Public Comment

The Berkeley Public Library Board of Library Trustees will be voting this Wednesday, May 26^th on the FY 2022 tax rate for funding the provision of Library Services. The proposed rate is $0.2402 per sq ft for dwelling units and $0.3632 per sq ft for industrial, commercial and institutional buildings. I calculated that I pay about $270 for library services. With reading at least a book a week and sometimes two, I’m already seeing the return on investment in our local libraries. Out of the 27 books I’ve read since January 1, twenty-five were from the library. 

My last Diary (May 8^th) I ended with a quote from Stuart Stevens and recommendation of three books: It Was All a Lie: How the Republican Party Became Donald Trump by Stuart Stevens, Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism by Anne Applebaum and How Democracies Die by Daniel Ziblatt and Steven Levitsky. I think of these books as the cornerstone for framing how to view the removal of Liz Cheney from her leadership position, the January 6 insurrection, the refusal of Kevin McCarthy to support a commission investigating the January 6 Capitol riot, the rush of voting suppression laws and the vow by Mitch McConnell to block President Biden’s entire agenda. I highly recommend all three. They are all available from Bay Area libraries. If you did not read the May 8^th Activist’s Diary here is the link: https://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2021-05-09/article/49179?headline=An-Activist-s-Diary-Week-Ending-May-8--Kelly-Hammargren 

Applebaum said it in the title of her book, the seductive lure of authoritarianism. Ziblatt and Levitsky in How Democracies Die wrote that a politician that displays even one of these four characteristics should be cause for concern: 1) disrespects norms, rejects the democratic rules of the game, 2) denies the legitimacy of opponents, 3) tolerates or encourages violence, 4) indicates a willingness to curtail civil liberties of opponents and the press. With Trump we hit the jackpot: He displayed all four. There are others behind Trump vying for power that are just as dangerous to our democracy if not more so. 

I do not feel as confident as some of the TV pundits and commenters that this country will ride out the turmoil with an intact democracy at the end. From all angles, Trump has completely taken over the Republican party. It’s hard for us standing on the outside to understand how Trump became a cult that has infected not just the unhinged, but people we thought to be sane. There is much for concern, especially as long as Joe Manchin and fellow Democratic travelers cling to a belief that the GOP still cares about democracy and bipartisanship, the filibuster stands and the voting rights bills languish and die. 

The lure of power is very tempting. The drumbeat for authoritarianism continues to grow, fanned by Fox and like media outlets. When someone tells you a politician has no core but ambition, believe them. Personally, there is a 2014 campaign I wish I had worked on and a 2016 campaign to which I devoted hours of work that I now wish I had sat out. 

The May 25^th council meeting is just around the corner. Th Agenda and Rules Policy Committees are planning for the May 25^th regular council meeting. Councilmember Droste’s proposal to pare down the commissions by 50% under the guise of post COVID budget recovery finally made it to the full council agenda. Mayor Arreguin said that at the May 25 Council meeting he would move the Commission reorganization (item 41 in the May 25 final agenda) to consent to be rescheduled to June 15. 

Take a hard look at the plan and start putting your comments together. After attending all the meetings through this process, I can’t help but think of a familiar Grover Norquist quote applied to replacing government with commissions, “I don't want to abolish government [Commissions]. I simply want to reduce it [them] to the size where I can drag it [them] into the bathroom and drown it [them] in the bathtub.” 

The more I watch our city government, the more I see an opportunity squandered. It is not in my nature to give up, and nature is the key word. The more I learn, the more disappointed I am in the leadership of the City of Berkeley, especially in the Planning Department, City Council and City Manager. 

Instead of beefing up the commissions to be innovative, the city council is careening toward gutting them all under the banner of saving money. It doesn’t stop there. 

The May 18th special council meeting item 1 was Systems Realignment. This is all about a process for submitting “major” legislation with charts and committees, reviews and loops to jump through. Arreguin seems to be totally enthralled. There was pushback from other councilmembers. Harrison went through a list of all the things that would not have happened if council accepts this kind of structure. And, looking in, that seems to be the point. 

