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Anti-war panel 12/4/19 7-9 pm

LEGACY OF PAST AND PRESENT
ANTI-WAR ACTIONS:
STRATEGIES TO CONSIDER FOR THE FUTURE

Wednesday, December 4, 2019 7-9 pm
UC Berkeley, Barrows Hall 126

David Miller  In October, 1965, David Miller, a Catholic pacifist affiliated with the Catholic Worker movement, was the first publicly to burn his draft card after the new law against this action went into effect. He spent 2 years in prison as a result, which ignited a storm of draft card burnings in response

Edward Hasbrouck  (Resisters.info) One of millions of young men who refused to register with the Selective Service System in the 1980s, and one of only nine people imprisoned for organizing resistance to the registration law before enforcement was abandoned. Massive noncooperation succeeded in blocking efforts to bring back the draft. He’ll update us on the upcoming Congressional debate on whether to end draft registration or expand it to women

Maxina Ventura  From Anti-nuke activism at UCLA, to D.C. lobbying, involvement in Plowshares Disarmament actions, blocking munitions trains and trucks at the Concord NWS, Nevada Test Site actions using decentralized organizing with affinity groups and spokescouncils, to the Livermore Nuclear Weapons Labs 1993 Shadow Painting action (with 2-months and solitary confinement for refusing to accept any restrictions to full freedom)

Liam Curry  6 year Navy submarine veteran, volunteered with Food Not Bombs after first Gulf War, became active with People’s Park movement during UC’s attempt to develop the park. Joined Veterans For Peace at the start of the second Gulf War. Worked on counter recruitment and various anti-war programs with Veterans For Peace

Soul (Susan B. Rodriguez) At 14 founded first homeless project, Hayward. At 15 was President of Brown Berets, Hayward. Co Founded Free Lunch, Hayward, and Berkeley Liberation Radio 104.1fm. 1990 Anti Nuclear Dove of Peace Disarmament Action. People’s Park Activist 1990-present. Founded Murals of Life N Hope, W. Oakland, G.I. Suicide Awareness Campaign, Co Founded Occupy Oakland, Marine Recruitment Action, Berkeley, and works with Restorative Justice, Oakland

Niusha Hajikhodaverdikhan is a 20-year old artist, and UC Peace and Conflict studies student. From Nezamabad, Tehran, Iran, her family, deeply affected by the U.S. sponsored Iran-Iraq war (1980-88), she investigates war crimes using open-source investigation at UC Berkeley’s Human Rights Center. Her work in academia, art, and community focuses on mutual aid, decolonization, and 3rd world liberation with an anti-capitalist, anti-fascist approach.

Co-Sponsored by The People’s Park Committee (www.peoplespark.org)
and The Suitcase Clinic (www.suitcaseclinic.org)
Info: 510-900-1160 (Landline. No texts received)
Wheelchair Accessible ** Fragrance-free, please

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An Audio Blast From the Past — The formation of People’s Park

Here’s an audio montage Robert A. Beede put together from radio music and dialog from the time of the formation of People’s Park.

This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

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Press Release: Unveiling of New Freebox Dedicated to the 50th Anniversary of People’s Park

Dear friends and colleagues, 

We wish to inform you of an important upcoming event this Sunday, April 28, at the start of the 50th Anniversary Concert for People’s Park at 12pm noon.

The People’s Park Committee and the People’s Park Community are pleased to announce a new, improved People’s Park FreeBox. The FreeBox is a dedicated facility for accepting and distributing donations of clothing, bedding, and other items, freely available to those in need. 

A longtime People’s Park tradition, the FreeBox has been replaced and rebuilt many times, but, unfortunately, there has been no such accomodation for donations in the Park for several years now. The new FreeBox, created and donated by UC Berkeley students involved in organizing to save the Park, will be the largest yet. 

Please join us on Sunday, April 28, 2019 at 12 noon for a short ceremony and ribbon cutting, inaugurating the new, improved FreeBox at the beginning of the People’s Park 50th Anniversary concert event. We invite you, or anyone else who may be available, to come and report on this historic dedication and event.

