iphone mini blog buzz 01.13.09

(01-13) 16:07 PST SAN FRANCISCO -- The San Francisco Housing Authority has agreed to allow its residents to own guns in a settlement of a National Rifle Association lawsuit that followed last year's U.S. Supreme Court ruling on the right to bear arms. In papers filed Monday with a federal judge, the Housing Authority agreed not to enforce a provision it added to tenant leases in 2005 prohibiting the possession of guns and ammunition. The ban will now apply only to illegal gun ownership, like possession of a machine gun or possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. The National Rifle Association filed the suit on behalf of an unidentified San Francisco tenant a day after the Supreme Court's June 2008 ruling that declared the Constitution's Second Amendment gave Americans the right to possess guns for self-defense. It was one of a number of suits filed by gun advocates against local firearms restrictions around the nation after the court struck down a Washington, D.C., handgun ban. Tim Larsen, a lawyer for the Housing Authority, said Tuesday the agency never intended to enforce its 2005 ban against law-abiding gun owners and has never done so, even though the lease provision covered legal as well as illegal weapons. CONTINUE READING..

(01-13) 18:31 PST OAKLAND -- Demonstrators angered by the shooting of an unarmed, prostrate man by a BART police officer have scheduled a rally for Wednesday afternoon in downtown Oakland, a week after protesters shattered storefronts and vandalized cars.Protest organizers, police and Mayor Ron Dellums say this time will be different. They met Tuesday to coordinate their efforts and try to keep the event peaceful. Police say they are also ready for anarchists or other "professional protesters," whom some officials and rally leaders blamed for last week's vandalism."We understand people's right to voice their opinion and to protest," said Officer Jeff Thomason, an Oakland police spokesman. "We're here to facilitate that. ... But if they start throwing objects at police and start breaking windows and damaging property, we are going to take action."The rally, planned for 4 p.m. outside City Hall, is being organized by the Coalition Against Police Execution, a group that started on Facebook in the wake of the New Year's Day shooting of Oscar Grant by former BART police Officer Johannes Mehserle.The group held a rally last Wednesday at the Fruitvale BART station, where Grant, 22, was shot after he and others were pulled off a train following reports of a fight. The rally was peaceful, but a splinter group broke away and marched several miles to downtown Oakland, where scores of people engaged in a rampage that damaged businesses and cars.When it was over, 105 people had been arrested. Oakland officials initially said 300 businesses were damaged, but they reduced that total this week to about 50.In addition to coordinating their event with officials, protest organizer Dereca Blackmon said that as many as 200 volunteers will act as security at today's rally.Blackmon said the volunteers have received training and assistance from other nonprofits that have experience with demonstrations, including the Ruckus Society of Oakland, which trains people in nonviolent protest. CONTINUE READING..

GILLIAN CLARK calls fried chicken the curse of the black chef. Ms. Clark’s parents are from Panama. She graduated from a Long Island, N.Y., high school. She enrolled in a French-influenced cooking school and was first taught by French chefs. But whenever she opens a restaurant, people want her to fry some chicken.“I’d be more at home making knish,” she said.But like politics, relationships and neighborhoods, cooks change.Later this year, Ms. Clark plans to open Georgia Street Meeting House in her working-class neighborhood in Northwest Washington. The menu will be unabashedly Southern, in the style of the late Edna Lewis, with lard pie crusts and whole roast pigs at formal Sunday suppers.Recently, Ms. Clark realized that she could draw a line connecting her West Indian ancestors with America’s Deep South and the earliest African-American residents of this city, where she has lived for nearly 25 years. That Ms. Clark’s new place is on a street she was once afraid to walk on after dark is a sign of another kind of change, too.In Petworth, Columbia Heights, the U Street district and even the dicier parts of North Capital Hill, a little restaurant revival is under way. Washington neighborhoods that for years were considered too dangerous or too poor for a viable sit-down restaurant are suddenly entertaining quite a few.Some places, like Ms. Clark’s ode to Southern food in Petworth and the pan-Latin Rumberos in Columbia Heights, reflect the flavor of their neighborhoods. Others could open just about anywhere, but they all are part of a renewed excitement among the segment of this city that doesn’t wash in and out with each new administration.“It’s such an interesting time for the real D.C., because for years there has been a whole lot of nothing going on,” Ms. Clark said.You could trace the roots of the revival in part to developers who in the late 1990s took advantage of city-led urban renewal projects and began investing in neighborhoods that had been torn by riots, drugs and civic inattention.In the ensuing years, Washington’s population began growing instead of shrinking, and crime rates started to drop. But lately, something has been going on that is harder to quantify.“For the past two or three years, you kind of feel this energy, this current, going through D.C.,” said Neil Glick, who for eight years has served as the advisory neighborhood commissioner for Capitol Hill East. “It’s really kind of a hip place to be. Suburbia is dead.” CONTINUE READING..