Anti-nuke protesters and members of local Native American tribes continue to keep vigil in Ward Valley at the site of a proposed nuclear waste dump. In June, the 114 day occupation of the site ended when the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) rescinded an eviction notice issued on February 13. At the same time, the BLM dropped preparations for further soil tests at the site. According to the Save Ward Valley office in Needles, the outcome of the 12 year effort to halt the desecration of Ward Valley is once again in limbo. A hearing is scheduled in Federal District Court in Washington DC for sometime in August. The hearing is to consider a lawsuit filed by the state of California to force the US government to transfer the land to the state so the dump project can go ahead. Campers are still needed in Ward Valley. Call the Save Ward Valley office at 760-326-6267. And stay tuned. N. Sandy Crab

Cars get subsidised by driving on free roads
it s time transit users got a free ride

While Congress recently passed a $218.3 billion, six-year highway bill to subsidise more car driving and new suburban sprawl, AC Transit bus service continues to be whittled away. AC Transit buses; which underserves densely populated East Bay cities and its more colourful and poorer ridership; run less frequently, fewer hours, and on fewer routes. Anyone entirely dependent on buses and other public transit for getting around faces increasing isolation. When Berkeley mayoral candidate Don Jelinek recently announced his candidacy, he proposed making AC transit buses free to everyone anywhere within the Berkeley city limits.

Jelinek has discussed the idea with the AC Transit Board and other officials and believes transit service could be made free by pooling money already spent by large Berkeley employers such as LBL, Alta Bates, Bayer and UC on their own shuttle vans or on subsidies for bus service. There are also state and federal grants available to get the idea off the ground. Santa Clara County already runs free bus service almost entirely with private money

In return for a steady funding flow, AC Transit would take over the major employer and UC van or bus service, which is currently provided by private services, and provide special, new AC lines servicing the employees or students, plus anyone else who cared to ride. Since AC transit would have a steady source of money from the city, it could afford to work with Berkeley to increase service city wide, including more frequent service and the use of more vans or smaller buses where appropriate.

Unlike in Seattle and Santa Cruz, where free bus service is provided only in the downtown area mainly to avoid heavy traffic in the business district, Jelinek favors a citywide service so that all of Berkeley s residents could benefit from the free service. In contract, a few years ago Emeryville introduced limited free bus service that only went from BART to major employers, but skipped local residents along San Pablo Avenue. Such free; service is really a further subsidy to commuters and business that seems designed to avoid service to poorer customers.

Jelinek points out that people might start making short trips within Berkeley by bus instead of car if they didn t have to pay to get on the bus. He hopes free and better bus service would draw people out of their cars and relieve the parking crunch throughout Berkeley.

The 1st global street party

Tens of thousands of people around the world participated in the Global Street Party against globalization on May 16. A sampling of actions elsewhere: Geneva, Switzerland 4000 people wearing costumes and carrying flags and banners wound through the streets attacking banks, jewelry shops and local branches of McDonalds in an effort to Reclaim the Streets from global capitalism. Riot police stopped the demonstration from reaching the world headquarters of the World Trade Organization (WTO). Professor Swamy from the Indian Karnataka State Farmers Association addressed the crowd at the barricade The WTO kills people; we must kill the WTO. Moments later, a Mercedes limousine was overturned, sending a flutter of diplomatic papers into the air. The street party raged at a main intersection into the night.

Prague, Czechoslovakia Over 3,000 people spontaneously marched from the RTS street party to block Prague’s main road after a street party which featured 4 sound systems, 20 DJs, puppet shows, drums, live music, fire performances, etc. Without warning, riot police attached the crowd, starting a riot that lasted hours. Up to 100 people were arrested and severely beaten, 22 police were hospitalized, 3 McDonalds restaurants and a KFC were trashed, 6 cop cars destroyed. One RTS organizer was later arrested and may be facing 2 years in jail. Email letters of support to Slavomir Tesarek, tesarek@usa.net.

Toronto, Canada About 500 people reclaimed a major downtown street for an hour with dancing, puppets, drumming, children drawing chalk pictures on the street and balloons until police with knives and horses waded into the celebration to pop the balloons (!) and arrest a number of party-goers. Four were charged with crimes including one who suffered a broken arm, apparently in police custody.

