Category Archives: Non-profits
Ride for Recovery targets $25,000 in donations for Options
On Sunday morning at 6 a.m., Bobby Miller will get on his bike in front of the Veteran’s Memorial Building on Center Street, and set off on a ride. He’ll head first to the Carquinez Bridge, then to Napa, before turning to Lake Berryessa and ending up in Davis. On Monday, he’ll retrace his route back to Berkeley, for a total of 216 miles in two days.
Miller, the 67-year old executive director of Options Recovery Services, isn’t riding … Continue reading »
Ashkenaz provides music, “living room” for activists
Berkeley newbies may have trouble finding a cold beer and clog-dancing lesson on a Friday night. Bay Area long-timers, however, know the old brown building on San Pablo Avenue is a good place to start.
Since 1973, Ashkenaz has bridged cultural divides, supplying Berkeley residents with world music performances and a variety of dance lessons on an almost-daily basis.
“Ashkenaz has been around for 40 years, and it’s definitely a unique institution,” said Aaron Simon, board president of Ashkenaz. “We’re a world music venue with roots in the Berkeley counterculture and protest movement. We’re a favorite venue with many national touring acts and an important stage in the local music scene.”
Music enthusiasts are hard-pressed to find a more diverse show calendar. Ashkenaz’s upcoming week boasts western swing, Cajun/Creole, alternative rock, east-coast reggae and conscious hip-hop.
Most concerts at Ashkenaz follow a dance lesson that fits the mood. … Continue reading »
Five “Berkeley originals” — as decreed by the Chronicle
The San Francisco Chronicle decided to mark Independence Day with a slide show of Bay Area independents — the original people, businesses and ideas that make the Bay Area so special. Out of the 48 chosen independents, there are five with clear Berkeley provenance (which we think is a bit stingy).
Here are the Berkeley originals.
Yomi Wrong and the Center for Independent Living. The Chronicle correctly calls Berkeley “the birthplace of the disability rights movement”. Knit … Continue reading »
“Charity” book bins run by for-profit company
Berkeleyans tend to be generous, civic-minded people, so the bright blue bins in supermarket parking lots marked “Donate Books” could inspire thoughts about clearing clutter from some shelves. Think again. The bins are run by for-profit Thrift Recycling Management, based in Lakewood, Washington. In Berkeley, the bins are now at Andronico’s and Safeway locations. Nationally only about 25% of the books are given to non-profits (locally, Safeway has a different arrangement with no books being sold).
According to a recent investigation by D. K. Row for The Oregonian, Thrift Recycling Management (TRM) has revenues of about $26 million a year and 200 employees. The books collected in the bins are sorted into three groups: about one-quarter are sold through online sites like Amazon, about half are pulped, and the final one-quarter is given to non-profits. Most of these go to Reading Tree, a non-profit registered in Utah. Row’s investigation revealed unusually close links between TRM and Reading Tree. TRM President Jeff Mullin is also president of Reading Tree. (Reading Tree’s 2009 990 form can be seen here. The organization had gross receipts of over $10 million in 2009.)
“They’re not being straightforward,” said Diane Davenport, president of Friends of the Berkeley Public Library. “TRM made $26 million last year from books that they’d gotten out of these blue bins.” … Continue reading »
Pets of the homeless to get help at People’s Park clinic
In February, some people were sitting on a wall in Berkeley when one of them jumped off and accidentally landed on the leg of a puppy, HarleyQuin.
Shadow, the street name for HarleyQuin’s owner, rushed the dog to a nearby vet but didn’t have the $60 it would take to have her examined. Shadow left the office and hoped for the best, but HarleyQuin’s leg continued to swell. Shadow didn’t know how he would help his dog until he connected with a new Berkeley nonprofit Paw Fund, which helps homeless and low-income people provide medical care for their pets.
Paw Fund, which was started by Jill Posener, a photographer and former Animal Care Commissioner, arranged for a doctor to put HarleyQuin’s leg in a cast. It also paid the $700 doctor’s bill, although Shadow eventually contributed $210.
Berkeley has dozens of homeless youths like Shadow and many of them have dogs.
“It’s common for people without homes to have dogs for companionship, for warmth, and for protection,” said Posener. “For many people living on the street, their animal is their family, the one creature in their immediate circle who they can depend on to love them unconditionally.”
