By Bruce B. Brugmann
Joe Neilands, the University of California-Berkeley biochemistry professor who broke the PG&E/Raker Act scandal story in the Bay Guardian in 1969, died Thursday night of a rare form of tuberculosis at Alta Bates Hospital in Berkeley. He was 87.
His son Torsten reported his death in an email to me and asked that a memorial box be placed in the Guardian with this copy:
“J. B. Neilands
September 11, 1921 -October 23, 2008
Final Words: Vote yes on Prop H!”
We will proudly publish the memorial box in the Wednesday (10/25/2008) of the Guardian, our last edition before the Nov. 4 election and the vote on the Clean Energy Act (Prop H). There will be no services. His family suggested that donations should be made to SFCleanEnergy.com.
He was Professor J. B. Neilands, a distinguished professor of biochemistry at UC Berkeley, but to his many friends, colleagues, and fellow activists he was just plain Joe. To the Guardian and to the clean energy/public power constituency, he was the consummate independent political activist. His independent political activities span the trajectory of progressive politics in the Bay Area for more than 50 years, from his successful underdog battle in the early 1960s to keep the Pacific Gas & Electric Company from building a nuclear power plant upwind of San Francisco on Bodega Bay, through the free speech movement at Cal, to the fight against the Vietnam War, to the passionate and unending battle to enforce the federal Raker Act, bring public Hetch Hetchy power to San Francisco, and buy out PG&E.
His specialty was taking on the pioneering great cause himself, personally, when the appropriate institution would not do it. And that’s how he got his scandal story about PG&E into the Guardian and helped make it our signature story through the decades. It all started in Joe’s living room in the Berkeley Hills.