Posted Mon., Feb. 4—Berkeley city manager for five years, Phil Kamlarz will get his first City Council evaluation tonight (Monday) in a special closed-door council session. 

Special meetings require only 24-hour notice to the public. Tonight's meeting was announced Thursday afternoon. 

“I doubt if many members of the public are aware of the evaluation,” Councilmember Kriss Worthington told the Planet. The public is not permitted at closed session meetings but may comment before the meeting. 

Noting that the city has a council-manager form of government, Worthington said he thought the manager should be evaluated annually. 

Another hot-button issue to be discussed behind closed doors this evening is a possible settlement of the lawsuit brought against the city by the Elmwood Neighborhood Association, which has argued that the John Gordon “Wright’s Garage” project, approved by the city, is out of scale with the neighborhood. 

Public comment begins at 5 p.m. 

“In order to participate in the Public Comment portion of this meeting, you must arrive in the building prior to 5 p.m. Entrance to this building closes at 5 p.m.,” the notice says. 

Worthington pointed out that notice may impinge on the right of persons to speak before closed session if they arrive a few minutes late. 

The closed session begins at 5 p.m. at city administration building, 2180 Milvia St., 6th floor, the Redwood Conference Room.

Posted Sun., Feb. 3—Most of the public and literary appreciation for bare trees seems to come from wintry places like New England, but bonsai artists and fans and the landscape pruners who think along similar lines make a big deal of the “winter silhouette.” It’s one of the most refined criteria for judging a deciduous tree.  

One reason for that is that a deciduous tree in winter is naked indeed, and any mistakes you’ve made in shaping it will stick right out. In bonsai, the small scale makes errors even more obvious: it’s not so much miniaturization as abstraction, representing a wild tree in as few artistic strokes as possible, so any single part gets more attention.  

Once the leaves fall from landscape trees, it doesn’t take an expert to see what horrors have been wreaked upon them. There’s a row of poplars I have to look at every time I’m in the Union Bank parking lot; they’re up against a building on Channing Way and face west. In leaf, they look like so many toothbrushes; maybe some people think that’s an OK look. Naked, they’re just pitiful: nice straight trunks and then little awkward twigs sticking out in graceless desperate clusters.  

Maybe some people think that looks OK. There are those who go for pollarded trees, and some among them might be a bit uncritical of un-treelike forms for perfectly innocent trees. I find it hard to imagine, though.  

I’m a bit more tolerant of pollarding than I used to be—as long as it’s done right. Originally, pollarding was utilitarian, a way of harvesting firewood without killing the trees. Mulberries and sycamores will tolerate it well; it’s a classic urban way of treating London planetrees, a sycamore hybrid we often see in cities. If you try pollarding other species it’s riskier.  

Pollarding doesn’t mean just sawing pieces off at random. You have to start when the tree’s relatively young and take care to cut back to the same place on each scaffold limb every year. It gets easier to spot the place after a couple of years, as the tree forms big knobs at the cut places. You leave the knobs, taking off just the straight skinny branches that grew since the last pollarding.  

You also have to do it yearly, because those skinny branches are attached weakly, not to the central part of the tree. If they stay on the tree and get bigger, they just might fall off and bonk you on the head and it would serve you right.  

The trees still look funny to me, but I’m so old that low-rise pants look funny to me too: quaint. I wore them the last time they came around, in the ‘70s, and I remember how odd those old photos looked 15 years later. It’s just a matter of fashion, pollarding, until somebody blows it and then it’s tree abuse. (I suppose when somebody blows it with the pants it’s a gesture of solidarity with plumbers or somesuch.) Or maybe I’ve become more apathetic as I’ve noticed that both mulberries (the ‘Fruitless’ male clones planted as street trees) and planetrees are allergenic as well as ubiquitous. I’m Irish/Welsh; I bear grudges.  

One more positive reason for looking hard at a tree in winter is the revelation of the private lives of summers past. We see abandoned nests of squirrels and birds; there are field guides detailed enough to tell what species reared its young in each of them, in the shelter of last year’s leaves. Woodpecker holes and sapsucker drillmarks show up and winter residents become visible. The tree tells you what it and its tenants have been up to.  

The basic attraction of the winter silhouette is its sheer unlikely beauty. It’s so difficult to imitate the tree’s natural ramification, or just not to screw it up, because it’s not at all random. It obeys rules that are complex, mathematical, exigent, and organic, and while we sometimes know enough to approximate their effect, we rarely know enough to follow them precisely.  

Every cell in those twigs grows to reach toward light, to support a leaf that will catch as much light as possible, while responding to every other cell in the tree, pushing and dancing and proposing hypotheses, turning to bask in the sun and later lignifying, supporting its successors in the same quest.  

The tree makes its silent approximations every second of its growth, refining its formulae, adding to its suncatching surface, crystallizing to make its space while filling it, fracturing the sky into precise geometries. If we’re to do it justice, we must sit and learn, listen awhile, humbly shut up and hear what it has in mind.  

Posted Sat., Feb. 2—Richmond’s Design Review Board (DRB) voted Thursday to approve Chevron’s plans to upgrade its refinery, but before the vote was taken, few folks had anything nice to say about the world’s seventh largest corporation. 

The DRB’s approval was hedged with a set of lengthy conditions after members accused the firm of arrogance and indifference to the community. 

“You got greedy,” said Ted J. Smith, the board’s oldest member. “All you’ve done is take out of this community and screw us every time you get the chance.” 

Smith, an African American, chided the company because none of the Chevron representatives at the meeting “look like me.” 

Board member Donald L. Woodrow insisted that the company provide extensive mapping of the soils down to bedrock at the refinery site and reports on how soils and the plant would be affected by the impacts of a major earthquake on the Hayward Fault. 

“It will be earthquake safe,” promised Dean O’Hair, the oil company’s Richmond external affairs director. He said all construction wold meet current building and seismic codes. 

Woodrow was less than reassured, and the proposed condition remained. 

Chair Bob Avellar said he wanted approval contingent on the company’s grant of access to complete the last unfinished stretch of the Bay Trail in the city. 

During the public comment period earlier in the meeting, Bruce Beyaert, an ardent supporter of the trail and chair of the Trails for Richmond Action Committee, said negotiations with the company had stalled for two years, only to be rekindled as refinery project approval deadlines approached. 

Woodrow said the company should provide the access, cofund the design costs and pay for operating costs, all of which were included in his motion for approval 

Member Diane Bloom added the proviso that the trial siting decision would come back to the board for approval. 

Avellar added conditions for approving geodesic domes the company planned to install on new storage tanks included in the project, and called for an increase in number of trees planted to screen both the tanks and the periphery of the refinery. 

When she suggested the board ask the company to plant trees in other cities and outside Contra Costa County wherever winds carried particulates from the refinery, Smith shook his head. “I won’t vote for trees outside Richmond. I’m not looking out for anybody else.” 

Woodward then said the company should also reexamine options for using the site to generate solar and wind power to offset some on the company’s energy needs. 

Comments heated 

Most of the public comments earlier in the meeting were critical of the oil company. While most focused on concerns about pollution, one speaker raised a key financial issue. 

“I’m concerned about the very nice-looking hokum we’ve received,” said Contra Costa County Assessor Gus S. Kramer, speaking from the audience. 

He blasted a the company’s expensive color mailing which promised “millions in new revenues for the City of Richmond” from the project. 

He countered the corporate claim by citing the company’s own appeals to have the refinery’s property taxes slashed by two thirds for the prior three tax years. 

“I don’t want you to think that Richmond is going to get this windfall of services,” Kramer said. 

He got no response from company officials. 

Chevron representatives, including former plant manager and now Chevron Vice President of Marketing Curt Anderson, found themselves before a largely skeptical audience, with their only outright support coming from the business and labor communities. 

The next step in the project is a public meeting called by the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, which will be held starting at 6 p.m. Feb. 13 meeting at the RRC Social Hall, 3230 MacDonald Ave. 

Within city government, the proposal now goes to the Planning Commission, with a likely appeal to the City Council regardless of which way the commissioners come down. 

The refinery issue could be the DRB’s swan-song, as the city council has already voted to merge its functions with the Planning Commission. 

Posted Fri., Feb. 1—The World Can’t Wait ratcheted up the protests at the downtown Berkeley Marine Recruiting Center today (Friday), when three members, dressed in orange jump suits to symbolize the garb worn by the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, chained themselves to the recruiting center doors at 64 Shattuck Ave.  

Describing their protest as “civil resistance,” Mary Ann, chained to the door with Alex and Lou —the three declined to give their last names—told the Planet the recruiting center “represents the immoral acts of this president—the Iraq war, wire tapping, torture, and ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement].”  

Two Berkeley police officers came by the gathering that had drawn about 15 people by 9:30 a.m. and told the group that they would station a police officer across the street for the demonstrators’ protection. Lt. David Reece said the city supports the demonstrators, but he wanted assurance that there would be no vandalism at the office.  

It took more than two years for questions surrounding criminal activities in the Berkeley Police Department to reach the City Council, but when the Police Review Commission report on Evidence Theft was before them Tuesday evening, councilmember reactions were heated. 

They wanted to know why police supervisors had failed to see problems within the department and condemned the Berkeley Police Association for refusing to cooperate with the commission. They unanimously approved reports from both the city manager/police chief and from the commission, and asked for followup in March.  

In other actions, the council went on record calling on the governor to withdraw the California National Guard from Iraq, asking Congress to reaffirm the existence of the Armenian genocide and adopting a policy, where practical, to cease purchases from Chevron Corp. They also raised meter parking fees from $1 to $1.25 per hour, asked the city manager to look at how the lying-on-the-sidewalk ordinance would be implemented and made Berkeley a sanctuary for medical cannabis users and dispensaries. They also heard a presentation on a city plan to address global warming.  

The Police Review Commission report, unanimously approved by its members and written by a subcommittee that studied the issue for more than a year, focused on the theft of drug evidence from the locked police vault by former Sgt. Cary Kent, who was convicted in April 2006 on separate felony counts of grand theft, possession of heroin and possession of methamphetamine. 

Kent pleaded guilty, served a year of home detention and is now on probation. He was never interviewed by police or the district attorney. 

The council voted unanimously to accept the commission report and recommendations from both the city manager and the commission—the city manager’s report had rejected two of the commission’s recommendations—and to have the commission return to council in March, with details on unanswered questions. And the chief will report at that time on the reforms he has accomplished within the department. 

“I’m very concerned about the lack of response from the supervisors,” said Councilmember Linda Maio. “There seems to be no performance review.” 

Maio was reacting to sections in the PRC report that detailed aberrations that had been noticed in Kent’s behavior for more than two years before he was placed on a leave of absence and allowed to resign from his position, according him benefits and retirement pay for the approximate 18 years he served on the Berkeley force.  

The behavior included not showing up for work or meetings, showing up late and being at the police department at odd hours of the night looking disheveled. 

“What most disturbed me was a lack of cooperation [in the investigation] from line officers,” said Councilmember Laurie Capitelli. 

In fact the Berkeley Police Association attorneys told the commission that they would not submit to questioning by the PRC, alleging that such an investigation would be contrary to personnel privacy guarantees. 

“We come up against this wall of silence,” said Councilmember Max Anderson. 

“Our greatest problem in conducting this investigation was the lack of cooperation by the Berkeley Police Association, which, as it turns out, virtually controls, with the assistance of their lawyers, the behavior of the sworn police officers vis a vis the Police Review Commission,” said PRC Commissioner Sherry Smith, a subcommittee member. 

“Our investigation would have been completed much more expeditiously had we had a modicum of help from the rank and file.”  

A registered nurse, Anderson said he was particularly disturbed by a lack of tight controls over the drug evidence, controls he said are strictly maintained in hospitals where he’s worked. 

Capitelli said he didn’t understand why Kent had not been compelled to divulge information such as the quantity of drugs taken. Hambleton explained that it was not up to him, but up to the district attorney to demand he answer questions, to which Capitelli retorted: “You can send him to jail.” 

In the PRC’s 200-page report is a copy of a statement released by the city manager April 14 2006 the day Kent pled guilty to the charges. “Kent submitted a letter in March 2006 announcing his retirement rather than cooperate with BPD Internal Affairs staff regarding this audit.” 

When Hambleton responded to Capitelli that, as a first-time drug offender, Kent actually got a harsher sentence than most drug abusers, who are generally given diversion, a number of people still in the Council Chambers at the 11 p.m. hour groaned and jeered. 

While the chief and the commission agreed on most of the recommendations to tighten controls in the department, two issues divided them: commissioners said all the people working in the unit with Kent should be moved out of the Special Enforcement Unit (SEU) as a group.  

Hambleton told the council that would be unfair: “There was no evidence whatsoever of any misconduct on the part of the two employees. We don’t think it would be fair to transfer them because a transfer would be viewed as punitive,” he said. 

Subcommittee member Andrea Prichett told the council that in Boston officers were immediately transferred out of the unit when impropriety was suspected.  

An accounting of how Boston police are dealing with a suspected theft of drugs is detailed in a Jan. 5 Boston Globe story “Police find widespread drug tampering.” The article says that the drug evidence tampering sparked “an audit of all department units, including hiring and personnel.” 

The Globe story quotes Police Commissioner Edward Davis saying, “We’re really going to shake the place out and make sure that every department is up to national standards.” 

The other outstanding question was that the commission wanted a thorough investigation into the amount of drugs missing from 286 envelopes containing drug evidence that investigators found may have been opened. The police investigation only looked at a few envelopes, enough to charge Kent with the three felonies. 

The chief said it would be too expensive to have a lab investigate these envelopes, but he sent a memo to the commission last week, quantifying the amount of drugs recorded on the 286 envelopes. According to the memo, that added up to: 1.6 pounds of methamphetamine (powder and crystal), 9 ounces of heroin (tar, powder and liquid), 1.5 ounces of cocaine (rock and powder), 5 pounds of marijuana, 1 ounce of hashish, and 235 pills including Vicodin, ecstasy, Oxycontin, Tylenol/codeine and fentanyl. 

“I don’t believe he took drugs from every single one of those envelopes,” Hambleton said. Nevertheless, the chief said he checked with a number of experts, whose conclusion was that the amount of drugs in question was consistent with use by one person. 

In the memo, he wrote: “Except for the marijuana, there was a consensus [among experts] that these amounts are consistent with what a light to moderate user would consume within a one year period.” 

Attorney Jim Chanin, who served on the subcommittee, told the council the chief was wrong. “He’s talking about a light to moderate user. I don’t know what he’s talking about. I add this up at two grams of meth a day; the combination of drugs is not consistent with a single user.” 

In addition, Chanin told the council, “buried in the report that you have, there was evidence developed by the police department, that Cary Kent was buying drugs from a confidential informant while he was on duty, even though that was not his job.” This was not followed up in the investigation. 

Prichett told the council that the investigation was lacking because it never asked whether Kent was acting alone. “They decided that Kent was the guilty party and built a case against him,” she said. 

Lying on the sidewalk 

Councilmember Linda Maio said she had been concerned about an ordinance approved by the council in December which gives police the right to cite individuals lying on the sidewalk, though it makes citing at night low priority. 

She said she was concerned that people who had nowhere else to go would be given citations. 

So she and Councilmember Laurie Capitelli wrote a resolution, passed unanimously by the council Tuesday night, to ask the city manager to suggest a policy “that would require no (or low) enforcement of [the law against lodging on the sidewalk] at night if no shelter beds are available.”  

If they are available, the resolution says that, in addition to offering the person a bed, transportation by taxi to a shelter would be included in the mix, paid for by scrip. 

Councilmember Dona Spring had a number of questions regarding the proposal. She asked what would happen to people who want to go to a shelter, when the shelter has rules that they can sleep there for 30 days, then must wait 60 days before returning. And, she wanted to know if people could enter during the night, as most shelters have a curfew for entry. 

Maio said she had talked to service providers who said they would make exceptions for people entering the shelters late, but that she hadn’t considered the problem posed by shelters that don’t allow persons to stay there more than 30 days. 

Medical cannabis sanctuary 

The council unanimously approved a resolution sponsored by Councilmembers Darryl Moore and Kriss Worthington opposing attempts by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration to close medical marijuana dispensaries and declaring Berkeley a sanctuary for medical cannabis use, cultivation and distribution.  

The resolution directs the Berkeley Police Department and city attorney not to cooperate with DEA investigations against physicians, patients or their caregivers and medical cannabis dispensaries operating in accordance with California state and local law.  

At a press conference before the council meeting, Worthington said the DEA should not “use precious resources harassing patients, dispensaries and their landlords.” 

At the meeting, medical cannabis user Pat Crossman, who has arthritis and walks with the aid of two canes, told the council she has been using the medicine for 10 years. “It’s helpful for easing the pain,” she said. “I would be very upset if the feds came in and busted us or frightened us—we’re doing the best we can.” 

Berkeley’s Traffic Bureau came across a few snarls on the city’s streets this week. Not all were caused by clogged lanes and reckless driving. 

Police officers acting as decoys were booed, jeered and heckled while trying to monitor pedestrian right-of-way violations Tuesday. 

While some community members lauded the Berkeley Police Department (BPD) for their efforts, others said they should be chasing drug peddlers and robbers instead. 

“The community wants us to carry out decoys like this,” said BPD Community Relations Officer Sgt. Mary Kusmiss. “And yet when they happen there will always be a reaction ... there will always be some discomfort. Nobody likes getting cited.” 

The first of many focused enforcement projects kicked off Monday after City Manager Phil Kamlarz directed city officials to create a task force on traffic safety earlier this year. 

“Our goal is to collaborate and create a program of sustained education, enforcement and traffic engineering assessments,” Kamlarz told the Planet Wednesday. 

He added that he felt reasonably safe while walking on the city’s streets. 

“I have grown up walking on the streets,” he said laughing. “But there is a lack of awareness for pedestrian safety out there which we need to change.” 

Efforts to educate and enforce traffic laws on vehicle drivers, pedestrians and cyclists were carried out by the Traffic Bureau at Solano Avenue and Fresno Street—the site of two pedestrian fatalities last year—and Shattuck Avenue and Allston Way and Telegraph Avenue and Haste Street Monday. 

“We handed out over 2,000 informational flyers to community members,” Kusmiss said. “The focus in any traffic safety program is the 3 Es—education, enforcement and engineering. All three need to be employed to achieve some measure of success. The BPD Traffic Bureau always focuses on drivers, but we also know from our experience that pedestrians and cyclists also need some education and awareness.” 

Kusmiss pointed out that 16 of the 37 traffic collisions involving pedestrian fatalities that took place since 1984 were determined to be the pedestrian’s fault. 

“Of the four cyclists killed, all were the cyclist’s fault,” she said. 

Officers wrote 113 citations to pedestrians and cyclists on Tuesday.  

On Wednesday afternoon, the group carried out enforcement on drivers violating the pedestrian right of way at Shattuck and Berkeley Way using Officer Ross Kassebaum as a pedestrian decoy. 

“There are certain legal requirements we need to fulfill,” Kusmiss said pointing at two orange cones placed at a distance from each other on Shattuck Avenue. “They have been placed there in order to provide a vehicle with a reasonable amount of time to stop before the officer writes the citation. We don’t like to call it a sting, we like to call it focused enforcement.” 

As unsuspecting pedestrians jaywalked at the intersection of Shattuck and Berkeley Way with cellphones and iPods in hand, bike officers chased them down to applause from passers-by. 

“There were no cars coming so it was safe to walk,” said a teenager. 

“I jaywalked because there is a conspiracy going on with parking meters. It is espionage,” this from another young man. 

“I had to dash across because I left my baby in the car,” said a woman on Solano Avenue. 

According to Kusmiss, the woman was cited for leaving a 6-week-old baby unattended in her car while she went to get a bagel. 

Kassebaum, who had been out for three hours on Wednesday morning, admitted that there had been instances when he had been scared for his life. 

“Most of the drivers are not even looking,” he said. “They are either reading the paper or talking on the phone. Quite a few will even go by without seeing you. It’s impossible to read their mind.” 

Councilmember Dona Spring said she was concerned about the increase in the number of pedestrian accidents in the city. 

“Allston and Addison are the two most dangerous residential streets in the city,” she said. “The city needs to do something about that ... But again I don’t want overzealous enforcement. I think we need a pollution tax so that we can make drivers pay more and in the process create safety features for pedestrians.”  

Kamlarz said that a bike-pedestrian safety plan was scheduled to go before the City Council on Feb. 11. 

Julie Christiansan, who works in North Berkeley, praised the officers for their efforts. 

“It’s awesome,” she said smiling. “I have parked in this neighborhood for 20 years and I always cross the street with my life in my hands ... It’s treacherous.” 

“I just wish they would stop the robberies in the Southside,” said another gentleman who didn’t want to give his name. 

The question of dedicating space—a parking space—for Code Pink’s weekly demonstrations in front of the downtown Berkeley Marine Recruiting Center (MRC) raised hackles at Tuesday night’s City Council meeting, when Councilmember Gordon Wozniak likened the demonstrations there to protests at abortion clinics. 

“There’s a line between protesting and harassing,” Wozniak said, referring to possible harassment of recruits. 

Wozniak was the lone vote opposing a resolution authored by Councilmembers Linda Maio and Max Anderson designating a parking space in front of the recruiting center for the demonstrators from noon to 4 p.m. every Wednesday for six months. 

The dedicated parking space “is showing favoritism to one side of the argument,” Wozniak said.  

He added, “My concern is giving a parking space in front of the Marine Recruiting Center seems confrontational.” 

Move America Forward, which calls itself “the nation’s largest grassroots pro-troop organization,” weighed in on the question in a press statement issued Wednesday:  

“It is disgraceful that in the birthplace of the Free Speech Movement, anti-military activists would attempt to silence the same military men and women who serve this country and give their lives to protect the free speech rights of all Americans, including these ungrateful and despicable people on the Berkeley City Council,” said KSFO talk-show host Melanie Morgan, Move America Forward chair, quoted in the statement. 

Dori Schmidt, whose husband owns The Berkeley Review, a test preparation business above the MRC, told the council that the demonstrations disrupt the business with their noise. All the other public speakers, however, supported the parking space designation. 

“It’s not favoritism,” said PhoeBe Sorgen, a member of Code Pink and the Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists Social Justice Committee. Rather, it’s following the Berkeley “tradition to stand up for peace,” she said. 

Bob Meola, a veteran who has staffed hot lines for military personnel trying to leave the service, told the council that use of the parking space will help the demonstrators deliver the truth to possible recruits.  

“People get lied to. They don’t get the jobs and training” they’re told they will get, Meola said. “It’s a community service to warn youth about the criminal liars.” 

Anderson spoke as a former Marine who had protested the Vietnam War, addressing the unfair advantage of the Marines that have “millions of dollars at their disposal to bombard the nation with propaganda.” 

Councilmember Betty Olds, who originally intended to vote against the resolution, said she changed her mind after listening to one of the speakers, 90-year-old peace activist Fran Rachel. Olds said it would have been hypocritical of her to oppose the resolution, since she, like many others in Berkeley, “found a psychiatrist who said their kids were all crazy to get them out of the [Vietnam] war.” 

Olds added, “The Marines ought to have had the sense not to come here.” 

Earlier, at the Tuesday night meeting, the council passed a tri-part resolution from the Peace and Justice Commission 7-2 and 6-3 condemning the military presence in Berkeley. 

Olds and Wozniak opposed all three sections of the resolution: one clause asked the city attorney to consider whether the city can enforce a local anti-discrimination law on the basis that the military discriminates against people who are openly gay and lesbian; another clause praised the work of demonstrators who try to impede the work of the recruiters through nonviolent means. 

Councilmember Kriss Worthington joined Olds and Wozniak opposing the third clause of the resolution that asked the city manager to write to the marines, telling them that the recruiting office is not welcome in Berkeley “and if recruiters choose to stay, they do so as uninvited and unwelcome intruders.” 

Worthington told the Planet that, while he is a peace activist, he opposed this clause because “we need to be respectful of veterans.” He added, “It is important to build coalitions.” 

“This is pretty bad,” Councilmember Betty Olds said at the council meeting, commenting on the resolution. “I’m going to vote no—they serve a purpose of giving jobs to people without other opportunities.” 

At a rally that attracted some 50 supporters outside the Marine Recruiting Center in downtown Berkeley on Wednesday, the Regulating Military Recruiting Coalition launched a drive to collect 5,000 signatures for a ballot initiative aimed at regulating where public and private military recruiters can locate offices in Berkeley. 

The measure would amend Berkeley’s zoning ordinance, requiring military recruiters to obtain a use permit that would mandate a public hearing if they want to locate within 600 feet of a residential neighborhood, hospital, school or park, according to attorney Sharon Adams, who wrote the initiative.  

“The military serves the civilian population. As civilians we have the right to regulate the military. We have the duty to regulate the military,” Adams said, addressing the rally. 

Library Trustee Ying Lee, former councilmember and former aide to Congressmembers Ron Dellums and Barbara Lee, pointed to the military recruiting office at 64 Shattuck Square: “This office is asking people to go to war to kill, be killed or injured. How do they get these young people?”  

By lying, she said. “We are sick of the lies. They are fighting an illegal war in our name.”  

Lee, peace activist PhoeBe Sorgen and former City Councilmember Carole Kennerly are the signatories proposing the initiative. 

Calling the initiative “a legal tool to level the playing field through the public hearing and public comment process,“ Kennerly said mandating public input means “we can shine a light on the ridiculous notion that the military is a great opportunity for the poor and youth of color. The truth is that military recruiters exploit the lack of other options for underprivileged young people, in a phenomenon, which is called a ‘poverty draft.’  

“The unfair burden of this illegal and unpopular invasion of Iraq is carried disproportionately by youth of color and poor youth,” she said.  

Recruiters inside the center referred the Planet for comment on the initiative to a public information spokesperson. Last week, Marine recruiting spokesperson Major Wes Hayes told the Planet by e-mail that the military follows local zoning ordinances. 

Acting City Attorney Zach Cowan told the Planet that federal and state government entities are not required to follow local zoning laws, but may opt to do so.  

Organizations endorsing the initiative include: CodePink Women for Peace Bay Area, Grandmothers for Peace, Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists Social Justice Committee, World Can’t Wait, Bay Area Iraq Veterans Against War, Berkeley Greens, Courage to Resist, Watada Defense Committee, National Lawyers Guild Bay Area, Berkeley Gray Panthers and more. 

For information on the initiative go to bayareacodepink.org or call 524-2776. 

Photograph by Judith Scherr. 

Former Councilmember Carole Kennerly speaks outside the Marine Recruiting Center at 64 Shattuck Square in a rally kicking off an initiative to make future military recruiter offices go through a zoning process that will include public comment. Also pictured are Library Trustee Ying Lee (left), peace activist PhoeBe Sorgen (behind), attorney Sharon Adams (center right) and Zanne Joi of Code Pink. 

When 60 Minutes tackled the FBI investigation of the mortgage implosion Sunday night, producers looked to Stockton, “ground zero for the current financial crisis and a microcosm of everything that went wrong.” 

But their coverage of the current crisis overlooked another foreshadowing crisis for which Stockton was also Ground Zero—another national financial disaster under another Republican president. 

The link was there, early in Steve Kroft’s opening remarks. “A few years ago, it was one of the hottest real estate markets in the country; today it is the foreclosure capital of America.” 

A few years before that, Stockton had given birth to a hometown S&L that rocketed into the deregulated stratosphere of the early Reagan years to become the nation’s largest, and the darling of Wall Street. 

State Savings And Loan transformed itself into American Savings, the linchpin of Financial Corporation of America (FCA), with its vast network of mortgage funds bankrolled by double-digit uninsured jumbo CDs. 

The eventual collapse of American Savings is still the largest-ever bank failure in the country’s history. What is less well known was that its crimes were known to the same law firm that produced the two federal prosecutors in charge of the case: the local U.S. Attorney in Sacramento and U.S. Attorney General—and for years Reagan’s personal attorney—William French Smith. Another senior attorney from the same firm sat on FCA’s board. 

The collapse was completely predictable to someone on the outside, too. 

I know this as an absolute fact, because I did predict it, and I got exiled to the night cops’ beat at the Sacramento Bee because I refused to stop trying to write about it. I still have the letter of reprimand I got when I shouted at my editor. “You insisted we were missing a national story,” he wrote. I give him credit for that. And night cops is the rookie’s beat, the same one I took when I hired on at the Las Vegas Review-Journal at age 19. 

The FBI had a good idea what was happening, enough to merit a thorough investigation. It was their prosecution of a former State S&L vice president who pulled off a trailer loan pyramid scam in partnership with a concessionaire who had previously been the proud proprietor of“Jesse James Motors,” a used car lot in Fresno. But that investigation died an odd death when the culprits entered plea bargains. 

One of the peculiarities of the case I discovered was a lawsuit filed by the fellow from Santa Rosa who had previously brokered the bank’s trailer loan concession. Alleging he was wrongly deprived of the loan business, the Santa Rosan laid out the details of the scam in the court records I found in Stockton. The bank settled after negotiations by its law firm, the same one that produced the attorney general, the U.S. Attorney and one of FCA’s directors. 

By the time I had devoured the trailer case papers, I was tumbling to other schemes, the biggest and most disastrous of which involved mortgages. The bank was lending vast sums for office buildings, shopping centers and subdivisions, but often not quite enough to get things finished—often in the range of 90 percent of final costs. But developers, being the world’s eternal optimists, presumed that once they’d consumed their 90 percent, the bank would cough up the rest. 

When the bank refused to loan the rest, the projects drifted into foreclosure—in the case of one subdivision I toured, minus all but carpets and lawns—and the bank then peddled off the loans for between a quarter and fifty cents on the dollar. 

When I ran the paper trails on the buyers, I found partnerships controlled by partnerships, sometimes as many as five or more levels deep, until I wound up in the telephonic presence of a couple of old fellows who had ties to the old Al Capone Outfit and who had made a fortune during World War II buying up property seized when many of California’s Japanese-Americans were sent to concentration camps. 

The State corporation itself was a circus, with the bankers playing their own financial games on the side. The spouse of FCA’s CEO owned a private jet airline which did business with the bank, and which had its offices furnished by FCA. The bank was buying the furnishings of its branches from another partnership that turned out to consist of another executive and his spouse. 

A group of executives owned a party pad over on the coast through a partnership named Wizbang. The bank president had a pole in his yard he called his “farting post,” where inebriated guests were encouraged to cut the cheese for the uproarious entertainment of all. 

I documented all of it. 

But I was told, in writing, that the Bee didn’t consider my stories worth the effort, despite frequent heartfelt pleas. Finally, when I produced yet another story after being told to drop it for the third or fourth time, I was dispatched to night cops. 

Later, after I had quit the Bee in frustration and not long after the FCA empire collapsed in bankruptcy, I dropped by the paper to talk to a friend. Walking down a hallway after a brief visit, I encountered the editor who had banished me. He greeted me with a nod. I nodded back. “Looks like you were right, Dick.” 

American Savings was the biggest of the banks that fell to a variety of forces, but all of it involved mortgage foreclosures and the reckless pursuit of anything that could pay the high rates promised on those jumbo certificates of deposit. The ensuing oversupply of downtown office buildings led to foreclosures and bankruptcies, while subdivisions stood empty and shopping malls filled only with echoes. 

The banking collapse threatened hundreds of billions in jumbo CDs, many payable at rates far above the post-debacle norms. Jumbo CDs aren’t insured—thus the rationale for the higher rates—but the feds reorganized the deposit insurance systems, and paid off all the certificate-holders. 

The reason the uninsured were so considerately protected was because so many of the notes were held by unions, churches, pension funds, school districts and other branches of local and state governments and a whole lot of very rich and powerful people. The whole thing cost the U.S. Treasury about half as much as the whole Vietnam War. 

I was one of several reporters working on the S&L crisis at the time, and all of us were sidelined in one way or another. I found out why later, when a Sacramento banker took me to lunch to explain why he’d told the paper to either kill the story or lose his advertising—which was substantial. That’s when I realized what “not worthwhile” meant. 

So when I watched the opening of the 60 Minutes segment and learned that Stockton was the center of yet another mortgage catastrophe I wasn’t all that surprised. 

What does have me wondering is just what were the forces this time that kept the press from screaming out something that should’ve seemed ridiculously obvious to anyone who took a good look at the wonderful world of deregulated banking. 

Where the hell was the press this time? Why didn’t admonitions become the dominant memes? Why weren’t a lot more questions on a lot more lips? 

In the conversation to come, as blame-throwers blast away at bankers, regulators and, increasingly, the borrowers themselves, save a few barbs for us, the folks who’re supposed to serve as your representatives to the rich and powerful. Ask us how we fulfilled our role as keepers of public forums. Ask us if we had questions, and what we did or didn’t do to give them voice.

The remnants of a red and yellow toy train mark the spot where the redwood building housing the King Child Development Center at 1939 Ward St. used to be.  

A bobcat hovers around in the background, clearing up debris in the cold January rain. 

There are no shrieks of joy from pre-schoolers, no parents bustling around to fuss over them after school. But all that will soon change. 

A notice put up by the Berkeley Unified School District informs passersby that the old building has been demolished and a brand new one will be ready for students in August. 

An artist’s rendering of the proposed structure—consisting of six classrooms, an administrative building and a garden—gives an idea of what will occupy this gaping hole across the street from the derelict Berkeley Iceland. 

Plans for the demolition and reconstruction of the King Child Development Center on Ward Street, as well as the Franklin Para Nursery at 1460 Sixth St., had been in place since Berkeley voters approved Measure AA, under then-Superintendent Jack McLaughlin, in November 2000. 

After district officials visited the Ward Street site and declared it to be in a state of disrepair last year, the Berkeley Board of Education hired WLC Architects in March to create a plan for the new buildings. 

The board in June unanimously approved the demolition and the proposed reconstruction, estimated to cost the district $6.4 million in bond funds. 

“The district applied for funding for seismic retrofit of all the schools right after the Loma Prieta earthquake,” said Jon Santoro, former director of Berkeley Unified’s early childhood education program. “For some reason the plans for developing the early childhood program were put on hold ... I am glad it’s finally been done. The buildings were not habitable for children. They were rotting.” 

Lew Jones, the district’s director of facilities, told the Planet that the district had decided to upgrade a host of facilities between 2000 and 2010. 

“The board votes on a yearly basis on what projects to approve,” he said. “Last year it was Franklin and King.” 

District superintendent Michele Lawrence, who retires today (Friday), visited the sites in June and discussed plans with the schools’ staff about their temporary relocation this year to Malcolm X, West Campus and the Berkeley Arts Campus. The program was moved to these locations in July to prepare for the demolition. 

Calls from the Planet for comment on the project were not returned by Lawrence, who was attending a conference in Monterey. 

“The district determined that the facilities could not be renovated from a cost and space effective perspective,” said school board president John Selawsky. “It made sense to just start over. We decided on modular buildings because they were within our budget and the students would be able to get back to their old schools within a year.” 

Selawsky said that the planned prefabricated buildings, which will have metal roofs and stucco walls, would first have to be approved by the Division of the State Architect. 

According to Jones, the King buildings were built from hazardous materials. 

“Franklin caught fire a couple of years ago and we had to remove two out of the five classrooms,” he said. “The proposed project will have the same number of classrooms as King. Everything else will also be the same. Only the layout will be different.” 

King, which currently houses up to 84 children, would grow to 144 with the new plan.  

King old timers reminisced about the former redwood building during class Thursday. 

“They can say what they want about it but we made it work,” said Margie Kirk, who retired last year after teaching at the center for 27 years. “It helped a lot of young single parents and taught a lot of good things to children.” 

In the same breath she added that it was time for it to come down. 

“We are going to get a new building, so sacrifices have to be made for a few months,” she said. 

Alma Barrios, who teaches 3-year-olds at King, said that the transition to Malcolm X—where the kids occupy four after-school classrooms—had gone off smoothly. 

“There were a few minor hitches initially but parents and teachers were very responsive all over,” she said. “We are excited about moving into a new building.” 

LaSonia McCain, who took over from Santoro last year, said that teachers had wanted spacious classrooms for their students. 

“A place where they can play and get prepared for kindergarten,” she said. 

“We are moving into more academic goals now and trying to combine both play and child development. Teachers also wanted a building to collaborate and plan out their activities. For the small inconvenience that all of us will have to put up, we will get something better. As for the parents, the only thing they are concerned about is when their children can move into the new space.” 

Photograph by Riya Bhattacharjee. 

A train climbing structure is all that’s left of the King Child Development Center. 

Superstars and locals are gearing up for “super-duper” Tuesday, Feb. 5. 

At noon today (Friday) at Sproul Plaza, Barbara Lee will join Craig Newmark of Craigslist and hip-hop artists to stump for Barack Obama. 

Down the street, at 2 p.m. Sen. Edward “Ted” Kennedy will speak on Obama’s behalf at Beebe Memorial Cathedral, 3900 Telegraph Ave. in Oakland.  

Tomorrow (Saturday) at 11 a.m. there will be a get-out-the-vote rally for Obama at Frank Ogawa Plaza at 14th Street and Broadway in Oakland. 

Also tomorrow, John Kerry will participate in a “canvass kick-off rally” at 9:30 a.m. at Everett Middle School in San Francisco's Noe Valley, 450 Church Street.  

Not to be outdone, rival Hillary Clinton is flying into the Bay Area, first for a 4 p.m. appearance at the San Jose Convention Center, then for a 7 p.m. rally at the Orpheum Theatre on Market Street. 

The Obama campaign has been running a grassroots operation in the ninth congressional district with captains organized in almost every precinct, according to Obama spokesperson Erin Callahan. The Daily Planet was unable to reach the Clinton campaign. 

