As someone whose west Berkeley neighborhood just suffered three shootings in three days, I'm always amused when the university's spokesperson, Dan Mogulof describes People's Park as "attracting crime" as he just did in the San Francisco Chronicle. This is the same university I attended and graduated from which suddenly, absent any factual foundation, described me and former Ashkenaz owner David Nadel in a SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) as a "key leader in a violent conspiracy" in 1992 when, as now, a group of us formed to oppose the destruction of People's Park.
Several million public dollars later the university removed its own sand pit volleyball courts which had most definitely attracted years of creative protest. That predictable fact cost both the university and the City of Berkeley unnecessary millions.
The supposedly top university has, apparently, learned nothing. The most renowned landmark in town, People's Park, is surrounded by at least eleven additional landmarks including the First Church of Christ, Scientist built by Bernard Maybeck in 1910, which is on the National Register, as People's Park soon will be.
Keep a couple things in mind as the university gets its preferred headline that "housing" is on its way to People's Park. The university isn't building "housing"; it's building short-term luxury student rentals which well-off students can utilize for only two years before they're swimming in the same predictable, deliberately planned, politically lucrative housing market the rest of us do.
And the over-enrollment by thousands which helped create the housing crisis was recognized - and just capped - by Judge Seligman who, unlike our mayor, managed to see that square footage is not only finite, the university itself chose only sites right next to its campus in a tight ring of proposed high-rises despite being the largest landowner in California.
The university's decades-old effort to annihilate People's Park and any recognition of the role it plays in resistance history is an old song. And we have a new song; respect natural landscapes, irreplaceable open space, redwoods, and significant cultural history while building real housing in the places where it will be welcomed. And apologize for costing lives, business, and educational focus along the way.
As someone who's played music and gardened at People's Park for over 50 years, I can assure you that these headlines reflecting the university's wishful thinking always show up every five to ten years just like successive chancellors' claims that destroying People's Park has "student support", and they're always wrong. Be sure to ask your City Council how many lives they're willing to lose this time.
For over 50 years I have been writing about foreign policy, mostly America’s, but those of other nations as well. I think I have a pretty good grasp of countries like Turkey, China, India, Russia and the European Union. I regret that I am less than sure-footed in Africa and Latin America.
During this time I have also learned a fair amount about military matters and various weapons systems, because they cost enormous amounts of money that could be put to much better use than killing and maiming people. But also because it’s hard to resist the absurd: the high performance US F-35 fighter jet--at $1.7 trillion, the most expensive weapons system in US history--that costs $36,000 an hour to fly, shoots itself, and can decapitate pilots who attempt to bail out. There are, as well, the $640 toilet seats, the $7,622 coffee maker, and the fact that the Department of Defense cannot account for $6.5 trillion in spending.
I have also become fairly conversant with the major nuclear arms agreements and I know what Article VI of the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty says (more on this later).
This is a farewell column, so I ask for your indulgence. Having (hopefully) beaten back cancer, I have decided to spend more time with my grandkids and maybe return to my three novels (I have at least one more in my head). But I would like a last hurrah about what I have learned about the world and politics over that last half century, so bear with me.
First, wars are really a bad idea, and not just for the obvious reason that they cause enormous misery and pain. They don’t work, at least in the sense that they accomplish some political end.
The United States is finally withdrawing from Afghanistan and contemplating getting out of Iraq. Both were disasters of the catastrophic variety. If anyone in the Oval Office or the Pentagon had bothered to read Ruyard Kipling on Afghanistan (Arithmetic on the Frontier comes to mind) and DH Lawrence on Iraq (the Algebra of Occupation is worthwhile) they would have known better.
But the illusions of Empire are stubborn. The US still thinks it can control the world, when every experience for the past 50 years or more suggests it can’t: Vietnam, Somalia, Libya, Afghanistan and Iraq. Indeed, the last war we “won” was Grenada, where the competition was not exactly world class.
Americans are not alone in the delusion of confusing the present for the past. The British are sending the aircraft carrier HMSQueen Elizabeth and a destroyer to the South China Sea--to do what? The days when Charles “Chinese” Gordon could scatter the locals with a few gun boats is long gone. What the People’s Republic will make of Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s nostalgia for Lord Nelson and Trafalgar is anyone’s guess, but Beijing is more likely to be amused than intimidated by a mid-size flat top and a tin can.
China is not out to conquer the world. It wants to be the planet’s biggest economy and to sell everyone lots of stuff. In short, exactly what Britain wanted in the 19th Century and the US wanted in the 20th. The Chinese do insist on military control of their local seas, in much the same way that the US controls its east, west and southern coasts. Imagine how Washington would react to Chinese warships regularly exercising off of Pearl Harbor, San Diego, Newport News, and in the Gulf of Mexico.
Are the Chinese heavy handed about this? Yes, indeed, and they have unnecessarily alienated a number of nations in the region including Vietnam, the Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia and Japan. Demilitarizing the East and South China seas would reduce tensions and remove the rationale for Beijing’s illegal seizure of small islands, reefs and shoals in the area. China will have to realize that it can’t unilaterally violate international law through its claims over most of the South China Sea, and the US will have to accept that the Pacific Ocean is no longer an American lake.
The Russians are coming! The Russians are coming! Actually, no they are not, and it is time to stop the silliness about Russian hordes massing on the border ready to overrun the Ukraine or the Baltic states. What those troops were doing late last spring was responding to a plan by NATO for a huge military exercise, “Steadfast Defender.” Russia is not trying to recreate the Soviet Union. Its economy is about the size of Italy’s, and the current problems stem from the profoundly stupid decision to move NATO eastwards. The Russians are sensitive about their borders, with good reason.
We can thank presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush for disinterring this particular aspect of the Cold War. Both presidents expanded NATO, and Bush unilaterally withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM) and began deploying anti-missile systems in Poland and Romania. NATO claims the ABMs are aimed at Iran, but Iran doesn’t have missiles that can reach Europe and it doesn’t possess nuclear weapons. The Russians would be foolish to draw any other conclusion but that those ABMs are targeting Moscow’s missiles.
NATO has become a zombie alliance, staggering from one disaster to another: Afghanistan, then Libya, and now the US is pressing NATO to confront China in Asia (unlikely--Europeans view China as an invaluable market not a threat).
NATO should go the way of the Warsaw Pact, and the US should rejoin the anti-ballistic missile agreement. Removing the ABM missiles might, in turn, lead to re-establishing the Intermediate Nuclear Force Agreement, an extremely important treaty from which the US also unilaterally withdrew.
Israel needs to study some Irish history. In 1609, the native population of what became Northern Ireland was forcibly removed to Connaught in the island’s west, and replaced by 20,000 Protestant tenants. The upcoming census is almost certain to show that Catholics now constitute a majority in Northern Ireland.
The moral? Walls and fences and apartheid policies will not make the Palestinians go away or cause them to forget that much of their land was stolen.
In the short run, the rightwing settlers may get their way, just as the Protestant settlers did more than 400 years ago. But history is long, and the Palestinains are no more likely to disappear than the native Irish did. It would save a lot of bloodshed and communal hate if the Israelis removed the West Bank and Golan settlers, shared Jerusalem and let the Palistinains have their own viable state. Alternative? A one state, one person, one vote democracy.
The US should also end Israel’s “special status.” Why are we not as outraged with apartheid in Israel as we were with apartheid in South Africa? Why do we ignore the fact that Israel has nuclear weapons? When Americans lecture other countries about maintaining a “rules based” world, can you blame them if they roll their eyes? Why is it “illegal” for Iran to acquire nukes when Tel Aviv gets a pass?
The Biden administration is fond of using the term “existential” in reference to climate change, and the term is not an exaggeration. Our species is at a crossroads, and the time for action is distressingly short. By 2050, some 600 million Indians will have inadequate access to water. Vanishing glaciers are systematically draining the water reserves of the Himalayasians, the Hindu Kush, the Andes and the Rockies. While much of the world will face water shortages, some will experience the opposite, as Germans and Chinese recently discovered. Water is a worldwide crisis and there are few blueprints about how to deal with it, although the 1960 Indus Valley water treaty between India and Pakistan could serve as a template.
There is simply no way that the world can tackle climate change and still continue to spend--according to the Stockholm International Peace Institute--almost $2 trillion a year on weapons. Nor can the US afford to support its empire of bases, some 800 worldwide, the same number as Britain had in 1885.
However, climate change is not the only “existential” threat to our species. Somehow nuclear weapons have dropped off the radar as a global threat, but currently there are major nuclear arms races underway involving China, India, Pakistan,North Korea,Russia and NATO. The US is spending upwards of $1 trillion modernizing its nuclear triad of aircraft, ships and missiles.
Sanctions, as journalist Patrick Cockburn argues, are war crimes, and no country in the world applies them as widely and with such vigor as the US. Our sanctions have impoverished North Korea, Iraq, Iran, Venezuela, and Syria, and inflict unnecessary pain on Cuba. They raise tensions with Russia and China. And why do we apply them? Because countries do things we don’t like or insist on economic and political systems that we don’t agree with. Washington can do it because we control the de facto world currency, the dollar, and countries that cross us can lose their ability to engage in international banking. The French bank BNP Paribas was forced to pay $9 billion in fines for bypassing sanctions on Iran.
And sanctions have almost always failed.
On self-determination:
Dear Spanish government: Let the Catalans vote in peace and accept the results if they decide they want to go their own way. Ditto for the Scots, the people of Kashmir, and, sometime in the future, the Northern Irish. You can’t force people to be part of your country if they don’t want to be, and trying to make them is like teaching a pig to whistle: can’t be done and annoys the pig.
Refugees: The US and NATO cannot destabilize countries like Afghanistan, Syria, and Libya and then pull up the drawbridge when people flee the chaos those wars have generated. The colonial countries that exploited and retarded the development of countries in Africa and Latin America cannot wash their hands of the problems of post-colonialism. And the industrial countries that destabilized the climate can’t avoid their responsibility for tens of millions of global warming refugees. In any case, the US, Europe and Japan need those immigrants, because the depressed birth rates in developed countries mean they are heading for serious demographic trouble.
Hypocrisy: The world rightfully condems the assassination of political opponents by Russia and Saudi Arabia, but it should be equally outraged when the Israelis systematically kill Iranian scientists, or when the US takes out Iranian leaders with a drone attack. You don’t have the right to kill someone just because you don’t like what they stand for. How do you think Americans would react to Iran assassinating US Gen. Mark Milley, the head of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff?
The world desperately needs an international health treaty to confront future pandemics and must guarantee that it includes the poorest countries on the globe. This is not altruism. If countries can’t provide healthcare for their residents, that should be a responsibility for the international community, because untreated populations give rise to mutations like the Delta variant. Ask not for whom the bells tolls. It tolls for us all.
American exceptionalism is an albatross around our necks, blocking us from seeing that other countries and other systems may do things better than we do. No other country accepts that Americans are superior, especially after four years of Donald Trump, the pandemic debacle and the Jan. 6 insurrection in Washington. Who would want the level of economic inequality in this country, or our prison population, the highest in the world? Is being 44th on the World Press Freedom Index, or 18th on the Social Progress Index something we should take pride in? What we can take pride in is our diversity. Therein lies the country’s real potential.
Finally, to Article VI of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty: “Each of the Parties to the Treaty undertakes to pursue negotiation in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament and on a Treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.” Amen.
Pie in the sky? An old man’s wish list? Well, the one thing I have learned in these past 50 plus years is that things happen if enough people decide they should. So to quote that rather clunky line from Pete Seeger’s “One Man’s Hands,” sung widely during the ‘60s peace movement: “If two and two and 50 make a million, we’ll see that day come ‘round.”
Harvey Smith, People’s Park Historic District Advocacy Group
Monday September 27, 2021 - 03:31:00 PM
The Regents of the University of California are poised to vote this Wednesday for the destruction of People’s Park in Berkeley. The Capital Strategies Committee will recommend whether to move forward on a massive new 12 story housing project on the site, located ¼ mile south of the UC Berkeley campus.
While student housing in Berkeley is a critical need, UC Berkeley has other sites that do not destroy the cultural and historical legacy of the city. The project will severely impact several surrounding architectural landmarks, including the National Historic Landmark First Church of Christ Scientist, designed by renowned Berkeley architect Bernard Maybeck.
UC Berkeley’s Long Range Development Plan (LRDP) failed to adequately study the impacts of the project and to implement mitigation measures that would reduce its impact.
People's Park Historic District Advocacy Group and Make UC A Good Neighbor (both nonprofit organizations) have challenged the LRDP and another out of scale project Berkeley project, the proposed Anchor House. Should the Regents approve the People’s Park project, the two organizations will challenge the environmental study as inadequate.
###
Background
This lawsuit will build on a previous win in court on limiting unmitigated UC Berkeley growth and will challenge UC Berkeley’s poor strategic decisions for eliminating its budget deficit through monetizing public assets.
The primary issue is UC Berkeley expansion and overreach into Berkeley, which would destroy irreplaceable open space of People’s Park but also many sites and buildings in Berkeley over the 16-year span of the plan. Every Berkeley resident will eventually be affected by UCB’s corporate-like growth.
Davarian L. Baldwin’s recent book In the Shadow of the Ivory Tower: How Universities Are Plundering Our Cities details four other cities that mimic what is happening in Berkeley, questioning if university for-profit enterprises are in conflict with their public education missions. Cal's unrestrained growth is part of the larger process of gentrification that has led to the decline in Black population in many Bay Area cities. In Berkeley, Black people made up 23.5% of the population in 1970; today it's only 7.9%. What is more difficult to measure is the creative loss – how many artists, writers, actors, poets and musicians can no longer afford to live here?
Within the richest country in history and within one of the richest areas of the richest country in history, homelessness has become normalized. In the depths of the depression during the New Deal, public policy and financing was directed to solving housing displacement. Only due to the lack of political will do we see huge homeless encampments in our urban areas. Homelessness can and should be addressed decisively, not with rhetoric but action. This problem should not be blamed on People’s Park.
What would a vision of People’s Park look like?
Ideally the university would give up its destruction plan and let the park revert to city control because it has shown it has little interest in maintaining it as open space.
· The park would be maintained at the level of all Berkeley public parks, including new curbs and sidewalks which could include imbedded medallions pointing out the architectural treasures surrounding the park.
· A thriving Farmers Market could be established, like the one in the Civic Center, to serve the Southside and campus community.
· Restoration of the Native Plant Garden that was a joint project between UC Berkeley and the park community could reestablish a cooperative working relationship with the campus.
· Continue the cultural events and rallies that have always taken place in the park. Providing food for the needy could continue in the park or be moved to a nearby location as it used to be at the University Lutheran Chapel.
· Establish an interpretive center in one of the historic buildings surrounding the park to provide background on the neighborhood’s town and gown history, on Berkeley’s incredible architectural legacy, and on the political and cultural history of activism on the Southside from the Sixties to the present.
People come to Berkeley from all corners of the U.S. and international locations and ask, “Where is People’s Park?” This landmark location is an asset to Berkeley and with some care and concern could become a much greater one.
The success of the week was at the Zoning Adjustment Board (ZAB) meeting. There are two of us who have been attending regularly educating ZAB on habitat, native plants, bird safe glass, down lighting, bird migration, ecosystems, keystone plants, heat island effect, permeable paving and more. We haven’t made a dent with the Berkeley Planning Department staff, but ZAB is responding and Thursday evening we had a big success with 2015 Blake. The up lighting was caught and changed to downlighting, the balance of exotic non-native plants was reversed with a threshold of 80% native plants and the project will come back to DRC (Design Review Committee) on EV charging stations (ZAB request) and the bird safe glass.
There are three things that contributed to this success, 1) persisting in educating ZAB at meeting after meeting for months, 2) a willingness of ZAB members to listen and 3) cooperation from the developer. On the last piece, Mark Rhoades is on this project and he should know better than to bring a project with up lighting and non-native plants.
It is not enough to speak up once or twice or write an occasional letter. Making change requires persistent follow through. Success can never be taken for granted and sustaining forward motion requires paying attention.
It is hard to know what is in the heads of the Planning Department staff, but one thing for certain is that no matter how many meetings we attend, no matter what we present, they are unmoved to act in any different way than they always have. From all appearances it is a narrow world without vision.
