Free Republic

People are back in the streets because of Pacific Steel Casting Company. In the past, it has been the issue of pollution. The workers have struck over the issue of health and safety (the same issue, as seen from inside). And now, some 200 workers are protesting unjust job termination, owing to intervention by ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement), in violation of the spirit of Berkeley as a sanctuary city. This factory remains a problem. There will be a march to publicize this problem on Friday, Feb. 17. Here's a bit of the story (aka history). The factory is a...

BERKELEY -- A longtime Berkeley tree sitter has been convicted of illegal lodging and pointing a laser at a police officer. Fifty-five-year-old Matthew Dodt received a 60-day suspended sentence and three years of probation . . .

Berkeley considers closing its multimillion dollar Wells Fargo account over bank's handling of foreclosure crisis Berkeley is considering closing its Wells Fargo account worth $350 million and entrusting the money to a community bank or credit union, saying the bank is partly to blame for the financial crisis of the last four years.The City Council voted unanimously Tuesday night to study cutting ties with the bank and rewarding "responsible financial institutions" with its business. The city manager will return with a report in May on the feasibility of ending the 8-year-old contract, which is up for renewal at the end...

“The Bay Area Occupy Movement has got to stop using Oakland as their playground,” said Oakland Mayor Jean Quan, speaking at a press conference Saturday evening after a day of demonstrations called by Occupy Oakland that saw approximately 400 arrests, multiple injuries and numerous confrontations with police. She ticked off the damage that had been done when a group of protesters broke into City Hall, overturning a scale model of the building, vandalizing a children's art exhibit, and burning an American flag. The next day in an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, she returned to her talking point: "It's...

Progressive observers treat the Tea Party’s forays into land use planning as the work of paranoid reactionaries. The March-April 2011 issue of Mother Jones ran an article by Stephanie Mencimer that portrayed Tea Partiers as “nutters” whose opposition to increased density and mass transit is rooted in “a hostility to what it sees as elites” and a pro-sprawl, suburban lifestyle. Last December, the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy’s Anthony Flint riffed off of Mencimer’s piece in a post on the Atlantic magazine’s “Urban Wonk” blog that decried Tea Party disruption of planning efforts from California to Maine to Florida. The...

The University's recent bulldozer "maintenance" in the Park is problematic in several ways. First, it is a violation of trust and respect. The University snuck into the Park in the early hours with no notice to the community and long time Park volunteers. The Pergola, or trellis in the West End, which UC rather mysteriously decapitated, was designed and agreed upon during almost a year of meetings with University architects and the volunteers who built it. And the information that the University is providing for their recent attack is misleading, if not outright falsehood. I'll eat my hat if the...

Bulldozers ploughed through the west end of People’s Park today turning decades of community garden into rubble. Dozens of police watched as crews tossed mountains of healthy plants and a community-built arbor into dumpsters, leaving behind stripped earth. A young student who claimed to be volunteering as a police assistant handed out university fliers which stated, “In response to park users and neighbor concerns, we are doing maintenance work to address the rat infestation and safety issues in People’s Park.” A UC press release described the activity as "an effort to provide students and the broader community with safer, more...

Being out and about in Berkeley in the week before Christmas provides a good window on the world in 2011. A lot of fuss has been made, rightly so, about the major divide between the 1% super-rich and the 99% others, but the old distinction of the haves versus the have-nots is still valid. Berkeley has recently been certified as the center of this split. We have the biggest gap between the rich and the poor of any city in the Bay Area. Of course, the simple explanation is that we’re the rich city most tolerant of also including some...

olice said they'd enforce no-camping restrictions in Civic Center Park, but they didn't say when. When has since come and gone—and so has the encampment. Goodbye, and good riddance? Twenty-five Occupy addicts, and some curiosity-seekers showed up at Thursday's general assembly, in Civic Center Park, to debate responses to the city's take-down of the camp. Many denounced the troubled camp, but some supported it. One Occupier tried to rally the GA to march across the street to the Berkeley police station, but had to do so, himself. After 10 minutes, he returned—a man without a crowd. The GA was disrupted...

