The SFPD has razed a bunch of hackles and a din of howls with its plan to fight crime by enlisting remote-controlled robots to lob bombs at members of the civilian population. The Chronicle was quick to reassure its readers that the SFPD "has no plans to outfit robots with a gun." No way! Instead, these cop-bots would only be "equipped with explosive charges… to incapacitate violent suspects" by tossing hand-grenades in their general direction. 

When it came to providing background on using these military mini-tanks to tackle crime, the Chron revealed that the SFPD has possessed 17 if these weapons for more than a decade but only 12 of them "are functioning" today. This raises questions. Why did SF's PD amass 17 of these robobots? (Was the SFPD secretly staging robot soccer matches?) And why are only 12 of them working today? (Benched for tread-wear? Dead batteries?) 

Another issue re gunless bomb-bots: While a gun can be aimed; a bomb would destroy the bot and anything within a 20-foot radius. Another problem: the use of mechanical bomb-wielding cops would increase the likelihood of hostage-taking. 

And then there was that embarrassing incident from the 1990s…. 

On August 28, 1993 the Associated Press ran the following report on a Robocop gone rogue in SF. According to the AP dispatch ("Robot Sent to Disarm Bomb Goes Wild in San Francisco"):
A hazardous-duty robot malfunctioned Wednesday night and spun out of control in an attempt to defuse an explosive situation. 

"It was spinning around, just going wild," said Edward Ellestad, a member of the Police Department's bomb squad. "People were yelling, 'Shut it off!' So we pulled the plug.' " 

The police robot, nicknamed "Snoopy," went out of control as officers tried to get it to grasp a pipe bomb found at the C & B Cafe during a raid . . . . 

The 28-year-old, 1,000-pound robot had not quite grabbed the plastic bag containing the pipe bomb when it malfunctioned. 

"It could've been a lot worse if it had picked up the device when it was doing 360's and banging off the walls," Officer Ellestad said. 

Bomb squad officers had to remove the device by hand before placing it in a special container and taking it to a remote area to detonate it. 

The New York Times also reported on the SFPD's bot-botched incident with the following sentence:
"Snoopy," the San Francisco Police Department's clunky old hazardous-duty robot, came close to causing a bomb blast instead of preventing one … 

Snoopy?! 

Yes, indeed. In a publicity ploy to promote the introduction of mechanical street cops, the Powers That Be decided to introduce the ominous devices by naming them after a beloved (and harmless) cartoon character. 

And it wasn't just the SFPD. 

Down the Peninsula, the San Jose Police Department's Explosive Control Unit had been trained to use remote mini-tanks as far back as the 1970s. In 1982, four SJPD officers—all graduating members of the Pentagon's Hazardous Devices School—posed for a photo that shows them standing next to their own "Snoopy," a "remote-controlled disposal robot." Like SF's "Snoopy," this device looked a lot like Pixar's WALL-E—but equipped with a bullhorn and a bomb-clutching mechanical claw. 

When I first read the 1982 report on the near-disaster with SF's Snoopy, I was shocked by the attempt to Snoopy-coat the introduction of robot enforcement by expropriating the name of one of the most adorable characters in the world of cartooning. 

I was so offended, in fact, that I sat down and wrote a letter to Charles Schultz, the creator of Charlie Brown, Snoopy, and all the beloved “Peanuts” characters. (Noted in passing: Charles "Sparky" Schultz would have turned 100 years old on November 26.) 

To my delight, Schultz wrote back. 

I just dug up that 30-year-old letter (mailed from Schultz' address, "Number One Snoopy Place, Santa Barbara, Calif. 95401"). 

Schultz was not the kind of fellow who would blow a gasket and file a copyright-infringement lawsuit. His reply read like a sorrowful, long-suffering sigh, trying to understand the misbehavior of others. 

In his note, Schulz wrote: 

"I agree with everything you said in your letter.
It was a total surprise when I saw the photograph in the paper, but I guess it's one of those things that just happen." 

With all due respect to Sparky, it may not "just happen"—not if "The People" have anything to say about it! 

Here's an action response from Media Alliance and Oakland Privacy. As the two organizations note: "No legislative body in the Bay Area has yet explicitly permitted the use of robots outfitted with weapons (bombs or guns) against civilian populations." 

They Can't Be Serious About The SF Killer Robots

In a surreal meeting last Tuesday, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors approved on first reading a military equipment use policy that explicitly allows the use of robots outfitted with bombs to blow people up. The policy allows 3 high-level command officers to employ robot bombs based on their "evaluation" that other things wouldn't work. The Robocop policy passed on an 8-3 vote…. 

The supervisors admit that virtually everyone who has written to them says no to the killer robots. The second vote is on Tuesday afternoon. It needs to come out differently. Here is what you can do to make this happen. 

1) Come to a rally and press conference on Monday December 5th at 9:30am on the Polk Street steps of SF City Hall
2) Email the Board at Board.of.Supervisors@sfgov.org. (Several members of the board have taken umbrage at the term "killer robots" as hyperbole. Therefore, when you write to the Board, we suggest you use the term "robots that kill" instead).
No legislative body in the Bay Area has yet explicitly permitted the use of robots outfitted with weapons (bombs or guns) against civilian populations.  

Private practice attorney Ismail Ramsey has been nominated to be the next U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California, President Joe Biden announced Tuesday. 

Ramsey is a founding partner of Ramsey and Ehrlich LLP, the Berkeley-based law firm where he has worked since 2006. He also served as an associate at San Francisco's Keker and Van Nest law firm from 1997 to 1999 and 2003 to 2005. He also served as an assistant U.S. attorney for the Northern District of California between 1999 and 2003. 

Ramsey is one of two U.S. attorney nominees announced Tuesday by the White House. 

"These individuals were chosen for their devotion to enforcing the law, their professionalism, their experience and credentials, their dedication to pursuing equal justice for all, and their commitment to the independence of the Department of Justice," the White House said in a statement. 

Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Alex Padilla, D-California, lauded the nomination of Ramsey and called him "an outstanding individual" with "a wealth of experience and expertise." 

"We look forward to working with our Judiciary Committee colleagues to swiftly confirm his nomination," the senators said in a joint statement. 

Ramsey is a graduate of Harvard Law School, the University of California, Berkeley, and Harvard College. He is also a U.S. Air Force veteran. 

He grew up in Berkeley and is a graduate of Berkeley High School.  

His father, Henry Ramsey Jr., served on the Berkeley City Council, was an Alameda County judge and later dean of Howard University's law school. 

If he is confirmed, Ismail Ramsey will replace acting U.S. Attorney Stephanie Hinds, who has served in the role since Feb. 2021, when previous U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California David Anderson announced that he would step down following Biden's inauguration. 

The Northern District encompasses 15 counties, including the Bay Area cities of San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose.

As 48,000 academic workers across the University of California enter a third week of striking, hundreds of full-time faculty in the system pledged Monday to join the work stoppage and not teach or submit grades until the strike ends.

More than 200 faculty members across UC's campuses had signed the pledge as of Monday afternoon.

"As long as this strike lasts, faculty across the system will be exercising their right to honor the picket line by refusing to conduct university labor up to and including submission of grades -- labor that would not be possible without the labor of all other academic workers as well as university staff," the faculty pledge states.

The striking academic workers -- including teaching assistants, graduate student researchers, academic researchers and postdoctoral scholars -- are asking for better pay, benefits and job security. The strike involves four separate bargaining units, all of which are represented by United Auto Workers.

UC and UAW bargained for ten consecutive days between Nov. 14 and Nov. 23 before taking a break for the Thanksgiving holiday, a UC spokesman told EdSource on Monday. Negotiations resume this week. 

The timing of Monday's faculty pledge is key, said Simeon Man, an associate professor of history at UC San Diego and one of the organizers of the pledge. 

Seven of UC's nine undergraduate campuses are on the quarter calendar and are now in their last week of classes, with final exams scheduled for next week. At UC's two campuses that are on the semester calendar, Berkeley and Merced, instruction ends next week and finals are scheduled for the following week. 

With the strike ongoing, the ability of faculty to hold those final exams and submit grades is in jeopardy. Final grades are typically due shortly after finals, though some campuses have extended those deadlines. 

In a systemwide letter to faculty, UC Academic Senate leaders acknowledged that there may be "unavoidable and understandable delays in grading this term," given that teaching assistants typically play a large role in grading. The Academic Senate leaders said faculty can take advantage of the extended deadlines for grades and said faculty can also hire temporary readers to help with grading, though they acknowledge that doing so may not be practical. 

The Academic Senate leaders also suggested that faculty consider making final exams optional rather than canceling them altogether, since some students may need to take the exam to raise their grade. 

Faculty joining the work stoppage, including by not submitting grades, say they are exercising their legally protected right to do so under the Higher Education Employer-Employee Relations Act. 

Marisol LeBron, an associate professor in feminist studies and critical race and ethnic studies at UC Santa Cruz, this fall is teaching an intro to critical race ethnic studies class with about 200 students. She hasn't been teaching her class nor has she been grading assignments or giving out new assignments since the strike began on Nov. 14. Right before the strike, her students turned in their second assignment of the quarter, but she doesn't have teaching assistants to grade them. This week, students were supposed to be assigned their final paper, but LeBron emailed them Sunday night to let them know that she wouldn't be able to assign it. 