The mayor and council are a harder nut to crack. Without Kate Harrison we would not have a natural gas ban in new buildings. And, Terry Taplin is picking up the mantle on native plants. That gives hope, but it leaves the mayor and six councilmembers who have been more about rhetoric and appearances than actual action.
For all the hand wringing on fire risk and fire prevention in the hills, the City of Berkeley has yet to enforce parking restrictions in the fire zones to ensure there is a clear path for fire trucks and crews to reach the fires when they come and for residents to evacuate. This was the subject of the Disaster and Fire Safety Commission on Wednesday evening. The parking enforcers need to make it up to the hills to start passing out parking tickets and those tickets need to appear year-round not just on high fire days. The item received unanimous approval, but will the City act?
The other item that was continued to the next meeting for the purpose of finalizing the wording was about limiting the addition of new housing in high fire zones. With the passage of SB 9 and SB 10 and finding places for 8934 new dwelling units, it is unclear if these would open high risk fire areas to more construction. It would seem foolish to put more people in the areas of the 1991 Oakland Berkeley Firestorm where 25 people died or the area of the Berkeley 1923 fire, but that is exactly what has transpired over the years. The firestorms of the present decade burn hotter and faster than anything seen in the past. Under the current conditions an uncontrolled fire in the hills, the urban wildland interface can quickly grow to engulf large areas of Berkeley, even all of it according to our former Fire Chief Brannigan.
On the natural gas ban, I had an interesting conversation with a friend about replacing her stove. She did not know that she was burning methane in her kitchen. She isn’t the only one. Too many people know methane is bad, but have been lulled into thinking the “natural gas” fed to their stove and the other big appliances like the water heater and furnace is something different, “natural” and not toxic to their household, the environment and the climate. Will we ever move past the propaganda from the fossil fuel industry and successful marketing?
Tuesday evening was the presentation to council on the Housing Element AKA how the consultants will go about creating a plan for adding 8934 new units of housing in Berkeley between 2023 and 2031 with 2446 very low income units, 1408 low income units, 1416 moderate income units and 3664 market rate units. Berkeley has a history of overbuilding market rate (better known for price gouging students and residents) and underbuilding affordable housing.
The number of units is based on an expected growth of 45% and assigned by ABAG (Association of Bay Area Governments). Mayor Arreguin is the ABAG President and chair of the committee that developed the assignment of units. It was surprising to see in the list of participants in the creation and assignment of unit allocations members of the aggressive pro-development groups. With Arreguin as the chair and president of ABAG, one has to wonder who invited the lobbyists. As expected while other cities are submitting objections, Berkeley is not.
In the Housing Element presentation there was not one even one tiny drop of attention to the impact on the environment, local climate, heat island effect, habitat or ecosystems. There was no attention as to any consideration of how the plan for additional housing could be planned to coexist with nature. It appears that it will be up to the public and it will take more than the question poised to council by an attendee and left unanswered: “Where will the water come from?”
After a summer break the Community for a Cultural Civic Center met Monday. There was a short review of the Tipping Structural Engineering assessment which provides seismically resilient structures at a substantially lower cost than the Gehl proposals. Gehl was the consulting group hired by the City for $375,000 to create a Civic Center plan that included the restoration of the Maudelle Shirek and Veterans Buildings. At the October meeting the group will formulate a recommendation for Council. The Council worksession for the Civic Center is listed as unscheduled with a likely date in early 2022.
The Thursday morning Budget and Finance Committee meeting covered one subject, allocating the marina Doubletree Hotel tax to the Marina Fund. The Parks and Waterfront Chair Gordon Wozniak gave a thoughtful presentation followed by an amazing slide show by Erin Diehm on biodiversity. Did you know there are apps to identify and record observed species of birds, insects, plants and more with iNaturalist and eBird? I didn’t. https://www.cityofberkeley.info/uploadedFiles/Clerk/Marina%20TOT%20presentation%202.pdf
In the end, the City Manager wants the transfer tax/hotel tax from the Doubletree to stay in the general fund and not to be allocated to the marina. She formulated the motion. The final: qualified negative (to allocating the transfer tax to the Marina fund) and made a referral back to the Budget and Finance Committee to discuss and develop alternative revenue measures/streams for the marina, including a reserve, and to look at other approaches.
In closing, there are some books that should just be required reading. At book club on Wednesday that was the agreement on The Road to Unfreedom by Timothy Snyder who may be better known outside of academic circles for On Tyranny, Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century. I have another required reading recommendation, Dirty Work: Essential Jobs and the Hidden Toll of Inequality in America by Eyal Press, 2021. Dirty Work challenges the reader to think about the jobs that we as a society want done and our attitudes toward the workers who do them. For example, when putting our fork into a piece of meat or dishing out the food for one of our meat loving pets, we do our best not to think about the killing and butchering of animals in meatpacking plants and the toll on the workers who do the killing and butchering.
Last weekend when it was finally confirmed after lots of rumbling that those killed in the U.S. drone strike in Afghanistan were all civilians and seven were children, I was reading the section in Dirty Work on drone operators. When the use of drones as warfare first became public, I remember hearing speculation that to the drone operators the actual task was merely like playing video games. Drone operators in Dirty Work paint a different picture of being haunted by the strikes. One description was a strike that killed the suspected adult terrorist and spared a child only to see on the screen the little child trying to put the pieces of the parent back together as if that would make them whole and come alive.
The book goes further in the triple pain to the workers, the trauma of the job itself, being trapped by poverty or residency status into the job and the scorn from the public.
At times, if we are to grow, we need to leave our comfort zones and challenge our thinking.
Gene Poschman, a towering stalwart of Berkeley civic life, died at home on September 8. He was 86 years old. As a longtime member of the Zoning Adjustments Board and the Planning Commission, he used his unparalleled knowledge and political acumen to ride herd on development interests and their enablers in City Hall. He was the strategist behind the successful No on T campaign, which thwarted the Bates council’s 2012 attempt to transform light-industrial/artisanal West Berkeley into a warren of multi-block office parks.
When he retired from the Planning Commission in April 2018, after serving twenty-two years on that body, Mayor Arreguin and the council issued a proclamation honoring him as “a treasured community advocate and dedicated volunteeer, who for decades has given generously of his time, wisdom, and wit to the citizens of Berkeley.”
Gene was an invaluable comrade, a dear friend, and my political mentor. I met him in the early Seventies, when he was on the faculty committee that hired me to teach a class on American government at what was then called Hayward State University. We shared a common intellectual background: the political theory scene at UC Berkeley in the Sixties.
I only came to know him well after Councilmember Linda Maio appointed me to the Planning Commission in 1997. During the next seven years, Gene provided an on-the-ground education in land use politics and politics at large. He taught me how to read the Zoning Code and the unwritten codes of maneuvering for influence and power. He’d studied the latter subject as a legislative aide to Assemblymember Byron Rumford who helped create the landmark Fair Housing Act—and also as a lifelong jock. As he told me, “You have to know someone’s moves.”
One night as we were walking to the parking lot behind the North Berkeley Senior Center after a meeting, I complained that when I’d been attacked by a fellow commissioner, he hadn’t offered me support. Gene didn’t apologize. “Zelda,” he said, “you’re too thin-skinned.”
The next morning, a page rolled into my Fax machine. It was from Gene. Across the top, he’d written: “Since graduate school, this has been my prayer.” The text was the conclusion of Max Weber’s essay “Politics as a Vocation.” Every line was underscored, some twice. This is how it ends:
Politics is a strong and slow boring of hard boards. It takes both passion and perspective. Certainly all historical experience confirms the truth—that man would not have attained the possible unless time and again he had reached out for the impossible….[E]ven those who are neither leaders nor heroes must arm themselves with that steadfastness of heart which can brave even the crumbling of all hopes. This is necessary right now, or else men will not be able to attain even that which is possible today. Only he has the calling for politics who is sure that he shall not crumble when the world from his point of view is too stupid or too base for what he wants to offer. Only he who in the face of all this can say ‘In spite of all!’ has the calling for politics.
Monday morning the Council Safety Committee meets at 10:30 on Ghost Guns, The Agenda Committee meets at 2:30 pm on the draft agenda for the 10-12-2021 Council regular meeting, The Children, Youth and Recreation Commission and the Zero Waste Commission both meet at 7 pm.
Tuesday morning the Council Land UseCommittee meets at 10:30 am on the Affordable Housing Overlay. The Regular City Council meeting is at 6 pm with Baseline Zoning and Objective Building Standards on the agenda.
Wednesday the Police Accountability Board meets at 7 pm.
Thursday the Reimagining Task Force meets at 6 pm. The Housing Advisory Commission meets at 7 pm.
Saturday Ride Electric with electric vehicles and eBikes will be at the downtown Farmers Market from 11 am – 3 pm. The Independent Redistricting Commission meets at 1 pm to provide instruction in how to submit maps for new council boundaries. The Berkeley Tenants Union meets from 4 – 6 pm
The full draft agenda for the October 12th City Council regular meeting and the full agenda for the Tuesday evening September 28th City Council meeting follow the daily list of city meetings.
Register for Citywide Virtual Evacuation Drill on Friday, October 8 and Saturday, October 9 at 9 – 11 am
October 8 all participants to review household evacuation plan – use registration link for bulletin with resource for drill and evacuation planning, October 9 virtual drill at 9 – 11 am,
Teleconference: 1-669-900-9128 or 1-877-853-5257 Meeting ID: 833 4205 9740
AGENDA: Public Comment non-agenda and 1 – 7, 1. Minutes, 2. Draft Agenda for 10-12-21 (use link or go to end of list of meetings to see full draft agenda for 10-12-21 council regular meeting), 3. Berkeley considers, 4. Adjournments in memory, 5. Worksession, 6. Council referral to agenda committee for scheduling, 7.land use scheduling, REFERRED ITEMS FOR REVIEW 8. Impact Covid-19, 9. Preliminary analysis return to in-person meeting, UNSCHEDULED ITEMS 10. Supporting City Commissions. UNFINISHED BUSINESS FOR SCHEDULING: Kitchen Exhaust Fans, Surveillance Technology Report, Street Maintenance and Rehabilitation Policy.
AGENDA: Discussion/Updates: 8. Housing Element, 9. Covid, 10. Recreation Program and Facilities, Action: 11. Communication with Council regarding Commission Consolidation.
AGENDA: 6. Staff updates: zero waste division staffing, mattress recycling program, FITES committee draft bag ordinance, Council zero waste rates worksession, Discussion/Action 1. Nov meeting 11-15 instead of 11-22, 2. SB 1383 and possible support opt-in to Alameda Co. Waste Management Authority’s Organics Reduction and Recycling Ordinance, 3. Commission restructuring, 4. Single Use Foodware and Litter Reduction Ordinance
AGENDA: 3. Public comment on agenda and non-agenda comments, 9. Old Business a. analysis from City Attorney regarding lawful changes to hearing process to correct imbalances, and obligation to meet and confer over those and other proposed provisions of the Interim Regulations for handling complaints against sworn officer, b. Training Police Dept patrol responsibilities, 10. New Business a. Policy Complaint, b. City Attorney conflict-of-interest issues
AGENDA: 2. Public Comment, Subcommittee Reports: Policing, Budget & Alternatives to Policing, Community Engagement, Improve and Reinvest, Alternative Solutions to Gender Based Violence, Discussion/Action Items: Dispatch Presentation, Task Force Discussion and Facilitation NICJR.
RECESS ITEMS: 1. Contract accept bid $1,461,900 (includes 10% contingency) with Murry Building for Cazadero Camp Jensen Dormitory Construction Project, CONSENT: 2. Council expense account staff salaries and fringe benefits for Legislative Assistant position, 3. City council rules and procedure refine meeting rules, 4. Formal Bid Solicitations – Zero Waste Fund $750,000, 5. Contract using Measure FF $517,000 for two ambulances, 6. Contract using Measure FF $322,000 for five pick up trucks Ford F-250 4x4 with Nicholas K Corp DBA “The Ford Store.” 7. Amend Contract add $62,000 total $100,000 and extend 5-1-2021 to 7-31-2024 with Alameda Co Healthcare Services for epidemiology and program evaluation, 8. Appointment Abraham Roman as Fire Chief salary $268,990, 9. Classification establish program manager I & II hourly salary range $51.7326 - $62.4561/hour, 10. Transfer tax refund for 1685 Solano to Bay Area Community Land Trust to support the acquisition and renovation operation as affordable housing, 11. Amend contract add $100,00 total $499,411 from 9-14-2016 to 6-30-223 with Geographic Technologies Group for Additional Geographic Information System, 12. Purchase order for vehicle GS-35F-0280X for $492,000, 13. Grant Application: Environmental Enhancement and Mitigation Project (EEMP) $500,000 to plant urban forest trees, 14. Taplin & Kesarwani - Budget referral: $500,000 Security Cameras in the Public Right of Way at intersections experiencing increased violent crime and environmental safety assessment for high crime areas: arterial intersections along University, Ashby & Alcatraz, 6th/University, 7th/Ashby, San Pablo/Ashby, Sacramento/Alcatraz, Alcatraz/Adeline, Ashby/Telegraph, Gilman/6th, College/Alcatraz, Ashby/Domingo, Ashby/Claremont, other possible intersections University/Sacrament, Sacramento/Ashby, George Florence park, 10th/Bancroft, 8th/Channing, 8th/Addison, 15. Bartlett - Infrastructure and Affordable Housing Finance Plan for Adeline Corridor, 16. Harrison – Budget Referral Allocate General Fund Revenues to Support Pilot Program offering free AC Transit on Sundays in Berkeley, 17. Wengraf – Adopt resolution denouncing Texas Anti-abortion law (SB8) and reaffirming reproductive freedom in Berkeley, 18. Wengraf - Support for HR 3755 – Women’s Health Protection Act of 2021, ACTION: 19. ZAB Appeal 1205 Peralta, 20. Amending the Berkeley Election Reform Act (BERA) relating to officeholder accounts, 21. Harrison - Referral to the Zero Waste and Energy Commission to conduct community outreach and education regulating the use of carryout and pre-checkout bags and to make recommendations to FITES, 22. City Manager (CM) – referrals for removal, 23. Proposed Ordinance Amending Paragraph NN BMC 19.48.020 expands existing fire code tp require fire sprinklers in new structures and retrofit sprinklers into existing structures in Fire Zone 3 to to include fire zone 2, 24. CM – City policy regarding scheduling meetings on significant religious holidays, 25. Taplin, cosponsor Arreguin, Robinson – Letter to Senate Budget Committee Chair Senator Skinner regarding budget allocation for Berkeley Pier, 26. Harrison Resolution in support of Direct Pay Provision for the 26 U.S.C § 25D Residential Energy Efficient Property Tax Credit
September 28, 2021 City Council Regular Meeting at 6 pm,
RECESS ITEM: Contract add $175,900 total $2,175,900 with CA Constructores for Construction of Pedestrian Improvements at California & Dwight, CONSENT: 2. 2nd reading - Amendments to BMC 19.44.020 (Housing Advisory Commission) to include oversight of Measure O bond-funded housing initiatives, 3. 2nd reading – Transfer 2 Parcels to State of CA for the Ashby-San Pablo Intersection Improvements Project, 4. Contract add $120,000 total $321,900 with QuickCaption, Inc. for closed captioning, 5. Accept grant $10,525 from William and Flora Hewlett Foundation to protect affordable spaces for the arts, 6. Formal Bid Solicitations, 7. Contract $1,974,457 with Genasys for Citywide Warning System, 8. Grant Application: Funding from FEMA’s Assistance to Firefighters Grant to Support a Regional Fire Service Leadership Development Academy, 9. Contract add $100,000 total $300,000 and extend to 6-30-2024 with BOSS for services, 10. Contract $150,000 7-1-2021 – 6-30-2024 with Berkeley Free Clinic for Laboratory Services, 11. MOU $491,933 with Alameda County Behavioral Health Care for Mental Health Wellness Center, 12. Donation $3400 for Memorial Bench (Nancy Park) at Cesar Chavez Park, 13. Donation $3400 for Memorial Bench (Michael, Anna and John Wyman) at Greg Brown Park, 14. Donation $3400 for Memorial Bench (Dixie Lewis) at Jane Hammond Softball Field at Corodonices Park, 15. Donation $3400 (Shay M. Finnegan) at Shorebird Park at Berkeley Marina, 16. Exclusive Negotiating Agreement with Innovation Properties Group for 199 Seawall Drive, 17. Contract add $125,000 total $425,00 and extend 12-31-2023 with Ben Noble, City and Regional Planning for Zoning Ordinance Revision Project, 18. 7-year lease estimated $920,000 annual payments total $6,500,000 with Motorola Solutions for public safety radios, 19. Contract $2,900,000 FY 2022 – 2026 with Bruce’s Tire, Inc for new tires for city-owned vehicles and equipment, 20. From Disaster and Fire Safety Commission recommends all Berkeley Fire Dept overtime be properly coded to assist in determining what is eligible for Measure GG funding, 21. Appointment of Tommy Escarega to Mental Health Commission, 22. Kesarwani – Referral to City Manager to establish procedure for enhanced review of use permits in manufacturing zone for industrial facilities to ensure public health and environmental impacts are appropriately mitigated, if appropriate installation of 3rd party air quality monitoring devices, 23. Taplin – Amend BMC 14.56.070 for 3-ton Commercial Truck Weight Limit on Berkeley’s Bicycle BLVD and At-Risk West Berkeley Residential streets (Ninth between Dwight and Heinz, Addison, Allston, Bancroft, Channing, & Dwight between San Pablo and 6th, Camelia between 8th and 9th, 8th between Jackson and 9th, Virginia between Sacrament and MLK and Shattuck and Euclid, Channing between MLK and Piedmont, Heinz between 9th and San Pablo, Russell between San Pablo and Shattuck and Telegraph and Claremont, California between Hopkins and University and Dwight and Russell and Stanford, Milvia from Dwight to Russell, Bowditch from Bancroft to Dwight, Hillegass from Dwight to Woolsey, 24. Taplin & Arreguin - Resolution in Support of Afghan Refugees, 25. Bartlett co-sponsors Arreguin, Taplin – Refer to staff to work with the Ashby Recreation and Community Housing (ARCH) Consortium to develop planning grant for Ashby BART East Parking Lot, 26. Wengraf – Resolution Renewing and Re-affirming Wildlife Prevention and Safety, 27. Wengraf – amend BMC 14.56.040 to reduce commercial vehicle weight limit from 4 tons to 3 tons, ACTION: 28. ZAB appeal 2943 Pine, 29. Response to Short Term referral for amendments to ADU ordinance to address Public Safety Concerns, 30. Resolution and Ordinance for Shared Electric Micromobility Permit Program, 31. Approval of Interim Regulations for the Police Accountability Board and Office of Director for Handling Complaints Against Sworn Officers, 32. Adoption of Baseline Zoning Ordinance, 33. Objective Standards Recommendations for Density, Design and Shadows, INFORMATION: 29. Sanctuary City Contracting Compliance for FY 2020, 30. Auditor - Financial First Aid Kit: A Guide to Emergency Financial Preparedness for Berkeley Residents.
