bayarealureneb 320 - 339

320.

Published news story by Lurene Helzer, May 3, 1999, Berkeley Daily Planet, “Court may redefine ‘disabilities’”. This lengthy story appeared before the U.S. Supreme Court made some changes to the Americans with Disabilities Act in 2001.

Berkeley residents were nervous about the upcoming case in 1999. There was a sizable disabled population in Berkeley, including the then-serving Berkeley councilmember Dona Spring, who died in July of 2008. She is quoted in my story.

There are also quotes from attorney Gary Near, who was able to provide insight, given his experience with disability cases in San Francisco.

“Sometimes they are, by their very nature, unqualified,” says San Francisco attorney Gary Near, who has experience with ADA cases and monitors developments in the act. “What happens if the pilot loses his glasses in bad weather?”

“When they apply for a job, and the job has specific qualifications, there’s always a tension there, because the employer is in a squeeze between not discriminating and getting the job done right.”

The question for employers, Near said, comes down to, “If I hire this person, will I have other issues of liability?”

321.

Published news story by Lurene Helzer for Berkeley Daily Planet, April 16, 1999, “KPFA supporters rally.” Story, most of which is gone at moment and unavailable on the internet, regards fans of Berkeley radio station KPFA, their street gathering to support well-known station employees Larry Bensky and Nicole Sawaya.

Bensky and Sawaya were then in conflict with the Pacifica Foundation, confronting a possible termination of their contracts.

In the 1999 news photo running alongside my story (authored by an unidentified photographer), San Francisco area broadcaster Bill Mandel addresses the crowd of about 400 Bensky and Sawaya supporters. The crowd was gathered on Berkeley’s Martin Luther King Jr. Way with temperatures nearing 80 degrees Fahrenheit. They were calling for mediation.

Whatever your position on the various news events of the long Cold War era, Bill Mandel was one of the more colorful speakers called to speak during the McCarthy spree.

“This is a book-burning! You lack only the tinder to set fire to the books as Hitler did twenty years ago, and I am going to get that across to the American people!” Mandel said before Senator Joseph McCarthy in 1953, according to transcripts.

When in 1960 a member of the House Un-American Affairs Committee, then in San Francisco, asked Mandel if he was a member of the Communist Party, you can imagine Mandel’s response. Now, the House was in Mandel’s yard.

“Honorable beaters of children, sadists, uniformed and in plain clothes, distinguished Dixicrat wearing the clothing of a gentleman, eminent Republican who opposes an accommodation with the one country with which we must live at peace in order for us and all our children to survive…” began Mandel.

“...where a son of a friend of mine had his head split by these goons operating under your orders, my boy today might have paid the penalty of permanent injury or a police record for desiring to come here and hear how this committee operates. If you think that I am going to cooperate with this collection of Judases, of men who sit there in violation of the United States Constitution, if you think I will cooperate with you in any way, you are insane!” Mandel is recorded as saying in 1960 San Francisco.

You could not have paid me enough to live in the former Soviet Union, but I quickly concede McCarthyism in the United States was no fun. Communism revealed deep rifts within American society and Europe, fatal flaws with liberalism. I think the American left needs to be far more candid in portraying the Soviets as they were in those decades, but we may never quite see it.

Mandel himself is still around Berkeley. He will be 92 on June 4, 2009. So, covering Berkeley was innervating.

322.

Published news story by Lurene Helzer, Berkeley Daily Planet, April 28, 1999, “Assisted suicide bill opposed.” The Berkeley council heard views on legal suicide at this meeting. Assisted suicide has always been a sensitive issue in the United States.

It was interesting to hear how afraid some disabled residents of Berkeley were of assisted suicide law, recognition of the act by law. It raised the ghost, for them, of governments starving or burying the retarded as socially undesirable, or of insurance companies declining to cover the cost of care for serious illness. That is, the insurance would theoretically refuse to cover cancer treatments, but would gladly cover the cost of a physician-assisted suicide.

They sounded to me paranoid that night in 1999 Berkeley. But in 2009, a discussion like this would gather far more public interest. It’s tragic because it’s not that people want to die, but that they refuse to die – or can’t stand death -- leaving their families with millions in medical bills. To be fair, it’s true throughout the world, not just the United States. It’s less of a problem in Europe and Canada, however.