LeBron added that those types of "serious disruptions to student learning" will only escalate as the strike continues, saying that "we're now in the territory where this becomes a grade strike." That means students may not receive letter grades at all for the quarter, which creates problems especially for those students who worked hard for a good grade and who may be planning to apply to graduate school. 

"But the thing that I've been stressing to my students is that the disruption is not the fault of the teaching assistants and is not my fault, but is the fault of the administration," LeBron said. "It's the decision that the administration has made essentially to not bargain in good faith with these workers." 

The bargaining units say they have made some progress, including by securing stronger protections against discrimination and harassment as well as protections from unjust discipline. But negotiations have stalled in some key areas, particularly around wages for graduate student workers. UAW Local 2865, which represents those workers, says it made its most recent wage proposal for graduate student workers 11 days ago but hasn't received a counterproposal from UC officials. 

The UC spokesman, Ryan King, said in a statement that the two sides have conducted more than 50 bargaining sessions since the spring and "secured 95 tentative agreements" in that time. But, King added, they "remain apart on key issues related to tying wages and pay increases to housing costs and tuition remission for nonresident international students." 

UC is seeking a private mediator to help with negotiations, King added, but UAW has resisted that. 

The striking academic workers have the support of the UC Student Association, which represents students across UC, including undergraduates. UCSA adopted a resolution supporting the strike and has called on students to not go to class during the strike. 

Man, the UC San Diego professor, said UC officials are counting on full-time Senate faculty to submit grades by the end of the quarter, which he said would take away one of the "most powerful tools" that striking workers have. 

"I think the UC administration is counting on Senate faculty to willingly end the strike. I think it's important for faculty to know they do not have to do this. We want to mobilize faculty across the UCs to basically stop being used to break up the strike," Man said. 

On Monday, academic workers held strike events across the state, including outside the UC central president's office in downtown Oakland as well as on the UCLA, UC Irvine, UC Riverside, UC San Diego and UC Santa Barbara campuses. 

"UC's failure to bargain fairly and efficiently is putting education and research at risk," Rafael Jaime, president of UAW Local 2865, said in a statement Monday, referring to UC's lack of a counterproposal on wages for graduate student workers. 

UC maintains that its latest wage proposal is "fair and generous" and "would place our student employees at the top of the pay scale among the nation's leading public universities." The UAW units, however, say that UC's proposals amount to an effective wage cut because the rate of increase is less than inflation. 

LeBron, the associate professor at UC Santa Cruz, said faculty such as herself that have joined the work stoppage see the workers' demands as "fair and reasonable." She pointed to the high cost of living in Santa Cruz and other UC campuses, particularly Berkeley, Los Angeles, San Diego and Santa Barbara. Many academic workers at Santa Cruz, ​​LeBron said, commute between two and three hours to campus because they can't afford to live nearby. 

LeBron added that it's impossible to teach her ethnic studies course this fall without her five teaching assistants. 

"They're the ones who put in the most face-to-face time with the students. They're the ones who know the students' names. They're the ones who are communicating with most of the students," she said.

Due to some editorial confusion too difficult to explain, the following links will take you to articles posted over last weekend which rightfully belong in this week's issue:

Superb Singing Highlights LA TRAVIATA at San Francisco Opera Reviewed by James Roy MacBean 11-27-2022

ON MENTAL WELLNESS: It's Chaos, Don't Personalize It Jack Bragen 11-27-2022

ECLECTIC RANT: Gun Control, the Third Rail of American Politics Ralph E. Stone 11-27-2022

THE BERKELEY ACTIVIST'S CALENDAR: November 27-December 4, 2022 Kelly Hammargren, Sustainable Berkeley Coalition 11-27-2022

I watched a nearly empty San Francisco bound train go by before boarding Lake Merritt BART at 8:01 Monday to report for jury duty. According to BART reports ridership has increased (incrementally), but comparing the present to pre-pandemic ridership, it has basically fallen off a cliff. Even on the best day of the week, Tuesday, ridership reaches a high of 40% of pre-pandemic. Monday is the lowest at 35%.

This was only my second time on BART since COVID hit our shores and the first ride during commute hours.

The Water Emergency Transportation Authority (WETA) board meets this week, and as with every monthly meeting there are charts comparing WETA ridership with CalTrain and BART, showing where each is in recovering to pre-pandemic levels. WETA is doing the best at near 80%, but looking deeper into utilization, systemwide at the very best hour of the morning, at 80% recovery the highest ridership is 31% of capacity. In the evening it is 36%. All of this means that most of the time the 307,603 gallons of fuel (October 2022 usage) is used to take near-empty ferries back and forth across the bay. (ridership reports are on pages 17 – 20 https://weta.sanfranciscobayferry.com/sites/default/files/weta-public/currentmeeting/b120822aFULL.pdf )

You may ask why does this matter? It is because the City of Berkeley contracted with consultants for $1,100,000 for a plan for the Berkeley Marina to make the Marina a booming income generating enterprise zone with a new pier and ferry. And all this is based on a thriving utilization of ferries to and from San Francisco, bolstered by morning and evening commuters.

When the pandemic hit and everyone who could work from home was sent home, the initial reaction was something like “What? you expect me to work from home? I can’t possibly work from home!” And then once adjustment set in, it is, “What, you want me to return to the office? I can’t possibly go back to the office, at least not every day.” Commuter car traffic still seems to be pretty heavy, but on the few days, I’ve actually had to drive in it, it is not as bad as it used to be.

I think it is time to rearrange our thinking on expecting offices full of workers. Scanning business articles, a 50% return to the office seems to be the national average. This has wide ranging implications.  

I am all for a smaller footprint, a smaller impact on the environment and climate, and working remotely can certainly help. The next four to six months should be very telling on how much we need to rearrange our thinking. Whatever changes do or don’t appear, we need to plan for a different future than just expecting to replicate how we lived prior to March 2020. 

As for jury duty, we were given a screening questionnaire for a criminal case. I got the call Friday that I didn’t need to return. No surprise. I had so many “yes” answers and explanations to complete on the questionnaire, I was the last one out of the room. 

At Monday’s Berkeley City Council Agenda Committee meeting, Councilmember Ben Bartlett’s item on regulating miniature bottles of alcohol was forwarded to the Health Commission, and his item on creating a Berkeley song and flag was forwarded to the Civic Arts Commission. Councilmember Terry Taplin’s item on hiring consultants for creating a plan for dedicated bus lanes and elevated platforms on University Avenue was referred to the Facilities, Infrastructure, Transportation, Environment and Sustainability (FITES) Committee. I asked that all of these road diets and modifications on emergencby access and evacuation routes be looked at in total, not one street at a time.  

My walk partner and I were in the last mile of our 5 mile walk when a fire truck came screaming down Monterey and turned onto Hopkins. She reminded us that Hopkins is one of those emergency routes about to be narrowed.  

At the City Council meeting on Tuesday Jim O’Fell (spelling from captioner’s record) commented on the lack of engagement by City staff with the public on plans for the Hopkins corridor. There has been no response to questions regarding whether the plan had been reviewed by the Fire Department and Department of Emergency Services. Also, people on Talbot, blocks away from Hopkins, were asked about parking, but not neighbors on Alvina, a half block from Hopkins, that would bear the brunt of the removal of parking.  

Berkeley has a new Fire Chief, but I wouldn’t hold my breath on a fire chief standing up to a team of consultants, the council, city planners and bicycle activists bent on road diets, turning emergency access and evacuation routes into single lane roads as is the current fashion. But while we’re waiting, we might want to watch this video about the impacts of road diets on public safety, and possibly Chief Sprague could use it in showing what happens with road diets. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PamppHOHTs 

Council returns to hybrid meetings with the option to attend in-person or virtually via zoom on December 6. This is just as RSV, Flu and COVID are surging in California. Do not follow the announcement Friday evening on KRON 10 pm news that surgical masks are just as effective as N95 (or KN95). Epidemiologist Michael Osterholm ripped that study to shreds in his Thursday podcast. He said surgical masks offer little protection and it is fine to reuse your N95 until it is visibly dirty or no longer holds a seal (men with beards cannot maintain a seal). Osterholm also said get your vaccines and boosters, and if you contract COVID do your best to get access to Paxlovid ASAP. Per Johns Hopkins data 12/3/2022 in the U.S. the daily average of deaths from COVID is 305. https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/covid-19/podcasts-webinars/episode-119 

The last item on the council agenda was the reconfiguration of Adeline at BART and Ed Roberts Campus. Machai Freeman, Mary-Lee Smith and others spoke to the problems of access for persons with disabilities, with road diets and street reconfigurations on Milvia as an example of the worst design for disabled persons in wheelchairs.  

The reconfiguration of Milvia with its bicycle lanes and curbs is often touted as a huge success. A picture of Farid Javandel, Transportation Division Manager, on his bicycle riding down Milvia even made a frontpage splash on the local print paper. 

Parking didn’t get much attention except in relation to disabled persons at the Ed Roberts campus. It did not come up for how the flea market vendors will get their goods to the locations on the plaza. I guess the assumption has been made that this topic is covered, but I am not sure how it all will work.  

