I’m hearing reports that ICE is targeting at least 2,000 families across the country on Sunday, including right here in San Francisco. The most important thing to remember is: be prepared and know your rights. 

If one of Trump’s ICE agents comes banging on your door, stay calm and know that you do not have to open it. Do not answer any questions. Demand they provide you with a search and arrest warrant. Do not sign anything they give you. Ask for a lawyer or an interpreter if you need one. 

Trump is playing games with human lives. Since Day One, he has targeted and persecuted immigrant communities. These outrageously dangerous ICE raids are just scare tactics to terrorize our communities and rip families apart — but we must be stronger. 

California has always been a beacon of hope. For an America in turmoil, California is on the frontlines of progress. We have the power to stop Trump and fight to ensure that everyone across the country is safe from his xenophobic attacks. 

As long as Trump sits in the White House, millions of lives remain at risk. We have to stop him.

The Berkeley City Council voted unanimously Tuesday night to hold a community rally on Saturday afternoon to protest the mass detention of children and adults in torturous conditions at our southern border.

The event will feature Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguín, City of Berkeley Poet Laureate Rafael Jesús González, DREAMers and immigrant rights activists, protest songs by Musicians Action Group and Occupella, faith leaders, and others. The event will also include representatives from immigrant rights organizations, sanctuary congregations, and other groups so protest attendees can learn more about how they can get involved. 

The City of Berkeley was the first U.S. city to declare itself a sanctuary nearly 50 years ago—in 1971 in response to the Vietnam War. Then, the Berkeley City Council passed a resolution to provide sanctuary to 1,000 crew members of the U.S.S. Coral Sea who had signed a petition to stop the ship’s journey back to Vietnam from the San Francisco Bay. 

Now, the Berkeley community will come together—in solidarity with the Lights for Liberty National Day of Action (https://www.lightsforliberty.org/)—to declare that no human being is illegal and demand that all people are treated humanely. 

Please join us to send a message to Close the Camps Now! 

Our event will take place from 12 to 2 p.m. on Saturday, July 13th at Berkeley Civic Center Park, accessible from the Downtown Berkeley BART station. Attendees are encouraged to take public transportation, walk, bike, or carpool.  

For more information, please contact Berkeley Councilmember Rashi Kesarwani - rkesarwani@cityofberkeley.info or 510-982-6128 (Google Voice cell phone number to call or text).

Marijuana promoter High Times' effort to use Cesar Chavez Park as a "designated location" for marijuana events was so strongly opposed in the spring of this year by grassroots park protectors and public health advocates that Mayor Jesse Arreguin reassured at least one advocate that there are "no immediate plans to revisit the Marijuana events issue, and if we do I agree it should go to multiple commissions including the Health Commission, Parks Commission and Marijuana Commission, because this policy could have multiple impacts on our city." 

That word apparently didn't travel far. The "Health, Life Enrichment, Equity and Community Committee" took it up on Monday, July 8th, 2019 at 10:00 am on the sixth floor of City Hall where it took another beating by community voices opposed to using any parks for marijuana promotions, especially Cesar Chavez Park. Councilmember Ben Bartlett quickly withdrew his proposal after public comment. 

Councilmembers Cheryl Davila, District 2, and Ben Bartlett, District 3, had referred the matter to the committee of three; Councilmembers Rashi Kesarwani, in whose district Cesar Chavez Park is located, Sophie Hahn, who chaired the 10:00 am meeting after, ironically, an item about air quality, and Ben Bartlett, who introduced the item as an "equity" issue. Racial equity is the concept of using lucrative marijuana dispensary licensing to address the disproportionate burdens the war on drugs and disproportionate criminal penalties have had on communities of color by making sure entrepreneurs of color are represented in the new landscape of marijuana profits. 

Most of the speakers were in favor of addressing racial disparities in just this way, but were opposed to marijuana promotions in public parks, access to which are a crucial park of public health in any healthy community and which, in Berkeley, are smokefree since 2008 by local ordinance. 

The materials in the committee packet touted Berkeley's overwhelming support for California's Proposition 64, which decriminalized recreational marijuana, as an indication that Berkeley would be in support of marijuana promotions in public parks. This is not the case. Proposition 64's support in Berkeley and in other California cities was for decriminalization, for safe access, and for the prohibition of marijuana smoking in all public places. That public smoking prohibition is part of why the proposition passed. 

