InBerkeley

The Daily Clog has posted Your Guide to Walkout Festivities to help you navigate the various budget protest and walkout events taking place on campus over the next  24 hours or so.   They warn you should expect to encounter a lot of picket lines and rallies if you’re planning on being anywhere in the vicinity of campus tomorrow.

Events kick off tonight at 7 p.m. at Wheeler Auditorium for a Save the University teach-in, where several big-name faculty members, including Robert Reich and Ananya Roy, will explain the situation and the reasons for all the fuss.

You’ll also find several links to other Daily Californian articles on the walkout.

Education, Events, Government, Issues, Politics, UC Berkeley

The 636 solar panels atop the new Berkeley Bowl West building at 920 Heinz Street in Berkeley must be doing their job pretty well.  Tomorrow, the market’s owners are receiving a $167,029 solar energy rebate check from PG&E.

Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates, representatives from PG&E and Sun Light & Power President Gary Gerber will be on hand, too, no doubt to promote solar energy, boast about what a great job they’re doing and to get their photos taken. In preparation for tomorrow’s event, southeastern Berkeley and parts of the downtown area were plunged into darkness early this morning to remind citizens of just how important electricity is to our daily lives. No word on whether Berkeley Bowl West was affected by the blackout or not.

The solar panels atop the acclaimed Berkeley Bowl West facility are expected to produce 149,633 kilowatts of electricity per year, and were installed by Berkeley-based by Sun Light & Power.

You, too, can attend the rebate-receiving ceremony. It will take place at noon on Friday at the Berkeley Bowl West.

Architecture, Business, Environment, Events, Government, Green, Politics, West Berkeley

Photo by Katey Alatalo

A group of demonstrators took to the streets today in Berkeley at the corner of Shattuck Ave. and Cedar St. to rally in support of health-care reform.  UC Berkeley student Katey Alatalo reported the event on Twitter, snapped this photo of the rally on her iPhone, and expressed surprise at the lack of press coverage of this event.

We don’t know who organized this event, or exactly what they were saying, but if anyone does know, we’d appreciate it if you could please post it in the comments section.

General, Issues, Politics

Ashraf Ghani, who taught at Berkeley in 1983, finished fourth in the Afghan presidential elections with about 1 per cent of the vote.

Ghani had a distinguished academic career before joining the World Bank in 1991. He returned to Afghanistan after 24 years in December, 2001, and served in a variety of advisory and ministerial posts, including as finance minister in the Karzai government. His election manifesto was based on his comprehensive development plan for Afghanistan, Securing Afghanistan’s Future. He hired the “ragin’ Cajun”, James Carville, as a campaign advisor.

Photo from World Economic Forum on Flickr

Politics, UC Berkeley

Brad Delong responds to Berkeley law school dean Chris Edley about whether or not “there clear professional misconduct–that is, some breach of the professional ethics applicable to a government attorney–material to Professor Yoo’s academic performance now.”

So we see on the one hand that when the President is William Jefferson Clinton his Commander-in-Chief powers are so crabbed and restricted that Democratic President Clinton exceeded them by instructing American soldiers to obey the orders of the NATO theater commander.

And we see on the other hand when the President is George W. Bush his Commander-in-Chief powers are so extensive and unconstrained that Congress s explicit authority to “make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces” can place no restrictions at all on what lawful orders Republican President George W. Bush can give to mistreat abuse and torture persons held by the U.S. armed forces.

These two Commander-in-Chief powers are very different indeed.

To advance as your basic principle of Constitional construction “don t worry it s OK if you are a Republican” is a breach of professional ethics serious enough to more than pass the bar set by Dean Edley–unless of course all legal reasoning is just a crock of manure to mask partisan maneuvering.

via Grasping Reality with Both Hands.

Education, Issues, Politics, UC Berkeley

Here’s a link to the email message Dean Christopher Edley of Berkeley Law School sent to UC Berkeley faculty, administration and students responding to substantial public protests surrounding Professor Yoo’s return to his tenured professorship in law at Berkeley.

My sense is that the vast majority of legal academics with a view of the matter disagree with substantial portions of Professor Yoo’s analyses; this includes most though perhaps not all of his Berkeley Law colleagues. If, however, this strong consensus were enough to fire or sanction someone, then academic freedom would be meaningless.

