421. The Nightclub Man 1997 - 1999 San Francisco. Memories of Prague.

Photo of 1968 Prague from "a world town in" site.

421.

Unpublished book or memoir by Lurene K. Helzer, final draft dated December 1999, The Nightclub Man. It was written in installments between November 1997 and 1999. The memoir is about Czechs in 1997 San Francisco.

When I read this small memoir today, one of the things I can’t help tripping over again and again is the complete social devastation that Russian communism wrought for the 20th Century, as was evident with the social relationships of 1997 Czechs I then met. The ruin of Soviet-dictated communism.

These are only the opening paragraphs. I am still entering manuscript into 2009 computer. I use fictional names for story:

He watched her through the blurred glass as she toed carefully along the puddle studded street toward his bus. The color of the sky was ashen, the gusts vengeful, whipping everything in sight like a powerful, lawless hand. He narrowed his eyes. He was sure he had seen her before. Tonight, he thought, in her black skirt, red turtleneck, and weary eyes, she looked as if she had just returned from a far-off land that had altered her sense of time badly.

The driver, smiling steadily, was a tall, trim, smartly handsome black man. He liked his job, and thought he could read people. The last passenger boarded, and the driver moved the bus west on Sacramento Street.

“It’s Friday, November 21, 1997, 5:13 p.m.,” he announced. His voice was velvet and calm, but authoritative, as a jazz station announcer. “The Dow closed up 23 points today at 7.881.10, gold is hovering just above $300 an ounce, and the NASDAQ lost 15 points to 1,620.75.”

One man, wearing a well-cut navy blue suit and red, paisley tie, looked up from his half-soaked Wall Street Journal with mild irritation. A red-haired woman in a white wool pantsuit and running shoes laughed.

“I’ve seen this guy before,” she said to the confused woman in the seat behind her. “He always has his numbers right, too. Listens to the news right before his shift starts.”

“The forecast calls for rain,” he continued. “It’s going to rain all night. It’s going to rain tomorrow. On Sunday, it’s going to rain. And on Monday, it’s going to rain some more. It is 48 degrees Fahrenheit in San Francisco with occasional gusts. Tonight’s word:” he lowered his voice to a thunder-like tone and said, with perfect Spanish pronunciation. “El Nino.”

327: The look and cost of generational poverty in U.S. cities

[Photo by Lurene Helzer of North Philadelphia slum, 1987. Photojournalist Lloyd Francis driving car.]

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.

326: Berkeley's University Avenue debate of 1994

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.

325: Blood Thirsty Butchers of Japan play 1994 Berkeley

325.

*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.

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.”

324: Monterey County and memories of Marilyn Monroe, 2001

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.

323: San Mateo armed robbery, 2001

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.

322: Assisted suicide bill opposed in Berkeley, 1999

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.

321: Radio controversy for Berkeley's KPFA, 1999

Photo by Lloyd Francis of Rear Adm. Poindexter, Beckler during Iran-Contra Hearings in 1986. Not the subject of text below, but heavy coverage of such events are standard programming on KPFA radio in Berkeley. Ronald Reagan was then U.S. President.

321.

Published news story by Lurene Helzer for Berkeley Daily Planet, April 16, 1999, “KPFA supporters rally.” Story regards fans of Berkeley radio station KPFA, their street gathering to support well-known station employees Larry Bensky and Nicole Sawaya. (See this entry also with other, similar KPFA stories posted on this blog as a group.)

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

In the 1999 news photo running alongside my story, 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.

A second photo by Berkeley Daily Planet Editor Rob Cunningham runs inside. That photo shows the crowd that day from a different angle. Most at the demonstrators held signs:

As the rally was going on, KPFA was simultaneously celebrating its 50th year on the air with the rebroadcast of many of its most memorable shows since 1949, including writer James Baldwin and labor leader Cesar Chavez.

It added a strange, historical feeling to the protest. One could have been at the rally and put a headset tuned to KFPA on to hear, “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness…” in beat poet Alan Ginsberg’s scratchy 1957 broadcast of “Howl.”

Larry Bensky was there to speak. Rally organizers had constructed a kind of stage in the bed of a small truck with microphones. He stepped up into it.

“I’ve been known for a lot of things in my life, but now I seem to be known as the person who was fired for speaking freely on free speech radio,” said Bensky.

There was a large variety of homemade signs at the rally. “Lynn Chadwick and corporate mind-set have to go,” read one.

“While Clinton attacks Yugoslavia, his friends attack KPFA,” read another, drawn up by Aaron Aarons of Berkeley. He said he had made seven or eight signs. Some other attendees, lacking a sign with a slogan, had dipped from his cache of placards.

