What if your city had a Peace and Justice Commission which had the power to approve or deny contacts and vendor purchases based on whether the vendor signed a nuclear-free disclosure form? Well, the City of Berkeley does have such a commission, designed to help Berkeley comply with its Nuclear-Free Berkeley Act and Oppressive State Ordinance.

So here’s the problem: the Berkeley Public Library, which uses a Checkpoint self-checkout system (utilizing RFID, or radio-frequency identification), needs to sign a maintenance contract for the system. However, Checkpoint has outsourced its maintenance to 3M, so the city would be contracting with 3M.

However, 3M has refused to sign the City of Berkeley’s standard forms for contractors. Read the rest of this entry »