…

I believe the crucial questions in view of our university mission are these: Was there clear professional misconduct—that is, some breach of the professional ethics applicable to a government attorney—material to Professor Yoo’s academic performance now? Did writing the memoranda, and any related acts, violate a criminal or comparable statute?
…

Absent very substantial evidence on these questions, no university worthy of distinction should even contemplate dismissing a faculty member. That standard has not been met.

Education, Issues, Politics, UC Berkeley

Opponents of a downtown Berkeley development plan say they have gathered more than enough referendum signatures to force the City Council to reconsider the plan or to put it to a citywide vote.

City Councilman Kriss Worthington, who was working with Councilman Jesse Arreguin on the issue, said the group collected about 8,000 signatures in 30 days, far more than the 5,558 signatures needed and a good cushion to offset signatures that are invalid.

via Oakland Tribune/Inside Bay Area.

Downtown, Government, Issues, Politics

When classes started Monday at UC Berkeley, protesters at the law school were demanding John Yoo’s dismissal.

The dean of the law school, Christopher Edley, has rejected calls for dismissal, saying Professor Yoo, who received tenure in 1999 before taking a leave to work for the Bush administration, is protected as a matter of academic freedom.

Is the Yoo case an instance where academic freedom principles clearly come into play or does it raise other considerations?

Brian Leiter, University of Chicago Law School, Kathleen Clark, Washington University Law School, Cary Nelson, American Association of University Professors and Carlos Villareal, National Lawyers Guild, present their views on the contentious John Yoo matter.  The general consensus seems to be that while dismissal cannot be handed down unilaterally by the dean of the law school, there is certainly plenty of reason for appropriate hearings to commence immediately.

via NYTimes.com.

Education, Issues, Politics, UC Berkeley

Pure democracy and representative democracy continue to duke it out on the streets of Berkeley as the petition drive to bring the downtown Berkeley development plan to a vote of the people approaches today’s deadline to reach 5558 valid signatures. Opponents to the petition include many political and business leaders, who have been unusually vocal in their support of the current plan and have mounted a strong defensive campaign against against the petition drive. Proponents of the referendum are reported to be paying some signature gatherers $2 per signature while complaining about tactics being used to deter signers.

Opponents of a downtown Berkeley development plan were still on the streets Wednesday gathering the 5,558 signatures needed by Thursday to put the plan to a citywide vote.

City Councilman Jesse Arreguin, 25, who is behind the campaign to overturn the Downtown Area Plan, which allows for taller buildings, more housing density, more open space and which imposes green building requirements, said he is “cautiously optimistic” his group has enough signatures to go forward.

via Berkeley Voice/Inside Bay Area.

Architecture, Business, Downtown, Politics

Looks like this local Berkeley story is spreading.  Now the San Francisco Chronicle is covering it.  What’s next, the New York Times?

“Sometimes democracy can go too far,” Councilwoman Susan Wengraf, one of the six council members opposing the petition, said of the proposed referendum.

State Sen. Loni Hancock, Assemblywoman Nancy Skinner and Mayor Tom Bates have appeared in glossy flyers urging the public: “Please don’t sign the petition.” There have been e-mails and, in some cases, people shadowing signature gatherers to discourage potential signers.

Wengraf and Bates said they could not recall another time in Berkeley history when so many elected officials campaigned against a citizen’s petition.

via San Francisco Chronicle/SF Gate.

Downtown, Politics

It appears the controversy over professor John Yoo has ratcheted up a notch as protesters have started rallying on the UC Berkeley campus with calls for the law school to fire him.

Anti-war protesters are rallying on the University of California, Berkeley campus to call for the firing of a law professor who co-wrote legal memos that critics say were used to justify the torture of suspected terrorists…The tenured professor has defended the controversial techniques, saying they were needed to protect the country from terrorists after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

via The Associated Press.

UPDATE: Apparently at least four protesters have been arrested, so far.

Issues, Politics, UC Berkeley

Something to ponder the next time you go swimming at the UC Berkeley gym:

The skulls and bones of Japanese war dead from World War II’s Battle of Saipan are being kept at the University of California-Berkeley in apparent violation of the Geneva Conventions for the protection of war victims.