I had been wondering what the point was of the 82 pages of a duplicative, disorganized, undated list of 504 referrals to the city manager that is attached to the agenda committee and other packets. Now I know: It is so the city manager can whine about it at council meetings and offsites and use it to squelch new ordinances. The mayor can also use it to make the council look progressive, and then push passed ordinances onto a list where they will languish and die, like the Bird Safe Ordinance. 

At the May 11 council meeting, James McFadden summed up the city response to the climate crisis perfectly, “ I notice there are toothless items with a pro-environment slant. I thank the council for the pro-environment slant, but I think we ought to have something of substance…where Berkeley is doing more than cheerleading.. like banning all plastic containers for takeout food…[instead of] feel good that does nothing. 

Arreguin responded with the council passed a ban on single use plastic food containers in 2019. The problem is, of course, that there continues to be lots of single use plastic. In fact, my walk partner picked up sushi takeout in single use plastic just this week. Item 6 on the Zero Waste Commission agenda for Monday, May 24 should be interesting as it is an update from staff on the status of the single use foodware and litter reduction ordinance. 

Our City Auditor Jenny Wong has been making the rounds presenting Data Analysis of the City of Berkeley’s Police Response. https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Auditor/Home/Audit_Reports.aspx 

The Reimagining Public Safety Task Force heard it first, then council on May 11 and this Thursday is the Mental Health Commission’s turn. Here is the key:The audit found the same biased policing studying 2015 – 2019 as the Center for Policing Equity (CPE) looking at 2012 - 2016. https://www.cityofberkeley.info/CPEDraftInterimReport.aspx Note that there is an overlap of two years 2015 and 2016. The one shortcoming of the Auditor’s report is that the Auditor should have been given more time to gather data so the beat/location of police stops and calls could be plotted. 

There was supposed to be action on the findings of biased policing following the CPE report release in 2017. Those of us who attended the June 27, 2017 city council meeting will remember the resistance to making the CPE report public or even available to council. The important information from the audit is that nothing seems to have changed. If you are Black or Brown in Berkeley you will have a different experience with Berkeley Police than if you are White. 

I’ve been attending the Reimagining Public Safety Task Force meetings. The task force is a committed group and they are really digging in to the reimagining process. 

Peeling off some of the police calls to other service providers is important. Someone in a mental health crisis needs a mental health professional not a police person with guns, and the same for the homeless person who needs social services support, not a police person with guns. 

An update on the progress of developing a Special Care Unit for mental health calls will be presented to the Mental Health Commission Thursday, May 27. 

The bottom line is, what are we doing to deal with the core issue that results in biased policing. Will the reimagining process bring any more than moving the flags around as Dan Lindheim asked at the last task force meeting? Lindheim said that he has been through many reorganizations and looking at https://gspp.berkeley.edu/faculty-and-impact/faculty/daniel-n-lindheim he has the experience to pose that question. 

As a White person with White Privilege, I don’t know what it is like to live with daily microaggressions. I don’t know what it feels like to be questioned when entering my own home, as happened to a Black friend in Berkeley, followed through stores, stopped when I did nothing wrong, have to give the “talk” to a son or daughter. What I can do is listen, observe, record, educate myself in our long ugly history that continues to this day, monitor my own behavior and step in. 

As I have mentioned previously, I belong to a book club with a focus on politics, race and climate and I do a lot of reading outside of book club. Other book club members liked White Fragility by Robin DeAngelo. I thought Debbie Irving’s Waking Up White was better at pointing out what I call everyday racism, the microaggressions and actions to take to counter them. Both of these books built on our previous selections: White Rage, Just Mercy, The Color of Law, Between the World and Me, Dog Whistle Politics, African American and Latinx History of the United States, The Warmth of Other Suns, Caste and One Person No Vote. 

There is much to do and if the early responses to the Rights of Nature film Invisible Hand that I arranged with the support of Sustainable Berkeley Coalition and Berkeley Citizens Action is any indication, we will have a little more on our plate. 

If you managed to reach the end of this lengthy Diary, thank you. This was a long one. 

