely white and Asian, then the school would be essentially split in half,” said School Site Council President Claudia Wilken. 

To prevent that possibility, last spring the School Site Council proposed a diversity requirement for Academic Choice and passed a site plan calling on programs in the large school to reflect the diversity of the high school at large. 

Powers said Academic Choice parents had sent letters over the summer encouraging minority students to enroll in the program and that Principal Jim Slemp had assured them in July that the controversy wouldn’t affect the program this year.  

But then at an Aug. 24 meeting of the Site Council, Slemp announced that scheduling problems had forced him to cut Academic Choice classes and consolidate Academic Choice students into regular classes. In all of the more than 600 students who requested an Academic Choice class, fewer than 250 received one. 

“It was mostly scheduling,” said Slemp, explaining that trying to divide class sections between Academic Choice and the regular school meant classes in neither grouping would have enough students. The consolidation of classes didn’t cost any students the opportunity to take an Advanced Placement class, he added. 

Although Slemp insisted “there was no intent to get rid of Academic Choice,” he acknowledged that political infighting played a role in his decision and that school “needed to take a year to find out what its mission will be.” 

Powers sees Academic Choice partly as a bulwark against a perceived movement to turn the high school exclusively into small schools partially funded with money from Microsoft founder Bill Gates. 

“This goes to the whole philosophy of Berkeley High,” Powers said. “Are we really planning to be a Gates guinea pig school? If that’s true we need to know it so a lot of us can go on and do something different.” 

He said Academic Choice teachers opposed forming a small school because it wouldn’t have been fair to group so many top teachers in a school of just a few hundred students. 

On the race issue, Powers said the program was starting to do more outreach and wasn’t as segregated as its critics claimed. While whites comprised over half of Academic Choice students, African Americans accounted for 12 percent and “mixed” students for about 30 percent, he said. 

“If we can recruit 20 Latino kids and 50 African American kids we’d be at the school average,” he said. 

Powers, though, doubted the program’s critics wanted to see that happen. 

“When close to 700 kids chose more rigorous and difficult program that was clearly a signal of what Berkeley wanted and it made the site council try to undermine us,” he said. 

Site Council member Michael Miller insists Academic Choice opponents didn’t want to kill the program, but were trying to ensure it doesn’t reduce equity in the name of choice.  

“We need all our master teachers teaching all of our students,” he said, pointing to a past policy, dumped by the district in 2001, that allowed students to pick their teachers. Opponents of the policy had argued that in practice wealthier, better connected students ended up with better teachers. 

The next chapter in the struggle will likely come Thursday when elections will be held to pick the four parent representatives on the Site Council. A slate of four Academic Choice parents will seek seats, in the caucus style election, where any Berkeley High parent who shows up can vote. 

Meanwhile Academic Choice teachers are still simmering over the school’s schedule, not released until the third week of August. “It was the latest it’s ever been done in my history at Berkeley High,” said veteran teacher Steve Teel.  

“You can’t have teachers prepare for one course and walk in and find they’re teaching something different. That’s unprofessional.”  

Sally Hindman has made a name for herself in Berkeley as the homeless advocate who co-founded Street Spirit. But if all goes according to plan, her biggest legacy could be in Varna, Bulgaria. 

Hindman first traveled to the Black Sea port town two years ago to adopt an orphaned Roma (“Gypsy”) child, but in the finest tradition of Berkeley do-gooders she threw her arms around the entire town. 

While spending nearly five months in Varna waiting for officials to process the adoption of her now 3-year-old daughter Sylvia, Hindman followed through on her planned tile wall art project for local Roma youth, assisted the local Jewish community win international grants to rebuild its synagogue left in disrepair since World War II and immersed herself in the city’s history, including its role as a chief point of departure to Palestine for European Jews fleeing Nazi persecution. 

Now, armed with a grant from the U.S. embassy in Bulgaria, but still in need of additional funding, Hindman is planning a return trip early next year to oversee construction of a second tile wall she hopes can honor the city’s Jewish past and create a better future for all its residents. 

“I want it to facilitate healing around the past and put forth a vision for creating a tolerant community,” she said. 

The centerpiece of the wall will be a memorial to the victims of the Ship Salvador, which on Dec. 4, 1940 departed Varna for Palestine with 321 refugees and sank in the Marmara Sea off the coast of Turkey. Two hundred and one passengers drowned, 66 of whom are believed to have been orphans. 

“Every time I visited that little gypsy child, I kept imagining the boatload of people escaping in the middle of winter. Especially since my husband was a little Jewish child,” she said.  

When it comes to treatment of Jews, Bulgaria scores fairly well for an eastern European country. Nearly all of the country’s estimated 50,000 Jews avoided concentration camps, thanks largely to energetic support of Bulgarian society against the Nazi’s puppet regime. 

But like nearly all countries in Eastern Europe, Bulgaria’s Roma minority, which a 1992 census placed at 312,000, suffers from ingrained prejudice and has seen its standard of living drop precipitously since the country emerged from Soviet domination. 

“In Bulgaria, Roma never get a fair chance for jobs or education,” said Sani Rifati, president of Voice of Roma, a charitable organization based in Sebastopol, Calif. “With employment no longer guaranteed, they’re the first ones fired and the last ones hired.” 

Inevitably, he added, many Roma women decide they can’t care for their babies and give them to orphanages, the fate Sylvia suffered prior to her adoption by Hindman. 

Hindman said she witnessed local disdain for both minority groups during her first stint in Bulgaria. She watched a police officer beat a Roma man on a train and she tore down posters of hook-nosed Jews that served as an advertisement for a joke book about Jews. 

Even before her journey to Varna, though, she had drawn parallels between the two groups, which contributed to her and her husband’s decision to adopt a Roma.  

“We wanted to reconnect with Eastern Europe and with my husband’s roots there,” she said. “We thought we might have something to offer a Roma child.” 

Sylvia knows who her “mommy” is. The rambunctious girl, who competed gamely for Hindman’s attention during a recent interview, will accompany her mother in Varna and attend nursery school in her home town. 

While Sylvia enjoys a homecoming, Hindman will be hard at work pulling off the tile project. She hopes the wall will be both a work of art and a vehicle for Roma, Jewish and ethnic Bulgarian children to learn about each other and move beyond centuries-old prejudices. 

Before she begins the project, Hindman is working to raise $2,000 in donations to pay for Roma youth facilitators to lead tolerance workshops where Roma and Jewish youth will discuss the discrimination they face. 

Each of the Jewish children participating in the project will design a tile with the name of a victim of the Ship Salvador. Hindman tracked down all the names by searching archives at Yad Vashem, the holocaust museum in Jerusalem. 

The rest of the wall, including its size and shape will be decided by a committee of Varna residents. 

Hindman’s last tile wall was built by 250 Roma youth, many of whom were orphans, and funded in part by the Gavroche Association, a Varna-based organization that cares for homeless youth. The young artists painted tiles demonstrating their future dreams and the final work now stands on permanent exhibit at the Varna Children’s Museum. 

The future location of the proposed project rests with the Varna City Council, said Hindman, who said she would lobby for high-visibility space. 

“This wall is a pledge for a tolerant city,” she said. “It’s a statement that this is our past but it’s never going to happen again.” 

Donations for the tile wall project can sent to “Shalom Varna Tile Project—Bulgaria” Central and Eastern European Program, American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, 847A Second Ave., New York, NY, 10017.

With Berkeley as little as a month away from rolling out a state-of-the-art online system to track homeless residents, some local homeless service providers are wondering if the new technology will catapult them into the 21st century or send them back to 1984. 

Dubbed the Homeless Management Information System (HMIS), the program, mandated in a 2001 congressional appropriations bill, requires any jurisdiction that receives federal homeless dollars to implement a computerized tracking system approved by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). 

Homeless clients will be asked to provide basic information including their social security numbers to help authorities monitor use of various service providers. Clients will have the right to withhold their information and still receive services. HUD is also forbidden from distributing client information beyond local service providers. 

The program’s mission is to get sound data on the number of homeless nationwide, analyze patterns of use and study the effectiveness of homeless care providers. The information will be used to compile the first congressionally-mandated Annual Homeless Assessment Report, due out next year. 

HUD has selected Berkeley as one of 80 sample jurisdictions to be included in the report. The Women’s Daytime Drop-In Center, the Berkeley Food and Housing Project and Building Opportunities for Self Sufficiency (BOSS) have been selected as the first service providers to operate the system. 

But with the city scheduled to begin the program as early as the end of the month and no later than February, not everyone is fully on board. 

“There are a lot of mixed emotions about this,” said Jane Micallef, the city’s homeless policy coordinator. 

On the plus side, Micallef said, when the system is fully implemented the city would better understand the nature and extent of homelessness. By addressing gaps in services, agencies could improve case management coordination, access to data, and report generation capabilities, she said. 

Then there is the privacy issue. 

Should homeless clients chose to provide personal data, they will get a second option either to allow their data to be shared among local providers, so they won’t need to register again at other agencies, or refuse to share their data altogether. 

All personal information collected in Alameda County will be stored on a server in Shreveport, LA, home of the county’s HUD-approved information technology provider, Bowman Internet Solutions.  

The fear, said Robert Barrer, deputy director of BOSS, is what might happen down the road. 

“People say ‘What if the congressional mandates change and they have this information at their fingertips?;” he said.  

A cautionary tale comes from San Francisco, which, armed with a HUD grant, initiated its own tracking system last year that, unlike Berkeley’s, is mandatory for homeless clients and requires them to submit to a fingerprint scan. 

The system is supposed to be full-proof when it comes to protecting client identities, but when Chance Martin, editor of San Francisco’s Street Sheet, made a public records request of the San Francisco Department of Human Services and Metsys Monitoring, the city’s information technology provider, he couldn’t believe what he saw. 

“We got reams of papers full of bug reports that had confidential client information all over them,” Martin said. “It was clear that the people running the program didn’t know the meaning of confidentiality.” 

HUD didn’t earmark money to pay for the tracking system, and how much it will cost Berkeley and local homeless service providers remains unclear. The Alameda County Continuum of Care has submitted a grant proposal to HUD that would pay for half of the implementation costs for every effected jurisdiction in the county, Barrer said. 

Since Berkeley has to get its system online early, he said, the city is providing funds to BOSS and other service providers to help offset the cost. BOSS, which is one of the largest service providers in the county, wouldn’t have much trouble implementing the new system, Barrer said, but smaller agencies with less technological infrastructure could take a big hit. 

“Unfunded mandates are never cheap,” he said. 

›

NEW YORK—There are many stories to tell at this convention. The known storylines inside Madison Square Garden are familiar Republican themes that are repeated over and over: the recycled compassionate conservatism, John Kerry’s misrepresenting his war record, the war on terror, George Bush is the only candidate who can protect you, and of course, Bush will cut your taxes even more. 

The recognizable mainstream news storylines from outside the convention are about ever-tighting security around the Garden, the large Sunday afternoon half-million strong anti-Bush protest through Manhattan, and customer-starved small businesses in and around what has become known as the convention’s Green Zone. But, there have been perhaps, a dozen or so stories that are either being covered inadequately or not at all. 

The under-reported stories of Republican National Convention 2004 occurring on the inside include the numerous demonstrators—up to 30 in all—who have broken through the intense Madison Square Garden security lines and gotten onto the convention floor to make protest statements, the relentless pursuit of the Missouri delegation by members of ACT-UP and other activists, the now infamous and short-lived Band-Aid over a purple heart stickers representing John Kerry’s not really earned medals that were passed out and worn by an estimated 250 Republican delegates, and finally the glaring absence of any fresh Bush—read Republican—ideas on really moving the country forward. 

Outside the Garden the untold narratives are legion. First, the ubiquitous, forceful, costly and massive presence of police in the New York City streets surrounding the convention site may be seen, when history is written, more as an occupying force that had to kill some democracy in order to save the Republican convention. 

Next, the daily large-scale street protests—nothing like the half-million, but significant by Bay Area standards—often received little or no coverage. The wretched conditions which exist at the Pier 57 detention center, an old oil-stained former bus maintenance facility set up by police to hold and process those arrested during this convention week is another story not often told. And finally, a story which has received scant exposure was the absolute outrage by average New Yorkers towards the Republicans’ attempts of co-opting the 9/11 terrorist tragedy for political gain. 

On three out of four nights of the convention, anti-Bush people made severe breaches in security, according to secret service members. 

The first two nights saw several patches of empty seats inside the Garden and Republicans sought to fill up the seats even if it meant handing out tickets to non-delegates who never underwent the usual security background checks. In fact, on Tuesday night Code Pink’s Medea Benjamin, the recipient of one of these passes, unfurled a banner that read, “Be Pro-life, Stop Killing in Iraq.” 

She did it during Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s prime-time speech. In fact, Schwarzenegger, Vice President Dick Cheney, New York Governor George Pataki, and White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card all had there speeches interrupted by protesters. And yes, even President Bush’s speech was interrupted by one very determined Code Pink heckler, June Brashares.  

In an interview, Code Pink’s Benjamin said, “The great under-reported story of this convention is June Brashares getting in without any credentials at all. She just walked onto one of the hotel shuttle buses and told security that she simply lost her credential.” 

Contrast all of this with the relative few street protests at the Democratic convention in Boston, and only once was there a floor protest, by Benjamin herself, and you have a recipe for an extremely polarized America. By mid-week New York City’s police chief was even chastising the Republicans for being lax about security. 

The Missouri delegation was targeted by protesters from the very beginning. Missouri has passed a “Defense of Marriage Act,” and the delegates definitely bore the brunt of protester’s ire for the passage of this measure. Whether it was at their hotel (Westin), or the restaurants or clubs they frequented, and even while attending a Broadway show, the Missourians were confronted again and again. They were beseeched in the form of picket lines, kiss-in’s, chants, and in your face cat-calls. The Gay-Lesbian-Bisexual-Transgender community and their supporters clearly made it a more uneasy convention for the Show-me stators. 

And what about the Band-Aid over the purple heart incident? “A little Ow-ee,” is how former Nixon Administration operative and now conservative radio commentator, G. Gordon Liddy put it to this reporter when asked about the mocking of John Kerry’s purple hearts by some Republican delegates. 

Democratic National Chair, Terry McAuliffe, earlier in the day, was incensed about this gesture of wearing Band-Aids over purple hearts to signify that Kerry sustained only light war wounds. McAuliffe said, “It was disgraceful and disgusting. There were 250 of these [Band-Aids] handed out and that doesn’t happen without the top leadership directing it.” While no formal apologies were issued by the RNC, few Republicans spoken to agreed with this type of action. 

Finally, from the inside, the most startling revelation coming from the mouth of President Bush during his prime time acceptance speech was that there were no new policy ideas, only recycled ones. Beyond the revamped compassionate conservative sloganeering—“Government should help people improve their lives, not try to run their lives,” Bush read off a state of the union-type litany of “new” program ideas, but without identifying the legislative hurdles or economic impacts each would have. 

Overhauling Social Security and Medicare, tax relief, health savings accounts, reining in federal spending, reshaping immigration law, “simplify the federal tax code,” and of course, the 9/11 tragedy and protecting the United States from terrorists—”we have fought the terrorists across the earth.” These are all Republican topics from the past. There is nothing here akin to the bold agenda that the president’s aids, in the days leading up to the speech, promised reporters that he would divulge. 

Outside the convention the untold stories were even more numerous. Whether it was the 60 protesters who marched all the way from Boston to NYC after the close of the Democratic convention, or the literal good cop-bad cop split personalities on the part of some New York police units during the dozen mass protest gatherings here, or singer-songwriter Steve Earle’s relentless personal campaign “to turn up the vibe and get people out to vote,” in exorcising “W” from the Whitehouse, and not to mention the previous Sunday’s half-million marchers. Although much has been written about this latter event, given its proper context—the largest convention protest march in history—much more could be said. But I chose four other underreported stories. 

First, the cops. Every police officer, traffic cop, and police cadet was mobilized. They were supported by hundreds more—FBI, Secret Service, National Guard, New York State Troopers. All days off were canceled. 

This massive security apparatus totaled almost 40,000. The area around Madison Square Garden became known as the “Green Zone,” as the U.S. security zone in Baghdad is known. While police were generally friendly when approached by reporters, none would willingly go on record, and many times in tense situations the media were treated like the protesters, with even some arrests of journalists made by accident. Only in Guatemala City during the 1980’s dictatorship of Efrain Rios Montt has this reporter felt so closely watched. 

Walls of bicycle and motorcycle cops, waves of helmeted riot police, dozens of plainclothes police were constantly hovering, always trying to be one step ahead of the next protest event, even when there wasn’t one. This situation created an almost permanent sense of foreboding, fear, and confusion. Was it the police strategy from the beginning? Probably. But also, away from the Green Zone of the convention hall, police were almost always hanging out in small groups usually trying desperately to while away their 12-hour shifts. 

Secondly, since it would be difficult to top the gigantic march of Sunday, so many of the smaller marches were lightly covered by the more than 15,000 media people holed up in the Garden waiting for the Republicans. On Monday there were two marches. The first, a permitted one, saw more than 5,000 marching towards the Garden. The second, the “Poor People’s March,” was a non-permitted demonstration which police allowed, had close to 10,000 marchers. On Tuesday, the day planned by the A-31 coalition as being a day of “direct action,” saw more than 1,200 people arrested. The largest number of arrests that day—over 200—came during a non-permitted, War Resisters League procession of a few hundred. 

The arrests took place when confusion and miscommunication on the part of police and protesters alike had police wrapping orange plastic mesh around the a large group at the front of the march which started from “Ground Zero.” It had been headed towards the convention but never made it. Many non-protesters were arrested including a 15 and 16 year old on their way to a movie theater in the same area, and a building maintenance worker who was putting out the garbage.  

Also on Tuesday, large protests took place at Fox News Headquarters where a “Shut Up-athon” targeting Bill O’Reilly attracted about 2,000. Near the same time a demonstration organized in the East Meadow in Central Park by the National Organization of Women (NOW) drew more than 10,000. On Wednesday a massive labor rally was held. More than 25,000 union members and their supporters were jammed into seven blocks along Eight Avenue from 23rd to 30th streets. 

The following day, the night of President Bush’s acceptance speech, saw two large rallies. A candlelight vigil at Union Square attracted more than 5,000, and a raucous, closely-watched by police rally of close to 10,000 took place within four blocks of the convention. 

Overall, given the number of demonstrators and the number of security people, the vast majority of gatherings were peaceful, well-organized and offered useful outlets for ordinary New Yorkers, hardened protesters, and others in-between, to vent their frustration and outright anger with the Bush Administration. 

The most underreported story of this convention was most likely the jail conditions and the time it took for those arrested in street demonstrations to contact their lawyers and see a judge. In fact, on Friday it got so bad that Judge John Cataldo of the New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan demanded that the city process all demonstrators immediately. 

When that had not happened by 6 p.m. that day he held the city in contempt and ordered a fine of $1,000 for each person still held. Many were finally released late Friday, some after having spent more than 60 hours in detention and in violation of their Constitutional rights. 

Bill Dobbs, Media Coordinator for group United for Peace and Justice which organized many of the protests and also assisted in legal help, said that as of Saturday afternoon, “The vast bulk of detainees had gotten out of jail and that it looks like [these long detentions] were politically motivated by the city.” 

Dobbs went on to say, “In the same way Bush used a preemptive strike against Iraq, the New York Police Department used a preemptive strike against protesters. The Mayor and police department went too far,” Dobbs said. Lots of different lawyers are involved from groups like the National Lawyers Guild and the Center for Constitutional Rights, according to Dobbs, and that they will be back in a New York courtroom tomorrow (Wednesday). 

Finally, the last under-reported story of this convention is perhaps how not-Republican New York City is. Average New Yorkers came out to many protests, people who had never even been to a protest before. Those not protesting often supported protesters. There are stories of restaurant bills paid anonymously, taxi rides given free of charge, and spontaneous bursts of applause throughout Manhattan for anti-Bush protesters. 

It is doubtful Bush will be back here to campaign, given that New York is Kerry country, or that the Republican National Convention will be convening in this city anytime in the near future. 

ª

It’s Tuesday evening on the corner of 34th Street and Sixth Avenue. The sidewalk is packed with protestors hemmed in by a wall of police. Traffic had been diverted. The protestors are chanting and yelling and waiving signs, and have made passage up and down the sidewalk nearly impossible.  

The doors of the corner pizzeria are open. At the table nearest the entrance a woman is trying to calm an 18-month-old baby, who is clearly at the end of her rope. The baby is clutching a tattered stuffed animal, saying “piggy, piggy” every time she drops it. The animal is now an indecipherable shade of grey from too many close encounters with New York sidewalks. 

The mother is trying to feed the child with spoonfuls of baby food, smeared on slices of cold pizza she has ripped into bite sizes with her teeth. The child is not eating. She grabs her mother’s hand and tries to pull her out into the street, into the thick of the demonstration. The mother resists. The baby cries. The mother gets up, takes the child’s hand and commences a game of ring around the rosy. The child is happy for a minute, and then begins to cry again. Finally the mother gives up, gathers her belongings, straps the child into the stroller, and starts off towards the subway. I follow Rachel, my daughter, who has been trying do the impossible—nurse a sick child and at the same time report on the protests for AlterNet. 

After I help her load the stroller and Luna June into the back seat of a taxi, I head back to the protest. Police have blocked off access to the 34th Street corner. On the next street south, 33rd street, at the northern end of Greeley Square, the sidewalk is clogged with protestors, who are taunting delegates heading to the convention from one of their numerous parties. They walk by in groups of twos and threes, with large plastic convention passes dangling from chains around their necks—the women, carefully coiffed, the men in their suit jackets and leather shoes. 

As each group approaches the corner the protestors erupt with raucous shouts of “Shame! Shame! Shame!” One of them lobs a half eaten banana in the direction of the delegates. Another raises his fists with a double middle digit salute. Stony faced or with a weak smile the delegates try not to make eye contact as they walk by. A few walk through the crowd massed on the sidewalk. The majority make their way down the center of the street, escorted by police. 

A squad of cops waits on the other side of Sixth Avenue. Long blond wood riot batons dangle from their black gloved hands. High above the scene, a large billboard advertises the ipod. Against an olive green background the black silhouette of a woman grooves to the music. She holds her white ipod in one hand. Thin white wires dangle from her ears. She is in her own world, plugged in, while below her, an unruly rabble of protestors has clearly come unplugged and is decidedly out of control. 

Which is why I expect a bust to happen any minute. An argument breaks out in the crowd between a man in a “Microshit” t-shirt who identifies himself as a Navy veteran and another man with a crew cut and an open neck dress shirt, who is questioning his military record. As I pass by, Microshit is yelling at dress shirt: “The Arabs invented zero, you dipshit.” 

I take a break to pee and buy a bottle of water. In the basement restroom of Steevie’s Fast Fresh Food I encounter Louis Alvarez, a short old man with skin the color of a Havana cigar and a white stubble sprouting on his face. He’s standing at the sink, washing up, his pants down around his knees, and a straw hat on his head.  

“What do you think of the protests?” I ask.  

“It’s a great country,” he says, as he hitches up his pants. “Anybody can protest. Why just the other day there were people protesting naked.”  

“What were they protesting?” I ask.  

He doesn’t know.  

“And what do you think about the protests going on outside?”  

He tells me he would not protest, but he supports them. He doesn’t like Bush, primarily because of polices towards his homeland, Cuba. He does not understand the point of the blockade, or the new rules making it harder to visit and send money. “I will vote for the other guy,” he says. “I don’t know what the other guy will do, but at least he’s not Bush.”  

The arena of Madison Square Garden, ringed around with police, is like a spaceship that has landed on planet New York from which alien life forms, the convention delegates, venture out into the city in well-guarded clumps. But the protesters are also in some sense an alien form. Walk away from a demonstration, go down into the subway, and there, waiting for the train, are old people, large people, mothers with children, beggars, tired workers falling asleep. People who look like them are by and large not out there on the street with picket signs and banners. There have been very few children at the marches. And the bubbling racial mix that is New York is not much in evidence. 

It does not need to be this way. On Monday a “March for Our Lives” is led by the Kensington Welfare Rights Union. The Union was started in April 1991 by a group of welfare mothers who lived in the Kensington neighborhood of North Philadelphia, the poorest district in Pennsylvania. They began organizing around the basic human needs for food, housing, medical care, jobs, and the price of utilities. 

Now the Union has brought people from the neighborhood to New York and established a makeshift encampment they call “Bushville” at a church on Myrtle Avenue in Brooklyn. And although they came from Philadelphia, their march looks like New York. In the lead is a line of children in strollers and elderly women in wheelchairs. In the lap of one of the women rests a book, "Spiritual Solution.” One of the children in the strollers sucks on a bottle of red punch. 

An unruly scrum of photographers pushes and jostles for the money shot of the kids and old women. The crowd chants “Hey! Hey! Ho! Ho! Poverty must go!” The monitors struggle to keep the photographers from falling onto the strollers, and although this is an unpermitted march the cops are putting most of their energy into helping the monitors control the media. It’s a tumultuous wonderful scene. 

The march is headed for Madison Square Garden to deliver a letter of demands to the GOP. There will, no doubt, be some sort of confrontation. I want to stay to see what happens, but I need to leave to take care of Luna June so Rachel can continue her reporting.  

Walking away, with the sound of the protest diminishing behind me, I’m suffering from protestus interruptus. I feel like I’ve been tossed up by a churning river onto a dry embankment. A woman walks by carrying bags of groceries. A man passes me talking on his cell phone. We each inhabit our separate worlds, and as a consequence the world we share in common becomes unexamined background, imbued with permanence and inevitability.  

The next day I search in vain for a story on the march in the Daily News and the Times. Nothing. What happened to all those photographs all those photographers were jostling to take? If a protest falls in a forest of silence does it make a sound? What if the whole world is not watching? 

The silence is never complete. The corporate media could not completely ignore half a million people marching on Sunday, and 1,500-plus arrests over the week of protests. We do not know the resonances of our acts. Old men, tucking in their shirts in basement restrooms hear shouts from the streets above. Mothers at home with sick babies, may look down from their windows and catch sight of a banner fluttering by below. Protest—permitted, unpermitted, disruptive, orderly, inclusive and less inclusive—preserves our capacity for audacity. It’s a capacity we will need in full measure no matter who wins in November.  

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Yet another player has joined the ranks of would-be East Bay gambling—and though it’s identity remains obscured, the firm’s sales pitch is breathtaking in the promises it implies. 

According to two people polled, the calls began as a traditional election poll. 

“They started out by asking what I thought of (California Senate Majority Leader) Don Perata, (Assemblymember) Loni Hancock, Mayor Bates and the mayor of Albany,” said Berkeley computer consultant Tom Hunt. 

“They wanted to know about how various things would change my mind about casino gambling at Golden Gate Fields,” he said. “They way they put it, Berkeley and Albany would be rolling in cash forever.” 

Hunt was floored when the pollster asked him if it would change his mind about the suggested casino if every graduate of Albany and Berkeley High Schools were given a college scholarship. 

“They were talking about laying out large sums of dollars the same way I’d think about buying a printer cable,” Hunt said. 

“We were contacted by several constituents in both cities and they asked us if we know who was behind it,” said Terri Waller, district coordinator for Assemblymember Hancock. 

Waller declined to speculate on the poll’s sponsors. 

The poll appears to be more than a mere opinion survey. Instead, it smacks of what political operatives call a “push poll,” a pseudo-survey designed to influence opinion rather than merely record it. 

One of Waller’s callers was Merry Silk of Albany, who told the Daily Planet she was called about two weeks ago by the pollster. 

“They said, ‘We’re conducting a poll about the upcoming election,’” Silk said. “They asked what I thought about the mayor of Albany and the mayor of Berkeley. 

“Then they began to ask, in several different ways, would it persuade me to support an Indian Casino at the track if they offered every child in Albany and every child in Berkeley were offered a scholarship.” 

Silk said she was “really irritated because the survey indicated to me that this organization was ready to put a lot of money into ensuring that there’d be as large a development as possible.” 

While Silk doesn’t consider herself a major activist—”I joined the Sierra Club mostly because I was concerned about things going on nationally”—she has two children in Albany public schools and she’s active in the PTA. 

Both Silk and Hunt said the pollsters didn’t say how much the scholarships would pay. 

Waller declined to offer any speculations about who’s funding the polls, but Hunt and Silk suspect the cash came from Magna Entertainment, the Canadian racing and gambling firm that controls the track. The firm hasn’t returned any of the Daily Planet’s calls—either about the regional shopping center they’ve proposed for part of the track site or about the casino poll. 

The two sets of questions—one focusing on a tribal casino and the other not—reflect two parallel current in California gambling. 

Owners of race tracks and card rooms have floated Proposition 68, a ballot initiative that would award slot machine licenses to its sponsors unless each and every Native American casino in California agrees to pay a fourth of their net gambling handle to the state. 

The card rooms and “racinos,” as casinos at race tracks have been termed, authorized by the measure would pay a third of their earnings to the state. 

Polls show Prop 68 trailing badly—meaning that if Magna wants casino gambling, they’d have to find a tribe who would buy the land, apply for reservation status and seek authorization from the Department of the Interior to open a casino on the site. 

Silk said the caller also asked which of the track’s arguments might persuade her to endorse the casino plan, and what arguments from opponents would lead her to reject it. 

She finally hung up after a series of questions asked her age, her race, her religion and her income. The first two she answered, the rest she didn’t. 

“Scary,” she concluded. 

While Magna owns more than twice as many North American racetracks than it’s nearest competitor, the firm hasn’t made money for it’s shareholders. 