The remains of several Japanese soldiers or civilians removed from the island of Saipan in 1945 by a Navy doctor are housed on storage shelves maintained by the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology on the UC-Berkeley campus, museum officials said.

The admission has sparked the fury of international law experts and anthropologists, who say the university has a legal and ethical duty to return the remains to Japan.

Three sets of skeletal remains with skulls, and various bones of three additional Japanese war dead without skulls, are stored in wooden containers in vaults beneath the Hearst Gymnasium swimming pool.

via MontereyHerald.com/San Francisco Chronicle.

Issues, Politics, UC Berkeley

The operators of Slim’s and the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco plan to open a 1,500-seat concert venue in downtown Berkeley.

The application for the project in the old UC Theater building on University Avenue near Shattuck Avenue goes before the city’s Zoning and Adjustments board Thursday night. City staff is recommending the board approve the project. The project was approved by the city’s planning commission in May.

The project comes on the heels of the Aug. 27 opening of the new Freight and Salvage Coffeehouse just a block away on Addison Street. That venue, which will showcase folk and traditional American Music, will seat 440 people.

via Inside Bay Area.

8/14/09 UPDATE: Last night the Zoning and Adjustments board in Berkeley approved the zoning change that will allow this project to move forward. According to the San Francisco Business Times, the project still needs several more approvals and permits before it can start construction. The opening is targeted for fall of 2010

Arts, Business, Downtown, Government, Music, Politics, Property

In a major coup, the Berkeley-based Center for Investigative Reporting has hired Lance Williams, the San Francisco Chronicle’s top investigative journalist, to join its new California Watch Project.
Williams, who has been a reporter for 34 years and who attended UC Berkeley, will be covering money and politics for the new initiative, which is backed by $2.4 million in grants from major foundations. He will join Louis Freedberg, the director of California Watch and a former editorial writer for the Chronicle and Mark Katches, a California native who previously worked the Orange County Register and Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
California Watch is a multimedia investigative project started in May to fill the reporting gaps left as the state’s major newspapers cut deeply into their staffs. California Watch is a joint project of CIR and the California Media Collective based out of the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco.
“California is a state facing immense challenges,” said Katches. “It has never been more important for a strong watchdog team to hold those in power accountable and to shine a light on important issues facing citizens of the state.
Williams won numerous awards at the Chronicle for uncovering the BALCO steroid scandal of major league baseball.  He and Mark Fainaru-Wada wrote Game of Shadows: Barry Bonds, BALCO and the Steroids Scandal that Rocked Professional Sports, and the book prompted major league baseball to open a formal investigation into doping.
The Center for Investigative Reporting, founded in 1977, is the nation’s oldest non-profit investigative reporting news organization. Its staff reporters and associated freelancers have produced stories on a range of topics, which have aired on many of the major networks and appeared in many of the nation’s top newspapers or magazines.

The Center  is located near Ashby and Shattuck Avenues.

Business, Education, Environment, Politics Journalism

The Berkeley Downtown Area Plan was passed by the Berkeley City Council on a 7–2 vote on July 14, 2009. As expected, opponents of that plan have already initiated a petition drive seeking a referendum to cancel the plan.  According to the Berkeley Daily Planet, if at least 5,558 valid signatures of registered Berkeley voters are collected and turned in to city officials by Aug. 20, the City Council has the option of either invalidating the Downtown Area Plan itself or putting a referendum on the November 2010 ballot for voters to decide if they want the plan implemented.

In Berkeley recently received an email message from Berkeley resident and New York Times bestselling author Ayelet Waldman endorsing a letter she received from Liveable Berkeley Executive Director Erin Rhoades which asks people not to sign the petition now being circulated in opposition to the Berkeley plan.  With their permission, we are reprinting Ms. Rhoades’ letter and Ms. Waldman’s introduction here.

Glory, have we had bad weather and good food here in Maine. Ribs from local pigs. Ice cream and milk from local cows (my kids think the milk tastes like milkshakes – we’re in heaven unless we all get E Coli and die). Vegetables from friends’ gardens. Honestly, it’s a culinary wonderland. And let’s not forget the fried clams and lobster rolls.

