UC Berkeley wants bidders for its first major downtown construction project in the city center, the Helios Energy Research Facility, with the contract to be awarded Oct. 15. 

The 112,800-square-foot building will be built on part of the site now occupied by the old state Department of Public Health building, just across Oxford Street from the main university campus. 

Estimated cost of the high-tech lab building is $85 million. 

The building will house both public and corporate research labs, with much of the work funded by the controversial $500 million grant from BP, formerly known as British Petroleum. 

The project will occupy the northeast corner of the long block between Oxford Street and Shattuck Avenue between Berkeley Way and Hearst Avenue. 

While the existing and privately owned Berkeleyan apartments will remain on the site’s southeast corner, the remainder of the existing buildings are scheduled for demolition.  

The largest portion of the extended block is slated for the future development of the university’s Community Health Campus, which originally had been projected to occupy the whole site now occupied by the former state office building. 

Construction at the site will be the first major development under the university’s plans to build a total of 850,000 square feet of new off-campus construction in downtown Berkeley. 

That extensive building program sparked the lawsuit that resulted in the much-revised Downtown Area Plan, which is currently on hold after opponents gathered enough signatures to force a referendum on the version finally adopted by the Berkeley City Council. 

University officials will discuss their plans for the Helios building, as well as research to be conducted there, during a public information session Thursday, Oct. 8, during a 90-minute session that begins at 7 p.m. 

The session will be held in Pat Brown’s Grille in the Genetics and Plant Biology building, located on campus just east of the intersection of Oxford Street and Berkeley Way. 

UCB spokesperson Dan Mogulof said the school “expects to submit the design of” the building to the Board of Regents in January. “If they approve and give the go-ahead for construction, demolition of the existing structure at 2151 Berkeley Way is planned to begin early in early February, 2010. 

“Completion of demolition and site clearance is anticipated in June 2010. The university will fund and manage the demolition; the bid process to hire a contractor is scheduled to begin the week of Oct. 12. with construction of the new building to begin once demolition is finished.” 

If all goes as planned, the building should be ready for occupancy by the end of 2012, he said. 

The university will also brief Berkeley Planning Commissioners on the project during the Oct. 14 meeting.  

The downtown lab is one of two facilities planned for the Helios project, with a second, smaller lab set for construction at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory for research on photovoltaics and electrochemical solar energy storage systems.  

Planning for that project won’t begin until a specific site has been picked, Mogulof said.

Berkeley public elementary schools are bursting at the seams and there is no quick fix for the problem. 

Enrollment in the 9,000-plus Berkeley Unified School District is expected to grow by 464 students over the next 10 years, and district officials are scrambling to find short-term as well as more permanent solutions to address the space crunch. 

In May, the Berkeley Board of Education gave the district the green light to review classroom capacities and attendance zones to address overcrowded K-5 facilities. 

Although the district's student assignment plan has had minor adjustments and the number of schools has changed since the board approved the three elementary school zones—north, central and south—in 1994, their geographic boundaries have remained the same.  

After a quick briefing on the issue in August, district Director of Facilities Lew Jones bought some recommendations back to the board at their regular meeting Sept. 24. 

Jones said the district had hired Davis Demographics & Planning, Inc. to help with the planning of future shifts in student population.  

This is the first time the district has hired an outside entity to study its enrollment numbers, Jones said. 

DDP factored current and historical student data with demographic data and planned residential development to calculate a 10-year student population projection. 

Data reported to the state by Berkeley Unified shows the district had 9,370 students in 2000-2001, which declined to 8,843 students by the 2003-2004 school year. The DDP study shows that over the next five years BUSD’s enrollment stabilized at around the 9,000-student mark with a low of 8,904 in 2004-2005 and a high of 9,088 in 2006-2007. In 2008-2009—the last year the DDP study took into account—it was 8,988. 

The DDP report predicts that most of the growth projected to take place over the next decade will be in the elementary grades, growing from 3,686 to 4,033 students—an increase of 347 students. 

In the middle schools, the numbers will rise from 1,799 to 1,894, an increase of 95 students. 

At the high schools, student population is expected to fluctuate over the same period, at first declining and then rebounding to current levels as larger classes in the lower grades graduate over the years. 

The DDP report attributes the projected growth—especially in K-5—to a jump in kindergarten enrollment over the past two years. Data reported to the state shows that the 650 students enrolled in kindergarten in 2007-2008 was the greatest since the 1999-2000 school year.  

Last year’s kindergarten enrollment—694—is the largest the district reported since 1993-1994. 

Although most districts show a direct correlation between area births and kindergarten enrollment five years later, the report says that it is not the case for Berkeley Unified. 

Kindergarten enrollment increased even as the number of babies born between  2001 to 2002 (the 2006-2007 and 2007-2008 school years) declined. 

Jones said in a report to the board that a variety of factors might affect student population, including a fluctuating housing market and the number of students attending private schools. 

However, the “interplay between private and public schools is more complex than other districts,” he said. 

Zone models 

Jones pointed out that under the current zone model, the central and northwest zones would exceed their present capacities. 

As a result the district explored the following options to modify the K-5 attendance boundaries; 

• The current attendance zones. 

• A shift in boundaries so that Berkeley Arts Magnet is in the northwest zone and Malcolm X is in the central zone. 

Capacity 

The district is exploring the following options to increase capacity: 

• Adding a new school at West Campus. 

• Adding a new wing to Jefferson. 

• Replacing Washington annex portables with a large building. 

• Adding portables to Jefferson. 

• Adding portables to Washington annex. 

• Adding portables to Berkeley Arts Magnet. 

Jones said that district officials did not believe it was necessary or financially feasible to add a new elementary school based on the current population projections. 

While exploring zone modifications, the district considered several factors, including minimizing disruption, busing costs and capital expenses and giving more importance to parental choice and overall flexibility. 

The district’s preferred model would keep the existing zone lines intact but convert Berkeley Arts Magnet into a school straddling both the northwest and central zones. It would also turn Malcolm X into a school shared between the central and southeast zones. 

The district is also considering two other models—the current model and one that shifts Malcolm X to the central zone and Arts Magnet to the northwest zone. 

If the district sticks to the current model, it would have to add five to six portables to the Jefferson campus and either use the Washington Annex portables for the elementary program or add three to four portables at BAM. 

In case the district decided to shift Malcolm X to the central zone and Arts Magnet to the northwest zone and reconfigure the boundary lines, either Washington annex would be used for elementary use or three to four portables would be added to Jefferson or BAM. The portables at Washington are currently being used for Berkeley High classes. 

Community members will be able to comment about the zone changes at three public meetings over the next couple of weeks. 

The district is scheduled to bring a final recommendation to the board on Oct. 28. 

Forums 

Berkeley Arts Magnet Auditorium, 7:30 p.m., Wednesday, Oct. 7.       

Malcolm X Auditorium, 6:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 8.      

Jefferson Auditorium, 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 13.         

Public comments can be sent to the Board of Education at boardofed@berkeley.k12.ca.us or BUSD Board of Education, 2134 Martin Luther King Jr. Way, Berkeley, CA 94704 

Documents on zone changes are available at www.berkeley.k12.ca.us.

About 200 students gathered in Lower Sproul Plaza Wednesday evening to discuss the upcoming Oct. 24 mobilizing conference at UC Berkeley, potentially the next big event planned in protest of the university’s budget cuts, furloughs and fee hikes. 

Various student groups who took part in the Sept. 24 faculty and student walkout in the 10-campus UC system organized Wednesday’s general assembly in front of Eshelman Hall for students to brainstorm ideas for future protests or other forms of action. 

A group of UC Berkeley students moderating the meeting described it as “an open forum for all groups to come together,” calling the walkout the “first time faculty, staff and students had come together in a show of solidarity.” 

Later that night, students met to form three committees—the general assembly committee, an Oct. 24 committee and a peace committee which would ensure that all future protests were non-violent. 

UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau and Executive Vice-Chancellor and Provost George W. Breslauer sent an e-mail to faculty, staff, students and members of the campus community thanking them for the “orderly, peaceful and effective way in which the Sept. 24 budget protest actions were held on and around campus.” 

The letter acknowledged that although a large number of people took part in the day’s actions, there was minimal disruption to university operations and classes. 

“Berkeley is proud of being the home of the Free Speech Movement and yesterday’s protests exemplified the best of our tradition of effective civil action,” the letter said. “Your actions have sent a clear and important message to our legislators and to the California public that the State’s disinvestment in public higher education must stop. We hope that we can build on these actions together to continue to inform the public and the State legislature that cuts to the University of California undermine our state’s future and that it is in the interests of all of the people of our great State of California to reinvest 

in public higher education.” 

UC Berkeley is facing a 20 percent cut—about $637 million—in its budget for the 2009-10 fiscal year as part of the budget agreement between the legislature and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. The university’s current budget is $2.6 billion. 

Birgeneau announced Thursday that UC Berkeley had hired Bain & Company to help identify ways the campus could increase efficiency and cut costs. 

Representatives from CalSERVE, the Solidarity Alliance, the Associated Students of the University of California, AFSCME and other Bay Area colleges and organizations spoke at the meeting, promising support for the conference. 

Although many proposals were tossed around—ranging from benefit concerts to statewide strikes to rallying outside California Hall in an attempt to shut it down—most students stressed it was important to focus on the conference. 

Ten minutes into the meeting, students from the Oct. 24 committee handed out invitations to the conference. The slip of paper said that all “UC, CSU, CC and K-12 students, workers, and teachers were invited to the all day conference which would seek to “democratically decide on a state-wide action plan capable of winning this struggle,” which would define the future of public education. 

“Why is this important?” asked Eric Blanc, a student at City College of San Francisco who is a member of the Oct. 24 committee. “Because we have a huge opportunity, a historic moment to win this statewide struggle.” 

Organizers are trying to get the word out by various means, including Facebook, and through campus student groups throughout California. 

Blanc announced to cheers from the audience that the San Francisco Labor Council had endorsed the conference. 

Students also revealed the movement’s two main goals—to defend public education and reform the structure of the UC system—and six demands, including no student fee increases; no layoffs or furloughs; no paycuts to workers earning less than $40,000 a year; full disclosure of the budget; the halt of efforts to privatize California public education; and the election of UC regents by students, faculty and staff. 

“[Sept.] 24th was beautiful,” said Maricruz Manzanarez, representing the UC custodians union Local 3299. “It never happened before at UC Berkeley. We hope the numbers increase by the day. It’s time for Birgeneau to come out of the bushes and talk to us and make the right decision.” 

Union members handed out petitions which asked the university to stop laying off custodial staff and furloughs. 

A member of the university’s Professional and Technical Employees Union, who did not want to use her name for fear of retribution, said her union had been without a contract for 15 months because of the budget cuts. 

Students also emphasized the need for a coordinating committee which would play an important role in any imminent protests.

Berkeley police have arrested a man in connection with two stabbings that took place in downtown Berkeley Wednesday. 

Berkeley Police Department spokesperson Officer Andrew Frankel said Berkeley police officers responded to a stabbing on the 2000 block of Milvia Street just after 4 p.m. The officers found a man and a woman who had been stabbed by another man, a family member who had fled the scene. 

Frankel said the suspect was stopped a few blocks away in his car and taken into custody by Berkeley police officers without further incident. 

The victims were transported to Highland Hospital in Oakland where they were treated for non-life-threatening injuries. 

Frankel declined to name the victims and the suspect or give any other details about the incident. 

UC Berkeley students headed back to Sproul Plaza Wednesday evening to discuss possible actions to protest the university’s budget cuts and related topics. 

After a hugely successful student and faculty walkout Thursday, Sept. 24, which received national and international media coverage, about 200 students took part in a general assemby at 6 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 30. The meeting had barely begun by the time the Daily Planet went to press. 

Student organizers said the meeting was intended as a grassroots effort to brainstorm ideas about future rallies or activities surrounding the cuts. 

“It’s for students who want to get involved,” said Tu Tran, chair of UC Berkeley’s Associated Students of the University of California. “More like a strategy session.” 

ASUC External Affairs Vice President Dani Haber said that the meeting had been conceived and planned by various students who came together after the walkout. 

The Solidarity Alliance, CalSERVE and ASUC, along with a coalition of other student groups were expected to attend the event, she said. 

Haber said that students planned to continue discussions from the last general assembly discussion, held Sept. 23, at which they planned the walkout. 

“No committees were created—so we might do that,” she said. “There is also talk of forming a coordinating committee. We’d like to formalize plans for the next major target which is the UC Regents’ meeting in November.” 

Haber said there were also plans to substitute the “Go Bears” wave with “save the UC” at the USC-Cal football game this Saturday. 

“A lot of the really leftist groups have planned actions we don’t know about, so we are not really sure what will happen when,” she said. 

The agenda for the meeting included two main goals—to defend public education and reform the structure of the UC system—and six demands, including no student fee increases; no layoffs or furloughs; no paycuts to workers earning less than $40,000 a year; full disclosure of the budget; the halt of efforts to privatize California public education; and the election of UC regents by students, faculty and staff. 

Also on the agenda was discussion of an all-day Oct. 24 conference to be held at UC Berkeley to decide on a statewide action plan to define the future of public education. Workers, teachers and students from all UC schools, state universities, community colleges and K-12 schools are invited to take part.  

The walkout 

Angered by massive fee hikes for students, unpaid “furloughs” for faculty and staff and layoffs, thousands mobilized last week in the largest burst of activism seen on the UC Berkeley campus in many years, with the possible exception of the celebration that erupted on the night Barack Obama was elected to the presidency.  

More than 700 overflowed Wheeler Auditorium on Wednesday night for a faculty teach-in, followed the next day by a mass rally and march that drew more than 5,000 people to Sproul Plaza, followed by an organizing session that lasted well into the night. 

Michael Delacour, one of the founders of People’s Park, said the rally was the largest he’d seen in recent decades, larger than any of those held when faculty and students organized in the 1980s to force the university to divest from South Africa in protest of that nation’s apartheid policies.  

By day’s end Thursday, students had issued a call for a statewide Oct. 24 gathering at the Cal campus, focusing not just on the problems of Berkeley and the UC system but also on public education at all levels throughout the state. That meeting is still being planned. 

Peter Glazer, professor of Theater, Dance and Performance Studies, emceed the Wednesday night teach-in. In his introduction, he called the UC Board of Regents and the Office of the President “unreliable partners” when “they say they have no choice but to raise fees, cut staff” and limit public access. 

“They tell us we have no choice, but they are wrong. Our trust has not yet been earned and we do have a choice,” he said.  

City and Regional Planning Professor Ananya Roy decried what she called the advent of “tolled education,” citing plans for differential fees, where students in programs with high economic potential will be charged more than students in other disciplines. 

“The UC Regents are raising fees on the backs of the middle class,” she said. “This is how hierarchies are remade in the public university.” 

The resulting system will be unjust, Roy declared, and “makes a mockery of public education.” 

After spending the summer in Egypt studying the impacts of neoliberal restructuring in that land, Roy said, “I returned home to find the restructured University of California.” 

“We have to convince the citizens of California to stand in solidarity with us,” she said. “I will be walking out to say ‘Not in my name.’” 

Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor under President Bill Clinton and now a professor at UCB’s Goldman School of Public Policy, sounded a theme cited by several other speakers, the devastating impacts of Proposition 13 (the Jarvis-Gann Initiative) on public education. 

That California constitutional amendment capped property taxes at 1 percent of assessed valuation, limited property tax increases to 2 percent a year, and, critically, required a two-thirds legislative vote on any new state taxes and a two-thirds voter mandate for any new local property taxes. 

Proposition 13 wouldn’t have met its own mandate, gaining only 65 percent of the votes in 1978. But since the law at the time required only 50 percent plus one to pass an initiative, the Jarvis-Gann Initiative became the law of the land. 

With the new law in place, property tax revenues fell by half, devastating local governments. 

“Twenty years ago in this state, 20 percent of the state budget went to higher education, and 3 percent went for prisons. Now 9 percent goes for prisons and 7 percent to higher education,” Reich said. 

He said not to blame “Bob Birgeneau or Mark Yudof” or the Board of Regents or the governor for the dysfunctional nature of California’s government, which Reich described as “the worst government I’ve ever seen.” 

“I blame the fact that so many of us for so long have turned our backs on the problems,” Reich said, including Proposition 13 and its two-thirds rule, gerrymandering of the state into consistently single-party districts, “and the initiative process.” 

“In 1978, the people of California sold their kids down the river for real estate,” said Microbiology Professor Kevin Padian. 

As a result of Proposition 13, he said, “A one-third minority in the Legislature is twice as powerful as its opponents. Their votes are twice as powerful.”  

Padian also called for increased transparency in the governance of the University of California. “These people simply can’t account for what they did. And this is especially true of the Office of the President,” he said, evoking a round of applause. 

“This university is known for its faculty, not the status of its administrators,” said Catherine Cole, professor of Theater, Dance and Performance Studies. “When was the last time UC Berkeley won a Nobel Prize for administration?” 

“You are witnessing the birth of an unprecedented movement,” Cole told the gathering. “You have the opportunity to be a part of the story.” 

Wendy Brown, a professor of political science, began with another common theme of criticism, privatization of the university, “a future that is partly already upon us” and that “if allowed to unfold, will result in a very serious alteration” of the university’s mandate for public education. 

She said the evidence lies in “the growing increase” in the emphasis of commercialization of research, and the unfolding transformation of a public institution into a mechanism for selling products to corporations and students.  

One result, she said, is “decreased support for all aspects of the university that are not entrepreneurial, including humanities, the arts, “soft social sciences,” and basic research instead of applied research. 

“Privatization means out with Einstein, out with Darwin, out with Aristotle and in with Bill Gates,” she said. 

The critics said they were also concerned with efforts to market classes online, a move they said would eliminate the vital student/teacher bond. 

Ricardo Gomez, a CalSERVE student organizer from Solidarity Alliance, the umbrella organization coordinating the protests, and a member of Berkeley Students Against the Cuts, said “the point of the walkout is to put a stop to business as usual and to send a message to the regents and the Legislature to keep UC public.” 

He also told the audience that so many had shown up for the teach-in that they more than filled the 700-seat Wheeler Auditorium, with the hundreds turned away holding their own teach-in outside. 

Thursday’s rally provided the media highlight of last week, with a throng of 5,000 jamming Sproul Plaza, many hoisting aloft colorful and sometimes obscene placards. 

Cameras were everywhere, and overhead a news helicopter streamed live video, not the teargas that helicopters once brought to Sproul Plaza protests. 

The day had begun with picket lines around campus, many of them from Berkeley’s Local 1 of the University Professional and Technical Employees (UPTE), but also including members of other campus unions, faculty and students. 

TV crews interviewed participants and organizers, including Lyn Hejinian, the poet, English professor and activist in Solidarity Alliance, the multi-organization campaign for the Thursday walkout.  

“No Cuts. No Fees,” the pickets chanted. “Education Sets You Free.” 

By the time the noon rally began, Spoul Plaza was packed with bodies and signs. 

Ishmael Ramirez, one of 34 custodians laid off by campus officials last week, said “We are here to fight the wave of justifications used to cut off our jobs for no reason.” 

Thanking the students for their support for his co-workers, he offered his in turn for their fight against fee increases. 

“We are at a moment of near breakdown, and no one is saying the way out will be without pain,” said Professor of Modern Art T. J. Clark. 

Percy Hintzen, African American Studies professor, said he first came to Berkeley “as the beneficiary of campaigns just like this.” 

“This is not the preserve of white, powerful rich men,” he said. “When it was the preserve of these people, the university was free, and anyone who was rich and powerful with ‘C’ grades came here to play polo. 

“They used this university to become the richest people in the world, and when they became rich, they began figuring out ways to make this university their preserve again.” 

Claudette Begin of the Coalition of University Employees (CUE), an independent union representing clerical workers throughout the UC system, said her union has been in bargaining with the university for a year and a half. 

“They threaten our people all over the place and they are scared,” she said. 

“We’ve had 69 people laid off here and at the Office of the President, and they tell us this is only the start ... they’re going to outsource.” 

After the rally, protesters set off on a march through downtown Berkeley, intending to head down University Avenue. Instead, police funneled the throng back onto Bancroft Way. 

Organizing 

The day ended with an organizing session that began indoors at the Cesar E. Chavez Student Center, where participants had planned to break into groups to discuss specific issues. 

With only a half-hour available indoors, most of that time was spent arguing format and location, with a minority urging the rest to head for Memorial Glade, from whence they could be heard—they insisted—by Chancellor Robert Birgeneau, who they said was meeting with million-dollar donors at that very moment. 

But the majority voted to head to Lower Sproul, where they divided into groups in the open air to discuss where next to take their emerging movement. 

Given a deadline, participants formed a series of circles, sitting on the pavement around an expanse of paper, felt pen at hand, where they began drawing up their proposals of areas and plans for future action. 

When time expired, the groups gathered their papers and headed to Wheeler Hall, where, one-by-one, representatives of each group presented their ideas to the assembly. 

Then, with word that campus police were arriving outside the hall, the outer doors were closed by participants, with an organizer explaining, “I don’t necessarily like police intimidation.” 

The idea of a statewide conference “of everybody who’s affected” by the hikes and cuts emerged from the first group to take the stage. The date of October 24 was proposed by another group. 

In the end, the assembled particpants called for a statewide Oct. 24 conference in Berkeley on the plight of all public education throughout California, the date being a month after Thursday’s rally. At press time yesterday, this was still in the planning stage. 

Many other ideas were floated, including: 

• An unannounced sit-in at Bancroft Library. 

• A campus-wide petition to gather signatures for a call for more funding, to be sent to state legislators. 

• Creation of a website for the “Free Education Movement.” 

• Talking with and organizing parents. 

• Hunger strikes. 

• Phone campaigns. 

• Occupations of buildings. 

Moments after the issue of occupations had been raised by one of the groups, it was announced that students had occupied the Graduate Student Commons building at UC Santa Cruz. 

Applause and cheers followed, with a drum beat accompaniment. 

But when a speaker called for an immediate occupation of Wheeler Hall, the mood grew tense. “Let’s not be subversive here,” said one of the organizers. 

The AC Transit Board of Directors took a step back from its signature Bus Rapid Transit project last week. But just how big a step back is yet to be determined.  

At an unusual and hastily scheduled Friday night meeting, the board unanimously approved General Manager Rick Fernandez’s proposal to request a shift of funds from the BRT project to AC Transit’s operating budget.  

The funds—already authorized for BRT by the Metropolitan Transporta-tion Commission—would be used to stave off a portion of AC Transit’s pending personnel layoffs and service cuts.  

In the best-case scenario, the proposed fund-swap would allow the district to reduce its impending 15 percent bus service cuts by half, prevent any immediate layoffs, and postpone the start of BRT construction for just one year. At worst, it could cause either a longer delay in BRT implementation, reduction of the scope of the project, or even a possible abandonment of BRT altogether.  

The proposed service cuts and layoffs were initiated after AC Transit declared a fiscal emergency earlier this year, and last June projected a $57 million operating deficit. Since that time, district staff members say the transit agency is anticipating even further reductions in sales and property tax income this year.  

Fernandez and AC Transit Board members denied that last week’s sudden fund-swap proposal signaled the beginning of the end of BRT.  

“We’re hopeful that we can still keep the BRT project alive,” Fernandez told board members in presenting his proposal at the Sept. 25 meeting.  

South Alameda County Boardmember Jeff Davis, who made the motion to approve the fund-swap proposal, said “many people think this means the death knell of BRT. It does not. This is no reflection of my support for BRT.”  

But in remarking on the rapidity with which the proposal first came to light and then came before the AC Transit board—rumors of the Fernandez proposal began circulating only a week ago, during a time when AC Transit was still promoting BRT at community meetings—Davis acknowledged that the proposal could put the BRT project in danger, saying that, “for a project that has such a long history, to think that it could be jeopardized in such a quick time is so wrenching to those who have committed themselves to this project.”  

With member Joel Young absent and Joe Wallace participating by telephone, board members voted 6–0 to authorize Fernandez to pursue the transfer of funds.  

Under the proposal, which Fernandez says has garnered a favorable preliminary reception by Metropolitan Transportation Commission Executive Steve Heminger, the 19-member commission requested to take $35 million in Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality (CMAQ) capital-project-only funds already committed to the BRT project and apply them to another capital transit project under MTC’s nine-county jurisdiction. In return, MTC will be asked to identify $35 million in unrestricted CMAQ money for AC Transit to use in its operating budget.  

Distribution of the CMAQ money among local transit agencies is controlled by the MTC board.  

Fernandez had also proposed a similar swap for $45.6 million in MTC-controlled Regional Measure 2 (RM2), saying he did not believe Heminger would recommend to the board the CMAQ swap only. But on a motion by At-Large AC Transit Director Chris Peeples, Fernandez will feel out Heminger to find out if the CMAQ swap can go through on its own, with AC Transit holding onto the RM2 funds for the BRT project while it seeks other funding sources to relieve its remaining budget problems.  

The proposed transaction is complicated by the fact that, even if Heminger and the MTC board approve the proposed swap, there is no guarantee that MTC will be able to find enough unrestricted CMAQ or RM2 money within its control to swap with the BRT-designated capital funds. In that event, Fernandez said, both the BRT project and the district’s proposed January service cuts and layoffs would move forward as planned.  

AC Transit must move fast on the proposed swap because the longer the district holds off on the service cuts and layoffs, the deeper its financial hole will be.  

AC Transit is in the last stages of the development process of BRT, an ambitious proposal to run fast, light-rail-like bus service between downtown Berkeley, downtown Oakland, and downtown San Leandro along the Telegraph Avenue/International Boulevard/East 14th Street route currently used by the district’s 1 and 1R bus lines.  

That process was moving forward on its original schedule even as the AC Transit board contemplated slowing it down.  

The night before the emergency Friday AC Transit board meeting, Berkeley’s Willard Neighborhood Association—in conjunction with the LeConte, Halcyon, Claremont-Elmwood, and Bateman associations—held a community meeting at Willard Middle School to give staff members from the city of Berkeley the chance to present the city’s BRT Locally Preferred Alternative to the public and answer questions.  

Berkeley is proposing slight modifications to AC Transit’s plans to generally run dedicated, bus-only lanes for BRT along Telegraph Avenue between the UC Berkeley campus entrance and the Berkeley–Oakland border. Similar to the 1 and 1R lines, BRT would connect with downtown Berkeley in a loop to run along Bancroft Way and Durant Avenue.  

Community sentiment at the Willard meeting was high in opposition to any transfer of lanes along Telegraph from auto use to exclusive bus use. The only speakers at the meeting who won applause were those who opposed the dedicated-lane proposal, and when one speaker asked for opponents of BRT in the audience to stand up, nearly two thirds of the participants stood up.  

The city of Berkeley will be holding its own community meeting on the proposed BRT project from 10:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 17, in the third floor Community Meeting Room at the Berkeley Central Library. .

The Downtown Berkeley Association (DBA) is moving in a new direction with the creation of a three-year strategic plan and a search for a new executive director in order to generate more revenue for the 20-year-old organization with hopes of making the downtown more attractive. DBA President Mark McLeod has revealed the organization’s intention to explore the creation of a property-based business improvement district (PBID) and a parking revenue district. The existing Business Improvement District is controlled by business owners, who are not necessarily property owners but can also be tenants. 

The DBA sent out a statement Wednesday saying that its executive director, Deborah Badhia, was named the operations director, a new role that will focus on community programs. 

“I’m excited about my new role and the changes for the DBA,” Badhia said in a statement. “I’m looking forward to growing our current programs and helping the organization move in a new direction.” 

DBA President McLeod said that the organization’s 2010–2012 strategic plan would guide its organizational priorities for the next three years. 

McLeod said the plan had been developed with the help of more than 20 community members over a period of nine months. 

“As the only organization representing downtown stakeholders, the DBA Board recognizes that we are operating in a competitive regional market and that we must work harder to make the downtown more attractive and welcoming to new and existing businesses, customers and visitors,” the statement from Badhia said. 

“We are excited about the DBA’s future as envisioned in the strategic plan. It represents a new 'take charge' direction for the DBA,” she continued. 

McLeod said the plan seeks to address retail vitality, cleanliness and safety by providing new services that would augment, not replace, existing services. 

The plan, available on the Downtown Berkeley Association website, outlines the services the organization intends to provide and proposes a strategy to raise funds from public and private sources to pay for them. 

McLeod said that it was important to continue the programs Badhia had created as executive director, including the Berkeley Host Ambassador Program, Buy Local Berkeley, the Downtown Berkeley Storefront Art Program and the Berkeley Business District Network. 

McLeod said that the new executive director would develop new revenue streams for the organization, serve as an advocate for the district to governmental agencies and conduct and implement strategic planning. 

“We will try to get the city to take really good care of the downtown,” he said. “It’s important to allow the DBA to do more than it was doing.” 

Under the property-based business improvement district, the city would collect money from property taxes instead of sales taxes in order to give it to the DBA. 

“We would get money from services other than retail,” McLeod said. “Some of the biggest properties downtown are UC Berkeley and the city itself. Up until now, those institutions have not been involved in giving money to the BID [Business Improvement District]. However, under the PBID, these large institutions would provide the money to run the BID, and as a result the DBA will be able to take on a larger workload.” 

Usually, in property-based business improvement districts, voting is based on property ownership rather than on business ownership. 

Under the parking improvement district, a percentage of the parking fees goes into the business improvement district. 

For more information on the new executive director search and the three-year strategic plan, visit www.downtownberkeley.org. 

The Shattuck Hotel has been born again. The 100-year-old six-story landmark, Berkeley’s oldest hotel, officially reopened Thursday, Sept. 24, with much fanfare after a two-year, multi-million-dollar remodeling effort.  

The block between Shattuck and Milvia on Allston Way was closed momentarily for a ribbon-cutting ceremony that was attended by Berkeley Councilmember Linda Maio, Berkeley Visitors and Convention Bureau President Barbara Hillman and community members and followed by a performance by the UC Berkeley a capella group Decadence.  

As the guests made their way into the revamped lobby, which opens up into a mirrored, oval-shaped bar flanked by the bistro Five, they caught glimpses of the building’s bygone era, including the 100-year-old red-and-white crystal chandelier, high columns and ornate molding wrapped around the ceiling.  

Gone are the old carpets, creaky furniture and cracked paint. Everything from the white marble floors to the landscaped courtyard to the quaint iPod docks at the new Hotel Shattuck Plaza exudes modern chic.  

Owner and UC Berkeley alumni Perry Patel of BPR Properties, who bought the Shattuck Hotel from independent hotelier Sanjeev Kakkar in 2007, said he had wanted the new design to be “timeless.”  

“I wanted to preserve and honor the hotel’s history,” Patel said, standing next to his father and siblings in the hotel’s 2,800-square-foot Crystal Ballroom. “We have brought back the jewel in the downtown’s crown.”  

Patel said that when he took over the Shattuck Hotel, he envisioned it as a four-star boutique hotel, sleek, but not too modern, classy but not too stiff.  

Designers Thom Jess of Arris Architects, Ziv Davis and historical architect Mark Hulbert subtly pulled details from Berkeley’s history into the hotel’s interior, choosing a red and mauve 1960s flower-power pattern for the hallway carpets—without making it too psychedelic—and strategically placing framed pictures of Berkeley street life and the Campanile inside each of the hotel’s 199 rooms.  

But perhaps nothing gets more Berkeley at the Hotel Shattuck Plaza than the huge peace symbol emblazoned on the floor of its vaulted foyer, greeting guests as they make their way up an equally stylish ramp to the lobby.  

The architects also preserved the hotel’s exterior arches and tall glass windows, bringing back the building’s original cream tones, which blend with the surrounding.  

The hotel’s rooms—some of which offer sweeping views of the bay—have been occupied since June, and Scott Howard, the chef at Five, has been treating patrons to his signature contemporary American cuisine served with a twist.  

“We are very proud and happy to be in Berkeley and look forward to investing in our staff and our community in order to provide an exciting experience and return,” said Euan Taylor, who hails from Scotland and was hired by Patel as the Hotel Shattuck Plaza’s general manager. “We’d like to make our hotel a destination. I think it’s a great asset we can give back to the community.”  

Taylor worked with the Four Seasons chain for a number of years before moving to the Bay Area.  