Best regards,
The People’s Park Committee and the People’s Park Community

http://peoplespark.org/

Join the People’s Park Committee mailing list:
https://lists.sonic.net/mailman/listinfo/peoples-park-committee
Follow People’s Park on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/PeoplesParkCommunity/
 Subscribe to the People’s Park YouTube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCt23prsLStARCVoNDQVoTMQ
Join the People’s Park Community discussion forum:
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/peoplesparkcommunity/info

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Gardening and Urban Planning

Gardening can function as a way to reprogram the mind and activity patterns away from the patterns imposed by exploitative architecture, transportation, and urban design paradigms. Food production is the basis of our life, yet the city’s design dysfunction is the denial of that basis, replacing it with capitalist enterprising based on selling transportation gear and construction projects, a “boxing in” of the human mind and imagination.

Some people have “Long Range Development Plans”. Do these people have real estate business interests? Construction industry interests? Academia business interests? Student loan business interests? Other interests? Undisclosed interests?

Long Range Development Plan – Thoughts, context, and questions:

Who’s development plan? On whose behalf? Corrupted by what special interests, industries, competing corporations, dystopian paradigms? More pathological air and noise pollution from predatory auto industry prowlers and ‘status symbol’ cruising, and everyone else trapped in automobile dependent urban transport and architecture paradigms? More space wasted on parking? More real estate robots and construction industry interests replicating vanity architecture disguised as necessity and authority? More destruction of green space by academic profiteering and rent exploitation? Is there ever any new green space reclaimed from the insane delusions of urban ‘human’ robots? How can money be seen as power when it seems to only be used to perpetuate and create more dystopia? The externalized costs of fossil fuel usage (climate breakdown, pollution, direct and indirect health damages and cleanup costs not paid for by the industry) are gravely damaging our present and future. People have become puppets of the designs of industrialists, constantly moving their metal boxes from parking space to parking space. The dependency is now becoming a terminal global ‘disease’. When will this pathological behavior and design be shutdown for the collective crime that it is? Who inside and outside of any entity, be it a university, a government, a neighborhood, a business, a church, or any kind of organization or group, is perpetuating this pathological design and activity?

People’s Park is at a point in time and part of a huge collection of other physical elements in an urban transformation. How will all the elements transform, and why?

Background context:

Internal Combustion book – Edwin Black
http://internalcombustionbook.com

Concrete: the most destructive material on Earth
After water, concrete is the most widely used substance on the planet. But its benefits mask enormous dangers to the planet, to human health – and to culture itself
https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/feb/25/concrete-the-most-destructive-material-on-earth

Bonobo : Cirrus — This animation depicts the insane propagation of human industrialist construction and materialism across the landscape.

Books:

EcoCities: Rebuilding Cities in Balance with Nature book – Richard Register
Ecocity Builders
https://ecocitybuilders.org

How to Grow More Vegetables book – John Jeavons

Natural Capitalism book – Paul Hawkin, Amory Lovins, L. Hunter Lovins

People’s Park Still Blooming book – Terri Compost

Seed to Seed book – Suzanne Ashworth

Permaculture: A Designer’s Manual book – Bill Mollison

Natural Capitalism book excerpt:

2. Reinventing the Wheels: Hypercars and Neighborhoods – Natural Capitalism
http://www.natcap.org
The largest industry in the world, automotive transportation, is already well along the way to a Factor Four or greater breakthrough in resource productivity. It is also beginning to close its materials loops by adopting durable materials that can be continuously reused to make new cars, and to reduce dramatically its pressure on air, climate, and other key elements of natural capital by completely rethinking how to make a car move. This restructuring of so well established a segment of the economy is gaining its momentum not from regulatory mandates, taxes, or subsidies but rather from newly unleashed forces of advanced technology, customer demands, competition, and entrepreneurship.
Imagine a conversation taking place at the end of the nineteenth century. A group of powerful and farseeing businessmen announce that they want to create a giant new industry in the United States, one that will employ millions of people, sell a copy of its product every two seconds, and provide undreamed-of levels of personal mobility for those who use its products. However, this innovation will also have other consequences so that at the end of one hundred years, it will have done or be doing the following:
• paved an area equal to all the arable land in the states of Ohio, Indiana, and Pennsylvania, requiring maintenance costing more than $200 million per day;
• reshaped American communities and lives so as to restrict the mobility of most citizens who do not choose or are not able to own and operate the new product;
• maimed or injured 250 million people, and killed more Americans than have died in all wars in the country’s history;
• be combusting 8 million barrels of oil every day (450 gallons per person annually);
• made the United States increasingly dependent on foreign oil at a cost of $60 billion a year;
• relied for an increasing percentage of that oil on an unstable and largely hostile region armed partly by American oil payments, requiring the United States to make large military expenditures there and maintain continual war-readiness;
• be killing a million wild animals per week, from deer and elk to birds, frogs, and opossums, plus tens of thousands of domestic pets;
• be creating a din of noise and a cloud of pollution in all metropolitan areas, affecting sleep, concentration, and intelligence, making the air in some cities so unbreathable that children and the elderly cannot venture outside on certain days;
• caused spectacular increases in asthma, emphysema, heart disease, and bronchial infections;
• be emitting one-fourth of U.S. greenhouse gases so as to threaten global climatic stability and agriculture;
• and be creating 7 billion pounds of unrecycled scrap and waste every year.

