Public Comment

NORTH SHATTUCK PLAZA 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

David Stoloff in his March 6 commentary is misleading the public once again about what is happening on North Shattuck Avenue. 

After two highly contentious community meetings, Stoloff’s North Shattuck Plaza concept was “off the table” according to Councilmember Laurie Capitelli and Heather Hensley, executive director of the North Shattuck Merchants Association. 

The plaza idea met with vehement opposition from more than 30 merchants in the Vine-Rose area including Earthly Goods, Black Oak Books, Peets, Chester’s Cafe, the Laundromat, Masse’s, Toyo, the Produce Center, Terrestra, the Bel Forno Cafe and Andronico’s. 

On top of this, neighborhood residents are clearly divided about the plan. Some want no change, others want some sprucing up or more trees and flower boxes, but almost no one wants to remove the angled parking that now runs from Black Oak Books to Longs. If the angled parking remains, as most people want, there is no room for Stoloff’s plaza. 

Yet he keeps pushing his soundly rejected idea in different guises, hoping, I suppose to manipulate the process, just as he manipulated himself into the chairmanship of the Planning Commission. 

Art Goldberg 

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RUNNING WOLF’S WORDS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Message to Zachary Running Wolf: You do a disservice to activists everywhere when you claim the Berkeley campus police arrested you for sitting in the campus tree to knock you out of the 2008 Berkeley mayor’s race.  

You could have proudly proclaimed right to exercise your right of free speech, and to call more attention to UC Berkeley’s completely insane plan to convert Bowles Hall into a glorified guest room for the business school, build a multi-million-dollar gym directly on an earthquake fault, and knock down several perfectly fine trees, 

Instead you give further fuel to those who would disparage the good name of my wonderful home, Berkeley, by claiming there is a police conspiracy, when it is clear there is none. 

Massimo Introvigne 

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TIMES ARE A-CHANGIN’ 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

After almost a year of avoiding your editorials I read the March 3 gem. Things never change, do they? Old gal Becky still has her head lodged way up her anal canal. Everyone else on the planet knows that Berkeley streets are a living disgrace because of the presence of large numbers of bums. Telegraph is the worst. Why go to one of our “independent” overpriced bookstores when you can safely and cheaply order books from the privacy of your home via Amazon and Alibris? You can get anything you want and you don’t have to be at the mercy of the particular prejudices of local store buyers. And, no, Becky another goofy local law won’t stop this welcome trend. Horsesmiths were en masse displaced by the automobile industry and the overpriced local market fell victim to the large chains. For most consumers this is a good deal. We live in an ever-changing global economy that has no place for Berzerkeley NIMBYs. Some industries like second-hand bookstores and daily newspapers aren’t going to make it. There are a very few exceptions here that I’d like to see survive at least among the bookstores, in Oakland but not Berkeley, and none among the daily liepapers. Let’s be honest, liberalism has killed Berkeley, and now itself is dying an overdue demise. KPFA has lost listeners galore in the past decade and the Daily Planet is barely hanging in there despite narcotics-induced hallucinations that most “thoughtful” people around here read it.  

Michael P. Hardesty 

Oakland 

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CO-OP BOOKSHOPS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Many people share your concern for the demise of our Berkeley bookshops. Last year, at a community meeting in response to the closing of Cody’s on Telegraph, several people suggested that we form a co-op and take over Cody’s. 

Well I am a member of a co-op, a worker co-op, a rare breed in the co-op community, but not in the Bay Area, which has the largest concentrations of worker co-ops in the country. 

The worker co-op model is not uncommon in the book community and in fact for over 30 years two stores in San Francisco have used this model: Bound Together and Modern Times. The co-op model can take several forms, but the common thread is that those who run these shops see their work as vital to the intellectual vibrancy of the community. 

The sense of mission enables the core staff to attract volunteers to help with the venture and often that extra, unpaid, assistance makes it possible for the shop to pay its bills by relieving core staff paid hours. This model is very common in food co-ops. And in fact the bookshop volunteers can be rewarded with perks as a “thank you” for their gift of hours, just as food co-op members get discounts on their food purchases. 

The biggest stumbling block with implementation of a bookstore co-op is not however the lack of passion, but the lease. Hand in hand with an innovative collective structure must come an innovative approach to land ownership. Just as we preserve wilderness through land trusts, it seems that a similar approach must be introduced to maintain community resources. 

We live in an age when public services are increasingly privatized much to the determent of the community. The irony is that the market can no longer maintain those aspects of the life of a community that add quality to the experience. Isn’t it time to think creatively about taking the market, and its drive for profits, out of the business of meeting peoples’ needs? I personally think it never did adequately in the first place. Neither did those working people in Rochdale, England who set-up the first co-op store in the mid-19th century. 

B. Marszalek 

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BERKELEY’S FAR LEFT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Maybe the bookstores are all closing because every one I have ever been to in Berkeley seems to only want to cater to the far left of the city. The liberal (read communist/socialist) leanings of the 1960s generation is finally being discovered as the trash that it is. People want to return to reading normal things and not about some nutcase’s diatribe on what is wrong with this country, etc. 

