Carol Denney

Homelessness Isn’t Just an Accident—It’s a Plan

Opinion
We know we’re one paycheck away, one injury away from being that homeless person our policymakers wish would leave town if we can’t keep up with exorbitant rents. Why do our political and planning representatives continue to build unaffordable housing instead of addressing the most pressing housing needs?

Bulldozing People’s Park Is Not User Development

Opinion
University of Calfornia officials are trying to erase history. The incursion is a test to see if the People will hold this place as the sacred ground we liberated from the folly of UC officials in 1969 and have held all these years. Bulldozing is not user development.

January Poetry of the Streets

Poetry
grab your tent and screw the rent come occupy/ join the slackers and the hackers occupy/ meet the folks who lost their homes/ meet the folks who never owned one/ meet the folks down to the bone/ you’ll find you’ll never be alone/ grab a sign and join the line at occupy/ admit you’re the 99 and occupy

UC Bulldozes Community Garden in People’s Park

News   Poetry
Bulldozers destroyed huge numbers of healthy plants and trees at People’s Park in Berkeley on December 18, carrying out the orders of University of California officials. The bulldozers destroyed all the plants and flowers that had been carefully tended for decades by volunteer gardeners, leaving behind stripped earth.

Preserve Affordable Housing in Berkeley

Opinion
Any proposed development at the vacant lot on the corner of Haste and Telegraph Avenue that precludes the replacement of the 77 lost units of SRO housing is a theft of irreplaceable housing. Berkeley has systematically destroyed its SRO housing, replacing it with high-end condos and rental units.

August Poetry of the Streets

Poetry
A gentle lady with Parkinson's/ slept in dark alleyways/ without curfew and/ abandoned houses without walls/ in lonely Cable Car Land/ She's not there anymore/ a concerned young man/ gave her his arm and/ brought her to the hospital/ from where she never returned

Another Anti-Homeless Ballot Measure? Really?

News
Berkeley’s business improvement districts continue to obsessively pursue anti-homeless measures in an attempt to cleanse the downtown sidewalks of homeless people. Yet the last thing Berkeley’s small businesses need is another highly politicized and self-destructive campaign about how terrible it is to shop in Berkeley.

Young People Lead Protest at Berkeley City Hall

News
Homeless youth led a colorful protest at Berkeley City Hall, displaying scores of prayer flags in an appeal for compassion for homeless people targeted by a sitting-ban proposal. The Stand Up For The Right To Sit Down coalition scored at least a temporary victory by sending this proposal “to limbo.”

Poetic Resistance to the Berkeley Sitting Ban

Poetry
Poets held a poetry reading to challenge the City Council’s proposed sitting ban. How delightful it would be if we could just sing our way right past this terrible proposal to outlaw something as natural as sitting down. We should pour enough poetry on it that it is doused entirely.