Millions of people prefer European health systems because the cost of public health is shared. In 2009, it’s difficult to make predictions about where the American health system is going. Change seems likely by 2015, though. Major reform will be hard to put off for another decade, according to everything I have heard and read in the past two years.

323.

Published news story by Lurene Helzer, June 26, 2001, Bay City News, “Two Suspects Sought in San Mateo for Armed Robbery.” San Mateo is a fairly quiet city near San Francisco, but, like all cities, has occasional crime.

The victim was walking on a downtown-area street very early on a Sunday morning, so he might have been taking a needless risk in deciding to walk to his destination in darkness. The summer crime was reportedly committed within two blocks of U.S. Route 101 in San Mateo. Residential streets near major freeways are almost always popular crime spots late at night, it seems to me.

324.

Published news story by Lurene Helzer, July 26, 2001, Bay City News, “One Dead, One Seriously Injured in Castroville.”

Castroville, located in California’s Monterey County, rarely comes up in news that I ever notice. If Californians hear of it at all, it’s usually because it’s Artichoke Festival time. This city, agricultural in its character and financial history, calls itself the “Artichoke Center of the World.” In 1948, American film legend Marilyn Monroe (then-known as Norma Jeane Mortenson) was named “Artichoke Queen.” She was still relatively unknown then, but by 1950 would appear in Hollywood’s classic film “All About Eve.”

Monroe had to start somewhere. Why not Castroville? Singer Elton John’s tune comes to my head automatically as I revisit this old news story in May of 2009, but my brain warps the lyrics a bit:

“Goodbye Norma Jean
Though I never knew you at all
You had the grace to hold yourself
While those around you…” PICKED!

Marilyn Monroe is my favorite symbol of old Hollywood. My 2001 story, though, is about teens involved in a horrific auto accident. One died and another was in a coma. California Highway Patrol officers raced to the scene after the high-speed wreck and wrote in their statement that they intended to file charges of vehicular manslaughter against the young driver who was allegedly responsible.

325.

Published news story for East Bay Journal, August 15, 1994, “Punks hang at Gilman Street”, by Lurene Kathleen Helzer. Story is about some of Berkeley’s 1994 music culture.

I include the grammatically-incorrect opening paragraphs of my story (below) because they help today’s reader interpret the photo shown above:

“They came from Japan and called themselves the Blood Thirsty Butchers, one of the bands playing at the 924 Club in Berkeley on a recent Saturday night.

But who cares about them? It’s the victims, er, audience, that were really cool. It is a fashion show for punks – stiff hair with multiple spikes which create shadows on the wall, single magenta curls on bald heads, red skunk stripes.

Most of them are under 18, and look like something out of a 1950s monster movie. This particular Saturday evening the punksters were peaceful.

But, on May 8 of this year, Jello Biafra, lead singer of the Dead Kennedys, was beat up at 12:28 a.m. during what police call a “tense evening” at the club. Police car tires were slashed while officers were inside. According to Lt. Tom Grant of the Berkeley Police Department, club goers that Sunday evening were “hostile to police presence.”

The Blood Thirsty Butchers needed more practice, an amusing thought considering Punk’s a genre of music which depends on clashing chords and intentional disharmony. At Gilman Street though, there’s plenty of graffiti to read, even though it is officially proscribed.

“No drinking, drug use or vandalism in or around the club, and no stagediving or excessively violent dancing during the show,” read a card given to patrons at the door.

Some choice excerpts from the walls inside include:

● “I kissed Christian Beansprout and I’m Not Sorry.”
● “Shelf Life Loves You.”
● “Masturbation 14 Times a Week is O.K.”

*Photograph I have, taken years before story ran, by photographer Lloyd Francis. Photo shows The Dead Kennedys performing in downtown San Francisco’s Moscone Center. It shows Jello Biafra on stage as a fan is pushed back into the crowd after jumping onto the stage.

326.

Published news story for East Bay Journal, July 5, 1994, “Outcry over renaming University Ave. grows” by Lurene Kathleen Helzer. Story is about rather spicy idea to rename Berkeley’s old University Avenue “Avenida Cesar Chavez”, the consequent debates in Berkeley. Merchants were generally against the idea of the avenue’s name being changed.