Councilmember Hahn was full of ideas for the plaza, like chess boards as seen at Washington Square in Manhattan and bocchi ball like in Spain, France and Portugal. No one needs to go to Manhattan to see people playing chess outside. A trip to the front of the old Cody’s bookstore on Telegraph will do the same.  

An actual plan for the housing project at Ashby BART is several years away. A statement was added to the motion by Councilmember Harrison to “developing preliminary engineering concepts ensuring universal design and access for the public.” The council voted for configuration 2 with a 60 foot wide plaza that will extend to the retail frontage. (page 9 https://berkeleyca.gov/sites/default/files/documents/2022-11-29%20Item%2015%20Adeline%20Street%20at%20Ashby%20BART.pdf)  

The presentations and discussion of lighting and restroom improvements at Ohlone Park were refreshing. The plan is not yet finalized, with public comment open until January 2, 2023 You can send your comments to echan@cityofBerkeley.info and srutherford@cityofberkeley.info. When you go to the city webpage, scroll to past events and pick the 3rd document in the list, the presentation. https://berkeleyca.gov/your-government/our-work/capital-projects/ohlone-park-restroom-and-lighting-improvements 

The Romtec restroom received the most votes by attendees and A and D were the top restroom site choices, but that was before we heard from the neighbor at site D. There were requests for night lighting on the volleyball court and multiple attendees requested directed, shielded down lighting below tree canopy for pathways. Concerns were raised about the impact of night light.  

It was an ugly Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) meeting on Thursday evening and it may well be repeated on Wednesday, December 7, at the Civic Arts Commission at 6 pm.  

It is now 30 years since Berkeley renamed Columbus Day as Indigenous Peoples’ Day and when the idea of changing the defunct Civic Center Fountain into a space for dedication to the indigenous people of this area, the Lisjan/Ohlone. 

Lee Sprague and Marlene Watson, both of whom are indigenous people, were the original design team in 1992. The project stalled for over two decades when a community group of supporters and local indigenous people came together around 2018 picking it back up, raising money and developing a design that would fit within the confines of the existing fountain structures, incorporating the bronze turtles created for the project which are now in City Hall and the eight indigenous peoples’ medallions. https://turtleislandfountain.org/ 

City staff stepped in this year, tracked down Lee Sprague and Marelene Watson, hired PGA as consultants, threw out previous designs including the most recent and started over and this is where the evening at LPC began its descent.  

After the new design was presented, I asked where the representatives of the Lisjan/Ohlone we are accustomed to seeing and hearing from were. Scott Ferris Director of Parks, Recreation and Waterfront said “we chose not to bring them, ” implying that it would be too chaotic. Lee Sprague and Marlene Watson (neither of whom are Lisjan/Ohlone), while the original designers, are not local, and we have been hearing how the local indigenous people have been shut out of meetings in creating the public art to honor their history.  

Beyond the questions and comments from the Landmarks Preservation Commissioners requesting a water feature, expressing the difficulty as an outsider of determining who is representative of the indigenous community and being asked to be a juror and not a commissioner, the design itself appears to be fraught with problems. And that is beside the fact that the newest Sprague and Watson design would conflict with the historical designation. https://berkeleyca.gov/sites/default/files/documents/2022-12-01_LPC_Item%205_Turtle%20Island.pdf 

The new design comes with no budget estimate. It features a 12 foot snapping turtle on top of a circular slab of polished granite that sits on top of the fountain (top level of the fountain removed) and glass tile work at the base to simulate water. To me it did not appear that this design would actually work especially the large slap of granite.  

I found an online calculator https://stoneyard.com/calculators/stone-slab-weight/ just to get a gross estimate of what a slap of granite would weigh to sit on top of the fountain with a 12 foot bronze turtle on top. A circular slab of granite 14 feet in diameter and two feet thick would weigh 64,680 lbs or 32.34 tons. Slimming it down to 13 feet by 1 foot thick would be 27,885 lbs or 13.9425 tons. I heard today at CCCC there is not solid ground under the fountain so weight is even more of a problem. 

One additional problem (I am sure there are others) Snapping Turtles are not native to California, are illegal in California and the California Fish & Game regulations specifically forbid possession or release of any genus or species of snapping turtle. So, the centerpiece, the snapping turtle is a predator of local wildlife. Maybe Sprague, Watson, PGA and the City have an explanation as to why they chose an invasive predatory species to honor the Ohlone. Is there another message here, maybe the genocide of the indigenous people and the theft of their land or am I reading too much into the symbolism? 

If we are really going to honor the Lisjan/Ohlone a more meaningful action than land acknowledgements recited at City meetings would be giving our indigenous people prominent space in the Maudelle Shirek Building instead of building new offices for city council and staff. 

I skipped the Monday Sugar Sweetened Beverage subcommittee meeting and Tuesday morning Civic Arts Commission Policy Subcommittee meeting. I couldn’t attend the Zero Waste Commission and Community Health Commission meetings as they ran the same time as City Council. I attended the 4 x 4 Joint Task Force Committee on Housing only long enough to raise the concern that minutes were not posted in a timely manner. I attended the Environment and Climate Commission long enough to learn that the subcommittee on Native Plants and Pesticide Reduction had not met, but I was encouraged by the remarks on native plants from Shannon Allen who has left City of Berkeley employment. The Thursday morning Land Use Committee meeting was cancelled.  

I can’t say exactly where I heard of Kelly Weill’s book Off the Edge: Flat Earthers, Conspiracy Culture and Why People Believe Anything, but it seemed like a perfect selection for these times when conspiracies appear to have consumed seemingly well-educated people we thought to be normal and most days it feels like half the country, at least half of those who voted, live in a different universe.  

Weill, a journalist for the Daily Beast, wrote she started looking at the Flat Earth website in 2017 whenever the days news felt too crazy, and checking in on the Flat Earth movement gave a sense of normalcy.  

2017 was, of course, at the beginning of Trump’s presidency, before COVID and the U.S. and the world slid into embracing bizarre conspiracies, fortified by social media: before we were surrounded by anti-vaxxers claiming COVID vaccines were injecting micro-chips to track us (a smart phone and google do that).  

Pizzagate started in 2016 with the hacking of John Podesta’s email account and the claim that Comet Ping Pong Pizzeria pizza orders in the emails were really code for human trafficking and a child sex ring. This conspiracy was merged into QAnon, and we saw those believers joining the Oathkeepers and Proud Boys in the attempted coup on January 6th, 2021. Weill reported that 97 QAnon supporters ran for Congress in 2020.  

After hearing that over one hundred legislators that voted to overturn the election of President Biden in the evening after the January 6 attack on the capital were re-elected in November 2022, I looked for an article that gave the actual results. When I couldn’t find one, I pulled up the list and went through them one by one. Of the eight senators, only John Neely Kennedy from Louisiana was up for re-election. He won with 61.6% of the vote against twelve other candidates. The other seven senators are up for re-election in 2024 and 2026.  

In the House of Representatives, one hundred thirty-nine voted against certifying the election of President Biden. Only two of the 139 were defeated by Democrats. Yvette Herrell lost to Gabriel Vasquez in New Mexico and Steve Chabot lost to Greg Landsman in Ohio. Of the remaining 137, five ran for other offices, four were defeated in the primary, four did not run for re-election and three died, leaving 121 who voted to overturn the election and were re-elected in November 2022. Of that 121 eight ran unopposed.  

If you are feeling at all secure that there was no Republican sweep, we still lost the House and are barely hanging on to the Senate. We have work ahead if we want to maintain a democracy, and we would do well to understand how people are sucked into conspiracies. Kelly Weill found many fell into flat earth through YouTube algorithms. And the more they were questioned, rejected, unfriended, the more they with dug in reaching for reinforcement within in their group. (Sound familiar?). And one more thing, the deeper the flat earthers were into one conspiracy, the easier it became to reach to other conspiracies.

As I get older, I am increasingly shocked by how much everything and everyone are changing, and this is a very uncomfortable feeling. I feel that other people's progress is far outstripping mine, and I'm being left behind like I'm on a lifeboat, floundering in the wake of a passing giant vessel. It seems as though I'm not keeping up with the world. Could this be normal?

If you feel the same way, you are not alone. A severe psychiatric disability and medication to treat it should not be shrugged off; it means you have a substantial roadblock. Give yourself some credit, let yourself off the hook, and give yourself some reassurance. There could be millions of people in the U.S. who feel exactly the same as we do, yet who don't have a psychiatric diagnosis.

Everything is a challenge. Getting clean clothes is a challenge. Maintaining oral hygiene, maintaining proper nutrition, keeping the bills paid, keeping the trash taken out, and so on... How does a person have the time and energy to keep up with the glam lives of others? Not to mention remaining medicated and stabilized, keeping prescriptions filled, keeping appointments with treatment practitioners, taking medications and not missing doses... 

How does even the most determined and intelligent mentally ill person keep up with it all? Maybe we don't. There isn't normally an expectation that a schizophrenic person should be able to keep up with the jet set. If we can, then maybe something is wrong. 

If I feel as though left behind even though I'm keeping up with many of the things most people do, and to boot I have a semiprofessional writing career, it might show that the changes and challenges of the modern world are relatively extreme. 

Feeling left behind is probably very common today. If I don't want to be left in the dust, maybe I need to network a bit more. I am not in much communication with people about all of the multiplying developments on the web. I talk to my brother, who does earn a living, and he talks to me about "Google Docs." Yet I scoff at that because I'd be handing over to Google all of my copyrighted material. And what's to stop them from ripping it off? Nothing. 