Now imagine they succeeded.

This is the automobile industry—a sector of commerce so massive that in 1998, five of the seven largest U.S. industrial firms produced either cars or their fuel. If this industry can fundamentally change, every industry can. And change it will. This chapter describes how the world’s dominant business is transforming itself to become profoundly less harmful to the biosphere.
That transformation reflects, today partially and soon fully, the latest in a long string of automotive innovations. In 1991, a Rocky Mountain Institute design called the Hypercar synthesized many of the emerging automobile technologies. To maximize competition and adoption, the design was put in the public domain (making it unpatentable), hoping this would trigger the biggest shift in the world’s industrial structure since microchips. As revolutions go, it started quietly, with simple observations and heretical ideas.
The automobile industry of the late twentieth century is arguably the highest expression of the Iron Age. Complicated assemblages of some fifteen thousand parts, reliable across a vast range of conditions, and greatly improved in safety and cleanliness, cars now cost less per pound than a McDonald’s Quarter Pounder. Yet the industry that makes them is overmature, and its central design concept is about to be overtaken. Its look-alike products fight for small niches in saturated core markets; they’re now bought on price via the Internet like file cabinets, and most dealers sell new cars at a loss. Until the mid-1990s, the industry had become essentially moribund in introducing innovation. As author James Womack has remarked, “You know you are in a stagnant industry when the big product innovation of the past decade is more cup holders.” Virtually all its gains in efficiency, cleanliness, and safety have been incremental and responded to regulations sought by social activists. Its design process has made cars ever heavier, more complex, and usually costlier. These are all unmistakable signs that automaking had become ripe for change. By the 1990s, revolutions in electronics, software, materials, manufacturing, computing, and other techniques had made it possible to design an automobile that would leapfrog far beyond ordinary cars’ limitations.
The contemporary automobile, after a century of engineering, is embarrassingly inefficient: Of the energy in the fuel it consumes, at least 80 percent is lost, mainly in the engine’s heat and exhaust, so that at most only 20 percent is actually used to turn the wheels. Of the resulting force, 95 percent moves the car, while only 5 percent moves the driver, in proportion to their respective weights. Five percent of 20 per-cent is one percent—not a gratifying result from American cars that burn their own weight in gasoline every year.

peoplespark.org has a huge photo collection in various categories, gardens, music, art, style, history, and numerous event announcements and articles about the park and contemporary issues.

—

20th Annual Bay Area Seed Swap
Friday, March 15, 2019, 7:00 pm — 9:00 pm
Ecology Center, 2530 San Pablo Avenue, Berkeley, CA 94702

https://ecologycenter.org/events/20th-annual-bay-area-seed-swap/
Join us for the 20th Anniversary of the Annual Seed Exchange hosted by the Bay Area Seed Interchange Library (BASIL). In its 20th year, this swap features speakers, a potluck dinner, and hundreds of seeds to share. Seeds from all around the Bay Area will be available to swap– take home a whole new garden! Come experience one of our most popular, fun, and knowledge- filled events! All are welcome.
Bring seeds and a potluck dish and get in free! Or a suggested donation of $5-$20. No one turned away for lack of funds.
Interested in volunteering at the swap, or helping us sort seeds on March 16? We would love to have your help! Email minna@ecologycenter.org.
Co-sponsored by Indigenous Permaculture Project, Richmond Grows, Sustainable Economies Law Center, and Transition Berkeley.

—

People’s Park gardens photo collection – Greg Jalbert — To be added to peoplespark.org site.

