A 34-year-old Oakland man is in custody today after being arrested on suspicion of robbing a bank in Berkeley on Monday afternoon, police said today. -more-
The Berkeley City Council may join the fight to free three UC Berkeley graduates detained in Iran. The council will consider tonight (Tuesday, Jan. 26) whether to send a letter urging Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to release the trio. -more-
Wareham Development has threatened to sue the City of Berkeley if it allows a cannabis clinic to move into the old Scharffen Berger building in West Berkeley. -more-
Berkeley’s second annual A Walk for Change in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day on Monday drew a modest crowd due to threatening weather. The group had planned to drive the mile route from Jefferson Elementary School to King Middle School this year, but a break in the rain allowed them to walk. At King, about 75 students, parents and school staff sat in the auditorium and listened to King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. Organizers pointed to the empty chairs, where about 300 people had sat a year before, asking, “Where are you, on this special day of remembrance?” and encouraged the audience to go back to their communities and ask the same question. -more-
Berkeley is doing its part to bring relief to disaster-struck Haiti in the aftermath of the Jan. 12 earthquake that crippled the Caribbean nation, killing tens of thousands. -more-
The fate of Berkeley Iceland hangs in the balance over the next four months as its owner and the non-profit trying to save it attempt to strike a deal. -more-
Berkeley’s southside is under siege. Or so says a class-action lawsuit filed by some of the area’s residents at the Alameda County Superior Court Tuesday, seeking respite from rowdy UC Berkeley frat boys and their drunken brawls. -more-
The Berkeley City Council Tuesday approved stricter enforcement of its existing soft-story ordinance, approved a public hearing for a special property tax ballot measure to fund pools improvement, and discussed a report on the city’s involvement in the Omnibus Bill -more-
Berkeley High School’s Parent, Teacher, Student Association met Tuesday to discuss alternative models of school governance. Present to discuss the models were Superintendent Bill Huyett and School Board Policy Committee members Shirley Issel and John Selawsky. -more-
Berkeley Public Housing tenants showed up at Tuesday’s City Council meeting to rally against the loss of public housing. -more-
A group of lawyers, journalists and advocates filed a Freedom of Information Act request Thursday for a report about authors of the Bush administration's torture memos, including UC Berkeley law professor John Yoo. -more-
Several hundred UC Berkeley staff, students, and faculty held a noon rally on Wednesday to protest UC administration plans to privatize bus service at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Fourteen protesters, including Berkeley City Councilmember Jesse Arreguin, sat down in front of one of the buses in an act of civil disobedience and were arrested. -more-
At the Jan. 13 Berkeley School Board meeting, the Berkeley Federation of Teachers (BFT) joined the Berkeley Council of Classified Employees (BCCE) in opposing applications for two new independent charter schools in Berkeley, one a middle school and the other a high school. Both unions favor the development of a new educational program that is not independent of the school district. -more-
Kenneth Harvey Cardwell, Bay Area architect and professor emeritus of architecture at UC Berkeley, died Jan. 11 in Oakland at age 89. -more-
Al Winslow, a journalist and homeless advocate who adopted Berkeley as his home, died Jan. 8 following a short illness. He was 68. -more-
San Francisco's Commission on the Environment has announced that it will consider a set of recommendations to protect the public from cell phone radiation. These recommendations, which have the tentative support of Mayor Gavin Newsom, include: -more-
The horrific disaster that has befallen Haiti is perhaps unprecedented in the Western hemisphere. Estimates now say that perhaps hundreds of thousands have died as a result of the Dec. 12 earthquake. Many in the media have constantly said, as a mantra, that the reason so many have died is because of the weak infrastructure and poor quality of construction there. The implication is that Haitians are unable to govern and build a reliable, sustainable society. -more-
Three UC Berkeley students initially thought missing in Haiti are safe and will help with relief efforts, the university said Thursday. -more-
The combination of watching the Berkeley City Council and hearing the results of the Massachusetts elections on Tuesday night could give you a serious case of mental indigestion: just too much to swallow in both cases. Even though it was completely predictable, even though I stopped just short of predicting it a couple of weeks ago in this space, Massachusetts was a sad spectacle. -more-
In November 1978 Harper’s magazine published my article on the passage of Proposition 13 with the headline “Californians Rush for Fool’s Gold.” -more-
The Board of Directors of the Free Speech Movement Archives (www. fsm-a.org) includes a number of participants from the 1964 Berkeley Free Speech Movement, and we believe we can speak with some authority on behalf of those who made that movement a success. -more-
On Dec. 15, 2009, the Berkeley City Council held a public hearing on the city’s proposed $8,000 lien concerning the boarding-up of Dr. Rash Ghosh’s McGee and Dwight property. City officials supervised the city’s boarding-up of Dr. Ghosh’s buildings, which violated its own order to board from the inside as well as a court order, and defeated the alleged purpose for boarding. -more-
In what is being hailed by electoral reform activists as a landmark victory for future third-party election efforts in the East Bay, the Oakland City Council on Jan. 5 passed a measure that dramatically transforms the City of Oakland’s election process. -more-
I am not a masochist and therefore I cannot explain why I allowed myself to suffer for two minutes seeing and listening to Bush and Clinton ask us to help Haiti (YouTube). My stomach turned over seeing George W, poised unblinkingly before the cameras, saying, “When confronted with massive human suffering Americans have always stepped up and answered to call to help.” Witnessing such incredible boldness is excruciating. Here was the worst president in our history speaking as if he sincerely wanted to do for the black residents of a benighted island what he failed to do for the black residents of his own country in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. -more-