Most of the hotel’s clients are people visiting the university or Lawrence Berkeley National Lab on business, although Patel is offering attractive discounts on fall packages named Cal! and Touchdown Bears (that one reduces the room rate by 2 percent for every touchdown the Bears score that weekend) ranging from $131 to $169 per night. And, unlike in the past, every single room has a private bathroom—no more late-night trudges down the hallway.  

Heather Smith, a sales coordinator for the hotel, said a UC Berkeley graduate student recently rented out the Presidential Suite for his wedding reception.  

“Before, it was more of a residential property—there were a lot of people living here,” she said. “It had classic furniture and it tried to look old. We hope our modern amenities will draw both Berkeley residents and students and their families.”  

Champagne, flowers and balloons dotted the lobby, and, as the last of the invited guests left the hotel around noon, Patel finally sat down with his family for lunch.  

He admitted that the ride hadn’t always been easy.  

Although Patel received a green light on the project from both the Zoning Adjustments Board and the Landmarks Preservation Commission, the going got rough when the building was red-tagged for a fire code violation during the renovation in 2007, following which he had to settle with several of Kakkar’s tenants for an undisclosed amount to get them to leave the building.  

“You have to take all those things in stride,” Patel said smiling. “This is a really powerful city, very dynamic, and as an alumnus it’s just great to come back. I have great memories of the hotel, but for the last 20 years no one has mentioned it. We are here to take it back where it belongs.”

State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell was in Berkeley Wednesday to announce the names of five California public high schools—including Berkeley High—selected for a new “green energy” partnership academy pilot program that seeks to train students in clean energy technologies. 

A partnership between the California Department of Education and the Pacific Gas and Electric Company, the three-year program seeks to effectively prepare students for job opportunities in the rapidly expanding energy sector as well as provide them with an academically rigorous learning experience that has a “real-world” focus. 

O’Connell was joined in the Berkeley High School Library around 10:30 a.m. by California Public Utilities Commission President Michael R. Peevey, PG&E Vice President Ophelia Basgal, Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates and his wife, Sen. Loni Hancock, Berkeley Unified School District Superintendent Bill Huyett and Berkeley Board of Education President Nancy Riddle. 

Representatives from the four other schools selected—Edison High School in Fresno, Foothill High School in Sacramento, Independence High School in Bakersfield and Venture Academy in Stockton—were also present at the event. 

The New Energy Academy is designed to provide energy career education to at-risk students who might otherwise not have the opportunity.  

The green energy academy, which is also being supported by the non-profit CaliforniaALL, will be Berkeley High’s seventh small school. 

Berkeley High Principal Jim Slemp told the Daily Planet that the state Department of Education and PG&E had approached the school last spring about the program. 

Slemp said the new academy would have an entirely different curriculum from the School for Social Justice and Economy, a Berkeley High small school that focuses on justice issues surrounding the environment. 

“It fits with what we have been doing,” Slemp said. “The fact that the state department [of education] and PG&E came to us is a compliment for us. Now we have lots of work to do.” 

Slemp said that although a few parents had expressed concern about the corporate nature of the partnership, the feedback from the community had been positive so far. 

“Green energy is a growing field that is critical to turn the tide on climate change,” said O’Connell, who has sponsored legislation supporting the partnership between schools and different philanthropic organizations and corporations. “I am excited that California students in these programs will be learning about technologies that can help the entire planet.”  

O’Connell, who mingled with the crowd before and after the event, had almost a rock star effect on students, with some of them pressing him for pictures. The Berkeley High School student newspaper, The Jacket, interviewed O’Connell for their online video segment, a new feature student editor Charlotte Wayne said the paper was trying out this year. 

“I take credit for all your great test scores when they come out in Sacramento,” O’Connell told students smiling.  

Addressing the audience later, he said “This is a cause for celebration—career technology academies create not just jobs but careers for the rest of your life. They offer cutting-edge curriculum and innovation for new technology along with problem-solving skills. California needs a well-skilled well-educated problem solving workforce.” 

O’Connell said more students were becoming eligible for admission to colleges and universities, making it pertinent for school districts to prepare them for the future. 

“The entire community has a responsibility to prepare students,” he said. “We have the statistics that prove that career partnership academies work—it’s like a school within a school. They include the three new R’s: rigor, relevance and relationship with the business community. These days there’s not much difference between career preparation and college preparation. The two are not mutually exclusive.” 

Fifty percent of students in career partnership academies are at risk students and 96 percent graduate from high school. 

Out of that, 70 percent are college-bound, O’Connell said. 

“Given the rise of technology in California, this is great news,” said Ophelia Basgal, PG&E Vice President of Civic Partnership and Community initiatives. 

“It will link young people to academic curriculum,” said Loni Hancock. “So whether they install or invent the next generation of solar panels, they know what they are giving to the world. We are facing many challenges. We need to turn around global warming, protect the planet and keep this beautiful state we live in safe for our children and grandchildren. Our challenge is to conserve, install and invent and to have a million solar panels.” 

Bates, who is a staunch supporter of solar energy, called the green energy academy a wonderful addition to the East Bay Green Corridor, which he said already had four other career technology academies funded by the state Department of Education. 

The Berkeley Board of Education approved the planning grant for the green energy academy and will vote on whether to approve the curriculum and concept at a future date, Berkeley Unified spokesperson Mark Coplan said.  

Schools are eligible to receive up to $40,000 during the planning year, which includes $25,000 from PG&E and $15,000 from the state education department. 

PG&E will help to craft the curriculum, but Berkeley High will ultimately be responsible for its governance.  

The program will begin in the 2009 academic year with curriculum planning and teacher development. Educators selected to teach its courses will spend almost a year evaluating, contributing and studying course content.  

Teachers will be selected based on their interest, expertise and willingness to join the program.  

The five schools will also receive grants and access to professional development workshops and industry experts. The new academy is scheduled to open next fall. 

Approximately 60 to 70 students will be enrolled in the sophomore year and the number will increase to 150 to 200 students when the program gets implemented eventually. 

At least half of the students who enroll in the green energy academy must meet specific “at-risk” criteria as defined in the education code.  

PG&E, which provides energy to 15 million people in northern and central California, plans to spend $19 million this year on various charitable programs 

Berkeley High senior class president Brandon Lucky told the Planet that students were very excited about the new school. 

“It’s a great opportunity for students to help the economy,” said Lucky, who will be entering Hampton University in the fall. “Students will understand better what the business field is like. I wish it had been available when I joined Berkeley High.” 

The community is invited to a forum disucss the new small school from 7–9 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 6 at the Berkeley High School Library. Those who cannot attend are invited to send their comments to gwolkenfeld@berkeley.k12.ca.us.

In a short-agenda meeting Tuesday night where controversy was notably absent, the Berkeley City Council unanimously agreed to an across-the-board 25-cent-per-hour increase in parking meter rates, added 420 new parking meter locations around the city, and set an Oct. 27 date to begin a series of council discussions and action on how to increase the amount of affordable housing in the city. 

Meanwhile, following the meeting, City Manager Phil Kamlarz said that he expected the City Council would be holding discussions in two weeks in both public and closed sessions over filling the long-vacant post of city attorney. Assistant City Attorney Zach Cowan has been serving as acting city attorney since October of 2007, when former City Attorney Manuela Albuquerque resigned. In June of 2008, the Daily Planet reported that Kamlarz told Mayor Tom Bates and several councilmembers that he would begin a national search to find a permanent replacement for Albuquerque following that month’s passage of the city budget. 

In Tuesday night’s parking decisions, the increase in parking meter rates from $1.25 to $1.50 per hour, which will take effect Nov. 15, is expected to raise $1.1 million a year. The increase is expected in part to offset a $300,000 per year decline in parking meter revenue the city is attributing to the national economic woes. 

Several councilmembers indicated they were passing the increase “reluctantly,” with Gordon Wozniak saying that it was preferable to cutting city services mid-year. Darryl Moore asked staff members “non-rhetorically” if the rate increase could be rescinded once the economy recovers, with Laurie Capitelli saying that “maybe we should raise rates for this fiscal year only and then come back to reconsider it next year,” adding that “it would be revolutionary for a city to roll back parking rates.” Several councilmembers indicated that even though they felt the increase was necessary for the time being, Berkeley’s parking rates put the city at a business competitive disadvantage to neighboring Emeryville, which has a $1 per hour parking charge on its Bay Street shops, and Albany and El Cerrito, which have no parking fees. Capitelli said the problem was most pronounced in the commercial district along Solano Avenue, where Berkeley has metered street parking spaces while the city of Albany has free spaces. 

Meanwhile, the bulk of the 420 single-stand, coin-only parking meters, which became available for reuse after the city began moving to its pay-and-display (P&D), credit-card-friendly multi-space meter kiosk system in other areas, will be installed in existing one- and two-hour- limit street parking areas roughly along San Pablo Avenue between Harrison Street and Grayson Street and on Adeline and Shattuck in the Berkeley Bowl area (a map of the entire metering area is available on the city’s website). 

City staff had originally proposed placing 832 of these coin-only meters in various locations. But after meeting with merchants and residents earlier in this year, city staff scaled the new meter placements down to 420. 

At the request of Councilmembers Kriss Worthington, Max Anderson, Jesse Arreguín, and Moore, the council had been set to consider a proposal to ask the city’s Planning Commission to immediately look into ways to “consider strengthening [Berkeley’s] Inclusionary Housing Ordinance, including looking at raising it to 25 percent citywide.” Berkeley’s inclusionary zoning rate, which is currently set at 20 percent, is designed to get new housing developments in the city to include units priced to be affordable to people with low and moderate income. 

At Mayor Tom Bates’ suggestion, however, the four agenda item sponsors as well as the rest of the council agreed that the matter could be moved forward faster if the council first took an extensive look at the issue at its Oct. 27 meeting. The council set an inclusionary zoning and affordable housing workshop for that date, as well as an agenda item that will allow it to pass on recommendations to the Planning Commission for action. Several councilmembers indicated, however, that the council discussion and decision may take more than one meeting session. 

Besides being of citywide concern, the issue of inclusionary zoning and affordable housing was one of the concerns that helped drive the successful recent petition drive that blocked implementation of the council’s Downtown Area Plan. In separate conversations with the Daily Planet earlier this month, Bates, who supports the council-passed version of the Downtown Area Plan, and Worthington, who opposes it in its latest form, said that resolving the inclusionary zoning/ affordable housing question on a citywide basis could remove it as an issue, and perhaps would be one move toward a settlement of the various differences over the plan.

People’s Park: Still Blooming, brilliantly compiled by Terri Compost, longtime Park activist and gardener, is a book that grabs your attention. On the cover is a captivating picture of a sweet-faced child peeking out from behind a flower, and, as you look more closely, below it a vaguely familiar black and white photo of a mass of soldiers standing at attention, wearing gas masks and armed with bayonets. The 190-page book contains hundreds of photographs interspersed with short segments of text culled from museum and newspaper archives, and conversations and recollections from a wide variety of sources. It’s an unusual way to construct a book, but it works well. 

The book starts with the history of the park. It is not always a pretty story. Jesse Palmer, in his preface to the book, writes that the university “(disputably) legally owned the land.” Where the park is now, there were houses. The story begins in June 1967 when UC took over the houses, by purchase or by eminent domain, evicted everyone and destroyed the houses. It announced that it planned to build a dormitory on the site. It turned out Cal didn’t have the money to build, nor even enough to clean up the debris-littered lot. It stayed that way for almost two years. 

Finally, on April 20, 1969, a call went out to the community, and hundreds of people gathered to turn the site into a park. They cleared the land, planted trees and flowers, built a children’s playground. For three exhilarating weeks they came and created a true community park while the university dithered. Terri has many quotes in the book about those heady days of park building. A woman recalls, “We were seeing ourselves as basically fighting for the children. This was an unbelievable beautiful place and the energy, the multi-level, the strata, rich, poor, middle-class, working homeless, it was a place for everyone and it was incredibly compelling to be there, that energy was so full of love and joy.” Someone else wrote, “It was a very special experience for Americans. ... It was a time when you were working and you were actually believing in what you were doing.” And there was the member of the Berkeley City Council who warned the Board of Regents that “this is anything but a harmless frolic. ... this cleared land, awaiting development by the university, is being rapidly built into a hippie Disneyland. ... I have been informed by intelligence sources ...” And Ronald Reagan declared, “It should be obvious to every Californian that there are those in our midst who are bent on destroying our society and our democracy and they will go to any ends to achieve their purpose—whether it be a so-called park or a college curriculum.” 

For three weeks there were negotiations and betrayals, promises made and broken, leading up to violent surprise attacks by police and national guard with helicopters spraying tear gas, hundreds of people jailed and abused for protesting, one young person blinded and another, James Rector, killed in police gunfire. It felt like the city of Berkeley was under siege. Accompanied by incredible violence, the university built an eight-foot chain-link fence around the park. It was three years before a massive protest succeeded in tearing down the fence, and the park became a garden. 

From that time on, the story is one of user development, which means, Jesse explains, “the people who use ... the space ... should be the ones who determine how it is developed and operated” through a democratic process of decision making. In contrast to that, the university’s process involves various in-house bureaucrats, who hire high-priced consultants to produce reports which get filed away and may or may not be acted upon. Consequently, over the years there were and still continue to be confrontations over user developments that the university tries to tear down or university impositions that the park users object to. 

There were skirmishes about placement of toilets and the free speech stage, but a major confrontation occur-red in 1991 when the university decided to build volleyball courts in the park. Park users and friends insisted there was no need for or interest in volleyball, but their protests were ignored. A fence was built, bulldozers came in, protests were met with a massive police force and once more there was violence. The photographs of that period show a striking replay of the early days of the park. The volleyball courts were rarely used—the word was that the university offered to pay people to play—and six months later the bulldozers came back and the courts were removed.  

The main message of the book is a positive affirmation eloquently expressed in a cover blurb by Osha Neumann. The park continues to be “... a free space for free people, for the earth and for justice!” The book, he writes, “is full of all the joy, laughter, heartbreak, passion, and courage of all genuine people’s struggles.” On page after page we see an amazing variety of activities and happenings; social activism, promoting progressive causes, free speech and free expression and free food, music, art, dance. There are the exuberant celebrations of the park anniversaries, of Mardi Gras, music festivals and student activities, all richly illustrated with photographs contributed by scores of people whose lives are somehow connected with the park. There are pictures and poems to the plants, flowers, trees and the community garden, descriptions of work parties building the stage and the pergola, and much, much more. One can’t help wondering if there is any other place in the world where so much goes on in such a small space. 

Conflicts with the university flare up fairly regularly, but the park continues to be part of the fabric of Berkeley. The spirit of the park users that has kept it going for 40 years is still there. But the world has changed and the city has changed, there is poverty and homelessness that this generation has not experienced. This has brought a new population of users to the park, people who are homeless. For them, the park is a place of refuge, a life sustaining place to rest, to be free and undisturbed during the day after being in the streets all night. Perhaps part of the battle over the park today is simply holding on to it, making sure that this special place is not lost. Terri’s book is a good reminder of how important that is. 

PEOPLE’S PARK: STILL BLOOMING 

By Terri Compost. Published by Slingshot Collective. 200 pages. $24.95. 

The Alameda County district attorney’s office announced Wednesday, Sept. 23 that it would not press criminal charges against four protesters cited for misdemeanors during a rally at UC Berkeley’s School of Law. 

The Aug. 17 rally called for UC Berkeley law professor John Yoo to be fired, disbarred and prosecuted for war crimes for his role in crafting the Bush administration’s torture policies. 

UC Police Department officers cited and then released Stephanie Tang, George Cammarota, Elliot Cohen and Donna Norton for trespassing and disturbing the peace on campus when they refused to comply with an order to leave the law school building after exhibiting loud and disruptive behavior. 

Tang and Cammarota are members of World Can’t Wait, an activist group that organized the protest in collaboration with Code Pink and the National Lawyers Guild on the day Yoo returned to the Berkeley campus after a semester at Chapman University in Orange County.  

Cohen is a former member of the Berkeley Peace and Justice Commission and Norton lives in Petaluma. 

All four joined the protest on the steps of the law school formerly known as Boalt Hall, and then entered the building, where they talked to students and waited for Yoo, a tenured professor, to show up for class. 

The group of 60 or so activists, community members, and current and former law school students voiced their desire for a comprehensive criminal investigation into Yoo’s role in the writing of interrogation memos while he was legal counsel for the U.S. Department of Justice from 2001 to 2003. 

The Obama administration on Aug. 24 released partially declassified CIA documents that criticized the agency’s interrogation program in 2002 and 2003 as poor, resulting in the use of “unauthorized, improvised, inhumane and undocumented” techniques. 

Tang was one of the protesters who spoke with students inside Yoo’s classroom. 

“I told them about the problems of having a war criminal on the faculty and the implications of being educated at a law school where you have a professor who is in a position of responsibility in the Justice Department who counseled President Bush on how to break the law,” Tang said. “When I saw Yoo, I told him he was a war criminal. He turned away and kept walking.” 

E-mails to Yoo for comment were not returned by press time. 

Tang said UCPD officers banned the four protesters from entering the campus for seven days.  

Tang said she had gone back to the campus after the ban expired to join in the weekly protests at Sproul Plaza, which were devised to draw attention to Yoo’s actions. 

“It’s kind of amazing how many people on campus have not heard the name John Yoo,” Tang said. “Then there are those who sympathize with our message but are not sure what they can do. We think there is something the whole UC could do—that is, launch a full investigative process before the Academic Senate. The world is waiting for some accountability.” 

Seth Chazin, the lawyer representing Tang, Cammarota, Cohen and Norton, said the DA’s office had decided to drop the charges because they did not view his clients’ actions as worthy of prosecution. 

Calls to the DA’s office for comment were not returned. 

Opinions about Yoo’s involvement in the Bush torture memos have been divided in both the legal and the academic world, with some justifying his actions at the Justice Department as academic freedom. 

Responding to the public outcry on Yoo’s first day of fall classes, law school Dean Christopher Edley sent an e-mail to students and faculty outlining why disagreeing with “substantial portions of Professor Yoo’s analyses”—which he said was how most, though not all, of his colleagues at Berkeley felt—was not enough “to fire or sanction someone.” 

If it was, he continued, “then academic freedom would be meaningless.” 

“Assuming one believes as I do that Professor Yoo offered bad ideas and even worse advice during his government service, that judgment alone would not warrant dismissal or even a potentially chilling inquiry,” Edley’s letter said, referring to the General University Policy Regarding Academic Appointees, adopted for the 10-campus University of California by both the system-wide Academic Senate and the Board of Regents. 

Types of unacceptable conduct stated in the policy include “Commission of a criminal act which has led to conviction in a court of law and which clearly demonstrates unfitness to continue as a member of the faculty.” 

“This very restrictive standard is binding on me as dean, and in any case disciplinary authority over faculty is lodged not with deans but with the Provost, Chancellor and Academic Senate,” Edley said. “But I will put aside that shield and state my independent and personal view of the matter: I believe the crucial questions in view of our university mission are these: Was there clear professional misconduct—that is, some breach of the professional ethics applicable to a government attorney—material to Professor Yoo’s academic performance now? Did writing the memoranda, and any related acts, violate a criminal or comparable statute? Absent very substantial evidence on these questions, no university worthy of distinction should even contemplate dismissing a faculty member. That standard has not been met.” 

Edley went on to say that when the attorney general released the results of the Department of Justice’s internal ethics investigation, he along with others would review it carefully and consider its implications for the campus. 

“In all candor, I doubt that there will be,” he said. 

Stephen Rosenbaum, a lecturer at the UC Berkeley law school, told the Planet that, although disrupting classes and shouting slogans may not be the most productive way to debate the issue, it is “clear that law students are eager to discuss the ethical consequences of giving a classroom podium to a professor who has notoriously used his legal skills to justify a public policy that runs counter to all reasonable interpretations of constitutional and international law.” 

Tang said it was ironic that Colombian artist Fernando Botero’s paintings and drawings about abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq were being exhibited at the Berkeley Art Museum on Bancroft Avenue when Yoo was teaching across the street. 

Botero’s art exhibit opened on Sept. 23 and will be on display at the museum until Feb. 7, 2010. 

Botero’s work was inspired by a Seymour Hersh article in the New Yorker about the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. soldiers. 

The Berkeley Art Museum first unveiled the paintings to the public in 2007. 

Firefighters from the East Bay Regional Park District and four other state and local agencies battled a fire near the Fish Ranch Road exit off Highway 24 Tuesday afternoon, according to park district officials.  

A spokesperson for the park district fire department said that the fire had been completely contained by 5:36 p.m. He said that there had been no damage to any property except for some grass and brush. Park district officials are investigating the cause of the fire.  

East Bay Regional Park District spokesperson Shelly Lewis said the park district received a call from the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection at 3:09 p.m., reporting that “there was a fire at Fish Ranch Road outside Sibley Park that burned into Sibley.”  

Shelly said that the fire had spread to 30 acres. Sibley Park was evacuated, but residences were not evacuated, she said.  

Lewis said a total of five agencies—the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, Moraga-Orinda Fire Department, Contra Costa Fire Department, Oakland Fire Department and the East Bay Regional Park District—had helped to douse the flames. About 30 to 50 firefighters were present at the scene.  

Berkeley Fire Department Chief Gil Dong told the Planet that Berkeley firefighters had not been involved in efforts to control the fire because it had taken place outside their jurisdiction.  

Dong said the fire had started in the Moraga-Orinda area. Eyewitnesses reported around 4 p.m. that Tunnel Road near Claremont was closed immediately after turning onto Alvarado, a route used by many UC Berkeley employees on their way back home.  

Some afternoon commuters said traffic was a mess on upper Ashby Avenue because of the fire and reported seeing helicopters flying over the Oakland-Berkeley hills.  

John Gertz has told the Daily Planet that he alone did not pay for the signature ad which appeared in the East Bay Express. This was his own prior description of his relationship to the series of ads denouncing the Planet, which have been appearing in the Express, as e-mailed to the Planet’s advertising sales representative on Sept. 8: 

“Our first East Bay Express ad runs in about 10 days … Actually, to be honest, it isn’t my ad running in the EBX, but rather a full page ad being run by some supporters who stepped forward on their own. Nevertheless, they asked my permission to feature DPWatchDog prominently in their ad, so, although I haven’t seen the final ad layout, it might look like it came from us. I will then run some follow-up ads on my own in the East Bay Express.”  

He was right in surmising that the signature ad would look like it came from him and his associates, whoever they are. The editor did not see the e-mail to the sales rep, and was indeed confused by the ad. Last week’s editorial said that “Gertz took a full-page signature ad in the East Bay Express (using the name of a front committee) to publicize the URL of his site.” He did sign the ad, but we have no proof of who paid for it. Readers can draw their own conclusions.

In the early ’70s, I lived at 2700 Virginia St. in the Berkeley Hills with a sublime view of the Golden Gate Bridge. My next-door neighbor was Adam, a Jewish guy who took care of his son, David, while his wife taught at UC Berkeley. I, as a black writer, and Adam, a stay-at-home father, had a lot of free time on our hands. While taking care of David, we talked a lot about writing fiction and the books we loved. And, of course, we also talked about how we were going to change the literary world. With the publication of my novel, I was something. I threw parties and invited everybody—English department celebrities like Mark Schorer, Larry Ziff, and Leonard Michaels, and lots of writers, like Richard Brautigan, Claude Brown, Richard Pryor and Ishmael Reed. Adam was always invited. 

Years passed and we left the idyllic abode in the Berkeley Hills. When we crossed paths again, we celebrated our latest successes—I had written a film for Richard Pryor, and he had co-founded a magazine called Mother Jones. 

We were still so fond of each other that we wanted to realize some of our ideas about writing and publishing. The next thing I knew, I had written the cover story about Richard Pryor for Mother Jones. 

Several years passed, and we ran into each other again. What was he up to? He was starting a Writer’s Union. Would I like to lead a panel on the ills of writers? Of course. 

Years passed and I ran into Adam again. He was excited about his new editor at Mother Jones. Did I want to pitch him some ideas? 

I went by the office to meet the new editor, Michael Moore. Even back then he was a big guy—a big white guy with a friendly smile. I remember his great sense of humor, though he did turn down some of my stuff. However, before we could get started, Michael was fired.  

There was a big ruckus at the magazine, and my interest wandered; after all, I was running with Richard Pryor, and Hollywood beckoned. 

I heard through the grapevine that Michael Moore had sued Mother Jones and, with his $87,000 settlement, he made his first film, Roger and Me. 

It always hurts to be fired. But it must especially hurt to be fired by Adam Hochshild! Adam is not a bad guy. He’s a sweet guy. A writer. I read somewhere that after the film turned out so well, Michael wanted to thank Adam for firing him. Otherwise, he would have never found himself and his calling. In the film, he admits that, “It wasn’t that I was upset about getting fired, it was going back to Flint, Michigan.”  

I could relate to that, it was the personal voice. He then uses his persona as the allegory for larger problem—the factory layoffs and the GM culture. 

I’m sure I wouldn’t have thought another thing about Michael Moore if it hadn’t been for a very beautiful woman in Berkeley who asked a favor of me. She had a young son who wanted to be a writer, and since I was a writer, would I talk to him? His problem, she said, was that at 17, he was too smart for Berkeley High; all he wanted to do was “smoke dope and read Michael Moore.” 

Of his two vices, I was unfamiliar with one of them, so in order to talk to him I decided to read a book by Michael Moore. 

I walked into a bookstore on Shattuck Avenue in Berkeley, and picked up Dude, Where’s My Country? After a few chapters, I was laughing loud and hard. 

I saw immediately what all the fuss was about. Moore has a wonderful technique of picking an outrageous topic and making the reader laugh. While the reader is laughing, he connects the humor to an underlying meaning, or idea. I loved that technique; it seemed so familiar. 

Where had I seen that before? Richard Pryor, of course. This was his method, too. 

Richard and Moore always introduce themselves into their stories because they need a persona.  

Apart from technique, there is this thing Michael has about commitment to ideals. Not long after that, I was driving in my car listening to the radio. There was a commentator saying that, as a filmmaker, he didn’t want to work with whites any more. He wanted to work with black people. I didn’t know who was speaking and assumed he was a black filmmaker left over from the 1960s. But who, could that be? Melvin Van Peebles? He was in New York. Gordon Parks? No, he’s dead. 

When the announcer said that the guest was Michael Moore, I had to pull my car over and give this some thought. Could it be that racism is so bad that black men can no longer speak out for themselves and must now rely on a white man? 

A few days later I saw that he was giving a talk and a screening for his film Sicko and I went to it. During the question-and-answer period, I raised my hand and asked him why he preferred making films with black people. 

He recalled coming out of church with his family when someone announced that Martin Luther King had been assassinated.  

“I was 13 years old, getting out of the car with my parents. Somebody said, ‘They just shot Martin Luther King.’ A cheer went up. I was 13. Uh, this was one of those moments when you go, OK, fuck this. I want out of this place.’” 

He then told the audience of about 2,000 upper-class people in Mill Valley that this was the moment he realized he was born into the wrong community 

He continued with the answer. Once he made a lot of money with Roger and Me, he turned to his wife and said, What good can we do with this money? Since there had never been a film produced by a black woman, he decided to finance a young black woman, “Just Another Girl on the IRT.”  

Michael helped Leslie Harris, director, writer and producer, land the job directing Oprah Winfrey’s adaptation of Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God. 

It was a moving response and sincerely meant. 

After this encounter, I decided to write a book saluting his technique and humor. I took something that I was personally involved in at UC Berkeley. 

I took an outrageous title and related it to a serious situation. At the time, faculty members of the UC system were scheduled to walk out in protest over student fee hikes. Ironically, many who sat on the sidelines while blacks and other minorities fought for affirmative action were now crying the blues.  

A French commentator once asked James Baldwin what it was like to be a Negro. Baldwin responded to the Frenchman that he need not worry, that one day he would be Negro, too. What Baldwin meant was that the conditions that created the “Negro problem” could and can happen to whites too. This is the underlying theme I wanted to get across (hopefully, through humor,) about what was happening at UC Berkeley. 

I asked my 13-year-old nephew what film he considered to be great film. He said, “I tell you a really great film, Dude, Where’s My Car? I saw the film and realized he was right. It was the film that inspired Michael Moore’s Dude, Where’s my Country?, the book that I liked so much. 

So I came up with, Dude, Where’s my Black Studies Department? 

The proof of my success with this technique and this book is that I get e-mails and praise because the title of the book leads the reader to think seriously about an otherwise uninteresting topic: affirmative action and the lack of black in our universities. Here is the latest e-mail from a reader back East: “Dear Professor Brown, You don’t know me from a can of paint …But I just read your book on Black studies…The title of the book is deceiving and would not normally give the impression that it’s the serious work that it is. The book is great.” 

This is precisely what the Michael Moore method teaches. Do you think Bowling for Columbine is about bowling? Is his new movie Capitalism—A Love Story just about capitalism? Is Sicko really just about health care? They are all actually about the lost art of getting your reader to laugh, so that her inhibitions are distracted and you can effectively get a serious idea across. That was Mark Twain’s method, too. 

So my hat is off to Mr. Michael Moore. He has combined the many voices of the black leaders I grew up with. In his analysis of the racial situation, he retrieves the moral tone of James Baldwin. In his political militancy, he brings to my mind the voice of Eldridge Cleaver. In his wit and sagacity, I hear the voice of Dick Gregory. In the outrageous laughter that he provokes, he resuscitates the wry crack of my main man, Richard Pryor.

With all due respect to those who have just noticed, the corporatization/privatization of universities public and private, in California and elsewhere, has been going on for a long time. Way back in the late 1970s I was the only journalist and the only intellectual property lawyer who participated in a semester-long seminar on the problem at Stanford sponsored by the National Science Foundation. We focused on the effect on scientific research of what were potentially high-profit new technologies then under development in university laboratories. Central to the discussion was the biotechnology industry, then just beginning its migration from labs at Stanford and UCSF into lucrative companies like Genentech.  

I got a lot of good material out of those seminars, which later became articles in the ’80s in relatively high-profile magazines like the Nation and Mother Jones, and in more obscure and even more earnest publications with names like Multinational Monitor. The key issue, always, went back to the question I had learned to ask when I read Cicero’s Orations in high school: Cui bono? Good for whom? Who profits? 

At that point, believe it or not, many researchers working on the exciting new frontiers in molecular biology simply published their results for colleagues to use and learn from. In our seminars, this was contrasted with the evolution of the Silicon Valley electronics industry from engineering research at Stanford, which had been orchestrated by a sophisticated Stanford patenting and licensing office which at the time did not have a University of California counterpart. 

That’s all changed. Twenty years before Silicon Valley got started, C.P. Snow wrote extensively about the cultural gap between scholars of science and of humanities which existed in universities in his era. By 2009, exactly a half-century on from his seminal “Two Cultures” lecture, it’s become clear that science and engineering now rule campuses almost everywhere. Universities have discovered that there’s big money in science and its progeny, and have adapted to better match the corporate science model of squeezing maximum profit out of research dollars, complete with aggressive intellectual property policies that discourage sharing results with peers.  

Corporatization segued into privatization when corporations which had been making research grants to support academic researchers figured out that while buying the milk is nice, owning the cow is even better. The days when corporations like AT&T maintained major in-house research and development efforts like Bell Labs are over. Now British Petroleum, newly sanitized as BP, has an ownership interest in University of California at Berkeley laboratories (exact details concealed as “trade secrets”) and its captive researchers are falling all over themselves to turn West Berkeley into a proprietary theme park for their biofuel R&D companies.  

What private corporations control, the public doesn’t. That’s why public money now constitutes only about 20 percent of the University of California’s funding. And why the “president” of UC looks and acts a lot like a corporate CEO and is paid accordingly. (If you have a strong stomach, check out Deborah Solomon’s Q&A with UC President Mark Yudof in last Sunday’s New York Times Magazine.) 

Professors who are trying to blame the California Legislature and its budgeting woes for the university’s problems are not following the money. There’s no incentive for the state’s elected officials to worry about funding its universities when private corporations are so eager to do it for them. As long as the Board of Regents is comprised mostly of corporate executives, they won’t complain about a university whose priorities are increasingly controlled by the corporate profit agenda. 

Several of the UC regents, in fact, like Richard Blum (husband of Sen. Dianne Feinstein) amassed their own wealth in the building industry, and are delighted to see companies like BP paying for yet another major construction project. Decent pay for teaching assistants and cafeteria staff does nothing for the bottom line. Undergraduate education has never been a profit center.  