_____________________
Public Hearings Scheduled – Land Use Appeals
2943 Pine (construct a 2nd story) 9/28/2021
1205 Peralta (conversion of garage) 10/12/2021
Notice of Decision (NOD) and Use Permits with End of Appeal Period
1141 Addison – 2 story addition 9-23-21
1339 Carleton – legalize ADU 10-5-2021
2521 College – legalize ADU 9-28-2021
1530 Grizzly Peak – expand ADU with non-conforming setback 10-5-2021
2956 Hilegass – Addition 3rd story balcony 10-5-2021
171 Hill – install an unenclosed hot tub 10-12-2021
2808 Ninth – demo existing single-family dwelling and construct new 9-28-2021
840 Page – add floor area and balcony 9-28-2021
1443 San Pablo – establish off-sale service of beer and wine 9-28-21
October 19 –1. Berkeley Police Department Hiring Practices (referred by Public Safety Committee), 2. Crime Report
December 7 –1. WETA/Ferry Service at the Marina, 2. Presentation by Bay Restoration Authority, 3. Update Zero Waste Rates and Priorities,
Unscheduled Workshops/Presentations
Cannabis Health Considerations
Alameda County LAFCO Presentation
Civic Arts Grantmaking Process & Capital Grant Program
Review and Update on City’s COVID-19 Response
Civic Center – Old City Hall and Veterans Memorial Building
If you have a meeting you would like included in the summary of meetings, please send a notice to kellyhammargren@gmail.com by noon on the Friday of the preceding week.
This meeting list is also posted on the Sustainable Berkeley Coalition website.
If you or someone you know wishes to receive the weekly summary as soon as it is completed, email kellyhammargren@gmail.com to be added to the early email list. If you wish to stop receiving the Weekly Summary of City Meetings please forward the weekly summary you received to kellyhammargren@gmail.com
Even though the various claims of evidence alleging a stolen 2020 election — “The Big Lie” — have been exhaustively investigated and litigated and found wanting, a May 21, 2021 Ipsos/Reuters Poll found that over half of Republicans believe Donald Trump is the actual President of the United States. And Trump’s stronghold over the Republican party remains. His refusal to concede the 2020 election and calls of widespread fraud have raised doubts about the integrity of its results among his Republican base. Consequently, 56% of Republicans believe the election was rigged or the result of illegal voting, and 53% think Donald Trump is the actual President, not Joe Biden.
“The Big Lie” refers to Trump's false claim that the election was stolen from him through massive fraud, and eventually led to Trump supporters storming the U.S. Capitol on January 6. “A big lie (German: große Lüge; often the big lie) is a propaganda technique used for political purposes, defined as "a gross distortion or misrepresentation of the facts, especially when used as a propaganda device by a politician or official body.” This German expression was "coined by Adolf Hitler, when he dictated his 1925 book Mein Kampf, to describe the use of a lie so "colossal" that no one would believe that someone could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously.”
Larry Elder, the top Republican seeking to replace Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) in the September 14 recall election declined before the election to say whether he could accept the results. A website affiliated with his campaign asked visitors to “sign a petition to stop the fraud of the California recall election.” BothTrump and Elder’s campaign falsely claimed fraud even before California votes were counted. You can bet this will be an ongoing Republican tactic.
That so many gullible Americans would believe The Big Lie in spite of the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, and Trump’s history of lying, is irrational. And especially since the Republican Party’s policies are generally unpopular. If Republicans came clean about those policies, they would rarely win free and fair elections. Republicans want to turn back to the Jim Crow era "by keeping Black and brown and other members of Democratic Party’s base from voting.”
Trump and his sycophants are intent on keeping “The Big Lie” in the public eye as long as possible to undermine the integrity of future elections and give impetus to state voter suppression laws. The Big Lie has given eighteen states justification to pass new voting laws in the past six months. Republican-dominated legislatures have also stripped secretaries of state and other independent election officials of their power.
In addition, the third audit (or "fraudit" as some have called it) is now being conducted in Maricopa County, Arizona, ten months after the election by the Cyber Ninjas, a company hired by the Republican-controlled Arizona state Senate, who have no experience in conducting election audits. (The name “Cyber Ninjas” itself doesn’t inspire confidence.)
Other Republican-controlled states will continue this farce unless the U.S. Department of Justice steps in to end this likely violation of federal election laws. For example, a Wisconsin lawmaker has taken the unprecedented step of demanding clerks in two counties turn over all ballots and voting equipment used in the 2020 presidential election for a “cyber-forensic” review of the results. And Pennsylvania Republican lawmakers voted to subpoena Gov. Tom Wolf’s administration for voter records, communication between state and county elections officials, and other documents as they investigate the 2020 presidential election 10 months after Joe Biden’s victory.
Clearly, Congressional Republicans will oppose any federal voting rights legislation.
As Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan once said, "Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.” It’s time for Americans to wake up and repudiate Trump and his The Big Lie. Our very democracy is at stake.
The just released Cyber Ninjas’ audit (or "fraudit" as some have called it) report of Arizona’s Maricopa County found that Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential election, and by more than originally thought. No fraud was uncovered.
Will this report put an end to Trump's shameless "Big Lie?" After all, a firm called Cyber Ninjas with no experience in conducting election audits should inspire GOP confidence in this audit.
As I see it, Mr. Trump was hoisted by his own petard. And the Republican-controlled Arizona Senate who hired the Cyber Ninjas should be embarrassed, but won’t be. Arizona taxpayers will have to decide whether the cost of the audit was money well spent.
Meanwhile, I suspect Trump will continue peddling his Big Lie.
When we as mental health consumers are dealing with therapists, we may never get a sense of how they truly see us. They project to us an image of themselves as caring and helping people, who assume no superiority over us. The piece of the jigsaw puzzle that we're missing can be gleaned from overhearing how they speak about us to fellow therapists. Another method is to know someone who is a therapist, such as a family member or an acquaintance who works in that field.
At my best guess about therapists, their actual set of agendas differs vastly from how they want us to see them. Therapists function at multiple levels. The content in the forefront is very different from the content in back. The perspective in back runs the show.
Therapists are expected not to become emotionally involved with us. When there is too much attachment on their part, they may have to discontinue. This is for ethical reasons. Therapists also are forbidden from taking sexual or financial advantage of us. This is irrespective of gender(s). Any financial or sexual involvement of any kind could invoke consequences to their future careers.
Additionally, psychotherapists have egos and sets of personal ambitions. I've met a therapist who self-published a book and was spending good money to promote it. It was quite an ego boost for him. He had a copy on display in his waiting room, along with a newspaper clipping of a story a newspaper reporter had done about him.
Many therapists would love to be the next Dr. Phil, or Dr. Drew.
(To get tangential: Dr. Drew was fired or quit following expressing doubts about Hillary Clinton's health, during the Clinton versus Trump Presidential race.)
In my impression of all of my recent therapy, the therapist is after information. They want a lot of specifics, and they want to know how I do things, why I do things, and what things I am doing. This could be an indication that I'm dealing with some form of forensic psychology. Forensics tend to run counter to actual help. The consumer is ultimately betrayed, and this can lead to substantial damage. A person has been taught to fully trust someone and open up and be vulnerable. Then they are given "the shaft"--pardon the expression. This could do irreparable psychological damage.
We are given the old, tired line that our information is strictly confidential unless we are a threat to someone. Yet, we've signed a release of information that allows them to do whatever they want with our information.
But to the therapist, damage to the person being treated, is secondary, because they have achieved their objective--whatever that happens to be. How are we to trust someone and open up--and share our secrets--when this information is likely to be used against us?
Therapy can potentially be a true helping profession. Forensic Therapy apparently is about getting all of the client's information, which can potentially become part of a court case. Evidence from forensic therapy can also exonerate. Since I completely lack knowledge of how therapeutic evidence is deployed, I can't speak about it. I know of it from my end, and that's all I know of it.
Therapists have feelings, too. They are not individuals to whom we should act abusively. We will be corrected if we make any comments concerning their appearance, good or bad.
Some therapy is intrinsically damaging. This is where old wounds are reopened, closely examined, and thereby exacerbated. This is done in the name of healing the client, the theory being that mental illness is produced by past trauma that we haven't dealt with.
It has some validity if you are ready for it. In the past few years my mind has developed the habit of revisiting old memories and reinterpreting events based on the sense of reality I have now. This has allowed me to have a lot more understanding of myself and my past gross mistakes and missteps. It yields more understanding of why things happened the way they did. Yet, it doesn't cure the pain.
I would not do this reflection in therapy because I feel that some things about me are none of anyone's business. When a therapist digs too much it can do irreparable damage. This is partly because the therapist has forty-five minutes in which to perform something analogous to a surgical procedure on our psyches. Even though it is nonphysical surgery, the person who cuts must have know-how.
And forty-five minutes is not enough time to complete what is being done and close the incisions. And they don't know how we are constructed. It is like driving a car and navigating streets based on where you think things should be rather than where they are. If you did this, you would quickly go off the road or hit something.
And I've seen a number of mental health consumers have an irreversible downturn following a therapeutic revelation. They weren't ready to handle information about their pasts, and they resultantly had a catastrophic breakdown.
I've dealt with some therapists who are very sharp and others who are dense. The sharp ones ask the right questions and do not use force. They do not talk down to us. Their work is empathy based and not analytic based. They do not think they're God or that they're cut from better cloth.
Therapy can help in part because it provides attention to the client. Perhaps no one else is interested enough to ask all of these questions about us. This, in itself, is potentially a good thing and feels good.
Therapy can help us or hurt us, it will never cure us, and if we needed medication before we went into therapy, we will continue to need it. We should never presume that we're cured.
On our side of things, we may need to work with a therapist a few months for us to determine whether the therapist is any good, and to determine whether they are invested in helping us. Psychotherapy doesn't cure psychiatric illness, but it can help a mental health consumer deal with the absurdities of life.
PART 2: Disentangling Ourselves from Institutionalized Therapy
Psychotherapy is a grab bag in which we get some fools who assume we are fools, some very sharp therapists, and some therapists who are crazy.
When we approach leaving intensive therapy to transition to something requiring less of an investment in time and energy, it matters how we approach it. If our approach is paranoid and/or from a place of resistance, we inevitably encounter more pushback, and we invite the neutralizing strategies of the therapists because they detect our uncooperative headspace.
We cannot get into a battle of wills, consisting of "me vs. them" because therapy vendors have too much power. Our approach to leaving or modifying therapy should be that we are acting "compliant."
When we feel ready, we are best off having our mental health treatment be in the backdrop of our lives and not the forefront. To accomplish this, we must convince therapists that their jobs are done, and they've cured us.
Jack Bragen lives in Martinez and is author of "Instructions for Dealing with Schizophrenia: A Self-Help Manual," and other books.
Here's the latest addition to my collection of "Letters the Chronicle Didn't Print."
[Professor and former dean of the UC Berkeley Graduate school of Journalism] Edward Wasserman makes a good case ("Whistleblower reveals deadly truth," Sept. 22) for freeing whistleblower Daniel Hale, imprisoned for revealing how the Pentagno's "killer drone" program has murdered hundreds of innocent civilians.
Hale's release would be especially welcome in light of the recent drone strike that killed Afghan aid worker Zemari Ahmad and nine members of his family—including 7 children.
With the whole world watching, it's time to man-up and step down.
Without McKenzie's resignation — or his firing — his apology is meaningless.
As former Army Col. Ann Wright recently noted: "At least ten US military in the chain-of-command are culpable for the deaths of ten innocent civilians. They should be charged with manslaughter. If they are not, then the US military will continue to murder innocent civilians with impunity."
The Pentagon's "killer drones" — a cowardly weapon haunted by a long and growing record of civilian victims — should be grounded, permanently. The message is a simple one:
It's time to stop firing missiles and start firing generals.
No Homeland for the Homeless?
The long-established tent camp that used to line the front of the Mangalam Centers building on Addison next to the Berkeley Main Post Office, is no more.
Suddenly, the colorful and orderly collection of shelters and belongings is gone, replaced by a series of large cement containers housing identical clumps of colorful flowers.
Where have the familiar denizens of this tent community gone? Have they relocated to a better location with City support? No public notices were posted to explain what has occurred. The only message that remains is the one that was painted on the sidewalk in slowly-fading colors: "Homeless Lives Matter."
Fashion Plates
The local owner of a red Ford Ranger is clearly happy with his wheels. How can you tell? His license plate reads: FUN RNGR. (I'm now on the lookout for a happy Honda owner with a plate reading: FAB 4STR.)
Also spotted: a red Honda Civic sashaying about town with a plate that reads: REDANCR. And the owner of an electric Chevy Bolt with a Danish anti-nuke sticker on the rear (Atomkraft? Nej Tak!) isn't shy about taking a public bow. The Bolt's plates read: M11THAL.
I tip my hat to you, Emma Leventhal.
When Good Streets Go Bad
There's a large sign on the road where Spuce Street crosses Eunice that announces a "Road Rehabilitation" project lies ahead.
It's not surprising that Road Rehabs are needed. Just look at what the road crews have to deal with: Bad roads. Dirty roads. Wrong-way streets. Dead-end streets. Two-way streets. Back alleys. Divided highways.
On the plus side, we've got Superhighways and Freeways.
