Free Republic

The student government at Berkeley University allocated $982 of student funds earlier this year to send a delegation of "queer and Latin" individuals to a conference designed to "educate and empower queer people of color."Berkeley's Young Queers United For Empowerment (YQUFE), the organization that received the funds via a student senate bill, describes itself on its Facebook as serving "those who identify as queer and Latin." The funds were allocated out of the student government’s “contingency fund” for conference fees, renting vans and “two queen beds,” for the 25 individuals expected to attend the conference, which took place at California...

BERKELEY – Times are tough on Telegraph Avenue, the notoriously countercultural and once-thriving street leading to the heart of the University of California campus here. The five-block stretch of Telegraph that ends at the southern edge of campus gained its legacy from the protests and social upheaval of the Sixties. It was the birthplace of the Free Speech Movement in 1964 and a hub of protest during the Vietnam War. About 40 percent of students polled by a campus group last year said they get food on Telegraph and half said they visit less than once a month for any...

A former UC Berkeley doctor accused of sexually molesting six male patients is being sued for wrongful death after one of his alleged victims committed suicide. The body of Elgin Stafford was found floating in a Carson, California, river channel on March 29, nine days after the 23-year-old was reported missing. The parents of the UC Berkeley and University of Southern California student claim he killed himself after he was 'repeatedly sexually violated and abused' by Dr. Robert Kevess, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. . . 'He was ashamed, and this thing ate him up,' she told the newspaper....

The Islamophobia Research & Documentation Project (IRDP)—a program of the University of California, Berkeley's Center for Race and Gender (CRG)—recently held its third annual conference, "Critical Discourses on Islamophobia: Symbols, Images, & Representations." As in previous years, speaker after speaker decried an imaginary racist, imperialist, Orientalist Western juggernaut, while disregarding the very real predations of Islamism. The first day of the conference brought in approximately eighty people at its peak, including a number of women in hijab (head scarf), typing furiously on laptops. Others sported keffiyehs and dreadlocks; a smattering of Arabic and French could be heard; and a scruffy,...

Leroy Eldridge Cleaver(8/31/1935 to 5/1/1998) Remembering Eldridge Cleaver* By: Larry Walker, Jr. *"Right-wing conservatives and left-wing radicals here in the U.S. must be willing and able to sit down at the same table, look across the table at each other and see not an enemy, a target or a statistic, but a brother, a sister, a fellow American, another child of God. We must expand our hearts and enlarge our identity beyond ‘my people’ to include and embrace all of Creation." ~ Eldridge CleaverIn the late 1960’s, after leading a troubled youth, Leroy Eldridge Cleaver became a prominent member...

A standoff between UC Berkeley and Occupy activists who planted renegade crops on university land is headed from the farm to the courts. The University of California Board of Regents filed a lawsuit Wednesday against 14 protesters, claiming they and others conspired to cut through chains that secured gates and trespass onto the Gill Tract, a patch of land along bustling San Pablo Avenue in Albany. The activists, who call themselves Occupy the Farm, moved onto the tract April 22. They are pressuring the university to preserve part of the tract, which has been the subject of development debates for...

A standoff between protesters and the University of California at Berkeley over a 10-acre plot of university-owned agricultural land in Albany continued into its 17th day today. Anya Kamanskaya, of the group Occupy The Farm, said the ball is in the university's court after protesters issued a response late Monday to the university's proposal to resolve the standoff. UC Berkeley spokesman Dan Mogulof said the university planned to respond to the protesters' letter later today. Occupy the Farm activists moved onto the site, which is known as the Gill Tract and is located near the corner of Marin and San...

Merchants and nearby residents are hoping a new police foot patrol on Telegraph Avenue and at People's Park will reduce the numbers of transients and their aggressive dogs that drive other people away. The patrols started April 30. On day two, they arrested a South Carolina murder suspect who was doing push-ups in People's Park. Police said they initially questioned the man because of his shopping cart, which is illegal to possess. After running his name through a database, he was arrested on a no bail warrant. The patrols, two teams of two from UC Berkeley and the city of...

A former UC Berkeley assistant vice chancellor who doubled the salary of a male subordinate during a 15-month affair has been fired from the university. Diane Leite, 47, who had already been bumped from her assistant vice chancellor's job, was dismissed from the six-figure-salary adviser's job where she had landed, UC Berkeley spokesman Dan Mogulof confirmed Friday. Leite's relationship with purchasing manager Jonathan Caniezo, who is 17 years her junior, was detailed in a whistle-blower letter to her boss back in August. Records show that Caniezo's pay grew from $57,864 in late 2008 to $120,000 in 2010.When the scandal went...

