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UC Has Created Fire Danger in People’s Park.
The City of Berkeley Fire Department, the City Council and the City Manager Are Aware but Unresponsive

Maxina Ventura, member, People’s Park Council

Saturday June 18, 2022 - 12:35:00 PM

Only a couple of weeks ago, People’s Park was recognized for its importance, and placed on the National Register of Historic Places.

You can watch the fascinating State Parks nomination hearing if you scroll down our website’s main page (peoplespark.org). But UC, the institution of higher learning, seems to have no respect for some of our most important local and U.S. history, or the ongoing needs of those of us trying to stay in the city. Now, UC has turned the park into a staging area for its ongoing deforestation of the hills of healthy trees which capture moisture, drip it onto grasses to keep them moist when the sun hits, and store huge amounts of water (and carbon) in their trunks and roots.

UC has filled the park with massive mounds of wood chips (some 8 feet high and about as wide), and huge logs, some 4 feet in diameter, now a fire danger because they are drying out in the sun.

As two people from the city manager’s office were pressuring people to leave the park on Monday, June 13th, after the logs were dumped, I asked them how the city is involved in this dumping of flammable materials in the park. They said it was UC doing the dumping. I asked why this was happening and they said it was being done to keep people from putting down tents. The City of Berkeley and the University of California at Berkeley, , in other words, are in contact about this.

Both Monday and Tuesday I told these people that the City has to get involved in getting rid of this danger. I explained that I had emailed and called the Fire Department and had, had no response and that the city manager’s office needed to make sure this fire danger is mitigated. They were not interested.

So I went over to the Berkeley Police Department bike cops who were relaxedly watching what was taking place in the park which was causing so much distress, as park users were being pressured and threatened with the loss of belongings, even people who clarified that, they don’t sleep I the park but just come to spend time there.

I asked these city representatives to call the COB Fire Department to come out to investigate, and mitigate this spontaneous combustion danger created by UC. The one said, “Oh, I don’t think it would spontaneously combust.” The other said, “You should call UC.”

The major fire concern is of spontaneous combustion (weather is forecast to be in the 80’s and 90’s early next week) and if those piles combust and then ignite the wood chips spread around the park, and the logs as they dry out, the whole neighborhood could be in danger. Please view the photos here https://www.peoplespark.org/wp/take-action-to-save-peoples-park/ and realize these photos were taken after a lot of wood chips had been spread by park activists. We hope you’ll come pick some up to take away, and spread some to knock down the possibility of spontaneous combustion.

This all is happening while UC waits for legal challenges to their flimsy Environmental Impact Report to wind its way through the court system. (Please! Donate to the legal work here, as often lawsuits are the only thing that in any way slows down UC: https://www.peoplesparkhxdist.org/about/). Meanwhile they harass people who are enjoying the park, even in the middle of the day. We have pointed out many a time that, this is one of the only places in Berkeley where Black residents gather in numbers, in what otherwise can be a relaxing setting with tall trees and wildlife (Thursday night we saw an owl swoop and then land on a light pole to watch the happenings).

If you have been listening to UC’s narrative in the last few years (actually, decades) you might believe UC, the institution, cares about students, housing, education, and all of us in Berkeley. While I could write 100 pages now (have written many hundreds or more, often one by one, to students and anyone else confused about UC’s obsession with takin g over People’s Park), let’s go over a few facts here, since most of my time that I devote to the continued work to save People’s Park and also the Berkeley Student Co-ops, is spent myth-busting.

Some personal background: I first set foot in the park in 1983 and was enchanted with not only the beauty of the old and newer trees and gardens, but the Free Speech Stage park activists had built only four years prior in celebrating the park’s 10 anniversary. Having come from the classical music world and singing in maj or concert halls and venues, seeing “fine arts” in the U.S. not welcoming those without much money, I was captivated by this idea of a stage anyone was welcome to use, a stage and park that was not monetized.

And without going further, I will say that this whole struggle over the park is about money, and about wanting to shift Berkeley to support only the wealthy, your basic capitalism formula of delivering land and other resources to the wealthiest, at the expense of everyone else, who then is encouraged to fight over crumbs. Really, it is that basic. Sociologist Inge Bell wrote in one of her early 80’s books that, in 1972 the UC Regents represented 1/10th of the top 1% of U.S. society.

Many people have written on these pages about the ills of UC since its inception, and the City’s recent collision with UC, and many have done excellent numbers-crunching of the secret agreement Jesse Arreguin made with Carol Christ, the Chancellor. This will cost the rest of us enormous amounts of straight-ahead cost, but also the cost of people’s individual financial loss due to artificially-inflated rents (and mortgages). There are over 4000 empty rental units in Berkeley right now (15-20% in the large apartment building where I live), and that does not include empty UC-owned dorms or vacant apartments on land UC has leased to big developers. It’s land speculation, of course. It all looks so good on paper, as long as you remove people and the environment from the equation.

Everything intensified to another level when UC started marketing more in 2018, and on. I wish someone would do calculations on how much public money and students’ money, much of it loans that will impede most for decades and many for life, has been spent on marketing? While they have not provided enough core classes for students (so that they get pushed into a 5rh year (great for their real estate interests), or clog the Peralta community college system, further crushing many of the most vulnerable who are trying to open some doors in life by attaining higher education. When one of my kids was at BCC, they had one class where one Cal undergrad was taking two of his four classes at BCC, displacing others because… wait for it… an ugly deal had been made giving Cal students preference over others.

So in the midst of them having $168 Billion listed as assets on their investments page of the Office of the President of UC for July 1, 2020- June 30, 2021, they also crow on that page that, in just that year, their investments grew by $37.7 Billion.. .that’s a ‘B’. While they’ve closed down many libraries. Hmm. And while several thousand students are sleeping in their cars. Hmm. And while they are trying to get their hands on the student co-ops, which actually provide much more affordable rents than anything UC offers, where the name of the game is to stuff 3-4 in a small room, and charge $2000 a month for rent, including only 12 meals a week. I hope those kids are into intermittent fasting.

