News

Patrick Kennedy and David Teece—Berkeley’s biggest private landlords—are selling their seven signature apartment buildings to a Chicago-based corporation. -more-

Berkeley is not invulnerable to virulent racist, anti-immigrant and anti-Semitic hate campaigns. -more-

After declaring Hillside School to be surplus property, the Berkeley Unified School District (BUSD) is getting ready to give the same designation to the Berkeley High School tennis courts and property at West Campus and on Sixth Street. -more-

While Woodfin Suite Hotel workers are beefing up union and local support to get the hotel to comply with Measure C, Emeryville’s Living Wage Ordinance for hotel workers, the hotel is flexing its muscle in its own way. Last week the Woodfin filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court—for the second time—claiming the 2005 law passed by the city’s voters is unconstitu-tional. -more-

Berkeley High became the scene of a virtual battleground over spring break when the Berkeley Police Department SWAT team—known as the Barricaded Subject Hostage Negotiation Team (BSHNT)—descended on the campus Thursday. -more-

California Assemblymember Sandré Swanson (D-Oakland) brought his Oakland Unified School District restoration of local control bill to the OUSD Board of Trustees Wednesday night, and, not surprisingly, trustees voted unanimously for a resolution in support. -more-

The ongoing battle between tree-sitter Zachary Running Wolf and UC Berkeley police took a new turn Friday when legendary Bay Area attorney Tony Serra agreed to represent the protester. -more-

Manager Scott Doddington and many of his fellow workers at the San Francisco Cody’s store will be out of their jobs effective April 20. -more-

That baker’s dozen plus one of 16-story “point towers” sprouting like mushrooms after a spring rain in downtown Berkeley? Forget about it. -more-

The AC Transit District continued with its sudden premature replacement of its NABI bus fleet, with directors approving, on Wednesday afternoon, the request of General Manger Rick Fernandez to sell 10 more of the popular 40-foot buses five years before their scheduled retirement date and to replace them with buses from the Van Hool company. -more-

The People’s Park Advisory Committee will be announcing the names of Gianna Ranuzzi and Christine Dixon as its newest board members during a meeting Monday. -more-

The use of radio frequency identification (RFID) technology at the Berkeley Public library has been a flashpoint since its inception more than two years ago, enraging some patrons, who say the identifiers allow “Big Brother” to track what people read and where they are if they’re carrying library books, and upsetting some library workers who say the system doesn’t work as it is supposed to and is devouring library funds better spent elsewhere. -more-

In many ways the Reference Department, as the disseminator of information about the world, is the heart of a library. At the downtown Central Library, reference librarians, sitting behind the green-topped counters, field questions both on the phone, on the computer and from the patrons who come into the library. -more-

After graduating from UCLA, I went to Library School at UC Berkeley known then as “Danton’s Inferno,” for J. Perian Danton who was the head of the Library School at that time. -more-

With a crowd of TV cameras and adults with microphones towering over them, Adrian, Yadira and Adriana Ramirez—6, 10 and 12 years old—sat on a bench outside of First United Methodist Church in Palo Alto yesterday, and shyly told the news crews that though they wanted to stay at their home in Palo Alto, they would go to Mexico to be with their father, who was deported an hour after his arrest by Immigration Customs and Enforcement officers. -more-

In the backyard of President George Bush’s home state of Texas, a racist legacy continues. But Shaquanda Cotton, the 14-year-old black student who was convicted of shoving a hall monitor at a Paris high school in a dispute over entering the building before the school day had officially begun, was released by the Texas Youth Commission (TYC) on Saturday, March 31. She was detained at the Brownwood facility, where she was mandated to serve a seven-year prison term. -more-

Last Friday, when most of their friends were hanging out somewhere enjoying the Caesar Chavez holiday break from school, a group of mostly Latino Oakland middle school students were sitting in a classroom at Havenscourt Middle, taking in lessons. The subject? Gang Awareness. The teachers: high school students from an East Oakland youth advocacy group called Teens on Target (TNT) sponsored by the Youth Alive! anti-violence, youth leadership organization. -more-

When EBMUD director Andy Katz spoke to the City Council early in the year, he urged councilmembers and residents to conserve water, given the East Bay Municipal Utility District pipeline retrofit that affected the amount of available water from December through the end of February. -more-

After years of struggle, work began Monday at the site of what will become the city’s largest low-income housing structure and the home for a collection of cutting-edge environmental groups. -more-

Strawberries marked Cesar Chavez’s 80th birthday at Malcolm X Elementary School Friday. -more-

It’s more than just a house on a hill. For 76 years International House at UC Berkeley has been a second home to more than 60,000 scholars from around the world—a place where Palestinians have dialogues with Israelis, Christians share meals with Muslims and, most recently, an Iraqi made his first Iranian friend. -more-

While Iceland shuttered its doors Saturday, supporters are marshaling their efforts to save the facility—including a hearing Wednesday before the Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC). -more-

The plan for a possible local takeover of energy decision-making is moving forward, albeit at a slower pace than the City Council had projected—and much too slowly for Paul Fenn, who wrote the legislation making possible local takeover of energy decisions. -more-

DAPAC Chair Will Travis insists that a scenario for creating a new downtown Berkeley landscape studded with high-rise, apartment-filled “point towers” is solely for modeling purposes. -more-

Members of the St. Joseph the Worker Social Action Committee will join the Ecumenical Peace Institute, Seminarians to End War, Tri-Valley Cares and others at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory for the annual Good Friday protest April 6. -more-

In a revival of the sharp fiscal debate that often took place two years ago when newly elected board members sought to establish stricter fiscal controls on the district, Peralta trustees rejected a staff recommendation last week for a one-year renewal of a contract with ePaperless consultants for computer hardware work, agreeing instead to a month-to-month renewal until the scope of the contract work can be evaluated. -more-

The Peralta Community College District, which has gotten generally poor marks for the quality of its website, took a leap forward last week with board approval of a $55,000 three-year contract with Granicus, Inc. of San Francisco to provide web-based streaming videos of district board meetings. The contract provides for a setup fee and an $11,640 yearly charge for which Granicus will provide storage of Peralta’s video archives. -more-

UC recycling center demolished in blaze -more-