Kate Harrison

Thinking outside the GDP box sounds scary, but it doesn’t have to be. It means recognizing and living within ecological limits, focusing on equity and reinvesting capital into productive enterprises.

Telling RV owners to move elsewhere without a clearly defined place for them to go only results in an endless, expensive and inhumane game of cat and mouse.

In 2018, Berkeley became the first city in California — the second in the country — to declare a climate emergency. In the time since, 23 other California cities and counties have followed us in passing such declarations.

The Urban Shield program does not reflect our needs. In the past decade, rather than confronting terrorist threats, the police department has trended toward facing high-risk searches, arrest warrant services, patrol support and crowd management. The tactical exercises at Urban Shield do not focus on these activities but instead on politically motivated mass violence, obscuring the principle of de-escalation in community crime encounters.

Strengthening community oversight of our police department is vital for ensuring more equitable policing outcomes and increasing trust between the Berkeley community and our police.