UC (public) land has been handed to developers for student housing, which in the case of what they call Anchor House they sold to “the public” as being for transfer students (who in most cases are not wealthy), demolished a 112 year-old rent-controlled building, then launching residents from an expected future they could afford into their rent control, if they could get into a rent-controlled place, starting at triple or more the rent. Anchor House? We’ve heard the rents are planned to be $4400 for a 1 br. A good trade-off for more profits; that is, trading off students’ well-being for profits for the developers, part of the Regents’ class.

I’m full of factoids and analysis but let’s get back to People’s Park, the City of Berkeley, and fire danger.

Ever since the residents and users of the park started being pressured to get out, they were being told that the City and UC cared so much, they were going to provide temporary housing at The Rodeway Inn for 18 months, food, and services. However, once people moved in, they were being threatened with 3-month limits; no services to speak of, some really disrespectful staff (those contracts the City Mgr. hands out…; they do not have keys to their rooms and have to be let in by a guard; they are locked out if they return later than midnight, even if they need meds; the food is inadequate, except for Food Not Bombs supplementing, further extending the volunteers’ work which they fund on a shoestring; they cannot have visitors; there are random room checks. Folks, if you have not experienced an extended time in jail, I can assure you that, this lack of freedom is a jail situation. Let’s make no bones about it. If freedom to come and go is conditional, or you may be barged in on at any time, you cannot have even your mother or father visit, as one man said, let alone his significant other, that is utter disrespect, and is damaging to a person emotionally and mentally. This is not a recipe for people improving their lives. Rather, we’ve seen people come back to the park, even sleeping back at the park, because of the lack of dignity afforded people at The Rodeway. So, please, let’s be clear that, this is what the City of Berkeley is funding, and is further subsidizing UC. And as they have limited rooms at The Rodeway, they’ve been taking people to a shelter in this forced relocation. But what I’m seeing is more people in tents on the streets again as both these options are full of faults.

The park was so crowded due to so much need during the pandemic, and yes, there always have been heavy drugs but you may not know that all these decades, UC has left the heavy-drug dealers, different names and faces over decades, but well-known and obvious to anyone who spends any time at all in the park. UCPD and BPD endlessly are in and out of the park. UC refused to build bathrooms so we tried and at every attempt UC sent in their people to take our pipes and fittings and fill in our trenches. As we were trying to be good neighbors after Reagan had dumped people out onto the streets without a safety net, we saw more people in the park, as everyone did in urban areas on both coasts because of more survivable temperatures for people living outdoors.

Eventually there was media coverage of the bathrooms debacle and UC looked so bad, they built some and built a cop shop overlooking the park. It was staffed by a UC person for nearly three decades until the pandemic, at which point UC kept not unlocking bathrooms, and was not stocking toilet paper until way into the pandemic, and never has regularly stocked soap, or otherwise maintained the bathrooms in any reasonable manner. Please take a look at this video we made and presented to everyone City and UC early in the pandemic which should give you pause to question UC’s intentions, if nothing else has done: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCmRP5W-ME

So, UC always has known the heavy-drug dealers but it’s the users who are hassled, ticketed, jailed, and some have died. Why, you may wonder, would this be? It’s useful to step back and consider UC’s largest goal, expansion of capitalism, which benefits a few financially.

And you thought UC was about education!

Since its inception, UC Berkeley has been based on expansionism, and has a dirty history of devaluing Southside to then sweep in and convince people to sell for less than market rate (and that’s a discussion for another day). They proclaim that a building is in a dangerous neighborhood, so is worth less than in other parts of town: a neighborhood depressed due to violence or drugs, for instance, and then they take property by Eminent Domain and pay below market rate. A former UCB student wrote an excellent paper on UC’s expansionism going back to the inception, and it’s well-cited. You can find it on the website home page (scroll down to see ‘U.C. Expansionism….’). It’s worth a read in these troubling times.

So, yes, those drugs in the park have been real. And they have benefitted U.C., at the expense of the users, and all of us.

When you go to see the photos of the fire danger, you’ll see a request for action. As I write this Friday evening at about 8 pm, there still has been no response from any of the institutions listed. They need to hear what you think about them colluding in not removing the fire danger UC has created, since starting to dump these massive mounds of wood chips on June 9th, threatening all of the neighborhood.

Email, call, share on Social Media, and email info@peoplespark.org to get onto our announcements list, and if you use a cell phone text SAVETHEPARK to 74121 to get onto the bulldozer alert. Things could move quickly, as this incursion into our park space, as many things indicate, but public pressure can slow things down as more people get involved, again, in creating the park we all deserve, one in the long tradition where poor, wealthy, and everyone in between has been able to co-exist and enjoy good company, green, and some great shows.

Biden’s Mini Summit of the Americas

Jagjit Singh

Sunday June 19, 2022 - 01:11:00 PM

Biden’s mini summit was an acute embarrassment for the U.S. The stated rationale was his reluctance to engage with autocratic regimes. But we have supported some of worst undemocratic governments in the world with our tax dollars and trade. Examples, Egypt, Turkey, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf states.

Nevertheless, the absence of so many Latin American countries represents a welcome decline in U.S. hegemony. The following is a brief summary of the uninvited guests:

Cuba

Our long tortuous relationship with our neighbor, Cuba, began with the overthrow of the thoroughly corrupt US puppet, Fulgencio Batista, in January 1959 by Fidel Castro who was initially lauded as a hero in the US press. This quickly changed and in March, the National Security Council (NSC) planned a regime change (oh, how we relish regime changes!) by arming guerrillas inside Cuba. This led to efforts by the CIA who launched bombing and incendiary raids piloted by exiled Cubans and numerous efforts to assassinate Fidel Castro including exploding cigars. It’s ironic that we should be accusing Cuba of terrorism when we have engaged in decades of terror to undermine the Castro regime. Yes, Cuba is a Communist government, which unlike the US offers universal health care and a gun free environment to its citizens.

