The Week

Standing between former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich and Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Berkeley-Oakland), gubernatorial candidate Phil Angelides speaks to an enthusiastic crowd in a South Berkeley backyard. Photograph by Judith Scherr.
Standing between former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich and Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Berkeley-Oakland), gubernatorial candidate Phil Angelides speaks to an enthusiastic crowd in a South Berkeley backyard. Photograph by Judith Scherr.
 

News

Angelides Woos Berkeley In Backyard Pow-Wow

By Judith Scherr
Friday August 25, 2006

The 80 or so people that packed a sunny south Berkeley backyard Thursday morning didn’t seem to need convincing that Phil Angelides, 53, would be their pick for governor on Nov. 7. -more-


Maio Faces Mitchell In District 1 Race

By Judith Scherr
Friday August 25, 2006

Fourteen-year District 1 Councilmember Linda Maio might have thought she’d breeze through the fall election without a challenge: She’s off on vacation without having put a penny into a campaign account. -more-


Book Alleges Mob Ties to Jerry Brown

By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor
Friday August 25, 2006

A book scheduled to be released next month revives decades-old charges that California attorney general candidate and Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown had close ties with individuals related to organized crime during Brown’s tenure in the 1970s as governor of California. -more-


School Board Gets Back to Work After Summer Recess

By Riya Bhattacharjee
Friday August 25, 2006

The Berkeley school board met Wednesday for the first time after summer vacation. Mateo Aceves took the oath of office as the new student school board director for the coming school year. -more-


Incoming Freshman Take First Look at BHS

By Riya Bhattacharjee
Friday August 25, 2006

Photo I.D.s, brand-new textbooks and lots of good advice marked Tuesday’s freshman orientation at Berkeley High for the Class of 2010. -more-


Berkeley City College Opens, Ready or Not

By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor
Friday August 25, 2006

With hallways and classrooms still filled with construction tools and rubble and workers only taking a short break to make way for brief speeches and a hurried open house public tour, the Peralta Community College District cut the ribbon this week on the new $65 million downtown Berkeley City College campus a day before fall semester classes were scheduled to begin. -more-


Equity and Inclusion Chancellor Post Created for UC

By Riya Bhattacharjee
Friday August 25, 2006

At the UC Berkeley back-to-school media briefing on Wednesday, Chancellor Robert J. Birgeneau made the announcement of a new position in the UC system—vice chancellor for equity and inclusion—deemed to be one of the first such cabinet level positions in the country. -more-


Democratic Clubs Debate Over a Place for Greens

By Judith Scherr
Friday August 25, 2006

While the Democratic Party tent might be big enough for hawks such as Joe Lieberman and Hillary Clinton and radicals like Cynthia McKinney and Maxine Waters, there’s no room for people of other political stripes, most notably Green Party members. -more-


Upcoming Political Candidate Events

Friday August 25, 2006

August 26 -more-


Column: Undercurrents: ‘Sydewayz’ Video Celebrates Sideshow Culture

By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor
Friday August 25, 2006

By the time I finally learned how to pronounce Oakland documentary filmmaker Yakpazua Zazaboi’s name without stumbling over it, he had dropped out of sight and I lost contact with him for a couple of years. Yap, as he’s called on the streets, was the premier videographer of Oakland’s Sideshow Movement in the years between 1999 and 2004, recording hours of footage at the immense after hours gatherings at the Pac ‘N Save parking lot on Hegenberger and then, when the police chased the events into the neighborhoods, following them into the heart of the neighborhoods of Deep East Oakland. -more-


Ethnic Media Share Survival Stories One Year after Katrina

By Donal Brown, New America Media
Friday August 25, 2006

The men in the office slept on the floor, had to forego bathing and ate rations provided by the National Guard, but they were able to broadcast nonstop after the devastating hurricane. The men were five dee jays for 1540 Radio Tropical Caliente, some of the workers for the ethnic media of New Orleans that survived Katrina to provide first response services and eventually overcome financial blows and play a role in the rebirth of the city. -more-


Back to Berkeley: East Bay Celebrates Diversity With Festivals, Fairs, Parades

By Joe Eaton, Special to the Planet
Friday August 25, 2006

Diversity is not just a lofty abstraction: it tastes great, and you can dance to it. With the exception of the wet months, the Bay Area calendar is full of street fairs, music festivals, parades, and other events where you can hear everything from mariachi to taiko and sample endless variations on grilled-meat-on-a-stick. -more-


