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Re: “Unfounded Fears”
I was born and raised in Berkeley. Some of my friends did not make it. Years wasted. Drugs-suffering-death. My own child was a drug addicted street kid for about Three weeks. We got her into treatment. Berkeley is enabling drug addition! I suggested in one of my parent support groups that some of the Berkeley adults I speak with seem to think that all the street kids don't have a family who loves them. The parents went crazy. We are suffering! We don"t know where are kids are! Some of them are mentally ill! All the street kids are addicted! Or are drinking hard. The only time my kid wants to be out there is when she is using. We need treatment! Most of the kids have some member of there family that are functional. Who want them to be safe and off the street. I speak the truth. I talk to the kids. I talk to the families. The Berkeley High kids are not safe. This town needs to wake up. We have a drug crisis.
Re: “How Peet's Starbucked Itself”
I just want to pitch in my two cents and say I completely agree with the article. Peet's has changed for the worse over the past few years. I have seen the stress level rise to the point that shift leads are in tears almost every shift. This was a fun, challenging and rewarding job. Now it seems like not only we can never please the demanding management, we don't get paid anywhere near the living wage but we are forced to "volunteer" and work off the clock as well, since not enough time is provided to complete tasks and you get written up if you go into overtime. I know that all the Peetniks at my store would agree.
Re: “Unfounded Fears”
A one-sided, stereotype-laden, ill conceived, abysmally written, and extremely long hit piece by an ethically challenged hack writer masquerading as an investigative journalist generally doesn’t make it to print in a reputable newspaper. But, apparently, the East Bay Express has nothing approximating publishing guidelines, so the match was made.
In “Unfounded Fears: Why the controversy over a Berkeley measure that would ban sitting on sidewalks is overblown,” Rachel Swan has provided a model for writing hit pieces. Here are some of her rules, along with examples:
1. Imply a lack of objectivity by using snide descriptors: “Spitting distance” from the BART, “mounds of detritus,” and a “horde of activists.”
2. Imply that homeless people lack humanity: “Ambassadors would quietly shoo homeless people away from the city's main commercial districts.”
3. Imply that homeless people are to blame for skyrocketing rents: “Owners and managers of commercial property”… “have a hard time renting … because the scene … has had a real chilling effect,” explains the CEO of the Downtown Berkeley Association.
4. Imply that an area has been damaged to divert attention from damaged individuals: “A mere glance at the empty windows and gutted buildings shows that the area is suffering.”
5. Imply that the opponents of Measure S are less than honest by creating an ad hominem argument: “after all, homeless people won't be moving to other areas of the city if they're in jail.”
6. Imply the necessity of creating a homogenous area by rationalizing the elimination of homeless people: “[Berkeley is] now home to a more affluent student population with greater discretionary income, and it's right on the cusp of becoming a busier commercial center.”
I could go on to page two, but I’ll stop here.
The following organizations oppose Measure S (partial list): Alameda County Peace and Freedom Party, ACLU of Northern California, American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, ASUC Senate, Berkeley Citizens Action, Berkeley Society of Friends, Building Opportunities for Self-Sufficiency, Cal Democrats, City of Berkeley Peace and Justice Commission, Community Defense, Inc., Disabled People Outside Project, East Bay Community Law Center, East Bay Stonewall Democratic Club, East Bay Young Democrats, Food Not Bombs, Gray Panthers of the East Bay, Green Party of Alameda County, Homeless Action Center, International Indian Treaty Council, John George Democratic Club, Meiklejohn Civil Liberties Institute, National Lawyers Guild, Western Regional Advocacy Project (WRAP), and Youth Spirit Artworks.
Measure S will not help homeless people.
Measure S will not help Berkeley small businesses.
Measure S will waste tax money that could be spent on services and job opportunities, and on revitalizing Berkeley’s commercial district.
NO on Measure S!
Re: “Unfounded Fears”
I'm not that keen on these measures, but I would never vote against it. My empathy extends to the people on the sidewalk, and to the people running the businesses, and to myself, and others who love to go for a walk down a street without stepping over someone's "home". It isn't empathy to leave people living on the street, and it isn't compassion. It's abuse, and it is time Berkeley stopped being codependent. Sometimes a push is just what humans need to make changes in their lives....
