Arts & Events

I don’t know how complete my diary will be next week as I’ve been summoned to report to jury duty on Monday. My first reaction was, did you not look at my age? I’m closer to 80 than 70, but then our President just turned 80 this week. Bernie Sanders is 81 and Noam Chomsky is 94. 

I always say, people age at different rates and so do bodies and minds. Age was the subject of my morning podcast. Reagan was showing signs of dementia in his second term (age 73-77) and Adam Schiff wrote in his book Midnight in Washington: How We Almost Lost Our Democracy and Still Could of the mental decline of Robert Mueller III (age 74 when Mueller report was released) 

When Elton John walked on and off the stage in 2019 in Vegas, then 72, he was no longer capable of the cartwheels and flips I saw him do across the stage at the end of his performance at Hollywood Bowl nearly 50 years earlier, when we were both in our early twenties. But as he sat down at the piano starting the evening performance, the music was richer and more dynamic. I said to my friends he walks like an old man and plays like a young man. 

If the Paradise City Council had listened to Mildred Eslin in 2014, the 88 year-old woman who was the lone voice in opposition to narrowing the road (road diet) in and out of Paradise, would that same road have become the “kill zone”, as it was labeled after the 2018 fire? Would 85 people have died? How prescient were her words, “The main thing is fire danger, if the council is searching for a way to diminish the population of Paradise, this would be the way to do it.” 

Vision Zero (reducing traffic deaths to zero) / road diets are the latest fashion in city planning. In “Artificial Gridlock: Who Put the ‘Die’ in LA Road DIEts?” published in L.A.’s online City Watch, Liz Amsden wrote that the LAPD reported that 294 people were killed in traffic collisions in 2021, 22% more than in 2020 and a 58% increase in pedestrian deaths since Vision Zero was launched. 

Road diets work in some places and not others. Dwight is much easier to cross at California with the reconfiguration. 

The main message is, road diets don’t work everywhere, and when they are on emergency access and evacuation routes, disaster isn’t far behind. That is the warning that Margot Smith has been making, and Liz Amsden lays it out clearly in her article with this: 

“As implemented in the United States, road diets have proven to be dangerous, doing the opposite of what they're supposed to – causing more accidents and fatalities, while slowing emergency responders from reaching people. 

It took an ambulance and fire engine nearly four minutes to travel four blocks to where a motorcyclist lay pinned under a semi due to the Venice Boulevard road diet.  

A road diet on Foothill Boulevard in the Sunland-Tujunga neighborhood during the 2017 La Tuna Fire, the biggest in Los Angeles in half a century, created a bottleneck for evacuations and blocked access by police and fire.  

The Sunland-Tujunga Neighborhood Council passed a motion to return the boulevard to four lanes, two in each direction to avoid a repeat, but the City ignored the request, and to add insult to injury has added another road diet, this one to La Tuna Canyon Road which is the sole route through hilly wildfire-prone terrain.  

Firefighters, paramedics, and police officers in Los Angeles and elsewhere have confirmed lane reductions, particularly so-called “road diets,” have significantly increased response times. Ask any first responder – even 30 seconds delay can mean the difference if someone lives or dies. 

The Paradise fire was so deadly because three years earlier a Complete Streets road diet narrowed the main road from four lanes to two creating total gridlock when residents attempted to flee the advancing flames. The fire department called it their kill zone. Places where there have been similar lane removals are being called death traps for fires still to come.  

Imposing solutions that worked in another country or even from another area of Los Angeles without addressing underlying needs and local concerns will never work in a city with so many geographically diverse neighborhoods.  

The goal of getting people out of their cars is based on the theory that people can readily shift to other ways of commuting. That is just plain balderdash for Los Angeles, which is an enormous, spread-out city with limited viable public transportation options.  

“Every road diet also exacerbates the problem of drivers cutting through side streets and residential neighborhoods, past schools and parks.”  

https://citywatchla.com/index.php/cw/los-angeles/24745-la-traffic-who-put-the-die-in-road-diets 

Fashion and fads are hard to break. Adeline, Telegraph, Hopkins are all mapped as emergency access and evacuation routes and are in some stage of planning for a road diet. Siegal & Strain is pushing a road diet for MLK Jr Way. Councilmember Taplin’s proposal for University Avenue listed in the draft agenda for December 13 makes five. If there is one takeaway, it is in the title “Who Put the DIE in Road DIEt.” If you follow the link, the “DIE”extends to businesses, in contrast to comments from Walk Bike Berkeley that the reconfiguration of Hopkins Street will benefit businesses. 

