October 11

RECALLING THE RECALL.
Recalling the Origins of the Recall
There’s a high-end building boom in Santa Cruz and it’s not what the doctor ordered. Luxury condos, tear-downs giving way to trophy homes, endless bidding wars over once moderately priced homes, the housing crisis has left many scars. If you’re a socialist, now’s a good time to be alive because we are up to meeting this severe challenge. The current Santa Cruz city council majority ought to be called out for continuing to vote with their developer and real estate overlords. Martine Watkins, Renee Golder, Shebreh Kalantari-Johnson, Sonja Brunner, and Donna Meyers–are supported by these same real estate interests and for-profit housing developer interests. They ran on a pro-development platform and they are carrying it out. Just go to the Santa Cruz planning department web page …. and you will see no less than twenty-five significant projects that will yield very few affordable units. So, it is not surprising that their administration of this city has been an investment piñata party for developers under the fuzzy notions of “equity” often invoked by the current 5-2 majority. This council majority has filled the piñata with loads of community assets and interests since their election and it includes the 205-unit project on Pacific Avenue that has not even one unit of affordable housing. The development is a poke into the eye of the current inclusionary rule of 20%. In addition, this city council majority has negotiated with an out of town hotel developer to sell two city-owned parcels so as to make a large hotel project work on the site of the Santa Cruz Community Credit Union. Another auto-centric project stuck into the pro-market rate build program is a plan to construct a five-story parking garage on the site of the Downtown Farmer’s Market. Clearly, this council is not negotiating in the interests of its low and middle-income residents.

Policy-making by Initiative, Proposition, and Recall
We may not have a socialist city council yet, but we do have the means of creating and instituting socialist policy through the initiative process. It is a collective endeavor that can make lasting impacts on the way we live now and in the future. The ballot initiative process was born in the Golden State back in 1911 to reign in the Southern Pacific Railroad and the pro-capitalist powers of Harrison Gray Otis, then the owner of the Los Angeles Times. Policy-making by initiative and proposition has brought monumental changes to this state as well as to the Santa Cruz community. Legislating by the ballot is an act of self-governance more akin to the direct democracy of a New England town meeting today beyond just getting candidates elected. In fact, it is a way around the elected officials who’ve been coopted by the circling vultures of capitalist self-interest. Some elected officials are better than others at warding off these powerful special interests. The free-market buzzards in Santa Cruz are currently winning, with their 5-2 council majority.

Recent Socialist-Supported Ballot Initiatives
In 2020, a total of nine ballot initiatives, endorsed by various Democratic Socialist of America (DSA) chapters around the country, won. The $15 minimum wage sailed to victory in Portland, Maine and Orlando, Florida. A “No Eviction Without Representation” measure passed in Boulder, Colorado, and in Montgomery County, Maryland, voters turned back a cap on property taxes with DSA’s support. Measure J in Los Angeles was backed by DSA-LA. This initiative “requires that no less than 10% of the county’s general fund be appropriated to community programs and alternatives to incarceration.” In fact, the Socialist party of California supported “[T]he adoption of the initiative, referendum and recall and of proportional representation, nationally as well as locally” in their 1912 platform according a Northern Illinois University labor history web page. Socialists saw the ballot initiative as an opportunity to chip away at the Democrat-Republican duopoly of power. The Progressive party was running Teddy Roosevelt after his two terms as a Republican president. He and Eugene V. Debs would lose the presidential election of 1912 to future one-termer, William Howard Taft, who in-turn would be followed by the overtly racist policies of Democrat, Woodrow Wilson. That same Socialist platform was pretty remarkable, and prescient, in the scope of what we are still facing today in terms of big national issues encompassing capitalism’s shortfalls. The Socialist’s reform measures included direct election of the President, “equal suffrage for men and woman…full voting rights in US Territories…the adoption of a graduated income tax and the extension of inheritance taxes,” and voting rights for the District of Colombia, which was actually recently passed by the U.S. House of Representatives, but has yet to be signed into law.

A Brief History of the Ballot Initiative in California
The California “initiative, referendum, and recall” movement actually began in Los Angeles around 1900. It was the election of Hiram Johnson as governor in 1910 and, believe it or not, his “Progressive majority” (republican at the time) that introduced the initiative, referendum, and recall efforts at both the state and local levels of state government. Johnson, a Republican populist, ran a crusader campaign against the hegemony of the Southern Pacific Railroad. The National Conference of State Legislators (NCSL) notes that the initiative process actually began in South Dakota in 1898 and as of today “that makes 24 states with an initiative process.”  The initiative, referendum, and recall law was enshrined in the California constitution in a special election that was held on October 10, 1911. Although transplanted Pennsylvanian, Dr. John Randolph Haynes who formed the Direct Legislation League in Los Angeles in 1900 is credited for bringing the initiative, referendum, and recall process to California. Lawyer and historian Joshua Spivak also credits the Socialist-Labor party’s activist efforts in passing such avant-garde policies. But to understand the initiative and recall movement at the time, one has to consider the unique history of Haynes. He “was not a typical progressive, having amassed a fortune in his medical practice and in real estate, mining, and other capitalistic ventures. However, he spent a large portion of his wealth to promote a form of gradual, democratic socialism in the United States.” He also supported public ownership of all utilities and was instrumental in starting and keeping the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power in public hands. Haynes Wikipedia entry actually calls him “a prominent California Socialist.” What is clear is that the initiative, referendum and recall law was designed and implemented by socialist and progressive forces in the early twentieth century to act as a populist lever of power that could thwart powerful capitalists who were led by oil and railroad millionaires.

1914, A Decisive Year in California History
Interestingly, a pair of early statewide initiatives included abolishing the California poll tax (52%-48%) and also providing $1.8 million in construction bonds for the University of California in 1914 (63%-37%). Another ‘believe-it-or-not’ Golden State moment occurred on the 1914 ballot when forty-eight propositions appeared, the most ever! I urge you to look at this list of 48, many of which we are still debating over today. Nineteen-fourteen was clearly a turning point in California history. On the ballot that year there were two competing alcohol initiatives. Proposition 2 would have made alcohol illegal and Prop. 37 would repeal proposition 2. That year, Prop. 2 was trounced and 39 won overwhelmingly with the pro-alcohol forces voting winning by more than 120,000 votes. The federal government trumped the California proposition when it outlawed alcohol sales and consumption from 1920-1933. It was the period known as prohibition. Another proposition on the 1914 ballot, Prop. 33, would’ve “authorized municipal corporations to acquire and operate public utilities.” It lost, 55% to 45%.

Socialist Turns Democrat to Run for Governor
In the 1934 election for governor, Socialist Upton Sinclair did what Bernie Sanders would do years later, switch to the Democratic Party. Sinclair ran for governor. He is the author of such classics as The Jungle (1905), King Coal (1917), and Oil (1926) and was a long-time member of the same Socialist party of Eugene V. Debs and Jack London. Sinclair had run twice before as a Socialist. He ran on a platform, and movement, to “End Poverty in California” (EPIC). Although he came much closer to winning while running as a Democrat, his campaign was severely undermined by Hollywood’s “news reel” propaganda hit pieces against his candidacy. The anti-Sinclair forces were funded by movie producers Louis B. Mayer and Irving Thalberg. Historian James Gregory offers a curious state-wide voter breakdown in his essay, Who Vote for Upton Sinclair and EPIC?

[Editor’s (Krohn’s) Note: What does this initiative, proposition, and recall history mean for Santa Cruz? Two initiatives, “The Empty Homes Tax,” and “Our Downtown, Our Future” will be highlighted here next week as Part II, “Santa Cruz Ballot Initiatives Seek Justice and May Threaten Politically-Deaf City Council.”]

“Americans don’t know what’s in the Build Back Better plan because the corporate media doesn’t discuss it. Let’s stop the beltway gossip and start talking about lowering prescription drug costs, expanding Medicare, childcare, and housing – and combatting climate change.” (Oct. 10)

Lot 4, the battle over the future of this lot continues.

October 4. 

Reprinted in large part from his Political BrattonOnline Report of 2/27/2017

Note to Reader: I am running a column written in February of 2017 as a way of illustrating how intractable issues are…well, intractable…here are two big ones, the ICE raid that took place with assistance from the SCPD, and the long-standing housing crisis.

Was ICE—Immigration and Customs Enforcement—actually a part of the recent DHS urban blitzkrieg? 

