Public Comment

Mari Mendonca, candidate for Berkeley City Council, has a clearly iterated understanding of the importance of open, natural space.

She recognizes Measure L as "a lofty wish list of vague goals with no specific plan, no accountability and no oversight."

Willing to publicly question the dominant narrative, Mari will open the door to the substantive debate lacking within the council; and potentially inspire sleeping dragons to rise. Many aspects of the shadowed, uninspired, lifeless Berkeley plan proclaimed to preserve climate are diametrically opposed to its stated goal. Resemblant of the Pied Piper, it seems our present city council will lead us to "go gently into the good night." I think Mari may be 'just what the doctor ordered' to facilitate a directional pivot of momentum leading toward sunshine and wakefulness.

I write this with profound sadness, as tomorrow another 100-foot tree will be killed to make space for two ADU's that will 'fill in' over a thriving established regenerative organic garden. The squirrels who nest in the tree will lose their home. Our crow friends and hawks will not be visiting. Hummingbirds, smaller corvids, green finches, bumblebees, honey bees, metallic green bees will no longer avail themselves of the bountiful flowers and seeds. Swallowtail, buckeye, painted lady, monarch and gulf fritillary butterflies will not be sustained. Their eggs, laid carefully on their host passion vines and aromatic fennel, if they have time to hatch, will not have time to metamorphose from larvae into butterflies.

I am so, so sorry. I'm not sure we humans deserve you. 

I thank you, acacia tree for the shade, the oxygen, the wind and heat mitigation, the hosting of birds and squirrels, the conversations of your leaves as they dance with the wind, for your roots that hold together the earth, drink and retain water in the ground. Thank you squirrels for endless entertainment as you chatter and chase one another up and down the tree. Thank you, corvids, for your company and your patience when I attempt to emulate some of your language. You are loved. 

Another hundred-foot tree on the block was killed a few months ago, but for a better reason, to my mind, as arborists told the owners the tree might fall. This at a house that is empty, purchased by investors a few years ago. 

The house next door is to be demolished and 2 houses will go up, covering most of the nature-filled yard with cement, further destabilizing West Berkeley's liquefaction-prone foundation. 

As I mourn, I am wondering what is wrong with the city council and mayor of Berkeley. Where is the life-affirming energy of the Free Speech Movement, the Black and Gray Panthers, the dynamic substantive debate? 

Does the council and mayor have Stockholm Syndrome? Investments in pharmaceuticals (which might explain ongoing mandates that City of Berkeley employees take particular drugs)? Partnerships with real estate developers? Are they banking political capital by planning for three times the state required quotas for 'housing' in Berkeley? Why are they allowing/encouraging development before we have functional public transit? With Mayor Arreguin's massive conflict of interest with his position as president of the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG), why does he not recuse himself from any votes on the subject of development? The City of Berkeley colludes with, praises and advertises Monsanto/Bayer--two corporations that have and continue to cause massive climate change with bee-killing Round-Up, neonicotinoids, and myriad facilitations of destructive agricultural practices. 

Judging by the obsequious praise of the city manager for sometimes doing her job, even while she refuses to take responsibility for hiring an incompetent group of IT people to 'fix' the web site, who instead created a web site that seems to intentionally further abrogate the democratic process, all the council and the mayor fear the city manager (who recently receiving an $80,000 raise.) 

The present city council is an echo chamber of mind-obliterating platitudes, with group-think vocabulary displaying an astounding paucity of personal integrity and apparent willingness to deceive. 

We will not balance the climate by destroying the ecosystem, murdering trees and manufacturing a sterile, sun-blocking environment wherein plant life will not thrive. Nature is irreplaceable. Those who enjoy breathing might want to remember that photosynthesis creates oxygen; and thank every leaf on every tree, every blade of grass, bacteria, fungi, archaea and the mycelium through which the plant kingdom communicates. 

I will be supporting Mari Mendonca for city council. 

We require diversity of thought, personal integrity and courage to stand up even while most seem to be hypnotized. 

Please wake up, Berkeley. 

And if anyone else can relate, please send prayers, love, light, energy, apologies and/or gratitude to West Berkeley trees, butterflies, birds, squirrels, opossums, skunks, bees, and bacteria.