The City meetings piled up on Monday, with the main event being the City Council special meeting on the Fair Work Week Ordinance at 5 pm. I gave a description of the November 3 Fair Work Week filibuster in my November 6 edition of the Activist’s Diary. https://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2022-11-06/article/50047?headline=A-Berkeley-Activist-s-Diary-Week-Ending-November-6-2022--Kelly-Hammargren 

The effort for the Fair Work Week Ordinance started in 2018. Basically, it protects workers earning less than twice the minimum wage (under $33.98 per hour). In the Fair Work Week Ordinance, qualified current employed workers must be offered additional hours before new employees are hired or staffing agencies are called in. They also receive a minimum pay (4 hours of pay or the hours scheduled, whichever is less) when canceled in less than 24 hours. In scheduling changes of greater than 24 hours, the employee receives one hour of pay for the scheduling changes or cancellations. 

For those of us who have been tracking the Fair Work Week Ordinance and attended the November 3, 2022 council meeting, the core resistance was coming from the City of Berkeley Administration with game playing and pick up by Councilmembers Wengraf and Droste to carry administration water. 

Dee Williams-Ridley, City Manager and LaTanya Bellow, Deputy City Manager were not present Monday evening. Instead, in this round the City was represented by Paul Budenhaggen who was in general supportive and came with financial analysis that put objections to rest. Wengraf tried and failed to modify the proposed ordinance by excluding Longlife Medical Berkeley and changing the criteria for businesses exempted from the ordinance. 

Droste was absent the entire evening and Wengraf signed off the meeting according to record at 6:39 pm which I first noticed when the vote was called. The ordinance passed with no changes, with a unanimous vote by those remaining (Kesarwani, Taplin, Bartlett, Harrison, Hahn, Robinson and Arreguin). The meeting adjourned at 6:58 pm. 

In all the council meetings I’ve attended, I don’t ever recall Wengraf taking a stand alone. When she comes up for re-election in 2024 (if she runs) District 6 voters might want to ask why she left without staying just a few minutes longer to cast her vote for or against the Fair Work Week Ordinance. 

By Tuesday morning all that was left of City meetings was the Land Use, Housing and Economic Development special meeting at 9:30 am. The chair, Councilmember Rigel Robinson, announced that neither of the authors (Wengraf and Harrison) could attend for the single item on the agenda, so no action would be taken on the amendment to BMC Chapter 13.110, the COVID emergency eviction moratorium. Mayor Arreguin stepped in as an alternate for the meeting and opened his participation with the statement that he was opposed to the proposed amendment. With no action in the offing, I tuned out. The 1 ½ hour recording is available if you wish to listen, just go to the bottom of the page under Additional Information and click on audio recordings. https://berkeleyca.gov/your-government/city-council/council-committees/policy-committee-land-use-housing-economic-development 

The Community for a Cultural Civic Center (CCCC) met at noon on Monday to discuss the election results, the Civic Center Vision Plan open house and the status of the Turtle Island Monument Project. 

There was disappointment from some that Measure L didn’t pass, but no one thought there was going to be any significant contribution to the Civic Center. More than the election was the concern that the plan presented at the open house by Susi Mazuola from Siegal & Strain and Gehl Consultants was to move city offices into the Maudelle Shirek Building and relegate the media and the historical society museum to the basement. 

I said from the beginning that Measure L money would be going to vanity projects. The Civic Center plans presented at the open house certainly confirmed for me that my instinct was correct. Looks like if this goes forward, Berkeley can have its own multi-million-dollar expenditure, so the mayor and council can strut around in their new digs while community non-profits sit in any leftover space the basement, out of sight out of mind, sinking the community visions for use of Maudelle Shirek and the Veterans Buildings. 

The update on the Turtle Island Monument Project for the Civic Center Fountain brought more bad news. The architects, PGA Design Landscape Architects https://pgadesign.com/, have completely shut out the indigenous people that the monument is supposed to honor and the group that raised the money for the project. 