I don't know about you, but I'm getting fed up with these self-important gangs of masked, black-clad agitators running roughshod over our city streets. They've occupied parks, shut down roadways, vandalized private property, assaulted law-abiding citizens and left entire communities afraid to venture into financially struggling downtown business districts. They've wielded spray cans and left behind eyesores that have incensed the community. I am speaking, of course, about the police.

An Open Letter to UC Berkeley Students, Faculty, Administration & Regents from the UC Berkeley Police Officers’ Association It is our hope that this letter will help open the door to a better understanding between UC Berkeley police and the University community. The UC Berkeley Police Officers’ Association, representing approximately 64 campus police officers, understands your frustration over massive tuition hikes and budget cuts, and we fully support your right to peacefully protest to bring about change.  It was not our decision to engage campus protesters on November 9th. We are now faced with “managing” the results of years of poor...

Flash: U.C. Berkeley Faculty Senate Registers 10-1 Vote Condemning Administration Response to Occupy Berkeley ProtestersThe Berkeley Division of the University of California Faculty Senate endorsed, by a 10-1 margin (336-34), a group of four resolutions expressing, with varying degrees of specificity, their lack of confidence in the way Berkeley administrators have handled student protests. Three U.C. Berkeley executives, Chancellor Robert Birgenau and two of his subordinates, attempted an explanation of their actions on November 9, when students and faculty were clubbed by police. They were greeted with stony silence by the faculty members in the front of the International House...

The Bay Area has come down with a serious case of Protest Fatigue. The 99 percent of Northern Californians who want to go about their business are being jammed with protests and forced to pay for shutdowns imposed by the 1 percent of activists who don't know the difference between free speech and free camping. There are so many protests here that the group No Justice No BART had to call off a planned demonstration on Nov. 2 in order to accommodate activists planning to take public transit to the Occupy Oakland general strike. When President Obama came to San...

A face-off on the UC Berkeley campus this morning pitted Democrats vs. Republicans, pro-affirmative-action students vs. those favoring race-blind policies, and, ultimately, cupcakes vs. brownies. None other than former UC Regent and affirmative action opponent Ward Connerly, showed up on Sproul Plaza today to sell frosted cupcakes priced according to the race of the buyer. Connerly, who wrote Proposition 209, the state's voter-approved ban on race preferences in government programs, sat at a table with the Berkeley College Republicans to hawk their baked goods. The group's stunt, which some students have called racist and insensitive, was touted as a satirical...

I don't know about the political ethics or math skills of the UC Berkeley students who came up with the idea for an Increase Diversity Bake Sale, but they certainly know how to draw a crowd. The student Republican group that sponsored a race-based bake sale set to be held on the campus today must have been counting on raising more than just the cookie dough. There are few places in America more reactionary than a college campus, and among them, UC Berkeley is a leader. A bake sale flyer posted on Facebook last week linked the price of pastries...

The Berkeley College Republicans have taken a strong stance against a proposed law that would allow, among other things, race to be taken into consideration during the admissions process. They say on a Facebook event page: "The Berkeley College Republicans firmly believe measuring any admit's merit based on race is intrinsically racist." In this note I'll show that their belief is wrong. Not only is the use of race in admissions not intrinsically racist - the failure to consider race and other similar factors is intrinsically racist. This is not some subjective interpretation of histories of oppression. This is not...

BERKELEY -- The protest season began with a near bang at UC Berkeley this afternoon as hundreds of chanting, fist-pumping students angry about tuition hikes charged into Tolman Hall after a raucous noon rally. They filled the ground-floor hallways and jostled police officers. One student grabbed an officer's .40-caliber magazine, sending the ammunition clip flying. Officer Donna Chapman, who had been trying to order students to clear the building entrance, ran to pick up the clip before protesters could grab it. Around her, students shouted "No cuts, no fees, education must be free" as they flooded into the building. Classrooms...