The Berkeley Public Library Board of Library Trustees will be voting this Wednesday, May 26^th on the FY 2022 tax rate for funding the provision of Library Services. The proposed rate is $0.2402 per sq ft for dwelling units and $0.3632 per sq ft for industrial, commercial and institutional buildings. I calculated that I pay about $270 for library services. With reading at least a book a week and sometimes two, I’m already seeing the return on investment in our local libraries. Out of the 27 books I’ve read since January 1, twenty-five were from the library. 

My last Diary (May 8^th) I ended with a quote from Stuart Stevens and recommendation of three books: It Was All a Lie: How the Republican Party Became Donald Trump by Stuart Stevens, Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism by Anne Applebaum and How Democracies Die by Daniel Ziblatt and Steven Levitsky. I think of these books as the cornerstone for framing how to view the removal of Liz Cheney from her leadership position, the January 6 insurrection, the refusal of Kevin McCarthy to support a commission investigating the January 6 Capitol riot, the rush of voting suppression laws and the vow by Mitch McConnell to block President Biden’s entire agenda. I highly recommend all three. They are all available from Bay Area libraries. If you did not read the May 8^th Activist’s Diary here is the link: https://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2021-05-09/article/49179?headline=An-Activist-s-Diary-Week-Ending-May-8--Kelly-Hammargren 

Applebaum said it in the title of her book, the seductive lure of authoritarianism. Ziblatt and Levitsky in How Democracies Die wrote that a politician that displays even one of these four characteristics should be cause for concern: 1) disrespects norms, rejects the democratic rules of the game, 2) denies the legitimacy of opponents, 3) tolerates or encourages violence, 4) indicates a willingness to curtail civil liberties of opponents and the press. With Trump we hit the jackpot: He displayed all four. There are others behind Trump vying for power that are just as dangerous to our democracy if not more so. 

I do not feel as confident as some of the TV pundits and commenters that this country will ride out the turmoil with an intact democracy at the end. From all angles, Trump has completely taken over the Republican party. It’s hard for us standing on the outside to understand how Trump became a cult that has infected not just the unhinged, but people we thought to be sane. There is much for concern, especially as long as Joe Manchin and fellow Democratic travelers cling to a belief that the GOP still cares about democracy and bipartisanship, the filibuster stands and the voting rights bills languish and die. 

The lure of power is very tempting. The drumbeat for authoritarianism continues to grow, fanned by Fox and like media outlets. When someone tells you a politician has no core but ambition, believe them. Personally, there is a 2014 campaign I wish I had worked on and a 2016 campaign to which I devoted hours of work that I now wish I had sat out. 

The May 25^th council meeting is just around the corner. Th Agenda and Rules Policy Committees are planning for the May 25^th regular council meeting. Councilmember Droste’s proposal to pare down the commissions by 50% under the guise of post COVID budget recovery finally made it to the full council agenda. Mayor Arreguin said that at the May 25 Council meeting he would move the Commission reorganization (item 41 in the May 25 final agenda) to consent to be rescheduled to June 15. 

Take a hard look at the plan and start putting your comments together. After attending all the meetings through this process, I can’t help but think of a familiar Grover Norquist quote applied to replacing government with commissions, “I don't want to abolish government [Commissions]. I simply want to reduce it [them] to the size where I can drag it [them] into the bathroom and drown it [them] in the bathtub.” 

The more I watch our city government, the more I see an opportunity squandered. It is not in my nature to give up, and nature is the key word. The more I learn, the more disappointed I am in the leadership of the City of Berkeley, especially in the Planning Department, City Council and City Manager. 

Instead of beefing up the commissions to be innovative, the city council is careening toward gutting them all under the banner of saving money. It doesn’t stop there. 

The May 18th special council meeting item 1 was Systems Realignment. This is all about a process for submitting “major” legislation with charts and committees, reviews and loops to jump through. Arreguin seems to be totally enthralled. There was pushback from other councilmembers. Harrison went through a list of all the things that would not have happened if council accepts this kind of structure. And, looking in, that seems to be the point. 