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New Landscape: Durant Avenue – Housing / multiuse buildings and mini-parks

Why waste so much space on relatively unused asphalt?

New Landscape: Durant Ave – Rendering of housing / multiuse buildings and mini-parks

This visionary project creates two new three-story housing / multiuse buildings, interleaved with three mini-parks in part of the wasted asphalt space on Durant Avenue, East of Telegraph, just south of UC Berkeley campus.

A work in progress…

Two three-story buildings between the mini-parks have housing on the quieter South side, away from Durant traffic, and the hallways on the North side overlook the noisy Durant traffic.

The mini-parks include 3-5 trees each, several moveable tables and benches, providing more outdoor space for dining and socializing. This would be a benefit to all the local restaurants, visitors and residents.

The current 2019 Durant Avenue, a wasteful asphalt expanse
New landscape: Durant Avenue, mini-parks, trees, tables and benches for visitors and outdoor dining

The glass on the South side of the buildings will reflect some sunlight into shadows of the South side of Durant.

New landscape: Durant Avenue, mini-parks, and placeholder floor-plans

Green, living wall plants on the exterior would provide aesthetic interest and cooling and air-cleansing functions.

Keep the old sidewalks on both sides of Durant and revise as well with outdoor seating, greenery.

The new buildings have appropriate automobile crash barriers built into the first floor wall facing Durant.

Rooftop garden beds, and patios with tables, chairs, wind break walls, and sun shades would increase outdoor space for building users or restaurant users.

The modular housing/park concept could be extended all the way East on Durant to the end of the block, and/or replicated on the block West of Telegraph.

The details of this project, such as building height, unit sizes and quantities, layout, and other logistical and ecological details are all to be determined by qualified designers with full community feedback.

The automobile age is ending. The new lifestyle and design paradigm is about bikes, e-bikes and scooter sharing systems, car-sharing, ride-hailing services, mass-transit and walkable, livable city designs made for people instead of automobiles. Electric bicycles require much less space for parking and are quiet, less distracting for people. Noise is a serious detriment to studying and mental health. The new paradigm releases a large amount of previously paved land for new uses.

Currently five lanes wide with two lanes of parking and three lanes for traffic, this project has part of Durant reduced to two lanes of traffic and no parking.

It is time to protect and increase precious green space in the city, improve quality of life, reorient space use priorities.

This project is designed to reduce loss of public green space parks in the city, such as the historic user-developed multi-use People’s Park in Berkeley. One of the mottos from the founding of People’s Park in 1969 is “Let a thousand parks bloom.” could be inscribed in furniture of the new mini-parks.

Together, creatively, we will make develop better cities and neighborhoods.

— Greg Jalbert

Concept and rendering – Greg Jalbert
Thanks to Alfred Twu for inspiring preliminary sketches!
February 2019

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The History and Struggle for People’s Park – Feb. 27, 2019

The History and Struggle for People’s Park
Panel and Q&A Discussion
Wednesday, February 27, 2019, 7pm–9pm
UC Berkeley, MLK Student Union, Stephens Lounge, 3rd floor

Garden making at People’s Park – c. 1970 – Photo © 2015 The estate of Clay Geerdes
Peoples Park event crowd – c. 2010

Panelists:

Jim Chanin – American civil rights attorney, and former member of the City of Berkeley/University of California Committee around Berkeley’s People’s Park, from 1990 to 1994.

Dan Siegel – American civil rights attorney, former student activist and leader in Students for a Democratic Society from 1967-1970 while at University of California, Berkeley’s School of Law.

Carol Denney – Award-winning musician, published poet, “Fiddlers for Peace” founder, curator of the “Deep Poetry Project”, and editor of the Pepper Spray Times. 2004 honoree by the City of Berkeley for homeless advocacy, 2003 honoree for civil liberties activism by the Berkeley Commission on the Status of Women, People’s Park SLAPP-suit defendant.