<p>First she was buoyantly up in a "dangerous" People's Park tree protesting "Everything," but now she's at Highland Hospital with a broken back, ending an eight-day protest which was a protest-in-progress.</p> <p>Her last fall from the tree was her second. She fell in her second day in the tree and was caught in the arms of a friend before she hit the ground. "Moon Shadow," who was first up, last Monday, reportedly took a plunge when—out on a limb—he helped attach a protest banner.</p>

A bizarre showdown between well-known indie journalist Josh Wolf and an optometry professor is set to reach its dramatic conclusion Friday in Berkeley Small Claims Court. Cal Prof. Robert DiMartino wants Wolf to reimburse him $1,066, and a judge will decide if he has to. But this dispute is about cash like "Bleak House" is about a will. To Wolf, it's a question of democratic principles. A known First Amendment-hugger, the June graduate of UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism first gained notoriety in 2007 after serving 226 days in federal prison for refusing to give police the video he'd...

BERKELEY -- UC Berkeley is asking some of the country's largest foundations to help undocumented immigrants afford college. Buoyed by a new state law that allows public colleges and universities to offer private scholarships to students who came to the United States illegally, UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau said Wednesday he has spoken to major organizations such as the Carnegie and Ford foundations about helping the university. "One was nervous about the political impact," he said in an interview after his annual back-to-school media briefing. "The other said, 'This is fantastic.' " Birgeneau has been a vocal supporter of undocumented...

ATHENS, Greece - 235 years after the American colonies declared independence from Britain, the passenegers on the U.S. Boat to Gaza call for a new American Declaration of Independence, this time from Israel. The passengers issued their call from the decks of the U.S.-flagged boat, The Audacity of Hope, which is currently confined to a Greek military pier near Athens, while its captain sits in jail. Like the Founders in Philadelphia, the passengers in Athens recognize that "When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them to another, a...

It’s hard to believe, but it seems that the clueless owners of the commercial buildings in downtown Berkeley and on Telegraph are pressing on with their campaign to ban sitting down. It appears that their proposal is still on the fast track for passage in mid-summer, in that convenient sweet spot when most students and many other residents are out of town and the Berkeley City Council can do its dirtiest deeds relatively unnoticed. Since there are already many well-organized opponents, passing an ordinance like this would be a guaranteed recipe for disruption: certainly demonstrations, possibly calls for boycotting businesses...

When Rep. Hilda Solis inserted remarks in the Congressional Record praising Los Angeles activist John Pérez as "an asset to the labor movement," she was recounting the life story of a man who would later become California's Assembly speaker. "After graduating from the University of California Berkeley, John began working on designing and organizing education programs," Solis, then a Los Angeles congresswoman and now U.S. secretary of labor, wrote in 2004. But the record is wrong: Pérez dropped out of UC Berkeley and never returned. For a decade, Pérez's designation as a UC Berkeley graduate went unchallenged in newspaper articles,...

When President Barack Obama announced the death of Osama bin Laden, his demeanor was properly restrained. It is hard to imagine George W. Bush issuing a similar pronouncement without cracking a grin and making a disparaging remark. The killing of bin Laden, Obama reflected, said much about America: “We will be true to the values that make us who we are.” Sadly, the media showed too many Americans greeting the news of bin Laden’s death with fist-pumping elation. Raucous, shouting mobs gathered outside the White House and at New York’s “Ground Zero” to wave US flags and chant “USA! USA!”...

Berkeley's Telegraph Avenue responded Monday to U.S. killing of Bin Laden with a big ho-hum and grave respect for the dishonored dead. Mon. evening, Chris Hedges, a leading critic of U.S. government policies covered much of the street's ground. Many street people surveyed were less than ten years old when the World Trade Center crashed in 2001. Also interviewed were shop clerks, businessmen, and passers-by. They were all asked to comment on the death of Bin Laden Monday evening Chris Hedges, Pulitzer Prize winning former journalist turned best-selling author and minister to progressives, sermonized at Berkeley's First Congregational Church on...