Like Hurricane Katrina that ripped the Gulf Coast and New Orleans in particular, the earthquake that shook Haiti and Port-au-Prince is not simply a “natural disaster.” The death unfolding on a scale impossible to imagine is not simply the result of an “exceptional set of circumstances.” Rather, powerful impacts of this event are in large part due to past actions of the United States, uncovering the poverty that lurks just below the surface from Alexandria to Oakland. -more-
Thanks to a would-be Jockey-short Jihadist with three ounces of powdered explosive in his shorts, I recently found myself flying back to the U.S. smack in the midst of air travel’s Scared New World. The prospect of being denied access to a bathroom during the last hour of flight left me pondering the creative repurposing of airsickness bags. -more-
Police misconduct is epidemic in this country and anyone with two eyes and a heart knows this is true. The few protections against abuse that once existed have been removed. The Berkeley Police Review Commission, once a model for the nation, has been emasculated to the point that its hearings are held in secret and its findings are confidential. As most observers know, our elected officials are loathe to offer any public resistance to police supremacy. -more-
We have a national predisposition to hold assumptions and generalizations regarding people based on pigmentation and accents. Educated people who are white or have light enough skin and features that allow them to pass for white and who speak Standard English—as spoken by national network television newscasters—are more easily employed and elected to public office. There has always been a hierarchy based on color in America as well as within the black community itself. In white majority communities minorities, foreign-born and people of color are less likely to win elections. Unfortunately, historically in America the darker the skin and the stronger the accent the more limited the opportunities and the harder it is to get a job or elected to public office. -more-
Now that the Jew-on-Jew battle has reached the screechy stage (“Your side helped the Nazis!” “No we didn’t! You’re a Nazi for saying so!”), I strongly suggest that it’s time for Becky O’Malley to impose some filters; there’s no reason why the Berkely Daily Planet should provide a platform for a three-thousand-year-old-and-still-ongoing family argument. -more-
The recent stunning defeat of Democrat Martha Coakley by a previously unknown Republican state senator for Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat in Massachusetts is a wonderful gift to the Obama administration. -more-
The nation of Haiti—battered, bleeding Haiti—is on the minds and in the hearts of most of the world this week. Mark the moment well. It is fleeting. We are like the well-intentioned neighbors who crowd the home of the bereaved and the church on the day of the funeral but, except for a few loyal souls, leave the widow ever after lonely and alone in her house for long months on end ever after. Generous and sincere in the immediate aftermath, our attention span on great tragedies grows ever shorter. -more-
“The instability in Yemen is a threat -more-
Oakland’s Temescal district is best known today for its demographic diversity, most visibly manifested in the variety of its restaurants. Only one establishment, the venerable Genova Delicatessen, stands as a reminder of the neighborhood’s Italian past. -more-
Sometimes this dysfunctional city actually gets it right. Last year I had a conversation and some e-mail exchanges with David Snippen of the Berkeley Civic Arts Commission about an environmental art installation that was being planned for Cesar Chavez Park. The donor had stipulated the site, which was right on top of a stretch of riprap where a small group of western burrowing owls spend the winter. It sounded like a high-minded instance of plop art (remember the Marina’s notorious Guardian statue?) -more-
Some things are a bad idea no matter how you shake ’em. Government lobbying, TV shows involving supermodels, and pretty much anything involving a lot of helium balloons and lawn furniture. Oh, yes, and trying to refinish your own floors while your partner is off for the weekend. -more-
The Bay Area International Children’s Film Festival, founded last year as a one-day event by a group of parents whose children attend the Renaissance School in Oakland, will be held Saturday and Sunday at Michaan’s Auctions, the restored Art Deco movie -more-
Local Mozart aficionados look forward all year to the series of concerts presented at cities around the Bay Area by the Midsummer Mozart Festival under the direction of Maestro George Cleve. All year long, “spite of despondence” as Keats says, we draw comfort from our eager anticipation of the exciting Mozartean gifts that Cleve will unwrap for us at the July concerts. In the last few years, we have occasionally received a lagniappe in the form of a benefit concert, and this year is no exception with the extra event scheduled for Mozart’s 254th geburtstag on Sunday, Jan. 24, from 6:30 to 9 p.m. at the Berkeley City Club. -more-
After months of reports and rumors, it’s official: Anna’s Jazz Island is out and The Marsh is in. -more-
An “eternal juvenile” no more, Dick Powell finally broke free of the battery of baby-faced roles he endured in a seemingly endless series of bright-eyed 1930s Warner Bros. musicals. With middle age fast approaching, Powell struggled to carve out a new identity for himself, jumping ship from one studio to another in search of a new career path. -more-
Where have the mourning doves and hummingbirds gone? I used to hear a pair of murmuring doves as they explored, not silently, the sidewalk and nearby rooftop of my north Berkeley neighborhood. And hummingbirds flitted at feeders containing sugar water that hung from balconies (where permitted) and porches. Rachel Carson’s two favorite kinds of birds were the veery, a member of the thrush family, and the tern, a small, black-capped gull-like bird with forked tail. -more-
There's nothing like silence to focus the eye. In her low-fi experimental films of the 1970s, Chantal Akerman trained her camera on everyday life and allowed for no distractions. Without sound, without action — indeed, with little motion — she opened her lens to the commonplace, to the mundane, and taught her audience to look that much deeper at what lay before them. -more-