Chan Calls for Delay Of OUSD Land Sale

By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor
Tuesday August 22, 2006

State Assemblymember Wilma Chan, who co-sponsored legislation that led to the state takeover of the Oakland Unified School District in 2003, says that contract negotiations to sell Oakland Unified School District Lake Merritt-area property that were authorized in that legislation “should be slowed down” until more information can be obtained about the controversial deal. -more-


Father of Army Officer Resisting War Speaks Out

By Judith Scherr
Tuesday August 22, 2006

When Ehren Watada signed up for the army, he thought he was being patriotic. But after talking to veterans returning from Iraq and studying documents that showed Bush had lied about weapons of mass destruction there, the 28-year-old lieutenant became convinced that the patriotic position was to refuse deployment to Iraq. -more-


New Test Scores Show Trouble For Jerry Brown’s Charter Schools

By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor
Tuesday August 22, 2006

Student test scores at Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown’s Oakland School for the Arts (OSA) charter school dropped significantly in two key areas from last year to this, according to a report on the California Standards Test (CST) recently released by the California Department of Education. -more-


Bayer Grant Gets Students Working in Biotechnology

By Riya Bhattacharjee
Tuesday August 22, 2006

Biotech Partners, formerly Berkeley Biotechnology Education, Inc/BBEI, received a surprise $150,000 grant from the Bayer Foundation on Wednesday, which reaffirmed Bayer Corporation’s commitment to the model biotechnology school-to-career program that the company established with the city of Berkeley 13 years ago. -more-


UC Custodians Call for Fair Wages as Term Opens

By Judith Scherr
Tuesday August 22, 2006

UC Berkeley custodians welcomed students moving into southside dormitories with an informational picket line on Sunday, calling on the administration to give them fair wages. -more-


Finance Department Head Resigns, Takes Hayward Post

By Judith Scherr
Tuesday August 22, 2006

After more than a decade crunching numbers as the head of Berkeley’s Finance Department, E. Frances David will be making a shift south to become assistant city manager in Hayward. -more-


Pacific Steel Report on Health Risk from Emissions Past Due

By Riya Bhattacharjee
Tuesday August 22, 2006

Pacific Steel Casting Corporation will hand over their health risk assessment report to the Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD) in the first week of September, according to Elizabeth Jewel of Aroner, Jewel & Ellis Partners, the company’s public relations consultants. -more-


Testers Posing as Katrina Survivors Encounter ‘Linguistic Profiling’

Lorinda M. Bullock, New American Media
Tuesday August 22, 2006

As the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina approaches on Aug. 29, displaced Americans from Louisiana and the Gulf Coast have been slowly rebuilding their lives and looking for a place to call home. -more-


A Few Questions for Berkeley High Principal Jim Slemp

By Rio Bauce, Special to the Planet
Tuesday August 22, 2006

Berkeley High School Principal Jim Slemp took some time off from his busy schedule recently to answer a few questions as he begins his fourth year as principal at BHS. -more-


Opinion

Editorials

Editorial: Is ‘Berkeley for the Berkeleyans’ Good Public Policy?

By Becky O’Malley
Friday August 25, 2006

The ever-estimable Nation magazine’s latest issue highlights, among other things, what the cover calls “the new nativism”—the most recent episode in the “America for the Americans” tendency that has been with this nation since its founding. One article traces its historic roots: all the way from Ben Franklin in the 18th century inveighing against German immigrants to Pennsylvania (now the belovedly quaint Pennsylvania “Dutch”) through anti-Irish riots at the beginning of the 19th century at the time of the Potato Famine immigration, on to the Chinese exclusion advocated by the Irish-American Dennis Kearney’s Workingmen’s Party in the West during the last part of that century, culminating in the 20th century charge against “hyphenated-Americans” led first by Theodore Roosevelt, followed by the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II. The 1965 immigration law reform was supposed to have put an end to national-origins quotas, but now all over the U.S. there’s a revival of crusades against Spanish-speaking immigrants both legal and undocumented. Xenophobia—the pathological distrust of outsiders—in other words is as American as cherry pie, as Stokely Carmichael was once castigated for saying about violence. -more-


Editorial: It’s Time for a Meeting

By Becky O'Malley
Tuesday August 22, 2006

Over the weekend we received the e-mail reprinted [below]. Evidently the signers of the letter have been misinformed by someone for some reason. They say that “we recently requested a meeting with the Daily Planet Executive Editor Becky O’Malley. Ms. O’Malley refused to meet, stating ‘you won’t convince me of your position.’” -more-


