Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguin has posted information about a possible PG&E power shutdown which will affect most of Berkeley which could be in effect after 4 a.m. tomorrow. Information about what we should do to prepare for it can be found here:

Extraordinary. Harrowing. Heroic. Stoic. Suspenseful. Nail-biting. Frightening. Exhausting. Unforgettable.

These are just a few of the words that come to mind in an attempt to capture the experience of watching Midnight Traveler, the cinematic saga of one family's attempt to survive the challenge of forced migration.

Midnight Traveler is an astonishing record of an epic tale of survival that follows an Afghan family of four—Hassan, his wife Fatima, and theirs daughters, precocious Nargis and little Zahra—on a perilous three-year, 3,500-mile journey.

It would have been a major accomplishment had this film been produced by a major studio with a big budget, a well-crafted script by an A-list screenwriter, and a cast of internationally known actors. Instead, this is a documentary—a homemade movie of a family made homeless by political division and the perils of life in a combat zone.

Miraculously, despite having to deal with armed police, human traffickers, smugglers, and attacks by anti-immigrant gangs, the family survives this road-trip from Hell intact. Even more miraculously, Fazili and his wife (also a filmmaker) were able to capture their ordeal on the family's three mobile phones. Those fraught images form the heart of Fazili's transfixing docudrama. 

In 2015, filmmaker Hassan Fazili's life was thrown into turmoil after his documentary, Peace in Afghanistan, was aired on national TV. The Taliban took offense and called for his death, forcing the director, his wife and two daughters, to flee to Tajikstan—the beginning of a harrowing, three-year journey through war-zones and refugee camps, in hopes of finding security and safety in Europe. 

On the 51^st day of their journey (by car and by foot), Fazili's family is stranded in Bulgaria. A smuggler is threatening to take the children and assault the parents if they don't give him more money. The family is arrested by local police and held for 12 days. 

By Day 102, they've made it to a refugee camp. But, instead of finding sanctuary, they discover the camp is surrounded by angry gangs of local men out to attack migrants. Fazili is hit trying to protect Nargis from the punches of an angry attacker while Zahra clings to her mother and screams in terror. The family decides to strike out for Serbia, 245 miles away. 

Day 109: The family is deep in a forest trying to sleep on the ground in freezing temperatures. After surviving 20 days walking through a forest (and occasionally being forced to run to avoid capture), they reach Serbia, only to be turned away by a security guard who coldly informs them that there is no room at his camp and then turns his back on them. 

Day 114: The Fazilis take refuge in an abandoned high-rise. Snow blows in through the open windows of the unfinished building as they try to sleep on beds of concrete and cardboard. 

Day 189: They have made their way to another refugee camp where their names will be entered on a list for people seeking permission to enter Hungary. The wait will take another 475 days. 

One of the marvels of Midnight Traveler is the way it captures the most intimate moments of family life—the shared love as well as the occasional bickering—that manage to keep despair at bay. This family may have no home and an uncertain and possibly empty future but they keep going because they know they can depend on one another. The resilience of the two young children is especially remarkable. Even in the midst of a cold forest, the sisters still delight in teasing one another. Only rarely, do they succumb to the frightful uncertainty of their new lives. Given her tenacity, it's especially hared to watch Nargis, confined to the walls of a refugee camp, breaking out in tears as she confesses, "I'm bored. I don't like it here any more." 

And there's an amazing—and disturbing—moment when Hassan, in a startling act of honesty, shamefully confesses to a moment when his training as a filmmaker threatened to overrule his responsibilities as a father. 

 

Dispossessed and desperate migrants are too frequently portrayed as sub-human riff-raff. Midnight Traveler corrects this false narrative. As we marvel at the grit and resilience of the Fazili family, we realize that migrants—be they families or individuals—are nothing short of heroic in their commitment to survival, at whatever risk and no matter the cost. 

The film is playing at the Landmark Opera Plaza and Landmark Berkeley.

If you've wondered about the vigil that appears in front of the Berkeley Probate Court on Wednesday mornings—covering the lawn in front of the old City Hall building with dozens protest signs—Maxine Ussery will be more than happy to fill you in. Ussery is a member of The Gospel Truth Probate Reform Movement and, if you ask, she'll hand you a thick, 26-page press packet filled with protest letters and press clippings.

Every Wednesday, a half-dozen protestors routinely gather on the MLK sidewalk to hand out literature about an ongoing injustice that has caused distress among the daughters and sons of the "Pearl Harbor Generation of African Americans." The phrase refers to the now-aging population of local residents who relocated to the Bay Area during WWII and bought homes for their families.

