I spoke to one sad young woman moving out of a rental who said that she has been told by the landlord to leave ... she said she cant afford to rent in Berkeley anymore
since the banks wont lend to anyone non-rich at the moment, and the rest of the Bay Area, especially the neighboring Oakland gentrification colony, is suffering really badly from social and economic problems making life really sketchy
in short, Berkeley is becoming a green ghetto for rich, mostly white (though certainly not all) in the heart of neoliberal imperialism
you can see the same dynamics at work at KPFA which is split between two opposing functions.
1. a local listener supported and run radio station reflecting the culture of the place; nice restaurants, world music, too much jazz and hard left news as a form of infotainment 2. the second function is a masthead, a leading station for a national network that takes a radical left position and acts as pretty much the only organized institution able to keep leftist ideas and practices circulating in the global media-sphere
I guess its natural for old radical liberals to want a nice safe and care-free retirement, but buy leaving the real-estate market and an aging demographic take its course without some serious strategic innovation means that the place and its institutions will become increasing inward, small, safe, small and nostalgic while the rest of the world, including neighboring Oakland and Richmond go down below third world conditions
its amazing, one simple solution, tax the rich and send some of the money down off the Berkeley and Oakland Hills to pay for schools and health and jobs
its pretty disappointing Occupy Oakland pissed away all its community coalition capital on testing anarchist theories and playing political theatre with poor peoples political economy
-- Nicholas Roberts US 510-684-8264 http://Permaculture.TV http://permaculture.coop