The Obama campaign can be reached at www.barackobama.com—plug in a zip code for local events. The Oakland office is at 510-268-1008. 

The local Clinton campaign can be reached at http://www.hillaryclinton.com/hq/california/  

Of 20 commissions listed in Title 3 of the Berkeley city code, stipulations that declare the “City Council shall appoint one of its members to act as a liaison representative to the commission” are found in the statutes creating only three commissions: Aging, Planning and Zero Waste. 

The only other mention of a council liaison is in the statute establishing the Parks and Recreation Commission, which declares both the council and the Berkeley Unified School District Board “may” appoint their own liaisons. 

In Planning Commission meetings covered by a Daily Planet over the past five years, attendance by any councilmember has been rare, and when it has occurred, it hasn’t been as a delegated representative of the city’s elected governing body. 

Typically, the council’s directives have been expressed by the city’s professional planning staff, and on significant occasions by Planning and Development Director Dan Marks. 

Christopher Lien, an attorney who lives in Berkeley and is active in the LeConte Neighborhood Association, raised the issue of the absent councilmember at the Planning Commission last week. 

Asked where the missing councilmember was, commissioners—and city staff—responded with blank stares. Similar responses came from city officials contacted a week later. 

But it’s there, in Section 3.28.040 of the code, “Council liaison representative—Functions.” 

The councilmember delegated to the commission is assigned: 

• “To attend the meetings of said commission;  

• “To advise the council of the background. attitudes and reasons behind decisions and recommendations of said commissions; and 

• “On request of any member of said commission to advise the commission of policies, procedures and decisions of the council that may bear on matters under discussion by the commission.” 

Acting City Attorney Zach Cowan said he didn’t ever recalling knowing of any council liaisons to the commissions, but their absence wouldn’t have any bearing on the legality of actions of either body. 

“It sounds like (the provision) is for the benefit of the council, not the commission,” Cowan said. “But there’s nothing that says the council can’t do without” a liaison. 

“I guess it’s a polite invitation,” he said. 

But Lien said the issue is deeper, and much more serious. 

The provisions, he said, aren’t for the council’s benefit but for the benefit of the citizenry. 

They are ordinances, and the city charter requires the city manager to enforce all ordinances in the municipal code, Lien said. 

The southside attorney said he was disturbed by the fact that the ordinance has been on the books throughout all the years Mayor Tom Bates has served on the council, yet neither the council, planning commissioners nor city staff seemed to be aware of the ordinances. 

Lien said Sharon Hudson has already emailed the council a demand that members follow the law and appoint the liaison to the Planning Commission. 

For Lien, the presence of the liaison is critical when commissions are dealing with matters of lasting consequence like the Downtown Area Plan and its potential for significantly increasing the city’s density. 

Should the council not appoint a liaison and the city manager not insist on an appointment, the next step would be in court, and a petition for a writ of mandate to enforce compliance. 

But Councilmember Kriss Worthington—who admits he wasn’t aware of the statute—said compliance could prove a mixed blessing for Lien and other neighborhood activists. 

“If the City Council were to vote on a liaison, I don’t know what one person would actually reflect the balance of opinion on so many complicated issues,” he said, given that members “come down all over the place on different issues.” 

City Planning and Development Director Dan Marks said he too wasn’t aware of the ordinance. 

“It’s news to me,” Marks said. “There may be such a person, but I’m not aware of it. Clearly, it’s not something that’s been actively used since I’ve been with the city.” 

The city’s top planning official said he’d be checking with City Manager Phil Kamlarz to find out what the statute might mean. 

Kamlarz was away from his desk when called Thursday afternoon.

The potentially volatile Oakland Unified School District teacher contract negotiations—in the midst of a state budget crisis and as the district transitions from state takeover to local control—bubbled to the surface Wednesday night when shouting Oakland teachers forced a brief but tense administrator-board meeting recess while demanding that their contract proposal presentation not be bumped down lower on the agenda. 

School board members and state administrator Vincent Matthews sat in stony silence, staring straight ahead, while teachers chanted “Teachers have the right to speak! Teachers have the right to speak!” School Board President David Kakishiba eventually relented after consultation with Oakland Education Association (OEA) President Betty Olsen-Jones, allowing the teacher presentation to move forward immediately, but not before he himself had to shout down repeated interruptions of his remarks with calls to “Listen!” before finally being able to announce that he was giving in. 

The brief confrontation began after Kakishiba announced he was moving up a report on the financial implications of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s proposed state budget cuts, ahead of the OEA and district contract proposal presentations. 

Teachers later charged that district officials wanted to present the potential grim repercussions to the district of the Schwarzenegger budget cuts first, in order to blunt the impact of OEA’s sweeping requests for pay raises, increased support services, and lower class sizes. 

Wednesday’s meeting marked the first round of OUSD negotiations on a contract that expires in July of this year. 

Despite the fact that OUSD Director of Labor Management and Employee Relations Troy Christmas tried to smooth over the contract disagreements by saying that “even when [the district and the teachers union] differ on methods, my experience has been we’re working towards a common purpose,” the OEA and OUSD management appeared far apart on their initial proposals. 

Saying that “we’re presenting a bold proposal” and “we’re tired of having to continue to say that we are going to do more with less,” OEA President Olsen-Jones gave district officials what she called “demands” that included, among other things, a 20 percent across-the-board teacher salary increase, a freeze on any teacher payment on health insurance premiums, maximum class sizes of 20 students in both elementary and secondary schools, decreased caseloads for school nurses and school counselors, and a guarantee of a library and librarian for all district schools. 

OUSD pointedly played close-to-the-vest in its own proposal. On compensation, the district’s proposal said only that “within budgetary constraints, adjust compensation to best recruit and retain quality educators and supporting personnel,” and on health benefits, that “changes to this section will be proposed to the joint Health Benefits Improvement Committee.” The OUSD proposal was silent on the issue of increased support services. 

But in his presentation to the board, OUSD Labor Management Director Christmas appeared to throw cold water on any increased teacher compensation, saying that while “all of us in here believe education is underfunded,” the district “needs to ensure that our expenses do not exceed our income.” More directly, Christmas told board members that district revenue between 2002 and 2007 “did not go up as fast as teacher compensation.” 

The two sides are now scheduled to go into private contract negotiations. 

The public’s ability to sort out the two contract proposals was made more difficult Wednesday night by the discovery that agenda documents posted on OUSD website are not currently visible on a large number of computers, a possible violation of California’s open records Brown Act. 

OUSD used to provide hard copies of agenda background documents at board meetings, but stopped the practice when the district began attaching links to such documents on its online meeting agendas. When a reporter informed OUSD Board Secretary Edgar Rakestraw Wednesday night that agenda that the background documents could not be viewed on his Mac computer, Rakestraw said that the district configured its website to be used on PC computers using an Internet Explorer browser, and any inability to download or even view the documents was “the fault of the individual computer.”  

Immediately afterwards, however, Board President Kakishiba informed Rakestraw that the agenda background documents were not available on the PC computer placed by the district on the board table for his use during board meetings. A similar problem was later reported during the meeting by a citizen attempting to view the same agenda documents supplied by the district in the audience section of the board room. 

Rakestraw said he would look into the problem. 

Saying that “the governor dropped a bombshell on the education community,” Oakland Unified School District interim Chief Financial Officer Leon Glaster painted a gloomy picture Wednesday night of the potential financial effects on OUSD of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s proposed 10 percent across-the-board budget cuts.  

The governor’s proposal was his initial response to the deepening national recession that has lowered California’s state income. If the 10 percent state budget cut actually becomes necessary, state legislators or the governor could eventually spread the reductions to hit different parts of the budget at different rates. But among the details Glaster outlined if the 10 percent state education cuts actually go into effect are: 

•1 percent required planned decreases in the current (2007-08) budget could mean a $1.067 million cut to the current OUSD budget by June. 

• The governor’s proposal would lead to a $15.6 million cut in the OUSD general fund budget in 2008-09, with a total budget reduction in excess of $22 million. 

• The governor’s proposal requires all unexpended school district 2007-08 categorical funds be sent back to the state if not spent by June 30, setting off a potential scramble of local spending to keep from losing that money. 

• The governor is proposing delaying the state Average Daily Attendance (ADA) payments to local districts from July 1 to September 30, meaning OUSD would either have to dip into its own reserves to pay its bills during that period, losing the interest income that money would earn the district, or take out a short-term loan to make up the difference. 

Board members, figuring out how to pay back the $100 million state loan that surrounded the state takeover of OUSD five years ago, immediately balked at any plan to take out new loans, and Board President David Kakishiba said that any such plan would need to be carefully considered and discussed in detail before being put into place. 

Meanwhile, Glaster told board members that on March 12, his office will do a “detailed analysis of what the governor’s proposal will do to the OUSD budget.” 

And OUSD state administrator Vincent Matthews said that on the issue of the loss of unspent money this year, he was meeting with district principals on Thursday (yesterday) “to appraise them of the budget situation and devise strategies for them to spend the money by June.” 

Under the bifurcated OUSD rule—in which board members have only regained local control of certain portions of district operations—the state administrator’s office retains complete authority over all district budget matters. State administrator Matthews, however, appears to be consulting board members on budgetary issues. 

UC Berkeley this week revealed the companies picked to bid on a new $56 million law school building and called for an architect to plan major changes to Haas School of Business. 

Officially described as the Law School Infill Project, construction includes a new 50,000-square-foot building to be erected in the courtyard adjacent to the existing building plus another 10,000 square feet of renovations to the current facility. 

The new building will consist of three floors, two of them underground, with the upper level covered by a green roof. 

University officials have narrowed the list of prospective bidders to four firms for the work at the School Formerly Known as Boalt Hall: Charles Pankow Builders of Oakland and Hunt Construction Group, McCarthy Building Companies and Plant Construction Company, all of San Francisco. 

The companies were among 14 which had picked up project plans. 

According to the original advertisement for bids, the project “will strive to comply with LEED Silver equivalent,” referring to the second lowest of four energy conservation standards developed by U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standards. 

Bids are due by 2 p.m. Feb. 22, and will be opened two minutes later. 

The second project is much broader, and seeks an architectural firm to develop a strategic facilities plan for the Haas School. 

The winner will be paid a lump-sum fee of not more than $185,000, according to the Request for Qualifications (RFQ) posted by the university. 

The plan “is envisioned as the first phase of a program of capital improvement which may include both renovations to existing facilities and construction of new facilities,” states the RFQ. 

The plan is to address near-, mid- and long-term needs of the school as they have developed since the school moved into its new buildings 12 years ago. 

The current complex housing 2,178 students, 74 permanent faculty, 80 visiting and non-permanent faculty members in buildings totally 234,000 gross square feet. 

The new plan is separate from the previously announced plans to create a “connection building” uniting offices and meeting spaces for both the law and business schools, said Dan Mogulof, executive director of the university’s Office of Public Affairs. 

But that project, estimated three years ago to cost between $100 million and $120 million, has been placed on hold. 

The reason? 

Calvin Hall, a circular building at the site of the proposed connection building, is currently housing the facilities of the Energy Biosciences Institute (EBI), the $500 million corporate/academic research program funded by BP, the Company Formerly Known as British Petroleum. 

The EBI is scheduled to get a new home in the purpose built Helios Building up the hill at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab (LBNL). 

But that project is several years from completion, forcing the delay in the connection building that was dramatically unveiled by Chancellor Robert Birgeneau as one of the keystones of the Southeast Campus Integrated Projects—themselves the subject of legal action in Alameda County Superior Court. 

The architect hired for the business school plans will evaluate the school’s needs and space and “prepare a space program that corrects existing deficiencies” while meeting long-term goals. The RFQ also calls for the winner to “identify and evaluate alternative investment strategies to accommodate the space program.” 

Work would begin immediately on the signing of the contract, with completion due by July 1. 

Michael Kelly of the Panoramic Hill Association is one of the plaintiffs in the suit challenging the Environmental Impact Report for the SCIP projects, and he said Thursday that he wondered if both projects were including scope of the SCIP EIR, which did cite improvements at both schools. 

“Thanks for the heads up,” he said when told the university had posted both projects on its website. 

The RFQ is at www.cp.berkeley.edu/CP/Projects/HaasSchoolofBusiness/RFQ_18217A_StrategicFacilitiesPlan.pdf; the notification of qualified bidders for the law school is at www.cp.berkeley.edu/AFB_12267A_LawSchoolInfill_afterPreq.pdf

Posted Wed., Jan. 30—The question of dedicating space—a parking space—for Code Pink’s weekly demonstrations in front of the downtown Berkeley Marine Recruiting Center (MRC) raised hackles at Tuesday night’s Berkeley City Council meeting, when Councilmember Gordon Wozniak likened the demonstrations there to protests at abortion clinics. 

“There’s a line between protesting and harassing,” Wozniak said, referring to possible harassment of recruits. 

Wozniak was the lone vote in opposition to a resolution authored by Councilmembers Linda Maio and Max Anderson designating a parking space in front of the recruiting center for the demonstrators from noon to 4 p.m. every Wednesday for six months. 

The dedicated parking space “is showing favoritism to one side of the argument,” Wozniak said, adding, “My concern is giving a parking space in front of the Marine Recruiting Center seems confrontational.” 

While Dori Schmidt, whose husband owns The Berkeley Review, a test preparation business above the MRC, told the council that the demonstrations disrupt the business with their noise, other public speakers supported the parking space designation. 

“It’s not favoritism,” said PhoeBe Sorgen, a member of Code Pink and the Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists Social Justice Committee. Rather, it’s following the Berkeley “tradition to stand up for peace,” she said. 

Bob Meola, a veteran who has staffed hot lines for military personnel trying to leave the service, told the council that use of the parking space will help the demonstrators deliver the truth to possible recruits.  

“People get lied to. They don’t get the jobs and training” they’re told they will get, Meola said. “It’s a community service to warn youth about the criminal liars.” 

Anderson spoke as a former Marine who had protested the Vietnam War, addressing the unfair advantage of the Marines that have “millions of dollars at their disposal to bombard the nation with propaganda.” 

Councilmember Betty Olds, who originally intended vote against the resolution, said she changed her mind, especially listening to one of the speakers who is a 90-year-old peace activist. Olds said it would have been hypocritical of her to oppose the resolution, since she, like many others in Berkeley, “found a psychiatrist who said their kids were all crazy to get them out of the [Vietnam] war.” 

Olds added, “The Marines ought to have had the sense not to come here.” 

The council also went on record calling on the governor to withdraw the California National Guard from Iraq, asking Congress to reaffirm the existence of the Armenian Genocide and adopting a policy, where practical, to cease purchases form Chevron Corp. They also raised meter parking fees from $1 to $1.25 per hour, made Berkeley a sanctuary for medical cannabis users and dispensaries and approved both the city manager and Police Review Commission reports on prevention of criminal activity by police. 

The Berkeley City Council will be addressing the issue of people lying on sidewalks and will have its first opportunity tonight (Tuesday) to address criminal behavior in its police department following the 2006 conviction of former Sgt. Cary Kent for stealing drugs from the evidence room he supervised and the alleged theft of cash and property belonging to suspects by another officer.  

The council meeting begins at 5 p.m. with a workshop on the city’s Climate Action Plan and continues at 7 p.m. with the public commons proposal, a contract with police, a resolution calling on the governor to remove the California National Guard from Iraq, a resolution opposing attempts by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration to close medical marijuana dispensaries and more. 

Public Commons 

The mayor’s Public Commons for Everyone Initiative was intended to address the needs of people with inappropriate behavior so that they would not interfere with consumers’ enjoyment of shopping. 

Part of it is an ordinance that allows police to cite people lying on the sidewalk in commercial areas. When the measure came to the City Council in December, Councilmember Linda Maio would not vote for it. 

“I was concerned with what happens to people in the middle of the night,” Maio told the Planet on Friday, explaining that she was not sure if there was adequate space in shelters for the people sleeping on the sidewalk. 

To be sure homeless people have somewhere to sleep, she and Councilmember Laurie Capitelli have written a resolution that would stop police from citing people lying on the sidewalk when there were no shelter beds available and would have the officers direct people to an available shelter bed and even give them taxi scrip to get them there.  

Maio said she was told that there are five-to-10 shelter beds available each night. 

“There’s no enforcement if there’s no bed,” she said. 

Maio said that when homeless people go to shelters, they have the opportunity of being connected to services that will eventually take them off the streets. 

Asked how the council will know if the program is working, Maio said one way would be to ask for a report on how the taxi scrip was being spent.  

Also on the council agenda is a public hearing on raising the parking meter fee from $1 per hour to $1.25 per hour This is expected to raise $1 million annually, which would be dedicated to pay for services for the people acting inappropriately. That would include keeping bathrooms open all night, renting port-a-potties and providing housing with services for 10-15 people in need. 

Addressing police behavior 

“The possibility that a sworn and armed officer was not only working while under the influence of narcotics, but that he was able to steal drugs from what should have been the most secure location in Berkeley, cast a shadow of doubt on the entire department,” says the report authored by a Police Review Commission subcommittee.  

The council will consider separate recommendations by the PRC and the police chief. While Chief Doug Hambleton agreed with most of the commisision’s recommendations for change, there are differences notably in areas where the commission is asking the chief to go further in his investigation of the missing drug evidence. 

The full amount of missing drugs is unknown. While there was tampering with 286 drug evidence envelopes, there was no measure of the quantity of drugs missing. “Without knowing the total amount of drugs missing, the possibility that the amount of missing drugs was more than what would have been required to supply one addict can not be ruled out,” the report says. 

Committee members said they wanted more investigation into the quantities of drugs in those envelopes, as they suspected that there may have been more drugs missing than one person could have consumed. 

But the chief argues in his report that more investigation is costly and that the criminal—Kent—was apprehended, convicted and served his time, based on just a few envelopes with drugs missing that were fully investigated.  

The PRC report recaps the Cary Kent case, noting that 21 officers had observed that Kent had problems such as having a “sallow look,” being “withdrawn,” appearing “disheveled,” being “extremely talkative” and exhibiting “erratic” behavior. Twelve officers complained of Kent’s tardiness or missing appointments when he was responsible for bringing drug evidence to court, the report says.  

Despite this and other suspicious behavior, “the chief was never informed and did not suspect any drug abuse until November of 2005,” the report says.  

“The failure of BPD officers, particularly supervisors, to intervene given their observations of Sergeant Kent is unacceptable,” the report says, noting that officers in the narcotics unit are not all trained in detecting drug abuse and they are not trained to tell their supervisors if fellow officers appear unable to fulfill their responsibilities. 

Some other facts noted in the PRC report were that while Kent was placed on administrative leave Jan. 6, a warrant to search Kent’s office and car was not issued until Jan. 25 2006, and a search warrant for his computer wasn’t issued until Feb. 17 2006. 

The chief accepted most of the recommendations advanced by the PRC including:  

moving the responsibility for storage of all narcotics evidence out of the Special Enforcement Units; holding scheduled and unscheduled inspections; and identifying who is responsible for monitoring entry into secured drug storage areas.  

The authors of the report, PRC Commissioners William White, Sharon Anne Kidd and Sherry Smith, and community members Jim Chanin and Andrea Prichett, said that the report’s weakness was the inability of the subcommittee to interview various officers.  

“The [Berkeley Police Association] BPA’s attorney wrote to Chief Hambleton and threatened to sue the city if officers were interviewed about this incident,” the report says, noting that the objections were related to a California Supreme Court decision and a BPA lawsuit that shields officers from public scrutiny for personnel reasons.  

Also before the council will be: 

• The contract between the Berkeley Police Association and the city that will give the police a cumulative cost of living adjustment of 14 percent over four years, approximately $6.9 million between 2008 and 2012.  

• A resolution aimed at the Marine Recruiting Center downtown: asking the city attorney to look into enforcing a clause in the city’s municipal code prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and directing the city manager to send letters to the Marine Recruiting Center “advising them that the Marine recruiting office is not welcome in our city….” 

• A resolution calling on the governor to remove California National Guard troops from Iraq; 

• A request asking for information on pedestrian and bicycle accidents; 

• A resolution opposing attempts by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration to close medical marijuana dispensaries and declaring Berkeley a sanctuary for medicinal cannabis use and distribution. 

Richmond’s Design Review Board this week will take up major renovation plans for the city’s Chevron Refinery, using an environmental impact report (EIR) one city councilmember calls “really pathetic” and “a piece of shit.” 

“I’ve been dealing with Chevron for decades,” said Tom Butt, the always-outspoken councilmember. And while Richmond was once a company town, he said the oil giant has alienated too many people to win an easy pass. 

He said too many questions remain unanswered about the extensive plans for what the oil company calls its Energy and Hydrogen Renewal Project. 

Mayor Gayle McLaughlin agrees. 

“I believe we need a re-circulation of the EIR with all relevant information and all potential impacts disclosed for full public review,” she said in an email to this newspaper. “Hundreds of public comments (some hundreds of pages long) were received by Planning Department expressing grave concerns about the project as proposed.” 

The Design Review Board, which meets at 6 p.m. Thursday in the temporary city council chambers at 1401 Marina Way South, is the first city body to take up the document. 

But the meeting will find two of the board’s five seats vacant with the citizen panelists in a state of limbo as the city moves towards ending the board’s existence and merging its functions into the Planning Commission. 

A council majority adopted a Maria Viramontes proposal to merge the two bodies, though the agencies continue their separate existences five months after the board’s intended termination. 

Butt said he hopes the board exercises its right to delay a decision until they have had time to review what he called “the nine pounds of documents [which] were dumped on them last weekend.” 

He said the board also has the right to call in consultants at Chevron’s expenses to review any questions they may have. 

While the slowly expiring board has a title that would seem to focus on issues of style and color, Butt said the body is also charged with evaluating how projects impact the quality of life in the community. 

Once the proposal has passed muster with the board, it then heads to the Planning Commission. 

Butt said he expects that whatever decision those bodies reach, an appeal to the city council is a foregone conclusion. 

“This massive project requires so much more than a dialogue between city staff, consultants, and Chevron,” said the mayor. “The pertinent dialogue here is the dialogue within the community who will be the recipient of any potential impact.” 

Butt has been targeting the project’s impact in emails to his constituents, focusing on issues of global warming, dangerous emissions and public health. 

Butt and McLaughlin are both concerned that the report failed to adequately address public health issues. 

“Western Contra Costa County has much higher rates of cancer and asthma than the rest of the county,” Butt said, charging that the EIR failed to adequately address the impacts of refinery pollutants when combined with other chemicals circulating in the city’s environment. 

McLaughlin raised the issue in her State of the City Address: “When it comes to expansion proposals from Richmond’s petrochemical industry, anything short of a reduction in each pollutant and a cumulative reduction in the overall pollution that is rained over our heads is simply more of the same ... a continuation of the environmental injustice that our city has suffered for decades.” 

The draft EIR generated “hundreds and hundreds of pages of comments from very reputable people and groups, including the Attorney General’s office,” Butt said. 

One of Butt’s particular concerns in environmental justice, “which is just glossed over in the EIR. It’s the idea that where there is a concentration of people who are already disadvantaged for economic and other reasons, you don’t do something that’s going to make it even worse.” 

“My position on the Chevron Expansion project is that this project must not increase pollution and must reduce current pollution levels for the people of Richmond,” McLaughlin said. 

On its own website, Chevron touts the project’s benefits, citing an overall decrease in noxious emissions and its promise to generate “millions in new tax revenues for Richmond that could be used to fund city programs including public safety, street repairs, libraries and youth services.” 

Butt said that while he believes his council colleagues have finally “had it with Chevron,” he worries that the company could promise enough grant funds to councilmembers’ pet projects to overcome their initial reluctance. 

According to the company website, the project includes four major components: 

• “Power Plant Replacement. Replace inefficient steam boiler plant built in the 1930s with gas turbine Cogeneration plant. 

• “Hydrogen Plant Replacement. Replace existing 40-year old high energy use plant with new energy efficient plant. 

• “Hydrogen Purity. Modify existing equipment to remove sulfur compounds and improve the purity of hydrogen used by refinery processing plants. 

• “Reformer Replacement. Replace 1960s gasoline reformers, with one plant of the same processing capacity as two existing plants.” 

The company said the construction effort will employ 1,200 workers. 

The city’s planning department website describes the project this way: “In general, the project would modify, replace and install typical refining equipment such as piping, heat exchangers, instrumentation, catalytic reactors, fractionation equipment, pumps, compressors, furnaces, tanks, hydrogen sulfide absorption capacity, hydrogen generation capacity and their associated facilities, including steam and electrical generation as well as some refinery buildings and infrastructure. These changes would include construction and installation of new facilities as well as replacement of or modifications to existing facilities.” 

David J. Teece, the UC Berkeley professor and until recently perhaps Berkeley’s richest private landlord, used illegal tax dodges and owes Uncle Sam millions, says the IRS. 

And the agency is taking him to tax court—again. 

But this time, he raised eyebrows at Forbes Magazine, prompting writer Janet Novack to remark, “An adverse outcome in the cases could hurt Teece’s credibility as a highly paid witness and provide fodder for hostile cross-examiners.” 

The feds want $12 million in back taxes and penalties, alleging the internationally famous business maven claimed $21 million in bogus short-term capital losses in 1998 and 1999, according to the Forbes account. 

In addition to holding the Thomas W. Tusher Chair in Global Business at the university’s Haas School of Business, Teece is founder, director and vice chair of LECG Corporation (the initials stand for Law and Economics Consulting Group.) 

The firm provides expert witnesses, and Teece’s expert submissions have been cited in decisions issued by the U.S. Supreme Court. 

The New Zealand-born economist also served as a member of the Atlas Group’s board of directors and as a trustee of Atlas Insurance Trust. 

Atlas was the brokerage arm of Golden West Financial, which owned the Atlas Funds and World Savings. Both have since been acquired by Wachovia Corporation, ending Teece’s tenure. 

Among his New Zealand-based investments, Teece holds major interests in investment funds and is the founder of Canterbury International, Australasia’s leading purveyor of rugby uniforms. He is named in a separate IRS tax case against Canterbury Holdings LLC, its American subsidiary. 

But to Berkeley residents not affiliated with the university, he has left his biggest mark on the city as partner with Patrick Kennedy in the Gaia Building and other downtown apartment buildings recently sold to a company controlled by an even richer landlord, Sam Zell’s Equity Residential. 

Just how much of the $140 million-plus sales price Teece will reap remains an open question. 

On Nov. 27, he signed a seven-year retention agreement with LECG guaranteeing him payments of $10 million divided between the last quarter of 2007 and the first quarter of the new year. The pact also allowed him to sell some of his previously restricted stock in the company. 

According to records filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, between Jan. 14 and Jan. 24, Teece sold 470,500 LECG shares for a total of $6,643,800. 

While Teece has yet to return a call from this paper, he granted an interview to the Wall Street Journal last March in which he acknowledged that 60 LECG consultants were making more than $500,000 a year each. 

The experts, who include people with powerful political connections in both parties, are consulted by leading companies around the globe. 

In 2006, according to LECG Corporation’s latest annual report, Teece earned $3,519,258 in fees in addition to his other earnings from the company.  

An examination of tax court filings in San Francisco shows that Teece and spouse Leigh G. Teece were named in an action filed last Aug. 15 and served two days later. 

The couple was also named in an IRS tax claim filed Sept. 14, 2004 and dismissed four months later because the allegations it raised had been covered in a still earlier action. 

Canterbury Holdings LLC. was named in three actions filed in 2004 and a fourth case filed July 21, 2006. 

According to Forbes, the most recent case against the Teeces alleges that Teece used partnership, options and stock in Germany’s Deutsche Bank to manufacture tax losses and shield his other income from federal taxes. 

A 2007 estimate printed in New Zealand—where he still owns a home and visits frequently—estimated his net worth at $94 million. 

Asked about the federal tax claims, David Roth, Teece’s Beverly Hills tax lawyer, said, “We have no comment.” 

The company’s stock, which trades on the NASDAQ exchange, was selling for as much as $17.87 on Nov. 9 but closed at $12.43 Monday. 

Dona Spring, the Berkeley City Councilmember whose district houses most of the buildings created by the Teece-Kennedy partnership, said that if the allegations are true “he needs to pay it back.” 

“That could help pay for some of the deteriorating streets, storm drains and schools,” she said, adding, “I wonder if, if it’s true, whether the local politicians who made money from his fund raisers will return it?” Recipients of Teece contributions include President George W. Bush, state Senator Don Perata, former Berkeley Mayor Shirley Dean and Berkeley Councilmember Gordon Wozniak.

Berkeley’s Peace and Justice Commission is asking the city tonight (Tuesday) to approve a resolution to “cease all purchases from Chevron, to the extent allowable by law.”  

In Richmond, Chevron houses more than 11 million pounds of toxic materials and has been responsible for more than 304 accidents, according to the resolution. “For illegally bypassing wastewater treatments and failing to notify the public about toxic releases, Chevron’s Richmond refineries were forced to pay $540,000 in 1998,” the resolution says, noting that the company is responsible for 95 Superfund sites. 

The resolution also points to Chevron’s role in Burma, Nigeria and Angola. Texaco, which became part of Chevron in 2001, dumped more than 18 billion gallons of toxic wastewater into Amazon rainforests from 1964 to 1992, which “is often considered one of the world’s worst ecological catastrophes,” according to the resolution. 

When heavy winter rains and cold weather are predicted, even the hardiest of homeless people find themselves desperate for shelter. Thanks to funding from the city of Berkeley, the generosity of the congregation of St. Mark’s Episcopal Church—and some luck and community support—there is a haven from the storms.  

If it looks like it will be a bad night, signs reading “GIMME SHELTER” in big red letters are posted at places where homeless people are likely to be, announcing that St. Marks will be open at 7 p.m. for anyone needing a warm, dry bed for the night. The word then quickly goes out via cell phones to the street dwellers in the community. The emergency storm shelter is operated by J.C. Orton of Dorothy Day House. 

For a number of years shelter for the homeless was provided by a rotating arrangement among several churches with each hosting the shelter for three months at a time. Then in 2002, the city took an interest.  

As J.C. Orton tells it, the city approached Dorothy Day House, which provides meals and other services, and “asked us ‘what do you think of the idea of creating a shelter? We said ‘interesting but how would it work?’ They said ‘you guys find a venue and we’ll throw some money at it and you provide people and logistics to make it work.’”  

The hardest part of such an enterprise is finding a place for it. There are no facilities dedicated to providing round the clock social services for anyone. Orton approached the various churches that had hosted the shelter part time in the past. All refused except St. Marks, which has the smallest congregation and least resources. And they ask for no compensation for their expenses—the heating bill alone is no small item. 

The shelter is open only on rainy or very cold nights. There is enough funding this year for 66 nights. If J.C. decides to open the shelter he has to put out the announcements by early afternoon. That can call for some tricky decision making. If it looks like it will be stormy and he opens up and the weather turns out to be balmy the night is “wasted.” On the other hand if the weather turns ugly too late in the day to plan on opening, a lot of people will be very miserable.  

The doors are open from 7 to 9 p.m. for people to sign in. Each person is given a pad, a sheet and blanket for the night. J.C. also gives out sleeping bags that people can keep with them. The sheets are collected in the morning and taken to the laundromat. The room is large and radiant heating around the perimeter keeps it comfortably warm. There are usually between 50 and 60 people, four to six times as many men as women, mostly people between 26 and 55 years of age though there is a significant and increasing number of older people over 55. Many are chronically homeless and come to the shelter repeatedly whenever it is open. 

By 9 p.m. most people have settled down, reading, relaxing on their mats or in quiet conversation. For someone who is homeless and has virtually no income surviving from day to day is extraordinarily difficult. Leaving the shelter at 7 a.m. (most shelters put people out at that early hour so the facility can be cleaned up for the daytime users) the guests must usually an hour wait for a free breakfast—somewhere. During the day, between trudging all over town for lunch or dinner meals which are served at various locations and different times each day and taking care of personal needs like showers and laundry, there is little opportunity to earn money with occasional jobs or panhandling, let alone save enough to get into housing.  

We talked with Van who has been staying at the shelter frequently for several years. She does odd jobs, recycles, sells the Street Spirit newspaper, but she says “even if I get a job today and work 24/7 I would still not have enough money to afford a place.” While trying to come up with first and last month rent and security deposit, “I’ll still be on the street for eight months trying to save money” to get into permanent housing. Meantime it’s a great relief to be able to stay out of the rain. 

Juan is 45 years old, he has a disability and, he says, “I have a substance abuse problem ... but I’m making steps, getting help. I’m clean and sober now.” But being on the street makes it much harder. “(It) gives you the perfect excuse to go out there and say the hell with it, nobody else cares. But I do care and J.C. cares about me,” he says. “He cares about people.”  

A distinguished looking, white haired man who won’t give his name, “Call me Center and Shattuck” says “I’m here because it’s raining and I’m homeless” and when the shelter isn’t open “I sleep out on the streets in various places.” He has skills, he has had jobs, but bad luck has dogged him so he hasn’t managed to save enough money to get into an apartment. Like many other homeless people ‘Center and Shattuck’ is worried that the Public Commons for Everyone Initiative Berkeley just passed will bring about more harassment of people who are living on the street.  

On the positive side, asked if he thinks the city is doing better or worse with regard to homelessness, J.C. Orton who has been providing services for Berkeley’s homeless for many years, sees some improvement.  

“I think it’s important to give the city credit for what they are doing. (But) I think it’s important that the city do more,” he says. “Regardless of how much the city does it will never be enough.” 

At its Jan. 13, 2008 meeting, Berkeley Citizens Action members considered the presidential primary candidates and the propositions and measures on the upcoming Feb. 5, 2008 ballot.  

To receive the BCA endorsement, a proposition, measure, or candidate must receive at least 60 percent of all votes cast in that ballot. No candidate received the 60 percent necessary for an endorsement, though BCA voted on candidates from the Democratic, Green and Peace and Freedom parties.  

Using the same 60 percent rule, BCA members present and voting did decide to endorse a NO vote on Propositions 91, 93, 94-97 and Measures A and B. Proposition 92 (Funding of Community Colleges) received a YES endorsement.  

The steering committee of the Progressive Democrats of the East Bay also recommended NO votes on all ballot measures except Proposition 92, which got a YES recommendation. The Berkeley Democratic Club had previously made the same choices. 

However, the Progressive Democrats of the East Bay did endorse a presidential candidate, Dennis Kucinich. Kucinich has since withdrawn from the race, though his name cannot now be taken off the California primary ballot. 

It had been commonly believed—at least by Assembly District 14 candidates Richmond Councilmember Tony Thurmond, Berkeley Councilmember Kriss Worthington, and Berkeley resident Dr. Phil Polakoff—that East Bay Parks District member and former Berkeley City Councilmember Nancy Skinner had decided not to run for the Assembly seat now occupied by Loni Hancock. 

“I never announced such a thing,” Skinner told the Planet last week. “I’ve never been out of the race.” 

Skinner said she had been waiting until after the Feb. 5 election to start her campaign. If voters approve Prop. 93, Sen. Don Perata will stay in his present job as state senator and Hancock, hoping to win Perata’s seat if it’s vacant, will run for another term in the Assembly. 

A fundraising e-mail from Skinner to supporters last week said: “I had hoped to wait until the term limit issue is settled to activate my Assembly campaign, but politics, like nature, abhors suspense. So I’m writing to let you know my campaign has begun.” 

Neither Worthington, Polakoff, Thurmond nor Skinner plans to face Hancock if she runs again for the Assembly seat.  

If Prop. 93 fails, Hancock will run against Wilma Chan, a former assemblymember and former county supervisor, for the Senate seat Perata now occupies. 

Skinner is a long-time political ally of Hancock and her husband Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates, assemblymember for 20 years before Hancock was elected.  

Skinner, who recently left her job as U.S. director of the Climate Change Group—an organization that works with Fortune 500 businesses and government leadership on climate change issues—told the Planet she will focus on “how do we move to a low carbon economy that would include maximizing jobs and economic opportunity” in the field of greenhouse gas reduction. 

All three other candidates say Skinner is beatable.  

While Skinner’s track record in the environmental movement will stand her in good stead with global warming wary folk, Worthington points out that he has a strong environmental track record, notably in shoreline protection and transportation issues and is past chair of the local Sierra Club. 

He also points to his record supporting labor, gay and women’s rights, racial justice and more. Worthington said he’s not only sponsored progressive legislation such as the city’s Living Wage, Equal Benefits, Zero Waste and Precautionary Principle ordinances, he’s walked picket lines for striking workers and sat in at the governor’s office to support the rights of disabled people. 

“It’s unfortunate that she will split the progressive vote by jumping in at such a late date,” Worthington said. 

Polakoff, who ran for mayor against Hancock, said Worthington and Skinner are too closely tied to Berkeley to win the election. “I’m not pigeon-holed,” he told the Planet. “I can talk to everyone—people in the hills and the flats.” 

Polakoff said he’ll be the choice for folks east of the Berkeley Hills. The 14th Assembly District extends through Lamorinda to parts of Walnut Creek and Pleasant Hill. He’s endorsed by former Mayor Shirley Dean, Councilmember Gordon Wozniak and former Sheriff Charles Plummer. 

Polakoff said his activism has been outside the political arena, working on health care policy on the state and local levels and working on neighborhood issues as past president of the Claremont-Elmwood Neighborhood Association. 

Richmond Councilmember Tony Thurmond says it’s a myth that the 14th Assembly District belongs to someone from Berkeley. 

“If you believe what people say, a Richmond resident cannot win,” Thurmond told the Planet. “But my decision to run is not based on what people think.” He says he can provide the best leadership for the entire district. 