Thus, while I'm unfamiliar with a number of web platforms currently out there, many of them won't do me any good. There are a lot of mentally ill people who aren't good on a computer. And this will prevent keeping up with society. If you do not have a goal other than to live in an institutionalized situation, this is fine. If you live with parents, maybe parents will do a lot of things to help you. And both of these are fine. I, personally, have been in life circumstances in which I've needed to look after myself. This at times can seem very damned difficult. 

There are people at all levels. It is a spectrum, and you could be at the bottom ten percent or at the top five percent. Either way, you are somewhere on the spectrum. I did that "opt-out" thing with having credit card offers sent to me. The result was a reduction in my credit rating with fabricated excuses. 

We're being guided by giant industries like Google, Musk, Microsoft, and several other mega-corporations. They want everyone to be the same. They want control over the populace. The Kardashians serve as examples of how you are expected to be and who you are expected to worship. The objective of television production is to guide Americans and give examples of the expected norms. If you deviate from what is on television, it might make you think you're not keeping up. But television is a make-believe world, and people in fact do not behave as they do on TV. 

Things keep changing. Can we keep up? Can I keep up? Only time will tell. But likely, there isn't that much to worry about. The amount of worry I have is disproportionate, and the reader, if you feel you're not keeping up, should realize; probably don't have that much to worry about. 

---

Jack Bragen is a writer who lives in Martinez, California.

The more than two-months of mass protests over the death of 22 year-old Mahsa Amini at the hands of Iran’s so-called Morality Police for allegedly allowing wisps of hair to show beneath her hijab or head scarf has precipitated a nationwide movement that calls for the overthrow of Iran’s theocratic regime. This is something quite new in Iran. Back in 2009, Iranians protested by the hundreds of thousands in support of reformist presidential candidates Mpussavi and Karroubi, and they were outraged when Ahmadinejad was declared the winner and assumed Iran’s presidency. Today, however, the current rebellion, a leaderless movement coming mainly from women and the young generation, who make up over 60% of Iran’s population, no longer wants reform. Instead, they want revolution and an overthrow of the theocracy of the mullahs. 

What are the chances for this? Interestingly, Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, is at this point extremely ill and reportedly near death. Protesters have made it clear that they will never accept Khamenei’s son as his successor as Supreme Leader. It seems clear to me that if the Supreme Leader dies in the next few months, that will bring about the end of the theocratic Islamic Republic of Iran. 

But what will come next? The popular movement is powerful, but, being leaderless, it offers no clues as to how it would proceed after the downfall of the mullahs. In the aftermath of an overthrow of the mullahs, the Revolutionary Guard will have a major role in determining Iran’s future. With their strong economic and political hold on Iran’s power structure, the Revolutionary Guard may well be the best positioned movement in Iran to shape the new directions after the theocracy is rejected. But what will they do? How will the Revolutionary Guard position itself as it deals with a revolution coming from the people? Will they simply pay lip service to the people’s aspirations for democracy, while attempting to solidify their hold on power? That is the question.

It just never ends, does it?

While making my way through the newspaper (SFC) one day (Nov. 27, 2022), I came across a familiar story. Two cops in the Denver area had just been indicted for having killed a man who was sitting in his car. On June 10, the car had somehow started to slip down an embankment. The man had obviously gotten scared (it was the middle of the night), and called for help. When two cops showed up, they told him to get out of the car. He refused. He said something about being afraid. The media reports that they talked to him for about an hour. But he kept the window closed. Finally, they ordered him out of the car. Again, he refused. So they smash in the window of the car. He throws things at them. And they shoot him to death. [Equal opportunity assassins; the guy was white.]  

His name was Christian Glass. The cops are being charged with negligent homicide. Negligent?? They shot him six times. After talking to him for an hour. They finally figure out that the guy needed help, and came to the conclusion that the only help they could offer him was pulling a trigger. That’s not negligence. They were right there on the job, taking care of business. They were doing what they were trained to do when somebody refuses to obey orders. That is the military way. An officer gives orders, and those orders must be obeyed instantly, or the recalcitrant will be removed from society (either by imprisonment or death).  

It happens again and again. Walter Scott ran from a traffic stop after giving the cop his license (April, 2015). The cop commanded “stop,” and then shot him dead. Willie McCoy fell asleep in a Taco Bell drive-thru line (late at night, in February, 2019); the cops open his dooor, order him out (with which he complies), and whip out the handcuffs, to which he says "no." And they shoot him to death as he tries to get away from them. Oscar Grant had been thrown to the BART platform by two cops on New Year’s Eve, 2009, and broke his fall with his hands under his body. Two cops sat on him, while trying to get his hands free for cuffing. When they couldn’t (because of their own weight), it was interpreted as disobedience, and Grant was shot in the back. When Vincent Bryant, a homeless man in Berkeley, January 2021, got hungrier than he could stand, he took a sandwich from a Walgreen’s, and left what he had in his pockets as payment. The cops found him a block away eating his sandwich and ordered him to drop it and get on the ground. He ignored them, and one cop shot him with a rifle from 50 feet, hitting him in the jaw (as if to punish him for eating). If the cop hit him in the jaw, it means he was aiming for his head; and that means he intended to kill this man (for being hungry). A Berkeley cop.  

It goes on and on. The ability to form a mini-military-situational-hierarchy in the moment is the core of police militarization. They assume the right to punish refusal (court-martial??) by shooting the person. And they therefore affirm an allegiance to a kind of “gun-nationalism.” The only thing to which they object is being indicted, so it happens rarely – a bit more often now in the wake of the 2020 summer of demonstrations. Speaking of which, George Floyd’s case wasn’t even one of disobedience. He was already in handcuffs and in custody when Chauvin and his gang showed up. They took him from the custody officer, threw him on the street, and killed him. It was premeditated murder.  

The media mentions some alleged experts who were of the opinion that the decision to break the window on Glass’s car "escalated" the encounter. What encounter? Since when is a guy sitting in a car saying "no" an "encounter"? Didn’t these cops ever hear of the Constitution? Was it beneath their dignity to say, “Be calm, sir, we are calling a tow-truck.” Apparently, the cop’s didn’t see it as an encounter, either. For them, it was treason to the nationalism of the gun. For which they executed him, after a one-hour’s court-martial.  

The issue of police militarization has been raised recently over the bestowal of military grade weapons to local police departments by the Dept. of Defense. Their gifts include assault rifles, flash-bang grenades, armored vehicles (aka tanks), drones, tear gas, and others. Since standard police practices are already militarist, are these weapons simply the icing on the cake, signifying DoD approval for the way the cops deal with disobedience?  

The issue of this military equipment has become so controversial that the California legislature has even passed a bill (AB 481) requiring city governments to be diligent, and pass an ordinance on each item of military equipment that the police wish to adopt. The bill includes involving local communities at all stages of each investigation, and calls for organizing city-wide forums on the issue. City governments like Berkeley have yet to do that. In general, milquetoast politicians speak about how the police have to win the trust of the people instead of giving the people a platform from which to speak and (heaven forbid) participate in making policy.  

Berkeley actually passed an ordinance in May, 2021, requiring any military weaponry offered the police to be investigated and cleared by City Council enactment. This measure was introduced at roughly the same time that the California state assembly was considering its own law (AB 481). The city ordinance falls short of the state bill by not requiring forums on the issue or community-wide meetings on any military equipment accepted.  

That is par for the course for Berkeley. It doesn’t want “the people” involved in policy-making. For instance, no RV dwellers were included in making city policy for those who have only a vehicle to live in; no encampment dwellers were included in making policy about encampments; no low income neighborhood residents were included in making policy about housing affordability. The city begs off by saying that people have "input." But "input," which means being restricted to letters, or a minute or two comment in council meetings (instead of a seat at the table) is actually a form of exclusion from policy-making.  

Theoretically, the community should have the power to veto the police having or using any weapons. But it generally takes a massive expression of outrage to compensate for the vacuousness of "input." One would need a City Council with some spunk to go against the police and its love of weapons. Both City Council and the leadership of those involved in constituting a Police Accountability Board have very little of that. They value wheedling the officials (aka lobbying), rather than build a community base of assemblies from which to represent the needs of the people, and redefine accountability itself.  

Both groups know that the cops kill in response to disobedience. Yet they accept the police assurance that the new weapons are a sign that social violence is being brought under control. The police claim there are so many weapons “out there” in people’s hand that these military weapons have become a necessary "equalization" mechanism.  

However, the police bring their history of gun-nationalism with them wherever they go. If they don’t like that reputation, they have no one to blame but themselves. And to the extent they do not make the people feel safe, then the people will buy the instruments they need for their own self-defense. And this then is what the cops try to "equalize"?  

Yet where did those weapons come from originally? Way back, after Prohibition and world war, there were laws against private persons owning automatic weapons – the machine guns that gangsters used to blow each other away in the movies were actually illegal. How have so many weapons gotten out there that the police now need to become an army?  

