Most of the people who live in Berkeley are at risk for displacement. The market prices of housing in Berkeley are affordable only to households with incomes over $100,000. The median household income in Berkeley is much less than that.

In 2015, that median income was only around $66,000. Anyone who must leave their current residence in Berkeley is statistically likely to have difficulty finding an affordable replacement in Berkeley

Each year -- year after year -- the number of Berkeley households making less than $100,000 falls by the hundreds. Each year the number making more than $100,000 grows even faster than that. (See the attached graph.)

Berkeley is Gentrification City

Between 2000 and 2015, Berkeley added over 7,000 households with incomes over $100,000.[1] Most of that increase happened just between 2005 - 2015. During that same period, Berkeley lost over 6,000 households where the people had incomes under $100,000.

Some of those changes in household income might be explained by households that had incomes below $100,000 in 2000, but who by 2015 had seen their incomes increase to over $100,000. Still, it is unlikely that explains very much of this overall change.

Each year, on average, many hundreds of very high income households move into Berkeley. And many households with lower incomes wind up leaving.

Berkeley is becoming gentrified at a very rapid pace. -more-

BART police are investigating a robbery that occurred Thursday at the Ashby Station in Berkeley. -more-

As a community we need to decide what we want our values really mean and under what circumstances.

We don't want to militarize our police, stop and frisk and profiling is unacceptable, and we have "use of force" monitors at previous protest to, rightfully, ensure there is no repeat of Black Lives Matter events. These are Berkeley values we all embrace.

Now we want to stop people coming into Our City, profile and frisk them, because look like Nazis and do not support our values. (Which is true and frightening). And, if we are truthful, we would be happy if they were all run out of town or thrown in the slammer for aggressive behavior.

I would like to hear some dialog around this. It is important to hear from the community about these conflicting approaches. Peace and Justice/Indivisible PLEASE chime in!!! It is so important to the approach that will be taken. -more-

The ominous signs of global warming are becoming more and more self-evident. Here in the United States, temperatures have risen sharply. According to the recent climate report from 13 federal agencies, the warmest climate has been experienced in recent decades, the hottest during the past 1,500 years. Record temperatures have also been experienced in Europe, Australia, the Middle East and India. The august body, The National Academy of Sciences, has signed off on the draft report which should give it enormous credibility.

If no remedial action is taken, temperatures are expected to rise 2 degrees centigrade by the end of the century. This would cause blistering heat waves, rainstorms, flooding and accelerate the obliteration of coral reefs. Greenland and the arctic ice are melting at an alarming rate a causing dramatic rise of sea levels.

The deadline for approval of the report is August 18. It is probable that Scott Pruitt, head of the EPA, a climate change denier, may bury the report.

This must not be allowed to happen. I urge readers to call your representatives and demand the report be released to the general public. Light up the White House comment line and demand remedial action to combat the scourge of climate change. Silence is not an option. Your children and all future generations’ lives are at stake. If no action is taken, climate change will become the longest suicide ever attempted by the human race and we have a very good chance of success. -more-

The U.S. continues to view North Korea’s rulers as cartoonish madmen. Kim Jong-un, North Korea's ruler, probably isn’t crazy. Like his grandfather and father before him, Kim has generally behaved in a predictable and rational way for the ruler of a small, poor country trying to preserve his own grip on power in the face of bigger and more powerful rivals.

Anyway, it is not advisable to belittle a man with his finger on a nuclear weapon. I find little comfort that Trump has his finger on our nuclear button. -more-

After six months of the Donald Trump presidency, we know what to expect going forward. We've learned six lessons. -more-

Now it seems clear that Russia’s cyberattack on the U.S. electoral system in the summer and fall before the 2016 presidential election was widespread and included attacks into voter databases and software systems in at least thirty-nine states. -more-

I've had to scrap a previous version of the column for this week, because I realized in the nick of time that it would get people paranoid and/or upset. I was affected by my paranoid symptoms, and had written the piece accordingly. -more-

I've written about Mary Sano before, her exquisite dancing and choreography, the important work she's doing here and in Japan to revive Isadora Duncan's legacy, here at her studio, an occasional home for all kinds of performing artists, just blocks away from where Isadora was born in the late 1870s. -more-

After several successful seasons at Oakland’s abandoned train station, West Edge Opera was told by Oakland city officials that in the wake of the Ghost Ship warehouse fire, for safety reasons the city could no longer permit public performances at the abandoned train station. So West Edge Opera’s General Director Mark Streshinsky set out in search of another suitable (and cheap) venue where his company could stage their 2017 Festival. What Streshinsky came up with was Pacific Pipe, a former West Oakland warehouse for a steel refurbishing factory. In this vast former industrial space, West Edge Opera is currently presenting three new operas, all rarely seen anywhere. On Sunday, August 6, I attended L’arbore di Diana/The Chastity Tree by Vicente Martin y Soler. A Spanish composer who worked in Vienna as a contemporary of Mozart, Martin y Soler shared with Mozart the services of renowned librettist Lorenzo da Ponte, who wrote the libretto for The Chastity Tree. Later in life, da Ponte considered L’arbore di Diana the best opera libretto he had written, noting that “it was voluptuous without overstepping into lasciviousness.” -more-

On Saturday, August 5, Cal Performances presented violinist Sarah Chang with the Asian Youth Orchestra at Zellerbach Hall in a program of music by Richard Strauss, Jean Sibelius, and Ludwig van Beethoven. With the Asian Youth Orchestra’s founder, Richard Pontzious, conducting, the evening began with the Tone Poem Don Juan by Richard Strauss. An early work by Strauss, Don Juan took up the same womanizing character made famous by Mozart’s great opera Don Giovanni. However, Richard Strauss altered the Don’s character by making his Don Juan seek the ideal woman who would be, as it were, all women in one. Because he can never find his ideal woman, Don Juan suffers from disgust and disillusionment at his predicament, and, as Strauss wrote, “This Disgust is the Devil that fetches him.” -more-