Will rallies and walkouts make any difference in this discouraging picture? As long as so many researchers are content to take home generous paychecks from BP and its ilk, protests by the teaching faculty and by students are not likely to prevent the machine from working, as Mario Savio and his Free Speech Movement colleagues earnestly hoped they would. In his famous “throw your bodies upon the gears” speech, Savio derided a “well-meaning liberal” who compared the president of the university to “the manager of a firm” and the regents to “his board of directors.” That was 1964, but not much has changed. 

In the meantime, in fact, privatization/corporatization has proceeded apace with little to slow it down. Each segment of the university community recognizes its own woes and is willing to fight the machine in its own way, but seldom do all work together for change.  

Students protest tuition hikes. Faculty complain about administration of the euphemistically titled “furloughs” (actually pay cuts). Staff workers denounce inadequate pay and working conditions. A few alumni withhold contributions. 

But until all of these varied groups manage to get together and speak with one voice, the gears of the machine will continue to grind on. They’ve been grinding away like this for at least half a century, and as the Greek philosopher Sextus Empiricus said, “the mills of the gods grind slowly, but they grind exceeding fine.”  

Academics have a deplorable tendency to bicker over arcane formulations and vie for high-profile leadership roles, a tendency which could sabotage the current protest if it’s not kept in check. Perhaps the secret is that protesters, instead of throwing their bodies on the gears, should think of themselves as trying to amass a great number of tiny grains of sand. More followers, not more leaders, are needed now. Enough sand in the gears will stop almost any machine. 

AC TRANSIT/BRT 

Editors, Daily Planet:  

In the Sept. 24 Planet, J. Douglas Allen-Taylor reports that the AC Transit manager is proposing that they use BRT funds to hold off service cuts. 

Since BRT would require spending large amounts of money for very little gain, I think pulling money from it to keep AC Transit going now is a great idea. In addition, I think most bus riders, merchants, street vendors and neighbors would agree with me. 

Sal Levinson  

• 

NIMBY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Joanne Kowalski “Not In My Backyard” Sept. 24 provides an engaging and informative mini-history of urban renewal after World War II. Interesting as it is, I fail to see how massive dislocations in Chicago and Detroit relate to the prospect of cleaning up a dozen city blocks in Berkeley. 

In the same issue, Gerry Tierney provides a clear and professional insight into the options we may consider here. It is required reading for anyone who frets over the “Manhattenization of Berkeley,” however silly that may be. 

Jerry Landis 

• 

CARBON FOOTPRINT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I have some very serious issues with the editorial that Gerry Tierney wrote for the Sept. 24 issue; I do not know if he is seriously misinformed or what but I am having a hard time seeing how a resident of Manhattan has a smaller carbon footprint than a campesino living in the mountains of southern Mexico. Really, sir, you need to back statements like this up with facts, otherwise we will all know that there is no possible way that you can build a 22-story building, and that people can live in such, in an environmentally sustainable way. 

If I do not recieve a response in print, backed up with facts and genuine research, your opinion is not worth the paper that it is written on. 

Arthur Fonseca 

• 

AC TRANSIT LOSSES 

Editors, Daily Planet:  

The AC Transit Mess: the $450,000,000 BRT delusion of grandeur meets the $10,000,000 annual operating budget deficit. Oops. As Gary Larson’s brilliant cartoons used to say, “trouble ahead...” 

Mr. AC Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) plan, may I introduce you to Mr. AC Annual Operating Budget Deficit? It seems that with the discovery of an annual operating budget deficit for AC Transit of almost ten million dollars, that cooler heads are finally beginning to have their doubts about this notion of “bus rapid transit,” planned to run from Berkeley down to San Leandro, running parallel to the existing BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) line in the same area. 

First, the notion of a bus system that operates on city streets as somehow being “rapid” is absurd on its face. If buses speed on city streets, they will be a serious threat to the health and safety of pedestrians, children, old people, pets, squirrels, birds, insects, bicyclists and motorists alike. The terms, “bus rapid transit” truly constitute an oxymoron, when combined. 

Second, what is the sense having AC Transit trying to duplicate the existing BART rapid transit service; BART trains can actually go 75 or 80 mph between stations on their dedicated train tracks. I know this from riding in the front of BART trains when they first opened some thirty-five years ago. There is no way that buses operating on crowded narrow city streets can duplicate those speeds. 

Third, AC Transit planners should give up on their delusional dream of tearing up Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley and creating two bus-only lanes and thus forcing car drivers to ride the bus by producing local gridlock in the downtown areas. Can’t you transit planners just wait until gasoline hits ten dollars a gallon? 

Fourth, maybe AC Transit should take a break from their endless “planning.” Why does everything have to be constantly growing and expanding? Alameda County and Contra Costa County are not expanding, at least in terms of land area. It seems to me that “transit planners” are basically bureaucratic troublemakers, who can’t seem to leave well enough alone. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. How many millions of dollars each year could AC Transit save by laying off all their planning staff? 

Fifth, maybe AC Transit could simply concentrate on running their present bus lines, without any changes. Just keep the present bus fleet mechanically tuned up and run as per the schedule. No worries, mate. 

James K. Sayre 

Oakland 

• 

BRT IMPACT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

For reasons that the BRT would negatively impact the neighborhood—with zero benefit to Berkeley or to Telegraph merchants—and in support of the transfer of funds to sustain the AC Transit operating budget, we want to say no to the BRT and yes to finding creative ways to use AC Transit funding—e.g., negotiating with the MTC that involves moving $35 million in CMAQ funds and $45.6 Million in RM2 funds from the BRT Capital funds into operating funds to avoid service reductions. 

Mark and Nelly Coplan 

• 

WHERE TO PARK? 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Enough is enough! Where am I supposed to park? 

The City of Berkeley has decided that the best way to raise money is to issue as many parking tickets as it can. I am a delivery driver for a small Berkeley business. I drive a van with commercial plates, our company logo and the little bumper sticker that allows you to park in yellow zone. I got a parking ticket on Friday while parked in the yellow on Allston Way. The ticket was for “no visible activity.” I was delivering a package but the parking enforcement person said that I need to be loading or unloading my van. The ticket states that my tires were marked at 1:35 p.m. and the ticket issued at 1:49 p.m. I did not get to Allston Way until 1:41 p.m. I had three delivers on Center St. and I have the meter receipt to prove it.  

I know if I fight the ticket I will win but that not the point. I have talked with other people who can legally park at yellow zone and every single person I talked to has been issued one of these tickets. Hey Mr.Mayor where am I supposed to park to make a delivery? Should I just leave my van wide open so some activity could happen while I am doing a delivery? Meanwhile large commercial trucks can double park on Shattuck and block traffic. UPS and FED X can park anywhere they want. Meter maids park in the yellow zone in front of Peets Coffee and go get coffee. The yellow zone is for loading or unloading so they can’t do that. You guys remind me of the tax collectors in the Robin Hood cartoon,  

Parking citations cannot support the city!  

I want to hear from more people who have been issued this kind of ticket. 

Sergio Blandon 

• 

ENTERPRISE OVER HEALTH 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Your story “City Council Approves Berkeley’s First Enterprise Zone” is not exactly true to the facts. 

Readers should know that in the mid ‘90s Berkeley approved a recycling enterprise zone for West Berkeley. The city’s first designated enterprise zone allowed the California Integrated Waste Management Board to lend three-quarters of a million dollars to the Pacific Steel Castings foundry for the construction of a waste incinerator. With little more than a nod from Berkeley’s zoning and no demand for a CEQA review, the incinerator was placed up wind and within a block of residential housing and a childcare facility. 

The recycling zone enabled the West Berkeley foundry to save on disposal fees by authorizing them to conduct the onsite burning of chemical binders from sand-casting molds. The incinerator, more like a Trojan horse than not, was touted as a “green recycler” that would limit the amount of the company’s generate waste traditionally destined for landfill. 

The supporters of this “burn barrel” technology—they prefer the term “thermo recycler”—say incinerating the molds on site also saves the immediate area from fugitive emissions when trucks had to haul away the molds and casting sands. What residents have learned is that the stack emissions composed of chemicals and particulates from the ten-year-old incinerator are simply being more widely distributed across West Berkeley’s neighborhoods and beyond. 

For a decade, Pacific Steel’s incinerator has resulted in grossly degraded air quality for the Oceanview district, an area that had already been identified nationally as an asthma hotspot. This waste treatment process has also produced more airborne chemicals and odors. 

It is hypocritical of our city officials to prohibit cigarette smoking within twenty feet of commercial doorways, while refusing to address the steel mill’s inappropriate zoning of their incinerator and its deleterious effects on nearby residents and schools. Perhaps this resistance by our city, regional air district regulators and CIWMB is a direct result of so much being vested into this project, especially politically. 

PSC’s incinerator is a clear case of profit over environmental protection, enterprise over health. 

L A Wood 

Editor’s Note: In response to a query from the Planet, Michael Caplan, with the City of Berkeley, responds: It is true that part of West Berkeley did get a designation as a Recycling Zone in the 1990s. We shared that designation with Oakland. The thing to note is that a Recycling Zone is a completely different program than a standard Enterprise Zone with very distinct features and incentives. 

• 

KPFA ELECTION 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Probably because I’ve been readily approachable at almost all of the three hundred plus KPFA public events that have been presenting writers in the Bay Area over the last 22 years, I am often asked for an opinion on the best candidates for KPFA’s Local Station Board. When this occurs at the event itself, usually I shrug and apologize, as election rules forbid in this context any response that could be interpreted as campaigning. 

As those rules don’t apply here, I get a modest say. It’s simple enough. In my opinion, candidates should not be voted for who: show only hostility to the station’s devoted staff and management; offer no credible pragmatic ideas for improvement; are unprepared to provide or obtain financial support for the station; clog the air with negative rhetoric; merely want power. 

KPFA’s serious imperfections need the attention of candidates with proven skills. 

While I don’t personally know any of the candidates named here, I know enough about them to urge you to consider voting for them: Conn Hallinan, Andrea Turner, Adam Hudson, Banafsheh Akhlaghi, Virginia Rodriguez, Dan Siegel, Jack Kurzweil, Sharon Esbenshade, John Van Eyck, Pamela Drake.  

Bob Baldock,  

KPFA Public Events Producer 

• 

ISRAEL/PALESTINE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The statistics quoted by Mark Wetzel in the Sept. 24 issue of the Daily Planet regarding fatalities in the Palestinian/Israeli conflict were deliberately meant to mislead. 

  Ninety-five percent of Palestinian fatalities in this conflict are male. This simple fact completely contradicts assertions that Israel has indiscriminately targeted residential areas. If Israel were specifically targeting civilians, the expected ratio of women to men killed would be much closer to 50/50. 

  The overwhelming number of “child” fatalities in the West Bank and Gaza are older teenaged boys because the Palestinians have been using them as combatants. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and the UN Security Council Resolution 1261 describe the use of children as soldiers as a “violation of international law,” yet the Hamas and Al Qassam Brigade websites routinely list “children”—older teenaged boys—among their ranks. 

  In contrast, women and girls account for 31 percent of all Israelis killed in the conflict and nearly 40 percent of the Israeli noncombatants killed by Palestinians. Overall, 80 percent of those killed in Israel have been noncombatants. 

  The cynical use of Palestinian children as shields and as soldiers is the real issue and the main contibuting factor in the statistics Mr. Wetzel quotes. Children should not be encouraged to participate in violence and acts of agression. Unfortunately, until this practice is discontinued in places like Gaza, more children will die.  

Faith Meltzer 

El Cerrito 

• 

‘WOMAN’S HANDS’ 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Marcus Gardley is a brilliant playwright and he has gifted the Bay Area with another beautiful portrayal of our history. World in a Woman’s Hands humanizes the incredible times during World War II and the many women who built the ships in the Richmond ship yards. And how that history weaves into our present. This play and his previous “Love is a House in Lorin Station” are theater at it’s finest. They show us where we come from, who we are and what is important.  

Many thanks for this great musical performance, The Shotgun Players, The Ashby Stage and all who have brought this gem to us. I’d love to bring all the East Bay on a date to see it. 

Terri Compost 

• 

‘AMERICAN IDIOT’ 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Last night we went to the first 20 minutes of American Idiot. Our arm muscles became exhausted from trying to hold our ears closed against the blast of noise, relieved only by the 15 seconds of dialogue—and even that was unnecessarily miKed. There was so much noise that we couldn’t make out any of the lyrics—if “lyrics” is the right word—and so, we had no idea what was happening or why we were there to see it. I liked the stage sets and lighting until bright lights started flashing at the audience, when I had to shut my eyes to prevent blindness. I wonder if the flashing lights triggered any epileptic seizures. 

As far as I was concerned, the worst part was the noise. I wish I had brought my decibel meter. I am sure that the show did permanent damage to the hearing of some of the people in the audience. If theatres were covered by OSHA hearing conservation regulations, as they should be, I am sure that Berkeley Rep would have been in for a large fine. 

Add to that, the “play” was incomprehensible because no-one could hear anything on account of the noise. 

My husband said that the worst part for him was that the “play” was not in the least theatric—that it made no sense, was going nowhere, and consisted only of alienated youths. I guess we will never know if there was a point or a drama to American Idiot, because we would never be able to glean the words from the noise. 

At any rate, we long-time subscribers to Berkeley Rep were appalled. I understand that they want to bring in younger audiences, but it seems to me pretty cold if they bring them in just to turn them prematurely deaf.  

We walked out after 20 minutes. I kept thinking that they would have to get to some dialogue sooner or later. We wasted our two $46 tickets, plus the $10 parking fee, plus our valuable time. Ugh!  

Martha Luehrmann 

• 

CITY COMMONS CLUB 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The Berkeley City Commons Club has, week after week, year after year, presented topknotch speakers at their Friday Noon Luncheons. Held at the Berkeley City Club on Durant Street, lunch is served at 11:45, followed by a discussion by the featured speaker, and a question and answer period. There have been many lively and stimulating programs over the past years, but last Friday’s was without question one of the more memorable ones. The speaker that day, Hans F. Gallas, spoke on “Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas: Debunking the ‘There There Myth.” Clearly an authority on the subject, Mr. Gallas regaled us with fascinating stories of these very, shall we say, “eccentric” women. 

It’s a well known fact that Stein, an expatriate U.S. writer, and her family lived in Oakland for several years, moving from one neighborhood to another. It should be noted that her famous, but misinterpreted remark, “There’s no there” was not an unkind reference to Oakland, but rather to the house where she once lived, no longer standing when she visited her old neighborhood. She attended Franklin school, later lecturing at Mills College and the University of California. 

Stein went abroad to live in 1903. Her home in Paris, at 2 rue de Fleurus, became a salon for artists and writers (i.e., Picasso, Cezanne, Ezra Pound, etc.). Over the years she and her brothers acquired a priceless art collection. One brother, a dedicated collector, purchased the first Matisse ever sold. Stein, a German Jew, was living in Paris during the Nazi occupation, but managed to survive, thanks to the help of friends and protectors. 

Mr. Gallas spoke briefly of the friendship between Stein and Alice B. Toklas, the latter famous for her Cookbook containing a recipe for hashish—a book that U.S. publishers shied away from, but not London publishers. As proof of the deep bond between these two women, Stein left her fabulous art collection to Toklas. Bureaucratic red tape resulted in the collection being taken away from her, thus leaving her financially destitute. 

Art lovers in the Bay Area will soon have the good fortune to view Stein’s magnificent art collection when it goes on display next year at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco, moving next to the Museum of Modern Art. 

Gertrude Stein died in 1946, and was buried in Paris. Her parents, I was astonished to hear, are buried in the Jewish Section of Mountain View Cemetery on Piedmont Avenue. So, for the connection of this famous woman—she of the close cropped hair and plain dress—to the Bay Area and California, we owe a note of thanks to the City Commons Club and its speaker, Hans R. Galler. 

Dorothy Snodgrass 

• 

UC FOOTBALL 

Editors, Daily Planet:  

As a tax paying citizen of Berkeley I was alarmed and emotionally shaken to read that apparently while on a field trip to neighboring Oregon this Saturday past, the entire Cal football team came down with the flu. That is to say, how else to explain the nation’s sixth ranked team getting beat down 42-3 by an unranked team? 

  Clearly, in my mind, we have witnessed the birth of an incipient pandemic that if not struck down at its root may infect the entire city and perhaps, god forbid, beyond. 

  What are Berkeley’s political and Health Dept. officials doing to protect the rest of us from this rampant, Ebola virus-like disease? Has the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta been notified? Have the team and the Athletic Dept. training facilities been quarantined? God help us all! Where are the tree sitters when we really need them? 

Jean Damu  

• 

BROWER CENTER NOISE 

Editors, Daily Planet:  

I live in a residential apartment building adjacent to the soon-to-open, gigantic new restaurant in the David Brower Center, which is supposedly dedicated to sustainable environmental standards.  

The owners of this new restaurant have applied for a permit that will allow them to blare live, loud, outdoor acoustic music from noon to 9 p.m. 365 days of the year. They propose to turn a patch of downtown Berkeley into a live, outdoor music venue. 

I have a personal agenda here but live outdoor music permitted nine hours daily, 365 days a year will affect several thousand immediate residents. I do not want to be subjected to live music nine hours of every day, 365 days of the year. Live music played on Terrain’s outdoor patio amounts to music in my back yard. I invite everyone reading this letter to imagine their next door neighbor playing live outdoor acoustic music for nine hours every single day. 

For anyone sympathizing with the guys opening Terrain, in a building dedicated to sustainable living, try to imagine a live, outdoor music venue in your backyard for nine hours every day. 

Live, outdoor music, nine hours daily, 365 days a year. I can scarcely wrap my mind around it. How could the city planning department consider such a thing? 

Tree Fitzpatrick 

• 

ZONING COMPLIANCE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I find it interesting but not particularly surprising that Zoning Compliance says they will investigate the property of the person making the complaint about a neighbor’s non-compliance. I view this as harassment. I would certainly like to hear from others who have had this happen to them. 

Ann Slaby 

    .• 

CRIME REPORTS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The letter-writer in your previous issue who didn’t like my feeling about Richard Brenneman’s crime writing misunderstands in several ways. He’s wrong to characterize my opinion of the noir-style writing (and its fans) as “disdain”; rather, it’s an objection to a theatricalization of real events, sometimes life-changing and tragic, that affect real people. 

“Conciseness, easy word flow, and...accuracy” are not part of my criticism, unless we stretch “easy word flow” to encompass a glib attitude, something I often do feel from Brenneman’s colorful framing of people’s negative experiences at the hands of criminals. My focus here is the Police Blotter, not his news reporting in general. 

Saying it would be better to “wage serious tirades against the real merchants of journalistic baloney” citing TV news sources misses the specific point. It might be important to do that, but I’m not familiar with the programs he mentions. I read the local paper and care about the local community. 

I think the letter-writer’s most telling misunderstanding lies in his own words: he refers to the Blotter as “crime stories.” Precisely wrong. These are not “stories.” They are reports, and they need not be juiced up with fictional spin. You had some good people covering this for awhile. Please bring them back. 

Sandy Rothman 

• 

IRAN 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The Iranian Government claims that their nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only. 

Do we believe them? 

This reminds me of a cartoon which I did awhile ago. A shoplifter is walking out with a fishead sticking out of his jacket. The manager stops him, saying either you steal a smaller fish,or wear a larger jacket! 

The Iranians claim peaceful purposes, yet build secret and heavily armored facilities. Hey! 

Either it's peaceful and aboveboard, or stop the silly claim. 

Harry Gans 

• 

BACK TO THE FUTURE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

General Stanley McChrystal’s appearance on 60 Minutes, Sept. 27, came close to an ultimatum to his commander-in-chief: Give me more troops or we’ll lose the war in Afghanistan! At the very least his prime-time performance seemed designed to increase pressure on the White House to go along with his recommendations. 

  McChrystal, a seasoned warrior, claimed surprised at realizing that military prowess – firepower, helicopter gunships, drones, etc.—sewed the seed of its own demise; each collateral civilian deaths created new enemies among the survivors.  

  He insisted that his soldiers show the population they recognized Afghanistan’s plight and simply wanted to help anyway they could. Leading by example, McChrystal, socialized unarmed everyday with ordinary Afghans and forbad his heavily armed body guards from standing closer than 20 paces. His goal was not to persuade Afghans to accept him as one of their own but rather, it seemed to me, to let him be their savior. 

  President Obama hesitates to endorse McCrystal’s  “secret” request for more troops.  Perhaps the president sees the inherent contradiction between sending more troops in order to win a war that cannot be won by military force. Or perhaps the president understands the Founders’ reason for designating him, a civilian, commander-in-chief.   

After all, “War is too serious a matter to be entrusted to military men.” (George Clemenceau, Premier of France, 1906-09 and 1917-20) 

Marvin Chachere 

San Pablo

The City Council has their collective head in the sand (or someplace darker), and haven’t made the announcement, even though it’s official, so it’s my privilege to be the first to publicly state: the referendum on the council downtown plan was certified last week by the Alameda county registrar. Based on sampling, 7,900 of the 9,200 signatures submitted were estimated to be valid Berkeley voters at their proper address and with a proper signature, so many more than the 5,558 required that by law there was no need to validate them individually. As a member of the referendum committee, I’d like to express my thanks to all the Berkeley citizens who decided to take an active role in their future and signed the petition. Go Bears!  

Now the council majority, which fought hard and ugly to prevent the people of Berkeley from voting on the dramatic changes they proposed, has to let you vote on their plan, or take it back. The referendum committee members are watching carefully, and you should pay attention too. Mayor Tom Bates has announced that he is in no hurry to decide which course to take, and intends to wait until the last legal moment, in late February, to make that decision. The man who was in an extraordinary hurry to pass the legislation in July—making it as hard as it ever gets for petition gathering: all students and many residents are gone, and Bates somehow arranged for it to be an impossibly hot August—is now Mr. Lean Back and Twiddle His Fingers.  

If the council goes for letting you vote and they lose, the law requires them to wait a year before passing another plan. But if they decide instead to take the plan back, the year-long clock would start ticking immediately, instead of next June. Every day they put off this decision is another day a new plan can’t be passed. The mayor, and the Chamber of Commerce who funded the anti-petition effort, were anxious for potential petition-signers to understand that the only reason that the Council didn’t want the people to vote on the plan was the Danger of Delay. Apparently the Red Alert has somehow quieted way down.  

Meanwhile, the mayor and his allies are busy trying to explain what’s wrong with the people they represent. Two of the councilmembers have publicly bemoaned the democratic process: Laurie Capitelli, District 5 (Solano), said on his city website that “What makes this town great—the diversity of viewpoints and the passion of its citizenry—can sometimes cripple its progress,” and Susan Wengraf, District 6 (Marin Avenue), was more blunt: “Sometimes democracy can go too far.” (“Berkeley Officials Seek to Block Petition Drive”, Chronicle, Aug. 20).  

In the Daily Californian (“Petition Against Downtown Area Plan Advances”, Aug. 24), Wengraf said, “I haven’t spoken to anybody who has a solution to the problem. The good thing about the plan is it’s a step towards acknowledging we want to change something about downtown.” We don’t really know what we’re doing, but we’re going to try tripling the building heights; maybe that’ll do the trick. Our council is either misleading us or a bit, shall we say, clue-challenged. They tell us that this dramatic plan is too complex for us simple folk (or them) to understand, but not so complex that they can’t make unrealistic claims for the wonders it will deliver unto us.  

Here’s some actual hard facts, instead of propaganda, from someone (me) who served 14 years on the Zoning Adjustments Board (appointed by Carla Woodworth, Dona Spring, and finally Linda Maio, until she canned me for excessive candor): the only entity interested in these big buildings in the downtown is UC, which has been on a downtown shopping spree for five years, and who also need to house their students, who have been almost the only occupants of the units built in the downtown for 15 years (a responsibility UC has left almost completely to the private sector).  

The lawsuit settlement that Bates pushed through the council in secret four years ago not only freed the university from all but a token payment ($120,000 a year) for their use of city services like the sewer system, but gave them veto power over the new downtown plan. Though UC is not legally bound by city zoning, concern for their public image has always compelled them to comply with it. They desperately want a plan that will let them build way up, and rather than publicly admit it and ask for our cooperation, they’ve chosen to let Bates do their work for them indirectly. No one will be building the 20-story luxury apartments the plan touts; there’s just no market for it. That’s just the sizzle the mayor is using to get the Chamber of Commerce excited.  

What we’ll be getting is UC-outside-UC, like the BP project (Helios Building) the university has already announced will occupy the site of the old state health building on the block southeast of Hearst and Shattuck, and vast amounts of consolidated university statewide offices, plus all the cars that will bring into the city. That’s particularly ironic, since Councilmember Maio, District 1 (north of University Avenue), delights in explaining how the council plan will reduce downtown traffic by providing housing for downtown workers—who’d have to make over $200,000 a year to qualify for the cheapest condos foreseen in the council plan. If you want to understand the market for luxury condos in the downtown, just keep an eye on the soon-to-be-completed Arpeggio Building on Center. Really, keep watching, it should be entertaining.  

That brings up a good window into what this council is all about. If we really wanted to give the downtown a shot in the arm, we’d build more parking; that’s the only thing that would convince Berkeley residents to shop downtown. It might count as encouraging those evil automobiles, but the reduced carbon footprint from driving in town instead of to the far-flung malls would more than justify it. But the council, backed by pretend environmentalists and by the downtown property owners who’d have to pay a substantial part of the cost of creating more parking, has instead been busy converting the existing city parking lots to housing (and the cold but sexy-sounding Brower Building), and two years ago quietly sold off the air rights to the existing (and badly in need of a teardown and rebuild) Center Street city parking structure to the Arpeggio developers, who wanted to be able to guarantee their potential buyers bay views.  

Bates wants to get appointed to the Regents, and I support him wholeheartedly in that. The sooner the better. But the rest of our council has to wake from their stupor and start looking out for the people they claim to represent. A good start would be to dump the absurd plan that’s an article of religious dogma, not a serious effort to help the downtown respond to its challenges, and to open a public dialog with the university over our closely intertwined futures. 

Dave Blake is a Berkeley resident.

It’s heartening to know that Afghan Narcotics has at last drawn a letter to the editor in both Berkeley weeklies, but dismaying to read Harry Gans’ proposals. It is impossible to imagine how to “pay poppy farmers ... to not grow poppies.” How can the million Afghan families who live off the opium trade be identified, or paid? If farmers are paid full-market value—five to ten times that of any other crop—everyone will grow poppies next season; but if less than full value is paid, why would any farmer join the program? If the United States buys the entire crop , we will look hypocritical, for in May 2001 the State Department paid the Taliban $43 million for destroying the opium crop. 

On a more serious level, Senlis, a British think tank, has received a sustained, basically favorable response the past two years for its proposal to buy Afghan opium to produce medicinal morphine—which is currently in short supply in the world. However, similar problems plague Senlis’ as they do Gans’ proposals. Neither addresses Afghan opium grown for the illegal market. If only a fraction—say 10–20 percent—of the annual production is bought and destroyed or turned into morphine, this only reduces supply, thus increasing the price for the other 80–90 percent of the crop, making the illegal drug trade even more popular to Afghans. 

Both the Gans and Senlis proposals give the illusion of reasonableness, but in fact they are frivolous diversions from the contemplation of a reasonable drug policy for Afghanistan. In recent months, Obama has lent his stamp of approval to a new drug policy in Afghanistan—rotating 85-person teams of specially trained U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency narcs to Afghanistan, which has already resulted in a vast increase of hashish as well as opium/heroin seizures. Having failed to create an Afghan-manned U.S.-style War on Drugs despite having spent over a billion dollars from 2005–08 to do just that, we have decided to send our own guys to show them just how it’s done. If you like paying $60 an eighth of an ounce for pot, you’ll love what the DEA is doing in Afghanistan. 

The past eight years of U.S. policy has not changed the basic equation in Afghan-istan—a war cannot be won when the major employer and income generator is deemed a criminal enterprise, this then used to justify the destruction of that economy. In a country as poor as Afghanistan—still among the 10 poorest in the world despite the profits from the drug trade—the destruction of half the economy by a foreign power seems to be a crime against humanity. It is that policy—a U.S.-conceived, staffed, paid for and executed War on Drugs in Afghanistan—not the frivolous and impossible suggestion of buying their entire opium crop, that Berkeley, the real-politick conscience of the nation, should contemplate. 

My suggestions? Briefly: 1.) Withdraw the DEA and funding for all privately-funded anti-drug projects from Afghanistan; 2.) Withdraw the UN’s drug agency from Afghanistan (they’ve been more gung-ho War on Drugs than the United States, until the just-initiated Obama policy); 3.) Declare Afghanistan a neutral zone in the War on Drugs for the next three years or until the U.S. withdraws from Afghanistan, whichever comes first. 4.) Despite my best wishes, end support for Obama if he persists in escalating the insane, insatiable War on Drugs. 

Jerry Mandel is Emeritus Professor at Sonoma State University.

The United Nations has often been tested in the course of its history, and once again it is facing a major challenge directed at its capacity to serve the cause of peace, security, and justice through respect for the rule of law. The test involves the treatment given to the Goldstone Report, so named after the distinguished jurist, Richard Goldstone, former judge of the South African Constitutional Court, who headed a fact-finding mission on behalf of the UN Human Rights Council. The focus of the mission was on alleged war crimes committed by Israel and Hamas between Dec. 27, 2008 and Jan. 18, 2009, when Israel attacked Gaza, an essentially defenseless society whose population was already severely weakened by a blockade of food, fuel, and medicine, which had then been maintained for eighteen months.  

On Sept. 15 the Goldstone Report was released. It is 575 pages in length, relying on 188 interviews, more than 10,000 pages of reports and documents, and 1,200 photos. There is nothing really new in the report as far as substance is concerned, but it has caused quite a stir. Earlier respected human rights organizations, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, as well as Israeli and Palestinian groups, had confirmed the main allegations against both Israel and Hamas. The Goldstone Report is more comprehensive, and in one sense, enjoys a greater credibility because of the eminence of the mission members. Ironically, Israel could not have hoped for a more sympathetic chair for such an inquiry. Goldstone, a lifelong Zionist with strong family ties and institutional affiliations in Israel, as well as an impeccable reputation as a non-partisan devotee of the rule of law, should have put the issue of balance and fairness to rest. If Goldstone can be attacked as biased, which Israel has done with great fury, then there is no one on the planet who could have proved acceptable! Any commission with a truth-telling commitment would have reached the same conclusions as the Goldstone Report if its members had even a 30-percent open mind. 

Indeed, what makes the Goldstone Report a historic document is precisely its status as a record of Israeli war crimes resulting in massive Palestinian suffering that cannot be responsibly disregarded or discredited. The report also makes recommendations for implementation that will help the world better understand whether the UN stands behind the rule of law or remains a plaything of the rule of force. What makes the report difficult to ignore is the call for an end to impunity, tasking the UN Security Council, the General Assembly, and ultimately the International Criminal Court with the job of moving forward with investigating whether criminal prosecutions of Israeli and Hamas political and military leaders should be forthcoming. 

The report also recommends reliance on “universal jurisdiction,” that is on national courts with the capacity to prosecute for international crimes where sufficient evidence exists. Several constitutional democracies in Western Europe claim this authority. Israel itself invoked universal jurisdiction back in the early 1960s when it prosecuted Adolf Eichmann for crimes committed in Nazi Germany years before the state of Israel even existed. Such a basis for attaching criminal law to foreign acts has a long history, mainly associated with the practice of apprehending pirates and their ships wherever found. 

The Goldstone Report considers in detail the Israeli claims that their attacks were a defensive response to the rocket attacks, and agrees that these Hamas rockets were indiscriminate weapons aimed mainly at Israeli residential communities near the Gaza border. It considers these rocket attacks to be war crimes, and urges that comparable action be taken by the UN to impose accountability. Nevertheless, the overwhelming emphasis of the report is upon alleged Israeli practices during the Gaza War that amounted to war crimes, which cumulatively appear to constitute crimes against humanity. Both Israel and Hamas are given up to three months to investigate these charges in a manner that meets international standards—rather than the self-congratulatory investigations that have been so far conducted by the Israeli Defense Forces—and another three months to follow up with appropriate action against any perpetrators. If this does not happen, the scene for implementation is supposed to shift to the International Criminal Court, with the expectation that steps to impose accountability would follow. 