Last week in Santa Cruz began with a blitzkrieg-style raid by agents of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). A Bear Cat-style tank was seen near the Boardwalk. It was reported by several residents that children were left alone after their parents were taken into custody. An immigration raid? Searching for terrorists? Or was it both? Pretty serious stuff. These actions were carried out in Santa Cruz County’s mostly Latino neighborhoods: Beach Flats, Live Oak, and Watsonville. My week ended at an academic conference on the UCSC hill, “Democratizing the Green City: Sustainability and the Affordable Housing Crisis.” It was a discussion that ranged from Ernest Callenbach’s, Ecotopia to the current research findings of UCSC sociology professors, Miriam Greenberg and Steve McKay concerning the Santa Cruz plague of high housing rates combined with low wages. They invited a bunch of their friends from New York City, Minneapolis, Seattle, Berkeley and Davis to share their research as well. Turns out we’re screwed, but not alone.

Surreal Week

I felt like it was a surreal week and that these two events were perhaps interrelated. While the raid was an out-of-nowhere slap-upside the head to all undocumented area residents who are not members of the Mara-Salvatrucha 13 gang, the conference was a further head-scratching discussion of the age-old question, ‘Who gets to live in Santa Cruz?’ The Greenberg-McKay investigation of the extreme differences between the high cost of housing and the miserably low wages paid to workers right here in Surf City often pushed hard against Callenbach’s visionary book. That book was a green revolution bible for many, but essentially it presents a segregated nation-state concept that seeks to transform the Sixties dominant paradigm into a green paradise with a hippie veneer. Who knew that Callenbach’s greening—trees, greenbelts, bike lanes—would end in a boon to real estate developers while failing to produce a cross section of housing for all income groups? Is equity even possible in Santa Cruz? Or Minneapolis, Berkeley, Davis, or New York City? 

Can Democratic Cities Be Made Green? Conference participant, Jennifer Rice, a professor of geography at the University of Georgia quoted an activist in Seattle, but could’ve easily been describing one from Santa Cruz. She said, “Our planning department continues to approve significant numbers of market rate housing (and upscale hotels) while people with families are forced to move,” (first to Live Oak then to Watsonville and finally out of the county). Of course, many of us are keenly aware of those who perform even a different housing dance. The first move is often from their house or apartment into a vehicle, then inside a tent they go looking up at the trees within the university footprint, and finally they may end up under the eaves of city hall or the post office. Prof. Rice also suggested in her talk that residents can successfully protest large capital projects in Seattle, for example, where a proposed $160 million police headquarters was scratched in favor of affordable housing bonds. It seemed to be one positive activist response in the era of sky-high housing costs.

Gawd, I love this town!

The late Herb Caen used to use the phrase, “Gawd, I love this town,” and I am appropriating those words in this week’s column. I love Santa Cruz because our people can put up a fight in the face of injustice, no matter how well-armed the foe may be. There were urgent, organized, and immediate responses by neighbors and activists to the DHS raids this past week. Homeland Security’s intrusions into our community sent ripples of fear and uncertainty through the homes of hardworking Santa Cruzans. A day later, several groups were present at city hall to confront the city council I serve on. They were led by “Sanctuary Central” and demanded a community forum to talk about DHS’s tide of terror that was witnessed by residents, many who are now too fearful to even leave their homes. The Activists shut down the meeting for about twenty minutes as the city council huddled in the back room wondering what to do next. Before additional police officers actually arrived to clear the room of protesters as called for by some councilmembers, a negotiation of sorts took place. Vice-mayor Terrazas and I waded back into the council chambers to open negotiations with the 200-plus crowd. An agreement was soon reached that agenda item 17, which had to do with Santa Cruz sanctuary city status, would be moved up so that those present could immediately comment on the DHS-ICE raids from the day before. The police never had to arrive to clear the room, and residents were able to vent about this serious and delicate issue. Is that what “a win-win” is?

Bottom Line

The affordable housing conference at UCSC cannot have come soon enough because Greenberg and McKay actually provide plenty of data, on the ground interviews, and open-ended analysis of the severe housing crisis that is no longer the elephant standing in the Santa Cruz city living room. This crisis is now front and center and may be the story within the story in the immigrant neighborhoods that were raided. Mayor Cynthia Chase, upon taking office this past January said she would be pursuing an affordable housing agenda this year. The community appears urgently poised to join her.

Short-takes on Local Issues

In between the raids and the conference, I encountered several other locals and experiences that made me say to myself again and again, “Gawd, I love this town.” I will offer a Cliff Notes version here of those conversations, while hoping to expand upon the themes in future columns.

• Airbnb is large—$37 billion and growing—and an exceedingly complex corporation. Its social reach includes the disabled, the temporarily unemployed, or single moms just renting out a room in order to make ends meet, all the way to individuals renting and re-renting large numbers of units and in the process wholly transforming Santa Cruz neighborhoods. In addition, I fear the Airbnb model is more numerous than any of us might have imagined. It is now estimated that there are 577 dwellings, and counting, according to one local well-placed real estate investor. This same close observer also told me that “perhaps hosted vacation rentals represent even a greater threat than un-hosted ones.” Stay tuned, the STVR—Short-Term Vacation Rentals—committee is studying the vacation rental issue and will send it to the city council “soon,” perhaps by May or June I am told. But a couple of sticking points that may not go away are the existing ADA provisions along with parking requirements that could be enforced on each vacation rental?
• Who is the “General Strike Planning Committee” and what are their intentions?  I do know that hundreds have turned out to their five “planning” meetings and beer hall (Lupulo) reading group discussions. In fact, over 100 showed up at the Louden Nelson center last Friday to participate in an “(Un) President’s Day” event. It was a smorgasbord of social justice and environmental groups presenting themselves and all organizing in the spirit of resistance during the age of Trump. Along with the Woman’s March it seems very encouraging, if somewhat chaotic with lots of unplanned planning sessions along the way.
• At the UCSC affordable housing conference I was struck by NYU sociology professor named, Gianpaolo Baiocchi. One of his solutions to the rental crisis included: “Squatting is a pretty effective housing solution.”
• The Fruit Tree Project, led by Andy Moskowitz, Debora Wade and Steve Schnaar, organized a work day to plant fruit trees where San Lorenzo Blvd. meets Riverside Ave., alongside Mike Fox Park. Seventy-five volunteers showed up one morning to assist in furthering the local community garden revolution. Wow!
• From the too many conversations I’ve had with locals I’m fast becoming convinced that the enduring 3-legged stool of high rents is caused by a) the university’s ability to allow in more students and its inability to provide more beds; b) the city’s Rental Inspection Ordinance that took out hundreds of housing units, many unpermitted but not unsafe according to a certain local architect; and c) the rampant growth of Airbnb and the entire vacation rental market. 

Four Years Later…the Same Truth:

But what is really troubling is that the seat of this stool is not really for the people of Santa Cruz to sit on, but is actually a resting place for the enormous derrière of Silicon Valley’s wads of disposable income.

“Look, the Republican Party has already been bought and paid for — they are not going to do anything to help working people. We know this. But I hope very much and I expect that the Democratic caucus will stand firm and will fight for the working class of this country.” (Oct. 3)

“This sign was posted recently explaining the removal of bells in the city of Santa Cruz. It reads in part: “The destructive impacts of colonialization continue to be felt by California’s Indigenous communities today in the form of intergenerational trauma, dispossession from ancestral lands and widespread poverty. As the true history of California is brought forward, so are important conversations about what it can look like to move towards repair and healing in the 21st century.” Wow! I am proud to live in a town that acknowledges a hurtful past and a hopeful future.