Re: “Unfounded Fears”
If the goal of Berkeley related to Measure S is to get people OFF the street--and into services...and the main problem is homeless youth...then there needs to be some place for homeless youth in Berkeley to go during the day--to get off the street. But there is NOT. Berkeley has no drop in center for homeless youth. So if a youth is homeless (and there are 400 homeless youth in Berkeley on any given day) they have NO PLACE to go. What "services" are they going to be directed to via Measure S? Youth use the public library as the de facto drop in center right now. With no place to go we are creating a situation where youth will just be shuffled from block to block, and endlessly ticketed. Berkeley needs to create a center for homeless youth that includes drop in services and shelter. Measure S is a cruel waste of taxpayer dollars on a strategy that is NOT going to work!
Re: “Unfounded Fears”
This article is incredibly biased. In San Francisco, 58% of Haight Street merchants who were interviewed one year after the sit/lie law went into effect there said that there were the same amount or more people loitering outside of their businesses as before the law was implemented. But somehow this reporter didn't manage to talk to any of them. As far as I know, there are already several laws in place in Berkeley that are used against people who are aggressive or disruptive outside of businesses--disorderly conduct, disturbing the peace, and anti-camping ordinances, among others. If those aren't working, why is yet another law going to work any better? Meanwhile, I think of the times when I sit on the street. I have a knee injury, and it's usually when I'm tired and need a rest, and there's no where else to sit down. I've often done this when I've traveled abroad. Are we going to start citing tourists who sit on the sidewalk when they're tired from dragging their luggage around town? Berkeley can do better than this.
Re: “Unfounded Fears”
I was blown away by how one-sided this article is given the controversy of the issue--it's practically an extended pro Measure S statement. Amazing--voters
would have no idea there are in fact serious problems with Measure S.
There is in fact zero evidence of any connection between homelessness on the streets and local business struggles--none whatsoever. Beyond that, Measure S penalizes homeless people for much bigger economic problems, and is based on a model that has failed in SF. But this article ignores all that.
This is by far the most one-sided and heavily biased article I've seen on Measure S. Readers and voters deserve better -- it's one thing to have a bias, quite another to totally ignore facts and countering views. Before you vote, visit www.noonsberkeley.com. No matter what you think about homeless people on the streets, Measure S won't fix anything, and it's a waste of taxpayers' time and money. Vote No, and let's get some real solutions going instead of kicking homeless folks around while fixing nothing.
Re: “Unfounded Fears”
Wow, Express: very biased reporting you've got going on here: reads like an ad for the DBA!
Anyone else surprised that John Caner is not the director, but the CEO of the DBA? CEO?? iS the DBA for profit? And if so, why are they presented as serving the community?
Re: “Unfounded Fears”
Telegraph Avenue started a steep decline starting around 1995. Cody's Books owner Andy Ross with support of the TAA started agitating for the removal of undisirables from the Ave. At the time I told Andy that "If you run off the characters of Tele, someday you will have to hire actors to play them." That day has come. Telegraph Ave. was at that time a world famous "scene" a little (O.K. a lot) unruly, but interesting and vital. Merchants did well and rents reflected that. Then the geniuses at TAA made sure our police ran everyone off. People that came looking for that fabled place welcome to people of all stripes, found a ghost town. No "scene" at all and people never even parked. Business, starting to suffer and business leaders, getting criticism, compunded their error by pointing the finger and cracking down on what little was left. Hence the "ghosttown" you see today. People can shop anywhere, but there was only one Telegraph and your leaders threw the baby out with the bath water. Prospective renters look at the rents, and Telegraph rents are still at Tourist Attraction prices. I've had a great plan to revitalize Tele in a drawer here for years, but when you have business people put faith in leaders like Roland Peterson and that wacko at the Med. Craig Becker (Who wants to have "sitting schools" for illegal sitters,like bad drivers schools.) and John Caner with his hilltop Sonoma County retreat (TipTop) stepping over and on our most vunerable people. Coupled with supposed service providers like Davida Coady who says. "Pay me, I'll set it up!! People that are only too happy to take huge sums of taxpayer money to give you the same old song and dance that has been shoveled year after year. Business and supposed civic leaders (Bleeders) that have no idea of what makes a place like Telegraph tick and feed on the dysfunction.