Proposition 64 allowed cities to create municipal rules and permits for temporary marijuana events, but the law itself prohibits public smoking of marijuana, and lists marijuana smoke clearly as a carcinogen on its public health website as mandated by Proposition 65's public list of all known carcinogenic substances. There are many private areas where marijuana promoters could hold festivals and events. But Berkeley would have to erode its hard-won municipal public health protections to create marijuana events in public places. 

 

But it is also misleading to imply that "equity" mechanisms, efforts to address racial inequities, are best addressed through the promotion and sale of marijuana in public parks, especially considering that Berkeley's public health indices continue to show obscene disparities in public health between Berkeley's white populations and our communities of color. Minority communities have long been the target of Big Tobacco, which has linked arms with the marijuana industry and the vaping industry in primarily targeting youth, a practice documented by smokefree advocates for decades. Berkeley students smoke marijuana at twice the rate of California students more generally. As a city, we have work to do. 

High Times, the group whose inquiry originated this "pilot project", is a wealthy, white group promoting marijuana nationwide. It prides itself on violating smokefree ordinances wherever it goes as part of its rebel branding, a branding that made sense when marijuana was being unnecessarily demonized. High Times has had decades to demonstrate an honest interest in racial equity issues. It has not. It has the deep pockets to generate a fund to assist communities of color with start-ups not limited to marijuana; small businesses with are the heart of any commercial district. And it has done none of those things. It continues to do what Big Tobacco has done for decades; find ways to whittle loopholes in local smoking restrictions in an effort to restore the shrinking habitat for those who use its products, which now include vaping products and a wider array of marijuana products. "Equity issues" in Berkeley are just its latest cloak; this is about money, money it primarily makes off of communities of color. 

Look sharp for special interests using "equity" in the same familiar efforts Big Tobacco uses to undermine public health protections. Express your suspicions about any room set aside to discuss the use of public parks for marijuana promotions which does not include representatives from the American Heart Association, the American Cancer Society, Americans for Non-Smokers Rights, and the American Lung Association, to name only a few. 

And if you don't hear a ringing defense of your smokefree public parks and smokefree protections from your Berkeley City Councilmembers and your Mayor right about now as they try to coax people into back rooms and try to do an end run around the relevant commissions, please consider running for office. Your community needs you. The tobacco, marijuana, and vaping industry are coming for your kids, and there's nothing subtle about it. 

 

 

All the recent hoo-ha about whether Kamala Harris actually participated in the Berkeley public schools’ integration experience, including some from people I know around here who should know better, is arrant nonsense. It wasn’t that long ago, for heaven’s sake, and some of us still alive can remember the busing experience, including some of the senator’s former schoolmates.

Many of the ignorant denizens of the commentariat, both local and national, thought they’d made a big discovery: that the schools had been integrated long before Kamala. They’d found old Berkeley High yearbooks with pictures of Black students from years earlier—but what they didn’t grasp is that the busing program which affected Harris was aimed at desegregating the elementary schools. BUSD started transporting little kids around town to do what fair housing laws had yet to accomplish.

High school in Berkeley has never been segregated because there’s only ever been one high school, which everyone attended. That’s not to say that within the high school academic tracking and social self-segregation have not been cause for concern, but the school as a whole was always integrated.

The situation in the elementary schools was different. As in most U.S. elementary schools in those days, the students in the first eight or so grades were expected to be able walk to schools close to their homes.

But housing in Berkeley in the 1960s, as in most other U.S. cities, was effectively segregated, both economically and by racist covenants and real estate practices. It was virtually impossible for non-White families, both Asian and African American, regardless of means, to buy or rent homes east of Grove Street (now Martin Luther King Junior Way).

The elementary school population at the time reflected this pattern, with some K-6 schools effectively all-White and others predominantly Black. The busing program which affected Kamala was designed to integrate these lower grades.  

The primary schools were reconfigured to serve either Kindergarten through 3^rd grade or 4^th through 6^th grade. The K-3 schools were in predominantly White neighborhoods, and the older kids went to 4-6 schools in the mixed neighborhoods of South and West Berkeley. 

When we moved back to Berkeley in 1973 our older daughters, then in fourth and sixth grades, rode the school bus to Malcolm X (formerly Lincoln), which was west of Grove, while the little children who lived near Malcolm X were bused to John Muir, on Claremont. Young Kamala, who is exactly the same age as my middle daughter, lived west of Grove, so she took a school bus in the first three grades to formerly mostly-White Thousand Oaks School, just as she told Joe Biden in the Democratic debate.  

