Public Comment

KPFA 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In “KPFA’s Tradition of Advocacy is Threatened,” in the April 6 issue of the Planet, Marc Sapir attacks Sasha Lilley, KPFA’s interim program director, for upholding KPFA’s policy of requiring that KPFA programmers refrain from overtly endorsing demonstrations and other public activities. But KPFA has followed this policy since sometime in the seventies. 

My question to Marc Sapir: Why attack Sasha Lilley for upholding this policy, without mentioning that it has been KPFA practice for decades? What is your real agenda? 

I have another question, this one for the editors of the Daily Planet. Why did you decide to publish this article? Marc Sapir attacks Sasha Lilley through insinuations and smears. He charges her with “perpetuating internal chaos at the station” without providing any evidence. In the context of his article, his statement that “we should assume that there are...COINTELPRO types operative in this environment” can only be taken as directed at Lilley. But of course Sapir gives no evidence, because there is none. Sapir even includes unsubstantiated, and irrelevant, rumors about Lilley’s parents. His rhetoric is left but his method is the McCarthyite tactic of discrediting one’s target through insinuations that are left unsubstantiated, but are scandalous enough to start tongues wagging, and thus do damage. It is difficult not to conclude that the Planet is so eager to promote controversy that it disregards the quality of the pieces that it publishes, and the merits of the arguments made in them. This style of debate destroys relations within the left, as well as discrediting the left. No doubt there will always be people who will engage in these sorts of tactics. But editors should exercise judgment about what they print. 

Barbara Epstein 

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STOP EDITORIALIZING 

Editors, Daily Planet:  

Richard Brenneman, seems to have abandoned his usual journalistic impartiality and is now editorializing in his news stories. In his March 30 article covering the Planning Commission meeting of March 28, he referred to the “developer-friendly five-member majority...”, of which I am identified as one. This implies that the other four commissioners are “developer-unfriendly”—that they are allied with those in the city who see themselves as protectors against avaricious developers who would build huge multi-family housing projects and destroy low-density neighborhoods. Brenneman also mischaracterized me as wanting to end all business district quotas.  

To set the record straight: On the quota issue, I don’t pretend to know enough about whether quotas are good or bad for business, and under what circumstances. The Planning Commission was not asked to recommend a change in the Telegraph Avenue quotas for the different categories of business, but to make it possible for a business to exceed the quotas if the Zoning Adjustments Board agrees that it would be good for the district. 

On the “developer-friendly” characterization, many others and I are friendly to the kind of development that enables Berkeley to be a leader in smart, environmentally sensitive and socially responsible growth. To reduce permitted residential densities is inherently anti affordable housing since it reduces the housing production by increasing the cost of development. The reduction of the production of new housing, reduces our ability to bring housing and jobs into balance, and also reduces our ability to produce energy efficient housing. 

I urge Mr. Brenneman to keep to the job of reporting that he does so well and leave editorializing to the editorial page. 

David Stoloff 

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WEALTHY PANHANDLERS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The commentary by Roland Peterson clarified for me the “Public Commons for Everyone” initiative: “...there are many wealthy, well-housed individuals who behave badly, so there are many homeless who are well-behaved.” 

That’s why I hate going downtown: all those aggressive wealthy panhandlers! 

Myrna Sokolinsky 

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PUBLIC COMMONS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Returning from a vacation this week, the pungent odor of urine greeted me at the entrance to the building where I lease office space. Last month on a weekend day afternoon, I observed a man urinating on the wall of the building at the northwest corner of Shattuck Avenue and Durant Street. The public library a block away offers toilet facilities. How many patrons of the soon to close Barnes and Noble across the way noticed this display as well? Arriving at work mornings the sight of feces on the sidewalks near this intersection is common. 

Governments exist, among other reasons, to maintain the streets free of human waste, but this city lacks the willingness to carry out this duty. The mixed reception given the mayor’s public commons proposal shows the absence of consensus that the current state of affairs is intolerable. Something is seriously wrong in the body politic. 

John McDougall 

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RED ZONES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I live at 1455 Spruce St. I came home from work today to discover that someone—presumably a city employee under orders from Traffic Engineering—had painted 20-foot red stretches from the corner of Spruce and Vine northward and eastward where no red zone had existed previously. This action immediately obliterated two parking spaces in a neighborhood that is not only severely impacted by parking issues, but where neighbors have fought a pitched battle and spent many thousand of dollars—along with the city—working out parking plans to accommodate the recently relocated Beth El congregation’s parking needs. 