It is an interesting story. Let us return to 1963 or 1964. Federal law enforcement began to worry about the "threat" (as Hoover called it) to national security of the civil rights movements. They "worried" that massive uprisings against segregation and racial discrimination could possibly become insurrectionary. Restaurants, pools, public areas, means of transportation, public events like professional sports, concerts, movies, etc., that had all been previously (for almost a century) reserved for whites-only were being opened to all of humanity by the mass actions of people of color and some allies. For those in power (still uniformly white), this was inimical to their sense of white racialized identity. They decided that the country needed to prepare for martial law if the uprisings got too "disruptive." The National Guard was already the agency designated to protect against insurgency. It was thought that civilian assistance would be necessary and desirable. So the National Guard established relations with a number of right-wing organizations (survivalists, neo-nazis, White Citizen Council off-shoots) for the purpose of training them in weaponry and tactical police maneuvers.  

When word got out that this kind of project was being promoted (for instance, in the pages of a radical left-wing investigative newspaper called the National Guardian), much of the project was cancelled. However, the training sessions had already transferred a large number of military grade automatic weapons (still illegal) to private hands. When individuals who had been part of the original project needed money, they would sell the weapons, which would then end up in gun store "special" backroom inventories.  

In an ancillary project, when confronted with the backwash from the Iran-Contra scandal, the Feds concocted a similar project to start a war between LA gangs dealing crack. In 1986m the CIA planted a couple of unlocked boxcars full of weapons on a siding in LA, and let the word out. The next day, the boxcars were empty, and the turf war had begun. (Gary Webb wrote articles about that.) The government found itself having to deal with automatic weapons in the streets of its cities without any possibility of explaining how they had gotten there.  

So now, the government finds it useful to give PDs military weapons. But instead of dealing with crack turf wars, PDs are arming themselves against a populace that is in motion against white supremacy and police brutality (as we saw during the summer of 2020). Against this, with government approval, the police now take a war-making stance. And they carry the weapons, and they become a source of social violence.  

In November, 2022, there was a panel in the Bay Area on the police acceptance and use of military equipment, organized by two local police reform groups (the Ashby Village Task Force for Police Reform, and the Society of Friends Racial Justice Action Team). The basis of the panel’s approach was the recognition that police use of militaristic violence often makes situations more injurious and deadly than they otherwise would have been.  

But the panel was somewhat disappointing. No one asked, “what the hell is the government doing beefing up the police military attitudes when they have already taken extreme social control stances on our streets? No one asked why civil society needed a militarized police in the first place.  

One panelist mentioned that throughout the history of policing in the US, they have always been somewhat militarized. They have always been a force for social control, he said. Though he didn’t think that was positive, he spoke about it as if history determined destiny, as a legacy unopen to question. For him, this meant that we have to change how people perceive the police. Does that mean it is the fault of all those killed for disobedience that they didn’t perceive themselves as being in a military situation while still in a civilian city? What happened to the recognition, from the summer of 2020, of a need to change policing itself, and make it more human-oriented, more civilian oriented? How does a milquetoast attitude toward military weaponry not discount what people have been saying from the streets?  

The panelists gave uncritical credence to the existence of the police, as if it were a sovereign entity. It says, policing simply exists, period. It is not something that civil society has to arrange, the way a family has to arrange putting food on the table every day. The bread to be eaten doesn’t put itself on the table in whatever character it decides to make of itself (stale, rotten, moldy, or fresh and gluten free, etc.). Families and communities are duty bound to preserve the security of the people in them, which means taking control of both the character and the freshness of the bread – that is, of the police.  

When one panelist spoke about a balance of interests between the community and the police, it granted mutual existence and interest to police and community alike, separate and equal (the bread and the diner having equal input). Where does that kind of attitude come from? Another spoke about risks vs. benefits, as if one could take an administrative perspective, observing from a distance the relation to human life to security. Only one panelist focused on the sociological and psychological effects on people when confronted with a militarily hostile attitude -- especially toward black and brown communities.  

The police officer who had been invited to be on the panel was a retired cop who had been, at different times, a spokesperson for the police. When a panelist complained that assuming people were criminals by making derogatory reference to them exhibited an attitude of utter disrespect, this ex-cop said he thought the complaint was valid, and that the path should be toward better “understanding and conversations that don't demonize or make people ‘other.’” But that is the hypocrisy of the police in accepting military weaponry. Military style comportment does nothing but make people "other.” Glass’s panic, even before they broke his window, was precisely at being rendered "other."  

One panelist who had been in negotiations with the police admitted that it did not go as expected, but that, instead of oversight, the community representatives were more of a collaboration with the police, compromising rather than communicating. In short, these community representatives found themselves negotiating with a non-community entity and having to accept it as sovereign.  

The movement for police reform is a movement to stop the government of the US, at all its levels, from killing its own people – as well as injuring and discriminating against and harassing and segregating them. If no one calls in question the form and content of policing in this country, then it means its militarism has already become accepted as fixed, separate from community, a force invading from beyond its boundaries. Just to say that the police have a job to do, and we should discuss with them how to get that job done, means that the police get to define what that job is, and who "we" are in service to that definition. We cease to be those in whose name the police are supposed to exist in the first place.  

Alas, what we do not question rapidly becomes unquestionable. And we still have to deal with the entire issue of social violence. That’s for the next article.

Save Ukraine's Homeless House Pets

Owing to the onerous wreckage of war, Giving Tuesday has gained a new focus. The following plea was posted by Greater Good Charities:

"Without your help, pets in Ukraine won't survive the winter. Farmland in Ukraine has been seized and grain stores have been destroyed, leading to global food shortages. Pets who have been stranded or abandoned in the war-torn country are starving. This Giving Tuesday, help save the lives of thousands of pets with your donations."

Politics and Pets: Cats Versus Dogs

That item got me thinking. Are most pet-owners conscientious liberals who believe in care-taking and animal companionship or conservative authoritarians who like to bark orders, give commands, and demand obedience as they parade their animals on a leash?

According to a University of California Press study titled Pets and Politics: Do Liberals and Conservatives Differ in Their Preferences for Cats Versus Dogs?, "states with the highest percentage of cat owners in America tend to be liberal-leaning, and states with the highest levels of dog owners tend to be conservative-leaning." Other findings (as of 2010): "Over 48 million [US] homes have at least one dog, over 31 million homes have a cat, and over 1 million homes have at least one fish."

How does this translate into current politics?

"We found that 7 of the 10 states in which former President Donald Trump had the most support were also among the 10 states with the highest percentage of dog owners." 

"Self-reported dog people tend to score higher on SDO and competitiveness than self-reported cat people." The SDO scale stands for "Social Dominance Orientation," which is defined as "the preference for hierarchy, hierarchical group structures, and the domination of higher groups over lower groups." 

A related Right Wing Authoritarianism scale rates individuals with "a strong belief in authority and a need to follow the leadership of authority figures." RWAers tend to be dog people since "dogs are seen as more loyal and obedient than cats." 

Studies have affirmed that dog-people score "higher on Conscientiousness and lower on Openness to Experience, compared to 'cat people.'” 

Another difference between GOPs and DEMs. Democrats tend to rescue pets from animal shelters while Republicans tend to purchase animals off-the-shelf—paying with cash at a pet store.g 

Fashion Plates 

A collection of personalized license plates spotted around town: 

A grey Tesla: LUVVVVV (Wait! I thought LUVVVV is "What makes a Subaru a Subaru.") 

A tan Toyota 4Runner: TESSTAD (Dad gives tests? The car is co-owned by Tess and Tad?) 

A silver RAV4 Electric Toyota: It had a normal plate but the frame triggered a double-take. It read: "Summa Cum Laude / Accidental College." 

Bumper Snickers 

Horn Broke: Watch for Finger 

I'm only driving this way because I'm pissed off 

Want to See God? Keep Texting While You Drive 

EARTH Without ART Is Just 'EH' 

Dogs Have Masters; Cats Have Staff 

Chicken Pot Pie: My 3 Favorite Things 

I dream of a world where chickens can cross the road without having their motives questioned 

The Poetry of Sports Headlines 

While the SF Chronicle is known for inserting puns into its daily dose of news headlines, the Chronicle's sports pages feature headlines salted with athletic abbreviations, league lingo and playbook gab — a combo that creates a special kind of poetry. Some recent samples: 

Transfer portal shakes up Pac-12 while providing lift to Cal. 

Resting starters watch as New Orleans delivers rout. 

Americans stoke knockout hopes after clutch draw. 

Dons' men stay perfect; Krimili sparks women. 

Bosa wears out Chargers with ironman game. 

Seat growing hotter for Stanford's Shaw. 

Young core left withering on sideline. 

Pelicans beat Grizzlies. 

Return to Sender? 

A couple of back-to-back mail-back questions: 

It makes perfect sense that local property taxes are paid to an Alameda Tax Collector named Henry Levy (as in "levy, verb: to impose a tax or fine; to collect monies due") but why are local water bills to EBMUD sent to a Payment Center in Los Angeles? 

Diablo Canyon and Biden's Billion-dollar Bailout 

On November 21, Joe Biden announced he was ordering the US Treasury to give PG&E $1.1 billion to continue operating California's degraded Diablo Canyon nuclear reactor until 2025. (Note: Biden's Billion isn't a loan or a subsidy—it's an outright gift!) The aging reactor, which has far surpassed its 40-year operational lifetime, has been troubled by breakdowns and mishaps. 

