Public Comment

(Kriss, this is an open letter--it's public.)

We already knew because it wasn't a guarded secret that y'all on the Berkeley City Council planned to vote last night to continue Berkeley's participation in Urban Shield exercises and even the extremely dangerous NCWIC--the "suspicious activities" national data collection system whose data base can be politicized and gets around to police department countrywide-- (if that program doesn't frighten you nothing can). So the whole deal of a third Council meeting on this subject was a charade--a satire on democracy.  

It wouldn't matter how many petitions were signed, how many people showed up (about 300), how polite or impolite, how raucus or calm the crowd, how good the evidence of the public presentations. You know, as well as I do, that this was decided 2 months ago because you told people that. You also know that you've made us, the public and the Stop Urban Shield Coalition sit through thousands of person hours over 4 meetings (three of them City Council Meetings, of which two lasted until almost 1 a.m.), watching repetitive slide shows by the police chief (and we've seen the Sheriff's slide shows as well at the Board of Supervisors meetings), pretending that you've had open ears and minds, which you did not. You made us jump through these hoops even though you had already made up your minds. I didn't make this up; it's what you and other councilmembers have told people privately and intimated not so privately. 

If we were to put Homeland Security's Urban Shield and its 5 million dollar yearly SWAT performance art show on a Berkeley ballot, which I doubt anyone is going to waste time doing, is it not likely that your position, especially on participating in the Urban Shield militarization scenario exercises and weapons expo and the participation in NCWIC, would be repudiated? You are playing this two ways against the middle. You claim you need more investigation? If a commission or committee of Council advises to pull out of Urban Shield next year you will do it for a year. No biggie, right? Studying a problem that has already been over-studied is such an old typical delaying charade. Meanwhile the real world keeps spinning out of control, as we bomb 7 countries now shooting down a Syrian plane over Syria because they bombed "near" our surrogates in region of Syria the U.S. has staked out for itself. This threatens potential war with Russia and Iran as well as North Korea. Meanwhile thousands of Americans like Hugo and Rodrigo sit newly imprisoned without rights. Do you even know who Hugo and Rodrigo are: upstanding Union members of the Painters Union from Marin, seized on the Job and held now from their wives and children with no recourse to the courts for over a month? What does "sanctuary city" actually mean to you in practice? I didn't see you or Jessie or Wengraff or Maio or other Councilpeople at the rally at the ICE building in S.F. yesterday morning outside the hearing for these two fathers, husbands, family men, whose ability to provide for their families has been taken from them--and they may even be deported or kept in prison for doing nothing? Certainly no one representing Berkeley spoke there at that rally though a rep from a State legislator came all the way from Southern California to give his public support for their rights.

Our mayor sat up there on the Longfellow Junior High School stage Tuesday night like a pompous dictator--like a Mussolini or a Trump--warning the crowd below to behave according to his rules (and yours). But there were barely a few non-disruptive far off snickers as one (only one) citizen of the hundreds in attendance spoke in favor of Urban Shield. And how badly he treated Councilwoman Davila? It was hard not to notice the parallel between how those Republican Senators treated Camilla Harris and how Jesse Arreguin had the nerve, the unbridled chutzpah, to tell Davila to lay off the police chief when she asked him why he left the police killing of Kayla Moore while in custody out of in his presentation by claiming there have been no such police incidents in many years in Berkeley. What do you, yourself, think of his leaving off the police killing of Moore? Are you prepared to make a criticism and public apology for your chief's flagrant omission? Isn't it like the "careless" omissions of Flynn and the stonewalling of Sessions? This is politics in the 21st New American Century. And the reason, in my view, why the Democratic Party can not pull out of its tailspin is because its duplicity, like yours, is just as real and just as transparent as that of the Republicans. Duplicity, such as providing the Stop Urban Coalition leaders an incorrect agenda sequence for the meeting as was done, is the type of behavior that causes the growing outrage everywhere in our society. Is chaos what you want to see happen here? Your dishonesty about the process we just engaged in promotes chaos and creates a lack of trust that we can even try to have any democracy.

I would have thought that those of you on Council who listened to our former mayor Gus Newport's scolding you might have felt some shame as to how long you dragged this nonsense out. I had a small hope that you might reconsider what you were about to do. Urban Shield is a no brainer. Yes, a no brainer as Gus pointed out, unless you think that the police department exists mainly to defend you, yourselves, from the public. Urban Shield participation isn't a legitimate referendum on your support or betrayal of the Berkeley Police department. Any intelligent person can separate out the two separable issues. Supporting the police department doesn't require capitulation to their political and policy desires. The police are supposed to work for the people; they should have no political role in democratic governance. By advancing the politicization of police work in this way your are placing yourselves in support of fascism and endangering the public. No I don't mean the Berkeley Police are fascists. What I mean is that if you don't subordinate policing power to popular will you are furthering the serious political and cultural crisis our nation is facing. That's a general statement about what is happening, not a comment about Berkeley's police department.

I find it ironic that Mayor Jesse Arreguin made a big show of his opposition to the armored van. I say ironic because that's the one part of this whole charade that was of little actual importance in my view. I don't care whether the department gets a bulletproof van. But, as Councilwoman Harrison pointed out I think, the van could be bought without this UASI money--without Homeland Security ties--if you felt it was necessary. Instead you claimed that the city obligated itself to UASI. Do you mean that Berkeley isn't allowed to cancel an agreement to accept money from Homeland Security to buy a van? Why would that be? The van hasn't been outfitted yet. There's always ways to get out of such a deal, but are you afraid to alienate the Feds? If so, why? And if not, is getting the money, their 80 thousand dollars, that important to you or the Police chief and the Union? If so, why?

You and your cohort are playing with fire Kriss. Rather soon Trump and Sessions and Kushner and Manifort and Flynn are all going before the bar of justice for their persistent deceptions and lying. Some will likely go to prison but all will be disgraced. Dishonest and duplicitous behavior like integrating the City with Homeland Security will eventually be exposed here as well, even if there is no legal culpability. This collaboration with Homeland Security and the reactionary Sheriff Ahern has already cost you yourself more than you recognize. Only upon your own vote--yes yours personally, not the rest of Council---was there a huge gasp from the remaining, still sizeable, audience at 12:35 a.m. You had assaulted your own reputation. Did you even pay attention that almost all of the people in the audience of about 250-350 or so were actually Berkeley citizens? That all are strongly opposed to what you were about to do and that they surely represent tens of thousands of others? Do you even care? Do you truly believe that you know more or better than we do about what our City needs in terms of police work? Do you actually think the people of Berkeley elected Jessie (and you and Sophie) to defy the public will and to thus denigrate our intelligence and insights? When I voted for Jessie and for Sophie Hahn, I didn't think that I was doing that old American 2 party dance of choosing some lesser of two evils. I thought--from what I had heard--that we had a chance for a revival of progressivism here that might parallel the outstanding things happening in Richmond where they've made so many gains for their citizens in spite of Chevron's millions against them. Even at 75 years of age and experience I was fooled, yet again. Kris, that you are no longer a progressive leader is a reality that is sure to get wide play. You might lead by following the will of the people rather than your own, that of insiders or outsiders, named or unnamed. And if you can't do that, you should just-- as the saying goes--get outta the way.