The poll comes just as Magna has been going through major management changes and a shift in corporate direction. According to accounts in the Canadian press, Frank Stronach, the Austrian immigrant and friend of Arnold Schwarzenegger who controls the firm, is looking deeper into the casino business. It already has a casino at its Canadian racetrack and is seeking to bring slots into it’s tracks in the U.S. The firm also owns a major Internet gambling site. 

Over the objections of many of the minority shareholders in Magna Entertainment, Stronach wants to buy them out and bring the company under the sole control of Magna International Developments, a spinoff created 13 months ago by Magna International, the Canadian giant built up from the world’s largest auto parts company. 

On Aug. 19 and 20, two well-connected Magna executives stepped down, former Ontario Premier William Davis and Newfoundland Premier Brian Tobin—who left within hours of learning that Stronach had hired former General Motors Vic President Mark Hogan as Magna International CEO. 

With Schwarzenegger’s opposition to Proposition 68, the ballot measure sponsored by Stronach and others to install slots at card rooms and tracks, a move to bring in a tribe would be the logical solution. 

Magna’s already announced its intention to building a massive regional shopping center on part of its Golden Gates Fields property, a tactic already implemented at some of its other racing facilities. 

The firm is also building a major racing facility in Dixon in nearby Yolo County that is specially designed for streaming video and simulcasts, leaving the fate of racing at Golden Gate in question since the firm also owns Bay Meadows and getting a racing season is a difficult task.

County education administrators have indicated their intention to certify Berkeley Unified School District’s roughly $90 million budget, ending three years of strict supervision over the cash-strapped school district. 

Alameda Board of Education officials handed a draft certification letter to Superintendent Michele Lawrence at a Monday meeting, district spokesperson Mark Coplan said. An official letter of approval is expected to be delivered at an upcoming school board meeting, he said. 

The district succumbed to county oversight three years ago when its creaky financial systems and ballooning budget deficit nearly sent the district into receivership. During the course of a three-year plan approved by county regulators, the district slashed $12.5 million from its budget. 

The cuts have resulted in larger class sizes, and reduced music and library programs. The district is pushing an $8.3 million parcel tax this November to lower class size and restore funding to music and other programs. 

Coplan said county certification means Berkeley will no longer face oversight from the Fiscal Crisis & Management Assistance Team (FCMAT). The controversial auditor, appointed to the district as part of a deal brokered by the state legislature, was to have made two additional progress reports. FCMAT was not available to confirm they would cease their work with Berkeley Unified. 

Also, Coplan said, the district would no longer be required to produce three time-consuming interim budget reports for county education officials. 

Superintendent Lawrence has previously warned the school board that although district finances appeared sound for the next two years, structural deficits were projected to return in fiscal year 2007. 

Two major issues come before Berkeley’s land use agencies this week, when the revised municipal landmarks code comes up for consideration by the Planning Commission Wednesday night and the Zoning Adjustment Board conducts its final hearing Thursday on a use permit for the Seagate Building. 

Many in Berkeley’s sizable community of preservationists worry that the measure, which comes before planners during their 7 p.m. meeting in the North Berkeley Civic Center, 1901 Hearst Ave., will weaken the city’s protections for older builders. 

Not all in the pro-development community are all that happy either, and the debate is expected to be lengthy. 

The Seagate Building, a nine-story structure planned for Center Street just west of the Well Fargo Annex building, has drawn some fire as well, stemming from its height—bigger than anything constructed in downtown in recent years—and for the placement of the units reserved for low- and lower-income tenants. 

Civics Arts Commission members blasted the developer, Marin County-based Seagate Properties, for reneging on an agreement to have a city employee in charge of selecting the artworks to display in a public corridor and for giving control of the large ground floor performance space to one already-well-funded theatrical troupe. 

The combination of the inclusionary housing units and the cultural space allowed developers to tack on four more stories than would be normally permitted. 

The ZAB meeting begins at 7 p.m. Thursday in the second floor City Council Chamber, 2134 Martin Luther King Jr. Way. 

Yet another land use-related meeting is scheduled for the same hour Thursday evening, the West Berkeley Project Area Commission, which will gather in the West Berkeley Senior Center, 1900 Sixth St.  

—

“I want a zippered, hooded sweatshirt with the letters SFSU splashed big across the front,” says my friend Corrie. We are in the student bookstore at San Francisco State University shopping for textbooks, but very quickly we have migrated to the other side of the room and are perusing racks and racks of work-out clothes and underwear that sport the logo SFSU in the school colors that, I learn for the first time, are gold and purple. 

“Isn’t that kind of geeky?” I say, glancing over at Corrie nonchalant-like to see if I have made the right response. Since returning to graduate school after a 30-year hiatus, I have become unsure of my sense of fashion, or if, in fact, I ever had one.  

“No,” says Corrie emphatically. “It’s not geeky at all. In fact, it’s kind of cool in a geeky sort of way.” 

“It is?” I ask, pausing between hangers. “I don’t remember it being cool to wear a college logo in 1969. I only wore tie-dye t-shirts and overalls.” 

“Suzy,” says Corrie, “times have changed. Just look at all this stuff with San Francisco State written across it. You need to get with it.” 

Indeed, there is a lot of logo stuff in this store, so much so that it is overwhelming. There are sweatshirts and t-shirts of all shapes and sizes, pants and boxers with SFSU scrawled along the sides, printed around the waistbands and stamped across the buttocks.  

“What about these?” I say to Corrie, holding up a pair of skimpy, slinky gold shorts with SFSU in purple block letters on the behind. “You think you’d look good in these?” 

Corrie squints at the shorts through the lenses of her light blue cat-eye shaped glasses. I remember when those kinds of frames used to be geeky. But now they are cool. I know this because I’ve considered getting myself a pair, though by the time I get around to it they may be uncool. I need help with fashion decisions which is one reason why I have latched on to Corrie. She seems to know the trends. 

“No,” says Corrie seriously, “I wouldn’t look good in them.” 

“But do you think they’re cool or geeky?” I ask.  

“Slutty,” says Corrie. “Definitely the slut look. Which is, of course, cool if you know what I mean.” 

“I thought wearing thong underwear so the waistband shows above your low rider stretch jeans was the slut look,” I say. 

“No,” says Corrie. “That’s a cool look. But only in the U.S. In Europe they are much too cool to do that. They let skinny, multiple bra straps show underneath skimpy tops, but they don’t do that gross thong showing underwear thing. That’s been out of style on the Continent for years.” 

“I’m moving to Europe,” I say. “Wearing thong underwear is definitely overrated. It hurts like hell and I can’t imagine pulling it up around my waist. My god, it would kill me. I’m all for VPLs.” I pause for effect. “That’s short for visible panty line, “ I add. I want Corrie to know that I can be cool when I want to be, but she is no longer paying attention. 

I put the shorts down and continue filing through the racks. We can’t find a size large woman’s zippered, hooded sweatshirt with the logo SFSU on it and we can’t locate a size small men’s sweat of the same design. The men’s sweatshirts are all so big that Corrie would have to put on about 85 pounds in order to fill one out. The woman’s sweats are only in sizes small or x-tra small and cut short so that one’s bellybutton is exposed when wearing them. I haven’t displayed my midriff in public since about 1972, and I don’t intend to now. I decide right then and there not to be sucked into this logo sweatshirt obsession of Corrie’s. 

“I’m going over to the notebook section,” I say to Corrie. “They’ve got these cool books with San Francisco State printed on the cover.” 

“Big time uncool and geeky,” says Corrie under her breath as I walk away, but I ignore her.?

WAR CRIMINALS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The severity of damage to our national reputation caused by the Bush administration still hasn’t been fully comprehended. Our new enemies see Abu Ghraib not only as the chambers of torture imposed by an imperial occupier, they see the sexual humiliation as proof that ours is a culture of perversion. Our violent entertainment, our sex-titillating commercial advertising, and now, the images from Abu Ghraib, represent the reason why our enemies gain members who are willing to die for their cause. They are fighting a war for their cultural survival. 

It doesn’t help our desire to be the “light on the hill,” when official investigations like the Schlessinger report lack the courage to place responsibility where it belongs. While Bush’s strategists, Justice Department lawyers, and Rumsfeld’s memos tacitly encouraged such torture, saying the Geneva Convention doesn’t apply, Schlessinger’s commission was only able to mumble something about “inadequate planning, organization, and accountability.” 

The responsibility lies in the White House. The only way we can redeem the good reputation we think we deserve is to vote these war criminals out of office, and then hold them accountable before the bar of justice. 

Bruce Joffe 

Piedmont 

• 

EASTSHORE STATE PARK 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In the hope that at least one councilmember is minding the store during City Council’s summer break and will read this letter, I would like to know if the council approves of the present, on-going decimation of the meadow in Eastshore State Park, and do you care?  

I was under the impression that since City of Berkeley has final approval on Eastshore State Park plans, the city had rejected the state’s meadow plans after great public outcry; that the meadow would be left as is, intact, as the last wild area in the Eastshore State Park. Was I, and hundreds others, mistaken? 

These state plans, as you may recall, call for four wooden paths starting at the corners of the meadow converging in the center to a “bird sanctuary.” Apparently, the construction of such paths require the clear cutting of the meadow taking place right now. 

These paths, if completed, will greatly multiply foot/bike/blade traffic in the meadow and destroy a great natural habitat. Bye, bye red winged blackbirds, et al. Hello to more of the Disneyfication of the natural. 

A more lasting, positive legacy would be to underground the telephone lines on the north side of the meadow and lay down a new curving blacktop road, replacing the current pothole-ridden road so that scenic views of the meadow, as created, will be accessible to wheelchair users, pram-pushing parents roller bladers, etc. Those improvements, plus removing the concrete blocks in the adjacent inlet, are all that are needed in that area. We have enough of the managed look of nature in our city parks. 

Were those hundreds of us who lobbied to keep the meadow free of further invasion just shined on? I look forward to receiving a clarification of City of Berkeley’s policy for the meadow. 

Maris Arnold 

• 

SHORELINE WILDLIFE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

For many years so many of us have enjoyed the wild life in the fields that grew between the boulevard and Frontage Road by the Berkeley Marina, rabbits, snakes, birds of many kinds et cetera, and now it is all being ravaged by development in favor of yet another sterile and boring park that will cost not only to build but to maintain and police. Could someone from the East Bay Regional Parks please tell us why? For whom is this park intended, when so many of us would rather have kept the fields wild? I thought the park system was for preserving wilderness, not eliminating it. 

Peter Najarian 

• 

BERKELEY SCHOOL BOARD 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I am writing to strongly urge the Berkeley community to support Kalima Rose and Karen Hemphill in the upcoming race for the Berkeley School Board. As a member of the Berkeley High Jacket for the last three years and its editor last year I have attended many School Board meetings as a reporter. My conclusion is simple: This board is not doing enough to address the overwhelming and unacceptable problem of the achievement gap among children in the district. 

Although much lip service is paid to the achievement gap and some admirable efforts have been made, the community needs strong leaders with experience and insight into our district’s most pressing issue serving on the board. Kalima is one of the most active parents in CAS, Berkeley High’s successful pilot small school. Kalima and others recognized the importance of diversity right from the inception of the program and it is one of the only groups at BHS that is intrinsically diverse. Karen would be the only African-American member of our board, lending real diversity to a traditionally homogeneous group. 

Karen also has a lot of experience with school district issues- she is a member of the District Advisory Council, is president of the Washington School Site Council, and is a former BSEP Planning and Oversight Committee member and for the past two year was a member of the Longfellow School Governance Council. 

We cannot afford another term of inaction from our School Board. Year after year our white students excel and our students of color fall through the cracks. Kalima and Karen care about all students in our community and are committed to the vision of a district that affords them all an equal chance at success. Please vote for and support Kalima Rose and Karen Hemphill for Berkeley School Board. 

Peter True 

Berkeley High Graduate, 2004 

Editor, Berkeley High Jacket, 2004 

• 

QUESTIONS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

How come we are doomed to multi-storied buildings erupting like poisonous mushrooms all over Berkeley? Who decided New York City was the model we should follow? 

What happened to buildings we could see the tops of? What happened to the zoning people who supported the kind of town we could live with? The town that once had a department store and a deli with seats to accommodate the customers, where did it go? 

In a town where traffic is already hazardous and pedestrians must jump out of the way, why must we fill up every last inch of the territory with endless cars and the people to run them, others to evade them? 

Why do the perpetrators of the multi-story eruptions call themselves developers? Where did our control go? Who pushed the go button? 

Dorothy V. Benson 

If you didn’t watch the Republican National Convention, you didn’t miss much. Most of the convention speakers before the president spoke from the same biased script: Republicans are strong on defense; Democrats are not. Republicans are macho action figures like Arnold Schwarzenegger; Democrats are “girlie-men.” George Bush is resolute; John Kerry waffles. For four days viewers across the nation saw the worst face of partisan politics, an event carefully orchestrated to demean John Kerry and to convince voters that only George Bush could keep them safe. 

After listening to the closing speech of the third day, Dick Cheney’s angry Kerry-bash, independent voters may well have wondered, “Do Republicans think we don’t get it? Do they believe that we have some how missed their core message that Bush is steadfast and Kerry is a flip-flopper?” Some independents may have concluded that the convention was so determinedly negative because Republicans had nothing positive to talk about. 

For this reason, there were high expectations when Bush stepped onto center stage at Madison Square Garden, as it was widely anticipated that he would deliver a positive message, his vision for America. Instead, Bush continued the negative attacks on Kerry and presented not a plan, but a pastiche of doctrinaire conservative ideas and well-worn Bush-campaign themes wrapped in faux patriotism. As the first “MBA President” George Bush should be expected to know what a plan is—a vivid definition of an attractive future that provides the step-by-step details of how we get from here to there.  

In foreign affairs Bush provided no semblance of such a plan. First, he had the nerve to compare our post-war situation in Iraq to our occupation of Germany after World War II, and himself to President Truman. (To paraphrase former Senator Lloyd Bentsen, “I knew Harry Truman, Mr. President, and you’re no Harry Truman.”) He offered the same simplistic prescription for Afghanistan and Iraq: “We will help new leaders to train their armies and move toward elections and get on the path of stability and democracy as quickly as possible,” completely ignoring the anarchy in both. Bush maintained that our “success” in these countries would send “a message of hope” throughout the Middle East. This is not just an inadequate plan, it is a delusion; the failure of the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan has spawned terrorists and earned us the dubious status of most-hated nation. 

Bush’s “new” strategy for the war on terrorism is based upon the same arrogant unilateralism that has been a hallmark of his administration. Apparently, Bush and Republicans, in general, have given up on the United Nations, and the idea of coalition building, because it makes them look like “girlie-men.” Real men go it alone. 

For his domestic plan, Bush offered an omelet made of broken promises, old ideas, and new slogans. The cornerstone was once again tax cuts, reframed as “tax relief.” For four years the president has stubbornly argued that no matter what problems faced America, tax cuts were the cure. By now, most Democrats and Independents understand that when Bush talks about tax relief, he actually means “tax inequity”—abandoning the historic American philosophy of tax fairness in favor of tax privileges for the rich and powerful. Bush proposed more tax cuts—masked as tax “incentives” and “credits”—without saying how they would remedy the serious economic problems facing the nation such as loss of three million decent jobs, erosion of worker benefits, and a staggering increase in poverty. 

The Bush “solution” to a crisis where 45 million Americans are without health care was a call for tax cuts for those who purchase their own insurance, an additional tax break to those able to pay for these policies. Of course, what the president did not say was that his proposal would undermine the troubled health-care system as it would give employers another excuse to refuse to pay their share of insurance costs. 

Bush again proposed privatizing Social Security and restructuring educational benefits. (He had the nerve to declare his “No Child Left Behind” program a success when most commentators feel that it has done more harm than good.) In each case this would provide still more privileges for the rich and powerful, and further weaken an important element of the social safety net. It’s ironic that while Bush’s proposed foreign policy emphasizes homeland security, his domestic policy results in homeland insecurity.  

Bush’s speech concluded a convention that will long be remembered for its hubris and hate. Gone was any pretense that the president strives to be “a uniter, not a divider.” Gone was any attempt at civility, any notion of reconciliation across class, culture, or party. The Republican Party, which talks so frequently about values, has adopted the moral philosophy that the ends justify the means; everything is permissible so long as you win. In this mean spirit, Bush is waging a campaign based on patriotic rhetoric, lies about his accomplishments, benefits for the rich and powerful, and negative attacks on did present his plan for America—a demolition plan. 

Berkeley resident Bob Burnett is working on a book about the Christian Right.

For over 20 years, Berkeley law has required developers of new apartment buildings to offer 20 percent of their units at levels affordable to people with lower-than-average incomes. It’s a trade-off with developers (for which they’re handsomely rewarded) to make sure that, as Berkeley develops, poorer people aren’t steadily forced out of the city. That same law requires those units to be evenly dispersed throughout the building, because poor people shouldn’t be sequestered in special poor sections of apartment buildings. 

But in all apartment buildings erected in the last five years, the top levels are free of these affordable units. (When you get in the elevator, don’t press “P” if you’re poor; that button’s for penthouse residents, not for you.) So instead of poor-people ghettos in new apartment buildings, we’ve made poor-people-free zones. How did a city that prides itself most of all on its commitment to fairness end up violating its own laws to segregate its housing stock and keep poor people out of its best (and most heavily city-subsidized) new real estate? 

The tale descends arcanely from the 1989 state law that codified how developers are to be compensated for providing these lower-priced units. Five years ago a big Berkeley developer came to the Berkeley city attorney and complained that we weren’t interpreting that law strictly enough. The city attorney agreed, and wholesale changes were instituted in the project approval process that took away almost all city discretion over project size. (All four-story projects, for instance, have automatically become five-story projects.) In essence, apartment buildings were granted a 25 percent increase in square footage. Furthermore, that increase itself, according to our city attorney’s state-law interpretation, does not generate any further affordable-housing requirement. 

Ten days ago, during a discussion of the composition of units in the proposed Seagate Building (the north side of Center Street just below Shattuck), which at seven stories was so big that it was granted two extra of these “bonus” stories, sharp-eyed commissioner Laurie Capitelli noticed that there were no affordable units marked out for the penthouse floors, as we'd always understood our Code required. City staff explained: “The first five stories are what’s allowed in the Code, the next two are for the Cultural Bonus [we also grant extra stories for space creation deemed to benefit the city culturally, which this building has taken advantage of in an unusual way], and the last two are for state density bonus. That’s why they’re on the top.” 

So the state density bonus units go on the top, which just happens to be the most valuable residential real estate. And then the coup de grace: since the bonus units do not themselves generate any requirement for further affordable units, there shouldn’t be, we were told, any such units on those floors. 

Interpretation layered on top of interpretation, and Berkeley’s law giving the poor some measure of access to new housing has been reshaped to exclude them from the best of it. 

Dave Blake is a long-time member of the Berkeley Zoning Adjustments Board 



The dozen or so petitioners at Saturday morning’s Sick Plant Clinic at the UC Berkeley Botanical Garden brought offerings ranging from dried leaves to big branches: a sheaf of photographs, a pear, a Japanese maple twig, an orchid growing on a bark slab. 

They all had the same questions: What’s wrong with my plant? What can I do about it?  

The implied third question—What did I do wrong?—could give the session a confessional air, but what happens is much jollier. 

Dr. Robert Raabe, UC plant pathologist, and Dr. Nick Mills, UC entomologist, convene a cordial team at the conference center of garden the first Saturday of every month to diagnose plant illnesses and recommend remedies, at no charge, to anyone who walks in with a request and enough information to figure things out. 

The easiest way to ensure that is to take a piece of the poor plant along—in a securely sealed container, please; a zipperlock bag is ideal.  

Last Saturday, Raabe and Mills were joined by plant pathologist and arborist Ann Northrup, Master Gardener Ermadene Tilley, and Liz Waterman of the California Rare Fruit Growers to answer questions and consult. A couple of microscopes were handy, to get a better look at insects and infestations and signs of disease. 

Raabe offered to take one leaf sample home and try to culture whatever was attacking it: to grow out the hidden organism until it showed its identity. He also explained how that works. One of his plant pathology students was attending, and he took the opportunity to educate her and the rest of the crowd on things like the distinction between a sign and a symptom. 

The room quickly filled with chatter, a detectives’ cascade of questions, answers, guesses, refined answers, explanations, and advice. People swapped stories. People showed off interesting flowers as well as what Raabe has been known to call “beautiful examples” of fungus spots or insect damage. People peered through microscopes and flinched. Impromptu, focused anatomy and natural history lessons were given. These folks clearly just like explaining things, and they’re good at it.  

One client wondered aloud if her mystery insect was trying to make lace when it attacked her shrub. Another allowed his caterpillars to pose for photos. The atmosphere was more one of excited discovery and puzzle-solving than sickroom gloom, in spite of the occasional bad news about verticillium wilt. There was, in spite of much opportunity, absolutely no scolding.  

If this were about human medicine, I’d call it “holistic.” Most of the advice given was not about what pesticide to apply but about how to keep the plants happy, because a healthy plant is less susceptible to disease and more able to fight one off. If a sick plant is dosed but the conditions that made it susceptible aren’t changed, chances are it will just get sick again.  

Quite a few examples of plant damage were culture problems, rather than pests or disease: brown-edged leaves were evidence of sunscald or thirst, and sometimes that in turn was caused by soil-mix problems. Plants from Mediterranean climates, unaccustomed to summer water, were dying of fungus infections at the root or crown. (Answer: Plant them in fall and let the winter rains establish them.)  

To keep plants healthy, it helps to know them. Know what they are, where they come from, what conditions they prefer, what they’ll tolerate and how to help them endure unaccustomed conditions. Put them in places where they’ll thrive—sun, shade, clay, gravel. Learn how to plant, water, and fertilize right. If you don’t know, ask! Garden people, whether they’re yard owners, nursery workers, or just mavens, generally like to talk about gardens and plants. Keeping your neighborhood’s ecosystem healthy helps a lot in the long run. An overfertilized monoculture with all the natural predators starved or killed out is an invitation to disease.  

Sometimes plants just get sick anyway. That’s when to consult the Sick Plant Clinic. It happens every month, 9 a.m. to noon, first Saturday, at the UC Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Drive, in the canyon above the stadium. Admission is free (and you can sneak a look at the garden afterwards) but parking in the lot across the road is fifty cents an hour, payable in advance at a machine on the lot. Make an estimate of how long you’ll stay and then double it because the place is too much fun to leave.  

The garden is throwing a plant sale on-site on Sunday, Sept. 26, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Dr. Raabe will be among the experts giving advice there. He’ll have an educational display with plant samples and disease examples, where you can take the first steps toward solving your own problems. 

Most Saturday mornings you can find Marty Schiffenbauer at the counter at Ozzie’s, the venerable soda fountain in the Elmwood Pharmacy at 2900 College Ave. 

“I’m one of the very new customers,” he said. “I’ve only been going there 24 years.” 

Like many Ozzie’s patrons, Schiffenbauer fears the loss of a unique community touchstone as economic realities bear down on the pharmacy and its tenant. 

The charms of Ozzie’s run deep, spanning more than half a century. 

Chuck Gresher discovered a lot of them when he paid his first visit last Wednesday afternoon. 

“I’ve seen it a million times, but I’d never come inside. Today I was hungry and wanted to try something new,” Gresher said. “I’m glad I did. You get simple, good food, and you get to enjoy it in something that pretty much doesn’t exist anymore.” 

“I’ve been coming here for a long time, and it’s an excellent place,” said a woman who asked to be called “just Dawn.” 

The draw? 

“Good food at reasonable prices in a very, very friendly, very, very Berkeley place” is a major attraction, she said. 

Asked to name the eatery’s single best feature, she answered instantly: “Michael.” 

Michael Hogan—“Mike” or “Mikey” to many of the folks who congregate at his counter—knew from the first, when he took over three and a half years ago, that he was stepping into some very big shoes. 

Last of It’s Kind 

Ozzie’s, it seems, is a rare breed, the Bay Area’s last authentic drug store soda fountain around, a neighborhood hangout with a solid crew of patrons, many of them regulars, some going back to Ozzie’s early days. 

“It would be a real loss to the neighborhood to see it go away,” said Dawn.  

But that’s the danger, and Michael Hogan said he is committed to rescuing a venerable Berkeley institution. 

Ozzie’s gets its name from Charles Osborne, the soda fountain’s long-time former proprietor. He first stepped behind the counter in 1950 and gave the place his nickname. 

And there was no doubt it was his place, starting with the picture on the menu: Ozzie wearing his World War II Army Air Force flying gear, standing beside a biplane trainer. Printed next to the photo are words from the most famous of World War II Air Force ballads, “We Live In Fame Or Go Down In Flame.” 

And fame he got, as he piloted British-made Spitfire and American P-51 fighters in five invasion campaigns in the European Theater, downing enough German and Italian fighters in aerial duels to earn the coveted title of ace. 

He didn’t figure on sticking around. Berkeley was just the latest stop in his search for a salubrious environment for his asthmatic son. 

Osborne was looking for something to do when “the place was recommended to me by a friend who worked for Borden Ice Cream,” he said. 

With Osborne’s arrival at the Elmwood Pharmacy, the fountain was transformed from a four-stool narrow affair at the back of the store into a congenial 16-stool counter running the length of the north wall, warmly lit by the store’s big windows. 

And behind the counter, the fearsome aerial warrior proved a compassionate, genial figure who quickly earned a cherished spot in the hearts of his growing ranks of customers. 

Counter-Culture Revolution 

Osborne wasn’t looking to get rich, and his political instincts were as compassionate as his business practices. 

Though he’d never intended to sink his roots into Berkeley soil, “there came a time when I couldn’t envision being anyplace else,” he said. “I’ve never been one to wish for a glut of money, and the prices were always quite reasonable.” 

He and his customers’ lives had merged into a unique community. 

Ozzie’s became “a touch-base for high school kids, for younger kids and for older retired neighbors,” he said. 

As his politics edged Left, Ozzie’s became the meeting spot and petition central for Elmwood activists. 

By 1982 he was serving the grandkids of some of his earlier patrons and had been an honored guest at the weddings of some of their parents. But other faces had vanished as the California real estate bubble drove out many fellow merchants from his earlier days in the Elmwood. 

With word of impossible new rents, the end was in plain view. 

That’s when his regulars became his champions. 

Barbara Lubin was one such regular. 

“Ozzie was the best friend of Barbara’s son, who had Down’s Syndrome,” Marty Schiffenbauer recalled. He became her de facto baby sitter, giving her a reliable, safe, and friendly environment where son was comfortable. 

Lubin circulated a “Save Ozzie’s” petition, gathering signatures form all parts of Berkeley. During a chance encounter Schiffenbauer asked Lubin, “Why not a real petition?” 

A petition to regulate commercial rents.  

Voters supported two landmark initiatives that year, one rescheduling city elections from April to November, the other creating the nation’s first commercial rent control system. 

Before long, “a third of all the businesses on the avenue were sold to their renters,” Osborne recalls. 

Seven years later, a year after the California lawmakers passed legislation outlawing commercial rent control, Osborne called it quits. 

“I’d stayed well beyond my Medicare eligibility,” Osborne, now 84, said. “And one day I just left, just like that.” 

The Pharmacy  

The wood frame structure, with its high ceilings and spacious interiors, went up on the corner of College Avenue and Russell Street in 1921, created by noted Berkeley builder John Bischoff. It’s been a focus of Elmwood neighborhood life ever since. 

Fred Beretta took over the Elmwoord Pharmacy in the building beginning in 1923 and over time developed a friendly competition with the College Avenue Pharmacy, at College and Ashby, run by Charles Carter. Beretta’s son Leslie, who inherited the pharmacy, had an understanding with the Carter family: should one ever decide to sell, they would give the other the first option to buy. 

This happened in 1960, when Beretta decided to sell and Carter packed up his store and moved a block north into the Elmwood Pharmacy. Osborne had been serving sandwiches and milk shakes for a decade already when Carter took over ownership. 

Until last month, Victoria Carter, Charles’ daughter, ran the pharmacy and sundries side. She’d been in charge for 18 years. 

But the pharmacy died last month, when harsh economic realities forced her to close the prescription department. Records went to Elephant Pharmacy on Shattuck Avenue, and today the shelves in Carter’s prescription department are largely empty. 

The Elmwood Pharmacy had struggled in recent years, sapped by the same overwhelming forces that have closed thousands of independents across the country. 

The culprits? Insurance companies and high rents. 

“Pharmacies are the only businesses where a third party dictates what you can make,” Carter said. “They discount you so much that you simply can’t afford to fill a prescription.” 

Carter said “it was very difficult” to close down the pharmacy, and it would be harder to close the store, and with it, Ozzie’s. 

“The store’s been here 83 years, and we like to think it’s been important to the neighborhood. Everyone would like to have it remain, but I’m not sure if that’s feasible.” 

And then there’s the lease, which runs out at the end of the year. 

“This is a very unique neighborhood,” Carter said. “There aren’t many like this in the whole country. Business neighborhood-oriented. We have a bank, a cleaner’s, a theater, a hardware store and other convenience stores. 

“Unfortunately, it’s also very, very expensive.” 

Many of the older business are gone, as the Elmwood becomes ever-trendier place and rents soar, only a unique quota system remains to help the survivors. 

Without more business, Carter said, “the future is very uncertain.”  

The Gentle Optimist 

Three-and-a-half years ago, Ozzie’s had been closed for several months and the regulars were starving for their old haunt. Another regular, Burl Willes—author of Tales of the Elmwood as well as the store history posted at www.ozziesfountain.com—stepped up to the plate. 