By the time she was in middle school, her family had moved to Canada. I haven’t been able to figure out where she went for Grades 4, 5 and 6. I have a dim memory of hearing that she went to one of the small alternative private schools which were popular in those days, but I can’t confirm that. 

The school configurations have been endlessly rearranged since then, but what’s most interesting about Berkeley’s experience with busing for school integration is that it did a thorough job of improving the city’s social fabric. Simply put, it got rid of the undesirables for a couple of decades. 

When I came to Cal in 1958, the mayor was a Republican. Berkeley was a very buttoned-up place, with no alcohol allowed to be sold within a mile of campus and students not allowed to have cars at school.  

A large percentage of the student body (which Clark Kerr promised to cap at 12,500) lived in all-White fraternities and sororities. The faculty, also mostly White, tended to live in substantial houses, many in walking distance of campus, north and south. Students like me who disdained both dorms and frats lived in slightly decaying older group houses and apartments a few blocks north, south and a bit west, though they seldom ventured west of Grove into the limited area open to people of color despite prevalent redlining. 

In my circle we’d heard of changes in the wider world. We picketed Woolworth’s in solidarity with southern student sit-ins. Several of my friends were red diaper babies, so when the House Un-American Activities Committee came to town in 1960 to hunt Communists, they organized a major picket line at the San Francisco City Hall which eventually resulted in what HUAC called a riot. I boycotted my graduation in 1961 because Governor Pat Brown, who had just allowed Caryl Chessman to be executed, was the speaker. 

The rest of the decade is history. I got married and moved to Ann Arbor, but Berkeley students made plenty of trouble here without me.  

By the time we moved back with three kids in 1973, things were pretty well all shook up, between the demonstrations and school integration. The Republican-inclined were moving to Lamorinda and environs in droves. The first African American mayor of Berkeley, a Democrat, had been elected in 1971. 

As a result of all this excitement, property values were plummeting. We bought a commodious house at a bargain price on a block of Ashby which had a variety of collective houses, at least one of them radical enough that it boasted its own FBI spying operation in the attic across the street. The seller moved to Rossmoor in Walnut Creek. 

Berkeley’s reputation as a quirky idiosyncratic place to live lasted through the seventies, eighties and into the nineties. In 1994 the then-current Democratic mayor, elected with support from leftish Berkeley Citizens Action, resigned to take a job in the Clinton administration. She arranged for her successor to be the pleasant, wealthy, vaguely liberal owner of a substantial percentage of downtown Berkeley, and thenceforth city administrations were centrist on most local issues, though ever ready to take a stand about far-away causes. 

Lately it seems that Berkeley is regaining its earlier 20^th century status as a bedroom community for people with good jobs in The City. The difference is that many well-off people have gotten over their fear of demonstrations, integrated schools and dark-skinned neighbors, so they’re happy to displace current residents to move into formerly low-income neighborhoods.  

And they’re not all White. People of color who can afford it are welcome in any neighborhood. Mixed families like Kamala’s are the norm, not the exception. Among my grandmother peers, almost all of us have at least one mixed-race grandchild.  

What exactly does all this sociological detail about Berkeley matter to the 2020 presidential campaign? What it shows is that Senator Kamala Harris comes from an entirely different place than former Vice President Biden does. Biden’s historical opposition to busing for desegregation (like Bernie Sanders’) was rooted in the kind of limited world view which was common in the Berkeley of my undergraduate days. 

He’s an old White guy from a small provincial state, and she’s a younger woman of color who might be called a multinational, a global citizen like Barack Obama. Her indignant take-down of Biden was based on her small measure of participation in the common African American experience. She’s escaped many of the indignities others suffered because of her family background, but she’s able to appreciate what she gained from being part of the controversial busing experiment in Berkeley. 

However, the crucial upcoming election will not be a fight between Biden and Harris. A good number of my friends and relations have announced that they’re simply voting for “The Democrat” in the general election, and I tend to agree with them. The reason for joining one primary campaign or another would be to promote a sure winner, but I doubt that there is one.  

I do think that winning will depend on mobilizing women and people of color, and in the past few weeks Biden has demonstrated that he’s not fast enough on his feet anymore (if he ever was) to do that. Harris, on the other hand, has shown that she’d add spice to any ticket, which would be A Good Thing, though perhaps not enough by itself. It’s still early days.

After months exchanging “love letters,” President Trump and North Korea’s, Kim Jong-un finally met holding hands at the DMZ. It was a sight to behold. 

