COLLEGE POLITICS OF 1984-1985, UNWELCOME MEMORIES OF 1978 PEOPLE'S TEMPLE MURDERS FOR SF BAY AREA, JOURNALISTS

1, Jackson in San Francisco for 1984 Democratic Convention. I attended that convention as student observer. Photo by Lloyd Francis; 2, July 15, 1984 at Moscone Center, Democratic Convention rally for Marijuana rights, Photo by Howard Ford.

427.

Published news stories by Lurene Helzer, The Chabot College Spectator, May 10, 1984. “ASCC Seeks New Liaison,” “Gwilliam Turns Down Stipends,” “Meet Chabot’s Ronald Graham”.

428.

Published news stories by Lurene Helzer, The Chabot College Spectator, March 9, 1984. “Up, Up and Away…”. Story is about Chabot’s forensics team.

429.

Published news stories by Lurene Helzer, The Chabot College Spectator, March 16, 1984. “Marketing Team Wins Awards,” “ Aguiar For The Defense”.

430.

Published news stories by Lurene Helzer, The Chabot College Spectator, April 26, 1984. “Polls Close Tonight For ASCC Election,” “It’s Official: Escobar’s Eligible”. It was an average newspaper for a community college, but in 2009, I can recognize the outlines of future news events.

You had three students running for 1984 student government. Ray Gwilliam, Eddie Escobar and Michael Faryabi. Even then, you were scratching your head when candidate/incumbent Michael Faryabi kept calling actions of the student government “illegal.”

Illegal? Nobody quite knew what Faryabi was ranting about. Today, you very easily do: maybe the governments of Iran and/or Afghanistan.

You recognize in these old speeches a clear rehearsal for Mideast/Islamic diplomatic rhetoric that is common today for diplomats out of Iran, Afghanistan and Israel’s West Bank/Gaza Strip. This style of activism – assuming a minor political position in the U.S. simply to gain a podium and promote an unrelated cause -- became more pronounced by Palestinian sympathizers on many U.S. campuses by 1988.

It’s now used all the time in 2009. You’ll see a group promoting pediatric health, but they’re always stuck on Palestinian kids’ health, somehow, and since they’re on that subject, how about Palestinian rights in general....

But the observer needs to step back, consider the general background of the activist. I doubt this obfuscatory style of political activism was invented by Islamic immigrants. I think it’s probably a style used by people coming from non-democratic, authoritarian countries in general. I could be wrong from one case to another, but I can’t help putting it together this way while revisiting this 1984 story in 2009. I think it was the public speaking style of the era for many Afghans in the East Bay. They were thinking still of the Soviet invasion.

In Iran, for example, one would have a hard time starting a club advancing women’s rights, per se. Let’s face it: makes more sense to start a knitting club in Tehran and spend the entire afternoon – yarn openly displayed – discussing rights in Islam relating to….knitting. The women return home in safety. Nobody gets jailed the next day.

431.

Published news stories by Lurene Helzer, The Chabot College Spectator, May 17, 1984. “Marketing Team Walks Away With Medals”. What stands out about this issue of the campus newspaper is not my story, but that Jesse Jackson was on the front page, preparing to make a run for the U.S. presidency.

Student Journalist Catherine Kellam wrote a story about Jackson’s speech at SF State. Jackson is quoted in her story promoting friendlier relations between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Ronald Reagan was then U.S. president.

Jackson was one of many in those late years of the Cold War who favored a friendlier stance toward Soviet Russia. The Soviet Union was in 1984 led by Konstantin Chernenko. With this leader, the Soviets, in retaliation for earlier U.S. actions, boycotted the Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, encouraged increased KGB oppression on political dissidents in the Soviet sphere, and forged ahead with a useless conflict inside Afghanistan. (We are in Afghanistan today, by the way, having about as hard a time in that tribal society, so....)

Jackson, like so many with the left in those years, had major blind spots when it came to recognizing the Soviets as they truly were inside Eastern Europe and Russia. After the fall of The Berlin Wall and the crumbling of the Soviet-led dictatorships, critics like Jackson seemed a bit reluctant to revisit their earlier positions regarding the Soviets.

This is a key point today because there are as many or more nuclear weapons now as there were then. Activists like Jackson seem far less vocal about nuclear weapons today than they were in the 1980s. The holders of nuclear weaponry today seem far less politically stable, rational, than were the dictatorial Soviets of 1984.

432.

News stories for Chabot College Spectator between May, 1984 and June, 1985. Or, these are the copies I still have. I was editor of the campus newspaper by June of 1985.

In that 1985 issue, I wrote a longer story about journalism, and about the 1978 Jonestown murders by Jim Jones. San Francisco Photojournalist Greg Robinson, working for The San Francisco Examiner, was killed, as were many others.....to be continued.

Cigarettes, Jerusalem, October 2000

H.D. photo of field in India, date unknown.

426.