If Biden had offered this gift as a give-back to the country's taxpayers (and their non-tax-paying children) everyone in the US would be getting about $3.06 in extra pocket change. If that money were handed out to qualified homeowners, 100,000 Americans could have installed solar panels on their roofs. 

With the ability to generate 2240 megawatts, the Diablo Canyon site can serve the needs of 3 million people. And each of those 3 million energy consumers has just seen Biden hand over approximately $367 of their tax dollars to pay PG&E to operate its troubled and unprofitable reactor. 

Biden on Hate 

The GOP has two main complaints it uses to throw shade on Democrat candidates in the last election—out-of-control inflation and out-of-control crime and violence. 

While inflation was a worldwide problem not unique to the US, the levels of American violence have out-paced every other country on Earth that is not currently engaged in war—or dealing with the threat of attack from US and/or NATO forces. There have been more than 600 mass shootings in the US so far this year. But you don't hear the GOP grousing about gun violence and gun-abetted crime when it comes to these high-body-count crimes. Even when the truth is spelled out in the very name of the most dangerous of these weapons. "Assault rifles!" The deadly truth is spelled out—right there in the corporate ads. 

When Biden recently spoke out about the Club Q mass-shooting in Colorado Springs, he proclaimed "We cannot and must not tolerate hate." 

If you think about it, this all-too-common statement is fundamentally flawed. A similarly constructed sentence might proclaim: "If there's one thing I can't tolerate, its intolerance." Or, to put it in grosser terms: "We must hate hate." 

Imagine a Day without a Mass Shooting 

The Brady PAC—a gun control group founded after Ronald Reagan's press secretary Jim Brady was shot in the head during the assassination attempt on the president—has a few data points to share: 

• 155% more people are shot in incidents where assault weapons are used.
• Since the assault weapons ban expired in 2004, there's been an 183% increase in massacres and a 239% increase in fatalities.
• 67% of Americans support a ban on assault weapons.
NRA-backed extremists in Congress are doing everything in their power to protect gun sales and block a ban. But with a gun safety majority in the Senate, we have the chance to fight back and FINALLY pass this critical and life-saving legislation. 

Shoot for the Moon 

Live Views of the Moon and the Earth from the Artemis Mission 

 

Watch live as the uncrewed Orion spacecraft completes a six-week mission around the Moon and back to Earth. During #Artemis I, Orion will lift off aboard the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, and travel 280,000 miles (450,000 km) from Earth and 40,000 miles (64,000 km) beyond the far side of the Moon, carrying science and technology payloads to expand our understanding of lunar science, technology developments, and deep space radiation. 

g

Berkeley Councilmember Bartlett recently used the revelation of racist Berkeley police texts to salute himself and the people of Berkeley in an article in the November Berkeley Daily Planet[1] claiming the people of Berkeley "have committed and recommitted to defend the constitution, and our freedom by ending racist policing." 

Councilmember Harrison did the same thing on November 17, 2022, issuing a statement saying, "We do not know if these offensive comments and actions extend beyond the time period and team implicated in the text threads, but the texts validate real concerns in our community and underscore the importance of the Mayor’s Fair and Impartial Task Force and Reimagining Policing efforts on which I served." 

They're both wrong. The evidence of Berkeley's racism lies in plain sight ignored by a complicit City Council obediently passing anti-homeless legislation on cue[2]. It's obvious in our legislation[3] as documented by Berkeley Law School's Policy Advocacy Clinic's report issued in 2015 comparing the spectacular mountain of Berkeley laws targeting homeless people with that of other California cities. 

The Berkeley Law School's Policy Advocacy Clinic group issued another report[4] September 18, 2018, showing that publicly funded Business Improvement Districts "Exclude Homeless People from Public Space with Taxpayer Dollars." These well documented studies go unremarked by the Berkeley City Council. 

Harrison's statement goes on to suggest that the interim police chief be at the helm of an investigation into the racist texting glinting in the current news cycle, an investigation she is apparently content to have overseen by the same council and mayor whose blindness about decades of discriminatory police practices has been underscored yet again - by a whistleblower instead of any city agency with appropriate purview. 

The recent revision of the Police Review Commission didn't notice, let alone address, these racist practices, nor did the recent "reorganization" of the city's commissions which the current city councilmembers did not oppose. Without the whistleblower's intervention, the racist legislation, texts and the culture that enabled them would have gone unnoticed, the same way only a bystander's accidental video posted on YouTube revealed an assault on a homeless man by one of the Downtown Berkeley Association's (DBA) "ambassadors" in March of 2015.[5] 

When that video went viral, the apologies flowed like the publicly funded wine which more traditionally lubricated the Downtown Berkeley Association's yearly public event routinely summarizing its benefits to the community, a community which to this day has yet to require a serious complaint system or serious oversight of any kind. Merchants know that if they want to "disappear" a single individual or a tent group, all they have to do is signal an ambassador and the magic happens whether it is constitutional or not; the publicly funded merchant associations oversee their own complaint process - if they exist at all[6] - without objection from the mayor or council. 

District Four's Kate Harrison, in particular, played a starring role in email discussions between herself and the DBA's Director John Caner as they discussed Streetplus's "Pilot Program" arming Berkeley's "ambassadors" with pepper spray, batons, and handcuffs. No citizen commissions were included in this email discussion which turned the "Hospitality/Cleaning Ambassador services" into a group which makes its own arrests.[7] 

This recipe works for the wealthy. Courts which used to exhibit a modest obligation toward civil rights violations by police have doubled down on pressuring the poor to take pleas or face lengthy pre-trial incarceration, especially now as the pandemic backs up an already overloaded court system. Those of us routinely discriminated against by prejudice against targeted individuals, whether activists singled out for political purposes[8] or poor people pushed into public spaces for wont of any safe space to harbor, have individual stories to document the human toll taken on a community that should know better. But the systematic studies of police stops, arrest records, and discriminatory legislation ought by now to have put an end to the "bad apple" assessment both Bartlett and Harrison recommend. 

In recent decades the war on the poor, on open space, and on independent thought is so profound that the current Rent Board slate takes a "loyalty oath" to qualify for candidacy, apparently without embarrassment. Commissions are reconfigured to as to pose no challenge to a developer/status quo-driven council with no incentive to listen to constitutional issues. When the "ambassadors" were caught systematically removing legally posted public posters in the downtown area, no one got fired.[9] Even today the DBA boasts on its own website about providing unconstitutional services to remove and relocate people behaving in perfectly legal ways, such as sleeping, which is a human necessity, not a crime.[10] 

The pressure on the police to promote discriminatory practices in policing comes straight from various Business Improvement District's (BID) property owners and BID staff who don't just promote discriminatory legislation such as anti-panhandling, anti-sitting, and anti-poor laws to a complacent city council - they sit with small groups of councilmembers[11] and officials and help create the original legislation, often without bothering to allow it to visit the various commissions which in better times would have an opportunity to temper their excesses. 

Our current mayor, Jesse Arreguin, won't even allow ceremonial recognition of People's Park's admission to the National Register of Historic Places, apparently terrified to even symbolically affirm years of dedicated scholarship by dozens of historians, naturalists, students, professors, and activists. If it doesn't suit the machine, it disappears, with our current City Council's blessing. 

The police should know better, to be sure. But they don't set discriminatory policy independently. The Downtown Berkeley Association's first poster was that of an outstretched hand - surrounded by a red circle with a line through it. It went up all over town. On that day, decades ago, the same handful of us objected, protested, and continue to do so today.[12] And on that day, as today, the council searched for scapegoats and evaded its own complicity. 

* * * 

 

 

Worth Noting:

A full week ahead, check https://berkeleyca.gov/ for meetings posted on short notice.

Monday the go to meeting is the in-person North Berkeley BART Station Housing Project open-house meeting at 6 pm at the Library on University. Monday morning at 10:30 am the Public Safety Committee will review the policy for police officer extra duty, i.e. Apple Store on Fourth Street. PAB meets in closed session at 11:30 and the Personnel Board meets at 7 pm.

Tuesday at 6 pm Council meets with item 10 Citywide Affordable Housing Requirements. The proposed changes calculate the fee for avoiding including affordable housing in a project (in lieu fee) by gross residential square feet instead of number of units or providing land at an alternative site with the same or greater value as the in lieu fee. At 6:30 OES (fire department) sponsors a discussion on Emergency Preparedness.

Wednesday the go to meetings are the Civic Arts Commission at 6 pm receives a presentation of the Turtle Island Monument Project and the Planning Commission hearing on the Housing Element at 7 pm. The Disaster and Fire Safety Commission and Police Accountability Board also meet at 7 pm.

Thursday morning at 10 am the Budget and Finance Committee will review and recommend which projects/items will be funded through the AAO (Annual Appropriations Ordinance – mid-year budget adjustment) (another important meeting) The Zoning Adjustment Board meets at 7 pm. Two projects on consent are similar – they both tear down existing single family housing and build two 2-story single family houses in place of one house.

Saturday the Berkeley Neighborhoods Council meets at 10 am (always worth attending). 

 

The December 13 City Council Agenda is posted and available for comment. Use link https://berkeleyca.gov/your-government/city-council/city-council-agendas or go to post at the end of this notice. Item 8 under consent adds 22 IKE Smart City Kiosks. Item 23 is the approval of the AAO (the mid-year budget adjustment). This is the last expected meeting before council goes on winter recess December 14, 2022 – January 16, 2023. 