Sydney, Australia About 4,000 people reclaimed the streets in the largest RTS event yet in Australia. The party featured 3 stages (Rock, Central Techno and Hip-Hop/Raggae/Dub), 25 foot tall tripods blocking the street, carpets, sofas, food fundraiser, skateboard rail, five terminal sidewalk internet station, sandstone sculptors, poets, fire twirlers, street gardeners, recycling and RTS supplied rubbish bins. Police were on hand but didn’t stop the party. Berlin, Germany Over 1000 people, in three groups, some on bikes, came together in the center of Berlin at the same moment for Berlin RTS. The party blocked a road crossing with a huge soundsystem, a drum group, furniture, etc. The party included dancing, drinking, volleyball, chess and artistical stuff. Because of media reaction to police violence on May Day, only 3 people were arrested and only a handful hit by cops. The police were taken by surprise by the protest.

Tel Aviv, Israel About 500 people reclaimed a major road with a rave and mobile sound system in a van. The party had a police permit to be near the location of the party and when they poured into the street, the cops were powerless to stop them.

Turku, Finland About 2000 people, marching from different locations, joined up to reclaim a city block of road in the central city, including one of the main bridges over the river. An advance action group blocked the street before the marches arrived. Banners and flags hung from the bridge and the police didn’t interfere: no problem with your illegal demo, but please a big less volume.

Utrecht, Netherlands 800 people blocked a six land highway with a street rave and a wild dance party for about five hours. The police didn’t interfere and even helped set-up the generator for the sound system. Valencia, Spain About 300 people reclaimed the Streets for 5 hours. First, we thought to take the market square, in the traffic-polluted heart of the city. But this wasn’t possible, only for half an hour, because the police isn’t a body which is made to dance. Later the party moved throughout the city, blocking streets and visiting the Virgin Mary at the Cathedral, who also didn’t dance.

York, UK 250 people blockaded the street, drummed and listened to a bike powered sound system.

Brisbane, Australia Police, some on horses, arrested a number of people, seized the sound system and towed it away, but the street party proceeded with drumming and whistling.

Ljubljana, Slovenia About 40 people reclaimed the streets with a Critical Mass ride. The group had such a good time that more rides were planned for the rest of the summer.

Tallinn, Estonia 50 cyclists and pedestrians blocked a 6 lane road where a cross-walk had been removed the previous year and replaced by fences, requiring bikers and pedestrians to walk half a mile to cross the road. Their banner red Kellele kiirteed, kellele piirded (Some get highways, others get fences). Lyon, France 200 people with costumes, bikes, signs and a float marched through the streets before blocking a road with a tripod. Police forced the crowd off the street into a park, where people danced and splashed in a fountain.

Stockholm, Sweden People with drums and flags marched through the streets for an hour and then danced in a park. The anarchists of Stockholm were more colorful than ever before.

Birmingham, UK London RTS, which called the Global Street Party, organized May 16’s largest party at the site of the G8 international meeting of world leaders. 8,000 people, some dressed as clowns with cream pies, reclaimed a traffic circle for several hours near the G8 meeting to laugh in the face of global capitalism. Ha Ha Ha. A huge kite with the names of other cities hosting street parties flew above the festivities. Police in riot gear were more obnoxious than at past RTS gatherings and one of them got a pie in the face for their efforts. A car abandoned in the midst of the gathering was flipped and trashed but, after much discussion, not set alight. Thanks to London RTS for organizing an amazing international outpouring of rage. When was the last time an international protest of this scale happened with such a minimal amount of work and central bureaucracy? The only question now is: when is the next schedule and how many cities will have parties next time?

Thinking globally, partying locally

About 700 people in Berkeley reclaimed the streets on May 16, as part of an international Global Street Party against the global economy and the global environmental destruction it is causing.

The Reclaim the Streets (RTS) movement, hatched in London in 1995, brings environmental direct action to an urban context. Car transportation, and the disastrous urban sprawl, pollution and social disintegration that goes along with it, is the urban equivalent of a clearcut. In England, RTS is the urban wing of Earth First! campaigns to save the countryside from more roads. The Berkeley RTS made the links between cars/car dominated streets and the global capitalist system which is increasingly impoverishing and disenfranchising workers everywhere.

Demonstrators in Berkeley RTS at the downtown BART station at 7 p.m. The large crowd, half on foot and half on bikes, marched down the street a few blocks waiving black flags and carrying a 25 foot long banner reading Take back our lives–Reclaim the Streets. Then the march divided with the bikes peddling straight for a Critical Mass to the secret location of the Street Party while the march turned left. On the way to the Street Party location, the march picked up couches, rugs and other props that had been left the night before in hidden locations.

At Telegraph Avenue, the march and the Critical Mass ride triumphantly met up with couches, bikes and flags held high. The rejoined group took a side trip to get around a line of cops and finally ended up at the intersection selected for the Street Party. An advance action group had already blockaded Telegraph Ave. with an old donated car and blocked a side street with dumpsters and signs. The intersection had been reclaimed!