Joe Liesner – East Bay Food Not Bombs member and activist

Andrea Pritchett – founding member of Berkeley Copwatch, and Berkeley Police Review Commissioner

Musical Performance:
Hali Hammer – award winning singer-songwriter

Co-Sponsoring Organizations:
People’s Park Committee, Berkeley Copwatch, Food Not Bombs, Students Against Fascism and War, Green Party at Berkeley, Bay Area Landless People’s Alliance, Berkeley East Bay Grey Panthers, Neither Here Nor There, Berkeley Friends on Wheels, The United Front Against Displacement

Protect Our Green Space, Trees, Community, Historical Landmark, Free Speech, Social Justice, Civil Rights, Gardens, Music, Art, Style, Freebox, Recreation, Climate, Ecology, Education, Sports, Health, User-developed Park

The 50th Anniversary of People’s Park will be celebrated in April 2019 with several events and two concerts in the park.

peoplespark.org

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Glorious People’s Park forest rainbow

Friday Feb 15, 2019 — All People’s Park visitors got a special treat today with wonderful sunny February rains (a special atmospheric river, a Pineapple Express) and this double rainbow (ya gotta squint a bit) over the beautiful forest of the West side of the park. We really enjoyed it, all jumping out to see the glory, all while listening to a stunning show of Aretha Franklin tunes on KCSM radio and an assortment of reggae and world music items donated to the park. Music stories lead to cultural stories, and lead to wisdom. Sweet dreams. – Greg Jalbert

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Comment on “UC Berkeley must prioritize community voices in People’s Park housing plans”

For reasons I can’t fathom, the Daily Cal deleted my comment on that op-ed.
– Thomas Lord, February 13, 2019

——– Original Message ——–
Subject: response Feb 12 op-ed (re People’s Park)
Date: 2019-02-13 15:48
From: Thomas Lord lord@basiscraft.com
To: editor@dailycal.org

I wrote this in response to the February 12 op-ed “UC Berkeley must prioritize community voices in People’s Park housing plans”. It got positive responses from Park supporters including members of the People’s Park Committee. I’ve appended it below.

I am writing to ask that you please explain to me why you deleted my comment from the op-ed. To me it seems response, informative, and civil – especially in contrast to many comments on the Daily Cal that you don’t censor.

Thanks,
Thomas Lord (Berkeley, CA)

My comment:

There is no just way to raze the Park. The Park can not be reduced to just the most controversial users (i.e. poor people). The community can not be reduced to a set of “services” to be replaced.

Nor is there any practical reason to raze the Park. For that matter, there is no practical reason to build on the research field on Oxford. When the Chancellor’s office embarked on this farce they turned a blind eye to alternative sites such as the SW and NW parking lots on Clark Kerr. They ignored the part of the Oxford parcels with the older (run down) buildings. Those are just two examples – there are more. And to add insult to injury, they are proposing to build privately profitable housing that will gouge students and taxpayers. It’s an enormous wealth transfer from public education to already rich people. These facts alone should make students skeptical that UC is speaking with them in good faith. You’re being ripped off. Again. In yet another way. When do you stop trusting this institution?

The history of the Park matters. It was, once upon a time, housing. The housing was largely occupied by counter-culture households, many not-affiliated with the University but influential on student life. This context is vital to understand the past 50 years of struggle:

The University had taken some bruises, from their perspective, in that very conservative time. They had taken bruises from student involvement in the Civil Rights movement, from the Free Speech movement, from the anti-war movement, and from the growth of revolutionary politics and radical environmentalism. Students today can check out some deep (and academically very serious) history in Seth Rosenfeld’s “Subversives: The FBI’s War on Student Radicals, and Reagan’s Rise to Power”. Students today can find source materials about Park history in the on-line archives of the Berkeley Barb (content warning: no shortage of sexist and race-insensitive content in those old issues – but you’ll also find plenty of evidence of the positive good that was going on, really, at that time).

Where the Park stands today there was housing. The housing was largely occupied by unaffiliated counter-cultural types the University saw as a political threat.

Back then, the University found a flimsy excuse (a false promise to build student housing, ironically) to take that housing by eminent domain, evict the counter cultural residents, raze the buildings, and salt the earth by leaving behind a huge dirt patch. Meanwhile, the University continued its oppression of students who questioned and challenged the society around them, and the institution that processed them like commodities.

The Park grew out of student and community frustration and anger, and the something-in-the-air of the times that sought out solidarity, positive creation, much needed earth-loving, and the spontaneous discovery of the power of positive direct action. Watch some of the videos of the Park being built — and of the military counter-attack – to get some sense of the times.