In the Assembly, he would focus particularly on addressing violence reduction. “It’s important in the entire district—in Richmond, Oakland and Berkeley,” he said, noting that he would reestablish the I-80 corridor group to attack the problem among cities from Oakland to Richmond. “No one city can solve the problem alone,” he said. 

Thurmond’s supporters include California State Assemblymember Mervyn M. Dymally from Compton, former Alameda County Supervisor John Knox and SF Mayor Gavin Newsom. 

Candidates’ websites are: www.TonyThurmond.com, www.drphilforassembly.com and www.krissworthington.com. Skinner can be reached at nancyskinner@dslextreme.com. 

In a made-for-TV moment, under blue skies and beside a sparkling bay at Shorebird Park, Mayor Tom Bates rolled out the draft Climate Action Plan aimed at reducing greenhouse gases 80 percent by 2050—fulfilling the goals of Measure G, approved by Berkeley voters in 2004. 

The mayor told the gathering of community and press that Berkeley, one of three cities with the largest number of rooftop solar collectors in the country, has already begun to reduce its carbon footprint. 

“We reduced our greenhouse gases by 9 percent between 2000 and 2004,” said Bates, who had come from city hall to the event in an AC Transit fuel-cell powered bus.  

Bates lauded the plan, which will have cost more than $200,000 by the time it is approved in April. It was written by Climate Change Coordinator Timothy Burroughs and the city’s Energy & Sustainable Development staff and taken to a number of city commissions and to the business community for input.  

“This has gotten more scrutiny than any plan” developed by the city, Bates said, noting that the plan will remain a draft until the City Council approves it in the spring. The public will be able to send comments on an interactive website at www.berkeleyclimateaction.org until March 7. 

Staff will present the draft plan to the City Council at a 5 p.m. workshop today (Tuesday). 

The plan aims at making all structures in Berkeley achieve a net zero energy consumption level by increasing efficiency and shifting to renewable energy sources such as wind and solar. 

By 2050 most people in Berkeley will be walking, biking or using public transit—personal vehicles will run on alternative fuel cells or electricity, the plan says. 

It further states that to achieve the greenhouse gas reduction goal, there must be zero waste sent to landfills and most food consumed in Berkeley will be produced within a few hundred miles of the city. 

When Bates took questions from the press and community, he was asked about the role of the development of biofuels in Berkeley’s future and the growing concern that producing agricultural products for biofuels has removed a food source from people in developing nations.  

Bates lauded the city’s use of biodiesel—its truck fleet uses 20 percent biodiesel made mostly from used vegetable oil. He pleaded ignorance, however, to the rest of the question: “I’m not an expert in biofuels,” the mayor said, explaining that he did not know anything about biofuels production in developing countries. 

Dan Kammen, director of UC Berkeley’s Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory, an advisor on the plan who spoke to the gathering after the mayor, helped the mayor with a response. He said he was aware of the controversy surrounding biofuels production, but noted that biofuels can be sourced from algae, which would not disrupt food production. He also said more can be done to fund agriculture in developing countries to blunt the negative impact of biofuels production. 

Community member Juliet Lamont told the mayor she hoped the plan would include protection for wildlife habitat and riparian corridors.  

“We want to look at all these things,” Bates responded. 

Councilmember Kriss Worthington, often at odds with Bates, stood behind the mayor holding the plan’s “join the movement to reduce greenhouse gas” banner, during the presentation.  

After the speeches, Worthington told the Planet: “We need an action plan—some ideas didn’t make it into the plan.” That includes consideration of the impacts of the University of California and the Lawrence Berkeley National Labs, which the plan does not address, Worthington said, and “it doesn’t include eco-passes,” which are public transit passes paid for by an employer or school and free for use by workers and students. 

It should also include very simple ideas such as mandating recycling in apartments, which are now left out of the city’s recycling efforts, Worthington said. 

The plan, however, says specific actions will be costly and “necessitate additional resources and sustained coordination across sectors.” 

Three more challengers, including one in the district of powerful Oakland City Council President Ignacio De La Fuente, have announced for the Oakland City Council in what already was one of the most crowded election years in the city in recent memory. 

Realtor Mario Juarez is running for the seat currently held by De La Fuente from District 5 in central East Oakland. Former Oakland Planning Commissioner and AC Transit Director Clinton Killian has announced his intention to run for the Oakland City Council At Large seat currently held by longtime incumbent Henry Chang. And in the deep East Oakland District 7, neighborhood activist Clifford Gilmore—the son of Oakland’s first African-American City Councilmember, Carter Gilmore—is running against longtime incumbent Councilmember Larry Reid. 

Juarez, the owner of Realty First and Mortgage Mario Juarez Team in Oakland’s Fruitvale section, is a longtime Fruitvale resident who serves on the board of directors of the Fruitvale-based Unity Council, and was a Mayor Jerry Brown appointee to the Workforce Investment Board.  

Although his campaign is not yet official, he is already speaking out against the incumbent De La Fuente, saying that he is “running against one of the biggest egos in the city,” and saying that he is responding to a “craving in the community for change and new ideas.”  

Juarez says that he will be a strong advocate on issues of crime and violence, which he calls a “city-wide emergency” that has long been a problem in the Fruitvale area. 

De La Fuente could not be contacted for this story, but it is widely assumed that he is running for re-election. 

Killian, a longtime Oakland real estate, probate, and business attorney and currently a Montclair resident, recently picked up the early endorsement of District 16 Assemblymember Sandré Swanson.  

He was widely mentioned as a candidate in 2006 for the District 16 Assembly seat being vacated by former Assemblymember Wilma Chan, but Killian dropped out of the race later won by Swanson.  

Killian served on the AC Transit Board of Directors from 1994 to 2000 and was an Oakland Planning Commissioner from 2001 to 2005.  

In a recent article in The Globe newspaper, where Killian writes a weekly column, he said that crime prevention will be a major focus of his campaign.  

“And it’s not just about hiring more police officers,” Killian said, “but developing a comprehensive approach to attacking crime which includes prevention, creating safe neighborhoods and rehabilitation to move people away from criminal activity. It’s not going to be solved by doing one thing.”  

Killian also said that new business recruitment to Oakland and equalizing services in the city’s neighborhoods will be among his other priorities if elected. 

Killian joins an already-crowded At-Large field fueled, in part, by rumors that incumbent Henry Chang may not be running for re-election this year. Chang has not yet made any public announcement of his election plans and did not return phone calls in relation to this article. 

A second At-Large candidate will be Charlie Pine, co-founder of Oakland Residents for Peaceful Neighborhoods. Pine, an Allendale district resident and the only candidate to put up a campaign website so far [www.pineforoakland.org], lists “peaceful neighborhoods” as his major goal. “Let's make peaceful neighborhoods top priority,” a paragraph on the front page of his campaign website reads, “and let's get city government back to basic services like trimming the trees and repairing the streets. The budget has the money; but we must spend it for urgent needs, not political pork.“ 

A third challenger, AC Transit At-Large Director Rebecca Kaplan, has also announced her intention to run for the At-Large Oakland City Council seat. Kaplan lost to Chang in a 2000 runoff for Chang’s seat. 

But the major player in the At-Large seat may not be any of the announced candidates, even if Chang chooses not ito run. It is rumored that District 4 City Councilmember Jean Quan is considering a run for the At-Large seat if Chang chooses not to run. Quan could not be reached in connection with this article. 

In District 7, a Gilmore campaign pamphlet describes him as a community organizer who has “worked to establish Neighborhood Crime Prevention Councils throughout the city, stimulated neighborhood growth through economic investment, created accountability within local public schools, and worked continuously with Oakland’s youth as a coach and mentor.” 

Gilmore says he is running “to reverse the trends that have plagued Oakland for too long: crime, blight, and development that does not benefit the residents of District 7.” 

Incumbent Larry Reid, a former aide to former Oakland Mayor Elihu Harris, says he is running for re-election and that there are “exciting things” going on in the council district that extends to the San Leandro border. 

In West Oakland’s District 3, a third candidate, Covenant House Development Director Sean Sullivan, may be joining incumbent Nancy Nadel and Oakland School Board member Greg Hodge. Sullivan could not be reached in connection with this story. 

A fifth council seat—that of District 5 Councilmember Jane Brunner—is also up for election this year. 

Meanwhile, the schedule for this year’s council elections is still up in the air. Oakland City Council elections were originally scheduled for June 3, with Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) taking the place of runoff elections.  

But with Alameda County’s proposed IRV software still tied up in the approval process with the Federal Elections Commission—with the California Secretary of State’s office next in line to take a look—council has set a Feb. 5 date to consider setting a June 3 election with a Nov. 4 runoff schedule, scrapping IRV for this year. 

Oakland City Council Races 

At Large 

Incumbent: Henry Chang (not yet announced) 

Announced: Rebecca Kaplan, Charles Pine, Clinton Killian 

Possible: Jean Quan (if Chang does not run) 

District 1 

Incumbent: Jane Brunner (no information available on her plans) 

Announced: None 

District 3 

Incumbent: Nancy Nadel (running for re-election) 

Announced: Greg Hodge 

Possible: Sean Sullivan 

District 5 

Incumbent: Ignacio De La Fuente (not yet announced his intentions) 

Announced Candidates: Mario Juarez 

District 7 

Incumbent: Larry Reid (announced for re-election) 

Announced Candidates: Clifford Gilmore 

Berkeley Rent Stabilization Board Member Chris Kavanagh, facing seven felony counts stemming from allegations that his real home is in Oakland and not Berkeley as he has claimed, was back in court on Thursday. 

The court set two more hearing dates for Kavanagh: a pre-trial hearing on Feb. 7 and a preliminary hearing on Feb. 22, according to Deputy District Attorney Trevor White.  

“There have been discussions between his attorney and myself” outside the courtroom, White told the Planet, declining to elaborate.  

Kavanagh’s attorney, James Giller, did not return calls for comment and Kavanagh did not respond to e-mails. 

Kavanagh took a three-month leave of absence from the rent board, which ended Jan. 31, after which time he was reinstated on the board.  

“He e-mailed that he was really sick and couldn’t make the [Jan 22] meeting,” Rent Board Executive Director Jay Kelekian told the Planet, adding that he had no further information on Kavanagh’s situation. 

In December the City Council had on a closed-door agenda a motion to ask the district attorney to ask Kavanagh to step down, but took no action at the time. 

Kavanagh continues to plead not guilty, White said. 

The West Berkeley Community Monitoring Project will release test results today (Tuesday) for air samples taken near the Second Street-based Pacific Steel Casting to check for toxics. 

The release, at the West Berkeley Senior Center, 1900 6th St., 7 p.m., culminates more than six months of testing made possible with help from Global Community Monitor—an environmental justice organization—and grants from the Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD). The event is hosted by Greenaction, Global Community Monitor, West Berkeley Alliance for Clean Air and Safe Jobs and the Ecology Center. 

A group of residents got together between April and November and collected 66 air samples at 24 locations near the steel foundry to monitor for particulate matter using portable air samplers recommended by the air district. Control samples identified pollution coming from the freeway and other nearby sources. 

According to LA Wood, who participated in the project, the sampler used a calibrated pump to gather particles on filters which were tested for heavy metal pollutants such as lead, manganese, nickel and zinc by a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency approved laboratory. 

“It’s quite timely since Pacific Steel’s Health Risk Assessment (HRA) report is being reviewed for public comment until Thursday,” he said. “Our sampling project will undoubtedly give those in West Berkeley real hope that something concrete is being done to actually investigate the air emissions and health concerns generated by Pacific Steel.” 

Prepared by Pacific Steel Casting with assistance from the environmental consulting firm ENVIRON, the HRA report examines the effects of both current and future emissions on residents and whether West Berkleyans need to be notified about health risks under air district guidelines. The community project’s air sampling identified Pacific Steel as “the largest point source of a variety of air pollutants of concern.” 

“Whatever the outcome of the tests, it’s impossible to tie it to one source,” said Elizabeth Jewel, of Aroner, Jewel & Ellis Partners, the public relations firm representing Pacific Steel.  

But Denny Larson, a project participant, said: “For years complaints and concerns have focused on odors of gaseous chemicals and not the particulate pollution which can be more reasonably assigned to Pacific Steel and is arguably more hazardous to health as heavy metals can accumulate in the body.” 

Although preliminary test results released in August indicated high levels of toxic metals nickel and manganese, Pacific Steel called the findings inconclusive and misleading since the air monitor was not EPA-approved and the results were not verified by the air district. 

According to Mark Cherniak, an independent international health expert, the levels of nickel and manganese found in the samples taken near the West Berkeley steel foundry were hundreds of times higher than considered safe by the World Health Organization. 

Community members are concerned that the Pacific Steel’s own health risk report identified children at the Duck’s Nest preschool—located a block away—as being most susceptible to risks from airborne hazardous material and subsequent cancer risks. 

The city’s Zoning Adjustments Board mandated the foundry’s first Health Risk Assessment in 1991 due to the pre-school’s proximity to it. “Our results are not inconsistent with the HRA,” Wood said. “We all recognize that there is a problem. What we differ on is the level of the problem. We believe that the sampling is indicative of a chronic exposure.” 

Snow, rain, wind. It’s that time of year when snuggling under an eiderdown, preferably with furry four-pawed friends, seems the only way to keep warm. 

It’s a great time to tuck up the garden, too. A thick layer of mulch and soil amendments placed on the vegetable beds now—stable manure, worm compost, hay, pine shavings—will quickly rot in snow, rain and wind, and be ready to turn under in the hyperactive months ahead, March, April and May, when we expect it to be warm enough above and below ground to plant. 

What to choose? The gardening year starts in fall in California, with winter rains breaking the dormancy of seeds of native flowers. In our climate, between Tilden Park and the Bay, cool-weather vegetables can be grown in fall too, as well as spring, depending on the micro-climate of the garden, except for favas, garlic and celery, which are best grown only in fall, no later than Oct. 15.  

Celery is a marsh plant. If sown as seeds in a pot, put the pot in a shallow dish of water for constant moisture. Commercial six-packs of young plants transplant well. 

Peas can be soaked overnight, to speed germination. Sow seeds where they are to come up, in moist soil, as they dislike being transplanted. Do not water until leaves appear.  

Most of the leafy Brassicas can be started in August or February as seeds. Transplant when true leaves appear. They like heavy soil, plenty of manure, and should be firmly and deeply pressed into the earth to just below their leaves. Do not buy large leggy plants. 

Mustard grows very fast. Sow directly. 

Turnips are sown directly. Protect against an egg-laying moth, whose caterpillars tunnel into turnip globes and ruin them, by covering with screen or by sowing only in fall. 

Carrots, Beets, Chard, Spinach and Onions can be sown directly and thinned later (which tends to uproot all of them) or sown in pots and transplanted later. 

Radishes can be spaced when sown. Keep the bed moist. 

LETTUCE and its relatives can be sown or bought as plants. 

POTATOES are frost tender. Plant between mid February to mid March for early potatoes. The tubers are formed on lateral rhizomes that grow from the stalks, so by mounding the plants with earth and organic material as they grow, more rhizomes and therefore more potatoes can develop. Potatoes will be found just below the surface, so be sure to keep them well mulched. Sunlight turns them green and inedible. 

Remember to defend leafy seedlings (cabbages, lettuce) from slugs, snails and cutworms with a collar of copper strip, sold by the foot in nurseries. Better still, acquire a pair of ducks. You will never again see a snail in your garden. Just be sure to shut the ducks securely into a cosy, well-ventilated coop every night at twilight, or they will be killed by raccoons. Ducks thrive on a daytime routine of snail patrol (and other foodstuffs of course) and nights spent safely on a deep litter bed of clean pine shavings. 

Keep the litter stirred, periodically refresh it, and totally replace it twice a year. Animal Farm on San Pablo at Cedar sells big bags of pine shavings. By year’s end you will have several bags of mulch already fortified with nutrients with which to coddle your vegetable beds when snow, rain and wind come round again in our cycle of local weather. 

Long before that, by Easter probably, you will have enjoyed fresh eggs with your flavor-rich, organically-grown vegetables. 

It’s down-to-the-wire time now. On Wednesday a substantial number of my California relatives and friends told me that they’d finally filled out their absentee ballots and sent them in. What were they waiting for? Well, like all the rest of us, they were still trying to decide who to vote for in the Democratic presidential primary. Here’s the refrain: “I’d like to vote for Edwards, but if Obama and Clinton are very close I’ll probably have to choose Obama instead.” Some—a few—mentioned Kucinich instead of Edwards. 

If the truth be told, I expect that was John Edwards’ thought process too. His polls—and his not inconsiderable political instincts—told him that he just wasn’t going to win, and he didn’t want to be the spoiler for the candidate he likes. People in my chat circles think that would be Obama, but they do wonder why, if so, Edwards didn’t actually endorse him. Perhaps he’s saving his muscle for any tight spots that might develop between now and the convention. 

Obama is essentially irresistible. As many commentators have pointed out, Obama as symbol is even more potent than Obama as candidate. He represents a clean break with a political history that many Americans find distasteful for a multitude of unrelated reasons, going all the way back to Lyndon Johnson.  

The number of people in this country—north, south, in between—who would fail to vote for him just because his paternal ancestors lived in Africa is small and dwindling. Even the cultural racist who genteely deplores “the way some of those people act” can find nothing to fault in Barack Obama’s history or the way he presents himself in the campaign. Such people welcome the opportunity to prove that their prejudices are not actually racial but are based on “facts.” 

Obama is the epitome of what Jack Kennedy used to call “vigah.” He’s amazingly—and yes, I do know that the word is often a patronizing putdown of African-Americans, but it applies here in every primary sense—articulate. And articulate is exactly what Hillary Clinton is not. She often speaks well and clearly, yes, but she’s unwilling or unable to give the impression that she’s sure of what she believes and is ready to fight for it, in contrast to both Obama and Edwards. What she tries to pitch as experience comes across, to use a simile popular when I was a teenager, like a lead balloon. Her real-life lead balloon is Chairman Bill, lurking heavily in the background taking clumsy almost-racist potshots at Obama which fool no one. 

In a week of personal polling, I only found one person who’d admit to planning to vote for Ms. Clinton. She is a woman of a certain age whose symbolic buttons are most powerfully pushed by the idea of a female president. But many more women in that category (my contemporaries and close friends) say that they too long to see a woman president, but not this one, who has inherited all the negative baggage from her husband’s term. They’d like the first women president to win the office free and clear—a Barbara Boxer type perhaps. 

This paper as an institution has not traditionally made endorsements. On occasion the editorial “I” has revealed some personal electoral choices, which are almost always the same as my partner’s, but I don’t presume to speak for the other editors or anyone else in the news room. We—the publisher and I—have already endorsed Kriss Worthington for State Assembly, because we hoped to head off knee-jerk candidacies from local factional machines. That didn’t work anyhow, and it’s not on the ballot in this election. And we’ll now be voting for Barack Obama in the California Democratic Primary, unless he does something really stupid before Tuesday. We always wait to vote in person on election day if we can, because you never know. 

Nonetheless, we’re committed to keeping a tight eye on who else has endorsed which Democrats as the race enters the home stretch. On the local level, for example, a UC Berkeley professor who’s been a big proponent of ethanol fuels is speaking for Barack Obama at a campus rally today (Friday). Unfortunately, that triggers in the mind of an unreconstructed political junkie like me the old reports that Obama, at least in his early career, got big contributions from the main corporate ethanol pusher, Archer Daniels Midland. And most politically alert environmentalists now think that production of ethanol from vegetable sources to fuel cars, which ADM supports, threatens food sources and forests in the third world. Nothing is simple. 

And what about those ballot measures, if any voters out there haven’t made up their minds yet? The Planet has been pleased to print a large number of intelligent comments from people with varying points of view, with more in for today, and I hope you’ve all read them carefully.  

The consensus among people I personally know and respect seems to be to vote no on everything except Proposition 92. These people tend to regard government-backed gambling in any form as a regressive way of separating poor people from their money. (Obama is with them on that.)  

They’re voting no on Proposition 93 because they don’t want Don Perata and Fabian Nuñez to continue in the Legislature, though the idealistic view that we might sometime have some legislators we’d want to keep has a certain appeal. They’re voting against the Children’s Hospital bond issue in Alameda County (Measures A and B) because they see it as a threat to county-run Highland Hospital’s ability to raise needed funds, and because they’re annoyed at the ham-handed way the privately-run Children’s has tried to sneak both the funding and the building project past the public. Even 92 has its detractors among people deeply involved with K-12 education, but most people seem to buy the argument that community colleges are an endangered species that need protection. 

So it’s a simple template, if you want to vote like me: Obama and no on everything except Proposition 92. Planet readers, however, make up their own minds. 

In 1968, General Westmoreland announced that we could finally see “the light at the end of the tunnel” in Vietnam. That announcement has come to define a paradigm: the tendency of leaders, military and political, to declare victory long before a conflict has actually been resolved. An editorial in the influential international scientific journal Nature in February of 2007 was in fact entitled “Light at the End of the Tunnel.” It was part of Nature’s Climate Change special edition, and it warned that the world-wide acceptance of the reality of climate change brought with it new perils: business and political leaders were starting to announce what steps they were taking to combat the problems of global warning as if the problem were solved, when in fact the solutions offered were not nearly enough to solve the problem. 

Another way to describe the kind of mistake Westmoreland exemplified in 1968 is the word “triumphalism,” as defined by Merriam-Webster: “an attitude or feeling of victory or superiority: ... smug or boastful pride in the success or dominance of one’s nation or ideology over others.” It’s almost always used in a pejorative sense, by those who want to point out that the light at the end of the tunnel isn’t as clear as some might think it is. 

Yesterday with the PR machine running at full tilt the mayor of Berkeley unveiled the first draft of his own program to combat climate change. At first glance, it seems to suffer from a bit of triumphalism. From the executive summary: 

“The climate action planning process produced a vision for addressing the threats outlined above. This plan’s purpose is to serve as a guide for setting the community on a path to achieve that vision. In 2050: 

• New and existing Berkeley buildings achieve net zero energy consumption through increased energy efficiency and a shift to renewable energy sources. 

• Public transit, walking, and biking are the primary means of transportation. 

• Personal vehicles run on alternative fuels or electricity. 

• Zero waste is sent to landfills. 

• The majority of food consumed in Berkeley is produced locally, i.e., within a few hundred miles. 

• Our community is resilient and prepared for the impacts of a changing climate. 

• The social and economic benefits of the community’s climate protection effort are shared equitably among everyone.” 

Surely this will happen—didn’t 81 percent of Berkeley residents vote for it in the last election? Unfortunately, it’s not quite that simple. Neither Mayor Bates nor I will be around to find out, but you younger folks shouldn’t bet the farm on this glowing scenario. And more to the point, as the Nature editorial and many other scientific publications are now stressing, it won’t be nearly enough, even if the whole dream comes true in Berkeley. Much more needs to be done, and on a global scale, and no amount of local action in isolation should be expected to solve it. 

A couple of controversial plans now in the news are good illustrations of what might be called the tin fiddle theory of public policy. A tin fiddle, for those unfamiliar with this grandmotherly expression, is a novel design that seems to the inventor to be a much more robust replacement for the dull old wooden kind, but sounds awful. Tin fiddles are bright ideas that just don’t pan out as expected. 

On the local level: Consider the now infamous Van Hool buses which AC Transit has been feverishly rushing to adopt. Planet readers have been reading about their manifest problems in these pages for a couple of years now. We gladly note that our colleague at the East Bay Express, the excellent reporter Robert Gammon, has joined the chorus with his two-part series (last week and this week) documenting in exhaustive detail, lots of facts and figures, everything that’s wrong with the Van Hool picture. These buses are part and parcel of AC’s highly touted but widely criticized Bus Rapid Transit scheme, a solution in search of a problem. Meanwhile, ridership continues to decline as fares increase. 

On a larger canvas, anyone who wants to understand the curious twists and turns of science policy should read Gary Taubes’ new book, Good Calories, Bad Calories. His thesis, still shocking to many: The low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet, promoted by the federal government, many public health agencies and even most physicians, is scientifically baseless, and might even be responsible for the alarming increase in diabetes and obesity in the same period. How the U.S. Dietary Guidelines evolved is fascinating reading, and an object lesson about the pitfalls of public policy initiatives by well-meaning politicians. If you can’t handle several hundred densely written pages with footnotes, he had an article on the same theme in the New York Times magazine last fall, available in the library or on line. There’s also an archived webcast of an excellent lecture he gave at UC Berkeley.  

Taubes spends a good bit of time on the common public health theory that even if you know something probably doesn’t work it’s a good idea to keep on recommending it just in case it might. That’s why, he says, many doctors continued to recommend removing cholesterol from your diet even after it was clearly established that dietary cholesterol didn’t cause heart disease. They should carefully study the story about the shepherd boy who cried wolf so often that nobody came to save him when the wolf actually appeared. 

Well-intentioned but inadequate local political solutions to the very major problems of climate change pose a similar risk. And less well-intentioned “solutions” which emanate from big corporate players like BP are even worse. Biofuels, for example, seem to have a worse carbon footprint than most alternatives.  

But by all means don’t take my word for any of this. The best feature of the city’s draft plan is that it allows for a month of public comment, and Berkeley’s civic community of sharp-pencil researchers should give it a full going over in the allotted time, before March 7. Please, as you do so, copy the Planet on your analyses. We look forward to reprinting them. Full details can found at www.berkeleyclimateaction.org. 

ADIOS, BERKELEY! 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Many thanks for the update on the attempt to ban recruiting for our military in your fair city. As one who visits annually with three friends for a long weekend of Cal and Raider football (while staying in the Berkeley Marina area and paying huge taxes on the rooms and rental car and other miscellaneous items and services) we won’t be coming back due to this continued effort. Its racial, unpatriotic and downright wrong. We’ll take in a Raider game in another more rational city and try to do the same with Cal.  

Thanks for the memories.  

Wesley W. Brumback 

Oviedo, Florida 

• 

DOCTOR FAUSTUS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Since the Aug. 2, 2007 murder of Oakland Post editor Chauncey Bailey, the media has increasingly focused on the late Yusuf Bey, his family and followers, and Your Black Muslim Bakery. I see some similarity between the unhealthy relationship between Yusuf Bey and East Bay politicians, and Jim Jones, the Peoples Temple leader and power broker in San Francisco. Remember Doctor Faustus, who sold his soul to the devil for power and knowledge? Why were politicians so easily taken in by Bey and Jones? Or were they? There isn’t anything extraordinary about Bey’s or Jones’ power. It was pure politics. They could deliver what politicians want, which is power. And how do you get power? By votes. And Bey and Jones could deliver the votes. The people who warned about Bey and Jones were ignored, intimidated, or marginalized. And many of the same politicians continue in power. Will we learn from these experiences? I am not optimistic. 

Ralph E. Stone 

San Francisco 

• 

PROPOSITION 93 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Randy Shaw writes that progressives should reject Proposition 93, claiming “Prop. 93 is a disaster for progressive interests.” I think he is 100 percent wrong, and that the defeat of Prop. 93 will kill the effort to relieve us from the pernicious effects of term limits for at least a decade.  

The argument in favor of Prop. 93 is really very simple, to wit: 

1. Term limits bad. 

2. Prop. 93 weakens term limits. 

3. Therefore, Prop. 93 good! 

That is true despite the blatant self-interest of some who are responsible for Prop. 93 being on the ballot. The bottom line is that, if Prop. 93 passes, it leaves us with a better public policy than we have now. We need to look beyond the parochial down-side and recognize the enormous benefits to all of us of legislators who have sufficient time on the job to have a chance to learn the ropes and accomplish complicated and time-consuming legislative goals before they are arbitrarily removed from office (in most cases despite the wishes of their constituents). 

Of course, if you support term limits — an anti-democratic method of telling people who they can and can’t vote for—then I suppose you oppose Prop. 93. And we simply agree to disagree. But if you recognize the noxious effects of term limits, then it must be obvious that Prop. 93 is a way to loosen their iron grip and allow legislators to gain sufficient experience and longevity in their job to be able to accomplish something. For example, Loni Hancock, assembly member for the 14th Assembly District, is termed out this year. She is the legislative author of clean money. If we lose her fervor, knowledge and experience in working that legislation, how will it ever become law? Sheila Kuehl is now termed out of the senate. If we don’t have her as our champion, who can or will effectively fight for single payer health insurance? Do we really want to leave the legislative process to legislators who barely have time to find their office before they are termed out? And, do we really want to have un-elected staff and lobbyists the only ones who know how things work in Sacramento? 

Mr. Shaw rails against Don Perata and Fabian Nuñez. I agree with him that they are rotten legislators. But there is a democratic answer to rotten legislators: vote them out of office. And if you can’t do that (and if the federal government won’t do it for us—in Perata’s case), don’t take out your frustration and pique on all the other legislators in the state, and the voters that want them in office. Progressives have no business, or self-interest in supporting an anti-democratic public policy because of unhappiness with any particular politician. (And I note parenthetically that Wilma Chan comes out of the Perata machine, so I wonder what real advantage we would have replacing him with her.) 

Progressives, of whatever party, should not be so inherently childish that they are willing to scuttle a much-needed reform of a very bad policy because it also benefits an undeserving politician. With respect, I think for progressives supporting Prop. 93 is both an easy and an eminently correct decision. 

Mal Burnstein 

Co-chair Progressive Caucus 

California Democratic Party 

• 

PUBLIC ENEMY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

If you steal $1.5 billion a week (present cost of Iraq occupation) of a nation’s wealth, destroy almost all of its international alliances, totally scatter and weaken its army, kill thousands and wound tens of thousands of its soldiers, and make all of its citizens more vulnerable to terrorist attacks, public health emergencies and natural disasters, plus destroy its environment, what does that make you? 

An enemy of that nation. 

Remember all those years that our government was worried about America being infiltrated by communists? 

Well, now we have been infiltrated by an actual enemy, and our country is being destroyed. 

It seems that if a person had even a shred of ability to think logically, the Bush government would meet every definition of the word “enemy.” It’s ironic that after we became so strong that nobody could defeat us, we attacked ourselves! 

Jeff Syrop 

Hayward 

• 

AC TRANSIT AND 12TH STREET 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I am writing about the surprised reaction of the AC Transit Board to the idea that humans may someday be able to cross 12th Street. 

Recently-elected AC Transit directors may not realize that the 12th Street project has been on the radar for a long time. As a founding member of the Coalition of Advocates for Lake Merritt, I clearly remember discussing 12th Street with an AC Transit planner in 2001. The 12th Street improvement plan is as old or older than the detailed planning of the bus rapid transit system. Our citizen-generated plan, drawn up with the help of experienced architects and planners, was covered in all the newspapers in 2001 and 2002. The Lake Merritt Master Plan then incorporated the idea, later included in the Measure DD bond measure passed by 80 percent of Oakland’s citizens. 

The concept of rapid public transit must go hand in hand with creating a pedestrian-friendly, bike-friendly, and child-friendly East Bay. A one-to-two-minute delay at 12th Street will not doom bus rapid transit. The folks who may slightly slow the rapid buses are the same ones who form the ridership, after all. 

I have reduced my automobile use drastically, and use the bus. In order to reach the bus stops, commuters, park visitors, bicyclists and pedestrians will need to cross 12th Street. I am confident that AC Transit and the City of Oakland can work out an elegant solution, enhancing Lake Merritt and its park, providing opportunities to remain alive while crossing the street, and increasing transit use at the new open spaces and improved lakeshore. 

Cooperation is a green skill! I’d be happy to assist. 

Naomi Schiff 

Member, Coalition of Advocates  

for Lake Merritt 

• 

HELIOS APARTMENTS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I’m just taking a moment to write a note from my “cell” in the “mayor’s crown jewel at the corner of University and Sacramento” rather than walk the “long, meandering halls.” 

As a resident of the above described Helios Corner Senior Apartments, I struggled to connect my experience here with Ms/Miss/Mrs. Wiggins description. My spacious—granted, not huge—one-bedroom apartment opens onto a long terrace, I have many amenities as standard equipment, the insulation is great (only used the heat three times so far), there are many community rooms for resident gatherings and activities, a wonderful array of classes are offered onsite through Berkeley Adult School, West Berkeley Senior Center provides door-to-door transportation for shopping, public transportation is very convenient (enabling environmentally sound living), the entire roof area is solar panels, the staff is courteous and warm, there are beautiful public outdoor gathering areas, the other residents are friendly and intelligent people. 

Best of all, the rent is lower than I was paying in an old, drafty studio in a declining neighborhood that has experienced several shootings in the past six months. I love it here, my neighbors love it here. We’re sorry Constance Wiggins misrepresented our beautiful new home in her letter. 

Gary Wilson 

• 

DISABILITY RIGHTS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I’m a budding disability rights advocate (particularly for Asperger’s and related conditions) and budding environmental advocate. There should be no doubt that protecting the environment against gross over-development is the same as protecting the health of our society.  

I am also disabled; I have Asperger’s and related conditions. I was also beaten by a UCB cop on Jan. 28. His foot kicked my head against the concrete on more than one occasion, he used a sharp portion of his handcuffs to cut my hand and generally used excessive force on me just because I took a brief moment that day to say hi to a good dear friend, who happens to live in a tree, and show her a photo. The only reason he stopped before I was serious hurt is because I know as an Aspie that when cops go bad I can always cry for help and draw a crowd to witness brutality. 

Those of us who are differently abled are still brave enough to fight for what we believe in, even though we are dealing with handicaps that slow us down a bit. I may have Asperger’s, but that doesn’t make me less of a person. And doesn’t make me love the planet or my friends any less. I will stay strong as will all friends of the trees. The cops can’t assault my spirit. 

For the naysayers, the good people of Landmark Security video-taped the assault and the tape will be used as evidence in my trial to show the brutality of UCB against the friends of the trees. Especially the brutality used against people who are disabled. The tape will show me explaining my condition to the cops. 

For those curious, I was showing my friend a photo of the Weld Pirate Ship. Look it up, it’s amazing and inspirational. 

Nate Pitts  

• 

ADMISSIONS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

UC Berkeley, followed by a group including UCLA, UC San Diego, and UC Irvine, are public ivies. Preliminary figures show applications for the fall 2008 term by international applicants to all UC campuses rose 25 percent. This year, our first group of 51 graduating seniors here at Hankuk Academy of Foreign Studies, Yongin, Gyeonggi-do, South Korea, who applied early admission, were accepted into: Stanford (2), Amherst, Brown, Georgetown (2), U Penn (2), Duke, Johns Hopkins (2), Northwestern (2), and Columbia. Several of our seniors applied to the four UCs mentioned above, during November (notifications for early admissions were mailed in December). Last year, freshman Asian-American admissions outnumbered whites at UC Berkeley by 730. Asian-American admissions outnumbered whites at UCLA by 1,168. Asian-American admissions outnumbered whites at UC San Diego by 2,411. Asian-American admissions outnumbered whites at UC Irvine by 4,034. Go Bears!  

Richard Thompson 

San Diego / South Korea 

• 

ASIAN ECONOMIES TO ENJOY OUR ‘REFUND’ 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The tax refund being pushed by the president and Congress is ridiculous as the refund will quickly get spent by most Americans on products of Asian origin doing very little to stimulate our economy. I would suggest that we should have that money put into a resurrected WPA for rebuilding many run-down public housing projects put up decades ago. That would provide jobs for many workers in the fast collapsing housing industry; workers, who will soon start drawing unemployment benefits to burden the government more due to the workers not paying income tax then. 

I also suggest much more stimulation of the economy can occur if the money were to be put into developing the program for pyrolysis of organic wastes that I outlined in my Nov. 30, 2007 commentary. Those wastes are an already harvested biofuels crop wasted, and they have trapped carbon dioxide that we needlessly let get reemitted especially in the much touted composting now going on. Some energy and/or fuel can be gotten from the pyrolysis process, and charcoal to be buried, thereby actually remove some from the globe to help reduce albeit slowly the overload of carbon dioxide on the globe causing warming. Ever increasing amounts of megabucks being spent every year to maintain dumps containing organic wastes could be greatly reduced by pyrolysis of such wastes as germs and toxics would be destroyed. Most of the money spent in maintaining dumps is to be sure that germs and toxics do not leak out, and the cost reduction in paying for maintaining dumps might end up putting more money in your pocket yearly than the refund. 

I call on Planet readers to wake up Berkeley and their elected officials to using pyrolysis hoping that some of that refund money might be put to better use than stimulating Asian economies.  

James Singmaster 

Environmental Toxicologist, Retired 

Fremont 

• 

BOYCOTT KFC 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Regarding KFC’s treatment of our feathered friends, consider the following and then frequent KFC with a clean conscience, if you can! 

KFC’s suppliers scalds many birds to death while they’re still conscious. 

KFC’s suppliers breed and drug birds to grow so fast that many may become crippled under the weight of their massive upper bodies. 

Birds raised for KFC live in extremely crowded sheds and have barely enough room to spread a wing. 

PETA is urging KFC to make the changes that its own animal welfare advisors have asked it to make. 

PETA’s recommendations would prevent birds from having their wings and legs broken, suffering painful and crippling diseases, having their throats slit, and being scalded to death while still conscious. 

If KFC executives were abusing dogs, cats, pigs, or cows the way that they’re abusing chickens, they could go to jail on felony cruelty-to-animal charges. 

Thank you for this opportunity to protest this malicious practice. I only hope that people will take to heart the suffering of these creatures and boycott KFC. 