A mobile sound system churned out tunes while the intersection was transformed into a living room with dozens of couches, rugs and miscellaneous furniture. Free food tables were set up, folks smashed up and overturned the car, smoked pot, danced and socialized. A TV smashing got a little out of hand as glass covered the dance floor. Then parts of the crowd ignited a toxic bonfire with some of the couches, while other people in the crowd repeatedly put out the fire. Finally, the fire was extinguished and the party got into full swing, lasting several hours. Activists handed out about 1,000 flyers explaining the politics behind the event: Welcome to a rupture of the everyday. Before you is a street party: a community festival on the [paved over] town square. By dancing and playing–turning the pavement into a playground–we are reclaiming the street from the automobile which ruins the street by making it a place to be moved through not lived in. We believe the city and the street should be for people to live, meet others and celebrate creativity and freedom. The city should serve the human community, not mechanized consumerism. Cars are only the most visible and tangible representative of an inhuman consumer society which is smashing community, constricting human spontaneity and freedom and destroying the Earth’s life support system.

Berkeley RTS was a huge success and plans are developing for another international RTS event, this time with much greater participation in the United States (which needs a vibrant anti-roads movement far more than England.) In addition to Berkeley RTS being one of the largest demonstrations for a few years in Berkeley, it managed to simultaneously take on capitalism and environmental destruction with direct action tactics. Particularly inspiring was the international aspect as thousands around the world with the same vision for a democratic and sustainable future gathered to rage against a global enemy that can only be challenged by an international movement.

Injunction shuts down Free Radio Berkeley but the fight for micro-powered, community radio continues

Free Radio Berkeley, which for the past three and a half years had been openly broadcasting 24 hours a day on 104.1 FM after Federal Judge Claudia Wilken refused to grant the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) an injunction to shut the station down, went off the air June 16 after Wilken finally issued the FCC its injunction. The injunction order, based on a legal technicality which the judge said prevented her from ruling on the constitutional issues raised by FRB during the lengthy litigation, brought an abrupt end to one of the most original and revolutionary radio stations ever.

Under the injunction, anyone acting in active concert or participation with FRB founder Stephen Dunifer faces contempt of court charges for making any radio transmissions or doing any act, whether direct or indirect, to cause unlicensed radio transmissions or to enable such radio transmissions to occur.

The harsh and overbroad injunction language convinced many in FRB that continued open, on-air broadcasting as Free Radio Berkeley carried a significant possibility of arrest and harsh punishment. An FRB meeting the day the injunction issued voted to temporarily go off the air to save the transmitter from seizure and make a plan for its defense. The station never went back on the air. Decision making was paralyzed in divisive meetings following the injunction and many former DJs drifted away in disgust or fear.

Finally, over a month down the road, initial disorganization is being supplanted by diversified strategies to continue the struggle for participatory community access to the radio airwaves.

Covert Broadcasting Service

Soon after the injunction, unidentified persons have returned to FRB’s roots, making covert broadcasts from the hills on 104.1 FM, mostly on weekend nights. Calling themselves the Covert Broadcasting Service (CBS), rumors are circulating that additional underground broadcasting cells may soon form to reclaim 104.1 FM seven days a week, at least in the evenings. Although the unusual schedule and barriers to wide participation posed by the need for secrecy and the mobile, hill location means that CBS is unlikely to soon replace Free Radio Berkeley’s role as a community station, CBS shows that resistance continues and is possible. Media interest in CBS has kept the fights against corporate control of the airwaves in the public eye.

Since the injunction only affects those acting in concert with Dunifer, most would-be broadcasters in Berkeley and Northern Californian now face the same risks always faced by other micro broadcasters around the US. And these risks may not be as great as the FCC would like people to think they are.

Even before the injunction, micro broadcasters outside of California faced intermittent FCC raids and threats. In most cases, micro broadcasters received numerous warnings, but the FCC rarely followed through with military-style raids. The FCC has always had the power to seize unlicensed transmitters and levy fines against micro-broadcasters. And, the Communications Act has always carried criminal penalties for unlicensed broadcasts, although they are rarely used. In the only recent criminal prosecution, Lonnie Kobres, who faced up to 28 years for illegal broadcasts, was sentenced July 14 to 3 years probation, 6 months of house arrest and a $7,000 fine for micro-broadcasts in Florida. The judge didn’t buy the FCC’s claims that Mr. Kobres was a threat to public safety for exercising his free speech. Kobres is the only recent criminal case out of thousands who have gone on the air over the past year.