Public Comment

Letters to the Editor

Friday August 25, 2006

Commentary: Rolling Out Berkeley’s Green Carpet

By Mayor Tom Bates
Friday August 25, 2006

When I ran for mayor four years ago, I promised to put the environment at the top of my agenda. Earlier this month, two of Berkeley’s innovative energy and environmental programs were highlighted in “New Energy for Cities,” a national report released by the Apollo Alliance. -more-


Commentary: LBNL: 75 Years of Science, 75 Years of Pollution

By L A Wood
Friday August 25, 2006

This weekend marks the 75th anniversary of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Established a decade prior to World War II, the “rad lab,” as it was first called, has maintained a strong presence at the UC Berkeley campus since that time. Today the national laboratory is operated by the Department of Energy and it continues with its radiation research. -more-


Letters to the Editor

Tuesday August 22, 2006

ALCOHOL -more-


Commentary: Clif Bar Loss Indicative of City’s Out-of-Date Policies

By Steven Donaldson
Tuesday August 22, 2006

Berkeley is now seeing the loss of yet another world-class business. Clif Bar is moving to the City of Alameda. Clif Bar, with it’s great all-natural organic nutritional bars. A green business, with a commitment to employees, customers and the community, is leaving what should be its natural “ideological” home for the City of Alameda. -more-


Commentary: I Will Put an End to Fake Democracy in Berkeley

By Christian Pecaut
Tuesday August 22, 2006

The last refuge of scoundrels is their long record of public service. Tom Bates long ago voided not only his 30 years of public office, but also whatever dignity and respect he had accrued prior to 1972. Such is the inevitable effect of consciously choosing to deceive those with less power than you have. So disastrous are these deliberate misreports of perception and understanding by more powerful people, that almost the entire ability for below figures to sort out what is accurate/inaccurate is destroyed. -more-


Columns

Central Oregon Coast: Uncrowded Beaches, Spectacular Ocean Vistas, Bargain Prices and 3 Skate Parks

By Carole Terwilliger Meyers
Friday August 25, 2006

By Carole Terwilliger Meyers -more-


East Bay Then and Now: SBCC: A Grand Building On a Modest Scale

By Daniella Thompson
Friday August 25, 2006

The half-dozen years before World War I were significant ones for Berkeley’s ecclesiastical architecture. -more-


About the House: New Houses Aren’t Quite as Trouble-Free as They Seem

By Matt Cantor
Friday August 25, 2006

Crisis is opportunity isn’t it? And some days I just have to say, Thank you, Lord Buddha, for another #$%@ing growth opportunity. -more-


Garden Variety: Selecting Plants with Natural Scents in Mind

By Ron Sullivan
Friday August 25, 2006

After a day of being olfactorily jostled by vehicle exhaust, the odd pile of dog turds by the sidewalk, and overdone, overused, over-applied synthetic perfumes, being surrounded by natural scents clears the crud from one’s mind and mood. -more-


Column: The Public Eye: Notes on NIMBYism Part IV: The NIMBY Manifesto

By Sharon Hudson
Tuesday August 22, 2006

In 1990, 60 percent of New Yorkers said they would live somewhere else if they could, and in 2000, 70 percent of urbanites in Britain felt the same way. Many suburbanites commute hours every day just to have “a home, a bit of private space, and fresh air.” But unfortunately, running off to suburbia or to the wilderness to find contentment is becoming environmentally and economically unviable. -more-


Column: The Public Eye: Toward a New Liberal Foreign Policy

By Bob Burnett
Tuesday August 22, 2006

Conservative foreign policy has failed and taken with it their dream of a new American empire. Unfortunately, in the course of its jingoistic pursuit of global supremacy, conservatism undermined the international institutions that both Democratic and Republican presidents struggled to strengthen, before the disastrous reign of George W. Bush. -more-


Column: Horse and Cart, Write and Attend

By Susan Parker
Tuesday August 22, 2006

I should have knocked on wood last week when I said I often use Kaiser’s Emergency Room as an office in which to get some writing done. As I e-mailed the essay to the Daily Planet, Ralph’s health took an unexpected and rapid slide downhill. I drove him to ER. I took a pen and notebook with me, but because his vital signs were alarmingly weak, he was rushed through triage and put in a room for patients who need immediate attention. -more-


