BNC seeks to select a cultural treasure to feature in this section of the eNEWS. This cultural treasure may be a person, event, business, or activity that reflects a strong connection with the community. See below for details on how to make a nomination.
BNC Announces Our Cultural Treasure for this Issue:
Berkeley Resident and City Certified Artist
Cecile Pineda
At this point you might be wondering how and why someone gets to be a “City Certified Artist.” BNC uses that title because at the beginning of the April 5, 2016 Council Meeting, Mayor Bates issued a proclamation declaring that date as “Cecile Pineda Day in the city of Berkeley.”
The proclamation, read in full on that date by Mayor Bates, described Ms. Pineda as having been a cultural worker for almost half a century, working in theatre and publishing eight fiction and non-fiction works with a ninth to appear on October 16, 2016. It described her work as intending to “engage the political and emotional imagination of her readers,” and noted that she “has been and continues to be active in progressive politics at the municipal, national, and international levels, where she reflects a need to address environmental, cultural, radical women’s, and anti-nuclear issues.”
What happened next stunned a standing room only crowd attending the Council meeting. The following is quoted from the “unofficial text file” of the City’s transcriptionist.“
Ms. Cecile Pineda:
”I am quite happy to accept this honor from the City of Berkeley for my efforts as a cultural worker, especially from a council which recently passed a resolution urging the closure of a nuclear reactor, Diablo Canyon, which sits atop a fine network of connected faults, a fact PG&E knew as early as the 1960s but kept secret from the public until last year.
But if the City of Berkeley is serious about honoring its artists, it must remember that the role of a true artist is to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted. It must consider its draconian approach to homelessness. It must take responsibility for the library directors it appoints, ensuring that 39,000 more books, books which are the commons of the citizens of Berkeley, have no more chances of walking out the library back door to be pulped. It must guard and preserve the lungs by which it breathes and moderates its climate by protecting the 600,000 East Bay hills trees designated for the FEMA axe and Monsanto’s herbicides. It must quit selling out its city block by block to the vulture flock of developers who settle in for a killing. It must regulate rents now so that people unable to afford the new market rate apartment rents are not evicted from existing housing stock because of rising rents. It must provide affordable housing for those displaced by the stampede to build market rate apartments. It must not permit the Zoning Adjustments Board to rubber stamp 18-story high-rise projects without having so much as look at the engineering report. It must understand that one of Berkeley’s last remaining cultural vestiges is the Shattuck Theater. It must protect its citizens from gross incursions by the University of California. And it must learn to value its black community by not displacing it under the veneer of gentrification.
It must understand finally that the concepts of wise government go back to the 14th century, where its effects are vividly laid out in the council chambers of the city of Sienna by Ambrogio Laurenzetti, an artist whose work was deliberately commissioned by its citizens to remind the council that it must govern wisely and well in the history of promoting a healthy society endowed with both compassion and civic responsibility. Thank you very much.“
Well, Ms. Pineda certainly addressed that age-old question regarding the role of the true artist in the community by answering that
”the role of a true artist is to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted“
We strongly encourage readers to send us your nominations for BNC’s Cultural Corner. Nominations must be made by a Berkeley resident who has no connection to the nomination other than that of an ordinary observer of, patron of, or participant in whatever or whoever is being nominated. Submissions may be sent to bnc50@berkeleyneighborhoodscouncil.com. BNC will notify the selected treasure.