Berkeley is one of the most distinguished, progressive and diverse communities in the world. This is a legacy of which we residents are very proud: Not only is our city home to what is arguably the best public university in the world, we have a defining history of diversity, activism Read More…
Is ignorance bliss? On Monday, Gov. Jerry Brown signed Assembly Bill 130 which ultimately allows undocumented students, also referred to as AB 540 students, to receive financial aid through institutional funds. Consequently, this relieves some of the burden that AB 540 students face when trying to come up with ways Read More…
My name is Ju Hong, and I am undocumented and unafraid. On Tuesday, July 12, six other undocumented students and I conducted an act of civil disobedience to empower young undocumented immigrant youth and to protest the inhuman treatment of immigrants. We sat in the street near San Bernardino Valley Read More…
To some degree, we all share the intuition that we should seek balance and avoid extremes in our lives. Aristotle aptly called this the eternal quest for the “golden mean.” Today, the fight over how to resolve the debt and deficit problem relates precisely to this point. Thus far the Read More…
This year, Californians have a lot on their plate. Zooming in on the map just a bit more, though, highlights a city with a hefty agenda of its own. The release of the 2010 census presents Berkeley with a revolutionary opportunity that comes along only once every ten years: redrawing Read More…
It was a very serious mistake for the City Council to approve the “contract extension” with SEIU Local 1021 (Council item 48a on the June 28 Agenda). This agreement effectively freezes and extends for three years a labor contract that pre-empts serious pension and fiscal reform in a time when Read More…
Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig recently struck out, big time, by refusing to relocate the 82nd All-Star Game from Phoenix, Arizona, to another city due to the desert state’s immigration law, SB 1070. Although the core of this draconian law remains under a federal court injunction, if Arizona Gov. Read More…
The realization will hit any day now. It will be brutal for those who thought they could somehow create Rodeo Drive out of Telegraph Avenue, but the upside is that it will save years of police riots, court costs and the bewildering schizophrenia of having the richest property owners in Read More…
With the 2010 census numbers in, redistricting in Berkeley is about to begin, and residents of the city are being asked to submit proposals. Recently, the city council moved back the proposal deadline from mid-August to Sept. 16 in order to give students more time to have their voices heard; Read More…
You may hear that “immigration reform is dead” in the 112th Congress. But in reality, it is very much alive. It will just probably happen in pieces, not “comprehensively.” A trend for new bipartisan immigration policy is emerging that focuses on two immigration issues: granting more green cards to educated Read More…