The FCC’s actions locally have demonstrated that it is still possible to get away with micro-powered broadcasting. Only a week after the injunction, two unidentified individuals calling themselves Free Radio Cedar Tree broadcast on 104.1 FM from the Berkeley hills. Although FCC agents located them in 15 minutes, the FCC didn’t try to arrest them or seize their transmitter. They merely asked them to turn the transmitter off. After attempting to interview the FCC live on the air, the radio rebels shut down and escaped into the night.

Another form of civil disobedience- broadcasting is to transmit from public events. On the Fourth of July, two dozen people openly broadcast on 104.1 FM from the Independence Day celebration at the Berkeley Marina. Although the broadcast was in broad daylight, the FCC took no action. Broadcasts from demonstrations or even house parties combine a media stunt with the relative safety that numbers provide against FCC intervention. Of course, scattered public broadcasts may have few listeners, since its impossible to know when or where to tune in.

Some former FRB DJs have also rebuilt the FRB studio to legally transmit audio files over the internet. While this project can potentially reach a worldwide audience (of those with computers) and is interesting in its own right, it hardly replaces local, on-air broadcasts.

Nationally, the injunction seems to have encouraged FCC repression against other open micro broadcasters. Soon after the FRB injunction, Radio Mutiny in Philadelphia, one of the best organized micro radio stations aside from Free Radio Berkeley, was raided by FCC agents, who seized all equipment in sight, but made no arrests. Radio Mutiny recently hosted an East Coast micro radio conference and was involved in high profile publicity efforts. The FCC apparently targeted it to eliminate another vocal critic.

Several other micro stations, including San Francisco Liberation Radio, have also recently gone off the air after receiving FCC threats or in reaction to the injunction in Berkeley. A national micro-radio Pledge of Resistance is being circulated so people can commit to defending stations threatened by FCC action.

Legal Implications

Free Radio Berkeley lawyers immediately attacked the injunction by filing a motion for reconsideration. Unfortunately, motions for reconsideration are rarely granted. If the motion for reconsideration is denied, an appeal is also possible. During all of the possible future legal maneuvering, however, it appears that the injunction will be in force, preventing Free Radio Berkeley from openly broadcasting.

The Court injunction stated that Free Radio Berkeley didn’t have standing to use a constitutional defense to the FCC’s injunction action because it had never applied for (and been denied) a license to broadcast.

The ruling may be vulnerable since the FCC has continuously stated that it would automatically deny a micro power license application from Free Radio Berkeley if one was made. The Court’s reasoning requires micro radio proponents to be rich enough to spend about $100,000 to apply for a micro-powered FCC license (which doesn’t exist) so they can be denied in order to show they have standing to challenge whether the FCC rules which limit broadcasting to the rich are constitutional! In addition to the $3,000 FCC application fee, an FCC license applicant has to submit expensive engineering studies and prove that the applicant has a one year advance supply of operating funds. Radio Mutiny in Philadelphia attempted to apply for a license with a fee waiver, but the application was denied without reaching the micro-power issue.

Into the Future

Ultimately, the period during which Judge Wilken refused to grant the FCC its injunction was an unprecedented opportunity to build a movement for micro powered, community radio. During the three and a half year opening, hundreds of transmitters were built and distributed around the country and thousands of people coast-to-coast experienced first-hand the potential that micro radio represents.

At a time when fewer and fewer mega-corporations dominate the airwaves, when radio formats sound the same from New York to LA, micro-power radio represents a huge opportunity for
a different model of radio broadcasting. Micro power is cheap, simple and accessible, allowing communities and individuals to have a voice. The Free Radio movement received extensive media coverage over the last three years partly because the alternative to corporate domination that it represents is so attractive, even to members of the corporate media.

At this stage of the micro radio movement, as litigation to challenge the constitutionality of FCC regulation of the airwaves continues, although without a legal gray area to permit open broadcasting in Berkeley, the movement needs to redouble its efforts to reach middle America with the message that there is another way. Under the Communications Act, the FCC is charged with regulating in the public interest. Their gross mismanagement of the airwaves must be exposed for what it is: a giveaway to corporations.

Efforts thus far against the FCC have been largely focused on litigation. There are now enough proponents of micro powered radio throughout the country to better develop a second, politically-oriented attack.

Since the start of 1998, at least two petitions for rulemaking have been filed with the FCC to permit forms of micro-powered broadcasting. The petitions, developed by small-business persons, aren’t exclusively focused on allowing non-profit, community oriented radio as envisioned by Free Radio activists, but they show that changes in FCC rules may be on the horizon. Public comment is accepted on every proposed rulemaking, and Free Radio needs to have its comments heard. Free Radio activists need to get involved in this process to amend the existing petitions and write new ones so that the new rules better reflect the public interest.