Laurie MacKenzie, a sample of the small but fiercely dedicated core group of financial do contributors that keep the station afloat, came from San Francisco with her 8-month-old son, Duncan Rocha to attend the demonstration.

She said she had been listening to KPFA for the last 20 years.

“It shouldn’t be run like any other broadcast corporation. The staff and listeners should have a say in the programming – especially the staff,” said MacKenzie.

But who were some of the attendees in the crowd? That was almost the whole story. You had Bill Mandel, after all, who is best remembered for his famous words during the Cold War 1950s.

Whatever your position on the various news events of the long Cold War era, 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, either.

Communism revealed deep rifts within American society and Europe, but also fatal flaws with liberalism itself. With all respect to KPFA, I think the American left needs to be far more candid in portraying the Soviets and the American left as they honestly were in those decades. We may never quite see it, though.

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

320: Berkeley residents nervous about disability laws in 1999

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?”

319: Emeryville and Kaiser's plans for 1994

319.

Published news story by Lurene Kathleen Helzer for East Bay Journal, January 18, 1994, “Emeryville responds to Kaiser’s relocation plans”.

In this story, Kaiser favored Emeryville as the site for a new medical facility, but residents organized an opposition group. Kaiser’s developers felt Emeryville was an easier site.

“‘I think that’s why Kaiser wants to come here, because Emeryville is such an easy get,’” [community activist Madeline Stanionis] said, adding that the city is so pro-development it embarrasses her.”

The residential activist had a point, to some degree. In 2009, Emeryville is a highly-profitable business location in the San Francisco East Bay. It has an Amtrak station, and a small marina. It was once an Ohlone village; the Ohlone tribe was Native American.

318: Assorted library items

318.

Assorted items relating to Lurene Gisee inserted here for record only: Poem written by high school writing instructor, Ray Hanby, about my interests in writing and in poetry, “…she walks the windy beaches at night/searching the stones for seasalts”, circa 1980; Certificate of Merit signed by State Student President, State Faculty President and Executive Secretary from Journalism Association of California Community Colleges awarded to Lurene Helzer, Chabot College, Fourth Place News Story, April 19, 1985; News photo in Hayward Daily Review, circa 1984, regarding former employer Walt’s Productions; Report for Lurene Helzer from Fremont Unified School District, January 18, 1973, from routine hearing test at Harvey Green Elementary School in Fremont, CA, I was in the third grade and was found to be deaf in my left ear; Letter of reference for Lurene Helzer by Fitness USA gym, December 30, 1983, confirming my work as manager of the Hayward gym, and other positions I held for Grecian Health Spa, as it was once known.

317: Memories of Virginia's lynchings, the sounds of laughing; 1991 interview in San Francisco

317.

Published article by Lurene Helzer, North Beach Now, San Francisco Monthly, August 21, 1991, about R. Alan Williams, political activist and artist. See blog in this group: North Beach Man.

316: United Press International, Jerusalem, 1990

316.

Unpublished letter of reference for Lurene Helzer, June 7, 1990, from Bureau Chief William B. Ries, United Press International, Jerusalem office. UPI's office was then on Hillel Street in downtown Jerusalem. I was a visiting student at The Hebrew University in Jerusalem for 1989-1990, so volunteered to do light filing in the office.

I just wanted to "hang out" a few hours each week while I was in Jerusalem. They did not need me there. I did nothing of importance for them, but I was able to observe some workings of the small newsroom during the first Intifadah, read the daily work of reporters. What did I learn? I learned over the weeks that covering domestic militants gets routine as the weeks drone on. The actions of the militants would weekly injure and kill others, destroy property, but the words and slogans were stale. Arafat lacked political talent as the rebellion wore on, and created little of long-term value for the Palestinian people.

I thought it was a loss for them. This was/is only my own observation, though. The reporters and editors I met with UPI did not make such comments in the office, or share with me their personal opinions. They focused on the story at hand, were personally reserved.

315: Marines Memorial Club and Hotel of San Francisco, 2002

Marines Memorial Club and Hotel of San Francisco. Leatherneck Steakhouse.
http://www.marineclub.com/visit_sf.htm

315.

Press release for the Marines’ Memorial Club in San Francisco by Scott deCarrillo, written by Lurene Helzer, July 23, 2002, titled “Why Guadalcanal Matters for America Today”. Press release announced an event at the luxurious hotel and club for U.S. Marines featuring historians and participants of the 1942 Guadalcanal operation in the South Pacific.

I worked at the Marines’ club for a short time in their public relations office. I became too ill to continue working in the summer of 2002, but loved my time there. I was complimented that they hired me, especially since July of 2002 was only a few months after the terror attacks of September 11, 2001 in New York City.

The Guadalcanal presentation was made in cooperation with San Francisco’s Rotary Club on August 6 and 7th of 2002. Attendees could arrange a room at the Association’s immaculate downtown headquarters, and attend a private dinner at the club.