Willes was a natural for the task after spearheading the drive to save the Elmwood Theater by creating a self-taxing business district. 

The ideal candidate would be a lot like Ozzie, someone who cared about people, about community, someone who wasn’t out to make a fortune. 

“When he asked me, I said yes,” Hogan said.  

A native of Annapolis, Md., Hogan moved to Pacifica in 1995. “Before, I was a massage therapist, and I did non-profit law work for ten years,” he said. 

But once behind the counter, he discovered his real niche. 

“He’s made it his life,” Schiffenbauer said. “He’s been steadily improving the business, he’s kept up a lot of the traditions, the food is a lot fresher.” 

“I think he’s done very well,” says Osborne. “He tries very hard to keep it open, and he certainly provides an adequate amount of food.” 

“It’s our first time,” said Cory, sitting at the counter with Betty, her mother, last week. “I heard that the sandwiches were great. And as soon as she saw BLT on the menu, my mother had to try it.” 

Asked why no last names were offered, Cory quipped, “We’re celebrities. We’re traveling incognito.” 

So what about their BLTs? 

“Really very good,” Cory said, “and it’s a very nice atmosphere. I like it.” 

Not bad, considering Hogan’s previous experience in the restaurant world had been a brief dishwashing gig at age 14. 

Above the shelves facing Hogan as he works is a row of album covers—all 50’s and early 60’s LPs from artists like Sinatra, Connie Francis, a very young Harry Belafonte, Peggy Lee and Tennessee Ernie Ford. There’s even a favorite and rather ribald party album from 1960, Rusty Warren’s “Knockers Up,” not far from a poster for the cult, camp 1957 flick Reform School Girl. 

He’s particularly fond of the cordless mechanical cash register, which outdates him.  

Ozzie’s Today 

“We’re on this corner near the entrance to the customer parking lot, and people coming to shop walk right by our front door. What’s most amazing to me is the number of people who walk by the corner and stop, slack-jawed,” Hogan said. 

“When they walk in the door, they tell me they’re amazed that a place like this still exists.” 

And what a place. 

Walking for the first time into Hogan’s anyone near Social Security age who lived a childhood in the U.S. confronts an overwhelming sense of deja vu. To be sure, the chairs are cane, not woven wire, and the tables aren’t marble—but the essence was the same.  

The long counter, the cast iron square pedestal stools with the revolving round vinyl cushions, the long counter topped with chrome-plated menu holders that serve as home base for the condiments, the tall glass chrome-topped sugar container and the even taller round glass straw holders, the kind with the straw-lifting chrome lids. 

Rounding out the picture at 3 p.m. on a recent Wednesday afternoon were the customers, filling most of the seats, some munching on sandwiches accompanied by chips and a cup of salad, arrayed with a casual artfulness raises the deja vu tingle to near fever pitch. 

Nearly every seat is taken, and customers are talking, writing, reading and eating—of sipping at ice cold malts and sodas, served up in heavy, stemmed tulip glasses. 

And Hogan finds time to swap smiles and stories as he works on a pair of BLTs. 

To most customers, it’s a instantly familiar place, even to the first time visitor. 

First-time customers are frequent, many of them coming down from the Claremont in search of something different. Of the local first-timers, more and more are becoming regulars. 

What’s Next? 

Learning of the impending changes, Hogan set to work—e-mailing his “counter contingency,” the regulars, asking for thousand dollars apiece as investments in a limited liability corporation that would own the business and pay to make it work. 

Though interest was high, he soon realized he needed a serious feasibility study and specific proposals. That’s what he’s working on now, he said. 

Whatever the plan’s specifics, he knows it’s his customers who’ll save Ozzie’s. 

“They’re great,” he said, offering the warm smile that’s became familiar to his customers. 

“Today we were short-handed when a big family came in. When they say how busy we were, they bused two tables themselves and had a wonderful time. They’re a very loyal and compassionate bunch, and some of them say that if we’re forced out they’ll never shop at whoever replaced us.” 

He’s already got some ideas. 

“I would expand the hours and double the seating capacity with twenty more places, and I’ve always wanted to be open Sunday because there are very few opportunities for breakfast around here and customers keep encouraging me to do it.” 

He hopes to reopen the pharmacy, though cutting back on some of the sundries to open space for seating. 

Pointing to the counter’s Formica top, he said “they’re still making this. And they’re still making the linoleum,” he added, casting his eyes down at the hints of black and white squares still visible in the spaces where they’re not been worn down to the wood by generations of feet. 

Hogan also wants to restore the interior, filling in the gapes of lath, replacing leak-stained ceiling tiles and refinishing the wood. “I want to make it pretty again,” he said. 

Restoration and bringing the cooking area up to full efficiency won’t be cheap. There’s the new freezers needed to hold a reasonable supply of the ice cream that goes into malts, shakes, sodas, sundaes and cones. There’s the stove and vent hood to prepare meals for a doubly large crowd. 

While other parties have shown interest in the building—including one Fourth Street restrateur—Hogan said “I want to be a contender, and with the support of the community, I think we can do it.”  

And one thing’s certain. He’s got a lot of folks pulling for him. 

“I don’t know what I’d do with my Saturday mornings,” Schiffenbauer said, trying to imagine a life without Ozzie’s. “There’d be a big gap in my life, and in the lives of a lot of others.” 

That there’s some reason for hope can be found literally right next door, when the vanished Avenue Books is returning in a new incarnation as Ms. Dalloway’s. 

Forever Ozzie 

Though he’s living in Palo Alto these days, Ozzie Osborne remains in close touch with his band of regulars. He still throws the annual Valentine’s Day party he started in Berkeley 22 years ago. 

“Every year about 40 of us gather. Hardly anyone’s ever missed one,” Osborne says. 

Including Marty Schiffenbauer, who said, “He spends the year collecting the joke gifts he gives out at the party.” 

Another Berkeley regular is carrying on with Osborne’s 4th of July fetes, when the old crowd exchange visits and calls with their long-time patron. 

Though he’s 84 and has suffered some circulatory problems, Osborne’s stays busy. “I love landscaping, and I’m in charge of the grounds of a very large church,” he said. The site covers half a city block. 

As for Ozzie’s, “it was a good lifetime for me. I was able to reach out to a lot of people and get involved in their lives—and they in mine.”  

?

TUESDAY, SEPT. 7 

THEATER 

Shotgun Theatre Lab “The Faith Project” runs Tues. and Wed. at 8 p.m. to Sept. 15 at The Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby at MLK. Free with suggested donation. 841-6500. www.shotgunplayers.org 

EXHIBITION OPENINGS 

Mark P. Fisher “Love for Sale” paintings, opens at Turn of the Century Fine Arts, 2510 San Pablo Ave. and runs to Oct. 20. 849-0950. www.turnofthecenturyfinearts.com 

FILM 

Alternative Visions: “The Films of Morgan Fisher” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Richard Clark discusses “Against All Enemies: Inside America’s War on Terrorism” at 6 p.m. at Zellerbach Auditorium, UC Campus. Sponsored by Cody’s Books. Tickets are $10. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com  

Mandy Aftel descrbes “Aroma: Recipes for Scented Food and Fragrance” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Edessa & Smyrna Time Machine at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $9. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Peter Barshy Duo at 8 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810. 

Jazz House Jam at 8 p.m. at The Jazz House. Donation $5. www.thejazzhouse.com 

Ernestine Anderson at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Also on Wed. Cost is $10-$18. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

Jazz School Tuesday with Misturada at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 8 

EXHIBITION OPENINGS 

Ninth Annual Yozo Hamaguchi Printmaking Scholarship Awards Exhibition Reception from 6 to 8 p.m. at the Isabelle Percy West Gallery, California College of the Arts, 5212 Broadway, Oakland. Exhibit runs to Sept. 19. www.cca.edu  

THEATER 

Berkeley Rep, “The Secret in the Wings” opens at the Roda Theater, 2015 Addison St. until Oct. 17. Tickets are $10-$55. 647-2949. www.berkeleyrep.org 

FILM 

Performance Anxiety: Linda Montano” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Café Poetry at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña. Donation $2. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Berkeley Poetry Slam at 8:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5-$7. 841-2082. 

www.starryplough.com 

Roya Hakakian describes “Journey From the Land of No: A Girlhood Caught in Revolutionary Iran” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Wednesday Noon Concert, Jessie Lee, piano, Garrett McLean, violin, Inning Chen, piano, at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. 642-4864. http://music.berkeley.edu 

Baguette Quartette at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $9. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Kurt Ribak Trio at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

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

Pat MacDonald, Liam Carey and Paul Panamerenko at 9 p.m. at the Ivy Room, 858 San Pablo Ave. 524-9220. www.ivyroom.com 

Larry Ochs with Fred Firth, Miya Masaoka and Chris Brown at 8 p.m. at The Jazz House. Donations of $8-$15 suggested.  

www.thejazzhouse.org 

THURSDAY, SEPT. 9 

EXHIBITION OPENINGS 

“Vincent Avalos: Interactive Installations” reception at 6 p.m. at Oakland Box Gallery, 1928 Telegraph Ave. Exhibition runs until Oct. 1. 451-1932. www.oaklandbox.com 

Bill Dallas “Artmatism” reception at 5:30 p.m. at Joyce Gordon Gallery, 409 14th St. Oakland. 465-8928. 

7th International Juried Enamel Exhibition Docent tour at 2 p.m. at the ACCI Gallery, 1652 Shattuck Ave. 843-2527. www.accigallery.com 

FILM 

“Beautiful Secret: A Tribute to Katy Jurado” at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña. Cost is $8. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Maurice Pialat: “A nos amours” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Ursula Hegi talks about her new novel “Sacred Time” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

Jennifer Leo, editor, introduces us to “Whose Panties are These? And Other Misadventures” at 7:30 p.m. at Easy Going Bookstore, 1385 Shattuck Ave. 843-3533. 

Luisah Teish and Bayou Heat, stories and videos in the style of New Orleans at 7 p.m. at Belladonna, 2436 Sacramento St. Cost is $10. 883-0600. www.belladonna.ws 

Word Beat Reading Series at 7 p.m. with Jeremy Morris Siegel and David Gollub at Mediterraneum Caffe, 2475 Telegraph Ave. 526-5985.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Odessa Chen, Inca at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5. 841-2082. www.starryplough.com 

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

Jazz Mine at 6:30 p.m. at King Tsin Chinese Restaurant, 1699 Solano Ave. www.jazzmine.net 

Hot Buttered Rum String Band at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $15.50 in advance, $16.50 at the door. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Gini Wilson, solo piano, at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810. 

Larry Ochs of Rova at 8 p.m. at The Jazz House. Donation $8-$15. www.thejazzhouse.org 

Jane Monheit at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Also on Fri. Cost is $12-$24. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

FRIDAY, SEPT. 10 

THEATER 

Alameda Civic Light Opera, “Pippin,” Sept. 10-11, 17-18 at 8 p.m. Sept. 12 and 19 at 2 p.m. Kofman Auditorium, 2220 Central Ave., Alameda. Tickets are $23-$25. 864-2256. www.aclo.com 

Aurora Theatre Company, “The Persians” opens at 8 p.m. and runs through Oct. 10. Tickets are $28-$45. 843-4822. www.auroratheatre.org 

Berkeley Rep, “The Secret in the Wings” at the Roda Theater, 2015 Addison St. until Oct. 17. Tickets are $10-$55. 647-2949. www.berkeleyrep.org 

Impact Theatre, “Fluffy Bunnies in a Field of Daisies” at 8 p.m. at La Val’s Subterranean Theater, 1834 Euclid, and runs Thurs.-Sat. through Oct. 2. Tickets are $10-$15. 464-4468. www.impacttheatre.com 

Woodminster Summer Musicals “Flower Drum Song,” at 8 p.m. at Woodminster Amphitheater in Joaquin Miller Park, 3300 Joaquin Miller Rd. Fri.- Sun. to Sept. 12. Tickets are $19-$31. 531-9597. www.woodminster.com 

Unscripted Theater Company, “The Short and the Long of It,” improv theater, Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m. at Temescal Arts Center, 511 48th St. at Telegraph, through Oct. 2. Tickets are $7-$10. 415-869-5384. www.un-scripted.com 

EXHIBITION OPENINGS 

7th International Juried Enamel Exhibition at the ACCI Gallery, 1652 Shattuck Ave. Reception 6 to 8 p.m. Gallery hours are Mon.-Fri. 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., Sat. 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. 843-2527. www.accigallery.com 

“Blossoming” the floral works of three local women artists, Jane Magid, Chaya Spector and Karen Mills. Reception from 6 to 8 p.m. at the Women’s Cancer Resource Center, 5741 Telegraph Ave. www.wcrc.org 

“Times of India: The Woman and the Goddess” Reception at 7 p.m. at the Addison Street Windows Gallery, 2018 Addison St. 981-7546. 

Kei Mizuochi “Silkscreens” Reception for the artist at 6 p.m. at Schurman Fine Art Gallery, 1659 San Pablo Ave. 524-0623. 

FILM 

Maurice Pialat: “The Mouth Agape” at 7:30 p.m. “Police” at 9:15 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

Old Oakland Outdoor Cinema on Washington St., between 9th and 10th Sts. Music at 5 p.m., and film, “Singin’ in the Rain” at 8 p.m. Bring your own chairs and blankets. 238-4734. www.filmoakland.com 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

International Literacy Day at 12:30 p.m. at Martin Luther King, Jr. Park. Local authors and adult literacy students will read their poetry, short stories and other works. 981-6299. 

Colin Channer reads from his new collection of stories “Passing Through” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

Gary Erickson, founder of Clif Bar, discusses “Raising the Bar: Integrity and Passion in Life and Business” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. www.codysbooks.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Alfredo Muro, Peruvian guitar virtuoso, at 8 p.m. at La Peña. Cost is $12. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

The Hogan, Emerge perform jazz, latin funk and eclectic in a free concert at 5 p.m. at Baltic Square, behind 121 Park Place, Pt. Richmond. 236-1401. www.pointrichmond.com/music 

Hitomi Oba Quartet at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $12-$15. 845-5373. www.jazz- 

school.com 

Hot Buttered Rum String Band at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $15.50 in advance, $16.50 at the door. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Vinyl, The People, funk, groove, at 9:30 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $5-$8. 548-1159. www.shattuckdownlow.com 

Larry Ochs with Fred Firth, Davon Hoff and Miya Masaoka at 8 p.m. at The Jazz House. Donations of $8-$15 suggested. www.thejazzhouse.org 

Grapefruit Ed and David Gans at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com  

Mimi Fox Quartet at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810. 

DJ & Brook at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Mingus Amungus at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Battle of the Bands at 6 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

Toys That Kill, Rasputin, Bezerk, Rivithead, Stiletta at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $6. 525-9926. 

SATURDAY, SEPT. 11 

EXHIBITION OPENINGS 

“Eyes Opened Wider” Recent panoramic landscapes by photographer Robert Reiter. Reception for the artist from 6 to 8 p.m. at the Photolab Gallery, 2235 Fifth St. Exhibition runs to Oct. 16. 644-1400. 

“Bodyspeak” paintings by Debbie Moore. Reception at 8 p.m. at Loop Gallery, 6436 Telegraph Ave. 590-0040. 

FILM 

“The Battle of Chile” at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña. Donations. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Maurice Pialat: “Graduate First” at 7 p.m. and “French Chronicles,” “Early Shorts” at 8:45 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Larry Tye will read from his book “Pullman Porters and the Making of the Black Middle Class” at 2 p.m. at West Oakland Library, 1801 Adeline St. 238-7352.  

Victor Villaseñor describes his memoir of life in Mexico, “Burro Genius” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. Donation $2. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Philharmonia Baroque “Cupid’s Arrow” with music by Rameau at 7:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church, Dana and Durant. Tickets are $28-$62 available from 415-392-4400. www.philharmonia.org 

Bobby McFerrin, solo performance at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $32-$68. 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

Zydeco Flames at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenez. Dance lesson at 8 p.m. Cost is $13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com  

Angel Magik at 9 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $10-$15. 548-1159. www.shattuckdownlow.com 

Larry Ochs, with Fred Firth, Mark Dresser and Miya Masaoka at 8 p.m. at The Jazz House. Donations of $8-$15 suggested. www.thejazzhouse.org 

Brown Baggin, Low Fat at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5-$7. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Leftover Dreams with Tony Marcus and Patrice Haan at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $15.50 in advance, $16.50 at the door. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Frank Jackson Trio at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810. 

Tangria at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

The Fleshies, The Frisk, Scattered Fall, Shadowboxer, in a benefit for Jesse at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $6. 525-9926. 

John Schott’s Typical Orchestra at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

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

Wallace Roney Quintet at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square, through Sun. Cost is $16. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

SUNDAY, SEPT. 12 

FILM 

Maurice Pilat: “The House in the Woods” at 3 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

“Fictitious Marriage” at 2 p.m. at the Berkeley Richmond Jewish Community Center, 1414 Walnut St. Donation $2. 848-0237. www.brjcc.org 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“Where Do We Go From Here?” a discussion of Southeast Asian cultural legacies in conjunction with the exhibit “California and the Vietnam Era” at 2 p.m. at the Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak Sts. www.museum.ca.org 

Poetry Flash with Forrest Hamer and Alice Jones at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. Donation $2. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

“Shoso-in Treasures: Reconstructing Musical Instruments,” a lecture and demonstration by Toshiro Kido at 1 p.m. at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. http://ieas.berkeley.edu 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

East/West Canvas: “Questioning Beauty” Dance performance by Sue Li Jue at 3 p.m. Berkeley Art Museum, 2626 Bancroft Way. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

Concert of Peace with the Oakland East Bay Symphony, Peace Chorus and William Corbett-Jones, piano, at 4 p.m. at St. Joseph the Worker Church, 1640 Addison St. Honoring Fr. Bill O’Donnell and St. Joseph the Worker’s 125th Anniversary. Tickets are $15-$30, reservations suggested. 843-2244. 

Philharmonia Baroque “Cupid’s Arrow” with music by Rameau at 7:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church, Dana and Durant. Tickets are $28-$62. 415-392-4400. www.philharmonia.org 

David Buice, organist, perfroms an all Bach program “Darkness into Light: A Meditation on Chorale Preludes” at 6:10 p.m. at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, 2300 Bancroft Way. 845-0888. www.stmarksberkeley.org 

La Nina Flamenco with Carola Zertuche, guitarist Jose Valle “Chuscales” and dancer Antonio Granjero, at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña. Cost is $18-$20. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Music from Japan’s Reigaku and Gagaku: A Living Tradition at 3:30 p.m. at Hertz Hall. Tickets are $28. 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

Americana Unplugged with Pete Madson at 5 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Deaf Electric, electronic experimental sounds, at 8 p.m. at The Jazz House. www.thejazzhouse.org 

Kenny Werner and Peter Barshay in a dinner concert fundraiser for the Jazzschool at 7 p.m. at Downtown. Cost is $60. 649-3810. 

John Stewart, singer-songwriter, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50 in advance, $18.50 at the door. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

MONDAY, SEPT. 13 

EXHIBITION OPENINGS 

Bella Feldman and Katherine Westerhout, sculpture and photography at the Craft and Cultural Arts Gallery, State of California Office Building Atrium, 1515 Clay St. Exhibition runs until Oct. 29. 622-8190. www.oaklandculturalarts.org 

FILM 

“The Motorcycle Diaries” at 7 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Actors Reading Writers “The Unsuitable Object of Desire” at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. Free.  

Stephen Ducat discusses “The Wimp Factor: Gender Gaps, Holy Wars & The Politics of Anxious Masculinity” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

Poetry Express featuring contributors to the “Berkeley Review of Poetry” from 7 to 9:30 p.m., at Priya Restaurant, 2072 San Pablo Ave. berkeleypoetryexpress@yahoo.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Berkeley Symphony, featuring Unsuk Chin’s Violin Concerto, Viviane Hagner, violin, at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $22-$49. 841-2800. www.berkeleysymphony.org 

Catie Curtis, contemporary folk, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage Coffee House. Cost is $17.50 in advance, $18.50 at the door. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Jackie King at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

I just finished a collection of natural history essays by Howard Ensign Evans, a retired entomologist in Colorado. One of the pieces, about a meadow where he and his wife had enjoyed songbirds and wildflowers, concludes with this paragraph: 

The meadow is now posted and is becoming a housing development. That, of course, is how essays on environmental subjects usually end. 

He’s right; modern environmental writers are about as cheerful as Richard Thompson. But if doom is our stock in trade, it’s only a reflection of the steady drumbeat of bad news: mass extinction, habitat loss, global warming, West Nile virus, overfishing. Think of all those PBS nature documentaries that end with the sound of the chainsaw. 

But there are times when we have something to celebrate rather than mourn. A couple of weeks ago I spotted a white-tailed kite at the Berkeley Marina, hovering over the field where University Avenue feeds onto Interstate 80. These raptors used to be called “angel hawks”; they’re mostly white, with pale gray wings and black shoulders, and have an ethereal look. The story of the kite is a welcome counter-example—a native species that made it back from the edge of the abyss. 

James Cooper, who published the first major study of our state’s birds in 1870, described the white-tailed kite as “quite abundant in the middle districts of California,” especially in the tule marshes of the Sacramento Valley. That was the case up through the mid-1890s, and then the kite population nosedived. In 1927 Ralph Hoffman, author of the pioneering field guide Birds of the Pacific States, estimated there were “not more than 50 pairs left in California.” 

Five years later Gayle Pickwell described the bird as “probably a dying species.” Joseph Grinnell and Alden Miller confirmed in 1944 that the kite was “rare or entirely gone” from most of its former range. 

What had happened? In part, it seems to be the old familiar story of habitat loss: wetlands drained for farming. Californians shot a lot of kites, too. The birds were unwary and made conspicuous targets. Although kites feed almost exclusively on small rodents, they were believed to prey on quail and ducks as well, and hunters killed them to eliminate the competition. Along with crows, jays, owls, and other hawks, they were targeted in mass hunts sponsored by manufacturers of ammunition. 

Then there were the oologists. Egg-collecting was one of those late-Victorian obsessions (remember Peter Cook’s character in The Wrong Box?) The eggs of the white-tailed kite, considered among the most beautiful of North American birds’, were a particular prize. 

And the increasing scarcity of the kites after the turn of the 20th century only whetted the collectors’ appetites. 

So the kite looked like a goner. But a funny thing happened on the way to extinction. Around the time of the Second World War, birders began to notice an upswing in kite numbers. And the trend continued into the ‘50s, the ‘60s, the ‘70s. White-tailed kites reclaimed much of their lost range in California and pushed north into Oregon, where they had never nested historically. They bounced back in Texas, too, and spread into Central America all the way south to Panama. The kite have had their ups and downs, declining during drought years in the last couple of decades, but they’ve come a long way from Hoffman’s 50 pairs. 

Legal protection, which came in 1905, clearly helped the kite. But this was long before the Endangered Species Act: the white-tailed kite never had a recovery plan, a captive breeding program, a critical habitat designation. In part the bird seems to have been the unintentional beneficiary of man-made changes to the California environment. And it had a set of traits that positioned it for a comeback once the shooting stopped. 

Although conversion to farmland destroyed much of the kite’s original habitat, farmers created something to replace it. Kites eat voles; voles require standing water; and fields that are irrigated year-round are a vole’s paradise. The dependable supply of rodents may have boosted the kites’ breeding success and compensated for natural fluctuations tied to rainfall cycles.  

In a 1971 article in American Birds, Eugene Eisenmann speculated about other factors in the kite’s recovery. Most birds of prey maintain exclusive territories. White-tailed kites, though, are flexible enough to nest in colonies and share hunting grounds when conditions are right. Typical hawks lay two or three eggs and produce only one brood per year; kites have four- or five-egg clutches and are sometimes double-brooded. Rather than occupying the same territory year-round, kites evolved a nomadic lifestyle, going where the voles are. This tendency to wander favored the dispersal of pioneering birds into vacated portions of the species’ range. 

During the white-tailed kite’s rebuilding years, the populations of other raptors—the peregrine falcon, the osprey, the bald eagle—went down the tubes, largely as a result of pesticides like DDT. Eisenmann suggested that the kite may have escaped the worst effects of pesticide contamination by eating low on the food chain. 

Kites eat voles that eat leaves and seeds: two steps from primary producer to predator. Eagles and ospreys, on the other hand, eat big fish that have eaten smaller fish (and so on), accumulating higher levels of toxins in the process. 

Let’s not get too optimistic here: the example of the white-tailed kite doesn’t show that endangered species can make it back from the brink of extinction without human assistance. The kite’s recovery seems to have reflected a unique mix of environmental factors and life-history traits. It was, in short, one lucky bird. And we are lucky as well that we can still see angel hawks from the freeway.m

TUESDAY, SEPT. 7 

An Evening with Richard Clarke, former counterterrorism czar and author of “Against All Enemies” at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Auditorium, UC Campus. Sponsored by the Goldman School of Public Policy. Tickets are $5-$10 available from 642-9998.  

“OUTFOXED” a documentary on media empires, led by Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News at 9:15 p.m., 1834 Park Blvd.,Oakland. Free, sponsored by Not in Our Name. 601-8006.  

National Organization for Women Oakland/East Bay Chapter meets at 6 p.m. in the Boardroom of the Oakland YWCA, 1515 Webster St. The speaker will be Jean Damu who will discuss reparations for damages caused by slavery. 287-8948. 

WriterCoach Connection (formerly Writers’ Room) seeks volunteers for this coming academic year for Berkeley schools. From 6:30 to 9:30 p.m., and on Sept. 14. Other training times available. For information please contact Lynn Mueller at 524-2319 or writercoachconnect@yahoo.com www.writercoachconnection.org 

Family Story Time at the Kensington Branch Library, Tues. evenings at 7 p.m. 61 Arlington Ave. 524-3043. 

“Trekking the Himalaya and Beyond” Practical tips for exploring the world on foot with Arlene Blum at 7 p.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. 527-4140. 

Docent Training at the Regional Parks Botanic Garden every Tues. through Feb. 8 at the Regional Parks Botanic Garden, Tilden Park. Cost is $125. To register please send a check to Dr. Glenn Keator, 1455 Catherine Drive, Berkeley, 94702. For more information call 527-9802. www.nativeplants.org 

Kairos Youth Choir Auditions for boys and girls age 7-15. For information call 414-1991. www.kairoschoir.org 

Acting and Storytelling Classes for Seniors offered by Stagebridge, at Arts First Oakland, 2501 Harrison St. Classes are held at 10 a.m. Tues.-Fri. For more information call 444-4755. www.stagebridge.org 

American Red Cross Blood Services Volunteer Orientation from 9:30 to 11 a.m. at 6230 Claremont Ave., Oakland. Advance sign-up needed 594-5165.  

Creating Economic Opportunities for Women Free orientation meetings for training programs for immigrant and refugee women in English, finance and computer skills. Also on Sept. 9. 655 International Blvd., at 7th Ave., 2nd floor. To register call 879-2949. 

Phone Banking to ReDefeat Bush on Tuesdays from 6 to 9 p.m. at Cafe de la Paz, 1600 Shattuck Ave. Bring your cell phones. Please RSVP if you can join us. 415-336 8736. dan@redefeatbush.com 

“Heal Your Back, Straighten Your Spine” at 1 p.m. at Pharmaca, 1744 Solano Ave.  

St. John’s Prime Timers meets at 9:30 a.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. Scuba diver Carl Arnoult will show underwater slides of coral reefs around the world at 11 a.m. 845-6830. 

Berkeley Camera Club meets at 7:30 p.m., at the Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. 548-3991. www.berkeleycameraclub.org 

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.  

WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 8 

Wednesday Bird Walk Discover the first of the migrants and help us with the monitoring of the shoreline, at 8:30 a.m. at Martin Luther King Jr. Shoreline. Turn into the park off Swan Way, follow the drive to the end and meet at the last parking lot by the observation deck. 525-2233. 

Workshop for Candidates and Treasurers offered by the Berkeley Fair Campaign Practices Commission at 7 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-6950. 

“Fed Up” a film at 7 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St., Oakland. Admission is free. Part of the GMOs and Food series sponsored by GMO Free Alameda County. 527-9898. www.gmofreeac.org 

Walking Tour of Old Oakland uptown to the Lake to discover Art Deco landmarks. Meet at 10 a.m. in front of the Paramount Theater at 2025 Broadway. Tour lasts 90 minutes. For reservations call 238-3234. 

Walk Berkeley for Seniors meets at 9:30 a.m. at the Sea Breeze market, just west of the I-80 overpass. Everyone is welcome, wear comfortable shoes, sunscreen and a hat. 548-9840. 

Berkeley Peace Walk and Vigil at the Berkeley BART Sta- 

tion, corner of Shattuck and Center. Vigil at 6:30 p.m., Peace Walk at 7 p.m. www.geocities. 

com/vigil4peace/vigil 

Prose Writers’ Workshop An ongoing group focused on issues of craft. Meets Wed. at 7 p.m. at the Berkeley Jewish Community Center, 1414 Walnut St. 524-3034. georgeporter@earthlink.net 

Auditions for the new Arlington Children’s Choir will be held between 4 and 6 p.m. at 52 Arlington Ave., Kensington. Children ages 8-14, who enjoy singing and performing, are invited to participate. For audition time call 843-7745. 

Poetry Writing Workshop, led by Alison Seevak, every second Wed. at 7 p.m. at the Albany Library, Edith Stone Room, 1247 Marin Ave. Registration required. 526-3700, ext. 20. 

Berkeley CopWatch open office hours 7 to 9 p.m. 548-0425. 