Various FCC officials have also recently given lip service to taking another look at smaller, community oriented radio. Unfortunately, their words ring hollow. The explosion in use of cell phones and digital technology, including High Definition TV, are all making demands on radio spectrum space. All of these technologies are championed by the kind of well-funded, massive corporate interests that the FCC has a long history of serving. Nonetheless, Free Radio activists should use their words to demand action.

The network of Free Radio activists developed over the past three years can become significant critics of the FCC’s current, corporate-oriented priorities. Combining tactics such as covert broadcasting, mainstream media coverage, media stunts, teach-ins, radio trainings and micro broadcasts at public rallies, Free Radio activists can point out the alternative as well as the bankruptcy of the current FCC rules. It’s also time to recruit any politicians who aren’t already bought and paid for by the broadcast industry to the cause. The fight for free speech on the airwaves is not over; it has only begun.

To get involved call Free Radio Berkeley at 510-594-8082. Or check out www.free radio.org or www.radio4all.org.

Reclaim the sidewalks

Since the onslaught of El Nino in February, the rulers and administrators of Berkeley have been launching a little El Nino of their own on Telegraph Avenue to discourage the presence of the homeless, punks, people without money, and anyone else who stands in the way of the Avenue turning upscale. Their offensive has consisted of propaganda in the local media about problematic street behavior, increased police presence including a one month crackdown named Operation AveWatch and increased issuance of citations for petty offences like jaywalking, tearing down opposition fliers, and the physical sanitation of the street to make it look like a yuppie shopping strip.

This has been the longest and most concerted effort in years by the unholy alliance of merchants, property owners, the University of California, and now the City of Berkeley, to extinguish Telegraph’s longstanding street culture and further enforce mandatory consumer culture on the Avenue.

Put simply, its payoff time for the area’s reactionary backroom brokers who have spent the past few years coalition building in the form of the Telegraph Area Association. The TAA, and some previous incarnations before it, was formed as a new hegemonic force uniting those with institutionalized authoritarian power behind a mission of bringing the Avenue back under civilian control following the Volleyball Riots of 199__ that led to the empowerment of the street community and subsequent anarchy on Telegraph Avenue. The position of the police was so weakened by the uprising that occurred, that they were forced to tolerate an anything goes atmosphere on Telegraph and for one full year the Avenue belonged to the people.

But once again, Telegraph Avenue which has previously been home to people wanting to enjoy life, the streets, and eachother without spending a lot of money, are finding themselves forced out by a network of a few greedy people who want to play the street for their own personal profit.

There are two main forces, or stakeholders, in the Telegraph struggle. One is the money-making side, those who want the Avenue to be about profits and so have an interest in making sure that what goes on on the Avenue enhances their goal. The other side is the street community, people who come to Telegraph to hang out, to live out their days and their lives surving or thriving on the streets, trying to have a good time, as well as to meet their material needs.

Lots of other people come to the Avenue, but they are not stakeholders per se. They come as consumers, passing students, tourists, and weekend and fair weather hanger outers–all people who may have an opinion about how the Avenue should be and may come or not come to the Avenue for a particular reason, but are not people who really care too much. They are people who can always go somewhere else.

California and the Bay Area are continuing to experience a large population influx. This is already creating increased pressures on public space, rising rents, and an enlarged class of upwardly mobile people who have their sights set on Berkeley as a nice suburban second-best to too expensive San Francisco. The police are brought in as the security firm of this yuppie class wanting a safe playground.

Merchants, land owners, the University of California, are the driving forces. Their employees in the City of Berkeley and their security firm, the Berkeley Police Department, are doing the work for them. Government is the ideological framework which allows the ruling class to dictate society under pretensions of serving a public good.

From merchants to street vendors, from neighboring housing associations to the University of California and its lackey teacher’s-pet dorm reps, from real estate interests to the Chamber of Commerce to the Telegraph Area Association, all the forces of bourgeois and petty bourgeois Southside are united by a desire to eradicate the poor in order to increase profits. Anyone who stands in their way– homeless, punks, activists, idlers, the artistic, poetic, and the poor–will be eventually swept away, not only by the police, but by the subtle manouvers of a social class on the move.