All U.S. Marines always feel protective of American security and integrity, of course, but will feel so profoundly following an attack on the U.S. This 2002 event was about a 1942 World War II battle, but the mood in San Francisco’s downtown was guarded in the wake of the attack in 2001 Manhattan.

314: Hayward's Daily Review in 1985; Copy Clerk letter

314.

Unpublished letter to Lurene Helzer from Supervisor Dennis J. Oliver and Managing Editor Dick Rogers of the Hayward Daily Review, July 26, 1985. The positive letter was only confirming my work as an editorial (copy) clerk for the newspaper in 1984-1985.

I worked in the newspaper’s copy room with Lloyd Francis, Chris Arellano and Sandra Hoover. We ripped incoming items from the wire and delivered to editors. Then, we’d take news material/photos from the editors to the composing room upstairs. The editors had to the check work carefully for journalistic accuracy, legality and credibility.

Photographer Saul Bromberger stopped in sometimes to chat with Lloyd, along with Bay area photojournalist Howard Ford. (Hoover and Bromberger later married and had a family, I believe.) Francis probably helped me get my foot in the door. Ronald Reagan was then the U.S. leader, so many of the stories we ran were involving his decisions during the closing years of the Cold War.

I wrote some news for the paper and its related publications, but the letter couldn’t yet acknowledge this. I had yet to do the freelance writing work for them. I was still in college when I began working for them. I remember it being a fantastic place for a 21-year-old student to work in the mid-1980s.

313: Guns and Needles in 1994 Berkeley

313.

Published news story by Lurene Kathleen Helzer for East Bay Journal, January 18, 1994, “Guns ‘n needles in Berkeley”. Berkeley’s city council was taking a stand in favor of needle-exchange programs and gun control. California’s then-Gov. Pete Wilson did not support gun control laws or needle-exchange programs, according to the council. Gun laws have been on the books like beached whales for years. They can only affect those who obtain guns through conventional channels, through legal paths. These laws don’t affect the thug of East Oakland who murders his gang enemy with an illegal weapon. The witnesses of the murder are afraid to speak. It’s a worn story by 2009.

But the needle-exchange programs in 1994 were relatively novel. Health care professionals still say the needle-exchange programs lessen the spread of AIDS inside poor communities of major cities. Washington D.C. is reportedly the city with one of the highest HIV infection rates of the U.S., according to multiple sources.

As of 2009, AIDS has become sadly common in poor, African-American areas and in non-U.S. cities across the continent of Africa. Much of the HIV’s spread in the U.S. is due to heroin use with dirty needles.

Those drug users then spread HIV through unprotected sex with multiple sex partners. The sex partners, often women, either use drugs themselves or do not ask their partners obvious questions. Even if they do ask questions, they foolishly believe whatever they’re told. If it’s not that, they are prostitutes. Or they are married to men who cheat on them. Or they are sleeping with men who were just released from prison, men who were raped inside prison by the HIV-infected prisoners. Then, at the end of the line, the infected women have kids. Those babies are born with the virus.

The thing is, it’s a far, far uglier pandemic than people realize. It increases each year in black America and in the black populations across Africa. Activists in areas like Washington D.C. still like to say that stemming the epidemic is a matter of “public education,” but this is false in the United States.

People know quite well what spreads HIV and have known since the late-1980s. This is not to imply we should ignore the illness or cut education programs, but it’s really not about teaching people to wear condoms in Washington D.C. anymore.

312: Letter to New York Times, 1997

312.

Published letter to New York Times by Lurene K. Helzer, January 26, 1997. I’m encouraging the building of an “economically viable Palestinian infrastructure with a modern educational system.” I mention the Yitzhak Mordechai, then the new Israeli Defense Minister.

I still think the Palestinians need to build a stable economy and focus on their schools. They would make genuine progress because their neighbors would be eager to take part. World charity and sympathy, which is what they tap now, is unreliable, unpredictable, and has encouraged continuing bloodshed and instability in the territories up to today, February of 2009.

If they were able to make some kind of stable non-aggression pact with Israel, they would have direct access to fantastic economic and educational opportunity on virtually their own terms, in their neighborhoods. Peace would develop on its own.

This can be said regarding many of today’s adjacent nations, however. Compare the difference in relations between the United States and Canada, and the United States and Mexico. It largely lies in the respective educational standards and economic systems of the societies, however flawed they may be.

311: Berkeley and Banks, 1999

311.

Published news story by Lurene Helzer for Berkeley Daily Planet, April 15, 1999, “ATM fee limits endorsed: Banking industry opposes city’s ‘ridiculous’ ordinance”.