Israel from the outset refused to cooperate with the Goldstone mission, claiming that the UN Human Rights Council was biased. It contended that nothing worthwhile could result from such a mission even if led by Richard Goldstone. Now that the report has been issued, top Israeli officials have vented their fury: Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that the report was “a perversion of truth;” Shimon Peres, the President of Israel, called it “a mockery of history;” and the Defense Minister, Ehud Barak, called it a “shameful document” whose only message was that “terrorism pays.”  

How can we explain such a hysterical reaction from top leaders to such a sober, fact-based, truth-telling report? It is an example of the politics of deflection—an effort to divert attention from the message to the messenger. Will it work? Time will tell. It is disappointing, yet not surprising, that the Obama presidency, despite its broad promises to uphold the rule of law in foreign policy, has seconded the Israeli effort to bury the report. It has officially called the report one-sided, and pleads with all parts of the UN to reject its recommendations.  

For most of the world the Palestinian struggle has become the successor to the anti-apartheid campaign as the primary moral battleground in the world today. To stand in support of Israeli tactics in Gaza is seen outside of the United States as little different than support for the racist regime in South Africa would have seemed in the 1980s. It is the wrong side of history so far as human rights and global justice are concerned. Even if the United States cannot manage it, let us hope that the UN, at this symbolic moment, seizes the opportunity to convey two messages: there is no longer impunity for war crimes regardless of the identity of the perpetrator, and the UN refuses to remain a footstool of geopolitics. 

Richard Falk is professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University. Since March 2008, he has served as the United Nations’ Special Rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories.

The recent outburst by Joe Wilson in Congress concerning Obama’s veracity on his proposed health care reform once again invoked that ghost so often enlisted to sidetrack real issues, the specter of the “illegal” person. It refers to those immigrant workers who labor without proper papers under substandard conditions, mostly in agricultural work that is very hard and injurious to health, both physically and chemically. Politically, they live precariously, subject to arrest by immigration authorities and the callous breaking of family bonds, often held, unconstitutionally, in indefinite detention, yet with taxes withheld from paychecks that they then cannot reclaim. They do essential work in this economy, yet face demands that they leave. They are excluded from social services, such as health care and education, that they nevertheless pay for through their labor and their taxes. From a value-added standpoint—the primary standpoint of a capitalist economy—they constitute an ideal labor force. 

Justice would demand that those who add value to this society be at least honored for it, if not granted citizenship. Yet these people are considered a threat, and are thought of as seizing that which properly belongs to more worthy people. Let us deconstruct this briefly in the context of the international political economy to which these immigrant workers belong. 

What drives the current wave of Latino immigration? Why do they come here? After all, they come with an awareness of the hardships, the dangers of dealing with violent paramilitary anti-Latino vigilantes, the anti-immigrant legislations and the impunity and brutality of immigration police with which they are greeted when found. The mainstream response is: “they want what we have.” And the hidden truth in that response is the question, where did we get it? That is a question of political economy. 

The central economic fact of the western hemisphere in the 20th century has been U.S. corporate investment throughout Latin America. As Juan José Arévalo, former president of Guatemala, revealed in his book, The Shark and the Sardines, this investment historically gave the U.S. financial control of Latin American trade and production, and through that, control of their political structure. Traditionally, before the 1970s, such investment—typically in agricultural products and mining, both labor intensive—enjoyed a profit rate of around 20 percent, owing to low wage scales and non-union labor conditions enforced by military rule. That is, its capital outlay was recuperated in a mere 5 years. 

The result was impoverishment. The profit from resource extraction, including labor, was brought to the U.S. These resources were used to manufacture products, some of which were sold in Latin America at a profit, which was then brought to the U.S. The concomitant control of hemispheric finances by U.S. banks obstructed any autonomous local industrial development. Thus, U.S. corporate investment constituted an impoverishment machine, sucking up value from poor societies and transferring it to the pockets of the rich. 

In short, the people and nations of Latin America weren’t poor; they were actively impoverished by a relational process that enriched the U.S. 

Yet people found ways of surviving. In the vast rural areas of Latin America, local autonomous economies existed or were formed—cooperatives, communal agriculture, ejidos, communes, and barter economies, etc.—some derived from ancient indigenous modes of living. Thus, people attempted to withstand the onslaught of corporate investment. Ultimately, these “alternate” economies formed a significant popular base for the national liberation movements of the 1960s and 1970s. 

But then, around 1975, with the beginning of the “neo-liberal” era, things got worse. And the vast floods of immigration faced by the U.S. and Europe has been one of the results. 

The term “neo-liberalism” refers to global economic policies adopted in the wake of anti-colonial movements that swept the world after World War II. Those movements, seizing control of their own lands and attempting to found autonomous and independent societies, tended to socialize public or social assets and resources, to make them available to all. The neo-liberal project sought first of all to privatize those social assets, to undo their anti-colonial socialization, so they could be used for investment profitability. Privatization means corporate control of social resources such as utilities, water, hospitals, public transportation, and nationalized industries. The privatization process was imposed through debt. The IMF would propose loans for development, accompanied by “structural adjustment programs” (SAPs) that required the elimination of price controls, food subsidies, welfare safety nets, the removal of prohibitions against sale of communal (ejido) lands, the removal of tariff barriers, protective ecological rules, labor rights, etc., as conditions for the loans. Insofar as the World Bank had centralized control of international financing, countries that refused these SAPs would find themselves blacklisted from most sources of credit needed for independent development and trade. The two primary results of neo-liberalism have been the shunting of local economic activity over to debt service, requiring new loans and austerity programs to meet debt obligations, and the destruction of the alternative economies by which rural people had survived. 

A classic example of the devastation imposed by an SAP is Rwanda. The local economy in the 1980s was centered on truck farming, including livestock, with some economic surplus for international trade produced by fishing in Lake Kiva and Lake Tanganyika. The fisherman were small entrepreneurs, whose labor intensive activity supported much of Ruanda’s employment profile. Gasoline was subsidized to support the truck farms and markets. The nation was poor, but the economy sustainable. The SAP opened the lakes to corporate fishing, removed subsidies for gasoline, and permitted imports that undermined the markets for food crops on which local farmers depended. Farmers could no longer afford to take their produce to market, and were unable to undersell the imported food. Corporate fishing pushed local fisherman aside, fished out  

Steve Martinot is the author of several books on public policy. 

the lakes, and left. The result was mass starvation, a generalized unemployment situation, and the desparation that led to the catastrophes of the early 1990s. 

Similar conditions have been imposed on Latin America through IMF loans, and “free trade” agreements (NAFTA, CAFTA, and the FTAA). 

With their economies eroded from beneath their feet, the people of Mexico, Central America, and parts of South America have nowhere else to turn but to go where their own wealth has gone. In coming to the US, Latino immigrants are simply following their money as it is taken north. They come to find work, in order to send their earnings back as remittances. Their efforts are significant. For El Salvador, for instance, some 30% of their economy depends on those remittances. For Mexico, it is 15 percent. 

For most immigrants, the average length of stay in the US is three years, after which they return. to follow their own money back to their home communities. Not all return. Some stay and seek social assimilation. They form an important core of the Latino immigrant communities, helping newly arrived laborers with employment information, and assistence in out-maneuvering the legal obstacles that the US government places in their way. They facilitate border crossings without coyotes, and help people to obtain documents—false or otherwise. Altogether, these communities form the base of an organized political movement, one of whose central purposes is returning their wealth to their home economies. And they do it not by taking that wealth, but by working for it. 

One could say that they form a vast “reparations” operation seeking to compensate for the damage done to their home economies by US investment—in other words, repatriating what had been taken from them. It is therein that the justice of the immigrant situation lies. 

Though many immigrants may not comprehend their labor and remittances in terms of a reparations project, it is an objective aspect that explains why the tremendous dangers they face in coming here appear worthwhile to them. In these terms, what the anti-immigrant movement seeks to preserve is the injustice of having taken the wealth from Latin America through economic imposition in the first place, leaving devastated economies in its wake. For them, the pillage of Latin America has been “legal.” But on a human level, to consider these documented workers “illegal” is itself illegitimate, unjust, and even criminal.   

Steve Martinot is the author of several books on public policy.

On Oct. 7, 2001 the United States. launched a war of terror against Afghanistan. U.S. leaders are still debating how best to achieve U.S. goals there. Military leaders, including Joint Chiefs Chair Admiral Mike Mullen, Central Command leader General David Petraeus, and General Stanley McChrystal, commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, support the further escalation of the war by sending more U.S. troops to Afghanistan to prosecute the “new” counterinsurgency troop-intensive strategy they wish to pursue. It is reported that some of Obama’s civilian aides are arguing for a greater emphasis on attacking al Qaeda leaders with increased special operations missions and missile strikes, including more missile strikes launched against targets within Pakistan. Commander-in-Chief Obama will have to decide on which course to follow. But regardless of which of various strategies is implemented, it is clear that no one in the top rungs of the U.S. government is arguing for the end of the Afghan war. 

  U.S. leaders are continuing a war that is now opposed by a majority of the American public. A CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released on Sept. 1 indicated that 57 percent of Americans questioned stated they oppose the Afghan war. The percentage in opposition to the war is the highest ever in CNN polling since the war began. 

  President Obama has repeatedly referred to Afghanistan as a “war of necessity.” The initial invasion was “justified” as a self-defense reaction to 9/11 according to the Bush regime. But a National Security Presidential Directive (NSPD) was submitted to the White House on September 9, 2001 that essentially outlined the same war plan that the United States put into play after the 9/11 attacks. The 9/11Commission Report stated that on Sept. 10, 2001, the Bush administration agreed on a plan to oust the Taliban regime by force if it refused to hand over Osama bin Laden. The 9/11 attacks served as a convenient excuse to do what the United States was already intent on doing—attacking Afghanistan. 

  What have eight years of war accomplished? 

  Thousands of Afghans have been killed and millions continue to be refugees —either within Afghanistan or in nearby nations. The Afghan economy is shattered and Afghanistan is among the poorest countries in the world. Women are still oppressed as they were under the Taliban. This year the Afghanistan legislature passed a law that requires Shi’ite women to get permission from their husbands to go to school, visit a doctor, to work, and to do other ordinary activities. President Karzai who was originally hand-picked by the United States signed the legislation to advance his election chances within Shi’a areas. Government corruption is so extensive that even the U.S. State Department has condemned it. The recent “democratic” elections are still being contested because of massive fraud. War and drug lords are part of the government. One of Karzai’s vice-presidential running mates, Mohammad Qasim Fahim, is a notorious human rights abuser. In many areas such as poverty rates, life expectancy, unemployment, child mortality, life expectancy, and lack of human rights, Afghanistan is near the worst in the world. Afghanistan is number one in opium production which funds most of the various Afghan factions in the ongoing war there. 

  After taking office, Obama escalated the war by sending additional troops to Afghanistan, with 68,000 to be there by November. There are also 38,000 NATO troops present and Afghan puppet forces include 216,000 police and soldiers. As of March 2009, the U.S. military also employed 68,000 “contractors” in Af-ghanistan. These contractors do not include other contractors on the payrolls of the State Department or other U.S. agencies. And despite nearly 400,000 personnel working for the U.S. military, “The insurgents control or contest a significant portion of the country,” according to General McChrystal. So McChrystal wants to nearly double the puppet forces, and increase U.S. forces by up to 45,000 more troops according to various Pentagon “leakers.” 

  In September CIA Director Panetta announced that the CIA is adding extra bases in Afghanistan to support the military buildup in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Since taking office, Obama has asked Congress for more funds to expand the U.S.-run prison in Bagram, which holds prisoners taken in the war of terror in Afghanistan and those captured and kidnapped by U.S. forces and their allies from around the world. Bagram’s record of human rights abuses rivals Guantanamo’s. 

  In addition to escalating the Afghan war, Obama has expanded the war into neighboring Pakistan by launching frequent missile strikes. The United States has pressured Pakistan to attack Islamic militants within the country and civil war has broken out in parts of the country as a result. Continuing to expand the war of terror into nuclear-armed Pakistan is a dangerous proposition. 

  U.S. military leaders openly admit that they are engaged in a “long war” in the Afghanistan region. Depending on which one you listen to, the war will last anywhere from 5 years to a few more decades. Obama claims the United States must fight this war so that the Taliban and al Queda can not retake control of the country. 

  But neither Taliban nor the United States rule, through its puppet allies, is in the interests of the Afghan people. Two historically obsolete and reactionary forces are contending in Afghanistan—the Islamic fundamentalist forces led by the Taliban and the outmoded ruling strata of the imperialist system, led by the United States These two forces reinforce each other, even while opposing one another. Supporting the U.S. government to defeat the Taliban and their allies will not advance the interests of the Afghan or American people. 

This war must be ended, not escalated. The U.S. government must withdraw U.S. forces. To this end, World Can’t Wait and other groups are mobilizing for a National Day of Resistance on October 6th. We must deliver a powerful message to the world that people in the United States will not allow their government to commit war crimes in Afghanistan. To help deliver that message, see worldcantwait.org. 

Kenneth J. Theisen is an Oakland resident and a steering committee member of World Can’t Wait.

Readers of the Daily Planet might have noticed an odd disconnect in the recent exchanges between the supporters of Concerned Listeners (CL) and their opponents in the current KPFA Local Station Board elections.  CL’s endorsers are heavy on the labor side, including at least two Labor Councils, the leadership of several others, not to mention scores of militant organizers from a wide range of unions.  Yet some of our attackers have called us anti-worker.  Such is the mudslinging in this election.  

Many CL candidates, like myself, come out of the labor movement—I grew up in a farm worker family, and I’ve been a trade unionist all my life. We stand in support of the workers at the station in the face of animosity from unexpected places—such as the KPFA board and candidates.  I have been particularly disturbed by the hostility of our opponents to the union staff at KPFA, who are members of the Communications Workers of America.  A number of people running for the KPFA board have come out against a statement by KPFA’s union asking candidates to vow to raise money for the station.  Given that fundraising is one of the duties of the board, spelled out in the Pacifica bylaws, such a position should be of concern to all voting listener-members of KPFA who care about the station’s health.  I certainly vow to raise money for KPFA if I am elected to the board, as both a responsible board member and as a proud union supporter. 

I also hear there is talk within Pacifica of using this economic crisis as an opportunity to get rid of paid staff at KPFA and change to an all-volunteer station. That's an elitist model that leaves the radio station in the hands of those who can afford to work long hours for free. That sounds pretty anti-union to me.    

So here’s the irony: the Concerned Listeners slate is made of labor folks, backed by labor leaders and rank-and-filers, supports KPFA's union, and yet some of candidates running against CL have accused us of “union busting.”  Why?  Because some of us didn't  insist that the station’s management recognize just any old group of people calling itself an unpaid staff organization as a volunteer collective bargaining unit.  

This is actually a pretty easy call if you are a trade unionist. Calling yourself a union doesn’t make you one. In every union I was ever in we had elections or collected cards indicating that more than 50 percent of the workforce—the real work force—wanted representation.   Membership rules are very important. No group of workers wants to be represented by an organization whose membership is not tied to specific work requirements. The reason is simple: those who work have a real stake in the outcome of a dispute between labor and management. An organization that is composed of people, paid or unpaid, who only have a tangential relationship to production doesn't have much on the line when it comes to a fight. 

So, why did some Concerned Listeners members voice reservations about supporting recognition of the current Unpaid Staff Organization at KPFA? There is a contradiction between the Pacifica bylaws and the charter of the current unpaid staff organization. The bylaws say you have to volunteer 30 hours every three months under the supervision of station management to qualify as "unpaid staff" and earn voting rights.  But the rules of KPFA's Unpaid Staff Organization say that you only have to volunteer 30 hours in a year, 

that work doesn't have to be supervised, and if there's any dispute, it'll be the Unpaid Staff Organization leadership that decides whether or not you qualify. Under the former rule everyone can be confident that an unpaid staff member is actually doing something, and therefore has the right to vote for staff representatives on the LSB.  Under the latter rule, however, a faction on the unpaid staff organization could pack the election with its allies and essentially load the dice. Not only is that unfair to KPFA members, it reduces the unpaid staff organization to little more than a way to win elections. And recognition lets those rules trump the ones in Pacifica's Bylaws. 

KPFA's unpaid staff have a right to organize -- but I hope we could all agree that any Unpaid Staff Organization recognized by KPFA should be composed of people who actually work at the station, under station supervision, for a substantial amount of time. Otherwise you have a phony organization that keeps real workers off its rolls to prevent them from voting—a charge a number of unpaid staff have made against the current unpaid staff organization—and just acts in the interest of the so-called “independent” faction. 

So if you want a board at KPFA that respects the station's union employees enough to contribute to fundraising efforts during tough times, and respects the station's unpaid staff enough to want them represented by more than a sham front group, support our Concerned Listeners slate. Check us out online at www.concernedlisteners 

During the KPFA-Pacifica history, the progressive listeners have, at several moments of crisis, come to the rescue of KPFA and Pacifica, and demanded to get their stations back. The listeners helped rescue the network in the 1999 attempted takeover, along with dedicated legal help from attorneys like Dan Siegel, the network is still alive. The following message is to alert the listeners that another, very serious, crisis is now in progress, here in Berkeley today. 

Fact 1: All KPFA listeners are gentle progressive people who appreciate kindness, believe in democracy and are opposed to violence and cruelty. 

Fact 2: The thugs who are trying to steal KPFA and the Pacifica Network today, at this current KPFA-LSB election, are power lusting bullies who hate democracy and are devoted to controlling others with fear, violence, cruelty, lies, and deceit. I have known them for over 60 years, first in New York City, where they originated, and in Berkeley after they expanded to recruit young UC Berkeley students in the 1960s. 

Fact 3: These same New York thugs, in Berkeley today, who have already crippled the original WBAI Board in 2004 that turned that station over to thugs, who manage the station with violence, causing progressive staff to escape. Amy Goodman was attacked, at that time, and she escaped to start an independent version of “Democracy Now” which fortunately thrives as a huge success, and she still serves KPFA plus 800 other stations, which is good for Amy, good for KPFA, and good for the listeners of Amy’s 800 other stations. But the now crippled WBAI is still part of the larger plan to control the entire Pacifica Network. Recently they infiltrated and took over the Pacifica National Board, so the only obstacle left in this total takeover plan is to control KPFA—at this current KPFA-LSB election. 

Fact 4: If this current KPFA-LSB election is successfully corrupted, which appears to be possible, KPFA and Pacifica are finished as a progressive voice of hope. However, those who want to steal this election must do the following things, which have been tried at previous elections without much success, but their massive deceitful efforts today could be successful. Listeners need to be informed of the betrayal they face. 

Tactic 1: Stolen Ballots: Of the large number of deceits being used in this election, one of the most dangerous will be stolen ballots. In the 2006 election one of the participants in the final vote-count process, who was removing ballots from envelopes, was shocked to see a large number of Ballots with identical choices, obviously from one person with stolen Ballots. The easiest place to steal ballots is at the print shop where 30,000 ballots are printed, sealed in envelopes, and piled in postal bins waiting to be delivered to the post office. But only 3,000 KPFA listener-voters actually vote. Therefore, some believed that only a small number of stolen ballots could determine the election outcome, and stolen Ballots would not be noticed if only 10% of the listeners vote. At that 2006 election vote-count procedure, “volunteers” clearly brought stolen ballots with them into the final vote-count confusion, and more stolen ballots were also likely stuffed into the unsecured ballot box at the station during the final week, when mailed ballots couldn’t arrive on time, and listeners dropped off their ballots at the station. The Local Election Supervisor refused to open the ballot box to possibly expose an exceptionally large number of drop-off ballots, which could include stolen ballots. These ballots were included in the vote count. But the drop-off ballot envelopes had data to identify the voter. A request, to phone a sample of drop-off-ballot voters to confirm that they actually put their ballot in the ballot box at the station, was resisted. A “no” answer would indicate a stolen ballot. But the Election Supervisors resisted this verification, and finally lied that they had erased the database and could not make calls. Even if they did erase the voter database, the phone numbers are still available in the regular listener database. After the Executive Director of Pacifica was notified of this problem, the local ballot print shop was replaced by a distant print shop at a secret location, to print all ballots for all stations, which protected the 2007 and the 2008 elections from stolen ballots. But this 2009 election has no protection against stolen ballots. If the previous couple of dozen stolen ballots didn’t work in the 2006 election, many hundreds of stolen ballots are now available to corrupt this election. Without a Pacifica Executive Director to watch for problems, we have no assurance of a fair election with only honest ballots from only honest listeners being counted. But this problem can still be eliminated with enough honest listener observers at the vote-count procedure to watch for piles of identically marked Ballots. 

Tactic 2: Computer Fraud: At the early LSB elections I watched the scanned ballot data being transferred into ChoicePoint software in minutes to process the final election results in less than an hour. At the last election in 2008, the possibility of modifying the scanned computer data to pre-determine the winners and losers was great. At that 2008 election I spent many hours watching a new computer technician modifying the raw ballot data from the scanned ballots, before that data was entered into the ChoicePoint software to get the final vote result. When he finally did run a test in ChoicePoint, two names came up with obviously unintended “wrong” results, so this technician claimed that the software had a “bug” that he had to fix. He dismissed the observers, with a promise to call us when the “bug” was fixed. I didn’t wait for his call, and I went to the station to see how it was coming. I was told that this technician and the Election Supervisor left shortly after we observers left, to catch a flight to the next election site. My suspicion that he spent hours trying to define the election results by modifying the scanned data was verified when I took my copy of the original raw scanned ballot data to a ChoicePoint expert I knew who, in a few minutes, produced the honest election outcome that was not reported officially to the station until many days later. That accidental failure to pre-determine the election outcome in 2008 is expected to be corrected in this 2009 election if that same technician gets his hands on the software. But, again, with more honest listeners to observe the vote-count procedure, and demand to be told what is being done, this vote fraud may be eliminated. Moreover, it is important for more voters to vote, which can assure an honest election. The low 10 percent of voters actually voting is an open door for a stolen election. Today we need to actively stop this new takeover attempt. 

Listener response, comments, and new information are welcome at thorgilsy@yahoo.com

We KPFA unpaid-staff members would like to respond to Marcia Rautenstrauch’s attack on our Unpaid Staff Organization, published in last week’s Planet “KPFA Unpaid Staff and the Elections.”  

Coincidentally, but appropriately, her commentary appeared next to another article titled “Union Busting 101.” Our UPSO is the closest thing the unpaid staff has to a union, yet incumbent  manager Lemlem Rijio and her accomplices have tried to undermine or marginalize it. They’ve done the same with other KPFA institutions they weren’t able to control, notably the Program Council, which existed for decades, but is now effectively disbanded, leaving management to make program decisions unilaterally without the impediment of discussion or voting.  

Ms. Rautenstrauch makes an array of assertions that simply aren’t true; here are some examples:  

• So far this year, UPSO has held four meetings of the membership; these have been announced via email, and notices at the station, from four to five days in advance, not “one or two days” as Ms. Rautenstrauch claims. 

• Ms. Rautenstrauch says that, “almost no staff has endorsed” the Independents for Community Radio candidates in the Local Station Board election. Actually, many staff have done so, including Robbie Osman, Gabrielle Wilson, Pedro Navarro, Khalil Bendib, and Nora Barrows-Friedman; the full list of endorsers can be seen at www.indyradio2009.org  In fact, the ICR candidates have more KPFA staff endorsements than does the rival Concerned Listeners slate. 

• The history lesson: it’s true there was a time when a small group of loud, rude individuals caused disturbances at UPSO meetings. But they’ve been gone for years. By 2007, when GM Rijio “derecognized” UPSO, they’d already left and the organization was reviving itself. 

• Cover-to-Cover host Denny Smithson has not been “kept off the voting rolls,” as Ms. Rautenstrauch asserts; he’s been included in every iteration of the UPSO membership list. 

Ms. Rautenstrauch herself is not on UPSO’s membership list because she is not a programmer. The traditional election practice at KPFA has been that unpaid programmers (news reporters, DJs, producers, engineers, etc.) vote as staff, while volunteers not connected with programming, such as Ms. Rautenstrauch (who helps in the mailroom) are issued listener-member ballots, their volunteer time replacing or supplementing a financial contribution to the station. In fact, KPFA’s Local Election Supervisor for 2006 says that Ms. Rautenstrauch was counted as a listener voter in that election. Now, however, she’s evidently decided she wants to be “staff,” although there’s no precedent at KPFA (nor at KPFA’s sister stations) for counting administrative volunteers as staff for election purposes. This is not to disparage her contribution (everyone who volunteers time to KPFA deserves gratitude), but only to point out that long-established practices shouldn’t be altered just because one person demands it.  

The reader will notice that the UPSO saga is closely intertwined with KPFA’s Local Station Board elections. When Rijio “derecognized” UPSO in 2007, one consequence was that management could make up its own unpaid-staff list for the staff portion of that year’s LSB election, rather than using UPSO’s membership list. Now another LSB election is underway, and along comes another attack on UPSO. It’s not a surprise, but still a disappointment, that some people at a supposedly pro-labor institution would look to undermine the only collective organization that the unpaid staff have. Meanwhile, although Rijio nominally “rerecognized” UPSO earlier this year, she still has not restored the previously-existing unpaid-staff representation in program decision-making or on hiring committees.  

Is UPSO perfect? Certainly not, but it also confronts circumstances that other labor alliances do not. Unlike a union local for paid employees, UPSO has no state or national parent organization, collects no dues, has no bank account, and can’t hold meetings on “company time.” In this informal environment, tasks get done only when members step up to do them. Moreover, most KPFA unpaid staffers have day jobs and other responsibilities, as well as their KPFA programs to attend to, so setting aside additional time for UPSO is not easy. But that’s the nature of KPFA itself, where the majority of workers are unpaid.  

And where do we stand regarding the LSB elections? We thank the Independents for Community Radio candidates for their staunch support of the unpaid staff, and we urge KPFA voters to choose ICR candidates. Read more at www.indyradio2009.org, and remember to vote! Ballots are due by October 15.  

The authors are unpaid staff members at KPFA, and are present or former members of the UPSO Council or Program Council.

           The KPFA board elections are in full swing and the ballots are due October 15. I was struck by couple of developments. 

First, in their endorsement of the Concerned Listener slate the Alameda Labor Council endorsement states: "(the Concerned Listeners are) ...also strong supporters of KPFA's professional staff, who are members of CWA Local 9415--unfortunately, other elements of KPFA's board have attacked the station's unionized staff, and called for replacing them with volunteers." Second, an email from long time Morning Show host Philip Maldari said: “The following request from the CWA 9415 paid union staff at KPFA is to all of the board candidates. The union staffs at KPFA are facing layoffs because of growing deficits... We would like you to pledge that, if elected, you will fulfill your fundraising duties, and refrain from actions that undermine that goal.” 

            I am not aware of any board member who has called for replacing unionized staff with volunteers. It is of course totally understandable that the paid staff will be concerned about fundraising as it is their livelihood. 

          The platform/statement of the ‘Concerned Listeners’ says: “As for raising money: all of us are political organizers, many of us with 40 or more years of experience. We know how to organize and fundraise.” So one can understand why the paid staff will be supportive of the ‘Concerned Listeners’. But exactly who are the ‘Concerned Listeners’? 

The first thing I noticed is that there is a heavy Wellstone Democrats Renewal Club stamp. Current member Matt Hallinan is co-founder of the WDRC, and three of their candidates hold leadership positions in the WDRC: Pamela Drake, Local Political Coordinator; Jack Kurzweil, Administrative Coordinator; and Donald Goldmacher, Voting Rights Task Force. Problem is that WDRC is a Democratic Party enterprise. I make this point since the 1999 takeover was carried out by active members of the Democratic Party. Mary Francis Berry, then Pacifica chair, was a political appointee of President Clinton; Roberta Brooks, then Pacifica secretary, became legislative aide to both Ron Dellums and Barbara Lee. 

I do not mean to suggest that anyone on the Concerned Listeners are the same as those Democrats, but some of them still move in the same circles for political support and fundraising. One cannot help noting this in light of their platform claim to be able to “organize and fundraise”.  Conn Hallinan, who is Matt Hallinan’s brother and current LSB chair, was part of the ‘host committee’ for a fundraiser for Congressional candidate Jerry McNerny in 2006 with aforementioned Roberta Brooks. 

Many Pacifica listeners are registered Democrats, but they are aware of the venality of the Democratic Party leadership. Most know that when Tony Coelho began the practice of taking money from corporate lobbyists the Democratic Party became corporate vassals not unlike the Republicans, which is the reason many of them joined to fight their hijacking attempt of 1999.  

I have been on the board for three years now and I am baffled by the secrecy and lack of transparency. Why are the management and the Concerned Listener Board members so intent on keeping the operation of the station hidden from our stake holders, the listener subscribers? Why are there no town hall meetings, why did they reduce the number of meetings by half, why do they never post the minutes of the meetings, why did the management disband the Program Council and derecognize the Unpaid Staff Organization? Most glaring of all, why did they schedule a fund raiser right in middle of the board election and preempt election coverage? Why are they marginalizing each segment of the KPFA community? 

Brian Edwards–Tiekert, in support of Concerned Listen slate says: “There’s a group on KPFA’s board—they run under a different banner every year—that is hostile to the station’s   professional staff, enamored of conspiracy theories, doctrinaire in their approach to public affairs, and sectarian in their approach to internal politics – they’d rather attack KPFA than improve it.” 

           Well, I am running against the CL majority and I am none of the things Brian says. I appreciate all the staff, both paid and unpaid and their commitment in the low paying field of community radio. And I also totally understand the paid staff concerns for their jobs; I also appreciate their understandable misgivings about the possibly intrusive/disruptive involvement of the “Listener Board” as expressed in their open letter to the LSB in 2004. No one denies that democracy is a messy endeavor and that disagreement can be tiring, but we know too well what lies in at the end of the impulse to silence others. 

            Progressives bemoan corporate control of our two mainstream political parties for reasons that we do not need to restate here. But we cannot permit our independent, corporate free KPFA to become a puppet manipulated by a corporate party – no matter how well intentioned the individual members of the immediate group may be. We need to keep KPFA truly independent and FREE OF CORPORATE MONEY influence – no matter how remote. That is why I am running against the ‘Concerned Listeners’ and with ‘Independents for Community Radio’. 

            We need to bring community back into Community Radio. An inclusive open station is going to be healthier and stronger in the long run. We need to reconnect and build trust among ourselves as listeners, with the listener subscribers. We should remember that ENACTMENT of peaceful conflict is a founding purpose of Pacifica; we must learn to bring forth and articulate what underlies our antagonisms in order to resolve them in a way that will benefit all of us. 

The candidates that are endorsed by the Independents for Community Radio are (in alphabetical order): Banafsheh Akhlaghi, Shara Esbenshade, Sasha Futran, Ann Hallatt, Adam Hudson, Lara Kiswani, Rahman Jamaal McCreadie, Henry Norr, Andrea Prichett, Evelyn Sanchez, and Akio Tanaka.  

There are 29 candidates for 9 seats. We have had several events to meet the candidates all around the Bay Area. There has been much more promotion of the election on the air this year based on a Pacifica National Board (PNB) resolution. Concerned Listeners (CL) elected to the PNB voted against this inclusiveness resolution. CL allies in management recently took the candidates’ recorded statements off the air. 

The CL currently has a slim majority on the LSB. The CL slate has consciously avoided the  many “Meet the Candidate” events with usually only one of their 10 candidates showing up and sometimes none. This despite their mailer saying: 

“Inclusiveness: KPFA as a forum for progressive dialogue and debate…” 

CL candidates don’t seem to want to have any in person dialogue or interchange with the listener/voters. This also shows disrespect for the efforts of the LES and the Election Committee, who have put together events in SF, North Bay, Marin, the Peninsula, South Bay, East Bay and Vallejo. It doesn’t speak well for the kind of governance they will be likely to practice. This does coincide with their reducing the LSB meetings from once a month to every other month. Reducing contact and accountability to the people that elected them.  

The Alameda County Central Labor Council has entered the election contest with a major dirty trick. They endorsed CL without inviting any other candidates to address them. But that is not the worst of what they have done. They sent out an e-mail blast on September 9, 2009 that stated in part: 

“…other elements of KPFA's board have attacked the station's unionized staff, and called for replacing them with volunteers.” 