Hungry students and their supporters sit for the seventh day in front of University of California at Berkeley’s California Hall, after a futile meeting with University Chancellor Robert Birgeneau. The students asked Birgeneau yesterday to reinstate fired ethnic-studies staff members. “We're still here, we're still fighting and basically, we're not going anywhere," said a weary-looking, third-year Native American studies major, Zoila Lara-Cea. They are protesting cuts resulting from a comprehensive audit of university operations conducted by the consulting firm Bain and Company. The auditors recommended trimming two-and-a-half staff positions from the Ethnic Studies Department. Even though cuts are distributed university-wide,...

There was a message on my machine on Monday: “I’m just sort of stunned by the news, and I wouldn’t mind having a friend’s take on it. I feel some…relief, frankly.” Well, yes. Full confession: I haven’t gotten back to her yet, because I don’t know exactly what to say. I find myself having heretical ideas, hard to process, harder to disclose. . . . Radical idea: maybe if G.W.B. had simply ordered the assassination of Saddam Hussein in 2002, how many lives, both American and Iraqi, both combatant and civilian, might have been saved? And extrapolating from that heterodox...

In an era of fiscal austerity when cities all over the Bay Area are reducing library hours, shedding library staff or closing libraries altogether, a small band of preservationists is actually fighting to stop a new library from being built in Berkeley. The Concerned Library Users is using the language in a 2008 voter-approved bond measure as the basis for a lawsuit filed last fall to halt the city from tearing down the south branch library on Martin Luther King Jr. Way. Because Measure FF, a $26 million library bond measure, makes no mention of demolition, the group contends that...

A doctor who worked for UC Berkeley's health center for more than 20 years has been charged with sexually assaulting patients, authorities said today. Robert Martin Kevess, 52, of Oakland assaulted at least six male patients since 2006 while working at the Tang Health Center at 2222 Bancroft Way just south of the campus, according to Alameda County prosecutors. . . . A 19-count complaint filed Wednesday accuses Kevess of sexual exploitation of numerous patients, along with several charges of sexual battery with false professional purpose and sexual penetration with a foreign object. If convicted, Kevess could face a lengthy...

Berkeley officials say a lawsuit by residents could prevent the demolition and rebuilding of two aging libraries in the poorest areas of town. The officials took their case to Berkeley residents Tuesday night, publicly urging the plaintiffs to drop the suit at a rally before a City Council meeting. The suit, brought by five residents calling themselves Concerned Library Users, contends language in a 2008 ballot measure that secured money for the renovation of the libraries does not contain the word "demolish" and that doing so would be illegal. At issue are plans for demolition and construction of the west...

California is being looked at as the rare alternative to Tea-Party rule these days. Jerry Brown’s direct style and transparent budget strategy as governor have led to a waning in people’s longtime pessimism about state government. Yet, with the extreme policies of other new governors dominating the news -- and with Meg Whitman remaining in the public eye-- one must wonder how it would have been if California had voted the other way in 2010. It was certainly significant that voters went to the polls and beat back Whitman's $178 million candidacy. This is further relevant because in California elections...

Do you love love love Cheese Board pizza? Is your idea of heaven standing in line for a slice and then eating it picnic-style with friends on the grassy strip down the middle of North Shattuck in what’s called “The Gourmet Ghetto” in the New York Times Style Section? Well, think again, because the clueless merchants of North Shattuck are scheming to make it illegal. Or maybe it’s not actually you and your lunch buds that they’re out to get, but if equal protection is still the law of the land you’ll have to be on the radar too if...

In the middle of a meeting called to discuss guns and safety at Berkeley High School, the deputy district attorney in charge of Alameda County's juvenile division stood up and announced that the community is not being realistic about how dangerous a place it is. . . .

