Well, stupid poopy head Beetle managed to post first and completely distill everything I would’ve said into one paragraph, but I have something he doesn’t have! I was actually THERE! And I drew pictures!

Presenting the Poorly Illustrated Gazette’s Visual Coverage of the City of Berkeley Council Meeting:

First there was the press conference. There were a lot of people there, though most of them were from Oakland and supporting worker retention efforts. Here’s Ben in a snappy jean shorts Tshirt combo that really got things rolling:

Here’s a wider shot of the majestic Old City Hall with igor standing in front. Those things at his feet are the kickass portable speakers they brought, not boxes with little hats drown on them:

 

After a great deal of waiting, the city Council meeting finally began. I know most people don’t understand how the city council works, so I’ve helpfully labeled each of the members:

 

Then a whole bunch of people talked, but the first one was this guy who verbally threatened the Council Members and said that if they didn’t stop the Bart Ashby development plan they’d be real sorry!

 

As for the actual arguments, they went mostly as beetle described, though here’s a bit more texture. The city council was kind of bitchy and repeatedly asked if the people speaking were "from berkeley" or were in second place in the election. Implying that if the first were true, they shouldn’t be there, and if the second was, anything they said was meaningless because they were biased.

Here are my awards: 

Best Dressed goes to Lauren Karasek, whose black dress with white trim did much to show off her figure.

Best comment of the evening goes to the crazy lady who at the end of the night said something like "Our friends the trees, who absorb the carbon, need our help" … "will you give me a computer? Our untested technologies are something something … a hallmark of the earth’s impending MAGNETIC POLAR SHIFT"

Topic of the Night: This is a tie between ASUC Autonomy and Global Warming. A lot of talk about global warming. At one point a woman thanked Mayor Tom Bates "on behalf of the earth" for a recent bill he passed. After she sat down, he thanked the earth for its kind words. It was also mentioned that "perforated asphault" leads to global warming, which I guess is true since asphault is really hot. 

Best word created by city government goes to "Visioning," as in, "This bill will create a committee to help the Ashby area visioning of the Ashby Bart improvement project"

Coolest thing of the night goes to the closed captioning system. This thing was fucking psychic. I worried for the ASUC speakers because how could they win an argument when the other side already knew what they were saying? The closed captioning sometimes fell behind but occasionally got ahead of the speakers too to make up for it.

Best overall argument goes to Lauren Karasek who had the best prepared speech and who got very huffy when the council tried to pretend she was only interested in getting into office, saying if she lost she’d "go get a real job."

And that’s the end of my coverage. I’d like to thank the daily cal political cartoon illustrator from last year for inspiring my artistic growth. Goodnight. 

PS: For those wondering how I gave out awards after only spending an hour at a 3 hour council meeting, screw you. You try sitting in a hot stuffy room through 3 hours of screaming local residents bitching about traffic. "OH god, not development of new businesses! There’ll be traffic!"