Editorials

Putsch, noun, a plotted revolt or attempt to overthrow a government, especially one that depends upon suddenness and speed.

It’s a word that has historically acquired very ugly connotations because of its association with the Nazis, but it can also be used in somewhat less ominous contexts. Putsches major and minor happen from time to time. Attempted putsches can be seen everywhere from PTAs to congressional committee chairs.

At the moment it looks like we are in the middle of what we might label a “Pandemic Putsch”, a takeover orchestrated by ambitious politicians on behalf of some speculative financiers who contribute to their campaigns.

While local residents have been pre-occupied with coronavirus-inflicted crises as mundane as stockpiling toilet paper and as consequential as avoiding being evicted, developers who specialize in land speculation and their wannabes have been making best efforts to avoid the controls that years of general planning were supposed to be regulating. They seek exceptions to every local land use rule, with only one hard and fast criterion: The project has to “pencil out”, i.e. it must provide the speculative capitalist with an obscene rate of return. And since they can't game all the rules, they're pushing to change them. 

Since this is being written in Berkeley, by and for Berkeley residents, we’ll concentrate on what’s going on here, but the same thing is happening all over California, and in Bloomington, Austin, Vancouver and London, to choose a few venues at random. 

The cover for the accelerated development activity, the spark that fuels the flame that are engulfing our older urban and suburban cities, is provided by the shift from local government by citizen consensus to sovereignty by soundbyte. Weighty decisions that used to be discussed in Berkeley at lively public hearings, sometimes punctuated by colorful demonstrations, are apparently being settled off-camera in the age of Zoom. 

Public comments on Zoom are limited to one minute per person, subject to being axed by the presiding official mid-sentence. Online, faces and protest signs are hidden, with the patently false claim that showing the assembled online audience is technically impractical, which anyone who participates in online organizations recognizes as dubious. Names can be faux, a rule particularly attractive to the YIMBY claque marshalled by Twitter to call in from San Francisco or Sacramento or wherever they live. 

Examples of how this works can often be observed online. 

First, last Thursday morning, if you had the right kind of high-tech setup and a fast dialing finger, you might have gotten a look at a prime example of the Pandemium Putsch in action. 

The Berkeley City Council's Land Use and Housing committee discussed a proposal by four councilmembers to permit construction of four dwelling units on lots currently zoned for single family homes. Mayor Jesse Arreguin and Councimembers Droste, Kesarwani and Taplin have been the prime proponents of this legislation. 

Many, many Berkeley residents tried to call in and failed, since the COB Zoom license limited citizen participation to 100 callers, and those comments were the new normal: one-minute soundbytes, totally inadequate for discussion of what would be a major dramatic change in the city’s fabric. 

If you’d like hear what went down, you can listen to the audio here if you’re on the privileged side of the digital divide. Never mind the large percentage of Berkeleyans who don't even have smart phones, let alone computers. 

Second, at its next meeting,Tuesday at 6 pm, the Berkeley City Council will debate a resolution to support elimination of what sponsors are hoping to label exclusionary zoning—i.e. single family zones. 

Old folks who have been around since the early 1970s are well aware that the speculators' real target now is acquiring the land under the remaining single family homes in South and West Berkeley, just as it was in that era. At that time single family zoning was backed by progressives, led by Berkeley’s African American Mayor Warren Widener and councilmembers including Ron Dellums, in order to protect the Black homeowners who had bought their houses in the neighborhood around San Pablo Park. 

They’d been redlined out of the Berkeley Hills by duplicitous real estate agents and restrictive covenants, and the value of their home investments in the flats, where some had been able to buy, was being threatened by the “cash register multiples” which were being promoted for the expanding student population and by “white hippies” who wanted communal group houses instead of family homes. 

Now the same pattern is emerging again, with variations. Those who don’t remember history are happy to repeat it. 

But now a lot of my peers who were in Berkeley in the 70s are still around to set the record straight, as they have been doing on NextDoor, Berkeleyside and elsewhere. The attempt to conflate single family residential zoning in the flats with direct racial exclusion in the hills by restrictive covenant was called blackwashing by one writer, akin to the greenwashing name for phony environmental claims by developers. 

Berkeley Councilmembers Bartlett, Droste, Robinson and Taplin have aready expressed their support for the resolution, and the Mayor is on record endorsing the pseudo-historical concept on which it’s predicated, so it’s clear what the decision will be—and it looks like the deal’s gone down. But just in case, Vice-Mayor Droste has told her YIMBY followers that she expects this item to come up around 9 if they want to call in from wherever they are to tell Berkeley what to do. 

The predatory development speculators are gathering in Sacramento too, with the benefit of about a half-million dollars from only one of the several YIMBY fronts and leadership by Senators Scott Wiener and Nancy Skinner. But that’s a story for another day. 

Meanwhile, you could call in to the Berkeley City Council meeting on Tuesday to see what's happening and speak your piece.

The agenda packet for the full city council meeting can be found here. 

The resolution is item 29 on the agenda. 

Zoom: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81676274736 

And also, if you write a letter to the council, send the Planet a copy at opinion@berkeleydailyplanet.com.