Speaking of Divided Highways
There are two places where Shattuck Avenue has an identity problem. A split-personality situation prevails in the Downtown where Shattuck subdivides between Center and University, creating two parallel Shattucks. One continues to be called Shattuck. The two-block diversion to the east is called Kala Bagai Way (named in honor of an Indian immigrant and activist—the first city street to honor an Asian-American woman).
The second Shattuck break-up occurs just north of Vine Street where something quite strange happens. Shattuck Avenue becomes the enclosed one-lane commercial parking zone that fronts Saul's Delicatessen and runs to Rose. The larger open street to the West is unnamed on Google Maps. The south-bound single lane to the west is called Shattuck Avenue—until it runs into a stretch of road that identifies as "Shattuck Place." Place doesn't become Avenue until the two north and south lanes merge as a single street. And, at this magical moment—due west from Books Inc.—there are three different Shattuck Avenues running side-by-side. In the block just south of Rose, Shattuck Place turns into Henry.
But we're not done!
At Rose Street, the eastern-most of the three parallel Shattuck Avenues ends abruptly while the middle Shattuck Ave takes a quick hop to the west and rejoins the remaining Shattuck Avenue on the other side of Rose to become a single Shattuck that continues merrily in the direction of Live Oak Park.
Meanwhile, Henry Street is not finished either. Instead of disappearing into the two advancing Shattuck Avenues, Henry negotiates a half-block hop to the west, where it resumes business as usual and continues unmolested through north Berkeley until it collides with Cedar Street and vanishes into oblivion.
A Twisted Tale Behind a Twisted Tale
I recently re-watched Roman Polanski's classic, Chinatown, and got tangled in the dark and twisted tale of intrigue, political gamesmanship and familial philandering. This is a story where everyone encountered by private eye J. J. Gittes (Jack Nicholson) is driven by hidden motives. Example, the woman who Faye Dunaway's character claims as her younger sister actually turns out to be her daughter, thanks to Noah Cross, her incestuous father.
Looking for some clarity to decipher Robert Towne's screenplay, I perused up a copy of Ronald Brownstein's Rock Me On the Water. 1974: The Year Los Angeles Transformed Movies, Music, Television, and Politics. In the section of the book that detailed the gestation of Polanski's wicked tale, I found the following factoid: "Jack Nicholson wasn't planning a career in show business when he arrived in LA in September 1954 to live with the woman he believed was his older sister, June."
There was a footnote to this sentence, and it read: "In a baroque twist, Nicholson learned in 1974 that June was, in fact, his mother, who had giving birth to him out of wedlock. Ethel May Nicholson, who raised Jack as his mother, was in fact his grandmother. Lorraine, whom he believed was his sister, was, in fact, his aunt."
In this case, truth turned out to be just as creepy as fiction.
Two Political Slogans that Don't Exist
• In the 1970s, did anyone ever refer to well-heeled, swell-wheeled Republicans as "the Party of Lincoln Continentals"? (Apparently not, according to Google.)
• Here's a slogan for the Trumpified wing of the GOP that wants to take America back to Take America Backwards: "Make America Retrograde Again."
A Right to Life Rally Cites Rites to Write
There was a pro-abortion rights rally at the Texas Capitol this week that brought out a large crowd. Some of the protesters arrived with placards that were real zingers. In a photo of the demonstration, one young woman is seen flashing a sign that reads: "If it's not your body, It's not your choice!" Another reads: "Keep your filthy laws off my silky drawers!" And my favorite proclaims: "My Body, My Choice. Get Ovary It."
No Laughing Matter—For Ukranian Billionaires
Former stand-up comic and current president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, isn't kidding when it comes to squelching homegrown corruption. The world leader best known in the US for being offered a political bribe by Donald Trump, has ordered a new law to reduce the political influence of oligarchs in his country. The new law, signed on September 25 and approved by a 62% margin, requires the ultra-wealthy to publically register their names, prevents them from using their wealth to lobby politicians, and bans them from "taking part in the privatization of state assets." The US could take a lesson from our friends in Kyiv.
Massachusetts, meanwhile, has taken steps to create a "millionaires tax" to finance "transformational investments" in green infrastructure. The proposal goes up for a vote in November 2024. Let's hope more states join this Mass. movement.
How the Biggest Part of the Budget Gets the Least Attention
While Washington pols jockey over passage of two massive budget items—a bipartisan infrastructure bill and a reconciliation bill to Build Back Better—little attention is being paid to a third budget item that is "bigger than the other two." That would be the billions set aside to fund Washington's military operations. According to David Swanson of World BEYOND War, the war-funding budget "is 170% of Building Back Better and the Infrastructure Extravaganza combined." Yet the media pays it no mind. More attention has been paid to the part of the bill that would require every teenage girl in the US to register for the military draft. The prospect of turning young women into "cannon fodder" is usually described as "feminist progress" by America's corporate media.
For more on Swanson's critique of the Biggest Budget Elephant in the room, click here.
The State Reps Who Said 'No" to War
As the Pentagon's Afghan campaign sputtered to its chaotic end, Congressmember Rashida Tlaib had a message for the nation: "We JUST ended an expensive, destructive 20-year war in Afghanistan," she wrote, "but one day after that war ended, 14 Democrats voted with Republicans in the House Armed Services Committee to drastically increase the Defense Department budget. They voted for a budget that’s $25 billion more than what President Joe Biden was seeking—which was already an increase to last year’s outrageously massive budget."
The House went on to vote 316-to-113 to approve the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). In 2001, Rep. Barbara Lee cast a historic lone vote against authorizing the Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) that begat George W. Bush's "War on Terror." In 2021, Barbara Lee has continued to wage peace by introducing legislation to cut the Pentagon budget by $350 billion—and use the loot to fund critical domestic programs. Two other Calif. Dems have backed Lee's bill: Jared Huffman and Mark DeSaulnier.
This year, 38 Democrats joined Rep. Lee in voting against the gargantuan Pentagon budget. Six of California's 36 Congressional Democrats voted against the Pentagon hand-out. The six resisters were: Barbara Lee, Sara Jacobs, Mark DeSaulnier, Jimmy Gomez, Ro Khanna, and Alan Lowenthal. State Democrats voting for the NDAA included Anna Eschoo, John Garamendi, Zoe Lofgren, Jared Huffman, Jackie Speier, Maxine Waters, Adam Schiff and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. (Pelosi also reportedly pushed for a special $1 billion gift to Israel's armed forces.)
Raytheon "Honors" Wounded Vets with a Cynical Celebration
Arms manufacturer Raytheon thought it would be great PR to stage a "Run to Home Base" event at Boston's Fenway Park to "honor" US soldiers "recovering from the wounds of war."
Massachusetts Peace Action wasn't buying it. MPA pointed out that this Merchant of Death has pocketed more than $310 billion in US weapons contracts since 9/11 while investing $2.5 billion on lobbying to secure legislators' votes for those very contracts—a not-too-shabby 124-fold return on investment.
As the MPA organizers noted: "Raytheon is no friend of US soldiers as long as it's in the business of war-profiteering."
A Soldier Ambushes Bush in California Confrontation
Mike Prysner is an Iraq War veteran who lost a lot of fellow soldiers during his days in the combat zone. When he heard George W. Bush was headed to Beverly Hills for a paid speaking gig, Prysner scrapped together $500 for a ticket and challenged Bush in mid-speech, shouting that the former Commander-in-Chief lied about "weapons of mass destruction" and demanding that he "Apologize!" for all the resulting US and Iraqi deaths. During an online chat with members of the peace community, a California activist had only one complaint. Instead of tossing insults, he suggested Prysner "should have thrown a shoe!"
Prynsner intended to read two long lists with names of US and Iraq victims but the names of the US troops who "served" the country were snatched from his hand and ripped to shreds by members of the pro-Bush/pro-War crowd.
Bush's only response was to tell the former soldier to "Sit down and be quiet."
The whole confrontation—including Prysner's post-ejection comments and his list of the names of war dead—is posted on the Environmentalists Against War webpage.
Late Night Hosts Roast Climate Skeptics
In an unprecedented act of solidarity, on September 22, late-night talk-show hosts on all major TV networks joined forces to focus on the threat of climate chaos. Participants in #ClimateNight included: Stephen Colbert, Samantha Bee, James Corden, Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, Seth Meyers, and Trevor Noah.
Jimmy Kimmel got things rolling with the following montage of Climate Change Deniers. (Viewer warning: You may find this chilling to watch.)
And here's a compendium from each of the participating celebrities:
A 9/11 Question: "What Else We Should Never Forget"
While Americans are told to “never forget” 9/11, many have already forgotten the needless civilian casualties and high costs that came with the war in Afghanistan. The hidden message of "Never Forget" seems to be: "Never Question." Here's Trevor Noah's contribution to the debate:
When a cop killed Alan Blueford in East Oakland as he lay on his back, his hands raised and empty, Blueford was saying “I didn’t do anything.” The cop shot him three times anyway. When Mr. Powell kept telling the court, "I’m trying to deal with what the city wants; I have no objection to fixing up my house, I just don’t have any money,” the court put the house in receivership anyway, and thus put Mr. Powell in horrendous debt. The city could have worked with Mr. Powell; but instead it refused to listen to him, and chose to offer him fake assistance. The court too could have worked with Mr. Powell; but instead, it refused to listen to him, and chose to hear the city’s fabricated arguments about drugs in the house, a public nuisance to the neighborhood, disobedience to city processes.
Fast forward to 2019; we hear the punchline for this entire story. Mr. Powell has been saddled with a $750,000 debt. The city has a Deed of Trust for the house, so it can authorize a sale (to cover the receiver’s exorbitant expenditure). It can sell the house to cover the debt as soon as the judge says “okay.”
Selling the house was to be the punchline all along from the beginning. That’s why neither the city nor the court would listen to Powell. The city had taken him to court not because he did anything wrong, but in order to put him in debt so they could get his property (after turning it into income property by violating the judge’s instructions).
Actually, the Receiver gets to sell the house because the receivership agreement gives him power over the property. And the owner of the property becomes the victim of that power. Thus, at the beginning of 2019, the Receiver, as the creditor, decides Mr. Powell is far enough over his head in debt to ever pay, and petitions the court for the right to sell the house.
And when and if that happens, the city just gets rid of another black family, and turns a family housing situation into a fancy rental property. The banks win, and the victim disappears into some other town somewhere. Mr. Powell is black. Isn’t that what has happened to black people ever since 1863? And it still happens in 2019.
In other words, the city and the receiver are just pulling another trick out of their hat. It was the third round. The first round was in holding a poor black man to faked deadlines and punishing him for missing them. The second trick was promising money that would be withheld even though it was used to get a Deed of Trust signed, and give the city control over the house. The third trick was in suing Mr. Powell in civil court, a step toward putting his house in receivership, while creating the power to refuse to listen to him while he pleads his case.
He pleaded his case on his own, having no lawyer to represent him, for two years. He knew that receivership would destroy him. He knew that intuitively. He has known from experience that "they" (cops, city administrators, etc.) take you to court not because you have broken a law but in order to gain control over you. You become a detail in a transaction in which other people in high position make profit.
Mr. Powell knew all that. He never let go of that powerful two-letter word: "No."
In March, 2015, the city petitioned the court to place the house under receivership. The receivership was not to benefit Mr. Powell and his family. It was to create a debt that could be used to throw Mr. Powell and his family on the street as soon as it got too big for Mr. Powell to pay.
In January, 2019, the Receiver petitions the court of sell the house. QED.
But it didn’t turn out that way. Mr. Powell’s community, people from his block and from south Berkeley, showed up at the court proceedings and watched silently. They made themselves witnesses. You just never know what effect a group of silent people, intently watching what is going on, will have by the end of the day. There is so much that goes on in this society that depends on avoiding the light of day. A crowd of silent people, sitting and watching, often becomes strong sunlight illuminating dark-side events.
From 2015 on, Mr. Powell argued that he could do the work on the house slowly, raising a little money here, and a little money there. Most of it just required some maintenance work. The city threw tweaked deadlines at him, and repeated the city’s claim that the building was a “public nuisance” -- a technical or legalist term for blanket condemnation.
The court listens when the city boasts of providing an interest-free loan. It doesn’t listen when Mr. Powell says he never got any of that money. In 2015, the court could have asked the city, “why not, why didn’t he get the money?” The city waits until 2017, and approval of its receivership petition, to say why not.
What produced that two year delay? It was Powell’s statement that he had no representation. That was the only thing the court can hear.
But why was representation so scarce? Apparently, local lawyers who are willing to fight the city for a black family are hard to find.
You don’t think race played a role in this entire saga? Well, that is almost understandable. A large number of black people had to be killed on video for the nation to wake up to the role that race plays in all areas of this society. In this saga, we are dealing with only one. Yet even so, black people had to be killed by police in order for the role race plays in housing, the building of unaffordable market-rate housing on the one hand, and the displacement of low income black families on the other, to become discernible.
Even terms like "nuisance" and "substandard" have racist undertones. As terms written into city codes well before Brown v. Board, they sit there on the books pretending to not be what they are – that is, implying a low-life character to whoever is subjected to them. A nuisance is someone who bothers you. Black person don’t have to do anything to bother some white people. Their existence is enough. Even their house becomes a nuisance if the city says so. Who do you listen to? What race are they?
You know how the city finally got approval from the court for its trick? Someone found Mr. Powell a lawyer. Mr. Powell paid this lawyer $800 to protect him. The lawyer took the money, and said he would. But then, two weeks later, he is in court, and signs off on the judge’s order approving the city’s petition for receivership. That happened on March 15, 2017. On March 9, 2017, six days earlier, Mr. Powell had filed his own declaration stating that he did not want receivership, and that it would seriously harm members of his family (his daughter did self-dialysis every day, for instance).
Guess what? Nobody listened to him. The judge ignored his filing and sold him out, the city ignored his family situation and sold him out, and that lawyer just plain sold him out.
After experiencing colossal military failures and $trillions in wasteful spending, it is time to identify the real threat to our very existence, the existential threat of climate change. California is in the fourth year of a very serious drought significantly affecting agriculture. Wildfires rage in California, and New England amid changing climate. Reservoirs are at about 30 percent of capacity Tube wells are being dug deeper and deeper to access diminishing ground water. Oregon and Washington experienced draught conditions this year. Texas and Louisiana have been awash with severe flooding causing billions of dollars damage. If ever there was an environmental battle exemplifying a game of ping pong, it would be the stop-start story of the Keystone XL pipeline. We should pay more attention to indigenous people’s voices who revere the land, rivers and the natural habitat more than the fleeting pleasure of corporate profits.
If we can transport dirty tar sands oil from Alberta, Canada to the US Gulf coast we most certainly have the know how and technology to transport flood waters from states like Texas and Louisiana to drought-stricken California. It is a win-win situation all around. It is time to drastically cut back wasteful military spending and redirect the savings in the construction of a national water grid. The time to begin construction of the grid is NOW! Please call your legislators and demand immediate action.
After decades of humiliating defeats, Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Iraq, Afghanistan, . . - American credibility is in the dog house. But the shooting war is not over. Drones will be launched from “over the horizon” ships using highly unreliable aerial surveillance to home in on their targets. Many US drone operators have left the military vehemently opposed to this type of remote warfare which results in 90 percent of civilian casualties. Taliban fighters are quick to seize the moment persuading the grieving families to “switch sides” and embrace the anti-American crusade.
Taliban fighters are euphoric over their victory forcing the US military to retreat. Sharia Law is back forcing women to drape in head-to-toe suffocating clothes in the blistering Afghan sun. Music and all forms of entertainment are forbidden. Many budding artists have been forced to smash their instruments fearful they may suffer the wrath of the religious police. Meanwhile, the world greets the excessive cruelty and inhumane customs and policies of the Taliban with a deafening silence. The clear message from the Islamic world from Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt, . . . and the Taliban is Islamic women are inferior to their male counterparts and serve only for their pleasures and comfort. It is profoundly disappointing that there is a complete absence of a METOO movement in the Islamic world demanding the same rights as men. God did not create women to be abused but to be cherished and honored.
Now that the recall is over and a sigh of relief in the outcome is in order, we can put our focus on the other ballot, KPFA. KPFA is having a station board election and the deadline will arrive on October 15, 2021. To vote in this election you must have donated to KPFA between July 1, 2020 and June 30, 2021. If you donated and cannot find your electronic ballot the website https://www.kpfaprotectors.org/ (the candidates I am supporting) has the information and links.
