AC Transit and UC Berkeley are considering changes to the bus shuttle that serves the campus, which could result in the layoffs of several drivers employed by the university.

Under an existing agreement, the university offers the service and leases the buses from AC Transit. But the long-term lease expired in June 2008 and has been month-to-month since then. The transit agency elected not to continue the deal past December of this year, said Seamus Wilmot, UC Berkeley’s acting director of parking and transportation. 

Perimter bus driver Bob Mayer talks to a passenger.

But AC Transit spokesman Clarence Johnson would not confirm the end of the relationship with UC Berkeley, and said that the lease was not terminated and talks still continuing. “Anything is possible, and there is no way to know what will happen because the talks are still on and there is no timetable to get something out,” Johnson said.

Wilmot, though, met with the drivers in mid-April to tell them that the lease would not continue and they would likely lose their jobs by August.

Bob Mayer has been working as a driver on the campus for almost 16 years. He said he’d be disappointed to stop driving the campus routes, where he’s come to know the area inch by inch and has developed a good relationship with the passengers. Mayer talked as he drove the perimeter bus, which skirts the campus from Shattuck up the north side of the university, south past the Haas School of Business, and then down Bancroft to Shattuck again.

Anita Ross has used the bus for 30 years and said there’s a community connection between the drivers and the campus. “It is a big loss,” she said. “I’m a staff employee here and I get free transit, and I don’t know if I will have to pay for the bus in the future. The drivers are very generous and gentle and they wait for us when wave at them, unlike AC Transit.”

The university is looking for options to make sure the campus is still served by bus service. One solution might be to give AC Transit access to campus, and allowing the transit agency to provide the sole service to the campus area, although that would likely mean an increase in student and staff fees. Another option might be for the university to purchase its own vehicles, fuel and insurance, and also do its own maintenance, but this would also lead to higher fees and probably cost the university more than an agreement with AC Transit.

Currently the bus service costs more than $2 million, which the university pays to AC Transit. Student and staff fees cover about $1.2 million of that. Students pay $58.50 for an unlimited ride pass, while Berkeley staff members pay $37 per month.

The 17 drivers who drive the campus routes, meanwhile, are worried that if AC Transit takes over, they’ll lose their driving jobs because AC Transit will staff the routes with its own drivers, and does not have to budget to hire more. Wilmot said the university could try to find jobs elsewhere on campus for the displaced drivers. “Unfortunately,” he said, “this is the hardest part of the whole thing.”

Mayer said he’s thinking of seeking an alternative job with the Berkeley campus if he loses his driving job. “I would have to seek my options if there is another department job on the campus I can go to and work on my benefits and years of service in Berkeley,” Mayer said. “If I start with AC Transit I will have to stop everything I learned here and start all over again and it will be different. I will have to make a decision if I want to make that change.”

Linda Jerkins started driving one of the buses two years ago, and said she loves her job. She actively passes out fliers to passengers, whether at a bus stop or while she waits for her shift. “I want to stay here and I was thinking to keep working here until I retire,” Jerkins said.

The decision will be finalized in the next two weeks to a month, according to Wilmot, who said that they are still looking for options to solve the problem.

By Shaleece Haas/Special to 510 Report

Biofuel Oasis, a worker-owned biodiesel company, is moving from their one-pump garage to a new drive-through station on a busy corner in southwest Berkeley, Calif.

UPDATE: On April 30, 2009, Biofuel Oasis made the move to their new station.

By Alba Mora/Special to Oakland North

Would you ever let two strangers crash on your couch? Recently reporter Alba Mora welcomed two couchsurfers into her Berkeley home.

By Lauren Rudser and Brittney Johnson/ Oakland North

Last week, the Obama administration reversed bans, put in pace under President Bush, on Stem Cell research using federal funds. See how this is affecting one local couple.

I was driving down Shattuck Ave this afternoon – the 6th anniversary of the Iraq war – and out of the corner of my eye I noticed quite a commotion out front of the Marine Recruiting Center. I circled around to get a better look, and saw the huge windows at the front of the Center being replaced. There were baseball-sized holes in the windows, and dripping red paint.

Read an article about the vandalism from the Oakland Tribune.

The tropical crops of Maria Inés Catalán’s youth don’t grow in Hollister. Instead of winding through the papaya and mango trees of her native Guerrero, Mexico, here, wearing black loafers caked in mud from the past week’s rain, she tramples weeds, carefully stepping over the kale, broccoli and artichoke plants that thrive in the Northern California winter.

Catalán stops mid-field, spotting something hidden in one of the plants.

“Mira!” she says excitedly. “Look!” When she smiles her round sun-chapped cheeks seem to grow, and her already slanted eyes become thin lines on her face. Her brown hair is streaked with a mix of grey and orange-yellow strands.