Thus, the avenue was not renamed after labor leader Cesar Chavez in 1994. However, Berkeley’s North Waterfront Park was renamed Cesar Chavez Park in 1996, two years after I wrote this story. The park is today a popular site for kite flying, dog walking, sightseeing and playing. Between 1957 and 1991, the lot was a municipal garbage dump, albeit a dump with a lovely San Francisco Bay view.

It’s interesting to discover where the old dumps are today in major U.S. regions, the history. You feel like you know where all the “dead bodies” are in town. In this case, we can say Berkeley loves its labor history, imagines Mr. Chavez’ spirit gloriously living on amid the unseen corroded wires of 1959 and rotting vegetables of 1972.

327.

Published news story by Lurene Kathleen Helzer, July 5, 1994, East Bay Journal, “Berkeley eases landlords’ cost to evict”.

This brief story describes a common problem for The City of Berkeley. The problem is general maintenance of the less-wealthy area of town.

Berkeley is a fantastic city noted for academic excellence, science and even for its role in American history. This is known well.

It’s also noted, though, for an unaffordable liberalism. What does that mean?

It means that Berkeley has always had a voting bloc that wants to make life as easy and hospitable as possible for the downtrodden. There would be nothing wrong with this if the poor didn’t come with heaps of costly problems for Berkeley from the start. Let’s try a fair look at it:

The poor, typically, have many “first level” problems for which they’re not even remotely at fault. Chronic illness, lack of education, parental abandonment, for instance. American society seems forgiving of these shortcomings, in general. It’s genuinely not the person’s fault, and they need help immediately.

From those issues, however, spring the more costly problems that average people despise. What are these costly, embedded, “second level” problems?

The frequent problems with drugs and alcohol, the lifelong need for cheap housing, the need for eternal government money and – more than anything – a kind of legal laxity or ignorance coming from poverty that the rest of a metropolis will not tolerate.

This small story is a good example of how the problem works itself out at city hall.
Poor areas of town typically have drug dealers, loitering. With street-drug dealing arrives the violence, broken windows, etc. When it’s time for a city to evict the residents of a crack house or similar property, someone’s got to pay. It might be Section 8 housing, which is supported with federal tax dollars in the first place, and if the residents need to be evicted for their crimes, the city or county or state needs to pay the cops for their work at the property and/or in local courts, sometimes at time-and-a-half. It was costing Berkeley money they did not quite have to spare in 1994.

Members of Berkeley’s city council sometimes wanted to be forgiving of the poverty-stricken residents, their landlords, to keep the housing cheap and available for troubled families. Other city council members did not. They argued about it during this 1994 meeting.

The city attorney, Manuela Albuquerque, also present, finally backed away from the whole debate in slight exasperation. She reminded the politicians she was “just a lawyer” for Berkeley and considered ethical questions about who pays for what to be their problem.

Assuming there is no riot, this is always the conclusion of such debates because there’s only so much a government can do through law. At some point, the cops and lawyers leave the room because there’s literally nothing more they can or will do.

328.

Published news story for East Bay Journal, July 5, 1994, by Lurene Kathleen Helzer, “Berkeley sees traffic nightmare from Kaiser project”. The long story is about a planned medical development in the East Bay, the debates it generated.

I add text from either a second but related story that ran near my story in the same issue, or text I wrote that belongs with my original story. I believe I wrote all the text, but I see my by-line on only one clipping.

The story is about a proposed Kaiser medical development for Emeryville, California. Just the key words and names say much: traffic, Ashby Avenue, San Pablo, 7th Street, Environmental Impact Report, Berkeley Planning Director Gil Kelley, Oakland, BART, California Gov. Jerry Brown, Shattuck Avenue, sinkholes, 1970s, urban cores, jobs, Berkeley City Councilmember Linda Maio, shuttle, street-widening, 53rd Street, Park Avenue, Hollis Street, medical center, 1999, Madeline Stanionis, SON, Mall of America, NIMBY, Michele Molineaux, Saving our Neighborhoods, height, million, $15 million, Greg Meyer, writer, artist, San Francisco, 400 signatures, 3,000 cars, developer.

329.