The Agenda committee on Monday was as usual poorly attended with the Mayor and Councilmembers Wengraf and Hahn sifting through the draft for the September 28th regular council meeting. Taplin’s proposed ordinance requiring plant materials to be native to Berkeley and Northern California and drought tolerant was referred to the FITES Committee (facilities, infrastructure, transportation, environment and sustainability).
I never really thought much about native plants (except what was the big deal) until a neighbor and I started a swimming routine and walked to and from our homes in the McGee Spaulding neighborhood to the Downtown Y. She would talk about pollinators and habitat and point out how the yards on the way were filled with flowers and devoid of bees and butterflies. I learned about host plants (i.e. monarch caterpillars only feed on milkweed), that with native plants little bites out of leaves was a good thing, that oaks are a keystone plant supporting 300 or more species and that Ginkos supported nothing, a dead zone for habitat. There was one house with a large California native pipevine. We would stop on the way home and watch the pipevine caterpillars chewing away on the plant. The pipevine never needed trimming to control its expansive growth as the lively caterpillars would keep it in check. That was until the owner decided on a new fence and had the pipevine cut down to a stump. The black and orange pipevine caterpillars and the iridescent blue and black butterflies are gone. All we have left is pictures. https://www.nps.gov/articles/california-pipevine-swallowtail.htm
My journey in appreciating native plants continued with picking up the writings of Douglas Tallamy and Edward O. Wilson. Most of all I’ve grown to understand just why these points by Edward O. Wilson are so critical to our future, “Insects are the little things that run the world.” “If insects were to vanish so would nearly all the flowering plants and the food webs they support. This loss in turn, would cause the extinction of reptiles, amphibians, birds and mammals: in effect, nearly all terrestrial animal life.”
Many of us have been taught that bugs are bad, to be afraid and hate the little crawly things and that we must buy the pesticides on the garden store shelves to kill them. We’re taught native plants are weeds and to fill our yards with exotic plants from places other than here, exotic non-native plants that create a food desert to native pollinators. An analogy: offering non-native plants to pollinators is like serving a child kerosene instead of food. Even the subject of the book I summarize at the end of this Diary is about our species damaging local ecology and the destruction it wrought.
One plant, one yard doesn’t seem like much, but when we multiply that over and over across our neighborhoods, our cities, our state, our nation, our planet it is a cascade of destruction. We can look to this as contributing to the loss of 3 billion birds in North America over the last 50 years, the disappearance of insects, the decline of the monarchs and so many other species.
It doesn’t have to be this way. My neighbor, friend and swim partner has filled her yard with native plants. It is delightful as birds, butterflies, skippers, caterpillars and a wide variety of native bees discovered it. This is what Tallamy teaches us.
It was one of Tallamy’s graduate students that pulled together a study of nesting chickadees and tallied how many caterpillars were needed to feed the babies until they fledged the nest. The tally was 6000 to 9000 caterpillars. Think about that when about 96% of all baby birds need caterpillars as their diet.
If I were to guess from looking at this neighborhood, probably 90% of it supports not even one caterpillar. Crows will eat just about anything , which is a good reason why that population keeps expanding and song birds are in small numbers. The feeders with seeds in our yards will attract adult birds, but most baby birds can’t digest seeds.
You may wonder why I write week after week on the environment, habitat, ecosystems and climate. I am trying to bring you along, to pique your interest in creating an environment that supports our local ecosystems. I know it is a big stretch. And this grounding brings us to the rest of the city meetings.
At the Tuesday council meeting the Objective Standards and the Baseline Zoning Ordinance were rolled over to the September 28th. If you have rooftop solar and live in an area that may be the site of mixed use apartment buildings, which is pretty much everywhere with the signing of SB 9 and SB 10, then you should care about Objective Standards. In the standards up for a vote, a new tall apartment building next door can shadow up to 50% of your solar without any accommodation or design modification. In a city that claims to be concerned about resilience and climate this should be pretty appalling. It is item 33 in the agenda for the 28th. https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Clerk/City_Council/2021/09_Sep/City_Council__09-28-2021_-_Regular_Meeting_Agenda.aspx
You have another opportunity to dig into the Baseline Zoning Ordinance. The thickness of the document 532 pages is overwhelming. A suggestion is to use this link to the “readable” version (476 pages) review the table of contents and then go to the pages that affect your neighborhood and the things you care about.
Not one of these documents gives any attention to the environment, habitat or ecosystems.
The bills passed by our legislature completely ignore the environment other than promoting density as the beginning and end to solve greenhouse gas emissions. There is absolutely no consideration to creating corridors to connect to larger open spaces like parks where ecosystems can thrive. There is not one thought to preserving trees and a total absence of understanding the heat island effect when trees are removed and land is covered with buildings and hardscape.
That alone can increase local temperature by 10° to 20°. Buildings, sidewalks and patios add to water runoff if and when rain arrives, exacerbating the impact of drought rather than recharging the underlying land.
At the Transportation Commission on Thursday evening, Farid Javandel spoke about trees as though they are an inconvenience to be cutdown without a second thought.
The Human Welfare & Community Action Commission was canceled due to a lack of quorum and the Council Land Use Policy Committee meeting was cancelled without a listed reason although SB 9 and SB 10 might be somewhere in the background. I was planning to comment on the only listed item, Councilmember Taplin’s affordable housing overlay. In Taplin’s proposal, he does not define the percentage of housing affordable to each income level and especially moderate income (80% - 120% of AMI - area median income), the number of years the housing must be affordable 55 years, longer or in perpetuity, and there is nothing on green building, permeable paving or space/corridors between hardscape to support urban biodiversity/ecosystems. If this comes back again, I’ll need to update the chart posted in the Planet on March 14, 2020 adding the impact of SB 9 and SB 10 and including any modifications from Taplin. https://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2021-03-14/article/49067?headline=Affordable-Housing-Overlays-Cambridge-vs.-Berkeley--Kelly-Hammargren
This week’s book was Four Winds by Kristin Hannah, 2021. Fiction is not my usual fare, although many of the political books released this year make me wish they were fiction. Four Winds has been on the lucky day shelf of ebooks at the Berkeley Library and came highly recommended by my sister. The novel is about the dust bowl, the migration to California, the wretched conditions of the migrant camps, the search for work and ends with union organizing by members of the American Communist Party. A close friend of my husband’s, Sylvia Thompson, who passed away in 2012. was a member of the American Communist Party and was a union organizer in North Carolina in the early 1940s. She had stories about the dangers of organizing and being chased out of towns.
In the author’s note, Hannah makes reference to the 2008 recession. I think more about the climate and environmental disasters that have been forcing migration within the U.S. and will continue doing so into the future. Climate migrants from outside the U.S. are already at our doorstep, and they were described in the same ways by the Trump administration as in the book on the dust bowl: lazy, dirty, infected criminals who burden the economy.
This novel has renewed my interest in finding the collection of essays by red diaper babies (it is somewhere on a shelf or in a stack of books) and finishing it. Berkeley has been a city with many red diaper babies, and that may be a significant contribution to the local progressive history.
Have you ever had that nightmare where you are standing all alone in a strange place, surrounded by people looking at you silently in deadpan, and there is a man looking down on you with a sneer on his face, saying “We’re going to help you”?
In the dream, you know what it means. They will help you lose all your money, lose your property, lose your ability to walk across the street without their permission, lose your life.
When said in waking life by a city administration, it takes on a few hidden meanings. For instance, when the city presented Powell with a list of code violations, and gave him 45 days to fix it, they were pretending he was a rich man, and could hire contractors with the snap of his fingers. Then, when the city pretended the deadline had passed when it hadn’t, it was secretly conniving. “We’re going to help you,” the list of violations pretended to say. You would have become a legitimate resident, it implied, if you had met our deadlines. The city secretly laughed, as if it were all a “big joke.”
Mr. Powell’s response to the list was: “I’ll do it.” Wrong response. Can you guess why? He was perfectly happy to bring his house into code compliance. He got a few contract estimates. The lowest one was for $184,000. It would include rebuilding a few window frames and door jambs, as well as dealing with electrical maintenance and dry rot. Minor maintenance stuff. But the city didn’t want estimates; it wanted applications for "permits." Mr. Powell knew the contractor had to do that, not he himself. And he didn’t have the money yet to get a contract signed. When he asked for assistance, the city just accused him of missing a deadline. “Too late, Buster.”
But the city ain’t all bad. It assigned a couple of beautiful ladies from the Housing Department to offer him a loan especially designed for elderly retired homeowners; $100,000, interest free. Can you imagine? An interest free loan from the city? Wow. They really do want to help.
So they bring forth the paperwork, and Mr. Powell signs a Deed of Trust for the house, as a condition for getting the loan. That essentially puts the house’s future in the hands of the city (a DoT means nothing can happen with respect to the house without the Trustee saying so). But then, no money. Mr. Powell never sees a cent of the money he gave a Deed of Trust to cover as collateral. Not a single cent.
Why not?
Will you be satisfied with a minor technicality? The city was. It had a technicality ready that allowed it to withhold all that money.
You see, when Mr. Powell moved into the house, back in the 1970s, it was a duplex. But he was the man of a family of eight. They boarded up one door, broke a hole in one wall that gave access to the internal stairway, and turned the house into a single family home. Just like that. It was perfect for that family. They lived well in it for 40 years. But Mr. Powell never got any permits to do those elementary operations. Officially it was listed as a duplex, while practically it was single family house. Nobody cared until that day in 2014.
But even then, the city didn’t care. In its list of code violations, the city made mention of the fact that there had been no permit to change the house status, but did not consider it a code violation. The city actually suggested it accepted the house’s single family status. Indeed, it gave instructions to Mr. Powell as to what he would need to do if he desired returning the house to former status. He didn’t do them. He didn’t want that.
But the loan was for duplex buildings only, and required the owner to live in one of its two units. Mr. Powell lived in the house, but it was no longer a duplex. So he couldn’t get the money, even though he had signed for it. The city had brought forth a loan targeting duplex houses, while accepting the change of status of this one. Thus, it falsely offered the loan.
Are we clear on this? The city was implicitly accepting the building’s change of status (to single family), but then using that as an excuse to withhold the money.
When the city actually went to court and petitioned for receivership, it claimed that Mr. Powell seemed to be unwilling to do the maintenance to correct the code violations. But it didn’t mention that he couldn’t because they hadn’t forwarded the money he had signed for.
In short, the city created a condition in which Mr. Powell needed assistance, offered assistance that it was unable to provide, and then held it against him that he was unable to do what depended on that assistance.
Do you know when the city actually admitted to what it had done? In March of 2017, two years later, when the city finally succeeded in getting the court to place the house in receivership, and assign a Receiver.
All along, the city was arguing that Mr. Powell was not correcting his violations. On the very day, March 15, 2017, when the judge approved receivership, the city mentions (in one small paragraph in its filing) that it had withheld the money Mr. Powell needed on that little technicality.
It was all a con. The city falsely offered money, and then falsely withheld the money, while getting a Deed of Trust as collateral for the money as if they had given it to him. And finally, the city falsely portrayed Mr. Powell in court as not willing to do the repairs required by the list of violations.
He was trapped. The city had saddled him with $150,000 worth of work that he didn’t have the money for. The city promised to get him money to do the work that the city knew it could not give him. But in promising to give him money the city could not provide, it got him to sign a Deed of Trust making the city Trustee. So Mr. Powell could not finance his own house to get the money to do the work on the house that the city required because the city had a lien on the house for $100,000 that Mr. Powell never got but that a mortgager would have to pay off first in order to mortgage the house. He was trapped. There was nothing he could do to keep himself and his family from being taken to court and sued by the city. And it was the city that put him in that trap. It placed him in that trap by looking down on him and saying, “We’re going to help you.”
And that’s when things really got crooked. The city turned its back and allowed it to happen. By November, 2017, Mr. Powell was in debt for $435,000. And by June, 2018, it was up to $700,000.
I would like to introduce you to my sister, Roxana Gillett.
"Roxie" is a musician, novelist, and playwright currently residing in Las Cruces, New Mexico with her husband. She boasts an unusual resume.
After a stint as a Hollywood stunt-person (she went toe-to-toe with a demon dog in the film version of Stephan King's Cujo), she became a performer with the country's last traveling circus and wound up spending more than 15 years caring for lions, tigers, and elephants, including a long Bay Area stint at Marine World / Africa USA.
Roxie turned to writing, in part, because she wanted to communicate "the beauty and loving hearts wild animals have and the dignity and respect they deserve when they 'allow us' to be part of their lives."
Her first book, The White Elephant Kneels, was inspired by her travels to Africa and her long experience working with African and Indian elephants. She is currently polishing two new musicals and there's another novel in the works.
The following "true-life mini-memoire" was written decades ago and a friend recently discovered it posted online. It had me laughing and seemed worth sharing. So here, after many years, is a frisky tale of one of my sister's worst days during her career as a circus performer.
Ta-Tas…..Breasts….The Girls.….Let’s Talk….. By Roxana Gillett
I admit I’ve always been a tiny bit obsessed about my Bra Buddies. It’s because I didn’t have any. Really. Nada. Nothing. Just Nipples. Don’t get me wrong, they were perky little things, but I wanted more than Flapjacks and Fried eggs. I wanted Gazingas and Goombas.
Am I embarrassing you, talking about my Boobies? Seriously, it’s not like we are not all old enough. By this age, we’ve all seen a pair of Paw Patties, haven’t we? Anyway, back to my story.
I was so desperate for normal-sized Mushmelons, that once, when I got stung by a bee on my left Snuggle Pup, I put the band-aid under the sting to give that Cha-Cha a little more lift. I didn’t even care about being lopsided. I figured one was better than none.
For part of my Flat-hoodness, I was a performer with Circus Vargas—an Elephant-Broad, a girlie-girl. But being Mammies-challenged, I had to wear rubber-falsies under my teeny bikini. These flesh-colored Grillworks were the stuff dreams are made of—and for an extra two dollars, you could get them with nipples. I figured, heck, money well spent. I got the nipples.
“Styling” doesn’t’ even begin to tell you how swell these Milk Shakers made me feel. "If you got them flaunt them" finally had meaning.
So, we were in North Dakota, under the big top of Circus Vargas, all searchlights and glam. I rode into the tent confident and flaunting my Hood Ornaments, riding high, legs tucked tightly behind the lead elephant’s ears. Triple false eyelashes glued in place and Bodacious Ta-Ta’s bouncing, I was a sight to behold . . . a real beauty.
Aha, but the god of “You ain’t got real Love Muffins” was about to bring me down.
The ponderous pachyderms pounded the turf as they circled the circus arena. Dust bellowed! Clouds cart-wheeled. I waved to the cheering multitudes, my Bazooks thrust forward showing off their fullness, flashing rhinestone and gloating Pointer-Sister perfection under the bright circus lights.
The elephants stopped at center ring. They stood, front feet on each other’s backs as I pirouetted in high-heeled dance shoes, to stand on top of my elephant’s head. The crowd clapped. The sound grew louder, and then . . . the big “O!”
I got a standing ovation. It was my Montezumas that made the difference, and I was proud. When the elephants dismounted so did I.
Once again they circled the tract. I waited, right hand in the air, smiling, Cup-Cakes jetted out and on display. The elephants raced toward me. I stood my ground. The crowd noise hushed. When the lead elephant was a mere six feet away, I lowered my hand with dramatic flair and collectively the audience sucked in their breaths.
The lead elephant screeched to a halt with only inches to spare and lowered her head. The others stopped behind her. I grabbed the harness that wrapped around her face with flashing circus jewels. She flipped her massive head up in the air with a practiced jerk and sent me flying three feet above her. I twisted and twirled. I was to land on her back with a flourish and outstretched arms. But it was not to be.
My LopIollies ejected!
OMG! They have abandoned ship. Grab a life raft!
One Billybong went right . . . the other Bonbon flew left. I reached out for them, but they eluded me, and shame upon shame, I landed on my butt at the feet of my fearless pachyderm.
But in the immortal words of our Ring Master, “The show must go on.” I rose, smiled, and waved. I figured at the very least I’d get a round of applause for my bravery, but instead I got snickers.