The biggest problem we have in this country and specifically Berkeley is that these freaks from the ’60s, many who are still on acid just hang around and accomplish nothing but taking up space and urinating/defecating on business’ doorsteps. That makes it highly improbable that people with money would shop there. Berkeley has become a museum piece on the failure of the ’60s. 

The idea sounds great when discussed, however, it is just not going to work. You have smelly, wild-haired freaks sitting in the bookstores all day reading for free and true buying customers do not like that kind of ambiance when looking for and buying books. 

I suggest time limits for browsing, unless buying, of 10 minutes, then clear out. Don’t start with “These people have rights, too.” They have none when it comes to the private sector and the manager or employee of a bookstore can throw out anybody he wants and should. Berkeley needs to set apart an area where only the leftover flower children and the like can stay and not bug people who have jobs and money to spend at these establishments, 

Clean up Telegraph already, it is a shithole. Why Berkeley allows the nuts to run rampant on its streets is beyond me. I think we need to place a whole bunch of them in psych institutions whre they belong. Can’t do that though because the nut jobs from the ACLU will raise a stink. 

No total solution here but some things to look at to move Berkeley to the city it was before the flower-power peace-freak drugheads took it over and decided how they wanted their little Camelot. 

Spare change seekers are another one. Get them the hell out of town! What is so hard about that? When one comes up to me, which is rare, I tell them to back off and do it quick or you will need more than money to fix your problem. You see, I will have stomped his face into the pavement. 

Christopher Fuller 

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EYES OF THE BEHOLDER 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

It goes without saying that where our side sees a terrorist the opposing side sees a hero, a patriot, sometimes a martyr. To think otherwise requires an independent active mind because separating Us from Them is innate and persistent. And yet, the need to overlook differences and accept the oneness of mankind has never been more urgent because the alternative, descent into barbarity, is where the Bush administration is taking us under the absurdly named “war on terrorism.”  

Terrorism is spreading intense fear and the people who do it do not identify themselves as terrorists. 

Attila terrorized Rome. Genghis Khan terrorized a continent. Senator Joe McCarthy terrorized Hollywood actors and script writers. 

But it isn’t only individuals who use terror to achieve their purposes. Organizations use it: the Algerian Freedom Fighters used it against the French, the Irish Republican Army against the English and the Klu Klux Klan used it to keep Negroes in their place. 

Our governing officers find terror useful and sometimes actively stimulate public awareness with “chicken little” announcements of “barbarians at the gate.” Spreading fear helps them suppress opposition, enabling the enactment of measures—the mis-named Patriot Act and the new military tribunals—that they would not otherwise dare. To paraphrase Santayana, if we do not remember the Cold War we will be condemned to repeat it. 

Given nature’s many capricious acts of destruction—hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, tsunamis, earthquakes, plagues, etc.—and given the fragility of human life (made more delicate by ubiquitous cars and airplanes), fear is unavoidable.  

To live at all means restraining and containing our fears.  

Marvin Chachere 

San Pablo 

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THE PUPPET MAN 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I would like to thank you for helping me to reach the public with my desire to find out more about Tom Roberts, aka The Puppet Man. I have had good responses to my request published in the letters column and would like to summarize the info thus far. It turns out that other people have used my information published in your paper to look up this much-loved street performer. 

Again, Tom Roberts performed a puppet act on the streets of Berkeley. Many students from the early to mid 1970s recall him on the Sproul steps and his act his with affection. He would give flowers to young women and quip, “Berkeley is so liberal, I have to have to pass out two hats!” He wrote books of poetry, which were published locally and/or by him. One such title: I Gotta Hunger—I Gotta Need, inscribed and signed by Tom Roberts (The Puppet Man), Berkeley local folk artist and puppeteer. 44 pp illustr. soft cover, Cody’s Books, Inc. Berkeley, CA, 1971. 

Other books by Tom Roberts: To Chico With Love, Mosaic Mexicano, and Bridge to Berkeley. 

Roberts lived at 1010 Bush St., San Francisco, which is now the Balmoral Residence Club. I called to see if they have always been the BRC but I only got the voicemail. No response as of yet. If I had $40 and a dream (I have the dream end of it) I’d try to find his Social Security number, birth date, and when he died. I’d like to think he had a hundred people flood the street at his funeral, but it seems unlikely. 

So folks, please contact me with any memories, photos (I have one), or what have you by contacting me at rhubarbfarm@hotmail.com. 

Nathaniel Rounds 

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TAKING RESPONSIBILITY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The new fad way to say that you’ve screwed up on the media is to say: “I take responsibility” for this or that. Or even more dramatically, “I take full responsibility” for etc. What ever happened to “I was wrong and I regret it.” Or, “I’m guilty” for this or that. Or, even more explicitly:” I’m a jerk, or stupid.” “Taking responsibility” for something is evasive and meaningless nonsense when it comes to the horrors of Walter Reed or the tragedy of the Iraq War. It sounds like you’re a good guy, not a screwup, or a lackey, or a criminal, or a scoundrel.  

