Public Comment

After the week we just finished, it is hard to focus on anything other than the end of Roe: Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization and Clarence Thomas setting his sights on gay sex ; Lawrence v Texas, same sex marriage ; Obergefell v. Hodges and contraception;Griswold v. Connecticut. Note that Clarence Thomas did not cite the other transformative Supreme Court decision based on the Fourteenth Amendment: Loving v. Virginia, ending the ban on interracial marriage.

Roe isn’t the end of all the bad 6 to 3 rulings this session. The Court ruled on Thursday that a New York law restricting the ability to carry a gun in public violated the Second Amendment in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen. There was Shinn v. Ramirez, that inmates can only use evidence previously produced in state court proceedings and cannot present new evidence. This leaves inmates on death row unable to present new evidence, the center of the Innocence Project. And, Vega v. Tekoh, that a person cannot sue a police officer under federal civil rights law for violating their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination by failing to provide a Miranda warning.

We should note how generously John Eastman, former professor and Trump lawyer, pled the Fifth Amendment a total of 146 times when questioned in deposition. Jeffrey Clark, who appeared in White House logs on January 3, 2020 as acting Attorney General before Trump backed down, also pled the Fifth when under oath.

It is an ugly time. The seductive lure of authoritarianism and power rides high in the righteous right. And, on top of this mess is that the most corrupt president of all time brought us here, and he lost the popular vote twice. Even those who testified to Trump’s corruption and attempted theft of the presidency he lost said they would vote for Trump again should he run.

We should all recognize that this week was in the making for a very long time, decades. In fact, CWA, which I will get to later, organized in 1978. We are now in a country that is split into those who embrace authoritarianism, the power it brings, and the wish to impose their Christian interpretation on all of us, and those who still want to live in a democracy, a multicultural one at that where women have agency over their bodies, where there is separation of church and state, equity and equality exist and sexuality and exercise of gender is not tied to a past saturated in repression, oppression and imprisonment. 

We have a radical conservative Supreme Court majority of five that bluntly threw Supreme Court Chief Justice Roberts under the bus in their critique of Roberts’ concurrence in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett don’t need Roberts to impose their beliefs on the nation. 

Tuesday, the Berkeley City Council held two meetings. The 4 pm meeting was to finish the two items left from June 14th. The contract with Axon, Inc., for body worn cameras, was passed quickly with little fanfare. Vice Mayor Harrison submitted “revised material” for the second item: “Police Equipment & Community Safety Ordinance Impact Statements.” Harrison’s revision passed in a 6 to 3 vote with Droste, Wengraf and Kesarwani abstaining all stating they had not had time to read and compare the documents from the Berkeley Police epartment and the submission from Harrison. Droste did the usual dance: She didn’t understand. Harrison filled the hole left by BPD which was the actual potential impact:potential injury from use of equipment. Now the package is on the way to the Police Accountability Board to finish the work.  

The Council 6 pm special meeting was to give input to staff regarding developing the ballot initiatives for November. One is the parcel tax for streets and the other is for a general obligation bond for infrastructure under the broad umbrella of Vision 2050. I rarely agree with Alex Sharenko, but this time we landed close when he described the bond as an “ill defined slush fund.” Thomas Lord, whom I nearly always agree with and did again, described the infrastructure bond this way: 

“…This plan was conceived by a council in climate denial and who remains that way. It would make some sense if this were 1990. If we were two years out from James Hansen’s testimony before Congress. If we had a few decades to take our time with something like this, but today is 2022, more than three decades later, and the situation has changed and this is much more urgent. This isn’t about sea level rise for god’s sake. It isn’t a hot day. This is one of the coldest years you are ever going to experience for the rest of your lives.” 

The Wednesday 5 pm meeting of the Environment and Climate Commission was significant in a number of ways. Staff described, in general, action the commission could take to educate the public, a direct contrast to the Zero Waste Commission, where the chair stated at a recent meeting that the role of the commission was restricted to advising the City Council and nothing more. 

The Environment and Climate Commission meeting was recorded, though Alene Pearson, Deputy Director of Planning, said when asked that the recording was only available through a PRA (Public Records Act request). The recording can theoretically be publicly accessed through the cumbersome PRA process. This response is in stark contrast to Roger Miller, Secretary and Scott Ferris, Director, of the Parks, Recreation and Waterfront Commission and Khin Chin, Emergency Services Coordinator, the staff person supporting the Disaster and Fire Safety Commission that met at 7 pm the same evening. Chin gave a flood of reasons that evening as to why Disaster and Fire Safety meetings can’t possibly be recorded. Miller and Ferris have been on the same course impeding meeting recordings. 

Not having recordings means that when Mayor Arreguin touts public oversight for the planned infrastructure bond on the November ballot, opponents won’t have recordings from the commissioners with responsibility for ballot measure oversight expressing their frustration that they can’t perform their responsibilities. 

Failure of the City of Berkeley and the Fire Department specifically to provide the necessary information for oversight was exactly the center of discussion Wednesday evening at the Disaster and Fire Safety Commission. The commissioners spoke at length of their frustration and inability to fulfill their responsibility to provide oversight to Measure FF (fire services emergency response, hazard mitigation, wildfire prevention) and Measure GG (improve emergency medical response, disaster preparedness and keep fire stations open). 