Sept. 30-Oct. 6, 2021

Hot Topics Updates

Empty Homes Tax

Have you noticed a lot of empty homes while jogging on West Cliff or walking on King Street or Bay or just visiting friends at the end of Frederick Street or in the Prospect Heights area? These homes sit empty while so many in Santa Cruz struggle to find housing, and when they find it, they are paying stratospheric rents more akin to the West Village in Manhattan or San Francisco’s Mission District. How many homes are empty?  Vancouver, Oakland, and Portland found an answer: plenty! This ballot initiative aims to not only find out what homes are vacant, but also to tax every empty house $6000. The goal? To either force the owners of empty homes to rent it, or pay the six grand, which will go into an affordable housing fund to both build and acquire housing for “low and very low income” residents. Is it THE solution to the housing crisis? No, but it chips away at that enormous accommodations boulder encompassing the neck of Surf City. Stay tuned, or go their website, EmptyHomesTax.org

Our Downtown, Our Future

Hot topic item #2, the future of downtown. For many residents, the future of the once leafy, pedestrian-congested, and the community’s grand living-room, is in peril of being sign, sealed, and delivered to the highest bidder. It started with the cockamamie scheme of getting a library bond passed, Measure S, in 2016 and then handing over its fate to Public Works director, Mark Dettle, and Economic Development Director, Bonnie Lipscomb who were to lead this legacy project of City Manager, Martin Bernal. You guessed it, Bernal is now long-gone and the new, interim, CM is Water Director Rosemary Mennard. Some say that she’s not so keen on continuing the project. Time will tell, but again, the good people of Santa Cruz are by-passing the city council and city manager and have organized a petition drive to a) modernize and rebuild the library where it has been for over 100 years; b) dedicate “Lot 4” as a permanent home for the Farmer’s Market; c) maintain all those climate-mitigating heritage trees on Lot 4 to provide post(or pre?)-pandemic shade, d) create a downtown Central Park, and e) designate all city-owned downtown lots as affordable housing sites. A tall order?! So was Lighthouse Field, acquiring the greenbelt, stopping a freeway down Chestnut, creating the Tannery Arts Center, and bringing the Del Mar Theatre back to life. People, we’ve been here before, now it’s on with gathering the 5,000 signatures from registered voters to put these issues before voters and take them out of the hands of bureaucrats and corporate real estate-elected councilmembers. It’s time.

Credit Union cum Large Hotel?

About that New York hotelier who’s involved in the remake of the Santa Cruz Community Credit Union (SCCCU) property…it’s true, his name is Stephen Chan and his email chain with local developers and the Economic Development Director were uncovered through a freedom of information act request recently. Stephen’s company, (can I call you “Stephen?”), Eagle Point Partners LLC, is located on Lafayette Street in Lower Manhattan. The city of Santa Cruz owns two “remnant parcels” within the future dreamed-about hotel footprint, which according to the emails, have got to be included if the deal is to go forward. In the meantime, the parcels were on last week’s city council closed session agenda and guess what? The deal has yet to be consummated. The group now organizing to Stop the Hotel, is reaching out to SCCCU members to force another meeting of the board. Lots going on, so stay tuned on this one too. It ain’t over ’til it’s over! 

Not So Fast: Homeless Garden Project Encounters Legal and Moral Hurdles as it Seeks to Occupy Prime Greenbelt land in the Pogonip

Oh boy, this is another, only in Santa Cruz stories. See if I get this right…way back in 1996, the Santa Cruz City Council, led by Scott Kennedy and Mike Rotkin, dealt away the then Homeless Garden Project’s Pelton Street property to a luxury-home developer. Result: eight or nine mini-mansions now sit on the once bucolic, community supported agriculture property. While the city received a pittance, about $2 million and change, the developer became evermore wealthier and HGP was out of a home until Ron Swenson offered up his Delaware and Shaffer Road property for a dollar a year. HGP has been on the Swenson property for more than two decades and could be cultivating organic veggies for a couple of more, but word spread (rumor?) that Swenson wanted to build on the property and the garden would have to vacate soon. That was at least 20 years ago and HGP leaders worked with the city of Santa Cruz to relocate to greenbelt land, the Pogonip. When the price to channel water to the lower meadow came in at over $2 million, the project was somewhat delayed. Local nonprofit executive, Cathy Calfo came in to save the day and has thus far raised more than $3 million to relocate the garden to the Pogonip. A lot of history here. After surviving intense opposition to relocate to the lower meadow, it turns out that land has to now be remediated because it was once a skeet shooting area. Lead and the shards of clay pigeons do not a garden make. Now the HGP negotiated to use the upper meadow, near the Pogonip Clubhouse, a once-venerable outpost for women’s polo enthusiasts. The city council signed onto the move in August, but now there is plenty of opposition. Cathy Calfo, meet your Pognip political neighbors, Grey Hayes, Gillian Greensite, and Kaitilin Gaffney. Long-time Save the Pogonip stalwarts, Celia and Peter Scott are also present in spirit and in their opposition to the upper meadow move. This looks like another legal battle brewing. The trio from Save the Pogonip (Again)’s simple argument is that open space is open space, and it was not set aside by the people of Santa Cruz for agricultural use. Last week, Grey Hayes brought to light three issues here in BrattonOnLine:

• The original state funding source that supported acquisition of the Pogonip was for open space, watershed restoration, and habitat protection and does not allow use as a commercial farm. 2. The Lower Meadows site should be cleaned up expeditiously to remove the lead contamination on site. 3. If the Homeless Garden Project no longer wants to relocate to the approved Lower Meadow site, it should consider options such as a permanent location at its current site on the Westside or leasing land zoned for agricultural use.

UCSC’s Shuttle System Teetering?

What is up with UCSC’s shuttle system? They are using belching, lurching, diesel-spewing aging buses (wrecks?) to shuttle students around UCSC’s rather pastoral, heavily environmentally protected campus. Inside some of the shuttles is a spider web of caution tape. It courses around aging seat covers and windows that are hard to open. Maintaining social distance between drivers and students seems to be the idea, but the UC Regents says that campus policy does not include social distancing rules this year. Students and drivers alike are more than courteous, all glad to be back and give it a post-covid try, but it will not be long before these belching beasts either break down or are put out to a bus cemetery. What’s more is that student fees not only prop up the Santa Cruz Metro bus system, but also pay for these pathetic shuttle buses. The Metro is currently auditioning an E-bus on its Watsonville route. We can only hope that UCSC Transportation and Parking Services (TAPS) does not continue to lag behind. Oy vey, students already pay more than $300 a year in transportation fees, while A-Lot parking stickers go for $765.12 per year, or $150 a month. Compare that with the recently increased city monthly parking garage permit fee of $76 per month, pre-Covid, and the climate-destroying $33 PER YEAR street parking permits. Something is not passing the overall city transportation smell test. I guess the diesel fumes are too strong and getting in the way.

News Sourcing Addendum

Thanks to all of you who wrote in with additional sources of news. How could I leave out Al Jazeera, not to mention Jimmy Dore Show and Counterpunch? I also learned about a bunch of new ones that include: The Gray Zone, Black Agenda Report, Nonsite.org, The Vanguard (“A couple of Kansas City bros”), Rising (Now With Kim Iversen), Secular Talk With Kyle Kulinski, Frank Analysis, Tim Black Show…and then there’s the podcasts: The Katie Halper Show, Chapo Trap House, Bad Faith With Brianna Joy Gray, Fred Hampton Leftists, Behind The News With Doug Henwood, Joe Rogan (“Yes, a Thoughtful and Mostly Leftist Thinker”), This Week With David Rovics…and the Substack Subscriptions of Matt Taibbi, and Useful Idiots. Wow, a lot to take in!

(Note: AOC apologized to supporters for voting “present” on the Israeli “Iron Dome” system, which is already financed by US taxpayers, but was looking for a billion dollars more. So, this week, it is not an AOC Tweet, but a strongly-worded apology issued by her, which included this: “And, the reckless decision by House leadership to rush this controversial vote within a matter of hours and without true consideration created a tinderbox of vitriol, disingenuous framing, deeply racist accusations and depictions, and lack of substantive discussion on this matter. I want to be clear that the decision to rush this vote – virtually preventing any member from meaningfully consulting with their community – was both intentional and unnecessary. Even the night before, as it became clear that the discourse around this issue was quickly devolving from substance to hateful targeting, I personally had a call with the House Majority Leader to request a 24-hour stay of the vote, so that we could do the work necessary to bring down the temperature and volatility, explain our positions, and engage our communities. That request was summarily dismissed. Not only was the request dismissed, but despite the House having almost 8 straight hours of votes yesterday, this vote was chosen to be the first despite being one of the most controversial.”

Donning masks and hiking boots, with water bottles in hand, a new crop of UCSC students plants itself on the paths of the Great Meadow ready to explore the infinite possibilities of campus. To paraphrase the late great Herb Cain, Gawd, I love Autumn!

September 20. 

POLITICAL WATCHING, READING AND LISTENING.

How do You Stay Informed?