Rosh Hashanah “The Meeting Point Between Cosmic, Cyclical, Linear and Historical Time” A workshop presented by Avital Plan at 7:30 p.m. at the Berkeley Richmond Jewish Community Center, 1414 Walnut St. Cost is $5. 848-0237, ext. 112. 

THURSDAY, SEPT. 9 

Berkeley Folk Dancers’ Beginners Class starts and runs for 8 weeks on Thurs. at 7:45 p.m. at Live Oak Park, Shattuck at Berryman. Cost is $30. 528-9168. 

East Bay Mac User Group meets at 6 p.m.at Expression Center for New Media, 6601 Shellmound St. http://ebmug.org, 

www.expression.edu 

Grizzly Peak Flyfishers monthly meeting at 7 p.m at the Kensington Community Center, 59 Arlington Ave., with Kirston Koths on “Fly Fishing in Scotland: In Search of Sea Trout, Brown Trout and the Historical Connection to Scotch Malt Whisky.” 547-8629. 

FRIDAY, SEPT. 10 

International Literacy Day celebrated from 12:30 to 2:30 p.m. at Martin Luther King Jr. Park. Listen to authors and adult literacy students read their poetry and short stories. 981-6299. 

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon with Anne Butterworth, PhD on “Solar Wind Mission.” Luncheon at 11:45 a.m. for $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 Gloria La Riva, Cuba solidarity activist and union leader and Richard Becker, co-founder, ANSWER coalition, at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists, 1924 Cedar St., at Bonita. Donation $5. 528-5403. 

“The Wild Buffalo of Yellowstone” a discussion with the Buffalo Field Campaign at 7 p.m. at The Ecology Center, 2530 San Pablo Ave. near Dwight Way. 548-2220, ext. 233. www.ecologycenter.org 

Old Oakland Outdoor Cinema on Washington St., between 9th and 10th Sts. Music at 5 p.m., and film, “Singin’ in the Rain” at 8 p.m. Bring your own chairs and blankets. Sponsored by the City of Oakland and the Old Oakland Historic District. 238-4734. www.filmoakland.com 

Berkeley Critical Mass Bike Ride meets at the Berkeley BART the second Friday of every month at 5:30 p.m. 

Berkeley Chess Club meets at 7:15 p.m. at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. 652-5324. 

Mandala Circle of Bliss Workshops Fri.-Sun. at Belladonna, 2436 Sacramento. Cost is $175. To register call 883-0600. 

SATURDAY, SEPT. 11 

Mainstreet Moms Oppose Bush Marathon Letter-Writing Party from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. at The Common Room at Redwood Gardens, 2951 Derby Street. All materials will be provided. Please bring your own pen. A donation of $5, or more, is requested. For additional information and to RSVP, email bobbie@themmob.com  

Berkeley Path Wanderers Stroll in Miller/Knox Regional Park. Meet at 10 a.m. in the main parking lot of Miller/Knox, off Dornan Drive. For more information call 235-2835. 

Mini Farmers A farm exploration program for children accompanied by an adult. Wear boots and prepare to get dirty. At 9 a.m. at Tilden Nature Area, in Tilden Park. Cost is $3-$5, registration required. 525-2233. www.ebparks.org 

Meet My Tarantula and learn that spiders are essential in our world at 1:30 p.m. at Tilden Nature Area, in Tilden Park. 525-2233. www.ebparks.org 

Educators Academy: Monarchs in the Classroom from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at Coyote Hills Regional Park. You will construct and take home your own rearing cage, complete with milkweed and larvae. For grades K through 5. Fee is $45-$51. Registration required. 636-1684. 

California Natives Learn how natives benefit local wildlife, save water and are attractive additions to your garden at the same time. At 10 a.m. at Magic Gardens Nursery, 729 Heinz Ave. 644-2351. www.magicgardens.com 

Free Emergency Preparedness Class on Responding to Terrorism from 9 a.m. to noon at 2100 Martin Luther King Jr. Way. 981-5605. www.ci.berkeley.ca. 

us/fire/oes.html 

Walking Tour of Oakland City Center Meet at 10 a.m. in front Oakland City Hall at Frank Ogawa Plaza. Tour lasts 90 minutes. Reservations can be made by calling 238-3234. 

Collecting Good Water Quality Data, a workshop with Dr. Revital Katznelson, Environmental Scientist for the State Water Resources Control Board at Merritt College. Cost is $11. For information call 434-3840.  

Community Sing from 7 to 8:30 p.m. at 1216 Solano Ave., Albany. Adults $3, children $2. Sponsored by the Albany YMCA. 525-1130.  

Video Screening of the “Battle of Chile,” Parts 1 & 2, with introductory remarks by author, Roger Burbach at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña, 3105 Shattuck Ave.  

Luna Kids Dance Open House with a free parent/child dance class, at 10 a.m. at Grace North Church, 2138 Cedar St. 644-3629. www.lunakidsdance.com 

“Traditional Jewish Teachings on Spiritual Healing” the practice of Mussar with Dr. Alan Morinis at 8:45 p.m. at Berkeley Richmond Jewish Community Center, 1414 Walnut St. Co-sponsored by Netivot Shalom, Temple Isaiah and Temple Beth Chaim. Cost is $10-$15. To register call 523-7709. 

SUNDAY, SEPT. 12 

Solano Avenue Stroll “A Pearl of a Stroll” from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Solano Avenue in Berkeley and Albany. Parade, entertainment, food, crafts, art and antique cars and Kidtown. 527-5358. www.solanostroll.org 

Butterflies in the Garden Learn how to attract these colorful, delicate insects to your own yard at 11 a.m. at Tilden Nature Area, in Tilden Park. 525-2233. www.ebparks.org 

Monarch Migration Celebration Learn about these amazing butterflies from 1 to 4 p.m. at Tilden Nature Area, in Tilden Park. 525-2233. www.ebparks.org 

Fire Bush! A fundraiser for America Coming Together sposored by the Potter’s Studio, from noon to 6 p.m. at 637 Cedar St. Art auction, music by the BHS Jazz Combo and the Square Peg String Band, poetry, and a firing of Bush in the kiln at 5 p.m. 527-5268. 

Sunday in the Park Without George A concert and benefit for MoveOnPAC to benefit Kerry/Edwards featuring music by Bonnie Raitt and Taj Mahal, food and wine, young spoken word performances by semi-finalists of the San Francisco Poetry Slam, MoveOn founders Joan Blades and Wes Boyd, comedian and political satirist Will Durst, and other special guests. From 3 to 7 p.m. in Coventry Grove. Cost is $1,000. For reservations see www.sundayinthepark.org  

Herb Walk in Strawberry Canyon Learn to identify and use many edible and medicinal plants that grow wild in the Bay Area. Meet at noon at the Strawberry Canyon Fire Trail head, below the UC Berkeley Botanical Gardens on Centennial Drive. Walk lasts about two hours. Cost is $6 to $20 sliding scale. Offered by the Pacific School of Herbal Medicine. 845-4028. www.pshm.org  

Benefit for Habitat for Humanity and Berkeley Food and Housing Project from 2 to 5 p.m. at A New Leaf Gallery, 1286 Gilman St. Wine tasting, live improvisational jazz, food donated by Bay Area restaurants. Cost is $35. 525-7621.  

Appian Creek Clean-Up from 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Learn about the program and the trash assessment monitoring tool as we remove harmful trash. Refreshments, tools, and gloves provided. Meet at Appian Creek behind the Boys & Girls Club, 4660 Appian Way in El Sobrante. Youth under 18 years need signed permission from a parent or guardian so please contact us for a waiver in advance. Sponsored by The Watershed Project (formerly Aquatic Outreach Institute). To register or for more information, contact Elizabeth O'Shea, 231-9566 or Elizabeth@thewatershedproject.org 

Picnic for Jewish Families and Friends from 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Joaquin Miller Park. Music, magician and raffle. Sponsored by the Jewish Community Federation Young Leadership Division. www.jfed.org/picnicfest 

Rauda Morcos, Palestinian lesbian activist and poet from Kufar Yassif, Israel at 4 p.m. at Middle East Children’s Alliance. 901 Parker St. at 7th St. Donation $7-$20 sliding scale. Sponsored by BAWIB, GenerationFIVE, JFFP, JVP, MECA & QUIT. 548-0542.  

“Is Israel’s Fence Legal or Necessary?” with attorney Ephraim Margolin at 7:15 p.m. at the Berkeley Richmond Jewish Community Center, 1414 Walnut St. Sponsored by Bridges to Israel-Berkeley and the BRJCC. Donation $10. 848-0237, ext. 110. 

Neighborhood Disaster Training for Sante Fe and Gilman Sts. from 9 a.m. to noon. Sponsored by the City of Berkeley. To register call 981-5506. 

Hands-on Bike Maintenance Class Learn how to perform basic repairs on your bike, from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. Cost is $85 REI members, $100 others. Registration required. 527-4140. 

South Asian Bookclub meets to discuss “Lolita” by Vladimir Nabakov at 11:30 a.m. at Barnes and Noble, 2352 Shattuck Ave. 644-0861. 

Huston Smith will speak at 9:30 a.m. at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, 1 Lawson Rd., Kensington. Part of the Personal Theology Seminars. 525-0302.  

“The Wisdom of Chakras” at 3 p.m. at Alaya’s, The Shaman Store, 1713 University Ave. Donations requested. 548-4701. 

“Breema: The Art of Being Present” Open House with Jon Schreiber at the Breema Center 6076 Claremont Ave., at College. Call to schedule first-time Breema bodywork sessions 5:30-6:30, or attend the class at 7 p.m. 428-0937. www.breema.com 

“Dreamtime Rituals” a lecture by author/ritualist Antero Alli at 6 p.m. at Premalaya Books, 1713 University Ave., near McGee. 548-4701. 

MONDAY, SEPT. 13 

Reclaim Democracy with Joan Blades, Patricia Ellsberg and Ronnie Gilbert at 7 p.m. at the Berkeley Richmond Jewish Community Center, 1414 Walnut St. Cost is $5. 848-0237, ext. 110. 

Berkeley Community Garden Meeting at 6 p.m. at Spiral Gardens, 2838 Sacramento St. at Oregon. Potluck dinner and speaker, Rosalie Fanshel on “Growing our own Medicine.” 883-9096. 

Reportback on Haiti at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley Fellowship, Cedar and Bonita. Please bring snacks and drinks to share. 644-1937. 

Afterschool Center providing tutoring and support for Berkeley students age 5 to 14 at 1255 Alston Way. Cost is $20 per week. Sponsored by Berkeley Youth Alternatives. 845-9066. 

Great Popular Fiction Bookgroup meets to discuss “Sandstorm” by James Rollins at 7 p.m. at Barnes and Noble, 2352 Shattuck Ave. 644-0861. 

Berkeley Community Chorus and Orchestra rehearsals begin at 7 p.m. at First Congregational Church, 2345 Channing at Dana. No auditions, all welcome. 964-0665. www.bcco.org 

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 601-4040, ext. 109.  

World Affairs/Politics Discussion Group for people 60 years and over meets Mondays at 10:15 a.m. at the Albany Senior Center, 846 Masonic Ave. Join at any time. 524-9122. 

“Ulysses” Discussion Book Group at 7 p.m. at the Long Haul, 3124 Shattuck Ave. We will meet every Monday night and hope to finish by Bloomsday 2005. 

Berkeley CopWatch organizational meeting at 8 p.m. at 2022 Blake St. Join us to work on current issues around police misconduct. Volunteers needed. For information call 548-0425. 

CITY MEETINGS 

Commission on Disability meets Wed., Sept. 8, 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., Sept. 8, 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., Sept. 8, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Ruth Grimes, 981-7481. www.ci.berkeley. ca.us/commissions/planning 

Police Review Commission meets Wed. Sept. 8, 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., Sept. 8, at 7 p.m., at 201 University Ave. Cliff Marchetti. 644-6376 ext. 224. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/waterfront 

Berkeley Rent Stabilization Board meets Thurs. Sept. 9, at 7 p.m. in City Council Chambers, Pam Wyche 644-6128 ext. 113. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/rent 

Commission on Early Childhood Education meets Thurs., Sept. 9, 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, Sept. 9, at 6:45 p.m., at the South Berkeley Senior Center. The Commission is interested in hearing from Berkeley residents about the health issues that are important to them, their families, and their neighborhoods. William Rogers, 981-5344. www.ci.berkeley. 

ca.us/commissions/health 

Transportation Commission meets Thurs., Sept. 9, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Peter Hillier, 981-7000. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/transportation 

West Berkeley Project Area Commission meets Thurs., Sept. 9, at 7 p.m., at the West Berkeley Senior Center. 981-7520. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/westberkeley  

Zoning Adjustments Board meets Thurs., Sept. 9, at 7 p.m., in City Council Chambers. Mark Rhoades, 981-7410. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/zoning  ª

Faced with a court order blocking them from approving a lucrative Point Molate casino pact with a Berkeley developer, the Richmond City Council did the second-best thing Tuesday night: They voted unanimously to show their intent to sign the deal once legal clouds clear. 

ChevronTexaco, owners of the Bay Area’s largest refinery as well as all the land surrounding the site, had won a temporary restraining order Monday morning in Contra Costa County Superior Court blocking the sale pending a Sept. 20 hearing. 

The council session lasted over six hours, and featured Power Point presentations from a city-hired attorney, Berkeley developer James Levine and Gary W. Loveman, a former Harvard Business School professor turned president and CEO of Harrah’s Entertainment, the nation’s dominant gambling operator and designated Point Molate casino operator. 

The first word went to Assistant City Manager Richard McCoy, the city’s point man during negotiations on the casino deal.  

McCoy said the city’s goals included: 

• Preservation of open space 

• Ensuring the project’s long-term economic viability 

• Maintaining public access and use of the shore and undeveloped areas of the site 

• Creating a regional attraction 

• Preservation of the historic structures on the site 

• Job creation 

• Minimizing environmental impacts 

• Provision of mixed uses, and 

• Generation of money for the city 

The Berkeley Developer 

Next up was James D. Levine, a Berkeley developer who founded Upstream Point Molate LLC to develop the waterfront project. Before venturing into the gambling world, he headed LFR Levine-Fricke, one of the country’s leading environmental cleanup firms. 

A skillful organizer with deep experience in negotiating with governments, Levine began by assuring councilmembers that he’d launched the casino proposal “to do something remarkable for the City of Richmond and its people.” 

To a city afflicted with monumental debt, serious crime and drug problems, and high unemployment rates in its African American community, he offered hope, thousands of jobs and a world class resort generating an endlessly flowing fountain of dollars for empty city coffers. 

Levine also announced that Richard Cohen, a former Republican governor of Maine and Secretary of Defense in the Clinton Administration before becoming a highly paid international consultant, has become a full partner in Upstream. 

Cohen’s roles include handling negotiations with the Navy, which is still cleaning up the site, and the Interior Department bureaucracy, which has final say on whether or not the Guidiville Rancheria band of Pomo tribespeople will be granted a reservation at Point Molate—the key step before a casino can open. 

When Levine said his discussions with the tribe “were not really about money but what we can do for the community,” a chorus of groans erupted from incredulous casino foes. 

The Gambling Baron 

Next up was Loveman, whose 15-state, 47,000-employee empire is about to gain another 50,000 workers and 28 casinos across the globe as it swallows Caesars Entertainment, the once-premiere gambling combine that began as a hot dog stand in Florida. 

Harrah’s revenues topped $5 billion last year, and Loveman predicted they’d double with the Caesars takeover. The firm is also the nation’s largest tribal casino manager, with operations in Arizona, North Carolina, Kansas and San Diego.  

Across the country, 28 million adults belong to the firm’s customer loyalty program, essentially a frequent gambler program, and Loveman said 2.6 million of them live within 150 miles of Point Molate, providing a solid customer base even before the doors open.  

In addition to a casino with 2,500 to 3,000 slot machines and 125 to 160 table games, Harrah’s would run its own 350-400 room hotel at Point Molate. Another hotelier and Upstream partner, Lowe’s Entertainment, will operate the remainder of the site’s 1,100 rooms. 

Many in the audience applauded when he finished his pitch, and Richmond Vice Mayor Richard L. Griffin offered special praise for Loveman’s accessibility during negotiations. “In my 25 years (of public service), we’re never before been able to meet with a CEO and discuss the plans in detail.” 

Next up were Guidiville Tribal Chair Merleen Sanchez and Michael Derry, CEO of Black Oak Development, the tribe’s corporate arm. 

After a brief introduction by Sanchez, Derry described the tribe’s history and the illegal termination of its reservation near Ukiah by the Department of the Interior four decades ago. Though its status was restored in 1991, the tribe remains landless. 

If the casino deal survives the legal and political processes, the once-landless tribe will become Richmond’s largest employer, Derry said.  

Red, Gold and Diamond 

Derry was followed by former Las Vegas Mayor Jan Laverty Jones, who appeared in a red mini-skirt and sporting Christian Dior pumps (the designer label prominent in rather large brass plates), and heavy gold jewelry—including a pricey necklace, a ring dominated by a three-carat or so canary yellow diamond and a gaudy Chanel pin with gold tassels. 

Jones—who ran a car dealership before her entry into politics—became the subject of no less than eight ethics hearings (none sustained) during her reign as Sin City’s chief executive. A prominent Democrat and friend of former President Bill Clinton, her political career ended with a failed gubernatorial run, paving the way for the current mayor, former mob lawyer Oscar Goodman. 

Today she’s a senior vice president of Harrah’s in charge of communications and travels the country helping Harrah’s sell its gaming proposals to legislatures and city councils, as well as campaigning against increased gambling. 

The Well-Connected Lawyer 

Last to speak before the meeting was thrown open to the 67 people who’d signed up for the public comment period was John Knox, a partner with Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, a powerfully connected law firm that specializes in representing government agencies in bond issues and other complex financial negotiations. 

A Sept. 6, 2002 feature in New York Lawyer, headlined “Firm Cashes In On Relationships With Politicos,” detailed Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe’s substantial campaign contributions, and the substantial fees it earned—such as $147,000 from Pittsburg during the 2001-2000 California legislative session. 

The son of a legendary figure in California Democratic politics, former Assembly floor leader of the same name, Knox served as the Richmond’s hired gun during pact negotiations. His Power Point presentation was heavy on text and bullet points (unlike those of Levine and Loveman, who alternated flashier graphics with their own bullet points.) 

Knox carefully pointed out that while the accord says the tribe must submit their designs to the city for review, they alone have the final say on whether they heed whatever the city proposes. The city also has to pay for site maintenance, which currently runs about $500,000 a year, half of Upstream’s million-dollar-a-year option fee. 

Then it was time for the public. 

The Boosters 

While the strongest support came from organized labor and Richmond’s job-starved African American community, many speakers favored the casino as a much-needed jolt to jump-start the city into prosperity. 

While Rev. Andre Shumake of the North Richmond Missionary Baptist Church acknowledged that he didn’t like gambling, he said that in a neighborhood where community centers had closed and people are “still reeling from the shooting death of (athlete) Terrence Kelly and the fact that a 15-year-old resident is accused of the crime. . .we can’t afford the luxury of principle when our young men and women are dying on the street.” 

Marshall Walk III turned in signatures he’d collected in support of the casino from 500 youths he had approached on Cutting Boulevard. 

Labor proponents included officers of the AFL-CIO of Contra Costa County, the Richmond Police Management Association, the building trades unions, and Jim Russey, the well connected political powerhouse from Firefighters Local 188. 

Bonnie Daily, a 28-year resident, seemed to endorse the project partly as an act of protest again ChevronTexaco. Daily blasted the project’s courtroom opponent and the city’s largest source of jobs as “a bully in this town for a long time. The concerns they have expressed have been fabricated.” 

City Council candidate Kathy “Storm” Scharff waxed rhapsodic, praising Levine’s plan as “a gift from heaven” to a debt-plagued city that “could make us the Monte Carlo by the Bay.” 

“We cannot lose with it,” she declared. 

African American council candidate Tony Thurman called the proposal “a critical opportunity for the City of Richmond”—most notably, jobs for his would-be constituents. 

But Thurman added a word of caution, calling for the creation of an official commission, “a community accountability group to make sure the agreement is properly implemented.” 

The Opposition  

A third council candidate, Gayle McLaughlin of the Richmond Progressive Alliance, made her position clear the moment she walked up to the microphone. 

“Gambling has a history of destroying societies,” she said. “Gambling does not create wealth, it merely redistributes it—mostly from the have-nots to the haves. You’re gambling with the future of our community and you have no right to do that.” 

McLaughlin also scorned ChevronTexaco’s offer of $34 million as “a disingenuous act from an arm of the war machine.” 

Opposition largely derived from a combination of moral and environmental concerns, as well as McLaughlin’s cynicism about the notion of corporate benevolence. 

Charles Smith called Tuesday night’s gathering a “sham meeting” from a short-sighted opportunistic government.” 

Several faces were familiar from the oil firm’s carefully staged Aug. 13 outdoor press conference, where the counter-offer was first floated: Norman La Force appeared for the Sierra Club, Arthur Feinstein for the Golden Gate Audubon Society, Robert Cheasty of Citizens for the East Shore State Park and Save the Bay co-founder Sylvia McLaughlin. 

Richmond resident Soula Culver, daughter of a Native American father and an outspoken environmentalist, said “it’s a shame that the only way a Native American can make money is to hook up with ripoff artists” and blasted the casino agreement as “a deal city hall crafted behind closed doors with an out-of-town developer.” 

Dean O’Hair, spokesman for Richmond’s ChevronTexaco refinery, detailed the firm’s opposition, beginning the claim cited in their successful plea for the Temporary Restraining Order blocking the sale; namely that Richmond’s pact violated California law requiring that government-owned property must first be offered to other public agencies before it can be sold to private parties. 

O’Hair also charged that the pact doesn’t require Upstream to build anything, nor does it mandate that they hire and train a workforce from the local community—only that they expend “reasonable effort” to do so. 

The Non-Deal Deal 

When the last speaker left the podium at 11:46 p.m., the council voted to extend the meeting until 12:30, then retired behind closed doors to work on the legal wording of a resolution from Councilmember Nathaniel Bates. 

When they reassembled in Council Chambers a 12:16, Interim City Attorney Everett Jenkins read the final result, spelling out the council’s intent to sign the agreement whenever the court gives its approval. 

New language promised that the citizens of surrounding communities will “strongly benefit” from construction and ongoing jobs at the resort complex. 

The language also pave the way for the city to “conduct negotiations in conformity with the (state) Surplus Property Act” should the judge agree with ChevronTexaco. 

New language was inserted promising permanent public access to the 150 acres of open space and shoreline on the property. 

Insisting on being heard over the initial objections of Mayor Irma L. Anderson, Councilmember Tom Butt sought confirmation that the agreement would obligate the council to offer the land under the Surplus Property Act, and that the resolution didn’t vest any legal rights with the developer. 

On receiving reassurance from Jenkins, Butt joined his fellow councilmembers in a unanimous vote.?

Willard Middle School appears headed towards a distinction it could do without: the fourth school in Berkeley to run afoul of President Bush’s No Child Left Behind Law. 

District officials said Wednesday that after failing to meet federal achievement standards two years running, Willard will probably have to draft an improvement plan, offer students the chance to transfer, and provide extra funding for staff development. 

When a school enters program improvement status, it means that the district must evaluate the school’s teaching and administration practices and devise a program to raise student performance to avoid further penalties. If the school continues to fail for five consecutive years the district could face a state take-over of the school. 

“It doesn’t look too good [for Willard],” said District Curriculum Director Neil Smith, who wouldn’t confirm that the school would enter year one of federally-mandated “program improvement” until he received official word from state education authorities. 

Three elementary schools already penalized under the federal testing regime also received failing marks and face more severe consequences than Willard. Cragmont Elementary, now in year two of program improvement status, must continue working on its improvement plan and provide supplemental services to eligible students. Washington, now in year three, will likely need to revamp its curriculum, but could face a staff overhaul or outside takeover. Rosa Parks Elementary, now in year four, underwent a massive staff overhaul by the district last spring. 

News that nearly one-third of its schools might now be labeled failing underscored a disappointing performance by Berkeley students on the California Standards Test, released Tuesday by the California Board of Education.  

While Berkeley still bested the average district scores in the county and state, the gap is closing. On the state’s Academic Performance Index (API) which grades schools and districts on a scale of 1-to-1000, Berkeley Unified scored 731, the same as last year. Meanwhile, across the county, scores rose 11 points to 724 and statewide scores jumped 10 points to 693.  

However, the state’s academic indicators mean little under the more punitive system established by No Child Left Behind. While the state system measures progress based on improvement by all students from one year to the next, the federal law instead bases a school’s success on the percentage of students who meet proficiency standards in math and English. 

Under No Child Left Behind, schools that repeatedly fail to make “adequate yearly progress” (AYP) face increasingly strict reform. Subpar participation in testing or a failure by poor students, English learners or any statistically significant racial group to reach performance goals prevents a school from making AYP under the law. 

To actually face punishment, however, a school must receive federal Title 1 money doled out to schools with high percentages of poor children and fail in the same area two years in a row. All Berkeley elementary and middle schools receive some form of Title I assistance. 

Different measures of performance for state and federal testing systems can lead to mixed messages about Berkeley schools. Cragmont, for instance, saw its API increase from 743 to 787—the fifth highest score among district elementary schools. That wasn’t enough, however, to keep the school from advancing to year two in program improvement under No Child Left Behind. 

Cragmont—one of just two schools in the district to have five statistically significant ethnic and socioeconomic subgroups—failed to meet English standards for its English learners population. Only 13.2 percent (seven out of 53) scored proficient or above.  

Required proficiency thresholds for students in elementary and middle schools are 13.6 percent for English and 16 percent for math. The thresholds must increase gradually until 2014 when all students must test proficient. 

“We’re a little frustrated,” said Cragmont Principal Jason Lustig. “We figure if we keep improving we won’t have problems.” 

The other Berkeley schools penalized under federal law had less of a silver lining. Washington, which like Cragmont failed the test last year based only on its participation rate, backslid this year. Only nine percent of African Americans and 11.2 percent of socio-economically disadvantaged students at the school scored proficient in English. 

Rosa Parks improved 13 points to 666 on the state measure, but failed to reach proficiency levels for five subgroups of students. African American students, as a group, and socio-economically disadvantaged students, as a group, failed to meet the math requirement and Latino, English learners and socio-economically disadvantaged students failed, as groups, to meet set thresholds on the English test. 

All three middle schools improved their overall state scores, but for the second straight year they saw African American students, as a group, performed dismally in math.  

At Willard, eight percent of African American students (19 out of 235) scored proficient. At King 14.7 percent were proficient and at Longfellow 15.4 percent met federal standards. Both schools managed to avoid Willard’s apparent fate because the socio-economically disadvantaged students at those schools met set goals on the tests. Just 12.9 percent of socio-economically disadvantaged students at Willard scored proficient on math, the second consecutive year the subgroup failed the test.  

Scores at Berkeley High dropped 16 points to 709 on the state performance index. 

Other disappointments for the district included LeConte and Oxford elementary schools, both of which saw their state scores plummet by more than 30 points. Poor students at LeConte failed to reach proficiency in English, putting the school at risk of entering program improvement status if it suffers a repeat performance next year. 

Oxford, which last year boasted the highest overall score in the district, this year claimed the title of biggest achievement gap between African American and white students. Eighty-one percent of whites were proficient on English and 79 percent on math, compared to 15 percent and 20 percent for African Americans.  

Smith noted that over the past five years Berkeley’s API scores have risen steadily and played down the significance year-to-year fluctuations. “Especially in the smaller elementary schools 25 percent of students tested are different from the year before. That’s a significant chunk,” he said. 

On the brighter side, Thousand Oaks Elementary—Berkeley’s other school with five statistically significant subgroups—passed with flying colors and raised its state ranking 37 points to 769. Jefferson Elementary improved its state score 45 points to 845, the highest tally in the district. 

Berkeley also appears to have dodged the attendance bullet. After 12 of its 16 schools failed to meet the 95 percent participation threshold last year in all of their subgroups, this year only seven schools failed on participation and none appeared to have been thrust into program improvement status for a participation violation. 

?

Last October Berkeley swimmers—fresh from a six-month campaign of chlorine-infested fundraising—presented the City Council with a gift they couldn’t refuse: cold hard cash.  

Twenty-seven thousand dollars to be exact, enough to help prevent the scheduled winter closure of Willard Pool. 

In June the council paid them back as only a cash strapped city could. They announced the winter closure of both Willard and West Campus pools, leaving swimmers only the jam-packed King Pool from November through May. 

This year, the council’s passage of another pool-busting budget caused barely a ripple at city pools for months, but when the signs went up and the letters sent out about the impending closures, a tidal wave began to mount. 

Now, in a deal struck with the city’s Department of Parks and Recreation at a Tuesday meeting, swimmers have six weeks to raise $13,316 to save neighborhood access to the West Campus pool, located at Addison and Curtis streets.  

Berkeley swimmers were slower off the starting block this year and have already conceded Willard Pool, at Telegraph Avenue and Derby Street, which would have required a $70,000 cash infusion. Their struggle is emblematic of the challenge to maintain public recreation when time and money are in short supply. 

“I think this is the best we can get,” said Bill Hamilton, a Willard swimmer, who helped organize last year’s drive to save his local pool. “If they cut West Campus, it will be much harder to recover. The people in charge wouldn’t know what they were losing.” 

The reason West Campus remains financially salvageable is that the city—much to the swimmers’ frustration—planned to close the pool to the public but keep the pool heated and opened for private swim groups like the Berkeley Bears youth swim team which pays the city $22,000 a year in rent. Willard on the other hand is scheduled only to house a shower program for the homeless. 

