3-10-11 0730 Sconehenge Bakery, Berkeley.
I rode my bike down from the Claremont hills in Berkeley, where I was staying overnight, to meet Osha for breakfast. Supposed to be rain later, but now its quite fresh and gorgeous, northern hemisphere light glancing across the intersections, and off the speed bumps. Berkeley bristles with devices to make driving unpleasant, or at least through neighborhood driving. My favorites are the heavy metal wickets that stick up just high enough to rip out a fella’s transmission when he decides he can just drive over it. Years ago at 2 am coming home from the hospital, heard a roaring screeching cacophony of frustration, and came around the corner to find a big American car, maybe an Buick, high and dry on one of these restriction devices, the tires squealing on pavement, the driver revving and, now that I was closer, could hear the muffled cursing from inside the tightly closed and by that time fogged up windows. No, I didn’t try to help…it’s was about the same time all those people shot each other on the GWB in NY.
This morning, the wickets, mini traffic circles, and rotund flower bearing concrete bollards are all working find to facilitate bikes and frustrate cars. It’s a 10 minute effortless coast all the way to Sconehenge, where we are meeting at 7:30.
The place is empty when I walk in. It’s successful, apparently, because they’ve expanded the sitting area recently. The small kitchen turns out specials such as chorizo scramble or the basic Mexican breakfast, also pancakes and waffles. And these are not your usual roadside hotcakes, which Osha once characterized while on a trip elsewhere as being ‘..made of a material for which syrup appeared to be the solvent..” It’s all good here, and they are willing to provide the green tea with soy milk that is his favorite, as well as the routine decaf that warms my soul. I choose a naugahyde upholstered bench cubicle, order the decaf, and settle down to wait. I am finally reading my friend Doug Abram’s novel ‘The Eye of the Whale’. It’s just menacing enough, realistic enough without gratituitous violence or self indulgent sex, and filled with ‘showing it’ rather than ‘telling it’. The kind of writing I would like to become better at, particularly because he takes up the subject of whales and environmental degradation in a way that encourages but does not belabor reflection on the realities we face today. Not for nothing was the title ‘Leviathan’ chosen by an earlier commentator.
Osha arrives after my decaf, and picks up the book. But his preoccupations, once we exchange updates on grandchildren, are with Wisconsin and North Africa. Osha is not lightly moved by American political chicanery. Perhaps it’s the combination of what’s going on right here, in his life as a social activist lawyer, and what’s taking place in the heartland, and abroad.
Right here at home, a trip down the mainstreets of SF or Berkeley make it clear that both Reds and Blues have done really badly by American society. Neither have reversed the flow of wealth away from the middle. Nor have they improved employment or job stability. Prospects for retirement of any kind are bleak. In the midst of wealth, poverty is increasing. And right on world famous Market St in SF , somewhere past the Powell St BART, poverty and dispair was scaresomely evident when I walked from Embarcadero to the Wisconsin Support Rally 10 days ago. All boarded up, aside from a few liquor stores. Humans spun off the social wheel to land in the street, wandering, lying on cardboard in doorways, talking to non existent cell phones, mostly not even able to ask for spare change effectively. Shattuck Ave, and Telegraph Ave in Berkeley don’t have anything quite so gapingly obvious, but Cody’s is still closed, as well as one of the old anchor department stores. The number of street people is actually probably less than it was in the 60’s. But the failure of the market economy to come up with real solutions to our problems makes store owners much more reactive, and ready to lash out at accessible targets for their anger.
And Osha’s in a good position to observe, since he’s been spending more time in court defending the homeless against citations that really amount to a criminalization of poverty. “It’s a mess”, he says. “And now the City Council wants to pass new laws, even more targeted at street people”.
This idea, turning the poor into criminals, is certainly nothing new. It seems to occur to social orders everywhere, the kind that favor ‘Final Solutions’ to problems. And blaming the poor is a political ploy that has always worked, and works today.
Perhaps, Osha muses, it’s the combination of the failure of the market economy, of capitalism, that makes this different. In the ‘60’s, there was oppression, there was imperialism, there was opportunism but the middle class had jobs. Now perhaps ‘they’, those billionaires who control our lives, have gone too far. If they could fix things, we reflect, they would, because they couldn’t be so short sighted to kill off the golden goose, now could they?
Who knows what will happen in North Africa..or the Middle East? The emergent events from situations like this aren’t predictable. Who knows what will happen in poor urban neighborhoods with plenty of guns? Who knows about the poor rural neighborhoods , also with plenty of guns?
Who knows about right here in the East Bay, home of the Free Speech Movement, the Vietnam Day Committee, and the Black Panther Party? Osha wonders out loud if there is something new to say to the liberal store owner who sent a testimonial letter praising the police arrests of street people sitting in front of his store. Perhaps, we opine, more student research into the real causes of concern, why the store owners are hurting would help to re-direct attention to these, help build some kind of new movement. Would the police accept community ideas for a different style of enforcement? What could the law clinic due to help? I’ve certainly been on the other side of disagreements…have cursed zoning rules when I wanted to build, have bad mouthed unions when they wouldn’t agree to my management side proposals for job re-definition. But in the long run, without that give and take, mistakes are made, people get hurt. I trot out my favorite old example; when they were planning the new hospital on Pill Hill, the custodians were not part of the process…and the broom closets were forgotten.
But these may not be thinking times. Not much thoughtful process in evidence when the City of Berkeley considers de-funding the internationally recognized Ecology Centers’ recycling program. And it seems, says Osha, that Mr Obama is a little late, and a little short on thinking..a little too responsive to the very people who have taken the actions that have got us into the mess of ecology and economy that has led to the events today.
Well, the decaf is finished, as are the waffle, the green tea, and the poached eggs. Time to head out into our 70 year old lives. Another wonderful day in paradise!!