According to Ussery and other demonstrators, property that would be expected to be passed down to children and heirs has, all too frequently, wound up in the hands of the Alameda Country Probate Court. Or, more specifically, in the hands of the Probate Court's 20-plus attorneys—most of whom appear to be white and male.

The problem comes about whenever a dispute arises among the children of aging parents. A standard Will or Living Trust document is intended to smooth the path for the transfer of wealth and property but, if there is a challenge from one or more family members, the Probate Court can intervene and impose a "confiscation-of-inheritance" scenario.

In a 2016 document, Ussery complained: "We believe Alameda Country's Probate Courts have, over the last 50 years, legally robbed the African-American community of well over One Hundred Million Dollars."

Ussery and more than 45 other aggrieved members of the community maintain that the Probate Court system has profited from "pitting legally named beneficiaries/trustees against each other so that the Court can claim they have to administer the estate/trust because the legal beneficiaries cannot agree; And then getting approval to sell the assets of the estate/trust to satisfy some overwhelming, non-existing, tax debt or unforeseen expense that the estate/trust has occurred." 

This long-standing struggle has been the subject of numerous articles in The Oakland Post and Berkeleyside. Oakland Post editor Paul Cobb has also written a letter of concern to the Commission on Judicial Performance calling for an investigation and noting that, while the Probate Court serves an important function, "the practice of stripping people of their homes, estates and wealth for the sake of keeping the courts solvent has reached criminal and epidemic levels" leaving "thousands, if not millions of citizens . . . destitute after going through probate." 

Here's a 52-minute video featuring members of the GTPRM sharing their experiences: 

 

It’s a time-tested government strategy: if you want to duck a controversial issue, appoint a citizen’s group to study it, and hope that the controversy will go away in time. That’s what the Berkeley City Council did when confronted with an ongoing struggle between city employees eager to clear-cut the traffic circles in flatland neighborhoods and the neighbors who have been lovingly maintaining them for many years.

There’s a plethora of news reports and op-eds on the history of what’s happened so far which can be found with a simple google search on “traffic circles Berkeley”, but in the interest of saving time and space let’s just summarize the various press reports:

Sometime in 2015 there was a lawsuit filed by someone who was injured in a collision at an intersection in the southside area which contained a planted traffic circle. The defendant driver was quickly determined to be essentially judgement-proof, so the plaintiff focused on the deep pockets of the City of Berkeley, also a defendant. The suit was handled, some say ineptly, by a new Berkeley city attorney who opted to settle instead instead of risking a trial. Analyses of the terms of the settlement differ, but the bottom line seems to be that blame for the accident, fairly or unfairly, was fixed on the vegetation in the circle, especially a tree.

This outcome was seized upon by the city’s public works and traffic staffers as an opportunity to take over the circles and strip them of most of the plantings, though nothing in the settlement specifically required this.

A public outcry ensued, resulting in a Berkeley City Council resolution in February of this year to establish, yes, a Citizen’s Task Force to study the problem and present a report on next steps. 

From the city’s web site, here’s what it was supposed to do: 

“Traffic Circle Policy Task Force Mission: 

The charge of this Task Force is to: 

1. Evaluate the City’s current traffic circle vegetation policy for consideration by the City Council and Traffic Engineer; 

2. Find a solution, through active participation and engagement with the community, that respects environmental policy, habitat, safety and performance standards, existing and future liability issues that address sight lines; and 

3. Deliver a policy to City Council for adoption prior to August 9, 2019. 

4. Conduct a community-led process to update that policy to ensure pedestrian/bicycle/ vehicle safety and community efforts to beautify traffic circles. 

Eleven members will be appointed by the Mayor and chosen from geographically diverse parts of the city, including one representative from Berkeley Partners for Parks.” 

Of course, August 9 has come and gone, along with many, many meetings of the Task Force. Their report, which has now reached its last draft, was scheduled for final review at the Wednesday, October 2 meeting. 

This penultimate version of the Task Force’s report can still be found attached to that meeting’s agenda as posted on the city’s web site. It’s already a magnum opus, a work of art, replete with photos, maps, diagrams and copious data. From what I know of the citizen members who worked on it, that’s no surprise, given their impressive levels of education and experience. 

On the city staff’s side, participants, from the City’s Public Works and Traffic sectors, were described by Citizen Task Force members as people who seem to view their jobs as facilitating the flow of traffic, especially the wheeled modes, autos and bicycles. None were expert in either horticulture or environmental science. And above all, they appeared to be intent on reducing the city’s liability exposure in subsequent lawsuits if any to zero. 