“[West Campus] was a tough call”, said Parks and Recreation Director Marc Seleznow. “From my point of view we were just trying to save labor costs.”  

Pools in Berkeley have always been a financial black hole. For the current fiscal year, based on the presumed winter closures, Seleznow projected that the pools will cost the city $830,000 a year and bring in only $347,700. Although usage and fees are up, so is the cost of natural gas used to keep the pools heated, he said. 

Lap swimmers who use the public pools must buy a monthly pass for $68 or pay $4.50 for each visit. 

Compounding the problem is that the city’s most logical financial partner, and potentially the swimmer’s most influential political ally—the Berkeley Unified School District, owner of the city-managed pools—droped out of the swim instruction business last year. 

“There’s no money for it,” said district spokesperson Mark Coplan. 

An agreement signed in 1991 between the district and city pledged both sides to reimburse one another for use of each other’s facilities, but neither side has bothered to make payments. Under the 1991 agreement the district was supposed to fund a portion of the electricity, gas and water expenses, estimated to cost $80,000 a year, for school-sponsored water programs. 

With money in short supply, South Berkeley’s Willard Pool and West Berkeley’s West Campus Pool have become endangered species each of the past three springs. In 2002, swimmers, armed with goggles, filled the council’s chamber’s and in an election year, pressured the council to reverse its decision to close both pools. Last year, the council voted to close Willard, but swimmers banded together to raise enough money and increase programming to spare the pool. 

For swimmers in South and West Berkeley, their anger at this year’s proposed winter pool closings is fueled in part by the perennial choice to keep open North Berkeley’s King Pool. 

“King is always the sacred cow,” said longtime Willard swimmer Barbara Traylor. “Why should South Berkeley always have to suck it up?” 

Seleznow didn’t have the statistics, but he said King annually attracts the most money and houses the most programs. Willard, conversely, is mainly used for lap swim, while West Campus houses the Berkeley Adult Masters program, which brings upwards of 80 swimmers to the pool.  

“That’s why we need West Campus Pool,” said Masters coach Blythe Lucero. “We wouldn’t want to bump people from King.” 

Seleznow said he’d be open to alternating pool closures in future years so South and West Berkeley swimmers don’t face the brunt of the pool closures. 

Traditionally Berkeley only kept King open in the winter. In the early 1990s they opened the other two pools for winter swimming under pressure from swimmers demanding swimming access in South and West Berkeley. 

Winter pool closures aren’t unheard of elsewhere in California. Oakland, with nearly quadruple Berkeley’s population has seven public pools, but keeps only two available to the public from November to April. 

With the city earlier this year demanding that each department cut its budget by about 10 percent to close a $10 million deficit in its general fund, recreational programs have taken a hit. While athletic fields and basketball courts remain open, the department has had to cut structured activities that require paid supervision, Seleznow said. 

Berkeley’s ability to preserve access has rested primarily on the organization of the swimmers, which unraveled this year. Unlike in previous years, swimmers didn’t lobby the council or offer their services to keep pools open. 

“We got burned out,” Traylor said. “People have jobs and a life. We don’t get paid to go to these meetings.” 

Now with many of the veterans of past pool wars in permanent retirement, a new crop of swimming advocates is planning a final dash to save West Campus. 

They’ve scheduled a 24-hour Swim-A-Thon for early October, which they hope will raise enough get them to next winter. 

“We’re in this for the long term,” said Mark Pingree, who is helping organize the effort. “We know next year won’t be the end of our troubles.” 

One of the longest serving police officers in recent Berkeley history will go out as with one of the briefest reigns as police chief. 

Roy Meisner, 55, announced his retirement Wednesday, effective Dec. 31, after more than three decades in the Berkeley Police Department, the last two serving as Berkeley’s top cop.  

“I’ve been doing this 32 years and it’s time,” said Meisner. He said he had taken the job thinking he’d stay five years, but decided it was time to pass the job over to someone who would be in it for the long term. 

“It’s time to do strategic planning and when I looked five years out, I had to ask is that me leading the department or is that someone else?” he said. 

Meisner said he didn’t approach the job as a transitional leader, but came to feel like his “number one job was to prepare my successor.” 

Meisner becomes the latest to join the recent exodus of top administrators from city government. In the past few months City Clerk Sherry Kelly, Fire Chief Reginald Garcia and Human Resources Director Nikki Spillane have all announced their plans to retire. 

City Manager Phil Kamlarz attributed the slew of resignations to the city’s generous retirement benefits, which are especially lucrative for police officers like Meisner. “He’s working for free right now,” said Kamlarz, referring to Meisner’s city-funded pension.  

State law mandates that Meisner receive 90 percent of his annual salary, listed last January at $162,230, for an annual pension of at least $146,007. Additionally, through the city’s Supplemental Retirement Income Plan, which currently sets aside annual payments of $2,170 per employee in addition to salary, Meisner could get an additional six-figure payout. 

Berkeley will conduct a nationwide search for Meisner’s replacement and will consider in-house applications, Assistant City Manager Arrietta Chakos said. She expected the search to extend past Meisner’s final day on the job, she added, making the appointment of an interim chief likely. 

Speculation among police watchers is that Captain Stephanie Fleming, a Berkeley native and 26-year department veteran, would be the Berkeley officer most likely to win the promotion. Earlier this year, she was the point person on the department’s failed attempt to start a canine unit. If appointed chief, Fleming would be the first woman to lead the city’s police force. 

Kamlarz said whoever succeeds Meisner will have a tough act to follow. “Roy’s one of the people whose judgment I can trust on any given issue,” he said. 

Meisner started his career in 1972 as a patrol officer in a very different Berkeley.  

“The riot years had turned the community and officers against each other,” he said. “’Pigs off campus was the phrase.’ Now it’s just the opposite,” he said. 

Though Meisner doesn’t live in Berkeley and wouldn’t give his city of residence, he said 32 years of policing Berkeley had left an indelible mark. “There are many people who raised me in this community and shaped my thinking on the issues,” he said. As chief, Meisner said he “emphasized basic responsibility about enforcing the law and doing it courteously.” 

Meisner assumed the top job under tough circumstances: The era of city cutbacks was just underway and improved retirement benefits resulted in a much younger, less experienced force. 

“We really developed a team approach to handling the cuts,” said Meisner who praised his union for agreeing to a city-requested salary giveback. In the latest round of cuts, Meisner lost 13 police officer jobs that were already vacant. 

For the new officers, Meisner said he revisited departmental orders and changed them to further one of his chief tasks: restoring community policing in Berkeley. 

Councilmember Kriss Worthington credited Meisner with reviving the program, which he said had been ignored under former Chief Dash Butler.  

Like his predecessor, Meisner also caught flak for the department’s reputation of not divulging crime details to residents. Meisner oversaw the department putting its police log online, and said the department would become better at dispensing information to the community when it replaces its outdated crime analysis system. 

Asked about a specific memory, Meisner, like several veteran Berkeley officers immediately recalled the night of Sept. 27, 1990 when a lone gunman open fire and took 33 hostages at Henry’s Publick House, a Telegraph Avenue Bar. As operations commander, Meisner was never on the scene for the seven hour stand-off that ended when a SWAT team stormed the bar and killed the gunman, but that didn’t diminish what how he felt about the work of his fellow officers. “You celebrate the great people you work with,” he said. “I was never as proud of the department.” 

›

State environmental officials threw a major stumbling path on the road to a controversial massive high-rise residential complex near the Richmond shoreline this week, halting a crucial excavation and raising the specter that work might not recommence till spring. 

Cherokee-Simeon, the partnership of a Marin County developer and a Colorado-based firm specializing in development on restored brownfields (i.e., cleaned-up toxic waste sites), have only September and October to excavated contaminated soils from shoreline marshland. 

November marks the start of the nesting season for the Clapper Rail, an endangered shorebird regularly observed along the Richmond waterfront. After that, the dig could only take placed when the nestlings have taken wing in the spring. 

Barbara J. Cook, the Berkeley-based chief of Northern California coastal cleanup for the state Department of Toxic Substances Control, triggered the halt Monday with a four-page letter to the Regional Water Quality Control Board.  

Assembymember Loni Hancock followed up the next day with a letter of her own, asking the board to halt the project until Cook’s questions were resolved. 

IRG Environmental is handling the cleanup, following a plan produced by LFR Levine-Fricke, an Emeryville-based toxic cleanup specialty firm once headed by would-be Point Molate casino developer James D. Levine of Berkeley. 

The original cleanup plan was formulated when Simeon Properties targeted the site for an industrial park, and Cook said it failed to take into account the more recent plans for housing—which requires a higher set of standards because of round-the-clock occupancy and the presence of children. 

Cook also cited the plan’s failure to spell out what would happen to the water in the marsh mud excavated during the cleanup. 

While the cleanup plans called for processing the mud on site and burying it under the soil cap already encasing burned pyrite cinders on the site, Cook questioned whether that could be done without a hazardous waste permit from her agency’s Hazardous Waste Management Branch. 

Cook also wanted greater public access to air-monitoring results from sensors on the site, particularly for residents without computers and therefore unable to access the web site created for that purpose. 

The toxics expert also wants more information about the developer’s plan for control of contaminated dust during the cleaning, tighter standards for exposure levels permissible to site workers and the surrounding community and an explanation for the company’s selection of contaminants to be monitored in the air. 

Residents have protested the presence of a view-blocking high-rise on the waterfront and environmental activists have expressed concerns that the project and its tenants might drive out the endangered and threatened species that frequent the area. 



Rapid buses along regular streets versus dedicated high-speed bus lanes, finances, safety, driver accountability, air quality, and dwindling bus routes are expected to be some of the issues that will shape two contested AC Transit Board races this November. 

Two political newcomers are running against the incumbent in the at-large race, while the District 2 incumbent faces an expected tough challenge against the bus system’s drivers’ and mechanics’ union president. 

In addition, under Measure BB, area voters will be asked to increase the parcel tax by $2-a-parcel to support the transit agency, which operates a $250 million budget with 1,200 drivers operating 800 buses. 

In the at-large seat, seven-ear incumbent H.E. Christian Peeples is opposed by paralegal James K. Muhammad and Rebecca Rae Oliver, a student and technical editor. 

AC Transit at-large candidates run from the district as a whole, from Pinole at the northern tip to Fremont at the southern, at its midpoint going as far east as Pleasanton, but for the most part staying west of the foothills. 

Peeples, an antitrust and real estate and securities fraud attorney, is active in the AC Transit Bus Riders Union. “I think the main issue in the race is explaining to people what’s been going on with our finances,” Peeples said. “Why there have been cuts in bus service. Although people understand to a certain extent because of cuts in other areas of local government, I think people are quite concerned.” 

Peeples was also critical of the transit agency’s public information campaign concerning its new buses. “Quite frankly, we have done a terrible job in helping passengers adjust to the new buses. I’m trying hard with our staff to get them to do something about that. They’re good buses, but they take some getting used to.” He lists what he called equitable service distribution as another of his key continuing issues. 

“In the past,” he said, “we had distributed service largely on complaints. And it turns out—not too surprisingly—that people who are wealthier and better educated are better at writing complaints. And so we had a lot of pretty empty buses running through more affluent areas and in some of the poor areas of town, we had people literally not being able to get on a bus, particularly in the morning rush hours. So we’ve had to readjust and put bus service where people actually ride it.” 

Muhammad, who says he has worked for paralegal firms in the past but is currently working independently, said that the new busses are “not safe.” He also complained about the “changing of the destination of bus lines,” a problem often talked about by passengers waiting at area bus stops. 

Muhammad also said that “a lot of people who don’t even ride the bus” are part of AC Transit’s problem. “They create issues to try to divert the attention of the general public who do use the bus, and their primary interest is not to let the right person get in there [on the board].” 

Rebecca Rae Oliver could not be contacted in connection with this article. 

District 2 

Former Emeryville mayor Greg Harper is running for his second term on the AC Transit Board representing Ward 2 against Amalgamated Transit Union Local 192 president Christine Zook. 

Ward 2 encompasses Emeryville, Piedmont, and Oakland from the Berkeley border to a jagged southern border running from Park Boulevard in the hills down to 42nd Avenue in the lower flats, as well as the southeastern corner of Berkeley from Cedar Street to the Oakland border along Telegraph Avenue. 

Harper, an attorney, believes he is being targeted by the union both because he has been tough on enforcing driver behavior codes, but also because “the drivers’ union would like to take out a director; if they can beat one, it sends a message to the other directors.” 

Harper said that although most of the district’s drivers do their job well, he said there were “far too many rider complaints of incidents involving driver accountability” from what he called “a small number of drivers.” In his campaign statement on file at the Alameda County Registrars Office, Harper said that “AC Transit is now pressuring the few remaining drivers who pass up passengers, are rude to passengers, run lights, or abuse benefits to change or find other work. 

“You’ve got to be able to get drivers to understand that they can’t do these kinds of things, and that’s something for which [my opponent] has taken great umbrage [as union president]. She really wants to be able to protect drivers, but I say that a good, strong union does self-discipline. And this union isn’t doing that.” 

Harper lists the new Rapid Bus service—currently operating on San Pablo and “fully funded” for Telegraph, Broadway, and International Boulevard, and the pending arrival of gas-electric hybrid buses as two of the promises he has kept to voters to “put passengers first.” 

Zook, a 12-year transit union president and a 27-year AC Transit employee, says “equity in justice in transportation” is the key issue in the campaign. “Voters [in the East Bay] decided to fund transit through taxes so that people, not profits, would be the bottom line,” she writes in her candidate statement. “Yet the current board has voted repeatedly for massive service reductions, fare increases, and contracting out service despite the needs of riders and workers.” 

She also disputed the success of the Rapid Bus service. “It’s not finished yet,” she said, “notwithstanding what my opponent is saying about it being completed. Rapid Bus is supposed to be on San Pablo Avenue, but there’s not nearly the number of shelters, LED readouts for the time until the next bus is coming, the district isn’t cleaning up the shelters that are out there already. And the other facet of the Rapid Bus system that has yet to be implemented is the proof of payment system.” 

Proof of payment—a system used in several local light-rail systems such as that operated by VTA in the South Bay—allows passengers to purchase a transit ticket before they get on the bus, but does not require them to display that ticket when they get on the bus. Enforcement is done by periodic checks by transit police, who levy hefty fines for all passengers who cannot produce a ticket. Zook said implementation of such a system would speed up the Rapid Bus service considerably. 

“I’m real concerned that AC Transit and Harper in particular are going around saying that Rapid Bus on San Pablo is complete, when, in fact, it’s not,” Zook said. “They have not fulfilled their commitments to the cities along that corridor. I’m really interested in making sure that the district maintains those commitments.”Ó

It felt perfectly appropriate when Raul Cardenas bent down and kissed the stairs of San Jose’s Superior Court. Twice. State Drug Agent Michael Walker, the killer of his brother Rudy Cardenas, had just been indicted for voluntary manslaughter after a week-long open grand jury session.  

It was a triumph for the grass-roots movement to stop needless police shootings and may mark a turning point in police accountability in the San Francisco Bay Area. A new fraternity of families—Latino, black and Asian—who have lost loved ones to police shootings cheered the indictment.  

From the beginning, the Cardenas family knew the district attorney's office would be more accountable if the grand jury hearings were open. This was a lesson learned from the family of Cau Bich Tran, a 25-year-old Vietnamese woman who was shot by a police officer in her kitchen in San Jose in July 2003. The Tran family pushed for an open grand jury. Tran’s was only the second open hearings in San Jose history.  

Although Officer Chad Marshall wasn’t indicted for Tran’s death, the open hearings led to media coverage and touched off a public debate that went beyond the Vietnamese community. “The Tran family even wrote letters to the district attorney’s office about getting our grand jury case open,” says Regina Cardenas, Rudy’s 26-year-old daughter.  

Gary Woods, of the Coalition for Justice and Accountability, says the multiethnic group has effectively challenged the police. “The police have become very good at spin when they can target a specific community.” Woods recalls that after Tran's shooting San Jose police responded to the bad publicity “by placing ads on Vietnamese radio within 24 hours and sending reps to community centers to say how unfortunate the incident was.” He says that with a movement that extends to Latino, black and other Asian communities, “the police have more pressure on them to actually change things.”  

When the families marked the first anniversary of Tran’s death, the memorial service grew to include the family of Chila Amaya, a 35-year-old Latina from Union City; the family of Cammerin Boyd, a 29-year-old black man who was killed in May in San Francisco; and the family of Rudy Cardenas, who was shot in the back by Walker in downtown San Jose.  

The families testified to their common experiences—the needless shooting of a loved one, their inability to get answers, the vilification of the deceased in the media as drug users, mentally unstable or criminals, and court sessions that move painfully slow. The gathering was remarkably diverse. When Tran was killed, the memorial service was almost exclusively Vietnamese. Now, the families have a new collective identity.  

Lonny Amaya’s sister, Chila, 35, was shot by a policeman in 1998 in her house in Union City. When Lonny first heard about Tran’s death he went to her apartment in downtown San Jose. “I met her boyfriend, and we just stood outside arm in arm for hours. I knew exactly what he was going through.” He adds, “Color stops being an issue once the officer pulls the trigger.”  

Two months ago, the Union City Council gave Chila’s shooter, Officer Woodward, an “Officer of the Year” award. The Amayas, led by Chila’s mother, went to protest. “After my mother yelled at all the officers, the mayor asked her to go out to the lobby. As we were walking, Cammerin Boyd's mother came. I introduced them and they both cried and held each other,” Lonny says.  

Marylon Boyd finishes the story. “At the time, right after Cammerin’s death, I was so traumatized, I felt like my voice had been taken. Seeing Mrs. Amaya, this small woman getting in their faces, gave me my voice back. I told her, ‘I get strength from you.’ She said, ‘Don’t worry, later the words will come.’”  

Marolyn’s son, Cammerin, 29, was killed last May by undercover officers, as he was getting out of a car. Cammerin was a paraplegic from a prior accident, a fact Marylon is certain the police were aware of.  

Marylon knows the ties the families are making in the larger community. “When I go to the shops near my office that have Vietnamese owners, they tell me how happy they are to see me on TV talking also about Cau Tran. They felt there was not enough attention on her case, and my voice was helping getting their story out as well as Cammerin’s.” 

The Coalition recently met in the San Jose Vietnamese Community Center to discuss Walker’s grand jury indictment with Tran’s lawyer. They planned a meeting with the San Jose Independent Police Auditor about the unusually long delay in medical help to both Rudy Cardenas and Cau Tran. They had already pressured the city to invest in non-lethal weaponry to prevent more needless deaths. Turning to the mostly Vietnamese audience Marylon Boyd said, “The indictment is not just a victory for our family, but it's for all of our families.” 

Ray Jayadev is the director of Debug, a magazine for young people in California’s Silicon Valley, and a project of Pacific News Service. 

›

Iran is the main motivational force behind the political ambitions of fiery Shi’ite cleric Muqtada Al Sadr, whose militants recently engaged U.S. and interim government forces in bloody battles in Najaf. Al Sadr, who lacks political stature, rebelled to ensure a place for himself in the new Iraq before the January elections. Indeed, through the fighting he escalated, his prestige rose, and the interim Iraqi government had to negotiate with him to end the fighting. Not bad for Iran’s main ally in Iraq.  

Unlike the first Iraqi Shiite uprising last April, sparked when the Americans tried to arrest Al Sadr, this time Al Sadr himself started the rebellion in Najaf. He cleverly led the Americans into armed face-offs by threatening to attack oil installations and declaring sovereignty in three major southern districts: Al Basrah, Al Amarah, and Al Naseriyah.  

In the first uprising the Americans underestimated the extent of Al Sadr’s support base. This time around the U.S. misread his inelegance. The Americans thought Al Sadr’s provocation was a good opportunity to get rid of him. They were wrong. Ayatollah Al Sistani, Iraq’s most respected religious leader, who sees Iran (via Al Sadr) as a threat to his religious authority, even willingly went on a three-week medical trip to London on the same day the Americans attacked Al Sadr’s Mahdi army. Analysts saw this trip as an implicit blessing on the U.S. move.  

Al Sadr, however, turned the attack to his advantage. At the peak of the fighting, he gave a speech in the Holy Shrine in Najaf, wearing the white clothes of martyrdom, his hand wrapped in white bandage for injuries he sustained the during American attacks. He vowed to fight “until the last drop of his blood.” Thus, Al Sadr gained tremendous support—he was widely seen as a freedom fighter willing to die with his men to free the country and the holy sites from foreign occupation.  

This explains why Al Sistani was extremely angry at the destruction in Najaf and intervened. He called on Iraqis to go to the holy city en mass to show that he was the one that still mattered most.  

Nonetheless, Al Sadr’s political stature was bolstered while the interim government’s was weakened. Al Sadr established himself as a leader who can’t be marginalized in a new Iraq, even by Al Sistani.  

This was a major objective of Iran, which is trying to make Al Sistani change his religious school of thought. Al Sistani, who had to coexist with Saddam Hussein, evolved the “Welih Al Jozeah” school of religious thought, wherein the ayatollah is only in charge of religious affairs. By contrast, in Iran the ayatollah is the supreme leader in both religious and state affairs—“Weliat Al Faqeh.” 

Iran’s aim to create another Hezbolah movement in Iraq depends on its ability to make Al Sistani accept Al Sadr as his military arm, thus re-creating the unique relationship that exists between the Grand Ayatollah of Lebanon and his charismatic young leader Nasrallh, who functions as his military leader.  

This end game is viewed as a threat by the U.S., which could face the same fate that Israel eventually faced in southern Lebanon. It is also seen as a threat by Arab regimes that have a long history of oppressing their Shiite populations. American success in preventing Iran from extending its influence in Iraq depends on the U.S.’ ability to muster the Arab regimes’ support for Iyad Allawi’s interim government.  

Al Sadr’s threat to declare sovereignty in Iraq’s Shiite region compelled some Arab media to warn against increased civil unrest not only in Iraq, but also in Arab countries with Shiite populations like Yemen, Saudi Arabia and Lebanon as well as other Muslim countries like Pakistan. The London-based newspaper Al Sharq Al Awsat called this the threat of the “Shiite Crescent.”  

The U.S. occupation of Iraq has already created increased tension between the Shiites and Sunnis, which in some cases has exploded into violence. In Yemen, where the Shiites are 30 percent of the population, an uprising led by the Shiite leader Hussein Al-Houthy, who has been fighting government forces since June, has claimed 900 lives and injured thousands of people.  

Saudi Arabia’s Shiites (15 percent of the population) have a history of fighting with the government. The most violent clash was in Nov. 1979, when the government killed dozens of Shiite civilians while crushing an uprising inspired by Ayatollah Seyed Al-Khamenei’s Islamic revolution in Iran. In the wake of Shiite empowerment in Iraq, the Saudi Shiites have submitted a statement called “Partners in Our Homeland” to Crown Prince Abdullah, with clear demands for their “legitimate rights.”  

The conservative Iran of today, which emerged after the elections last February, is different from the Iran of moderate President Mohammed Khatami, who called for Shiite empowerment through stronger bonds with the Sunni majorities in Islamic and Arab countries. But conservatives encouraging Shiites to rebel for their rights have weakened Khatami.  

This explains why Arab countries in general support Allawi, a secular Shiite. Arab regimes despise Tehran for encouraging Shiites to give up their national allegiances for a transnational Shiite loyalty to the Holy city of Kum—in Iran.  

Jalal Ghazi monitors and translates Arab media for New California Media (a project of Pacific News Service) and LinkTV.  

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Scores of University of California officials, alumni, and friends and admirers of Berkeley alumnus and pioneering African-American educator Ida Louise Jackson packed the sun-filled courtyard of a recently built university apartment building mid-day on Monday, Aug. 30, to celebrate its naming in honor of Jackson.  

“This will be the first building on campus dedicated to an African-American woman,” Professor Mary Ann Mason, dean of the Graduate Division, told the gathering. “She wanted women to climb high. Her name will be remembered here as long as this university goes on.”  

The dedication of the Ida Louise Jackson Graduate House continued a decades-old Berkeley campus tradition of naming student housing for members of the university family who worked to improve student life and whose own lives served as an inspiration to students.  

“We finally have at least the beginning of housing for (single) graduate students,” Mason said. The apartment building was completed a few years ago at the southeast corner of College Avenue and Durant Avenue. 

Dr. Barbara K. Phillips, a friend of Jackson and, like her, a past president of the national Alpha Kappa Alpha organization, called Jackson “a star in the fabric of existence” in her remarks at the ceremony.  

Phillip s said that Jackson, who died in 1996 at the age of 93, once told her, “I have few friends.” Phillips remonstrated, “You have many friends!” Many of them, along with admirers who did not personally know Jackson, were in the audience on Tuesday.  

“I’m sur e we’re all here to say, ‘Well done, Dr. Ida Louise Jackson,” Phillips concluded. “She was an erudite lady, precocious, different…she chose her own way.”  

Speaker Inez Dones, a trustee of the university’s Ida Louise Jackson Fellowship, recalled Jackson’s financial gift to the university in 1972 to establish a fund to help African-American women pursue graduate studies at Cal.  

The purpose of Jackson’s gift, Dones read, was “that educated and professional black people should take the initiative in helpin g less fortunates of the race.”  

Dones noted the support of Graduate Division officers and staff for the Fellowship program and added, “on behalf of Ida whose spirit is here today, I’m thanking you for all of these wonderful things…thank you for the wonderful tribute of naming this beautiful residence.” 

At the end of the ceremony alumnae of the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority joined hands around the courtyard, surrounded by the other attendees, and movingly sang their sisterhood’s hymn in Jackson’s memory. 

“This is the best ceremony I’ve been to on this campus,” Mason told an attendee. 

The crowd briefly reassembled along College Avenue where Mason and Dones pulled a cloth from the façade of the building, revealing the new name in metal letters.  

Ida Louis e Jackson grew up financially impoverished in a large Mississippi family. Driven by her parents’ strong belief in education and her own resolve, Jackson completed her first years of college in New Orleans and settled on teaching as a career. 

Before her b irth her father, a carpenter, farmer, and preacher, had narrowly escaped Louisiana after winning a court case against a white man who had fraudulently tried to take his farm. A white neighbor warned the Jackson family that a lynch mob was assembling and t hey fled in the night across the Mississippi. 

In 1918 Jackson moved with her widowed mother to Oakland, following her brothers who told her, she later wrote, “here in California I could get a better education free.” She registered for classes at the Univ ersity of California. 

In a memoir published in the Irving Stone-edited anthology, There Was Light, she warmly recalled the financial gift of a women students service organization that helped her after graduation, and another “source of great joy and insp iration,” the friendship and support of Dean of Women Lucy Stebbins, and Assistant Dean Mary Davidson.  

(All three women—Stebbins, Davidson, and Jackson—would ultimately have student residences named in their honor.) 

Yet Jackson also remembered the experience of “entering classes day after day, sitting beside students who acted as if my seat was unoccupied, showing no sign of recognition, never giving a smile or a nod.”  

To help combat that isolation—she was one of only 17 African American students at Cal in 1920—she and four other African-American women students organized a sorority, the first chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha in the western United States.  

After a semester’s probation they were granted official status and “we began to feel we were a part of things,” she wrote. But “a bruise that did not quickly heal” was the exclusion of the sorority’s picture from the yearbook, paying the required assessment and sitting for the official photographer. 

In 1922 Jackson received her B.A. degree, after two years at Cal. She participated in the traditional Senior Pilgrimage through the campus. “I walked alone, unnoticed by my fellow classmates,” she wrote.  

Jackson then earned her master’s degree at Cal, encouraged by friendly faculty in the School of Educa tion. Her thesis examined the role of sociological and environmental factors in the performance of African-American children on standard intelligence tests.  

She first taught in a segregated school in El Centro, California. Within a year she came back to Oakland to teach as a substitute. She was Oakland’s first African-American public school teacher, and the first African-American woman certified to teach in California’s schools.  

On her first day, when her adult white colleagues protested her presence to the superintendent, two white children from her class appeared at her classroom door at lunch with armloads of geranium blossoms because, they said, “we like you.”  

Some years later Jackson began, with the support of her old sorority, a summer outrea ch program to train and provide school supplies for rural teachers in the Deep South. A health clinic followed, serving thousands. Her work attracted considerable support and publicity, including an invitation to the White House. 

Graduate study at Columb ia and a stint as dean of women at Tuskegee Institute prepared her, she felt, for an administrative position in Oakland’s public schools but she was told “the time is not ripe for a Negro principal.”  

She returned to the classroom, ultimately spending 27 years as an Oakland educator and finally retiring in 1955 from the position of principal of McClymonds High School. 

“I am more than ever convinced that education is the greatest factor in the upward climb of any person or people,” Jackson wrote in the m id-1960s. “My theme song has been: learn, study, read—continuously…to tear down is not to build, as something of value is lost in the individual who seeks to destroy.” 

“The University of California has done for thousands what it has done for me,” she added. “It has enabled me to realize the vast avenues of learning and culture to be explored, and strengthened a desire to try, and in the exploration to take others along on the journey.”?µ

NEW YORK—The streets on day two of the Republican National Convention belonged to the A-31 coalition of affinity groups. A-31, or Aug. 31, was organized to create “a day of nonviolent civil disobedience and direct action,” according to their website. 

The various groups were intent on causing disruption in the streets and at targeted Republican events around New York City. The New York City police were having none of it, though. They took a heavy-handed approach and arrested more than 1,000 demonstrators on this day. 