But I’m not writing to make you feel bad. If you don’t live in Berkeley, just delete. Seriously, this won’t interest you. But if you do, and you agree that downtown Berkeley is a monstrous blot on our city, that’s is a sinkhole desperate for some decent urban planning, then please read the attached email. It was written by someone who knows more than you and I do, and forwarded by an architect whom I trust.

I’m telling you, I love our town, but I am so goddamn sick of the myopic vision of some of its more vocal (and colorfully-dressed) citizens.

Here’s the letter:

Dear Friend,

I’m writing to ask your help to revitalize Downtown Berkeley.

It’s an easy request. You don’t have to contribute any money, join any group or attend any meeting.

All you have to do is NOT sign the petition now being circulated to cancel our new Downtown Area Plan. And tell your friends to also “just say no.”

After four years of community-wide effort, seven of our nine Berkeley council-members (Anderson, Bates, Capitelli, Maio, Moore, Wengraf, Wozniak) voted to approve a new plan for Downtown Berkeley which would help turn around a downtown stuck in failure.

Our new Downtown Area Plan will revitalize Downtown Berkeley. It encourages more Downtown residents and more affordable housing, supports a pedestrian plaza on Center Street, enforces new green building standards and provides for much-needed street-level amenities to make the Downtown more enjoyable. It’s also essential to Berkeley’s Climate Action Plan because it supports more residents living downtown near transit and daily-needs shopping — essential to our environmental leadership role as a “climate smart” city.

In Downtown Berkeley today, commercial vacancy rates have topped 16%, almost all retail businesses continue to struggle, and only one new affordable apartment building has been completed in years. We need to do better, and the new Downtown Plan will help big-time.

For many years the people now opposed to our new Downtown Area Plan have also opposed all previous attempts to accommodate more people in Berkeley — even though that’s just what we need to BUILD an equitable, diverse and environmentally responsible future for our city.

This time their scare tactic is “Manhattanization:” the specter of “greedy corporate developers” crowding our Downtown with a forest of “huge skyscrapers”.

What’s actually in the new Downtown Plan is something different. It limits “tall” additions over the next 20 years to a maximum of one or two buildings for conference-oriented hotels or housing, plus no more than 6 other medium-height buildings — 2 of which could be office buildings and at least 4 residential. It asks for significant returns from developers for public amenities, including public open spaces in the Downtown. This potential growth over twenty years is constrained to a district that takes up less than FOUR PERCENT of Berkeley’s land – existing zoning limits would still apply everywhere else.

The conclusion the City Council reached is clear: the only way we can turn around Downtown is if we can house more residents and workers in new green buildings to support LOCAL-oriented shopping and services. Given that commitment, when is doing nothing the “better and greener solution” for Downtown, as the petitioners claim?

If the referendum succeeds, four years of hard community planning work would be thrown away and improvements for Downtown would be put on hold again. How would that help make Downtown more successful?

Please join the Council majority, Assemblymember Nancy Skinner, environmental and labor groups and many of your own neighbors in opposing this unfortunate and short-sighted attempt to freeze Downtown Berkeley in failure mode. Say NO to the petition — and say YES to a better and greener Berkeley in years to come.

Please help further by forwarding this message to your Berkeley friends and neighbors. And, let me know if you have a little time you could contribute in the next 3 weeks to help defeat this petition.

Best,

Erin Rhoades

P.S. If the petition gains enough signatures, the required election could cost the city more than $200,000 — money needed for many more important things in these tough economic times.

Yours,

Ayelet Waldman

You can read more about the referendum campaign here. Kriss Worthington, who represents District 7 on Berkeley’s City Council, voices his Top Ten Super-Sized Flaws of the Downtown Area Plan.

Business, Downtown, Government, Issues, Politics

The San Francisco Chronicle reports:

When the [Berkeley] City Council approves its $148 million general fund budget tonight, there will be no layoffs, all the fire stations will be kept open and no union contracts will be singled out by council members as an albatross. Instead, Berkeley’s budget will actually grow, albeit by less than 1 percent.

The article cites the stability of the city’s large employers, including Bayer, Lawrence Berkeley Lab and the university. Impending cuts at the university could clearly work in the opposite direction. Berkeley also saw a rise in its sales tax revenues in the last year, which is attributed to the absence of big-box retailers.

Business, Issues, Politics