What sense does it make, in light of the negotiated number of parking spaces we have all worked so hard to manage and create, for someone to come along and arbitrarily create red zones where perfectly legal parking spaces had existed? 

By what authority—i.e. where in the city charter—does it say the city traffic engineer or his designee can just come out and paint red zones into residential areas without input from residents? 

Michael Minasian 

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HOUSING MONEY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I was startled to read that developer Patrick Kennedy and his investor David Teece received over $70 million in tax-exempt bonds from the Association of Bay Area Governments’ Finance Authority for Non-Profit Corporations. Isn’t that money supposed to go to nonprofit affordable housing developers such as Affordable Housing Associates? 

Robert Lauriston 

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IN DEFENSE OF CELL PHONES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Recently I read an opinion in your paper regarding hatred for cell phones and claiming users of cell phones are bimbos who prefer not to contemplate the future. 

I was wondering about the “surreal atmosphere in society” mentioned. I don’t experience that. I also wonder who these people are who are “spouting off at the top of their lungs”? Where are they? I ride AC Transit and BART, and I dine in restaurants too, yet I have not seen them, nor have I heard them. 

I enjoy my conversations with friends, family and loved ones on my cell phone as I go about my day (called multi-tasking). Maybe I missed something. I was too busy with the business of my own life to eavesdrop on conversations and to criticize others to the point of thinking they ought to be shot. 

To say that any human being should be lined up at dawn before a firing squad for any reason is utterly ridiculous and extremely rude. It scares me to think anyone would go that far in referring to the use of cell phones. 

Us blonde “bimbos” actually do stroll, meditate, gaze and dream. We are also the same ones who get things done in life, and I found your readers comments to be an extremely offensive attack on me and anyone who has a cell phone. 

Charlotte Lyon 

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PUBLIC TRANSIT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In the April 3 edition, Steve Geller earnestly proposes methods to improve bus service and attract riders, but even if all available lines ran every 45 seconds the bus would not suffice considering the travel needed to negotiate today’s world of specialization. 

A Berkeley mother takes her kid to child care in Albany, goes to the chiropractor in Alameda, the psychiatrist in Emeryville, and the doctor in Oakland, except if she needs brain surgery and has Kaiser, then she must go to Palo Alto for that service. Her older children may walk to school, but odds are their teachers had to drive to arrive before the bell. The woman’s father has Alzheimer’s meaning travel out to the rest home. 

Shopping can be hard for the mother to do by bus. To save money she gets groceries from the supermarket, and be it Berkeley Bowl or Safeway, hauling a week’s worth of food by bus is a chore. Too bad there are few mom and pop stores where one could grab a few things on the way from the bus. It is also too bad that ever more jobs need a credential or license —meaning courses to travel to, police departments to visit for fingerprinting, and jobs being filled by someone living 20 miles away, because that person has the credential. 

Ted Vincent 

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HYPOCRISY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

“Cheney criticizes Pelosi for Syria visit.” Has this man no shame?! He and Rush Limbaugh got together to bad-mouth Nancy for her travel and diplomacy, playing to the lowest common denominator in the GOP. What about the three Republicans who just recently visited Syria? No, this is more hysterical hypocrisy from the harpies of hell. 

Ron Lowe 

Grass Valley 

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SOUTHEAST BERKELEY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I’ve lived here 20 years and I rarely hear anyone call the Berkeley hills called “Southeast Berkeley,” Of course, since your article was about racism in that area, maybe it sounds better to say “southeast.” That way we might think it’s a rough area of town, rather than the upscale area that it really is. 

Kate Harper 

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GLOBAL WARMING 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Last week the Supreme Court confirmed what science has continued to prove, that global warming is a reality that needs to be addressed. By deeming carbon dioxide emissions, like those from cars, trucks and power plants, subject to federal regulation, the government is finally taking a step towards combating global warming.  

Although this is a positive step, a very obvious component of global warming is being ignored: people. The more people on the planet, the more emissions are released into the air. Professor Tim Dyson of the London School of Economics indicates that even a 40 percent cut in per capita carbon emissions in the developed world could be completely canceled out by 2050—due to global population growth. 

Simply providing viable information and family planning resources can help curb this population growth. When women and couples are free to make their own informed choices and have access to family planning resources, they choose to have smaller families.  

