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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CITY RECEIVES ACCESS AWARD -more-

Looking upon his alma mater from his place in the heavens, Mario Savio would likely be filled with a mixture of confusion and disappointment. If he was lucky enough to peer onto the UC Berkeley campus on one of the few days each semester that students demonstrate, he would witness a small band of outspoken, ostracized activists struggling to be heard amid throngs of passing iPod enthusiasts, its message drowned out by cell phone conversations. -more-

I share Steve Geller’s vision of prioritized bus rapid transit that moves faster than the cars on our major arterials. But the extent to which this will replace personal vehicles is an open issue, and I believe Steve is applying more wishful thinking than science when he asserts that “people will flock to ride it instead of drive.” -more-

Nancy Keiler writes (Letters, March 27) castigating KPFA for not covering Barbara Lee-Ron Dellums-Sean Penn at Grand Lake Theater on Mar. 24. I sympathize with Kieler. The current lethargy in coverage of events—government hearings and such—by KPFA results from the tenacious battle that has been going on inside KPFA and Pacifica since listeners and staff defeated the self-perpetuating Pacifica National Board attempted coup under the infamous Civil Rights Commissioner Mary Frances Berry. Berry had every intention of moving the network away from its radical populist roots. Ironically she might still get her way, as the following memo attacking advocacy journalism reveals: -more-

Good grief! Iraq is just brimming with news. I don’t even know where to begin. At 4 am this morning, a huge armored vehicle moved us from the Baghdad airport to the Green Zone in a convoy composed of vehicles that looked like they had just came out of a Toys R Us catalog. -more-

And thus Captain Ahab shouted as he clung to the side of the great white whale in the midst of the sea, stabbing at it over and over with his harpoon: ‘I turn my body from the sun. … Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee. Sink all coffins and all hearses to one common pool! and since neither can be mine, let me then tow to pieces, while still chasing thee, though tied to thee, thou damned whale! THUS, I give up the spear!’ -more-

It’s one of those discussions that only Arts and Crafts people would have, because we’re weird. The basic question is, “What would Stickley do with a computer?” (Gustav Stickley, for those who don’t know, was a famous furniture designer and proponent of the Arts and Crafts movement during the first two decades of the 20th century.) There seem to be two points of view on the question: the “Oh, he’d just stick it out on a library table” camp and the “No, he would have designed a special piece of furniture for it” camp. -more-

Everybody up and at ‘em! Shop till you drop! It’s time for spring plant sales! -more-

The East Bay is a special place for so many reasons including architectural history. Now, I’m a technical guy (for a sensitive male) and the history that turns me on involves silly things like pipe threading and wire soldering. I love museums of mine shafts and light bulbs. I get no kick from champagne but a museum of science and industry makes my pulse race. In other words, I’m a geek. The one that all the girls moved away from at the junior high school dance and now, years later I can proudly come out of the closet, with my phaser held high and admit my affiliation with those who collect glass doorknobs and vacuum tube radios. -more-

Run to a safe place? -more-

Ken Loach’s new film The Wind That Shakes the Barley, opening this weekend at Shattuck Cinemas in downtown Berkeley, is the story of the nascent Irish Republican Army and its struggle against British occupation in the early 1920s. -more-

The documentary category is consistently one of the few categories in the Academy Awards in which every nominee genuinely seems to be worthy of the attention. This year’s nominees were all high-caliber films whose selection can hardly be questioned. The winner, however, was An Inconvenient Truth, its high visibility and great cultural impact perhaps earning greater recognition for the film than its inherent quality would merit. Jesus Camp, for example, was more compelling, and Iraq in Fragments was a unique artistic triumph. -more-