Berkeley’s deteriorating finances were the subject of the council’s work session last Tuesday. The proceedings should make citizens sad and mad. Sad, because the people who will be hit the hardest by the $12.5 million deficit forecast for Fiscal Year 2012 are among those in our community who are most in need of support—the aged, the mentally ill and the poor. Mad, because City officials blamed the looming debacle wholly on “outside forces,” when in fact the budget crisis results in good part from their own fiscal imprudence. First, a few more numbers. According to the staff report, the $12.5...

This morning the news on NPR, which at our house is turned on right after the alarm goes off, was vigorous backpedaling on the part of management. This followed an earlier story of how a bigtime fundraising guy for the organization had been trapped in a sting by far right activists, and had admitted to the faux donors sent to ensnare him that he was contemptuous of the tea baggers and wished NPR didn’t have to depend on federal funding. The shills even caught the exchange on video, it seems. For a change, let’s just quote Fox News: “Embattled NPR...

UC Berkeley police arrested one of nine people who walked out on a fourth-story ledge of UC Berkeley's Wheeler Hall at around 1:45 this afternoon, protesting budget cuts to higher education and campus layoffs. Police said the protester left the ledge and entered a classroom, but protesters claim police pulled him down. Some of the remaining eight protesters continued to be chained to the building's stone pillars as hundreds of students gathered on the steps below shouting the now-familiar mantra, "No cuts, no fees, education must be free!"

UC Berkeley police arrested 17 people who refused to leave Wheeler Hall on campus Wednesday night following a day of protests against education budget cuts, a police spokesman said. All 17 were taken to the Berkeley city jail and cited for misdemeanor trespassing, said UC Berkeley police spokesman Alex Yao. Fourteen were released after being cited, but three, who had extra charges of obstructing police officers, were held overnight to appear in court this morning, Yao said. Protesters at UC Berkeley are commonly issued citations and released on site and not taken to the jail Yao said, but in this...

The Berkeley city council has approved a resolution calling for the "immediate end to the cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment" of an Army private accused of leaking classified documents.

Today's AP story on the Gate on the Berkeley vote not to pass a resolution to resettle Gitmo detainees reports: The resolution singled out two Guantanamo detainees who have been cleared of wrongdoing but don't want to return to their home countries because they fear persecution -- Ravil Mingazov, a Russian ballet dancer, and Djamel Ameziane, an Algerian chef. That is just plain wrong. As I wrote Sunday, these detainees have not been cleared. On another note, the Center for Constitutional Rights has put together profiles on Guantanamo detainees, including this one for possible Berkeley-transplant, Djamel Ameziane. Languages: French, Arabic,...

The Berkeley City Council was set to consider a resolution Tuesday night that would offer refuge to released Guantanamo Bay detainees. Cynthia Papermaster, a Berkeley resident who heads Berkeley No More Guantanamos, first proposed the resolution to the Berkeley Peace and Justice Commission late last year. "The U.S. government-under President Bush and President Obama-- cleared the majority of Guantanamo prisoners for release, but many cannot safely return to their home countries because of the risk of persecution, torture or death,” she said. “Berkeley is a compassionate and caring community, like Amherst and Leverett, Massachusetts, which passed similar resolutions in 2009...

On Tuesday, on the recommendation of its Peace and Justice Commission, the Berkeley City Council is set to vote on a resolution to invite "one or two cleared" Guantanamo Bay detainees to resettle in Berkeley. Peace and Justice Commissioner Rita Maran told me that the idea was to invite to Berkeley "the kind of people you'd like to have living next door to you or dating your cousin." While the resolution doesn't name the one or two detainees, her panel presented material that cites two - Russian-born Ravil Mingazov and Algerian-born Djamel Ameziane - whom it claims have been "cleared."...

UC police have charged a man who has been sitting in a tree in People's Park for the last three months with attempted murder. Matthew Dodt, 54, was arrested around 3:15 am after a six-hour standoff, according to Lt. Mark Decoulode of the UC Berkeley police department. Dodt allegedly stabbed a man who had climbed up into the tree for a conversation, said Lt. Decoulode. Dodt allegedly aimed for the man's neck, but the man reached his hand up to his neck, deflecting the blow. The knife sliced the victim's hand. He was treated at a local hospital and released....