The embargo imposed on Cuba is excessively cruel. Even remittances sent by Cuban Americans are banned. Biden should have followed Obama’s more enlightened policy of easing tensions and promoting trade between the two countries. Finally, Guantánamo has become an unsavory symbol of American power where people have been held and tortured for years without due process. Prisoners should be release immediately and unconditionally and Guantanamo should be returned to its rightful owner, the Cuban people.

Venezuela

Yes, President Maduro is an unsavory autocrat who has grossly mismanaged the economy, but crippling US economic sanctions has created unnecessary misery for ordinary Venezuelans’ who are fleeing to neighboring countries in large numbers. The Biden administration was keen to replace Maduro with a US puppet Juan Guido who was judged to be more amenable to US interests.

Nicaragua U.S. Intervention in Nicaragua followed a familiar theme beginning with the US invasion in 1911/1912. In the years leading up to the First World War, the United States and Mexican governments competed for political influence in Central America. As a result, the U.S. Government intervened more directly in Nicaraguan affairs to ensure the government was friendly to U.S. political and commercial interests. However, these efforts failed with the spectacular rise of Daniel Ortega who has tightened his grip on power jailing his opponents and accusing them of treason. Yes, he is a brutal dictator, but excluding him from the Biden summit I think was a mistake. Isolating Ortega will only beholden his power. It is time the US stops following the playbook of autocratic regimes like Russia and China using its immense military and economic power to subjugate smaller nations. A good start would be to lift economic sanctions which cause immense hardship to the poor.

Columns

ON MENTAL WELLNESS: The Punishment Ethic Makes People Get Sick

Jack Bragen

Saturday June 18, 2022 - 05:04:00 PM

When we were little, our parents probably said to us, "Eat your vegetables!" We probably didn't want to eat the vegetables on our plates at dinner, because perhaps they didn't appeal to our young taste buds. Or, we may have been affected by the way our parents said that--as though it was a chore that we had to do, something we wouldn't want to do but had to do. When we were little, mom or dad may have said, "clean up your room!" And we didn't want to do that. But we had to, or we were in for the ire of our parents. Thus, we were taught at a young age that doing things we don't want to do is part of life.

Doing things that we don't want to do are/is a part of life. Yet many of us have it so deeply ingrained that we have learned to inflict punishment on ourselves. We may feel that we are not acceptable unless we've done enough unpleasant tasks. And look, we see it all over the media. People on exercise machines because the idea out there is, we can't be acceptable unless we have a toned six pack of abs and firm thighs. We are not acceptable unless we rise to high income levels. We can't accept ourselves (men) unless we adhere to the manliness ethic; (women); unless we are thin enough and attractive enough.

Being too hard on oneself is not a virtue. Those who punish themselves for the misguided notion it makes them acceptable may be at higher risk of developing a psychiatric condition from that. And while that's only an opinion, I think it is a well-founded one.

In the work world, there is plenty of punishment going around. Society in the U.S. is saturated with ways we can be punished for things that, to many of us, are natural behaviors. At some jobs, if you do not punch your timecard at exactly the right moment, it is a mark against you and it might even find its way to your file. If you don't meet your production quota, it increases the likelihood that you can be fired. There is a lot of punishment in the work world, and there are insults as well.

Most Americans feel that work is the bitter pill we must swallow to keep our bills paid, our stomach and gas tank filled, and a roof over our heads. People live for their time off. They sacrifice the concept that either they could be doing a job that brings happiness or could find ways to be happier with what they currently do. I've heard it said that: "If it wasn't hard, it wouldn't be called 'work'." This is exactly the attitude that causes a person to flush down the toilet the chance of being happy on the job.

I believe that work should be joyous.

I was especially miserable in most of the jobs I acquired. I stuck with it for as long as I could. When I hit twenty-five and was earning a minimal living doing part time delivery driving, I decided I could get hired at something else without a problem, and I was going to give notice. I did give notice and got an even worse job. I applied for Social Security benefits soon after that point. I obtained a retroactive check, after a period of not having any income, and following an inpatient stay due to severe psychosis, due to treatment noncompliance. When I recovered to an extent from this repeat episode, I was able to reinstate utilities, electricity, gas, and phone, in my apartment.

When I settled in at home and had reliable income that didn't entail going to a job, it was a huge relief and a burden off. And while I struggled with self-esteem for years afterward, I was nonetheless better off.

Yet, even after all of this, I still had a desire to be self-employed. With a government grant I opened an electronic repair and exchange shop and ran it from a storage space. However, I wasn't up to the task. I closed the business after about a year. Someone else took the storage space and took advantage of the fact that there was preexisting customer traffic for electronic work.

Part of work not being punishment entails that you are well enough and thick-skinned enough first. If you are hypersensitive, or if you are afraid of being too uncomfortable, then work is going to seem like punishment, regardless of changes of attitude. This is tangential to the idea of people needing to prove to themselves that they're working hard enough, for the sake of self-approval.

In life in the U.S. and in other countries (I am extrapolating from my limited contact with foreign people) many people do not feel they deserve to like themselves unless they've done enough tasks that they didn't want to do. The period in which people measure themselves could be a day, a week or other. The point is, it is almost universal in human cultures that people may feel they have to "earn" self-acceptance.

Work is often hard, but that doesn't mean it has to be punishment. Work can be all about reward. It doesn't have to be a situation where you are subjugated. Everyone needs a strategy for keeping their basic needs met. Mine is that I legitimately collect Social Security Disability. I have physical and mental issues that prevent me from working competitively.

Yet, the work I do producing pieces of writing, even while it hardly pays anything, is a source of satisfaction. If there is nothing in your life that you are doing, that you really love to do, then life itself could be a task. And that could lead to misery in general. Is there some life activity that you could do that could potentially make you happier? Do it. But only if you want to, and not because you read an article in the Berkeley Daily Planet advising it.