Robert Blau 

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A NEW KINDNESS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In this season of hacking, sweating, coughing, sneezing, sputum spitting, joint-aching-seizures, a new kindness was invoked: At the Berkeley Bowl grocery store, near the neat rows of disciplined shopping carts awaiting commands, are stands holding dispensers of 5” x 8” size chemically treated handi-wipes (like the smaller ones we put in our purse for awkward moments). 

Couple of swishes over the handle of the cart you select with the disposable wipes, and the season-of-sharing (germs) is partially aborted. 

What happens at your grocery store? Safeway? Albertsons? Andronicos? Luckys? Monterey Market? 

Len Holt 

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FAITH-BASED PROGRAMS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The Supreme Court is considering a case on White House faith-based programs. What would George Washington have thought about George Bush’s pet project of bringing religion back into politics under the guise of faith-based initiatives and of using U.S. tax dollars to support programs in tax-exempt churches? 

Ron Lowe 

Grass Valley 

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THANKS, COMRADE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Retired anthropologist Dr. Eugene Ruyle’s March 2 letter regarding Zachary Running Wolf seems to justify blatantly illegal behavior on the grounds that Running Wolf is “a dedicated and respected activist for the local community and for Native American issues.” Well, good for Running Wolf, a known vandal who regularly defaces public signage and whose latest arrest was for threatening police officers with violence. 

Much of Ruyle’s letter is taken up with irrelevantly patting himself on the back for his activist role in stopping development at Puvungna, a native “sacred creation center” on the property of Cal State Long Beach. He implies that the oak grove near Memorial Stadium involved in the current controversy fueled largely by Running Wolf’s political agenda is somehow equivalently “sacred,” apparently because Running Wolf says so. This simply is not true. In fact, it is a lie. 

A cursory Internet search about Dr. Ruyle reveals that he is a Marxist ideologue whose so-called “anthropology courses” at Cal State Long Beach were criticized by students as rants on the evils of capitalism, bourgeois culture and Euro-American guilt for the problems of the world. His online course notes for an introduction to cultural anthropology class contain such gems as “The sociobiology of Marxism is a sociobiology of hope, for it tells us that we humans can solve our problems, and are in fact solving them in revolutionary societies such as Nicaragua, Cuba, China, and the Soviet Union.” Despite the reactionary leftist politics of many Daily Planet readers who may agree with him, most informed people not only in the United States but around the world recognize the absurdity of pairing “hope” with the Soviet Union, and doubt that revolutionary Marxism has “solved” anything, ever. And if some see “hope” in China, it exists only because the Chinese have rejected revolutionary Marxism in favor of rampant capitalism. 

Finally, Ruyle states “Campus officials need to listen to the people.” This implies that the opposition to removing the oaks and getting on with the proposed athletic center is monolithic. In fact, it is not. Not even close. In addition to the “evil capitalists” who have pledged more than $100 million in private, personal funds for construction, nearly 7,000 people have signed an informal online petition in support of the University’s position. You don’t see that reported in the local media. I wonder why? 

Michael Stephens 

Point Richmond 

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SCHOOL FOOD 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

As a chef, and the current director of Nutrition Services in Berkeley School District, I want to thank so many in our community for their insights and understanding of the importance good nutrition, sustainable agriculture, and fresh foods can play in the health of the community. This is so evident in our many farmers markets and other organizations supporting these efforts. We too, in Berkeley schools share this value.  

The district’s vision is to have every child to seek, grow, prepare and eat nourishing, delicious and sustainable grown food. To teach them to make choices that have a positive influence on their personal health, family, community and surrounding environment. To this end, dramatic changes are being made in the lunch program. 

We have salad bars in every school, so children can have salad with every meal or they can make a meal from the salad bar (in the high school the organic salad bar is a major offering). Fresh fruit and vegetables are served daily; a quarter of our produce is now locally farmed and/or organic. Almost all of the food is made from scratch; that which isn’t cooked in our kitchens is made by Bay Area businesses. Breads served are organic and/or whole grain. Schools serve only hormone- and antibiotic-free low-fat and non-fat milk. 

Lunches at school are a very affordable and convenient option, costing $3 in the elementary schools, $3.50 in the middle schools, and $4 at the high school. But we still don’t have the rate of participation that gives me the confidence all our students are eating a healthy lunch. We need our parents and members of the community to encourage students to take advantage of our school cafeterias. The more students we serve the more improvements can be made, most importantly, the better chance we have of combating the escalating obesity and diabetes issues facing our nation’s children. 

If you are a parent of a Berkeley Unified School student, I urge you to have your child try the new school food.  

Ann Cooper 

Director of Nutrition Services 

Berkeley Unified School District