Many of those arrested were not engaged in civil disobedience and some were not even protesters. More than once police simply announced that “this is an illegal gathering” and began encircling groups of people with orange netting and placing them under arrest. Two hundred were ensnared and arrested en masse in one street action. 

They were attempting to march, without an official permit, from ground zero—site of the World Trade Center—to Madison Square Garden. Others were arrested participating in various civil disobedience-related activities including die-ins, blocking traffic, and unfurling large banners off buildings, including draping one of the famous lions in front of the NYC Public Library with an anti-Bush slogan. Perhaps some of the most chaotic, fun, and creative protesting occurred right outside of Fox News headquarters on Sixth Avenue and 48th Street. 

A “Bill O’Reilly Shut Up-athon” was slated to be held at 4 p.m. on the sidewalk outside of Fox and sponsored by the group Code Pink. The idea seemed simple enough: assemble outside of Bill O’Reilly’s office and chant, “shut up.” O’Reilly is the subject of a recent documentary, OutFoxed, by film-maker Robert Greenwald. His video was originally commissioned by MoveOn.org and first shown in thousands of house parties across America. It has received acclaim from several movie reviewers and now is appearing in movie theaters. But simple this one protest was not. 

The patience of the police as well as the tenacity of the almost 2,000 protesters who attended this one of many counter-convention events was severely tested. Then, Greenwald himself showed up at the Fox News building holding a sign-photo of O’Reilly which read, “Shut up Bill O’Reilly.” 

How this shut up-athon developed is reflective of many street actions. The spontaneity, energy, and sheer chutzpah of the demonstrators is what makes any single event a success. This was but one event called for on a day of multiple planned civil disobedience protests across the city. Of course it was nothing like the peaceful, non-confrontational march of hundreds of thousands through Manhattan on Sunday. People involved on this day of protests were generally young and daring. 

The particular gathering at Fox News included a smorgasbord of inventiveness. Many wore O’Reilly masks so there could be something real to yell “shut up” at. There were costumed Bush Administration look-alikes, a bus complete with a large video screen displaying O’Reilly and all the episodes of his show in which he said “shut up” to his guests, and a 15-member hip-hop band from Seattle, Infernal Noise, which lent an almost carnival-like atmosphere to the gathering.  

Around 4 p.m. about 30 people mingled and milled around. No police were yet in sight. While this was one of the more popular events on this day of direct action, the reasons protesters came seemed to be their palpable outrage at either O’Reilly or Fox News. 

“I’m saying ‘shut up’ to Fox News in general,” Tom Bregman, a Telecom Products Manager from Cornwall, N.Y., said. “Fox News is a propaganda machine for Bush just like Pravda was for Bresnev in the ‘70s.” 

Ann Salmirs, an unemployed consultant from Manhattan came for a slightly different reason. “I want to make a statement because Bush is exploiting 9/11.” 

Roger Anderson, an office worker from San Francisco, was very precise about why he came to make his voice heard. “We’re here to protest Fox News and protest the misperceptions which Fox puts out. We’re going to do a little civil disobedience shut up-athon against Bill O’Reilly,” he said. 

By 4:30 p.m. over a thousand had gathered along with 100 cops. Around this time two Code Pink activists, Medea Benjamin and Andrea Buffa, were arrested and hauled away in one of the ubiquitous police vans that occupy almost every corner of this city. While demonstrators chanted various slogans like, “Shut up, Bill O’Reilly, shut up,” “Fox hates freedom,” “ Interview us,” and “Shut up Fox,” a crescendo of street activity seemed to be reached at 4:40 p.m. At that time there were almost 2,000 protesters and 200 police. 

At 4:50 p.m. a pleased and smiling film director Greenwald appeared and held an impromptu news conference along 48th Street. “We invited him (O’Reilly) down, but like all bullies he didn’t come,” declared Greenwald to the roughly 10 journalists present. “The wonderful thing about O’Reilly is that when you ask him if he ever told his guests to shut up, he denies it. Then we show him the clips.” 

By 5:10 p.m. the police had created a large mobile “pen,” for the protesters. The pen took up one lane of Sixth Avenue and the cops were pushing protesters into it. “Get in the pen or get arrested,” one of them shouted. This behavior on the part of the police has been a recurrent strategy “since Guilliani,” according to the National Coordinator for United For Peace and Justice, Leslie Cagan.  

What happens is a large truck comes in and workers unload heavy metal five-foot sections of fencing material and then put them together rather quickly like the pieces to a child’s erector set. Pieces of this fencing can be seen all over this city, suggesting a former, or impending, war zone. Once “the pen” is built the police begin organized pushing and directing of protesters to get in. The cages appear odd to passers-by, but clearly demarcates us-them zones.  

By 5:15 p.m. the protesters began to evaporate into the Manhattan night and a little while later it was over. Many went to rest up for the coming night’s renewed confrontations with police. Others went to dinner and then home, too tired after a long day of pitched battles with Republican delegates, the news media, and New York police. 

Outfoxed, a recent documentary by filmmaker Robert Greenwald, is a scathing critique of how Fox News conducts its business. It includes many interviews with former Fox employees as well as a few prominent media analysts like Walter Cronkite. Greenwald paid a visit to what was billed as a “Bill O’Reilly Shut Up-athon” this past Tuesday outside of Fox News headquarters in New York City. The Daily Planet stuck a tape recorder in his Greenwald’s face and started asking questions. 

Daily Planet (DP): What has been Fox’s reaction to your movie? 

Robert Greenwald (RG): Fox was mad that we didn’t call them when we were making the movie, and of course, if we did they would have sued us and got us to stop. So, we finished the movie and then we called them to ask them for a comment and they said “No comment.” 

DP: Has there been any reaction at all? From O’Reilly? 

RG: Bill O’Reilly has called me a smear merchant, which I consider a proud honor and award. We haven’t seen any real change in Fox’s behavior, but we expect, over time, there might be. What we’re starting to do is affect the sponsors and we’re seeing an effect in that area. And that’s what makes the most concern to Fox News…it’s that sponsors know that liberals buy cars, they buy soap. And they [sponsors] don’t want to be identified by one political point of view. So, we are extremely hopeful over time and through AlterNet’s lawsuit (Don Hazen of AlterNet was standing nearby) that we will see change. 

DP: How is OutFoxed being distributed? 

RG: OutFoxed was first available on DVD and distributed through Moveon.org and the Center for American Progress. Through AlterNet, with Buzzflash, it is available for people who want to buy it and have house parties. But now it’s also in the theaters. It was number one on Amazon for over two weeks. 

DP: Do you have any reaction to how John McCain singled out one of your colleagues, filmmaker Michael Moore, in his speech the other night? (McCain referred to a certain “disingenuous filmmaker” without realizing Moore was sitting in the press area at Madison Square Garden.) 

RG: I am thrilled that the Republicans are focusing on the most serious issue of the day, which is Michael Moore, rather than on terrorism, lack of jobs, lack of education, and this horrible war that is going on. It just indicates where the priorities are. But on a serious level they are doing what they consistently do. They’re not dealing with the questions that Michael raised which are profound and important. They’re just trying to smear him. It’s what Fox News does. It’s what these guys, and women [Republicans] are doing over and over. Character assassination. 

DP: The film’s subtitle Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism. Why is that? 

RG: Fox News is owned by Rupert Murdoch who owns the News Corporation, which reaches some billion people around the world. And what Murdoch is doing with Fox News is not just being partisan and Republican. There is no news, it’s all opinion. He’s created an opinion station. And to that degree it affects and harms all news. There’s news that is objective facts, there are realities…and what Murdoch does, by design, is mix news and commentary, news and opinions. And you end up saying, ‘Well I can’t tell one from the other therefore it’s all equally valid.’ 

DP: Would you like to make a final comment about Fox? 

RG: I like watching wrestling on television, occasionally. Fox News is mud wrestling for people who have nothing else better to do during the day.›

Leslie Cagan is the National Coordinator for United For Peace and Justice, the group that organized Sunday’s massive anti-Bush rally in New York City. Cagan had been involved in negotiating with city officials to hold a rally in Central Park. She lost that battle, but was feeling exceedingly pleased at the outcome of Sunday’s large showing of protesters. The Daily Planet met Cagan at her cramped ninth floor office at UFPJ’s rabbit warren-like headquarters a few blocks from Madison Square Garden where the Republican National Convention is being held. Cagan was visibly exhausted, yet appeared almost giddy at the success the coalition’s organizing efforts have reaped. On the third day of the convention, activity was everywhere. Phones rang, banners were being made for other rallies, and protest paraphernalia of all kinds was being unpacked and repacked in boxes to be sent out to the next site. Cagan is a busy person and much in demand, even before Sunday. Her phone rang five times during our 20-minute interview. 

Daily Planet (DP): So, how are you feeling? 

Leslie Cagan (LC): Good, a little tired, but good. 

DP: How would you characterize the outcome of last Sunday’s march, (the largest march New York City has seen since 1982)? 

LC: Well, I think Sunday itself was a fabulous day. The numbers were there, like 500,000. It’s not an exact science, but we feel comfortable putting out that figure. It wasn’t just the numbers, the commitment, it was the range of issues that tie it all together under the rubric of the Bush agenda...and the spirit of the day. I think that hundreds of thousands of people came out of that day energized and hopeful. Even with the understanding that the world and the country have major, major serious problems and that things are awful out there in a lot of regards, people still feel hopeful that we could still be strong and get to be strong enough to actually make some change. I think that some of that energy has spilled over into the rest of this week. 

DP: How did United For Peace and Justice actually come together as an organization? 

LC: In October we will be two years old. We came together in the run-up to the Iraq War. We knew that by October of 2002 there was already a great deal of anti-war sentiment and emotion in the country and some of us who have known each other from previous movements got together and said, maybe if we could form a coalition we could make a difference. And sure enough we did. We took off in February of 2003 in New York. We generated hundreds of activities around the country on that day (Feb. 15). 

DP: What happened yesterday (Tuesday)? Why were so many people arrested (about 1,200 by some estimates)? 

LC: I was not actually on the streets yesterday. I was so exhausted from Sunday, so my commentary comes secondhand. It was planned for a long time now. Tuesday (of convention week) was planned for non-violent civil disobedience and a number of groups organized different activities in different parts of the city. The idea was that at a certain time people from different parts of the city were going to try move towards the (Madison Square) Garden and try to get as close as they could. I don’t think anyone got too close. And at different points people were stopped. One interesting tactic police used—they also used it Sunday evening after our demonstration was over on people who were in Times Square protesting the convention people—this new tactic is just sweeping people off the streets. I don’t know how many people were actually planning on doing civil disobedience. I think a lot more people ended up getting arrested than were planning on it. I know two people who were just swept up in this orange (plastic) netting kind of thing and they (police) literally surround people with it and then there you are, like fishing. Fishing for protesters. Some of them (protests) went quite smoothly. There were several die-ins, in which people lie down in the streets and they arrest them. It took a while. 

DP: UFPJ held a picket line this morning outside of the detention center at pier 57. What was that about? 

LC: It’s a detention center that’s an old garage where New York City processes people. 

DP: How are they treating people? 

LC: Well, they’re not beating people. New York City knew for months that demonstrations were being planned. They’ve been planning for months on how to deal with protests. Several months ago, maybe April, I remember the DA’s office went to the City Council and asked for more money because they wanted to be prepare for upwards to a thousand arrests a day. So I suppose the city was prepared for massive arrests. So this is what they prepared, an old garage? It doesn’t make any sense, there’s no cots or beds in there. People are not being processed quickly (over 1800 have been arrested in four days), there’s oil spills from old buses.  

DP: How long are people spending there? 

LC: I think the average is 12 to 18 hours, some longer. 

DP: How do you think Sunday’s march might affect swing voters? 

LC: I think our audience was massive and it was actually a global audience as well. I think what we were hoping to affect, if you were watching on C-SPAN which broadcast the march for four and a half hours, you would see people from all walks of life and maybe say, ‘Oh my God, I can imagine myself marching.’ It’s not necessarily that one demonstration transits directly into votes. I mean we’re hoping that this demonstration will feed an emotion that when you disagree with the government you can stand up and speak out and that’s a legitimate activity and a long tradition in this country of people doing that. There’s nothing wrong with that, nothing un-American about it. We knew months ago that this election might turn into a beauty contest and we wanted to keep issues front and center, especially the issue of Iraq. And we understand that a first step to changing foreign policy and domestic policy is to defeat the Bush agenda. 

DP: Are you a Democrat? 

LC: No. 

DP: Are you in touch with the Democrats at all? 

LC: No. We’re non-partisan. We try to be very careful because we have many groups within this coalition that have 501(C)3 (non-profit) tax exempt status. 

DP: Many Republicans have said that if any of these demonstrations get out of hand and there is violence it will be laid at the feet of John Kerry. 

LC: That’s just ridiculous. The Democratic Party had nothing to do with organizing these demonstrations. In fact, the Democratic Party stayed away from these demonstrations. Some NYC Democratic Party officials marched with us. Some City Council people and two members of Congress, Charles Rangel and Major Owens. Jesse Jackson marched too, but he doesn’t speak for the Kerry campaign. 

DP: So what’s next? What has the United For Peace and Justice coalition been doing since the march?  

LC: Well, we support as many of the activities as we can around town even though we didn’t organize all of them. We’re part of a process for the past six months now having meetings and discussions with all the people who are part of this coalition sharing information so an extension to that would be to try and be at each other’s events and so one of the things coming out of this office this week is just answering questions, ‘What’s coming next? What’s coming tomorrow kind of thing? But also organizing our own presence at some of these events too. 



Vietnam has risen again—not as a country but as a metaphor, a code word to symbolize, a bucket, overturned, its water running out into the various crevices of our national life. War. Courage and cowardice. Death and life. Service. The nature of our obligations—to our country, to our friends and family, to our beliefs, to ourselves. Its essence remains, but its original form has long-since been irretrievably lost, spilled along with the innocence of our youth. 

It has intruded upon the 2004 presidential campaign through the odd charges of the oddly named Swift Boat Veterans For Truth—never, ever trust a group which includes “truth” in its name, the old folks used to say—and the vetting of John Kerry’s war record on the rivers of Southeast Asia. Like looking endlessly at the Rodney King beating videotape, we have examined those flickering accounts of Mr. Kerry’s service so many times, over and over, that they have lost all meaning or practical value. 

Two stark truths remain, which the fog of war debate cannot obscure. John Kerry volunteered for Vietnam service, and served in combat. George W. Bush and Dick Cheney say they supported the American soldiers and the American war effort, but found ways to avoid service. In one course there was honor, in the other, there was not. Have we plummeted so far into the abyss that we need a national debate to determine which was which? 

Old memories hiss to the surface, like rising steam. 

The war wiped out my high school graduating class—Castlemont—1965. To this day, I have no idea how many died. I was away from California as the ‘60s waned and turned into the ‘70s, and in my calls back home, I finally had to ask my mother not to name any more. She often told the story of one of my classmates—a track star, who I had once written about in our high school newspaper, a young black cheetah or gazelle, skin glistening, muscles rolling, running the 200 on the curve like the wind itself—whose sister came into our family grocery store sometime before the Tet offensive, talking proudly of her brother's impending enlistment. My mother tried vainly—several times—to get the girl to talk to him and change his mind. He did not have to go. He shouldn’t go. One morning, the sister came into the store and collapsed on the counter in tears. The family had just received the news: her brother had died. “I wish I had listened to you, Mrs. Allen,” the girl sobbed. “I swear, I wish I had stood in the doorway and broke his leg and kept him from going.” 

A button worn by black protesters during the anti-war demonstration coming out of DeFremery Park in West Oakland: the Viet Cong Never Called Me A Nigger. 

Police stopping you and asking to see your draft card, ignoring your driver license, seeing the 1A in the corner and asking why you’re still out here on the street. 

Sometime after the horrific carnage of Tet, the government stopped listing the specific daily U.S. casualties as if—like the present administration’s banning of returning-coffin photos—the elimination of the symbol will eradicate the actual. Instead of numbers, the released reports ranged from “light casualties” and “light-to-moderate casualties” all the way over to “heavy casualties.” In that period there was a newspaper quote from a soldier, who said that he hoped he died on a day where there were at least “moderate-to-heavy” casualties. Why? he was asked. “ ‘Cause on a ‘light-to-moderate’ casualty day, nobody back home pays attention.” 

Remembering when “War” by the recently-deceased Edwin Starr was a powerful anti-war song played daily on the radio, and not a soundtrack to a zany kung fu comedy. 

A lone, long-haired peace worker—a hippie, to use the term of the day—keeping vigil down at the Oakland Induction Center, trying to convince the young men to refuse. 

The San Francisco federal courts so clogged with draft resistance cases that court actions on any type of case virtually ground to a halt. And later—unnoticed by all but the beneficiaries—when the U.S. forces were no longer involved in the Vietnam War hostilities—the Nixon Administration quietly dropping charges against most of the resistors, bringing them back in from the cold. 

A returning soldier—proud—hands over a photo that shows him driving, smiling behind the steering while of a jeep, a pale-faced Vietnamese seated on the hood, propped up, but seemingly asleep. It takes a moment to realize—with a jolt—that the paleness is unnatural, the sleep permanent. Looking up at the soldier, getting his picture back, his face full with the same proud grin. Is this barbarity inborn, or is it learned behavior? 

Two memorable political cartoons: 

Uncle Sam in a Vietnam foxhole, circa 1965, army issue rifle in hand, startled, eyes-widening, wheeling at an explosion in his rear: ala-BAM!-a. That year, civil rights demonstrators were beaten on the Edmund Pettus Bridge outside of Selma, on their way to the state capitol in Montgomery to protest voting restrictions. Later that year, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act. 

Another, during the fierce fighting in 1968 that swept into the heart of Saigon, President Lyndon Johnson turning from a telephone receiver and shouting to no-one in particular: “What the hell is Ho Chi Minh doing answering the phone at the U.S. Embassy?” 

Bobby Kennedy bringing his anti-war message to a park on 98th Avenue in East Oakland during the ‘68 Democratic primary. 

California Superior Court judges talking to defendants from the bench, giving them a choice: jail time, or volunteer for the war and have all charges dropped. 

1965, and Los Angeles Times columnist Bob Scheer—then a young, unknown journalist—returning from a fact-finding tour of Vietnam, standing on the steps at the old Merritt College on the old Grove Street in North Oakland, telling most of us for the first time that North Vietnam and South Vietnam had once been one, artificially divided by the French and then the Americans. I stood below in the small knot of student listeners and a light went on, one which has never been extinguished. 

All of us who lived through that era—came of age in that era—heard the stories of that era—have our own collection of memories. Strung together it is a long national memory—colorful—at times contradictory—and completely void of common conclusion or even common understanding. Time and again—in a sustained effort to “put the divisions of Vietnam behind us”—we have ducked a national dialogue on what happened in those days, and why. The true dodging of our time. 

And so Vietnam surfaces again—the metaphor about which we have no agreement as to meaning—muddying the waters of this year’s Presidential campaign while bombs and shells burst from Afghanistan to Iraq, ignored in our official deliberations. Our computers fly at warp speed, our ships sail across the solar system, and yet our national discussion remains stuck at one war behind, at least, and rapidly losing ground. 

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SO-CALLED DESTRUCTION 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I can’t find much sympathy for the current outpourings of emotion over the so-called “destruction” of the Willard School garden on Telegraph Avenue.  

When my own son was a Willard student a few years back, a dedicated group of parents contributed cash and much effort to landscape what was at that time hardpan and gravel on the Telegraph Avenue frontage. Our resulting plantings looked nice to my naive, unenlightened eye, and required little maintenance or water. It may have been a “commercial . . . sanitized” landscape, in the derisive words of one of your correspondents, but at least we parents had the satisfaction of knowing it was our very own commercial, sanitized landscape. 

Our grassroots effort was largely wasted, for within a couple a seasons our plantings had unashamedly been ripped out by those presuming a superior aesthetic that favored a biologically correct “natural” look. 

I would have shrugged the whole business off if it hadn’t been for the concurrent assassination of a beautiful old red-flowering tree on the corner of Telegraph and Stuart, an unusual species of eucalyptus that was highly praised just weeks ago in this newspaper. When Willard School was torn down and reconstructed in the early ‘70s, this splendid tree had been one of the few plants spared as a landmark, a reminder of the history of the site. I still grieve for this missing tree every spring when I pass this corner. 

If our earlier “commercial, sanitized” landscaping indeed required some revision, I think a little humility and respect for past efforts from the “natural look”-ers would have served the community better than their scorched earth policy that took down even a fine old tree. In my opinion, those who had so little respect for what went before are hardly entitled now to protest loudly when the school administration has to adjust the site to new conditions.  

Kim Cranney 

• 

PLEASED WITH THE CHANGE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I suppose people see what they want to see and ignore the reality as apparently your commentators do as they decry the removal of one of Telegraph Avenues greatest eyesores. My office is across the street and for these many years, I’ve watched this well intentioned experiment in jungle condoms not uncommon), often a well screened hiding place for homeless to encamp, and invariably, as a convenient and overgrown place to dump trash. Once every so often, there would be a serious but short lived cleanup, weeding, even new planting, then they all go home and leave it for those of us who see it and walk by it every day to witness the degradation anew. And the assertion that this was a “garden,” as in someway attractive and well cared for space to spend time in, is a joke.  

Thank you, Berkeley Unified School District, the change was long overdue. 

Michael Yovino-Young 

• 

DOWNTOWN 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Personally: I think there should be no more tall structures built downtown with the exception of the UC-related hotel (provided the creek is resurfaced and that street turned into a nice park). Otherwise, it will become too dark and windy downtown—precisely the opposite of what we want. Existing structures should just be “fossilized”—rebuilt in their current form, more or less (with artistic license), should they need replacing. There’s plenty of room down there for a vibrant economy. Just preserve the light and don’t make the wind any worse! Rather, some more structures along the size of the current monstrosities should fill in more of the remote areas of south Shattuck Avenue / Adeline. With all due respect, I wouldn’t miss at least one of the two current tall towers, downtown (and I doubt I’m alone in any of this). 

Also: We need trolleys. Can that be privatized somehow? (E.g., the city pays up front to lay down a backbone of tracks and operators, in exchange for a tax, can operate trains on their own schedule and subsidize (and vote on locations for) additional tracks?) 

Eh? Eh? Whaddaythink? 

Tom Lord 

• 

‘PECULIAR HEIST’ DETAILS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I am writing about the “Week’s Most Peculiar Heist” in the Aug. 3 Police Blotter because I was that “pedestrian” and you seemed to have left out some details, such as the fact that I was also attacked by one of the teens, and it happened at 10:15 p.m., not 9:15. Just thought I should let you know. 

Alexander Thorson 

• 

BART BOARD 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I am a candidate for the BART Board, District 3. In your article (“Well Qualified Trio Vies for BART Seat,” Daily Planet, Aug. 31-Sept. 2), it mentioned that BART extensions to San Jose, Livermore and Antioch are my goals. This is not my position. The headline “BART to Livermore and Antioch” was taken from my positions on my campaign website, www.BobforBART.com, and quoted as my goals, without mentioning what I had written underneath that headline: that there are more cost effective solutions than full-scale BART extensions. In the meantime, people can show their commitment to public transit by promoting ridership and building transit oriented development along transit corridors. BART extensions are glamorous, but not at the expense of local connecting services. 

Bob Franklin 

BART Board Candidate 

• 

MEASURE H 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Measure H—the Berkeley Fair Elections Act—was developed to strengthen political debate, increase competition for municipal office and enhance the responsiveness of local elected officials. If adopted, this proven Fair Elections system will put challengers on equal financial footing with incumbents and curb the ability of well-connected candidates to amass large campaign war chests to scare away challengers. Instead, elections will be based on candidates’ ideas, experience and community support, not their fundraising abilities.  

At the same time, Measure H will help enhance financial oversight over the city’s $280 million by creating the means for political newcomers to forcefully argue for changes in budget policies and priorities. At a cost of approximately .1 percent of Berkeley’s budget, Measure H will help ensure the remaining 99.9 percent is spent according to the wishes of the community.  

Jim Hultman’s suggestion that Measure H—the Berkeley Fair Elections Act—is Mayor Bates’ “baby” (see “LeConte Neighbors Fume Over Stolen Endorsements,” Daily Planet, Aug. 27-30) is completely misguided. Nothing is more threatening to an incumbent than an adequately funded challenger; the very essence of Measure H. Other LeConte members and Neighborhood leaders—like Nancy Carleton—understand the obvious benefits of public campaign financing of elections. If some neighborhood association members feel left out and inadequately represented, their best hope is to vote Yes on H. Then, they can run for office and ensure that issues of importance to long- and lifetime Berkeley residents—like myself—remain central in local elections.  

Increase the diversity of candidates! Help make elected officials more responsive! Level the playing field! Institute a proven, tested and sound reform! Help make history here in Berkeley and vote Yes on H. 

Sam Ferguson 

Co-Chair, Berkeley Fair Elections Coalition/Yes on H 

• 

MEDICAL CENTER WALKOUT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Thanks for your front-page coverage of the Aug. 30 walkout at the Alameda County Medical Center (ACMC). However, a number of factual errors crept into the piece. First, Measure A, the half-cent sales tax to support county medical services, was approved by voters just this past March 2, not two years ago. Secondly, ACMC did not lay off 340 workers last April; they proposed those layoffs which are only now being pursued, so there is no second round of layoffs this year. 

The biggest error, however, is contained in a quote from Keith Carson, who may well have been misquoted. As he well knows, there is not a “present $60-plus million deficit;” in fact, the final 2004-05 budget passed by the trustees last month included a modest surplus. Carson is also reported to say that ACMC’s budget is solely within the discretion of the board of trustees. Your reporter might have checked out this statement, which is commonly expressed by various members of the Board of Supervisors. 

Unfortunately, as those of us who attend the many public meetings required to stay on top of this issue, the supes have had a major negative impact on ACMC’s budget. For example, they demanded an increase in ACMC’s rent payment from $1 per year to $1.7 million per year! The supes have consistently underfunded the state-mandated contract for medical services to the indigent with a cut of $3.5 million this year alone. And a few weeks ago they dropped a huge bomb on the trustees just after they had adopted their budget for this year—the supes demanded a $17 million “debt repayment” from ACMC, which creates an enormous hole in their already fragile finances.  

The supervisors created the hospital authority and the board of trustees several years ago, and they appoint the trustees. They have the legal authority to dissolve the authority and bring the medical center back under direct county control. Both SEIU and community advocacy organizations like the one I chair, Vote Health, have urged the supes to eliminate this legal fiction that allows them to foist responsibility onto a non-elected volunteer body to run ACMC and to call the county subsidy a debt which requires repayment. 

The voters of Alameda County overwhelmingly passed Measure A on March 2, agreeing to tax themselves to ensure medical services to our most vulnerable residents. It is a betrayal of the voters for ACMC and the Board of Supervisors to pursue cuts that will only further injure these same patients. 

I urge the Planet to cover this urgent local issue more closely in the future! 

Kay Eisenhower 

Chair, Vote Health 

• 

OAKS AND ACORNS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I read Ron Sullivan’s article (”Zealous Chainsaw Use Proves Lethal to Trees,” Daily Planet, Aug. 31-Sept. 2) and that prompted this query. Ron appears to be very knowledgeable in the art of pruning trees and I thought perhaps he would have some advise on my question. I have an Oak tree very close to the side of my house. It drops acorns like crazy. Is there anything I can do to prevent the acorns from dropping—better yet, to prevent the tree from producing the acorns in the first place? I hear them dropping on the roof of the house and they’re all over the yard. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. 

Olive Santero 

?

Berkeley Man Charged with Date Rape 

A 48-year-old Berkeley man was arrested on suspicion of rape last Saturday after his date reported that he’d forced her after she refused his advances. 

Another Bad Man Busted 

Berkeley Police busted a 19-year-old man at 3:13 a.m. Monday on charges of battery, making threats of violence and brandishing a knife at a South Berkeley woman. 

Strong-arm Purse Snatch  

A pair of older teenagers snatched a woman’s purse at 11 o’clock Monday evening. 

Domestic Call Yields Drug Cornucopia 

Responding to a report of possible domestic violence near Addison Street and San Pablo Avenue at 10:40 p.m. Monday, Berkeley officers discovered a pharmaceutical bonanza, including sale weight quantities of marijuana and cocaine, both powder and rock. In addition to the felony drug charges officers booked a Berkeley man for violating parole and probation terms from prior cases, said BPD spokesperson Officer Joe Okies. 

Face-Kicker Jailed 

A 26-year-old man was busted on charges of assault with a deadly weapon after he kicked another man in the face at Shattuck Avenue and Vine Street shortly before 6 p.m. Tuesday. 

Would-Be Helmet Thief Airs Blade 

After a South Berkeley man confronted a stranger trying to rip off his motorcycle shortly before 1 a.m. Tuesday, the would-be bandit flashed a knife, then fled—leaving the headgear behind. 

Stubborn Motorist Takes Wrong Turn  

A 22-year-old motorist took a turn for the worse after he failed to stop for a Berkeley traffic officer who spotted him failing to yield the right of way shortly before 5 on Tuesday afternoon. 

When finally arrested after abandoning his car and fleeing onto a rooftop, the miscreant motorist was booked on charges of seizing the right-of-way, refusing to obey a lawful police order, fleeing a peace officer, driving without a valid license and interfering with a police officer. 

Claims Knife, Takes Purse  

A man claiming to have a knife confronted a woman with a purse near the corner of Blake Street and Martin Luther King Jr. Way shortly before 10 p.m. Tuesday. The woman surrendered her purse and the knife never appeared. 