Since Wednesday’s meeting my telephone line and my email have been aflame with outrage from involved community members. 

Why? Because the city staffers who have been participating in these many meetings said this: "Thank you for all your hard work and willingness to work with our concerns and for your efforts to concur with staff considerations, unfortunately we are just not there…There will be a companion report to your task force's proposed policy." 

In other words, one member said, there will be an “evil rebuttal” from city staff. 

The person who quoted the staff statement to me viewed it as a not-so-veiled threat, coupled with what city employees told them about what they plan to recommend to the council. The bottom line seems to be that citizens want existing trees in traffic circles to survive and staff still plans to cut them down. Period. 

One refrain that especially irked a couple of my informants was a traffic engineer’s claim, voiced several times on Wednesday, that he is just trying to protect “a slender small child chasing a ball into the street on a dark and stormy night.” Attendees claim that he implied that the citizens just didn’t care about kids, despite the fact that one of the most vocal residents was the parent of two little ones himself. (And children running around in the street on dark and stormy nights are at risk from much more than trees in traffic circles.) 

Trees. Why do Berkeley’s notorius tree-huggers care so much about trees? Well, climate change, for one thing. From a recent article in the National Geographic: 

“Trees—all plants, in fact—use the energy of sunlight, and through the process of photosynthesis they take carbon dioxide (CO2) from the air and water from the ground. In the process of converting it into wood they release oxygen into the air. In addition to the CO2 that trees capture, they also help soil capture significant amounts of carbon.” 

It’s becoming increasingly apparent that the world needs every tree it can get. From Sierra Magazine: 

“Carbon sequestration becomes easier to grasp if you consider a single tree. Plant, say, one silver maple today, and in 25 years—assuming it survives—it will have sequestered about 400 pounds of carbon dioxide, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.” 

Evidently city staff is now recommending the that there be NO trees in any traffic circle. In return, there’s a weak offer to plant more trees in those very unpopular bulb-outs, but inevitably those would be small spindly specimens, a poor tradeoff for mature trees like the elegant dawn redwoods which now grace several circles. 

Staff informed task force members on Wednesday that the Task Force’s scheduled report to the city council has been moved from the Oct 15 Council meeting to a Special City Council meeting to be held Tuesday, November 12 at 4pm. This gives those who question the staff’s plan one more chance to speak their minds in the period set aside for comments on non-agenda items at the regular council meeting on the 15^th. Office visits to inform councilmembers of the public’s views can also take place in the interim. 

Between now and November 12, the Planet would welcome informed Public Comment articles from members of the Task Force and the public at large. Send them to opinion@berkeleydailyplanet.com. There’s no official word limit, though we believe people stop reading online at about 1000 words. 

 

If the federal government decided to make a 30 hour seek mandatory without reducing wages or cutting benefits it would created millions of jobs and improve the quality of lives of many workers and their families. Of course the current political climate is unfavorable to taking such a giant step.

So it may be surprising to many that once this country was close to adopting early during the 1930s depression a shorter work week of 30 hours that paid working people the same as they earned on their full time jobs. Quite a contrast with the current practice of cutting programs as the economy declines. b Shortly after Franklin D. Roosevelt's (FDR) first presidential election a bill was proposed in both houses of Congress to reduce full time jobs to 30 hours a week. Employees who work longer hours would be paid time-and-a-half. The purpose was to substantially reduce unemployment. The bill in the Senate, which was written by Hugo Black, who was among the most liberal U.S. Senators, passed by an overwhelming majority of 53 to 30. FDR's strong support of the bill was among the reasons why it succeeded.

It was assumed that the 30 work week would also sale through the House as well. Instead, it never even came to a vote. One of the key committees, the Rules Committee, would have to release the bill for a house vote. However, the committee decided withhold its release.

The main reason is that enormous business pressure persuaded FDR to change his mind. He responded by putting considerable pressure on the Committee to withhold the bill. So FDR with the cooperation of the Committee successfully killed the 30 hour week proposal.

Several years later the President and Congress established the Fair Labor Standard Act, which required many employers to pay time-and-a-half when work exceeded forty hours. This bill was certainly welcomed by many workers. But it is several light years away from the 30 hour week. Not only are the number of hours much longer. The law excluded many workers from receiving a legal minimum wage and overtime for working long hours. The millions of agricultural employees have been among those excluded from recognition.

But the problem is not just a substantive one. There is something very seriously wrong with the process as well. That it is perfectly legal for a US President to interfere with another branch of government to prevent a vote from being taken is not what a genuine democracy is about.

