On Cal’s development plans: Don’t let the UC call it housing
By Carol Denney on High-end, for-profit housing is no substitute for real housing and honest efforts to permanently address the housing crisis, Denney writes.
Carol Denney
Decades old documents should protect People’s Park
By Carol Denney on On May 8th, 1978, Associate Vice Chancellor for Business Affairs Ted Chenoweth signed a “Letter of Agreement” assuring People’s Park’s
Berkeley Celebrates Luxury Housing for the Elite
I would have no problem with building luxury apartments if we weren’t in a housing crisis. Build for the rich, I would say. Build crazy stuff with gold-plated toilets and let them buy it. But we are in a housing crisis. The Downtown Berkeley Association tried to outlaw sitting on the sidewalk.
Big Tobacco’s Unlikely Allies
In the effort to protect the public from secondhand smoke, the main obstacles are “social justice” representatives who worry about the imposition it might create for a smoker to use nicotine gum or step outside to avoid exposing the millions of low-income nonsmoking renters who can’t afford to move.
Blues for the Homeless
I am amazed at some homeless elders’ carts,/ blankets and clothes in neat folds,/ layers of grace in intricate space,/ Crimes of legalized hate,/ may take the carts of the homeless away/ but cannot separate them from God/ whose home is in their heart/ with or without a shopping cart.
BLOCK BY BLOCK: A BID by Merchants to Seize the Public Commons and Erode the Rights of the Poor
Business organizations in Berkeley have adopted the Block by Block approach to erode the human rights of the poor. The Measure S initiative was the most expensive campaign in Berkeley’s history. It was funded almost entirely by large property-holding companies which play an influential role in the Downtown Berkeley Association.
A Family’s Disturbing Encounter with Berkeley Police
Imagine coming to visit friends in Berkeley and being tackled, torn from your family’s side, and forced to spend the night in a psychiatric ward without charge or explanation. Would you ever come back to visit? That’s what happened to Hila Sulme and her son one Sunday recently in Berkeley.
Berkeley Chooses Compassion: Measure S Rejected by Voters
The victory over Measure S is the first time since 1994 that a ballot measure to criminalize homeless people has been defeated anywhere in the nation. This victory is even more remarkable considering that Berkeley’s powerful business organizations vastly outspent the financially strapped homeless organizations that opposed the initiative.
How Berkeley Police Office #145 Protects and Serves the Public
A group of artists sketched a large chalk representation of “The Last Supper,” a painting by Leonardo da Vinci of Jesus eating at a table with his disciples. Across the top was the statement, “Let Us Sit Together and Break Bread.” It was a colorful protest against Berkeley’s proposed anti-sitting law.
Berkeley Tenant in Limited Equity Co-Op Faces Eviction
Ruby is still in shock over having to suddenly pack, sort out what she might store with a friend, and try to hang on in a world where most people dismiss you for having no address. Ruby is African-American, an older woman with severe disabilities. Can they do this in Berkeley?
Will Berkeley Abolish the Human Rights of the Poor?
“This isn’t some problem of bored kids from Oregon coming to Berkeley for the summer,” said Pattie Wall. “This is our problem, these are our kids and we have a responsibility to them — and our responsibility to them doesn’t include arresting them for not having any place to go.”
Got Free Speech? Berkeley’s Downtown Ambassadors Ignore the First Amendment
Berkeley’s so-called “Downtown Ambassadors” demonstrate their hostility towards freedom of speech by going after activists who post political messages in public. They seem unable to grasp that there is no law in the land that allows them to remove certain posters based on the political content of their message.