What this? I asked. Then I noticed the audience pointing at the Elephant, my ride; my liege. Their snickers turned to laughter, big-belly-tears-running-down-your-face-type of laughter.
There perched on top my elephant’s huge gray head was one lonely Boob. And she, my friend the elephant, held the other Coconut in her trunk . . . a Double-Whammie of Defeat.
Is there a moral to this story? Perhaps it’s as simple as: Next time you ride an elephant, pin on those Butterballs!
A full-page ad in a weekly news-rag recently caught my eye. It showed a baby sucking on a pacifier and dressed in a blue pajama outfit. I thought the ad was for the outfit but it turned out the ad was for "Oliver," the baby.
As the ad explained, Oliver was a doll. A very life-like "touch-activated" doll that "breathes and coos and has a 'heartbeat' you can feel."
These are not your grandma's stuffed-cloth rag dolls. Oliver is part of a new generation of hyper-realistic playthings that are not only bewitchingly believable but are also ready to engage
Touch these robobotic bundles-of-joy and they'll mew and giggle for you. Some will appear to gaze back at you with alert, watchful eyes. Squeeze one of these adorable simulacrums and their springy, TrueTouch® silicon surfaces will "capture the feel of a baby's skin." Touch some of these interactive dolls and they will reciprocate by clutching your hand.
Oliver, the work of renown "doll artist" Linda Murray, is described as "19" long and poseable. Batteries required." So the good news is you don't have to feed them or change their nappies. You just need to change their batteries. (Alas, no details are provided on how to change Oliver's power supply. A door in his silicon tummy, perhaps?)
Oliver is only one of scores of individualistic designer-babies inventoried for sale by Ashton-Drake, the prominent fake-baby merchant behind the ad. A-D is not shy about promoting there beguiling look-alikes. "Find a little one who fills your heart with joy! Each of our lovingly handcrafted baby dolls has a personality all their own, from their expressive faces right down to their wrinkly fingers and toes."
We're told that buying one of these dolls directly from designer Linda Murray (one of the half-dozen female "doll artists" who work for Ashton-Drake) would cost "thousands." But, somehow, Ashton-Drake stands ready to ship one of these little angels to your doorstep swaddled in a shipping crate for only $160 (plus $17 for shipping and handling).
Ashton-Drake will be happy to provide the new addition to your family with lots of high-price gear offered to "Pamper your little one with a wardrobe of adorable and fashionable looks…, blankets and buntings." The company also offers a trove of purchasable doll-sized "furniture and accessories." What kind of accessories? Well, you'll need diaper bags (why?) and basins for bathing your water-friendly Layla Rub-A-Dub-Dub doll.
There appear to be more than 70 unique kiddie-creations in the A-D stable. There are Twin Dolls, African-American Dolls (with names like Michael, Jackson, and Calvin for the boys and Gabrielle, Jada, Tiana, and Flora for the girls), and lifelike Monkey Dolls, for those who might wish to cradle a fake baby orangutan.
And, if you're in danger of tiring from babyhood, there are other Ashton-Drake artists turning out 25 different Toddler and Child Dolls that you can hold up while you help them take their "first steps."
Capitalism being what it is, it turns out that Ashton-Drake has competitors. Truly Reborn Dolls (located in Shenzhen, China) offers a similar range of hyper-realistic dolls that coo and "breathe" and cuddle. TRD warns that other doll-factories are fibbing when they claim their products are composed of 100% silicon. TRD boasts that their dolls are crafted from "soft vinyl, not very squishy." TRD offers this online shopping tip: "Be careful if a website's 22-inch doll [costs] less than 60 bucks!"
TRD admits that its rubber-babies have some limitations. While these Chinese-born dolls "can move their arms and legs but not very wildly…, they cannot move, blink, drink or eat. NO PRIVATE PART." This last claim raises some unsettling concerns about predators who may be buying these dolls for illicit purposes. And, in fact, a review of TRD's line of Reborn offspring reveals that at least some of the dolls come complete with genitalia.
TRD boasts they "only sell the reborn baby doll, do not sell creepy baby dolls." But, again, that last boast seems to ignore TRD's unique line of weird pre-toddlers including Werewolf Babies, Alien Avatar Babies, Elf Babies, and Preemie Babies.
The YouTubeVerse is filled with videos of adults and children gushing over their pricey robo-tots. Most of these videos seem to run on for more that ten minutes. Some of the videos feature women who are shown proudly sharing their crammed living spaces with scores of cute and cuddly infant look-alikes.
It's like watching a Zombie Apocalypse for the Very Young. Here's a taste.
Warning: The Following Assortment of TikTok Videos May Give You Nightmares
The September 14, 2021, California recall is over and Governor Gavin Newsom won a resounding victory. What does this portend for California politics? There are four takeaways:
1. Democrats demonstrated they can mobilize their base in an off-election year. The Republican recall "logic" had two aspects: first, Republicans wanted to get rid of Governor Newsom because of his strong response to the Coronavirus pandemic (the lockdown and mask mandates) and, second, they believed the recall would succeed because Democrats would not be bothered to vote in an "off" election year. However, Democrats did mobilize and blocked the recall with 63 percent of the vote.
Republicans made three miscalculations. First, because they didn't like Newsom, they assumed that some Democrats and many Independents also did not like him. That turned out not to be the case. Second, they assumed that most Californians were also anti-vaccination, anti-mask, and anti-mandate. That was also not the case; most Californians are tired of the pandemic and mad at those who will not get vaccinated, who will not take Coronavirus seriously. Third, Republicans assumed they could mobilize behind a Trump clone, Larry Elder, and voters would prefer him to Newsom. That was not the case; a strong majority of voters were horrified by Elder. Check out the CNN exit polls: (https://www.cnn.com/election/2021/exit-polls/california/recall )
(There were moderate Republicans who might have gotten traction with independents and some Democrats; for example, former San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer. However, Faulconer is now too moderate for mainstream Republicans.)
2. Most of Southern California voted "No" on the recall. This surprising result has consequences for six Republican held congressional seats.
California has 53 Congressional seats, 11 are held by Republicans: 4 of these are in Northern California -- above San Luis Obispo and Bakersfield-- and the remaining 7 are in Southern California: CA8 (Obernolte), CA 23 (McCarthy), CA25 (Garcia), CA39 (Kim), CA42 (Calvert), CA48 (Steel), and CA50 (Issa). Except for CA 23 (in Kern County), all of these districts opposed the recall. Before the recall, 3 of those congressional districts (CA25, CA39, and CA48) were already prime Democratic targets; perhaps CA8 and CA42 have been added to the list.
If Democrats continue to mobilize Latino voters, this will increase the likelihood of these Republican congressional seats flipping.
3. As a Republican candidate, linking yourself to Trump may be the most expedient thing to do, but it's not a viable strategy, in California, because it doesn't attract any crossover votes. Trump is not popular in California. For this reason, it didn't make much sense for Larry Elder to run as a Trump "clone." In the upcoming midterm elections, all 11 Republican incumbent members of Congress will be linked to Trump and to Larry Elder. This may help those incumbents who are in deep red districts, but it won't help those who are in toss-up districts.
4. Republicans aren't interested in most of the issues that concern the general California electorate. One of the factors that hindered Larry Elder was his cavalier attitude about the pandemic. Elder's position appeared to be "We don't need mandates to deal with Coronavirus, this is a matter of personal responsibility. I trust Republicans to do the right thing." Most Californians don't trust individual Republicans to do "the right thing." Most Californians feel that individual Republicans have prolonged the pandemic by their irresponsible behavior. ( https://www.cnn.com/election/2021/exit-polls/california/recall)
Elder expressed opinions on a wide-variety of issues: crime, homelessness, education, immigration, etcetera. His problem was that his positions never gained traction -- outside the Republican base -- because he didn't have a realistic plan to deal with the pandemic. (Elder also took extreme positions on social issues that diverted media attention from his bread-and-butter policy positions; for example Elder said that if he became governor, he would immediately issue an executive order banning all abortions.)
Summary: On November 8, 2022, Gavin Newsom will be up for reelection. Based upon the September 14th recall results, Newsom will have no viable Republican opponent. This suggests that Democrats will make a strong showing, in the 2022 midterm election, and probably pickup several house seats.
Bob Burnett is a Bay Area writer and activist. He can be reached at bburnett@sonic.net
Even though the various claims of evidence alleging a stolen 2020 election — “The Big Lie” — have been exhaustively investigated and litigated and found wanting, a May 21, 2021 Ipsos/Reuters Poll found that over half of Republicans believe Donald Trump is the actual President of the United States. And Trump’s stronghold over the Republican party remains. His refusal to concede the 2020 election and calls of widespread fraud have raised doubts about the integrity of its results among his Republican base. Consequently, 56% of Republicans believe the election was rigged or the result of illegal voting, and 53% think Donald Trump is the actual President, not Joe Biden.
“The Big Lie” refers to Trump's false claim that the election was stolen from him through massive fraud, and eventually led to Trump supporters storming the U.S. Capitol on January 6. “A big lie (German: große Lüge; often the big lie) is a propaganda technique used for political purposes, defined as "a gross distortion or misrepresentation of the facts, especially when used as a propaganda device by a politician or official body.” This German expression was "coined by Adolf Hitler, when he dictated his 1925 book Mein Kampf, to describe the use of a lie so "colossal" that no one would believe that someone could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously.”
Larry Elder, the top Republican seeking to replace Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) in the September 14 recall election declined before the election to say whether he could accept the results. A website affiliated with his campaign asked visitors to “sign a petition to stop the fraud of the California recall election.” BothTrump and Elder’s campaign falsely claimed fraud even before California votes were counted. You can bet this will be an ongoing Republican tactic.
That so many gullible Americans would believe The Big Lie in spite of the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, and Trump’s history of lying, is irrational. And especially since the Republican Party’s policies are generally unpopular. If Republicans came clean about those policies, they would rarely win free and fair elections. Republicans want to turn back to the Jim Crow era "by keeping Black and brown and other members of Democratic Party’s base from voting.”
Trump and his sycophants are intent on keeping “The Big Lie” in the public eye as long as possible to undermine the integrity of future elections and give impetus to state voter suppression laws. The Big Lie has given eighteen states justification to pass new voting laws in the past six months. Republican-dominated legislatures have also stripped secretaries of state and other independent election officials of their power.
In addition, the third audit (or "fraudit" as some have called it) is now being conducted in Maricopa County, Arizona, ten months after the election by the Cyber Ninjas, a company hired by the Republican-controlled Arizona state Senate, who have no experience in conducting election audits. (The name “Cyber Ninjas” itself doesn’t inspire confidence.)
Other Republican-controlled states will continue this farce unless the U.S. Department of Justice steps in to end this likely violation of federal election laws. For example, a Wisconsin lawmaker has taken the unprecedented step of demanding clerks in two counties turn over all ballots and voting equipment used in the 2020 presidential election for a “cyber-forensic” review of the results. And Pennsylvania Republican lawmakers voted to subpoena Gov. Tom Wolf’s administration for voter records, communication between state and county elections officials, and other documents as they investigate the 2020 presidential election 10 months after Joe Biden’s victory.
Clearly, Congressional Republicans will oppose any federal voting rights legislation.
As Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan once said, "Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.” It’s time for Americans to wake up and repudiate Trump and his The Big Lie. Our very democracy is at stake.
Narcissistic Personality Disorder is one kind of mental illness. It is distinct from Bipolar, Schizophrenia, Schizoaffective, Depression, and so on. Yet, many people get a mixture of two or more mental illnesses that could fall into any of these categories. I've met people who've described themselves as having a little bit of everything. Diagnoses don't define who we are, and it is inappropriate for treatment professionals to define us as objects that they are expected to manage and/or repair. Some with mental illness have had stellar careers. But this doesn't automatically make them narcissistic.
We are people, and that's it. Don’t call us "people with problems" or "people with mental illness" --at least, don't do that unless you have a good reason, such as mere description. When we speak of "a Black person," to refer to someone, it could be automatic racism. That's because the person speaking sees "a Black person," and not a "person." When people are referred to as "mentally ill people," it is a form of bigotry in some contexts but not others. It is a subtle distinction but an important one.
Being Black is more than just a description because they have a racial identity, one which contains being on the receiving end of much oppression and abuse, many triumphs, and great perseverance. It is apparent when we hear someone using the term "Black person" as a derogatory phrase versus otherwise. The same ideas to an extent, seems to hold true for "mental health clients," or "people with mental illness." We must always consider the context and tone of what is being said.
Add to this, the phrase "homeless problem." Or a politician speaking who claimed he was going to "fix the homeless situation."
The above concepts have been applied by many media sources, the ones that have any kind of reputation of appropriateness to maintain.
Anthony Bourdain did an incredibly good television series in which he traveled all over the world and within the U.S. to examine food, culture, and often, politics. He won numerous Emmy Awards for his series, "Parts Unknown." Bourdain seemed to be at the top of the world.
At around the time that President Trump came into office, Bourdain died from suicide. How could someone with that much going for him find life not worth living? Was he under too much pressure? Did he have a psychiatric illness? The answers appear to be 'yes.' Bourdain did struggle with mental health issues and was a recovered heroin addict. And his television series was massively demanding.
(Bourdain didn't die of a drug overdose.)
Other mega-celebrities have died tragically, not fulfilling their natural lifespans. Sometimes their personal doctors had a hand in it. The big celebrities who can remain grounded and low-key are the only ones able to live normally. The more obsessed a celebrity's fans become with that person, the harder it might be for famous people to retain a normal feeling about themselves.
Brittany Spears is an incredibly successful performer yet is under mental health conservatorship. Her father, the conservator, is in the process of ending that, and Spears will likely take charge of her own life. According to news sources, Brittany feels able to move on. The public campaign she waged may have put a lot of pressure on her conservator to release Brittany. This is an example of mega talent and mega popularity in combination with having a mental health diagnosis.
Catherine Zeta Jones is bipolar, but this apparently had a minimal or no effect on her career. She had not gone public about her condition until a few years ago.
Sometimes it seems as though the mental health disease, and the emotional pain a person has, are factors that end up helping the rise to the top, rather than being an impeding factor. If you have to deal with the continuous suffering of chronic mental illness and medication side-effects, it might cause the stresses of performing to seem relatively smaller. Moreover, a mental health condition could become part of a more intense motivation.
Society at large is obsessed with material success. And this is a collective social sickness. It applies to me and my ambition to succeed at writing. And when I have a lull in the amount of success I'm having in my publishing attempts, or in my perceived prospects of ever reaching a higher tier, I begin to question whether what I'm doing is worth it. My endeavors at writing have garnered me more negativity and put-downs from people rather than praise. And I find this inexplicable as well as distressing. Am I narcissistic? I don't think anyone can be an objective judge about that, where it applies to oneself. If you are a narcissist, you won't be able to acknowledge it.
Anyone can be a narcissist. You could be a garbage collector and be a narcissist. On the other hand, you could be President and you might not be thin-skinned or obsessed with yourself. President Obama is a fine example of someone who has reached the very top yet has maintained a sense of humor and a lightheartedness. He is a tremendous example of how to approach life correctly.
Jimmy Carter, U.S. President from 1977 to 1981, was willing to fly in the coach section of a commercial jet to get to a Democratic Convention. He is an example of someone with incredible accomplishments and incredible fortitude, who apparently does not elevate himself above others.
I haven't had much success in my life. I've either made the wrong decision at a vital moment, I've chickened out of an opportunity, or I wasn't strong enough on the inside to handle the work I was looking at. In some instances, I was doing very well, and other people have intentionally interfered and caused my efforts to be stymied. Even so, and even while my age exceeds a half century, I haven't given up. This is either perseverance or stupidity. Yet, it wouldn't do me any good to do drugs or to get lost in a fog of excessive psych meds and cigarettes.
Society needs to ease up. And we need to ease up on ourselves. We have inappropriate value systems. We need to understand the things that are genuinely valuable in life. That may sound trite, but it is applicable.
When we try to do something, success isn't guaranteed. But if you never try, you should not be surprised when nothing happens.
You don't need to be famous. I wanted to be famous when I embarked on writing. I had the foolish notion that I could make good money at it. As it turns out, I'm broke. I regret not doing something lucrative, at least as a sideline. Twenty years ago, I could have decided not to abandon my computer assistance practice. It was an entirely bad decision, and it surprisingly harmed my writing career at the time. For the reader, if you haven't decided where you want to go, I recommend doing something that brings income. When you get older, you probably won't regret this. Insofar as narcissism, you could be a penniless narcissist or a narcissist who has money. Or you might not be worried about it.