Gone were the days of nasty tweets of “fire and fury” to obliterate North Korea. I must say I was overcome with emotion and wept uncontrollably at the sight of the portly Trump meeting with his portly lover.  

In a magnanimous gesture of Christian forgiveness, Trump overlooked Kim’s acts of barbarity starving his people in North Korea’s gulags and allegedly killing his negotiating team. How the Christian evangelicals must have rejoiced. Now if only the President could repeat his winning strategy with Iran’s Supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, an incendiary situation could be averted avoiding a possible acceleration of its nuclear bomb making activity.  

The high drama follows a familiar theme. Threaten your adversaries with obliteration using America’s awesome firepower, then suddenly dial back and declare victory. Trump sulked and pouted accusing the media of ignoring his “brilliant diplomacy." 

Perhaps we have misjudged the president’s wisdom; if he loses the 2020 election his immunity from prosecution evaporates and facing jail time he may ask his friend Kim for asylum. If that day arrives, we should retrieve our MAGA hats from the rubbish heap and don them back on our heads proudly. The federal government should declare a week of rejoicing and festivities.

There is no law in the City of Berkeley. That is the only conclusion possible when government violates the law with impunity. It means there is no law.

We’re talking about the law of the land. Not the ordinances that the City Council passes to make itself look important, or to allow the police to violate the law by enforcing those ordinances. We’re talking about the law of the land and its protections.

The "law of the land" is the basic law from which all else gets its authority, namely, the US Constitution, the Constitution of the state of California, and the Berkeley City Charter. When a city council or its agencies involve themselves in avoiding, evading, sidetracking, circumventing, eluding, finding loopholes in, and countermanding the law, then for the people of that city, there is no law. If the people have access to a society organized around law only through those councils and agencies, then the people are out of luck.

Two crises beset this city, a crisis of homelessness, and an affordable housing crisis. The first is a crisis foisted by economic processes. The second crisis results from an absence of political will (and it will require a separate article). 

The city of Berkeley’s response to homelessness has been one of denial of the law. It has been continuously discriminatory in violation of the 14^th Amendment – a failure of “equal protection under the law.” And it has chosen to violate the 5^th Amendment and the 8^th Amendment. We live in an era when people have risen up against discriminatory oppressions of all kinds, to re-humanize themselves through such opposition. Somehow, Berkeley can’t seem to get it. 

What are the conditions of the unhoused?

The basic conditions of the homeless are that they must sleep on the street, for which they set up tents, and congregate in encampments as a form of protective community against social hostility (to which city government has contributed). They do this in public space. In some cases, they soil the area (garbage, waste, unused property, etc.). 

What they are trying to achieve is protection from the elements, and from hostile people. They seek to create places to eat and read and be with friends in peace, and enjoy a sense of privacy. These are the same goals for which a person buys or rents a house or apartment. 

The city responds with ordinances. I won’t call them laws because they violate the law of the land – in particular, the 5^th, the 8^th, and the 14^th Amendments of the US Constitution. They are written in response to alleged complaints from homeowners or commercial establishments who think their private space is corrupted by those who must live in public space. These ordinances are designed to make life more difficult for those whose lives are already most difficult. That is the choice the city makes. 

 

What these Amendments provide

The 5^th says that no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. (Please notice the use of "person" rather than citizen, and "law" rather than ordinance.) When the police break up a homeless encampment (which they do regularly) and cart away the property of its members, or require the tents to be broken down to fit in an area of 3 x 3 feet, they are depriving people of property and liberty without due process. 

The police inform those they deprive that they can apply for return of their property. But that is a process of appeal. Appeal and due process are very different. Appeal is for the rectification of a wrong. Due Process is for the prevention of an impending wrong. Due process must come first (according to the Constitution). The person to be deprived must get a hearing prior to deprivation. That is the law. Confiscating property because it sits on a sidewalk violates the law. 

Banning encampments on public land has been done for years. It has finally been shown to be in violation of the 8^th Amendment. The Ninth Circuit Court, in its Boise Decision of 2018 (Martin vs. Boise), articulated the principle that a government cannot punish a person for their condition or status in society, but only for their conduct. Sleeping and poverty are conditions, not conduct, and can’t be banned or made punishable. Unhoused people must be able to sleep on public land if the city cannot provide shelter for them. 