There’s no mistaking that Berkeley enjoys an outsized reputation for a city of only 113,000 people. While people from the redder parts of the country may think of Berkeley and San Francisco as liberal twins, the East Bay college town has a progressive flavor that leaves its big-city neighbor lying in the middle of the road. For this slideshow, Allen Matthews, Katie Dowd, John King and Dave Curran and Kitty Luce came up with the captions. Gate photo editor Douglas Zimmerman shot or found the illustrations....(SLIDE SHOW AT LINK)

A tussle between preservationists and UC Berkeley over a decadelong development project in Albany erupted into a pitchfork protest Sunday, when activists planted a renegade farm on a plot of land known as the Gill Tract in an effort to keep it agriculturally pristine. Timing their action to Earth Day, about 200 members of Occupy the Farm to Take Back the Gill Tract broke a lock on a gate, rototilled the soil and planted carrot, broccoli and corn seedlings on part of the 10-acre site at Marin and San Pablo avenues. The Albany tract is owned by UC Berkeley, which...

BERKELEY, California – Fifteen years ago, California voters were asked: Should colleges consider a student's race when they decide who gets in and who doesn't? With an emphatic "no," they made California the first state to ban the use of race and ethnicity in public university admissions, as well as hiring and contracting. Since then, California's most selective public colleges and graduate schools have struggled to assemble student bodies that reflect the state's demographic mix.

In solidarity with a number of Occupations, as well as long-running protest group Bohemian Grove Action Network, the call for peaceful protests against The Bohemian Club this July in Monte Rio (CA) are hereby announced. Since Bohemian Grove is on private land, we respect those legal boundaries. Therefore, this communique only endorses peaceful, non-violent protests on the public land existing outside Bohemian Grove. The goal is not to “shut down” their party – we simply want to shine a spotlight on it. We feel it blatantly confirms the existence of an interconnected, international power elite that holds a systematic "good...

The people of Berkeley have spoken loud and clear to city leaders: No new taxes. Even the famously left-leaning city has its limits, apparently. A recent poll of 430 residents likely to vote in the November election told city leaders they won't get the necessary two-thirds approval to raise property taxes to fund any of the $500 million needed to upgrade the city's infrastructure such as roads, swimming pools, storm drains and buildings. Residents' attitudes about the direction of the local economy weighed heavily on their answers to the $24,000 poll conducted in March, a pollster told City Council members...

"All governments lie," the late muckraker I.F. "Izzy" Stone used to preach. Let's add this: They also deny. Denial of access is a government lie in and of itself -- especially when a bureaucrat tells the public it has no right to view the writings of top officials, particularly when those officials are in trouble. A pair of recent controversies shows how quickly governments become recalcitrant for fear of embarrassment, denying access to information that may further public understanding and full accountability. In one, lawyers have denied access to records involving a California power couple, state Treasurer Bill Lockyer and...

<p>A Berkeley hills homeowner asked for police to respond quickly to deal with an intruder on his property about 15 minutes before the stranger allegedly bludgeoned him to death with a ceramic pot, according to records released Monday.</p> <p>No officers showed up before Peter Cukor, 67, was killed in the driveway of his home Feb. 18, as the department deployed officers to handle what turned out to be a small Occupy march. Police Chief Michael Meehan has defended his department's actions ..</p>

Columns Reversing the Sixties: The 2012 Republican Agenda By Bob Burnett Friday March 23, 2012 - 12:44:00 PM Bookmark and Share One of the most surprising aspects of contemporary Republican politics has been their across-the-board attack on women’s health services and women’s rights. Rather than an isolated misogynistic program, these attacks should be viewed as one part of a conservative agenda to role back gains made in the sixties. Recently, MoveOn reported Top 10 Shocking Attacks from the GOP’s War on Women ranging from changing the definition of rape to denying abortions in all circumstances to limiting access to contraception...

Four Occupy Cal protesters were arraigned today on misdemeanor charges for their involvement in a demonstration at Sproul Plaza at the University of California at Berkeley campus on Nov. 9. At the request of the Alameda County District Attorney's Office, Superior Court Judge Paul Seeman issued orders which require that the protesters stay away 100 yards from all UC property, except for when they go to and from class and work. Attorney Ronald Cruz, who represents three Occupy Cal protesters but not the four people who were arraigned today, attended today's hearing and said Seeman made it clear that the...

If police chiefs send armed officers to a journalist's door because he didn't like what was written abut him, would you feel just a tad uncomfortable as an American at the audacity? This is no academic discussion because it really happened. Not in what liberals may claim is the dangerous, intolerant south but instead in the heart of liberal land itself, Berkeley, California. Worse, one of the reasons this whole situation arose is because police were too distracted by an Occupy Berkeley protest to respond to an incident that ended up in the murder of a 67-year-old resident. But first,...

The city of Berkeley has hired a law firm to investigate the police chief's decision to send an officer to a reporter's home after midnight to push for changes in a story, officials said today. Interim City Manager Christine Daniel issued a statement confirming the independent investigation shortly after the police union called for an outside probe, saying the top cop should be held to the same standard as the rank and file. Chief Michael Meehan has apologized for what he has described as an "error in judgment." Any officer under his command who did what the chief did would...