Jack Bragen is author of the apolitical, escapist, "Jack Bragen’s 2021 Fiction Collection," and other timeless books, and lives in Martinez, California.

THE PUBLC EYE:What to do About Inflation

Bob Burnett

Saturday June 18, 2022 - 03:50:00 PM

Americans are not lacking for things to worry about: mass shootings, extreme weather, insurrectionists, and, of course, inflation. On June 10th, the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced (https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm ) that the consumer price index had increased 8.6 percent in twelve months, the largest yearly increase since December 1981. Americans are very upset by the rising costs. The Washington Post (https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/07/pessimism-about-economy-is-about-both-partisanship-prices/) noted: "Polling from YouGov conducted for The Economist found last month that 58 percent of Americans think the economy is getting worse."

There is some positive economic news: unemployment is low (3.6 percent) and real hourly wages have increased (5.2 percent). The economy is growing (3.5 percent annually) -- although it dipped slightly in the first quarter of 2022. Nonetheless, concerns about inflation dominate the mainstream media.

1.The biggest contributor to inflation is the increase in energy costs -- 34.7 percent in twelve months (with gasoline up 48.7 percent). On June 10th, the average US cost of a gallon of gasoline reached $5 -- a year previous the average cost per gallon was $3.08. Analyzing this increase, the New York Times (https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/11/business/energy-environment/gasoline-price.html) stated: "The war in Ukraine has had the most direct effect on gas prices, as sanctions on Russia have pulled more than a million barrels of oil off global markets. Energy traders have also bid up oil prices in anticipation that Russian production and exports will fall further.... [However] There isn’t enough capacity to refine oil into gasoline, diesel and jet fuel. Oil companies closed a handful of refineries in recent years, especially during the pandemic when demand plummeted." That is, the biggest factor has been the war in Ukraine, but another contributor has been the delay in increase in domestic production. CNET (https://www.cnet.com/personal-finance/heres-why-gas-prices-are-so-high-and-why-they-wont-be-going-down-anytime-soon/ ) commented: "Demand for gas plummeted during the pandemic, causing oil producers to put the brakes on production. Even though demand is nearing pre-pandemic levels, producers are still gun-shy about increasing production. In April, OPEC fell short of its targeted production increase by 2.7 million barrels a day."

A recent Washington-Post poll (https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/22056399-2022-05-12-post-schar-school-trend-for-release ) indicated that Americans blame high gas prices on "corporations trying to increase profits" (72 percent), "Russia's actions against Ukraine" (69 percent), "disruptions from the coronavirus pandemic" (58 percent), and President Biden (58 percent).

Two factors are interacting: Russian oil is now unavailable on the open market and the other major producers are under capacity. (Some say that the big domestic oil producers are happy with the high prices and place greed above the national interest.) President Biden has indicated that he is willing to use emergency powers granted under the "Defense Production Act" to boost production and to keep domestic suppliers from exporting oil. (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-06-15/biden-willing-to-use-emergency-war-time-law-to-boost-gasoline) That would be a good move.

2.The next largest contributor to inflation is food costs -- up 10.1 percent in twelve months. Many of the same factors that affect gas prices also impact the cost of food. For example, the war in Ukraine has Increased the price of food throughout the western world. The increased cost of gasoline has drive up food costs because food needs to be transported from farm to market. In Asia, a resurgence of the pandemic has disrupted supply chains. There are also food staples that have been impacted by extreme weather; for example the price of beef has been affected by increased costs of feed and water.

If the US government brings down the price of oil, this will lower the cost of food because transportation costs will go down. The Biden Administration might also consider relief for farmers that are severely impacted by climate change.

3.The Bureau of Labor Statistics tells us that "all items other than energy and food" have increased 6 percent in the last twelve months. this includes items such as "new cars," "shelter," "apparel," and "medical care services." All these items are going up, but some more than others; for example, "new cars" are up 12.6 percent because of supply-chain issues.

On June 15th, the Federal Reserve raised interest rates .75 percent. (https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/15/business/economy/fed-interest-rates.html ) Not all economist agreed on this step.

The interest rate increase won't impact the cost of energy and food -- they will require the interventions noted above. The Federal Reserve interest rate increase will impact housing purchases (and renovations) and the purchase of new cars (and other large consumer expenditures like TVs and boats.) The trick will be to "cool off" these purchases and not tank the economy. The Federal Reserve intent is to inspire a "soft landing" and not a recession.

4. The BB perspective: the US economy is in good shape compared to the rest of the world and we're likely to go into a period of modest growth compared to our trading partners, who will be in recession. (For example, Great Britain and Germany are probably headed for a recession.)

5.Politics: In today's polarized environment, Democrats and Republicans view inflation differently. (https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/07/pessimism-about-economy-is-about-both-partisanship-prices/)

Most Republican voters don't understand economics, so it's easy for them to believe that President Biden caused inflation. Recently Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio said: “This will be a [period] of high gas prices, shortages and inflation because far left lunatics control our government."

BB perspective: President Biden should get very aggressive with big-oil companies, and Russia. He should blame energy costs on them and subject them to harsh penalties.

Biden should blame food costs on big-oil (transportation) and climate change.

In general, Biden needs to be more outspoken about inflation. And, of course, more aggressive attacking the root causes.

Bob Burnett is a Bay Area writer and activist. He can be reached at bburnett@sonic.net

SMITHEREENS: Reflections on Bits & Pieces

Gar Smith

Sunday June 19, 2022 - 12:44:00 PM

Our Modern Watergate

On June 17, the 50^th anniversary of the Watergate scandal that drove Richard Nixon from power, our country found itself facing a new and potentially graver threat—from an imperial grifter, scam-artist, buffoonish bully, serial liar, consummate crook, infantile autocrat, and flat-out sociopath named Donald Trump.

Thinking back to 1972, I remembered how important the single word "Watergate" became in the months following the arrest of the White House burglars for their bungled attempt to break into the Democrat National Committee HQ in the Watergate complex.

