On Friday afternoon, November 3rd, a storm was brewing in Berkeley. Winds chased dry leaves into corners, grey clouds gathered, and people on the street tacked any tarps they had down over their belongings anticipating rain. -more-

Federal District Judge William Alsup today has ordered the city of Berkeley, by November 28, to submit to him “a practical plan for shelter for its homeless during the coming winter.”

He instructs the city authorities not to “simply recite the programs the City purports to offer, for they are admittedly insufficient.”

Instead, the city is required to “(s)ubmit a plan that will shelter substantially all of Berkeley's homeless.” He says in his order that “The Court is not ordering the plan to be adopted but wants to be informed, and the parties and counsel to be informed, concerning the scope of possible relief. “

The judge has also ordered that by the same date, Dan Siegel, the attorney for the homeless people who are now camped on Bay Area Rapid Transit land at the Berkeley/Oakland border, should submit his own proposed plan for sheltering the homelss . Siegel is told to “Be specific. Name soccer fields and open spaces he would convert to tent cities. Failure to be specific may be a sign that there is no practical solution.”

The judge in his order today did not address what the consequences of having no practical solution might be. -more-

A public health alert has been issued because salads contaminated with bacteria were shipped to some Trader Joe's stores in California and could cause health problems, officials with the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service said Tuesday. -more-

This weekend at the Mondavi Center, UC Davis

A remarkable event--perhaps the oldest ongoing theater form in the world, Kudiyattam, the last representative of the 2000 year old Sanskrit Theater, will be featured in performances this Friday and Saturday nights at the Mondavi Center on the UC Davis campus. -more-

A federal judge in San Francisco today turned down a bid by five residents of a homeless camp near BART tracks in South Berkeley for a preliminary injunction blocking their eviction by the transit agency. -more-

At next Tuesday’s Berkeley City Council meeting, the Council will consider legislation from our office directing the City Manager to require that all uses of force by the Berkeley Police Department are captured and analyzed with a goal of continuing de-escalation (item number 26 on the agenda). While we have an excellent police department that has already been taking steps to achieve improvements, it is critical that the Council help to guide and inform their efforts with a set of broad principles and requirements for the purpose of enhancing our use of force policy. The legislation is cosponsored by Mayor Arreguín and Councilmembers Bartlett and Worthington. -more-

There is concern that PG&E's electric transmission lines may have played a role in Northern California's devastating wildfires. Many times in the past, falling branches and trees toppled by high winds have crashed into electric transmission lines triggering grassfires that have erupted into major blazes. (It's happened before: in 2015, a damaged PG&E powerline started a fire in Amador County that fire burned for 22 days, killed two people, destroyed 549 homes and blackened 70,868 acres.)

During October's winds, cellphone images captured transformers dramatically erupting along suburban streets, underscoring the ignition potential of powerpoles inside cities as well as in the wooded foothills surrounding them.

The obvious solution—practiced in most of the world's developed nations—is to relocate these risky overhanging electric lines by placing them underground.

-more-

On Tuesday, October 31, 2017, attorneys representing the members of the Berkeley group, First They Came for the Homeless, will ask a federal judge to extend his injunction forbidding BART from evicting the homeless camp near the intersection of Martin Luther King Way and Alcatraz Ave in Berkeley. The hearing before Judge William H. Alsup will take place at 9:00 AM in Courtroom 8 in the federal courthouse at 450 Golden Gate Avenue, San Francisco.​ -more-

Funny how homelessness and the displacement of low income families by inordinate rent increases get turned against each other as issues. They are shunted into separate political domains, though building affordable housing would resolve both. The homeless are given shelters sufficient for 10% of their numbers, and the tenants facing displacement are given subsidy money to tide them over for a couple of months until the next threat of eviction. This, at least, is the extent to which City Council has seen fit to make positive policy with respect to these allegedly dual problems. The shelters guarantee that the problem of homelessness will not be reduced, and the city will continue to respond to it with increased policing. And addressing displacement only through monetary channels guarantees that for housing, the city will continue to turn to for-profit developers who will build market rate housing that induces displacement, and that the displaced cannot afford. Homelessness and housing get turned into policing and profiting, and people get thrown into the streets because there is no affordable housing. The outcome is the inability of the city to protect the majority of its people, the two-thirds of the population who are renters. -more-

"Children of the night--what music they make!" That old potboiler of horror, 'Dracula,' most famous for Bela Lugosi's campy performance as the vampire Count, has been reworked by Giulio Perrone of Berkeley's Inferno Theatre (Inferno did an earlier adaptation by Perrone in the Fall of 2012 that got a rave review in these pages)--and Inferno is staging it Thursday through Sunday nights, till Saturday, November 18, at the Brooklyn Preserve, just off International Boulevard near Lake Merritt. -more-

In his October 30 op-ed, “It’s time to drive away the developers,” Steve Martinot doesn’t seem to realize that on September 29, Jerry Brown signed a bill, AB 1505, that overrides the Palmer decision and allows cities and counties to establish inclusionary zoning requirements—that is, requirements that new residential rental projects include a specified amount of officially affordable housing. -more-

Opens October 27 at Berkeley's Elmwood Theater

When I first saw the movie posters for Jane—the story of world-famous chimpanzee researcher Dr. Jane Goodall—I assumed it was a biopic and I wondered who had been chosen to play the lead.

To my surprise, it turns out that this true tale of a young woman's journey from a prim British childhood to a primeval African adventure (and onwards to global fame as an environmental activist) is a documentary starring none other than Jane Goodall herself.

The film is a magnificent cinematic and emotional achievement—by turns, whimsical, magical, illuminating, astonishing, and frightening.

Adding to the magic is the fact that this documentary only exists because of the recent chance discovery of 100 hours of presumably lost reels of 16mm film. -more-

SECOND UPDATE, 11/3/17: It's now rumored that the Joey Gibson/Amber Cummings crowd of big baddies is going to bail on their November 11 rally. What a shame, since local stalwarts were busy organizing a Peace Picnic to shame them. On the other hand, rain is predicted, which might put the kibosh on both events. Watch this space for developments. -more-