Scenes evolve, and sometimes they are killed. They take roller-coaster rides depending on the times, the participants ect. I've heard the lame stories about how much better people were in the old days. How the activism of today just copies or shadows the past glories of Berkeley. There are no copies or shadows. After the rich "beautiful" people have their fun the people that these changes matter to, are left to trudge on. Here's a pro tip for you. The movements in Berkeley come about not because it is such a great place filled with beautiful people, precisely the opposite. The repression of speech, brought the Free Speech Movement. The neglect of the disabled brought the Independant Living Movement and the rapacious taking of land by eminent domain, led to People's Park. Just as the "No Blacks above Grove Street, led to our local addition to the Civil Rights Movement.
Things like SITTING LAWS try to turn the clock back. To a time of intolerance, racism and elitism. Berkeley is a place where the excesses of the rich and parasitic, can't keep out of the public eye, and that's too bad....For them.
What's grungy to some is colorful to others (see Nirvana) My point is. Don't cry about your not making money when you have no comprehension of where your bread is buttered and don't go scapegoatin' 'round here.
Vote NO, NO, NO on SSSSSSSsssssssssss.
Re: “Unfounded Fears”
The San Francisco Chronicle had a front page story that put in writing what many of us have known for a long time. Sitting laws, touted as a way to run off legions of wayward youngsters, have mostly come down on the grey and balding heads of the aged and disabled. The ones too addled to get out of the way.
Our Berkeley Mayor and his Republican rubber stamp council has known these results and have still pressed on because the Berkeley law on the November ballot is not about sitting at all.
It's about favors to campaign contributors (Berkeley Chamber of Commerce) and a sly way to transfer an unequal amount of Police protection to Shattuck Avenue and other commercial zones. While the police are “move along, move alonging” on the avenues, transferring no-shows to court, testifying, etc., we are being told there will be a wait for a police response to the psycho in our driveway.
Hundreds came out to city hall in July to express what a bad idea this is. But one man from the chamber sealed the deal. In my neighborhood we know that if you need help from the City, you don't call Councilman Darryl Moore, you call Kriss Worthington. Kriss, Jesse and Max are the only ones not wrapped up in the cocktail circuit and begoggled by real estate tycoons.
The Mayor and the council members that support this tell me that it is only $27,000, like $27,000 is nothing. But $27,000 is a ton of money when you are feeding the hungry, saving a mortgage or keeping a shelters door open. And that $27,000 is a lie. That's just to put it on the ballot. That doesn't factor in the police hours, court costs, lawsuits and the untold suffering visited upon people already at the end of their rope and the costs to our neighborhoods in losing more police availability at a time when property crimes and shootings, unheard of on Shattuck Ave. Are a source of concern in our neighborhoods.
Dan McMullan is the director of the Disabled People Outside Project.
Re: “Unfounded Fears”
It is possible all piles of this edition papers have been stolen out of newspaper boxes at the downtown. I have never seen them as empty on a Thursday morning. Found it past Dwight Way, near Pegasus. Is there some shenanigans going on?
Re: “Unfounded Fears”
Incidentally, while Measure S wouldn't do a thing to help businesses or people, it would do a lot of harm.
It costs more, month by month, to put people in jail than it does to send them to Cal. Since a second violation would carry a penalty of up to 6 months in jail, that's an incredible drain on city resources.
If we want to get people off of the sidewalks, we can invest those resources in a shelter that's open during the day (which Berkeley doesn't have). If we want to help people break the cycle of poverty, we can invest those resources in having more than 135 shelter beds for over 600 people!
Burying someone under piles of citations and jail terms is profoundly harmful when that person is broke and alone to begin with.
A staggering number of people on the streets are LGBTQ youth who were kicked out of their homes when they came out to their families. Homeless people are disproportionately people of color, veterans, former foster children, and people living with mental illness.
When you attack people living on the streets, you attack some of the most marginalized people in our society. That's not what community looks like.
Re: “Unfounded Fears”
We know that sit/lie wouldn't help businesses make a single dollar.
The San Francisco City Hall Fellows report found sit/lie to be a complete failure. According to Berkeley city records, commercial areas with visible homelessness have fared better during the recession.
