Shortly after John Moriarty opened his Elmwood District jewelry shop nearly three decades ago, the two-block shopping district on College Avenue had a cobbler, pharmacy, gun store and the most restrictive business regulations in Berkeley. -more-
Plans for a strike at the Alta Bates Summit Medical Center hospitals in Berkeley and Oakland were canceled Monday morning. -more-
Two Berkeley firefighters are back from emergency duty in hurricane-ravaged Mississippi, while a third remains on duty in New Orleans, following a dramatic rescue of a young girl. -more-
As families from the Gulf Coast continue arriving in the Bay Area, Berkeley began mobilizing Friday to provide hurricane victims with homes and services. -more-
With concerns over Berkeley High School’s Academic Choice program not quite the hot-button issue it was a year ago, elections to this year’s School Site Council (SSC) last week were decidedly less volatile than they were last September. -more-
Members of Berkeley’s Zoning Adjustments Board approved the use permits that would allow construction of the David Brower Center on the city’s Oxford Street parking lot. -more-
If the Peralta Community College District Board of Trustees were a college football team, we would be saying that “Peralta’s crop of rookie recruits enters its second season tonight with high hopes, after a tumultuous year filled with both fumbles and mastering team fundamentals.” -more-
Berkeley announced Monday that it has reduced emissions of greenhouse gases from city operations by 14 percent since 2002. -more-
In the last two weeks, getting ready for the Big One has suddenly engaged many Bay Area residents. With the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina serving as a heads-up, people are replenishing their stock of water, batteries, canned foodstuffs and first aid kits. Those who live in or frequent the Berkeley hills would do well to add another item to their earthquake preparedness lists: the recently published third edition of the Berkeley Path Wanderers Association’s popular map of all city-owned footpaths and stairways. -more-
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If we measured news coverage the way we measure hurricanes then Katrina’s Category 4 destruction of New Orleans would rate a Category 5. Everything imaginable and much that is not imaginable is said, repeated and illustrated. Print and electronic media stuff the public with countless graphic morsels of courage, fortitude, resilience, tenacity, evil, looting, anger, neglect, mendacity, incompetence, finger pointing and blame aplenty—a full rainbow of emotions, a microcosm of the American psyche, a mesmerizing surreal orgy of humanity in extremis. -more-
Friday morning, when they arrived at the opening plenary session of the first-ever Sierra Club convention held at San Francisco’s Moscone Center, several thousand activists got a surprise. Instead of an address by Executive Director Carl Pope, they heard a rousing speech from former Vice President Al Gore. (The schedule change arose because Gore was to have given a speech to state insurance commissioners in New Orleans.) -more-
Washington, D.C.—As an in-tractable and hopeless war in Iraq continues, a nightmare famine in Darfur lingers, and a post-hurricane catastrophe scenario plays itself out at home along comes a campaign to initiate a United States cabinet-level Department of Peace (DOP). -more-
For a few days after Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast, the Bush White House doled out the sort of upbeat rhetoric with which it customarily responds to disasters that are at least partly of its own making. The public was advised by Vice President Cheney that “tremendous progress” was being made in Louisiana. On Sept. 2, the president told FEMA Director Michael Brown, “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job.” -more-
Last Tuesday was the fourth anniversary of the death of my neighbor Mrs. Gerstine Scott. I think about her a great deal, but during this time of year she is especially on my mind. -more-
Marc Sapir’s op-ed in defense of KPFA’s General Manager Roy Campanella II (“Coup Crystallizes Inside KPFA—Again?” Aug. 19) abandons reasoned analysis for a one-sided polemic, riddled with errors and hyperbole. Sapir appears to be singularly misinformed about the facts of the disturbing labor dispute at KPFA—a conflict that should concern all who care about this crucial 56-year-old institution and the vitality of the left in the Bay Area and Central Valley. If Sapir had bothered to check his facts, instead of repeating Campanella’s spin almost verbatim, he would have found that he was being sold a bill of goods. -more-
This is the story of my foster child who I’ll call “Katrina.” Like many of the hurricane victims, she too has been jerked around by a bureaucratic system rife with finger-pointing and incompetence. -more-
As summer comes to a close, musicians from up and down the Pacific coast will converge on Berkeley for a series of shows at the Freight and Salvage Coffeehouse, Jupiter, Ashkenaz and the downtown Saturday farmer’s market. -more-
The informal consensus among the plant folks I know is that we’re having an unusually early autumn. That might be true; that poor plum tree that hangs over our fence is bald already, and started dropping leaves in early August. It’s been badly stressed though, since it was butchered so ineptly last year, so I’d thought it was an exception. -more-
East Bay progressives, politicians, celebrities, and business and religious leaders rallied this week in front of the Federal Building in Oakland to alternately denounce the Bush administration and urge aid for the Louisiana and Mississippi residents displaced by last week’s devastating storm and floods. -more-
Sixty-two years ago Shirley Thompson left her family in New Orleans behind to start fresh in Bay Area. Last week, 13 members of her family, their homes underwater and with little left besides the clothes on their backs, joined her. -more-
The landmark UC Theatre on University Avenue in Berkeley could soon be the home of a jazz club, but just when remains a question. -more-
Renovations to Berkeley’s Civic Center Park, in the works since 1996, have been delayed once again after the city learned that the project would cost at least $400,000 more than anticipated. -more-