On May 5, 2010, Robin Dalrymple walked excitedly into Berkeley’s Planning Department to apply for a use permit. She wanted to convert the vacant Ritz Camera store on Solano Avenue into an ice cream parlor. Eight months later, her store is still not open. Veronica Bradley signed a lease in April 2010 to transform what had been Left Coast Cyclery on Domingo Avenue into a store selling olive oil from around the world. After working with five city departments — building and safety, health, zoning, public works and engineering, and fire prevention –she finally got a permit in November. The...

Within minutes after the Jan. 8 shooting spree in Tucson, Ariz., that left six people dead and 13 injured, including the local congresswoman, television talking heads, radio gabbers and other media types were debating causes and effects. Those on the political left immediately blamed those on the right for fostering a climate of hatred, and as the identity and troubled background of the alleged shooter, Jared Lee Loughner, became known, those on the right cried foul. In the days that followed, no one could discover any overt political motivation in Loughner; rather, by all accounts, he appears to be highly...

UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau has come out swinging over the shooting spree that wounded Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and killed six people, linking it to Arizona's "discrimination against undocumented persons" and a "climate in which demonization of others goes unchallenged and hateful speech is tolerated." In a campus-wide e-mail message, Birgeneau said: "It is not a coincidence that this calamity has occurred in a state which has legislated discrimination against undocumented persons." He added that "this same mean-spirited xenophobia played a major role in the defeat of the Dream Act by our legislators in Washington, leaving many exceptionally talented and...

President Barack Obama on Wednesday renominated a Cal law school dean to a seat on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, weeks after Senate leaders cut a deal not to seek his confirmation in the final hours of the last Congress. The president first nominated Goodwin Liu, associate dean and professor at the UC Berkeley's Boalt Hall Law School, in February. Despite GOP opposition right out of the gate, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a confirmation hearing in April and voted 12-7 along party lines in May to send Liu to the full Senate for confirmation. But amid filibuster...

The Army private accused of giving sensitive wartime documents and a graphic combat video to the web site WikiLeaks.org did not gain hero status in the eyes of the Berkeley City Council Tuesday night. In a 8-0 vote with one abstention, the council tabled the resolution brought by the city's Peace and Justice Commission, mostly because council members said they were reluctant to proclaim a hero someone who has neither admitted to nor been convicted of leaking the information. The vote to declare Army Pfc. Bradley Manning a hero came on the same day that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was...

Alert the local TV news crews, because here's an early Christmas present, Visuals Division: A conservative group -- with links to the Tea Party -- will be in Berkeley Tuesday night to protest its City Council thinking of celebrating the Army private accused of leaking the WikiLeaks documents. As Comrade Jones told us, Berkeley's Peace and Justice Commission (yes, yes, we know, "sooo Berkeley") recommended the city pass a resolution lauding Private Bradley Manning "for his courage in bringing the truth to the American people and the people of the world." That is the same commission that called the U.S....

An enormous hoo-ha has developed over a resolution passed by Berkeley’s Peace and Justice Commission (commonly known as P&J). Seven of the good and sincere souls on that body think that it’s time to support Private Bradley Manning, who is suspected of providing WikiLeaks with fodder for its leaks heard round the world: release of (mostly not classified) contents of diplomatic cables and other embarrassing miscellany. Of course, it’s a media-engendered flap. As of this writing on Tuesday, it’s not known whether the Berkeley City Council will vote P&J’s draft up or down, but it’s almost certain that it won’t...

UC Berkeley freshman Devin Shoop got a $220 ticket in September. His crime: locking his bicycle to a railing instead of a bike rack. He got another ticket two weeks later: $220 for rolling his bike through a stop sign instead of fully stopping. Now he has to go to traffic school to keep a moving violation off his driver's license. Jorel Allegro, a junior, earned his $220 ticket in October for coasting through the campus dismount zone instead of walking his bike as required. California's law requiring the same traffic fines for cars and bikes isn't new. But at...