Car Crashes Fleeing Robbery Scene 

A 24-year-old man was arrested after a police chase and car crash following an armed robbery at San Pablo Avenue and Addison Street, reports Officer Okies. 

Responding to the robbery call at the U-Haul rental agency, officers spotted the suspected getaway car and gave chase. After the vehicle crashed at Tenth and Camellia streets, a search of the area found the suspect hiding in the REI store. He was placed into custody.  

Officers recovered the weapon and booked the suspect on suspicion of fleeing the scene of an accident. Other possible charges include armed robbery, burglary, kidnapping, failure to yield to a peace officer, and possession of a concealed weapon.?

Editors, Daily Planet: 

No word from the Berkeley Unified School District. At first, BUSD stated that they would stop the tractor and hold a meeting. The tractor stopped but there has been no word of a meeting.  

First issue: whose land is it? Is the sch ool district the property owner, entitled to do whatever it chooses? Or is the school district a trustee, holding the land for the real owners, us, the community, of which students are members? If the school district is a trustee, then it has a higher dut y, to always do what is best for the land and the public, which includes students and neighbors. 

The second issue is, how should decisions be made? Does the district make all decisions, or should parents and the broader school community be involved?  

D uring the past 20 years, the district, busy with its own failures, ignored the schools. In this climate of neglect, many school gardens sprouted through parent and community initiative. LeConte, Willard, King, Arts Magnet are examples. Parents and neigh bors, clearing weeds and garbage, planted the many beautiful school gardens throughout our town. 

Community involvement in decision making goes back even further. City commissions were formed soon after our city was formed. While city commissions are advi sory, our elected councilmembers give great weight and deference to the numerous commissions.  

In the school district, 16 years ago, we passed BSEP, our first school parcel tax. Yes, we taxed ourselves, but we also kept the power of how to spend that mon ey for elected committees of teachers, staff and parents at each school and at the district level. 

Now, we have a different school superintendent, one who was given the mandate by our school board to fight this “soft anarchy” and reassert district author ity. Unfortunately, the methods employed are little too Bush-like for my taste. A linear, hierarchical chain of command does not suit Berkeley well. This method promotes internal control and some forms of efficiency, but has closed the door to community participation. Research has shown that the best decisions are made by a truly diverse group. Small select groups cannot and do not make the best choices. The destruction of the Willard garden is a case in point. (The war in Iraq is another gross example.) 

Whereas in the past, school construction decisions were democratically decided by an elected and representative group, now, school administrators are the sole decision makers.  

It seems that the school district wants parents to do only two things, hand over our children and hand over our checkbooks. This is not a very satisfactory arrangement.  

There are now five people, including two incumbents seeking two seats on our school board. I challenge them to address this issue. For the incumbents, what is your response to the current linear, hierarchical chain of command at the district? To all candidates: in what form should participatory democracy occur within the Berkeley school system? I look forward to reading your responses. 

o

In an effort to “put people first”, Gov. Schwarzenegger recently convened the California Performance Review (CPR). The CPR undertook a “total review” of state government and issued a voluminous report recommending hundreds of cost cutting measures. While Schwarzenegger supports the CPR’s recommendations on the grounds that they will rid the state government of fraud and inefficiency, he does not mention that when it comes to defrauding ordinary Californians, the real harm often takes place beyond the corridors of state government and in the boardrooms of the private sector. And there is no better example of this defrauding, and of Schwarzenegger’s unwillingness to address it, than the $9 billion rip-off of Californians executed by Enron et al during California’s energy crisis. 

The electricity crisis erupted in the spring of 2000 when power supplies grew tight and California’s energy suppliers artificially manipulated the market in order to send prices through the roof. California had previously deregulated its power market, thereby making it much easier for these abuses to take place. It is estimated that Californians were overcharged $9 billion by energy suppliers, including the infamous Enron. Although there are still those who insist that the energy giants are not guilty of any criminal activity, they are slowly drowning in a sea of incriminating evidence. The evidence includes tapes which show energy traders figuring out ways to create artificial congestion on California electric transmission lines to drive prices up; which demonstrate that Enron manipulated the market in nine of 10 days during the crunch; and tapes in which Enron traders boasted of bilking “Grandma Millie.”  

Grandma Millie may be relieved to know that there are public officials and others in California who are fighting on her behalf. In March of 2003, a coalition of government agencies and the state’s two largest utilities submitted compelling evidence to federal regulators on behalf of California’s consumers. The state’s attorney general has sued both the energy companies and the federal government, and the state’s two U.S. senators have blasted the federal regulators for their handling of the charges against the energy companies. But there is one voice that is conspicuously missing from the chorus: the voice of “the people’s governor.”  

While Arnold boasts about terminating the waste and inefficiency in state government, he can only muster a whimper when it comes to making the energy companies pay back what they stole from California’s ratepayers. Schwarzenegger has refused to be interviewed on the subject and, unlike other state officials who have taken strong stands against the energy giants, Schwarzenegger has been remarkably conciliatory in correspondence with federal regulators. In a June letter to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), which many argue has been soft on the energy companies, the governor refers to the reclaiming of the money stolen from Californians as “a difficult process” and mentions no specific numbers. As journalist Thomas Elias commented: “[The governor] is the only state official willing to accept without question FERC’s judgment about what’s fair.” 

Although Arnold appears content sticking Californians with the $9 billion overpayment, to his credit, the governor did take measures to address the energy crisis in 2001 when it was in full swing. At that time, he was working hard to protect ordinary Californians from the likes of Enron Corp by meeting privately with none other than the company’s CEO, Kenneth Lay. Though Arnold initially denied attending the meeting, records now demonstrate that he was there. This should not come as any surprise to those who have had to stomach Arnold’s references to Milton Friedman, the world’s leading advocate on regulation-free markets, as “the king,” or his demands for even greater deregulation of California’s energy markets in order to avert another energy crisis. 

What should come as a surprise, however, is that Californians are not standing up to Arnold’s attempt to frame state government as an enemy of the people, while obfuscating his alliances with corporate elites whose interests are in marked contrast to the public interest. This deception should be resisted at every level. Californians should demand that the governor go after the billions that are owed to them by the energy companies that clearly put profits first while putting people last. 

Michael Marchant is a City of Berkeley employee. 

›

Republicans are converging for their quadrennial convention in New York this week, but the closest most Bay Area voters will ever get to a prominent Republican is on their living room television set. 

GOP leaders from Sacramento to Washington, D.C. have made the political calculation that they can win elections without the help of the Bay Area. The trend among Republican candidates is to avoid campaigning in the Bay Area, with rare visits to the region coming only for fundraisers or to make obligatory courtesy calls on Silicon Valley executives. 

While many Democrats and liberal independents may say ‘good riddance’ to the loss of Republican campaign visits, being written-off by the political party that controls the Governor’s office, the White House and Congress could have a serious financial impact on the Bay Area.  

Our regional economy is heavily dependent upon state and federal government spending. While there are several prominent Democrats representing the Bay Area in Washington and Sacramento, the power of the government purse is largely dictated by Republicans. From a $38,000 National Endowment for the Arts grant to the Boys and Girls Clubs of San Francisco, to the billions being spent to retrofit the Bay Bridge, the Bay Area needs continuing government assistance. 

Despite the overwhelming statewide victory of Arnold Schwarzenegger in the 2003 gubernatorial recall election, the Bay Area remains electorally hostile territory for Republicans. There are twice as many registered Democrats in the region than Republicans, with less than 25 percent of voters in the Bay Area registered as members of the GOP. In contrast, California as a whole has a 35 percent Republican voter registration rate.  

To put this Democratic dominance in context, of the 109 cities in the Bay Area, Republicans have a registration majority in only three cities, while Democrats have 50 percent or higher registration in 43 communities. 

The Republican presence in the Bay Area is shrinking rapidly. Analysis by the Bay Area Center for Voting Research shows that between 1999 and 2004, Republican registration in the Bay Area fell from 26.9 percent to 24.6 percent. This represents a net loss of 74,000 GOP voters – an equal number to the population of Livermore. 

This lack of support for the Republican Party explains why GOP candidates running statewide have largely abandoned the Bay Area in recent elections.  

In some cases Republican candidates are doing more than just ignoring the Bay Area and its 3.3 million voters, they have begun using the region as a campaign issue. This approach seeks to rally conservative voters in rural parts of California around the premise that the Bay Area’s voters are out of step with the rest of the state and that the region has a disproportionate influence on elections. 

If this electoral strategy continues, the Bay Area may find itself left on the sidelines during elections. This could have long-term implications for the Bay Area, as victorious Republicans heading to Sacramento and Washington may be less generous to the Bay Area with government spending than other parts of the state. 

Regardless of one’s party affiliation, there is no doubt that the Bay Area needs Republican support to thrive and grow. It seems increasingly clear, however, that Republicans aren’t convinced that they need us. 

Å

After chewing its title over for a while I’ve decided that Fluffy Bunnies in a Field of Daisies is about as good as you could get for Impact Theatre’s new production. The only question that remains for me is, now that I think that I’ve figured out what it has to do with the play, should I blow the secret? 

Naah…Anyway, this play is most certainly a piece of fluff. No one is going to mistake that. And, as is typical for Impact’s productions, it’s very well done.  

What is not typical, is that this particular piece of fluff seems limited to—perhaps exclusively of interest to—the exact group that Impact is designed to attract: 18 to 35-year-olds. And, of course, there’s nothing wrong with that. Though the company’s done well in obtaining that audience with previous productions, the plays themselves are usually also enjoyable by the rest of us who (ahem!) don’t quite qualify as being in the exact blush of youth. It’s not so true this time around. 

But if you do qualify, this production might strike you as a definite winner. What it’s about, of course, is the fine old matter of the mating game. This one differs from most in that it centers on the issue from the young male’s point of view. There is some effort to have the play become an argument about the old virgin/whore dichotomy but, in this humble opinion, it failed to come to full flower. (Maybe it does to the right age group). 

Most of the action takes place in a basement bar (somewhat reminiscent of La Val’s or Larry Blake’s) where three college age guys and the bar’s waitress, Jennifer (Emily Duarte Rosenthal) hang out on a regular basis, drinking beer and analyzing their mostly ineffective efforts to get their love lives working. Jennifer and the bearded Tommy (Steven Epperson, with a rather nice goatee) assume the roles of experienced advice givers to their less sophisticated buddies, who are lurching clumsily from one confused attempt at romance to another.  

The first, and rather startling (sexual, of course), scene involves the youngest guy, (Greg Ayers) who bears up surprisingly well under the nick-name “Baby Boy.” Ayers’ acting, as is true of most of the group, is absolutely first-rate. 

(Actually, a determined nitpicker might question whether Jennifer and Tommy really seem to have had the 30th birthdays they claim. Twenty-five, at the most, might be more like it. Even that seems a stretch when you consider Tommy’s obsessive Sherlockian efforts to prove that Jennifer couldn’t possibly still be a virgin. But they definitely come across as more mature than the others). 

Ryan Montgomery plays Nick, a somewhat—but not much—more mature bunny than is Baby Boy. However, he manages to get set up with women in equally confusing situations, and with equally bewildering results. Perhaps one of the most remarkable things about Montgomery is that he is also the play’s director. He’s done well by both roles. 

Naturally there have to be women characters other than the bar-maid. Four interesting actresses, Stefanie Goldstein (Tessa), Nicole Socia (Allison), Klahr Thorsen (Lindsey) and Jessica Viola (Yvonne), do the best that can be done with women’s roles that mostly resemble no women I’ve ever encountered in my life. But they are, after all, characters as seen by very youthful men. 

The playwright is new and shows real talent. It will be interesting to see what he does in five or 10 years. Meanwhile, he’s writing a follow-up to Fluffy Bunnies. 

(By the way, he should have done a wee bit more research about how diaphragms actually work). 

Û

For those who lived through those times, there is a point in the meandering hallways of the Oakland Museum’s “California And The Vietnam Era” exhibit that observation and objectivity give way to experience, and the roped and plyboard partitions morph into corridors of your own mind. 

That point, for me, came shortly after sitting in the listening room, where I heard the audiotape of the young woman explaining being called into the principal’s office in the middle of the school day. She wondered what trouble she’d gotten into. Instead, she was told that her brother had died in combat. 

From there the floor space broadened out into a broad promenade of exhibit cases of the events of 1968, one wall blaring out, on three screens, in rolling succession, television newsclips of that year. Over and over, the screen flickered past the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, police officers pointing to the spot where an assassin’s bullet took Martin Luther King’s life. Then to Bobby Kennedy speaking from the podium of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, moments later lying mortally wounded on the basement floor. The axis of the deaths of three men—the perfect metaphor for those times. Two deaths of leaders watched over and again by millions—the cause of street riots and monumental shifts in presidential politics—one of a soldier-brother noticed only by family, classmates, and friends. Each of them, in their own way, irretrievably altering and shaping our destinies. 

I stood in that axis for 15 minutes or more, oblivious to the other museum patrons flowing quietly around me, and for those 15 minutes I was 20 years old again, and the whole world was on fire. 

“What’s Going On? California And The Vietnam Era” is an ingeniously-devised, 7,000-square-foot walking tour of 50 years of the most tumultuous times in the nation’s largest state. It is generally accepted that in those days, California was both the birthplace and the center of many of the major national social movements of those times—both on the left and the right—and the fiery battleground upon which those movements had some of their most bitter clashes. Here, after all, began both Richard Nixon’s political career and the Reagan Revolution, as well as the Free Speech Movement, the Black Panther Party, and many of the major anti-Vietnam War actions. 

Interspersing artifact exhibits with audio and video clips, the Oakland Museum exhibit takes no position on these events, but allows us to live through them either again or for the first time, using both broad and subtle brush to paint across an era that began with the Cold War, anti-Communist mid-1950s, continuing through the Southeast Asian immigrant experiences of today. 

The museum’s brochure boasts that the exhibit “includes more than 500 historical artifacts, photographs, and documents interwoven with film clips, music, and oral histories, many contributed from veterans and former refugees.” It seems like much more. 

A placard at the “Baby Boomer” station, which begins the exhibit, announces that the generation that came of age during the years of the Vietnam War “grew up in a time of great affluence and innovation. They were the first generation to be raised with television and their toys reflect the ethics and fears of their times.” 

And so there are the modest, unsexual, anatomically incorrect dolls for the little girls alongside the traditional toy cowboy pistol and holster for the boys, sliding gradually into the guided missile model and the atomic space ray. Further on is a ‘50s era school desk—complete with an inkwell depression that was long obsolete by those times—a banner photo above depicting how—idiotically—we were taught to duck under those desks in the event of nuclear attack. 

At the Free Speech Movement station there is another huge photo, a familiar one of FSM leader Mario Savio marching through Sproul Gate followed by thousands. Beside it is a 1964 Oakland Tribune with a headline reading “Hundreds of UC Sit-Ins Jailed.” The headline is in red, as if the conservative Knowlands, then-owners of the Tribune, were making the less-than-subtle point that the “red” Communist menace was swarming into Berkeley.  

Further on, in a separate section, there is evidence of its entrenchment: an incongruous-looking red-covered pocket book of “Five Articles By Chairman Mao Tse-Tung,” and a veteran radical of those times does not even have to read the placard to know that this was the infamous “little red book” that members of the Black Panther Party sold to students on the UC Berkeley campus in order to help finance the revolution. 

But before that, an exhibit case looms with a Goldwater For President poster, and a program from an event I had forgotten—the 1964 Republican National Convention where Barry Goldwater declared that “extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice,” tolling what political observers announced at the time was the death knell of American conservatism. And yes, once more, we were that naive. 

But the heart of the exhibit, and easily its most poignant pieces, is the soldiers’ stories—physical evidence of the thousands upon thousands who passed through the doors of the Oakland Induction Center on their way to troop ships to take them to the war. Preserved are panels from the induction center’s walls, as well as white-canvas squares from the bunk berths of the ships themselves, where soldiers inked their messages: “Malibu Rules,” “Army Sucks,” “California—Land Of The Free—Home Of The Cool.” 

A notation from the 337th Signal Co. R/R, with checks behind destination points: Ft. Bragg, Oakland, Okinawa, Viet Nam. A reprisal of the World War II Kilroy cartoon, with the notation “Bob Was Here With Plenty To Do, Be Back From Nam In ‘72.” Was he? A 1967 letter from a soldier to Hells Angel founder Sonny Barger: “I wish you and the rest of the Hells Angels could come over here too because I would have a lot more confidence fighting with you, than I would if I had to fight along side a protester.” A cigarette lighter, professionally engraved: “Tay Ninh 67-68, If I Die In Vietnam, Bury Me On My Stomach, So The Army Can Kiss My Ass.” How many of these men now walk among us? How many of them never will again? 

Expected, of course, is the long section on anti-Vietnam War protests. The protest movement, after all, had its heart in California, and particularly in the East Bay. And so there are buttons and posters and flyers—even the actual peace-symbol highlighted guitar on which, presumably, Country Joe McDonald strummed his “I Feel Like I’m Fixing To Die Rag.” 

But a pleasant surprise is how the exhibit carries the Vietnam era on into the period of Southeast Asian immigration. Cloth money bags, hand-crafted spoons and metal combs, quaintly-colored homespun clothing, Vietnamese language newspapers, Cambodian and Laotian passports, boat people belongings blending into a 2002 political poster for Madison Nguyen for the McKinley School District Board of Education, the first Vietnamese-American elected to public office in Northern California. History unfolding before our eyes. 

At the end of the exhibit, the museum has placed note cards for comment, and many of them have already been hung as a continuing expansion of the exhibit itself. “Why Haven’t We Learned The Lessons From Vietnam?”, “I saw photos of my bro.-in-law in Viet Nam. Thanks.”, “Did we have to give all that space to Ronald Reagan?!”, “In memory of all our men that gave their lives. Cisco. Hells Angels Oakland M/C.” 

And, finally, a simple memorial notation: “Claiborne L. Shaw. My uncle. Shandle Shaw.” Stapled to the card, from the exhibit brochure itself, is a picture of Claiborne Shaw, a young African-American soldier, helmeted, drinking from a canteen. In the exhibit book, he sits under a sign that reads “Oakland, Calif., 11,000 mi.” and an arrow pointing east. 

We leave the exhibit ourselves, mindful that so many never left Vietnam, and walk out into an Oakland summer sun, carrying all the tapped memories with us. 

@

FRIDAY, SEPT. 3 

THEATER 

Alameda Civic Light Opera. “Pippin,” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. to Sept. 19. Kofman Auditorium, 2220 Central Ave. in Alameda. Tickets are $23-$25. 864-2256. www.aclo.com 

Aurora Theatre Company, “The Persians” opens at the Aurora Theatre and runs through Oct. 10. Tickets are $28-$45. 843-4822. www.auroratheatre.org 

California Shakespeare Theater, “The Importance of Being Ernest” Tues.-Fri. at 7:30 p.m., Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 4 p.m. at the Bruns Memorial Amphitheater, through Sept. 3. Tickets are $13-$32. 548-9666. www.calshakes.org 

Impact Theatre, “Fluffy Bunnies in a Field of Daisies” at 8 p.m. at La Val’s Subterranean Theater, 1834 Euclid, and runs Thurs.-Sat. through Oct. 2. Tickets are $10-$15. 464-4468. www.impacttheatre.com 

Woodminster Summer Musicals “Flower Drum Song” at 8 p.m. at Woodminster Amphitheater in Joaquin Miller Park, 3300 Joaquin Miller Rd. Fri.- Sun. to Sept. 12. Tickets are $19-$31. 531-9597. www.woodminster.com 

EXHIBITION OPENINGS 

“Community” works by Sonya Derian, John Kenyon, Ira Lapidus, Biliana Stremska and Vee Tuteur. Reception at 6 p.m. at ACCI Gallery, 1652 Shattuck Ave. 843-2527. www.accigallery.com 

7th International Juried Enamel Exhibition opens at the ACCI Gallery, 1652 Shattuck Ave. Gallery hours are Mon.-Fri. 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., Sat. 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. 843-2527.  

www.accigallery.com 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Artist’s Talk with “Time & Place” artists Elizabeth D'Agostino and Joan Truckenbrod will show slides and videos of recent work and discuss their Fellowship projects currently on view at 7 p.m. at Kala Art Institute, 1060 Heinz Ave. 549-2977. www.kala.org 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Kathleen Grace Trio at 8 p.m. at The Jazz House. Cost is $10-$15 sliding scale. www.thejazz-house.org 

Pharma, 77 El Dora at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $6. 841-2082.  

www.starryploughpub.com 

Tropical Vibrations at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

The Ravines at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Brian Melvin Trio at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810. 

Dave Ellis at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Jose Rizo’s Jazz on the Latin Side at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square, through Sun. Cost is $12-$24. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

Naked Aggression, Toxic Narcotic, Midnight Creeps, New Earth Creeps at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $6. 525-9926. 

Kathleen Grace Trio at 8 p.m. at The Jazz House. Cost is $8. www.thejazzhouse.com 

Barbary Coast by Night Music and food from Algeria, at 7 p.m. at Cafe Raphael’s, 10064 San Pablo Ave. El Cerrito. 525-4227. 

Beckett’s Battle of the Bands with The Fated, The Skindivers, Thriving Ivory and Walty at 6 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

SATURDAY, SEPT. 4 

CHILDREN  

“Wild About Books” Labor Day concert with folksinger Adam Miller at 10:30 a.m. at the Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. 981-6223. 

EXHIBITION OPENINGS 

“The Voices of Civil Rights Bus Tour” will be on display at Art & Soul in the plaza of the Ronald V. Dellums Federal Building, Clay St. between 12th and 14th Sts., though Sept. 6. 444-CITY. www.artandsouloakland.com 

“Eyes Opened Wider” Recent panoramic landscapes by photographer Robert Reiter opens at the Photolab Gallery, 2235 Fifth St. Exhibition runs to Oct. 16. 644-1400. 

THEATER 

“Surviving Cain” by the youth group of Chinese for Christ Church, at 8 p.m. at 2715 Prince St. Also Sun. at 2 p.m. www.cfcberkeley.org/english 

FILM 

Maurice Pialat “Turkish Chronicles” at 9:10 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808.  

www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Bay Area Poets Coalition holds an open reading, 3 to 5 p.m., on the front lawn at 1527 Virginia St. 527-9905. poetalk@aol.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Native Elements, reggae, at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $13. 525-5054.  

www.ashkenaz.com 

Paul Cebar and the Milwaukeeans at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $8. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com  

Kugelplex performs Klezmer at 9:30 p.m. at Albatross, 1822 San Pablo Ave. Cost is $3. 843-2473. www.albatrosspub.com 

Marca Cassity and Emma Luna at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Sylvia and the Silvertones at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810. 

Monkey Knife Fight at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

T.S.O.L, D.I., Wormwood, Blooddy Phoenix, Nightmare at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $6. 525-9926. 

SUNDAY, SEPT. 5 

EXHIBITION OPENINGS 

“Times of India: The Woman and the Goddess” paintings by women artists from the Madhubani District in rural India, at the Addison Street Windows Gallery, 2018 Addison St. Exhibition runs to Oct. 12. 981-7546. 

FILM 

Labor Day with Chaplin: “Modern Times” at 4 and 6 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Poetry Flash with Linda Elkin, Larry Felson and Bill Mayer at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. Donation $2. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Wawa Sylvestre and the Oneness Kingdom, Haitian, Latin and Caribbean, at 8 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Skit System, Desolation, Blown to Bits at 5 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $6. 525-9926. 

Americana Unplugged with Redwing Bluegrass Band at 5 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

MONDAY, SEPT. 6 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Last Word Poetry Series with Jessica Loos and Neeli Cherkovski at 7 p.m. at Pegasus Books, 2349 Shattuck Ave. 649-1320. 

MUSIC 

Larry Vuckovich & The Blue Balkan Ensemble at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

TUESDAY, SEPT. 7 

THEATER 

Shotgun Theatre Lab “The Faith Project” runs Tues. and Wed. at 8 p.m. to Sept. 15 at The Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby at MLK. Free with suggested donation. 841-6500. www.shotgunplayers.org 

EXHIBITION OPENINGS 

Mark P. Fisher “Love for Sale” paintings, opens at Turn of the Century Fine Arts, 2510 San Pablo Ave. and runs to Oct. 20. 849-0950. www.turnofthecenturyfinearts.com 

FILM 

Alternative Visions: “The Films of Morgan Fisher” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Richard Clark discusses “Against All Enemies: Inside America’s War on Terrorism” at 6 p.m. at Zellerbach Auditorium, UC Campus. Sponsored by Cody’s Books. Tickets are $10. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com  

Mandy Aftel descrbes “Aroma: Recipes for Scented Food and Fragrance” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Edessa & Smyrna Time Machine at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $9. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Peter Barshy Duo at 8 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810. 

Jazz House Jam at 8 p.m. at The Jazz House. Donation $5. www.thejazzhouse.com 

Ernestine Anderson at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Also on Wed. Cost is $10-$18. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

Jazz School Tuesday with Misturada at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 8 

EXHIBITION OPENINGS 

Ninth Annual Yozo Hamaguchi Printmaking Scholarship Awards Exhibition Reception from 6 to 8 p.m. at the Isabelle Percy West Gallery, California College of the Arts, 5212 Broadway, Oakland. Exhibit runs to Sept. 19. www.cca.edu  

THEATER 

Berkeley Rep, “The Secret in the Wings” opens at the Roda Theater, 2015 Addison St. until Oct. 17. Tickets are $10-$55. 647-2949. www.berkeleyrep.org 

FILM 

Performance Anxiety: Linda Montano” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Café Poetry at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña. Donation $2. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Berkeley Poetry Slam at 8:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5-$7. 841-2082. 

www.starryplough.com 

Roya Hakakian describes “Journey From the Land of No: A Girlhood Caught in Revolutionary Iran” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Wednesday Noon Concert, Jessie Lee, piano, Garrett McLean, violin, Inning Chen, piano, at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. 642-4864. http://music.berkeley.edu 

Baguette Quartette at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Parisian musette dance lesson with Karen Tierney at 8 p.m. Cost is $9. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Kurt Ribak Trio at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

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

Pat MacDonald, Liam Carey and Paul Panamerenko at 9 p.m. at the Ivy Room, 858 San Pablo Ave. at Solano. 524-9220. www.ivyroom.com 

Larry Ochs with Fred Firth, Miya Masaoka and Chris Brown at 8 p.m. at The Jazz House. Donations of $8-$15 suggested.  

www.thejazzhouse.org 

THURSDAY, SEPT. 9 

EXHIBITION OPENINGS 

“Vincent Avalos: Interactive Installations” reception at 6 p.m. at Oakland Box Gallery, 1928 Telegraph Ave. Exhibition runs until Oct. 1. 451-1932. www.oaklandbox.com 

Bill Dallas “Artmatism” reception at 5:30 p.m. at Joyce Gordon Gallery, 409 14th St. Oakland. 465-8928. 

7th International Juried Enamel Exhibition Docent tour at 2 p.m. at the ACCI Gallery, 1652 Shattuck Ave. 843-2527. www.accigallery.com 

FILM 

“Beautiful Secret: A Tribute to Katy Jurado” at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña. Cost is $8. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Maurice Pialat: “A nos amours” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Ursula Hegi talks about her new novel “Sacred Time” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

Jennifer Leo, editor, introduces us to “Whose Panties are These? And Other Misadventures” at 7:30 p.m. at Easy Going Bookstore, 1385 Shattuck Ave. 843-3533. 

Luisah Teish and Bayou Heat, stories and videos in the style of New Orleans at 7 p.m. at Belladonna, 2436 Sacramento St. Cost is $10. 883-0600. www.belladonna.ws 

Word Beat Reading Series at 7 p.m. with Jeremy Morris Siegel and David Gollub at Mediterraneum Caffe, 2475 Telegraph Ave., near Dwight Way. 526-5985.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Odessa Chen, Inca at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5. 841-2082. www.starryplough.com 

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

Jazz Mine at 6:30 p.m. at King Tsin Chinese Restaurant, 1699 Solano Ave. www.jazzmine.net 

Hot Buttered Rum String Band at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $15.50 in advance, $16.50 at the door. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Gini Wilson, solo piano, at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810. 

Larry Ochs of Rova, with Fred Firth, and Miya Masaoka at 8 p.m. at The Jazz House. Donation $8-$15. www.thejazzhouse.org 

Jane Monheit at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Also on Fri. Cost is $12-$24. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

FRIDAY, SEPT. 10 

THEATER 

Alameda Civic Light Opera, “Pippin,” Sept. 10, 11, 17, 18 at 8 p.m. Sept. 12 and 19 at 2 p.m. Kofman Auditorium, 2220 Central Ave., Alameda. Tickets are $23-$25. 864-2256. www.aclo.com 

Aurora Theatre Company, “The Persians” opens at 8 p.m. and runs through Oct. 10. Tickets are $28-$45. 843-4822. www.auroratheatre.org 

Berkeley Rep, “The Secret in the Wings” at the Roda Theater, 2015 Addison St. until Oct. 17. Tickets are $10-$55. 647-2949. www.berkeleyrep.org 

Impact Theatre, “Fluffy Bunnies in a Field of Daisies” a sexually-honest comedy, at 8 p.m. at La Val’s Subterranean Theater, 1834 Euclid, and runs Thurs.-Sat. through Oct. 2 Tickets are $10-$15. 464-4468. www.impacttheatre.com 

Woodminster Summer Musicals “Flower Drum Song,” at 8 p.m. at Woodminster Amphitheater in Joaquin Miller Park, 3300 Joaquin Miller Rd. Fri.- Sun. to Sept. 12. Tickets are $19-$31. 531-9597. www.woodminster.com 

Unscripted Theater Company, “The Short and the Long of It,” an improv theater experience, Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m. at Temescal Arts Center, 511 48th St. at Telegraph, through Oct. 2. Tickets are $7-$10. 415-869-5384. www.un-scripted.com 

EXHIBITION OPENINGS 

7th International Juried Enamel Exhibition at the ACCI Gallery, 1652 Shattuck Ave. Reception 6 to 8 p.m. Gallery hours are Mon.-Fri. 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., Sat. 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. 843-2527. www.accigallery.com 

“Blossoming” the floral works of three local women artists, Jane Magid, Chaya Spector and Karen Mills. Reception from 6 to 8 p.m. at the Women’s Cancer Resource Center, 5741 Telegraph Ave. www.wcrc.org 

“Times of India: The Woman and the Goddess” Reception at 7 p.m. at the Addison Street Windows Gallery, 2018 Addison St. 981-7546. 