I’m often asked what I’m reading. How do you stay informed? I think about this a lot because there is so much to read and keep up with. Autumn is now upon us too, and I always ask new UCSC students where they go for information about the world. Often, they say their “Google newsfeed” or “by-word-of-mouth” or “my parents send me articles.” Just as often they say “CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times, SF Chronicle, or Democracy Now!” Since technology has made it easier for individuals to report news, there are many non-traditional sources of information, which come with positive and negative side effects. Of course, all news reporting has a bias. The New York Times may state each day on its front page, “All the News That’s Fit to Print,” (how haughty!), but we are all keenly aware that there are many daily stories happening around the corner and around the world that are reported in The Guardian (London) or La Jornada (Mexico City) or O Globo (Rio de Janeiro), which never see the light of day in the Times, “the paper of record.” (more PR bloviating). So, here is a column on content, what I read to stay up to speed, or maybe we just think we can actually understand this “crazy world?” (“Ilsa, I’m no good at being noble, but it doesn’t take much to see that the problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. Someday you’ll understand that.” Humphrey Bogart’s, Rick character, in Casablanca).

Hey, let’s share information. Tell me what you read. Email me at: ckrohn@cruzio.com

The Intercept
It was started by the insightful, and decidedly leftist and hyper-critical journalist, Glenn Greenwald. He had a falling out with other editors over content and he left, but this investigative online publication still breaks many stories from many sources. One recent story made it to the New York Times Sunday magazine. African-American and Berkeley-native, Terry Albury, joined the FBI to fight terrorism, but he ended up harassing Somali immigrants, and being harassed himself by fellow white agents in a Minneapolis FBI field office, became a whistle-blower, and began sending classified documents to the Intercept. Then there was this breaking story last week about the outsized clout of West Virginia Senator, Joe Manchin and his daughter’s business dealings. “Even the infrastructure bill’s relatively modest and incremental provisions could reduce the value of Manchin’s business interests, and the coal industry is lobbying mightily against them — as are Manchin’s Wall Street donors who have hired their own army of lobbyists to kill any provisions that would raise their taxes or hurt their bottom line…Meanwhile, we’ve just uncovered evidence that Manchin’s daughter, former CEO of the drug company Mylan, worked directly with the CEO of Pfizer to jack up the prices of life-saving EpiPens. This new information is especially interesting in light of Big Pharma’s opposition to the infrastructure bill’s provision allowing Medicare to negotiate lower prescription drug costs.” Some shady stuff that others picked up on after The Intercept broke the story.

The Daily Poster
David Sirota was a senior advisor and speechwriter on the Bernie Sanders 2020 presidential campaign. The Daily Poster also does some excellent investigative news pieces from a decidedly left political perspective, “left” because he is critical of the neo-liberal economic policies of the Clintons, Obama, and Bush. He’s a former columnist at The Guardian. 

Rumble
Rumble is a Canadian news and entertainment site that covers stories about the world from a decidedly non-American editorial view and some consider a decidedly conservative perspective too. Greenwald joined Rumble recently along with former Hawaii congress member, Tulsi Gabbard. Possibly, Rumble is the video version of Substack?

Democracy Now with Amy Goodman
This is now the mainstream news source on the center-left. Goodman consistently and conscientiously goes after unreported and under-reported stories. DemocracyNow even revisits stories a year later, which most mainstream publications fail to do with any consistency in the here today-gone tomorrow capitalist news-gathering business.

What Else?
Jim Hightower‘s, The Hightower Lowdown, is a weekly fun read about populist politics in Texas and around the country, “Forget Trickle-Down BS.” You can even get it delivered in hardcopy too. Krystal Ball is entertaining and worthy of some trust in her clear and blunt reporting of political events. The Young Turks is also a lively and informative news show. Believe it or not, it is now in its 20th season. The LA Progressive is a labor of love for leftists, Dick and Sharon, well-written stories about California and the country by those known and unknown, definitely worth a read. CalMatters is a very reasonable journal of issues that “matter” in the Golden State and beyond “the world’s fifth-largest economy.” One CalMatters story that caught my eye is why aren’t more Californians going back to work as unemployment here ranks second highest in the country? 

Locally
Well besides BrattonOnline’s weekly dollops of local politics, the Serf City Times has become a go-to news source for under-reported Santa Cruz labor news as well as a useful update on the county’s Covid-19 infection rates, but it is not web-based. You must email editor Sarah Ringler and get on the mailing list coluyaki@gmail.com Lookout Santa Cruz costs $187 per year, so to actually read a story you must pay, but the summary at news@lookoutlocal.com is a useful and easy read in learning about what the county’s mainstream status quo believe to be “news.” The paywall appears immediately if you Google Lookout, but you can go to the above email and ask to be placed on the mailing list to see the headlines. Alas, I wish the Santa Cruz Sentinel and San Jose Mercury News were better. Vampire-like, Alden Capital, who owns both under the name Bay Area News Group, bleeds all resources from the two papers, thus never providing the resources to do investigative journalism while continually running AP and NY Times reprints. Believe it or not, the Merc and Senile actually make money, but Paymaster-Alden drains it away for their investors’ pockets. On the free front are two local propaganda pieces that are worth checking out once in a while. The Monthly Chamber of Commerce newsletter allows the reader to peek inside the brain of the Santa Cruz business class, mostly the chamber’s CEO Casey Beyer, that is busy devising evermore stealthy ways of sapping the county’s material resources. UCSC’s “Newsday,” always tells you why UC Santa Cruz is on the cutting edge of almost everything and the best UC that exists (which actually might even be correct!)

Polling Services and Ratings of House and Senate Members’ Voting Records, Progressive Punch
Progressive Punch has been around for many years and was started by former UCSC undergrad, Joshua Grossman. It ranks each member of Congress according to their voting record.

Justice Democrats
Justice Democrats “is running progressive campaigns to transform the Democratic Party,” so says their website. It was started in 2017 by Cenk Uygur (Young Turks), Saikat Chakrabarti (AOC assistant), and Zack Exley (Bernie campaign). After supporting so many left-Dems including Cori Bush, Jamaal Bowman, Marie Newman, Raul Grijalva, Ro Khanna, Ayanna Pressley, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, AOC, and Pramila Jayapal it has become a partisan Left-Democrat group that’s now taken quite seriously by DNC-types, or rather, the kind of fog-brained politics of the Santa Cruz Democratic Central Committee-types…not including Hochman, Falls, Dawson, Chiaramonte, and Glazer, but the group did once host progressive Ash Kalra from San Jose).

FiveThirtyEight
One of the premier polling firms is Nate Silver’s fivethirtyeight.com. This opinion poll analysis group takes its name from the number of electors in the US electoral college, 538. California gets 54 of those. (FunFact: according to FiveThirtyEight, Joe Biden’s approval rating has gone from 55 in March to 46 this week. The approval/disapproval lines merged on Aug. 26th and look like they have only gone in the disapproval direction since then.)

Real Clear Politics
Real Clear Politics is a “polling data aggregator” that came together in 2000. I find them tilting heavily rightward politically, but their aggregating of opinion data is phenomenal in terms of covering Senators, governors, and the President. (Where else can you find approval ratings for Voldemort, err…Tr**p?)

Of course, the New Yorker, National Geographic, New York Times and Jacobin are all standard hardcopy publications that come in weekly and monthly to our house. I also highly recommend Nation Magazine, Columbia Journalism Review, and the New York Review of Books, but I have lost the time to read them.

“In this year’s NDAA, I’ve intro’d 7 amendments, including blocking specific US weapons transactions to: – Saudi gov over the murder of Jamal Khashoggi – Colombia gov over its violent crackdown on protesters,& – Israeli gov over the bombing of Palestinian civilians, media centers” (Sept. 17)

Note: Some people are saying AOC had a bad week after wearing the expensive, Tax the Rich, dress at a New York City even more expensive gala event. The proof will be in the pudding if congress really does “tax the rich” in passing the $3.2 trillion spending bill.

A window into downtown development and the destruction of our Santa Cruz past. This is a picture of the corner of Pacific Ave. and Laurel Street. Read this recent article titled: The case for…never demolishing another building,” from Energy in Demand.