Janet Butler 

• 

PRIVATIZE BERKELEY TRAFFIC ENFORCEMENT! GO, RON, GO! 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

From reading the Berkeley Daily Planet opinions and letters, it seems libertarian, Second Amendment- and NRA-loving Ron Paul will do well in Tuesday’s Berkeley election. Bernie Lenhof’s favorite arm to bear on Berkeley roads is his 2.5 ton missile (Planet, Jan. 15), while Doug Buckwald likes his sleek 1.5 ton model (Jan. 25). Unfortunately for Sandra Gruber, one misguided weapon user thought it’s fine to deploy his arms while blinded by the sun. Various members of the libertarian choir sing that’s OK, for pedestrians shouldn’t cross streets when it’s sunny, dark, rainy, cloudy, or while cars have any metal blocking the driver’s view. I don’t encourage recklessness, but yielding to cars reinforces motorists’ bad behavior. I agree with Steve Douglas (Jan. 25) and Laurie Capitelli (Jan. 11) that Berkeley must change the paradigm via effective enforcement. 

Though the misguided weapon user was driving on Colusa, not Marin, the libertarian choir sings that all government traffic-calming interference should be removed. They ignore Preston Jordan’s data (Jan. 15) that average speeds on Marin have dropped significantly, perhaps because it doesn’t support their goal of saving precious nanoseconds while speeding. And, many (Jan. 29) praise Mike Katz (Jan. 25) for “thoughtful commentary,” yet what data supports his claim that Marin area residents used safety as a ruse “to divert traffic elsewhere [and] raise property values”? How about diverting unsafe, inconsiderate drivers to Ron Paul’s more sparsely populated East Texas district? Affordable housing awaits, near warm beaches. 

My observations about Berkeley’s four-lane roads, such as pre-reconfigured Marin, are that most drivers speed significantly. Usually, when one car starts to slow for pedestrians, the trailing cars assume a turn without signaling, and zig into the next lane, to save their lives’ precious nanoseconds. Oops! Too bad the selfish pedestrians’ heirs didn’t inherit maximized property values. 

Mike also thoughtfully considers cost effectiveness. With this in mind for our libertarian Berkeley drivers, why doesn’t Berkeley raise money by PRIVATIZING traffic enforcement for speeding, blinkerless turns, improper stops and failure to yield to pedestrians? Let them squeeze out every last profit, and make our streets safe enough to walk or bike, thereby reducing congestion and global warming. 

Mitch Cohen 

• 

BRT PROBLEMS IN OAKLAND 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I want to thank J. Douglas Allen-Taylor for letting us know about some very troubling BRT complications in his piece, “BRT Runs into Delay in Central Oakland.” (Jan. 25). It is clear that establishing an exclusive bus-only lane in central Oakland would cause significant traffic delays—slowing not only automobile and truck traffic but also the buses themselves! The consulting engineer’s estimated traffic delays of up to two minutes on a 1,000-yard stretch of roadway are indeed problematic—and show that implementing BRT might actually lengthen the travel time current bus riders spend on that part of the route, as well as increasing the overall time along the entire route. It’s no wonder that AC Transit Board Vice President Rebecca Kaplan stated recently, “That is enough of a delay to destroy the whole purpose of rapid transit.” 

For a problem of this magnitude to appear so late in the process shows how poorly conceived the entire BRT scheme is, and illustrates a wholesale failure of AC Transit officials to plan adequately to meet our transit needs. Instead of spending taxpayer money on trying to fit a poorly-suited and costly BRT system into this area, they should have been working to develop a fleet of smaller local buses that would serve more people and link up more effectively with BART for regional travel. 

It’s time for AC Transit to change its approach and begin to work with the people in the communities it serves to find out what transit improvements they would prefer—instead of just working with insiders who stand to benefit from the construction of BRT. Either that, or it’s time to consider recalling the entire AC Transit Board. 

Doug Buckwald 

• 

CAN A LEOPARD  

CHANGE ITS SPOTS? 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I currently support Barack Obama, but I also believe Hillary Clinton is qualified as well to be president, especially in comparison to the dysfunctional administration which has been in office for the past eight years. I am leaning more toward Barack, not because he’s black, but because I think he represents a new agenda and can connect with a broader constituency than has ever been seen in this America.  

However, with my many years of experience with the politics of the United States and the bigotry, good old boy networks, assassinations, and hypocrisies that have led to so many disappointments in my family’s, and people of color’s, lives I am less than optimistic that this leopard can change its spots! I think that in the privacy of the voting booth that most people (black, white, Asian, Hispanic etc.) vote racist, sexist and for whatever personal and private agenda they might have while no one is looking. I still haven’t met anyone that has admitted they voted for George W. Bush, but I hope I’m wrong this time!  

I’ve said in the past that we in the Bay Area are almost a separate nation from the rest of the country, the state, and the other side of the Caldecott Tunnel. We believe we are able to put our prejudice aside and vote for the best person. I think if either Barack or Hillary were elected president it would send a message that we’re now capable of viewing the world differently and avoiding the mistakes of the past. Who knows? Maybe it will change how other nations view us, and offer hope to the rest of the world too. But beware! That leopard is still lurking. So let’s get out and vote! 

Winston Burton 

The Peralta Board of Trustees, faculty and staff urge voters to support Prop. 92, the Community College Initiative, which will appear on the Feb. 5 statewide ballot. Its passage is vital to our Peralta colleges—Alameda, Berkeley City, Laney, and Merritt—as well as to the 109 California community colleges and 2.5 million students.  

California community colleges are one of the state’s greatest success stories. They provide millions with the knowledge and skills that lead to personal development and high-wage jobs that pump billions back into the economy. For every dollar spent on community college students, the state gains $3, thanks to the greater earning power of graduates. On average, students who earn a vocational degree or certificate see their wages double within three years of graduation. Compared with CSU and UC, community colleges are an amazing bargain for taxpayers. For each full-time freshman or sophomore, the state pays community colleges only one half of what it pays to CSU and one-third to UC. In other words, for every tax dollar, community colleges are twice as productive as CSU and three times that of UC.  

So why do we need Prop. 92? This landmark measure corrects a serious flaw in community college funding, which is tied to and driven by K-12 attendance. As attendance shrinks or expands in K-12, so does funding for community colleges. Today the two systems are out of sync; while K-12 attendance is falling, community colleges are expanding. Further, as the economy worsens, community college enrollment accelerates because laid-off workers return in thousands to retrain or upgrade skills.  

Complicating matters, while community colleges are guaranteed in statute a fixed percentage of the combined K-12/community college pot of money (together called K-14), the actual percentage fluctuates during the annual battle over the state budget, with community colleges often the loser. In effect, K-12 and community colleges play together in the same dollar sandbox, but being politically much bigger, K-12 can take some of the community college share when convenient. 

Tying community college funding to the fate of K-12 attendance not only makes no sense, in lean years it destabilizes planning, forcing last-second across-the-board cancellation of classes and reductions in high-cost programs like nursing. 

At fault is the assumption that K-12 provides the bulk of students to community colleges. In fact, K-12 graduates in any given year constitute only a minority of total enrollment. The average age is 28, 60 percent are female, and there are more Latinos, Asians and African Americans than in CSU and UC combined. In the fall of 2006 at Peralta, only 31 percent of students were 19-24 years old, while 51 percent were between 25 and 54. Because of the statewide principle of open access, Peralta students comprise one of the most diverse and complex populations in the state, with a staggering array of needs. They include high school dropouts, immigrants in dire need of basic skills, re-entry women, mature people upgrading skills and retraining for better jobs, as well as university bound students whose careers require high-end classes and state-of-the-art technology. A version of this profile applies to all California community colleges.  

How would Prop. 92 restore common sense to community college funding?  

• It would stabilize funding by creating two separate funds, one for K-12, governed by attendance, another for community colleges, governed by the young adult population (17-24), and it would limit growth in any given year to 5 percent. The split does not raise taxes and does not affect K-12 funding. In fact, for the next two years, both K-12 and community colleges would annually receive an infusion of $150 million. This is a tiny fraction of the state’s $141 billion budget and a solid investment in turning the economy around.  

• It would fix at 10.64 percent the CC share of the combined K-12 and community college allocation, eliminating annual, politically inspired fluctuations. 

• It would lower fees from $20 to $15 per unit and severely limit increases. Instead of $600, a full-time Peralta student would pay $450 per year. A typical student, however, also spends over $1,000 per year for text books, hundreds more for transportation, rent, fees and incidentals, and has less time available for essential full or part-time work. It’s estimated that the annual cost for a full-time community college student exceeds $7,000 per year. As with K-12, community colleges were originally intended to be free because the social and economic benefits far outweigh the cost. This is especially true today when many careers require at minimum two years of college. 

• It would establish in the state constitution a system of independent public community college districts and Board of Governors, similar to UC CSU, and K-12 governance structures.  

Admittedly, as written, Prop. 92 is confusing and subject to negative attack, principally by K-12 organizations that prefer to have political control over CC funding. When the details of Prop. 92 are explained, however, skeptics become enthusiastic supporters. Recently and remarkably, every single elected official in Berkeley endorsed Prop. 92 after Peralta Trustee Nicky Gonzalez-Yuen explained the details. We hope you will likewise support Prop. 92. Your vote will help improve the social and economic welfare of all California.  

Cy Gulassa is president of the  

Peralta Colleges Board of Trustees. 

In her Children’s Hospital’s Expansion Tax Measure commentary, Joyce Roy concluded with a question: What are our community’s priorities? As an Oakland resident and child advocate, I am compelled to list a few:  

To ensure that private companies treat Alameda County residents with respect 

Children’s Hospital of Oakland (CHO) has run roughshod in Oakland, believing that it need not engage our community. CHO has wholly refused to seek or accept input on its planned $700 million expansion. The hospital chose its site without consulting the county, the city, or the neighboring residents (some of whose modest homes CHO has now disclosed it intends to take by eminent domain and bulldoze for its 12-story high-rise). 

CHO’s use of children in its misleading $1 million campaign mailings is exemplary of its shameful tactics. Purportedly written by children (“Adriana, age 14, Leukemia”), they state that CHO will use the tax for a retrofit and “will have to close” otherwise. Both claims are patently false. And using vulnerable children to deliver the deception is revolting and exploitative. 

The pursuit of an admirable mission does not provide a license to treat our community in an arrogant, underhanded, and manipulative manner. We must demand that CHO respect our community and its children. 

To finance county-owned services 

Alameda County owns and operates Highland Hospital. Yet, Highland struggles financially. The estimate for Highland’s state-mandated seismic retrofit is a whopping $600 million, which our community will have to pay through a tax measure. If the $300 million proceeds from Measure A went to Highland instead of a private entity, we would be half-way there already. 

At a recent meeting with a councilmember, I learned that Oakland’s law enforcement does not pursue certain felony and misdemeanor charges because there are not enough courtrooms and judges to handle the volume of arrests. When someone set fire to Peralta Elementary School, the school district had few funds to assist in the repair. Would $300 million help? 

As taxpayers, our community already shoulders the burden of paying the Medi-Cal reimbursements that CHO receives for treating its patients. We need not pay for their decision to expand. Instead, our community must prioritize financing our own public services before taking the unprecedented step of funding a private, tax-exempt hospital’s expansion. To do otherwise would be fiscally irresponsible. 

To build and safeguard a livable Oakland and Alameda County 

Oakland is among Alameda County’s most diverse cities. The small neighborhood that CHO’s downtown-sized skyscraper would tower over is one of our community’s most diverse: economically, racially, and professionally. It includes retired widows, young families of all races and ethnicities, teachers, nurses, writers, firefighters, scientists, artists, bakers, urban gardeners, lawyers, contractors, government employees. These residents bought homes in (or stuck through) bad times and improved them their homes (without taxpayer assistance), so that the neighborhood is now experiencing good times. 

The modest homes on its tree-lined streets are as desirable as the ones in wealthier Rockridge—which is also adjacent to Highway 24—so desirable that strangers approach and ask if owners are willing to sell. The owners do not want to sell. They do not want a private hospital to take their homes by eminent domain. They do not want to be forced out by the specter of a skyscraper with helipad. They appreciate the members of our community who recognize that neighborhoods like this one make Oakland and Alameda County livable —that neighborhoods like this one are the glue that keeps our community together. They will vote no on Measures A and B. 

Katina Ancar is an Oakland resident.

As Super Tuesday looms, mail boxes across California have been stuffed with slick fliers, plus a thick Voter Information Guide, about Propositions 94-97, which ask voters whether or not they approve new gaming compacts that would triple the slot machines—by 17,000—at the casinos of four Southern California tribes. I can imagine the head-scratching over the claims and counterclaims: Is so much gambling capacity healthy for the state? How big a tax windfall? How adequate the accounting safeguards? What kind of impact on poorer tribes? On the environment? Then my eye spied a paragraph by the legislative analyst about labor relations at the casinos. And on that, fellow citizens, I can shed some light. 

The legislative analyst is talking about collective bargaining. She tells us that casino workers have a right to union representation, under ground rules that encourage the flow of information but prohibit intimidation, and that let them decide by secret ballot. Then the zinger: “No union currently represents the [fill in any name you want] tribe’s casino employees.” Why, if they can have it, wouldn’t casino workers want union representation? All they have to do is look across the desert to unionized Las Vegas, where working people just like themselves are earning good wages, getting full benefits, buying homes, and entering the middle class. Are they blind? No, they’re afraid. 

The truth is, the system the Legislative Analyst describes is a swindle. Casino workers are not free to have union representation. The casino operator can interrogate them, one on one; he can make them attend captive-audience meetings; he can say their jobs are at stake; and he doesn’t have to put up with troublemakers. He fires them. These problems are not unique to the casinos. They are endemic under our national labor law, but with this difference. Other workers at least have recourse to the National Labor Relations Board. There’s no NLRB for the Indian casinos; they essentially police themselves. No wonder that casino workers keep their heads down. 

So the unions have come up with a simple reform. They propose that casino workers be permitted to signify by authorization cards whether they want union representation. Card check would deny casino operators a platform for coercion, just like that. In 2004, six northern California tribes accepted card check and their casinos operate today under collective-bargaining agreements. But 17,000 slots wasn’t enough to lure the southern gaming tribes. They adamantly resisted the card-check reform, and they prevailed. That’s why you’ll see California’s unions, across the board, right up there, prominent among the groups urging a No vote. 

But scan the campaign literature for who’s missing. The governor is out front for the yes side. But where are the other key players, Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata and Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez? They’re nowhere to be seen, and for good reason. Card check is a Democratic issue. That’s literally true. It’s the core provision of a major Democratic labor bill that every presidential candidate backs and that every Democratic state legislator in Sacramento, including Perata and Nunez, signed a letter in support of. Then they turned around and, on their say-so, got the Democratic legislature to approve Schwarzenegger’s compacts. 

This is exactly the kind of politics that, for all its faults, justifies the referendum process. People don’t have to sit still when they are betrayed by their leaders. And in this case, they shouldn’t. 

The gaming tribes are simply rolling in money, and they are not shy about throwing it around politically. If you’re curious about why they got their way in these compacts, look no further. Everybody—the casino execs, the high-priced consultants, the politicians, the state’s General Fund—is feeding at the trough, everybody except the mostly minority workers who clean the toilets and empty the tills lack even the most basic protections because the tribal lands are beyond the reach of California’s anti-discrimination, workers’ compensation, minimum wage, and health and safety laws. 

Yes, low-wage workers will be lining up for those casino jobs. But California shouldn’t want low-wage workers. It should want workers who are lifting their families out of poverty, buying homes, and becoming active citizens, like the union chamber maids, baristas, and food servers who participated joyously in Nevada’s recent Democratic caucuses. Californians can make that happen. All they have to do is vote No and send the 17,000 slots back to the negotiating table. 

David Brody is professor emeritus of history at UC Davis. 

A great change is now happening, one that’s only now beginning to bubble up in the national consciousness, and this change is shaking our established institutions to their very roots. Yet this fact is barely registering among the so-called mainstream media, or for that matter, even the progressive one. Put simply, the old political definitions of left and right, liberal and conservative, Democrat and Republican, are eroding away. They are indeed becoming irrelevant as the new concerns of this new Century trump the politics of the past. It’s now no longer the right against the left, but rather: “Wall Street against Main Street.” 

The roots of this go back about 35 years. What occurred was, as one writer put it, a “revolt of the haves.” The American moneyed interests were quite terrified by the specter of an aroused and united American people. It’s also apparent from the literature of the time that both Democrat and Republican leaders were voicing the same concerns. One study from a Democratic-sponsored think tank even proclaimed that the public had become “ungovernable” and had to be returned back to their normal state of apathy. Apparently having had enough of an activist public interfering with their plans, the powers that be decided to do something about it. Using all legal and institutional means at their disposal, the powerful stymied all further attempts at real reform. 

For many, the experience of the 1960s and ’70s revealed the hidden hands of power that actually rule this republic of ours. To the generation that rebelled, they realized that the organs of national security would use all means necessary to crush any hint of real change in this country. To working people, they saw the power of their earnings erode, and once secure jobs were now being sent overseas. Independent businesses began to be overwhelmed by newly emerging corporate monopolies. To those who served and bled in Vietnam, they saw the privileged avoid the ordeal that they themselves suffered. And the poor, who were just getting by, became completely destitute. These were the beginnings of the economic disenfranchisement that is now sweeping America by storm. For the last three decades the message from those above was “consume, spend, and get with the program” or starve. And the public did indeed spend themselves into a frenzy of debt. Unfortunately, Economics 101 says that an economy based on debt creation is ultimately unsustainable. We Americans have all been using a giant credit card to finance what is so arrogantly called our “Lifestyle,” and now the bills are coming due. 

With the cold wind of recession starting to blow in our faces, we the people find that neither established political party offers any real solutions to our present crises. And there’s a reason for this, it’s because both parties are in the thrall of the politically connected rich. As the chair of the corporate sponsored Democratic Leadership Council recently stated, “No Democrat can win without our support.” And, as in the cases of Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul, any candidate who directly challenges the corporate establishment will be ignored, trivialized, and even forced out of debates by the leadership of their parties. Simply put, these corporate masters will not tolerate any challenges to their authority, and to deny this hard fact is to deny the realities of power in this country.  

In my conversations with younger people, their greatest gripe is that all they hear from progressive leaders is just more warmed over ’60s rhetoric. What they say today may have been relevant in 1968, but we now find ourselves facing a far different world than we had forty years ago. One now finds that the travails of the liberal Democrat are also those of the conservative Republican. These mutual concerns are starting to bring together groups that years ago would never have spoken to one other. For instance, abuses of eminent domain and redevelopment have brought together alliances of Greens and Libertarian Republicans. Climate Change issues unite many environmentalists with evangelical Christians. The so-called “Patriot Act” and other privacy-related matters have allied lifetime NRA members with established supporters of the ACLU. Common ground is apparently being found, yet we don’t hear very much about it. Why is this? I suspect that these new alliances are upsetting the agendas of those who would still have us living in the past. Perhaps they see a potential groundswell as something that could make them irrelevant. I will even guess that maybe this could be an even greater threat to the designs of the moneyed few than what there was in the ’60s. Perhaps this maelstrom that we see around us will finally make us aware that our salvation is not with the major parties, but rather with ourselves. I will add here that whomever wins this coming November, they will be facing a new and ever-increasing popular movement that transcends any label. I for one, am looking forward to it. 

John F. Davies is a Berkeley resident.

If you love the University of California, you may be interested in a study released Jan. 15 by the Center for Labor and Community Research, titled, “Failing California’s Communities: how UC’s low wages affect surrounding communities.” 

For those who pay attention to UC’s labor issues, the story is depressingly familiar. This study of zip codes and census data for roughly 20,000 low paid UC service and patient care employees at ten campuses and five hospitals asked the question; if UC paid market-rate wages, what would be the economic impact, or “multiplier effect,” and where would it show? It was produced with help from AFSCME local 3299. 

The conclusions were clear, UC’s lowest paid workers are concentrated in low income communities most in need of economic improvement and UC is failing those communities by paying wages significantly below other colleges and hospitals in California (25 percent below overall). Comparisons were made to wages at regional hospitals and large community colleges. Citing a 2005 study by the National Economic Development and Law Center, one-third of UC’s 124,000 employees do not earn sufficient wages to pay for food, rent and other basic necessities and many are eligible for public assistance. Nearly half of UC patient care and service workers live in neighborhoods with a poverty rate 50 percent higher than those surrounding the campuses. In the Bay Area, the percentage is probably higher. 

That study recognized that compensation practices of large employers affect entire communities. CLCR researchers note that as one of the largest employers in the state, if UC paid prevailing wages, it would have significant direct economic impact on struggling communities, including Oakland and Richmond, Inglewood and Hawthorne, plus 55 other working class communities near the UC system, where incomes run 15 percent lower than average. CLCR researchers conclude that, “the economic impact of UC matching prevailing wages is estimated to add $147 million in spending on local goods and services in those communities, create nearly nine hundred new jobs, add $9 million in state and local taxes and contribute $23 million in local business earnings.” Obviously, if UC were to provide market-rate wages, the social returns in low and moderate income communities would be far greater than any increase in sales of luxury goods in upscale districts adjacent to UC campuses from payoffs and perks lavished on top management. 

Old-timers tell me UC used to say, “it is a privilege to work for the greatest university in the world, and because of our interest in public service and the egalitarian mission of the university, you will gladly accept a little less.” 

More recently they said, “the economy is bad, we have to raise fees, tuition, health care costs, and no, no equity increases this year.” Seems every year, good or bad, UC’s primary customers, students, classroom educators and hospital patients take the hit. 

This year the mantra is, “Arnold won’t give us the money, $14B deficit you know.” But the state budget slice for service workers at UC is just 8.6 percent, the rest comes from hospital revenues, the feds and non-governmental funding such as food services and parking. While tuition costs explode, students fees, the ultimate battering ram of UC’s excuses, provide barely 1 percent of service costs. 

And I’m talking about unionized workers here, usually the most stable members of working class communities, whose wages UC is keeping down. People end up taking second jobs, putting their teen-aged children into the workforce and even collecting cans during breaks for a little extra cash. 

Sources in current contract negotiations say the university has acknowledged that it is not about money, rather, they claim it would be “fiscally imprudent” to raise workers pay to prevailing wage. That from a public entity with 22 billion dollars in net assets(assets minus expenses), up 18 percent in the last two years, a university system that is the largest recipient of Federal R&D funding in the nation, $4 billion last year alone. Current Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau recently cited low turnover at the bottom as justification for underpaying workers, and it is true that we need our jobs and UC can be a good place to work. However, we have less employment mobility than UC’s elite and are therefore ripe for exploitation. 

Readers will be unsurprised that labor contracts within the UC system are in flux. One of the largest employers in every jurisdiction where it resides, UC seems determined to continue depressing wages, in contradiction of its stated ideals. 

From the study’s conclusion; “What is at stake is the economic future of West Sacramento, San Pablo, Watsonville, El Cajon, East Oakland and other poor communities that would greatly benefit if UC made a greater economic investment in California’s communities.” 

A PDF version of the study “Failing California’s Communities: how UC’s low wages affect surrounding communities” is at www.clcr.org/index.php. 

Hank Chapot is a gardener at  

UC Berkeley.

MONEY WISELY SPENT OR WASTED? 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In the last two weeks, Berkeley Unified School District has sent around two e-mails to its parents. One claims that a budget crisis is looming, and wrongfully claims that California ranks 46th in the nation in public school funding. It’s the same old outdated false fact, being used to raise fear among parents. The second e-mail circulated hails a “State of Urgency” Community Forum organized by Assemblywoman Loni Hancock regarding public school funding. Both urge parents to take action to protect public school funding. 

So these two “public” e-mails have started banging the gong of stress and alarm, the same old cry of “poor,” under-funded public schools. The truth is, according to the Public Policy Institute, California ranks 26th in per pupil funding, right in the national average middle. And according to Ed-Data, the website by the California Department of Education, teacher salaries are the highest among the populated states, but teacher pupil ratios are also high. California, is far from being in the bottom of U.S. public school funding. 

At the same time, Mark Coplan the PR voice of BUSD, has sent out an e-mail asking people to buy $75 tickets for a party and gift for departing superintendent Michelle Lawrence with a optional “special lodging rate” of $135 at the Berkeley City Club, with an added request for donations for “scholarships” for this event. 

This sounds rather over the top. Maybe Michelle Lawrence should have the same goodbye party with cake and vegetables and dip, in the Council Chambers that Board of Education members have had in the past.  

With Berkeley schools’ high drop out rate, violence at the high school, and achievement gap, it doesn’t seem that our school district’s priority has been educating students. But they sure know how to ask for more nickels and dimes. 

Sharon Bauer 

• 

THE BEHOLDERS AND THE BEHELD 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Politicians, pundits, and opinion-makers do not agree on the proper classification of very important events. They argue about whether the savagery in Darfur is actually genocide, whether water-boarding is torture, whether the mess we’ve made in Iraq has plunged that long-suffering country into civil war, and they can’t decide whether the down turn in the nation’s economy is actually a recession. 

When you get right down to it our nation’s leaders are hung up on definitions – genocide, torture, civil war, recession. And yet as anyone who has a passing acquaintance with logic knows, definitions are good only to the extent of their usefulness.  

This means that genocide, torture, civil war or recession resides in the minds of the beholders. The subjects of their beholding—human beings in western Sudan, prisoners in Abu Ghraib and elsewhere, Sunnis and Shiites in Iraq, and every American except the very rich—don’t care about how their plight is defined. They suffer and die irrespective of how they are beheld. 

Marvin Chachere 

San Pablo 

• 

• 

WEST BERKELEY ZONING 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The Jan. 25 article “West Berkeley Zone Changes Linked to UC, LBNL” represents me as telling the Planning Commission that “changes in zoning rules had become more crucial because of ‘technology transfers that occur here’ resulting from research at the university and LBNL.” In reality, I did not argue for zoning changes in West Berkeley but reported on employment trends in West Berkeley, which is what I had been requested to do. I showed that manufacturing had declined as a source of employment in West Berkeley as elsewhere, but made a point of saying that this did not mean that the sector was disappearing or becoming less important but was a sign of how productive it was. I said that manufacturing was essential to the national and state economy and said that many jobs in the service and other sectors depended on the continued strength of manufacturing. In that context, I said that for the future of manufacturing in California and the nation as a whole, what was important about Berkeley in particular was innovation from research at UC Berkeley and LBNL and how technology was transferred to the private sector. Berkeley is an important place for technology transfer in fields like biotechnology and the development of biofuels, whether or not the manufacturing of new products occurs in Berkeley. 

Richard Brenneman construed me saying that “it is less important that traditional manufacturing activities continue in the city’s only industrial and manufacturing zones.” I suppose it is not unfair of him to derive this as an implication, but it is nothing that I intended to say. What I did say was that the expansion from research intensive firms, including some that are classified as manufacturers and already allowed to operate in West Berkeley would put pressure on land values and drive up rents which might threaten some traditional manufacturers and other businesses. I said that the pressure on land values came from within manufacturing itself, and not just office or retail firms, and that the city needed to find some other way than zoning to protect businesses that could not afford higher rents.  

David Fogarty 

• 

LETTER TO HILLARY 

Dear Hillary, 

Your actions over the past weeks have ensured that I will not vote for you in the primary. I am a California voter. 

I was sickened to see the tarnishing of McCain’s reputation in 2000 by Bush’s subversive whisper campaign. I was sickened to see Kerry’s service to this country swiftboated to oblivion while Bush sat by tight lipped. These campaign tactics foreshadowed what history has shown: Bush’s lack of respect for the truth during the campaign was mirrored in his presidency. 

Now you are engaging in those tactics. 

From the fairy tale, the teacher’s union suit, to Reagan—you have shown that you are more interested in playing hardball politics with a passing glance at the facts than you are at debating the issues and proving that you are the best choice for the American people. 

I was leaning heavily towards voting for you after you displayed your policy acumen at the League of Conservation Voters/Grist forum on global warming. 

Your hardball tactics have succeeded; Barack Obama is in a tactical box and on the defensive while your misrepresentations have been fact-checked on the back page, the accusations are in the front of voters’ minds. 

Global warming, health care, the Iraq war—these are the crises our country confronts. Get your priorities straight. 

Daniel Bell  

• 

WHERE HAVE ALL  

THE ROSIE’S GONE? 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

She was known as Rosie the Riveter during World War II when she was building ships and planes to serve her country. Most have gone, but many still abound in this area. They are all invited to hear Betty Reid Soskin who, while not a riveter herself, was on the scene and is still on the scene at the Rosie the Riveter/Home Front National Park in Richmond where she catalogs their stories. Now a cultural anthropologist, Ms. Soskin will speak of that experience and of the discrimination faced by both black and white in the community while doing their part to end the war. Join Oakland Eastbay NOW and six co-sponsoring women’s groups at the Rockridge Library, 5366 College Ave., on Saturday, Feb. 2 from 2-4 p.m. as we celebrate Black History Month. 

Carol Norberg 

Oakland 

• 

COVERING THE ARTS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Regarding Becky O’Malley’s Jan. 25 editorial “Where Have All the Critics Gone?”: O’Malley expresses disappointment that local theater organizations don’t give part of their revenue to the Daily Planet in the form of advertising. She writes, “It might seem unbearably crass for a publication like ours to announce that we will no longer review productions by theaters which have consistently refused to advertise with us, but the temptation to do so is strong.” 

Using Berkeley’s Aurora Theatre as an example, O’Malley’s uninformed point of view ignores the fact that Aurora provides the Daily Planet’s Theater Reviewer with two $55 tickets to each production. I am also on that very long press list and can tell you that many of us arts and entertainment writers from small, local papers appreciate Aurora’s generosity and wouldn’t be able to pay for tickets out of pocket. And if you think comp press tickets are a given, think otherwise. “Best of Broadway,” which has packed the large Curran Theater in San Francisco for years, cut their press list in half a while back. I know, I was one of the writer that was deleted. 

Joe Kempkes 

Laney Tower 

Oakland 

• 

EUPHORIC 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Wow, and Gosh almighty! I’m in a state of heightened euphoria waiting for my $300 check from Bush and Nancy! With that $300 I’ll be able to buy enough alcoholic beverages, sufficient to numb my critical faculties, which otherwise, would be telling me that $300 is a cruel joke. 

Robert Blau 

• 

MESSAGE TO BILL CLINTON: STOP DIVING DEMOCRATS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Why is Bill Clinton so involved in the front lines of trying to persuade the American people? Is he running for a third term? After Obama’s 28 point win in South Carolina, Clinton compared him to Jesse Jackson, saying that Obama only appeals to blacks. He doesn’t get it. This seems like the return of the southern strategy. It’s disgusting. During a speech, he said that had he not been married to her, he would still vote for her. This strikes me as false and disingenuous. 

He has said that Hillary knows how to unite Republicans and Democrats for a working majority, yet Hillary herself wants to continually “turn up the heat” on Republicans. 

These comments beg the question: Is the Clinton campaign merely about getting back in power? When a candidate is more about power and status than change, we suffer. Let us not shoot ourselves in the foot. 

If people are not troubled by Bill’s interference with voters’ ability to receive unfiltered messages and opinions from the candidates themselves, I must take issue. If people aren’t trouble by the trotting out of “slash and burn” tactics by the Clinton campaign, I must take issue. If people give Hillary credit for “experience,” without really saying what experience she has, I must take issue. 

People can support other candidates because they don’t believe Obama has had enough Washington DC experience- that is fine. 

However, don’t trash Obama’s experience as a community organizer (when he could have left law school and made thousands at a top NY law firm), as a constitutional law expert (and Professor at the University of Chicago), as an 8 year Senator in the Illinois legislature (where he passed death penalty reform, a universal healthcare commission bill, an ethics reform package, and a mandate for energy companies to buy energy from renewable sources). 

I am proud of the Obama campaign for sticking to the issues, and hope that people don’t vote for Hillary on Feb. 5 merely because “Bill will get back in the White House.” Don’t get me wrong; Clinton had a successful Presidency that inspired many Americans. It is unfortunate that his wife will not do the same. I will never forgive her for voting to go to war in Iraq. This campaign is not about Bill—he is living history. 

Obama is a transformational, inspirational and experienced figure. He’s ready to lead. Just ask President Kennedy’s daughter, Caroline; she just endorsed him. 

Nicholas E. Smith 

Former Chairman,  

Berkeley Labor Commission 

New York, NY 

• 

SOUTH CAROLINA 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In your Jan. 18 issue J. Douglas Allen-Taylor wrote eloquently about South Carolina, its deep-rooted racism, and the unholy triad of John Calhoun, “Pitchfork Ben” Tillman, and Strom Thurmond. I read the article with special interest because between the ages of about 1 and 3 I lived in that beautiful/terrible state, learning to walk and talk in the little town of Hardeeville. So maybe I’m to some degree a South Carolinian, though I’ve often been sorely tempted to say that Sherman had the right idea about the place. 

But Barack Obama’s stunning victory in the South Carolina primary suggests there may be hope even for my almost-native state. Messrs. Calhoun, Tillman, and Thurmond must be rapidly spinning in their graves. 

John English 

• 

CONGESTION, POLLUTION 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) is not the only method that is capable of reducing traffic congestion and pollution, and for the East Bay, may not even be the best method. Although it may seem counter-intuitive, it may even be possible to use increased parking to meet these goals. In particular I’m suggesting the construction of off-street structures or lots that provide preferential or discounted parking for car-pools, car or bike-shares, and bikes or motor-scooters, plus space for shuttle/local bus pick-up and drop-off. 

A shift from single occupancy cars to multi-occupancy cars, or to bikes or motor bikes, could significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions. A Prius with four people gets 180 passenger miles per gallon of gasoline, which is equal to the most optimistic claims for BRT. Furthermore, increasing the occupancy of the vehicle directly reduces the number of vehicles on the road, without the need for a dedicated bus lane. 

To actually make the parking preferential would require a method of verifying that a vehicle is carrying more than one occupant. Possibilities include a parking lot attendant, video checking, or a driver’s license or other ID check. The first two would provide entry level jobs. Providing a discount, or a reasonable chance to find parking, would be incentive for a driver to offer car pooling. If a car-pool matching system is put in place the riders may even get a ride to and from their house, and if there is a shuttle in place at the other end, both driver and rider get almost direct service to their destination. 

Having off-street parking would relieve pressure from on-street parking. In residential neighborhoods residents would be less likely to have to fight with commuters to park at home. In some business districts some of the on-street parking could perhaps be converted to pedestrian walk ways. Done properly, preferential off-street parking would result in less commute traffic, but possibly more shopping traffic. However, system-wide, shopping in local business areas reduces shopping in malls, and thus reduces overall traffic.  

In short, the preferential parking scheme may let you have your cake and eat it too. 

Robert Clear 

• 

WARM POOL 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I’ve tried very hard to keep quiet about Berkeley City Councilmember(s) who keep harping about people other than Berkeley residents using the warm water pool in Berkeley and thereby invalidating the need for the city’s financial support to save the warm water pool. 

I am a regular warm pool user who just happens to live in Oakland now; however, my roots are deeply embedded in Berkeley where I spent my formative years. I attended Longfellow, Willard and am an alumnus of Berkeley High and in my mind, heart and soul I am and always will be a “Berkeley girl.” This being the case, I feel it gives me an inherent connection to the city which cannot be broken merely by where I may physically reside. Also, four generations of my family have attended Berkeley High. 

I left Berkeley because I married an Air Force officer who subsequently lost his life on a bombing mission over North Vietnam. In my travels all over the world with him I always wore my being “from Berkeley” with great pride and was always very proud to extol the uniqueness of my home town—even to a U.S. president on one occasion and a couple of four star generals on another and even though we were together for a very serious matter, they all got quite a kick out of my ramblings about Berkeley. 

Most or all people who live in the Bay Area pay absolutely no attention to boundaries. They shop, dine; play, etc. in all of the numerous surrounding cities on a regular basis. I’m sure if you ask any one of them if they were ever asked where they live before they paid their money in these cities you would receive a resounding no. Likewise, have you ever had a Berkeley merchant ask you where you live before accepting your money? I think not. Bottom line, bigger picture where people live who use the warm pool is a very, very weak and petty argument for being against the warm pool and it’s possible out of town users. If you’ll please excuse the attempt at humor and a little levity, this argument just does not hold water. Further, Berkeley is known world wide for its diversity, freedom of spirit and has won national awards for its deep caring and compassion for the disabled. Are you going to allow a couple of individuals to taint and destroy this legacy? 

While it is understandable that the mayor and City Council would have concerns about Berkeley bearing the preponderance of financial responsibility for the warm pool while it is, in fact, a regional pool, is this really a valid argument against supporting the pool when one considers the hundreds, maybe, thousands of people from all over the Bay Area and the world who shop, work and/or spend money in Berkeley who don’t physically reside within Berkeley city limits? It is a great and wonderful effort to support “shop locally” and support the local merchants, etc. However, in a place such as the Bay Area no one city has everything one might want and/or need and part of the culture of being here is having a myriad of choices all over the East Bay as well as across the bay down the Peninsula and up to Napa Valley, etc., etc., etc. Need I go on? 

Last, but by far not least, all of you who are against saving the warm water pool which serves the elderly and disabled should really, really, think about “there, but by the grace of God, go I.” You may be able to say this now but what about later? Eventually, it could be you in need of warm pool therapy. 

Juanita Kirby 

Warm Pool User 

Oakland 

• 

ECHOES OF BUSH THE FIRST 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

We hear an echo of the first Bush presidency’s disastrous economy happening in America today, but the root cause for our crisis is not the same. Unlike his father, George W. Bush has succeeded in shifting much of our country’s wealth from the middle class to the upper one percent of the economic elite. The magnitude of this shift has not been seen since the turn of the last century. 

So when people say Americans have not given our current placeholder his just due for a surging economy, it is not because we have been consumed by an occupation of Iraq that that may well last another decade, it is because the average person in this country is much worse off economically today than they were 10 years, or for that matter 20 years ago. 