I had been wondering what the point was of the 82 pages of a duplicative, disorganized, undated list of 504 referrals to the city manager that is attached to the agenda committee and other packets. Now I know: It is so the city manager can whine about it at council meetings and offsites and use it to squelch new ordinances. The mayor can also use it to make the council look progressive, and then push passed ordinances onto a list where they will languish and die, like the Bird Safe Ordinance. 

At the May 11 council meeting, James McFadden summed up the city response to the climate crisis perfectly, “ I notice there are toothless items with a pro-environment slant. I thank the council for the pro-environment slant, but I think we ought to have something of substance…where Berkeley is doing more than cheerleading.. like banning all plastic containers for takeout food…[instead of] feel good that does nothing. 

Arreguin responded with the council passed a ban on single use plastic food containers in 2019. The problem is, of course, that there continues to be lots of single use plastic. In fact, my walk partner picked up sushi takeout in single use plastic just this week. Item 6 on the Zero Waste Commission agenda for Monday, May 24 should be interesting as it is an update from staff on the status of the single use foodware and litter reduction ordinance. 

Our City Auditor Jenny Wong has been making the rounds presenting Data Analysis of the City of Berkeley’s Police Response. https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Auditor/Home/Audit_Reports.aspx 

The Reimagining Public Safety Task Force heard it first, then council on May 11 and this Thursday is the Mental Health Commission’s turn. Here is the key:The audit found the same biased policing studying 2015 – 2019 as the Center for Policing Equity (CPE) looking at 2012 - 2016. https://www.cityofberkeley.info/CPEDraftInterimReport.aspx Note that there is an overlap of two years 2015 and 2016. The one shortcoming of the Auditor’s report is that the Auditor should have been given more time to gather data so the beat/location of police stops and calls could be plotted. 

There was supposed to be action on the findings of biased policing following the CPE report release in 2017. Those of us who attended the June 27, 2017 city council meeting will remember the resistance to making the CPE report public or even available to council. The important information from the audit is that nothing seems to have changed. If you are Black or Brown in Berkeley you will have a different experience with Berkeley Police than if you are White. 

I’ve been attending the Reimagining Public Safety Task Force meetings. The task force is a committed group and they are really digging in to the reimagining process. 

Peeling off some of the police calls to other service providers is important. Someone in a mental health crisis needs a mental health professional not a police person with guns, and the same for the homeless person who needs social services support, not a police person with guns. 

An update on the progress of developing a Special Care Unit for mental health calls will be presented to the Mental Health Commission Thursday, May 27. 

The bottom line is, what are we doing to deal with the core issue that results in biased policing. Will the reimagining process bring any more than moving the flags around as Dan Lindheim asked at the last task force meeting? Lindheim said that he has been through many reorganizations and looking at https://gspp.berkeley.edu/faculty-and-impact/faculty/daniel-n-lindheim he has the experience to pose that question. 

As a White person with White Privilege, I don’t know what it is like to live with daily microaggressions. I don’t know what it feels like to be questioned when entering my own home, as happened to a Black friend in Berkeley, followed through stores, stopped when I did nothing wrong, have to give the “talk” to a son or daughter. What I can do is listen, observe, record, educate myself in our long ugly history that continues to this day, monitor my own behavior and step in. 

As I have mentioned previously, I belong to a book club with a focus on politics, race and climate and I do a lot of reading outside of book club. Other book club members liked White Fragility by Robin DeAngelo. I thought Debbie Irving’s Waking Up White was better at pointing out what I call everyday racism, the microaggressions and actions to take to counter them. Both of these books built on our previous selections: White Rage, Just Mercy, The Color of Law, Between the World and Me, Dog Whistle Politics, African American and Latinx History of the United States, The Warmth of Other Suns, Caste and One Person No Vote. 

There is much to do and if the early responses to the Rights of Nature film Invisible Hand that I arranged with the support of Sustainable Berkeley Coalition and Berkeley Citizens Action is any indication, we will have a little more on our plate. 

If you managed to reach the end of this lengthy Diary, thank you. This was a long one. 

