The Opinion Pages

The Internet yesterday was flooded with tributes to Teddy Kennedy. For many Americans he was the last surviving representative of a generation of liberals who believed that with steady work and good will all noble things were possible. It was a faith that was severely tried during the Reagan and Bush I and II administrations, and it was a bit shaken even under Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. -more-

For 12 years, beginning in 1970, I was director of studies for international educational programs sponsored by UC Berkeley Extension at Oxford, Leningrad, Venice and elsewhere. On several occasions both in England and the Soviet Union, persons in my programs got sick. -more-

Why aren’t reporters asking the following questions of those they choose to interview? This in-cludes the predictable “public television” (e.g., News Hour, Bill Moyers’ Journal) programs.   -more-

If television cameras had focused on the urban poor in New Orleans…before Katrina, I believe that the initial reaction to descriptions of poverty and poverty concentration would have been unsympathetic.” So writes Harvard scholar William Julius Wilson in More than Just Race: Being Black and Poor in the Inner City. As we approach the fourth commemoration of the storm and flood, the nation has reverted to its pre-Katrina blindness to the poverty endemic to New Orleans—and to local Bay Area communities, whose conditions are ripe for just such wide scale disaster given our proximity to the ticking Hayward fault. -more-

Kéllia Ramares’ Commentary in the Planet Aug. 20 calls KPFA’s elections “silly” because “a tiny minority of listeners get totally worked up about” them but notes they “do not yield democratic results.” -more-

It’s 2009, and the first community radio station in the country, KPFA, born right here in Berkeley in 1949, is entering its election cycle once again. And I feel sick.  -more-

Was Donald Goldmacher’s commentary on the KPFA election fair, truthful and unbiased? Or did he conveniently leave out many crucial facts? You decide. -more-

KPFA listeners remember 1999 as the year of the Lockout and the massive response. 10,000 people marched through the streets of Berkeley chanting “Save KPFA!” “Save Pacifica!” That dramatic moment was followed by a decade of board meetings, mostly held inside the dark chambers of the Freight & Salvage Coffeehouse. And yet, basic issues are still not settled, their resolution still up for grabs. -more-