To its dehumanized shame, however, the city has been attempting to find loopholes in the Ninth Circuit’s decision, so that it can continue to punish the homeless for being homeless. It thinks it has found two. One is that during non-sleeping hours, a person’s property must fit in an area “3 x 3” feet. The other is that homeless people who are fortunate enough to have an RV to sleep in may not sleep in an RV between the hours of 2 am and 5 am in the morning. These ordinances use cruelty as a "norm." They represent a totally dehumanized approach to the real suffering of people. 

They are also discriminatory. In violation of the 14^th Amendment, they don’t provide equal protection for the homeless. 

How has the city been discriminatory?

The 14^th Amendment says “no state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the US.” It also says “Nor [shall any state] deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” If a state cannot do these things (abridge or deny), then neither can their charter extensions (aka cities). These two clauses, folded into the same Constitutional amendment, are quite different. The city of Berkeley violates both of them. 

Tents are refused permits

The homeless set up tents, sometimes composed of cardboard, to protect themselves from the elements. They are also to obtain a modicum of privacy. That is what houses are designed to do. To treat a tent differently from a house is outright discrimination. 

When neighbors or residents complain about the homeless obstructing a sidewalk, the police will protect the residents from that obstruction by seizing it and taking it elsewhere. The city does not protect the homeless from unnecessary and unwarranted complaints and attacks by residents (or the police). It violates the equal protection of “the law.” 

The homeless live on public land, just as homeowners live on private land. They should be given certificates of occupancy, just as houses are certified by housing Code Enforcement. Not to do so is to deny equal protection of the laws to homeless people. 

The city gives construction permits for housing

The city gives homeowners permits to construct things on their land, or to put additions on existing housing. But it refuses to give a comparable permit to the homeless to set up a tent on public land (which is the only "land" they have). According to the Boise Decision, public land is, for those who have no shelter and no housing, the equivalent of private property. Not to provide permits to set up tents on public land is to withhold “privileges and immunities” from the homeless citizens. That is discriminatory. To contravene that principle by attacking the homeless for using public land the way a landowner uses private land is to violate the 8^th Amendment, as well as the 14^th. 

Waste disposal

The homeless sometimes soil an area because the city offers no equal protection in the form of sanitation. The city provides sewer systems for those who live in houses. For years, the city refused to provide toilets for encampments. Today, it begrudgingly provides toilets for some encampments. The city provides for the collection of garbage in all neighborhoods. It begrudgingly collects the garbage from some of the homeless encampments, and uses that to disrupt their stability. Thus, the city withholds equal protection of health and hygiene for its unhoused residents. This is an especially dire form of discrimination against the unhoused. 

The city must provide comparable services to the unhoused as to the housed. Here, the 8^th Amendment and the 14^th Amendment work together. They are a framework for protecting the victims of economic oppression. 

The homeless who live in RVs are deprived of their rights

There are some unhoused who have been fortunate enough to obtain an RV in which to house themselves. The city looks at them as a parking problem rather than as a partial solution to the housing situation. Thus it chooses a dehumanized approach, focusing on the machine, rather than use a humanizing perspective that would seek to integrate this form of housing into the overall housing landscape of the city. 

City Council writes ordinances about permits for RV parking in order to create time limits past which the RV dwellers will have to leave town. Thus it abridges the RV dwellers’ “privileges and immunities” as human, substituting the machine for the person’s condition. It violates the Ninth Circuit’s 8^th Amendment argument, which provides that the RV dwellers, as homeless, must be able to use public space. 

The city seeks to maintain peace in its resident neighborhoods, but it refuses to establish dialogues between neighbors and RV dwellers, by which to arrive at common understanding and mutual benefits. Thus, it discriminates against the RV dwellers. 

The sanctity of public space

The homeless must live on public space. It is the only space they have. It is their home. The city is barred from entering a private residence by the 4^th Amendment. It cannot tell residents which room they may sit in. The city would not dare do such a thing. Yet it does not shrink from telling the homeless which part of public space they may sit in and which not. Only others using public space should be able to do that – in dialogue with those for whom public space is "home." Thus, the city is again discriminatory, in violation of the law. 

There is no law. 

What does this mean?

The derogations of the city are multiple. As a result of its discriminatory policies, 14 homeless people have died in the streets of Berkeley in the last 6 months. The city’s officials have all sworn an oath to defend the US Constitution. These violations of the Constitution represent betrayal of that oath. 

In violating the law, the city is also corrupting the ethics of representation and democracy. "Democracy" means that those who will be affected by a policy should be the ones to decide on the policy that will affect them. But the city has never involved the homeless in writing any ordinances concerning the homeless or their condition. Representation means that the city will equally protect all its residents. But it betrays the morality of our time, which has been a singularly massive struggle, from voter registration to LGBTQ pride, against all forms of discrimination. In being discriminatory, the city of Berkeley turns its back on its historical era, and becomes despotic. 