Some middle class people are saying they feel uncomfortable on the Avenue as it is. Big fucking deal! The rich have every other yuppie shopping area in the world to go to. They own everything else, and everything in this society is set up for them and their money. So much so that they have much of the working class scrambling for one of their jobs so they can lift their ass out from over the fire of capitalism and its whipping stick, the criminal justice system. The yuppies think they’re going to now move into Telegraph Avenue, because they’re not content with owning just 99% of everything, they need to exert their God-given right to go anywhere own everything, and feel as though they’re in power. It pains them to not be respected for their money.

The seemingly benign calls for clean streets that evereyone is agreeing on if you read the newspapers should be seen for what it really is: a chorus for kinder, gentler you know what. Once the litter is picked up, guess what they’re going to start trying to pick up next. Once all those yuppies start coming and more and more stores cater to them, the unsightly people who aren’t sporting new wardrobes on a regular basis are going to start looking mighty out of place. The poor won’t have to be driven off the Avenue, they’ll leave because they’ll feel so uncompfortable amidst all the upwardly mobile yuppie scum.

Inspired by rising rents and their success at developing 4th Street and downtown, the ruling class now only has to drive the poor from the Telegraph area to complete their creation of the New Berkeley. People who aren’t shoppers or workers will have no place in the New Berkeley.

The rulers want to make being on the sidewalk if you are poor and not spending money illegal. They call it Ôloitering.’ Drinking a beer if you are poor and didn’t pay $3-4 for it in a restaurant is illegal. It’s called Ôdrinking in public.’ The people who make profits in Berkeley want and need people to buy. Other people just get in the way of the buying and there is no need for them in their society. That is why they hire police to go up and down the street harrassing anyone who looks poor and does not stay walking on the sidewalk treadmills they’ve set up. The police will come up with any petty reason or excuse to harrass you if you are poor. The bottom line is they don’t want you around. And if they haven’t already created a law for something some poor person is doing, then they’ll make one up, or they’ll get their politicians to write another one. They call this democracy.

A few years ago, the city cleverly installed pointy metal recycling containers on top of all the trash cans on Telegraph so no one could sit on them anymore. They said they were promoting recycling, but they really want to get poor people out of the area.

This time around Andy Ross, owner of Cody’s, and a few other money-happy merchants are leading the charge. But you can be sure that behind them are the bigger interests: the 2 or 3 commercial property owners who own most of the real estate along Telegraph, the University of California whose long range development plan wants Telegraph as a yuppie student shopping area, home owners in the surrounding area who want property values to go up, and the rest of the rich and their politicial representatives in Berkeley. The Bay Area is a desireable place to live and all these white people with money are moving to Berkeley, driving poor people out with high rents, and remaking the city in their image. That’s why they want a new police station and courthouse downtown, and that’s why they’re bringing the cops on to Telegraph Avenue to harrass you and me.

We need to stand up against the police and also confront the people and forces behind the police who are doing this to us. W
e need to otherwise improve the living conditions for those who are forced to or choose to live on the streets.

The recent crackdown on Berkeley’s Telegraph Avenue is largely an election year wedge issue ploy by conservative Mayor Shirley Dean and her minions to win the election by playing the homeless card. In national politics, the Republicans attack immigrants, welfare mothers and drug users to win the election; in Berkeley, it’s problematic street behavior, a code word for the homeless.

Wedge issues work because politicians address real concerns that people have with what appears to be an easy solution. If a politician can split enough people off from the other candidate by raising an emotionally charged issue, they win. And if they don’t really have any solution, well, too bad. That’s politics.

Using police against the homeless, the poor, or even problematic street behavior has never worked, can’t work, and won’t work. For six months, the police have been busy enforcing laws that don’t exist (against sitting on the sidewalks) and issuing tickets for non-crimes. Littering, having an unlicensed dog, jaywalking Ð they may be annoying (or maybe not), but they hardly rise to the level of crime. When most people think about reducing crime, they’re thinking about stopping muggings, car break-ins, assault. Using police to attack non-crimes is a misuse of resources and isn’t intended to do anything but harass people to get votes for a particular candidate. Police harassment for non-crimes may drive poor and homeless people somewhere else for a while, but unless the crackdown continues indefinitely, nothing is solved.

There have been campaigns against freaks on the Avenue since there have been freaks on the Avenue. The reason these campaigns are good election year issues is that the left, such as it is, usually has no good response to problematic street behavior other than to advocate the status quo. Arguing to stop the police crackdown, and maybe provide a few services, doesn’t provide an alternative solution for the perceived problem.

Yes, these attacks on freaks, the homeless and the poor do violate their rights. Yes, everyone has a right to live without harassment from the police. But the reason the homeless card works in local politics is because real people, good people, are annoyed by rude freaks, litter, the perception of danger. The people who feel like this probably don’t hate the poor. They probably aren’t evil. They probably don’t realize they are playing into the hands of gentrifiers, big land owners, conservatives. Their feelings are genuine.