Brushing the plant leaves aside, she cups an artichoke gently in her hand and holds it proudly for all to see. It is huge, almost the size of her palm, and the green is stained with a light, washed-out purple.

“Qué chulada,” she says, almost to herself. What a beauty.

Catalán Family Farms, which María Inés Catalán owns, lies in a flat stretch of land surrounded by emerald green hills between the Silicon and Central Valleys. Once a farm worker, Catalán became one of the first Latina immigrant organic farmers in the country when she started fifteen years ago.

Today she sells her produce at farmers’ markets throughout the Bay Area, including three in Berkeley and one in the Temascal neighborhood in North Oakland. While the term “organic” often carries with it a highbrow, not to say high price, connotation, Catalán also sells at wholesale price to Farm Fresh Choice, a Berkeley-based food justice project that works to make organic produce accessible to low-income communities of color. Just as her desire to make healthy eating an option for the surrounding Latino community comes from her own experience as an immigrant, so her decision to go organic had more to do with her personal history with the land, than with pure business sense.

***

Standing in her Berkeley Farmer’s Market stall, wearing a black apron decorated with small embroidered vegetables, Catalán rapidly weighs heads of lettuce and bunches of celery, tells the customer the price in a rough but matter-of-fact English, and gives them their change with a gentle “Thank You.”

And she really is grateful. People are buying less than they used to before the economy went sour. “They used to buy two bunches of chard,” she says, “and now they buy only one, because they’re afraid of being left with no money.”

Small mounds of vegetables are spread out in front of her, and behind her hang two papers, both declaring her produce to be certified Organic. She points to them with a shake of the head, recalling how difficult it was to get the certification when she first started. There were so many forms, most in English, and it was dizzying to maneuver through the various agencies and departments in charge of the process.

But what angers her the most, as she tells it, is that once she did get certified and started selling at the markets, other vendors gave her a hard time. These fellow farmers, always white Americans, would come up to her stand and inspect her produce. “They would ask me if I grew it,” she says, “or if it was really organic, like they didn’t believe me.”

A funny question, since Catalán’s background is firmly rooted in the concept of organic farming. “It’s called organic certification here in the US,” she says,  “but for us in Mexico, it’s traditional agriculture. My grandparents grew organic. Simply because of our culture we are organic farmers.” The only difference, she says, is that in the US, “there’s regulations and politics to certify a ranch, to work in what you want to do, like to do, and are used to doing.”

But when Catalán migrated to California, this traditional agriculture was lost to her, and for years she labored in the pesticide-laden broccoli and strawberries fields of Monterrey County. She remembers it as painstaking, dehumanizing work. “They use you like a machine,” she says. “They tell you to fill…one box a minute, or 60 boxes of broccoli per hour. And by paying you a wage, they know how much they are going to produce per day or per hour.”

Catalán partly attributes her current farming to a need for healthier work.  “And as I learned that being an organic farmer was about about taking care of our environment, our air, soil, our water,” she says, “I made the decision to farm organic.”

Recalling childhood moments of running with goats and playing in piles of harvested peanuts on her father’s farm, Catalán says that even as a farm worker she dreamt of someday owning a farm where her grandchildren could grow up as she did.

“A lot of people told me I was crazy. They said, ‘We are in the United States, and being able to own your own farm and be your own boss and do what you like to do because of tradition is impossible.’”

Now, Catalan’s six grandchildren are growing up on a farm as she once dreamt, even if, in the end, they decide they don’t want to be farmers, themselves. “As they grow they are learning to love the land and to produce their own food, which is the most important thing,” she says proudly.

***

“It’s a man’s world, agriculture,” says Catalán, nibbling on a bright yellow mustard flower as she trudges through the muddy rows. “Usually the man is in front, and the woman is behind,” she says, “But here, I’m in front and my husband is behind!” she lets out a hearty laugh and looks back. “What do you think, viejo?” she calls out to her husband Javier, whom she always refers to as her “old man.”  He is following close behind with one of Catalán’s grandsons; he smiles and shrugs, unbothered.

Fifteen years ago, Catalán took part in three-year long Small Farmer Education training offered by the Agricultural and Land-Based Training Association (ALBA), which trains low-income farmers-many of them Spanish-speaking former farm workers-to grow and market organic produce. She was the only woman in the course, and her fellow farmers refused to take her seriously, especially when it came to learning how to operate heavy farm machinery. They would laugh and tell her that she should be at home taking care of her husband.