The Tree of Many Names Scents Our Woodlands

By Ron Sullivan, Special to the Planet
Tuesday August 22, 2006

Up in the hills, in the parks and in the places next to them, are Monterey pines—imported from Monterey, and many now old and ill and tottering—and native trees: redwoods, the odd Douglas fir, oaks, and a tree of many names, its official binomial being quite a melodious mouthful, Umbellularia californica. -more-


Arts & Events

Arts Calendar

Friday August 25, 2006

FRIDAY, AUGUST 25 -more-


Sankofa Institute Presents Charlie Parker Symposium

By Ken Bullock, Special to the Planet
Friday August 25, 2006

“We want to bring Jazz back to the fore, make it relevant again—and bring it back to black audiences,” said Duane Deterville, founder of the Sankofa Cultural Institute, of the two-day symposium “Bird, Bop, Black Art & Beyond” at the House of Unity, Suite 230 in Oakland’s Eastmont Mall, 7200 Bancroft Ave., this Saturday and Sunday. -more-


Moving Pictures: The Birth of Animation

By Justin DeFreitas
Friday August 25, 2006

Despite his claims to the contrary, Winsor McCay did not invent the animated cartoon. But the legendary cartoonist did play a pioneering role, helping to advance, shape and define the nascent art form. -more-


Central Oregon Coast: Uncrowded Beaches, Spectacular Ocean Vistas, Bargain Prices and 3 Skate Parks

By Carole Terwilliger Meyers
Friday August 25, 2006

By Carole Terwilliger Meyers -more-


East Bay Then and Now: SBCC: A Grand Building On a Modest Scale

By Daniella Thompson
Friday August 25, 2006

The half-dozen years before World War I were significant ones for Berkeley’s ecclesiastical architecture. -more-


About the House: New Houses Aren’t Quite as Trouble-Free as They Seem

By Matt Cantor
Friday August 25, 2006

Crisis is opportunity isn’t it? And some days I just have to say, Thank you, Lord Buddha, for another #$%@ing growth opportunity. -more-


Garden Variety: Selecting Plants with Natural Scents in Mind

By Ron Sullivan
Friday August 25, 2006

After a day of being olfactorily jostled by vehicle exhaust, the odd pile of dog turds by the sidewalk, and overdone, overused, over-applied synthetic perfumes, being surrounded by natural scents clears the crud from one’s mind and mood. -more-


Berkeley This Week

Friday August 25, 2006

FRIDAY, AUGUST 25 -more-


Arts Calendar

Tuesday August 22, 2006

TUESDAY, AUGUST 22 -more-


Arts: Dream Kitchen Kicks Off Downtown Jazz Festival

By Ira Steingroot, Special to the Planet
Tuesday August 22, 2006

The ambitious second annual Downtown Berkeley Jazz Festival, produced by the Jazzschool, begins this Wednesday. Over the course of five days, 45 musical events will be presented at 15 venues all over downtown Berkeley. -more-


Arts: ‘House of Lucky’ At La Vals

By Ken Bullock, Special to the Planet
Tuesday August 22, 2006

After the heavy metal overture screeches to a halt, both Frank Wortham and his one-man show, House of Lucky (ending its run this weekend), put on by Impact Theater at La Val’s Subterranean, come on with a bang. -more-


Arts: SF Shakespeare Presents ‘The Tempest’

By Ken Bullock, Special to the Planet
Tuesday August 22, 2006

Summer is almost gone, at least that official version that stretches between Memorial and Labor Days, but it’s still possible to catch that theatrical hallmark of the season, Free Shakespeare in the Park. -more-


The Tree of Many Names Scents Our Woodlands

By Ron Sullivan, Special to the Planet
Tuesday August 22, 2006

Up in the hills, in the parks and in the places next to them, are Monterey pines—imported from Monterey, and many now old and ill and tottering—and native trees: redwoods, the odd Douglas fir, oaks, and a tree of many names, its official binomial being quite a melodious mouthful, Umbellularia californica. -more-


Berkeley This Week

Tuesday August 22, 2006

TUESDAY, AUGUST 22 -more-


Correction

Tuesday August 22, 2006

In the Aug. 15 story “Incumbents Hit Filing Deadline,” the Planet reporter Richard Brenneman wrote that “Challenger Howard Chong has filed his papers for the Rent Board . . .” Howard Chong is not a challenger, however, but the current chair of the Board. -more-