While the wealthiest Americans have seen their income increase dramatically and their percent of income taxed go down, most American families are barely keeping pace with inflation and the primary reason they are holding steady is because both wives and husbands are working today. Real wages in this country have stagnated under George W. Bush. The poor are more numerous and there are fewer services available for them. 

Its no wonder that when the average American looks at the economy they don’t see it as a rising tide lifting all boats. If our next President wants to help America recover, (s)he must make sure that any recovery benefits all the people. Our country has been strong because we have a work ethic and a spirit of entrepreneurship ingrained in us. Our leaders need to unleash that so we can rebuild the middle class. 

That will be an economy about which people can say “Yes, I believe that America will be strong again!” 

Vincent Casalaina 

• 

IMPEACHMENT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Thank you, Rebecca DePalma, for your letter about how crucial it is to impeach, for the sake of our trust in government and the Constitution and to hold our elected officials accountable for crimes. Whether there are 12 months or 12 minutes left of this administration, if Cheney has committed crimes we need to know the truth. Pelosi and Conyers have basically said to Cheney—we’re not going to impeach you, so go right ahead and violate the constitution, steal from us, manipulate Congress to attack Iran, and so forth. Berkeley voters passed a measure calling for impeachment in 2006, and the Berkeley City Council voted for a resolution to Impeach Bush and Cheney. Each of us can take immediate and effective action to get Cheney’s impeachment hearings to start. Nine members of the House Judiciary Committee are calling for Cheney’s impeachment hearings to open immediately, and they need our support. Senior Judiciary Committee member Robert Wexler (D-FL) has a petition that now has 214,000 signatures. Go to www.wexlerwantshearings.com to sign the petition. When you’re there, watch Wexler’s stirring five-minute speech to Congress last week. It’s true statesmanship—not the wimpy cowardice Pelosi and the Democratic “leadership” have shown so far. We can impeach Cheney, and we must. Finally, our own Representative Barbara Lee is a co-sponsor of Kucinich’s House Resolution 799 to impeach Cheney. With over 50 percent of the country wanting him impeached, we should be able to get it done. 

Cynthia Papermaster 

• 

LOVE THY NEIGHBOR 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Many years have passed but the theory has not changed. Love thy neighbor to get the best out of our shared human connection. War stirs fear and hatred; it cannot succeed as a method for turning neighbors into friends. Maybe we should begin to practice Gandhi’s method. Whenever he went into a troubled situation he listened deeply to everyone involved. He talked to those who were oppressed and he talked to the oppressors. He provided an example of what thoughtful listening was like. He understood each point of view before feeling his way to human justice in a tense situation. 

To everyone involved in the tense situation he provided the cooling example of open listening. Can we begin right from home and school by becoming open listeners? “Listening deeply to a fellow human being I brought peace to the world.” 

Romila Khanna 

Albany 

• 

ABORTION AND THE GOP 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In the 35th year of Roe v. Wade religious protesters are still intimidating, harassing and stalking abortion providers, women and opponents of their self-serving crusade 

Over the past three decades children of anti-abortionists have been brainwashed, indoctrinated and programmed into believing a doctrine of deception, secrecy and the elimination of a woman’s freedom of choice. 

A clip about an abortion opponent at the Washington, D.C. rally caught my eye as it provides a view of the future. A man was marching with his wife and four children, ranging from 1 to 10. Anti-abortion proponents put their small children out in front of protests carrying grotesque and obscene signs bigger than they are. 

President Bush and leading GOP presidential candidates all support this vocal minority and fringe movement. 

Ron Lowe 

Grass Valley

Recent weeks have seen television ads and mailers from a broad list of progressive groups and politicians urging a yes vote on Prop. 93, which revises the state’s term limits law. Progressive groups who work at the state level have little choice but to back a measure designed to keep the current Democratic leadership in place, and Prop. 93’s passage will enable some progressive legislators to extend their careers. But Prop. 93 is a disaster for progressive interests. 

Its primary impact is twofold. First, it would keep the politically ineffective and non-progressive Democratic leadership team of Fabian Nuñez and Don Perata in place for another four years. Second, Prop. 93’s passage would enable Gov. Schwarzenegger to continue to escape blame for the state’s fiscal problems, as Nuñez and Perata have proved incapable of rallying broad public support against the governor’s agenda. New leadership in Sacramento requires Prop. 93’s defeat. 

Although Republicans were the driving force behind passage of California’s term-limits law, the measure has not furthered conservative interests. To the contrary, the California legislature has become more progressive since term limits took effect in 1996. 

Despite making a colossal mess of the state’s economy, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s popularity ratings have not fallen to Bush levels. The reason the governor has escaped being the target of popular rage is less his celebrity than the incompetence of the Democrats legislative leadership. 

And the entire reason Prop. 93 is on the ballot is to give these leaders another four to six years. 

Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez came to power due to the backing of organized labor, particularly UNITE HERE. He has rewarded labor and UNITE HERE’s support by backing the anti-union Indian gaming compacts that are now before the voters in Props 94-97. 

Nuñez has made a series of deals with Schwarzenegger aimed at continuing the speaker’s political career through Prop. 93’s passage. Nuñez even got the governor to endorse Prop. 93—which speaks volumes as to the measures’ non-progressive impact. 

Nuñez was a shining progressive star when becoming speaker, but his deal with the governor on Indian gaming, his betrayals of unions, and his widely-publicized and questionable use of campaign funds for junkets and high-priced meals have left him incapable of rallying Californians for progressive causes. 

Why in the world would any progressive vote to give Nuñez another six years as Speaker? 

Unlike Nuñez, Democratic Senate leader Don Perata never had progressive credentials. Perata’s entire political career has been designed to keep him in power, and Prop. 93 would give him four more years even though he has served in the State Senate since 1998. 

Perata has done nothing to justify the voters giving him another four years in leadership. 

And having worked on tenant issues at the state level under Democratic Senate leaders Lockyer, Perata and Burton, I have seen firsthand how leadership makes a tremendous difference. 

Tenant measures that went nowhere under Lockyer became law under Burton. And after Burton was termed out and Perata came in, tenant issues again became politically difficult. 

Burton’s departure highlights the critical political context of Prop. 93. If extending term limits kept a solid and productive progressive like Burton in power, I would be all for it. 

But Prop. 93 keeps politically bankrupt leadership in power, at a time when new leadership is needed to build public opposition to the Schwarzenegger agenda. 

Locally, term limits would give Perata another four years and Assemblymember Loni Hancock another six. 

Neither of these longtime politicians have anything new to offer. Nor do they represent the forces of “change.” 

It is not clear who will be elected to replace Hancock, but former Oakland Assemblymember Wilma Chan would be the favorite to replace Perata in the State Senate (Hancock is her chief opponent). Chan would represent quite an upgrade for progressives. 

So ignore the fact that Republicans are leading the opposition to Prop. 93, and that the Democratic Establishment is its chief backer. Prop. 93 will setback progressive change at the state level for years, and must be defeated. 

Randy Shaw is the editor of BeyondChron.org.

Berkeley’s Elected Officials Unanimously Say Yes to Propostion 92 

Berkeley citizens are among the most active and contentious in the world. So are their elected officials. So, it’s not very often when they agree on much. An extraordinary thing has happened in this Feb 5 primary though. Every single locally elected official in Berkeley agrees: Vote yes on Proposition 92, the measure to save our community colleges. Yes, unanimously, Mayor Tom Bates, Supervisor Keith Carson, the entire Berkeley School Board and full City Council, City Auditor Ann-Marie Hogan, the whole Rent Board, Representatives to EBMUD, the Parks District, BART, AC Transit and of course the Peralta College Board— all of them agree, Prop. 92 is good not just for Community Colleges but also for the City, the state and all citizens.  

Voting for Prop. 92 in the Feb 5 primary is not only the single most important thing voters can do to help the lives of 2.5 million community college students in our state, it is also the single most important thing voters can do to help stop California’s economy from turning into a nose dive. The only question is this: will voters be able to see through the campaign of disinformation and outright lies being put forward by opponents of Prop. 92?  

What does Prop. 92 do? 

• Lowers student fees to $15 a unit & limits increases to the cost of living. 

• Guarantees minimum funding for community college growth. 

• Does not hurt K-12 funding. 

• Guarantees a system of community college districts that are in touch with local needs and accountable to local voters 

Everyone has praise for California’s community colleges. Even the opposition to Prop. 92 says, “We all support community colleges.” But here’s the stark truth: California’s per student funding of community colleges ranks 45th in the nation. For 15 years, the Sacramento politicians have not had the political will to do the right thing by middle class and working families. The UC’s are funded at $18,000 per student, the CSU’s get $12,000, and the K-12 system gets $8,500. And even this is not enough. But Community Colleges come in dead last at a miserable $5,200 per student. 

What Californians need most is good jobs and good schools. Community Colleges deliver on both scores building an educated citizenry who can work in, and create, skilled jobs. Yes, there are many demands crying for attention in the state budget, from health care to public safety and choices must be made. So, we can invest in people at the front end and give them a real chance of success, or we can clean up the disasters that happen when our citizens are shut out of the economy. The old approach to budgeting will impoverish us as a state because it does not make investing in our people and in our communities our top priority. 

Prop. 92’s funding of Community Colleges is vital because these are investments that pay for themselves in very short order. More educated citizens use fewer state social services, stay out of prison, and pay far more in taxes. In fact, for every dollar we invest in community colleges we get back $3.00 in budget savings and revenue. The best antidote to the coming recession is passage of Prop. 92. In lean years, the worst thing you can do is to eat your seed corn. Instead, you plant it and look towards the coming year’s crop. In other words, a sound economy requires long-term planning, not panic. 

Prop. 92 makes more that just good budget sense. It also transforms the lives of Californians and helps our communities flourish. Community college students who earn a vocational degree or certificate see their wages jump in just three years from $25,600 to $47,571. I personally don’t know of any other more effective way to lift people out of poverty and to give them a shot at the kind of life America promises. 

Opponents of Prop. 92 have sent out a misleading hit piece claiming that community college spending is not accountable and will not benefit students. They also say that Prop. 92 will hurt K-12 funding. These are complete fabrications meant to scare and confuse voters. The truth: state law requires that at least 50 percent of every community college dollar be spent directly in the classroom. And this does not even include spending for counselors, librarians, financial aid specialists, tutors and the host of other services needed to support today’s students. The truth: K-12 funding is not touched by Prop. 92. This is why Oakland School Board President David Kakashiba, the entire Berkeley School Board and the SF School Board have all endorsed Prop. 92. Finally, locally elected community college Boards of Trustees and annual outside financial audits guarantee accountability at the most local level. If Trustees are not doing a good job, voters can throw us out of office at each election. This is our most basic system of democratic accountability. To assert otherwise is a lie, plain and simple. 

Prior to now, no one has seriously ever argued that California’s community colleges are “not accountable,” are wasteful or lack transparency of budgets. As the Contra Costa Times editorialized in their endorsement of Prop. 92: “[The community college] system is by far the most efficiently run in California.” The truth is that Prop. 92 writes into the State Constitution a stronger system of local accountability by constitutionally establishing a system of locally elected boards of trustees who must stand for election before a local electorate and by taking Sacramento politics out of the hiring process at the State Chancellor’s office. 

The American Promise. Go and spend an afternoon or an evening at Berkeley City College. What you’ll find is an amazing institution that literally is transforming the people’s lives. You’ll find great students who cannot afford four years at the now-overpriced UC’s. You’ll find laid-off workers, many with BA degrees, re-tooling for a new job or preparing for graduate school. You’ll find basic skills students who dropped out of high school but now are building a path towards a career and a productive place in their communities. You’ll find immigrants learning English and trying to find a new home in America. You’ll also find a lot of students who have a love of life-learning. 70 percent of all college students in the state are attending classes in one of the 109 CC campuses. We like to say that community colleges accept the top 100 percent of students. In other words, community colleges are these vital institutions that represent the very core of the promise of America.  

We can all say that we support community colleges, but when Sacramento politics for 15 years in a row has shortchanged the community colleges and left their funding near the bottom in national rankings, you just have to question how sincere their support is. It’s time for the citizens of this state to exercise the power of direct democracy once again and do what Sacramento cannot seem to do: invest in the future. Vote yes on Proposition 92. 

Nicky González Yuen is vice president of the Peralta Community College Board of Trustees representing Berkeley, Emeryville and Albany and also chair of the De Anza Community College Political Science Department.

Thousands of absentee voters registered as independents are in for a shock when they open their ballot envelopes for the upcoming primary election and discover there are no presidential candidates’ names on their ballot. If you’ve already opened your envelope and discovered this, then you’re probably one of over 10,000 California voters who have already called their county Registrar of Voters to find out how to fix the problem. You learned that the Registrar would mail you a partisan (e.g., Democratic or American Independent) ballot, which you could then fill in and mail back. (Republicans have excluded independents in this election.) 

If you are registered as a Democrat, a Republican, or another officially recognized third party such as the Green Party, you received a Vote by Mail ballot in the mail that included your party’s slate of presidential candidates. However, if you are registered as an independent (or “Decline to State”) voter and requested an absentee (Vote by Mail) ballot, the ballot you received was a “non-partisan” ballot. This means that it has all the measures and propositions listed, but no slate of presidential candidates. 

Unfortunately, many independent voters haven’t looked at their ballots yet, and time is of the essence. Voters must request their new ballots from their Registrar by the Jan. 29 or it’s too late. They can also carry their ballot into their polling place and exchange it there for a ballot with presidential choices. 

But here the voter who registered independent may run into another problem: This year, California has eliminated walk-in polling places in many precincts throughout the state. So voters who are used to voting at their walk-in polling place may assume it’s still there and then discover it’s gone. 

Voters in areas where their polling places have been eliminated can only vote by using Vote by Mail ballots (formerly referred to as absentee ballots). They will have already received them, but may not have known why. A mail-in ballot must be received by your County Election Department by the close of polls (8 p.m.) on election day (Feb. 5). You may also choose to bring it in person to any county polling place on election day. 

Another problem reported by Registrars of Voters is that some people who wished to register as independents mistakenly registered as American Independents (an official third party with its own slate of candidates). Unfortunately, those voters just discovering this mistake will not be able to vote for any other party’s candidates, because the deadline to change their affiliation was Jan. 22. 

So, if you are a voter who registered independent and absentee and wish to vote for one of a political party’s presidential candidates, you must call your Registrar of Voters at your county’s Election Department and request a partisan ballot (e.g., Democratic Party or American Independent Party). You should receive a new ballot promptly. Alternatively, you can bring your independent (Decline to State, or non-partisan) ballot to your polling place on election day and exchange it for the partisan ballot of your choice—if your polling place is still there. 

These are some of the problems California voters may face as a result of confusing rules and changes in how we vote. Voters who registered independent and haven’t yet dealt with these problems need to examine their ballots immediately, call their Registrars, and get new ballots. Otherwise, they risk losing their voice in this important upcoming primary election. 

Constance M. Piesinger is a resident of Yountville (Napa County) and a supporter of Barack Obama.

The arguments for and against the California Indian Gaming agreement propositions, Propositions 94, 95, 96 and 97, has prompted me to re-examine an underlying assumption about Indian gaming. That is, does California’s $7 billion Indian gaming industry substantially benefit California Indians economically and socially? There are 105 tribal entities in California with approximately 56,158 tribal members. There are 31 gaming tribal casinos. Yes, Indian gaming revenue has been used to build houses, schools, roads and sewer and water systems and to fund health care and education for California’s gaming tribes and to a lesser extent, its non-gaming tribes. However, there remains a large economic and social disparity between California Indians and those of other Americans. 

The average income for American Indians in California is well below the national average. “An Impact Analysis of Tribal Government Gaming in California,” published by the Center for California Native Nations at the University of California, Riverside (January 2006) (“Analysis”), using 2000 statistics, found that the average income of California Indians was only 53 percent of the national average. The Analysis estimates that it will take 55 years at the present rate to close the gap. Further, the Analysis found that 26 percent of the California gaming tribe families and 30 percent of the non-gaming tribe families lived in poverty compared to 9 to 10 percent at the national and state level. The unemployment rate among the Indian population was 17 percent compared to 7 percent for non-Indian Californians. As for education, the Anaylsis found that 14 percent of Indians over the age of 25 are college graduates compared to 30 percent for non-Indians, and 6.3 percent of gaming tribes and 14.4 percent of non-gaming tribes had less than a 9th grade education compared to 7 percent for non-Indians. 

In addition, there are large social gaps between American Indians (including Alaska Natives) and the general population. ( I am assuming that these statistics for American Indians as a whole would be similar for California Indians.) Crime rates among the American Indian population are significantly higher than in the general population. Based on Office of Applied Studies survey data, alcohol abuse is 10.7 percent and illicit drug use is 5 percent for American Indians as compared to 7.6 percent and 2.9 percent respectively for the general population. Census figures show that in 2004 one in six American Indians was separated or divorced compared to one in eight in the general population. Finally, the suicide rate among American male adolescents is two to four times the rate of the general population. 

Clearly, gaming revenue has not been the cure-all for the economic and social problems in the Indian community. Hopefully, future gaming revenue will be judiciously spent to eliminate the economic and social disparity between American Indians and the general population.  

Ralph E. Stone is a retired attorney living in San Francisco.

Children’s Hospital and Research Center Oakland is a hospital for very sick children and serves all of Northern California. Alameda County has the good fortune of having this hospital, located in its jurisdiction and has placed two measures on the ballot to support its construction program, Measure A and Measure B.  

Both measures are asking for a mere $24 per residential parcel (seniors and very low-income families are exempted), $150 per small business parcel and $250 per large business parcel per year. Is this too much to keep a hospital operating that provides treatment for children with serious illnesses like diabetes, cancer, birth defects and injuries like dog bites and gunshot wounds? The 10-year-old boy who was shot by a stray bullet while practicing a piano lesson on Jan. 10 was rushed to Children’s Hospital. 

Measure A is the better one because it provides enough funding to cover the county’s administrative costs. Even the sponsor of Measure B, the hospital, acknowledges that. 

Although this hospital is a private hospital, it is a non-profit and treats children of any family whether they can pay or not. About two-thirds of patients are on Medi-Cal. It is a community good, so shouldn’t the community be willing to pay something for it? 

We may not have children or grandchildren or even expect any, but we surely have friends, relatives and neighbors who do. And even, most of us were once children. 

The “high-rise” extension will be the nursing facility that will increase the hospital’s capacity from 171 beds to about 250. Nursing facilities of hospitals must be seismically upgraded by 2013. Constructing adjacent to their present hospital and re-using it for clinics and administration after the extension’s completion is the fiscally responsible and sustainable solution. They will be able to bring their scattered clinics to this central location, which will not only create more efficient service, but also eliminate much vehicle travel. 

Some neighbors object to a 12-story tower. Would they rather the hospital limit it to six stories? If so, to provide the same capacity, they would have to double its footprint and acquire another block of homes. That would be far more intrusive than a 12-story tower, particularly if it is set back from a four or five-story podium. The site is adjacent to Highway 24, which is not even the most desirable location for single-family residences. 

All but three residences have been acquired without eminent domain, which the hospital does not wish to use. Losing one’s home may seem devastating, but the compensation may enable owners to buy a better home in a location away from a freeway. 

Some of the loudest voices protesting this expansion do not even live near the hospital so you cannot call them “NIMBYs” (Not-In-My-Back-Yard) but rather “BANANAs” (Build-Absolutely-Nothing-Anywhere-Near-Anything). 

The process for placing the bond measures on the ballot can be described as convoluted but that is now a non-issue. Children should not suffer because of grown-ups’ silly behavior. The question at-hand is: are voters willing to pay $24 per year to help an existing, highly respected institution provide even better service to more very sick children. At least two-thirds of voters need to say ‘yes.’ 

What are our community’s priorities? 

Joyce Roy is an Oakland activist and semi-retired architect whose grandchildren live in Marin County. 

For decades, the stench from airborne chemicals emitted by Pacific Steel Casting has been allowed to pollute the air downwind from its foundries with virtual impunity. Environmental changes have come slowly to this part of the city. While other industrial polluters are much smaller, or have moved away in response to the growing residential population in this district, PSC’s operations have been allowed to expand. Until recently, it appeared that nothing would ever change. 

About six months ago, a group of residents, with the aid of Global Community Monitor, an environmental justice organization, began collecting air samples across the northwest portion of the city. Aided by a grant from the Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD), this monitoring project is an historic effort. It is the first serious attempt to actually define the impacts from spewing stacks, unabated roof vents and open doors at the Second Street steel foundry. Nothing of this magnitude has ever been attempted in the neighborhoods outside the fence line of Pacific Steel. 

A team of community volunteers set up portable air samplers on residential rooftops downwind from the steel foundry. This “citizens’ science” effort has detected some startling findings about airborne metal particulates. The large collection of samples clearly shows excessive manganese and nickel levels at many locations close to Pacific Steel. Predictably, the foundry claims the airborne metals are not from their operations. However, according to the Air District, 100 percent of the manganese, and 99% of the nickel from all industrial sources in the area originate from PSC. Community air monitoring has proved that these airborne particulates can’t be blamed on the freeway. 

Global Community Monitor’s report, generated by this extensive monitoring project, is due to be released this week. Needless to say, the results raise serious health concerns. It also reveals the city’s unsafe zoning practices in West Berkeley that fail to adequately protect nearby citizens from this longstanding environmental injustice. 

West Berkeley Cancer Zone 

This new information about Pacific Steel’s emissions couldn’t have come at a better time since the foundry has been required to update their sixteen-year-old Health Risk Assessment (HRA). The HRA has been called a whitewash by residents, and as expected, requires no real changes in PSC’s emissions or risk reduction. 

“Low risk” or “No risk” is the message of the draft HRA to those residing and working near PSC. At least this is what the foundry’s consultant, Environ, has stated. But then, this is the sort of spin that contractors like this Emeryville firm get paid to serve up for industry. In any case, Environ has had their hands full trying to show that PSC, without any buffer to the surrounding community, creates no risk to the public’s health. 

One requirement of the new HRA is to provide an estimate of the cancer burden from the foundry. This demand was triggered by PSC’s emissions of hexavalent chromium, arsenic, cadmium and nickel. The consultant’s analysis of the cancer risk posed by the steel mill included a map reflecting the narrowest possible “zone of impact.” The map drew a tight line around PSC that most conveniently excluded the two closest children’s facilities, the Duck’s Nest preschool, a mere block away, and the city-supported transitional housing at Ursula Sherman. 

Environ’s estimates were counter to the findings from the community’s air monitoring which show high levels of airborne nickel more than a half mile from the facility. Although Environ publicly touted its analysis of PSC’s cancer risk to be on the conservative side, the community’s data places this assumption, as well as the entire HRA, in doubt. 

Duck’s Nest, Canaries in the Mine Shaft 

The most troubling interpretation of health risks created by Pacific Steel has been the stance taken by the HRA in addressing the Duck’s Nest. The children at this preschool have been identified in the report as the maximally exposed “sensitive receptors”. Environ concludes that if estimates of cancer risks are acceptable for this group of children just outside the fence line, then all is well. And of course, this is exactly what the consultants have rationalized. All too literally, the children at the Duck’s Nest have become the “canaries in the mine shaft”. 

Environ is right to assume that the children at the facility and those living nearby are the most sensitive to exposure from airborne hazardous chemicals and consequent cancer risks. Early exposure to carcinogens may increase the incidence of adulthood cancers. These toxic burdens can also cause certain cancers to appear much earlier in life. 

It’s unlikely that Environ knew much about the community monitoring team or their sampling efforts at several properties around the childcare facility, including the fence line to the play yard. These samples were collected at the end of last fall after the upgrades to the foundry’s emissions listed in the HRA had been put in place. Citizen monitoring data associated with the Duck’s Nest suggests an entirely different exposure scenario on site. Almost every sample revealed high levels of both manganese and nickel. 

Certainly the best way to measure Environ’s cancer burden analysis of PSC is to provide body burden testing for all West Berkeley residents, especially for children exposed to the steel mill’s emissions. Many metals, like nickel, bio-accumulate. Blood and hair testing should be provided by the city, at no cost, to all those downwind within a mile of the foundry. 

Undoubtedly, BAAQMD recognizes the many uncertainties that can result from exposure to such toxic emissions. The Air District has recently installed an air-monitoring trailer four blocks downwind of the foundry near the Duck’s Nest. Even though the Air District says it is merely studying regional air quality, make no mistake; it is Pacific Steel that is being monitored. Why else would BAAQMD make a $750,000 commitment of taxpayer money for such extensive monitoring if they really believe the cancer and chemical exposure estimates of the HRA and Environ? 

Monitor West Berkeley Zoning 

Duck’s Nest is no stranger to PSC and has had a long history with the foundry. The few attempts to monitor air quality in West Berkeley in the late 1980s were done in association with this preschool. The close proximity of Duck’s Nest to Pacific Steel was the driving force that mandated the first Health Risk Assessment of the foundry by the city’s Zoning Adjustments Board (ZAB) in 1991. 

Since the HRA is a condition of Pacific Steel’s permit, ZAB now has a legal obligation to publicly review the new HRA after its approval by the Air District. This gives the city a legal opportunity to study and set new conditions for the foundry’s operating permit. A timetable and deadline for the long overdue odor management plan would be a good place to start. As the HRA points out, PSC no longer operates in a purely manufacturing district. A thorough examination of their permit by Zoning is long overdue. 

Our city continues to play a game of obfuscation concerning PSC’s toxic legacy. More than anything else, this has perpetuated the city’s negligence to control Pacific Steel’s emissions. Recently, both Mayor Bates and Councilmember Linda Maio have voiced strong concerns regarding PSC emissions and their commitment to protect citizens downwind from the steel factory. The city has the authority to control the health and environmental impacts produced by Berkeley’s biggest polluter. Now is the time! 

To learn more about the air monitoring results in West Berkeley, please come to the Community Meeting tonight, Tuesday, January 29th, 2008 from 7 to 9 p.m. at the West Berkeley Senior Center, 1900 Sixth St. 

L A Wood maintains a local political blog at www.berkeleycitizen.org. 

FOCUS ON AREA-WIDE 

TRAFFIC CALMING 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In his Jan. 25 Planet commentary, Michael Katz attacks traffic circles as traffic diverters rather than safety enhancements. But he summarily dismissed the idea of area-wide traffic calming. Increased parking charges and congestion fees for non-residents can make a real difference to Berkeley’s quality of life. Instead of debating traffic circle safety, let’s focus on area-wide traffic calming.  

Scott Mace 

• 

IMPROVING SAFTEY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Kudos to Michael Katz for his thoughtful commentary on Berkeley’s efforts to improve traffic and pedestrian safety. It is refreshing to read an account that avoids easy generalizations. As a frequent traveler on Spruce, Marin and Solano avenues, I have often pondered the net result of the “improvements” that have been attempted in recent years. These improvements certainly leave much to be desired, but have they made the situation worse? I honestly don’t know.  

Effective solutions are sometimes counter-intuitive. Witness a recent report on European cities that appear to have safely solved their traffic problems by actually removing curbs, stop-signs and traffic signals: www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=18217318. 

John Lutterman 

Davis 

• 

PEDESTRIAN SAFETY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Recently I just about hit a pedestrian who was crossing a street while wearing jeans and a dark hooded sweatshirt which made him nearly invisible under low-light conditions. Another pedestrian warning is in order: Please, please, please wear light colors in the rain and at night; at least use a white hat or scarf. Never talk on a cell phone while crossing a street. Never buy a black or navy blue raincoat or parka. Also, if you are walking at night please carry a flashlight and turn it on when crossing streets. Remember that current steeply sloped windshields on recent models of cars have major blind spots just to the sides of straight ahead. 

Judith Wiese 

• 

PEDESTRIAN SURVIVAL ON MARIN AVENUE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

My kudos to Michael Katz for a thoughtful article on the dangerous life of pedestrians. The new Marin Avenue configuration may look more bucolic, but it has not benefited pedestrians. At problem intersections such as Colusa I definitely feel much less safe now: First, because the four-lane configuration is de facto still at work here due to turning cars. Second, what was formerly a predictable four-lane behavior has now been rendered more chaotic by motorists’ last-minute swerves to turn. 

Also, the entire crossing now has to be accomplished on one light, or good bye life! And I am not a slow walker! A solid widened, elevated median strip with the formerly predictable four-lane pattern in place would make me feel much safer. 

My personal caveat to pedestrians everywhere: A reflective vest will enhance your chances of survival! I wear it regularly around my sidewalkless home turf, and my motoring neighbors appreciate it too. As a driver myself I too often have experienced heart-stopping moments at night. Especially crossing traffic with dark clothing on rainy nights has got to be an absolute invitation to suicide! Do you believe in Darwin? 

Juergen Hahn 

• 

SIMPLE TRAFFIC CALMING 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

We could help prevent future pedestrian deaths using the simple, inexpensive form of traffic calming that has recently been implemented on Oxford Street at Virginia. 

When I lived on this street, residents used to complain that cars treated the street like a freeway and that it was impossible to cross at Virginia. 

Recently, the city has added bright green signs saying that cars must yield to pedestrians in the crosswalk in the middle of Oxford at Virginia. These signs are placed at many dangerous crossings, but at this intersection, the city has also striped bulb-outs next to the sidewalks and put little plastic stanchions with reflectors at the edge of the bulb-outs, narrowing the space that cars pass through to the width of the lane. 

I have often heard that narrowing the street slows traffic, and this visual narrowing proves it: cars slow down to near the legal speed limit when they go through this intersection, even if no one is crossing. I think it would be even more effective to have the bright green yield-to-pedestrian sign at the edge of the bulb-out, since it is so prominent visually. 

Because it only involves striping and plastic stanchions, this intersection treatment would be less expensive and less controversial than most traffic calming devices, and far less expensive than enforcement. Of course, it only works on two-lane streets where cars speed—but there are plenty of those in Berkeley. 

We could add this treatment to many of our dangerous intersections very quickly—maybe quickly enough to prevent another death. 

Charles Siegel 

• 

A FEW POINTS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I believe Michael Katz is correct when he says that those who advocate for traffic circles have more on their minds than preventing pedestrian fatalities. I live in the Le Conte neighborhood, and have since before there were any traffic calming measures. I remember what Fulton and Ellsworth were like when they served as urban freeways to and from the university, and I surely have welcomed the change. (Before people lay down in the street to demand major change in the early seventies, they had been begging for years for stop signs, to no avail.) 

Here are a few points I’d like to make. 

First: How could we calculate the number of children (or adults) who have NOT become victims because the whole area has less cars, and overall they are not going as fast? Mr. Katz conceded that investigators determined neither of the tragic recent fatalities in north Berkeley was caused by traffic engineering issues. Believe me when I tell you I know my neighborhood is safer and more livable for residents with the changes that have come here in the past three decades. Granted Shattuck and Telegraph are busier, but even without bollards and circles here, they would have high volume traffic, and they are more business-focused. Yes, there are residents, but not nearly so many families with children. 

Second: Fulton Street, sporting three traffic circles, is a major bikeway. I use it myself, and it is far superior to the various paving-striped bike routes where cyclists have to compete with cars cutting them off, buses, long waits at red lights, and “bike lanes” that abruptly end amid heavy traffic. 

Third: Yes, this is California, not Finland. I think there are some drivers who are not slowed down much by the circles, just as there are people who run stop signs or execute “California rolling stops.” There is also some confusion over which intersections on Fulton have stop signs in which direction. So no, it is not a perfect solution. But I do believe that overall it has gotten better gradually for residents, pedestrians and bicyclists in this area with the advent of diverters, circles, and other traffic calming measures in the past thirty years. 

Donna Mickleson 

• 

MISLEADING CLAIMS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

There were a number of misleading claims about traffic calming research in a Jan. 15 commentary by Michael Jerrett (“Implement Area-Wide Traffic Calming in 2008”). 

Jerrett’s claim that there is overwhelming evidence traffic calming reduces accidents and saves pedestrian lives is not true. Traffic calming research acknowledges the large variations in studies around the United States. 

In fact, a study by the ITE and FHWA, “Traffic Calming State of the Practice,” states: 

“Traffic calming in the United States is largely restricted to low volume residential streets. Collisions occur infrequently on such streets to begin with, and any systematic change in collision rates tends to get lost in the random variation from year to year. This limits our confidence in drawing inferences about safety impacts of traffic calming.” 

Research from Portland, Ore., one of the first cities in the country to use devices such as humps and circles, showed a reduction in accidents of only 5 percent, and even that was statistically insignificant. 

Mr. Jerrett praises a study in Oakland by then medical student, June Tester, which has been criticized. The conclusions of this study were found to be falsely interpreted and the methodology, flawed. 

Dr. Tester’s study claimed children who lived on a block with a speed hump were 50 percent less likely to be hit by a car—either on the block, or strangely, as far away as 1/4 mile. However what the numbers actually show could be interpreted as humps making children less safe. The results had a 95 percent confidence level that a child living near a speed hump was between 85% less likely to 6% more likely to be involved in a pedestrian accident. This is an indication that the sample size was too small to show with any real certainty, anything about safety at all. The full critique can be found at: http://ti.org/vaupdate63.html. 

Dr. Tester did her study solely using a database of hump installations from 1995 and later. But Oakland began installing speed humps in 1994—a fact not mentioned in the “Limitations” section of her analysis. Therefore the study was done without truly knowing whether an incident had occurred near a hump, or not. 

Mr. Jerrett ignores studies on the other side of the issue. Two studies, one from Boulder, Col., and one from Austin, Texas, show that risk to resident survivability is many times greater from delay by devices such as humps and circles to emergency responders to time-critical emergencies, than from cars—speeding or not. 

A measured approach to addressing the problems of speeding in communities is what research on traffic calming has advised, not the emotional one-sided argument presented in Mr. Jerrett’s commentary. 

Kathleen Calogne 

Boulder, CO

To treat the spate of pedestrian traffic deaths and accidents as a uniquely Berkeley problem is blind provincialism at its worst as the problem is widespread throughout the country. There have been system change efforts to make Berkeley streets safer including lowering of speed limits, protruding peninsulas to shorten the crossing time and distance, trials of flags and flashing ground lights, the change to one lane of traffic each way on Marin, the bicycle boulevards and so forth. Many people have expressed their opinions as to whether these and other changes contribute to or alleviate the risk to pedestrians. Like one letter writer I have no doubt that talking on cell phones while driving contributes to many accidents and there is ample data from the transportation safety people to back that up. Cell phone driving has to be stopped by state laws that are highly promoted and enforced. But, beyond that hazard (and drunk driving) do we understand the major causes of such accidents? 

For as long as I can remember we have trained our children to be safe by crossing the street in the crosswalk at an intersection. I believe that this paradigm is probably wrong and contributes to accidents. One Planet commentator mentioned the support posts in all cars that can obscure forward lateral view as one begins a corner turn. I can remember, not once but several times, being scared out of my wits because I began a turn seeing no pedestrian and found myself almost into the crosswalk when I became aware of a pedestrian in the crosswalk. No matter how you sit there will always be a brief blind spot to the side. And if you happen to be glancing toward the side at the moment a pedestrian is behind that post you may risk injuring them.  

Besides the post problem there is a more obvious one that explains why drivers can not and do not spend enough time looking thoroughly for pedestrians when turning. Upon commencing a turn, whether left or right, a driver has to be concerned with oncoming traffic and assuring it creates no problem for a turn, and also lateral traffic for the same reason. This is a necessary precaution even when one has a green light. In this process, looking ahead into the turn is a competing priority for the driver’s attention, even if the driver is stopped for the turn. In rainy weather, moreover, the lateral field of vision of the driver is further restricted by the field of the windshield wipers.  

The fact that reckless and drunk drivers hit pedestrians at a higher rate tends to obscure the risks that pedestrians face from the problems of normal driving patterns. It seems likely that increasing the number of cross walks placed mid-block rather than at intersections can reduce pedestrian risk. This ought to be considered citywide here or in another urban environment so that the change can be promoted publicly to local drivers and the results evaluated. 

In Berkeley we have several safe and successful midblock crosswalks, such as in front of the old University Theater on University Avenue and in front of the French Hotel and the Shattuck post office on North Shattuck Avenue. Drivers tend to be very aware of these locations and to behave appropriately. But, if enhancements were necessary, mid-block crosswalks can be easily supplemented with push buttons for pedestrians that activate a large blinking orange warning light 100 feet before the crosswalks. In that setting a driver looking forward faces no competing risks for attention.  

A portion of the deaths at intersections may result from competing factors for driver attention. We can not afford to place pedestrians as a secondary consideration for drivers. Commentaries about inappropriate behaviors of citizens—whether pedestrians or drivers—tend to obscure the reality that crosswalks at traffic intersections do not seem to protect pedestrians as they are intended to do. There should be no other perceptual competitors for a driver’s attention than the pedestrian as each driver approaches a crosswalk. And the lateral blind spot needs to be eliminated as well. For both these reasons, frontal approaches to many or most crosswalks is a rational public safety measure.  

Berkeley resident Marc Sapir is the former director of Retro Poll.

Fighting Measures A and B on next Tuesday’s ballot has pushed me over the edge. I’ve lost weight, acquired more wrinkles and lost my sense of humor. Sometimes I don’t even speak in coherent sentences. I’ve put my clothes on inside out, forgotten to zip my fly, backed out of the driveway without looking left or right for oncoming traffic. 

I broke my hand in October. The cast was supposed to come off in November but the bone didn’t heal properly. In December, a Kaiser Permanente technician sawed off the cast. Now I have a permanent bump on my middle metacarpal bone. I’d like to blame Children’s Hospital Oakland, (CHO) for the disfigurement, but that wouldn’t be fair, or would it? 