Speaking of "complex": It was a challenge just to remember all the secretive players, daunting to assess all the mind-boggling revelations, a chore to keep all the numbers in mind as investigators struggled to "follow the money."

The scandal might have crumbled into confusion amid all the complicating revelations and the public might have lost interest in the crime. But that didn't happen because the media came up with a short phrase that encompassed the entire story in a single headline-worthy word: "Watergate." From that point on, no one needed to be a master of minutia. You only had to utter the word "Watergate" and everyone silently added the word "scandal."

The January 6 Committee has done an excellent job researching the misdeeds of Trump and his minions and got off to a great start presenting its findings in a series of in-person episodes on live TV. But there's a risk that the country's attention may begin to wane as the coming episodes are broadcast intermittently over the next weeks.

For those who may have started to tune out of the on-going drip of revelations, we may need another all-encompassing piece of shorthand to nail Trump's crimes to the wall—a MAGA-era "Watergate," if you will.

Here's a suggestion. When Trump lost the election, he lost the right to occupy the White House. The building's owners (the voting public) essentially ordered him to vacate the premises. Instead of accepting that his lease had run out and he was facing eviction, Trump maintained he was still the rightful occupant of the Oval Office. There is a word for someone who is ordered to leave someone else's property and refuses to do so. That word is "squatter."

So maybe we should start referring to Trump's seditious scandal as "Squattergate!"

Weirdest News Note of the Year

A California District Court of Appeals was recently called upon to determine "whether the bumblebee, a terrestrial vertebrate, falls within the definition of a fish." According to TIME, on May 31, the court ruled that "bumblebees can, indeed, be classified as fish for the purpose of being protected by the California Endangered Species Act." Good news, but could this open the door to a new sport of fly-fishing for honeybees?

Fashion Plates

• A VW in Marin sports a plate that reads 350RFRY.
My guess is the driver is a climate activist with 350.org (350 parts-per-million being the danger-point for atmospheric concentrations of CO₂). So the plate reads "350 'r Fry"—i.e., keep climate-changing pollution below 350ppm or learn to deal with planetary heat stroke.

• On a Honda Civic: ARETE UP.
Thank you, Google, for solving this mystery: "Arete is an ancient Greek word meaning excellence or virtue. The arete of something is the highest quality state it can reach. Avoid actions that lack arete."

Biden's Summit Tanks; Peoples' Summit Soars

While the mainstream media covered President Biden's contentious Summit of the Americas gathering in Los Angeles, the MSM managed to ignore a parallel event—the People's Summit for Democracy, also held in LA.

On May 10, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador announced that he was boycotting the Summit to protest the exclusion of Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua. A number of other Latin American leaders announced their own boycotts of the Summit.

“The world is much bigger than the dominance and arrogance of Washington,” said President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela, calling the People’s Summit “the true Summit of Los Angeles.”

People's Summit participants gathered outside the LA Convention Center, site of Biden's summit and brandished protest signs reading “end white supremacy,” “end mass incarceration,” and “housing for all.”

Brian Becker, executive director of the ANSWER Coalition told the crowd: “Working class and poor people in the United States have hundred times more in common with the people of Cuba and their government, a hundred times more in common with Venezuela and its government, than we do with the Wall Street bankers and capitalists who pretend to speak in our name.”

For a taste of what went on at the three-day Peoples' Summit, tune in to this CODEPINK Radio episode, as Medea Benjamin greets grassroots ambassadors from the Global South and calls for the abolition of the Organization of American States.

What's the beef with the OAS? According to CODEPINK, the OAS has "promoted a coup in Bolivia, ignored electoral fraud in Honduras, props up an unelected government in Haiti, endorsed an invasion of Venezuela, and [has] ignored human rights abuses … in Haiti, Honduras, Ecuador Colombia, and Chile. And all of this occurred in just the past five years!"

Who's a Democracy?

President Biden explained he was not inviting Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua to participate in his Summit of the Americas because those countries were "dictatorships." Maybe Joe should reconsider. According to the 2022 Index of Economic Freedom, the USA failed to make it into the Top Ten list of world democracies. (The top democracies are—in reigning order: Singapore, Switzerland, Ireland, Luxembourg, New Zealand, Taiwan, Estonia, Netherlands, Finland, and Denmark.) The USA comes in at #25. (Lithuania, Lativa, South Korea, and the Czech Republic are more democratic than the US.) Nicaragua is ranked more democratic than Brazil or Ukraine. (The World Population Review lists 33 full-fledged global democracies. The "flawed" US is not among them.

And the US itself doesn't even rank as a democracy. According to Freedom House, the US is now listed as a "flawed democracy" whose ranking has plummeted 11 points in the past decade, placing it below Argentina and Mongolia. Cuba holds elections but it has a one-party political system.

If you ask Google "Is Nicaragua a democracy?" the response is: "Nicaragua is not a perfect democracy. It is a practicing one, and in comparison to those countries around it, it looks benign, even beneficent. In El Salvador, civilian populations are bombed by the government army using US-supplied military aid and expertise."

According to the World Population Review, 57 nations are ranked as full-blown authoritarian regimes They are: Mali, Mauritania, Palestine, Kuwait, Algeria, Burkina Faso, Angola, Iraq, Jordan, Nicaragua, Gabon, Mozambique, Ethiopia, Russia, Niger, Qatar, Zimbabwe, Kazakhstan, Republic of the Congo, Cambodia, Rwanda, Comoros, Guinea, Eswatini, Myanmar, Oman, Vietnam, Egypt, Afghanistan, Cuba, Togo, Cameroon, Venezuela, Djibouti, United Arab Emirates, Azerbaijan, Guinea Bissau, Belarus, Sudan, Bahrain, China, Iran, Eritrea, Burundi, Uzbekistan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Libya, Tajikistan, Equatorial Guinea, Laos, Turkmenistan, Chad, Syria, Central African Republic, DR Congo, and North Korea.