It is unknown what PGA Design Landscape Architects will present at the Landscape Preservation Commission on December 1 at 7 pm and at the Civic Center Commission on December 7. CCCC voted to send a letter to city council regarding the handling of the Turtle Island Monument Project. 

On October 11, 2022 Berkeley City Council voted to adopt the Land Acknowledgement Statement recognizing Berkeley as the ancestral, unceded home of the Ohlone people. The Land Acknowledgement is now included in writing (not recited) under preliminary matters in council regular meeting agendas (not special meetings or closed meeting agendas). 

Councilmember Hahn, who authored the acknowledgement, spoke about how much she learned in the process. There is much to learn, and one piece that barely hit the radar until notice of a hearing was published in New York Times, that the U.S. has yet to fulfill the promise of Article 7 in the Treaty of New Echota of 1835 / TREATY WITH THE CHEROKEE, 1835. Kim Teehee is the Cherokee Nation Delegate requesting to be seated as a nonvoting delegate in the House of Representatives. Teehee has been waiting three years, the Cherokees nearly 200 years for the vote of admission as a delegate to the House of Representatives. 

“ARTICLE 7. The Cherokee nation having already made great progress in civilization and deeming it important that every proper and laudable inducement should be offered to their people to improve their condition as well as to guard and secure in the most effectual manner the rights guaranteed to them in this treaty, and with a view to illustrate the liberal and enlarged policy of the Government of the United States towards the Indians in their removal beyond the territorial limits of the States, it is stipulated that they shall be entitled to a delegate in the House of Representatives of the United states whenever Congress shall make provision for the same.” 

https://americanindian.si.edu/static/nationtonation/pdf/Treaty-of-New-Echota-1835.pdf 

The community meeting on the Ohlone Park restroom and lighting is Wednesday evening at 6:30 pm. It has been ingrained for decades through scary movies and suspense scenes that crime lurks in the darkness and if we just have enough bright light we will be safe and secure. In the webinar “Light at Night: A Glowing Hazard” one of the speakers related how her partner’s catalytic converter was stolen from a vehicle parked in bright light right under a street light. 

Light at night disrupts our own circadian rhythm and wild life. The question is can we overcome our fear of the dark and put artificial light at night (ALAN) in the proper frame as light pollution and treat it like every other pollution? Reducing night light pollution means shielding light so it is directed to only where and when it is needed, placing fixtures close to the ground, using the least amount of light needed with the appropriate color temperature with red/orange/yellow wave lengths and utilizing timers and motion detectors. 

Dahlia Lithwick who as senior legal correspondent for Slate writes about law, the Supreme Court and hosts the podcast Amicus https://slate.com/podcasts/amicus is also the author of the book Lady Justice: Women, the Law, and the Battle to Save America. The early chapters are energizing reviews of women in law who took courageous stands, started programs, took on white supremacists, defended reproductive rights, like Sally Yates, serving as Acting Attorney General in the transition from President Obama to Trump, who refused to defend the Muslim ban, Becca Hellar who started the International Refugee Assistance Program and was instrumental organizing the lawyers that showed up at airports providing legal support during the Trump travel ban, and Roberta Kaplan and Karen Dunn who litigated Charlottesville. Bridgitte Ameri was the attorney assisting the teenager seeking an abortion in an ICE detention facility who overcame through appeal the 2 to 1 decision with Kavanaugh in the majority delaying access to abortion. 

The chapter titled MeToo speaks to the sexual harrassment of Judge Alex Kozinski, how Kozinski’s sexual misconduct was an “open secret” until Heidi Bond, a former clerk, finally blew the whistle in the Washington Post. Lithwick writes “Everybody knew something awful absolved all of us of the burden of doing anything. All of us hoping the story would break someday and we would be off the hook.” The powerful Judge Kozinski was in the position to make or break legal careers. For Brett Kavanaugh, clerking for Judge Kosinski was the step to clerking for Justice Kennedy and making his way to the Supreme Court. 

Lithwick lays out how those subjected to the harassment and the bystanders who stayed silent makes everyone complicit. It is the ethical question of when and where do we draw the line.