Month: July 2018

Unexpected Education at a Berkeley Art Gallery

By Carol Denney on
Opinion
Berkeley officials are serious when they insist that their downtown look like Disneyland. The signs and tables of businesses are not targeted for removal the way poor people are. Politicians want you to support more taxes without addressing the lopsided use of police resources against the poor.

GOP Seeks Massive HUD Budget Cuts

Features   News
Despite the severe shortage of affordable housing, the GOP is seeking massive new cuts to HUD’s housing programs. Their budget would also result in nearly $6 trillion in catastrophic budget cuts over a decade to our nation’s federal domestic programs, not including the military.

How Big Growers Exploit and Intimidate Farm Workers

Features   News
The lawsuit says managers routinely threatened to send farm workers home if they failed to meet the quota, and to blacklist them afterwards, preventing them from returning to the U.S. to work in subsequent years. One manager told them, “You came here to suffer, not for vacation.”

In Spirit and in Truth

By Andy Pope on
Opinion
It is a mistake to think that one’s primary aim ought to be the acquisition of great wealth. The more I love God, and the less I love money, the better off I am. It is then that my life best reflects my concern and my hope for humanity.

Abolish the Inhumanity of War and Poverty

By Jack Bragen on
Opinion
We face a spectrum of cruelty, from bullying in the schools to the inhumanity of poverty and the catastrophic cruelty of war and nuclear bombs. Inhumanity leads to senseless shootings at the local level and senseless wars on the global level. People must learn to be kinder and more humane.

My Back Pages: Kerry's Kids, An Undying Dream

Features
Oakland pediatrician Dr. Karen Kruger said, “Kerry’s death was so sudden and seemingly purposeless and shocking that I think there was a need for people that loved her to carry on her memory in a way that she would look down on from her cloud and be happy about.”

My Back Pages: A Song for Miss Kay

Features
She softly sings the soul anthem “Stand By Me.” It is a song for Miss Kay, a song for all of us. Her life, with its music and joy, followed by a downward slide into homelessness and death, tells us something deeper than words about the human condition.

Mother Teresa’s Gift of Love in San Francisco

Features   News
She took home with her the men who had only a few days left to live and were suffering the most, and tenderly cared for them around the clock. I am certain some of the people I was meeting were angels, whose job was to make certain no soul died alone and unloved.