In other words, we can verify that the central premise behind Measure S is false. People sitting on the sidewalk have zero effect on business.
Why the insistence that there must be some connection? Why, in the middle of big box stores stealing business and an economic collapse caused by the big bankers, do we pick out homeless people?
To speculate, I think we're taking our general discomfort with poor people and trying to give it some justification. We don't want to say that we're uncomfortable because we're terrified that we might be poor someday too. We don't want to say that we blame them because we feel guilty for going home to warmth and comfort while they shiver in the rain.
We know that poor people don't cause economic downturns, but we're willing to believe it, because the alternative is that we might have a responsibility to help them.
Re: “Unfounded Fears”
26 paragraphs in support of Measure S. 5 opposed. Was there any actual journalistic coverage of Measure S in the Express, this year, or is this long-form op-ed all we're getting?
Re: “Yelp and the Business of Extortion 2.0”
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Re: “Unfounded Fears”
Well, thanks for giving me a list of Berkeley businesses I will NOT patronize in the future. Let's see: Revival (we just cancelled dinner plans for tomorrow night there), the Caffe Mediterraneum (which I patronized for years before Becker took over), Paul's Shoe Repair and many more. These greedy and stupid merchants (whose business the Express assiduously courts) don't seem to know that there's a recession going on, or that almost all of the behaviors they complain about are already illegal.
And the sloppy reporter doesn't seem to have checked out the garbage that phony "socialist feminist" politico Mike Rotkin fed her about Santa Cruz, where street beggars of all stripes still abound on the main drag, just as they always have.
Re: “Unfounded Fears”
Is Jesse Arreguin the last compassionate leader in Berkeley? He's the only person quoted in this article who sees homeless people as human beings with needs, not convenient scapegoats for complex social and economic problems.
I don't think most homeless people have made a lifestyle choice or any choice at all to camp out on the street. Had the journalist interviewed more than one homeless person, she might have come away with a different understanding of the causes of homelessness.
And incidentally, I've lived near downtown Berkeley for 16 years and have never been hassled by homeless people. Sure I've been panhandled a lot but it certainly doesn't deter me from shopping or dining. (Venus is one of my favorite restaurants). It just makes me sad for the panhandler--that's all, not scared, not angry, not victimized, not disgusted. Just sad. Shoppers aren't the victims in this social tragedy.
Re: “Unfounded Fears”
How about this: Let's impose a fee for vacancies in commercial spaces all over Berkeley. Landlords won't adjust rent to align with the market, charging amazingly out-of-touch rents that were ridiculous even during the boom times. We tax vacancies that endure for longer than 6 months, and where rents don't match the market rates. Vacancies make downtown and Telegraph "hard" for folks who want their businesses to succeed. We use this money to fund a year-round shelter for homeless youth. Merchants win because homeless youth have somewhere to go, landlords who are in dreamland with the rents they expect actually pay their fair share to make downtown and Telegraph more "welcoming". Measure S is just a whiny, "Wah, wah, Mayor Bates! Arrest homeless youth! We can't make enough money because no one will pay our exorbitant rents." plea from property owners whose vacant storefronts in every district in Berkeley are a suck on actual businesses that make actual money from our neighborhoods. It's not homeless youth who make commercial rents in Berkeley ridiculous and out of touch. It's that greed thing.
Re: “Unfounded Fears”
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Re: “A Worker's Life Under H&R Block”
I am in the midst of taking the first tax preparer's class and it did indeed cost me $199, and indeed bilingual speakers are allowed to take classes in my area for $99 and are told they are looking for bilingual speakers... we have some in our class and they are pandered to often not knowing how to use a computer or needing help translating the english instructions... I am doing well in the class and if hired as a first year tax preparer will get a salary I started with in 1979. I was already told I probably wouldn't do more than 50 tax returns a year and I must have looked surprised because the person that told me this then looked down quickly, I do them manually and correctly in 1/2 hour so using the software I'd be able to whip them through... perhaps 50 every two weeks not 50 the entire season... but I am not letting that deter me because I will find out from the manager of the office I will work out how she or he handles newbees... I enjoy doing the returns so perhaps after getting some experience if the pay is shoddy I can go elsewhere...