Nothing seems very fair to me these days. How can CHO, a private outfit, get two measures on the Feb. 5 ballot that will allow them to use taxpayers’ money to build a 12-story high-rise in a residential neighborhood? Why am I being asked to help foot the bill at the same time they are threatening the use of eminent domain to take away our homes?  

My house is not in the footprint of the hospital’s proposed 196-foot tower. I live five doors away but I’m pretty sure CHO wants my home as well as my neighbors’ homes. They’ve already bought one house outside the proposed site. When asked why, Mary Dean, senior vice president of CHO External Affairs, told me, “It was an opportunity.”  

And now they have another opportunity because the neighbors across the street from me have fled to Berkeley. Their home goes up for sale in February. Please someone buy their charming 1914 California bungalow before Children’s snaps it up. 

I’m not the only one feeling harassed and frazzled. Mr. and Mrs. Odom, the last remaining “real” residents on 52nd Street between Dover and MLK Jr. Way, have been feeling like this since the early ‘80s. “Children’s Hospital has been after me to sell my house for years,” Mr. Odom tells me. “Realtors call all the time. They don’t say they work for Children’s but I know they do. Back when Children’s was building the outpatient building and parking garage, black realtors came to black-owned houses, and white realtors came to white-owned homes. What they offered us depended on what color we were and what they thought we’d settle for.”  

Mr. Odom shakes his head, “But I ain’t movin’.” 

Mr. Odom is interviewed by KGO Channel 7 News. He tells a reporter about the man across the street from him who worked for CHO, but wouldn’t sell his home to them. He says the man lost his job before he retired, and later died. His widow died last year and CHO bought their house. It’s now the Yes on Measure A campaign headquarters and stocked with thousands of yard signs. 

My neighbor Yasmin and I run around the neighborhood gathering signatures, distributing bumper stickers, passing out fliers. Yasmin puts on a hat that once belonged to my husband, Ralph. She wears it sideways by mistake. The earflaps cover one of her eyes, and like me, she too has lost weight, so her pants hang down around her hips. She looks like a homeless person. 

We talk to an urban planner. He studies the site plans CHO has up on its website. He tells us that 55th Street is the natural buffer zone for a project of this magnitude. He says that to do it properly, CHO will have to take out all the homes between 52nd street and 55th. 

I glance at Yasmin as his words sink in. She looks horrified, and I know I look the same. Skinny and scared. Clothes on backwards and inside out. We look like two people who have washed up under a freeway overpass. I think about Mr. Odom. Thirty-six years on 52nd Street and he says he ain’t gonna move. I wish I could say the same, but I may not be as tough.

I am a longtime supporter of public transportation, and have been so since my youth when I used to ride around Oakland on AC Transit, often getting off and walking the last 10 blocks home along East 14th only because I thought it extravagant to pay the extra 10 cents it used to cost to go past 73rd Avenue. I was born too late to ride on the old Key System, but I fell in love with light rail when I worked, for a time, in San Jose, and thereafter thought that its reintroduction into Oakland would help ease the city’s traffic and parking problems in our city, and might also help to reinvigorate the downtrodden parts of International Boulevard east of High Street as well as West Oakland’s floundering business and commercial districts. 

I say that because some of the more vocal supporters of AC Transit’s new Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) proposal often make the charge that any criticism or even critical analysis of AC Transit or BRT automatically equates to opposition to public transit and rapid transit, and that to support the latter two, you must ever and always beat the drum for the former two.  

The charges most recently surfaced in the online reader comment section of the first of a two-part East Bay Express series by investigative reporter Robert Gammon on AC Transit’s relationship with the Van Hool bus company of Belgium. 

On Jan. 28, reader Robert Kruger posted “The Van Hool story is further complicated by neighborhood opponents of Bus Rapid Transit (BRT), who have realized that stirring up outrage over the Van Hools helps them build opposition to the whole BRT project. Mr. Gammon's article plays right into their hands, without any critical examination of the motives they might have for painting the Van Hools in such a negative light.” Five days earlier, an East Bay blogger, dto510, took off after Mr. Gammon himself, writing that: “This harmful tirade represents a wholesale embrace of the anti-transit agenda sweeping the East Bay, which seeks to prevent the establishment of the world's most popular mass transit system, BRT, to preserve a handful of parking spaces.” And NovoMetro columnist V Smoothe, who I just praised in last week’s column for her analysis (sigh), wrote in her A Better Oakland Jan. 23 blog (www.abetteroakland.com) “I cannot overlook or forgive this week’s insane cover story [in the East Bay Express] which appears to be an attempt to turn the whining of a handful of Van Hool haters into yet another bullshit excuse to bitch about BRT.” 

There is, actually, a nexus between the Van Hool buses and BRT, although it is not in the manner in which Mr. Kruger, (Mr.? Ms.?) dto510, and Ms. Smoothe portray it. The Van Hools are intended to be the backbone of BRT. The 60-foot, articulated versions (the two-part buses with the “accordion” in the middle) currently operate along AC Transit’s 1-1R Telegraph Avenue-International Boulevard-East 14th Street route that is intended to eventually become the BRT route, and one can reasonably assume that the district intends that these buses—or some other Van Hool model—will run along BRT if BRT becomes a reality. 

If BRT is to attract a large number of new riders—necessary for it to become a success—a large majority of those new riders will therefore need to like the Van Hool riding experience. If too many riders stay away from BRT because they don’t like the Van Hools, BRT will end up being the kind of East Bay public project disaster that will remain with us the rest of our lives, much like, say, the Raiders deal. Prudence dictates, therefore, that we take this process slowly and examine it carefully before we move forward with BRT approval. 

But at least where it involves Van Hool, there is a considerable body of evidence that AC Transit has not moved forward carefully at all. Instead, in the Van Hool dealings I have observed and reported on in the last year, the district has too often acted like the octopus, throwing up an obscuring cloud of ink in the water whenever thoughtful and serious questions are raised. 

I was not covering AC Transit during the time the original Van Hool contract was negotiated and signed, and I don’t know enough about that contract to have formed an opinion. But last year, I did cover AC Transit’s odd 16-bus NABI-Van Hool trade-and-buy deal, and that transaction raised serious doubts about how AC Transit was doing business with the Belgian bus manufacturer. Those articles were originally published in The Berkeley Daily Planet; they are available on the Planet’s website, as well as collected on my personal website at www.safero.org/vanhool.html. 

Under the deal—too complicated to explain in detail in this column—AC Transit proposed to sell 16 of its North American Bus Institute (NABI) manufactured buses to the American Van Hool distributor, the buses eventually to be bought by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) for use in the Gulf Coast, with the buses to be replaced by newer Van Hools. One of the complications was that AC Transit wanted the federal government to put aside any financial penalty to the agency for getting rid of the NABI buses years short of their federally-mandated street life. The federal government refused, and in one of his articles this week (“Thwarting Buy American Laws to Buy Belgian”), Mr. Gammon quotes AC Transit General Manager Rick Fernandez as saying that the NABI-Van Hool swap “didn’t pan out.” 

The problem was, there was always a problem with the NABI-Van Hool bus swap “panning out” that was evident from the beginning. As I reported in my Daily Planet stories, while Mr. Fernandez repeatedly told AC Transit board members that the bus swap was a “no-brainer” and a good deal for the district, in the “Fiscal Impact” section of his recommending memos in both March and April 2007, the general manager did not disclose a bottom-line figure, instead writing that “the fiscal impact will be determined by the proceeds of the sale” and associated costs. 

The AC Transit Board of Directors, therefore, went in blind, not knowing what the NABI-Van Hool transfer might save or cost the district. A majority of the board members went along with the deal anyway, an act of public irresponsibility which is not a good precedent if we are supposed to trust the board and AC Transit management in the BRT project. 

I ran into other red flags during my coverage of the NABI-Van Hool bus swap. 

As I noted earlier in this column, the success of BRT is predicated on the rapid transit line attracting new riders. If significant rider disaffection with the Van Hool buses keeps too many new riders from using the new system, its finances will collapse. 

You can find passionate riders on both sides of the Van Hool issue—many say they love the buses, many say they hate them. Let us give these riders the benefit of the doubt, and say that all of them are giving their honest opinions. The question is, how, then, can AC Transit decide whether public opinion over the Van Hools would be a drag or a benefit to its proposed BRT? 

A prudent transit agency—concerned with the interests of their own agency rather than its “partnership” with an outside bus manufacturing company (as Mr. Fernandez once described the AC Transit-Van Hool relationship)—would have long ago hired an independent outside polling firm to conduct a bus rider public opinion survey. During last year’s debates over the NABI-Van Hool swap, General Manager Fernandez often noted that AC Transit did such a study, and that opinion was favorable to the Van Hools. The rider opinion study was done, however, just as the Van Hools were originally being introduced in the district, and before riders had enough experience with them to form their final opinions. 

It’s past time for the district, if it wants the general public to have confidence in its decisions, to find an independent agency to conduct such a survey. How else can the district management make informed recommendations and the district board make informed decisions on future bus purchases? 

Meanwhile, in the second of Mr. Gammon’s three Van Hool articles, “Belgium Or Bust,” a quote from former AC Transit Board President Greg Harper shows that opposition to Van Hool buses does not necessarily mean opposition to BRT. 

“Harper,” Mr. Gammon writes, “who is … a strong proponent of BRT [emphasis added], said in an interview that the Van Hools enjoyed such overwhelming support on the board that he would have lost his ability to get things done had he publicly opposed them.” Mr. Gammon goes on to say that when asked if newly requested modifications of Van Hool buses—making them closer in internal design to buses from other manufacturers—“meant that buying the Belgian buses was a waste, [Mr. Harper] responded: ‘I'd say pretty much it was.’” 

Were the AC Transit Van Hool bus purchases a waste, and do they threaten public support for the district’s rapid transit plans, however those plans may eventually take shape? 

It would seem like the many vocal and passionate BRT supporters in the area might want an answer to these questions. It would also seem that East Bay taxpayers—who foot the AC Transit subsidy bills but rarely pay attention to district board activities—might want to know as well. AC Transit needs to do better—much, much better—in answering. It does not mean that you are an opponent of public transit if you’re asking these questions. In fact, the supporters of public transit ought to be the first ones in line doing the asking. Mr. Gammon’s recent articles take us a step further in shedding light on what, so far, has been largely a shadowy public finance transaction. 

I am a supporter of public transit, and I am a supporter of the development of some sort of rapid transit system in the East Bay that bridges the gap between AC Transit’s current inter-city bus system and BART’s fixed-rail intra-city transit line. Whether or not ACT Transit’s BRT proposal would fill that need remains to be seen. I am willing to listen. But I am not yet convinced. 

Some 10 years ago I was out in my backyard pulling up ivy. My next door neighbor was doing the same. As we both neared the fence he muttered, “Gardening in California—it’s all about killing things.” He was right.  

While I occasionally get to plant something, most of my gardening for the last twenty years has consisted of hacking back out-of-control plants and weeds. It’s not that I long for the Midwest, where I was born, but I do have to admit that snowy winters kill a few things off, or at least give one a respite from the battle. I always laugh when I read that some task should be performed when the plant is “dormant”—when exactly would that be? The bouganvillea blooms all year, the lemon tree always has lemons, and it’s always the season for weeds. 

Because I have always bought fixer-uppers, I have never been blessed with what the real estate ads call “mature landscaping.” Well, possibly it’s mature, but it always seems to be mature blackberries, bamboo, Bermuda grass, ivy, or the Ultimate Plant From Hel—oxalis pes-caprae. Blackberries are annoying—but at least you can eat them. Oxalis has no obvious redeeming value, yet is pretty much the Rasputin of the plant world. 

You have to grudgingly admire its will to live. It grows from bulbs, yet its connection to the bulb is so tenuous that if you pull it up the bulb stays in the ground. When the bulb gets big enough, it splits into more bulbs. But that’s not all—if allowed to flower, it also produces up to twenty microscopic bulblets at the base of the stem. And it sends out an underground rhizome as well. 

There is conventional wisdom about how to get rid of it. Use Round-up (glyphosate), they say. Ha! It barely notices. Use newspaper or cardboard with mulch on top. Yeah. It will grow three feet sideways till it finds the edges of the cardboard and come up there. Even if you overlap it by twelve inches. Soil solarization (putting down clear plastic) is mentioned. Uh-huh. That’s like sending it for a lovely spa vacation. Pull it up while it’s green—it will weaken the bulbs. Sure. They’ll only be able to bench-press 200 pounds after that. Landscape fabric? Oxalis grows right through it. Put on a high-nitrogen fertilizer and they’ll grow themselves to death? What?—Risk that they’ll mutate into a giant indestructible plant that will take over the yard? Oh wait—that’s already happened. Dig up the bulbs and sift the soil to make sure you get all of them. Impossible. You never get all of them. 

How do I know this? Because I have spent the last four years in my current house doing all of these things. And that’s only in the backyard. Recently I have spent weeks obsessively digging down twelve inches and removing every visible oxalis bulb in an area of about 10 square feet. The same area in which I spent weeks last spring (and the three springs before that) pulling up oxalis. Then the first rain of the season arrives—and two days later, the entire area is covered with happy green oxalis, looking no different from the rest of the yard. 

It’s like I have Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. It’s worse than Obsessive Weeding, with which all gardeners are familiar. I sit out there and sift through the soil, filling a bucket with bulbs. I don’t eat; I keep at it until it’s too dark to see. I have fantasies—mostly having to do with bulldozers, flamethrowers and Agent Orange. Occasionally I have another fantasy, one in which the garden is lovely, I have legions of gardeners, and all I ever have to do is wander out to pick flowers. In this fantasy I am also much younger, richer, and better-looking. I think longingly of this day when the oxalis is finally conquered, and there are no other weeds either. Then I remember the five million wild onion bulbs in the front yard, and despair. 

I ask myself, though frankly, not as often as others ask me, why I continue to fight this battle if it’s so futile. Well, there are many things in life which are repetitious and pointless, yet still need to be done—washing the dishes, for instance. Or I could say that I am doing my part in the battle against an invasive plant which is threatening many natural ecosystems. In a ploy for sympathy, I could compare it to my ongoing battle with a chronic form of Non-Hodgkins lymphoma—you know, all those out-of-control cancerous lymphocytes that must be killed before they colonize some other organ. Frankly, I was never much for all that cancer visualization stuff anyway. My battle with oxalis isn’t really a metaphor, it’s just an excuse to sit outside in the sun and air and think about stuff while doing a really mindless task. Not unlike fishing. Besides, deep down I hold on to the expectation that ultimately I will prevail. I’ve been told that old carpeting really will smother oxalis for good—maybe I’ll use Astroturf and pretend it’s a lawn. And I hear goats will eat anything.  

Jane Powell is the author of several books about bungalows, available at www.bungalowkitchens.com. Send your oxalis-killing suggestions to janepowell@sbcglobal.net. 

Speaking truth to power is all very well. Sometimes, though, I just lose my temper and feel the need to speak truth to cockamamie. 

The same people, beings, places, systems that get routinely threatened by the powerful are just as vulnerable to the thoughtless deprecations of any bliss ninnies who get hold of a half-baked notion and enough bucks to get it started.  

If they don’t do more than dig a hole before the foundation grants run out, they’ve still obliterated whatever was there before them and set the stage for the invasion of the nasties. Remember that parable Jesus told that ended with the re-possession of the victim by not one but seven devils? 

Gardens are as invisible to such visionaries as natural systems and places. Is it because of the merely mortal, living beings that inhabit and compose them? It’s amazing that such beings seem to be so disposable; maybe it’s that humans can’t quite conceive of our own mortality, no matter how often or hard we get our noses rubbed in it. 

What ticked me off this week is a ballot proposition in San Francisco, and the full-page ad in Monday morning’s Chronicle promoting it. They want to pave Alcatraz and put in a porking lot. 

I don’t think this porkbarrel proposition will pass, given the lean times and general electoral impatience: the right thing for the wrong reason.  

“The Light Party” proposes in its “Alcatraz Conversion Project” that “By Converting Alcatraz Island, a place of pain and suffering, into a ‘Jewel of Light,’ We will activate powerful forces for cooperation, reconciliation and healing.” [All sic.] 

Evidently these bozos haven’t deigned to set foot on the island in the last few years, or weren’t paying attention. There’s a lot more going on at Alcatraz than an “old and decaying prison.” One of the most interesting experiment in actual cooperation between species is happening there right now. 

The gardens of Alcatraz are being renewed. These were planted and maintained for food and beauty by prison employees, their families, and sometimes by prisoners over the years.  

The interesting bit is that the Garden Trust and the National Parks people are clearing off smothering blackberry and ivy and propagating what plants they find around and under it to populate the gardens. These plants have persisted over some four decades of complete neglect, including watering—they’ve survived on rainfall alone. Alcatraz has no natural fresh water. 

The survivors include surprises like fuchsias, ten kinds of roses, pelargoniums, edible figs, artichokes (!), tulips, chasmanthe, aeoniums—nearly 200 species or cultivars so far.  

There’s also a thriving seabird colony: western gulls, Brandt’s and pelagic cormorants, and pigeon guillemots breed here. So do snowy egrets, black-crowned night herons, ravens, and song sparrows; I’d bet hummingbirds too.  

Let’s not pretend that demolition and construction wouldn’t screw all this up. 

Ignorance is not a virtue. Allowing oneself to persist in ignorance is wicked. Proceeding through ignorance toward destruction of our planet, one place at a time, is evil. Shame on these people.  

Gardens of Alcatraz 

Essays by John Hart, Russell A. Beatty, and Michael Boland; photographs by Roy Eisenhardt. 1996, Golden Gate National Parks Foundation. ISBN 1-883869-17-X (trade paperback) 

http://www.nps.gov/alcatraz/ 

http://www.gardenconservancy.org/ 

http://www.globalpeacefoundation.org/ 

Ron Sullivan is a former professional gardener and arborist. Her “Garden Variety” column appears every Friday in the Daily Planet’s East Bay Home & Real Estate section. Her column on East Bay trees appears every other Tuesday in the Daily Planet. 

Murphy must be in the contracting business. You know, the one who wrote that famous law: Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong. He (or she, we’ve never met in the flesh, although I’ve fallen victim to his/her epistemology a time or two) was either a contractor or the client of one for enough time to codify the law and its corollaries. 

When working with contractors it is inevitable that things will go wrong. Many of them will be small and of little consequence but some can go very wrong and lead to tears. Some lead to lawyers (always a bad sign) and most have some relationship to poorly written contracts (there is no accident that they’re called contractors). 

To minimize fretting and gunfire, a clearly written contract is a darned good thing and I would recommend that you demand such in advance of any work you have done by a G.C. (general contractor). Even the setting of a toilet usually involves a short proposal on an NCR form or receipt book. 

A contract doesn’t have to define everything imaginable but the more it does define, the less likely one will experience discontent. Further, I would argue that most of the really bad workmanship that keeps me in business (I get called when things go wrong) is generated by those who are incapable of producing a cogent and detailed proposal. How can you do it if you can’t even write it down?  

So, this is a sort of test or gateway for contractors and I assure you that if you do nothing beyond reviewing a proposal (agreement, contract or what have you) with some care, you will easily eliminate the bottom tier of contractors.  

This will of course eliminate the cheapest ones but I think you need to do that anyway. I have often found that those who seemed to be cheap, were, in the long (or short) run, no bargain at all. There is no job so expensive as the one you have to do twice.  

If you’ve managed to get a proposal out of your G.C. (or, ideally, several G.C.s), what you want to start looking for is very specific information about what will be done. You can’t be too picky here. Let’s say you are doing a bath remodel.  

The contract should specify the physical area that will be worked upon; how the area will be masked off, if that is to be done; which walls will be fully demolished (or ideally, all of them); what will be done with any decay, rot or damp that is revealed; identify which portions of plumbing will be removed and replaced; which material will be used; how old and new piping will be joined; what fixtures will be used.  

The document should state if the subfloor is to be replaced; what kind of membranes will be used to line showers, tiled floor or other surfaces. If I’m painting a clear enough picture, you may begin to understand that there are actually a huge number of specifications and details relating to the way in which work will be done and that pinning them down will eliminate questions later on. 

There are also many areas in which a contractor may simply be doing it the way they are accustomed to operating that you may wish to have a say in. By seeing it in the contract, you have gained the possibility of inquiry and potential change. This applies to many things that you may or may wish to get on board with. It also induces discussion of methods and choices between you and your contractor that may never have happened were it not in writing.  

What you don’t want to hear is “don’t worry your little head, Ma’am. We’ll take care of everything,” Right? Even if you don’t understand a lot about construction methods, trust me, you want to be educated invited & involved.  

This also forces the contractor to stop and think about how they do things. They may have been doing a particular procedure or using a particular material so long that they’ve stopped thinking about it. By seeing it in the proposal, it becomes possible to question it and potentially alter it (was Heisenberg a contractor?). 

A contract also helps define and clarify the specific details that you’re asking for. A particular medicine chest that fills three stud bays (is framed into the wall several feet wide), a particular brand of toilet, a specific brand of paint that you’ve come to like. 

If it’s in the contract, you’ll know what you’re supposed to get and, if you don’t, you have a clear statement signed by both parties that eliminates the often encountered controversy over how it was supposed to be. 

I’ve been involved in too many cases where an unhappy client asked me to support his or her claim that they’d been, shall-we-say “mistreated” (you know that’s not the word they used) by that %$#*ing contractor and when I asked them what the contract specified, there was usually a long silence and then the shuffling of papers. Ultimately, most complainants don’t have the paper to back up their beef and benefit only from the learning experience. It’s very hard for a small-claims judge to do much for a client when there’s nothing in writing that clearly states what was to be expected. Yes, there are minimum standards for workmanship but they say little about what paint was to be used, which toilet was to be selected and whether a bath fan was included in the bid. 

If it’s not written down, it’s less likely to happen the way you thought it was supposed to go. Now, some smaller contractors work very intimately with their clients and the client gets just what they wanted, although they may not have a clear notion of the total cost in these situations, but, this is the less common case. 

If you are presented with a contract that seems a bit too sketchy and you like the contractor on other grounds (or they’re simply the only one you could get to actual produce a proposal), you can offer a counter-proposal that contains many more details that you’re aware of.  

Naturally, they will need to amend their proposal (you can and should try to write the contract) to include the new details and you can also ask for more specificity on the items you don’t understand also. 

Murphy has a few colleagues and my favorite is Hanlon. Hanlon’s razor says: Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity. 

Contractors are rarely malicious but a few … well, you know. 

Got a question about home repairs and inspections? Send them to Matt Cantor at mgcantor@pacbell.net.

A friend asks me to check out the website www.idealist.org. I click on their URL and up pops a paid plea from Children’s Hospital Oakland, (CHO). It asks for help distributing 50,000 “Vote Yes on Measure A” yard signs. That’s one helluva lot of soon-to-be-thrown-away plastic signs. 

My neighbors and I buy 50 green and white signs that say “Vote No on Measure A: Build healthy neighborhoods, not high-rises.” We get them at a discount because they’re recycled. The messages vary. “Put the Christ back in Christmas!” some shout. Others urge readers to “Boycott Turkish Products!” A few list contact information for “Doggie-doo Pet Grooming Services.” We paint over the original slogans and stick them in our front yards. 

This sums up the David and Goliath battle we’re fighting to stop Children’s 

Hospital, a private corporation, from building a 12-story 196-foot high-rise at 53rd and Dover streets: Our 50 signs vs. their 50,000, plus BART and freeway-viewable banners; our website and letters to the editor vs. their expensive TV commercials and glossy “Get Well” cards. Slick Sacramento political marketing gurus pitted against me and my neighbors and a Kinko’s Xerox machine.  

CHO is spending more than a million bucks on their campaign to get Alameda 

County voters to endorse their expansion with a $300 million parcel tax. Their signs and messages shout that’s it’s a retrofit and rebuild, but it’s not.  

My neighbors and I aren’t opposed to expansion, but we want them to find a more appropriate spot for their hulking high-rise, or to build on their own campus closer to the freeway and their existing helipad, away from our one-and two-story single family homes. And, by the way, we don’t want to pay for it. 

To make our case, we attend lots of community meetings. Folks who don’t live in our neighborhood—or anywhere near a 12-story high-rise or helipad—suggest we shouldn’t have moved to the flats of North Oakland if we didn’t want Children’s Hospital to take our homes. Floyd Cole, who’s lived on 53rd Street for over 40 years and will never again see the sun from his front window if CHO builds its high-rise, says, “I’m a Flatland Man. I don’t like hills. Never wanted to live there and I won’t move there now.” 

We ask our Oakland City Councilmember Jane Brunner for help, and she responds three weeks later with this email: “I’ll study the plans CHO has filed.” 

When we point out that there is no master facilities plan and that the preliminary project application has not yet been filed, there’s silence in District 1 cyberspace. 

We fire off more letters to newspapers and get the attention of local TV and radio stations. Lee Otis Odom, the sole homeowner left on 52nd Street, between MLK and Dover, is interviewed by KGO Channel 7. 

Bob Schenker, who faces losing his unique home/studio on 53rd Street, is interviewed on NBC11. I’m on KTVU-Channel 2 for exactly five seconds. 

The mailman delivers an oversized postcard that appears to be from the Democratic Party. “Everyone says that curing sick kids is important,” it says. “If you mean it, vote yes on measure A.” But it’s not from the Dems; it’s from a marketing firm down in Sherman Oaks. We counter with some cheap bumper stickers: “No on Measure A or your tax $$ will bulldoze homes.” 

And then THE LETTER arrives in our mailboxes. It appears to be handwritten by a child. It asks the reader to “vote yes on Measure A if you mean it.” It’s signed “Adriana, age 14, Leukemia.” 

The exploitation of vulnerable children for political purposes makes me sick to my stomach. My neighbors feel the same. Children’s Hospital should argue their case based on the merits of their proposed expansion, not sick children. Fifty thousand yard signs and they still need to use 14-year-old Adriana with leukemia to do their bidding. Shame on you, CHO. 

Not that I miss them, but I haven’t found any Argentine ants in the house this winter. I hesitate to consider this a permanent victory, though. They’re out there somewhere, biding their time. 

Linepithema humile has been called, against stiff competition, one of the world’s worst invasive species. Argentine ants don’t sting or bite, like that scourge of the South the red imported fire ant. What they do is more insidious: they disassemble whole ecosystems. They kill or drive out native ant colonies and eat their way through the local arthropod prey base. (They can handle much larger native ant species; photographs of a half-dozen of them dragging down a huge, as ants go, harvester ant are reminiscent of that Planet Earth footage of a pride of lions tackling an elephant.)  

Ant-eating reptiles like the coast horned lizard can’t stomach them, and horned lizard populations have declined by up to 50 percent in invaded areas. Plants that depend on native ants to transport their seeds are left partnerless. The Argentines use exotic plantings like iceplant as staging areas for colonizing native plant communities. 

Once they arrive in a new locale, Argentine ants form supercolonies containing millions of individual workers. Back home in South America, neighboring colonies live in a constant state of mutual hostility. But that isn’t true in California and other Linepithema beachheads in Mediterranean Europe, Asia, Australia, southern Africa, and the Pacific islands.  

According to research by Andrew Suarez, now at the University of Illinois, there is in effect one great big Argentine ant colony in California that stretches from San Diego to Ukiah. Normally, introducing a worker ant to a foreign colony is a death sentence. But you can drop an Argentine ant from Lompoc into a colony in Milpitas and she’ll receive a sisterly welcome, and be put right to work. 

That’s because she’ll have the correct colony smell. South American colonies are genetically varied, and each one has its distinctive odor which serves as a badge of membership. But the Argentine ants in the great California supercolony, descendants of a small founder population, all smell alike. They haven’t had time to re-evolve the variation. Although genetic bottlenecks are supposed to be a bad thing, reducing a population’s resistance to disease and other stressors, these ants seem to benefit from their genetic uniformity. 

Despite that, you would think that Argentine ant booms would eventually go bust, since eating everything in sight is not a sustainable foraging strategy. They don’t, though. These ants have another trick up their sleeves. 

According to a recent study by David Holway at UC San Diego, who collaborated with Suarez, Argentine ants do start out as generalist predators of other insects. At some point, however, they switch to a high-carb diet of the honeydew that aphids and scale insects excrete. “Honeydew nectar is essentially digested plant sap,” Holway says. “If you’ve ever parked your car under a tree and found your windshield covered with sticky stuff, that’s honeydew from aphids and scales.” Think, for example, of the tulip trees on University Avenue. It’s honeydew that fuels the growth of the supercolonies. 

A mutualist relationship with honeydew producers is not rare among ants. What’s unusual is the change from predation to nectar-sipping. It’s as if a band of human hunter-gatherers moved into a new hunting territory, killed off almost everything edible, then domesticated the last few sheep and became pastoralists. 

Holway and his co-authors tracked a Linepithema invasion in Rice Canyon in southern California, documenting the near-extirpation of native ants as the newcomers moved in; native diversity fell from 23 species to two. They used a technique called stable isotope analysis to determine what the Argentine ants had been eating, and identify when their diet changed. Comparing the ratio of heavy to light nitrogen isotopes allowed the scientists to distinguish carnivores from herbivores (or, in the case of the Argentines, carbovores.) 

So it appears that Argentine ants are flexible enough in their behavior to avoid the consequences of ecological overkill. As long as they have their scales or aphids, they’re in fine shape. 

And things are only going to get better for them. Species with limited ranges and narrow habitat and food requirements may be pushed to extinction by global climate change, but not the Argentine ant. Another recent study, headed by Nuria Roura-Pascual at the University of Girona in Catalonia, suggests that unoccupied areas in East Asia, northeastern North America, and elsewhere will become more suitable for invasion in a warmer world. Linepithema marches on. 

Joe Eaton’s “Wild Neighbors” column appears every other Tuesday in the Berkeley Daily Planet, alternating with Ron Sullivan’s “Green Neighbors” column on East Bay trees.

FRIDAY, FEB. 1 

THEATER 

Actors Ensemble of Berkeley “Barefoot in the Park” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m. at Live Oak Theater, 1301 Shattuck Ave. at Berryman, through Feb. 16. Tickets are $10-$12. 649-5999.  

Altarena Playhouse “Wait Until Dark” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. at Altarena Playhouse, 1409 High St., Alameda, through Feb. 16. Tickets are $17-$20. 523-1553. www.altarena.org 

Aurora Theatre “Satellites” at 8 p.m. at 2081 Addison St. through March 2. Tickets are $40-$42. 843-4822.  

Black Repertory Group Theatre “A Raisin In The Sun” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2:30 p.m. at 3201 Adeline St. Tickets are $5-$25. 652-2120. blackrepertorygroup.com 

Contra Costa Civic Theatre “The Cocoanuts” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., some Sun. matinees at 2 p.m., at 951 Pomona Ave., at Moeser, El Cerrito, through March 2. Tickets are $15-$24. 524-9132. www.ccct.org 

foolsFURY Theater “Monster in the Dark” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m. and Sun. at 5 p.m., through Feb. 17, at the Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby Ave. Tickets are $12-$30. 800-838-3006. www.brownpapertickets.com 

Masquers Playhouse “Angel Street” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2:30 p.m. through Feb. 23 at 105 Park Place, Point Richmond. Tickets are $18. 232-4031. www.masquers.org 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Tilden Odyssey” Textured paintings, collages, and monotypes by Sheila Sondick on display at the Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park, through Feb. 28. 525-2233. 

“Double Vision: Artist Partners” Opening reception at 6 p.m. at Chandra Cerrito Contemporary, 25 Grand Ave., upper level, Oakland. Exhibition runs to March 15. www.chandracerrito.com 

“Yea We Said It, And No We’re Not Sorry” works by Malik and Milton Bowens for Black History Month. Opening reception at 5:30 p.m. at Joyce Gordon Gallery, 406 14th St., Oakland. Exhibit runs to Feb. 29. 465-8928. 

Huey P. Newton Photography Exhibit Celebrating the achievements and influence of the founder of the co-founder of the Black Panther Party at the West Oakland Branch of the Oakland Public Libray, 1801 Adeline St., through Feb. 29. 238-7352.  

“Heart Attack: The Ying & Yang of Love” Group art show opens at Eclectix, 7523 Fairmunt Ave., El Cerrito. 364-7261. www.eclectixgallery.com 

“L I N E” Drawings by Keiko Ishihara. Opening reception at 7 p.m. at Front Gallery, 35 Grand Ave, Oakland. 444-1900. 

FILM 

The Medieval Remake “Lancelot of the Lake” at 7 p.m. and “The Knithgt” at 8:45 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Kelly Corrigan reads form “The Middle Place” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 559-9500.  

MUSIC AND DANCE  

Noon Concert, with Kai Chou, cello and Wiggin Wi, piano at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Free. 642-4864. 

Zydeco Flames in a celebration of Black History Month at 5 p.m. at Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak, Oakland. Cost is $5-$8. 238-2002. 

Andrea Prichett & Friends of Carol Denney, Funky Nixons, Phoenix, After Buffalo, MC Che X in a fundraiser for Carol Denney & Berkeley Liberation Radio at 7 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center, 3105 Shattuck Ave. Tickets are $12-$15 sliding scale. 849-2568. 

Dwight Tribble & Muzuki Roberson Quintet at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $14. 841-JAZZ.  

Soja, Rebellion, reggae, at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $12-$15. 525-5054.  

Palm Wine Boys at 8 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Darryl Henriques at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $19.50-$20.50. 548-1761.  

Andrew Sammons and Friends, jazz, swing, at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

Trick Kernan Combo, rock, jazz, at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. 

Dave Matthews Blues Band at 8 p.m. at The Warehouse Bar & Grill, 402 Webster St., Oakland. 451-3161. 

The Connie Lim Band, Tara Tinsley, Rabbitmotaei at 9 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $8. 841-2082.  

Kevin Seconds, Ryan Stark, Eric Core and others at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $6. 525-9926. 

3rd Date at 10 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790.  

The Immortals at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

Greg Scott, R&B, pop, at 9 p.m. at Maxwell’s Lounge, 341 13th St., Oakland. Cost is $10-$15. 839-6169. 

SATURDAY, FEB. 2 

CHILDREN  

Los Amiguitos de La Peña with Joe Reilly singing environmental songs at 10:30 a.m. at La Peña. Cost is $5 for adults, $4 for children. 849-2568.  

Active Arts Theatre for Young Audiences “Little Women” Sat. and Sun. at 2 p.m., through Feb. 3, at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave. Tickets are $14-$18. 925-798-1300.  

African Tales with storyteller Kirk Waller Sat. and Sun. at 1:30 and 2:30 p.m. at Children’s Fairyland, 699 Bellvue Ave., Oakland.  

FILM 

Screenagers: Bay Area High School Film Festival at 1 and 3:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808.  

Human Rights Watch Film Festival “Everything’s Cool” at 6 p.m. and “The Unforeseen” at 8 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

18th Annual African American Celebration through Poetry from 1 to 4 p.m. at the West Oakland Branch of the Oakland Public Library, 1801 Adeline St. 238-7352.  

David Rieff reads from his tribute to his mother “Swimming in a Sea of Death” at 3 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 559-9500. 

Bay Area Poets Coalition holds an open reading from 3 to 5 p.m., at Strawberry Creek Lodge, 1320 Addison St. Park on the street, not in Lodge parking lot. 527-9905.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Berkeley Arts Festival: Sarah Cahill, pianist, new music at 8 p.m. at 2213 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $10. 665-9496. 

The Laurel Ensemble, “French Romance and American Modernism” at 8 p.m. at Trinity Chapel, 2320 Dana St. Tickets are $8-$12. 549-3864.  

La Richie & Co. “Indoor Fireworks: The Pyrotechnics of Handel and his London Oboists” at 8 p.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College at Garber. Tickets are $10-$25. 528-1725. www.sfems.org 

Ethiopian Arts Forum: Either/Orchestra, led by Russ Gershon, with special guest Mulatu Astatke at 9:30 p.m. at Historic Sweet‚s Ballroom, 1933 Broadway, Oakland. Tickets, available at the door, are $20, $30 for VIP area. 501-3413.  

Young People’s Symphony Orchestra Winter Concert at 8 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing Way. Tickets are $12-$15. 849-9776. 

Winds Across the Bay “Winds Goes to the Movies” with music from Star Wars, The Aviator, Henry V, Lord of the Rings, Fiddler on the Roof, King Kong, and more, at 2 p.m. at the Hilltop Community Church, 3118 Shane Drive, Richmond. Tickets are $5-$10. 243-0514. www.windsacrossthebay.org 

Mardi Gras Countdown with Chelle and Friends at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $12-$15. 849-2568.  

Eric Swinderman Quintet “In Pursuit of the Sound” at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $12. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Mardi Gras with Hot Pink Feathers and Blue Bone Express at Café Van Kleef, 1621 Telegraph Ave. Oakland. Cost is $10.  

Creole Belles with Andrew Carriere and Suzy Thompson at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cajun dance lesson at 8 p.m. Cost is $13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com  

Rodney Brillante, Lily Virginia, guitar, ukulele, at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

Jim Post “Mark Twain and the Laughing River” at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $19.50-$20.50. 548-1761.  

Brian Pardo Group at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $15. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Caroline Chung Trio, jazz, at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

Apple Pie Hopes, The Hobo Gobbelins and Jonathan Beast & the Bathroom Floors at 9 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $7. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Mo’Fone at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

Tera Mellos, Planets, Car at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $6. 525-9926. 

