{"id":475937,"date":"2026-09-26T01:24:07","date_gmt":"2026-09-26T01:24:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/475937\/"},"modified":"2026-09-26T01:24:07","modified_gmt":"2026-09-26T01:24:07","slug":"letters-berkeley-should-honor-its-history-of-compassion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/475937\/","title":{"rendered":"Letters: Berkeley should honor its history of compassion"},"content":{"rendered":"

Submit your letter to the editor via this form<\/a>. Read more Letters to the Editor<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Berkeley should honor its legacy of compassion<\/p>\n

Re: \u201cHomeless camp clearings are a battle<\/a>\u201d (Page A1, Sept. 20).<\/p>\n

I was so excited to move here last month for my master\u2019s in public health.<\/p>\n

Since childhood, I\u2019ve heard about Berkeley\u2019s fierce commitment to civil rights.\u00a0I\u2019ve kept my eyes out for social justice landmarks like Sproul Hall and People\u2019s Park.\u00a0I found the former easily. Imagine my surprise upon realizing I had been biking by the latter every day \u2014 only now, it is surrounded by a two-story metal wall and razor wire.\u00a0That same week, the city \u201ccleared\u201d the Harrison Street encampment, home to many of the city\u2019s most vulnerable residents.<\/p>\n

Homelessness is not just the problem of houseless individuals and the privileged who feel inconvenienced or unsafe seeing them. It is a sign that our social safety net has ruptured, which means we\u2019re all in trouble.<\/p>\n

Berkeley should honor the legacy that brings so many of us here, and prioritize not sweeps, but permanent homes for the unhoused.<\/p>\n

Caitlin Donohue
Oakland<\/p>\n

8-story building extends Walnut Creek\u2019s slide<\/p>\n

Re: \u201c8-story mixed-use building gets approval<\/a>\u201d (Page B1, Sept. 1).<\/p>\n

Which Walnut Creek City Council members voted in favor of this monstrosity? This on the heels of allowing the 30-acre, 400-tree wildlife sanctuary Seven Hills Ranch to be leveled for a superfluous senior housing community.<\/p>\n

So much for \u201cGreen Walnut Creek.\u201d These characters appear to be so laughably in the pockets of developers and concrete contractors.<\/p>\n

Is this latest monument to greed, cloaked in concern for a \u201chousing shortage,\u201d what you want to see in this once-livable burg?<\/p>\n

Mike Scott
Walnut Creek<\/p>\n

Bay Area reps, senators should join bills on AI<\/p>\n

Re: \u201cWill AI kill us all in 10 years? Probably not.<\/a>\u201d (Aug. 18).<\/p>\n

AI doesn\u2019t have to go rogue to be a threat to civilization. We know that hyperscale data centers can require 50 megawatts of power \u2014 enough electricity for a small city \u2014 most commonly generated by burning fossil fuels that release the heat-trapping pollutants that are causing climate change. They use vast amounts of water to cool them when climate change is making droughts more common.<\/p>\n

My colleagues and I with the East Bay Climate Hope Affiliate<\/a> are calling on our federal representatives to co-sponsor legislation that will start to hold data centers accountable. Reps. Lateefah Simon and Aisha Wahab should co-sponsor HR 6983<\/a> and HR 6984<\/a>; Sens. Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff should co-sponsor S. 5054<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n

Jeffrey Spencer
Fremont<\/p>\n

Colleges should set clear AI guidelines<\/p>\n

Every semester I face different AI rules depending on which professor I have. Some ban it, some encourage it and most say nothing. Students are left guessing what counts as cheating and what counts as normal.<\/p>\n

San Diego State University\u2019s 2023 student survey<\/a>\u00a0found the same problem: a \u201cpatchwork\u201d of AI expectations, even within one course. That pressure led the college to require an AI policy in every syllabus by 2025. Community colleges need that same clarity. Policy alone will not protect the skills AI can do for us, like writing clearly, solving problems and telling accurate information from confident-sounding nonsense. That last part is a media literacy skill as much as a technology one.<\/p>\n

Colleges should set clear AI guidelines and keep teaching students to think and write without leaning on a machine. Students deserve to know what is allowed, and to graduate with skills AI cannot replace.<\/p>\n

Yuvika Gupta
San Ramon<\/p>\n

Donald Trump\u2019s record of failure continues<\/p>\n

Donald Trump doesn\u2019t care that he\u2019s caused a higher inflation rate and another endless war in the Middle East, both of which he promised not to do when he ran for president. He doesn\u2019t have a clue how to end this war with Iran, but why pretend to govern when he can just hide from the wrath of the voters by restricting mail-in voting?<\/p>\n

In fact, he votes by mail all the time. All he cares about are his vanity projects like the White House ballroom and having his name chiseled onto the Kennedy Center building. Even his own Supreme Court appointees have ruled against him in a number of recent high-profile cases such as tariffs, birthright citizenship and now on mail-in voting.<\/p>\n

Even a broken clock is right twice a day, but somehow, Trump has even managed to underperform the clock.<\/p>\n

Arthur Straus
Walnut Creek<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Submit your letter to the editor via this form. Read more Letters to the Editor. Berkeley should honor…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":475938,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[389,2080,184,7,390,1752,392,6836,536,332,394,2306,1493,1337,181,2953,1564,143,145,144,975,13,2652,18764,75656,398,1689],"class_list":["post-475937","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-alameda-county","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-bay-area","tag-california","tag-central-contra-costa","tag-congress","tag-contra-costa-county","tag-danville","tag-donald-trump","tag-east-bay","tag-fremont","tag-higher-education","tag-homelessness","tag-housing-development","tag-latest-headlines","tag-letters","tag-letters-to-the-editor","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news","tag-opinion","tag-politics","tag-san-ramon","tag-senate","tag-transgender-issues","tag-tri-valley","tag-walnut-creek"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475937","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=475937"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475937\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/475938"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=475937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=475937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=475937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}