This is a McCarthyism scare tactic. There is no truth to it what so ever. It is shameful that a labor organization with a long history of supporting working people would stoop to use the “bosses” methods and to attempt to deflect political criticisms by calling them “attacks.” No candidate is advocating replacing the entire paid staff with volunteers. Given the CL Management Group’s $300,000 deficit there may need to be some staff reductions. This same management group increased the paid staff by approximately 50% in the last few years despite advice that the fund drive money could not sustain these increases. 

Perhaps the fact that CL member and LSB Secretary, Susan Mc Donough, works at the Alameda County Central Labor Council in a management position explains the back door endorsement and the defamatory attack on others. 

www.Peoplesradio.net candidates have an 80+ % attendance record at election events. I have only missed two, while out of the country on a trip planned in 2008,  long before I decided to run. If I had been here we would be at 90+ %. We have appeared on all the on air events. We have also gone to all major KPFA sponsored events to talk with the voters and hand out campaign information and Berkeley Daily Planet Articles about KPFA/Pacifica. 

Unfortunately several others have not attended many events. The Independents For Community Radio (ICR) candidates have had only two consistent participants, Henry Norr and Aki Tanaka. 

Newcomers to KPFA, Evelyn Sanchez, Shara Esbenshade, Lara Kiswani, and Banafsheh Akhlagi have been essentially no shows at these community events that I have attended. Banafsheh came to the SF event and left half way into the program. Their other candidates have a mixed record of partial attendance. Some of these folks have missed on air events. 

Finding out what the listeners want and think is very important if you are going to be a real representative. I think this would be very important to the ICR no shows and part timers since most have no prior experience with KPFA governance. 

The real campaign mysteries with ICR are why is Annie Hallett on their slate and why did they rank Henry Norr sixth (6th ) out of their top seven (7) ranked candidates on their mailer? Many listeners have raised these questions to me. Annie Hallett voted with the CL/KPFAForward folks 85-90% of the time when on the LSB. Including voting with them against a Program Council and against moving Democracy Now! to prime time. Hallett’s statements at the election events are often closer to CL positions than ICR positions. 

Steve Zeltzer of Voices for Justice Radio has made less than half of the events. His slate mate, another newcomer to KPFA, has consistently attended, as has Judith Gips and Jim Weber.  These four have consistently appeared for the on air events. Judith is a real independent candidate. 

Jim Weber is a shill for CL despite the fact CL won't put him on their slate. Weber’s only endorsements are four hard-core CL folks.  Weber’s repeated theme is that everybody is demonizing CL and their management allies. It is a weak attempt to allow CL and their allies in management to deflect criticism and avoid accountability. 

Campaign financing has become a real issue. In this election we have had two large slates send out expensive slate mailers. Under current Supreme Court rulings money = speech. I disagree with this pro-corporate ruling. Unfortunately the current law prohibits us from curbing spending. However, we can and should demand transparency. The same as we have in regular election campaigns. We all have a right to know whom the thousands of dollars for these expensive mailers are coming from! 

Please consider this a formal request to CL and ICR to disclose in detail where the money came from to pay for their expensive slate mailers and how much they spent. 

Please study the issues and vote if you are a KPFA subscriber. Rights are like muscles; if you don’t exercise them you lose them.  

Ballots are to be mailed in and must be received by October 15, 2009. If you are a subscriber and have not received your ballot, e-mail the Local Election Supervisor (LES) at election@kpfa.org or call (510) 848-6767 ext.626. 

Richard Phelps, former Chair KPFA LSB, current www.peoplesradio.net  candidate along with Stan Woods, Gerald Sanders and Jim Curtis. 

Pacifica Radio, the nation’s oldest listener sponsored broadcast network, is at an existential crossroads. If serious reforms aren’t implemented soon, the network could go under. The crisis pre-dates the current recession and is the result of numerous factors. The greatest of these is a hopelessly dysfunctional governance structure. 

Each of Pacifica’s five stations has a cumbersome 25 member board of directors. To put that into perspective, only 11 supervisors govern the entire city of San Francisco. These boards are elected from the listening audience and station staff. Experience serving on non-profit boards is not a pre-requisite for candidacy, nor is any demonstrable skill set, or experience that could be of use to the organization. Many who run don’t have prior knowledge of non-profit board duties. The unwieldly size of the boards and the disgregard for expertise would be problematic for a local animal shelter board, let alone a multi-million dollar broadcast network. 

The biggest problem with the boards by far is the attitude that a large proportion of the board members bring with them to their posts. Many board members disregard their responsibility for securing the financial health of the organization by participating in fundraising. Some of them argue that because the board is elected and not appointed, which is traditionally the case at non-profits, they are not responsible for carrying out this most essential of board functions. The above assertion would be laughable if it weren’t such a serious abdication of board member responsibilities. What would we think of a person who ran for a position on a hypothetical “elected” fire department and thought it was beneath him or her to actually participate in putting out fires? 

The attitude of some board members is one of outright hostility to station employees and management. Again, non-profit and for-profit board members have a responsibility of loyalty to the organization. The best way to express that is to promote and support the organization and its staff. Many board members see their role on the board as that of a sort of political police force, making sure the programming of the station reflects their own political viewpoints without a hint of consideration for what the wider listening community may think. 

That is the situation we now find ourselves in at Pacifica. Hundreds of thousands of listener sponsor dollars are spent on board elections and local and national board meetings that accomplish little. The boards don’t even raise enough money to pay for themselves, let alone bring in valuable extra funds. Looked at from a cost-benefit perspective, this amounts to a tremendous waste of network resources. 

As troublesome as these facts are, they need not necessarily lead to a fiscally unsustainable situation. There are candidates running for the board who honor their responsibilities to the organization. They appreciate the importance of fundraising for the organization. They want to be board members to help staff and management keep Pacifica’s vital news, music, arts and information viable and sustainable. They look forward to promoting and marketing KPFA to new audiences. In short, they want to be responsible members of a serious non-profit board. 

We do believe that there are candidates from the different slates who do have the experience and dedication to run KPFA responsibly. We have heard many listeners say the don't know anything about the candidates and slates and are not sure how to vote.  As staff at KPFA, we support candidates from different slates, but we think that the Concerned Listener slate has the most overall number of candidates who want to build KPFA and not tear it down.  You can look them up on line for more information. Thank you for supporting Pacifica. 

Max Pringle, KPFA News Reporter Mitch Jeserich, KPFA Morning Show Executive Producer.

As a candidate of Voices For Justice Radio www.voicesforjusticeradio.org who is running for the KPFA listeners candidate for the Local Station Board, I was surprised to see the letter by Sister Rautenstrauch about the struggle within the Unpaid Staff Organization. As a long time unpaid staff volunteer at the station it is surprising to hear her confusion about issues that took place in the unpaid staff organization by a so called  "small organization."  "Several years back the station management derecognized UPSO after a small group within the station tried to take UPSO over and screamed and yelled abuse at anyone who would oppose them in meetings to the point that the organization fell apart?". 

As a member of the unpaid staff at the time I and others were trying to get some transparency and accountability in the Unpaid Staff Organization. The representatives at that time including Bonnie Simmons and Mary Berg were in our view not representing the unpaid staff but the management and those entrenched programmers who wanted no new programming at the station. The action to dissolve the recognition of the UPSO took place over a year after these alleged "incidents". These same people who were supposed to represent the unpaid staff including Simmons and other met with management and conspired on how to eliminate the UPSO. We know this because one of the members of the KPFA Labor Collective was on the UPSO staff council and attended the meeting where these events were discussed. 

We also raised a resolution which was passed by UPSO and later passed by the Local Station Board that called for a safe environment for community programmers and the staff at the station. As Sister Rautenstrauch should know as a long time staffer, there is a history of violence and threats of violence against members of the staff by other members of the staff and management.  This atmosphere and the lack of checks and balances at the station as well as the lack of a personnel manual that would provide a process for resolving differences with due process and with fairness has been one of the very factors that continues to lead to these incidents. The failure of the present and past management to properly handle these issues has in fact led to physical assaults, verbal physical threats and in the latest incident which was  the calling of police to the station to arrest a Black community programmer Nadra Foster for trespassing. She was beaten and arrested. Maybe Sister Rautenstrauch thinks these are what to expect when one works at a local community station but I and many others disagree. The fact that we raised these issues in the UPSO was a very real reason that management was intent on eliminating the KPFA Labor Collective from even submitting programming proposals. This was supported by the way by a number of members and supporters of the Indy Media 2009 slate. The illegal ban was later overturned by the KPFA Local Station Board since it was not in the purview of the Program Council to take disciplinary action. 

http://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2006-09-01/article/24976?headline=Labor-Collective-Fights-KPFA-Ban 

The action of the present manager to dissolve the Unpaid Staff Organization which was supported by the Concerned Listeners who support the present management is another example of trying to shutdown the unpaid staff from having any representation or organized voice against a arbitrary and vindictive management. Although it was overturned by the Pacifica National Pacifica Board it shows an attitude hostile to the unpaid staff. It was also recently reported at a Local Station Board meeting by another supporter of the Concerned Listeners and paid staff representative to the Local Station Board Brian Edwards-Tiekert  that there would have to be an extra day of fundraising to pay for legal costs of these incidents. Is this what KPFA and Pacifica listeners have to put up with? Additional days of programming to pay for the failure of management to handle personnel issues properly? 

We believe that listeners and supporters of KPFA and Pacifica need a station that can cover the critical issues facing working people in the bay area, this country and the world without having to be at war with it's workers paid and unpaid. 

Steve Zeltzer 

www.voicesforjusticeradio.org 

The information attack came like a one-two-three punch. The Berkeley Daily Planet printed a front page story, titled, “KPFA Charges Pacifica With Raid on Station’s Funds.” That was Thursday, August 6th. The paper had hardly hit the street, and we hadn’t even seen it yet before we heard KPFA newscaster Philip Maldari talking about it on the Morning Show. Improperly using KPFA’s on-air microphone, Maldari called on listeners to attend the Saturday board meeting and hear for themselves how Pacifica grabbed $100,000 from KPFA. He urged listeners to speak out against the “raid.” 

It was election time at KPFA, and this was apparently a campaign tactic by the “Concerned Listeners” (CL) group. That much was pretty obvious, but what was this hundred thousand dollar grab all about? Was there some truth in it? 

There was a flurry of emails as people hurriedly sorted out the facts, and within a few hours we learned there’d been no “raid” on KPFA funds. Listener Rep. Tracy Rosenberg explained: 

“There is no $100,000 take. The only thing that happened was that the $420,000 securing the foundation line of credit was renegotiated with the result that $320,000 is returned to KPFA, $100,000 continues to be collateral. Period. Nothing else happened.” 

So the “raid” story was a fairly transparent lie. All year long the CL/management group which dominates KPFA had been attacking the new leadership of the network’s national office, targeting acting Executive Director Grace Aaron and acting CFO LaVarn Williams. This spring Aaron and Williams had saved WBAI, the NY Pacifica sister station, from a financial meltdown, but in doing so had disturbed the status quo. Thus they’d incurred the wrath of the CL, who want to regain control of the national office. That’s what this was all about. 

The CL campaign strategy in the election was to conjure up an image of conflict between KPFA and the national office of the fivve-station Pacifica network. In this supposed clash, the CL’ers present themselves as defenders of the local station, of community radio, guardians of its financial resources. 

One of the ironies was, that the grain of truth on which the raid story was based had to do with a loan that was taken out by the previous PNB chair, Sherry Gendelman, who happened to herself be a CL’er. It had little to do with people currently in the national office. 

“Libelous,” someone called the “raid” story. It was libelous to tell a newspaper something like that. 

“It’s not libelous,” Tracy emailed back, “It’s irresponsible, adverse to the best interests of the [Pacifica] foundation and rotten journalism, but it’s not libel.” 

The newspaper came out on Thursday, and the Local Station Board (LSB) would meet Saturday, August 8th. A huge flock of CL supporters would most certainly respond to Philip Maldari’s on-air call to action and descend upon the meeting. There’d be standing room only, if even that. Would we be able to get on the speaking list for Public Comments? Only 30 minutes is allotted to public comments, and with a huge number of speakers, maybe not. 

It was at the Unitarian Church on Cedar in Berkeley, and we rushed to get there early. As I entered, and found seats, people were still arriving. Eventually I counted about 33 in the audience. Five or possibly ten were CL supporters. 

Normally the CL’ers have exactly one supporter in the audience—good old Jim Weber who never misses an LSB meeting. The rest of the audience is not there to support the CL; at most LSB meetings they number 10 or 15, rarely more than 20. There are 25 board members, with about 22 usually present; that was the number here today. 

Eight people signed up to speak during public comments, two of them CL supporters. Not the fifty we’d feared. Public comments are scheduled near the beginning of the session. Each speaker was given two minutes; the woman immediately ahead of me characterized Brian Edwards-Tiekert’s behavior in what he’d told the newspaper as “Byzantine and Machiavellian.” 

While she spoke, Board Member Warren Mar sat there carrying on a loud conversation with the person next to him, and, at the end of her talk, he threw a nasty insult at her. 

All this time, Conn Hallinan, who was chairing, said nothing to Warren Mar. Both Warren and Conn are CL’ers. However, opposition board members side spoke up, objecting to Warren’s behavior. There was a brief discussion, and it was quickly resolved that public speakers would not be interrupted. 

Then it was my turn. Since the CL’ers liked incredible stories, such as the one they’d told the newspaper, I offered an even better story—that the Pacifica national office was run by a coven of witches. 

People started laughing. Then Warren Mar cut in, loudly objecting that my account was ridiculous. Of course the board had just ruled against his intrusions, so Chairman Conn Hallinan should’ve called Warren to order. But he didn’t. So I turned to Warren and said, “Do you mind?” He kindly allowed me to finish my account. 

The speakers after me included Aileen Alfandary, a pro-CL newscaster who echoed the “raid” story. She was followed by Stan Woods, who refuted the story and defended iCFO LaVarn Williams. Steve Zeltzer criticized the financial situation of KPFA. Max Blanchet expressed praise for iCFO LaVarn Williams and iED Grace Aaron. They spoke without interruptions. 

Next was the Treasurer’s Report, given by Brian Edwards-Tiekert, Staff Rep. At the end of the report, there were questions from several board members, including Joe Wanzala, Sasha Futran, Sureya Sayadi, Tracy Rosenberg, Chandra Hauptman and Gerald Sanders. The topic was finance, and these questions led back to the newspaper article. Brian was the source of that story, having told the reporter that the national office was making a “raid on KPFA’s accounts.” 

The information in the newspaper article was exposed as untrue, and Listener Rep Sasha Futran bluntly told Brian, “You passed known lies to the media.” 

“I did not send it to the media,” Brian objected. “I didn’t call the reporter. The reporter called me.” It was implied that someone else, an anonymous leaker, had contacted the reporter who called Brian. 

Sasha insisted on holding Brian responsible and pursued him with questions till Chairman Conn Hallinan cut in, practically snarling at her, “Watch yourself!” But Sasha did not let up, and a moment later Conn cut in again, shouting into the microphone, “Sasha! You’re out of order!” 

Somewhere in this exchange, Sasha pointed out that scaring listeners with invalid information could have the unwanted effect of undermining donor confidence before a fund drive. 

The CL’ers avoided dealing with the fact that Brian had given false information to the newspaper, blaming it instead on an anonymous leaker who’d supposedly directed the reporter to Brian. Sherry Gendelman, queen mother of the CL’ers, said, “Whoever it was that leaked Brian’s observations to the Planet gave the other side a very convenient excuse to attack Brian.” 

It was all the fault of that unknown person. That’s how the CL’ers were spinning it. So Listener Rep Gerald Sanders said to Brian: “Did you, or did you not, speak to a reporter?” 

Brian responded as he often responds—by making a speech. But he could not deny being the source of the quotes which the Berkeley Daily Planet attributed to him. According to the article: ‘KPFA Local Station Board Staff Representative and Treasurer Brian Edwards-Tiekert called the situation a “raid on KPFA’s accounts.”’ 

And as to the identity of the leaker, opposition board members pointed out that there was an online petition, posted by Brian, alleging the removal of “$100,000 from a KPFA bank account.” The reporter saw the petition with Brian’s name on it and phoned him. There was no leaker—other than Brian’s online petition. 

Brian Edwards-Tiekert then went on to ask the board to approve his proposed budget, coupled with a motion titled “Re: National Financial Accountability.” And they did, over the objections of opposition board members who’d received copies of the budget only minutes before. The CL’ers, who are the majority, voted together in lock step, as always, cult members responding to the voice of their leaders. 

A few days later, in the August 13th issue of the Berkeley Daily Planet, there was a front page retraction. So, did that end it? No, of course not. Two weeks after that LSB meeting of August 8th, board chair Conn Hallinan continued the lie in an email to Doug Henwood, “Pacifica also tried to do an old fashioned smash and grab on KPFA’s funds.” 

In Concerned Listener mythology, they, the CL’ers, are defending KPFA against the Pacifica national office. The real purpose behind this mythology is to get the CL’ers elected. 

Daniel Borgström is a KPFA listener 

Iranian nukes 

Are they or aren’t they? That depends on whom you ask. 

According to Associated Press, “senior officials” at the United Nation’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) say Iran has the ability to make a nuclear bomb and has worked on a missile to carry it. The document—entitled “Possible Military Dimensions to Iran’s Nuclear Program”—has yet to be formally released. The study is based on the intelligence provided by UN member states, not the UN itself. 

However, an IAEA official says the organization “has no concrete proof that there is or has been a nuclear weapon program in Iran.” 

Some of the “evidence” against Iran is based on documents that purport to show Iran was working on a program from 2001 to 2003. But the fact that none of the documents have security markings and that letters from Iranian defense officials lack government seals make them suspect. The Iranians claim the documents and letters are forged. 

According to historian Gareth Porter, the IAEA used the absence of security markings and government seals to determine that the Niger uranium documents, which the Bush administration used to justify the invasion of Iraq, were false. Porter says in this case, however, the IAEA seems to think the documents are genuine. 

Does the revelation that Iran has built a secret enrichment facility change things? That depends on what the facility—which is not yet functioning—is designed to do. To be a backup in case of an attack on Iran’s other enrichment facility, or a facility to produce weapons grade material? Only IAEA inspections will settle that issue. 

The Israelis claim Iran is within months of producing weapons grade uranium, an assessment the U.S. intelligence community disputes. According to Newsweek, U.S. intelligence agencies say they are confident that the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) of Iran’s nuclear capacity correctly concluded that as of 2003 Iran had “halted its nuclear weapons program,” and not resumed it. 

That has not stopped the Netanyahu government’s full court press on the Obama administration to stiffen sanctions against Iran and to consider a military strike if those fail. A report by the pro-Israeli Bipartisan Policy Center, signed by Republican Dan Coats, Democrat Chuck Robb and Air Force Gen. Charles Ward (ret.), charged that Iran would be able to produce “a weapon’s worth of highly enriched uranium…in less that two months,” and that the Obama administration should “begin preparations for the use of military options.” 

On Sept. 10 the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) poured lobbyists into Washington to press for “crippling” sanctions against Iran, which included support for U.S. Rep. Howard Berman’s (D-Ca) Iran Refined Petroleum Sanctions Act to cut off gasoline supplies to Iran. Iran has lots of gas and oil, but not much refinery capacity and must import gasoline. 

United Against Nuclear Iran, an advocacy group founded by State Department heavyweights Dennis Ross and Richard Holbrooke, recently launched a TV blitz to “isolate Iran economically” to prevent Teheran from acquiring nuclear weapons. 

Tougher sanctions might pass the U.S. Congress, but it is running into stiff opposition abroad. 

Russia and China recently agreed to consider new sanctions-a quid pro quo for the U.S. scrapping its missiles in Eastern Europe? But whether they would go along with “crippling” sanctions is another matter. China, for instance, provides Iran with about one-third of its gasoline needs. 

Germany will only support tougher sanctions if they have the backing of the entire European Union (EU). French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner also expressed doubts, saying that a gas embargo was a “bit dangerous” and would hurt “mainly poor people.”  

Since the EU works by consensus, and since many EU members will not go along with an embargo without United Nations authorization—an authorization that might draw a Russian or Chinese veto—sanctions like a gasoline embargo look doubtful. 

The Berman bill would punish countries that traded gasoline to Iran, but that could put the United States at loggerheads with Russia, China, and the EU. Brazil has also made it clear that it will have nothing to do with sanctions. “I think there are a lot of sanctions and not enough conversations with Iran,” Brazilian President Lula da Silva told Le Monde. 

If the sanctions collapse, might Israel be tempted to go for a military strike? Again, that depends on whom you ask. 

Tel Aviv has talked quite openly about attacking Iran, although even the Netanyahu administration seems to be of multiple minds about the military option. While the Prime Minister calls Iran an “existential threat,” Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak told the press Sept. 17, “Iran does not pose an existential threat against Israel.” And according to Russian President Dmitry Mediedev, Israeli President Shimon Peres assured him that Israel did not intend to attack Iran. 

The Israeli military say they can pull off an attack, but other observers are no so confident. Even the Israelis admit that such an attack would only delay, not derail, an Iranian nuclear program. 

Some Americans are pushing for a military response. “No one should believe that tighter sanctions will, in the foreseeable future, have any impact on Iran’s nuclear weapons program,” says former UN ambassador John Bolton. “Adopting tougher economic sanctions is simply another detour away from hard decisions on whether to accept a nuclear Iran or support using force to prevent it.” 

In the meantime, Iran has accepted an invitation to talk with the Obama administration, although it says its right to enrich nuclear fuel for civilian power plants is not on the table. However, Trita Parsi of the National Iranian American Council says that Iran’s initial position is “most likely an opening bid, not a red line.” Iran, for instance, might agree to rigorous and intrusive inspections of its enrichment program. 

Playing hardball may backfire. “Pointing a gun at their heads merely reinforces their desire for a reliable deterrent, and probably strengthens the hand of an Iranian official who think they ought to get a bomb as soon as possible,” writes Harvard University professor of international relations Stephen Walt. 

Another question is whether the government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is in any shape to carry out negotiations. Last month’s rigged elections has Ahmadinejad relying increasingly on the military and the most rightwing forces in Iran, and such an alliance may constrain the government’s ability to compromise.  

Iran’s internal turmoil has certainly animated Ahmadinejad’s most provocative tendencies, including his recent questioning of the Holocaust as a “real event,” a denial the late, great Palestinian intellectual and revolutionary, Edward Said, had little patience with: 

“We must recognize the realities of the holocaust not as a blank check for the Israelis to abuse us, but as a sign of our humanity, our ability to understand history, our requirement that our suffering be mutually acknowledged. The real issue is intellectual truth and the need to combat any sort of apartheid and racial discrimination, no matter who does it. There is now a creeping, nasty wave of anti-Semitism and hypocritical righteousness insinuating itself into our political thought and rhetoric. One thing must be clear in my firm opinion: we are not fighting the injustices of Zionism in order to replace them with an invidious nationalism, religious or civil, that decrees that Arabs in Palestine are more equal than others. The history of the modern Arab world—with all its political failures, its human rights abuses, its stunning military incompetences, its decreasing production, the fact that alone of all the modern peoples we have receded in democratic and technological and scientific development—is disfigured by a whole series of out-moded and discredited ideas, of which the notion that the Jews never suffered and that the holocaust is an obfuscatory confection created by the Elders of Zion is one that is acquiring too much, far too much currency.” 

Taliban’s Challenge  

Readers might want to go to shahamat.org, the Taliban’s website, and click on the English version of Mullah Omar’s “Message of Felicitation” to the Obama administration. There is lots of religion in it-the man is a Mullah-but what should give the White House pause is the strong current of nationalism.  

“With the passage of time, the resistance and the Jihadic movement, as a robust Islamic and nationalist movement, assumed the shape of a popular movement and is approaching the edge of victory…the policy which they [the U.S. and NATO] have adopted will only prolong the current crisis but will never solve it. This is because the existence of foreign troops in Afghanistan and the invasion is in itself an issue, not a solution.” 

He blasts the “rampart corruption” of the “Kabul administration” and its “…embezzlement, drug trafficking… mafia networks,” and “the tyranny and high-handedness of the warlords…” that “has driven the people to face poverty, starvation and unemployment…” 

Afghanistan has the highest infant mortality in the world and for every person who dies in the war, 20 die of treatable diseases and malnutrition. 

His own program is vague: “…rehabilitation of social and economic infrastructure, advancement and development of the education sector, industrializations of the country and the development of agriculture.” Omar challenges the idea that the Taliban are “against education and women’s rights,” but gives no details. 

He pledges that Afghanistan will be a “responsible force” and “will not extend its hand to cause jeopardy to others,” adding, “The West does not have to fight this war.” 

He calls on the resistance to “abandon internal differences” and, while demanding that foreign troops leave, keeps the door open for negotiations: “Our goal is to gain independence of the country and establish a just Islamic system. We can consider any option that could lead to the achievement of this goal.” 

If the war in Afghanistan becomes one for national liberation, not religion, all the foreign troops in the world don’t stand a chance.

An assertion in this week’s Chip Johnson column in the San Francisco Chronicle on Oakland City Council’s parking fee controversy (“Compromise on Oakland parking may be in works”) caught my attention, as Mr. Johnson’s writings sometimes do. 

As you probably already know, in an effort to bring in more revenue in order to balance its fiscal year 2009-10 budget in the midst of the economic downturn, the Oakland City Council passed several parking-related measures just before the summer break, raising the meter rates and fines and increasing the hours of parking meter operation. The measures resulted in what we in the media like to characterize as a “firestorm” of public criticism in Oakland, with calls coming from all over the city during the summer for the council to rescind its actions. Oakland City Council is currently considering what actions to take in response. 

In his column, Mr. Johnson attempted to describe the current situation facing the Oakland City Council and then wrote the line that attracted my attention. “Oakland,” he said, “is not the only Bay Area city to feel the financial crunch of a lingering recession, but their approach—to adopt across-the-board parking hikes—remains unmatched.” He then listed San Francisco and Walnut Creek as having tried alternatives to “across-the-board parking hikes,” including “test[ing] a program to charge premium prices for convenient on-street parking spots.” 

Mr. Johnson missed a city in his review, misstated his assumption, and therefore missed the lessons that might be learned from the Oakland parking problem. 

First and foremost, Oakland was not the only Bay Area city to consider “across-the-board parking hikes” this year. 

In a late March article in the Daily Planet, I wrote that “[w]ith almost a complete lack of controversy or public dissent, the Berkeley City Council unanimously approved a staff recommendation Tuesday night that will raise most parking citation fines $5 across the board, but significantly higher on University of California football game days. … The $5 increase is due to recent state legislative action to relieve California’s budget crisis, and all but 50 cents per violation of the increase will pass directly through to the state treasury.” 

Then, in late June, I wrote that “In order to balance the [city’s fiscal year 2009-10] budget, for the second time this year the [Berkeley City] Council raised across-the-board parking fines by $5 per citation. Fines for most overtime parking violations will jump from $35 to $40, while no parking zone violations will go from $56 to $61.” In that story, I added that “as part of its preparation for expected state cutbacks, the council will consider three other parking-related fee increases—raising the meter rate by 25 cents, adding meters to new areas, and a 15 percent residential preferred parking fee increase—in the coming weeks.” 

Two of those items—“Increase the parking rate by 25 cents to $1.50 per hour” and “Expand locations of Single-Space Parking Meters and Pay-and-Display (P&D) Stations to commercial parking areas in Districts 1, 2, and 3 that currently have time zones”—came before the Berkeley City Council on Tuesday night of this week. 

Berkeley City Council therefore raised across-the-board parking fees-meter rates and fines—as well as added parking meters to non-meter areas over the course of the late spring and early fall of this year—yet, despite the fact that Berkeley residents are not known for their reticence or civic apathy, those actions generated none of the controversy that accompanied the Oakland increases. 

Why the difference? 

This is where taking only a superficial look at the results of local parking changes will get you to the wrong conclusion, as on the issue of across-the-board fee and fine increases—the issue that caught Mr. Johnson’s attention—there does not appear to have been any difference between the reactions in Oakland and Berkeley at all. And that appears to be because the “parking revolt” in Oakland may have not had anything to do with the across-the-board fee and fine increases. 

I’ll explain. 

The Oakland parking fees and fines issues first appears to have come before the Oakland City Council during the council’s June 16 meeting in three separate items, during the time when the council and the city administration were struggling to plug an $83 million budget deficit. During passage of an amendment to the city’s Master Fee Schedule, the meeting minutes indicate that in the course of considering changes in a 66 page Master Fee document, the Council ordered that “[t]he following fees will be brought back for introduction on June 30: Current On-Street parking meter rate increase $.50 to $2 per hour city wide...”  

At the same meeting, the council voted to continue the matter of across-the-board increases in meter violation fines—fines that are set by Oakland municipal code—to its June 30 meeting, but passed an ordinance increasing the across-the-board fines for California Vehicle Code-related parking violations as well as pushed the hour the city operates its parking meters from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. 

Although the minutes of the June 16 meeting show that there were several members of the public that spoke on other council items that night, only two persons spoke on the parking fee-related items: Oakland library advocate Patrick Camacho and East Bay News Service owner Sanjiv Handa (who speaks on almost every item at Oakland City Council). 

When the parking issues came up again for final passage at Oakland City Council’s June 30 meeting, only two individuals again spoke on the four separate items involved: someone named Sophie Vrabel (with whom I am not familiar) and Mr. Handa. 

Given the fact that Oakland City Council agendas are closely monitored by a significant number of individuals, the number of times (seven) over a spread of two public meetings that the Council agenda indicated “something” was being done in Oakland that would raise the cost of parking, and the sparsity of public comment, one can reasonably conclude that if Oakland residents weren’t happy about the across-the-board parking rate/fine increases passed in June, they weren’t upset enough about them to pitch a fit. And none of the bloggers who keep close tabs on public comment in Oakland appear to have raised an issue about this in June. Echa Schneider, for example, the V Smoothe blogger, posted a June 28 item in which she outlined the differences between the mayor’s and council’s budget proposals, and of 25 comments, none of her readers mentioned the parking fee/fine increases as a problem. 

Why, then, such an explosion of anger and protest after the fact? 

This is just a guess, but it would appear that Oakland’s parking meter two-hour extension (from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.) simply got overlooked by the public in all the fine print and the detail of the city’s scramble to close its budget deficit. And that’s how the City of Oakland’s handling of this situation--the city, not the citizens--may have differed from Berkeley. 

While the City of Berkeley did not propose extending parking meter hours earlier this year, it did propose something similarly controversial: adding meters to selected areas of the city that currently have no meters, but only one or two-hour limits. The meters the city proposed to be placed were those coin-operated machines taken out when the city added the pay-and-display (P&D), credit card-accessible meter stands in many areas. A review of Berkeley city staff’s report from Tuesday night’s City Council meeting shows what happened. 

“In February 2009,” the Berkeley staff report reads, “after the new P&D stations were installed, staff returned to Council for approval to proceed with Phase 4 of the Meter Expansion Program: installation of 832 single-space meters. In response to public comments on the plan, Council directed staff to meet with neighborhood residents and businesses in the specified commercial districts to gather additional feedback and input on meter locations. These meetings were held in June and July in the three areas to discuss proposed locations, answer questions, and solicit comments and recommendations. As an outcome of these meetings, approximately 420 parking spaces (50 percent fewer than the 832 originally specified) have been identified to install single-space parking meters in commercial areas with existing timed-parking zones.” 

A fair reading of this report is that the Berkeley City Council—perhaps with staff input—anticipated the controversy over adding parking meters to unmetered areas and, therefore, ordered special public meetings to spread the information about the proposed changes and get public input. As a result of that input, the City drastically modified its proposal, cutting back 50 percent of the proposed new meters. As a result of that outreach and those changes, the proposal received minimal citizen complaint when it was approved by the council on Tuesday night. 

There is no evidence that the City of Oakland did a similar outreach over the far more controversial meter hour extension plan. And while it would be unfair to accuse city officials of deliberately hiding the proposal, Oakland did not go out of its way to publicize those changes in the agenda items or the ordinances approved last June.  