The Berkeley Public Library Board of Library Trustees will be voting this Wednesday, May 26^th on the FY 2022 tax rate for funding the provision of Library Services. The proposed rate is $0.2402 per sq ft for dwelling units and $0.3632 per sq ft for industrial, commercial and institutional buildings. I calculated that I pay about $270 for library services. With reading at least a book a week and sometimes two, I’m already seeing the return on investment in our local libraries. Out of the 27 books I’ve read since January 1, twenty-five were from the library. 

My last Diary (May 8^th) I ended with a quote from Stuart Stevens and recommendation of three books: It Was All a Lie: How the Republican Party Became Donald Trump by Stuart Stevens, Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism by Anne Applebaum and How Democracies Die by Daniel Ziblatt and Steven Levitsky. I think of these books as the cornerstone for framing how to view the removal of Liz Cheney from her leadership position, the January 6 insurrection, the refusal of Kevin McCarthy to support a commission investigating the January 6 Capitol riot, the rush of voting suppression laws and the vow by Mitch McConnell to block President Biden’s entire agenda. I highly recommend all three. They are all available from Bay Area libraries. If you did not read the May 8^th Activist’s Diary here is the link: https://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2021-05-09/article/49179?headline=An-Activist-s-Diary-Week-Ending-May-8--Kelly-Hammargren 

Applebaum said it in the title of her book, the seductive lure of authoritarianism. Ziblatt and Levitsky in How Democracies Die wrote that a politician that displays even one of these four characteristics should be cause for concern: 1) disrespects norms, rejects the democratic rules of the game, 2) denies the legitimacy of opponents, 3) tolerates or encourages violence, 4) indicates a willingness to curtail civil liberties of opponents and the press. With Trump we hit the jackpot: He displayed all four. There are others behind Trump vying for power that are just as dangerous to our democracy if not more so. 

I do not feel as confident as some of the TV pundits and commenters that this country will ride out the turmoil with an intact democracy at the end. From all angles, Trump has completely taken over the Republican party. It’s hard for us standing on the outside to understand how Trump became a cult that has infected not just the unhinged, but people we thought to be sane. There is much for concern, especially as long as Joe Manchin and fellow Democratic travelers cling to a belief that the GOP still cares about democracy and bipartisanship, the filibuster stands and the voting rights bills languish and die. 

The lure of power is very tempting. The drumbeat for authoritarianism continues to grow, fanned by Fox and like media outlets. When someone tells you a politician has no core but ambition, believe them. Personally, there is a 2014 campaign I wish I had worked on and a 2016 campaign to which I devoted hours of work that I now wish I had sat out. 

The May 25^th council meeting is just around the corner. Th Agenda and Rules Policy Committees are planning for the May 25^th regular council meeting. Councilmember Droste’s proposal to pare down the commissions by 50% under the guise of post COVID budget recovery finally made it to the full council agenda. Mayor Arreguin said that at the May 25 Council meeting he would move the Commission reorganization (item 41 in the May 25 final agenda) to consent to be rescheduled to June 15. 

Take a hard look at the plan and start putting your comments together. After attending all the meetings through this process, I can’t help but think of a familiar Grover Norquist quote applied to replacing government with commissions, “I don't want to abolish government [Commissions]. I simply want to reduce it [them] to the size where I can drag it [them] into the bathroom and drown it [them] in the bathtub.” 

The more I watch our city government, the more I see an opportunity squandered. It is not in my nature to give up, and nature is the key word. The more I learn, the more disappointed I am in the leadership of the City of Berkeley, especially in the Planning Department, City Council and City Manager. 

Instead of beefing up the commissions to be innovative, the city council is careening toward gutting them all under the banner of saving money. It doesn’t stop there. 

The May 18th special council meeting item 1 was Systems Realignment. This is all about a process for submitting “major” legislation with charts and committees, reviews and loops to jump through. Arreguin seems to be totally enthralled. There was pushback from other councilmembers. Harrison went through a list of all the things that would not have happened if council accepts this kind of structure. And, looking in, that seems to be the point. 