The council was considering an ordinance to outlaw 1991 usage fees for some ATM machines/networks in Berkeley, or the fees for some ATM transactions. It was a vigorous debate and sheds light today on why banks are so little understood and sympathized with in their massive crisis today.

A local banking industry spokesman, Greg Wilhelm of the California Bankers Association, opposed the 1991 proposal in a subsequent interview. A student group, The California Student Public Interest Research Group (CALPIRG), portrayed bank policies as, essentially, commercially injurious to California’s smaller financial institutions.

The proposed ordinance was meant to protect the interests of the customer who, for instance, stops in the convenience store to get a soda, has no cash, uses the freestanding ATM there, and is charged an extra few bucks to withdraw his own bank assets. The customer in this case is essentially paying an “intermediary” who maintains the ATM, as well as his own bank, for the transaction.

On February 19, 2009, it’s interesting to revisit the discussions. Berkeley Councilmembers Diane Woolley, Kriss Worthington, Polly Armstrong, Maudelle Shirek, and Linda Maio were all part of the discussion, as was Berkeley’s Mayor Shirley Dean. The most frequent argument of councilmembers was that 1999 banks were misguided or insensitive in their ATM policies, and that they ought to be kind to less-prosperous residents of Berkeley.

It shows the 2009 reader how banks were viewed by San Francisco Bay area residents then. They expected area banks, like Bank of America, to be commercially servile. This is a reasonable expectation to some degree, of course, but at the same time, banks are not charities. They are profit-making businesses, key financial intermediaries inside an economy.

When the attitude displayed in this story begins to surface in a “mass” sense, as the law of the land, you will probably always have things like the massive financial bailouts of 2008 and 2009, the sub-prime crises, foreclosures and more. The financial world cannot, for decades and decades, routinely serve the poor and simultaneously promote a healthy, vigorous economy.

This story reports a typical action of the Berkeley council as it then was, though. At least in those years, the city’s council seemed to back a lot of financial positions that were a waste of city staff’s time. I was waiting for them to pass a resolution at the next meeting that would limit the cost of a cheeseburger on Shattuck Avenue.

310: Unpublished 1997 essay, "Diplomacy under Netanyahu."

310.

Unpublished essay by Lurene Helzer, December 10, 1997, “Diplomacy under Netanyahu.” I corrected some obvious errors (lying, not laying) in this February 2009 review/inclusion of the essay that I wrote more than eleven years ago, but otherwise typed it in as it was originally written in late 1997.

Today, I could not write the same essay because I’m no longer politically active, and because my opinions have shifted substantially, have grown more conservative. I think the Palestinians are lost under Hamas, for one thing. They are losing economic opportunity with this leadership, and many, many other things.

I was still a member of JVP when I wrote this. It’s probably what motivated me to write it in first place. I don’t remember the essay generating much talk then, though, to be honest. I resigned from the group, Jewish Voice for Peace, by 1999 or early 2000, because my opinions about Palestinian actions and leadership then were growing increasingly dismal; I thought Israelis were negotiating with a brick wall by late 1999 or mid-2000. I thought they would get no further with Arafat at the helm.

Some areas of the essay bore me today, or are outright dumb and irrelevant. Other areas of it, like the mention of Hamas as it then existed and was increasingly repositioning itself, are interesting today. I write the word “enemy” in quotes in one section, which is never a good idea in political writing, by the way. It seems to mock one side or the other without cause. It should never be done in political writing.

That aside, my pointing to some of then-Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu remarks as worrying is interesting, since he is again, through 2009 election, taking a higher spot within Israel’s political leadership. I am calling some of his flippant (or hostile) 1997 diplomatic language unwise. I have no position on today’s Israeli elections, though. Today, I would wish them all luck, leave it alone there.

309: Hayward murder suspect, 2001

309.

Published news story by Lurene Helzer for Bay City News, June 26, 2001, “Hayward Police Arrest Man for Alleged Homicide”. The alleged suspect was 19. I did not follow the case, but if he was tried and convicted of a crime similar to that outlined here from the first reports (a fight over money, a slam on a head, video of him trying to unload a dead body outside the immediate commercial district), he is probably sitting today – February 2009 – in one of California’s 33 prisons.

Why is that of any note today? Because he’s doing one of two things in early 2009 that he was not able to consider or choose in June of 2001.

First, he’s awaiting possible release because of prison overcrowding. California’s broke. A federal judge ruled in February 2009 that the state must begin to thin out the population of California’s prisons by releasing some. It’s probably not the case that he’s awaiting release, however, if he was tried and convicted of this murder. Since that is the possible case, he probably won’t qualify for release in 2009.

What’s the second thing he could be doing, then, assuming the federal court’s 2009 order to release prisoners holds? Finding room to stretch in his prison cell.