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Cal ASUC - from 2008 meeting on fight The Cal ASUC Senate (or The Associated Students of The University of California) passed a very controversial bill last Wednesday night, that called for the University of California campus system to divest from Israel. The reason for the bill's creation was concern that the University of California was investing in companies that supplied Israel with materials used in alleged war crimes. According to t he Daily Californian , ASUC Senators voted 16 to 4 to pass the bill, following a hearing that drew 80 speakers and four hours of discussion. According to the blog Desert Peace , Student Senator Rahul Patel said "In the 1980s the Berkeley Student Government was a central actor in demanding that the university divest from South African apartheid. Twenty-five years later, it is a key figure in shaping a nationwide movement against occupation and war crimes around the world." He's right. This blogger remembers the riot tha

Please join us as OaklandSeen proudly unveils its new online destination, OaklandSeen.com! Official Launch Party for OaklandSeen.com DJ fflood Thursday March 25, 6-9pm Somar Bar / 1727 Telegraph. Ave, Oakland no cover / cash bar / donations gladly accepted More About OaklandSeen After building a solid foundation through radio and social networks, OaklandSeen presents OaklandSeen.com, a web portal dedicated to sharing genuine voices, striking images, investigative stories, and daily updates by and about our own community. OaklandSeen forges a pioneering new model for media and community engagement. Its information network highlights issues important to working people, people of color, young people. OaklandSeen links radio broadcasts, social networks, community news, blogs, and web resources to share a compelling mix of Oakland’s most credible and exciting voices -- yours! This spring, OaklandSeen presents OaklandSeen.com, a web portal that will locate Oakland's multir

A City of Oakland, California ordinance that would set-aside public campaign money and transfer it to what is called voter education about the new ranked choice voting system was delayed by the Oakland City Council last week. That's excellent. Really, there's no need for an ordinance that is really just a power-grab on the part of incumbent Oakland politicians. The proposal, if it were implemented, would eliminate public financing for Oakland City Council elections. Think about that. The idea launched by Oakland Councilmember Ignacio De La Fuente (District 5) and by Oakland Councilmember Rebecca Kaplan (At-Large) would take election assistance money away from potential new political threats running for office - like Libby Schaaf who's running for Oakland Councilmember Jean Quan's seat in District 4 - and give it to a program that can be done for less than $225,000: educating voters about ranked-choice voting. It does not take a quarter of a million dollars to do

Oakand Mayor Ron Dellums  In the 2010 Oakland Mayor's Race, this news: Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums is running for reelection . This blogger learned the news from a good friend who's been involved in Oakland political and nonprofit circles for over 3 decades. In the "funny who you see on the same plane flight" book, this person was on the same San Francisco to Chicago flight late Tuesday night. That's when the information that's been largely hidden from the public was shared. "Dellums is going to give it a go and see what happens" the person said. Also Mayor Dellums had a fund-raiser over the weekend. The foundation for Ron Dellums' campaign for reelection as Mayor of Oakland has started. While, as of this writing, I still don't think Dellums can win, the Mayor does have three things going for him. First, he's the incumbent and he's theoretically able to defend his record better than anyone else. Second, and perhaps th

As the news that the Oakland, California teacher's union's planned one-day walkout was moved to April 22nd from March 24th, this blogger ran across a paragraph in the East Bay Express that has information that was incorrect. In "Some Hard Truths About Oakland Teachers", Robert Gammon wrote: ...the City of Oakland has nothing to do with teacher salaries. Teachers are employees of the Oakland Unified School District, which is a completely separate legal entity that gets its funding from the state, not the city. So the city has no say in how much teachers make. And thus comparing teacher salaries to cops' salaries, as some commenters want to do, is ridiculous, because they're paid by different entities. Gammon's wrong and he should look at Section 33678 Subdivision (B) of the California Health and Safety Code . The common misconception about California Redevelopment Law and Tax Increment Revenue, is that redevelopment revenue can't be used to prov

The richest person in the world is Carlos Slim Helu , but who Carlos Slim Helu? The Richest Man In The World reportedly makes $30 million a month. Carlos Slim Helu, who tops The Forbes billionaire list, is the Lifetime Honorary Chairman of Telefonos de Mexico. Mr. Helu, whom the Christian Science Monitor weirdly described as "the portly cigar-smoker", is the first man from a developing country to become Richest Man In The World. That's another way of saying Carlos Slim Helu is the first person of color to top the Forbes billionaire list. How Carlos Slim Helu got there is by purchasing a controlling interest in Telmex in 1990, along with a group of investors, and used that to leverage the buying of as many telecom companies in Mexico and Latin America as possible. Now, his family owns 90 percent of Mexico's telephone lines and 80 percent of its cellphone. He's used that to finance his business operations around the World. Carlos Slim Helu owns almos

On March 18th The Seattle P.I., the website that was once connected to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, turns one year old. This month of March, and to the total surprise of this blogger, his work turned up on the "City Brights section" of Seattle P.I. It's great to at the Seattle P.I. (as it gives me a reason to focus on a city I love, Seattle) and at SFGate.com , and at Examiner.com , and at Zennie62.com, and the 100 blog network we have there, and on Youtube.com , Blip.tv , and five other video sites, and about 30 social networks and bookmarking sites and on CoLoursTV . The one problem is the Seattle P.I. appears to be using the Zennie62 RSS feed but not formatting the result. Thus, the blog posts come out without paragraph breaks, leaving one long "go" of words all mushed together. The damage is done when it reads "posted by Zennie Abraham" - it wasn't posted by Zennie Abraham. He's me, as you know. Thanks, Seattle P.I.; ple