Fore-note:

This week's column has dismal content, and you should embark on reading it with caution. It reflects the realities that many persons with mental illness face, and often these are not good. However, I'd like to preface it with another reality, which is hope. So long as we live, breathe and think, we can do some things to better our life circumstances and our mental condition. It takes effort and it takes bravery, but, if you are determined, you can make things better.

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I have a brother with schizophrenia, the same condition that affects me. We've both made it past age 50. Yet, it is common for men afflicted with this disease not to make it as far as we have. I could name perhaps a dozen men and women with psychiatric illness who did not make it past 50. There are multiple causes of death. One of the most common is suicide. I've met numerous individuals who died this way. Others have had early heart disease, and/or diabetes. Others have passed because of an accidental drug overdose or bad interaction. You do not hear of many mentally ill people making it to their seventies.

These deaths are tragedies and should not be trivialized because of it happening to a mentally ill person. People often don't perceive us as being in the category of fully-fledged human beings. Many medical doctors do not treat mentally ill patients with the same level of care afforded to a non-afflicted person. 

The lives of many mentally ill people, before an early death, are often an additional tragedy. We've been shortchanged in life. We do not get the good stuff that mainstream Americans are after and are able to get for themselves. This is because many people with a severe mental illness are not employable. 

And if we can do a job and perform competitively, we have limited chances of being hired to do such a job. Many mentally ill people do not have college education. Those who do have college have a far better chance at employment. Yet, the condition and the impairments that come with it often get in the way of being hired and of then performing at a job. This constitutes a huge barrier to the hope of living under good conditions. 

I've met people with substantial mental illness who have a good education, who can get hired, and who work at a professional job. Most people in this category must remain closeted about their condition, by necessity. 

Those who are more impaired and/or less fortunate could be stuck seeking bottom of the barrel jobs, if any. This doesn't lead to finding a fulfilling relationship. It doesn’t lead to buying a house or to having a good car. 

I'd like to tell you that if you just take your medication, cooperate with treatment, and do all of the things authorities and mental health practitioners tell you to do, that life will be good. I can't tell you that. If you want anything for yourself, you must fight for it. You must be willing to compete with people who do not have any impairment. 

Yet, there is nothing wrong with being taken care of by the mental health treatment system, so long as we have some valid source of fulfillment in our lives. I, myself, accept treatment. I wish I had more support than I get from the system. The system falls short. There isn't enough care. At this point, I'd settle for a lot less than I'd originally hoped to have in life, if things would just get a lot easier. 

Many Americans are spoiled. The expectations handed down to us include a nice home, a family, vacations, and fulfilling, lucrative careers. This is the basic American Dream that baby-boomers have been led to expect. Yet, the generation following baby-boomers (and varying labels have been put to this such as "Generation X") Have been sorely let down. And, Millennials, the current generation, are struggling. They experience far more demands and far fewer rewards compared to preceding generations. 

And, if you look at the plight of those with disabling psychiatric illnesses, prospects are dismal. And this must be rectified. Our society needs to offer some shred of hope to us that there is some way we can have a better life.  

Meanwhile, we wait, and we hope. 

If this is your situation, you should realize that you are not alone. 

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Jack Bragen has several books in print, including "Revised Short Science Fiction Collection of Jack Bragen," "Schizophrenia: My 35-Year Battle," and others.  

With the September 24th initiation of a formal impeachment inquiry, the political battle lines have formed. Democrats will subpoena witnesses and gather material that will be presented before the House Intelligence committee; eventually the House Judiciary Committee will construct the formal impeachment measure and submit it to the entire House of Representatives. Meanwhile, Donald Trump, and his Republican acolytes, will do everything they can to discredit the inquiry. Their obstruction will take (at least) ten forms.

By the way, before you consider what follows, it would be a good idea to read the "Unclassified Memorandum of Telephone Conversation" between Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Zelensky (https://www.politico.com/story/2019/09/25/trump-ukraine-phone-call-transcript-text-pdf-1510770 ). It would also be a good idea to read the "Unclassified Whistleblower memo to Senator Richard Burr and Congressman Adam Schiff." (https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/09/26/us/politics/whistle-blower-complaint.html)

One Trump strategy will be to ignore the allegations of Trump misconduct and to attack. 

1.Harassment: Trump loyalists will insist that Democrats have been "hounding" Trump for three years and this impeachment inquiry is the latest example of unfair treatment. Republicans will assert, "Democrats aren't interested in governing; they spend all their time attacking Trump." Republicans won't address any of the specific accusations against Trump but rather demean them as "more of the same" and claim that Dems are trying to "steal the election." (That's the theme of the latest Trump campaign ad (https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2019/09/27/trump_campaign_ad_democrats_want_to_impeach_trump_for_trying_to_drain_the_swamp.html).) 