Chris Krohn is a father, writer, activist, and a Santa Cruz City Council member from 1998-2002 and from 2017-2020. Krohn was Mayor in 2001-2002. He’s been running the Environmental Studies Internship program at UC Santa Cruz for the past 16 years. On Tuesday evenings at 5pm, Krohn hosts of “Talk of the Bay,” on KSQD 90.7 and KSQD.org His Twitter handle at SCpolitics is @ChrisKrohnSC Chris can be reached at ckrohn@cruzio.com Email Chris at ckrohn@cruzio.com

 September 13

“COVID, COVID, COVID” (voice of an ex-president) 
There was a professional football game last Thursday night in Tampa Bay, Florida. Some 65,000-people attended. Quarterback Tom Brady had another spectacular game and very few attendees wore masks. Social distancing was not respected, enforced, or even tolerated. The seven-day average of case counts in the Tampa Bay-St. Petersburg area for those testing positive is near 3,000 according the current New York Times coronavirus tracker. A day before this game, President Joe Biden was implementing new vaccine and mask mandates, pleading over the airwaves to please get vaccinated, to wear a mask, and to social distance, but this was not the case at college and pro-football games around the country.

Step Backwards
Back in February when the Super Bowl took place in Tampa Bay, NFL officials limited the number of those attending to 22,000 and made masking mandatory. Even though social distancing protocols were also implemented, many thought a super-spreader event might be in the making, and at the time the 7-day case counts only averaged about 1400 according to the Times tracker. More than a million-people attended pro-football games this past weekend in packed stadiums even larger than Tampa Bay’s. “More than 90 percent of N.F.L. players and all coaches and staff are vaccinated, yet dozens of them have tested positive for Covid-19 since training camps opened in July,” according to NY Times sportswriter Ken Belson.  Well, Santa Cruz case counts averaged around 200 during Super Bowl week last February. Today, the 7-day average is around 70 according to the same Times tracker. With the coronavirus “breakthrough” variant strains coursing through our country as a result of so many people just being on the move, can our Covid-19 rates remain low for very long in our county?

Covid Fear and Loathing in the Classroom?
It began at noon last week with 187 participants. It swelled to 195 by 12:30pm. The meeting was only scheduled for an hour, but at 1:10pm there were still 126 on the Zoom meeting. People, UCSC faculty and staff, seemed hungry for information about how to deal with Covid, vaccination enforcement, and classroom decorum. Only two weeks remained before the first day of instruction, Thursday, September 23rd. There was much information distributed by at least six different campus officials. They clearly had their hands full. Faculty and staff were peppering the admins (administration) with some real concerns, and fears, about opening the campus. Here are some of the questions and responses:

Staff/Faculty: What are we to do if a student will not put on a mask?
Admin: “If a student will not put on a mask when asked, then ask them to leave…but don’t call the police…the police enforce the law, it is not their job to enforce campus rules.”
Staff/Faculty: Who will enforce the masking rule? (Never answered during discussion. Came up several times.)
Admin: There is a new rule in the fall, “no eating or drinking in any classroom…you must keep your mask on at all times.” (Does this include coffee?)
Admin: Unvaccinated students will be required to get “2 tests every 4 days,” while unvaccinated staff and faculty will need to get “2 tests per week.”
Admin: All students have to provide negative test results before they can move into campus housing. All other students must provide a negative test result within 5-7 days after arrival “to campus.”
Staff/Faculty: Will you require mandatory testing of vaccinated people? 
Admin: No. 
Staff/Faculty: Why is UCLA requiring it, but not UCSC? 
Admin: We are following UC guidelines. We are not set up for it. “Almost all hospitalizations are of unvaccinated people.” 
Staff/Faculty: Do faculty need a doctor’s note if they want to teach on zoom instead of in-person? 
Admin: “Yes, documentation is needed…” through the “disability accommodation process.”
Staff/Faculty: What about classroom ventilation?
Admin: Ventilation in some of the classrooms has been enhanced. If ventilation is not adequate, you can request another classroom, “but do not call the registrar, contact your dept. office. We are identifying bad ventilation and installing hepa-filters.”
Staff/Faculty: I’m concerned about equity (if the new color-coated badge system is being predicated on having a cell phone) and students who have no phone. 
Admin: Yes, we are too and we are looking into it.
Faculty/Staff: What is the main benefit of being in an in-person classroom if everyone is masked? 
Admin: Students told us they want to come back to the campus and we are trying to accommodate that. “You’ve all told us you want to be back.”
Staff/Faculty: What about these “breakthrough” transmissions of the virus?
Admin: “Breakthrough transmissions are from unmasked individuals.”
Faculty/Staff: Can students sit in every other chair in the large classrooms?
Admin: UC system is not requiring social distancing. “We want students and staff to have the accommodations we can provide…we cannot provide for social distancing.”
Admin: “Talk to your students on the first day about how you are going to norm the room…visit your classrooms before the quarter begins and see what kind of accommodation is needed…we had the idea of blocking out every other seat, but these [large] classrooms will not have seats blocked out.”
Admin: Don’t come to campus if you have been exposed to those testing positive or think you were exposed and are waiting for lab results.

What is College Life? (personal memory)
I’ve been experiencing lots of thoughts lately about my own college experiences at UCSC and what it has been like for students having to learn “remotely.” But also, what constitutes a real college experience and if the university grows to 28,000 students and adds 4000-5000 more staff and faculty, how will that experience be changed? How would any of us feel about a “remote” Zoom education? Yes, there are students who prefer it, but not many, and what kind of education is it? UCSC used to be about making connections, potlucks at professor’s houses, going to lectures and films on campus and then talking about it with roommates until 2am…it’s also going to the Catalyst and Moe’s Alley and ending up at the Red…it is sitting in the library and wandering the stacks never knowing what you might find…oh the books that I’ve discovered! It is participating in streaking on the first night of rain in Santa Cruz…it is Halloween downtown…breakfast at Zachary’s with friends…listening to jazz at Kuumbwa, hiking in Wilder/Pogonip/upper campus and all the while running into friends and classmates…It is participating in in the Holi Festival, 4/20, Earth Day, and intramural sports…it is all those serendipitous chance meetings, connections, and friendships that matter most…on-line college just doesn’t make it. A college education is not simply listening to lectures, passing tests, and writing papers. It is an (w)holistic endeavor that should be available to all of our young people. (And 20,000 students in Santa Cruz is enough…basta! We’ve reached our student carrying capacity.)

If You Love UCSC so Much, Why Do You Seem Hostile?
Hostility comes from many corners of Santa Cruz, essentially because the UC Regents is an undemocratic system. It justifies dumping students from El Cajon, Fresno, and Eureka into SC and expecting them to survive because every young person in California deserves a UC education. Yes, everyone deserves a UC education and no, Santa Cruz can only accept its fair share. I am certain most people in Santa Cruz would not want to give up the real perks and privileges of having a UC here–great libraries, musical concerts, plays, and visiting faculty lectures, but why not spread the wealth? Why not erect new campuses? Why not a UC Eureka, UC Stockton, UC El Centro, or UC Redding? We need to build more campuses, not continue to stress out the communities that already house a UC. Community goodwill is not something to dismiss lightly.

UC and Bad Decisions?
And/but, UCSC has made terrible decisions…kicked Shakespeare Santa Cruz off campus; brought in 100 cops to beat up grad and undergrad students last year (not the first time either); it’s still not gone to electric buses when by all indications they would do it 10 years ago; then the admin saying campus population will grow to 28k and not including the extra 4-6k faculty and staff in that number up front; seeking to build in the ecological hotspot that is upper campus; trying to construct buildings on the iconic east meadow thus defying a 60,000-plus signature petition; and of course the eternal question which perplexes locals: why aren’t the UC Regents building more housing on-campus for ALL new students? Are Santa Cruzans hostile? How about insurrectionary.

“We have worked very hard to develop legislation which finally meets the long-neglected needs of the working class. $3.5 trillion is already the compromise — we must pass the infrastructure bill and the reconciliation bill in tandem.” (Sept. 12)

Iron Man/Womyn competition is quite the event! It was held this past weekend and large crowds came out all along West Cliff, Highway 1, and in the Depot Park area. Amazing athletes! But Covid-19 had its way here too. I heard over 2000 registered (at $349 each), but less than 1300 showed up.