When there is no law, there is only despotism. 

Applying the principle of democracy

Let the homeless of Berkeley take seriously the fundamental principle of democracy, and autonomously write their own rules and regulations concerning their lives, their survival, and their relations with the neighborhoods. Let them do this in dialogue with the neighborhoods. Let them present that to the city as their democratic expression, as a step toward reviving the reality of law in Berkeley. 

Let that democratic expression be their participation in establishing their own equal protection, or at least the principle of their own equal protection. Let that expression call the question on the city, that is must return to the law. 

This would be a really important step to dealing with the homeless as people. 

Let the city thus take its first steps away from its despotic propensities, by honoring the autonomy of the people, and by guaranteeing the “privileges and immunities” of all its citizens. 

W.E.B. DuBois begins his classic work, “The Souls of Black Folk,” by telling the story of how it feels to read that “unasked question” in the expressions of white people, “How does it feel to be a problem?” And here we are, a century later, unable to look at or embrace real human beings in terms that could really dispense with that paradigm. 

 

 

The New York Times has published yet another article pushing housing affordability, this time a front page attack on single-family zoning: “Housing Scarce, Cities Erase Single-Family Lots.”

There is a rich irony in the flagship newspaper of New York City, the densest city in the United States and also one of the most expensive to live in, relentllessly flogging the notion—as news, no less--that density create affordability. San Francisco, also expensive, is the second densest.

So facts don't really matter, but no, I’m not going to use the "fake news” expression. But I might suggest, as your paper does with the nominal president, that you fact check the building lobby promoter-in-chief California Senator Scott Wiener. His quote in the article: “Single-family zoning 'means that everything else is banned….Low-income housing, which is only multi-unit-banned…’ ” is false.  

I live in Oakland, where some of the most affordable housing is still, despite gentrification in many parts of the city, single family, modest homes on mini-lots. In the Oakland hills, where density advocate Jerry Brown lived for years, large single family homes occupy at least an acre. What type of single family home are you talking about? 

As Wiener surely knows, the market rate multi-unit apartment buildings going up quickly in the most “desirable” parts of cities are not likely to be affordable.  

Why eliminate zoning? Kill cities and towns in order to save them? Turn every city into Houston, which may lack zoning but has deed restrictions instead? 

New York City: Solve your own problem first! (In truth, housing affordability is part of a larger problem with income inequality, and needs a national fix.) 

At the recent G20 meeting, President Trump greeted his friend, Vladimir Putin, warmly with the full knowledge that he got him elected.

The president brushed off accusations of election interference with a wink and smile, a coded gesture inviting more interference targeting his Democratic opponent in the 2020 election. The wily Putin chuckled with a silent nod hinting Russian trolls were ready to further eviscerate American democracy and propel the President to the White House for four more years. The public outrage over Trump’s chumminess with Russia harked back serious concerns over his financial entanglement and possible sexual encounters with Russian prostitutes. Putin seemed delighted with his meeting with Trump, a willing partner to undermine America’s democracy. 

Forgotten were the urgent warnings from special counsel Mueller that Russia conducted a “sweeping and systematic” operation to sway the 2016 election in Trump’s favor prompting former President Carter to call him an illegitimate president.  

The meeting with Putin followed Trump’s gratuitous insults towards Japan broadly hinting America’s possible departure from the US-Japan security treaty. It does follow a familiar pattern of treating allies as foes and foes as friends. Well done Mr. President you are fast forwarding America’s demise ably supported by your Republican co-conspirators.

As a T-V reality star, Donald Trump has always loved pageantry. He was inspired by a Bastille Day celebration in Paris that he attended in 2017, or perhaps his friend “Vlad” might have told him about the glorious Russian Revolution with Soviet tanks rolling past a portrait of Vladimir Lenin in Moscow’s Red Square in a 1980 parade. The pageantry will be a much needed distraction from his personal misfortunes as a failed businessman (lost over 1B over a 10 year period). The House Judiciary Committee has issued subpoenas to demand the release of his tax returns to reveal possible financial entanglements with Russian oligarchs.

How the draft dodger loves military parades.  