Jack Bragen is author of "Jack Bragen's 2021 Fiction Collection."
Oakland's California Ballroom is set to host the Animal Liberation Conference 2021, which will from September 24-30. According to the event organizers, a wide range of activities will include "trainings for the revolution, games, plant-based food trucks, and the Animal Liberation March in San Francisco." And one of the keynote speakers Pentagon whistleblower Chelsea Manning.
Manning served seven years of a 35-year sentence for exposing US war crimes in Iraq. Her sentence was commuted by President Barack Obama but Manning was jailed two more times for refusing to testify against WIkileaks whistleblower Julian Assange. Manning, who found herself confined in all-male prisons, attempted suicide during her captivity.
Manning will be the keynote speaker at Saturday's September 25 event at noon in the California Ballroom. Leading animal rights groups—including Direct Action Everywhere (DXE), Animal Rebellion, and the Animal Save Movement—hope to inspire activists "to take bold, collective action to achieve revolutionary social & political change for animals." For all the details, check the conference website online. [Late-breaking news. Chelsea Manning has reportedly tested positive for COVID-19 and may not be able to attend this event.]
Getting Off on the Right Foot
The REI sporting goods co-op recently emailed a promo for its autumn footwear sale. The wording of the ad was a little unsteady. The subject line read: "Running Shoes for Comfy Fall."
The idea of a "comfy fall" reminds me of the warnings that appear in front of the doors of mass transit rail cars that read: "Watch Your Step" and "Have a Nice Trip."
A Chronic Condition
A recent a nod in the direction of the Chronicle's pun-loving headlines, provoked the following dispatch from local Planetarian phil allen:
"From the Refrigerator News—posted Chron headlines from the past:
'Dire Report on Blondes a Washout,' 'Mental Ward Plan Called Reasonable,' and 'Extra Anesthesia Needed for Redheads.'"
Fashion Plates
A BMW rolling down the Berkeley streets was seen flashing a license plate that read: DL MAKR. Also spotted: an enigmatic license plate on a silver Kia that read: N8TR[heart]ER. Message? "Nature Lover."
America: Fulfilling Bin Laden's Prophesy
Reuters reporter Naimul Karim (naimul@gmail.com) recently offered this salient summation of Washington's wasted, wasteful war in Afghanistan:
"As far as I am concerned, Bin Laden has won. No sugar-coating it. Our freedoms gone, freedoms that he (supposedly) hated, our reputation and moral fabric in tatters, our country bankrupt, infrastructures decrepit, society in disharmony, the future rudderless…. Most bitter of all, Bin Laden even didn’t have to do it—he made us do it ourselves. That’s because he knew us better than we know us…."
Afghanistan Was No Surprise: The Military Knew
In July 2017, the Military.com website posted an article under the title: Countries with the Worst Militaries, The article identified the Pentagon's top three lost causes as Afghanistan, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia.
Addressing the Afghan situation, Military.com offered this prophetic assessment: "Afghanistan makes the list despite the decade-plus of training from ISAF [International Security Assistance Force] advisors. The sad truth is that all that nifty training doesn’t make up for the fact that the ANA [Afghan National Army] will likely collapse like a card table when the US leaves Afghanistan — if the US ever leaves Afghanistan."
Regarding Iraq, Military.com wrote: "Despite years of training from US and British forces, as well as $26 billion in investments and military aid, the Iraqi Army has only 26 units considered 'loyal.' On top of that, Iraqi lawmakers discovered 50,000 “ghost soldiers” in its ranks — troops who received a paycheck, but never showed up for work. In 2014, ISIS was able to overrun much of Western Iraq as Iraqi troops fled before the Islamist onslaught."
And addressing the Saudi Kingdom, Military.com wrote:
"The Saudis are currently engaged in a coalition military operation in Yemen with the United Arab Emirates [supported by the US] in an effort to expel Houthi tribesmen from Sana’a and re-establish the Sunni rulers. And they can't…. They’ve been there since March 2015 and the Houthis are still in the capital."
It's now seven years later and the Houthis are still in the capital.
Nuclear Subs Down Under
The US, UK, and Australia have just made waves this past week by announcing "AUKUS"—a tri-partite military trade deal that will bring US nuclear-powered submarines to Australia—dangerously close to the contested South China Sea.
Why is it called AUKUS? That's a combination of the initials Australia, UK, and US. Reporting from Australia, Dr Alison Broinowski AM (Acting President of Australians for War Powers Reform) suggests two other explanations for AUKUS: (1) This diplomatically puts the smallest nation first
(2) It sounds like something out of "Lord of the Rings."
Dr. Broinowski also notes that, if you put the "US" first, it would read "USUKA," which makes more sense because "USUKA would sound like 'You sucker, Australia.' Which is true."
AUKUS also can be read as "Aw, cuss!" but Dr. Broinowski assures me: "We don’t say ‘aw cuss’ at this end of the world."
Australia's Defense Policy Explained
Celebrate International Peace Day with a Blue Scarf
With the approach of the UN International Peace Day on September 21, there's been a run on ordering Sky Blue Scarves. These long, blue wraps were originally created by grassroots activists in Afghanistan, in response to Professor Noam Chomsky’s challenge to build "a world free of borders." The Afghan activists explain that the blue scarf “represents our collective wish as a human family to live without wars, to share our resources and to take care of our earth under the same blue sky.”
In 2008, a small gathering of women from RAWA bravely gathered in war-torn Kandahar wearing Blue Scarves while they called for prayed for peace and justice in Afghanistan. Another 1,500 brave women joined them in what became known as the "Blue Scarf movement." Thousands more joined joined the movement with the assistance of Unifem. (You can read more at TheBlueScarf.org.)
In 2011, the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers marched alongside the women and members of The Simple Way. They began handing out blue scarves at their events and, soon, a global movement was born.
Now that California's Recall Ruse has been "resoundingly" rejected, let's take some added pleasure in the following bit of political news.
Organizers of a pro-Trump rally in Kentucky recently promised: "The Biggest Patriot Rally Of The Year—A True Reunion Of We, The People, combining the biggest names in the conservative patriot movement including Gen. [Michael] Flynn, Lin Wood, Candace Owens, Mike ["Pillow Guy"] Lindell, and many others along w/top notch Christian & Country Music Entertainment! Simply put: This will be THE 'Event Of The Year' for American Patriots!"
The Trumpalooza promoters predicted a mega-MAGA crowd of 10,000. And how many pro-Trumpers showed up to crash the gate? 300.
The Daily Kos' offered this post-event comment: "if you’re expecting 10,000 enthused MAGA mites and only 300 show up, maybe it’s finally time to fold the denim tent you’ve kept propped up for the day of Donald Trump’s triumphant return."
Adding to the lack-luster non-event, was a photo taken at the rally that showed a car with a political statement painted on the back window. It read: "Trump Won!! Bidan [sic] is a cheater."
EXXON Knew
Fossil fuel companies knew about the threat of the climate crisis decades ago. Over the course of nearly forty years, these companies spent millions of dollars to spread doubt and misinformation about the dangers of fossil fuels and stall the transition to renewable energy.
That’s why Rep. Ro Khanna and the climate activists at 350.org are demanding that top Big Oil executives testify in front of Congress—even if it requires subpoenaing them. As Chair of the Environmental Oversight Subcommittee, Khanna is eager to hold these Big Oil, Coal, and Gas executives accountable.
The $3.5 Trillion Bill that Terrifies Corporate America
UCB Economics Prof. Robert Reich recently extolled the virtues of the Democrat's visionary budget proposal: "Child care. Universal pre-K. Free community college. Paid leave. Medicare expansion. Climate action. Taxes on the rich and corporations. It’s all in the Democrats' $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill." The podium is yours, professor:
ACTION ALERT: Ban Politicians from Owning Weapons Stocks
The US war in Afghanistan may finally be behind us but war-profiteering continues unabated. According to an investigation by Sludge, at least 11 Senators and 36 Congress members (and/or their spouses) own millions in defense-contractor stocks. The rule here should be clear: If you're a politician who has an interest in conflict, you've got a conflict of interest.
This isn’t a partisan issue: these 47 conflicted politicians are both Democrats and Republicans. To find out which politicians are profiting from war, click here. (Preview: The most conflicted US senator is Rhode Island Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse, with a whopping $500,000 invested in Honeywell, Lockheed Martin, and Raytheon.)
It’s really simple, says the ActionNetwork: Members of Congress shouldn’t be allowed to own weapons stocks—especially from major defense contractors like Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Raytheon.
Defense contractors make most of their money from the US government and pocket massive returns for themselves and their shareholders. Half of the $14 trillion in Pentagon spending over the past two decades went directly to arms industry contractors.
"It’s a moral failure," says the ActionNetwork: Elected officials should not be profiting off death and suffering. "We need leaders acting in our interest, not in the interest of their wallets."
Here's a taxpayer-funded, celestial gift from NASA. A stunning, other-worldly panorama—captured on February 20, 2021 by the Navigation Cameras aboard NASA’s Perseverance Mars Rover—was stitched together from six individual images and sent back to Earth over a distance of 246 million miles. The result is magical. Click here to connect to the image on Facebook. [https://www.facebook.com/1538781282/posts/10226951732689491/]
Press your cursor on the image and you'll be able to direct your gaze across the Martian landscape. Pause and marvel at the revelation of what a starry nighttime sky really looks like—without a polluted atmosphere standing in the way.
Credits go to NASA/JPL-Caltech, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and image editor Hugh Hou, whose 360-degree full-sky experience was accomplished using Oculus Quest 2 software.
The Bountiful and Bogus Mysteries on Mars
Since the Perseverance Mars Rover settled in on the Martian plains, YouTube has become saturated with images that appear to show an array of bizarre sights on the Martian landscape. Many seem to be "teasers"—promoted with provocative display images that never appear in the actual videos.
Some of these tease-pages are beyond laughable but the fact remains: the detailed panoramas that the Rovers have been beaming back to Earth have turned the red planet into the solar system's largest Rorschach Test.
The following alert has been popping up at the end of emails sent by some of my activist friends:
NOTICE:Due to Presidential Executive Orders still not rescinded by the present administration, the National Security Agency may have read this email without warning, warrant, or notice, and certainly without probable cause. They may do this without any judicial or legislative oversight.
SMITHEREENS: Reflections on Bits & Pieces
By Gar Smith / The Berkeley Daily Planet
Chelsea Manning Is Coming to Oakland
Oakland's California Ballroom is set to host the Animal Liberation Conference 2021, which will from September 24-30. According to the event organizers, a wide range of activities will include "trainings for the revolution, games, plant-based food trucks, and the Animal Liberation March in San Francisco." And one of the keynote speakers Pentagon whistleblower Chelsea Manning.
Manning served seven years of a 35-year sentence for exposing US war crimes in Iraq. Her sentence was commuted by President Barack Obama but Manning was jailed two more times for refusing to testify against WIkileaks whistleblower Julian Assange. Manning, who found herself confined in all-male prisons, attempted suicide during her captivity.
Manning will be the keynote speaker at Saturday's September 25 event at noon in the California Ballroom. Leading animal rights groups—including Direct Action Everywhere (DXE), Animal Rebellion, and the Animal Save Movement—hope to inspire activists "to take bold, collective action to achieve revolutionary social & political change for animals." For all the details, check the conference website online. [Late-breaking news. Chelsea Manning has reportedly tested positive for COVID-19 and may not be able to attend this event.]
Getting Off on the Right Foot
The REI sporting goods co-op recently emailed a promo for its autumn footwear sale. The wording of the ad was a little unsteady. The subject line read: "Running Shoes for Comfy Fall."
The idea of a "comfy fall" reminds me of the warnings that appear in front of the doors of mass transit rail cars that read: "Watch Your Step" and "Have a Nice Trip."
A Chronic Condition
A recent a nod in the direction of the Chronicle's pun-loving headlines, provoked the following dispatch from local Planetarian phil allen:
"From the Refrigerator News—posted Chron headlines from the past:
'Dire Report on Blondes a Washout,' 'Mental Ward Plan Called Reasonable,' and 'Extra Anesthesia Needed for Redheads.'"
Fashion Plates
A BMW rolling down the Berkeley streets was seen flashing a license plate that read: DL MAKR. Also spotted: an enigmatic license plate on a silver Kia that read: N8TR[heart]ER. Message? "Nature Lover."
America: Fulfilling Bin Laden's Prophesy
Reuters reporter Naimul Karim (naimul@gmail.com) recently offered this salient summation of Washington's wasted, wasteful war in Afghanistan:
"As far as I am concerned, Bin Laden has won. No sugar-coating it. Our freedoms gone, freedoms that he (supposedly) hated, our reputation and moral fabric in tatters, our country bankrupt, infrastructures decrepit, society in disharmony, the future rudderless…. Most bitter of all, Bin Laden even didn’t have to do it—he made us do it ourselves. That’s because he knew us better than we know us…."
Afghanistan Was No Surprise: The Military Knew
In July 2017, the Military.com website posted an article under the title: Countries with the Worst Militaries, The article identified the Pentagon's top three lost causes as Afghanistan, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia.
Addressing the Afghan situation, Military.com offered this prophetic assessment: "Afghanistan makes the list despite the decade-plus of training from ISAF [International Security Assistance Force] advisors. The sad truth is that all that nifty training doesn’t make up for the fact that the ANA [Afghan National Army] will likely collapse like a card table when the US leaves Afghanistan — if the US ever leaves Afghanistan."
Regarding Iraq, Military.com wrote: "Despite years of training from US and British forces, as well as $26 billion in investments and military aid, the Iraqi Army has only 26 units considered 'loyal.' On top of that, Iraqi lawmakers discovered 50,000 “ghost soldiers” in its ranks — troops who received a paycheck, but never showed up for work. In 2014, ISIS was able to overrun much of Western Iraq as Iraqi troops fled before the Islamist onslaught."
And addressing the Saudi Kingdom, Military.com wrote:
"The Saudis are currently engaged in a coalition military operation in Yemen with the United Arab Emirates [supported by the US] in an effort to expel Houthi tribesmen from Sana’a and re-establish the Sunni rulers. And they can't…. They’ve been there since March 2015 and the Houthis are still in the capital."
It's now seven years later and the Houthis are still in the capital.
Nuclear Subs Down Under
The US, UK, and Australia have just made waves this past week by announcing "AUKUS"—a tri-partite military trade deal that will bring US nuclear-powered submarines to Australia—dangerously close to the contested South China Sea.
Why is it called AUKUS? That's a combination of the initials Australia, UK, and US. Reporting from Australia, Dr Alison Broinowski AM (Acting President of Australians for War Powers Reform) suggests two other explanations for AUKUS: (1) This diplomatically puts the smallest nation first
(2) It sounds like something out of "Lord of the Rings."
Dr. Broinowski also notes that, if you put the "US" first, it would read "USUKA," which makes more sense because "USUKA would sound like 'You sucker, Australia.' Which is true."
AUKUS also can be read as "Aw, cuss!" but Dr. Broinowski assures me: "We don’t say ‘aw cuss’ at this end of the world."
Australia's Defense Policy Explained
Celebrate International Peace Day with a Blue Scarf
With the approach of the UN International Peace Day on September 21, there's been a run on ordering Sky Blue Scarves. These long, blue wraps were originally created by grassroots activists in Afghanistan, in response to Professor Noam Chomsky’s challenge to build "a world free of borders." The Afghan activists explain that the blue scarf “represents our collective wish as a human family to live without wars, to share our resources and to take care of our earth under the same blue sky.”
In 2008, a small gathering of women from RAWA bravely gathered in war-torn Kandahar wearing Blue Scarves while they called for prayed for peace and justice in Afghanistan. Another 1,500 brave women joined them in what became known as the "Blue Scarf movement." Thousands more joined joined the movement with the assistance of Unifem. (You can read more at TheBlueScarf.org.)
In 2011, the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers marched alongside the women and members of The Simple Way. They began handing out blue scarves at their events and, soon, a global movement was born.
Now that California's Recall Ruse has been "resoundingly" rejected, let's take some added pleasure in the following bit of political news.