The Homeless Panel of Experts is having the same problem with Measure P (funding for navigation centers, mental health, rehousing, homeless services). When the chair called a special meeting for June 22 on short notice to review and finalize recommendations to the Budget and Finance Committee on Measure P, the secretary published the wrong meeting time.  

Because so few of us attend city meetings, especially commissions, and even fewer of us attempt to publish what happened, the city can create all kinds of fantastical promises. A public record is essentially absent. The majority of voters will have little to go on to make their decision in determining whether to vote yes or no on the November ballot measures and that just might be what the City leadership is depending on. 

At the Budget and Finance Committee, Arreguin was pushed by public comment from me and verified by former mayor and current commissioner Shirley Dean to ask the City Manager, Dee Williams-Ridley, why the commissions were not receiving the information they needed for oversight. She had no explanation. 

The mayor’s proposed budget is better than I expected. I was looking for funding the EV (Electric Vehicle) charging stations at the corporation yard and parking enforcement in fire zones. Both are included which brings us back to the Environment and Climate Commission. 

After the presentation on Climate Literacy for BUSD (Berkeley Unified School District) students, Thomas Lord responded that high schoolers already know the stuff on climate and their complaint is that it is the adults who need the education. Lord went on to call out that we are in a climate emergency, action is needed and it is the elected leaders who need the education. 

Thursday morning Councilmember Kesarwani was the first to respond to the mayor’s proposed budget and began by asking why the corporation yard needed EV charging stations, stating it is such a big sum of money, over $1 million. Vice Mayor Harrison explained to Kesarwani, that the City can’t have EVs without charging stations. Kesarwani still didn’t seem to grasp that EV batteries need to be charged. Harrison continued to expand her explanation until Kesarwani finally said she understood. 

I was floored that any elected official in 2022 in this highly educated city didn’t understand that EV and charging stations are connected, that batteries need to be plugged into a charging station to load the battery to power the vehicle, just like combustion engine cars need gasoline to power the motor. Kesarwani certainly confirmed Thomas Lord’s analysis: It is the electeds that need education on climate and climate action. Maybe this plus a host of other issues is why there is an ad to find someone to run against Kesarwani in District 1 for the election in November.  

The Zoning Adjustment Board (ZAB) was the last meeting of the week and the last project reviewed was 2213 Fourth Street and 747 (787) Bancroft Way. This project sits right at the edge of Aquatic Park, which is in the Pacific flyway. Migrating birds land to rest and refresh before continuing on their journey. The project was posted with bird safe glass only on the west side, as if birds can read our instructions to never fly to Aquatic Park from the north, south or east. The proposed building is designed to be surrounded in glass from ground to roof, deadly for birds. We finally achieved success by requiring that the developer connect with the Golden Gate Audubon Society for final direction on bird safety for the building. 

As I was finishing, I saw that the January 6th Committee was to meet Tuesday, the day Book club was set to discuss Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation. The biggest shock in reading the book was the activism of the pro-family anti-feminist evangelical women’s organization, Concerned Women of America (CWA), with this record: 98% vote, 93% sign petitions, 77% boycotted a company, 74% had contacted a public official and nearly 50% had written a letter to an editor. CWA with over 3 million members has been organizing since 1978 to take down ROE. We have a lot of work ahead of us and it won’t get done by checking out. 

Next time you hear someone say they are going to sit out an election, keep these CWA numbers and rattle them off. And, send along this YouTube recording from 1980 of conservative Paul Weyrich, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GBAsFwPglw. "I don't want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of the people. They never have been from the beginning of our country and they are not now. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down." 

I keep intending to write down where or from whom I heard about each book I pick up to read. I know that I did not pick up How the World Really Works: The Science Behind How We Got Here and Where We’re Going by Vaclav Smil because it is on Bill Gates’ reading list. I sort of make a note never to check his list, but after I finished this book I learned Vaclav Smil is one of Gates favorite authors. Smil a Czech-Canadian scientist packed How the World Really Works with information beginning with the four things he identified modern civilization can’t live without, cement, steel, plastics and ammonia. 

July is the challenge month to give up plastics or at least try and remain keenly aware of how plastic is ubiquitous penetrating every corner of our lives and the planet. Smil challenges our thinking, assumptions, perceptions of risk, wishful thinking and throughout the book, he gives a heavy dose of reality with descriptions of misguided ventures, adventures and irrelevant quests. I don’t know if Thomas Lord read this book, but I am convinced he would like the closing, “…of all the risks we face global climate change is the one we need to tackle most urgently…” and the ending, “The future as ever is not predetermined. Its outcome depends on our actions.” 

I heard the news about Thomas Lord’s death while I was reading the last chapters of How the World Really Works. I only met Thomas in person a couple of times, but that was pre-pandemic and before I really grew to appreciate his consistent strong voice and call for action on climate. 

Thomas Lord and I seemed to be following each other with our comments at recent meetings as we spoke to Council and Commissioners. I would have liked to talk to him about my latest read, but that opportunity is gone and so too is the opportunity to say thank you and just how much I appreciated his consistent caring and warning voice. Thomas Lord was very special. Life is fragile. I will miss him.