He thrives on personal attention and adulation. At great taxpayer’s expense, estimated in excess of $100 million he ordered his administration to organize a July 4th extravaganza with tanks rolling down Pennsylvania Avenue chewing up the road. Trump will address the nation amidst a flyover of the Blue Angels to symbolize America’s military might which has created untold misery throughout the world (Vietnam, Central America, Iraq, Libya, and Yemen. .). This showcase is a crass political stunt to launch his 20-20 reelection campaign. He tweeted modestly that this will be “an address by your favorite President, me!” He promised “brand new Sherman tanks” but nobody told him they haven’t been in service since the 1950s. 

There are tanks in the nation’s capital and concentration camps on its border. Oh, is America like Thelma and Louise driving off a cliff?

Activists and working people in Berkeley should be proud of their achievement of winning a minimum wage of $15 an hour and an annual increase according to the Consumer the Consumer Price Index. As of July of this month, the minimum wage has been increased from $15 to $15.59 cents an hour. The minimum wage will be adjusted every July 1. 

Those who fought for the annual adjustment were aware that without an annual increase the buying power of the minimum wage would decline. Moreover, employers are not allowed to deduct the wage because of gratuities and tips. 

Also, employees earn one hour of paid sick leave for every 30 hours of work. 

Employers had claimed that a minimum wage law would hurt both business and employees as well. But on the contrary, since the law passed in 2014, the unemployment rate dropped from 4.6 percent to 2.8 percent in 2018. Clearly, the Berkeley economy has been doing well. Undoubtedly the aggregate impact of the wage increase has been to improve the local economy. 

It is not that the current wage is considered adequate. However, I think we agree that it is going in the right direction.

It is important for us to pay more attention to the political climate today. We are seeing changes that are destroying the fundamental values of democracy. We have not made any progress in improving the lives of citizens of the neither the middle class, nor low income and poor amongst us.

Our self-centered thinking has taken us back at least 60 years .

We have not yet learned that each one of us has the right to participate in the political process to elect the right person to represent us in our government. 

We know that our right to vote, our right to live in a safe and healthy environment, is being ignored by the three branches of our government. Most of the actions by our federal government are hurting people who are below the poverty level, and who lack the power to improve their living standards. 

It seems most everything is being done to benefit the wealthy and upper class. It appears that the Republican party has a plan to change democratic principles to a dictatorship. I don’t know why we are not engaged in participating in the political process. We need to bring about change to the current political climate where our life, our safety, and our health is suffering. The federal government is not working to improve our lives, nor taking steps to give us equal opportunity to have the best education, better healthcare, better opportunities to live peacefully without having to worry about how to survive.  

Our climate, our safety, our voices and our needs are totally ignored. 

People, talk about gun violence and the traumatic situation of young and old at our border. No steps have been taken to remove the cause. We see effects of gun violence in different areas and still only talk about Second Amendment and people’s right to own guns. Why don’t we talk about some of our own citizens killing innocent people everyday in our communities? 

Our politicians give more importance to the life of the six week old unborn fetus in the mother’s womb, but they don’t care for the children whose’s life is in danger at the border! They don’t care to punish those who attack the young girls and women, who drug them to sexually abuse them. Why are the rights of living women and young girls ignored? Why is the lack of their physical safety not bothering our President? Is our government working to bring equal justice for these people who have suffered silently? Are each one of us are getting the basic human rights to live happily in better circumstances? 

I think, the gun manufacturers have been granted enough freedom to manufacture more weapons of destruction to create pain and trauma in the lives of those who lose their family members due to gun violence.  

We have to speak with a united voice to demand an environment that helps to create a healthy, happy and peaceful community all over in USA. We must work together to bring about real peace, humanity and restore our democratic values now!

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Since the June 26-27 Democratic Presidential debates, the candidate rankings have shifted and it now appears the Democratic nomination is up for grabs. The winner will be determined by voters perception of which candidate is most electable.

A June Gallupreport (https://news.gallup.com/poll/259454/electability-democratic-nominee-outranks-issue-stances.aspx) found that "58% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents prioritize a candidate's ability to beat Trump over their views on important issues." (This finding held across all demographic groups except for younger voters -- aged 18 to 29.) Gallup concluded: "The diverse field of Democratic presidential candidates would be well-advised to focus their debate performances and campaign strategies on looking like they can beat Trumpinstead of worrying about highlighting their issues positions." [Emphasis added]

What does it mean to "[look] like they can beat Trump"? Depending upon the Democratic voter, being electable means that their candidate adopts a particular stance/attitude. During the debates we saw four different approaches. 