September 6, 2021

RECALL, PART II

Recall Balloting by the Numbers

Vote-By-Mail Counts in the California Recall as of Sept. 2nd:

• Number of ballots mailed to registered voters: 22,349,461
• Number of ballots returned to all county registrars of voters: 5,476,946
• Turnout statewide is currently: 24.5%

Santa Cruz County balloting:

• Number of ballots mailed to registered voters:  171,070

• Number of ballots returned to SC county registrar of voters: 51,925
• Turnout countywide is currently: 30.35% 

Thinking of Writing in Mike Rotkin for Governor?
Think again. In case you are wondering about writing someone in on your ballot for governor, chances are if you’ve already voted, whoever you wrote in will not receive your vote because they were not an official write-in candidate. “The official list of write-in candidates” was only released by Secretary of State Shirley Weber, on September 3rd, well into the recall voting process. The list is short and only includes seven candidates, two Democrats, one Republican, one American Independent, and three NPP’s, or No Party Preference. (Hint: Mike is not on the official list.)

Petition Season
Watch for those petitioners, there’s a lot on the line and to paraphrase Peter Douglas the former Executive Director of the Coastal Commission, Santa Cruz is never saved, Santa Cruz is always being saved. And folks, the chips are down right now on many progressive fronts. The 5-2 pro-developer and pro-realtor Santa Cruz city council is not letting up. With the status of the planning commission now in limbo–most of their past half dozen meetings were cancelled by city staff–the city council continues to permit one housing development after another, and in all due respect to my YIMBY friends, no, all housing is not equal. Most of what is being approved is higher end housing and most of it is comprised of studios and one-bedroom apartments because that’s where the profits are. With UCSC set to grow by 9,000 more students and when 3000-4000 more new staff and faculty are added into the mix, building market-rate housing is all the rage now in Surf City. Beginning with the 100 Laurel Street project (corner of Pacific Avenue) with a planned 205 condos and not one unit in this complex will be affordable, all the way to a planned hotel on the site of the Santa Cruz Community Credit Union, there’s a lot to talk about and Santa Cruzans are not going to take it lying down.

Save the Farmer’s Market, and the 11 Trees
The Campaign for Sensible Transportation is teaming up with the Sierra Club, Don’t Bury the Library, the Downtown Commons Advocates, and the Santa Cruz Climate Action Network to take the fight into the community. Their petition is going through the final stages of legal look-sees, printing, fundraising, and culminating in a circulation day party (TBA). This is one of those Made in Santa Cruz initiatives that comes along once every generation. Lighthouse Field was one, Saving the Pogonip was another, and stopping the Dream Inn and La Bahia Convention Centers were yet other political stands that the community took when the developer dollar signs of night always seemed about to overcome the progressive community’s first light of dawn. 

Our Downtown, Our Future
If passed, what will this ballot measure accomplish? It will (1) address the City’s housing crisis by prioritizing the development of affordable housing on City-owned properties in Downtown Santa Cruz; (2) it will keep the Downtown Farmer’s Market, an important community institution, at its current location in-perpetuity and also preserve the heritage trees at that site; (3) this measure will prevent the construction of a multi-level parking garage that the city’s own transportation consultants concluded is unnecessary; and finally, it will (4) keep our downtown library at its historic site, where it’s been for more than 100 years. If you like the market, enjoy shade trees, want more affordable housing downtown, and also desire a remodeled downtown library forming one piece in a revitalized Civic Center, then sign the petition so we can get it on the Santa Cruz ballot! Our Downtown, Our Future initiative needs 5,772 signatures to qualify for the November 8, 2022 ballot, according to the Santa Cruz city clerk.

Tax Empty Homes? Hell Yeah!
Have you been seeing a lot of empty apartments, ADU’s, and big houses around Santa Cruz lately? Me too. Best indication is to bike around at night and notice the no-lights emptiness on West Cliff, at 555 Pacific, and at the large complex at River and Pacific near San Lorenzo Lumber. Enter from stage Left, the Empty Homes Tax Working Group. They’ve been organized for more than six months studying parcel tax measures in Oakland, Portland, Maine, and Vancouver, Canada. Turns out they work. If homes are taxed for leaving them vacant more than 120 days per year, the owners either rent their property out, thus providing more housing, or they pay the tax. The tax will be $6,000 per house that is left vacant per year and $3000 per apartment per year, but only in apartment complexes over seven units. 

Where Would the Tax Money Collected Go?
The revenue collected would fund more housing units, either they would be bought or built. Those units would be kept at an affordable rent in perpetuity. Monies in the Fund may be used for the purchase or construction of affordable housing units for rental, sale or resale that are deed restricted to permanently maintain affordability to low, very low, and extremely low income individuals or households pursuant to Title 25 of the California Code of Regulations, Section 6932

Here is essentially a summary of what the Empty Homes Tax ballot measure would do:

The Santa Cruz community consistently identifies the creation of more affordable housing as a top priority. Funding to support the creation of affordable housing for the lowest income levels is often identified as a barrier for the production of low, very low and extremely low income deed restricted affordable units. The Santa Cruz Empty Home Tax is a community driven ballot initiative to increase affordable housing options in the city of Santa Cruz by raising funds through a parcel tax on empty homes to create affordable housing.

Is Gavin Sweating Yet?
As of 9/2/21, the California Secretary of State’s office reports that only 24.5% of recall ballots mailed out have been returned. That’s not good news. In Santa Cruz County, it’s a slightly different story, but we’re not significantly better. There were 171,070 ballots mailed to county voters. Of that number only 51,925 Vote-by-Mail (VBM) ballots have been accepted by the county registrar of voters, which is a 30.35% return rate. Joshua Spivak, who follows these numbers closely, says on his Twitter feed, “Day over day turnout numbers drop below 400K for the first time. A blip, a tail-off or does the bottom drop out (as opposed to 2020, when the turnout expanded by the end)?” We’ll see, but first, please turn in your ballot and if you have, call five friends to turn in theirs too! Vote no this phony recall.

Correction from last week. Dr. John Randolph Haynes (not Haynes Johnson as reported here) was the Philadelphian and socialist who is credited as bringing the “direct democracy” concept to California, which evolved into our initiative, proposition, and recall processes.

“Thanks to the labor movement, workers have weekends, 8-hour workdays, paid overtime, a minimum wage, breaks during work, the right to strike, workplace safety standards, and child labor laws.” (Sept.6)

There are now close to 300 tents and structures (I counted!) covering San Lorenzo Park Benchlands and along the east and west banks of the San Lorenzo River. Most folks I talk to say they are either from Santa Cruz or had been living and working here before they became houseless.

August 23 

GOVERNMENT BY INITIATIVE

The Recall of Gov. Gavin Newsom

Vote No. I agree, but end of conversation? That’s what the California Democratic Party (CADEM) wants you to think. They are as responsible for this recall as much as Gavin Newsom’s dalliance with the French Laundry. Both Newsom and CADEM are out of touch with rank and file Democratic voters. They seem to think that since this state votes inordinately Democratic, then Newsom is a cinch not to be recalled. Maybe that bet will pay off, but not if most big “D’s” stay home. The average democratic voter (if that really exists) likely has no relationship with either CADEM or their local Democratic Central Committee (DCC). It is a disconnect of monumental proportions that could cost Newsom the election. The governor needs motivated voters right now and it’s like he is in the desert searching. Why? Because he and CADEM only look for registered democrats at election time. I receive 2-4 emails a day from CADEM, but I’m a party delegate from AD 29 (Santa Cruz). I have yet to see any US mail about this recall, besides the actual ballot that was sent from the Santa Cruz County registrar of voters. If democrats go out and vote, I have no doubt Gov. Newsom will NOT be recalled, but will they? Drew Glover and I were recalled in March of 2020, right before the presidential election. The turnout was 65% for that recall election, but the percentage of voters coming out for the following November presidential election was over 85% in Santa Cruz. It is unlikely we would’ve been recalled had the election been in Nov. of 2020, and that’s the strategy the same one pro-recall people are using on Newsom. Although Newsom would likely win with a 65% turnout, it appears unlikely that will happen by the Sept. 14th election ballot deadline. Also, it is a “partisan” election, whereas the city council recall that involved a formerly registered Republican, Renee Golder, was deemed nonpartisan by most and we did not draw Democratic party support. Glover and I were both registered Democrats. On the other hand, Republican voters are a motivated bunch right now as were the Republicans who started the Santa Cruz recall process, so low democratic voter turnout and high republic participation should make this election a close one. Newsom has a 57% job approval rating according to a YouGuv-CBS August poll. That’s pretty good and should be plenty to avoid the recall, but only if Democrats get out and vote. Should schools and restaurants close again because of high Covid-19 variant rates and wildfires continue to sour the collective voter mood, it may be much more difficult for Newsom to prevail.