Incidentally, the much beloved Ohlone Park in North Berkeley grew out the very same process of direct action. It was initiated in a moment of response to the murder of James Rector and the maiming and injury of others by the literal occupying army sent to suppress the People’s Park movement. The Park is sacred for many reasons.

For 50 years, the University has done everything it can to interfere with the Park’s positive development. You write of “services” the Park provides? You have no idea how much more extensive the mutual support was in the Park before the University cracked down on it. If it looks shabby and beat down today — keep in mind that the sticks used to beat it down were wielded by the very powers you think you are now negotiating with.

My metaphor for what even the well meaning author’s of this piece propose is an ugly one: It reminds me of those horrific photos of trophy hunters gloating over dead elephants, rhinos, and big cats — the kind you see flying around social media. You may mean well but if you think “just development” means anything more than giving some very mean folks a trophy photo, please reconsider.

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Hold drivers and police accountable – Rally and March, Saturday, February 9, 2019, 1 pm

Rally and March, Saturday, February 9, 2019, 1 pm
Hold drivers and police accountable for hit-and-run reckless driving!
Rally at People’s Park! March in Protest!

Bring water and a lunch!

The hit-and-run incident: On January 22, 2019, supporters of People’s Park marched down Telegraph Avenue to Sproul Plaza. This peaceful protest was interrupted by a reckless driver who pushed up on the protesters and struck a sleeping homeless man as he fled the scene driving on the sidewalk and driving the wrong way on Durant Avenue. Police have refused to release the identity of the driver or respond to this blatant attack on poor people in the City of Berkeley.

Join us for a rally, then march with us, as we come together to expose these injustices and fight back!

Co-Sponsored by: People’s Park Committee, Berkeley Copwatch, Bay Area Landless People’s Alliance, The Grey Panthers, Neither Here Nor There, Poor Magazine, The United Front Against Displacement, and Berkeley Friends on Wheels.

Protest sign: Hold-drivers-and-police-accountable-sign-01.pdf

Posters / flyers

Hold-drivers-and-police-accountable-11×17-01.pdf

Hold-drivers-and-police-accountable-8.5x11in-01.pdf

Hold-drivers-and-police-accountable-8.5×11-2up-01.pdf

JPG thumbnails of the posters:

Hold-drivers-and-police-accountable-11×17-01.jpg

Hold-drivers-and-police-accountable-8.5x11in-01.jpg

Hold-drivers-and-police-accountable-8.5×11-2up-01.jpg

More letters about holding police and drivers accountable for reckless driving and hit-and-run

Hit and Run at Durant and Telegraph – Maxina Ventura – January 29, 2019 – An Open Letter to Berkeley Officials

Open Letter to Berkeley Officials Regarding Hit and Run on Telegraph Yesterday — Marcia Poole, Wednesday January 23, 2019

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Hit And Run At Durant And Telegraph

Maxina Ventura – January 29, 2019

Subject: HIT AND RUN AT DURANT AND TELEGRAPH
From: beneficialbug@sonic.net
To: Jacquelyn McCormick <robleroad@gmail.com>, James Mcfadden <jpmcfadden925@yahoo.com>, Sustainable Berkeley Coalition <sustainable-berkeley-coalition@googlegroups.com>, Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguin <mayor@cityofberkeley.info>, Berkeley City Manager <manager@cityofberkeley.info>, Susan Wengraf <swengraf@cityofberkeley.info>, Ben Bartlett <bbartlett@cityofberkeley.info>, Sophie Hahn <shahn@cityofberkeley.info>, rkesarwani@cityofberkeley.info, Cheryl Davila <cdavila@cityofberkeley.info>, Kate Harrison <kharrison@cityofberkeley.info>, “rrobinson@cityofberkeley.info. Lori Droste” <ldroste@cityofberkeley.info>Cc: Berkeley-Disabled <Berkeley-Disabled@yahoogroups.com>, Andrea Prichett <prichett@locrian.com>

To all whom I hope will be concerned:

Tuesday, 3/22/19, the day of the march in protest of decimation of healthy trees in People’s Park, maybe 40 of us gathered and headed out of the park to go down Telegraph to UC first day of classes, to let people know what had occurred. We had two massive banners, one at the front, and one at the back of the march. It was a perfectly peaceful march until a young driver for whatever reason (entitlement? Out-of-control and not fit to be on the road? Perhaps drugged?) headed into the back of the march at the intersection of Durant and Telegraph. Suddenly, I heard shouting such as, “What the hell are you doing?” and “Stop! Stop!”. Our little march was a bit spread out and I was maybe in the front third. I was maybe 50 feet north of Durant. Obviously, something bad was happening and I tried to get to the intersection as quickly as possible. I was trying to get down the sidewalk full of students and others so I did not witness him driving into Jake’s bike and totaling it, but once I got back to the NW corner of Durant and Telegraph, I heard Tony howling in pain. Jake came up from the curb cut and said this guy had rammed into his bike and that, he’d had to jump out of the way to avoid being run over himself. His bike was completely mangled. The fork of the bike was bent far out of shape, as was the front wheel, which clarified the speed/velocity of the driver in the car. Jake was holding part of the car’s fender which had fallen off after the driver smashed the bike.

When I had turned from where I was north of the intersection, I saw this driver stopping and starting (like a bucking bronco) and then I saw him turn the wrong way onto Durant. By the time I got closer to the intersection I saw the driver hop the curb and then when I got to Durant I saw people trying to block this person after he’d driven over Tony’s feet. They were yelling at him to stop, and people were yelling, “Get his license plate number!” Finally, this out-of-control driver  succeeded in careening down the street wrong way, past anyone trying to stop him.

Several of us stayed around well past Tony being taken by ambulance. We were trying to give witness statements and most of the cops there were beyond uninterested. I was stressing the out-of-control aspect of this driver’s actions. Totally impatient with a little march (probably 40 of us). I was pointing out that when I taught my 3 young people to drive I stressed again and again that if something’s going on, just pull over and cool out before ever getting on the road again.

I waited and waited to give a witness statement. Let me stress here that, these cops were not calling out anything such as, “If you witnessed, please stay and give us a statement.” I basically had to foist myself upon them to get them even to take a statement. I cannot emphasize enough that though there were a few around, they were not actively trying to take statements, only relenting when people said we needed them to take our statements. But in what I saw that Jacquelyn McCormack sent out, you’d have no way of knowing what went on, in spite of people trying to get info to the people who are supposed to be taking statements. There was a sense of hostility from the cops. Someone had just been run over and they didn’t want to be bothered.
I was giving a statement to two cops, and the one said in a harsh way, as though to be interrogating me, someone who’d waited around for quite awhile to give a statement, something like, “What’s your contact info?” I gave him my business card which has on it my phone number and my website info. He demanded my address. You tell me why he would need that? But I have nothing to hide, so gave it, and he walked away as I was trying to give them both my statement.

Here’s what struck me:

– They showed zero compassion about Tony

– They showed zero compassion about Jake losing his means to his work

– They showed zero interest as I talked about witnessing this person stopping and starting, bucking, obviously out of control

– They showed zero interest in my describing seeing this guy jump the curb, though I did not witness him actually running over Tony since there were so many people on the sidewalk at that NW corner of the Durant intersection. Tony was sitting on the ground, but I could see the car as the driver was speeding across the sidewalk before jumping back into the street (wrong direction)

– They showed zero interest in listening to Jake as he described how he would have been run over, too, had he not jumped out of the way. He tried to hand the cop the piece of the car fender which had fallen off when the driver smashed into his bike. He certainly showed zero compassion for Jake’s distress over losing his means to working for his job.

The one who stayed around when the other one had walked off after interrogating ME about my address, showed zero interest in hearing my description of this driver being obviously out of control, and even less interest as I tried to get him to understand this from a mother’s point of view. I explained that, as a person who’s taught my children basic driving skills, I feel it’s important to stress that this person made every mistake on the books, completely totaling the bike of someone who uses it for his work (and lucky that guy jumped out of the way), and more importantly careening over a sidewalk and running over a human being’s shins/feet. Tony was in dire pain, moaning, howling in pain. And this guy careened down Durant the wrong way once he drove back off the sidewalk.