2. Setup: Some Trump supporters will go into more detail and assert that the Trump-Zelensky affair was "a set up." These Trump stalwarts will, in essence, be claiming that Democrats fabricated the phone conversation and the related whistleblower information. (That's the drift of the claims by Republican stalwart Liz Cheney (https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/09/30/liz-cheney-ukraine-phone-call-political-set-up-donald-trump/3826791002/).) 

3. Vendetta: Other Trump supporters will claim that the impeachment inquiry is a personal vendetta being lead by House Intelligence Committee chair Adam Schiff. Republicans will personally attack Schiff -- Trump has already called Schiff a traitor and urged him to resign. (On September 29th, Trump tweeted, "I want Schiff questioned at the highest level for Fraud & Treason.") 

4. Deep State: Many Trump supporters will assert that the inquiry is a conspiracy launched by "the deep state" -- that is, by the intelligence community including the CIA and FBI. Many Trump loyalists have long claimed that elements within the intelligence community have been out to get Trump since he entered the White House. (Recently, Republican stalwart Newt Gingrich wrote, "[The impeachment inquiry] is a legislative coup d’etat. It is an effort by the hard left, the news media, and the deep state to destroy the president chosen by the American people,” ) 

5. Biden: Finally, some Trump advocates will take the position that not only is there nothing to the Trump-Zelensky affair but rather the mainstream media is missing the real story: Joe and Hunter Biden's illegal involvement in Ukraine. (On September 29th, White House staff member Stephen Miller claimed "Trump is the real whistleblower." (https://www.foxnews.com/politics/stephen-miller-says-trump-is-real-whistleblower).) 

For each form of these attacks, the Democrats response is straightforward: they should return to the known facts of this case as detailed in the transcript of the Trump-Zelensky phone call and the whistleblower memo. The problem Dems face is that Trump is launching a multi-million dollar attack campaign over social media (https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/30/politics/facebook-trump-impeachment/index.html). Democrats have to make sure that their side of the story is widely publicized. 

Another core Trump strategy will be to attempt to undermine the whistleblower report. 

6. Hearsay: Republicans will assert that the whistleblower report is based on "hearsay;" that is, it is inaccurate, because the whistleblower was not present during the actual phone call(s). 

The Democratic response should be to point out that the Inspector-General has already conducted an investigation and has corroborated the whistleblower assertions. 

7. Illegal Act: Another way to demean the whistleblower claim is to assert that he or she broke the law. That is, regardless of the facts of the matter, Republicans will claim that the information was obtained illegally. (On September 30th, Trump tweeted: "The Whistleblower knew almost nothing, its 2ND HAND description of the call is a fraud!”) 

Again, the Democratic response should be to lean on the report of the Inspector-General, who has determined that the whistleblower acted within the law. 

8. Obstruction: The Trump Administration can seek to undermine the whistleblower report by blocking Congressional verification of the elements of the report; that is, keeping congressional committees from recreating the investigation already conducted by the inspector general. That seems to be the strategy of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo (https://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/pompeo-house-depositions). 

9. No Crime: A more sophisticated tactic would be for Republicans to argue that no crime was committed. That is, Donald Trump may have asked Ukrainian President Zelensky to for a "favor" -- to investigate the Bidens -- in return for military aid but that is not a violation of the law. On October 3rd, Trump seemed to take this position when he asked both Ukraine and China to continue to investigate the Bidens. (https://www.cbsnews.com/live-news/trump-impeachment-inquiry-latest-updates-today-2019-10-03/) 

Many legal experts believe that Trump's action was a violation of Federal campaign finance law and possibly Federal laws related to bribery and extortion. (Separate from that is consideration of whether, in this action, Trump launched both a conspiracy and a coverup.) 

10. Not Impeachable: Finally, Republicans may ultimately argue that even if Trump's actions technically broke the law they are not of sufficient severity to constitute an impeachable offense. At the moment, that seems to be the attitude of most Republican Senators. (That's the position taken by former Attorney General Michael Mukasey on the October 3rd PBS News Hour ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9fELgg6718 ). 

Again, Democrats should return to the known facts of this case as detailed in the transcript of the Trump-Zelensky phone call and the whistleblower memo. (They can also use the recent statements of Donald Trump where he appears to be admitting to the accusations; taking the position that he is above the law.) Democrats have public opinion on their side and should press forward with impeachment proceedings. 

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