Published news story for East Bay Journal, July 5, 1994, by Lurene Kathleen Helzer, “Dirtmovers sweep across Berkeley again”. Discussion about street-sweeping machines in Berkeley. Berkeley’s Shirley Dean, then on the city council, said the machines did nothing but “move dirt around.”

For the city, though, the machines had another clever feature insofar as revenue is concerned: moving money around. When the big machines would visit the residential block at 5 a.m., residents needed to move their cars or to not have parked in that convenient spot on the previous evening. If the resident did not consider the city sweeper’s appointed rounds, left the car at the usual spot, the resident could be cited/fined for parking illegally.

This is not just a Berkeley hassle. Cities everywhere probably use these dumb, ugly, loud, creepy, massive vehicles. The city council members were not discussing traffic tickets, however, as some residents of the world might have liked. They were, superficially, discussing sweeping as it related to copper pollution in the San Francisco Bay.

330.

Published news story for East Bay Journal, July 5, 1994, by Lurene Kathleen Helzer, “500 dollars a day for weed-clogged lots”. The Berkeley Fire Department made numerous complaints about residential weeds being a fire hazard. The city council now approved a fine, with the advice of the Berkeley Fire Department, for failure to comply with local fire codes.

Fire codes are tricky. After the terrible 1991 conflagration in the East Bay hills, California’s fire codes took precedence for a few years. By 1994, Berkeley was getting the law back to some semblance of metropolitan “normal,” and updating it for local “climatic, geological or topographical conditions.” In California, the first section of the preceding sentence has assorted interpretations from year-to-year, while the second is perhaps more meaningful to local firefighters from hour-to-hour.

Whatever the case, you were in 1994 California, the subject was fire law, and you would be in big trouble if you were not following fire codes as they related to your front yard.

331.

Published news story for East Bay Journal, July 5, 1994, by Lurene Kathleen Helzer, “‘Not in my back yard’ prevalent in Berkeley”. Area residents in 1994 were against a new social service facility for HIV/AIDS patients.

“It seems strange to me that they would choose a pleasant, well-kept neighborhood to build something like that in,” said Berkeley resident Catherine Bussinger in 1994 for my story.

In 1994, there were 25 social service organizations in Berkeley, located overwhelmingly in one area of the city, which was Councilmember Dona Spring’s downtown-area district. Other areas of Berkeley would not willingly accept facilities for the poor, the mentally ill, the addicted, or tolerate the various social needs in a facility close to home. Councilmember Spring had to object in 1994.

“Spring said the area including Martin Luther King Way, Addison Street, University Avenue and Berkeley Way has enough social service programs.” [Photojournalist Chester King authored the 1994 photo published alongside my story of the proposed site for the controversial facility.]

There’s no need to pick on Berkeley and its residents, though. I’m not calling it hypocrisy; it’s more the misguided essence of modern liberalism itself, the lack of financial “horse sense.” For this reason, many are compassionate in the abstract, but “NIMBY” at home. I only say this because I had to do tens of stories like this in the San Francisco Bay Area.

332.

Published news story for East Bay Phoenix Journal, June 7, 1993, by Lurene Kathleen Helzer, “State Farm deflects lowballing charges”. Allegations in this story that State Farm Insurance was shortchanging claimants after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, which registered as 7.1 on the Richter scale.

The charges were brought to light during a wrongful termination civil suit brought on State Farm by former employees Levente Csaplar and Ina DeLong. DeLong began a consumer-interest organization called United Policyholders, which can be found today on the web.

Being an average reporter, I asked DeLong why she did not come out with her allegations against State Farm as an employee for the insurance company, which she was for 27 years.

“‘Being a consumer advocate doesn’t come with a handbook,’ DeLong said. She was fearful of lawsuits from the company, of [State Farm] trying to prevent her from going public with her allegations. ‘I knew that giving them to (CBS’) “60 Minutes” put me in a better position than giving them to a local paper. I could rest assured that the whole nation would know,’ said DeLong.”

I asked her to provide a solid example of the insurance company’s allegedly dishonest business style.

“‘They say the contractor had a ‘fluffy earth’ theory. And I don’t know where they got that. The contractor had a theory that the earth moved as a result of the 7.1 earthquake. State Farm has some problems with that. That shows their stupidity,’” DeLong told me in 1994.