SUNDAY, FEB. 3 

EXHIBITIONS 

California Society of Printmakers Valentine Show from 11 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at Chamber Arts, 2924 Ashby Ave. between College and Claremont. art@lilahands.com 

Watercolors by Emily Weil Opening reception at 4 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

FILM 

The Medieval Remake “The Seventh Seal” at 2 p.m. and “the Virgin Spring” at 4 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Rumi: and 800th Birthday Party with Coleman Barks and musicians Stephen Kent, Geoffrey Gordon, Sukhawat Ali Khan and Kris Yenny at 8 p.m. at King Middle School, 1781 Rose St. Tickets are $15-$20 at Cody’s and at www.kpfa.org 

Jim Wallis on “The Great Awakening: Reviving Faith and Politics in a Post-Religious Right America” at 7:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing Way at Dana. Suggested donation $10. 559-9500.  

“Radical Fatherhood and Political Parenting” Reading and discussion with Tomas Moniz and Rahula Janowski at 5 p.m. at Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave. 649-1320. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Young People’s Symphony Orchestra Winter Concert at 2 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing Way. Tickets are $12-$15. 849-9776. 

Live Oak Concert Solo Violin with Donna Lerew at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley Art Center, 1275 Walnut St., near Eunice. TIckets are $10-$15. 644-6893.  

Angela Kraft-Cross, organ concert at 3 p.m. at First Presbyterian Church of Oakland, 2619 Broadway. 444-3555. 

Mamak Khadem Ensemble, Middle Eastern fusion, at 7 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $25. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Plays Monk at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761.  

Ana Nitmar at 7 p.m. at La Peña. Cost is $10-$12. 849-2568. 

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

Az Samad, Shelley Leong at 11 a.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

MONDAY, FEB. 4 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Real or Surreal” Art by Mari Kearney opens at Cafe Diem, 2224 MacArthur Blvd., Oakland. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Art, Technology and Culture Colloquium “Giant Robot Architecture” with Greg Lynn and Angewandte at 7:30 p.m. at 160 Kroeber Hall, UC Campus. 643-9565.  

“The Adventures of a Wildlife Photographer” with Eleanor Bricetti at 12:30 p.m. at Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave. 526-3720, ext. 17. 

David Lance Goines will present an illustrated lecture on the process of making posters at 7:30 p.m. at the Hillside Club. 

Actors Reading Writers “Transformational Romance” stories by N.M. Kelby and Jonathan Lethem at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. 932-0214. 

Aurora Theatre “Our Dad is in Atlantis” reading followed by discussion at 7:30 p.m. at 2081 Addison St. 843-4822.  

Poetry Express with Cherise Wyneken at 7 p.m. at Priya Restaurant, 2072 San Pablo Ave. 644-3977. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Berkeley Arts Festival Jerry Kuderna Monday Lunch Piano Concert from noon to 1 p.m. at 2213 Shattuck Ave. Free.  

Quake City at 7 p.m. at Le Bateau Ivre, 2629 Telegraph Ave. 849-1100.  

SF Bluegrass & Old-Time Festival with Town Mountain, Spring Creek and Homespun Rowdy at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage Coffee House. Cost is $15.50-$16.50. 548-1761  

Larry Coryell with Bombay Jazz at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $12-$20. 238-9200.  

TUESDAY, FEB. 5 

CHILDREN 

Chinese New Year Program with Elaine Chui, for ages 3 and up, at 7 p.m. at Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave. 524-3043.  

EXHIBITIONS 

“Eye Gotcha Covered” multi-media exhibit by Oakland artist Milton Bowens. Opening reception at 4 p.m. at The June Steingart Gallery of Art, Laney Tower Lobby,one block south of Lake Merrit BART Station. 464-3161. 

FILM 

Experimental Documentaries “F is for Phony” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808.  

“Iron Ladies of Liberia” A documentary on a new generation of leaders in Africa at 6:30 p.m. at Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak St. Panel discussion follows. Free. 238-2022.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

H.D. Moe, Garrett Lambrav, Blake More at 7:30 p.m. at Moe's Books, 2476 Telegraph Ave. 849-2087. 

James Martel reads from “Subverting the Leviathan: Reading Thomas Hobbes as a Radical Democrat” at 6 p.m. at University Press Books, 2430 BAncroft Way. 548-0585.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Fat Tuesday Mardi Gras Celebration with the Lloyd Family Players, Joyfull Noise Brass Band and The California Honeydrops at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $12. 525-5054.  

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

SF Bluegrass & Old-Time Festival with Huckleberry Flint and Mighty Crows at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $15.50-$16.50. 548-1761.  

Barbara Linn and John Schott at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Larry Coryell with Bombay Jazz at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $12-$20. 238-9200.  

WEDNESDAY, FEB. 6 

FILM 

History of Cinema “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari” at 3 p.m. and Jazz at the Movies “Paris Blues” at 6:30 p.m., “All Night Long” at 8:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Dahr Jamail discusses his book “Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches From an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq” at 7 p.m. at Revolution Books, 2425 Channing Way. 848-1196. 

Ying Chang Compestine talks about “Revolution is not a Dinner Party” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Music for the Spirit Celebrating Black History Month at 12:15 p.m. at First Presbyterian Church of Oakland, 2619 Broadway. 444-3555. 

Wednesday Noon Concert “Baroque and New Music for Viola” at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Free. 642-4864.  

Hugh Masekela’s Chissa All-Stars at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $28-$52. 642-9988.  

Calvin Keys Birthday Party at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ.  

Whiskey Brothers at 9 p.m. at Albatross, 1822 San Pablo Ave. 843-2473.  

Fourth Legacy, Armenian, at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $10. 525-5054.  

The Wayside State at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

Beckett’s Musical Forum, hosted by GG Tenaka, at 10 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790.  

Steve James with Eric & Suzy Thompson at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761.  

Quartet San Francisco at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $14. 238-9200.  

THURSDAY, FEB. 7 

FILM 

African Film Festival “Two By Sembene” at 5:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Free First Thursday. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Lunch Poems with Arthur Sze at 12:10 p.m. at the Morrison Library, inside the Doe Library, UC Campus. 642-0137. 

Lester Brown, Earth Policy Institute president, at 7:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing Way. Tickets are 45-$13. 415-255-7296, ext. 253. 

Richard Thompson Ford discusses “The Race Card: How Bluffing About Bias Makes Race Relations Worse” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 559-9500. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

The Bridge Crawl, Don’t Lokok Back, Settledown, rock at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $TBA. 525-5054.  

Brazilian Guitar Festival with Sergio, Badi & Odair Assad at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $24-$46. 642-9988.  

SF Bluegrass & Old-Time Festival with Carolina Chocolate Drops at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761.  

Denny Berthiaume Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ.  

Alexis Harte Band, Kate Isenberg & Cindi Harvell at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

The Famous, Emily Herring, The Hooroders, alt twang and rock at 9 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $6. 841-2082 www.starryploughpub.com 

Fred O’Dell and the Broken Arrows at 10 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790.  

Eliane Elias, sings and plays Bill Evans, at 8 and 10 p.m., through Sun. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $12-$20. 238-9200.  

The Oakland Magic Circle, the oldest independent magic club in the United States west of the Mississippi, is hosting its annual Installation Banquet and Show this coming Tuesday at the Bjornson Hall at 2258 MacArthur Blvd. 

“It’ll be a very international show,” said Scott Alcalay, new president of the Oakland Magic Circle. “Our headliners, Goldfinger and Dove, have played the Crazy Horse in Paris and have twice won the best of the year award at The Magic Castle in Hollywood. They’re true ambassadors of magic. Their act is fast-paced, with music and dance—all kinds of surprises from a repertoire so large,”  

Other performers include Patrick Martin of Palo Alto, who’s played the Easter Egg Roll on the White House Lawn “for two or three presidents,” Benny Benedini and his silent, quick-change act that was called “150 faces under a hat” in 1920s vaudeville—and KTVU Channel 2’s Bob McKenzie, member of The Circle “for decades,” performing his mentalism act, “The Mysteries of Mind.” 

Spectators at Magic Circle events will recognize Alcalay as the usual M.C., genial and witty. On Tuesday, he’ll be inducted as president, along with vice president Mark Tarses of Berkeley, secretary Byron Walker of San Leandro, treasurer Monya Casto of Walnut Creek, sergeant-at-arms Dagmar Thielson of Berkeley and librarian David Sament of San Francisco. Walker, a longtime Circle member, is an antiquarian magic book dealer with the largest independent collection on the West Coast. 

The Circle meets at 6:30 p.m. on the first Wednesday of every month.  

“We’re always welcoming new members,” said Alcalay, “And at all meetings, members always have an audience, so they can stand up and perform, practice their skills, show us what they’re working on. We also have magic teach-ins.Magic enthusiasts who don’t perform are also welcome.”  

This April’s meeting will feature The Circle’s annual magic swap meet and flea market, the largest in Northern California. “You’ll find selections of how-to DVDs, illusions, packet tricks, books, great presentation books, parlor tricks, close-up and stage magic,” he said. 

If the banqueters come early (doors open at 6:30 p.m.), they’ll see close-up magicians circulating through the tables. “It’ll be one of the best shows ever,” said Alcalay. “They seem to get better and better every year.” 

The Magic Circle was founded in 1925 by Arthur Bullo, who performed as El Tap. 

OAKLAND MAGIC CIRCLE 

INSTALLATION BANQUET  

AND SHOW 

Tuesday, Feb. 5, Bjornson Hall, 2258 MacArthur Blvd. (near Fruitvale Boulevard). 

$20 for adult dinner and show, $10 for kids dinner and show, and $10 show only. Only tickets for the show (without dinner) will be sold at the door. For more information and to buy tickets, see www.oaklandmagiccircle.com.

Some 10 years ago I was out in my backyard pulling up ivy. My next door neighbor was doing the same. As we both neared the fence he muttered, “Gardening in California—it’s all about killing things.” He was right.  

While I occasionally get to plant something, most of my gardening for the last twenty years has consisted of hacking back out-of-control plants and weeds. It’s not that I long for the Midwest, where I was born, but I do have to admit that snowy winters kill a few things off, or at least give one a respite from the battle. I always laugh when I read that some task should be performed when the plant is “dormant”—when exactly would that be? The bouganvillea blooms all year, the lemon tree always has lemons, and it’s always the season for weeds. 

Because I have always bought fixer-uppers, I have never been blessed with what the real estate ads call “mature landscaping.” Well, possibly it’s mature, but it always seems to be mature blackberries, bamboo, Bermuda grass, ivy, or the Ultimate Plant From Hel—oxalis pes-caprae. Blackberries are annoying—but at least you can eat them. Oxalis has no obvious redeeming value, yet is pretty much the Rasputin of the plant world. 

You have to grudgingly admire its will to live. It grows from bulbs, yet its connection to the bulb is so tenuous that if you pull it up the bulb stays in the ground. When the bulb gets big enough, it splits into more bulbs. But that’s not all—if allowed to flower, it also produces up to twenty microscopic bulblets at the base of the stem. And it sends out an underground rhizome as well. 

There is conventional wisdom about how to get rid of it. Use Round-up (glyphosate), they say. Ha! It barely notices. Use newspaper or cardboard with mulch on top. Yeah. It will grow three feet sideways till it finds the edges of the cardboard and come up there. Even if you overlap it by twelve inches. Soil solarization (putting down clear plastic) is mentioned. Uh-huh. That’s like sending it for a lovely spa vacation. Pull it up while it’s green—it will weaken the bulbs. Sure. They’ll only be able to bench-press 200 pounds after that. Landscape fabric? Oxalis grows right through it. Put on a high-nitrogen fertilizer and they’ll grow themselves to death? What?—Risk that they’ll mutate into a giant indestructible plant that will take over the yard? Oh wait—that’s already happened. Dig up the bulbs and sift the soil to make sure you get all of them. Impossible. You never get all of them. 

How do I know this? Because I have spent the last four years in my current house doing all of these things. And that’s only in the backyard. Recently I have spent weeks obsessively digging down twelve inches and removing every visible oxalis bulb in an area of about 10 square feet. The same area in which I spent weeks last spring (and the three springs before that) pulling up oxalis. Then the first rain of the season arrives—and two days later, the entire area is covered with happy green oxalis, looking no different from the rest of the yard. 

It’s like I have Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. It’s worse than Obsessive Weeding, with which all gardeners are familiar. I sit out there and sift through the soil, filling a bucket with bulbs. I don’t eat; I keep at it until it’s too dark to see. I have fantasies—mostly having to do with bulldozers, flamethrowers and Agent Orange. Occasionally I have another fantasy, one in which the garden is lovely, I have legions of gardeners, and all I ever have to do is wander out to pick flowers. In this fantasy I am also much younger, richer, and better-looking. I think longingly of this day when the oxalis is finally conquered, and there are no other weeds either. Then I remember the five million wild onion bulbs in the front yard, and despair. 

I ask myself, though frankly, not as often as others ask me, why I continue to fight this battle if it’s so futile. Well, there are many things in life which are repetitious and pointless, yet still need to be done—washing the dishes, for instance. Or I could say that I am doing my part in the battle against an invasive plant which is threatening many natural ecosystems. In a ploy for sympathy, I could compare it to my ongoing battle with a chronic form of Non-Hodgkins lymphoma—you know, all those out-of-control cancerous lymphocytes that must be killed before they colonize some other organ. Frankly, I was never much for all that cancer visualization stuff anyway. My battle with oxalis isn’t really a metaphor, it’s just an excuse to sit outside in the sun and air and think about stuff while doing a really mindless task. Not unlike fishing. Besides, deep down I hold on to the expectation that ultimately I will prevail. I’ve been told that old carpeting really will smother oxalis for good—maybe I’ll use Astroturf and pretend it’s a lawn. And I hear goats will eat anything.  

Jane Powell is the author of several books about bungalows, available at www.bungalowkitchens.com. Send your oxalis-killing suggestions to janepowell@sbcglobal.net. 

Speaking truth to power is all very well. Sometimes, though, I just lose my temper and feel the need to speak truth to cockamamie. 

The same people, beings, places, systems that get routinely threatened by the powerful are just as vulnerable to the thoughtless deprecations of any bliss ninnies who get hold of a half-baked notion and enough bucks to get it started.  

If they don’t do more than dig a hole before the foundation grants run out, they’ve still obliterated whatever was there before them and set the stage for the invasion of the nasties. Remember that parable Jesus told that ended with the re-possession of the victim by not one but seven devils? 

Gardens are as invisible to such visionaries as natural systems and places. Is it because of the merely mortal, living beings that inhabit and compose them? It’s amazing that such beings seem to be so disposable; maybe it’s that humans can’t quite conceive of our own mortality, no matter how often or hard we get our noses rubbed in it. 

What ticked me off this week is a ballot proposition in San Francisco, and the full-page ad in Monday morning’s Chronicle promoting it. They want to pave Alcatraz and put in a porking lot. 

I don’t think this porkbarrel proposition will pass, given the lean times and general electoral impatience: the right thing for the wrong reason.  

“The Light Party” proposes in its “Alcatraz Conversion Project” that “By Converting Alcatraz Island, a place of pain and suffering, into a ‘Jewel of Light,’ We will activate powerful forces for cooperation, reconciliation and healing.” [All sic.] 

Evidently these bozos haven’t deigned to set foot on the island in the last few years, or weren’t paying attention. There’s a lot more going on at Alcatraz than an “old and decaying prison.” One of the most interesting experiment in actual cooperation between species is happening there right now. 

The gardens of Alcatraz are being renewed. These were planted and maintained for food and beauty by prison employees, their families, and sometimes by prisoners over the years.  

The interesting bit is that the Garden Trust and the National Parks people are clearing off smothering blackberry and ivy and propagating what plants they find around and under it to populate the gardens. These plants have persisted over some four decades of complete neglect, including watering—they’ve survived on rainfall alone. Alcatraz has no natural fresh water. 

The survivors include surprises like fuchsias, ten kinds of roses, pelargoniums, edible figs, artichokes (!), tulips, chasmanthe, aeoniums—nearly 200 species or cultivars so far.  

There’s also a thriving seabird colony: western gulls, Brandt’s and pelagic cormorants, and pigeon guillemots breed here. So do snowy egrets, black-crowned night herons, ravens, and song sparrows; I’d bet hummingbirds too.  

Let’s not pretend that demolition and construction wouldn’t screw all this up. 

Ignorance is not a virtue. Allowing oneself to persist in ignorance is wicked. Proceeding through ignorance toward destruction of our planet, one place at a time, is evil. Shame on these people.  

Gardens of Alcatraz 

Essays by John Hart, Russell A. Beatty, and Michael Boland; photographs by Roy Eisenhardt. 1996, Golden Gate National Parks Foundation. ISBN 1-883869-17-X (trade paperback) 

http://www.nps.gov/alcatraz/ 

http://www.gardenconservancy.org/ 

http://www.globalpeacefoundation.org/ 

Ron Sullivan is a former professional gardener and arborist. Her “Garden Variety” column appears every Friday in the Daily Planet’s East Bay Home & Real Estate section. Her column on East Bay trees appears every other Tuesday in the Daily Planet. 

Murphy must be in the contracting business. You know, the one who wrote that famous law: Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong. He (or she, we’ve never met in the flesh, although I’ve fallen victim to his/her epistemology a time or two) was either a contractor or the client of one for enough time to codify the law and its corollaries. 

When working with contractors it is inevitable that things will go wrong. Many of them will be small and of little consequence but some can go very wrong and lead to tears. Some lead to lawyers (always a bad sign) and most have some relationship to poorly written contracts (there is no accident that they’re called contractors). 

To minimize fretting and gunfire, a clearly written contract is a darned good thing and I would recommend that you demand such in advance of any work you have done by a G.C. (general contractor). Even the setting of a toilet usually involves a short proposal on an NCR form or receipt book. 

A contract doesn’t have to define everything imaginable but the more it does define, the less likely one will experience discontent. Further, I would argue that most of the really bad workmanship that keeps me in business (I get called when things go wrong) is generated by those who are incapable of producing a cogent and detailed proposal. How can you do it if you can’t even write it down?  

So, this is a sort of test or gateway for contractors and I assure you that if you do nothing beyond reviewing a proposal (agreement, contract or what have you) with some care, you will easily eliminate the bottom tier of contractors.  

This will of course eliminate the cheapest ones but I think you need to do that anyway. I have often found that those who seemed to be cheap, were, in the long (or short) run, no bargain at all. There is no job so expensive as the one you have to do twice.  

If you’ve managed to get a proposal out of your G.C. (or, ideally, several G.C.s), what you want to start looking for is very specific information about what will be done. You can’t be too picky here. Let’s say you are doing a bath remodel.  

The contract should specify the physical area that will be worked upon; how the area will be masked off, if that is to be done; which walls will be fully demolished (or ideally, all of them); what will be done with any decay, rot or damp that is revealed; identify which portions of plumbing will be removed and replaced; which material will be used; how old and new piping will be joined; what fixtures will be used.  

The document should state if the subfloor is to be replaced; what kind of membranes will be used to line showers, tiled floor or other surfaces. If I’m painting a clear enough picture, you may begin to understand that there are actually a huge number of specifications and details relating to the way in which work will be done and that pinning them down will eliminate questions later on. 

There are also many areas in which a contractor may simply be doing it the way they are accustomed to operating that you may wish to have a say in. By seeing it in the contract, you have gained the possibility of inquiry and potential change. This applies to many things that you may or may wish to get on board with. It also induces discussion of methods and choices between you and your contractor that may never have happened were it not in writing.  

What you don’t want to hear is “don’t worry your little head, Ma’am. We’ll take care of everything,” Right? Even if you don’t understand a lot about construction methods, trust me, you want to be educated invited & involved.  

This also forces the contractor to stop and think about how they do things. They may have been doing a particular procedure or using a particular material so long that they’ve stopped thinking about it. By seeing it in the proposal, it becomes possible to question it and potentially alter it (was Heisenberg a contractor?). 

A contract also helps define and clarify the specific details that you’re asking for. A particular medicine chest that fills three stud bays (is framed into the wall several feet wide), a particular brand of toilet, a specific brand of paint that you’ve come to like. 

If it’s in the contract, you’ll know what you’re supposed to get and, if you don’t, you have a clear statement signed by both parties that eliminates the often encountered controversy over how it was supposed to be. 

I’ve been involved in too many cases where an unhappy client asked me to support his or her claim that they’d been, shall-we-say “mistreated” (you know that’s not the word they used) by that %$#*ing contractor and when I asked them what the contract specified, there was usually a long silence and then the shuffling of papers. Ultimately, most complainants don’t have the paper to back up their beef and benefit only from the learning experience. It’s very hard for a small-claims judge to do much for a client when there’s nothing in writing that clearly states what was to be expected. Yes, there are minimum standards for workmanship but they say little about what paint was to be used, which toilet was to be selected and whether a bath fan was included in the bid. 

If it’s not written down, it’s less likely to happen the way you thought it was supposed to go. Now, some smaller contractors work very intimately with their clients and the client gets just what they wanted, although they may not have a clear notion of the total cost in these situations, but, this is the less common case. 

If you are presented with a contract that seems a bit too sketchy and you like the contractor on other grounds (or they’re simply the only one you could get to actual produce a proposal), you can offer a counter-proposal that contains many more details that you’re aware of.  

Naturally, they will need to amend their proposal (you can and should try to write the contract) to include the new details and you can also ask for more specificity on the items you don’t understand also. 

Murphy has a few colleagues and my favorite is Hanlon. Hanlon’s razor says: Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity. 

Contractors are rarely malicious but a few … well, you know. 

Got a question about home repairs and inspections? Send them to Matt Cantor at mgcantor@pacbell.net.

FRIDAY, FEB. 1 

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon with Andrew Stern, Emeritus Journalism School Professor, UCB, on “Photojournalism Today: Including Photos from Pamplona, Running of the Bulls.” Luncheon at 11:45 a.m. for $14.50, speech at 12:30 p.m., at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant St. 526-2925.  

“Redefining the Occupation in Palestine” A presentation and discussion with Mark Turner at 7 p.m. at St. Joseph the Worker Church, 1640 Addison St. $10-50 donation, no one turned away for lack of funds. 499-0537. 

“King: A Man of Peace in a Time of War” A documentary of Martin Luther King Jr. with rare footage from the Mike Douglas Show and his views on the Vietnam War, at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley Friends Church, Sacramento at Cedar St. 684-9303. 

“The End of Suburbia: Oil Depletion and the Collapse of the American Dream” A documentary on how “peak oil” affects life as we know it at 3 p.m. at Berkeley City College, 2050 Center St. Followed by discussion with Berkeley Oil Independence Task Force. www.relocalize.net/groups/oilindependentberkeley  

“The Story of Stuff” A documentary on the underside of our production and consumption patterns at 7 p.m. at Center for Urban Peace, 2584 Martin Luther King, Jr. Way. 549-3733. ext. 6. 

Friday Films for Teens at 3:30 p.m. at the Berkeley Public Library, 3rd flr., 2090 Kittredge St. For details call 981-6121. 

“Enlivening the Chakras” with Anodea Judith at noon at Elephant Pharmacy, 1607 Shattuck Ave. 549-9200.  

Mahea Uchiyama Center for International Dance Open House from 6 to 9 p.m. at 729 Heinz Ave. 845-2605. 

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. 

Circle Dancing, simple folk dancing with instruction at 7:30 p.m. at Finnish Brotherhood Hall, 1970 Chestnut St at University. Donation of $5 requested. 528-4253.  

SATURDAY, FEB. 2 

“Education is Everybody’s Business” Latino Education Summit with information on applying to college, financial aid, with workshops in both English and Spanish. From 8:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. at CA State Univ. East Bay, 25800 Carlos Bee Blvd. Free, but registration required. 885-3516.  

Save the Bay Trash Removal Technology Tour at Lake Merritt from 10 a.m. to 1 pm. Cost is $25, free for Save the Bay members. Call for details 452-9261, ext. 119. 

Masked Bandits Learn about clever racoons through a craft and a nature walk, for ages 6+ at 2 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

Grounhog Day Children’s events from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Storytelling at noon at Habitot Children’s Museum, 2065 Kittredge St. 647-1111.  

Winter Bird Walk at 9 a.m. at UC Botanical Garden. Cost is $12-$15. Registration required. 643-2755, ext. 03.  

Treasure Under Glass Tour of the Arid House, and Orchid, Fern and Carnivorous House from 10 a.m. to noon at UC Botanical Garden. Reservations required. 643-2755, ext. 03. “Where Have All the Rosies Gone?” with Betty Reid Soskin of the Rosie the Riveter/Home Front National Park at 2 p.m. at Rockridge Library, 5366 College Ave. 

Know Your Rights Training A workshop on your rights if you are detained or arrested, and how to be an effective police observer, from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. at 2022 Blake St. Free. Sponsored by Berkeley Copwatch. berkeleycopwatch@yahoo.com 

Politcal Affairs Readers Group meets to discuss”Africa Today” by Libero Della Piana and “The Eagle Flies Over Africa” by Vijay Prashad at 10 a.m. at Niebyl-Proctor Marxist Library, 6501 Telegraph Ave. Sponsored by the Communist Party (Oakland Berkeley). 595-7417.  

Preschool Storytime, for ages 3-5, at 11 a.m. at Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave. 526-3720, ext. 17. 

The Berkeley Lawn Bowling Club provides free instruction every Wed. and Sat. at 10 a.m. at 2270 Acton St. 841-2174.  

Oakland Artisans Marketplace Sat. from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Sun. from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Jack London Square. 238-4948. 

SUNDAY, FEB. 3 

Lunar New Year Celebration with activities for the whole family from noon to 5 p.m. at the Oakland Museum of California, Oak and 10th St., Oakland. Cost is $5-$8. 238-2002. 

Toddler Nature Walk, for 2-3 year olds, to look for salamanders at 10:30 a.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

An Amphibian Amble A walk to look for newts, ensatinas and salamanders in local puddles, ponds and under logs, from 2 to 3:30 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

Alan Rinzler’s Writer’s Workshop on “Getting Published” at 3 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. Other sessions on March 9 and April 6. 559-9500. 

“The Great Awakening: Reviving Faith and Politics in a Post-Religious Right America” with Jim Wallis at 7:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing Way at Dana. Suggested donation $10. 559-9500.  

“Radical Fatherhood and Political Parenting” Reading and discussion with Tomas Moniz and Rahula Janowski at 5 p.m. at Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave. 649-1320. 

Berkeley Rep’s Family Series Monthly theater workshop for the entire family at 11 a.m. at Berkeley Rep School of Theatre, Nevo Education Center, 2071 Addison St. Free, but bring a book to donate to the library at John Muir Elementary School. 647-2973. 

Old Time Radio East Bay collectors and listeners gather to enjoy shows together at 5 p.m. at a private home in Berkeley. For more information email DavidinBerkeley at Yahoo.com. 

Kensington Farmers’ Market from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at 303 Arlington Ave. at Amherst, Kensington. 525-6155. 

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 Steve Randall on “A New Way of Inquiry” at 6 p.m. at the Tibetan Nyingma Institute, 1815 Highland Pl. 809-1000 www.nyingmainstitute.com 

MONDAY, FEB. 4  

Golden Gate Audubon Society Field Trip “Arrowhead Marsh, Oakland” with Bob Lewis. Meet at 9:30 a.m. From 880, exit at Hegenberger, and head west. Turn right on Pardee and then left on Swan and right into the park. 843-2222. 

Building a Movement in Oakland in Solidarity with African Liberation from 7 to 9 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St., Oakland. Sponsored by the Uhuru Solidarity Movement. www.apscuhuru.org 

Berkeley School Volunteers Orientation from noon to 1 p.m. at 1835 Allston Way. Come learn about volunteer opportunities. 644-8833. 

Free Boatbuilding Classes for Youth Mon.-Wed. from 3 to 7 p.m. at Berkeley Boathouse, 84 Bolivar Dr., Aquatic Park. 644-2577.  

Berkeley CopWatch organizational meeting at 8 p.m. at 2022 Blake St. Join us to work on current issues around police misconduct. 548-0425. 

TUESDAY, FEB. 5 

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 the EBMUD Velle Vista Staging Area. Call for meeting place and if you need to borrow binoculars. 525-2233. 

“Iron Ladies of Liberia” A documentary on a new generation of leaders in Africa at 6:30 p.m. at Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak St. Panel discussion follows. Free. 238-2022.  

End the Occupation Vigil every Tues. at noon at Oakland Federal Bldg., 1301 Clay St. www.epicalc.org 

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. 

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 welcome new members over 50. 845-6830. 

WEDNESDAY, FEB. 6 

Tilden Mini-Rangers Hiking, conservation and nature-based activities for ages 8-12. Dress to ramble and get dirty. From 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. Cost is $6-$8, registration required. 1-888-EBPARKS. 

Walking Tour of Old Oakland in Celebration of Black History Month “New Era/New Politics” highlights African-American leaders who have made their mark on Oakland. Meet at 10 a.m. and the African American Museum and Library at 659 14th St. 238-3234. www.oaklandnet.com/walkingtours 

“Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches From an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq” with author and journalist Dahr Jamail at 7 p.m. at Revolution Books, 2425 Channing Way. 848-1196. 

“Peace is Every Step” a documentary on the life and work of Tich Nhat Hanh at 7:30 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St., Oakland. Donation $5. www.Humanist Hall.org 

“Hiking the Pacific Crest Trail” with Ken and Marcia Powers at 7 p.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. 527-4140. 

Writer Coach Connection Volunteers needed to help Berkeley students improve their writing and critical thinking skills from 6:30 to 9:30 p.m. To register call 524-2319. www.writercoachconnection.org  

Red Cross Blood Services Volunteer Orientation from 10 a.m. to noon at 6230 Claremont Ave., Oakland. Registration required. 594-5165. 

Teen Chess Club from 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. at the North Branch Library, 1170 The Alameda at Hopkins. 981-6133. 

“Omega-3’s & Optimal Health” at 4 p.m. at Elephant Pharmacy, 1607 Shattuck Ave. 549-9200. 

“Weight Loss 101” at 7:30 p.m. at Elephant Pharmacy, 1607 Shattuck Ave. 549-9200. 

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. Heavy rain cancels. 548-9840. 

Berkeley Peace Walk and Vigil at the Berkeley BART Station, corner of Shattuck and Center. Sing for Peace at 6:30 p.m. followed by Peace Walk at 7 p.m. www. 

geocities.com/vigil4peace/vigil 

Morning Meditation Every Mon., Wed., and Fri. at 7:45 a.m. at Rudramandir, 830 Bancroft Way at 6th. 486-8700. 

After-School Program Homework help, drama and music for children ages 8 to 18, every Wed. from 4 to 7:15 p.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. Cost is $5 per week. 845-6830. 

Stitch ‘n Bitch at 6:30 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

THURSDAY, FEB. 7 

“Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization” with Lester Brown, Earth Policy Institute President, at 7:30 p.m. at the First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing Way. Tickets are $5-$13, available at independent bookstores and at www.globalexchange.org. 415-255-7296, ext.253. 

The “War on Terror” and Human Rights with Major General (Ret.) Antonio M. Taguba at 7 p.m. at International House, Chevron Auditorium, Piedmont Ave. at Bancroft. Free admission, registration requested. http://www.acteva.com/booking.cfm?bevaid=150262 

“No Easy Victories: African Liberation and American Activists 1950-2000” A gathering of vteran activists of the anti-apartheid movement in the Bay Area at 6 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center, 3105 Shattuck Ave. 238-8080, ext. 309. 

Seniors Exploring Albany Hill Walkers age 50+ explore Cerrito Creek and Albany Hill from 9 aa.m. to 11 a.m. Meet at Peet’s Coffee, San Pablo and Carlson, El Cerrito (AC Transit 72). The pace will be moderate, but the walk gains almost 300 feet elevation. Wear shoes with good traction; bring walking sticks if you use them. Registration required. 848-9358. 524-9122. 

The Café Literario, book discussion group in Spanish, meets to discuss “El Túnel” by Ernesto Sábato at 7 p.m. at the West Branch Library, 1125 University Ave. 981-6270 or 981-6140.  

“Eight Twenty Eight” Lavi Ben Gal’s documentary of life on a kibbutz at 7:30 p.m. at JCC of the East Bay, 1414 Walnut St. tickets are $10-$12. 848-0237. 

“Elderhostel: Learn, Travel, Enjoy” Learn about the benefits of Elderhostel travel, a program for older adults at 1:30 p.m. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave., Albany. 526-3720. 

Demystifying Organic Wines at 1 p.m. at Elephant Pharmacy, 1607 Shattuck Ave. 549-9200. 

Stroke and Osteoporosis Screening from 9 a.m. on at La Quinta Inn, 920 University Aven. Cost is $159. Appointments required. 1-888-754-1464. 

Quit Smoking Class for LGBT Smokers Three sessions from 6 to 8 p.m. at the Pacific Center for Human Growth, 2712 Telegraph Ave. Free, but registration required. 981-5330. 

Babies & Toddlers Storytime at 10:15 and 11:15 a.m. at Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave. 524-3043.  

Fitness Class for 55+ at 9:15 a.m. at Jewish Community Center, 1414 Walnut St. 848-0237. 

Avatar Metaphysical Toastmasters Club meets at 6:45 p.m. at Spud’s Pizza, Adeline and Alcatraz. namaste@ 

avatar.freetoasthost.info  

CITY MEETINGS 

Council Agenda Committee meets Mon., Feb. 4 , at 2:30 p.m., at 2180 Milvia St. 981-6900. 

Community Environmental Advisory Commission meets Thurs., Feb. 7, at 7 p.m., at 2118 Milvia St. Nabil Al-Hadithy, 981-7461.  

Housing Advisory Commission meets Thurs., Feb. 7, at 7:30 p.m., at the South Berkeley Senior Center. Oscar Sung, 981-5400.  

Landmarks Preservation Commission meets Thurs., Feb. 7, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-7419.  

Public Works Commission meets Thurs., Feb. 7, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-6406.  

West Berkeley Project Area Commission meets Thurs., Feb. 7, at 7 p.m., at the West Berkeley Senior Center. 981-7520.  

ONGOING 

Help a Newt Cross the Road Every year newts migrate across Hillside Drive to reach their breeding pools in Castro Creek. Volunteers prevent many of these creatures from being crushed by cars. We need volunteers every evening during January and February in El Sobrante. The newts are most active on rainy nights. annabelle11_3@yahoo.com 

Free Tax Help If your 2007 household income was less than $42,000, you are eligible for free tax preparation from United Way's Earn it! Keep It! Save It! Sites are open now through April 15 in Alameda and Contra Costa counties. To find a site near you, call 800-358-8832. www.EarnItKeepItSaveIt.org 

Donate the Excess Fruit from Your Fruit Trees I’ll gladly pick and deliver your fruit to community programs that feed school kids, the elderly, and the hungry. The fruit trees should be located in Berkeley and organic (no pesticides). This is a free volunteer/ 

grassroots thing so join in!! To scehdule and appointment call or email 812-3369. northberkeleyharvest@gmail.com http://botanicalgarden.berkeley.edu 

EDITOR’S NOTE 

The Planet has been notified that an individual is using our calendar listings to ask for cash donations for listed organizations, in particular for school tutoring. Donations should not be given to anyone on the basis of a calendar listing. We try to include a telephone number or website for all of our listings, and urge you to contact the organizations directly if you suspect that someone is using their name improperly. If you have any questions about our calendar, please e-mail calendar@berkeleydailyplanet.com or call 841-5600, ext. 102.

TUESDAY, JAN. 29 

FILM 

Experimental Documentaries “we will live to see these things, or, five pictures of what may come to pass” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Beth Lisick reads from “One Skeptic, Ten Self-Help Gurus, and a Year on the Brink of the Comfort Zone” at 7:30 p.m. at Moe’s Books, 2476 Telegraph Ave. 849-2087. 

Louise Dunlap describes “Undoing the Silence: Six tools for Social Change Writing” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 559-9500. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Del Sol String Quartet “Rhythms and Sounds from Around the World” with clarinetist Jeffrey Anderle at 8 p.m. at Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. Tickets are $20. 525-5211. 

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

Randy Craig Trio, jazz, at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave. 548-5198.  

Bandworks at 7:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $5. 525-5054. 

Chris Botti at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square, through Sun. Cost is $35-$40. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

Jazzschool Tuesdays at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

WEDNESDAY, JAN. 30 

EXHIBITIONS 

Youth Arts Festival Artwork from Berkeley K-12 public school students. Opening reception at 5 p.m. at Berkeley art Center. 1275 Walnut St. in Live Oak Park. 644-6893. 

“Awakening” Hand-drawn mandalas by Maia Apalonia, opens at NoneSuch Space, 2865 Broadway, Upper Floor, Oakland, and runs through March 1. 625-1600.  

Works by Sunhee Kim opens at Christensen Heller Gallery, 5829 College Ave., Oakland. 655-5952. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“From the Cinema of Abstractions to Narrative Illusionism” with Prof. Marilyn Fabe at 3 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808.  

The Believer Magazine Pizza Party at 7:30 p.m. at Moe's Books, 2476 Telegraph Ave. 849-2087. 

Andrés Reséndez describes “A Land So Strange: The Epic Journey to Cabeza de Vaca” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

Berkeley Poetry Slam with host Charles Ellik and Three Blind Mice, at 8:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5-$7. 841-2082. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Wednesday Noon Concert “Schubert and Beethovan in Vienna” at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Free. 642-4864. http://music.berkeley.edu 

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

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

Gator Beat at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cajun/Zydeco dance lesson at 8 p.m. Cost is $7. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Orquestra Bakan at 9:30 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low. Cost is $5-$10. 548-1159.  

Pacific Manouche at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

THURSDAY, JAN. 31 

FILM 

Jean-Pierre Léaud “Two English Girls” at 6:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Jennie Wang reads from “The Iron Curtain of Language: Maxine Hong Kingston and American Orientalism” at 5:30 p.m. at University Press Books, 2430 Bancroft Way. 548-0585.  

