Berkeley homeowners have figured out that hitching a ride on Airbnb, although illegal, can make lots of money. People literally sleeping on the street cannot seem to move the hearts of City Council members, but homeowners looking to monetize their million-dollar asset seem to have no trouble getting through.

City officials intend to drastically cut funding for ten South Berkeley nonprofits serving homeless and other underserved people, including youth and people with mental health challenges. The City must either show respect and concern for its longtime residents, or else let the “market” drive out programs that serve our poorest citizens

The Downtown Berkeley Association tries to look respectable while pouring their out-of-town real estate money into robbing the poor of their blankets. The real-estate juggernaut prefers to knock down cheap housing and kick out the artists, hippies and musicians who pester them about civil rights and democracy.

Many former slave-holding states in the South blocked black citizens from voting by requiring literacy tests, exacting poll taxes, and using intimidation to exclude black voters. After one hundred years of struggle, the march in Selma culminated in the effort to overcome this injustice.

Martin Luther King believed that the founding principles of the United States required the creation of what he called “the beloved community” — a society that is not driven by making profits, but one that was built by developing relationships of mutual concern and care.

When citizens are fed up with errant police behavior to the extent that petitions are circulated for a new police reform act, we could see a change in how people are treated. We need to make the law enforcement branch of government accountable to citizens and to the law.