The left must have a program for addressing the reality that people get harassed and annoyed in public spaces, especially Telegraph Avenue. We need to paint a vision for how public space can get more public and nicer for everyone to be in (including the freaks), not just sanitized by millions of cops. The right wing has their vision for public space: the shopping mall. Enclosed, climate controlled, under constant surveillance. The right wing wants to make the whole world a shopping mall.

The left needs to fight back. We envision public space like a public square that works. Different kinds of people mix and interact. If there are annoying people, they get diluted by many interesting people. A community with certain standards of interaction develops. Small businesses thrive, but you don’t have to go there just to shop. There are other non-commercial options: chess tables, games, old people having deep conversations, free live music, grass to sit on, lovers holding hands, benches.

Try to find a good bench anywhere in any modern, mallified downtown. Someone Ð conservatives, merchants, developers? Ð has used the fact that homeless people sleep on benches as an excuse to get rid of benches for everyone. Maybe benches don’t earn money for merchants. Maybe shoppers sitting on benches stay longer, taking up parking and room, and don’t spend as much.

In the leftist vision of public space, there are so many benches in public spaces that if 30 or 40 homeless people are sleeping on them, there are still hundreds more for other people to sit on and enjoy. The way the left will defeat the conservative, police crackdown-based solution for problematic street behavior is to demand that the public realm expand and improve so that everyone will want to go there. Ideas like the car free Telegraph, closed to traffic from Dwight to Bancroft, with lots of public space, are the left’s answer to police crackdowns and cleaning up the Avenue.

Police crackdowns ultimately don’t bring more shoppers out to Telegraph Avenue Ð they further brutalize and privatize public space. People learn to stay at home or go to police controlled malls.

The reason why Telegraph Avenue is worth struggling for is that Telegraph Avenue is still a public space where everyone can go, more so than most sanitized shopping areas around. It should be nurtured, not disinfected and destroyed.

Communities of Fear

Our communities are in crisis, due to the burgeoning growth of gated communities and the security industry. Gated communities are becoming the norm of development; security systems, including surveillance cameras and private guards, monitor-an increasing portion of public life. There -is no obvious need for this security frenzy: crime rates have fallen steadily, throughout the 1990’s. But however unnecessary, the trend is potentially devastating to communities. Communities cannot function when people live in gated enclaves, segregated by wealth and class. A social system based around fear and enforced isolation is asking for revolt by those outside the gates.

Gated communities are becoming the model for home development. Since 1970, gated communities have increased by a factor of ten, numbering 20,000 in 1997. Fifty-two percent of Dallas-area home buyer feel gated, communities are desirable or essential, according to a National Association of Home Builders 19% survey. The demand for gated communities is spread across the home buyer spectrum: mobile homes, as well as upscale houses, are being developed within walls and gates.

What do these people feel they will gain by the gates? Psychologically, gates and valid are linked to protection but often ft structures surrounding these communities can be easily scaled. And many advertisements and newspaper, articles describing gated communities list them in relatively affluent surroundings, A gate does offer control of who enters the neighborhood and who comes to the door. But with control comes predictability, and can quickly lead to a sense of isolation. Mental health practitioners are in fact seeing increased incidences of social isolation, which is strongly linked to higher rates of disease and premature death.

Perhaps most importantly, a community composed of waited and gated enclaves is not a community. The impulse towards safety is being manifested as a desire to surround yourself with your own social class, shutting others. out. Children growing up in such non-diverse surroundings may have a grossly distorted world view. The end effect is segregation by socioeconomic class. Gates send a strong message: when you are on the outside, you are not good enough. To those on the inside, people on te outside will begin to seem less. trustworthy; the outsiders will be perceived as second class citizens. As Edward J. Blakely and Mary Gail Snyder point out in Fortress America: Gated Communities, in the United States, ‘For fine inside the gates, life may be a little more comfortable. For others’, however, gated communities. symbolizee a larger social pattern of segmentation and separation, designed to disassociate, and exclude.” What gated communities are really about is the abdication of, responsibility. Instead of dealing wit I h issues that make them uncomfortable, people who can afford gates and walls secret themselves away from things, scary – or maybe even just” different.

Communities are about sharing resources and responsibilities. Since most gated communities privatize everything within the gates, including streets, parks, and other municipal services, people living within the gates risk becoming anesthetized to issues outside the gates. They will likely no longer feel the need to share their resources. If the rich keep all their resources to themselves, the rest of the larger community will have work harder to maintain institutions outside the gate. The end result is the exacerbation of the problems” the gated folks tried to escape by living within the gates.