Lashonda Barnett describes “I Got Thunder: Black Women Songwriters on Their Craft” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 559-9500. 

Richard Friar discusses “The Keepers: Part 1: WWIII” the first book in “The Keepers” trilogy and the battle machines he has included in the novel at 6:30 p.m. at El Sobrante Library, 4191 Appian Way, El Sobrante. 374-3991. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

“Change the Beat” Benefit for Educate, Ugandan and Rwandan refugees, at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $10. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Berkeley Symphony with the US premiere of Toshio Hosokawa’s “Lotus under the moonlight” at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $20-$60. 841-2800. www.berkeleysymphony.org 

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

Bob Kenmotsu Quartet at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $8. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Houston Jones at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Ben Benkert and the Burnouts, Raya Nova at 9 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5. 841-2082. 

Joe Reilly, singer-songwriter, at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $5-$10. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

The Phantom Family, La Otracina, rock, heavy metal, at 9 p.m. at Maxwell’s Lounge, 341 13th St., Oakland. Cost is $7. 839-6169. 

Chris Botti at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square, through Sun. Cost is $35-$40. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

FRIDAY, FEB. 1 

THEATER 

Actors Ensemble of Berkeley “Barefoot in the Park” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m. at Live Oak Theater, 1301 Shattuck Ave. at Berryman, through Feb. 16. Tickets are $10-$12. 649-5999. www.aeofberkeley.org 

Altarena Playhouse “Wait Until Dark” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. at Altarena Playhouse, 1409 High St., Alameda, through Feb. 16. Tickets are $17-$20. 523-1553. www.altarena.org 

Aurora Theatre “Satellites” at 8 p.m. at 2081 Addison St. through March 2. Tickets are $40-$42. 843-4822. www.auroratheatre.org 

Black Repertory Group Theatre “A Raisin In The Sun” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2:30 p.m. at 3201 Adeline St. Tickets are $5-$25. 652-2120. blackrepertorygroup.com 

Contra Costa Civic Theatre “The Cocoanuts” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., some Sun. matinees at 2 p.m., at 951 Pomona Ave., at Moeser, El Cerrito, through March 2. Tickets are $15-$24. 524-9132. www.ccct.org 

foolsFURY Theater “Monster in the Dark” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m. and Sun. at 5 p.m., through Feb. 17, at the Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby Ave. Tickets are $12-$30. 800-838-3006. www.brownpapertickets.com 

Masquers Playhouse “Angel Street” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2:30 p.m. through Feb. 23 at 105 Park Place, Point Richmond. Tickets are $18. 232-4031. www.masquers.org 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Tilden Odyssey” Textured paintings, collages, and monotypes by Sheila Sondick on display at the Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park, through Feb. 28. 525-2233. 

“Double Vision: Artist Partners” Opening reception at 6 p.m. at Chandra Cerrito Contemporary, 25 Grand Ave., upper level, Oakland. Exhibition runs to March 15. www.chandracerrito.com 

“Yea We Said It, And No We’re Not Sorry” works by Malik and Milton Bowens for Black History Month. Opening reception at 5:30 p.m. at Joyce Gordon Gallery, 406 14th St., Oakland. Exhibit runs to Feb. 29. 465-8928. 

Huey P. Newton Photography Exhibit Celebrating the achievements and influence of the founder of the co-founder of the Black Panther Party at the West Oakland Branch of the Oakland Public Libray, 1801 Adeline St., through Feb. 29. 238-7352.  

“Heart Attack: The Ying & Yandg of Love” Group art show opens at Eclectix, 7523 Fairmunt Ave., El Cerrito. 364-7261. www.eclectixgallery.com 

FILM 

The Medieval Remake “Lancelot of the Lake” at 7 p.m. and “The Knithgt” at 8:45 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Kelly Corrigan reads form “The Middle Place” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 559-9500.  

MUSIC AND DANCE  

Noon Concert, with Kai Chou, cello and Wiggin Wi, piano at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Free. 642-4864. 

Zydeco Flames in a celebration of Black History Month at 5 p.m. at Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak, Oakland. Cost is $5-$8. 238-2002. 

Andrea Prichett & Friends of Carol Denney, Funky Nixons, Phoenix, After Buffalo, MC Che X in a fundraiser for Carol Denney & Berkeley Liberation Radio at 7 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center, 3105 Shattuck Ave. Tickets are $12-$15 sliding scale. 849-2568. 

Dwight Tribble & Muzuki Roberson Quintet at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $14. 841-JAZZ.  

Soja, Rebellion, reggae, at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $12-$15. 525-5054.  

Palm Wine Boys at 8 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Darryl Henriques at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $19.50-$20.50. 548-1761.  

Andrew Sammons and Friends, jazz, swing, at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

Trick Kernan Combo, rock, jazz, at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. 

Dave Matthews Blues Band at 8 p.m. at The Warehouse Bar & Grill, 402 Webster St., Oakland. 451-3161. 

The Connie Lim Band, Tara Tinsley, Rabbitmotaei at 9 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $8. 841-2082.  

Kevin Seconds, Ryan Stark, Eric Core and others at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $6. 525-9926. 

3rd Date at 10 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790.  

Greg Scott, R&B, pop, at 9 p.m. at Maxwell’s Lounge, 341 13th St., Oakland. Cost is $10-$15. 839-6169. 

SATURDAY, FEB. 2 

CHILDREN  

Los Amiguitos de La Peña with Joe Reilly singing environmental songs at 10:30 a.m. at La Peña. Cost is $5 for adults, $4 for children. 849-2568.  

Active Arts Theatre for Young Audiences “Little Women” Sat. and Sun. at 2 p.m., through Feb. 3, at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave. Tickets are $14-$18. 925-798-1300.  

African Tales with storyteller Kirk Waller Sat. and Sun. at 1:30 and 2:30 p.m. at Children’s Fairyland, 699 Bellvue Ave., Oakland.  

FILM 

Screenagers: Bay Area High School Film Festival at 1 and 3:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808.  

Human Rights Watch Film Festival “Everything’s Cool” at 6 p.m. and “The Unforeseen” at 8 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

18th Annual African American Celebration through Poetry from 1 to 4 p.m. at the West Oakland Branch of the Oakland Public Library, 1801 Adeline St. 238-7352.  

David Rieff reads from his memoir and tribute to his mother “Swimming in a Sea of Death” at 3 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

Bay Area Poets Coalition holds an open reading from 3 to 5 p.m., at Strawberry Creek Lodge, 1320 Addison St. Park on the street, not in Lodge parking lot. 527-9905.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Berkeley Arts Festival with Sarah Cahill, pianist, premieres new music at 8 p.m. at 2213 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $10. 665-9496. 

The Laurel Ensemble, “French Romance and American Modernism” at 8 p.m. at Trinity Chapel, 2320 Dana St. Tickets are $8-$12. 549-3864. www. 

trinitychamberconcerts.com 

La Richie & Co. “Indoor Fireworks: The Pyrotechnics of Handel and his London Oboists” at 8 p.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College at Garber. Tickets are $10-$25. 528-1725. www.sfems.org 

Ethiopian Arts Forum: Either/Orchestra, led by Russ Gershon, with special guest Mulatu Astatke at 9:30 p.m. at Historic Sweet‚s Ballroom, 1933 Broadway, Oakland. Tickets, available at the door, are $20, $30 for VIP area. 501-3413.  

Young People’s Symphony Orchestra Winter Concert at 8 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing Way. Tickets are $12-$15. 849-9776. 

Winds Across the Bay “Winds Goes to the Movies” with music from Star Wars, The Aviator, Henry V, Lord of the Rings, Fiddler on the Roof, King Kong, and more, at 2 p.m. at the Hilltop Community Church, 3118 Shane Drive, Richmond. Tickets are $5-$10. 243-0514. www.windsacrossthebay.org 

Mardi Gras Countdown with Chelle and Friends at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $12-$15. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Eric Swinderman Quintet “In Pursuit of the Sound” at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $12. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Mardi Gras with Hot Pink Feathers and Blue Bone Express at Café Van Kleef, 1621 Telegraph Ave. Oakland. Cost is $10.  

Creole Belles with Andrew Carriere and Suzy Thompson at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cajun dance lesson at 8 p.m. Cost is $13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com  

Rodney Brillante, Lily Virginia, guitar, ukulele, at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Jim Post “Mark Twain and the Laughing River” at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $19.50-$20.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Brian Pardo Group at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $15. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Caroline Chung Trio, jazz, at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

Apple Pie Hopes, The Hobo Gobbelins and Jonathan Beast & the Bathroom Floors at 9 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $7. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Tera Mellos, Planets, Car at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $6. 525-9926. 

SUNDAY, FEB. 3 

EXHIBITIONS 

California Society of Printmakers Valentine Show from 11 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at Chamber Arts, 2924 Ashby Ave. between College and Claremont. art@lilahands.com 

Watercolors by Emily Weil Opening reception at 4 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

FILM 

The Medieval Remake “The Seventh Seal” at 2 p.m. and “the Virgin Spring” at 4 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Rumi: and 800th Birthday Party with Coleman Barks and musicians Stephen Kent, Geoffrey Gordon, Sukhawat Ali Khan and Kris Yenny at 8 p.m. at King Middle School, 1781 Rose St. Tickets are $15-$20 at Cody’s and at www.kpfa.org 

Jim Wallis on “The Great Awakening: Reviving Faith and Politics in a Post-Religious Right America” at 7:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing Way at Dana. Suggested donation $10. 559-9500.  

“Radical Fatherhood and Political Parenting” Reading and discussion with Tomas Moniz and Rahula Janowski at 5 p.m. at Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave. 649-1320. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Young People’s Symphony Orchestra Winter Concert at 3 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing Way. Tickets are $12-$15. 849-9776. 

Live Oak Concert Solo Violin with Donna Lerew at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley Art Center, 1275 Walnut St., near Eunice. TIckets are $10-$15. 644-6893.  

Angela Kraft-Cross, organ concert at 3 p.m. at First Presbyterian Church of Oakland, 2619 Broadway. 444-3555. 

Mamak Khadem Ensemble, Middle Eastern fusion, at 7 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $25. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Plays Monk at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761.  

Ana Nitmar at 7 p.m. at La Peña. Cost is $10-$12. 849-2568. 

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

Az Samad, Shelley Leong at 11 a.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

Jesse Evans, Swann Danger, Otto Nervous at 5 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $5. 525-9926. 

MONDAY, FEB. 4 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Real or Surreal” Art by Mari Kearney opens at Cafe Diem, 2224 MacArthur Blvd., Oakland. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Art, Technology and Culture Colloquium “Giant Robot Architecture” with Greg Lynn and Angewandte at 7:30 p.m. at 160 Kroeber Hall, UC Campus. 643-9565.  

“The Adventures of a Wildlife Photographer” with Eleanor Bricetti at 12:30 p.m. at Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave. 526-3720, ext. 17. 

David Lance Goines will present an illustrated lecture on the process of making posters at 7:30 p.m. at the Hillside Club. 

Actors Reading Writers “Transformational Romance” stories by N.M. Kelby and Jonathan Lethem at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. 932-0214. 

Aurora Theatre “Our Dad is in Atlantis” reading followed by discussion at 7:30 p.m. at 2081 Addison St. 843-4822.  

Poetry Express with Cherise Wyneken at 7 p.m. at Priya Restaurant, 2072 San Pablo Ave. 644-3977. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Quake City at 7 p.m. at Le Bateau Ivre, 2629 Telegraph Ave. 849-1100.  

Trovatore, traditional Italian music, at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

SF Bluegrass & Old-Time Festival with Town Mountain, Spring Creek and Homespun Rowdy at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage Coffee House. Cost is $15.50-$16.50. 548-1761 www.freightandsalvage.org 

Larry Coryell with Bombay Jazz at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $12-$20. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com

In a Victorian parlor, a querulous wife (Michelle Pond as Bella Manningham) feels things are slipping away from her grasp, though she’s unable to explain how or why, while her prepossessing husband (David Shirk as Jack Manningham), in quiet, gentle tones or with impatience, treats her as a child, whether a naughty one or a child unaware of the import of what she’s doing. 

Bella’s fear is that she—like her late mother—is losing her mind. And her husband supplies the proof of it: household items squirreled away which Bella has no memory of moving out of their accustomed place.  

The maidservants are the witnesses. Jack even calls them in to testify—loyal Elizabeth (Jean Rose) with supportive words, saucy young Nancy (Heather Morrison) with condescension and a smirk. 

But while the master of the house is out, an eccentric stranger comes calling. Introducing himself as Rough (Norman Macleod), a neighbor, the gentleman declares to Bella that the trouble isn’t in her mind, but in what he knows happened, a long time ago, in the house. 

Like a moth between two candles, Bella orbits between two stories, as the plot thickens when the gaslight goes low. 

“Gaslight,” that lurid brightness at night before electricity, is the title the Masquers production of Patrick Hamilton’s Angel Street is best known by. Alfred Hitchcock’s film of that name took that popular potboiler beyond the constraints of theatrical runs and word-of-mouth, to an enduring recognition. And the gaslights in the parlor themselves signal the changes in this hypnotic duel of wills that does seem to be a battle of darkness with light. 

Michelle Pond, longtime Masquer, who just played flirtacious Nancy Twinkle in that farce to end all light opera, Little Miss Sunshine, fulfills the vow set down in her program bio, giving up “hamming it up” in musicals to “simply let this fabulous script take me on this sad, frightening and hopeful journey each night.” She takes the audience along with her, truly the subject in every sense. 

David Shirk plays Jack less with an air of mystery than as a man self-assured to the point of complete self-absorption, difficult to read until he plays his hand—an admirable characterization in this kind of melodrama. 

And Norman Macleod brings an analytical seriousness to what becomes, as he describes it, a labrynthine predicament. It’s a bit lightened by his whimsicality, the only levity in Bella’s grim dilemma. 

Patricia Inabnet’s direction sets the tone from which the drama evolves. Rob Bradshaw’s sober, matter-of-fact set provides grounding along with Debbi Sandmann’s lights and Jerry Telfer’s sound design. Jo Lusk’s costumes, so important to establish period, class and character, seem impeccable. 

When players greet the audience in the lobby after the show, the mood lifts, and it’s like waking from a dream. An old-time entertainment has done its work; the Masquers have conducted their visitors on a seance through Victorian shadows. 

Angel Street 

Masquers Playhouse 

105 Park Place, Richmond 

Fri.-Sat. 8 p.m., Sun. 2:30 p.m. 

through Feb. 23 

Tickets $18 

www.masquers.org, 232-4031

McSweeney’s, the San Francisco Mission District publishing concern founded by author Dave Eggers, is coming to Berkeley with a pizza party (they will provide the pizza) at Moe’s Books at 2476 Telegraph Ave. to celebrate the 50th issue of their monthly magazine, The Believer, on Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. Moe’s is one of 20 stores nationally where McSweeney’s is planning a celebration this week. “Any magazine today producing 50 issues is remarkable,” said Owen Hill of Moe’s. “McSweeney’s has a list of young, clever writers. The Believer is a good, open-ended interview/review magazine. We’ve hosted a pizza party before for their video magazine, and they're good at getting enough veggies for the vegetarians, enough meat for the carnivores!” 

A pair of Oakland writers have offered a compelling blueprint for the world’s energy ministers as they debate how best to address global warming and replace the Kyoto Protocol when it expires in 2012. 

In Break Through: From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility, Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger, longtime writers and organizers for a variety of environmental groups, argue that countries that want to get serious about combating global warming will have to start doing more than just finding better ways to limit carbon emissions—they will have to find new ways to create and invest in clean energy. 

In fact, Nordhaus and Shellenberger write, the “the politics of limits,” which they see as defining the environmental movement, have failed to address the challenges posed by global warming. What is needed, they say, is a new approach built on investment in technological innovation and financial security, not on limiting economic potential and talking about the coming ecological apocalypse. 

According to Nordhaus and Shellenberger, we must find a way forward rather than concentrating only on how to reverse our path. The authors have expanded on the theme of their 2004 article “The Death of Environmentalism,” which raised quite a few eyebrows at the time for criticizing the accepted gospel of how to best protect the environment. 

The authors point out that only a few of the countries that signed on to Kyoto will reduce their emissions at all by the deadline. Most will meet the required 5 percent reduction by buying carbon reduction credits from developing countries. The authors express little hope that the Kyoto limits-based approach is the answer to reducing real emissions as the global demand for energy is expected to grow more than half by 2030 and carbon dioxide emissions are projected to rise 55 percent in that time unless cleaner energy sources are discovered.  

Nordhaus and Shellenberger propose a combination of investments in technology and economic development to drive the quest for these sources. “We argue for a pro-growth agenda that defines the kind of prosperity we believe is necessary to improve the quality of life and to overcome ecological crisis,” they write. “One of the places where this politics of possibility takes concrete form is at the intersection of investment and innovation.” They say a pro-growth agenda can help stabilize the climate. Environmentalists can’t solve the ecological crisis, they contend, because only those who put prosperity first have the ability to push for such a revolution in our politics to prepare for and address global warming. 

Despite the growing ubiquity of green merchandise, media coverage, and talk among politicians about ending global warming, Nordhaus and Shellenberger point out that the environment remains a low priority and is actually decreasing in importance among most voters. The environmental movement as we have known it in this country for the past 40 years has stalled, they argue. It has become a partisan issue and worse than that one that doesn’t effectively motivate voters on the left. Environmental groups have become just another special interest group, the authors argue, focused on a sole issue, often to the detriment of competing progressive causes. Sure, most people say they favor protecting wetlands, improving the air and reducing global warming, but when it comes to priorities, jobs, crime and health care are justifiably higher concerns for almost everyone, Democrats and Republicans alike. 

Nordhaus and Shellenberger point out that only with rising affluence do people turn their attention to certain quality of life issues such as environmentalism. In this way, economic security is the basis for ecological concern. Americans have become more affluent and less secure at the same time, they write. With growing job insecurity, greater economic disparity, rising health care costs and growing debt, Americans in general feel less in control of their lives than they did a generation ago when sympathy with environmental causes was stronger. “It is only when people are feeling in control, secure and free to create their lives that they behave expansively and generously toward the collective,” Nordhaus and Shellenberger write.  

The authors propose that progressives stop feeding this insecurity by telling horror stories about the coming ecological collapse, such as Al Gore did in An Inconvenient Truth, and instead look for ways to create more secure and healthier communities where people feel able to seek quality-of-life issues that include ecological concerns. Nordhaus and Shellenberger propose that new environmentalists look at how successful evangelical Christians have been in such community building, paying attention to the needs and values of how people live and creating new ways for them to belong and feel fulfilled. 

On the international level, they argue for debt elimination for countries like Brazil and a new understanding that certain countries, such as ours, can no longer leverage their own economic national interests against the world’s ecological needs. The authors devote a chapter to the economic and ecological challenges facing Brazil, explaining how the country’s crippling debt payments are responsible for exacerbating the deforestation of the Amazon and preventing the country from addressing the material needs of its citizens, denying the society any possibility of striving toward the prosperity that is needed to elevate ecological concerns among its citizens. They write: “Until the world’s wealthiest countries seriously support Brazil’s goals for itself, the colossus of the south will have neither the means nor the motives to save the Amazon.” 

In this way, they argue, environmentalists must stop seeing new prosperity in countries like China and India as a threat to ecological stability and understand that along with the obvious dangers and challenges there also exist opportunities to create new environmental values there. And likewise, in the Unites States, the answer for a more efficient way of living is to increase urban density. Nordhaus and Shellenberger ask why some should have the right to privilege their neighborhood (or their county) over others. “In the name of opposing development that is ‘out of scale with the neighborhood,’ they end up blocking the transformation of American communities into vibrant, creative, and high-density cities,” the authors write. Nordhaus and Shellenberger tell us that we have to prepare for climate change, that the reality of global warming is here and that means that we have to learn how to live differently.  

They give credit to veteran environmentalists who fought for limits effectively in winning the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act, but the fight against global warming is a different beast, they say, and it’s time for the old leaders to step aside. According to Nordhaus and Shellenberger the old strategies of pushing for caps on emissions, reductions on manufacturing and bans on chemicals are inadequate to address such a complex problem as global warming. Without any vision for forward motion, speaking only about limits and what we can’t or shouldn’t do, the authors conclude that environmentalists have become the naysayers of the nation, the killjoys in the conversation about how to move forward.  

Nordhaus and Shellenberger have been part of crafting a new Apollo project on clean energy, calling for the investment of $300 billion in energy markets over the next decade to help propel technological breakthroughs in wind, solar, mass transit, carbon sequestration, hydrogen and other energy sources. “A new Apollo project tells an overarching story about America,” Nordhaus and Shellenberger write. “It begins by acknowledging what America is great at: imagining, experimenting, and inventing the future.” 

BREAK THROUGH: FROM THE DEATH OF ENVIRONMENTALISM TO THE POLITICS OF POSSIBILITY 

By Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger.  

Houghton Mifflin Company. 2007. $25.

Not that I miss them, but I haven’t found any Argentine ants in the house this winter. I hesitate to consider this a permanent victory, though. They’re out there somewhere, biding their time. 

Linepithema humile has been called, against stiff competition, one of the world’s worst invasive species. Argentine ants don’t sting or bite, like that scourge of the South the red imported fire ant. What they do is more insidious: they disassemble whole ecosystems. They kill or drive out native ant colonies and eat their way through the local arthropod prey base. (They can handle much larger native ant species; photographs of a half-dozen of them dragging down a huge, as ants go, harvester ant are reminiscent of that Planet Earth footage of a pride of lions tackling an elephant.)  

Ant-eating reptiles like the coast horned lizard can’t stomach them, and horned lizard populations have declined by up to 50 percent in invaded areas. Plants that depend on native ants to transport their seeds are left partnerless. The Argentines use exotic plantings like iceplant as staging areas for colonizing native plant communities. 

Once they arrive in a new locale, Argentine ants form supercolonies containing millions of individual workers. Back home in South America, neighboring colonies live in a constant state of mutual hostility. But that isn’t true in California and other Linepithema beachheads in Mediterranean Europe, Asia, Australia, southern Africa, and the Pacific islands.  

According to research by Andrew Suarez, now at the University of Illinois, there is in effect one great big Argentine ant colony in California that stretches from San Diego to Ukiah. Normally, introducing a worker ant to a foreign colony is a death sentence. But you can drop an Argentine ant from Lompoc into a colony in Milpitas and she’ll receive a sisterly welcome, and be put right to work. 

That’s because she’ll have the correct colony smell. South American colonies are genetically varied, and each one has its distinctive odor which serves as a badge of membership. But the Argentine ants in the great California supercolony, descendants of a small founder population, all smell alike. They haven’t had time to re-evolve the variation. Although genetic bottlenecks are supposed to be a bad thing, reducing a population’s resistance to disease and other stressors, these ants seem to benefit from their genetic uniformity. 

Despite that, you would think that Argentine ant booms would eventually go bust, since eating everything in sight is not a sustainable foraging strategy. They don’t, though. These ants have another trick up their sleeves. 

According to a recent study by David Holway at UC San Diego, who collaborated with Suarez, Argentine ants do start out as generalist predators of other insects. At some point, however, they switch to a high-carb diet of the honeydew that aphids and scale insects excrete. “Honeydew nectar is essentially digested plant sap,” Holway says. “If you’ve ever parked your car under a tree and found your windshield covered with sticky stuff, that’s honeydew from aphids and scales.” Think, for example, of the tulip trees on University Avenue. It’s honeydew that fuels the growth of the supercolonies. 

A mutualist relationship with honeydew producers is not rare among ants. What’s unusual is the change from predation to nectar-sipping. It’s as if a band of human hunter-gatherers moved into a new hunting territory, killed off almost everything edible, then domesticated the last few sheep and became pastoralists. 

Holway and his co-authors tracked a Linepithema invasion in Rice Canyon in southern California, documenting the near-extirpation of native ants as the newcomers moved in; native diversity fell from 23 species to two. They used a technique called stable isotope analysis to determine what the Argentine ants had been eating, and identify when their diet changed. Comparing the ratio of heavy to light nitrogen isotopes allowed the scientists to distinguish carnivores from herbivores (or, in the case of the Argentines, carbovores.) 

So it appears that Argentine ants are flexible enough in their behavior to avoid the consequences of ecological overkill. As long as they have their scales or aphids, they’re in fine shape. 

And things are only going to get better for them. Species with limited ranges and narrow habitat and food requirements may be pushed to extinction by global climate change, but not the Argentine ant. Another recent study, headed by Nuria Roura-Pascual at the University of Girona in Catalonia, suggests that unoccupied areas in East Asia, northeastern North America, and elsewhere will become more suitable for invasion in a warmer world. Linepithema marches on. 

Joe Eaton’s “Wild Neighbors” column appears every other Tuesday in the Berkeley Daily Planet, alternating with Ron Sullivan’s “Green Neighbors” column on East Bay trees.

TUESDAY, JAN. 29 

Community Meeting on Pacific Steel and West Berkeley Air Quality Monitoring Learn about air monitoring results in West Berkeley and what toxics have been found in the air at 7 p.m. at West Berkeley Senior Center, 1900 6th St., at Hearst. Sponsored by Greenaction, Global Community Monitor, West Berkeley Alliance for Clean Air and Safe Jobs, and the Ecology Center. 415-248-5010. 

“The Eleventh Hour” A documentary by Leonardo DiCaprio on the state of the global environment, and practical solutions for restoring the planet’s ecosystems at 5 p.m. at Boalt Hall, Room 110, UC Campus. Sponsored by the California Center for Environmental Law and Policy. 642-6774. 

“Navigating the Mekong” A film by Mic O’Shea on his solo kayak adventure from Tibet to the South China Sea at 7 p.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. 527-4140. 

Berkeley School Volunteers Orientation from 4 to 5 p.m. at 1835 Allston Way. Come learn about volunteer opportunities. 644-8833. 

Alameda Women’s Commission “Community Conversation” to gain support for CEDAW (The United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women) at 5:30 p.m. at the Alameda Library, 1550 Oak St., Alameda. Free, but reservations requested. 259-3871. 

Family Storytime at 7 p.m. at Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave. 524-3043.  

“The TV show House and the Experience of Socialist Society So Far” Discussion taking off from an excerpt of “Making Revolution and Emancipating Humanity” by Bob Avakian at 7 p.m. at Revolution Books 2425 Channing Way. 848-1196. 

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 

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., and Sat. from 2 to 6 p.m. at at 84 Bolivar Dr., Aquatic Park. 644-2577. www.watersideworkshops.org 

Fresh Produce Stand at San Pablo Park from 3 to 6 p.m. in the Frances Albrier Community Center. Sponsored by the Ecology Center’s Farm Fresh Choice. 848-1704.  

Berkeley Camera Club meets at 7:30 p.m., at the Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. Share your digital images, slides and prints and learn what other photographers are doing. Monthly field trips. 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 offer ongoing classes in exercise and creative arts, and always welcome new members over 50. 845-6830. 

WEDNESDAY, JAN. 30 

Proposed Spraying to Combat Apple Moth in Alameda County A community meeting on the spray will take place at 7:30 p.m. at the Center for Environmental Health, 528 61st St., Oakland. 594-9864. 

Rally Outside the Marine Recruiting Station in Berkeley at 10 a.m. for the launching of the Military Recruiting Zoning Ordinance Initiative to refine the zoning regulations of military recruiting. 524-2776. info (at) bayareacodepink (dot) org 

Pools for Berkeley meets at 7 p.m. at the City of Berkeley Corporation Yard, 1326 Allston Way. www.poolsforberkeley.org 

“Paradise Now” A film about Palestinian recruits for a major operation in Tel Aviv, at 7:30 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St., Oakland. Donation $5. www.Humanist Hall.org 

“Understanding Children’s Temperament” with Rona Renner, R.N., at 6:30 p.m. at Windrush School, Multipurpose Room, 1800 Elm St., El Cerrito. 970-7580. 

Cash for College Workshop at 6:30 p.m. at Albany High School, 603 Key Route Blvd. or Oakland High School Theater and Library, 1023 Macarthur Blvd. For details see www.calgrants.org 

“Women’s Hormone Balance: PMS, Infertility, and Menopause” at 7:30 p.m. at Rockridge Curves, 5665 College Ave., Suite 1, Oakland. Free. Foundation for Wellness Professionals. 849-1176. 

Pacific Boychoir Auditions for boys ages 5-9 at 410 Alcatraz in Oakland. Please call for an audition appointment. 652-4722.  

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. Heavy rain cancels. 548-9840. 

Teen Chess Club from 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. at the North Branch Library, 1170 The Alameda at Hopkins. 981-6133. 

Berkeley Peace Walk and Vigil at 6:30 p.m. at the Berkeley BART station. www. 

geocities.com/vigil4peace/vigil 

Morning Meditation Every Mon., Wed., and Fri. at 7:45 a.m. at Rudramandir, 830 Bancroft Way at 6th. 486-8700. 

After-School Program Homework help, drama and music for children ages 8 to 18, every Wed. from 4 to 7:15 p.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. Cost is $5 per week. 845-6830. 

Stitch ‘n Bitch at 6:30 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

THURSDAY, JAN. 31 

Babies & Toddlers Storytime at 10:15 and 11:15 a.m. at Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave. 524-3043.  

World of Plants Tours at 1:30 p.m. at the UC Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Drive. Cost is $5. 643-2755.  

Fitness Class for 55+ at 9:15 a.m. at Jewish Community Center, 1414 Walnut St. 848-0237. 

Stress Reduction Free intro class at 7 p.m. at 1672 University Ave. 524-8833. 

FRIDAY, FEB. 1 

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon with Andrew Stern, Emeritus Journalism School Professor, UCB, on “Photojournalism Today: Including Photos from Pamplona, Running of the Bulls.” Luncheon at 11:45 a.m. for $14.50, speech at 12:30 p.m., at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant St. 526-2925.  

“King: A Man of Peace in a Time of War” A documentary of Martin Luther King Jr. with rare footage from the Mike Douglas Show and his views on the Vietnam War, at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley Friends Church, Sacramento at Cedar St. 684-9303. 

“The End of Suburbia: Oil Depletion and the Collapse of the American Dream” A documentary on how “peak oil” affects life as we know it at 3 p.m. at Berkeley City College, 2050 Center St. Followed by discussion with Berkeley Oil Independence Task Force. www.relocalize.net/groups/oilindependentberkeley  

“The Story of Stuff” A documentary on the underside of our production and consumption patterns at 7 p.m. at Center for Urban Peace, 2584 Martin Luther King, Jr. Way. 549-3733. ext. 6. 

Friday Films for Teens at 3:30 p.m. at the Berkeley Public Library, 3rd flr., 2090 Kittredge St. For details call 981-6121. 

“Enlivening the Chakras” with Anodea Judith at noon at Elephant Pharmacy, 1607 Shattuck Ave. 549-9200.  

Mahea Uchiyama Center for International Dance Open House from 6 to 9 p.m. at 729 Heinz Ave. 845-2605. 

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. 

Circle Dancing, simple folk dancing with instruction at 7:30 p.m. at Finnish Brotherhood Hall, 1970 Chestnut St at University. Donation of $5 requested. 528-4253.  

SATURDAY, FEB. 2 

“Education is Everybody’s Business” Latino Education Summit with information on applying to college, financial aid, with workshops in both English and Spanish. From 8:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. at CA State Univ. East Bay, 25800 Carlos Bee Blvd. Free, but registration required. 885-3516.  

Save the Bay Trash Removal Technology Tour at Lake Merritt from 10 a.m. to 1 pm. Cost is $25, free for Save the Bay members. Call for details 452-9261, ext. 119. 

Masked Bandits Learn about clever racoons through a craft and a nature walk, for ages 6+ at 2 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

Grounhog Day Children’s events from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Storytelling at noon at Habitot Children’s Museum, 2065 Kittredge St. 647-1111.  

“Where Have All the Rosies Gone?” with Betty Reid Soskin of the Rosie the Riveter/Home Front National Park at 2 p.m. at Rockridge Library, 5366 College Ave. 

Politcal Affairs Readers Group meets to discuss”Africa Today” by Libero Della Piana and “The Eagle Flies Over Africa” by Vijay Prashad at 10 a.m. at Niebyl-Proctor Marxist Library, 6501 Telegraph Ave. Sponsored by the Communist Party (Oakland Berkeley). 595-7417.  

Preschool Storytime, for ages 3-5, at 11 a.m. at Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave. 526-3720, ext. 17. 

The Berkeley Lawn Bowling Club provides free instruction every Wed. and Sat. at 10 a.m. at 2270 Acton St. 841-2174.  

Free Garden Tours at Regional Parks Botanic Garden Sat. and Sun. at 2 pm. Regional Parks Botanic Garden, Tilden Park. Call to confirm. 841-8732. www.nativeplants.org 

Around the World Tour of Plants at 1:30 p.m., Thurs., Sat. and Sun. at UC Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Drive. 643-2755. http://botanicalgarden.berkeley.edu 

Oakland Artisans Marketplace Sat. from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Sun. from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Jack London Square. 238-4948. 

SUNDAY, FEB. 3 

Lunar New Year Celebration with activities for the whole family from noon to 5 p.m. at the Oakland Museum of California, Oak and 10th St., Oakland. Cost is $5-$8. 238-2002. 

Toddler Nature Walk, for 2-3 year olds, to look for salamanders at 10:30 a.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

An Amphibian Amble A walk to look for newts, ensatinas and salamanders in local puddles, ponds and under logs, from 2 to 3:30 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

Alan Rinzler’s Writer’s Workshop on “Getting Published” at 3 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. Other sessions on March 9 and April 6. 559-9500. 

“The Great Awakening: Reviving Faith and Politics in a Post-Religious Right America” with Jim Wallis at 7:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing Way at Dana. Suggested donation $10. 559-9500.  

“Radical Fatherhood and Political Parenting” Reading and discussion with Tomas Moniz and Rahula Janowski at 5 p.m. at Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave. 649-1320. 

Berkeley Rep’s Family Series Monthly theater workshop for the entire family at 11 a.m. at Berkeley Rep School of Theatre, Nevo Education Center, 2071 Addison St. Free, but bring a book to donate to the library at John Muir Elementary School. 647-2973. 

Old Time Radio East Bay collectors and listeners gather to enjoy shows together at 5 p.m. at a private home in Berkeley. For more information email DavidinBerkeley at Yahoo.com. 

Kensington Farmers’ Market from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at 303 Arlington Ave. at Amherst, Kensington. 525-6155. 

Berkeley Chess Club meets every Sun. at 7 p.m. at the Hillside School, 1581 Le Roy Ave. 843-0150. 

Free Garden Tours at Regional Parks Botanic Garden in Tilden Park Sat. and Sun. at 2 p.m. Call to confirm. 841-8732.  

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 Steve Randall on “A New Way of Inquiry” at 6 p.m. at the Tibetan Nyingma Institute, 1815 Highland Pl. 809-1000 www.nyingmainstitute.com 

Sew Your Own Open Studio Come learn to use our industrial and domestic machines, or work on your own projects, from 5 to 9 p.m. at 84 Bolivar Dr., Aquatic Park. Cost is $3 per hour. 644-2577. www.watersideworkshops.org 

MONDAY, FEB. 4  

Golden Gate Audubon Society Field Trip “Arrowhead Marsh, Oakland” with Bob Lewis. Meet at 9:30 a.m. From 880, exit at Hegenberger, and head west. Turn right on Pardee and then left on Swan and right into the park. 843-2222. 

Berkeley School Volunteers Orientation from noon to 1 p.m. at 1835 Allston Way. Come learn about volunteer opportunities. 644-8833. 

Free Boatbuilding Classes for Youth Mon.-Wed. from 3 to 7 p.m. at Berkeley Boathouse, 84 Bolivar Dr., Aquatic Park. 644-2577.  

Berkeley CopWatch organizational meeting at 8 p.m. at 2022 Blake St. Join us to work on current issues around police misconduct. 548-0425. 

Dragonboating Year round classes at the Berkeley Marina, Dock M. Meets Mon, Wed., Thurs. at 6 p.m. Sat. at 10:30 a.m. For details see www.dragonmax.org 

CITY MEETINGS 

City Council meets Tues., Jan. 29 , at 7 p.m in City Council Chambers. 981-6900. www. 

ci.berkeley.ca.us/citycouncil 

ONGOING 

E-Waste Recycling St. Vincent de Paul of Alameda County accepts electronic waste including computers, dvd players, cell phones, fax machines and many other ewaste products for disposal free of charge at many of its locations throughout Alameda County. Free bulk pick-up available. 638-7600. www.svdp-alameda.org 

Help a Newt Cross the Road Every year newts migrate across Hillside Drive to reach their breeding pools in Castro Creek. Volunteers prevent many of these creatures from being crushed by cars. We need volunteers every evening during January and February in El Sobrante. The newts are most active on rainy nights. annabelle11_3@yahoo.com 

Free Tax Help If your 2007 household income was less than $42,000, you are eligible for free tax preparation from United Way's Earn it! Keep It! Save It! Sites are open now through April 15 in Alameda and Contra Costa counties. To find a site near you, call 800-358-8832. www.EarnItKeepItSaveIt.org 

Donate the Excess Fruit from Your Fruit Trees I’ll gladly pick and deliver your fruit to community programs that feed school kids, the elderly, and the hungry. The fruit trees should be located in Berkeley and organic (no pesticides). This is a free volunteer/ 

grassroots thing so join in!! To scehdule and appointment call or email 812-3369. northberkeleyharvest@gmail.com http://botanicalgarden.berkeley.edu