Second Ballot Question: Candidates to Vote for Should the Governor be Recalled, Choose One

Newsom and CADEM are saying don’t vote for anyone, which seems silly, and may prove chaotic should a non-democrat win with less than 25% of the vote. Silly, because while this state is overwhelmingly filled with registered Democrats, rightwing radio host Larry Elder or moderate Republican, Kevin Faulconer, might win. I guess what the strategy on the part of CADEM is to not tempt voters with someone they could live with as governor and get people to vote NO on the recall and yes on a potentially acceptable candidate. Is that what’s going on here? My main question is: how will the public respond to this kind of strategy by an out of touch California Democratic Party, one likely hatched in their Sacramento offices or Los Angeles high-rises? Even given all of this, vote NO on the recall. Recalls are inherently unfair for so many reasons. Real recalls are regularly scheduled elections every two or four years. Newsom has earned a shot to serve out his term and be “recalled,” or not, in November of 2022 not September of 2021.

Who’s on the Ballot?

There are 46 candidates on the ballot. One will serve out Gavin Newsom’s term if he is recalled. Should the governor be recalled, it will bring shame and dishonor to the Democratic party of California, but it will probably not be the end of the world and it will not be the end of Newsom’s political career. 

The recall ballot includes:

• 24 Republicans with Larry Elder (R) leading in the YouGuv-CBS poll
• 9 Democrats with “YouTuber” Kevin Paffrath leading in the YouGuv-CBS poll
• 10 No Party Preference candidates
• 2 Green Party candidates
• 1 Libertarian

If Newsom is recalled, the likely outcome will be a severely ham-strung governor fighting with an overwhelmingly Democratic-controlled legislature. The governor will veto bills, but he or she will probably get nothing passed through the legislature. A non-Newsom governor, Elder leads in the most recent polling by 10 points, could possibly create border chaos by sending in some national guard troops or put out anti-vax messages, for example, and that would be terrible and the state would also likely be the brunt of late-night comedy. In other words, it would be a public relations disaster for everyone, not just the Democrats. If Newsom is recalled, would the Democratic Party go through some soul-searching? Would Gavin Newsom run in 2022? Would Donald Trump make inroads into California fundraising largesse in his bid for the 2024 presidential election? It’s unlikely the Republicans will rise out of their decade long spiral into the ash heap of state political history, but they are certainly hoping for one last gasp, or is that one last cash haul?

The Initiative Movement

The Fall of 2022 is shaping up to be a form of local legislating and rule-making by ballot initiative. It will involve the local library, the future of the Farmer’s Market, a permanent fund for housing the homeless, and a tax on “empty homes” with the goal of funding affordable housing. It is clear to most political observers that there is a public policy-making gap, with respect to growth, between what the five-member majority on Santa Cruz city council is leaning into and what SC voters are willing to tolerate. The Meyers-Watkins-K-Johnson council continues to legislate in favor of the kind of massive for-profit growth not seen in Surf City since the 1960’s. The community on the other hand, is playing catch-up. There are a couple of well-organized grassroots ballot initiatives now taking shape with the goals of throttling the run-away growth we’re seeing and also creating a more livable downtown. It’s shaping up to be an epic confrontation between an engaged electorate and an out of touch pro-developer and politically estranged city council. 

Brief History of the Ballot Initiative

The California “initiative, referendum, and recall” movement actually began in Los Angeles around 1900. It was the election of Hiram Johnson as governor in 1910 and, believe it or not, his “Progressive majority” (republican at the time) that introduced the initiative, referendum, and recall efforts at both the state and local level. They became enshrined in the California constitution in a special election that was held on October 10, 1911. This government by initiative process was brought to California by former-Philadelphian, Dr. Haynes Johnson. A pair of early statewide initiatives included abolishing the California poll tax (52%-48%) and also providing $1.8 million in construction bonds for the University of California in 1914 (63%-37%). Another ‘believe-it-or-not’ occurred on the 1914 ballot, forty-eight propositions appeared on it, the most ever! I urge you to look at this list of 48, many of which we are still struggling over even today. Nineteen fourteen was clearly a turning point in California history. That year too, there were two competing alcohol initiatives. Proposition 2 would have made alcohol illegal and Prop. 37 would repeal proposition 2. Well, Prop. 2 was trounced and 39 won overwhelmingly with the pro-alcohol forces voting no by 120,000 votes more than voted yes on 39 that year. The federal government out-lawed alcohol sales and consumption from 1920-1933 during a period known as prohibition. Interestingly, Prop. 33 on that same ballot would’ve “authorized municipal corporations to acquire and operate public utilities.” It lost, 55% to 45%.

November 8, 2022

There will likely be at least three significant initiatives on the November 8, 2022 election day ballot. One, which will finally address the community-council differences on where the Santa Cruz main branch of the public library will be located and whether a five-story parking garage will be built, along with designating a permanent home for the downtown farmer’s market. The second initiative will catalog and tax empty and under-used homes in the city of Santa Cruz. The Empty Home Tax petition will soon be out on the street collecting signatures of registered voters. The third local ballot issue is already proving to be quite controversial. The local Santa Cruz County Greenway group is out seeking signatures on their initiative. This endeavor basically seeks to gut, or “rail bank,” the now county-owned rail-trail project and replace it with a “trail-only” transportation pathway. It will be a gubernatorial election year, which usually spells lower turnout, but with these initiatives effecting groups and individuals from bicyclists to environmentalist to library readers, a much larger turnout will be expected in Santa Cruz on November 8, 2022.

Looking for Some Compelling Radio About Local Issues?

Try “Talk of the Bay” Tuesdays from 5-6pm, on KSQD 90.7 and KSQD.org 

This week’s August 24th show will feature California State Senator John Laird discussing the Sept. 14 recall of Governor Gavin Newsom. Next week, August 31, Greenway’s Bud Colligan will go head-to-head with Campaign for Sensible Transportation’s Bruce van Allen in discussing rail-trail vs. trail-only. If you want to hear other past shows, ones that include SC Local’s Kara Meyberg Guzman, SC city councilmember Sandy Brown, Empty Homes Tax board member Cyndi Dawson, The Great Morgani, Library Director Susan Nemitz, UCSC activist Ayo Banjo, former Mayor Don Lane, medical marijuana guru Valerie Coral, and community activist Kayla Kumar…then click here!

“We have a moral obligation to the Afghan people. The U.S. role in this crisis is indisputable. We must waste no time or expense in helping refugees safely & swiftly leave Afghanistan. We must immediately welcome them to the U.S. & provide real support as they rebuild their lives.” (Aug. 16)

Come join us at the Squid, KSQD 90.7 and KSQD.org on Tuesday’s from 5-6pm.

August 16.  

SANTA CRUZ CREDIT UNION BOARD GETS AN EAR-FUL.
The Santa Cruz Community Credit Union board decided to sell the rather large site they own on Front Street near the corner of Laurel Street in downtown Santa Cruz. The sale was never an issue until it became public that the board decided to sell to a hotel group represented locally by land-use “Fixer,” Owen Lawlor.

But I Digress… 
(Owen Lawlor, upon graduation from UCSC, drifted off to NYC to obtain a degree in real estate development (see it before the site is “scrubbed”) and then drifted back to Santa Cruz after realizing how beautiful this place is and what a cash cow it might become for him and a few of his investor buddies, but this is all a story for another column. In Owen’s world, he is called an “entitler,” because he does the nasty work many developers shun in Santa Cruz, like glad-handing members of the Economic Dev. Dept., securing permits for market-rate projects, and making parcel-property exchange deals, but I digress.) 

On with the Show
About a dozen Santa Cruz Community Credit Union members organized a petition effort to force a special meeting of the SCCCU board. That meeting was held this past Friday (Aug. 13). At the beginning of the meeting, someone on the board said it was not an official meeting because the signatures were not “official,” even though the group had obtained over 700 and needed only 426, but alas, the meeting went on. If it wasn’t “official” then did it really happen? And why did it happen?