DeLong also later shared her documents with the newspaper San Francisco Examiner, which published the allegations on Jan. 20, 1991.

When I revisit the story in 2009 for this library, I can’t help considering how much trouble some areas of the American insurance industry are in now, or perceived as being in by investors. I can’t say State Farm was wise or unwise in its business practices of the late 1980s and early 1990s, but they vigorously denied DeLong’s allegations. California tracks complaints regarding the insurance industry.

Whatever one’s view of the insurance industry in the Golden State, though, some of Ms. DeLong’s quotes today still make the California resident laugh.

333.

Published news story for East Bay Phoenix Journal, September 6, 1994, by Lurene Kathleen Helzer, “Berkeley: Powell challenges Dona Spring for council”. Powell, who was slightly more conservative than Spring, challenged Spring’s position representing District 4 on Berkeley’s city council.

It’s interesting to revisit for a moment in 2009 because Powell was identifying herself as a Feminist, which Berkeley candidates were still often doing in 1994 during routine, local elections.

Today, the left often seems to keep a political distance from feminism in campaign statements. I think this is mainly because it’s considered a settled ideological issue, of course, but also because a large area of the left in the San Francisco area sympathizes with Islamic populations, and those Islamic groups are almost never identifying themselves or their concerns as feminist. It’s almost never openly discussed on liberal broadcast shows or in print news sources, either. Feminism has probably gone as far as it can/will in modern world.

334.

Published news story for East Bay Journal, September 6, 1994, by Lurene Kathleen Helzer, “Berkeley: Nov. voting choices”. Berkeley’s loitering ordinance was appearing on the ballot after more than 7,000 residents signed petitions for it, along with several other items.

This U.S. House election, coming in the middle of President Bill Clinton’s first term, ushered in Republican Newt Gingrich as Speaker at the U.S. House of Representatives. He campaigned on his popular Contract with America set of reforms. For Berkeley, it was a Contract ON America, as local reporters occasionally joked. (Not my gag, but I laughed when hearing it during elections from Photojournalist Lloyd Francis.)

There were actually several issues confronting the East Bay city in 1994 other than those around panhandling on the city’s main streets. For instance, Berkeley was waving goodbye to Apartheid government in South Africa by asking voters to repeal ordinances prohibiting Berkeley from dealing with financial institutions which did business with South Africa, as South Africa existed in earlier years as a strict, racially segregationist government.

Apartheid was an important issue for Berkeley students in the 1980s, so it’s not stunning that Berkeley’s council reacted to the conclusion of Apartheid during this meeting. I was not an activist compared to others in those days, but even we who kept our mouths comparatively shut knew that Apartheid wasn’t working, no matter what the defense offered. I would talk occasionally to average people who had routine business trips to South Africa. They always said -- if they said anything -- they were glad to leave the area as it then existed with segregation.

335.

Published news story by Lurene Kathleen Helzer, May 17, 1993, East Bay Phoenix Journal, “Insurance companies deserting disaster areas”. My story focused on Florida, as 34 insurance companies pulled out of the state in 1993, declining property coverage to residents. Up to then, it was one of the most bizarre financial situations I’d covered or heard of regarding property insurance in the United States. I show some of my 1993 story below, in italics:

In the first quarter of 1993 there were $2.8 billion in losses for the insurance industry. This figure includes the [February 26, 1993] bombing of the World Trade Center in Manhattan and the “Storm of the Century” which hit the East Coast late this winter, said Gary Kerney of Property Claims Services, a division of American Insurance Services Group.

By contrast, in the first quarter of 1992, insurance losses were $810 million — a record amount at the time. By the end of the year [1992], after hurricanes Andrew, Iniki and the Los Angeles riots ran their courses, the insurance industry was faced with $23 billion worth of damage.

Kerney, who is director of catastrophe services for his company, hesitated to speculate on the immediate future of the industry. But he also said the industry as a whole was “confident.”

“Who knows what’s in store for us? They’re difficult questions to answer. If we have one (major disaster) this year, things will be difficult. But if eight (quiet) years go by, we could handle it,” Kerney said. “It may have been a run of bad luck,” he said.

336.