Globally, at least 350 million couples lack family planning services. Certainly the lack of family planning services in underdeveloped countries is an enormous problem, but we can start by looking in our own back yard. In the United States, one-third of all births are unintended. We have the highest rate of teen pregnancy in the developed world.  

It is obvious that Bush’s “Abstinence Only” sex education is not working. From giving faulty information that “condoms don’t work” to withholding information about birth control, the upcoming bearers of children in one of the world’s most developed nations is being denied the right to make informed decisions. But by pushing for a change to comprehensive sex education, we have a chance to give our teenagers that same right that is now being championed in many less developed countries.  

It’s vital to focus on technical issues such as tax credits, energy alternatives and emissions trading programs. But cutting energy consumption must be coupled with stabilizing population, especially in the United States, where less than 5 percent of the world’s population produces about 25 percent of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions. And the best way to stabilize population is by giving our women the right to make an informed decision about their bodies.  

Georgia Gann 

Berkeley Field Organizer,  

Population Connection 

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EVIL 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

On Wednesday April 4, President Bush addressed U.S. troops at Fort Irwin. He referred to a suicide bombing where terrorists allegedly used two children to get through a checkpoint and then exploded the car as strengthening his resolve to continue the war in Iraq. He said, “It makes me realize the nature of the enemy we face, which hardens my resolve to protect the American people. People who do that are not—it’s not a civil war, it is pure evil. And I believe we have an obligation to protect ourselves from that evil.” 

If this incident occurred, it is indeed morally reprehensible, but to hear Bush describe the killing of children as evil makes me want to gag at the hypocrisy. Over 650,000 Iraqis have died as a result of U.S. forces under Bush invading the country. How many of these were children? And did I miss the president condemning the sanctions imposed on Iraq after the first Gulf War during his father’s presidency and then continued under Clinton and then again under his own regime? By most accounts at least half a million children died as a result of these economic sanctions. Where was Bush’s moral outrage then?  

If killing two children in a car bombing is evil, then how do you describe acts that kill hundreds of thousands, Mr. President? War crimes? Crimes against humanity? Should a man responsible for the deaths of so many children be impeached? How do we “protect ourselves from that evil” Mr. Bush? 

Kenneth J. Theisen 

Oakland 

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A FAUSTIAN BARGAIN 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

A theme that emerges from a surge of new books is that the ship of state constructed over two centuries ago has lost is moorings. For example, in a class characterized by ominous forebodings you’ll find Chalmers Johnson’s trilogy, Blowback, The Sorrows of Empire, and Nemesis or in a different class you can find Noam Chomsky’s densely crafted Hegemony or Survival in which nuggets of unflattering facts strip naked our government’s royal clothing, or check out Jeremy Scahill’s Blackwater that exposes the contribution a mighty mercenary army is making to the Iraq disaster. All together this library advances a single thesis: As a nation we have failed so often to live up to the promises of our birth that we have come to change those promises willy-nilly to fit the nefarious goals we, as a nation, have come to pursue. 

Alarming instances are reported each day, sometimes explicitly, by the mainstream media. Often appearances hide the truth and just as often a small victory hides a large defeat. Let this one stand for the many. 

Both houses of Congress passed resolutions that urged but did not require that the president prepare to withdraw our troops from Iraq.  

Properly understood, these legislative acts conceded that the nation’s dignity (what’s left of it) is worth the death and dismemberment of tens of thousands more, ours and theirs. Thus, members of Congress voted for a “timetable” that, in effect, will trade blood for dignity. 

It is a sign of the times that the men and women now in the majority are capable of boasting about such a Faustian bargain.  

Marvin Chachere 

San Pablo 

A TRUE LANDMARK 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I was shocked when I heard that the Berkeley School Board voted to demolish the Gym at Berkeley High School. As a person born and raised in Berkeley, attending public schools, I have fond memories of the Gym. I first learned to dive off the high diving board there. My favorite gym class was modern dance and my friends and I spent many hours practicing for performances in the studio on the second floor located on the southern end of the Gym. 

I am a former special education teacher and was fortunate to spend my last years teaching in the Berkeley School District. I taught all grade levels as a teacher of the Visually Impaired. While working on the high school campus with students, I visited the Gym and, though the Gym had undergone many years of almost benign neglect, I was delighted to find that the beautiful wood floors are in amazingly good condition. The building has stood up surprisingly well considering the neglect it has suffered over the many decades since I attended Berkeley High. 