Monday, December 5, 2022 

PUBLIC SAFETY COMMITTEE at 10:30 am 

Videoconference: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86864219403 

Teleconference: 1-669-900-9128 or 1-877-853-5257 (toll free) Meeting ID: 868 6421 9403 

AGENDA: 2. Review of Policy 1043 Extra Duty Employment (policy for officers working special details wherein the City of Berkeley has a contractual agreement to provide services for a fee to private third parties, i.e. Apple Store on 4th Street) 

https://berkeleyca.gov/your-government/city-council/council-committees/policy-committee-public-safety 

POLICE ACCOUNTABILITY BOARD (PAB) Hearing Panel Closed Session at 11:30 am 

Videoconference: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88595956163 

Teleconference: 1-669-900-6833 Meeting ID: 885 9595 6163 

AGENDA: Closed Session continuation of deliberations pursuant to Berkeley Police Association v. City of Berkeley, et all Alameda County Superior Court Case No. 2002 057569 

https://berkeleyca.gov/your-government/boards-commissions/police-accountability-board 

North Berkeley BART OBJECTIVE DESIGN STANDARDS Office Hours at 6 – 7:30 pm 

In-Persosn 

West Berkeley Branch Library Community Room at 1125 University 

AGENDA: Drop-in Office Hours on objective design standards to ask questions, HIGHLY RECOMMENDED – use link to scroll through Objective Design Standards presentation before attending meeting, https://berkeleyca.gov/sites/default/files/documents/NB-BART_PreODS_Community_Meeting_1_v1.pdf (both “first Objective Design Standards Community Meeting” and “North Berkeley Objective Design Standards Community Meeting” on the website are the same document) 

https://berkeleyca.gov/community-recreation/events/north-berkeley-bart-objective-design-standards-office-hour-person 

PERSONNEL BOARD at 7 pm 

Videoconference: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85963133318?pwd=ZFZuVkc5WEh3dEFUOCtESG45YXFvdz09 

Teleconference: 1-669-900-9128 Meeting ID: 859 6313 3318 Passcode: 250835 

AGENDA: V. Recommendation to Establish the Medical Director Classification, VI. Request for Extension of Temporary Animal Services Assistant. 

https://berkeleyca.gov/your-government/boards-commissions/personnel-board 

Tuesday, December 6, 2022 

CITY COUNCIL REGULAR MEETING at 6 pm 

Hybrid Meeting – Conducted In-Person and Via Zoom Videoconference 

In-Person 1231 Addison St, BUSD Board Room 

Videoconference: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84189893148 

Teleconference: 1-669-900-9128 or 1-877-853-5257 (toll free) Meeting ID: 841 8989 3148 

AGENDA: Use link and HTML or go to agenda list at the end of this post. Under action affordable housing requirements. Item 10 Citywide Affordable Housing Requirements. 

https://berkeleyca.gov/your-government/city-council/city-council-agendas 

PLUG INTO EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS at 6:30 pm – 8 pm 

Register https://www.eventbrite.com/e/plug-into-emergency-preparedness-registration-476831695437 

AGENDA: interactive discussion, from website it looks like this will be about preparing your emergency kit – event sponsored by City Office of Emergency Services (OES - fire department) 

https://berkeleyca.gov/community-recreation/events/plug-emergency-preparedness 

Wednesday, December 7, 2022 

BOARD of LIBRARY TRUSTEES (BOLT) at 6:30 pm 

Videoconference: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86042306505 

Teleconference: 1-669-900-9128 Meeting ID: 860-4230 6505 

AGENDA ACTION: A. Proposed Personnel Changes, Impact to Budget FY 2023-24, B. Report on recruitment process to fill vacancy on BOLT (Davenport’s term ends 5-15-2023). 

https://www.berkeleypubliclibrary.org/about/board-library-trustees 

CIVIC ARTS COMMISSION at 6 pm 

Videoconference: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86147520326 

Teleconference: 1-669-900-9128 Meeting ID: 861 4752 0326 

AGENDA PRESENTATIONS, DISCUSSION & ACTION ITEMS: a) Turtle Island Monument Conceptual Design, b) Land Acknowledgement, c) FY 2024 Grant Review Panelist Pool, d) FY 2024 Capital Improvements Grants Guidelines, e) FY 2024 Community Festivals and General Operation Support Grant Guidelines changes, f) Cube Space Exhibition, g) 2023 Civic Arts Commission meeting schedule. 

https://berkeleyca.gov/your-government/boards-commissions/civic-arts-commission 

DISASTER and FIRE SAFETY COMMISSION (DFSC) at 7 pm 

Videoconference: https://cityofberkeley-info.zoomgov.com/j/1619573531 

Teleconference: 1-669-900-9128 Meeting ID: 161 957 3531 

AGENDA: 5. Community Wildfire Protection Plan (CWPP) Meeting #3 Assessment Priorities and Action Plan, NOTE: this presentation that occurs during the DFSC meeting https://us06web.zoom.us/j/81595546232 is listed online with a different ZOOM link than the meeting and website https://cwpp-berkeley.hub.arcgis.com/ 6. Update on Commission Recommendations to Council, 7. Berkeley Fire Code Update, 8. Fire Department Facilities Master Plan. 

https://berkeleyca.gov/your-government/boards-commissions/disaster-and-fire-safety-commission 

PLANNING COMMISSION at 7 pm 

Videoconference: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/89799598815 

Teleconference: 1-669-900-6833 Meeting ID: 897 9959 8815 

AGENDA ACTION: 9. Public Hearing: Housing Element 2023-2031, 10. Discussion: Land Acknowledgement Practice. (packet is 1417 pages) 

https://berkeleyca.gov/your-government/boards-commissions/planning-commission 

POLICE ACCOUNTABILITY BOARD at 7 pm 

Videoconference: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82237902987 

Teleconference: 1-669-900-6833 Meeting ID: 822 3790 2987 

AGENDA: 3. Public comment on agenda and non-agenda items, 5. Staff report, 6. Chair and board reports, 7. Chief’s report, 8. Subcommittee reports a. controlled equipment, b. policy and practices relating to downtown task force and bike unit allegations, c. police chief process, 9. New business a. 2023 schedule, b. Board retreat, c. discussion regarding future access to BPD Internal Affairs Bureau Reports and Information. 10. Public Comment 

https://berkeleyca.gov/your-government/boards-commissions/police-accountability-board 

Thursday, December 8, 2022 

 

BUDGET and FINANCE COMMITTEE at 10 am 

Videoconference: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81924010136 

Teleconference: 1-669-900-9128 or 1-877-853-5257 (toll free) Meeting ID: 819 2401 0136 

AGENDA: 2. Amendment: FY 2023 Annual Appropriations Ordinance 1. Discuss and determine carryover, 2. Authorize AAO (Annual Appropriations Ordinance), 3. Presentation on Mental Health Transports and Update on the Implementation of the Specialized Care Unit and Community Crisis Response Services, 4. Energy Commission - Recommendation on Climate, Building Electrification, and Sustainable Transportation Budget Priorities for FY 2023 and 2024. 

https://berkeleyca.gov/your-government/city-council/council-committees/policy-committee-budget-finance 

ZONING ADJUSTMENTS BOARD at 7 pm 

Videoconference: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/87660567955 

Teleconference: 1-669-900-6833 or 1-669-444-9171 Meeting ID: 876 6056 7955 

AGENDA: 3. 2506 Haste – Use Permit #ZP2022-0074 add a Cannabis Consumption Lounge and amplified live music to existing Cannabis retail store – continue to 2-9-2023 

4. 1200 Dwight Way – on consent – Use Permit #ZP2022-0028 – demolish single family dwelling and detached garage and build two 2-story single family dwellings with two parking spaces 

5. 2310 Eighth Street – on consent – Use Permit #ZP2022-0098 - demolish single family dwelling and detached garage and build two 2-story single family dwellings with two parking spaces 

6. 2000 San Pablo – on action - staff recommend approve – Use Permit #ZP2022-0057 to allow retail sale of beer and wine for off-site consumption (Type 20 ABC License) in conjunction with an existing convenience store. 

https://berkeleyca.gov/your-government/boards-commissions/zoning-adjustments-board 

WETA (WATER EMERGENCY TRANSPORTATION AUTHORITY) at 1:30 pm 

Hybrid Meeting 

In-Person: Vallejo City Hall, 555 Santa Clara Street, Vallejo, CA 

Videoconference: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89718217408 

Teleconference: 1-669-900-6833 Meeting ID: 897 1821 7408 Password: 33779 

AGENDA: go to link for agenda 

https://weta.sanfranciscobayferry.com/next-board-meeting 

Friday, December 9, 2022 – Reduced Service Day 

Saturday, December 10, 2022 

BERKELEY NEIGHBORHOODS COUNCIL at 10 am 

Videoconference: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/81913698863?pwd=NFJjWlh2aDhtSjh1eG4yQUFkMzNmQT09 