– HOW DO I COME TO THE CONCLUSION THERE WAS NO INTEREST? IN SPITE OF MY EXPLAINING WHY IT WAS IMPORTANT TO INCLUDE NOTES ABOUT WHAT I EXPERIENCED AS A PARENT WHO’S TAUGHT KIDS TO DRIVE, AND WHAT I SAW BOTH FROM ABOUT 50 FEET AWAY, AND THEN FROM THE NW CORNER AND THEN RIGTH BY TONY, HE TOOK NEXT TO NO NOTES, AND AS FAR AS I COULD SEE, DID NOT TAKE MY NAME. THE OTHER ONE DID BUT WALKED OFF, BUT IF THEY ACTUALLY INTERVIEWED 14 PEOPLE, ARE THEY GOING TO MATCH NOTES ABOUT WHICH NAMES GO WITH WHICH STATEMENTS? HE WAS TOTALLY DISMISSIVE AND YOU MIGHT ASK HIM WHY. NO STATEMENTS ON PAPER ALLOW A COMPLETELY OUTRAGEOUS REPORTING AND THEN ACCEPTANCE BY THE CITY. YOU NEED TO KNOW WHAT YOU’RE WORKING WITH HERE

No wonder other city people have no clue what happened. Yes, Tony is black and homeless and disabled. Apparently some of those who run this town see him as expendable, because that is how at least a couple of the cops acted, and how dismissive some city people were when they got a report. A younger cop seemed to be trying to take down some notes from some others, but if he wrote anything that told the story of what actually had gone on, it seems not to have been included. And nothing from my statement was included in what went out to city people. The idea of collecting witness statements is to put together a full picture of what occurred. The cops were completely negligent, and some apologist parent is helped to let his out-of-control son apparently get completely off the hook.

– PLEASE INTERVENE AND DO NOT LET THIS KID JUST WALK AWAY. THE DAD BLAMING OTHERS FOR DAMAGE TO HIS CAR? WOW! MAYBE MAKE THE KID PAY FOR THAT $2000 THE DAD SAYS IS THE COST OF DAMAGE.

Consider that THE DAD MADE TIME THAT VERY DAY TO GET THE CAR ASSESSED FOR DAMAGE COST BUT APPARENTLY, HAS NO INTEREST IN THE PEOPLE HIS SON HAS DAMAGED

– PLEASE DO NOT LET THIS BE THE OUTCOME OF SUCH GREAT ENTITLEMENT. WE DO NOT WANT THIS KID ON THE ROAD. HIS LICENSE SHOULD BE YANKED,  ANGER MANAGEMENT THERAPY SHOULD BE ORDERED, AND THE FAMILY NEEDS TO TAKE CARE OF THE DAMAGED INDIVIDUALS. TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOUR SON, Mister

So many disabled people are hit in this town by drivers texting, altered by Wifi and GPS/WLAN (here’s an excellent short video of an experiment from Mainz University in Germany: https://vimeo.com/244746945  ) and in this case who knows what other factors are at play, but the father’s reaction as reported makes very clear that, he believes his son, and apparently cannot imagine his son doing anything bad, or is a complete enabler of his son doing anything he pleases.

Some of the powers-that-be seem to be conspiring NOT to look at the truth, and NOT to hold accountable an out-of-control young person who runs over a human being and then does what? Blames people for marching to demand an end to the decimation of the trees in a park? We’ve had decades of trying to hold off the university’s disingenuous moves to encroach on the park, the needed green space and meeting space of thousands over decades (we’re hitting 50 in April). Just as a reminder, UC owns a lot of Berkeley and has many places to plunk down YES… needed housing. It does not have to be there, just like their tennis courts didn’t need to be there (and are a block away), just like their volleyball courts were not wanted by actual users of the park (UC PAID UC students to play volleyball there in ’91 as no one else would. They wanted media saying it was needed. Eventually, we succeeded in getting the world’s biggest litterbox out of the park.

The lie UC keeps stating is many decades old: students don’t use the park. When I hear anyone say that, I know they are unlikely ever to have set foot in the park. Because students are out there all the time enjoying the grass, the sun, the shaded areas (so much less shade now).

Let me register here that, I am completely offended at the negligence and at the seeming lack of any compassion for a lot of people threatened with harm, with one whose work life is harmed and could have massive emotional harm at being so nearly run over himself, and above all for a person already facing really tough circumstances (he’s homeless, he’s disabled, he’s black) who was run over, was in tremendous pain, and while he was turned back out onto the streets from the ER, probably will suffer longterm soft-tissue damage which could further complicate his life.

Sincerely, Maxina Ventura
2304 Roosevelt Ave. #4
Berkeley  94703    900-1160

This is what I just [sent] to a bunch of city people. — Max