Organizers of a pro-Trump rally in Kentucky recently promised: "The Biggest Patriot Rally Of The Year—A True Reunion Of We, The People, combining the biggest names in the conservative patriot movement including Gen. [Michael] Flynn, Lin Wood, Candace Owens, Mike ["Pillow Guy"] Lindell, and many others along w/top notch Christian & Country Music Entertainment! Simply put: This will be THE 'Event Of The Year' for American Patriots!"
The Trumpalooza promoters predicted a mega-MAGA crowd of 10,000. And how many pro-Trumpers showed up to crash the gate? 300.
The Daily Kos' offered this post-event comment: "if you’re expecting 10,000 enthused MAGA mites and only 300 show up, maybe it’s finally time to fold the denim tent you’ve kept propped up for the day of Donald Trump’s triumphant return."
Adding to the lack-luster non-event, was a photo taken at the rally that showed a car with a political statement painted on the back window. It read: "Trump Won!! Bidan [sic] is a cheater."
EXXON Knew
Fossil fuel companies knew about the threat of the climate crisis decades ago. Over the course of nearly forty years, these companies spent millions of dollars to spread doubt and misinformation about the dangers of fossil fuels and stall the transition to renewable energy.
That’s why Rep. Ro Khanna and the climate activists at 350.org are demanding that top Big Oil executives testify in front of Congress—even if it requires subpoenaing them. As Chair of the Environmental Oversight Subcommittee, Khanna is eager to hold these Big Oil, Coal, and Gas executives accountable.
The $3.5 Trillion Bill that Terrifies Corporate America
UCB Economics Prof. Robert Reich recently extolled the virtues of the Democrat's visionary budget proposal: "Child care. Universal pre-K. Free community college. Paid leave. Medicare expansion. Climate action. Taxes on the rich and corporations. It’s all in the Democrats' $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill." The podium is yours, professor:
ACTION ALERT: Ban Politicians from Owning Weapons Stocks
The US war in Afghanistan may finally be behind us but war-profiteering continues unabated. According to an investigation by Sludge, at least 11 Senators and 36 Congress members (and/or their spouses) own millions in defense-contractor stocks. The rule here should be clear: If you're a politician who has an interest in conflict, you've got a conflict of interest.
This isn’t a partisan issue: these 47 conflicted politicians are both Democrats and Republicans. To find out which politicians are profiting from war, click here. (Preview: The most conflicted US senator is Rhode Island Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse, with a whopping $500,000 invested in Honeywell, Lockheed Martin, and Raytheon.)
It’s really simple, says the ActionNetwork: Members of Congress shouldn’t be allowed to own weapons stocks—especially from major defense contractors like Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Raytheon.
Defense contractors make most of their money from the US government and pocket massive returns for themselves and their shareholders. Half of the $14 trillion in Pentagon spending over the past two decades went directly to arms industry contractors.
"It’s a moral failure," says the ActionNetwork: Elected officials should not be profiting off death and suffering. "We need leaders acting in our interest, not in the interest of their wallets."
Here's a taxpayer-funded, celestial gift from NASA. A stunning, other-worldly panorama—captured on February 20, 2021 by the Navigation Cameras aboard NASA’s Perseverance Mars Rover—was stitched together from six individual images and sent back to Earth over a distance of 246 million miles. The result is magical. Click here to connect to the image on Facebook. [https://www.facebook.com/1538781282/posts/10226951732689491/]
Press your cursor on the image and you'll be able to direct your gaze across the Martian landscape. Pause and marvel at the revelation of what a starry nighttime sky really looks like—without a polluted atmosphere standing in the way.
Credits go to NASA/JPL-Caltech, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and image editor Hugh Hou, whose 360-degree full-sky experience was accomplished using Oculus Quest 2 software.
The Bountiful and Bogus Mysteries on Mars
Since the Perseverance Mars Rover settled in on the Martian plains, YouTube has become saturated with images that appear to show an array of bizarre sights on the Martian landscape. Many seem to be "teasers"—promoted with provocative display images that never appear in the actual videos.
Some of these tease-pages are beyond laughable but the fact remains: the detailed panoramas that the Rovers have been beaming back to Earth have turned the red planet into the solar system's largest Rorschach Test.
The following alert has been popping up at the end of emails sent by some of my activist friends:
NOTICE:Due to Presidential Executive Orders still not rescinded by the present administration, the National Security Agency may have read this email without warning, warrant, or notice, and certainly without probable cause. They may do this without any judicial or legislative oversight.
Monday the Civic Center meetings resume at 12:15 pm
Tuesday the 4 x 4 Task Force meets at 3 pm on the housing Fair Chance and Source of Income Discrimination ordinance. The City Council Special meeting at 6 pm is on the Housing Element. Now, that Newsom has signed off on SB 9 & 10 it is going to be critical to track what is happening locally with the housing element and where Berkeley can add 8934 new dwelling units between in the next cycle from 2023 – 2030.
Wednesday is packed seven city meetings. The Energy Commission starts at 5 pm, the Civic arts Commission and Independent Redistricting Commission start at 6 pm, the Grove Park Community meeting is at 6:30 pm and the disaster and Fire Safety Commission and the Police Accountability Board both start at 7 pm.
Thursday is another full day with the Budget Committee at 10 am reviewing the proposal to allocate marine hotel tax to the marine fund instead of the general fund and the pilot incentive program to electrify housing. In the evening the Rent Stabilization Board, Mental Health Commission and Zoning Adjustment Board all meet at 7 pm.
Friday is the city sponsored outdoor movie Madagascar at Glendale La Loma Park at 7:15 pm
The September 28 City Council regular meeting at 6 pm full agenda is at the end. Council will vote on the baseline zoning ordinance and objective standards. These deserve your attention.
Sunday, September 19, 2021 No City meetings or events found
Monday, September 20, 2021
Civic Arts Commission Policy Subcommittee at 10 am
AGENDA: 3. Water intrusion study update, 4. Tipping seismic evaluation project update, 5. November 2022 Infrastructure Bond Update, 6. Phase 2 Civic Center visioning Process, 7. Civic Center Park Stage Update
Tuesday, September 21, 2021
4x4 Joint Task Force Committee on Housing: Rent Board/City Council at 3 pm
Teleconference: 1-669-900-9128 or 1-877-853-5257 Meeting ID: 881 2081 6296
AGENDA: 1 item only. Housing Element Update (Berkeley is assigned to build 8934 new units of housing in the next housing element cycle from 2023-2031, 2446 very low income, 1408 Low income, 1416 moderate income and 3664 market rate).
AGENDA: 6. Presentation (discussion and action 7.a)): American Rescue Plan funds for the Arts Grant Guidelines, 7. b) Love Grows Naturally mural design for side wall 2498 Telegraph at Dwight by Illuminaries, c) Mundane Times newspaper project design project by Kate Pocrass for multiple locations in Berkeley, d) Berkeley Big Book Mural for 2052 Center by Nigel Sussman, e) New Civic Arts Commission representative to DRC.
AGENDA ACTION: 3. Enforcement of Existing Parking Rules and Regulations, 4. LRDP for UCB, 5. Recommendation to identify High Risk Areas that are exempt from State Imposed Housing Increases Due to Public Safety Considerations, 6. Measure FF, DISCUSSION: 7. Berkeley Fire Code Updates, 8. Wildfire Joint Powers Agency for East Bay, 9. Commission Home Page Resource List.
AGENDA: 2. Possible adoption of a slogan, 3, Revisions to community interest forum, 4. Selection of at-large commissioner, 5. Review of map for public submissions.
AGENDA: 8. Subcommittee report Fair & Impartial Policing, b. Director Search, c. Regulations, 9. A. Hear and consider analysis from City Attorney regarding lawful changes to hearing process and recommendations from Regulations Subcommittee, c. Training Police Dept, d. Discuss and adopt permanent Standing Rules for Board’s Conduct of business.
AGENDA: 2. Proposal to Allocate Revenues Generated by the Transient Occupancy Tax (hotel tax) in the Waterfront Area to the Marina Fund to Avoid Insolvency. 3. Budget Referral and Resolution Establishing A Pilot Existing Building Electrification Incentive Program to Assist New Homeowners, Renters, Existing Homeowners with transition to Zero-Carbon Buildings.
AGENDA: 3. Presentation Housing, Homelessness and people with SMI and SUD, 4. Mental Health Manager’s Report and Caseload Statistics, 5. Specialized Care Unit Steering Committee Update, 6. Re-imagining Public Safety Task Force, 7. Alternatives to Santa Rita Jail, 8. Whole Person Care – Access to “Community Health Records” and Public education Campaign.
AGENDA: 2. 1716 Seventh Street – on consent – demolish existing to single-family dwelling and detached garage and construct two 2-story detached single family dwelling units totaling 3,393 sq ft with reduced rear yard setback and 1-uncovered off-street parking in side yard,
3. 2015 Blake - staff recommend approve – use permit and EIR, merge 7 parcels into 2, demolish 4 existing buildings including 1-residential, 1-ADU, 2-nonresidential, relocate and restore 2 existing residential units with 7 units and construct a 3-story 6-unit building with 2 units affordable to low income and a 7-story 155-unit building with 9 units affordable to low income and subterranean garage with 93 parking spaces,
4. 2411 Sixth Street – appeal of zoning officer approval, staff recommend dismiss appeal and approve – alter and expand an existing 975 sq ft single story single-family dwelling to 2051 sq ft 2-story single family dwelling on 4,154 sq ft lot.
5. 1527 Sacramento - appeal of zoning officer approval, staff recommend dismiss appeal and approve – add 520 sq ft 2nd story with aveage height of 21’9” at the rear, a major residential addition of more than 15% of lot area including 44 sq ft on 1st floor, legalize from porch enclosure in non-conforming front setback and add unenclosed hot top on 2783 sq ft lot that contains 1-story 824 sq ft single-family dwelling.
Outdoor movie at Glendale La Loma Park: Madagascar 3 at 7:15 pm
Show starts at 7:15 pm. Film will be shown on large portable inflatable movie screen with premium audio visual. Bring blankets, sleeping bags and/or low back beach chairs with maximum height of 9” off ground, this is an alcohol free event.
RECESS ITEM: Contract add $175,900 total $2,175,900 with CA Constructores for Construction of Pedestrian Improvements at California & Dwight, CONSENT: 2. 2nd reading - Amendments to BMC 19.44.020 (Housing Advisory Commission) to include oversight of Measure O bond-funded housing initiatives, 3. 2nd reading – Transfer 2 Parcels to State of CA for the Ashby-San Pablo Intersection Improvements Project, 4. Contract add $120,000 total $321,900 with QuickCaption, Inc. for closed captioning, 5. Accept grant $10,525 from William and Flora Hewlett Foundation to protect affordable spaces for the arts, 6. Formal Bid Solicitations, 7. Contract $1,974,457 with Genasys for Citywide Warning System, 8. Grant Application: Funding from FEMA’s Assistance to Firefighters Grant to Support a Regional Fire Service Leadership Development Academy, 9. Contract add $100,000 total $300,000 and extend to 6-30-2024 with BOSS for services, 10. Contract $150,000 7-1-2021 – 6-30-2024 with Berkeley Free Clinic for Laboratory Services, 11. MOU $491,933 with Alameda County Behavioral Health Care for Mental Health Wellness Center, 12. Donation $3400 for Memorial Bench (Nancy Park) at Cesar Chavez Park, 13. Donation $3400 for Memorial Bench (Michael, Anna and John Wyman) at Greg Brown Park, 14. Donation $3400 for Memorial Bench (Dixie Lewis) at Jane Hammond Softball Field at Corodonices Park, 15. Donation $3400 (Shay M. Finnegan) at Shorebird Park at Berkeley Marina, 16. Exclusive Negotiating Agreement with Innovation Properties Group for 199 Seawall Drive, 17. Contract add $125,000 total $425,00 and extend 12-31-2023 with Ben Noble, City and Regional Planning for Zoning Ordinance Revision Project, 18. 7-year lease estimated $920,000 annual payments total $6,500,000 with Motorola Solutions for public safety radios, 19. Contract $2,900,000 FY 2022 – 2026 with Bruce’s Tire, Inc for new tires for city-owned vehicles and equipment, 20. From Disaster and Fire Safety Commission recommends all Berkeley Fire Dept overtime be properly coded to assist in determining what is eligible for Measure GG funding, 21. Appointment of Tommy Escarega to Mental Health Commission, 22. Kesarwani – Referral to City Manager to establish procedure for enhanced review of use permits in manufacturing zone for industrial facilities to ensure public health and environmental impacts are appropriately mitigated, if appropriate installation of 3rd party air quality monitoring devices, 23. Taplin – Amend BMC 14.56.070 for 3-ton Commercial Truck Weight Limit on Berkeley’s Bicycle BLVD and At-Risk West Berkeley Residential streets (Ninth between Dwight and Heinz, Addison, Allston, Bancroft, Channing, & Dwight between San Pablo and 6th, Camelia between 8th and 9th, 8th between Jackson and 9th, Virginia between Sacrament and MLK and Shattuck and Euclid, Channing between MLK and Piedmont, Heinz between 9th and San Pablo, Russell between San Pablo and Shattuck and Telegraph and Claremont, California between Hopkins and University and Dwight and Russell and Stanford, Milvia from Dwight to Russell, Bowditch from Bancroft to Dwight, Hillegass from Dwight to Woolsey, 24. Taplin & Arreguin - Resolution in Support of Afghan Refugees, 25. Bartlett co-sponsors Arreguin, Taplin – Refer to staff to work with the Ashby Recreation and Community Housing (ARCH) Consortium to develop planning grant for Ashby BART East Parking Lot, 26. Wengraf – Resolution Renewing and Re-affirming Wildlife Prevention and Safety, 27. Wengraf – amend BMC 14.56.040 to reduce commercial vehicle weight limit from 4 tons to 3 tons, ACTION: 28. ZAB appeal 2943 Pine, 29. Response to Short Term referral for amendments to ADU ordinance to address Public Safety Concerns, 30. Resolution and Ordinance for Shared Electric Micromobility Permit Program, 31. Approval of Interim Regulations for the Police Accountability Board and Office of Director for Handling Complaints Against Sworn Officers, 32. Adoption of Baseline Zoning Ordinance, 33. Objective Standards Recommendations for Density, Design and Shadows, INFORMATION: 29. Sanctuary City Contracting Compliance for FY 2020, 30. Auditor - Financial First Aid Kit: A Guide to Emergency Financial Preparedness for Berkeley Residents.
_____________________
Public Hearings Scheduled – Land Use Appeals
2943 Pine (construct a 2nd story) 9/28/2021
1205 Peralta (conversion of garage) 10/12/2021
Notice of Decision (NOD) and Use Permits with End of Appeal Period
1141 Addison – 2 story addition 9-23-21
1339 Carleton – legalize ADU 10-5-2021
2521 College – legalize ADU 9-28-2021
2809 Fulton – remodel and addition over 14 ft 9-23-21
1530 Grizzly Peak – expand ADU with non-conforming setback 10-5-2021
2808 Ninth – demo existing single family dwelling and construct new 9-28-2021
840 Page – add floor area and balcony 9-28-2021
1443 San Pablo – establish off-sale service of beer and wine 9-28-21
1866 Thousand Oaks – new 2nd floor balcony 10-5-2021
October 19 – 1. Update Zero Waste Rates and Priorities, 2. Berkeley Police Department Hiring Practices (referred by Public Safety Committee), 3. Crime Report
December 7 – 1. Review and Update on City’s COVID-19 Response, 2. WETA/Ferry Service at the Marina, 3. Presentation by Bay Restoration Authority
Unscheduled Workshops/Presentations
Cannabis Health Considerations
Alameda County LAFCO Presentation
Civic Arts Grantmaking Process & Capital Grant Program
If you have a meeting you would like included in the summary of meetings, please send a notice to kellyhammargren@gmail.com by noon on the Friday of the preceding week.
This meeting list is also posted on the Sustainable Berkeley Coalition website.
If you or someone you know wishes to receive the weekly summary as soon as it is completed, email kellyhammargren@gmail.com to be added to the early email list. If you wish to stop receiving the Weekly Summary of City Meetings please forward the weekly summary you received to kellyhammargren@gmail.com