The agenda title for that item reads as follows: “Recommendation: Adopt An Ordinance Amending Oakland Municipal Code Section 10.48.010 

“Schedule Of Parking Fines” To Increase California Vehicle Code Parking Fines, And Amending O.M.C. Section 10.36.050 “Parking Meter Indication That Space Is Illegally In Use", To Increase The Parking Meter Hours, And Amending O.M.C. Section 10.48.010 “Schedule Of Parking Fines” To Increase Parking Fines Related To Illegal Truck Parking” (even knowing what you’re looking for, the parking meter hour extension issue is hard to spot). 

And in the body of the proposed ordinance changes, the parking meter extension is equally obscure, reading: 

“Section 3 Oakland Municipal Code (O.M.C.) section 10.36.050 ‘Parking Meter Indication That Space is Illegally in Use’ is hereby amended as set forth below. Additions are indicated by underscoring and deletions are indicated by strike through type; portions of ordinances not cited or not shown in underscoring or strike-through type are not changed. 

A. It is illegal for any person to park or leave standing any vehicle in any parking meter zone on any street at any time during which the parking meter shows, indicates, registers, or displays that the parking space is illegally in use except during the time necessary to deposit United States 

coins in said parking meter so as to show, indicate, register, display, or permit legal parking and excepting also during the time from six p.m. eight p.m. to eight a.m., and excepting also all holidays as defined in Section 10.36.090 when indicated by appropriate signs located on the parking meter. When five-hour meters are installed, such meters shall show, indicate, register, display, or permit legal parking during a twenty-four (24) hour period, seven days a week, when indicated by appropriate signs located on the parking meters.” 

No wonder it got overlooked. 

While the demands to cut back the parking meter increases have since been added to the protest, it seems clear that it was the meter hour extension that was the catalyst. That seems to be indicated in the commentary by one of the leaders of the parking revolt, Grand Lake Theater owner Allen Michaan, who wrote in a July 23 Berkeley Daily Planet commentary (“A Death Sentence For Oakland Business”) against the Council decision “to raise the meter rates to an unconscionable $2 per hour and, even worse, to extend enforcement hours to 8 p.m.” 

Rather than a revolt over across-the-board parking fees, this appears to be a revolt against what you might call the “pigfoot factor,” the phenomenon famously introduced by the great blues singer, Bessie Smith, in the song “Gimme A Pigfoot.” Faced, apparently, with being charged 25 cent to enter a bar, Ms. Smith shrieks out, “25 cents? No, no! I wouldn’t pay 25 cents to go in nowhere.” 

The lesson here is that being used to go in a place for free where they can buy liquor and hear music, people will balk and may not even go in if they suddenly find themselves being charged. People will grumble and complain—but are more likely to pay—if the fee to go in goes from 25 cents to 50. That’s just human nature. 

Oakland’s failure to understand that phenomenon is the real lesson to be learned in Oakland’s parking fee revolt. 

I wish I could recommend the new Sibley Guide to Trees as enthusiastically as I can recommend breakfast and/or lunch at Quince, also new.  

Go out right now (or tomorrow morning, if it’s after hours) and eat at Quince! Grass-fed beef burgers! Herbed fries with spicy ketchup! Real salmon! Serious hummus! Dolmas to die for! Now with extra exclamation points!  

Don’t get me wrong; I like the Sibley tree book a lot. We pounced on it largely on the strength of David Sibley’s previous bird guides, which kick serious butt about field identification and bird behavior, respectively. No regrets about that; Sibley’s Guide to Trees answers some questions about exotics and Eastern trees, and it’s just a good read if you’re the kind of wonk who reads field guides. (Yes, I am.)  

Certainly it’s as thorough as a North America-spanning ID guide is likely to be. Herein lies the rub.  

This book is approximately the size of the whole-continent versions of Sibley’s bird guides—that is, somewhat bigger than Quince is—and, like those books, not exactly a backpacker’s dream. Sibley’s publisher dealt with that problem by splitting the original ID guide in two, East and West, which resulted in a pair of books each about the size of the comparable Peterson series.  

Some folks I know carry the Western Sibley with them and stash the big book in the car for reference, since we live in California where everything shows up sooner or later. We have a similar problem with trees. The damnedest things will grow in our mild coastal climate.  

Sibley includes cultivated trees, reasonably; most trees that urban- and suburban-dwellers see are exotics. Also, many exotic species have become “naturalized” especially here and in the Southeast, so what you see in wildlands might not be native there. I saw a question last night on a tree e-mail list about local “wild” plums—feral flowering plums from our streets and gardens, long-lived leftovers from a forgotten home or bird- or squirrel-planted volunteers.  

Almost my only gripe with the Sibley guide is that he didn’t include whole-tree drawings for every tree in the book. I do recognize that if he had, I might not be able to bench-press the result; still, as good as he is on the matter of birds’ “jizz”-birder slang: “General Impression and Shape” or Gestalt—he might have applied the same method to tree ID. You can tell this is a book by a birder, and that’s a good thing.  

One strength of the book is oaks. My goodness, there are lots of oaks—I knew this, but the pages and pages of them make the point. Plus, of course, they hybridize freely; they’re promiscuous as ducks. Our local hybrid swarms get mentioned, so do some rare types that might be species, might be hybrids; the debate’s still on.  

Sibley doesn’t paint trees as well as he paints birds, and some illustrations look more hasty than impressionistic. Still, I like owning this guide, even at retail price. Get one, but treat yourself to a meal at Quince first.  

The Sibley Guide to Trees 

David Allen Sibley 

428 pages, $39.95 

Quince Cafe and Grill 

2228 San Pablo Ave., Berkeley.  

666-0094. quincecafe.com. 

6:30 a.m.–2:30 p.m. Monday through  

Friday; 7 a.m.– 2:30 p.m Saturday.  

Closed Sunday.

In its 136 years, the University of California’s Berkeley campus has seen many buildings come and go. Among them, North Hall was the only one to have merited a demolition ceremony attended by the UC president and 700 alumni. 

Like South Hall, which housed the library, museums, and laboratories, North Hall was designed in the Second Empire style by Scottish-born architect David Farquharson. But unlike the brick-and-stone South Hall, North Hall was built in wood to house classrooms, assembly room, and faculty rooms, with the basement devoted to student activities. 

As early as 1902, North Hall was identified as a fire trap by Berkeley Fire Chief James Kenney, yet the building continued to be the center of student life until 1917, when it was ceremonially torn down, President Benjamin Ide Wheeler striking the first blow. 

For 18 of North Hall’s best years, its most enduring fixture was an Irishman by the name of James Tait, whom the students called “Jimmy Potatoes.” 

James Tait (1865-1906) was the janitor of North Hall. He immigrated to the United States in 1888 and must have made his way directly to Berkeley, for the following year he was listed in the city directory as a laborer on the UC grounds. 

It didn’t take long for Tait to become a student-body favorite. As his obituary in the San Francisco Call would attest, “his keen Irish wit, unfailing good humor, genuine interests in the doings of the undergraduate host, and the faculty of making friends with those of high and low degree served to give ‘Jimmy Potatoes’ distinction that mightier, richer men cannot acquire.” 

A thrifty man, in 1894 Tait managed to buy land on Henry Street near Vine and erected on it a very small house. Whether he lived in it or not is unclear, since the city directory sometimes indicated North Hall as his residence. 

In the late summer of 1897, Tait married Bella White (1876-1963), newly arrived from Ireland. Acquiring a lot at 2022 Delaware St., he moved his Henry Street house to the new location and enlarged it. 

Newspaper accounts of the period reported that Tait did everything to make his young bride comfortable in her new home. Unhappily, Bella was homesick, and within a few weeks of the marriage fell into melancholy so morbid that she couldn’t be safely left alone. In early October 1897 she was taken to the East Bay Sanitarium in Oakland. Upon her discharge three weeks later, her husband promised to send her back to Ireland and made arrangements for a married woman of their acquaintance to accompany her there. The night before the two women were to depart, Bella disappeared. She was found the next morning lying in a muddy pond, in a condition describ-ed as “hopelessly insane.” 

The trip to Ireland was cancelled, and Mrs. Tait was hospitalized again. On Feb. 18, 1898, the San Francisco Call announced, “The Californian-Occident baseball game will take place on the campus tomorrow morning at 11:15. The proceeds of the game will go to the benefit of James Tait, better known as ‘Jimmy,’ the janitor of North Hall, who recently had the misfortune of having to send to the insane asylum his wife, who had come all the way from Ireland to wed him.” 

Somehow, Bella Tait pulled through with no further incident. In April 1899 she gave birth to the couple’s daughter, Sadie. Their son, John, was born in June 1900. By then, Jimmy Tait had been twice enshrined in the university’s Blue and Gold yearbook. The 1900 edition carried an unsigned four-stanza poem titled “Jimmy,” illustrated by a photograph of the janitor on the stairs of North Hall, feather duster in hand. The poem’s first two stanzas convey the writer’s sentiment succinctly: 

What is yon bright and stately being, 

Which, with movement slow and calm, 

Telleth o’er the moments fleeing 

Ere he sound the loud alarm? 

It is Jimmy. 

Now with pail and now with shovel, 

Like an angel, bright is he, 

As he cleans and sweeps this hovel, 

Making it divine for me. 

It is Jimmy. 

Elsewhere in the same yearbook, an irreverent two-page cartoon titled “The Race for Popularity” depicted 11 men haphazardly staggering through a footrace. Ten of them, identified by name and tagged “also ran,” were members of the faculty. Ahead at the finish line, wearing patched trousers and carrying a broom and a smile, was the one person who needed no introduction: “Jimmy” Tait. 

“The cartoon was not appreciated by the authorities,” reported the San Francisco Call on Feb. 20, 1906, “and, with other objectionable matter, was regarded as ground for the suspension of the editor and manager of the publication. Jimmy Potatoes’ fame was largely increased by the affair, and he became more than ever an idol of the campus.” 

Indeed, Tait made an appearance in Joy Lichtenstein’s book For the Blue and Gold: A Tale of Life at the University of California (1901), where an account of the final exams produced this reminiscence: “Before they knew it they were all through, and the erstwhile echoing corridors of North Hall quieted down. For a while would ‘Jimmy Potatoes’ cease from tolling the North Hall recitation bell.” 

By 1902, James Tait had been reassigned from North Hall to gardening duties in the campus greenhouses and along its walks. The 1903 Blue and Gold lovingly marked his new role: “The Conservatory dates from the year of the Midwinter Fair. It is an appanage of the Agricultural and Botanical departments, and contains tropical or delicate plants, many being quite rare specimens, such as the celebrated Jimmy Potatoes, imported at great expense from Ireland.” 

When California Hall was completed in 1905, Tait became janitor of this modern edifice. There, in early February 1906, he was unpacking books when one of his hands received a scratch. He paid no attention to the cut until his arm began to swell. Alarmed, he consulted Dr. George Reinhardt, the university physician, and was sent to Providence Hospital in Oakland, where he died two weeks later. 

On the day of his death, Feb. 19, the campus flag was lowered to half mast, and President Wheeler’s office released an official announcement. Almost immediately, Professor Albin Putzker, head of the German Department, initiated a fundraising drive for the benefit of the widow. His call was taken up by the Daily Californian, which proposed to raise $1,000 in order to retire the $900 mortgage on the Tait home. On March 10, the UC varsity baseball team played a benefit game against St. Mary’s College of Oakland. The University Cadet Band provided music, and President Wheeler threw the first pitch, attracting 600 spectators. A month later, the band held a moonlight benefit concert of popular songs in the Greek Theatre. 

And what of the bereaved family? They remained on Delaware Street for another 50 years. In 1908, Bella Tait married Stephen Belford, another Irish laborer who worked for a while as campus gardener. In 1909, they constructed a larger house next door, on land acquired by James Tait in 1901. John Tait, who spent his entire life in the two family homes, died in 1966, exactly 60 years after the death of his father, the celebrated janitor of North Hall. 

The Tait house will be one of the attractions on a walking tour to be led by Daniella Thompson this Saturday, Oct. 3. See details on the BAHA website, www.berkeleyheritage.com. 

Contracting is called contracting because it’s about writing contracts. It’s about sales, which are contractual. Contractors aren’t builders, they are people who write and perfect (that’s the legal term for bringing to completion) contracts. We’ve come to think of contractors as people who wear tool belts, but for anyone who has ever hired a contractor only to find them inexplicably absent for the duration of the job, this understanding of a contractor’s role in building can prevent woe and direct you through a morass of remodeling problems. 

Unless specified, a contractor isn’t obliged to have anything more to do with your job than to sign the contract, take a deposit and wish you well. And, of course, make sure that somebody does the job in accordance with the specific provisions of the contract (your contract had lots of specifics, right? like assuring the contractor would call you, talk to you, tell you everything was O.K. and they have enjoyed the time they shared with you). It’s a cruel world out there, and then, your health care gets voted on by congress. Time to wake up and smell the sawdust. 

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that contract law allows contractors to defraud the public and vacate promises of work. It does not, but it says very little about who you have actually hired. Ask around, and you will find more than a few folks who, having hired a given contractor, often because of their trust in that particular person, later found themselves working with a gang of subordinates who cast a sorry or limp shadow of the absent hero. 

So, it’s a good idea, when you sit down with the contractor you’re hoping to work with to ask whether they will be doing the work. Often, the answer will be that they will be checking on the work from time to time, but they won’t actually be swinging a hammer. If you never ask, you might never know until the work is well under way. 

One can specify in a contract that one wishes the contractor to be on-site and perform certain services (within some reasonable bounds, indentured servitude now being largely outlawed), but this is a very slippery slope, and I would argue that it’s always better to start off by hiring someone to do things the way that they are accustomed to doing them. Then the marriage has a chance. 

Many small contractors (2–5 person firms) will be on-site much of the time anyway, and if you’re looking for that boutique experience, you might want to stay with a highly ranked person in a company of roughly that size. Once a contractor has more than, say, 6 or 7 persons on staff, nobody is going to see them all that much of the time, since the lion’s share of their energies will be going into keeping all those other people productive, efficient and paid.  

As contractors, our lives and days change as we evolve into business-folk. We change hats and clothing, manners and venues. Many don’t make the switch. Some back up, drop down to handyman status or leave entirely. Some find the upward-mobility a natural ride. It varies with each contractor and each has their own gifts and curses.  

Discerning these attributes should be the mission of the consumer. Shopping for contractors is like figuring out what kind of suit you’re looking for (or overall, or ripped tee). Will they be on-site? Will they supervise well? Will I get a good deal? Will the work be to my liking? Will I enjoy the experience and feel taken care of? These needs will vary with the buyer (yes, you will bring much to this table) and the contractor. Small can be very intimate and make a lot of room for positive change and adaptation, even though it can be slower. Larger firms are often quicker and can usually tackle tougher problems. They may also have plusses that a small one does not, such as a connection with an engineer or architect. 

There is no one model for everyone, but there is one element in this equation that is worth asking and learning about and that is the job-site foreman or superintendent. 

These mini-contractors are both employee and boss. They are liaison and worker. Often, they are a job boss (telling everyone else what to do) and organizer, but above all, they are yours. These sergeants in the field of contracting hold sufficient rank to do all the things your absent contractor cannot, and, often as not, will do better carpentry and clean up than the boss.  

Now just as contractors vary, a foreman comes in a variety of shapes and sizes. Meeting a proposed foreman during the shopping phase is an awfully good idea. If there are several foremen (these can, of course, be women) then meet them all, just in case there’s a switch. It is quite common, in my experience for these persons to be quite similar in a given company since they will reflect the predelictions of the boss (ever meet two or three ex-husbands of the same woman?). 

The job foreman is empowered to make a range of decisions, but this will have its limits. They may have to consult with the general contractor or wait for a call back on some issues, but this is a finer point. The take-home message here is that if you have a foreman dedicated to your job and you like them, you will often be happier than the person who has the contractor on-site every day. The politics of this are sort of like good-cop, bad cop. There is face-saving too. The foreman “feels” like they belong to you when they’re on your site and they can “seem” to go to bat against the contractor to get you more of this or less of that because they have an investment in you and the outcome of “their” job. It’s very much like organizational politics and you’re the winner if you have a stalwart foreman that you like and with whom you have a good working relationship. 

If you are thinking of working with a mid-sized contractor who does not use a foreman or superintendent system, think again. This is often a sign that the contractor has either not matured organizationally, or is just cheap (which is also foolish). For contractors, spending enough to keep people happy is smart business, and no successful contractor can last long with a string of unhappy clients dragging behind them. The ones that shine, are those who spend enough to keep the jobs moving along at an appropriate pace and keep good replicas of themselves on-site to create, solve and please.

THURSDAY, OCT. 1 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Sticky Earth” New ceramics by NIAD artists. Reception at 5 p.m. at NIAD Center for Art and Disabilities, 551 23rd St., Richmond. 620-0290. www.niadart.org 

“On the Road to Dharma” Works by Amy Oliver. Opening reception at 7 p.m. at Giorgi Gallery, 2911 Claremont Ave. Exhibit runs to Oct. 31. 848-1228. www.giorgigallery.com 

THEATER 

Round Belly Theatre Company “Orestia: Before the Furies” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 5 p.m. at Noodle Factory, 1255 26th St. at Union, Oakland. Suggested donation $10. www.roundbellytheatre.com 

FILM 

Berkeley Film Foundation Grant winners honored at 6 p.m. at the Fantasy Building, 2600 Tenth St. Donation $100 benefits the Berkeley Film Foundation. filmberkeley.com 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Poetry of Protest Local poets present work focused on the realities of war and the current state of America’s Healthcare failures, at 7 p.m. at Café Mediterranean, Telegraph Ave. between Dwight and Haste. 

Celebrating 50 Years of Free Speech Readings from banned books with Mollie Katzen, Marissa Moss, Elisa Kleven, David Lance Goines and others at 7 p.m. at Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave., Kensington. 524-3043. 

Poetry Flash with Denise Newman and Sandra Stone at 7:30 p.m. at Moe’s Books2476 Telegraph Ave. 849-2087. moesbooks.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Dervish at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Double Vision at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Bigelows Treehouse, Porkchop Express at 9 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $6. 841-2082.  

Women Jam Night at 7 p.m. at Chester’s Bay View Cafe, 1508 Walnut St. 849-9995. 

FRIDAY, OCT. 2 

THEATER 

Altarena Playhouse “The Nerd” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. at Altarena Playhouse, 1409 High St., Alameda, through Oct. 25. Tickets are $17-$20. 523-1553. www.altarena.org 

Berkeley Rep “American Idiot” at 2025 Addison St., through Nov. 1. Tickets are $32-$86. www.berkeleyrep.org 

Contra Costa Civic Theatre “Harvey” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. through Oct. 11 at 951 Pomona Ave., El Cerrito. Tickets are $18, $11 for 16 and under. 524-9132. www.cct.org 

Impact Theatre “See How We Are” A contemporary adaptation of “Antigone.” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m. at La Val’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid Ave., through Oct. 17. Tickets are $12-$20. impacttheatre.com 

Round Belly Theatre Company “Orestia: Before the Furies” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 5 p.m. at Noodle Factory, 1255 26th St. at Union, Oakland. Suggested donation $10. www.roundbellytheatre.com 

Shotgun Players “This World In A Woman’s Hands” The story of the WWII Victory warships and the African-American women who built them, with live acoustic bass by Marcus Shelby. Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 5 p.m. at The Ashby Stage. 1901 Ashby Ave, through Oct. 18. Tickets are $18-$25. 841-6500. www.shotgunplayers.org 

Woman’s Will “The Clean House” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m. at Gaia Arts Center, 2120 Allston Way, through Oct. 10. Tickets are $15-$25. 420-0813. www.womanswill.org 

EXHIBITIONS 

City of Berkeley Civic Center Art Exhibition Works by Berkeley artists on display Mon.-Fri. from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Martin Luther King Civic Center, 2180 Milvia St., through Dec. 11. 981-7533. 

The El Cerrito Art Association’s 33rd Annual Art Show Meet the Artists reception at 7:30 p.m. at the El Cerrito Community Center, 7007 Moeser Lane. Also Sat. from noon to 7:30 p.m. and Sun. from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.  

Art Attack! A special event for California Arts Day, from 6 to 8 p.m. at Eclectix Gallery, 10082 San Pablo Ave., El Cerrito. www.eclectix.com 

Tarra Lyons “Transmutation” and Joan Weiss “Reckless Blooms” Opening reception at 6 p.m. at Mercury 20 Gallery, 25 Grand Ave., Oakland. 701-4620. www.mercurytwenty.com 

“Longing for the Background” Thérèse Lahaie’s sculptures, photography and site-specific installations. Opening reception at 6 p.m. at Chandra Cerrito Contemporary, 25 Grand Ave., upper level, Oakland. Exhibition runs to Nov. 21. 415-577-7537. www.chandracerrito.com 

“The Human Face of Death Row” Art by Kevin Cooper, James Anderson and Edie Vargas, two of whom are on death row, and the third has a life sentence. Opening reception at 7 p.m. at Rock Paper Scissors Gallery, Telegraph and 23rd St., Oakland. www.nodeathpenalty.org 

“This Long Road” work by Derek Weisberg, Crystal Morey, and Ben Belknap. Reception at 7 p.m. at The Compound Gallery, 6604 San Pablo Ave., Oakland thecompoundgallery.com 

Robert Rickard, metal wall art at Christensen Heller Gallery, 5829 College Ave., Oakland, through Nov. 1. 655-5952. www.christensenheller.com 

“Embracing the Spirit” Works by artists who teach art to children. Opening reception at 6 p.m. at Museum of Children’s Art Gallery, 472 Water St., Oakland. 

23rd Annual Emeryville Art Exhibition Opening reception at 6 p.m. at 5815 Shellmound Way, Emeryville. Exhibition runs to Oct. 25. 652-6122. www.emeryarts.org 

“Faces and Places” Paintings by Damon Rodrigues. Opening reception at 1 p.m. at Alameda Museum, 2324 Alameda Ave., off Park St. 521-1233. www.alamedamuseum.org 

“Writer in Residence” Group art show in mixed media. Opening reception at 7 p.m. at Frank Bette Center for the Arts, 1601 Paru St., Alameda. 523-6957. www.freankbettecenter.org 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Banned Book Week at Berkeley Public Library with readings from 3 to 5 p.m. in the Library Plaza, 2090 Kittredge St. 981-6100. berkeleypubliclibrary.org 

“Celebrating Fr. Damien” A reading by Mary O’Donnell from her manuscript “The Exiles” an historical novel on the life of Fr. Damien of Molokai at 7 p.m. at St. Joseph the Worker Church, 1640 Addison St.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Highlands Meets Lowlands Andean and Venezuelan harp tradtions at 8:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $13-$15. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Macy Blackmand & The Mighty Fines at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $14. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Agualibre, LoCura at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $10, $8 with bike. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

WomenGig@Trieste with The Kitty Rose Trio at 8 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave. Suggested donation $10-$15. 548-5198. 

Rebecca Rust, cello, Friedrich Edelmann, bassoon, Bill Mayer, poet at 8 p.m. at MGiorgi Gallery, 2911 Claremont Cost is $15. 848-1228. 

The Good Friends Trio with Maria Marquez, Hugo Wainzinger and Jonathan Alford at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $15-$18. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Ramana Viera and Ensemble, Portuguese world music, at 8 p.m. at Art House, Gallery & Cultural Center, 2905 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $10-$15. 472-3170. 

Tony Marcus at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Damage, Inc., Paradise City, Aaron Pearson at 9 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $10. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

SATURDAY, OCT. 3 

CHILDREN  

Los Amiguitos de La Peña with Jerry Kennedy at 10:30 a.m. at La Peña. Cost is $5 for adults, $4 for children. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Saturday Stories “Jackson and Bud’s Bumpy Ride: America’s First Cross-Country Automobile Trip” read by author Elizabeth Koehler-Pentacoff at 1 p.m. at Museum of Children’s Art, 538 9th St., Oakland. 465-8770. www.mocha.org 

Active Arts Theatre “Strega Nona” Sat. and Sun. at various times at Julia Morgan Theater, 2640 College Ave, through Oct. 4. Tickets are $14-$18. 296-4433. activeartstheatre.org 

Babes in Toyland Puppet Show at 11 a.m. and 2 and 4 p.m. at at Children’s Fairyland, 699 Bellevue Ave., Oakland. 296-4433.  

THEATER 

Stone Soup Improv Comedy at 8 p.m. at Temescal Arts Center, 511 48th St. at Telegraph, Oakland. Cost is $7-$10. www.stonesoupimprov.com 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Exploring De Staebler Through Movement” A movement workshop with Muriel Maffe in conjunction with the exhibition “Steven De Staebler: The Sculptor’s Way” at 11 a.m. at The Richmond Art Center, 2540 Bartlett Ave., Richmond. Free. 620-6772. www.therac.org 

“Metaphysical Abstraction: Contemporary Approaches to Spiritual Content” Opening Reception at 5 p.m. at Berkeley Art Center. 644-6893. berkeleyartvcenter.org 

“Faces and Places” Paintings by Damon Rodrigues. Opening reception at 1 p.m. at Alameda Museum, 2324 Alameda Ave., off Park St. 521-1233. www.alamedamuseum.org 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Bay Area Poets Coalition open reading from 3 to 5 pm. at Strawberry Creek Lodge, 1320 Addison St. Park on the street. 527-9905. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

San Francisco Cabaret Opera “Solidarity” at 8 p.m.at Flux53 Theater/Artspace, 5306 Foothill Boulevard, Oakland. Tickets are $15-$20. 415-289-6877. www.goathall.org  

Festival of the Harps, featuring over 35 harp groups, from 5 to 9 p.m. at Chapel of the Chimes, 4499 Piedmont Ave. Oakland. Tickets are $10-$20. www.brownpapertickets.com 

Oakland East Bay Symphony “An Evening with Denyce Graves” at 8:30 p.m. at The Fox Theater, 1807 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. Tickets are $60-$125. www.oebs.org 

“Hand to Mouth” A song-play of the journey of the seed from soil to table with tenor John Duykers at 7:30 p.m. at Bucci’s Café, 6121 Hollis, Emeryville. Cost is $60, inlcudes dinner. For reservations call 547-4725. 

Jackie Payne, Dennis Wilmerth, Jada Simone in a free concert from 1 to 5 p.m. in People’s Park. Presented in conjunction with Single Payer Healthcare Not War. 

Concert for Labor & Human Rights with George Mann at 8 p.m. at Berkeley Fellowship Unitarian Universalists 1924 Cedar at Bonita. Suggested donation $5. 495-5132. www.bfuu.org 

The Marlenes at 6:30 p.m. at Bacheeso’s Garden Bistro, 2501 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 644-2035. 

Mucho Axe CD release party at 9 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $8-$10. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Carlos Oliveira and Ana Carbatti at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Youssoupha Sidibe at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $10-$13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com  

Strange Angel Blues Band at 7 p.m. at Chester’s Bay View Cafe, 1508 Walnut St. 849-9995. 

Walcott’s Medicine Show at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Sephardic Music Experience with Kat Parra at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $20. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Kurt Ribak Jazz Trio at 9:30 p.m. at Albatross, 1822 San Pablo Ave. Cost is $3. 843-2473. www.albatrosspub.com 

The Zony Mash with Horns at 9 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $10. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

SUNDAY, OCT. 4 

CHILDREN 

Octopretzel at Ashkenaz at 3 p.m. Cost is $4-$6. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Shepherd’s Crook, Zack Bateman & the Spirit in the Basement and others in a benefit for Children’s Hospital at 8 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $10. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

UpSurge: Evolution of UpSurge at 4:30 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $15. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Festival of Harps Fringe Festival with Ann and Charlie Heymann, Park Stickney and Rudiger Oppermann at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Compared to What, R&B, at 7 p.m. at Chester’s Bay View Cafe, 1508 Walnut St. 849-9995. 

MONDAY, OCT. 5 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Subterranean Shakespeare “Pericles” staged reading at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley Unitarian Fellowship, 1924 Cedar at Bonita. Tickets are $8. 276-3871. 

Jock Whitehouse “The Ledge of Quetzal, Beyond 2012: A Magical Adventure to Discover the Real Promise of the Mayan Prophcey” at 7:30 p.m. at Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave. 649-1320. 

The Art, Technology and Culture Colloquium with artist Camille Utterback on interactive art 7:30 p.m. at Sutardja Dai Main Auditorium, Sutardja Dai Hall, UC campus. 495-3505. atc.berkeley.edu 

Poetry Express with Sharon Coleman and Thadra Sheridan at 7 p.m. at Priya Restaurant, 2072 San Pablo Ave. 644-3977. 

TUESDAY, OCT. 6 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Po Bronson on “Nurtureshock: New Thinking About Children” at 7 p.m. at The Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St. TIckets are $10-$12. www.brownpapertickets.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Mark St. Mary Lousiana Blues and Zydeco at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cajun/Zydeco dance lesson at 8 p.m. Cost is $10. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Singers’ Open Mic with Ellen Hoffman at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $5. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Cecile Corbel at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

WEDNESDAY, OCT. 7 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Domestic Disturbance” Intergenerational group of artists on the difficulties of balancing public and private life. Opening reception at 5 p.m. at Worth Ryder Gallery, 116 Kroeber Hall, UC campus. Exhibit runs to Oct. 31.  

FILM 

“Suite Habana” at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $7-$10. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Richard Dawkins on “The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution at 7:30 p.m. at FCCB, in the sanctuary at 2345 Channing Way. Enter from courtyard. Tickets are $6-$15. www.brownpapertickets.com 

Cihan Tugal on “Passive Revolution: Absorbing the ISlamic Challenge to Capitalism” at 5:30 p.m. at University Press Books, 2430 Bancroft Way. 548-0585. www.universitypressbooks.com 

Berkeley Poetry Slam with host Charles Ellik and Three Blind Mice, at 8 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $7. 841-2082. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Wednesday Noon Concert at Hertz Hall, UC campus. Free. 642-4864. http://music.berkeley.edu 

Whiskey Brothers 45th Anniversary Party at 9 p.m. at Albatross, 1822 San Pablo Ave. 843-2473. www.albatrosspub.com 

Patrice Haan, harp, at 7 p.m. at Le Bateau Ivre Resturant, 2629 Telegraph Ave. 

Willy Porter at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Scott Huckabay, world music, at 8 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $10-$12. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Borinquen at 8 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $5-$10. 548-1159.  

Silver Kittens at 7 p.m. at Chester’s Bay View Cafe, 1508 Walnut St. 849-9995. 

THURSDAY, OCT. 8 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“Inventing a Masterwork: Bernard Maybeck and the First Church of Christ, Scientist, Berkeley, 1909-1911” with Robert Judson Clark at 7:30 p.m. at First Church of Christ, Scientist, 2619 Dwight Way. Tickets are $15, available from Berkeley Architectural Heritage. 841-2242. berkeleyheritage.com 

Poetry Flash with Rose Black, Rafaella del Bourgo and Joseph Zaccardi at 7:30 p.m. at Moe’s Books2476 Telegraph Ave. 849-2087. moesbooks.com 

Sherman Alexie on “War Dances” at 7:30 p.m. at First Congregational Oakland, 2501 Harrison St., at 26th, Oakland. Tickets are $6-$15. www.brownpapertickets.com 

Cornelia Nixon discusses “Jarrettsville” about brothers who fought on opposing sides in the Civil War at 7 p.m. at Diesel, 5433 College Ave., Oakland. 653-9965. www.dieselbookstore.com 

Individual World Poetry Slam Championships 7 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $10-$15. 841-2082. www.iwps.poetryslam.com 

Poetry Slam Thurs. and Fri. at 7 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center, with events from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. in the café. Cost is $8-$10. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Edward Espe Brown presents “The Complete Tassajara Cookbook: Recipes, Techniques, and Reflections from the Famed Zen Kitchen” at 7:30 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Ablaye Cissoko & Volker Goetze, African, at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $12. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Dr. K’s Home Grown Roots Revue with Culann’s Hounds, Lucia Comnes, and the Gas Men at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $15.50-$16.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Jazz Singers’ Soiree with Benny Watson Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

The Adrian Gormley Jazz Trio at 10 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

Country Joe McDonald’s Open Mic at 7 p.m. at BFUU, 1924 Cedar St.  

The Lost Cats at 7 p.m. at Chester’s Bay View Cafe, 1508 Walnut St. 849-9995. 