The COMMUNITY in SCCCU to the Rescue
This was perhaps the most secretive of public meetings held in the pandemic era. Just registering for the meeting was excruciating, and no link was forthcoming after registering until the day of the meeting. It led to great uncertainty among those wanting to attend the membership meeting to contest the sale of SCCCU property to a hotel group. Even after receiving “a link” many members were unclear as to how to use the link they received and were consequently locked out of the Friday “members-only” meeting. It was not a typical Zoom meeting either, one in which you could see who was attending, exchange “chats” with each other, and pose questions to the board for all to see. No, this was as tightly controlled a virtual gathering as I have been to in Covid-19’s eighteen-month reign. Why? No one knows why the board sent off such paranoid vibes and made the meeting so opaque as to squelch a good deal of dissent. Of course, rumors abound as to why the meeting secrecy was so heavy, but I will not go into them here. I will say there were at least 88 members present. Someone on the board later alluded to the number 100, but I am not sure as the participant number did not appear on the screen as it normally does in Zoom virtual meetings.

The good news is that a vote by those present was taken. It was a pretty simple up or down one. Do you support the credit union being sold to a hotel developer? When it came time to vote on this resolution, put forward by former city councilmember Micah Posner, 66% of those present voted NO, they don’t support their member-owned credit union being sold to a hotel developer! One would think it was a resounding victory: Hey, credit union board, STOP the sale, immediately! But, if you remember, since it wasn’t an “official” meeting, this was an advisory vote. Lots of unanswered questions…What were their lawyers telling the board? Was it a financial cover-your-ass move in front of the membership?

Nevertheless, those who spoke in favor of cutting ties with the hotel group were informative, eloquent, and forceful in their 3-minute statements before the board. A compelling argument was made, but since the vote is non-binding, the ball is now in the board’s public relations court. How will they spin it? It is anyone’s guess, but they have been staunchly adamant about following through on the sale of the property before this meeting. Will they have a change of mind? Stay tuned.

Questions for SCCCU’s Chief Exec, Beth Carr, and Board
Barbara Riverwoman, a keen observer of local politics, has her eyes fixed on the SC Credit Union’s sale of the property to a hotel group headed by locals, but it includes New York hotel person/group (won’t tell us) as well. She watched last Friday’s meeting and posed these all too relevant questions:

1. Is the sale of the credit union still in escrow?  What penalties would be assessed if the credit union withdrew from the sale? 
2. Why did the Board and staff fail to actively solicit the input from the membership back in 2018 when you first began exploring the sale?
3. Why did the Board and staff meet with Bonnie Lipscomb, the City’s Economic Development Director, the Chamber of Commerce and other pro-development players in Santa Cruz but not with its own members? 
4. Did the Board ever consider working with the City to combine the three pieces of land as one – which would then have required the construction of affordable housing on that plot?
5. The credit union received an assessment of $4.9 million on the land and building.  Was an assessment ever made on the combined land of the City and the Credit Union.
6. Why did CEO Beth Carr wait so long to send us the minutes of the Board meetings and why were there so many last-minute redactions (blacked out lines) in the minutes?
7. And why have there been so many closed session meetings with no minutes as to subject of each of these meetings?
8. Why did Beth Carr absolve herself and the credit union of any responsibility in the matter of who was the buyer of the property?  (And, as Stacey Falls posed the question at the membership meeting: Would the credit union have sold the property to ICE if they wanted to put a detention center there? I think not, so they likely have discretion over who they sell the property to, no?)

 
Short-term Electoral Politics vs. Building a Working-class Movement
Since Bernie Sanders ran for President on the Democratic ticket but as a Democratic Socialist in 2016 and lost, and lost again in 2020, there has been a raging debate across the US among socialists of all stripes as to the relevancy of electoral politics. On one hand, lots of socialists feel that the system is rigged and as they look back now, Sanders had a chance of becoming the Democratic Party’s candidate, not in a million years. Others, while they agree, look to all the gains other socialists made on the coat-tails of Bernie: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Jamaal Bowman, Cori Bush, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Ayanna Pressley and many others were elected and now are poised to implement a socialist agenda. The Democratic Socialists of America just completed their biannual convention, virtual this year because of the pandemic, and this topic was an electric one. Locally, Jeb Purucker, the Santa Cruz DSA co-chair, lent his perspective to this debate. I reprint it below from an email exchange we engaged in. Recently, Nina Turner lost a Democratic primary to an insider Democratic National Committee candidate to represent the Cleveland area in congress. The DNC threw everything at Turner. She was Bernie Sanders’ national presidential campaign co-chair in 2020. The question I posed to Jeb was did he see a place for socialists, Turner being one, within the Democratic Party? In other words, should socialists hold out for possible short-term gains in maybe winning the odd election, or should they be looking at a bigger picture and forming a viable third party. His response follows.

by Jeb Purucker, Co-Chair

Santa Cruz Democratic Socialists of America

I am sure it won’t surprise you, but I think this is exactly the wrong lesson to draw from the [Nina] Turner loss… for me the question isn’t “electoralism or not?” but rather “what do we need to do to actually build power independent of the democrats?”  If we start from the premise that what we need is a party that truly represents working people rather than corporate interests, the question is what do we do to get there?  The option [Ryan] Skolnick puts forward–running against conservative democrats and trying to take over the Democratic Party–is an immediatist approach.  It says, essentially, that we don’t have to build new forms of worker organization; we don’t have to deal with the profound disorganization of the working class over the past century.  It assumes that all you have to do is message your campaign right, and knock on enough doors, and then magically the difference in organization between an extremely organized and experienced ruling class faction in the Democratic Party and the disorganized and atomized working class elements in the party can be overcome.  In short, it assumes that the main site you need to organize is the party apparatus itself.  

In my opinion, Turner’s loss (and Bernie’s loss too) reflects the limits of this kind of magical thinking.  Both cases show that the party apparatus is capable of absorbing really strong challenges.  If we take the approach that [Ryan] Skolnick is advocating here, and start by mobilizing mass numbers of working people and progressives into the democratic party, we are still doing essentially the Turner/Bernie thing of trying to take over the party without actually organizing the class itself outside the party first.  Ultimately, that kind of extra-party work is the only thing that can sustain a real challenge to a much more organized capitalist class.  

We have to instead ask what kind of work is NOT being done when we are focusing on taking over a party apparatus that is, at its core, built around the interests of certain segments of the ruling class.  When you are registering people to vote Democrat, or working on taking over local central committees etc. you are NOT out there organizing working people around their own immediate concerns and interests; you are NOT building independent worker organizations–tenant unions, labor unions, socialist organizations etc.  

So, I think Skolnick gets the question wrong when he poses it as “inside or outside electoral politics?” or “inside or outside the democratic party?”.  The question should instead be: “do we think we can build and sustain a party of the working class before we have done the hard work of rebuilding working class organization?” Skolnick wants to jump right to organizing the party before organizing the class.  I think that this can produce some limited victories (and a lot of defeats), but ultimately if we want to build something that is sustainable in the long term, the focus has to be on base-building.  What would have happened in the Turner race if it weren’t just a bunch of Justice Democrat activists knocking on strangers’ doors, but instead were built on a foundation of a robust network of tenant organizations and independent labor unions that were primarily turning out their own members and that had strong political education campaigns built in? 

“It is absolutely wild that members of Congress are still allowed to buy and sell individual stock. It shouldn’t be legal. We’ve introduced legislation to end the practice, but as one can imagine it’s a very uphill battle to pass. This shouldn’t even be controversial though!” (Aug. 12)

Rick Longinotti (left) and Russell Brutsche (with guitar) address a crowded Campaign for Sustainable Transportation (CFST) picnic this past Sunday (August 15) at Harvey West Park. It’s a celebration! CFST raised more than $50k to confront the forces of highway widening, get the Regional Transportation Commission to consider alternatives, and take them to court if they do not. Because of this group’s efforts, alternatives to ever-expanding highways in Santa Cruz County will be considered and Highway 1 expansion has been put off, at least for now. The struggle continues.

(Chris Krohn is a father, writer, activist, and was on the Santa Cruz City Councilmember from 1998-2002. Krohn was Mayor in 2001-2002. He’s been running the Environmental Studies Internship program at UC Santa Cruz for the past 16 years. Krohn was elected to the city council again in November of 2016, after his kids went off to college. That term ended when the development empire struck back with luxury condo developer money combined with the real estate industry’s largesse. They paid to recall Krohn and Drew Glover from the Santa Cruz city council in 2019. Email Chris at ckrohn@cruzio.com