“They respect her now,” says her son Juan, “because they know that she is helping everyone.” Juan, whom Catalán brought from Mexico with his three siblings when he was seven years old, used to work el fil-the field-with his mother as a young boy. Now, he helps her run the farm. At one point when she is not around, he proudly shows off a leather-bound “Certificate of Appreciation” awarded to his mother by the Department of Agriculture in recognition of her work for Latino farmers. He points to the gold seal with his finger, as though to highlight the official nature of her work.

Catalán is, after all, founder and current president of Pequeños Agricultores de California (Small Farmers of California), an organization of Latino organic farmers mainly concentrated in San Benito County. She is also the organization’s only female member.

On this day, Catalán is in a hurry to get to an 11 o’clock meeting with another organization to discuss the lack of access to financial resources that Latino organic farmers have. The organization works almost as a cooperative, although she doesn’t use those terms. Farmers grow their crops and mutually help each other commercialize their product. Oftentimes, Catalán has given other farmers small interest-free loans, and helps new farmers maneuver through the complicated organic certification process she herself struggled with years ago.

And farming continues to be a struggle. Although the Catalán’s business is staying afloat, this year-during what has been referred to as California’s most severe drought in history-seems particularly daunting.  The farm might not get any irrigation water from the municipal reservoir, because the state’s priority is supplying the cities first. There is even talk that the county may start to charge for using local well water. Many farmers in the north, says Catalán, have decided not to even plant this season.

“But if nothing gets planted and there is no alternative, there won´t be any food,” she says, her voice mixture of anger and despair. “That’s what they don’t see.”

Last week’s rain has helped the crops, but not so much Catalán’s market sales. Fewer people come to farmers’ markets when it rains. And there’s another economic issue: the high cost of labor. Catalán reaches into the middle of the lettuce crop and pulls out a handful of weeds-if this was a “conventional” farm, she says, there wouldn’t be any weeds because of the chemicals used on the plants. But in organic farming, the only way to get rid of the weeds is to pull them out by hand; because of that, she estimates that out of the $30,000 it takes for her to maintain the farm each month, about $20,000 of that goes to the contractor who hires the laborers.

Though happier as a farmer than as a farm worker, Catalán has yet to own the land on which she farms. She leases it, paying $5,100 a month in rent, with the option to buy. Without any outside financing, buying land is a difficult goal to attain, but for Catalán, it’s something she is working towards.

“Imagine if it was like Zapata said,” she says, referring to the Mexican revolutionary who fought for land reform in the early 20th Century, “and the land belonged to those who worked it.”

***

Amidst the early morning garble of chickens and cows and the neighing of horses, Catalán lets out a squeal.

“Está naciendo!” (“It’s being born!”) She gasps and points to a goat standing perfectly still inside a pen, with what looks like a lump of slime drooping from between its legs. “Viejo!”  she calls out to her  husband. “Está naciendo!”

“I always get nervous,” she says, wringing her hands.  “Sometimes the babies get trampled on by the mother and die.” In one quick second the slimy pouch drops onto the hay, red liquid gushing out after it, and the baby goat squirms for a few minutes before attempting to wobble on its still-weak legs.

Catalán sighs in relief. It’s as though she’s never seen a goat being born before, but in the same pen there are eleven other kids, along with eighteen adults.

She hopes to certify them as organically raised, so she can sell the meat to restaurants. She already sells produce to a handful of restaurants in San Francisco and the East Bay, in addition to selling through Community Supported Agriculture programs in Monterrey. These new endeavors, she says, are the only way to keep the farm running in hard times.

Later that day, she returns to the barn area to check in on the newborn goat. It’s standing now, stumbling to find its mother´s teat. The anxiety that the kid will get trampled comes back for a minute; Catalán presses her husband to take the two goats out of the pen, so the baby isn’t in danger. He disappears and comes back with an old towel.

“I´ll do it,” says Catalan, grabbing the towel and briskly walking into the pen. She gently scoops the kid up in the blanket and lays it outside. They tie the mother to a post next to it. She calms down again.

Dame un cigarro, she says bluntly, putting out her palm. “Give me a cigarette.” No “please,” no “Thank you.”  Her husband pulls out a pack of Marlboro reds and hands her one along with a lighter.

Catalán props herself onto a plastic barrel, the blue of her fleece sweater almost blending into the pale blue of the sky, the fields rolling back behind her. She hides the hand holding the cigarette behind the barrel so the smoke doesn’t blow in anyone else’s face. Her legs dangle, crossed at the ankles, and in between deep drags of her cigarette she begins to talk dreams: Of starting a commercial kitchen, as she calls it, where members of the Small Farmers of California would be able to jar or pickle their produce in order to preserve and sell it. Of letting the chickens lay eggs wherever they want so there will be 800 chickens and she can start selling organic eggs. Of inseminating a cow with world-renowned Japanese bull semen so she can sell organic beef. Of expanding her crops to include more Mexican produce – nopal cactus and different varieties of chiles that she can dry. Of homemade salsas she can sell at the farmers’ markets.

