The DBA’s board is dominated by large property owners who were the primary funders of the failed anti-sitting law campaign in 2012. It takes courage to say no to the merchant association’s short-sighted effort to make homelessness and poverty invisible. Courage is in short supply in the Berkeley City Council.

Gov. Brown’s cutbacks will cause suffering from the cradle to the grave. They will fall with devastating force on the poor, disabled, elderly, students and families with young children.

The Good Friday protest at Livermore Laboratory on April 3 has the theme: "Beyond Nuclear Weapons, Beyond Empire, Beyond Racism." We will remember Dr. Martin Luther King’s “Beyond Vietnam” speech. David Hartsough will lead the service, followed by the Stations of the Cross. Some will commit nonviolent civil disobedience.

Fort Lauderdale faces a lawsuit by Food Not Bombs for criminalizing food sharing. Laws to criminalize homelessness are “a response to the visibility of homelessness in public spaces,” said Kirsten Clanton of Southern Legal Counsel. “It’s business interests. It’s an effort to sanitize public space, often for tourism and tourist dollars.”

An eye-opening film by a UCB student exposes the degrading conditions and overcrowding in SRO hotels in San Francisco. Many low-income families are caught in slum conditions and live in cramped, unsanitary and dangerous rooms. They endure drug-dealing in hallways and managers who threaten tenants and their visitors.

In response to beatings and the indiscriminate use of CS gas and projectiles shot directly into crowds by the Berkeley police during the December protests of police killings, the City Council votes for a moratorium on CS gas, wooden and rubber projectiles and over-the-shoulder baton strikes.