I had been wondering what the point was of the 82 pages of a duplicative, disorganized, undated list of 504 referrals to the city manager that is attached to the agenda committee and other packets. Now I know: It is so the city manager can whine about it at council meetings and offsites and use it to squelch new ordinances. The mayor can also use it to make the council look progressive, and then push passed ordinances onto a list where they will languish and die, like the Bird Safe Ordinance. 

At the May 11 council meeting, James McFadden summed up the city response to the climate crisis perfectly, “ I notice there are toothless items with a pro-environment slant. I thank the council for the pro-environment slant, but I think we ought to have something of substance…where Berkeley is doing more than cheerleading.. like banning all plastic containers for takeout food…[instead of] feel good that does nothing. 

Arreguin responded with the council passed a ban on single use plastic food containers in 2019. The problem is, of course, that there continues to be lots of single use plastic. In fact, my walk partner picked up sushi takeout in single use plastic just this week. Item 6 on the Zero Waste Commission agenda for Monday, May 24 should be interesting as it is an update from staff on the status of the single use foodware and litter reduction ordinance. 

Our City Auditor Jenny Wong has been making the rounds presenting Data Analysis of the City of Berkeley’s Police Response. https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Auditor/Home/Audit_Reports.aspx 

The Reimagining Public Safety Task Force heard it first, then council on May 11 and this Thursday is the Mental Health Commission’s turn. Here is the key:The audit found the same biased policing studying 2015 – 2019 as the Center for Policing Equity (CPE) looking at 2012 - 2016. https://www.cityofberkeley.info/CPEDraftInterimReport.aspx Note that there is an overlap of two years 2015 and 2016. The one shortcoming of the Auditor’s report is that the Auditor should have been given more time to gather data so the beat/location of police stops and calls could be plotted. 

There was supposed to be action on the findings of biased policing following the CPE report release in 2017. Those of us who attended the June 27, 2017 city council meeting will remember the resistance to making the CPE report public or even available to council. The important information from the audit is that nothing seems to have changed. If you are Black or Brown in Berkeley you will have a different experience with Berkeley Police than if you are White. 

I’ve been attending the Reimagining Public Safety Task Force meetings. The task force is a committed group and they are really digging in to the reimagining process. 

Peeling off some of the police calls to other service providers is important. Someone in a mental health crisis needs a mental health professional not a police person with guns, and the same for the homeless person who needs social services support, not a police person with guns. 

An update on the progress of developing a Special Care Unit for mental health calls will be presented to the Mental Health Commission Thursday, May 27. 

The bottom line is, what are we doing to deal with the core issue that results in biased policing. Will the reimagining process bring any more than moving the flags around as Dan Lindheim asked at the last task force meeting? Lindheim said that he has been through many reorganizations and looking at https://gspp.berkeley.edu/faculty-and-impact/faculty/daniel-n-lindheim he has the experience to pose that question. 

As a White person with White Privilege, I don’t know what it is like to live with daily microaggressions. I don’t know what it feels like to be questioned when entering my own home, as happened to a Black friend in Berkeley, followed through stores, stopped when I did nothing wrong, have to give the “talk” to a son or daughter. What I can do is listen, observe, record, educate myself in our long ugly history that continues to this day, monitor my own behavior and step in. 

As I have mentioned previously, I belong to a book club with a focus on politics, race and climate and I do a lot of reading outside of book club. Other book club members liked White Fragility by Robin DeAngelo. I thought Debbie Irving’s Waking Up White was better at pointing out what I call everyday racism, the microaggressions and actions to take to counter them. Both of these books built on our previous selections: White Rage, Just Mercy, The Color of Law, Between the World and Me, Dog Whistle Politics, African American and Latinx History of the United States, The Warmth of Other Suns, Caste and One Person No Vote. 

There is much to do and if the early responses to the Rights of Nature film Invisible Hand that I arranged with the support of Sustainable Berkeley Coalition and Berkeley Citizens Action is any indication, we will have a little more on our plate. 

If you managed to reach the end of this lengthy Diary, thank you. This was a long one.