FRIDAY, OCT. 9 

THEATER 

Altarena Playhouse “The Nerd” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. at Altarena Playhouse, 1409 High St., Alameda, through Oct. 25. Tickets are $17-$20. 523-1553. www.altarena.org 

Berkeley Rep “American Idiot” at 2025 Addison St., through Nov. 1. Tickets are $32-$86. www.berkeleyrep.org 

Contra Costa Civic Theatre “Harvey” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. through Oct. 11 at 951 Pomona Ave., El Cerrito. Tickets are $18, $11 for 16 and under. 524-9132. www.cct.org 

Impact Theatre “See How We Are” A contemporary adaptation of “Antigone.” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m. at La Val’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid Ave., through Oct. 17. Tickets are $12-$20. impacttheatre.com 

Ragged Wing Ensemble “So Many Ways to Kill a Man” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m. at Metal Shop Theater, 2425 Stuart St. at Willard School, through Oct. 24. Tickets are $15-$30. 1-800-838-3006. www.raggedwing.org 

Round Belly Theatre Company “Orestia: Before the Furies” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 5 p.m. at Noodle Factory, 1255 26th St. at Union, Oakland. Suggested donation $10. www.roundbellytheatre.com 

Shotgun Players “This World In A Woman’s Hands” The story of the WWII Victory warships and the African-American women who built them, with live acoustic bass by Marcus Shelby. Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 5 p.m. at The Ashby Stage. 1901 Ashby Ave, through Oct. 18. Tickets are $18-$25. 841-6500. www.shotgunplayers.org 

Smokey Joe’s Cafe “The Songs of Lieber and Stoller” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m. at Alameda Elks Lodge, 2255 Santa Clara Ave., Alameda. Tickets are $30, Dinner adn show tickets are $55. 522-3428. 

Woman’s Will “The Clean House” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m. at Gaia Arts Center, 2120 Allston Way, through Oct. 10. Tickets are $15-$25. 420-0813. www.womanswill.org 

UC Dept. of TDPS “Dead Boys” A musical by Joe Goode in collaboration with composer Holcobe Waller, Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m., through Oct. 18 at Zellerbach Playhouse, UC campus. Tickets are $10-$15. 642-8827. 

FILM 

“It Happened One Night” at 8 p.m. at the Paramount Theatre, 2025 Broadway, Oakland. Tickets are $5. 1-800-745-3000. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Naomi Lowinsky and Al Averbach read their poetry at 7 p.m. at Nefeli Caffe, 1854 Euclid Ave., a little north of Hearst. 841-6374. 

Individual World Poetry Slam Championships 7 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $10-$15. 841-2082. www.iwps.poetryslam.com 

Poetry Slam at 7 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center, with events from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. in the café. Cost is $8-$10. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Deborah Tannen reads from “You Were Always Mom’s Favorite! Sisters in Conversation Throughout Their Lives” at 7:30 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

“When Dreams Are Interrupted” dance, music, art and spoken word on the WWII internment experience of Bay Area Japanese-Americans, Fri.-Sun. at 2 p.m. in the Berkeley residence of former internees. For more information see www.purplemoondance.org 

Artists Vocal Ensemble “Kirchenabendmusik” at 8 p.m. at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, 2300 Bancroft Way. Tickets are $10-$20. wwwave-music.org 

Laurie Lewis and Tom Rozum & Friends at 8 p.m. at UTunes Coffe House, First Unitarian Church of Oakland, 685 14th St., Oakland. Tickets are $14-$18, children ages 6-15, $5. www.utunescoffehouse.org 

Gateswingers Jazz Band at 7:30 p.m. at 33 Revolutions Record Shop and Cafe, 10086 San Pablo Ave. at Central, El Cerrito. 898-1836. 

Quijerema at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $10. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Hurricane Sam & The Hotsshots at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $12. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

LT3, in a benefit for Buffalo Field Campaign at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $15. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Lost Weekend at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

George Cole & Vive Le Jazz at 8 p.m. at Art House Gallery, 2905 Shattuck Ave.  Donation $10-$12. 472-3170. 

Green Machine at 10 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

7th Street Band at 9 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is 410. 548-1159.  

SATURDAY, OCT. 10 

CHILDREN  

Los Amiguitos de La Peña with Juanita Ulloa at 10:30 a.m. at La Peña. Cost is $5 for adults, $4 for children. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Babes in Toyland Puppet Show at 11 a.m. and 2 and 4 p.m. at at Children’s Fairyland, 699 Bellevue Ave., Oakland. 296-4433.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Joana Carneiro, Berkeley Symphony's new music director, in conversation with pianist and radio host Sarah Cahill at 3 p.m. at the Berkeley Public Library, 3rd flr. community room, 2090 Kittredge. 981-6236. 

Ernest Bloch Anniversary Symposium at 2 p.m. at 125 Morrison Hall, UC campus. Free.  

“Metaphysical Abstraction: Contemporary Approaches to Spiritual Content” Artist talk with Tom Marioni at 4 p.m. at Berkeley Art Center. Cost is $5. 644-6893. berkeleyartvcenter.org 

Joaquin J. Gonzalez on “Filipino American Faith in Action” at 3:30 p.m. at Eastwind Books of Berkeley, 2066 University Ave. 548-2350. 

Richard Russo in conversation with West Coast Live’s Sedge Thompson at 7:30 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

“When Dreams Are Interrupted” dance, music art and spoken word on the WWII internment experience of bay Area Japanese-Americans, at 2 p.m. in the Berkeley residence of former internees. For more information see www.purplemoondance.org 

Women’s Antique Vocal Ensemble 10th year anniversary concert at 8 p.m. at St. Albert Priory Chapel, 6172 Chabot Rd., Oakland. Tickets are $10-$15. www.wavewomen.org 

San Francisco Cabaret Opera “Solidarity” at 8 p.m.at Flux53 Theater/Artspace, 5306 Foothill Boulevard, Oakland. Tickets are $15-$20. 415-289-6877. www.goathall.org  

Ernest Bloch Anniversary Concert at 8 p.m. at Hertz Hall, UC campus. Free. 

The Bloom Project Piano and saxophone comprovisations with Thollem McDonas and Rent Romus at 8 p.m. at Trinity Chapel, 2320 Dana St. Tickets are $8-$12. 549-3864. 

Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra “The Concerto: An Adversarial Friendship” at 8 p.m. at First Congregational Church, 2345 Channing Way. Tickets are $25-$75. 415-392-4400. 

El Cerrito Free Folk Festival with Eric and Suzy Thompson, Leftover Dreams with Tony Marcus and Partice Haan, Euphonia, Misner and Smith, and many others, from noon to 10 p.m. at Windrush School, 1800 Elm St., El Cerrito. www.elcerritofolkfest.org 

Gamelan Sekar Jaya at 8 p.m. at Julia Morgan Theater, 2640 College Ave. Tickets are $10-$20. brownpapertickets.com 

Orquestra La Moderna Tradición at 9:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $12. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Lady Bianca Blues at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $14. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Reggae Angels at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $10-$13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com  

Kris Delmhorst at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Quijerema at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $15. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Sonic Safari at 7 p.m. at Chester’s Bay View Cafe, 1508 Walnut St. 849-9995. 

Moh Alileche Ensemble at 8 p.m. at Art House, Gallery & Cultural Center, 2905 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $10-$12. 472-3170. 

LT3 at 10 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

SUNDAY, OCT. 11 

CHILDREN 

Asheba at Ashkenaz at 3 p.m. Cost is $4-$6. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

EXHIBITIONS 

Sharyl Gates Solo Show of paintings in oils and acrylics. Opening reception at 4 p.m. at the Albany Community Center Foyer, 1249 Marin Ave., Albany.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

ENDdependence Poets honor Indigenous La Raza Day at 6 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $5-$15. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Opera Piccola Play Reading & Open Mic Poetry at 4 p.m. at Opera Piccola Performing Arts, 2946 MacArthur Blvd., Oakland. Free, donations accepted. www.opera-piccola.org  

Anna Thomas presents “Love Soup: 160 All-New Vegetarian Recipes from the Author of The Vegetarian Epicure” at 4 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

San Francisco Cabaret Opera “Solidarity” at 7 p.m.at Flux53 Theater/Artspace, 5306 Foothill Boulevard, Oakland. Tickets are $15-$20. 415-289-6877. www.goathall.org  

“When Dreams Are Interrupted” dance, music art and spoken word on the WWII internment experience of bay Area Japanese-Americans, at 2 p.m. in the Berkeley residence of former internees. For more information see www.purplemoondance.org 

Chamber Music Sundaes Program of String Chamber Music at 3 p.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. Tickets at the door are $20-$25. 415-753-2792. www.chambermusicsundaes.org 

Sundays @ Four Chamber Music “Two Pianists” with Luis Magalhaes and Nina Schumann at 4 p.m. at Crowden Music Center, 1475 Rose St. Tickets are $15, free for children 18 and under. 559-6910. info@crowden.org 

Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra “The Concerto: An Adversarial Friendship” at 7:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church, 2345 Channing Way. Tickets are $25-$75. 415-392-4400. 

Peter Rowan Bluegrass Band Fundraiser for the Stupa Peace Park at 1:30 p.m. at Berkeley Unity Church, 2401 LeConte at Scenic. Tickets are $35-$40. 831-425-4466. 

Darryl Rowe & His Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Hipline Extravaganza, belly dance, at 7:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $12. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Terrence Brewer “Goovin Waves” A Wes Montgomery Tribute at 4:30 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $15. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Bill Staines at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

The Funkenauts at 10 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

Compared to What, R&B, at 7 p.m. at Chester’s Bay View Cafe, 1508 Walnut St. 849-9995. 

Bill Evans and Megan Lynch at 3 p.m. at Wisteria Ways, 383 61st St., Oakland. Donations $15-$20. Reservations strongly recommended. info@WisteriaWays.org 

Oakland East Bay Symphony, celebrating Michael Morgan’s 20th anniversary as music director, will present “An Evening with Denyse Graves,” a preseason benefit for the symphony’s education and outreach programs, this Saturday, beginning at 5 p.m. with a champagne reception including special guests, followed by dinner with entertainment by Charles Spikes and Friends at 6 p.m., a Gala Concert at 8:30, and a dance with dessert reception at 10:30, at the Fox Theatre in uptown Oakland. 

The concert program includes Leonard Bernstein’s “Overture to Candide,” Ravel’s song cycle Scheherazade, Gershwin’s An American in Paris, Bizet’s Carmen, Suite No. 1 Prelude & Aragonaise—and with Denyse Graves, “Près de remparts de Seville” (from Carmen), Saint-Saëns’ “Mon coeur s’ouvre a ta voix” (from Samson and Delilah), Puccini’s intermezzo from Manon Lescaut, Francesco Cilea’s “Acerba volutta” from Adriana Lecouv-reur and the spiritual “Every Time I Feel the Spirit.”  

Denyse Graves, who has been called “an opera superstar of the 21st century,” is most closely associated with the title role of Carmen—her signature and debut role at the Metropolitan Opera during the 1995–96 season. 

Graves is a native of Washington, D.C., where she attended the Duke Ellington School for the Performing Arts; she studied at the Oberlin College Conservatory of Music and the New England Conservatory, receiving her doctorate from Oberlin. Ebony Magazine named her one of 50 Leaders of Tomorrow.  

Graves received the Marian Anderson Award, presented by Marian Anderson, and sang at the tribute honoring the 70th anniversary of Marian Anderson’s appearance at the Lincoln Memorial. She hosts a weekly show on XM satellite radio, “Voce di donna.” 

Also from Washington, D.C.—where he bagan conducting at 12—and an Oberlin alumnus, Michael Moore studied at Tanglewood with Gunther Schuller and Seiji Ozawa, working there with Leonard Bernstein. He debuted as a conductor in 1982 at the Vienna State Opera. In 1986 he was chosen by Sir George Solti as assistant conductor of the Chicago Symphony. That year, Bernstein invited him to debut with the New York Philharmonic. In addition to the Oakland East Bay Symphony, Morgan directs the Oakland Youth Orchestra, the Sacramento Philharmonic and Festival Opera in Walnut Creek, and teaches the graduate conducting class at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. 

Oakland East Bay Symphony’s educational and outreach programs serve more than 24,000 East Bay students annually.

Opera tenor John Duykers, no stranger to unconventional performance, will join forces with musician and composer Miguel Frasconi, founder of the Glass Orchestra, in a “sneak preview” and dinner to show excerpts from (and to benefit) Hand to Mouth, the work-in-progress song-play they’re developing together with director Missy Weaver, including additional songs by Charles Shere and artwork by sculptor John Watrous. 

The show starts at 7:30 p. m. this Saturday at Bucci’s Cafe, 6121 Hollis St. in Emeryville ($60 for dinner and performance; reservations: 547-4725), followed by two dinner “sneak previews” on Sunday at the French Garden Restaurant in Sebastopol. Information: http://agapeperformanceart.blogspot.com. 

Duykers and Weaver spoke with reflectiveness and wit of the traveling they both do to performances and educational events in other cities—and how they’ve balanced being constantly in motion by living on a farm in Sebastopol with friends, the proprietors of the French Garden Restaurant, raising produce that’s cooked at home or in the restaurant, or taken to farmers markets.  

Duykers mentioned in particular the veritable ragout of this performance, drawing on a wide array of ingredients to “celebrate the journey of the seed from soil to plate and ... the inner thoughts of a farmer as he ponders the meaning of his life’s work": a song from a poem by James Whitcomb Riley ("Little Brook,” from “Brook Song,” a lovesong from a seed to a brook); the instruments and media Frasconi and Duykers will play—and play with—(glass goblets and bowls, toy piano, kalimbas, cooking and eating utensils, farm implements, electronic keyboards, video and audio playback,computer); the songs by composer Charles Shere, whose music and writing is familiar to Berkeley listeners; Watrous’ artwork and sculture, which often include installation of lights; the element of improvisation Duykers, Frasconi and Weaver are committed to—and writings by Duykers, including reflections on his life, on growing up in Butte, Montana, the copper-mining “richest hill on earth,” then making a career in music and performance that has taken him around the world—and down on the farm. “I share the genesis of my passion for farming and singing, and the trials and triumphs related to these passions,” Duykers wrote of the song-play, adding he’d sing “of culinary addictions and delights, and the wonders of the earth.”  

Duykers and Weaver have worked together many times, including on Berkeley Symphony’s premiere of Kurt Rohlde and Amanda Moody’s oratorio, Bitter Harvest, about farmers battling with agricultural genetic engineering by Monsanto. Frasconi has collaborated with the other two, notably on an opera, Trespass Knot, with libretto by Weaver, as well as “spontaneous compositions” for events like the San Francisco Song Festival. 

John Duykers has sung major roles for 40 years in opera houses all over the world, has premiered new works by Philip Glass and Robert Wilson, and created the role of Chairman Mao in Peter Sellars’ original production of John Adams’ Nixon in China, as well as with performance artist George Coates. Miguel Frasconi, living in New York, but long a Bay Area resident, has scored many dance performances, including work by Alonzo King and Anna Halprin, shadowplay theater pieces by Larry Reed’s Shadowlight Productions and has performed with Morton Subotnick. Missy (Melissa) Weaver has designed and staged works for the Paul Dresher Ensemble, performanceartist Rinde Eckart and composer Clark Suprynowicz.

Pinball machines are really a kind of kinetic sculpture,” said Lawrence Zartarian of the Pacific Pinball Museum in Alameda, as he and museum founder Michael Scheiss, both Berkeley residents, gave a tour of the museum on Santa Clara Avenue, where visitors can pay a set price for free play on the dozens of vintage machines, as well as check out art exhibits and find out about the history and science of pinball. 

Pinball’s history of technological and artistic development will be the special theme of the third annual Pacific Pinball Exhibition, presented by the museum in association with the Pinball Revival Company of Novato, from this Friday through Sunday, at the Marin County Civic Center Exhibition Hall, just north of San Rafael. The exhibition is the biggest pinball show anywhere and features tournaments, speakers, clinics, vendors, raffles and antique and unique games, including one of the museum’s “visible” pinball machines, made of Plexiglass, which shows its electromagnetic workings while being played, and vintage Woodrail games of the ’40s and ’50s from the newly acquired collection of Gordon A. Hasse. Admission gives exposition attendees free play on the hundreds of machines from the museum’s collection, which now number about 650. 

There’s more than a little local history to the museum itself. A game arcade known as Lucky Ju Ju (“Lucky—not bad!—Ju Ju,” Scheiss points out, smiling), once a stroll from the Neptune Beach amusement park that flourished on Crab Cove from 1917 until 1939, which the nonprofit museum has begun to restore and refurbish with vintage jukeboxes, an old movie theater popper and bottles of cola.  

The museum’s being expanded, too, into a long storefront, which was once the Record Gallery, with an entrance on Webster. “It was owned by an old Alameda character named Fud,” Scheiss said. Fud was reputedly something of a hip mentor to the young Jim Morrison, later of the Doors, when his Navy brass father was stationed here. 

Scheiss and Zartarian—both collectors who’ve donated their scores of pinball machines to the museum—spoke with enthusiasm, erudition and wit about the history of the game that inspired cautionary tales from generations of mothers. Remotely descended from an ancient Greek game—“like bocce ball,” said Scheiss, “but played up an incline, arching balls over holes”—pinball’s more direct ancestor was Bagatelle, a game popular with the French aristocracy during the reign of Louis XVI. Played at the Château de Bagatelle, it employed a cue stick to shoot marbles that would be caught by arrays of pins on a board “the size of a grape tray,” according to Zartarian. “Like the nobility taking croquet indoors as billiards, with pockets,” said Scheiss.  

In America, pinball’s true home, Montague Redgrave developed the ball shooter in 1870. Pinball quite literally got legs in the 1890s, joining the coin-op phonograph as an amusement in saloons and pharmacies.  

Pinball was electrified in the ’30s, the Bally Bumper added on, and finally, in 1947, the flipper was invented, giving the player ball control and making pinball a game of skill. 

Going through the museum’s warehouse at Alameda Point is a good way to get into the game: pinball machines are being overhauled and restored constantly there. Scheiss and Zartarian eagerly show some of the unique games—or survivors—including the biggest pinball machine ever, Hercules, which shoots cue balls with cue sticks, quite the opposite of Bagatelle’s marbles.  

Back at the museum, the first licensed game, Tommy, is on display. “The Who gave a boost to pinball with their rock opera,” said Scheiss. But within a decade or so, video games had overtaken the electromagnetic marvels of pinball. 

While vintage machines were being discarded, European collectors were discovering Americana. “The lion’s share of jukeboxes are in Europe,” Scheiss noted. But Pacific Pinball Museum is on a mission to bring pinball back home. “We want to become the Smithsonian of pinball,” said Scheiss. He then launched into a funny tale about visiting the venerable national institute and looking for three hours in the American Heritage wing for pinball, only to be shown a Pac Man game. 

Scheiss went through a local odyssey before becoming a pinball collector. A Berkeley High alum, he met his wife, Melissa Harmon (who has written an essay—“A feminist essay!” Scheiss declares—on the fashions worn by the women represented on pinball backglasses), at the Berkeley Film House, “a film commune in an old frat that was going under—but the food killed it! Half wanted macrobiotics, the others, meat and potatoes.” He organized the first annual Berkeley Film Festival, making films—“eating razor blades in one, instead of slicing a woman’s eye, like Dali and Buñuel in their first film ... in 1972, I won the Mayor’s Film Award with The Cretin. I doubt the mayor ever saw it! He reminisced about pinball at the Silver Ball ‘on Durant, above the the art store—aspiring artists would go upstairs!’” 

Showing the backglasses of French-born pinball artist Christian Marche—“like back to the home of Bagatelle”—whose pointy, angularcaricature figures and bright, contrasting colors made his name in the genre, but who had a wide range of style and a master illustrator’s eye for composition—or talking about “Lil Ju Ju,” the 1947 Spartan Manor Travel Trailer that’s become the museum’s equivalent of a Library Bookmobile, taking pinball games and ajukeboxto schools and events—Scheiss and Zartarian demonstrate that special mix of collectors’ doting care with the zeal of educators—and just pure enthusiasm—required to lift a relic of craft, technology and entertainment out of the recent past—often the time most quickly forgotten—and bring it back to life by showing its true place in popular culture, something obscured by the game’s plebian associations. Watching either of these two directors of the Pacific Pinball Museum play a game, jostling the machine with loving care to avoid a “tilt!"—is to know the venerable sport and its equipment are literally in good hands.  

PACIFIC PINBALL EXPO 

10 a.m.–10 p.m., Friday, Oct. 2; 10 a.m.–midnight, Saturday, Oct.3; 10 a.m.–8 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 4. at the Marin Civic Center Exhibition Hall, San Rafael. $15–$25 a day; $35–$45 for the weekend. 

PACIFIC PINBALL MUSEUM 

713 Santa Clara Ave., Alameda. Open Tuesday through Sunday (Friday until midnight). $10 adults; $5 for kids under age 12. 205-9793. www.pacificpinball.org.

Working—or rather, slaving—in Terre Haute, architect Willum (Misha Madison) is having a birthday party. From his lady love Tansy (Jillian Seagrave), he receives a card for an 8-year-old (“I couldn’t find one that said 34”) and a kind of ultimatum: she’ll be leaving for D.C. to be a TV weatherwoman (“There’s something bigger than us—meteorology!”). He also receives a notice of an audit from the IRS and, from his cynical, hard-drinking theater-critic friend (clearly a realistic role) Axel (Christopher Ciabattoni), a ration of, well, acid bons mots—manque for his milquetoast demeanor. (Willum’s the sort of guy who leaves an outgoing voice message, “I’m not at home—but the front door is always open!”) 

Willum also gets a couple of birthday visits: one, which he isn’t particularly looking forward to, from his eccentric but demanding boss, Warnock Walgrave, aka “Ticky” (Matt Beall), and his overly polite wife, Clelia (Judy Beall) with their high-strung, conniving kid Thor (Noah Han), and another, heralded by an answering machine message, from Rick Steadman (Tim Beagley), the guy from Wisconsin he owes his life to, but has never met, face-to-face. 

Such is the set-up for Larry Shue’s popular screwball comedy-cum-farce, The Nerd, directed by Richard Robert Bunker, in mid-run at Altarena Playhouse in Alameda. 

Bunker, in his program notes, defines Shue’s strong comedic suit as “silly and farcical circumstances, explored by realistic characters with ‘real-world’ problems.” Actually, couldn’t that be any of us? What’s refreshing is for it to be placed in the Midwest or rural South (as in Shue’s The Foreigner) in the ’70s. 

It’s maybe the comic drift of certain situations as much—or more—as the one-liners, rejoinders and resolutions that provoke the deepest laughter: Willum, who’s wondered for years what the heroic soldier from another unit, who found him unconscious behind the lines and carried him to safety, must be like—then discovers Rick, emerging from a monster suit (Rick somehow thinking it was costume dress), who wrecks his birthday with preposterous party games, getting quickly stuck to him through Rick’s loathsome, unwavering loyalty for life, unable to cue his oblivious benefactor in on the horror inspired in all ... attacked by a ravening Nerd indeed. 

(The character of The Nerd touches the hem of political incorrectness, which also disarms the other characters. Confronted by such a vehemently sincere Yahoo, what can they do? It invites comparison with an old Barry Humphries—Dame Edna—character, supposedly his brash, learning-disorderly cousin, an embarrassment to all but his own gleeful, trumpeting self. It also covertly brings up a fundamental theatrical question: who’s acting? And who’s sincere?) 

Attempting to de-nerd his already unwieldy existence, Willum finds Nice doesn’t work—and discovers, too, he can’t play possum: this nerd’s for him. Unable to sit out the infestation, Willum and his friends call in a little help from an unseen cohort who has a plan to try and out-provincialize Rick—but, like a carny mirror image, the Nerd merely leers back distortedly. 

From party games with shoes and socks off and paper bags over heads (funny that the same playwright who in The Foreigner puts on the Klan has the Hoosiers don hoods) to a supposedly secret Terre Haute insider ritual that resemble a mangy dance for tourists by “natives” paid below scale, the slapstick gets goofier, the normal folk reveal more chagrin—and Rick, in his element, reaches for an apotheosis: a kind of normalcy. 

Special Ed teacher-by-day Bunker’s direction (he’s essayed The Foreigner , too, for Altarena) keeps what could be a ragged show from an overreaching script crisp and funny; the cast comes through as individuals and ensemble. And it’s a perfect role for comic actor Beagley, who’s played proto-nerds, outsiders, even tricksters before—like Groucho in The Cocoanuts at CCCT, a production Jillian Seagrave was featured in, too. 

THE NERD 

8 p.m., Friday and Saturday, and at 2 p.m., Sunday, through Oct. 25 at Altarena Playhouse, 1409 High St., Alameda. $17–$20. 523-1553. www.altarena.org.

Ever since Rodin conveyed the illusion of movement by modeling a Walking Man without head or arms in the 1870s, so many modern sculptors have adopted the partial human form that it has become endemic to modern sculpture. For at least three decades, Berkeley sculptor De Staebler has been forming sculpted, fragmented images that signify human incompleteness and yearning for wholeness. 

Like many leading Bay Area artists, De Staebler had initial exhibitions of his work at the Richmond Art Center. It was also there that he received the first of his many awards. In the 1960s, when still in his 30s, he created the sanctuary and crucifix at Newman Center here in Berkeley—one of the truly successful ecclesiastical artworks of our time. It is worth noting that this artist was a student of theology at Princeton before coming to Berkeley to study sculpture. The present show is a stunning installation of numerous standing fragmented figures.These pieces are made of clay, which is the crust of the earth itself. Clay, or terra cotta—Latin for “cooked earth”—has an ancient history in human civilization. 

De Staebler’s sculptures stand like totems of an ancient culture, defiant witnesses of endurance. They have no gender but are endowed by the sculptor with a sense of the universal human condition. All these pieces are assembled from previously fired fragments, many of them long buried by the artist over a period of some 40 years on the hillside of his studio and home in Berkeley. Proceeding like an archaeologist, De Staebler then excavated the pieces and placed them on armatures to construct new sculptures with rods, pins and glue. He never resorted to painting or glazing the clay but derived the color from pigments and oxides, applied prior to single firing. This exhibition, consisting of all these fragments of the past, can be seen as compendium of a life’s work. 

The sculptures are expertly installed, standing against light gray walls. Some of them are placed against a slow curve, which emphasizes their vertical stance. Many of his figures are shafts with long vertical forms, suggesting legs, visible torsos and, small heads. “Figure with Curved Leg,” assembled in 2009, is a six-and-a-half-foot silent statue, whose open legs create a dialogue between solid and void kept in equilibrium, which this artist has achieved by fragmentation.

In its 136 years, the University of California’s Berkeley campus has seen many buildings come and go. Among them, North Hall was the only one to have merited a demolition ceremony attended by the UC president and 700 alumni. 

Like South Hall, which housed the library, museums, and laboratories, North Hall was designed in the Second Empire style by Scottish-born architect David Farquharson. But unlike the brick-and-stone South Hall, North Hall was built in wood to house classrooms, assembly room, and faculty rooms, with the basement devoted to student activities. 

As early as 1902, North Hall was identified as a fire trap by Berkeley Fire Chief James Kenney, yet the building continued to be the center of student life until 1917, when it was ceremonially torn down, President Benjamin Ide Wheeler striking the first blow. 

For 18 of North Hall’s best years, its most enduring fixture was an Irishman by the name of James Tait, whom the students called “Jimmy Potatoes.” 

James Tait (1865-1906) was the janitor of North Hall. He immigrated to the United States in 1888 and must have made his way directly to Berkeley, for the following year he was listed in the city directory as a laborer on the UC grounds. 

It didn’t take long for Tait to become a student-body favorite. As his obituary in the San Francisco Call would attest, “his keen Irish wit, unfailing good humor, genuine interests in the doings of the undergraduate host, and the faculty of making friends with those of high and low degree served to give ‘Jimmy Potatoes’ distinction that mightier, richer men cannot acquire.” 

A thrifty man, in 1894 Tait managed to buy land on Henry Street near Vine and erected on it a very small house. Whether he lived in it or not is unclear, since the city directory sometimes indicated North Hall as his residence. 

In the late summer of 1897, Tait married Bella White (1876-1963), newly arrived from Ireland. Acquiring a lot at 2022 Delaware St., he moved his Henry Street house to the new location and enlarged it. 

Newspaper accounts of the period reported that Tait did everything to make his young bride comfortable in her new home. Unhappily, Bella was homesick, and within a few weeks of the marriage fell into melancholy so morbid that she couldn’t be safely left alone. In early October 1897 she was taken to the East Bay Sanitarium in Oakland. Upon her discharge three weeks later, her husband promised to send her back to Ireland and made arrangements for a married woman of their acquaintance to accompany her there. The night before the two women were to depart, Bella disappeared. She was found the next morning lying in a muddy pond, in a condition describ-ed as “hopelessly insane.” 

The trip to Ireland was cancelled, and Mrs. Tait was hospitalized again. On Feb. 18, 1898, the San Francisco Call announced, “The Californian-Occident baseball game will take place on the campus tomorrow morning at 11:15. The proceeds of the game will go to the benefit of James Tait, better known as ‘Jimmy,’ the janitor of North Hall, who recently had the misfortune of having to send to the insane asylum his wife, who had come all the way from Ireland to wed him.” 

Somehow, Bella Tait pulled through with no further incident. In April 1899 she gave birth to the couple’s daughter, Sadie. Their son, John, was born in June 1900. By then, Jimmy Tait had been twice enshrined in the university’s Blue and Gold yearbook. The 1900 edition carried an unsigned four-stanza poem titled “Jimmy,” illustrated by a photograph of the janitor on the stairs of North Hall, feather duster in hand. The poem’s first two stanzas convey the writer’s sentiment succinctly: 

What is yon bright and stately being, 

Which, with movement slow and calm, 

Telleth o’er the moments fleeing 

Ere he sound the loud alarm? 

It is Jimmy. 

Now with pail and now with shovel, 

Like an angel, bright is he, 

As he cleans and sweeps this hovel, 

Making it divine for me. 

It is Jimmy. 

Elsewhere in the same yearbook, an irreverent two-page cartoon titled “The Race for Popularity” depicted 11 men haphazardly staggering through a footrace. Ten of them, identified by name and tagged “also ran,” were members of the faculty. Ahead at the finish line, wearing patched trousers and carrying a broom and a smile, was the one person who needed no introduction: “Jimmy” Tait. 

“The cartoon was not appreciated by the authorities,” reported the San Francisco Call on Feb. 20, 1906, “and, with other objectionable matter, was regarded as ground for the suspension of the editor and manager of the publication. Jimmy Potatoes’ fame was largely increased by the affair, and he became more than ever an idol of the campus.” 

Indeed, Tait made an appearance in Joy Lichtenstein’s book For the Blue and Gold: A Tale of Life at the University of California (1901), where an account of the final exams produced this reminiscence: “Before they knew it they were all through, and the erstwhile echoing corridors of North Hall quieted down. For a while would ‘Jimmy Potatoes’ cease from tolling the North Hall recitation bell.” 

By 1902, James Tait had been reassigned from North Hall to gardening duties in the campus greenhouses and along its walks. The 1903 Blue and Gold lovingly marked his new role: “The Conservatory dates from the year of the Midwinter Fair. It is an appanage of the Agricultural and Botanical departments, and contains tropical or delicate plants, many being quite rare specimens, such as the celebrated Jimmy Potatoes, imported at great expense from Ireland.” 

When California Hall was completed in 1905, Tait became janitor of this modern edifice. There, in early February 1906, he was unpacking books when one of his hands received a scratch. He paid no attention to the cut until his arm began to swell. Alarmed, he consulted Dr. George Reinhardt, the university physician, and was sent to Providence Hospital in Oakland, where he died two weeks later. 

On the day of his death, Feb. 19, the campus flag was lowered to half mast, and President Wheeler’s office released an official announcement. Almost immediately, Professor Albin Putzker, head of the German Department, initiated a fundraising drive for the benefit of the widow. His call was taken up by the Daily Californian, which proposed to raise $1,000 in order to retire the $900 mortgage on the Tait home. On March 10, the UC varsity baseball team played a benefit game against St. Mary’s College of Oakland. The University Cadet Band provided music, and President Wheeler threw the first pitch, attracting 600 spectators. A month later, the band held a moonlight benefit concert of popular songs in the Greek Theatre. 