Teleconference: 1-253-215-8782 Meeting ID: 819 1369 8863 Passcode: 377919 

AGENDA: not posted, check later in the week 

https://berkeleyneighborhoodscouncil.com/ 

Sunday, December 11, 2022 – no City meetings found 

++++++++++++++++++++ 

December 6, 2022 CITY COUNCIL REGULAR MEETING at 6 pm 

Hybrid Meeting – Conducted In-Person and Via Zoom Videoconference 

In-Person 1231 Addison St, BUSD Board Room 

Videoconference: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84189893148 

Teleconference: 1-669-900-9128 or 1-877-853-5257 (toll free) Meeting ID: 841 8989 3148 

https://berkeleyca.gov/your-government/city-council/city-council-agendas 

AGENDA CONSENT: 

1. Urgency Ordinance for leasing 1720 San Pablo Avenue term 5 years
2. Amend Contract No. 32100161 add $612,559 total $2,270,177 with Dorothy Day House to cover costs to extend Safe RV parking program through 12/31/2022 and operate the Horizon Village Shelter through 6/30/2023
3. Formal bid solicitations $2,581,000
4. Classification and salary ADA Program Coordinator monthly salary $9,231.73 - $11162.67 (annual $110,780.76 - $133,952.04)
5. Donation $3,400 for Memorial bench at Cesar Chavez Park in memory of Linda Loh
6. Taplin, co-sponsors Harrison, Hahn, Robinson - Office of Racial Equity: Re-Entry Employment and Income Programs Refer to Budget process $50,000 for consultant to recommend a Universal Income Pilot Program for Berkeley and Refer to City Manager study re-entry programs, supports and systems already available for Berkeley residents and to establish evaluation processes for all social services programs recommended through the Reimagining Public Safety Process

ACTION: 

7. Update BPD efforts related to improving Hate Crimes Reporting and Response
8. Renewal of Elmwood Business Improvement District for 2023
9. 2nd reading Adoption of 2022 CA Fire Code with Local Amendments
10. Public Hearing – updating Citywide Affordable Housing Requirements

INFORMATION REPORTS: 

11. FY 2022 Fourth QTR Investment Report, ended June 30, 2022

++++++++++++++++ 

December 13, 2022 – CITY COUNCIL Regular Meeting at 6 pm 

Hybrid Meeting – Conducted In-Person and Via Zoom Videoconference 

In-Person 1231 Addison St, BUSD Board Room 

Videoconference: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81885763338 

Teleconference: 1-669-900-9128 or 1-877-853-5257 (toll free) Meeting ID: 8818 8576 3338 

https://berkeleyca.gov/your-government/city-council/city-council-agendas 

AGENDA CONSENT: 

1. 2nd reading Fair WorkWeek Ordinance
2. 2nd Reading Referral Response: Amendments to the Sign Ordinance and establish new fee
3. Resolution ratifying local COVID emergency
4. Resolution legislative bodies to continue to meet via videoconference
5. Waiver of Sanctuary City Contracting Ordinance for AG Witt LLC for the City’s FEMA Cost-Recovery Contract
6. Adopt a Resolution approving the 2023 City of Berkeley’s State and Federal Legislative Platform
7. Adopt a Resolution Authorizing the City Manager to Execute a License Agreement with East Bay Community Energy for Electric Vehicle Fast Charging Stations on Municipal Property
8. Ordinance No. 7,626-N.S. IKE Smart City Kiosk Locations, Phase Two add 22 locations for Phase two.
9. Contract $400,000 with Herbert Gene Hern, MD as Berkeley Fire Medical Director for 5 years from 7/1/2022 – 6/30/2027
10. Contract $70,907 Statewide Prevention and Early Intervention Project FY2023 Participation Agreement – California Mental Health Services Authority through 6/20/2023
11. Contract $150,000 with Resource Development Associates to design and implement an evaluation for program effectiveness of the Specialized Care Unit (SCU) and Community Crisis Response Services (Bridge Services) 1/1/2023 to 6/30/2025
12. Contract $4,500,000 with Bonita House 2/1/2023 to 1/30/2025 to implement Berkeley’s Specialized Care Unity for 2-year pilot.
13. Reserving Predevelopment Funds $500,000 for the Development of Affordable Housing at the North Berkeley BART Station, contingent team’s selection and BART Board approval at Dec 1metting
14. Contract $1,120,344 (includes 20% contingency $186,724) with California Constructures for Ohlone Park (East) Playground Replacement and Site Improvements Project
15. Contracts $5,000,000 for On-Call Transportation Planning services 1/1/2023 – 6/30/2028 with $1,000,000 each with Alta +Design, Inc, Community Design + Architecture, Fehr & Peers, NN Engineering, In and Toole Design Group, LLC
16. Contracts total $10,000,000 for On-Call architectural services ELS Architecture and Urban Design (ELS) $3,333,334, Noll & Tam Architects (N&T) $3,333,333 and Siegal & Strain Architects (SSA)
17. Authorization for additional Commission on Disability meeting
18. Disaster and Fire Safety Commission – Measure FF Budget Recommendation, the Council Public Safety Committee recommended adopting the Companion Report from the CM/Fire Chief Sprague
19. Environmental and Climate Commission – Send a letter to Wicks and Skinner to advance a proposal to allow cities to dedicate parking spaces for Zero-Emission Vehicles
20. Arreguin – Relinquishment of funds to Berkeley Holiday Fund

ACTION: 

21. Zoning Ordinance Technical Edits and Corrections to BMC Title 23
22. FY 2022 Preliminary Year End Status
23. Adopt 1st reading of FY 2023 AAO 7,828-N.S. (Annual Appropriations Ordinance) adjustments $172,583,851 (gross) and $170,322,312 (net)
24. Status Report – Berkeley’s Financial Condition (FY 2012 – FY 2021) Pension Liabilities and Infrastructure Need Attention.
25. Taplin, co-sponsor Harrison – Support Trip Reduction Alternative for BUSD Berkeley High Tennis team and Parking Structure

+++++++++++++++++++ 

LAND USE CALENDAR: 

Public Hearing to be scheduled 

2065 Kittredge (construct 8-story mixed-use building) 1/31/2023 

1262 Francisco (add 40 sq ft and 2nd story balcony) 2/28/2023 

Remanded to ZAB or LPC 

1205 Peralta – Conversion of an existing garage 

 

WORKSESSIONS: 

Local Pandemic/Endemic Update Report 2/21/2023 

Housing Preference Policy 2/21/2023 

Annual Crime Report 3/14/2023 at 4 pm 

Civic Arts Grantmaking Process & Capital Grant Program 3/21/2023 at 4 pm 

Civic Center Vision Project 3/21/2023 at 4 pm 

Fire Facilities Study Report 5/16/2023 

Unscheduled Presentations 

Housing Element - Local Adoption of the Housing Element in January possibly Wednesday, January 18 virtual meeting at 4 pm 

Adoption of Election Results, adoption of vice-mayor, seating and committees publish on dec 8 or 9 for meeting on dec 13 (December 2022) 

African American Holistic Resource Center (January 2023) 

Zero Waste 5-Year Rate Schedule (February 2023) 

(removed - BART tentative December 13, 2022) 

Kelly Hammargren’s on what happened the preceding week can be found in the Berkeley Daily Planet www.berkeleydailyplanet.com under Activist’s Diary. This meeting list is also posted at https://www.sustainableberkeleycoalition.com/whats-ahead.html on the Sustainable Berkeley Coalition website. 

If you would like to receive the Activist’s Calendar as soon as it is completed send an email to kellyhammargren@gmail.com. If you wish to stop receiving the weekly summary of city meetings please forward the weekly su 

WORKSESSIONS: 

September 20 Residential Objective Standards for Middle Housing at 4 pm 

October 6 Measure O Report and Update at 4 pm 

Unscheduled Presentations 

Civic Arts Grantmaking Process & Capital Grant Program 

Fire Facilities Study Report 

African American Holistic Resource Center (November 15) 

(removed - Cannabis Health Considerations) 

Kelly Hammargren’s on what happened the preceding week can be found in the Berkeley Daily Planet www.berkeleydailyplanet.com under Activist’s Diary. This meeting list is also posted at https://www.sustainableberkeleycoalition.com/whats-ahead.html on the Sustainable Berkeley Coalition website. 

If you would like to receive the Activist’s Calendar as soon as it is completed send an email to kellyhammargren@gmail.com. If you wish to stop receiving the weekly summary of city meetings please forward the weekly summary you received to kellyhammargren@gmail.com 

https://www.cityofberkeley.info/planning_and_development/land_use_division/current_zoning_applications_in_appeal_period.aspx 

WORKSESSIONS: 

September 20 Residential Objective Standards for Middle Housing at 4 pm 

October 6 Measure O Report and Update at 4 pm 

Unscheduled Presentations 

Civic Arts Grantmaking Process & Capital Grant Program 

Fire Facilities Study Report 

African American Holistic Resource Center (November 15) 

(removed - Cannabis Health Considerations) 

Kelly Hammargren’s take on what happened the preceding week can be found in the Berkeley Daily Planet www.berkeleydailyplanet.com under Activist’s Diary. This meeting list is also posted at https://www.sustainableberkeleycoalition.com/whats-ahead.html on the Sustainable Berkeley Coalition website. 

If you would like to receive the Activist’s Calendar as soon as it is completed send an email to kellyhammargren@gmail.com. If you wish to stop receiving the weekly summary of city meetings please forward the weekly summary you received to kellyhammargren@gmail.com 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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