Windfall Profits for the Oiligarchs (Not a Typo)

“Exxon made more money than God this year.” Thus spake President Biden, scolding the oil giant for hiking gas pump prices and raking in $8.8 billion in profits over the first quarter of 2022.

"Not to nitpick," writes Public Citizen's Robert Weissman, "but the president must have missed that Shell made even more than that, with $9.1 billion in profits from January through March—its best quarter ever. Chevron ($6.3 billion in first quarter profits) and BP ($6.2 billion in first quarter profits) did pretty well for themselves, too."

Remember: we aren't talking sales; we're talking profits.

Weissman ticked off a major contributing factor: Production costs haven't changed but the market price of oil is up owing to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. And are US oil companies using these windfall profits to invest in clean energy? Heck, no! They’re using the money to buy back their own stock!
Weissman compares Big Oil to a "sleazy drug dealer" keeping the public hooked on dirty, deadly products. "The fossil fuel industry has brought us to the brink of climate catastrophe that threatens the continued viability of human civilization as we know it," Weissman rages. "It’s time to tax Big Oil’s outrageous windfall profits and give money back to American consumers. Italy is doing this. The United Kingdom — even with Boris Johnson (still) in charge — is doing this."

Public Citizen has posted this online petition:

Tell Congress: The American people need a break from out-of-control prices. Pass legislation without delay to tax Big Oil’s windfall profits and give money back to consumer. Add your name here

Fox News Downplays Big Oil's Upswings

My Country Is of Thee, Sweet Land of Infantry

A keen observer of political corruption and the Pentagon recently noted how "Congress gives the Pentagon money and the Pentagon uses the money to pay lobbyists to manipulate congress into voting more money for the Pentagon."

So: the more money the pols give the DoD, the more money the solons stand to receive back in the form of donations from the war lobby—freshly laundered by the country's powerful "defense" industries.

And then there's the Pentagon's scheme of "foreign aid." Many of the financial bequests the US bestows on foreign allies is gifted on the condition that a substantial part of the largesse must be used to buy US-made weapons.

The US spends more money on its military than the next 11 most-militarized countries combined. The US maintains around 800 military bases in more than 70 foreign nations. The US is the world's largest merchant of arms. In 2021, the US and its allies conducted more than 300 military exercises around the planet. It has been said that "America's greatest export is war."

According to the 2014 book, America Invades: How We’ve Invaded Or Been Militarily Involved With Almost Every Country on Earth, the US "has invaded or fought in 84 of the 193 countries recognized by the United Nations and has been militarily involved with 191 of 193—a staggering 98 percent."

As the website, We Are the Mighty points out, "there are only three countries in the world America hasn’t invaded or have never seen a US military presence: Andorra, Bhutan, and Liechtenstein." (Note: The numbers don't match up so it looks like the Pentagon may have added one of these three tiny nations to its squish-list.)

Given all the above, maybe we it's time we should start referring to the US as "The United States of Warmerica."

Russia and the Nazis: It's Personal

In the run-up to his invasion of Ukraine, Russian President Putin complained about the presence of extremist hard-right politicians in the neighboring country, including some who openly paraded under banners historically linked to Hitler's Germany. These latter-day Nazi sympathizers were involved in the 2014 US-backed coup against Ukraine's pro-Russian leader

Why does Putin have such a fixation on neo-Nazis? It has a lot to do with the USSR's WWII role in defeating Hitler.

Historians note that 24-27 million Soviet fighters died on the battlefields of WWII. Soviet soldiers killed 80% of the Nazis fighting on the Eastern front.

Some 418,500 US soldiers were killed in WWII. The Soviet Union had 60 times more killed and wounded than the US.

Of the estimated 60-70 million deaths caused by World War II, around half occurred in battles fought in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe between the Nazis and the USSR.

A Caribbean Escape

A few weeks ago, against all odds (and owing to the tenacity of MBF), we managed to bust through a swath of extreme weather and the COVID Curtain to negotiate a dicey trip to an island in the Caribbean. Some memorable encounters included:

• Meeting Gabriel, the keeper of a lighthouse built by the US military in 1910. A few years ago, the landmark was blown apart by a hurricane. The lights were knocked out and the metal cap that topped the tower now sits nearby on the hilltop looking like a crashed UFO.

• While Gabriel explained how a new radar system now tracks commercial vessels in the island's waters, we noticed a stray goat crossing a meadow below a loose rope trailing from its neck. Ten minutes later, the goat joined us in the tower. The animal turned out to be the lighthouse keeper's pet. We asked what the critter's name was. Gabriel replied: "Goaty."

• We stayed in a spacious villa overlooking a bay, a pier, and the towering distillery tanks of a large brewery.

The gracious owner/resident of the two-story dwelling explained that the brewery's former owners built the villas on the nearby bluff so they could look down on their employees working below. (That explained the competition-class tennis court adjacent to the "overseers'" top-most villa.)

• We noticed a large sports stadium that sported the five Olympic rings. We were told the Olympics never made it to the island and the sports stadium was converted to serve as a hospital. Unfortunately, the hospital's new doors turned out to be too narrow to accommodate the passage of gurneys. As a local resident explained: "The only part of the building that worked was the morgue."

• We learned of another building project was halted after two years when someone pointed out that the impressive new structure lacked two critical elements—windows and doors.

• We met a lot of delightful people, including Terry T. Janvier, a local artist who had turned his entire multi-floored residence into a visual carnival of painted lattices, cabinets, windows, galleries, and architectural flourishes adorned with portraits of luminaries like Nelson Mandela and Sir William Arthur Lewis.

• We also had the good fortune to meet two adorable sisters—nine-year-old Ivana and her five-year-old sister Mia—who adopted us and wound up engaging in surf-splashing conversations, water gymnastics, Zen calisthenics, and palm-tree rope-swinging contests for several delightful, never-to-be-forgotten hours.