And what are these “problems”? The main difficulty” is that the people not living in gated communities will either be too poor to afford that level of security, or uninterested in living a segregated life- neither of which is cause for fanatical security and isolation. The fear and superiority the gated folks feel is clearly a consequence of a society that emphasizes wealth, class, and profit over community and humanity.

The concentration of wealth encouraged by gated communities almost guarantees a revolt by the peoplr outside the walls. Against of angry, frustrated people, walls and gates will offer laughably little protection. One private guard working at a gated community acknowledged that he could easily scale the gate. ‘It may be nice for a couple ofdecades,’ write Carolyn Shaffer and Kristen

Anundsen in Creating Community Anywhere, ‘But if there is too much disparity between the private enclaves of wealth and homogeneous groups of people, the rest of the community is going to be poor, frustrated and angry. And the walls are not going to be high enough to keep out the problems.”

Electronic Security System Additional protection measures are being taken, both in conjunction with and apart from gated communities. Elaborate security packages, including private guards, alarms, and surveillance cameras, are standard on 30% of new homes. Private security guards are being hired to. patrol neighborhoods, in addition to the conventional police presence. Nationally, private security is a $104 billion industry, while public security (such as local police forces) is a $44 billion industry. Private security guards offer somewhat illusory protection. Often, guards are hired specifically to observe. crimes and report them to the police force, instead of to intervene. Even in uniform, private guards are still only private citizens; anybody on the street has the power to detain a suspect for a ‘reasonable length of time.

‘Most criminals know exactly what those services do and what they can’t do, and they are not afraid of them like they are the police”‘ says Terry Schauer, senior lead officer at ,LAPD’s West Los Angeles station. Nonetheless, the security guard industry continues to expand. Some neighborhoods, both with and without gates, are hiring private security guards to patrol their streets.’ Several neighborhoods in the Baton Rouge, LA area have established mandatory taxes to fund the guards. Ironically, son* conservatives join civil libertarians in speaking against these residential tax districts. ‘it is going to Balkanize the cities even further,” argues Walter Abbott of the politically conservative Americans for Tax Reform. ‘It’s pitting neighborhood against neighborhood. Ifs a gate community without walls.” Electronic security systems are as ineffective as private guards. Electronic systems are standard on 30% of new homes; a fifth of United States residences now have alarm systems, compared to 1 % in 1970. Thesystems are little to sensitive, creating a boy-cries-wolf effect: in one luxury gatedcommunity, mosquitoes can set off the infrared motion sensors. Nationally, only 1%of alarms are valid. These mistakes lead police to deprioritize any alarm signal, real orspurious. A cop’s arrival an hour after the alarm sounds is meaningless, considered that most thieves can escape with their cargo in minutes.

Surveillance cameras are proliferating even faster than alarms systems. For several years, surveillance cameras have been staples of convenience stores and ATM’S, but spy cameras can increasingly be found monitoring all aspects of public life. In one eight block area of New York, NY Civil Liberties Union volunteers found 300 cameras in plain sight; many more could have been hidden. The presence of cameras often suggests an atmosphere of safety.

According to the Village Voice, however, no clear link exists between crime prevention and cameras. Researchers think cameras may cause decreases in petty crime such as vandalism, but probably don’t prevent larger comes. For instance, convenience store robberies have not significantly decreased, even after years of taping the cash register area. Cameras often are not monitored directly, and may not be monitored at all unless a crime occurs in the area. The tapes are only viewed afterwards with hopes of catching the perpetrators.

Security Through Community The securit
y frenzy points to a crisis within our communities. For security’s sake, mainstream America accepts daily monitoring, and then returns home-to sealed homes inside sealed gates. But technology cannot provide household security precautions, we can better invest our attention and resources in strengthening our whole-community health and security, enhancing and opening up our lives instead of closing them down.” Carolyn Shaffer, also a Berkeley community organizer and author, echoes these thoughts: ‘People are very afraid to be vulnerable and have mistakenly thought that security comes through external systems of burglar alarms, gates, guns and police forces. What I believe is that true security comes through being willing to connect openly with one another, honestly and respectfully. Building those bonds and links of connection creates much greater security- than all the hardware, firepower or guards you can hire.’

Donate to Slingshot

If you like Slingshot, send us your Money! We spent $1500 on this issue! Send dough to keep us in print! We also need letters, articles, art and photographs. Send to: 3124 Shattuck Ave. Berkeley CA 94705.