And what of the bereaved family? They remained on Delaware Street for another 50 years. In 1908, Bella Tait married Stephen Belford, another Irish laborer who worked for a while as campus gardener. In 1909, they constructed a larger house next door, on land acquired by James Tait in 1901. John Tait, who spent his entire life in the two family homes, died in 1966, exactly 60 years after the death of his father, the celebrated janitor of North Hall. 

The Tait house will be one of the attractions on a walking tour to be led by Daniella Thompson this Saturday, Oct. 3. See details on the BAHA website, www.berkeleyheritage.com. 

Contracting is called contracting because it’s about writing contracts. It’s about sales, which are contractual. Contractors aren’t builders, they are people who write and perfect (that’s the legal term for bringing to completion) contracts. We’ve come to think of contractors as people who wear tool belts, but for anyone who has ever hired a contractor only to find them inexplicably absent for the duration of the job, this understanding of a contractor’s role in building can prevent woe and direct you through a morass of remodeling problems. 

Unless specified, a contractor isn’t obliged to have anything more to do with your job than to sign the contract, take a deposit and wish you well. And, of course, make sure that somebody does the job in accordance with the specific provisions of the contract (your contract had lots of specifics, right? like assuring the contractor would call you, talk to you, tell you everything was O.K. and they have enjoyed the time they shared with you). It’s a cruel world out there, and then, your health care gets voted on by congress. Time to wake up and smell the sawdust. 

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that contract law allows contractors to defraud the public and vacate promises of work. It does not, but it says very little about who you have actually hired. Ask around, and you will find more than a few folks who, having hired a given contractor, often because of their trust in that particular person, later found themselves working with a gang of subordinates who cast a sorry or limp shadow of the absent hero. 

So, it’s a good idea, when you sit down with the contractor you’re hoping to work with to ask whether they will be doing the work. Often, the answer will be that they will be checking on the work from time to time, but they won’t actually be swinging a hammer. If you never ask, you might never know until the work is well under way. 

One can specify in a contract that one wishes the contractor to be on-site and perform certain services (within some reasonable bounds, indentured servitude now being largely outlawed), but this is a very slippery slope, and I would argue that it’s always better to start off by hiring someone to do things the way that they are accustomed to doing them. Then the marriage has a chance. 

Many small contractors (2–5 person firms) will be on-site much of the time anyway, and if you’re looking for that boutique experience, you might want to stay with a highly ranked person in a company of roughly that size. Once a contractor has more than, say, 6 or 7 persons on staff, nobody is going to see them all that much of the time, since the lion’s share of their energies will be going into keeping all those other people productive, efficient and paid.  

As contractors, our lives and days change as we evolve into business-folk. We change hats and clothing, manners and venues. Many don’t make the switch. Some back up, drop down to handyman status or leave entirely. Some find the upward-mobility a natural ride. It varies with each contractor and each has their own gifts and curses.  

Discerning these attributes should be the mission of the consumer. Shopping for contractors is like figuring out what kind of suit you’re looking for (or overall, or ripped tee). Will they be on-site? Will they supervise well? Will I get a good deal? Will the work be to my liking? Will I enjoy the experience and feel taken care of? These needs will vary with the buyer (yes, you will bring much to this table) and the contractor. Small can be very intimate and make a lot of room for positive change and adaptation, even though it can be slower. Larger firms are often quicker and can usually tackle tougher problems. They may also have plusses that a small one does not, such as a connection with an engineer or architect. 

There is no one model for everyone, but there is one element in this equation that is worth asking and learning about and that is the job-site foreman or superintendent. 

These mini-contractors are both employee and boss. They are liaison and worker. Often, they are a job boss (telling everyone else what to do) and organizer, but above all, they are yours. These sergeants in the field of contracting hold sufficient rank to do all the things your absent contractor cannot, and, often as not, will do better carpentry and clean up than the boss.  

Now just as contractors vary, a foreman comes in a variety of shapes and sizes. Meeting a proposed foreman during the shopping phase is an awfully good idea. If there are several foremen (these can, of course, be women) then meet them all, just in case there’s a switch. It is quite common, in my experience for these persons to be quite similar in a given company since they will reflect the predelictions of the boss (ever meet two or three ex-husbands of the same woman?). 

The job foreman is empowered to make a range of decisions, but this will have its limits. They may have to consult with the general contractor or wait for a call back on some issues, but this is a finer point. The take-home message here is that if you have a foreman dedicated to your job and you like them, you will often be happier than the person who has the contractor on-site every day. The politics of this are sort of like good-cop, bad cop. There is face-saving too. The foreman “feels” like they belong to you when they’re on your site and they can “seem” to go to bat against the contractor to get you more of this or less of that because they have an investment in you and the outcome of “their” job. It’s very much like organizational politics and you’re the winner if you have a stalwart foreman that you like and with whom you have a good working relationship. 

If you are thinking of working with a mid-sized contractor who does not use a foreman or superintendent system, think again. This is often a sign that the contractor has either not matured organizationally, or is just cheap (which is also foolish). For contractors, spending enough to keep people happy is smart business, and no successful contractor can last long with a string of unhappy clients dragging behind them. The ones that shine, are those who spend enough to keep the jobs moving along at an appropriate pace and keep good replicas of themselves on-site to create, solve and please.

THURSDAY, OCT. 1 

Berkeley Film Foundation Grant winners honored at 6 p.m. at the Fantasy Building, 2600 Tenth St. Donation $100 benefits the Berkeley Film Foundation. filmberkeley.com 

Jane Goodall “Reason for Hope” in a benefit for International Child Resource, at 8 p.m. at Julia Morgan Theater, 2640 College Ave. Reception at 6 p.m. Tickets are $25-$200. 800-838-3006. brownpapertickets.com 

Berkeley Path Wanderers Annual Meeting with Zara McDonald, founder and director of the Felidae Conservation Fund for the protection of big cats, at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St. www.berkeleypaths.org 

Celebrating 50 Years of Free Speech Readings from banned books with Mollie Katzen, Marissa Moss, Elisa Kleven David Lance Goines and others at 7 p.m. at Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave., Kensington. 524-3043. 

Berkeley Public Library Branch Renovation Program Come share ideas, meet the architects, and learn about the projects’ scopes at 6:30 p.m. at South Branch, 1901 Russell St. at MLK, Jr. Way. www.berkeleypubliclibrary.org 

“Rational Empire and the Cuban Five” with Dr. Michael Parenti at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists. 1924 Cedar at Bonita. Donation $10-$15. 219-0092.  

Circle of Concern Vigil meets on West Lawn of UC campus across from Addison and Oxford, Thurs. at noon and Sun. at 1 p.m. to oppose UC weapons labs contracts. 848-8055. 

Fitness Class for 55+ at 9:15 a.m. at Jewish Community Center, 1414 Walnut St. 848-0237. 

FRIDAY, OCT. 2 

Recipe for Hope Fundraiser for Alameda County Community Food Bank with silent and live auctions, entertainment, food and wine at 7 p.m. at the Hillside Club, Cedar at Arch. Tickets are $60 in advance from The Craftsman Home, 655-6503. 

Rainbow Ramblers Explore the magic of a full moon on a sunset moonrise walk for the LGBTQ community. Bring a sack dinner. Well-behaved dogs on leashes welcome. Meet at 6 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center. 544-2233. 

Berkeley School Volunteers New Volunteer Orientation from 10 to 11 a.m. at 1835 Allston Way. Bring a photo ID and two references to the orientation. Returning volunteers do not need to attend. For further information 644-8833. 

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon with Jeff Robinson on “Amazon Wildlife Photography Cruise” Luncheon at 11:45 a.m. for $15, speech at 12:30 p.m., at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant St. For information and reservations call 527-2173.  

“Celebrating Fr. Damien” A reading by Mary O’Donnell from her manuscript “The Exiles” an historical novel on the life of Fr. Damien of Molokai at 7 p.m. at St. Joseph the Worker Church, 1640 Addison St.  

Single Payer Healthcare Not War' Speakers’ Forum and open mic at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Plaza on Telegraph at Haste.  

“Just Begun” Community Rejuvenation Project presents their summer work, including a documentary, photographs, mural painting, and gardening projects in East Oakland, at 7 p.m. at Oakland Green Youth media Center, 2781 Telegraph, Oakland. communityrejuvenation.blogspot.com 

Red Cross Blood Drive from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at 1701 Harbor Bay Pkwy., Alameda. To schedule an appointment go to www.helpsavealife.org 

Kensington First Friday from 6 to 9 p.m. with art, music and refreshments from the merchants of Colusa Circle and The Arlington. 525-6155. 

Tibetan Buddhist Meditation Instruction Pointing Out the Nature of Mind with Rigzin Dorje Rinpoche at 7 p.m. at Rudramandir, 830 Bancroft Way at Sixth St. Donation $20. http://bayvajra.inf 

Berkeley Women in Black weekly vigil from noon to 1 p.m. at Bancroft and Telegraph. Our focus is human rights in Palestine. 548-6310. 

Stand With Us Stand for Peace Stand with Israel vigil every Friday from noon to 1 p.m. at Bancroft and Telegraph. www.sfvoiceforisrael.org 

SATURDAY, OCT. 3 

Berkeley Architectural Heritage Fall Walking Tour North-Central Berkeley Cost is $10-$15, or $40-$50 for the series. Advance registration required. 841-2242. berkeleyheritage.com  

Berkeley Historical Society Walk Marin Avenue North Early 20th Century Berkeley Hills, led by Paul Grunland at 10 a.m. with an optional picnic afterwards. Cost is $8-$10. For reservations and starting point, call 848-0181.  

Walking Tour of Old Oakland Explore the 9th and Washington St. district. Meet at 10 a.m. in front of Ratto’s, 821 Washington St. Tour lasts 90 minutes. Reservations can be made by calling 238-3234.  

Aztec Run for Education sponsored by the Spanish Speaking Citizens’ Foundation at 8 a.m. at Laney College Track, 900 Fallon St., Oakland. Entry fee is $15. Register at www.aztecrun.org 

Mini-Farmers in Tilden A farm exploration program, from 10 to 11:30 a.m. for ages 4-6 years, accompanied by an adult. We will explore the Little Farm, care for animals, do crafts and farm chores. Wear boots and dress to get dirty! Fee is $6-$8. Registration required. 1-888-EBPARKS. 

Homefront Festival with exhibits, tours, entertainment and activities for children from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. at Lucretia Edwards Park in Richmond. www.homefrontfestival.com 

“Exploring De Staebler Through Movement” A movement workshop with Muriel Maffre in conjunction with the exhibition “Steven De Staebler: The Sculptor’s Way” at 11 a.m. at The Richmond Art Center, 2540 Bartlett Ave., Richmond. Free. 620-6772. www.therac.org 

“Predatory Lending Prevention and Foreclosure Intervention Workshop” From 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at Emeryville Senior Center, 4321 Salem St., Emeryville. All welcom. 596-4316. 

“Obama, the Middle East, and the Prospects for Peace” with Noam Chomsky at 7:30 p.m. at The Paramount Theater, 2025 Broadway, Oakland. Cost is $22-$250, benefits the Children of Gaza. www.mecaforpeace.org 

Political Affairs Readers Group meets to discuss “The Struggle for Health Care: Lessons from China, 1949 to Now” with Al Sargis at 10 a.m. at Niebyl-Proctor Marxist Library for Social Research, 6501 Telegraph Ave., near Alcatraz. 595-7417. 

A Day of Free Financial Planning, offered by the Financial Planning Association of the Bay Area from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Elihu Harris State Building, 1515 Clay St., Oakland. Please pre-register at clinicregistration@yahoo.com 

Tea & Fashion Show Benefit for Prevention International - No Cervical Cancer at 2 p.m. at Bakewell Hall, 521 29th St., Oakland, just west of Telegraph, behind the historic church. Suggested donation $25. 501-5183. Soroptimistoakland.org  

“The Zen of Alice” with author Daniel Silberberg at 4 p.m. at RabbitEars, 377 Colusa Ave., Kensington. 525-6155. 

BayAir Big Air Bammer Grand Opening Jam event and music show, of a public bike and skate park. Jam sign-up at 9 a.m., Jam at noon at 2310 Myrtle St., Oakland. Free for Oakland youth (ID required), others $10. info@bayairpark.org 

Red Cross Blood Drive from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Greater Cooper AME Zion Church, Church Hall, 1420 Myrtle St., Oakland. To schedule an appointment go to www.helpsavealife.org 

Witches and Wizards Weekend at Playland-Not-At-The-Beach Sat. and Sun. from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at 10979 San Pablo Ave., El Cerrito. Cost is $10-$15. 932-8966. www.playland-not-at-the-beach.org 

Free Garden Tours at Regional Parks Botanic Garden Sat. at 2 p.m. and Sun. at 11 a.m. and 2 pm. Regional Parks Botanic Garden, Tilden Park. Call to confirm. 841-8732. www.nativeplants.org 

Lawn Bowling on the green at the corner of Acton St. and Bancroft Way every Wed. and Sat. at 10 a.m. for ages 12 and up. Wear flat soled shoes, no heels. Free lessons. 841-2174.  

SUNDAY, OCT. 4 

Spice of Life Festival from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., with food, cooking demonstrations, arts and crafts, and activities for children, on Shattuck Ave. between Virginia and Rose. www.gourmetghetto.org 

EcoHouse Tour Tour the Ecology Center’s environmentally friendly demonstration site and learn about greywater systems, solar panels, on-demand and solar water heater, natural and recycled building materials, and much more. Tours at 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. at 1305 Hopkins St., enter via garden entrance on Peralta. Cost is $10-$15. 548-2220, ext. 239. register@ecologycenter.org 

“Oakland’s Fernwood Neighborhood” House and garden tour sponsored by Oakland Heritage Alliance. For details see www.OaklandHeritage.org 

Tantalizing Tarantulas Learn about these arachnids and learn the best spots for find them, from 2 to 3 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Pak. 544-2233. 

Brooks Island Voyage Paddle the rising tide across the Richmond Harbor Channel to Books Island to explore the island’s natural and cultural history, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.. For experienced boaters who can provide their own kayak and safety gear. Cost is $20-$22. Registration required. 1-888-327-2757. 

Free Hands-on Bicycle Clinic Learn how to repair a flat, from 10 to 11 a.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. Bring your bike and tools. 527-4140. 

“People’s Park Still Blooming” Book release party at 7 p.m. at Art House Gallery, 2905 Shattuck. Donation $5. 

“With Hammer in Hand: The Story of Women in Construction” a television documentary in progress at 2 p.m. at 1401 Walnut St., #1C. RSVP to 548-9904. ruthmag@earthlink.net  

GreenPoint Showcase Tour of homes that have been remodeled or built green, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Cost is $10. For details see www.ktvu.com/builditgreen 

Moon Viewing Festival An evening of Japanese food, entertainment, and moon viewing sponsored by the Oakland Fukuoka Sister City Association and the Golden State Bonsai Collection North. Bento dinner at 5:30 p.m., for $15 at Lakeside Park Garden Center, 666 Bellevue Ave., Oakland, entertainment at 6 p.m. and moon viewing at 6:30 p.m. For dinner reservations call 482-5896 or email info@oakland-fukuoka.org www.oakland-fukuoka.org 

“India: Memories, Dreams and Reflections” with Bill Hamilton-Holway at 10 a.m. at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, 1 Lawson Rd., Kensington. 525-0302, ext. 306. 

East Bay Atheists Annual Picnic from noon to 4 p.m. at Big Leaf Picnic Area, Tilden Park. Please bring a dish to share. Details at www.eastbayatheists.org/meetings.html  

Jewish Harvest Festival for Young Children at 10:30 a.m. at Jewish Gateways, 409 Liberty St., El Cerrito. Free for first-time participants. RSVP required. 559-8140. 

Free Garden Tours at Regional Parks Botanic Garden in Tilden Park Sat. at 2 p.m. and Sun. at 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. Call to confirm. 841-8732. www.nativeplants.org 

Lake Merritt Neighbors Organized for Peace Peace walk around the lake every Sun. Meet at 3 p.m. at the colonnade at the NE end of the lake. 763-8712. lmno4p.org 

Tibetan Buddhism with Erika Rosenberg on “Working with Emotions” at 6 p.m. at the Tibetan Nyingma Institute, 1815 Highland Pl. 809-1000. www.nyingmainstitute.com 

MONDAY, OCT. 5 

Healing Children While Building Bridges with Jewish and Arab Children in Israel with three speakers from Israel: Lana Nasrallah, first Palestinian Waldorf class teacher in Israel, Shepa Schneirsohn Vainstein, therapist and co-founder Salaam Shalom Foundation and Tally Zahor, teacher Waldorf HS and peace activist at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists, 1924 Cedar at Bonita. Co-sponsored by BFUU’s Social Justice Committee. 

“TV News: How it Got the Way It Is, and Does it Have a Future?” with Bill Schechner at 1:15 p.m. at JCCEB, 1414 Walnut St. Free. 848-0237. www.jcceastbay.org 

Political Rally Supporting Single Payer Health Care Not War with music from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. at University Ave. and Martin Luther King Blvd.  

Forum on Immigration Issues at 7 p.m. at North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst. 981-5190. 

“The Power of Color” Vision and seeing colors with Christie Jones at 7:30 p.m. at The Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St. Cost is $5. 

Berkeley CopWatch organizational meeting at 8 p.m. at 2022 Blake St. 548-0425. 

TUESDAY, OCT. 6 

Free Flu Shots at the Berkeley Adult School, 1701 San Pablo. Vaccines available in both shot and nasal mist form. Seniors and those needing special assistance should enter on Curtis St. 981-5356. 981-5300. 

Tuesdays for the Birds Tranquil bird walks in local parklands, led by Bethany Facendini, from 7 to 9:30 a.m. Today we will visit the Berkeley Meadow, Eastshore State Park. Bring water, field guides, binoculars or scopes. Call for meeting place and if you need to borrow binoculars. 544-2233. 

Red Cross Blood Services Volunteer Orientation from 6 to 8 p.m. at 6230 Claremont Ave., Oakland. Registration required. 594-5165. 

Tuesday Tilden Walkers Join a few slowpoke seniors at 9:30 a.m. in the parking lot near the Little Farm for an hour or two walk. 215-7672, 524-9992. 

End the Occupation Vigil every Tues. at noon at Oakland Federal Bldg., 1301 Clay St. www.epicalc.org 

Homework Help at the Albany Library for students in grades 2 - 6, Tues. and Thurs. from 3:15 to 5:15 p.m. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave. Emphasis on math and writing skills. No registration is required. 526-3720. 

Homework Help Program at the Richmond Public Library Tues. and Thurs. from 3 to 5:30 p.m. at 325 Civic Center Plaza. For more information or to enroll, call 620-6557. 

Street Level Cycles Community Bike Program Come use our tools as well as receive help with performing repairs free of charge. Youth classes available. Tues., Thurs., Sat. and Sun. from 2 to 6 p.m. at at 84 Bolivar Dr., Aquatic Park. 644-2577. www.watersideworkshops.org 

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

St. John’s Prime Timers meets at 9:30 a.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. We always welcome new members over 50. 845-6830. 

Bridge for beginners from 12:30 to 2:15 p.m., all others 12:30 to 4 p.m. Sing-A-Long at 2:30 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5190. 

WEDNESDAY, OCT. 7 

Berkeley Path Wanderers “Paths, Creeks & History” A self-guided walk. Meet at 10 a.m. in front of Live Oak Park Recreation Center, 1301 Shattuck Ave. 520-3876. www.berkeleypaths.org 

Tilden Mini-Rangers Hiking, conservation and nature-based activities for ages 8-12. Dress to ramble and get dirty. Bring a snack. From 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. Cost is $6-$8, registration required. 1-888-EBPARKS. 

North Branch Library Rennovation "Meet the Architects" at 6:30 p.m. at 1170 The Alameda. www.berkeleypubliclibrary.org 

Immigration Teach-In “History, Problems, Options for Reform” with Leti Volpp, UCB Prof. of Law, and Mark Silverman, Immigrant Legal Resource Center, and immigrants from the community, at 7 p.m. at Congregation Beth El, 1301 Oxford St.  

Sudden Oak Death Preventative Treatment Training Session Meet at 1 p.m. at Tolman Hall “portico” Hearst Ave. at Arch/Leconte, UC campus for a two hour field session, rain or shine. Pre-registration required. SODtreatment@nature.berkeley.edu 

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. 

“The Next Big Earthquake in Our Backyard” with Kevin Mayeda, seismologist at the UCB Seismological Laboratory at 7 p.m. at Café Valpareso at La Peña, 3105 Shattuck Ave. Sponsored by East Bay Science Cafe. 

“Ethics, Ecology, and World Renewal” with writer and filmmaker Stephen Most at 7:30 p.m. at Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. 526-3805. 

“White Haze and Jet Trails” and “Weather Warfare” documentaries at 7:30 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St., Oakland. Donation $5. www.Humanist Hall.org 

“An Introduction to Estate Planning” at 7 p.m. at Grace North Church, 2138 Cedar St. www.gracenorthchurch.org 

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

THURSDAY, OCT. 8 

“Inventing a Masterwork: Bernard Maybeck and the First Church of Christ, Scientist, Berkeley, 1909-1911” with Robert Judson Clark at 7:30 p.m. at First Church of Christ, Scientist, 2619 Dwight Way. Tickets are $15, available from Berkeley Architectural Heritage. 841-2242. berkeleyheritage.com 

Helios Community Open House A presentation on the new Biosciences Institute to be built in downtown Berkeley at 7 p.m. at Pat Brown’s Grill, in the Genetics and Plant Biology Building, UC campus. Take the stairs off Oxford St. near Berkeley Way. For information contact comrel@berkeley.edu 

Tilden Explorers An after-school nature adventure program for 5-7 year olds. We will have a Nature Treasure Hunt. from 3:15 to 4:15 p.m.. Cost is $6-$8, registration required. 1-888-EBPARKS. 

Beginning Seed Saving An introduction to the whys and hows of garden seed saving at 6:30 p.m. at the Ecology Center, 2530 San Pablo Ave., near Dwight Way. Cost is $10-$15. 548-2220, ext. 233. ecologycenter.org 

Berkeley School Volunteers New Volunteer Orientation from 3 to 4 p.m. at 1835 Allston Way. Bring a photo ID and two references to the orientation. Returning volunteers do not need to attend. For further information 644-8833. 

Home Energy Improvements Workshop Learn how you can save energy and money, improve indoor air quality and take advantage of incentives and rebates, at 7 p.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. For information call 981-7473. 

East Bay Mac Users Group with Derrick Story, photographer, at 7 p.m. at Expression College for Digital Arts, 6601 Shellmound St., Emeryville. ebmug.org 

American Red Cross Alameda County Heroes Breakfast at 8 a.m. at the Hilton Oakland Airport Hotel, 1 Hegenberger Rd., Oakland. Tickets are $45. 415-427-8086. www.redcrossbayarea.org 

Red Cross Blood Drive from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Samuel Merritt College, Bechtel Room, 400 Hawthorne St., Oakland. To schedule an appointment go to www.helpsavealife.org 

Circle of Concern Vigil meets on West Lawn of UC campus across from Addison and Oxford, Thurs. at noon and Sun. at 1 p.m. to oppose UC weapons labs contracts. 848-8055. 

The Poetry Workshop, offered by the Berkeley Adult School, meets on Thurs. from 9 a.m. to noon in the library of the North Berkeley Senior Center. Writers of all skill levels are welcome. 

Fitness Class for 55+ at 9:15 a.m. at Jewish Community Center, 1414 Walnut St. 848-0237. 

FRIDAY, OCT. 9 

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon with Dr. Bethany Cobb n “Astronomical Events: Their Vital Role in the Development of Life on Earth” Luncheon at 11:45 a.m. for $15, speech at 12:30 p.m., at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant St. For information and reservations call 527-2173. www.citycommonsclub.org 

“Education Inequity” with Dr. Pedro Noguera at 5 p.m. at MLK Student Union at Bancroft Way and Telegraph Ave., UC campus, followed by student spoken word performances on their educational experiences. http://publicservice.berkeley.edu 

Laney College Sixth Annual Business Conference on Green Entrepreneurial Opportunities with keynote speaker Scott Cooney, Author of “Build a Green Small Business: Profitable ways to become an Ecopreneur and a Green Entrepreneur” From 8:15 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Laney College, 900 Fallon Street, Oakland. Free. 464-3161. 

“People’s Park Still Blooming” Book release party at 6 p.m. at Cafe Med, 2475 Telegraph Ave., with slide show and park update. 

Womansong Circle An evening of participatory Spsinging for women at 7:15 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, Small Assembly Room, 2345 Channing at Dana. Suggested donation $15-$20. www.betsyrosemusic.org 

Red Cross Blood Drive from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Kaiser Permanente, Dining Conference Room, 1950 Franklin St., Oakland. To schedule an appointment go to www.helpsavealife.org 

A Jewish Holiday That’s Like Decorating a Christmas Tree? at 6:15 p.m. at Jewish Gateways, 409 Liberty St., El Cerrito. RSVP required. 559-8140. www.jewishgateways.org 

Berkeley Women in Black weekly vigil from noon to 1 p.m. at Bancroft and Telegraph. Our focus is human rights in Palestine. 548-6310. 

Stand With Us Stand for Peace Stand with Israel vigil every Friday from noon to 1 p.m. at Bancroft and Telegraph. www.sfvoiceforisrael.org 

Berkeley Chess Club meets every Fri. at 7 p.m. at the Hillside School, 1581 Le Roy Ave. 843-0150. 

SATURDAY, OCT. 10 

Indigenous Peoples Day Pow Wow and Indian Market from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. at MLK Jr., Civic Center Park, with exhibition dancing at 10 a.m., grand entry at noon, Turtle Island Fountain Sculpture Ceremony at 2 p.m. 595-5520. info@ipdpowwow.org 

Berkeley Architectural Heritage Fall Walking Tour Claremont Creekside From 10 a.m. to noon explore this neighborhood where the contours of the land are kept intact. Cost is $10-$15, or $40-$50 for the series. Advance registration required. 841-2242. berkeleyheritage.com  

Autumn Arachnids Learn about the mysteries of the spider and explore the area looking for orb weavers, jumping spiders, crab spiders and others, from 2:30 to 4 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. 544-2233. 

Fall Fruit Tasting from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. at Berkeley Farmers’ Market, Center St. at Martin Luther King, Jr. Way. ecologycenter.org 

Harmony Walk to End Hunger A 3.5 mile walk beginning at 8 a.m. at Civic Center Plaza, Richmond. Sponsored by Greater Richmond Interfaith Program. For information call 233-7127, ext. 304. gripcommunity.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. 

Native Plant Fair with plants, speakers, books and posters, Sat. from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., and Sun. from noon to 3 p.m. at Native Here Nursery, 101 Golf Course Dr., Tilden Regional Park. Sponsored by the California Native Plant Society. 222-2320. ebcnps.org 

Berkeley Garden Club Plant Sale with natives, annuals, perennials, garden items from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. at 131 Ashbury Ave., El Cerrito. www.berkeleygardenclub.org 

Point Richmod Fall Fest with music, arts, pumpkin patch, chili cook-off and more from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Washington Ave. and Park Place in downtown Point Richmond. www.pointrichmond.com/FallFest 

Rabbit Adoption Day from 1 to 4 p.m. at RabbitEars, 377 Colusa Ave., Kensington. 525-6155. 

German International School, Bilingual K-5 Berkeley Open House from 10 a.m. to noon at UUCB Berkeley, One Lawson Rd., Kensington. www.gissv.org 

“99 Bottles of Beer: Global Brewing Tradition 2500 B.C. to Present” from noon to 6 p.m. at The Phoebe Hearst Museum of Anthopology, Gallery and Patio, 103 Kroeber Hall, UC campus. Tickets start at $20. To register see hearstmuseum.berkeley.edu/beer 

Techno Geek Art Challenge Create designs or cyborgs with fuses resistors and other gadjets, from 1 to 3 p.m. at Museum of Children’s Art, 538 9th St., Oakland. Cost is $3-$7. 465-8770. www.mocha.org 

2009 Reel Rock Film Tour Climbing and adventure films at 8 p.m. at Albany Twin, 1115 Solano Ave. tickets are $12. www.reelrocktour.com 

Great Ghost Gathering at Playland-Not-At-The-Beach Sat. and Sun. from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at 10979 San Pablo Ave., El Cerrito. Cost is $10-$15. “Mystery and Mentalism” with Peter Kim, Sat. at 8 p.m. Cost is $20-$25. 932-8966. www.playland-not-at-the-beach.org 

Red Cross Blood Drive from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Herms District Scouts and Lions Club, American Red Cross Bus, 1325 Portland Ave., Albany. To schedule an appointment go to www.helpsavealife.org 

“Taking your Leadership to the Next Level” from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. at Ginn House in Preservation Park, 1233 Preservation Park Way, Oakland. RSVP to westcoast@moretolife.org  

Free Garden Tours at Regional Parks Botanic Garden Sat. at 2 p.m. and Sun. at 11 a.m. and 2 pm. Regional Parks Botanic Garden, Tilden Park. Call to confirm. 841-8732. www.nativeplants.org 

Lawn Bowling on the green at the corner of Acton St. and Bancroft Way every Wed. and Sat. at 10 a.m. for ages 12 and up. Wear flat soled shoes, no heels. Free lessons. 841-2174.  

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

SUNDAY, OCT. 11 

Native Plant Fair with plants, speakers, books and posters, from noon to 3 p.m. at Native Here Nursery, 101 Golf Course Dr., Tilden Regional Park. Sponsored by the California Native Plant Society. 222-2320. ebcnps.org 

Pumpkin Patch Pageant Learn about the squash family at 11 a.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. 544-2233. 

Little Farm Goat Hike Join a short hike and learn about the historic connections between humans and their ungulate friends at 2 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. For ages 6 and up544-2233. 

Crabby Chefs Seafood Festival Benefit for Cal Recreational Sports Fund from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Spenger’s Fresh Fish Grotto, 1919 Fourth St. 845-7771. 

Education Summit for all Bay Area educators and youth workers from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. at MLK Student Union at Bancroft Way and Telegraph Ave, UC campus. Over 25 skills-building and education issues workshops and keynote by G Reyes. Free for all students, $25 for community members. http://publicservice.berkeley.edu  

Oaktoberfest in the Dimond with a traditional bier garten, Eco-Expo, and events for children, from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. at Fruitvale and MacArthur. www.Oaktoberfest.org 

Old Time Radio East Bay Collectors and listeners get together to enjoy shows together at 4 p.m. at a private home in Berkeley . For more information email DavidinBerkeley, [at] Yahoo.com 

All Italian Car and Motorcycle Show Benefit for the Alameda Special Olympics from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Lincoln Middle School, 1250 Fernside Blvd., Alameda. Cost is $5. 

“Religious Syncretism in Peruvian Shamanism” with Doug Sharon, retired director of Museum of Anthropology, UCB, at 10 a.m. at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, 1 Lawson Rd., Kensington. 525-0302, ext. 306. 

Free Garden Tours at Regional Parks Botanic Garden in Tilden Park Sat. at 2 p.m. and Sun. at 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. Call to confirm. 841-8732. www.nativeplants.org 

Lake Merritt Neighbors Organized for Peace Peace walk around the lake every Sun. Meet at 3 p.m. at the colonnade at the NE end of the lake. 763-8712. lmno4p.org 

Tibetan Buddhism with Tom Morse on “Alternatise to Dissatisfaction” at 6 p.m. at the Tibetan Nyingma Institute, 1815 Highland Pl. 809-1000. www.nyingmainstitute.com 

CITY MEETINGS 

Community Environmental Advisory Commission meets Thurs., Oct. 1, at 7 p.m., at 2118 Milvia St. Nabil Al-Hadithy, 981-7460.  

Landmarks Preservation Commission meets Thurs., Oct 1, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-7429.  

Council Agenda Committee meets Mon., Oct. 5, at 2:30 p.m., at 2180 Milvia St. 981-6900. 

Community Health Commission meets Thurs., Oct. 8, at 6:45 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5356.  

Mental Health Commission meets Thurs., Oct. 8, at 5 p.m. at 2640 MLK Jr. Way, at Derby. 981-5217.  

Zoning Adjustments Board meets Thurs., Oct. 8, at 7 p.m., in City Council Chambers. 981-7430. 

City Council meets Tues., Oct. 13, at 7 p.m in City Council Chambers. 981-6900. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/citycouncil