Unpublished poem by Lurene Helzer, October 21, 2002, “Cigarettes, 1, Jerusalem, October, 2000.” I must have written this about someone I met in Jerusalem as I was thinking about my own struggles to quit smoking. I had quit, restarted, quit for good a year later. Outside that, I am not sure what prompted the writing of this dismal poem:

I saw bones. Bones of the near future.

She would never lie, all crushed innocence, in a mass grave in Europe. She would not disintegrate against the awful force of an explosion at high noon. She would not suffer….she wrote her meaning in white chalk, in white smoke…

425: HE FLED NAZIS, LOST BOTH PARENTS, ESCAPED COMMUNISTS AND THEN -- AFTER SURVIVING ALL THAT -- ARRIVED IN U.S. AND VOLUNTEERED FOR VIETNAM WAR

Photo from Vietnam War 1968 from siue.edu website

425.

Published news story by Lurene Helzer, September 24, 1987, El Cerrito Journal, “EC physical therapy clinic stresses the human touch”. This is one of those short news stories that, for a small newspaper, define the real job.

You are trying to let residents of the area know what’s around them, where they can spend their dollars.

In this case, we were talking about a small business on San Pablo Avenue owned and operated by a Polish couple, Gregory and Helena Gorecki. This was a unique story. It’s not the kind of immigrant family we hear enough about. This incredible family had fled Poland in terror. Mr. Gorecki truly arrived in – and remained in -- the United States the harder way by choice:

After living through the Nazi occupation of Poland and losing both of his parents, he fled the country during the late Sixties by hopping a train bound for Vienna, Austria.

“I was not easily admitted to the United States,” Gorecki remembers. But he said he hated the communist government of Poland so much that when he was finally admitted to the United States in the last years of the 1960s, he volunteered to fight communists in Vietnam.

422-424: STEELE RESIGNS, BUSES FOR BERKELEY STUDENTS, JULIE JORGENSEN'S 1987 BABY NEWS

Berkeley view from above; UC Berkeley students in 2005 with campus Republican club who might have used AC Transit for transportation. First photo on MRE Commercial Real Estate website, Second photo was posted on a UC Berkeley Campus Republican website.


422.

Published news brief by Lurene Kathleen Helzer, East Bay Journal, May 16, 1994, Berkeley’s school superintendent retires”. This small item regards retirement of Berkeley’s LaVonia Steele. There were previous stories about her plans to retire, so this mention was just a courtesy for local readers.

423.

Published news story by Lurene Helzer, Berkeley Daily Planet, April 26, 1999, “Cal students OK transit ‘class pass’”. This public transportation plan was enthusiastically viewed by both University of California at Berkeley students, and Berkeley’s city council members:

The program will be funded through student fees. The students had to approve the fees, however, through their student elections, which were held last week on campus.

“It is not easy to vote to tax yourself on something that benefits the larger community. The students stepped right up to do that. Very impressive,” said Armstrong.

The pass will be available for purchase in the fall semester on campus. Students will be able to use the passes not only for AC Transit rides around the East Bay and into San Francisco, but also for free rides on the campus shuttle.

“I hope this will encourage students to ride the shuttle, particularly in the evening, even for short distances, because I think this could be a significant crime deterrent,” Armstrong said.

Berkeley police have said that Berkeley’s image as a pedestrian city has sometimes attracted criminals who are looking for easy robbery targets, particularly at night. Students are particularly vulnerable.



Photo of Oakland neighborhood where we all lived in 1987 from Flickr.

424.

Unpublished essay for unborn baby by Lurene Helzer, May 18, 1987, untitled essay about how Julie Jorgensen of Oakland, CA, told her boyfriend, Rob, of her pregnancy.

I had dated Rob’s handsome cousin, Doug, a few times. I think he lived in Fremont or Union City. We had nothing in common, but he had the good manners, wonderful looks. That’s about as deep as my dating got in 1987, I must admit. Doug was clearly the more gracious, the more steady, of us. I have fond memories of him in 2009.

Those were good days in 1987 Oakland. Julie and her family, friends, were neighbors and friends. I write this essay to baby we’d just learned was forming in Julie’s belly:

He thought it was great and miraculous. He started to make predictions about the next nine months. He said she would probably be moody.

He seemed to know more about being pregnant than Julie did. He was the kind of guy who wouldn’t complain if she wanted something weird like pickled sardines dipped in chocolate at 2:36 a.m. on a rainy Sunday night. He’d find a way of getting them, even if he had to hop on his bad ankle all the way.

Rob didn’t want anyone to know. But when he took her out to dinner, she said he told four or five waitresses. Then she told me. Over a game of pool and a Budweiser, Rob told Doug. Julie told me I could tell Lloyd. I told Lloyd. Rob also told a few select family members.

But remember, said Rob as he was getting out of Doug’s truck, “it’s a secret.”

As long as no one read that week’s issue of NEWSWEEK, I figured it would stay that way.

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.