(1) Some folks want a candidate who will be "tough" enough to stand up to Trump. Trump's a liar and a bully and these voters want a candidate who can call him out. 

(2) Others want a Democratic candidate who can talk to the "blue-collar Obama voters" who, in 2016, voted for Trump. On the first night of the Democratic debate. Congressman Tim Ryan referred to these voters: "[The Democratic Party is] not connecting to the working class people in the very states that I represent in Ohio, in the industrial Midwest... We have got to change the center of gravity of the Democratic Party from being coastal [and elitist] ... to get those workers back on our side." This is the political stance: "I feel your pain." 

(3) Some Democrats want a candidate who can beat Trump on specific issues such as healthcare, immigration, climate change, gun control, and housing, among others. This is a more intellectual stance: America has problems but Trump is a dummy who offers no real solutions, whereas the Democratic candidate does. 

(4) Finally, there are voters who want to take on Trump's immorality. New York Times opinion writer David Brooksis in this category. In his June 25th column (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/27/opinion/democratic-debate-2020.html), Brooks wrote: "A decent society rests on a bed of manners, habits, traditions and institutions. Trump is a disrupter. He rips to shreds the codes of politeness, decency, honesty and fidelity, and so renders society a savage world of dog eat dog." These voters want a candidate who emphasizes that Trump is immoral; whereas, the Democratic candidate can be trusted. 

The top-four Democratic candidates -- Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Kamala Harris -- offer different perspectives on what it means to be electable. Former Vice-President Biden seems to have staked his electability claim on (4) and (2). Biden introduced his campaign in a video where he spoke about the August 2017 white-supremacist Charlottesville rally: "I believe history will look back on four years of this president and all he embraces as an aberrant moment in time. But if we give Donald Trump eight years in the White House he will forever and fundamentally alter the character of this nation, who we are. And I cannot stand by and watch that happen..." Biden plans to seize the moral high ground. In addition, Biden has spent a lot of time in Pennsylvania and the industrial Midwest, talking to voters in traditionally Democratic areas that voted for Trump. 

Biden talks tough. He assures voters that he can stand up to Trump. But that's not his strong suit. Nor is policy. Biden is running as a nice guy who can bring us together. 

The champion of the intellectual approach (3) is Elizabeth Warren. ("I have a plan for that.") For voters who want a candidate who can out-wonk Trump on any of the important policy issue, it's hard to ignore Senator Warren. In the last couple of months, she's gained a lot of support because of her thoughtful plans. 

There's no doubt that Democratic voters will think Warren is smarter than Trump. Her electability problem is that many Democrats may not believe she can stand up to America's biggest bully. 

In 2015-16, the wonk candidate was Bernie Sanders. Now it appears that Elizabeth Warren has seized this mantle. Recently she's gained support, at the expense of Senator Sanders. 

There's no doubt that Sanders can stand up to Trump. But Bernie's style turns off many women. 

The remaining top-tier Democratic candidate is Senator Kamala Harris. At five foot two, Harris is the shortest candidate but for many Democrats she comes across as the best prospect for standing up to Trump, calling him out as a bully (1). ("We have a predator living in the White House.") Harris can be a commanding figure. In the Senate, Harris showed this with her interrogations of Brett Kavanaugh, Jeff Sessions, and Bill Barr. During night two of the first Democratic candidates debate (6/26), Harris took control about twenty minutes in. There was cross-talk between the candidates and Senator Harris put up her hands in a calming motion and said: "Hey, guys, you know what? America does not want to witness a food fight, they want to know how we are going to put food on their table." From that point on, Harris commanded the debate. 

The latest Quinnipiac poll of Democratic voters shows Biden in the lead (22 percent), Harris close behind (20 percent), with Elizabeth Warren garnering 14 percent, and Bernie Sanders 13 percent. (All the other candidates had single digit support.) Since the previous, April, Quinnipiac poll, Harris and Warren gained voters at the expense of Biden and Sanders. In April, Biden had a commanding lead over Harris in two categories: women and black voters. Now, Harris has taken the lead with women and she's cut Biden's margin among black voters from 31 percentage points to only 4. 

The gains for Senator Harris are particularly impressive when you consider that one-third of Democratic voters either haven't heard about her or know so little they have no opinion. 

There's a long way to go before the February Iowa caucuses but, at the moment, Kamala Harris is surging because many voters are taken with her commanding presence and, for this reason, believe she has the best chance of beating Trump. 

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Bob Burnett is a Berkeley writer and activist. He can be reached at bburnett@sonic.net