Published news story by Lurene Kathleen Helzer, August 1, 1994, East Bay Journal, “Berkeley: Mayoral hopeful opposes loitering restrictions”. Don Jelinek was the only Berkeley candidate for this election taking a position against ordinances to control panhandling in Berkeley. Berkeley was going to vote November of 1994.

The candidate Jelinek, once an attorney working on Wall Street, had previously served on Berkeley’s city council. Maudelle Shirek and Dona Spring, both Berkeley councilmembers in 1994, also stood against the panhandling ordinance. For this interview, Jelinek shared an interesting memory about civil rights leader Martin Luther King, which I added to story:

In 1966, he found himself in a room with a group of civil-rights workers, including Martin Luther King Jr. Jelinek had an idea for a three-state march, and began outlining his idea to the crowd.

They all listened for about 15 minutes. Suddenly, King exclaimed, “Toilets?”

There was a silence in the room. “Medicine?” King said next.

King went on like that, Jelinek said, punctuating the silence with single words. King’s point was that Jelinek needed to plan his ideas out in detail, including how he was going to care for the participants, who were always in danger.

“I can tell you. I was fighting back tears. I felt humiliated, put-down,” Jelinek recollected. “The next day I came back with a plan that included towels, blankets, medicines, toilets…Only then would he listen to the plans I had for this march.”

337.

Published news story by Lurene Kathleen Helzer, August 1, 1994, East Bay Journal, “Berkeley steps back from panhandling issue”. Brief story about city council’s decision to put the issue of panhandling to local voters for the 1994 November ballot in Berkeley. It would be an advisory vote, thus non-binding.

Berkeley Mayor Jeff Leiter said he understood any proposed ordinance would be controversial, but that local merchants and voters were increasingly complaining to him about Berkeley’s main streets in 1994; the growing number of beggars on Shattuck, Telegraph and College avenues.

Even more interesting, Mayor Leiter’s family helped build the early Berkeley. Jeff Leiter’s full name was Jeffrey SHATTUCK Leiter. He was probably more liberal than his ancestors, but Berkeley’s founder, Francis Kittredge Shattuck, lived in the area from 1824-1898. He was active in California’s politics in that period.

Mayor Leiter did not often discuss his personal history in 1994 Berkeley, but he cared deeply about the city his ancestor put on the California map. In fact, another of the city’s streets is Kittredge, also named after the early founder. Mayor Leiter of 1994 Berkeley was gay, making him perhaps Berkeley’s first/only gay mayor.

338.

Published news story by Lurene Kathleen Helzer, May 2, 1994, East Bay Journal, “Berkeley needs drug dogs & 31 cops”. Story involves a 1994 study on law enforcement in Berkeley.

The report by PERF (Police Executive Research Forum) pointed to the holes in Berkeley’s law enforcement patterns. Councilmembers were skeptical listening to the study findings during the 1994 council meeting. PERF, after all, emphasized the need for “community policing” in Berkeley, more cooperation and routine communication between the East Bay city’s residents and its police.

Community policing is typically successful is affluent areas of California, but an uphill battle for much of Oakland or Los Angeles. The reason? Minority and immigrant communities are generally extremely afraid and/or distrustful of police. This fear of authority is easy to put together when you picture a drug dealer in East Oakland or Richmond, CA. He does not want anything to do with police because he doesn’t want to get caught again.

The difficulties inherent in community policing do not as easily come to mind, however, when considering the Berkeley resident who is a native of, say, Iran or Ivory Coast. Those 100% legal immigrants do not put the concepts of “police” and “safety” in the same universe, and may never. If you’re the Iranian stopped by a traffic cop for going slightly over the speed limit, watching the cop walk over to your car door, you’re turning pale, scared stiff.

339.

Published news brief by Lurene Kathleen Helzer, June 20, 1994, East Bay Journal, “Berkeley: Smoking while playing bingo OK”. Berkeley had outlawed smoking in public places in November of 1992. But in this case, Berkeley allowed a wall to stand between smokers and non-smokers at The Gilman Street Bingo Hall.

The bingo games helped support Berkeley-Richmond Jewish Community Center, Berkeley Symphony Orchestra, D.E.A.F. Media, Inc. and the Japanese Services of the East Bay. All of the organizations, as well as the city, were under pressure by bingo players who would spend/lose their charitable dollars outside Berkeley if they could not smoke.