Kei Mizuochi “Silkscreens” Reception for the artist and Japanese flute concert at 6 p.m. at Schurman Fine Art Gallery, 1659 San Pablo Ave. 524-0623. 

FILM 

Maurice Pialat: “The Mouth Agape” at 7:30 p.m. “Police” at 9:15 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

Old Oakland Outdoor Cinema on Washington St., between 9th and 10th Sts. Music at 5 p.m., and film, “Singin’ in the Rain” at 8 p.m. Bring your own chairs and blankets. 238-4734. www.filmoakland.com 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

International Literacy Day from 12:30 to 2:30 p.m. at Martin Luther King, Jr. Park. Local authors and adult literacy students will read their poetry, short stories and other works. 981-6299. 

Colin Channer reads from his new collection of stories “Passing Through” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

Gary Erickson, founder of Clif Bar, discusses “Raising the Bar: Integrity and Passion in Life and Business” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. www.codysbooks.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Alfredo Muro, Peruvian guitar virtuoso, at 8 p.m. at La Peña. Cost is $12. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

The Hogan, Emerge perform jazz, latin funk and eclectic in a free concert at 5 p.m. at Baltic Square, behind 121 Park Place, Pt. Richmond. 236-1401. www.pointrichmond.com/music 

Hitomi Oba Quartet at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $12-$15. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Hot Buttered Rum String Band at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $15.50 in advance, $16.50 at the door. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Vinyl, The People, funk, groove, at 9:30 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $5-$8. 548-1159. www.shattuckdownlow.com 

Larry Ochs with Fred Firth, Davon Hoff and Miya Masaoka at 8 p.m. at The Jazz House. Donations of $8-$15 suggested. www.thejazzhouse.org 

Grapefruit Ed and David Gans at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com  

Mimi Fox Quartet at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810. 

DJ & Brook, jazz trio, at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Mingus Amungus at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Battle of the Bands at 6 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

Toys That Kill, Rasputin, Bezerk, Rivithead, Stiletta at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $6. 525-9926.

Celery seedlings can be difficult to find locally because it is considered hard to grow here. In fact, especially where the water table is high (and where in Berkeley is it not?), this marsh-loving member of the Umbelliferae family is one of the many vegetables that reward the home gardener.  

Search for six-packs in the fall, plant them six inches apart in lavishly-enriched soil, give each plant a collar of copper strips to protect from slugs and snails, and let the winter rains do the rest. I set them out closely because I like to dig up alternate plants when they are young, leaving plenty of space for the others to mature. 

In a more limited way than leafy greens, celery is a vegetable one can harvest gradually, cutting off outside branches as needed. And as with leafy greens, planting in early fall gives roots time to develop for a growth spurt in early spring. There is no need to blanch the stalks, since they have the same taste and crunch whether green or white.  

The celery season is short. Dig up the entire crop when rain has ceased, and replace with a heat-loving vegetable. In hot dry weather it deteriorates. I like to leave one plant to set seed—which has culinary value in the Indian cuisine—and sow a few of these when they are fully ripe and dry at summer’s end. The trick to their germination is to sprinkle the tiny seeds on to a six-pack or other small pot of fine potting soil and set it in a dish of water. The constant moisture seems to be what the seeds need and love. When true leaves appear, transplant to individual four-inch pots and keep them constantly moist. Set them in the ground no later than October. 

When preparing celery for eating, strip off the stringy fibers, as these can be indigestible. Home grown celery is crisper and more tender—more youthful, no doubt—than store-bought celery. It is best eaten raw, as part of an antipasto, with oily black olives, rosy radishes, thin slices of garlicky salami and a glass of cool Frascati.  

It also makes an excellent veloute, or velvety soup, the diced stalks simmered in lightly-salted water, blended when soft, thinned and reheated with milk and enriched with a touch of butter or cream. Taste for salt, and grind over it some black pepper. This is a delicate soup whose flavor is best revealed when not masked by seasonings and poultry stock. A sprinkling of chopped parsley is an ideal garnish. 

Parsley is in the same family, yet its seed is much more difficult to germinate. Parsley seed is said to go to the devil and back before it will sprout. One should never trust a woman who cannot grow parsley. Or is it one who can? Either way, parsley’s usefulness in the kitchen is legendary. Yet celery leaves make an excellent substitute where stronger flavoring is acceptable and green fingers and thumbs have failed. Try an intensification of the above soup with the incorporation of a young celery leaf or two, finely chopped. 

FRIDAY, SEPT. 3 

Radio Summer Camp Learn how to build and operate a community radio station. A four-day camp from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sponsored by Radio Free Berkeley. 625-0314. www.freeradio.org 

Berkeley Chess Club meets Fridays at 7:15 p.m. at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. Players at all levels are welcome. 652-5324. 

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. Sponsored by the Buddhist Peace Fellowship. 655-6169. www.bpf.org 

Overeaters Anonymous meets every Friday at 1:30 p.m. at the Northbrae Church at Solano and The Alameda. Parking is free and is handicapped accessible. For information call Katherine, 525-5231. 

Peace Ceremonies with Andree Morgana and the Hayehwatha Institute at 7 p.m. at Belladonna, 2436 Sacramento St. Cost is $10. 883-0600. www.belladonna.ws 

SATURDAY, SEPT. 4 

Basket Bonanza Learn about the weaving techniques of native people and the many uses of baskets. We will weave baskets of our own. For ages 8 and up. From 10 to 11:30 a.m. at Tilden Nature Area, in Tilden Park. Cost is $3-$5, registration required. 525-2233. www.ebparks.org 

Kids Garden Club on the science of cooking. Investigate kitchen science by making soup and baking bread, from 2 to 4 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. For ages 7-12. Cost is $3-$5, registration required. 525-2233. 

Berkeley Fire Station Open House from 1 to 4 p.m. at Station 4, 1900 Marin Ave. Tour the station, see a safety presentation, and historical display and enjoy hot dogs and cake. Families and children especially welcome. 981-5506. 

World Food Festival Asian Cuisine from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Farmers’ Market, Center St. at MLK Jr Way. Cooking demonstration of Thai-California cuisine at 11 a.m. with Vanni Patchara. 548-3333. www.ecologycenter.org 

Walking Tour of Old Oakland “New Era/New Politics” highlights African-American leaders who have made their mark on Oakland. Meet at 10 a.m. at the African American Museum and Library at 659 14th St. 238-3234. www.oaklandnet.com/walkingtours 

Art and Soul Festival from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. through Mon. at Frank Ogawa Plaza, City Center, Oakland. Over 40 bands on four stages, food, artisan marketplace, and Fun Zone for children. Cost is $5. www.artandsouloakland.com 

Sick Plant Clinic The first Sat. of every month, UC plant apthologist, Dr. Robert Raabe, UC entomologist Dr. Nick Mills, and their team of experts will diagnose what ails your plants. From 9 a.m. to noon at the UC Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Dr. Free. 643-2755. 

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

SUNDAY, SEPT. 5 

“Propagating Natives with Cuttings” with Martin Grantham, Greenhouse Manager for San Francisco State University. From 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Regional Parks Botanic Garden, Visitors Center, Tilden Park. Cost is $40 members, $45 nonmembers. Attendance is limited, registration advised. Class fees benefit The Friends of the Regional Parks Botanic Garden. 845-4116. www.nativeplants.org 

Reptile Roundup Come meet Tilden’s reptiles and learn how the world was formed on the shells of turtles and why snakes have natural spectacles. From 2 to 3:30 p.m. at Tilden Nature Area, in Tilden Park. 525-2233. www.ebparks.org 

“That’s not a Weed, that’s an Herb!” Free lecture by herbalist and gardener Patricia Kazmierowski on common garden weeds and how you can use them for food, health, and beauty care, at 2 p.m. at Peralta Community Garden, 1400 Peralta St. 548-1417. 

Domingo de Rumba a family participatory event with Afro-Cuban folkloric drums and dances, at 3:30 p.m. at La Peña, 3105 Shattuck Ave. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Les Contes pour Enfants An hour of nature stories in French for children at 10 a.m. at Tilden Nature Area, in Tilden Park. 525-2233. www.ebparks.org 

“Growing Up and Growing Old: Life Stages of Enlightenment” with Walter Tuett Anderson, at 9:30 a.m. at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, 1 Lawson Rd., Kensington. 525-0302.  

MONDAY, SEPT. 6 

Rainbow Berkeley Brunch at 11 a.m. at Hs Lordships Restaurant, 199 Seawall Drive. With MC Darryl Moore and music by Out on a Clef and Irina Rivkin. $10-$20 suggested donation. 548-9235. 

Tilden Environmental Education Center Open House with a variety of drop-in programs from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Tilden Nature Area, in Tilden Park. 525-2233. www.ebparks.org 

World Affairs/Politics Discussion Group for people 60 years and over meets Mondays at 10:15 a.m. at the Albany Senior Center, 846 Masonic Ave. Join at any time. 524-9122. 

Labor Day Flea Market with furniture, books, toys, clothes, electronics and more, also music, food and fun for children from 9 a.m. to dark at the Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists, 1924 Cedar at Bonita. 

Central Labor Council of Alameda County celebrates Labor Day at the Oakland A’s game at 4 p.m. at the East Side Club. Tickets are $12.50. For reservations call 632-4242. 

Color of Woman Story Writing Workshop with Shiloh McCloud at 6 p.m. at Belladonna, 2436 Sacramento St. Cost is $40, materials $20. 883-0600. www.belladonna.ws 

Community Healing Circle through chanting, singing and music, every first Mon. at 7 p.m. at Premalaya, 1713 University at McGee. alayabrk@earthlink.net  

Fitness for 55+ A total body workout including aerobics, stretching and strengthening at 1:15 p.m. at the South Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5170. 

Berkeley CopWatch organizational meeting at 8 p.m. at 2022 Blake St. Join us to work on current issues around police misconduct. Volunteers needed. For information call 548-0425. 

TUESDAY, SEPT. 7 

An Evening with Richard Clarke, former counterterrorism czar and author of “Against All Enemies” at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Auditorium, UC Campus. Sponsored by the Goldman School of Public Policy. Tickets are $5-$10 available from 642-9998.  

“OUTFOXED” a documentary on media empires, led by Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News at 9:15 p.m., 1834 Park Blvd. near Lake Merritt in Oakland. This free event is sponsored by Not in Our Name. 601-8006.  

National Organization for Women Oakland/East Bay Chapter meets at 6 p.m. in the Boardroom of the Oakland YWCA, 1515 Webster St. The speaker will be Jean Damu who will discuss reparations for damages caused by slavery. 287-8948. 

WriterCoach Connection (formerly Writers’ Room) seeks volunteers for this coming academic year for Berkeley schools. From 6:30 to 9:30 p.m., and on Sept. 14. Other training times available. For information please contact Lynn Mueller at 524-2319 or writercoachconnect@yahoo.com www.writercoachconnection.org 

Family Story Time at the Kensington Branch Library, Tues. evenings at 7 p.m. 61 Arlington Ave. 524-3043. 

“Trekking the Himalaya and Beyond” Practical tips for exploring the world on foot with Arlene Blum at 7 p.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. 527-4140. 

Docent Training at the Regional Parks Botanic Garden every Tues. through Feb. 8 at the Regional Parks Botanic Garden, Tilden Park. Cost is $125. To register please send a check to Dr. Glenn Keator, 1455 Catherine Drive, Berkeley, 94702. For more information call 527-9802. www.nativeplants.org 

Kairos Youth Choir Auditions for boys and girls age 7-15. For information call 414-1991, info@kairoschoir.org www.kairoschoir.org 

Acting and Storytelling Classes for Seniors offered by Stagebridge, at Arts First Oakland, 2501 Harrison St. Classes are held at 10 a.m. Tues.-Fri. For more information call 444-4755. www.stagebridge.org 

American Red Cross Blood Services Volunteer Orientation from 9:30 to 11 a.m. at 6230 Claremont Ave., Oakland. Volunteers needed for Berkeley blood drives and/or Oakland Blood Center. Advance sign-up needed 594-5165.  

Creating Economic Opportunities for Women Free orientation meetings for training programs for immigrant and refugee women in English, finance and computer skills. Also on Sept. 9. 655 International Blvd., at 7th Ave., 2nd floor. To register call 879-2949. 

Organic Produce at low prices sold at the corner of Sacramento and Oregon Streets every Tuesday from 3 to 7 p.m. This is a project of Spiral Gardens. 843-1307. 

Phone Banking to ReDefeat Bush on Tuesdays from 6 to 9 p.m. at Cafe de la Paz, 1600 Shattuck Ave. Bring your cell phones. Please RSVP if you can join us. 415-336 8736. dan@redefeatbush.com 

“Heal Your Back, Straighten Your Spine” at 1 p.m. at Pharmaca, 1744 Solano Ave.  

St. John’s Prime Timers meets at 9:30 a.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. Scuba diver Carl Arnoult will show underwater slides of coral reefs around the world at 11 a.m. 845-6830. 

Berkeley Camera Club meets at 7:30 p.m., at the Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. 548-3991. www.berkeleycameraclub.org 

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.  

WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 8 

Wednesday Bird Walk Discover the first of the migrants and help us with the monitoring of the shoreline, at 8:30 a.m. at Martin Luther King Jr. Shoreline. Turn into the park off Swan Way, follow the drive to the end and meet at the last parking lot by the observation deck. 525-2233. 

Workshop for Candidates and Treasurers offered by the Berkeley Fair Campaign Practices Commission at 7 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-6950. 

“Fed Up” a film at 7 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St., Oakland. Admission is free. Part of the GMOs and Food series sponsored by GMO Free Alameda County. 527-9898. www.gmofreeac.org 

Walking Tour of Old Oakland uptown to the Lake to discover Art Deco landmarks. Meet at 10 a.m. in front of the Paramount Theater at 2025 Broadway. Tour lasts 90 minutes. Reservations can be made by calling 238-3234. 

Prose Writers’ Workshop An ongoing group focused on issues of craft. Novices welcome. Community sponsored, no fee. Meets Wed. at 7 p.m. at the Berkeley Jewish Community Center, 1414 Walnut St. 524-3034. georgeporter@earthlink.net 

Walk Berkeley for Seniors meets every Wednesday, rain or shine, at 9:30 a.m. at the Sea Breeze market, just west of the I-80 overpass. Everyone is welcome, wear comfortable shoes, sunscreen and a hat. 548-9840. 

Berkeley Peace Walk and Vigil at the Berkeley BART Sta- 

tion, corner of Shattuck and Center. Vigil at 6:30 p.m., Peace Walk at 7 p.m. www.geocities. 

com/vigil4peace/vigil 

Auditions for the new Arlington Children’s Choir will be held between 4 and 6 p.m. at 52 Arlington Ave. in Kensington. Children, between the ages 8 and 14, who enjoy singing and performing, are invited to participate. For information and audition time call Shanti at 843-7745. 

Poetry Writing Workshop, led by Alison Seevak, every second Wed. at 7 p.m. at the Albany Library, Edith Stone Room, 1247 Marin Ave. Registration required. 526-3700, ext. 20. 

Fun with Acting Class every Wednesday at 11 a.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Free, all are welcome, no experience necessary. 

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

Rosh Hashanah “The Meeting Point Between Cosmic, Cyclical, Linear and Historical Time” A workshop presented by Avital Plan at 7:30 p.m. at the Berkeley Richmond Jewish Community Center, 1414 Walnut St. Cost is $5. 848-0237, ext. 112. 

THURSDAY, SEPT. 9 

Berkeley Folk Dancers’ Beginners Class starts and runs for 8 weeks on Thursdays at 7:45 p.m. at Live Oak Park, Shattuck at Berryman. Cost is $30. 528-9168. 

East Bay Mac User Group meets the 2nd Thursday of every month, from 6 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. at Expression Center for New Media, 6601 Shellmound St. http://ebmug.org, www.expression.edu 

Berkeley Farmer’s Market with all organic produce at Shattuck at Rose, from 3 to 7 p.m. 548-3333. www.ecologycenter.org 

“Managing Weight, Mood and Menopause” at 5:30 p.m. at Pharmaca, 1744 Solano Ave.  

Grizzly Peak Flyfishers monthly meeting at 7 p.m at the Kensington Community Center, 59 Arlington Av. in Kensington, with Kirston Koths on “Fly Fishing in Scotland: In Search of Sea Trout, Brown Trout and the Historical Connection to Scotch Malt Whisky.” 547-8629. 

FRIDAY, SEPT. 10 

International Literacy Day celebrated from 12:30 to 2:30 p.m. at Martin Luther King Jr. Park. Listen to local authors and adult literacy students read their poetry and short stories. 981-6299. 

“So How’d You Become an Activist?” with Gloria La Riva, Cuba solidarity activist and union leader and Richard Becker, co-founder, ANSWER coalition, at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists, 1924 Cedar St., at Bonita. Suggested donation $5. 528-5403. 

“The Wild Buffalo of Yellowstone” a discussion with the Buffalo Field Campaign at 7 p.m. at The Ecology Center, 2530 San Pablo Ave. near Dwight Way. 548-2220, ext. 233. www.ecologycenter.org 

Old Oakland Outdoor Cinema on Washington St., between 9th and 10th Sts. Music at 5 p.m., and film, “Singin’ in the Rain” at 8 p.m. Bring your own chairs and blankets. Sponsored by the City of Oakland and the Old Oakland Historic District. 238-4734. www.filmoakland.com 

Berkeley Critical Mass Bike Ride meets at the Berkeley BART the second Friday of every month at 5:30 p.m. 

Berkeley Chess Club meets Fridays at 7:15 p.m. at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. Players at all levels are welcome. 652-5324. 

Mandala Circle of Bliss Workshops with Vicki Noble and Laura Amazzone Fri. p.m. and Sat.-Sun. at Belladonna, 2436 Sacramento. Cost is $175. To register call 883-0600. 

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. People of all traditions are welcome to join us. Sponsored by the Buddhist Peace Fellowship. 655-6169. www.bpf.org 

Overeaters Anonymous meets every Friday at 1:30 p.m. at the Northbrae Church at Solano and The Alameda. Parking is free and is handicapped accessible. For information call Katherine, 525-5231. 

ONGOING 

Afterschool Center providing tutoring and support for Berkeley students age 5 to 14 at 1255 Allston Way. Cost is $20 per week. Sponsored by Berkeley Youth Alternatives. 845-9066. 

Twilite Basketball for young women age 11 to 18 Wed. and Fri. from 6 to 9 p.m. Sponsored by Berkeley Youth Alternatives. 845-9066. 

CITY MEETINGS 

Commission on Disability meets Wed., Sept. 8, 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., Sept. 8, 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., Sept. 8, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Ruth Grimes, 981-7481. www.ci.berkeley. ca.us/commissions/planning 

Police Review Commission meets Wed. Sept. 8, 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., Sept. 8, at 7 p.m., at 201 University Ave. Cliff Marchetti. 644-6376 ext. 224. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/waterfront 

Berkeley Rent Stabilization Board meets Thurs. Sept. 9, at 7 p.m. in City Council Chambers, Pam Wyche 644-6128 ext. 113. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/rent 

Commission on Early Childhood Education meets Thurs., Sept. 9, 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, Sept. 9, at 6:45 p.m., at the South Berkeley Senior Center. The Commission is interested in hearing from Berkeley residents about the health issues that are important to them, their families, and their neighborhoods. William Rogers, 981-5344. www.ci.berkeley. 

ca.us/commissions/health 

Transportation Commission meets Thurs., Sept. 9, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Peter Hillier, 981-7000. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/transportation 

West Berkeley Project Area Commission meets Thurs., Sept. 9, at 7 p.m., at the West Berkeley Senior Center. 981-7520. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/westberkeley  

Zoning Adjustments Board meets Thurs., Sept. 9, at 7 p.m., in City Council Chambers. Mark Rhoades, 981-7410. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/zoning  ª

Last Friday night after work I went down to Orchard Supply Hardware to buy a couple of small items. (Only chain stores are open on Friday nights in Berkeley.) As I was driving back up Ashby Avenue on my way home, I saw a white van marked “Crime Scene Unit” parked on the southeast corner of Ashby and California. There were three or four Berkeley police cars parked on the north side of Ashby, and I saw several police officers. Since that’s a neighborhood which has had several shootings in the last year, I wondered what might be going on.  

I turned left at the next corner and went around the block to come south on California Street, where I saw three or more additional police cars parked at the corner and more officers. I pulled up alongside one of the officers who were standing in the street and asked him what was going on. “Why do you want to know?” he asked. I told him that I’m with the Daily Planet, and that I thought that something newsworthy might have happened. “Why should you think that?” he said. Because of the number of police present, I said.  

“I don’t have to tell you anything,” he said. “Rubbernecking, holding up traffic like this, it’s a serious breach of decorum.” I looked in my rearview mirror back along California Street—no one behind me, no one held up.  

Perhaps he hadn’t heard me say that I was with the press? I tried again. I stuck my hand out the window, shook his hand (much to his discomfort), told him my name and my job, and asked him what his name and badge number were. “Officer Jim __________, Badge 114.” he muttered. I couldn’t hear his last name, something ending in “I,” but I was afraid to annoy him by asking again. I fumbled around in my purse for a card, but he didn’t want it, wasn’t interested. He asked what right I had to ask what was going on. I hazarded an answer, knowing it would not make him happy: “The people’s right to know?” Hands on hips, he frowned again. 

By this time a younger officer had come up behind him and was trying to get his attention, saying he needed to talk to him about something. It was pretty obvious that the junior guy, who had arrived on a bicycle, was nervous about Officer Jim’s belligerent behavior, but O.J. refused to be distracted.  

“What are you doing here?” he said. I told him that I worked nearby, and lived on Ashby, and that I was on my way home. “This is my neighborhood, and I haven’t seen you at any neighborhood meetings,” he said in a challenging tone of voice. Finally, grudgingly, with an eye on the junior guy listening, Officer Jim said, “What if I told you there was a traffic accident?” 

By this time there was another car waiting behind me, and I figured that was the best I was going to do, so I left. When I got home, I called the police non-emergency number, and was told that there had indeed been an accident on that corner.  

Why did Officer Jim feel such a strong need to be gratuitously rude to a citizen who stopped to ask a question? O.J. was hostile to me even before he found out that I am connected with the press, which would not have been an excuse for rudeness anyway. 

I’m not exactly threatening looking: a middle-aged somewhat frazzled-looking plump woman driving a granny van.  

He couldn’t have been too busy, given that there were a minimum of six cars with attendant personnel, plus the crime scene unit, available to take care of the traffic accident, if that’s what it was. By the time I got there, I didn’t see any dented cars, obvious victims or ambulances, though they may have been there earlier. The officers I saw were just standing around. 

So why couldn’t he just politely answer my polite question? “What’s happening?” “There’s been a traffic accident.” Thanks and goodbye. Simple, but obviously too challenging for Berkeley’s finest.  

I remembered a letter the Planet received a while back from a citizen who was unwilling to have it printed because of fear of reprisals. He said: 

“Public safety workers are rapidly becoming the new aristocracy of labor. Police and fire salaries and benefit costs are soaring and are taking an increasing chunk of General Fund money. This is leading to proposals for parcel taxes to fund things that are getting squeezed out by the growth in public safety and other public employee costs. But the City Council should not expect the voters to be sympathetic to calls for new parcel taxes until they deal with the underlying cause of the city’s budget problem which is excessive municipal employee wage and benefit increases.” 

He backed up his analysis with credible facts and figures, too many to include here. One comparision: “ ….if no changes are made in the police contract, the starting salary for a rookie police officer will be almost double the starting salary of a teacher who just got a credential. Right now, the starting salary of the lowest paid cop is at least 168 percent of that of the lowest paid teacher with a credential. Teachers with emergency credentials are paid even less.” I thought of a recent story: the police chief will soon be retiring at 55 with a lifetime pension of about $150,000 a year.  

We get frequent complaints from readers about how hard it is to get police attention for drug dealing, prostitution and other crime problems, particularly in south and west Berkeley. But it’s not as if we’re tying the hands of the law—our paper and others have reported that most if not all Police Review Commission decisions about inappropriate police behavior are now overturned by the police department’s internal affairs office. Bottom line, the popular perception is that Berkeley police manage to combine ineffectiveness with hostile and belligerent behavior toward innocent citizens, and that they’re grossly overpaid.  

In the City Council election campaign now underway, this is a situation the candidates should be addressing. Comment from incumbent councilmembers, from the city manager’s office and even from the mayor would also be welcome. Voters are right now making up their minds about the parcel tax, and they’d like to know what’s going to be done about the police. 

e

Watching the Republican Convention on television is like picking at a scab. You know it’s a mistake, you know it will only make things worse, but it’s hard not to do it, albeit obsessively and secretly. It’s a metaphor-generating experience, because it’s almost impossible to describe the horror and disgust provoked in the person of ordinary sensibility using straightforward descriptive language.  

Look at poor David Gergen. Never expected to feel sorry for him. He’s always been a Republican, in fact was the MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour’s token Republican, paired with TradLibDem Mark Shields, who survives on the all-Lehrer version of the show. Someone asked Gergen what he thought of the anti-Kerry Swift Boat Veterans ads. His facial expression was roughly that of a person at a formal banquet looking at a platter on which a little Scottie dog, trussed and stuffed, is served up as the centerpiece of the meal. “Disgust” doesn’t begin to cover it. He did make two good observations about ex-Democrat Zell Miller’s speech: (1) Zell Miller got his start with Lester Maddox (the rabid segregationist Georgia governor) and he sounded just like Lester last night and (2) Republicans talk about Kerry’s flip-flops, but Georgians have been talking about “Zig-Zag-Zell” for years.  

And Miller himself! He is one of most frightening looking people ever seen in prime time, including in horror movies, with his hawk-bill nose looming over the frown lines which dominate his face. You could run a video of his speech with an audio version of Puritan preacher Jonathan Edwards’ hellfire sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” or Cotton Mather’s “The Devil in New England” and it would be plausible. A real American fundamentalist, in other words. 

The content of his speech, like the content of the one delivered by Iceberg Dick Cheney, also reminded the viewer of another tradition, a European one: the Big Lie, perfected by the Nazis. Republicans are telling big lies and small, consequential and gratuitous both. Someone on the Internet will surely have a catalog of lies told at the Republican National Convention, but it will come too late to make any difference in the opinions of the average viewer. The outright fabrications were too numerous for the talking heads to count on Wednesday night, even seasoned mudwatchers like Joe Klein and Joe Conason, who each got an occasional minute or two to try to comment.  

And there was very little intelligent opinion available on the two channels where some small amount might have been expected: PBS and CNN. The one commentator who was permitted occasional cogent observations was the token Spanish-speaker brought on by Larry King, Univision’s Jorge Ramos. Larry kept calling Ramos “Gore-hay,” and seemed uncharacteristically reluctant to interrupt, perhaps because he was desperately trying to remember how to pronounce the name each time. In the most elegant and discrete way, Ramos said that his Spanish-language viewers in the 13 Latin American democracies would be deeply shocked by what they saw of the convention, particularly the enshrinement of the religious right, when many countries like Mexico cherish their traditional separation of church and state.  

It was the consensus among the talking heads, both intelligent and brainless, that the Republicans have put on this show of viciousness to energize their base, rather than to convince the undecided. Pundit Central has decreed this year that the function of attack speeches and ads is really to scare the non-politicized undecideds into staying home, to convince them that politics equals evil. The pundits could be right.  

The Kerry camp’s strategy until now has been Mr. Nice Guy: don’t attack Bush, just deliver an upbeat, positive message and hope that it persuades. This is starting to make Kerry supporters very nervous. Polling and focus groups, which in the last few years have dominated candidates’ decision-making processes, don’t seem to be working, because results are within the margin of error of the methodology.  

The Shields/Klein/Conason contingent has started spreading rumors of a reprogramming effort underway at Kerry Central in Nantucket this weekend, which might produce a more forthright Kerry posture. The people in the streets in New York have been trying to deliver the strong criticism of the Bush regime which they think Kerry neglects, whether Kerry’s on board with them or not.  

Kerry’s personal style derives more from the New England of Calvin Coolidge than that of Cotton Mather. But in the past, in the days of Vietnam Veterans against the War, he showed himself to be capable of assertive leadership when it was required. Now he needs to shift gears, to connect better with the New England style of its Irish immigrants and their descendants, people like Tip O’Neill, skilled at forceful, issues-sparked political rhetoric. He needs, in fact, to borrow some moves from the Kennedys, to whom he is often compared. John Kennedy had the word for what Kerry’s campaign lacks: vigor (pronounced “vigah” in the local dialect). A little Vigah from Kerry right now might make all the difference.