I don’t understand why this beautiful old gym, a wonderful example of more graceful times, must be demolished. Why has there been no serious consideration and public discussion about rehabilitating it?  

I would urge the mayor and councilmembers to look at what has been done with other historical school sites in this city: Martin Luther King, Jr. Middle School, Longfellow Elementary, John Muir Elementary, Berkeley Arts Elementary, to name a few. Surely the same could be done with the Berkeley High gym. It certainly meets the criteria for a city landmark on many different levels. I would hate to think that the mayor and City Council, supposedly so concerned with environmental issues and professing to want to make a difference in the world, would turn their backs on all the resources—including several thousand square feet of beautiful wood in nearly excellent condition—that would be completely wasted if the demolition of the gym complex was to occur. Rehabilitation and re-use seems so much more in keeping with the principles that so many of us in Berkeley believe in. 

Finally, I would like to mention the graceful setback of the gym that is so pleasing to passing pedestrians and drivers alike. If we seriously want to begin to make a dent in the conservation of the world’s resources, why not begin in our own back yard and save and restore this grand old building for our young people and community to enjoy in the decades to come? It would compliment and enhance other historic buildings in the city’s Civic Center: City Hall, the Veterans’s Building, the Main Post Office, to name only a few. I am hoping that the Landmarks Preservation Commission will do the right thing and vote to preserve this grand old structure that the Berkeley School Board so carelessly dismissed. 

Susan Chase 

A FEW CORRECTIONS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I write in needed response to the Wendy Walker-Moffat’s March 16 commentary “Independent Study Program at Risk.” 

Although this is an important and well-written commentary, I would like to make some corrections, and add some facts, and opinions from someone who spent the years from 1999 to 2005 working with students at the Independent Study facility. Hans Barnum was never a student at the Alternative High School. He wrote the piece quoted while he and his brother both were City of Berkeley Youth Commissioners (2003-2007). At that time Hans attended the Independent Study Program on the same campus location as the Alternative High School, and was completely familiar with the issues and events there. He wrote that piece because he was becoming extremely dissatisfied with the lack of BUSD’s response to student needs at both the Alternative High and the Independent Study Program. 

Both Hans and his brother, Nils, left the Berkeley Unified School District to attend a distance learning charter school independent study program in 2005. The reason they changed schools was because BUSD had sadly changed direction, (since replacing the very competent 1999-2004 directors of Independent Studies), in ways that both youth commissioners saw were causing harm to the students. This was not only because of the poor quality of new leadership at the Independent Study facility itself in 2005, but was also due to BUSD’s years of unresponsive, top-down management style which has seldom responded to the voices of BUSD students and their families.  

Since 2005, enrolled in a more supportive environment than offered by BUSD, and which is very responsive to the needs of students, both of these former BUSD students have passed the CAHSEE with very high scores (having only completed the ninth grade!), and are now straight A students in their new charter school. BUSD needs to take a look at the results of what has been happening to students in recent years, and when that look makes clear that the academic achievement rate is not what parents want for their children, and that other matters important to the students and their families are regularly being disregarded, then a change in leadership is what is needed for BUSD. 

To act in a costly manner to seriously disrupt the students and faculty, and diminish what little they now have, for unnecessary and poorly thought out change, is not a solution. Students do not need more mismanagement of the money taxpayers intend to be used to educate them. Those tax dollars are not intended to be used as an exercise in bureaucratic experimentation for which there is no reason to believe there will be any improvement in the quality of education of the students at risk because of BUSD’s errors. 

The cost of disrupting student populations could instead be spent on quality textbooks and other important materials that we are not now supplying students, services for teen-age high school students with children of their own, the serious drug problems at Berkeley High School, the lack of sufficient tutoring programs, disabled student services, improved wages and conditions for teachers, and many other educational needs that are now not being sufficiently met by BUSD. It is time to look at a much needed change in the leadership at BUSD. Merely disrupting the education of students, to try some haphazard approach to changing any inefficiencies, which the current leadership is not only unwilling to understand but is in a large part responsible for, is not an answer to improving education in Berkeley. We need to take a close look at the BUSD (mis)management problem that is the root of our children not getting the education from this school district that we are paying for, and stop trying to treat the symptoms instead of the disease.  

Patty Pink