The Berkeley City Council meets Tuesday at 7 p.m. after an eight-week recess. Items on the agenda include: -more-
The drive to make Berkeley the first city in the country to charge a fee for grocery bags at city supermarkets hit a snag this week when results were released of a recent unscientific online survey conducted by the mayor’s office. -more-
Hundreds of dead fish floated to the surface of Strawberry Creek Tuesday morning, the apparent result of chemicals dumped in the stream, according to a group of residents who reported the incident. -more-
At least one-quarter of unionized workers at Bayer Corp.’s Berkeley facility were barred by their union from voting on a new contract Wednesday because they had refused to pay a $40 surcharge after an embezzlement scheme had depleted union coffers of more than $100,000. -more-
Berkeley Unified School District leaders pledged this week that even though the Fiscal Crisis Management Assistance Team has left the building, the district itself will continue the organization’s work. -more-
As Tuesday’s strike deadline nears for the East Bay’s Summit Alta Bates hospitals, a state legislator announced plans Thursday for hearings on the tax-exempt status of their corporate parent. -more-
One of the most heart-wrenching facts of Hurricane Katrina’s horrific destruction is that so much of the death and devastation was completely avoidable. Another sobering fact is that the means to avoid so much pain and loss was well known and technologically low-tech. -more-
NEW DELHI—Even as the United States struggles to come to terms with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina that has destroyed New Orleans, there is a sense of shock in India. Pictures of victims begging for food, reports of looting, rapes, racist attacks, an ineffective disaster management routine has revealed the innards of America that many believed never existed. After all, making it to America, the land of opportunities, freedom and quality lifestyle, remains one of the abiding Indian dreams. New Orleans is a modern city and a tourist destination. -more-
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Imagine that you are young and poor and nursing your beautiful new baby (brown and dimpled, with a head full of hair) while looking after your sister’s children and thumbing through the newspaper looking for a job. Your mother, who has been your rock, is in the next room tending to your ailing father who is suffering from diabetes. Your little brother walks in from school, hungry as usual. You butter the last slice of bread and try to help him with his homework which, at the seventh grade level, is already beyond you. -more-
Watching the Bush administration’s bumbling response to Hurricane Katrina, one felt a chilling sense of déjà vu. American has seen this ineptitude before: first with 9/11—George frozen while reading The Pet Goat and meandering across the country on Air Force One; and then the “liberation” of Baghdad—chaos fanning the fires of insurgency. History will remember that George Bush had three chances at crisis leadership, and struck out each time. -more-
Do you know what it means, what happened in New Orleans? To understand it, we must look to the nation’s past. -more-
There is no blotter today because repeated calls to Officer Steve Rego were not returned. Officer Shira Warren of the Community Services Bureau said Rego was filling in during the absence of Berkeley Police spokesperson Officer Joe Okies. -more-
A new progressive coalition is growing in Berkeley, and you are invited to our second meeting at 7 p.m. Monday, Sept. 19 at the Unitarian Fellowship at Cedar and Bonita. -more-
It is interesting that it is often anti-development proponents who complain of insufficient low- and middle-income housing being built in Berkeley. It is -more-
Musicians and Fine Artists for World Peace has been working since 2001 to establish a U.S. Department of Peace. In partnership with the Peace Alliance we were successful in getting the cities of Berkeley and Oakland to endorse resolutions in support of that initiative. -more-
Just into Ron Jones’ monologue/solo show, adapted from his book, When God Winked, the protean Jones—who takes on the mannerisms and voices of his charges and colleagues from the Recreation Center for the Handicapped in San Francisco—blows out through the exit, into the lobby of The Marsh’s new Berkeley theater in the Gaia Building, and shepherds in (like a Border Collie) late arrivals, with high-pitched admonitions: “Don’t be tardy! Have you seen Carol?” -more-
The carefree days of summer have slipped through our fingers, making time spent outdoors all the more crucial. Make a commitment today to walk, hike, bike, play or just sit enjoying the nature around you. There’s still time to participate in the 2005 East Bay Regional Park District’s Trail Challenge and hike number five offers a number of options for an outdoor adventure. -more-
The cover photo of this week’s issue of the French magazine Le Nouvel Observateur shows an armored vehicle labeled “state police tactical unit,” manned by grim-faced booted and helmeted figures with clenched jaws, wearing dark glasses, and carrying big guns, staring straight ahead. In the lower right-hand corner, we see two middle-aged African-American women looking up at the truck. One, wearing a red floral muu-muu, hair in curlers, raises her arm in supplication to the men, who ignore her. The headline is stark: “L’Amérique mise a nu”—America laid bare (literally, nude). The sub-head says that “The hurricane reveals the fissures in the society of everyone for himself.” -more-
A curious development in Berkeley’s social evolution has recently surfaced in these pages. Despite the fact that the official city logo is derived from the multi-hued faces which are part of the mural Romare Bearden created for the City Council chambers, it’s apparent that the city has a residual population of pull-up-the-ladder cultural isolationists. Embedded political commentator Zelda Bronstein’s recent column documented and lamented the fact that Berkeley’s building boom has still produced almost no housing for low-income people (anticipated more than a year ago in an article by Rob Wrenn). It has elicited responses from seemingly well-educated and articulate residents who ask why anyone would want to live with such people anyhow. -more-