The problem, she says, pushing her finger into the air and moving her entire body forward to make the point, is that there are no resources to help already established organic farmers expand in this way. Although there are organizations that help them get started, such as the one that helped her fifteen years ago, there is nothing to help them “take it farther.”  This, she explains, is what her meeting will be about later today.

Which reminds her that she has to get moving.

“I think I was a queen in a past life,” she says with a grin in between smokey breaths, “Just that this time I was born poor.”  She belts out a laugh and turns to her husband.

“Right, viejo?”

Farm Fresh Choice, a food justice and youth empowerment project of the Berkeley-based Ecology Center, works with youth of color in West Berkeley to educate the community around nutrition and access to healthy eating. On Tuesday afternoons, they run an organic produce stand outside Bahia, a bilingual after-school program. Listen to some of the youth as they discuss their work in the community.

By Huda Ahmed/510 Report

Jessica Fischer organized mysterious shapes made of plastic and metal, as well as spongy brightly-colored toys on the table and waited for her young audience at UC Berkeley’s International House to be seated. The dim yellow light bulbs gave the room a romantic glow. The whole room was soon packed with more than 45 international students from the University of California trying to figure out what these objects were and what the speaker would say.

Fischer a fair, skinny 25-year-old woman, is a masters candidate with the Department of Sexuality Studies at San Francisco State University, and she was about to lead a workshop about pleasure physiology and sex toys. The workshop’s goal was to let students understand their bodies and feel comfortable with them, and to be as comfortable talking about sex with members of the opposite gender as with their own.

Sex is very sensitive subject for some international students like Cheryl Lo, a 22-year-old undergrad in mass communications, who was staring at the workshop flyer: “It was a bit shocking when I saw it. I asked myself, ‘Do they talk about sex and orgasm publicly?” she said. “I‘m curious and I want to ask some questions. I’m from Hong Kong and in our culture; it is embarrassing to talk about sex in public.”

Fischer began her lecture by asking the students who had taken any biology classes to raise their hands – only one student did. “Okay, in this workshop, we will talk about the history of sex toys, the use of them and the physiology of pleasure to understand how these things stimulate our body,” she said.

She produced two cloth dolls, a man and a woman, with spongy genitals.  The students passed them from one to another, making fun of them and taking pictures; some were nervous and shy about touching the toys.

The lecture lasted for more than two hours; Fischer spoke about the earliest days of sex toys when they were used for medical therapy, not as entertainment objects, and about the 19^th Century doctors who tried to find a way to enhance or increase the sense of pleasure for women who could not get satisfaction from their partners.

Fischer is originally from Arizona, and works as an independent contractor for the Good Vibrations OSSE (Off-Site Sex Education) program. Good Vibrations is a retailer devoted to providing “access to sex-positive products,” according to their Web site. Fischer realized her ability to teach when she was very young, “I have always educated people around me. I used to give my friends condoms to help them have safe sex,” she said, “I came from conservative state which is different from California, so I did not know how it was going to be and if I would be able to talk about sex topics in public.” 

The students were curious and they kept asking questions, especially the males. For many of them, the lecture was helpful and informative.  “I learned about the human body, differences between women and men,” said one Middle Eastern student, who asked that her name not be used. In her home country, she said, “We are mostly introduced to the subject as biology without going into details. Due to the culture we did not discuss it—it is not a public issue, it is completely private and prohibited. You can talk about it with your same sex but, not with the other sex.”

The sex workshop was not the first one for Angela Chang, a senior chemistry major at UC Berkeley, “This is the third sex workshop I’ve attended.  I was so nervous in the first workshop because I was worried how people would judge me but I felt so comfortable about my body after that,” she said, “My family is originally from China but I was born here. At home, we definitely never talk about sex with me. The only way my parents wanted to teach me is when they handed me a stack of sex books about the change the body goes through and that is it.”

The lecture wrapped up with sex toys in different colors and shapes being passed around by the students, who found it a chance to make goofy remarks. One of the students put a vibrator toy on the floor to make it look like a worm. Fischer does not mind her audience to play with the toys. “It is no harm to throw jokes in here and there to break the sensitive barrier of the subject, as long it helps people to understand and have safe sex,” she said.

Scenes from an Auction: As the number of Bay Area foreclosures skyrockets, so does the amount of auctions selling foreclosed homes at a fraction of their original price. Watch potential buyers vie for bargains at a recent auction.

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