Over and Out

A Berkeley Activist's Diary, week ending 6-19-22

Kelly Hammargren

Tuesday June 21, 2022 - 03:04:00 PM

Heather Cox Richardson in her Letters from an American June 19, 2022 edition gives a full description of Juneteenth including General Order No. 3 in full. https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/june-19-2022?utm_source=email

When I think back on all the things I never learned in school or even college and how much I’ve learned through the political book club Barbara Ruffner and I formed over coffee at the “sanity café” in 2014, I wish I had that set of encyclopedias my father bought for my sister and me. I’d like to go back and look through them with fresh eyes for how much of our history was left out to paint a different kind of picture of this country.

Jeffery Robinson, former ACLU Deputy Legal Director, in the documentary, “This Is Who We Are” describes the same kind of revelation in the opening of the film. He describes himself as having had one of the best educations in America, and that even as a Black man there is so much he didn’t learn, until suddenly he became the parent of his 13 year old nephew, struggling what to tell his Black son about racism in America.

The City of Berkeley offices were closed on Monday in observation of the Juneteenth holiday, though the celebrations really did start on Sunday. AB 1655, to officially recognize Juneteenth as a State of California, holiday is still pending.

When I was writing the description of Juneteenth for the Activist’s Calendar, I found on June 17, 2021, the same day President Biden signed into law Juneteenth as a national holiday, Governor Carney of Delaware signed House Bill 198, mandating teaching Black history, the significance of enslavement, the contributions of Black people to American life, the impact of racial trauma and the responsibilities of all citizens to combat racism.

Some weeks later, on August 6, 2021, Governor Newsom signed the requirement for California high schoolers to complete a semester course of Ethnic Studies, beginning with the 2025-2026 academic year, to earn a high school diploma. That puts Delaware ahead with a 2022-2023 implementation and tighter definition of content.

It isn’t just the South where parents are showing up at school boards declaring critical race theory must be banned and books removed from school libraries. California is not immune to White Supremacy and white parents pushing back on what can be taught about racism. In one of the articles I found it mentions Ramona Unified in San Diego County adopting a course that promotes patriotism while tightly restricting what can be taught about racism. We have a long way to go.

Just Saturday, the Republican Party of Texas adopted a platform that should give all of us chills. Heather Cox Richardson covers it well in her June 18, 2022 Edition. https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/june-18-2022?utm_source=email

The week started with the staged reading of ROE on Sunday and a repeat on Thursday. I was glued in full attention curious to see how closely ROE would parallel the life of Norma McCorvey as it was covered in Joshua Prager’s book The Family Roe: An American Story. The play was written in 2017 and the book was published in 2021. A 2 ½ play can’t possibly cover a lifetime, but playwright Lisa Loomer captured McCorvey’s true character and closely paralleled the book. The friends I sat with thought McCorvey was overplayed, but reading the book showed the Actors Ensemble of Berkeley under the direction of Susannah Wood really got it right. Carole Marasovich did an amazing job of pulling this together in just three months. If you missed ROE and see another reading grab a ticket.

The City Council meeting Tuesday evening got a little testy as the voting approached on Councilmember Kate Harrison’s proposed ballot initiative, the Empty Homes Tax, aka the “Vacancy Tax.” Harrison said that we tell homeowners to pay for city expenses, but we never tell developers or out of town owners to pay.

Susan Wengraf responded: “…if you said this was an item that referred to ten units or more then you would be targeting larger landlords…”

Which raises the question of what Wengraf reads. Single-family homes are being gobbled up by investment firms. Blackstone Group Inc. struck a $6 billion deal last year on a single-family home rental strategy. Big investment companies are moving into smaller properties. Setting a limit at ten-unit properties misses what is happening in the market with big investors.

Mayor Jesse Arreguin voiced his concern that putting the Vacancy Tax on the ballot would impact “our ability to pass both our streets parcel tax and our housing and infrastructure bond.” He has it all backwards if he thinks the vacancy tax is going to hurt his November ballot initiatives for an infrastructure bond and parcel tax. If anything, a vacancy tax will help, as it makes the developers and the out of town property owners pay their share. That makes a bond and parcel tax more palatable for local homeowners.

We know there are buildings not being rented and can see the homeless on the street. These investor owners shouldn’t escape by keeping empty units off the market. Even if a vacancy tax were break even, just getting existing housing back on the market and rented would be a success.

From Harrison’s presentation, the Empty Homes Tax ballot initiative has a dual benefit. It brings units back on the market, and for those landlords that withhold housing the tax collected will expand the Housing Trust Fund for acquisitions and construction. I read the proposed Empty Homes ordinance in full and it is well written with limited exemptions and very specific uses for the tax collected.

If Arreguin’s bond and parcel tax ballot measures fail this November to garner enough votes, it won’t be because an empty homes tax is on the ballot with it. It will be because the City Manager attempted to use ballot Measure GG funds for fire prevention to pay for carpet. It will be because a city staff member told the chair of the Homeless Commission that Measure P funds for homelessness were needed to balance the budget.

It will be because after years of work on the Adeline Corridor Plan it was thrown out by the mayor in a final vote.

It will be because Berkeley is contributing $53 million to get 35% affordable housing at the North Berkeley and Ashby BART Stations while El Cerrito is getting 49% with no contributions.

It will be because of the kind of foolishness that makes the Berkeley City Manager the 4th highest paid manager of 13 bay area cities surveyed. Berkeley was the smallest city of the 13 in square miles (10.5 square miles, 17.7 if water is included) and 11th in population. At $386,160, Berkeley pays its city manager more than the city manager of San Jose with a population of over 1 million and a physical size of 179.9 square miles.

If the bond ballot measure loses it will be because of broken trust and because the language is too squishy, allowing funds to be shifted to cover pet projects and departments.

