Worth Noting:

It is not a mistake. The special Council meeting on the Ashby BART housing development is MONDAY, September 16 at 6 pm. The City Council September 24 meeting agenda is available for comment.

• Monday, September 16, 2024:
  • At 2:30 pm the Agenda and Rules Committee meets at 1231 Addison in the hybrid format.
  • At 4:30 pm City Council meets in closed session in the hybrid format.
  • At 6 pm the City Council meets in the hybrid format on Ashby BART housing project.
  • From 10 am – 3 pm the Civic Arts Commission meets in person
• Tuesday, September 17, 2024:
  • At 12 pm the Budget and Finance Committee meets in the hybrid format.
  • At 3 pm the Civic Arts Commission Public Art subcommittee meets on Zoom.
• Wednesday, September 18, 2024:
  • At 1:30 pm the Commission on Aging meets in person.
  • At 2 pm the Facilities, Infrastructure, Transportation, Environment, Sustainability Commission meets in the hybrid format.
  • At 6 pm the Human welfare and Community Action Commission meets in person.
  • At 7 pm the Commission on Labor meets in person.
  • At 7 pm the Commission on the Status of Women meets in person.
• Thursday, September 19, 2024:
  • At 5:30 pm the Zero Waste Commission meets in person.
  • At 6:15 pm the Transportation Commission meets in person.
  • At 6:30 pm the Design Review Committee meets in person.
  • At 6:30 pm the Fair Campaign Practices and Open Government Commissions meet in the hybrid format, however, the zoom link needs to be updated.
  • At 7 pm the Commission on Labor meets in person.
• Friday, September 20, 2024:
  • At 2:30 pm the 2 x 2 Committee meets in the hybrid format.
  • At 6 pm is the teen silent disco party
• Saturday, September 21, 2024:
  • At 9 am is the Coastal Cleanup.
  • At 10 am is Build Your Own Emergency Kit at Ace Hardware on Milvia.

Call it Payapal Pay-Pal

Progressive Democratic Rep. Pramila Jayapal is raising campaign funds with a September 25^th online event called "Virtual Build Our America." The invite promises the event will include "Special Guests" but if you want to know who these mysterious luminaries are going to be, you'll need to secure a ticket for the event. These ducats don't come cheap but they do come with some catchy sponsorship labels. "Early Bird" tickets begin at $175, followed by five larger categories—Bold Activist ($300), Ardent Organizer ($600), Committed Visionary ($1,000), Innovative Idealist ($2,500), and Resolute Dreamer ($3,000). -more-

I was in Tim Walz country (Minnesota) when I saw the book Gunflint Burning: Fire in the Boundary Waters by Cary J. Griffith sitting on top of the stack of books at my sister’s house. Gunflint burning is the story of the Ham Lake Fire, the largest fire in Minnesota history in almost a century. -more-

The Berkeley City Council is poised to take full advantage of the Trump Supreme Court’s anti-homeless decision in the Grants Pass case. -more-

Reich Versus the Rich: The Inflation Ploy
With the rising prices of food and goods, Republicans are hammering the Biden Administration for allowing the cost of living to skyrocket during these critical pre-election months. In response, Berkeley economics truth-teller and MoveOn money-maven Robert Reich recently posted an online essay exposing "The Truth About Inflation." -more-

The Berkeley City Council has not passed a resolution calling for a cease fire in Gaza, unlike most Bay Area city councils, and the city's Agenda Committee has not even considered a proposed draft of such a resolution. Members of Berkeley's Peace and Justice Commission, due to a bureaucratic snafu, have not been able to consider such a measure either. They held a rally last Tuesday on the steps of the South Berkeley Senior Center, where the commission was supposed to have met, which was attended by about 200 people and featured many speakers, including this one: -more-

Worth Noting:

City Council summer recess ends September 9, 2024. A full week of meetings ahead.

The September 16, 2024 City Council Special Meeting at 6 pm is available for review and comment. Agenda item 1. The Ashby BART Transit Oriented Development (housing project and flea market) (packet is 124 pages) and 2. The Berkeley-El Cerrito Corridor Access Plan (packet 171 pages). https://berkeleyca.gov/city-council-special-meeting-eagenda-september-16-2024

• Sunday, September 8, 2024: From 10 am – 5 pm is the Solano Stroll with Solano closed to traffic.
• Monday, September 9, 2024:
  • At 2:30 pm the Agenda and Rules Committee meets in the hybrid format.
  • At 4:30 pm City Council meets in closed session in the hybrid format.
  • At 6:30 pm the Police Accountability Board has a community input meeting on the Berkeley Police Use of Force Policy.
  • At 6:30 pm the Youth Commission meets in person.
  • At 7 pm the Personnel Board meets in person.
• Tuesday, September 10, 2024: At 7 pm City Council meets in the hybrid format with the Encampment Ordinance as item 37 in the agenda.
• Wednesday, September 11, 2024:
  • At 3 pm the City/UC/Student Relations Committee meets in the hybrid format.
  • At 5 pm the Disability Commission provides virtual conferencing to commissioners and presenters, however, the public including public members with disabilities are required to attend in person.
  • At 6:30 pm the Police Accountability board meets in the hybrid format.
  • At 7 pm the Parks, Recreation and Waterfront Commission meets in person.
• Thursday, September 12, 2024: At 7 pm the Zoning adjustment Board meets in the hybrid format with agenda item 4 the 26-story mixed use project with 456 units at Oxford and Center.
• Friday, September 13, 2024: At 7:30 pm is the movie A Million Miles Away at Grove Park.
• Saturday, September 14, 2024:
  • From 10 am – 12 pm the Berkeley Neighborhoods Council meets online on Berkeley Waterfront Development Plans and Middle Housing Ordinance with City of Berkeley Planning staff presenting and available for questions.
  • From 11:30 to 3 pm is the city sponsored skate jam for all ages.

IDF-Settler terrorism in the West Bank escalates. -more-

This week my sister and brother-in-law celebrated their sixtieth anniversary. Remembering their wedding was especially meaningful for me because it coincided with another meaningful anniversary I remember from 1964, a Democratic convention quite different from the one we just watched which was a brilliantly produced television spectacle.

The 1964 convention was held in Atlantic City New Jersey. Lyndon Johnson was the incumbent president and his candidacy was locked up. Hubert Humphrey, a textbook exponent of what we called the SLP (standard liberal position), was slated to become the Democratic candidate for vice-president.

The wedding was in New Jersey too, at my parents’ home about an hour away from Atlantic City. My husband and I were allies of the civil rights struggle, and had been active in the fight for a fair housing law in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where we lived at the time. We took advantage of the opportunity to leave our not-quite-two-year-old daughter with her grandparents for the day so that we could make a trip to the convention, where the principal controversy was going to be the attempt of members of the multi-racial Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party to be seated as delegates in place of the traditional southern Democrats, the segregationists who officially represented Mississippi for close to a century.

As I watched the 2024 convention from home 60 years later, I was struck by the similarities and contrasts between the two events.

In 1964 we had no credentials whatsoever, but walked right in a side entrance and wandered at will through the spectator seats of the hall. Security did not seem to be a concern, despite the fact that John Kennedy had been assassinated just the year before. The Freedom Democrats were offered a couple of seats among the delegates in the Atlantic City auditorium, though without convention voting rights. (They weren’t satisfied.)

In Chicago last week the protestors, opponents of the war on Gaza, were among the elected and voting delegates seated on the floor, some sporting keffiyehs, but no one was allowed to express this opinion as a speech from the podium. Pre-convention credentialling and on-site security were very tight. No unauthorized person was allowed in. -more-