But since these youths often move from city to city and have to scrounge for food and a place to sleep, they often don’t prioritize their animal’s health, said Posener. As a result, many of their dogs and cats haven’t gotten their vaccines, are riddled with fleas, and produce litter after litter, exacerbating the number of unwanted pets in the region that eventually are euthanized. … Continue reading »
End of budget negotiations imperils city, school budgets
Already tough budgets for the city and the school district became significantly tougher with the collapse today of negotiations between Governor Jerry Brown and the Republicans in Sacramento.
Since Brown took office in January, his highest priority has been a plan to close the state’s $26.6 billion deficit. Lawmakers have agreed $11.2 billion in spending cuts and funding shifts, but Brown’s plan required a June vote to extend various tax measures. That would have required at least four Republicans — two in the Assembly and two in the Senate — to reach the required two-thirds majority. With today’s end of negotiations, there will be no June vote and the taxes will expire at the end of June. … Continue reading »
Will Willard Pool become a vegetable garden?
About a dozen UC Berkeley students were working at the filled-in Willard Pool on Saturday, cleaning up the premises and hauling rich dirt to place on top of the soil used to fill in the pools after they shut down.
The students were part of The Berkeley Project, a Cal group that sends volunteers to the city of Berkeley to help out community groups. Each fall, The Berkeley Project hosts a project event day where thousands of students work around the East Bay. In the spring, it hosts a project month where volunteers help community organizations the last three Saturdays before spring break.
The students working at the Willard pool were loading dirt piled on Derby Street into wheelbarrows, rolling them to the small, filled-in pool and spreading it with rakes.
“It will be some kind of garden,” said Phil Harper-Cotton, a city recreation program supervisor. “Whether it will be vegetables or flowers , we haven’t figure it out.”
Another twist in the KPFA tale
The long-running dispute over management of local non-commercial radio station KPFA took another turn yesterday. The Pacifica Foundation, which owns and runs the station, reinstated former Morning Show co-host Brian Edwards-Tiekert with back pay and benefits. But Edwards-Tiekert will return to the station as a news reporter, not as a show host.
In a letter to supporters, Edwards-Tiekert wrote, “Legally speaking, Pacifica management is throwing in the towel… Pacifica has basically conceded it can’t win the pending arbitration … Continue reading »
Berkeley cannabis collectives slapped with huge tax bills
The state Board of Equalization is contending that the Berkeley Patients Group, one of the oldest and largest medical cannabis dispensaries in California, owes $6 million in back taxes, Berkeleyside has learned.
The board claims that the dispensary on San Pablo Avenue did not pay taxes on the medical marijuana it sold from July 2004 to June 2007 and now owes $4.4 million in taxes and about $1.6 million in interest.
The charges come on the heels of a September 2010 ruling in which the Board of Equalization determined that another Berkeley cannabis collective, Patients Care Collective, had to pay $639,000 for back taxes it owed from January 1, 2005 to September 8, 2008 on the sales of cannabis and marijuana cookies.
The Berkeley Patients Group, which has about 13,000 members and serves 800 to 1,000 patients each day, is contesting the charges, according to Elisabeth Jewel, whose firm Aroner, Jewel, & Ellis advises BPG on governmental regulations. Until February 2007, the laws regarding the collection of taxes for the sale of cannabis were murky, which is why the BPG did not pay, she said.
“There is no allegation of malfeasance in terms of collecting a tax and not paying it,” said Jewel. “The Berkeley Patients Group contends it was not clear to them that they had to pay sales taxes on what they consider medicine.”
The Board of Equalization will hold a hearing on the charges at its February 22-24 meeting in Sacramento. While the board would not officially confirm there is a claim pending against BPG, a spokesman did confirm the BPG hearing was on the agenda, which has not yet been made public. Berkeleyside learned about BPG’s late tax payments from a source close to the board, who asked not to be named.
After Berkeley, school lunches will never be the same
When Helen De Michiel was shooting Lunch Love Community, a series of short films focused on Berkeley’s groundbreaking school lunch program, she would often interrupt her desk work to drop in to King Middle School to see what was on the menu for lunch.
Sharing the food with the school kids, chatting with the cooks and watching the care taken by the servers, dishwashers and cleaners all translated into material for the documentary, the making of which she also documented on her Notes from the Field blog.
In one entry, De Michiel, co-director and co-producer of Lunch Love Community with Sophie Constantinou, writes: “The school lunch cooks are planting seeds for future memories. At some point later in their lives, the kids who have gone through these lunch lines will remember the fine smell of delicately seasoned pinto beans, the crunch of the fresh Mexican slaw, and the ceiling light in the Commons rooms, and that moment when they were twelve years old and peeling a perfect Clementine orange to taste. This is how we make change on a daily level, one plate at a time.” … Continue reading »
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