At the Agenda Committee, Councilmember Taplin’s measure to set a parking maximum in manufacturing districts, eliminating the current parking minimum, was moved to the consent calendar for the June 28th council meeting. It will arrive too late for the neighbors of the project at 2213 Fourth Street and 747 (787) Bancroft Way with its 4 ½ story 412 parking space garage being reviewed this Thursday, June 23 at the Zoning Adjustment Board (ZAB). It is too late for 742 Grayson with 325 parking spaces spread over 7 stories, reviewed at the Design Review Committee (DRC) last Thursday. It is way too late for 600 Addison which was approved for 943 parking spaces months ago.

Like seemingly all of Taplin’s measures of substance, they are a referral to the City Manager. Taplin can tell his constituents he is working for them and yet we can expect nothing to happen. It seems anything that would put a crimp in any developer’s dream projects ends up being captured in the Planning Commission bottleneck.

To be fair I am told changes in ordinances have to go through the Planning Commission. However, it appears that only items that eliminate development restrictions bubble up through staff for action. The rest recirculate or languish and die, making referrals the kiss of death.

I’d like to ask what happened to the days when the Planning Commission met twice a month. It certainly felt like things got done. Maybe it was no better since I wasn’t tracking as closely, but the way it looks now Berkeley is bogged down in process on top of more process ad nauseum. I can’t see that the City Manager’s generous raise of $84,732 brought any efficiency with it, unless the efficiency is to make work and squash measures which the public wants but the electeds and city administrations don’t.

The Fair Work Week ordinance effort which started in 2018 with a referral by Councilmember Harrison to the Labor Commission ran up against a wall. It was on the April 12, 2022, regular council agenda under action for the first reading. Lisa Warhuus, Director of Health, Housing and Community Services, entered a companion report for the City Manager requesting further study. The supplemental submission from Harrison was an objection to delay, but in the end, Harrison agreed to send the Fair Work Week ordinance to the Council Health, Life, Enrichment, Equity & Community Committee to save it.

The Fair Work Week ordinance was discussed in committee on Monday. No action was taken. Councilmember Hahn voiced her concern for low paid workers.

We might want to ask how many years ordinances must be studied before they move forward. And, whatever happened to Tenants Opportunity to Purchase Act (TOPA) from the mayor?

All this makes Councilmember Harrison’s July 16, 2019 ordinance banning natural gas in new construction with the implementation date of January 1, 2020 all the more amazing. Of course, there are still chef’s and cooks who insist they can’t possibly learn to use induction stovetops and restaurants insisting not having natural gas would ruin their food as was indicated by the architect for 2439 Durant. He said at the DRC meeting on Thursday that KIPS restaurant would be asking for an exception to the natural gas ban for the kitchen in the new to-be-constructed 2439 Durant.

This strikes me as someone who learned to drive a car with a clutch insisting they couldn’t possibly drive a car with an automatic shift, or the handful of medical personnel who resisted the transition to digital imaging insisting film x-rays with all the chemical developing were just as good. I had to deal with a veterinarian in that camp.

Calling out the luddites of cooking brings us to climate and budget. Will Mayor Arreguin walk the talk and include the Public Works request for $1,000,000 for EV charging stations at the corporation yard? We’ll see Thursday morning when he reveals his proposed biennial budget for 2023 & 2024. The City of Berkeley can’t do its part to transition the City’s vehicles to electric without the charging station infrastructure.

The election of the Sheriff is over. Yesenia Sanchez is the winner for the Alameda County Sheriff with 52% of the vote and Gregory J. Ahern conceded, the man I can’t think of without picturing the Oath Keepers sharing the Sheriff’s booth in the Urban Shield photos.

When I first heard of the Oath Keepers I understood them as a White Supremacist organization. Now with the insurrection, failed coup and the January 6th hearings, I know so much more.

Trump laid the framework for staying in office months in advance of the election. None of us should underestimate Trump or the lust for power and money.

Trump is a con man and a lifelong criminal (still waiting on my order of the book The Criminology on Trump). If you pick up the book I just finished, Putin’s People: How the KGB took Back Russia and Then Took On the West , by Catherine Belton, and just want to read about Trump’s hand in money laundering, corruption and connections with Russia go to chapter 15. If this is your first big dive into reading about Putin, I would suggest keeping a note pad to write the names, scandals and connections to keep it all straight. My big take away is how much the Mueller investigation missed or more likely chose not to explore.

There is a waiting list at the library.

When I think back on all the things I never learned in school or even college and how much I’ve learned through the political book club Barbara Ruffner and I formed over coffee at the “sanity café” in 2014, I wish I had that set of encyclopedias my father bought for my sister and me. I’d like to go back and look through them with fresh eyes for how much of our history was left out to paint a different kind of picture of this country.

Jeffery Robinson, former ACLU Deputy Legal Director, in the documentary, “This Is Who We Are” describes the same kind of revelation in the opening of the film. He describes himself as having had one of the best educations in America, and that even as a Black man there is so much he didn’t learn, until suddenly he became the parent of his 13 year old nephew, struggling what to tell his Black son about racism in America.

The City of Berkeley offices were closed on Monday in observation of the Juneteenth holiday, though the celebrations really did start on Sunday. AB 1655, to officially recognize Juneteenth as a State of California, holiday is still pending.

When I was writing the description of Juneteenth for the Activist’s Calendar, I found on June 17, 2021, the same day President Biden signed into law Juneteenth as a national holiday, Governor Carney of Delaware signed House Bill 198, mandating teaching Black history, the significance of enslavement, the contributions of Black people to American life, the impact of racial trauma and the responsibilities of all citizens to combat racism.

Some weeks later, on August 6, 2021, Governor Newsom signed the requirement for California high schoolers to complete a semester course of Ethnic Studies, beginning with the 2025-2026 academic year, to earn a high school diploma. That puts Delaware ahead with a 2022-2023 implementation and tighter definition of content.

It isn’t just the South where parents are showing up at school boards declaring critical race theory must be banned and books removed from school libraries. California is not immune to White Supremacy and white parents pushing back on what can be taught about racism. In one of the articles I found it mentions Ramona Unified in San Diego County adopting a course that promotes patriotism while tightly restricting what can be taught about racism. We have a long way to go.